The man, posing as Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, held secret talks with U.S., NATO, and Afghan officials, including Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and then after three meetings disappeared.

Not surprisingly, these so-called "high-level discussions... appear to have achieved little" and American officials have "given up hope that the Afghan was Mr. Mansour, or even a member of the Taliban leadership."

Promoted by Colman: I have no idea what to do with this, other than to bury my head under a pillow. So screwed up.

Frank Fenner sees no hope for humans is how The Australian, Rupert Murdoch's rag, puts it. Virologist Frank Fenner, who oversaw the eradication of smallpox, now predicts that it is possible humans may be extinct by the end of this century.

Frank Fenner doesn't engage in the skirmishes of the climate wars. To him, the evidence of global warming is in. Our fate is sealed.

"We're going to become extinct," the eminent scientist says. "Whatever we do now is too late."

Fenner is 95 years old and I don't know if it is just that he is nearing the end of his life that his outlook is bleak, or if it is an insight gleaned from his long life.

"Homo sapiens will become extinct, perhaps within 100 years," he says. "A lot of other animals will, too. It's an irreversible situation. I think it's too late. I try not to express that because people are trying to do something, but they keep putting it off.

Xe Services announced its decision in a brief statement that gave few details, the agency said.

Owner and founder Erik Prince said in a statement that selling the company is a difficult decision, but constant criticism of Xe helped him make up his mind, according to the agency.

I think it isn't so much that Prince couldn't stand the constant criticism, but rather after Blackwater mercenaries massacred 17 Iraqi civilians in Nisoor Square in Baghdad on the September 16, 2007, he couldn't shake public attention to his once-fly-below-the-radar operation.

• DB's goal is to run the trains 90% on time.

• €1 million is being spent to overhaul the coffee machines on ICE trains.

• DB needs up to "up to 300 new trains for long-distance rail travel", an order they estimate to be worth €5 billion.

• DB is trying to buy Arriva, the British transport operator, for €2.7 billion.

• DB is investing €41 billion on German rail over the next 5 years.

• DB is €15 billion in debt.

Also, Grube thinks French and British operators are blocking the DB from running ICE trains to London via the Channel Tunnel.

About the video:

Econstories.tv is a place to learn about the economic way of thinking through the eyes of creative director John Papola and creative economist Russ Roberts.

In Fear the Boom and Bust, John Maynard Keynes and F. A. Hayek, two of the great economists of the 20th century, come back to life to attend an economics conference on the economic crisis. Before the conference begins, and at the insistence of Lord Keynes, they go out for a night on the town and sing about why there's a "boom and bust" cycle in modern economies and good reason to fear it.

Lyrics and a mp3 are available at the website of EconStories and in case it wasn't obvious from the video and lyrics about whose side the video skews toward, Papola and Roberts position becomes clear when they were interviewed by NPR about the economists' rap battle.

Papola's growing interest in the influential but little-known economist eventually led him to discover libertarian economist Russell Roberts, co-author of the popular blog Cafe Hayek and host of the EconTalk podcast.

Papola was an executive producer at Spike TV and "in 2009, he cold-called Roberts and left a 'long, ranting message' about how he was interested in the business cycle and monetary policy." Papola and Roberts oppose governments using economic stimulus as a means to revive an economy that has collapsed into a recession.

As Hayek fans, this didn't make Papola and Roberts too happy. They wanted to find a way to critique Keynes' theories and give Hayek the attention they thought he deserved... The resulting 6 1/2-minute music video tells the story of Keynes and Hayek going out for a night on the town. While drinking and rolling with their homies, they lay out the basics of their theories.

The current terrorism threat level is Severe This means that a terrorist attack is highly likely.

"Johnson said the new level meant people needed to be 'more aware'," BBC News reported. Aware of what?

Perhaps with the general election due to take place on or before 3 June, the government is hoping the British public will be cowering in fear? After all, Johnson said "The number one job of the government is to keep the public safe".

But how, exactly, has the Labour government kept the British people safe?

In 1970, Samuelson was the first American to receive the Nobel Prize for economics. He was cited by the prize committee "for the scientific work through which he has developed static and dynamic economic theory and actively contributed to raising the level of analysis in economic science".

The New York Times reports the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced that Samuelson had died on Sunday. At MIT, Samuelson helped build the school into "into one of the world's great centers of graduate education in economics." Students and colleagues of Samuelson included fellow Nobel laureates George Akerlof, Robert Engle, Lawrence Klein, Paul Krugman, Franco Modigliani, Robert Merton, Robert Solow, and Joseph Stiglitz.

"Paul Samuelson was both a path-breaking and prolific economic theorist and one of the greatest teachers that economics has ever known," said Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, a former student of Samuelson's told the Wall Street Journal. "I join with many other former students and colleagues of Paul's in mourning the passing of a titan of economics," he said.

frontpaged - Nomad

What does the European Union truly stand for besides a cradle-to-grave social welfare system? For without something to struggle for, there can be no civil society—only decadence.

