Bankrupt Detroit—America In A Microcosm

Report by emergency manager says Detroit’s finances are crumbling, future is bleak

Associated Press

Detroit is broke and faces a bleak future given the precarious financial path it’s on, according to a new report out by the city’s state-appointed emergency manager.

The report was released late Sunday by bankruptcy attorney Kevyn Orr and is his first on Detroit’s finances since officially taking the job in March.

Under state law, the report was due within 45 days of Michigan’s newest emergency manager law taking effect. Orr’s spokesman Bill Nowling had warned last week that the report was an early look at Detroit’s fiscal condition and would not be glowing.

The summation is the latest blow to the city which came under state oversight in March when Gov. Rick Snyder selected Orr to handle Detroit’s finances. Then, the city estimated its budget deficit to be about $327 million. Detroit also has struggled over the past year with cash flow, relying on bond money held by the state to pay some of its bills.

But Orr reports that Detroit’s net cash position was negative $162 million as of April 26 and that the projected budget deficit is expected to reach $386 million in less than two months.

He also warns that the city’s financial health might change as more data is collected and analyzed.

“What is clear, however, is that continuing along the current path is an ill-advised and unacceptable course of action if the city is to be put on the path to a sustainable future.”

Detroit is the largest city in the country under state control and the city’s wallet is now Orr’s to command. He dictates how Detroit spends its money, something that had been the responsibility of first-term Mayor Dave Bing and the nine-member City Council.

In a statement Monday morning, Bing said his office plans a “comprehensive evaluation” of the report over the next day.

“A comprehensive review of the emergency manager’s financial and operating plan has yet to be conducted,” Bing said. “However, my initial review is that the assessment by Mr. Orr of the city’s financial condition is consistent with my administration’s findings.”

The city’s problems preceded Bing, a former steel supply company owner and professional basketball Hall-of-Famer.

“This has been a moving target. The historical numbers that have been reported were unreliable,” bankruptcy expert Doug Bernstein said. “Certainly, nobody was going to expect the numbers were to be better than were reported.”

Orr described the city’s operations as “dysfunctional and wasteful after years of budgetary restrictions, mismanagement, crippling operational practices and, in some cases, indifference or corruption.”

“Outdated policies, work practices, procedures and systems must be improved consistent with best practices of 21st century government,” he said in the report. “A well run city will promote cost savings and better customer service and will encourage private investment and a return of residents.”

The report also looked at attempts officials have made to fix problems.

“Recently, tens of millions of dollars of pension funding and other payments have been deferred to manage a severe liquidity crisis at the City,” Orr wrote in the report. “Even with these deferrals, the City has operated at a significant and increasing deficit. It is expected that the City will end this fiscal year with approximately $125 million in accumulated deferred obligations and a precariously low cash position.”

The city also owes more than $400 million in outstanding obligations, including $124 million used to provide funds for public improvement projects.

Orr’s report identifies areas of concern and those needing immediate attention.

It’s highly likely he will seek concessions from the city’s labor unions. At least five unions representing police and firefighters are seeking arbitration in collective bargaining with the city.

Detroit lacks, but is developing a “comprehensive labor strategy for managing” its relationships with its unions, according to Orr.

The emergency manager law gives Orr the authority to “reject, modify or terminate” collective bargaining agreements and concessions will be sought, he wrote in the report.

“This power will be exercised, if necessary or desirable, with the knowledge and understanding that many city employees already have absorbed wage and benefit reductions,” he wrote.

When taking the job, Orr said he hoped to avoid a municipal bankruptcy filing, but didn’t rule one out if Detroit can’t reach agreements with its many creditors and bond holders.

“If he already hasn’t, he should continue negotiating for savings necessary in collective bargain,” said Bernstein, a managing partner of the Banking, Bankruptcy and Creditors’ Rights Practice Group for the Michigan-based Plunkett Cooney law firm. “He has to negotiate reductions with bond holders and get as many concessions as he can. It’s an across-the-board savings.

“If he can’t get everything completed by consent, then there is no option but bankruptcy. It should be a last resort. It should be used sparingly. It is an option. When all else fails, that’s the last tool in the tool box.”

The report also notes the instability in leadership atop the city’s police department. Detroit has had five different police chiefs over the past five years with varying plans on how to best handle the city’s high crime rate.

“As a result, (the department’s) efficiency, effectiveness and employee morale are extremely low,” Orr wrote. “Based on recent reviews … and input from the Michigan State Police and other law enforcement agencies, it is clear that improvements in DPD’s operations and performance could be achieved through the strategic redeployment of resources, civilianization of administrative functions, other labor efficiencies and revenue enhancements.”

The department also could benefit from more and better technology, equipment, police cars and personnel.

THATCHER (AND REAGAN) GOT IT ALL WRONG

[SEE: The Supply-Side Fraud: Republican Economics Don’t Work ]

THATCHER GOT IT ALL WRONG

AANGIRFAN

Bill Roache (left) has been arrested on suspicion of raping a young girl in 1967. Thatcher, on the right, always seemed to be surrounded by alleged child abusers.

In May 2013, Margaret Thatcher’s party, the Conservatives, performed rather badly in local elections.

The Thatcher funeral, in April 2013, reminded lots of voters that Thatcher got it all wrong, especially on the economy.

Thatcher with Conservative Member of Parliament Nigel Evans who has just been arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting two teenage males. Deputy Speaker Arrested On Suspicion Of Rape

Oxford historian David Priestland recently wrote about Thatcher:

History Magazine

“Since 2008, it has become increasingly evident that she did not lay the foundations for a prosperous Britain…

“It was only in 2008 that the true economic state of affairs became evident : the model built by Thatcher was being sustained by debt.”

Thatcher. (Geoffrey White / Daily Mail / Rex Features)

David Priestland, referring to the economic problems of the 1970s, writes:

“Some governments – like the Germans and the Swedish – sought to create a social consensus behind a programme of gradual restructuring…

“But Thatcher, like her fellow militant Ronald Reagan, … accelerated … the ‘deindustrial revolution’.”

Thatcher and Reagan.

Britain’s growth rate in the 1960s, before Thatcher, averaged well over 3%, in spite of strikes.

The average growth rate between 1979 and 1990, under Thatcher, was well below 3%, and, according to Priestland: “would probably have been lower without the North Sea oil windfall.”

Thatcher

Because of high unemployment under Thatcher, productivity rose temporarily.

But, in Germany, productivity rose more than twice as much, and they didn’t have the high unemployment!

Child abuser Savile was invited to stay with Thatcher many Christmases in a row. 

Historian Dominic Sandbrook writes of Thatcher:

History Magazine

“She promised to restore law and order, yet she presided over the worst riots Britain has ever seen.

Thatcher’s gay friend DEREK LAUD

“She talked of bringing back Victorian values, yet her decade in office saw divorce, abortion and illegitimacy reach unprecedented heights…

“She unleashed casino capitalism…”

“Public spending actually rose in all but two of her years in office.”

Austerity is not necessarily the answer when an economy is in touble.

Howe and Thatcher

“In late 1979, Thatcher’s economic minister Sir Geoffrey Howe told Thatcher that inflation was unlikely to fall below about 15 per cent.

“What actually happened in 1979-1981 was that the monetary targets were always overshot and inflation raced away regardless.

“The most obvious effect of the high interest rates that were supposed to tame M3 was, instead, to push up the sterling exchange rate, pricing British manufacturing exports out of world markets.”

Sir Geoffrey Howe then introduced a policy of severe austerity.

http://www.ft.com/

Alleged child abuser Sir Peter Morrison (left) was Thatcher’s closest aide.

Economists Paul de Grauwe and Yuemei Ji have pointed out that Eurozone countries that have introduced the most severe austerity since 2010 have experienced the largest falls in GDP and hence the greatest increases in debt to GDP ratios.

Panic-driven austerity in the Eurozone and its implications | vox

THATCHER’S FATHER LIKE JIMMY SAVILE?…

The Thatcher government pocketed “one-off gains from the sale of public assets as current income.

“Together with the tax receipts from North Sea oil (again a temporary bonanza), this pushed the budget briefly into surplus at the peak of the boom under chancellor Nigel Lawson in the late 1980s.

“After the resignation of Lawson in 1989, and of Thatcher a year later, later chancellors were left to repair their financial legacy.”

World View: Obama’s Meeting with Jordan’s Abdullah may Signal Troop Deployment

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[Mossad source Debkafile reports that Obama has ordered 20,000 US troops w/equipment to King Hussein Air Base Mafraq, near the border with Syria.  Mafraq is also the location of several refugee camps, holding hundreds of thousands of Syrians.  With the help of the little Jordanian king Obama may be about to try to tilt the scales of the Syrian civil war in favor of the so-called "moderate" faction.  If this is the case, then he probably informed the pig of Qatar of his decision this week, telling him to hold back on any further terrorist support until called upon to resume.  If Obama is foolish enough to pour his final conventional military resources "down a rat hole," into a futile attempt to prevent the total "Islamist" takeover of Syria, then he will not only turn Syria into another quagmire "ala Bush," but he will very likely enable the Saudis and Qatar to establish the dreaded "Caliphate" that the right-wing is constantly crying about. 

I don't know about you, but I don't think that I can peacefully withstand another round of Imperialist war.]

by John J. Xenakis 

• Demonstrators in Jordan protest American troop presence
• Jordan’s King Abdullah and Obama meet to discuss Syria
• Sunni Jihadists pour into Syria

Demonstrators in Jordan protest American troop presence

Anti-American protesters in Amman, Jordan on Friday (Al-Monitor)

Last week, we reported that the U.S. announced the formal deployment of 200 troops to Jordan. The troops will be “ready for military action” if President Barack Obama were to order it. On Friday, Jordanians rallied against the deployment of the U.S. forces in Jordan. Demonstrators also burned a mock American flag. At the end of the demonstration, they gathered in a circle and danced, chanting about Ali Baba and the forty thieves. Al-Monitor

Jordan’s King Abdullah and Obama meet to discuss Syria

The question of the use of chemical weapons by Syrian president Bashar al-Assad continued to draw worldwide attention on Friday. President Barack Obama met with Jordan’s King Abdullah II in the White House and said that “a line has been crossed” in Syria.

He said, “To use weapons of mass destruction on civilian populations crosses another line in terms of international norms and laws… That’s going to be a game changer.” However, he declined to intervene militarily until a “vigorous investigation” had been completed to find more “direct evidence.”

However, Debka, which sometimes gets things wrong, is quoting its military intelligence sources as saying that the purpose of Obama’s meeting with Abdullah is to firm up an agreement for the U.S. to deploy a 20,000 troop “surge” into Jordan. The 200 troops announced last week are to lay the groundwork for the main body to take up quarters in the King Hussein Air Base Mafraq, near the borders of Iraq and Syria.

The purpose of the “surge” is to protect Jordan’s royal family both from jihadists from Syria and from an “Arab Spring” type revolt — a step that the Obama administration did not take with Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, or Yemen. The “surge” will be heavily coordinated with Israeli forces, and buffer zones will be set up on Syria’s borders to prevent attacks on both Jordan and Israel.

This “surge” comes at a time when thousands of fighters from Iran-backed Shia militias from Iraq and Hizbollah are aiding the al-Assad regime forces and are threatening to defeat the opposition rebels. The Hill and Debka

Sunni Jihadists pour into Syria

With thousands of fighters from Iran-backed Shia militias arriving in Syria to support al-Assad’s regime, it’s not surprising that thousands of Sunni jihadists are also arriving in Syria to fight the Shia militias. In particular, disaffected Muslims from Germany and elsewhere in Europe have been heading for Syria to receive training in weapons and terrorist techniques. German analysts are concerned that these fighters are gaining experience in Syria, making contacts, and will return to Germany and conduct terrorist attacks there. Spiegel

Bulk Gold Sales Halted As Price Drops Drastically

[All of the following reports from the last 7-14 days deal with different purchases of TONS OF GOLD----China Buys Physical Gold By Tons ; Pakistan buys nearly 3 tons of Gold ;  Azerbaijan's SOFAZ buys 1 more ton of Gold ; Indians are about to buy a lot of gold—but it won’t make any difference to global prices ;  Russia and Turkey lead another gold-buying charge ]

COMEX Hurtling Towards Default And People Will Be “Settled” With Dollars, No More Metal Will Be Delivered!

InvestmentWatch

Comex Physical Drain Accelerates—With Over $7.8B In Gold Disappearing From All Depositories

As the headline battle between paper sellers and physical buyers of gold escalates, something eerily strange is continuing behind the scenes.

As first reported here on April 9th, Comex gold inventories have been plummeting, demonstrating the highest levels of physical removal ever during a single quarter in Q1, 2013.

Most shocking however, is that Comex warehouse inventories are accelerating their downward plunge, with dropping inventories now spreading to the world’s largest fund depositories.

Over the last four weeks alone, total reported inventories of ETFs, funds, and depositories collapsed by over 5.5 million ounces, or in dollar terms, by over $7,000,000,000 dollars.

http://bullmarketthinking.com/comex-physical-drain-accelerates-with-over-7-8b-disappearing-from-all-depositories/

This brings to mind important questions, such as…

-Why is there such a panic going on to remove physical gold from Comex registered warehouses and other depositories?

-Why did it begin before the collapse, and why does it now appear to be accelerating?

-Why is the multi-trillion dollar fund management industry denouncing gold, while it quickly moves inventory out of registered warehouses?

-Where is the gold moving, and what is it telling us?

-Is this wholesale migration signaling an imminent geopolitical or major market event?

SILVER DOCTORS:

The COMEX will default in the next week or several weeks and people will be “settled” with Dollars, no more metal will be delivered! So, knowing that “game over” has arrived, they are dumping a massive volume of paper contracts with impunity to push the metals prices as low as possible before the “default”. This way the “shorts” do not have to and will not be “covered” when “supply” cannot be obtained because of “an act of God”. They will be settled in cash (at a profit no less) because these “unforeseen” disruptions in supply. “Who could have seen it coming?” will be the mantra. I would suspect that banking stress and “bail ins” will also become prevalent globally. The pricing structure” will now push any and all physical sellers away from the markets and the “door” to safety is effectively being shut. Either you own metal or you don’t.

After the closure of the COMEX and LBMA doors there will be no availability and “price” will be meaningless. Your ability to protect yourself is right now for all intents and purposes being eliminated.

Thatcher/Reagan Destroyed the World Economy for Elitists’ Profit, But Germany Is Still Thriving

Few countries embraced Thatcher’s capitalism

From Mr Marc McDonald.

Sir, In “Right about Britain, Europe and nearly everything” (Comment, April 9), Niall Ferguson writes that Margaret Thatcher was “right about most things”. If this is true, why is Thatcher not fondly remembered today by most British people?

Thatcher’s central economic policy was to deregulate virtually everything, slash social services to the bone and embrace hardcore, dog-eat-dog capitalism. But today who advocates this sort of thing, outside of perhaps a dwindling number of Tea Party extremists in the US?

Prof Ferguson attacks “left-leaning Brits” for being supposedly wrong about Thatcher. But as I recall, Thatcher’s foes predicted that her policies would decimate the middle class. They have been vindicated.

A great deal of the economic prosperity of the Thatcher years was really more because of the North Sea oil bonanza, rather than the Iron Lady’s policies.

Outside of the US, few nations have ever embraced Thatcher’s slash-and-burn methods. In continental Europe today, for example, few people want anything to do with “Anglo-American” capitalism. The same is true of much of today’s Latin America.

As far as Thatcher’s crushing of the unions and deregulating the economy, I would challenge Prof Ferguson as to whether even this was necessarily a good thing.

Germany, for example, still has some of the most powerful unions in the world, as well as a heavily regulated economy. And yet Germany today still has a strong middle class and a world-beating high-technology manufacturing base. Germany is one of the world’s leading capital surplus nations, while Britain runs massive current account deficits. And yet Germany accomplished its enviable economic success by rejecting the Thatcher/Reagan economic model.

Marc McDonald, Fort Worth, TX, US

Homelessness, poverty are greater national threats than terrorism

  Crissy Canganelli

“I fundamentally reject the notion that terrorism is the greatest threat to our national security. A far greater threat that has a far more profound implication for our economy and indeed our society for generations to come, for the future of this nation, is the fact that an ever increasing number of our nation’s children will have known homelessness and poverty.

More and more of those who we turn to in the next generation to take this country, our country, into the future will have grown up with compromised health, their education has been fractured, they have known hunger and food insecurity, they have known homelessness with all the disruptions and anxieties that come with it.”

Crissy Canganelli is the executive director of Shelter House. For information, visit www.shelterhouseiowa.org.

• 44:15 America’s Broken Dreams – Documentary – The new American poor: The Middle Class
• 28:23 The End Of The American Dream – USA
• 3:04 ‘Car Sleepers’ US Middle Class Hit By Crisis

Get Prepared EXPO–(This Weekend In Lebanon MO, Apr. 6-7)

Get Prepared EXPO – April 6-7, 2013 – The Largest Survival and Preparedness EXPO in the USA

 

Schedule of Events – Version 7 – 04/05/13

 

Get Prepared EXPO – Largest Survival and Preparedness EXPO in the USA

 

80 Full One-Hour Seminars and 100 Exhibits

 

April 5, 6, 7, and 8, 2013

 

Cowan Civic Center, 500 E. Elm Street, Lebanon, MO 65536

 

Tickets On-line $8 per day – $15 for the Full weekend – CLICK HERE

 

Apply to be on TV’s Doomsday Preppers – Meet and have dinner with the casting Director

 

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USAPrepares.com – Schedule of Events:

 

Friday April 5, 2013 10AM – 5PM– Exhibitor Setup

 

6PM Networking Dinner – Instructors, Exhibitors, Guests

 

Dowds Catfish and BBQ, 1760 West Elm St., Lebanon,

 

MO 65536 – 417-532-1777- $8.99 up

 

—————————————————————————————————————————Saturday April 6, 2013 8AM – Exhibitor Setup

 

Saturday April 6, 2013 9AM – 6PM – EXPO Hall Open for Guests

 

Saturday – Seminar Rooms A, B, C, Entry Lobby, Theater, and Second Floor Mezzanine

 

10-11

 

Theater – Dr. Richard Allen Miller– Mind Control- Learn to Think Like a Navy SEAL .

