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Concurrently, the areas under the coup government have been hit by hyper-inflation. Food prices have climbed so high that an estimated 20 per cent of the population can no longer afford to eat nutritious meals. Way to go, CIA.

73 screen Slide Show Presentation detailing how the socialist built their coalition, and how conservatives should respond with their own.  The meat starts on slide 56, with the Saul Alinsky power tactics.  This is folllowed by the Andrew Breitbart strategy.   The key for conservatives is "Precinct Activism".  Starts on slide 65, and outlines exactly how Precincts work, and why activism at this level will work..  Highlightes:   "Taking Back Your Government:  The Neighborhood Precinct Committman Statregy eBook"  http://goo.gl/SjdEG The Precinct Project Blog:  http://goo.gl/F071w The Concord Project | Resources:  http://goo.gl/svTpb GOTV Project ::  Get Out The Vote GOTV Campaign + Precinct Activists + Recruitment

It's complicated.  The bottom line is that we know where the $1.6 Billion in customer assets, squandered and "lost" by Corzine, is.  JP Morgan is holding the bulk of it, and due to recent changes in the 546(e) section of the Federal Bankruptcy code, JP Morgan and the other big banksters will be able to keep that money from it's rightful owners.  Oh, yeah.  One other thing.  The big banksters now running off with the assets of investors are the very same people who lobbied hard and heavy ($$$) to have the changes in the code pushed through by their unwitting stooges in Congress. excerpt: This week in The Institutional Risk Analyst we published a comment on the ongoing financial genocide at MF Global, "MF Global: Where's the Cash?"  http://us1.irabankratings.com/pub/IRAstory.asp?tag=515 The comment correctly identifies the location of the "missing" $1.6 billion as JP Morgan Chase and other bank custodians of MF Global.  The trouble is that even though we now know where the missing customer money has gone, namely JPMorgan, there is little chance that the defrauded customers of Jon Corzine will ever recover a dime. Here's the link to a video by William Rochelle of Bloomberg News explaining how the safe harbor in Section 546(e) of the Bankruptcy Code likely will prevent MF Global customers from ever getting their $1.6 billion back -- even when it's located, as it has been evidently. ... (MONEY SHOT) The problem here is that the existing laws against pillaging customer accounts and other acts of fraud are in conflict with the bankruptcy statute designed to make the world safe for large banks and over-the-counter derivatives.  Specifically, the post 2005 bankruptcy laws prohibit trustees from clawing back the $1.6 billion in stolen customer funds.  Indeed, the Bankruptcy Court and trustee are precluded from pursuing the banks just as the trustee in the Madoff fraud has likewise been stymied.    In addition to the clients of MF Global who were ap

Trivial tweaks, no reform. Whatever meat there is will be found in a new Presidential Directive issued today that hasn't yet seen the light of day and may not because it contains classified information. 

An accidental find, the full text online of USMC Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler's 1935 book, War Is a Racket. Butler served in the Marine Corps from 1899 to 1931 and at the time of his retirement was the most-decorated Marine in history, for both valor and accomplishments. Following his retirement, he became a vehement anti-war activist and public speaker.  This book is easily his most-cited and most-quoted published work. You can capture the flavor from an article he published in a magazine that included the following lines: "I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler#Lectures  I look forward to reading this book. The book was reprinted in 2003 and is available from the linked web site, together with two bonus titles. 

"WAR IS A RACKET" - free online book CHAPTER ONE WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes. In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows. How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle? Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few - the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill. And what is this bill? This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations. For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds g

This just may be the speech in which Barack Obama's speechwriters managed to set a new record in presidential hypocrisy. It's long and a very depressing read for someone who is intimately familiar with the issues he discusses. I've tried to highlight only the tastiest meat of the beast. But it's worth reading the whole thing, from the traitor's pledge of undying allegiance to Israel through the announcement that nothing has changed in America other than a public that is demanding peace but won't get it from Mr. Obama. Mr. Obama's contempt for the U.N. Charter riddles his speech, a treaty that is enshrined in our own law through the Constitution's Treaty Clause, is remarkable. That charter of course forbids wars of aggression (and threats thereof) absent the authorization of all permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.  

Related: the top 45 lies in Obama's U.N. speech: http://warisacrime.org/content/top-45-lies-obamas-speech-un

I haven't been keeping up lately on the Doha Round of trade agreement negotiations. But generally speaking, the WTO series of trade agreements have been of, by, and for moneyed interests. Which is why their get-togethers get picketed a lot. Money talks at the WTO; not mere mortals.  When this round concludes, there will be in the U.S. a very large package of treaties delivered to the Senate for ratification, followed by ratification conditioned on the President certifying that certain Congressional limitations have been achieved, whereupon enabling legislation will automatically kick in. For example, the Trade Agreements Act of 1979, 19 U.S.C. 2501, et seq., , ushered in the following: [to be filled in on Diigo because the list is so long].  

