Saturday, June 12, 2010

The Alien in the White House



The distance between the president and the people is beginning to be revealed.

By DOROTHY RABINOWITZ
The deepening notes of disenchantment with Barack Obama now issuing from commentators across the political spectrum were predictable. So, too, were the charges from some of the president's earliest enthusiasts about his failure to reflect a powerful sense of urgency about the oil spill.

There should have been nothing puzzling about his response to anyone who has paid even modest critical attention to Mr. Obama's pronouncements. For it was clear from the first that this president—single-minded, ever-visible, confident in his program for a reformed America saved from darkness by his arrival—was wanting in certain qualities citizens have until now taken for granted in their presidents. Namely, a tone and presence that said: This is the Americans' leader, a man of them, for them, the nation's voice and champion. Mr. Obama wasn't lacking in concern about the oil spill. What he lacked was that voice—and for good reason.


WSJ Asia editorial writer Hugo Restall reports on the President's travel plans.
.Those qualities to be expected in a president were never about rhetoric; Mr. Obama had proved himself a dab hand at that on the campaign trail. They were a matter of identification with the nation and to all that binds its people together in pride and allegiance. These are feelings held deep in American hearts, unvoiced mostly, but unmistakably there and not only on the Fourth of July.

A great part of America now understands that this president's sense of identification lies elsewhere, and is in profound ways unlike theirs. He is hard put to sound convincingly like the leader of the nation, because he is, at heart and by instinct, the voice mainly of his ideological class. He is the alien in the White House, a matter having nothing to do with delusions about his birthplace cherished by the demented fringe.

One of his first reforms was to rid the White House of the bust of Winston Churchill—a gift from Tony Blair—by packing it back off to 10 Downing Street. A cloudlet of mystery has surrounded the subject ever since, but the central fact stands clear. The new administration had apparently found no place in our national house of many rooms for the British leader who lives on so vividly in the American mind. Churchill, face of our shared wartime struggle, dauntless rallier of his nation who continues, so remarkably, to speak to ours. For a president to whom such associations are alien, ridding the White House of Churchill would, of course, have raised no second thoughts.

Far greater strangeness has since flowed steadily from Washington. The president's appointees, transmitters of policy, go forth with singular passion week after week, delivering the latest inversion of reality. Their work is not easy, focused as it is on a current prime preoccupation of this White House—that is, finding ways to avoid any public mention of the indisputable Islamist identity of the enemy at war with us. No small trick that, but their efforts go forward in public spectacles matchless in their absurdity—unnerving in what they confirm about our current guardians of law and national security.

Consider the hapless Eric Holder, America's attorney general, confronting the question put to him by Rep. Lamar Smith (R., Texas) of the House Judicary Committee on May 13.

Did Mr. Holder think that in the last three terrorist attempts on this soil, one of them successful (Maj. Nidal Hasan's murder of 13 soldiers at Fort Hood, preceded by his shout of "Allahu Akbar!"), that radical Islam might have played any role at all? Mr. Holder seemed puzzled by the question. "People have different reasons" he finally answered—a response he repeated three times. He didn't want "to say anything negative about any religion."

And who can forget the exhortations on jihad by John Brennan, Mr. Obama's chief adviser on counterterrorism? Mr. Brennan has in the past charged that Americans lack sensitivity to the Muslim world, and that we have particularly failed to credit its peace-loving disposition. In a May 26 speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Mr. Brennan held forth fervently, if not quite comprehensibly, on who our enemy was not: "Our enemy is not terrorism because terrorism is just a tactic. Our enemy is not terror because terror is a state of mind, and as Americans we refuse to live in fear."

He went on to announce, sternly, that we do not refer to our enemies as Islamists or jihadists because jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam. How then might we be permitted to describe our enemies? One hint comes from another of Mr. Brennan's pronouncements in that speech: That "violent extremists are victims of political, economic and social forces."

Yes, that would work. Consider the news bulletins we could have read: "Police have arrested Faisal Shahzad, victim of political, economic and social forces living in Connecticut, for efforts to set off a car bomb explosion in Times Square." Plotters in Afghanistan and Yemen, preparing for their next attempt at mass murder in America, could only have listened in wonderment. They must have marvelled in particular on learning that this was the chief counterterrorism adviser to the president of the United States.

Long after Mr. Obama leaves office, it will be this parade of explicators, laboring mightily to sell each new piece of official reality revisionism—Janet Napolitano and her immortal "man-caused disasters'' among them—that will stand most memorably as the face of this administration.

It is a White House that has focused consistently on the sensitivities of the world community—as it is euphemistically known—a body of which the president of the United States frequently appears to view himself as a representative at large.


It is what has caused this president and his counterterrorist brain trust to deem it acceptable to insult Americans with nonsensical evasions concerning the enemy we face. It is this focus that caused Mr. Holder to insist on holding the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in lower Manhattan, despite the rage this decision induced in New Yorkers, and later to insist if not there, then elsewhere in New York. This was all to be a dazzling exhibition for that world community—proof of Mr. Obama's moral reclamation program and that America had been delivered from the darkness of the Bush years.

It was why this administration tapped officials like Michael Posner, assistant secretary of state for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. Among his better known contributions to political discourse was a 2005 address in which he compared the treatment of Muslim-Americans in the United States after 9/11 with the plight of the Japanese-Americans interned in camps after Pearl Harbor. During a human-rights conference held in China this May, Mr. Posner cited the new Arizona immigration law by way of assuring the Chinese, those exemplary guardians of freedom, that the United States too had its problems with discrimination.

So there we were: America and China, in the same boat on human rights, two buddies struggling for reform. For this view of reality, which brought withering criticism in Congress and calls for his resignation, Mr. Posner has been roundly embraced in the State Department as a superbly effective representative.

It is no surprise that Mr. Posner—like numerous of his kind—has found a natural home in this administration. His is a sensibility and political disposition with which Mr. Obama is at home. The beliefs and attitudes that this president has internalized are to be found everywhere—in the salons of the left the world over—and, above all, in the academic establishment, stuffed with tenured radicals and their political progeny. The places where it is held as revealed truth that the United States is now, and has been throughout its history, the chief engine of injustice and oppression in the world.

They are attitudes to be found everywhere, but never before in a president of the United States. Mr. Obama may not hold all, or the more extreme, of these views. But there can be no doubt by now of the influences that have shaped him. They account for his grand apology tour through the capitals of Europe and to the Muslim world, during which he decried America's moral failures—her arrogance, insensitivity. They were the words of a man to whom reasons for American guilt came naturally. Americans were shocked by this behavior in their newly elected president. But he was telling them something from those lecterns in foreign lands—something about his distant relation to the country he was about to lead.

The truth about that distance is now sinking in, which is all to the good. A country governed by leaders too principled to speak the name of its mortal enemy needs every infusion of reality it can get.

Ms. Rabinowitz is a member of the Journal's editorial board.

Terrorism: Made in the U.S.A.



by Sheldon Richman, June 11, 2010

It’s a perilous world, as our so-called leaders love to remind us. And for a change they’re right. It is a perilous world. But guess who is most responsible for the peril to Americans? Those very same “leaders” and a long line of predecessors.

Moreover, they — along with anyone else who takes time to examine the matter — know that they create the greatest dangers Americans face. They just don’t care. They have bigger fish to fry than keeping Americans safe. Besides, the dangers they create provide excuses for more power.

Let’s just say what many people already know: the “war on terrorism” produces terrorists. No half-intelligent person could think that U.S. treatment of the Muslim world could have any effect other than to produce violent, vengeful anti-Americanism. Even in the government-friendly mainstream media you will find the facts, though you’ll have to connect the dots yourself.

When you treat people like they are worthless, or help others to treat them that way, some of those people will get mad and vow to get even. If desperate enough they will even be willing to give their lives to the cause.

Isn’t this already obvious? For over 50 years U.S. administrations, for the sake of geopolitical hegemony and preferential access to resources, have treated much of the Muslim world like personal property. They’ve backed brutal dictators, subverted governments, and invaded and occupied countries as it suited their agenda of “world leadership.” The program included defying the will of the Iranian people (1953), backing the repressive Saudi monarchy and the Egyptian and Iraqi dictatorships, financing Israel’s wars against Lebanon and oppression of the Palestinians, and so much more. It was bad enough that England and France had betrayed the trust of the Arabs after World War I and turned the Middle East into a colonial playground, with all the humiliation and repression that implies. The U.S. government then compounded the crime by picking up the mantle of empire after World War II. Power and oil were the reasons. Were the brutalized and mortified people supposed to be grateful to the West?

We kid ourselves when we pretend that history began on Sept. 11, 2001. Can anyone say with a straight face that before that date America was minding its own business according to the noninterventionist guidelines set out by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson? Read some history. Or does American exceptionalism mean not having to know anything before dropping bombs on people and torturing detainees?

The Muslims who wish Americans ill have never been mysterious about their grievances. Osama bin Laden’s fatwa against the United States is online. Read it for yourself. It was issued in 1996, soon after U.S.-financed Israel conducted one of its regular onslaughts against the Lebanese. What are his specific grievances? American troops stationed near Muslim holy places in Saudi Arabia. The 1990s killer U.S. embargo on Iraq. U.S. sponsorship of Israel’s domination of the Palestinians and its neighbors. “Terrorising you, while you are carrying arms on our land, is a legitimate and morally demanded duty,” he wrote.