In his latest dispatch, "Let's Go, Europe", Kaplan writes that "NATO staggers on" and that "just keeping Europe on the ground, in uniform, in Afghanistan represents an achievement of sorts" for the Obama administration that "that we should not belittle".

According to Kaplan:

Because the cause of international peace and security sometimes requires a willingness to fight, and humanitarian rescue missions often rely on skills honed in combat, the U.S. has, since the end of the Cold War, had to try to enlist Europe in its grand strategy, despite what some might legitimately consider Europe's neopacifism.

The caveats placed on European troops in Afghanistan aren't the only problem. The anemic level of European military spending in general is also a factor: only four countries (Great Britain, France, Greece, and Turkey) allocate at least two percent of their GDPs to defense--a requirement of all NATO members. And Greece and Turkey are well-armed only in the anticipation of fighting each other. Then there is Europe's continuing failure to form a rapid response force for out-of-area military emergencies.

At home, Europe's social safety net is estimable. But what will the European Union, now with its own president and foreign minister, work toward abroad? After all, a neopacifist Europe is the result not only of the continent's ethical awakening following centuries of war, but of a new strategic context in which Europeans simply face no credible security threat.

"This program died because of a lack of political will," according to an anonymous source quoted in the article, "Tycoon, Contractor, Soldier, Spy", by Adam Ciralsky in the January 2010 issue of Vanity Fair.

Among the team's targets, according to a source familiar with the program, was Mamoun Darkazanli, an al-Qaeda financier living in Hamburg who had been on the agency's radar for years because of his ties to three of the 9/11 hijackers and to operatives convicted of the 1998 bombings of U.S. Embassies in East Africa. The C.I.A. team supposedly went in "dark," meaning they did not notify their own station--much less the German government--of their presence; they then followed Darkazanli for weeks and worked through the logistics of how and where they would take him down.

Biden was reluctant accept Barack Obama's invite to be his running-mate and lose "his role as a Senate baron". According to Joe Podesta, who headed Obama's transition, Biden "didn't want to be the guy in charge of x portfolio". Like Cheney before him, Biden wanted to the final person to speak to the president before a decision was to be made. "On foreign policy," Traub writes, "Biden has largely realized his wish".

He attends the president's daily briefing every morning with James L. Jones, the national-security adviser; often Biden will stay behind for a few minutes to raise other issues. He has a weekly lunch with the president and no staff members. He sits in on most of the "principals' meetings" of top national-security officials, which occur about once a week; unlike Cheney, a silent presence at these sessions, Biden has plenty to say. Biden attends every important meeting on foreign policy the president holds.

Obama announced 30,000 more troops - afew

Originally published on October 8th

Baker points out the scenario Fisk outlined in his anonymous sourced article has been a "persistent, recurring conspiracy theory" over the past decade.

Fisk says, the dollar will suffer a severe blow to its international standing and the United States might struggle to pay for its oil...

Fisk's theory would make a good plot for a Hollywood movie, but it doesn't make much sense as economics. It is true that oil is priced in dollars and that most oil is traded in dollars, but these facts make relatively little difference for the status of the dollar as an international currency or the economic well-being of the United States.

Baker explains that any market "requires a unit of measure" and while the dollar is convenient, "there would be no real difference if the euro, the yen, or even bushels of wheat were selected as the unit of account for the oil market."

"It's simply an accounting issue," he writes.

We don't need no stinkin' conspiracies - diary rescue by Migeru

And now come the stories about the rise of the Right, the collapse of the Left!!

Stop it.  Stop it right now, all editors, reporters, and think-tank types with good degrees from fancy private colleges opining in quarterly journals few people read.  Stop writing this tripe right now!!!

There is no left and there is no right any more in Europe, at least not by the historic definitions of those terms.  There is only a center ground and all politicians with a hope of electoral success occupy it.

Europe's left -- with its historic ties to statist socialism is dead, dead, dead.

Goldfarb writes that Francois Mitterand killed the left 30 years ago, with Tony Blair issuing the coup de grâce 15 years ago. On the right, Goldfarb writes that British Conservatives today are pale imitations of Thatcherites. Angela Merkel is not going to attack Germany's unions and Nicolas Sarkozy is not dismantling the socialist state.

Left and right have meaning only where radical politics have real purchase in a society.  In Europe that is only at the fringe so there is no need to apply those terms in Europe. The U.S. is different. The fringe has taken over a mainstream political party turning the Republicans into the only party in the civilized world that is truly radical. So you can use the appelation "right-wing" when discussing U.S. politics.  But the Republicans are not counter-balanced by a radical party of the left.  The only people who see radicalism in the Democrats are the propagandizers of the "right." Impartial observers have yet to detect it. Therefore America has a "right-wing" but no "left-wing."

