EuroYank Blogs

We Are The Enemy

2009-06-07T15:52:00.005+02:00

(Note: Click the Previous Posts Links On the Right Side
and Scroll Down To Leave Comments From This Start Page)

The War Is Not Against Bin Laden. We Are The Enemy.

The war is not against Bin Laden. We are the enemy

- BILDERBERG: The systemic conspiracy - BILDERBERG: BIG, BAD & UGLY -

- DEMAND DESTRUCTION - BILDERBERG: MALTHUS REVISITED -

*Pragmatic Witness (Link)

A Journey Through The Graveyard of American Dreams

2009-05-27T15:30:00.004+02:00

American Censored News, Disinformation, Propaganda

(These posts are reprints and updates from 2006-2009.

America Destroyed: The True State of the Union
(allow 8 sec lead in time)

Is the American Dream At An End?

Reader please watch the videos at the end of this text to get a complete picture of the info presented here.

This is one of the most complicated posts I have ever researched, and one of the most important. To begin - think about this statement - "In 20 years the USA will have a third world work force engaged in domestic non-tradable services."

read this article at the link below ...
*The Lies at the End of the American Dream

What Is Happening

One way to comprehend what is happening is to look at the split between how much of the economy is won by profits and how much by wages.

The share allotted to corporate profits increased sharply, from 17.7% in 2000 to 20.9% in 2005, while the share going to wages has reached a record low.
The incomes of the top 20% have grown much faster than the earnings of those at the middle or bottom of the income distribution.

The income of the top 1% and top 0.1% have grown particularly rapidly. From 1992 to 2005, the pay of chief executive officers of major companies rose by 186%.

The equivalent figure for median hourly wages was 7.2%, leaving the ratio of CEOs' pay to that of the average worker at 262.

In the 1960s, the comparable figure was 24.

Downward Pressure On Wages

The Federal minimum wage has been static for a decade.

The "China effect,", the idea that low prices of imported manufactured goods are pushing US industry to cut its workforce in order to increase productivity.

Public, private and corporate debt far exceeds any previously known dimensions. Trusting in a future rosier than the present, millions of households are borrowing so much money that they end up endangering the very future they're looking forward to.

The lower and middle classes have practically given up on putting aside any savings.

They're going into the 21st century like a poverty-stricken, Third World family, living from hand to mouth without any financial reserves whatsoever.

The production sectors such as the furniture industry, consumer electronics, many automobile part suppliers, and now computer manufacturers have left the country for good.

American Declining Values

Actual losses in the US real estate market are much higher than what you have been reading in the newspapers recently.

Using a combination of official government statistics and the most widely used index of housing values, we will demonstrate that the US real estate market has lost a total of $6 trillion in value in the last two years.

*Read more

The value of the U.S. dollar falling 28 per cent against other currencies. World financial markets are already starting to bet against the U.S. dollar. Our creditors, particularly Asian central banks, are losing their appetite for U.S. Treasuries.

The consequences of a rapidly declining dollar are not yet fully understood by the American public. The long-term significance has not sunk in, but when it does there will be political hell to pay in Washington.

Our relative wealth as a nation is measured in dollars, and the steady erosion of the value of those dollars means we will all be poorer in the future. The artificial stimulation of our economy through cheap money comes with a price.

When dollars are abundant, they are worth less. This is the reality facing Americans today, especially older Americans who rely on savings to finance their retirement years.

The government has pumped its currency into the world economy so vigorously that the dollar can now be brought to the point of collapse, and now large parts of the US workforce is standing with its backs against the wall.

References

*America’s Socio-Economic Conundrum
*Fed Covers Up Declining Dollar
*Effects of our declining currency

For many blue and white-collar workers, this decline is already real, because they have less of everything than they used to.

They possess less money, they are shown less respect in society, and their chances for climbing up the social ladder have deteriorated dramatically.

They're the losers in the world war for wealth.

When a large part of citizens are cut off from the nation's overall wealth, we have to face an uncomfortable reality.

The Rise of State Fascism

Last call to awaken the slumbering promise of our Constitution - or to watch our freedom slither away forever. Corporate media has enabled tyranny to prevail over the truth, because they value profits above all else.

This is a wake-up call to save us from the final descent into an Orwellian world from which we will not be able to return.

American Fascists Part 1 American Fascists Part 2

Mainstream media corporations like CNN, Fox, and NBC (General Electric) together with giant telecoms like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T have become administration pawns in a well-organized effort to hijack America.

A warning for all Americans the media has become a docile lapdog of government while failing at keeping us informed. Those who stay tuned to Fox News, CNN or any other corporate-owned news source realize that the bottom line is what determines newsworthy without having the public's interest in mind.

End of US Democracy Part 1 End of US Democracy Part 2

Mainstream media have failed us in covering issues crucial to the survival of American democracy.

Corporate media have systematically attempted to dumb down and distract us from reality with sex and violence; government has used corporate media to shock and awe Americans into surrendering their constitutional rights in the name of the War on Terrorism; and media personalities have been complicit in the mass deception.

Now when the mainstream media reports from Afghanistan, Iraq, or anywhere around the world, including here in the United States, it is in cooperation with the government. Without a functioning media, there is no stopping government from divesting us of our freedom.

Let us now take a video journey through
the "Graveyard of American Dreams" ....

Income Inequality and the Middle ClassCorporate Profits Up, Wages Down

Is the American Family Under Attack?Haunted House of Economic Horrors

No Jobs for Middle Class Facts about the economy

U.S. Trade Policy and Job - Destroying Treaties, WTO & NAFTA

References

*The American middle class is becoming the loser of globalization.

Also see ...

"It’s the biggest untold economic story of our time: more of
the nation’s bounty held in fewer and fewer hands, and Bush’s
tax cuts are only making the problem worse."
References
*The Great Wealth Transfer
*The Great Wealth Transfer (continued)

Also see ...

"(Oil) The holy grail of world trade, the basis of neo-liberal growth and prosperity, is completely dependent on a resource that is not only finite but moving into decline. The era of globalisation seems destined to be relatively short-lived."

Reference
*Cultural meaning of the oil crisis and the end of growth

Race to the Bottom

Introduction - Third Reich Modern Rock

2009-04-17T13:06:00.012+02:00

English & German Versions

see more at
*Third Reich Modern Rock

To All That Use Entrecard

2009-03-04T15:35:00.060+01:00

Censored by Entrecard

This was an exercise in the limits of Free Speech
(not protected on private property or private websites)
and the post before this one was me stating I was not blogging anymore.
I just decided to go out with a BANG. Hope you all had fun with it!
Thank You All For Participating

For a Complete Explanation
Check Out This Post at the link below ...

*EuroYank's Situation and Free Political Speech Versus Coercion

About Seven Months Earlier

Can you tell me why my site is not being indexed in the campaign section even though I am getting record advertising placements and high numbers of visits?

Why is my site standing still and the others keep progressing? You put me on a 24 hour cool off and never got back to me as to why, and you penalized me 1000 points. You did not even have the courtesy to notify me of this.

--- On Wed, August 3, 2008 euroyank wrote: ---
One month later

On Thu, Sep 4, 2008 at 1:29 AM:
-----Inline Attachment Follows-----

You sent one message 11 hours ago, one message 6 hours ago, one message 5 hours ago and one message 4 hours ago.
I am not sure why you think we can get back to you that quickly.
Ben --
Entrecard Support

Entrecard Help Guide: http://entrecard.com/docs/

(Note: To Leave and Read Comments
Click the Previous Posts Links On the
Right Side and Scroll Down From This Start Page)

For aiding and abetting in the Subjugation of Free Speech and Freedom of Expression

I have decided to file suit against you in an American Federal court. Please expect to hear from me again, but not using your support network.
EuroYank

--- On Wed, 3/4/09, Entrecard Accounts Support <accounts@entrecard.com>
wrote:

From: Entrecard Accounts Support
Subject: [EntrecardAccounts #ULL-122071]: Account deleted
To: EuroYank2005@yahoo.com
Date: Wednesday, March 4, 2009, 7:17 AM

Hello,
Due to the recent change to manually checking/approving blogs, all sites in the
Entrecard network must meet the Blog Quality Standards:
http://help.entrecard.com/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=27

If we receive complaints regarding offensive material, such as discrimination, nudity, illegal activies/downloads, and spam, we do take appropriate action. One has to remember, people of all ages, races, religions and creeds utilize the network and we want to create a safe place for everyone to gather.

At this time, your blog will not be reinstated.

Regards,
Beth
The Girlie Geek
Volunteer Entrecard Support

Ticket Details
===================
Ticket ID: ULL-122071
Department: Accounts
Priority: High
Status: Closed

Signs of Things to Come Videos

2009-02-27T08:59:00.062+01:00

America Your Turn Is Coming
(Warning Graphic Violence)

- Tomorrow Belongs to Me - Fascist Russia- neo Nazi gangs in Moscow -
- Horrific Documentary on Russian Neo Nazis - Patriots blood - American Nazis -
- Hitler Rap - Yes We Can -

The Truth Behind Terror - The Great Satan & CIA Drug Trafficking

2009-02-24T13:17:00.116+01:00

"You can fool all the people some of the time,

and some of the people all the time, but you

cannot fool all the people all the time."

(Abraham Lincoln 16th President

of the United States 1809-1865)

Al-Qaeda Doesn't Exist

There's no such thing as al-Qaeda. It's a fraud perpetrated on the British and American people by the governments to scare us into submission. This is a clip from the excellent three-part BBC documentary *The Power of Nightmares".

Watch this video clip ...

Behind the Bin Laden
Hate Of America

The story starts over 60 years ago with the CIA, and the secret history is now documented by John Stockwell, (former CIA Station Chief in Angola in 1976, working for then Director of the CIA, George Bush) ...

He spent 13 years in the agency. He is the highest level CIA officer to testify to the Congress about his actions. He estimates that over 6 million people have died in CIA covert actions, and this was in the late 1980's.

The United States CIA is running 50 covert actions (1987), destabilizing further almost one third of the countries in the world today.

(Must see Important Videos)
John Stockwell intelligence gatherer
and task force commander goes public ...

Video 1 America's 3rd World WAR Video 2 Dark Alliance

Former President Bush Head
of the CIA Drug Import Agency
(see the videos)

Video 1 The CIA's Involvement in Drug Trafficking - Video 2 C.I.A The Drug Affair Part 1 - Video 3 C.I.A: "The Drug Affair Part 2 -

When the Nicaraguan contras began to covertly fund their war against the Sandanistas by selling drugs and guns to California street gangs, the Central Intelligence Agency turned a blind eye. While black neighborhoods were being ravaged by the crack cocaine plague, CIA operatives actively participated in this devastating drug explosion, protected from prosecution by a secret agreement between the Department of Justice and the CIA.

We now know that the CIA was a self-perpetuating agency, and it
created the conditions to keep it growing, and to keep it in business.

Other Secret Deals

Gen. Gehlen (middle) was imported along with his Gestapo by the Dulles Brothers after WWII to help setup and train the CIA (operation paperclip)

Reference
*Secret Deals of the CIA

Under President Ronald Reagan America not only increased its involvement in the Middle East by supplying arms to both Iraq and Iran in their war against each other, but America stepped up its involvement in conflicts around the world, especially South America.

Reference
*Secret Wars & Secret Deals

Why does a war begin?

CIA Funding By Drugs

This documentary gives quite an overview of what has
actually happened in the last 50 years regarding the CIA ...

The Truth Behind Terror

When the U.S. government sent more than 500,000 U.S. troops to invade Iraq in 1991, the operation was led by Sec. of Defense Dick Cheney. The unilateral decision to militarily invade a Muslim nation for the first time in American history was made on October 30, 1990 by George H. Bush.

Reference
*The Truth About Terror

Bin Laden's Letter to America

Why are we fighting and opposing you? The answer is very simple:
(1) Because you attacked us and continue to attack us.
a) You attacked us in Palestine:

(i) Palestine, which has sunk under military occupation for more than 80 years. The British handed over Palestine, with your help and your support, to the Jews, who have occupied it for more than 50 years; years overflowing with oppression, tyranny, crimes, killing, expulsion, destruction and devastation.

The creation and continuation of Israel is one of the greatest crimes, and you are the leaders of its criminals. And of course there is no need to explain and prove the degree of American support for Israel. The creation of Israel is a crime which must be erased. Each and every person whose hands have become polluted in the contribution towards this crime must pay its*price, and pay for it heavily.

(ii) It brings us both laughter and tears to see that you have not yet tired of repeating your fabricated lies that the Jews have a historical right to Palestine, as it was promised to them in the Torah. Anyone who disputes with them on this alleged fact is accused of anti-semitism. This is one of the most fallacious, widely-circulated fabrications in history.

The people of Palestine are pure Arabs and original Semites. It is the Muslims who are the inheritors of Moses (peace be upon him) and the inheritors of the real Torah that has not been changed. Muslims believe in all of the Prophets, including Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad, peace and blessings of Allah be upon them all. If the followers of Moses have been promised a right to Palestine in the Torah, then the Muslims are the most worthy nation of this.

