History stuff...

Sinking of the Lusitania in 1915 was an Anglo-American Staged False Flag Conspiracy

Posted by Charleston Voice

By Sam Greenhill

Her sinking with the loss of almost 1,200 lives caused such outrage that it propelled the U.S. into the First World War.

But now divers have revealed a dark secret about the cargo carried by the Lusitania on its final journey in May 1915.

Munitions they found in the hold suggest that the Germans had been right all along in claiming the ship was carrying war materials and was a legitimate military target.

The Cunard vessel, steaming from New York to Liverpool, was sunk eight miles off the Irish coast by a U-boat.

Maintaining that the Lusitania was solely a passenger vessel, the British quickly accused the 'Pirate Hun' of slaughtering civilians.

The disaster was used to whip up anti-German anger, especially in the U.S., where 128 of the 1,198 victims came from.

A hundred of the dead were children, many of them under two.

Robert Lansing, the U.S. secretary of state, later wrote that the sinking gave him the 'conviction we would ultimately become the ally of Britain'.

Americans were even told, falsely, that German children were given a day off school to celebrate the sinking of the Lusitania.

The disaster inspired a multitude of recruitment posters demanding vengeance for the victims.

One, famously showing a young mother slipping below the waves with her baby, carried the simple slogan 'Enlist'.

Two years later, the Americans joined the Allies as an associated power - a decision that turned the war decisively against Germany.

Bullets from the ship now confirm it was carrying military cargo. (Courtesy Eoin McGarry)

The diving team estimates that around four million rounds of U.S.-manufactured Remington .303 bullets lie in the Lusitania's hold at a depth of 300ft.

The Germans had insisted the Lusitania - the fastest liner in the North Atlantic - was being used as a weapons ship to break the blockade Berlin had been trying to impose around Britain since the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914.

Winston Churchill, who was first Lord of the Admiralty and has long been suspected of knowing more about the circumstances of the attack than he let on in public, wrote in a confidential letter shortly before the sinking that some German submarine attacks were to be welcomed.

He said: 'It is most important to attract neutral shipping to our shores, in the hope especially of embroiling the U.S. with Germany.

'For our part we want the traffic - the more the better and if some of it gets into trouble, better still.'

Hampton Sides, a writer with Men's Vogue in the U.S., witnessed the divers' discovery.
He said: 'They are bullets that were expressly manufactured to kill Germans in World War I - bullets that British officials in Whitehall, and American officials in Washington, have long denied were aboard the Lusitania.'

The discovery may help explain why the 787ft Lusitania sank within 18 minutes of a single German torpedo slamming into its hull.

Some of the 764 survivors reported a second explosion which might have been munitions going off.

Gregg Bemis, an American businessman who owns the rights to the wreck and is funding its exploration, said: 'Those four million rounds of .303s were not just some private hunter's stash.

'Now that we've found it, the British can't deny any more that there was ammunition on board. That raises the question of what else was on board.

'There were literally tons and tons of stuff stored in unrefrigerated cargo holds that were dubiously marked cheese, butter and oysters.

'I've always felt there were some significant high explosives in the holds - shells, powder, gun cotton - that were set off by the torpedo and the inflow of water. That's what sank the ship.'

Mr Bemis is planning to commission further dives next year in a full-scale forensic examination of the wreck off County Cork. Source DailyMail

Link:
http://chasvoice.blogspot.com/2012/05/sinking-of-lusitania-in-1915-was-anglo.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FhRRzR+%28Charleston+Voice%29

Old newspaper clip of the day: New World Order not new idea it seems. It's all part of the plan, folks.....

Source:
http://whatreallyhappened.com/

OOPS!!! Remember this???

FLASHBACK 2000 - Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past

Monday 20 March 2000

By Charles Onians

Britain's winter ends tomorrow with further indications of a striking environmental change: snow is starting to disappear from our lives.

Sledges, snowmen, snowballs and the excitement of waking to find that the stuff has settled outside are all a rapidly diminishing part of Britain's culture, as warmer winters - which scientists are attributing to global climate change - produce not only fewer white Christmases, but fewer white Januaries and Februaries.

The first two months of 2000 were virtually free of significant snowfall in much of lowland Britain, and December brought only moderate snowfall in the South-east. It is the continuation of a trend that has been increasingly visible in the past 15 years: in the south of England, for instance, from 1970 to 1995 snow and sleet fell for an average of 3.7 days, while from 1988 to 1995 the average was 0.7 days. London's last substantial snowfall was in February 1991.

Global warming, the heating of the atmosphere by increased amounts of industrial gases, is now accepted as a reality by the international community. Average temperatures in Britain were nearly 0.6°C higher in the Nineties than in 1960-90, and it is estimated that they will increase by 0.2C every decade over the coming century. Eight of the 10 hottest years on record occurred in the Nineties.

However, the warming is so far manifesting itself more in winters which are less cold than in much hotter summers. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event".

"Children just aren't going to know what snow is," he said.

The effects of snow-free winter in Britain are already becoming apparent. This year, for the first time ever, Hamleys, Britain's biggest toyshop, had no sledges on display in its Regent Street store. "It was a bit of a first," a spokesperson said.

Fen skating, once a popular sport on the fields of East Anglia, now takes place on indoor artificial rinks. Malcolm Robinson, of the Fenland Indoor Speed Skating Club in Peterborough, says they have not skated outside since 1997. "As a boy, I can remember being on ice most winters. Now it's few and far between," he said.

Michael Jeacock, a Cambridgeshire local historian, added that a generation was growing up "without experiencing one of the greatest joys and privileges of living in this part of the world - open-air skating".

Warmer winters have significant environmental and economic implications, and a wide range of research indicates that pests and plant diseases, usually killed back by sharp frosts, are likely to flourish. But very little research has been done on the cultural implications of climate change - into the possibility, for example, that our notion of Christmas might have to shift.

Professor Jarich Oosten, an anthropologist at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, says that even if we no longer see snow, it will remain culturally important.

"We don't really have wolves in Europe any more, but they are still an important part of our culture and everyone knows what they look like," he said.

David Parker, at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Berkshire, says ultimately, British children could have only virtual experience of snow. Via the internet, they might wonder at polar scenes - or eventually "feel" virtual cold.

Heavy snow will return occasionally, says Dr Viner, but when it does we will be unprepared. "We're really going to get caught out. Snow will probably cause chaos in 20 years time," he said.

The chances are certainly now stacked against the sortof heavy snowfall in cities that inspired Impressionist painters, such as Sisley, and the 19th century poet laureate Robert Bridges, who wrote in "London Snow" of it, "stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying".

Not any more, it seems.

Link:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html

Yeah, right!!!!

Picture taken Sunday 2 December 2012 09:17 CET / 08:17 UTC
QTH: 55 North 40 X 13 East 22
Temperature: -3.1C / +26.4 F

Source:
http://whatreallyhappened.com/

US Government media manipulation & lies...

Psywar : Full Documentary HQ

The new reserve currency is just years away...

Yuan may become main reserve currency next decade - Lavrov

Next decade, under consideration may be turning the yuan into the main reserve currency, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.

Many developing countries that have created modern industry and substantially improved the population's welfare have benefited from the globalization, while developed states have experienced processes of deindustrialization and reduction of the middle class stratum, with clearer social stratification, the minister noted on Saturday, when speaking at the Assembly of the Council on Foreign and Defence Policy.

At present, it is a question of searching for solutions to overcome problems in economy of Europe and the United States. Experts say that China may come to the position of a leading economic power in five-six years. Then, evidently, the issue of turning the yuan into the main reserve currency may be raised, the minister said.

For the present, no changes are seen in the policy to continue inflational pumping up of American economy. The crisis of the euro zone assumes a protracted character, Lavrov noted.

Quite a new picture of the world is expected to be formed in the next 20 years. It envisages a painful process of re-adjusting of international relations, the minister added.

Link:
http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2012/12/02/yuan-may-become-main-reserve-currency-next-decade-lavrov.html

Judge Napolitano Applauds Passage of Email Privacy Bill 'Preserves Constitutional Right to Privacy'...

“The [Cloward-Piven strategy] taught that if you flooded the welfare rolls and bankrupted the cities and ultimately the nation, it would foster economic collapse, which would lead to political turmoil so severe that socialism would be accepted as a fix to an out-of-control set of circumstances,” wrote Jeannie DeAngelis for American Thinker about this malevolent agenda. “Combine class warfare, demonizing the rich, getting as many people onto the welfare rolls as possible, and pushing the economic system to collapse and you have a flawless formula for Cloward-Piven 2.0.”

Geithner: Raise U.S. debt limit to infinity

Ethan A. Huff

The elaborate Ponzi scheme officially known as the U.S. financial system is set to completely transform into a Monopoly-style fantasy economy where money and debt are both meaningless and limitless. U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has actually come out with a proposal that the American debt ceiling be completely eliminated, allowing the crooks that run the federal government to print as much phony debt currency as their hearts desire, and spend away into oblivion.

