United Nations - Spirituality

Spirituality...

The Meditation Room, located on the west side of the public lobby in the United Nations General
Assembly Building, is a quiet room dedicated to world peace for peoples of all faiths and
religions. Opened in October 1952 and remodeled and enlarged in the winter of 1956, this room
has been viewed by hundreds of people who have registered their support for world peace in a
guest book.

Such a room was envisioned by UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld who believed that the
UN, dedicated to work and debate in the service of peace, "should have one room dedicated to
silence in the outward sense and stillness in the inner sense." Mr. Hammarskjöld planned and
personally supervised the creation of the Meditation Room.

The V-shaped room is off-white and has a projecting panel at its narrow end covered with a
fresco by the Swedish artist Bo Beskow. The 9 x 6½ feet fresco consists of blue, white, gray
and yellow geometric forms with the light, pure colours intersecting to form deeper shades. In
the center of the room is a great slab of raw iron ore, millions of years old, in its purest form. This was chosen to symbolize qualities of timelessness and strength. This rock, a gift from Sweden, is about 4 feet high, oblong-shaped, and weighs six tons. A shift of light strikes the stone in a room of utter simplicity and there are no other symbols.

Mr. Hammarskjöld, who himself was from Sweden, said about the iron ore: "The material of the
stone leads our thoughts to the necessity for choice between destruction and construction,
between war and peace. Of iron man has forged his swords, of iron he has made ploughshares.
Of iron he has constructed tanks, but of iron he has likewise built homes for man. The block of
iron ore is part of the wealth we have inherited on this earth of ours. How are we to use it?"
The Secretary-General knew exactly what use this quiet room would have for people in years to
come: "There is an ancient saying that the sense of a vessel is not in its shell but in the void. So it is with this room. It is for those who come here to fill the void with what they find in their center of stillness."

http://www.un.org/geninfo/faq/factsheets/meditation.pdf

But the stone in the middle of the room has more to tell us. We may see it as an altar, empty not because there is no God, not because it is an altar to an unknown god, but because it is dedicated to the God whom man worships under many names and in many forms.

The stone in the middle of the room reminds us also of the firm and permanent in a world of movement and change. The block of iron ore has the weight and solidity of the everlasting. It is a reminder of that cornerstone of endurance and faith on which all human endeavour must be based.

http://www.aquaac.org/un/medroom.html

I have often spoken about the fact that the United Nations is an organization which has been widely infiltrated by occultists and propagators of the "New Spirituality" (New Ageism). In the book "The Aquarian Conspiracy", by Marilyn Ferguson, a survey of New Agers showed that the leading influence on their spiritual "awakening" was Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

The occultist and well-known "channeller", Dr. Robert Muller, who was an Assistant Secretary General at the United Nations until recently, wrote in one of his books:

"Teilhard [de Chardin] had always viewed the United Nations as the progressive institutional embodiment of his philosophy" (Robert Muller, ed., The Desire to be Human: A Global Reconnaissance of Human Perspectives in an Age of Transformation, Miranana, 1983, p.304).

As the darling of the "New Spirituality", Teilhard de Chardin rigorously applied his monist, evolutionary philosophy to the world political situation, leading him to advocate a vision of some kind of one-world government.

In his book "The Future of Man", he wrote:

"Although the form is not yet discernible, mankind tomorrow will awaken to a ’pan-organized’ world".

The United Nations has long been one of the foremost world harbingers for the "New Spirituality" and the gathering "New World Order" based on ancient occult and freemasonic principles.

Seven years after the birth of the U.N., a book was published by the theosophist and founder of the Lucis Trust, Alice Bailey, claiming that,

"Evidence of the growth of the human intellect along the needed receptive lines [for the preparation of the New Age] can be seen in the "planning" of various nations and in the efforts of the United Nations to formulate a world plan... From the very start of this un-foldment, three occult factors have governed the development of all these plans".
[Alice B. Bailey, Discipleship in the New Age (Lucis Press, 1955), Vol.II, p.35.]

Although she did not spell out clearly the identity of these ’three occult factors’, she did reveal to her students that,

"Within the United Nations is the germ and seed of a great international and meditating, reflective group - a group of thinking and informed men and women in whose hands lies the destiny of humanity. This is largely under the control of many fourth ray disciples, if you could but realize it, and their point of meditative focus is the intuitional or buddhic plane - the plane upon which all hierarchical activity is today to be found".
[Ibid., p.220.]

To this end, the Lucis Trust (formerly known as the Lucifer Trust), under the leadership of Foster and Alice Bailey, started a group called ’World Goodwill’ - an official Non-Governmental Organization within the United Nations. The stated aim of this group is "to cooperate in the world of preparation for the reappearance of the Christ" [One Earth, the magazine of the Findhorn Foundation, October/November 1986, Vol. 6, Issue 6, p.24.]

Readers should bear in mind that ’the reappearance of the Christ’, as stated in Neo-Gnostic literature, is not to be confused with the biblical concept of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, but refers to the ’World Teacher’ who is expected to lead humanity into a forthcoming Golden Age on earth. But the esoteric work inside the U.N. does not stop with such recognized occult groupings.

Much of the impetus for this process was initiated through the officer-ship of two Secretary-Generals of the U.N., Dag Hammarskjöld (held office: 1953-1961) and U Thant (held office: 1961-1971) who succeeded him, and one Assistant Secretary-General, Dr. Robert Muller.

One has only to enter the so-called "Meditation Room" at the U.N. Headquarters (click image right) in New York to recognize the dark antichristian origins of the spiritual philosophy which has conceived and pervaded this organization.

The bare wedge-shaped room with its eerie lodestone altar, and the cryptic, Picasso-like mural on the smallest wall, symbolize the empty heart of countless esoteric religious cults down the ages. It therefore comes as no surprise to learn that the U.N. has its own official Indian meditation instructor, Sri Chinmoy, who holds two meditation sessions per week within the U.N. building, and whose specialty is to lull his audiences into trance with music!

Even the normally staid Houses of Parliament in the U.K. have played host to Sri Chinmoy - at the invitation of the Speaker of the House of Commons-so that politicians could receive instruction in his meditation technique. [The Daily Telegraph (UK), undated article in the ’Peterborough’ column.]

Dr. Robert Muller also sheds some light on the relationship of the United Nations to the "New Spirituality". He rewrites the first chapter of the biblical Book of Genesis to make it refer to the creation of the United Nations.

Under the title of ’The New Genesis’, the first verse states:

"And God saw that all nations of the earth, black and white, rich and poor, from North or South, from East and West, and of all creeds were sending their emissaries to a tall glass house [i.e. the U.N. Headquarters. AM] on the shores of the River of the Rising Sun, on the Island of Manhattan, to stand together, to think together, and to care together for the world and all its people. And God said: "That is good". And it was the first day of the New Age of the Earth’. [Robert Muller (ed.), The Desire to be Human: A Global Reconnaissance of Human Perspectives in an Age of Transformation (Miranana, 1983), p.17.]

In another of Dr. Muller’s books, "Decide to Be", we see the New Age philosophy perfectly set forth. One passage which aptly demonstrates the real spiritual impetus behind the United Nations reads:

"Decide to open yourself to God, to the Universe, to all your brethren and sisters, to your inner self...to the potential of the human race, to the infinity of your inner self, and you will become the universe...you will become infinity, and you will be at long last your real, divine, stupendous self ". [Robert Muller, Decide to Be, Link-Up, 1986, p.2. This was published by the British New Age journal ’Link-Up’, which has now changed its name to ’Global Link-Up’.]

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/esp_sociopol_un05.htm

The U.N. Meditation room at U.N. headquarters in New York (pictured here) is off-limits to most visitors, including Americans who pay most of the bills up there. It has been described as a pagan temple. It includes no traditional religious symbols. Secretary-General Kofi Annan was married to his Swedish wife in this room. Does worship of the earth, the spirit of "Gaia," take place there? The book Spiritual Politics says people have had mystical experiences in this place.

http://www.usasurvival.org/med-room.html

The United Nations has been working diligently for decades to implement the one world government and one world religion as prophesied in the Bible. Hiding behind words such as: sustainable development, global warming, global consciousness, and civil liberties, they are busy implementing the plans laid out in the UN Charter, the Earth Charter, and many other UN resolutions. These plans include a globalization effort that would eliminate state sovereignty, and place the world's people and resources under the direct control of the United Nations - the same organization that seeks wisdom from spirit guides through new age meditation.

The purpose of Contender Ministries UN Watch is to keep Christians informed and prepared to present the truth in the face of increasingly powerful government, excessive political correctness, and a fast growing new age movement that is at the heart of the globalization agenda. May God bless you as you contend for the faith.

The U.N. Meditation Room (right) is built in the shape of a truncated pyramid. In the center is an altar made out of magnetite, the largest natural piece of magnetite ever mined. For meditation purposes it is probably the most ideal spot on the planet, since the magnetite altar has its foundation straight down, built into the bedrock of the land below; tapping into the energies of the earth itself. The mysterious mural also helps the worshippers tune into esoteric energies, and helps facilitate a state of altered consciousness.

http://contenderministries.org/UN/unwatch.php

And finally, we come to the photos of the UN General Assembly Hall and the UN meditation room. On the left immediately below is the UN Meditation Room. Notice the similarity of the "barren" look and "sterile" feel between the UN Meditation Room, the masonic temples, the Anglican Churches and the Vatican II New "Catholic" Churches. According to the official United Nations website, the meditation room was "created by former Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld as 'a place where the doors may be open to the infinite lands of thought and prayer.'" One source has described it this as follows: "This room contains numerous freemasonic symbols and has an altar to the 'faceless god.'" (Revs. Francisco and Dominic Radecki, CMRI, What Has Happened to the Catholic Church?) Although in theory people of all faiths are welcome to us it, the stark, abstract chamber is tailor-made for occult/New Age groups, two of which enjoy the status of UN non-governmental organizations (NGOs): the Aquarian Age Community and the Lucis Trust (originally Lucifer Trust). These organizations hold their meetings in UN conference rooms and provide assistance, advice, and counseling to the U.N. officials and staff. The UN has also affiliated with other occultist-friendly activities and conducted its own, such as the Planetary Initiative, for which it named as director David Spangler, guru at Scotland's neo-pagan Findhorn Community. Spanger has been described by religious researcher J. Gordon Melton as the "primary architect/theoretician" of the New Age Movement and is particularly infamous for his contention that "No one will enter the New World Order unless he or she will make a pledge to worship Lucifer. No one will enter the New Age unless he will take a Luciferian Initiation." And then there is the Earth Charter, which seeks to being about a new "global spirituality." (Among the Charter's supporters are the unrepentant Communist Mikhail Gorbachev and "liberation theology" propagandist Leonardo Boff.)

