Archive for the ‘Those Bush's’Category

Al-Qaida and Taliban threat is exaggerated, says security thinktank

“‎”Exaggerated” is also an understatement. The C.I.A. created al-qaida. It’s our governments swan song for all their illegal wars, loss of liberties for citizens in this country, and general mind-fucking on the American public.”

-Fred Face  9/8/10

Richard Norton-Taylor

The threat posed by al-Qaida and the Taliban is exaggerated and the western-led counter-insurgency campaign in Afghanistan risks becoming a “long, drawn-out disaster”, one of the world’s leading securitythinktanks warned today.

According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), the west’s counter-insurgency strategy has “ballooned” out of proportion to the original aim of preventing al-Qaida from mounting terrorist attacks there, and must be replaced by a less ambitious but more sensible policy of “containment and deterrence”.

The critique of the US- and British-backed military policy is contained in the latest strategic survey from the IISS, a respected but usually uncontroversial body. IISS officers made clear today they have departed from their normal practice because of the serious threat to the west’s security interests in pursuing the current Afghan strategy.

In an effort to ignite a fresh debate and bring about a new approach towards Afghanistan, they challenge claims, not least from David Cameron, that the presence of thousands of British troops in Afghanistan is necessary to prevent al-Qaida from returning and thus increasing the threat to the UK.

“It is not clear why it should be axiomatically obvious that an Afghanistan freed of an international combat presence in the south would be an automatic magnet for al-Qaida’s concentrated reconstruction,” the IISS director-general, John Chipman, said.

Al-Qaida is now “engaged in Pakistan in very small numbers”, not remotely comparable to the situation in Afghanistan pre-September 2001, Nigel Inkster, an IISS director and former deputy chief of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, said. No such threat is likely to come from al-Qaida elsewhere, including Yemen and Somalia, he added.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/07/al-qaida-taliban-threat-afghanistan

The Impact of Fiat Money as the World’s Reserve Currency

David Redick

The creation of fiat official government money has had a profound effect in history and on our nation and the world today. “Fiat” means it is worth whatever the government says it is (its face value), although the material of which it is made may have more or less intrinsic market value.  Examples would include both valuable silver dollars and worthless paper, each declared to be worth $1; and today’s American Eagle bullion coin with a face value of $50 for one ounce of gold.

Normally, when a country creates too much fake money, sellers avoid it for payment, or stop buying its bonds due to its falling value, and the party is soon over. However, the U.S. is in a unique positionnever seen in the history of the world. Our fiat paper money is the primary de facto world’s “reserve currency” (anyone will accept it for payment and keep it as cash, or as a dollar-denominated asset; banks keep it as their reserves, like gold). We can create new money out of thin-air, and sellers of goods and services worldwide will accept it.   We can also pay our debts with it, even as the federal government spends to excess.

We have abused the privileged status of the U.S. dollar in many immoral and counterproductive ways. It is the underlying cause of our major problems, such as jobs being exported due to excess imports of goods (other countries would run out of money; the U.S. can create more as needed!), strange banking and securities deals based on loose money, excess personal spending and debt, and wars.

One cannot underestimate the importance of our ability to pay debts to other nations, and not be required to convert to their money. This conversion would normally trigger market valuation, which could collapse the value of the U.S. dollar.  Conversely, other nations must buy dollars to pay for most imports, and face declining exchange rates if they have expanded their money supply too much. We have abused this reserve status, and as of mid-2009 other nations started seeking alternatives (yuan, yen, a basket of currencies, etc.).

Most people are not aware that the reserve currency is used for most payments between other nations; for example, India pays Brazil for coffee with U.S. dollars. Hence, all nations keep a supply of U.S. dollars to use in trade. All banks are required to have sufficient reserves in order to show a strong asset base for the bank’s obligations (mainly demand and time deposits). Since the USD has been valued by the world system to be “as good as gold,” it is known as a reserve currency and used instead of gold to fund these bank reserves. The Dollar has been used in about 90% of international transactions since its ascendancy in the 1920s, but has become weaker since 2000, and declined to 70% or less by 2009. About 30% of international deals are now done in Euros and Yen, but that is increasing as the economies and currencies of China and others grow stronger. Indeed, China started using its yuan for international transactions in 2010, and also allowed foreign firms to create yuan-denominated private equity funds.

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Irish protesters hurl bottles, eggs, shoes at Tony Blair during book signing

“That look of fear & uneasiness on rat face Blair will be the new “in” look for politicians in the fall season… fuckin’ rat…”

-Fred Face 9/6/10

By Agence France-Presse

More than 200 noisy demonstrators, many chanting slogans criticising Blair over the 2003 Iraq war, had gathered for the event and witnesses said plastic bottles and flip-flops were thrown at him as his motorcade arrived.

None of the objects — also reported to include eggs and shoes — landed near the former premier as protestors surged towards a security barrier separating them from him before being repelled by police.

One woman said she tried to make a citizen’s arrest on Blair once he was inside the bookshop where the event was taking place.

“After I went through airport-like security to get to Mr Blair, I told him I was there to make a citizen’s arrest on him for war crimes committed in Iraq,” said Kate O’Sullivan, an activist from the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

“Mr Blair looked down and I was immediately grabbed by five security men and dragged away.”

A police spokesman would not give a precise figure for the number of people who were arrested at the protest but said it was in single figures.

Blair was carrying out the signing to publicise “A Journey”, his account of his decade in Downing Street from 1997 to 2007, which was released earlier this week.

In the book, he said he “can’t regret” the decision to go to war in Iraq alongside thenUS president George W. Bush but acknowledged that he did not foresee the “nightmare” which was unleashed in the aftermath.

He will hold another book signing in London Wednesday which anti-war activists are also pledging to target.

In Dublin, the demonstrators waved placards with slogans such as “Blair lied, millions died” and “Lock him up for genocide” and chanted amid a heavy police presence.

Part of the city’s main thoroughfare, O’Connell Street, where the bookshop is located, was sealed off and access inside was being tightly controlled.

Several hundred people braved pouring rain to queue at a back entrance to the store in the hope of getting their book signed by Blair.

Killian Kiely, a 21-year-old from south Dublin, was among those who got to meet him.

“I wanted to see him, he is one of the most important leaders of his generation though there is a lot I would disagree with about his policies,” he said. “I just wanted to see him in the flesh.”

But many hoping to meet Blair were left disappointed when he left after about an hour-and-a-half of signing.

In his first live television interview promoting the book on Friday, Blair brushed off the opposition he still faces from anti-war campaigners, seven years after the Iraq invasion.

“One of the first things that you learn in politics is that those who shout most don’t deserve necessarily to be listened to most,” he told Irish state television RTE.

“Everyone should be listened to equally, irrespective of the volume of noise.”

In a fresh sign of continuing opposition, over 2,500 people have joined a group on social networking website Facebook calling for shoppers to move Blair’s book to the crime section in bookshops.

Blair, who reportedly received a 4.6 million pound (5.6 million euro, 7.2 million dollar) advance for the book, will donate all proceeds to the Royal British Legion, a charity helping war veterans.

Despite continuing controversy over the Iraq conflict, Blair is particularly hailed by many in Ireland for his key role in the Northern Ireland peace process.

This video of raw footage from the Irish protest of Tony Blair’s first book signing was published to YouTube by Russia Today on Saturday, Sept. 4, 2010.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/09/bottles-eggs-shoes-hurled-tony-blair-ireland-appearance/

Kucinich criticizes ‘privatization of war’ after Obama’s speech

“I lost some confidence in Kucinich when he caved on the health care bill but I believe he is a good guy deep down.”

-F.F.

By Eric W. Dolan

A leading congressional opponent of the Iraq war welcomed the formal end of US combat operations on Tuesday but warned of the increased reliance on private mercenaries.

“The President is rightly celebrating that less American troops are in harm’s way,” Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) said Tuesday night. “I join the President in that celebration.”

“We need to dispense with the fiction, though, that this announcement in any way diminishes our financial or resource commitment to Iraq,” he continued.

“Fifty thousand ‘non-combat’ troops will remain, and that number does not include the State Department’s plan to double the amount of mercenaries through next year–whose only loyalty is to the highest bidder–and fortify numerous ‘enduring presence posts’ throughout the country. This fortification will include the recent State Department request for Black Hawk helicopters, mine-resistant ambush-protected (MRAP) vehicles, and advanced surveillance systems.

Such a substantial reliance on mercenaries amounts to a privatization of war.”

The State Department is planning to rely on 6,000 to 7,000 private security guards, according to The New York Times.

These private security contractors are expected to “operate radars to warn of enemy rocket attacks, search for roadside bombs, fly reconnaissance drones and even staff quick reaction forces to aid civilians in distress.”

Private security firms such as Xe, formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide, have received harsh condemnations from Iraqi officials for killing civilians.

Two Blackwater employees have been indicted for the unprovoked murder of two Afghan civilians in 2009 and will appear before a grand jury for trial on September 14.

A similar incident occurred in 2007, when Blackwater security workers shot and killed Iraqi civilians in Baghdad.

The five guards were charged with killing 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians and wounding 18 others during an unprovoked attack at a busy traffic circle using gunfire and grenades.

The men had faced up to 10 years in jail on each of 14 manslaughter counts, but a judge dismissed the case.

US officials have had reason to complain, too. In August, the security firm agreed to pay 42 million dollars in fines to settle 288 alleged violations “involving the unauthorized export of defense articles and provision of defense services to foreign end-users” in a number of countries between 2003 and 2009.

Kucinich warns that regardless of the official end of combat operations in Iraq, the United States will continue to spend billions of dollars “with absolutely nothing to show for it.”

“We must admit that our mere presence there undermines any hope for a peaceful and stable Iraq. We need to remove all American forces – military and otherwise – and commit to working diplomatically for a viable government.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/0901/kucinich-laments-privatization-war/

10 Reasons Why Conservatives Should Be Against Unfair Trade With China (And) 10 Reasons Why Liberals Should Be Against Unfair Trade With China

By Michael Snyder

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, John McCain, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have all fully supported our trade relationship with China.  In this day and age, virtually anyone who even dares to question how fair our “free trade” is with China is immediately labeled as a “protectionist” and is dismissed as a loon.  But when you sit down and really analyze it, there are a whole lot of very good reasons why both conservatives and liberals should be fundamentally against our unfair trade relationship with China.  But you won’t hear these reasons being talked about on CNN, MSNBC or Fox News.  You won’t hear many members of Congress get up and give speeches about how trade with China is bleeding our economy dry.  Both major political parties have completely and totally bought into “the benefits” of globalism and free trade and there isn’t even much of a national debate about our trade policies anymore.

But there should be a national debate.  Unfortunately, most conservatives are just going to accept whatever their leaders tell them to believe.  Conservatives have been convinced that to be against unfair trade is to be “anti-business” and no conservative ever wants to be anti-business.

Similarly, most liberals blindly follow whatever Obama, Pelosi and Reid tell them to believe.  Millions of hard working Democrat voters have lost their jobs due to our nightmarish trade relationship with China, but they are still convinced that Obama is their savior and that they must not ever say anything that he does is wrong.

Well, I have a message to members of both political parties….

WAKE UP!  YOU HAVE BEEN LIED TO!

If you are truly a conservative, there is no way that you should ever support our trade relationship with China.

If you are truly a liberal, there is no way that you should ever support our trade relationship with China.

Globalism has allowed the big global corporations that dominate our economy to make huge amounts of money, but it has also forced American workers into one gigantic global labor pool.

Are you willing to work 12 hours a day for less than $2.00 an hour in sweatshop conditions?

Well, that is your new competition.

The top 1 percent of all Americans is using globalism to make huge profits, but the standard of living for the rest of us is slowly but surely being forced down toward the rest of the world.

Is that what you really want?

If after reading the reasons below you can still consider yourself a good “conservative” or a good “liberal” and still support our current trade relationship with China please leave a comment to this article.  I would love to hear your reasoning.

10 Reasons Why Conservatives Should Be Against Unfair Trade With China

1 – Conservatives are supposed to be all about creating jobs.  But millions upon millions of good paying middle class jobs have been shipped off to China and they are never coming back.

2 – Once upon a time, conservatives were opposed to communism.  But our trade relationship with China has enabled the largest communist economy in the world to go from third world status to superpower status.  China is now the second largest economy in the world, and that would have never happened without our cooperation.

3 - Conservatives are supposed to be concerned about national security.  But thanks to the massive amount of money they have made from us, the Chinese have been able to dramatically upgrade and modernize their military.  At the top levels of the Chinese government, most officials still believe in the ultimate worldwide triumph of communism, and now thanks to us they have a world class military with which to advance that agenda.

4 – China has a very strict one-child policy which should be absolutely abhorrent to any true conservative.

5 – China uses mobile abortion vans to help enforce the one-child policy.  How any social conservative can justify trade with China after learning this is a total mystery.

6 – If Republicans actually started fighting to protect American jobs from going overseas they could win the “angry working class vote” and take both houses of Congress and the White House in 2012.

