(CNSNews.com) – Christians in Pakistan’s flood-hit regions are doubly affected by the disaster as a result of anti-Christian discrimination by government relief workers and Muslim aid agencies, according to representatives of the embattled minority.
They are urging Christians to send assistance to organizations that will either help stricken Christians specifically, or at least ensure that Christians are not sidelined in the aid distribution.
As flood waters begin to recede, thousands of Christians are among millions of Pakistanis left homeless. Aid agencies are delivering food, clothing, building supplies and hygiene kits in a bid to prevent outbreaks of water-borne diseases.
Many have lost not only their homes but also their source of livelihood as their crops and subsistence fields have been washed away along with seed for next season’s planting.
According to the Pakistan Christian Congress (PCC), Muslim relief organizations and government agencies have been denying assistance to Christians affected by the flooding in Punjab province.
The PCC organ Pakistan Christian Post described the southern Punjab was a “hotbed” of extremist organizations which view Christians as “infidels.” It said local officials in fear of the radical elements were barring Christians from tent camps for flood victims.
Islamabad, Sep 2 (PTI) A Pakistani minister wants US President Barack Obama to offer Eid prayers at Ground Zero in New York and become the “Amir-ul-Momineen” or Caliph of Muslims.
Minister of State for Industries Ayatullah Durrani, who belongs to the ruling Pakistan People”s Party, said the upcoming Eid-ul-Fitr festival, expected to be observed on September 11, would be a “golden opportunity” for Obama to offer Eid prayers and declare himself the leader of all Muslims.
“In this way, all the problems of the Muslim world would be solved,” Durrani told The Nation newspaper.
Durrani, a former member of the Pakistan Ideological Council, contended that the Muslim world is in “dire need” of a Caliph and occupying this distinguished slot would provide Obama “exemplary titles” like “Mullah Barack Hussain Obama” or “Allama Obama”.
He said: “The time is approaching fast. Barack Hussain Obama must act now. This is a golden opportunity, Muslims badly need it.”
Obama”s elevation to the Islamic Caliphate would be the “key to success, he claimed but did not offer any explanation for his remarks.
”Ground Zero” is the former site of the fallen twin towers of the World Trade Center.
[ The MSM is already seeding the public consciousness for this ultimate control mechanism... May God help us all. ]
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by David Kramer
It always starts out with the MSM doing a puff piece on some “wonderful” new technology which will make our lives “safer” and more “efficient.” From the broadcasting arm of the number one New World Order industrial corporation, General Electric, comes this story about the “convenience” of being microchipped for identification. (I know all of us have a serious problem about “not” carrying around any identification with us when we go outdoors with our wallets. Don’t worry—with the microchip implant we won’t even need our wallets anymore because all of our personal and financial information will be stored on this “convenient” chip.)
[ The only lasting beneficiaries of war are the corrupt politicians and bankers who initiate them.... Blair is one of their chief apostles... ]
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Tony Blair memoirs: we must be prepared for attack on Iran
The international community has to be prepared to take military action against Iran if the regime develops a nuclear weapon, Tony Blair has said in an interview to promote his memoirs, A Journey.
He said it was ”wholly unacceptable” for Tehran to seek a nuclear weapons capability and insisted there could be ”no alternative” to military force ”if they continue to develop nuclear weapons”.
Speaking to BBC journalist Andrew Marr, Mr Blair said: ”I am saying that I think it is wholly unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapons capability and I think we have got to be prepared to confront them, if necessary militarily.
”I think there is no alternative to that if they continue to develop nuclear weapons. They need to get that message loud and clear.”
In the interview, to be shown on BBC2 on Wednesday night, Mr Blair also said he was ”desperately sorry” for the relatives of those killed in Iraq but insisted leaving Saddam Hussein in power would have been a ”bigger risk” to security than removing him.
He was ”sorry for the lives cut short” but did not regret the decision to go to war.
[ Obviously Barak does NOT represent the political will of those Jews who believe the Torah and the promises of the land given to Israel.... ]
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JERUSALEM, Sept. 1 (UPI) — In the framework of a peace deal with the Palestinians, Israel is willing to partition Jerusalem, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said.
In an interview with Haaretz newspaper Wednesday, Barak said while the gaps remain wide and are of a “fundamental nature,” he believes there is a real chance to achieve peace with the Palestinians, based on a two-state solution and the division of Jerusalem.
“I’m not saying that there is a certainty for success, but there is a chance. This chance must be exploited to the fullest,” he told the newspaper.
Outlining the principles of a peace deal, the Israeli defense minister revealed his vision concerning Israel’s capital city.
“West Jerusalem and 12 Jewish neighborhoods that are home to 200,000 residents will be ours. The Arab neighborhoods in which close to a quarter million Palestinians live will be theirs. There will be a special regime in place along with agreed upon arrangements in the Old City, the Mount of Olives and the City of David.”
The conclusion of talks he said must achieve two states for two nations, an end to the conflict and the end of all future demands. The demarcation of a border that will run inside Israel where a solid Jewish majority will remain for generations, and on the other side a demilitarized Palestinian state, he said. Comprehensive security arrangements must also be made, he added.
[ Is this the logical result that comes from the misanthropic propaganda that humans are useless feeders who are destroying "Mother Earth"? One of Al Gore's "true believers".... ]
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SILVER SPRING, Md. — A gunman with a possible explosive device strapped to himself entered the Discovery Communications building in Silver Spring, Md., Wednesday afternoon and was holding a “small number” of hostages, police said…
Lee appears to have posted environmental and population-control demands online, saying humans are ruining the planet and that Discovery should develop programs to sound the alarm.
Lee said he experienced an ‘‘awakening” when he watched former Vice President Al Gore’s environmental documentary ‘‘An Inconvenient Truth.”
“I want Discovery Communications to broadcast on their channels to the world their new program lineup and I want proof they are doing so. I want the new shows started by asking the public for inventive solution ideas to save the planet and the remaining wildlife on it,” the alleged manifesto reads, adding:”Nothing is more important than saving … the Lions, Tigers, Giraffes, Elephants, Froggies, Turtles, Apes, Raccoons, Beetles, Ants, Sharks, Bears, and, of course, the Squirrels. The humans? The planet does not need humans.”
