Friday 31 August 2012

Putin Is Demonized While Democracy Fails In Amerika ~ Paul Craig Roberts

The latest “rights group” to jump on Russia’s President Putin about Pussy Riot is RootsAction. Following the propaganda line that Washington has established, RootsAction’s appeal for money and petition signers states that the three Russian women were sentenced to two years in prison “for the ‘crime’ of performing a song against Russia’s president Vladimir Putin in a Moscow church.”

This statement is a propagandistic misrepresentation of the offense for which the women were tried and convicted.

Relying Upon The European Numbers

Via Mark J. Grant, author of Out of the Box,

The Numbers

Our business revolves around the understanding of numbers and decisions based upon them. There is gaff, hype and fluff in great abundance, no doubt, but in the end the numbers generally tell a more accurate story. Most of us have been schooled to perform various analysis on the data presented and to draw conclusions from them but if the figures are inaccurate then, as the computer Geeks say, it is “garbage in and garbage out.”

Syria: Turning Back the Clock on the Arab Spring

by Ahmad Barqawi

Whatever genuine grievances and demands for political reform the Syrian people might have had a year and half ago were trodden underfoot by this stampeding sectarian drive that the Syrian opposition itself worked so hard to foster among its own supporters.

Perhaps one of the most inglorious accomplishments of the western-backed/Gulf-funded Syrian opposition is that it has – and over the course of mere months - managed to inflict such a colossal, irreparable damage to the Syrian people’s future prospects of having a real, homegrown and genuine uprising to bring about positive change in their own country.

The Deception at the Heart of the Upcoming US Presidential Election

by Staff Report

Romney's moment: The Republicans' chosen battleground is the very shape and scope of US government ... Mitt Romney has been introduced to the American people in many guises: the hard-nosed executive who saved Utah's Winter Olympics; the middle-of-the-road governor who brought universal health care to Massachusetts; the repentant and radicalised Right-winger who campaigned (twice) for his party's presidential nomination; and now, since the selection of Paul Ryan as his running mate, as the fiscal conservative to bring sanity to the nation's finances. – UK Telegraph

A new film, “Compliance,” examines “the human desire to follow and obey authority.” Liberal institutions, such as the media, universities, federal courts, and human rights organizations, which have traditionally functioned as checks on the blind obedience to authority, have in our day gone over to power’s side. The subversion of these institutions has transformed them from checks on power into servants of power. The result is the transformation of culture from the rule of law to unaccountable authority resting on power maintained by propaganda.

Did you know that median household income in the United States is lower today than it was when the last recession supposedly ended? If we are in the middle of an "economic recovery", how can this possibly be happening? Stunning new statistics compiled by Sentier Researchshow that the U.S. economy is not nearly as healthy as we have been led to believe. According to the study that Sentier Research has just released, median household income in the United States was sitting at $55,470 back in January 2000. In December 2007, when the recession began, it was sitting at $54,916. In June 2009, when the recession supposedly ended, it was sitting at $53,508. Today, it is sitting at $50,964. This is a long-term trend that is definitely going in the wrong direction. The fact that median household income in the U.S. is now 4.8 percent lower than it was when the last recession ended is incredibly disturbing, especially since all of the things that we buy on a regular basis just keep going up in price. Food, gas, electricity, car insurance and health insurance all cost a whole lot more today than they did back in the year 2000, and yet median household income has dropped8.1 percent since that time. So what does all of this mean? It means that American families ARE getting poorer.

Obama’s Geopolitical China ‘Pivot’: The Pentagon Targets China

by F. William Engdahl

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the nominal end of the Cold War some twenty years back, rather than reducing the size of its mammoth defense spending, the US Congress and all US Presidents have enormously expanded spending for new weapons systems, increased permanent military bases around the world and expansion of NATO not only to former Warsaw Pact countries on Russia’s immediate periphery; it also has expanded NATO and US military presence deep into Asia on the perimeters of China through its conduct of the Afghan war and related campaigns.

Why Everybody's Going To War in the Middle East

by Ron Holland

Everybody's going to war but we don't know what we are fighting for." – Nerina Pallot, from "Everybody's Gone to War"

Iran Wants War

Although a peaceful nation for hundreds of years, Iran was invaded and occupied by the Allies in both World War One and Two. Then in 1980, at the urging of the United States, Saddam Hussein invaded them and used poison gas against both Kurds and Iran. Over 500,000 civilians, Iranian and Iraqi soldiers died in the longest war of the 20th century, which lasted until 1988.

America's Descent into Poverty

by Paul Craig Roberts

The United States has collapsed economically, socially, politically, legally, constitutionally and environmentally. The country that exists today is not even a shell of the country into which I was born. In this article I will deal with America's economic collapse. In subsequent articles, i will deal with other aspects of American collapse.
Economically, America has descended into poverty. As Peter Edelman says, "Low-wage work is pandemic." Today in "freedom and democracy" America, "the world's only superpower," one-fourth of the work force is employed in jobs that pay less than $22,000, the poverty line for a family of four. Some of these lowly-paid persons are young college graduates, burdened by education loans, who share housing with three or four others in the same desperate situation. Other of these persons are single parents only one medical problem or lost job away from homelessness.

by Matthias Matthijs

While the whole world has been adopting a pragmatic consensus on economic policy since the Great Recession, Europe — and Germany in particular — is stubbornly sticking to a policy that has all the downsides of the old classical gold standard.

