The mystery over who ordered U.S. Army forces to patrol the streets of the south Alabama town where 11 people were killed in a shooting spree last week has been solved. WND confirmed troops from nearby Ft. Rucker provided limited assistance after a request from the police chief of Samson, Ala.
"Under the authority of a mutual aid agreement which Fort Rucker has with local law enforcement community in Samson, Alabama, the Samson city police chief requested support from military police after the shooting," Lt. Col. Almarah Belk, an Air Force officer working for the Department of Defense press office, told WND in a telephone interview.
"Fort Rucker provided 22 military police personnel, and five vehicles were sent into Samson to provide non-law enforcement support in the town of Samson, Alabama," Belk said.
WND has reported extensively that USNORTHCOM is a combatant military command based at Peterson Air Force base in Colorado Springs, Colorado, with a mission to provide Department of Defense-directed military support to state and local law enforcement in domestic emergency situations.
In an exclusive interview with WND during Vigilant Shield 2008, commanding officer Gen. Renuart affirmed USNORTHCOM would deploy U.S. troops on U.S. soil should the president declare a domestic emergency in which the Department of Defense ordered USNORTHCOM involvement.
http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=92191
For more information on the US Northern Command see my respective post...
http://yophat.blogspot.com/2009/02/us-northern-command.html
A lawyer threatened by a federal judge with sanctions for filing one of the myriad legal challenges to President Obama's eligibility has responded by criticizing the judge for relying on "hearsay" blog information for his decision and suggesting he should be given a hearing that could include discovery of the president's original birth certificate.
WND reported earlier when Judge James Robertson dismissed a lawsuit filed by John D. Hemenway on behalf of Gregory S. Hollister, a retired military officer, who is subject to being recalled to duty and therefore would need to know the legitimacy of any order coming from Obama.
In his statement dismissing the case, Robertson ridiculed the complaint, which never had a court hearing, ruling that the eligibility issues had been "blogged, texted, twittered and otherwise massaged."
"The issue of the president's citizenship was raised, vetted, blogged, texted, twittered, and otherwise massaged by America's vigilant citizenry during Mr. Obama's two-year-campaign for the presidency, but this plaintiff wants it resolved by a court," Robertson wrote.
Wrong on most counts, Hemenway contends.
"This is not what Plaintiff Hollister’s concern is," Hemenway wrote in a court-required response. "Plaintiff Hollister is a retired colonel, who is subject to recall. Plaintiff’s concern is how an order received from Soetoro/Obama is to be regarded. Would it be a legal order which he must obey or an illegal order which he must disobey?
"These are not frivolous matters, as the learned Judge Robertson has suggested. Possible illegal orders are a matter of great concern to officers in the armed forces. Undersigned counsel himself entered the Army of the United States during WWII and was promoted to Infantry Second Lieutenant preparing for the anticipated landings in Japan which were scheduled for November 1, 1945. But for President Truman’s use of nuclear weapons to end the war, this would have transpired. The legality of orders in and out of combat is of paramount importance," he wrote.
Hemenway continued with a "second point" Robertson raised.
That is, he said, that "the president of the United States had been properly vetted."
"This assumes facts not in evidence and was not addressed. It is clear that the constitutional qualifications of President Soetoro/Obama have not been properly vetted. Judge Robertson even cites an earlier case filed in Pennsylvania by one of the two lead attorneys in this case, in which the judge claimed candidates in the recent presidential election had never been more closely vetted. Nothing was further from the truth. Effectively, the Pennsylvania District Court judge was introducing his own hearsay and opinion into the case as if it were acceptable evidence," Hemenway wrote.
"It is sad to read this court's use of material from the Internet to imply that the issues in the numerous lawsuits filed have been resolved by the 'twittering and blogging' to determine that the litigants are invoking 'conspiracy theorists.' It suggests that the intellectual capacity of this court focused on the issues in the instant suit at a very low level, perhaps for political purposes, such as to win attention from the highest authority when a seat on the Supreme Court of the United States becomes vacant," Hemenway wrote.
Further, Hemenway wrote, Robertson is threatening him with sanctions for "the costs allegedly borne by the defendants when all that would be necessary to terminate this political chicanery (substitute 'crisis') that now has involved hundreds of thousands of concerned citizens would be for President Obama to display his actual birth certificate."
Instead, ranks of attorneys have been hired to block "access to his records by sealing his college records, refusing access to his 'vault' birth certificate; and all other documents which would provide his citizenship status."
Hemenway said, "Defendant Soetoro/Obama has never responded. Instead, a document [purporting] to be Soetoro/Obama's birth certificate was placed on the Internet in sites including, but not limited to: factcheck.org, dailykos.com and fightthesmears.com.