On the right is a picture from October 4, 1965, of Paul VI sitting beneath three UN officials just before he spoke at the UN assembly. (Later that day he would go to Yankee Stadium for an outdoor Mass before 80,000 people.) In that address he called the UN "the last, best hope of mankind," and, according to Catholic author Piers Compton, "propagated the social gospel so dear to the heart of revolutionaries, without a single reference to the religious doctrines that they [the revolutionaries] found so pernicious." (The Broken Cross) Paul VI also wore the breastplate of the Jewish High Priest Caiphas while visiting the UN. (Caiphas was the High Priest who condemned Christ to death 2000 years ago in the secret, illegal middle-of-the-night trial which took place right after Judas betrayed Christ with a kiss in the Garden of Gethesemane, and right before Caiphas ordered that Christ be taken to Pontius Pilate.) Once the photos of Paul VI wearing the breastplate of Caiphas circulated, Abbe de Nantes of France challenged Paul him about this, and the breastplate was never seen in public again. The late traditional Mexican priest, Fr. Joaquin Saenz y Arriaga, wrote that

Paul VI knows very well what this "Breastplate of Judgement,' the Ephod signifies; he knows its origins in the ritualistic dress of the Ancient Covenant [that is, the old testament]; he is not ignorant of the fact that Masons today use it as a distinctive mark of their high priest.

The late writer William Strojie wondered whether Paul VI wore the breast plate of Caiphas because, just as Caiphas was condemning Christ to death and handing Him over to the worldly powers (Pontius Pilate, the Roman authority), Paul VI was attempting to condemn the Church (the Mystical Body of Christ) to death, and handing it over to the worldly powers (the United Nations). Concurrent with this was his greatly trumpeted handing over of the Papal tiara "for the poor" (November 14, 1964); likewise, he gave his pectoral cross and fisherman's ring to UN Secretary General U Thant, who, in turn, sold them to a Jewish businessman in the Midwest. (Rama Coomaraswamy, The Destruction of Christian Tradition. Compton notes that the the pair purchased for $64,000 and some of the gems from them were later seen adorning a Hollywood actress.)

Significantly, after his speech and before heading to Yankee Stadium, Paul VI went to the meditation room, but just what he did in there is disputed. Most commentators writing about this interlude report that he prayed (which is creepy enough in itself), but others maintain that something far darker occurred. Compton, who believes that Paul VI was a conscious enemy of the Catholic Church, was at that time happy with the success the conspiracy had had at the soon-to-be closing Vatican II—the goal of subverting the Church was well in hand. The UN address can be see as Paul VI's veiled communication to his brother conspirators around the world that it was time to rejoice. With this in mind, Compton writes: "It now remained to round off a truly historic visit with an initiatory rite that would put the seal on this newly admitted realization." According to Compton, the purpose of the occult ritual that took place in the meditation room:

represented the early stage of a scheme, the fulfillment of which would be...the erection of the Temple of Understanding, on fifty acres of the Potomac in Washington, D.C....The underlying purpose of the Temple was plainly revealed by its...All-Seeing Eye...that represented six world faiths -- Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Confucianism, and Christianity

The Temple of Understanding calls itself a "spiritual United Nations," and is another group that has NGO status at the UN. It was conceived in 1960, and besides Paul VI, other founders and supporters have included John XXIII (photo, below left), Mother Teresa, U Thant, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlat Nehru, Trappist monk Thomas Merton, the Dali Lama, former-First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, Dr. Albert Schweitzer, Planned Parenthood's Margaret Sanger, socialist Norman Thomas, séance-obsessed Episcopal Bishop James Pike, and billionaire John D. Rockefeller, who largely bankrolled the seed money for the organization. Just as the United Nations constitutes the precursor of a one world government, so. too, the syncretistic Temple of Understanding can be seen as the basis for a one world religion.

The photo below shows John Paul II addressing the UN General Assembly in 1995. He, too, is an ardent supporter of the United Nations, despite its abysmal record of propping up tyrannies (while allegedly championing freedom), trampling upon human rights (while claiming to uphold them), stirring up conflicts (while sending in its "peacekeepers") and the largest and being the world's most visible promoter of the New World Order. Former UN Under Secretary General Robert Muller, a member of the Novus Ordo church who promotes the late Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin's condemned evolutionary theology, is a favorite of John Paul II. Muller, who has been called the UN's "prophet of hope" wrote the "Framework for Planetary and Cosmic Consciousness" and is belongs to ex-Soviet dictator Mikhail Gorbachev's Gorbachev Foundation. He blasphemously has referred to the United Nations as "the body of Christ." As a token of his esteem, John Paul II gave Muller a pectoral cross.

In fact, in the early 1990s he stated: "By the end of this decade we will live under the first one world government that has ever existed in the society of nations…a government with absolute authority to decide the basic issues of human survival. One world government is inevitable." (Cited, Malachi Martin, The Keys of This Blood, emphasis added. Although John Paul II supposedly believes in free will, this quote is deterministic in tone, sounding eerily like the Communist Manifesto, where Marx and Engels—who, by virtue of their materialism, were strict determinists—declared that the eventual communism conquest of the world is inevitable.)

Such a statement is consistent with other statements coming out of Rome since Vatican II. John XIII's Pacem in Terris (1963), the call was made "Men's common interests make it imperative that at long last a world-wide community of nations be established." Two years later, Paul VI, during his United Nations speech, would echo this, saying that the UN "is the obligatory path for modern civilization and world peace."

And the Iraqi War has given John Paul II's Vatican an occasion to once again promote the concept of world government:

Archbishop Renato Martino, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, said: "The crisis situation of the U.N., caused by the war in Iraq, does not contradict but reinforces the appeal in 'Pacem in Terris' for a world political authority." (U.N.'s role needed now more than ever, says Archbishop Martino," Zenit, 4/11/03)

He went on to say that the UN should be a "subsidiary world authority" to guarantee "a manner of world government that favors peace" and that "it is time to undertake a constitutional engineering of humanity so that the United Nations can carry out its irreplaceable role."

While world government is a concept embraced by John Paul II and the two Vatican II predecessors whose names he took, this no more resembles the traditional thinking of Popes concerning international relations than does the United Nations' meditation room resemble the interior of a Catholic Church. The notion of a singular global rule was addressed in 1920, by the reigning pontiff, Pope Benedict XV, (photo, right) who declared:

The coming of a world state is longed for, and confidently expected, by all the worst and most distorted elements. This state, based on the principles of absolute equality of men and a community of possessions, would banish all national loyalties. In it no acknowledgement would be made of the authority of a father over his children, or of God over human society. If these ideas are put into practice, there will inevitably follow a reign of unheard-of terror.

http://www.realnews247.com/altar_comparison_pictorial.htm

The room was designed by the late Secretary General of the UN, Dag Hammerjskold, who said that the black stone monolith or block is "every man's god." The room is 18 feet wide at the entrance, which in numerology is 3 sixes. The room is also 33 feet long and tapers inward to form a truncated pyramid. There is an abstract mural on the front wall, which is full of witchcraft symbols, and in the middle of the room, is a black stone block, which weighs exactly 6.5 tons or 13,000 pounds. The black stone block has a certain kind of magnetism about it, and when I walked into the room with my praying wife, I could sense the intense presence of an evil force beyond description. This is where the world leaders and Illuminati masterminds go to meditate, which is why it is open to the public only in the mornings. Once the sun moves from antemeridiem to post meridiem only the adept in witchcraft are allowed into that room, for that is witchcraft doctrine regarding meditation. As the sun gives way to waning light and the female power of the moon goddess, the meditation room at the UN becomes off-limits to what they call the "profane."

It is bad enough that we have a United Nations, but now, God forbid, there is a United Religions or UR being started in San Francisco, California, where the UN was started. Bishop William Swing of the Episcopal Diocese of California is the leader of the 55 man task force to finalize the unifying of all religions with the official signing to take place in San Francisco in June, 2000, on the very day that the United Nations' Charter was signed. Bishop Swing operates his offices for United Religions in the "Presidio" in the bay area of San Francisco. It is also interesting to note that the former Russian communist leader Gorbachev also operates the Gorbachev Foundation out of the same Presidio. Here let it be noted that the words "Presidio" and "Kremlin" have the same meaning. Both mean "fortress." Very soon, only the members of the UR religious system will be recognized as acceptable religions. Does your church subscribe to that? Find out and take immediate action. All of the big denominations will sign a "Judas pact" with Satan on that day, and hell's bells will ring as the true remnant Christians become outcasts in the world, however, the judgement of God will soon fall!
http://www.lasttrumpetministries.org/1999/Aug99.html

If you tip the Eye of Providence over the "eye" would be behind the mural...

Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero has just unveiled Spain’s latest contribution to fostering global peace and security. No, his government will not be sending more troops to help rebuild Afghanistan. And no, Spain will not be providing more vaccines to help needy children in Africa. Instead, the Zapatero government is the proud sponsor of a lavish decorative ceiling at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva.

Miquel Barceló, one of the world’s most highly paid abstract artists, was commissioned by Spain to redecorate “Room XX” and its ellipsoidal dome at the Palais des Nations. He used more than 100 tons of paint to turn the negotiating room into a cave dripping with thousands of 50-kilo multicolored artificial stalactites.

“The cave is a metaphor for the Agora, the first meeting place of humans, the big African tree under which to sit to talk, and the only possible future: dialogue, human rights,” says Barceló. Using postmodern rhetoric which closely mimics that employed by Zapatero, Barceló describes his new work as “reaching towards the infinite, bringing a multiplicity of points of view.”

The 1.500m2 (15.000ft2) ceiling, which was co-unveiled on November 18 by King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia of Spain in the presence of UN Secretary General Ki-moon, is being hailed by the Spanish government as one of the UN’s most important works of art. Some are even comparing Barceló’s new “symbol of multilateralism” with Michelangelo’s work at the Sistine Chapel.

As Spaniards debate the artistic value of Barceló’s ceiling, however, excitement has turned into anger as Spanish taxpayers learn that they will be the ones footing the bill. The 13-month redecoration project has cost more than 20 million euros, all of which is being paid for by Spain. Some 60 percent of the money is coming from a group of Spanish companies that presumably have been pressured into joining a special NGO set up by the Spanish foreign ministry to “promote dialogue through the use of Spanish art.” The remaining 40 percent is being paid for by the Spanish government, including 500,000 euros that were taken from Spain’s overseas development aid fund. Barceló, who insists that the money was not “stolen from the poor,” will walk away with 6 million euros for his “long, hard, fun and ultimately orgiastic” efforts.

Zapatero, who does not like the concepts of transparency and accountability (unless, of course, they are applied to US President George W Bush), had tried to keep the cost of the controversial project secret. But he was forced to come clean after Spanish newspapers published exclusive photos of the final product just a week before it was to be unveiled.

In a quintessentially Socialist way of doing damage control, Spain’s foreign-minister-cum-art-critic Miguel Ángel Moratinos refused to debate the cost because “art has no price.” He said: “Only fools confuse value and price. This project is a new way of doing diplomacy and foreign policy.”

And indeed it is. Welcome, once again, to the Zapaterian world of postmodern politics, where image is king and substance is, well, un pequeño detalle (a small detail).

http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3651

Miscellaneous Ramblings....

While Reichfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler and Hitler both pursued the cause of National Socialism, Himmler did not pursue a military victory as persistently as did Hitler. In fact, in the second part of Hitler’s “Political Testament,” he expelled Himmler from the Nazi Party because the latter conducted “secret negotiations with the enemy” and for “illegally attempting to seize power in the State.”