When the Muslims conquered Palestine and drove out the Romans, Palestine and Jerusalem returned to Islam, the religion of all the Prophets peace be upon them. Therefore, the call to a historical right to Palestine cannot be raised against the Islamic Ummah that believes in all the Prophets of Allah (peace and blessings be upon them) - and we make no distinction between them.

(iii) The blood pouring out of Palestine must be equally revenged. You must know that the Palestinians do not cry alone; their women are not widowed alone; their sons are not orphaned alone.

(b) You attacked us in Somalia; you supported the Russian atrocities against us in Chechnya, the Indian oppression against us in Kashmir, and the Jewish aggression against us in Lebanon.

(c) Under your supervision, consent and orders, the governments of our countries which act as your agents, attack us on a daily basis;

(i) These governments prevent our people from establishing the Islamic Shariah, using violence and lies to do so.

(ii) These governments give us a taste of humiliation, and places us in a large prison of fear and subdual.

(iii) These governments steal our Ummah's wealth and sell them to you at a paltry price.

(iv) These governments have surrendered to the Jews, and handed them most of Palestine, acknowledging the existence of their state over the dismembered limbs of their own people.

(v) The removal of these governments is an obligation upon us, and a necessary step to free the Ummah, to make the Shariah the supreme law and to regain Palestine. And our fight against these governments is not separate from out fight against you.

(d) You steal our wealth and oil at paltry prices because of you international influence and military threats. This theft is indeed the biggest theft ever witnessed by mankind in the history of the world.

(e) Your forces occupy our countries; you spread your military bases throughout them; you corrupt our lands, and you besiege our sanctities, to protect the security of the Jews and to ensure the continuity of your pillage of our treasures.

(f) You have starved the Muslims of Iraq, where children die every day. It is a wonder that more than 1.5 million Iraqi children have died as a result of your sanctions, and you did not show concern. Yet when 3000 of your people died, the entire world rises and has not yet sat down.

(g) You have supported the Jews in their idea that Jerusalem is their eternal capital, and agreed to move your embassy there. With your help and under your protection, the Israelis are planning to destroy the Al-Aqsa mosque. Under the protection of your weapons, Sharon entered the Al-Aqsa mosque, to pollute it as a preparation to capture and destroy it.

(2) These tragedies and calamities are only a few examples of your oppression and aggression against us. It is commanded by our religion and intellect that the oppressed have a right to return the aggression. Do not await anything from us but Jihad, resistance and revenge. Is it in any way rational to expect that after America has attacked us for more than half a century, that we will then leave her to live in security and peace?!!

(3) You may then dispute that all the above does not justify aggression against civilians, for crimes they did not commit and offenses in which they did not partake:

(a) This argument contradicts your continuous repetition that America is the land of freedom, and its leaders in this world.

Therefore, the American people are the ones who choose their government by way of their own free will; a choice which stems from their agreement to its policies.

Thus the American people have chosen, consented to, and affirmed their support for the Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, the occupation and usurpation of their land, and its continuous killing, torture, punishment and expulsion of the Palestinians.
The American people have the ability and choice to refuse the policies of their Government and even to change it if they want.

(b) The American people are the ones who pay the taxes which fund the planes that bomb us in Afghanistan, the tanks that strike and destroy our homes in Palestine, the armies which occupy our lands in the Arabian Gulf, and the fleets which ensure the blockade of Iraq.

These tax dollars are given to Israel for it to continue to attack us and penetrate our lands. So the American people are the ones who fund the attacks against us, and they are the ones who oversee the expenditure of these monies in the way they wish, through their elected candidates.

(c) Also the American army is part of the American people. It is this very same people who are shamelessly helping the Jews fight against us.

(d) The American people are the ones who employ both their men and their women in the American Forces which attack us.

(e) This is why the American people cannot be not innocent of all the crimes committed by the Americans and Jews against us.

(f) Allah, the Almighty, legislated the permission and the option to take revenge. Thus, if we are attacked, then we have the right to attack back. Whoever has destroyed our villages and towns, then we have the right to destroy their villages and towns. Whoever has stolen our wealth, then we have the right to destroy their economy. And whoever has killed our civilians, then we have the right to kill theirs.

The American Government and press still refuses to answer the question: Why did they attack us in New York and Washington?

If Sharon is a man of peace in the eyes of Bush, then we are also men of peace!!! America does not understand the language of manners and principles, so we are addressing it using the language it understands.

(Q2) As for the second question that we want to answer: What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you?

(1) The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam.

(a) The religion of the Unification of God; of freedom from associating partners with Him, and rejection of this; of complete love of Him, the Exalted; of complete submission to His Laws; and of the discarding of all the opinions, orders, theories and religions which contradict with the religion He sent down to His Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). Islam is the religion of all the prophets, and makes no distinction between them - peace be upon them all.

It is to this religion that we call you; the seal of all the previous religions. It is the religion of Unification of God, sincerity, the best of manners, righteousness, mercy, honour, purity, and piety.

It is the religion of showing kindness to others, establishing justice between them, granting them their rights, and defending the oppressed and the persecuted.
It is the religion of enjoining the good and forbidding the evil with the hand, tongue and heart. It is the religion of Jihad in the way of Allah so that Allah's Word and religion reign Supreme.

And it is the religion of unity and agreement on the obedience to Allah, and total equality between all people, without regarding their colour, sex, or language.

(b) It is the religion whose book - the Quran - will remained preserved and unchanged, after the other Divine books and messages have been changed.

The Quran is the miracle until the Day of Judgment. Allah has challenged anyone to bring a book like the Quran or even ten verses like it.

(2) The second thing we call you to, is to stop your oppression, lies, immorality and debauchery that has spread among you.

(a) We call you to be a people of manners, principles, honour, and purity; to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling's, and trading with interest.

We call you to all of this that you may be freed from that which you have become caught up in; that you may be freed from the deceptive lies that you are a great nation, that your leaders spread amongst you to conceal from you the despicable state to which you have reached.

(b) It is saddening to tell you that you are the worst civilization witnessed by the history of mankind:

(i) You are the nation who, rather than ruling by the Shariah of Allah in its Constitution and Laws, choose to invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from your policies, contradicting the pure nature which affirms Absolute Authority to the Lord and your Creator. You flee from the embarrassing question posed to you: How is it possible for Allah the Almighty to create His creation, grant them power over all the creatures and land, grant them all the amenities of life, and then deny them that which they are most in need of: knowledge of the laws which govern their lives?

(ii) You are the nation that permits Usury, which has been forbidden by all the religions. Yet you build your economy and investments on Usury. As a result of this, in all its different forms and guises, the Jews have taken control of your economy, through which they have then taken control of your media, and now control all aspects of your life making you their servants and achieving their aims at your expense; precisely what Benjamin Franklin warned you against.

(iii) You are a nation that permits the production, trading and usage of intoxicants. You also permit drugs, and only forbid the trade of them, even though your nation is the largest consumer of them.

(iv) You are a nation that permits acts of immorality, and you consider them to be pillars of personal freedom. You have continued to sink down this abyss from level to level until incest has spread amongst you, in the face of which neither your sense of honour nor your laws object.

Who can forget your President Clinton's immoral acts committed in the official Oval office? After that you did not even bring him to account, other than that he 'made a mistake', after which everything passed with no punishment. Is there a worse kind of event for which your name will go down in history and remembered by nations?

(v) You are a nation that permits gambling in its all forms. The companies practice this as well, resulting in the investments becoming active and the criminals becoming rich.

(vi) You are a nation that exploits women like consumer products or advertising tools calling upon customers to purchase them. You use women to serve passengers, visitors, and strangers to increase your profit margins. You then rant that you support the liberation of women.

(vii) You are a nation that practices the trade of sex in all its forms, directly and indirectly. Giant corporations and establishments are established on this, under the name of art, entertainment, tourism and freedom, and other deceptive names you attribute to it.

(viii) And because of all this, you have been described in history as a nation that spreads diseases that were unknown to man in the past. Go ahead and boast to the nations of man, that you brought them AIDS as a Satanic American Invention.

(xi) You have destroyed nature with your industrial waste and gases more than any other nation in history. Despite this, you refuse to sign the Kyoto agreement so that you can secure the profit of your greedy companies and*industries.

(x) Your law is the law of the rich and wealthy people, who hold sway in their political parties, and fund their election campaigns with their gifts. Behind them stand the Jews, who control your policies, media and economy.

(xi) That which you are singled out for in the history of mankind, is that you have used your force to destroy mankind more than any other nation in history; not to defend principles and values, but to hasten to secure your interests and profits. You who dropped a nuclear bomb on Japan, even though Japan was ready to negotiate an end to the war. How many acts of oppression, tyranny and injustice have you carried out, O callers to freedom?

(xii) Let us not forget one of your major characteristics: your duality in both manners and values; your hypocrisy in manners and principles. All*manners, principles and values have two scales: one for you and one for the others.

(a)The freedom and democracy that you call to is for yourselves and for white race only; as for the rest of the world, you impose upon them your monstrous, destructive policies and Governments, which you call the 'American friends'. Yet you prevent them from establishing democracies. When the Islamic party in Algeria wanted to practice democracy and they won the election, you unleashed your agents in the Algerian army onto them, and to attack them with tanks and guns, to imprison them and torture them - a new lesson from the 'American book of democracy'!!!

(b)Your policy on prohibiting and forcibly removing weapons of mass destruction to ensure world peace: it only applies to those countries which you do not permit to possess such weapons. As for the countries you consent to, such as Israel, then they are allowed to keep and use such weapons to defend their security. Anyone else who you suspect might be manufacturing or keeping these kinds of weapons, you call them criminals and you take military action against them.

(c)You are the last ones to respect the resolutions and policies of International Law, yet you claim to want to selectively punish anyone else who does the same. Israel has for more than 50 years been pushing UN resolutions and rules against the wall with the full support of America.

(d)As for the war criminals which you censure and form criminal courts for - you shamelessly ask that your own are granted immunity!! However, history will not forget the war crimes that you committed against the Muslims and the rest of the world; those you have killed in Japan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Lebanon and Iraq will remain a shame that you will never be able to escape. It will suffice to remind you of your latest war crimes in Afghanistan, in which densely populated innocent civilian villages were destroyed, bombs were dropped on mosques causing the roof of the mosque to come crashing down on the heads of the Muslims praying inside.

You are the ones who broke the agreement with the Mujahideen when they left Qunduz, bombing them in Jangi fort, and killing more than 1,000 of your prisoners through suffocation and thirst. Allah alone knows how many people have died by torture at the hands of you and your agents. Your planes remain in the Afghan skies, looking for anyone remotely suspicious.

(e)You have claimed to be the vanguards of Human Rights, and your Ministry of Foreign affairs issues annual reports containing statistics of those countries that violate any Human Rights. However, all these things vanished when the Mujahideen hit you, and you then implemented the methods of the same documented governments that you used to curse. In America, you captured thousands the Muslims and Arabs, took them into custody with neither reason, court trial, nor even disclosing their names. You issued newer, harsher laws.

What happens in Guantanamo is a historical embarrassment to America and its values, and it screams into your faces - you hypocrites, "What is the value of your signature on any agreement or treaty?"

(3) What we call you to thirdly is to take an honest stance with yourselves - and I doubt you will do so - to discover that you are a nation without principles or manners, and that the values and principles to you are something which you merely demand from others, not that which you yourself must adhere to.

(4) We also advise you to stop supporting Israel, and to end your support of the Indians in Kashmir, the Russians against the Chechens and to also cease supporting the Manila Government against the Muslims in Southern Philippines.

(5) We also advise you to pack your luggage and get out of our lands. We desire for your goodness, guidance, and righteousness, so do not force us to send you back as cargo in coffins.

(6) Sixthly, we call upon you to end your support of the corrupt leaders in our countries. Do not interfere in our politics and method of education. Leave us alone, or else expect us in New York and Washington.

(7) We also call you to deal with us and interact with us on the basis of mutual interests and benefits, rather than the policies of sub dual, theft and occupation, and not to continue your policy of supporting the Jews because this will result in more disasters for you.

If you fail to respond to all these conditions, then prepare for fight with the Islamic Nation. The Nation of Monotheism, that puts complete trust on Allah and fears none other than Him. The Nation which is addressed by its Quran with the words: "Do you fear them? Allah has more right that you should fear Him if you are believers.