During a recent interview on Bloomberg TV, Geithner told Political Capital‘s Al Hunt that the Congressionally-established debt ceiling, which was specifically designed to establish reasonable limits on the amount of money the federal government can borrow, should be completely abolished. Even though Congress is the only entity that can make such a decision, Geithner expressed his belief that the limit be scrapped to avoid its being used as “a tool for political advantage.”

“It would have been time a long time ago to eliminate it,” said a nervous Geithner to Hunt, after being asked when he believed the debt ceiling should be eliminated. “The sooner the better.”

The so-called debt ceiling is virtually meaningless anyway, as Congress has already voted dozens of times in years past to raise it every time the national debt approaches a breach. But a permanent lifting of any sort of debt ceiling will officially seal the deal, and drive the last nail in the coffin for the American economy, which is today built solely on debt rather than actual monetary currency.

Geithner proposal part of ‘Cloward-Piven’ strategy to collapse national economy

Geithner’s suggestion also seems to follow the playbook of the infamous Cloward-Piven strategy to the tee, which is built on the idea of intentionally crashing the existing U.S. economy for the purpose of rebuilding it in the image of socialist ideals. Part of this strategy includes deliberately destroying the nation’s currency by accumulating large amounts of unsustainable debt, none of which can ever truly be paid off and settled.

“The [Cloward-Piven strategy] taught that if you flooded the welfare rolls and bankrupted the cities and ultimately the nation, it would foster economic collapse, which would lead to political turmoil so severe that socialism would be accepted as a fix to an out-of-control set of circumstances,” wrote Jeannie DeAngelis for American Thinker about this malevolent agenda.

“Combine class warfare, demonizing the rich, getting as many people onto the welfare rolls as possible, and pushing the economic system to collapse and you have a flawless formula for Cloward-Piven 2.0.”

This appears to be the precise strategy behind eliminating the debt ceiling, as federal government controllers would truly have a limitless bank account from which to continue swelling the welfare state and spending the nation into complete collapse. And once the system eventually collapses in on itself, as planned, the masses will be begging for their own enslavement in the form of full nanny state provisions and complete government tyranny.

Link:
http://www.naturalnews.com/038167_debt_limit_Geithner_infinity.html

The push for a New World Order and global government marches on...

Convergence: Globalists Push Russia-EU Merger

William F. Jasper

An op-ed column appearing in the November 25, 2012 Gulf News, entitled, “Need for Europe-Russia institutional integration,” by former Russian Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov is one of the latest globalist paeans to East-West “convergence.”

“Without a fundamental reset,” argues Ivanov, “relations between Russia and Europe will continue to decay, eventually becoming characterised by benign neglect.” To avoid this undesirable situation, Ivanov avers, “Russia and Europe must identify where their interests converge” and work toward “partnership,” “political cooperation,” and “political integration.”

“Convergence” is a key theme of policy elites the world over, especially those associated with the Royal Institute for International Affairs (RIIA), the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), World Policy Conference (WPC), Trilateral Commission (TC), Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP), and Bilderberg Conferences (BC). Mr. Ivanov, who was an apparatchik in the Soviet diplomatic corps and head of the Russian Security Council under Vladimir Putin, has been associated with all of the above-named organizations. He is a member of that growing body of “former” Communists who now unabashedly wear the globalist label and hobnob with billionaire Russian oligarchs, western corporate CEOs, Wall Street bankers, heads of the giant tax exempt foundations, and denizens of the elite think tanks.

Globalists march under a number of banners and code words to identify themselves and the global political-economic transformation they desire: globalism, globalization, global governance, internationalism, and new world order. In moments of candor and/or daring, some globalists unblushingly blurt out their true goal: world government.

Convergence, in the political and economic sense, although not a term familiar to or used by the average citizen, is central to the globalist program of world government and is commonly used in their higher circles to describe their policies. Convergence is the process by which the widespread political, economic, social, and cultural differences among disparate nations are gradually diminished so that they can be more comfortably merged together, first into supranational regional groupings, and then into a global government. All of this must be done by deception, naturally, since most peoples of the world, and Americans in particular, are not keen on being amalgamated into a global gulag presided over by the United Nations or any other worldly entity.

The convergence strategy was, perhaps, most nakedly explained by Ford Foundation President H. Rowan Gaither (a Council on Foreign Relations member), who admitted to congressional investigator Norman Dodd in 1953 that he and others inside and outside of government were working “to so alter life in the United States that we can be comfortably merged with the Soviet Union.” (The story of the of the Congressional investigations of the tax-exempt foundations and Norman Dodd’s remarkable meeting with Mr. Gaither, is told in detail in William H. McIlhany’s The Tax-Exempt Foundations (Arlington House, 1980).

The Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie foundations were being investigated because it had become inescapably obvious that they were funding numerous groups, individuals, movements, and projects that were politically, socially, economically, and morally subversive. Mr. Gaither’s private admission to Dodd about the foundations’ subversive secret directives merely confirmed what was apparent from the foundations’ grant portfolios.

Before his death in 1987, Mr. Dodd was interviewed by author/film maker G. Edward Griffin for a documentary produced by Congressman Lawrence P. McDonald (R-Georgia) and his Western Goals Foundation. Mr. Dodd’s testimony in that film has gone viral and can now be found on many sites across the Internet (See video at the bottom of this page).

There should be little doubt for the objective observer that in the last seven decades since the Gaither-Dodd conversation, life has indeed been altered to such a degree that we are very nearly ready to be merged with (post-Soviet) Russia. The European Union is, in many respects, even further along in the convergence process. Mr. Ivanov and his fellow globalists in Russia, the United States, and the EU want to hasten that process.

“In the race towards globalisation,” Ivanov says, “the stakes are high for both Russia and Europe.” He continues:

If Europe, for its part, fails to respond to the challenges of the 21st Century, it will face chronic economic stagnation, rising social tension and political instability. Indeed, as industrial production migrates to East Asia and innovation remains in North America, Europe risks losing its position in the most attractive international markets. As a result, the European project itself could be called into question.

To avoid these outcomes, Russia and Europe must identify where their interests converge and work to establish a mutually beneficial partnership in those areas. However, in order to foster such a partnership, they must first alter their negative perceptions of each other.

“Of course, Russia will probably not become a full Nato member in the foreseeable future,” writes Ivanov. “But political integration is feasible.”

According to Comrade Ivanov, integration and convergence are the “only option” for Russia and Europe:

Greater political cooperation would provide a context for discussing issues like the future of Afghanistan, international terrorism and nuclear proliferation, as well as for creating joint initiatives and strategies that address crucial issues affecting both powers.
The institutional integration of Russia into greater Europe will require strong commitment from both sides. But, in this globalised century, it is the only option.

As mentioned above, we found Mr. Ivanov’s op-ed at Gulf News, but it originated at Project Syndicate, a project of George Soros’ Open Society Foundation that has sprouted into a network of nearly 500 newspapers in more than 150 countries with worldwide circulation of over 70 million copies. According to the syndicate’s web site, it is the largest syndication of independent commentators in the world.

Mr. Soros, who is himself a dedicated world-government globalist, writes regular columns for Project Syndicate. He is also a member of (and major financial supporter of) the Council on Foreign Relations, as well as a regular at the TC, WPC, CEIP, and BC confabs that Mr. Ivanov associates with. A typical Soros column from the Project Syndicate oeuvre is his November 9, 2009 piece entitled, “A New World Architecture,” which aimed at greater economic and political convergence, especially between China and the United States, along with expansion and greater empowerment for the United Nations and International Monetary Fund.

Mr. Ivanov, after decades of participating in meetings of the CFR, writing for the CFR journal Foreign Affairs, co-chairing the Carnegie Endowment’s Euro-Atlantic Security Initiative (EASI), sitting on the board of directors of Ted Turner’s United Nations Foundation, addressing the World Economic Forum, and consorting with CFR and RIIA one-worlders, has been thoroughly indoctrinated in the globalist dogmas. So much so that he is now president of the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC), the Kremlin’s counterpart to the CFR and RIIA.

One of Ivanov’s old pals in the British diplomatic corps is Sir Roderic Lyne, former UK Ambassador to Russia and an avid exponent of East-West convergence, particularly favoring Russia-EU integration. Lyne, who is now Vice Chairman of the RIIA (more commonly known as Chatham House), as well as a board member of the Russo-British Chamber of Commerce and an adviser to JPMorgan Chase, authored an article for Europe’s World in 2006 entitled, “Russia in the EU? We should Never Say Never.”

“The European Union’s policy since 1991 has been to encourage convergence and to seek to build a much closer relationship with Russia,” Lyne wrote. “That is manifestly in the EU’s interests, and arguably in Russia’s too.”

