Apple’s Foxconn Auditing Group ‘Surrounded With Controversy’

Apple’s Foxconn Auditing Group ‘Surrounded With Controversy,’ Critics Say
Christina Bonnington
February 13, 2012
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/02/apple-foxconn-investigations
Following ongoing public outcry and organized protests at Apple stores last week, Apple has announced that an organization called the Fair Labor Association is conducting independent assessments of worker conditions inside the factories of Foxconn, its manufacturing partner in China.

The FLA audit began this morning in Shenzen’s “Foxconn City.” In the inspections, FLA representatives will interview thousands of factory employees about their living and working conditions, delving into topics such as compensation, health and safety, working hours, and the workers’ communication with management. The results of the inspections will be posted on the FLA’s website in early March.

“We were hoping for a quick response, but I don’t know if we were actually expecting such a fast response from Apple,” said Sarah Ryan, a human rights organizer at Change.org, one of two groups that orchestrated last week’s protests at Apple stores. “It’s especially exciting that these audits are going to be transparent and public.”

The FLA said the audits will be conducted by “a team of labor experts” composed of FLA staff and representatives from two accredited service providers, Openview and INFACT. They’ll be visiting another Foxconn facility in Chengdu, China in the coming weeks.
While encouraged by today’s Apple announcement, Ryan also conceded the FLA is “surrounded with controversy in terms of effectiveness and objectiveness.” Still, Ryan says Change.org recognizes Apple has an existing relationship with the FLA, and as long as its findings are open and transparent, that’s a good thing.
But another key advocate of the Foxconn workers was even less impressed with Apple’s Monday announcement. Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, executive director of SumOfUs.org, told Wired, “We’re hopeful that this is a step towards the solution, but it’s not even close to the solution itself. The FLA does not have a great track record of conducting effective investigations.”

SumOfUs and Change.org co-sponsored a petition asking Apple to respond to allegations of Foxconn worker abuse, and to commit to developing “ethical” products. More than 250,000 people signed the petition, which was hand-delivered to Apple Stores across the globe on Thursday morning. A second petition, from Hong Kong group SACOM, takes last week’s protest one step further by outlining five specific areas in which Apple needs to improve, including ending the use of student workers and providing a living wage for factory employees.

Although knowledge of poor working conditions inside Foxconn has existed for years, after Apple’s record earnings in 2011, the issue struck a big nerve with much of the public. A New York Times piece that highlighted some of the dire conditions inside Apple’s Chinese factories motivated people to start taking action against the status quo.

The new FLA investigations, detailed in an Apple press release, appear to be a direct response to this outcry. Apple has conducted more than 40 supply chain audits of Foxconn since 2006 and over 500 audits of its factories total.

“We believe that workers everywhere have the right to a safe and fair work environment, which is why we’ve asked the FLA to independently assess the performance of our largest suppliers,” Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, said in the release.
“As an Apple consumer, I’m relieved to hear that Tim Cook is taking this seriously and is breaking ground in the industry with Fair Labor Association auditing,” said Mark Shields, the consumer who originally launched the Change.org petition, in a statement. “But Apple still needs to use some of their trademark creativity and problem solving to create a worker protection plan for new products — especially the upcoming iPad 3 — so that they’re proactively taking care of their workers.”

But for those looking for Apple (as well as other tech companies) to really change their ways, the FLA may not be the best company to perform these assessments, if its history is anything to go by.

Stinebrickner-Kauffman pointed out a site called FLA Watch that’s dedicated to monitoring the company’s well-publicized audits. It calls the FLA “a public relations mouthpiece” for corporations (particularly the apparel industry).

“The FLA was created in response to student protests around the sweatshop issue in the late 90s, specifically to monitor garment shops, with NIKE as a founding member,” Teresa Cheng, international campaigns coordinator with United Students Against Sweatshops (the organization behind FLA Watch), told Wired. “Ten years later, we see little to no reform of sweatshop conditions in NIKE’s supply chain, and no positive changes can be attributed to the FLA.”