You don’t need to take bin Laden’s word for it. Bush administration officials acknowledged that U.S. policy creates more terrorists than it kills. Bush strategist Paul Wolfowitz himself said that occupying Iraq permitted U.S. troops to leave Saudi Arabia, where they had created so much hostility to America. Correct: American policy manufactures terrorism.

With impunity the U.S. government fires missiles from pilotless drones into Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere, killing innocents. Its occupation forces leave death and misery in their wake. Gen. Stanley McChrystal concedes that in Afghanistan “We’ve shot an amazing number of people and killed a number and, to my knowledge, none has proven to have been a real threat to the force.” And in the latest incident, Israel killed nine aid volunteers (including an American citizen) on the high seas while enforcing a cruel blockade of Gaza, the latest mistreatment of Palestinians. How can this not come back to haunt us, Israel’s financiers?

U.S. policy — no matter who’s in power — couldn’t be better tailored to recruit terrorists. We can keep pretending we are innocent victims. Or we can finally put the responsibility where it belongs: in Washington, D.C.

Friday, June 11, 2010

Today's college kids lack empathy



Compared to 30 years ago, it's all about me now, study finds
By Jeanna Bryner

updated 8:55 a.m. PT, Fri., May 28, 2010
College students today are less likely to "get" the emotions of others than their counterparts 20 and 30 years ago, a new review study suggests.

Specifically, today's students scored 40 percent lower on a measure of empathy than their elders did.

The findings are based on a review of 72 studies of 14,000 American college students overall conducted between 1979 and 2009.

"We found the biggest drop in empathy after the year 2000," said Sara Konrath, a researcher at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research.

The study was presented this week at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science in Boston.

Is "generation me" all about me?
Compared with college students of the late 1970s, current students are less likely to agree with statements such as "I sometimes try to understand my friends better by imagining how things look from their perspective," and "I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me."

"Many people see the current group of college students — sometimes called 'Generation Me ' — as one of the most self-centered, narcissistic, competitive, confident and individualistic in recent history," said Konrath, who is also affiliated with the University of Rochester Department of Psychiatry.

Are today's young people really more self-centered?

Konrath's colleague graduate student Edward O'Brien added, "It's not surprising that this growing emphasis on the self is accompanied by a corresponding devaluation of others.”

Other recent studies have shown mixed results on the character of today's youth . For instance, one study of more than 450,000 high-school seniors born at different time periods showed today’s youth are no more self-centered than their parents were at their age.

The role of media
Even so, Konrath and O'Brien suggest several reasons for the lower empathy they found, including the ever-increasing exposure to media in the current generation.

"Compared to 30 years ago, the average American now is exposed to three times as much nonwork-related information," Konrath said. "In terms of media content, this generation of college students grew up with video games , and a growing body of research, including work done by my colleagues at Michigan, is establishing that exposure to violent media numbs people to the pain of others."

The rise in social media could also play a role.

"The ease of having 'friends' online might make people more likely to just tune out when they don't feel like responding to others' problems, a behavior that could carry over offline," O'Brien said.

In fact, past research has suggested college students are addicted to social media .

Other possible causes include a society today that’s hypercompetitive and focused on success, as well as the fast-paced nature of today, in which people are less likely than in time periods past to slow down to really listen to others, O'Brien added.

"College students today may be so busy worrying about themselves and their own issues that they don't have time to spend empathizing with others, or at least perceive such time to be limited," O'Brien said.

Publisher Slaps “Outdated” Warning On U.S. Constitution, Founding Documents



Warns parents that Declaration of Independence should be contextualised for kids

Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Thursday, Jun 10th, 2010


A publishing company is drawing ire for placing a disclaimer on the U.S. Constitution and other founding documents, indicating that they are out of date and do not reflect the values of modern America.

Wilder Publications, which carries reprints of the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, Common Sense, the Articles of Confederation, and the Federalist Papers, includes a warning on the books that reads:

“This book is a product of its time and does not reflect the same values as it would if it were written today.”

The company also provides advice to parents seeking to educate their children on U.S. history:

“Parents might wish to discuss with their children how views on race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and interpersonal relations have changed since this book was written before allowing them to read this classic work.”

The clear indication here is that the Constitution and those who value it may be socially inept racists, sexists and homophobes.

In a Fox News article on the story, Walter Olson, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, notes that Wilder may have been forced to place the disclaimers on the documents in order that they not be removed from the shelves by “oversensitive people”:

“Any idea that’s 100 years old will probably offend someone or other,” Olson said. “…But if there’s anything that you ought to be able to take at a first gulp for yourself and then ask your parents if you’re wondering about this or that strange thing, it should be the founding documents of American history.”

Wilder Publications issued the following statement clarifying their position:

“We specialize in classic books and we were receiving complaints about the values depicted in some of the books. We wrote the disclaimer so that we could stop having to point out to our readers that people held different values 100 or 200 years ago. It seems we’re dammed if we do and dammed if we don’t.”

Constitutional attorney Noel Francisco says the idea that the warnings are legally required is ridiculous:

“Would it ever be a legal concern that selling the Constitution would expose you to some kind of liability? No. Never,” Francisco told FoxNews.com. “The Constitution is the founding document of the country, an operative legal document.”

“By putting on the warning, you’re making controversial something that’s not controversial: our Constitution, our Declaration of Independence,” Francisco added.


Angry customers have vented their views at Wilder’s page on Amazon.com

One reviewer notes:

“Really we need to have a disclaimer on our historic documents? The constitution is more important now than any other time in our nations history. I will check every book I purchase and ensure it is not published by Wilder Publications until they stop printing the constitution with a disclaimer.”

Others have vowed to boycott both Wilder and Amazon.

It seems that their anger is somewhat misdirected and should be more focused toward those in positions of authority that have so distorted social and cultural norms to the point where it is considered necessary to place such a disclaimer on freedom.

Take Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan for instance.

Kagan’s has previously argued that the government has a role in policing free speech, that the state should have a remit to censor books and newspaper editorials, as well as the political opinions of radio talk show hosts or television reporters.

In addition, Obama’s information technology czar Cass Sunstein has called for the re-introduction of the “fairness doctrine,” which would force political websites to carry mandatory government propaganda.

While Wilder’s Constitution disclaimer is an alarming story, it is merely part of the fallout of the wider erosion of freedom which, unfortunately, boycotts and one star reviews on Amazon .com will not coming close to fixing

Toxic Corexit dispersant chemicals remained secret as feds colluded with Big Business



Mike Adams
NaturalNews
June 11, 2010

After weeks of silence on the issue, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finally decided to go public with the list of ingredients used to manufacture Corexit, the chemical dispersant used by BP in the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster. There are two things about this announcement that deserve our attention: First, the ingredients that have been disclosed are extremely toxic, and second, why did the EPA protect the oil industry’s “trade secrets” for so long by refusing to disclose these ingredients until now?

As reported in the New York Times, Brian Turnbaugh, a policy analyst at OMB Watch said, “EPA had the authority to act all along; its decision to now disclose the ingredients demonstrates this. Yet it took a public outcry and weeks of complaints for the agency to act and place the public’s interest ahead of corporate interests.”

On the toxicity question, you could hardly find a more dangerous combination of poisons to dump into the Gulf of Mexico than what has been revealed in Corexit. The Corexit 9527 product has been designated a “chronic and acute health hazard” by the EPA. It is made with 2-butoxyethanol, a highly toxic chemical that has long been linked to the health problems of cleanup crews who worked on the Exxon Valdez spill.

A newer Corexit recipe dubbed the “9500 formula” contains dioctyl sodium sulfosuccinate, a detergent chemical that’s also found in laxatives. What do you suppose happens to the marine ecosystem when fish and sea turtles ingest this chemical through their gills and skin? And just as importantly, what do you think happens to the human beings who are working around this chemical, breathing in its fumes and touching it with their skin?

The answers are currently unknown, which is exactly why it is so inexcusable that Nalco and the oil industry giants would for so long refuse to disclose the chemical ingredients they’re dumping into the Gulf of Mexico in huge quantities (over a million gallons dumped into the ocean to date).

But it gets even more interesting when you look at just how widespread this “chemical secrecy” is across Big Business in the USA… and how the U.S. government more often than not conspires with industry to keep these chemicals a secret.

It’s time to end chemical trade secrets

Armed with the accomplices in the FDA, EPA, FTC and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, powerful corporations have been keeping secrets from us all. It’s not just the toxic chemicals in Corexit, either: Large manufacturers of consumers products — such as Unilever, Proctor & Gamble and Johnson & Johnson — routinely use toxic chemical ingredients in their products — ingredients which are usually kept secret from the public.

Similarly, virtually every perfume, cologne and fragrance product on the market is made with cancer-causing chemicals that their manufacturers refuse to disclose, claiming their formulas are “trade secrets.”

