Power of The Individual

Predictions From The Floor of Congress in 2002 All Have Come True

2012-01-06T07:59:00.000-08:00

This is the Ron Paul we should appreciate. The one that foresaw and predicted what would be the response to policy coming out of Washington.

The question now is what would happen if Ron Paul moved the country too quickly backwards. He is in my opinion too isolationist. If we were not where we are today maybe that wouldn't be so bad but we must walk back over a period of time not immediately.

I think it is important to look back at these predictions on the floor of the US chamber on April 24 2002 before we went into IRAQ but after 9-11.

Is 2012 A FIRE Sale? A New Credit Crunch on The Horizon?

2012-01-05T08:00:00.000-08:00

The Center For American Progress is Our Shadow Government

2011-12-30T06:26:00.000-08:00

The colors of the American flag are red, white and blue, but the colors of the Center for American Progress are red, white and green. Red for the left and green for Islam.
The Center for American Progress is not just any organization. Headed up by John Podesta, a co-chairman of Obama’s transition team and backed by a 38 million dollar annual budget, it is George Soros’ most ambitious attempt to turn his Shadow Party into a shadow government. CAP is the organization with the single greatest influence on the Obama White House and its foreign and domestic policy.
CAP is more than just another think tank; it’s a lever for shifting the Democratic Party further to the left, bought and paid for by George Soros and a roster of secret donors whose names are not made public by the secretive and powerful organization. Those who buy influence with it also get anonymity as part of the package.
But the Center is more than a rogue billionaire’s brand of progressivism turned into talking-point groupthink by Washington insiders. It is a link between the American left and the Muslim right, articulating the Islamist agenda as a vehicle for the foreign policy of the post-American left. It’s where Ali Gharib can run pieces whitewashing the Muslim Brotherhood while Zaid Jiliani attempts to justify the ambassador to Belgium’s comments denying the existence of Muslim anti-Semitism.
A CAP report co-authored by Wajahat Ali, a defender of Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists, and a board member of the Muslim Students Association, a Muslim Brotherhood front group, claimed that counterterrorism analysts were misrepresenting the threat of Sharia law and that Sharia was “overwhelmingly concerned with personal religious observance such as prayer and fasting, and not with national laws.” That particular revelation might come as a shock to raped women in Pakistan and gay men in Iran.

read the rest here at Front Page Magazine

Did You Know Anonymous Published A Survival Guide for The Coming Revolution?

2011-12-23T09:03:00.001-08:00

Anonymous - Survival Guide for Citizens in a Revolution

Francis Fox Piven and The Weight Of The Poor 2011

2011-12-23T08:34:00.000-08:00

Something Terrible Happened to The Arab Spring -Islamic Fundementalism

2011-12-19T05:57:00.000-08:00

Something Terrible Happened to The Arab Spring -Islamic Fundementalism

The History of Hyperinflation and Monetization of Debt

2011-12-07T07:15:00.001-08:00

The history of Hyperinflattion in Germany. Why Germany is frozen in action in the Euro crisis. click link

Welcome To Entitlement Nation USA

2011-12-02T06:24:00.001-08:00

h/t CNN.com
47% will pay no federal income tax
An increasing number of households end up owing nothing in major federal taxes, but the situation may not be sustainable over the long run.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Most people think they pay too much to Uncle Sam, but for some people it simply is not true.

In 2009, roughly 47% of households, or 71 million, will not owe any federal income tax, according to estimates by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

Some in that group will even get additional money from the government because they qualify for refundable tax breaks.

The ranks of those whose major federal tax burdens net out at zero -- or less -- is on the rise. The center's original 2009 estimate was 38%. That was before enactment in February of the $787 billion economic recovery package, which included a host of new or expanded tax breaks.

The issue doesn't get a lot of attention even as lawmakers debate how to pay for policy initiatives like health reform, whether to extend the Bush tax cuts and how to reduce the deficit.

The vast majority of households making up to $30,000 fall into the category, as do nearly half of all households making between $30,000 and $40,000.

As you move up the income scale the percentages drop.

Nearly 22% of those making between $50,000 and $75,000 end up with no federal income tax liability or negative liability as do 9% of households with incomes between $75,000 and $100,000.

Of course, income taxes don't tell the whole story. Workers are also subject to payroll taxes, which support Social Security and Medicare.

When considering federal income taxes in combination with payroll taxes, the percent of households with a net liability of zero or less is estimated to be 24% this year, according to the Tax Policy Center's estimates.

A key reason why there is a zero-liability group at all is because the U.S. tax system is progressive. Those who bring in more money pay more than those lower down the income scale to support government functions such as national defense and social safety nets like Medicaid for those in need. That progressivity can be dialed up or down.

"Some think it's too progressive. Some don't think it's progressive enough," said Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the center.

President Obama falls into the latter camp. He has proposed increasing the income tax burden on families making more than $250,000 and individuals making more than $200,000, while offering new measures to reduce the tax bite for most Americans making less.

One of Obama's proposals is to extend the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts for everyone except high-income tax filers, which was the group that derived the most benefit from those cuts.

As a result, under Obama's budget, he would keep the ranks of the non-payers higher than they would otherwise be.

read the rest here

Cramer Predicts, Again Some Big Market Trouble, Remember His 2008 Meltdown

2011-11-30T06:01:00.001-08:00

That was in 2008 just as Bear Stearns was going down. Cramer was pleading publically with the FED to loosen up the credit markets. The FED was asleep about the credit problems. Cramer has some friends on the bond trading floors and he was signaling what most of us could not see.

______________________________________________________________
This was Monday November 28 2011 -

Cramer is once again pleading with his audience that a big EU event is inevitable. Is he as prescient this time?
What does Cramer see? Are there problems in the credit markets that are growing in the dark again?

By the way - last night the world's central banks opened up the dollar spigots full blast. This may be the end of the Euro soon.

Part 2 -

Black Friday Was Historically Chaotic

2011-11-28T07:16:00.001-08:00

Is Antisemitism Is Breaking Out Around The Country?

2011-11-17T07:15:00.001-08:00

Jeruselum Restaurant Blows Up in The Middle of The Night - Foul Play in Cinncinatti?

Subway Sign Defaced in Bias Incident: MyFoxNY.com

Swaztikas and Cars Burnied This Week in NY City Like a War Zone

Is Society Breaking Down?

2011-11-14T06:13:00.001-08:00

h/t Economic Collapse Blog
Economic Collapse Blog
#1 In Detroit, 100 bus drivers recently refused to drive their routes out of fear for their own personal safety. An article posted on the website of the CBS affiliate in Detroit is quoting the head of the bus drivers union, Henry Gaffney, as saying that the drivers are "scared for their lives"....

“Our drivers are scared, they’re scared for their lives. This has been an ongoing situation about security. I think yesterday kind of just topped it off, when one of my drivers was beat up by some teenagers down in the middle of Rosa Parks and it took the police almost 30 minutes to get there, in downtown Detroit,” said Gaffney.

#2 In Wilmington, Delaware recently, a man offered to help someone carry a television down the street, but quickly realized that it was his own television which had just been stolen out of his house....

A Wilmington resident who stopped home for lunch about noon today saw a man carrying a flat screen TV down the street and asked the man if he needed help.
He then recognized the television as his own, looked up and saw the door to his home ajar, said Master Sgt. Adam Ringle.

#3 Shocking video has surfaced of a young thug walking up to a defenseless elderly man in a Chicago subway station and knocking him out cold. In the video, the friends of the young man are cheering him on and laughing at how easy it was to knock the old man out cold.
#4 Beating up old people for no reason seems to be catching on all over the country. Just check out the following report from a recent article posted on philly.com....

AN 84-YEAR-OLD ex-university official savagely attacked by four young punks during a walk in Wissahickon Valley Park earlier this week theorizes that the beating he endured was a cruel game of "get the old geezer."
Jim Shea, a former vice president of university relations for Temple, from 1968 to 1983, walks up to five miles on Forbidden Drive, in Fairmount Park, three times a week, but that type of stamina wasn't enough to stave off the lowlifes who not only beat him bloody, but dealt a blow to one of the things he holds most dear - his pride.

#5 All over the United States, police are wailing on Occupy Wall Street protesters with clubs and liberally using pepper spray on them. Whatever you may think of the Occupy Wall Street protests, the reality is that this is not a sign that things are becoming "more stable" in America. You can see video of one very disturbing confrontation right here.
#6 Clashes between police and protesters in Oakland, California recently became so violent that at one point the streets of Oakland resembled a war zone.
#7 Unfortunately, as the American people become increasingly frustrated with out system many of them are actually starting to consider violence as a solution. According to one recent survey, 31 percent of all Occupy Wall Street protesters "would support violence to advance their agenda".
#8 In New York recently, a confrontation between two female customers and a frustrated cashier ended with the cashier beating the living daylights out of them with a metal rod. The following is how a local CBS affiliate in New York described this incident....

It appeared to have started when two female customers argued and yelled obscenities at the cashier when he questioned a $50 bill they gave him.
One of the female customers then slapped the cashier. A woman is then seen jumping over the counter while the other woman goes behind the register.
That’s when the cashier can be seen on the video disappearing into the back of the fast-food restaurant. He comes back with a metal rod and begins hitting the women.

You can see video of this violent confrontation right here.
#9 These days, many Americans are so "on edge" that just about anything will make them snap. For example, a 60-year-old woman in New Mexico recently repeatedly stabbed her boyfriend because she thought that he was cheating during a game of Monopoly.
#10 If you thought that the above example was crazy, just check out what one man down in Georgia did recently. He actually firebombed a Taco Bell because they did not put enough meat in his Chalupa.
#11 In Cleveland last week, a 49-year-old man was sent to the hospital after a poll monitor working for the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections tried to bite his nose off.
#12 Not only do TSA agents make us feel like dehumanized cattle as we go through airport security, some of them are evening making fun of us at the same time. For example, one TSA agent recently scribbled “GET YOUR FREAK ON GIRL” on a TSA inspection notice after discovering a sex toy in the luggage of one female traveler.
#13 Identity theft is rising to very alarming levels all over the United States. For example, a recent article in the Palm Beach Post described what has been going on down in Florida this year....

In the first half of this year, the Federal Trade Commission received more than 20,000 complaints from Floridians whose identities had been stolen -- nearly as many as in all of 2010. More than half of those reporting their Social Security numbers or other personal information had been ripped off and used to commit fraud or theft were in South Florida, with heavy concentrations in parts of Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood and Hallandale Beach.
"That kind of increase is really shocking,'' said Vance Luce, deputy special agent in charge of the U.S. Secret Service in South Florida, which investigates identity theft and financial crimes. "The fact that it's on the upturn doesn't surprise me at all, but that's pretty alarming.''

#14 In the Seattle area, an elderly couple in their eighties was recently brutally attacked by a 31-year-old man armed with a crossbow and a hatchet. The following description of this brutal crime comes from King 5 News....

Prosecutors say 31-year-old John Chase was walking down the highway when he saw Ralph Aldrich, 88, in his back yard. Detectives say Chase shot and killed Aldrich with a crossbow and then went inside the home and repeatedly hit 83-year-old June Aldrich with a hatchet.

#15 As America falls apart, more of us than ever are taking medication for depression. At this point, more than 1 out of every 10 Americans over the age of 12 is taking prescription antidepressants.
#16 In some areas of the country, people have been literally tearing apart their own cities in an attempt to find things to sell. I recently discussed this phenomenon on The American Dream Blog....

In Fresno, California the damage caused by thieves stealing copper wire from city street lights is costing the city about $50,000 a month. So far, about 2,500 street lights have been stripped of their wiring.

#17 As people become more desperate, we are starting to see some truly bizarre crimes in many parts of the nation. In northern Alabama, one team of crooks has been using a forklift to pull entire ATM machines out of the ground.
#18 Most Americans don't realize this, but all over the U.S. livestock is being stolen from ranchers in unprecedented numbers. The following is from a recent Associated Press article....

While the brazenness may be unusual, the theft isn't. High beef prices have made cattle attractive as a quick score for people struggling in the sluggish economy, and other livestock are being taken too. Six thousand lambs were stolen from a feedlot in Texas, and nearly 1,000 hogs have been stolen in recent weeks from farms in Iowa and Minnesota. The thefts add up to millions of dollars in losses for U.S. ranches.
Authorities say today's thieves are sophisticated compared to the horseback bandits of the rugged Old West. They pull up livestock trailers in the middle of the night and know how to coax the animals inside. Investigators suspect it's then a quick trip across state lines to sell the animals at auction barns.

#19 At this point, thieves are becoming so bold that they will steal literally anything that they are able to cart away. For example, in the San Francisco area a while back thieves actually stole a copper bell that weighs 2.7 tons.
#20 According to the FBI, the number of gang members in the United States has increased by a staggering 40 percent since 2009. Right now, there are 1.4 million gang members terrorizing citizens on the streets of America.
#21 Down in Miami, thieves have become so bold that they have actually been breaking into parked police cruisers and stealing guns and ammo out of them. Many of those guns undoubtedly are ending up in the hands of gangs members.
#22 Be careful who you befriend online. They might just hold you captive and use you as part of a Satanic sex ritual. The following description of an incident that recently happened in Milwaukee comes from thesmokinggun.com....

Two young Milwaukee women were arrested this week after an 18-year-old Arizona man--who traveled to Wisconsin by bus after meeting one of the suspects online--told cops that he was held captive in the duo’s apartment for two days and slashed and stabbed more than 300 times as part of an apparent satanic sex ritual.

Anger and frustration are growing to unprecedented levels in this country, and all of this anger and frustration is manifesting in thousands of different ways.
As I have written about previously, the rioting, the crime and the violence that we are seeing now is only just the beginning of what is coming.
Unless a miracle happens, our country is going to keep heading down the road toward societal collapse. For even more examples that show that our country is starting to come apart at the seams, please see the following articles that I have authored previously....
-"18 Signs The Collapse Of Society Is Accelerating"
-"12 More Signs That Society Is Collapsing"
It won't happen all at once, but unless our nation changes direction dramatically, we will see things get progressively worse and worse.
Instead of teaching our children to love and care for one another, we have taught them to be incredibly self-involved. Today, way too many Americans deeply love themselves, deeply love money and are deeply addicted to entertainment. Each new generation seems to be even more prideful, even more arrogant and even more violent. As a nation, we are losing our empathy for others, our compassion for the needy and our respect for the elderly. Our family units are breaking down and thousands of our communities are being transformed into hellholes.

Students Protesting Tuitions In The Streets of London Again

2011-11-09T08:24:00.000-08:00

Attempts to set up a protest camp in Trafalgar Square failed today as police quickly swooped on tents and demonstrators.
The camp had been set up by protesters who had broken away from a student march to demonstrate against tuition fees and spending cuts.
Marchers were outnumbered by police as only around 2,500 attended the protest, which was overseen by 4,000 officers.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2059366/Student-tuition-fees-protest-Police-remove-Occupy-London-tents-Trafalgar-Square.html#ixzz1dE4q1ozg

If Italy Fails Who Will Go Next?

2011-11-09T08:04:00.000-08:00

Italy is being touted as the country that is too big to save. And with the ECB legally prevented from being a lender of last resort, an Italian debt restructuring is inevitable, according to Nouriel Roubini.
Italian 10-year yields have exploded over 7% and clearing house LCH.Clearnet SA has raised the cost of trading Italian debt.
And with the the turmoil in Italy, Ireland is having a harder time convincing markets and investors that it could escape contagion. Meanwhile, Greece is still waiting on a new government.
As the European debt crisis continues, we drew on UBS analyst Andrew Cates' aggregate balance sheet risk index to provide a snapshot of the financial fragility of countries that look most likely to default. The factors that help determine balance sheet risk include high cumulative credit outstanding, high banking sector leverage as measured by loan-deposit ratios, and substantial public sector debt as a percentage of GDP.

http://www.businessinsider.com/italy-countries-most-likely-to-default-2011-11

Occupy Oakland Has Become Just Chaos and Violence

2011-11-03T05:30:00.000-07:00

OAKLAND, Calif. —

Police and protesters supporting the Occupy Wall Street movement have clashed downtown following a dayof peaceful protests throughout Oakland.
   The confrontation began after protesters started a large bonfire in the middle of a downtown street. Dozens of police in riot gear moved in on hundreds of protesters as the flames leapt more than 15 feet in the air from several large metal and plastic trash bins that had been pushed together.
   Police warned protesters to clear out before firing several rounds of tear gas and "flash bang" grenades to clear the area.
   In the aftermath of the police actions, protesters with cloth wrapped around their faces to protect them from the stench of the gas marched through the area chanting, "Whose streets? Our streets."
   Some marchers wore gas masks.
   Glass covered streets and sidewalks from windows of area businesses that were shattered.
   Graffiti on the wall next to one of the damaged shops read, "This act of vandalism was not authorized by the general assembly. Peaceful protest."
Shortly after the clash, police and protesters separated by only a few feet stared each other down in a tense standoff. A few dozen people sat on the ground right in front of officers, some with their heads bowed as if in prayer.
   There were scores of police in riot gear on the scene, about as many officers as demonstrators.
The clash and subsequent standoff came only hours after Occupy Wall Street protesters declared victory after thousands of demonstrators shut down one of the nation's busiest shipping ports late Wednesday, escalating a movement whose tactics had largely been limited to marches, rallies and tent encampments since it began in September.
   As a voice over a bullhorn said "The night is not over, yet," protest organizers told demonstrators to head back to the downtown plaza where the Oakland movement has been based for more than a month. The Occupy encampment across the street from City Hall also was the scene of intense clashes with authorities last week.

