Creation Week - Chuck MIssler

Absolute proof Obama was Indonesian citizen

A college classmate of Barack Obama who wrote a column asserting “The Obama Scandal is at Columbia” says he received a call from a reporter who claims to have “absolute proof” Obama became an Indonesian citizen.

WND has reported since 2008 that an Indonesian school record shows Obama attended school in the Asian nation registered as an Indonesian citizen and as a Muslim.

Wayne Allyn Root, in an interview with fill-in host Joe Pagliarulo on the “Glenn Beck Program,” said he received a phone call at 4 a.m. this morning from an investigative reporter with Breitbart.com probing Obama’s past in Indonesia.

The reporter, according to Root, a former Libertarian Party vice-presidential nominee, said he has “absolute proof” Obama was adopted by his mother’s new husband and became an Indonesian citizen.

“It’s a fact, it’s not a question,” the reporter told Root. “I’m looking at [the proof] right now.”

Information about Obama’s Indonesian schooling first surfaced in January 2007 in a blog called An American Expat in Southeast Asia. The blog documented Obama was registered Jan. 1, 1968, under the name Barry Soetoro, with serial number 203, in Class 1B at the Catholic Franciscan Assisi Primary School in Jakarta.

School records listed Barry Soetoro as an Indonesian citizen born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on Aug. 4, 1961.

His religion was listed as Islam.

According to the blog, school documents recorded Barry’s father as L. Soetoro Ma, a worker in the director general’s office in the TNI Topography division of the Indonesian army.

The records indicated Barry attended the Franciscan school for three years, until Class 3.

WND reported Aug. 17, 2008, that conformation for Obama’s attendance in the Indonesian school came with the surfacing of a 2007 Associated Press photograph by Tatan Syuflana, an Indonesian AP reporter and photographer. The photo showed Obama’s registration card at the Assisi school.


Obama school registration

An AP spokesman confirmed to WND that the photograph of the registration card was authentic.

The listing of Obama in an official record in a foreign country as a foreign citizen should have prompted a major media investigation.

Obama in Islam: A Muslim

After attending the Catholic school in Jakarta, Obama was enrolled at a public school.

WND has been unable to find an Indonesian law in force when Obama was in Jakarta that required a child to be an Indonesian citizen to attend public schools in Indonesia.

Indonesian law at the time required instruction in Islam, a contention confirmed by two academic studies done by Lambert Kelabora, a lecturer in Indonesian Education at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia.

Writing in Asian Survey in 1976, Kelabora wrote that Sukarno’s defeat of the Partai Komunis Indonesia, the Communist Party of Indonesia, in an unsuccessful coup led to changes in religious instruction in the Indonesian public school curriculum.

“With the victory over the PKI in their hands,” Kelabora wrote, “Moslem groups had no difficulty in arguing that it was religion that had saved the country from Communism, and that it was time to make religion compulsory for everyone in order to strengthen the moral fibre of the nation.”

As a result, Islamic studies throughout Indonesian institutions were intensified “in the communist prison camps, in factories, in offices, and in all educational institutions.”

The study of Islam was then made mandatory in all Indonesian educational institutions in the country, including pre-primary schools. All students were required to increase their study of Islam to four lessons a week, some 10 percent of the curriculum, elevating the study of Islam “to the most important subject in the school curriculum.”

In a 1979 paper Kelabora published in Comparative Education, titled “Assumptions Underlying Religious Instruction in Indonesia,” he stressed “the changing political and security situation in the country since 1949 has made religion a compulsory subject for all, from pre-primary to tertiary level, from the communist prison camps to factories and government establishments.”

Even Kim Barker, a Chicago Tribune foreign correspondent, in an article focused on “debunking the myth Obama had attended a Madrassa,” admitted Barry Soetoro attended the mosque with his father to pray.

Barker interviewed Israella Darmawan, Barry’s first grade teacher at the Assisi school, the teacher previously interviewed by the Los Angeles Times. Barker reported her as saying, “Sometimes Lolo went to the mosque to pray, but he rarely socialized with people. Rarely, Barry went to the mosque with Lolo.”

In an interview with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, Obama was questioned about his Islamic education.