Was Himmler’s creation of a Nazi underground that would outlast the Third Reich and spread throughout the world part of the Power Elite’s (PE’s) plan? This certainly seems to be the impression one gets when listening to the final statement in the documentary “Himmler’s Castle,” which is as follows: “In the deepest cellar of the west tower is Himmler’s personal safe. Not even the castle’s SS commandants had known of its existence. Several days after the castle was first entered by the Allies, an American special unit blew open the safe and removed the piles of documents and valuables they found inside. The men and the documents then disappeared from history.” This was at the end of the war at the same time concealed SS assets were being shifted by the “Schroder/Dulles network.”

NOTE: I’ve mentioned before that President Obama’s mentor was Saul Alinsky, who authored Rules For Radicals in 1971 and emphasized “change” as does Obama. Alinsky also urged his followers to emphasize such concepts as liberty, equality and fraternity. These were the watch words of the French Revolution, which was the seedbed for Socialism.

http://gunnyg.wordpress.com/2009/06/01/the-power-elite-and-the-secret-nazi-plan-parts-1-4/

No, not really. Rather, the Obama Administration held a background briefing to explain what will happen as GM enters bankruptcy tomorrow, a big part of which was designed to calm worries that by owning a huge chunk of GM, we will become a socialist country.

The briefing reviewed the terms of the agreement. And, perhaps most interestingly, they announced "principles of government investment"--rules the government will follow when it takes a significant stake in a company. They did note they'd use it with companies in which they already have huge stakes (AIG). But I got the feeling they thought they might be using these principles in the future. So maybe we really will start nationalizing some companies.

The principles of government investment were basically:

* Install the right kind of management
* End the need for government support as quickly as possible
* Protect taxpayer investment
* Do not interfere with day-to-day operations
* No government employees will serve on the board
* Only participate on core board issues, such as selection of board members, major events, and transactions

It's a bunch of pablum designed to calm the fears of those worried about socialism, but it doesn't really add up to protecting the interests of Americans. For example, when asked whether the government would limit executive compensation, they said only that the company had to comply with all laws (they mentioned the Dodd amendment specifically), and otherwise, that the compensation committee would decide executive compensation.

And when asked whether the government would prevent GM from importing cars from China, they said that GM had made a commitment in its renegotiated labor contract for production in North America (note: North America includes Mexico, of course). The press release says,

The new GM will also pursue a commitment to build a new small car in an idled UAW factory, which when in place will increase the share of U.S. production for U.S. sale from its current level of about 66% to over 70%.

Committing one factory to a new small car (which may be the Spark they talked about importing from China) does not rule out also producing them somewhere else--like Mexico.

So the takeaway, I think, is that as of tomorrow we will, indeed, own a big chunk of GM (incidentally, Canada will get a 12% stake). But the only way we'll get to really influence the policy at GM will be to infiltrate the GM board with socialists.

Socialism, the American way.

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/05/31/obama-announces-socialism/

Pepe Escobar writes@ Asia Times Online about the new deal between Pakistan and Iran, the Great Game thickens, excerpt-

The earth has been shaking for a few days now all across Pipelineistan – with massive repercussions for all the big players in the New Great Game in Eurasia. United States President Barack Obama’s AfPak strategists didn’t even see it coming.

A silent, reptilian war had been going on for years between the US-favored Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline and its rival, the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline, also known as the “peace pipeline”. This past weekend, a winner emerged. And it’s none of the above: instead, it’s the 2,100-kilometer, US$7.5 billion IP (the Iran-Pakistan pipeline), with no India attached.

…

Now, IP reveals Islamabad’s own interests seemed to have prevailed against Washington’s (unlike the virtually US-imposed Pakistan army offensive against the Taliban in the Swat Valley). The Barack Obama administration has been mum about IP so far. But it will be very enlightening to hear what former Bush pet Afghan Zalmay Khalilzad – who’s been infiltrating himself as the next CEO of Afghanistan – has to say about it.

…

Sanaullah Baloch roundly denounces the “civil-military elites” of Pakistan as implicated in the systematic repression going on in Balochistan; “Without their consent, no political regime can undo their policy of continued suppression.”

And his analysis of why Islamabad has made a deal with the Taliban in Swat but won’t do a deal with Balochis could not be more enlightening: “The establishment in Pakistan has always felt comfortable with religious groups as they do not challenge the centralized authority of the civil-military establishment. The demands of these groups are not political. They don’t demand economic parity. They demand centralized religious rule which is philosophically closer to the establishment’s version of totalitarianism. Islamabad’s elite are stubborn against genuine Baloch demands: governing Balochistan, having ownership of resources, and control over provincial security.”

So Islamabad still has all it takes to royally mess up what it has accomplished by approving IP. For the moment, Iran, Pakistan, China and Russia win. The SCO wins. Washington and NATO lose, not to mention Afghanistan (no transit fees). But will Balochistan also win? If not, all hell will break loose, from desperate Balochis sabotaging IP to “foreign interference” manipulating them into creating an even greater, regional, ball of fire.

http://tenpercent.wordpress.com/2009/06/01/the-iran-pakistan-pipeline/

So what does WWII occupied France have to do with modern America? I would suggest we have labored under a Vichy-style occupation since 1865 when a virulent form of government supremacism extinguished states rights in the original Federal system and then the Progressivist virus metastasized under Theodore Roosevelt and the rest is history as the republican vision of a decentralized, localized and minimal government became as anachronistic as the notion of natural rights.

We are all Vichy French in America today. Your decision is to choose Free American or Vichy French. Your choice is collaboration with a regime that seeks to control your every behavior and rob your children of their inheritance or to stand athwart history and say enough is enough. Collaboration is the willful ability to hold your nose and do what you know is the wrong thing. Collaboration is the desire to look the other way as a large coercive system robs your neighbors’ against their will and you take advantage of the spoils. Pushkin said "[w]hy should cattle have the gifts of freedom? Their heritage from generation to generation is the belled yoke and the lash."

How many folks do you know (especially collectivists) who would voluntarily pay the taxes they do right here and right now if not compelled by the threat of violence? How many folks do full stops instead of rolling stops at stop signs? How many corporations would willingly staff the accountancy and regulatory requirements imposed on them? From the local to the federal level, how many Americans would enforce or comply with the millions of idiotic regulations forced on them?

What if tens of millions of American workers simply followed Gandhi’s teaching and crossed their arms and said no more taxes, jail me instead? Imagine if state governors stood up and said all the Federal Law enforcement elements within their borders had 24 hours to resign or leave the state?

There was no foreign vector that caused this to happen as it did in WWII France yet the amount of discontent, disenfranchisement and disgust on the part of Americans matches much of what inspired the resistance organizations. Depressingly, one of the reasons the French Resistance was such a tough nut to crack throughout the war was that before the Nazi occupation, they had been hunted as Communists by the pre-1940 French regime and had a very robust cellular organization structure. Many Americans today increasingly look at the machinations in DC and view it as occupation behavior. Yet why did so many Frenchmen collaborate with the Nazi and Vichy regimes? They did it because any other behavior demanded a moral stand or courage they did not possess. We all have to take a measure of the degree of moral cowardice we are willing to live with.

Of course, this is the story of humanity. How did the Bolsheviks maintain their stranglehold over tens of millions? How do we maintain the fascinating fiction just celebrated on Memorial Day that American foreign wars since 1898 have secured our freedom? Was Spain that strong a threat? Did WWI stop the Bolshevik victory in Russia? Did WWII guarantee a free and democratic Russia? All of these can be argued into the wee hours but one observation remains unassailable: war abroad robs and strangles freedom and liberty at home. Case in point: the United Kingdom now is the most visible and truest testament to Orwell’s vision in 1984.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/buppert/buppert24.1.html

Most people will not change. Too radical. Not going with the flow. Not betting against the herd.

The best examples in the 20th century were Jews in Germany in 1933. They stayed. This included Jewish bankers, all of whom could have left. They thought they could deal with Hitler. They did not read Mein Kampf. They did not take it seriously.

About 7% did leave early: 38,000 out of 523,000. More left after 1938. By 1941, about 160,000 remained in Germany. Then emigration was closed by the Nazis. Earlier, it was encouraged. The data are here.

At some price, almost all could have left. There were countries that would have let them in. They would have had to learn a new language. They would have arrived in poverty. But Jews had faced those options ever since the Assyrian captivity in the eighth century B.C. So what?

They all would not have escaped the Nazis. Some would have moved to other European countries that were overrun by Germany after 1939. But they could have tried to get away. They stayed. They refused to acknowledge the warning signals. "It can't be that bad." It got worse.

Jews had an answer for worrywarts. "No problem. We can handle it."

The Armenians went through the same thing. The Turkish massacres of 1895 were a foretaste. Most stayed behind. Then came the genocide of 1915.

NO PROBLEM!

Look back at the economy in October 2007. The Dow was at 14,000. The banks were booming. Real estate was down a little, but the experts gave no warning. They were wrong. All of them.

The U.S. government is running a $1.8 trillion deficit this year. Federal tax receipts are down 34%, which means that the deficit will go above $2 trillion. No one cares. No one says, "This is the end. The American economy will never again be what it was."

Think "2007." Would you have believed that Chrysler and GM were both headed for bankruptcy? In October 2007 GM shares were at $43. Now they are at $1. There was an industry called investment banking. Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and Goldman Sachs were not part of the commercial banking system. To survive, a few made the transition in September 2008. Some did not make the cut.

Merrill Lynch is gone. Bank of America and Citigroup were bailed out by the government. They would have gone under. They sell for a fraction of what they did in 2007.

And what do most people say? "No problem."

There is no problem for which their answer is not "no problem."

Medicare will go bust. Social Security will go bust. "No problem."

The unemployment rate keeps rising. "No problem."

When people refuse to face reality, because reality is going to be more painful than anything they have experienced, they look for signs that the problems they cannot avoid without changing are really not that bad. They look for offsetting good news.

They think the status quo ante will return. The U.S. government is about to spend another $30 billion to buy a dead carcass of a company. It has already spent $20 billion. "No problem."

The government will let the company stiff bondholders for $27 billion in exchange for 10% of the company, 72% owned by the government and 17% by the United Auto Workers medical insurance fund. "No problem."

Bondholders were originally told that it would take a 90% vote to authorize this. The government has changed the rules. It will determine after the May 30 vote by bondholders what percentage must approve. "No problem.

The company will never return to what it was. "No problem." People will not buy as many cars as before from a company run by the government and the United Auto Workers. "No problem."

The Dow rose 100 points on the rumor that the largest bondholders will accept the deal. The deal is a disaster, but investors are in "No problem" mode. Somehow, the wipeout is less of a wipeout.

Who is going to buy a GM car instead of a Japanese car? Here is a company that is about to break its contracts with thousands of its dealers. "No problem." Yet buyers are expected to trust a GM warranty.

Oldsmobile is gone. "No problem." Pontiac is going. "No problem." Cadillac sells its cars with an ad of a flash model putting the pedal to the medal. Hot stuff! The company thinks people with money will not see through this ad. The Cadillac division has lost its way. "No problem."

The price/earnings ratio for the S&P 500 is over 120. Traditionally, 20 was regarded a sell. The investor pays $120 on the hope that the stock will retain a dollar of earnings, and pay investors some minimal percentage of these earnings as dividends. "No problem."