 

Room A – Nicole Trujillo, Doterra – Medicine Cabinet Makeover – Essential Oils

 

Room B – Judy Dollarhite – USAPrepares.com – Water Filtration at Home or On-The-Go

 

Room C – Ken Hurley, Kyani – Lower High Blood Pressure, Increase Endurance – Naturally

 

Entry Lobby – Edward Campbell – Nobel Mint – Purchasing Gold in Small Amounts

 

Second Floor Mezzanine – Bob Gaskin – Bug-in or Bug-out? Which one? And Why?

 

11-12

 

Theater – James Wesley, Rawles – Part -1of 2 – via Teleseminar with Vincent Finelli -Survival

 

Room A- Carl Rickard, CC Silver – What is Colloidal Silver? How it is beneficial to your

 

Room B – Roy Birdsong, Choose Your Own Wireless – Cell Phone Calling Plans – $8 per Month

 

Room C – Nathan Jones, Power Source Solar – Alternative Energy from the Sun – Solar Life

 

Entry Lobby – Bill Whaley – Living off Junk, Creative and Useful Applications discarded Items – Also see special all-day seminar on Monday, April 8

 

Second Floor Mezzanine – Eric Vought – Start Your Own Sheriff’s Auxiliary – your first line of defense

 

12-1

 

Theater – James Wesley, Rawles -Part 2 of 2 – via Teleseminar with Vincent Finelli -Survival

 

Room A – Dr Dan Junker – Oxygen Cures – The Underground Cancer Doctor

 

Room B – Alan Busiek (of Doomsday Preppers) Preparedness for Beginners – how to begin

 

Room C – Robb Clopfill – Salad Master: Demonstration – Learn to cook to preserve nutrition – Enjoy sample foods…

 

Entry Lobby – John Dollarhite, DollarValue Computers. EMPs – Preventing Computer Failure

 

Second Floor Mezzanine – Stephen Heuer – Synergistic Nutrition - Learn The 5 Factors That Stop Your Body from operating at 100%

 

1-2

 

Theater – Joyce Riley – The Power Hour – When There is no Doctor

 

Room A – Brooklyn Bagwell – Doomsday Preppers – Casting Call – Do you have the preps to be on TV?

 

Room B – Len Pense, Gardening Revolution – Survival High Yield Gardening. Learn how to build your raised bed garden.

 

Room C – John Moore – Violent Climate Change. You can feel the climate changing – Should you relocate?

 

AMP-3 Booth – David Pruett, MD, AMP-3 – Hands-on Suture Seminar Part-1 of 2 by our Emergency Room Doctor – Suture a pigs foot, and take home spare suture kit. For educational purposes only – we are not training you for surgery – Cost $65 – Watch for Free (Class size limited to 20) purchase ticket at the Store Tab at http://www.USAPrepares.com

 

Entry Lobby – Dough Dougherty – Author, Survive USA – Beyond Food and Water – then what?

 

Second Floor Mezzanine – Dragon Heaters – Cindy Mathieu – Fire Science: Wood Stoves, Masonry Heaters, and Rocket Heater

 

2-3

 

Theater – Dr. Joel Wallach, DVM – Youngevity – Restore Your Health – Dead Doctors Don’t Lie

 

Room A – Joel Johnson, Kodiak Survival – MacGyver 101. Invisible inventions

 

Room B – Marjory Wildcraft, Grow Your Own Groceries in Your Backyard – Living off the land

 

Room C – Paulette Wohnoutka, Millstreet Market – Build Your Own Bucket of Food. You can

 

AMP-3 Booth – David Pruett, MD, AMP-3 – Hands-on Suture Seminar Part-2 of 2 by our Emergency Room Doctor – Suture a pigs foot, and take home spare suture kit. For educational purposes only – we are not training you for surgery – Cost $65 – Watch for Free (Class size limited to 20)

 

Entry Lobby – Mike Mah – Negotiate for Your Life. Learn the lifestyle of making friends easily

 

Second Floor Mezzanine – Dr Cass Ingram – Dr Oregano (Talk Show Host) – The All-purpose Cure and Prevention Herb

 

3-4

 

Theater – Larry Pratt, Teleseminar – Larry Pratt (with Vincent Finelli) – Executive Director of Gun Owners of America – The Second Amendment is in Danger

 

Room A – Mike Nocks, White Harvest Seed – Seeds Planting, Gardening and Saving – what to do right now!

 

Room B – Dr. James Hubbard – Wound Care – Burn Care

 

Room C – Dr. Julie Penick, Penick Health Care – Sea of Toxins. Overweight? Tired? Irritable?

 

Entry Lobby – Caleb Arthur, Missouri Sun Solar – Living With Solar Power

 

Second Floor Mezzanine – Dr Bones and Nurse Amy – Survival Medicine

 

4-5

 

Theater – Mat Stein – EMPs and Solar Flares – Fact Fiction and Survival Strategies. Buy your autographed books.

 

Room A – David Pruett, MD, AMP-3 – First Aid Kits Developed by an Emergency Room Doctor – Build yours and take it with you.

 

Room B – Craig Douglas, Forbidden Knowledge – Radiation Detection – Can you detect

 

Room C – John Ragan USAF Officer (Ret) – Author – The Financial State of the Union

 

Entry Lobby – Jeff Olms – Selecting Your First Defense Firearm

 

5-6

 

Theater – Dr Cass Ingram – Dr Oregano (Talk Show Host) – The All-purpose Cure and Prevention Herb

 

Room A – Dr Bones and Nurse Amy – Survival Medicine

 

Room B – Johnny Delerious, Monolithic Dome – Concrete Dome Structures. If you are willing

 

Room C – Lucinda Bailey, Texas Ready – Heirloom Seeds. Grow a 2,000 pound Garden

 

Entry Lobby – Scott Peterson – Down To Earth Seeds – Our Current Food Supply, and Dangers

 

Second Floor Mezzanine – Dr Richard Alan Miller – Ask the Doctor – the questions you want answered

 

 

 

 

 

Saturday April 6, 2013 6PM – 8PM– Banquet Dinner – $6, $7 Tickets Required

 

Networking Dinner – Instructors, Exhibitors, Guests

 

Seminar Rooms A, B, and C

 

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10-11

 

Theater- Dr. Joel Wallach, DVM – Youngevity – Restore Your Health – Dead Doctors Don’t Lie

 

Room A – Stephen Heuer – Synergistic Nutrition - Learn The 5 Factors That Stop Your Body from operating at 100%

 

Room B – Eddie Allen – American Open Currency Standard – Gold, Silver, and Copper barter

 

Room C – Judy Dollarhite – Raising Rabbits and Chickens – In the City – And Her New Book – about her $6 Million USDA Fine

 

Entry Lobby – Mike Mah, No StressMike.com, Hoy Chi, The Ancient Art of Chinese Medicine.

 

Second Floor Mezzanine – Ken Hurley, Kyani – Lower High Blood Pressure, Increase Endurance – Naturally

 

11-12

 

Theater – Dr. James Hubbard – The Survival Doctor – Wound Care – Burn Care

 

Room A – Paulette Wohnoutka, Millstreet Market – Build Your Own Bucket of Food. You can

 

Room B – Joyce Riley – The Power Hour – The Truth about Military Experiments

 

Room C – Lucinda Bailey, Texas Ready – Heirloom Seeds. Double Your Tomato Yield

 

Entry Lobby – Dr. Richard Alan Miller – Who Knows – It really doesn’t Matter

 

Second Floor Mezzanine – David Klotz – – The Wal-Mart Takeover of America

 

12-1

 

Theater – John Moore – Violent Climate Change. You can feel the climate changing – do you need to relocate?

 

Room A – Joel Johnson, Kodiak Survival – MacGyver 101. Invisible inventions – that is what

 

Room B – Eric Lancaster, Teraganix – High Yield Gardening on Steroids – Let Microorganisms do the hard work.

 

Room C – Glenn Meder, Survival Still – Emergency Water Distillation – What do you do when there is no clean drinking water?

 

AMP-3 Booth – David Pruett, MD, AMP-3 – Learn how to vacuum pack foods for long term storage.

 

Entry Lobby – Dr Bones and Nurse Amy – Survival Medicine

 

Second Floor Mezzanine – Aaron Tarlow -Southern Armory – Buy Your First Survival Firearm – Beginners

 

1-2

 

Theater – Marjory Wildcraft, (Doomsday Preppers Expert), Grow Your Own Groceries – Bugs, the final and last choice for

 

Room A – Valerie Earhart – ABC Books – EMP Proof Information that You Need – We have

 

Room B – Casey Mustion, Hewitt Messenger – Well Drilling and Water Treatment.

 

Room C – Dr. Howard Shayne, DDS, Fox Grape Dentistry – Emergency Dentistry

 

Entry Lobby – Ray Cooley, Solar Labs – Solar Power for Your Home and Business

 

Second Floor Mezzanine – Jeff Olms – Selecting Your First Defense Firearm

 

2-3

 

Theater – Sheriff Richard Mack (America’s Sheriff) – The Second Amendment – Our Greatest Threat to Liberty

 

Room A- Bill Whaley – Live Off Junk – Creative and useful applications for items in the trash

 

Room B – Bruce Hough – Buy Your First Farm

 

Room C – Bob Gaskin – What to do When the Lights Go Out – Serious Survival Strategies

 

Entry Lobby – Wes McCollum – VacuCanner – Simple and Effective Process for Food Storage

 

Second Floor Mezzanine – Chief Cloudpiler – Native American Medicine – Do you want to be a Medicine Man/Woman – Natural Healing

 

 

 

3-4

 

Theater – David Pruett, MD, AMP-3 – Every Day Carry – The essential Supplies that you must carry with you.

 

Room A – Len Pense, Gardening Revolution – Survival High Yield Gardening. Learn how to…

 

Room B – Ozark Beekeepers Association – Beekeeping for Food Production. It is simple.

 

Room C – Dr Dan Junker – Oxygen Cures – The Underground Cancer Doctor

 

Entry Lobby – Julia Schopick – Author – Honest Medicine – Teleseminar with Vincent Finelli

 

Second Floor Mezzanine – Louis Krudo – Krudo Knives – Knife Fighting – Devense

 

 

 

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Sunday April 7, 2013 – 4PM – Exhibitor Close Down

 

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Monday, April 8, 2013 8AM – 5PM – Special Optional Seminars for Guests

 

8 – 5

 

Seminar Room A – Dr. Richard Alan Miller – Critical Decision Making Power Tools – Learn to Think Like a Navy SEAL – by the man who developed the technology. Limited seating. Cost $35 per person, $50 per couple. On-Line Registration – USAPrepares.com, Store Tab. Dinner at Dowd’s Catfish and BBQ – Optional and on your own

 

 

 

Monday, April 8, 2013 8AM – 5PM – Special Optional Seminars for Guests

 

8 – 5

 

Seminar Room B – MacGyver meets the Junk Man – Presented by the Authors and Developers of “Invisible Inventions” (a.k.a. “MacGyver 101″) and “How to Live on Junk”

 

BASIC / INTERMEDIATE WORKSHOP In this hands-on workshop, Joel Johnson, (“The Real MacGyver”) and Bill Whaley (“The Junkman”) train you to take another man’s trash and turn it into fuel, tools, and weapons essential for emergency survival, to economize, and to think, see, and perform like MacGyver. Cost $35 per person, $50 per household. On-Line Registration – USAPrepares.com, Store Tab. Dinner at Dowd’s Catfish and BBQ – Optional and on your own

“This is a third world war through the economy. The Italians will be next, and they know it,”

[Check-out the local comments

43 comments]

‘We will not become Germany’s slaves’

By Stefanos Evripidou

A protester clashes with police last evening

HUNDREDS OF Laiki (Popular) Bank employees gathered outside parliament last night after word got out that the government had prepared a bill for the second largest bank on the island to undergo restructuring.
As the sun set, news trickled out in the media of a plan to split the bank into a ‘good’ bank retaining healthy loans and a ‘bad’ bank which would take on ‘bad’ loans and work towards recovering as much money as possible.
Around 500 Laiki employees and their families gathered in an impromptu demonstration outside parliament, where the newly-prepared bills were expected to be taken for discussion in the plenum.
Some protesters managed to break through the police barricades and make their way to the parliament doors which were locked by police.
Greek journalists covering the demonstration mocked the Cypriot media’s depiction of tussles outside parliament, suggesting they were more like polite handshakes compared to what they’ve seen in Athens.
Protesters were furious about the lack of information about whether they would have a job tomorrow, and berated the absence of employees at the demo from other Cypriot banks.
Demonstrators held banners saying, “Who’s next?” and “We will not become Germany’s slaves” while shouting slogans like, “Today it’s us, tomorrow it will be your turn”.
Head of the banking union ETYK, Loizos Hadjicostis, called on all bank employees to go to parliament today ahead of an expected vote on the bill for the resolution and recovery of Laiki Bank.
He described yesterday’s developments as “unacceptable”.
One Laiki employee, Demetra Veresies, 47, asked: “Who is responsible for this? The bankers? The golden boys? The MPs who vote bills without knowing what they are? The German government that wants to punish Cyprus for reasons unknown? Who?”
Elena Constantinou, a Russian lawyer who’s been living 23 years in Cyprus, said she and her Russian friends from Limassol came to Nicosia to protest, without being employees of Laiki.
“What Europe is doing is not at all an act of friendship. With friends like that, who needs enemies? Once we sign the memorandum, our children and grandchildren will live as slaves,” she said.
“This is a third world war through the economy. The Italians will be next, and they know it,” added Constantinou.
She called on President Nicos Anastasiades to go himself to Moscow to speak with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to seek a way out of the crisis instead of sending his finance minister.
Asked about money laundering in Cyprus, she said, “There is no money laundering here. Money laundering takes place in England, Germany and Switzerland.”

The Road to World War 3

U.S. Economic Collapse Warning (Government Preparing)

Tuesday Morning Bank Run Predicted, After Weekend EU “Haircut” (Skimming) of Cyprus Bank Accounts

Our View: The ‘rescue package’ designed to destroy the economy

EVEN though the haircut of bank deposits had been on the agenda of the EU for more than a month now, featuring in Commission memos and being openly discussed by European politicians, most of whom, refused to rule it out, few people thought the Eurogroup would go ahead with it. It was an idle threat, to force Cyprus privatise SGOs and increase the corporate tax, was the prevailing view.

And after all, President Anastasiades had emphatically declared in his inauguration speech that “absolutely no reference to a haircut on public debt or deposits will be tolerated,” adding that “such an issue isn’t even up for discussion.” Finance Minister Michalis Sarris made similarly reassuring statements, arguing that it would be lunacy for the EU to impose such a measure because it would threaten the euro system.

Germany and the leaders of the Eurogroup opted for this lunacy, calculating that Cyprus is too small and inconsequential for the haircut on its bank deposits to cause contagion in the eurozone. Of course, the markets could view the decision differently, perhaps not when they open on Monday, but a few weeks later as it becomes apparent that not even deposits in European banks are safe from raids by the Eurogroup.

It is obvious from the statements made that Anastasiades was blackmailed into accepting this euphemistically called ‘solidarity levy’. If he did not accept it, the European Central Bank would not provide Emergency Liquidity Assistance to the Cypriot banks, after the March 21 deadline (it had been extended by two months in January) and the banks would have collapsed on the same day, with people losing much bigger parts of their deposits than the seven to 10 per cent that would be taken now.

Was there an alternative for Anastasiades? It is difficult to say, given the pressure for a political agreement by last Friday. All indications are that our EU partners had taken their decision before then and this was why they scheduled the Eurogroup meeting that would discuss the bailout on a Friday night. The Cypriot banks would be closed for three days during which all the steps for bailing in deposits could be taken, and the banks could re-open normally on Tuesday.

If only things were so simple. It is highly unlikely it will be business as usual at the banks on Tuesday as thousands of people will likely turn up to withdraw their money. Big depositors would give instructions for the transfer of money abroad and never again place it in a Cypriot bank. What would be the capital needs of the banks faced with a mass exodus of deposits, brought on by the Eurogroup decision? Would the EU order another ‘solidarity levy’ in such a case or would it declare Cyprus bankrupt, having dealt a fatal blow to its financial services sector that is by far the biggest contributor to GDP, and kick it out of the eurozone?

Yesterday’s decision still needs to be approved by the House of Representatives, which will meet today or tomorrow to approve the haircut bill. Judging by the statements made by the political parties yesterday the approval of the relevant bills is far from certain. Anastasiades was to meet the party leaders last night in an effort to persuade them to support the bills, but there are already many dissenting voices, not to mention the public outcry, which is bound to affect the stand of the parties.

One deputy yesterday wondered whether it would be better to allow the two banks that required liquidity assistance from the ECB to go under instead of accepting the haircut. But the problem would not be confined to these two banks as there is inter-dependence among the banks and a bank run on two would spread to all. This will be Anastasiades’ main argument in explaining why he agreed to the bail in of deposits. The alternative would have been the collapse of the banks, state bankruptcy and exit from the euro.

Under the circumstances the president opted for the lesser of two evils, even though we doubt there would be many people who would give him credit for that. In effect, the EU offered a ‘rescue package’ that is designed to destroy rather than rescue what is left of the Cyprus economy.

The Brilliant Pentagon Plan To Ignite Holy War In the Middle East and the Unacceptable Price That Civilians Must Pay

[SEE:  America’s “Islamists” Go Where Oilmen Fear to Tread ;  f the Script Calls for Credible “Bad Guys,” Then Invent Some! ]

New Excuse for Greater CIA Involvement in Iraq

Lobe Log

by Wayne White

With a long history of misguided, damaging American intervention and meddling in the Middle East, the reported CIA effort to target the al-Nusra Front in Syria by helping Iraqi anti-terrorism units to attack its roots in Iraq seems to be the former and possibly destined to be the latter.

The Sunni Arab politics of Iraq, already complicated by the 2003 American invasion, have been further harmed by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s unremitting hostility toward Iraq’s Sunni Arab community. He and his Shi’a cronies bitterly opposed the American deal with Sunni Arab insurgents back in late 2006 through 2008, and attempted to undermine the arrangement while US-Sunni Arab Awakening efforts to take down much of al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) were in progress.