   The nearly 5-hour protest at the Port of Oakland, the nation's fifth-busiest shipping port, was intended to highlight a daylong "general strike" in the city, which prompted solidarity rallies in New York, Los Angeles and other cities across the nation.
   The demonstrations in Oakland were largely peaceful and police said there were no arrests.
   Police estimated that a crowd of about 3,000 had gathered at the port at the height of the demonstration around dusk. Some had marched from the city's downtown, while others had been bused to the port.
   The crowd disrupted operations by overwhelming the area with people and blocking exits with chain-link fencing and illegally parked vehicles. The demonstrators also erected fences to block main streets to the port. No trucks were allowed into or out of the area.
   Port spokesman Isaac Kos-Read said evening operations had been "effectively shut down."
   And later port officials released a statement saying that maritime activity would be cancelled indefinitely, but they hoped to resume the work day Thursday.
   "Our hope is that the work day can resume tomorrow and that Port workers will be allowed to get to their jobs without incident," the statement read. "Continued missed shifts represent economic hardship for maritime workers, truckers, and their families, as well as lost jobs and lost tax revenue for our region."
   Hours after the rally began, the crowd began to dwindle and a voice on a bullhorn declared a victory for the movement, saying, "The port has been shut down. Let's head back to the plaza."
   The Oakland protests became a rallying point for the far-flung movement last week when an Iraq War veteran was injured in clashes with police in riot gear that included multiple volleys of tear gas, reports of "flash bang" grenades and rubber bullets.
   In Philadelphia, protesters were arrested earlier Wednesday as they held a sit-in at the headquarters of cable giant Comcast.
   Military veterans marched in uniform in New York, angry at their dim job prospects. And parents and their kids, some in strollers, joined the Oakland rallies by forming a "children's brigade."
   "There's absolutely something wrong with the system," said Jessica Medina, a single mother who attends school part time and works at an Oakland café. "We need to change that."
   Oakland organizers said they targeted the port because they want to stop the "flow of capital." The port sends goods primarily to Asia, including wine as well as rice, fruits and nuts, and handles imported electronics, apparel and manufacturing equipment, mostly from Asia, as well as cars and parts from Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Hyundai.
   Craig Merrilees, spokesman for the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, said its members were not being called to strike, but that they supported the protesters.
   The members "are supporting the concerns raised by Occupy Oakland and the Occupy movement to speak up for the 99 percent and against the corporate greed that is wrecking America," Merrilees said.
   As protesters left the area on foot some stopped to burn money, others bickered, and one burned an American flag.
   Zachary RunningWolf, a well-known Bay Area activist, said he burned the flag "to start an educated discussion among us."
   The day's events in Oakland began with a rally outside City Hall that drew more than 3,000 people who spilled into the streets and disrupted the downtown commute. Protesters hung a large black banner that read: "Occupy Everything, DEATH TO CAPITALISM."
   The crowd included students, families with young children and many people wearing labor union T-shirts. "Shut down the 1 percent. We are the 99 percent," they chanted.
   Although windows at two bank branches and a Whole Foods store were broken and graffiti was painted inside one of the banks, officials described the protests as peaceful and orderly and said no arrests had been made.
   "It is important to acknowledge the world is watching Oakland tonight," city administrator Deanna Santana said as demonstrators began to gather at the port. "And we need to ensure it remains a safe place for everyone."
   There was little to no visible police presence all day, although authorities were on standby in case of an emergency, officials said.
   Elsewhere, police in Philadelphia arrested nine protesters who staged a sit-in inside the Comcast lobby. Officers handcuffed them and led into police vans as supporters cheered.
   One protester, Bri Barton, said she was there because the gleaming Comcast tower represents excessive wealth in a city with many blighted neighborhoods. "It's hard for me to see this and that existing in the same city," she said.

   In New York, about 100 military veterans marched in uniform and stopped in front of the New York Stock Exchange, standing in loose formation as police officers on scooters separated them from the entrance. On the other side was a lineup of NYPD horses carrying officers with nightsticks.
   "We are marching to express support for our brother, (Iraq war veteran) Scott Olsen, who was injured in Oakland," said Jerry Bordeleau, a former Army specialist who served in Iraq through 2009.
   The veterans were also angry that returned from war to find few job prospects.
   "Wall Street corporations have played a big role in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan," said Bordeleau, now a college student. He said private contractors have reaped big profits in those countries.
   In Boston, college students and union workers marched on Bank of America offices, the Harvard Club and the Statehouse to protest the nation's burgeoning student debt crisis.
   They say total outstanding student loans exceed credit card debt, increase by $1 million every six minutes and will reach $1 trillion this year, potentially undermining the economy.
   "There are so many students that are trying to get jobs and go on with their lives," said Sarvenaz Asasy of Boston, who joined the march after recently graduating with a master's degree and $60,000 in loan debt. "They've educated themselves and there are no jobs and we're paying tons of student loans. For what?"
   Oakland let city workers use vacation or other paid time to take part, and officials said about 5 percent took the day off. About 360 Oakland teachers didn't show up for work, or roughly 18 percent of the district's 2,000 teachers, officials said. The district has been able to get substitute teachers for most classrooms, and where that wasn't possible children were sent to other classrooms, he said.
   "I came here because the schools are in the (same) boat as everyone else," said Steve Neat, a fifth-grade teacher.
   "We have five schools being closed here in Oakland. We have class sizes skyrocketing. We have cuts, cuts, cuts, just like everyone else. And the 1 percent, their share of the wealth is growing, and it's time for that to stop. It's time for some of that wealth to be shared out to all of society," he said.
   Some protesters broke off from the rally to picket at nearby banks. All three banks located within blocks of the plaza were closed, though that didn't stop protesters from chanting and waving signs outside.
   At a Citibank branch, more than a dozen protesters blocked the entrance, some with fake $100 bills taped across their faces. They held signs with messages such as "Share the Billions with the Millions." About 200 people chanted outside a Wells Fargo branch, where graffiti was scrawled on the wall. The messages read "The 1 percent won't back down" and "Who's robbing who?"
   Farther away from the rally, vandals shattered a Chase bank branch and splattered ink all over an ATM. Someone later taped a note to the shattered glass that read: "We are better than this. ... Sorry, the 99 percent."
   In front of the Oakland Public Library, about three dozen parents brought toddlers and school-age children for a stroller march in a "children's brigade." Demonstrators handed out signs written as if in a children's crayon that read "Generation 99% Occupying Our Future." People attached the signs to their baby backpacks and their strollers.
   By the time the group made its way to the main rally, itnumbered about 200 adults with their children.
   Like others, Marisol Curiel, an Oakland residents who brought her two sons, ages 2 and 4, in a double stroller, said there was a need to tax the wealthy to benefit families and schools and to make sure there are opportunities and jobs for children when they grow up.
   "Normally I would be the type of person who would watch it from the sidelines," she said. "But being able to have a presence and also a chance to be more educated seemed really important. All of this will affect not just now, but our future."

Bill Ayers Says Promote The Violence That Already Exists To His Revolutionaries

2011-10-26T09:13:00.000-07:00

Weather Underground Bill Ayers is Actively Supporting the Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-25T18:37:00.000-07:00

From Big Government.com

Former Weather Underground terrorist leader, and long time colleague of president Barack Obama, Bill Ayers is actively supporting the Occupy Wall Street movement, in his home town of Chicago – while his education activist brother Rick Ayers wants to see the movement extended to the nation’s schools.

In an October 16 interview with Chicago Sun-Times journalist Laura Washington, Bill Ayers described the” Occupy” movement as a “North American Spring,” akin to the “Arab Spring” still playing out in North Africa and the Middle East.
Said Ayers:

“These kinds of movements expand our consciousness of what’s possible…Every revolution seems impossible at the beginning, and after it happens, it was inevitable.”

Ayers’ support took a more practical form October 19, when the retired UIC professor led a “teach-in” with Occupy Chicago protesters on “ non-violent direct action” at the group’s HQ (in front of the Federal Reseve Bank at Jackson and LaSalle).
Ayers detailed the tactics and history of the Civil Rights movement, drawing analogies to the group before him. “You created power where there was none,” the famed agitator said.
Ayers spoke naturally to the crowd of 40, who sat in rapture, registering their approval by lifting silent fingers.
“It’s critical that you maintain your independence,” Ayers told the crowd – warning them not to be co-opted by labor unions or the Democrats. History, Ayers told the assembled activists, shows his preferred approach to political power. “Martin Luther King didn’t go begging for a meeting with Lyndon Johnson,” Ayers said. “Lyndon Johnson begged for a meeting with Martin Luther King.”
The protesters seem to have already followed Ayers’ advice. The group turned down Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s proposition for a meeting, demanding the misdemeanor charges from last Saturday’s arrest of more than 170 activists be dropped first.

Writing from San Francisco, Bill Ayer’s brother Rick, a Professor in Teacher Education at the University of San Francisco, has called for the “Occupy” movement to reach into America’s schools.
Rick Ayers, an activist in his own right and a long time collaborator with his brother Bill in the Rethinking Schools movement, wants to see the OWS tactics “applied to schools”.

Writing in the Huffington Post, Rick Ayers praised OWS for its militancy:

“Occupy wall Street is action. We have had talk, talk, talk for years, decades even. The right — the think tanks, big media outlets, politicians, foundations — thunders its dogma on a regular basis. The left – community organizers, unions, educators, activists — refute their arguments, though with a much smaller voice and very few dollars. But it has all just been a conversation.

Now action obliterates the deadlock. Whatever we have been waiting for — Obama, common sense, karma — we realized it was never coming to help us and it is time for action. Action creates facts, and facts are essential — they create possibilities and new words, fresh vocabularies. The silenced majority, the 99%, has finally been pushed so far that it is pushing back. Every movement is improbable until it happens; after the fact it so clearly was inevitable.”

Rick Ayers went on to say:

The same type of bold action could be applied to schools. The privatizers, those who would strip down our schools to being test-prep factories training only for compliance and passivity, have made their case with all the volume that billions of dollars can buy…

But so far it has only been a conversation. It does not matter if we defeat their arguments over and over. They still have the purse strings, the foundations, and the big megaphone. The time has come for action. Take over these schools. Occupy them. Sit in. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We built these schools with our taxes, our labor, our commitment to students and communities. They are not just playthings for overfed business dilettantes. Instead of taking marching orders from Wall Street, we need to take these schools and make them institutions of liberation.

With students, community members, and teachers in these buildings, imagine the possibilities. Poetry workshop in one room; free clinic in another; science lab in a third. Food production. Critical pedagogy class. Strategy meetings. A kind of education that embraces deep meaning, knowledge for people’s needs, and participatory democracy. Watch these young people step up. In a liberated space, the bored and resistant students in the back of the room will be transformed. You will see them taking responsibility for their education, demonstrate their desire for ethical action, for sacrifice for the common good, and for a future they can believe in.

Can we do this? At one site? At a hundred? You can be certain that this is a discussion popping up all over the country. This is the kind of action that would trump the endless, and ultimately losing, debate we have been locked in over the past years. We can’t talk our way out of the problems in education. But we can act, together, because another world is possible.”

Is the “Occupy” movement a passing phase that will wither when the first blasts of winter hit Chicago and New York and Milwaukee? Or is this the beginning a much more significant, and dangerous period of US history?
The involvement of veteran activists like the Ayers brothers indicates that this is no mere passing explosion of youthful anarchist outrage. The “mature” left is backing OWS for a reason. They’ve been waiting for this for a long time. They knew it would come. After all, their Marxist creed tells them that revolution is inevitable. Its only a matter of time.

Violent Revolution? It's What They are Threatening.

2011-10-25T06:41:00.000-07:00

This interview spells out the problem with today's media reality. You are not hearing the "TRUTH".

There is a violent underpinning in this "Occupy Wall Street" movement. It has garnered support of the Unions (SEIU, AFL-CIO,Teamsters, Transportation Unions, etc). It has the support of David Duke and the KKK. It has the support of the Communist Party and the National Socialist Party. They have the support of CAIR and the Islamists.

The point isn't whether you think these people have power. It isn't whether they are fringe group of crazies. It is that they are getting together with a common goal of remaking the American capitalist landscape.

This has happened before in History. It can and has lead to some of the most memorable revolutions in history (Bolshevik, French, Hungarian, etc)

Power of The Individual -

Occupy Wall Street Goes Global - Who's Organizing It?

2011-10-17T19:37:00.000-07:00

Occupy Wall Street Goes Global - Who's Organizing It?

see the rest here

The Anti Tea Party Revolutionaries - Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-17T19:17:00.000-07:00

The Misunderstood Populous Uprising

The media are mistakenly characterizing the Occupy Wall Street movement as unemployed Millennials with a legitimate gripe against Wall Street consistent with the Tea Party, or as a rag-tag group of unemployed stoners with no coherent message, not to be taken too seriously. After spending hours interviewing protesters in Oakland, California, both characterizations are way off base. If either scenario were apt, these folks would be marching on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and storming Congress. Instead, they're taking on Wall Street and storming the homes of the wealthy and the buildings of large corporations.
It's Mourning in America, friends. Wake up to the fetid smell of Marxism taking over Main Street, intent on crushing Wall Street.
Each person interviewed in Oakland had the same story to tell, and if you listen carefully to the video from the main stream press, it's this: capitalism is the root of all evil.
According to the Occupiers, Big Business has corrupted our government, corporations exploit workers, the rich control everything, the top 1% own somewhere between 30% and 60% of all wealth, the disparity between the rich and the remaining 99% is growing and the property-owning bourgeoisie is responsible for that. The workers need to take control of the means of production and mount a revolution to overthrow capitalism by expropriating property from the bourgeoisie. The workers need to rise up (fist pump), redistribute capital more equitably and establish a Marxist paradise -- slaying the neo-liberalism dragon and enthroning the worker, all in the name of "economic justice."
Read the rest at The American Thinker

Occupy Wall Street Protests Spread Strangely and Violently to Rome

2011-10-15T11:13:00.000-07:00

The protests against the global financial system that have swept across the US in the past month have spread to the international stage, inspiring offshoot occupations in London, Sydney, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Toronto and other cities.
A “global day of protest” is planned for Saturday in at least 868 cities in 78 countries. Organisers say they are broadly in favour of greater democracy in global financial and political systems.
“Undemocratic international institutions are our global Mubarak, our global Assad, our global Gaddafi,” said a statement from Egality, an activist group that is helping co-ordinate the global protests.
Shimri Zameret, a co-ordinator for Egality, said that events such as the Arab spring, the student-led protest movement in Chile and Spain’s indignados, or outraged, who have been demonstrating against joblessness and austerity measures, were all part of the same global movement demanding greater democracy and fairness.

The rest at Financial Times

Frances Fox Piven: "We Desperately Need A Popular Uprising"

2011-10-03T06:22:00.000-07:00

Frances Fox Piven: "We Desperately Need A Popular Uprising" ---- Click for the video interview

Watch her talk about what she is seeing hearing and sharing with her students at the prestigious university in NY that she teaches at.

Is she serious? Does she have influence? Who is she? What does she mean by a popular uprising?

Power of The Individual -

Van Jones Says Look Out October is Where The Progressives Come Fighting Back

2011-09-30T12:10:00.000-07:00

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Van Jones and The Progressives are set on bringing about social redistributive change. He calls it "Rebuilding the American Dream". When exactly was Marxism an American Dream - Redistributive Justice!?

Power of The Individual

Transit Union Just Endorsed Wall Street Protest - Look For Escalation

2011-09-29T07:36:00.000-07:00

According to Daily Kos, The New York Transit Workers Union (TWU) voted to support the Wall Street Protestors at their meeting last night.
A member of TWU Local 100 told a reporter that they would join the protest Friday at 4PM.
Here's more about them from their website:

The TWU has four main divisions: Railroad; Gaming; Airline; Transit; and Utility, University and Service. The Union has 114 autonomous locals representing over 200,000 members and retirees in 22 states around the country.

Occupy Wall Street has been picking up some decent support from unions in the past few days. Yesterday we reported that the Teamsters Union declared their support for protestors, and we also found out that the United Pilots Union had members at the protest demonstrating in uniform.
Today we learned the Industrial Workers of the World put a message of support on their website as well.
That's good for the protestors, sure, but the bottom line is whether or not these unions can produce bodies. Experience says that when they want to, unions can be quite good at doing that very thing.
And it seems that they're interested. In many of their statements of support, they say that their members are part of "The 99%" that Occupy Wall Street protestors keep talking about.
But what does that even mean? Naturally, we had to get to the bottom of it, so we found the We Are The 99% blog. It's made of a collection of pictures people holding up signs about how the sorry state of the economy has effected them. Here are some examples:

A guy in a lab coat with a stethoscope around his neck (you can't see his face) holds a sign saying: "Ivy League medical student over 100,000 in debt committed to a life of helping the homeless and mentally ill. We are the 99%."
Another girl holds a sign saying: "They say you can be anything you want if you work hard enough. The truth is you can only be what you want if you can pay enough. Only 20 and already drowning in debt because I want to follow my dreams. I am the 99%."
Another woman holds up a sign saying: "I'm a single mom of four, college graduate 3.6 GPA, shelf stocker, I go hungry daily, I am the 99%. Occupy Wall Street.

Now for your protest update: When we checked in on the live feed around 9:30 this morning, the protestors were marching, playing drums and chanting: "All day, all week occupy Wall Street!"
A cop briefly interrupted them and told them that they were "invited" to stay on the sidewalk and the drumming continued to the sound of applause cheers of "YAY the sidewalk!"
Also, good old Michael Moore will be giving an interview from the protest tonight on MSNBC at 8 PM.

