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I Hereby Secede
I Hereby Secede
great find!!!
This Election Just Became About Obamacare (better distraction from coming financial crush)
11:06 AM, Jun 28, 2012 • By JEFFREY H. ANDERSON
(disclaimer - this election is a fraud and I don't like Romney or Obama. They eat from same table, imho).
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/election-just-became-about-obamacare_647928.html
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision upholding the constitutionality of Obamacare, the principal choice now facing Americans on November 6 will be whether to keep Obamacare or to repeal it. The question is a binary one, and the answer — expressed almost entirely through their presidential vote — will go a long way toward determining the future course of this great nation.
Yes, the economy is extremely important; and, yes, Obamacare is hurting the economy. But the reason why this election is the most important since the Civil War is not because Mitt Romney would make a far better steward of the economy than President Obama. Rather, it’s because we are about to decide whether to put what will soon be one-fifth of our economy under the control of the federal government; whether to funnel previously unthinkable amounts of power and money to Washington; and whether this nation conceived in liberty will continue to prioritize liberty.
It is understandable why President Obama has no interest in framing this election as a referendum on Obamacare. His party already suffered perhaps its worst defeat since the 19th century thanks to his centerpiece legislation. With the Supreme Court’s ruling now behind him, he will have even less incentive to remind voters about Obamacare going forward. As far as he’s concerned, the less the American people think about it, the better.
Cantor: House will vote on repeal on July 11
http://www.politico.com/blogs/on-congress/2012/06/cantor-house-will-vote-on-repeal-week-of-july-127555.html
By SEUNG MIN KIM |
6/28/12 11:02 AM EDT
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said Thursday that the Republican-led House will vote on repealing the health care law soon after the July 4 recess.
Cantor, who sets the floor schedule in the House, said in a statement that the House will vote on the repeal the week of July 9 (later amended to 11th) – which Cantor said will clear the path for “patient-centered reforms that lower costs and increase choice.”
(Also on POLITICO: Full health care coverage)
“The Supreme Court’s decision to uphold ObamaCare is a crushing blow to patients throughout the country,” Cantor said. “ObamaCare has failed to keep the President’s basic promise of allowing those who like their health care to keep it, while increasing costs and reducing access to quality care for patients.”
This part was amended from:
The court reinforces that individuals can simply refuse to pay the tax and not comply with the mandate.
To:
The court reinforces that individuals cant simply refuse to pay tax and not comply with mandate...
Supreme Court upholds health-care law, individual mandate
By Robert Barnes and N.C. Aizenman, Updated: Thursday, June 28, 10:30 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/supreme-court-to-rule-thursday-on-health-care-law/2012/06/28/gJQAarRm8V_print.html
The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the individual health-insurance mandate that is at the heart of President Obama’s landmark health-care law, saying the mandate is permissible under Congress’s taxing authority.
The potentially game-changing, election-year decision — a major victory for the White House less than five months before the November elections --will help redefine the power of the national government and affect the health-care choices of millions of Americans.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. sided with the majority in voting to uphold the law, Obama’s signature domestic initiative.
Passage of the legislation by the Democratic-controlled Congress in 2010 capped decades of efforts to implement a national program of health care. The legislation is expected to eventually extend health-care coverage to more than 30 million Americans who currently lack it.
Republicans in Congress and GOP presidential challenger Mitt Romney have vowed to try and repeal the measure after the November elections.
The health-care issue thrust the Supreme Court into the public spotlight unlike anything since its role in the 2000 presidential election. The court’s examination of the law received massive coverage — especially during three days of oral arguments in March — and its outcome remained Washington’s most closely guarded secret.
The court reviewed four questions: whether it was within Congress’s constitutional powers to impose an “individual mandate” to purchase health insurance; whether all or any additional parts of the law must be struck down if the mandate is rejected; whether an expansion of Medicaid was unduly coercive on the states and whether all of those questions can even be reviewed before the mandate takes effect.
On the Medicaid question, the judges found that the law’s expansion of Medicaid can move forward, but not its provision that threatens states with the loss of their existing Medicaid funding if the states declined to comply with the expansion. The finding immediately raises questions as to how effectively the federal government will be able to implement the expansion of the joint federal-state insurance program for the poor.
The most crucial issue before the court was considered to be the individual mandate, known technically as the “minimum coverage” provision, because striking it down would jeopardize the ability of insurers to comply with other, more popular elements of the health-care law without drastically raising premiums. Under those other provisions, for example, insurers can no longer limit or deny benefits to children because of a preexisting condition, and young adults to up age 26 are eligible for insurance coverage under their parents’ plans.
During oral arguments in March, conservative justices indicated they were skeptical about the individual mandate, the provision in the 2,700-page health-care law that requires nearly all Americans to obtain health insurance by 2014 or pay a financial penalty.
Arguing the case for the Obama administration, Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. defended the law as a constitutional exercise of congressional power under the charter’s commerce clause to regulate interstate commerce. He said lawmakers were regulating health insurance to deal with the problem of millions of people who lack coverage and therefore shift costs to the insured when they cannot pay for their medical care.
The court rejected the commerce clause argument, but ruled that Congress nevertheless had the power to impose the mandate because it can be considered a tax.
Paul D. Clement, representing Florida and 25 other states objecting to the health-care law, argued that Congress exceeded its power in passing the law, which he said compels people to buy a product.
Although the most controversial provisions of the law are not scheduled to take effect until 2014, a complex web of new rules has already extended coverage and expanded benefits across the country.
No initiative has exemplified Obama’s progressive domestic agenda or inflamed his conservative opponents like the health-care law, officially called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
The court’s decision will resonate throughout the election season, not only in the presidential campaign but in House and Senate races across the country.
The law provoked an unlikely debate about the Constitution. Opponents saw it as a trespass on individual and state’s rights by an omnipotent federal government, and supporters viewed it as a long-sought guarantee of health care to Americans regardless of where they live or work.
As a mark of the case’s importance, the justices spent more than six hours over three days hearing oral arguments on the constitutional questions and related issues. It was the most time than the court has spent on any issue in nearly half a century.
As soon as Obama signed the health-care bill in March 2010, opponents raced to challenge it. Early court decisions followed a predictable pattern, with district judges appointed by Democratic presidents upholding the law and Republican appointees striking it down.
But at the appeals court level, that changed. In a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta, Judge Frank Hull, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, joined with a Republican colleague in saying that the individual insurance mandate in the “unprecedented” legislation exceeded congressional authority. The judges said that if the law were constitutional, it would be impossible to say what action on the part of the government would go too far.
At the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit in Cincinnati and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, two prominent Republican-appointed judges agreed that the law is intrusive but said it is within Congress’s powers.
In Cincinnati, Judge Jeffrey Sutton, a George W. Bush appointee, was the deciding vote to uphold the act. In Washington, Senior Judge Laurence Silberman, named to the bench by President Ronald Reagan, wrote an opinion saying that the question was political, not constitutional.
“It certainly is an encroachment on individual liberty,” Silberman wrote. But then — alluding to other cases in which the Supreme Court has ruled that the commerce clause gives Congress power — he added that “it is no more so than a command that restaurants or hotels are obliged to serve all customers regardless of race, that gravely ill individuals cannot use a substance their doctors described as the only effective palliative for excruciating pain, or that a farmer cannot grow enough wheat to support his own family.”
Even as the legal wrangling grew to a crescendo, some aspects of the law were already being enforced. Those include requirements that many insurance plans allow young adults to stay on their parents’ policies until age 26; cover a range of preventive services, including birth control, without imposing co-payments or other out-of-pocket costs; eliminate lifetime dollar limits on coverage; and begin phasing out annual caps.
The three cases the Supreme Court considered were National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius; Florida, et al., v. Department of Health and Human Services; and Department of Health and Human Services v. Florida, et al.
Flashback - Sep 20, 2009 9:00am Obama: Mandate is Not a Tax
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2009/09/obama-mandate-is-not-a-tax/
President Obama signaled in our interview that he was prepared to address some of the concerns raised by key Senator Jay Rockefeller, who called the Baucus bill a "big middle class tax increase" this week.
That means he'll support more subsidies for middle class families.
But in our most spirited exchange, the President refused to accept the argument that a mandate to buy health insurance is equivalent to a tax.
Here it is:
STEPHANOPOULOS: You were against the individual mandate…
OBAMA: Yes.
STEPHANOPOULOS: …during the campaign. Under this mandate, the government is forcing people to spend money, fining you if you don’t. How is that not a tax?
OBAMA: Well, hold on a second, George. Here — here's what's happening. You and I are both paying $900, on average — our families — in higher premiums because of uncompensated care. Now what I've said is that if you can't afford health insurance, you certainly shouldn't be punished for that. That's just piling on. If, on the other hand, we're giving tax credits, we've set up an exchange, you are now part of a big pool, we've driven down the costs, we've done everything we can and you actually can afford health insurance, but you've just decided, you know what, I want to take my chances. And then you get hit by a bus and you and I have to pay for the emergency room care, that's…
STEPHANOPOULOS: That may be, but it's still a tax increase.
OBAMA: No. That's not true, George. The — for us to say that you've got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase. What it's saying is, is that we're not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you anymore than the fact that right now everybody in America, just about, has to get auto insurance. Nobody considers that a tax increase. People say to themselves, that is a fair way to make sure that if you hit my car, that I'm not covering all the costs.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But it may be fair, it may be good public policy…
OBAMA: No, but — but, George, you — you can't just make up that language and decide that that's called a tax increase. Any…
STEPHANOPOULOS: Here’s the…
OBAMA: What — what — if I — if I say that right now your premiums are going to be going up by 5 or 8 or 10 percent next year and you say well, that's not a tax increase; but, on the other hand, if I say that I don't want to have to pay for you not carrying coverage even after I give you tax credits that make it affordable, then…
STEPHANOPOULOS: I — I don't think I'm making it up. Merriam Webster's Dictionary: Tax — "a charge, usually of money, imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes."
