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Wholesale Food Prices Soar As Commodity Costs Continue To Rise Even Higher

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Say ‘thank you’ to the BoE for nuking the pound:

– Bank of England Governor Mervyn King warns that Britons face higher inflation for longer

It worked just fine!

Field of wheat Rising wheat costs have pushed up wholesale food prices. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian

Soaring wheat and other commodity costs on world markets have pushed up UK wholesale food prices at the fastest rate in two years, official figures showed this morning.

Prices of food produced in the UK were 9.8% higher last month than a year ago, the biggest annual increase since October 2008, the Office for National Statistics reported. Imported food prices climbed 4.5% on the year, the fastest rate since October 2009.

Food prices are likely to be pushed even higher in coming months, with refined sugar surging to a record peak of $783.90 a tonne today.

Read moreWholesale Food Prices Soar As Commodity Costs Continue To Rise Even Higher

Outrageous: Unicredit Debt Collection Scam ‘Serves’ Fake Court Papers by Fake Cops and Fake Judges

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This story is so outrageous that I cannot figure out why it has not gone viral on the internet. Unicredit America Inc, a debt collection firm, had people dress up (pretending to be police), serve fake papers to people requiring them to show up in court.

People showed up in a fake court for a fake hearing with a fake witness stand, and an individual in black pretending to be a judge.

Please consider Debt Collector Scam Reaches New Low: The Unicredit Bogus “Courtroom” Scam

It isn’t easy for consumers to protect themselves these days, from robo-signers, foreclosure-rescue scams, and all manner of abusive collection tactics, but the Unicredit scam may take the prize for sheer audacity. It seems that Erie, Pennsylvania debt collection agency Unicredit not only set up a fake courtroom, complete with phony judge, with which to bamboozle and intimidate, but it dressed up employees like sheriff’s deputies to “serve” faked court papers on consumers.

The Unicredit scam, as outrageous as it is, differs mainly in scope from tactics that are commonly used by creditors and collection agencies, whose stock in trade is to mislead, exaggerate, and intimidate.

And while I haven’t seen the pseudo-courtroom scam before, the pseudo-law enforcement official is nothing new.

It’s not always easy when you are scared and someone is breathing down your neck, but again, that is a debt collector’s stock in trade. The more urgent he makes everything sound, the more likely you won’t slow down to think, and ask yourself some practical questions.

The most important and most practical advice is to go see an attorney. If you’re being threatened with legal action, an attorney can tell you what really can (and can’t) happen. If you’ve already been intimidated or scammed into giving up something you shouldn’t have, an attorney can tell you how to redress the situation. An attorney can also help you come up with a plan for addressing persistent credit problems, explain your options, and tell you what you can do about it. Knowledge is power, and it is the best, and most effective weapon you can have in protecting yourself from scam artists of all kinds–even the ones you owe.

I concur with the advice of Dana Wilkinson, Attorney at Law who wrote the above. If you are facing financial difficulties, please see the article for additional tips on how to protect yourself.

For still more reasons on why you need to consult an attorney in these matters please consider

Pennsylvania Attorney General Files Charges

How could anyone at Unicredit possibly think what they did was legal?

Read moreOutrageous: Unicredit Debt Collection Scam ‘Serves’ Fake Court Papers by Fake Cops and Fake Judges

Citizens Against Government Waste Advertisement: Chinese Professor

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Added: 20. October 2010

CAGW’S NEW DEBT AD GOES VIRAL

(Washington, D.C.) – Last Thursday, Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) unveiled a national ad campaign addressing our country’s spending addiction, the dangers of relentless deficits, and the corrosive nature of our national debt.  The ad has received critical acclaim from both the public and press.  James Fallows of The Atlantic characterized the ad as, “The Phenomenal ‘Chinese Professor’ Ad,” that “you can imagine people actually remembering a decade from now.”  The ad, which depicts a chilling look at one potential future scenario if we continue on our current destructive fiscal trajectory, is a 2010 homage to a 1986 ad that was produced by W.R. Grace & Co. called “The Deficit Trials.”  The ordinal ad was a sensation; however, it was considered so alarming that the major networks refused to run it.

CAGW will continue to run the ad on FOX News Channel (FNC), FOX Business News, CNN, CNBC, and CNN Headline News.  Within 96 hours of its premier on FNC’s “Your World with Neil Cavuto,” the ad has had more than 350,000 views on YouTube and dozens of media mentions.  History Channel, A&E, and ABC viewers will not see the ad because the ad has been rejected by those channels.  In an eerie parallel to the 1986 “Deficit Trials” ad, the History Channel said that the content was “too controversial.’

The national debt was $2 trillion in 1986 when “The Deficit Trials” ad was denied air time; today the debt stands at $13.7 trillion, and is projected to reach 140 percent of GDP in two decades, the time in which the new CAGW ad is set.

