Queensland coal producers, including BHP Billiton Ltd. and Xstrata Plc, appointed Citigroup Inc (C:NYSE). to advise on a bid for the state’s rail lines, as the government advances a planned initial share sale of the assets. Credit Suisse Group AG, G C:NYSE: Queensland Coal Miners Appoint Citigroup for Rail Bid

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C:NYSE: Queensland Coal Miners Appoint Citigroup for Rail Bid

I am not defending Radovan Karadzic (”Karadzic blames Islamic militants for war,” Web, Monday, and “Karadzic blames Muslims for killing,” Geopolitics, Tuesday). However, there is a basis for his claim that Osama bin Laden's Muslim militants were active in the Balkan war. Instead of being honest brokers in what was a civil war, the Clinton administration, along with a willing media, successfully portrayed Serbian forces, including the Serbian people collectively, as the only villains. In 1993, the government of Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic issued a passport to bin Laden at the Bosnian Embassy in Vienna, thereby enabling themaster terrorist to… Original Article: Forum: News/Activism

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Serbs had to battle an Islamist threat, too

Mark Krikorian from the National Review Online has a great suggestion on how we can all fight back against the divisive racial classifications perpetuated by the government via the Census. Mark’s recommendation is to enter “American” as our response to Question #9 on the 2010 Census Form that will soon be mailed out to all American households. We urge you to do this and stop the continual segregation of America into more and more racial classes. We are one people and one country under God. We are all Americans! Original Article: Forum: News/Activism

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My Race is "American"

Zombie computers worldwide launch denial of service assault on flagship Internet freedom websites Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet.com Tuesday, March 9, 2010 Alex Jones’ websites were assaulted by a massive, organized and sustained attack today which is still ongoing as zombie computers around the world were used to launch a denial of service attack which is undoubtedly related to our ongoing efforts to expose the government’s Cybersecurity agenda as the gargantuan threat to Internet freedom it represents. “It appears to be a Distributed Denial of Service attack, utilizing “zombied” (or hacked) computers all over the world to overwhelm our servers, disabling them from serving normal traffic,” states Infowars systems administrator Wes Perkins. As Wikipedia explains, a DoS attack consists of “Saturating the target (victim) machine with external communications requests, such that it cannot respond to legitimate traffic, or responds so slowly as to be rendered effectively unavailable. In general terms, DoS attacks are implemented by either forcing the targeted computer(s) to reset, or consuming its resources so that it can no longer provide its intended service or obstructing the communication media between the intended users and the victim so that they can no longer communicate adequately.” This is precisely what happened to Prison Planet.tv and Infowars.net today, while flagship websites Infowars.com and Prison

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Alex Jones Websites Under Massive And Sustained Attack

In a recent conversation with a fellow gold analyst, he was emphatic that the price one pays for physical gold should be ignored. “What’s far more important,” he insisted, “is how many ounces I own in relation to the total value of my assets.” Building a core position in gold bullion is a smart goal, to be sure, and a strategy Casey Research has been advising for years. However, ignoring the price you pay for gold could be seen as foolhardy; sure, it’s insurance, but isn’t price part of the consideration when you shop for insurance? So, who’s right? The World Gold Council just released their 2009 annual report on gold trends. From the densely populated pages of interesting data, there’s one compelling tidbit I gleaned that may shed some light on the buying behavior of gold investors. Overall investment in gold was 7% higher in 2009 than 2008. This is significant when you consider that demand in the fourth quarter of 2008 – during one of the worst financial meltdowns in history – was so great that shortages of physical metal abounded everywhere. And yet investors bought more gold in 2009 when investor fear about global financial uncertainty was subdued. Further, 2009 total funds invested in all forms of gold exceeded 2008 by 20%, and the average price was 11.6% higher. In other words, investors were buying gold even though the price wasn’t necessarily “low.” To be sure, that’s a broad statement. But the fact remains that year-on-year, more gold was purchased at higher prices when the markets were less scary, than when the price was lower and Hank Paulson was on CNBC every 15 minutes pontificating on how to save America’s financial system. This isn’t to suggest one shouldn’t pay attention to price. And the data doesn’t identify how many of those who purchased gold last year were first-time buyers, as certainly there were newcomers to the sector that contributed to higher demand. But it begs the question, who would continue to buy gold when the price is higher? Whoever doesn’t own enough, that’s who. The gold I bought last month was certainly higher priced than what I paid in 2008. But I’m trying to position my assets for protection from eventual dollar debasement and rising inflation. So perhaps…