7 – Conservatives don’t like when other countries try to take advantage of the American people.  Yet China is taking advantage of the American people by keeping their currency artificially low and most conservatives are strangely quiet about this.  This currency manipulation has put large numbers of U.S. small businesses at a huge competitive disadvantage and has forced many of them to shut down.  Essentially, this currency manipulation has enabled China to get us down on the mat and continually beat the stuffing out of us.  Meanwhile, our politicians stand by and do nothing.

8 – Our trade deficit with China has enabled them to accumulate about a trillion dollars of our debt.  This gives them tremendous leverage over us and is a very serious threat to our economy and to our national security.

9 – Conservatives are traditionally very protective of national sovereignty and state sovereignty.  But a global economy governed by the G20, the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank is a giant step toward world government and a giant step away from national sovereignty and state sovereignty.

10 - The giant trade deficit that the United States runs is making us poorer as a nation each and every month.  Each year, somewhere around half a trillion dollars of our national wealth gets transferred out of the United States.  Much of that gets transferred to China.  The United States spends approximately $3.90 on Chinese goods for every $1 that the Chinese spend on goods from the United States.  The transfer of wealth that this represents is absolutely mind blowing.  China is literally bleeding us dry.

10 Reasons Why Liberals Should Be Against Unfair Trade With China

1 - Liberals are supposed to defend unions, yet our trade relationship with China has done more to hurt unions than anything else and most liberal politicians don’t seem to care.  Globalism has put the average American worker in direct competition with the cheapest labor in the world.  Unemployment is going to continue to increase unless something is done to stop the offshoring and outsourcing of our jobs.

2 – Liberals are supposed to care about the environment.  But our trade relationship with China means that thousands of factories and businesses leave our shores and end up in China where the environmental regulations are not nearly as strict.  In fact, China has become a complete and total environmental nightmare at this point.  If liberals truly cared about the environment they would want to keep factories and businesses here.

3 - Our trade relationship with China (and with the rest of the world) has caused the income inequality gap in America to explode.  The top 1% of all Americans have done very well in this environment while the rest of us suffer.  For much more on this phenomenon, please see my recent article entitled “Winners And Losers“.

4 – Dangerous products from China are pouring into the United States. Liberals should be horrified that so many of our products are now made outside the United States far from the watchful eyes of our regulatory agencies.  Over the past couple of years, there has been headline after headline about dangerous products made in China.  The following is just one example of this: 10 Babies Die Mysteriously At Fort Bragg: Toxic Drywall From China Used In Base Homes The Culprit?

5 – In a global economy, every piece of legislation that Democrats intend to help American workers with ends up backfiring.  For example, a rise in the minimum wage or a law increasing worker benefits causes American workers to become even more expensive and gives corporations even more incentive to move jobs overseas.

6 – “Free Trade” has been the most destructive in the inner cities where Democrats have traditionally gotten a tremendous amount of support.  Shiny new factories are going up all over China while at the same time formerly great manufacturing cities such as Detroit have degenerated into rotting war zones.  This is not good for liberals.

7 – Democrats won’t get elected if there are no jobs.  Each month, more jobs leave the United States for China and the growing number of long-term unemployed workers in the U.S. is not going to be inclined to keep the same politicians in office if this continues.  If liberal politicians value their jobs they should start protecting the jobs of average Americans.

8 – Free trade with China threatens to ruin our social safety net.  It is a good thing to help those in need, but there comes a point where too many people jump on to the net and it breaks down.  Already, one out of every six Americans is enrolled in at least one anti-poverty program.  Over 40 million Americans are on food stamps.  These are not good numbers for liberals.

9 – True liberals should be absolutely horrified by the exploitation of labor in China.  In China, millions of people work in horrific conditions for what is essentially slave labor pay.  The fact that big global corporations are getting rich from this should make the stomach of every liberal turn.

10 – The giant trade deficit that the United States runs is making us poorer as a nation each and every month.  Each year, somewhere around half a trillion dollars of our national wealth gets transferred out of the United States.  Much of that gets transferred to China.  The United States spends approximately $3.90 on Chinese goods for every $1 that the Chinese spend on goods from the United States.  The transfer of wealth that this represents is absolutely mind blowing.  China is literally bleeding us dry.

Liberals and conservatives should both be able to agree that it is not a good thing for millions of American jobs to leave the United States and go to China.

Liberals and conservatives should both be able to agree that it is not a good thing that billions of dollars in wealth gets transferred from the United States to China every single month.

But will our leaders wake up and start pursuing a more logical approach to China?

Don’t count on it.

http://www.blacklistednews.com/news-10419-0-5-5–.html

Orwellian DoubleThink: Rights are Privileges

Orwellian DoubleThink Series 2
Activist Post

Rights are Privileges (Freedom is Slavery): The primary duty of all public officials is to protect the rights of citizens as defined in the Constitution, where they shall not make or enforce any laws that violate those rights.  In fact, the “checks and balances” were put in place to assure that rights of citizens are not being trampled by one branch of the government. After 9-11, President Bush and other public officials proclaimed that their most important job was protecting the safety of the American people, which basically put an end to our rights coming first.

If the corporate-government fear campaign fails to scare the rights away from citizens, they try to convince the public that rights are now privileges and charge a fee or a tax for the “right” to engage in a certain activity.

Here are a few recent examples where rights are eroding into privileges:

  • Air travel has become a privilege since 9-11.  We must now forfeit all rights to our physical being by submitting to naked body scanners that emit unhealthy levels of radiation, or open-palm invasive frisking.  Everyone is assumed to be guilty until thoroughly cavity checked for explosives.
  • Free-speech Blogging on the Internet is now the target of taxes and licensing fees — the trial financial assault before free speech is ultimately killed with the end of net neutrality. Philadelphia is seeking a blog tax, while South Carolina has attempted to require all controversial speech groups to register, of course with a fee attached.
  • Food rights may be disappearing faster than any other rights.  Armed raids on raw milkproducers and the proposed senate bill S.510 that seeks to essentially criminalize local food are the pinnacle of corporate-government tyranny.
  • Rights to use Rainwater is becoming illegal or being taxed by the overlords who control mother nature and the slaves who dare to use her resources.  Your basic right to nature’s sustenance is now a taxable privilege in the land of the free.
  • Gun rights are under continued pressure by the government and the media to make us believe it is a privilege to own guns.
  • Capital rights, or the freedom to spend or invest our own money, are now under assault with capital controls.
  • Property rights erode every time property taxes are jacked up because the Fed creates inflation.  We own less and less of our property each day the dollar devalues. Property rights also erode as more strict zoning regulations continually pass.

http://www.activistpost.com/2010/08/orwellian-doublethink-rights-are.html

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Gates Foundation Puts Its Money Where Its Mouth Is

Posted by Jill Richardson

Well, well, well. It’s about time. Kind of like when Fox News gave $1 million in campaign contributions to Republicans. It wasn’t exactly a secret before, but now it’s official. The Gates Foundation just bought a whopping 500,000 shares of Monsanto stock.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with buying stock. My parents hold lots of BP stock, and they are hardly guilty of dumping the 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf. But this is one more step in a long line of actions by the Gates Foundation in which it is advocating policies and agricultural technologies that will directly benefit and profit Monsanto while screwing over the most vulnerable people on earth: hungry subsistence farmers in developing countries.

I wrote a piece recently about what happens when American industrial agriculture collides with poor, uneducated subsistence farmers in the developing world and it ain’t pretty. In fact, it’s tragic. It’s criminal. For a corporation to prey upon such a vulnerable population for its own gain, when the result is the starvation, continued impoverishment, or loss of land and lifestyle of the poor.

Perhaps Gates thinks he is doing something good for the world with his advocacy of biotechnology and industrial agriculture. No doubt all of the executives from Monsanto and other biotech and chemical companies tell him that every day. He should instead listen to the 400 scientists who spent 3 years performing the most comprehensive study of agricultural knowledge, science, and technology in the history of the world, the IAASTD report. The report recommends agroecology – what many in the U.S. would refer to as “organics” (even though the term is more nuanced than that).

See the press release from AGRA Watch here.

http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/08/26/gates-foundation-puts-its-money-where-its-mouth-is/

Vaccine Deaths And Injuries Skyrocket As Cover-Up Implodes

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Monday, August 30, 2010

Global revolt against deadly vaccines spreads as cases of debilitating illnesses, soft-kill side-effects and even instant deaths become widespread

Cases of debilitating illnesses, soft-kill side-effects and even instant deaths as a result of vaccinations across the world are skyrocketing as the cover-up of deadly inoculations implodes and more people than ever become suspicious about what they are being injected with by health authorities who have proven they cannot be trusted.

The implosion of the vaccine cover-up is sure to discourage more parents from vaccinating their children in the coming months, with the swine flu shot now being combined with the regular seasonal flu jab. A recent Rasmussen poll found that 52 per cent of Americans were concerned about the safety of vaccines as we approach the start of school and college terms, where many children and teenagers will be “required” to take shots before they can attend.

A global revolt against dangerous vaccines is brewing following a series of cases where children have been killed as a direct result of inoculations.

A measles vaccination program in India was halted after four children died almost immediately after receiving the shot. “Four children died within minutes of receiving a vaccine for measles followed by drops of Vitamin A solution on Saturday,” reports MedGuru.

Indian newspaper reports carried eyewitness accounts of what happened. “The four children were reported to have fainted soon after they were vaccinated and witnesses reported seeing the children’s eyes roll back as they began to have seizures,” reports Blitz.

Furious villagers reacted to the tragedy by going on a rampage, attacking health workers and holding government doctors hostage.

Health professionals and doctors with government ties were also blamed in Finland and Sweden after aH1N1 vaccination program was halted following a 300 per cent increase in cases of the neurological disorder narcolepsy amongst children and young people who had received the shot over the last six months.

According to Kari Lankinen, head physician of the Finnish Medicines Agency, doctors were complicit in hiding the link between the swine flu shot and narcolepsy and did so to advance their careers.

Meanwhile, concerned mothers whose daughters have been injured or killed by the Gardasil vaccine have put together a website that documents the truth about how the vaccine has killed and injured thousands of young girls since it was introduced in 2006. Thousands of teenagers have suffered adverse reactions and at least 71 have died from the vaccine since the HPV program was launched four years ago.

The global vaccine cover-up took a massive blow after it was confirmed that the 2009 swine flu outbreak was, as we predicted from the start, a contrived scam centered around making vast profits for pharmaceutical companies while endangering the health of the public.

As we reported earlier this year, Chair of the Council of Europe’s Sub-committee on Health Wolfgang Wodarg’s investigation into the 2009 swine flu outbreak found that the pandemic was a fake hoax manufactured by pharmaceutical companies in league with the WHO.

Wodarg said that governments were “threatened” by special interest groups within the pharmaceutical industry as well as the WHO to buy the vaccines and inject their populations without any reasonable scientific reason for doing so, and yet in countries like Germany and France only around 6 per cent took the vaccine despite enough being available to cover 90 per cent of the population.

Wodarg said there was “no other explanation” for what happened than the fact that the WHO worked in cahoots with the pharmaceutical industry to manufacture the panic in order to generate vast profits, agreeing with host Alex Jones that the entire farce was a hoax.

He also explained how health authorities were “already waiting for something to happen” before the pandemic started and then exploited the virus for their own purposes.

Professor Ulrich Keil, director of the World Health Organization’s Collaborating Centre for Epidemiology, also slammed the swine flu epidemic as an overblown “angst campaign”, devised in conjunction with major drug companies to boost profits for vaccine manufacturers.

As Natural News’ Mike Adams reported, several members of the Emergency Committee expert panel that advised the World Health Organization (WHO) during the swine flu scare were receiving financial support from pharmaceutical manufacturers either during or prior to the epidemic.

Both H1N1 and seasonal flu shots have been linked with a number of different side-effects across the globe, including Guillain-Barré Syndrome as well as dystonia, a paralyzing neurological disorder.

The seasonal flu vaccine has also been linked with convulsions and fits in under-5′s.

Many batches of the swine flu vaccine included squalene and mercury amongst their ingredients, two substances that have been directly connected with the explosion of autism amongst children as well as other diseases. Individuals within government and the military were privileged to receive additive free shots that did not include these substances. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and government ministers, as well as German soldiers, were amongst those who received access to the so-called “friendly” version of the vaccine.

In order to head off legal claims for side-effects caused by the swine flu vaccination program, the U.S. government provided vaccine makers with blanket legal immunity before the shots began to be dispersed.

Citing concerns over safety, Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Health Minister Ewa Kopacz, with the broad support of the public, ensured that Poland was the only country in the world to completely reject the H1N1 vaccine.

“We are making this decision only in the interest of the Polish patient and the taxpayer,” Tusk said. “We will not take part because it’s not honest and it’s not safe for the patient.”

In a 2008 trial for a bird flu vaccine, three Polish doctors and six nurses faced criminal charges after the vaccine killed 21 homeless people who were participating in the test.