PHOENIX, Aug. 31 (UPI) — The U.S. Justice Department says it has filed an immigration lawsuit against Arizona authorities alleging hiring discrimination by schools in the state.Justice Department officials said the Phoenix-area Maricopa Community Colleges discriminated against nearly 250 non-citizen job applicants by forcing them to fill out more documents than required by law to prove eligibility to work, a violation of the federal Immigration and Nationality Act.
The district, which did not require the extra documents from U.S. citizens, stopped the practice in January during a yearlong Justice Department investigation, The Arizona Republic reported.
The suit calls for the community college district to pay a penalty of $1,100 for each non-U.S. citizen who was authorized to work but was forced to supply additional documentation.
The lawsuit alleges a group of community colleges acted illegally in requiring non-citizens to provide their green cards before they could be hired for jobs, The Washington Post reported Monday.
Department of Justice ditches red, white and blue stars and stripes
by Bruce Cunningham
Well, how interesting! It seems the U.S. Department of Justice has changed its website. Gone are the colorful red, white and blue U.S. flag decorations on the page, replaced by stark black and white.
And at the top of the page, is a rather interesting quote:
“The common law is the will of mankind, issuing from the life of the people.“
Catchy, huh? Just one tiny little (too small to be relevant obviously) point — the quote is from C. Wilfred Jenks, who in the 1930′s was a leading proponent of the “international law” movement, which had as its goal to impose a global common law and which backed ‘global workers’ rights.’
Call it Marxism, call it Progressivism, call it Socialism — under any of those names it definitely makes the DOJ look corrupt in their sleek, new black website with Marxist accessories to match.
See for yourself: http://www.justice.gov
How very interesting that ‘they’ couldn’t find a nice quote from one of our Founders. People, we have lost our Republic. We need to get it back ASAP.
Education secretary urged his employees to attend Sharpton’s rally
By: Lisa Gartner
President Obama’s top education official urged government employees to attend a rally that the Rev. Al Sharpton organized to counter a larger conservative event on the Mall.
“ED staff are invited to join Secretary Arne Duncan, the Reverend Al Sharpton, and other leaders on Saturday, Aug. 28, for the ‘Reclaim the Dream’ rally and march,” began an internal e-mail sent to more than 4,000 employees of the Department of Education on Wednesday.
Sharpton created the event after Glenn Beck announced a massive Tea Party “Restoring Honor” rally at the Lincoln Memorial, where King spoke in 1963.
The Washington Examiner learned of the e-mail from a Department of Education employee who felt uncomfortable with Duncan’s request.
Although the e-mail does not violate the Hatch Act, which forbids federal employees from participating in political campaigns, Education Department workers should feel uneasy, said David Boaz, executive vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute.
“It sends a signal that activity on behalf of one side of a political debate is expected within a department. It’s highly inappropriate … even in the absence of a direct threat,” Boaz said. “If we think of a Bush cabinet official sending an e-mail to civil servants asking them to attend a Glenn Beck rally, there would be a lot of outrage over that.”
The “smoking gun” that the events of 9-11 were not accurately reported by the US government is found in the destruction of World Trade Center Building Number 7, a 47 tall steel-frame structure that was NOT hit by an airplane and yet fell at free-fall velocity later on the fateful day of 9/11/2001. The final report on its collapse, postponed several times, was published over 7 years after the event on November 20, 2008. (It is revealing that the 9/11 Commission, which published its report in 2004, does not mention in a single sentence the destruction of WTC7….)
Built in 1985, WTC7 was formerly the headquarters of the junk-bond firm Drexel Burnham Lambert, which contributed to the Savings and Loans collapse, prompting the $500-billion taxpayer-underwritten bailout of the latter 1980s. At the time of its destruction, it exclusively housed government agencies and financial institutions (for a list, click here).
Over the years, many people have tried to awaken the sleeping public to this massive cover-up, but astonishingly most Americans are still unaware that this third building was even destroyed, let alone who its occupants were. It is TIME to get some answers….
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“The symmetry of WTC 7′s descent means that all of its steel supports – 25 central and 58 peripheral columns – were destroyed almost simultaneously. Any asymmetry in the damage to structures would have led to asymmetrical collapse. “ – Source
Vaccine programmes grind to a halt in India once more, when four children died after they received the measles vaccination in Lucknow. The four children were reported to have fainted soon after they were vaccinated and witnesses reported seeing the children’s eyes roll back as they began to have seizures. All of the children were under the age of two years of age, with the youngest being just six months. Sadly the children died before medical aid workers could reach them.
As news of the deaths spread, immunization drives in 41 villages have been halted until further investigations have taken place.
[ Despite the targeted propaganda by the liberal mass media, being a Libertarian does not make you a Sarah Palin Supporter! ]
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Ron Paul’s Shocking Message To The Tea Party
Ron Paul has some surprising news for the Tea Party:
You’re being taken for a ride.
At least this is what many libertarians like Ron Paul believe when they see someone like Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin trying to lead the Tea Party at the “restoring honor” rally this weekend. In fact, Ron Paul believes, if you’re looking for real freedom, you should really go back to the core of the constitution and the bill of rights, which Beck and Palin do not fully endorse when you really look at their beliefs. Whether it be Palin’s support for starting more wars or Beck’s beliefs on paying the private Federal Reserve MORE interest on our money by means of a VAT tax.
Ron Paul believes in neither of the above.
Here was Ron Paul’s message to the Tea Party via The New York Times just the other day:
“As many frustrated Americans who have joined the Tea Party realize, we cannot stand against big government at home while supporting it abroad. We cannot talk about fiscal responsibility while spending trillions on occupying and bullying the rest of the world. We cannot talk about the budget deficit and spiraling domestic spending without looking at the costs of maintaining an American empire of more than 700 military bases in more than 120 foreign countries. We cannot pat ourselves on the back for cutting a few thousand dollars from a nature preserve or an inner-city swimming pool at home while turning a blind eye to a Pentagon budget that nearly equals those of the rest of the world combined.”
