"It is not enough to know that there is a shadow government pulling the strings of the visible government- we must also act to expose it, and defeat it!"-Mark Matheny
The essence of debt serfdom is debt rises to compensate for stagnant wages.
I often speak of debt serfdom; here it is, captured in a single chart. The basic dynamics are all here, if you read between the lines:
1. Financialization of the U.S. and global economies diverts income to capital and those benefitting from globalization/ “financial innovation;” income for the top 5% rises spectacularly in real terms even as wages stagnate or decline for the bottom 80%.
2. Previously middle class households (or those who perceive themselves as middle class) compensate for stagnating incomes and rising costs by borrowing money: credit cards, auto loans, student loans, etc. In effect, debt is substituted for income.
3. The dot-com/Internet boom boosted incomes across the board, enabling the bottom 95% to deleverage some of the debt.
4. When the investment/speculation bubble popped, incomes again declined, and households borrowed heavily against their primary asset, the home, via home equity lines of credit (HELOCs), second mortgages, etc.
5. The incomes of the top 5% rose enough that these households could actually reduce their debt (deleverage) even before the housing bubble popped.
Here is a chart of real (inflation-adjusted) incomes, courtesy of analyst Doug Short: note that the incomes of the bottom 80% have been flatlined for decades, while the top 20% saw modest growth that vanished once the housing bubble popped. Only the top 5% experienced significant expansion of income. Notice that incomes of the top 20% and top 5% really took off in 1982, once financialization became the dominant force in the economy.
Interestingly, we can see the double-bubble (dot-com and housing) clearly in the top income brackets, as these speculative bubbles boosted capital gains and speculation-based income. Since the bottom 80% had little capital to play with, the twin bubbles barely registered in their incomes.
Bottom line: financialization and substituting debt for income have run their course. They’re not coming back, no matter how hard the Federal Reserve pushes on the string.Both of these interwined trends have traced S-curves and are now in terminal decline:
Those hoping the economy is “recovering” on the backs of financial speculation/ legerdemain and ramped up borrowing by the lower 95% will be profoundly disappointed when reality trumps fantasy.
Columbus Dispatch: Government propaganda is now claiming that Osama Bin Laden was growing increasingly discontent with groups attaching themselves to the organization he founded. The report also claims that papers found in the pakistan compound which they allege was his house, say that Osama had plans to assassinate the President. Inside sources claim Osama Bin Laden died in Tora Bora back in 2001.
A third explosion rocked Syrian city of Idlib on Monday, hours after twin bomb blasts killed more than 20 people in the northwestern city.
Casualties are feared in the third blast which shook the university neighborhood in Idlib on Monday.
Activists say at least 20 people were killed and dozens of others were injured in twin explosions targeting the Air Force Intelligence headquarters and the Military Intelligence buildings in Idlib earlier in day.
Press TV has conducted an interview with Webster Griffin Tarpley, an author and historian from Washington, to further explore the issue. What follows is an approximate transcription if the interview.
Press TV: Many point out the situation in Syria and the US involvement in the region in the past year specifically are part of the US plan for a new middle east. Would you agree with that assessment and how would you define the US’ views of a new Middle East?
Tarpley: I think the US strategic role in the Middle East is the destruction of all existing national states. There is an outline for this that has been known for many years as the Bernard Lewis plan.
It has been expressed again by people like Zbigniew Brzezinski. Microstates, mini states, rump states, secessionism, chaos, warlords and NATO feels free to seize whatever assets they think are important, be it oil or water or strategic ports or things like this.
If we just look at what is happening in Syria right now, I think we can say that –the so-called Syrian opposition, these Syrian national council and the terrorists of the free Syrian army– they are politically defeated and their only hope right now is to maintain a constant series of terrorist attacks, bombings, murders; they have had suicide bombings.
This is not a technique of the Syrian army; it is a technique of al-Qaeda. We have just heard, as you say, Idlib near the Turkish border three attacks in one day, coordinated attacks, another hallmark of the al-Qaeda.
So there is no political content here. It is simply a desire to keep something going so that there will be a pretext for foreign forces to intervene and I think that is where we are headed right now.
We have a movie here in the United States called ‘Wag the Dog’ and it is the story of a president who is facing defeat in an election and he looks around and he says how can I get a provocation going? How can I get people’s attention focused on a foreign war, a foreign enemy?
Well, maybe President Sarkozy of France fills the bill this week, as he looks at the coming defeat of his electoral hopes. He is a lame duck president; he seems to be on his way out; may he not mount something. His Foreign Minister [Alain] Juppe, at the end of last week, said it is time now to get serious and get that attack on Syria organized.