In the years since, Maliki has been rather consistent in his exclusion of the bulk of Iraq’s Sunni Arabs from the Baghdad political mainstream. He has driven away many of those who have sought or secured office using the machinery of so-called “de-Ba’thification” and has even purged, assassinated or arrested large numbers of former Awakening cadres as well as various other key Sunni Arabs, often on trumped up charges of terrorism (or no formal charges at all — frequently employing his own extrajudicial security forces or Iraq’s mainly Shi’a Anti-Terrorism Service, which answers directly to him).

In this context, it is hardly surprising that a robust measure of Sunni Arab extremism flourishes in Iraq (apparently more now than back in 2008 when most Sunni Arabs were, by contrast, relatively more war-weary and eager for some sort of enduring engagement with the government in Baghdad). Resentment over Maliki’s disinterest in anything that would re-integrate Iraq’s Sunni Arab minority into much of the country’s core activities has done a lot to sustain a drumfire of AQI bombings inside Iraq and, since late 2011, sent gaggles of Islamic fighters from Iraq’s Sunni Arab northwest into the raging battle for Syria.

Al-Nusra probably is to a large extent an arm of AQI, as the US alleges, but also could be the recipient of many Iraqi fighters simply enraged over the plight of Sunni Arabs in their own country more generally. Additionally, there are quite a few historic tribal and family connections that extend far beyond the Syrian-Iraqi border, making events in Syria that much more palpably personal for quite a few Sunni Arabs inside Iraq.

So al-Nusra most likely is more than an organization; a phenomenon welling up from the profound resentment among many Sunni Arabs toward hostile political orders in both countries. If so, that’s not something that can be surgically extracted. Unfortunately, there always is the possibility that somewhere down the road a frustrated Washington (after Baghdad inevitably fails to address al-Nusra, just as it has been unable to deal a crippling blow to AQI) might think drones offer such a capability. If, however, they ever were employed over Sunni Arab areas of Iraq, the anger currently aimed primarily at the Maliki government and the Assad regime would become far more focused on the US.

Al-Nusra clearly is an unwelcome and dangerous player on the opposition side amidst the fighting in Syria. Yet, the sheer length, brutality, mass destruction, horrific casualties and more than a million refugees generated by the violence so far, predictably have rendered more extreme certain elements of the opposition. The seeming rise in regime-like rebel atrocities most likely is linked to some extent to the duration of the carnage.

The US already has become unpopular in broad Syrian opposition and popular circles for not providing desperately needed military assistance. At first, this frustration centered upon frantic requests for a US/NATO no fly zone over Syria. Since hope for that evaporated, attention shifted to arms and ammunition needed by rebels to take on regime-armored vehicles and air power. Some oppositionists in Syria may understand why the US remains wary of providing surface to air missiles that could very well fall into the hands of international terrorist groups, but anti-tank rockets are less of a concern in that respect. Yet, Washington decided not to send any arms whatsoever to opposition fighters — even vetted ones — late last summer and once again recently.

The US designation of al-Nusra as a terrorist group does not appear to have reduced that group’s high military profile as the tip of the opposition’s combat spear against the forces of the Assad regime. And involving the US in a campaign against al-Nusra’s support base in Iraq now could easily be perceived more broadly as being anti-Sunni Arab. After all, many of Iraq’s Sunni Arabs might ask pointedly why the US has chosen not to take a stronger stand against Maliki’s ongoing persecution of and human rights violations against Iraq’s Sunni Arab community — concerns that extend far beyond AQI and its supporters.

Iraq essentially remains in a state of sectarian conflict with Maliki playing the leading role as provocateur. The opposition effort to take down the Assad regime in Syria also has become, in large measure, a sectarian conflict.

By doing little to cross Maliki about his mistreatment of Sunni Arabs, going after al-Nusra in Iraq and providing meager support to the Syrian opposition, Washington potentially is setting itself up to be viewed — at least by Sunni Arab participants in these struggles — as anti-Sunni Arab across much of the greater Arab al-Jazira region as well as the northern Levant. The US faces enough grievances in the region as it is. Why add more to the list?

The Day of Reckoning

[The big unknown in all of this—

How many of us will pick our guns up, when we are ordered to lay them down?

This is the unknowable variable that induces hesitancy in the feverishly power-drunk bureaucratic minds, actually serving to keep the government at bay, so far— too afraid to declare martial law and seize our guns, for fear that they will set-off an American insurgency, which will dwarf anything that the Pentagon has so far faced in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

In the dramatic, though realistic scenario laid-out for us by Mr. Owens, beneath the following intro, we see that logically, one-percent or less of all American citizens are fully prepared to defend their Second Amendment Right to own a gun for the purpose of self-defense.  A government that is hostile to the very Constitution which it claims to represent is a very real threat to all life, liberty and personal property rights, at least as great a threat as any burglar knocking-in your back door. 

Such a government would no longer within the Republican parameters set for it in the Constitutional division of powers outlined by our Founding Fathers.  It would have exposed itself as a Facist Dictatorship.  Each and every American Patriot owes it to his Family, to posterity and to himself, to oppose such a dictatorship if one ever rises-up above us, down to his last breath and to his last bullet. 

I am still breathing and I have not yet begun to run out of bullets.  How about you? 

Will you be one of the Last American Patriots, when the Dictatorship comes out of the closet?] 

When Gun Confiscation Starts. How Will a Rebellion Play Out Nationwide?

Charleston Voice

Posted by The Watchdog

It is hard to say what will happen. County Sheriffs and police chiefs vowed to stand down and not give material support or help to the federal agencies involved trying to disarm the American people. Many in the US Military will stand down like the East German Military shortly before the Berlin Wall came down. Soon after communism collapsed in Russia and eastern Europe.

It is hard to say if it will bloodless or a blood bath in the streets if the US government tries to come after the guns. It is my hope the US Government collapse flinching when the US Military and Federal Agents hesitate when ordered to disarm the American people, most of all disarm the veterans.

Blogger Bob Owens has written “What Will You See in the Rebellion,” a likely scenario  how a revolt against the US government will possibly unfold.

What you’ll see in the rebellion

Written By: Bob - Dec• 28•12

Let me explain, gun grabbers, how your confiscatory fantasy plays out. Let us imagine for a moment that a sweeping gun control bill similar to the one currently suggested is passed by the House and Senate, and signed into law by a contemptuous President.

Perhaps 50-100 million firearms currently owned by law-abiding citizens will become contraband with the stroke of a pen. Citizens will either register their firearms, or turn them in to agents of the federal government, or risk becoming criminals themselves. Faced with this choice, millions will indeed register their arms. Perhaps as many will claim they’ve sold their arms, or had them stolen. Suppose that as many as 200-250 million weapons of other types will go unregistered.

Tens of millions of Americans will refuse to comply with an order that is clearly a violation of the explicit intent of the Second Amendment. Among the most ardent opposing these measures will be military veterans, active duty servicemen, and local law enforcement officers. Many of these individuals will refuse to carry out what they view as Constitutionally illegal orders. Perhaps 40-50 million citizens will view such a law as treason. Perhaps ten percent of those, 4-5 million, would support a rebellion in some way, and maybe 40,000-100,000 Americans will form small independently-functioning active resistance cells, or become lone-wolves.

They will be leaderless, stateless, difficult to track, and considering the number of military veterans that would likely be among their number, extremely skilled at sabotage, assassination, and ambush.

After a number of carefully-planned, highly-publicized, and successful raids by the government, one or more will invariably end “badly.” Whether innocents are gunned down, a city block is burned to ash, or especially fierce resistance leads to a disastrously failed raid doesn’t particularly matter. What matters is that when illusion of the government’s invincibility and infallibility is broken, the hunters will become the hunted.

Unnamed citizens and federal agents will be the first to die, and they will die by the dozens and maybe hundreds,  but famous politicians will soon join them in a spate of revenge killings, many of which will go unsolved.

Ironically, while the gun grab was intended to keep citizens from preserving their liberties with medium-powered weapons, it completely ignored the longer-ranged rifles perfect for shooting at ranges far beyond what a security detail can protect, and suppressed .22LR weapons proven deadly in urban sniping in Europe and Asia.

While the Secret Service will be able to protect the President in the White House, he will not dare leave his gilded cage except in carefully controlled circumstances. Even then he will be forced to move like a criminal. He will never be seen outdoors in public again. Not in this country.

The 535 members of the House and Senate in both parties that allowed such a law to pass would largely be on their own; the Secret Service is too small to protect all of them and their families, the Capitol Police too unskilled, and competent private security not particularly interested in working against their own best interests at any price. The elites will be steadily whittled down, and if they can not be reached directly, the targets will become their staffers, spouses, children, and grandchildren. Grandstanding media figures loyal to the regime would die in droves, executed as enemies of the Republic.

You can expect congressional staffs to disintegrate with just a few shootings, and expect elected officials themselves to resign well before a quarter of their number are eliminated, leaving us with a boxed-in executive, his cabinet loyalists trapped in the same win, die, or flee the country circumstance, military regime loyalists, and whatever State Governors who desire to risk their necks as well.

Here, the President will doubtlessly order the activation of National Guard units and the regular military to impose martial law, setting the largest and most powerful military in the world against its own people. Unfortunately, the tighter the President clinches his tyrannical fist, the more rebels he makes.

Military commands and federal agencies will be whittled down as servicemen and agents will desert or defect. Some may leave as individuals, others may join the Rebellion in squad and larger-sized units with all their weapons, tactics, skills, and insider intelligence. The regime will be unable to trust its own people, and because they cannot trust them, they will lose more in a vicious cycle of collapse.

Some of these defectors will be true “operators,” with the skills and background to turn ragtag militia cells into the kind of forces that decimate loyalist troops, allowing them no rest and no respite, striking them when they are away from their most potent weapons. Military vehicles are formidable, but they are thirsty beasts, in terms of fuel, ammo, time, and maintenance. Tanks and bombers are formidable only when they have gas, guns, and can be maintained. In a war without a front, logistics are incredibly easy to destroy, and mechanics and supply clerks are not particularly adept at defending themselves.

Eventually, the government will turn upon itself. The President will be captured or perhaps killed by his own protectors. A dictatorship will form in the vacuum.

If we’re lucky, the United States of America, or whatever amalgam results, will again try to rebuild. If we’re very lucky, the victors will reinstate the Constitution as the law of the land. Just as likely though, we’ll face fractious civil wars fought over issues we’ve not begun to fathom, and a much diminished state or states will result, perhaps guided by foreign interests.

It will not be pretty. There will be no “winners,” and perhaps hundreds of thousands to millions of dead.

Yet, this is the future we face if the power-mad among us are not soundly defeated at the ballot box before they affect more “change” than  we, the People, are willing to surrender to would-be tyrants.

[author's note: This article is just one of an evolving series of posts reacting to current events that many are interpreting as possible threats to our Republic and the Constitution. Please proceed to the main page to keep up to date. Thank you.]

Washington Co-Conspirators Build “Al-Qaeda” Myth with Wild Claims About Their “Economic Warfare” Capabilities

Terrifying! “Economic Jihad” and Cyber Surveillance

by Bea Edwards ( The Whistleblogger)

This week, the House of Representatives will consider the “Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act,” a piece of legislation that would allow America’s intelligence agencies to share and protect the voluminous data they collect about America’s citizens with the keepers of America’s financial infrastructure, among others. An identical bill passed the House last year but died in the Senate, despite a powerful push from a curious coalition of spies, lawyers, financiers and politicians.

As an American citizen about to be shared and protected, when you see that kind of lineup behind a power play, you may fear trouble. For many months now, the bill’s campaign has been building. It began last summer with a briefing for about 50 Washington think tankers convened by former Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ).

That day, July 9, 2012, was a scorcher, with afternoon temperatures over 100 degrees when the audience convened in a third floor briefing room at the Senate’s Russell Office Building on Capitol Hill. Kyl had invited the American Center for Democracy (ACD) and the Economic Warfare Institute (EWI) to hold a “Super-Panel” and an open discussion on the topic of “Economic Warfare Subversions: Anticipating the Threat.”

The make up of the panel was a little peculiar; it featured a number of heavy hitters from the intelligence community, including General Michael Hayden (former director of both the CIA and the National Security Agency), James Woolsey (former CIA director), and Michael Mukasey (former Attorney General for George W. Bush). But there were others. First among them was the facilitator and director of the Economic Warfare Institute itself, Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, who aggressively used her academic title at every opportunity, an unusual practice in this company. Among the remaining panelists, one suggested that jihadists were setting wildfires in Colorado that summer. Another, a former Alternate Director for the U.S at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), also produced a memorable presentation by envisioning complex terror scenarios not even Hollywood could produce.

In total, the panel included Dr. Ehrenfeld and eight white men. To kick off the festivities, she approached the podium. Dr. Ehrenfeld opened her remarks with the announcement that the United States was target-rich for economic jihad, apparently a new concept for only a few of us in the audience. We the uninitiated exchanged nervous glances as Dr. Rachel went on to explain the “Cutting Edge Threats” that keep her up at night. She pointed out that both Sept. 11, 2001 and Sept. 15, 2008 were potentially devastating to the United States. One attack was the work of al-Qaeda, a foreign enemy, and the other was self-inflicted by the management of our own financial institutions. However, Dr. Ehrenfeld said, we could not rule out the possibility that economic terrorists were: a) responsible for, or b) learning from the economic collapse that precipitated the Great Recession. She also referenced the “flash crash” of May 6, 2010 when the Dow lost over 1000 points in a few minutes, only to regain 600 of them minutes later:

Still, two years later, the joint report by the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Committee (CFTC) did not rule out “terrorism” as a possible cause for the May 2010 “flash crash,” and the entire financial industry still has no uniform explanation of why or how this event occurred.

Quite simply, Dr. Ehrenfeld was terrifying.

EWI [Economic Warfare Institute] is of the strong opinion that threats to the U.S. economy are the next great field of battle. Indeed, we are already at economic war with such state actors as China and Iran and such non-state actors as al-Qaeda and its affiliates. The future battlefield is vast: it not only includes the realms of cyber and space but also of banking and finance, market and currency manipulation, energy, and drug trafficking. The list could go on and on.

So, EWI believes that the US faces mass terror-induced economic calamity. The fact that this has not yet occurred, she cautioned us, does not mean it isn’t going to.

Shortly thereafter, General Michael Hayden, now a principal at the Chertoff Group, a lucrative security consulting firm run by former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff took the floor. General Hayden stood to speak about “The Most Dangerous Tools in the Most Dangerous Hands. How much should we fear hacktivists achieving state-like capabilities?” The answer to this rhetorical question was “a lot.” Speaking as the former director of the NSA, he told us, “You want us to go to the cyber domain to defend you. But in that domain, every advantage goes to the attacker because the environment is both insecure and indispensible.” In other words, we can’t defend you without the proper weapons.

But what would those be?

By this time, some of us were alarmed. Apparently, we are completely unprotected from flash crashing at the hands of terrorist hacktivists waging economic jihad. And the next speaker was no relief. Daniel Heath, the former US Alternate Director at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and currently a Managing Director at Maxwell Stamp, broke the ice by suggesting that we imagine the following scenario:

A foreign country holding about a trillion dollars in US debt demands an arrangement to swap it for the agricultural production of California. Capital begins to flee the US. It’s Christmas, and a heavy snow storm hits the northeast, knocking out the power grid. An act of sabotage hits the Washington, D.C. metro, and a couple of assassinations occur, both high-value targets and random ones. Finally, a biochem incident or two occurs, like anthrax or something in the water supply.

Heath just kept on coming. Shadowy parties might manipulate the price of oil and a real economic crisis would occur – like the one of Sept. 15, 2008. He suggested that episode was actually a jihadist plot. Probably. Well, possibly.

What if terrorists aim to engineer a renewed financial meltdown? Is it possible? How would the financial system handle a massive attack on New York City? Is enough being done to buttress financial resilience—to limit the contagion of cascading failures throughout the economy? In what ways could different kinds of terrorist attacks succeed in destabilizing our financial sector and impair the real economy?

And just when we thought it couldn’t get worse, David Aufhauser, former General Counsel and Chief Legal Officer of the Department of the Treasury, took the floor. After his presentation – “Transnational Crime – Unholy Allies to Disorder, Terror and Proliferation” – there wasn’t a dry seat in the house (to quote Alfred Hitchcock). This guy speculated about an alliance between Iran, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and Hugo Chavez. Among them, they’ll create nuclear weapons for Venezuela. Terror, psycho crime and jihad will come together for the politically purposeful annihilation of our banks. We must identify nodes in the corruption network and break the circuitry, Aufhauser claimed. If not, we’ll have WMD at our ATMs.

After a few more interventions, Mukasey wrapped it all up as the final speaker. He was talking about “legal perspectives” on economic terror. The Law needs to stay out of the way, he said. “The rules won’t work and the law is inadequate. Criminal law, he said, punishes after the act. We need to take action before the bad guys act. And the only way we can do that is to know what the bad guys are up to by “monitoring” them. Unfortunately, since we don’t know exactly who the bad guys are, we’re going to have to monitor everyone, it seems. And we’re going to ask our “Too Big to Fail” banks to help. So, the NSA, the CIA, Bank of America and Citigroup will work together to protect you and your data.

Why isn’t this a comforting prospect? Perhaps because we are still recovering from the loss of our homes, jobs and pensions that occurred as a consequence of the banks’ last exercise in risk management.

The bullet point from Mukasey was this:

In dealing with new economic threats and circumstances, the law has a strong tendency to get in the way. This is not to disparage the law but, rather, to recognize that new circumstances beg some jettisoning of old principles and the creation of new ones.

Yes, the law does have a tendency to get in the way. Which brings us back to the “Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act.” This smart new law will clear those cumbersome old ones out of the road. It will jettison old principles and create some new ones.

And this prospect is the truly terrifying one. At GAP, where we represent whistleblowers from the NSA, the CIA and the major US banks, we’ve learned that none of these institutions can be allowed to operate with the secrecy, privileged information and latitude they already have. Using their current powers, intelligence agencies are conducting wholesale, illegal surveillance of American citizens while wasting billions in taxpayers’ money on unconstitutional boondoggle projects. For their part, private banks have been leveraging loans to a point where they’re secretly insolvent.