“Taxpayers have responded viscerally to this ad and it has received critical acclaim among the media because it addresses a significant issue:  the national debt and massive deficit spending have real-world consequences,” said CAGW President Tom Schatz.  “The fiscal crisis we face is leading many Americans to question whether or not the country can maintain its fiscal independence and self-sufficiency and prosper in the future with such an onerous debt burden hanging over our heads.”

The new ad is part of an ongoing communications program in CAGW’s decades-long fight against wasteful government spending, increased taxes, out-of-control deficit spending, and a crippling national debt that threatens the future and survival of our country.  The group plans to run the ad on major cable networks throughout the rest of 2010 and into 2011.

Citizens Against Government Waste is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.

October 25, 2010

Source: Citizens Against Government Waste

Catherine Austin Fitts: The Looting Of America

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Flashback: 

Former Assistant Secretary of Housing: The U.S. is the Global Leader in Illegal Money Laundering

Former Assistant Secretary of Housing under George H.W. Bush Catherine Austin Fitts blows the whistle on how the financial terrorists have deliberately imploded the US economy and transferred gargantuan amounts of wealth offshore as a means of sacrificing the American middle class. Fitts documents how trillions of dollars went missing from government coffers in the 90’s and how she was personally targeted for exposing the fraud.

Fitts explains how every dollar of debt issued to service every war, building project, and government program since the American Revolution up to around 2 years ago – around $12 trillion – has been doubled again in just the last 18 months alone with the bank bailouts. “We’re literally witnessing the leveraged buyout of a country and that’s why I call it a financial coup d’état, and that’s what the bailout is for,” states Fitts.

Massive amounts of financial capital have been sucked out the United States and moved abroad, explains Fitts, ensuring that corporations have become more powerful than governments, changing the very structure of governance on the planet and ensuring we are ruled by private corporations. Pension and social security funds have also been stolen and moved offshore, leading to the end of fiscal responsibility and sovereignty as we know it.

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Added: 3. November 2010

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Pentagon Awards $630 Million Afghanistan Contract to Highly Controversial Supplier

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See also:

– US Spends 511 Million Dollars on Embassy Expansion in Afghanistan

– In US 14 Percent Rely on Food Stamps, 42,389,619 Americans received food stamps in August

The Pentagon has awarded an Afghanistan fuel supply contract worth a potential $630m (£388 million) to Mina Corp, a highly secretive company which refuses to disclose its ownership and whose role is under investigation by the US Congress.


A U.S. C-5 Galaxy aircraft lands at Manas International Airport near Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan Photo: REUTERS

The award of the contract to supply the Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan, goes directly against the requests of the country’s President, Roza Otunbayeva, making it an enormous diplomatic gamble for the US.

Derek Mitchell, principal deputy assistant secretary of defence, said that the Pentagon’s main concern was ensuring supplies for the war in Afghanistan.

“It is a priority of the United States to ensure a secure, reliable and uninterrupted supply of fuel to the transit centre to enable us to sustain our critical operations in Afghanistan,” he said.

Mina Corp and Red Star, which share personnel and operations, have won more than $3bn worth of contracts to supply Manas and the Bagram airbase in Afghanistan since 2003, but have never revealed their ownership.

The award has been made even more controversial by the revelation in the Washington Post over the weekend that Erkin Bekbolotov, one of Mina Corp’s partners, met with Atai Sadybakasov, Mrs Otunbayeva’s son, in Istanbul in July. Two revolutions in the country in the past five years have been caused in part by public suspicions that the families of the then Presidents were benefiting from the contracts.

Read morePentagon Awards $630 Million Afghanistan Contract to Highly Controversial Supplier

Ireland: Government to let them eat cheese

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See also:

– Irish Bond Yields Shooting To Record And Another Prof. Warns That It’s Just One Month Until Endgame

– Irish ‘Groundhog Day’ & Ireland Cancels All Remaining 2010 Bond Auctions Due To Market ‘Turbulence’

The banksters got just a little more for Christmas:

– Ireland: Bank Bailout May Hit 50 Billion Euros

– Anglo Irish Bank losses are the worst in the entire world


The Government is to distribute some 53 tonnes of free cheese to people in need in the run up to Christmas.

Minister for Agriculture Brendan Smith announced the EU-funded scheme today following talks with a number of charitable organisations.

He said the cheese will be available free of charge for distribution to those most in need. It will be available from November 15th “in time for Christmas”.

The State has been given more than €818,000 from the EU budget to purchase the cheese and the Irish Dairy Board has been awarded the tender to supply it. More than €750,000 will be spent on the Christmas scheme.

The Minister said the scheme was “an important means of contributing towards the well-being of the most deprived citizens in the community”.

