http://kunstler.com/blog/2011/11/your-new-american-dream.html
Your New American Dream
It's really something to live in a country that doesn't know what it is doing in a world that doesn't know where it is going in a time when anything can happen. I hope you can get comfortable with uncertainty.
If there's one vibe emanating from this shadowy zeitgeist it's a sense of the total exhaustion of culture, in particular the way the world does business. Everything looks tired, played out, and most of all false. Governments can't really pay for what they do. Banks have no real money. Many households surely have no money. The human construct of money itself has become a shape-shifting phantom. Will it vanish into the vortex of unpaid debt until nobody has any? Or will there be plenty of worthless money that people can spend into futility? Either way they will be broke.
The looming fear whose name political leaders dare not speak is global depression, but that is not what we're in for. The term suggests a temporary sidetrack from the smooth operation of integrated advanced economies. We're heading into something quite different, a permanent departure from the standard conception of economic progress, the one in which there is always sure to be more comfort and convenience for everybody, the economy of automatic goodies.
A big part of the automatic economy was the idea of a "job." In its journey to the present moment, the idea became crusted with barnacles of illusion, especially that a "job" was a sort of commodity "produced" by large corporate enterprises or governments and rationally distributed like any other commodity; that it came with a goodie bag filled with guaranteed pensions, medical care to remediate bad living habits, vacations to places of programmed entertainment, a warm, well-lighted dwelling, and a big steel machine to travel around in. Now we witness with helpless despair as these illusions dissolve.
The situation at hand is not a "depression," though it may resemble the experience of the 1930s in the early going. It's the permanent re-set and reorganization of everyday life amidst a desperate scramble for resources. It will go on and on until there are far fewer people competing for things while the ones who endure construct new systems for daily living based on fewer resources used differently.
In North America I believe this re-set will involve the re-establishment of an economy centered on agriculture, with a lot of other activities supporting it, all done on a fine-grained local and regional scale. It must be impossible for many of us to imagine such an outcome - hence the futility of our current politics, with its hollow promises, its laughable battles over sexual behavior, its pitiful religious boasting, its empty statistical blather, all in the service of wishing the disintegrating past back into existence.
This desperation may be why our recently-acquired traditions seem especially automatic this holiday season. Of course the "consumers" line up outside the big box stores the day after the automatic Thanksgiving exercise in gluttony. That is what they're supposed to do this time of year. That is what has been on the cable TV news shows in recent years: see the crowds cheerfully huddled in their sleeping bags outside the Wal Mart... see them trample each other in the moment the doors open!
The biggest news story of a weekend stuporous from leftover turkey and ceremonial football was a $6.6 billion increase in "Black Friday" chain-store sales. All the attention to the numbers was a form of primitive augury to reassure superstitious economists - more than the catatonic public - that the automatic cargo cult would be operating normally at this crucial testing time. The larger objective is to get through the ordeal of Christmas.
I don't see how Europe gets through it financially. The jig is up there. Lovely as Europe has become since the debacles of the last century - all those adorable cities with their treasures of deliberately-created beauty - the system running it all is bankrupt. Europe is on financial death-watch and when the money stops flowing between its major organs, the banks, the whole region must either go dark or combust. Nobody really knows what will happen there, except they know that something will happen - and whatever it is portends disruption and loss for the worlds largest collective economy. The historical record is not reassuring.
If Europe's banks go down, many of America's will, too, maybe all of them, maybe our whole money system. I'm not sure that we will see a normal election cycle here in 2012. A few bank runs, bank failures... gasoline shortages here and there... the failure of some food deliveries to supermarkets in some region... these are the kinds of things that can bring down a political system drained of once-ironclad legitimacy. All that is left now is the husk of ritual - witness the failure of the senate-house "super-committee." The wash-out was so broadly anticipated that it was greeted with mere yawns of recognition. It would be like pointing at the sky and saying, "air there."
This holiday season spend a little time musing on what the re-set economy will be like in your part of the country. Think of what you do in it as a "role," or a "vocation," or a "trade," or a "calling," or a "way of life," rather than a "job." Imagine that life will surely go on, even civilized life, though it will be organized differently. Add to this the notion that you are part of a larger group, a society, and that societies evolve emergently according to the circumstances that their time and place presents. Let that imagining be your new American Dream.
Monday, November 28, 2011
Monday, November 21, 2011
SC109-3
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29717.htm
"Genocidal Cynicism"
No sane person, especially someone who has had access to the elementary knowledge acquired in primary school, would agree that our species, especially those who are children, teenagers or youth, should be deprived of the right to live, today, tomorrow and forever. Never have human beings, throughout their eventful history, as persons endowed with intelligence, ever heard of an experience like that.
I feel the duty to convey to those taking the trouble to read these Reflections the opinion that all of us, with no exception, are obliged to create awareness about the risks that humankind are running in an inexorable manner, towards a final and total catastrophe as the consequence of irresponsible decisions made by politicians who fate, rather than talent or merit, has placed the destiny of humankind in their hands.
Whether they are citizens of their country or not, whether they are followers of some religious belief or unbelievers, no human being in their right mind would agree that their children or closest kin should perish precipitously or as victims of atrocious and torturous misery.
On the heels of the repugnant crimes that are being increasingly committed by NATO under the aegis of the United States and the wealthiest countries in Europe, the gaze of the world focused on the G-20 meeting where the profound economic crisis affecting every nation today should have been analyzed. International opinion, especially in Europe, was awaiting an answer for the profound economic crisis that, with its serious social and even climatic implications, is threatening every inhabitant on the planet. At that meeting, it was being decided whether the Euro would be able to be kept as the common currency for most of Europe and even whether some of the countries would be able to remain in the community.
There was no answer or solution of any kind for the most serious problems of the world economy despite the efforts of China, Russia, Indonesia, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina and other emerging economies, anxious to cooperate with the rest of the world in the search for solutions for the serious economic problems affecting them.
What was unusual was that just when NATO concluded the Libyan operation - after the air attack that injured the constitutional head of that country, destroyed the vehicle carrying him and leaving him at the mercy of the empire´s mercenaries who murdered him and exhibited his body as a war trophy, violating Muslim customs and traditions - the IAEA, a UN body and an institution that ought to stand for world peace, released the political, money-driven and sectarian report putting the world on the brink of war with the use of nuclear weapons that the Yankee empire, in alliance with Great Britain and Israel, has been meticulously preparing against Iran.
After the veni, vidi, vici of the famous Roman emperor more than two thousand years ago, translated to "I came, I saw and he died" broadcast for public opinion by an important television network as soon as the death of Gaddafi had been learned of, there are more than enough words to describe US policy.
Now what is important is the need to create clear awareness in the peoples about the abyss towards which humankind is being led. Twice our Revolution lived through dramatic dangers: in October of 1962, the most critical of all where humankind was on the brink of nuclear holocaust; and in mid-1987 when our forces were facing racist South African troops armed with nuclear weapons that the Israelis had helped them create.
The Shah of Iran also collaborated, along with Israel, with the racist and fascist South African regime.
What is the UN? An organization driven by the United States before the end of World War II. That nation, whose territory was considerably far away from the theatre of war, had incredibly increased its wealth; it accumulated 80% of the world´s gold and under the leadership of Roosevelt, a sincere anti-fascist, it promoted the development of the nuclear weapon that Truman, his successor, a mediocre oligarch, did not hesitate in using against the defenceless cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
The world´s gold monopoly in United States´ power and the prestige of Roosevelt handed the US the Bretton Woods agreement, assigning it the role of issuing the dollar as the only currency to be used for decades in world trade, with no limiting factor other that it´s being backed by the gold metal.
At the end of that war, the US was also the only country possessing the nuclear weapon, a privilege it did not hesitate in transmitting to its allies and members in the Security Council: Great Britain and France, the two most important colonial powers in the world at that time.
Truman had not even informed the USSR one single word about the atomic weapon before using it. China, at that time governed by Nationalist General Chiang Kai-shek, a pro-Yankee oligarch, could not be excluded from that Security Council.
The USSR, seriously stricken by the war, destruction and the loss of more than 20 million of its sons and daughters in the Nazi invasion, dedicated considerable economic, scientific and human resources to bring its nuclear capacity up to par with that of the United States. Four years later, in 1949, it tested its first nuclear weapon: the H-bomb in 1953; and in 1955 its first megaton bomb. France had its first nuclear weapon in 1960.
There were only three countries that had the nuclear bomb in 1957 when the UN, under the aegis of the Yankees, created the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA). Does anybody think that US instrument did anything to warn the world about the terrible dangers to which it would expose human society when Israel, unconditional US and NATO ally, located in the very heartland of the world´s most important oil and gas reserves, would become a dangerous and aggressive nuclear power?
Its forces, cooperating with colonial British and French troops, attacked Port Said when Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, French property; this forced the Soviet premier to send an ultimatum demanding the ceasing of that aggression that the European allies of the US had no alternative other than to attack.
"Genocidal Cynicism" (Part II and end)
In order to give an idea of the potential of the USSR in its efforts to maintain parity with the United States in this sphere, we only need to point out that when its disintegration occurred in 1991, in Byelorussia there were 81 nuclear warheads, in Kazakhstan 1400 and in the Ukraine approximately 5000; all these went over to the Russian Federation, the only state capable of sustaining its immense cost, in order to maintain independence.