While the Tea Party will be out supporting Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin this weekend, you wonder how many of them will be in full support of more wars and paying more interest to a group of untouchable and unauditable private bankers otherwise known as the FED? This is precisely what Ron Paul is asking the American public to consider when looking at the Tea Party leaders and see if they really stand for what they believe in.
Ron Paul believes the Tea Party is not about “left” or “right” like a lot of political pundits make it out to be. It’s about the constitution, and limited government.
(NaturalNews) Although it’s still summer in North America, it is of course winter in Australia, and the flu season is well under way there. As usual, Australian health authorities have been urging parents there to vaccinate their children against the flu, propagating the mythology that flu vaccines are both safe and effective. But this time around, many Australian parents found out the hard way that they were being lied to.
It didn’t take long to realize the truth after their children start going into convulsions following the flu vaccine injections. Other children began vomiting or exhibiting dangerously high levels of fever. One child has gone into a coma and may never recover.
As reported in WA Today (http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/f…):
“Perth mother of two Bea Flint said her 11-month-old boy Avery had a seizure after receiving the first dose of the two-dose flu vaccination on Saturday. Mrs Flint said that after the 9am vaccination she noticed Avery had a minor temperature about 2pm. At 7.45pm, Avery started whimpering and moaning. When Mrs Flint got to his cot the baby had vomited and was lying on his side having a seizure. ‘He couldn’t cry – his head was hanging down in the car seat and he couldn’t move. I was petrified – it was one of the worst experiences of my life.”
The story goes on to say, “The doctor who treated Avery told Mrs Flint her baby was the fifth child with similar symptoms admitted to the hospital that day.”
In other words, this was no rare event. Vaccinated children suffering severe convulsions were piling up in hospital emergency rooms across the country.
The real kicker, though, is that children started having convulsions two weeks ago but Australian health authorities ignored them, insisting that the vaccine was safe and causing it to be injected in yet more babies. Two weeks later, with dozens more children experiencing convulsions (and who knows how many thousands actually being harmed in less obvious ways), Commonwealth chief health officer Professor Jim Bishop finally announced the vaccination ban.
Remember: Health authorities in Australia, UK, the United States and everywhere else have relentlessly insisted that flu vaccines are perfectly safe and can’t possibly harm anyone. In the U.S., the FDA has given its approval to the very same flu vaccine that’s harming children in Australia, and the CDC has insisted that all children in the USA — regardless of age — should now be injected with this very same flu vaccine.
So now we’ve got a vaccine that Australia has banned but the USA somehow says is safe enough to inject into a six-month-old infant. How many convulsing babies will it take in the U.S. before American parents realize the truth about flu vaccines?
Chemically induced convulsions
As you’re reading this, you may find yourself wonder, “Well, what could cause such convulsions in children?”
The answer is more terrifying than you might think, because it’s not “weakened flu viruses” that vaccine manufacturer claim they put into the vaccines. A weakened flu virus doesn’t send children into convulsions. Only a chemical can do that.
The chemical in question is one that’s routinely added to most vaccines as a way to aggravate the immune system to respond to the presence of the weakened virus. It’s called an “adjuvant” and consists of a highly inflammatory chemical that we now know may damage brain tissues and the nervous system. It is this adjuvant that most likely caused the convulsions in children.
Even in children who don’t experience convulsions, there is speculation that this adjuvant may lead to future Alzheimer’s disease or other neurological disorders. Vaccine manufacturers always attempt to downplay their use of adjuvant chemicals, and few media outlets focus on this important point, but it is the adjuvant that is most likely responsible for sending these Australian children into hospitals with convulsions.
Health authorities defend dangerous vaccine
One thing I’ve noticed about vaccine pushers is that they behave like irrational zealots. No matter how much evidence surfaces about the dangers of vaccines, they continue to mindlessly push them while ignoring the evidence.
Big Government: House Republicans are stepping up to the plate and asking Americans on Main Street what we need to do to get the economy back on track. On Monday, Members of the Economic Recovery Working Group unveiled a 13-miniute video which takes a look at the debt crisis facing our country, titled “Obama’s Endgame: A Look at the National Debt.”
The Internet as you know it is in serious, serious danger. Some of the most powerful communications companies in the world have been involved in negotiations and have been making agreements that would throw net neutrality out the window and would move us toward a two-tier Internet. So exactly what would that mean? It would mean that the big corporate giants that have a virtual monopoly on other forms of media and entertainment would be able to buy access to the blazing fast “next generation” Internet that communications companies are developing and the rest of us (like this site for example) would be stuck on the decaying “gravel roads” of the old Internet. The threat that this poses to freedom, liberty, Internet commerce and the free flow of information should not be underestimated.
I want you to take a few moments and imagine with me what the future of the Internet could look like if something is not done. Imagine a world in which your Internet service provider gives you more “choices” regarding your level of Internet access. For a “budget” price, you can get email and access to several hundred of the hottest and most popular websites (controlled by the big media conglomerates of course) on the incredibly fast “next generation” Internet. For a bit more, you can get access to thousands of websites (once again, controlled by the big media conglomerates) on the new blazing fast version of the Internet that has been developed. Or lastly, you can get the “premium package” which will give you access to the entire Internet, including the millions of websites that are still chugging along on the “old Internet”.
Wouldn’t that be great?
Of course not.
Isn’t it obvious what would happen?
The millions of websites that are unwilling or unable to pay the exorbitant “tolls” to get on the new blazing fast version of the Internet would rapidly start losing traffic and would eventually fizzle out almost altogether.
After all, in this day and age who is going to stick with technology that is slow and outdated?
For example, how many people still use “dial-up” anymore? There are a few, but it is just not that many.
For years, the big Internet companies have been dreaming of getting permission to sell access to an Internet “fast lane” to the highest bidder. The potential profits to be had are staggering.
But right now there is one thing that stands in the way of those profits and that must be eliminated according to them.
Net neutrality.
Up until now, any information sent over the Internet has been treated more or less equally. When a data packet enters the Internet, it is directed to its destination regardless of the identity of the customer or the importance of the information.
But now some very powerful interests want to change all that. The idea is to have the Internet much more closely resemble cable television.