OBAMA: George, the fact that you looked up Merriam's Dictionary, the definition of tax increase, indicates to me that you're stretching a little bit right now. Otherwise, you wouldn't have gone to the dictionary to check on the definition. I mean what…
STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, no, but…
OBAMA: …what you're saying is…
STEPHANOPOULOS: I wanted to check for myself. But your critics say it is a tax increase.
OBAMA: My critics say everything is a tax increase. My critics say that I'm taking over every sector of the economy. You know that. Look, we can have a legitimate debate about whether or not we're going to have an individual mandate or not, but…
STEPHANOPOULOS: But you reject that it’s a tax increase?
OBAMA: I absolutely reject that notion.
JPMorgan Trading Loss May Reach $9 Billion
By JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG and SUSANNE CRAIG
Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase (complete with Presidential Seal cuff-links), discussed the deal last week before the House Financial Services Committee.
Losses on JPMorgan Chase’s bungled trade could total as much as $9 billion, far exceeding earlier public estimates, according to people who have been briefed on the situation.
When Jamie Dimon, the bank’s chief executive, announced in May that the bank had lost $2 billion in a bet on credit derivatives, he estimated that losses could double within the next few quarters. But the red ink has been mounting in recent weeks, as the bank has been unwinding its positions, according to interviews with current and former traders and executives at the bank who asked not to be named because of investigations into the bank.
The bank’s exit from its money-losing trade is happening faster than many expected. JPMorgan previously said it hoped to clear its position by early next year; now it is already out of more than half of the trade and may be completely free this year.
As JPMorgan has moved rapidly to unwind the position — its most volatile assets in particular — internal models at the bank have recently projected losses of as much as $9 billion. In April, the bank generated an internal report that showed that the losses, assuming worst-case conditions, could reach $8 billion to $9 billion, according to a person who reviewed the report.
With much of the most volatile slice of the position sold, however, regulators are unsure how deep the reported losses will eventually be. Some expect that the red ink will not exceed $6 billion to $7 billion.
Nonetheless, the sharply higher loss totals will feed a debate over how strictly large financial institutions should be regulated and whether some of the behemoth banks are capitalizing on their status as too big to fail to make risky trades.
JPMorgan plans to disclose part of the total losses on the soured bet on July 13, when it reports second-quarter earnings. Despite the loss, the bank has said it will be solidly profitable for the quarter — no small achievement given that nervous markets and weak economies have sapped Wall Street’s main businesses. To put the size of the loss in perspective, JPMorgan logged a first-quarter profit of $5.4 billion.
More than profits are at stake. The growing fallout from the bank’s bad bet threatens to undercut the credibility of Mr. Dimon, who has been fighting major regulatory changes that could curtail the kind of risk-taking that led to the trading losses. The bank chief was considered a deft manager of risk after steering JPMorgan through the financial crisis in far better shape than its rivals.
“Essentially, JPMorgan has been operating a hedge fund with federal insured deposits within a bank,” said Mark Williams, a professor of finance at Boston University, who also served as a Federal Reserve bank examiner.
A spokesman for the bank declined to comment.
In its most basic form, the losing trade, made by the bank’s chief investment office in London, was an intricate position that included a bullish bet on an index of investment-grade corporate debt. That was later combined with a bearish wager on high-yield securities.
The chief investment office — which invests excess deposits for the bank and was created to hedge interest rate risk — brought in more than $4 billion in profits in the last three years, accounting for roughly 10 percent of the bank’s profit during that period.
In testimony before the House Financial Services Committee last week, Mr. Dimon said that the London unit had “embarked on a complex strategy” that exposed the bank to greater risks even though it had been intended to minimize them.
JPMorgan executives are briefed each morning on the size of the trading loss. The tally could shrink if the market moves in JPMorgan’s favor, the people briefed on the situation cautioned.
But hedge funds and other investors have seized on the bank’s distress, creating a rapid deterioration in the underlying positions held by the bank. Although Mr. Dimon has tried to conceal the intricacies of the bank’s soured bet, credit traders say the losses have still mounted.
While some hedge funds have compounded the bank’s woes, others have been finding it profitable to help JPMorgan get clear of the losing credit positions.
One such fund, Blue Mountain Capital Management, has been accumulating trades over the last couple of weeks that might help reduce the risk of the bets made by JPMorgan in a credit index, according to interviews with more than a dozen credit traders. The hedge fund is then selling those positions back to the bank. A Blue Mountain spokesman declined to comment.
As traders in JPMorgan’s London desk work to get out of the huge bet, which started generating erratic losses in late March, the traders based in New York are largely sitting idle, according to current traders in the unit.
“We are in a holding pattern,” said one current New York trader who asked not to be named.
Long before the losses started mounting, senior executives at the chief investment office in New York worried about the trades of Bruno Iksil, according to the current traders.
Now known as the London Whale for his outsize wagers in the credit markets, Mr. Iksil accumulated a number of trades in 2010 that were illiquid, which means it would take the bank more time to get out of them.
In 2010, a senior executive at the chief investment office compiled a detailed report that estimated how much money the bank stood to lose if it had to get out of all Mr. Iksil’s trades within 30 days. The senior executive recommended that JPMorgan consider putting aside reserves to deal with any losses that might stem from Mr. Iksil’s trades. It is not known how much was recommended as a reserve or whether Mr. Dimon saw the report, but the warning went unheeded.
The losses are the most embarrassing fumble for Mr. Dimon since he became chief executive in 2005.
In appearances before Congress, Mr. Dimon has taken pains to assure investors and lawmakers that the overall health of JPMorgan remained strong and that it had more than sufficient amounts of capital to weather any economic dislocation.
Even as he apologized for the trade, calling it “stupid,” Mr. Dimon emphasized to lawmakers that the loss was an “isolated incident.”
The Federal Reserve is currently poring over the bank’s trades to examine the scope of the growing losses and the original bet.
SUPREME COURT RULES:
Mandate survives as a tax...
Chief Justice Roberts joins the left of the Court...
The Medicaid provision is limited but not invalidated...
'Congress had the power to impose the exaction in Section 5000A under the taxing power, and that Section 5000A need not be read to do more than impose a tax. This is sufficient to sustain it. '
The court reinforces that individuals can simply refuse to pay the tax and not comply with the mandate.
SUPREME COURT RULES:
Mandate survives as a tax...
Chief Justice Roberts joins the left of the Court...
The Medicaid provision is limited but not invalidated...
'Congress had the power to impose the exaction in Section 5000A under the taxing power, and that Section 5000A need not be read to do more than impose a tax. This is sufficient to sustain it. '
The court reinforces that individuals can simply refuse to pay the tax and not comply with the mandate.
El Hierro’s volcanic alert status raised to ‘yellow’ following increase in quake activity
Posted on June 27, 2012
http://theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com/2012/06/27/el-hierros-volcanic-alert-status-raised-to-yellow-following-increase-in-quake-activity/
June 27, 2012 – CANARY ISLANDS – Seismic activity has increased on the volcanic island of El Hierro. The INVOLCAN, the Volcanological Institute of the Canaries, and the PEVOLCA (the Civil Protection Plan for Volcanic Risk), have raised the alert status in parts of El Hierro to “Yellow.” About 580 earthquakes were registered from Monday to Wednesday. Thirty of them were greater than magnitude 3 on the Richter scale – a level at which they can usually be felt. The volcano 24 hour monitoring network, National Geographic Institute (IGC), recorded a total of 221 earthquakes on the island of El Hierro, specifically in the municipalities of Frontera and El Pinar, on Tuesday June 26. –The Extinction Protocol
I really liked it and have shared it out quite a bit in other arenas. Rings pretty true to me:)
with shrooooms, lol
Halfpasthuman - The gift?
www.halfpasthuman.com
Into everyone's life, shit happens. When the shit happens in your life, be aware that this is universe providing you the necessary precondition for transformation.
By rejecting the process of transformation which is triggered by the shit reaching too damn high, you are sticking your chin out as far as you can, and inviting Fate to bitch slap the shit right out of you.
You see, the shit must go. That is how universe works. It piles shit up to the rafters as a method of forcing us lazy pie eaters to get out of our kitchens and deal with the transformation, that we know, deep in our gut, is required.
Universe does not provide us with what we want. It gives us what we need.
It provides us our needs at many levels, both collective and personal. Recently we have all (likely) participated in this process. Some, like me, more active than others, but we have all participated in providing David Wilcock, Ben Fullford, and maybe Drake, the preconditions necessary for transformation.....i.e. we have given them shit. As i say, some of us more than others. But therein lies the 'gift of shit', unknowingly, acting from our own motivation, we contribute to the potential for growth in ourselves and others, by reacting in a courageous way (criticizing the behavior of others, correctly, with honor and respect takes courage).
Universe rewards courage. It removes obstacles, smooths the path, and brings additional opportunities, once courage is demonstrated. By embracing Destiny, one can avoid Fate. The difference is the intent to recognize, and harmonize with the 'gift of shit' from universe. The ability to harmonize grows over time and is not a prerequisite to universal process. It is the decision, apparently, to take all that comes from universe as grist for our personal mill of transformation, that changes the experience from fate to destiny. Thereafter it is keeping to that decision that is necessary. No small task. Beyond that, the ability to listen to universe, and effectively harmonize, are skills that grow over time with failure (success rarely teaches anything).
This is true both personally and collectively.
Universe rewards courage, both personally and collectively. Paradoxically, in order for the populace to have courage collectively, the individual must have it, and be prepared to demonstrate it. Once demonstrated by one individual, courage runs through a populace like flame through brush. This is what scares the QE (quivering elites). This is why they work so hard to manage the flow of shit to coincide with their schedule of things....as they are aware that even shit will ignite if you pile it deep enough.