“I am very conscious that many people find themselves in difficult circumstances at present and I want to commend the work of the many charitable organisations who are working on the frontline to bring what comfort and relief they can,” he said. “I am glad to be able to help their work in such a practical way.”

Read moreIreland: Government to let them eat cheese

Rep. Ron Paul vows renewed Fed audit push next year

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* Urges return to gold standard

* Republican says also to scrutinize IMF

WASHINGTON, Nov 4 (Reuters) – U.S. Republican Representative Ron Paul on Thursday said he will push to examine the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy decisions if he takes control of the congressional subcommittee that oversees the central bank as expected in January.

“I think they’re way too independent. They just shouldn’t have this power,” Paul, a longtime Fed critic, said in an interview with Reuters. “Up until recently it has been modest but now it’s totally out of control.”

Paul is currently the top Republican on the House of Representatives subcommittee that oversees domestic monetary policy, and is likely to head the panel when Republicans take control of the chamber in January.

That could create a giant headache for the Fed, which earlier this year fended off an effort headed by Paul to open up its internal deliberations on interest rates and monetary easing to congressional scrutiny.

Paul, who has written a book called “End the Fed,” has been a fierce critic of the central bank’s efforts to boost the economy through monetary policy.

“It’s an outrage, what is happening, and the Congress more or less has not said much about it,” he said.

Read moreRep. Ron Paul vows renewed Fed audit push next year

Homeland Security advises Jewish institutions

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SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) – The U.S. Department of Homeland Security advised Jewish institutions on protecting themselves from terrorist threats.

About 500 Jewish agencies joined a 75-minute conference call on Wednesday focusing on security. The call was organized after the thwarted mail-bomb threat against two Jewish institutions in Chicago.

Paul Goldenberg, national director of the Secure Community Network, the central agency for Jewish communal security, said the call was part of a larger Department of Homeland Security effort to reach out to the Jewish community through the network.

The call included security briefings from two assistant undersecretaries and senior staffers from the Transportation Security Administration, U.S. Postal Service and the office of the Department of Homeland Security secretary.

Goldenberg said Homeland Security had planned to launch a significant outreach to Jewish communal institutions before last week’s bomb attempt following a flurry of recent anti-Jewish attack attempts, including the attempted bombing of a Bronx, New York synagoue in the summer of 2009.

Read moreHomeland Security advises Jewish institutions

Barack Obama Loses Forbes Title As ‘World’s Most Powerful Person’ To Hu Jintao

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Hu Jintao, the Chinese president, has been named the most powerful person on Earth knocking Barack Obama off the top spot.


G20: Tensions rise over the future of the global econom Photo: GETTY

The annual list, compiled by Forbes, the business magazine, places David Cameron, the British prime minister, at seven, behind Angela Merkel, the German chancellor in the list of 68.

Forbes explained that those on the list had been chosen “because, in various ways, they bend the world to their will”.

King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al Saud of Saudi Arabia came in third behind Mr Jintao and Mr Obama, while Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister was fourth, ahead of Dmitry Medvedev, who only came in at 12.

Pope Benedict XVI was in fifth place, while the rest of the top 10 was rounded off by Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, Sonia Gandhi, the Indian president, and Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Mr Gates finished ahead of Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple, who was in 17th place.

Read moreBarack Obama Loses Forbes Title As ‘World’s Most Powerful Person’ To Hu Jintao

German Finance Minister Schaeuble on Bernanke’s QE: ‘With All Due Respect, US Policy Is Clueless’

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True, but Schaeuble is also an elite puppet, who supported the bankster bailouts and he is the greatest public supporter of the German ‘Big Brother STASI Police State’, now called ‘Schaeuble 2.0’:

That is easily the Quote Of The Day, and it’s from German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble regarding Ben Bernanke’s quantitative easing.

He added: “(The problem) is not a shortage of liquidity. It’s not that the the Americans haven’t pumped enough liquidity into the market and now to say let’s pump more into the market is not going to solve their problems.”

Joe Weisenthal | Nov. 5, 2010, 7:30 AM

Source: Business Insider

Hitler’s Stealth Bomber: How the Nazis designed the Ho 2-29 bomber to beat radar

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Blast from the past: The full-scale replica of the Ho 2-29 bomber was made with materials available in the 40s

With its smooth and elegant lines, this could be a prototype for some future successor to the stealth bomber.

But this flying wing was actually designed by the Nazis 30 years before the Americans successfully developed radar-invisible technology.

Now an engineering team has reconstructed the Horten Ho 2-29 from blueprints, with startling results.


Futuristic: The stealth plane design was years ahead of its time

It was faster and more efficient than any other plane of the period and its stealth powers did work against radar.