The other news of today or of yesterday is the arrival of General [Robert] Mood, the Norwegian NATO general who is supposed to direct these NATO observers. Now this, I would point as the reductio ad absurdum of this entire situation. Here we have a NATO general.
Norway is a NATO state. They are part of that aggressive neocolonialist group of states called NATO. He is now going to be the judge in jury of what is going on in Syria. His brother NATO officers across the border in Turkey are actively sending death squads, weapons, organizing these actions that we see; his brother NATO officers from France have been have been captured in the area of Homs.
So how can General Mood be impartial? We would need to see lots of observers from Russia, from China, from Cuba, from Venezuela, from North Korea, from what the West would call the rogue states. That is the only hope of getting some kind of an honest vision of what is going on in Syria.
Press TV: Dr. Tarpley , I’d like to pick up on a point that you made earlier which was even the Syrian media has drawn parallels between the recent terrorist attacks in Syria and those carried out by al-Qaeda. What do you make of al-Qaeda involvement under what the Syrian government calls ‘US backing’?
Tarpley: Well, al-Qaeda of course is the CIA Arab legion created by the CIA and by MI6 to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan back in 1980 and there are still people running around Washington who had a hand in that.
Robert Gates was Secretary of Defense until just a little while ago; Michael Vickers is going to be the head of the new Defense Clandestine Service. He is a top official in the Pentagon. He was present at the creation back in the 1980s.
So the trick is that these al-Qaeda fighters have been used for example to overthrow the government of Libya and they would then redirect it into Syria. Very interesting fact, this ship that was caught by the Lebanese navy, I believe, off the Coast of Eastern Mediterranean.
It was coming from the NATO puppet state of Libya which has been taken over by precisely these people, loaded to the gills with heavy weapons and this was going to be deliberate to the Syrian death squads and the Syrian rebel coalition.
So this is an example of hypocrisy and double-dealing, I guess, in order to find a comparison we have got to go back to Hitler and the Sudetenland in 1938 where Hitler was actively fomenting terrorism inside the country and then he could turn around and say, ‘oh, I am sorry I have got to intervene’, and he was telling his minions on the ground, ‘do not negotiate, make unreasonable demands, do not come to an agreement because we need an issue; we do not need an agreement; we need a reason to invade’.
That is the NATO posture today.
Press TV: Then I guess the multimillion question here is that who then is going to gain from this? Who stands to benefit?
Tarpley: We are talking about a significant piece of the world and a building bloc for world domination.
Everybody has observed that if Syria falls into chaos, if Syria is wiped off the map and replaced by Kurdish, Alewite and other entities and warlords, then Iran loses an ally, Hezbollah loses its strategic depth, the predicament of the Israelis is made much easier, there are probably hotheads in Istanbul and Ankara who think that they can seize pieces of this right on their way to some kind of new Ottoman Empire.
There are lots and lots of people who would like to carve themselves a piece of Syria. Naturally, I would warn them, especially the Turks that when the US offers Turkey this wonderful perspective of invading Syria, the goal there is to destroy Turkey as well as Syria.
(Reuters) - The euro zone economy worsened markedly last month and U.S. employers cut back on hiring, according to two reports on Friday that dampened hopes for gradual recovery on either side of the Atlantic.
In Europe, the purchasing managers indexes (PMIs), which primarily cover services, suggested a recession across the continent's currency union could now extend to mid-year and be deeper than previously thought.
The gloomy surveys clashed with the picture painted by European Central Bank President Mario Draghi, who on Thursday spoke of a gradual recovery taking place in the euro zone during the course of the year - although he did speak about risks.
In the United States, a government report showed employers added a disappointing 115,000 workers to payrolls last month and, critically, many Americans stopped looking for work. Economists had expected 170,000 new nonfarm jobs, and the report could hurt President Barack Obama as he steps up a re-election campaign that will likely hinge on the state of the economy.
Though the U.S. unemployment rate edged down to 8.1 percent from 8.2 percent, stocks .SPX fell sharply as fears grew that the erratic recovery of the world's largest economy was sputtering.
"This shows just how painfully slowly the U.S. economy is growing," said Thanos Bardas, a portfolio manager at Neuberger Berman in Chicago, which manages nearly $200 billion in assets.
The U.S. government did, however, revise upward earlier estimates of payroll growth in February and March, and the euro zone surveys indicated better progress among Chinese companies.
