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Sunday, September 30, 2012

" At this point our entire financial system is based on debt, and if the debt bubble does not continue to expand the entire thing will collapse. But no financial bubble grows forever. History has proven that to us over and over. At some point this bubble is going to burst."

The Federal Reserve Sends Thank You Letters To Congress For Letting Them Destroy Our Economy In Secret

Mike Snyder

The Federal Reserve continues to pump up this "bubble economy" by recklessly printing money and by setting interest rates artificially low, and the U.S. Congress continues to stand aside and allow them to systematically destroy our economy. The U.S. Congress could choose to end this madness at any time, but the truth is that Congress won't even pass a law that would allow the American people to see what is going on over at the Federal Reserve. Congress has voted down every single bill that would authorize a comprehensive audit of the Federal Reserve. So the folks over at the Fed will continue to be able to destroy our future in secret. In fact, back in July Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke actually sent five thank you letters to members of Congress that gave speeches on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives encouraging their fellow lawmakers to vote against the bill to audit the Fed. Since the U.S. Congress continues to refuse to do anything to hold the Federal Reserve accountable, the Fed will continue to print unprecedented amounts of money, it will continue to set interest rates insanely low and it will continue to pump up the greatest debt bubble in the history of the world. Unfortunately, all debt bubbles eventually burst, and when this one does it is going to be a financial nightmare unlike anything we have ever seen before.

It was Politico that first broke the story about the thank you letters that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke sent to five members of Congress back in July. Bernanke acknowledged in the letters that there was never any worry that the "Audit the Fed" bill would actually get through Congress and be signed into law, but he was still extremely grateful that a number of members of Congress got up and publicly denounced the bill....

In July, the Fed chairman sent letters of gratitude to five Democratic members of Congress after they delivered speeches on the House floor urging fellow lawmakers to reject the “Audit the Fed” bill authored by retiring Texas Republican Ron Paul, the central bank’s chief antagonist.

Their efforts failed to defeat the bill, but they were not in vain, at least in Bernanke’s eyes.

“While the outcome of the vote was not in doubt, your willingness to stand up for the independence of the Federal Reserve is greatly appreciated,” Bernanke wrote in the letters, which were obtained by POLITICO through a Freedom of Information Act request.

So who did Bernanke send those letters to?

According to Politico, the thank you letters were delivered to U.S. Representatives Barney Frank, Elijah Cummings, Melvin Watt, Carolyn Maloney and Steny Hoyer.

By refusing to take action against the Federal Reserve, the U.S. Congress is silently endorsing their incredibly foolish policies.

Sadly, most Americans don't even realize that the Federal Reserve has more control over our economy than anyone else does. Most Americans that are actually concerned about politics are busy arguing over whether Obama or Romney will be better for the economy when it is actually the Fed that controls the levers of economic power.

Just think about it.

The Federal Reserve played a major role in creating the housing bubble which severely damaged our financial system a few years ago.

As the chart below shows, after 9/11 the Federal Reserve dropped interest rates to historically low levels. This allowed potential home buyers to get into much larger mortgages, and the big banks (which the Fed supposedly "regulates") started making home loans to almost anyone with a pulse.

When interest rates started to go back up to normal levels in 2005, many home owners discovered that their adjustable rate mortgages started to become much more painful. By 2007, we started to see a massive wave of mortgage defaults. In 2008, the financial system crashed.

In response to the financial crisis of 2008, the Federal Reserve dropped interest rates to record low levels. The effective federal funds rate is essentially at zero at this point, and the Fed has promised to keep interest rates at ultra-low levels all of the way into 2015.

But didn't artificially low interest rates cause many of our problems in the first place? The central planners over at the Fed are convinced that this is the right course for our economy, but can we really live in a zero interest rate bubble indefinitely? Won't this eventually cause even greater problems?....



The Fed is also destroying our economy by recklessly printing money.

Once upon a time, the U.S. monetary base rose at a very steady pace. But since the financial crisis of 2008, Ben Bernanke has been flooding the financial system with money and this has caused an unprecedented explosion in our money supply.

It isn't too hard to see from this chart what the foolish "quantitative easing" policies of the Federal Reserve have done to our monetary base....



Fortunately a lot of the money from previous rounds of quantitative easing is being stashed by the big banks as "excess reserves" with the Federal Reserve, but when that money starts flowing into the "real economy" (and it will at some point), we are going to have a major problem on our hands.

But more than tripling our monetary base was not enough for Bernanke. He recently announced yet another round of quantitative easing which he says will last indefinitely.

Basically, Bernanke is taking a sledgehammer to the U.S. dollar. Our currency is being systematically destroyed, and the U.S. Congress is standing by and doing nothing.

For a lot more on why QE3 is going to be so incredibly destructive for our economy, please see the following five articles....

-"QE3: Helicopter Ben Bernanke Unleashes An All-Out Attack On The U.S. Dollar"

-"How QE3 Will Make The Wealthy Even Wealthier While Causing Living Standards To Fall For The Rest Of Us"

-"The Federal Reserve Is Systematically Destroying Social Security And The Retirement Plans Of Millions Of Americans"

-"QE4? The Big Wall Street Banks Are Already Complaining That QE3 Is Not Enough"

-"Quantitative Easing Did Not Work For The Weimar Republic Either"

The Federal Reserve seems to think that printing more money is always the solution to whatever economic problems we are having.

But of course the Fed has been debasing our currency from the very beginning. The entire Federal Reserve system is designed to create inflation.

From the time that the Federal Reserve was created back in 1913, the purchasing power of a U.S. dollar has declined from $1.00 to only about 4 pennies today.

And now Bernanke seems bound and determined to wipe out those last 4 pennies.

The Federal Reserve system was also designed to create a never ending spiral of government debt.

Sadly, most Americans simply have no idea where money comes from. Most Americans have no idea that money that the Federal Reserve zaps into existence out of thin air is loaned to the U.S. government at interest. Most Americans have no idea that the primary reason why we are 16 trillion dollars in debt is because this is what the system was designed to do to us.

Today, the U.S. national debt is more than 5000 times larger than it was when the Federal Reserve was originally created in 1913. This did not happen by accident....


Not that our politicians should be off the hook for this. They have been spending money as if there is no tomorrow. Most of them have shown no concern at all about the legacy of debt that they are passing on to future generations of Americans.

If our politicians had been more responsible, the national debt would still be there, but it would be at a much more manageable level.

If we ever want to totally get rid of our national debt, the Federal Reserve must be abolished.

There is no other way.

And government debt is not the only bubble that the Federal Reserve has pumped up.

The following is a chart that shows the growth of all forms of debt (government, business, consumer, etc.) in the United States. The total amount of debt in the United States has grown from less than $2 trillion to more than $55 trillion over the past 40 years....



How in the world could we have been so foolish?

How in the world did we allow the total amount of debt in our country to get more than 27 times larger over the past 40 years?

As you can see, there was a slight "hiccup" in the bubble as a result of the financial crisis of 2008, but now it has started growing again.

At this point our entire financial system is based on debt, and if the debt bubble does not continue to expand the entire thing will collapse.

But no financial bubble grows forever. History has proven that to us over and over.

At some point this bubble is going to burst.

When it does, we will either experience a deflationary collapse or a hyperinflationary collapse depending on how "the powers that be" respond to what is happening.

History has shown us that financial collapse is often accompanied by social upheaval. Many times it even leads to war.

So what will happen to America when our economic collapse happens?

That is a very good question.

How would you answer it?


Link:
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/the-federal-reserve-sends-thank-you-letters-to-congress-for-allowing-them-to-destroy-our-economy-in-secret

Poster of the day...


Virtual 911...

"But the Fed is determined to continue to do the only thing it knows how to do: expand the money supply, buy up additional securities, put newly created money into the hands of its member banks, and hope. Hope that someday, somehow, miraculously, consumers will start to spend again."

The Fed is Playing With Fire
Written by Bob Adelmann


Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s promise not only to expand the money supply by buying more mortgage-backed securities but to continue doing so until he sees “ongoing sustained improvement in the labor market” has sparked numerous warnings of unintended consequences as a result. The Federal Open Market Committee said on September 13:

If the outlook for the labor market does not improve substantially, the committee will continue its purchases of agency mortgage-backed securities, undertake additional asset purchases, and employ its other policy tools as appropriate until such improvement is achieved in a context of price stability.

One of the people who is most nervous about the Fed’s plan to continue to print until the recovery begins in earnest is Martin Feldstein, former chairman of President Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisors. Writing in The Financial Times newspaper, Feldstein called Bernanke’s idea a “dangerous” strategy which could lead to high inflation and asset bubbles while waiting for that recovery to begin.

A chart from the Federal Reserve showing just how much new paper money the Federal Reserve has already pumped into the economy in its attempt to jump-start it is unnerving. As recently as 1990, the Fed’s balance sheet was a monstrous $350 billion. Currently it is $2.6 trillion, more than a seven-fold increase. Even children know that when the supply of something increases, each piece is worth less.