Read moreHitler’s Stealth Bomber: How the Nazis designed the Ho 2-29 bomber to beat radar

ECB Rejects Request for Disclosure of Greek Swap Files, Citing This ‘Would Undermine The Public Confidence’

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What confidence?

The reason for this secrecy is very simple. The elite puppet ECB shields the elite puppet banksters and the elite puppet governments, so that the people may not understand that they have just been robbed by an elite criminal operation, that  intentionally caused the entire financial crisis worldwide. The truth is not bad for you, but for them! The people may start thinking like financial analyst Max Keiser:

– Max Keiser on the Middle Class And Revolution

Max is already well known in Greece for exposing the bankster, government and IMF agenda:

– Max Keiser on Greece: ‘The IMF is a Financial Mafia’


ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet wrote, “The information contained in the two documents would undermine the public confidence as regards the effective conduct of economic policy.” Photographer: Hannelore Foerster/Bloomberg

The European Central Bank refused to disclose internal documents showing how Greece used derivatives to hide its government debt because of the “acute” risk of roiling markets, President Jean-Claude Trichet said.

The ECB turned down a request and an appeal by Bloomberg News to release two briefing documents officials drafted for the central bank’s six-member Executive Board in Frankfurt this year. The notes outline how Greece used the swaps to hide its borrowings, according to a March 3 note attached to the papers and obtained by Bloomberg News.

“The information contained in the two documents would undermine the public confidence as regards the effective conduct of economic policy,” Trichet wrote in an Oct. 21 letter in which he rejected the appeal. Disclosure “bears, in the current very vulnerable market environment, the substantial and acute risk of adding to volatility and instability.”

The ECB is withholding the information six months after the European Union and International Monetary Fund led a 110 billion-euro bailout ($154 billion) for Greece. The government didn’t originally disclose the swaps, which were designed to help it comply with the deficit and debt rules it agreed to meet when it joined the euro in 2001. Eurostat, the EU’s statistics agency, is still trying to work out how Greece hid the deficit.

The Greek swaps fueled a financial crisis that threatened the breakup of the region’s currency. The government now says the swaps, some of which were arranged by Goldman Sachs Group Inc., may have caused “long-term damage” for taxpayers.

‘Full Disclosure’

Read moreECB Rejects Request for Disclosure of Greek Swap Files, Citing This ‘Would Undermine The Public Confidence’

Elite Puppet Glenn Beck Warns Of Catastrophic Event That Will Lead To A New World Order

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More elite puppets here:

– Elite Puppet President Obama Exposed

Both of Glenn’s guests, authors Damon Vickers and Brad Thorn agree that the scenario is a very possible one.

Day 1 of Glenn Beck’s scenario begins with China announcing that they will no longer buy U.S. Treasury bonds. This is not such a far fetched idea, as they have certainly slowed their rate of bond purchases and have voiced public criticism of Ben Bernanke’s announcement this week of a second round of quantitative easing.

Day 2 and 3 focuses on Wall Street which gets ‘spooked’ by China’s announcement. The volume of stock sales is ultra low as rumors of instability abound. By Day 5, the world begins to react. Markets in Asia drop 10%. The American and European markets also decline a like amount. The European Central Bank reacts quickly, raising interest rates to attract capital as investors seek a ‘flight to safety’.

Day 7 of Glenn Beck’s scenario has the U.S. stock markets closed while the Federal Reserve Board holds an emergency meeting. Needless to say the government is certainly participating in decisions during the next 48 hours. With some vague pledge of ‘a plan’, the markets reopen on Day 8. They may even rally a bit, gaining 500 points or so. On Day 9, things seem to be stable.

Day 10 and the U.S. Dollar loses 10-15% of it’s value! The Fed’s quantitative easing has pushed a sudden burst of inflation as global banks try to divest themselves of the reserves of dollars. How possible is this? Again, following Bernanke’s statements on Wednesday, financial leaders in China, South Korea and Thailand have already said this week that they will act together, in concert, to protect themselves from a devalued dollar.

Day 11, the Fed meets again. On Day 12, in Beck’s scenario, the Fed decides to follow the Euro Bank’s move of increasing interest rates. Far from securing stability and confidence, the sudden change in direction by the Fed has the opposite affect.

Day 13, Lucky 13 — GLOBAL MELTDOWN! All of the world’s market begin to crash as confidence in ‘The System’ goes out the window. It’s every man (and lady) for themselves! The value of all paper securities, be they mortgages, stocks bonds, currency, is questionable. The markets go into total free-fall, losing perhaps 20% or more in a single day.

Read moreElite Puppet Glenn Beck Warns Of Catastrophic Event That Will Lead To A New World Order

NATIONAL SECURITY ALERT: F-35 STEALTH FIGHTER SPY COVER-UP

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“WIKI” STYLE ESPIONAGE LANDS $300 BILLION DOLLAR SUPER-PLANE PLANS


F-35 Joint Strike Fighter worthless?

