China is preparing for conflict 'in every direction', the defence minister said on Wednesday in remarks that threaten to overshadow a visit to Beijing by his US counterpart next month.
Webmaster's Commentary:
...And the US is NOT preparing for conflict "in every direction"?!?
Animals in factory farms are given doses of antibiotics -- both to keep them alive in stressful, unsanitary conditions, and to make them grow faster. The practice leads to new strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, such as the now-widespread form of staph (MRSA) known as ST398. It's important to realize that antibiotic-resistant disease like MRSA is a man-made problem, created by the excessive use of antibiotics. Medical overuse of antibiotics is one aspect, but the greatest, and most hidden, factor is the excessive use of antibiotics in food production.
Granted, conventional medicine still needs to curtail its prescriptions for antibiotics, but even if you use antibiotics judiciously you're still exposed to great amounts of antibiotics from the foods you eat.
Studies have shown that when you reduce the use of antibiotics in meat production, human disease caused by antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria is significantly reduced as well.
As an adult, you have three to four pounds of beneficial bacteria and yeast living within your intestines. These microbes compete for nutrients from the food you eat. Usually, the strength in numbers that beneficial bacteria enjoy both keeps the ever-present yeasts in check and causes them to produce nutrients such as the B vitamins. However, every time you swallow antibiotics, you kill these beneficial bacteria within your intestines. When you do so, you upset the delicate balance of your intestinal terrain. Yeasts grow unchecked into large colonies and take over, in a condition called dysbiosis.
On December 23, Israeli forces shot and killed Salama Abu Harhish without warning while herding sheep and goats in Beit Lahya. Civilized nations don't murder nonviolent civilians in cold blood, this time leaving a widow and day-old unnamed baby. What "democracy" thrives on violence, spurns peace, and wages preemptive wars like Cast Lead. Besides America, only Israel, a global menace like its Washington paymaster/partner, together with Britain the real axis of evil.
This week, a group of elderly Palestinian women were escorted to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance musuem to learn about the Jewish genocide in Europe. At the entrance of the museum, they were surrounded by a group of Jewish Israeli youth who recognized them as Arabs. "Sharmouta!" the young Israelis shouted at them again and again, using the Arabic slang term for whores, or sluts.
Webmaster's Commentary: Here's a thumbnail sketch of Israel in the 21st century: a wretchedly apartheid, self-proclaimed theocracy with nukes.
American weapons deals abroad are of course a source of lucrative contracts for domestic arms manufacturers, but serve a more important function: The integration of scores of nations around the world into Washington’s military network. A recent analysis in China’s Global Times detailed how the U.S. employs the sale and provision of military hardware – from firearms to armored combat vehicles, warships to warplanes and other military aircraft, missiles (including interceptors) to entire weapons systems – to advance its global geostrategic objectives:
“To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary.”
Never mind that Israel and America don't negotiate. They demand, imposing their will unilaterally when denied, often by force. Both countries also deplore peace. They prevent it by provoked conflict, blamed on governments they oppose, even democratically elected ones. Israel is now so extremist that Haaretz writer Zeev Sternhell described Netanyahu's Knesset as "an assembly line of legislation that is dragging Israel down to the bottom of the list of civilized countries," amounting to might makes right.
Webmaster's Commentary: As the worldwide chorus swells for recognition of a Palestinian state, look for Israel to embrace a "scorched earth" policy (particularly in Gaza and the West Bank) to prevent this from happening.
The phrase “enemy within” brings to mind the image of a shadowy spy stealing military secrets. That was the case for Israeli master spy Jonathan Pollard jailed for 1980s espionage that compromised U.S. Cold War strategy. That phrase also describes those involved in a form of psy-ops that is not easily detected because it operates so brazenly. For instance, the well-timed release of diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks displaced reports of Israeli obstinacy in peace talks with reports of a need for war with Iran.
An Israeli based company was hired in 2010 to spy on “Gas Activists”. This type of behaviorinduced by major corporations along with the Department of Homeland Security is turning our nation into a total “Orwellian”, fascist police state. We saw this type behavior in recent years with the MIAC Report as well. One thing is for sure, the people stand little chance with lawsuits against these massive corporations.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned on Wednesday that anti-Arab letters signed by rabbis and wives' of rabbis would lead to a wave of racism that would threaten to "take over" Israeli society.
Barak expressed his concern in a statement, released shortly after a letter urging Jewish women not to date non-Jewish men was published by a group of rabbis' wives and just weeks after a rabbis' letter was published urging Jews not to sell or rent properties to non-Jews.
Webmaster's Commentary: What Ehud Barak is concerned about is not the wretchedly apartheid attitude of Israelis against Arabs (which has existed from the foundation of Israel), but that it has become worldwide public knowledge, in the wake of these letters.
Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s 32 year term in office could become a lot longer if a draft amendment to the nation’s constitution is cleared. Now in discussion in parliament, the amendment would clear the way for Saleh to become president for life.
Webmaster's Commentary: The US government is again supporting another tinpot dictator who has absolutely no regard for the welfare of his people. If someone in the US State Department isn't squirming right now, they should be, in terms of the ramp-up of aid we're giving Selah at this moment to quell insurgency in Yemen. When peaceful revolution is impossible, violent revolution is inevitable.
The US is attempting to with Saleh what it did with the Shah of Iran, Pinochet in Chile, Batista in Cuba; and we can completely appreciate what "triumphs" those situations were for US foreign policy!
The US State Department today condemned efforts by the Palestinian Authority to bring a resolution before the UN Security Council pointing out the illegality of the Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, but declined to answer questions on whether the US would veto the resolution. Israel’s Foreign Ministry mocked the resolution, saying it proved how desperate the Palestinians were, and cautioned European nations which might support such a resolution not to give the Palestinians false hope that the settlements would stop being expanded into their territory.
Webmaster's Commentary: Israel's foreign minister has just tipped his hand with the observation that the passage of such a resolution might "...give the Palestinians false hope that the settlements would stop being expanded into their territory."
These illegal Israeli incursions into Palestinian land will not end until they have been completely absorbed by Israel!
Abuelazam faces charges of murdering three people and trying to murder five others for a series of stabbings in the Flint area. He’s also charged with attempted murder in Toledo, Ohio, and suspected in similar attacks in Leesburg, Va., where he once lived. Abuelazam was arrested in Atlanta on Aug. 11 while trying to fly to his native country, Israel.”
Webmaster's Commentary:
I wonder if this Abuelazam is a Mossad assassin and like Irv Rubin, the head of the JDL arrested for plotting to murder a US Congressman and then murdered before trial, if Israel wants this guy silenced.
Though the Bush Administration before them and the Obama Administration have both declare Iran’s “nuclear weapons program” as an issue of absolute fact, they have yet to provide the American public with even a shred of evidence that it actually exists. Indeed, the closest they come to evidence is to point to Iran’s very real civilian program and suggest that Iran’s inherent untrustworthiness fills in the blanks that years of effort and billions of dollars in spying could not.