At present, however, that new money is residing on the balance sheets of the Fed’s member banks rather than being spun out into the economy. For the moment, that is. Another chart from the Fed shows just how unwilling banks are to lend, and borrowers to borrow, the new money. Turnover of money in the economy before the Great Recession averaged 1.6 (meaning that one dollar in the economy was “turned over” or spent about one-and-a-half times every year). That ratio dropped to a low of 0.7 during the current recession and is still less than 1.0, enough to keep inflation fires under control, for the moment.

Unfortunately, the “trigger” that will ignite spending the new money is obscure. Harry Figgie, in his blockbuster book Bankruptcy 1995, said three things had to be in place before the average citizen finally figured out that it was better to spend his cash rather than hoard it:

1. The federal government can no longer collect enough tax revenue to service its debt.

2. The Federal Reserve begins to buy substantial amounts of the government’s debt.

3. Congress and the administration, while they talk a good game, avoid taking the bold actions needed to bring down the deficit.

One can see that it’s just a matter of time before all three of these conditions are met. No wonder Feldstein is nervous.

In addition, Feldstein is nervous about an “asset bubble” as a result of the continuing Fed actions. Looking around, the most apparent bubble is in the price of bonds, especially long or long-maturity 30-year bonds. As interest rates have dropped from the early 1980s to the present, bond values have jumped. Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business warned back in March that the end of the 30-year bull market in bond prices is over.

As their article acknowledged, "A basket of stocks would have returned a mere 19% from the start of 2000 through 2011, for example, while a basket of bonds would have returned about 113%...."

But now that interest rates have reached historic lows, the only direction from here is up. As Wharton points out, for every one percent rise in interest rates the holder of a 30-year bond will lose 10 percent of his value, and acknowledges that “bonds — and bond funds — are riskier than they have been in recent decades.”

Waiting for the economy to improve before turning off the printing presses is likely to take a very long time. The August numbers on the economy were disheartening for those waiting for such an improvement: U.S. durable goods production fell for the third month in a row, astonishing economists who had predicted much better numbers. GDP continues to slow, and companies such as Caterpillar, the world’s biggest construction and mining equipment manufacturer, cut its earnings outlook because of the continuing slowdown in the world economy.

And jobs? The 96,000 jobs added last month not only were significantly fewer than economists had predicted, they were far below the number necessary to absorb new entrants into the workforce, forcing many people to withdraw altogether from even looking for work. The unemployment rate has remained above eight percent for 43 months, the longest period since records began in 1948, and it would be over nine percent if the workforce itself hadn’t shrunk due to discouraged job seekers giving up.

But the Fed is determined to continue to do the only thing it knows how to do: expand the money supply, buy up additional securities, put newly created money into the hands of its member banks, and hope. Hope that someday, somehow, miraculously, consumers will start to spend again.

It’s a forlorn hope, and likely to be a long wait. In the meantime, the Fed continues to play with fire.


Link:
http://thenewamerican.com/economy/commentary/item/13025-the-fed-is-playing-with-fire

New York Rabbis Meet with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad...

Ron Paul: War with Iran has already been decided by the Financial Elite...

What is The Federal Reserve?

"Will we get World War III for Christmas? Possibly, if the US election is close as it approaches. If the election is too close to call, Netanyahu might throw the dice and rely on Obama following his lead. Iran will be attacked, and the consequences are unknowable."

How The Government’s Lies Become Truth

Paul Craig Roberts


In my last column, “A Culture of Delusion,” I wrote that “Americans live in a matrix of lies. Lies dominate every policy discussion, every political decision.” This column will use two top news stories, Iranian nukes and Julian Assange, to illustrate how lies become “truth.”

The western Presstitute media uses every lie to demonize the Iranian government. On September 28 in a fit of unmitigated ignorance, the UK rag, Mail Online, called the president of Iran a “dictator.” The Iranian presidency is an office filled by popular election, and the authority of the office is subordinate to the ayatollahs. Assange is demonized alternatively as a rapist and a spy.

The western media and the US Congress comprise the two largest whore houses in human history. One of their favorite lies is that the Iranian president, Ahmadinejad, wants to kill all the Jews. Watch this 6 minute, 42 second video of Ahmadinejad’s meeting with Jewish religious leaders. Don’t be put off by the title. Washington Blog is making a joke. http://www.globalresearch.ca/horrifying-graphic-video-of-iranian-leader-savagely-abusing-jews/

Last week the news was dominated by the non-existent but virtually real Iranian nuclear weapons program. The Israeli prime minister, Netanyahu, blatantly intervened in the US presidential election, demanding that Obama specify the “red line” for attacking Iran.

Netanyahu believes his maximum leverage over Obama, the president of the “world’s only superpower,” is just prior to the election. Israel cannot attack Iran on its own without the risk of Israel’s destruction. But Netanyahu reasons that if he attacks Iran the week before the US election, Obama will have to join in or lose the Jewish vote for not supporting Israel in states such as Florida, which has a large Jewish population and many electoral votes. If the election is close, Netanyahu, a person consumed by arrogance and hubris, might exercise his threat and attack Iran, despite the opposition of former chiefs of Israeli intelligence and military, the opposition party, and a majority of the Israeli people.

In other words, the outcome of the “superpower’s” presidential election might depend upon whether the sitting president of the “superpower” is sufficiently obedient to the crazed Israeli prime minister.

That the outcome of the US presidential election could depend upon the agenda of the prime minister of a tiny country that exists only because of US financial, military, and diplomatic support, especially the UN veto, should disturb those Americans who think that they are the “indispensable people.” How indispensable are you when you have to do what the Israeli prime minister wants?

The US media makes certain that this question never enters american minds. Americans have been told that if Iran doesn’t have nukes, it has a nuke weapons program. This is what the politicians of both parties, the media, and the Israel Lobby tell them. Americans are told this despite the facts that the CIA and the National Intelligence Estimate stick to the conclusion that Iran abandoned its flirtation with a nuclear weapon in 2003 and the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors on the ground in Iran report no evidence of a nuclear weapons program and no evidence of any diversion of enriched uranium to a weapons program.

Moreover, what could Iran do with a nuclear weapon, other than use it against an aggressor? Any offensive use would result in Iran’s destruction.

Why do Americans believe Iran has nukes or is making nukes when the CIA says they are not? The answer is that Netanyahu says so, and the elected members of the US government in the House, Senate, and White House are afraid to contradict the Israeli prime minister, as are the American print and TV media. Some “superpower” we are! The “indispensable people” have to grovel in the dirt before Netanyahu. Americans are not even aware of their shame.

Iran, unlike Israel, signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Signatories to the treaty have the right to nuclear energy. Nuclear energy requires a low level of enrichment, 5% or less. The minute Iran announced a nuclear energy program, the Israeli government and its prostitutes in Washington lied that Iran was building a bomb. For exercising its legal rights under the treaty, Iran has been painted as a rouge criminal state and demonized.

A nuclear weapon requires 95% enrichment. To get to 5% from scratch and then to 95% is a long drawn out process. I think I first started hearing Israeli government claims of an Iranian nuke back in he 1990s of last century.

When Iran announced that, in view of the sanctions imposed by the US, sanctions that affect medical supplies, Iran was going to enrich uranium to 20% in order to supply itself with medical isotopes, the Israeli allegations that this would lead to a bomb resulted in Iran saying that the Iranian government was content for France or some other country to supply their medical isotopes and would not pursue enrichment beyond energy requirements. The US and Russia were also mentioned as suppliers.

According to the NY Times on September 29, 2011, “the Iranian president told the Washington Post and later, in basically the same terms, the New York Times: ‘if you [the United States and Europe] give us uranium grade 20 percent now, we will stop production.’”http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/30/opinion/30iht-edvaez30.html?_r=0

On Israel’s orders Washington vetoed the Iranian concession. Solving the problem is not what the Israeli government wants. The problem has to be kept alive so that it can be used to foment an attack on Iran.

The Iranian nuke is one of those grand hoaxes, a lie designed to hide the real agenda.

What is the real agenda?

The real agenda hiding behind the hysterical concern about an Iranian nuke, is the rightwing Israeli government’s design on the water resources of southern Lebanon.

Twice the Israeli government sent the Israeli army into southern Lebanon to occupy and eventually annex the territory. And twice Hizbollah defeated and drove out the vaunted Israeli army.

The few thousand Hizbollah fighters were able to defeat the Israeli army, which is equipped and supplied by US taxpayers’ dollars while Americans are foreclosed out of their homes and left unemployed as Washington applauds the offshoring of their jobs, because Syria and Iran provide Hizbollah with financial support and weapons that destroy Israeli tanks.

Syria, of course, is currently resisting its destruction by Israel and its american puppet state. The overthrow of Syria hasn’t gone well, because the Russians and Chinese didn’t go along with it, like they stupidly did in Libya. But the far rightwing Israeli government has concluded that with american prestige involved in the overthrow of the Assad government in Syria, the deed will be done.