From the US to Russia and Japan, and from Brazil to India and China, the rest of the world has been careful to preserve substantial flexibility with its domestic fiscal and monetary policy levers. No such caution in continental Europe, where a "one size fits none" monetary policy by an independent central bank that cannot act as a true lender of last resort and a Brussels-imposed fiscal straightjacket that has not served a single euro member state well reign the day. Add to that the problem of intra-European financial markets with "national" regulatory institutions and the lack of a Europe-wide deposit insurance scheme or common debt instrument, and one can start to understand why the euro zone is going through an existential crisis with still no real end in sight.

Syria-Iran Dominos Lead To World War: The Bottom Line Is There WON’T BE NO Winners: Only The 0.1% Group Celebrate

Almost three years ago I wrote an analytical piece on the concept of deliberately engineered wars, big and small, by elitists to distract the masses away from particular global developments that work to the benefit of the establishment power structure. That article was entitled ‘Will The Globalists Trigger Yet Another World War?’:

http://www.alt-market.com/neithercorp/press/2010/01/will-globalists-trigger-yet-another-world-war/

In that analysis, I concluded that since at least 2008, the power’s that be (whether posing as Republicans or Democrats) had set in a motion a series of events that revolved around Iran, and most disturbingly, Syria, which could be used to trigger a vast global war scenario. Today, unfortunately, it seems my concerns were more than valid, and circumstances evolving in that particular region are dire indeed.

US officials are worried that if Greece exits the eurozone, it will damage President's election hopes

The Obama administration will pressure European governments not to let Greece fall out of the eurozone before November's Presidential elections, British Government sources have suggested.

Representatives from the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Commission are due to arrive in Athens next month to assess Greece's reform efforts.

They are expected to report in time for an 8 October meeting of eurozone finance ministers which will decide on whether to disburse Greece's next €31bn aid tranche, promised under the terms of the bailout for the country.

American officials are understood to be worried that if they decide Greece has not done enough to meet its deficit targets and withhold the money, it would automatically trigger Greece's exit from the eurozone weeks before the Presidential election on 6 November.

America is becoming a very cold place. If you don't have money, you don't really matter much in our society. The ads on television aren't for you - they are directed at people that actually have good jobs and that can afford to buy the nice little "extras" in life. The politicians aren't really interested in you either - they figure that they can buy your vote with all of the money that they are getting from the wealthy people. When you don't have money, even friends and relatives start to distance themselves from you. Perhaps they are afraid that you will ask them for money or perhaps they are afraid that your "failure" will start to rub off on them. When people know that you are struggling for money, the barriers immediately go up. In the United States today, there are tens of millions of people that have been forsaken and forgotten. They mostly stay at home (if they still have a home), and for most of them quiet desperation has become a way of life. You won't ever read much about them or see them appear much on television because nobody really cares too much about them. As far as society is concerned, there are just way too many of them and they are a problem that "the government" should be able to handle anyway. Sadly, the truth is that many communities all across America want absolutely nothing to do with those that can't take care of themselves. All over the country cities are passing laws making it illegal to feed the homeless, and in other instances cities are actually making it illegal to be homeless. Unfortunately, this problem is not going away. In fact, the number of Americans living in poverty increases with each passing day. So where do we go from here?

Alistair Darling Warns Germany To Change Course On Its Eurozone Rescue Policies Or Risk 1930s-Style Depression

Alistair Darling has strongly criticised the German government's policies towards recovery in the eurozone, suggesting a failure of leadership by Angela Merkel and other European politicians risks political upheaval similar to that seen in the 1930s.

In an interview with The Huffington Post UK the former Labour chancellor expresses his fears that European politicians will continue to kick the can down the road, despite predictions that the Greek debt crisis will come to a head in September.

My heart goes out to the three Russian women who comprise the Russian rock band, Pussy Riot. They were brutally deceived and used by the Washington-financed NGOs that have infiltrated Russia. Pussy Riot was sent on a mission that was clearly illegal under statutory law.

You have to admire and to appreciate the spunk of the women. But you have to bemoan their gullibility. Washington needed a popular issue with which to demonize the Russian government for standing up to Washington’s intention to destroy Syria, just as Washington destroyed Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, and as Washington intends to destroy Lebanon and Iran.

8 Economic Threats That We Were Not Even Talking About At The Beginning Of The Summer

In the crazy times in which we live, it helps to expect the unexpected. Sometimes you can think that you have it all figured out and then this world can throw a real curveball at you. Very few people anticipated that we would see a massive outbreak of the West Nile Virus in Texas this year or that the Mississippi River would be in danger of drying up after experiencing historic flooding last year. Who would have thought that we would see the worst drought in more than 50 years or that horrific wildfires would burn nearly 7 million acres of land? This is why economic conditions are always so hard to predict. A single "black swan event" can come along and change everything almost overnight. Our world has become incredibly unstable, and so who really knows what the rest of 2012 will bring? Will we see a stock market crash? Will the hurricane season be unusually bad? Will war erupt in the Middle East? Will we see a major earthquake on the west coast or even a volcanic eruption? Will the upcoming election cause an eruption of anger and frustration in America? We don't know the answers to those questions yet, and the truth is that we will probably see some things happen that very few of us are anticipating at this point.

