George Soros predicts class war and riots

George Soros, the billionaire investor, has predicted riots on the streets and global class war as the economic downturn results in a new "age of fallibility".

By Rosa Prince, New York

In an interview ahead of a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the 81-year-old said that for the first time in his career he was baffled by the current state of the market, and saw no way to avoid a violent crisis which at its worst could result in the total collapse of the financial system.

Known as the "man who broke the Bank of England" after betting against the pound on Black Wednesday in 1992, Mr Soros plans to use his Davos address to issue a stern warning that he now considers it "more likely than not" that Greece will default in 2012. And unless Europe's leaders do more to stop it, the euro is likely to collapse with a devastating impact on the rest of the world, he will add.

The financier compared the crisis to the collapse of the Soviet empire and the Great Depression, adding that the old belief in the power of the market to prevent turmoil could no longer be relied upon.

He told Newsweek: "The euro must survive because the alternative – a break-up – would cause a meltdown that Europe, the world, can't afford. I'm not here to cheer you up. The situation is about as serious and difficult as I've known in my career. We are facing now a general retrenchment in the developed world.

"The best-case scenario is a deflationary environment. The worst-case scenario is a collapse of the financial system. We need to move from the Age of Reason to the Age of Fallibility in order to have a proper understanding of the problems."

Warning that violence on the streets was inevitable unless the problems of unemployment and debt were addressed, he warned this could lead to the erosion of civil liberties and installation of a police state.

Asked about the likelihood of riots in the US, he said: "Yes, yes, yes. It will be an excuse for cracking down and using strong arm tactics to maintain law and order which, carried to an extreme, could bring about a repressive political system, a society where individual liberty is much more constrained."

Are our brains being boggled by Google? Study says humans now use the internet as our main 'memory' - instead of our heads

* People remember where to look up information - not the info itself
* People actively forget information if they think they can look it up later
* Tests on how people remembered items they would normally Google

By Rob Waugh

The Internet is becoming our main source of memory instead of our own brains, a study has concluded.

In the age of Google, our minds are adapting so that we are experts at knowing where to find information even though we don’t recall what it is.

The researchers found that when we want to know something we use the Internet as an ‘external memory’ just as computers use an external hard drive.

Nowadays we are so reliant on our smart phones and laptops that we go into ‘withdrawal when we can’t find out something immediately’.

And such is our dependence that having our Internet connection severed is growing ‘more and more like losing a friend’.

Researchers from Harvard University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Columbia University in the U.S. carried out four tests to check their theory.

They involved giving test participants a trivia quiz and then seeing whether they recognised computer-related words more quickly than other words.

The other tests involved seeing if people remembered 40 pieces information they would typically later have normally looked up.

The third and fourth parts of the study involved checking how well people remember where to look up information on-line and whether or not they remembered the location more than the actual data
The results showed that when people don’t believe they will need information for a later test, they do not recall it at the same rate as when they do believe they will need it.

In fact, some of those in the study ‘actively did not make the effort to remember when they thought they could later look up the trivia statements they had read’, the paper says.

'People actively do not make the effort to remember when they think they can look up information later,' says the study

The other results showed that when continuous Internet access is expected, people are better at remembering where they can find it than the details.

The study was lead by Betsy Sparrow, an assistant professor at the department of psychology at Columbia University.

In their paper, the researchers say that we now have access to the Internet 24 hours a day meaning we are 'seldom offline unless by choice' and it is 'hard to remember how we found information before the Internet became a ubiquitous presence in our lives'.

The paper reads: ‘The advent of the Internet, with sophisticated algorithmic search engines, has made accessing information as easy as lifting a finger.

‘No longer do we have to make costly efforts to find the things we want. We can ‘Google’ the old classmate, find articles online, or look up the actor who was on the tip of our tongue.

‘When faced with difficult questions, people are primed to think about computers and that when people expect to have future access to information, they have lower rates of recall of the information itself and enhanced recall instead for where to access it.

‘The Internet has become a primary form of external or transactive memory, where information is stored collectively outside ourselves.’

The study is not the first to touch on such anxieties and similar fears were addressed in ‘The Shallows: How the Internet is rewiring our brains’, a book released last year.