Webmaster's Commentary: I'm amazed that so many Americans could be hoodwinked by the boldfaced lie about Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program, and concerned that 24% of the Americans polled believed that a military strike against Iran would be a positive thing to do.
Unfortunately, due to lack of critical thinking ability on the part of most US citizens, all it would take to turn US sentiment around would be one false flag operation, blamed on Iran, to get a shooting regional war going; a war which could, very possibly move from regional to global in a heartbeat.
Those $100,000 wristwatches all the rage on Wall Street will be exposed as cheap counterfeits from Taiwan. The United Nations, responding to Charles Manson’s support of a global government, will voluntarily disband. Al Gore will disappear. 5000 years from now his body will be found frozen in a glacier in the San Bernardino mountains, showing signs of having been shot in the back.Mike Gravel will declare for President in 2012. Nobody will notice. The dollar will collapse and old burned-out ipods will become the new hard currency.
Even as he tried to stick to the official stance about progress, NATO spokesman Brigadier General Joseph Blotz conceded that violence would escalate yet further in 2011, adding that “there is no end to the fighting season.”
On the other hand, the German general insisted that NATO was finally moving into the “hold” phase of its clear and hold strategy, at least in some parts of the country. This did not, however, appear to mean anything in terms of violence.
Webmaster's Commentary: This appears to be the "pacification phase" of the war, almost a decade in, to "calm" the way for the construction of the Trans Afghanistan Pipeline, which is slated to begin construction in 2012, and be ready to deliver natural gas from Turkmenistan in 2014. This "pacification" will come with a very brutal price tag for the Afghan people, and is yet another demonstration of how this very publicly funded war is, at the end of the day, only for potential private profit.
At the White House on Dec. 15, business executives asked President Obama for a tax holiday that would help them tap more than $1 trillion of offshore earnings, much of it sitting in island tax havens. The money -- including hundreds of billions in profits that U.S. companies attribute to overseas subsidiaries to avoid taxes -- is supposed to be taxed at up to 35 percent when it’s brought home, or “repatriated.” Executives including John T. Chambers of Cisco Systems Inc. say a tax break would return a flood of cash and boost the economy.
Webmaster's Commentary: Corporations can pull off these kinds of moves with absolute impunity.
Last month, Janet Napolitano floated the idea of TSA searches for bus, ship and train passengers; she later withdrew it, but I'm sure it will be re-introduced after Americans come to accept such treatment in airports – which Napolitano has just confirmed "for the foreseeable future" (that is, permanently). So, I can't fly. And maybe, someday not far off, I won't be able to ride any form of mass transit either, unless I become so debased and broken in spirit that I don't mind vacation and business trips bookended by government-mandated sexual humiliation. And while my government requires such dehumanisation, I mournfully recall 20 years ago, when the cold war ended and we Americans thought concepts like "freedom" and "human dignity" would rule the future.
Civil liberties groups argue that the government's new criteria, which went into effect over the summer, have made it even more likely that individuals who pose no threat will be swept up in the nation's security apparatus, leading to potential violations of their privacy and making it difficult for them to travel.
"They are secret lists with no way for people to petition to get off or even to know if they're on," said Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.
Webmaster's Commentary: Look for these lists to become longer, and more full of names of innocent American citizens who simply have reasoned, peaceful differences of opinions from those of the Federal government, in order to create a climate of fear.
How long the world would have to wait to see the criminals facing the justice? How many more lives would be plucked before the truth dawns? Who would dare to reign them in
A year after a Nigerian man allegedly tried to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner, officials say they have made it easier to add individuals' names to a terrorist watch list and improved the government's ability to thwart an attack in the United States. The failure to put Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on the watch list last year renewed concerns that the government's system to screen out potential terrorists was flawed. Even though Abdulmutallab's father had told U.S. officials of his son's radicalization in Yemen, government rules dictated that a single-source tip was insufficient to include a person's name on the watch list.
Modern Survival Online There are tons of good downloads in the Survival Database Download section of this website. For this article – I have selected 10 that everyone should have either printed and put away, or placed on a USB drive – or better yet both. So – let’s get to it:
The next time the CIA comes up with another Osama bin Laden videotape, you might want to compare their images of the alleged al-Qaeda leader to the photograph I’ve provided here. If he looks any healthier than that, then you’re probably looking at an impostor. Yeah, Osama has definitely seen better days. But give the guy a break, huh? You wouldn’t look much better if you’d been dead for nine years. Oh, by the way, in case you’ve just joined us? Osama bin Laden is dead.
The Internet, while impossible to control, is also an excellent recruiting ground for sympathetic or easily-convinced “bloggers” who will quickly disseminate official dissemination for pay or public acclaim. It is invaluable to distract the public from questioning various governmental actions, both domestic and foreign. For this reason, our organization, and others, have “disinformation” centers that prepare information of a sensational nature which is then released to paid sources who, in turn, disseminate it onto the Internet. The purpose of this is to create a cloaking movement that will point the curious into innocuous areas. As a case in point, it was imperative to prevent the public sector from looking too deeply into the origins of the 9/11 attacks.
Deutsche Bank, a German lender, has sold the Fed more than $290 billion worth of mortgage securities, Fed data through July shows. Credit Suisse, a Swiss bank, sold the Fed more than $287 billion in mortgage bonds.
The data had previously been secret. It was released Wednesday per the recently-enacted law overhauling the federal financial regulation. The Fed, ferociously backed by the Obama administration, fought lawmakers' desire for full disclosure throughout the financial reform debate.
Webmaster's Commentary:
BUMP BACK TO THE TOP
As detailed in "Bankers Gone Wild", mortgages were cranked out by unscrupulous mortgage brokers, then bundled together into mortgage securities, which were in turn re-sold to investors as triple-A investments, even though the bundles included sub-prime mortgages already defaulting as US jobs were shipped overseas.
These mortgage-backed securities are a Wall Street invention! And at first they appeared to be immensely profitable, so not only were US financial corporations, investment houses, and pension funds buying them, but so too were non financial corporations and major foreign banks including Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse.
Worse, we now know that individual mortgages were pledged as collateral to multiple security bundles, which is illegal! This is briefly mentioned at 3:48 in the next video.
What appears to have happened is that the European banks realized that the American investment firms selling those mortgage-backed securities were engaging in fraud! Greenspan has admitted to such.
Obviously, the people of Europe are refusing to be chained to a global bank and seem far more worried about their freedoms than their American counterparts. Yet a quick Google search shows the media encouraging the nations hit with this massive financial fraud to apply to the IMF for more loans, never mentioning that in their indebtedness lies the end of their national sovereignty!