“The day we see truth and do not speak is the day we begin to die.” - Martin Luther King

Conspiracy theories have now blossomed into what the smug presstitute media calls a "conspiracy culture." According to the presstitutes, Americans have to find some explanation for their frustrations and failings, so Americans shift the blame to theBilderbergers, the Rothschilds, the New World Order and so forth and so on.

A very large segment of the population has figured out that it can use voting as a tool to get more money and benefits from the government, and that is a very dangerous thing. Once upon a time, the free market was the one that distributed nearly all the wealth in our system. But now the federal government has become a giant deluded "Santa Claus" that distributes goodies to the American people far beyond its actual capacity to do so. In fact, we are borrowingtrillions of dollars that we do not have so that our politicians can continue to buy votes with handouts. Look, we will always need a safety net. We don't want anyone in America starving to death or sleeping in the street. However, our current system has gotten completely and totally out of control. Today, there are nearly 80different "means-tested welfare programs" operated by the federal government. As I have written about previously, more than 100 million Americans are enrolled in those programs. Sadly, that does not even count Social Security and Medicare. Tens of millions of Americans are enrolled in each of those programs as well. And when you add in more than 22 million government workers, you get one giant pile of people that are getting money or benefits from the government. In fact, at this point more than half of all Americans are at least partially dependent on the government.A recent Forbes article by Bill Wilson estimates that over 165 million Americans are government dependents to at least some degree....

Netanyahu's Secret War Plan: Leaked Document Outlines Israel's "Shock and Awe" Plan to Attack Iran

by Richard Silverstein

In the past few days, I received an Israeli briefing document outlining Israel’s war plans against Iran. The document was passed to me by a high-level Israeli source who received it from an IDF officer. My source, in fact, wrote to me that normally he would not leak this sort of document, but:

“These are not normal times. I’m afraid Bibi and Barak are dead serious.”

The reason they leaked it is to expose the arguments and plans advanced by the Bibi-Barak two-headed warrior. Neither the IDF leaker, my source, nor virtually any senior military or intelligence officer wants this war. While whoever wrote this briefing paper had use of IDF and intelligence data, I don’t believe the IDF wrote it. It feels more likely it came from the shop of national security advisor Yaakov Amidror, a former general, settler true-believer and Bibi confidant. It could also have been produced by Defense Minister Barak, another pro-war booster.

I’ve translated the document from Hebrew with the help of Dena Shunra.

Before laying out the document, I wanted to place it in context. If you’ve been reading this blog you’ll know that after Bibi’s IDF service he became the marketing director for a furniture company. Recent revelations have suggested that he may have also served in some capacity either formally or informally in the Mossad during that period.

Escalating violence and a vicious cycle of retaliation could leave Syria ungovernable even if a winner finally emerges from President Bashar al-Assad's battle with rebels. Nearly a year and a half since the uprising erupted, initially as peaceful protests for reform, Assad's forces and their insurgent foes are fighting a messy conflict with no frontline and scant regard for the rules of war. Assad has deployed air strikes and artillery to pound restive towns into submission, hitting civilian homes and hospitals. Rights groups say his forces have committed massacres. Rebels have shot or slit the throats of captured Assad supporters and hurled corpses off high buildings. – Reuters

As long term readers of this blog will be aware, I have been concerned for some time with the misreporting and interference in the west with Russian cases. The Pussy Riot case is another example. There is in fact no great legal or political issue or principle involved in this case. Every society has to face occasional challenges to public order and that is all ultimately that the Pussy Riot case is about. It is not the malevolent prosecution by a corrupt dictatorship of harmless artists or political dissidents. Treating it as if it was not only completely misrepresents the case but has also seriously damaged the prospects of the three young women involved avoiding a lengthy prison sentence. To the extent that this is the case the fault lies not with Putin, the Russian state, the Russian Courts, the Russian Orthodox Church or the Russian police but with the women's supporters both in Russia and the west. – Mercouris

Are you willing to bet against three of the wealthiest men in the entire world? Jacob Rothschild recently bet approximately 200 million dollarsthat the euro will go down. Billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson made somewhere around 20 billion dollars betting against the U.S. housing market during the last financial crisis, and now he has made huge bets that the euro will go down and that the price of gold will go up. And as I wrote about in my last article, George Soros put approximately 130 million more dollars into gold last quarter. So will the euro plummet like a rock? Will the price of gold absolutely soar? Well, if a massive financial disaster does occur both of those two things are likely to happen. The European economy is becoming more unstable with each passing day, and investors all over the globe are looking for safe places to put their money. The mainstream media keeps telling us that everything is going to be okay, but the global elite are sending us a much, much different message by their actions. Certainly Rothschild, Paulson and Soros know about things happening in the financial world that the rest of us don't. The fact that they are all behaving in a consistent manner right now should be alarming for all of us.