That leaves Iran. The Israeli government knows that it cannot be forthright and say that it wants Americans to go to war with Iran so that Israel can steal southern Lebanon. But if fear over nonexistent nukes can muster the Western populations to support an attack on Iran, Iran can be eliminated as Hizbollah’s supplier, and Israel can steal the water from Lebanon.

There is no discussion whatsoever of the real agenda anywhere in the US print and TV media. I doubt there is any discussion anywhere in Europe, which is a collection of american puppet states.

Will we get World War III for Christmas? Possibly, if the US election is close as it approaches. If the election is too close to call, Netanyahu might throw the dice and rely on Obama following his lead. Iran will be attacked, and the consequences are unknowable.

Let’s turn to Julian Assange and Wikileaks. Like Iran, Assange has been demonized, not on the basis of facts but on the basis of lies.

Washington, which poses as a purveyor of human rights, has been mistreating if not torturing Bradley Manning since May 2010 without bringing him to trial in an effort to make Manning say that he and Assange constitute a spy team working against the US.

Assange is a celebrity, because Wikileaks publishes the news leaked to the organization that the Presstitute media suppresses. While in Sweden, Assange was picked up by two celebrity-hungry women who took him home to their beds. The women later bragged of their conquests on social media, but apparently when they found out that they were rivals, they turned on the “two-timer” Assange and made charges. One claimed that he had not used a condom as per her request, and the other claimed that she had offered one helping but he had taken two.

Whatever the accusations, the Swedish prosecutorial office investigated and dismissed the case.

Despite this known fact, the Western Presstitute media reports that Assange is a fugitive evading rape charges by hiding in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London. Even RT, an alternative media voice, has fallen for this disinformation.

After Assange was cleared in Sweden, a female prosecutor has tried to reopen the case. There is no evidence for her to bring charges, so she demand


Link:
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Tom Woods Talks Agorism, Economics, and U.S. History...

New Yorker editor now a crazy conspiracist???

New Yorker magazine editor says Netanyahu is 'arrogant and dangerous'

David Remnick accuses the Prime Minister of endangering Israel and making himself a factor in the U.S. elections.

By Haaretz


New Yorker magazine editor and Pulitzer-Prize winning author David Remnick accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday of endangering Israel, interfering in U.S. elections and aligning with Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in a "neocon strategy" against U.S. President Obama.

In a biting blog post in the magazine on Wednesday, Remnick accused Netanyahu of doing more “than any other political figure to embolden and elevate the reactionary forces in Israel, to eliminate the dwindling possibility of a just settlement with the Palestinians, and to isolate his country on the world diplomatic stage.”

Remnick highlighted the Prime Minister’s obstinacy and “innate distrust” of myriad Israeli military and intelligence experts who oppose a unilateral strike on Iran, as well as of President Obama, whom the PM attacked earlier this week for failing to present Iran with so-called red lines. This, despite the Obama's committment to preventing a nuclear Iran and the fact that defense cooperation between the two countries has never been stronger...


Read more:
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/new-yorker-magazine-editor-says-netanyahu-is-arrogant-and-dangerous-1.464779

"On his part, Hedges said that emails hacked by Anonymous and released by Wikileaks show that the US government has attempted to “tie a legitimate dissident group to terrorism and strip them of their right of dissent,” to which Bolen follows up with an explanation that supports the ramped up attempts from the White House to persecute whistleblowers and leakers under President Obama..."

Obama refuses to answer whether Americans are currently being held without trial or charge while insisting the NDAA be kept on the books to have the right to do so.

RT

The plaintiffs that are suing US President Barack Obama over his insistence on keeping the National Defense Authorization Act on the books said Thursday that they fear Americans are already being held indefinitely and without trial under the NDAA.

US President Barack Obama refrained from even once commenting on his efforts to keep his power to indefinitely detain Americans without charge when he appeared on Reddit.com recently and urged users to “Ask Me Anything.” His opponents in the matter aren’t shying away from speaking up online, though.

The plaintiffs in the case to ban the White House from imprisoning Americans indefinitely without trial or due justice took to Reddit on Thursday to answer questions involving the National Defense Authorization Act of Fiscal Year 2012, or the NDAA, and blamed corrupt media and a broken governmental establishment for letting the Obama administration maintain its to book Americans in military prisons without charge.

On December 31, 2011, President Obama authorized the NDAA, and with it he approved a controversial provision that permits the government to indefinitely detain US citizens without trial for mere allegations of ties to suspected terrorists. Journalists and activists filed a lawsuit against the president earlier this year over the provision, Section 1021, which US Federal Judge Katherine Forrest in turn agreed was unconstitutional. Last month Judge Forrest decided that an earlier, temporary injunction on the clause should be made permanent, but the Obama Justice Department pleaded for an emergency stay only hours later. A lone federal appeals judge has since heard that plea and has momentarily blocked Judge Forrest’s injunction. Now pending the results of an appeals panel’s formal investigation, the NDAA’s indefinite detention provision remains on the books.

On Thursday, the plaintiffs in the case — journalist Chris Hedges, activist Tangerine Bolen, Pentagon Papers leaker Dan Ellsberg, their attorneys and others — told users of Reddit to ask them anything.

“The Obama DOJ has vigorously opposed these efforts, and immediately appealed her ruling and requested an emergency stay on the injunction – claiming the US would incur ‘irreparable harm’ if the president lost the power to use Section 1021 – and detain anyone, anywhere until the end of hostilities on a whim. This case will probably make its way to the Supreme Court,” the plaintiffs acknowledged in their introduction.

From there, President Obama’s opponents in federal court combed through hundreds of posts to answer questions regarding the NDAA over the course of several hours. And although the plaintiffs have not exactly been silent with the status of their fight since suing the White House earlier this year, the insight they offered on Reddit provided a fresh update on the case against the NDAA amid some of the government’s most unusual legal maneuvers yet.

Offering his take on the case, Hedges said that he even believes the NDAA’s indefinite detention clause is already being used to imprison Americans, “because they filed an emergency appeal.”

“If the Obama administration simply appealed it, as we expected, it would have raised this red flag,” Hedges added. “But since they were so aggressive it means that once Judge Forrest declared the law invalid, if they were using it, as we expect, they could be held in contempt of court. This was quite disturbing, for it means, I suspect, that US citizens, probably dual nationals, are being held in military detention facilities almost certainly overseas and maybe at home.”

“The signing statement is the most ridiculous part to this for me. He writes this statement saying he’s not happy about the power existing, but then his administration fights so hard to keep that specific power in place,” Reddit user devilrobotjesus responded.

“If Obama didn’t want it to happen, he would not have signed it, especially after stating that he would veto it,” co-counsel Carl Mayer explained. Mayer has represented the plaintiffs in the case of Hedges v. Obama and said that he plans on continuing his pursuit to take indefinite detention off the books.

“We will do whatever it takes,” Mayers added. “We are prepared for a Supreme Court battle.”

Activist and journalist Tangerine Bolen is also insistent on prevailing over the Obama administration, but says “The biggest obstruction to our winning this case . . . is our broken systems.” Bolen blames a lack of media coverage, insufficient public awareness “and the government behaving very badly, even in court, on the record,” for the difficulties the plaintiffs have had to endure, adding that the Obama administration’s constant missteps have been noticed by no one except “seven plaintiffs, four attorneys, one federal judge and the activists who have been following this case.”

“Amazing,” she added.

Journalist Chris Hedges extrapolated on Bolen’s opinion, singling out “a corporate-owned system of information” for not informing Americans that they can be imprisoned without trial at this very moment.

“MSNBC, which is a propaganda arm of the Democratic establishment, just as Fox is a propaganda arm of the Republican establishment, is not going to raise this as Obama is as guilty as Romney. If we had a healthy press this would have gotten more coverage, although the print media, and in particular my old paper the NY Times, finally did good coverage,” Hedges wrote.

Daniel Ellsberg, the former Defense Department employee who achieved notoriety a generation earlier by leaking what became known as the Pentagon Papers, agreed that the system is severely in fault in this instance.

“Virtually every public institution has failed us gravely. Not only the executive, but the courts, congress, most of the media and most of the churches,” Ellsberg wrote on Reddit. “Radical reform is needed, even to the point of non-violent revolution. “

Elsewhere, the panel touched on why they believe the Obama administration is so adamantly fighting to keep the NDAA legal.

“It is quite possible that the NDAA is . . . a way to get Julian Assange and WikiLeaks,” Bolen claimed. “While the USG has tried to paint us as irrational, delusional and ridiculous, you see the slippery slope here.”

On his part, Hedges said that emails hacked by Anonymous and released by Wikileaks show that the US government has attempted to “tie a legitimate dissident group to terrorism and strip them of their right of dissent,” to which Bolen follows up with an explanation that supports the ramped up attempts from the White House to persecute whistleblowers and leakers under President Obama

“Yes, of course, if [Assange] is an enemy of the state, then yes, [The New York Times] could be considered to have communicated with the enemy. And perhaps the NDAA is a way to finally nail him,” Bolen said.

A three-judge appeals panel is expected to soon weigh in on the stay placed on Judge Forrest’s injunction, in the meantime keeping Section 1021 and the rest of the NDAA applicable to every American.


