It’s 2K10 — Better Get Digital

 

True Story …

Drugs money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the global crisis, the United Nations‘ drugs and crime tsar has told the Observer.

Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said he has seen evidence that the proceeds of organised crime were “the only liquid investment capital” available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year. He said that a majority of the $352bn (£216bn) of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result.

This will raise questions about crime’s influence on the economic system at times of crisis. It will also prompt further examination of the banking sector as world leaders, including Barack Obama and Gordon Brown, call for new International Monetary Fund regulations. Speaking from his office in Vienna, Costa said evidence that illegal money was being absorbed into the financial system was first drawn to his attention by intelligence agencies and prosecutors around 18 months ago. “In many instances, the money from drugs was the only liquid investment capital. In the second half of 2008, liquidity was the banking system’s main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor,” he said.

Some of the evidence put before his office indicated that gang money was used to save some banks from collapse when lending seized up, he said.

“Inter-bank loans were funded by money that originated from the drugs trade and other illegal activities… There were signs that some banks were rescued that way.” Costa declined to identify countries or banks that may have received any drugs money, saying that would be inappropriate because his office is supposed to address the problem, not apportion blame. But he said the money is now a part of the official system and had been effectively laundered.

“That was the moment [last year] when the system was basically paralysed because of the unwillingness of banks to lend money to one another. The progressive liquidisation to the system and the progressive improvement by some banks of their share values [has meant that] the problem [of illegal money] has become much less serious than it was,” he said.

 

CONSUME

The Triple Black Lambo

&

The Invisible Stilheto Booty

 

Just A Wednesday

 

Dubai –

 

The Artic Wolf & The Polar Bear

 

Free Markets

 

Mithra

But it has only slipped below the radar of history. As a popular mystery cult, especially strong in the Roman Military it resurfaces, albeit in variant forms, all over Europe as the pagan religion of choice. Late Roman emperors even underwent Mithraic baptismal rites supervised by members of the Parthian priesthood. Their Mithreaeums – dark subterranean sanctuaries, where the initiatic mysteries were gorily celebrated with the sacrifice of living bulls – are found as far apart as Armenia, Scotland, and the borders of the Sahara Desert, and abound in Rome. The dank limestone wall-carvings depict a haunting story: that of the celebrated sacrifice of the bull by Mithra himself. Intermediary between man and the Divine, a spiritual being of threefold nature, light bearer of the world, born of a virgin mother Anahita on the 25^th of December, it is Mithra himself who drives into the neck of whom he has subdued. By the redemptive power of blood, his twelve companions are spiritually reborn, and share in a final feast of sacred bread and wine before their masters ascent to heaven.

It is a long time before this same thread becomes visible again in ….

 

The Last Millenium

We have lived many lives. In the bluehorse sweat lodges of the native plains peoples we had glimpses to those old lives: when we were sacrificed as a child at the temple of Kali in the Bihar flatlands, when we lost a fatal game of ball in a mayan temple, the years we spent traversing to oceans as a whale — we have been karmically blessed to live as a mammal for all these generations. We seemed to have missed nearly a millenium. Maybe they were spent as a cockroach as karmic payback for when as an early homid we estinguished the ashes of a rival tribe out of spite and hatred for Oognor — the prissy Alpha of that other tribe. Maybe they were spent as a fern or a maple tree that had been uprooted by a pilgram. These years are hard to remember. But in the late 70’s we were reborn on a island in greece to a nudist colony. And life as such has grown from there.

Recently we stood at the graves of Voltaire, and Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison, and saluted these men of freedom. Never have we thought too much about this last millenium chalking it up mostly to the unhindered expansion of capital markets and environmental degradation. But in front of these graves we came to know about these times, about the french revolt and the guillotine, and we felt good about humans for a while. And this other evening, in a meadow where there used to desert, looking at a lake and surrounded by thousands foot tall buildings, we watched something about the 60’s, the youth of the time banded together, and about music.

the best time is always now, but those times looked good too.

 

Sheikh Sultan bin Saqr bin Mohammed Al Qasimi dies

Sheikh Sultan bin Saqr bin Mohammed Al Qasimi died yesterday, according to a statement by the Government news agency WAM.

In the statement, the Emiri Court of Ras al Khaimah announced a seven-day mourning period in the emirate. Local government departments and institutions in the emirate will observe a three-day holiday starting from yesterday.

WAM said funeral prayers for Sheikh Sultan were offered at the Sheikh Zayed Mosque in RAK shortly after the Juma prayers. He was buried at the Al Qawasim Cemetery in Al Iraibi. Condolences were received at Sheikh Sultan’s home in the Dahisha area.

Dr Sheikh Sultan bin Mohammed, the Ruler of Sharjah, Sheikh Saud bin Rashid, the Ruler of Umm al Qaiwain, and Sheikh Humaid bin Rashid, the Ruler of Ajman, paid their respects.