Ultimately the European banks are never going to sit still for fraud, even from Wall Street, and even from the USA! In order to reduce their losses and avoid more IMF entanglements, the European banks demanded a refund on those fraudulent investment packages. No doubt the Wall Street mortgage fraudsters refused, suggesting that the bankers of Europe dump their losses on their populations just as the American banks were being forced to do. That some European banks did so explains why so many European nations are in financial trouble. However, the larger European banks may have decided to "get tough" with the Americans, and this may explain the mysterious electronic run on the US financial system in February 2009, which almost crashed the US economy. Strangely, the American people were never informed who had initiated the financial transfers, even though obviously this information is recorded in the transactions on the computer systems.
This "attack" may have been a warning from the European main banks to the US to make good on the bad investments, or risk full public exposure for the mortgage backed securities fraud!
Soon after, we learned that the Federal Reserve was handing out trillions and trillions of dollars, loans which the American people are expected to repay, only the Federal Reserve refused to say who was getting the money, and even implied that exposure of the recipients of these trillions of dollars might pose a threat to the US economy. Now, nearly two years later, we find out that the Federal Reserve was buying back the mortgage-backed securities from European banks including Deutsche Bank and Credit Suiss. The reason this was kept secret was that the American people were being told that all these "bailouts" would be repaid, yet common sense tells us that profit cannot be made from an exposed fraud! The Fed could not admit too owning all those mortage-backed securities without being forced to answer the question of just exactly why they were not producing any earnings, with the usual "it was all the borrowers' fault" excuses wearing thin even then! As cash left the nations financial system to cover the repurchase of the fraudulent mortgage backed securities, banks found their balance sheets slipping into the red. The banks were being driven into insolvency making good on the bad paper and this is what triggered the epidemic of fraudulent foreclosures. Banks needed real assets on their balance sheets as quickly as they could to get their balance in the black and their banks out of insolvency. So shortcuts were taken which became known as "foreclosuregate". For some banks, it was too late. Hundreds of banks either dragged down by the fraudulent mortgage securities or made insolvent buying back the bad paper, have been shut down. For other major banks and financial institutions, the tactic worked and they stayed afloat, for which making millions of Americans homeless seemed a small price to pay! Indeed one might explain the hitherto unexplained reluctance by the Federal Government to stem the offshoring of American jobs as a deliberate policy of setting up Americans to lose their homes in order to preserve the capital structure of the banks!
In other words, the American people were looted to make good on the fraud perpetrated by Wall Street not only against American financial institutions, but bankers in the Eurozone as well.
The Wall Street Fraudsters should have gone to jail. But they walk free and clear, saved from the FDIC and prison, heading into a wonderful holiday with record-setting bonuses to spend while ordinary Americans have been made jobless, homeless, and hungry to keep the criminals out of prison. The Mortgage Backed Securities fraud is the biggest fraud in the history of the United States, and as today's revelations make clear, we still do not know the full scale of the financial rape this nation has suffered.
VIDEO - Canon DLSR on tripod with remote timer taking a photo once every five minutes. Approximately 20 hours in 40 seconds. This is madness - New Jersey might be worse than Minnesota...
We often hear it asked if a tree falls in the forest and no one was around to hear the noise, was there one? No one ever asks if an Israeli rocket or bomb falls on Gaza and there weren’t any reporters around to write about it, did it really happen?
Geraldine Hoff Doyle, who was believed to be the unwitting model for the “We Can Do It!” poster of a woman flexing her biceps in a factory during World War II — an image that later became a symbol for the American feminist movement — died on Sunday in Lansing, Mich. She was 86.
"Foundational moment" is an understatement for that day in a state's life when the verdict is handed down in the case of a former president charged with rape and sexual harassment. Regardless of the outcome, this is also a moment of truth for the legal system, which must decide whether the man chosen to be Israel's number one citizen has the same sexual rights once granted to feudal lords, kings and princes.
Webmaster's Commentary:
The "megaphonies" are already prowling the internet, screaming "racist" and "anti-Semite" at everyone posting or commenting on this story. I guess they think rape is okay.
If you thought last week was as cold as you could bear it, brace yourself. Forecasters say the worst is yet to come, and this winter could be the harshest since the Thames froze over more than three centuries ago. Temperatures for December are the coldest on record, with the average reading close to minus 1c – almost six degrees below normal.
Interesting fact: the Chairman of the Met Office board, Robert Napier, is or has been: * Chairman of the Green Fiscal Trust* * Chairman of the trustees of the World Centre of Monitoring of Conservation * a director of the Carbon Disclosure Project * a director of the Carbon Group * Chief executive of the World Wildlife Fund UK He is also a member of the Green Alliance.
The world’s largest clearinghouse for credit-default swaps, ICE Trust, has had second thoughts about registering with regulators, citing concerns over new rules devised to bring transparency to the $600 trillion derivatives market. Webmaster's Commentary: You got a problem with transparency????????
A standout North Carolina high school student has been suspended for the remainder of her senior year and charged with a misdemeanor for having a small paring knife in her lunchbox. Ashley Smithwick, 17, of Sanford told WRAL she accidentally took her father's lunchbox to Southern Lee High School in October instead of her own when school officials searched the lunchbox, along with several other students' possessions, possibly looking for drugs. Ashley's father, Joe Smithwick told the station the lunchbox had a paring knife inside so that he could slice up an apple that accompanied it.
"It's just an honest mistake. That was supposed to be my lunch because it was a whole apple," he said. But school officials didn't see it that way.
Webmaster's Commentary:
"Our goal am to totally repress and demoralize America's children until they are spineless cowards who will vote the way we done tells them to vote!" -- Principle Barnie Fife.
Banovac was searched and interrogated for an hour before being refused access to her flight by TSA agents who said they found residue of nitrates, which can be used on bombs, on her person.
Webmaster's Commentary:
Nitrates come from many other things besides bombs, including fertilizer (Oklahoma, hello TSA?) and various glues.
Hezbollah had blared warnings months ago that Israel plans to steal natural gas from Lebanese territory but vowed to defend the resources. Israel’s fields could extend into Lebanese waters while the maritime boundary, still officially at war, has never been precisely set. The warnings from Hezbollah and Lebanon Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri aimed to press for the passage of a long-delayed draft oil law, needed before any Lebanese fields can be developed, but yet no decrees for the implementation of the oil law was adopted.
The Vatican today announced new rules to make its financial dealings more transparent and bring it into line with international legislation designed to prevent money-laundering.
Webmaster's Commentary:
The Vatican also set up new rules regarding child molestation. Those didn't stop the problem or the scandal either.
A judge has upheld the seizure of euro23 million ($30.2 million) in Vatican assets in a money-laundering probe involving the Holy See's bank, the second time the bank has been denied the return of the funds. Webmaster's Commentary:
"Can we go back to talking about the molesting of children? I liked that one better!" -- Pope Benny the Rat
"Belgium no longer works. It is a nation that has failed." This loud statement recently came from Bart De Wever, a candidate for Prime Minister of this country and leader of the Nationalist Party The New Flemish Alliance. Thus, one of the leading politicians of Belgium acknowledged that the country that hosts the headquarters of the EU and NATO is on the verge of a collapse.