Link:
http://rt.com/

We seem to have an extra $450 million for Egypt. Just think how many cell phones this could buy for her and her friends...

U.S. Move to Give Egypt $450 Million in Aid Meets Resistance

By STEVEN LEE MYERS

The Obama administration notified Congress on Friday that it would provide Egypt’s new government an emergency cash infusion of $450 million, but the aid immediately encountered resistance from a prominent lawmaker wary of foreign aid and Egypt’s new course under the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood...

Read more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/29/world/middleeast/white-house-move-to-give-egypt-450-million-in-aid-meets-resistance.html?_r=0

Poster of the day...


US giving millions to group that killed our ambassador...

Surreal: Clinton Pledges $45 Million in Aid to Al Qaeda in Syria

Tony Cartalucci


US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that the US would be providing an additional $45 million in “non-lethal aid” to the “opposition” in Syria, reported the Associated Press. The Western press chose their words carefully, ensuring that the term “civilian opposition” was repeatedly used to describe the armed terrorist forces attempting to violently overthrow the Syrian government.

In reality, the “opposition” in Syria constitutes foreign terrorist legions flowing across Syria’s borders, and in particular, staging and crossing over from NATO-member Turkey. In fact, it was recently admitted by the terrorist legions themselves that their headquarters has been located within Turkish territory for the duration of the conflict. In a recent France 24 article titled, “Free Syrian Army move HQ from Turkey to Syria,” armed militants claimed they had only just recently “moved from Turkey to within Syria.”

Clinton’s Aid is Going to Al Qaeda, Not a “Civilian Opposition.”

While the Western media attempts to portray heavily armed foreign terrorists as “Syria’s civilian opposition,” it has been revealed that entire brigades are led by Libyan terrorists drawn from the ranks of the US State Department (#29), UK Home Office (page 5, .pdf), and UN-listed terror organization, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG).

The presence of LIFG in Syria was first announced by the Western press in November of 2011 when the Telegraph in their article, “Leading Libyan Islamist met Free Syrian Army opposition group,” would report:

Abdulhakim Belhadj, head of the Tripoli Military Council and the former leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, “met with Free Syrian Army leaders in Istanbul and on the border with Turkey,” said a military official working with Mr Belhadj. “Mustafa Abdul Jalil (the interim Libyan president) sent him there.”

Another Telegraph article, “Libya’s new rulers offer weapons to Syrian rebels,” would admit

Syrian rebels held secret talks with Libya’s new authorities on Friday, aiming to secure weapons and money for their insurgency against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, The Daily Telegraph has learned.
At the meeting, which was held in Istanbul and included Turkish officials, the Syrians requested “assistance” from the Libyan representatives and were offered arms, and potentially volunteers.

“There is something being planned to send weapons and even Libyan fighters to Syria,” said a Libyan source, speaking on condition of anonymity. “There is a military intervention on the way. Within a few weeks you will see.”

Later that month, some 600 Libyan terrorists would be reported to have entered Syria to begin combat operations and more recently, CNN, whose Ivan Watson accompanied terrorists over the Turkish-Syrian border and into Aleppo, revealed that indeed foreign fighters were amongst the militants, particularly Libyans. It was admitted that:

Meanwhile, residents of the village where the Syrian Falcons were headquartered said there were fighters of several North African nationalities also serving with the brigade’s ranks.

A volunteer Libyan fighter has also told CNN he intends to travel from Turkey to Syria within days to add a “platoon” of Libyan fighters to armed movement.

CNN also added:

On Wednesday, CNN’s crew met a Libyan fighter who had crossed into Syria from Turkey with four other Libyans. The fighter wore full camouflage and was carrying a Kalashnikov rifle. He said more Libyan fighters were on the way.

The foreign fighters, some of them are clearly drawn because they see this as … a jihad. So this is a magnet for jihadists who see this as a fight for Sunni Muslims.

CNN’s reports provide bookends to 2011′s admissions that large numbers of Libyan terrorists flush with NATO cash and weapons had headed to Syria, with notorious terrorist LIFG commandersmaking the arrangements.

LIFG officially merged with Al Qaeda in 2007, but has fought along Al Qaeda since its inception by the US and Saudis in the mountains of Afghanistan in the 1980′s. This includes fighting alongside Al Qaeda most recently in Afghanistan and Iraq against US troops while sowing sectarian violence, as covered by the US Army’s West Point Combating Terrorism Center in a 2007 report.

The report titled, “Al-Qa’ida’s Foreign Fighters in Iraq” stated specifically:

The apparent surge in Libyan recruits traveling to Iraq may be linked the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group’s (LIFG) increasingly cooperative relationship with al‐Qa’ida, which culminated in the LIFG officially joining al‐Qa’ida on November 3, 2007.

The vast majority (84.2%) of Libyans that recorded their route to Iraq arrived via the same pathway running through Egypt and then by air to Syria. This recruiting and logistics network is likely tied to LIFG, which has long ties (not all positive) with Egyptian and Algerian Islamist groups.

The announcement that LIFG had officially sworn allegiance to al‐Qa’ida was long‐expected by observers of the group. Both the ideologue Abu Yahya al‐Libi and the military leader Abu Layth al‐Libi have long histories with the LIFG, and are increasingly prominent figures along the Afghanistan‐Pakistan border and in al‐Qa’ida’s propaganda. Abu Layth is now an operational commander in Afghanistan; and in 2007, Abu Yahya is second only to Ayman al‐Zawahiri as the most visible figure in al‐Qa’ida’s propaganda. The increasing prominence of LIFG figures in al‐Qa’ida’s high command may be a function of the group’s logistics capacity, including its now demonstrated ability to move people effectively around the Middle East, including to Iraq. (begins on page 9, .pdf)

It would now appear that LIFG’s logistics capacity aimed at Iraq which was previously routed through Syria and Egypt in cooperation with sectarian extremists, most notably the Muslim Brotherhood based in both nations, is now being directed exclusively at Syria. LIFG is doing this with Qatari, Saudi, US, French, British, and NATO support (predominantly Turkey) after receiving similar support in overthrowing the Libyan government in 2011.

US Support of Al Qaeda Announced on Heels of US Ambassador’s Death.

Ironically, the recent infusion of cash and support for Al Qaeda terrorists by the US comes on the heels of assaults staged by the group against US diplomatic missions across the region. One in particular, emanating within LIFG’s own terror emirate in Benghazi, Libya, would claim the life of US Ambassador Christopher Stevens. While Stevens’ death was most likely accidental, (he succumbed to smoke inhalation, and was not killed directly by militants), it was most certainly the LIFG militias who dominate Benghazi that staged the attacks.

The purpose of the attacks was to reestablish an adversarial narrative between the US and regional sectarian extremists after a surge in public awareness that the two have been working in tandem against the enemies of the West for years. The US itself would implicate “Al Qaeda” as being behind the regional attacks for this very purpose, before continuing their support of the terror organization in its efforts to overrun Syria.

West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center 2007 report specifically mentions the city of Benghazi and nearby Darnah as the LIFG terror epicenter, stating specifically:

Both Darnah and Benghazi have long been associated with Islamic militancy in Libya, in particular for an uprising by Islamist organizations in the mid‐1990s. The Libyan government blamed the uprising on “infiltrators from the Sudan and Egypt” and one group—the Libyan Fighting Group (jamaʹah al‐libiyah al‐ muqatilah)—claimed to have Afghan veterans in its ranks. The Libyan uprisings became extraordinarily violent. Qadhafi used helicopter gunships in Benghazi, cut telephone, electricity, and water supplies to Darnah and famously claimed that the militants “deserve to die without trial, like dogs.”

Abu Layth al‐Libi, LIFG’s Emir, reinforced Benghazi and Darnah’s importance to Libyan jihadis in his announcement that LIFG had joined al‐Qa’ida, saying:

“It is with the grace of God that we were hoisting the banner of jihad against this apostate regime under the leadership of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which sacrificed the elite of its sons and commanders in combating this regime whose blood was spilled on the mountains of Darnah, the streets of Benghazi, the outskirts of Tripoli, the desert of Sabha, and the sands of the beach.” (begins on page 12, .pdf)

It is quite clear then, that the NATO-backed 2011 “revolution” in Libya was merely the continuation of Al Qaeda’s campaign against Qaddafi, this time assisted by US, French, and British jets and special forces, with an infusion of Western, Qatari and Saudi cash, “non-lethal” aid, and weapons. The West, with a sound understanding of LIFG long predating their support for Al Qaeda in Libya in 2011, knowingly aided and abetted terrorists with Western blood on their hands who were long-listed on various Western foreign terrorist organization lists.

Deceitfully, European foreign ministries and the US State Department had portrayed these terrorists as “Libya’s civilian opposition,” in order to justify military intervention and regime change just as they are portraying these very same terrorists as “Syria’s civilian opposition.”