"This image so presented was later challenged by a forensic expert as a forged and/or altered document. … It is a widely recognized legal principle that, when a false or modified or counterfeit document is presented as the original, under discovery, the actual document must be presented," he said.
"Moreover, this document is a Certification of Live Birth which is issued by the Hawaiian State Government when births abroad or births occurring outside of a hospital are registered with the Hawaii Department of Health. A proper birth certificate provides information as to where the child was born, weight, length, parent’s information, doctor information, etc. The Certification of Live Birth provided by Soetoro/Obama only shows he was born – somewhere," he said.
http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=92149
Increasingly, the International Monetary Fund, with the support of the United States and Russia, appears positioned to launch a one-world currency at the upcoming G-20 meeting in London.
The move is intended to be a last-ditch effort to prevent massive bank failures from occurring throughout the European Union.
The idea is for the IMF to issue at least $250 billion in Special Drawing Rights, or SDRs, to IMF member states as a method of placing a safety net under developing countries that might otherwise have to declare bankruptcy.
The idea gained momentum Tuesday when the Moscow Times published an article revealing that the Kremlin intended to use the G-20 meeting, beginning April 2, to push for the IMF to utilize SDRs as "a super-reserve currency widely accepted by the whole of the international community."
U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is on the record calling for the G-20 to support "substantially increasing emergency IMF resources" by up to $500 billion to deal with the global economic crisis.
"The IMF is looking for about $500 billion in SDRs in order to bail out the European Union banks that have lost trillions of dollars making loans into the Eastern European countries the EU thought would adopt the euro after joining the EU," said Bob Chapman, author of the online International Forecaster newsletter, in a telephone interview.
"If the United States or other countries come up with $500 billion the IMF wants to back these new SDRs, the $500 billion will end up being loans to the IMF that the IMF will simply never pay back," Chapman explained.
"SDRs under the IMF proposal before the G-20 are going to end up being a newly invented one-world currency manufactured by a one-world organization, created to ease nations out of failed fiat currencies like the dollar," he argued.
SDRs are international reserve assets calculated by the IMF in a basket of major currencies that are allocated to the IMF 185 member nation-states in relation to the capital, largely in gold or widely accepted foreign currencies that the IMF member nation-states have on deposit.
The Washington and Kremlin-backed proposal would issue SDRs to central banks of IMF member states far in excess of any gold or currency reserves the member states have on deposit with the IMF.
http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=92207
WASHINGTON - At least 13 firms receiving billions of dollars in bailout money owe a total of more than $220 million in unpaid federal taxes, a key lawmaker said Thursday.
Rep. John Lewis, chairman of a House subcommittee overseeing the federal bailout, said two firms owe more than $100 million apiece.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29773472/
At his town hall meeting in Costa Mesa, Calif., Wednesday evening, President Obama compared embattled insurer AIG and other large failing banks to a suicide bomber.
"A lot of people say, 'Well, why not just let the banks fail?'" the president said. "'Why don't we just let them fail, let them go bankrupt, what's the problem?'"
The president said that if the local community bank, Fullerton Community Bank, failed, "We've got something called the FDIC, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, that would take it over, it would guarantee all the deposits so you don't have to worry about your deposits. They are not at risk. And it would be able to kind of sort things out and then resell the bank fairly quickly and it doesn't threaten the system as a whole."
Bigger banks, however, "Citicorp or Bank of America or, you know, Wells Fargo that controls 70 percent of the banking system, and all of them are weakening, you can't afford to have all those banks all at once start going under. Even though the deposits might be guaranteed, you've got the entire economy resting on that credit."
"Here's the problem," Mr. Obama said, "It's almost like they've got -- they've got a bomb strapped to them and they've got their hand on the trigger. You don't want them to blow up. But you've got to kind of talk them, ease that finger off the trigger."
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/03/president-ob-14.html
Watch the other 30% disappear quickly into the hands that currently control the 70%!
OTTAWA (AFP) — A plane set off Wednesday during a break in bad weather to re-supply three stranded British researchers, who are trapped and fighting to survive in the North Pole, organizers of the aid effort said.
The team aims to gather data to complement satellite and submarine observations to measure the sea ice and plot how fast it is disappearing during their 850-kilometer (530-mile) trek.
Global warming is believed to be the main culprit in the rapidly melting north polar ice cap that is freeing up new sea routes and untapped mineral resources on the ocean bottom.
In a statement on Tuesday, Hadow described the team's desperate plight.