Is There A Coming Market Collapse - Some Traders Think So

2011-09-27T07:36:00.000-07:00

A BBC NEWSREADER was left quite literally speechless yesterday when an independent trader confidently predicting a worsening of the economic climate – saying the savings “of millions” would be wiped out.
Alessio Rastani told the BBC News channel that the economic crisis was “like a cancer” and that if it was not dealt with quickly enough, it would become fatal to the global economy.
Any plan for resolving it, however, will fail – because “the governments don’t rule the world… Goldman Sachs rules the world, and Goldman Sachs doesn’t care about this rescue package.”
As the news studio fell deathly silent, Rastani advised viewers to “be prepared and act now”, advising that the worst thing people could do to protect themselves was fail to act.
Watch the climax of Rastani’s interview below.

Read more: http://businessetc.thejournal.ie/watch-bbc-newsreader-stunned-as-trader-predicts-wipe-out-of-savings-237781-Sep2011/?utm_source=shortlink#ixzz1ZADYhYhC

There is no way to know for sure. But the conditions for a sovereign debt crisis are very disturbing. The EU is not handling there own banking issues and massive debt obligation issues very well. Couple this with the rise of Nationalism across Europe and the spread of civil unrest is very concerning.

Pay very close attention to Europe.

Power of The Individual

Protests "Occupy Wall Street" Leads to 80 Arrests

2011-09-26T07:20:00.001-07:00

SEIU Leader - We Need to Spread The Chaos, Protest and Break The Laws

2011-09-20T08:19:00.001-07:00

The Enemy is Right Here in The US - Get Ready

2011-09-16T06:24:00.000-07:00

The New Black Panthers are threatening to create civil unrest inside the US.

There Is Massive Civil Global Unrest Near

2011-09-14T06:26:00.000-07:00

From The Business Insider.com (h/t)
Through a computerized analysis of news reports, researchers claim they can forecast major human events (via @_alea).
The online peer reviewed journal First Monday reports that by analyzing 30-years worth of news "culturomics" could have predicted the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya; the stability of Saudi Arabia through May 2011; and the location of Osama bin Laden's bunker to a 200-kilometer radius in north Pakistan.
For instance, here's how culturnomics predicted Egyptian unrest:

On 25 January 2011, popular dissent with the Egyptian state culminated in mass protests that continued through President Mubarak’s resignation on 11 February. Figure 2 shows the average tone by month from January 1979 to March 2011 of all 52,438 articles captured by SWB mentioning an Egyptian city anywhere in the article. Only articles explicitly mentioning an Egyptian city were included to filter out casual references to Egypt to return only articles reporting on the country in more detail. To normalize the data, the Y axis reports the number of standard deviations from the mean, with higher numbers indicating greater positivity and lower numbers indicating greater negativity. January 2011 reports only the tone for 1 January through 24 January, capturing the period immediately preceding the protests. Only twice in the last 30 years has the global tone about Egypt dropped more than three standard deviations below average: January 1991 (the U.S. aerial bombardment of Iraqi troops in Kuwait) and 1–24 January 2011, ahead of the mass uprising. The only other period of sharp negative moment was March 2003, the launch of the U.S. invasion of neighboring Iraq.

Looking at the world, the study concluded that "news is becoming more negative"—which seems to predict global unrest.
The below map shows the Summary of World Broadcasts content from 1979-2010. Green is positive and red is negative.

Check out the entire paper here >

Egyptian Activists Tear Down Israeli Embassy Wall

2011-09-10T08:46:00.000-07:00

(Reuters) - Egyptian activists destroyed a wall around the Israeli embassy and set police cars on fire in Cairo on Friday after thousands demonstrated at Tahrir Square to push for a timetable for reforms and an end to military trials for civilians.
Activists who spearheaded an uprising that ousted President Hosni Mubarak on February 11 have been piling pressure on the ruling military council to fix a date for parliamentary and presidential elections and to get rid of senior officials who served under Mubarak.
Thousands converged on Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the pro-democracy protests that toppled Mubarak, after Friday prayers for what was billed as "Correcting the Path" protests.
Some later marched to the opposite bank of the Nile in Giza. Demonstrators used hammers, large iron bars and police barricades to tear down the wall, erected this month by Egyptian authorities after daily protests over the killing of five Egyptian border guards in Sinai.
Protesters scaled the embassy building, removed the Israeli flag for the second time in less than a month and burned it.
Giza's police chief said that two police vehicles were set alight near the Israeli embassy building during the protests. State television said four police vehicles were set on fire.
"This action shows the state of anger and frustration the young Egyptian revolutionaries feel against Israel especially after the recent Israeli attacks on the Egyptian borders that led to the killing of Egyptian soldiers," Egyptian political analyst Nabil Abdel Fattah told Reuters.
Egyptian police stood aside as activists tore down the concrete wall to the cheers of hundreds of demonstrators.
"It is great that Egyptians say they will do something and actually do it," Egyptian film director and activist Khaled Youssef said, standing among the protesters outside the embassy.
"They said they will demolish the wall and they did ... the military council has to abide by the demands of the Egyptian people," he said.
Israel Radio cut into its Sabbath programing with bulletins about the Cairo demonstrations. Citing Foreign Ministry sources, it said the ambassador was safely at his official residence and that Israel was in contact with Egypt, the United States and European powers about the incident.
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said in a statement late on Friday that he had gone to the ministry's situation room in Jerusalem to monitor events at the embassy.
"Police will ... be left unharmed to continue demolishing the wall," one security source said. State television reported that 88 people were hurt during the pushing and shoving or from falling debris.
Tensions between the two countries sparked a series of angry protests that reached a climax last month when a demonstrator scaled the building and removed the Israeli flag.
The five security men died during an Israeli operation against gunmen who had killed eight Israelis. Egypt threatened to withdraw its ambassador from Tel Aviv. Israel has stopped short of apologizing, saying it is still investigating how the Egyptian troops were killed.
Protesters also demonstrated outside the Interior Ministry, near Tahrir Square, pelted the building with stones and scrawled graffiti denouncing the head of the ruling military council, Mohamed Hussein Tantawi.
State television said a fire broke out at a building used to store forensic evidence. Firefighters managed to put it out.
TAHRIR PROTESTS
Fridays demonstrations were organized mostly by secular groups which had been pushing for reforms, a new constitution and an end to the trial of civilians before military courts.
Islamists, including the political party set up by the Muslim Brotherhood -- Egypt's best organized political force after the dissolution of Mubarak's National democratic Party -- have distanced themselves from the planned protests.
The country's military rulers have promised to hand back power to a civilian government after elections, which they said would be held before the end of 2011. The council has also facilitated the trial of Mubarak and several of his aides, including former Interior Minister Habib al-Adli, on charges of corruption or conspiring to kill some 850 demonstrators.
But many Egyptians remain sceptical.
"Since January 25 until today, we don't feel there has been any change," said Kamel Ebrahim, a 37-year-old civil servant who was among the thousands in Tahrir Square.
"Thugs and thieves have multiplied and the Field Marshal has done nothing to improve things," he said, referring to Tantawi.
The protests also put pressure on Tantawi, who is due to testify in Mubarak's trial in a closed session on Sunday. The judge has banned all media coverage of the proceedings during the week also. Other senior figures, including former officials under Mubarak, will also testify.
"This is your last chance, either you say the people are in my heart or you leave," a man who identified himself only as a driver said. "Will you be able to say that Mubarak did not give orders to shoot?" he said, standing beneath a large poster on which Tantawi's face was spliced together with Mubarak's.
Activists said they have no plans to camp in the square.
Protests were also organized in Alexandria, Egypt's second largest city, and in Suez. Witnesses said military police detained three activists during a demonstration in the city.
In Alexandria, thousands of protesters chanted "The trial, the trial or the gang will stay in power."
One of the protesters, Hazem Ahmed, 26, a member of Egypt's Democratic Front party said, "I joined the protest because of the slow pace of the trials and it being not serious."
(Reporting by Dina Zayed, Shaimaa Fayed and Seham Eloraby, Abdel Rahman Youssef in Alexandria and Yusri Mohamed in Suez; Additional reporting by Dan Williams in Jerusalem; Writing by Sami Aboudi; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Terror attacks skyrocket in August in Israel

2011-09-05T13:39:00.000-07:00

Terror attacks skyrocket in August

Report: Total of 178 attacks against Israel recorded last month, compared to 53 in July

Ynet

Published:

09.05.11, 18:24 / Israel News

A significant rise in the number of terror attacks was recorded in August, the Shin Bet reported Monday.

According to the report, 178 attacks were recorded in August, compared to 53 in July. The figures include rocket strikes from the Gaza Strip.

Attack in south (Photo: Ariel Hermoni, Defense Ministry)

Overall, 134 rocket attacks against Israel were recorded during the month.
Shin Bet officials noted that the number of terror attacks originating in the Gaza Strip rose to 135, compared to 30 that originated in Judea and Samaria. Meanwhile, six terror attacks originated in Jerusalem, compared to eight in July.

read the rest here

The Black Panthers Are Training Inner City Youth For What Exactly? Coming When?

2011-09-02T07:31:00.000-07:00

And why exactly in America are we teaching decapitation techniques to inner city youth?

"Exhuming of a Nation.” Among other statements, he declared, “F*** whitey‘s Mother’s Day.”
“I see black folks in here. I see no crackers in here today,” Shabazz said. “How do you feel?”
“Black power!” the audience answered.
“You love being black?”
“Yes!”

Is There A Substantial Rise in Race Related Attacks Going on In The US?

2011-08-31T08:27:00.000-07:00

If There is A 60's Radical Attorney General, Can There Be A Black Hate Crime?

Power of The Individual

____________________________________________________

From The American Thinker -

One man was stomped to death and another man nearly killed in a racist amusement called the "knock-out game," currently being played by black teenagers. The victims were both white, and that fact needs to be raised in our national conversation about race.
PC disclaimer: only a tiny fraction of blacks play this game, and the vast majority of blacks do not condone violence of any kind. With that established, consider the facts:
Half-brothers Elliott T. Murphy, 18, and Deonta "Fuss" Johnson, 16, were recently convicted of first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder in the heinous stomping death of 61-year-old Jerry Newingham and the stomping attack of 46-year-old Kevin S. Wilson. The two convicted were part of a group of 9 blacks. Their two victims were white. The brutal murder took place in Decatur, IL, a place commonly known as "a classic Midwest USA small city." They group was playing the "knock-out game."
The game is as cruel and ignorant as it sounds. The only rule is to pick a victim and try to knock them out. The group of black teens in Decatur discussed playing the game, before going out and finding a random victim for their unprovoked attack. They called it the "point 'em out, knock 'em out" game.
After being let out of school, the teens began their fun. They "randomly" selected a white person to play along. The teens punched, kicked, and then jumped on and stomped their first victim, Mr. Newingham. He never regained consciousness after being mauled by the feral teens.
Seventy minutes later, the group beat up Kevin Wilson, who also just happened to be white. One witness said he saw Murphy jump on Wilson's head -- jumping with both feet. That witness said that Wilson was not even moving during and after the attack. Another witness, a 14-year-old girl, told a detective, "They were jumping on him like he was a trampoline, basically."
This is not the first time the game has been played. Such attacks have been reported in Illinois, Massachusetts, Missouri, and New Jersey. It was played on a large scale in Wisconsin, with as many as 18 suspects arrested for involvement. Students in Chicago have produced a community service movie speaking out against the game.

The "game" is not always lethal, but sometimes it is.
In St. Louis earlier this year, a 72-year-old man named Hoang Nguyen was walking with his wife, Yen, when four "young people" approached them. One first grabbed Hoang and moved his face to the side to make a "clear target for his fist," recalled his wife. Nguyen was punched so hard that he fell to the ground and struck his head. Then the attacker turned on Nguyen's 59-year-old wife, punching her so hard that she suffered a broken eye socket. She could only watch as her husband was then kicked repeatedly by another one of the misunderstood youth. Hoang succumbed to his injuries later that day. A young black male, 18 years old, is charged with first-degree murder in that attack.
In general, the knockout game involves "unprovoked attacks on innocent bystanders," according to police who have had to deal with it. A retired police officer explains, "Normally it was a group of black males, one of which would strike [the victim] as hard as he could in the face, attempting to knock him out with one punch." The victims are typically not robbed, but simply punched with no provocation. One would be hard-pressed to find an example of whites playing this "game." Given the racial make-up of victims and attackers in this trend of crime, it makes sense to ask whether there is a racial motive involved.
Between the flash mobs and the knock-out game, we have very good reasons to change the way we think about racism in America.
Why is the racial make-up of these crimes the way it is? Is it because non-blacks are more attractive as victims? If so, then it would be accurate to say that non-blacks are being targeted. Maybe they're not being targeted out of racial animosity, but surely any form of racial selection is by definition a racial problem.
Are the victims non-black because non-blacks will have more to steal? That explanation makes sense when there is a robbery, but many times there is not. One thing is certain: if the races were switched, this game -- combined with the flash mobs -- would be considered a national crisis. There would be a chorus of wailing and gnashing anguish the likes of which hasn't been seen in over fifty years. We would all be made to confess that racism has reemerged. The attacks would be treated as a reflection of a massive, looming problem. We would be talking about our nation's rotten, racist soul if whites were playing this game.

Read The Rest Here

Stop The Machine - Create A New World

2011-08-30T07:13:00.000-07:00

Do you believe that the anarchists, communists, socialists, and revolutionaries are on the march? Why are they on the march? What do they want?

They want to bring down capitalism and create a new system.

They will not tell you details about what that new system is. They just want you to join their movement out of anger.

Don't be a "useful idiot".

Power of The Individual -

We Are The Chaos We've Been Looking For

2011-08-29T06:05:00.000-07:00

Originally at the American Spectator.org Accelerating downward spiral. That is what I have been predicting for the Obama Administration for over two years. And now it's happening. Events are spinning out of control.
Rising inflation is restricting the Fed's options for keeping the economy high on monetary stimulus crack. The result? Fast developing market chaos.
On account of President Obama's economic policies, the economy never recovered from the last recession. Now it may go back into full scale recession before any recovery occurs. We may soon be living through a reenactment of the 1930s, not the 1970s. If we do not change course, there will be a double dip recession by 2013, directly caused by the economic policies Obama already has in place under current law.
And now we have riots in Obama's Amerika, kept quiet by the media, echoing the violence in London.
Inflation and the Fed
Rapidly increasing producer price inflation is now spilling over into the consumer price index. The CPI soared in July at an eight percent annual rate, up close to four percent over the past year. The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that these price pressures "could constrain the Federal Reserve from taking more action soon to spur economic growth and hiring." Or, as the Journal quoted J.P. Morgan Chase chief economist Michael Feroli, the budding inflation "could slow the degree to which the Fed provides further monetary stimulus."
Why is that? Because continuing to pump up the money supply could push inflation into double digits. And stopping it then will be even worse, throwing the economy into a bigger recession, just like in the 1970s.
But Rick Perry has it pegged right. The Fed is committed to pumping up the money supply right through the election, to prevent any downturn from darkening Obama's magical Dupe America reelection tour. That is why the Fed is so committed to keeping interest rates near zero until 2013. So to accomplish this, they’re running the printing presses. Inflation may well climb into double digits next year.
That inflation will force the Fed to turn off the spigot right after the election, with the contractionary effect coming in 2013, just when all the tax rate increases from Obamacare and the expiration of the Bush tax cuts will become effective. There will be a whopping recession then unless the voters remove Obama from office next year and quickly replace Obamanomics with Reaganomics, which solved a very similar problem in the early 1980s.
Obama's Strategy: Shut Down Debate
What else is contributing to national events spinning out of control? How about President Obama's abusive, deceptive rhetoric? It was evidenced in his disgraceful speech at Johnson's Controls, Inc. in Michigan on August 11, where he said:

We know there are things we have to do to erase a legacy of debt that hangs over the economy. But time and again, we've seen partisan brinkmanship get in the way -- as if winning the next election is more important than fulfilling our responsibilities to you and to our country. This downgrade you've been reading about could have been entirely avoided if there had been a willingness to compromise in Congress. See, it didn't happen because we don't have the capacity to pay our bills -- it happened because Washington doesn't have the capacity to come together and get things done.

This echoed what Obama said at a press conference soon after America's historic credit rating downgrade:

On Friday, we learned that the United States received a downgrade by one of the credit rating agencies -- not so much because they doubt our ability to pay our debt if we make good decisions, but because after witnessing a month of wrangling over raising the debt ceiling, they doubted our political system's ability to act.

Obama is saying that the downgrade resulted because the Tea Party had the temerity to debate and question his policies. See, it was a Tea Party downgrade, according to the Democrats' silly rhetoric. It wasn't Obama's record smashing national debt and first-time-ever trillion dollar plus deficits every year in office that caused the debt downgrade. No. It was the Tea Party-forced debt limit debate, that "month of wrangling over raising the debt ceiling," that supposedly indicated to the markets that "Washington doesn't have the capacity to come together and get things done."

More at the American Spectator.org

The Mexican Drug Cartels Are Terrorizing Mexico

2011-08-26T05:24:00.000-07:00

Is there an civility left in Mexico?

Food Prices Could Hit Tipping Point For Social Unrest

2011-08-18T10:42:00.000-07:00

Food Prices Could Hit Tipping Point for Global Unrest

From Wired Science

By Brandon Keim

When food shortages and rising prices drive people to desperation, social unrest soon follows. It’s as true today as it was in 18th-century France. According to a new analysis of food prices and unrest, the 2008 global food riots and ongoing Arab Spring may be a preview of what’s coming.
“When you have food prices peak, you have all these riots. But look under the peaks, at the background trend. That’s increasing quite rapidly, too,” said Yaneer Bar-Yam, president of the New England Complex Systems Institute. “In one to two years, the background trend runs into the place where all hell breaks loose.”
Bar-Yam and his colleagues are hunters of mathematical signals in social data: market trends and economic patterns, ethnic violence, Hollywood movies. In their latest expedition, described Aug. 11 in the prepublication online arXiv, they focus on the 2008 food riots and the Arab Spring, both of which followed year-long surges in basic food prices.