Hillary Clinton is handing millions in cash to known Al Qaeda terrorists, on the heels of these terrorists claiming one of her own ambassadors in the middle of LIFG’s terror emirate – this while the West berates Iran for supporting the government of Syria as it attempts to defend itself against what is clearly a foreign invasion, not a popular uprising.

While it may seem an act of unhinged insanity – it is not. It only seems “insane” if one believes the narratives spun by Western politicians who are attempting to sell their agenda from various, not always mutually conducive angles. If one however understands that the corporate-financier interests of Wall Street and London are pursuing global hegemony at any cost, the use of Al Qaeda terrorists who have just led mobs attacking Western consulates across the region that claimed the life of one of America’s own ambassadors makes perfect sense.


Link:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/surreal-clinton-pledges-45-million-in-aid-to-al-qaeda-in-syria.html

Friday, September 28, 2012

"While their entire economic future has been sold down the river, these people have allowed their votes to be bought by a free phone."

Forget Your Free Phone, Obama Has Screwed The Poor

“Everybody got Obama phone!”

Paul Joseph Watson


A video clip posted by the Drudge Report that has since gone viral which shows an Obama supporter semi-incoherently blathering about how she is voting for Obama because the government gave her a free phone tragically underscores how the state exploits dependency by offering poor people trinkets while simultaneously stealing their entire economic future.



Once you have recovered from the hilarity of the video clip, the awful truth behind it begins to sink in. While this Obama voter screeches about her government-provided cellphone, Obama has been busy screwing the poor at every turn.

To clarify, the “Obama Cell Phone” program has provided 269,000 poor Americans with free phones and monthly service at a cost of over $1.6 billion dollars to the taxpayer, a figure that keeps rising every year.

The video harks back to a 2008 clip during which an Obama voter gushed about how Obama’s election victory meant she no longer had to worry about paying her mortgage or filling her car with gas.




The delusion that these people are living under knows no bounds.

Under Obama that the poor have got poorer. Poverty levels have increased to levels approaching the 1960′s.

Obama didn’t pay for your mortgage, he bailed out the mortgage companies, the predatory lenders, the big banks, and then the Federal Reserve paid them not to lend.

Obama didn’t pay for your gas, but he did pay for General Motors to ship your jobs to China.

Obama gave the green light for Ben Bernanke to engage in QE Infinity – driving up gasoline prices and driving down the value of the dollar. Under Obama, the cost of living has soared.

The only people benefiting from Obama and the Fed’s economic holocaust are the super rich who are invested in the casino stock market.

The gap between rich and poor has never been greater than under Obama. The fraction of growth for the top one percent grew at 95 per cent under Obama compared to 65 per cent under Bush.

Obama has screwed the poor.

But forget all that – “Everybody got Obama phone!”

While their entire economic future has been sold down the river, these people have allowed their votes to be bought by a free phone.


Link:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/forget-your-free-phone-obama-has-screwed-the-poor.html

Yes, people are ignorant of the threat to their liberties......

Almost Half Of All Americans Support Domestic Surveillance Drones

Only one third fear for privacies

Steve Watson


Close to half of Americans say they are in favour of police departments deploying surveillance drones domestically.

According to a survey conducted by The Associated Press and The National Constitution Center, 44 percent support the idea of police using unmanned aerial vehicles to track suspects and carry out investigations.

Only 36 percent said that they “strongly oppose” or “somewhat oppose” police use of drones, according to the survey.

The poll also found that only one third of Americans say they are significantly concerned about their privacy being eroded by the adoption of drones by police forces throughout the country.

Thrity-five percent of respondents said they were “extremely concerned” or “very concerned” when asked if they believed that police departments’ use of drones for surveillance would impact their privacy.

Almost exactly the same number, 36 percent, noted that they were “not too concerned” or “not concerned at all”, while twenty-four percent were neutral on the issue, saying they were only “somewhat concerned” about a potential loss of privacy.

David Eisner, president and CEO of the constitution center in Philadelphia, told the AP that he was somewhat baffled by the response to the poll:

“I had assumed that the idea that American police would be using the same technology that our military is using in Afghanistan would garner an almost hysterical response,” Eisner said. Support for drone use “shows that people are feeling less physically secure than they’d like to because they are willing to accept fairly extreme police action to improve that security.”

The poll comes in the wake of a stark warning concerning the deployment of drones from The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), the biggest union of law officials in the country. The IACP has issued guidelines calling for a reassessment of the potential widespread use of aerial drones for domestic policing.

The Association’s national advisory for the use of unmanned aircraft notes that more and more departments across the nation are considering turning to drones to conduct search and rescue operations, traffic accident scene mapping and surveillance activities.

Don Roby, chairman of the IACP’s aviation committee noted in comments to USA Today, that in the face of such plans, the advisory represent an “urgent” call to limit the use of drones.

“It’s very important that people understand that we won’t be up there with armed predator drones firing away,” said Roby, who also is a Baltimore Police Department captain. “Everytime you hear someone talking about the use of these vehicles, it’s always in the context of a military operation. That’s not what we’re talking about.”

“Equipping the aircraft with weapons of any type is strongly discouraged.” notes the advisory.

In another recent development, a prominent private investigator operating out of New York and Texas has noted that anyone engaging in any large scale protest, is now subjected to scanning by drones that skim their personal information from their cell phones.

In a talk entited “Privacy is dead”, pi Steven Rambam told an audience of hackers and privacy activists at HOPE 9 in New York recently that the authorities have the capability to extract real-time data on individuals by “surveying” their electronic devices, and do so as a matter of routine.

The federal government is in the process of rolling out new rules on the use of the unmanned drones, with the FAA announcing procedures will “streamline” the process through which government agencies, including local law enforcement, receive licenses to operate the aircraft.

Critics have warned that the FAA has not acted to establish any safeguards whatsoever, and that congress is not holding the agency to account.

FAA documents recently obtained and released by the Electronic Frontier Foundation have confirmed that the roll out of domestic unmanned drones will, for the most part, be focused solely on the mass surveillance of the American people. In a report, EPIC recently noted:

With some exceptions, drone flights in the U.S. have been all about developing and testing surveillance technology. The North Little Rock Police Department, for instance, wrote that their SR30 helicopter-type drone “can carry day zoom cameras, infrared cameras, or both simultaneously.”

Not to be outdone, the Seattle Police Department’s drone comes with four separate cameras, offering thermal infrared video, low light “dusk-dawn” video, and a 1080p HD video camera attachment.

The Miami-Dade Police Department and Texas Department of Public Safety have employed drones capable of both daytime and nighttime video cameras, and according to the Texas Department of Public Safety’s Certificate of Authorization (COA) paperwork, their drone was to be employed in support of “critical law enforcement operations.”

However, the FAA didn’t just rubber stamp all drone requests. For example, the Ogden Police Departmentwanted to use its “nocturnal surveillance airship [aka blimp] . . . for law enforcement surveillance of high crime areas of Ogden City.” The FAA disapproved the request, finding Odgen’s proposed use “presents an unacceptable high risk to the National Airspace System (NAS).”

Furthermore, thousands of pages of FAA experimental drone flight records that were obtained by the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) detail just how complicated and risky it would be to operate thousands of unmanned arial vehicles safely without spending billions of dollars.

Another report released recently, by the Congressional Research Service found that ”the prospect of drone use inside the United States raises far-reaching issues concerning the extent of government surveillance authority, the value of privacy in the digital age, and the role of Congress in reconciling these issues.”

“Police officers who were once relegated to naked eye observations may soon have, or in some cases already possess, the capability to see through walls or track an individual’s movements from the sky,” the report notes. “One might question, then: What is the proper balance between the necessity of the government to keep people safe and the privacy needs of individuals?”

The “ability to closely monitor an individual’s movements with pinpoint accuracy may raise more significant constitutional concerns than some other types of surveillance technology,” CRS says.

“Unless a meaningful distinction can be made between drone surveillance and more traditional forms of government tracking,” the report notes, “existing jurisprudence suggests that a reviewing court would likely uphold drone surveillance conducted with no individualized suspicion when conducted for purposes other than strict law enforcement.”

Following intense lobbying, almost exclusively by defense contractors, Congress recently passed legislation paving the way for what the FAA predicts will be somewhere in the region of 30,000 drones in operation in US skies by 2020.


Link:

The Fiscal Cliff...

It'a all part of the plan, folks...

UN Pushes Global Tax

George Russell


A 1 percent tax on billionaires around the world. A tax on all currency trading in the U.S. dollar, the euro, the Japanese yen and the British pound sterling. Another “tiny” tax on all financial transactions, including stock and bond trading, and trading in financial derivatives. New taxes on carbon emissions and on airline tickets. A royalty on all undersea mineral resources extracted more than 100 miles offshore of any nation’s territory.

The United Nations is at it again: finding new and “innovative” ways to create global taxes that would transfer hundreds of billions, and even trillions, of dollars from the rich nations of the world — especially the U.S. — to poorer ones, in line with U.N.-directed economic, social and environmental development.