Another veteran of the garment industry backs up Cheng’s opinion of audits.

“Reading that Apple has been auditing their vendors since 2006 does not mean anything,” says Sindy Sagastume, production manager for a fashion c'ompany called Aimee Lynn, which imports clothing for distribution to companies like Walmart, Target, and Sears. “Audits are truly a tool used by retailers in the US to make themselves seem to be socially compliant, but in fact does nothing to ensure factories are acting appropriately,” Sagastume told Wired.

So how much teeth does the FLA really have behind its audits? The organization has developed a code of conduct with which it judges workplace conditions, but all it does is investigate and report on working conditions; it doesn’t actually instigate any change itself. According to the organization’s website: “The FLA is a brand accountability system that places the onus on companies to voluntarily achieve the FLA’s labor standards in the factories manufacturing their products.”

In other words: The FLA is a reporting agency, not a policing agency. Any real change for Foxconn workers will come from either Foxconn itself, or pressure from the Chinese government or Apple.
“This is at best a decent first step,” echoed Stinebrickner-Kauffman of SumOfUs.org. “At worst, the beginning of a white-washing campaign.”

When asked to comment on its Foxconn investigations, the FLA supplied Wired with an official statement that mirrors the language of Apple’s press release. We will continue to reach out to the FLA for comment.

Top 10 Threats of 2012

Arnaud De Borchgrave
Friday, 06 Jan 2012
Full Article:
http://www.newsmax.com/deBorchgrave/Iran-al-Qaida-Pakistan-threats/2012/01/06/id/423323

These are the top 10 that directly threaten the U.S. homeland and are likely to trigger U.S. military involvement:

A mass casualty attack on the U.S. homeland or on a treaty ally.

A severe North Korean crisis (e.g., armed provocations, internal political instability, advances in nuclear weaponry).

A major military incident with China involving U.S. or allied forces.

An Iranian nuclear crisis (e.g., surprise advances in nuclear weapons/delivery capability, Israeli response).

A highly disruptive cyber-attack on U.S. critical infrastructure (e.g., telecommunications, electrical power, pipeline output, transportation and emergency services.

A significant increase in drug trafficking violence in Mexico that spills over into the United States.

Severe internal instability in Pakistan triggered by a civil-military crisis or terror attacks.

Political instability in Saudi Arabia that endangers global oil supplies.

A U.S.-Pakistan military confrontation, triggered by a terror attack or U.S. counter-terror.

Intensification of the European sovereign debt crisis that leads to the collapse of the euro, triggering a double-edged transatlantic crisis.

Happy New Year!

Obama Signs Global Internet Treaty Worse Than SOPA

White House bypasses Senate to ink agreement that could allow Chinese companies to demand ISPs remove web content in US with no legal oversight
Paul Joseph Watson
Thursday, January 26, 2012
http://www.infowars.com/obama-signs-global-internet-treaty-worse-than-sopa

Months before the debate about Internet censorship raged as SOPA and PIPA dominated the concerns of web users, President Obama signed an international treaty that would allow companies in China or any other country in the world to demand ISPs remove web content in the US with no legal oversight whatsoever.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement was signed by Obama on October 1 2011, yet is currently the subject of a White House petition demanding Senators be forced to ratify the treaty. The White House has circumvented the necessity to have the treaty confirmed by lawmakers by presenting it an as “executive agreement,” although legal scholars have highlighted the dubious nature of this characterization.

The hacktivist group Anonymous attacked and took offline the Federal Trade Commission’s website yesterday in protest against the treaty, which was also the subject of demonstrations across major cities in Poland, a country set to sign the agreement today.

Under the provisions of ACTA, copyright holders will be granted sweeping direct powers to demand ISPs remove material from the Internet on a whim. Whereas ISPs normally are only forced to remove content after a court order, all legal oversight will be abolished, a precedent that will apply globally, rendering the treaty worse in its potential scope for abuse than SOPA or PIPA.