Lyne was also a co-author — along with Strobe Talbott (CFR) and Koji Watanabe — of the influential Trilateral Commission Report, “Engaging with Russia: The Next Phase,” timed for release to influence the 2006 G8 Summit hosted by Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg. The Trilateral engagement plan pushed more partnership, cooperation, integration, and convergence.

And Putin himself, despite regularly playing the Russian chauvinism card and trash-talking the U.S. and Europe, has said that it is “quite possible” that “one day Russia will be in some joint currency zone with Europe.”

More recently, Russian billionaire oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov, owner of the New Jersey Nets NBA franchise, made a similar pitchfor a “common global currency based on the euro and the ruble” during his campaign for the Russian presidency.

None of this is surprising to readers familiar with Anatoliy Golitsyn, the top-level KGB defector who has been warning, publicly, for the past four decades of the Kremlin’s long-range deception strategy of cooperation, integration, partnership and convergence. (See here, here, and here.)

Link:
http://thenewamerican.com/world-news/europe/item/13785-convergence-globalists-push-russia-eu-merger

Confidence in the dollar continues to collapse...

The Chart That Keeps Ben Bernanke Up At Night

Zero Hedge

What changed in the last 30 days? Did the world just wake up to the idea that the only way out of this quagmire is a twisted currency war that appears to have re-ignited thanks to Abe’s efforts? Something appears to have snapped in the American psyche as the last 30 days have seen the largest physical gold sales on record. Between the search volume for ‘bulk ammo’ and this, we fear something is afoot and while Congress fiddles as our economy burns, Bernanke going ‘back to work’ is perhaps what the physical ‘horders’ are thinking… or maybe they understand, as we noted here, that just as Kyle Bass has confirmed previously, Paper Gold is just like allocated, unambiguously owned physical bullion… until it’s not.

Link:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-12-01/chart-keeps-ben-bernanke-night

Sam Donaldson on Economic Policy and the Redistribution of Wealth...

"HEIST: Who Stole the American Dream?" [Official Trailer]...

Strategic Maneuvers - The Revolving Door from the Pentagon to the Private Sector...

"The “kill lists” are the work of Obama and his advisors, led by John O. Brennan, and come straight from the White House, according to The New York Times. Apparently, the president spends a good deal of time being prosecutor, judge, jury, executioner and concealer."

Reining in Obama and His Drones

By Ralph Nader

Barack Obama, former president of the Harvard Law Review and a constitutional law lecturer, should go back and review his coursework. He seems to have declined to comport his presidency to the rule of law.

Let’s focus here on his major expansion of drone warfare in defiance of international law, statutory law and the Constitution. Obama’s drones roam over multiple nations of Asia and Africa and target suspects, both known and unknown, whom the president, in his unbridled discretion, wants to evaporate for the cause of national security.

More than 2,500 people have been killed by Obama’s drones, many of them civilians and bystanders, including American citizens, irrespective of the absence of any “imminent threat” to the United States.

As Justin Elliott of ProPublica wrote: “Under Obama…only 13 percent (of those killed) could be considered militant leaders – either of the Pakistani Taliban, the Afghan Taliban, or Al Qaeda.” The remaining fatalities, apart from many innocent civilians, including children, were people oppressed by their own harsh regimes or dominated by U.S. occupation of their country. Aside from human rights and the laws of war, this distinction between civilian and combatant matters because it shows that Obama’s drones are becoming what Elliott calls “a counterinsurgency air force” for our collaborative regimes.

The “kill lists” are the work of Obama and his advisors, led by John O. Brennan, and come straight from the White House, according to The New York Times. Apparently, the president spends a good deal of time being prosecutor, judge, jury, executioner and concealer. But he does so quietly; this is no dramatic “thumbs-down” emperor.

Mr. Brennan spoke at Harvard Law School about a year ago and told a remarkably blasé audience that what he and the president were doing was perfectly legal under the law of self-defense. Self-defense that is defined, of course, by the president.

It appears from recent statements on The Daily Show that President Obama does not share the certitude boldly displayed by Mr. Brennan. On October 18, President Obama told John Stewart, and his audience, that “one of the things we’ve got to do is put a legal architecture in place, and we need Congressional help in order to do that, to make sure that not only am I reined in but any president is reined in terms of some of the decisions that we’re making.”

So in the absence of “a legal architecture” of accountability, do presidents knock off whomever they want to target (along with bystanders or family members), whether or not the targeted person is actually plotting an attack against the United States? It seems that way, in spite of what is already in place legally, called the Constitution, separation of powers and due process of law. What more legal architecture does Mr. Obama need?

Obviously what he wants is a self-contained, permanent “Office of Presidential Predator Drone Assassinations” in the White House, to use, author, scholar and litigator Bruce Fein’s nomenclature. According to The New York Times, President Obama wants “ explicit rules for targeted killing…. So that a new president would inherit clear standards and procedures.” Mr. Fein notes that “clear standards and procedures without accountability to the judiciary, Congress, or the American people” undermine the rule of law and our democracy.

Indeed, the whole deliberation process inside the Obama administration has been kept secret, a continuing process of morbid over-classification that even today contains secret internal legal opinions on targeted killings. The government refuses even to acknowledge that a drone air force operates over Pakistan – a fact that everybody knows including the hundreds of injured and displaced Pakistanis. This drone air force uses, what The New York Times called, “signature strikes against groups of suspected, unknown militants.”

Predictably, these strikes are constantly terrorizing thousands of families who fear a strike anytime day or night, and are causing a blowback that is expanding the number of Al Qaeda sympathizers and affiliates from Pakistan to Yemen. “Signature strikes,” according to the Times, “have prompted the greatest conflict inside the Obama administration.” Former CIA director under George W. Bush, Michael V. Hayden has publically questioned whether the expansion in the use of drones is counterproductive and creating more enemies and the desire for more revenge against the U.S.

Critics point out how many times in the past that departments and agencies have put forth misleading or false intelligence, from the Vietnam War to the arguments for invading Iraq, or have missed what they should have predicted such as the fall of the Soviet Union. This legacy of errors and duplicity should restrain presidents who execute, by ordering drone operators to push buttons that target people thousands of miles away, based on secret, so-called intelligence.

Mr. Obama wants, in Mr. Fein’s view, to have “his secret and unaccountable predator drone assassinations become permanent fixtures of the nation’s national security complex.” Were Obama to remember his constitutional law, such actions would have to be constitutionally authorized by Congress and subject to judicial review.

With his Attorney General Eric Holder maintaining that there is sufficient due process entirely inside the Executive Branch and without Congressional oversight or judicial review, don’t bet on anything more than a more secret, violent, imperial presidency that shreds the Constitution’s separation of powers and checks and balances.

And don’t bet that other countries of similar invasive bent won’t remember this green-light on illegal unilateralism when they catch up with our drone capabilities.

Link:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/reining-in-obama-and-his-drones/5313692

A little fun...

Secret White House list of demands for fiscal cliff resolution leaked to Natural News (satire)

Mike Adams

President Obama has dispatched U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to negotiate a solution to the "fiscal cliff" debt ceiling with Republicans. The negotiations are being carried out in secret, but a copy of Geithner's secret demands were leaked earlier today to Natural News.

This list explains why U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell "burst into laughter" upon hearing the demands, as has been reported in the mainstream media.

Here's the full list of the ten demands:

Top 10 secret White House demands for resolving fiscal cliff negotiations
1) Change the federal tax rate to 75% for all businesses except those which are "friends" of the Obama administration, in which case the federal government actually pays you huge bonuses to LOSE money.

2) Officially alter the rules of mathematics so that deficits are no longer called "negative" numbers, because that makes things sound too negative. Require all economists to "stay positive" when discussing government expenditures and financial projections.

3) Merge the USDA with Monsanto to create more "efficiencies" in government approval of genetically modified crops.

4) Reduce federal spending by creating a "Reduce the Federal Spending Agency" whose job it is to monitor the spending of all other federal agencies except the ones that don't wish to be monitored. This means the "Reduce the Federal Spending Agency" will essentially monitor itself and produce reports on how much money it is spending producing reports on spending. "We've run out of the forms we use to order more forms!"

5) By government decree, divide the numbers on all currency and prices by ten so that everything suddenly appears to be ten times cheaper, tricking consumers into buying more stuff they don't need, thereby stimulating the economy.

6) Authorize a nationwide "TSA liposuction ethanol" federal program to suck the body fat out of the bellies and butts of overweight TSA agents and convert it to ethanol fuel so that obese TSA goons can literally "power America" by eating more muffins and cupcakes they confiscate from travelers because muffins might be terrorist weapons. (Ya never know...)

7) Enact a new federal "fluoride tax" that requires every American to pay $5,000 a year to the federal government as compensation for the "benefits" of drinking fluoridated water. Also declare nuclear radiation to be a "health benefit" of Obamacare, and assess a radiation tax following the next nuclear accident.