The Czech Republic rejected a swine flu vaccine produced by pharmaceutical manufacturer Baxter after the company was caught shipping vaccines contaminated with deadly live H5N1 avian flu virus to 18 countries by a lab at an Austrian branch of Baxter.

Given the routinely stated goal on behalf of mega-rich foundations that fund vaccination programs around the world, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, to use vaccines as a way of sterilizing the planet’s population as part of the global eugenics soft-kill assault on humanity, it’s unsurprising that as more people become aware of this agenda, take-up rates of new as well as seasonal vaccines continue to decline.

As Jurriaan Maessen recently documented in his Infowars exclusive, in its 1968 yearly report, the Rockefeller Foundation acknowledged funding the development of so-called “anti-fertility vaccines” and their implementation on a mass-scale.

This program was then launched by a group that was created under auspices of the World Health Organization, World Bank and UN Population Fund entitled “Task Force on Vaccines for Fertility Regulation”. In the 1990′s, the WHO was mired in controversy after it distributed a “tetanus vaccine” to poor girls and women in the third world that was contaminated with human chorionic gonadotrophin (hCG), a hormone that induces involuntary abortion.

During a TED conference earlier this year, Bill Gates openly stated that vaccines would be used to lower the earth’s population in the name of combating climate change. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is one of the major funders of vaccine research and production in the third world.

Warning that the global population was heading towards 9 billion, Gates said, “If we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services (abortion), we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 per cent.”

Quite how an improvement in health care and vaccines that supposedly save lives would lead to a lowering in global population is an oxymoron, unless Gates was referring to vaccines that sterilize people, which is precisely the same method advocated in White House science advisor John P. Holdren’s 1977 textbook Ecoscience, which calls for a dictatorial “planetary regime” to enforce draconian measures of population reduction via all manner of oppressive techniques, including sterilization.

With people globally becoming increasingly aware of the role of vaccines in the agenda to reduce world population, the cover-up of debilitating diseases, soft kill side-effects, and instant fatalities as a result of vaccinations will continue to implode, until authorities are forced by law to implement vastly more stringent screening procedures and remove the toxic additives from vaccines that are causing these deaths and diseases.

http://www.infowars.com/vaccine-deaths-and-injuries-skyrocket-as-cover-up-implodes/

Finland Suspends Swine Flu Shots After Vaccine Linked With Neurological Disorder

“Wow a government toying with honestly… wish we had one…”

-F.F.

Minister of Health and Social Services Paula Risikko says it is essential to thoroughly examine suspicions that increased outbreaks of child narcolepsy might be linked to the H1N1 swine flu vaccine.

However, the Minister said the swine flu vaccination programme would continue. In her view, Risikko thought it wise to examine any connection between narcolepsy and swine flu vaccine in other European countries.

The National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) is to determine if vaccine for the H1N1 swine flu could be linked to an increase in cases of narcolepsy among children.

The condition causes excessive daytime sleepiness even after adequate nocturnal sleep.

Although the THL’s Vaccine Department Director Terhi Kilpi does not fear any connection between the H1N1 jab and narcolepsy, she says doubts must be examined.

Experts on both vaccines and narcolepsy met on Wednesday to discuss the issue.

Doubts arose when a Finnish child neurologist noticed an increased level in the number of narcolepsy cases this year. Similar observations have been noticed in Sweden, reports the tabloid Iltalehti.

Medical officials in Sweden are also examining a possible link between the Pandemrix vaccine and narcolepsy, according to the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet. The Swedish news agency TT reports six cases with a possible link to the vaccine.

A patient suffering from narcolepsy may suddenly fall asleep, for example, while, speaking or eating without prior warning. Their muscles may also suddenly weaken, causing them to suddenly collapse. There is no known cure for the disease.

Several Times Normal Rate of Cases

About a dozen Finnish children fell ill with narcolepsy during or after last winter’s swine flu epidemic, far more than the average rate. The THL is trying to determine whether the cases may have been related to the H1N1 vaccine or to the flu itself.

The cases were diagnosed during the spring and early summer. Dr Markku Partinen, a docent in neurology at the University of Helsinki and former president of the World Association of Sleep Medicine, notes that the cases appear to have a chronological link to the H1N1 epidemic.

Doctors began to wonder when an unusually large number of cases of narcolepsy began to appear last spring.

“When it became clear that the symptoms began to appear in December, January and February, we began to consider a link to the swine flu epidemic,” says Partinen.

So far about 12-14 cases have been detected, all with symptoms that began between December and February, says Partinen. The patients are aged 5 to 15.

On average about three cases of the illness are diagnosed in Finland annually.

http://yle.fi/uutiset/news/2010/08/minister_calls_for_thorough_examination_of_possible_link_between_h1n1_and_narcolepsy_1912099.html?print=true

Nonlethal weapons touted for use on citizens

“‎(by design) break down the economy…

(you get) desperate people doing desperate things to survive…

(they get) the excuse to usher in a total lockdown police state.

Homeland Security is for YOU… not fake arab terrorists. Sounds scary, right? Doesn’t have to be. If people stop living in denial and focus… tyranny will be squashed quick like.”

-Fred Face 8/25/10

WASHINGTON — Nonlethal weapons such as high-power microwave devices should be used on American citizens in crowd-control situations before they are used on the battlefield, the Air Force secretary said Tuesday.

Domestic use would make it easier to avoid questions in the international community over any possible safety concerns, said Secretary Michael Wynne.

“If we’re not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens, then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation,” said Wynne. “(Because) if I hit somebody with a nonlethal weapon and they claim that it injured them in a way that was not intended, I think that I would be vilified in the world press.”

The Air Force has funded research into nonlethal weapons, but he said the service isn’t likely to spend more money on development until injury issues are reviewed by medical experts and resolved.

Nonlethal weapons generally can weaken people if they are hit with the beam. Some of the weapons can emit short, intense energy pulses that also can be effective in disabling some electronic devices.

On another subject, Wynne said he expects to pick a new contractor for the next generation of aerial refueling tankers by next summer. He said a draft request for bids will be put out next month, and there are two qualified bidders: The Boeing Co. and a team of Northrop Grumman Corp. and European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co., the majority owner of European jet maker Airbus SAS.

The contract is expected to be worth at least $20 billion.

Chicago-based Boeing lost the tanker deal in 2004 amid revelations that it had hired a top Air Force acquisitions official who had given the company preferential treatment.

Air Force tightens its belt
Wynne also said the Air Force, which is already chopping 40,000 active duty, civilian and reserves jobs, is now struggling to find new ways to slash about $1.8 billion from its budget to cover costs from the latest round of base closings.

He said he can’t cut more people, and it would not be wise to take funding from military programs that are needed to protect the country. But he said he also encounters resistance when he tries to save money on operations and maintenance by retiring aging aircraft.

“We’re finding out that those are, unfortunately, prized possessions of some congressional districts,” said Wynne, adding that the Air Force will have to “take some appetite suppressant pills.” He said he has asked employees to look for efficiencies in their offices.

The base closings initially were expected to create savings by reducing Air Force infrastructure by 24 percent.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14806772/

If you want to know what tyranny is like, look around.

“None Dare Call It Tyranny.”

By Sheldon Richman

If you want to know what tyranny is like, look around.

The national government — specifically the executive branch — can do pretty much what it wants. It could bomb Iran tomorrow without a declaration of war from Congress. It can — and does — conduct secret wars and covert operations against countries that have done nothing to us. Of course, they are secret only to the ignorant taxpayers who must finance them and perhaps suffer when the provoked retaliation occurs. It can have men behind PlayStation consoles in Nevada fire Hellfire missiles from aerial drones on people in Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere.

This tyrannical government can send any foreigner picked up anywhere in the world to third countries known for torturing prisoners. It can hold people accused of nothing indefinitely in prisons in Cuba and Afghanistan and torture them into making false confessions. It can conduct a war crimes trial in a military kangaroo court for a man, Omar Khadr, held captive for eight years after he was picked up at the age of 15 during a U.S. assault on villagers near Kabul. His torture-induced “confessions” will be admissible. All this is in violation of commitments under the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict not to treat children in war as though they were adults.

It can assassinate even American citizens abroad without a scent of due process.

It is a government that can write its own warrants without judicial review — and call them national security letters — in order to conduct fishing expeditions in anyone’s electronic records. But that isn’t enough power for the present Progressive administration, which wants the freedom to examine our browser histories and email correspondents’ names. The Bill of Rights, like the Geneva Convention, has become “quaint” and obsolete.

Like any self-respecting tyranny, it tries to keep the truth from its subjects. Comforting words camouflage the 50,000 armed and combat-ready troops that will remain in Iraq after “withdrawal.” Their “primary” mission is to train an army whose own general says won’t be ready for years. This gross deception follows on the heralded “surge,” which supposedly turned things around in Iraq. What “worked,” however, was not U.S. military prowess or Gen. David Petraeus’s brilliance, but the spreading of American taxpayers’ cash to buy off Sunni insurgents and the denouement of ethnic cleansing in Baghdad.

And, again, like any self-respecting tyranny, it bridles at leaks of classified documents that tell the people the truth. Solemn administration officials condemn Wikileaks and its sources for supposedly jeopardizing U.S. troops and Afghan collaborators, while adding that nothing new had been revealed. With no sense of irony, the same officials find blood on the hands of Wikileaks’ Julian Assange, ignoring the rivers of blood their policies and weapons have produced in the Middle East and South Central Asia. Without those policies, there would be nothing to leak. Some call for the assassination of Assange, and for all we know he is on President Obama’s kill list. Meanwhile a courageous young soldier, Bradley Manning, who apparently leaked video of American troops committing cold-blooded murder in Baghdad, faces 52 years in prison.

Now we are being softened up for the next war, against Iran. As in 2002 with Iraq’s phantom WMDs, the empire advance men tell us Iran is building nuclear weapons, and Obama and Secretary of State Clinton say “all options are on the table,” which phrase includes hydrogen bombs. Once again a Big Lie is repeated without proof. The reason is simple: all evidence runs the other way. The government’s own intelligence agencies say Iran has no nuclear-weapons program, and the International Atomic Energy Agency is on the scene. But no matter. If it suits the tyrannical administration or its partner in empire, Israel, bombs of some kind will fall. The consequences all around will be horrible.

Can it really be tyranny if we get to vote? Yes. Thomas Jefferson warned of “elective despotism.” How valuable is your one vote when the government manipulates and distorts the flow of information, when Congress capitulates, and when the “adversarial” mainstream media act like government press agents, if not adoring lapdogs. The ugly truth is out there, but you have to want to know it.

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=1072

Toxic legacy of US assault on Fallujah ‘worse than Hiroshima’

By Patrick Cockburn

Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study.

Iraqi doctors in Fallujah have complained since 2005 of being overwhelmed by the number of babies with serious birth defects, ranging from a girl born with two heads to paralysis of the lower limbs. They said they were also seeing far more cancers than they did before the battle for Fallujah between US troops and insurgents.

Their claims have been supported by a survey showing a four-fold increase in all cancers and a 12-fold increase in childhood cancer in under-14s. Infant mortality in the city is more than four times higher than in neighbouring Jordan and eight times higher than in Kuwait.

Dr Chris Busby, a visiting professor at the University of Ulster and one of the authors of the survey of 4,800 individuals in Fallujah, said it is difficult to pin down the exact cause of the cancers and birth defects. He added that “to produce an effect like this, some very major mutagenic exposure must have occurred in 2004 when the attacks happened”.

US Marines first besieged and bombarded Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad, in April 2004 after four employees of the American security company Blackwater were killed and their bodies burned. After an eight-month stand-off, the Marines stormed the city in November using artillery and aerial bombing against rebel positions. US forces later admitted that they had employed white phosphorus as well as other munitions.

In the assault US commanders largely treated Fallujah as a free-fire zone to try to reduce casualties among their own troops. British officers were appalled by the lack of concern for civilian casualties. “During preparatory operations in the November 2004 Fallujah clearance operation, on one night over 40 155mm artillery rounds were fired into a small sector of the city,” recalled Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster, a British commander serving with the American forces in Baghdad.

He added that the US commander who ordered this devastating use of firepower did not consider it significant enough to mention it in his daily report to the US general in command. Dr Busby says that while he cannot identify the type of armaments used by the Marines, the extent of genetic damage suffered by inhabitants suggests the use of uranium in some form. He said: “My guess is that they used a new weapon against buildings to break through walls and kill those inside.”

The survey was carried out by a team of 11 researchers in January and February this year who visited 711 houses in Fallujah. A questionnaire was filled in by householders giving details of cancers, birth outcomes and infant mortality. Hitherto the Iraqi government has been loath to respond to complaints from civilians about damage to their health during military operations.

Researchers were initially regarded with some suspicion by locals, particularly after a Baghdad television station broadcast a report saying a survey was being carried out by terrorists and anybody conducting it or answering questions would be arrested. Those organising the survey subsequently arranged to be accompanied by a person of standing in the community to allay suspicions.