A country known for its enforcement of harsh Internet censorship policies like China could demand under the treaty that an ISP in the United States remove content or terminate a website on its server altogether. As we have seen from the enforcement of similar copyright policies in the US, websites are sometimes targeted for no justifiable reason.

The groups pushing the treaty also want to empower copyright holders with the ability to demand that users who violate intellectual property rights (with no legal process) have their Internet connections terminated, a punishment that could only ever be properly enforced by the creation of an individual Internet ID card for every web user, a system that is already in the works.

“The same industry rightsholder groups that support the creation of ACTA have also called for mandatory network-level filtering by Internet Service Providers and for Internet Service Providers to terminate citizens’ Internet connection on repeat allegation of copyright infringement (the “Three Strikes” /Graduated Response) so there is reason to believe that ACTA will seek to increase intermediary liability and require these things of Internet Service Providers,” reports the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The treaty will also mandate that ISPs disclose personal user information to the copyright holder, while providing authorities across the globe with broader powers to search laptops and Internet-capable devices at border checkpoints.

In presenting ACTA as an “international agreement” rather than a treaty, the Obama administration managed to circumvent the legislative process and avoid having to get Senate approval, a method questioned by Senator Wyden.

“That said, even if Obama has declared ACTA an executive agreement (while those in Europe insist that it’s a binding treaty), there is a very real Constitutional question here: can it actually be an executive agreement?” asks TechDirt. “The law is clear that the only things that can be covered by executive agreements are things that involve items that are solely under the President’s mandate. That is, you can’t sign an executive agreement that impacts the things Congress has control over. But here’s the thing: intellectual property, in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, is an issue given to Congress, not the President. Thus, there’s a pretty strong argument that the president legally cannot sign any intellectual property agreements as an executive agreement and, instead, must submit them to the Senate.”.

26 European Union member states along with the EU itself are set to sign the treaty at a ceremony today in Tokyo. Other countries wishing to sign the agreement have until May 2013 to do so.

Critics are urging those concerned about Obama’s decision to sign the document with no legislative oversight to demand the Senate be forced to ratify the treaty.

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show and Infowars Nightly News.

Alien ET Cities You Can Visit On Earth Now

Tuesday, November 15, 2011
http://beforeitsnews.com/story/1383/629/NL/Alien_ET_Cities_You_Can_Visit_On_Earth_Now.html

Ever dream of visiting alien worlds and studying their amazing wonders? Well, you don't have to leave Earth to do that—you can travel right now to cities where aliens visited, even lived.

Walk the pathways along many of Earth's ancient cities and you're walking in the footsteps of the gods. At least that's what the legends and myths of the civilizations that seem to have sprung from nothing overnight record in their earliest records.

Anthropologists agree the human race is at least two million years old and ancient Man was much like us more than one million years in the past.

Mankind and help from the stars

So, why did the human race scavenge like animals and live in caves and the hollows of trees—supposedly for 990,000 years—if humans back then were so much like us?

While some evidence exists that supports the idea that humans had advanced civilizations as far back as 100,000 years ago, that still leaves uncounted some 900 millennia where human beings made very little progress in anything important.

Were they that stupid?

Perhaps they were. Perhaps real advancement didn't start happening until extraterrestrials appeared. Researchers like Erich von Däniken and others have argued as much while being viscously attacked or mocked by debunkers, self-styled skeptics, and orthodox science.

Why humans seem so ignorant for so many hundreds of thousands of years remains a mystery, but clues to the rise of civilization are filled with testimonies of interaction with aliens from the stars starting about 8,000 years ago and continuing through the millennia into the records of religious writings by the ancient Indians and Hebrews.

While modern scientists and archaelogists shrug off what some ancients believed important enough to paint onto or carve into stone for posterity—or to include in their religious texts—remnants of impossible architecture and artifacts that hint at other worlds cannot be easily dismissed…unless a lucrative research grant is at stake.

Yes, money sometimes trumps real science and knowledge suffers as a result.