FAO Price Index at current prices (black curve) and corrected for inflation (blue curve) between January 2004 and May 2011. Red dashed lines signify the beginning dates of food riots and unrest in North Africa and the Middle East. Black and blue horizontal lines represent the current-price and inflation-adjusted food price thresholds for riots. Bar-Yam et al/arXiv

The researchers are hardly the first to portray food problems as a spark that inflames social inequality and stokes individual desperation, unleashing and amplifying impulses of rebellion. The role of food prices in triggering the Arab Spring has been widely described. Their innovation is a pair of price points on the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s food price index: about 215 in current prices, or 190 when corrected for inflation.
It’s at those points where, on a graph of food prices and social unrest between 2004 and 2011, unrest breaks out. But whereas they were crossed by price jumps in 2008, Bar-Yam and colleagues calculate that the underlying, steady trend — driven primarily by commodity speculation, agricultural crop-to-fuel conversion and rising prices of fertilizer and oil — crosses those points between 2012 and 2013.
“Once we get there, the peaks aren’t the problem anymore. Instead it’s the trend. And that’s harder to correct,” said Bar-Yam. At that point, widespread political unrest and instability can be expected, even in countries less troubled than those in North Africa and the Middle East.
“When the ability of the political system to provide security for the population breaks down, popular support disappears. Conditions of widespread threat to security are particularly present when food is inaccessible to the population at large,” write Bar-Yam and colleagues in arXiv. “All support for the system and allowance for its failings are lost. The loss of support occurs even if the political system is not directly responsible for the food security failure, as is the case if the primary responsibility lies in the global food supply system.”
The analysis comes with caveats, one of which is the possibility that it’s the dynamics of spiking prices, rather than a particular price level, that unleashes unrest. But according to Bar-Yam, even the underlying trends are rising at an extremely fast pace. “If things change slowly rather than rapidly, there would be a different response,” he said. “If it was going to happen over a period of 10 to 20 years, we’d be talking about something else. But the circumstance we’re talking about is one of changes in a year or two.”
Citation: “The Food Crises and Political Instability in North Africa and the Middle East.” By Marco Lagi, Karla Z. Bertrand and Yaneer Bar-Yam. arXiv, Aug. 11, 2011.

Run Up To UN Vote on 2 State Solution in September Gets Bloody

2011-08-18T08:29:00.000-07:00

6 Israeli Dead in Triple Terror Attack

Six dead following a triple terrorist attack in Israel's southern region. IDF soldiers killed several terrorists and search for others.

by Chana Ya'ar

Published: 18/08/11, 2:46 PM

Attack on Bus 392

Screen Shot Channel 2

Magen David Adom (MDA) has declared a mass casualty event and the State of Israel has moved to its highest security alert nationwide as hospitals report that five are dead following terror attacks that struck the country's southern region midday Thursday.
Authorities are calling for Israeli to donate blood at local MDA stations across the country. The area has been declared a closed military area and the IDF spokesman has asked people to keep away.
At Yoseftal Medical Center, 29 casualties were admitted with a range of injuries, including severe trauma. Seven of the most critically wounded were sent by medical helicopter to Soroka Medical Center in Be'er Sheva.
Two Egged buses and an IDF vehicle were targeted by unidentified terrorist cells in what appears to be a coordinated operation. Several soldiers were also wounded when explosives went off at the security fence with Gaza.
In the first attack, three terrorists ambushed bus # 392 about 30 kilometers from Eilat as it traveled on Route 12 from Be'er Sheva towards the city, opening fire with automatic weapons. Most of the passengers in the first bus were IDF soldiers heading to the Red Sea resort city on leave. The troops engaged the terrorists in a shootout, killing at least two of the three operatives and leaving a third critically injured.
Terrorists targeted a second Egged bus less than an hour later, firing a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) at the vehicle and wounding more passengers just a few kilometers from Eilat.
An IDF military vehicle was blown up as it raced to the scene, driving over an explosive device planted on the narrow road, killing the car's occupants.
A number of soldiers were seriously wounded in the attack.

From Arutz Sheva

Class War Fare is Burning in Germany Now

2011-08-18T08:18:00.000-07:00

Car Burnings are a 'Precursor to Terrorism'

By Florian Gathmann

REUTERS

The last three nights have seen an unprecedented wave of car torchings in Berlin, but police are not sure who to arrest. Politicians on the left and right warn the attacks could lead to more dangerous forms of protest. Meanwhile, the failure to stop them could sway September's mayoral election.

Erhart Körting, in charge of security matters in Berlin, isn't known as a careless man, but on Wednesday he uttered a sentence that may call his sanity into doubt. "I still park my car on the street in front of my house," he said.

The center-left Social Democrat obviously wanted to make a point -- that Berlin authorities won't be cowed by a rash of seemingly random car burnings in the German capital. But the numbers are alarming. After the senator for interior policy spoke on Wednesday night, nine cars were torched around Berlin. Thirty were damaged or destroyed by flames on Monday and Tuesday, about 15 per night, and authorities have made no arrests. "We need hard deterrent measures," said Rainer Wendt, head of DPoIG, the country's second-largest police union, according to the mass-circulation Bild on Thursday morning. A security expert for the Social Democrats, Dieter Wiefelspütz, told the paper that automobile arsons were "a precursor to terrorism."
No one has been hurt so far, and no one has claimed responsibility. But burning upscale cars is a form of left-wing protest in some German cities, particularly Berlin and Hamburg. Authorities say 300 cars have been torched in Berlin since the start of 2011. The number of arsons over the last three days has been disproportionate, however, and authorities say the targets are not just luxury cars but also vans and delivery trucks.
Berlin's mayor, Klaus Wowereit, called the burnings "deranged vandalism" and said they amounted to "unacceptable crimes that must be prosecuted to the fullest extent."
Berlin Election Approaches
They come at a very bad time for Wowereit's left-wing coalition of Social Democrats (SPD) and socialist Left Party members. Their campaign for a municipal election on September 18 has trundled along uneventfully, but the arsons may now threaten the incumbent government.
The two parties stand to gain nothing in a debate over burning cars: Wowereit's cabinet has failed to create a policy over the last few years against the crimes, which admittedly may be hard to prevent along the city's 5,400 kilometers (or 3,355 miles) of streets.
Investigators have also said in the meantime that the perpetrators may not be left-wing extremists alone. Because of the variety of targets, experts say, the arsons don't resemble an organized political protest -- they seem to be the work of random individual perpetrators.

Nevertheless, the latest car burnings have moved to districts such as Charlottenburg and Tiergarten. Until now, the most common settings for car arson had been the alternative eastern districts of Mitte, Prenzlauer Berg and Friedrichshain -- all of which have been undergoing steady gentrifiction in recent years. The conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) -- Germany's main rival party to the SPD -- smells a campaign issue. The party is planning a new series of posters on security in Berlin, and on Thursday Wolfgang Bosbach, a Christian Democrat who heads a committee for interior security in the federal parliament, criticized Mayor Wowereit's performance.
"The terrorism of the Red Army Faction (or Baader-Meinhof gang, which bombed political targets in the 1970s) started with quote-unquote 'just' arson," he told broadcaster N24. "For this reason there is a danger that the violence could one day target people."
From Der Spiegle

Farm Land Is Becoming The Next Biggest Investment For Hedge Funds - WHY?

2011-08-18T06:24:00.000-07:00

Farm Land Is Turning Out To Be an Incredible Investment

Perry Vieth baled hay on a neighbor’s farm in Wisconsin for two summers during high school in 1972 and 1973. The grueling labor left him with no doubt about getting a college degree so that he’d never have to work as hard again for a paycheck. Thirty-eight years later, and after a career as a securities lawyer and fixed-income trader, Vieth is back on the farm.
Except, now, he owns it. As co-founder of Ceres Partners LLC, a Granger, Indiana-based investment firm, Vieth oversees 61 farms valued at $63.3 million in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Tennessee. He’s so enthusiastic about the investments that he quit a job in 2008 overseeing $7 billion in fixed-income assets at PanAgora Asset Management Inc., a Boston-based quantitative money management firm, to focus full time on farming, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its September issue.
On a spring afternoon, Vieth, 54, barrels along backcountry roads in a Jeep Cherokee in Indiana and Michigan to scout a fruit orchard and corn and soybean farms to buy. Rural towns with names such as Three Rivers pass by in a blur, separated by a wide horizon of fields with young crops popping up.
“When I told people I was leaving to start an investment fund in farmland, they said, ‘You’re doing what?’” says Vieth, in a red polo golf shirt and khakis. “It will always be difficult for Wall Street firms to understand. It’s not like buying stocks on a computer.”
It’s much better: Returns from farmland have trounced those of equities. Ceres Partners produced an average annual gain of 16.4 percent after fees from January 2008, just after the firm started, through June of this year, Vieth says.

George Soros

The bulk of the returns are in rent payments from tenant farmers who grow and sell the crops and from land appreciation. The Standard & Poor’s GSCI Agriculture Index of eight raw materials gained 5.3 percent annually over the same period, and the S&P 500 Index (SPX) dropped almost 1 percent.
Investors are pouring into farmland in the U.S. and parts of Europe, Latin America and Africa as global food prices soar. A fund controlled by George Soros, the billionaire hedge-fund manager, owns 23.4 percent of South American farmland venture Adecoagro SA.
Hedge funds Ospraie Management LLC and Passport Capital LLC as well as Harvard University’s endowment are also betting on farming. TIAA-CREF, the $466 billion financial services giant, has $2 billion invested in some 600,000 acres (240,000 hectares) of farmland in Australia, Brazil and North America and wants to double the size of its investment.

Jim Rogers

“I have frequently told people that one of the best investments in the world will be farmland,” says Jim Rogers, 68, chairman of Singapore-based Rogers Holdings, who predicted the start of the global commodities rally in 1996. “You’ve got to buy in a place where it rains, and you have to have a farmer who knows what he’s doing. If you can do that, you will make a double whammy because the crops are becoming more valuable.”
The growth in demand for food, spurred by the rising middle classes in China, India and other emerging markets, shows no signs of abating. Food prices in June, as measured by a United Nations index of 55 food commodities, were just slightly below their peak in February. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization said in a June report that it expects food costs to remain high through 2012.
So many investors have rushed to capitalize on food prices in the past three years that they may be creating a farmland bubble. The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, which covers Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska and other agricultural states, said in May that farmland prices had surged 20 percent in the first quarter compared with a year earlier.

Safe Haven

“Yes, farmland will be a bubble again; all agricultural products will be in a bubble again,” says Rogers, who is an investor in Agrifirma Brazil Ltd., a South American farmland owner.
Hedge-fund manager Stephen Diggle calls farming the ultimate safe haven. Diggle began buying farms with his own money in 2008 after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (LEHMQ) filed for bankruptcy in September of that year and the S&P 500 plunged 43 percent in the next six months. He purchased 8,000 acres in Uruguay, three smaller plots in southern Illinois and an 80-acre New Zealand kiwi-and-avocado orchard.
“We really thought all the investment banks would go under,” says Diggle, who as a hedge-fund manager uses options and warrants to bet on price swings in the market. “Everyone said, ‘Buy gold.’ But at the end of the day, you can’t eat it. If everything else goes and I just have these farms, it makes me moderately wealthy.”

Read the rest at Bloomberg

Why Are The Rich for Higher Taxes?

2011-08-17T06:23:00.000-07:00

Why are the rich for higher taxes? Becuase they have their money already.

From the WSJ

Barney Kilgore, the man who made the Wall Street Journal into a national publication, was once asked why so many rich people favored higher taxes. That's easy, he replied. They already have their money.
That insight is worth recalling amid the latest political duet from President Obama and Warren Buffett demanding higher taxes on "millionaires and billionaires." Mr. Buffett is repeating his now familiar argument this week, coinciding with Mr. Obama's Midwestern road trip on the economy. Since the media are treating Mr. Buffett as a tax oracle, let's take a closer look at some of the billionaire's intellectual tax dodges.
• The double tax oversight. The Berkshire Hathaway magnate makes much of the fact that he paid only 17.4% of his income in taxes, which he considers unfair when salaried workers often pay more. But Mr. Buffett makes most of his income from his investments, in particular from dividends and capital gains that are taxed at a rate of 15%.
What he doesn't say is that much of his income was already taxed once as corporate income, which is assessed at a 35% rate (less deductions). The 15% levy on capital gains and dividends to individuals is thus a double tax that takes the overall tax rate on that corporate income closer to 45%.

This onerous tax on capital is a U.S. competitive disadvantage in the global economy, which is why Congress agreed in 2003 to cut the rates on dividends and capital gains. Even as the rest of the world is cutting tax rates on corporate income, Mr. Buffett wants to raise U.S. rates in a way that would make America less attractive for investment. Under a sensible tax reform, the feds would impose either a corporate tax or a dividend and capital gains tax, but not both.
• The middle-class bait-and-switch. Like Mr. Obama, Mr. Buffett speaks about raising taxes only on the rich. But somehow he ignores that the President's tax increase starts at $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for couples. Mr. Obama ought to call them "thousandaires," but that probably doesn't poll as well.
The President needs to levy his tax increase at such a lower income level because that's where the money is. In 2009, 237,000 taxpayers reported income above $1 million and they paid $178 billion in taxes. A mere 8,274 filers reported income above $10 million, and they paid only $54 billion in taxes.
But 3.92 million reported income above $200,000 in 2009, and they paid $434 billion in taxes. To put it another way, roughly 90% of the tax filers who would pay more under Mr. Obama's plan aren't millionaires, and 99.99% aren't billionaires.
Mr. Buffett says it's only "fair" to raise his taxes, but he's lending his credibility to raising taxes on millions of middle-class earners for whom a few extra thousand dollars in after-tax income is a big deal. Unlike Mr. Buffett, those middle-class earners aren't rich and may earn $250,000 for only a few years of their working lives. How is that fair?
• The charity loophole. For billionaires like Mr. Buffett, the single most important deduction in the tax code is for charitable giving. Middle-class earners can't give nearly as much money away to reduce their overall tax burden. Yet we don't hear Mr. Buffett calling for the elimination of that deduction in the name of fairness.
Mr. Buffett has also already sheltered the bulk of his fortune from federal taxes by putting them into a foundation that will give the money away. That's an act of generosity, but if the government's purposes are so vital, why doesn't he simply give the money to the IRS?
Rebecca Quick of CNBC put that question to Mr. Buffett in 2007. His answer: "Well, that's a choice and it's an option . . . If I had to give it to a single individual, or make some young Buffett a multibillionaire, or give it to the government, I'd absolutely give it to the government. I think that on balance the Gates Foundation, my daughter's foundation, my two sons' foundations will do a better job with lower administrative costs and better selection of beneficiaries than the government."
Mr. Buffett is no doubt right about the relative efficiency of private donors, but should billionaire philanthropists get such a large tax preference? Another case of fairness?
Mr. Buffett is one of the great stock-pickers of his time, and we don't begrudge him a single dollar of his wealth. We only wish that, having already made himself rich, he weren't so intent on making it harder for others to become rich too. If he's worried about being undertaxed, we'd suggest he simply write a big check to Uncle Sam and go back to his day job of picking investments.

Socialist Marxist Global Revolution Possibility?

2011-08-10T06:32:00.000-07:00

The London Riots May Very Well Have Been Race Riots

2011-08-08T08:16:00.000-07:00

What colour is Mark Duggan? Mark Duggan is the man who was shot dead by the police on Thursday in Tottenham. The Tottenham riots last night were sparked when people protested his death. This morning, I first heard of the riots on the radio, then on the television. I read articles on the internet. But oddly, no one would say what colour Mark Duggan was. No one would say the unsayable, that the rioters were, I suspect on the whole, black. Then, finally, Toby Young’s Telegraph blog post on the riots was published. Is Toby Young the only journalist out there who will dare say that these riots are about race?
Still, one paper did carry a photo of Mr Duggan. When I saw the photo, it confirmed what I knew instinctively: black youths once again have set London alight.
Some of the black kids I used to teach will tell you that the riots are absolutely justified. A number of adults would agree with them. Everywhere I read that the protest was understandable because “people are very angry”.
I’d like to know what they’re angry about. Mark Duggan is dead. He was shot by the police in a shootout. Duggan was in a minicab and shots were fired from both the cab and the police elsewhere. A police officer was hurt in the incident and a bullet was found lodged in a police radio. Either Duggan was shooting at the police or the driver of the minicab was. Either Duggan was in the wrong place at the wrong time and his death is a terrible tragedy – he was caught in the crossfire – or he shot at the police and the police defended themselves. Whatever the explanation, the police did not kill this man in cold blood.
Yet, a friend of Duggan who gave her name as Niki, 53, said marchers had wanted “justice for the family” and “something had to be done”. She said some of them lay in the road to make their point. “They’re making their presence known because people are not happy. This guy was not violent. Yes, he was involved in things but he was not an aggressive person. He had never hurt anyone.”
I wonder what “involved in things” means? I also wonder whether the police officer who was hurt at the scene believes Mark Duggan never hurt anyone. “Something had to be done”? She makes it sound as if the police are killing black people every other weekend and finally someone decided to take a stand.
At school I remember watching a presentation given to the kids by Trident, the Metropolitan Police Service unit set up to investigate and inform communities of gun crime in London’s black community. I didn’t know what Trident was then, and it struck me that all of the photos of people shot (the idea was to scare the kids) were black. So at the end, I approached one of the policemen and asked him what percentage of those involved in gun crime were black. I kid you not, but my question made this thirty-something white man who was, after all, trained to deal with the black community and its issues, turn pink.
He explained that about 80 per cent of gun crime took place in the black community. I smiled uncomfortably. But no, he said, it was worse than that. Then he told me that 80 per cent was black on black gun crime, and that of the remaining 20 per cent about 75 per cent involved at least one black person: black shooting white, or white shooting black. I pushed to know more. While he kept saying his stats were crude and he didn’t have scientific numbers, on the whole the whites who were involved in these shootings tended to be from Eastern Europe.