8) Achieve economic equality in America by recruiting the U.S. military to air-drop billions of freshly-printed federal reserve notes on all the poor, inner-city neighborhoods that voted for Obama. (Imagine the boom in crack sales alone!)

9) Enact a new federal tax on all Salvation Army holiday donations, transforming all those Santa-like bell-ringers into jolly federal tax collectors.

10) As China holds about one-third of U.S. debt, pay off China with currency laced with melamine, lead and mercury to make up for all the toxic products China ships to the USA, and we'll call it even.

Oh yeah, and eliminate all deductions, period. Because the subtraction symbol is just too negative.

I can't imagine why anyone would find these proposals laughable. To restore America to greatness once again, we have to be BOLD in our efforts to raise government "revenue" while massively increasing spending to make up for it, right?

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/038142_fiscal_cliff_negotiations_federal_spending.html#ixzz2Doie98uZ

OOPS!!!

7am Saturday - Record low for the Winter season

Temperatures plunged in Sweden overnight with a record cold for the season measured at 7am in Vittangi between Kiruna and Gällivare where it was -33.5 degrees celsius. The Swedish Met office (SMHI) also issued a class 1 warning for the coast of Norrland, upto the Västerbotten coast, where heavy snowfall continues. Throughout the day, snow will be spreading over Dalarna, Jämtland and Härjedalen causing major delays for road and rail traffic.

"There is about upto 40 centimetres of snow", says SMHI meteorologist Emil Björck to news agency TT.

Link:
http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=2054&artikel=5365794

Amazing Anamorphic Illusions...

The problem is that's all there is available for employment in today's world. People are now relying on what were once considered entry level positions to raise a family...

$15 per Hour To Flip a Hamburger???

Posted by David Kramer

That's what the economically-ignorant workers at many of the country's fast food restaurants want. It's so that they can make a "living" wage. Why so stingy with themselves? Why not $50 per hour or $100 per hour? Then they would really have a living wage.

As Peter Schiff pointed out in his excellent analysis of minimum wage laws:

The way it is supposed to work is that people do not choose to start families until they can earn enough to support them. Lower wage jobs enable workers to eventually acquire the skills necessary to earn wages high enough to support a family. Does anyone really think a kid with a paper route [or a fast food worker] should earn a wage high enough to support a family [or support himself, for that matter]?

MEMO to all workers (low-wage or otherwise): It is the market that determines the price of a product or service (i.e., labor). If the buyer of a product (i.e., customer) or service (i.e., employer) determined the price, everything would cost a penny (or, in the case of salary/wages, we'd all be paid minimum wage*). If the seller of a product (manufacturer/retailer) or service (employee) determined the price, we'd all be paying hundreds or thousands or even millions of dollars for readily abundant products (such as hamburgers) or services (such as the people who flip hamburgers).
_______________________________
*According to the Labor Department, the average fast food worker actually makes $9.00 per hour—which is above the $7.25 per hour minimum wage.

UPDATE: Fast food employee Michael writes:

This was surprisingly so personal and in one of my favorite places on the Net! I work in fast food.

While I, duh, defend the right of people to associate with fellow and other workers for peaceful unionization, to walk out en masse and such, I am skeptical to say the least about the practicality in this instance considering the firm competition, the age of the workforce, the high labor turnover, language barriers, and so on. This seems quite susceptible to consumers and employers just firing them, as they have the right to do.

As far as a "living wage" or whatever, I do make over minimum wage and that is in under a year and in this economy. I also have saved over a third of my wage income before taxes. So, it is indeed possible to live and relatively prosper on such an income. Sharing housing, living close to work, not having kids, and avoiding use and abuse of drugs goes a long way, and there is nothing undignified or unjust about facing reality so. Unfortunately, I didn't have the sense to avoid college debt or at least delay it until I had a better motive or plan beyond appeasing others. My current source of education is primarily my Kindle, and it is quite a bit more affordable and enjoyable.

I'd like a real $15 an hour for my job, a lot more even, but count me beyond skeptical that unionization could legitimately get me there. Also, as hostile to the illegitimate aspects of actual unions.

I would also like to take this chance to thank all the writers at LRC. I can't thank y'all enough for persuading me so absolutely away from the establishment. It is a big thing to me at least, but it is my intention to maintain my record of never voting.

Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/127435.html

Glenn Greenwald On The Next 4 Years With Obama...

"According to the nature of the recorded waves (body and surface waves), we can propose"

Geophysicist releases study of seismic recordings from 9/11, finds evidence of "strong explosives"

By Dr. André Rousseau

We would like to thank Tod Fletcher, who provided editorial assistance by revising an
earlier version of this article.

ABSTRACT
The seismic signals propagating from New York on September 11, 2001,
recorded at Palisades (34 km) and published by the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
of Columbia University (LDEO), have here been subjected to a new critical study
concerning their sources. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that the nature of the waves, their velocities, frequencies, and magnitudes invalidate the official explanations which imply as sources the percussion of the twin towers by planes and the collapses of the three buildings, WTC1, WTC2 and WTC7.

First of all, we show the contradictions in the official explanation between the
seismic data and the timing of the events. Then we point out that it is strange that
identical events (percussions of identical towers on the one hand, and collapses of
identical towers on the other hand) at the same location would have generated seismic
sources of different magnitudes. We demonstrate that only strong explosives could be the cause of such seismic waves, in accordance with the observed low frequencies.

According to the nature of the recorded waves (body and surface waves), we can propose
a location of each explosive source. According to the presence of shear waves or the
presence of Rayleigh waves only, we hypothesize a subterranean or a subaerial explosion.

The magnitude of an aerial explosion is insufficient to provide seismic waves at 34 km.
The witnesses and video observation confirm our conclusions of subaerial
explosions close to the times of aircraft impacts on WTC1 and WTC2, a strong
subterranean explosion closely correlated with the WTC1 collapse, and subaerial
explosions closely correlated with the WTC2 and WTC7 collapses, WTC7 not having
been hit by a plane. As a consequence, we draw the conclusion that the three buildings
were demolished by a controlled process.

1 Dr. Rousseau is a former researcher in geophysics and geology at the National Center
for Scientific Research (CNRS) of France and a specialist in acoustic waves. He is also a member of Scientists for 9/11 Truth...

Read the full report here:
http://www.journalof911studies.com/resources/RousseauVol34November2012.pdf

James Turk: "A lot of central bank gold is missing"...

Buchanan on the fragmentation of America...

Buchanan, in N.H., Laments "Fragmentation" of America
Written by Jack Kenny

Journalist, author, and three-time presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan reminisced about his half-century in journalism Thursday night, while lamenting what he described as the decline of the "e pluribus unum" (out of many, one) ethos in America. Returning to the state where he won the opening primary in the 1996 presidential campaign, Buchanan told an audience in Concord, New Hampshire that a growing factionalism is sundering the foundations of national unity.

"Are we still one nation indivisible or are we permanently Red State America and Blue State America?" asked Buchanan, the keynote speaker at the First Amendment Awards ceremony of the Nackey S. Loeb School of Communications. The breakdown is particularly troublesome for the "red state," or Republican faction, he said, since Republican voters are mostly Christians of European descent, a shrinking percentage of the American population. Newer waves of immigrants and their descendants, along with African-Americans, vote consistently Democratic, he said, noting that 18 states have voted Democratic in the last six consecutive elections. Buchanan dwelt on the role of the news media, particularly the TV networks, in what he described as "the fragmentation of American society."

Television "killed the evening newspapers," he said, recalling that by the late 1960s two-thirds of the American people were relying on television as their main source of news. Having gone to work writing editorials for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat shortly after graduating from the Columbia School of Journalism in 1962, Buchanan recalled that in the autumn of that year, former Vice President Richard Nixon, defeated as a candidate for governor of California, bitterly assured members of the state and national press corps they wouldn't "have Nixon to kick around anymore." Two years later, former President Dwight D. Eisenhower, speaking at the Republican National Convention in San Francisco, ignited a spontaneous demonstration of anger among the delegates toward the press corps when he spoke of "sensation-seeking columnists and commentators." The conservative war against the "liberal bias" of the major news media was underway.

While serving as a senior advisor in the Nixon White House in 1969, Buchanan noted with alarm the negative analysis the network news commentators provided immediately following Nixon's "Silent Majority" address to the nation on the Vietnam War. Describing how every presidential speech or action was being "filtered" through the news media, Buchanan recalled telling the president, "They're standing on our windpipe." In response, Buchanan wrote a strongly worded criticism of the TV commentators and their "instant analysis" for Vice President Spiro Agnew, which was broadcast live on network television when Agnew delivered the address to the Midwestern Regional Republican Conference in Des Moines, Iowa. Buchanan recalled that Nixon, in reviewing and editing the speech, observed with a chuckle, "This'll tear the scab off the (expletive deleted)." The expletive he deleted, Buchanan explained, was Nixon's pet name for the news media.