In particular, a recent agreement regarding net neutrality between Google and Verizon is causing alarm among Internet users.
Sound too conspiratorial to be true? Like the cover-up ops of spy novels? Well, it’s reality. And it is possibly the most bizarre, inhumane and abusive way that the White House is expanding its power over the American people.
It’s not an extremist belief or theory of the far right. It’s a fact that has been confirmed by The New York Times, The Washington Post and MSNBC and even documented by the far-left online magazine Salon.com.
And it’s the gravest nightmare of U.S. citizens and abandonment of our Constitution to date: a presidential assassination program in which U.S. citizens are in the literal scopes of the executive branch based upon nothing more than allegations of terrorism involvement as the branch defines it.
Of course, the CIA has executed covert assassinations of foreigners for decades. But tragically, Obama is expanding this program to include American, non-Islamic, stateside, homegrown terrorists.
“We are now moving beyond traditional distinctions between homeland and national security. … This includes a determination to prevent terrorist attacks against the American people by fully coordinating the actions that we take abroad with the actions and precautions that we take at home” – Barack Obama
It all started in January, when The Washington Post reported: “As part of the operations, Obama approved a Dec. 24 strike against a (Yemeni) compound where a U.S. citizen, Anwar al-Aulaqi, was thought to be meeting with other regional al-Qaeda leaders. Although he was not the focus of the strike and was not killed, he has since been added to a shortlist of U.S. citizens specifically targeted for killing or capture.”
“A shortlist of U.S. citizens specifically targeted for killing”?
That’s right. No arrest. No Miranda rights. No due process. No trial. Just a bullet.
While the Obama administration continues its Bush-blaming for the economy, it is mega-morphing Bush policy in covert ops overseas, which was, according to the Post, “to kill U.S. citizens abroad if strong evidence existed that an American was involved in organizing or carrying out terrorist actions against the United States or U.S. interests.”
Well, in recent weeks, the Obama administration has taken this overseas killing op to a new low: stateside assassinations.
A former director of national intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair, confessed before Congress: “We take direct actions against terrorists in the intelligence community. If we think that direct action will involve killing an American, we get specific permission to do that.”
If you are wondering who the “we” are to whom Adm. Blair refers, they are Smith, Wesson and the White House.
Now we know what deputy national security adviser John Brennan meant when he admitted in May, “And under President Obama, we have built upon the work of the previous administration and have accelerated efforts in many areas.” (Remember when Bush’s eavesdropping on U.S. citizens seemed harsh?)
Chuck Norris is no pinko-liberal-commie, and Human Events is a very conservative publication. The two have come together to produce an important article, “Obama’s US Assassination Program.”
It seems only yesterday that Americans, or those interested in their civil liberties, were shocked that the Bush regime so flagrantly violated the FlSA law against spying on American citizens without a warrant. A federal judge serving on the FISA court even resigned in protest to the illegality of the spying.
Nothing was done about it. “National security” placed the president and executive branch above the law of the land. Civil libertarians worried that the US government was freeing its power from the constraints of law, but no one else seemed to care.
Encouraged by its success in breaking the law, the executive branch early this year announced that the Obama regime has given itself the right to murder Americans abroad if such Americans are considered a “threat.” “Threat” was not defined and, thus, a death sentence would be issued by a subjective decision of an unaccountable official.
There was hardly a peep out of the public or the media. Americans and the media were content for the government to summarily execute traitors and turncoats, and who better to identify traitors and turncoats than the government with all its spy programs.
The problem with this sort of thing is that once it starts, it doesn’t stop. As Norris reports, citing Obama regime security officials, the next stage is to criminalize dissent and criticism of the government. The May 2010 National Security Strategy states: “We are now moving beyond traditional distinctions between homeland and national security. . . . This includes a determination to prevent terrorist attacks against the American people by fully coordinating the actions that we take abroad with the actions and precautions that we take at home.”
Most Americans will respond that the “indispensable” US government would never confuse an American exercising First Amendment rights with a terrorist or an enemy of the state. But, in fact, governments always have. Even one of our Founding Fathers, John Adams and the Federalist Party, had their “Alien and Sedition Acts” which targeted the Republican press.
Few with power can brook opposition or criticism, especially when it is a simple matter for those with power to sweep away constraints upon their power in the name of “national security.” Deputy National Security Adviser John Brennan recently explained that more steps are being taken, because of the growing number of Americans who have been “captivated by extremist ideology or causes.” Notice that this phrasing goes beyond concern with Muslim terrorists.
In pursuit of hegemony over both the world and its own subjects, the US government is shutting down the First Amendment and turning criticism of the government into an act of “domestic extremism,” a capital crime punishable by execution, just as it was in Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia.
Initially German courts resisted Hitler’s illegal acts. Hitler got around the courts by creating a parallel court system, like the Bush regime did with its military tribunals. It won’t be long before a decision of the US Supreme Court will not mean anything. Any decision that goes against the regime will simply be ignored.
[ When people are entirely given over to evil - as those who follow the twisted thinking of Saul Alinsky - then reason is abandoned and "might makes right" is the only thing left.... ]
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One of Washington’s principal supporters of the Tea Party movement, former GOP Majority Leader Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks, has been receiving death threats and profanity-laced phone calls as it gets involved in the fall elections. The number and intensity have reached such heights that the organization is leaving its downtown location near the FBI and moving to a high-security building near the U.S. Capitol.
“FreedomWorks and Dick Armey receive dozens of threatening and harassing calls and E-mails each day. Many imply violence and use of weapons,” spokesman Adam Brandon tells Whispers. “As we get closer to the election we expect the harassment to increase.”