Ancient manuscripts, scrolls, glyphs and cylinders recorded human meetings with Sky Gods—beings that came from the stars to help Mankind build (or rebuild) civilizations. Did they tame the Earth, erect massive monuments and construct the world's first cities?

Five of the most fascinating alien cities still exist: the earliest human civilizations guided by the all-powerful gods from the stars.

You can visit these amazing alien cities because they're still right here on Earth.

ET City 1: Eerie Hopi Reservation, American Southwest

Where the Hopi came from is a mystery to scholars. Academics theorize the Southwestern natives originated from the earlier Anasazi. The Hopi deny this, however, calling the Pueblo people Hisatsinom: The Ancient People.

The Hopis explain their ancestors arrived from deep within the earth, ascending upwards through massive caverns called kivas to the surface, The Fourth World.

Hopi art and myth is bursting with images and imagery of otherworldly contact—not only with a rich spirit world, but also with advanced beings from other worlds.

Because their origin mythology is interlaced so tightly with actual alien contacts it is sometimes difficult to separate the two. But there's little doubt the early Hopi did have some contact with ETs, as did other Mesoamerican tribes such as the Anasazi, Olmecs, Incas, Mayans and Aztecs.

ET City 2: The amazing Aztec Teotihaucan, Mexico

Rising from the fall of the mighty Mayan civilization that preceded it, the Aztecs were to the Romans, as the Mayans were to the Greek city states.

The Aztec origins were built upon much of the earlier Mayan knowledge including the Mayan records that bluntly stated: "Men came from the stars, knowing everything, and they examined the four corners of the sky and the Earth's round surface." [From the Mayan Popol Vuh text]

Today you can walk the ruins of the magnificent city, sift through the centuries with your fingers, and walk the pathways where men once commiserated with gods from the stars.

ET City 3: The mysterious Tiwanaku, Bolivia

With an estimated population of 250,000 to 1.5 million people, Tiwanaku has no surviving written history. Its power and influence peaked around 700 A.D., but it's origins are believed to go far back into time.

A power of the Andes, like the amazing Incas that preceded them, the people of Tiwanaku believed that gods from the sky taught them survival skills.

The few records that survive suggest E.T.s shared with them some of the secrets once taught the mighty Incas…or so their legends claim. But what did they know, right? They only lived through the experience.

ET City 4: The fabled Babylon, Iraq

The fabled Babylon, at one time the virtual center of world civilization may owe its existence to the Sumerians. The Babylonians borrowed heavily from Sumer, adopting parts of their culture and technology in a fashion similar to Rome's adaption of the Greek culture thousands of years later.

The Babylon mysteries continue to confound: their knowledge of batteries, advanced mathematics, belief that superior beings lived on planets orbiting other star systems. Where did they come upon such knowledge in the 23rd Century B.C.?

How did they know all this?

Much of what the Babylonians knew they adopted from ancient Sumer. The Sumerians knew. They had the first-hand, original knowledge because they met and lived with with the Sky Gods.

Paleocontact, according to the research of Zacharia Sitchen—that literally fills volumes—involves a vastly superior race that contact with the people of Sumeria. These aliens helped build Sumer's culture and steer the Sumerian people towards a higher level of learning and technology.

The Sumerians were the first people on Earth to develop writing enabling them to chronicle their advancements and history and—perhaps most importantly—document their contact with alien intelligences for posterity.

Although paleocontact's been researched extensively, the works and conclusions drawn by its two leading proponents, von Däniken and Sitchen, are mostly dismissed by academics and not taken seriously.

Yet the records tell a tale of meetings and interactions with advanced beings from the stars. The evidence survives to this day in fragile cylinder seals, stunning artwork, and the rich tapestry of Sumerian mythology...myths built upon contact with extraterrestrials.