After acknowledging that he once got in trouble for making faces during Quran study classes in his elementary school in Indonesia, Obama recited for Kristoff the opening lines of the Arabic call to prayer. It reads as follows:

“Allah is Supreme! Allah is Supreme!
Allah is Supreme! Allah is Supreme!
I witness that there is no God but Allah
I witness that there is no God but Allah
I witness that Muhammad is his prophet …”

Kristof noted Obama recited the prayer “with a first-rate accent.”

“In a remark that seemed delightfully uncalculated (it’ll give Alabama voters heart attacks),” Kristoff wrote, “Mr. Obama described the call to prayer as ‘one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.’”

The lines of the Adhan are very similar to the Shahada, the Muslim declaration of the oneness of Allah and the acceptance of Muhammad as his final prophet. Recitation of the Shahada is one of the most important of the Five Pillars of Islam and is performed daily by Muslims worldwide.

Maya Soetoro: Obama’s ‘adopted’

WND reported April 28, 2011, one day after the White House posted a PDF file it claims is Obama’s authentic long-form birth certificate, Maya Soetoro-Ng, Obama’s Indonesian half-sister, suggested on a blog that Obama was adopted by her stepfather.

On a Facebook page, Soetoro-Ng wrote to a woman who had met her in Hawaii after Madelyn Dunham, the mother of Stanley Ann Dunham and grandmother to both Maya and Barack, passed away in 2008.

Soetoro-Ng was objecting to having a conversation with a critic of her half-brother and said she had been misquoted as saying her whole family was Muslim.

She wrote: “I did not say my brother was a Muslim. I did say that I was more philosophically Buddhist. I told you that you were upsetting me. You said that you were not trying to upset me but wanted to know the truth about (Raila) Odinga (a Muslim for whom Barack Obama campaigned in the 2007 presidential race in Kenya.) I told you I didn’t know who that was and had never met him. You mentioned the adoption laws of Indonesia that you saw as related to my brother’s legitimacy (you were suggesting that because my father, his stepfather, had adopted him, that my brother was no longer American) and I said that I had no idea about Indonesian adoption law.”

WND noted that while not a definitive statement, Maya’s post on Facebook supports the registration of Obama at the Catholic school in Jakarta as an Indonesian citizen.

Indonesian citizenship law
The Indonesian citizenship law in effect when Obama was there was titled “Laws of the Republic of Indonesia, Number 62 Year 1958, Regarding Citizenship of the Republic of Indonesia (LNRI 1958/113).”

Article 2(1) deals with the citizenship of foreign children and reads as follows:

A foreign child not yet 5 years of age who is adopted by a Republic of Indonesia state citizen, acquires Republic of Indonesian citizenship, when the adoption is declared lawful by the District Court of the place of residence of the person who adopts the child.

If Obama were adopted by Lolo Soetoro after the age of 5, he would have had to undergo the Indonesian naturalization process to become an Indonesian citizen.
If Obama had been naturalized, he would have been required to renounce U.S. citizenship, prove Indonesian language proficiency and knowledge of the history of Indonesia.

To this point, no official Indonesian adoption papers proving Lolo Soetoro legally adopted Obama have been presented; nor is there any proof Obama was naturalized as an Indonesian citizen when he was there with his stepfather and mother.

Obama ‘Soebarkah’
State Department documents released in two separate FOIA requests indicate that Ann Dunham apparently identified her son with an Indonesian surname and asked the State Department to drop him from her U.S. passport.

In a passport amendment she submitted in person to the State Department at the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, on Aug. 13, 1968, less than a year after joining her second husband in Indonesia, she petitioned to renew her expiring passport.

In the amendment form, she also requested “Barack Obama II (Soebarkah)” be removed from her U.S. Passport No. 777788.

Her listing of her son’s name as “Barack Hussein Obama (Soebarkah)” suggests she intended to indicate he was an Indonesian citizen.

Until the State Department released the document in July 2010, the surname Soebarkah had never surfaced in reference to Barack Hussein Obama Jr. Indonesians do not typically use surnames, as is the custom in Western nations.

Surnames may be used to convey ethnic information and even within families surnames may vary. Soebarkah may be a variation of the Soetoro surname.