[ Bush II and Obama were the latest pair of "change agents" selected by international powers to deconstruct and therefore destroy the United States. Bush was the "nasty conservative" (ying) and Obama is the "nasty liberal" (yang). The diabolical social engineers use the Hegelian dialectic to "move history," and that involves setting up entirely false polarities, propaganda, and even violence (i.e., wars on terror, etc.) to carefully control the public and monitor its responses. There is not much we can do except appeal to the LORD God of Israel to destroy the works of darkness. May He do so soon, and in our day! ]
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The Most Fiscally Irresponsible Government in U.S. History
Current federal budget trends are capable of destroying this country
By Mortimer B. Zuckerman
There is an instinctive conclusion among the American public that President Obama’s stimulus package has failed to create a sustained recovery. Unemployment has increased, not declined; consumers have retrenched; housing starts have crashed along with mortgage applications; and there is a fear that a double-dip recession may very well be in the pipeline. The public perception, reflected in Pew Research/National Journal polls, is that the measures to combat the Great Recession have mostly helped large banks and financial institutions, and that’s a view common to Republicans (75 percent) and Democrats (73 percent). Only one third of either political leaning thinks government policies have done a great deal or a fair amount for the poor.
There is another instinctive conclusion among the American people. It is that the national deficit, and the debts we have accumulated, are of critical political importance. On the national debt, the money the government has spent without the tax revenues to pay for it has produced mind-numbing numbers so large as to be disconnected from reality. Zeros from here to infinity. The sums are hard to describe; it is hard to describe an elephant, but you know one when you see one. The public knows that, shuffle the numbers as you may, the level of debt is unsustainable.
Who could be surprised since millions of voters have discovered that for themselves? As one realizes the morning after the night before, there is an unavoidable penalty for excess. It is unnerving to wake up and learn that you have a mortgage on your home that exceeds the value of the property. Or, and too often both, you have a credit card line that you cannot repay and the issuer has you on the rack for ever bigger compound interest on the debt. The lesson has been well and truly learned that debt catches up with you. Millions understand that they are just going to have to find a way to live within their means—and then still eke out some savings to pay down debt. And there are well over 14 million Americans without a paying job, so the level of discontent is very high. Just how are they going to regain control of their lives?
In a usnews.com post on July 26, Jodie Allen of the Pew Research Center reported that in recent weeks more academic and market economists have been urging the government to defer budget cuts and tax increases and instead provide additional stimulus to a still-fragile economy, some by continuing the Bush tax cuts. But among the public there has been a suggestive shift of opinion the other way, reflecting worries about debt. “Deficit and government spending” has jumped from 10th or 11th place as a priority for the federal government to one that is second only to job creation and economic growth. The drift of opinion is manifest in other recent polls. For instance, a CBS poll conducted July 9-12 assessed the most important problem facing the country as the economy and jobs (38 percent), with concern about the budget deficit and national debt way down at 5 percent. Yet CNN (July 16-21) has 47 percent preoccupied first with the economy, and 13 percent with the federal deficit. In a recent Time magazine poll, two thirds of the respondents say they oppose a second government stimulus program and more than half say the country would have been better off without the first one.
[ May God save us from Citi, CitiBank, Citigroup, Citimortgage, etc., institutions of corruption, greed, and heartless deception.... ]
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Analyst: Citigroup Is Cooking the Books
By Charlie Gasparino
Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit and a prominent securities analyst who is saying that the big bank may be cooking the books by inflating its earnings through an accounting gimmick, FOX Business Network has learned.
The analyst, Mike Mayo, of the securities firm CLSA, has been telling investors that Citigroup (C: 3.72 ,+0.06 ,+1.78%) should take a writedown, or a loss on some $50 billion of “deferred-tax assets,” or DTAs. That is a tax credit the firm has on its financial statement that Mayo says is inflating profits at the big bank by as much as $10 billion.
For that critique, Mayo has been denied one-on-one meetings with top players of the firm, including CEO Vikram Pandit, Chief Financial Officer John Gerspach, and any other member of management, while other analysts enjoy full access to the bank’s top executives, FBN has learned.
In fact, Mayo hasn’t had a meeting with Pandit or anyone in Citigroup management since around the time of the financial crisis, in the fall of 2008, when Citigroup was on the verge of extinction and needed an unprecedented series of government bailouts to survive.
Since then Citigroup has been profitable, albeit marginally. Though it posted a loss for the full year of 2009, after it repaid a government bailout loan during the fourth quarter and began to unwind Uncle Sam’s ownership stake. One reason Citigroup may be unwilling to write off its DTAs: to do so may sink the troubled bank back into unprofitability.
Capitalism Fixes Problems & Preserves Democracy: Capitalism is what we should be relying on to fix our problems. Capitalism has it’s own ecosystem, just like biology’s ecosystem. An economic ecosystem that weeds out the weak, has parasites that eat the failures and new bacteria that evolves and grows replacements for that which failed. A system that keeps everything in balance.
The problem is we are no longer a capitalistic society. What we were taught in school is now utter and absolute nonsense. Capitalism is a thing of the past.
As outlined in “It’s Not A Financial Crisis – It’s A Stupidity Crisis”, we created two back to back bubbles. The air out of the Tech Bubble was sucked up for fuel by our next stupidity crisis: The Housing Bubble.
Now, after the second Stupidity Crisis there isn’t a third bubble to inflate. If we still lived in a capitalistic environment the banks and financial institutions that created loans for folks who should have remained renters and then sold those loans as investments to pensions and countries would have been cleansed by capitalism’s ecosystem.
But that isn’t what happened.
In a very anti-capitalistic move the government decided that stupidity and criminal activity should be rewarded. I’d say they took our money, but it is worse, we didn’t have that much money. So they borrowed the money in our name. The loan has a variable rate. They borrowed so much money that our kids cosigned the loan. In fact, our kid’s future kid’s signed on the dotted line.
That is unequivocally immoral.
They gave that borrowed money to a bunch of morons as a reward for stupidity. Morons who created subprime loans, liar loans, no income no documentation loans and other fraudulent instruments. Morons bundled that trash, got it rated AAA and then sold these turds or weapons of mass destruction that they had the audacity to name complex financial instruments or derivatives to pension funds, countries and other “investors”.
Then it all blew up.
Big surprise.
For blowing up the world’s economy this Stupidity Crisis was falsely named an Economic Crisis by CNBS and 535 morons on a hill in DC (Ron Paul and a few other fiscally responsible adults excluded). The idiots who created the mess were rewarded with a 700 billion dollar “bailout”. This “bailout” was anything but a bailout and had a price tag of anything but 700 billion. The actual price tag is closer to 11 trillion and puts us on the hook for another 13-17 trillion – not counting interest.