Translation mentions beam weaponry

This translated excerpt from one of the Babylonian texts relates an episode where one of the female ETs takes a new Earthman as her husband and elevates him to the ruling class. She boasts that his power will be greater than a "Power-Weapon" that curiously sounds like a high energy laser or beam weapon:

"I have cast for you the spell, exalting you in the Assembly of the gods.
To counsel all the gods I have given you full power.
Truly, you are supreme, you are my only consort!
Your utterance shall prevail over all the Anunnaki!"
She gave him the Tablet of Destinies, fastened on his breast:
"As for you, your command shall be unchangeable, your word shall endure!"
As soon as Kingu was elevated, possessed of the rank of Anu,
they decreed the fate for the gods, his sons:
"Your word shall make the first subside shall humble the `Power-Weapon,' so potent in its sweep!" [Enuma Elish ("When on high...")]

Visit Babylon and walk where gods walked

The city of Babylon, heir to Sumer and the Land of the Sky Gods, can still be visited. Mostly a giant mound with ruins spread from central radial points, what was Babylon is in present-day Al Hillah, Babil Province, Iraq some 55 miles south of Baghdad.

ET City 5: 'Impossible' Xianyang pyramid city, Mount Baigong Qinghai, China

China is the focus of legends, myths and stories of alien visitations and many of them center on the Xianyang pyramid.

Local villagers claim their distant ancestors spoke of sky great ships that navigated the heavens and used the pyramid as a landing, refueling and resupply site.

20th Century historians have called the early Chinese culture an "enigma wrapped in a mystery."

Tales of China's ancient days are crammed with stories about the "sky people" and the "god-men" who came from the stars using the Earth as a base for exploration.

Along the way these beings taught some of the primitive peoples they met the basics of technology, engineering, farming, and the complex structure of the universe.

China's Area 51?

These pictures were found via Google Maps in China's Kumtag Desert. To read more on these mysterious structures:

Why Is China Building These Gigantic Structures In the Middle of the Desert?
Jesus Diaz
Nov 13, 2011
http://gizmodo.com/5859081/why-is-china-building-these-gigantic-structures-in-the-middle-of-the-desert

Chinese TV Host Says Regime Nearly Bankrupt

Matthew Robertson, Epoch Times
November 13, 2011

China’s economy has a reputation for being strong and prosperous, but according to a well-known Chinese television personality the country’s Gross Domestic Product is going in reverse.

Larry Lang, chair professor of Finance at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said in a lecture that he didn’t think was being recorded that the Chinese regime is in a serious economic crisis—on the brink of bankruptcy. In his memorable formulation: every province in China is Greece.

The restrictions Lang placed on the Oct. 22 speech in Shenyang City, in northern China’s Liaoning Province, included no audio or video recording, and no media. He can be heard saying that people should not post his speech online, or “everyone will look bad,” in the audio that is now on Youtube.

In the unusual, closed-door lecture, Lang gave a frank analysis of the Chinese economy and the censorship that is placed on intellectuals and public figures. “What I’m about to say is all true. But under this system, we are not allowed to speak the truth,” he said.

Despite Lang’s polished appearance on his high-profile TV shows, he said: “Don’t think that we are living in a peaceful time now. Actually the media cannot report anything at all. Those of us who do TV shows are so miserable and frustrated, because we cannot do any programs. As long as something is related to the government, we cannot report about it.”

He said that the regime doesn’t listen to experts, and that Party officials are insufferably arrogant. “If you don’t agree with him, he thinks you are against him,” he said.

Lang’s assessment that the regime is bankrupt was based on five conjectures.

Firstly, that the regime’s debt sits at about 36 trillion yuan (US$5.68 trillion). This calculation is arrived at by adding up Chinese local government debt (between 16 trillion and 19.5 trillion yuan, or US$2.5 trillion and US$3 trillion), and the debt owed by state-owned enterprises (another 16 trillion, he said). But with interest of two trillion per year, he thinks things will unravel quickly.

Secondly, that the regime’s officially published inflation rate of 6.2 percent is fabricated. The real inflation rate is 16 percent, according to Lang.

