Whistle-blower lifts lid on "rigged" oil prices

MyFinances

The government announced yesterday that it will investigate whether traders and city speculators are rigging markets to force up petrol prices.

In July, a report commissioned by the G20 concluded that the oilmarket was “wide open to manipulation.”

The International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO), who compiled the report found that traders, oil companies and hedge funds have an “incentive” to distort the market with phoney prices to boost their trade.

And yesterday, Energy Minister John Hayes said that he will ask regulators to look into the market after more than 80 MPs, led by Conservative MP Robert Halfon, asked for the government to look into the cost of petrol and diesel.

Mr Hayes said he would include an investigation into fuel prices alongside the planned investigation into the Libor scandal.

He will also ask the Financial Services Authority (FSA) to investigate.

Mr Hayes said: “As a result of the arguments that Robert Halfon has put today, I will instruct my officials to do a detailed study, with analysis of how far people have to travel to reach their nearest petrol station and how this can change over time. He can count that as a significant victory.”

Mr Hayes said that data collected by his department shows that falls in wholesale prices are being passed on to motorists at the forecourt, but: “Nevertheless I am going to ask my officials to look at this matter again, to revisit their analysis, as a direct result of this debate. The Government would be happy to take action again if the evidence legitimises it.”

Mr Halfon told MPs that there was “evidence of dodgy speculators rigging the market and pushing up the price of oil’ and that as a result ‘petrol and diesel have never been more expensive in real terms.”

He is calling for any traders who are found guilty of rigging the market to be sent to prison as they were in the United States.

Mr Halfon cited the evidence of “whistle-blower” who has shown exactly how prices are rigged and is a full-time oil trader who works in the UK oil futures commodity markets.

According to Mr Halfon's researcher, the whistle-blower said: "I trade the oil market on a daily basis, and every day the price is manipulated.

"All through July, for example, there has been a massive buying-pressure on oil futures for August and September 2012. Both were trading at around a $0.5c to $1 dollar premium.

"This gives a false impression of the market and inflates the price of the nearby oil price

, making prices higher on retail markets so pushing up the price of petrol at the pumps. Profiteering seems to be the only objective."

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has already announced that it is to investigate the issue.

AA President Edmund King said an inquiry was due and that high oil prices are hindering the economic recovery.

He said: “Stock market speculators have regularly seized on every whiff of mildly supportive news to pump up the value of crude, exaggerate its value and maximise the return on their gambling.”

Governments ADMIT That They Carry Out False Flag Terror

Washington's Blog

MOSSAD Agents Posing as "Al Qaeda"

Forget the claims and allegations that false flag terror - governments attacking people and then blaming others in order to create animosity towards those blamed - has been used throughout history.

This essay will solely discuss government admissions to the use of false flag terror.
For example:

• A major with the Nazi SS admitted at the Nuremberg trials that - under orders from the chief of the Gestapo - he and some other Nazi operatives faked attacks on their own people and resources which they blamed on the Poles, to justify the invasion of Poland. Nazi general Franz Halder also testified at the Nuremberg trials that Nazi leader Hermann Goering admitted to setting fire to the German parliament building, and then falsely blaming the communists for the arson

• The CIA admits that it hired Iranians in the 1950's to pose as Communists and stage bombings in Iran in order to turn the country against its democratically-elected prime minister

• Israel admits that an Israeli terrorist cell operating in Egypt planted bombs in several buildings, including U.S. diplomatic facilities, then left behind "evidence" implicating the Arabs as the culprits (one of the bombs detonated prematurely, allowing the Egyptians to identify the bombers, and several of the Israelis later confessed) (and see this and this)

• The former Italian Prime Minister, an Italian judge, and the former head of Italian counterintelligence admit that NATO, with the help of the Pentagon and CIA, carried out terror bombings in Italy and other European countries in the 1950s and blamed the communists, in order to rally people’s support for their governments in Europe in their fight against communism. As one participant in this formerly-secret program stated: "You had to attack civilians, people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state to ask for greater security" (and see this)(Italy and other European countries subject to the terror campaign had joined NATO before the bombings occurred)