Whistleblowers have shown us, with convincing clarity, that all of these institutions have abused the trust and authority they already have. They’re warning us that we may not want to jettison our constitutional rights in exchange for protection from economic jihad – whatever that is.

 

Bea Edwards is the Executive Director for the Government Accountability Project, the nation’s leading whistleblower protection and advocacy organization.

“Fiscal Cliff” Not Really A Cliff, More of A Steep Slope

Fear not the fiscal cliff!

BRANDYWINE TO BROAD

Jan Ting
brandywinetobroad@whyy.org

 

The so-called “fiscal cliff” is the confluence of three separate legal events on January 1, 2013: expiration of a temporary payroll tax cut, expiration of the so-called “Bush” income and estate tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003, and mandatory spending cuts also known as “sequestration”.

Many commentators are expressing concern that unless Congress intervenes by January 1, the economy will suffer a serious setback. But I don’t think that’s the worst thing that could happen.

First, the expiration of the payroll tax cut is going to happen in any event. The payroll tax was lowered in 2011 and 2012 as a temporary economic stimulus. But there is bi-partisan agreement that the payroll tax should be restored to pre-2011 levels to adequately fund Social Security. No controversy here. Payroll taxes will increase in 2013.

The so-called “Bush tax cuts” of 2001 and 2003 were enacted as temporary responses to the economic recession triggered first by the collapse of the internet bubble and then the September 11 terrorist attacks. The Republican sponsors of those tax cuts agreed that they would expire at the end of 2010. As that deadline approached, and President Obama and congressional Republicans continued to argue over whose taxes should be allowed to go up, the President and his political adversaries agreed to extend the tax cuts for two more years, until the end of 2012.

President Obama campaigned on allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire for households earning $250,000 or more, but extending the tax cuts for households earning less than that amount. Republicans advocate making the tax cuts permanent for all taxpayers regardless of income, and also making permanent the elimination of the federal estate tax on decedent millionaires, which they call the “death tax”. Unless Congress acts, all the Bush tax cuts will expire on December 31, and both income and estate tax rates will be restored to the levels that applied before 2001.

As part of the 2011 agreement to increase the debt ceiling, Congress pledged to cut federal spending by $1.2 trillion over 10 years, with specific cuts to be determined by a joint select deficit-reduction “super committee”. To insure that the cuts would happen, Congress specified that if by the super committee failed to designate sufficient spending cuts, and Congress failed to take any superseding action by December 31, 2012, those $1.2 trillion cuts would happen automatically, spread equally between defense and non-defense spending. These automatic, across-the-board spending cuts have been labeled “sequestration”.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke coined the worrisome phrase “fiscal cliff” to describe the consequences if Congress fails to act by December 31, and the Bush tax cuts all expire, and sequestration spending cuts begin. But that’s not the worst scenario.

The worst scenario would be for Congress to extend all the Bush tax cuts and repeal its commitment to cut federal spending by $1.2 trillion over 10 years. That worst case scenario would mean growth of the federal government’s $1 trillion annual budget deficit would continue to accelerate, and the now $16 trillion national debt would continue to expand in excess of gross domestic product, the total value of all goods and services produced in the U.S.

The political reality is that it’s very difficult for elected officials who want to be re-elected to either cut spending or raise taxes. But cutting spending and raising taxes are both needed to reduce the deficit and slow the growth of the national debt. It is both irresponsible and dangerous for us to burden future generations of Americans with the obligation to pay for our accelerating current spending.

It would be nice if Democrats and Republicans could get together and reach agreement on exactly how to reduce spending and raise taxes. But in the current gridlocked political environment, that seems to be a fantasy.

Anyone who recognizes that should understand that the so-called fiscal cliff is not so bad. Allowing all the Bush tax cuts to expire will raise everyone’s taxes, but only to the levels that applied during President Clinton’s administration when the economy was strong and expanding. Sequestration is a blunt instrument to reduce federal spending, but there does not appear to be a better way. Does anyone seriously doubt that there is tremendous unnecessary spending and waste which can and should be cut from the federal budget?

There’s nothing irrevocable about the fiscal cliff. Congress could act any time before or after January 1, 2013, to fine tune the already mandated spending cuts and tax increases.

Republicans deserve both the credit and the blame for making the Bush tax cuts expire and requiring spending cuts as a condition for increasing the debt ceiling. President Obama should be willing to allow those events to happen if that’s the only way to address our growing deficit and national debt. He will be in a stronger position after January 1, to make a better and fairer deal than he could negotiate this year.

And if he can’t? Bring on the fiscal cliff!

29 Signs That The Elite Are Transforming Society Into A Total Domination Control Grid

Michael Snyder:

The elite want to tightly control almost everything that we do, say and think.  When most people think of “tyranny”, they think of thugs with guns and little dictators running around barking orders at everyone.  But that is not how the elite are accomplishing their goals these days.  They want us to actually believe that we have freedom and that we are choosing our own leaders, but in the background they are exerting “soft power” in a way that is absolutely ruthless.  They fund the political campaigns of our politicians, they own nearly all of the large corporations and financial institutions, they exert very tight control over the media and their agenda is being promoted through the education systems of virtually every nation on the planet.  What the elite are doing is not illegal.  In fact, they use the government and they use the law to accomplish their purposes.  That is one reason why the elite love big government.  For them, it is an instrument of control.  The larger the government is, the easier it is to watch, track, monitor and control the rest of us.  As you read this, a “total domination control grid” is being constructed all around us that is far beyond anything that George Orwell ever dreamed of.  This system is advancing on hundreds of different fronts, and it is getting tighter and more restrictive with each passing day.  We may think that we still have a certain degree of liberty, but if you start doing things that the system does not like, the system has a way of getting you back in line very quickly.  In the end, it is all about control.  There are many among the elite that actually believe that a tightly controlled society that is dominated by government institutions that they control is what is best for humanity.  Many of them honestly believe that society would descend into chaos without a strong hand guiding it.  Many of them truly are convinced that those that are “enlightened” are doing a noble thing by guiding humanity into the “bright future” that the elite are designing for them.  But of course the freedoms and the liberties of the common people must be greatly limited in order to get us to that “bright future”.  We are like cattle that need to be penned in for our own good.  This is how the elite actually think.  I spent many years being educated by them and rubbing shoulders with them.  They should not be trusted.  Once our liberties and freedoms are gone, they will be nearly impossible to get back.  And once the elite have total control, we will be faced with a tyranny unlike anything humanity has ever seen before.

The following are 29 signs that the elite are transforming society into a total domination control grid…

1. A new bill in the U.S. Senate would allow more than 20 different government agencies to read your email without a search warrant.

2. Next generation facial recognition cameras that can identify a person in less than a second and “send authorities all known intelligence about anyone who enters a camera’s field of vision” are being put up in southern California.

3. A highly sophisticated surveillance grid known as “Trapwire” is being installed in major cities and at “high value targets” all over the United States.  Unfortunately, most Americans do not even realize that it exists.

4. Police departments all over America are beginning to deploy unmanned surveillance drones in the skies over their cities.  But don’t think that a drone is not watching you just because you don’t live in a major city.  The truth is that the federal government has been using unmanned surveillance drones to spy on farmers in Iowa and Nebraska.  There could be a drone over your house right now and you might not ever know it.

5. Individual politicians know more about you than they ever have before. The amount of information that the Obama campaign has compiled on potential voters is absolutely frightening…

If you voted this election season, President Obama almost certainly has a file on you. His vast campaign database includes information on voters’ magazine subscriptions, car registrations, housing values and hunting licenses, along with scores estimating how likely they were to cast ballots for his reelection.

6. The UK is often five or ten years ahead of much of the rest of the world in implementing “Big Brother” police state measures.  Over there it is now against the law to insult someone with your speech.  If you say something that is “likely” to insult a Muslim or a homosexual you could end up being dragged in front of a judge.  It is only a matter of time before we see these kinds of laws all over the planet.

7. Could you imagine the government telling you what the temperature inside your own home can be?  A new law in Francewould do exactly that…

Heating a French home could soon require an income tax consultation or even a visit to the doctor under legislation to force conservation in the nation’s $46 billion household energy market.

A bill adopted by the lower house this month would set prices that homes pay based on wages, age and climate. Utilities Electricite de France and GDF Suez will use the data to reward consumers who cut power and natural gas usage and penalize those whom regulators decide are wasteful.

8. Control freak bureaucrats love to tell others how to run their lives.  For example, one man down in Orlando, Florida was recently ordered to rip out the vegetable garden that he was growing in his front yard.  Will we eventually get to the point where even the smallest details of our lives are micromanaged by the government?

9. Most Americans don’t realize this, but the DNA of almost every newborn baby in America is collected and stored by the government.  What plans do they have for all of this DNA?

10. All over America, schools are beginning to require students to carry IDs with RFID microchips in them wherever they go.  Fortunately, some students are fighting back…

The San Antonio sophomore who opposed microchipping student IDs that would track their every movement has inspired a groundswell of 300 students in her huge district who now refuse to wear the identification chips over religious, personal privacy, safety and civil liberties concerns. In addition, some 700 other people have signed petitions opposing the microchipping program.

11. There is more crossover between our education system and our law enforcement system than ever before.  An increasing number of schools in the United States have police officers roaming their hallways, and today there are more than 70,000 children behind bars in America.

12. When you rely on FEMA to take care of you, it can literally feel like you are in prison.  The following is a description of what life is like in one FEMA camp that was set up in New Jersey in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy…

“Sitting there last night you could see your breath,” displaced resident Brian Sotelo told the Asbury Park Press. “At (Pine Belt) the Red Cross made an announcement that they were sending us to permanent structures up here that had just been redone, that had washing machines and hot showers and steady electric, and they sent us to tent city. We got (expletived).”

Sotelo said Blackhawk helicopters patrol the skies “all day and night” and a black car with tinted windows surveys the camp while the government moves heavy equipment past the tents at night. According to the story, reporters aren’t even allowed in the fenced complex, where lines of displaced residents form outside portable toilets. Security guards are posted at every door, and residents can’t even use the toilet or shower without first presenting I.D.

“They treat us like we’re prisoners,” Ashley Sabol told Reuters. “It’s bad to say, but we honestly feel like we’re in a concentration camp.”

13. Your cell phone collects information about you wherever you go, and law enforcement authorities in the United States requested that cell phone data be turned over to them more than a million times in 2011 alone.

14. The federal government has created an iPhone app that is designed to encourage all of us to take photos of “suspicious activity” and report our neighbors to the authorities.

15. The U.S. government is increasingly using spyware to monitor the behavior of their employees while they are at work.

16. According to three NSA whistleblowers, the agency “has the capability to do individualized searches, similar to Google, for particular electronic communications in real time through such criteria as target addresses, locations, countries and phone numbers, as well as watch-listed names, keywords, and phrases in email.”

17. Private corporations are gathering every shred of information about you that they possible can. One of the largest companies involved in “mining our data” is known as Acxiom.  It turns out that Acxiom has compiled information on more than 190 million people in the United States alone…

The company fits into a category called database marketing. It started in 1969 as an outfit called Demographics Inc., using phone books and other notably low-tech tools, as well as one computer, to amass information on voters and consumers for direct marketing. Almost 40 years later, Acxiom has detailed entries for more than 190 million people and 126 million households in the U.S., and about 500 million active consumers worldwide. More than 23,000 servers in Conway, just north of Little Rock, collect and analyze more than 50 trillion data ‘transactions’ a year.

18. We are being trained to give up our privacy and our dignity in the name of “security”.  For example, what the TSA did recently to one woman who was dying of leukemia was absoutely shameful…

A dying woman says a a security pat-down at Sea-Tac Airport left her embarrassed in front of crowds of people.

Michelle Dunaj says screeners checked under bandages from recent surgeries and refused to give her a private search when she requested one.

19. According to one recent survey, nearly one-third of all Americans would be willing to submit to a “TSA body cavity search” in order to fly.

20. Law enforcement authorities all over the United States will soon be driving around in unmarked vehicles looking inside your cars and even under your clothes using the same backscatter technology currently being used by the TSA at U.S. airports…

American cops are set to join the US military in deploying American Science & Engineering’s Z Backscatter Vans, or mobile backscatter radiation x-rays. These are what TSA officials call “the amazing radioactive genital viewer,” now seen in airports around America, ionizing the private parts of children, the elderly, and you (yes you).

These pornoscannerwagons will look like regular anonymous vans, and will cruise America’s streets, indiscriminately peering through the cars (and clothes) of anyone in range of its mighty isotope-cannon. But don’t worry, it’s not a violation of privacy. As AS&E’s vice president of marketing Joe Reiss sez, “From a privacy standpoint, I’m hard-pressed to see what the concern or objection could be.”

21. A company known as BRS Labs has developed “pre-crime surveillance cameras” that supposedly can identify criminal activity before it happens.  These cameras are being installed at major transportation hubs all over San Francisco.

22. According to Gizmodo, the Department of Homeland Security will soon be using laser-based scanners that can scan your body, your clothes and your luggage from 164 feet away…

Within the next year or two, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will instantly know everything about your body, clothes, and luggage with a new laser-based molecular scanner fired from 164 feet (50 meters) away. From traces of drugs or gun powder on your clothes to what you had for breakfast to the adrenaline level in your body—agents will be able to get any information they want without even touching you.

And without you knowing it.

The technology is so incredibly effective that, in November 2011, its inventors were subcontracted by In-Q-Tel to work with the US Department of Homeland Security. In-Q-Tel is a company founded “in February 1999 by a group of private citizens at the request of the Director of the CIA and with the support of the U.S. Congress.” According to In-Q-Tel, they are the bridge between the Agency and new technology companies.

Their plan is to install this molecular-level scanning in airports and border crossings all across the United States.

23. A complex network of automated license plate readers carefully track the movements of millions of vehicles as they move in and out of Washington D.C. and the surrounding suburbs.  Most people do not even know that they are there.

24. The FBI is spending a billion dollars to develop a biometric identification system that will reportedly be far more sophisticated than anything that law enforcement in the United States has ever had before….

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation has begun rolling out its new $1 billion biometric Next Generation Identification (NGI) system. In essence, NGI is a nationwide database of mugshots, iris scans, DNA records, voice samples, and other biometrics, that will help the FBI identify and catch criminals — but it is how this biometric data is captured, through a nationwide network of cameras and photo databases, that is raising the eyebrows of privacy advocates.

Until now, the FBI relied on IAFIS, a national fingerprint database that has long been due an overhaul. Over the last few months, the FBI has been pilot testing a facial recognition system — and soon, detectives will also be able to search the system for other biometrics such as DNA records and iris scans.

25. If the government decides that you are a “bad guy”, they can put you on a “no fly list” that will ban you from flying indefinitely.  This can be done to you at any time, without any notice, and you won’t be told that it has happened.  In fact, as one prepper discovered recently, you might only find out that you are on the list when you try to board a flight.

26. Those that revere individual liberty are now being labeled as “potential terrorists” in official U.S. government documents.

27. A National Guard whistleblower recently revealed that members of his unit were told that “doomsday preppers” will be treated as “terrorists” when civil unrest breaks out.

28. One family in Idaho recently had their home raided by a SWAT team because a computer identified them as “constitutionalists” after someone had phoned in and complained about a domestic disturbance at their address.

29. Today, the mainstream media in the United States is totally dominated by just six giant corporations.  Those corporations own television networks, cable channels, movie studios, newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, music labels and large numbers of popular websites.  The way that almost every American looks at the world is being constantly influenced by these media corporations every single day.

Please share this list with as many people as you can.  We desperately need to wake people up while there is still time.

Written By Michael Snyder

Michael has an undergraduate degree in Commerce from the University of Virginia and a law degree from the University of Florida law school.   He also has an LLM from the University of Florida law school. Michael has worked for some of the largest law firms in Washington D.C., but now is mostly focused on trying to make a difference in the world.

 

European Anti-Austerity Protesters Learning To Coordinate Across EU Borders

Strikes, protests hit much of European Union

AP

Workers around the European Union sought to unite in a string of strikes and demonstrations on Wednesday. (AP Photo)

BRUSSELS: With rampant unemploymentspreading misery in southern Europe and companies shutting factories across the continent, workers around the European Unionsought to unite in a string of strikes and demonstrations on Wednesday.

Most European governments have in recent years had to cut spending, pensions and benefits and raise taxes aggressively to bring public debt under control. That includes not only the most financially troubled governments, like Greece, but also the traditionally more stable ones, like France and Britain.

The result has been a dramatic drop in living standards in many nations that leaders have accepted as collateral for policies they claim are unavoidable. With no end in sight to the economic misery, workers were trying to take a stand on Wednesday.

“Of course it’s a political strike, against the policies of a suicidal and anti-social government,” said Igancio Fernandez Toxo, a CCOO Spanish union leader, as the general strike spread through Spain where a 25 percent unemployment rate has put the country at the heart of theEU social unrest.

A Spanish Interior Ministry official says 32 people have been arrested and 15 people treated for minor injuries in disturbances.

Spain’s General Workers’ Union said the nationwide stoppage, the second this year, was being observed by nearly all workers in the automobile, energy, shipbuilding and constructions industries. The government downplayed the impact.

A north-south divide emerged in the participation to the strikes, with unions in wealthier states like the Netherlands and the Nordic nations, where the crisis has not hit that hard, not in the mood for closing down their countries.

Belgium straddles that divide but a 24-hour rail stoppage and scattered strikes through the south of the nation disrupted daily life. Both the Thalys and Eurostar high-speed rail services that connect Brussels with London and Paris were severely disrupted.

“Austerity means cuts in the public services and public companies and also cuts in the buying power for the working class,” said Belgian socialist union leader Filip Peers. “Austerity means recession and it deepens the crisis.”

From his headquarters nearby, the chief of the EU employers’ federation took a different view.

“If you start striking at national level and in companies you only will harm the economy,” said Eurobussiness leader Philippe de Buck in an interview. “And it is not the right thing to do today.”

“It costs billions” of euros, he said, adding that Europe’s reputation as a hotbed of trade union action would not attract global investors.