WASHINGTON — The administration of President Barack Obama oversees a unit that is examining non-profit groups that support Israel.
A lawsuit filed in U.S. federal district court has disclosed that the Internal Revenue Service was operating a unit assigned to examine the positions and board members of pro-Israeli non-profit groups. The unit was said to have denied tax-exempt status to at least one organization, called Z Street, on grounds that it opposed Obama’s policy toward Israel.
“Z Street was informed explicitly by an IRS Agent on July 19, 2010, that approval of Z Street’s application for tax-exempt status has been at least delayed, and may be denied because of a special IRS policy in place regarding organizations in any way connected with Israel,” the suit, filed in U.S. district court in Philadelphia, said. “And further that the applications of many such Israel-related organizations have been assigned to ‘a special unit in the D.C. office to determine whether the organization’s activities contradict the administration’s public policies.’ ”
Z Street, established in 2009 as a non-profit educational group, has sued the IRS for refusing an application for tax exemption. Z Street, quoting an IRS agent, said the refusal was based on the group’s advocacy of Israel that differed with administration policy.
Lobbyists said this marked the first time since the 1950s that pro-Israeli non-profit organizations were being threatened with denial of their tax-exempt status for their political positions. Neither the IRS nor the White House has acknowledged the existence of the special unit.
“We don’t know if there are other organizations that have received the same treatment or even if this is a new policy,” Z Street president Lori Lowenthal Marcus said. “People don’t talk about this. But I can guarantee you that they didn’t establish this unit just for Z Street.”
[ Faith touches everything.... A doctor who regards you as a useless feeder without an eternal soul has the same basic worldview as Josef Mengele, the Angel of Death who worked for the Nazis.. ]
Doctors who are atheist or agnostic are twice as likely as those with deeply religious beliefs to take decisions that might shorten a terminally-ill patient’s life, according to research.
Atheist doctors ‘more likely to hasten death’
Study finds medics’ faith affects care of terminally ill, as hospital clinicians admit ‘ethically controversial’ decisions
Terminally-ill patients would be well advised to find out the religious beliefs of their doctor, according to research showing the effect of faith on a doctor’s willingness to make decisions that could hasten death.
Doctors who are atheist or agnostic are twice as likely to take decisions that might shorten the life of somebody who is terminally ill as doctors who are deeply religious – and doctors with strong religious convictions are less likely even to discuss such decisions with the patient, according to Professor Clive Seale, from the centre for health sciences at Barts and the London school of medicine and dentistry.
“If I were a patient facing end of life care, I would want to know what my doctor’s views were on religious matters – whether they are non-religious or religious and whether the doctor felt that would influence them in the kinds of decisions they were looking at,” said Seale.
A patient who wanted their life prolonged at all costs in the event of a terminal illness, or did not want it prolonged, should make sure they had a doctor who was in sympathy with this.
Doctors are influenced by their beliefs, just as other people are, said Seale.
“It is easy for clinicians to present themselves as neutral appliers of science, but values do come into it,” he said. That is accepted in abortion care, but the issue has not yet been widely discussed in the care of the dying. “I had a GP who was powerfully committed to not legalising euthanasia,” said Seale. He has now changed his GP.
[ Is it really possible that the Party of Evil™ is beginning to doubt its own unbridled propaganda by questioning its supposed invincibility???]
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Democrats privately fear House prospects worsening
Top Democrats are growing markedly more pessimistic about holding the House, privately conceding that the summertime economic and political recovery they were banking on will not likely materialize by Election Day.
In conversations with more than two dozen party insiders, most of whom requested anonymity to speak candidly about the state of play, Democrats in and out of Washington say they are increasingly alarmed about the economic and polling data they have seen in recent weeks.
They no longer believe the jobs and housing markets will recover – or that anything resembling the White House’s promise of a “recovery summer” is under way. They are even more concerned by indications that House Democrats once considered safe – such as Rep. Betty Sutton, who occupies an Ohio seat that President Barack Obama won with 57 percent of the vote in 2008 – are in real trouble.
In two close races, endangered Democrats are even running ads touting how they oppose their leadership.
“Democrats kept thinking: ‘We’re going to get better. We’re going to get well before the election,’” said one of Washington’s best-connected Democrats. “But as of this week, you now have people saying that Republicans are going to win the House. And now it’s starting to look like the Senate is going to be a lot closer than people thought.”
Schoolgirls and teachers sick from poison gas in Afghanistan
By the CNN Wire Staff
Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) — Dozens of schoolgirls and teachers were sickened Wednesday by poison gas in Afghanistan, medical and government officials said.
The latest incident, this one at a high school, is the ninth such case involving the poisoning of schoolgirls, said Asif Nang, spokesman for the nation’s education ministry.
Dr. Kabir Amiri said 59 students and 14 teachers were brought to the hospital, and were faring better.
“We don’t have good equipment to verify the kind of gas that they were poisoned with, but we have taken their blood tests to send to Turkmenistan for verifying the type of gas” that was used, Amiri said.
Many Afghan girls were not allowed to attend school during the Taliban’s rule from 1996 to 2001. Girls’ schools began reopening after the Islamist regime was toppled. The United Nations children’s agency, UNICEF, estimates that 2 million Afghan girls attend school these days.
[ It's been said that people get the government they deserve... Godless America therefore is now in the grip of dictatorship based on greed, duplicity, and fascist control.... ]
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The Government’s New “Right” to Track Your Every Move With GPS
Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn’t violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway – and no reasonable expectation that the government isn’t tracking your movements.
That is the bizarre – and scary – rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants – with no need for a search warrant. (See a TIME photoessay on Cannabis Culture.)
It is a dangerous decision – one that, as the dissenting judges warned, could turn America into the sort of totalitarian state imagined by George Orwell. It is particularly offensive because the judges added insult to injury with some shocking class bias: the little personal privacy that still exists, the court suggested, should belong mainly to the rich.