While much of the media denied the accusation of bias, Buchanan said the controversy sparked by the criticism from Agnew and others prompted many newspapers and TV talk shows to feature more conservative opinion writers. He cited the rise to prominence of conservative media stars like George Will and James J. Kilpatrick and noted that William Safire, his fellow speechwriter in the Nixon White House, became an op-ed columnist for the New York Times. Buchanan's career followed a similar path, leading to a widely syndicated column and several years as co-host of the former CNN show, Crossfire. He remains a fixture on the syndicated program, The McLaughlin Group. Today, he said, a larger, more diverse media both reflect and perpetuate the fragmentation he described.

"You've got Rush [Limbaugh] and [Sean] Hannity and Laura [Ingram] versus NPR and Big Bird," he said, with each holding its own constituency. In one of several observations that sparked laughter, Buchanan recalled President George W. Bush saying, "They've got these new things called the internets." The Internet, Buchanan said, has enabled consumers of news to seek out the stories and opinions congenial to their own biases.

"They create their own newspapers, if you will, where they only have to read and understand and know what their side is saying. So more and more people are living in these separate bubbles of their own making," he said.

Buchanan was on familiar turf in New Hampshire, where he made several forays during his three campaigns for president, starting in 1992, when the journalist-turned-candidate mounted a late but surprisingly strong primary challenge to incumbent President George H.W. Bush, garnering 37 percent of the vote in New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation primary. Four years later, he upset perceived frontrunner and eventual nominee Bob Dole in New Hampshire, but failed to win in any of the following contests. He left behind some memorable phrases, dubbing his campaign bus as "Asphalt One" and describing his supporters "peasants with pitchforks," coming over the hill to challenge the party establishment.

In his victory speech in New Hampshire in '96, an exuberant Buchanan called on his supporters to "mount up and ride to the sound of the guns!" Several losses later, he recalled, someone reminded him, "You didn't tell us we were riding into Little Big Horn."

The First Amendment Awards are presented annually at Concord's Capitol Center for the Arts by the Loeb School of Communications, founded by Nackey S. Loeb, the late publisher of the New Hampshire Union Leader and Sunday News. Buchanan acknowledged the papers' editorial support during his talk Thursday night. "Without the Manchester Union Leader and Nackey Loeb and (current publisher) Joe McQuaid, there would have been no Buchanan campaign," he said.

Admitting he is no "historical optimist," Buchanan claimed to find some hope for America in the prophecy of 19th century German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who reportedly spoke before his death of a special providence that watches over "drunkards, fools and the United States of America."

"Let's hope it's so," Buchanan concluded.

Link:
http://thenewamerican.com/culture/item/13790-buchanan-in-nh-laments-fragmentation-of-america

"Please take note of what is happening in places like Greece and Spain right now, because similar conditions will soon be coming to the United States."

Wake Up! 11 Facts That Show That Europe Is Heading Into An Economic Depression

Michael Snyder

Europe is not just heading into another recession. The truth is that Europe is heading into a full-blown depression. The economy of the EU is actually larger than the U.S. economy, and we are watching it melt down right in front of our eyes. Things just continue to get worse in Europe, and yet somehow the authorities over in Europe just keep insisting that everything is going to be “just fine”. Well, everything is not “just fine” over in Europe right now. Unemployment in the eurozone has just hit another brand new record high. In some nations in Europe, the unemployment rate is already significantly higher than anything the United States experienced during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Europe is a continent that is collapsing under the weight of its own debt, and this is just the beginning. A lot more pain is on the way. Officials over in Europe are trying to hold the European financial system together with duct tape and prayers, but it could literally fall apart at any moment. Europe has a much larger banking system than the United States does, so when a financial collapse happens in Europe, it is going to be very significant for the entire globe. Sadly, most Americans do not even pay attention to much of anything that is happening in Europe. They tend to think that the United States is the center of the universe and that as long as we are fine that everything will be okay. Well, all of those people who are not paying attention need to wake up. First of all, the U.S. economy is most definitely in decline. Secondly, the European economy is imploding right in front of our eyes and Europe is going to end up dragging the entire globe down with it.

The following are 11 facts that show that Europe is heading into an economic depression…

1. The economies of 17 out of the 27 countries in the EU have contracted for at least two consecutive quarters.

2. Unemployment in the eurozone has hit a brand new all-time record high of 11.7 percent.

3. The unemployment rate in Portugal is now up to 16.3 percent. A year ago it was just 13.7 percent.

4. The unemployment rate in Greece is now up to 25.4 percent. A year ago it was just 18.4 percent.

5. The unemployment rate in Spain has hit a brand new all-time record high of 26.2 percent. How much higher can it possibly go? This is already higher than the unemployment rate in the United States ever reached during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

6. Youth unemployment levels in both Greece and Spain are rapidly approaching the 60 percent level.

7. Earlier this month, Moody’s stripped France of its AAA credit rating, and wealthy individuals are leaving France in droves as the socialists implement plans to raise taxes to very high levels on the rich.

8. Industrial production is collapsing all over Europe. Just check out these numbers…


You don’t have to be an economic genius to understand that the perpetual uncertainty over the Eurozone’s future has led to a widespread freeze on industrial investment and development. Industrial production is collapsing at an accelerating rate, falling 7% year-on-year in Spain and Greece, 4.8% in Italy, and 2.1% in France.

9. There are even trouble signs in the “stable” economies in Europe. In Germany, factory orders in September were down 3.3 percent from the month before, and retail sales in October declined 2.8 percent from the previous month.

10. The debt of the Greek government is now projected to hit 189 percent of GDP by the end of this year.

11. The Greek economy has shrunk by more than 7 percent this year, and it is being projected that the Greek economy will contract by another 4.5 percent in 2013.

But sometimes you can’t really get a feel for how bad things really are over there just from the raw economic numbers.

Many people that are living through these depression-like conditions are totally giving in to despair. Just check out the following example from an RT article from earlier this year…


A 61-year-old Greek pensioner has hung himself from a tree in a public park after succumbing to the pressure of crushing debt. A note in his pocket indicates he is merely the latest in a rash of economic crisis-induced suicides.

The pensioner’s lifeless body was found dangling by an attendant in a public park not far from his home in the suburb of Nikaia, Athens. The attendant also found a suicide note in the man’s pocket, The Athens news reports.

The man, identifying himself as Alexandros, said he was a man of few vices who “worked all day.” However, he blamed himself from committing one “horrendous crime”: becoming a professional at the age of 40 and plunging himself into debt. He referred to himself as a 61-year-old idiot who had to pay, hoping his grandchildren would not be born in Greece, as the country’s prospects were so bleak.

Please take note of what is happening in places like Greece and Spain right now, because similar conditions will soon be coming to the United States.

This is one reason why I try so hard to encourage people to prepare for what is coming. There is hope in understanding what is coming and there is hope in getting prepared.

You don’t want to end up getting blindsided by the coming crisis and end up sitting on a park bench trying to figure out if life is still worth living or not.

Life is most definitely worth living. Yes, a storm is coming and the world is going to become incredibly unstable in more ways than one. But if you understand what is coming and you work hard to prepare, then you and your family will have a chance to thrive even in the midst of the storm.

Please learn from what is happening over in Europe. The economic horror show that is unfolding over there is going to come to America too, and time is running out.

Link:
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/wake-up-11-facts-that-show-that-europe-is-heading-into-an-economic-depression

"The threat of terrorism is a misty and shadowy demon outside the gates. It is a phantom enemy. The real enemies of America made the country their home in 1913 with the establishment of the private Federal Reserve banking system. Bankers, not terrorists, present the greatest threat to America and modern Western civilization."

Beyond The Phantom Of Terror: Five Real Ways America Is Under Attack

Saman Mohammadi

1. Economic Warfare: Big Banks, Imaginary Cliffs, And Genocidal Austerity.

America’s economic life has been deliberately brought to a halt by the psychopathic international oligarchy that controls the Federal Reserve, corporate America, and the U.S. political system. The systematic destruction of the American economy began in the 1970s and it continues to accelerate. There is no question that the deindustrialization of America was preventable. But sine the globalists in Washington abandoned America and its people, they saw to it that America’s core industries were destroyed.

The big event that advanced this covert economic policy was 9/11, which marked the beginning of a politically transformative global war on terror that has drained much of the economic resources of the nation. Trillions of dollars were wasted in Iraq and Afghanistan by the military-industrial-congressional complex.

The other major event that further enabled the looting of the American public treasury by the global financial oligarchy was the 2008 financial crash. The bailout of the criminal big banks was done at the expense of the economic security of the American people. The U.S. political elite was faced with a key decision in the fall of 2008 – defend the American people, or bail out the predatory international bankers – they went with the bankers.

And now the bankers are back for more money. The term “fiscal cliff” has been introduced into the public psyche to pave the way for the continued looting of the American people by the big banks. Key government programs that provide a basic safety net for millions of people will be cut under the rogue Obama regime. Dr. Webster Tarpley has the right term for this bipartisan policy: genocidal austerity.