WND

$9 Corn Could Be a Big Problem for the Economy

Corn prices — which have already surged about 50 percent in the past two months — could go significantly higher if current trends hold up, and the effects might be felt throughout the economy.

Price momentum indicates corn  could rise at least 21 percent over the next six months, putting $9.50 a bushel or even higher into play, according to a model used by the American Restaurant Association.

"It's not infallible but it suggests that there's definitely upside risk here in this market," said David Maloni, president and founder of the ARA Group. "It's alarming, that's why we look at it. We would not be surprised to some type of blow-off occur in corn and soybeans in the coming weeks."

Corn prices hit their lowest point in nearly two years in mid-June but have spiked violently as drought conditions have worsened across the country.

With little relief in sight, there's growing belief from agriculture experts that the price trajectory for grains is decidedly higher.

"It just depends on how bad these crops are, and I'm not sure anybody knows how bad they are," Maloni said. "We're rationing corn and soybean demand. The question is how much demand do we have to ration? We don't know and probably won't know for sure until later this fall."

More troubling for corn's future is that the danger of a price increase isn't just indicated by technicals: there also are fundamental reasons. They include growing demand not just in the U.S. but also abroad in emerging markets, as well as the onerous ethanol mandates from the U.S. government.

"From a supply situation, yes, there is the possibility for a run at $9 or above," said Darin Newsom, senior analyst at DTN in Omaha, Neb. "It's there because what we could be facing is one of the tightest supply situations the market has ever seen, given the ongoing drought and given the type of yields that are starting to come in in front of Friday's USDA reports."

The U.S. Department of Agriculture releases its monthly production data and world agriculture supply and demand report Friday at 8:30 am ET.

"Just about everybody connected to the corn industry is going to feel some kind of pain before this is all said and done.”

If the production numbers come in as light as expected, the news could be just the thing the corn market needs to take yet another leg up.

With corn used to manufacture numerous food products as well as produce enthanol and feed livestock, a sharp move would have wide reverberations.

"This is not going to end well for anybody," Newsom said. "Just about everybody connected to the corn industry is going to feel some kind of pain before this is all said and done."

The only bright side both he and Maloni see is that demand likely will capsize if the surge is that high.

"If production gets as bad as what is expected, then demand is going to be cut further," Newsom said. "What's going to happen then is prices will post a quick peak and then collapse."

However, other forces could come into play to put a floor under food prices. The Federal Reserve's monetary policy is not dollar-friendly, so if the U.S. currency starts falling that could push commodity prices higher.

Food prices rose 0.2 percent in June, before the real spike in corn prices took hold. Maloni said a 3 percent to 5 percent increase in food is possible from the expected corn increase.

Richard Hastings, macro strategist at Global Hunter Securities in Newport Beach, Calif., looks at the spread between the Fed funds rate — near zero percent — and the consumer price index and sees potential trouble.

"The market may not understand the pervasiveness of inflation because of the grain problem. I don't think the market's pricing that in," Hastings said. "Now that we have geopolitical, supply and refinery things pushing up gas prices to some interesting level, then you come in with the grain problem. You're looking at a pretty good push over the next four to five months against the CPI."

The ARA's Maloni said the restaurant industry also will feel an impact, though he said "it's not like a catastrophe."

He expects some government involvement, with efforts possible to reduce the ethanol mandate the most likely possibility.

"It's not a catastrophe for the restaurant industry," he said. "It certainly could be a catastrophe for those who are more needy in developing countries who are impacted more by a surge in grain prices, and of course the farmers who have suffered because of this."


CNBC

The latest US estimate: Urgent to stop Iranian nuclear proliferation.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Thursday said that a recently reported US intelligence report is closer than ever to Israel's own intelligence estimates on Iran. The latest US estimate, he told Israel Radio, gives much more urgency to stopping Iranian nuclear proliferation.

"As far as we know it (the intelligence assessment) brings the American assessment much closer to ours ... it makes the Iranian issue even more urgent and (shows it is) less clear and certain that we will know everything in time about their steady progress toward military nuclear capability," the Defense Minister told Israel Radio.