The shit has been piled this deep on this planet before. The evidence shows that those ancient peoples denied their Destiny and were consumed by Fate.
It is our turn now. Within days of this posting, the global social glue will stretch so far as to expose the 'strings attached'. This shit is piled head deep, and we are drowning in it; a perfect precondition for transformation, both collectively and personally. If you were not feeling the push for transformation at a personal level, you would not be reading this missive now.
Just the way that universe works. To those whom it really likes, it gives the gift of awareness. Of course, as with all gifts of universe, duality is expressed, as the gift of awareness comes through the stink of the gift of shit.
John Barrow, the Georgia Democrat, looks to be following the lead of Claire McCaskill of Missouri, and Joe Manchin and Earl Ray Tomblin of West Virginia and will not be attending the Democratic National Convention. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/endangered-ga-democrat-skipping-convention_647877.html
Colorado wildfires: Several fires explode across Front Range
Posted: 06/26/2012 11:00:00 PM MDT
June 27, 2012 11:38 AM GMTUpdated: 06/27/2012 05:38:11 AM MDTBy Jeremy P. Meyer
A three-day-old wildfire erupted with catastrophic fury Tuesday, ripping across the foothills neighborhoods of Colorado Springs, devouring an untold number of homes and sending tens of thousands fleeing to safety in what was shaping up as one of the biggest disasters in state history. "This is a firestorm of epic proportions," said Colorado Springs Fire Chief Richard Brown. The Waldo Canyon fire in El Paso County — which had been growing in the forested hills on the city's west side — blew into an inferno late in the afternoon, raging over a ridge toward densely populated neighborhoods.
An apocalyptic plume of smoke covered Colorado's second-largest city as thousands of people forced to evacuate clogged Interstate
25 at rush hour trying to get to their homes or to get out of the way.
By nightfall, roughly 32,000 people left their homes, chased out by the flames.
"We have homes burning right now," El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa said shortly before 9 p.m.
The sheriff was among those forced from their homes by the fire.
"This is a very bad day," said Colorado Springs Mayor Steve Bach.
As the fire continued to grow, all of northwest Colorado Springs was ordered evacuated, including the Air Force Academy.
"People are freaking out," said Kathleen Tillman, who drove up I-25 from Pueblo to her house in northern Colorado Springs. "You are driving through smoke. It is completely pitch black, and there is tons of ash dropping on the road."
At the same time the fire in Colorado Springs was erupting with a new fury, a lightning-sparked wildfire in Boulder blew up in the tinder-dry forest above the city. The Flagstaff fire grew in minutes to an estimated 228 acres and sent a smoke column over Boulder Valley. Twenty-six homes were evacuated, and residents of more than 2,000 homes in south Boulder were told to be ready to flee as the fire crept one ridge away from coming into the city.
Fire crews assembled at Fairview High School in case the wildfire burned into the city.
"This is the structure-protection plan," said Jeff Long, battalion chief for Boulder Fire Rescue. "We are staying here in case it takes a turn for the worse. As long as the city is threatened, we'll be here."
It is a scenario that firefighting officials have feared as the conditions continued to get worse over the past week.
Scorching temperatures have baked the Front Range for several days as thousands of firefighters on the ground and more than 100 planes and helicopters have been battling more than eight wildfires across the state.
Denver tied a record with its fifth straight day of temperatures of at least 100 degrees, and weather in the 90s is expected to continue for several days even as officials hoped that seasonal subtropical moisture would eventually creep into the region and bring much-needed rain.
While Colorado Springs and Boulder took over the headlines, crews working on the High Park fire west of Fort Collins was measured at 87,250 acres with still 55 percent containment. That fire, the most destructive in state history, has torched at least 257 homes, nine more than previously thought.
Conditions are dry throughout the state. Even a fire near Last Chance on the Eastern Plains blew up to 45,000 acres in just eight hours.
But as darkness arrived, it was clear that the biggest fight in the state was in Colorado Springs, where ghostly orange flames rose across the city's western edge.
Gov. John Hickenlooper arrived in Colorado Springs late Tuesday.
"The bottom line is we're just going to have to work through this — all of us," Hickenlooper said. "We just flew over the fires. ... It was like looking at a military invasion."
Wind gusts of 65 mph and the hottest day on record for Colorado Springs — the high hit 101 degrees — proved to be an explosive combination for the Waldo Canyon fire, which until Tuesday had not touched a structure.
"I've seen a lot of fires, but I have never seen one move this quickly," Sheriff Maketa said.
By early evening, the website for the Flying W Ranch, a Western-themed attraction west of Garden of the Gods, announced that it had "burned to the ground."
"Please keep us in your thoughts and those whose homes are close to us," an official of the Flying W Ranch said in an e-mail.
Denver Post staff writers Kurtis Lee, Tom McGhee, Erin Udell and the Boulder Daily Camera contributed to this report.
Read more: Colorado wildfires: Several fires explode across Front Range - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_20945863/several-fires-explode-across-front-range#ixzz1z09H71bC
Read The Denver Post's Terms of Use of its content: http://www.denverpost.com/termsofuse
LMAO!! Good one Z
I took forever to get dark here tonight (in Kentucky) and the moon appears to be moving from right to left instead of left to right....
And no, I am not smoking anything, lol.
http://www.emsc-csem.org/Earthquake/?filter=yes
In 24 hours, 142 earthquakes RT El Hierro
Syria and Turkey's Phantom War
By Pepe Escobar
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31713.htm
June 26, 2012 "Information Clearing House" -- Once upon a time, not too long ago, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu was the prime proponent of a foreign policy dubbed "zero problems with our neighbors" - derided by many in the West as "new-Ottomanism".
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) meets this Tuesday in Brussels not only to craft its response to a Turkish F-4 Phantom jet shot being down by Syria's anti-aircraft artillery but to seal what sort of "new Ottomanism" is emerging from what actually turned into a "big problem with one of our neighbors" policy.
Davutoglu insists the F-4 was shot in international air space - although conceding it had briefly entered Syrian air space. Contradicting Syria's official explanation, he said the jet was clearly marked as Turkish; was on a "training flight" to test Turkey's "national radar system"; and most of all had "no covert mission related to Syria".
Previously, Syrian Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi had stressed this was an "accident, not an attack". According to Makdissi, "an unidentified object entered our air space and unfortunately as a result it was brought down. It was understood only later that it was a Turkish plane."
Davutoglu, in a Turkish media blitzkrieg, as reported by Today's Zaman, reiterated this was a "solo flight"; the jet was "unarmed"; there was no warning before it was shot down; and as for Syria trying to connect the "not ill-intentioned violation" of its airspace to the shooting of the F-4, that was "irrelevant".
Violation of another country's air space, trying to avoid its defenses by flying at low altitude, is as normal to Davutoglu as a sheesh kebab for lunch; "There were many violations of Syrian air space by other countries before. But Syria shot down our unarmed plane."
But then the foreign minister started deviating (or not) from the script. He stressed, "No matter how the downed Turkish jet saga unfolds, we will always stand by [the] Syrian people". And this; "We will always stand by Syrian people until the advent of a democratic regime there." Forget about the F-4 Phantom; the "Syrian people" may sleep soundly because the heart of the matter remains regime change.
Everything else is irrelevant
NATO will consider Turkey's case under Article Four of its charter - which allows consultations whenever "the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the parties is threatened". We're not - yet - at Article Five, which is all about armed response. But we could be, depending how NATO interprets Turkey's assertion that the F-4 Phantom was "hit 13 miles off the Syrian coast, in international air space".
So according to Davutoglu's story the F-4 was briefly deviated to Syrian airspace by some irresistible force (Thor?); soon realized its mistake; left in a hurry; but then was shot down. By the way, it was not a "solo flight"; witnesses told Turkish TV they saw two low-flying fighter jets speed by in the direction of Syrian waters, but only one return.
As predictably as England being kicked out of Euro 2012, the usual European warmongering poodles of the William Hague kind have already stepped in, blaming Syria because Turkey violated Syrian airspace. Yet there's no evidence - so far - that Ankara warned the Syrian government and military they would be conducting some sort of reconnaissance very close to a by now very explosive border.
Whether the F-4 (or the pair of F-4s) was armed or not is, to quote Davutoglu, "irrelevant"; try telling the Pentagon, for instance, that an unknown, low-flying, fast-moving, unidentified object entering your air space is not a threat. If this was a military reconnaissance mission, as Davutoglu himself argues, the F-4 had to be armed.
And imagine if this was a Syrian jet flying over Turkish or Israeli territory.
Burn, Anatolia, burn
Ankara will certainly ask Damascus for a formal apology and payment of reparations. Tehran - which until virtually yesterday, that is, before the Syrian uprising, was part of an Ankara-Damascus-Tehran axis - is calling for cool heads to prevail.
As much as professional warmongers are encouraging a Gulf of Tonkin remix, that remains pure folly. Still, Asia Times Online has learned from a local source about "frantic" movement at NATO's sprawling Incirlik base in Turkey for days.
Everyone knows - but nobody talks about - NATO's command and control center in Iskenderun, in Turkey's Hatay province, near the Syrian border, set up months ago to organize, train and weaponize the motley crew known as the Free Syrian Army. Everyone knows Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the CIA are advising and weaponizing these Syrian NATOGCC "rebels" with essential Turkish help in the logistics/safe haven front.
Everyone knows Washington will settle for nothing less than regime change in Syria - to the benefit of a pliable, sub-imperial puppet (certainly not an Islamist). Everyone knows every provocation advances the not so hidden agenda of an all-out NATOGCC attack on Syria without a UN Security Council resolution, bypassing both Russia and China.