Read the rest here

London Is On Fire

2011-08-07T05:41:00.000-07:00

Is The Dollar Really In Jeopardy As The World Reserve Currency?

2011-08-04T06:02:00.000-07:00

I find it interesting sometimes to listen to what the other side (the far left) has to say about the economy and the current global crisis. It is refreshing to listen to what the mainstream and the the old guard Wall Street media would never say. The dollar has been destroyed for at least the better part of the last 12 years in an effort to balance out trade and balance sheet in-balances. This is a dangerous game that could end very badly for the US. With a great deal of the rest of the world's central banks sitting on dollars in reserve (because they have to for international trade settlements), there is the real danger that the central banks of the world at some point in the near future will begin dumping the dollar. This would cause massive inflation for the US and its citizens.

Be careful if you are too confident that America can't lose it's reserve currency status.

Power of The Individual

Are You Rethinking The Cloward and Piven Strategy Yet?

2011-08-02T05:39:00.000-07:00

From The American Thinker

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 -- and a vehicle that ensures Obama remains in power.

Cloward-Piven is a much talked-about strategy proposed in the mid-1960's by two Columbia University sociology professors named Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. The Cloward-Piven approach was sometimes referred to as the "crisis strategy," which they believed were a means to "end poverty."
The premise of the Cloward-Piven collective/anti-capitalist gospel decried "individual mobility and achievement," celebrated organized labor, fostered the principle that "if each finally found himself in the same relative economic relationship to his fellows ... all were infinitely better off."
The duo 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.
The idea was that if people were starving and the only way to eat was to accept government cheese, rather than starve, the masses would agree to what they would otherwise reject. In essence, for the socialist-minded, the Cloward-Piven strategy is a simple formula that makes perfect sense; the radical husband-and-wife team had Saul Alinsky as their muse, and they went on to teach his social action principles to a cadre of socialist-leaning community organizers, one of whom was Barack Obama.
As the debt crisis continues to worsen, President Obama stands idly by an inferno with his arms crossed, shaking his head, and doing nothing other than kinking the fire hose and closing the spigot. Spectator Obama is complaining that the structure of the American economy is engulfed in flames while accusing the Congress, which is trying desperately to douse the fire, of doing nothing about the problem.
Although speculative, if the Cloward-Piven strategy is the basis of the left's game plan, spearheaded by Alinsky devotee Barack Obama, it certainly explains the President's inaction and detached attitude.
The greatest nation in the history of the world is teetering on the brink of a catastrophic economic crisis. America was pushed to this point by a rapidly-expanding national debt and a stressed-out entitlement system; in the center of this crisis is the President, who insists on expanding it even further, all in the name "fairness" and "social justice."
As a default date nears and the President threatens seniors that there's a chance they may not receive their Social Security checks, it has been revealed that the federal government disperses a stunning 80 million checks a month, which means that about a third of the US adult population could be receiving some sort of entitlement.
Since the 1960's when Cloward-Piven presented a socialistic guideline to usher in the type of evenhandedness Obama lauds, America's entitlement rolls have swelled from eight million to 80 million. If the nation's ability to disperse handouts were ever disrupted, it's not hard to see how chaos would erupt should an angry army of millions demand what Cloward-Piven called "the right to income."

Read the Rest Here

Egypt Has Been Reduced to Towers of Trash After Revolution

2011-07-28T06:07:00.000-07:00

With mountains of rubbish towering over children and endless bin bags bulging from high-rise flats, these are the shocking images that show Cairo's 'Garbage City' - where thousands of Egyptians live amongst piles of stinking rubbish.
Manshiyat naser, or Garbage city, as it is known by locals, is a slum on the outskirts of Cairo, just a short drive away from luxury five star resorts.
But these shocking photos show a whole community which has been living in the slums for hundreds of years surrounded by rats and rotting rubbish.

Riot Police Have to Control Rave Crowd Turned Violent in LA

2011-07-28T05:52:00.000-07:00

Riot police fired rubber bullets at a huge crowd of young ravers after the rioting youths sparked mayhem on Hollywood Boulevard.
Authorities were called after the youngsters threw bottles and set fire to cars after being denied entry to a Hollywood film première.
The unruly crowd began partying on the streets in protest and when they refused to disperse, officers took drastic action.

Everywhere you look it seems that society is a thread away from completely ripping apart.

- Power of The Individual

The 14th Amendment and The Debt Ceiling

2011-07-25T05:44:00.000-07:00

Is the 14th amendment a license to lift the debt ceiling without congressional authority? Or was the debt ceiling put in place to stop on branch of government from running over another branch of government?

Our founders were very concerned about the balance of power in order to protect the individual citizens against and out of control and tyrannical government. After all, they had fought a revolution against an tyrannical king. They were very careful in the crafting of this representative republic.

Flotilla Attempting To Break Israeli Blockade Stopped By Navy Seals

2011-07-20T15:46:00.000-07:00

Soros Fund Manager and Former BlackRock Founder Go to 75% Cash - Why?

2011-07-20T15:41:00.000-07:00

Soros Fund Manager and Former BlackRock Founder Goto 75% Cash - Why?

One of George Soros' funds, the flagship Quantum Endowment Fund, is holding 75% cash right now.

After being down 6% YTD, the fund's main portfolio manager, Keith Anderson, decided to cut its losses."In mid-June, Anderson told his portfolio managers to pull back on trades," Bloomberg reported. "As a result, the fund is about 75 percent in cash as it waits for better opportunities."
While it's not an incredibly unusual move, it is certainly not commonplace, and it has piqued our interest in Anderson.
In May as Soros began selling his famed gold holdings, "people familiar with Mr. Anderson’s thinking said he believes the Federal Reserve’s continuing to pump money into the system has reduced the likelihood of deflation."
Anderson is the Chief Investment Officer at Soros Fund Management, managing the firm's "14 internal managers and more than a dozen external managers," according to the New York Times.
Before he joined the hedge fund, Anderson had spent 20 years with BlackRock, which he co-founded in 1988, as an advisor and managing director and CIO of fixed income, according to Bloomberg Businessweek.

San Francisco Protests PIGS After Parolee Shooting

2011-07-20T14:48:00.000-07:00

The Euro May Not Survive and The US Will Be Affected

2011-07-18T12:34:00.000-07:00

Syrian Protesters Attack US Embassy

2011-07-11T08:44:00.000-07:00

BEIRUT - Syrian government supporters smashed windows at the U.S. Embassy in Damascus on Monday, raised a Syrian flag and scrawled graffiti calling the American ambassador a "dog" in anger over the envoy's visit last week to an opposition stronghold, witnesses said.
French Embassy security guards in the capital fired in the air to hold back supporters of President Bashar Assad's regime who were also protesting the French ambassador's visit to the same city, Hama, in central Syria. Protesters smashed embassy windows and shattered the windshield of a diplomatic SUV outside the compound. The French flag was removed and replaced with a Syrian one.
"God, Syria and Bashar. The nation that gave birth to Bashar Assad will not kneel," read graffiti written outside the embassy. One witness said three protesters were injured when guards beat them with clubs. The witness asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the situation.
There was no immediate word on casualties among protesters at the American Embassy demonstration.
A U.S. official said the Obama administration will formally protest the attack and may seek compensation for damage caused when a mob breached the wall of the compound before being dispersed by Marine guards.
The official said the State Department would summon a senior Syrian diplomat on Monday to condemn the assault and demand that Syria uphold obligations to protect foreign diplomatic missions. The official said no buildings were entered and there were no injuries to embassy personnel. But the official said the attackers damaged the chancery building.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said Syrian security forces were slow to respond to the attack.
The Syrian regime called the French and American ambassadors' visits to Hama last week interference in the country's internal affairs and accused the envoys of undermining Syria's stability.
The protests erupted after U.S. Ambassador Robert Ford harshly criticized the Syrian government's crackdown on a popular uprising.
Some 1,600 civilians and 350 members of security forces have been killed since demonstrations began, activists say. Syria blames what it calls "armed gangs" and Muslim extremists for the violence.
Hiam al-Hassan, a witness, said about 300 people had gathered outside the French Embassy while hundreds others were at the American diplomatic compound.
"Syrians demonstrated peacefully in front of the French embassy but they were faced with bullets," said al-Hassan.
On Sunday, Ford attacked the Syrian government for allowing pro-government protests while beating up anti-regime demonstrators. The pro-Assad protests in Syria are known as "mnhebak," or "we love you."
"I have not seen the police assault a "mnhebak" demonstration yet," Ford wrote on the embassy's Facebook page. "On July 9, a "mnhebak" group threw rocks at our embassy, causing some damage. They resorted to violence, unlike the people in Hama, who have stayed peaceful."
"And how ironic that the Syrian Government lets an anti-U.S. demonstration proceed freely while their security thugs beat down olive branch-carrying peaceful protesters elsewhere," he said. "I saw no signs of armed gangs anywhere not at any of the civilian street barricades we passed," Ford added.
Monday's protests coincided with government-organized talks in Damascus on possible political reforms after four months of unrest.
However the talks did not stop Syrian forces from pressing their crackdown on the opposition.
Before the embassy attacks, Syrian troops stormed the country's third-largest city with armoured personnel carriers and heavy machine-guns, a rights activist. At least two people were killed and 20 wounded in the attacks in Homs, activists said.
The clashes in Homs in central Syria suggest the Assad regime will not ease its four-month-old crackdown on the opposition despite proposing some political changes.

read the rest here

Malaysia erupts Into Violence in The Streets

2011-07-10T08:05:00.000-07:00

From Rueters -
Malaysian police fired repeated rounds of tear gas and detained over 1,400 people in the capital on Saturday as thousands of activists evaded roadblocks and barbed wire to hold a street protest against Prime Minister Najib Razak's government.
At least a dozen people were hurt in the demonstration for electoral reform in downtown Kuala Lumpur. There were no reports of serious injuries but some analysts said the police action was excessive and would dent Najib's image.
"We are not criminals, we are just asking for free and fair elections," opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim's daughter, Nurul Izzah Anwar, told reporters after her father was knocked down and hurt in a melee when he and his supporters were tear gassed.
"Many innocent people were injured. We condemn this act of cruelty by UMNO and Barisan Nasional," she said, referring to Najib's party and the ruling coalition.
Street protests are rare in this Southeast Asian nation, but foreign investors are worried that any groundswell of anti-government sentiment could delay economic reforms seen as essential to draw investment.
If he is put under popular pressure, Najib may reconsider plans for a snap election and hold back on reforms such as cutting fuel subsidies or unwinding an affirmative action program for the country's Malay majority.
Polls are not due until 2013 but analysts have said Najib could seek an early mandate after economic growth accelerated to a 10-year high in 2010.
"From Najib's perspective, holding elections anytime soon would be a mistake because of the damage that has been done today," said Bridget Welsh, Malaysia specialist at Singapore Management University.
"The fact that such a large crowd turned up despite a crackdown shows that voter anger is deep and this is going to push a lot of people who are in the middle toward the opposition."
Reuters witnesses saw tear gas shells lobbed repeatedly at groups of protesters in downtown Kuala Lumpur as the crowds chanted "Long Live the People" and "Reformasi, reformasi," the Malay word for reform.
Several people were seen bleeding after the tear gas was fired, but police gave no details of any injuries. Crowds around the city's main bus station were also sprayed with water cannon.
Malaysia's inspector-general of police, Ismail Omar, said 1,401 people were taken into custody, but many will be released after questioning. At least three senior opposition leaders were among those detained, other officials said.
"We have made our point that we want free and fair elections," said Chan Mei Yin, a 32-year old accountant who joined the protest.
"The police are just showing that they are brutal to Malaysians. I will not vote for this government."
NOT THAILAND
While Malaysia is far from being divided by political strife like its northern neighbor Thailand, the opposition has been steadily growing more vocal.
Tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets at a November 2007 rally, which analysts said galvanized support for the opposition ahead of record gains in a 2008 general election.
Analysts said the turnout of protesters on Saturday was more than 10,000, around the same as in 2007. Police, however, put the number at 5,000-6,000, while protest organizers claimed 50,000 attended.
"Malaysian civil society is showing the government that intimidation will not work," said Ooi Kee Beng, a political analyst at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies of Singapore.
"We're seeing a lack of will on the part of the government to try to negotiate and to defuse the situation. It's all going to look very bad outside Malaysia."
After Malaysia's constitutional monarch tried to defuse the situation, the government initially offered Bersih (Clean), the group that called the protest, the use of a stadium to hold its demonstration.
But it baulked at allowing the group to use the main stadium in downtown Kuala Lumpur, at which point Bersih said it would defy the ban.
From midnight, police locked down the central shopping district of the city of 1.6 million people, setting up roadblocks and barring taxis and buses from the area. Suburban trains, however, continued to operate and other areas of the city were not affected.
Bersih has vowed to bring together tens of thousands of supporters to the protest but it fell short. Still, some analysts said the government faced a problem.
"Just looking at the crowd there were many 'first timers', young people from the Facebook generation who just wanted to have a peaceful life," said Ibrahim Suffian, director of the independent opinion polling outfit Merdeka Center.
"This is trouble for Najib as it will polarize traditionally non-political segments of society like the young even further away from him."
Najib took power in 2009, and inherited a divided ruling coalition which had been weakened by historic losses in the 2008 polls. He has promised to restructure government and economy and introduced an inclusive brand of politics aimed at uniting the country's different races.
Najib's approval ratings have risen from 45 percent to 69 percent in February, according to independent polling outfit Merdeka Center. But analysts said recent ethnic and religious differences have undermined his popularity.
(Additional reporting by Angie Teo and Damir Sagolj; Writing by Liau Y-Sing; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Sugita Katyal)

Van Jones The Radical Green Jobs Revolutionary

2011-07-09T11:25:00.000-07:00

Back in 2009, the public knew little about Van Jones . Perhaps, if anything, we knew only that he was one czar among many in the Obama administration. Like most czars, he did not need to be confirmed by Congress.
However, as more was learned about his radical background, Van Jones was exposed. Americans were repulsed by what they heard.
With his hateful statements and Communist views revealed, a personal history of radicalism emerged. A left-wing goody bag assorted with an affinity for anarchism, anti-capitalism, Communism, trutherism and, as Jones put it, “rowdy” Black Nationalism.
As the pressure grew, Van Jones was forced to resign as “green jobs” czar in the fall of 2009. But he wasn’t finished.
Today, nearly two years removed from the White House, he continues to delight “progressives” with his brand of Robin Hood-style “justice.”
In a manner one would expect from a class warfare peddler and propagandist, Van Jones recently asserted that America was “robbed” and that “somebody has our money” (emphasis added). Just who are the villains in this worn-out narrative? Why, Wall Street and the wealthy. This serves only to fuel class envy and the culture of entitlement.
Such rhetoric may seem little more than red meat for “Rebuild the Dream” conference goers—the event at which Mr. Jones spoke this month—but his calculated and oft-repeated charge is designed to influence the ill-informed. For the left-minded, excoriating the rich or, more generally, capitalism, has long been in vogue. It is sadly effective.

read the rest here

Farrakhan, Nation of Islam & Cynthia McKinney Call Libya a Race War

2011-07-08T16:32:00.000-07:00

The far left in this country is stoking for a revolution. They are saying that the President is working for the "White Man" for Imperialism.

They are agitating and this will most assuredly stir up even more hatred on the left.

I fear that we are headed for revolutionary movement from the left. What is the left? The are Marxists, Socialists, Communists, Social Justice, Eco-terrorists, and anti-capitalists. They want the overthrow of capitalism because they believe it is the cause of all the worlds problems.

They are wrong. But they believe with all of their fiber that they are right.

Be forewarned of the coming of all of the forces of the radical left.

Power of the Individual -

Communist Van Jones Former Green Job Czar Back on Capitol Hill

2011-07-07T05:26:00.000-07:00

The House Democratic Caucus hosted communist revolutionary-group founder Van Jones just one day before he spoke to a student group funded by billionaire George Soros.
"Why are Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrat Caucus seeking out Jones' counsel?" asked Guy Harrison, executive director of the National Republican Congressional Committee, in a fundraising email yesterday.
"They say a person can be judged by the company they keep, and that holds true for the Democrat caucus as well," Harrison wrote in a fundraising email.
In September 2009, Jones resigned as President Obama's "green jobs" czar after it was exposed he founded the communist revolutionary organization Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement, or STORM. It was also reported he signed a statement that accused the Bush administration of possible involvement in the 9/11 attacks.

Jones was a featured speaker at a two-day national conference that began yesterday for a group that calls itself Campus Progress. Other speakers include former President Bill Clinton and Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn.
Campus Progress is a "project" of the Center for American Progress, or CAP, which is heavily bankrolled by Soros. CAP, reportedly highly influential in helping to craft White House policy, is led by John Podesta, who served as co-chairman of Obama's presidential transition team.
Jones himself is a CAP fellow. On CAP's board is Carol Browner, who directed the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy until earlier this year.