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Price Per Ounce or Total Ounces Owned

Yesterday I mentioned an article on Seeking Alpha where some of the comments seemed to be taking to heart some of the same things I’ve been writing about in terms of how the concept of retirement is evolving, evolving quite rapidly I’d say. I was encouraged by the tone.br /br /Then on an article of mine on SA a whole bunch of span style=”font-style: italic;”woe is me/span comments popped up about the difficulty to save enough and live within you means and getting growth from the stock market is a sucker’s game. Oh boy.br /br /span class=”fullpost”I attribute the sentiment to several different factors. Part of the equation could be a weariness from the stock market’s poor result over whatever recent time period you want to look at except for the last twelve months. There is no doubt weariness, reasonably speaking, over the state of the economy and everything else that goes with it. I also believe that in the specific comments I am talking about there was a lack of comprehension that retirement will be completely different for most people over the next few decades when compared to the last few decades.br /br /a onblur=”try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}” href=”http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_7ZckZ-8naz0/S5HO26bS2DI/AAAAAAAADHU/9noQAfTj-lA/s1600-h/Picture+123.jpg”img style=”margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;” src=”http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_7ZckZ-8naz0/S5HO26bS2DI/AAAAAAAADHU/9noQAfTj-lA/s400/Picture+123.jpg” alt=”" id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5445360867259635762″ border=”0″ //aMy belief that social security and medicare will not be there could obviously be wrong (to be clear I am not changing my mind on this) but I think most people agree it is on shakier ground than it has been on in a long time. Many pensions are also on shakier ground than they have been on.br /br /The possibilities with this creates the need for more reliance putting savings into something that offers the chance for growth like the stock market. Of course the US market was down in the last decade and there are some serious structural threats that we collectively seem to struggle to understand let alone find the will to make the difficult sacrifices needed to have a shot at getting things back on course.br /br /We know that wages in real terms have stagnated for many years now (I think at least a decade), we know that the savings rate in the US has been lousy (not sure why the government numbers on this exclude 401k contributions) and we also …

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The Big Picture for the Week of March 7, 2010

Sheldon Richman Campaign For Liberty March 6, 2010 President Obama likes to portray himself as a man of the people. But a look behind the veil shows this to be a deception. Take the financial regulatory overhaul brewing in Washington. I know what you’re thinking: What could better illustrate Obama’s bona fides as a champion of the people? He wants to regulate the banking industry after the recent debacle and is being fought by the banks and the Republicans. Doesn’t this clearly demonstrate his pro-people agenda? A closer looks reveals the real story to be something quite different. First, there has never been an unregulated banking industry in the United States. You can look it up. And since 1914 we’ve had a central bank, the Fed, whose regulatory powers have only increased over the decades. Several other agencies also regulate the banks. There are regulators at the state level too. But to focus only on regulation is to miss a big part of the story. In truth what we have had is a banking cartel, a partnership of government (state or national) and nominally private financial institutions. This partnership has two broad aspects that function as a quid pro quo: regulation and protection from free competition, that is, special privilege. The two sides haven’t always agreed on the exact proportions of the two elements, and the bankers have even disagreed among themselves. But lack of unanimity about details should not be mistaken for lack of agreement about the fundamental nature of the system. It is a government-banking alliance. Neither side would have it any other way. Second and following from what has just been said, the government’s fingerprints are all…

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Obama’s Phony Populism

This is a hot button issue… many federal workers are going to read statistics about how a number of occupations in the public sector get paid more than their private sector counterparts and they are simply not going to believe it. Clearly, it’s frustrating for both sides. An article today digs a little further into You Asked for it: More Details on Overpaid Federal Workers originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning . The Daily Reckoning, offers a uniquely refreshing, perspective on the global economy, investing, gold, stocks and today’s markets. Its been called “the most entertaining read of the day.”