Throughout Big Business in America, the toxic chemicals used in everyday products such as household cleaners, cosmetics and yard care remain a dangerous secret, and the U.S. government actually colludes with industry to keep these chemical ingredients a secret by, for example, refusing to require full disclosure of ingredients for personal care products. The FDA offers us virtually no enforcement in this area, depending almost entirely on companies to declare their own chemicals are safe rather than requiring actual safety testing to be conducted.

This is why the following statement is frightening yet true: What BP is doing to the Gulf of Mexico, companies like Proctor & Gamble are doing to the entire population. We are all being mass poisoned by the toxic chemicals in personal care products, foods, medicines, fragrance products and other concoctions created by powerful corporations that use toxic chemicals throughout their product lines… but who refuse to disclose those ingredients in the public.

Thanks to the widespread use of secret chemicals in foods, medicines and personal care products, we are awash in synthetic toxic chemicals that have already reached the shores of public health. The rates of cancer, Alzheimer’s, diabetes and infertility that we’re seeing right now are a reflection of the devastating health cost associated with ongoing the ongoing chemical contamination of our population. Even public water fluoridation policies are a kind of “water contamination disaster” where chemicals from an undisclosed source are dumped into the water supply (on purpose, no less!).

What’s doubly disturbing about all this is that many of the chemicals used in foods, medicines, household cleaners and personal care products end up in the Gulf of Mexico as well because they get flushed down stream. So now the Gulf isn’t just polluted with crude oil and dispersant chemicals; it’s also heavily contaminated with all the chemical runoff from the products made by large corporations that refuse to disclose the actual chemical ingredients, claiming they’re trade secrets.

It’s time to end the chemical secrecy

As this Gulf of Mexico oil disaster clearly demonstrates, it’s time to end the chemical secrecy maintained by Big Business. We must demand that all ingredients be fully disclosed for all products so that the curtain of chemical secrecy is lifted once a for all.

Neither oil companies nor consumer product companies should be able to hide behind the excuse of “trade secrets” to avoid disclosing the actual chemicals contained in the products they sell. As consumers, we must demand chemical transparency from these companies or refuse to buy their products.

Legislatively, we must demand new laws that require full disclosure on all consumer products so that ordinary people can see what’s contained in the products they buy.

In a world where one person’s chemical runoff impacts every other person, there is no justification for chemical secrecy. We all have the right to know what we’re putting on (or in) our bodies, and if companies refuse to be honest with us, we should boycott their products and publicly shame them for engaging in deceptive, secretive behavior.

Because the truth is that consumer product companies don’t dare want you to know what’s actually found in their products. And that’s because most of their products are made with poison. If the average perfume product listed its chemical ingredients on the label, for example, product sales would plummet as consumers realized just how many of those ingredients are linked to cancer and liver disorders.

Big Business wants us all to remain ignorant… blinded to the truth of what poisons they’re slathering on our skin or dripping down our throats. But it’s time to halt this dark era of chemical secrets in our modern world. It’s time to demand transparency, clean up our waterways and stop poisoning ourselves and our planet.

Gulf Oil Spill ‘Could Go Years’ If Not Dealt With



F. William Engdahl
Financial Sense
June 11, 2010

The Obama Administration and senior BP officials are frantically working not to stop the world’s worst oil disaster, but to hide the true extent of the actual ecological catastrophe. Senior researchers tell us that the BP drilling hit one of the oil migration channels and that the leakage could continue for years unless decisive steps are undertaken, something that seems far from the present strategy.

In a recent discussion, Vladimir Kutcherov, Professor at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden and the Russian State University of Oil and Gas, predicted that the present oil spill flooding the Gulf Coast shores of the United States “could go on for years and years … many years.” 1

According to Kutcherov, a leading specialist in the theory of abiogenic deep origin of petroleum, “What BP drilled into was what we call a ‘migration channel,’ a deep fault on which hydrocarbons generated in the depth of our planet migrate to the crust and are accumulated in rocks, something like Ghawar in Saudi Arabia.”3 Ghawar, the world’s most prolific oilfield has been producing millions of barrels daily for almost 70 years with no end in sight. According to the abiotic science, Ghawar like all elephant and giant oil and gas deposits all over the world, is located on a migration channel similar to that in the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico.

As I wrote at the time of the January 2010 Haiti earthquake disaster,3 Haiti had been identified as having potentially huge hydrocasrbon reserves, as has neighboring Cuba. Kutcherov estimates that the entire Gulf of Mexico is one of the planet’s most abundant accessible locations to extract oil and gas, at least before the Deepwater Horizon event this April

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Troops Invade Chicago



ADRIANA CORREA
NBC Chicago
June 10, 2010

Disaster. Mayhem. Panic in the streets.

Chicago could look a lot like a Michael Bay movie-in-action this weekend when massive emergency response exercise takes place in and around the city.

The Illinois National Guard says more than 50 local, state, federal and private agencies will participate in the drill to learn how to respond to disasters. The five-day training exercise will run from Sunday through Thursday, June 17.

Officials with the Illinois National Guard say the event is a “full-scale exercise” and residents can expect to see emergency responders throughout the Chicago area “look and acting” as if it were a real disaster mission.

Obama Administration Prolonging Gulf oil Crisis by Denying Oil Cleanup Technology



Mark Matheny
Sic Semper Tyrannis
June 10, 2010

The Dylan Ratigan Show, June 9, 2010:

Francois Vorster of Super Suck International talks about his plan to clean up the oil disaster: Attach a giant vacuum to one of the supertankers and suck up the oil from the surface.

Why is the Obama Administration not using this excellent technology, when it is apparently available with little problem? Are they prolonging this “crisis” to bolster the call to “green ” technologies at the next United Nations Sustainable Developement Summit? This seems to be the case. It seems there is no limit to the desparation that the Elites will go to in order to bring about their Carbon Taxes, and control of the oceans.

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

Bernanke: ‘Things Will Come Apart’ If Entitlements Are Not Reformed and Spending Controlled



Matt Cover
CNSNews
June 10, 2010

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke delivered a frank assessment to Congress on the fate of the economy if entitlement programs are not restructured. On Wednesday, Bernanke warned that “things will come apart” if Congress allows the federal entitlement programs and the deficit spending they cause to continue on their unsustainable path.

Speaking at a hearing of the House Budget Committee, Bernanke offered his dire prediction after being asked what would happen if Congress did not take action to head off the impending crisis brought on by unsustainable entitlement spending, led primarily by Medicare.



“The entitlement programs are not self-funded,” Bernanke said, “they are unfunded liabilities. They are the single biggest component of spending going forward.”

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

America’s Bread And Circus Society



Chuck Baldwin
June 8, 2010

The Roman poet Juvenal (circa 100 A.D.) wrote regarding the way latter-day Roman emperors retained power and control over the masses that were seemingly more than happy to obsess themselves with trivialities and self-indulgences while their once-great-and-powerful empire collapsed before their very eyes. He wrote:

“Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions–everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses.”

It used to be when men stripped their shirts off and painted their faces, they were heading to the battlefield to kill the tyrant’s troops.

I submit that a good many in America are, like Rome of old, carelessly frittering away their God-given liberties, foolishly clamoring for nothing more than government handouts and never-ending entertainment. Millions and millions of Americans (especially males) are literally intoxicated with sports. Sports are no longer a great American pastime; they are now a great American obsession.

Mind you, this writer has been a sports fan all of his life. I began playing organized basketball in the fifth grade; I was on the high school wrestling team; I played football in high school and college; and I ran track. Still today, I enjoy watching a good NFL game (yes, I’m still a Green Bay Packers fan), a good college game when the Gators are playing, a good NCAA men’s basketball game (especially during the tournament–even more so when the Hoosiers are in it), and any NBA championship series between the Celtics and Lakers (I root for Boston). And I even like to watch a round of professional golf once in a while (it helps me go to sleep when I’m trying to take a nap). But none of the above will interfere with anything that is important, and I am not going to plan my whole universe around any of it. If it is convenient, I will watch. If it’s not, I will read about it in the sports section of the newspaper. And I’m certainly not going to spend my hard-earned money following any sports team (even those I like) all over the country like some rock band groupie.

I am not talking about sports in general; I am talking about the way many American men have allowed sports to control and dominate their lives. With many, sports are not just a hobby; they are a religion. I cannot count the number of conversations between men that I overhear in restaurants, airplanes, boardrooms, and, yes, even church houses, in which every man in the circle is literally consumed with all sorts of sports facts, information, and opinions. In many such discussions, these men will talk about nothing else. To these men, there is absolutely nothing in the world more important than the latest sports score, announcement, or trade. NOTHING!

And there is also a very real psychological pitfall associated with a man’s intoxication with sports. I submit that an obsession with sports gives men a false sense of masculinity and actually serves to steal true manhood from them.

For example, it used to be when men stripped their shirts off and painted their faces, they were heading to the battlefield to kill the tyrant’s troops. Now they are headed off to the sports coliseum to watch a football game. A man’s ego and machismo was once used to protect his family and freedom; now it’s used to tout batting averages and box scores. The fact is, if we could get the average American male to get as exercised and energized about defending the historic principles upon which liberty and Western Civilization are built as he is in defending his favorite quarterback or NASCAR driver, our country would not be in the shape it is in today.