I agree with his assessment of the U.S. America does not have a leftwing, even the Progressive caucus of the Democratic Party are more centrist than radical lefties. So as consequence, the pull on American politics is constantly to the right.

However, not being in Europe I don't have a good feel if Goldfarb's assessment is correct. Is the left and the right today in Europe just shadows of their past? Are European politicians a collection of centrists?

Notions that population growth is a boon for prosperity - or that national political success depends on it - are "Ponzi demography," says Joseph Chamie, former director of the population division of the United Nations.

The profits of growth go to the few, and everyone else picks up the tab.

Diary Rescue by Migeru

The Soviet Union's military force in Afghanistan was kept roughly between 80,000-104,000 troops for duration of its occupation in the 1980s. The Moscow-backed Afghan government fell despite more than nine years of Soviet military assistance and nearly 14,000 Soviet casualties.

The U.S.-led occupation force is even larger when private civilian and military contractors are added to the Western military footprint. For at least the past couple years, contractors have outnumbered U.S. troops in Afghanistan the NY Times reported on Tuesday.

"I think they (the Obama administration) thought this would be more popular and easier," a senior Pentagon official said. "We are not getting a Bush-like commitment to this war."

I'm going to interpret this remark as a glimmer of independence in the White House regarding the future direction of the ongoing war in Afghanistan. The quote comes from a McClatchy article yesterday, the Pentagon is worried about Obama's commitment to Afghanistan.

The concern among members of the military leadership is that while U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal's recently submitted his assessment of the "deteriorating situation" in Afghanistan did not request additional troops, such a request could come from the Pentagon within weeks. Or, as the New York Times reported the Groundwork is laid for new troops in Afghanistan.

From the diaries - afew

"The future is horrific," says Charlie Veron, an Australian marine biologist who is widely regarded as the world's foremost expert on coral reefs.

"There is no hope of reefs surviving to even mid-century in any form that we now recognise. If, and when, they go, they will take with them about one-third of the world's marine biodiversity. Then there is a domino effect, as reefs fail so will other ecosystems. This is the path of a mass extinction event, when most life, especially tropical marine life, goes extinct."

Or, as David Adam explains in his Guardian article about Why coral reefs face a catastrophic future:

Within just a few decades, experts are warning, the tropical reefs strung around the middle of our planet like a jewelled corset will reduce to rubble. Giant piles of slime-covered rubbish will litter the sea bed and spell in large distressing letters for the rest of foreseeable time: Humans Were Here.

They are not alone in their bleak outlook for the future of the world's coral reefs.

My skepticism is compounded when I read in the Financial Times that the Fed makes $14bn profit on crisis loans (hat tip marco).

The Federal Reserve has made a $14bn profit on loan programmes that have provided hundreds of billions of dollars in liquidity to the financial system since the start of the crisis two years ago, according to Fed officials.

The "Bailout Propaganda Begins" blogs Matt Taibbi. He writes:

Since only a small portion of the debt has been put down by the best borrowers, and since the borrowers in the worst shape haven't retired their obligations yet, it's crazy to make any conclusions about TARP, pure sophistry. Moreover, a think tank set up to analyze TARP, Ethisphere, calculated in June that TARP was still $148 billion down overall, a debt of over $1200 per American. To start talking about what a success TARP is now is beyond meaningless.

The Polish newspaper names Washington lobbyist Riki Ellison, chairman of the Missile Defence Advocacy Alliance, as its source. "The signals that the generals in the Pentagon are sending are absolutely clear: as far as missile defence is concerned, the current US administration is searching for other solutions than the previously bases in Poland and the Czech Republic," Ellison said.

"The administration has been sounding out for a couple of weeks now how the Congress will react when the plans for building the missile defence in Poland and the Czech Republic are dumped," Ellison said a Congressional source has told him.

"The boys pose a challenge for European countries many of which have sent troops to fight in Afghanistan but whose publics question the rationale for the war."

Thousands of lone Afghan boys are making their way across Europe, a trend that has accelerated in the past two years as conditions for Afghan refugees become more difficult in countries like Iran and Pakistan. Although some are as young as 12, most are teenagers seeking an education and a future that is not possible in their own country, which is still struggling with poverty and violence eight years after the end of Taliban rule.

Estimates by the Separated Children in Europe Program have about 100,000 unaccompanied children from non-EU countries living in the EU. Many of the minors are not asking for "protection in any form."

After the polls closed, the New York Times reported the Afghan election was called a success despite Taliban attacks. "American officials were quick to declare the poll a success -- worth the expanding commitment of troops and money to an increasingly unpopular and corruption-plagued government."

Before the election, Western officials feared the Taliban would completely disrupt the election with violence. The Guardian noted that US and NATO officials were quick to proclaim poll a success despite violence, low turnout, and fears of electoral fraud.