By virtue of the START and SORT treaties on the reduction of offensive weapons signed by the two great nuclear powers, the number of these was reduced to several thousand.
In 2010, a new treaty of this kind was signed by the two powers.
Since then the greatest efforts have been dedicated to improving direction, scope and precision and to the deception of adversary defence. Huge amounts of money have been invested in the military sphere.
Very few persons in the world, other than a handful of thinkers and scientists, notice and warn about the fact that the explosion of 100 nuclear strategic weapons would suffice to put an end to human life on the planet. The great majority would have an end that would be as inexorable as it would be horrible, resulting from the Nuclear Winter that would be generated.
The number of countries possessing nuclear weapons at this time has gone up to eight; five of them are members of the Security Council: the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and China. India and Pakistan acquired the nature of countries possessing nuclear weapons in 1974 and 1998 respectively. The seven aforementioned countries acknowledge this nature.
By contrast, Israel has never acknowledged its nature as a nuclear country. Nevertheless, it is calculated that it possesses between 200 and 500 weapons of this type, without taking the hint when the world becomes concerned by the extremely serious problems that the outbreak of a war in the region producing a large part of the energy moving industry and agriculture on the planet would bring.
Thanks to possessing weapons of mass destruction, Israel has been able to play its role as the instrument of imperialism and colonialism in that Middle Eastern region.
We are not dealing with the legitimate right of the Israeli people to live and work in peace and freedom; we are dealing precisely with the rights for freedom and peace of the other peoples in the region.
While Israel was speedily creating a nuclear arsenal, in 1981 it attacked and destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak. It did exactly the same thing to the Syrian reactor at Dayr az-Zawr in 2007, an occurrence of which world opinion was oddly not informed. The UN and the IAEA were perfectly well aware of that event. Such actions had the support of the United States and the Atlantic Alliance.
There is nothing odd about the fact that the most senior Israeli authorities are now proclaiming their intention of doing the same thing with Iran. That country, immensely wealthy in oil and gas, had been the victim of the conspiracies of Great Britain and the United States, whose oil companies were pillaging their resources. Their armed forces were equipped with the most modern weaponry of the US war industry.
Shah Reza Pahlevi also hoped to be supplied with nuclear weapons. Nobody was attacking his research centers. The Israeli war was waged against the Arab Muslims. Not against those in Iran, because they had become a NATO bastion that was aiming at the heart of the USSR.
The masses in that nation, deeply religious, under the leadership of the Ayatollah Khomeini, challenging the power of those weapons, ousted the Shah from his throne and disarmed one of the best equipped armies in the world without a shot being fired.
Due to their capacity for struggle, the number of inhabitants and the size of the country, an aggression against Iran bears no similarity with the war adventures of Israel in Iraq and Syria. A bloody war would inevitably break out. We can have no doubts about that.
Israel has a large number of nuclear weapons and the capacity of having them reach any point in Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania. I am wondering: does the IAEA have the moral right to sanction and smother a country if it intends to do what Israel has done in the heart of the Middle East, for its own defence?
I really think that no country in the world should possess nuclear weapons and that energy should be put at the service of the human species. Without that spirit of cooperation, humankind marches inexorably towards its own destruction. Among the citizens of Israel themselves, a hard-working and intelligent people without a doubt, many do not agree with that absurd, irrational policy that is also taking them down the road to total destruction.
What is being said these days in the world on the economic situation?
International news agencies inform that President Barack Obama of the United States and his Chinese peer Hu Jintao presented differing trade agendas, underlining the growing tensions between the two major world economies.
Reuters states that Obama used his speech to threaten China with economic sanctions unless it starts to play according to the rules. Undoubtedly, such rules are US interests.
The news agency states that Obama is embarked on the re-election battle for next year and his Republican opposition is accusing him of not being severe enough with China.
News printed on Thursday and Friday shows the realities we are living much better.
The best informed US agency AP reports that the supreme Iranian leader warned the United States and Israel that Iranâ�Ös answer would be energetic if its arch-enemies were to launch a military attack on Iran.
The German news agency informed that China had stated that, as always, it believed dialogue and cooperation were the only way of active rapprochement to solve the problem.
Russia was also opposed to punitive measures against Iran. Germany rejected the military option but revealed itself to be for strong sanctions against Iran.
The United Kingdom and France advocate strong and energetic sanctions.
The Russian Federation assured that it would do everything possible to avoid a military operation against Iran and it criticized the IAEA report.
Konstantin Kosachov, head of the Duma Foreign Affairs Committee, stated that a military operation against Iran could bring very serious consequences and Russia would have to put all its weight into smoothing feelings over. According to EFE, he criticized statements by the US, France and Israel about the possible use of force and that the launching of a military operation against Iran is getting closer day by day.
Edward Spannaus, editor of the US magazine EIR, stated that the attack against Iran would end up as World War III.
The US Defence Secretary himself, after a trip to Israel a few days ago, acknowledged that he was not able to get any commitment from the Israeli government on prior consultation with the US on an attack against Iran. Those are the extremes we have reached.
The US under-secretary for political and military affairs harshly revealed the empireâ�Ös sinister aims.
On Saturday, Andrew Shapiro, Under-Secretary for Political and Military Affairs of the United States stated that Israel and the United States shall embark on more important joint manoeuvres that are of greater transcendence in the history of the allies.
At the Washington Institute for Middle Eastern Policy, Shapiro announced that more than 5,000 US and Israeli armed forces troops will take part in the manoeuvres simulating the defence of Israelâ�Ös ballistic missiles.
He added that Israeli technology was becoming essential to improve US national security and to protect US troops.
Shapiro emphasized the support of the Obama government for Israel, in spite of comments on Friday by a senior US official who expressed his concern about Israel not warning the US before starting military action against Iranian nuclear installations.
He said that US relations with Israeli security are broader, more profound and more intense than ever before.
According to him, the US supports Israel because it is in US national interest to do so. It is the solid Israeli military force that is deterring possible aggressors and helps to promote peace and stability.
Today, on November 13, Susan Rice, US ambassador to the UN, told the BBC that the possibility of military intervention in Iran was not only still on the table but that it was a real option that is growing because of Iranian conduct.
She insisted that the US administration is reaching the conclusion that it will be necessary to end the current regime in Iran in order to prevent it from creating a nuclear arsenal. Rice acknowledged that she was convinced that the change in regime is going to be the USA only option there.
We do not need to add a single word.
"Genocidal Cynicism"
No sane person, especially someone who has had access to the elementary knowledge acquired in primary school, would agree that our species, especially those who are children, teenagers or youth, should be deprived of the right to live, today, tomorrow and forever. Never have human beings, throughout their eventful history, as persons endowed with intelligence, ever heard of an experience like that.
I feel the duty to convey to those taking the trouble to read these Reflections the opinion that all of us, with no exception, are obliged to create awareness about the risks that humankind are running in an inexorable manner, towards a final and total catastrophe as the consequence of irresponsible decisions made by politicians who fate, rather than talent or merit, has placed the destiny of humankind in their hands.
Whether they are citizens of their country or not, whether they are followers of some religious belief or unbelievers, no human being in their right mind would agree that their children or closest kin should perish precipitously or as victims of atrocious and torturous misery.
On the heels of the repugnant crimes that are being increasingly committed by NATO under the aegis of the United States and the wealthiest countries in Europe, the gaze of the world focused on the G-20 meeting where the profound economic crisis affecting every nation today should have been analyzed. International opinion, especially in Europe, was awaiting an answer for the profound economic crisis that, with its serious social and even climatic implications, is threatening every inhabitant on the planet. At that meeting, it was being decided whether the Euro would be able to be kept as the common currency for most of Europe and even whether some of the countries would be able to remain in the community.
There was no answer or solution of any kind for the most serious problems of the world economy despite the efforts of China, Russia, Indonesia, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina and other emerging economies, anxious to cooperate with the rest of the world in the search for solutions for the serious economic problems affecting them.
What was unusual was that just when NATO concluded the Libyan operation - after the air attack that injured the constitutional head of that country, destroyed the vehicle carrying him and leaving him at the mercy of the empire´s mercenaries who murdered him and exhibited his body as a war trophy, violating Muslim customs and traditions - the IAEA, a UN body and an institution that ought to stand for world peace, released the political, money-driven and sectarian report putting the world on the brink of war with the use of nuclear weapons that the Yankee empire, in alliance with Great Britain and Israel, has been meticulously preparing against Iran.
After the veni, vidi, vici of the famous Roman emperor more than two thousand years ago, translated to "I came, I saw and he died" broadcast for public opinion by an important television network as soon as the death of Gaddafi had been learned of, there are more than enough words to describe US policy.
Now what is important is the need to create clear awareness in the peoples about the abyss towards which humankind is being led. Twice our Revolution lived through dramatic dangers: in October of 1962, the most critical of all where humankind was on the brink of nuclear holocaust; and in mid-1987 when our forces were facing racist South African troops armed with nuclear weapons that the Israelis had helped them create.
The Shah of Iran also collaborated, along with Israel, with the racist and fascist South African regime.
What is the UN? An organization driven by the United States before the end of World War II. That nation, whose territory was considerably far away from the theatre of war, had incredibly increased its wealth; it accumulated 80% of the world´s gold and under the leadership of Roosevelt, a sincere anti-fascist, it promoted the development of the nuclear weapon that Truman, his successor, a mediocre oligarch, did not hesitate in using against the defenceless cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
The world´s gold monopoly in United States´ power and the prestige of Roosevelt handed the US the Bretton Woods agreement, assigning it the role of issuing the dollar as the only currency to be used for decades in world trade, with no limiting factor other that it´s being backed by the gold metal.