Greece Will Not Rest In Peace

Tension Over Aid to Greece Could Unsettle Markets

FRANKFURT — While the Greek prime minister,Antonis Samaras, will be greeted with military honors when he arrives in Berlin on Friday, his pleas for easier bailout terms could meet with a cool reception, setting up tension that could unsettle the financial markets this week.

Their summer vacations over, European political leaders appear to have resumed the maneuvering that has so often caused market turmoil and frustrated outsiders hoping for a quick solution to the euro zone debt crisis.

Around 1000 people per day are still losing their jobs in Greece with the percentage of the population not working now uncomfortably larger than those who are employed. This is creating drastic - or perhaps more aptly philosophical - reflections by its people. As the BBC reports, the feeling in Greece is that a "whole generation is on hold" and there is a growing trend towards the creation self-sustaining eco-communities - free of the ties of money and modern civilization. "What others saw as a global economic crisis, [Greeks] saw as a crisis of civilization" and so they are trying something different, growing their own food, bartering with one another, and exchanging surpluses with other villages. The community calls itself "Free and Real" - an acronym for Freedom of Resources for Everyone, Respect, Equality, Awareness and Learning - and it is growing as a stunning 76% of Greeks would like to emigrate. The positivist angle notes that the Greek crisis is not all bad as it shows the lives we are leading are not working and Greeks can "begin to look for alternatives."Everyone is stressed; but "Being able to work is a basic human right in a civilized society, if the government won't provide us with it then we will have to fight for it."

Source

Another 2.5 Billion Euros Greek Shortfall Growing Ever Larger

Greece may need to come up with 2.5 billion euros more than thought.

The Greek prime minister has spent weeks searching for ways to come up with 11.5 billion euros to satisfy international conditions for emergency aid. Now, though, SPIEGEL has learned that the shortfall may be as much as 14 billion euros. German politicians are becoming increasingly exasperated.

Athens has not been having an easy time coming up with the €11.5 billion in cost cutting measures over the next two years it has promised Europe. Indeed, Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras is reportedly set to request an additional two years to make those cuts during meetings later this week with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday and French President François Hollande on Saturday.

Is a Kurdish Spring on the Way?

The world has been mesmerized by the revolutionary upsurge across the Arab Spring as longstanding dictatorships fell under popular pressure. But are the Arabs the only people in the Middle East to get a spring?

Via Meadia was early to the story of rising tensions between Turkey and Syria, spurred on by a spate of bold new terrorist provocations by the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) inside Turkey. This week’s Economist fills in some details of what’s been going on:

The spike in terrorist activity may be linked to the August 15th anniversary of its 28-year-old armed campaign for Kurdish independence (the PKK says it would now settle for autonomy). Yet Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, puts the blame on Syria’s president, Bashar Assad. Mr Erdogan says Mr Assad has resumed the support for the PKK that ended when Turkey threatened to go to war against his father in 1998. Mr Erdogan’s critics retort that he is himself to blame. Turkey’s firm support for Syria’s rebels has won Mr Assad’s enmity along with that of Iran, home to several PKK camps.

Israeli-US Script: Divide Syria, Divide the Rest

by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

What is happening in Syria is a sign of things to come for the region. Regime change is not the sole goal of the US and its allies in Syria. Dividing the Syrian Arab Republic is the end goal of Washington in Syria.

Britain’s Maplecroft, which specializes in consulting on strategic risk, has said that we are witnessing the balkanization of the Syrian state: “Kurds in the north, Druze in the southern hills, Alawites in the coastal northwestern mountainous region and the Sunni majority elsewhere.”

We are already hearing people like White House advisor Vali Nasr talking about all this. The religious and ethnic cleavages in Syria are not demarcated in purely geographic terms and the balkanization process could play out as a lebonization process, which means that Syria will be divided along violent sectarian fault lines and face political deadlock like Lebanon during its civil war without formally breaking up. Lebonization, a soft form of balkanization, has already taken place in Iraq under federalism.

On 16th November 2011, Volker Kauder, a close ally of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, warned Britain that it would not “get away with” looking after its own interests at the expense of Europe. He said European nations “are now speaking German in that they are backing Chancellor Merkel”.

1930′s fascists Hitler and Mosley had “Europe A Nation” as their slogan. Hitler’s 1942 “Europäische Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft” translates to “European Economic Community”. Foreign Minister Carl Clodius said at the time there would be a currency and customs union across Europe.

I don’t write this to join in the chorus of anti-German feeling about at the minute, but rather to make a much more intriguing point. There follow two news items from today:

In four months the debate over America's Fiscal cliff will come to a crescendo, and if Goldman is correct(and in this case it likely is), it will probably be resolved in some sort of compromise, but not before the market swoons in a replica of the August 2011 pre- and post-debt ceiling fiasco: after all politicians only act when they (and their more influential, read richer, voters and lobbyists) see one or two 0's in their 401(k)s get chopped off. But while the Fiscal cliff is unlikely to be a key point of contention far past December, another cliff is only starting to be appreciated, let alone priced in:America's Demographic cliff, which in a decade or two will put Japan's ongoing demographic crunch to shame, and with barely 2 US workers for every retired person in 2035, we can see why both presidential candidates are doing their darnedest to skirt around the key issue that is at stake not only now, be every day hence.