"We and the Americans agreed not to allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons and all options are on the table," Barak said. Ultimately, however, it is the Israeli government that will make decisions regarding its security and future.

The defense minister also addressed criticism of the government's perceived decision-making process, saying that the cabinet would need to approve any military strike on Iran. "The description in the media as if two people are sitting around and hatching attack plans is utterly ridiculous," he proclaimed.

Earlier in the week, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu once again shot down the idea that a nuclear-armed Iran could be contained. If Iran gets a nuclear bomb, it may actually use it, he said in a meeting with Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr on Monday.

That the Iranians might actually use the bomb is a reality that cannot be denied, Netanyahu said.

“This is a regime that has broken every rule in the book,” he added. “They very likely could use weapons of mass death.”

Netanyahu said there was an illusion among many in the world that if Iran acquired nuclear weapons, it would behave responsibly like the world’s other nuclear states.

The prime minister, during the discussion dominated by the Iranian issue, said Iran is governed by a “fanatical regime” that sees itself on a sacred mission of global Islamic domination, and destroying Israel was just one step toward its larger vision.

Everyone talks about the cost of stopping Iran, “but they shouldn’t ignore the cost of not stopping Iran,” he said.

Netanyahu’s comments come a week after he said that the decision to attack Iran would be taken by the country’s elected political leadership, and not by the defense and security establishment.

Those remarks followed media reports of Israel’s top security officials being opposed to an Israeli attack without US backing.

Jerusalem Post

N.Korea 'Could Conduct Fresh Nuke Test in 2 Weeks'

North Korea has the capability to conduct a third nuclear test within two weeks, U.S. nuclear experts claimed Monday. "North Korea appears to have an underground tunnel ready for testing," write Siegfried Hecker, the director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, and Frank Pabian, a senior nonproliferation analyst at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, a the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

"Commercial satellite imagery shows a recently excavated 'south portal' for a tunnel in Punggye-ri, situated very close to the tunnels for the first two tests" in 2006 and 2009, they add.

The two experts speculate the next bomb test will be based on highly enriched uranium, "or multiple bombs will be tested simultaneously, using both [uranium] and plutonium." The North "has a very small plutonium stockpile, sufficient for only four to eight bombs," they say. "All the same, it appears that plutonium is a dead end for Pyongyang's nuclear arsenal because it shut down and has not restarted its five megawatt electric plutonium production reactor."

In November 2010, Pyongyang invited Hecker and showed him a uranium enrichment facility with more than 1,000 centrifuges at Yongbyon in a bid to demonstrate its capability to develop uranium-based nuclear weapons.

But whether and when North Korea conducts another nuclear test “will depend on how high a political cost Pyongyang is willing to bear," the report says. "Beijing has continued to expand aid and trade with North Korea, but has also applied significant diplomatic pressure on Pyongyang not to test. Moscow recently forgave nearly $11 billion in North Korean debt, signed a new border treaty, and is still in the game for building a gas pipeline going through the North to South Korea, but Russia is also on record as opposing continued nuclear testing."

The North would therefore have to be ready to handle tensions with these two countries and further consequences, it adds.

In April, when rumors of an impending test first surfaced, the North Korean Foreign Ministry said the country had "no plans to conduct a nuclear test." But the regime hinted at resuming nuclear testing last month when it said, "Circumstances compel us to review the nuclear issue in a wholesale way" in the wake of an alleged foreign plot to destroy statues of regime founder Kim Il-sung.


The Chosunilbo

Gerald Celente: “I Have That Feeling” It’s 9-11 All Over Again

In back-to-back interviews on the Gary Null Show and the Tommy Schnurmacher Show, Gerald Celente sees another mega geopolitical quake to match the shock-and-awe of 9-11 in America’s not-to-distant future.

“I’m worried about the drumbeats of war getting louder and louder,” Celente told CJAD talk show host Tommy Schumacher, Monday. “It’s coinciding, as well, with the economic collapse that’s happening throughout Europe.”

Celente went on to say that, when sociopath and psychopath politicians get into trouble with their constituents due to a poor economy, those pols, who can divert the public’s attention away from the nation’s financial problems and redirect the collective anger toward the threat of an outside enemy, will use their power to take that nation to war at a politically advantageous time.