Nov. 2 (Veterans Today) — “Another spy disaster like Pollard, shoved under the rug too long due to pressure from the powerful Israeli lobby.”

On April 21, 2009, the Department of Defense announced the theft of 1.5 terabytes of data on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the platform meant give the United States and her allies air superiority for the next 40 years.  In a flash, all that was gone, $300 billion dollars of funding down the drain, every system, defense, offense, stealth, everything needed to build one or shoot it down, all gone.  Day one, China was accused but it wasn’t China, it wasn’t Iran, it wasn’t Pakistan.  The theft left a clear signature, one identical to the data Wikileaks has been receiving, sources inside the Pentagon repeating the actions of Israeli-Soviet spy, Jonathan Pollard.  As vital as the F-35 is to America’s defense, Pollard’s triumph on behalf of Soviet Russia and Israel dwarfs the current espionage coup.

Since the 2009 announcement, there has been nothing but silence.

When the theft was announced, Pentagon “damage control” went into action immediately branding the disaster as “unimportant” while scrambling to look for any possible way to “put the toothpaste back into the tube.”  What Secretary Gates came up with was a simple denial and to pretend it never happened.  With the continual efforts by the Israeli government to secure the release of master spy Jonathan Pollard, a “witch hunt” for another Israeli spy would endanger America’s hopes of winning a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.

There was no real question, this was another Israeli operation, their “signature” was all over it.

“AN UNPRECEDENTED DISASTER”

What did America lose?  15 years of research and development?  That doesn’t come close.  Key components of the F-35, from stealth materials, flight and weapons systems, to tens of thousands of man-hours of systems programming are now “out there,” available to any potential rival, military or commercial.  At best, it could be considered a $300 billion dollar bank robbery, by American standards, nothing new in today’s financial world.


Additional Risk for U.S. Navy Carriers  – Another spy disaster like Pollard, shoved under the rug too long due to pressure from the powerful Israeli lobby.

At worst, nations whose defense capabilities were decades behind the US can now be at par, as the F-35 was estimated to be “air superiority capable” until at least 2040. Data stolen could make production of a comparable aircraft possible in as little as 36 months, particularly with several projects in the offing, Russia/India and in China, each of which are capable of quickly adapting upgraded systems.

The JSF (Joint Strike Fighter) in its three variants, conventional takeoff/landing (CTOL), carrier variant (CV) and short takeoff/vertical landing (STOLV), are scheduled for production through 2026 with estimates of service life until 2060 and beyond.  Export versions of the F-35, “detuned” are available for American allies, NATO and Israel.  The F-35 delivers more “punch” per dollar than any current “legacy” fighter by a margin of as much as 8 to 1.  The economics of “stealing” the F-35 and auctioning it off, system at a time, is tremendous.

Read moreNATIONAL SECURITY ALERT: F-35 STEALTH FIGHTER SPY COVER-UP

America – The End of Liberty (Documentary)

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How the U.S. is headed for a complete societal collapse! The most important film of all time!

Source: National Inflation Association

QE2 – The Day After: Entire World Blasts Deranged Madman Bernanke’s Uncheckable Insanity

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Yes, the Federal Reserve is above the law!

– Federal Reserve Will Surpass China As Top Holder Of US Debt By The End Of The Month: Shit Just Got Real!

– Federal Reserve To Spend $600 Billion More To Destroy The US Dollar And The Middle Class

– Federal Reserve Banksters Return to Jekyll Island to Celebrate 100 Years of Successfully Destroying America


Yesterday’s Ben Bernanke penned an Op-Ed in which he essentially said: “I am doing whatever I interpret my mandate to be, which right now means only thing: Dow 36,000. I am only accountable to the private bank that is the Federal Reserve, a few Wall Street CEOs, and no one else. Congress has no power over me.Try to stop me.”

And while the stock market is so far in love with this exhibition of outright hubris which promises record bonuses even as a record number of Americans subsist on foodstamps and real, not BLS, unemployment is over 20%, putting the Chairman in a long-overdue strait jacket will ultimately require an outright clash between those who still believe in that piece paper called the constitution and the kleptocratic cartel to whom the trade-off between a senior bond impairment and their first born is never all that clear.

And while more and more try to educate a hypnotized, strategically defaulting US society what QE2 means to their future, the rest of the world is already rising in a tidal wave of disapproval aimed at the Federal Reserve. As the FT reports, Brazil, China, German, and Thailand, and soon everyone else, have already voiced thighest criticism and their condemnation of this escalation in FX wars.

China, Brazil and Germany on Thursday criticised the Fed’s action a day earlier, and a string of east Asian central banks said they were preparing measures to defend their economies against large capital inflows.