We are watching the investment world adopting a lemming mentality that has always produced losses. "This time it's different. No problem."

CONSUMER CONFIDENCE

The Conference Board announced that consumer confidence is up to 55. The 50 figure is neutral. Yet consumer confidence is a lagging indicator historically. When it rises, the stock market usually falls.

The indicator is a reflection on what the stock market has done recently. To use consumer confidence as a justification for buying stocks is nonsense. This is like saying, "I will buy stocks because the public is confident, which based on the fact that stocks have risen." If that strategy worked, stocks would never stop rising.

Even hard-money newsletter readers are beginning to doubt that the recent good news is in fact "less worse than expected" bad news. This is the stuff of dreams that do not come true.

Readers look at the reports, and the reports look awful: falling home prices, rising unemployment, an astronomical Federal deficit. But the media say we are close to a bottom – the bottom of a crash that none of them forecasted.

Readers think, "by the standards of late 2007, what we are seeing daily was inconceivable." Optimists speak of a slow, weak recovery. Pessimists speak of hyperinflation and depression simultaneously. But as the chorus proclaims "No problem," the public mindlessly picks up this refrain.

"We have nothing to fear but . . . fear itself!" Yet as FDR delivered those words, Hitler was consolidating power in Germany. Stalin was beginning the purges. A quarter of the U.S. work force was unemployed. But Roosevelt began the refrain: "No problem." Four years later, unemployment was still 20%. The Federal deficit had ballooned. Happy days were not here again.

Your friends don't want to hear your pessimism anymore. They don't want to change. They will refuse to change.

In 1934, Ludwig von Mises realized that Hitler, an Austrian, would seek to bring Austria under German hegemony. He warned Jewish economists to leave. They had been his students at his famous seminar in Vienna. Fritz Machlup believed him, and came to the U.S. So did Gottfried Haberler. Mises went to Switzerland as a professor, leaving his great personal library behind. He fled to the U.S. in 1940, after France had fallen. He never got a full-time teaching job again.

A few listened. Most did not. "No problem."

HEARING, THEY WILL NOT HEAR

People count the costs of making a change. This is wise. Jesus taught:

For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, Saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish. Or what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first, and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand? Or else, while the other is yet a great way off, he sendeth an ambassage [ambassador], and desireth conditions of peace (Luke 14:28–32).

In short, count the costs. This is what people have refused to do. They have counted the cost of doing something radical. It's high. They have counted the immediate cost of doing nothing new. It seems low. They prefer doing nothing.

But what about the long term? What about:

1. Retirement (no Social Security or Medicare)
2. The Federal Deficit ($1.8 trillion this year)
3. Federal Reserve's monetary base (doubled)
4. Falling house prices
5. Rising unemployment
6. The war in Afghanistan (forever, until our defeat)

"No problem!"

How do you reason with these people? Answer: you don't, if you value your time and your privacy. If you turn out to be wrong, you will be ridiculed or at least treated as a child. If you are correct, you will be hated. You will also be hit up for money. If you are a Christian, you will be told you are heartless. You will become a line of credit for those whose mantra was "No problem!"

They don't want to change. They will not change. They will not listen to you.

And when things turn out much worse than even most newsletter writers are forecasting, you will be hated. Are you prepared for this?

Do you have a real plan to deal with what is obviously an unfolding disaster: rising government ownership, massive deficits, rising unemployment, falling house prices, busted retirement pensions, rising interest rates (falling corporate bonds), and Federal Reserve inflation on a scale never seen in American history?

Or do you think you can delay. "No problem!"

We live in today's world. It's bad, but it's not a catastrophe. We must keep our heads above water.

A Tsunami is coming. In such a scenario, you have got to get out of the water and off the beach. But few people ever do, unless they have seen a tsunami. Few have.

Allocate some percent of your wealth to tsunami-avoidance. Do it quietly. Do not discuss this with your big-mouth brother-in-law.

What do you really think is likely to happen? Not what you would prefer will happen.

Think, "General Motors in October 2007"

Think Chrysler, Merrill Lynch, and Lehman Brothers.

No one saw it coming. It came.

Problems. Big, big problems.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north718.html

I love New York. But how much should it cost to call New York home? Decades of out-of-control budgets, spending increases and relentless borrowing have made New York simply too expensive.

Politicians like to talk about incentives -- incentives for businesses to relocate, incentives to buy local and incentives to make smart decisions. After reviewing the 2009 budget, I have identified the most compelling incentive of all: a major tax break immediately available to all New Yorkers. To be eligible, you need only do one thing: move out of New York state.

Last week I spent 90 minutes doing a couple simple things: registering to vote, changing my driver's license, filling out a domicile certificate and signing a homestead certificate -- in Florida. Combined with spending 184 days a year outside New York, these simple procedures will save me over $5 million in New York taxes annually.

That savings doesn't include that Florida has a 6 percent sales tax, compared to New York's 8 percent or more. Florida has lower utility taxes and lower gasoline taxes. The Florida homestead certificate guarantees my property taxes will not grow more than 3 percent.

By moving to Florida, I can spend that money on worthy causes, like better hospitals and improving education, and on worthy projects like the Clinton Global Initiative. Or maybe I will continue to invest that money in fighting the status quo in Albany. One thing is certain: That money will not continue to fund Albany's bloated bureaucracy, corrupt politicians or regular handouts to the special interests.

How did we get here in the first place? It all starts with spending, spending and more spending.

BUDGET SPENDING

New York's budget was $72.7 billion in 1999. Ten years later, it has ballooned to $131.8 billion. That growth is astounding, but it continues to get worse. Each year, New York's budget has had 6 percent compounded growth, double the average rate of inflation (2.8 percent). Florida's budget, on the other hand, went down 8 percent this year. HEALTH CARE SPENDING New York spends $2,283 per person on Medicaid. That's the highest per capita spending in the nation and twice the national average. In the last decade, the Medicaid budget has grown by 50 percent ($30 billion in 1999 and $45 billion in 2009). In almost every sector (hospitals, nursing homes, medicine, clinics, and home and community care), spending per recipient regularly exceeds the national average.

Faced with escalating costs and diminishing returns, Albany and their allies, the health care unions (SEIU has over 300,000 politically active members), had only one answer: Increase taxes.

EDUCATION SPENDING

New York spends the most per pupil in America on education, spending 63 percent above the national average. Costs went up about 60 percent in the last decade ($12.7 billion in 1999 and $20.7 billion in 2009). Like health care, education is something worth spending on and worth investing in, but we're spending more and getting less. New York City schools graduated 54 percent of high school students in 2007, Buffalo 47 percent and Rochester 45 percent.

Why? Perhaps it's because the New York state teachers union, with its $114 million budget, is always trying to convince Albany to spend more. Maybe it's because it's mandatory that all teachers pay union dues. Whatever the cause, when faced with potential cuts, the union and their allies have one response: Increase taxes.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT SPENDING

It's not just the state. It's the range and breadth of New York layers of governments and special taxing districts. In New York, the average state and local tax burden is $5,260 for every man, woman and child. That's by far the highest in the country. Like Albany, when faced with a difficult problem, these municipalities have one answer: Increase taxes.

Upstate New York has been particularly hard hit. Add unreasonable real estate taxes to the uncontrolled state spending, and you have whole communities decimated. The assessment process is unfair, unworkable and unreasonable, and the result is that 15 of the 20 highest taxed counties in America are right here in Upstate New York. While homeowners in other areas build equity, we just pay more taxes.

NO ONE'S HOME

This problem did not begin with the current recession. New York faced a $6 billion shortfall before the economic downturn. However, in the face of economic turmoil Gov. Paterson, Speaker Silver and Majority Leader Smith looked to the unions and special interests, who answered with one voice: Raise taxes.

Among other taxes and fees, they raised the marginal tax rate on the most successful (and most mobile) New Yorkers to 8.97 percent, the second highest rate in the nation.

It was irresponsible and it may just prove to be counterproductive, since the top 1 percent of earners account for about 50 percent of state revenue. We're the ones who can -- and will -- leave.

It's not an easy decision, but I'm being forced away from my family and friends, a pain shared by too many parents and grandparents in this state.

I'm leaving. And by domiciling in Florida, I will personally save $13,800 every single day. That's a pretty strong incentive.

Like I said, I love New York, but I'm not going to pay New York more for the waste, corruption and inefficiency that is New York state government.

http://www.niagarafallsreporter.com/golisano5.26.09.html

Of course Florida is subsidized by illegal drug trafficking...but to each his own!

Ironically, most of what has been said about New York is applicable to the nation as a whole, California in particular. Slippery slope we are on.....the descent into oligarchy!

Afghanistan

May 29, 2009 "Counterpunch" -- So far the principle result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan following the events of 9-11 has been the destabilization of Pakistan. That breakdown is peaking with the events in what AP calls the “Swat town” of Mingora---actually a city of 375,000 from which all but 20,000 have fled as government forces moved in, strafing it with gunships. We’re talking urban guerrilla warfare, house-to-house fighting, not on the Afghan border but 50 miles away in the Swat Valley. We’re talking about Pakistani troops fighting to reclaim the nearby Malam Jabba ski resort from the Tehreek-e-Taliban, who since last year have been using it as a training center and logistics base. We’re talking about two million people fleeing the fighting in the valley and 160,000 in government refugee camps.

And of course, “collateral damage”: As was reported in The News in Pakistan May 19:

Several persons, including women and children, were killed and a number of others sustained injuries when families fleeing the military operation in Swat’s Matta town were shelled while crossing a mountainous path to reach Karo Darra in Dir Upper on Monday, eyewitnesses and official sources said. Eyewitnesses, who escaped the attack or were able to reach Wari town of Dir Upper in injured condition, said they were targeted by gunship helicopters. However, police officials said they might have been hit by a stray shell. Local people said they saw some 12 to 14 bodies on a mountain on the Swat side but could not go near to retrieve them or help the injured for fear of another aerial attack.

What a nightmare scenario for Pakistan.

We’re talking about the Pakistani Army sometimes fighting over the last year to retake towns from Taliban forces in the Buner region of the North-West Frontier Province that are closer to the capital of Islamabad than the Afghan border. And while the Talibs apparently lack popular support, even among the Pashtuns (who are 15 % of the Pakistani population---26 million and 42% of the Afghan population---14 million) they have been able to inflict embarrassing defeats on the army.

Tehreek-i-Taliban leader Baitullah Mahsud, head of the militant forces in South Waziristan, established his credentials when his forces captured 300 Pakistani soldiers and traded them for about 30 imprisoned militants in the fall of 2007. Time and again the several (sometimes rival) “Taliban” forces, which did not exist before the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan created them, have forced the government to negotiate terms. Most recently in February Islamabad agreed to the implementation of the Sharia in the Swat Valley in exchange for peace. The Taliban broke the agreement in April, or so the story goes, and the army claims it’s killed 1,100 militants since.

But curiously as of Sunday it claimed to have killed only 10 Taliban, while boasting of seizing (according to AP) “a spot nicknamed ‘bloody intersection’ because militants routinely dumped the mutilated bodies of their victims there.” On Monday I read of another four dead militants but the Taliban announced through a spokesman that they would maintain “aides” in place in the city, cease fire, and advise civilians to return. It appears most have retreated to other towns, including Buner and Daggar where fighting goes on now. This they can do under cover of the masses of refugees of course.

