Video 25min 55sec. "International Monetary Fund (IMF) downgrades US. After Raping and pillaging much of the world the IMF bankers come home to smash and grab what they can from America."

This time Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, report on IMF downgrades, zombie consumers and a financial circus. In the second half of the show, Max talks to Professor Steve Keen about the Greek debt crisis and Minsky's moment.

"The people of Greece need to stand up to financial terrorism, because Greece goes down, Ireland goes down, Portugal goes down, Spain goes down, and they're going to come to the US. The US is going down: by the same financial terrorists. So, please, people of Greece, don't let Papandreou and those nincompoops in your country steal all of your wealth."

"You can just have bandits at the IMF constantly holding people up." The IMF is completely bankrupt. That's way tey go into a country like Greece. They take Greece's assets. They use that as collateral from other corrupt bankers to take over Greece.

Sweden's government is picking a fight with the EU over plans to monitor and store all telecom and internet traffic, when every call, every text, even every email will be watched if the EU has its way.

The European Commission has moved to sue Sweden after the Nordic state failed to implement the EU's Data Retention Directive in a timely fashion.

The Directive was passed back in 2006 and requires all EU member states to implement some form of data retention legislation, with terms of six month to two years. National laws were to be in place by March of this year, but Sweden still has yet to introduce a bill of its own.

Internet providers and search engines would all need to retain user data and IP addresses so that law enforcement would have a window of time in which to access that information during investigations.

According to Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, the Swedish government does plan to introduce legislation in the next month or two, asking for a six-month retention period. Why hasn't it happened yet? Because the Swedish Justice Ministry has been busy. Also, it's not Justice Minister Beatrice Ask's "favorite project."

The legislation, whenever it appears, will put more pressure on various ISPs that offer anonymity to their users. Beginning April 1, 2009, ISPs in Sweden had to implement the Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED), which meant that they could be forced to turn over user account information in some legal cases.

ISPs like Sweden's Bahnhof responded to IPRED by simply deleting all their data on a regular basis—a perfectly legal move. But when the Data Retention Directive goes into effect, that option will be taken off the table.

Beatrice Ask also says that the process of introducing a bill has been slowed by all the consultation the government has been doing. Which makes sense, since data retention is a sticky wicket for Europeans, who have generally focused on getting ISPs and search engines to store less user data (and for less time).

When all the European countries meet their national Data Retention Directive obligations, the continent will have made it illegal to delete data too quickly, and illegal to store it for too long.

Text: ArsTechnica

Queen Elizabeth II, head of state of the United Kingdom and of 31 other states and territories, is the legal owner of about 6,600 million acres of land, one sixth of the earth’s non ocean surface.

She is the only person on earth who owns whole countries, and who owns countries that are not her own domestic territory. This land ownership is separate from her role as head of state and is different from other monarchies where no such claim is made – Norway, Belgium, Denmark etc.

The value of her land holding. £17,600,000,000,000 (approx).

This makes her the richest individual on earth. However, there is no way easily to value her real estate. There is no current market in the land of entire countries. At a rough estimate of $5,000 an acre, and based on the sale of Alaska to the USA by the Tsar, and of Louisiana to the USA by France, the Queen’s land holding is worth a notional $33,000,000,000,000 (Thirty three trillion dollars or about £17,600,000,000,000).

Her holding is based on the laws of the countries she owns and her land title is valid in all the countries she owns. Her main holdings are Canada, the 2nd largest country on earth, with 2,467 million acres, Australia, the 7th largest country on earth with 1,900 million acres, the Papua New Guinea with114 million acres, New Zealand with 66 million acres and the UK with 60 million acres.

She is the world’s largest landowner by a significant margin. The next largest landowner is the Russian state, with an overall ownership of 4,219 million acres, and a direct ownership comparable with the Queen’s land holding of 2,447 million acres. The 3rd largest landowner is the Chinese state, which claims all of Chinese land, about 2,365 million acres. The 4th largest landowner on earth is the Federal Government of the United States, which owns about one third of the land of the USA, 760 million acres. The fifth largest landowner on earth is the King of Saudi Arabia with 553 million acres.

Video - 1min 52sec. Tens of thousands of protesters crowded central London on Saturday to protest government cuts to public services, streaming in from around the country with banners, balloons and whistles.

Organisers of the march estimated that at least 100,000 people were joining in the demonstration, what the Trade Union Council called the largest civil society demonstration in years.

Police say some protesters have thrown paint bombs and light bulbs filled with ammonia at officers.

A group of black-clad demonstrators also threw paint bombs at shops and banks on the main shopping streets of Oxford Street and New Bond Street.

The group had broken away from the larger march organized by the TUC to protest against government cuts to public services.