The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. – Benjamin Franklin
NEW YORK: In the narrative that has governed American commercial life for the last quarter-century, saving companies from their own mistakes was not supposed to be part of the government’s job description. Economic policymakers in the United States took swaggering pride in the cutthroat but lucrative form of capitalism that was supposedly indigenous to their frontier nation.
Here you will find all Top 25 Things Vanishing From America.
This series explores aspects of America that may soon be just a memory — some to be missed, some gladly left behind. From the least impactful to the most, here are 25 bits of vanishing America.
My mother grew up on her family’s dairy farm in central Oregon, and when she was a child she was in 4-H — just like all the kids in her town. I’ve always admired her way with the “home arts” (she makes a mean jar of cucumber relish, and her embroidery festoons quilts for all my boys) so when I saw her 4-H ribbons I assumed that big purple one must have been for brownies, or jam. “Oh, that was for the pig I raised,” she said matter-of-factly.
Read moreTop 25 Things Vanishing From America: No.1 The Family Farm
July 21 (Bloomberg) — Ben S. Bernanke and Henry Paulson are under pressure to embrace the big-government policies of America in the 1930s, or Sweden in the 1990s, to contain the conflagration engulfing the U.S. housing and financial markets.
Among the ideas: Using taxpayer money to shore up the capital of loss-ridden Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, setting up new agencies to buy and refinance mortgages in default, even taking over failing financial institutions.
The government’s current “fire-brigade approach to dealing with the fallout from the extremely weak domestic economy is eroding general confidence in the U.S. financial system,” says Brian Bethune, chief U.S. financial economist at Lexington, Massachusetts-based Global Insight. “Bold, creative, aggressive policy action is needed.”
Read moreBernanke, Paulson Pressed to Seek Big-Government Bank Bailout
ScienceDaily (July 20, 2008) – Consumers accept nanotechnology in nutrition for packaging and, to a lesser extent, even the food itself. This is according to a study from ETH Zurich’s Institute for Environmental Decisions (IED).
Read moreNanotechnology In Food And Packaging Accepted By Consumers
SYDNEY (AFP) – Up to a million people in Australia could face a shortage of drinking water if the country’s drought continues, a report on the state of the nation’s largest river system revealed Sunday.
The report said the situation was critical in the Murray-Darling system, which provides water to Australia’s “food bowl”, a vast expanse of land almost twice as big as France that runs down the continent’s east coast.
Read moreDrought threatens drinking water for a million Australians
I called the death of Indymac Bancorp on Monday, July 7th. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation seized Indymac on Friday, July 11th.
I called the implosion of the two Government Sponsored Entities in the mortgage business, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on Wednesday, July 9th. Sunday, July 13th the White House announced a bailout for them.
Related article: Fed: No more bailouts, except Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
Want to know what happens next? It’s ape ass ugly and it’s going to happen to you, so don’t say I didn’t warn you.
US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack
Washington says Tehran has two weeks to decide between suspending its uranium enrichment program and facing ‘further isolation’.
In a Saturday statement, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said time has come for Tehran to choose between confrontation and meeting Western demands over its enrichment program.
“We hope the Iranian people understand that their leaders need to make a choice between cooperation, which would bring benefits to all, and confrontation, which can only lead to further isolation,” said McCormack.
This article is also another lesson in racism, which is always a sure sign of absolute ignorance, insecurity and low self-esteem, because racism is attempting to see other people as inferior, so that those “superior” racists can feel better about their wretched, unenlightened little life. ________________________________________________________________________________________
On June 5, 1873, in a letter to The Times, Sir Francis Galton, the cousin of Charles Darwin and a distinguished African explorer in his own right, outlined a daring (if by today’s standards utterly offensive) new method to ‘tame’ and colonise what was then known as the Dark Continent.
‘My proposal is to make the encouragement of Chinese settlements of Africa a part of our national policy, in the belief that the Chinese immigrants would not only maintain their position, but that they would multiply and their descendants supplant the inferior Negro race,’ wrote Galton.