Demonstrators demanding jobs clashed with security forces as protests spread across Tunisia. A social eruption on such a scale is virtually unprecedented in this highly repressive and tightly controlled North African country.
Abbas is Israel’s sheriff against his own people, including by provoking conflict with Hamas. According to a WikiLeaks released cable, Shin Bet head Yuval Diskin “established a very good working relationship” with him. He, in turn, shared “almost all its intelligence” with Israel. “They understand that Israel’s security is central to their survival in the struggle with Hamas in the West Bank.”
Daily Mail Police are hoping to win government backing for a new counter-terrorism power to stop and search people without the suspicion of criminal activity...
Free-Market Analysis: The hoary anarchist meme is being trotted out again. What we can see from the above article excerpt is that a firm link is to be drawn between anarchism and violence. This has happened before. The last time anarchists appeared to savage the West was around the turn of the 20th century – when regulatory democracy was under threat previously. Reading about anarchism, generally, on such sites as Wikipedia is enough to make one's head ache. The untruths are manifest; the manipulation seems obvious. It is a sub-dominant social theme of the power elite: fear those who wish to do without government (at least as it is currently constituted). They are lawless and apt to turn violent.
Beginning January 1st, 2011 every single day more than 10,000 Baby Boomers will reach the age of 65. That is going to keep happening every single day for the next 19 years.
In her senior years, she was brought down by a kid looking for a marketable soundbyte like the one he extracted — as if he was a big game hunter in Africa who bagged a lioness. She had been baited and took the bait. Unaware of how the video could be used, she ventilated and then regretted doing so. It was too late. That one media hit job triggered millions of online video hits. Helen later apologized for how she said what she did without retracting the essence of her convictions. But by then, it was too late. Her long career was instantly terminated. The perception became everything; the context nothing.
The world’s most famous social networking site has been blocked in China, without explanation, since just after ethnic riots between Muslims and Han Chinese broke out in the far Western province of Xinjiang in July 2009. Mark Zuckerberg, the site’s founder and chief executive, has expressed his desire to get Facebook back online in China. “How can you connect the whole world if you leave out 1.6 billion people?” he remarked recently.
The east coast of America was struck by a dramatic blizzard between Sunday and Monday, with up to 32 inches of snow falling in a single night. Thousands of people in New York remain snowed in, as city authorities whose adverse weather routines normally work like clockwork, have failed this time to plough their roads. A newborn baby died after ambulances could not reach its mother for nine hours.
Karel Janicek and George Jahn Associated Press BRATISLAVA, Slovakia — Bells pealed and fireworks shot across midnight skies in Bratislava two years ago, as Slovaks celebrated not only the New Year but also their country's long-sought entry to the club of nations using the continent's common currency, the euro. Fast forward to the dying days of 2010 – after the eurozone's debt crisis forced the bailouts of Greece and Ireland and painful austerity measures across the region_ and one thing is clear: while Slovaks will again turn out in droves on Dec. 31, the cheer will have nothing to do with belonging to the euro...
Daniel Tencer Raw Story The US Supreme Court's striking down of nearly a century's worth of campaign finance laws means the US government can now be "bought" and the country may be headed for fascism, says an outgoing Democratic House representative.
"World bankers, by pulling a few simple levers that control the flow of money, can make or break entire economies. By controlling press releases of economic strategies that shape national trends, the power elite are able to not only tighten their stranglehold on this nation's economic structure, but can extend that control world wide. Those possessing such power would logically want to remain in the background, invisible to the average citizen." (Aldus Huxley)
Mr. Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, a private corporation, would have us believe that, quantitative easing is the only way to save the US economy and to reverse the unemployment problem. He conveniently forgets to tell you that he authored a paper in 1988 with Mr. Michael Baskin that concluded that what Mr. Bernanke is doing with QE does not work. He told watchers of “60 Minutes” that the jobless rate would have been far higher; something like it was in the “Great Depression” at 25%. If Mr. Bernanke had taken time to have his minions do the research, he would have found that U3 at the peak of the “Great Depression” was 25.2% and U6 was 37.6%.
More than 300 newly released pages of Iowa FBI investigation files confirm the existence of a busy network of federal agents across the Midwest dedicated to clamping down on political dissenters. A Freedom of Information Act request by Des Moines' David Goodner revealed two extensive "Terrorism Enterprise" style investigations against dissenters mainly run by the Omaha FBI office into Iowa, including digging through garbage, watching restaurants, advanced data mining and cell phone record collection. The agents involved claimed "statistical accomplishment" of saving our nation from terrorism: this is exactly, how, and why, federal agents endlessly create pretend counterterror campaigns.
Hundreds of herbal medicinal products will be banned from sale in Britain next year under what campaigners say is a "discriminatory and disproportionate" European law. With four months to go before the EU-wide ban is implemented, thousands of patients face the loss of herbal remedies that have been used in the UK for decades. From 1 May 2011, traditional herbal medicinal products must be licensed or prescribed by a registered herbal practitioner to comply with an EU directive passed in 2004. The directive was introduced in response to rising concern over adverse effects caused by herbal medicines.
On the same day that the Washington Post revealed that our federal government is "is assembling a vast domestic intelligence apparatus to collect information about Americans, using the FBI, local police, state homeland security offices and military criminal investigators," the District of Columbia continues to reel from recent news of dragnet searches without individualized suspicion throughout the region's transit system.
The storyline being sold to the American public by the White House and the corporate mainstream media is that the economy is growing, jobs are being created, corporations are generating record profits, consumers are spending and all will be well in 2011. The 2% payroll tax cut, stolen from future generations to be spent in 2011, will jumpstart a sound economic recovery. Joseph Goebbels would be proud. It was another wise old man named Ben Franklin who captured the essence of what those in control are peddling: “Half a truth is often a great lie.”
Australian organic farmer Steve Marsh recently had his organic certification status pulled by the National Association for Sustainable Agriculture, Australia (NASAA) because his organic wheat field was contaminated by a nearby genetically-modified (GM) canola field. And after Marsh threatened to sue the GM farmer for the incident -- which has cost Marsh his entire business, by the way -- Monsanto, the owner of the GM canola, came out and said it would legally back the GM farmer "in any way [it] could."
In another anti-Palestinian move, the wives of a group of leading Israeli rabbis have called on Jewish women to avoid marrying or working with Arab men.
The mounting unemployment rate in the United States has provided an opportunity for the Pentagon to recruit more people for its unpopular wars abroad, an analyst says.
Anyone who doesn’t believe that the US is an incipient fascist state needs only to consult the latest assault on civil liberty by Fox News (sic). Instead of informing citizens, Fox News (sic) informs on citizens. Jason Ditz reports (antiwar.com Dec. 28) that Fox News (sic) “no longer content to simply shill for a growing police state,” turned in a grandmother to the Department of Homeland Security for making “anti-American comments.”
This raises the question of how China’s official support for Palestinian self-determination will coincide with its ongoing procurement of the tools of Palestinian pacification.