Europe has been a global trailblazer for union action and workers’ rights over the past half century have been one of the cornerstones of the continent’s vaunted welfare state, with its guaranteed medical care, unemployment benefits and often generous pensions.

Where this was not directly under threat on Wednesday, labor action was more muted.

“So far, there are only symbolic demonstrations here in Germany, because we were able to avoid the crisis,” said Michael Sommer, the head of Germany’s main labor union federation.

In Denmark, too, there were no strikes, since cooperation between workers and employers have largely survived the crisis so far.

“The employers speak the same language as we do and we understand each other’s’ needs and demands,” said Joergen Frederiksen, a 69-year-old retired worker and a former shop steward. “There are good vibes between us and that means a lot.”

Is Obama Using “Fiscal Cliff” Imagery To Shakedown Republicans Over Bush Tax Cuts?

Romney camp slams Obama over ‘fiscal cliff’ veto threat, lack of contact with Boehner

FoxNews.com

The White House confirmed Thursday that President Obama is prepared to veto legislation that would skirt the so-called “fiscal cliff” — a battery of tax hikes and spending cuts — unless Republicans consent to raise taxes on top earners.

The move drew renewed accusations from rival Mitt Romney that the president has chosen to “simply ignore” Republicans on the Hill instead of dealing with the problem. According to one account, Obama hasn’t so much as spoken with House Speaker John Boehner since July.

The fresh reports have suddenly woven the “fiscal cliff” emergency back into the campaign debate in the closing weeks of the race. Congress is preparing to take up the issue in the post-election, lame-duck session, but with lawmakers on recess and the president on the campaign trail little is expected to be accomplished until then.

Romney’s campaign on Thursday blamed the president for the inaction.

“His approach would let our economy sink into recession for the sake of pursuing job-killing tax increases. Rather than work in a bipartisan manner as the ‘fiscal cliff’ approaches, President Obama prefers to issue veto threats and simply ignore the other party. We can’t afford four more years of this failed leadership,” Romney spokesman Ryan Williams said in a statement. “When Mitt Romney is president, he [will] work with members of both parties to cut spending, restore our AAA credit rating and get our economy growing again.”

The double-blow of tax hikes and spending cuts is scheduled to hit starting in January. It includes the expiration of the Bush-era tax rates, along with defense and other cuts set into place by lawmakers’ failure to reach a deficit-reduction deal in the wake of the 2011 fight over raising the debt ceiling.

The White House on Thursday confirmed an earlier Washington Post story that Obama is prepared to turn down any bill that would avoid the “cliff” without raising tax rates on top earners. Press Secretary Jay Carney described that threat as nothing new.

“The president has long made clear that he will veto an extension of tax cuts for the top 2 percent of wealthiest Americans,” Carney said. “That has been his position, as you know, for a very long time. If there is concern about what we can do right now to address the so-called fiscal cliff, the House ought to follow the Senate and pass the extension of tax cuts for 98 percent of the American people.”

Carney went on to put the onus on Congress to bridge the differences in Washington, particularly when asked about a Politico report that Boehner has not spoken with Obama in four months.

“The president has put forward very clear plans on how to address our fiscal challenges,” Carney said. “That approach enjoys a broad consensus in Washington and the country. The one obstacle is the adamant refusal of Republicans in the House to accept the principle that there should be balance.”

Asked Thursday whether Obama would veto legislation that excludes those higher taxes win or lose, Carney did not say — though he voiced confidence in the president’s chances: “First of all, he’s not going to lose the election.”

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have voiced frustration, though, with the lack of progress on avoiding the fiscal emergency that by some accounts could plunge the country back into recession.

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., speaking at the Bipartisan Policy Center on Thursday, said “this shouldn’t be this hard.”

“It’s almost un-American to think that we couldn’t get this done,” he said, adding that he remains “very optimistic.”

The heads of the nation’s largest banks and financial firms on Thursday also renewed their call for Congress and the president to strike a deal.

“At a time when economic growth is less than 2 percent, and with nearly 25 million Americans either out of work or underemployed, the still-fragile U.S. economy cannot sustain — and the American people do not deserve — the impact of more gridlock in Washington,” the members of the Financial Services Forum wrote. “We urge (policymakers) to negotiate a bipartisan agreement as quickly as possible to prevent us from going over the fiscal cliff so that we can avoid the damage to the economy and the markets that inaction will cause.”

 

Unresolved EU/US Fiscal Crisis Is Major Impediment To Forging Closer Ties with Asia

Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao reviews an honor guard during a welcoming ceremony at Wattay airport before the 9th Asia-Europe summit in Vientiane, Laos on Nov. 4, 2012

European Crisis Seen Hindering Closer Trade Ties With Asia

By Daniel Ten Kate

European and Asian leaders will this week discuss a stalled trade agenda between the world’s fastest and slowest-growing regions, as the debt crisis undermines expansion of commercial ties.

Europe’s economic woes may exacerbate protectionist tendencies that make it harder to expand trade with its biggest commerce partner at a time when the U.S. and Australia are forging new agreements, according to Fredrik Erixon, head of the European Centre for International Political Economy in Brussels. Apart from a trade deal with South Korea, the 27-member European Union has seen talks lag with China, Japan, India and Southeast Asian countries since 2007.

“Europe needs to improve its policy toward the entire Asian region in order to take up a greater part of Asia’s economic expansion, but we’re not really seeing it,” he said by phone. “The train is about to leave the station and Europe certainly isn’t on it.”

Europe’s leaders face pressure to boost ties with Asia after U.S. President Barack Obama declared a pivot to the region and Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard unveiled a strategy last week to make her country “a winner in the Asian century.” At stake is safeguarding links that European economies are increasingly counting on, with the 19 Asian nations participating in a summit starting in Laos today accounting for 38 percent of the EU’s total trade last year, up from 30 percent a decade ago.

Euro-Area Slowdown

The International Monetary Fund expects the euro area’s economy to contract 0.4 percent this year, while China is forecast to grow 7.8 percent and the U.S. may expand 2.2 percent. Trade growth between the EU and Asian countries attending this week’s meetings slowed to 6 percent through the first six months of 2012 from a pace of 8 percent last year, according to the bloc’s data.

Asia’s exports to the EU will drop “quite significantly” in the near term as countries deleverage, Changyong Rhee, the Asian Development Bank’s chief economist, said by phone. Closer policy coordination is needed between leaders from the two regions to ensure a global recovery, he said.

“The U.S., Canada and Australia are more aggressive in Asia than Europe,” Rhee said. “The EU may be slow because you have to harmonize all countries together to have a free trade agreement, but once you have one FTA between the EU and another country it’s actually 27 FTAs.”

Trade Talks Stall

The EU suspended trade talks in 2009 with the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, a bloc with about 600 million people, and is now negotiating separate agreements with individual countries such as Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam. Similar talks with India that kicked off in 2007 are stalled.

During a visit to Brussels two months ago, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao urged the EU to “exercise restraint in resorting to trade-remedy measures.” The EU was the biggest market for Chinese exports last year, according to Chinese data, while China is the bloc’s No. 2 commercial partner, after the U.S.

Earlier in September, the EU started a probe into whether Chinese makers of solar panels sell them below cost, the largest European trade dispute of its kind covering 21 billion euros ($27 billion) of imports. China faces more EU anti-dumping duties than any other country, covering about 1 percent of its exports to the bloc.

China’s official news agency Xinhua published an editorial two weeks ago that criticized protectionist rhetoric in Europe. It singled out French Industry Minister Arnaud Montebourg, who has urged consumers to spurn cheaper imports and buy goods “Made in France.”

‘Contemptible Trick’

“Amid an irreversible momentum towards globalization, trade protectionism is nothing but a contemptible trick and cannot help France revive its sluggish economy,” Xinhua said.

Wen is scheduled to attend the Asia-Europe Meeting in Laos along with about 30 other heads of government and state, including Gillard, French President Francois Hollande, Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and Japanese Prime MinisterYoshihiko Noda. Germany, Spain and the U.K. are sending foreign ministers, while Greece will be represented by its ambassador in Vientiane.

Norway’s sovereign wealth fund has invested $80 billion in Asian equities and bonds, Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg told leaders at the summit today.

“Our ships are built in this region and more and more business is in Asia,” he said. “Today this region is a driving force in the global economy.”

Japan is ready to start free-trade negotiations with the EU if it can get a mandate from member states, a Japanese official told reporters last week on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. Noda will meet with EU President Herman Van Rompuy and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso in Laos.

‘Staggering’ Rise

Noda also wants to improve ties with China and South Korea after territorial spats increased tensions in recent months, Kyodo reported, citing comments he gave before leaving Tokyo. No formal talks are scheduled between the leaders, it said.

Gillard last week called for Australia to do more to take advantage of Asia’s economic boom. She aims to boost trade with the region to at least a third of gross domestic product by 2025, compared with a quarter today.

“The scale and pace of Asia’s rise is staggering,” Gillard said in a report. “There are significant opportunities and challenges for all Australians.”

Yuan Use Increases

Obama’s top trade priority has been the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an agreement involving nine Asia-Pacific countries that will undergo its 15th negotiation round next month. Canada and Mexico are preparing to join, while Japan may also sign up.

The slowdown in developed economies has prompted China in recent years to increase trade ties with Asia, the Middle East and Africa, Lim Cheng Teck, who heads China operations for London-based Standard Chartered Plc, said in Bangkok last week. The bank expects use of theyuan in international trade settlement to triple within three years to $1.03 trillion, he said.

“For Europe we believe it’s kind of a structural challenge that will not be so quickly solved,” Lim said. “China is kind of saying ‘OK, let’s turn to other markets.’”

To contact the reporter on this story: Daniel Ten Kate in Bangkok at dtenkate@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Stephanie Phang at sphang@bloomberg.net

 

Nearing the Fiscal Cliff: How Election-Year Inaction Could Affect the U.S. Economy

[SEE: Significant recession imminent if Congress doesn’t act on fiscal cliff: CBO report] Brian Low Financial Group In February, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke coined the phrase “fiscal cliff” to warn Congress about the potentially harmful combination of nearly $600 billion in federal tax increases and spending cuts that are scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2013, unless lawmakers address the deficit, taxes, and government spending. Economists and government officials have expressed concern that failing to prevent such severe fiscal tightening at the start of the year could cause a recession.1 The Congressional Budget Office projected that if no action is taken, U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) growth could fall 0.5% (year-over-year) by the fourth quarter of 2013, and unemployment could rise to 9.1%.2 With the national election looming, politicians have largely avoided controversial decisions related to taxes, government spending, and the national debt. However, legislative deadlines may prompt the president and Congress to address a number of important financial issues soon after the election and possibly before the end of 2012. A Bigger Tax Burden Many of the tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 — including rates on regular income, capital gains, dividends, and estates — are scheduled to expire on December 31, 2012, and revert to their previously higher levels. The 2% payroll tax reduction for workers, enacted as a temporary stimulus, is also set to expire at the end of the year. The expiring tax provisions could cause the federal tax bill of the average middle-income household (earning $50,000 annually) to rise by about $1,750, and higher-earning families could owe thousands more in total federal taxes.3 Federal Budget Cuts The Budget Control Act of 2011 mandated $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction spread over nine years (2013–2021), divided evenly between defense and nondefense programs. About $109 billion in automatic budget cuts are scheduled to go into effect on January 1, 2013 ($54.7 billion a year from U.S. defense spending). Pay for military service members and Social Security and Medicare benefits are exempt.4 The blunt cuts were meant to be indiscriminate and painful for both political parties in order to motivate lawmakers to replace them with a more targeted deficit-reduction package. To date, there has been much discussion but little agreement on how to accomplish such a feat.5 Debt Disputes The national debt is also projected to reach its legal limit (the “debt ceiling”) sometime around the end of 2012. Congress must pass legislation to raise the limit, which initiated heated negotiations in the summer of 2011. Standard & Poor’s was the first ratings agency to downgrade the U.S. credit rating after a debt-ceiling standoff that threatened the U.S. Treasury’s ability to make payments to debt holders.6 Moody’s Investors Service, which changed its outlook on U.S. government debt to “negative” last year after Congress and the White House finally agreed to an increase in the debt ceiling, has warned that it could lower the U.S. AAA credit rating next year if lawmakers fail to craft a long-term debt-reduction plan.7 Deadline-Driven Decisions? After the November election, sitting lawmakers may have only six or seven weeks to work through a number of complicated tax issues and funding initiatives. Of course, it’s possible that Congress may temporarily extend the current tax provisions and/or delay planned spending cuts until more comprehensive legislation can be enacted. Even so, the resulting uncertainty may make it difficult for individuals and businesses to move forward on major purchases or investments. Leaving critical issues unresolved for too long could also weaken the U.S. economy, especially if political gridlock continues well into next year. Because the balance of power in Washington, D.C., could have a major influence on fiscal policies that affect Americans for years to come, the stakes are high for the November election. Contentious disputes or headline surprises may cause an increase in market volatility. As an investor and taxpayer, you may want to monitor how the U.S. political situation and fiscal decisions unfold in the coming months. Maintaining a steady course could help you weather market changes. Keep in mind that it is important to make investment decisions based on your time horizon, risk tolerance, long-term goals, and personal circumstances. 1) Reuters, September 19, 2012 2) Congressional Budget Office, 2012 3) The New York Times, April 13, 2012 4–5) The Wall Street Journal, September 14, 2012 6–7) CNNMoney, September 12, 2012 The information in this article is not intended as tax or legal advice, and it may not be relied on for the purpose of avoiding any federal tax penalties. You are encouraged to seek tax or legal advice from an independent professional advisor. The content is derived from sources believed to be accurate. Neither the information presented nor any opinion expressed constitutes a solicitation for the purchase or sale of any security. This material was written and prepared by Emerald. Copyright © 2012 Emerald Connect, Inc.

Brian Low Financial

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January 1, 2013, the Debt Bomb Explodes In Our Faces–Mandatory Massive Budget Cuts and Tax Increases

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U.S. fiscal cliff, Europe’s debt woes worry G20

 

By Krista Hughes and Julien Toyer

MEXICO CITY

(Reuters) – Leading world economies pressed the United States on Sunday to act decisively to avert a rush of spending cuts and tax hikes, warning that the so-called fiscal cliff is the biggest short-term threat to global growth.

Unless a fractious Congress can move swiftly to reach a deal after the U.S. elections on Tuesday, about $600 billion in government spending cuts and higher taxes are set to kick in from January 1 and could push the U.S. economy back into recession.

“If the United States fails to resolve the fiscal cliff it would hit the U.S. economy hard as well as the world and the Japanese economy, so each G20 country will urge the United States to firmly deal with it,” Bank of Japan Governor Masaaki Shirakawa said before a meeting of Group of 20 finance ministers and central bankers.

With a close U.S. presidential vote looming on Tuesday, as well as Congressional elections, there has been a delay in action to avert the fiscal cliff and there is uncertainty about whether Congress can reach a deal.

European delegates at the G20 meeting in Mexico City were particularly keen for details on the U.S. plan, according to those present at preparatory talks.

Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said that in terms of short-term risks to the global economic outlook, the U.S. fiscal cliff outweighed Europe’s debt crisis.

“They may not deal with it until the 11th hour and the 55th minute but I expect that they’ll do it just as they dealt with their banks in 2008,” he told reporters.

South Korean Finance Minister Bahk Jae-wan forecast the global economy could suffer during the first quarter of 2013 because of uncertainty about the fiscal cliff.

Nonetheless, he too was counting on Congress being able to find some kind of fix, telling Reuters: “I think compared to the euro zone crisis the fiscal cliff issue is much easier to solve.”

The euro crisis, which erupted more than two years ago, has eased after the European Central Bank said in September it was ready to buy more government debt. But investors are edgy about when or whether Spain will request an international bailout and how Greece’s deep financial problems can be fixed.

A draft communique being readied for the G20 policymakers said there were elevated risks facing the global economy, including Europe’s crisis and potential problems in Japan.

“Global growth remains modest and risks remain elevated, including due to possible delays in the complex implementation of recent policy announcements in Europe, a potential sharp fiscal tightening in the United States and Japan, weaker growth in some emerging markets and additional supply shocks in some commodity markets,” the draft said, according to a G20 source.

The final communique will be published once talks end on Monday.

G20 officials said t he word ing on Europe referred to differences a mong E uropea n governments over how to build a banking union, considered an important way to bolster the bl oc’s shaky f inancial system, during 2013. France, Spain and Italy have been frustrated with German demands for the new scheme.

Few expect major agreements in Mexico with heavyweights such as U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner – expected to stand down after the U.S. elections – European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi and top Chinese officials skipping the meeting.

GERMANY PRESSES ON DEBTS, DEFICITS

In a move that could revive tensions with the United States, Germany was pressing other countries on Sunday for new commitments on deficit and debt reduction targets beyond 2016.

Germany, the euro zone’s biggest economy which has faced criticism for its insistence on belt-tightening to restore confidence in the world economy, came to the meeting saying the United States and Japan shared as much responsibility as Europe for ensuring global economic stability.

“I think the focus is now increasingly balanced, on both the U.S. and EU,” a euro zone official said. “The difference being that there is recognition of and support for the EU efforts, while it is less clear how exactly the U.S. should address its issue.”

Most of the pressure on the United States to explain how the fiscal cliff can be avoided came from the European Commission, the executive body of the European Union, and from Germany, a senior G20 official said.

Policymakers are scrambling to stem a new slowdown in a global economy still limping after the 2008-09 financial crisis.

The G20′s consensus of four years ago, which helped stave off the risk of a new depression, has given way to deep differences over issues such as spending to boost growth and the right pace of belt-tightening to tackle high debt levels.

“It won’t be a straight choice between growth or fiscal rebuilding, such a debate has dangerous aspects,” an official from one G20 country said.

Another official said the G20 would resolve the differences by focusing more on structural reforms and on fixed targets for cutting deficits in heavily indebted countries, independently of the pace of economic growth. That would allow countries such as Spain or Greece to meet their targets this year and next despite deeper than expected recessions.

The International Monetary Fund last month cut its forecast for global growth to 3.6 percent for 2013, citing “familiar” forces dragging on advanced economies: fiscal consolidation and a weak financial system.