Now think of what has happened here. Whether or not this was Osama bin Laden’s conscious plan, the local, ethnically-based, ideological movement most receptive to his own (i.e., the Taliban, or more precisely, multiple talibans on the Pakistan side of the border) has flourished since the U.S. attack upon Afghanistan in response to the 9-11 attacks. The imperialist response to 9-11 inflamed Pashtunistan. The toppling of the Taliban itself aroused indignation among many Pakistani as well as Afghan Pashtuns. Some militants fleeing east met with the traditional Pasthtunwali welcome, as they would under less stressful circumstances, and beyond that political sympathy.

The drone missile attacks, the civilian deaths, the contemptuous official denials, the repeated insults to national sovereignty, the connivance of the regime in power, have angered many, perhaps most, Pakistanis. While the Taliban has undergone a quiet resurgence in southern Afghanistan, leading U.S. generals to conclude that a military solution to the war is impossible, bands of religious “students” gathering around tribal leaders and warlords in Pakistan forming the umbrella “Movement of the Taliban” or Tehreek-e-Taliban under Mahsud have been able to generate this kind of chaos.

The Army had been deployed before against Indian and Chinese forces. But the disproportionately Pashtun force had never confronted or been trained to confront fanatical Pashtun jihadis---particularly when the issue was the implementation of the Sharia. Not surprisingly it performed badly and Islamabad wound up cutting a deal in February to implement Islamic law in the Swat Valley. U.S. Defense Secretary Gates can criticize that judgment in stating, “We want to support [the Pakistanis]. We want to help them in any way we can. But it is important that they recognize the real threats to their country.” And Secretary of State Hillary Clinton can tell Congress, “I think the Pakistani government is basically abdicating to the Taliban and the extremists [by making a peace deal in Swat]. Changing paradigms and mindsets is not easy, but I do believe there is an increasing awareness of not just the Pakistani government but the Pakistani people that this insurgency coming closer and closer to major cities does pose such a threat.”

It’s easy to lecture about such things, to judge the actions of another government facing a crisis. But isn’t it obvious that what Clinton has since at least April been calling Pakistan’s “existential threat” wouldn’t be closing in on the cities of that country had the U.S. not responded to 9-11 with the knee-jerk bombing of Afghanistan and the toppling of the Taliban? President Pervez Musharraf has recalled that Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told him soon after 9-11 to “prepare to go back to the Stone Age” if he didn’t cooperate with the U.S. in the war on terrorism. The existential threat to Pakistan was the Bush administration!

The Bush administration pressured Musharraf to deploy the Pakistan Army in border provinces where it had never been deployed and where its very presence was perceived as a provocation. The result was the September 2005 “peace agreement” in which the government agreed to halt military operations along the border and dismantle checkpoints in return for tribal leaders’ commitment to end support for militancy and prevent cross-border incursions into Afghanistan. It was a face-saving defeat for the regime that drew U.S. criticism, as have all subsequent deals with the militants, which have in any case broken down, like the February deal in Swat.

The 2005 agreement followed the notorious Lal Masjid episode in Islamabad when the security forces stormed an important seminary and hotbed of Islamist activism. The khatib (prayer-leader) had been dismissed for issuing a fatwa stating no Pakistani Army officer could be given an Islamic burial if died fighting the Taliban, and then the mosque had risen up in general rebellion, sparking solidarity attacks on government forces by militants in North Waziristan and the North West Frontier Province (NWFP). The government was forced to back down.

That’s been the pattern ever sense. Get tough on the “insurgents,” with U.S. prodding, and funding, and threats of funding reduction and direct intervention. Then negotiate with tribal and religious leaders, recognizing locals’ mistrust of outsiders, the Pakistani state, and its international backers which the mullahs may identify as U.S. imperialism and Zionism. And watch both carrot and stick policies fail as Pakistan’s own homegrown Taliban insurgency swells alongside the recrudescent original next door.

Now, while the Pakistani Army is still struggling to take control of Mingora and the Taliban is regrouping, the insurgents have pulled off a brazen attack on the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) office compound in Lahore, in eastern Pakistan, on the border with India, killing about 30 and injuring 250. The irony here of course is that the Taliban was nurtured by the ISI in the 1990s and the attackers may well have known the location of ISI offices for that very reason.

Such terror has Bush’s war on terror visited on Pakistan, with no end in sight. And Obama’s war in “Af-Pak,” reliant on a troop surge, more Predator drone attacks, and maybe some “divide and conquer” tactics, hold out little promise for relief. U.S. officials screw up their faces as if genuinely puzzled about while the Pakistanis aren’t doing more---as if puzzled about why they don’t understand that their existence is at stake. The fact is that they are the ones on the outside looking in, who do not understand that the interests of U.S. imperialism do not cause religious and national and ethnic sensibilities to disappear or make it possible for local leaders, even those on the imperialist payroll, to snap their fingers, crush local resistance and produce social peace. The interests of U.S. imperialism in this case, in the form of regime change in Afghanistan, and the way it was done, have antagonized much of the Pakistani population.

This is Washington’s unwanted gift to Islamabad, for which Islamabad keeps getting paid and keeps paying.

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22735.htm

Afghanistan is, as of March, 2008, the greatest illicit (in Western World standards) opium producer in the world, before Burma (Myanmar), part of the so-called "Golden Crescent". Opium production in Afghanistan has been a significant problem (or a significant business) for Afghanistan, especially since the downfall of the Taliban in 2001. Based on UNODC data, there has been more opium poppy cultivation in each of the past four growing seasons (2004-2007), than in any one year during Taliban rule.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Production_in_Afghanistan

Afghanistan's notorious, soaring drug trade is hitting home. The country now has one of the world's sharpest rising rates of drug use, especially in the cities. With few antidrug programs – and many of those poorly funded – aid agencies say drug abuse is now the fastest-growing social problem in the country.

There are twice as many heroin users on the streets of Kabul than just four years ago, says Mohammed Zafar, an official at the Ministry of Counter Narcotics.

The opium capital of the world, Afghanistan is responsible for 92 percent of global output. Each year, the country produces about $4 billion worth, or 53 percent of gross domestic product, making drug production easily Afghanistan's most lucrative industry, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

About 1 million of Afghanistan's 34 million people are drug users, and the majority of these live in the country's principal cities, UNODC estimates.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0313/p04s01-wogn.html

MOSCOW, November 20 (RIA Novosti) - Opium production in Afghanistan has increased by 150% since a NATO-led security and development mission entered the country in 2001, Russia's Federal Drug Control Service said on Thursday.

"Afghanistan has become the absolute leader in narcotics production, producing 93% of the world's entire opiates... Afghan drug dealers have in two years set up the successful production of cannabis [marijuana, hashish] with over 70,000 hectares of land being cultivated, taking Afghanistan into second place in the world behind Morocco in terms of the cultivation of such drugs," the service said in a statement.

Since the Taliban regime was overthrown in the 2001 U.S.-led campaign, Afghanistan, with almost all its arable land being used to grow opium poppies remains the world's leading producer of heroin.

According to the UN, Afghanistan's opium production increased from 6,100 tons in 2006 to 8,200 tons in 2007.

The narcotics trade has become an acute problem for the Central Asian republics due to a continual flow of illegal drugs from Afghanistan.
http://en.rian.ru/world/20081120/118431526.html

http://www.unodc.org/pdf/afg/afghanistan_opium_survey_2004.pdf

http://www.tcf.org/publications/internationalaffairs/dobbinscopy.pdf

The US has made some serious headway in Afghanistan. Scared Bin Laden out of the country...in fact assisted his escape from Tora Bora...kicked the Taliban's hindquarters...killed a bunch of people....boosted the drug trade...

North Korea

May 29, 2009 "The Guardian" -- The big power denunciation of North Korea's nuclear weapons test on Monday could not have been more sweeping. Barack Obama called the Hiroshima-scale ­underground explosion a "blatant violation of international law", and pledged to "stand up" to North ­Korea – as if it were a military giant of the Pacific – while Korea's former imperial master Japan branded the bomb a "clear crime", and even its long-suffering ally China declared itself "resolutely opposed" to what had taken place.

The protests were met with ­further North Korean missile tests, as UN ­security council members plotted tighter sanctions and South Korea signed up to a US programme to intercept ships suspected of carrying weapons of mass destruction. Pyongyang had already said it would regard such a move as an act of war. So yesterday, nearly 60 years after the conflagration that made a charnel house of the Korean peninsula, North Korea said it was no longer bound by the armistice that ended it and warned that any attempt to search or seize its vessels would be met with a "powerful military strike".

The hope must be that rhetorical inflation on both sides proves to be largely bluster, as in previous confrontations. Even the US doesn't believe North Korea poses any threat of aggression against the south, home to nearly 30,000 American troops and covered by its nuclear umbrella. But the idea, much canvassed in recent days, that there is something irrational in North Korea's attempt to acquire nuclear weapons is clearly absurd. This is, after all, a state that has been targeted for regime change by the US ever since the end of the cold war, included as one of the select group of three in George Bush's axis of evil in 2002, and whose Clinton administration guarantee of "no hostile intent" was explicitly withdrawn by his successor.

In April 2003, North Korea drew the obvious conclusion from the US and British aggression against Iraq. The war showed, it commented at the time, "that to allow disarmament through inspections does not help avert a war, but rather sparks it". Only "a tremendous military deterrent force", it stated with unavoidable logic, could prevent attacks on states the world's only superpower was determined to bring to heel.

The lesson could not be clearer. Of Bush's "axis" states, Iraq, which had no weapons of mass destruction, was invaded and occupied; North Korea, which already had some nuclear capacity, was left untouched and is most unlikely to be attacked in future; while Iran, which has yet to develop a nuclear capability, is still threatened with aggression by both the US and Israel.

Of course, the Obama administration is a different kettle of fish from its ­predecessor; it had earlier floated renewed dialogue with North Korea and has made welcome noises about nuclear disarmament. Whether such talk was ever going to impress the cash-strapped dynastic autocracy in Pyongyang – which had had its fill of broken US commitments and the new belligerence from its southern neighbour – seems doubtful. In any case, having gone so far, it was surely inevitable the regime would want to rerun its half-cocked 2006 test to demonstrate its now unquestioned nuclear power status.

Yet not only has America's heightened enthusiasm for invading other countries since the early 1990s created a powerful incentive for states in its firing line to acquire nuclear weapons for their own security. But all the main nuclear weapons states have, by their persistent failure to move towards serious disarmament, become the single greatest driver of nuclear proliferation.

It's not just the breathtaking hypocrisy that underpins every western pronouncement about the "threat to world peace" posed by the "illegal weapons" of the johnny-come-latelys to the nuclear club. Or the double standards that underpin the nuclear indulgence of Israel, India and Pakistan – now increasing its stock of nuclear weapons, even as the country is rocked by civil war – while Iran and North Korea are sanctioned and embargoed for "breaking the rules". It's that the obligation of the nuclear weapons states under the non-proliferation treaty – and the only justification of their privileged status – is to negotiate "complete disarmament".

