Watchman Newsletter

Sunstein: Fetuses 'use' women, abortion limits 'troublesome'

WorldNet Daily (Link) - Aaron Klein (September 25, 2009)

Restrictions on access to abortion would turn women's bodies into vessels to be "used" by fetuses, according to President Obama's newly confirmed regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein.

"A restriction on access to abortion turns women's reproductive capacities into something to be used by fetuses. ... Legal and social control of women's sexual and reproductive capacities has been a principal historical source of sexual inequality," Sunstein wrote in his 1993 book "The Partial Constitution."

In the book, obtained and reviewed by WND, Sunstein sets forth a radical new interpretation of the Constitution. In one chapter, titled "Pornography, abortion, surrogacy," Sunstein argued against restrictions on abortion and pornography.

"Restrictions on abortion, surrogacy and free availability of pornography are troublesome," he wrote.

"I do not mean to oppose equality to liberty. ... Liberty does not entail respect for all 'choices,'" he maintained.

Sunstein's views on fetuses are not limited to his 1993 book.

WND reported earlier this month that in a 2003 book review, Sunstein argued there is no moral concern regarding cloning human beings since human embryos, which develop into a baby, are "only a handful of cells."

Obama: G20 brought economy back from brink

Yahoo! News (Link) - AP - Tom Raum and Emma Vandore (September 25, 2009)

World leaders on Friday issued sweeping promises to fix a malfunctioning global economic system in hopes of heading off future financial meltdowns. President Barack Obama said actions taken so far "brought the global economy back from the brink."

"We leave here today confident and united," Obama said at the conclusion of a two-day gathering of the world's 20 top economies to deal with the worst financial crisis since the 1930s.

The leaders agreed to keep stimulus plans, which include government spending and low interest rates, generally in place in their respective countries for now to avoid derailing still-fragile recoveries. Obama had pressed for just such a course and praised the decision.

"Our coordinated stimulus plans played an indispensable role in averting catastrophe. Now we must make sure that when growth returns, jobs do, too," he said at a wrap-up news conference. "That's why we will continue our stimulus efforts until our people are back to work and phase them out when our recovery is strong."

In a statement, all the G-20 leaders declared major progress from what they called their coordinated efforts and "forceful response."

"It worked," they said.

Although many of the pronouncements and actions taken by the leaders lacked specifics or details on follow-through, leaders were bold in pronouncing the gathering — the third G-20 summit in a year — as a big success.

G20 adjusts to new economic landscape

EU Observer (Link) - Andrew Willis (September 25, 2009)

Leaders from the Group of 20 industrialised and developing nations meeting in Pittsburgh, USA, on Thursday night (24 September) appear to have struck a series of deals that recognise the changed economic landscape of the 21st Century.

Agreement was reached on a new framework to reduce world imbalances and on the need to reform voting rights within the International Monetary Fund. A decision was also taken to recognise the G20 as the primary forum for economic decision-making.

The package of deals constitute a major success for US President Barack Obama, and are set to grant a greater voice to developing countries on the international stage.

Several thorny issues still remain for Day Two (Friday) of the talks however, with discussion on climate change, banker bonuses and bank capital requirements likely to produce heated debate.

Separately in Brussels, a meeting of NGOs said the response to the crisis by world leaders had merely been more of the same, while instead a new economic paradigm based on lower consumption was needed.

Archeologists find 'Joseph-era' coins in Egypt

The Jerusalem Post (Link) (September 25, 2009)

Archeologists have discovered ancient Egyptian coins bearing the name and image of the biblical Joseph, Cairo's Al Ahram newspaper recently reported. Excerpts provided by MEMRI show that the coins were discovered among a multitude of unsorted artifacts stored at the Museum of Egypt.

According to the report, the significance of the find is that archeologists have found scientific evidence countering the claim held by some historians that coins were not used for trade in ancient Egypt, and that this was done through barter instead.

The period in which Joseph was regarded to have lived in Egypt matches the minting of the coins in the cache, researchers said.