Officials are concerned about Japan’s own version of the fiscal cliff, a potentially crippling funding shortfall just as it risks sliding into recession.

U.S. and European officials are likely to come under pressure from G20 peers for dragging their feet on implementing the so-called Basel III accords. They would require banks to set aside more capital – potentially hurting profits – which is one of the key global responses to the financial crisis.

Countries which fail to introduce the rules could be punished, a Mexican finance official said

(Additional reporting G20 team in Mexico City; Writing by Simon Gardner; Editing by Kieran Murray and Chizu Nomiyama)

Racketeering and Money Laundering Lawsuit, Seeking Return of $43 Trillion to the United States Treasury

Major Banks, Governmental Officials and Their Comrade Capitalists Targets of Spire Law Group, LLP’s

NEW YORK, Oct. 25, 2012 /PRNewswire/ — Spire Law Group, LLP’s national home owners’ lawsuit, pending in the venue where the “Banksters” control their $43 trillion racketeering scheme (New York) – known as the largest money laundering and racketeering lawsuit in United States History and identifying $43 trillion ($43,000,000,000,000.00) of laundered money by the “Banksters” and their U.S. racketeering partners and joint venturers – now pinpoints the identities of the key racketeering partners of the “Banksters” located in the highest offices of government and acting for their own self-interests.

In connection with the federal lawsuit now impending in the United States District Court in Brooklyn, New York (Case No. 12-cv-04269-JBW-RML) – involving, among other things, a request that the District Court enjoin all mortgage foreclosures by the Banksters nationwide, unless and until the entire $43 trillion is repaid to a court-appointed receiver – Plaintiffs  now establish the location of the $43 trillion ($43,000,000,000,000.00) of laundered money in a racketeering enterprise participated in by the following individuals (without limitation):  Attorney General Holder acting in his individual capacity, Assistant Attorney General Tony West, the brother in law of Defendant California Attorney General Kamala Harris (both acting in their individual capacities), Jon Corzine (former New Jersey Governor), Robert Rubin (former Treasury Secretary and Bankster), Timothy Geitner, Treasury Secretary (acting in his individual capacity), Vikram Pandit (recently resigned and disgraced Chairman of the Board of Citigroup), Valerie Jarrett (a Senior White House Advisor), Anita Dunn (a former “communications director” for the Obama Administration), Robert Bauer (husband of Anita Dunn and Chief Legal Counsel for the Obama Re-election Campaign), as well as the “Banksters” themselves, and their affiliates and conduits.  The lawsuit alleges serial violations of the United States Patriot Act, the Policy of Embargo Against Iran and Countries Hostile to the Foreign Policy of the United States, and the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (commonly known as the RICO statute) and other State and Federal laws.

In the District Court lawsuit, Spire Law Group, LLP — on behalf of home owner across the Country and New York taxpayers, as well as under other taxpayer recompense laws — has expanded its mass tort action into federal court inBrooklyn, New York, seeking to halt all foreclosures nationwide pending the return of the $43 trillion ($43,000,000,000.00) by the “Banksters” and their co-conspirators, seeking an audit of the Fed and audits of all the “bailout programs” by an independent receiver such as Neil Barofsky, former Inspector General of the TARP program who has stated that none of the TARP money and other “bailout money” advanced from the Treasury has ever been repaid despite protestations to the contrary by the Defendants as well as similar protestations by President Obama and the Obama Administration both publicly on national television and more privately to the United States Congress.   Because the Obama Administration has failed to pursue any of the “Banksters” criminally, and indeed is actively borrowing monies for Mr. Obama’s campaign from these same “Banksters” to finance its political aspirations, the national group of plaintiff home owners has been forced to now expand its lawsuit to include racketeering, money laundering and intentional violations of the Iranian Nations Sanctions and Embargo Act by the national banks included among the “Bankster” Defendants.

The complaint – which has now been fully served on thousands of the “Banksters and their Co-Conspirators” – makes it irrefutable that the epicenter of this laundering and racketeering enterprise has been and continues to be Wall Street and continues to involve the very “Banksters” located there who have repeatedly asked in the past to be “bailed out” and to be “bailed out” in the future.

The Havens for the money laundering schemes – and certain of the names and places of these entities – are located in such venues as Switzerland, the Isle of Man, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Cypress and entities controlled by governments adverse to the interests of the United States Sanctions and Embargo Act against Iran, and are also identified in both the United Nations and the U.S. Senate’s recent reports on international money laundering.  Many of these entities have already been personally served with summons and process of the complaint during the last six months.   It is now beyond dispute that, while the Obama Administration was publicly encouraging loan modifications for home owners by “Banksters”, it was privately ratifying the formation of these shell companies in violation of the United States Patriot Act, and State and Federal law. The case further alleges that through these obscure foreign companies, Bank of America, J.P. Morgan, Wells Fargo Bank, Citibank, Citigroup, One West Bank, and numerous other federally chartered banks stole trillions of dollars of home owners’ and taxpayers’ money during the last decade and then laundered it through offshore companies.

This District Court Complaint – maintained by Spire Law Group, LLP — is the only lawsuit in the world listing as Defendants the Banksters, let alone serving all of such Banksters with legal process and therefore forcing them to finally answer the charges in court.  Neither the Securities and Exchange Commission, nor the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, nor the Office of the Attorney General, nor any State Attorney General has sued the Banksters and thereby legally chased them worldwide to recover-back the $43 trillion ($43,000,000,000,000.00) and other lawful damages, injunctive relief and other legal remedies.

James N. Fiedler, Managing Partner of Spire Law Group, LLP, stated:  “It is hard for me to believe as a 47-year lawyer that our nation’s guardians have been unwilling to stop this theft.  Spire Law Group, LLP stands for the elimination of corruption and implementation of lawful strategies, and that is what we’re doing here.  Spire Law Group, LLP’s charter is to not allow such corruption to go unanswered.”

Comments were requested from the Attorney Generals’ offices in NY, CA, NV, NH , OH, MA and the White House, but no comment was provided.

About Spire Law Group

 

Spire Law Group, LLP is a national law firm whose motto is “the public should be protected — at all costs — from corruption in whatever form it presents itself.” The Firm is comprised of lawyers nationally with more than 250-years of experience in a span of matters ranging from representing large corporations and wealthy individuals, to also representing the masses. The Firm is at the front lines litigating against government officials, banks, defunct loan pools, and now the very offshore entities where the corruption was enabled and perpetrated.

Contact:
James N. Fiedler
877-438-8766
http://spire-law.com

SOURCE Spire Law Group, LLP

RELATED LINKS
http://spire-law.com

PR Newswire (http://s.tt/1r0wJ)

Profile of a Police State

WarIsACrime.org

By Stephen Lendman

 

For years, America has been on a fast track to tyranny. Duopoly power runs things repressively. Government of, by, and for the people never existed and doesn’t now.

 

Homeland repression is policy. Police state laws target resisters. Elections are farcical, rigged, and illegitimate. People have no say. Corporate controlled electronic voting machines decide for them.

Money power is firmly in charge. Democracy is illusory, not real.

 

Corporate/party boss-run Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) members exclude alternative voices. Money power operates secretly with no public oversight. A sham process repeats each electoral cycle.

 

Alternative party presidential candidates risk arrest for showing up to watch debates. Participation is out of the question.

 

On October 16, Green Party presidential and vice presidential candidates learned firsthand. Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala were arrested, detained, and held handcuffed uncomfortably to metal chairs in a remote police warehouse for hours.

 

They were charged with “obstructing traffic.” None at the time was visible. That’s how tyranny works. Challenging authority risks prison or worse. Many are tortured and abused. Some end up dead.

 

Obama appointed himself judge, jury and executioner. He decides who lives or dies. Romney won’t change a thing. No matter who wins, expect police state America to be more repressive than ever post-election.

 

If presidential challengers can be arrested and abused, what chance have ordinary people. Step out of line and expect the worst. Stein learned firsthand a second time. Herweb site explained.

 

She supports activists opposing the environmentally destructive Keystone XL (KXL) project. More about it below.

 

In east Texas, she was arrested and handcuffed for bringing food, Halloween candy, and supplies. She was detained in Wood County jail. Authorities charged her with criminal trespassing. She and others were involved.

 

“They were not warned of imminent arrests; and the arresting officers did not self-identify as police.” Stein said she’s willing to face arrest in support of blocking KXL.

 

It’s a controversial 1,661-mile Alberta, Canada to Port Arthur, TX pipeline. Earlier, hundreds of environmental activists protested in front of the White House against it.

 

If completed, it’ll carry toxic tar sands oil from Western Canada to refineries on America’s Gulf coast. It’ll pass through environmentally sensitive areas in six states.

 

They include waterways and the Ogallala Aquifer. It’s one of the world’s largest. In America, it supplies about 30% of the nation’s irrigation ground water. It’s also used for human consumption.

 

Friends of the Earth says Keystone XL “will carry one of the world’s dirtiest fuels: tar sands oil.” Moreover, its route “could devastate ecosystems and pollute water sources, and would jeopardize public health.”

 

If completed, it’ll double America’s dirty tar sands oil supply. At the same time, environmental toxicity will increase exponentially. No matter the stakes, Big Oil wants it. So do Republicans and many Democrats. Obama once again conceded.

 

TransCanada Corporation is building it. It’s spill-prone construction record assures trouble. It promised its Keystone I pipeline would leak once every seven years. In year one, it leaked 12 times or once a month on average. It was unprecedented in US pipeline history.

 

TarSandsBlockade.org asks “Why Oppose KXL?”

 

For many reasons, it states. NASA scientist James Hansen calls it “a fuse to the largest carbon bomb on the planet.”

 

All pipelines spill. Avoidance is impossible. Large-scale environmental damage is too great a price to pay. TransCanada said up to 700,000 gallons of tar sands crude could leak without detection. In other words, safeguards are weak and ineffective.

 

Pipeline construction abuses eminent domain. TransCanada “intimidated landowners” along its route to contractually accede to its demands. In addition, the company “fraudulently steals land from private citizens through eminent domain.”

 

Water contamination is certain. The Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer (CWA) is threatened. In March 2011, water resources & environmental engineer/consultant Lawrence Dunbarsaid CWA spillage would be environmentally disastrous. Human and natural resources would be impacted.

 

Release of enough tar sands contaminants would make affected water resources unfit for human consumption. CWA “is one of the greatest assets of the East-Central region of Texas. It provides water for agriculture, industry, and human consumption and use.”

 

It’s far too valuable to contaminate. KXL assures it. Remediation would be hard to impossible to achieve.

 

According to Cornell University’s Global Labor Institute, KXL will also destroy more jobs than it creates. Its September 2011 “Pipe Dreams?” report said job creation claims lack credibility.

 

At best up to 4,650 temporary ones will be created. In two years or less they’ll be gone. “KXL will not be a major source of US jobs, nor will it play any substantial role at all in putting Americans back to work.”

 

Moreover, diverting tar sands oil “now supplying Midwest refineries, so it can be sold at higher prices to the Gulf Coast and export markets (means) Midwest (consumers) could be paying 10 to 20 cents more per gallon for gasoline and diesel fuel.”

 

Doing so will adversely impact other spending and cost jobs. KXL will also have “a chilling effect on green investments and green jobs creation.”

 

Thus far, green economic spending generated “2.7 million jobs in the US and could generate many more.”

 

In addition, “Tar Sands oil and energy independence really do not belong in the same sentence.”

 

Cornell, the Natural Resources Defense Council and other independent assessments say KXL assures higher gas prices.

 

Exporting tar sands oil won’t reduce US dependence on foreign supplies. Prioritizing exports is planned. At issue is selling at the highest possible price.

 

KXL violates tribal sovereignty. The Indigenous Environmental Network’s “Mother Earth Accord” supports and urges opposition to tar sands development. At issue is preserving the integrity of US and Canadian First Nations and tribal lands.

 

TransCanada won’t disclose an analysis of chemical dilutants used to facilitate transporting tar sands oil through KXL. At issue are human and environmentally destructive substances.

 

The Pipeline Hazardous Material Safety Administration told Congress that pipeline regulations weren’t crafted with tar sands oil in mind. They’re woefully inadequate and require strengthening. At a time of deregulatory extremism, don’t expect it.

 

The State Department, not EPA, conducted KXL’s Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). Hillary Clinton has close ties to TransCanada lobbyist Paul Elliot. He was one of her main 2008 presidential campaign officials.

 

EIS analysis was rigged. Its methodology lacked credibility. Results claimed minimal environmental contamination risk.

 

KXL’s southern area “Gulf Coast Project” failed to conduct its own environmental assessment. Issues related to the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer, wild fires, droughts, and others weren’t examined.

 

Connect the dots. Omnipotent money power, permanent imperial wars, corporate empowerment, rigged elections, homeland repression, and government of, by, and for the privileged few characterize today’s America.

 

Even independent presidential candidates challenging a system this corrupt, venal and dysfunctional risk arrest, abuse, and possible imprisonment.

 

On November 6, consider your options. Boycott America’s duopoly. Vote independent or stay home. Change depends on ordinary people struggling long-term. Nothing else works. Not now! Not ever!

 

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

 

His new book is titled “How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion and Class War”

 

http://www.claritypress.com/Lendman.html

 

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

 

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour

How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It–(334 pages of help when there is none)

How_To_Survive_The_World_As_We_Know_It

Tactics, Techniques, and Technologies for Uncertain Times
James Wesley, Rawles
a  p lu m e  b o o k

Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction ix
Publisher’s Note xv
1 The Survival Mind-set for Living in Uncertain
Times 3
2 Priorities: Your List of Lists 21
3 The Survival Retreat 38
4 Water: The Key Resource 65
5 The Deep Larder: Your Family’s Food Storage 78
6 Fuel and Home Power 108
7 Gardens and Livestock 128
8 Medical Supplies and Training 148

9 Communications and Monitoring 190
10 Home Security and Self-Defense 202
11 Firearms for Self-Sufficiency and Self-Defense 223
12 G.O.O.D. Vehicles and the Dreaded Trip Outta
Dodge 247
13 Investing, Barter, and Home-Based Businesses 261
14 It Comes Down to You 287
Appendix A: Glossary 291
Appendix B: Books and Online Resources 299
Appendix C: Protecting Your Family from an
Influenza Pandemic 300
Index 309

Survivalist Wisdom–Voices from the Hurricane Sandy Aftermath

[Prepare for the worst, pray that you never need it.  Pray even harder if you do need it, for protection from those whose only survival plan has been to take what they needed.]

Six Letters Re: Hurricane Sandy After Action Reports

SurvivalBlog.com

James,
I’m located in central New Jersey not far from the Delaware River. In the days prior to the hurricane hitting, everyone packed the supermarkets, warehouse clubs and home improvement stores to stock up.

At the home improvement stores, the people who had best luck getting generators were those who purchased them online and selected in-store pickup. There were lines of people 100+ deep from the front of the store to the back waiting for new shipments of generators to arrive. The only people who were guaranteed anything were those who had already purchased and paid online.

For those lucky enough to get a generator, they’d have a hard time fueling it if they didn’t already have gas cans and gas stored at home. The shelves were cleared of gas cans days before the storm hit.

The warehouse club that we are members of sold out of water the day before the storm hit. They normally have pallets of water on shelves up to the ceiling along the length of an entire aisle. That aisle was completely bare. They also sold out of most fruits/and vegetables that could store for a little without power. The displays that normally hold bananas and apples were bare.

Flashlights and D batteries were gone days before the storm too. The only ones that were left were plug-in rechargeable flashlights that would be of little use after the first discharge in a power outage.

My sister had luck finding a huge display of batteries at a big chain baby store. Most people went straight to the supermarkets and home improvement stores, not thinking that many other types of stores also kept basic supplies.

The winds really started to pick up Monday afternoon. There wasn’t much rain, even at the height of the storm, but the winds were very strong. Our house, which is only 4 years old, shuddered a couple of times in the highest gusts. We didn’t sustain any physical damage to the house, but a couple of small trees tilted over but didn’t uproot or break. Some sections of vinyl fencing in our neighborhood blew out and shattered from the force of the wind.

Sections of our neighborhood started to lose power around 6 PM not long after the hurricane made landfall. Street lights were out and the power to houses across the street were out. From our upstairs windows, we watched the sky glow blue and pink in all directions as transformers blew. Every minute or so another one would blow.

Finally, around 8:30 PM, we watched a transformer light the sky up for about 30 seconds. When it finally darkened, we and the rest of our neighborhood were out of power.

I had filled our spare refrigerator in our garage with cases of water and the spare freezer with bags of ice. I also took every empty plastic jug and bottle out of our recycling bins and filled them 3/4 of the way with water and froze them in our main/spare freezers. Every inch of freezer space that wasn’t packed with food was packed with an ice bottle.

I knew our refrigerator wouldn’t keep food cold long, so we immediately transferred our most critical food (milk for the kids, etc.) into ice filled coolers. The main freezer with most of our frozen food and frozen water bottles was never opened. It stayed perfectly cold until the power came back on, and most of the ice bottles had barely started to thaw. The food in our ice-filled coolers also was fine. We did sacrifice non-critical food that we didn’t have space for in the coolers to the garbage bin.

We lit the house with long-lasting led lanterns that definitely did the trick. We hunkered around an old battery power radio to keep up with storm news, and gave our two-year old son a spare lantern to play with, which kept him happy. With no power and little news expected until morning, we turned in early (for us) at around 10 PM.

Our furnace was out and we don’t have a fireplace, so the temperature dropped to the low 60s in our house overnight. It was a little chilly, but we were comfortable enough. We were definitely lucky it wasn’t colder outside.

By the morning the storm had passed and a family that we are very close friends with down the street had their generator running. We and several of our friends congregated there for the day. They had enough power for their refrigerator, several lights, a tv and cable box, and a power strip for charging phones.

Although the power was out, the cable stayed on until around noon so we were able to see the first images of storm damage. After the cable went out, most of us switched to our web-enabled smartphones and social media to stay informed and reach out to friends.

We grilled outside for lunch and dinner, with everyone pitching in food that would go bad if unused. Everyone with spare gas stored was prepared to pitch in whatever they had until the power came back on to keep the generator running. We brought over 10 gallons that wasn’t needed.