"Freedom Fighters": The Foot Soldiers of the American Empire

by Julie Lévesque

Since the end of World War II, the Anglo-American Empire has covertly supported the deployment of foreign and domestic "foot soldiers", including terrorists and paramilitary brigades to bring about regime change and further its agenda of World domination.

One of the earlier examples of such a modus operandi, still widely ignored, is Gladio, "NATO's European stay-behind army", active during the Cold War. Controlled by the CIA and Britain's MI6, Gladio members orchestrated terrorist attacks in Western Europe, which were blamed on Communist entities.

Alarming French debt data shift eurozone balance of power back to Berlin
As the true extent of Greek ally France’s short-term debt problemscame to light, French sources today reported that the Troika will produce “a damning report” on Greek austerity and debt repayment progress….alleging in particular that Athens is building a ‘survival fund’ to give it greater bargaining power. This muddies the waters still further in relation to the European tour of Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras next week: Berlin now looks to be in a stronger position than previously.

Events make fools of us all. Last Saturday, The Slog nailed its colours to the mast of an inevitable German exit from the eurozone. I still think the odds are very much on that outcome, but one or two developments in the last 36 hours have moved things back into the realms of possibility for a Merkeschäuble triumph against those odds. For the risk investor, these are the most significant ones helping Germany:

Ecuador President Rafael "We Are Not A Colony" Correa Stands Up To The Jackbooted British Gestapo

by Paul Craig Roberts

A coward dies many deaths; a brave man dies but once.

The once proud British government, now reduced to Washington's servile whore, put on its Gestapo Jackboots and declared that if the Ecuadorean Embassy in London did not hand over WikiLeaks' Julian Assange, British storm troopers would invade the embassy with military force and drag Assange out. Ecuador stood its ground. "We want to be very clear, we are not a British colony," declared Ecuador's Foreign Minister. Far from being intimidated the President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, replied to the threat by granting Assange political asylum.

The once law-abiding British government had no shame in announcing that it would violate the Vienna Convention and assault the Ecuadorean Embassy, just as the Islamic students in the 1979 Khomeini Revolution in Iran took over the US Embassy and held the diplomatic staff captive. Pushed by their Washington overlords, the Brits have resorted to the tactics of a pariah state. Maybe we should be worried about British nuclear weapons.

Most Americans confuse zionism and Judaism.

While many assume that zionism simply means allowing the Israeli nation to exist, many zionists in high positions within the Netanyahu and Sharon administrations advocate for very different policies altogether, including the use of offensive wars throughout the Middle East. See this, and read the section entitled “Securing the Realm” here.

In reality, many devout Jews are against zionism as being antithetical to traditional Jewish values. As such, many Jews say that criticizing zionism is not anti-semitism. … and some zionists themselves admit that even non-Jews have the right to criticize Israel.

What Mr Draghi should be aiming at: Or how to move from Ponzi Austerity to Rational Crisis Management by a stepwise implementation of the Modest Proposal

Ponzi growth happens when unsustainable capital flows, wilfully predicated upon funding schemes that Reason knows to be fraudulent, give rise to large spurts of economic activity.

Ponzi austerity, in contrast, is what happens when unsustainable spending cuts, wilfully predicated upon funding schemes that Reason knows to be fraudulent, cause significant drops in economic activity. (Click here for my original piece on Ponzi Growth and how it led to Ponzi Austerity.)

It is an incontestable fact that Europe’s Periphery shifted from Ponzi growth to Ponzi austerity some time after the Crash of 2008. Before the Crash, tsunamis of toxic money, minted and multiplied by US, UK and German banks, flooded the Periphery, causing bubbles in the real estate and public sectors. When that toxic money fizzled out, and capital receded from the Periphery like a vicious tide going out on a grim shore, the Periphery’s states and banks sunk deeply in the mud of irreversible insolvency. So as to delay the inevitable defaults that would strike huge blows on the tittering northern banks, so-called bailouts were arranged on condition of austerity policies that were as unsustainable as the growth whose collapse led to them.

Finns Prepare For Euro's End: "Deeply Suspicious" of EU's 'Gang of Four'

While not advocating the break-up of the Euro-zone, Finland's foreign minister Erkki Tuomioja told the Daily Telegraph this evening that "it is only a matter of time". In a somewhat stunning show of truthiness, perhaps the first cracks in Europe's Nash Equilibrium are starting to show through following Monti's 'threats', Draghi's 'promises', and Merkel's 'well, nothings'. The Finn continues, via Reuters, "Either the south or the north will break away because this currency strait-jacket is causing misery for millions and destroying Europe's future."