Its author, American technologist Nicholas Carr, talks of how we are unable to concentrate for long periods because of how using the web has affected us.

In research he commissioned for the book, test subjects said they were unable to read copies of Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’ because their minds had been altered.

Others were disturbed at how they could only think in ‘staccato’ bursts because they had become little more than ‘decoders of information'.

Iran slams EU oil embargo, warns could hit US

by Castrol Edge Nurburgring

TEHRAN/BRUSSELS: Iran accused Europeans on Monday of waging "psychological warfare" after the EU banned imports of Iranian oil, and US President Barack Obama said Washington would impose more sanctions to address the "serious threat presented by Iran's nuclear program."

The Islamic Republic, which denies trying to build a nuclear bomb, scoffed at efforts to choke its oil exports, as Asia lines up to buy what Europe scorns.

Some Iranians also renewed threats to stop Arab oil from leaving the Gulf and warned they might strike US targets worldwide if Washington used force to break any Iranian blockade of a strategically vital shipping route.

Yet in three decades of confrontation between Tehran and the West, bellicose rhetoric and the undependable armoury of sanctions have become so familiar that the benchmark Brent crude oil price edged only 0.8 per cent higher, and some of that was due to unrelated currency factors.

"If any disruption happens regarding the sale of Iranian oil, the Strait of Hormuz will definitely be closed," Mohammad Kossari, deputy head of parliament's foreign affairs and national security committee, told Fars news agency a day after US, French and British warships sailed back into the Gulf.

"If America seeks adventures after the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, Iran will make the world unsafe for Americans in the shortest possible time," Kossari added, referring to an earlier US pledge to use its fleet to keep the passage open.

In Washington, Obama said in a statement that the EU sanctions underlined the strength of the international community's commitment to "addressing the serious threat presented by Iran's nuclear program."

"The United States will continue to impose new sanctions to increase the pressure on Iran," Obama said.

The United States imposed its own sanctions against Iran's oil trade and central bank on Dec 31. On Monday, it imposed sanctions on the country's third-largest bank, state-owned Bank Tejarat and a Belarus-based affiliate, for allegedly helping Tehran develop its nuclear program.

The EU sanctions were also welcomed by Israel, which has warned it might attack Iran if sanctions do not deflect Tehran from a course that some analysts say could potentially give Iran a nuclear bomb next year.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a statement with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner: "This new, concerted pressure will sharpen the choice for Iran's leaders and increase their cost of defiance of basic international obligations."

US ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, reiterated Washington's commitment to freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz. "I think that Iran has undoubtedly heard that message and would be well advised to heed it," she said at a meeting of the board of governors of the American Jewish Committee in New York.

CALLS FOR TALKS: Germany, France and Britain used the EU sanctions as a cue for a joint call to Tehran to renew long-suspended negotiations on its nuclear programme. Russia, like China a powerful critic of the Western approach, said talks might soon be on the cards.

Iran, however, said new sanctions made that less likely. It is a view shared by some in the West who caution that such tactics risk hardening Iranian support for a nuclear programme that also seems to be subject to a covert "war" of sabotage and assassinations widely blamed on Israeli and Western agents.

The European Union embargo will not take full effect until July 1 because the foreign ministers who agreed the anticipated ban on imports of Iranian crude at a meeting in Brussels were anxious not to penalise the ailing economies of Greece, Italy and others to whom Iran is a major oil supplier. The strategy will be reviewed in May to see if it should go ahead.

Curbing Iran's oil exports is a double-edged sword, as Tehran's own response to the embargo clearly showed.

Loss of revenue is painful for a clerical establishment that faces an awkward electoral test at a time of galloping inflation which is hurting ordinary people. But since Iran's Western-allied Arab neighbours are struggling to raise their own output to compensate, the curbs on Tehran's exports have driven up oil prices and raised costs for recession-hit Western industries.

A member of Iran's influential Assembly of Experts, former intelligence minister Ali Fallahian, said Tehran should respond to the delayed-action EU sanctions by stopping sales to the bloc immediately, denying the Europeans time to arrange alternative supplies and damaging their economies with higher oil prices.

"The best way is to stop exporting oil ourselves before the end of this six months and before the implementation of the plan," the semi-official Fars news agency quoted him as saying.

