Thursday, April 14, 2011

Want to Blame Someone? Blame the Fed

Want to Blame Someone? Blame the Fed : Deadline Live With Jack Blood

April 13, 2011 by Szandor Blestman
Filed under Commentary

Are you currently experiencing economic difficulties? It seems like everyone is these days. All kinds of people from all walks of life seem to be having more and deeper financial problems. Normally I would make the claim that a person should blame themselves for their financial woes, but in the real world there are extenuating circumstances and powerful forces working against the best interests of even the most hard working and capable people. The common folk have been kept in the dark. People can’t make choices for themselves when they don’t know choices exist. People can’t be blamed for their behavior when they have been trained from birth that the system they live in is the only system they can operate in.

In today’s world, people who have been victimized by the economic downturn are looking for someone to pin the blame on. Just about everyone seems to understand that something is wrong with the current system and most everyone seems to think they know who’s to blame. I am no exception. Some people blame Republicans. Others blame Democrats. Some blame unions. There are those who blame the Chinese and those who blame illegal immigrants. Some poorer people may well blame those who are better off financially and some well to do people may blame those who are less fortunate and look to the state for help. There are many people to blame and many excuses that can be used to blame them, all which are very divisive. I think if you’re going to blame someone or something for our financial woes, it may as well be the organization that nearly everyone in the world is a victim of. It may as well be the entity that claims control over the world’s economy. You may as well blame the Fed.

If you don’t know the story behind the Fed, then likely you haven’t been paying attention lately. It has become quite the story on many economic blogs and even some corporate media broadcasts with the continuing push to audit it. The Fed likes to operate in secret and has done so from its very conception. The meeting that conceived it in its modern form and determined how to best sell it to the American people, who were historically anti central banking, was held in great secret back in 1910. It came into existence in 1913 more through shady political dealings, payoffs and questionable voting practices than through open and honest debate, popular support or popular consent. Since that time its tentacles have reached into nearly every aspect of our economic lives and its enforcement arm, the IRS, has grown into the fearsome spectacle we see today.

Naturally, the Federal Reserve claims it needs its secrecy. They claim that their business will be harmed if exposed to public scrutiny. They claim that doing so will harm the American people. Just what are they trying to hide? What practices could a central bank be doing that would be harmful if we knew about it? If everything is on the up and up, they should have nothing to fear from a full and complete audit. We all know that secrecy isn’t there to protect the American people, it’s there to protect wrong doing from being discovered. It’s there to protect thieves and liars. It’s there to cover up practices that are harmful to the economy. It’s there to protect the extremely wealthy and the power elite.

From its inception, the Federal Reserve has worked to get its fingers into everyone’s pie. It wasn’t hard for them to do since they have a monopoly on the currency we are required to use. Just a few years after it was established, America found itself embroiled in Europe’s first world war. That involvement quickly used up America’s treasure and forever indebted the nation to the elite few who claim ownership of the Federal Reserve. I don’t know how much gold, assets, real money and wealth was transferred at that time, but I don’t imagine it was a mere pittance. From that moment forward, the wealth manipulation and monetary chicanery becomes historically obvious as the downward trend of the value of the dollar, and all fiat currencies, is charted.

The Federal Reserve System promised stability. They promised full employment. They lied. They broke their promises. They failed miserably. What had been promoted as a banking system radically different from anything the world had ever seen before became nothing but a mega ponzi scheme, just like any other fractional reserve, fiat driven central bank. It has become a wealth funneling scheme that has taken some very wealthy banking families and made them into modern day royalty.

The Fed has its hands in nearly everything, and certainly in everything worth anything. They are the corporate establishment, more or less. Huge corporations have become dependent on the Fed’s ponzi scheme for their survival, after all, currency that is based on nothing but debt is only good so long as people have faith in the system. People stop having faith in the system when they are unemployed, underemployed, their means of employment have been shipped overseas, prices of basic necessities like energy and food keep rising, the gap between rich and poor widens and political policies serve only the very wealthy or the very poor.