Soros ICG Lobbying for The Muslim Brotherhood - Extremists in Egypt and Libya

2011-07-07T05:21:00.000-07:00

JERUSALEM – The foreign affairs adviser for a top U.S. lobby firm hired to represent the rebels of Libya served a few months ago as President Obama's special representative to Egypt, where he reportedly held a clandestine meeting with the Muslim Brotherhood.In addition, a public relations firm working on behalf of the rebels recently arranged a meeting for Libya's opposition with a progressive group funded by billionaire George Soros that is known for its close relationship with the White House.
WND previously reported the International Crisis Group, or ICG, led in part by Soros, has long petitioned for the Egyptian government to normalize ties with the Muslim Brotherhood.
The ICG includes on its board Egyptian opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei and other personalities who champion dialogue with Hamas, a violent offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.
WND reported on the numerous ties of Soros initiatives – including his own Open Society Institute – to the revolutions sweeping the Middle East and North Africa.
Earlier this week, The Hill reported Patton Boggs, the top-earning K Street firm, is lobbying for the rebels to be accepted in the international community as the "legitimate government of the sovereign nation of Libya," according to documents filed this week with the Justice Department.
The Hill reported Patton Boggs signed a contract with the so-called Interim Transitional National Council of Libya to provide "advice and assistance on U.S.-Libya bilateral relations," the documents said.
The agreement was reportedly signed with Ali Suleiman Aujali, the rebels' representative to the United States. Aujali resigned as ambassador to Libya in the wake of the NATO campaign targeting the regime of Moammar Gadhafi.
Patton Boggs' foreign affairs adviser is Frank Wisner, a career diplomat who served as U.S. ambassador to Egypt, India, Zambia and the Philippines.

4 Shot and 1 Killed at The Caribbean Festival in a RIOT in The Streets

2011-06-27T14:42:00.000-07:00

Riots Break Out in Belfast

2011-06-22T15:56:00.001-07:00

Agenda 21 and Sustainable Development

2011-06-22T06:29:00.000-07:00

What is Agenda 21? If you do not know about it, you should.
Agenda 21 is a two-decade old, grand plan for global ’Sustainable Development,’ brought to you from the United Nations. George H.W. Bush (and 177 other world leaders) agreed to it back in 1992, and in 1995, Bill Clinton signed Executive Order #12858, creating a Presidential Council on ‘Sustainable Development.’ This effectively pushed the UN plan into America’s large, churning government machine without the need for any review or discussion by Congress or the American people.
‘Sustainable Development’ sounds like a nice idea, right? It sounds nice, until you scratch the surface and find that Agenda 21 and Sustainable Development are really cloaked plans to impose the tenets of Social Justice/Socialism on the world.
At risk from Agenda 21;

Private Property ownership
Single-Family homes
Private car ownership and individual travel choices
Privately owned farms

The Agenda 21 plan openly targets private property. For over thirty-five years the UN has made their stance very clear on the issue of individuals owning land;
Land… cannot be treated as an ordinary asset, controlled by individuals and subject to the pressures and inefficiencies of the market. Private land ownership is also a principal instrument of accumulation and concentration of wealth and therefore contributes to social injustice; if unchecked, it may become a major obstacle in the planning and implementation of development schemes. The provision of decent dwellings and healthy conditions for the people can only be achieved if land is used in the interest of society as a whole.

Source: United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat I),Vancouver, BC, May 31 – June 11, 1976. Preamble to Agenda Item 10 of the Conference Report.

There are two more, very good reasons to be wary of Agenda 21 and the International Council of Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) that supports it: George Soros and the United Nations. Soros money has been tracked to funding parts of ICLEI ;

In 1997, George Soros’s Open Society gave ICLEI a $2,147,415 grant to support its Local Agenda 21 Project

As regards the UN, that organization‘s problems with America’s appreciation of freedom and self-determination is one that needs no explanation.

read the rest here

CIA Director Co-Chaired Initiative to Cede Control of US Waterways To The UN

2011-06-21T05:55:00.000-07:00

CIA Director Leon Panetta, President Obama's nominee for secretary of defense, co-chaired an initiative to regulate U.S. oceans and cede them to United Nations-based international law.
Panetta's oceans initiative was a key partner of an organization, Citizens for Global Solutions, that promotes world government.
Also, the group’s parent organization, the World Federalist Movement, promotes democratized global institutions with plenary constitutional power. It is a coordinator and member of Responsibility to Protect, the controversial military doctrine used by Obama as the main justification for U.S. and international airstrikes against Libya.
As WND reported, billionaire George Soros is a primary funder and key proponent of the Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect, the main organization pushing the doctrine. The center includes the World Federalist Movement as one of its members and coordinators.
Panetta faces a Senate vote tomorrow on whether to confirm him as defense secretary.
Until his appointment as CIA director in 2009, Panetta co-chaired the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative, which is the partner of Citizens for Global Solutions in a push to ratify U.S. laws and regulations governing the seas.

The oceans initiative bills itself as a bipartisan, collaborative group that aims to "accelerate the pace of change that results in meaningful ocean policy reform."

Among its main recommendations is that the U.S. should put its oceans up for regulation to the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea.
That U.N. convention defines the rights and responsibilities of nations in their use of the world's oceans, establishing guidelines for businesses, the environment and the management of marine natural resources.
Other recommendations of Panetta's Joint Ocean Commission Initiative include:

The Administration and Congress should establish a national ocean policy. The Administration and Congress should support regional, ecosystem-based approaches to the management of ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes.
Congress should strengthen and reauthorize the Coastal Zone Management Act.
Congress should strengthen the Clean Water Act.

The New World Order

2011-06-18T05:44:00.000-07:00

Russia and China are calling for a New World Order at the International Economic Forum in St Petersburg.

We have heard rumors of these musings before and they have always been dismissed as crazy or conspiratorial. There is no way the US would go for something like that. They wouldn't give up their sovereignty. Why would the world's super power subjugate themselves to any other country?

In the last 10 years the dollar which is the worlds reserve currency has declined against a basket of world currencies by 20%. And it is down in relative terms about 80% since the Fed was created in 1913.

If you look at the US national debt at 14.4.Trillion dollars ad the unfunded future liabilities at more than 100 trillion dollars you might not think of the US as an economic super power any more. click here for the running http://www.usdebtclock.org/

If we still think that a New World Order can't happen then maybe then you haven't been paying attention, especially the last 10 years.

Another Days of Violent Protests in Athens

2011-06-16T12:21:00.001-07:00

Mob Mentality Is Running High Everywhere and It Seems to Be A Growing Trend

2011-06-16T11:11:00.000-07:00

This is Vancouver last might after the Stanley Cup finals.

Greeks Protesters Fire Bomb The Police

2011-06-15T06:17:00.000-07:00

I believe that if you are watching, and most I contend are not watching, you are seeing the seeds of a world wide revolution.

The last time this happened was the French Revolution which swept the globe in a wave of years that followed.

It may be tempting to use the American Revolution as a demarcation point. This would be incorrect. The American Revolution was about Freedom from Tyranny. It was a fight for man to rule himself. The French Revolution was a proletariat uprising overthrowing aristocracy. They had no plan beyond a rejection of the system and only fell under the next strong hands of aristocracy.

I believe this to be the greatest threat to the uprisings around the globe. The major difference this time is that America is heading away from man's individual freedom toward a soft tyranny. This could possibly be the end of the "Great Experiment" that has been America.

It is time to start paying attention to what is happening around the globe.

Greece Austerity Has The Public Outraged

2011-06-13T06:25:00.001-07:00

Is The World About to Be Plunged Into WW III

2011-06-09T08:43:00.000-07:00

The World is On The Brink and Her Are The Tipping Points

Tipping Point #1

Syria is a situation to watch very, very closely. The Syrian government is in a lot of trouble right now. Sadly, the instability inside Syria probably makes war with Israel even more likely.
Make no mistake - a war between Israel and Syria has been brewing for a long, long time and at some point it will happen. When it happens, the entire Middle East may erupt in warfare.

Read more: http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/10-tipping-points-which-could-potentially-plunge-the-world-into-a-horrific-economic-nightmare#ixzz1OnIGPshr

Tipping Point #2

The Iranian nuclear program is in the news again. A new report by RAND Corporation researcher Gregory S. Jones claims that Iran could have a nuclear weapon within 2 months. His report is based on recent findings by the International Atomic Energy Agency. According to Jones, airstrikes alone would be incapable of stopping Iran's nuclear weapons program at this point. Instead, Jones says that a "military occupation" would be required.
It is a minor miracle that a war with Iran has not erupted yet. It seems almost inevitable that at some point either the United States or Israel will use military force to try to stop Iran's nuclear program.

Read more: http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/10-tipping-points-which-could-potentially-plunge-the-world-into-a-horrific-economic-nightmare#ixzz1OnIg3vOn

Tipping Point #3

NATO has made it abundantly clear that Moammar Gadhafi will no longer be tolerated. In fact, NATO apparently plans to reduce Tripoli to a heap of smoking ruins if that is what it takes to bring about the fall of Gadhafi.
What a "humanitarian mission" we have going in Libya, eh? It turns out that NATO believes that the United Nations gave it permission to bomb television stations and to make attack runs with helicopters.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov recently said that by using attack helicopters, NATO has moved dangerously close to turning the Libya operation into a ground invasion....

Read more: http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/10-tipping-points-which-could-potentially-plunge-the-world-into-a-horrific-economic-nightmare#ixzz1OnJ5q2lJ

Greece is On The Brink

2011-06-06T07:25:00.000-07:00

Greece Back on the Brink via Der Spiegle

By Manfred Ertel, Christian Reiermann and Anne Seith

Protestors in Athens demonstrating against austerity measures.

Part 2: 'We Are Back Where We Started'

The outcome of the efforts to date, at any rate, has been sobering, despite everything the Papandreou government has done. It has trimmed the salaries of government workers, increased taxes considerably, raised the retirement age and publicly denounced tax evaders. Nevertheless, the country is still on the brink of disaster. There is a growing sense that it was all for nothing, says Dimitrios Daskalopoulos of the SEV employers' association, "and that we are back where we started."
Daskalopoulos doesn't believe that the government did everything it could. In fact, he says, it failed in its most pressing task: reforming the massive government bureaucracy.
His attack is directed against labor leaders like Nikos Fotopoulos, 48. He is a union leader with the partially state-owned electric utility DEI, a former Trotskyist and, for the last 33 years, a member of Papandreou's PASOK Party. "We aren't eating with silver spoons here," Fotopoulous, an electrician by trade, says defiantly. His office is decorated with posters of Che Guevara, Karl Marx and Leon Trotsky.
Since 1999, his union has received close to €31.3 million in direct and indirect financial subsidies from its employer. In a particularly absurd twist, the utility has paid the union €115,000 in the last three years for demonstrations -- against its own shareholders, and against the government and its austerity measures.
Companies like DEI or the partially state-owned Hellenic Petroleum are still viewed as workers' paradises. The roughly 2,500 employees of the oil company are paid 17.8 monthly salaries a year, and even drivers and doormen earn annual salaries upwards of €90,000. Chairman Tassos Giannitsis nonchalantly attributes the high salary levels to his company's "highly specific business and substantial dependence on international price and profit margins." Besides, he adds, personnel costs make up less than three percent of revenues.
Many Greeks are angry about the special treatment of government employees. While labor representatives like Fotopoulos staunchly defend the many benefits enjoyed by workers in government-owned businesses, the draconian austerity measures have plunged the rest of the population into an economic crisis that has brought hardship to many people.
Social Upheaval
More than 200,000 jobs were lost last year. All of a sudden, middle-class citizens are waiting in line outside Athens soup kitchens. People are moving out of the sprawling capital to places where the cost of living is cheaper, or to work as farmers on land owned by their families.
More and more Greeks are also tapping into their savings, either because they need the money or to move a few euros to a safer place, just in case the drachma is reintroduced. Deposits in private bank accounts have already declined by €31 billion since the beginning of 2010.
Recently, the European Commissioner for Maritime Affairs & Fisheries, Maria Damanaki, became the first official representative of her country to mention the the possibility of a withdrawal from the euro. But Prime Minister Papandreou remains rigorously opposed to a return to the drachma. He is banking on additional money from the euro zone partners, more austerity measures and a privatization program that seems fairly unrealistic.
For example, Papandreou hopes to raise €50 billion by 2015 through the sale of more than 30 fully and partially government-owned businesses. The privatization list includes water companies, the ports of Piraeus and Thessaloniki, the Athens racecourse, the Postbank, a casino and the OPAP lottery company. The government is also seeking an investor for the chronically money-losing government railroad, while Papandreou hopes to raise large sums of cash with the sale of a wide range of government-owned real estate.
Since the planned sell-off of government assets was announced, the public's mood has shifted once and for all. In their headlines, the daily newspapers have called it the "looting of a people," a "recipe for impoverishment" and "blood and soil for the fifth loan tranche."
Doubts About Privatization
Even economists who have been deeply critical of Greece's generous welfare system are outraged at the proposed sale of public assets. "You can't just sell everything so quickly," says former Finance Minister Stefanos Manos, noting that such privatization programs must be carefully prepared and the investments tied to conditions, in some cases.
Economist Jens Bastian, who has lived in Athens for the last 14 years, doubts whether the Greek bureaucracy can even handle such a massive sell-off. The country's government agencies are not only considered to be vastly overstaffed, but Kafkaesque in their bureaucratic complexity.
Because there is no comprehensive property registration system, the Greek government has no idea how much land, buildings or yacht harbors it even owns, concluded a study by the Institute of Strategic and Development Studies (ISTAME) in Athens. The institute, which has close ties to the government, values the state's assets at about €270 billion, but is quick to point out that this figure is only an initial estimate.
Nevertheless, in February the Greek government optimistically promised its international overseers to provide an initial list of available real estate by the end of June. Soon afterwards, it was scrambling to find consultants to conduct a large-scale inventory.
In early March, the finance ministry official in charge of privatization issued a job advert that was hardly more than a page long. Given the time constraints, his requirements were not particularly stringent. He wrote that "relevant" knowledge of real estate was necessary, and that experience in the Greek market was considered desirable. Interested parties were to respond to the notice within 10 days, providing all the information "they consider appropriate."
The team of consultants now has until the end of 2012 to compile a complete database, but according to one member of the team, most of the details are still unclear.
The problems the government is likely to face in its privatization program can already be envisaged. Because detailed land records are often missing, landowners are regularly involved in disputes over property lines. At times, plaintiffs file claims derived from ancient property rights.
Trade Unions May Thwart Sell-Offs
Just how difficult it is to turn government properties into cash recently became apparent on the grounds of the old Hellenikon Airport in Athens, which is on the coast near Piraeus and is valued at about €6 billion. Investors from Qatar have been trying to secure the rights to use the land for years. Now all of their efforts appear to have failed in the face of opposition from citizens' groups and adjacent communities which would prefer to see the site turned into a park instead of a commercial complex.
A number of state-of-the-art arenas, built at great expense for the 2004 Summer Olympics, occupy a portion of the giant waterfront property. Now the facilities are fast turning into ruins.
Meanwhile, the unions organized within the government-owned companies are getting ready to deter potential investors. Union leader Fotopoulos says he would consider shutting off the nation's power supply if the government goes ahead with its plan to privatize the electricity company. "We want to protect our poor customers," he argues outlandishly.
Panagiotis Koutras, the top labor representative at the OTE telephone company, is planning a number of strikes for June and is also indicating that there will be other reactions meant to "surprise" people.
German telecommunications giant Deutsche Telekom owns 30 percent of the company. Now the Greek government is exercising an option that forces the German company to acquire more shares of OTE. But for Deutsche Telekom the investment, once praised as an asset in the southeast European market, has been nothing but trouble. The OTE share price has fallen by more than half since the Germans made their initial investment.
The experiences of foreign investors aren't exactly a selling point to attract investment in Greece. Intractable union leaders aren't thre only culprits. The notoriously cash-strapped government, for example, has an extremely poor reputation when it comes to payment. It still owes German companies several hundred million euros. Last year, state-owned hospitals offered to pay their debts to pharmaceutical companies with Greek government bonds.
Prime Minister Papandreou says Greece has neglected to develop a modern economic structure over the last 30 years. Now it is expected to catch up quickly, but reforms take time.
Economist Varoufakis ran a simulation to see what would happen if the country had to continue along its current austerity course. He concluded that even if Greece fulfilled all requirements and privatization goals, and the recession came to an end, the country's mountain of debt would continue to grow. It would be more than double the national income by 2020, which means that a default would be practically "guaranteed."
That outcome, he noted, was based on optimistic assumptions.
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

The "Audacity of Hope" to Break the Blockade in The Gaza

2011-06-01T08:25:00.000-07:00

The "Audacity of Hope" to Break the Blockade in The Gaza

JERUSALEM – The organizers of an American activist flotilla setting sail later this month for the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip have appealed to President Obama to "protect" their ship.
The ship is named "The Audacity of Hope," the namesake of Obama's 2006 book and his 2004 speech to the Democratic National Convention. Obama himself took the name from the title of a sermon, "Audacity to Hope," given by his controversial pastor for more than twenty years, Jeremiah Wright.
Several of the ship's endorsers and fundraisers have been close associates of Obama's.
The new flotilla is attempting to break Israel's naval blockade of the Gaza Strip. The Jewish state maintains the blockade to ensure against Hamas arming itself at sea. The terrorist group had been caught several times attempting to smuggle weapons, including rockets and advanced missiles, into Gaza by sea.
In a letter to Obama, flotilla organizer Ray McGovern said the president's major Middle East address from two weeks ago "emboldens me to claim your protection as we set out to put flesh on your rhetoric."
"I write you for assurance of your support and protection as we try to embody your rhetoric," wrote McGovern.
Continued McGovern: "You spoke eloquently today about 'times in the course of history when the action of ordinary citizens spark movements for change because they speak to a longing for freedom that has been building up for years.' And you lamented 'failure to speak to the broader aspirations of ordinary people.'
"We, the passengers and crew of 'The Audacity of Hope,' sailing to Gaza in June together with the 2nd International Freedom Flotilla, represent ordinary Americans determined to speak to the aspirations of the 1.5 million ordinary Gazans yearning to be free."
The "Audacity of Hope" boat is slated to be one of the approximately 15 boats that will sail to Gaza with people from over 22 countries

Turks Chart a Course for Conflict Again in Gaza

In an Istanbul dockyard, workers areoutfitting the Mavi Marmara, the ship on which Israeli commandoskilled nine Turkish activists a year ago, to lead a secondattempt to break Israel’s embargo of the Gaza Strip.
The first voyage ended when soldiers rappelled fromhelicopters and opened fire after the ship, part of a six-boatflotilla, refused to stop. Israel says people onboard shot firstand attacked with iron bars, a charge they deny. This time,activists plan to sail 15 vessels loaded with cargo and pro-Palestinian supporters, setting them on a collision course withIsrael’s military.

read the rest here
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-29/turks-sailing-again-in-gaza-flotilla-chart-a-collision-course-with-israel.html

This was predicted in a report earlier this year in the Canada Free Press

What The Revolution in Egypt Isn't Over Yet - What About The Arab Spring?