The study, entitled “Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005-2009″, is by Dr Busby, Malak Hamdan and Entesar Ariabi, and concludes that anecdotal evidence of a sharp rise in cancer and congenital birth defects is correct. Infant mortality was found to be 80 per 1,000 births compared to 19 in Egypt, 17 in Jordan and 9.7 in Kuwait. The report says that the types of cancer are “similar to that in the Hiroshima survivors who were exposed to ionising radiation from the bomb and uranium in the fallout”.

Researchers found a 38-fold increase in leukaemia, a ten-fold increase in female breast cancer and significant increases in lymphoma and brain tumours in adults. At Hiroshima survivors showed a 17-fold increase in leukaemia, but in Fallujah Dr Busby says what is striking is not only the greater prevalence of cancer but the speed with which it was affecting people.

Of particular significance was the finding that the sex ratio between newborn boys and girls had changed. In a normal population this is 1,050 boys born to 1,000 girls, but for those born from 2005 there was an 18 per cent drop in male births, so the ratio was 850 males to 1,000 females. The sex-ratio is an indicator of genetic damage that affects boys more than girls. A similar change in the sex-ratio was discovered after Hiroshima.

The US cut back on its use of firepower in Iraq from 2007 because of the anger it provoked among civilians. But at the same time there has been a decline in healthcare and sanitary conditions in Iraq since 2003. The impact of war on civilians was more severe in Fallujah than anywhere else in Iraq because the city continued to be blockaded and cut off from the rest of the country long after 2004. War damage was only slowly repaired and people from the city were frightened to go to hospitals in Baghdad because of military checkpoints on the road into the capital.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/toxic-legacy-of-us-assault-on-fallujah-worse-than-hiroshima-2034065.html

City receives citation for not fluoridating water

BY: JON CHOWN

The City of Watsonville has been cited by the California Department of Public Health for failure to comply with an order by the state to fluoridate the water supply.

The citation was received by the city Thursday and demands written assurance from the city by Aug. 29 that it will comply, and plan and schedule for fluoridation submitted by Sept. 19.

City Attorney Al Smith said the citation appeared “out of the clear blue.”

“We have been in communication with the Department of Health Services,” he said. “I was surprised … but it is what it is.”

Fluoridation has been an issue ever since the City Council first passed a resolution accepting a grant to fluoridate. In February 2002, Flouridation 2010 Workgroup offered the city $946,000 to fluoridate, but in November of that year, Watsonville residents concerned about the safety of fluoridation passed Measure S, banning all substances from the water not specifically approved by the Food and Drug Administration, which includes fluoride.

But a state law requires cities to fluoridate if given the funding to do so, and Watsonville lost its battle in court to honor the voters’ wishes. However, that case was decided years ago, and the city and the California Dental Association Foundation have been wrangling over a contract ever since as the city tries to make certain the project will cost it nothing. Of specific concern are lawsuits associated with the project.

http://www.register-pajaronian.com/v2_news_articles.php?heading=0&story_id=9337&page=72

Ground Zero Mosque Imam Is Globalist Stooge

“Instead of channeling their anger to our government & wall street for their destruction of our economy… people get behind hyped bullshit issues. These mainstream media PR machine have some good ideas and diversions but they will only last so long as the masses snap the fuck out of it…”

Fred Face 8/23/10

Steve Watson
Prisonplanet.com
Friday, Aug 20th, 2010

The Imam of the now infamous “ground zero mosque” is a member of the ultra elitist Council On Foreign Relations and receives financial backing from powerful globalist sources including the Rockefellers, the Carnegie Corporation and the Ford Foundation.

This information provides a compelling backdrop to the theory that the move to establish the mosque is a deliberate attempt to further stoke religious tensions and divert attention away from the real enemy of free humanity, the corporate globalist elite who continue to profit from global war and division.

The proposed mosque, to be known as Cordoba House is the project of the Cordoba Initiative, an organisation founded by ‘Imam’ Feisal Abdul Rauf (pictured above), who, in addition to being a member of the World Economic Forum’s Council of 100, is an active member of the Council on Foreign Relations’ Religious Advisory Committee.

The Cordoba Initiative’s website cites “Christian support for the Cordoba House” in the form of Christian publication, “Sojourners”, which is owned by evangelical Christian writer and political activist Jim Wallis, also coincidentally a sitting member of the CFR’s Religious Advisory Committee.

The CFR, as regular readers know, is populated exclusively by major players with the biggest corporations, banks and defence contractors in the world – all of whom are making vast profits and securing more power from continued global conflict. The CFR also exerts far reaching influence over the U.S. government.

Tony Cartalucci at landdestroyer blog breaks down the fact that every single leading player in both the neocon infested Bush administration and the “change” gang under Barrack Obama is a CFR luminary. Cartalucci also provides further stunning research relating to Cordoba House and its CFR Imam, which breaks down as follows.

Feisal Abdul Rauf also heads up the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA) which enjoys a partnership with the Cordoba Initiative and provided $100 million to secure the site close to ground zero for the mosque to be built.

That $100 million came directly from the back pockets of ASMA’s financial backers.

According to ASMA’s website they include the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers, Rockefeller Philanthropy, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund – essentially the tip of the pyramid of the international globalist elite.


This story is a perfect microcosm of the new world order agenda.

The mainstream media continues to push the mosque story hour after hour, day after day, from the perspective of both the left and the right, manufacturing a controversy that plays on a now indentured fear of Islam that has been cooked up over the last nine years via endless phony “muslim” terror plots and concocted “al qaeda” threats.

Real muslims are witnesses to a vicious backlash, stirred up and served from this corporate media cauldron, creating the impression they are under attack by non-muslims and forcing them to have to defend their religion, and the whole thing snowballs onwards.

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The connections to 9/11 are clear, and also serve to enforce the mythical notion that 19 radical muslims controlled by some guys in a cave in Afghanistan were able to direct military precision attacks on America with devastating consequences.

Meanwhile behind all of this are the global elite, rubbing their hands in glee as a manufactured “clash of civilizations” unfolds and the whole of humanity lunges at each other’s throats.

Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor at Alex Jones’ Infowars.net, and regular contributor to Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham in England.

http://www.infowars.com/ground-zero-mosque-imam-is-globalist-stooge/

The Left/Right Paradigm is Collapsing! Obamanoids are Waking Up

“She’s a little slow going but she’s on point.”

-F.F.

Government is not the answer.

In this June 2009 speech in the U.S. House, Congressman Paul described the threat posed by continuing to follow failed policies and described how America can return to prosperity.

The Anti-Fed Revolution

By Anthony Gregory

End the Fed by Ron Paul
(New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2009), 212 pages.

Through his 2008 presidential campaign, Ron Paul managed to make monetary policy a national political issue. For nearly a century it had been a relatively obscure topic, and throughout my lifetime respectable opinion considered it a fringe inclination even to be interested in it. Certainly, those who questioned the necessity of even having a central bank had long been relegated to the kooky periphery of political discourse.

This all changed with Paul’s campaign, which put restoring sound money at the top of the 21st-century populist libertarian agenda, second only, perhaps, to ending the U.S. military empire. The financial crisis has made Americans from all walks of life dare to question the central banker behind the curtain. Recent polls show that the Federal Reserve is now among the least-trusted federal agencies, with a vast majority of the public supporting a thorough and independent audit. Paul’s efforts to bring about such an audit garnered more than two-thirds support in the House of Representatives, and for the first time, the Fed’s partisans are on the defensive, publishing articles vindicating its expansionary credit during the Bush years, which an increasing segment of the population, including some in the mainstream press, now blame for causing the housing bubble and consequent financial collapse.

Capitalizing upon this rising public distrust of the once-sacred central bank, Ron Paul has written End the Fed, a direct attack on the moral, economic, and legal foundations of the Federal Reserve. Although much of what can be found in the book can be learned elsewhere, no other popular treatment — concise, sharp, accessible, principled, and insightful — fills the niche that End the Fed serves to fill.

Of Paul’s many accomplishments in popularizing the ideals of liberty, his successful advancement of the Austrian school of economics deserves special recognition. End the Fed provides an accessible introduction to the economic thinking of Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Murray Rothbard, and others of the Austrian tradition, whose focus on individual human action is arguably the most radical of all the economic disciplines, and the most compatible with principled libertarian political philosophy. They are not one and the same, for economics is a value-free, scientific study of cause and effect, and the use of resources by people pursuing their interests in a world of material scarcity, whereas libertarianism is a political philosophy centered on moral precepts of property rights, with a definitive normative focus.

But the two reinforce each other by employing methodological individualism — the study of human affairs in terms of individual choices and decisions — and together they show that we are not required to choose between a free society and a prosperous one. For helping to bring such a radical and yet intuitively comprehendible outlook to the general public, one that is not burdened by the mathematical esoterica and affinity to central planning that permeate mainstream economics, we owe Ron Paul a debt of gratitude.
Fiat money

Of course, what makes Austrian economics so particularly compelling and important these days is its explanation of the boom-and-bust business cycle. Ludwig von Mises and F.A. Hayek, the latter of whom won the Nobel Prize in 1974 for his work on this topic, explained unsustainable and systemic economic booms in terms of artificially easy credit, which leads to malinvestment in economic projects, especially long-term ones that cannot be justified by current savings. In a free market, interest rates are determined by the willingness of people to forgo spending and instead save their money. When the rates are lowered by the Fed, it discourages saving while simultaneously encouraging borrowing and investing. This leads to a cascade of high wages, massive construction, rising prices, and everything else we associate with booms such as those seen in the 1920s, the Nasdaq bubble, and the skyrocketing housing prices of the Bush era. But eventually, as economic projects must yield a return, the savings are shown not to have been there to justify the investment. Whereas a free market in interest rates harmonizes production and consumption over time, central bank distortions lead to the boom and bust.

The Fed was sold to the public partly on the basis that it would end the business cycle and financial panics forever. But “the data show otherwise,” writes Paul.

Continue Article

Der Spiegel: US middle class vanishing

The American middle class is on the verge of disappearing, while the United States, itself, is in danger of becoming a third world country, a leading German newspaper says.

According to an article appearing in the German newspaper, Der Spiegel, the negative consequences of the global financial crisis include a widened social class rift and the elimination of the middle class in the US.

The article states that many Americans are beginning to realize that the American Dream has now become a nightmare as people are having to face the bitter reality of a shrinking job market along with decades of stagnating wages and dramatic increases in inequality.

More than a year after the official end of the recession, the overall unemployment rate remains consistently above 9.5 percent. But this is just the official figure. When adjusted to include the people who have already given up looking for work — or are barely surviving on the few hundred dollars they earn with a part-time job and having to use their savings to supplement their income — the real unemployment figure jumps to more than 17 percent.

In its current annual report, the US Department of Agriculture notes that “food insecurity” is on the rise, and that 50 million Americans were unable to buy enough food to remain healthy at some point last year. One out of every eight American adults and one out of four children now survive on government food stamps. These are unbelievable numbers for the world’s richest nation

Last week, leading online columnist Arianna Huffington issued the almost apocalyptic warning that “America is in danger of becoming a Third World country.”

In a recent cover story titled “So Long, Middle Class,” the New York Post presented its readers with “25 statistics that prove that the middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence in America.”

http://www.presstv.com/detail/139522.html

Nearly 50 percent leave Obama mortgage-aid program

“What do you expect when you make a deal with the devil. Like Obama’s Financial “Reform” Bill… which greatly expands power to the Federal Reserve and puts more toxic derivatives in the market. You know… the two things that got us into this whole mess in the first place. Ummm… ranting on Friday.”

Fred Face 8/20/10

By MARTIN CRUTSINGER (AP)

WASHINGTON — Nearly half of the homeowners who enrolled in the Obama administration’s flagship mortgage-relief program have fallen out.

A new report issued Friday by the Treasury Department said that approximately 630,000 people who had tried to get their monthly mortgage payments lowered through the effort have been cut loose through July. That’s about 48 percent of the 1.3 million homeowners who had enrolled since March 2009. That is up from more than 40 percent through June.

The report suggests foreclosures could rise in the second half of the year and weaken the ailing housing market, analysts say.

Another 421,804, or 32.3 percent of those who started the program, have received permanent loan modifications and are making their payments on time.

Many borrowers have complained that program is a bureaucratic nightmare. They say banks often lose their documents and then claim borrowers did not send back the necessary paperwork.

The banking industry said borrowers weren’t sending back their paperwork. They also have accused the Obama administration of initially pressuring them to sign up borrowers without insisting first on proof of their income. When banks later moved to collect the information, many troubled homeowners were disqualified or dropped out.

Obama officials dispute that they pressured banks. They have defended the program, saying lenders are making more significant cuts to borrowers’ monthly payments than before the program was launched. And some of the largest mortgage companies in the program have offered alternative programs to those who fell out.