Yet far from doing any such thing, both the US and Britain are investing in a new generation of nuclear weapons. Even the latest plans to agree new cuts in the US and Russian strategic arsenals would leave the two former superpower rivals in control of ­thousands of warheads, enough to wipe each other out, let alone the smaller fry of global conflict. So why North Korea, no longer even a signatory to the treaty and ­therefore not bound by its rules, or any other state seeking nuclear protection, should treat them as a reason to disarm is a mystery.

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22734.htm

May 27 (Bloomberg) -- North Korea threatened a military response to South Korean participation in a U.S.-led program to seize weapons of mass destruction, and said it will no longer abide by the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War.

“The Korean People’s Army will not be bound to the Armistice Agreement any longer,” the official Korean Central News Agency said in a statement today. Any attempt to inspect North Korean vessels will be countered with “prompt and strong military strikes.” South Korea’s military said it will “deal sternly with any provocation” from the North.

South Korean President Lee Myung Bak ordered his government to take “calm” measures on the threats, his office said in a statement today. Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary, Takeo Kawamura, echoed those remarks and called on North Korea to “refrain from taking actions that would elevate tensions in Asia.”

The threats are the strongest since North Korea tested a nuclear weapon on May 25, drawing international condemnation and the prospect of increased sanctions against the communist nation. South Korea dispatched a warship to its maritime border and is prepared to deploy aircraft, Yonhap News reported, citing military officials it didn’t identify.

“This rapid-fire provocation indicates a more aggressive shift in the Kim Jong Il regime,” said Ryoo Kihl Jae, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul. “Kim is obviously using a strategy of maximum force.”


http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aS17xp.yHokM&refer=home


SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - North Korea's military says it considers South Korea's participation in a U.S.-led program to intercept ships suspected of spreading weapons of mass destruction tantamount to a declaration of war against the North.

The communist North's military said in a statement Wednesday that it will respond with "immediate, strong military measures" if the South actually stops and searches any North Korean ships under the Proliferation Security Initiative.

The statement, carried by the North's Korean Central News Agency, said North Korea no longer considers itself bound by the armistice that ended the Korean War, as a protest over the South's participation.

South Korea announced its participation in the anti-proliferation program Tuesday, one day after the North conducted a nuclear test.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D98EBO2G1&show_article=1

More with analysis...

http://zerohedge.blogspot.com/2009/05/nk-calls-sk-decision-to-join-anti.html

Update: Many people don’t realize this, but the UN Security Council has already spoken. See UNSC 1718 of 2006. The North has completely ignored every section of the resolution. The UN is powerless here, like it was with Iraq.

http://fwcon.wordpress.com/2009/05/27/north-korea-declares-war-on-south/

“In Korea in the state of armistice confrontation means escalated tension and it may lead to an uncontrollable and unavoidable military conflict and a war,” it said.

The states, technically still at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended with a cease fire and not a peace treaty, have more than 1 million troops near their border. There are about 28,000 U.S. troops in South Korea to defend the country.

The North’s bureaucracy works slowly to form policy and it may still be trying to figure out its approach with the new Obama team, analysts said, making it easier for Pyongyang to direct its anger at Washington’s allies, including Seoul.

The North in recent months has repeatedly threatened to destroy the conservative government of President Lee Myung-bak, which ended a decade of free-flowing aid to Pyongyang after taking office a year ago.

Lee’s government mostly ignores Pyongyang’s taunts.

http://defencedebates.wordpress.com/2009/02/01/north-korea-warned-on-sunday-that-the-downward-spiral-of-relations-with-the-south-has-pushed-the-peninsula-to-the-brink-of-war/

The Stimulus Package

Economic stimulus refers to the use of fiscal policy -- government spending or tax measures -- to support or revive an economy in recession. In February 2008, as signs of a slowdown emerged, Congress passed a $168 billion package of tax cuts and rebates. Later in the year, after Wall Street crumbled and economic activity contracted sharply, Democrats called for a far larger stimulus, and after his election as president, Barack Obama declared that what he preferred to call a "recovery" package would be his top priority.

On Jan. 28, 2009, the House of Representatives passed an $819 billion stimulus plan by a vote of 244 to 188. The measure passed without a single Republican vote in favor. Intensive negotiations in the Senate led three moderate Republicans to lend their support to an $838 billion version of the bill, getting Democrats over the 60-vote hurdle needed to prevent a filibuster. Final passage of the Senate measure on Feb. 10 by a 61 to 37 vote was followed by a whirlwind round of negotiations with the House that produced agreement the next day on a $789 billion final version of the bill.

In scale and scope, both bills were closer to the biggest stimulus effort of all, the New Deal, than those that had been developed to cope with other postwar slowdowns. In many recessions, no stimulus was adopted at all.

Over the decades since the Depression, a consensus had developed among economists that fiscal policy was an ineffective tool in combating recessions compared with monetary policy, that is, the ability of the Federal Reserve to make more money available -- thereby increasing demand -- by lowering interest rates. The stimulus passed in early 2008 was held up as an example of the shortcomings of fiscal policy. It consisted primarily of tax rebates, and surveys showed that much of the extra money was saved or used to pay debts, neither of which generates direct economic activity.

But in the most dire situations, monetary policy can cease to have traction, when banks are so shellshocked that they are unwilling or unable to make new loans even if a central bank provides the money with no interest charges at all. The United States appeared to be in such a "liquidity trap'' in the winter of 2008 and early 2009, as the credit crisis that followed Wall Street's implosion barely eased even as the Fed reduced its rates to virtually zero.

The final bill includes $507 billion in spending programs and $282 billion in tax relief, including a scaled-back version of Mr. Obama's middle-class tax cut proposal, which would give credits of up to $400 for individuals and $800 for families within certain income limits. It will also provide a one-time payment of $250 to recipients of Social Security and government disability support.

Even trimmed to $789 billion, the recovery measure, signed by President Obama on Feb. 17, will be the most expansive unleashing of the government's fiscal firepower in the face of a recession since World War II. And yet it seemed almost trifling compared with the $2.5 trillion rescue plan for the financial system - a combination of loans to banks and incentives to bring private capital into the banking system - announced on Tuesday by Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner.

In early May, some states and cities began to complain that the money had yet to reach them. Some states have been slow to get their paperwork to Washington; as of mid-May, Virginia had yet to send the Transportation Department its list of road projects.

The Obama administration has committed to spending 70 percent of the money, or $550.9 billion, within the first two years. By that benchmark, an administration official said, the government is 8 percent toward its goal.

The government has reported spending more than $10 billion in stimulus money, and officials have said that the speed will increase as the program grows.

http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/subjects/u/united_states_economy/economic_stimulus/index.html

Nearly three months after President Obama approved a $787 billion economic stimulus package, intended to create or save jobs, the federal government has paid out less than 6 percent of the money, largely in the form of social service payments to states.

The stimulus bill has directly injected around $45.6 billion into the economy, mostly to help states cover the costs of Medicaid and unemployment benefits, one-time $250 checks that were mailed to Social Security recipients last week, and income tax cuts that began to take effect this spring.

Although states around the country are beginning roadwork projects, the Department of Transportation had spent only about $11 million on highway projects through the first week of May.

The intent of the stimulus program was to pump money into the economy quickly, and many members of Congress said at the time of its passage that speed was of the essence. But the huge program has been a challenge to administer for both a new administration and for states and local governments grappling with their own fiscal problems.

Some states and cities are beginning to complain that the money has yet to reach them. Others have been slow to get their paperwork to Washington; Virginia has yet to send the Transportation Department its list of road projects.

At the same time, some economists have questioned the administration’s claims that the bill has saved or created 150,000 jobs.

Obama administration officials, however, say the pace of the stimulus program is on schedule, and even if the federal checks are not yet in the mail the effects of the stimulus are beginning to reverberate: the promise of the federal money has been enough to get states to start construction work and to retain some jobs that were in jeopardy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/13/us/politics/13stimulus.html?_r=1

Couple key points....1) more illusion than reality 2) enticed states to spend more money that they don't have thereby hastening the transition to Federal power....or in other words....oligarchy!

FYI - democracy is a word used to describe the transition from Republic to Oligarchy...

compare the progress of $45.6 billion in spending to the advertised injection time line...



Notice where the spending is....Fed vs State/Private/Individual...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2009/02/01/GR2009020100154.html

With waves of bad news rolling in from Wall Street and Main Street, the Society of Marketing for Professional Services Foundation held a think tank to explore "The Upside of a Down Economy." Participants at the Feb. 20 conference in Atlanta found little in the way of an upside, but a panel of nine senior industry experts came away with a meaningful to-do list for firms hoping to cope—and even prosper—in an era of diminished opportunity.

Stimulus measures enacted by Congress and the Obama administration, while helpful, will not significantly impact the general outlook for business. The amounts slated for additional federal spending in 2009 in nonresidential construction, one panelist noted, is "just too small to make a difference." Even stimulus spending for state highway work in 2009—the largest section of the stimulus—is "a drop in the bucket," said Laurin McCracken, chief marketing officer for Jacobs Global Buildings NA.

Panelists agreed the virtual collapse of the credit and bond markets for new project financing was the single biggest factor holding back new projects. The stimulus package "pales in comparison to the credit issues we’re facing," said Al Potter, chief strategy officer for Gilbane Building Co.

"The sources of funding are just not there," agreed Art Gensler, chairman of San Francisco-based Gensler. He says there are 250 major projects on hold at his firm. Gensler related a story in which his firm was days away from signing a design-services contract totaling $850 million for a major project in Dubai, only to have the plug pulled. With the current global outlook, he says, "In my lifetime you won’t see another project of that type."

Another less visible issue killing the ability to finance new project starts is the unprecedented overhang of existing commercial mortgage backed securities. Beebe noted that the amount of loans coming due on commercial properties over the next three years, including many that are already financially distressed, "is just staggering." Banks are so highly leveraged with existing real estate loan portfolios that they can’t make new loans, added McCracken. "Until that huge debt load gets corrected, they can’t lend money on new projects," he said.

Turning to the business outlook, all agreed the current economic downturn is fundamentally more severe than previous recessions. Based on recent research, James P. Cramer, publisher of Design Intelligence, Norcross, Ga., estimates that a net loss of $7 billion in design fees will occur over the next 18 months in the U.S. design market. "There will be deep cuts at design firms," in some cases up to 50% of staff, he said.

Potter pointed out that the AEC industry in the U.S. has had a relatively uninterrupted growth for the last 16 years. That run of growth has clearly been interrupted, with owners putting projects on hold and financing almost nonexistent. "This downturn does feel different, doesn’t it?" he asked.

http://enr.construction.com/business_management/finance/2009/0225-CreditCrunchImpact.asp

Americans are understandably angered and frustrated over the stimulus bill. But ask yourself this: Why is it the stimulus package is getting so much more attention than the bank bailout plans, both from Congress and the mainstream media?

One possible answer is the stimulus bill is easier to comprehend and there's a relatively straightforward outlet for our anger: Congress, particularly the Democratic leadership for failing to craft a bill that more than three Republicans could support in both Houses (combined).

The issues behind the bank bailout are certainly more complex and there's more-than plenty of blame to go around - from Wall Street fat cats to Congress (both parties) and regulators (of all stripes), as well as the rating agencies and investors, plus individuals who took on way too much debt.