What we have done to future generations over the past 30 years is absolutely criminal. 30 years ago the U.S. national debt was a bit under one trillion dollars, and at that time it was considered a huge national crisis. Today, the national debt is 14 times larger and the years ahead look absolutely apocalyptic at this point. We have literally sold our children and our grandchildren into perpetual debt slavery.
A young woman's story about the collection practices of Bank of America and why she was fired from her job for helping too many customers. Compelling tale of the outrageous abuses that are normal for Bank of America.
Newly initiated foreclosures increased to 382,000 in the third quarter, a 31.2 percent INCREASE over the previous quarter and a 3.7 percent rise from a year ago. Yowza...more details inside...
Among the measures, Rabner is requiring the nation's six largest mortgage lenders, including Ally Financial's GMAC, Citigroup, OneWest Bank and Wells Fargo, to prove their procedures are up to par at a hearing set for Jan. 19 -- or risk having their foreclosure activities SUSPENDED in the state. Includes Video - Alan Grayson - Banks Are Foreclosure Fraud Factories
The innocent victims of America's secret drone war have become "unpeople", in the words of the historian Mark Curtis – those whose lives are seen as expendable in the pursuit of the west's foreign policy goals. Killed via remote control, they remain unseen and unremembered. Forgive me, Mr President, for not seeing the funny side. Webmaster's Commentary: The only thing these drone attacks can do, apart from indiscriminately killing non-combatants, is push those left standing into the waiting embrace of the insurgency. And when you have, as you do in Pakistan, that "perfect storm" of political corruption, poverty, joblessness and lack of education for the many, insurgency can start looking attractive to those with nothing to lose.
Even MSNBC’s pro-Obama host Chris Matthews has joined the crowd calling on the president to release his long-form birth certificate to settle the controversy surrounding his birthplace once and for all, saying “if it exists, why not put it out?”
I am going to toss out a theory here; a theory that explains why even though Obama was born here in Hawaii why there has been obfuscation over the birth certificate. The theory involves a minor scandal Obama needed hidden, yet was too trivial to be of use to either Hillary Clinton or John McCain during the 2008 campaign.
If true, this connects all the facts together in a reasonable manner.
Obama grew up pretending that the man married to his mother was his biological father, and took the Obama name into politics. The revelation that mom had had an affair and that Obama was illegitimate is an embarrassment, and in a tightly contested election race a liability. But given that Davis was from Chicago, there is no question that Obama, in this scenario, is still a naturally born US citizen. McCain and Hillary could not have used the scandal without making Obama look like a victim of dirty politics. After all, Obama can hardly be blamed for the circumstances of his conception. But his deception is intentional on Obama's part and reason enough for Kagen to block the birther lawsuits to keep the original certificate hidden.
The problem is, I'm a TV reporter and on I'm on the road a lot. Yesterday, I was very hungry and stopped at Vietnamese restaurant in Aiea (Oahu) for lunch. I ordered stir fried vegetables with some tofu (GMO, what can I say?) and rice. A few minutes after consuming this food, I started feeling anxious. A good, healthy meal should not make you feel like you just drank 10 cups of coffee or took a hit of crystal meth. Something was wrong. My heart started racing and a horrible anxiety came over me. My feet and legs got numb and my hands started tingling. It felt like I was losing motor control of the muscles of my extremities. I felt like I was about to have a seizure. My tongue went numb and felt swollen and dry. (Classic MSG symptom.) I had difficulty swallowing.
Webmaster's Commentary: When you're putting food in your basket at the market, please read the labels. Refuse to put anything in your basket with MSG in it. When you are at a restaurant, it's perfectly OK to ask if they put any MSG (monosodium glutamate) in the dish you want to order. This stuff is absolute poison to your system.
When scientists want to create obesity in rats or mice, they add MSG to their food to make them want - and eat - more than they naturally would.
Even though the government's spending on the "war" on the economic crisis dwarfs the amount spent on the New Deal, our economy is still stuck in the mud. Given that the government has done so much, but we are still mired in a situation which in many ways is comparable to the Great Depression, it is not a very radical statement to say that the government is doing the wrong things to address the downturn.
Mr. Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, a private corporation, would have us believe that, quantitative easing is the only way to save the US economy and to reverse the unemployment problem. If Mr. Bernanke had taken time to have his minions do the research, he would have found that U3 at the peak of the “Great Depression” was 25.2% and U6 was 37.6%. As we write U3 is 9.8% and U6 is 17%. If you strip out the bogus birth/death ratio, real unemployment on a U6 basis is probably close to 22-3/8%, as yet, considerably less than in the 1930s, but impressively unacceptable. What Mr. Bernanke has done is add fuel to the fire, which has given us one of the greatest financial scams of all time.
Webmaster's Commentary: What is of great concern to me, reading this, is the very clear understanding that traditionally, the US has moved itself out of economic depression by going to war. With all sorts of "hot zones" around the world, many largely courtesy of US foreign policy, one has to wonder just where the US government may be intent on striking next, to generate the war which will- theoretically - lift the US out of this depression. However, there are several significant factors which might well mitigate against a US success in such a military confrontation.
1. The US military is stretched to the breaking point, where even multiple deployments of our troops can barely keep up the necessary troop strength to the level it is needed for commitments in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and other places where the US military stationed.
2. The US is incapable of keeping up a sustained military confrontation because the US has offshored nearly all of its manufacturing. It's got to be a blitzkrieg (read: tactical nukes), or nothing.
3. The world is appearing to separate into two geopolitical camps, if you will; the first is the US and NATO and their sphere of influence;the second is China and Russia and their sphere of influence. If the US decides to attack - say - Iran, it is highly unlikely that Russia and China will stand idly by and let this happen. We may well see Russia and China jump into such a fray on the side of Iran; and both countries are nuclear armed.
Bruce Krasting Oh boy is 2011 going to be an exciting year! Some things that I think might happen:-Volatility is going up across the board. If you have the stomach for the swings that are coming across all markets there is a ton of money to be made; balls and timing are all that are necessary. The markets will create dozens of opportunities to make and lose...
2011 will be the year of the municipal default. At least that's what analysts like Meredith Whitney predict, as do bond investors that have been fleeing the muni market.There are many reasons to be worried. First, the expiration of Build America Bonds will make it harder for cities to raise funds. Second, city revenues are crashing and keep getting worse. Property taxes haven't reflected the total damage from the housing crash. High joblessness is cutting into city revenues, while increasing costs for services. Webmaster's Commentary: This trend may well accelerate wildly in the coming year.
Israel may have refused U.S. President Barack Obama's request to freeze settlements construction in the occupied West Bank but it is still pushing him to free Jonathan Jay Pollard, Israel's most notorious spy. But U.S. officials say that even with Netanyahu's imprimatur on the Pollard case, it is highly unlikely the spy will be released, in part because of continued Israeli espionage in the United States. Pollard's betrayal still rankles with many intelligence people in Washington and the establishment remains adamantly opposed to his release. The damage he inflicted on U.S. national security was so profound that top-level figures in the U.S. intelligence establishment threatened to resign if the government buckles to Israeli pressure to pardon Pollard.