The corporate establishment owns the politicians. The Fed owns the corporate establishment. If you’re angry about anything political, blame the fed. Mad about the bailouts? Blame the Fed. Mad about the wars and occupations? Blame the Fed. Mad about states and municipalities going broke? Blame the Fed. Mad about the deficit? Blame the Fed. Mad about high taxes and unaccountable government? Blame the Fed. Why even acknowledge the political class anymore? They don’t listen to you. They don’t answer any redress of grievances. They don’t answer to you, they answer to their corporate masters. They answer to the Fed. They answer to the super wealthy, elite central bankers. The Fed pulls the strings. You wouldn’t blame the puppets if you didn’t like the show. You’d go behind the curtain and express your displeasure to the puppeteers. Politicians are simply the puppets, those behind the Federal Reserve System and central banks worldwide are the puppeteers.

The thought occurs to me that perhaps most protests are aimed in the wrong direction. Maybe the bankers are laughing at us. Maybe the power brokers and influence peddlers are snickering as they watch the angry mobs take to the streets and demand their puppet politicians do something. Million man marches have done no good. Flooding the congress with letters and emails have done little good, although it seems to have made a dent. Still, I think something more can be done. What if protesters started showing up in large numbers in front of Federal Reserve buildings, only they weren’t just protesting for the audit of the fed? What if anti war protesters started protesting there? What if union protesters started demanding policy changes in front of Federal Reserve buildings instead of at state houses? What if tax protesters, Tea Partiers, Constitutionalists and other freedom advocates took their causes to the doors of the Fed’s buildings? What if the common folk of the world joined in and began to take their protests to the doors of their central banks?

Better yet, what if the protesters started marching outside the private residences of those who own the world’s central banks? What if the common folks showed them that they know who holds the real power? What if these people who believe they are untouchable and above all law couldn’t walk outside their homes without hearing the jeers and complaints of the common folk? What if people started petitioning the real governments of the world for a redress of grievances? Perhaps then someone would listen. Perhaps then something would get done. At the very least, they would know that we know who to blame. They would know that we know where the real power rests. At the very least, they would know that their cover has been blown and they can no longer hide behind the skirts of their puppet politicians.

My archived articles are available at szandorblestman.com. Please visit there to help support me and my efforts. I also have an ebook available entitled “The Ouijiers” by Matthew Wayne.

Video: US troops fire on Iraqi detainees - Press TV News

Cut This! Cut That! We're Spending 8 Billion Dollars A Month On A War Th...

TSA Gropes 8-Year Old Boy, In Front Of Outraged Mother

» TSA Gropes 8-Year Old Boy, In Front Of Outraged Mother Alex Jones' Infowars: There's a war on for your mind!

Steve Watson
Infowars.com
April 14, 2011

Following the emergence of a video of a TSA agent subjecting a scared and confused 6-year old girl to an invasive full body pat down this week, another incident has come to light today in which an 8-year old boy was recently groped in the same way. This despite the fact that the TSA claimed it had changed its security procedure for children.

Young Spencer Sheahan was looking forward to the trip of a lifetime to Disneyland, but the fun was cut short at Portland International Airport in Oregon when a TSA agent pulled the child out of line and frisked him up and down in front of his stunned mother.

“They went up his leg, into that area, down the next leg, up here (chest), felt all over,” Heather Sheahan tells KGW News.

Ms Shehan quickly grabbed her camera and took photos to document the incident.

The pictures can be seen in the following KGW report:

“I was confused,” Spencer told the reporter. “I did not know what they were going to do to me.”

Globalists Positioned to Exploit Japan's Tragedy

Land Destroyer: Globalists Positioned to Exploit Japan's Tragedy
No Good Crisis Goes to Waste.
by Tony Cartalucci

Bangkok, Thailand April 14, 2011 - With US troops occupying Iraq and Afghanistan, conducting military operations in Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, and covertly inside Iran, and troops tied up at more than 820 installations in at least 135 countries, America couldn't offer Japan much help even if they wanted to.

The United States has approximately 38,000 troops stationed in Japan, however they have neither the equipment nor the training to provide the sort of help needed to deal with Japan's unprecedented disaster. TheWall Street Journal has reported that US military forces were struggling against a myriad of foreseeable and unforeseeable obstacles to provide even a basic response such as surveying the damage or delivering badly needed supplies to disaster victims.