“It’s reaching a critical mass right now, and I haven’t felt this way since December 14, 2000,” said Celente, and noted that he senses desperation in the voice and actions of Israel’s, Benjamin Netanyahu, the present and very unpopular prime mister in that Mideast country. “I have that feeling now” with Netanyahu, said Celente.

“This guy, Netanyahu, he has 60 percent disapproval rating right now, and I’ve seen it before,” Celente continued. “I remember Bill Clinton, you know, wag the dog. Every time he’d get into trouble with Monica Lewinsky, it was bomb over Baghdad. They continually do this.”

After wavering earlier this summer whether to remain in the U.S. or flee from a “fascist” dictatorship shaping up in America, the 65-year-old Celente told InfoWars’ talk show super-star personality, Alex Jones, that he will not allow a “bunch of freaks” in Washington chase him out. Celente said he will stay and fight.

But the personal struggle on this question continues to weigh heavily on his mind.

Whether another 9-11-like event takes place on U.S. soil or overseas, Celente now seriously contemplates fleeing America if the U.S. or Israel instigates another 9-11 incident—either through a false-flag attack or other pretension to ‘justify’ a politically unpopular position to attack Iran. An attack on Iran, he said, might be the ‘straw that broke the camel’s back’ to get him to flee America for his physical safety, as he would, then, begin to mull over another trend he sees developing: jailing or “silencing” journalists.

“If the United States or Israel goes to war with Iran, it’s the beginning of World War III,” Celente told radio talk show host Gary Null, Tuesday. “Our lives will be hell after that. If you think we have a Gestapo state right now, you haven’t seen anything yet, because it’s not going to stop.

“These are the Persians; they’re 70 million strong,” he explain. “They’ve been around a long time; theyre not going to be going anywhere. And they’re going to fight down to the last man. And people forget that the Iranians lost a million people between 1980 and 1988 when the United States started a war, funding Iraq to attack Iran.

“This country won’t be worth living in, if we go to war with Iran. So I don’t know, I just don’t know what to do after that,” said Celente, who audibly struggled to match the words with his own personal thoughts on the matter. “I don’t know if I want to be here as much as I want to stay, because we’re seeing all of our rights being abrogated from us now; it will only, only, only get much worse.”

Aside from offering a peak into his mind regarding the subject of his personal quandary with the possibility of expatriation, Celente strongly advocates that Americans protect their wealth during the upcoming turmoil he sees on the horizon by holding ‘physical’ gold and silver.

He said, “It’s all I buy, is gold and silver,” and added, though his personal decision to hold precious metals is not to be construed as financial advice. Celente has repeatedly said in dozens of prior interviews that he is not a registered investment adviser, nor does he sell precious metals. But gold and silver are the only money he has outside of working capital for his business, The Trends Research Institute.

Read more: http://www.beaconequity.com/gerald-celente-i-have-that-feeling-its-9-11-all-over-again-2012-08-08/#ixzz22zmYiWr3

Army's new spy blimp makes first test flight over N.J.

After a two-month delay, the Army's high-tech spy blimp has made its maiden flight, over the New Jersey Shore.

The football-field-size airship -- Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle, in Army parlance -- was put through its paces for 90 minutes Tuesday evening at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, a military spokesman confirmed to our Gannett colleagues at the Courier News.

Technicians are "checking to see how the vehicle withstood the flight ... aerodynamic loads," said John Cummings, a spokesman for the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command/Army Forces Strategic Command.
OnDeadline

Over 100 Million Now Receiving Federal Welfare

A new chart set to be released later today by the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee details a startling statistic: "Over 100 Million People in U.S. Now Receiving Some Form Of Federal Welfare."



"The federal government administers nearly 80 different overlapping federal means-tested welfare programs," the Senate Budget Committee notes. However, the committee states, the figures used in the chart do not include those who are only benefiting from Social Security and/or Medicare.

Food stamps and Medicaid make up a large--and growing--chunk of the more than 100 million recipients. "Among the major means tested welfare programs, since 2000 Medicaid has increased from 34 million people to 54 million in 2011 and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or food stamps) from 17 million to 45 million in 2011," says the Senate Budget Committee. "Spending on food stamps alone is projected to reach $800 billion over the next decade."