Fight against them so that Allah will punish them by your hands and disgrace them and give you victory over them and heal the breasts of believing people. And remove the anger of their (believers') hearts. Allah accepts the repentance of whom He wills. Allah is All-Knowing, All-Wise." [Quran9:13-1]

The Nation of honour and respect: "But honour, power and glory belong to Allah, and to His Messenger (Muhammad- peace be upon him) and to the believers." [Quran 63:8]

"So do not become weak (against your enemy), nor be sad, and you will be*superior ( in victory) if you are indeed (true) believers" [Quran 3:139]

The Nation of Martyrdom; the Nation that desires death more than you desire life:

"Think not of those who are killed in the way of Allah as dead. Nay, they are alive with their Lord, and they are being provided for. They rejoice in what Allah has bestowed upon them from His bounty and rejoice for the sake of those who have not yet joined them, but are left behind (not yet martyred) that on them no fear shall come, nor shall they grieve. They rejoice in a grace and a bounty from Allah, and that Allah will not waste the reward of the believers." [Quran 3:169-171]

The Nation of victory and success that Allah has promised:

"It is He Who has sent His Messenger (Muhammad peace be upon him) with guidance and the religion of truth (Islam), to make it victorious over all other religions even though the Polytheists hate it." [Quran 61:9]

"Allah has decreed that 'Verily it is I and My Messengers who shall be victorious.' Verily Allah is All-Powerful, All-Mighty." [Quran 58:21]

The Islamic Nation that was able to dismiss and destroy the previous evil Empires like yourself; the Nation that rejects your attacks, wishes to remove your evils, and is prepared to fight you. You are well aware that the Islamic Nation, from the very core of its soul, despises your haughtiness and arrogance.

If the Americans refuse to listen to our advice and the goodness, guidance and righteousness that we call them to, then be aware that you will lose this Crusade Bush began, just like the other previous Crusades in which you were humiliated by the hands of the Mujahideen, fleeing to your home in great silence and disgrace. If the Americans do not respond, then their fate will be that of the Soviets who fled from Afghanistan to deal with their military defeat, political breakup, ideological downfall, and economic bankruptcy.

This is our message to the Americans, as an answer to theirs. Do they now know why we fight them and over which form of ignorance, by the permission of Allah, we shall be victorious?

Reference
*Full text: bin Laden's letter to America

Highway of Death American War Crime Gulf War

2009-02-24T01:20:00.012+01:00

Warning Extreme Graphic Violence

American Censored News
Highway of Death Iraq

*Highway of Death Video

*Highway of Death Audio

The typical line has been that the convoys were engaged in “classic tank battles,” as if to suggest that Iraqi troops tried to fight back or even had a chance of fighting back. The truth is that it was simply a one-sided massacre of tens of thousands of people who had no ability to fight back or defend themselves.

The Highway of Death
(Even in Vietnam I didn’t see anything like this. It’s pathetic.“) — Major Bob Nugent
Army intelligence officer)

There are also indications that some of those bombed during the withdrawal were Palestinians and Iraqi civilians. According to Time magazine of March 18, 1991, not just military vehicles, but cars, buses and trucks were also hit.

In many cases, cars were loaded with Palestinian families and all their possessions.”
— Joyce Chediac -
Report presented at the New York Commission hearing May 11, 1991

Shooting in a sheep pen

The above photo of wreckage on the infamous “Highway of Death” was taken in March 1991, in southern Iraq. The road went from Kuwait to Safwan, at the Iraqi border, and on to Basra.

Tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians were fleeing desperately, many in civilian vehicles. They were obviously no military threat to anyone. And yet American forces gleefully massacred them all, joking that it was as easy as “shooting in a sheep pen.”

On many occasions Iraqi soldiers tried to surrender to American forces. It didn’t make any difference. U.S. Air Force and Navy pilots were under orders to mass-murder every last human being in cold blood.

Incinerated body of an Iraqi soldier on the “Highway of Death”, a name
the press has given to the road from Mutlaa, Kuwait, to Basra, Iraq.

Highway of Death

One of the most graphic and heinous crimes of the Gulf War occurred on the highway between Mutlaa, Kuwait and Basra, Iraq, also known as "The Highway of Death."

As the U.S. began its land assault, Iraq announced that it would comply with U.N. resolution 660 and withdraw from Kuwait.

Iraqi soldiers as well as Iraqi, Palestinian, Jordanian and other civilians piled into whatever vehicles they could commandeer, including a fire truck, and fled north towards Iraq. U.S. planes disabled vehicles at both ends of the convoy, creating a 7-mile long traffic jam.

U.S. planes then began to bomb and strafe the entire line of some 2,000 vehicles for hours, killing tens of thousands of helpless soldiers and civilians while encountering no resistance and receiving no losses to themselves.

"Another 60-mile stretch of road to the east was strewn with the remnants armored cars, trucks, ambulances and thousands of bodies following an attack on convoys on the night of February 25, 1991.

U.S. planes immobilized the convoy by disabling vehicles at its front and rear, then bombing and strafing the resulting traffic jam for hours.

More than 2,000 vehicles and tens of thousands of charred and dismembered bodies littered the sixty miles of highway.

Outlawed Weapons Massacre

The clear rapid incineration of the human being [pictured above] suggests the use of napalm, phosphorus, or other incendiary bombs. These are anti-personnel weapons outlawed under the 1977 Geneva Protocols.

This massive attack occurred after Saddam Hussein announced a complete troop withdrawal from Kuwait in compliance with UN Resolution 660.

As the U.S. began its land assault, Iraq announced that it would comply with U.N. resolution 660 and withdraw from Kuwait.

Iraqi soldiers as well as Iraqi, Palestinian, Jordanian and other civilians piled into whatever vehicles they could commandeer, including a fire truck, and fled north towards Iraq. U.S. planes disabled vehicles at both ends of the convoy, creating a 7-mile long traffic jam.

U.S. planes then began to bomb and strafe the entire line of some 2,000 vehicles for hours, killing tens of thousands of helpless soldiers and civilians while encountering no resistance and receiving no losses to themselves.

"Another 60-mile stretch of road to the east was strewn with the remnants of tanks, armored cars, trucks, ambulances and thousands of bodies following an attack on convoys on the night of February 25, 1991.

Such a massacre of withdrawing Iraqi soldiers violates the Geneva Convention of 1949, common article 3, which outlaws the killing of soldiers who “are out of combat”.

There are, in addition, strong indications that many of those killed were Palestinian and Kuwaiti civilians trying to escape the impending siege of Kuwait City and the return of Kuwaiti armed forces.

No attempt was made by U.S. military command to distinguish between military personnel and civilians on the “highway of death”. The whole intent of international law with regard to war is to prevent just this sort of indiscriminate and excessive use of force.

Now as we draw the comparison with American and coalition forces in that first war we find the following: the US had more than 500,000 troops in the War while non-US forces added up to an additional 160,000.

US wounded tallied 467, British 24, French 2. US casualties were 148 battle deaths and 145 nonbattle deaths and allied Arab casualties numbered 39. That means that the US suffered 293 deaths to Iraq's 100,000, not counting the 35,000 civilians killed or 460 times as many Iraqi dead as US forces....

"It has never happened in history that a nation that has won a war has been held accountable for atrocities committed in preparing for and waging that war. We intend to make this one different.

What took place was the use of technological material to destroy a defenseless country. From 125,000 to 300,000 people were killed... We recognize our role in history is to bring the transgressors to justice." Ramsey Clark

One can stare at the 24-hour cable news networks from sunup to sundown and get no sense of the carnage in towns and cities from Baghdad, to Fallujah, to Ramadi, to Hilla in the south and Tal Afar in the north that is left in the wake of US rockets, bombs, tank shells and sniper rounds.

The evening news reports of the major networks provide at most a fleeting image of the death and destruction, inevitably hedged with absurd avowals from the US military that “precision” attacks were carried out against “terrorist” and “anti-Iraqi” targets.

In reality, the US media's disinformation operation is among the most striking and significant expressions of the collapse of American democracy.

More Videos ...
Read and see more ...
*The highway of death Video

*Highway Of Death' Slaughter

*A Report on United States War Crimes Against Iraq

Read more ...
*US media covers up American war crimes in IraqUS media covers up
*US War crimes on Iraq;Video,Photos,Text
*America is Committing War Crimes in Iraq
*Soldiers For the Truth

American War Crimes During the Gulf War

Bush Ordered the Destruction of Facilities Essential to Civilian Life and Economic Productivity Throughout Iraq.

The United States Intentionally Bombed and Destroyed Defenseless Iraqi Military Personnel; Used Excessive Force; Killed Soldiers Seeking to Surrender and in Disorganized Individual Flight, Often Unarmed and Far from Any Combat Zones; Randomly and Wantonly Killed Iraqi Soldiers; and Destroyed Material After the Cease-Fire.

The United States Used Prohibited Weapons Capable of Mass Destruction and Inflicting Indiscriminate Death and Unnecessary Suffering Against Both Military and Civilian Targets.

The United States Intentionally Attacked Installations in Iraq Containing Dangerous Substances and Forces in Violation of Article 56 of Geneva Protocol I of 1977.

Defendant Bush Encouraged and Aided Shiite Muslims and Kurds to Rebel Against the Government of Iraq Causing Fratricidal Violence, Emigration, Exposure, Hunger and Sickness and Thousands of Deaths.

After the Rebellion Failed, the U.S. Invaded and Occupied Parts of Iraq Without Lawful Authority in Order to Increase Division and Hostilities Within Iraq.

Defendant Bush Intentionally Deprived the Iraqi People of Essential Medicines, Potable Water, Food and Other Necessities.

Defendant Bush, Having Destroyed Iraq's Economic Base, Demands Reparations Which Will Permanently Impoverish Iraq and Threaten Its People with Famine and Epidemic.

Read more ...
*American War Crimes During the Gulf War

Read more ...
*We had a great day. We killed a lot of people

Read more ...
*WAR CRIMES

Read more ...
*Miserable Deaths

USA Immunity From War Crime Prosecution

George W. Bush, upon taking office in 2001, immediately began a systematic withdrawal from major international treaties to which the US was a signatory. As part of that policy, on May 7th, 2002 Donald Rumsfeld informed the Secretary General of the UN that the US was officially withdrawing from the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Months before, the US had already established that the court would grant the United States immunity from the court for US citizens suspected of atrocities. Under guidelines pushed through despite EU concerns, US soldiers serving overseas would be immune from prosecution in the court, while politicians and US officials, including CIA operatives, could claim diplomatic immunity.

That was not enough. Rumsfeld made it very clear that the United States would reject any attempt by the court or state parties to the treaty to assert any jurisdiction over American citizens.

In short, Americans were accountable to no one for any atrocities they might commit anywhere in the world.

Bombs Over Baghdad

U.S. War Crimes in Iraq: A Prima Facie Case

Ever since the end of Desert Storm, when the Pentagon unloaded 350 tons of depleted uranium, American officials have been well aware of the health hazards of the residue that is collected from the processing of nuclear fuel.

When President [sic] Bush and the Pentagon authorized the use of depleted uranium for the shock-and-awe campaign against Iraq in March 1991, the Bush administration not only committed a war crime against the people of Iraq, it demonstrated reckless disregard for the health and safety of American troops.

Article 23 of the Geneva Convention IV is clear and unambiguous: "It is forbidden to employ poison or poisoned weapons, to kill treacherously individuals belonging to the hostile nation or army, to employ arms, projectiles or material calculated to cause unnecessary suffering." The Geneva Protocol of 1925 explicitly prohibits "asphyxiating, poisonous or other gasses, and all analogous liquids, materials or devices."

Read more ...
*U.S. War Crimes in Iraq

Other American War Crimes

In Afghanistan the American military will not allow news coverage so as to have a free hand in the extermination of all Taliban forces. The American media has exercised almost total self-censorship regarding documented massacres in Afghanistan ....

Read more ...
*American Slaughter of 3,000 Taliban POW's
*War with Taliban won't be televised
Two years after Sept. 11, the Taliban is thriving along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border

Read more ...
*Who's Winning the War on Terror?

American Forces Do Not Do Body Counts ....
They Just Report What Sounds Good

In October, the British medical journal Lancet estimated 98,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the invasion and occupation. The study was based on interviews with people in 988 households with 7,868 residents randomly selected across Iraq. Forty-six percent of the violent deaths were of children younger than 15, and 7 percent were women, the researchers reported. The findings were dismissed by the U.S and British governments as inaccurate.

The estimates of ordinary Iraqis killed -- by insurgents, U.S. troops and Iraqi criminals -- vary greatly, from as low as 6,000 up to nearly 100, 000, depending on the methodology used.

The U.S. military says it does not keep track of civilian deaths. "We don't do body counts," Gen. Tommy Franks, who commanded U.S. troops in both Afghanistan and Iraq, said in 2002.

'An invisible issue' in the U.S.

Read more ...
*Tally of civilian deaths depends on who's counting
US admits the war for ‘hearts and minds’ in Iraq is now lost

On “the war of ideas or the struggle for hearts and minds”, the report says, “American efforts have not only failed, they may also have achieved the opposite of what they intended”.

Read more ...
*Pentagon report reveals catalogue of failure

When Peak Oil and Peak Population Implode the Earth

2009-02-21T20:52:00.014+01:00

Today's Entrecard Fan Comment - Straight no Chaser.. This site highlights the
seamy underbelly of politics.His understanding of politics comes from
his former insider status. Now he's telling it all. This site may push you
over the edge, so bring your patience; and an open mind.
Truth Always - from a European Yank's view.