"We're hungry, the cold is relentless, our sleeping bags are full of ice and because we're not moving, the colder we get," he said.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ikCGhKLMGDwCv15YPvnDOBGoFizw
Sounds like warming isn't an issue!
Here's a few excerpts from two of the Protocols (written in the late 19th century)...
Protocol 20The reforms projected by us in the financial institutions and principles of the goyim will be clothed by us in such forms as will alarm nobody. We shall point out the necessity of reforms in consequence of the disorderly darkness into which the goyim by their irregularities have plunged the finances. The first irregularity, as we shall point out, consists in their beginning with drawing up a single budget which year after year grows owing to the following cause: this budget is dragged out to half the year, then they demand a budget to put things right, and this they expend in three months, after which they ask for a supplementary budget, and all this ends with a liquidation budget. But, as the budget of the following year is drawn up in accordance with the sum of the total addition, the annual departure from the normal reaches as much as 50 percent in a year, and so the annual budget is trebled in ten years. Thanks to such methods, allowed by the carelessness of the goy States, their treasuries are empty. The period of loans supervenes, and that has swallowed up remainders and brought all the goy States to bankruptcy.
Every kind of loan proves infirmity in the State and a want of understanding of the rights of the State. Loans hang like a sword of Damocles over the heads of rulers, who, instead of taking from their subjects by a temporary tax, come begging with oustretched palm of our bankers. Foreign loans are leeches which there is no possibility of removing from the body of the State until they fall off of themselves or the State flings them off. But the goy States do not tear them off; they go on in persisting in putting more on to themselves so that they must inevitably perish, drained by voluntary blood-letting.
What also indeed is, in substance, a loan, especially a foreign loan? A loan is -an issue of government bills of exchange containing a percentage obligation commensurate to the sum of the loan capital.
If the loan bears a charge of 5 per cent, then in twenty years the State vainly pays away in interest a sum equal to the loan borrowed, in forty years it is paying a double sum, in sixty -treble, and all the while the debt remains an unpaid debt.
Protocol 21When we ascend the throne of the world all these financial and similar shifts, as being not in accord with our interests, will be swept away so as not to leave a trace, as also will be destroyed all money markets, since we shall not allow the prestige of our power to be shaken by fluctuations of prices set upon our values, which we shall announce by law at the price which represents their full worth without any possibility of lowering or raising (Raising gives the pretext for lowering, which indeed was where we made a beginning in relation to the values of the goyim.)
We shall replace the money markets by grandiose government credit institutions, the object of which will be to fix the price of industrial values in accordance with government views. These institutions will be in a position to fling upon the market five hundred millions of industrial paper in one day, or to buy up for the same amount. In this way all industrial undertakings will come into dependence upon us. You may imagine for yourselves what immense power we shall thereby secure for ourselves. . .
for more on the Protocols...
http://yophat.blogspot.com/2009/03/protocols-you-be-judge.html
The following is a snippet from a secret memorandum written by high-ranking German officers and distributed among an elite group of German leaders in Bonn and other parts of the world. It is an electrifying picture of current events.
Economic difficulties will one day plunge the United States down from its present dizzy heights. Such a catastrophe can be brought about through crafty manipulations and through artificially engendered crises. Such maneuvers are routine measures which have already been employed in international power struggle and will be used again and again as long as economic rivals fight for power positions and markets in the world.
It is quite conceivable that America, weakened by a depression, will one day seek support from a resurrected Germany. Such a prospect would open tremendous possibilities for the future power position of a bloc introducing a new order in the world.
That was written in 1950. It can be found in T.H. Tetens’ 1953 book, Germany Plots With the Kremlin.
http://www.thetrumpet.com/index.php?q=6042.4438.0.0
For more than a year, the U.S. Federal Reserve System has been increasingly acting as the world's central bank, injecting hundreds of billions of dollars into foreign government treasuries in an effort to increase liquidity in those countries.
The foreign central banks have used the U.S. currency to bail out financial institutions within their borders. The Fed program links its balance sheet directly to the fates of foreign central banks at a time when they're on the ropes.
The program has so far gone unreported in the mainstream media and is a major expansion of Federal Reserve involvement in the global economy. It represents a stark break from the prior role of the Fed, moving it into territory more traditionally occupied by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The program puts both the Fed and the foreign central banks at increased risk. If the bailed-out banks can't repay the loans, the foreign central bank is still on the hook to the Fed. It would have to raise the money by selling debt -- which most Europeans are finding difficult today -- or raise taxes or cut spending, actions that further exacerbate the economic crisis. Or, the foreign central bank could default, leaving the U.S. holding a bag of foreign currency of plummeting value.