For more information, see: 1) Webster Tarpley’s “Emergency Call for a United Front Against Austerity,” 2) “Why the Fiscal Cliff is a Scam,” by The Real News, and 3) Alex Jones - The Destruction of America: Brought to You By JP Morgan Chase.

2. Psychological Warfare: Media Propaganda, Mass Mind Control, And Cultural Programming.

The reality that America is under an information siege could not be any clearer. This siege is part of a larger psychological war on the American public mind. The music and film industries are actively engaged in this diabolical war. Stalinist tactics are being used by the U.S. government, mainstream media, and Hollywood. Ninety-five percent of films is social and cultural programming.

The upcoming propaganda film “Zero Dark Thirty” was made to reinforce the mythic narrative that Bin Laden attacked America and that Obama ordered his death while he was hiding out in Pakistan. Both claims are false. The film itself is most likely a Pentagon black opthat has the aim of further brainwashing the American people.

3. Total Global Warfare: Torture, Indefinite Detention, Killer Drones, And Presidential Assassinations.

Americans are being tortured by their own government. This is an indisputable fact. Read Glenn Greenwald’s article about the vicious and cruel treatment of free speech hero Bradley Manning by the military called, “Bradley Manning: a tale of liberty lost in America.”

Also, go here to read what Glenn Greenwald has to say about the idea of there being a “global battlefield,” and what this means. In the annals of history, no empire has had the technological capabilities, the arrogance, and the determination to wage war against the entire Earth.

In our time, the idea of a global battlefield, which is really spiritual in nature, has been utilized by the murderous totalitarian fascists in the U.S. government to basically declare any member of the human species to be a potential terrorist that can be killed without being given a trial in a U.S. court or an international court.

If person X opposes Obama’s policies then he is killed by his army of drones. That is U.S. foreign policy in a nutshell. Obama likes to kill defenseless citizens of the global village from the sky like a coward. A person would be mad to follow such a cruel and heartless leader.

For more analysis, read, “Everyone Is On Satan’s Kill List: The Rise of The Antichrist And The Death of Mankind.”

4. Intellectual Warfare: Dissent As Conspiracy Theories And The Weapon of Ridicule.

I’ve written so much about this topic that it is unnecessary to write anything new here. I’ll refer you to these articles: 1) “Why People Reject Conspiracy Theories,” 2) “Destroying Freedom, Truth And Justice With The Power of Words,” and 3) “Freedom of Speech In The West Is Constrained By The “Conspiracy Theory” Label.”

5. Political Warfare: Destruction of The Bill of Rights And Gradual Implementation of Covert Policies.

The core principles and laws of America have been systematically attacked by Republican and Democratic administrations. Obama is finishing what his predecessors in office started. Read, “President Obama Kills The Bill of Rights, Hands Americans A Bill of Lies.”

Republican and Democratic leaders, in league with the international banking cartel, have uprooted America under the cover of darkness, dug up its proud national soil, and scattered it to the winds of history.

The process of destroying the integrity of America’s legal and political structures has gone for decades. Post-Kennedy U.S. presidents have done violence to the American people in secrecy while falsely presenting themselves in public as their protectors. Their betrayal is generational and bipartisan. As creators of a fascist totalitarian world state, they deem America their worst enemy. They have done more to destroy America than the combined forces of radical Islam ever will.

The threat of terrorism is a misty and shadowy demon outside the gates. It is a phantom enemy. The real enemies of America made the country their home in 1913 with the establishment of the private Federal Reserve banking system. Bankers, not terrorists, present the greatest threat to America and modern Western civilization.

Link:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/beyond-the-phantom-of-terror-five-real-ways-america-is-under-attack.html

The bill is coming due...

Obama’s Now Borrowed More Than All Presidents from Washington to W

Terence P. Jeffrey

The federal government has now borrowed more money during Barack Obama’s time as president than it did in the period lasting from the time President George Washington took the oath office until July 2, 2001, more than five months into the first term of President George W. Bush.

At the close of business on Jan. 20, 2009, when President Barack Obama was inaugurated, the national debt stood at $10,626,877,048,913.08, according to the Treasury. At the close of business this Thursday, it stood at $16,323,083,449,604.98.

That means the debt has increased $5,696,206,400,691.90 during Obama’s presidency.

On July 2, 2001, more than five months after President George W. Bush entered office, the national debt was $5,693,220,327,798.14, according to the Treasury. By the close of business on July 3, 2001, it had risen to 5,698,195,769,465.40. Since then, the debt has never again dropped below $5,696,206,400,691.90—the amount it has increased in less than one full term of Obama.

(Between late 1999 and the middle of 2001, as federal revenues sometimes exceeded expenditures, the debt fluctuated back and forth over the $5.696 trillion mark--only to finally pass that threshold, without retrenching, between July 2 and 3, 2001.)

On Thursday, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner suggested that Congress give President Obama the unilateral authority to lift the limit on the national debt.

The Census Bureau estimated in September that there were 114,916,000 households in the United States. That means that the $5,696,206,400,691.90 the Obama administration has borrowed in the name of U.S. taxpayers now equals about $49,568 per household.

Link:
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/obama-s-now-borrowed-more-all-presidents-washington-w

Doesn't the Constitution say Congress shall pass no law that denies you your liberty and freedom???

The Government Can Still Black Bag Any American

Travis Holte

Lew Rockwell Blog

The Senate passed the much ballyhooed Feinstein-Lee amendment last night, which supposedly partially nullifies the provision in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) allowing for Americans to be kidnapped by the government and disappeared without any charge or due process. Senator Rand Paul put out a press release declaring victory. But as Congressman Justin Amash points out, the wording of the amendment effectively codifies tyranny:

The heart of the Feinstein amendment:

“An authorization to use military force, a declaration of war, or any similar authority shall not authorize the detention without charge or trial of a citizen or lawful permanent resident of the United States apprehended in the United States, UNLESS AN ACT OF CONGRESS EXPRESSLY AUTHORIZES SUCH DETENTION.”

Well, that Act of Congress is the 2012 NDAA, which renders the rest of the Feinstein amendment meaningless.

I have some questions. Why are Americans who are traveling, working, living abroad left out of this legislation? Does one only have his rights when he’s within the sanctified borders of the U.S.? Why is it not being argued that ALL PEOPLE have the right to due process? Why are there libertarians celebrating this passage when rather than making us more free it really only further enshrines the idea that the State grants (and denies) us our rights?

Link:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/the-government-can-still-black-bag-any-american.html

"The world is abandoning the use of the dollar to settle international accounts, and the demand for dollars is falling as the Federal Reserve increases the supply of dollars."

Our Collapsing Economy and Currency

Paul Craig Roberts

Is the “fiscal cliff” real or just another hoax? The answer is that the fiscal cliff is real, but it is a result, not a cause. The hoax is the way the fiscal cliff is being used.

The fiscal cliff is the result of the inability to close the federal budget deficit. The budget deficit cannot be closed because large numbers of US middle class jobs and the GDP and tax base associated with them have been moved offshore, thus reducing federal revenues. The fiscal cliff cannot be closed because of the unfunded liabilities of eleven years of US-initiated wars against a half dozen Muslin countries–wars that have benefitted only the profits of the military/security complex and the territorial ambitions of Israel. The budget deficit cannot be closed, because economic policy is focused only on saving banks that wrongful financial deregulation allowed to speculate, to merge, and to become too big to fail, thus requiring public subsidies that vastly dwarf the totality of US welfare spending.

The hoax is the propaganda that the fiscal cliff can be avoided by reneging on promised Social Security and Medicare benefits that people have paid for with the payroll tax and by cutting back all aspects of the social safety net from food stamps to unemployment benefits to Medicaid, to housing subsidies. The right-wing has been trying to get rid of the social safety net ever since Franklin D. Roosevelt constructed it, out of fear or compassion or both, during the Great Depression.

Washington’s response to the fiscal cliff is austerity: spending cuts and tax increases. The Republicans say they will vote for the Democrats’ tax increases if the Democrats vote for the Republican’s assault on the social safety net. What bipartisan compromise means is a double-barreled dose of austerity.

Ever since John Maynard Keynes, economists have understood that tax increases and spending cuts suppress, not stimulate, economic activity. This is especially the case in an economy such as the American one, which is driven by consumer spending. When spending declines, so does the economy. When the economy declines, the budget deficit rises.

This is especially the case when an economy is weak and already in decline. A declining economy means less sales, less employment, less tax revenues. This works against the effort to close the federal budget deficit with austerity measures. Instead of strengthening the economy, the austerity measures weaken it further. To cut unemployment benefits and food stamps when unemployment is high or rising would be to provoke social and political instability.

Some economists, such as Robert Barro at Harvard University, claim that stimulative measures, the opposite of austerity, don’t work, because consumers anticipate the higher taxes that will be needed to cover the budget deficit and, therefore, reduce their spending and increase their saving in order to be able to pay the anticipated higher taxes.