Judge's order in ‘birther' case unlikely to draw Obama

By Bill Rankin / The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Even though President Barack Obama has been summoned to a court hearing here Thursday, don’t expect the Commander in Chief to come.

Obama will embark on a three-day trip following his State of the Union address Tuesday evening, White House press secretary Jay Carney said during a press briefing Monday. The White House has said that Obama will be in Las Vegas, Denver and Detroit this Thursday.

In a surprising ruling Friday, a Georgia state administrative judge declined to quash a subpoena directing Obama to attend a hearing Thursday at the Fulton County courthouse on a challenge to strike him from the Georgia ballot this fall on claims he is not a natural born U.S. citizen.

Deputy Chief Judge Michael Malihi issued the decision after previously declining to dismiss the case, one of dozens around the country brought by so-called “birthers.” Malihi, appointed in 1995 by Gov. Zell Miller, presides at the Georgia Office of State Administrative Hearings, which hears complaints against state agencies.

Last year, eight people filed challenges to Obama’s citizenship with the Georgia Secretary of State’s office, which administers elections. The agency referred the dispute to the administrative hearing office as required by law, an office spokesman said Monday.

Lawyers for those pursuing the challenges recently issued a subpoena for Obama to attend the upcoming hearing. Obama’s legal team filed a motion to quash the subpoena, but Malihi declined. In his order, Malihi noted that Obama’s legal team had argued that no president should be compelled to attend a court hearing.

“This may be correct,” Malihi wrote. “But [Obama] has failed to enlighten the court with any legal authority.”

Obama’s court filings fail to show why his attendance would be “unreasonable or oppressive” or why his testimony would be “irrelevant, immaterial or cumulative,” the judge wrote.

The White House on Monday referred questions to Obama’s reelection campaign, which had no public comment.

“It’s a major victory,” said Orly Taitz, a California lawyer who represents five of the people who filed challenges.

Taitz, who is also a dentist, is a leading proponent of challenges to Obama’s citizenship. Last year Obama released a long-form birth certificate showing he was born in Hawaii. Taitz said Monday she considers it a “cheap, computer-generated forgery.”

In court filings, Obama’s legal team has called the “birther” allegations baseless and the criticisms of his birth records “patently unfounded.” The filings also noted 68 similar challenges filed have been dismissed and, during a 2009 challenge, a federal judge in Columbus fined Taitz $20,000 for “frivolous” litigation.

Marietta lawyer Melvin Goldstein, who is not involved in the case, said if the hearing goes on as scheduled without Obama, Malihi could refer the matter to a Fulton County Superior Court judge. It would be up to that judge to decide whether to enforce the subpoena and, if necessary, hold the president in contempt, Goldstein said.

Eric Segall, a Georgia State University law professor, predicted that won’t happen.

“There have been many, many lawsuits trying to litigate the issue of the president’s nationality,” Segall said. “They have all been dismissed and this one should be too. In light of the frivolousness of the case, the judge has no valid authority to require the president to appear in court.”

Did NASA Lie About Triangle UFO?

By Blogger 51

The appearance of a triangular object on a telescope has many UFO hunters speculating that they have captured an image of a giant alien spacecraft.

The object, which moves across the viewing field of NASA’s stereo B spacecraft (one of the two telescopes responsible for providing a panoramic view of the solar system) first appeared on December 27. The scale of the image would suggest that the object in question is of planetary size— one bad mother of a spaceship...

While NASA does not often deign to address such claims, in this case, however, they did offer an explanation. They claim that the object is a reflection from within the satellite’s lens of the planet Venus, which enters into the field of vision concurrently with the object many claim to be a UFO. The optics explanation passes a sniff test, especially considering the previous incidents in which tricks of light resulted in similar phenomena. Nevertheless, the very fact that NASA is bothering to refute these claims has given some pause.

Whatever the case may be (and this blogger finds this theory to be effectively debunked), it has become painfully clear that we are woefully unprepared for when an object of this size actually does appear in our solar system.

I call upon NASA to get to its real purpose: the development, in conjunction with Northrop Grummond and the RAND corporation, of much-needed space cannons before it’s too late.