If "neo-Ottomanism" persists with its regime change obsession in Syria - to a large extent tied to the Turkish dream of finding a solution to the Kurdish "problem" - it had better start evaluating how Damascus could shower the Kurdish PKK with funds and logistics so they may unleash hell in Turkish Anatolia.
No doubt this will get much uglier. But in Wag the Dog terms - and that's what this is all about - no one knows for sure; is Turkey trying to wag the NATO dog into a war, or is it the other way around?
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His latest book is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).
Eric Holder: 'It’s Going to Get Really Busy on Thursday, Apparently'
2:00 PM, Jun 26, 2012 • By DANIEL HALPER
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/eric-holder-it-s-going-get-really-busy-thursday-apparently_647866.html
Attorney General Eric Holder avoided commenting on the Fast and Furious scandal in Boston today. The Boston Herald reports:
Embattled Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. refused to say today whether he would consider resigning if a federal probe into the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ disastrous “Fast and Furious” operation threatens President Obama’s re-election.
The question was posed to Holder by a Herald reporter at the Seaport World Trade Center, where he delivered a keynote address on the state of civil rights to a packed room of federal prosecutors and local law enforcement. Holder kept on walking and didn’t answer.
In just two days, the U.S. House of Representatives is expected to take a historic vote, potentially to hold Holder in contempt of Congress for allegedly refusing to turn over documents about the two-year gun-tracking investigation in Mexico that resulted in the murder of a Border Patrol agent.
Later, Holder made an oblique reference to the House vote scheduled for Thursday on whether to hold the attorney general in contempt. "It’s going to get really busy on Thursday, apparently," Holder said, according to the Boston Herald. Holder's comment was reportedly met with "awkward laughs."
A self-effacing Holder drew awkward laughs from the symposium hosted by longtime pal U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz when, while touching upon how busy his schedule is, he said, “It’s going to get really busy on Thursday, apparently.”
The Bear at the Door
Russian nuclear bombers test U.S. air defenses in arctic war games during chilly Obama-Putin summit
BY: Bill Gertz - June 26, 2012 5:00 am
http://freebeacon.com/the-bear-at-the-door/
Russian strategic nuclear bombers threatened U.S. airspace near Alaska earlier this month and F-15 jets responded by intercepting the aircraft taking part in large-scale arctic war games, according to defense officials.
The Russian war games began the same day President Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin held a frosty summit meeting in Mexico June 18.
U.S. officials said the arctic exercises over the Russian Far East and Pacific appeared to be a further sign of Russia’s hardening posture toward the United States.
The Obama administration made no protest of the bomber intrusions, according to the officials, in line with its conciliatory “reset” policy of seeking warmer ties with Moscow.
About 30 strategic nuclear bombers and support aircraft took part in the war games that continued through June 25. The aircraft included Tu-95MS Bear H and Tu-160 Blackjack nuclear-capable bombers, along with Il-76 refueling tankers, A-50 airborne warning and control aircraft, and Su-27 and MiG-31 jet fighters. Some 200 troops also took part in the Russian Strategic Aviation forces exercise.
A spokesman for the joint U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense command in Colorado Springs, which monitors air defense intrusions, had no immediate comment. A Pentagon spokesman declined to comment.
U.S. and Canadian F-15 and F-16 jets were involved in the intercepts that took place near the Air Identification Zone surrounding Alaskan airspace over the northern Pacific.
The exercises are part of increasingly aggressive Russian military activities in the arctic region in both the eastern and western hemispheres, which have created security worries among governments in northern Europe and Canada.
One official said the failure to publicize the threatening bomber maneuvers might have been related to Obama’s overheard promise in March to Russian President Dmitri Medvedev of “more flexibility.”
According to the defense officials, the arctic bomber exercises are part of Russian efforts to assert control over vast areas of the arctic circle that are said to contain large mineral and oil deposits.
Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney, a former Alaska North American Aerospace Defense commander, said the Russian exercises should be a concern.
“The Russians continue to exercise our air defense identification zone, which shows Mr. Putin loves to let President Obama know that they still have global capability,” McInerney said in an interview. “So much for reset.”
McInerney also said the Obama administration kept the encounter between the bombers and U.S. fighters secret because “they obviously don’t want the world to know that the exercise was done deliberately to coincide with the Obama-Putin summit.”
Obama and Putin met in Los Cabos, Mexico June 18 in what aides described later as a “businesslike” encounter. The two leaders, however, were shown in video and photos as unsmiling and displaying a cool demeanor toward each other.
Russia’s government and military have threatened preemptive military attacks on future U.S. missile defense sites in Europe as part of a Russian propaganda campaign against those defenses. Moscow views U.S. and NATO missile defenses as threatening its strategic missiles.
Defense officials said Russian bomber exercises highlight Moscow’s targeting of the U.S. missile defense base at Fort Greely, Alaska, one of two major ground-based interceptor bases that are part of a limited integrated missile defense system against North Korean and possibly future Chinese or Russian missiles.
Additionally, the bomber exercises raised concerns that Russia was simulating cruise missile strikes aimed at disrupting U.S. oil pipelines in Alaska. Currently, the state’s Trans-Alaska pipeline delivers more than 11 percent of U.S. oil.
The Russian bombers involved in the exercises are equipped with long-range precision-guided cruise missiles, including nuclear and conventional missiles.
A similar bomber exercise in 2007 involved Bear H and Blackjack bombers that conducted simulated cruise missile attacks on the United States. Those bombers operated from strategic bomber bases at Anadyr, Vorkuta, and Tiksi.
Military reference books state that Bear H bombers are deployed with six Kh-55 or Kh-55SM cruise missiles that can hit targets up to 1,800 miles away with either a high-explosive warhead or a 200-kiloton nuclear warhead.
Russian Air Force Lt. Col. Vladimir Deryabin, a Defense Ministry spokesman, told Russian state-controlled news agencies that the main purpose of the war games was to provide practice for strategic, fighter, and special aviation aircrews. The first phase involved the dispersal of aviation groups to air bases in the northern and eastern region. A second phase deployed aircraft that flew in groups with fighter cover, he said.
Deryabin said that the mission of the exercise was to “practice destruction of enemy air defenses and strategic facilities,” according to a June 25 dispatch by the Russian news agency Interfax.
State Department documents made public by Wikileaks have revealed that Russian offensive military exercises in the arctic during the past several years have been aimed at Moscow’s efforts to “emerge as the dominant arctic power by default.”
Such exercises have alarmed Norway’s government since many of the exercises took place near Norway’s coast.
International discussions on Russian military exercises in the arctic have been highlighted by Moscow’s failure to provide pre-flight notification of bomber exercise flights.
It could not be learned if the Russians notified the United States of the recent bomber exercises near Alaska.
Canada has complained that earlier Russian bomber flights were conducted without Russia notifying the Canadian government.
A classified 2009 cable from the U.S. Embassy Moscow said Russia in May 2009 outlined its policy toward the arctic for 2020 and beyond, and said Moscow adopted a “cold peace” policy against Europe and the United States. It stated that the region will be used for strategic resources and that Moscow is seeking to claim exclusive control over an emerging northern sea route passage.
“The Arctic region, both within Russia’s legally clarified borders and in areas beyond, likely holds vast untapped resources of oil and gas,” the cable states. “While many Russian analysts are skeptical that any of these resources will be economically exploitable in the near future, the Russian leadership wants to secure sovereignty over these ‘strategic’ resources.”
As part of the arctic military expansion, Russia announced May 30 it was re-opening arctic air bases that had been closed after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
Russian officials have said the strategic air bases will be used for arctic operations and include airfields in the far north at Naryan-Mar, on Novaya Zemlya, and Franz Josef Land.
Naryan-Mar is a mainland strategic air base and Novaya Zemlya and Franz Josef Land are islands.
Additionally, Russia has announced it is setting up an 8,000-troop Arctic Brigade that will be deployed on the Kola Peninsula, near Finland and Norway.
In 2010, Adm. James A. Winnefeld, then-commander of the Colorado-based U.S. North Command, said in an interview that Russia has continued to fly its strategic nuclear bombers near U.S. airspace as part of Moscow’s efforts to maintain what he termed the illusion of power.
“In some cases, this is about the illusion of power, where power is not quite there,” Winnefeld said from the Colorado Springs-based command known as Northcom. “They are trying to show the world that they are a powerful nation, and we’re not giving them the satisfaction.”
This entry was posted in National Security and tagged alaska, Nuclear, Obama, Putin, reset, Russia, War Games. Bookmark the permalink.
The Supreme Court’s unusual moment in the spotlight
By Robert Barnes,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/speculation-grows-that-roberts-will-write-majority-opinion-in-health-care-case/2012/06/26/gJQAShqe4V_print.html
Calculating who will write the final decision of the Supreme Court’s term is a game usually of interest only to a small band of lawyers, professors, reporters and politicos who obsess over the justices’ every footnote.
But this year, the likelihood that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. is preparing the court’s judgment on President Obama’s health-care overhaul is worthy of headlines and a whirl of Internet spin.
Roberts’s questions at oral arguments are being consulted, his decisions in past cases are being reviewed, and the analysis is underway about whether his presence in the majority means he is preparing a life preserver or a stake for the Affordable Care Act.
The first Monday in October and the last week of June, the bookends for each session, are always moments in the spotlight for the Supreme Court. But this is no ordinary time.
The court has rarely occupied so prominent a place in the public consciousness as now: deciding the constitutionality of a health-care plan that would touch every American, ruling on the president’s bitterly fought but signature domestic achievement, issuing an opinion that will immediately impact election-year politics.
“More people have paid attention to this case than any other case in recent memory, probably with the exception of Bush v. Gore,” Paul D. Clement, who argued the case on behalf of the law’s challengers, told reporters last week.
But the decision that decided the 2000 presidential election was an anomaly, an emergency that no doubt sealed the court’s reputation for many but was unlike its usual practice of briefing and argument and contemplation and opinion-writing.