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You Asked for it: More Details on Overpaid Federal Workers

China has drafted a 10-year renewable energy plan which it intends to make public in the near-term, which will result in billions in investments, reduce reliance on fossil fuel imports and coal, and will be in line with the countryrsquo;s goal to reduce GHGs by 40% to 45% by 2020. Renewable energy accounted for 9.9 percent of China’s total energy consumption last year, up from 8.5 percent the year before, the report said. Under the plan, by 2020, the government intends to raise that to 15 percent. China’s total energy consumption surged 6.3 percent last year to 3.1 billion tons of standard coal equivalent, up from 4 percent growth in 2008, the report said. Bloomberg New Energy Finance said it expects 30% of the $184 billion committed in the form of ldquo;green stimulusrdquo; from major economies around the world last year, to be deployed by governments this year ndash; up from about 9% last year. Biofuelsnbsp;nbsp; Verenium (Nasdaq:VRNM) said it has extended an 18-month-old joint development program with BP for an additional month until April 1. The companies will continue their work on cellulosic ethanol while they negotiate a longer-term collaboration, receiving an additional $2.5 million from BP to co-fund the effort for March.nbsp; Clean Technbsp;nbsp; Pollution Controls Sector nbsp;nbsp;Fuel Tech (Nasdaq:FTEK) announced an exclusive 4-year alliance agreement with a lsquo;major domestic power producerrsquo; for the potential supply of multiple nitrogen oxide (NOx) control systems. The initial modeling order for several of these units has been placed under the agreement. Solar Emerging Energy Research reported this week that the US utility-scale PV industry (systems gt;100 kW) closed the door on 2009 with 176 MW installed and an 18% jump over 2008 installed capacity. Amidst economic uncertainty, the uptick innbsp;US PVnbsp;activity signals significant growth ahead as utilities scale to meet their 2020 targets. middot;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; It said the utility segment surged in Q4 2009, making up 63% of the solar PVnbsp;market while adding over 50 MW as the first wave of large-scale PV projects were completed in the US, and middot;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; California dominated the US PV market in 2009, with over 90 MW of large-scale PV completed, and a utility-heavy pipeline of 474 MW slated for 2010. California accounts for 91 MW, or 52%, of PV systems installed in 2009. Secondary markets New Jersey, Florida, and Colorado also added significant capacity, while middot;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; Average project size rose above 1 MW in 2009 for the first time as PV continues to scale in the US in both the rooftop and ground-based segmentsnbsp;nbsp; Ascent Solar (Nasdaq:ASTI) signed a strategic supply agreement with FTL Solar which includes a minimum purchase commitment of $6.5 million over a three year period. It said it is scheduled to begin shipments to FTL Solar for market seeding of emerging market opportunities with their lightweight solar integrated tensile fabric product line which intended to serve…

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Aspire’s Alt Energy and Clean Tech Highlights Week to Date (Mar 3, 2010)

Filed under: Market Matters , Financial Crisis Remember just a few short months ago when the financial markets were in a tailspin? Day after day, selling came in to the market. Short selling accelerated. Then came “naked short selling.” The markets ended up being chaotic and the government had to step in. With frantic short selling going on, the SEC banned naked short sales of a few select banks for a few days. Now we fast forward to Europe. The same scenario is being played out against the euro. Hedge funds have increased their short positions . Traders are buying credit default swaps (CDSs) supposedly as protection against a Greek default. But very much like the U.S. meltdown, traders are also buying naked CDSs. Traders holding naked CDSs do not have an underlying position that they are hedging. Continue reading Hedge Funds Raise Their Short Positions Against the Euro Hedge Funds Raise Their Short Positions Against the Euro originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 03 Mar 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink �|� Email this �|� Comments

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Hedge Funds Raise Their Short Positions Against the Euro

Filed under: Earnings Reports , Federal Natl Mtge (FNM) , Housing , Recession , Financial Crisis Fannie Mae ( FNM ), the country’s largest mortgage lender, said Friday when it reported its latest quarterly results that it needs another $16.3 billion to stay afloat. Fannie Mae has been under water since the government started bailing it out in 2008. The reason for Fannie’s persistent problems are the mortgage defaults spreading throughout the housing industry. Serious delinquencies rose to 5.38% as of December 31, up from 4.72% on Sept 30 and 2.42% at the end of 2008. Continue reading Fannie Mae Requests Another $16.3 Billion from the U.S. Treasury Fannie Mae Requests Another $16.3 Billion from the U.S. Treasury originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink �|� Email this �|� Comments

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Fannie Mae Requests Another $16.3 Billion from the U.S. Treasury

Except in wartime, there has never been another government program that produced as much technological innovation as the U.S. space program, and there likely never will be. No other program has so successfully infused the economy, rallied the nation, inspired youngsters toward academic achievement or established the U.S. as the world leader in technology. In spite of this, on Feb. 1, President Barack Obama announced the cancellation of the Constellation program of exploration, leaving NASA, for the first time in history, without a specific mission. It is as if President Gerald Ford had canceled the space shuttle program in 1975,… Original Article: Forum: News/Activism

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Obama’s NASA Disgrace