These latest global tax proposals have received various forms of endorsement at U.N. meetings over the spring and summer, and will be entered into the record during the 67th U.N. General Assembly session, which began this week. The agenda for the entire session, lasting through December, is scheduled to be finalized on Friday.

How to convince developed countries wracked by economic recession and spiraling levels of government debt – especially the U.S. — is another issue, which the world organization may well end up trying to finesse....


Read more:
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/09/27/as-un-opens-its-general-assembly-session-it-is-already-thinking-up-new-global/

Even Jonathan Turley thinks a false-flag attack might be in the works...

False Flag: Leading Analyst At Pro-Israeli Think Tank Publicly Discusses How U.S. Can Be Forced Into War With Iran

Jonathan Turley


Many critics have argued that there is a concerted effort to push the United States into a war with Iran by supporters of Israel. Patrick Clawson, director of research for the highly influential pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) think tank, seemed intent to prove those rumors true this week in comments as a luncheon on “How to Build US-Israeli Coordination on Preventing an Iranian Nuclear Breakout.” Clawson casually discusses how to create a false flag operation to push the U.S. into war to overcome any reluctance by the public. We have been discussing how many leaders like Senator Joe Lieberman had begun to use the same rhetoric that led to the last two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and how the suggest timing of an attack has been tied to the presidential election.

In his remarks, Clawson helpfully lists a series of historical events used to push the country into war like the Gulf of Tonkin incident that gave us the Vietnam War. Clawson expressed his frustration in acknowledging that it is “[v]ery hard for me to see how the United States President can get us to war with Iran.” However, there is hope. Clawson explains that the “traditional way” to get the country into a war is through false flags or manufactured incidents where Americans are killed. Thus, he observes, “we are in the game of using covert means against the Iranians, we could get nastier about it. So, if in fact the Iranians aren’t going to compromise, it would be best if somebody else started the war.”

The fact that one of the leading analysis for the WINEP would feel comfortable in making such comments is itself quite chilling. It indicates that such discussions have become sufficiently regular that it has creeped into public discussion. It is a measure of the secret pressure building to push this country into a third major war despite our crippling economic conditions and losses in military personnel. The assumption in Washington is that neither Romney nor Obama could oppose such a war. Even if Obama does not publicly support Israel, the assumption is that political allies of Israel in Washington can guarantee that we would offer extensive military loans and intelligence. Even if there is a delay in such military loans and support, the assumption is that Israel can go to war with the understanding that the United States will cover a significant portion of the costs. Moreover, in his remarkably candid remarks, Clawson shows how the U.S. can easily be forced into direct combat by pushing Iran to simply kill some Americans or sink a few of our ships. Then members would be clamoring for revenge. Notably, the Israelis have been ratcheting up the war rhetoric in pushing Iran, which predictably has now reserved the right to engage in a preemptive strike not just against Israeli but U.S. interests. We would then, again, find ourselves in a war without any public debate or collective decision.

While Clawson adds a passing caveat that he is not advocating such an approach, his remarks are clearly designed to show how the group can get the United States into a war for Israel if only we can get Iran to kill some of our citizens or soldiers. Those people are of course expendable props in Clawson’s realpolitik.

By the way, Clawson has been enlisted to give his insightful analysis at the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. He is also a member of the National Defense University’s Institute for National Strategic Studies. The World Bank connection is particularly interesting given the history with Paul Wolfowitz who pushed the U.S. into two disastrous wars in the Bush Administration and was rewarded with being made the head of the World Bank.

It is the callous disconnect that is most chilling in these remarks. Thousands of U.S. soldiers have died or have been crippled for life in these wars that have left the country near bankruptcy (and increasingly hostile “allies” in Afghanistan and Iraq). Those casualties and costs, however, appear immaterial in the discussion of supporting Israel in a war against Iran.




Link:
http://jonathanturley.org/2012/09/27/false-flag-leading-analyst-at-pro-israeli-think-tank-publicly-discusses-how-u-s-can-be-forced-into-war-with-iran/

" Economies tend to flourish in a stable, predictable environment. When you start recklessly printing money, it may help your economic numbers in the short-term, but it disrupts the stability of the system."

14 Signs That The World Economy Is Getting Weaker

Michael Snyder


The United States is not the only one with massive economic problems right now. The truth is that just about wherever you look around the globe things are getting even worse. China is experiencing a substantial economic slowdown, and Japan has resorted to yet another round of money printing in an effort to keep the Japanese economy moving. Unemployment in Europe continues to get even worse, and the riots this week in Spain and in Greece have been absolutely frightening at times. In the United States there are a whole host of signs that another recession is approaching, and the number of American CEOs that say that they plan to eliminate jobs in the coming months is rapidly rising. The world economy is more interconnected today than ever before, and that means that we are all in this together. Just remember what happened back in 2008 and 2009. The economic pain that started on Wall Street was felt in every corner of the planet. So anyone that believes that the United States (or any other major nation for that matter) is going to escape the next wave of the economic crisis is simply not being realistic. Why do you think central banks all over the world are in “panic mode” right now? They are firing all of their ammunition and printing money like there is no tomorrow in an attempt to keep the system together. Unfortunately, it is not going to work.

If the powers that be had an “easy button” that would quickly fix everything, they would have pressed it by now. But despite all of their efforts things continue to unravel. If you want to get an idea of where we are headed, just look at what is already happening in Europe. Unemployment has risen above 24 percent in Greece and above 25 percent in Spain.

Those two nations are on the “bleeding edge” of the next wave of economic problems. Unemployment is rising almost everywhere else in Europe as well, and things are eventually going to get really bad in Asia and in North America too.

So hold on to your seat belts – it is going to be a bumpy ride.

The following are 14 signs from around the globe that the world economy is getting weaker….

#1 Things in China do not look good right now. The Shanghai Composite index fell to its lowest point in over 3 years earlier this week. Will the S&P 500 soon follow suit?

#2 The Bank of Japan has resorted to yet another round of money printing in a desperate attempt to try to bolster the faltering Japanese economy….

In Asia, the Bank of Japan has long been manufacturing money out of thin air. It has just announced an eighth round of money printing to prop up the ailing Japanese economy. The Bank of Japan is to purchase 10 trillion yen of bonds to add further liquidity into the financial system. Now it has 80 trillion yen of bonds in its portfolio, equivalent to 20 per cent of Japan’s gross domestic product.

#3 In Spain, violent demonstrations over the state of the Spanish economy just outside the national Parliament building in Madrid on Tuesday evening made headlines all over the globe. You can view video of police brutally beating young Spanish protesters during those demonstrations right here.

#4 As unemployment hovers around the 25 percent mark, foraging through garbage bins for food has become so rampant in Spain that one city has actually started putting locks on supermarket garbage bins “as a public health precaution“.

#5 Despite all of the money printing that the ECB has been doing, the yield on 10 year Spanish bonds has risen back up to about 6 percent again.

#6 The economic protests in Greece are getting completely and totally out of control. Just check out this descriptionof the “Day of Rage” that took place in Greece earlier this week….

Police fired stun grenades and tear gas at protesters yesterday as tens of thousands poured into the streets of Athens as part of a nationwide strike to challenge a new round of austerity measures that are expected to cut wages, pensions and healthcare once again.

Dozens of youths, some masking their faces with helmets and T-shirts, hurled Molotov cocktails and rocks at police who fired back in an effort to scatter the angry crowds around the parliament building. More than 50,000 people are believed to have participated in the mass walk-out in Athens alone.

#7 The unemployment rate in France has risen for 16 months in a row and is now the highest that it has been in over a decade.

#8 As I wrote about recently, the number of unemployed workers in Italy has increased by more than 37 percentover the past year.

#9 New orders for durable goods in the United States fell by a whopping 13.2 percent in August. That was the largest decline that we have seen since the middle of the last recession (January 2009).

#10 According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. GDP only grew at a 1.3 percent annual rate during the second quarter of 2012 as opposed to the 1.7 percent annual rate previously reported.

#11 The U.S. Postal Service is about to experience its second financial default in just the past two months….

The U.S. Postal Service will default this week on a $5.6 billion congressionally mandated obligation to pre-fund retiree health benefits, marking the second time in two months the cash-strapped agency has done this.

#12 It looks like General Motors is on a path that will lead to bankruptcy (again).

#13 According to a recent survey conducted by State Street Global Advisors, 71 percent of “investors in a survey of 300 around the world, including the largest pension funds, asset managers and private banks, fear an imminent Lehman-like event.”

#14 According to a recent survey of American CEOs by Business Roundtable, the number of CEOs that plan to eliminate jobs has risen significantly from earlier this year….

The CEOs’ decline in confidence comes alongside a worsening employment outlook. Thirty-four percent of the 138 CEOs surveyed said in this quarter’s survey that they expected their companies to cut jobs in the next six months, compared to just 20 percent in the second quarter. Likewise, only 29 percent say they expect employment to grow in the next half year, down from 36 percent last quarter.

But the mainstream media in the United States would like us to believe that everything is getting better.

The mainstream media would like us to believe that QE3 is going to stimulate lots of new hiring all over America, and they are greatly celebrating the fact that the S&P 500 hit a five year high on Thursday.