Her sites ...

*Bad Gals Radio Today
*Bad Gals Radio
*Recyled Frockery

(Note: This is a mass media taboo subject)

Reader please watch the important videos at the end
of this text, to get a complete picture of the info presented here.

As the *British historian Toynbee, wrote ... “The U.S. will set a record in the rate of rise and fall of an empire. Between wide open borders and fall of the dollar and growing population against a declining resource base, the United States will be defeated from within.“

*The Oil Crash Documentary
(See this Trailer first)

Mobs will rule the streets in the nation that is now the third largest in the world right behind China and India, and unable to support its population except by taking resources from other countries.

The Olduvai Theory states that the life expectancy
of industrial civilization is about 100 years.

The Olduvai Theory Timeline

(1930) the beginning of Industrial Civilization
(1979) all time peak of world energy production per capita
(1999) the end of cheap oil
(2000) eruption of violence in the Middle East
(2006) all-time peak in world oil production
(2008) OPEC crossover when more than 50% of oil comes from the OPEC nations
(2012) permanent blackouts spread worldwide
(2030) world energy production falls to 1930 level

Future dates may vary but it is easy to see how, with the knowledge we have of peak oil, the world could slip into a Medieval or even Stone Age scenario. Even a Dark Ages world would be difficult to sustain with no coal and little wood to burn.

We are so dependent on energy that, unless we find some alternatives to hydrocarbon energy generation pretty quickly, we will find ourselves without the time or energy to switch.

Miracle At Lourdes, France

2009-02-21T07:24:00.042+01:00

Today's Random Entrecard Reader Comment -

What is happening in our country in the present is, obviously, not a surprise to me. From my 'smiling perspective' I believe this dissolution, of life as we know it, is both timely and necessary. As you have said, dark and destructive forces within our own country have been undermining the welfare of our people for a very long time. Although we will have to suffer many losses during this period, what we will gain is an opportunity to take stock of who we are as human beings and decide what is real and true for us, what we really believe in and what measures we are willing to take in order to create a reality that will honor and support both our lives and our country.

Her sites ...
*Melana's Song
*The Path: A Journey Into Light

*The Path of Love Podcast

Saint Bernadette Today
Unchanged Since Death 1879

On 18 April 1925, Bernadette's body was exhumed for the third and final time.
After 46 years, her body was still intact and uncorrupted.

Our Lady of Lourdes 130 years after death.

You can see her body
in the Church of Lourdes

A Life of Pain and Suffering Without Bitterness

Bernadette was to suffer poor health for the rest of her life ever since 1855, when her city of Lourdes was hit by an outbreak of cholera, and she was hit by the fever where 38 people died and hundreds more were affected.

In 1858 the Virgin Mary appeared to her, she was just a fourteen-year-old peasant girl in Lourdes; a small town in the Pyrenees in the south of France.

On Thursday, February 11, 1858, a poor, sickly, unlettered peasant girl of Lourdes, France went with her sister and another girl to fetch sticks. Bernadette Soubirous, age 14, who knew little of her catechism but was devoted to the will of God, experienced her first apparition of a lovely Lady at the Grotto of Massabielle.

See the Webcam
*Webcam Grotto of Massabielle

Upon seeing the Lady, who had a rosary draped over her right arm, Bernadette began praying the Rosary. Bernadette did not know who the Lady was at this time. This is Bernadette's description of the Lady at that first apparition ...

"While I was saying the Rosary, I was watching as hard as I could. She was wearing a white dress reaching down to her feet, of which only the toes appeared. The dress was gathered very high at the neck by a hem from which hung a white cord.

A white veil covered her head and came down over her shoulders and arms almost to the bottom of her dress. On each foot I saw a yellow rose. The sash of the dress was blue, and hung down below her knees. The chain of the rosary was yellow; the beads white, big and widely spaced."

Thereafter commenced a series of apparitions of the Lady to Bernadette at the Grotto. There were eighteen in all; the last took place July 16, of the same year. Bernadette often fell into an ecstasy during these apparitions, as was witnessed by the hundreds who attended the later visions, though no one except Bernadette ever saw or heard the apparition.

One day, the Lady told the girl to drink of a mysterious fountain within the grotto itself, the existence of which was unknown, and of which there was no sign. But Bernadette scratched at the ground, and a spring immediately bubbled up and soon gushed forth.

On another occasion the apparition bade Bernadette go and tell the priests she wished a chapel to be built on the spot and processions to be made to the grotto.

At first the clergy were incredulous. The priest said he would not believe it unless the apparition gave Bernadette her name. After another apparition, Bernadette reported that the Lady told her, "I am the Immaculate Conception". Though the girl was unfamiliar with the term, the Pope had declared the doctrine of the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary in 1854.

Word soon spread about the apparitions and more and more people accompanied Bernadette to the Grotto, but only Bernadette could see the Lady. At these apparitions the Lady told Bernadette to "Pray to God for sinners!" Bernadette, as instructed by the Lady, also kissed the ground several times to do penance for sinners.

At one of the apparitions Bernadette, following instructions of the Lady, scratched at the muddy earth and began to drink and wash from an unknown stream. Only later was the stream discovered to have miraculous healing powers.

The village Curé had asked Bernadette to inquire of the Lady who she was. On March 25, the feast of the Annunciation, also known as Lady Day, the Lady told Bernadette her name. She said, "I am the Immaculate Conception." Only a few years ago the Holy Father, Pius IX, had declared ex cathedra as dogma of the Faith that the Blessed Virgin Mary had been conceived without the stain of original sin.

Four years after Bernadette's visions, in 1862, the bishop of the diocese declared the faithful "justified in believing the reality of the apparition" of Our Lady. A basilica was built upon the rock of Massabielle by M. Peyramale, the parish priest. In 1873 the great "national" French pilgrimages were inaugurated. Three years later the basilica was consecrated and the statue solemnly crowned.

Bernadette died on 16th April 1879. Her body was buried in the small chapel dedicated to Saint Joseph, within the convent grounds.

In 1883 the foundation stone of another church was laid, as the first was no longer large enough. It was built at the foot of the basilica and was consecrated in 1901 and called the Church of the Rosary. Pope Leo XIII authorized a special office and a Mass, in commemoration of the apparition, and in 1907 Pius X extended the observance of this feast to the entire Church; it is now observed on February 11.

Read more
*Lourdes France Official Website

Millions of pilgrims venture every year to Lourdes. Miracles still flow from the miraculous waters of Lourdes. The message of Our Lady of Lourdes is about the healing Mercy of God. Lourdes is also about the need for prayer and penance.

St. Bernadette testified to this call of Our Lady of Lourdes by living the rest of her life in humble prayer and suffering in a convent in France.

The site has since become the greatest of all modern Christian shrines with more than five million pilgrims visiting each year, many of which are seeking cures from illnesses at a miraculous spring of water, that the Holy Virgin revealed in a grotto.

Details of the Exhumations

On September 22, 1909, Bernadette's body was exhumed, as part of the process leading to her eventual canonization. Bishop Gauthey of Nevers, together with other Church representatives and officials, entered the convent Chapel and took an oath upon the Holy Bible to tell the truth. Bernadette appeared exactly as she had been on the day of her death.

The hollowed-out tomb was extremely humid - her habit was very damp, the rosary held in her hands was rusted and her crucifix had turned green. In her hands she held a Rosary, which was rusting, and a Crucifix, which was covered in verdigris. The body was completely intact.

There was no smell and no trace of corruption was seen on the little body in the coffin. Doctor Jourdan, the surgeon who was present for the exhumation, has left a written record in the Community archives describing what occurred -

"The coffin was opened in the presence of the Bishop of Nevers, the mayors of the town several canons and ourselves. We noticed no smell. The body was clothed in the habit of Bernadette's order. The habit was damp. Only the face, hands and forearms were uncovered."

"The head was tilted to the left. The face was dull white. The mouth was open slightly and it could be seen that the teeth were still in place. The hands, which were crossed upon the breast, were perfectly preserved, as were the nails. The hands still held a rusting Rosary. The veins on the forearms stood out."

After the identification, the Sisters washed the body and dressed it in a fresh habit. It was then placed in a new coffin lined with white silk, and lowered back into the tomb. The entire process was completed at half past five in the evening.

On 13 August 1913, Pope Pius X authorized the introduction of the Cause for Canonization - Bernadette could now be given the title 'Venerable'. This meant that body had to be exhumed once again. This process was interrupted by the war, and the body was not re-exhumed until 3 April 1919. The process was the same as before - as were the results. The body remained intact.

On 18 November 1923, the Holy Father announced the authenticity of Bernadette's virtues - her beatification could now proceed.

Consequently, a third exhumation was needed. This time, relics were to be taken from the body - these would then be sent to Rome, to Lourdes and to Houses of the Sisters of Nevers throughout the world.

On 18 April 1925, the exhumation took place. Bernadette had been dead more than forty six years. Yet, her body remained uncorrupt. Doctor Talon, a surgeon, removed the relics. Three years later he wrote a report about this exhumation, for a medical journal.

In it, he described his amazement at the perfect preservation of the skeleton and the muscles in particular, as well as the liver which - he stated - should have deteriorated entirely very soon after death. he concluded that "this did not seem to be a natural phenomenon". The body itself was perfectly preserved.

At this exhumation, it was noted that a small portion of the skin on the face had discolored slightly, due probably to the washing the body had received and its exposure to the organisms of the air. Consequently, it was decided to cover the face and hands with light wax masks. The firm of Pierre Imans in Paris was contacted, and they agreed to make the necessary masks.

Also, the Armand Catelan workshop in Lyons had been contacted and they would make a beautiful reliquary for the body of the deceased Sister.

By June of 1925, the Cateland workshop in Lyon had finished the gilt and crystal reliquary which was to be the final resting place of the saint; the light wax masks were placed on the face and hands and the body was placed in the shrine. The same month, Pope Pius XI beatified Bernadette - she could now be called "Blessed" and her remains could be publicly venerated

On 14 June 1925, Pope Pius XI declared Bernadette 'Blessed' - her relics could now be exposed for public veneration. But the reliquary was not yet ready. So the body was put in the small chapel dedicated to Saint Helen, which was then officially sealed.

On 18 July, the shrine was ready. The body of the Beata was clothed once more in a new habit and was then transferred to the shrine. The reliquary was made of silver, gilt and crystal. On it were depiction's of the Apparitions at Lourdes, and lilies - the symbol of Bernadette's purity. Crowning the reliquary were the initials 'N.D. de L.' Notre Dame de Lourdes, entwined around which was a Rosary. The Office of Virgins was sung by the assembled Sisters. The shrine was solemnly transferred to the main chapel of the convent on 3 August 1925.

In August, the shrine was ceremonially placed in the main chapel of the convent, and the long line of pilgrims began to visit the convent. In 1933 Bernadette was declared a Saint - appropriately, this took place on December 8th, feast of the Immaculate Conception.

The Lady of Lourdes had kept the promise She made to Bernadette in 1858 - "I do not promise to make you happy in this world, but in the next."

The Grounds

The warm, dry weather makes long walks in the grounds very pleasant. Its very easy to imagine Saint Bernadette herself walking here, especially as there have been few changes since that time. Behind the convent, at the end of an avenue of chestnut trees, is the tiny chapel dedicated to Saint Joseph.

This was one of Saint Bernadette's favorite places for quiet prayer, as she had a fond love of the Spouse of Mary. It was later to become her resting place during the forty-six years of her burial. It is very plain and simple, with a stained-glass window of Our Lady above the small altar. Inset into the wall is the tombstone from Saint Bernadette's original grave.

At the bottom of the garden is the statue of Our Lady of the Waters, Saint Bernadette's favorite statue; "It has something of the beauty I saw" she used to say about it. It was placed here following the discovery of a spring nearby, hence the name.

Upstairs in the convent is the Saint Croix (Holy Cross) Infirmary. This is the room in which Saint Bernadette died in April 1879, having entered the "white chapel" of her sick-bed the previous December.

It is now a chapel proper, used by the Sisters themselves for quiet prayer. There is an inspirational atmosphere in this room, stemming from the knowledge that this is where the thirty-five year old sister spent the last months of her life before once more seeing the heavenly smile of her Beautiful Lady.

Bernadette's long periods of illness were never wasted on self-pity or bitterness - each became for her an opportunity of self-knowledge and personal and spiritual growth. For her, illness was not a burden but a special gift from her loving God, whose supreme gift was the Cross.

Videos of Saint Bernadette
Lourdes, France

Song of Bernadette

True History of Lourdes & St. Bernadette Excerpt1.

True History of Lourdes & St. Bernadette Excerpt 2.

True History of Lourdes & St Bernadette Excerpt 3.