The U.S. taxpayer has also bailed out foreign banks indirectly by pumping billions into American Insurance Group, which announced Sunday that it had forwarded that cash to counterparties that include foreign banks such as Societe Generale, Deutsche Bank, Calyon, Credit Suisse, the Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays.
"I'm concerned about Europe," Paul Krugman wrote in Monday's New York Times. "Actually, I'm concerned about the whole world -- there are no safe havens from the global economic storm. But the situation in Europe worries me even more than the situation in America."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/17/us-injecting-billions-int_n_175454.html
The Federal Reserve's decision to fire up the printing presses to the tune of $1 trillion continued to wash over world financial markets on Thursday, pushing the price of government bonds higher and dragging down the value of the dollar.
On Wall Street, stocks fluctuated in early trading, a day after they bounced in response to the Fed's plans to buy up $750 billion in mortgage-backed securities and $300 billion in Treasury debt.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/03/19/business/20marketsupdate.php
March 17 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. risks sending the world into a depression as its bailouts of failed companies rob healthy businesses of capital, investor Jim Rogers said.
“The U.S. is taking assets from competent people and giving them to incompetent people,” said Rogers, chairman of Singapore-based Rogers Holdings and the author of books including “Investment Biker” and “Adventure Capitalist.” “That’s bad economics.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a3kTp0KUJWWE&refer=worldwide
A Massachusetts bank that has defied the odds and remained free of bad loans amid the economic crisis is now being criticized by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. for the cautious business practices that caused its rare success.
The secret behind East Bridgewater Savings Bank's accomplishments is the careful approach of 62-year-old chief executive Joseph Petrucelli.
"We’re paranoid about credit quality," he told the Boston Business Journal.
That paranoia has allowed East Bridgewater Savings Bank to stand out among a flurry a failing banks, with no delinquent loans or foreclosures on its books, the Journal reported. East Bridgewater Savings didn’t even need to set aside in money in 2008 for anticipated loan losses.
But rather than reward Petrucelli's tactics, the FDIC recently criticized his bank for not lending enough, slapping it with a "needs to improve" rating under the Community Reinvestment Act, the Journal reported.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,509584,00.html
The threat is only implied in more than two-dozen state sovereignty bills making the rounds in legislatures across the country, except for a New Hampshire bill where the authors didn't hold back. Any law infringing on the state's right to self govern would trigger the dissolution of the nation: "All powers previously delegated to the United States of America by the Constitution ... shall revert to the several states individually."
The S.C. House of Representatives has approved a resolution with the same state's rights concerns (but omiting the dire consequences), and the Senate is expected to soon take up a similar resolution.
State Rep. Michael Pitts (R-Laurens), who authored the House bill, says that it's not as much a threat to the Union as it is a "wake-up call." Federal mandates have strained his patience, particularly those laws relating to gun control and the treatment of illegal immigrants. Threats aren't necessary, he says.
"If Washington doesn't wake up and our economy keeps going the way it is going, I don't think we'll have to dissolve the union," he says. "It won't be able to stand."
http://www.charlestoncitypaper.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A66068
This urgent message is from our correspondent, Linn Cohen-Cole:
We have less than two weeks to stop the take over the farms and ranches.
H.R. 875 and S. 425
We need to rally people immediately.
The new administration is pushing new farm controls through Congress as fast as possible and have coordinated the bills so there will be no debate and the committee meetings are closed.
Transparency, change, undoing Bush's regulations, giving the public time to comment, grassroots anything? Our entire food system and thus our health is being decided without the public knowing and those who do know have zero access and the media is absent and they are moving at warp speed to sew this up.
Would you put these out, in this order, showing the article as you do so people are more likely to read it? They are imperfect but the closest I've come to explaining how the game is going to be played. No direct, frontal assault on organic farming but an insidious process of "infecting" organic farming...
Example: imagine Joel Salatin's wonderful organic farm under the direction of the USDA, with detailed instructions on what he must feed and when, how he must medically "treat" his animals and with what, what he must "spray" and when, ... you get the picture. These bills will industrialize all farms and insure the farmers are forced to buy chemicals and drugs. Organic is dead. As well as human control over the food supply. As well as health.
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26714
The United States is the largest borrower in the world. The US national debt has already exceeded the level of 11 trillion dollars as of the beginning of 2009 and continues to grow like an avalanche. Experts say that the USA has only two ways to solve the problem: to either declare default or trigger off a war.