Webmaster's Commentary: In spite of the fact that Netanyahu and the Israeli government should be heaving a collective sigh of relief for the fact that the US didn't execute this traitor to his country, in light of the reality that Obama has completely capitulated to Israel on nearly everything else they have wanted from his administration, Netanyahu may think that this is his best chance to secure Pollard's release. Unfortunately, he may well be right.
“It’s not an explosive detector; it’s an anomaly detector,” Clark Ervin, who runs the Homeland Security Program at the Aspen Institute, told the Post. “Someone has to notice that there’s something out of order.” The machines cost $130,000 to $170,000 each, and by 2014, the federal government will have spent $234 million to $300 million for them. Which would be a bargain if they actually did something besides embarrass people. The solution for passengers? Get used to it.
Webmaster's Commentary: One has to hand it to Napolitano and her minions at TSA: these folks have unilaterally removed the 4th Amendment to the Constitution against unreasonable search and seizure with nary so much as a whiff of dissent from Congressional Representatives (who do not, by the way, have to suffer this kind of indignity when they travel!)
Norway, Switzerland and the EU countries Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Latvia, the Netherlands, Slovak Republic and Portugal are all among the countries trying to identify the network of criminals behind this massive fraud – a fraud with links to criminal networks operating outside the EU and in other continents, like the Middle East.
Webmaster's Commentary:
Notice how they name the actual nations involved in the scam ... until they get to the middle east ... then the naming of actual countries suddenly stops ...
On December 21, the Central Intelligence Agency gave its Agency Seal Medal to Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. Hoekstra has labored almost ceaselessly to assure that the CIA can break federal laws with impunity.
Webmaster's Commentary: One has to ask: why does the United States need to torture in order to remain "informed and safe", when we know, from the times of the Catholic Inquisition, that torture only gets the tortured person to say exactly what the torturer wants to hear in order for the torture to stop?!? This question, both at its moral and political level, needs to be answered with a resounding "No!!" at every level of this government, if we are to ever be a people of moral character again.
The face of New Jersey's robo-signing scandal may be a Pennsylvania notary public who signed thousands of foreclosure documents in the Garden State even though he wasn't licensed there.
It’s been two years since Israel initiated the Operation Cast Lead military assault on the besieged Gaza Strip. Since then, the right-wing Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has launched an unprecedented wave of intimidation against Israeli peace and human rights groups. These groups say they are “working in an increasingly hostile environment,” according to a New York Times report, and that Israeli government leaders are fostering “an atmosphere of harassment” by turning “human rights criticism into an existential threat.” However, Congress has chosen to look the other way – and wants the executive branch to do the same.
Webmaster's Commentary: As the government of Israel turns ever more fascistic in its dealings with its own Jewish people, you can almost always count on the "usual suspects" in Congress to support the repression of dissent in Israel as "the right thing to do." Similarly, and unfortunately, as the US government becomes ever more fascistic against its own people, you can most always count on these people, and their cohorts, to do all in their power to suppress peaceful, logical dissent on the part of the American people.
And if you don't think that American Congressional Representatives aren't frightfully eager to suppress peaceful dissent here at home, please think again: I give you (as reported on 19 March, 2010 at:
S.3081 - The Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010", which was referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
As the article reports:
"The bill outlines the process by which Americans may be held indefinitely, without notice of their Miranda Rights, and without ever being charged with a crime. Worse, detainment of an individual according to the legislation is authorized by mere suspicion that the individual did or seeks to harm any asset of the United States government or any civilian target."
To the best of my understanding, the bill is still floating in Committee; but if there is some kind of "civil unrest" or domestic "false flag" in the future, I would not bet against this legislation getting voted into law faster than the speed of light.
I believe that the banks had a plan to operate with less capital with Fannie and Freddie guaranteeing all manner of subprime loans. We know that they did not guarantee jumbos and many alt a loans, but subprime they did guarantee. So Fannie and Freddie were essential to kick-starting the scam. We have seen how their monstrous child, MERS, has attempted to run around state governments in corrupting the recording of proper documents and notes. So who were the main players in the scam?
1. the central banks like the Fed and the European Central Bank,
2. the mother bank of those central banks which is the Bank of International Settlements,
Speaking to the media today, a top US military commander in charge of securing the vast, mountainous border between Afghanistan and Pakistan admitted that there was literally no way for the US to actually accomplish this. The commander, Col. Viet Luong, insisted that it would require more resources than the force has at its disposal to secure the border and that it would require far more cooperation from the tribes inside Pakistan than they have ever been able to secure.
Webmaster's Commentary: This does not bode well for the ultimate construction of the Turkmenistan Afghanistan Pakistan pipeline, scheduled to begin construction in 2012, and to be completed in 2014 (one of the two real reasons the US is in Afghanistan at all). Remember SecDef Gates making that observation that "The US will be in Afghanistan until at least 2014?!?
U.S. home foreclosures jumped in the third quarter and banks' efforts to keep borrowers in their homes dropped as the housing market continues to struggle, U.S. bank regulators said on Wednesday.
Webmaster's Commentary:
Okay, one more time.
The bankers do not WANT you to stay in your home. A monthly payment stretching 20 years into the future does not help the bankers. They need to grab the entire value of your home as an asset on their balance sheet, to offset the losses form the forced repurchase of the fraudulent mortgage-backed securities. Otherwise they go to prison for fraud.
This is forced wealth confiscation, done in a way to trick the American people into thinking it is their own fault they lost everything.
For many reasons there is possibility of a future false-flag terrorist attack as the one of Argentina in the 1990s that they can blame on the Islamic Republic.There are many reasons to concern over an intense campaign escalating in Chile to frame the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Shia Muslims of Chile for supposed death threats and/or attacks received by members of the Jewish Community of Chile.
What does any would-be tyrant need in order to gain control over the lives of citizens? Three things come to mind: martial law, socialized medicine, and food dependency. In at least two of these categories, President Obama has already succeeded.
The following is satirical humour ….. but very true if you read it carefully. The demonisation of Islam, as all of racism, is based on ignorance…. this piece proves that.
Those 3000 high-tech and very expensive wind turbines provide 1.6% of Great Britain's electricity ... not counting the larger amount of electricity needed to keep them from freezing.
Another classic example of how the carbonazis don't think these things all the way through. It's like all those cities that spent millions of taxpayer dollars replacing old=fashioned tungsten traffic lights because they would use electricity and because they would not have to send out work crews to change blown bulbs. Only now they are realizing that the heat from those tungsten bulbs is what kept those traffic lights clear of ice and snow during winter, so now the crews are headed back out anyway ... to add inefficient electrical heaters to those efficient traffic lights!
The US is reportedly worried that its joint-military drills with Seoul and the recent threat of war by South Korean President Lee Myung-bak to the North could lead to problematic situation in the peninsula. According to The Washington Post, although several U.S. officials defended Seoul's plans, Joint Chiefs of Staff Vice Chairman James Cartwright worried that the artillery drills could set off a "chain reaction," in which U.S. and South Korean forces might "lose control of the escalation."