Possible first Latin American miracle for Virgin of Lourdes

Salve Regina de Lourdes

Lourdes Family Miracle

References
*Our Lady of Lourdes and St. Bernadette
*Our Lady of Lourdes
*Lourdes, France Photos
*Lourdes, France Photo Gallery

Technocrati Tags

Human Rights - The American Double Standard

2009-02-20T05:25:00.186+01:00

Her sites ...

*Bad Gals Radio Today
*Bad Gals Radio
*Recyled Frockery

Human Rights Abuses
Committed Daily In the USA

People often think that human rights violations only happen in other areas of the world, not in the United States. In reality, human rights abuses are committed daily in the U.S., even in the most routine aspects of people's lives.

Racial profiling, police brutality, prison conditions, and abuses in the "war on terror," are all human rights abuses. Racial profiling is so pervasive that it has impacted nearly 32 million people in the United States - about the population of Canada.

Our leaders in the United States, proudly present our country as being an advocate on the front lines for human rights ....

Lets Investigate This Double Standard which

is a cover for advancing special self-interests...

# The USA often has not ratified various international human rights related treaties
(and where it has, there have been many, many reservations).

# American diplomats were influential in drawing up the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, yet the USA has not always put its words into action.

See ...
*Human Rights and U.S. Policy

In the USA Health Care Is A Privilege
Not A Basic Human Right
(USA has 47 million uninsured)

The United States is the only industrialized nation that views
health care as a privilege, not a basic human right.

Access to Health Care 101

Wes Clark on the American Health System

Regarding the Death Penalty

The USA is engaged in a cruel, brutalizing, unreliable, unnecessary and hugely expensive activity for no measurable gain. There is no evidence that the US authorities have prevented a single crime with this policy.

They have diverted countless millions of dollars away from more constructive efforts to fight crime. And the macabre absurdity is that it creates more victims - the family members of the condemned - often in the name of victims' rights. The death penalty is a symptom of a culture of violence, not a solution to it.

The sooner US politicians begin to find the political courage to educate public opinion rather than hide behind it, the better.

See ...
*Amnesty International

There have been about 500,000 murders in the USA since 1977. In the same period, 716 men and women have been executed. This is a punishment, these basic statistics suggest, reserved for the “worst of the worst” of murderers in the USA.

But how can that be true if, for example, learning disabled prisoners are among the condemned? It is time they [U.S. leaders] took it upon themselves to measure US standards of decency against the aspirations of the international community on the death penalty.

Most of us are aware of police brutality.
Here is a 450 page
*Human Rights Watch

American Prison Industrial Complex See ...
*Economic Apartheid in America

The USA has the world's largest prison population of roughly 2 million people, which accounts for about a quarter of the world's prison population. America's incarceration rate was roughly constant from 1925 to 1973, with an average of 110 people behind bars for every 100,000 residents.

By 2000, however, the rate of incarceration in state and federal prisons had more than quadrupled, to 478.

America has over taken Russia as the world's most aggressive jailer. When local jails are included in the American tally, the United States locks up nearly 700 people per 100,000, compared with 102 for Canada, 132 for England and Wales, 85 for France and a paltry 48 in Japan.

USA Kicked Off the United Nations
Human Rights Commission

At the beginning of May, 2001, the United States lost its seat on the United Nations Human Rights Commission for the first time since the panel's founding in 1947. (The Human Rights Commission assigns investigators to probe abuses around the world.)

The U.S. was voted off by their allies (not by their enemies.)

See ..
*U.S. Arrogance on Display in UN Human Rights Commission Flap

Critics had pointed out that the U.S's recent “go-alone” stances on many international issues had been factors as well.

Examples include not supporting the international criminal court, not supporting the international landmine treaty, its stance on the death penalty, not paying its dues at the U.N. (leaving it to others to make up in some way, especially European nations), backing down from Kyoto, and so on.

Admittedly, the U.S. has been more vocal than many nations on some human rights issues, but when it has come to major initiatives and substantial changes to promote and support human rights, the U.S. has, as mentioned above, often been alone, acting in their own interests, as some examples throughout this web site will show.

See ...
*International Criminal Court
(scroll down)
*Landmines
*Kyoto

The USA
A Rogue Nation

When it has come to major initiatives and substantial changes to promote
and support human rights, the U.S. has often been a Rogue Nation acting alone,
in its own best interests ...

*Rogue Nation

*Noam Chomsky Archive

It is interesting to look at the USA's position on some of the standard international human rights treaties, given the USA's vocal position on human rights and insistence that it is the premier promoter of human rights.

Of the twelve main treaties, the United States has only signed the following, but not ratified any of them (as of 21 August, 2002):

See ...
*International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
*Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women
*Convention on the Rights of the Child

American
Read My Lips Service

Also as of 21 August, 2002 the USA has not
either signed or ratified the following:

*International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families

*Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

*Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty

In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of soldiers refusing to participate in the war and occupation in Iraq. They have applied for conscientious objector (CO) status, which would allow them exemption from participation in war, based on reasons of conscience or conviction.

However, the US government has denied most of these petitions and has aggressively pursued soldiers who have gone absent without leave (AWOL), a crime punishable by a maximum sentence of death by firing squad.

See ...
*Recently released conscientious objectors
*Cases Pending
*Women's Human Rights

The following videos are disturbing, but you need to see what is really going on in your name ...

Doctors of the World-USA - Health is a Human Right

Stop Torturing - The USA Should Not Torture Prisoners Video

Also see ...
*The Chain Gang - USA
Other Reference
*Send Lawyers, Guns, and Money

In A World of Lies, the Truth Is a Dream

2009-02-18T16:08:00.043+01:00

U.S a Dictatorship?

Newspapers, radio, TV and the mudslingers are trying to cover up what is becoming obvious to anyone but the blind: America had become a dictatorship with a strongly entrenched bureaucracy under the control of powerful special interests. This is not, in any way, an overstatement of fact.

Trying to disable a dictatorship that has ruled America outside her legislature and Constitutional structure is turning into a nightmare few of us have expected.

The War on Terror is turning out to be little more than a front for a massive financial scam stealing billions of dollars from, not only America, but Western Europe, the Middle East, Russia and China. None of this could be done until America herself was brought down and crushed under the heel of a police state.

What we have left is a justice system crippled by years of secret arrests, phony trials, torture, election rigging and a huge new bureaucracy answerable to no congressional authority.

Our Patriot Acts, passed by our cowardly congress, removed all Constitutional rights from Americans and allowed uncontrolled corruption at every level, banking, oil, defense, agriculture, pollution, election rigging, literally anything imaginable, to go on with full impunity.

The rule of law in America died overnight. No authority existed that couldn't be overridden by a phone call from a fat cat to their local party headquarters. Arrests were ordered, not by government, but by "business" insiders who bought their way into power with their checkbooks.

It turned out that their "business" was phony government contracts, looting banks and selling America to her enemies. We know that millions of people have lost their homes, their jobs and families around America are suffering. We know this must be true, although nothing is ever reported.

We only see empty highways, closed factories, empty houses and closed stores, not by the dozens but all around us. We hear numbers and suffering, yes, the suffering of the occasional Wall Street thief, now under arrest, or millionaire whose huge estate is sold off.

A trillion dollars was already sent to our banks to save America. Those banks are not lending that money to finance homes, cars, new businesses or anything else. Billions were paid out in bonuses, billions were stolen but little really went into our economy.

It seems the idea of people having good paying jobs, driving decent cars, sending their kids to college and owning homes offended people with the will, the influence and the power to take it all away.

All they had to do is crush the value of real estate, suck the money out of the banks, bond and stock markets, push up oil prices, food prices and keep the world at war. What our middle class worked for, saved for and sacrificed for was gone in a flash.

The same magicians that could take gasoline from a dollar a gallon to four dollars to two dollars on a whim can make your job, your home and your savings disappear in the wink of an eye.

They did it with your civil rights even easier and you said nothing.

The result, carefully planned, I assure you, was to make certain that every home was worthless, every retirement account was empty. Fear makes us compliant.

Only then could we live as intended, fearful of each other and turning to anyone or anything that promised us safety, our next meal, and a third rate version of the American dream, life half an inch above the poverty level for the lucky and total despair for tens of millions of Americans. Real estate prices, unless something drastic is done, have only begun to drop.

Foreclosures will continue for years until up to 40% of American homes are empty. Industrial jobs will all disappear, even China is closing hundreds of plants a month.

Low paying retail jobs are going away by the hundreds of thousands, jobs that kept millions in poverty off welfare and provided second jobs for families skirting poverty.

When the stock market crashed in 1929, brought on by "not so accidental" manipulation of the money markets by the very illegal Federal Reserve System, the private banking group created unConstitutionally in 1918 to print money and manage our economy, an economy that has been in collapse since 1918 except for times of war, it took years for the real "depression" to kick in.

Perhaps you can find a few union leaders, some college professors and an environmental activist or two to arrest and detain in the basement of the local police station. Chances are your local police will be right there with you, patrol cars with lights flashing.

In 8 years we went from full employment, peace, plenty, economic surplus to massive unemployment, endless war and total economic collapse while America's money, that didn't go overseas, went into the hands of a very few, 95% of whom had ties to the Bush administration.

Now we are going to see if that money, those billions, and the vicious stooges left can make Americans turn on each other rather than stop the theft, tax some of the freeloaders and put Americans back to work.

Michael Tsarion - Future of Mankind

See the full three hour lecture and more at ...
*World of Lies

Secret Handshake Deals That Will Destroy America

2009-02-17T08:21:00.013+01:00

Secret Handshake Deal American Corporate

Takeover of USA, Canada & Mexico
Prelude

The American Economic Crisis

American Censored News Uncovered

THE ONE THING NOBODY IS TALKING ABOUT
The Plan To Replace The Dollar With The Amero

This video highlights a very serious concern which none of our media is looking into. The Amero is being looked at as the defacto currency of the North American Community (or Union).

The idea to form the North American Union as a super-NAFTA knitting together Canada, the United States and Mexico into a super-regional political and economic entity was a key agreement resulting from the March 2005 meeting held at Baylor University in Waco, Tex., between President Bush, President Fox and Prime Minister Martin.

A joint statement published by the three presidents following their Baylor University summit announced the formation of an initial entity called, "The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America" (SPP). The joint statement termed the SPP a "trilateral partnership" that was aimed at producing a North American security plan as well as providing free market movement of people, capital, and trade across the borders between the three NAFTA partners:

We will establish a common approach to security to protect North America from external threats, prevent and respond to threats within North America, and further streamline the secure and efficient movement of legitimate, low-risk traffic across our borders.

A working agenda was established: The creation of a Permanent Tribunal on Trade and Investment with the view that "a permanent court would lay the groundwork for North American business law."

The intent is that this North American Union Tribunal would have supremacy over the U.S. Supreme Court on issues affecting the North American Union, to prevent U.S. power from "irritating" and retarding the progress of uniting Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. into a new 21st century super-regional governing body.

Today the United States is becoming the Fourth Reich, the continuation of an ideology thought to have been vanquished more than a half century ago.

This concept may seem absurd to those who cannot see past the rose-colored spin, hype, and disinformation poured out daily by the corporate mass media—most of which is owned by the very same families and corporations who supported the Nazis before World War II.

National Socialism never died, but rather its insidious philosophy is alive and active in modern America.

The Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), also known as the North American Union, is the Stealth, Profit, and Power Corporate Takeover of Mexico, the U.S. and Canada.

The North American Union (SPP) agreement was finalized without approval of the US Congress, the Canadian Parliament or the Mexican Congress. Rather, it was agreed to by President Bush, former President Fox of Mexico, and former Prime Minister Martin of Canada with only a handshake in Waco, Texas, on March 23, 2005.

Bush and these leaders were not clever enough to devise this plan themselves – especially Bush!

Corporations were behind the scenes. See *The Corporate Takeover Continues

The SPP, sometimes called NAFTA-Plus, involves superhighways from Canada, through the U.S. to Mexico.

It involves a “North American Army” and a North American Union like the European Union. Including spy planes and surveillance. It includes the loss of our democracy and our sovereignty, all replaced by corporate dominion over our lives, making a mockery of democracy and elections and local control!

This constitutes the new face of the corporate-inspired military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned against.

The corporate takeover has now advanced to another level, and the American Empire builders are on their way to their vision of supra-national corporate one-worldism. Funny thing, the right-wingers thought the UN was going to take over the world and create one government!

We can now be sure progressives were correct all along when they said making the world safe for “democracy”(Wilson) and spreading “democracy” (Bush) was cover for what was really going on.

American policy makers define terms by their exact opposites in meaning. As with Orwell, “democracy” means fascism, wherein multi-national corporations, not governments, run the world.

Governments and nations are simply the front for the corporate enterprise. Making the world safe for democracy meant making the world safe for corporate interests–corporatization and privatization at the point of a gun, our guns and our soldiers doing the dirty work and all paid for by our tax dollars– a nifty racket. See *General Smedley Butler

America loses one farm every 30 minutes due largely to intensifying corporate takeover of our food supply.