"A thorough examination revealed that the coins bore the year in which they were minted and their value, or effigies of the pharaohs [who ruled] at the time of their minting. Some of the coins are from the time when Joseph lived in Egypt, and bear his name and portrait," said the report.

The discovery of the cache prompted research team head Dr. Sa'id Muhammad Thabet to seek Koranic verses that speak of coins used in ancient Egypt.

"Studies by Dr. Thabet's team have revealed that what most archeologists took for a kind of charm, and others took for an ornament or adornment, is actually a coin. Several [facts led them to this conclusion]: first, [the fact that] many such coins have been found at various [archeological sites], and also [the fact that] they are round or oval in shape, and have two faces: one with an inscription, called the inscribed face, and one with an image, called the engraved face - just like the coins we use today," the report added.

CO2 is not melting the Arctic

The Migrant Mind (Link) - G. R. Morton (September 24, 2009)

It is modern myth that CO₂ is melting the Arctic sea ice. No doubt many people will take immediate offence at the mere title of this post but they would do well to listen to the data before they jump. CO₂ is supposed to heat the earth's atmosphere and then would melt the ice from above. The atmosphere can't get past the ice to warm the water below so the only logical conclusion is that a warm atmosphere should melt the ice from above.

But what is happening is the Arctic ice is melting from below due to warm waters that normally are about 100-200 m below the surface. I am going to show that due to a change in the winds, the Arctic ocean became more salty (salinization). The increase in salinity caused the underlying deeper waters to come into contact with the ice above, which melts the Arctic ice from below. Unless one can demonstrate that the wind change is due to global warming, one can't claim that CO₂ is melting the Arctic ice.

Let's start by looking at the vertical temperature profile of the Arctic ocean. The surface layer, the layer in which the ice floats, is in general is fresher than the warm Atlantic sea water below.

FDIC Is Broke, Taxpayers at Risk, Bair Muses

Bloomberg (Link) - Jonathan Weil (September 24, 2009)

The FDIC’s insurance fund is going broke, and Sheila Bair is wondering aloud about how to replenish it. This means one thing for taxpayers: Watch your wallets.

Bair, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s chairman since 2006, says the agency has many options. One way to boost its coffers, now running low after a surge in bank failures, would be to charge banks higher premiums. It could make them pay future assessments in advance. Alternatively, the FDIC could borrow money from the banks it regulates. Or it could borrow from the Treasury, where it has a $500 billion line of credit.

“There’s a philosophical question about the Treasury credit line, whether that is there for losses that we know we will have, or whether it’s there for unexpected emergencies,” Bair said Sept. 18 at a Georgetown University conference in Washington. “This is really a debate for Washington and for banks,” she added.

Far be it from me to intrude on this closed-circuit conversation. The question Bair posed should be a no-brainer. Borrowing taxpayer money to bail out the FDIC should be an option of last resort reserved for unforeseen emergencies. That the agency would consider this now underscores how dire its financial condition has become.

Whatever path it chooses, we shouldn’t lose sight of this: The FDIC has been mismanaged, and its credibility as a regulator is in tatters. Its insurance fund wouldn’t be in this position today if the agency had been run well.

Rare earths are vital, and China owns them all

Market Watch (Link) - Myra P. Saefong (September 24, 2009)

Rare earths may not be on most investors' radars, but they are certainly in almost any high-tech item they use -- and in the world of rare earths, China is king.

The U.S. Geological Survey recognizes 17 different rare earths, materials with science-fictionesque names like lanthanum and gadolinium. They are used in everything: glass polishing and ceramics, automotive catalytic converters, computer monitors, lighting, televisions and pharmaceuticals.

"We are addicted to rare earths as much as we are addicted to oil," said Byron King, editor of Energy & Scarcity Investors, published by Agora Financial LLC. Yet "none of these elements are famous like gold or silver. None gets shipped in giant ore freighters like iron, aluminum or copper."

"Without these elements, much of the modern economy will just plain shut down," he said.

And yet, King said, "the only people who really study these elements are master's- and PhD-level chemists and solid-state physicists ... and national leaders in places like China."