Webmaster's Commentary: OK, if the US military and State Department are "worried" about the North Korean government's response to South Korean live fire exercises, why in Sam Hill is the US government even contemplating sending in another carrier?!?
"Last week, South Korea's media had reported that the US decided to send another nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the USS Ronald Reagan, to East Asia. If true, this will be the third US aircraft carrier deployed in the area, in addition to the USS George Washington, which earlier took part in Washington's joint military drills with Seoul and Tokyo, and the USS Carl Vinson, which just arrived at Guam in the western Pacific." Forgive me, but being "worried" about the effect of these South Korean live fire drills, coupled with sending another US carrier group into the region, may well appear to be sending mixed signals to North Korea; and that is something the US should be avoiding like the plague in this situation. These mixed signals are almost guaranteed to exacerbate the situation, not contribute toward resolving it.
The Palestinians will ask the U.N. Security Council in the coming days to condemn Israeli settlement construction, a senior Palestinian official said Wednesday, part of a growing Palestinian campaign to rally international pressure against Israel with peace efforts deadlocked. Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said that shortly after the New Year the Palestinians' Arab allies would present a resolution that will "declare that the Israeli settlement building is illegal and must be stopped immediately."
Webmaster's Commentary: Unfortunately, as it has done with all UN resolutions condemning its actions, Israel will simply ignore this, and go on building.
As the Great Recession has sown unemployment and downgraded work even for those people who have held on to their jobs, the number of Americans lacking healthcare has swelled beyond 50 million, according to a sobering new report from the Kaiser Foundation. Among the report's most troubling findings: The number of Americans without any health care coverage grew by more than four million in 2009. That left almost one-fifth of non-elderly people uninsured. Among those between 19 and 29 years old, nearly one-third lacked coverage.
Webmaster's Commentary: Welcome to Ameristan, courtesy of the last and current administrations!
Under Obamacare, one has to wonder what the the current administration intends to do with those who absolutely do not have the money to pay for private medical insurance; jail them? Fine them?
Anger is mounting in Northern Ireland where some 40,000 people have been left without running water for up to eight days after pipes shattered following a deep freeze and a rapid thaw.
The two greatest visions of a future dystopia were George Orwell’s “1984” and Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.” The debate, between those who watched our descent towards corporate totalitarianism, was who was right. Would we be, as Orwell wrote, dominated by a repressive surveillance and security state that used crude and violent forms of control? Or would we be, as Huxley envisioned, entranced by entertainment and spectacle, captivated by technology and seduced by profligate consumption to embrace our own oppression? It turns out Orwell and Huxley were both right. Huxley saw the first stage of our enslavement. Orwell saw the second.
Despite a year of propaganda from their government informing them that the beleaguered European currency is good for them, 49 per cent of Germans still wish they had the mighty mark in their pockets. This is one of the highest proportions of Germans wanting its return since polls in the 1990s showed close to 70 per cent of them wanted to retain the mark, the currency of their “economic miracle”.
South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak called Wednesday for new international talks with North Korea on shutting down its nuclear programme, apparently softening his stance towards the negotiations. Webmaster's Commentary: This is at least a step in the right direction, one which China and the US should immediately endorse.
The Fabian Society has commissioned a survey of British attitudes to the EU. On his blog, the amiable Sunder Katwala summarises the findings as follows: “The British public are sceptical of the EU as an idea, yet rather in favour of having more of it in practice”. What? According to the survey, 45 per cent of us say EU membership has been bad for Britain, as against 22 per cent who say it has been good – a finding in line with recent polls. In what sense, then, do we want “more of it in practice”?
Hungary's recently elected right-wing government has introduced a law demanding -- under threat of fines and even shut-down -- that news sources be "fair and balanced," to borrow a phrase from a US news network. The move has critics fearing that it could lead to a silencing of critical media outlets. Under the new Law on Media and the Freedom of Press, national TV channels whose news coverage is found to be "unbalanced or offensive to human dignity or common morals" could be fined the equivalent of almost $1 million, reports the New York Times, while daily newspaper and Internet news sites could face fines of up to $120,000. Weeklies and magazines could see fines of almost $50,000.
Webmaster's Commentary: We may well see similar draconian legislation presented and passed here when Congress returns as the official "response" to the Wickileaks setup. The law here will be just as vague, to allow the maximum pressure on those who are critical of the Federal government in any way.
Veterans Today has been informed by sources within the ADL that, in coordination with Julian Assange’s announcement, they were “tasked” by the Tel Aviv government to begin operations against journalists and online publications that had let to Wikileaks being discredited as an Israeli intelligence operation. Sources indicate that Tel Aviv values Wikileaks as a vital asset in molding public opinion and providing cover for high risk operations. ADL’s website is loading up with warnings and attacks, all defending Wikileaks and Julian Assange and attacking news sources that print materials either critical of Julian Assange or citing Israel’s involvement in Wikileak’s agreement to allow material critical of Israel to be censored. Webmaster's Commentary:
How much public influence does a pro-Palestinian Israeli have? Left-wing activist Jonathan Pollak is sentenced to three months in jail for taking part in an illegal demonstration against the blockade of Gaza.
Lawrence Murphy was an evil man. He was a Wisconsin priest who molested over 200 boys, and just to make the story particularly deplorable, they were deaf children. Preying on the weakest and most vulnerable was apparently his life's mission. Furthermore, this was the scandalous case that was reported directly to then Cardinal Ratzinger in his role as the Vatican enforcer; his enforcement involved shuffling the guilty around to hide their crimes and give them fresh opportunities in new hunting grounds. Well, the Vatican has finally found it in its black (but gold-plated!) and shriveled husk of a heart to do something for Wisconsin: they've blessed a ghost sighting as genuine. Woo hoo! That'll fix everything right up!
The Pope had a Christmas message for the world this year: we should forgive Catholic priests for raping children because everyone else was doing it. He invented a peculiar history that bears no resemblance to the late 20th century I lived in.
More travel chaos is expected in the US northeast after hundreds of flights were cancelled and the region dug out from what what some are calling "Snowpocalypse." The frustration for travellers remains after one of the biggest blizzards in years. The system, packing enormous snowfalls and gales, left piles of snow as deep as 80 centimetres (32 inches). Airlines have resumed limited service, but some 800 flights were cancelled on Tuesday, mostly in the New York area. Many streets remain unploughed in the Sunset Park section of Brooklyn
Israeli have known now for years what to do in the West Bank – colonize, ethnically cleanse and bisect the area to death, while remaining publicly loyal to the futile discourse of peace or rather the ‘peace process’. The end result is expected to be a docile Palestinian Authority within a heavily Judaized West Bank.