In other words, the Keynesian effort to stimulate spending causes consumers to reduce their spending. I don’t know of any empirical evidence for this claim.

Regardless, the situation on the ground at the present time is that for the majority of people, incomes are stretched to the limit and beyond. Many cannot pay their bills, their mortgages, their car payments, their student loans. They are drowning in debt, and there is nothing that they can cut back in order to save money with which to pay higher taxes.

Many commentators are complaining that Congress will refuse to face the difficult issues and kick the can down the road, leaving the fiscal cliff looming. This would probably be the best outcome. As the fiscal cliff is a result, not a cause, to focus on the fiscal cliff is to focus on the symptoms rather than the disease.

The US economy has two serious diseases, and neither one is too much welfare spending.

One disease is the offshoring of US middle class jobs, both manufacturing jobs and professional service jobs such as engineering, research, design, and information technology, jobs that formerly were filled by US university graduates, but which today are sent abroad or are filled by foreigners brought in on H-1B work visas at two-thirds of the salary.

The other disease is the deregulation, especially the financial deregulation, that caused the ongoing financial crisis and created banks too big to fail, which has prevented capitalism from working and closing down insolvent corporations.

The Federal Reserve’s policy is focused on saving the banks, not on saving the economy. The Federal Reserve is purchasing not only new Treasury bonds issued to finance the more than one trillion dollar annual federal deficit but also the banks’ underwater financial instruments, taking them off the banks’ books and putting them on the Federal Reserve’s books.

Normally, debt monetization of this amount results in rising inflation, but the money that the Federal Reserve is creating in its attempt to manage the public debt and the banks’ private debt is hung up in the banking system as excess reserves and is not finding its way into the economy. The banks are too busted to lend, and consumers are too indebted to borrow.

However, the debt monetization poses a second threat that is capable of biting the US economy and consumer living standards very hard. Foreign central banks, foreign investors in US stocks and financial instruments, and Americans themselves observing the Federal Reserve’s continuous monetization of US debt cannot avoid concern about the dollar’s value as the supply of ever more dollars continues to pour out of the Federal Reserve.

Already there is evidence of central banks and individuals moving out of dollars into gold and silver bullion and into other currencies of countries that are not hemorrrhaging debt and money. According to John Williams of Shadowstats.com, the US dollar as a percentage of global holdings of reserve assets has declined from 36.6% in 2006 to 28.7% in 2012. Gold has increased from 10.5% to 12.8% and other foreign currencies except the euro increased from 38.4% to 44.4%.

Russia, China, Brazil, India, and South Africa intend to conduct trade among themselves in their own currencies without use of the dollar as reserve currency. The EU countries conduct their trade with one another in euros, and although not reported in the US media, Asian countries are discussing a new common currency for trade among themselves.

The world is abandoning the use of the dollar to settle international accounts, and the demand for dollars is falling as the Federal Reserve increases the supply of dollars.

This means that the price of the dollar is threatened.

Concern over the dollar means concern over dollar-denominated financial instruments such as stocks and bonds. The Chinese hold some $2 trillion in US financial instruments. The Japanese hold about $1 trillion in US Treasuries. The Saudis and the oil emirates also hold large quantities of US dollar financial instruments. At some point the move away from the dollar also means a move away from US financial instruments. The dumping of US stocks and bonds would destabilize US financial markets and wipe out the remainder of US wealth.

As I have previously written, the Federal Reserve can create new money with which to purchase the dumped financial instruments, thus maintaining their prices. But the Federal Reserve cannot print gold or foreign currencies with which to buy up the dollars that foreigners are paid for their US stocks and bonds. When the dollars in turn are dumped, the exchange value of the dollar will collapse, and US inflation will explode.

The onset of hyperinflation can be as sudden as the collapse of a currency’s exchange value.

The real crisis facing the US is the impending collapse of the US dollar’s foreign exchange value. The US dollar’s value in relation to silver and gold has already collapsed. In the past ten years, gold’s price in US dollars has increased from $250 per ounce to $1,750 per ounce, an increase of $1,500. Silver’s price as risen from $4 per ounce to $34 per ounce. These price rises are not due to a sudden scarcity of gold and silver, but to a flight from the dollar into the two forms of historical money that cannot be created with the printing press.

The price of oil has risen from $20 a barrel ten years ago to as high as $120 per barrel earlier this year and currently $90 a barrel. This price rise has come about despite a weak world economy and without any supply restrictions other than those caused by the attempted US occupation of Iraq, the Western assault on Libya, and the self-harming Western sanctions on Iran, impacts most likely offset by the Saudis, still Washington’s faithful puppet, a country that pumps out its precious life fluid in order to save the West from its own mistakes. The moronic neoconservatives wish to overthrow the Saudi Arabian government, but what more faithful servant has Washington ever had than the Saudi royal house?

What can be done? For a number of years I have pointed out that the problem is the loss of US employment, consumer income, GDP, and tax base to offshoring. The solution is to reverse the outward flow of jobs and to bring them back to the US. This can be done, as Ralph Gomory has made clear, by taxing corporations according to where they add value to their product. If the value is added abroad, corporations would have a high tax rate. If they add value domestically with US labor, they would face a low tax rate. The difference in tax rates can be calculated to offset the benefit of the lower cost of foreign labor.

As all offshored production that is brought to the US to be marketed to Americans counts as imports, relocating the production in the US would decrease the trade deficit, thus strengthening belief in the dollar. The increase in US consumer incomes would raise tax revenues, thus lowering the budget deficit. It is a win-win solution.

The second part to the solution is to end the expensive unfunded wars that have ruined the federal budget for the past 11 years as well as future budgets due to the cost of veterans’ hospital care and benefits. According to ABC World News, “In the decade since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, 2,333,972 American military personnel have been deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan or both, as of Aug. 30, 2011 [more than a year ago].” These 2.3 million veterans have rights to various unfunded benefits including life-long health care. Already, according to ABC, 711,986 have used Veterans Administration health care between fiscal year 2002 and the third-quarter of fiscal year 2011. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-veterans-numbers/story?id=14928136#1

The Republicans are determined to continue the gratuitous wars and to make the 99 percent pay for the neoconservatives’ Wars of Hegemony while protecting the 1 percent from tax increases.

The Democrats are little different.

No one in the White House and no more than one dozen members of the 535 member US Congress represents the American people. This is the reason that despite obvious remedies nothing can be done. America is going to crash big time.

And the rest of the world will be thankful. America along with Israel is the world’s most hated country. Don’t expect any foreign bailouts of the failed “superpower.”

Link:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/our-collapsing-economy-and-currency.html

Save your nickels...

Dollar's Decline Catches Up With U.S. Mint

by Bob Adelmann

Within days of each other, two announcements concerning the future of the US currency appeared in the popular press, and each avoided any mention whatsoever of the primary driver of the changes.

First was the announcement on November 26 from Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner that the U.S. Mint will begin removing pennies and nickels from circulation starting the first of the year, supposedly because they’re too expensive to make. It costs the mint nearly 5 cents to make each penny while it costs more than 16 cents to make a nickel. This is costing the mint a lot of money, an estimated $187 million last year alone.

Two days later CNN reported that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) called for the United States to stop printing one-dollar bills and switch instead to one-dollar coins. The GAO claimed that such a move could actually make the government some money:

A $1 coin typically costs about 30 cents for the U.S. Mint to produce, but then the government can sell them to Americans for a dollar each. That financial gain is called seigniorage, and over a period of 30 years, it could [make] the U.S. government about $4.4 billion, the GAO said.

Avoiding the real issue, the GAO said that although the coins cost more to make, they would last longer, thus turning a profit to the government:

We continue to believe that replacing the note with a coin is likely to provide a financial benefit to the government if the note is eliminated and negative public reaction is effectively managed through stakeholder outreach and public education.

Unfortunately there is little likelihood that any of that “outreach” and “education” will include any attempt at explaining why the change is necessary.

The real issue is the declining purchasing power of the currency. And that goes back to the year 1913 when the Federal Reserve System was successfully foisted upon the American public as a result of the banking establishment's antipathy towards the gold standard, which prevented them from creating fiat (unbacked) money out of thin air. Perhaps no one understood that antipathy better than Alan Greenspan. In 1966, prior to becoming chairman of the Fed, Greenspan championed gold, writing in The Objectivist:

An almost hysterical antagonism toward the gold standard is one issue which unites statists of all persuasions. They seem to sense ... that gold and economic freedoms are inseparable.

He then went on to explain that the real reason for the push behind the scenes for the Federal Reserve was to finance the welfare state:

Stripped of its academic jargon, the welfare state is nothing more than a mechanism by which governments confiscate the wealth of the productive members of a society to support a wide variety of welfare schemes. A substantial part of the confiscation is effected by taxation.