Guido Mantega, the Brazilian finance minister who was the first to warn of a “currency war”, said: “Everybody wants the US economy to recover, but it does no good at all to just throw dollars from a helicopter.”

Read moreQE2 – The Day After: Entire World Blasts Deranged Madman Bernanke’s Uncheckable Insanity

In US 14 Percent Rely on Food Stamps, 42,389,619 Americans received food stamps in August

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This, Americans, is so much more important than you:

– US Spends 511 Million Dollars on Embassy Expansion in Afghanistan

This is the change BS that you voted for and if you vote Republican, then you are also screwed and here is why:

– Elite Puppet President Obama Exposed

You do not really have a choice:

– George Carlin Talks War And American Politics

– George Carlin: The American Dream

Waking up some Americans seems to be a hopeless task:

– Is Obama A Keynesian?: ‘He was born in Hawaii!’ … ‘Most Americans Are Not Stupid.`


More Americans are using government assistance to buy food. Bloomberg News

(Wall Street Journal) — A huge number of American households are still relying on government assistance to buy food as the recession continues to batter families.

Food stamp recipients ticked up in August, children consumed millions of free lunches and nearly five million low-income mothers tapped into a government nutrition program for women and young children.

Some 42,389,619 Americans received food stamps in August, a 17% rise from the same time a year ago, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which tracks the data. That number is up 58.5% from August 2007, before the recession began.

Read moreIn US 14 Percent Rely on Food Stamps, 42,389,619 Americans received food stamps in August

Swiss Nuclear Bunker Houses World’s Toughest Server Farm

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Photo: Todd Antony

Deep inside the Swiss Alps, a former nuclear bunker is now the ultimate hiding place for the world’s most sensitive secrets. Wired gains access to the server farm designed to survive a full-scale military attack.

The cockpit of Christoph Oschwald’s silver Audi A8 is preternaturally quiet as he steers through the Swiss countryside towards our destination. Wired has been instructed not to disclose its exact whereabouts. It’s late June, “the longest day of the year”, Oschwald notes. It should be 25°C outside. Instead, it’s an unseasonably chilly 12°C, and the tiny village of Saanen, in the canton of Bern, sits beneath a steel-grey sky that lends an ominous air to what might otherwise resemble an Alpenland panorama on a souvenir chocolate bar.

The green valley that cradles Saanen and the near by town of Gstaad in the Bernese highlands plays host, according to local newspaper Der Bund, to the highest concentration of billionaires in the world, their chalets creeping up the piney slopes. But it’s also home to something else — a place that you won’t find on any of the tourist maps. For the past 18 years, Oschwald, 53, a retired Swiss paratrooper turned contractor, and his business partner, an engineer named Hanspeter Baumann, 55, have committed thousands of hours and millions of francs to realising their vision — the place we’re headed to today.

We pass a Tissot boutique abutting a tractor dealership before the road dives into dense forest and follows a stream. Finally we arrive at our destination. At first, it appears to be nothing more than a timber operation, with lorries moving wooden payloads around a gravelly clearing. But then we see them: three guards clad in black uniforms, berets askew, pacing at the base of an enormous mountain. The Alpine foliage above the sentry ends abruptly at a bare rock face painted in fading camo. And carved into the side of the mountain is our destination: a small, weather-beaten metal door. Once the entrance to a vast nuclear bunker built by the Swiss military at the height of the Cold War in the mid-60s, it is now a portal into what its creators claim to be the most secure and secretive storehouse for digital information in the world: the place Oschwald has christened Swiss Fort Knox.

“Sixteen years ago, nobody took us seriously,” Oschwald says. “They said to us, ‘Storing data under a mountain? Why?’” In the cheerier geopolitical climate of the 90s, it was decidedly easier to scoff at the eccentric Swiss entrepreneur, with his slicked-back hair and blinding white smile, as he extolled the data-security benefits of his decommissioned bunker. But today — with terrorism, environmental disasters and financial meltdown on the global agenda — some of the biggest players in technology and finance are buying into the facility’s promise. Oschwald can tick off blue-chip companies such as Cisco Systems, Novartis, UBS and Deutsche Bank among his clients.

Read moreSwiss Nuclear Bunker Houses World’s Toughest Server Farm

Experts: Did UN troops infect Haiti with cholera?

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The head of Nepal’s mission in Haiti, Lt. Col. Krishna, center, and Prakash Neupane, deputy chief of the MINUSTAH engineering section, left, enter Nepal’s U.N. base in Mirebalais, Haiti, Sunday Oct. 31, 2010. A cholera outbreak that has killed more than 300 people in Haiti matches strains commonly found in South Asia, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday, intensifying the scrutiny of a U.N. base that is home to recently arrived Nepalese peacekeepers, built on a tributary to the Artibonite River. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Researchers should determine whether United Nations peacekeepers were the source of a deadly outbreak of cholera in Haiti, two public health experts, including a U.N. official, said Wednesday.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the strain of cholera that has killed at least 442 people the past three weeks matches strains found in South Asia. The CDC, World Health Organization and United Nations say it’s not possible to pinpoint the source and investigating further would distract from efforts to fight the disease.