The sad reality is that much of today’s masculinity is experienced only vicariously through a variety of sports teams and personalities. Instead of personally flexing our muscles for God and country, freedom and liberty, or home and hearth, we punch the air and beat our chests over touchdowns and home runs (even though we had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with them ourselves). Instead of getting in the face of these would-be tyrants in Washington, D.C., who are doing everything they can to steal the American dream, we get in the face of the poor umpire who makes a bad call or the Little League coach who doesn’t play my son enough. Our happiness, well-being, and mood are not determined by anything personally achieved (or lost), but by what others accomplished (or didn’t accomplish) at the ball park. Whether our children inherit a land of liberty and freedom does not seem nearly as important as whether they make the starting lineup on the football team.

Add to an epidemic obsession with sports the demand for more and more handouts from Big Brother and the outlook for liberty is not good. Everywhere we turn, we seem to hear people clamoring for government to give them more and more. They expect government to supply their every need and meet their every demand. They then have the gall to turn around and say, “God bless America: land of the free”?

Ladies and gentlemen, one cannot have it both ways. If we expect government to be our supplier, we cannot expect that it will not become our master. Always remember this: government has nothing to give except that it first takes it from someone else. Every dollar and every job that government gives is first taken from someone else. Furthermore, every job given to government is another freedom–and another dollar–taken from the citizenry. Every government job brings with it a restriction, a prohibition, a regulation, an inspection, a fee, a tax, an assessment, etc. As government grows, freedom shrinks. As government spends, wealth shrinks. And as government hires, opportunity shrinks.

Most historians agree with Juvenal that the mighty Roman Empire collapsed from within due to a morally reckless, selfish, pleasure-crazed, sports-obsessed, bread and circus society that willingly surrendered the principles of self-government to an insatiable central government that, through perpetual wars and incessant handouts, destroyed a once-great republic.

By all appearances, the bread and circus society has reared its ugly head in America. And make no mistake about it: if the people of the United States do not quickly repent of this madness, the consequences will be just as destructive for our once-great republic as it was for Rome.

USNORTHCOM Gears Up For Potential Attack On U.S. Soil



Shepard Ambellas
Intel Hub
June 9, 2010

USNORTHCOM admits that they are preparing military operations within the United States. This is the first time in history this has been done. They will be working with DHS, state and local law enforcement on U.S. soil.

The focus of this operation will be in our back yard. This ORI is planning on defending against enemy attacks, supporting civilian authorities with fighting an unconventional foe in the U.S.

NORTHCOM went on to say that the drill will be in the Gulf area. They antcicipate no infulstructure and extreme weather conditions.

“Even more significant, this inspection marked the first time that any Air Force unit has been wartime validated in support of the security and defense of the United States of America. That’s huge,” Nelson said.

The survival of thousand Americans rests on this training they went on to say.

The Intel Hub believes they are preparing for a major biological attack or false flag. We will keep you posted. This could be part of Operation Garden Plot. This could be why there is a hardened troop build up in the Gulf.

Units make history with Air Force’s first homeland defense ORI

By Maj. Dale Greer

123rd Airlift Wing Public Affairs

June 3, 2010

GULFPORT, Miss. – Three units representing each component of the Air Force made history here May 16 through 23 when they successfully completed the first homeland defense operational readiness inspection.

The ORI, held at the Gulfport Combat Readiness Training Center here, was administered by the Air Mobility Command Inspector General on a trial basis, but it may help pave the way for future inspections, officials said.

“For the very first time, the U.S. Air Force has validated a unit’s wartime capability to defend the homeland by fighting an enemy right here on U.S. soil,” said Col. Greg Nelson, the commander of the Kentucky Air National Guard’s 123rd Airlift Wing, which served as the lead organization for the ORI.

“That represents a major shift in the way Air Force (leaders evaluate) unit readiness, because it puts the focus in our own backyard, rather than a simulated overseas location where these evaluations are usually staged,” he said.

The inspection was a total force effort, with the 123rd Airlift Wing representing the Air National Guard; the 317th Airlift Group from Dyess Air Force Base, Texas, providing active-duty forces; and the 70th Aerial Port Squadron from Homestead Air Reserve Base, Fla., contributing Air Force Reserve members and equipment.

As with traditional ORIs, this one tested the ability of each unit to mobilize Airmen and equipment, fly to a remote site, operate in a hostile environment, defend against enemy attacks, and redeploy back home, all while AMC inspectors evaluated every phase of the operation.

Unlike traditional ORIs, in this one the participants were tasked with supporting civil authorities while fighting an unconventional foe in the United States. In the past, ORIs have typically required units to deploy to simulated overseas bases and defend against conventional military forces.

“I’m pleased to say that all three units passed this new test with flying colors,” Nelson said. “We are ready to perform our mission of theater airlift anytime, anywhere, whether it be in support of our allies abroad or here at home in defense of the United States of America.”

The ORI scenario that played out in Mississippi required more than 300 Kentucky Air Guard members to establish operations in concert with about 175 Airmen from the Texas and Florida units, forming the notional 104th Air Expeditionary Wing.

All three organizations worked seamlessly to launch theater airlift and medical evacuation sorties across the Gulf Coast region, supporting U.S. Northern Command missions and civil authorities, while foiling multiple attacks by well-organized terrorists.

The inspection posed an unusually challenging environment because of extreme weather conditions and several eleventh-hour changes caused by the non-availability of infrastructure, Nelson said.

“We didn’t flinch. We didn’t whine. We didn’t push back to any challenge, from changes in taskings, to changes in locations, to changes in facilities at the last minute,” he said. “(With temperatures hovering near 100 degrees), it also was the hottest ORI the team chief had even seen. But we maintained a great attitude, we operated safely, and we performed our mission with a level of excellence that makes me proud.

“Even more significant, this inspection marked the first time that any Air Force unit has been wartime validated in support of the security and defense of the United States of America. That’s huge,” Nelson said.

Col. Dan Dagher, the 317th Airlift Group commander, agreed.

“The 317th (AG), 123rd (AW) and 70th (APS) are ready — and now tested — to meet the challenge, reduce human suffering and save lives,” he said. “If an attack on the homeland happens, we will be the first responders. Americans can sleep better knowing that the 317th (AG), 123rd (AW) and 70th (APS) can provide defense support to civil authorities in the United States, and that the very survival of thousands of … Americans rests on our now-tested ability to immediately respond and perform mass-casualty medical evacuations after a chemical attack.”

Nelson said the idea for a homeland defense/homeland security ORI originated at the Kentucky Air Guard, whose leaders asked AMC to consider using the alternate approach because it better reflects the realities of a post-9/11 world in which homeland defense has taken center stage. Read more…

http://www.northcom.mil/News/2010/060310.html

Massive Media Blackout in Gulf Oil Spill

Infowars.com
June 9, 2010

openUReyes blog reports:

According to documentary film maker, James Fox, reporting from Louisiana, there is a massive media black out being perpetrated in the Gulf of Mexico BP Oil spill. While that much may have seemed obvious to many, James says that people with cameras are being threatened with arrest, and locals are seriously afraid to talk. The place is swarming with both government officials and corporate officials, and by the sounds of this interview it’s a pretty scary situation.

James Fox is a filmmaker that specializes in UFO documentaries. One of his films aired last fall on the History Channel.

Music industry on verge of collapse



Jim Dyson / Getty Images
Thom Yorke of Radiohead performs during 'In Rainbows' tour in 2008 in London.

Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke is warning the music industry is on the brink of collapse, insisting young musicians should resist signing record deals because the major labels will "completely fold" within months.

The British rockers broke away from their longtime label, EMI, in 2007 and went on to embrace the new digital era with the release their seventh album, In Rainbows, which they offered up over the internet and allowed fans to choose the price.

Yorke has now issued a warning to upcoming artists, urging them not to sign traditional record deals because they would be tying themselves to "the sinking ship."

In an interview for a new high school textbook called The Rax Active Citizen Toolkit, which aims to inspire youngsters to become more politically literate, Yorke claims the music industry is on the verge of a major crisis and could collapse completely within "months".

He says, "It will be only a matter of time - months rather than years - before the music business establishment completely folds. (It will be) no great loss to the world."

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Evidence Points To BP Oil Spill False Flag



Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones
Prisonplanet.com
Tuesday, Jun 8th, 2010

- Sales of shares and stocks in days and weeks beforehand

- Halliburton link, acquisition of cleanup company days before explosion

- BP report cites undocumented tampering with well sealing equipment

- Government uses disaster to push for Carbon Tax, Nationalization talk

Troubling evidence surrounding the Deepwater Horizon explosion on April 20th suggests that the incident could have been manufactured.

On April 12th, just over one week before the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, Halliburton, the world’s second largest oilfield services corporation, surprised some by acquiring Boots & Coots, a relatively small but vastly experienced oil

well control companies.

The company deals with fires and blowouts on oil rigs and oil wells. It was responsible for putting out roughly one third of the more than 700 oil well fires set in Kuwait by retreating Iraqi soldiers during the Gulf War.

The deal itself is still under scrutiny with Boots and Coots facing an ongoing investigation into “possible breaches of fiduciary duty and other violations of state law”

Where this information gets really interesting is with the fact that Halliburton is named in the majority of some two dozen lawsuits filed since the explosion by Gulf Coast people and businesses who claim that the company is to blame for the disaster.