In fact, China has all but cornered the market. The rare-earths space is like a Monopoly game, in which Beijing owns Boardwalk, Park Place, and well, pretty much all the properties, while the West owns St. James Place.

"China is the Saudi Arabia of rare elements," said Mark Williams, a risk management expert and finance professor at Boston University. And "like oil, rare elements will flow to the highest bidder."

Pacific tsunami rescue stepped up

BBC News (Link) - AFP - P. Parameswaran (September 24, 2009)

Rescue workers on the Samoan islands and Tonga are continuing to search for survivors after a tsunami struck, killing at least 149 people.

The prime minister of Samoa said 110 people were dead on his islands and the devastation "was complete".

Officials said planes carrying aid supplies were arriving on Samoa and nearby American Samoa.

They said tens of thousands of people need help in villages swamped by waves triggered by Tuesday's huge earthquake.

The United Nations said it was sending an emergency team to Samoa.

'No house standing'

"The devastation caused was complete," Samoan Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele told Radio New Zealand after inspecting the south-east coast of the main island of Upolu, the hardest-hit area.

"In some villages absolutely no house was standing. All that was achieved within 10 minutes by the very powerful tsunami."

Did Obama call on Israel to vacate Temple Mount?

WorldNet Daily (Link) - Aaron Klein (September 24, 2009)

Did President Obama yesterday adopt U.N. and Palestinian phraseology while calling on Israel to give up the biblical West Bank and eastern sections of Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount?

Some members of the Israeli government here reacted angrily to Obama's strongly worded demand – expressed during his speech to the U.N. General Assembly – for the creation of a "viable, independent Palestinian state with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967."

The term "occupation" routinely is used by the Palestinians as well as some countries hostile to the Jewish state in reference to Israel's presence in the West Bank and Jerusalem. It is unusual for U.S. presidents to use the term, although Jimmy Carter once famously called Israel's presence in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem "illegal."

"Occupation that began in 1967" is a specific reference to the lands Israel retained after the Six Day War of that year, particularly the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount.

The Palestinians never maintained any official capacity in either territory, lands in which Jews have been present for thousands of years. The territories came under Jordanian rule from 1948 until Israel captured them in 1967 after Jordan's King Hussein ignored Israeli pleas for his country to stay out of the Six Day War. Most countries rejected Jordan's initial claim on the area, which it formally renounced in 1988.

Commenting on Obama's speech during a WND interview today, Tzipi Hotovely, a Knesset member for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party, accused the U.S. president of "misrepresenting history."

"Obama is misrepresenting Mideast history," she said. "The Jewish people's right to live in Judea and Samaria is firstly rooted in the Bible and God's promise 2,000 years before 1967."

Dollar under scrutiny at G20 summit

Yahoo! News (Link) - AFP - P. Parameswaran (September 24, 2009)

The embattled US dollar is expected to come under scrutiny at a summit of developing and industrialized nations following China-led calls to review its role as a reserve currency.

The dollar issue is bound to surface at the two-day meeting in Pittsburgh as US President Barack Obama and other leaders of the Group of 20 economies debate a new framework for tackling the so called global "economic imbalances" blamed for fuelling the latest financial crisis.

"Though not clear how the plan would be enforced, it would involve measures such as the US cutting its deficits and saving more, China reducing its reliance on exports and Europe making structural changes to boost business investment," analysts at French bank Societe Generale said in a report.

Some argue that the financial crisis resulted from imbalances between savings and investment in major economies, which have led to large current deficits, as evident in the United States, and surpluses, as enjoyed by China.

Beijing was the first to call for a new global currency as an alternative to the US dollar as the US deficit rocketed -- the White House estimates it could reach nine trillion dollars over a decade.

Holy Temple Mikveh Discovered Near Western Wall

Israel National News (Link) - Hillel Fendel (September 23, 2009)

A 2,000-year-old mikveh (ritual bath) has been uncovered just 20 meters from the Western Wall.

Given its location just outside the Holy Temple - where untold numbers of Jews regularly immersed before entering - the newly-revealed pool is among the largest ever discovered in Jerusalem. 