Despite occupying Japan for 66 years, the Wall Street Journal cites "language barriers" as one such obstacle to the US response. Radiological contamination is also cited, despite the treat of North Korean nuclear, biological, and chemical attack and the defense America supposedly provides against it that has been touted for years as a selling point for America's continued presence in Japanese territory.

The troops, most of which are likely doing their absolute best given what is on hand, are not to be blamed for this humiliating response. It is the politicians and the corporate interests steering them that have left the United States so far stretched it is incapable of responding to a crisis that threatens an "ally" and even its own shores. The botched response to Hurricane Katrina is another good example of this phenomenon in practice.

Adding Insult to Injury

While the globocrats myopically obsessed over exploiting a contrived crisis in Libya, there were smatterings of interest gravitating not around how to mitigate the ongoing disaster in Fukushima, but rather how Japan should rebuild - expressed amongst the pages of the corporate-funded think-tank reports.

One such report by Brookings Institute's Robert Pozen titled, "Japan Can Rebuild on New Economic Foundations" includes calls for Japan to throw its borders open, allowing immigrants to solve their aging population dilemma, reforming its political system to undermine spending in rural Japan, and of course, stimulating economic growth with advances in computer technology, drug discovery, and "financial innovation." Financial innovation is of course creating and marketing new forms of securities (i.e. derivatives.)

The Council on Foreign Relations' (CFR) Foreign Affairs magazine article "Tokyo's Turning Point" sees the disaster as an opportunity for Japan to abandon protectionism and embrace the "free-trade" travesty that is the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The TPP is yet another bid to further mire nations in the disastrous interdependency that is dragging economies from the US and across Europe into a speculative debt black-hole brought on by international bankers.

The article continues by suggesting future military reforms resulting from March 11 should include removing "anachronistic constraints" on JSDF rules of engagement, interoperability with U.S. forces, and participation in international defense industrial collaboration. It also suggests that faith in nuclear power having been shaken, Japan's dependency on foreign oil will increase, breathing new life into America's mandate to maintain the security of sea-lanes from Japan's coast all the way to the Middle East (China's "String of Pearls.")

False pretense for war in Libya?

False pretense for war in Libya? - The Boston Globe

EVIDENCE IS now in that President Barack Obama grossly exaggerated the humanitarian threat to justify military action in Libya. The president claimed that intervention was necessary to prevent a “bloodbath’’ in Benghazi, Libya’s second-largest city and last rebel stronghold.

But Human Rights Watch has released data on Misurata, the next-biggest city in Libya and scene of protracted fighting, revealing that Moammar Khadafy is not deliberately massacring civilians but rather narrowly targeting the armed rebels who fight against his government.

Misurata’s population is roughly 400,000. In nearly two months of war, only 257 people — including combatants — have died there. Of the 949 wounded, only 22 — less than 3 percent — are women. If Khadafy were indiscriminately targeting civilians, women would comprise about half the casualties.

Obama insisted that prospects were grim without intervention. “If we waited one more day, Benghazi . . . could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world.’’ Thus, the president concluded, “preventing genocide’’ justified US military action.

But intervention did not prevent genocide, because no such bloodbath was in the offing. To the contrary, by emboldening rebellion, US interference has prolonged Libya’s civil war and the resultant suffering of innocents.

The best evidence that Khadafy did not plan genocide in Benghazi is that he did not perpetrate it in the other cities he had recaptured either fully or partially — including Zawiya, Misurata, and Ajdabiya, which together have a population greater than Benghazi.

Libyan forces did kill hundreds as they regained control of cities. Collateral damage is inevitable in counter-insurgency. And strict laws of war may have been exceeded.

Allies Agree on Plan to Finance Libyan Rebels

RogueGovernment.com - Allies Agree on Plan to Finance Libyan Rebels

NATO, Arab and African ministers agreed Wednesday “to work urgently” with the Libyan rebel leadership to set up a mechanism by which some frozen assets belonging to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi and his family might be transferred to the rebel cause.

The agreement came at the first meeting between representatives of the NATO-led coalition, regional leaders and the rebels in a closed-door conference here that was billed as the beginning of a continuing dialogue. The meeting came at a time of growing frictions among the allied countries and with the rebels themselves over how much military force to apply on the Qaddafi regime.