Halliburton was forced to admit in testimony at a congressional hearing last month that it carried out a cementing operation 20 hours before the Gulf of Mexico rig went up in flames. The lawsuits claim that four Halliburton workers stationed on the rig improperly capped the well.

As the New York Times noted on May 26th, “BP officials chose, partly for financial reasons, to use a type of casing for the well that the company knew was the riskier of two options,”

Workers from the rig and company officials have said that hours before the explosion, gases were leaking through the cement, which had been set in place by the oil services contractor, Halliburton. Investigators have said these leaks were the likely cause of the explosion.”

According to a 2007 study by Minerals Management Service, cementing was a factor in 18 of 39 rig blowouts in the gulf between 1992 and 2006.

Another intriguing connection Boots and Coots has to the Deepwater Horizon explosion comes via Pat Campbell, the man BP has employed to cap the well beneath the ruined rig. Campbell worked for Boots and Coots as general manager for many years.

BP has admitted to buying Yahoo and Google keywords in an attempt to control publicly available information in the wake of the catastrophe. It seems that the company is taking all the flack for the spill while the Halliburton link is being roundly ignored.

BP’s prepared testimony briefing, which has since leaked online, also intriguingly notes that the Hydraulic Control System on equipment designed to automatically seal the well in an emergency was modified without their knowledge sometime before the explosion.

“the extent of these modifications is unknown at this time” states the report on page 37.



Possible prior knowledge of the explosion is also evident via huge dumping of stocks and shares in the weeks and days prior to the incident.

Goldman Sachs dumped 44% of its shares in BP Oil during the first quarter – shares that subsequently lost 36 percent of their value, equating to $96 million.

Other asset management firms also sold huge blocks of BP stock in the first quarter. Though the amounts pale in comparison to Goldman’s holdings, Wachovia, owned by Wells Fargo, sold 98% of its shares in BP and Swiss bank UBS sold 97% of its BP shares.

Furthermore, as reported by the London Telegraph on June 5th, Tony Hayward, the chief executive of BP, sold £1.4 million of his shares in the fuel giant weeks before the spill.

In the days before the Deepwater explosion, Obama had announced a new effort to explore for and lease new drilling locations in the deep Gulf and in Alaska. In the wake of the disaster, these plans have been cancelled and BP is taking a PR bashing.

All of which has been capitalized on by the Obama administration to reinvigorate talk of a carbon tax and has created the opportunity to reintroduce the idea of nationalizing oil, which the Democratic leadership has long sought.

The full story of what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico is yet to emerge, there are rumours of more spills and an ongoing coverup. The site represents a $2.2 trillion source of wealth and power, a motive along with a plethora of suspicious activity that needs to be investigated further.

Food and Depopulation: Rockefeller Family



Cassandra Anderson
Infowars.com
June 8, 2010

Part 1 of 4.

The purpose of this article is to give a brief outline of how the elites, and the Rockefellers in particular, are using food as a weapon.

Bill Gates has teamed with the Rockefellers, Monsanto and the government of Norway in the Doomsday Seed Vault, in which organic seed is stored for some vague anticipated world catastrophe.

Since the Rockefeller family came to power (especially after gaining a monopoly with Standard Oil) they have manipulated our government into ruining our financial system by way of the Federal Reserve, energy through oil dependency and food with GMOs (Genetically Engineered Organisms). The intention is to rob us blind and kill us. It’s time to wake up.

The official name of this program is Agenda 21 Sustainable Development.

It the overarching blueprint for depopulation and total control over America and the rest of the world. There is no question that Americans are targeted for depopulation: GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) food has saturated American farmlands. GMOs are dangerous and the proliferation of corn crops (used as sweetener, animal feed, processed food, etc) in America is shortening our life spans.(1) Our water is polluted, containing over 60,000 chemicals, most of which have never been tested for safety.(2) Our air is toxic, and the US is one of the most targeted areas for chemtrails.(3) This is just the tip of the iceberg, the things we know about. The focus of this article is revealing the link between the Rockefellers and their intended use of food as a weapon, which is more powerful than military domination and energy control.

While Agenda 21 was introduced in 1992, the elite collectivists, lead by the Rockefellers, have been pushing population control on America and the world for generations. In 1992, this depopulation and control policy was modernized and given a name: Agenda 21, or the Agenda for the 21st century. The premise for depopulation and control is to preserve the environment. One would have to be an idiot to disregard environmental concerns, however, the solutions that Agenda 21 offers fail to address the real issues. The primary tools that Agenda 21 Sustainable Development uses are global warming lies, water shortages (like the man made drought in California, which also causes food shortages) and the Endangered Species Act (designed to take away private property, which is the base of wealth creation and freedom).(4)

Food control goes hand in hand with population control. The eugenics (improvement of humans through selective breeding, often using brutal methods like genocide and forced sterilization) program of the Third Reich in Nazi Germany was revealed after WWII. Obviously, people did not have a high opinion of eugenics, so, according to William Engdahl, author of “Seeds of Destruction”, the Rockefeller strategists shifted their profile to champion the causes of the environment, resource scarcity and overpopulation.(5) The policy of population control remained, despite the illusion of caring concern- which is simply marketing; the word eugenics has been renamed as “human genetics”. This scheme for improving their image worked for them before, using “philanthropy” and tax-free foundations, when the Rockefellers became very unpopular following the Ludlow Massacre.

The Ludlow Massacre took place at a Rockefeller owned coal mine in Colorado. The mines were notoriously unsafe, which caused many deaths and the workers were paid in scrip (currency substitute that is often credit), to be spent at the Rockefeller company stores. When the workers went on strike, they were evicted from their homes and lived with their families in tent cities. Then they were provoked through murder, machine gun spray, harassment, etc, in order to goad the workers into violence.(6) This was used as a pretext to get the National Guard involved; the state militia opened fire on the tent cities, resulting in up to 53 deaths, 13 of whom were women and children. So, the Rockefellers created a propaganda campaign to polish their tarnished image through tax exempt foundations. These foundations are hardly philanthropic; they are used to fund the destruction of America (please read this excellent interview transcript by G. Edward Griffin to discover the true nature of tax exempt foundations).(7)

Why do you think Senator Jay Rockefeller is pushing so hard to censor the Internet?(8)

Today, the Rockefellers use coercive population control tactics and food as a weapon through a front organization, CGIAR (Consultative Group on Agricultural Resources) as the Rockefellers are trying to distance themselves from public- just like the Rothschild clan has done. Engdahl reports that CGIAR operates under the umbrella of the UN World Bank, and its primary focus is the spread of GMO crops. CGIAR was created by the Rockefellers and the Ford Foundation, along with the UN World Bank in 1971 with $350 million dollars a year in funding.



The Rockefeller’s “Green Revolution”, which was the implementation of new farming methods in developing countries, like Mexico, India and Asia, increased crop yields, but ended in disaster; the program lasted from the 1940’s- 1970’s.(9) The “Green Revolution”, funded by the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations and the US government, was a farming experiment with these results:

• Hybrid rice was planted that is often sterile in subsequent generations

• Intensive water usage, which depleted water sources

• Use of pesticides and herbicides, which causes cancer but made the manufacturers wealthy

• Use of synthetic (petroleum based) fertilizers that damaged the environment, but created untold wealth for the Rockefeller owned Standard Oil

• Created a monoculture (only a single crop is grown), which means that the food supply can be destroyed in one season

Bill Gates wants to have a new “Gene Revolution” in Africa. Bill Gates has teamed with the Rockefellers, Monsanto and the government of Norway in the Doomsday Seed Vault, in which organic seed is stored for some vague anticipated world catastrophe.(10)

The Rockefeller Brothers Fund created the ISAAA (International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications) and the Rockefeller Foundation is a major donor. The ISAAA is involved in promoting proprietary GMO seeds to developing countries. Its sponsors include Monsanto (USA), Dow AgroSciences (USA), Cargill (USA), Bayer CropScience (Germany), and a mysterious “Anonymous Donor “(USA), and US-AID of the State Department, per William Engdahl.

It is worth mentioning that Robert Deitch’s book, “Hemp: American History Revisited” explains that the Great Depression was not caused by the Wall Street stock market crash of ‘29, but by Prohibition (the 18th Amendment that prohibited alcohol from 1920 until it was repealed in 1933). Other businesses, besides the production of alcoholic beverages, that used alcohol were ruined. Deitch claims that the big oil interests, like Rockefeller (Standard Oil) and Mellon (Gulf Oil) demonized alcohol, not on propagandized moral grounds, but to eliminate competition. The automobile industry was in its infancy and they wanted to corner the market on energy, so they devised a plan to knock out the competition of alcohol powered vehicles.

Later, in 1937, after relentless lobbying, they did the same thing with hemp, and through deception and demonization of marijuana, hemp was outlawed. Hemp contains only miniscule trace amounts of THC (the active agent in marijuana), yet it is considered a ‘controlled substance’.

Hemp is a low maintenance plant that needs no pesticides or herbicides, and can produce oil, paper products, biodegradable plastics, medicine and textiles (it is also a super nutritious food). Because the Robber Barons (Rockefeller and Mellon- oil, DuPont- chemicals and Hearst- paper) were threatened, they joined together to outlaw hemp.