The mikveh was found at the site known as the Western Wall Tunnels, which has long been under excavation and study by the Israel Antiquities Authority, with the support of the Western Wall Heritage Foundation.

It is located about 30 meters past the entrance to the Tunnels, in the general direction of the Western Wall. Once it becomes open to the public, the 11 broad steps leading down to the mikveh will be seen approximately 8 meters below floor level.

Josephus, the famous turncoat general and historian of the period, wrote that the administrative and governmental center of Jerusalem was located at the foot of the Temple, and that among the buildings there were the National Council and the Lishkat HaGazit, Chamber of Hewn Stone, where the Sanhedrin – Israel’s Supreme Court – convened. The archaeologists feel that it is possible that the luxurious hall aside the mikveh was originally one of these structures.

President Obama and the Spirit of Global Development Partnership

The Brookings Institution (Link) - Noam Unger (September 23, 2009)

In his rousing speech at the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative yesterday, President Obama tied together his administration’s recurrent themes of international collaboration, public-private cooperation, and service. By planting these themes in the context of our highly globalized world—the ways in which it presents real opportunities and grave threats, Obama struck chords resonant with his campaign’s global development and democracy policy statement to “strengthen our common security by investing in our common humanity.”

The key feature of his speech was a call for a new spirit of global partnership, emphasizing that real progress in lifting millions out of poverty and countering transnational threats cannot be made by governments alone. The president declared his desire for this spirit to guide his administration and he referred to it as “a defining feature of our foreign policy.”

Italian Prime Minister Suggests a New “Core Europe”

The Trumpet (Link) (September 22, 2009)

Whether or not Ireland passes the Lisbon Treaty, a growing number in the EU want to create a small core of united European nations.

If Ireland rejects the Lisbon Treaty, a smaller group of European Union nations should create a “core Europe” in order to implement the treaty, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi suggested on Friday.

“If the Lisbon Treaty on EU reform does not pass, we need to completely revisit the current functioning of Europe to create a core of states that operate beyond unanimity,” he said at a press conference after meeting with Slovenian Premier Borut Pahor.

“Europe cannot truly take decisions because decisions must be taken unanimously and that cannot continue,” said Berlusconi.

EUobserver.com reported,

Various politicians and academics have advocated the idea that an inner core of EU member states drive forward with deeper integration via the development of a new organization, often described as a European federation, alongside the existing European Union.

Some experts believe that even if the Irish approve the treaty, such a move remains inevitable as the Union expands beyond 27 member states.

U.N. climate meeting was propaganda: Czech president

Reuters (Link) - Louis Charbonneau (September 22, 2009)

Czech President Vaclav Klaus sharply criticized a U.N. meeting on climate change on Tuesday at which U.S. President Barack Obama was among the top speakers, describing it as propagandistic and undignified.

"It was sad and it was frustrating," said Klaus, one of the world's most vocal skeptics on the topic of global warming.

"It's a propagandistic exercise where 13-year-old girls from some far-away country perform a pre-rehearsed poem," he said. "It's simply not dignified."

At the opening of the summit attended by nearly 100 world leaders, 13-year-old Yugratna Srivastava of India told the audience that governments were not doing enough to combat the threat of climate change.

Klaus said there were increasing doubts in the scientific community about whether humans are causing changes in the climate or whether the changes are simply naturally occurring phenomena.

But politicians, he said, seem to be moving closer to a consensus on climate change. "The train can't be stopped and I consider that a huge mistake," Klaus said.

Bernanke Would Control Pay for Thousands

Newsmax (Link) - Julie Crawshaw (September 21, 2009)

Ben Bernanke isn't waiting for Congress to expand the Fed's regulatory powers. Instead, he wants to put regulators directly inside banks to monitor (and possibly reject) pay packages.

The new proposal from the Fed requires a vote by the central bank's board but no congressional approval.

If enacted, pay for tens of thousands of bank employees nationwide would require approval from the Federal Reserve, empowering the Fed to reject any compensation policies it believes encourage bank employees to take too much risk.