Joel Skousen, editor of World Affairs Brief and author of Strategic Relocation: North American Guide To Safe Places, talks with Alex. Mr. Skousen’s book is available at the Infowars Store.
The unemployment crisis in America is much worse than you are being told. Did you know that there are 100 million working age Americans that do not get up in the morning and go to work?
No wonder why it seems like there are so many people that do not have jobs! According to the federal government, there are 12.6 million working age Americans that are considered to be “officially” unemployed, but there are another 87.8 million working age Americans that are not working either. The federal government considers those Americans to be “not in the labor force” so they are not included in the unemployment rate. In fact, this is one of the key ways that the government manipulates the unemployment numbers. The Obama administration would have us believe that the unemployment rate is going down and that that since the start of the last recession about as many Americans have left the labor force as we saw during the entire decades of the 1980s and 1990s combined. Of course that is a bunch of nonsense, but that is what the Obama administration would have us believe. The truth is that the percentage of working age Americans that are employed is just about the same right now as it was two years ago. It was incredibly difficult to get a job back then and it is incredibly difficult to get a job right now. So don’t believe the hype that things are getting much better. If you still do have a good job, you might want to hold on to it tightly, because there is not much hope that things are going to improve significantly any time soon.
The first chart that I have posted below shows the total number of “officially” unemployed workers in America. According to the Federal Reserve, that number is currently 12,673,000. This chart makes it look like the employment picture in America is getting significantly better….
But if you dig deeper into the numbers you quickly see that this is not true. A lot of those workers that were formerly classified as “unemployed” have now been moved into the “not in labor force” category. Since the start of the last recession, the number of Americans not in the labor force has risen by more than 8 million according to the Obama administration. The total number of working age Americans not in the labor force now stands at 87,897,000….
So when you add 12,673,000 and 87,897,000, you get a total of 100,570,000 working age Americans that do not have jobs.
Yes, there are certainly millions upon millions of working age Americans that do not have jobs and that do not want jobs.
But you have to be delusional to believe that there are nearly 88 million working age Americans that do not have jobs and that do not want jobs.
The greenback and the U.S. bond market are headed for a collapse as the U.S. Federal Reserve loses the ability to service the nation’s debt with “artificially low” interest rates, Peter Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific Capital told CNBC on Wednesday.
The Federal Reserve headquarters in Washington, DC.
“As far as I am concerned, U.S. Treasurys are junk bonds,” Schiff said on CNBC Asia’s“Squawk Box.” “And the only reason that the U.S. government can pay the interest on the debt, and I say ‘pay’ in quotes because we never pay our bills. We borrow the money so we pretend to pay, but the only reason we can do it is because the Fed has got interest rates so artificially low.”
The Fed has been keeping rates on benchmark 10-year Treasurys low by purchasing bonds viaquantitative easing(QE) , and this will ultimately be the U.S. economy’s “undoing,” Schiff said.
“Unfortunately, we are going to get more QE than Rocky movies, because the only thing keeping this phony economy going is this QE,” he said. “And the minute you take it away, it’s going to collapse.”
Schiff’s comments come after two Fed officials warned on Tuesday that the U.S. could be heading for a “fiscal cliff” at the end of the year if mandated tax increases and spending cuts are implemented. On the same day, fund manager Bill Gross, who runs the world’s biggest bond fund, told CNBC that the U.S. will face a downgrade of its triple-A debt rating if it did not fix its fiscal situation.
“It’s not just $15 trillion in terms of current debt,” Gross said on CNBC’s“Street Signs.” “It’s probably three to four times that in terms of Medicare, Medicaid, of Social Security, in terms of the present value.”
Peter Schiff
“So unless the U.S. begins to make some inroads, and that’s called thestructural deficit that the (Congressional Budget Office) and the (International Monetary Fund) basically identified as perhaps six to seven to eight percent, greater than any country other than Japan and the U.K. Until we address that structural deficit, then yes, we're headed to double-A territory,” he said.
Euro Pacific’s Schiff predicts weakness in the U.S. dollar, which will put pressure on commodity prices and fuel inflation . This will in turn force the Fed to raise interest rates, he added.
“The Fed will not do it; the Fed knows the only thing propping up our phony economy is zero percent interest rates and quantitative easing. And I think when the market figures this out, it’s going to put even more pressure on the dollar,” he said.
Schiff is a well-known bear who predicted in 2008 that the dollar will collapse amid hyperinflation . That did not happen, and the dollar strengthened against most major currencies by the end of 2009.