But those divisions were set aside — for the moment, at least.

“This is the money of the Libyans, not of Colonel Qaddafi,” said the Italian foreign minister, Franco Frattini, who added that the assistance would be aimed “at humanitarian and daily needs.”

He said, “People need food, or they need to pay salaries to workers.”

Rebel leaders in Benghazi received the news as an indication that the international community was prepared to sell them weapons in their struggle to overthrow Colonel Qaddafi.

“We have made a request to those friendly nations and those who have made their official recognition, and we are in the final stages of requesting military equipment,” said Abdul Hafidh Ghoga, a member of the rebels’ governing body, the Transitional National Council, and its spokesman.

“I don’t think there’s going to be any problem about getting military equipment in,” Mr. Ghoga said.

He cited a statement by Mr. Frattini that the Libyan rebels had “every right to purchase weapons for their self-protection.” However, Mr. Ghoga declined to reveal whether any concrete agreements for weapons shipments had been reached with the three countries that have recognized the council: Italy, France and Qatar.

United We Strike Radio-Marathon

Radio-Marathon
newUWSlogorev20110314

110 US male soldiers raped in 2010'

PressTV - '110 US male soldiers raped in 2010'
A large number of male members of the US military say they have been the victims of sexual harassment by their peers and superiors, a report says.


About 110 US male soldiers said they were sexually assaulted while serving in the military in 2010, which is nearly three times the number in 2007, the US-based Newsweek magazine reported.

According to the Pentagon, the number of victims is likely to be much higher since many of the soldiers either don't wish to reveal that they were subjected to such assaults, or they fear some sort of retaliation.

Analysts say the men that commit sexual assaults are mostly heterosexual and that rapes are a display of power and intimidation against service members that are new, weaker, or suspected of being homosexual.

Core producer prices, jobless claims rise

Core producer prices, jobless claims rise - Yahoo! News

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Core producer prices rose slightly faster than expected in March from February, as motor vehicle prices jumped, and the core increase from a year ago was the largest since August 2009.

The Labor Department said on Thursday its seasonally adjusted index for prices paid at the farm and factory gate -- excluding volatile food and energy costs -- rose 0.3 percent after gaining 0.2 percent in February. Economists had expected core PPI to rise 0.2 percent in March.

Light trucks prices, which advanced 0.7 percent, accounted for a third of the rise in core PPI last month. The increase in light truck prices was the biggest since July. Passenger vehicle prices increased 0.9 percent, the largest increase since June 2009.

Brazil seals new deals with China

Brazil seals new deals with China - UPI.com

RIO DE JANEIRO, April 13 (UPI) -- Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and her 300-strong team sealed a much publicized strategic partnership with China, including deals that secure China's position as the main partner and investor in the Latin American country.

Rousseff's visit to China followed talks with U.S. President Barack Obama in Brasilia in March that also resulted in deals, but not on the level seen during the current visit to Beijing.



Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Special/2011/04/13/Brazil-seals-new-deals-with-China/UPI-74161302723316/#ixzz1JWBGEXuI

Chinese city tracks officials through GPS-enabled phones

Chinese city tracks officials through GPS-enabled phones











NATO 'There Is No Military Solution to the Libya Conflict'

SPIEGEL Interview with NATO Head Rasmussen: 'There Is No Military Solution to the Libya Conflict' - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International
Even after weeks of NATO air strikes, the conflict in Libya appears no closer to being resolved. SPIEGEL spoke with NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen about whether bombs can lead to democracy, the possibility of Libya becoming a failed state and Germany's reluctance to get involved.

The Truth Movement: Half Truths, Not Much Movement

Clinton: NATO nations agree that Gadhafi must go

News from The Associated Press

BERLIN (AP) -- NATO nations stressed Thursday that their common aim in Libya is to bring an end to Moammar Gadhafi's regime, and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the world must increase its support for the Libyan opposition.

The effort to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya topped the agenda at a two-day meeting of foreign ministers from NATO's 28 member countries. Three weeks of airstrikes haven't routed Gadhafi's forces, causing tensions in the alliance.