The data come "from the U.S. Census’s Survey of Income and Program Participation shows that nearly 110,000 million individuals received a welfare benefit in 2011. (These figures do not include other means-tested benefits such as the Earned Income Tax Credit or the health insurance premium subsidies included in the President’s health care law. CBO estimates that the premium subsidies, scheduled to begin in 2014, will cover at least 25 million individuals by the end of the decade.)"

This is not just Americans, however. "These figures include not only citizens, but non-citizens as well," according to the committee.

The Weekly Standard

First Asian bank prepare for British exit from the EU

So we have a new term: BRIXIT.

Japan's biggest bank Nomura has issued an 11-page study evaluating the likelihood that the UK will leave the European Union entirely or partly.

Events could accelerate as soon as this autumn if eurozone woes force the Government to commit to a firm date for a BRIXIT referendum.

"The effect a looser relationship with the EU would have on the UK economy in general and on the financial services sector in the UK in particular is not clear at this time, even though British eurosceptics argue that being freed from EU regulation would be a booster. However, the prospect is, in our view, bound to raise concerns – indeed, is doing so already in the City."

The core point is that the eurozone may have to take drastic steps in integration (fiscal union, etc) to save the euro, making it nigh impossible for a fully sovereign state to remain part of the Project.

In other words, it is not so much Britain leaving the EU as the EU leaving the treaty-based club of sovereign states it was supposed to be.

The report is part of the bank's "Issues which keep me awake at night" series.

It does not take sides.

Here are a few extracts, written by Alastair Newton (an ex-British diplomat, former head to Tony Blair's G7 team, and intelligence co-ordinator in the first Gulf War). Unfortunately, we cannot post the whole report online because of Nomura's compliance rules. The bank emphasises that this is his personal opinion.

A deepening of the eurozone crisis in the immediate future remains a real possibility despite the recent efforts of the ECB in particular to calm markets. This, in turn, could spur acceleration in integration in order to try to prevent the collapse of the eurozone, thereby advancing projects which are likely to prove difficult for the British government.

One thing which is clear is that (assuming the eurozone does not collapse completely) it is only a matter of time, in our view, before crisis-related steps are agreed which necessitate treaty changes. In those circumstances, the British government will almost certainly demand ‘treaty change for treaty change’ in an effort to repatriate powers, ie be looking to win repatriation of powers to London for every concession on treaty reform sought by the eurozone on a one-for-one basis. However, in so doing the UK would likely be looking to repatriate powers which EU partners may be unwilling to concede within he context of the single market.

Third, and finally, we do not rule out the possibility of a serious schism between the EU nd the UK developing over non-crisis-related issues, with the 2014-20 EU budget an obvious potential bone of contention.

In the event of either the second or the third of these scenarios occurring, Mr Cameron could find himself in a very difficult position indeed, ie, under even more intense pressure from within the ranks of his own party to call an immediate referendum but knowing that, if he were to agree, this could be a bridge too far for the pro-EU LibDems who would try to force an early election rather than support the legislation necessary to hold a referendum. Thus, if there is to be a referendum in the UK on EU membership, it does indeed look likely to be after the next election, rather than before; but this could be at the price of the election being brought forward.

There is, in our view, a non-negligible probability that eurozone crisis-related events will encourage Conservative Party eurosceptics to exert still more pressure on Mr Cameron – and that, although we sense that eurozone leaders would prefer to avoid another row with the UK, such events could occur in the very near-term. Consider the following:

• A single bank supervisor: The 28/29 June European Council meeting agreed (with the support of the UK which is also supportive of a eurozone banking union) to establish a single eurozone bank supervisor, based in the ECB, by the year-end. However, some of the powers that the ECB is seeking (eg, to restructure and/or wind down stressed banks) could go beyond the eurozone and into the single market of all 27 EU members where qualified majority voting (QMV) generally applies, denying the UK a veto. Indeed, the European Commission is already actively promoting a banking union (towards which the bank supervisor is a significant first step) of all EU members rather than just the eurozone.