Major agribusiness corporations exercise increasing control over what we eat, how it is made, how much it costs, who produces it, and who profits from it.

The increasingly uneven balance of power between individual farmers and global firms, such as Cargill and ConAgra, leave individual farmers without the power to negotiate, accepting almost any contractual term and reduced payments in hopes to insure the survival of their farm.

While farmers are losing their bargaining power and working for less, farms are closing at an alarming rate, over 20,000 farms go under each year, taking with them the social fabric of small towns and farming communities.

There are over 300 initiatives in the SPP aimed at harmonizing North American policies on food, drugs, security, immigration, manufacturing, the environment and public health.

As well as regular SPP updates, the site is full of reports, interviews and multimedia presentations critical of what's often called the "deep integration" of North America.

See *SPP WATCH for the Canadian response and see *Fact Sheet: Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America for the official White House version.

Because no one is above the law here is *Judicial Watch Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America

In March 2005, as a result of intense lobbying from North America’s richest corporations, the leaders of Canada, Mexico and the United States met in Waco, Texas to shake hands on the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP). The SPP was a pledge to speed up the corporate goal of continental economic integration by linking it to U.S. government security demands.

In a post-9/11 world where, for the Bush administration, “security trumps trade,” the Canadian and Mexican governments have agreed to fully integrate their security apparatuses with the U.S. and fully participate in its “war on terror” in return for vague assurances of continued market access for their largest corporations.

But the SPP goes much further than this. Plans for regulatory convergence, energy sector integration and a potential common external tariff will make independent Canadian policies on agriculture, the environment and energy impossible.

Since March 2005, without public input and with little public awareness, all three North American governments have been moving quickly toward establishing a continental resource pact, a North American security perimeter, and common agricultural and other health, safety and environmental policies.

Working groups comprised of government officials and corporate leaders are quietly putting this “partnership” into action, and to date only industry “stakeholders” have been consulted, often in private, closed-door meetings. Not even our elected Members of Parliament have been kept in the loop.

Watch the Videos

the Truth ....

NORTH AMERICAN UNION

SPP Protest in Ottawa - Feb 16 2008
A Big Easy North American Union

Pt 1 Lou Dobbs reports on North American Union (SPP) 8.20.07
Pt 2 Lou Dobbs reports on North American Union (SPP) 8.20.07
the background ....

Harper, Bush & Calderon on the SPP, Afghanistan,conspiracies
Bush Family History

Corporate Fascism - The State Within the State

That Is Killing You Videos

Rising Against Corporate Fascism

The Stench of Truth

The Stench of Truth 2

Introduction

Globalism is the force shaping the world today. Power is not in the hands of nation states, or political systems, or dictators. Power today is controlled by the shadow men that rule multinational corporations. They owe no allegiance to country, culture, or creed! They control the TV screens and media. They determine the ebb and flow of the domestic and economic markets and the politics.

They are not the elitists that you know. They remain in the shadows and have a mission and a goal. Price control over resources, markets, and labor is their game. This new game of Globalism controlled by the shadow elite, decides the winners and losers in the economic struggle of life!

This blog documents the game.The game as it was played in the past and the game as it is played today. We are not the Players, but are being played, and you are just a pawn in the Game!

(Links)

*New World Order

*The New World Order (NWO) An Overview
*The New World Order Timeline

Looking At the Vanishing American Dream

2009-02-16T14:16:00.017+01:00

Crony Capitalism

If you want to understand politics, you better educate yourself about crony capitalism. Outsourcing is highly profitable for the select few who manipulate the financial markets. A global system of distorted trade that lines the pockets of cronies that have access to serious capital.

See the videos ...

Naomi Klein vs. Alan Greenspan on Crony Capitalism in the US

The Global Doctors

They maximize their corporate reach, built upon the lowest cost of production or service costs. Moving the venture to the next futile pasture, means that the next herd of sheep can graze and deplete the grass. The stock price jumps because earnings are sheltered by the unencumbered flow of imports not subject to domestic tariffs.

The reason that billionaires protect this charade and form a super elite rests upon their ability to penalize the vast majority by draining the life from middle class affluence. You say what else is new! The twist is that the remaining few who still are able to keep their heads above the waves, mostly work for transnational firms, derive funding from these corporations or are government bureaucrats.

It’s all one big buddy system. Free trade is designed to be anti-competitive for domestic enterprises. That’s the entire point.

If the goal is to swell sales at the lowest possible cost, sure move offshore. However, a business does not possess rights, for a corporation is an artificial invention that lawyers dreamed up to confuse the public and shelter the privileged.

The distribution of income in the United States is becoming more unequal! Labor still captures about two-thirds of national income, but only skilled workers have benefited. See *Rich Nation, poor Nation

SE Asia
Asia's crony capitalism has proved that it isn't ready for prime time. As most residents of SE Asia understand, the surging economy of the region is largely controlled by a limited number of wealthy families who suck in the money and only allow the bare minimum to trickle down to the masses.

Read more *Crony Capitalism in SE Asia Other references *Crony Capitalism and
*Corruption and Development in South Korea and the Philippines
Europe
Europe's mixed economies perch on a powder keg of 20 percent youth unemployment. Read more *Is Europe Doomed to Continued Economic Stagnation?

The Republican Planned

Economic Suicide

They have destroyed over 2.8 million jobs.

More extreme Republicans may actually want a fiscal train wreck: they could then slash federal spending on social programs and claim that it wasn't their fault.

Thus far, the Bush gang has been able to borrow to make up the rising difference between taxes and spending. As of June, 2003, China, Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong owned a combined total of about $696 billion in Treasuries, about 46 per cent of the outstanding bond debt.

China alone now holds over $290 billion in US government bonds, more than any other foreign lender.

The radical right in the United States is in control of the White House and is intent not only on "undermining the multilateral international order," but also on bringing the country to its financial knees so they can destroy Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.

That certainly explains why the Bush cabal is pursuing its present economic suicidal course.

Read more ... *Bush over 2.8 Million Jobs Destroyed.

American Police State

A police state exists when federal and state political and police mechanisms:

1. Shut down media coverage after they steal an election
2. Serve the central government instead of serving the citizens
3. Enforce the policies of the central government instead of responding primarily to criminal misdeeds
4. Spy on and intimidate citizens

All these conditions now exist in the United States! Read more *American Police State

America - Get Real

In the American system - for the last quarter century, virtually all the rewards of growth have gone to the educated, enterprising and already affluent.

See *As Cheap Oil Ends

Americans are delusional, They think they can continue living the way they’ve been living for the last 50 years. They think the key to it is to find a way to keep getting fuel.

For Americans, the American way of life is non-negotiable. The trouble is, Americans may not be willing to negotiate. But if they don’t, they are going to find that someone else is negotiating for them. And that someone else is called reality.

Higher fuel prices will change everything - the suburbs will become unlivable and undesirable. Wal-Mart will be unable to continue stocking its shelves with cheap imports ... food will have to be produced locally, not shipped half-way around the world...and people will have to find ways to manufacture locally too.

History of the Standard of
Living in the United States

In 1820 the United States was fifth in world rankings, falling roughly thirty percent below the leaders (United Kingdom and the Netherlands), but still two-to-three times better off than the poorest sections of the globe.

It is notable that in 1820 the richest country (the Netherlands at $1,821) was approximately 4.4 times better off than the poorest (Africa at $418) but by 1950 the ratio of richest-to-poorest had widened to 21.8 ($9,561 in the United States versus $439 in China), which is roughly the level it is today (in 1998, it was $27,331 in the United States versus $1,368 in Africa).

All countries that are rich today had rapid increases in their material standard of living, realizing more than ten-fold increases since 1820.

Economic progress has been uneven over time. If annual or quarterly data were given, it would show that business cycles have been a major feature of the economic landscape since industrialization began in the 1820s. By far the worst downturn in U.S. history occurred during the Great Depression of the 1930s, when real per capita Gross Domestic Product declined by approximately one-third and the unemployment rate reached 25 percent.

See ... *History of the Standard of Living in the United States

United Kingdom Living
Standards Outstrip USA

America last overtook Britain economically in the final years of the 19th century, during the so-called second industrial revolution, which brought mass manufacture and sharply rising prosperity to the United States.

LIVING standards in Britain are now set to rise above those in America for the first time since the 19th century, because of the UK economy’s record run of growth and rising incomes going back to the early 1990's.

In those days, according to Oxford Economics, Britain’s Gross Domestic Product per capita was 34% below that in America, 33% less than in Germany and 26% lower than in France. Now, not only have average incomes crept above those in America but they are more than 8% above France and Germany.

Americans have long complained that average incomes have been stagnant in their country. One often-quoted statistical comparison suggests that in real terms the median male full-time salary in America is no higher now than it was in the 1970s.

The UK has been catching up steadily with living standards in the US since 2001 – so, it is a well established trend rather than simply the result of currency fluctuations.

Despite the fact that Americans benefit from lower prices than those in Britain, and the average American has more spending power than his UK counterpart and pays lower taxes.

However, the British typically have significantly longer holidays than Americans as well as access to “free” health care.

Previous comments to this post ...
In the United Kingdom, people are much more "a citizen of the world" here. The States are isolated & don't get on well with the rest of the world. There's a lot of help & support for families in the UK. Health, eye doctors & dentists free for kids & the poor.

I had cancer & had to stop working for 10 years. I didn't have to worry about my kids, the rent or anything. I had the best surgeon & consultants. Clean, modern & compassionate care - all free.

The government paid our rent & supported us & our kids for many years. Now we can afford to pay some of our own way, but still get government help. We can't afford vacations or eating out every week, but we are not suffering.

I shudder to think of what our lives would have been like if I lived in the States. See *UK living standards outstrip US

The Permanent American Go For Broke War Culture

2009-02-15T03:05:00.038+01:00

(Checkpoint Charlie Berlin, Germany Before the End of the 45 Year Long Cold War)
(Occupation Zones Germany 1945-1989)

Listen To American Music On German Radio Online

(Hear What You Are Missing at ....
*German - American Music Radio)

How Presidents and pundits
keep "spinning"... War made easy

The Wall Street Bailout In Progress
(Socialism For The Wealthy Rich)

Shift of Spending Priorities?

Reader please watch the important videos at the end
of this text, to get a complete picture of the info presented here.

The Permanent American War Culture

For the 2009 fiscal year, the Defense Department is asking for $515 billion and a separate $70 billion to cover war costs into the early months of a new administration. Those amounts combined would represent the highest level of military spending since the end of World War II (adjusted for inflation). Already, defense spending hovers around 4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP)

Britain, France, and Australia spend an average 2.4 percent of their GDP on defense. Germany spends 1.5 percent.

Also see ...
*Budget of the United States Government Fisca Year 2009

U.S. military spending – Dept. of Defense plus nuclear weapons (in $billions) – is equal to the military spending of the next 15 countries combined.

These numbers show military expenditures for each country. Some say that U.S. military spending will naturally be higher because it has the highest Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of any country. The United States accounts for 47 percent of the world’s total military spending, however the U.S.’s share of the world's GDP is about 21 percent. Also note that of the top 15 countries shown, at least 12 are considered allies of the U.S. The U.S. outspends Iran and North Korea by a ratio of 72 to one.

Our military spending exceeds the rest of the world's spending combined, and we spend almost 10 times what the second-place country, China, spends. "Only" about $150 billion of the total U.S. amount is attributable to the two active wars we're fighting, in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thus, even if one wants to excludes those amounts, the basic picture remains the same. Nor do these amounts include the billions of dollars in military aid we give to fund the armies of other countries, such as Israel and Egypt, which alone comprise substantial portions of those countries' defense budgets.

And this gap between us and the rest of the world has widened considerably over the last 10 years. That's true because our own military spending, in absolute terms, has increased wildly during that time.

The budget numbers can be a bit confusing. For example, the Fiscal Year budget requests for US military spending do not include combat figures (which are supplemental requests that Congress approves separately). The budget for nuclear weapons falls under the Department of Energy, and for the 2009 request, was about $29 billion.

The cost of war (Iraq and Afghanistan) is estimated to be about $170 billion for the 2009 spending alone. Note that “Congress has already approved nearly $700 billion in supplemental funding for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and an additional $126 billion in FY'08 war funding is still pending before the House and Senate.”

Furthermore, other costs such as care for vetarans, healthcare, military training/aid, secret operations, may fall under other departments or be counted separately.

Also see ...
*US MilitarySpending World Military Spending

In American politics and policy, there is no distinction between "peacetime" and "war." We're the most militarized country in the world by far, on permanent war footing, far beyond what anyone could ever remotely argue is necessary for "defense" or a "strong defense," no matter how broad a definition one wants to adopt for those terms.

Why the USA Has Already Gone Broke

The neoconservatives in the White House and the Pentagon outsmarted themselves. They failed even to address the problem of how to finance their schemes of imperialist wars and global domination.