‘I should expect that the African seaboard, now sparsely occupied by lazy, palavering savages, might in a few years be tenanted by industrious, order-loving Chinese, living either as a semidetached dependency of China, or else in perfect freedom under their own law.’
Close relations: Chinese President Hu Jintao accompanies Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe to a ceremony in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing
Read moreHow China’s taking over Africa, and why the West should be VERY worried
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WASHINGTON – Driven by a sour economy and skittish consumers, U.S. business bankruptcies saw their sharpest quarterly rise in two years, jumping 17 percent in the second quarter of 2008, according to an analysis by McClatchy.
Commercial filings for the first half of 2008 are up 45 percent from last year, as the national climate for commerce continues to deteriorate amid rising energy and food costs, mounting job losses, tighter credit and a reticence among consumers to part with discretionary income.
From April through June, 15,471 U.S. businesses called it quits, according to data from Automated Access to Court Electronic Records, an Oklahoma City bankruptcy management and data company.
States that saw the biggest increase in filings were Delaware, Montana, Oregon, Maryland and Connecticut, suggesting that the economic gloom is spreading beyond large population centers.
It was the 10th straight quarter that business bankruptcy filings have increased. Nearly 29,000 companies filed in the first half of 2008.
Another 60,000 to 90,000 others probably have closed, because roughly two to three businesses fold for every one that files for bankruptcy, said Jack Williams, resident scholar at the American Bankruptcy Institute.
The vast majority of these failed companies are among the nation’s 23 million small businesses, with fewer than 100 employees. Their fortunes have tumbled as the national economic downturn has deepened.
“The climate is turning desperate for small businesses,” said George Cloutier, founder of American Management Services, a consulting firm that helps small companies increase profits. “They are in crisis, and, as these numbers show, it’s getting worse and worse.”
(RTTNews) – The FDIC is looking for ways to shore up its depleted deposit fund, including charging higher premiums on riskier brokered deposits, FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair said Friday.
However, that fund is “a myth,” according to longtime banking consultant Bert Ely, and consumers may end up paying the price of what is expected to be a growing wave of bank failures.
NYU Economics Professor Nouriel Roubini predicts that Congress will have to intervene in order to bail out the deposit fund.
“They’re going to run out of money, with certainty,” he predicted. “Congress is going to have to recapitalize the FDIC, those $50 billion plus is not going to be enough, by no means.”
(NaturalNews) A newly discovered and highly lethal virus strain begins with symptoms similar to that of a cold but can quickly lead to severe respiratory crisis.
Read moreEmerging Killer Virus Starts Like a Cold, But Kills Many
Something is going to break, and soon. Banks are insolvent and failing by the hundreds if not thousands. Hedge funds are on the edge of oblivion. Only a tiny percentage of toxic waste losses in real estate and other asset classes of collateral, which will eventually amount to over $1.4 trillion in the US alone, has to date been recognized by the lying bankster fraudsters. Bonds are producing negative rates of return even based on ludicrously understated official rates of inflation (until this month, when we finally got some data bordering on the truth).
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The nightmare scenario for U.S. economic authorities is here: confidence in their ability to rescue the country from a housing-led financial panic is now at its lowest level since the crisis began.
This means losses for investors, already totaling nearly half a trillion dollars, could mount even further over the next few months, with implications for business investment and the overall health of the economy.
“You see a massive potential for financial meltdown on a global scale,” said T.J. Marta, fixed-income strategist at RBC Capital Markets.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, testified before Congress this week on the country’s precarious financial state. They were met with unusually fierce questions from lawmakers on the feasibility of a plan to provide extra funding for mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae (FNM.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Freddie Mac (FRE.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz).
Read moreAs faith in bank bailouts dims, losses set to deepen
Extreme measures: There are more than 1,000 laws which give officials the right to enter private property
The march of the Big Brother state under Labour was highlighted last night as it was revealed that there are now 1,043 laws that give the authorities the power to enter a home or business.