But the welfare statists were quick to recognize that if they wished to retain political power, the amount of taxation had to be limited and they had to resort to programs of massive deficit spending, i.e., they had to borrow money, by issuing government bonds, to finance welfare expenditures on a large scale. (emphasis added)

But who would buy these newly issued government bonds in sufficient quantities over a long period of time to emplant the welfare state firmly onto the American public? There was in place, finally, the purchaser of last resort:

The abandonment of the gold standard made it possible for the welfare statists to use the banking system as a means to an unlimited expansion of credit. They have created paper reserves in the form of government bonds which — through a complex series of steps — the banks accept in place of tangible assets and treat as if they were an actual deposit.

Greenspan knew exactly how the system worked, and the inevitable end result of such unlimited expansion of the money supply:

The law of supply and demand is not to be conned. As the supply of money ... increases relative to the supply of tangible assets in the economy, prices must eventually rise. Thus the earnings saved by the productive members of the society lose value in terms of goods.

He concluded:

This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard.

Years later, when Greenspan was chairman of the Fed, Representative Ron Paul (R-Texas) pointed out the immorality of such a scheme:

When the government can replicate the monetary unit at will without regard to cost, whether it's paper currency or a computer entry, it's morally identical to the counterfeiter who illegally prints currency. Both ways, it's fraud....

This system of legalized plunder ... allows one group to benefit at the expense of another. An actual transfer of wealth goes from the poor and the middle class to those in privileged financial positions.

After the last remaining inhibition against unlimited expansion of the money supply was removed in 1971, when Nixon ended the Bretton Woods agreement, the money supply has virtually exploded and the purchasing power of the dollar has dropped precipitously.

Such decline was bound to catch up with the U.S. Mint eventually. Now it has.


Read more here:
http://www.thenewamerican.com/economy/economics/item/13779-dollars-decline-catches-up-with-us-mint

Tom Woods on nullification...

Forget Nullification, Says ‘Conservative’ Group; Stick to the Establishment’s Rules

by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.

Someone on my Facebook page (which I hope you will like) sent me a document drafted by a small group in Wisconsin (the Wisconsin GrandSons of Liberty [WGL]) that strongly opposes nullification – the Jeffersonian idea that the states must, according to the very logic of the Union, have the power to prevent the enforcement of unconstitutional federal laws within their borders.

The group’s statement is wrong in nearly every sentence, so for pedagogical purposes I have decided to examine it closely.

Here are some of those sentences, along with my commentary and corrections.

First, let us start by being clear as to what nullification is…and how it is viewed by the legal community.

The “legal community” was trained in American law schools, which if anything are worse than American universities as a whole in terms of promoting a particular point of view (in this case, Hamiltonian/Marshallian nationalism) and pretending no others exist. A Tea Party organization should want to challenge the “legal community,” not meekly sit at its feet, cross-legged, awaiting instruction.

It [nullification] is a state’s refusal to comply with a specific federal law, which that state considers to be unconstitutional, to the extent of breaking the federal compact (our federal Constitution, although not referred to here in the sense of legal “compact theory”), in the form specifically of the Supremacy Clause of our Constitution which states that the Constitution trumps all other laws, especially that of the individual states.

So according to the WGL, a nullifying state is breaking the federal compact and ought to be singled out for condemnation, but the possibility that the passage of an unconstitutional law by the federal government might break it is so trivial as not to be worth mentioning. Very strange priorities for a “limited-government” outfit, don’t you think?

The WGL gives us a slight improvement on the Official Law School Version of the Supremacy Clause. “The Constitution” trumps state laws. (This is better than the usual Official Law School Version, which says, “Federal law trumps state law.”) That’s true as far as it goes, but it’s irrelevant to nullification. A nullifying state is claiming that a particular law violates the Constitution. It begs the question to reply by saying the Constitution trumps all. That is precisely why the state is nullifying the law in the first place – to vindicate the Constitution against an unconstitutional law.

For what the Framers actually meant by the Supremacy Clause, see my article Nullification: Answering the Objections, and Brion McClanahan’s recent book The Founding Fathers Guide to the Constitution. But it obviously did not mean that any old law the federal government might pass was on par with “the Constitution” and therefore “supreme.” No one in his right mind would have ratified the Constitution under that understanding.

It is based on a theory originally proposed in the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 and 1799 authored by Thomas Jefferson and the Virginia Resolutions of 1798 authored by James Madison and later cited and advanced by John C. Calhoun. The Resolutions were published ANONYMOUSLY for good reason – namely the possibility of the Resolutions being called treasonous and due to the government positions of Jefferson and Madison at the time of writing.

The idea of nullification actually extends back to Virginia’s state ratifying convention of 1788, as Kevin Gutzman has shown and as I note in my book Nullification. The Tea Party seems to cheer the possibility that the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions might have been regarded as treasonous. The correct response to the possibility that the authors of these documents – which simply sum up the obviously correct compact theory of the Union – might have been hanged is horror, not delight.

These Resolutions were rejected by every one of the other states. Every state immediately realized that these resolves were a rejection of the Constitution and threatened the integrity of the Constitution and the cohesion of the nation.

This is not true. I count seven states that issued statements against the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions. We are supposed to believe that these states were just so concerned that the “integrity of the Constitution and the cohesion of the nation” was threatened by the power of the states to protect themselves against unconstitutional laws.

In fact, however, six of those seven states explicitly declared the Alien and Sedition Acts to be perfectly constitutional. These states supported the idea that journalists ought to be thrown in jail for criticizing John Adams. The WGL left that part out. No wonder those states opposed the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions!

Also left out by the WGL is that within less than ten years, some of these very states were themselves defending the Principles of ’98, as the ideas of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions became known. In 1820, the legislature of Ohio overwhelmingly approved a resolution noting that the great majority of Americans shared these views – views, one might add, which swept Thomas Jefferson into the presidency in 1800.

At the time, political leaders stated that the damage of the Resolutions was “deep and lasting, and was a recipe for disunion.”

But the damage of the Alien and Sedition Acts was so trivial as not to be worth mentioning? Again, what kind of priorities are these?

At the time of the Resolutions’ writing, there was no recognized “power of a state to reject unconstitutional federal law” and there is none now; contrary to the flyer’s statement otherwise. The flyer claims that nullification is “implied in the Constitution” but does not say where the implication is written although we surmise that the author of the flyer will say that such power is to be found in the 10th Amendment. If one cannot undertake to lay a finger on that article of the Constitution that is the unquestionable source of such a “constitutional power” then one must conclude that it does not exist.

Let’s start with the last sentence first. The WGL evidently thinks the states have only the powers expressly granted them in the Constitution. A more grotesque misunderstanding of the Constitution can hardly be imagined. The federal government has only the powers mentioned in the Constitution. The states and the people hold the remainder – in other words, all the powers not mentioned. To claim that the states do not possess the power of nullification because it is not mentioned is to misunderstand the Constitution entirely. Indeed the WGL has the Constitution exactly reversed.

The WGL is also incorrect to say no power to resist unconstitutional laws was recognized. We are to look to the ratifying conventions for the meaning of the Constitution, said Madison, and Virginia’s ratifying convention was perfectly clear that the states held such a power.

Federalist supporters of the Constitution at the Virginia ratifying convention assured Virginians that they would be “exonerated” should the federal government attempt to impose “any supplementary condition” upon them – in other words, if it tried to exercise a power over and above the ones the states had delegated to it. Virginians were given this interpretation of the Constitution by members of the five-man commission that was to draft Virginia’s ratification instrument. Patrick Henry, John Taylor, and later Thomas Jefferson himself elaborated on these safeguards that Virginians had been assured of at their ratifying convention.

The Kentucky Resolution of 1799 declared that Kentucky “will bow to the laws of the Union” but would continue “to oppose in a constitutional manner” the Alien and Sedition Acts. The Virginia Resolution did not use either the word or the concept of nullification. It used interposition which is an entirely different concept from nullification. Like nullification, interposition has also been repudiated by the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS).

Since Kentucky believed that nullification was a constitutional manner of resisting unconstitutional laws, I do not see the WGL’s point here. The further claim that the Virginia Resolutions in no way envisioned nullification cannot be taken seriously. A glance at the Virginia General Assembly debates over the Resolutions makes this clear. Kevin Gutzman, the most recent biographer of James Madison, likewise doesn’t buy it, finding no essential difference between the language of the resolutions of Virginia and Kentucky. (See Kevin R. Gutzman, “A Troublesome Legacy: James Madison and ‘The Principles of ’98,’” Journal of the Early Republic 15 [1995]: 569-89.) Judge Abel Upshur, in his 1833 pamphlet An Exposition of the Virginia Resolutions of 1798, systematically refuted the claim that the Virginia Resolutions were calling for anything other than nullification. (Upshur’s work is reprinted in my Nullification.)

Read the rest here:
http://www.tomwoods.com/blog/wgl/