Startling Evidence That Central Banks And Wall Street Insiders Are Rapidly Preparing For Something BIG

If you want to figure out what is going to happen next in the financial markets, carefully watch what the insiders are doing. Those that are "connected" have access to far better sources of information than the rest of us have, and if they hear that something big is coming up they will often make very significant moves with their money in anticipation of what is about to happen. Right now, Wall Street insiders and central banks all around the globe are making some very unusual moves. In fact, they appear to be rapidly preparing for something really big. So exactly what are they up to? In a previous article entitled "Are The Government And The Big Banks Quietly Preparing For An Imminent Financial Collapse?", I speculated that they may be preparing for a financial meltdown of some sort. As I noted in that article, more than 600 banking executives have resigned from their positions over the past 12 months, and I have been personally told that a substantial number of Wall Street bankers have been shopping for "prepper properties" this summer. But now even more evidence has emerged that quiet preparations are being made for an imminent financial collapse. That doesn't guarantee that something will happen or won't happen. Like any good detective, we are gathering clues and trying to figure out what the evidence is telling us.

The Israeli Crisis

By George Friedman

Crises are normally short, sharp and intense affairs. Israel's predicament has developed on a different time frame, is more diffuse than most crises and has not reached a decisive and intense moment. But it is still a crisis. It is not a crisis solely about Iran, although the Israeli government focuses on that issue. Rather, it is over Israel's strategic reality since 1978, when it signed the Camp David accords with Egypt.

Perhaps the deepest aspect of the crisis is that Israel has no internal consensus on whether it is in fact a crisis, or if so, what the crisis is about. The Israeli government speaks of an existential threat from Iranian nuclear weapons. I would argue that the existential threat is broader and deeper, part of it very new, and part of it embedded in the founding of Israel.

Israel now finds itself in a long-term crisis in which it is struggling to develop a strategy and foreign policy to deal with a new reality. This is causing substantial internal stress, since the domestic consensus on Israeli policy is fragmenting at the same time that the strategic reality is shifting. Though this happens periodically to nations, Israel sees itself in a weak position in the long run due to its size and population, despite its current military superiority. More precisely, it sees the evolution of events over time potentially undermining that military reality, and it therefore feels pressured to act to preserve it. How to preserve its superiority in the context of the emerging strategic reality is the core of the Israeli crisis.

Is Washington Deaf As Well as Criminal?

Is Washington Deaf As Well as Criminal?

by Paul Craig Roberts

The morons who rule the american sheeple are not only dumb and blind, they are deaf as well. The ears of the american "superpower" only work when the Israeli prime minister, the crazed Netanyahu, speaks. Then Washington hears everything and rushes to comply.

Israel is a tiny, insignificant state, created by the careless British and the stupid americans. It has no power except what its american protector provides. Yet, despite Israel's insignificance, it rules Washington.

When a resolution introduced by the Israel Lobby is delivered to Congress, it passes unanimously. If Israel wants war, Israel gets its wish. When Israel commits war crimes against Palestinians and Lebanon and is damned by the hundred plus UN resolutions passed against Israel's criminal actions, the US bails Israel out of trouble with its veto.

The power that tiny Israel exercises over the "worlds's only superpower" is unique in history. Tens of millions of "christians" bow down to this power, reinforcing it, moved by the exhortations of their "christian" ministers.

GREEK CRISIS: Why Antonis Samaras will not be going into battle unarmed next week.

The Greek Prime Minister has some good cards close to his chest, according to Slog sources

You can hardly blame many EU commentators for having found The Slog’s‘bondholder haircut and debt forgiveness’ Greek story from last weekend far-fetched. But an increasingly wide range of observers have since emailed me to say they’re convinced that the story is well-founded. Now more clues are emerging….and again, they relate to three consistent themes in The Slog’s approach to the Greek crisis: Samaras is being (with his Finance Minister) increasingly secretive towards his Coalition partners; the geopolitical dimension remains as important as ever; and the Germans are not going to budge: either the Greeks toe the line, or they’re out. (And if Berlin’s will doesn’t prevail, they’reoff).

Earlier this week, Merkel spokesman Stefan Siebert said there would be no more compromise with Athens, but then made what I found an odd statement under the circumstances. He said that “further decisions will have to wait until after a report from the troika is released in October.”

GREECE BREAKING: One third of Greek deficit lost to tax evaders, Greek elites earn twice as much as they claim

New research nails structural evasion as being endemic among the powerful

Tax cheats have robbed Greece of some 11.2 billion euros, say Greek and American researchers who used bank records to analyse the likely tax evasion level.

The method is precisely the one used by private banks to determine the real income of loan seekers. Surprise, surprise, this is more accurate than looking at tax records, often themselves falsified in the first place. The study concluded that the true income of the average Greek is about 1.92 times larger than the tax declaration.
During the 2009 tax year, evaders failed to report a whopping €28 billion euros which, at a tax rate of 40%, represents nearly a third
But this is where it gets interesting: the top tax-evading occupations were doctors, lawyers, engineers….and Parliamentarians. The Greek
parliament recently rejected a bill that would have targeted tax evaders in this manner. Why ever might that have been?