Hemp was later needed during WWII, so its cultivation was allowed in the US. Hemp was a threat to the Rockefellers not only because it produces oil, but also because Cannibis has uses as a medicine, thereby threatening their pharmaceutical drug monopoly. Nelson Rockefeller, as governor of New York, in 1973, established marijuana as a Schedule I narcotic drug, through the “Rockefeller Drug Laws” which had harsh penalties for the possession and sale of drugs (including marijuana) that could result in a sentence of 15 years to life. As other States followed suit, this became the cornerstone of America’s abysmal ‘War on Drugs’.(11)

California was the first State to defy the federal government in de-criminalizing marijuana for medical use, through the 10th Amendment (States’ rights). Fourteen other States have followed suit. California will be vote on marijuana legalization in November; this may pass because the government wants to tax it. Ironically, in 2006, a bill to allow hemp farming passed both houses of the California legislature, but collectivist Arnold Schwarzenegger, in another act of cowardice, vetoed the bill because he said that marijuana and hemp are indistinguishable under federal law. Hemp could go a long way toward saving California’s bankrupt economy.

Fifteen other States have introduced or enacted legislation to grow hemp, but they fear the federal Drug Enforcement Agency.(12)

Interestingly, California will have an initiative on the ballot in November to legalize marijuana. This means that if it passes, anyone can smoke marijuana for any reason, as opposed to limiting it to medical marijuana use. This is important for 2 reasons; first, it would open the door for hemp cultivation for food, oil, natural plastics, paper, etc. The second reason this is important is because it would nullify the federal drug law, thus enforcing the Tenth Amendment for state sovereignty.

Thanks to F. William Engdahl, author of “Seeds of Destruction” for all of his fine research and articles.

For more information, pleas visit www.MorphCity.com

1 http://www.theholisticoption.com/Pages/Video_King_Corn_Documentary_219.aspx

2. http://www.naturalnews.com/028638_EPA_water_supply.html

3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nD9ezi55mO4&feature=related

4. www. MorphCity.com

5. http://www.mindfully.org/GE/2005/Geopolitics-GM-Food6mar05.htm

6. http://www.newdemocracyworld.org/Bill-Gates-3.pdf

7. http://www.realityzone.com/hiddenagenda2.html

8. http://www.infowars.com/murder-of-the-internet-and-the-free-market/

9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution

10. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7529

11. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockefeller_drug_laws

12. http://www.naturalnews.com/020625_hemp_farming_politics.html

Investment Banker: It’s Going To Get Nasty — Buy Land, Barbed Wire And Guns



Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Tuesday, June 8, 2010

A top investment banker has warned that the economic fallout of the sovereign debt crisis could get so nasty over the next five years that people would be wise to abandon the markets and instead buy land, barbed wire and guns.

With gold smashing through its all time record high this morning on the back of fears over a double dip recession, analysts are turning increasingly bearish on the markets. Anthony Fry, senior managing director at Evercore Partners, told CNBC that the bond markets could turn nasty over the next few months and said that the current problems created by the European debt crisis could be with us for at least five years.

“Look at the current situation. You have Greece, now you have Hungary and huge issues surrounding Spain and Portugal,” he said, warning of a “nightmare scenario” of hyper-stagflation, where inflation rises dramatically but asset prices deflate.

“I don’t want to scare anyone but I am considering investing in barbed wire and guns, things are not looking good and rates are heading higher,” said Fry.

RBS Chief Strategist Bob Janjuah echoed Fry’s sentiments, predicting that governments would inject at least $15 trillion dollars more qualitative easing into the system and that investors should get into gold to offset the depreciating value of fiat currencies.

“Over the next 6 months we will see private sector deflation pushing 10-year yields down to 2 percent,” he said. “This will see the policymakers mistakenly attempt to kick-start the economy and market with a global quantitative easing program worth between $10 and $15 trillion dollars.”

Janjuah pointed out that, while gold has dramatically risen in value over the last ten years, the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones have both remained flat over the course of a decade.

Gold hit a record high of $1,251.85 dollars an ounce this morning as investors continued to flock to the precious metal as a hedge against economic turmoil and the very real possibility of a double dip recession.

With U.S. debt moving towards parity with GDP, members of Congress and leading financial experts are warning that the United States will be in the same dire situation as Greece within 7-10 years unless the federal government implements radical austerity measures.

The backlash to those austerity measures usually takes the form of rioting and violence, as we have seen unfold in Greece.

Top historians, social and financial analysts, along with police bodies are all predicting that Europe and America are set to experience a summer of rage, with social discontent building as a result of economic hardship.

“Far be it for me to make a dicey situation dicier but you can’t smell the sulphur in the air right now and not think we might be on the threshold of an age of rage,” wrote historian Simon Schama in his recent Financial Times column.

Monday, June 7, 2010

Obama becomes the first U.S. President to hold press conference without any American Flags present



Fire Andrea Mitchell
June 7, 2010

Here is yet another first for the “historic President.” One thing that few people noticed while Obama gave his press conference at the White House last week was missing. The American Flag! Progressive liberal’s can’t use the excuse of “lack of time in planning” because this press conference was known about nearly a week before it occured.

Behind him was just yellow curtains, and a couple of gold columns with chandeliers, but no American flag! A poster at Free Republic researched and looked at all photos of many press conferences (not press briefings) of past presidents. What the poster found was Obama is the only President to not have an American Flag or flags standing proudly behind or off to the side.

So, maybe there was another motive for the flags absence. We know Obama (or his handlers) carefully choreograph his image, his appearances… It’s why he’s so teleprompter-dependent. Surely he and his advisers know that flag issues have been a lightning rod — even before he was elected. I think this was deliberate. Could it be that Obama really is ashamed of America? Could it be that he thinks he is the citizen of the world which has no flag? Ladies and gentlemen this is very disturbing coming from the office of the Presidency. This is not normal to not have the symbol of the United States and its government in the east room of the White House and it is not very Presidential either. Many patriotic brave men and women have died under the stars and stripes called old glory. This fiasco coupled with the President skipping the laying of the Wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington Cemetary this Memorial Day speaks volumes of the man (or Usurper) that sits in the Oval Office. What say you?

Corexit is Killing the Gulf



J. Speer-Williams
Infowars.com
June 7, 2010

Let us set aside the possibility of provable intent or gross criminal negligence of governmental regulators and oil company executives causing or allowing the worse humanly caused catastrophe in world history.

Now, let us focus on the greater and utterly provable crimes committed by US regulators and BP (British Petroleum) executives immediately following the blow-out of the Gulf of Mexico oil well.

Please read the following seven paragraphs slowly and carefully to completely understand the enormity of these crimes.

BP, with governmental approval, was so quick to dump hundreds of thousand of gallons of their toxic chemical dispersant, Corexit 9500, at their undersea wellhead and on surface waters that they must have expected a blow out.

BP executives and governmental regulators had to have known just how deadly their dispersant Corexit would turn the Gulf waters, by creating monstrously large, oily, rushing underwater plumes.

These plumes are hundreds of square miles of poisonous, oily micro-particles that go unseen by satellites, cameras, and the naked eyes of the world. They kill all life in their path at 3,000 feet below sea level.

This is death to all life within the fragile Gulf Coast ecosystems that are impacted by these Corexit plumes. Plant, animal, and marine life will die as these oily, Corexit plumes slip their broken oily gunk well under protective booms.

This is death that can never be cleaned up from beneath the sea or from shorelines, without creating greater problems.

What kind of psychopaths would even manufacture something like Corexit, much less put a million gallons of it into our waters?

These sub-humans who have ascended to such power are obviously well behind the human race in the spiritual aspects of their evolutionary development.

If the BP executives were ignorant of what they were doing, they should have been stopped by officials of our federal government.

If our officials were also ignorant, they should all be held accountable for the death and destruction they have allowed by not stopping BP’s use of Corexit.

And what kind of president do we have who has not taken action against these monsters in our government and corporations, who have quadrupled the toxicity of the escaping crude oil with the ungodly use of Corexit.

Obama, who in his first year in office, is said to have indebted Americans more than all previous presidents put together is excellent at two things: Reading from teleprompers the words others write for him and throwing us all ever deeper into debt.

Effective action? We’ve seen none of it.

I know not what others feel, Mr. Obama, but to me you are proving to be worse than useless. At least with little George Bush as president the nation was rallying against his traitorous presidency.

Compounding these heinous crimes, oil executives and governmental officials have taken an unconscionable amount of time with their failed attempts to cut off the jet propelled oil from the bowels of Mother Earth.

We need a leader who’d give these well paid federal government officials and fabulously paid oil executives a lot of time … about 25 years to life.

Such a leader would then go after the real villains – those true psychopaths of the private and foreign International Monetary/Banking Cartel.

This private Cartel controls its puppets in Washington as it controls its oil company executives. Everything this Cartel does is anti-life; there are no exceptions. Their pretended Gulf oil clean-up is a glaring case in point.

How can the media call making this gushing oil about four hundred percent more toxic (with Corexit 9500) than crude oil is itself a clean-up effort?