• Bank transaction tax: Although four countries (to date) have opted out – ie, Ireland, Netherlands, Sweden, UK – work is under way to agree and implement a pan- European bank transaction tax of some sort. What form this may ultimately take is far from clear at this stage, but we understand that some options being considered by the European Commission could affect trades based in London, despite the UK’s opting out.

• Measures which discriminate against non-eurozone countries: The British government was powerless to prevent the ECB from bringing in measures relating to clearing houses handling euro-denominated transactions which discriminate against non-eurozone countries. Further discriminatory steps cannot be ruled out on the road tobanking/fiscal union."

This is the first time that I have seen a global bank issue such a report. Though I would be interested to hear from readers if there are any others around.

It has been my gut feeling for some time that the EMU debt crisis – or rather the intra-EMU currency misalignment crisis since debt as such is not the root problem (except for Greece) – has already led to de facto divorce.

Britain is no longer part of the Project. This is proving less traumatic than supposed. It is quite possible to imagine various forms of semi-detached, or mostly-detached status where we carry on trading much as before.

Britain would tilt more towards Asia, the Americas, and Africa, which is the proper strategy anyway. UK relations with Europe would settle down over time and would probably prove better.

I don't like the Swiss or Norwegian analogies since Britain is not remotely comparable. It much bigger and more diversified, much more difficult to push around. The fact that Norway feels it must go along with almost all EU law – a point invariably made by status-quo defenders – is irrelevant. It tells us nothing about Britain.

The Poles, Danes, Swedes, Czechs, et al, will all have to sort out their own complex relationships with the eurozone.

Do they really want to be locked in tightly to an EU system dominated by the Franco-German axis without any offsetting Anglo-block to soften the effects?

My time as EU correspondent taught me that Britain's role as an ideological swing power in the system is greater than meets the eye.

Remember the infamous Chocolate Summit at the outset of the Iraq War when France, Germany, Belgium, and Luxembourg called a summit to announce Europe's opposition to US policy?

It backfired horribly. The EU refused to let them use the Justus Lipsius building (they had to retire to the Hilton Hotel instead) and it ultimately turned out that 16 of the (then) 25 EU states supported the US directly or quietly behind the scenes.

Which is not to say that US policy in Iraq was either good or bad. That is not my point.

The risk for Britain post-BRIXIT is that other countries would indeed start to tuck in behind the Franco-German axis if they no longer had political cover from London. Such Chocolate Summits would succeed in the future.

Europe itself would change. It would become less free-market, more protectionist, more dirigiste, more prone to quarrel with the US.

I look forward to another report by Nomura – or perhaps a Chinese bank next time – on the investment implications for Europe without Britain in it.

The Telegraph

News Corp registers $1.6bn fourth-quarter loss

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp has swung to a loss partly due to the weakness of its publishing business, which includes newspapers like the Times and the Sun.

The fourth quarter net loss was $1.6bn(£1bn) compared with a net income of $683m in the same period last year.

The loss included a $2.9bn pre-tax restructuring charge.

The company plans to split into two, separating its profitable film and TV business from UK newspapers, embroiled in a phone-hacking scandal.

"News Corporation is in a strong operational, strategic and financial position, which should only be enhanced by the proposed separation of the media and entertainment and publishing businesses," Mr Murdoch said.

Its publishing division reported quarterly operating income of $139m, down from $270m reported in the same period a year ago, reflecting lower advertising revenues and the lack of sales from closed tabloid News of the World.

The $2.9bn charge is for "impairment and restructuring" - possibly ahead of the corporate split.

For the last financial year as a whole, the results include a $224m charge related to the legal costs over the phone-hacking scandal.
BBC

France to fall back into recession says central bank

France's economy will fall back into recession this quarter, the country's central bank has predicted.

The Bank of France estimates that the economy will contract by 0.1% in July to September. It has already predicted a fall of the same level for April to June.

France posted zero growth in the first quarter of the year.

France's economy has been hit by the eurozone debt crisis, which has weakened demand for its exports.

The debt woes of fellow eurozone nations, such as Greece, Spain and Portugal, have also knocked French business and consumer confidence.

If France does fall back into recession, it will be for the second time in three years. It last returned to economic growth in the spring of 2009.

BBC

Chris Powell on the Silver Manipulation Probe