Thirdly, that there is serious excess capacity in the economy, and that private consumption is only 30 percent of economic activity. Lang said that beginning this July, the Purchasing Managers Index, a measure of the manufacturing industry, plunged to a new low of 50.7. This is an indication, in his view, that China’s economy is in recession.

Fourthly, that the regime’s officially published GDP of 9 percent is also fabricated. According to Lang’s data, China’s GDP has decreased 10 percent. He said that the bloated figures come from the dramatic increase in infrastructure construction, including real estate development, railways, and highways each year (accounting for up to 70 percent of GDP in 2010).

Fifthly, that taxes are too high. Last year, the taxes on Chinese businesses (including direct and indirect taxes) were at 70 percent of earnings. The individual tax rate sits at 81.6 percent, Lang said.

Once the “economic tsunami” starts, the regime will lose credibility and China will become the poorest country in the world, Lang said...

Full Article:
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/china-news/chinese-tv-host-says-regime-nearly-bankrupt-141214.html

Gadhafi’s Gold-money Plan Would Have Devastated Dollar

Alex Newman Friday, 11 November 2011
http://thenewamerican.com/economy/markets-mainmenu-45/9743-gadhafis-gold-money-plan-would-have-devastated-dollar

It remains unclear exactly why or how the Gadhafi regime went from “a model” and an “important ally” to the next target for regime change in a period of just a few years. But after claims of “genocide” as the justification for NATO intervention were disputed by experts, several other theories have been floated.

Oil, of course, has been mentioned frequently — Libya is Africa‘s largest oil producer. But one possible reason in particular for Gadhafi’s fall from grace has gained significant traction among analysts and segments of the non-Western media: central banking and the global monetary system.

According to more than a few observers, Gadhafi’s plan to quit selling Libyan oil in U.S. dollars — demanding payment instead in gold-backed “dinars” (a single African currency made from gold) — was the real cause. The regime, sitting on massive amounts of gold, estimated at close to 150 tons, was also pushing other African and Middle Eastern governments to follow suit.

And it literally had the potential to bring down the dollar and the world monetary system by extension, according to analysts. French President Nicolas Sarkozy reportedly went so far as to call Libya a “threat” to the financial security of the world. The “Insiders” were apparently panicking over Gadhafi’s plan.

"Any move such as that would certainly not be welcomed by the power elite today, who are responsible for controlling the world's central banks,” noted financial analyst Anthony Wile, editor of the free market-oriented Daily Bell, in an interview with RT. “So yes, that would certainly be something that would cause his immediate dismissal and the need for other reasons to be brought forward [for] removing him from power."

According to Wile, Gadhafi’s plan would have strengthened the whole continent of Africa in the eyes of economists backing sound money — not to mention investors. But it would have been especially devastating for the U.S. economy, the American dollar, and particularly the elite in charge of the system.

“The central banking Ponzi scheme requires an ever-increasing base of demand and the immediate silencing of those who would threaten its existence,” Wile noted in a piece entitled “Gaddafi Planned Gold Dinar, Now Under Attack” earlier this year. “Perhaps that is what the hurry [was] in removing Gaddafi in particular and those who might have been sympathetic to his monetary idea.”

Investor newsletters and commentaries have been buzzing for months with speculation about the link between Gadhafi’s gold dinar and the NATO-backed overthrow of the Libyan regime. Conservative analysts pounced on the potential relationship, too.

“In 2009 — in his capacity as head of the African Union — Libya's Moammar Gadhafi had proposed that the economically crippled continent adopt the ‘Gold Dinar,’” noted Ilana Mercer in an August opinion piece for WorldNetDaily. “I do not know if Col. Gadhafi continued to agitate for ditching the dollar and adopting the Gold Dinar — or if the Agitator from Chicago got wind of Gadhafi's (uncharacteristic) sanity about things monetary.”

But if Arab and African nations had begun adopting a gold-backed currency, it would have had major repercussions for debt-laden Western governments that would be far more significant than the purported “democratic” uprisings sweeping the region this year. And it would have spelled big trouble for the elite who benefit from “freshly counterfeited funny-money,” Mercer pointed out.