Dmitry Abzalov, an expert with the Center for Russia ’s Political Conjuncture, said that governments currently take on the debts of corporations. “The corporate debts crisis thus becomes the crisis of governmental debts. The US debt in the beginning of 2009 amounted to $10.6 trillion. Taking into consideration the current deficit budget of the United States , as well as the prospects for the deficit of the budget during the current year, it becomes clear that the US Treasury bond market is based on no alternative whatsoever. There is no other way for investors to invest their funds with treasury bonds being the only option,” the expert told Bigness.ru.
he debt percentage grows every day, which makes the USA borrow more and more on a daily basis. America will have no chances to pay off the debt,” the expert said.
Inga Foksha, an analyst with Aton Investment Company, agrees that the US default is quite possible, although she is certain that it will not happen unless the world finds an alternative to the US dollar. The dollar will collapse immediately in case of default, which is absolutely unacceptable, because 63 percent of world reserves are saved in dollars. Their collapse will trigger the global economic collapse.
“Technically, the default of the United States may occur during three or five years, although it is too early to say that it could be possible. The USA can print new dollars to pay their debts with them,” she said.
Nevertheless, the US government bonds still enjoy investors’ support and are still considered a risk-free investment.
Dmitry Abzalov believes that the current situation with the US national debt may end with a new war. The war will destroy excessive liquidity and the current debt.
“The war in Iraq began to delay the US crisis, which started brewing in the US economy at the end of 2000,” he said.
The Americans have been trying to raise their economy with the help of military actions for decades, since the Great Depression of the 1930s. A war boosts the nation’s industry, even if a recovery is based on defense orders.
http://english.pravda.ru/world/americas/19-03-2009/107263-usa_economy_debt-0
There is a certain sense of disheartening irony in the fact that many of President Obama’s cabinet-level nominees have tax problems. The Democratic Party is, after all, the party that promotes taxation to spread the wealth. How can America’s leaders ask its citizens to dig deep and open up their pocketbooks to help the country, if those in power refuse to pay the taxes they themselves legislate?
Another cabinet-level nominee revealed on March 2 that he owes thousands in unpaid taxes for 2005, 2006 and 2007. Trade representative nominee Ron Kirk is the fifth Obama appointee to admit that he neglected to pay what he owes.
Yes, tax cheats have always been with us. But if there was ever a time that America needed strong, impeccable leaders of character to steer us through troubled economic times, it is now. Unfortunately, in our time of greatest need, Washington’s tax problems are one more factor destroying the people’s faith in the most important institution in the land—the government.
Kirk’s tax revelations add to the long list of admissions.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner failed to pay $34,000 in taxes that he owed. What was his reward? We gave him the keys to the national Treasury. The highest financial post in the government has been given to someone who either couldn’t manage his own finances, or purposefully tried to cheat on his taxes.
Former chief performance officer nominee Nance Killefer also admitted to failing to pay taxes. Prior to her resignation, President Obama implied Killefer would make the government “more effective, more efficient, and more transparent.” Obama credited her with modernizing the Internal Revenue Service (irs) and wringing out inefficiencies so that taxpayers could get more for their money. A former irs head not paying her taxes—hardly an incentive to follow the rules, is it?
Labor Secretary Hilda Solis admitted that the family business run by her husband had $6,400 in tax liens against it.
Former secretary of health and human services nominee Tom Daschle is the biggest offender. Somehow he forgot to pay $140,000 in back taxes and interest. Maybe it was partially because he failed to disclose more than $300,000 worth of income.
Then there is Rep. Charles Rangel, who wields congressional oversight of the federal tax code as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. He apparently did not realize income from rental properties was considered reportable income. He has apologized, but is still under investigation by the House Ethics Committee over his taxes.
It is bad enough for taxpayer morale that so many of America’s national leaders have tax problems, but sadly, evidence indicates state legislators are equally culpable—maybe more so.
Consider Georgia. Twenty-two elected members of the Georgia General Assembly have not paid their taxes—some for several years—according to a news report published by the Lexington Herald-Leader. That equates to 10 percent of the Assembly.
Georgia Sen. Robert Brown was not on the original list of delinquents, but while arguing against a proposed rule that would give other senators more power to take action against senators who don’t pay their taxes, Brown revealed that he wasn’t even sure if he owed any state or federal government taxes because he hasn’t filed a tax return for the past two years.
http://www.thetrumpet.com/index.php?q=6021.4424.0.0
Mexican cartels are entrenched in at least 230 American cities, the National Drug Intelligence Center says. For years they have subcontracted the distribution of drugs to local U.S. street gangs. But as the cartels have grown in power thanks to the enormous and increasing cash flow generated by their booming business, they have assumed greater control of the process. By cutting out the middlemen, they now rake in higher profits, which enable them to expand their filthy business even more.