List of WTO (and one agreement with Hungary) Agreements ratified and enabled by the Trade Agreements Act of 1979: (1) The Agreement on Implementation of Article VII of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (relating to customs valuation). (2) The Agreement on Government Procurement. (3) The Agreement on Import Licensing Procedures. (4) The Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (relating to product standards). (5) The Agreement on Interpretation and Application of Articles VI, XVI, and XXIII of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (relating to subsidies and countervailing measures). (6) The Agreement on Implementation of Article VI of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (relating to antidumping measures). (7) The International Dairy Arrangement. (8) Certain bilateral agreements on cheese, other dairy products, and meat. (9) The Arrangement Regarding Bovine Meat. (10) The Agreement on Trade in Civil Aircraft. (11) Texts Concerning a Framework for the Conduct of World Trade. (12) Certain Bilateral Agreements to Eliminate the Wine-Gallon Method of Tax and Duty Assessment. (13) Certain other agreements to be reflected in Schedule XX of the United States to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, including Agreements- (A) to Modify United States Watch Marking Requirements, and to Modify United States Tariff Nomenclature and Rates of Duty for Watches, (B) to Provide Duty-Free Treatment for Agricultural and Horticultural Machinery, Equipment, Implements, and Parts Thereof, and (C) to Modify United States Tariff Nomenclature and Rates of Duty for Ceramic Tableware.

High comedy from the office of the U.S. Trade Representative. The USTR's press release is here along with a link to its report. http://www.ustr.gov/about-us/press-office/press-releases/2014/March/USTR-Targets-Telecommunications-Trade-Barriers The USTR is upset because the E.U. is aiming to build a digital communications network that does not route internal digital traffic outside the E.U., to limit the NSA's ability to surveil Europeans' communications. Part of the plan is to build an E.U.-centric cloud that is not susceptible to U.S. court orders. This plan does not, of course, sit well with U.S.-based cloud service providers.  Where the comedy comes in is that the USTR is making threats to go to the World Trade organization to block the E.U. move under the authority of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). But that treaty provides, in article XIV, that:  "Subject to the requirement that such measures are not applied in a manner which would constitute a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination between countries where like conditions prevail, or a disguised restriction on trade in services, nothing in this Agreement shall be construed to prevent the adoption or enforcement by any Member of measures: ... (c)      necessary to secure compliance with laws or regulations which are not inconsistent with the provisions of this Agreement including those relating to:   ... (ii)     the protection of the privacy of individuals in relation to the processing and dissemination of personal data and the protection of confidentiality of individual records and accounts[.]" http://www.wto.org/english/docs_e/legal_e/26-gats_01_e.htm#articleXIV   The E.U., in its Treaty on Human Rights, has very strong privacy protections for digital communications. The USTR undoubtedly knows all this, and that the WTO Appellate Panel's judges are of the European mold, sticklers for protection of human rights and most likely do not appreciate being subjects o

5 hectares == 12.35 acres. Times 30 million Russians == 370.5 million acres less space for a home and a driveway. That's a lot of new agricultural production.  Bear in mind that Russia imported most of its food from Europe before the Ukraine sanctions. This article is about the evaporation of foreign trade that Europe will never get back.And it's about new Russian agricultural exports to China. Perhaps even about eventual exports to the U.S. for those who want a "GMO-free" label on their food. This is very bad news for Monsanto and other biotech companies in the U.S, especially a few years down the road when other countries begin importing Russian GMO-free food.  

This is a fun and enlightening read.  Extremely well written!  Maybe the most complete statement of both the facts of the Snowden - NSA disclosure event, and the mix of heartache and anger I feel about it.  Gut wrenching, nauseating and sick to my soul over what these clowns are doing to this great Republic, the Constitution, and the brief history of individual liberty this country represents.  Nicely written summary.

Oh, goody, a trade war with our second largest trading partner.

If we're to have a policy of non-interference, why do we need increase defense spending?

Escobar's point that for the U.S., Ukraine is about building an iron curtain between Russia and the E.U. should not be missed. 

I'll be posting more bookmarks on the topic of the cover being blown from the U.S. strategy on behalf of Israel to carve up Syria and Iraq into Balkanized states, whilst blocking the Iran-Iraq-Syria Freedom Pipeline. This has been covered from the beginning by alternative press but never made it into mainstream media. Not even the release of the Defense Intelligence Agency document proving that goal could crack that media blackout.   

I vividly recall that around 1965, the price of T-Bone steak was generally in the range of 17-19 cents per pound. I don't remember the price of ground beef, but it was a lot less than that.   Inflation is the cruelest tax of all.