2011-05-27T08:05:00.000-07:00

This is video of massive protests in Tahrir Square.

Egyptian Activists 'to form Nazi party', Newspaper Reports

2011-05-26T07:09:00.000-07:00

Egyptian activists 'to form Nazi party', newspaper reports...

Turks Adament That The Flotilla Still Challenge Blockade Next Month

2011-05-26T06:46:00.000-07:00

Turks Adament That The Flotilla Still Challenge Blockade Next Month

Organizers of the Turkish flotilla to Gaza are adamant about going ahead with their plans to challenge Israel's blockade next month despite official reports that the Rafah border crossing will be opened to Palestinians as of Saturday."We shall set sail, we have many surprises in store," IHH spokesman Ömer Faruk said. "If there really is no blockade then there shouldn't be a problem with us going there. Everything will become clearer next month."
Faruk claims that had the previous flotilla not departed, the Rafah border would not have been opened.
That's the language people understand, it's the only way they will pay attention to Palestinian suffering. If there will be a more convenient way, we'll take it, but right now our attention is focused on the population in Gaza. "The spokesman declared they will act peacefully, adding "we only hope the Israeli side acts the same."

read the rest here

US Withdrawals Diplomats from Yemen As The Violenece Intensifies

2011-05-26T06:33:00.000-07:00

US Withdrawls Diplomats from Yemen

The US has ordered all its non-essential diplomats and family members of embassy staff to leave Yemen as fighting there escalates.

Medical sources say 72 people have died in three days of clashes between tribal fighters and government troops.
President Ali Abdullah Saleh has again said he will not step down, despite mounting protests.
He has so far refused to sign a transition deal that would see him resign in favour of a unity government.
The US has repeated its call for Mr Saleh to step down, urging all sides to accept a ceasefire.

read the rest here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-13556349

EuroZone is Destroying Political Parties - What's Next

2011-05-23T08:35:00.000-07:00

We may be witnessing the unraveling of the entire Euro Zone. The question is perhaps only how far will it go?

See the video and pictures from Spain over the weekend leading up to the elections.

Is It Possible That A Few Powerful Corporations Run The Globe?

2011-05-21T04:14:00.000-07:00

John Perkins is the author of the "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" and he has been writing for a number of years about his insight while helping expand economic development in nations around the world for a large multinational corporation back in the 1970 and 80's.His books (there are 2 of them) examine the role of the World Bank and The IMF along with large corporations that would help, if you will, build infrastructure to create new heavily indebted nations that would owe allegiance or sympathetic support to the more mature and industrialized interests of the West.

It has been been a long held theory that if we could tie all the nations of the world together economically, then we could surely prevent another "Great War" We haven't had any major war since Vietnam which was the wind down or remnants of WW II and the Korean war or better yet the war on the dangerous ideology of Communism. This might cause some of the far left idealists to claim that there has been a victory of sorts. Others would make the case that when this all comes apart and it probably will when the great global credit expansion comes to an end. That day may well be near.

At that time each of the nations who have had their economies tied together will experience perhaps the greatest global recession ever. It will work like a domino effect. Where it begins one cannot be sure but it shows some signs in the PIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) nations within the European Union. Will this be where it begins? I do not know. But the inability to keep the credit flowing is growing more and more obvious.

The "Great Globalist Socialism and Corporatism One World Government" experiment that has been a project of the global elite has become understood now. One might say that the people are looking at the "Emperor" and the Emperor has no clothes. The emperor are the "Globalists". So, who are the globalists?

They are the World Bank, The IMF, The United Nations, The Left in the US and Europe. The Rhodes Scholars and The Fabian Socialists. The Council on Foreign Relations and The Media.Enjoy, and opine.

Have You Heard About China's Ghost Cities?

2011-05-17T17:57:00.001-07:00

Marches and Protests on Wall Street Intensify

2011-05-16T17:09:00.000-07:00

Bernadine Dorhn on Demilitarization of the US

2011-05-16T13:32:00.001-07:00

Spain is The Next Too Big To Fail

2011-05-16T13:21:00.000-07:00

Where will it stop? I think we may be witnessing the dominoes falling on the failed polices of socialist ideas on a global basis.

The bigger question is why are we headed in this direction here in the US while we witness our future in Europe. One really has to wonder.

Palastinians March in Protest in Golan Heights

2011-05-16T10:31:00.000-07:00

Seems things are heating up eveywhere in the middle east and have emboldened the Palestinians.

Borders Breached.
JERUSALEM — Israel’s borders erupted in deadly clashes on Sunday as thousands of Palestinians — marching from Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank — confronted Israeli troops to mark the anniversary of Israel’s creation. More than a dozen people were reported killed and scores injured. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/16/world/middleeast/16mideast.html

Protests Now Spreading To Turkey

2011-05-16T10:22:00.000-07:00

By Allen Tsai | Mon May 16, 2011 10:39 am

Thousands of Turks today poured into the streets to protest the government's censorship of the Internet, underscoring the growing power of Facebook and Twitter at organizing civil unrest against authoritarian regimes in the Middle East and North Africa.

Turkey's online regulator, the Information and Communication Technologies Authority, known as the BTK, announced it plans to begin filtering the country's Internet in August. Authorities are mandating local service providers to offer four filtering options that would limit access to many sites.That action prompted more than 50,000 people, largely organized through Facebook, to gather in Istanbul's Taksim Square, chanting, "The Internet is ours and will remain ours!" In total, over 600,000 people joined a Facebook page named "Internetime Dokunma!" or "Don't Touch My Internet!" highlighting how social network sites are at organizing protests.
Facebook and Twitter are largely fueling the Arab Spring, allowing activists to organize large-scale protests in short timeframes. The uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt toppled their governments, prompting authorities to take notice of, and attempt to filter, their services. But activists, seeing the importance of Facebook and Twitter to their causes, are now stemming any pre-emptive action by taking to the streets.

Egypt, which took perhaps the most drastic step of cutting off the Web completely from the global network, eventually folded, proving how bans on the Internet may not contain the Arab Spring spreading throughout the region.
Recognizing the importance the Internet is playing in spreading democracy, the U.S. government recently pledged $30 billion to fund new projects to evade government oppression and Internet censorship. The first of such technologies, a "panic button" app, allows protestors to completely wipe their phones before it falls into enemy hands.
Intelligence agencies are also analyzing Facebook and Twitter, studying how social media sites can incite surprise revolutions.

Executive Order Asking for Information on Donations Outside the Procurement Process

2011-05-16T08:56:00.000-07:00

The Days Grow Darker All Around Israel

2011-05-16T07:27:00.000-07:00

Israeli troops today clashed with Arab protesters along three hostile borders, including the frontier withSyria, leaving 16 people dead and dozens more wounded in an unprecedented wave of demonstrations marking a Palestinian day of mourning for their defeat at Israel's hands in 1948.

Along Israel's border with Syria, thousands of protesters stormed the fence and hundreds burst through, pelting soldiers with stones, the military said. Soldiers guarding the border opened fire to stop them. Dozens were wounded and four were reported killed.

Israeli defence officials said the military had not expected protesters to try to breach the border and was caught by surprise.

Investigation: Is Terror Closer Than You Think?

2011-05-10T08:16:00.000-07:00

Islam Rising? from WLTX South Carolina Channel 19

The classified report says Gilani has at least 28 other suspected communes in the U.S. all operating under the name Muslims of America. The report says they have more than 3,000 members spread out across the country. It adds that at least a dozen members have been convicted of terrorist activities including conspiracy to commit murder, firebombings, and gun smuggling.

Obama signature creates 'continental perimeter' Move described as key step in advance of North American Union

2011-05-10T07:58:00.000-07:00

Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper quietly have taken a major step toward erasing the border between the two nations with a new "Beyond the Border" bilateral declaration.
In a ceremony designed to remain below the radar of national public opinion, Obama and Harper bypassed Congress to sign on the basis of their executive authority a declaration that put in place a new national security vision defined not by U.S. national borders, but by a continental view of a "North American perimeter."
It happened Friday, the day the Obama administration usually pushes through issues that it prefers the media ignore.
By signing the declaration, the Obama administration has implemented without congressional approval a key initiative President Bush began under the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, moving the United States and Canada beyond the North American Free Trade Agreement, commonly known as NAFTA, toward a developing North American Union regional government.
The declaration signed by the two heads of state and titled "Beyond the Border: A Shared Vision for Perimeter Security and Economic Competitiveness," was described as "For Immediate Release" on the websites of the White House and the Canadian chief executive.

Venezuela Giving Safe Harbor for Iranian Terrorist Training Site

2011-05-10T06:08:00.000-07:00

From New Zeal Blogspot
Venezuela Giving Safe Harbor for Iranian Terrorist Training Site

Wanna Know What "Change" Is? Propaganda!

2011-05-05T06:48:00.000-07:00

I use to believe that Democrats were against war. I use to believe that liberals were about peace. Well, I have come to understand when that peace would be for them and every other "Progressive" in history. They use War to create Socialism because they believe that it will lead to a Utopia of one united world. In a world without religion they believe would eliminate disagreements. A world with one "Armed Force" and no nationality then we would can't fight national armies over political disagreements. If we didn't have the profit motive and no private property and the "State" owned all the resources in the name of the "People" then we wouldn't war over resources. And, also we won't have "American exceptional-ism any more than the French believe in French exceptional-ism." If we didn't have borders we wouldn't have an illegal immigration problem. And then we just need one world ID and we will have no terrorist hiding in wait to strike that can not be found. And if only the "State" had the guns then there would be no violent crime or resistance.

Listen you can't fix the world by eliminating the desire to thrive. You can't eliminate poor by paying everyone the same wage. You can't eliminate differences of belief by eliminating religion. You can't have a Utopia that doesn't need to kill millions of people who don't accept that there is no god and no need to thrive.

War for the sake of any political ideology is wrong. And, history has informed us of this again and again. But those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it and sometimes, again... and again... and again.

Power of The Individual

From WND - Ellis Washington Report

What is war socialism? Conventional thinking says that liberals or Democratic socialists like Presidents Wilson, FDR, JFK, LBJ, Clinton and Obama hate war, while conservative warmongers like Theodore Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, Bush-41 and Bush-43 can't wait to start another war. This conformist view holds that Democratic socialists only go to war when forced to – Wilson (World War I), FDR, Truman (World War II, Korea), Clinton (Bosnia), Obama (Libya), or to clean up unpopular wars started by their jingoistic GOP predecessors – JFK, LBJ (Vietnam), Obama (Iraq, Afghanistan).
However, this view conflicts with history. Although Wilson, FDR and Obama ran for president promising not to take the U.S. to war, these men and their "brain trusts" understood war as the tried and true method to most quickly and comprehensively achieve most of their progressive socialists goals like the League of Nations, United Nations, the Federal Reserve, Federal income tax, Social Security, the welfare state and Obamacare.
"War socialism under Wilson was an entirely progressive project," wrote Jonah Goldberg in his 2007 book "Liberal Fascism," and long after the war it remained the fast track to mandating progressive policies without assent from Congress or the courts. Goldberg continued, "To this day liberals instinctively and automatically see war as an excuse to expand governmental control of vast swaths of the economy. If we are to believe that classic fascism is first and foremost the elevation of martial values and the militarization of government and society under the banner of nationalism, it is very difficult to understand why the Progressive Era was not also the Fascist Era."
The progressive revolution was mainly a middle-class movement, a counter-revolution just as opposed to the industrial revolution and laissez-faire capitalism from above as it was to Marxist radicalism from below. Progressives, in their arrogant utopianism and idealism, believed they could forge a new synthesis, a new duality, what the fascists called the "Third Way" or what Richard Ely, an intellectual godfather to both Wilson and Roosevelt, termed the "golden mean" between laissez-faire individualism and Marxist socialism.
Progressives' obsession was to enforce a unifying, totalitarian ethical regime that stripped the individual of the freedom to pursue any happiness outside the omnipotent State. The progressive revolution, along with the fascists and Nazis, possessed a fanatical delusion to transcend class differences within the national community and create a new order. George Creel put it bluntly: "No dividing line between the rich and poor, and no class distinctions to breed mean envies."
George Soros, a radical socialist billionaire, is in the forefront of promoting war socialism on a global scale. Among his multi-tentacle organizations includes one called The Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect. This group is the world's leading champion of the military doctrine called Responsibility to Protect created by two of global group's advisory board members, Ramesh Thakur and Gareth Evans. Also on the commission board was the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, which was founded by White House aide Samantha Power, who is the wife of Cass Sunstein, Obama's regulatory czar.
My WND colleague Aaron Klein recently wrote about this Soros-Obama-Power trinity in "Is [Israel] Obama's next target after Libya?"

Power was Carr's founding executive director and headed the institute at the time it advised in the founding of Responsibility to Protect. She is the National Security Council special adviser to Obama on human rights. She reportedly heavily influenced Obama in consultations leading to the decision to bomb Libya. …In his address to the nation two weeks ago, Obama cited the military doctrine as the main justification for U.S. and international airstrikes against Libya. Indeed, the Libya bombings have been widely regarded as a test of Responsibility to Protect. Responsibility to Protect, or Responsibility to Act as cited by Obama, is a set of principles, now backed by the United Nations, based on the idea that sovereignty is not a privilege but a responsibility that can be revoked if a country is accused of "war crimes," "genocide," "crimes against humanity" or "ethnic cleansing."

Hedge Funds, Big Banks and Financial Mismanagement Gone Too Far

2011-05-03T07:23:00.000-07:00

From The Washington Times

The Gnomes of Zurich were derogatory caricatures of secretive, greedy, stiff Swiss-German bankers, pince-nez aquiver, who ruled over the land of secret numbered accounts for tax dodgers the world over. With the world’s best financial intelligence service, they knew their stuff and seldom spoke, even in retirement.
Their Geneva counterparts in French-speaking Switzerland were more sophisticated, relaxed in the company of global wheeler-dealers, and weren’t afraid to speak their minds, albeit off the record. Such was George C. Karlweis, the brain behind Banque Privee, owned by the late Baron Edmond de Rothschild. His biggest claim to fame: George Soros and the launch of his Quantum Fund in 1969.
An original $100,000 stake in Mr. Soros‘ fund was worth $150 million by 1994. Between 1970 and 2000, the return was 3,365 percent. (For 10 consecutive years, it did 42.6 percent per year.) In 1992, Mr. Soros bet billions against the British pound - and broke the Bank of England (“Black Wednesday”).
So the man behind Mr. Soros‘ original success is worth listening to today - unafraid to speak his mind in retirement.
The financial crises that have been blowing up for years are speeding up, Mr. Karlweis says, because of expenditure exceeding income, “borrowing hand-over-fist, even for no good reason, on ever shakier fundamentals.”
“Everyone is realizing we have gone too far,” he wrote. “The coffers are depleted … the excessive spending of the past has created a huge overhang, and no one knows how new borrowing can be financed.”
People who live on their savings, Mr. Karlweis adds, “have been fleeced. Their investments yield nothing; chances are they have lost everything.”
“Times ahead do not look pretty,” he warns.
After turning their countries into Weimar Republics by printing more and more money, Mr. Karlweis says, “they will all need a currency commissioner like Hjalmar Schacht,” a German banker who headed Reichsbank and became an early Hitler supporter, “to save them from hyperinflation. Let’s just hope they don’t turn their regimes into Third Reichs in the meantime.
“No one wants to predict the reactions of voters who constantly clamor for more bread and games to forget the looming disappointments that could give rise to black swans,” adds the former giant gnome of Geneva.
Bear Stearns got a triple-A rating shortly before it went under; ditto Fannie Mae. Lehman Brothers made double-A before the shipwreck. The subprime mortgage scandal had gone global in the fall of 2008 as the new chairman of the Federal Reserve said “the worst is now behind us.” Today, America’s credit cards are all maxed out.
“Governments, public corporations, financial institutions, consumers - everyone is over their head in debt,” Mr. Karlweis says. And “a huge part of the blame for the debacle of the past three years lies squarely with the U.S. By more or less shoving free trade down everyone’s throat, America paved the way for globalization. This is what has destroyed jobs and driven down wages in the developed countries, hobbling economic growth and gouging tax revenues.”
Mr. Karlweis argues that “it was a ridiculously low federal funds rate, reduced to 1 percent in the early 2000s by former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, that opened the floodgates for subprime mortgages and the worst financial disaster ever, in 2007-08.
In 2007, the face value of securities backed by subprime mortgages was estimated at about $1 trillion. Mr. Karlweis says the total collateralized debt obligation and mortgage obligations issued “exceeded $7 trillion, and the repercussions were devastating.”
“Like a disease overrunning a body’s already weakened defenses, subprime infected the entire global banking system. There were also many victims among small and medium-sized investors, even outside the United States,” Mr. Karlweis says he knows for certain.
“Creative types even invented synthetic versions of subprime, with no underlying portfolio of mortgages, that guaranteed the same yields as the original junk,” Mr. Karlweis‘ postmortem says. “These were earmarked for money managers who wanted to position themselves against subprime debt, namely by selling short to investors who were still lapping it up as a good bet,” and this then generated a double commission for the investment bankers.
Where were the risk committees, credit committees and others who should have taken the hour or two needed to read the prospectuses? “That and an ounce of common sense would have sufficed to see through Wall Street’s slicing and packaging antics,” he answers.
The bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (also triple-A before disaster hit) had what Mr. Karlweis calls “awesome consequences for America in particular.” The national debt leapt by about 50 percent to more than $14 trillion (excluding the debts of other “government-sponsored enterprises”). Next to America’s net worth, estimated at $70 trillion, “that was an unsettling level,” he argues.
Mr. Karlweis laments that “after a career in finance, I look aghast on what has happened since the turn of the 21st century. The conclusion I have come to is that the present financial crisis was caused by, and is one of the most blatant manifestations of, widespread moral decline in our society.”
The gnome-turned-sage says that “devoid of all common sense and consumed by greed, the big all-service banks led by Wall Street contrived a financial system that was nothing but a house of cards while adopting lending criteria based on equally flimsy mathematical hypotheses. Not that they cared; they unloaded the junk from their balance sheets onto duller players who snapped it up as a cash-flow booster, only to see it all go up in smoke later on.”
At a minimum, Mr. Karlweis concludes that “we will need a full reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act [partially repealed in 1999], which made it impossible for a single legal entity to conduct or control all types of financial business.” This means institutions that receive deposits from the public must be clearly prohibited from speculating on their own behalf with the money of their depositors.
Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of The Washington Times and United Press International.