At the end of that war, the US was also the only country possessing the nuclear weapon, a privilege it did not hesitate in transmitting to its allies and members in the Security Council: Great Britain and France, the two most important colonial powers in the world at that time.
Truman had not even informed the USSR one single word about the atomic weapon before using it. China, at that time governed by Nationalist General Chiang Kai-shek, a pro-Yankee oligarch, could not be excluded from that Security Council.
The USSR, seriously stricken by the war, destruction and the loss of more than 20 million of its sons and daughters in the Nazi invasion, dedicated considerable economic, scientific and human resources to bring its nuclear capacity up to par with that of the United States. Four years later, in 1949, it tested its first nuclear weapon: the H-bomb in 1953; and in 1955 its first megaton bomb. France had its first nuclear weapon in 1960.
There were only three countries that had the nuclear bomb in 1957 when the UN, under the aegis of the Yankees, created the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA). Does anybody think that US instrument did anything to warn the world about the terrible dangers to which it would expose human society when Israel, unconditional US and NATO ally, located in the very heartland of the world´s most important oil and gas reserves, would become a dangerous and aggressive nuclear power?
Its forces, cooperating with colonial British and French troops, attacked Port Said when Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, French property; this forced the Soviet premier to send an ultimatum demanding the ceasing of that aggression that the European allies of the US had no alternative other than to attack.
"Genocidal Cynicism" (Part II and end)
In order to give an idea of the potential of the USSR in its efforts to maintain parity with the United States in this sphere, we only need to point out that when its disintegration occurred in 1991, in Byelorussia there were 81 nuclear warheads, in Kazakhstan 1400 and in the Ukraine approximately 5000; all these went over to the Russian Federation, the only state capable of sustaining its immense cost, in order to maintain independence.
By virtue of the START and SORT treaties on the reduction of offensive weapons signed by the two great nuclear powers, the number of these was reduced to several thousand.
In 2010, a new treaty of this kind was signed by the two powers.
Since then the greatest efforts have been dedicated to improving direction, scope and precision and to the deception of adversary defence. Huge amounts of money have been invested in the military sphere.
Very few persons in the world, other than a handful of thinkers and scientists, notice and warn about the fact that the explosion of 100 nuclear strategic weapons would suffice to put an end to human life on the planet. The great majority would have an end that would be as inexorable as it would be horrible, resulting from the Nuclear Winter that would be generated.
The number of countries possessing nuclear weapons at this time has gone up to eight; five of them are members of the Security Council: the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and China. India and Pakistan acquired the nature of countries possessing nuclear weapons in 1974 and 1998 respectively. The seven aforementioned countries acknowledge this nature.
By contrast, Israel has never acknowledged its nature as a nuclear country. Nevertheless, it is calculated that it possesses between 200 and 500 weapons of this type, without taking the hint when the world becomes concerned by the extremely serious problems that the outbreak of a war in the region producing a large part of the energy moving industry and agriculture on the planet would bring.
Thanks to possessing weapons of mass destruction, Israel has been able to play its role as the instrument of imperialism and colonialism in that Middle Eastern region.
We are not dealing with the legitimate right of the Israeli people to live and work in peace and freedom; we are dealing precisely with the rights for freedom and peace of the other peoples in the region.
While Israel was speedily creating a nuclear arsenal, in 1981 it attacked and destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak. It did exactly the same thing to the Syrian reactor at Dayr az-Zawr in 2007, an occurrence of which world opinion was oddly not informed. The UN and the IAEA were perfectly well aware of that event. Such actions had the support of the United States and the Atlantic Alliance.
There is nothing odd about the fact that the most senior Israeli authorities are now proclaiming their intention of doing the same thing with Iran. That country, immensely wealthy in oil and gas, had been the victim of the conspiracies of Great Britain and the United States, whose oil companies were pillaging their resources. Their armed forces were equipped with the most modern weaponry of the US war industry.
Shah Reza Pahlevi also hoped to be supplied with nuclear weapons. Nobody was attacking his research centers. The Israeli war was waged against the Arab Muslims. Not against those in Iran, because they had become a NATO bastion that was aiming at the heart of the USSR.
The masses in that nation, deeply religious, under the leadership of the Ayatollah Khomeini, challenging the power of those weapons, ousted the Shah from his throne and disarmed one of the best equipped armies in the world without a shot being fired.
Due to their capacity for struggle, the number of inhabitants and the size of the country, an aggression against Iran bears no similarity with the war adventures of Israel in Iraq and Syria. A bloody war would inevitably break out. We can have no doubts about that.
Israel has a large number of nuclear weapons and the capacity of having them reach any point in Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania. I am wondering: does the IAEA have the moral right to sanction and smother a country if it intends to do what Israel has done in the heart of the Middle East, for its own defence?
I really think that no country in the world should possess nuclear weapons and that energy should be put at the service of the human species. Without that spirit of cooperation, humankind marches inexorably towards its own destruction. Among the citizens of Israel themselves, a hard-working and intelligent people without a doubt, many do not agree with that absurd, irrational policy that is also taking them down the road to total destruction.
What is being said these days in the world on the economic situation?
International news agencies inform that President Barack Obama of the United States and his Chinese peer Hu Jintao presented differing trade agendas, underlining the growing tensions between the two major world economies.
Reuters states that Obama used his speech to threaten China with economic sanctions unless it starts to play according to the rules. Undoubtedly, such rules are US interests.
The news agency states that Obama is embarked on the re-election battle for next year and his Republican opposition is accusing him of not being severe enough with China.
News printed on Thursday and Friday shows the realities we are living much better.
The best informed US agency AP reports that the supreme Iranian leader warned the United States and Israel that Iranâ�Ös answer would be energetic if its arch-enemies were to launch a military attack on Iran.
The German news agency informed that China had stated that, as always, it believed dialogue and cooperation were the only way of active rapprochement to solve the problem.
Russia was also opposed to punitive measures against Iran. Germany rejected the military option but revealed itself to be for strong sanctions against Iran.
The United Kingdom and France advocate strong and energetic sanctions.
The Russian Federation assured that it would do everything possible to avoid a military operation against Iran and it criticized the IAEA report.
Konstantin Kosachov, head of the Duma Foreign Affairs Committee, stated that a military operation against Iran could bring very serious consequences and Russia would have to put all its weight into smoothing feelings over. According to EFE, he criticized statements by the US, France and Israel about the possible use of force and that the launching of a military operation against Iran is getting closer day by day.
Edward Spannaus, editor of the US magazine EIR, stated that the attack against Iran would end up as World War III.
The US Defence Secretary himself, after a trip to Israel a few days ago, acknowledged that he was not able to get any commitment from the Israeli government on prior consultation with the US on an attack against Iran. Those are the extremes we have reached.
The US under-secretary for political and military affairs harshly revealed the empireâ�Ös sinister aims.
On Saturday, Andrew Shapiro, Under-Secretary for Political and Military Affairs of the United States stated that Israel and the United States shall embark on more important joint manoeuvres that are of greater transcendence in the history of the allies.
At the Washington Institute for Middle Eastern Policy, Shapiro announced that more than 5,000 US and Israeli armed forces troops will take part in the manoeuvres simulating the defence of Israelâ�Ös ballistic missiles.
He added that Israeli technology was becoming essential to improve US national security and to protect US troops.
Shapiro emphasized the support of the Obama government for Israel, in spite of comments on Friday by a senior US official who expressed his concern about Israel not warning the US before starting military action against Iranian nuclear installations.
He said that US relations with Israeli security are broader, more profound and more intense than ever before.
According to him, the US supports Israel because it is in US national interest to do so. It is the solid Israeli military force that is deterring possible aggressors and helps to promote peace and stability.
Today, on November 13, Susan Rice, US ambassador to the UN, told the BBC that the possibility of military intervention in Iran was not only still on the table but that it was a real option that is growing because of Iranian conduct.
She insisted that the US administration is reaching the conclusion that it will be necessary to end the current regime in Iran in order to prevent it from creating a nuclear arsenal. Rice acknowledged that she was convinced that the change in regime is going to be the USA only option there.
We do not need to add a single word.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
SC109-2
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/this_is_what_revolution_looks_like_20111115/
This Is What Revolution Looks Like
Welcome to the revolution. Our elites have exposed their hand. They have nothing to offer. They can destroy but they cannot build. They can repress but they cannot lead. They can steal but they cannot share. They can talk but they cannot speak. They are as dead and useless to us as the water-soaked books, tents, sleeping bags, suitcases, food boxes and clothes that were tossed by sanitation workers Tuesday morning into garbage trucks in New York City. They have no ideas, no plans and no vision for the future.
Our decaying corporate regime has strutted in Portland, Oakland and New York with their baton-wielding cops into a fool’s paradise. They think they can clean up “the mess”—always employing the language of personal hygiene and public security—by making us disappear. They think we will all go home and accept their corporate nation, a nation where crime and government policy have become indistinguishable, where nothing in America, including the ordinary citizen, is deemed by those in power worth protecting or preserving, where corporate oligarchs awash in hundreds of millions of dollars are permitted to loot and pillage the last shreds of collective wealth, human capital and natural resources, a nation where the poor do not eat and workers do not work, a nation where the sick die and children go hungry, a nation where the consent of the governed and the voice of the people is a cruel joke.