They’re not only infiltrating border cities: They are digging in as far north as Wisconsin and Alaska. And they’re bringing their criminal culture with them.
Phoenix now has the second-highest kidnapping rate of any city in the world—after Mexico City. Last year it averaged one abduction per day, and experts estimate only half are reported. Police there are becoming personally acquainted with the cartels’ signature ruthlessness: smashing the fingers of victims, pistol whipping, arbitrary killing to instill fear. “The tactics are moving north,” says Phoenix Assistant Police Chief Andy Anderson. Last month officials found a body of a man who had been tortured, shot, completely enveloped in duct tape and dumped. Gangs sometimes dress as Phoenix police or an American swat team as they raid homes. This is 185 miles from the Mexican border.
Atlanta, 1,500 miles from the border, has become the cartels’ top drug distribution center for the eastern U.S., according to a USA Today report last week. At the same time, this city is seeing a spike in assaults, abductions and executions. “The violence follows the drugs,” says fbi agent David Cuthbertson.
In Birmingham, Alabama, the bodies of five Mexican men—bound, gagged and electrocuted in what officials think was a drug-related hit—were found. Greenville, Tennessee, has indicted dozens of cartel-tied drug dealers. North Carolina has cartel cells that reach south of the border. Authorities in San Diego and Houston are convinced some murders there were assassinations ordered by drug traffickers from Mexico.
These are the types of projects the cash-rich cartels like to spend their money on. Another favorite project: incredibly sophisticated smuggling operations. The gangsters are building cross-border tunnels nine stories underground. They are purchasing semi-submersible vessels that can evade radar and travel at 20 knots. A recent year-long multi-agency investigation in Arizona exposed one organization bringing a billion dollars’ worth of marijuana into the U.S. via heavy duty camouflaged trucks; drivers wore night vision goggles so they could drive in the dark through the desert without headlights; scouts lived in the mountains for weeks on end radioing directives and warnings to drivers.
The cartels also use these routes to smuggle people. They sell their services to various groups for exorbitant fees, who turn around and extort money from the illegals traveling into the States. At hundreds of drop houses in American cities, immigrants are mistreated, tortured, raped—so criminals can extract ransoms from their families. “This is modern-day slavery of terrible proportions,” says Arizona state Sen. Jonathan Paton.
http://www.thetrumpet.com/index.php?q=6041.4435.0.0
WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama and his advisers have decided to expand significantly Afghanistan's security forces in the hope that a much larger professional army and national police force could fill a void left by the central government and do more to promote stability in the country, according to senior administration and Pentagon officials.
A plan awaiting final approval by the president would set a goal of about 400,000 troops and national police officers, more than twice the forces' current size, and more than three times the size that American officials believed would be adequate for Afghanistan in 2002, when the Taliban and Al Qaeda appeared to have been routed.
The officials said Mr. Obama was expected to approve a version of the plan in coming days as part of a broader Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy. But even members of Mr. Obama's national security team appeared taken aback by the cost projections of the program, which range from $10 billion to $20 billion over the next six or seven years.
By comparison, the annual budget for the entire Afghan government, which is largely provided by the United States and other international donors, is about $1.1 billion, which means the annual price of the program would be about twice the cost of operating the government of President Hamid Karzai.
Those figures include only the cost of training and establishing the forces, and officials are still trying to determine what the cost would be to sustain the security forces over the long term.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/03/19/asia/afghan.php
The Obama Deception is not about Left or Right: it's about a One World Government. The international banks plan to loot the people of the United States and turn them into slaves on a Global Plantation. Covered in this film: who Obama works for, what lies he has told, and his real agenda, and how his initial appointments and actions prove he serves the corporate oligarchs, not the American people. If you want to know the facts and cut through all the hype, this is the film for you.
LUXEMBOURG (Reuters) - A U.N. panel will next week recommend that the world ditch the dollar as its reserve currency in favor of a shared basket of currencies, a member of the panel said on Wednesday, adding to pressure on the dollar.
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE52H2CY20090318
Thursday, March 19, 2009
The House passed a bill yesterday which includes disturbing language indicating young people will be forced to undertake mandatory national service programs as fears about President Barack Obama’s promised “civilian national security force” intensify.
The Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act, known as the GIVE Act, was passed yesterday by a 321-105 margin and now goes to the Senate.
Under section 6104 of the bill, entitled “Duties,” in subsection B6, the legislation states that a commission will be set up to investigate, “Whether a workable, fair, and reasonable mandatory service requirement for all able young people could be developed, and how such a requirement could be implemented in a manner that would strengthen the social fabric of the Nation and overcome civic challenges by bringing together people from diverse economic, ethnic, and educational backgrounds.”