The Obama plan was designed to help people in financial trouble by lowering their monthly mortgage payments. Homeowners who qualify can receive an interest rate as low as 2 percent for five years and a longer repayment period.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gyoZ46fqVwnds84XZfpZHVMrkGCgD9HNAMRG0

Poll: ‘No’ to US wars at all time high

“Which means your government doesn’t listen (or) work for you… “The People.” But we already knew that.”

-F.F.

The CNN opinion poll found that 62 percent of the American people now think that the war in Afghanistan neither can be won, nor should it be fought at all, the Press TV correspondent in Washington reported on Thursday.

The poll also found that 69 percent of the Americans are now opposed to the US war in Iraq and favored the US President Barack Obama’s plan to withdraw 50,000 US troops from the country.

The poll, on the other hand, shows 30 percent of Americans support the wars.

About 50-thousand American soldiers will remain in the war-torn Iraq until the end of 2011 to help train Iraqi forces. The nearly seven and a half year war has claimed the lives of nearly 4500 American troops and cost more than $900 billion.

It is estimated that the US war in Afghanistan will cost nearly $105 billion in the 2010 fiscal year. The figure is expected to rise in 2011, as costs per service member in Afghanistan are almost twice as expensive as they are in Iraq.

The United States has about 87,000 troops involved in the Afghan war and with more deployments on the way, the number is expected to reach over 100,000 by next year.

The combined costs for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have surpassed one-trillion dollars.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/139299.html

Young will have to change names to escape ‘cyber past’ warns Google’s Eric Schmid

“Is this arrogant prick for real. Little swarmy fuck. What about changing the illegal spying that your company takes part in? But the big joke is that google isn’t in bed with the NSA/CIA… they are the NSA/CIA.”

-Fred Face 8/18/10

By Murray Wardrop

Eric Schmidt suggested that young people should be entitled to change their identity to escape their misspent youth, which is now recorded in excruciating detail on social networking sites such as Facebook.

“I don’t believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time,” Mr Schmidt told the Wall Street Journal.

In an interview Mr Schmidt said he believed that every young person will one day be allowed to change their name to distance themselves from embarrasssing photographs and material stored on their friends’ social media sites.

The 55-year-old also predicted that in the future, Google will know so much about its users that the search engine will be able to help them plan their lives.

Using profiles of it customers and tracking their locations through their smart phones, it will be able to provide live updates on their surroundings and inform them of tasks they need to do.

“We’re trying to figure out what the future of search is,” Mr Schmidt said. “One idea is that more and more searches are done on your behalf without you needing to type.

“I actually think most people don’t want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next.”

He suggested, as an example, that because Google would know “roughly who you are, roughly what you care about, roughly who your friends are”, it could remind users what groceries they needed to buy when passing a shop.

The comments are not the first time Mr Schmidt has courted controversy over the wealth of personal information people reveal on the internet. Last year, he notoriously remarked: “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

Earlier this year, Google was condemned by the privacy watchdogs of 10 countries for showing a “disappointing disregard” for safeguarding private information of its users.

In a letter to Mr Schmidt, Britain’s Information Commissioner Chris Graham joined his counterparts in countries including Canada, France, Germany and Italy, in raising concerns over its Street View and Buzz social networking services.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/7951269/Young-will-have-to-change-names-to-escape-cyber-past-warns-Googles-Eric-Schmidt.html#mce_temp_url#

Israel has ‘eight days’ to hit Iran nuclear site

“Man….? So, we need to bomb Iran quickly so we can save lives? Remember how Bush got us in Iraq? This is no different. Hopefully Obama-heads will FINALLY!!! see right through his transparent bullshit persona after he acts as parade master… marching us into another illegal and unjust war. Iran has no nuclear weapons right now… Israel has 200-300… oh, but we don’t talk about that. Come on people we’ve already killed well over one million people in Iraq and this coming invasion could easily set off WWIII. Which is exactly what the Satan Seamen Thirsty Globalist want. Democrats, Republicans, we want you on our team… I think it’s time to seriously consider alternatives.”

-Fred Face 8/17/10

WASHINGTON: Israel has “eight days” to launch a military strike against Iran’s Bushehr nuclear facility and stop Tehran from acquiring a functioning atomic plant, a former US envoy to the UN has said.

Iran is to bring online its first nuclear power reactor, built with Russia’s help, on August 21, when a shipment of nuclear fuel will be loaded into the plant’s core.

At that point, John Bolton warned Monday, it will be too late for Israel to launch a military strike against the facility because any attack would spread radiation and affect Iranian civilians.

“Once that uranium, once those fuel rods are very close to the reactor, certainly once they’re in the reactor, attacking it means a release of radiation, no question about it,” Bolton told Fox Business Network.

“So if Israel is going to do anything against Bushehr it has to move in the next eight days.”

Absent an Israeli strike, Bolton said, “Iran will achieve something that no other opponent of Israel, no other enemy of the United States in the Middle East really has and that is a functioning nuclear reactor.”

But when asked whether he expected Israel to actually launch strikes against Iran within the next eight days, Bolton was skeptical.

“I don’t think so, I’m afraid that they’ve lost this opportunity,” he said.

The controversial former envoy to the United Nations criticized Russia’s role in the development of the plant, saying “the Russians are, as they often do, playing both sides against the middle.”

“The idea of being able to stick a thumb in America’s eye always figures prominently in Moscow,” he added.

Iran dismissed the possibilities of such an attack from its arch-foes.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said Tuesday that “these threats of attacks had become repetitive and lost their meaning.”

“According to international law, installations which have real fuel cannot be attacked because of the humanitarian consequences,” he told reporters at a news conference in Tehran.

Iranian officials say Iran has stepped up defensive measures at the Bushehr plant to protect it from any attacks.

Russia has been building the Bushehr plant since the mid-1990s but the project was marred by delays, and the issue is hugely sensitive amid Tehran’s standoff with the West and Israel over its nuclear ambitions.

The UN Security Council hit Tehran with a fourth set of sanctions on June 9 over its nuclear programme, and the United States and European Union followed up with tougher punitive measures targeting Iran’s banking and energy sectors.

The Bushehr project was first launched by the late shah in the 1970s using contractors from German firm Siemens. But it was shelved when he was deposed in the 1979 Islamic revolution.

It was revived after the death of revolutionary founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989, as Iran’s new supreme leader Ali Khamenei and his first president, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, backed the project.

In 1995, Iran won the support of Russia which agreed to finish building the plant and fuel it. – AFP

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/world/21-israel-has-eight-days-to-hit-iran-nuclear-site-sk-02

‘Fructose-Slurping’ Cancer Could Sour the Soda Business

“And they’ve know all along… sweet, sweet Eugenics. The elite globalist religion.”

-Fred Face 8/16/10

Story HERE

10 Signs The U.S. is Becoming a Third World Country

Activist Post

The United States by every measure is hanging on by a thread to its First World status.  Saddled by debt, engaged in wars on multiple fronts with a rising police state at home, declining economic productivity, and wild currency fluctuations all threaten America’s future.

The general designations of the ranking system for world status date back to the 1950s, and have included countries at various stages of economic development.  Since the Cold War, the definition has come to be synonymous with repressive countries where a wealthy class of ruling elites segment society into the haves and have-nots, many times capitalizing on the conditions that follow an economic crisis or war.

While much of the world is still mired in poverty, the reduced cost of innovative tools such ascomputing and connectivity ironically puts traditional Third World countries at the forefront of a new lean-and-mean economy that is based on ideas of empowerment for the disenfranchised.   For better or worse, the world is leveling due to Globalism.  However, America and other over-leveraged countries face this re-balancing of the globe at a time when they have dwindling resources. We can speculate about who and what is to blame for America’s fantastic fall, but for the purposes of this article we shall focus on the obvious signs that the United States is beginning to resemble a Third World country.

1. Rising unemployment and poverty: Unemployment numbers, food stamps, and home foreclosures continue to reach new record highs.  The ugly reality of those numbers was recently on display when 30,000 people showed up to apply for public housing in East Point, GA for 455 available vouchers.  Fights broke out, people were fainting from the heat while in line, and riot police showed up to handle the angry poor.

2. Economic dependence: The United States finished 2009 with a debt-to-GDP ratio of 85%, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).  The current trend projects the United States to finish 2010 at 94% and 2011 at 98%.  The 90% level has become the IMF’s make-or-break point for countries hoping to grow their way out of debt. If the government debt load climbs above 90% of GDP, economic growth slows so much that growth is no longer a viable solution for reducing that debt, and the IMF insists on austerity measures. Surpassing this debt threshold has also caused China’s lead credit rating agency to cut America’s credit rating.

3. Declining civil rights: Everyday freedoms are often a casualty of a society in collapse.  As the anger of the populace mounts in response to declining economic conditions and political corruption, the government counters by increasing draconian measures that restrict the political rights and civil liberties of its citizens.

America is becoming a country like China, which has one of the lowest scoresaccording to Freedom House.  In America, private discussions and movements aremonitored, free speech is corralled, the freedom to assemble for protest is bygovernment decree, and independent thought that questions the political system is increasingly looked upon with suspicion.  A final indicator  is when the government insists upon secrecy for its own actions, while new laws and systems are created to put the individual under nearly constant surveillance.

4. Increasing political corruption: When political corruption becomes the accepted norm, as opposed to the exception, then there’s a good bet your country resembles the Third World.  Congress and all major institutions face a growing crisis in confidence, where a record-low 11% of the population believe Congress is doing a good job. It now seems obvious to all observers that big corporations directly control the agenda in Washington — much like typically corrupt Third World countries.

5. Military patrolling the streets: The rise of a militarized police state is a hallmark of most Third World countries, particularly in times of rapid economic collapse.  America’s declaration of the War on Terror has created a constant threat to National Security that has allowed for themilitary to be deployed on American soil.  Building upon the War on Drugs, this has created a fusion between the military and local police, where military-grade weapons and tactics are being used against American citizens in a cascade of violent confrontations over non-violent offenses.  Militarycheckpoints are moving farther inland, away from meaningful border control functions, and a full-blown military presence in American cities has been planned by the U.S. Army War College.

6. Failing infrastructure: As 46 of 50 states are on the verge of bankruptcy, cities are going dark, asphalt roads are returning to the stone age, and nationwide budget cuts are leaving students without teachers, supplies, or a full-time education.  These are common features one will see as they travel through the poorest of Third World countries.

7. Disappearing middle class: During the last presidential debate season, they argued that a family income of $250K was solidly middle-class.  Well, Census data shows less than 15% of families make over $100K, and only 1.5% of families make over $250K.  The income gap between the rich and poor has increased at a staggering pace, while many more middle-class folks join the ranks of the poor every day.  Cavernous income gaps may be what Third-World nations are best known for.

8. Devalued currency: The value of the Federal Reserve Note (U.S. dollar) hasdeclined 96% since the inception of the Federal Reserve in 1913.  The value of the dollar is based on its supply in circulation and, to a lesser extent, the demand for those dollars. For the last three years, the money supply has spiked literally off the charts. It can be argued that the dollar has become America’s top export as the world’s reserve currency, and if the volatile dollar is scrapped, which the U.N. and IMF now suggest, then demand will plummet, killing the currency.

9. Controlling the media: A government-influenced media that censors information is a key component of Third World countries.  In some countries it is openly owned by the State.  In America, privately-owned major media is not as balanced or as diverse as it seems; the concentration of ownership has led to censorship when national and corporate interests have sometimes overlapped.  The persecution of high-profile investigative journalists such as WikiLeaks is set amid a backdrop of the proposed Internet censorship of bloggers who wish to remain anonymous.  The end of net neutrality creates a pay-to-play system that can lead to further corporate and government control of information and opinion.  Cybersecurity initiatives are the final nail in the coffin, as the entire free flow of information can be vetted in a China-style system of “identity management.”  On the street, the police state and media control have converged in the recent rise of arrests for those who videotape the police.  This is a huge blow to First Amendment rights and the role of photojournalists who wish to document public police behavior.

10. Capital Controls: Many nations have enforced capital controls as their economies collapse.   It most recently happened in Argentinaand Venezuela as they sought to keep the remaining wealth within their borders. The SEC already has adopted policies to allow money market funds to suspend withdrawals during a financial crisis, while the recent HIRE bill (HR 2487) puts restrictions on Americans moving capital to foreign countries. Some economists suggest that the national debt has gotten so high that the government must now force investment of private capital into U.S. Treasury debt.