As a result, going into 2008, the United States finds itself in the anomalous position of being unable to pay for its own elevated living standards or its wasteful, overly large military establishment. Its government no longer even attempts to reduce the ruinous expenses of maintaining huge standing armies, replacing the equipment that seven years of wars have destroyed or worn out, or preparing for a war in outer space against unknown adversaries.

Instead, the Bush administration puts off these costs for future generations to pay or repudiate. This fiscal irresponsibility has been disguised through many manipulative financial schemes (causing poorer countries to lend us unprecedented sums of money), but the time of reckoning is fast approaching.

There are three broad aspects to the US debt crisis. First, in the current fiscal year (2008) we are spending insane amounts of money on defense projects that bear no relation to the national security of the US. We are also keeping the income tax burdens on the richest segment of the population at strikingly low levels.

Second, we continue to believe that we can compensate for the accelerating erosion of our base and our loss of jobs to foreign countries through massive military expenditures. American politics has the mistaken belief that public policies focused on frequent wars, huge expenditures on weapons and munitions, and large standing armies can indefinitely sustain a wealthy capitalist economy. The opposite is actually true.

Third, in our devotion to militarism (despite our limited resources), we are failing to invest in our social infrastructure and other requirements for the long-term health of the US. These are what economists call opportunity costs, things not done because we spent our money on something else.

Our public education system has deteriorated alarmingly. We have failed to provide health care to all our citizens and neglected our responsibilities as the world’s number one polluter. Most important, we have lost our competitiveness as a manufacturer for civilian needs, an infinitely more efficient use of scarce resources than arms manufacturing.

Fiscal Disaster

Liars Figure The Figures Don't Lie

It is virtually impossible to overstate what our government spends on the military. The Department of Defense’s planned expenditures for the fiscal year 2008 are larger than all other nations’ military budgets combined.

The supplementary budget to pay for the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not part of the official defense budget, is itself larger than the combined military budgets of Russia and China. Defense-related spending for fiscal 2008 will exceed $1 trillion for the first time in history. The US has become the largest single seller of arms and munitions to other nations on Earth.

Before we try to break down and analyze this gargantuan sum, there is one important caveat. Figures on defense spending are notoriously unreliable. The numbers released by the Congressional Reference Service and the Congressional Budget Office do not agree with each other. Robert Higgs, senior fellow for political economy at the Independent Institute, says: “A well-founded rule of thumb is to take the Pentagon’s (always well publicized) basic budget total and double it” (1).

Even a cursory reading of newspaper articles about the Department of Defense will turn up major differences in statistics about its expenses. Some 30-40% of the defense budget is “black”,” meaning that these sections contain hidden expenditures for classified projects. There is no possible way to know what they include or whether their total amounts are accurate.

There are many reasons for this budgetary sleight-of-hand — including a desire for secrecy on the part of the president, the secretary of defense, and the military-industrial complex — but the chief one is that members of Congress, who profit enormously from defense jobs and pork-barrel projects in their districts, have a political interest in supporting the Department of Defense.

The Federal Government Exempts Itself From the Law

In 1996, in an attempt to bring accounting standards within the executive branch closer to those of the civilian economy, Congress passed the Federal Financial Management Improvement Act.

It required all federal agencies to hire outside auditors to review their books and release the results to the public. Neither the Department of Defense, nor the Department of Homeland Security, has ever complied. Congress has complained, but not penalized either department for ignoring the law. All numbers released by the Pentagon should be regarded as suspect.

In discussing the fiscal 2008 defense budget, as released on 7 February 2007, I have been guided by two experienced and reliable analysts: William D Hartung of the New America Foundation’s Arms and Security Initiative (2) and Fred Kaplan, defense correspondent for Slate.org (3). They agree that the Department of Defense requested $481.4bn for salaries, operations (except in Iraq and Afghanistan), and equipment.

They also agree on a figure of $141.7bn for the “supplemental” budget to fight the global war on terrorism — that is, the two on-going wars that the general public may think are actually covered by the basic Pentagon budget.

The Department of Defense also asked for an extra $93.4bn to pay for hitherto unmentioned war costs in the remainder of 2007 and, most creatively, an additional “allowance” (a new term in defense budget documents) of $50bn to be charged to fiscal year 2009. This makes a total spending request by the Department of Defense of $766.5 billion.

But there is much more. In an attempt to disguise the true size of the US military empire, the government has long hidden major military-related expenditures in departments other than Defense.

For example, $23.4 billion for the Department of Energy goes towards developing and maintaining nuclear warheads; and $25.3bn in the Department of State budget is spent on foreign military assistance (primarily for Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Republic, Egypt and Pakistan).

Another $1.03 billion outside the official Department of Defense budget is now needed for recruitment and re-enlistment incentives for the overstretched US military, up from a mere $174m in 2003, when the war in Iraq began.

The Department of Veterans Affairs currently gets at least $75.7 billion, 50% of it for the long-term care of the most seriously injured among the 28,870 (now over 150,000) soldiers so far wounded in Iraq and 1,708 (now over 5000) in Afghanistan. The amount is universally derided as inadequate. Another $46.4 billion goes to the Department of Homeland Security.

Missing from this compilation is $1.9 billion to the Department of Justice for the paramilitary activities of the FBI; $38.5 billion to the Department of the Treasury for the Military Retirement Fund; $7.6 billion for the military-related activities of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; and well over $200billion in interest for past debt-financed defense outlays.

This brings US spending for its military establishment during the current fiscal year, conservatively calculated, to at least $1.1 trillion.

Such expenditures are not only morally obscene, they are fiscally unsustainable. Many neo-conservatives and poorly informed patriotic Americans believe that, even though our defense budget is huge, we can afford it because we are the richest country on Earth. That statement is no longer true.

The world’s richest political entity, according to the CIA’s World Factbook, is the European Union. The EU’s 2006 GDP was estimated to be slightly larger than that of the US. Moreover, China’s 2006 GDP was only slightly smaller than that of the US, and Japan was the world’s fourth richest nation.

A more telling comparison that reveals just how much worse we’re doing can be found among the current accounts of various nations. The current account measures the net trade surplus or deficit of a country plus cross-border payments of interest, royalties, dividends, capital gains, foreign aid, and other income.

In order for Japan to manufacture anything, it must import all required raw materials. Even after this incredible expense is met, it still has an $88 billion per year trade surplus with the US and enjoys the world’s second highest current account balance (China is number one).

The US is number 163 — last on the list, worse than countries such as Australia and the UK that also have large trade deficits. Its 2006 current account deficit was $811.5 billion; second worst was Spain at $106.4bn. This is unsustainable.

It’s not just that our tastes for foreign goods, including imported oil, vastly exceed our ability to pay for them. We are financing them through massive borrowing. On 7 November 2007, the US Treasury announced that the national debt had breached _$9 trillion for the first time.

This was just five weeks after Congress raised the “debt ceiling” to $9.815 trillion.

If you begin in 1789, at the moment the constitution became the supreme law of the land, the debt accumulated by the federal government did not top $1 trillion until 1981. When George Bush became president in January 2001, it stood at approximately $5.7 trillion. Since then, it has increased by 45%.

This huge debt is explained by our defense expenditures.

read more
*Why the US has really gone broke

See The Videos

US Infrastructure Crisis

Let's End The Empire

Military Waste

Failed States:The Abuse of Power & the Assault on Democracy

See the other videos in this series at ....
*Failed States The Abuse of Power

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USA #1 Highest Poverty Rate Among Developed Nations

2009-02-13T23:29:00.018+01:00

In the United States, the official numbers tell us that
approximately 37 million people live in poverty.

As shockingly high as those numbers appear, I think they still significantly underrate the problem. The government uses an absurdly low cost of living to measure poverty.

The poverty threshold varies depending on age and family size. On average a family of four is considered to be living in poverty if its annual cash income is below $18,810, according to government guidelines.

The threshold falls to about $14,680 for a family of three, $12,015 for a couple and $9,393 for an individual.

In the United States over one-fifth of all U.S. children are living in poverty. U.S. policies were relatively ineffective in supplementing poverty-level incomes to keep children out of poverty.

After taking into account the taxes (including refundable taxes) and transfers, the U.S. still led the 16 developed countries in child poverty. Report: 1.3 million more Americans in poverty. Ranks of uninsured grow by 1.4 million, Census Bureau says.

The rise was more dramatic for children. There were 12.9 million living in poverty last year, or 17.6 percent of the under-18 population. That was an increase of about 800,000 from 2002, when 16.7 percent of all children were in poverty. The ranks of the uninsured have risen by more than 5 million.

Although the economy has added 1.5 million jobs over the past year, the economy was still shedding jobs as recently as the summer of 2003, and job growth has been slower than previous expansion periods.

In another sign of a growing economic problem that is a key issue in the presidential election, the Census Bureau said the number of Americans without health insurance coverage rose to 45 million or 15.6 percent of the population, up 1.4 million from 2002, when 15.2 percent of the population was uninsured.

The increase, which mainly affected working-age adults across income brackets, was caused by a drop in the percentage of people covered by private, employment-based health insurance. The government Medicare and Medicaid programs expanded to cover an additional 3 million people.

The rising inequality in American society should come as no surprise to anyone who has examined income distribution statistics from the past two decades.

While the top 20 percent of Americans, and especially the top 5 percent, have done very well indeed during the economic good times of the '80s and '90s, the vast majority of Americans have seen no real increase in their incomes despite the aura of prosperity.

Much of the blame lies with depressed wages, especially those earned by the working poor. Anyone receiving the current federal minimum wage of $5.15 per hour is unable to support a family, and if the minimum wage of thirty years ago were translated into today's dollars, it would be more than $2 higher approximately $7.35 than it actually is.

Nevertheless, a 1998 congressional effort to raise it to $6.15 went nowhere, and the successes that local activist groups have had in persuading several dozen major cities to adopt "Living Wage" measures that require municipal contractors to pay higher minimum wages have received little attention in the national press.

References

*Reform of Tax and Child Poverty Policy
*Making Poverty History
*Creative Destruction

Videos and Special Reports To Shock & Awe You Since 2004

Lies At the Top: American Military Casualties Are Misleading and Wrong

2009-02-13T03:57:00.027+01:00

US Military Statistics are
Misleading and Wrong and
Deliberately So

On June 29 2005, the Veterans Administration (an official U.S. body) admitted to the U.S. Congress that while there were over 103,000 U.S. military casualties from Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the official figures at the time were showing 13,000 casualties.

A senior Pentagon official confirmed on the condition of anonymity that the actual death toll of U.S. service personnel as of 1st May 2006 in Iraq was in excess of 12,000. The real number of casualties – i.e. those unable to return to active service - is in excess of 150,000. He also confirmed that all reports from the U.S. military in Iraq confirmed that Iraqi resistance to the occupation growing better organized and more deadly by the day.

Those Not Counted

1. Soldiers killed or injured in any other way other than a direct bullet or bomb not counted.
2. Soldier shot and/or wounded but died on a flight to a U.S. military hospital not counted.
3. Anyone who dies in hospital or a U.S. military base not counted.
4. Severe mental illnesses those who are medically diagnosed as depressed and/or suicidal not counted.
5. Long term physical or mental problems resulting from brain damage not counted.
6. 15,000 or more US casualties not battle casualties are not counted.
7. Soldiers serving in the American military not American citizens are not counted.
8. Private contractors killed (over 100,000 active) not counted.

Also over 40,000 American soldiers have deserted.

Because American censors frequently make certain sites disappear,
here are the latest reference links that are still active to document this
and more information ...

*Hidden War Dead: Iraq

*20,000 Brain-injured Troops Not Counted as War Casualties

other reference links ...
*Distortions Of Casualties
*American casualties in Iraq is much higher than reported

Other Statistics

The US army is reported to be 40 per cent short of its recruitment target.

Despite a joining bonus of $90,000 paid over three years, of which $20,000 is in cash and $70,000 in benefits, along with a cancelling of the loans many a young American must take to afford to go to college.

There are reports also that people almost 40 years old are now eligible to join the military, and that the physical and intellectual standards for recruits have been lowered. Almost 30 per cent of new recruits leave within six months.

Other Suicide factors

In a state of shock and disillusionment about a war he had previously supported, 40 year old Eysselinck committed suicide at his home.

It turns out that while working in Iraq, a major stressor for Eysselinck was the persistent attempts by RONCO headquarters to disarm him and his team in Iraq with a view to avoid potential liability. This had become an ongoing struggle, even after other contractors who had been unarmed were killed, ambushed and severely beaten. Eysselinck had threatened to quit if they disarmed him.

read more ...

*The US Occupation of Iraq: Casualties Not Counted
*Other American Suicide Statistics

Casualties in Afghanistan & Iraq

"The view of the British chain of command is that the Americans' use of violence is not proportionate and is over-responsive to the threat they are facing. They don't see the Iraqi people the way we see them. They view them as racially inferior. They are not concerned about the Iraqi loss of life in the way the British are."

reference link ...
*The Real Iraq War Casualties
reference link ...
*US military tactics condemned
reference link ...
*Casualties in Afghanistan & Iraq

Pros & Cons of Kickstarting Capitalism

2009-02-11T02:44:00.071+01:00

Political Youth Then and Now

Today's Obama "Yes We Can" - A stranger was seated next to a little black girl on the airplane when the stranger turned to her and said, "Let's talk. I've heard that flights go quicker if you strike up a conversation with your fellow passenger."