Cell phone service was spotty. People who were subscribers of one the two major cell providers in our area had no problem making/receiving calls and surfing the web. Subscribers of the other major service had a signal, but couldn’t make calls and their data service only worked intermittently.

The day after the storm, most traffic lights remained out. All gas stations and most stores were closed. One home improvement store opened under emergency power. They only let a limited number of people into the front part of the store where they had set up displays with their remaining emergency supplies (flashlights, batteries, power cords, and a new supply of gas cans). They surprisingly even accepted credit cards. Some other stores we checked out only accepted cash if they were open at all.

24 hours after the power went out, it came back on for most of our neighborhood. We’re definitely lucky since of the 2/3 of our state that was without power, only about 15-20% of homes had been restored when we were reconnected.

It was an interesting experience for a day, but something that none of us would have been happy to have continue. We all realized, individually and as a group, what things we were missing that could have made us more comfortable.

Although we were lucky that our part of the state suffered little more than downed trees and power lines, New Jersey is very small so we all have friends in the hardest hit parts of the Jersey Shore and we are very familiar with the popular vacation spots that have been destroyed.

I’ve been in contact with friends who live just blocks from the beach who have raised homes and still have standing water lapping at their front doors. A few other friends live in beach neighborhoods that have essentially become islands with bridges, highways and other access roads out of service and surrounded by water. Others left some of the very hardest hit communities before the storm hit and don’t know if their homes are still standing.

Some neighborhoods devastated by storm surge and flooding are now burning. Along some of the barrier islands, emergency services from the mainland are cut off and fires will likely be left to burn themselves out. Some entire towns are expected to burn.

There are a lot of people who have lost everything and many who are still in harm’s way. Keep them in your prayers. Thanks, – Brad S.

 

James,
I have family from Pennsylvania to Maine.  I tried to encourage my family and cousins who I knew would be affected by Sandy to visit me in the mountains of New England, but they were all so sure that they could survive the storm.

Only one family had a generator.  It wasn’t wired into the house, so plenty of extension cords are in use there.  The others had nothing at all setup.  So I briefed them on filling the tub, freezing extra containers for ice, etc.  And all were briefed on staying put during and after the storm.

Of course, some don’t listen so well.  While all survived in some fashion, here is the latest and worse from my cousin on Long Island:

“Pumping out water all day.
We had absolutely not a drop of [drinking] water. Storm surge at 830 p.m. and we were seeing it force its way in at the rate of a foot a minute!! I have never witnessed anything like that in my life!
Scary stuff!!!

We tried to hold it back just no way hydraulic pressure was just too much.
Total 10 feet of water. We jumped ship when it got to 6 feet. Then couldn’t get to [deleted for OPSEC]‘s house… Every path home and on every road trees were down, we didn’t plan for that. We slept at a friend’s aunt’s house. She welcomed us (dog and all) with open arms and we are total strangers. The walls all cracked assuming will be a total loss.

We are going to call it quits soon will be back at it again tomorrow. No [phone] service so can’t call our insurance company. Friends are coming from all over to help. No big deal–It is just a material asset. Insurance hopefully covers hurricanes. We are fortunate, as it could’ve been much worse.”

He was right.  They were fortunate.  They could have drowned leaving during the night.  They could have been injured trying to leave that location to their ‘safe’ house.

I suspect that the next time they will evacuate in a timely fashion.  I doubt that they will ever disparage a prepared mindset again.

We can’t save folks from themselves.

I will head into New York and New Jersey when possible to reach them with support.  I expect to have to wait until after this coming Tuesday.

Thank you for your SurvivalBlog site! Regards, – Mike A.

 

Good Morning to You!
Our area of the East coast was spared the worst brunt of the storm.  Massive snowfalls to our west, and massive flooding to the east.  We were very fortunate.

We live on top of a hill, and by Monday morning, we had water filling our basement.  I went outside with middle son, and we found a deep hole filled with water next to the foundation of our house.  We dug a ditch from the edge of the hole far, far away from the edge of the hole and down the hill well past the fall line.  I would estimate we dug at least 30 feet of mud.  While I dug, my son took the shovels of dirt that I pulled out of the ground and put it back into the hole by the foundation.  Once we were finished, we moved the drainage pipe from the gutters so that it, too, fed into the ditch we had dug away from the house.  10 more inches of rain fell over the next 24 hours, but no more of it ran into our basement.

I understand now what you mean when you say you need to be physically fit!  I’m a 40 something mother of three, and my 17 year old son and I put in a good two hours worth of physical work in the driving rain, diverting water away from the house.  Maybe insurance would have covered the damage if we hadn’t done the work, but I prefer the effort of digging a ditch in the rain to the effort of clearing a basement of water and carpets and furniture.  Best two hours worth of work I’ve ever done, and our house is still in one piece!

Besides the obvious water and wind damage around here, there is one thing that stuck out more and more:  The number of people killed by falling trees.  Tall trees close to the house really do need to be trimmed back so that damage is lessened if a tree or limb falls on a house.  One gentleman told the story of how he and his father had a conversation on Saturday about how they needed to trim or cut down the tree next to the house.  Then on Monday, his father was killed instantly when the tree fell on the house during high winds.

Peace to you all. – B.L.W.

 

James,
The report from Delaware. With the exception of flood prone and some beach front areas we dodged the bullet.

It was an excellent exercise for our small family. The preparation for with this sort of an event turns on do you stay or leave. Different priorities for equipment supplies and staging following from each of those two choices. However what this storm brought home to us (since we have a shelter in place default ) is that within the shelter in place paradigm is,”suppose that tree falls on your house and you must leave in a hurry anyway’ sub-plan. Since for us in our location Sandy was forecast to be a wind event, this latter sub-plan rose up from the back burner rather forcefully.

Now, we had to pull out and check the go bags (not seen since last year’s windy scare) marshal water, food rations, range bags (did I restock those mags after the last week) , document case, comms and other take-with items by the door while preparing to deal with prolonged electrical outage (potentially weeks) therefore check generator, water reserves, fuel, etc etc..

I found that while our shelter in place preps and SOP were fairly well in hand, the “Yikes, we got-a-go now” end was pretty confused. Part of the reason for this is that we really need to have more duplicate gear stashed in the “Go now” configuration, and it was clear from this go round that we ain’t there yet. I also know as I write this that I have all sorts of essential items stowed carefully labeled clearly that I will want to toss in the vehicle, but it will take me days to think through the inventory. Not something to be doing as water is cascading through a rent in the building.

So I tell you to tell me, “build the list now while it is still fresh.”

One side note: We were “powerless” for only 8 hours, but as a result I am looking to replace my noisy old Generac (such a headache! The thing just roars. I must be getting old) with newer quieter Yamaha or Honda digital. While researching I found this very useful worksheet for calculating loads on the Yamaha web site.

Blessings… Pray for the folks in New York City, Connecticut and New Jersey…. They have a long way to come back. – Dollardog

 

JWR:
As per your request for info out of the New York City area: Having grown up in Florida, I kind of knew what to expect. Needless to say, I was well provisioned and my powder, so to speak, was high and dry and at the ready well in advance of Sandy’s final approach…

My wife and I rode out the storm in our “Brooklyn Bunker,” a fourth-floor apartment in a solid pre-war building. We spent a long night watching for the flashes of transformers exploding in the wind, and darkness encroaching as lights went out in the homes all around us. Luckily, the lights managed to stay on in our neighborhood, and we didn’t lose power once. After the storm passed, we emerged to discover no major damage, some trees down on cars and roofs, limited cell phone service, but that’s about it…

The same can’t be said for lower Manhattan and parts of Staten Island, though. The six-foot security fence around some rental property I own there came down, right into my truck. A violent storm surge turned most of the coastal communities on the island into what looks like a war zone, with the National Guard deployed to keep order. No working street lights, no stores open, no gas. People are attempting to drive into northern New Jersey to find gas stations that have power, with little luck. Con Edison now says power will be out to 60% of the island for more than a week. My tenants are in the dark with no heat…

Looking across the East River into Lower Manhattan at night, I am reminded of my time as a journalist in New Orleans during Katrina, where I witnessed another entire American city abandoned, darkened, and brought to its knees by Mother Nature (combined with a healthy dose of human stupidity). The entire subway system here is paralyzed, and along with it commerce, and most of the city’s inhabitants. There are already some rumblings on blogs and other social media platforms about the “lack of government response,” like this one here, but for the most part, people have remained unusually calm and accommodating to each other, at least for New Yorkers.

As with Katrina, Sandy reminded me of just how fragile the veneer of civilization that most most city-dwellers often take for granted truly is. During the final 24 hours leading up to Sandy’s arrival, lines at every major grocery store in Brooklyn and Manhattan were several blocks long, with hours-long wait times just to enter the stores and clerks taking small groups of people in to shop, just a few at a time.

Given the mentality of the average city-dweller, the run on grocery stores was to be expected. Perhaps more importantly for the SurvivalBlog readership at large, what’s transpired here over the past 48 hours is nothing short of an amazing exercise in the efficacy of state control circa 2012 (much better execution than what I witnessed during Katrina). I am at once somewhat pleasantly surprised yet shockingly dismayed by just how quickly the authorities were able to shut down and subdue the country’s biggest metropolis. Within a few hours, they were able to – successfully – deploy several thousand National Guard troops, shut down the country’s biggest subway system, 15 major bridges and tunnels, three major airports, and cut power to eight square miles of a world-class city…all with nary a whimper nor major objection from the populace.

New Yorkers in three major boroughs were – and in the case of Lower Manhattan, still are – effectively cut off from the outside world. Moving forward, most SurvivalBlog readers like myself who either choose or are forced to reside in cities should perhaps (re)consider their long term plans and preparations given the recent tactics on display here in NYC.

Thanks and best, – KTC in NYC

 

Dear Jim:
Sheeple no more here. Sandy came and went. Our area is Bucks County about an hour north of Philadelphia. We border the Delaware River. Power here went out early and and only came on today.

I think we weathered it well. I was one of the last minute “run to the store” folks. Bought a gallon of milk. Everything else was in place. As soon as the power went out, I fired up our generator and hunkered down for the 70 MPH winds.

We did lose a couple of shingles and some aluminum trim on the house. Those unprepared suffered flooded basements, many areas will not have power for a week or more. Lots of trees down, snapped telephone poles, sink holes in the road. The emergency services were running 24 hours for two days. Constant sirens all over the place.

Where did I come up short? I never got around to getting my ham radio license or programming my Baofeng UV-5R. It would have come in handy to keep in touch with the others in my group. I have some Uniden walkies and they proved worthless.

At the end of the storm my wife she thanked me for being prepared. Up until this happened she kind of went alone with my “hobby”. Always a little smile on her face. It’s different now.

What I need to do:

• Get my ham license.
• Run a dedicated electrical line to the crucial items in the house. Pumps, freezer, frig, security lights.
• Replace my burned out chainsaw.
• Read “How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It” for the 12th time and update my (your) lists of lists.

Take care and God Bless, – M.

Elitists Use Personal Positions of Power To Bring About the “Culling” of the Human Herd

Saving Humanity

Dave Hodges

The Common Sense Show

Do you remember when your mother asked you if you would jump off a cliff if everyone else was doing it? It turns out that all of us would have been wise to heed the advice from our mothers as the globalists aren’t just encouraging us to jump off a cliff, they are, in fact, pushing us off of the proverbial cliff in a deliberate attempt to fulfill the their mandate which is to eliminate a substantial portion of humanity. Meanwhile, the globalists will be safely tucked away in some underground structure free from the harm that they are perpetrating upon humanity. Sadly, many of our friends and family members are willingly going to their demise without so much as a whimper.

Heretofore, the topic of intentional depopulation was the perceived product of paranoid delusional conspiracy theorists who had too much time on their hands. The most frequent refrain from the unaware is that “they” would never do that. However, the globalists have left an unmistakable paper trail in which their true agenda is exposed.

I have collected a sample of quotes from the global elite, both past and present. And even people who cannot find the courage to abandon their normalcy bias, will have a difficult time denying the disturbing quotes which follow. .

Officials in the United Nations Want You Dead

Surely, the peace loving United Nations, complete with its expressed desire to save the world from any and all evil would stand in line to thwart any expressed threat to inhabitants of this planet, right?  Well, not exactly. The United Nations is permeated with individuals who are Satanically inspired and have repeatedly, on many fronts, have expressed their intent to reduce the world’s population by dramatic means, if necessary. Please consider the following quotes:

“No one will enter the New World Order unless he or she will make a pledge to worship Lucifer. No one will enter the New Age unless he will take a Luciferian Initiation.”
David Spangler, Director of Planetary Initiative, United Nations

The present vast overpopulation, now far beyond the world carrying capacity, cannot be answered by future reductions in the birth rate due to contraception, sterilization and abortion, but must be met in the present by the reduction of numbers presently existing. This must be done by whatever means necessary.”

Initiative for the United Nations ECO-92 EARTH CHARTER

 

“One America burdens the earth much more than twenty Bangladeshes. This is a terrible thing to say in order to stabilize world population, we must eliminate 350,000 people per day. It is a horrible thing to say, but it’s just as bad not to say it.         

 Jacques Cousteau, UNESCO Courier

“A reasonable estimate for an industrialized world society at the present North American material standard of living would be 1 billion. At the more frugal European standard of living, 2 to 3 billion would be possible”.

United Nations, Global Biodiversity Assessment

                     “A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline would  be ideal”                                                                                      

Ted Turner, founder of CNN and major United Nations contributor

Is anyone else bothered by the fact that this pack of Eugenicists are overseeing our elections?  Perhaps the officials at the United Nations stand alone among elite leaders on the planet.

 

 What About Our Educated Elite?

Although it is painfully obvious that the United Nations elite have a high level of contempt for the average person, surely those people responsible for educating our children will teach the time honored virtues of the United States Constitution. Surely, they will teach their students to develop a healthy respect for American sovereignty so that the genocidal lunatics running the United Nations are unable to put their genocidal schemes into motion. Upon further review, this is not the case as I bring to you the words of those who educate and mold the minds of our young people.

War and famine would not do. Instead, disease offered the most efficient and fastest way to kill the billions that must soon die if the population crisis is to be solved. AIDS is not an efficient killer because it is too slow. My favorite candidate for eliminating 90 percent of the world’s population is airborne Ebola (Ebola Reston), because it is both highly lethal and it kills in days, instead of years. “We’ve got airborne diseases with 90 percent mortality in humans. Killing humans. Think about that. “You know, the bird flu’s good, too. For everyone who survives, he will have to bury nine”

Dr. Eric Pianka University of Texas speaking on the topic of reducing the world’s population to an audience on population control.

“A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells, the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people. We must shift our efforts from the treatment of the symptoms to the cutting out of the cancer. The operation will demand many apparently brutal and heartless decisions”.                                                                            

  Stanford Professor Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb

“We have to take away from humans in the long run their reproductive autonomy as the only way to guarantee the advancement of mankind.”

Francis Crick, The discoverer of the double-helix structure of DNA

It strongly appears that the Eugenicists patrolling corridors of educational institutions possess the same disdain for mankind as do the lunatic officials from the United Nations.

 

What About the Environmental Elites?

It is apparent that humanity cannot look to the sociopathic leaders of the United Nations and America’s top academic leaders for salvation.  But certainly the eco-friendly environmentalists, with their penchant for saving the whales and the spotted owl will ride to the rescue of mankind.  Regrettably, this is also not the case. It seems that the humanitarian spirit of the environmentalists does not apply to any species which possess a collapsible thumb, the power of speech and has a well-developed cerebral cortex. Again, the words of the elite exposes their depopulation agenda.

“If I were reincarnated I would wish to be returned to earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.”

 Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, Leader of the World Wildlife Fund

“Malthus has been vindicated; reality is finally catching up with Malthus. The Third World is overpopulated, it’s an economic mess, and there’s no way they could get out of it with this fast-growing population. Our philosophy is: back to the village.”                  

 Dr. Arne Schiotz, World Wildlife Fund Director of Conservation

 

What About Our Government Leaders?

Historically, many Americans believe that they can look to the government to protect them from the evils of the world.  It is clear that our blind trust in our public officials misplaced. Our leaders are not our friends, and have not been for a very long time as evidenced by the following quotes:

“Society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind”
Theodore Roosevelt

“There is a single theme behind all our work–we must reduce population levels. Either governments do it our way, through nice clean methods, or they will get the kinds of mess that we have in El Salvador, or in Iran or in Beirut. Population is a political problem. Once population is out of control, it requires authoritarian government, even fascism, to reduce it….” “Our program in El Salvador didn’t work. The infrastructure was not there to support it. There were just too goddamned many people…. To really reduce population, quickly, you have to pull all the males into the fighting and you have to kill significant numbers of fertile age females….” The quickest way to reduce population is through famine, like in Africa, or through disease like the Black Death….
Thomas Ferguson, State Department Office of Population Affairs

“Depopulation should be the highest priority of foreign policy towards the third world, because the US economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less developed countries”.
Dr. Henry Kissinger

“The world’s population needs to be reduced by 50%,” and “The elderly are useless eaters”
Dr. Henry Kissinger

“The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes.”
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes

“Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“The Planetary Regime might be given responsibility for determining the optimum population for the world and for each region and for arbitrating various countries’ shares within their regional limits. Control of population size might remain the responsibility of each government, but the Regime would have some power to enforce the agreed limits.”
Obama’s science czar John P. Holdren: From Ecoscience

One percent of the population is sociopathic. Here are two clear markers for Sociopaths, discoverable in their behavior patterns: 1) Sociopaths have no conscience. Hence, 2) Sociopaths cannot feel guilt nor remorse, like  ordinary people can.

These are evil people, very evil people. Superficially charming, they are selfish, greedy, unemphathetic, manipulative, and prone to violence and abuse. They steal, cheat, vandalize others property, swindle, and they are pathological liars. They are unconcerned with the feelings of other humans, who are mere objects to be used, and have little or no conscience

A recent book, authored by Martha Stout, in which the material came from released government documents CEO’s are three times more likely to be a sociopath than the general population. Politicians are four times more likely to be sociopathic than you and I.  These are the people who seek power and once they obtain that power, the see absolute power, much to detriment of the soon-to-be extinct members of human race.