This case began in 2007, when Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents decided to monitor Juan Pineda-Moreno, an Oregon resident who they suspected was growing marijuana. They snuck onto his property in the middle of the night and found his Jeep in his driveway, a few feet from his trailer home. Then they attached a GPS tracking device to the vehicle’s underside.
[ The pretext of terror -- that YOU are a SUSPECT -- is now the common modality between the law "enforcers" and the common people... This is just the latest in a series of privacy-shredding and invasive tactics designed to degrade people into regarding themselves as chattel, wards of the ubiquitous state.... Only those willing to expose their genitalia before the god Molech (i.e., the State) are considered "safe" to a diabolically corrupt power structure. ]
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Full-Body Scan Technology Deployed In Street-Roving Vans
As the privacy controversy around full-body security scans begins to simmer, it’s worth noting that courthouses and airport security checkpoints aren’t the only places where backscatter x-ray vision is being deployed. The same technology, capable of seeing through clothes and walls, has also been rolling out on U.S. streets.
“It’s no surprise that goverments and vendors are very enthusiastic about [the vans],” says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of EPIC. “But from a privacy perspective, it’s one of the most intrusive technologies conceivable.”
American Science & Engineering, a company based in Billerica, Massachusetts, has sold U.S. and foreign government agencies more than 500 backscatter x-ray scanners mounted in vans that can be driven past neighboring vehicles to see their contents, Joe Reiss, a vice president of marketing at the company told me in an interview. While the biggest buyer of AS&E’s machines over the last seven years has been the Department of Defense operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, Reiss says law enforcement agencies have also deployed the vans to search for vehicle-based bombs in the U.S.
[ Does anyone recall how literally TRILLIONS of dollars were siphoned out of the US economy over the last two years, all in the name of "bailing out" troubled financial assets? This happened under both GW Bush and Obama... Just a FRACTION of that amount would have paid for ALL the distressed mortgages in the US economy -- and yet none of it actually helped the American people.... The US economy is running under an unsustainable debt -- and this debt load was created BY DESIGN. ]
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Economy Caught in Depression, Not Recession: Rosenberg
Positive gross domestic product readings and other mildly hopeful signs are masking an ugly truth: The US economy is in a 1930s-style Depression, Gluskin Sheff economist David Rosenberg said Tuesday.
Writing in his daily briefing to investors, Rosenberg said the Great Depression also had its high points, with a series of positive GDP reports and sharp stock market gains.
But then as now, those signs of recovery were unsustainable and only provided a false sense of stability, said Rosenberg.
Rosenberg calls current economic conditions “a depression, and not just some garden-variety recession,” and notes that any good news both during the initial 1929-33 recession and the one that began in 2008 triggered “euphoric response.”
“Such is human nature and nobody can be blamed for trying to be optimistic; however, in the money management business, we have a fiduciary responsibility to be as realistic as possible about the outlook for the economy and the market at all times,” he said.
The 1929-33 recession saw six quarterly bounces in GDP with an average gain of 8 percent, sending the stock market to a 50 percent rally in early 1930 as investors thought the worst had passed.
“False premise,” Rosenberg said. “And guess what? We may well be reliving history here. If you’re keeping score, we have recorded four quarterly advances in real GDP, and the average is only 3%.”
Rosenberg’s warning comes as a slew of major analysts—Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan among them—have slashed GDP projections for 2010 to the 1.5 to 2 percent range.
Chicago Federal Reserve President Charles Evans said in a speech Tuesday that the risk of a double-dip recession has escalated. He said government programs to help distressed homeowners have been ineffective and aren’t helping the pivotal housing sector recover.
The dour outlooks come on the same day that the National Association of Realtors said home sales reached a 15-year low in June, dousing hopes that the industry had reached a bottoming point.
Obama Scrubs White House Website of Climate Change Promises, Media Mum
Despite the fact that President Obama made Cap and Trade and other green policy plans a focal point of his early days in office — not to mention his campaign for president — the White House has quietly scrubbed from its official website many of Obama’s promises and green initiatives. I guess the era of Obama really is “change you can believe in.”
Especially interesting it the sudden disappearance of Obama’s plan to commit $150 billion on clean energy research and development.
In 2008 as Obama was preparing to take office he featured on his “Office of the President Elect” website a pledge to spend $150 billion on energy R & D. As of today, that pledge is still there.
Invest in a clean energy economy and create 5 million new green jobs: Obama and Biden will invest $150 billion over 10 years to advance the next generation of biofuels and fuel infrastructure, accelerate the commercialization of plug-in hybrids, promote development of commercial scale renewable energy, invest in low emissions coal plants, and begin transition to a new digital electricity grid. The plan will also invest in America’s highly skilled manufacturing workforce and manufacturing centers to ensure that American workers have the skills and tools they need to pioneer the first wave of green technologies that will be in high demand throughout the world.
This policy was a major plank in his green initiatives plan and was featured on the White House website until July but just short of the two-year point in his term this pledge has vanished from the White House website.
Also gone is any clear pledge to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions via his formerly touted cap and trade legislative efforts. For instance, the section once titled “Closing the Carbon Loophole and Cracking Down on Polluters” is now vanished down the memory hole.
Hussman: Bernanke’s Quantitative Easing Is About To Trigger A Collapse In The US Dollar
In his latest weekly letter, John Hussman warns of an imminent and disorderly collapse of the US dollar, courtesy of Ben Bernanke’s move towards more quantitative easing.
The whole thing is worth reading, but here’s the key part of it:
From the standpoint of the two parity conditions, the very long-term implication of quantitative easing is a gradual devaluation of the U.S. dollar (an increase in the dollar price $/FC of foreign currency). If this increased inflation risk was reflected in interest rates (so that real interest rates were held constant), the U.S. dollar would simply move along that gradually sloped PPP line, and likewise, foreign currencies would gradually appreciate against the dollar.
However, because of economic weakness and credit strains, coupled with the demand for Treasuries by the Fed, quantitative easing instead moves U.S. interest rates in the opposite direction, falling rather than rising. From the standpoint of interest rate parity, capital market equilibrium then requires the U.S. dollar to depreciate immediately, by a sufficient amount to set up the expectation of future appreciation in order to offset the shortfall of U.S. interest rate returns.