Key economic indicators point to a situation potentially worse than the Great Depression. The land of opportunity for so many is devolving into a system of government corruption, corporate looting, and military rule that threatens to sink the American Dream.  The capital flight from America has left a dwindling middle class holding an empty bag.  This style of underinvestment in the foundation of society is similar to what already has led to the exodus from the rural Midwest.  Now, there are ominous signs of a silent exodus of young, intelligent professionals seeking opportunities to realize their dreams outside of America; they are becoming known as Generation Xpat.  Lastly, many skilled immigrants have returned to their home countries to seek a better quality of life, which might be the scariest indicator of all.

http://www.activistpost.com/2010/08/10-signs-us-is-becoming-third-world.html

How propagandists function: Exhibit A

BY GLENN GREENWALD

Jeffrey Goldberg, in the new cover story in The Atlantic, on an Israeli attack on Iran:

Israel has twice before successfully attacked and destroyed an enemy’s nuclear program. In 1981, Israeli warplanes bombed the Iraqi reactor at Osirak, halting — forever, as it turned out — Saddam Hussein’s nuclear ambitions; and in 2007, Israeli planes destroyed a North Korean-built reactor in Syria.  An attack on Iran, then, would be unprecedented only in scope and complexity.

Good news!  Israel can successfully end a country’s nuclear program by bombing them, as proven by its 1981 attack on Iraq, which, says Goldberg, halted “forever, as it turned out — Saddam Hussein’s nuclear ambitions.”

Jeffrey Goldberg, The New Yorker, 2002, trying to convince Americans to fear Iraq:

Saddam Hussein never gave up his hope of turning Iraq into a nuclear power. After the Osirak attack, he rebuilt, redoubled his efforts, and dispersed his facilities. Those who have followed Saddam’s progress believe that no single strike today would eradicate his nuclear program.

When it suited him back then, Goldberg made the exact opposite claim, literally, of the one he makes today.  Back then, Goldberg wouldn’t possibly claim what he claims now — that the 1981 strike permanently halted Saddam’s “nuclear ambitions” — because, back then, his goal was to scare Americans about The Threat of Saddam.  So in 2002, Goldberg warned Americans that Saddam had “redoubled” his efforts to turn Iraq into a nuclear power after the Israeli attack, i.e., that Saddam had a scarier nuclear program than ever before after the 1981 bombing raid.  But now, Goldberg has a different goal:  to convince Americans of the efficacy of bombing Iran, and thus, without batting an eye, he simply asserts the exact opposite factual premise:  that the Israelis successfully and permanently ended Saddam’s nuclear ambition back in 1981 by bombing it out of existence (and, therefore, we can do something similar now to Iran).

This is what a propagandist, by definition, does:  asserts any claim as fact in service of a concealed agenda without the slightest concern for whether it’s true.  Will the existence of a vast and menacing Iraqi nuclear program help my cause (getting Americans to attack Iraq)?  Fine, then I’ll trumpet that.  Now, however, it will help my cause (mainstreaming an attack on Iran) to claim that the Israelis permanently ended Iraq’s nuclear efforts in 1981, thus showing how well these attacks can work.  No problem:  I’ll go with that.  How can anyone take seriously — as a Middle East expert and especially as a journalist — someone with this blatant and thorough of an estrangement from any concern for truth?  Can anyone reconcile these factual claims?

Jonathan Schwarz, who flagged this contradiction, documents how Goldberg’s dishonest propaganda begins in the very first sentence of his newAtlantic article, which reads:  ”It is possible that at some point in the next 12 months, the imposition of devastating economic sanctions on the Islamic Republic of Iran will persuade its leaders to cease their pursuit of nuclear weapons.”  Schwarz explains the obvious:

The official position of the U.S. intelligence community about this remains the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate. And it said Iran stopped pursuing nuclear weapons in 2003.  Maybe it was wrong, or maybe something’s changed since then.  But it is the essence of Goldberg-itude to simply ignore this and assert the opposite as unquestionable fact.

In other words, the core premise of Goldberg’s article — that Iran is currently pursuing nuclear weapons — is asserted, in the very first sentence, as indisputable fact without so much as acknowledging, let alone resolving, the substantial evidence casting serious doubt on that scary claim.  Sound familiar?  Moreover, as Schwarz compellingly documents, Goldberg’s latest historical assertion — that the 1981 Israeli attack ended Saddam’s nuclear efforts — is the precise opposite of reality:  Iraq had no genuine nuclear weapons program prior to 1981, but it was the Israeli attack which causedSaddam to conclude that he needed one.  That is what spawned the very substantial Iraqi efforts from 1981 to 1991 to develop nuclear weapons:  efforts which were actually ended by Operation Desert Storm and the subsequent U.N. inspection regime (which is what Scott Ritter relentlessly — and, thanks to the likes of Goldberg, with futility – attempted to point out in the run-up to the American attack on Iraq).

Goldberg wants to obfuscate those facts lest one conclude:  just as happened with Iraq, nothing would spur an Iranian desire for nuclear weapons more than a bombing campaign against their country. If you were an Iranian, is there anything that would convince you of the need for nuclear weapons more than watching Israel bomb your country?  I always thought it was difficult to imagine anything that could be more effective in convincing rational Iranians to proliferate than watching the U.S. invade and bomb at will nations that lack nuclear weapons while treating with the utmost respect those which have them.  What could possibly incentivize countries in general — and Iran in particular — to want to acquire nuclear weapons more than that behavior?  If anything could, it would be an Israeli (or American) attack on Iran.

More important than these specific factual contradictions, Schwarz very astutely describes Goldberg’s role in the propaganda effort concerning Iran.  Goldberg is not Bill Kristol or Charles Krauthammer, at least in terms of function.  He’s not going to run around overtly beating his chest demanding that the U.S. attack Iran (or that the U.S. support Israel’s attack):  at least not yet.  Although Goldberg did precisely that in the run-up to the attack on Iraq, his function now is more subtle, and more insidious.  He’s nothing if not shrewd, and certainly shrewd enough to know that if he spouts nakedly bellicose demands for a war with Iran, he’ll be quickly dismissed as a neocon fanatic, especially in light of his discredited and falsehood-filled campaign to persuade Americans to attack Iraq.  Indeed, Goldberg himself notes that even George Bush derided Kristol and Krauthammer as “the bomber boys.”  He’s much too smart to let himself be consigned to the lowly and limited (though important) role of fanning the flames of right-wing fanaticism; he’s intent on re-branding himself after what he did in 2002 and 2003 and preserving his mainstream influence.

Thus, his pose is objective journalist.  He’ll feign “ambivalence” about whether Iran should be bombed — thus showing how thoughtful and non-ideological he is — while infecting the discourse with the kinds of factual falsehoods documented here, all in service of skewing the debate towards ensuring an attack happens.  At its core, it’s only a slightly modified version of what he did with Iraq (I’m merely “reporting” on Saddam’s extensive relationship with Al Qaeda and his nuclear program/I’m merely “reporting” on the view of Israeli leaders that ”a nuclear Iran poses the gravest threat since Hitler to the physical survival of the Jewish people”).

It’s really one of the strangest and most revealing facts that the “objective journalist” to whom America’s political elites most faithfully turn for “reporting” on the Middle East is someone whose loyalty to Israel is so overarching that he actually went and joined the IDF (just try to imagine an American journalist reporting on this conflict for a large media outlet who previously joined the Iranian military or the military of any predominantly Muslim country).  There’s nothing wrong per se with his doing so or with maintaining loyalty to other countries; many Americans do so with all sorts of countries and for all sorts of reasons.  It’s also true that Goldberg’s intense, Israel-devoted agenda doesn’t preclude some good reporting; there are interesting and even revealing aspects in his article about how Israeli leaders think about Iran, or at least how they want Americans to believe they think about Iran.

But Jeffrey Goldberg is no more of an objective reporter on such matters than Benjamin Netanyahu is, and the fact that so many are willing to treat him as though he is provides a valuable testament to the ongoing vitality of the Supreme Law of Beltway Life:  Seriousness credentials, once vested, can never be revoked, no matter how grave one’s past sins of falsehood and error are.  The purpose of this Atlantic article is as obvious as it is odious:  to mainstream the debate over an Israeli or American attack on Iran by defending its rationale, all masquerading as objective reporting (I’m merely describing the substantial possibility that it could happen and, if it does, why it would be justifiable).  I’m tempted to say that anyone who falls for Jeffrey Goldberg’s act again deserves what they get, except that — as always — they’re not the ones who will pay the price for the fallout.

* * * * *

Goldberg’s article is, needless to say, suffused with comparisons of Iran to Nazi Germany — one after the next like this:

“The only reason Bibi [Netanyahu] would place Israel’s relationship with America in total jeopardy is if he thinks that Iran represents a threat like the Shoah,” an Israeli official who spends considerable time with the prime minister told me. “In World War II, the Jews had no power to stop Hitler from annihilating us. Six million were slaughtered. Today, 6 million Jews live in Israel, and someone is threatening them with annihilation. But now we have the power to stop them. Bibi knows that this is the choice.”

No discussion of any of this is complete without noting that it was endlessly claimed that it was Saddam who was the New Hitler in order ratchet up fear levels and justify an attack that country, too.  How many times can we be persuaded to attack the New Hitler?

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/08/12/goldberg/index.html

Is an International Financial Conspiracy Driving World Events?

by Richard C. Cook

“They make a desolation and call it peace.” -Tacitus

Was Alan Greenspan really as dumb as he looks in creating the late housing bubble that threatens to bring the entire Western debt-based economy crashing down?

Was something as easy to foresee as this really the trigger for a meltdown that could destroy the world’s financial system? Or was it done, perhaps, “accidentally on purpose”?

And if so, why?

Let’s turn to the U.S. personage that conspiracy theorists most often mention as being at the epicenter of whatever elite plan is reputed to exist. This would be David Rockefeller, the 92-year-old multibillionaire godfather of the world’s financial elite.

The lengthy Wikipedia article on Rockefeller provides the following version of a celebrated statement he allegedly made in an opening speech at the Bilderberg conference in Baden-Baden, Germany, in June 1991:

“We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time magazine, and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during these years. But the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government which will never again know war, but only peace and prosperity for the whole of humanity. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in the past centuries.”

This speech was made 17 years ago. It came at the beginning in the U.S. of the Bill Clinton administration. Rockefeller speaks of an “us.” This “us,” he says, has been having meetings for almost 40 years. If you add the 17 years since he gave the speech it was 57 years ago—two full generations.

Not only has “us” developed a “plan for the world,” but the attempt to “develop” the plan has evidently been successful, at least in Rockefeller’s mind. The ultimate goal of “us” is to create “the supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers.” This will lead, he says, toward a “world government which will never again know war.”

Just as an intellectual exercise, let’s assume that David Rockefeller is as important and powerful a person as he seems to think he is. Let’s give the man some credit and assume that he and “us” have in fact succeeded to a degree. This would mean that the major decisions and events since Rockefeller gave the speech in 1991 have probably also been part of the plan or that they have at least represented its features and intent.

Therefore by examining these decisions and events we can determine whether in fact Rockefeller is being truthful in his assessment that the Utopia he has in mind is on its way or has at least come closer to being realized. In no particular order, some of these decisions and events are as follows:

The implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement by the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations has led to the elimination of millions of U.S. manufacturing jobs as well as the destruction of U.S. family farming in favor of global agribusiness.

Similar free trade agreements, including those under the auspices of the World Trade Organization, have led to export of millions of additional manufacturing jobs to China and elsewhere.

Average family income in the U.S. has steadily eroded while the share of the nation’s wealth held by the richest income brackets has soared. Some Wall Street hedge fund managers are making $1 billion a year while the number of homeless, including war veterans, pushes a million.

The housing bubble has led to a huge inflation of real estate prices in the U.S. Millions of homes are falling into the hands of the bankers through foreclosure. The cost of land and rentals has further decimated family agriculture as well as small business. Rising property taxes based on inflated land assessments have forced millions of lower-and middle-income people and elderly out of their homes.

The fact that bankers now control national monetary systems in their entirety, under laws where money is introduced only through lending at interest, has resulted in a massive debt pyramid that is teetering on collapse. This “monetarist” system was pioneered by Rockefeller-family funded economists at the University of Chicago. The rub is that when the pyramid comes down and everyone goes bankrupt the banks which have been creating money “out of thin air” will then be able to seize valuable assets for pennies on the dollar, as J.P. Morgan Chase is preparing to do with the businesses owned by Carlyle Capital. Meaningful regulation of the financial industry has been abandoned by government, and any politician that stands in the way, such as Eliot Spitzer, is destroyed.

The total tax burden on Americans from federal, state, and local governments now exceeds forty percent of income and is rising. Today, with a recession starting, the Democratic-controlled Congress, while supporting the minuscule “stimulus” rebate, is hypocritically raising taxes further, even for middle-income earners. Back taxes, along with student loans, can no longer be eliminated by bankruptcy protection.

Gasoline prices are soaring even as companies like Exxon-Mobil are recording record profits. Other commodity prices are going up steadily, including food prices, with some countries starting to experience near-famine conditions. 40 million people in America are officially classified as “food insecure.”

Corporate control of water and mineral resources has removed much of what is available from the public commons, and the deregulation of energy production has led to huge increases in the costs of electricity in many areas.

The destruction of family farming in the U.S. by NAFTA (along with family farming in Mexico and Canada) has been mirrored by policies toward other nations on the part of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Around the world, due to pressure from the “Washington consensus,” local food self-sufficiency has been replaced by raising of crops primarily for export. Migration off the land has fed the population of huge slums around the cities of underdeveloped countries.