• As admitted by the U.S. government, recently declassified documents show that in the 1960's, the American Joint Chiefs of Staff signed off on a plan to blow up AMERICAN airplanes (using an elaborate plan involving the switching of airplanes), and also to commit terrorist acts on American soil, and then to blame it on the Cubans in order to justify an invasion of Cuba. See the followingABC news report; the official documents; and watch this interview with the former Washington Investigative Producer for ABC's World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. Official State Department documents show that - only nine months before - the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other high-level officials discussedblowing up a consulate in the Dominican Republic in order to justify an invasion of that country. (While the Joint Chiefs of Staff pushed as a serious proposal for Operation Northwoods to be carried out, cooler heads fortunately prevailed; President Kennedy or his Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara apparently vetoed the plan)

• The South African Truth and Reconciliation Council found that, in 1989, the Civil Cooperation Bureau (a covert branch of the South African Defense Force) approached an explosives expert and asked him "to participate in an operation aimed at discrediting the ANC [the African National Congress] by bombing the police vehicle of the investigating officer into the murder incident", thus framing the ANC for the bombing

• An Algerian diplomat and several officers in the Algerian army admit that, in the 1990s, the Algerian army frequently massacred Algerian civilians and then blamed Islamic militants for the killings (and see this video; and Agence France-Presse, 9/27/2002, French Court Dismisses Algerian Defamation Suit Against Author)

• Former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Hugh Shelton says that a Clinton cabinet member proposed letting Saddam kill an American pilot as a pretext for war in Iraq (and see this)
• According to the Washington Post, Indonesian police admit that the Indonesian military killed American teachers in Papua in 2002 and blamed the murders on a Papuan separatist group in order to get that group listed as a terrorist organization.

• The well-respected former Indonesian president also admits that the government probably had a role in the Bali bombings

• As reported by BBC, the New York Times, and Associated Press, Macedonian officials admit that the government murdered 7 innocent immigrants in cold blood and pretended that they were Al Qaeda soldiers attempting to assassinate Macedonian police, in order to join the "war on terror".

• Former Department of Justice lawyer John Yoo suggested in 2005 that the US should go on the offensive against al-Qaeda, having “our intelligence agencies create a false terrorist organization. It could have its own websites, recruitment centers, training camps, and fundraising operations. It could launch fake terrorist operations and claim credit for real terrorist strikes, helping to sow confusion within al-Qaeda’s ranks, causing operatives to doubt others’ identities and to question the validity of communications.”

• United Press International reported in June 2005:

  U.S. intelligence officers are reporting that some of the insurgents in Iraq are using recent-model Beretta 92 pistols, but the pistols seem to have had their serial numbers erased. The numbers do not appear to have been physically removed; the pistols seem to have come off a production line without any serial numbers. Analysts suggest the lack of serial numbers indicates that the weapons were intended for intelligence operations or terrorist cells with substantial government backing. Analysts speculate that these guns are probably from either Mossad or the CIA. Analysts speculate that agent provocateurs may be using the untraceable weapons even as U.S. authorities use insurgent attacks against civilians as evidence of the illegitimacy of the resistance.

• Quebec police admitted that, in 2007, thugs carrying rocks to a peaceful protest were actually undercover Quebec police officers

• At the G20 protests in London in 2009, a British member of parliament saw plain clothes police officers attempting to incite the crowd to violence

• A Colombian army colonel has admitted that his unit murdered 57 civilians, then dressed them in uniforms and claimed they were rebels killed in combat

• U.S. soldiers have admitted that if they kill innocent Iraqis and Afghanis, they then "drop" automatic weapons near their body so they can pretend they were militants

There are many other instances of false flag attacks used throughout history proven by the historical evidence. See this, this and this. The above are only some examples of governments admitting to using false flag terror.
You can't call it a conspiracy theory when the government itself admits it.
And this is not just ancient history:

• Jimmy Carter's former National Security Adviser - Zbigniew Brzezinski - told the Senate that a terrorist act might be carried out in the U.S. and falsely blamed on Iran to justify war against that nation 
  

• A retired 27-year CIA analyst who prepared and presented Presidential Daily Briefs and served as a high-level analyst for several presidents, would not put it past the government to "play fast and loose" with terror alerts and warnings and even events themselves in order to rally people behind the flag

Occupy America: protests against Wall Street and inequality hit 70 cities

The Guardian
Joanna Walters

The generation that opposed Vietnam has joined Facebook anarchists amid anger at tax breaks for the rich while ordinary folk tighten their belts

The Wall Street protests against economic inequality and corporate greed that targeted the nerve centre of American capitalism are no longer merely a New York phenomenon. This weekend, from Seattle and Los Angeles on the west coast to Providence, Rhode Island, and Tampa, Florida, on the east, as many as 70 major cities and more than 600 communities have joined the swelling wave of civil dissent.