Health care, Clement said, “is a case where everybody from ordinary citizens to reporters who are not used to covering the court are getting an education in how the court works.”
The main way it works, of course, is in secrecy, beyond public view and in a place unlike much of official Washington.
Television cameras are not allowed. The lucky spectators admitted to the courtroom are told to check their BlackBerrys at the door. Reporters are discouraged from using noisy cellphones, even in the press room. Ornate metal gates block the marble stairways that lead to the justices’ chambers.
Unlike many other institutions in this city, the court sticks to a sharp timetable, and the decision will be delivered Thursday morning, shortly after 10 a.m. And unlike in the rest of leak-happy Washington, discretion is demanded above all else. The health-care case was probably decided soon after the court’s historic three days of hearings in March. But even now, only a few dozen court employees — half of whom are probably unhappy with the decision — know the outcome.
Clement, who was solicitor general under President George W. Bush, said people unfamiliar with the court, especially political reporters, cannot believe that the result has not been disclosed.
“The thing I’ve found most amusing is their complete inability to believe there will not be leaks,” Clement said. “They are so used to covering the other two branches of government that they just assume leaks are absolutely invevitable.”
Absent those, Monday’s gush of news from the court, on its penultimate day of decisions, provided much fodder.
When Justice Anthony M. Kennedy was announced as the author of the court’s opinion on Arizona’s restrictive immigration law — the court’s second-most-significant case of the term — that provided a clue that Roberts would be writing the health-care ruling. Roberts and Kennedy are thought to hold the balance of power on the case, and it would be unlikely that Kennedy would write both.
The court delivered a split decision in the Arizona case, upholding the most controversial provision of the law with a sort of “we’ll be watching” warning and striking three others — and prompting immediate speculation. Could the ruling provide a template for a health-care compromise? Could justices, for instance, strike the health-care law’s unpopular individual mandate and still find a way to make the overhaul work?
Monday’s session provided another lesson for those who were there to witness it. The justices regularly declare themselves to be warm and caring colleagues, shaking hands before each session and proclaiming that harsh words are never spoken in their private conferences.
But things can look different on the bench. Justice Elena Kagan announced the court’s decision that states may not impose mandatory life sentences without parole for juvenile killers. Then the justice to her immediate right, Samuel A. Alito Jr., was moved for the first time in his career on the court to object from the bench.
He dressed down the logic of the opinion — and its endorsement of what he called an elitist attitude — that overturned what he said should be a prerogative of the states.
Barbara Perry, a Supreme Court expert at the Miller Center at the University of Virginia, was in the audience. “You could just hear the emotion in his voice,” she said.
Kagan, the newest justice, had not quite mastered the art of staring impassively ahead.
There was more. Justice Antonin Scalia ripped the court’s immigration ruling, with an unexpected criticism of Obama’s decision to ease deportation of illegal immigrants who were brought to the country as children.
“The president has said the new program is ‘the right thing to do’ in light of Congress’s failure to pass the administration’s proposed revision of immigration laws,” Scalia said. “Perhaps it is, though Arizona may not think so.”
Perry thought it was a “gratuitous shot,” and added that she felt the same when Obama criticized the court during the State of the Union address in 2010.
A former Supreme Court fellow who worries about the institution, she is distressed by polls that show growing public dissatisfaction with the court and an increasing number of people who think its decisions are politically motivated.
“Whenever the court enters the political thicket, it does so at its own peril,” she said.
Later that day, Perry attended a seminar for teachers at the court, and when she emerged, after the bustle and emotion of the morning, the place had returned to its natural state.
The marble halls were empty; all was quiet. Even the plaza outside was deserted, save for a couple of television reporters completing their stand-ups. Rain began to sprinkle, she said, and then they left, too.
© The Washington Post Company
Jun 26, 8:26 PM EDT
Obama prepping thousands of lawyers for election
By MIKE BAKER
Associated Press
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_OBAMA_LAWYERING_UP?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-06-26-12-58-13
OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) -- President Barack Obama's campaign has recruited a legion of lawyers to be on standby for this year's election as legal disputes surrounding the voting process escalate.
Thousands of attorneys and support staffers have agreed to aid in the effort, providing a mass of legal support that appears to be unrivaled by Republicans or precedent. Obama's campaign says it is particularly concerned about the implementation of new voter ID laws across the country, the possibility of anti-fraud activists challenging legitimate voters and the handling of voter registrations in the most competitive states.
Republicans are building their own legal teams for the election. They say they're focused on preventing fraud - making sure people don't vote unless they're eligible - rather than turning away qualified voters.
Since the disputed 2000 presidential election, both parties have increasingly concentrated on building legal teams - including high-priced lawyers who are well-known in political circles - for the Election Day run-up. The Bush-Gore election demonstrated to both sides the importance of every vote and the fact that the rules for voting and counting might actually determine the outcome. The Florida count in 2000 was decided by just 537 votes and ultimately landed in the Supreme Court.
This year in that state alone, Obama and his Democratic allies are poised to have thousands of lawyers ready for the election and hope to have more than the 5,800 attorneys available four years ago. That figure was nearly twice the 3,200 lawyers the Democrats had at their disposal in 2004.
Romney has been organizing his own legal help for the election. Campaign attorney Ben Ginsberg did not provide numbers but said the campaign has been gratified by the "overwhelming number of attorneys who have volunteered to assist."
"We will have enough lawyers to handle all situations that arise," he said.
The GOP doesn't necessarily need to have a numerical counterweight to Obama's attorneys; the 2000 election showed that experienced, connected lawyers on either side can be effective in court.
Former White House counsel Robert Bauer, who is organizing the Obama campaign's legal deployment, said there is great concern this year because he believes GOP leaders around the county have pursued new laws to impede the right to vote.
"The Republican Party and their allies have mapped out their vote suppression campaign as a response to our success in 2008 with grass-roots organization and successful turnout," Bauer said. "This is their response to defeat: changing the rules of participation so that fewer participate."
Several states with Republican leaders have recently pursued changes that could make voting more difficult, including key states such as Florida and Ohio, despite objections from voting rights groups that believe that the laws could suppress votes from low-income and minority blocs.
Republicans dispute that the laws are political, pointing to cases of election fraud and arguing that measures like those requiring voters to show identification are simply common sense. Pennsylvania's Republican House majority leader, Mike Turzai, however, told GOP supporters over the weekend that the state's new ID law "is going to allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania."
Independent from the Romney team, a conservative group is prepping an Election Day team of its own to combat possible fraud.
Catherine Engelbrecht, president and founder of True the Vote, said the organization hopes to train and mobilize up to one million volunteers this year, many of them to serve poll watchers. One of the group's main initiatives is to "aggressively pursue fraud reports."
"Being a poll watcher is an age-old tradition and we're fortunate that so many volunteers are ready and willing to take a day off, learn what they need to know and help out at the polls," Engelbrecht said. True the Vote already has thousands signed up to help and had 500 trained election workers monitoring the Wisconsin recall vote earlier this month.
"They serve as volunteer guardians of the republic, to ensure that procedures at the polls are in keeping with state law," she said.
It's one of the efforts that have Obama's team fretting. The Democrats fear that anti-fraud activity could get out of hand, with vigilante poll watchers targeting and intimidating voters who may not know their rights.
"We will have the strategy and the resources to address the threat and protect the voter," Bauer said.
The Obama-aligned attorneys, most of whom are not election experts by trade, undergo training and have materials to show them how to help at the polls on Election Day.
Charles Lichtman, who is helping advise the effort in Florida this year after leading it in the last two cycles, first created the Florida Democratic Lawyers Council after the 2000 election, vowing that there would never be a repeat of that disputed vote. He contends Democrat Al Gore would have won the presidency over Republican George W. Bush if a similar legal infrastructure had been in place then.
Lichtman's efforts have since been replicated for other states. He said that is vital to provide voter protection.
"My experience has been that, in every election, the other side has taken drastic measures to try to suppress the vote," Lichtman said. The volunteer organization has not been involved in the 2012 legal disputes so far, though they are monitoring the developments.
Four years ago, the teams of lawyers organized by Obama and Republican candidate John McCain in 2008 went largely unused since the election wasn't very close.
But this year may be different given all the changes to voting laws - and the closeness of the race in recent polling.
The states with the strictest ID laws require voters to show photo identification before casting ballots. If they don't have proper identification or fail to bring it, they can cast a provisional ballot but must later go to meet with state elections administrators to sort things out before the ballot is counted.
Voting groups see a variety of potential problems, such as how voters are informed of the rule changes, how poll workers handle voters who fail to bring IDs and whether voters are provided adequate notice of the steps they need to take after casting an absentee ballot.
About 30 states have some form of an ID law, with varying methods of implementation.
Legal challenges typically start coming in the weeks before the election, but "litigation has started coming sooner and more vociferously" this year, says Edward Foley, an elections law expert with Ohio State University. That includes lawsuits surrounding Florida's plan to purge ineligible voters from the rolls.
Foley said. "We're in an era of increased litigiousness over the voting process."
He said lawsuits after Election Day may occur only if votes in a battleground state are within the "margin of litigation." That would probably be a difference of just hundreds of votes, a result that would be rare.
Jimmy Carter Accuses U.S. of 'Widespread Abuse of Human Rights'
ABC NewsBy Amy Bingham | ABC News – Mon, Jun 25, 2012
http://news.yahoo.com/jimmy-carter-accuses-u-widespread-abuse-human-rights
A former U.S. president is accusing the current president of sanctioning the "widespread abuse of human rights" by authorizing drone strikes to kill suspected terrorists.
Jimmy Carter, America's 39th president, denounced the Obama administration for "clearly violating" 10 of the 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, writing in a New York Times op-ed on Monday that the "United States is abandoning its role as the global champion of human rights."