Since the 1980s the U.S. has been fighting wars throughout the world either directly or by proxy. The former Yugoslavia was dismembered by NATO. Under cover of 9/11 and by utilizing off-the-shelf plans, the U.S. is now engaged in the military conquest and permanent military occupation of the Middle East. A worldwide encirclement of Russia and China by U.S. and NATO forces is underway, and a new push to militarize space has begun. The Western powers are clearly preparing for at least the possibility of another world war.

The expansion of the U.S. military empire abroad is mirrored by the creation of a totalitarian system of surveillance at home, whereby the activities of private citizens are spied upon and tracked by technology and systems which have been put into place under the heading of the “War on Terror.” Human microchip implants for tracking purposes are starting to be used. The military-industrial complex has become the nation’s largest and most successful industry with tens of thousands of planners engaged in devising new and better ways, both overt and covert, to destroy both foreign and domestic “enemies.”

Meanwhile, the U.S. has the largest prison population of any country on earth. Plus everyday life for millions of people is a crushing burden of government, insurance, and financial fees, charges, and paperwork. And the simplest business transactions are burdened by rake-offs for legions of accountants, lawyers, bureaucrats, brokers, speculators, and middlemen.

Finally, the deteriorating conditions of everyday life have given rise to an extraordinary level of stress-related disease, as well as epidemic alcohol and drug addiction. Governments themselves around the world engage in drug trafficking. Instead of working to lower stress levels, public policy is skewed in favor of an enormous prescription drug industry that grows rich off the declining level of health through treatment of symptoms rather than causes. Many of these heavily-advertised medications themselves have devastating side-effects.

This list should at least give us enough to go on in order to ask a hard question. Assuming again that all these things are parts of the elitist plan which Mr. Rockefeller boasts to have been developing, isn’t it a little strange that the means which have been selected to achieve “peace and prosperity for the whole of humanity” involve so much violence, deception, oppression, exploitation, graft, and theft?

In fact it looks to me as though “our plan for the world” is one that is based on genocide, world war, police control of populations, and seizure of the world’s resources by the financial elite and their puppet politicians and military forces.

In particular, could there be a better way to accomplish all this than what appears to be a concentrated plan to remove from people everywhere in the world the ability to raise their own food? After all, genocide by starvation may be slow, but it is very effective. Especially when it can be blamed on “market forces.”

And can it be that the “us” which is doing all these things, including the great David Rockefeller himself, are just criminals who have somehow taken over the seats of power? If so, they are criminals who have done everything they can to watch their backs and cover their tracks, including a chokehold over the educational system and the monopolistic mainstream media.

One thing is certain: The voters of America have never knowingly agreed to any of this.


Richard C. Cook is a former U.S. federal government analyst, whose career included service with the U.S. Civil Service Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Carter White House, NASA, and the U.S. Treasury Department. His articles on economics, politics, and space policy have appeared on numerous websites. His book on monetary reform entitled We Hold These Truths: The Promise of Monetary Reform is in preparation. He is also the author of Challenger Revealed: An Insider’s Account of How the Reagan Administration Caused the Greatest Tragedy of the Space Age, called by one reviewer, “the most important spaceflight book of the last twenty years.” His website is at www.richardccook.com

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8450#mce_temp_url#

America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution

By 

As over-leveraged investment houses began to fail in September 2008, the leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties, of major corporations, and opinion leaders stretching from the National Review magazine (and the Wall Street Journal) on the right to the Nation magazine on the left, agreed that spending some $700 billion to buy the investors’ “toxic assets” was the only alternative to the U.S. economy’s “systemic collapse.” In this, President George W. Bush and his would-be Republican successor John McCain agreed with the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama. Many, if not most, people around them also agreed upon the eventual commitment of some 10 trillion nonexistent dollars in ways unprecedented in America. They explained neither the difference between the assets’ nominal and real values, nor precisely why letting the market find the latter would collapse America. The public objected immediately, by margins of three or four to one.

When this majority discovered that virtually no one in a position of power in either party or with a national voice would take their objections seriously, that decisions about their money were being made in bipartisan backroom deals with interested parties, and that the laws on these matters were being voted by people who had not read them, the term “political class” came into use. Then, after those in power changed their plans from buying toxic assets to buying up equity in banks and major industries but refused to explain why, when they reasserted their right to decide ad hoc on these and so many other matters, supposing them to be beyond the general public’s understanding, the American people started referring to those in and around government as the “ruling class.” And in fact Republican and Democratic office holders and their retinues show a similar presumption to dominate and fewer differences in tastes, habits, opinions, and sources of income among one another than between both and the rest of the country. They think, look, and act as a class.

Although after the election of 2008 most Republican office holders argued against the Troubled Asset Relief Program, against the subsequent bailouts of the auto industry, against the several “stimulus” bills and further summary expansions of government power to benefit clients of government at the expense of ordinary citizens, the American people had every reason to believe that many Republican politicians were doing so simply by the logic of partisan opposition. After all, Republicans had been happy enough to approve of similar things under Republican administrations. Differences between Bushes, Clintons, and Obamas are of degree, not kind. Moreover, 2009-10 establishment Republicans sought only to modify the government’s agenda while showing eagerness to join the Democrats in new grand schemes, if only they were allowed to. Sen. Orrin Hatch continued dreaming of being Ted Kennedy, while Lindsey Graham set aside what is true or false about “global warming” for the sake of getting on the right side of history. No prominent Republican challenged the ruling class’s continued claim of superior insight, nor its denigration of the American people as irritable children who must learn their place. The Republican Party did not disparage the ruling class, because most of its officials are or would like to be part of it.

Never has there been so little diversity within America’s upper crust. Always, in America as elsewhere, some people have been wealthier and more powerful than others. But until our own time America’s upper crust was a mixture of people who had gained prominence in a variety of ways, who drew their money and status from different sources and were not predictably of one mind on any given matter. The Boston Brahmins, the New York financiers, the land barons of California, Texas, and Florida, the industrialists of Pittsburgh, the Southern aristocracy, and the hardscrabble politicians who made it big in Chicago or Memphis had little contact with one another. Few had much contact with government, and “bureaucrat” was a dirty word for all. So was “social engineering.” Nor had the schools and universities that formed yesterday’s upper crust imposed a single orthodoxy about the origins of man, about American history, and about how America should be governed. All that has changed.

Today’s ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits. These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints. Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters — speaking the “in” language — serves as a badge of identity. Regardless of what business or profession they are in, their road up included government channels and government money because, as government has grown, its boundary with the rest of American life has become indistinct. Many began their careers in government and leveraged their way into the private sector. Some, e.g., Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, never held a non-government job. Hence whether formally in government, out of it, or halfway, America’s ruling class speaks the language and has the tastes, habits, and tools of bureaucrats. It rules uneasily over the majority of Americans not oriented to government.

The two classes have less in common culturally, dislike each other more, and embody ways of life more different from one another than did the 19th century’s Northerners and Southerners — nearly all of whom, as Lincoln reminded them, “prayed to the same God.” By contrast, while most Americans pray to the God “who created and doth sustain us,” our ruling class prays to itself as “saviors of the planet” and improvers of humanity. Our classes’ clash is over “whose country” America is, over what way of life will prevail, over who is to defer to whom about what. The gravity of such divisions points us, as it did Lincoln, to Mark’s Gospel: “if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand.”

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NEW WORLD ORDER: BAILOUTS HELPED FOREIGN FIRMS…

“No shit. Our government is trying to destroy this country… not fix it. It’s hard to swallow but through their “actual” actions, (not rhetoric), there is no other way to interpret it.”

-Fred Face 8/12/10

By MARCY GORDON

WASHINGTON (AP) – The $700 billion U.S. bailout program launched in response to the global economic meltdown had a far greater impact overseas than other countries’ financial rescue plans did on the U.S., according to a new report from a congressional watchdog.

Billions of dollars in U.S. rescue funds wound up in big banks in France, Germany and other nations. That was probably inevitable because of the structure of the Treasury Department’s program, the Congressional Oversight Panel says in a new report issued Thursday.

The U.S. program aimed to stabilize the financial system by injecting money into as many banks as possible, including those with substantial operations overseas. Most other countries, by contrast, focused their efforts more narrowly on banks in their nations that usually lacked major U.S. operations.

But the report says that if the U.S. had gotten more data on which foreign banks would benefit the most, the government might have been able to ask those countries to share some of the cost.

“There were no data about where this money was going,” panel chair Elizabeth Warren said in a conference call with reporters on Wednesday. “The American people have a right to know where the money went.”

An example: Major French and German banks were among the biggest beneficiaries of the U.S. rescue of American International Group Inc., yet the American government shouldered the entire $70 billion risk of pumping capital into the crippled insurance titan. The report compares that with the $35 billion that France spent on its overall financial rescue program and the $133 billion that Germany spent.

Much of the $182 billion in federal aid to AIG – the biggest of the government rescues – went to meet the company’s obligations to its Wall Street trading partners on credit default swaps, a form of insurance against default of securities. The partners included French banks Societe Generale, which received $11.9 billion in AIG money, and BNP Paribas, which got $4.9 billion, and Germany’s Deutsche Bank, $11.8 billion.

Of the 87 banks and financial entities that indirectly benefited from the U.S. aid to AIG, 43 are foreign, according to the report. In addition to France and Germany, they include banks based in Canada, Britain and Switzerland.

In addition to AIG, many of the U.S. banks and automakers that received billions in bailout aid derive a large proportion of their revenue from operations outside the U.S., the report noted.

The watchdog panel was created by Congress to oversee the Treasury Department rescue program that came in at the peak of the financial crisis in the fall of 2008. It has said it’s unclear whether U.S. taxpayers will ever fully recoup the cost of the AIG bailout. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that taxpayers will lose $36 billion.

Although the law creating the U.S. rescue program called for Treasury to coordinate its actions with similar efforts by foreign governments, “the global response to the financial crisis unfolded on an … informal, country-by-country basis,” the new report says. “Each individual government made its own decisions based on its evaluation of what was best for its own banking sector and for its own domestic economy.”

The U.S. program wound up injecting capital into around 700 banks, while all other governments combined aided fewer than 50, according to the oversight panel.

At the same time, the report suggests that the Treasury program, known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, may have played a constructive role.

“It appears that the existence of the TARP might have served to enhance the negotiating position of the U.S. government (at least in a limited way), as it demonstrated the willingness of U.S. officials to be aggressive and forceful in committing a significant amount of resources to confront a deepening crisis,” the report says.

Treasury Department spokesman Mark Paustenbach said the report “shows that Treasury worked effectively with its overseas partners in a number of ways to address the global financial crisis.”

The report says the financial crisis revealed the need for an international plan “to handle the collapse of major, globally significant financial institutions.”

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100812/D9HHSM180.html

More US troops deployed overseas under Obama than Bush

Lawsuit over Geronimo’s Remains dismissed because Government is Legally God

By Andrew Steele

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed against the Federal Government and Yale University by 20 descendents of the Apache warrior Geronimo, who say that their famous ancestor’s remains were stolen from Fort Sill, Oklahama and are illegally in the possession of “Skull and Bones”– a secret society at Yale.

Among those whom Geronimo’s ancestors accuse of stealing their ancestor’s remains years ago is former Skull and Bones member Prescott Bush– the now deceased father and grandfather of Presidents Bush Sr. and Jr.  Both former presidents were also members of the secret society, as well as Senator John Kerry.

Skull and Bones is an elite organization that often practices bizarre, occult rituals. According to an article on Skull and Bones’ own website:

“The initiation ceremony, held in April, involves as many alumni, or “patriarchs,” as possible, one of whom in each instance serves as the supervisor, known as Uncle Toby. The Inner Temple is cleared of furniture except for two chairs and a table, and Bonesmen past and present assemble: Uncle Toby in a robe; the shortest senior, or “Little Devil,” in a satanic costume; a Bonesman with a deep voice in a Don Quixote costume; one in papal vestments; another dressed as Elihu Yale; four of the brawniest in the role of “shakers”; and a crew of extras wearing skeleton costumes and carrying noisemakers. According to the initiation script, Uncle Toby “sounds like the only sane person in the room.”

The initiate then has to read a secret oath.

Whether the fact that our nation’s handpicked leaders participate in these rituals alarms the reader or not, what should alarm any decent human being is the charge that the secret society possesses human remains and uses them in a show. (Any ritual is just a playacting when you strip away their occult mystique.) The question of the bones being Geronimo’s or not is trivial in relation to this point, since the mores of human civilization dictate that the remains of any human being should be treated with respect. The charge that the secret society possesses actual human bones is one that can’t be overlooked, since there’s photographic evidence proving that Skull and Bones, at some point in history, was in possession of somebody’s remains:

What should also alarm the reader is this line from the AP’s report describing why the suit against the Federal Government was dismissed:

“Judge Richard Roberts last month granted a Justice Department motion to dismiss, saying the plaintiffs didn’t establish the government had waived its right not to be sued without its consent.”