But leading experts on cholera and medicine consulted by The Associated Press challenged that position, saying it is both possible and necessary to track the source to prevent future deaths.

“That sounds like politics to me, not science,” Dr. Paul Farmer, a U.N. deputy special envoy to Haiti and a noted expert on poverty and medicine, said of the reluctance to delve further into what caused the outbreak. “Knowing where the point source is – or source, or sources – would seem to be a good enterprise in terms of public health.”

The suspicion that a Nepalese U.N. peacekeeping base on a tributary to the infected Artibonite River could have been a source of the infection fueled a protest last week during which hundreds of Haitians denounced the peacekeepers.

Read moreExperts: Did UN troops infect Haiti with cholera?

Anger as Germany cuts funding to Orthodox Jews

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So not giving money to  Orthodox Jews means that you don’t want to deal with them?

The German government has ignited a row with the country’s Orthodox Jews after it stopped funding the training of Orthodox rabbis.


There are now some 120,000 Jews living in Germany, and many are Orthodox Photo: REUTERS

The authorities have been subsidising the training of rabbis for several years, but the interior ministry recently announced that it would only fund Liberal rabbis from now on.

Thomas de Maziere, the interior minister, blamed “the budget situation” for the decision, the Times reports.

However, the move has upset the Jewish community.

Jewish officials have claimed that the government made the decision because it no longer wanted to deal with Orthodox Jews.

“They like Liberal Jews because they are seen as easygoing, not reminding them all the time about anti-Semitism and the Shoah [Holocaust],” Stephan Kramer, the secretary-general of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, told the paper.

Read moreAnger as Germany cuts funding to Orthodox Jews

Federal Reserve Will Surpass China As Top Holder Of US Debt By The End Of The Month: Shit Just Got Real!

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See also:

– Federal Reserve Banksters Return to Jekyll Island to Celebrate 100 Years of Successfully Destroying America

– Federal Reserve To Spend $600 Billion More To Destroy The US Dollar And The Middle Class


As is all too well known by now, starting over the next few days, the Fed will commence purchasing $75 billion in Treasury securities monthly until the end of June, and will buy an additional $35 billion in Treasurys to make up for declining holdings of MBS (due to repurchases).

We still believe that as a result of the imminent drop in rates (especially those around the curve belly), as we have claimed for over a month, the feedback loop that will be created will result in a far greater repurchase frequency of MBS securities over the next 8 months, and we would not be surprised if at some point in Q2 2011, the Fed is buying $150 billion in Treasurys monthly.

Since nobody will believe this until it is actually confirmed by the H.4.1., we will leave this topic alone for the time being. And after all its will “only” mean a rotation of Fed holdings, a switch in duration, and an impact on the shape of curve. What is certain is that on June 30, the Fed’s balance sheet will have $2.68 trillion (or more) in holdings, of which $1.77 trillion will be in Treasurys, compared to the $840 billion today.

What is also certain is that the Fed will not be able to stop there. Which is why we have extended the projection period through January 2012. At that point the Fed will hold $2.6 trillion in US Treasuries, or roughly 25% of total US marketable debt at that point. 

And for those who collect now completely irrelevant statistics, the Fed will surpass China’s $868 billion in UST holdings before the end of November. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, shit just got real.

Incidentally, nowhere do we assume that the Fed will have launched QE 3, 4, and so forth, over the next 12 months, even though we now estimate the probability of America becoming an exponentially self-monetizing, Weimar-type case study in hyperinflation at over 50%.

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 11/03/2010 22:14 -0500

Source: ZeroHedge

US Spends 511 Million Dollars on Embassy Expansion in Afghanistan

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Obama bin Bush steals another $ 500 million from the American  people.

KABUL (AFP) — The United States is bolstering its presence in Afghanistan with a 500 million dollar expansion of its Kabul embassy and the construction of two consulates, it announced Wednesday.

Washington’s Kabul embassy is already its biggest in the world, with about 1,100 employees, projected to rise to 1,200 by the end of the year, officials said.

Hundreds have arrived over the course of this year as part of a “civilian surge” bringing development experts into the country to compliment the military effort already in its 10th year.

The United States and NATO have 150,000 troops in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban-led insurgency, following a military surge aimed at speeding an end to the war.

The embassy expansion contract was worth 511 million dollars and had been awarded under US law to an American company, Caddell Construction Inc., ambassador Karl Eikenberry said.