Andrew Economos, managing director and head of sovereign and institutional strategy at JPMorgan Asset Management, said what the Fed is trying to do is “buy time” by keeping credit cheap and encouraging banks to lend.
“Look, I am not an apologist for the Fed, but at the end of the day (Fed Chairman Ben) Bernanke is doing the only thing that he can do, which is buying time,” Economos said on CNBC’s“The Call.” “And I think that buys us time to rectify those structural problems the bears are harping about. It allows corporates and households to continue to deleverage and derisk their own personal balance sheets.”
SENIOR Eurocrats are secretly plotting to create a super-powerful EU president to realise their dream of abolishing Britain, we can reveal.
A covert group of EU foreign ministers has drawn up plans for merging the jobs currently done by Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council, and Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission.
European Council President Herman Van Rompuy at an EU summit
The new bureaucrat, who would not be directly elected by voters, is set to get sweeping control over the entire EU and force member countries into ever-greater political and economic union.
Tellingly, the UK has been excluded from the confidential discussions within the shady “Berlin Group” of Europhile politicians, spearheaded by German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle.
This is a truly ridiculous idea that must never be allowed to happen
Euro-MP Paul Nuttall, of the UK Independence Party
Opponents fear the plan could create a modern-day equivalent of the European emperor envisaged by Napoleon Bonaparte or a return to the Holy Roman Empire of Charlemagne that dominated Europe in the Dark Ages.
They are concerned that David Cameron’s coalition Government is doing nothing to prevent the sinister plot. The secret talks were uncovered by Independent Labour peer Lord Stoddart of Swindon.
“This is a plot by people who want to abolish nation states and create a United States of Europe,” he said.
“The whole thing is barmy. These people are determined to achieve their final objective.
A shocking U.S. Army manual that describes how political activists in prison camps will be indoctrinated by specially assigned psychological operations officers contains numerous clear references to the fact that the policies do apply domestically to U.S. citizens.
Despite the fact that the manual is well over 300 pages long and would take hours to read properly, within minutes of posting our story yesterday a minority of commenters were claiming that the policies outlined in the document only pertained to foreign combat operations and did not apply domestically to U.S. citizens.
This is similar to the denial witnessed prior to the passage of the NDAA when some argued that the indefinite detention provisions did not apply to American citizens despite numerous legal analysts asserting they did and President Barack Obama himself acknowledging they did when he signed the bill.
Click here to read the full document entitled FM 3-39.40 Internment and Resettlement Operations.
The most alarming portion of the document appears on page 56 and makes it clear that detention camps will have PSYOP teams whose responsibility will be to use “indoctrination programs to reduce or remove antagonistic attitudes,” as well as targeting “political activists” with such indoctrination programs to provide “understanding and appreciation of U.S. policies and actions.”
Let’s make one thing clear – the manual primarily deals with enemy combatants captured and detained in foreign prison camps run by the U.S. Military. However, another thing that is just as clear from reading the manual in full is the fact that it also applies to citizens detained within the United States, whether they be DCs (displaced citizens) or “civilian internees,” in other words citizens who are detained for, “security reasons, for protection, or because he or she committed an offense against the detaining power.”
Firstly, throughout the manual there are scores of references to how the U.S. Army would work together with the DHS, ICE and FEMA (page 24) to implement the policies “within U.S. territory” as part of “civil support operations” in the aftermath of “man-made disasters, accidents, terrorist attacks and incidents in the U.S. and its territories.” (page 38).
“The handling of DCs (displaced citizens) is also a mission that may be performed in support of disaster relief or other emergencies within the United States or U.S. territories during civil support operations,” states page 33. Page 56 also states that it is the responsibility of the PSYOP officer to “control detainee and DC populations during emergencies.”
“Resettlement conducted as a part of civil support operations will always be conducted in support of another lead agency (Federal Emergency Management Agency, Department of Homeland Security)” states page 37.
All these passages make it clear that the policies outlined on page 56 are also applicable within U.S. territory as part of “civil support operations” conducted in partnership with domestic federal agencies like the DHS and ICE. The U.S. Immigration authorities have no role in detaining prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq and neither do other U.S. agencies also listed in the document such as the Public Health Service (page 224).
The document also contains numerous references to U.S. citizens (notably pages 13, 41). Page 13 notes how “U.S. citizens will be confined separately from detainees,” meaning they will be separated from foreign prisoners in the camps
On page 146 of the manual, we learn how prisoners in the camps are to be identified.