Get back into your cages, they are telling us. Return to watching the lies, absurdities, trivia and celebrity gossip we feed you in 24-hour cycles on television. Invest your emotional energy in the vast system of popular entertainment. Run up your credit card debt. Pay your loans. Be thankful for the scraps we toss. Chant back to us our phrases about democracy, greatness and freedom. Vote in our rigged political theater. Send your young men and women to fight and die in useless, unwinnable wars that provide corporations with huge profits. Stand by mutely as our bipartisan congressional supercommittee, either through consensus or cynical dysfunction, plunges you into a society without basic social services including unemployment benefits. Pay for the crimes of Wall Street.
The rogues’ gallery of Wall Street crooks, such as Lloyd Blankfein at Goldman Sachs, Howard Milstein at New York Private Bank & Trust, the media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, the Koch brothers and Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan Chase & Co., no doubt think it’s over. They think it is back to the business of harvesting what is left of America to swell their personal and corporate fortunes. But they no longer have any concept of what is happening around them. They are as mystified and clueless about these uprisings as the courtiers at Versailles or in the Forbidden City who never understood until the very end that their world was collapsing. The billionaire mayor of New York, enriched by a deregulated Wall Street, is unable to grasp why people would spend two months sleeping in an open park and marching on banks. He says he understands that the Occupy protests are “cathartic” and “entertaining,” as if demonstrating against the pain of being homeless and unemployed is a form of therapy or diversion, but that it is time to let the adults handle the affairs of state. Democratic and Republican mayors, along with their parties, have sold us out. But for them this is the beginning of the end.
The historian Crane Brinton in his book “Anatomy of a Revolution” laid out the common route to revolution. The preconditions for successful revolution, Brinton argued, are discontent that affects nearly all social classes, widespread feelings of entrapment and despair, unfulfilled expectations, a unified solidarity in opposition to a tiny power elite, a refusal by scholars and thinkers to continue to defend the actions of the ruling class, an inability of government to respond to the basic needs of citizens, a steady loss of will within the power elite itself and defections from the inner circle, a crippling isolation that leaves the power elite without any allies or outside support and, finally, a financial crisis. Our corporate elite, as far as Brinton was concerned, has amply fulfilled these preconditions. But it is Brinton’s next observation that is most worth remembering. Revolutions always begin, he wrote, by making impossible demands that if the government met would mean the end of the old configurations of power. The second stage, the one we have entered now, is the unsuccessful attempt by the power elite to quell the unrest and discontent through physical acts of repression.
I have seen my share of revolts, insurgencies and revolutions, from the guerrilla conflicts in the 1980s in Central America to the civil wars in Algeria, the Sudan and Yemen, to the Palestinian uprising to the revolutions in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania as well as the wars in the former Yugoslavia. George Orwell wrote that all tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but that once the fraud is exposed they must rely exclusively on force. We have now entered the era of naked force. The vast million-person bureaucracy of the internal security and surveillance state will not be used to stop terrorism but to try and stop us.
Despotic regimes in the end collapse internally. Once the foot soldiers who are ordered to carry out acts of repression, such as the clearing of parks or arresting or even shooting demonstrators, no longer obey orders, the old regime swiftly crumbles. When the aging East German dictator Erich Honecker was unable to get paratroopers to fire on protesting crowds in Leipzig, the regime was finished. The same refusal to employ violence doomed the communist governments in Prague and Bucharest. I watched in December 1989 as the army general that the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu had depended on to crush protests condemned him to death on Christmas Day. Tunisia’s Ben Ali and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak lost power once they could no longer count on the security forces to fire into crowds.
The process of defection among the ruling class and security forces is slow and often imperceptible. These defections are advanced through a rigid adherence to nonviolence, a refusal to respond to police provocation and a verbal respect for the blue-uniformed police, no matter how awful they can be while wading into a crowd and using batons as battering rams against human bodies. The resignations of Oakland Mayor Jean Quan’s deputy, Sharon Cornu, and the mayor’s legal adviser and longtime friend, Dan Siegel, in protest over the clearing of the Oakland encampment are some of the first cracks in the edifice. “Support Occupy Oakland, not the 1% and its government facilitators,” Siegel tweeted after his resignation.
There were times when I entered the ring as a boxer and knew, as did the spectators, that I was woefully mismatched. Ringers, experienced boxers in need of a tuneup or a little practice, would go to the clubs where semi-pros fought, lie about their long professional fight records, and toy with us. Those fights became about something other than winning. They became about dignity and self-respect. You fought to say something about who you were as a human being. These bouts were punishing, physically brutal and demoralizing. You would get knocked down and stagger back up. You would reel backward from a blow that felt like a cement block. You would taste the saltiness of your blood on your lips. Your vision would blur. Your ribs, the back of your neck and your abdomen would ache. Your legs would feel like lead. But the longer you held on, the more the crowd in the club turned in your favor. No one, even you, thought you could win. But then, every once in a while, the ringer would get overconfident. He would get careless. He would become a victim of his own hubris. And you would find deep within yourself some new burst of energy, some untapped strength and, with the fury of the dispossessed, bring him down. I have not put on a pair of boxing gloves for 30 years. But I felt this twinge of euphoria again in my stomach this morning, this utter certainty that the impossible is possible, this realization that the mighty will fall.
This Is What Revolution Looks Like
Welcome to the revolution. Our elites have exposed their hand. They have nothing to offer. They can destroy but they cannot build. They can repress but they cannot lead. They can steal but they cannot share. They can talk but they cannot speak. They are as dead and useless to us as the water-soaked books, tents, sleeping bags, suitcases, food boxes and clothes that were tossed by sanitation workers Tuesday morning into garbage trucks in New York City. They have no ideas, no plans and no vision for the future.
Our decaying corporate regime has strutted in Portland, Oakland and New York with their baton-wielding cops into a fool’s paradise. They think they can clean up “the mess”—always employing the language of personal hygiene and public security—by making us disappear. They think we will all go home and accept their corporate nation, a nation where crime and government policy have become indistinguishable, where nothing in America, including the ordinary citizen, is deemed by those in power worth protecting or preserving, where corporate oligarchs awash in hundreds of millions of dollars are permitted to loot and pillage the last shreds of collective wealth, human capital and natural resources, a nation where the poor do not eat and workers do not work, a nation where the sick die and children go hungry, a nation where the consent of the governed and the voice of the people is a cruel joke.
Get back into your cages, they are telling us. Return to watching the lies, absurdities, trivia and celebrity gossip we feed you in 24-hour cycles on television. Invest your emotional energy in the vast system of popular entertainment. Run up your credit card debt. Pay your loans. Be thankful for the scraps we toss. Chant back to us our phrases about democracy, greatness and freedom. Vote in our rigged political theater. Send your young men and women to fight and die in useless, unwinnable wars that provide corporations with huge profits. Stand by mutely as our bipartisan congressional supercommittee, either through consensus or cynical dysfunction, plunges you into a society without basic social services including unemployment benefits. Pay for the crimes of Wall Street.
The rogues’ gallery of Wall Street crooks, such as Lloyd Blankfein at Goldman Sachs, Howard Milstein at New York Private Bank & Trust, the media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, the Koch brothers and Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan Chase & Co., no doubt think it’s over. They think it is back to the business of harvesting what is left of America to swell their personal and corporate fortunes. But they no longer have any concept of what is happening around them. They are as mystified and clueless about these uprisings as the courtiers at Versailles or in the Forbidden City who never understood until the very end that their world was collapsing. The billionaire mayor of New York, enriched by a deregulated Wall Street, is unable to grasp why people would spend two months sleeping in an open park and marching on banks. He says he understands that the Occupy protests are “cathartic” and “entertaining,” as if demonstrating against the pain of being homeless and unemployed is a form of therapy or diversion, but that it is time to let the adults handle the affairs of state. Democratic and Republican mayors, along with their parties, have sold us out. But for them this is the beginning of the end.
The historian Crane Brinton in his book “Anatomy of a Revolution” laid out the common route to revolution. The preconditions for successful revolution, Brinton argued, are discontent that affects nearly all social classes, widespread feelings of entrapment and despair, unfulfilled expectations, a unified solidarity in opposition to a tiny power elite, a refusal by scholars and thinkers to continue to defend the actions of the ruling class, an inability of government to respond to the basic needs of citizens, a steady loss of will within the power elite itself and defections from the inner circle, a crippling isolation that leaves the power elite without any allies or outside support and, finally, a financial crisis. Our corporate elite, as far as Brinton was concerned, has amply fulfilled these preconditions. But it is Brinton’s next observation that is most worth remembering. Revolutions always begin, he wrote, by making impossible demands that if the government met would mean the end of the old configurations of power. The second stage, the one we have entered now, is the unsuccessful attempt by the power elite to quell the unrest and discontent through physical acts of repression.
I have seen my share of revolts, insurgencies and revolutions, from the guerrilla conflicts in the 1980s in Central America to the civil wars in Algeria, the Sudan and Yemen, to the Palestinian uprising to the revolutions in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania as well as the wars in the former Yugoslavia. George Orwell wrote that all tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but that once the fraud is exposed they must rely exclusively on force. We have now entered the era of naked force. The vast million-person bureaucracy of the internal security and surveillance state will not be used to stop terrorism but to try and stop us.