Nearly half have been introduced since Labour came to power 11 years ago. They include the right to:
• Invade your home to see if your pot plants have pests or do not have a ‘plant passport’ (Plant Health England Order 2005).
• Survey your home and garden to see if your hedge is too high (Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003).
• Check that accommodation given to asylum seekers is not being lived in by non-asylum seekers (Immigration and Asylum Act 1999).
• Raid a house to check if unlicensed gambling is taking place (Gambling Act 2005 Inspection Regulations 2007).
• Seize fridges without the correct energy rating (Energy Information Household Refrigerators and Freezers Regulations 2004).
The rise in clipboard-wielding state inspectors flies in the face of repeated pledges by Ministers to curb the power of bureaucrats.
The full extent of the state’s ‘powers of entry’ is revealed in documents slipped out quietly by the Government last week.
The information was posted on the Home Office website, but in a highly unusual move, the computer file was locked to prevent it being copied or printed. A secret Home Office password was required to access the file.
A Home Office spokeswoman denied the restrictions were an attempt to stop the state’s powers being circulated more widely.
She claimed it was a ‘mistake’ and the file would be unlocked tomorrow.
Read moreNow there are 1,000 laws that will let the state into your home
– Bush Fulfills His Grandfather’s Dream:
A BBC story aired on July 23rd, 2007, documenting President George W. Bush’s grandfather’s involvement in a 1933 plot to overthrow the U.S. government and install a fascist dictatorship.
A BBC Radio 4 investigation sheds new light on a major subject that has received little historical attention, the conspiracy on behalf of a group of influential powerbrokers, led by Prescott Bush, to overthrow FDR and implement a fascist dictatorship in the U.S. based around the ideology of Mussolini and Hitler.
Source: Google Video
How on earth is it possible then, that G. W. Bush and his father could become Presidents of the United States?
Adolf Hitler signed a Directive 51 (Source: Brittanica.com)
and here is
Bush’s NSPD 51 (Source: The White House).
If President Bush will declare Martial Law, for the given reasons in NSPD 51, he will hold all power in his hands alone. He has to answer to no-one anymore. Presidential Directive 51 overrides everything.
So both directives were issued to give the DICTATOR in charge absolute power!
Maybe Bush should have named it NSDAP 51 instead.
National Security Presidential Directive 51
Source: YouTube
Is there an elite desiring to create a New World Order, a one World Government, with them on top to rule the world into slavery and fascism?
What do I think of mercenaries working for the U.S.A.?
The Roman Empire gradually entrusted the role of defending the Empire to mercenaries.
The Roman Empire is history.
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Saturday Jul 19, 2008, Source: AirForceTimes
Airmen might soon find Blackwater blimps patrolling Iraq and Afghanistan skies in addition to its helicopter and light transport aircraft already flying thousands of missions in theater.
According to Blackwater Worldwide CEO Erik Prince, eight Blackwater CASA 212 light transport aircraft flew 11,000 sorties in Afghanistan last year supporting 38 combat outposts over 19,000 square miles. Its aircraft transported more than 40,000 personnel and 9.5 million pounds of supplies last year.
“We moved about 40,000 passengers, and our total costs, our total invoice for that mission is about what the U.S. Air Force is paying for one new C-27,” he said.
“So the idea of outsourcing versus having government do it, that’s a pretty simple math question for me.”
…and for other contractors. Halliburton is charging $45 for a six-pack of Coca-Cola when it feeds our troops. International laws covering war crimes did not apply to such private contractors like Blackwater.
Blackwater, America’s Private Army
Source: YouTube
Recommended documentary: Iraq for Sale
Prince, who sat down July 7 for a rare, exclusive interview with Military Times editors and reporters, said he isn’t looking to replace the Air Force – simply fill a void where his company is needed.