Although NATO countries agree that Gadhafi must be ousted, his departure is not one of its military goals and the alliance has been at odds on how to proceed. One proposal from Italy - Libya's former colonial ruler - calls for the western powers to provide defensive weapons to rebels.

Protesters target BP annual meeting

Protesters target BP annual meeting | Business | guardian.co.uk

BP executives faced angry protesters as shareholders prepared to vote at its annual meeting in London, which is taking place a few days before the first anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon explosion.

Fishermen and women from the Gulf coast affected by the spill, some of whom had bought BP shares to allow them to attend the annual meeting, joined climate change activists and artists protesting against the oilcompany.

Institutional investors, angry at what they claim are excessive executive pay deals, urged shareholders to vote against the remuneration package.

As BP's chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg, described a year of "unprecedented crisis" and remembered the families of the 11 who died in the explosion, protesters spoke of their lost livelihoods.

Marijuana Carbon Footprint: Indoor Pot Production Uses 1 Percent Of U.S. Electricity, Study Says

Marijuana Carbon Footprint: Indoor Pot Production Uses 1 Percent Of U.S. Electricity, Study Says
Marijuana Production

Pot-smoking environmentalists take note: Grass might not be green. A new study reveals that indoor marijuana production carries a shockingly large carbon footprint.

GOOD reports that Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory researcher Evan Mills, Ph.D., has released a surprising new independent report,“Energy up in Smoke: The Carbon Footprint of Indoor Cannabis Production.” Mills reports that indoor Cannabis production uses 1% of the nation’s entire electricity consumption. This comes to energy expenditures of $5 billion per year.

While 1% may not seem like a lot, the report claims that smoking one single Cannabis joint is equivalent to running a 100-watt light bulb for 17 hours. That Cannabis cigarette carries two pounds of CO2 emissions.

According to the report:

Each four-by-four-foot production module doubles the electricity use of an average U.S. home and triples that of an average California home. The added electricity use is equivalent to running about 30 refrigerators. Processed Cannabis results in 3000-times its weight in emissions. For off-grid production, it requires 70 gallons of diesel fuel to produce one indoor Cannabis plant, or 140 gallons with smaller, less-efficient gasoline generators.

Hr1 World Plantation with Travinyle1 at 9pm E Hr2 Sound Off 04/13 by Commoncents Radio | Blog Talk Radio

Hr1 World Plantation with Travinyle1 at 9pm E Hr2 Sound Off 04/13 by Commoncents Radio | Blog Talk Radio

Jobless Claims Unexpectedly Rise; PPI Climbs -

Jobless Claims Unexpectedly Rise; PPI Climbs - CNBC

New claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose last week, bouncing back above the key 400,000 level, while core producer prices clumbed faster than expected in March, government reports showed on Thursday.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits rose 27,000 to a seasonally adjusted 412,000, the Labor Department said.

Peter Dazeley | Photographer's Choice | Getty Images

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast claims slipping to 380,000.

The prior weeks figure was revised up to 385,000 from the previously reported 382,000.

The four-week moving average of unemployment claims—a better measure of underlying trends—climbed 5,500 to 395,750.

The rise in claims interrupted a downward trend that had kept them below the 400,000 threshold for four weeks. That level is normally associated with steady job growth. Despite last weeks rise, the four-week average held below the 400,000 mark for a seventh straight week.

A Labor Department official said claims tend to rise the first week of a new quarter.

Banks Face $3.6 Trillion 'Wall' of Debt: IMF

Banks Face $3.6 Trillion 'Wall' of Debt: IMF - CNBC

The world's banks face a $3.6 trillion "wall of maturing debt" in the next two years and must compete with debt-laden governments to secure financing, the IMF warned on Wednesday.

Many European banks need bigger capital cushions to restore market confidence and assure they can borrow, and some weak players will need to be closed, the International Monetary Fund said in its Global Financial Stability Report.

The debt rollover requirements are most acute for Irish and German banks, with as much as half of their outstanding debt coming due over the next two years, the fund said.

"These bank funding needs coincide with higher sovereign refinancing requirements, heightening competition for scarce funding resources," the IMF said.