Well, those on Wall Street should celebrate this monetary “sugar high” while they still can. Of course QE3 was going to cause stock prices to rise in the short-term, but the reality of the matter is that QE3 is not going to do a thing to stop the financial markets from crashing when the time comes for them to crash.

Economies tend to flourish in a stable, predictable environment. When you start recklessly printing money, it may help your economic numbers in the short-term, but it disrupts the stability of the system.

And once you have created a tremendous amount of instability, it is really, really hard to convince people that you can create stability once again.

When it comes to economics, confidence is one of the most important ingredients. If people lose confidence in the system, it almost does not matter what else you do.

As I wrote about the other day, quantitative easing worked for the Weimar Republic for a little while, but in the end it resulted in total disaster.

It will also end in total disaster for us.

All over the globe financial authorities are playing all sorts of games in an attempt to keep the system functioning smoothly. But these games are going to steadily undermine confidence in the system, and that is going to prove to be absolutely deadly.

Take advantage of this period of relative stability while you still can, because when it is gone it is not coming back.


Link:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/14-signs-that-the-world-economy-is-getting-weaker.html

Thursday, September 27, 2012

Campaign button of the day...


Peter Schiff Smacksdown Mitt Romney...

Photo of the day...


Source:
http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/extras/extra_bases/2012/09/red_sox_announc_14.html

What they fail to tell you on TV...

Iran vs Israel: What The Media Wants You To Forget

From WhatReallyHappened.com

The corporate media have been given their orders to throw the focus back on to Iran.

Here is a recap of what they are trying to make you forget.

1. Last Spring, Rose Gottemoeller, an assistant secretary of state and Washington's chief nuclear arms negotiator, asked Israel to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Israel refused.

2. The United Nations passed a resolution calling on Israel to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and to submit to inspections. Israel refused.

3. The IAEA asked Israel to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and to submit to inspections. Israel refused.

4. Iran's formal notification to the IAEA of the planned construction of the backup fuel-rod facility underscores that Iran is playing by the rules of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which Iran has signed.

5. Iran allows IAEA inspections of all its facilities.

6. Contrary to face-saving claims, it appears that the US and Israel were both caught off guard by Iran's announcement of a planned underground (to avoid being bombed) enrichment facility. The reasoning is simple. Had the US or Israel announced the existence of he new facility before Iran's notified the IAEA, it would have put Iran on the defensive. As it is now, the US and Israel seem to be playing catch up, casting doubt on the veracity of Israel's claims to "know" that Iran is a nuclear threat.

7. The IAEA and all 16 United States Intelligence Agencies are unanimous in agreement that Iran is not building and does not possess nuclear weapons.

8. In 1986, Mordachai Vanunu blew the whistle and provided photographs showing Israel's clandestine nuclear weapons factory underneath the reactor at Dimona.

9. Israel made the same accusations against Iraq that it is making against Iran, leading up to Israel's bombing of the power station at Osirik. Following the invasion of 2003, international experts examined the ruins of the power station at Osirik and found no evidence of a clandestine weapons factory in the rubble.

10. The United Nations has just released the Goldstone Report, a scathing report which accuses Israel of 37 specific war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza earlier this year. Israel has denounced the report as "Anti-Semitic (even though Judge Goldstone is himself Jewish), and the United States will block the report from being referred to the War Crimes Tribunal at the Hague, thereby making the US Government an accessory after-the-fact.

11. Recently revealed documents prove not only that Israel has nuclear weapos, but actually tried to sell some to Apartheid South Africa. Who else Israel approached to sell nuclear weapons remains an unasked question.

12. In 1965, Israel stole over 200-600 pounds of weapons-grade uranium from the United States.

13. Declassified documents from the former South African regime prove not only that Israel has had nuclear weapons for decades, but has tried to sell them to other countries!

14: No less a source than the Jerusalem Post confirms that Israel has armed their German-supplied Dolphin submarines with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles.

We all need to be Joe Wilson right now. We need to stand up and scream, "LIAR!" at every politician and every talking media moron that is pushing this war in Iran. And we need to keep dong it until they get the message that we will not be deceived any more.

Israel wants to send your kids off to die in Iran, and YOU are the only one that can stop them.

Please forward this comment to your social networks.


Link:
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/IranvIsrael.php

"Most people would puzzle over this question. How can anyone borrow from himself or herself? That’s logically impossible for any of us to do."

Is the US Government Now Borrowing Entirely from Itself?

Most people would puzzle over this question. How can anyone borrow from himself or herself? That’s logically impossible for any of us to do.

The federal government, however, operates by different rules. The US government can borrow from itself because the Federal Reserve, a branch of the government, simply prints new money and then buys the government’s bonds with the new money. If private individuals did this, it would be called counterfeiting, but governments get away with it.

The government has borrowed from itself ever since the Crash of 2008. By now the Fed, that is, the government, owns more US debt than anyone else, even more than Japan or China. And this excludes what the government holds in its phony social security trust funds. This just counts debt bought by the Fed.

Larry Lindsey, President Bush’s first chief economic advisor, points out the obvious in the CNBC article below. The Fed now plans to print enough new money to buy bonds equivalent to the government’s entire annual deficit. So we no longer need worry about interesting investors, domestic or foreign, in these bonds, since the government can just borrow 100% from itself.

Fed chairman Bernanke has hidden all this behind a fig leaf. The Fed won’t buy US treasury securities in its new QE 3 program. It will buy mortgage securities, usually backed by agencies of the government. In that way, the Fed can deny that it is buying up the government’s deficit directly.

But the QE3 program is on-going. It need never stop and there is no prohibition against buying treasuries rather than mortgage backed securities. So if any treasury bond auction is looking shaky, the Fed can step in and quietly buy. This may be the real rationale for QE3. It is hard to believe that Bernanke really thinks it will increase employment. So his real motivation may be fear for the treasury bond market and a desire to be able to intervene to support it.

Well, what is actually wrong with the government printing the money it spends? Consider a little math. If national income consists of a dollar, and the government takes a third in taxes, government obviously gets to spend 1/3. If government doesn’t tax at all, but instead prints 50 new cents, government also gets to spend a third. So printing money is a kind of tax. Moreover it is a tax that creates inflation.

Let’s say that the $1 economy consisted entirely of three apples. If there is $1 in money, then each apple would be expected to cost 33 1/3 cents. But if the money supply increases to $1.50 because of government money printing, each apple would be now likely cost $50 cents. This is because the act of printing money doesn’t create any more apples, or other goods and services. It never does.

Here’s another way to look at it. If I have a cup of milk, and I pour a half cup of water into it, do I have more milk? It might look that way to the uninformed. But actually there is no more milk than before.

In actuality, the money printing tax is a stealth tax which eventually steals our money through inflation. Because it’s stealthy, and because the inflation may not come right away, the average person doesn’t understand what is happening. But wealthy people do understand; they often make money off the whole process while average people and especially the poor suffer.

Why is the economy so bad? The answer is simple. Because Ben Bernanke and others in government keep destroying it.


Link:
http://www.blacklistednews.com/Is_the_US_Government_Now_Borrowing_Entirely_from_Itself%3F/21712/0/38/38/Y/M.html

Reality Check: Muslim Protests Have Nothing To Do With A Youtube Video?

"Amazingly, incomes have dropped even more during the “recovery” than they did during the recession. In fact, they’ve dropped more than twice as much as they did during the recession. From the start to the end of the recession, the real median income of American households fell $1,413, or 2.6 percent. From the end of the recession to the present day, it has dropped $3,040, or 5.7 percent. This begs the question: What kind of “recovery” compares unfavorably with the recession from which it’s ostensibly recovering?"

Americans’ Incomes Have Fallen $3,040 During the Obama ‘Recovery’

By JEFFREY H. ANDERSON

Americans must be wondering how much more of this “recovery” they can afford. New figures from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey, compiled by Sentier Research, show that the typical American household’s real (inflation-adjusted) income has actually dropped 5.7 percent during the Obama “recovery.” Using constant 2012 dollars (to adjust for inflation), the median annual income of American households was $53,718 as of June 2009, the last month of the recession. Now, after 38 months of this “recovery,” it has fallen to $50,678 — a drop of $3,040 per household.

Yet it gets worse. Amazingly, incomes have dropped even more during the “recovery” than they did during the recession. In fact, they’ve dropped more than twice as much as they did during the recession. From the start to the end of the recession, the real median income of American households fell $1,413, or 2.6 percent. From the end of the recession to the present day, it has dropped $3,040, or 5.7 percent. This begs the question: What kind of “recovery” compares unfavorably with the recession from which it’s ostensibly recovering?

Two of the groups hit hardest have been ones that turned out in abundance for Obama in 2008: black Americans and younger Americans (those between the ages of 25 and 34). During the first three years of the Obama “recovery,” the real median household income for black Americans dropped a whopping 11.1 percent. For Americans between the ages of 25 and 34 — the group most apt, as Paul Ryan put it, to be “staring up at fading Obama posters” and looking to “get going with life” — real median household income dropped 8.9 percent.