(NaturalNews) Eating as little as three small servings of raw cruciferous vegetables per month, such as broccoli and cabbage, has been found to decrease the risk of developing bladder cancer by an astonishing 40 percent. This was discovered by researchers from the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo. The study is only one of several that have recently added to the evidence that raw fruits and vegetables dramatically lower cancer risk.
Related Articles:
• The mineral selenium proves itself as powerful anti-cancer medicine
• Cancer is not a Disease – It’s a Survival Mechanism (Book Excerpt)
• New research shows vitamin D slashes risk of cancers by 77 percent; cancer industry refuses to support cancer prevention
• Mammograms cause breast cancer (and other cancer facts you probably never knew)
• Breast Cancer Industry A Scam? Support Education, Not Medication
In this study, researchers conducted a survey on the dietary habits of 1,100 people, 275 of whom had bladder cancer. They found that among both smokers and non-smokers, those who ate three or more servings of raw cruciferous vegetables each month had a 40 percent lower risk of developing bladder cancer. Compared with smokers who did not eat that amount, non-smokers who ate three or more servings of raw cruciferous vegetables per month had a 73 percent lower chance of developing bladder cancer.
Keep in mind that this research only involved three small servings a month! That’s a ridiculously small amount of vegetable matter, and yet it had a profound anti-cancer effect.
Read moreRaw Broccoli, Cabbage Slash Bladder Cancer Risk by 40 Percent; Cooking Destroys Benefits
War really is getting more like a video game, as hardware and software from the gaming industry is increasingly being adopted for military use. The latest sign of this appeared at the Farnborough air show this week, where arms-maker Raytheon showed off its new Universal Control System for robotic aicraft. It’s based on the same technology that drives Halo and Splinter Cell:
“Gaming companies have spent millions to develop user-friendly graphic interfaces, so why not put them to work on UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles]?” says Mark Bigham, business development director for Raytheon’s tactical intelligence systems. “The video-game industry always will outspend the military on improving human-computer interaction.”
I just listened to Vincent Bugliosi talking to Bobby Kennedy about his plan to prosecute Bush for murder. (Listen here.)
It sounds like Bugliosi has an airtight case. If Bush leaves 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue next January, there should be a squad car waiting to pick him up.
Even if he somehow dodges the murder rap, sooner or later Bush will face dozens of charges of war crimes, kidnapping, torture, electoral fraud, maybe even high treason against the Constitution of the United States of America. Bush is a good bet to be our first ex-president to spend the rest of his life behind bars.
I say IF Bush leaves office next January because…well, he’d have to be crazy to step down.
Bush only has one card left to play: The get-out-of-jail-free card.
Set off a nuclear or biological weapon on American soil. Blame the usual suspects, “Muslim terrorists,” and link them to Pakistan or Iran. Attack Pakistan or Iran, invoke Presidential Directive 51, suspend the Constitution, declare martial law, intern dissidents and Muslims in FEMA camps, seize control of the other branches of government, and suspend the elections “until order has been restored.”
A high-risk move? Sure. But cornered rats sometimes make high-risk moves.
Richard Lees inspects his crop of broad beans which are not showing any signs of developing pods.
A LACK of bees may be blamed for the failure of bean crops in Selkirk gardens, writes Sally Gillespie. Although gardener Richard Lees of The Loan has not yet given up on his broad beans, he says the signs are not good.
“All the plants are fine – they couldn’t be better, the flowers are fine, but there are no beans. It’s too early to say it’s a failure yet, but I don’t like the look of it,” he told The Wee Paper this week.
Added: July 18, 2008
Source: YouTube
Related article:
– The Weapon of Mass Destruction Is Cancer
– Over 70,000 deaths, and over 1 million disabilities among American soldiers attributed to Iraq Wars says U.S. government data
– IRAQ: ‘Special Weapons’ Have a Fallout on Babies
– War-related birth defects in Fallujah
– Cheney can only call Iraq a success if he has a mindset like Hitler
– Wartime PTSD cases jumped roughly 50 pct. in 2007
– Soldier suicides could trump war tolls: US health official
Citigroup has reported another big loss, although it lost less money than had been expected.