"Instead of making the world safer, America's violation of international human rights abets our enemies and alienates our friends," Carter wrote.
While the total number of attacks from unmanned aircraft, or drones, and the resulting casualties are murky, the New America Foundation estimates that in Pakistan alone 265 drone strikes have been executed since January 2009 . Those strikes have killed at least 1,488 people, at least 1,343 of them considered militants, the foundation estimates based on news reports and other sources.
In addition to the drone strikes, Carter criticized the current president for keeping the Guantanamo Bay detention center open, where prisoners "have been tortured by waterboarding more than 100 times or intimidated with semiautomatic weapons, power drills or threats to sexually assault their mothers."
The former president blasted the government for allowing "unprecedented violations of our rights to privacy through warrantless wiretapping and government mining of our electronic communications."
He also condemned recent legislation that gives the president the power to detain suspected terrorists indefinitely, although a federal judge blocked the law from taking effect for any suspects not affiliated with the September 11 terrorist attacks.
"This law violates the right to freedom of expression and to be presumed innocent until proved guilty, two other rights enshrined in the declaration," Carter said.
While Carter never mentioned Obama by name, he called out "our government" and "the highest authorities in Washington," and urged "concerned citizens" to "persuade Washington to reverse course and regain moral leadership."
60 million euro stolen from 60 banks across the world in massive cyber bank raid
Posted on June 26, 2012
http://theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com/2012/06/26/60-million-euro-stolen-from-60-banks-across-the-world-is-massive-cyber-bank-raid/
June 26, 2012 – FINANCE – Sixty million euro has been stolen from bank accounts in a massive cyber bank raid after fraudsters raided dozens of financial institutions around the world. According to a joint report by software security firm McAfee and Guardian Analytics, more than 60 firms have suffered from what it has called an “insider level of understanding. The fraudsters’ objective in these attacks is to siphon large amounts from high balance accounts, hence the name chosen for this research – Operation High Roller,” the report said. “If all of the attempted fraud campaigns were as successful as the Netherlands example we describe in this report, the total attempted fraud could be as high as 2bn (£1.6bn).” The automated malicious software program was discovered to use servers to process thousands of attempted thefts from both commercial firms and private individuals. The stolen money was then sent to so-called mule accounts in caches of a few hundreds and 100,000 euro (£80,000) at a time. Credit unions, large multinational banks and regional banks have all been attacked. Sky News defense and security editor Sam Kiley said: “It does include British financial institutions and has jumped over to North America and South America. “What they have done differently from routine attacks is that they have got into the bank servers and constructed software that is automated. It can get around some of the mechanisms that alert the banking system to abnormal activity.” The details of the global fraud come just a day after the MI5 boss warned of the new cyber security threat to UK business. McAfee researchers have been able to track the global fraud, which still continues, across countries and continents. They have identified 60 different servers, many of them in Russia, and they have identified one alone that has been used to steal 60m euro,” Kiley said. –Sky News
Boots on the ground? Unconfirmed reports say British SAS forces already in Syria
Posted on June 26, 2012
http://theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com/2012/06/26/boots-on-the-ground-unconfirmed-reports-say-british-sas-forces-already-in-syria/
June 26, 2012 – MIDDLE EAST - Unconfirmed first reports from British, French and Turkish sources say British special operations forces crossed from Turkey into northern Syria Tuesday, June 26, and advanced up to 10 kilometers inside the country. The same sources report heavy fighting around the Presidential Guards compound on the outskirts of Damascus. Debkafile’s military sources note that this compound exists to defend Bashar Assad’s presidential palace on Mount Qaisoun overlooking Damascus. British and Gulf TV stations are again running interviews with dozens of Syrian soldiers taken prisoner by rebel forces and transferred to Free Syrian Army centers in South Turkey. But this time, they are being aired in conjunction with those two developments, indicating pivotal and coordinated military action inside the embattled country, or even the start of western intervention against the Assad regime. Later Tuesday, Gulf military sources confirmed the presence of British Special Forces in Syria. Our military sources estimate that the British military drive into Syria, if confirmed, is designed to establish the first safe zone along the Syrian-Turkish border, to be followed by more Western military incursions to establish additional zones of safe asylum in other parts of Syria. This follow-up action would depend substantially on Syrian, Russian and Iranian (+ Hizballah) responses to the initial stage of the operation. The reported British incursion, if confirmed, occurred at the tail end of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s 24-hour visit to Israel Tuesday morning and would have posed a direct challenge to his repeated warning that Moscow would not tolerate Western military intervention in Syria and actively prevent it. Similar warnings have issued from Tehran. As for the timing, the double military drive against Assad also occurred hours before a NATO “consultation” in Brussels on the shooting down of a Turkish warplane by Syria last Friday, June 22, which Ankara stated Monday “must not go unpunished.” –Debka
Battles reach Syrian capital: Assad declares ‘Syria at war’
Posted on June 27, 2012
http://theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com/2012/06/27/battles-reach-syrian-capital-assad-declares-syria-at-war/
June 27, 2012 – MIDDLE EAST - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad declared on Tuesday that his country was at war and ordered his new government to spare no effort to achieve victory, as the worst fighting of the 16-month conflict reached the outskirts of the capital. Video published by activists recorded heavy gunfire and explosions in suburbs of Damascus. A trail of fresh blood on a sidewalk in the suburb of Qudsiya led into a building where one casualty was taken. A naked man writhed in pain, his body pierced by shrapnel. Syria’s state news agency SANA said “armed terrorist groups” had blocked the old road from Damascus to Beirut. The declaration that Syria is at war marks a change of rhetoric from Assad, who had long dismissed the uprising against him as the work of scattered militants funded from abroad. “We live in a real state of war from all angles,” Assad told a cabinet he appointed on Tuesday in a speech broadcast on state television. “When we are in a war, all policies and all sides and all sectors need to be directed at winning this war.” The rambling speech – Assad also commented on subjects as far afield as the benefits of renewable energy – left little room for compromise. He denounced the West, which “takes and never gives, and this has been proven at every stage.” The United Nations accuses Syrian forces of killing more than 10,000 people during the conflict, which began with a popular uprising and has built up into an armed insurgency against four decades of rule by Assad and his father. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a group which compiles reports from rebels, said 115 people were killed across Syria on Tuesday, making it one of the bloodiest days of the conflict. Its toll included 74 civilians it said had been killed, including 28 in Qudsiya. It described heavy fighting near the headquarters of the Republican Guard in Qudsiya, and in other Damascus suburbs of al-Hama and Mashrou’ Dumar, just 9 km from the capital. SANA said dozens of rebels were killed or wounded and others arrested in fighting on the old Beirut road. Government forces seized rocket launchers, sniper rifles, machineguns and a huge amount of ammunition, it said. Samir al-Shami, an activist in Damascus, said tanks and armoured vehicles were out on the streets of the suburbs. Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said Syria must beware the wrath of Turkey after Syrian forces shot down a Turkish warplane on Friday at the Mediterranean coast. He ordered his armed forces to react to any threat from Syria near the border. “Our rational response should not be perceived as weakness, our mild manners do not mean we are a tame lamb,” he told a meeting of his parliamentary party. “Everybody should know that Turkey’s wrath is just as strong and devastating as its friendship is valuable.” NATO member states, summoned by Turkey to an urgent meeting in Brussels, condemned Syria over the incident in which two airmen were killed. The Western alliance called the incident “unacceptable” but stopped short of threatening retaliation. -Reuters
Eyeballing Iran? US Commissions 361 Cruise Missiles
US Navy to get 361 new Tomahawk cruise missiles, most of which are meant for Fifth Fleet destroyers based in Bahrain. Meanwhile, pressure to mount military strike against Tehran is permeating presidential campaign
By Yitzhak Benhorin
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31702.htm
June 25, 2012 "Ynet News" -- WASHINGTON – The United States has commissioned 361 new Tomahawk cruise missiles, and some 238 of them are meant to find their way to the Fifth Fleet, which is based in Bahrain, Ynet learned on Sunday.
According to the Business Insider, the deal – inked on the backdrop of repeated deadlocks in the nuclear negotiations between the West and Iran – may suggest that the US is gearing for a possible military campaign against the Islamic Republic.
US defense contractor Raytheon won the deal, for a reported $331 million.
According to the report, the deal – which follows repeated statements by both Israel and the US that "all options are on the table," and in view of Iran's recent naval maneuvers and military exercises – is another sign that "all sides are getting ready for the possibility of military conflict."
The missiles commissioned, the report added, "Will be designed to launch from submarines and the remainder from Navy ships currently operating with the Fifth Fleet based in Bahrain east of Iran."
Similar missiles were used by the US against Muammar Gaddafi's regime in Libya.
Additionally, the US Navy has commissioned 17,000 advanced submarine detection systems, for a reported $13 million.
'Time to act'
Meanwhile, Washington is still trying to devise diplomatic ways to stem Iran's pursuit of nuclear capabilities.
Dennis Ross, who served as a special advisor on Iran on the National Security Council, said that the only way to get Iran to suspend its nuclear activities is to make it realize that the threat of war is real. He further suggested "calling Iran's bluff" by offering Tehran civilian nuclear capabilities.
Former Secretary of State James Baker said that should nothing change and Iran does, within one year's time, reach nuclear capabilities, then the US should be the one to lead a strike against it, because it has the necessary force to end Tehran's nuclear program.
The pressure on US President Barack Obama to present a viable military option against Iran is growing, as 44 senators – Democrats and Republicans – demanded the he set clear preconditions for continuing the nuclear talks.
The pressure to mount a military strike is also permeating the presidential campaign: The Emergency Committee for Israel, a neo-conservative organization headed by Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, aired a special spot in Florida, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – key states in the presidential elections – urging Obama to strike Iran.