Despotic regimes in the end collapse internally. Once the foot soldiers who are ordered to carry out acts of repression, such as the clearing of parks or arresting or even shooting demonstrators, no longer obey orders, the old regime swiftly crumbles. When the aging East German dictator Erich Honecker was unable to get paratroopers to fire on protesting crowds in Leipzig, the regime was finished. The same refusal to employ violence doomed the communist governments in Prague and Bucharest. I watched in December 1989 as the army general that the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu had depended on to crush protests condemned him to death on Christmas Day. Tunisia’s Ben Ali and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak lost power once they could no longer count on the security forces to fire into crowds.
The process of defection among the ruling class and security forces is slow and often imperceptible. These defections are advanced through a rigid adherence to nonviolence, a refusal to respond to police provocation and a verbal respect for the blue-uniformed police, no matter how awful they can be while wading into a crowd and using batons as battering rams against human bodies. The resignations of Oakland Mayor Jean Quan’s deputy, Sharon Cornu, and the mayor’s legal adviser and longtime friend, Dan Siegel, in protest over the clearing of the Oakland encampment are some of the first cracks in the edifice. “Support Occupy Oakland, not the 1% and its government facilitators,” Siegel tweeted after his resignation.
There were times when I entered the ring as a boxer and knew, as did the spectators, that I was woefully mismatched. Ringers, experienced boxers in need of a tuneup or a little practice, would go to the clubs where semi-pros fought, lie about their long professional fight records, and toy with us. Those fights became about something other than winning. They became about dignity and self-respect. You fought to say something about who you were as a human being. These bouts were punishing, physically brutal and demoralizing. You would get knocked down and stagger back up. You would reel backward from a blow that felt like a cement block. You would taste the saltiness of your blood on your lips. Your vision would blur. Your ribs, the back of your neck and your abdomen would ache. Your legs would feel like lead. But the longer you held on, the more the crowd in the club turned in your favor. No one, even you, thought you could win. But then, every once in a while, the ringer would get overconfident. He would get careless. He would become a victim of his own hubris. And you would find deep within yourself some new burst of energy, some untapped strength and, with the fury of the dispossessed, bring him down. I have not put on a pair of boxing gloves for 30 years. But I felt this twinge of euphoria again in my stomach this morning, this utter certainty that the impossible is possible, this realization that the mighty will fall.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
SC109-1
http://carolynbaker.net/2011/11/14/2230/
Economic Collapse? We’re Soaking In It!
A rather unobservant or at the very least “unlucky” man strolls across a faulty bridge; weathered, termite ridden, and over-traveled. He hops and skips and jumps about like a brain damaged orangutan without a care in the world. He does this not only because he is oblivious to the fundamental physics behind the workings of the bridge, and the structural signs of a bridge that is on the verge of collapse, but also because numerous highly paid “experts” on bridges have told him it is absolutely safe to do so. The bridge, of course, crumbles right under his feet, and he falls.
Now, if the ground was relatively close to our unfortunate freefalling dupe, the sudden collapse and the painful shock of smacking into the rocky floor would be an understandable surprise. Given only moments between the failure of the bridge and the ultimate conclusion of the spine crunching granite bottom swan dive, one could hardly ponder the situation at all. However, in this event, the ground is not close. In fact, the ravine is dark, and the fall is long. Perhaps three or four years long. In this case, a man has plenty of time to think through the circumstances of his predicament, and realize that eventually, he WILL meet the future like a warm pancake smacking cold linoleum at 200 mph.
If such a man is unable to discern the problems he faces, or to even acknowledge the fact that the ground has given way beneath him, after such a long stretch of time, it becomes very hard to feel sorry for him. But then again, we were all like this man once…
Since the derivatives and housing market implosion of 2008, America and the rest of the world has been spiraling down a chasm some in this country still refuse to take note of. The question has never been whether there “will be” a full scale financial disaster. The end to that chapter of this story was already written years ago. Rather, the real question has been “when” will this inevitable event culminate? Sadly, speculation on the matter has met an irreconcilable road block. The fact is, all the necessary elements are in place to bring down our fiscal shelter not in five years, not in one year, not in six months, but today. That’s right…..the economy as we know it has the potential to derail completely before you wake up for your morning poptart.
Some skeptics might shrug off this statement as mere sensationalism for effect. I wish that were the case. Frankly, I would enjoy writing a little fiction for once. The truth is far too bizarre and disturbing lately.
In the case of economics, traditional views and standards have gone completely out the window in a way that I and probably every other analyst in the field have never heard of or encountered. All expectations are now null and void. Manipulation of the marketplace is no longer a subversive and secretive process, but open government and central banking policy! Who could have guessed five years ago, for instance, that U.S. taxpayers would be saddled with bailouts of the EU? Who could have predicted that global stock market psychology would be dominated for over a year by the debt drama of a country as economically insignificant as Greece? And, who could have foreseen that destructive fiat stimulus policies would soon be common knowledge events amongst the citizens of various faltering nations?
Liberty Movement analysts have been sounding the warning alarm for a long time on the possible consequences of Federal Reserve actions as well as government expansion, but to witness the scale of the fraud being unleashed and the brazen manner in which it is being implemented is something else entirely. Even now, the sheer scope of the systemic collapse is breaking into territory that may not be fully understood for decades to come.
That said, no one with any common sense or eyes to see can deny that the bridge has indeed given way. What awaits us when we finally hit bottom is hard to say, but it doesn’t take a soothsayer to predict an unpleasant outcome.
As the process of destabilization unfolds, the best we can do is stay attuned to political and financial shifts that often go underreported in the mainstream media. This gives us the ability to gauge the nature and speed of the crisis so that we can move to guard ourselves effectively when the time comes. Even the smallest morsel of information can have incredible significance. These holes in the fog are brief, but they reveal much. Some of this data signals a new and powerful wave of change on the horizon, a startling chapter which may be the last for the ailing economy as we know it…
Rise Of The Asian Union
Back at the end of 2008, a China reinventing itself as a consumer hub for the Asian-Pacific region announced a “proposal” to introduce cross border trade of the Yuan. Only a couple Western news sources covered this story, burying the information in their pages on Christmas Day. Now, cross border trade of the Yuan is launching the fiat unit towards reserve status in the Pacific and is hurtling China towards inclusion in the IMF’s new global currency; the SDR.
A recent meeting of the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) has led to a predictable clash of philosophies between the U.S. and China. Make no mistake, though, this conflict is a ploy. A soap opera designed to distract us as well as prep us for a trade war to end all trade wars.
The talks focused on progressive trade agreements and multilateral policies designed to shield Pacific nations from the poisonous debt cloud forming over the EU. These agreements rely, of course, on centralization tactics and the removal of protective export and import barriers. Both U.S. officials and Chinese officials WANT more centralization. Do not be fooled. The notion that American people have been fed, however, is that China wants a weak currency and export dominance for selfish ends. The notion the Chinese people have been fed, is that America wants to have its cake and eat it too; demanding a larger piece of the export market while at the same time expecting ultra-cheap goods from overseas. On the surface, they are both right, but go deeper, and you will find the tides of engineered globalism at work.
Ultimately, there is no APEC, at least not one that includes the U.S. There is only the ASEAN trading bloc, which is about to become the Asian Union. That’s right…they are ready. In a barely reported announcement from China, a proposal has been announced for the formation of an ASEAN central bank, designed much like the European Central Bank (ECB), which includes South Korea and Japan as stakeholders. Remember how cross-border trade in the Yuan started as a mostly ignored “proposal” back in 2008? This is not a proposal, this is a promise:
“The bank will also settle China-ASEAN trade in yuan, a step in China’s long campaign to make the yuan, also known as renminbi or people’s currency, a regional currency…”
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/27/us-china-asean-financial-idUSTRE79Q2F520111027
Its official, folks! The U.S. has just been replaced as China’s go-to trading partner, and a new multinational economic union is about to be formed. There is absolutely no incentive anymore for China to continue investment in U.S. debt or the dollar. Everything between the U.S. and China has been leading to this. All that is left is the spark of trade aggression from either side to seal the deal. This leaves the U.S. to flounder without a life-vest, or to be swallowed by the leviathan otherwise known as the IMF.
Fall Of The European Union
After endless months of hearing about Greece, finally, world markets are starting to realize that there are other more financially important countries to worry about, like Italy, for example. With the replacement of President Silvio Berlusconi, and the budgetary shortfalls of the government in the media view, attentions are beginning to wander over to the EU as a collection of nations all in their own particular brand of trouble, instead of being sidenotes or dominoes in the Greece debacle.
The EU Growth And Stability Pact dictates that EU member states must maintain a national deficit of 3% or less, and a debt to GDP ratio of 60% or less. More than half of EU economies have far exceeded these limitations.
Italy’s “official” debt to GDP ratio stands at around 120%, but the true size of its liabilities may never be known. Greece’s debt to GDP ratio was cited at around 142% by government officials while analysts who use total debt to GDP calculations place it closer to 200%. Germany, France, and the UK all stand at around 80% of GDP (official numbers, again):
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/BUSINESS/06/19/europe.debt.explainer/index.html
The situation is so bad in the EU, that some, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, want to end the current EU charter by 2012, and either shrink the number of members drastically, or restructure the agreement to allow more centralized control of member nations and their political policies:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/13/us-germany-eu-charter-idUSTRE7AC0KM20111113
What this means, essentially, is that there will not be a “collapse” of the EU in the traditional sense but, as we discussed here at Alt-Market last year, there will be enough chaos to frighten still sovereign minded Europeans into giving up certain economic and social powers and freedoms. A new EU will form, on the argument that it was “state sovereignty” and a lack of cooperation that caused the crisis to begin with.