"Given the changes the industry has already done, if the restrictions on income-producers or salespeople are too draconian, it will actually undermine the strength of the institution," Scott Talbott of the Financial Services Roundtable, a trade group of financial companies, told The Wall Street Journal.

Bernanke's proposal would, for the first time, inject government regulators deep into compensation decisions traditionally reserved for the banks' corporate boards and executives.

Greater EU harmony with foreign service, says diplomat

EU Observer (Link) - Andrew Willis (September 21, 2009)

An EU diplomatic service would greatly help the bloc define more unified positions when dealing with external countries says the European Commission's top representative in China.

Ambassador Serge Abou also sees future EU ambassadors becoming "primus inter pares [first among equals]" in areas of EU competence, when compared to member state diplomats working overseas.

"Their role will not be to represent the view of France, Germany or Spain but to represent the views of all of us [27 member states]," the Frenchman with over 35 years experience working in the European Commission told EUobserver in a recent interview.

The commission currently has over 150 delegations overseas, primarily dealing with issues where member states have handed authority over to the Brussels-based institution.

Strong quake rocks remote Bhutan: USGS

Breitbart (Link) (September 21, 2009)

A strong 6.3-magnitude earthquake struck the remote Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan and northeast India on Monday, the US Geological Survey said, with tremors felt in nearby Bangladesh and China.

According to the USGS, the epicentre was located just inside Bhutan's border with India, 180 kilometres (115 miles) east of the Bhutanese capital Thimpu, at a shallow depth of 7.2 kilometres.

There were no immediate reports of any casualties or damage. The Indian Meteorological Department said the epicentre was in a remote, sparsely populated area.

Strong tremors lasting up to 20 seconds were felt 125 kilometres away in Guwahati, the capital of India's northeastern state of Assam, where nervous residents ran into the streets.

Cracks appeared in several buildings in the city but there was no serious damage, witnesses said.

The tremors were also felt in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka and in Lhasa, the capital of the Chinese region of Tibet, according to Chinese state media.

HSBC bids farewell to dollar supremacy

Telegraph UK (Link) - Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (September 20, 2009)

The sun is setting on the US dollar as the ultra-loose monetary policy of the US Federal Reserve forces China and the vibrant economies of the emerging world to forge a new global currency order, according to a new report by HSBC.

"The dollar looks awfully like sterling after the First World War," said David Bloom, the bank's currency chief.

"The whole picture of risk-reward for emerging market currencies has changed. It is not so much that they have risen to our standards, it is that we have fallen to theirs. It used to be that sovereign risk was mainly an emerging market issue but the events of the last year have shown that this is no longer the case. Look at the UK – debt is racing up to 100pc of GDP," he said.

Crucially, China and rising Asia have reached the point where they can no longer keep holding down their currencies to boost exports because this is causing mayhem to their own economies, stoking asset bubbles. Asia's "mercantilist mindset" of recent decades is about to be broken by the spectre of an inflation spiral.

The policy headache was already becoming clear in the final phase of the global credit boom but the financial crisis temporarily masked the effect. The pressures will return with a vengeance as these countries roar back to life, leaving the US and other laggards of the old world far behind.

Earth approaching sunspot records

CJ Online (Link) - Corey Jones (September 20, 2009)

The average person may not associate coolness with the sun. The sun releases energy through deep nuclear fusion reactions in its core and has surface temperatures as hot as 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, according to NASA's Web site. Not cool at all.

But the sun's recent activity, or lack thereof, may be linked to the pleasant summer temperatures the midwest has enjoyed this year, said Charlie Perry, a research hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Lawrence.

The sun is at a low point of a deep solar minimum in which there are few to no sunspots on its surface.

In July through August, 51 consecutive days passed without a spot, one day short of tying the record of 52 days from the early 1900s.

As of Sept. 15, the current solar minimum ranks third all-time in the amount of spotless days with 717 since 2004. There have been 206 spotless days in 2009, which is 14th all-time. But there are still more than 100 days left in the year, and Perry expects that number to climb.