The little girl, who had just opened her coloring book, closed it slowly and said to the stranger, "What would you like to talk about?"

"Oh, I don't know," said the stranger. "Since you are a Negro, do you think that So-called President Elect Barak Obama is qualified for the job?" and he smiles.

"OK", she said. "That could be an interesting topic. But let me ask you a question first. A horse, a cow, and a deer all eat the same stuff 'grass '.

Yet a deer excretes little pellets, while a cow turns out a flat patty, and a horse produces clumps of dried grass. "Why do you suppose that is?"

The stranger, visibly surprised by the little girl's intelligence, thinks about it and says, "Hmmm, I have no idea."

To which the little girl replies, "Do you really feel qualified to discuss President Barak Obama... when you don't know shit?"

Provided by *Prove Me Wrong

Whenever the economy stumbles, politicians and interest groups commonly argue that government spending should be increased. Based on a theory known as Keynesianism, this increase is supposed to boost economic performance.

Yet the notion that bigger government leads to more growth is both theoretically unsound and empirically false.

This strange theory was first put forth back during the 1930s, when America was suffering from a deep downturn. An economist named John Maynard Keynes argued that the economy could be boosted if the government borrowed money and spent it.

According to this Keynesian approach, this new spending would put money in people’s pockets, and the recipients of the funds would then spend the money. This would, according to the theory, prime the pump as the money began circulating through the economy.

Watch This First

See the Complete series ...
*The New World Order Is Not New

The Keynesians also said that some tax cuts — particularly lump-sum rebates — could have the same impact since the purpose is to have the government borrow and somehow put the money in the hands of people who will spend it.

So is this the right recipe to boost a flagging economy? Keynesian theory sounds good, and it would be nice if it made sense, but it has a rather glaring logical fallacy. It overlooks the fact that, in the real world, government can’t inject money into the economy without first taking money out of the economy.

Money Government Puts In Economy's Right Pocket Is Money First Removed From Economy's Left Pocket ...

Put more bluntly, Keynesianism only looks at one-half of the equation. It conveniently ignores the fact that any money that the government puts in the economy’s right pocket is money that is first removed from the economy’s left pocket. As such, there is no increase in what Keynesians refer to as aggregate demand.

The bottom line is that Keynesianism doesn’t boost national income, it merely redistributes it.

The people who lend the money to government generally are not the same people who get money in their pockets because of the new spending or tax rebates, but that’s not important. The Keynesian theory is based on the notion that there will be an increase in overall spending power, yet that clearly is not the case.

Some advocates of this theory get a bit more creative and say that Keynesianism works because it increases consumer spending rather than the money sitting idle.

But money that is unspent by consumers does not sit idle. It winds up in the banking system someplace and is used to finance investment spending.

Stimulus Programs Increase Consumption
No Increase In Economic Output ...

So-called stimulus programs, at best, shift how national income is used so that more gets consumed rather than invested, but at noted earlier, there is no increase in overall economic output.

It is worth noting that government could finance new spending through inflation. Thankfully that option doesn’t seem to be on the table since almost all politicians now realize that it would be foolish to mimic the disastrous policies of basket-case economies such as Argentina and Zimbabwe.

The real-world evidence also confirms that Keynesianism is a failure. Indeed, it was a failure even before Keynes published *The General Theory in the mid-1930s. More recently, George W. Bush gave out so-called rebate checks in 2001 and 2008, yet there was no positive effect in either case. And Bush certainly was a big spender, yet that didn’t work either.

Not that this should be a big surprise. *Surveys of the academic literature reveal that even left-wing international bureaucracies are producing research showing that bigger government hurts economic performance by misallocating national resources.

The American Recession - Depression Experience

What is even more interesting is that if you look at the GDP output for the era, the US recovered by 1936-37 (including the pre-1927 growth rate) and was then hit with the price tag for all the New Deal starting in 1938 which caused a recession.

Combine that with the unemployment figures, however, and you get the result of each person employed being more productive, which is one of the effects of getting rid of inefficient businesses: those that survive or start-up with new manufacturing methods employ fewer people, but produce more goods at a lower cost.

When you get to WWII the New Deal retirement system kicks in just as the economy needs every worker of older age that it can get: from that you get the temporary tax benefit to private firms to offer health insurance, which was previously a ‘perk’ to high paid employees and executives.

That temporary relief became a permanent problem, so that we now spend more today, per person and adjuste for inflation, than our grand parents did on health care.

It isn’t that procedures are too expensive, it is that health care is subsidized which sets a minimum floor of pricing due to insured payments and government encouraging increases in payments through the government run health benefits plans.

It isn’t that so many people are uninsured (and what an awful way to pay for something) but that so many *are*. Insurance only works if a pay-out happens rarely - and that is not the case with health insurance… but then learning that subsidies cause over-use of whatever is being subsidized is something politicians love to ignore, across the political spectrum.

In spite of all the circumlocution and commotion by President Roosevelt, the 1930s President never came close to ending the depression economy. The massive deficit spending of World War II did end the depression economy and set it upon the road to postwar prosperity.

Consider World War II from an economic viewpoint. It was a huge public works operation financed by unprecedented deficit spending. It commandeered the productive capacity of this country and then destroyed this production in the battlefield. Why didn’t this bankrupt the country?

Theoretically, an operation like that should have bankrupted the country like a closed system business operation would have been bankrupted. (Fortunately, free-market capitalism at the macroeconomic level is open system.)

One can only imagine the derision and criticism had anyone of stature, in the 1930's, proposed such a program to end the depression economy. But there’s no denying that World War II deficit spending did do it.

Until one has a theoretical framework that can satisfactorily explain why World War II, not only did not bankrupt the country, but was the key factor in economic recovery — all one can do is bewail the problem without offering any solutions that will work *Open system perspective.

Its republicans, not democrats you need to convince of the truthfulness of this thesis. Its republicans who have been spending down the treasury for the past decade. That’s the whole reason they got their asses kicked in the past two elections. If we can’t depend on republicans to exercise some fiscal responsibility, then what are they good for?

Its the only reason that I tolerate all their incessant moralizing, their over-dependence on religion for their politics and their unending desire to get involved in the affairs of my bedroom. If they can’t control themselves when it comes to the budget, then they’re worthless. Which is exactly why they got their asses kicked. There are 700 billion reasons why they should be fired.

The depression didn’t end until 1946 or so. Ask anyone who lived through the war, or read any available history, and you will find that the citize4ns at home still didn’t have much. Rationing and scarcicty were still the order of the day. Aggregate cash flow numbers mean nothing.

The situation only got fixed when the wartime and other depression-era controls were lifted and after many trade limitations were listed.

We might also remember that the US could also sell to the rest of the world as many other countries could not because they were lying in ruins after the war.

In short, all WWII did was kill many millions of people, ruin the psyches of millions more, destroy untold amounts of wealth, and set economic progress back by a decade or more.

During WW-II, there was massive increase in destructive consumption, but also a massive increase in capital investments, the net result was a stagnant economy for the individual.

After the war, the capital investment was already in place, and the destructive consumption ceased. Individual productivity, forced upon the economy by manpower shortages, and amplified by the capital investment, rose to unprecedented heights.

We were able to sell our production for a profit instead of blowing it up.

The Fools Running The Federal Reserve

The half of Mr. Paulson’s 700B TARP funds which he’s already spent shoring up banks, including the one where he used to work, seems to have been vaporized already by short sellers. Too bad Mr. Cox is a fool on the subject of short selling and uptick rules. Maybe we should ask Robert Mugabe to take over at the Treasury, but then they seem to be following his policies anyway…print money.

After all, my fellow Republicans seem to have vaporized more wealth through ineptitude than Mugabe has by design. For what they’ve lost they might have purchased Uganda lock stock and barrel. Now the Democrats are going to try to outdue the present crop of nitwits. Throw money at the Big Three, now there’s a novel idea. Amtrack only managed to sublimate 13B in a decade. GM and Ford will easily go better in a quarter, or maybe even a month if they really work at it.

Ultimately, it was the increase in worker productivity, enabled by capital investment that ended the Great Depression.

Let us see how well worker productivity fares with stimulus checks drawn at the expense of capital investment this time around.

It has never worked before, but I hear that since the right people are in charge now, it is bound to work this time.

The only thing that is known to truly work is to lower taxes and help small business create jobs. Reagan had it right.

The Stock Market approves because capital starts to filter down into the economy, the government approves because they receive more revenue from increased production and consumer spending, and the people approve because they get to go back to work.

Government welfare programs don’t kickstart anything, they only seem to prolong a recession; FDR proved that! The prewar economy was characterized by excess supply side capacity versus demand (farmers dumping milk, killing livestock and burning fields).

The war economy was precisely opposite: due to war, more demand than supply thus rationing: so it is true the citizens still didn’t have much.

But there was full employment with wandering hobos shanghaied off the streets to work in factories. The private economy greatly improved their equity position and when the war was over, with price controls lifted, there was a burst of inflation due to pent-up demand.

During deflation, when money supply is in a collapsing spiral due to debt deleveraging, the result is currency values soaring relative to other assets — the marketplace is saying that there is a shortage of dollars. This is nothing more than an imbalance in the supply/demand equation.

It is so simple to solve this problem that it seems to defy comprehension. Print money and introduce this cash flow into the private economy through tax rebates or cuts.

This would be just the same as if the US treasury owned a mine, with a shaft of solid gold, for use in an emergency such as this. If this doesn’t seem like it’s possible that the value ascribed to dollars is real those dollars could be buried and recovered through mining with the purpose of installing real value to the asset.

It is just as important to create money for price stability as it is to stop printing money for inflation.

The government can indeed create an asset to which the marketplace will ascribe full value. And this would not be a liability to be paying off with future cash flow.

The only thing the conservatives can offer is the inevitability of financial collapse in severe economic downturn from excess credit expansion. Just try selling this load of pessimism to the electorate.

This is the conservatives’ Achilles heel in the current crisis. The political party that allows this to happen will be tossed out of office and wander in the political wilderness for the next 40 years, if it doesn’t destroy the party.

Conservatives should (posthaste) support large rebate like cash flow into the private economy until asset prices stop declining and housing prices start levitating. At this point to crisis will be over because toxic mortgages will be tradeable.

Otherwise, the big government political class will offer the World War II argument for huge public sector spending that won’t end like it did when World War II was over.

This could end up to be a permanent entrenchment of liberal/leftist European-style ruling political class which would destroy our dynamic entrepreneurial economy. It’s much better to have this money in the private economy for investment and consumer demand — for much greater multiplier effect. This allows the economy to grow in the direction it ought to.

Unemployment remained very high throughout the 1930s and overall output did not get back to the 1929 level until World War II. But why did WWII end the depression? Oh, because government spending increased aggregate demand. That put the unused capacity of the nation to work.

Under serious recession/depression conditions deficit spending is indicated. The problem becomes it is addictive.Fiat money inflation (temporarily) benefits only those who are first to get the new currency - the politicians and their friends.

From there, as the purchasing power of the dollar declines, each successive receiver and holder of dollars gets successively more shortchanged for his past real labor and savings. This is why counterfeiting - whether legalized or not is always morally wrong; it’s theft!

Fiat does not create real sustainable, stable, reliable value; only production of real, not fiat, goods and services can create real wealth.

The Root of the Problem

This is the root problem of the mainstream modern economics profession: virtually no economist studies the root of economics - production and trade by individuals and corporations. They’re too busy studying consumption for the statistic folly of concocting ever more impossible schemes to centrally “plan” and manage” the flow of billions of individual trades.

When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others… Destroyers seize gold and leave its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. [like the FED] Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced.

Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked ‘Account overdrawn. We need to return to free banking and privately issued, competing currencies.

Then the quality of our money would be restored and its value would again be objective - set by millions of individual traders every day instead of by the whims of 12 Fed governors every 6 weeks.

Of course, the statistics demand a monopoly on the issue of currency because if they had to compete with REAL money, they be out of business in a week and their giant looting scheme would be over.

Under a free market, only reckless fools would take Federal Reserve IOU Nothings in payment for their hard work. Abolish the Fed.

What the government should be doing, is borrowing now, whilst the economy heads to recession, and increase spending in order to bolster consumer spending and investment, but then be taking the money out of the economy in the good times, the boom.

This way the two extremes of the standard boom and bust economic cycle are softened and the standard of living can still increase over time with recessions being shallower and shorter, and booms not being so dramatic and, increasing inflationary pressure.

Today's Get Off Your Ass & Do Something Video

2009-02-10T21:23:00.002+01:00