Degenerative Brain Disease Threatens Afghan War Vets

WASHINGTON -- Almost a quarter million American troops diagnosed with traumatic brain injury are at risk of developing a degenerative disease that causes bursts of anger and depression and can lead to memory loss, difficulty walking and speaking, paranoia and suicide, according to military researchers.

At present, medical officials cannot diagnose or prevent the disease, called Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, and there is no known treatment for it, said Army Col. Dallas Hack, director of the Army's Combat Casualty Care Research Program.

Why Do Israeli Media Keep Predicting War with Iran?

Why Do Israeli Media Keep Predicting War with Iran?
By TONY KARON

A frenetic pounding of the war drums appears designed to create the impression that Israel will attack Iran before the U.S. presidential election. Whether that's Netanyahu's real intent remains a mystery

Abir Sultan / Pool / Reuters

If the White House believes November will arrive without any nasty surprises in the Iran nuclear standoff, it is not taking seriously the feverish chatter throughout Israel‘s media positing an imminent Israeli attack on the Islamic Republic. The front pages of the four main Israeli dailies last Friday reflected what appeared to be a concerted campaign to create the impression that Israel is preparing itself to start a hot war with Iran sometime over the next 12 weeks, notwithstanding objections by the U.S. and other Western powers — and, indeed, by much of Israel’s security establishment. “[Benjamin] Netanyahu and [Ehud] Barak determined to strike Iran in the fall,” proclaimed Yedioth Ahronoth. Haaretz offered: “Senior Israeli official — The Iranian sword at our throat is sharper than the run-up to the war in 1967.” Maariv informed us in its banner headline that 37% of the Israeli public believes that “If Iran gets the bomb, it might result in a second Holocaust.” And Yisrael Hayom said: “Iran significantly speeds up its progress toward the bomb.” The following day, the latter paper included a headline claiming that, according to Israeli TV, a “Decision by Netanyahu and Barak to strike Iran is almost final.”

Europe on the Edge of Recession

By ASSOCIATED PRESS

(LONDON) — Europe is edging closer to recession, dragged down by the crippling debt problems of the 17-country euro bloc, official figures showed Tuesday.

Eurostat, the European Union‘s statistics agency, revealed that the economies of both the eurozone and the wider 27-country EU shrank by a quarterly rate of 0.2 percent in the second quarter of the year. In the first quarter, output for both regions was flat. A recession is officially defined as two straight quarters of falling output.

You Will Not Believe What Some People Are Willing To Do For A Paycheck These Days

It is absolutely amazing what some people will do to make a living in this economy. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and we have not seen this kind of desperation for jobs in America since the Great Depression of the 1930s. What some people are willing to put up with just to bring home a paycheck these days will totally shock you. For example, would you slaughter dogs all day long even though you are really a dog lover? Would you personally train your replacement from China even though you knew he was about to take your job? Would you trade sex for a job? There are people out there actually doing all these things and worse. Every night in America, millions upon millions of people roll around endlessly in their beds and stare at their ceilings for hours because they can't sleep. They are sick to their stomachs because their money is gone and nobody will hire them. They can't provide even the basics for their families and they feel worthless. Unemployment can be absolutely soul crushing and it can suck the life right out of you. Things were supposed to be better by now, but they aren't. The month after Barack Obama took office the unemployment rate broke the 8 percent barrier and it has stayed above it ever since. But the truth is that the "official" unemployment number greatly understates the real amount of suffering that is going on out there. In reality, the percentage of working age Americans that have jobs is lower today than when the last recession ended. There are millions upon millions of Americans that are desperate for some hope, and there is no hope on the horizon. In fact, things are going to be getting a whole lot worse for the U.S. economy.

GREECE EXCLUSIVE: ‘Deal has been done to pay off bondholders and forgive residue of debt’

Samaras…big secret, upping the pace of austerity

FRENCH DIPLOMATIC SOURCE CONFIRMS BIG NEW CONTAINMENT PLAN FOR GREECE

‘What the deal does is allow another default date to come and go with everyone pretending it hasn’t happened.’

Another day, another bonkers conspiracy theory from The Slog. Greece has done a deal to put the lid on the Greek crisis? Pah! Formation of Greek/Israeli/Cyprus/US alliance? Fiddlesticks!

Let’s take the deal first.

There is a tradition in Greek politics that the government of the day delivers a speech and holds a press conference during the annual Thessaloniki International Trade Fair. Organized by Helexpo, it takes place every September at the Thessaloniki International Exhibition Centre. This convention of a sounding-board for those in power has been going on since 1926. Only during the German Occupation was it interrupted.

GREEK CRISIS: German Eurospin goes into overdrive.

Last week I predicted lots of Merkelian news management to suggest that Germany is going to be tough on Greece und effryvon is obeyink ordass. It’s begun in style this morning.

Ekathimerini ‘American observers claim to be stunned by the manner in which hardline German officials are dealing with their southern European partner..[but]…Officials argue that the markets have already priced in the scenario…US officials are shocked at the stubborness of their German counterparts. They are particularly worried that the hardline view is shared by high-ranking officials at the European Central Bank.’