Does anyone still not know that 9/11 was done by Mossad and the CIA, along with various parties in certain government agencies and sundry? Most of us are not hackers and we don’t deal with secret cables leaked by whistleblowers ‘or’ deliberately leaked after being sanitized in order to give the appearance of veracity. You would think that someone who is involved in intelligence information would have the intelligence and information to work out the obvious. I did it years ago, though the details are still fleshing themselves out, the names of the ones behind the attacks haven’t changed and aren’t likely to. I measure a person’s truthfulness and intelligence according to the way they define what happened on 9/11.
THE ISRAELI navy is closely monitoring a vessel carrying medical supplies and Asian activists poised to set sail from the Syrian port of Latakia for el-Arish in Egypt. The first Asian land and sea caravan attempting to break the Israeli siege of Gaza set off from India early this month and proceeded to Pakistan, Iran, Turkey and Syria, picking up activists and donations en route.
So even though the government's spending on the "war" on the economic crisis dwarfs the amount spent on the New Deal, our economy is still stuck in the mud. Given that the government has done so much, but we are still mired in a situation which in many ways is comparable to the Great Depression, it is not a very radical statement to say that the government is doing the wrong things to address the downturn. I hope that the economy recovers. But the above comparisons are worrisome, indeed.
At the White House on Dec. 15, business executives asked President Obama for a tax holiday that would help them tap more than $1 trillion of offshore earnings, much of it sitting in island tax havens.
The money -- including hundreds of billions in profits that U.S. companies attribute to overseas subsidiaries to avoid taxes -- is supposed to be taxed at up to 35% when it’s brought home, or “repatriated.” Executives including John T. Chambers of Cisco Systems Inc. say a tax break would return a flood of cash and boost the economy.
Webmaster's Commentary:
It is hypocritical of John T. Chambers to say that freeing them form the tax would help the US economy. If executives like John T. Chambers had not offshored US jobs to those foreign nations in the first place, the US economy would not be in the terrible shape that it is in.
And selling the idea of another tax break for the rich is not going to go over too well while middle and working class Americans are about to get hit with the biggest tax increase in US history.
Greg Hunter USAWatchdog From the very beginning of QE2, it was no secret the Federal Reserve wanted the stock market to rise. The Fed got its wish. Many people see the stock market increase of nearly 20% in a few short months as a sign things are turning around...
Saman Mohammadi Truth Excavator We're led to believe that the United States government is a positive force in the world but this is not true. I'm not saying it couldn't be in the future, in fact, once there is a regime change in Washington, America will become the greatest country in the world again, but as it is now, the deceitful and manipulative leaders in the CIA, the Federal Reserve, the White House, the State Department, and the Pentagon are the most destructive force in the world, and pose the greatest existential threat to human civilization, and world peace...
More than 25% of Kids and Teens in the U.S. Take Prescriptions on a Regular Basis Anna Wilde Mathews Wall Street Journal Gage Martindale, who is 8 years old, has been taking a blood-pressure drug since he was a toddler. "I want to be healthy, and I don't want things in my heart to go wrong," he says. And, of course, his mom is always there to check Gage's blood pressure regularly with a home monitor, and to make sure the second-grader doesn't skip a dose of his once-a-day enalapril...
The Jerusalem Municipality demolished a home in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sur Baher yesterday (22 December), displacing a family of 6 – of whom 4 are children.
Kimberly Schwandt FOX News HONOLULU, Hawaii -- After failing to get climate-change legislation through Congress, the Obama administration plans on pushing through its environmental policies through other means, and Republicans are ready to put up a fight...
American voters believe free market competition will protect Internet users more than government regulation and fear that regulation will be used to push a political agenda.
An unprecedented disinformation campaign is being orchestrated to justify foreign intervention in the Ivory Coast to unseat the Preseident Laurent Gbagbo and replace him with Alassane Dramane Ouattara, a stooge totally devoted to the interests of multinationals.
The U.S. Department of Justice has reje cted a request from prosecutors in Warsaw for assistance in the investigation into the alleged CIA prisons in Poland, where captives claim they were tortured.
As anger against the TSA has mounted, many have wondered if activists will be specifically targeted in an attempt to scare and intimidate them. No subject has been bigger than the gulf disaster and it looks as one of the groups who exposed the extensive use of Corexit9500 in the gulf have fallen victim to TSA tyranny. When Matt Smith, Gavin Garrison, and Heather Rally of Project Gulf Impact arrived at Ontario Airport in California Tuesday evening to board a plane headed back to the Gulf of Mexico, all three of them were pulled aside by TSA agents and patted down. Coincidentally, they were the only three people pulled out of the security lines.
“TSA doesn’t want stuff like this to end up on youtube”
These days, the medicine cabinet is truly a family affair. More than a quarter of U.S. kids and teens are taking a medication on a chronic basis, according to Medco Health Solutions Inc., the biggest U.S. pharmacy-benefit manager with around 65 million members. Nearly 7% are on two or more such drugs, based on the company's database figures for 2009.
Doctors and parents warn that prescribing medications to children can be problematic. There is limited research available about many drugs' effects in kids. And health-care providers and families need to be vigilant to assess the medicines' impact, both intended and not. Although the effects of some medications, like cholesterol-lowering statins, have been extensively researched in adults, the consequences of using such drugs for the bulk of a patient's lifespan are little understood. Still, a growing number of studies have been done under a Food and Drug Administration program that rewards drug companies for testing medications in children. In more than a third of these studies, there have been surprising side effects, or results that suggested a smaller or larger dose was needed than had been expected, Dr. Benjamin says. Those findings underscore that children's reactions to medicines can be very different than those of adults. Long-term effects of drugs in kids are almost never known, since pediatric studies, like those in adults, tend to be relatively short.
HOUSTON — A radioactive water well that is controlled by the City of Houston, and that serves residents of Jersey Village, is no longer being used, according to the communications director for Houston Mayor Annise Parker.
KHOU-TV has actively attempted to obtain maps which would allow us to tell you, for each of the eight wells listed above, exactly which neighborhoods and which streets are affected by the wells identified above, or any amount of radiation. We believe you have a basic right to know if you live in an area served by a radioactive well. The information is something you might use to protect yourself, in the event you believe your health may be at risk from drinking water with radioactive contaminants. KHOU filed a public information request to obtain these maps from the city. They are maps that officials showed KHOU briefly during a meeting at City Hall, prior to our reporting on radiation in Houston’s water supply. While we requested copies of those maps, so we could examine them closer and share them with you, city officials are now actively fighting our attempts to get these maps. They claim that “terrorists” could use them to harm you.
The central economic solution to unleash trillions of dollars for the US economy is simple:
1.Our Robber Baron-era monetary system must be recognized as a national “debt supply” that only profits the banks that create the debt. 2.This Orwellian opposite of a national money supply must be ended. In addition, shocking as it is for most Americans to discover, we’ve already overpaid in tax totals in the several trillions of dollars as revealed in collective governments’ published Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports (CAFRs). We need this ended and transformed to maximize the benefits of that money to the American people.
...And the US is NOT preparing for conflict "in every direction"?!?