The biggest US bank by assets lost $2.5bn (£1.3bn) in the three months to the end of June, weighed down by another $11.7bn of write-downs.
Citigroup said it had cut 11,000 jobs in the first six months of the year and planned to continue at the same rate.
Related article: US: Financial system is a house of cards
What will happen if “more” banks will fail?
Interesting comment:
“I was talking to a close friend yesterday and he told me that he just heard an “expert” on CNBC tell the audience that the failure of IndyMac was nothing to worry about – it was just one bank. How on God’s green earth do they allow such idiots to mis-lead the listeners? Just one bank? This is the second largest bank failure ever, (second in size only to the 1984 failure of Continental Illinois Bank which led to a big jump in the price of gold at the time). Don’t these fools realize that the Federal takeover of this “one bank failure” is going to leave 10,000 depositors with $1 billion in deposits that EXCEED the $100,000 FDIC insurance limit and they will be lucky to get any of it back. Don’t they realize that this “one bank failure” will use up 10% of the total FDIC fund, which is only $53 billion. How safe if your money in your bank? How safe is the dollar?” Source: Here
It looks like the entire financial system of the U.S. will fail.
If you take a closer look at the article below, then you will see how tense the situation already is.
And IndyMac was “just one bank”.
You will find more information below the following article.
– The Infinite Unknown
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July 17, 2008
Source: msnbc
LOS ANGELES – The frustration didn’t end for some IndyMac customers when they finally were able to withdraw their funds from the failing Southern California bank seized last week by federal regulators.
Some people have run into more problems when they tried to deposit IndyMac cashier checks at other banks.
Sheryl MacPhee said she waited in line two hours Tuesday at an IndyMac branch in San Marino to liquidate a certificate of deposit. But when she took it to a Washington Mutual branch in South Pasadena to deposit, she said a manager told her their new policy was not to accept IndyMac checks. If the customer insisted, she said she was told, it could take eight weeks or more to access the full amount.
“Sure, IndyMac will give you a check,” MacPhee told the Los Angeles Times, “but what good is it if no other institution will accept it?”
Wall Street investment giant Merrill Lynch on Thursday announced a quarterly loss of 4.6 billion dollars, driven by hefty writedowns from its bets on the US real estate market.
Merrill, which has been roiled by its exposure to the US subprime mortgage crisis, also said it would shore up its capital with the sale of some assets.
It announced the sale of its 20 percent stake in financial news and data group Bloomberg for 4.425 billion dollars.
Related: Fed: No more bailouts, except Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
Read moreMerill Lynch posts loss of 4.6 bln dlrs, sheds assets
“As I write this column, Congress has run this country into a $9,498,511,404,143.63 debt. That’s just under $9.5 TRILLION “dollars.””
I really hope that you will find time to read this article. 🙂
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Arthur Henning of the Chicago Tribune said back in 1935, “The New Deal will bring the Communist Party within striking distance of overthrow of the American form of government…” Mark Sullivan of the Buffalo Evening News also expressed alarm in 1935: “The New Deal is to America what the early phase of Nazism was to Germany…”
The nation is awash in fear because they are coming to realize that while they’ve been buying all the hype from the cabal of gangsters in Washington for decades, reality is now setting in as poverty is slamming millions who used to belong to the middle class. From dangerous lending practices to the derivatives time bomb waiting to go off and inflation getting ready to launch into hyper inflation, the situation is more grim by the week. A financial catastrophe so many have been warning about for decades, it’s all coming home to roost. The “perfect storm” as it’s being called. The beast is now devouring itself and we the people are caught in their cross fire.
Unfortunately, most Americans haven’t been listening. They’re either addicted to sports, shopping, porn, drugs or yaking on their cell phones while the world has been heading for financial Armageddon.
Read moreFREDDIE & FANNIE UNCONSTITUTIONAL BAIL OUT USING WHAT?