“The prisoner’s last name, first name, and middle initial are placed on the first line of a name board, and the prisoner’s social security number is placed on the second line.”
Last time I checked, the United States Social Security Administration was not responsible for handing out social security numbers to people in Afghanistan or Iraq.
On page 193 of the document, we learn that the policies outlined in the manual can be applied domestically. The language makes it clear that so long as the President passes an executive order to nullify Posse Comitatus, the law that forbids the military from engaging in domestic law enforcement, the policies “may be performed as domestic civil support operations.”
The manual states, “These operations may be performed as domestic civil support operations,” and adds that “The authority to approve resettlement such operations within U.S. territories,” would require a “special exception” to The Posse Comitatus Act, which can be obtained via “the President invoking his executive authority.”
These examples are just a handful of a plethora contained in the 326 page ‘Internment and Resettlement’ document which prove that the policies in the manual apply not only to foreign prisoners abroad, but also to American citizens within the United States.
On top of this, we have the 2009 story about how the National Guard posted a number of job listings looking for “Internment/Resettlement Specialists” to work in “civilian internee camps” within the United States.
The time for denial is over. People spent weeks arguing over the ‘indefinite detention’ provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act, ignoring assertions by top scholars and legal experts that the kidnapping provisions did apply to U.S. citizens.
It appears as though cognitive dissonance is causing some people to desperately search for any way of denying the shocking truth contained in these Army documents. This is particularly prevalent amongst Democrats and liberals, whose support for the cult of Barack Obama has blinded them to the fact that his administration is passing legislation which in many cases is far more draconian than anything Bush signed into law.
Take this comment for example from the Democratic Underground forum. Linking to our article from yesterday, a user writes, “A friend of mine just posted (as he usually does) a ridiculous article from InfoWars and it’s pissing me off to no end. I’m trying to find stuff to continuously disprove this drivel, and I’m probably wasting my time. Anyone able to help on this particular “story”?”
The individual does not even have the inclination to look at the source document to find out if the story is true, they would rather just throw out ad hominem insults like “ridiculous” and “drivel”. Rather than being “pissed off” at the frightening language contained in the U.S. Army manual, the individual is “pissed off” at Infowars for reporting on it.
Yes, the U.S. Army has really written a manual which details re-education camps. Yes, the manual does apply to U.S. citizens domestically. Denying these manifestly provable facts will not make the threat go away. This is not an imaginary monster under the bed.
The time for denial is over.
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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show and Infowars Nightly News.
The United States and Afghanistan have signed an agreement to extend the US presence in the war-torn country to another decade beyond 2014. Shortly after arriving in Afghanistan under cover late on Tuesday night, US President Barack Obama signed a deal with his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai to provide aid, advisers, and support for a period of 10 years after the expected departure of foreign combat troops in 2014, CBS News reported.
Press TV has conducted an interview with author and Afghanistan expert, Mohammed Daud Miraki to further discuss the issue.
Reserve soldiers conduct a training exercise (photo credit: Matanya Tausig/Flash90)
The IDF has issued emergency call up orders to six reserve battalions in light of new dangers on the Egyptian and Syrian borders. And the Knesset has given the IDF permission to summon a further 16 reserve battalions if necessary, Israeli media reported on Wednesday.
An IDF spokesperson said intelligence assessments called for the deployment of more soldiers. An army statement highlighted last August’s infiltration from the Sinai north of Eilat in which eight Israelis were killed, and said the subsequent division of that area into two distinct military zones necessitated additional manpower.
According to 2008′s Reserve Duty Law, combat soldiers can be called for active reserve duty once every three years, and for short training sessions during the other two. Rising tensions between Israel and Egyptand the ongoing unrest in Syria caused the army to ask the Knesset for special permission to call up more soldiers, more often.
The Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee approved the request recently, enabling the IDF to summon up to 22 battalions for active duty for the second time in three years. Already, the army has called up six of them.
“This signifies that the IDF regards the Egyptian and Syrian borders as the potential source of a greater threat than in the past,” the former deputy chief of staff, Dan Harel, said on Wednesday night.
“The army needs a better ‘answer’ than in the past to the threat,” he said, citing Egypt’s deteriorating control over the Sinai, marked by an upsurge in Bedouin smuggling of weapons and other goods. He also spoke of the growing threat of terrorism from Sinai, as exemplified by last August’s infiltration.
The Syrian situation was also highly combustible, Harel said, “and it could explode at any moment… and pose a direct challenge to us.”