What this means is that the United States government claimed “Sovereign Immunity”, otherwise known at “Crown Immunity” (hey, didn’t we fight a revolution against that kind of stuff?) and in order to be sued it has to waive its right to it, which it says it never did in this matter.

Sovereign immunity is a doctrine in which the state is considered incapable of committing a legal wrong and is therefore immune from lawsuits and criminal prosecution.

Many countries practice sovereign immunity in their legal systems. In the United States the process by which the Federal Government waives its right to the doctrine’s protection on a particular issue requires legislation to be passed by Congress.  This, despite the fact that the U.S. Constitution clearly outlines what powers the Federal Government has, and that the Tenth Amendment limits its powers to those specifically mentioned in the U.S. Constitution.

Though it’s often said that sovereign immunity originated from old English law, its real basis is the corrupt reality of power itself and the ability of rulers to declare themselves above the law. In ancient times rulers justified this by proclaiming that they themselves were literally God. Since many religions argue philosophically that God is infallible, the sovereign immunity doctrine places government on the same level as God by stating that it too can do no wrong.

The suit against the Federal Government didn’t argue the legal justification for sovereign immunity itself, but that the Federal Government had waived it with the passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990. This was a law which required government agencies and taxpayer funded institutions to return Native American artifacts to tribal descendants.

The suit against Yale– which officially declares that it’s not affiliated with Skull and Bones– was dismissed because the same Act “applies only to Native American cultural items excavated or discovered after 1990″.

So because the theft happened long ago, and because Geronimo isn’t a fossilized arrowhead or a muddy moccasin pulled out of a river, his descendents are considered to have no legal standing.

http://america20xy.com/blog6/2010/08/10/lawsuit-over-geronimos-remains-dismissed-because-government-is-legally-god/

The Grinch Who Stole Conservatism

By Chuck Baldwin

The GOP is frantically searching for the person who will lead them to the Promised Land (translate: White House) in 2012. Barack Obama is leaving a death stench so heavy that even most of the political allies in his own party are asking him to stay away from their reelection campaigns. You gotta give it to Obama: he has done in one term what most Presidents cannot accomplish until their second (lame duck) term. The problem is, the GOP just can’t seem to find their Moses (or even their Ronald Reagan). That means, as far fetched as it sounds now, Obama has a good chance of being reelected. And, once again, when any Democrat candidate for President wins, the GOP will have no one to blame but themselves. 2012 could be another example.

You see, the GOP (including their lackeys at Fox News) either really don’t know what a constitutional conservative looks like, or they do know what he or she looks like and don’t want them leading the party. I believe the answer is the latter, but in either case, the GOP continually does nothing to groom constitutionalist conservatives for leadership. Just the opposite: such people are routinely ignored, shunned, besmirched, or impugned. (Can anyone say, “Ron Paul”?) Is it any wonder that by the time the general election comes around, the GOP candidate for President is usually nothing more than a Democrat-lite, or a “Democrat in Drag” to borrow from Steve Farrell.

That brings me to one of the people that the talking heads at Fox News and other GOP propaganda centers are routinely discussing as their 2012 Presidential hopeful: former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich.

According to Reuters News, “Republican former House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich said on Sunday [July 25th] he will decide after November’s congressional elections whether he will make a run for the White House in 2012.”

Here’s what Gingrich is looking at: he wants to see if the GOP makes significant gains in both houses of Congress in the November elections. If the GOP wins one house (especially if enough real conservatives win), I predict Gingrich will enter the race. So he can ride a conservative wave into the White House in 2012? No! So he can derail any potential conservative momentum that the Tea Parties might be able to create in this year’s November elections. You see, Newt Gingrich is the Grinch Who Stole Conservatism from the GOP.

Some of us are old enough to remember Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America” that produced huge Republican victories in both houses of Congress back in 1994. However, what did that “Conservative Revolution” (as it was called then) actually produce? The answer: NOTHING! Newt’s promise of smaller government was immediately forgotten. Instead, Gingrich, along with Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, facilitated and helped orchestrate further expansion of the federal government. The “less government” theme that swept house freshmen such as Joe Scarborough, Steve Largent, Sonny Bono, Bob Barr, Helen Chenoweth, John Shadegg, and J.C. Watts into Congress quickly evaporated and this new neocon Republican Party was born.

Mark it down, if Newt Gingrich is the Republican Party’s Presidential nominee in 2012, he will do to whatever grassroots conservative momentum is brought about by this year’s congressional victories what he did to the “Conservative Revolution” in 1994: DESTROY IT!

Newt’s track record is there for anyone to see. So, why does Fox News continue to promote him as a leader of smaller government or constitutionalism? Does Fox News even have a clue as to what limited government really means? Apparently not.

Remember, Newt Gingrich is a long-standing member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), which is a notorious proponent of globalism and archenemy of national independence, State sovereignty, and limited government. Does anyone at Fox News recall what Admiral Chester Ward said about the CFR? (Plus, how many of the Big Shots at Fox News are themselves members of the CFR?)

Rear Admiral Chester Ward, who was the Judge Advocate General of the Navy from 1956 to 1960 and a former member of the CFR who pulled out after realizing what they were all about, warned the American people about the dangers of this and similar organizations (such as the Trilateral Commission). He said, “The most powerful clique in these elitist groups have one objective in common—they want to bring about the surrender of the sovereignty and the national independence of the United States. A second clique of international members in the CFR . . . comprises the Wall Street international bankers and their key agents. Primarily, they want the world banking monopoly from whatever power ends up in the control of global government.”

Admiral Ward also said, “The main purpose of the Council on Foreign Relations is promoting the disarmament of U.S. sovereignty and national independence and submergence into an all powerful, one world government.”

Accordingly, as a loyal CFR elitist, Gingrich has supported Big Government programs and policies all of his political life. Gingrich is also an ardent disciple of Alvin Toffler, who is the guru of “The Third Wave” politics. That’s why Gingrich refers to himself as a “conservative futurist.”

Webster’s (1992) Dictionary defines “Futurism” as: “Study of, and interest in, forecasting or anticipating the future, or theorizing on how to IMPOSE CONTROLS ON EVENTS.” (Emphasis added.)

Steve Farrell rightly notes that “futurism is a head-in-the-clouds political philosophy, complete with theories and forecasts, which envisions the use of force to insure that those theories and forecasts come to pass.” Farrell summarizes “conservative futurism” as “communism with economic vision.”

This is why Gingrich went along with Clinton’s Big Government agenda, and supported the unconstitutional faith-based subsidies, public-private “partnerships,” etc. Gingrich’s brand of “conservatism” spawned another Big Government neocon’s (Karl Rove—another favorite son at Fox News) “Compassionate Conservative” movement of the G.W. Bush White House, which at the time led to the biggest expansion of the federal government since Lyndon Johnson.

Gingrich’s infatuation with “conservative futurism” also helps explain his support for NAFTA, GATT, the WTO, and virtually every other policy promoting globalism and interdependence. It also helps explain why Gingrich and former Vice President Al Gore have worked so closely together in globalist organizations such as the now-defunct Congressional Clearing House on the Future (once chaired by Gore).

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=1056

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Gave Millions to La Raza

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
August 9, 2010

2002 annual report breaking down money doled out by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation reveals the foundation provided a grant to National Council of La Raza. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is arguably the largest “charitable” organization in the world.

Gates gave $6,661,364 to the racist organization for education, according to the foundation’s website. La Raza has also received financial support from the Ford Foundation. For instance, in 1968, the globalist foundation gave La Raza $600,000, according to research conducted by Philip Brennan.

La Raza’s website admits “the organization receives two-thirds of its funding from corporations and foundations, and the rest from the government.” For the period 1992-1996, the total amount of “gifts, grants and contributions” to La Raza was more than $38 million.

The Ford Foundation has also funded the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF). According to Mario Obeldo, former head of MALDEF, “California is going to be a Hispanic state. Anyone who does not like it should leave.” In 1998, Obledo was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Clinton.

La Raza’s motto is “For the race everything, outside the race nothing” (“Por La Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada”). La Raza is associated with the radical racist group Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán, or Chicano Student Movement of Aztlán (MEChA), an organization that espouses Aztec supremacism and irredentism (specifically advocating the annexation of the American Southwest). Mestizo activists believe they have a legal and primordial right to the land and propose that a new nation be created, a Republica del Norte. The primary vehicle for creating this Aztec nation is La Reconquista, a demographic “revolution” that strives to supplant “gringos” in the Southwest with an influx of illegal Mexican immigrants.

According to La Raza, border control is racist. The organization condemns the “step-up [in] immigration law enforcement significantly along the U.S./Mexico border and in the interior of the country” claiming such activities violate the civil rights of Hispanics.

A recent poll conducted by Fox Newsreveals that most Americans believe the federal government is failing to enforce the country’s immigration laws. In addition, voters are more likely to favor than oppose Arizona’s new immigration law that was blocked by a federal judge last week.

As Kevin Lamb notes, the Gates and Ford foundations, along with the Soros and Rockefeller foundations, have long funded and supported “well-organized ethnic-immigrant lobbies and advocacy groups, which are actively working to transform the U.S. into a borderless society,” a cornerstone of the globalist vision and the end game of world government. La Raza, MEChA, and other so-called Hispanic civil rights organizations calling for an unrestricted flow of illegal immigrants are indispensable for this one-world agenda.

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In addition to striving to eliminate borders and destroy the national sovereignty of the United States, Bill Gates has worked tirelessly as a eugenicist dedicated to reduce world population, another key objective of the elite. “First we got population. The world today has 6.8 billion people. That’s headed up to about 9 billion. Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent,” Gates said during an invitation-only conference held in Long Beach, California, earlier this year.

“In plain English, one of the most powerful men in the world states clearly that he expects vaccines to be used to reduce population growth. When Bill Gates speaks about vaccines, he speaks with authority,” writes F. William Engdahl.

La Raza and MEChA need to take note. The globalist foundations are not primarily concerned with the civil liberties of people in the third world, including Mexico, but are rather determined to exploit them in order to further their one-world and ultimately eugenics depopulation agenda.

http://www.infowars.com/bill-melinda-gates-foundation-gave-millions-to-la-raza/

The Economy in Pictures

By Jake Towne

“Truth persists and illuminates, even if there is no one to utter it. Government is not the solution; rather, it is causing the problems. The below slides (view atScribdbackup PDF) highlight the economic situation, updated from a May presentation. I’ve written about the solutions to the unemployment problem, the deficit, Social Security, and the high costs of health care which are linked below.

Will the real national debt please stand up? The national debt published in the papers and online — which is closely tied to the USTreasury market is now over $13.3 trillion. Current government plans include massive deficit spending through 2013, and the government’s optimistic projections of a return to “normalcy” after 2013 are not anchored in reality. Source of budget data. However, the true national debt is hidden by the cash-based accounting method government uses. The true national debt is over $120 trillion when GAAP (Generally Acceptable Accounting Principles) are used to identify futuretaxation sources and future debts such as Social Security and Medicare. That’s around $400,000 for every man, woman, and child in the country. Massive reductions in spending and taxation are necessary if America is to regain its financial sovereignty, my proposals are outlined here and in “Guns or Health Care?

As seen in the official USTreasury report on page 178/254, the total unfunded liabilities for Medicare and Social Security is a jaw-dropping $107 trillion over the future of these programs. While I predict the Democrats may bear the brunt of the blame for the collapse of Medicare, one must not forget that it was the Republican’s massive expansion of Part D’s prescription drug plan under Bush that severely worsened Medicare’s fiscal situation. While the situation in Medicare is worse — and changing daily due to the new healthcare legislation — some of my proposals to maintain Social Security are outlined in “Social Security or Insecurity?

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out their substance. — Declaration of Independence, 1776 The quote above from the Declaration is far more true in 2010 than it was in 1776. Not counting the millions of government contractors, the government’s Republocrat-controlled work force is currently 22.8 million bureaucrats. This is America’s largest single job sector, and remember, the taxpayer bears the full cost to keep these bureaucrats employed. Like something out of an Orwell novel, the Washington Post estimates 854,000 bureaucrats are employed to spy on and keep tabs on the rest of us and the world. Lisa Benson’s cartoon says it all.

Keep in mind bureaucrats make nearly twice the average wage of the private sector, and have better benefits. My solution? Lead by example. I will refuse the elite congressional pension and healthcare plans when elected, and keep just the median income for a salary and donate the rest of the $116,000 to local non-profit hospitals.

Next, notice that more than 1 in 8 Americans are on food stamps, or 40.4 million people. USDA link here. Note the strong rise in number of SNAP food stamp recipients during the past year. One would expect to see this number dropping or even flat-lining — along with employment rising — if a recovery were underway. The annual projected cost is now $66 billion, paid for by the ever-diminishing work force.

There is more:

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