Want An RFID Chip Implanted Into Your Hand? Here's What The DIY Surgery Looks Like (Video)

Amal Graafstra snaps on a pair of black rubber gloves. “Do you want to talk about pain management techniques?” he asks. The bearded systems administrator across the table, who requested I call him “Andrew,” has paid Grafstra $30 to have a radio-frequency identification (RFID) chip injected into the space between his thumb and pointer finger, and as Graafstra describes Lamaze-type breathing methods, Andrew looks remarkably untroubled, in spite of the intimidatingly high-gauge syringe sitting on the table between them.

Uproar as footage shows Syrian rebel atrocities

Horrific videos purportedly showing Syrian rebels throwing the bodies of postal workers off a roof and a man's throat being savagely cut triggered outrage among rights activists on Monday.
Three videos all showing the apparent atrocities in the province of Aleppo, including a bound man being repeatedly shot, were posted on YouTube on Monday but their authenticity could not immediately be verified.

Both sides in the 17-month conflict have been accused of human rights violations as reports of cold-blooded killings mount.

Olympic Calm Before Coming Financial Storm

Olympic Calm Before Coming Financial Storm

Olympic Calm Before Coming Financial Storm

Today's AM fix was USD 1,622.25, EUR 1,317.30, and GBP 1,035.33 per ounce.
Friday’s AM fix was USD 1,608.50, EUR 1,310.92 and GBP 1,030.69 per ounce.

Silver is trading at $28.04/oz, €22.81/oz and £17.94/oz. Platinum is trading at $1,405.30/oz, palladium at $580.10/oz and rhodium at $1,060/oz.
Gold rose $2.70 or 0.17% in New York on Friday and closed at $1,620.40/oz. Silver fell and then recovered to $28.32, but finished on Friday in New York with a loss of just 0.4%.

For the week, gold rose 1.1% and silver rose 1.2%.

Gold inched up again on Monday, continuing the climb for its 7th session as world economies falter – increasing the likelihood of further central bank policy action – which may again prove futile.

Are The Government And The Big Banks Quietly Preparing For An Imminent Financial Collapse?

Something really strange appears to be happening. All over the globe, governments and big banks are acting as if they are anticipating an imminent financial collapse. Unfortunately, we are not privy to the quiet conversations that are taking place in corporate boardrooms and in the halls of power in places such as Washington D.C. and London, so all we can do is try to make sense of all the clues that are all around us. Of course it is completely possible to misinterpret these clues, but sticking our heads in the sand is not going to do any good either. Last week, it was revealed that the U.S. government has been secretly directing five of the biggest banks in America "to develop plans for staving off collapse" for the last two years. By itself, that wouldn't be that big of a deal. But when you add that piece to the dozens of other clues of imminent financial collapse, a very troubling picture begins to emerge. Over the past 12 months, hundreds of banking executives have been resigning, corporate insiders have been selling off enormous amounts of stock, and I have been personally told that a significant number of Wall Street bankers have been shopping for "prepper properties" in rural communities this summer. Meanwhile, there have been reports that the U.S. government has been stockpiling foodand ammunition, and Barack Obama has been signing a whole bunch of executive orders that would potentially be implemented in the event of a major meltdown of society. So what does all of this mean? It could mean something or it could mean nothing. What we do know is that a financial collapse is coming at some point. Over the past 40 years, the total amount of all debt in the United States has grown from about 2 trillion dollars to nearly 55 trillion dollars. That is a recipe for financial armageddon, and it is inevitable that this gigantic bubble of debt is going to burst at some point.

German Austerity’s Lutheran Core

By STEVEN OZMENT

IF there’s one nationality the rest of the world thinks it readily and totally understands, it is the Germans. Combine their deep involvement with Nazism and anti-Semitism and, voilà! — 2,000 years of gripping, complex history vanishes.

Since the beginning of the euro crisis, this reductionism, which can be found insideGermany as much as outside it, has come in the form of sifting through the fatal legacy of the Weimar era, the years of promising democracy that began in the defeat and humiliation of World War I and ended with the Nazi takeover in 1933.

On the one hand, we’re told, the 1920s legacy of destabilizing inflation explains Germany’s staunch aversion to expansionary monetary and fiscal policies today; on the other hand, the Nazi taint on the interwar years seems to prove for some that, even in 2012, the intentions of democratic Germany can’t be trusted when it comes to Europe’s well-being.

Pages

Friday 31 August 2012

Wednesday 29 August 2012

Tuesday 28 August 2012

Monday 27 August 2012

Sunday 26 August 2012

Friday 24 August 2012

Thursday 23 August 2012

Wednesday 22 August 2012

Tuesday 21 August 2012

Monday 20 August 2012

Sunday 19 August 2012

Friday 17 August 2012

Most Americans confuse zionism and Judaism.

In reality, many devout Jews are against zionism as being antithetical to traditional Jewish values. As such, many Jews say that criticizing zionism is not anti-semitism. … and some zionists themselves admit that even non-Jews have the right to criticize Israel.

Thursday 16 August 2012

Tuesday 14 August 2012

Monday 13 August 2012

Sunday 12 August 2012