But given the cost of the bank bailout is orders of magnitude more than the stimulus package, and getting the bailout right far more important to our long-term economic health, let's hope Congress (and the media) will now turn its full attention to finding a legitimate solution to the financial crisis.

http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/article/173830/Why-Americans-Should-Care-More-About-the-2-5T-Bailout-vs.-the-789B-Stimulus?tickers=^dji,^gspc,SPY,DIA,QQQQ,XLF,SKF

At your request, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has prepared a year-by-year
analysis of the economic effects of pending stimulus legislation. This analysis is based
on an average of the effects of two versions of H.R. 1—as passed by the House and as
passed by the Senate. (The economic effects of those two bills are broadly similar.)

In contrast to its positive near-term macroeconomic effects, the legislation would reduce
output slightly in the long run, CBO estimates, as would other similar proposals. The
principal channel for this effect is that the legislation would result in an increase in
government debt. To the extent that people hold their wealth as government bonds
rather than in a form that can be used to finance private investment, the increased debt
would tend to reduce the stock of productive private capital. In economic parlance, the
debt would “crowd out” private investment. (Crowding out is unlikely to occur in the
short run under current conditions, because most firms are lowering investment in
response to reduced demand, which stimulus can offset in part.) CBO’s basic
assumption is that, in the long run, each dollar of additional debt crowds out about a
third of a dollar’s worth of private domestic capital (with the remainder of the rise in
debt offset by increases in private saving and inflows of foreign capital). Because of
uncertainty about the degree of crowding out, however, CBO has incorporated both
more and less crowding out into its range of estimates of the long-run effects of the
stimulus legislation.

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/99xx/doc9987/Gregg_Year-by-Year_Stimulus.pdf

Folks, this is the most frightening statement I've read from the FOMC - ever.

Notice what's missing - the statement just a few days ago from Ben Bernanke in which he said that the economy would recover in early 2010, and the recession would end in late 2009.

If this was the base case the FOMC believed, there would be no reason for the actions taken today. Monetary policy has a six month (or thereabouts) leadtime, which means that should Ben believe what he spewed on 60 Minutes then his actions to date were sufficient to fix the problem, needing only the fullness of time to flow through the system and restart credit creation.

I believe Ben knows what he said on 60 minutes was a lie.

But this action also tells us a few other things about the short term:

*
The banks aren't in as much trouble as we've been led to believe. That is, imminent business failure is not going to happen; this action had a dramatic and instantaneous impact in flattening the yield curve, which means the banks earn less in net interest margin. In the short term this means that the risk of upside surprises in earnings for next quarter are very real, even if those earnings are "cooked". Short take-away: beware if you're short banks.
*
Bernanke and pals have in their possession enough non-public information on the credit markets (likely TIC data - that is, foreign investment flows) that they have been effectively forced into doing this, lest something even worse happen immediately. Has China (along with others) finally woken up and said "no mas"? The sabre-rattling makes one wonder, especially in conjunction with this action yesterday.

Now $300 billion in purchases out the curve, to be sure, isn't all that much. In fact its about half of the issue expected over the next three months - significant to be sure, but not huge. More important to the market is the GSE ("agency") debt and coupon being purchased; a program that has been underway for some time, but has now been more than doubled in size. This program would appear to be low risk but really isn't, as Fannie and Freddie (where this paper is mostly coming from) are both bleeding money like crazy, and as such one has to wonder whether these notes being bought are really "money good" or not. The answer is almost certainly "not", which in turn strongly implies that there are monstrous hidden embedded losses that will appear down the road.

The problem with the direct Treasury purchase is the potential precedent.

See, Ben will effectively "overpay" for these bonds. As we saw in England with their buy this results in an immediate "sold to you!" response. Their "bid to cover" was insane, showing that essentially everyone and their brother was attempting to unload these bonds into the Bank of England - knowing full well that once this policy starts it always ends badly, and when you are given the opportunity to sell at higher than actual market value you take it.

The danger is that in trying to suppress the long end of the curve is that it can fail. That is, the move we had today (which was massive) can be fleeting - and then reverse. This of course would force Ben to do it again, and again, and again. Ultimately he could wind up owning the entire long end of the curve or even worse, the entire $6 trillion public Treasury float.

This is the "economic collapse" scenario, because further government spending in such a situation requires the dilution of all existing money in the system by the same amount spent. This is a circle jerk - you're not actually able to spend that money and get the goods and services you want as a government, since you are creating and consuming at the same time. As such the operations cancel each other in effect and the government finds it cannot fund its internal operations with Treasury issuance any more, being forced back onto whatever tax base it has left (which won't be much at that point!)

Here is the problem, graphically illustrated:

see link below for graphic...

Note the breakdown. We are anticipating at least a $1 trillion shortfall this year, and frankly, that's unreasonably "good"; the real shortfall is likely closer to $2 trillion.

So what happens if half of that $2 trillion is no longer "money" from foreigners - it is a circle-jerk from The Fed and Treasury? You can basically remove it, that's what.

Now look at that chart - you can't remove the "net interest" (about $250 billion), because that has to be paid. "Other spending", that is, other than defense, interest, and social programs, is about $700 billion. Defense is also about $700 billion.

If we find ourselves unable to sell debt to actual investors with actual money, and are circle-jerking ourselves; to balance this budget we would need to contract spending to roughly $1.0-1.5 trillion in total.

Since the interest payments are inviolate, that leaves us $1.25 trillion for everything else. Assume we can cut half of the defense budget, and we've got $800 billion left. Cutting "other spending" (that is, all other programs) by 50% would leave us with about $500 billion net-net for social programs - forcing a reduction of about sixty percent in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid - all at once.

In short this would wind up costing us roughly a 50% across-the-board cut in every program within government on an immediate basis. That in turn would force further reductions in GDP, which would further shrink tax revenues.

You can see where this leads, I'm sure, and it's not pretty.

http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/879-Bernanke-Inserts-Gun-In-Mouth.html

For more current analysis and news see post...


http://yophat.blogspot.com/2009/04/foundation-for-pyramid.html

and/or...

http://yophat.blogspot.com/2009/02/state-bankruptcies.html

For my predictions see post....

http://yophat.blogspot.com/2009/02/impending-incident.html


For possible solutions see post...

http://yophat.blogspot.com/2009/02/economic-survival.html

for stimulus humor...

http://yophat.blogspot.com/2009/03/stimulus-analysis.html

Future Forecast...

Update: 5/29/2009

For economic background see my post - Foundation of the Pyramid...

http://yophat.blogspot.com/2009/04/foundation-for-pyramid.html

I see unemployment payments running out between Aug & Oct. When that happens credit card defaults will spike while credit limits are curtailed. California is starting to awaken...

http://yophat.blogspot.com/2009/01/californification.html

The stimulus payments are mostly geared towards big government....this is the biggest & fastest transition to oligarchy yet...

See here's the trick with the stimulus money - its a giant injection into government agencies while the state & local stuff dries up. Case in point - rumor has it the INEL "Idaho Nuclear Engineering Laboratory" is getting $400 million in stimulus money and can't figure out how to spend it all.....to put that in perspective Walmart's total revenue last year was a hair over $400 million...

Bigger than Europe's Carrefour, Tesco, and Metro AG combined, it is the world's #1 retailer, with more than 7,870 stores, including about 890 discount stores, 2,970 combination discount and grocery stores (Wal-Mart Supercenters in the US and ASDA in the UK), and 600 warehouse stores (SAM'S CLUB). About 55% of its stores are in the US, but Wal-Mart continues expanding internationally; it is the #1 retailer in Canada and Mexico and it has operations in Asia (where it owns a 95% stake in Japanese retailer SEIYU), Europe, and South America.

meanwhile the local stuff looks like this...

The police department was asked to reduce their budget the first time by 12%, then the city asked for another 10%, then another cut at ???% – By the time they were done, or thought they were done, there was nothing left to cut unless you got rid of officers. They have no ammunition budget, no training budget and $2400 for the dog program. They reduced all civilian positions in the PD to part-time, cut the buy-back on comp time (you used to be able to get compensated for part of your unused paid time off), and required everyone to take unpaid time off. This week the mayor asked the chief to cut another $150,000. They’ve finally backed off the police department though, as the city manager stepped up and said there was nothing left to cut at the PD. Good thing the city manager took a hefty raise right before they started the worst of the budget cutting.

They asked the officers this week to think of things/ideas of more ways to cut costs. They have a small mounted patrol and it’s being cut to only the volunteer civilian mounted personnel. .... thinks they might cut the funding for the SWAT team and the K-9 program. They are applying for funding for a school resource officer from the stimulus money, but it won’t really be a full-time resource officer, and the town will absorb that money into their own budget. They took on the airport security and will use officers to staff it, and are receiving money for 3 positions, but (of course) won’t let the PD hire the 3 positions to staff it. The chief is looking at cutting the schedule so there is no graveyard shift (which he doesn’t want to do, as it will leave the entire county without any law enforcement during the early morning hours). That option is especially dangerous as there is a 2 hour call out delay because most of the officers don’t live anywhere near town. The chief doesn’t have a lot of options as officers are already left alone without backup on the current 24-hour schedule.

FYI: This is one of the largest cities in an oil rich state and one of four states that employment levels in 2008 exceeded 2007...

or like this...

Council's finance committee received a report from the city's finance department Monday saying the city was already $7.7 million behind its revenue forecast by the end of April. And, if the trend continues, the city could face a deficit of about $40 million through next year.

"Hell would have to freeze over for us to get out of this,'' said Council member Leslie Ghiz. "There will be layoffs. There will be cuts. And it will be painful."

For the short term, City Manager Milton Dohoney has called for a five percent cut in 2009 spending from all city departments; and ordered department heads to submit plans to him by the end of the week on how they will do that.

The city administration had expected to collect nearly $82.6 million in income taxes through April, but the actual receipts were about $76.5 million. Admission tax revenue - the money the city gets from the sale of tickets to entertainment and sporting events - is down as well; and the city took a $1.3 million hit when the state of Ohio reduced the amount of money municipalities get from the state's Local Government Fund.

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20090519/NEWS0108/905200319/Huge+deficit+stuns+city

You can expect more of that....as tax revenue falls and social costs increase...

I expect the retail sector to dry up by Jan/Feb as Christmas doesn't come around this year...sporadic riots in the larger metropolitan areas over the winter....picking up in frequency, intensity and duration by summer/fall 2010...the state, county, city budgets will bleed out by July 2010 when the new budgets roll around and I expect many of them won't survive as coherent organizations by Fall/Winter 2010...


Update: 5/11/2009

If Bernanke does not back off he will find himself in a tightening monetary flat spin. As he comes to own more and more of the public float of the long end the impact of each sale into his program by private holders is magnified in the market.

That is, if there is $1 trillion of something outstanding and you buy $100 billion of it (10% of the float) the impact is X. If there is now $900 billion outstanding (after the first operation) and you buy another $100 billion you have in fact sucked up about 11%. When you get to owning $500 billion another $100 billion sucks up 20% of the float. Each tender operation of the same size thus creates an ever-increasing impact on the underlying price, and since nobody in their right mind will continue to hold something they believe is overvalued, the spiral will tighten precipitously, forcing even more purchases until The Fed owns it all.