"President Obama has spent four years talking – Iran has spent four year building a secret nuclear site," the video says. "Obama is still talking and Iran has enough fuel for five nuclear bombs. Talking isn’t working – it's time to act."
Copyright © Yedioth Internet. All rights reserved.
"Netanyahu has Decided to Attack Iran Before the U.S. Elections in November"
By Michael Carmichael
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31695.htm
June 25, 2012 "Information Clearing House" -- Senior Israeli officials now confirm that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has, "decided to attack Iran before the U.S. elections in November."
Netanyahu's agenda is much broader than knocking out Iranian nuclear installations for his aim is to reshape the political landscape in the USA and Israel shifting everything to the far, far right in order to create a new comfort zone for religious fundamentalists.
Netanyahu's major backer, Sheldon Adelson, is now firmly behind Mitt Romney, and they are known to believe that an Israeli attack on Iran in September or October will displace Obama and many dovish Democrats in Congress and establish a hawkish regime in Washington.
Israel has agreed to restrain any attack on Iran until after the current round of five talks between Iran and the P5+1 that will come to an end in either late July or August:
"U.S., Israel continue preparations for strike on Iran nuclear facilities.
The website cites U.S. defense contracts and Israel's new military preparations, suggesting that 'all sides are getting ready for whatever may come.'
Israel and the U.S. are pushing forward with preparations to jointly strike Iran's nuclear facilities, the U.S. blog Business Insider reported on Saturday.
"U.S. defense contracts, an Iranian F-16 acquisition, and Israel's new military preparations suggest that all sides are getting ready for whatever may come," the report says.
According to the blog, the U.S navy has recently signed a $338 million contract with defense contractor Raytheon to "provide the Navy with 361 Tomahawk cruise missiles in their most recent configuration. According to the website, the U.S. is either renewing its stock of missiles or planning ahead.
"On May 9," the report added, "the U.S. House of Representatives passed the United States-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act of 2012, which seeks to "reaffirm the commitment to Israel's security as a Jewish state; provide Israel with the military capabilities to defend itself by itself against any threats... [and] expand military and civilian cooperation."
A senior Israeli official recently told Reuters that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has decided to attack Iran before the U.S. elections in November." (Haretz, June 23, 2012, emphasis added)
Military experts have long agreed that the "sweet spot" for an Israeli attack on Iran will be this coming September or October precisely because of the timing of the US presidential election cycle.
For maximum political impact and minimal diplomatic responsiveness, the time of the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, NC - September 3-6 comes within this window of opportunity as well as the days immediately prior to the US election - say from Halloween till the 6th of November.
It may be instructive to recall that Israel's Operation Cast Lead was timed to coincide with the transition between Obama and Bush and ended abruptly immediately before the Inauguration in January 2009.
Presidential election cycles have played major roles in the design of military timetables. For only one example, recall the Tet Offensive in early 1968 that drove LBJ out of the race for the White House.
This article was originally published at Global Research
US and Israel to Hold Largest Ever Joint Military Exercise
Focusing on stopping ballistic missiles and featuring thousands of soldiers, the October drill will simulate simultaneous rocket fire from Syria and Iran
By Aaron Kalman
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31700.htm
June 25, 2012 "Times of Israel" -- Israel and the US are set to hold their largest ever joint military exercise in October, featuring thousands of soldiers and advanced anti-missile defense systems, and simulating simultaneous fire from Iran and Syria.
News of the drill comes amid ongoing violence in Syria, and with Israel and the US closely discussing the means to thwart Iran’s nuclear drive. The commander of the 3rd Air Force, Lt.-Gen.Craig A. Franklin, on a recent visit to Israel, established a planning committee with representatives of the IDF to coordinate the details of the exercise, the Maariv Hebrew daily reported Monday. Some 3,000 US soldiers are to participate, alongside thousands of Israeli troops.
The drill will simulate missiles being fired at Israel from Iran and Syria simultaneously, with potentially tens, if not hundreds, of rockets mid-air at the same time. Israel will test its upgraded Arrow 2 defense system, while the US will deploy the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System and PAC-3 Patriot air defense platforms.
According to Maariv, some military analysts have nicknamed the exercise a “dress rehearsal” for a potential military conflict, noting that it will send a clear message to Iran at a time during which the impact of international sanctions, or lack thereof, will be clearer.
News of the drill comes shortly after talks between world powers and Iran regarding Tehran’s nuclear program broke up without progress in Moscow.
© 2012 The Times of Israel, All rights reserved
Romney to Jewish Donors: ‘I Get Israeli Briefings’
Republican presidential nominee tells donors at Park City retreat that Israeli officials keep him posted on regional developments.
By RON KAMPEAS/JTA
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31701.htm
June 25, 2012 "JPost" -- WASHINGTON - US Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney told donors attending his campaign's Utah retreat this weekend that he is briefed on the Middle East by Israeli government officials.
About 50 of the 700 donors who attended the retreat in Park City were Jewish, according to one in attendance.
Many of these attended a breakout session Friday afternoon on the US-Israel relationship, although between half and three quarters of the 100 donors attending the session were not Jewish.
Romney dropped in on the session, and said he had just been briefed by the Israeli ambassador, Michael Oren, speaking about, among other issues, the situation in Syria, the elections in Egypt and the effort to isolate Iran.
Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and the Republican presidential nominee, said he has such conversations with Israeli officials to be kept up to date on the region.
Such briefings are not unusual once it becomes clear who the major party candidates are.
Romney also spoke about where he believed he and Obama differed on Iran; Romney said he would be doing more to keep Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
The Obama administration is currently part of major power talks with Iran to make its suspected nuclear weapons program more transparent, and is also encouraging the international community to intensify sanctions.
It has also made representations to Israel to dial back threats of military action, although Obama administration officials have said that all options will be used to keep Iran from acquiring a bomb. Republicans have said that making clear such threats is the likeliest avenue to an Iranian retreat on the matter.
Addressing the US-Israel session were William Kristol, a founder of the Emergency Committee for Israel which recently ran ads accusing Obama of not doing enough to stop Iran; Michael Chertoff, the Bush administration Homeland Security Secretary, who is Jewish; and Norm Coleman, the former US senator from Minnesota, who is also Jewish.
To attend the retreat, donors either had to have donated $50,000 to the campaign or had to have raised $250,000.
GOP stars such as tactician Karl Rove, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Sen Jon Thune (R-S.D.) and Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the US House of Representatives majority leader, were in attendance, a sign of a unified front after a rough primaries campaign.
There was kosher food on hand, and a Shabbat dinner for Jewish attendees.
Park City was the site of the 2002 Winter Olympics, the event that Romney turned around into a success after early signs of a possible fiasco, and that shot him to national fame.
All rights reserved © 1995 - 2012 The Jerusalem Post.
Eurozone crisis: Spain’s borrowing cost triples in one month
Posted on June 26, 2012
http://theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com/2012/06/26/eurozone-crisis-spains-borrowing-cost-triples-in-one-month/
June 26, 2012 – SPAIN - Not much to add to Reuters summary of the overnight Spanish bill auction. The good news: the country that is not Uganda sold €3.08 billion compared to a range sought of €2-3 billion. The bad news: the price paid to sell this debt more than makes up for any optics that this was a good deal. “Spain’s short-term borrowing costs nearly tripled at auction on Tuesday, underlining the country’s precarious finances as it struggles against recession and juggles with a debt crisis among its newly downgraded banks. The yield paid on a 3-month bill was 2.362 percent, up from just 0.846 percent a month ago. For six-month paper, it leapt to 3.237 percent from 1.737 percent in May… Spain sold 3.08 billion euros of its short-term debt on Tuesday, slightly above its target amount, even as the Treasury paid the highest rates to sell the paper since November and met with falling demand from the country’s struggling banks. The Treasury sold 1.6 billion euros of a 3-month bill, and 1.48 billion euros of a 6 month bill, which together was just above the 2-3 billion euro target set. The Treasury has overshot its sales target in recent auctions, showing it still is capable of selling its debt even if has to rely on domestic banks to do so as international investors avoid Spanish debt.” Here’s a hint to whoever is pretending to be in charge of Spanish finances: selling more debt than the ‘max’ just to show you still have bond market access (i.e., debt bought by just downgraded Spanish banks) while paying ridiculous interest on this ‘optical success’ is about the dumbest thing a broke country can do. But who are we to judge. We will leave that to the bond market. –Zero Hedge
Eurozone crisis: Cyprus becomes the 5th nation to request a bailout
Posted on June 26, 2012
http://theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com/2012/06/26/eurozone-crisis-cyprus-becomes-the-5th-nation-to-request-a-bailout/
June 26, 2012 – EUROPE - Finance chiefs of the euro zone’s four biggest economies will hold last-minute talks in Paris on Tuesday evening to try to narrow differences on the currency area’s future after Cyprus became the fifth member to request a bailout. Ministers from Germany, France, Italy and Spain will discuss how to manage the crisis in the short term and proposals for closer long-term fiscal and banking integration to prepare for a European Union summit starting on Thursday. Financial markets are on edge and international pressure for decisive action is rising but the summit, the 20th since the bloc’s debt woes began in early 2010, is not expected to produce a lasting solution to the crisis. “Tomorrow there is a meeting, which will be very important, between (French President) Francois Hollande and (German Chancellor) Angela Merkel, and this evening I will receive the finance ministers… along with the European Commissioner,” French Economy Minister Pierre Moscovici said. A report prepared by the EU’s top four officials suggests the euro zone could create a treasury for the single currency and issue euro bonds in the medium term as the final stage of a fiscal union. However Merkel, who leads Europe’s biggest economy and the main contributor to its bailout funds, again ruled out on Monday any sharing of debt or bank liabilities as “economically wrong and counter-productive.” The finance ministers’ session was called at such short notice – in an apparent rush to repair damage from a public rift between Merkel and leaders of the other three states when they met in Rome last Friday – that one finance minister’s press staff only learned of the invitation on Tuesday morning. Little Cyprus, the 17-nation currency area’s third smallest economy with just 1 million residents, added drama to a fraught week by applying for rescue loans on Monday. –Reuters
Fantastic!!! Let's see if this hits MSM....