This is total nonsense of course. Central banking policies and insane Keynesian borrow and spend strategies around the world are what caused this nightmare, some would say by design (including myself).
So, before the end of 2011, we have seen the formation of an Asian Union, and the first steps towards a more tightly dominated European Union. What’s next?
American Default: One City At A Time
If you thought the derivatives debt game had leveled out in the U.S., and that the worst was over, think again. The bankruptcy of MF Global, a far larger company than Lehman Brothers, has signaled a new resurgence of bank weakness. However, the real danger behind the MF situation is not necessarily its failure, but how it has been hiding its failure.
Not only was MF making risky bets with borrowed money without disclosure, and “window dressing” their quarterly reports to fool investors, but they have also been caught siphoning capital from client accounts to pay off the massive liabilities they have accrued:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/02/us-mfglobal-exchanges-idUSTRE7A00LG20111102
These kinds of activities are what we usually call “fraud”. But with a company like MF Global, whose reputation was once considered sterling, a much more important and terrifying question arises; how many other banks are doing the same exact thing?
My guess is all of them.
MF Global’s implosion places doubt on all major banking institutions and the legitimacy of their reported health, which means Americans have a lot of soul searching to do as far as where they actually choose to put their savings. But the return of the credit and derivatives specter only hints at the issues ahead…
After the historic credit downgrade of the U.S. by ratings agency S&P, most investors absorbed the shock, then ignored the peril, and began throwing around cash with wild abandon yet again. What many of them have not taken into account, though, is that the downgrade is not over. S&P has stated it will extend the downgrade of the U.S. AAA rating to thousands of municipal bonds after Federal Budgetary issues are decided by the so called “Super Congress”:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-18/municipal-bonds-may-face-downgrades-following-final-u-s-budget-s-p-says.html
These decisions are supposed to be announced by November 23rd; only weeks away. After the 23rd, S&P will begin examining state and city debt ratings on a case by case basis. The likelihood of multiple rating downgrades of numerous U.S. cities and counties is very high. These downgrades could lead to explosive levels of municipal bankruptcies. Being that some areas of the country have already filed for bankruptcy without S&P’s help, like Harrisburgh, PA, and Jefferson County, AL, the signs are not encouraging:
http://money.cnn.com/2011/10/12/news/economy/harrisburg_bankruptcy/index.htm
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/10/us-usa-alabama-jeffersoncounty-idUSTRE7A87WW20111110
If you were wondering what the trigger would be for the next round of Federal Reserve quantitative easing, here it is; a combination of bank failure resurgence, along with city and state defaults leading to a clamoring for Federal funds just to stay in operation. Fiat injections in light of this event will dwarf previous measures. In fact, we may long for the days of TARP after the Fed has finished annihilating the dollar in order to plug thousands of ongoing municipal leaks in the hull of our sinking ship.
Economic Collapse? We’re Soaking In It!
A rather unobservant or at the very least “unlucky” man strolls across a faulty bridge; weathered, termite ridden, and over-traveled. He hops and skips and jumps about like a brain damaged orangutan without a care in the world. He does this not only because he is oblivious to the fundamental physics behind the workings of the bridge, and the structural signs of a bridge that is on the verge of collapse, but also because numerous highly paid “experts” on bridges have told him it is absolutely safe to do so. The bridge, of course, crumbles right under his feet, and he falls.
Now, if the ground was relatively close to our unfortunate freefalling dupe, the sudden collapse and the painful shock of smacking into the rocky floor would be an understandable surprise. Given only moments between the failure of the bridge and the ultimate conclusion of the spine crunching granite bottom swan dive, one could hardly ponder the situation at all. However, in this event, the ground is not close. In fact, the ravine is dark, and the fall is long. Perhaps three or four years long. In this case, a man has plenty of time to think through the circumstances of his predicament, and realize that eventually, he WILL meet the future like a warm pancake smacking cold linoleum at 200 mph.
If such a man is unable to discern the problems he faces, or to even acknowledge the fact that the ground has given way beneath him, after such a long stretch of time, it becomes very hard to feel sorry for him. But then again, we were all like this man once…
Since the derivatives and housing market implosion of 2008, America and the rest of the world has been spiraling down a chasm some in this country still refuse to take note of. The question has never been whether there “will be” a full scale financial disaster. The end to that chapter of this story was already written years ago. Rather, the real question has been “when” will this inevitable event culminate? Sadly, speculation on the matter has met an irreconcilable road block. The fact is, all the necessary elements are in place to bring down our fiscal shelter not in five years, not in one year, not in six months, but today. That’s right…..the economy as we know it has the potential to derail completely before you wake up for your morning poptart.
Some skeptics might shrug off this statement as mere sensationalism for effect. I wish that were the case. Frankly, I would enjoy writing a little fiction for once. The truth is far too bizarre and disturbing lately.
In the case of economics, traditional views and standards have gone completely out the window in a way that I and probably every other analyst in the field have never heard of or encountered. All expectations are now null and void. Manipulation of the marketplace is no longer a subversive and secretive process, but open government and central banking policy! Who could have guessed five years ago, for instance, that U.S. taxpayers would be saddled with bailouts of the EU? Who could have predicted that global stock market psychology would be dominated for over a year by the debt drama of a country as economically insignificant as Greece? And, who could have foreseen that destructive fiat stimulus policies would soon be common knowledge events amongst the citizens of various faltering nations?
Liberty Movement analysts have been sounding the warning alarm for a long time on the possible consequences of Federal Reserve actions as well as government expansion, but to witness the scale of the fraud being unleashed and the brazen manner in which it is being implemented is something else entirely. Even now, the sheer scope of the systemic collapse is breaking into territory that may not be fully understood for decades to come.
That said, no one with any common sense or eyes to see can deny that the bridge has indeed given way. What awaits us when we finally hit bottom is hard to say, but it doesn’t take a soothsayer to predict an unpleasant outcome.
As the process of destabilization unfolds, the best we can do is stay attuned to political and financial shifts that often go underreported in the mainstream media. This gives us the ability to gauge the nature and speed of the crisis so that we can move to guard ourselves effectively when the time comes. Even the smallest morsel of information can have incredible significance. These holes in the fog are brief, but they reveal much. Some of this data signals a new and powerful wave of change on the horizon, a startling chapter which may be the last for the ailing economy as we know it…
Rise Of The Asian Union
Back at the end of 2008, a China reinventing itself as a consumer hub for the Asian-Pacific region announced a “proposal” to introduce cross border trade of the Yuan. Only a couple Western news sources covered this story, burying the information in their pages on Christmas Day. Now, cross border trade of the Yuan is launching the fiat unit towards reserve status in the Pacific and is hurtling China towards inclusion in the IMF’s new global currency; the SDR.
A recent meeting of the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) has led to a predictable clash of philosophies between the U.S. and China. Make no mistake, though, this conflict is a ploy. A soap opera designed to distract us as well as prep us for a trade war to end all trade wars.
The talks focused on progressive trade agreements and multilateral policies designed to shield Pacific nations from the poisonous debt cloud forming over the EU. These agreements rely, of course, on centralization tactics and the removal of protective export and import barriers. Both U.S. officials and Chinese officials WANT more centralization. Do not be fooled. The notion that American people have been fed, however, is that China wants a weak currency and export dominance for selfish ends. The notion the Chinese people have been fed, is that America wants to have its cake and eat it too; demanding a larger piece of the export market while at the same time expecting ultra-cheap goods from overseas. On the surface, they are both right, but go deeper, and you will find the tides of engineered globalism at work.
Ultimately, there is no APEC, at least not one that includes the U.S. There is only the ASEAN trading bloc, which is about to become the Asian Union. That’s right…they are ready. In a barely reported announcement from China, a proposal has been announced for the formation of an ASEAN central bank, designed much like the European Central Bank (ECB), which includes South Korea and Japan as stakeholders. Remember how cross-border trade in the Yuan started as a mostly ignored “proposal” back in 2008? This is not a proposal, this is a promise:
“The bank will also settle China-ASEAN trade in yuan, a step in China’s long campaign to make the yuan, also known as renminbi or people’s currency, a regional currency…”
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/27/us-china-asean-financial-idUSTRE79Q2F520111027
Its official, folks! The U.S. has just been replaced as China’s go-to trading partner, and a new multinational economic union is about to be formed. There is absolutely no incentive anymore for China to continue investment in U.S. debt or the dollar. Everything between the U.S. and China has been leading to this. All that is left is the spark of trade aggression from either side to seal the deal. This leaves the U.S. to flounder without a life-vest, or to be swallowed by the leviathan otherwise known as the IMF.
Fall Of The European Union
After endless months of hearing about Greece, finally, world markets are starting to realize that there are other more financially important countries to worry about, like Italy, for example. With the replacement of President Silvio Berlusconi, and the budgetary shortfalls of the government in the media view, attentions are beginning to wander over to the EU as a collection of nations all in their own particular brand of trouble, instead of being sidenotes or dominoes in the Greece debacle.