Section 120 of the bill also discusses the “Youth Engagement Zone Program” and states that “service learning” will be “a mandatory part of the curriculum in all of the secondary schools served by the local educational agency.”
“The legislation, slated to cost $6 billion over five years, would create 175,000 “new service opportunities” under AmeriCorps, bringing the number of participants in the national volunteer program to 250,000. It would also create additional “corps” to expand the reach of volunteerism into new sectors, including a Clean Energy Corps, Education Corps, Healthy Futures Corps and Veterans Service Corps, and it expands the National Civilian Community Corps to focus on additional areas like disaster relief and energy conservation,” reports Fox News.
The Senate is also considering a similar piece of legislation known as the “Serve America Act,” which also includes language about “Youth Engagement Zones”.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/house-passes-mandatory-national-service-bill.html
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. government is working on an integrated plan to address Mexico's escalating war with drug traffickers and could complete work on the initiative as early as this week, a top U.S. military official said on Tuesday.
Air Force Gen. Gene Renuart, who oversees U.S. military interests on both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border as the head of Northern Command, told the Senate that the plan would likely involve all agencies of government including law enforcement and the military.
Among the priorities are likely to be measures to deal with violence that spills over the U.S. border, the flow of small arms from the United States to Mexico, support for the Mexican military, tightening border security and the spreading presence of Mexican cartels in U.S. cities.
The military is already employing border security techniques mastered in the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan, including unmanned aerial vehicles and technology capable of locating underground tunnels.
But an interagency government team, meeting this week at the Department of Homeland Security, is expected to produce a broad new initiative to confront a drug war that has killed thousands in Mexico and spilled over into U.S. cities such as Phoenix in a surge of kidnappings and other gang-related violence.
"They are the new face of crime in the age of globalization," Durbin said.
Sen. Jim Webb, a Virginia Democrat on the armed services panel, sought to underscore the complexity of the problem by saying that some drug traffickers are former Mexican soldiers trained by U.S. Special Forces.
"They're highly trained," he said. "Their tactics are very sophisticated."
Renuart said the Mexican military also faces a challenge in border cities like Juarez, near El Paso, Texas.
"They have been very effective when they've been in place," he said. "The challenge for the Mexican government is its sustainment of that effort because their military is not that large." He said the U.S. military is providing Mexico with assistance including tactics for raiding cartel operations and seizing weapons.
http://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/military_drug_violence/2009/03/18/193154.html
COLUMBIA, Mo. | A new document meant to help Missouri law enforcement agencies identify militia members or domestic terrorists has drawn criticism for some of the warning signs mentioned.
The Feb. 20 report called "The Modern Militia Movement" mentions such red flags as political bumper stickers for third-party candidates, such as U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, who ran for president last year; talk of conspiracy theories, such as the plan for a superhighway linking Canada to Mexico; and possession of subversive literature.
"It seems like they want to stifle political thought," said Roger Webb, president of the University of Missouri campus Libertarians. "There are a lot of third parties out there, and none of them express any violence. In fact, if you join the Libertarian Party, one of the things you sign in your membership application is that you don't support violence as a means to any ends."
But state law enforcement officials said the report is being misinterpreted.
http://www.kansascity.com/116/story/1086524.html
WASHINGTON, Mar 17, 2009 (UPI via COMTEX) -- The U.S. State Department re-signed the security firm formerly known as Blackwater despite Iraq saying it didn't want the company there, records show.
The State Department said $22.2 million deal signed with Blackwater, since renamed Xe, in February was a contract modification concerning aviation work, The Washington Times first reported. The contract expires in September, months after its contract for work in Baghdad was to have run out.
One observer said the deal raises questions about why the United States would want to pay a contractor for work in Iraq if the government won't approve its operating license.
"Why would you continue to use Blackwater when the Iraqi government has banned the highly controversial company and there are other choices?" asked Melanie Sloan, executive director of the non-partisan Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
The private security firm has been heavily criticized, particularly for a 2007 incident that left 14 Iraqi civilians dead and six former guards facing manslaughter charges.
Xe spokeswoman Anne Tyrell declined to comment to the Times on the company's work in Iraq or the contract modification. She said the company was aware that the State Department indicated it didn't plan to renew its contracts in Iraq but that Xe officials hadn't received specific information about leaving the country.