In short, quantitative easing is likely to induce what the late MIT economist Rudiger Dornbusch described as “exchange rate overshooting” – a large and abrupt shift in the spot exchange rate that occurs in order to align long-term equilibrium in the market for goods and services with short-term equilibrium in the capital markets.
Portions of the Gulf are So Toxic that Dolphins, Fish, Crabs, Stingrays and Other Animals are “Trying to Crawl Out of the Water”
On Friday, Inter Press Service reported:
Danny Ross, a commercial fisherman from Biloxi… said he has watched horseshoe crabs trying to crawl out of the water, and other marine life like stingrays and flounder trying to escape the water as well. He believes this is because the water is hypoxic. …
David Wallis, another fisherman from Biloxi… [said] “I’ve seen crabs crawling out of the water in the middle of the day. This is going to be affecting us far into the future.”
This has been a common occurrence since BP started spilling oil into the Gulf.
The Post Chronicle noted on August 12th:
Some local fishermen say they are seeing strange behavior by marine life — mullets, crabs and other creatures which normally stay well under water have been sighted congregating on the surface — and they relate this to the spill.
***
“It looks like all of the sea life is trying to get out of the water,” said Alabama fisherman Stan Fournier. “In the 40 years I have been on these waters I’ve never seen anything like this before.”
Net-neutrality group challenged by ties to MoveOn.Org, ACORN
By Sara Jerome
(THE HILL) A bipartisan coalition in favor of net neutrality has lost a key conservative supporter amid signs that the issue is becoming more divisive.
The Gun Owners of America (GOA) severed ties with the net-neutrality coalition Save the Internet after a conservative blog questioned the association with liberal organizations such as ACORN and the ACLU.
The blog RedState described Save The Internet as a “neo-Marxist Robert McChesney-FreePress/Save the Internet think tank” and questioned why GOA would participate in a coalition that includes liberal groups such as the ACLU, MoveOn.Org, SEIU, CREDO and ACORN.
GOA was one of the charter members of Save the Internet, but a spokesman for the gun rights group said times have changed.
“Back in 2006 we supported net neutrality, as we had been concerned that AOL and others might continue to block pro-second amendment issues,” said Erich Pratt, communications director for GOA.
“The issue has now become one of government control of the Internet, and we are 100 percent opposed to that,” Pratt said.
Save The Internet had long pointed to the support of gun owners as evidence that net neutrality is a nonpartisan issue.
Net-neutrality advocates are struggling to maintain bipartisan support during an election season that has cast the issue along party lines.
Last month, 35 Tea Party groups came out against net neutrality in a letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The letter accused the FCC of “relentlessly pursuing a massive regulatory regime” that would stifle the growth of the Internet.
The FCC is considering a move to boost its authority over broadband providers through a controversial process known as reclassification. The process could give federal regulators the power to impose net-neutrality rules, which would prevent Internet access providers from favoring some content and applications over others.
[ It should be noted that the official 9/11 story is riddled with inconsistencies, errors, propaganda, and outright lies... For more information about, for example, how a 47-story, all-steel structure (i.e., WTC-7) fell to the ground at free-fall velocity - despite never being hit by an airplane, see this site (or watch this video or this one). The Muslim-9/11 connection, therefore is suspect, and reminds me of the equally fallacious reasoning that attempted to connect Saddam Hussein with the collapse of the Twin Towers - even though the connection was later proven to be nothing but sheer propaganda. The real enemy of liberty in this country - and around the world - is the transnational banking conglomerates, who surely orchestrated the entire 9/11 event.
Let's not be fooled by the social engineers. They are attempting to exploit sentiment against Islam for their own evil purposes. Islam is surely a false religion, but it is not responsible for the collapse of the World Trade Center towers. If you want to know who's behind the real business of terror, follow the money trail. You can begin your search here...
In what follows, Ron Paul makes the (additional) point that fighting against a doctrine you find morally repugnant is a two-edged sword. If the mob is able to coerce Muslims into compliance, why should Christians object if Muslims do the same thing in other parts of the world? A consistent libertarian rejects governmental interference when it is not necessary. If we fight Islam regarding the liberty to worship, don't be surprised if the "secular" government turns its sight upon churches and synagogues next. After all, the autocratic State ultimately demands to be worshiped, just as bloody human history has revealed time and time again.... ]
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Ron Paul Defends Ground Zero Mosque
In an apparent break with his son, Kentucky GOP Senate candidate Rand Paul, Rep. Ron Paul unleashed a lengthy and at times angry statement on his website Friday that supports the rights of Muslims to build what’s become known as the “Ground Zero Mosque.”
The elder Paul, known as a staunch libertarian and small government conservative, argues strongly that New York City’s Muslim community has every right to build the mosque and Islamic cultural center two blocks from the site of the 9/11 attacks.
Rand Paul, by contrast, has sided with many conservatives asking that the site of the mosque be moved in deference to the wishes of those who lost loved ones during the attack.
“While this is a local matter that should be decided by the people of New York, Dr. Paul does not support a mosque being built two blocks from Ground Zero,” Paul spokesperson Gary Howard told “In Dr. Paul’s opinion, the Muslim community would better serve the healing process by making a donation to the memorial fund for the victims of September 11th.”
But Ron Paul doesn’t agree. Moreover, he criticizes those who blame Islam alone for the attacks, rather than a small fanatical group of terrorists. He goes on to argue that Christians, especially Catholics, could be held to the same standard for the religious wars in medieval Europe.
“This is all about hate and Islamaphobia,” he writes. “We now have an epidemic of “sunshine patriots” on both the right and the left who are all for freedom, as long as there’s no controversy and nobody is offended. Political demagoguery rules when truth and liberty are ignored.”
A traffic jam stretching more than 60 miles in China has entered its ninth day with no end in sight, state media reported.
Cars and trucks have been slowed to a crawl since August 14 on the National Expressway 110, which is also known as the G110, the major route from Beijing to Zhangjiakou, Xinhua News reported.
Officials expect the congestion to continue until workers complete construction projects on September 13, the report said.