The EU Growth And Stability Pact dictates that EU member states must maintain a national deficit of 3% or less, and a debt to GDP ratio of 60% or less. More than half of EU economies have far exceeded these limitations.
Italy’s “official” debt to GDP ratio stands at around 120%, but the true size of its liabilities may never be known. Greece’s debt to GDP ratio was cited at around 142% by government officials while analysts who use total debt to GDP calculations place it closer to 200%. Germany, France, and the UK all stand at around 80% of GDP (official numbers, again):
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/BUSINESS/06/19/europe.debt.explainer/index.html
The situation is so bad in the EU, that some, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, want to end the current EU charter by 2012, and either shrink the number of members drastically, or restructure the agreement to allow more centralized control of member nations and their political policies:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/13/us-germany-eu-charter-idUSTRE7AC0KM20111113
What this means, essentially, is that there will not be a “collapse” of the EU in the traditional sense but, as we discussed here at Alt-Market last year, there will be enough chaos to frighten still sovereign minded Europeans into giving up certain economic and social powers and freedoms. A new EU will form, on the argument that it was “state sovereignty” and a lack of cooperation that caused the crisis to begin with.
This is total nonsense of course. Central banking policies and insane Keynesian borrow and spend strategies around the world are what caused this nightmare, some would say by design (including myself).
So, before the end of 2011, we have seen the formation of an Asian Union, and the first steps towards a more tightly dominated European Union. What’s next?
American Default: One City At A Time
If you thought the derivatives debt game had leveled out in the U.S., and that the worst was over, think again. The bankruptcy of MF Global, a far larger company than Lehman Brothers, has signaled a new resurgence of bank weakness. However, the real danger behind the MF situation is not necessarily its failure, but how it has been hiding its failure.
Not only was MF making risky bets with borrowed money without disclosure, and “window dressing” their quarterly reports to fool investors, but they have also been caught siphoning capital from client accounts to pay off the massive liabilities they have accrued:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/02/us-mfglobal-exchanges-idUSTRE7A00LG20111102
These kinds of activities are what we usually call “fraud”. But with a company like MF Global, whose reputation was once considered sterling, a much more important and terrifying question arises; how many other banks are doing the same exact thing?
My guess is all of them.
MF Global’s implosion places doubt on all major banking institutions and the legitimacy of their reported health, which means Americans have a lot of soul searching to do as far as where they actually choose to put their savings. But the return of the credit and derivatives specter only hints at the issues ahead…
After the historic credit downgrade of the U.S. by ratings agency S&P, most investors absorbed the shock, then ignored the peril, and began throwing around cash with wild abandon yet again. What many of them have not taken into account, though, is that the downgrade is not over. S&P has stated it will extend the downgrade of the U.S. AAA rating to thousands of municipal bonds after Federal Budgetary issues are decided by the so called “Super Congress”:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-18/municipal-bonds-may-face-downgrades-following-final-u-s-budget-s-p-says.html
These decisions are supposed to be announced by November 23rd; only weeks away. After the 23rd, S&P will begin examining state and city debt ratings on a case by case basis. The likelihood of multiple rating downgrades of numerous U.S. cities and counties is very high. These downgrades could lead to explosive levels of municipal bankruptcies. Being that some areas of the country have already filed for bankruptcy without S&P’s help, like Harrisburgh, PA, and Jefferson County, AL, the signs are not encouraging:
http://money.cnn.com/2011/10/12/news/economy/harrisburg_bankruptcy/index.htm
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/10/us-usa-alabama-jeffersoncounty-idUSTRE7A87WW20111110
If you were wondering what the trigger would be for the next round of Federal Reserve quantitative easing, here it is; a combination of bank failure resurgence, along with city and state defaults leading to a clamoring for Federal funds just to stay in operation. Fiat injections in light of this event will dwarf previous measures. In fact, we may long for the days of TARP after the Fed has finished annihilating the dollar in order to plug thousands of ongoing municipal leaks in the hull of our sinking ship.
Saturday, November 5, 2011
SC108-15
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29606.htm
Western Democracy: A Farce And A Sham
Every day that passes adds to the fraudulent image of what is called Western democracy.
Consider that the entire Western world is outraged that the Greek prime minister announced that he is going to permit the Greek people to decide their own fate instead of having it decided for them by a handful of banksters, politicians, and bureaucrats living it up at taxpayer expense at “talks” in the French resort of Cannes on the Mediterranean.
The Greek economy is facing its fourth year of decline and lacks the revenues to service its national debt held by private European banks. The banks don’t want to lose any money, so a handful of power brokers reached an agreement with representatives of the Greek government to write off some of the debt in exchange for EU capital subsidies to be financed by inflicting severe austerity on the Greek population. Wages, salaries, pensions and medical care are being cut while the rate of unemployment rises to depression levels. Government employees are laid off. Valuable public properties are to be sold to private parties for pennies on the dollar. In short, Greece is to be looted.
Large numbers of Greeks have been in the streets protesting the austerity policy and have reached the point of anger of throwing Molotov cocktails at the police. Greece is disintegrating politically. The Greek people sense that the EU “bailout” is not bailing out Greece. It is bailing out the French, Dutch, and German banks at the expense of the Greek people.
The Greek prime minister, watching his party’s support and power crumble, announced that he would let the people decide in a referendum. After all, allegedly that’s what democracies do. But it turns out that “we have freedom and democracy” is not supposed to be taken literally. It is merely a propagandistic slogan behind which people are ruled through back-room deals decided by powerful private interests.
The Greek prime minister’s announcement that he would put the back-room bailout deal to a referendum shocked the EU hierarchy, Washington, and investors. Who does this Greek guy think he is permitting the people, who bear the cost of the deal, to have a say in it? Who let this Greek guy out of his cage? This is not the way democracies are ruled.
The EU power brokers are outraged over the Greek prime minister’s departure from normal procedure. But the Greek PM is relying on the Greek people to approve the deal, and not without reason.
The Greek people have been brainwashed for decades as to the importance of “being part of Europe.” That means being a member of the European Union. When the Greeks realize that voting down the bailout of the banksters means being thrown out of the European Union, which is what they will learn between now and the referendum, they will vote for the back room deal.
Polls already indicate this. A poll for a Greek newspaper indicates that whereas 46% oppose the bailout, 70% favor staying in the EU, which the Greeks see as a life or death issue.
If this poll is a reliable indicator, the Greek PM has made a brilliant political decision. The Greek people will vote in favor of what they have been protesting violently in the streets. As the Greek people will do themselves in, the politicians are off the hook. This is the bet that the Greek PM has placed.
Whatever the outcome, keep in mind that the entire Western political and investor world was shocked that a politician, instead of simply imposing a back room deal, said he would let the people decide. Letting the people decide is a no-no in Western democracies.
If you need more evidence of this mythical creature called “Western democracy,” consider that Western governments are no longer accountable to law. Contrast, for example, the sexual harassment charges that are plaguing US presidential candidate Herman Cain’s campaign with the pass given to high government officials who clearly violated statutory law.
What follows is not a defense of Cain. I take no position on the charges. The real point is different. In America the only thing that can ruin a politician is his interest in sex. A politician, for example, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, B. Omama, cannot be ruined by violating United States and international law or by treating the US Constitution as a “mere scrap of paper.” Bush and Cheney can take America to wars based entirely on lies and orchestrated deceptions. They can commit war crimes, murdering large numbers of civilians in the cause of “the war on terror,” itself a hoax. They can violate US and international laws against torture simply “because the president said so.” They
can throw away habeas corpus, the constitutional requirement that a person cannot be imprisoned without evidence presented to a court. They can deny the right to an attorney. They can violate the law and spy on Americans without obtaining warrants. They can send due process to hell. In fact, they can do whatever they want just like Hitler’s Gestapo and Stalin’s secret police. But if they show undue interest in a woman or proposition a woman, they are dead meat.
Very few commentators have said a word about this. The House of Representatives did not impeach President Bill Clinton for his war crimes against Serbia. They impeached him for lying about a sexual affair with a White House intern. The US Senate, which had too many sexual affairs of its own to defend, didn’t bother to try to convict.
This is Amerika today. A president without any authority whatsoever, not in law and certainly not in the Constitution, can assassinate US citizens based on nothing except an assertion that they are a “threat.” No evidence is required. No conviction. No presentation of evidence in any court. Just a murder. That is now permissible to the Amerikan president. But let him try to get a woman who is not his wife into bed, and he is a cooked goose.
In Amerika there is no such thing any longer as torture; there is only “enhanced interrogation.” A mere word change has eliminated the crime. So torture is permissible.
In Amerika today, or in the UK and the EU, anyone who tells the truth is a “threat.” Julian Assange of Wikileaks, who made public information leaked to him by US government sources horrified by the criminal actions of the United States government, is now, as a result of Amerikan pressure on UK courts, being turned over to Sweden, which, for favors from the “world’s only superpower,” will turn him over to the US regardless of law to be prosecuted on trumped-up charges.
Western “civilization” is totally corrupted by American money. There is no integrity anywhere. For a decade Washington has been murdering women, children, village elders, and journalists in the name of the hoax “war on terror.”
What terror does the world actually see? The world sees the terror that Israel, protected by Washington, inflicts on the Palestinians. The world sees the terror that the US inflicts on Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Latin America and now Africa, with Syria, Lebanon, and Iran waiting in the wings. The “war on terror” is nothing but an orchestrated invented excuse for Amerika-Israel to achieve hegemony while enriching their armaments industries.