 

What Is Humanity To Do?

If humanity is to preserve itself in its present form, it will be necessary to educate the masses as to the planned perils which lie ahead. The pro-human preservation movement needs bodies, billions and billions of bodies. Yet, the very victims of the coming planned genocide are dumbed down by the schools and propagandized into a false sense of security by the mainstream media which is owned by six global elite corporations who also want you gone.

For humanity to survive, we need to collectively rise from our knees and seize control of the planet’s institutions and permanently banish these dangerous sociopaths from their self-anointed positions of planetary leadership. The first step in gathering the numbers of people which we will need to accomplish this goal, is to educate the human race in as great as numbers as possible. My suggestion would be to forward these quotes to everyone you know and then follow up with one question. Do you think that your status in life is so significant that you and your family will be spared the coming holocaust?  If not, then you better roll up your sleeves and convince as many people as possible that we are in a great deal of danger.

OK Welfare Applicants Surrender To Drug Screening, When Will Social Security and All Fed Aid Follow Suit?

[The Police State begins in small steps, so as not to arouse the ire of the general public.  The seizing of blood or urine samples against our consent can be done under any "emergency" pretext, even when government-created flu vaccines turn normal people into infected zombies (NOT MY SCENARIO, this one originated with the CDC (Center for Disease Control).]

New Drug Screening Law In Oklahoma Takes Effect On Thursday

By Deanne Stein, News 9 - bio | email

File Photo

OKLAHOMA CITY -A new law allowing drug testing for certain welfare applicants goes into effect on Thursday.

Governor Mary Fallin signed House Bill 2388 into law back in May.

5/16/2012 Related Story: Oklahoma Governor Signs Drug Screening Bill Into Law

Under the new law, the Department of Human Services is required to screen adults who apply to the “Temporary Assistance for Needy Families” program. Anyone who fails or refuses the drug test will be denied benefits.

Applicants who test positive for illegal drug use and undergo substance abuse treatment can reapply for benefits six months after the date of their denial. Child-only cases and underage parents would be exempt from drug screenings.

5/17/2012 Related Story: DHS Spokesperson Explains New Drug Screening Law

The bill also allows for an alternative payee to be named when a parent has been denied benefits.

A Brilliant Pentagon Plan for Spreading Perpetual “Persistent War” Looks Just Like A “Failed” Terror War

[This is an excellent explanation of the mess that we find ourselves in today, due to the miserable, evil policies of the past two American Administrations, but the author from TomDispatch misses the most important point, as always.  That singular, vital to understand point is this--the American war on terror HAS NOT FAILED, it has succeeded brilliantly in its primary mission--to spread conflict over the entire planet.  The war on terror was NEVER intended to be won, it was just a means to an end, prepositioning military forces in every nation, before unleashing global nuclear war.  All of these little "piss ant" wars that we have been fighting, the various Partnership-for-Peace programs, Special Forces training missions, drug-interdiction and border control operations, along with the overall rubric of "fighting terrorism," have all provided the means to preposition American "Special Operators" and their weapons within other national militaries and police forces.  Their original mission has been to "win the hearts and minds" of foreign military men, before the real war begins, the war against all enemies at once.  

The Pentagon would prefer to be known as a bumbling,"inept giant," rather than as the monstrous, devouring beast that it really is.  The Joint Chiefs have been faithfully carrying-out the desires of their corporate masters and their puppets in the White House, by spreading the Pentagon's tentacles into every corner of the planet, even to the depths of the oceans and the heights of sub-orbital space.  The Pentagon is a monster, that is set upon devouring all of the little peasant villagers who will besiege the fortified fortresses of their dark overlords.  The Pentagon is firmly committed to a policy that is best defined as "Malthusian," the calculated thinning-out of the human herd.  The Pentagon has been setting itself up as the ultimate protectors of a small group of racist elitists, who consider the rest of us as cattle, fit only to be bought and sold, improved in limited numbers through selective crossbreeding and genetic experimentation, with the remainder of the herd to be  eventually slaughtered, probably to be processed into "Soylent Green" for them.  

The day is nearly upon us when open-air thermonuclear detonations will become a regular occurrence.  The day after that day comes and goes, will be the only time when Bush's war could be judged either a resounding success, or a total failure.  Until then, only the spread of death and terminal madness will spread across the face of the Earth.]  

A failed formula for worldwide war

How the empire changed its face, but not its nature.

US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey has been holding “strategic seminars” over a giant map of the world larger than a basketball court [EPA]

They looked like a gang of geriatric giants. Clad in smart casual attire – dress shirts, sweaters, and jeans – and incongruous blue hospital booties, they strode around “the world”, stopping to stroke their chins and ponder this or that potential crisis. Among them was General Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a button-down shirt and jeans, without a medal or a ribbon in sight, his arms crossed, his gaze fixed. He had one foot plantedfirmly in Russia, the other partly in Kazakhstan, and yet the general hadn’t left the friendly confines of Virginia.Several times this year, Dempsey, the other joint chiefs, and regional war-fighting commanders have assembled at the Marine Corps Base in Quantico to conduct a futuristic war-game-meets-academic-seminar about the needs of the military in 2017. There, a giant map of the world, larger than a basketball court, was laid out so the Pentagon’s top brass could shuffle around the planet – provided they wore those scuff-preventing shoe covers – as they thought about “potential US national military vulnerabilities in future conflicts” (so one participant told the New York Times). The sight of those generals with the world underfoot was a fitting image for Washington’s military ambitions, its penchant for foreign interventions, and its contempt for (non-US) borders and national sovereignty.A world so much larger than a basketball court In recent weeks, some of the possible fruits of Dempsey’s “strategic seminars”, military missions far from the confines of Quantico, have repeatedly popped up in the news. Sometimes buried in a story, sometimes as the headline, the reports attest to the Pentagon’s penchant for globetrotting. In September, for example, Lieutenant General Robert L Caslen, Jr, revealed that, just months after the US military withdrew from Iraq, a unit of Special Operations Forces had already been redeployed there in an advisory role and that negotiations were underway to arrange for larger numbers of troops to train Iraqi forces in the future. That same month, the Obama administration won congressional approval to divert funds earmarked for counterterrorism aid for Pakistan to a new proxy project in Libya. According to the New York Times, US Special Operations Forces will likely bedeployed to create and train a 500-man Libyan commando unit to battle Islamic militant groups which have become increasingly powerful as a result of the 2011 US-aided revolution there. Earlier this month, the New York Times reported that the US military had secretly sent a new task force to Jordan to assist local troops in responding to the civil war in neighbouring Syria. Only days later, that paper revealed that recent US efforts to train and assist surrogate forces for Honduras’s drug war were already crumbling amid a spiral of questions about the deaths of innocents, violations of international law, and suspected human rights abuses by Honduran allies. Shortly after that, the Times reported the bleak, if hardly surprising, news that the proxy army the US has spent more than a decade building in Afghanistan is, according to officials, “so plagued with desertions and low re-enlistment rates that it has to replace a third of its entire force every year”. Rumors now regularly bubble up about a possible US-funded proxy war on the horizon in Northern Mali where al-Qaeda-linked Islamists have taken over vast stretches of territory – yet another direct result of last year’s intervention in Libya.  Empire – The decline of the American empire And these were just the offshore efforts that made it into the news. Many other US military actions abroad remain largely below the radar. Several weeks ago, for instance, US personnel were quietly deployed to Burundi to carry out training efforts in that small, landlocked, desperately poor East African nation. Another contingent of US Army and Air Force trainers headed to the similarly landlocked and poor West African nation of Burkina Faso to instruct indigenous forces. At Camp Arifjan, an American base in Kuwait, US and local troops donned gas masks and protective suits to conduct joint chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear training. In Guatemala, 200 Marines from Detachment Martillo completed a months-long deployment to assist indigenous naval forces and law enforcement agencies in drug interdiction efforts. Across the globe, in the forbidding tropical forests of the Philippines, Marines joined elite Filipino troops to train for combat operations in jungle environments and to help enhance their skills as snipers. Marines from both nations also leapt from airplanes, 10,000 feet above the island archipelago, in an effort to further the “interoperability” of their forces. Meanwhile, in the Southeast Asian nation of Timor-Leste, Marines trained embassy guards and military police in crippling “compliance techniques” like pain holds and pressure point manipulation, as well as soldiers in jungle warfare as part of Exercise Crocodilo 2012. The idea behind Dempsey’s “strategic seminars” was to plan for the future, to figure out how to properly respond to developments in far-flung corners of the globe. And in the real world, US forces are regularly putting preemptive pins in that giant map – from Africa to Asia, Latin America to the Middle East. On the surface, global engagement, training missions, and joint operations appear rational enough. And Dempsey’s big picture planning seems like a sensible way to think through solutions to future national security threats. But when you consider how the Pentagon really operates, such war-gaming undoubtedly has an absurdist quality to it. After all, global threats turn out to come in every size imaginable, from fringe Islamic movements in Africa to Mexican drug gangs. How exactly they truly threaten US “national security” is often unclear – beyond some White House adviser’s or general’s say-so. And whatever alternatives come up in such Quantico seminars, the “sensible” response invariably turns out to be sending in the Marines, or the SEALs, or the drones, or some local proxies. In truth, there is no need to spend a day shuffling around a giant map in blue booties to figure it all out. In one way or another, the US military is now involvedwith most of the nations on Earth. Its soldiers, commandos, trainers, base builders, drone jockeys, spies, and arms dealers, as well as associated hired guns and corporate contractors, can now be found just about everywhere on the planet. The sun never sets on American troops conducting operations, training allies, arming surrogates, schooling its own personnel, purchasing new weapons and equipment, developing fresh doctrine, implementing novel tactics, and refining their martial arts. The US has submarines trolling the briny deep and aircraft carrier task forces traversing the oceans and seas, robotic drones flying constant missions and manned aircraft patrolling the skies, while above them, spy satellites circle, peering down on friend and foe alike. “The US military should have the planet on lockdown… yet after more than a decade of war, it has failed to eliminate a rag-tag Afghan insurgency with limited popular support.” Since 2001, the US military has thrown everything in its arsenal, short of nuclear weapons, including untold billions of dollars in weaponry, technology, bribes, you name it, at a remarkably weak set of enemies – relatively small groups of poorly-armed fighters in impoverished nations like Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen – while decisively defeating none of them. With its deep pockets and long reach, its technology and training acumen, as well as the devastatingly destructive power at its command, the US military should have the planet on lockdown. It should, by all rights, dominate the world just as the neoconservative dreamers of the early Bush years assumed it would. Yet after more than a decade of war, it has failed to eliminate a rag-tag Afghan insurgency with limited popular support. It trained an indigenous Afghan force that was long known for its poor performance – before it became better known for killing its American trainers. It has spent years and untold tens of millions of tax dollars chasing down assorted firebrand clerics, various terrorist “lieutenants”, and a host of no-name militants belonging to al-Qaeda, mostly in the backlands of the planet. Instead of wiping out that organisation and its wannabes, however, it seems mainly to have facilitated its franchising around the world. At the same time, it has managed to paint weak regional forces like Somalia’s al-Shabaab as transnational threats, then focus its resources on eradicating them, only to fail at the task. It has thrown millions of dollars in personnel, equipment, aid, and recently even troops into the task of eradicating low-level drug runners (as well as the major drug cartels), without putting a dent in the northward flow of narcotics to America’s cities and suburbs. It spends billions on intelligence only to routinely find itself in the dark. It destroyed the regime of an Iraqi dictator and occupied his country, only to be fought to a standstill by ill-armed, ill-organised insurgencies there, then out-manoeuvered by the allies it had helped put in power, and unceremoniously bounced from the country (even if it is now beginning to claw its way back in). It spends untold millions of dollars to train and equip elite Navy SEALs to take on poor, untrained, lightly-armed adversaries, like gun-toting Somali pirates. How not to change in a changing world And that isn’t the half of it. The US military devours money and yet delivers little in the way of victories. Its personnel may be among the most talented and well-trained on the planet, its weapons and technology the most sophisticated and advanced around. And when it comes to defence budgets, it far outspends the next nine largest nations combined (most of which are allies in any case), let alone its enemies like the Taliban, al-Shabaab, or al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, but in the real world of warfare this turns out to add up to remarkably little. In a government filled with agencies routinely derided for profligacy, inefficiency, and producing poor outcomes, itsrecord may be unmatched in terms of waste and abject failure, though that seems to faze almost no one in Washington. For more than a decade, the US military has bounced from one failed doctrine to the next. There was Donald Rumsfeld’s “military lite”, followed by what could have been called military heavy (though it never got a name), which was superseded by General David Petraeus’s “counterinsurgency operations” (also known by its acronym COIN). This, in turn, has been succeeded by the Obama administration’s bid for future military triumph: a “light footprint” combination of special ops, drones, spies, civilian soldiers, cyberwarfare, and proxy fighters. Yet whatever the method employed, one thing has been constant: Successes have been fleeting, setbacks many, frustrations the name of the game, and victory MIA. Convinced nonetheless that finding just the right formulafor applying force globally is the key to success, the US military is presently banking on that new six-point plan. Tomorrow, it may turn to a different war-lite mix. Somewhere down the road, it will undoubtedly again experiment with something heavier. And if history is any guide, counterinsurgency, a concept that failed the US in Vietnam and was resuscitated only to fail again in Afghanistan, will one day be back in vogue. “The more time, effort and treasure the US invests in its military and its military adventures, the weaker the payback.” In all of this, it should be obvious, a learning curve is lacking. Any solution to America’s war-fighting problems will undoubtedly require the sort of fundamental reevaluation of warfare and military might that no one in Washington is open to at the moment. It’s going to take more than a few days spent shuffling around a big map in plastic shoe covers. American politicians never tire of extolling the virtues of the US military, which is now commonly hailed as “the finest fighting force in the history of the world”. This claim appears grotesquely at odds with reality. Aside from triumphs over such non-powers as the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada and the small Central American nation of Panama, the US military’s record since World War II has been a litany of disappointments: Stalemate in Korea, outright defeat in Vietnam, failures in Laos and Cambodia, debacles in Lebanon and Somalia, two wars against Iraq (both ending without victory), more than a decade of wheel-spinning in Afghanistan, and so on. Something akin to the law of diminishing returns may be at work. The more time, effort and treasure the US invests in its military and its military adventures, the weaker the payback. In this context, the impressive destructive power of that military may not matter a bit, if it is tasked with doing things that military might, as it has been traditionally conceived, can perhaps no longer do. Success may not be possible, whatever the circumstances, in the twenty-first-century world, and victory not even an option. Instead of trying yet again to find exactly the right formula or even reinventing warfare, perhaps the US military needs to reinvent itself and its raison d’être if it’s ever to break out of its long cycle of failure. But don’t count on it. Instead, expect the politicians to continue to heap on the praise, Congress to continue insuring funding at levels that stagger the imagination, presidents to continue applying blunt force to complex geopolitical problems (even if in slightly different ways), arms dealers to continue churning out wonder weapons that prove less than wondrous, and the Pentagon continuing to fail to win. Coming off the latest series of failures, the US military has leapt headlong into yet another transitional period – call it the changing face of empire – but don’t expect a change in weapons, tactics, strategy, or even doctrine to yield a change in results. As the adage goes: The more things change, the more they stay the same. Nick Turse is the managing editor of TomDispatch.com and a fellow at the Nation Institute. He is the author/editor of several books, including the just published The Changing Face of Empire: Special Ops, Drones, Spies, Proxy Fighters, Secret Bases, and Cyberwarfare  (Haymarket Books). This piece is the final article in his series on the changing face of American empire, which is being underwritten by Lannan Foundation. A version of this article first appeared on TomDispatch. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.

Source: Tomdispatch

The Road to World War 3

Published on Sep 11, 2012 by StormCloudsGathering

We are on a road that leads straight to the World War 3, but in order to see that and to fully understand what is at stake you have to look at the big picture and connect the dots. This video examines the history of the dollar, its relation to oil, and the real motives behind the wars of the past two decades.

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Credits:
Music is original composition by StormCloudsGathering
Thumbnail is creative commons: http://kingsandji.deviantart.com
Scenes from Grey State trailer used with permission fromhttp://www.graystatemovie.com

The GRAY STATE Project–the American People Under Seige

The GRAY STATE Project

The world reels with the turmoil of war, geological disaster, and economic collapse, while Americans continue to submerge themselves in illusions of safety and immunity. While rights are sold for security, the federal government, swollen with power, begins a systematic takeover of liberty in order to bring about a New World Order.

Americans, quarantined to militarized districts, become a population ripe for tyrannical control.
Fearmongering, terrorism, police state, martial law, war, arrest, internment, hunger, oppression, violence, resistance – these are the terms by which Americans define their existence. Neighbor is turned against neighbor as the value of the dollar plunges to zero, food supplies are depleted, and everyone becomes a terror suspect. There are arrests. Disappearances. Bio attacks. Public executions of those even suspected of dissent. Even rumors of concentration camps on American soil.

This is the backdrop to an unfolding story of resistance. American militias prepare for guerilla warfare. There are mass defections from the military as true Patriots attempt to rally around the Constitution and defend liberty, preparing a national insurgency against federal forces, knowing full well this will be the last time in history the oppressed will be capable of organized resistance.

It is a time of transition, of shifting alliance, of mass awakening and mass execution. It is an impending storm, an iron-gray morning that puts into effect decades of over-comfort and complacency, and Americans wake up to an occupied homeland. It is a time of lists. Black list, white list, and those still caught in the middle, those who risk physical death for their free will and those who sell their souls to maintain their idle thoughts and easy comforts. It is in this Gray State that the perpetuation of human freedom will be contested, or crushed.

Is it the near future, or is it the present? The Gray State is coming – by consent or conquest. This is battlefield USA.

Encompassing the world of conspiracy theory, economic collapse, global disaster, end-time prophecies, martial law, and growing civil unrest, GRAY STATE is a piercing look into the immediate future in which the withered remains of freedom are traded for an impression of security.

GRAY STATE is the reality that can no longer be ignored. It is coming – by consent or conquest.

Watch the first official Gray State concept trailer here.

What is the Gray State?

The GRAY STATE is here. It always was.