At or before that point the long end becomes unavailable to Treasury as a funding source. Forcing all the issue to the short end now starts to ramp short yields (supply and demand, remember - add massive supply and what happens to price?) and Bernanke will then be urged to buy down the time line.

This path leads to a singularity - and both monetary and political failure. The bad news is that the event horizon is far before Bernanke actually winds up owning the entire float, but nobody knows exactly where it is.

Yet once crossed, there is no escape from the outcome.

We best not go there, because if we go down that road too far Americans will be needing all those firearms that they've been buying since Obama was elected - not for a revolution, as some suppose, but rather for self-defense as our political, social and economic structures collapse.
http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/1030-The-Economic-Tsunami-Is-Curling-Over.html



Feb 09 - Here's my predictions...

The stock market, at a minimum, will fall below early 90's levels. Keep in mind that I forecast in the spring of 2008 that the S&P 500 would be 800 or below January 1st 2009. I was off by a little.

Mexico will collapse into riots and civil war before the end of 2009.

California will collapse into chaos and anarchy by the end of 2009.

Sporadic riots and anarchy will spring up across the United States by the end of 2009.

The banking roll up will be complete or nearly complete by the end of 2009.

Foundation:

Baby Boomers - 401k/investment collapses, bankruptcy of social security and medicare, housing collapse, etc etc

Middle class decline -

A Vermont mother wrote, "We have at times had to choose between baby food and heating fuel." A 55-year-old man from rural Pennsylvania said, "I am just tired, the harder that I work the harder it gets." A retired couple in Vermont asked, "Does anybody in Washington care?"

It is one thing to read dry economic statistics which describe the collapse of the American middle class. Since George W. Bush has been in office 5 million Americans have slipped into poverty, 8 million have lost their health insurance and 3 million have lost their pensions. In the last seven years median household income for working-age Americans has declined by $2,500. Our country, for the first time since the Great Depression, now has a zero personal savings rate and, all across the nation, emergency food shelves are being flooded with working families whose inadequate wages prevent them from feeding their families.

It is another thing to understand, in flesh-and-blood terms, what that means in the lives of ordinary Americans. The responses that I received describe the decline of the American middle class from the perspective of those people who are living that decline. They speak about families who, not long ago, thought they were economically secure, but now find themselves sinking into desperation and hopelessness.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-bernie-sanders/the-collapse-of-the-middl_b_105658.html

Feb. 26 (Bloomberg) — In California’s Contra Costa County, 40,000 families are applying for just 350 affordable-housing vouchers. Church-operated pantries are running out of food. Crisis calls have more than doubled in the city of Antioch, where the Family Stress Center occupies the site of a former bank.

The worst financial crisis in seven decades is forcing thousands of previously middle-income workers to seek social services, overwhelming local agencies, clinics and nonprofits. Each month 16,000 people, including many who were making $60,000 to $100,000 annually just a few years ago, fill four county offices requesting financial, medical or food assistance.

“Unless we do things differently, not only will we continue to be on life support, but the power to the machine is going to die,” said county Supervisor Federal Glover, who represents Antioch and the cities of Pittsburg and Oakley about 50 miles (80 kilometers) east of San Francisco.



Here's a summary for those interested, but not that patient. Professor Warren studied economic data on spending and income gathered by the government for the "iconic" middle class family, trying to figure out the differences between the seventies and the current situation. The family from the seventies was single income with a stay-at-home Mom, whereas today it would primarily have two incomes.

Key points (as percentage of annual income):

* Saving went from 11% to less than nothing
* Credit Card Debt went from 1.4% to 15%

So basically what was once saved has instead been spent. But spent on what?

Consumption spending on: Clothing, Appliances, and Food all decreased. So where did the money go? The increases are found in important areas (which she describes as "fixed, relentless expenses"):

* 76% Mortgage (People buy bigger houses; true "entry level", affordable homes are not being built)
* 74% Health Insurance
* 52% Cars (People need two cars)
* 100% Child care (Stay-at-home Mom's save money)
* 25% Taxes (Two incomes = bigger tax bracket)

The seventies single-income family spent about half it's income on the basic expenses, whereas the current two-income family spends about three quarters of their income on these basic expenses.

She makes the point that two income families are necessary today, and almost all the income is already "fully budgeted." In the seventies, if the primary bread winner gets sick or fired, the stay-at-home Mom could go to work to provide a cushion.

She also points out that income volatility (the likelihood of getting fired) has gone up drastically since the seventies. The odds of suffering an economic blow for a family with two children has gone up 95%. The cost of a new home for a family with two children has gone up 100%, which she attributes to people buying homes near a good school.

She also points out that the widespread belief in the seventies was that if you had a good work ethic and a high school diploma, you'd make it into the middle class. The widespread belief today is that preschool and a university degree are required to make it into the middle class.
http://www.reddit.com/r/business/comments/7vy9o/the_coming_collapse_of_the_middle_class/

The man who predicted the 1987 stock market crash and the fall of the Soviet Union is now forecasting revolution in America, food riots and tax rebellions - all within four years, while cautioning that putting food on the table will be a more pressing concern than buying Christmas gifts by 2012.

Celente says that by 2012 America will become an undeveloped nation, that there will be a revolution marked by food riots, squatter rebellions, tax revolts and job marches, and that holidays will be more about obtaining food, not gifts.

“We’re going to see the end of the retail Christmas….we’re going to see a fundamental shift take place….putting food on the table is going to be more important that putting gifts under the Christmas tree,” said Celente, adding that the situation would be “worse than the great depression”.

“America’s going to go through a transition the likes of which no one is prepared for,” said Celente, noting that people’s refusal to acknowledge that America was even in a recession highlights how big a problem denial is in being ready for the true scale of the crisis.
http://www.infowars.com/celente-predicts-revolution-food-riots-tax-rebellions-by-2012/



He cites the warning of respected LSE economist Robert Wade, who recently told a protest meeting in Reykjavik that the world was approaching a tipping point and that March to May would be marked by widespread global civil unrest.

“It will be caused by the rise of general awareness throughout Europe, America and Asia that hundreds of millions of people in rich and poor countries are experiencing rapidly falling consumption standards; that the crisis is getting worse not better; and that it has escaped the control of public authorities, national and international,” said Wade.
http://www.infowars.com/2009-heralds-%E2%80%9Ca-new-age-of-rebellion%E2%80%9D/

MOSCOW -- For a decade, Russian academic Igor Panarin has been predicting the U.S. will fall apart in 2010. For most of that time, he admits, few took his argument -- that an economic and moral collapse will trigger a civil war and the eventual breakup of the U.S. -- very seriously. Now he's found an eager audience: Russian state media.

Prof. Panarin, 50 years old, is not a fringe figure. A former KGB analyst, he is dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry's academy for future diplomats. He is invited to Kremlin receptions, lectures students, publishes books, and appears in the media as an expert on U.S.-Russia relations.

"There's a 55-45% chance right now that disintegration will occur," he says. "One could rejoice in that process," he adds, poker-faced. "But if we're talking reasonably, it's not the best scenario -- for Russia." Though Russia would become more powerful on the global stage, he says, its economy would suffer because it currently depends heavily on the dollar and on trade with the U.S.

Mr. Panarin posits, in brief, that mass immigration, economic decline, and moral degradation will trigger a civil war next fall and the collapse of the dollar. Around the end of June 2010, or early July, he says, the U.S. will break into six pieces -- with Alaska reverting to Russian control.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123051100709638419.html

Pastor Lindsey Williams called the meltdown, along with dropping crude oil prices on 7-28-08 in an interview with Alex Jones. If you have never listened or watched Jones' program I suggest you start. He has the truth about this world and what is coming and has been broadcasting the warning for over a decade now. (www.infowars.com, www,prisonplanet.tv, also on shortwave radio)

The United States of America and its citizenry has been assessed, warned, plotted against, and sold out by internationalists in government, business, and the banking industry. Its workforce has been decimated, its standard of living shredded and its working people made financial slaves through unjust taxation, socialist government practices, rules and regulations at all levels in society that would make any communist dictator grin with envy.

Our role as partners in governmental affairs has been reduced to a whisper that is not heard by any elected official anywhere—with very, very few exceptions. Our representative government has become 535 regional dictators who live a life of luxury, self-importance and as arrogant master over the populace. The congress of the United States has carefully exempted itself from virtually all repressive laws they choose not to adhere to and have given themselves retirement pensions, health care and other perks, the rest of us can only dream of. They have become the Duma (Soviet Parliament) types who exemplify nothing other than crass selfishness at the expense of every American working citizen.

The past and present Administration has been pursuing a blending of Canada, America and Mexico into the “North American Union.” They have done it under the cover of governmental darkness. They have been running a race as to how fast they can manipulate our great nation into a “no going back” strategic position with these other two nations. The president and his cabal of sell-out White House/Congressional turncoats have intentionally kept the American people in a state of confusion (war on terror, etc.) so that organized resistance to this national sovereignty killing plan can not be formulated. Business and banking interests are salivating at the thought of trillions of dollars in “free trade” being exchanged throughout North America.

The cultures of Canada and Mexico are not that of the United States and its citizens. A disaster of Biblical proportions is on its way WHEN this plan is forced upon our nation. It is only one of several scenarios that are nearing completion and will spell the absolute end of the United States as we know it. Some will argue that the USA needs drastic overhauling and that this is the natural result of “planned obsolescence” in American culture. There are huge problems that must be addressed now by the American public, or the last opportunity to do so under “open and free” conditions will be lost.
http://www.thecitizen.com/~citizen0/node/35170

What others have said....

Former Vice President Dick Cheney warned that there is a “high probability” that terrorists will attempt a catastrophic nuclear or biological attack in coming years, and said he fears the Obama administration’s policies will make it more likely the attempt will succeed.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0209/18390.html

Video Link...
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1155201977?bctid=10116015001

Lord West, who advises the Prime Minister on security matters, told the House of Lords: "There is another great plot building up again and we are monitoring this."

He told peers: "Some of the measures that we have put into place in the past 15 months have made us safer, but that does not mean that we are safe.

"The threat is huge. It dipped slightly and is now rising again within the context of 'severe'.

"There are large complex plots. We unravelled one, which caused damage to al-Qaeda and the plots faded slightly.

"However, another great plot is building up again, which we are monitoring.
Lord West, the former First Sea Lord, is now Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Home Office with responsibility for Security and an advisor to the Prime Minister.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3198082/Lord-West-Terror-plot-being-investigated.html

SYDNEY (AFP) — The world is on the brink of an avalanche in the spread of devastating weaponry, a new global non-proliferation group warned Tuesday, saying that a nuclear incident would dwarf the September 11 attacks.
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gtW4R5X16sSsWPtKlo-SCugZ42qg



Link to news article with quote.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/10/biden-to-suppor.html



For more info see my posts on State Bankruptcies and State Sovereignty...

http://yophat.blogspot.com/2009/02/state-bankruptcies.html

http://yophat.blogspot.com/2009/02/state-sovereignty.html

For possible solutions to the mess see my post on economic survival...

http://yophat.blogspot.com/2009/02/economic-survival.html