Moreover, we’re still not headed in the right direction. Last month, American households’ real median annual income fell by another $543 — from $51,221 to $50,678. Sentier’s Gordon Green, former chief of the Governments Division at the Census Bureau, says, “This latest decline in real median annual household income is indicative of a struggling economy.” He adds that, while we are “technically” in a recovery, “real median annual household income is having a difficult time maintaining its present level, much less ‘recovering.’”

Similarly, the percentage of Americans who are employed has dropped during the Obama “recovery” — from 59.4 percent during the final month of the recession to just 58.3 percent last month. That’s according to the Obama administration’s own figures.

So, to recap, compared to the last month of the recession (in June 2009), the percentage of Americans who are employed has dropped 1.1 points, and typical Americans’ real annual household income has dropped $3,040. Who knew how good we had it back in the glory days of the Great Recession?

No wonder Obama says he’s running for reelection because he wants to realize “the future we imagined in 2008.” He can’t very well run on the reality we’re experiencing in 2012.


Link:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/americans-incomes-have-fallen-3040-during-obama-recovery_653116.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

"Science continues to provide more evidence that fluoride, which is added to most public drinking water systems in the U.S. as a way to fight tooth decay, causes more harm than good."

Yet more studies link fluoride to brain damage

J. D. Heyes


Science continues to provide more evidence that fluoride, which is added to most public drinking water systems in the U.S. as a way to fight tooth decay, causes more harm than good.

The Fluoride Action Network said in a press release that a newly discovered and translated study found that fluoride is linked to lower IQ, even at ranges added to U.S. water supplies. Moreover, the group said, fluoridation promoters “misrepresented” data from a recent Harvard fluoride/IQ study.

In all, FAN said, 34 studies now link fluoride to lower IQ levels in humans, while scores of other studies correlate fluoride to learning and memory impairment, fetal brain damage, altered neurobehavioral function and altered thyroid hormone levels.

“Legislators who mandate fluoridation without carefully considering this research are doing a profound disservice to the health and welfare of their constituents,” attorney Michael Connett of FAN said.

In a macro review of 27 fluoride/IQ studies, Harvard researchers concluded recently that the chemical’s effect on children’s developing brains should be a “high research priority,” especially in the United States which, they concluded, has never investigated the effects of fluoride on the brain.

‘That’s wrong’

Advocates of fluoridation; however, misinterpreted the research, then misled investigators in Phoenix, Portland, Ore., Witchita, Kan., and other locations by stating the Harvard research isn’t relevant to Americans, FAN said.

The advocates claimed that the Harvard study found only a one-half-point difference in IQ, and that the fluoride levels were much higher than Americans normally encounter.

“That’s wrong,” said the group, in its press release.

FAN says the Harvard team found that fluoride exposure was associated with statistically significant reductions of seven IQ points – far more than the half-point drop claimed by one advocate, Dr. Myron Allukian.

He, along with the Pew Children’s Dental Campaign and other advocates like Portland Mayor Sam Adams, have all said the Harvard study focused on fluoride levels of 11.5 mg/l. But, FAN says, only one of the studies was at 11.5 mg/l.

The group said the majority of water studies looked at by the team of Harvard researchers examined fluoride levels the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says is safe – fewer than four mg/l.

The group noted:

– One study, which was sponsored by UNICEF, found that IQ was reduced at just .88 mg/l of fluoride, a level within the “optimal” range added to U.S. drinking water systems for about 200 million Americans.

– Seven studies found reduced IQ levels among children who drank water containing between 2.1 mg/l and 4.0 mg/l, or levels that 1.4 million Americans consume daily.

– Four studies found effects at levels between 1.8 and 2.0 mg/l – levels that over 200,000 Americans drink every day.

What’s the right thing for government to do?

The EPA’s conventional approach to risk assessment generally limits exposure to chemical levels that are 10 times less than those known to cause adverse effects. With fluoride levels and IQ, the levels of the chemical in water and urine are, at most, just two or three times more than the amount to which tens of millions of American kids are exposed, the group said.

What’s more, FAN points out that children who have iodine deficiencies are particularly susceptible to harm by fluoride, adding that iodine deficiency has risen significantly in recent years, now affecting some 12 percent of the U.S. population.

“The question legislators should be asking themselves is, ‘Do I wait until public health officials catch up with the scientific literature that now shows fluoride can cause serious neurological harm to children, or do I take my leadership role seriously and stop fluoridation immediately,’” said FAN Executive Director, Paul Connett, Ph.D. “I think the latter is the only ethical answer.”


Link:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/yet-more-studies-link-fluoride-to-brain-damage.html

The Building 7 Challenge...

PauCraig Roberts: America, The Next Banana Republic...

Now, who do you think they are planning to use this against???

LRAD Sonic Weapons To Be Deployed “Throughout” America For Crises

Devices commonly used by police to quell civil unrest, disperse protests

Paul Joseph Watson


The U.S. Air National Guard has purchased half a million dollars worth of portable LRAD acoustic systems, which are commonly used by police to quell protests and civil unrest, ensuring that the sonic weapons will be deployed “throughout” America during upcoming national emergencies and other crises.



The video above demonstrates how the portable LRAD works even at 200 feet high and amidst the noise of a helicopter.

LRAD Corporation has received an order worth $550,00 from the Air National Guard to ship LRAD 100X devices this quarter.

“With this order, LRAD systems will be in use by every major force of the Department of Defense,” Tom Brown, president and CEO of LRAD told Government Security News. “The Air National Guard will be deploying the LRAD 100X systems throughout the country to support and assist civil authorities in the event of severe natural or man-made disasters. LRAD systems have proven highly effective in communicating warnings, instructions and commands over wide areas before, during, and in the aftermath of catastrophes.”

As well as being powerful communication devices, LRADs emit piercing sounds that amount to nothing less than auditory torture, and serve to disperse people from geographical areas, breaking up demonstrations and other gatherings.

Larger versions of the LRAD, previously used against Somali pirates and insurgents in Afghanistan, are increasingly being deployed inside America. In 2009, the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department deployed an LRAD against people going to a town hall meeting.

The largest version of the LRAD is routinely used to break up “unlawful assemblies” at protests of global summits,including at the 2009 G20 in Pittsburgh, during which an LRAD was used to terrify local residents who weren’t even involved in the protest.

The LRAD 100X is weather proof, able to be heard clearly at distances of 600 meters and is 20 to 30 decibels louder than a standard bullhorn. The sound which the device is capable of emitting to disperse people is both a tool of torture and psychological warfare. Despite being described as “non-lethal,” the most powerful versions of the device can kill under certain conditions.

Studies have found that the type of sound waves emitted by the sonic weapon can cause epileptic seizures, long term problems affecting brain tissue, as well as cardiovascular and central nervous system damage in humans.

As we have previously highlighted, preparations on behalf of law enforcement bodies, the federal government and branches of the military for domestic disorder have been ongoing.

The Department of Homeland Security has purchased over 1.4 billion rounds of ammunition in the last six months alone.

Last year, DHS chief Janet Napolitano directed ICE to prepare for a mass influx of immigrants into the United States, calling for the plan to deal with the “shelter” and “processing” of large numbers of people.

The U.S. Army has also been preparing for domestic disorder.

A recently leaked US Army Military Police training manual for “Civil Disturbance Operations” outlines how military assets are to be used domestically to quell riots, confiscate firearms and even kill Americans on U.S. soil during mass civil unrest.

U.S. troops are also being provided with new state of the art headgear in order to carry out “homeland security operations.”

Back in 2008 the Washington Post reported how 20,000 U.S. troops returning from Iraq would be stationed inside America under Northcom for purposes of “domestic security” from September 2011 onwards.

Northcom officials were forced to subsequently issue a denial after the Army Times initially reported that the troops would be used to deal “with civil unrest and crowd control.”

Watch a clip of a larger version of the LRAD dispersing protesters at the 2009 G20 in Pittsburgh, the first time the device was used inside the United States.




Link:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/lrad-sonic-weapons-to-be-deployed-throughout-america-for-crises.html

Remember the old cry "No Taxation Without Representation"?

World Health Organization Mulling Global Cigarette Tax

CJ Ciaramella


The World Health Organization (WHO) is considering a global excise tax of up to 70 percent on cigarettes at an upcoming November conference, raising concerns among free market tax policy analysts about fiscal sovereignty and bureaucratic mission creep.

In draft guidelines published this September, the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control indicated it may put a cigarette tax on the table at its November conference in Seoul, Korea.

“First we had doctors without borders,” said David Williams, president of the Taxpayer Protection Alliance. “Now you could have taxes without borders. … This is a new frontier in taxes. If they’re successful with this, consumers and taxpayers should be concerned about what’s coming down the pipe.”

Although WHO does not have any power to mandate taxes on sovereign nations, it is considering two proposals on cigarette taxes to present to member countries. The first would be an excise tax of up to 70 percent...


Read more:
http://freebeacon.com/taxes-without-borders/