The slogan "Occupy Wall Street" has been suitably abbreviated to a single word: "Occupy"
"This could be the tipping point," said Dick Steinkamp, 63, a retired Silicon Valley executive at the Occupy Seattle protest being held in the heart of the city's shopping and restaurant district . He and his wife had driven two hours from their home in Bellingham, north of Seattle, specifically to join the rally and give it support from more conventional professionals.

"I marched against the Vietnam war before I was drafted into the army and this movement is now getting towards that critical mass," he said.

One of the favourite messages of the protesters is that almost 40% of US wealth is held in the hands of 1% of the population, who are taxed more lightly than the majority of Americans. Steinkamp was holding a sign saying "I am the 99%". And there is widespread anger that ordinary people have born the brunt of the financial crisis with dire job losses and house repossessions.

"I came here because I wanted to show it wasn't just young anarchists," said Deb Steinkamp, also 63 and a retired marriage counsellor, wearing a green cagoule and sensible shoes against the damp, chilly Seattle weather.

Protests broke out last week in Chicago, Boston, Memphis, New Orleans, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, Austin, Louisville, Atlanta and dozens of other cities. Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal and Calgary are set to add themselves to the ranks next weekend.

Japan quake's economic impact worse than first feared

Reuters

* Nuclear crisis also threatens power supply

* Supply chain disruptions could be prolonged

* BOJ members uncertain when rebuilding will help growth

* Japan to explain quake and nuclear response at G20 meeting 

(Adds economist's quote, details)
By Rie Ishiguro and Shinji Kitamura 

TOKYO, April 12 (Reuters) - The economic damage from Japan's massive earthquake and tsunami last month is likely to be worse than first thought as power shortages curtail factory output and disrupt supply chains, the country's economics minister warned on Tuesday.

The more sober assessment came as Japan raised the severity of its nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant to a level 7 from 5, putting it on par with the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986.
The Bank of Japan governor said the economy was in a "severe state", while central bankers were uncertain when efforts to rebuild the tsunami-ravaged northeast would boost growth, according to minutes from a meeting held three days after a record earthquake struck Japan on March 11.

The government and main opposition party have agreed to a spending package to get some reconstruction work started, but setting a large additional budget will be difficult due to Japan's heavy debt burden.

"After a natural disaster, people tend to refrain from spending and you get a sense that factory output will shrink," Economics Minister Kaoru Yosano told reporters after a cabinet meeting.
"In some areas, the impact could be very big."



Japan is facing its worst crisis since World War Two after a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and a tsunami towering more than 10 metres battered its northeast coast, leaving nearly 28,000 dead or missing and rocking the world's third-largest economy.

The government estimates the material damage alone could top $300 billion, making it by far the world's costliest natural disaster.

Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda said on Tuesday that he would explain the Japanese government's efforts on post-quake reconstruction and the nuclear crisis at a Group of 20 meeting in Washington on April 15. [ID:nL3E7FC020]

Measuring the impact on consumer sentiment, factory production and the supply chain is proving more difficult, but as the crisis drags on at the nuclear power plant, the damage to the economy looks to be more severe.

Stop SPP Protest - Union Leader stops provocateurs

Detained and threatened with arrest for filming in the Toronto Convention Center

Security for the Metro Toronto Convention Centre detain Shaun and Dave as they shoot footage prior to the G20 Summit.

This video demonstrates that by standing firm, nobody can give themselves the right to view or delete your film. Trespassers must leave private property upon first notice, and they may only be arrested if they refuse to do so.

These security guards initially said we were being detained and were to accompany them to the security office. We politely declined, but kept filming to see if they would insist on deleting our footage. Eventually another security guard arrives, advises the office to film us on security camera, and claims we were never being detained in the first place.