Another two contracts, worth 20 million dollars each, have been awarded for the construction of consulates in Herat, the main city in western Afghanistan, and Mazar-I-Sharif in the north, he said.

Read moreUS Spends 511 Million Dollars on Embassy Expansion in Afghanistan

Federal Reserve To Spend $600 Billion More To Destroy The US Dollar And The Middle Class

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Quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve and deficit spending by the US government are destroying the dollar and bankrupting America.

This is the Greatest Depression.

If you do not know what is really going on read my commentary below.

Fed to Spend $600 Billion More To Help Boost US Economy


Waiting for and reacting to the Fed’s decision on rates and QE2, with Bill Gross, PIMCO co-founder; Kenneth Heebner, portfolio manager of CGM Realty Fund; and CNBC’s Steve Liesman, Erin Burnett & Hampton Pearson.

The Federal Reserve launched a controversial new policy on Wednesday, committing to buy $600 billion more in government bonds by the middle of next year in an attempt to breathe new life into a struggling U.S. economy.

The decision, which takes the Fed into largely uncharted waters, is aimed at further lowering borrowing costs for consumers and businesses still suffering in the aftermath of the worst recession since the Great Depression.

The U.S. central bank said it would buy about $75 billion in longer-term Treasury bonds per month. It said it would regularly review the pace and size of the program and adjust it as needed depending on the path of the recovery.

In its post-meeting statement, the Fed described the economy as “slow”, and said employers remained reluctant to add to payrolls. It said measures of inflation were “somewhat low.”

Read moreFederal Reserve To Spend $600 Billion More To Destroy The US Dollar And The Middle Class

Federal Reserve Banksters Return to Jekyll Island to Celebrate 100 Years of Successfully Destroying America

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A Return to Jekyll Island: The Origins, History, and Future of the Federal Reserve – November 5-6, 2010


Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and Rutgers University
November 5–6, 2010, Jekyll Island Club Hotel, Jekyll Island, Georgia

This special conference marks the centenary of the 1910 Jekyll Island meeting that resulted in draft legislation for the creation of a U.S. central bank. Parts of this draft (the Aldrich plan) were incorporated into the 1913 Federal Reserve Act. To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the drafting of the Aldrich plan, the conference will take place at the Jekyll Island Club Hotel on Jekyll Island, Georgia—the same building where the 1910 meeting occurred.

The conference’s discussions focus on three themes: the origins of the Fed and lessons from the pre-1913 era, how closely the Fed’s actual performance has adhered to the original vision expressed by the framers of the Aldrich plan, and what the Fed’s almost 100-year track record teaches us about its role going forward.

Conference Coordinator
Lisa Lee-Fogarty
Public Affairs Department
Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta
1000 Peachtree Street, NE
Atlanta, GA 30309
[email protected]
404-498-8267
404-498-8050 (fax)

Source: Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta

Some quotes:

“I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country [by signing the Federal Reserve Act of 1913]. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world. No longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.”
– Woodrow Wilson

“The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson. History depicts Andrew Jackson as the last truly honorable and incorruptible American president.”
– Franklin D. Roosevelt

“Gentlemen, I have had men watching you for a long time and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter, I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves.”
– Andrew Jackson

“When the President signs this act [Federal Reserve Act of 1913], the invisible government by the money power — proven to exist by the Monetary Trust Investigation — will be legalized. The new law will create inflation whenever the trusts want inflation. From now on, depressions will be scientifically created.”
– Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr.

Read moreFederal Reserve Banksters Return to Jekyll Island to Celebrate 100 Years of Successfully Destroying America

Chemtrails: The List of Patents For Stratosperic Arial Spraying Programs!

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For anyone doubting the existence of the phenomenon of ‘chemtrails’, please take a minute to read through this extensive list of patents from America on equipment and processes used in just such programs. The evidence is clear folks.

WE ARE BEING SPRAYING LIKE VERMIN!

United States Patent and Trademark Office

1338343 – April 27, 1920 – Process And Apparatus For The Production of Intense Artificial Clouds, Fogs, or Mists
1619183 – March 1, 1927 – Process of Producing Smoke Clouds From Moving Aircraft
1631753 – June 7, 1927 – Electric Heater – Referenced in 3990987
1665267 – April 10, 1928 – Process of Producing Artificial Fogs
1892132 – December 27, 1932 – Atomizing Attachment For Airplane Engine Exhausts
1928963 – October 3, 1933 – Electrical System And Method
1957075 – May 1, 1934 – Airplane Spray Equipment
2097581 – November 2, 1937 – Electric Stream Generator – Referenced in 3990987
2409201 – October 15, 1946 – Smoke Producing Mixture

Read moreChemtrails: The List of Patents For Stratosperic Arial Spraying Programs!