Instead of cleaning up the unprecedented catastrophe created by the Cartel’s mega-corporations (Halliburton, Transocean, and British Petroleum), these very same companies seem to be purposely killing our Gulf of Mexico, under the pretense of cleaning it up, using the chemical dispersant by the trade name of Corexit 9500.

Corexit 9500, about four times more toxic than crude oil, is one of the most poisonous dispersants ever developed, and is up to 20 times more toxic than other dispersants, while being only half as effective.

Oil does not become toxic until it reaches 11ppm, while Corexit 9500 is toxic at only 2.61 ppm, according to an Exxon Biomedical Sciences report entitled, “Acute Aquatic Toxicity of Three Corexit Products: An Overview.”

When Corexit 9500, with its 2.61 ppm toxicity level, is combined with the warm waters of the Gulf much of it will transition into a gaseous state that will be absorbed into clouds. It will then to be released as toxic rain upon all of the Eastern United States. And, Obama’s EPA has been unable to get BP to stop using Corexit..

The Banking Cartel, with their crude oil and Corexit , is not only destroying the biologically-richest waters in America, this Cartel may be trying to destroy life in the entire Eastern half of the United States.

Are hundreds of thousands of gallons of Corexit being dumped into our Gulf of Mexico waters to merely kill marine and wildlife, irrespective of the life it kills along our East coast?

With the International Monetary/Banking Cartel running the Obama administration, Congress, and the Supreme Court, who is worried about any other terrorists, except the woefully uninformed.

And of course, this news will be met with considerable disbelief by those who have yet to catch on to the fact that the private interests that own the Federal Reserve System – and all other central banks in the world – also own all major multinational corporations, including the major oil companies.

It is something you are not supposed to know and is politically incorrect to talk about: the International Monetary/Banking Cartel owns or controls, from its base in the financial District of London, and other undisclosed places, all large international corporations. Wall Street and the Federal Reserve banks of the US are merely the Cartel’s American subsidiaries.

The Cartel’s ownership of so much is hidden with various interlinked, interlocked directorships, proxies, nominees, sophisticated fronts, and the like. Their many corporations own shares of other corporations, which own still more shares of other corporations.

Socialist author, geo/political analyst, and activist Mr. Ralph Schoeman estimates that less than one percent of the world’s population comprises the capitalist/ banking Cartel’s infrastructures. yet this private Cartel owns over 95 percent of the world’s wealth, with each member holding an average of 14 large corporate directorships.

The Cartel’s multinational corporations are an arcane mixture of many corporations, all forming, in effect, one mega-corporation ultimately controlled – if not owned outright – by the International Monetary/Banking Cartel.

Even Harvard’s John Kenneth Galbraith, long recognized as America’s leading public intellectual, has warned us of the dangers and oligopolistic nature of large multi-national corporations.

Of the 100 largest economic units in the world today, 49 are governments, while 51 are corporations. Those corporations are the driving force on Earth. An open secret is that these corporations are owned by the International Monetary/Banking Cartel, which also controls the governments of the world.

This is international fascism at work.

It’s not that private ownership is a bad thing; it’s when nearly everything is owned by an entente of the few, and protected by governments, that makes private, corporate-led globalization of markets miasmatic to all other life forms. This is precisely what is currently occurring in the fragile ecosystems in our Gulf of Mexico, with its biodiversity of many plant, animal and marine species.

Killing our Gulf of Mexico is not merely corporate malfeasance. No, it’s governmental and corporate irresponsibility and criminal negligence at the very least, if not premeditated mass murder on an international scale.

To reiterate, our world is in the death grip of something known as the International Monetary/Banking Cartel, the fountainhead of all international monopolies that are protected by the laws and militaries of the major governments of the world. The US government, with her perfidious politicians, has led in the defense of this Cartel, beginning sometime after President Lincoln’s assassination.

Lincoln said, “Corporations have been enthroned. An era of corruption in high places will follow … until wealth is aggregated in a few hands … and the Republic is destroyed.”

Democratic politicians are the best agents for big business, because of the popular belief that democratic politicians will protect the public from the abuses of financial oligarchs, an easily provable myth.

It’s a sad truth that democratic voters, who see financial plutocrats as their greatest adversaries, constantly support ever bigger government, with more laws and regulations. These same voters do not have a clue that those very laws are written by the Cartel’s think tanks, to more enrich and empower themselves.

If one carefully explained all of this to an average democratic voter, they would probably demand proof. Oddly once proof was furnished, they’d ignore it all, calling it a right-wing conspiracy theory. So much for relying on democratic voters; they’ll not learn much political truth this lifetime.

What can be said for rabid republicans voters? Thanks to right-wing, war-loving demigods like Rush Limbaugh, republicans have monopoly capitalism confused with free markets and free enterprises, and do not want to make any distinctions between them.

Unfortunately, those stuck deeply within the media’s carefully engineered left/right paradigm have no desire to be objective, and thus are blinded to all truth that does not reinforce biased opinions. Remedial work in geopolitics will not open the minds of such people as they are badly in need of spiritual remedies.

Nevertheless, facts are facts, and some are available to truthseekers. Our present example is the killing of life in our Gulf of Mexico, by a death-dealing consortium whose power extends far beyond the politicians and corporate executives it controls.

“It’s a tightly knit, highly effective machine, that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific, and political operations. Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed. No secret is revealed.” These were the words of President John F. Kennedy regarding this diabolical cartel before he was assassinated by them.

If this consortium of international oligarchs was willing to kill a president, they’ll likely have no issues with killing our Gulf of Mexico.

Instead of using safe, non-toxic ways to gather up the rogue oil gushing from their incompetence – or their planned cataclysm – this private Cartel of oligarchs is using an extremely toxic chemical dispersant (Corexit), with the approval of the Obama administration, to drive the surface crude oil deeply underwater.

According to a New York Times article by Paul Quinlan, British Petroleum (BP) chose to us the toxic dispersant Corexit, despite alternative dispersants having been shown to be far less toxic, and in some cases nearly twice as effective.

Although scientists have warned that Corexit could cause long-term harm to marine life, BP has ordered almost a million more gallons of the deadly dispersant from Nalso, a company with whom BP enjoys a cozy relationship.

Even our own EPA data ranks Corexit as being 20 times more toxic, and far less effective in handling southern Louisiana crude than some other dispersants.

Historically, since the days of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, workers who have cleaned up after the use of Corexit have suffered with health problems, including blood in their urine, respiratory and nervous system illnesses, along with kidney, liver and other blood disorders.

Just as the federal government lied to the first responders after 911, they are allowing BP to hire Gulf Coast fishermen to set protective booms and do other oil clean-up work without respirators and other protective equipment. In fact, BP officials are telling the fishermen that the air along the coast is safe to breath. As a result, these Gulf fishermen have become scared, confused, and sick – very sick.

On the 19th of May 2010, WDSU News of New Orleans, reported on the many coast fishermen who have been getting sick. They featured the sad story of fisherman Gary Burris, who has gotten extremely ill from inhaling fumes during response work.

A doctor told Burris that his lungs looked like those of a three pack a day smoker. Gary Burris has never smoked.

A d v e r t i s e m e n t
Marine toxicologist Riki Ott said the chemicals [Corexit] used by BP can cause havoc in a person’s body, and lead to death.

Carys Mitchelmore, a professor at the University of Maryland’s Environmental Science asked, “Why wouldn’t you go for the lesser toxic formulation?”

BP spokesman Jon Pack defended the use of Corexit by saying their attention is focused on “plugging the leak” and not what dispersant is used.

Plugging the leak? Please Mr. Pack, don’t insult us. We have a gusher – or gushers – on our hands, and your company has been absurdly ineffective in stopping the escape of millions of gallons of crude oil.

And is it not odd Mr. Pack, that your British Petroleum – a British company – is using their Corexit oil in US waters, even though it has been banned in Britain for over a decade, as verified in the New York Times website, quoting a letter sent by Rep. Edward Markey (chairman of the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment) to the EPA?

“It’s a chemical [Corexit] that the oil industry makes to sell to itself, basically,” said Richard Charter, a senior policy advisor for Defenders of Wildlife.

Alan Levine, the head of Louisiana’s Department of Health and Hospitals, said, “We don’t have any data or evidence behind the use of these chemicals [Corexit] in the water. We’re now basically using one of the richest ecosystems in the world as a laboratory [for testing].”

As reported in Britain’s Telegraph, Louisiana state Secretary of the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, Robert Barham reported, “We’re very disappointed in their [EPA and oil company executives] approach. The federal procedures call for a consensus between federal authorities, the responsible party and the states involved. When we met and expressed our concerns [over the use of Corexit], apparently they decided to go without us.”

And go they did. Obama’s environmental “protectors” have allowed BP to turn our Gulf of Mexico, and perhaps the entire Eastern half of the US, into a killing field, or at the very least a toxic testing ground, instead of simply removing the crude oil.

British Petroleum (BP) has even refused to use their own oil tankers, currently lying in the Gulf to suck up most of the runaway oil, and possibly salvage it for sale later, as was done after a Saudi spill in the ‘90’s. That method was so successful it vacuumed up about 85 percent of that renegade oil.