“Had Gadhafi sparked a gold-driven monetary revolution, he would have done well for his own people, and for the world at large,” she concluded. “A Gadhafi-driven gold revolution would have, however, imperiled the positions of central bankers and their political and media power-brokers.”

Adding credence to the theory about why Gadhafi had to be overthrown, as The New American reported in March, was the rebels’ odd decision to create a central bank to replace Gadhafi’s state-owned monetary authority. The decision was broadcast to the world in the early weeks of the conflict.

In a statement describing a March 19 meeting, the rebel council announced, among other things, the creation of a new oil company. And more importantly: “Designation of the Central Bank of Benghazi as a monetary authority competent in monetary policies in Libya and appointment of a Governor to the Central Bank of Libya, with a temporary headquarters in Benghazi.”

The creation of a new central bank, even more so than the new national oil regime, left analysts scratching their heads. “I have never before heard of a central bank being created in just a matter of weeks out of a popular uprising,” noted Robert Wenzel in an analysis for the Economic Policy Journal. “This suggests we have a bit more than a rag tag bunch of rebels running around and that there are some pretty sophisticated influences,” he added. Wenzel also noted that the uprising looked like a “major oil and money play, with the true disaffected rebels being used as puppets and cover” while the transfer of control over money and oil supplies takes place.

Other analysts, even in the mainstream press, were equally shocked. “Is this the first time a revolutionary group has created a central bank while it is still in the midst of fighting the entrenched political power?” wondered CNBC senior editor John Carney. “It certainly seems to indicate how extraordinarily powerful central bankers have become in our era.”

Similar scenarios involving the global monetary system — based on the U.S. dollar as a global reserve currency, backed by the fact that oil is traded in American money — have also been associated with other targets of the U.S. government. Some analysts even say a pattern is developing.

Iran, for example, is one of the few nations left in the world with a state-owned central bank. And Iraqi despot Saddam Hussein, once armed by the U.S. government to make war on Iran, was threatening to start selling oil in currencies other than the dollar just prior to the Bush administration’s “regime change” mission.

While most of the establishment press in America has been silent on the issue of Gadhafi’s gold dinar scheme, in Russia, China, and the global alternative media, the theory has exploded in popularity. Whether salvaging central banking and the corrupt global monetary system were truly among the reasons for Gadhafi’s overthrow, however, may never be known for certain — at least not publicly.

THE AIR MAX LEBRON VIII

Ok I jumped on the bandwagon a little late! Initially when I saw the Nike Air Max Lebron VIII I wasn't impressed and kinda upset about the follow up to the VII. I wasn't thrilled about the paneling of flywire and leather/suede. After seeing the Hardwood Classic (HWC) from the Sneaker Pimps Tour in Chicago my Lebron light switched back on! This weekend to celebrate the grand opening of a new HOUSE OF HOOPS in Miami at the Dadeland Mall, the highly anticipated SOUTH BEACH/MIAMI VICE/PRE HEAT edition drops and I MUST HAVE THESE!!! The AMLB VIII features a 360 Air Max cushion bubble all along the outsole which is great for a New Yorker like myself who walks alot. There is in fact less flywire which is only along the rear of the shoe as opposed to the VII which dominated the upper. On the tongue there is the mighty Lebron Lion, or for the CHINA edition, a traditional dragon mask. The rest is either full grain leather or nubuck suede throughout the upper. Check out the pics below and let me know if you already were or are now on the bandwagon!

KNICKS HOME EDITION

USA BASKETBALL EDITION

CHARCOAL EDITION

WHITE ON WHITE EDITION

AIR MAX LEBRON DESIGNER JASON PETRIE

BLACKOUT EDITION

CHINA EDITION

SOUTH BEACH/MIAMI/PRE HEAT EDITION

1ST RELEASE

KNICKS AWAY EDITION