In Greece, at least the PM committed to giving the people a say in their fate. In America the people have no voice whatsoever. The sheeple are content to be protected by “security,” porno-scanners, warrantless wiretapping, indefinite detention, and sexual groping. To carry on the hoax “war on terror,” the US government has elevated itself above the law.
The American effort to achieve accountability to law, the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement, if not shut down by cold weather, ice, and snow, is likely to be shut down by police violence. One riot begun by provocateurs is all it takes to transform protesters into “domestic extremists,” the number one concern of Homeland Security. The presstitute media will make the case against the rioters, and the sheeple will buy it.
The police have been militarized by Washington. Community police forces no
longer represent the local public that pays their salaries. Local police represent Washington’s war against America.
American citizens are all suspects. Anyone who goes through airport security knows this. The only law that the US government obeys is not even a law. It is a bureaucratic regulation that prevents, even in dire wartime, any profiling of suspects by
ethnicity or country of origin.
Consequently, all native born, flag-waving, American super-patriots are suspects when they board commercial airliners. Americans who have a life time of security clearances are subject to being porno-scanned or sexually groped. Airport Security cannot tell a “terrorist” from a CIA analyst, a Marine general or a US Senator.
Well-connected members of the ruling elite, such as Michael Chertoff, can become rich from selling the porno-scanners to taxpayers in order “to protect the public from terrorists.”
The only terrorists Americans will ever experience are those funded by their own tax dollars within their “own” government. A people incapable of perceiving its real peril has no chance of surviving. America might be a military superpower, but it no longer exists as a free country with accountable government and a rule of law.
November 04, 2011 - Addendum: The Greek prime minister has been forced to withdraw the referendum on the bailout that he promised the Greek people. Europe’s rulers made it clear to the Greek PM that democracy has no role to play in the decision. Greece was told to vote the deal that was handed to you or Greece is out of the EU. The chastened PM warned the Greek parliament that the only way to remain in the EU is to submit to the dictate.
Western Democracy: A Farce And A Sham
Every day that passes adds to the fraudulent image of what is called Western democracy.
Consider that the entire Western world is outraged that the Greek prime minister announced that he is going to permit the Greek people to decide their own fate instead of having it decided for them by a handful of banksters, politicians, and bureaucrats living it up at taxpayer expense at “talks” in the French resort of Cannes on the Mediterranean.
The Greek economy is facing its fourth year of decline and lacks the revenues to service its national debt held by private European banks. The banks don’t want to lose any money, so a handful of power brokers reached an agreement with representatives of the Greek government to write off some of the debt in exchange for EU capital subsidies to be financed by inflicting severe austerity on the Greek population. Wages, salaries, pensions and medical care are being cut while the rate of unemployment rises to depression levels. Government employees are laid off. Valuable public properties are to be sold to private parties for pennies on the dollar. In short, Greece is to be looted.
Large numbers of Greeks have been in the streets protesting the austerity policy and have reached the point of anger of throwing Molotov cocktails at the police. Greece is disintegrating politically. The Greek people sense that the EU “bailout” is not bailing out Greece. It is bailing out the French, Dutch, and German banks at the expense of the Greek people.
The Greek prime minister, watching his party’s support and power crumble, announced that he would let the people decide in a referendum. After all, allegedly that’s what democracies do. But it turns out that “we have freedom and democracy” is not supposed to be taken literally. It is merely a propagandistic slogan behind which people are ruled through back-room deals decided by powerful private interests.
The Greek prime minister’s announcement that he would put the back-room bailout deal to a referendum shocked the EU hierarchy, Washington, and investors. Who does this Greek guy think he is permitting the people, who bear the cost of the deal, to have a say in it? Who let this Greek guy out of his cage? This is not the way democracies are ruled.
The EU power brokers are outraged over the Greek prime minister’s departure from normal procedure. But the Greek PM is relying on the Greek people to approve the deal, and not without reason.
The Greek people have been brainwashed for decades as to the importance of “being part of Europe.” That means being a member of the European Union. When the Greeks realize that voting down the bailout of the banksters means being thrown out of the European Union, which is what they will learn between now and the referendum, they will vote for the back room deal.
Polls already indicate this. A poll for a Greek newspaper indicates that whereas 46% oppose the bailout, 70% favor staying in the EU, which the Greeks see as a life or death issue.
If this poll is a reliable indicator, the Greek PM has made a brilliant political decision. The Greek people will vote in favor of what they have been protesting violently in the streets. As the Greek people will do themselves in, the politicians are off the hook. This is the bet that the Greek PM has placed.
Whatever the outcome, keep in mind that the entire Western political and investor world was shocked that a politician, instead of simply imposing a back room deal, said he would let the people decide. Letting the people decide is a no-no in Western democracies.
If you need more evidence of this mythical creature called “Western democracy,” consider that Western governments are no longer accountable to law. Contrast, for example, the sexual harassment charges that are plaguing US presidential candidate Herman Cain’s campaign with the pass given to high government officials who clearly violated statutory law.
What follows is not a defense of Cain. I take no position on the charges. The real point is different. In America the only thing that can ruin a politician is his interest in sex. A politician, for example, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, B. Omama, cannot be ruined by violating United States and international law or by treating the US Constitution as a “mere scrap of paper.” Bush and Cheney can take America to wars based entirely on lies and orchestrated deceptions. They can commit war crimes, murdering large numbers of civilians in the cause of “the war on terror,” itself a hoax. They can violate US and international laws against torture simply “because the president said so.” They
can throw away habeas corpus, the constitutional requirement that a person cannot be imprisoned without evidence presented to a court. They can deny the right to an attorney. They can violate the law and spy on Americans without obtaining warrants. They can send due process to hell. In fact, they can do whatever they want just like Hitler’s Gestapo and Stalin’s secret police. But if they show undue interest in a woman or proposition a woman, they are dead meat.
Very few commentators have said a word about this. The House of Representatives did not impeach President Bill Clinton for his war crimes against Serbia. They impeached him for lying about a sexual affair with a White House intern. The US Senate, which had too many sexual affairs of its own to defend, didn’t bother to try to convict.
This is Amerika today. A president without any authority whatsoever, not in law and certainly not in the Constitution, can assassinate US citizens based on nothing except an assertion that they are a “threat.” No evidence is required. No conviction. No presentation of evidence in any court. Just a murder. That is now permissible to the Amerikan president. But let him try to get a woman who is not his wife into bed, and he is a cooked goose.
In Amerika there is no such thing any longer as torture; there is only “enhanced interrogation.” A mere word change has eliminated the crime. So torture is permissible.
In Amerika today, or in the UK and the EU, anyone who tells the truth is a “threat.” Julian Assange of Wikileaks, who made public information leaked to him by US government sources horrified by the criminal actions of the United States government, is now, as a result of Amerikan pressure on UK courts, being turned over to Sweden, which, for favors from the “world’s only superpower,” will turn him over to the US regardless of law to be prosecuted on trumped-up charges.
Western “civilization” is totally corrupted by American money. There is no integrity anywhere. For a decade Washington has been murdering women, children, village elders, and journalists in the name of the hoax “war on terror.”
What terror does the world actually see? The world sees the terror that Israel, protected by Washington, inflicts on the Palestinians. The world sees the terror that the US inflicts on Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Latin America and now Africa, with Syria, Lebanon, and Iran waiting in the wings. The “war on terror” is nothing but an orchestrated invented excuse for Amerika-Israel to achieve hegemony while enriching their armaments industries.
In Greece, at least the PM committed to giving the people a say in their fate. In America the people have no voice whatsoever. The sheeple are content to be protected by “security,” porno-scanners, warrantless wiretapping, indefinite detention, and sexual groping. To carry on the hoax “war on terror,” the US government has elevated itself above the law.
The American effort to achieve accountability to law, the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement, if not shut down by cold weather, ice, and snow, is likely to be shut down by police violence. One riot begun by provocateurs is all it takes to transform protesters into “domestic extremists,” the number one concern of Homeland Security. The presstitute media will make the case against the rioters, and the sheeple will buy it.
The police have been militarized by Washington. Community police forces no
longer represent the local public that pays their salaries. Local police represent Washington’s war against America.
American citizens are all suspects. Anyone who goes through airport security knows this. The only law that the US government obeys is not even a law. It is a bureaucratic regulation that prevents, even in dire wartime, any profiling of suspects by
ethnicity or country of origin.
Consequently, all native born, flag-waving, American super-patriots are suspects when they board commercial airliners. Americans who have a life time of security clearances are subject to being porno-scanned or sexually groped. Airport Security cannot tell a “terrorist” from a CIA analyst, a Marine general or a US Senator.
Well-connected members of the ruling elite, such as Michael Chertoff, can become rich from selling the porno-scanners to taxpayers in order “to protect the public from terrorists.”
The only terrorists Americans will ever experience are those funded by their own tax dollars within their “own” government. A people incapable of perceiving its real peril has no chance of surviving. America might be a military superpower, but it no longer exists as a free country with accountable government and a rule of law.
November 04, 2011 - Addendum: The Greek prime minister has been forced to withdraw the referendum on the bailout that he promised the Greek people. Europe’s rulers made it clear to the Greek PM that democracy has no role to play in the decision. Greece was told to vote the deal that was handed to you or Greece is out of the EU. The chastened PM warned the Greek parliament that the only way to remain in the EU is to submit to the dictate.
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