Overall, the IMF said global financial stability has improved over the past six months.

The most pressing challenges in the coming months will be funding of banks and sovereigns, particularly in vulnerable euro area countries, it said.

The IMF and European Union bailed out Greece and Ireland, and are in talks with Portugal on a lending program as sovereign borrowing costs surge.

Obama Speech Full Of Lies

Review & Outlook: The Presidential Divider - WSJ.com

Did someone move the 2012 election to June 1? We ask because President Obama's extraordinary response to Paul Ryan's budget yesterday—with its blistering partisanship and multiple distortions—was the kind Presidents usually outsource to some junior lieutenant. Mr. Obama's fundamentally political document would have been unusual even for a Vice President in the fervor of a campaign.

The immediate political goal was to inoculate the White House from criticism that it is not serious about the fiscal crisis, after ignoring its own deficit commission last year and tossing off a $3.73 trillion budget in February that increased spending amid a record deficit of $1.65 trillion. Mr. Obama was chased to George Washington University yesterday because Mr. Ryan and the Republicans outflanked him on fiscal discipline and are now setting the national political agenda.

Mr. Obama did not deign to propose an alternative to rival Mr. Ryan's plan, even as he categorically rejected all its reform ideas, repeatedly vilifying them as essentially un-American. "Their vision is less about reducing the deficit than it is about changing the basic social compact in America," he said, supposedly pitting "children with autism or Down's syndrome" against "every millionaire and billionaire in our society." The President was not attempting to join the debate Mr. Ryan has started, but to close it off just as it begins and banish House GOP ideas to political Siberia.

Mr. Obama then packaged his poison in the rhetoric of bipartisanship—which "starts," he said, "by being honest about what's causing our deficit." The speech he chose to deliver was dishonest even by modern political standards.

***

The great political challenge of the moment is how to update the 20th-century entitlement state so that it is affordable. With incremental change, Mr. Ryan is trying maintain a social safety net and the economic growth necessary to finance it. Mr. Obama presented what some might call the false choice of merely preserving the government we have with no realistic plan for doing so, aside from proposing $4 trillion in phantom deficit reduction over a gimmicky 12-year budget window that makes that reduction seem larger than it would be over the normal 10-year window.

Bloomberg News

Mr. Obama said that the typical political proposal to rationalize Medicare's gargantuan liabilities is that it is "just a matter of eliminating waste and abuse." His own plan is to double down on the program's price controls and central planning. All Medicare decisions will be turned over to and routed through an unelected commission created by ObamaCare—which will supposedly ferret out "unnecessary spending." Is that the same as "waste and abuse"?

Fifteen members will serve on the Independent Payment Advisory Board, all appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. If per capita costs grow by more than GDP plus 0.5%, this board would get more power, including an automatic budget sequester to enforce its rulings. So 15 sages sitting in a room with the power of the purse will evidently find ways to control Medicare spending that no one has ever thought of before and that supposedly won't harm seniors' care, even as the largest cohort of the baby boom generation retires and starts to collect benefits.

Mr. Obama really went off on Mr. Ryan's plan to increase health-care competition and give consumers more control, barely stopping short of calling it murderous. It's hardly beyond criticism or debate, but the Ryan plan is neither Big Rock Candy Mountain nor some radical departure from American norms.

Mr. Obama came out for further cuts in the defense budget, but where? His plan is to ask Defense Secretary Bob Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen "to find additional savings," whatever those might be, after a "fundamental review." These mystery cuts would follow two separate, recent rounds of deep cuts that were supposed to stave off further Pentagon triage amid several wars and escalating national security threats.

Mr. Obama rallied the left with a summons for major tax increases on "the rich." Every U.S. fiscal trouble, he claimed, flows from the Bush tax cuts "for the wealthiest 2%," conveniently passing over what he euphemistically called his own "series of emergency steps that saved millions of jobs." Apparently he means the $814 billion stimulus that failed and a new multitrillion-dollar entitlement in ObamaCare that harmed job creation.

Timelapse Video of San Francisco-to-Paris Flight Captures Aurora Borealis - Yahoo! News

Timelapse Video of San Francisco-to-Paris Flight Captures Aurora Borealis - Yahoo! News