Nick Pozzi, a former oil pipeline engineering and operations project manager is puzzled why BP did not salvage perfectly good crude oil, both for later sale and to protect marine and wildlife.

What Mr. Pozzi does not know is that the oil companies are owned by the world’s only legal counterfeiters – the International Monetary/Banking Cartel – who can “print” all the money they want. Making money on Gulf oil was apparently not important to them. Killing the Gulf of Mexico apparently is important to them, for their own cryptic and esoteric reasons.

While it cannot yet be proven that the International Monetary/Banking Cartel’s Halliburton (of Dick Chaney fame) purposely and improperly cemented BP’s Gulf oil well, so it would later explode, it’s patently obvious that BP has quadrupled the toxicity of their runaway oil in the Gulf with their toxic dispersant, Corexit.

If the Cartel had wanted to later sell their floating crude, and save marine life, any oil they had not vacuumed up could have been eliminated or mulched with any number of non-toxic sources.

Microbes, for instance, would have eaten much of this errant crude oil, leaving the water safe for marine and wildlife, and filled the ocean with food for fish, birds and lower life forms in the process.

An absorbent “Oil Sponge,” a name Phase III, Inc. has trademarked, was also dismissed by BP.

Rated as the “best performing” absorbent by the US Army Corp of Engineers, Oil Sponge is 100% organic, and is made from renewable resources.

Oil Sponge is built using a microbial and nutrient package capable of transforming oil hydrocarbons into a safe byproduct of carbon dioxide and water.

Mysteriously, the governmental bureaucrats of the Obama administration, and the Cartel’s oil executives, had no interest in using an environmentally friendly product to clean up the world’s greatest man-made environmental disaster of all time. They seemed intent on making this unbelievable cataclysm far, far worse, and one that could never be cleaned up.

What will our government allow BP to do next? Will they allow BP to start burning the oil still on the surface waters, they should have vacuumed and mulched?

It cannot yet be proven that the Monetary Cartel purposely blew up their own wellhead, but the crimes they have committed in their so-called “clean-up” efforts are well documented, in spite of no corporate media outrage. Well, of course not, the Cartel that owns the oil companies also own “our” mainstream media.

After the Exxon Valdez incident of March 1989, Mycelx of Georgia developed what looks like a paper towel to soak up to 50 times its weight in oil. And while this product is used from the Middle East to Europe to Canada it was of no interest to the parties Obama charged with cleaning up the Gulf of the floating oil those very same parties caused.

Then there is the AmeriHaz Petroleum Solidifier that encapsulates environmental contaminants, making crude oil and other oil like substances easy to retrieve, which also proved to be of no interest to the Cartel or Mr. Obama.

Even hair naturally separates oil from water, leaving large tar globs, in which mushrooms can then be seeded. And as the mushrooms grow, they digest the oil, leaving non-toxic organics, which can then be composed into soil, great for growing healthy vegetables.

Anyone who has ever had a bad hair day knows how well hair will retain oil. In fact, Lisa Gautier, president of Matter of Fact (website for hair salons) has collected 400,000 pounds of hair, and stuffed it all into nylons to be used as booms near Gulf shores.

This idea could have been a shot in the arm of our dying economy, by creating organic compost for the millions of nutrient depleted farm acres in the world. Also there could have been a viable cottage industry of collecting hair from salons.

And, hair is certainly a renewable resource, with most of us contributing. But neither Obama or the Cartel has done anything for our dying US and world economy, but ensure it dies, while feebly pretending to resuscitate it.

And now that they’ve probably destroyed the tourist, shrimping, and fishing industries along the Gulf Coast, we’ll be hearing about more “stimulus packages” that will make what money we do have even more worthless as it enriches the Cartel’s Wall Street.

But in the world of what could have been, there’s hay, sawdust, crushed volcanic rock, sheep’s wool, and even kitty litter that could have mulched with the oil on the surface of the Gulf waters, making for easy pick-up.

But, oil industry executives and their confederates in the Obama administration quickly made sure that all spewing oil would either sink well below the surface, or never rise to it, with over half a million gallons of their dispersants. Now the oil that’s been gushing for weeks can never be vacuumed up or safely neutralized.

Worse yet, these international enemies of humanity, and life in the Gulf, committed their dastardly deed of deeply submerging the floating oil with their extremely dangerous chemical dispersant, Corexit, that would deny all marine creatures oxygen, thus killing them, and marine plant life to boot, as major underwater currents carry this poisonous oily plume through-out the Gulf and into the Atlantic.

Trying to give this mass murder a positive spin, BP spokesman John Crabtree said his corporation had dropped more than 560,000 gallons of Corexit on the surface slicks and 28,700 gallons of the chemical at the subsea wellhead, 5,000 feet below sea-level.

Crabtree’s justification for such an insane, criminal act was that their Corexit would drive the oil well below the water’s surface, thus keeping it away from coastal shorelines. So instead of removing the oil, BP decided to make the oil even more toxic, and drive it deep into the ocean where it can never be retrieved, but will kill all marine life in its path.

Mandy Joyce, a marine sciences professor at the University of Georgia carefully chose her words about BP’s deplorable dispersants: “Anything that requires oxygen will not be able to survive that water. The food web is going to change. You could stymie the entire production level of the Gulf of Mexico. That’s a very real possibility.”

Some of BP’s chemical dispersants contain 2-butoxyethanol, a compound that kills marine and wildlife, exactly the life our clean-up measures should try to save.

Corexit, currently being dropped by airplanes, break the crude oil into tiny droplets that sink well below the water’s surface, where they form a giant cloud or plume, making it impossible to gather, as is their obvious intention.

And with this poisonous plume creating a dead zone, currently estimated to be about the size of Delaware and Rhode Island combined, hidden at about 3,000 feet of water, no one can place an accurate figure on how much oil has actually rushed into the Gulf.

And once this death dealing plume reaches the large, rapidly moving Loop Current, this oily cloud of doom could swing toward Florida and Cuba, killing the coral reefs and marine life there.

According to Stephen Howden, an oceanographer at the University of Southern Mississippi, the Loop Current could drag the oxygen destroying cloud into shallower waters thus potentially impacting the coral reefs and fisheries near Florida’s coast.

University of Georgia’s Mandy Joyce said, “It’s a good thing the oil is not damaging the coast line, but to say everything is fine because its not hitting the coast is missing a very important part of this equation.”

And I would say, Ms. Joyce’s statement is a serious understatement.

Another person famous for misleading and under stated remarks is our president, Barack Obama.

There can be no denying that President Obama and his EPA regulators are accomplices to the crimes in the Gulf of Halliburton, Transocean, and British Petroleum by allowing these perpetrators of the disaster to be the ones in charge of the capping and clean-up efforts.

How much longer will our government allow these corporate criminals to fail with the capping of the oil gushers ,and making a dead zone of the Gulf of Mexico and perhaps the Atlantic Ocean?

Thus far, President Obama has made a grandstand play by pretending to excoriate the oil company executives responsible for the Gulf tragedy for not taking proper responsibility.

Excuse me Sir, it’s you who should have taken control and responsibility by tasking competent individuals and companies to cap this runaway well, and to clean up the mess, without destroying the entire Gulf of Mexico in the process.

And instead of excoriating the oil company executives and government bureaucrats who dumped over a half million gallons of toxic dispersants into the Gulf, you should be arresting them for crimes against humanity, not to mention their crimes against marine and wildlife.

Additionally, Obama’s teleprompter writers had the ignorance to state the ridiculous: “I know BP has committed to pay for the response effort, and we will hold them to their obligation,” read Obama.

The very obvious point Mr. Obama, is you should have saved our Gulf of Mexico, by making sure Transocean, Halliburton, and British Petroleum had absolutely nothing to do with the clean-up efforts, rather than making them pay to turn the Gulf into a dead zone.

President Obama went on to say many parties, including the federal government should accept blame for the disaster, he stopped short of saying he, himself, should be held responsible for his part in so destroying so much life in the Gulf.

“There is oil leaking. We need to stop it, and we need to stop it as soon as possible,” said Obama.

It’s not a leak, Mr. Obama. It’s a volcanic gusher spewing out an Exxon Valdez every two to four days.

Simply stated, Mr. Obama, we need far less of your teleprompter readings and far more effective actions.

The danger of the Obama presidency is the cognitive dissonance he must be creating within his numerous supporters. Cognitive dissonance is the uneasy and disturbing feelings one has, caused by holding two contradictory beliefs, ideas, or attitudes at the same time.

With Obama, many people believed his presidency would bring us the kind of change we all wanted. But the facts tell us a different story: President Obama has done no more than Bush, Jr. would have done.

To handle the discomfort of this kind of cognitive dissonance most democratic voters will alter those ideas that are easier to change by making excuses for Obama, excuses that they never would have made for little Bush.

With Obama or Bush as president, our best hope seems to be prayer.

Best selling author Whitley Strieber wrote, “The Gulf spill is out of control, the media has dropped it, BP is lying, the gov’t is silent. Pray.”

From whales and dolphins to sardines, from starfish to coral reefs, from microscopic organisms to all the fish in the sea, the Cartel has embarked upon killing them all, and will continue to kill … unless they are stopped. Are you man enough for the job, Mr. President?