Keynes Vs Hayek Round 2

2011-04-28T07:02:00.000-07:00

Enjoy learning the difference between Bottom Up Capitalism and Top Down State Controlled Central Planning.

Samantha Power is A Radical Extension of The White House

2011-04-27T07:28:00.000-07:00

White House official Samantha Power sees war as an "instrument for achieving her liberal, even radical, values," charged Tom Hayden, himself a notorious left-wing radical.
Power is the National Security Council special adviser to Obama on human rights. She reportedly heavily influenced Obama in consultations leading to the decision to bomb Libya.
WND exposed that a research center founded and headed by Power had a seat on the committee that invented the military doctrine used by Obama as the main justification for U.S. and international airstrikes against Libya.
Hayden made his remarks in a recent posting at the Rag Blog, a far-left website that is home to radical 1960s anti-war leaders, some with previous close ties to Obama.
Hayden was the principal organizer for the 1960s anti-war movement group Students for a Democratic Society, from which the Weather Underground domestic terrorist group splintered.
In an article about Power's role in the international coalition currently bombing Libya, Hayden writes that he had "a long conversation with Power in December 2003."
"I was struck by the generational factor in her thinking," relates Hayden. "If she had experienced Vietnam in her early 20s, I felt, she would have joined the radical left, suspicious always of American power."
Continued Hayden: "But as an Irish internationalist witnessing death and destruction in the former Yugoslavia, she wondered how the United States could be neutral. She strongly favored the American intervention and air war that followed."
Hayden contended that Power's Balkans experience led her to become an advocate of American and NATO military intervention in humanitarian crises.

Flotilla Sets Sail For The Gaza Strip Again - Provacation Number 2

2011-04-25T15:27:00.000-07:00

From Canadian Free Press
- Jim Kouri
The main organizers of last year’s so-called Gaza Flotilla, the Turkish-based Foundation for Human Rights, Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (IHH), the Free Gaza coalition, and assorted radical-left leaders such as President Obama’s friends and colleagues William Ayers and Jodie Evans, are preparing a new blockade-busting voyage, the operation’s leader said Saturday.

Bulent Yildirim, leader of the planned flotilla, said his group and supporters are getting the flotilla ready and warned that there will be a ship from every country in Europe. He said the Turkish-registered ship “Mavi Marmara” will be part of it.

The participants have warned that until the Israeli defense blockade is lifted on Gaza, the intifada will continue by land, by sea and by air. The blockade is a result of weapons, rockets, and other contraband being smuggled into the Palestinian territory in the Gaza Strip and being used against the Israeli people.

Last year’s killing of Turkish citizens by Israeli forces, who maintain they were acting in self defense, saw relations between Israel and Turkey—former close allies—reach a crisis point. Almost 12 months later, there has been little improvement, with the Turkish government demanding compensation for the victims and apologies, something Israel refuses to do.

Observers warn that with Syria in turmoil, the last thing the region needs is a new crisis. But with the flotilla due to leave in the coming weeks, a new crisis could well be looming.
While the world condemned the actions of the Israeli military, calls for an international body to investigate last year’s Gaza flotilla raid by Israeli forces—in which nine “peace activists” were killed—were clouded by political posturing and vitriolic soundbites, according to some U.S. counterterrorism experts.

Even President Obama proposed an independent inquiry into the incident that triggered worldwide condemnation of Israel especially by members of the elite news media, but his proposal was quickly dropped as information came to light that certain individuals close to him and the Democrat Party were involved in the bloody incident.
Israel maintained a blockade around Gaza for quite sometime with the hope to preventing weapons such as missiles and rockets from being smuggled to the Palestinian terrorists. It was decided by a number of Islamists and radicals to take actions that would ultimately end the blockade.

The organizer of the blockade-busting action was a known radical group called Free Gaza. The “Free Gaza” flotilla was far more than a collection of innocent “peace activists” trying to provide humanitarian aid to Gaza, as they were portrayed by many news organizations.

Free Gaza sponsored the flotilla that engaged in deadly clashes with Israeli special forces troops. Among its members were Weather Underground founders William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn—who perpetrated a series of terrorist attacks—as well as Jodie Evans, the leader of the radical activist organization Code Pink. Besides the U.S. radicals, Islamic groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah and Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood contributed to the flotilla.

As is well-known in the United States, Ayers and Dohrn were close associates of President Obama for years in Chicago. Meanwhile, Jodie Evans was a fundraiser and financial bundler for Obama’s presidential campaign. In fact, one of Obama’s fundraisers was held in the home of Ayers and Dohrn.
Evans later worked on Attorney General Jerry Brown’s successful run for the governorship of California.
“Ayers’ and Dohrn’s continued activities appear to elude the attention of the people responsible for reporting the news without bias. They are terrorists, plain and simple, so why would anyone be surprised to discover their connection to an anti-Semitic organization that supports terror groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brother and even al-Qaeda?” asks former New York Police detective Michael Snopes.
The passengers reportedly included 100-plus members of various Muslim Brotherhood chapters, at least 20 of whom taped al Qaeda-style “martyr” videos before embarking on their anti-Israel mission, according to terrorist expert Steve Emerson, founder of The Investigative Project on Terrorism
According to Emerson’s IPT investigation, the chief organizers had more than “peaceful” intentions for the flotilla.
The respected Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) reported that a Gaza-based Hamas leader declared three days before the voyage started that the captain of the [Gaza Flotilla] ship had told him: “We will not allow the Zionists to come near us, and we will wage resistance against them.”
Meanwhile, Congressman Trent Franks (R-AZ) responded to ongoing criticism of Israel following the incident near Gaza where Israeli Defense Forces personnel engaged the flotilla of six ships attempting to overrun an Israeli naval blockade.

Rep. Franks cited reports indicating that individuals on board the ships were carrying weapons and attacked Israeli soldiers as they were trying to stop the advance of the flotilla. The blockade exists to keep the terrorist organization Hamas, which has routinely launched attacks against innocent Israeli citizens, from supplying its forces with weapons and other materials while allowing necessary humanitarian supplies to reach those living in Gaza, Franks stated.

“The conflict that took place aboard the Turkish flotilla was a completely unnecessary and deliberate attempt to provoke Israel to action. The Gaza blockade was put into place in an attempt to prevent Hamas from continuing to use the Gaza strip as a launching pad for literally thousands and thousands of rockets fired into innocent Israeli citizen populations. Humanitarian shipments into Gaza are routinely used to smuggle weapons and other dangerous materials into Gaza for Hamas,” said Congressman Franks.

“The United States must maintain a strong position of support for Israel as the U.N. once again tries to make them a punching bag for the rest of the world. The Obama Administration must also commit to vetoing any resolution from U.N. Organizations like the Security Council or the Human Rights Council that would condemn Israel and encourage the terrorist groups who provoked the raid,” said the Arizona lawmaker.
Obama supporters in the midst of discussion regarding the current Egyptian civil unrest are claiming that the Muslim Brotherhood is not a terrorist organization and that its members are not major players in the Egyptian protests and uprising. They also claim there are no connections between the Obama administration and radical Islamists such as the Muslim Brotherhood, in spite of the activities of Ayers, Dohrn and Evans, who are known associates of the U.S. President.

“If the House Republicans, who are now the majority, wish to investigate the current administration and its abysmal performance on national security incidents, they should start with the President’s relationship with far-left radicals and Islamic fascists,” said Det. Snopes.

Stop Addiction to Economic Growth and Start The Green Revolution

2011-04-21T16:51:00.000-07:00

Today's useful idiots. Enjoy!

The Big Mac is Inflating

2011-04-21T16:16:00.000-07:00

McDonald's warns of higher food inflation

From Rueters

Q1 profit $1.15 per share vs Street view $1.14
* Sees more food inflation in United States, Europe
* Plans small price increases this year
* Will sacrifice some margin to protect traffic
* Shares down 1.5 percent (Adds analyst comment, updates shares)
By Lisa Baertlein and Phil Wahba
LOS ANGELES/NEW YORK, April 21 (Reuters) - McDonald's Corp(MCD.N) forecast higher prices for beef, dairy and other itemsand said it would cautiously raise prices to keep attractingdiners, who are grappling with higher grocery and gas bills.
Shares fell 1.5 percent after the world's biggest hamburgerchain said it planned to offset some, but not all, of itshigher food costs, with small price increases throughout theyear.
McDonald's results landed a day after rival Yum Brands Inc (YUM.N) reported strong China results that masked rising food and labor costs. Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG.N), which has nearly all of its 1,100 restaurants in the United States, saw higher food costs eat into margins.
McDonald's and other restaurant operators are gettingsqueezed by accelerating food costs and must figure out how toraise prices without scaring away already skittish diners.
"It's very hard to pass through price increase right now,"said Stifel Nicolaus analyst Steve West.
McDonald's Chief Executive Jim Skinner said customers aregetting "pinched everywhere. They should not suffer the samefate at McDonald's."
Chief Financial Officer Pete Bensen said the company wouldsacrifice some short-term margin to protect long-term growth.He added that McDonald's has experience finding the rightrecipe for price increases in fragile economic times.

McDonald's now expects food costs to rise between 4 percentand 4.5 percent in the United States and Europe this year. Thatis up from its prior call for a rise of 2 percent to 2.5percent in the United States and an increase of 3.5 percent to4.5 percent in Europe. [ID:nN24223102].
McDonald's in March put through a 1 percent menu price risein the United States, where it plans additional increases.Prices in Europe are up by the same amount and the companyplans to raise prices in China.
When it comes to raising prices, West said McDonald's hasan edge because it attracts a higher-income diner than otherfast-food chains. It could have the best luck raising prices onthings like premium burgers and McCafe drinks that appeal tothose customers, he said.
STEALING SHARE
After struggling during the recession, McDonald's hasoutperformed its fast-food peers by updating its menu tobroaden its appeal beyond the young males that account for thebiggest share of sales at most other fast-food chains.
"The bottom line is they're still doing a great job ofgrowing revenue," said Peter Jankovskis, co-chief investmentofficer at Oakbrook Investments.
Analysts remain worried that high gas prices could forcefast-food restaurant patrons to cut back. But Jankovskis saidMcDonald's was better equipped than others to cope.
McDonald's has roughly 32,700 restaurants around the world.The United States alone has 14,000 units, which means customersdo not have to travel far to get to one.
"The big test will come in the summer months with gasolineremaining in the neighborhood of $4.00 (a gallon) -- that'swhen the strength of McDonald's will come through," he said.(here)
March sales at restaurants open at least 13 months were up 3 percent in the United States, up 4.9 percent in Europe and gained 0.5 percent in McDonald's Asia/Pacific, Middle East and Africa unit. Asia results were adversely affected by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, but that the impact on overall income was "minor," Skinner said.
First-quarter net income rose 10.9 percent to $1.21billion, or $1.15 per share, topping analysts' profit view by apenny, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Total first-quarter revenue at the Golden Arches rose 9percent to $6.1 billion, with sales in Europe leading the way.
Still, operating margin fell to 17.7 percent from 18.2percent as costs for food and paper rose. Food and paper costswere 33.6 percent of sales in the quarter, compared with 32.9percent a year earlier.
McDonald's shares fell 1.5 percent, or $1.17, to $76.23 inmidday trading on the New York Stock Exchange. (Editing by Maureen Bavdek and Gunna Dickson)

Our Leaders No Longer Believe in Investing in Industry in America But Rather In Other Countries With Our Money

2011-04-19T06:24:00.000-07:00

U.S. Gov't Agency Plans $2.84 Billion Loan for Oil Refinery—In Colombia

Monday, April 18, 2011
By Terence P. Jeffrey (CNSNews.com) - The U.S. Export-Import Bank, an independent agency of the federal government, is now planning a $2.84-billion loan for a massive project to expand and upgrade an oil refinery--in Cartagena, Colombia.
The money would go to Reficar, a wholly owned subsidiary of Ecopetrol, the Colombian national oil company.
“This is part of a $5.18 billion refinery and upgrade project in Cartagena, Colombia supplying petroleum products to the domestic and export markets,” the Export-Import Bank said in a statement.
The U.S. government-controlled bank says the $2.84-billion in financing it plans to undertake will be the second largest project it has ever done. The largest was $3 billion in financing for a liquid natural gas project in Papua New Guinea.
The statement released by the bank said that on April 7 the bank’s presidentially-appointed board of directors had “voted to grant preliminary approval for a $2.84 billion direct loan/loan guarantee” for the Colombian refinery project.
Export-Import Bank Spokesman Phil Cogan told CNSNews.com that the bank could not say at this time how much of the $2.84 billion would be directly loaned to the Colombian refinery company and how much would be in loans guaranteed by the bank--although he expected it to be a combination.
“It is conceivable it could be all a direct loan,” said Cogan. “Right now it is set up so that the board could do either a complete direct loan or a combination of direct loan and guarantee. That hasn’t been determined yet.”
Since December, the bank has also approved almost $880 million in other loans and loan guarantees to Reficar’s parent company, Ecopetrol. So, in total, if the new $2.84 billion in loans is finalized, the Columbian national oil company and its wholly owned subsidiaries will have received $3.72 billion in financing backed by a U.S.-government-controlled entity within a span of five months.
“Just last February and December the Bank approved nearly $880 million in export financing to help finance the sale of goods and services from various U.S. exporters to Ecopetrol S.A., Colombia's national oil company,” Export-Import Bank President Fred P. Hochberg said in the bank’s statement announcing preliminary approval of the refinery loan.
Export-Import Bank Spokesman Cogan stressed in an interview that although Reficar is wholly owned by Ecopetrol it remains a separate entity, and is considered as such for Export-Import Bank financing purposes
In its 2009 annual report, Ecopetrol says “we became 100% owners of Reficar, the company in charge of carrying out the Cartagena Refinery modernization plan.”
In its ordinary procedure for financing projects of this magnitude, the board of the Export-Import Bank votes its preliminary approval, notifies Congress of that preliminary approval, then waits five weeks before voting final approval of the deal. This allows members of Congress to comment on the planned financing project.
“The Reficar transaction is subject to congressional notification, with a final vote anticipated approximately 35 days following the expiration of the notification period,” says the bank’s press release on the loan.
When asked if Congress can veto the loan, Ex-Im Spokesman Cogan said, “No.”
The public-policy rationale for the $2.84 billion loan for the Colombian oil refinery project is the same as the rationale for all Export-Import Bank loans to foreign interests: to create jobs in the United States.
“The transaction will help create or sustain over 15,000 American jobs for a total of four years,” says the bank’s statement about the loan.
Spokesman Cogan says the bank calculates the jobs created or sustained by a loan or loan guarantee by using a formula that estimates how much money spent buying U.S. exports in a particular industry it takes to create a job.
If the $2.84 billion loan to Reficar to expand and upgrade its Colombian refinery creates or sustains the 15,000 jobs in the United States that the bank believes it will create or sustain that would work out to $189,333 per job.
According to the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association (NPRA), 95 percent of the gasoline purchased by U.S. consumers is refined inside the United States, meaning that expanding the gasoline refining capacity of Colombia is unlikely to have a significant impact on the supply of refined gasoline in the Untied States.
Also according to NPRA, the last time a new oil refinery was built in the United States was 1993, when a small facility was built in Valdez, Alaska. The last time a new large oil refinery was built in the United States was 1976, says NPRA. Older U.S. refineries, however, have been upgraded and expanded in recent years.