El Hierro Volcano heats up even more with current earthquake swarm. See the Canary Island, Spain Region and that's El Hierro...
http://www.emsc-csem.org/?Earthquake/?view=1
El Hierro Volcano heats up even more with current earthquake swarm. See the Canary Island, Spain Region and that's El Hierro...
http://www.emsc-csem.org/?Earthquake/?view=1
So many good articles... http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/
Will Toledo, Ohio Be The First Major American City To Be Owned By China?
By Michael Snyder
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31687.htm
June 24, 2012 "Economic Collapse Blog" -- It has been said that there are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One way is by using the sword, and the other is by using debt. Fortunately, America is not in danger of being conquered by the sword right now, but America is being conquered by debt. The borrower is the servant of the lender, and today we owe China more than a trillion dollars.
By running a gigantic trade deficit with us, China has been able to become incredibly wealthy. We have begged them to lend us back some of the money that we have sent them and this has made them even wealthier. Now China is gobbling up U.S. real estate and U.S. assets at an astounding pace. In fact, some cities are in danger of becoming completely dominated by Chinese ownership. One of those cities is Toledo, Ohio. In many “rust belt” areas, real estate can be had for a song, and the Chinese are taking full advantage of this. America was once the wealthiest nation on earth, but now we are drowning in debt and we are being sold off in chunks to the highest bidder. Is this the legacy that we are going to leave for future generations?
According to a recent Fortune article, Chinese investors have been very busy purchasing distressed commercial real estate in Toledo lately….
In March 2011, Chinese investors paid $2.15 million cash for a restaurant complex on the Maumee River in Toledo, Ohio. Soon they put down another $3.8 million on 69 acres of newly decontaminated land in the city’s Marina District, promising to invest $200 million in a new residential-commercial development. That September, another Chinese firm spent $3 million for an aging hotel across a nearby bridge with a view of the minor league ballpark.
Toledo is being promoted to Chinese investors as a “5-star logistics region“. From Toledo it is very easy to get to Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Columbus and Indianapolis.
With a population of 287,000, Toledo is only the fourth largest city in Ohio, but it lies at the junction of two important highways — I-75 and I-80/90. “My vision is to make Toledo a true international city,” Toledo’s Mayor Mike Bell told the Toledo Blade.
For some reason the Chinese seem to be very interested in that area of the country. Last month, I wrote about how one Chinese group plans to develop a 200 acre “China city” just 40 minutes away from Toledo….
A Chinese group known as “Sino-Michigan Properties LLC” has bought up 200 acres of land near the town of Milan, Michigan. Their plan is to construct a “China City” with artificial lakes, a Chinese cultural center and hundreds of housing units for Chinese citizens. Essentially, it would be a little slice of communist China dropped right into the heartland of America. This “China City” would be located about 40 minutes from both Detroit and Toledo, and it would be marketed to Chinese business people that want to start businesses in the United States.
But it is not just the rust belt that is being bought up by the Chinese. A recent Forbes article documented several of the huge real estate deals that the Chinese are doing in New York right now….
According to a recent report in the New York Times, investors from China are “snapping up luxury apartments” and are planning to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on commercial and residential projects like Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn. Chinese companies also have signed major leases at the Empire State Building and at 1 World Trade Center, the report said.
In addition to real estate, the Chinese are also buying up businesses and natural resources all over the United States.
For example, the Dalian Wanda Group recently bought U.S. movie theater chain AMC Entertainment for 2.6 billion dollars.
Also, the Obama administration has been allowing companies owned by the Chinese government to gobble up U.S. oil and gas deposits worth billions of dollars.
On top of all that, the Federal Reserve recently announced that it will now allow Chinese banks to start buying up American banks.
So how in the world did we come to be so completely and totally dominated by China?
Well, the key to all of this is the trade deficit.
Most Americans can’t even tell you what a trade deficit is, but it is at the very heart of our economic problems.
Basically, we buy far, far more from other countries than they buy from us.
Most Americans don’t realize this, but the truth is that the United States has a trade imbalance that is more than 5 times larger than any other nation on earth has.
Overall, the U.S. has run a trade deficit of more than 8 trillion dollars with the rest of the globe since 1975.
If you go into a Wal-Mart of a dollar store today and you start looking at product labels, you will notice that hundreds of products say “made in China” and very few of them say that they were made in this country.
Every single month, China sends us gigantic mountains of plastic crap to sell in our stores and we send them gigantic mountains of our money.
The U.S. trade deficit with China during 2011 was $295.4 billion. That was the largest trade deficit that one country has had with another country in the history of the planet.
Sadly, so far our trade deficit with China in 2012 is about 12 percent larger than it was last year.
So things are getting even worse.
To get an idea of how far things have come, let us take a look back at the 1980s for a moment.
Back in 1985, the U.S. trade deficit with China was only 6 million dollars for the entire year.
All of this imbalanced trade is absolutely killing us.
Today, the United States spends about 4 dollars on goods and services from China for every one dollar that China spends on goods and services from the United States.
So why doesn’t China buy more stuff from us?
Well, there are a whole lot of reasons. One of the main reasons is that they slap huge tariffs on many American-made goods.
For example, according to the New York Times a Jeep Grand Cherokee that costs $27,490 in the United States costs about $85,000 in China thanks to all the tariffs.
So why do we allow China to keep doing this to us?
That is a very good question.
Meanwhile, China is continually getting wealthier and we are continually getting poorer.
All of the money that is leaving this country and going to China could be going to U.S. businesses and U.S. workers instead. In turn, those businesses and workers would pay taxes on that money to support the government.
Instead, we have to go beg China to lend us the money that we just sent to them.
At this point, China now holds approximately 1.17 trillion dollars of U.S. government debt.
None of this ever had to happen.
But it did happen because we were stupid.
Now China has mountains of money to literally buy us up.
But China is not the only country that we have an imbalanced trading relationship with.
For example, the new “free trade agreement” between the United States and South Korea that Barack Obama has been touting went into full effect on March 15, 2012.
So how has that “free trade agreement” turned out so far? The following is from a recent article by Pat Buchanan….
The U.S. trade deficit with Korea tripled in one month. Imports from South Korea jumped 15 percent to $5.5 billion in April, while U.S. exports to South Korea fell 12 percent to $3.7 billion. Suddenly, the U.S. trade deficit with Seoul surged to an annual rate of $22 billion.
Shades of NAFTA. When it passed in 1993, we had a $1.6 billion trade surplus with Mexico. By 2010, our trade deficit with Mexico had reached $61.6 billion.
Ouch.
The truth is that these free trade agreements are not fair and balanced.
U.S. workers end up competing for jobs with workers in countries where it is legal to pay slave labor wages. And other countries often have far fewer rules and regulations to follow as well. In his recent article, Buchanan described why all Americans should be economic nationalists….
Global free trade means U.S. workers compete with Asian and Latin American workers whose wages are a fraction of our own and whose benefits may be nonexistent. Global free trade means U.S factories that relocate to Indonesia or India need not observe U.S. laws on health, safety, pollution or paying a minimum wage.
Global free trade means that companies that move factories outside the United States can send their products back to the United States free of charge and undercut businessmen who retain their American workers and live within American laws.
Free trade makes suckers and fools out of patriots.
Unfortunately, both major political parties in the United States are absolutely married to the one world economic agenda that the elite are pushing.
So we will continue to bleed wealth, businesses and jobs at an astounding pace.
You can get a really good idea of the horrific manufacturing job losses in the United States over the past 40 years by checking out this map right here.
Overall, the United States has lost a total of more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities since 2001.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, since 2001 America has lost approximately 2.8 million jobs due to our trade deficit with China alone.
There seems to be absolutely no concern with protecting American jobs these days.
If you can believe it, Chinese corporations are even building our bridges. The following is a brief excerpt from a recent ABC News article….
In New York there is a $400 million renovation project on the Alexander Hamilton Bridge.
In California, there is a $7.2 billion project to rebuild the Bay Bridge connecting San Francisco and Oakland.
In Alaska, there is a proposal for a $190 million bridge project.
These projects sound like steps in the right direction, but much of the work is going to Chinese government-owned firms.
“When we subsidize jobs in China, we’re not creating any wealth in the United States,” said Scott Paul, executive director for the Alliance for American Manufacturing.
Americans need to start understanding that our trade deficit is causing us to lose massive numbers of businesses and jobs and that this is making us poorer as a nation.
As I wrote about the other day, the median net worth of families in the United States declined “from $126,400 in 2007 to $77,300 in 2010” according to the Federal Reserve.
Even if you take away the effect of the housing collapse, household net worth still declined by 25 percent between 2005 and 2010.
A lot of that decline in wealth was due to the recent recession, but the point I am trying to make is that we are getting poorer as a nation.
A decade ago, the United States was ranked number one in average wealth per adult. By 2010, the United States had fallen to seventh.
And when you factor in our debts, we are a complete and total mess. U.S. consumers are more than 11 trillion dollars in debt and the federal government is nearly 16 trillion dollars in debt.
We are getting deeper in debt at the same time that our ability to service that debt is declining.
The reality is that our economy is completely falling apart and it no longer produces enough jobs for everyone.
In fact, it isn’t even close.
Right now there are about 3.7 workers that are “officially” unemployed for every single job opening.
So what we are doing right now is clearly not working.
We need to fundamentally change direction as a nation.
Unfortunately, that is not going to happen any time soon.
So where do we go from here?