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/blackwater-still-works-us-iraq/story.aspx?guid={8C076A77-37D4-4E13-9BAA-44D48274A2DA}
On February 13, 2009, President Obama released his first National Security Directive. Titled Presidential Policy Directive -1, it greatly expands the power of the National Security Council (NSC) to oversee all executive departments and agencies. The Directive introduces new members into top level NSC meetings including the Energy Secretary and the U.S. representative to the United Nations. Most significant is that Obama’s National Security Advisor, General James Jones (ret.), was given direct authority to develop and implement policy throughout the NSC system. Under previous Presidential administrations, a number of interagency committees were not chaired or controlled by the NSC. “Under Obama”, according to one Foreign Policy analyst, “the NSC chairs everything, though some committees can and will be cochaired.” Prior to his current appointment, General Jones was involved in a secretive Boeing Corporation effort to declassify antigravity technology for commercial application. Boeing’s declassification efforts were denied. Obama’s Directive now gives General Jones a second opportunity to have antigravity technology declassified for commercial development.
http://www.examiner.com/x-2383-Honolulu-Exopolitics-Examiner~y2009m3d4-Presidential-Directive-opens-door-for-release-of-antigravity-technology
After reading about the droughts in two major agricultural countries, China and Argentina, I decided to research the extent other food producing nations were also experiencing droughts. This project ended up taking a lot longer than I thought. 2009 looks to be a humanitarian disaster around much of the world
http://www.marketskeptics.com/2009/02/2009-global-food-catastrophe.html
On March 11, most of San Cristobal de las Casas' 200,000 residents bathed themselves out of buckets and left the dishes to pile up in the sink as they have all week. For most of them, it was their sixth day without running water. For some, it's been over a month.
The government is aware of the problem, but refuses to fix it. In fact, it was the government that intentionally shut off the water to spite San Cristobal residents. San Cristobal's government-owned and -operated Municipal Potable Water and Sewage System (Sapam in its Spanish abbreviation) owes $1,380,000 pesos to the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), also a government company. So, last week the CFE shut off electric power to all of the pumps that supply San Cristobal with water.
When angry and dirty San Cristobal residents attended a city council meeting to demand action from their elected representatives, Mayor Mariano Diaz Ochoa left the meeting early without hearing all the citizen complaints. Before he did so, he told his constituents that the water would stay off until everyone paid their water bill. Diaz Ochoa claims that 90% of San Cristobal's water customers have not paid their bills. This may or may not be the case--no one knows for sure because Sapam's operations and books are not readily available to the public. But one thing residents are sure of is that state companies don't suddenly go bankrupt without warning. Something happened.
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/kristin-bricker/2009/03/rampant-corruption-leaves-major-chiapan-city-without-running-water
A look at the future!
Are Mexican drug cartels a threat to the United States? This is an easy conclusion to make after reading most mainstream U.S. newspapers. Hardly a day goes by without sensational stories about “broad daylight” gun battles, heart-wrenching interviews with weeping mothers, and praise for the Mexican army in its “war” against “narco-terrorists.”
Interestingly, Mexico has lately been compared to Pakistan as a country “on the verge” of becoming a “failed state,” with the Mexican drug cartels accused of playing the same “destabilizing” role as the Taliban/terrorists in Pakistan. Calling such a comparison a stretch would be a gross understatement, of course.
There is in fact a real connection between Mexico and Pakistan that’s worth discussing, though you’d never hear it mentioned in the mainstream media. Both countries have governments that are virtual pawns of the U.S. and, as such, are having a difficult time with their native populations as they attempt to please their real bosses — U.S. mega-corporations and rich investors.
And these bosses can be demanding. For example, in Pakistan the U.S. dominated International Monetary Fund (IMF) is demanding that Pakistan privatize state-owned banks, railways, power plants, water, insurance, factories, etc. — so that U.S. corporations and investors can buy them at discount rates for private profit.
In Mexico, the same U.S. groups are lustfully eyeing Mexico’s number one source of national revenue: the state oil company (PEMEX). Mexican companies and natural resources had already been gobbled-up by U.S. corporate vultures long before NAFTA came into effect, though this trade agreement intensified the trend, making it a good place to begin if one is to have any understanding of the current political situation in Mexico.
NAFTA is in fact more than a trade agreement, it’s a trade bloc, the size of which rivals the European Union as the world’s largest. A trade bloc is essentially an agreement between countries on economic integration, which inevitably includes varying levels of political and military agreements. Also, every trade bloc has a dominant member — which in NAFTA’s case is the U.S.
When NAFTA was enacted, a new flood of U.S. corporate and private investment flooded into Mexico, requiring that this money be well protected. For the international investor, political instability of any kind is bad for business. This is in fact why NAFTA was extended into the “Security and Prosperity Agreement,” which provides U.S. security (military) aid to protect the NAFTA-created prosperity (investments) inside of Mexico.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12709
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