1984 is 2010

The Defense Department needs to get better at lying and fooling people about its intentions. That’s the conclusion from an influential Pentagon panel, the Defense Science Board (DSB), which recommends that the military and intelligence communities join in a new agency devoted to “strategic surprise/deception.”

Tricking battlefield opponents has been a part of war since guys started beating each other with bones and sticks. But these days, such moves are harder to pull off, the DSB notes in a January report (.pdf) first unearthed by InsideDefense.com. “In an era of ubiquitous information access, anonymous leaks and public demands for transparency, deception operations are extraordinarily difficult. Nevertheless, successful strategic deception has in the past provided the United States with significant advantages that translated into operational and tactical success. Successful deception also minimizes U.S. vulnerabilities, while simultaneously setting conditions to surprise adversaries.”

The U.S. can’t wait until it’s at war with a particular country or group before engaging in this strategic trickery, however. “Deception cannot succeed in wartime without developing theory and doctrine in peacetime,” according to the DSB. “In order to mitigate or impart surprise, the United States should [begin] deception planning and action prior to the need for military operations.”

Doing that will not only requires an “understanding the enemy culture, standing beliefs, and intelligence-gathering process and decision cycle, as well as the soundness of its operational and tactical doctrine,” the DSB adds. Deception is also “reliant … on the close control of information, running agents (and double-agents) and creating stories that adversaries will readily believe.”

Such wholesale obfuscation can’t be done on an ad-hoc basis, or by a loose coalition of existing agencies. The DSB writes that ”to be effective, a permanent standing office with strong professional intelligence and operational expertise needs to be established.” I wonder: what would you call that organization? The Military Deception Agency? Or something a bit more … deceptive?

Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/#ixzz0eB14ZdAP

The coming financial collapse of the U.S. government

Written by Mike Adams (Natural News)

The bankruptcy of the United States government has been talked about for years by independent observers. If you’ve read the book, “Empire of Debt,” then you know where the U.S. is headed financially. But most people have no idea about the ultimate financial consequences of decades of borrowing and spending by Washington, and they remain irrationally convinced that the status quo will remain intact for eternity. No one in any position of authority, you see, has yet admitted that the U.S. government is indeed going bankrupt. Until now, that is.

In a remarkable paper posted by the Federal Reserve of St. Louis, and authored by a Boston University teacher named Prof Kotlikoff, it is revealed in blunt, powerful language that the era of borrowing and spending without consequence may soon come to a close. The paper, entitled, Is the United States Bankrupt?, may not remain posted for very long once the public gets word of what it actually says.

And what, exactly, does it say? For starters, Kotlikoff explains, “Unless the United States moves quickly to fundamentally change and restrain its fiscal behavior, its bankruptcy will become a foregone conclusion.”

The country is bankrupt

He goes on to explain, “[that] the United States is going broke, [and] …that radical reform of U.S. fiscal institutions is essential to secure the nation’s economic future.”

Failure to engage in these massive reforms will inevitably result in the financial demise of the United States, Kotlikoff says: “[W]e have a country at the end of its resources. It’s exhausted, stripped bear, destitute, bereft, wanting in property, and wrecked (at least in terms of its consumption and borrowing capacity) in consequence of failure to pay its creditors. In short, the country is bankrupt and is forced to reorganize its operations by paying its creditors (the oldsters) less than they were promised.”

We might possibly be saved, he explains, if the nation engages in massive, radical reform in three areas: 1) Eliminating the current income tax system and moving to a national retail sales tax of 33 percent. 2) Privatizing social security so that workers own their savings accounts and the federal government can no longer swipe funds from Social Security. 3) Launching a national health insurance program that covers everyone and relies on a system of government-issued vouchers that citizens can spend with health insurance companies.

These radical reforms are necessary because the future gap between what the government owes and what it stands to receive in revenues is already monstrously large, and it’s growing by the minute. This gap, called the Gokhale and Smetters measure, currently stands at an astonishing $65.9 trillion. (Yes, with a “T”.) As Kotlikoff explains, “This figure is more than five times U.S. GDP and almost twice the size of national wealth. One way to wrap one’s head around $65.9 trillion is to ask what fiscal adjustments are needed to eliminate this red hole. The answers are terrifying. One solution is an immediate and permanent doubling of personal and corporate income taxes. Another is an immediate and permanent two-thirds cut in Social Security and Medicare benefits. A third alternative, were it feasible, would be to immediately and permanently cut all federal discretionary spending by 143 percent.”

If you read that last paragraph with any presence of mind, you now begin to understand the magnitude of the fiscal problem facing the United States. It could be solved, as explained above, by doubling all personal and corporate income taxes. But then what’s the point in working? It could also be solved by slashing promised benefits in Social Security and Medicare. But what about the inevitable street riots?

None of these solutions are likely to occur. And that leaves the Ace up the sleeve. It’s the Ace that all government eventually play on their way to bankruptcy and collapse, and it’s the Ace that the United States will ultimately be forced to play, too: hyperinflation. The U.S. will have to print more money to escape the financial consequences of its unbridled spending.

Hyperinflation is inevitable

As Kotlikoff explains: “Given the reluctance of our politicians to raise taxes, cut benefits, or even limit the growth in benefits, the most likely scenario is that the government will start printing money to pay its bills. This could arise in the context of the Federal Reserve “being forced” to buy Treasury bills and bonds to reduce interest rates. Specifically, once the financial markets begin to understand the depth and extent of the country’s financial insolvency, they will start worrying about inflation and about being paid back in watered-down dollars. This concern will lead them to start dumping their holdings of U.S. Treasuries. In so doing, they’ll drive up interest rates, which will lead the Fed to print money to buy up those bonds. The consequence will be more money creation—exactly what the bond traders will have come to fear. This could lead to spiraling expectations of higher inflation, with the process eventuating in hyperinflation.”

It’s not like it hasn’t happened before. Hyperinflation is actually the norm, not the exception, and it’s the escape route taken by virtually every country suffering under the burden of payment promises is cannot possibly keep. Whether we’re talking about Germany after World War I, or the United States over the next few years, hyperinflation is the only option remaining for politicians who refuse to practice fiscal sanity.

No politician ever got elected by promising voters their entitlements would be halted, did they? Political popularity is derived from promising voters precisely what the nation cannot afford: Endless entitlements and runaway spending without apparent consequence.

The China factor

The only thing keeping the U.S. afloat right now is the temporary willingness of Asian countries to keep buying U.S. debt, thereby pumping up the U.S. economy with dollars earned on the backs of Chinese laborers.

But even the Chinese — known for their tolerance of hard times and manual labor — may eventually tire of lending money to a posh, arrogant Western nation that has all but abandoned the concept of saving money. Says Kotlikoff, “China is saving so much that it’s running a current account surplus. Not only is China supplying capital to the rest of the world, it’s increasingly doing so via direct investment. The question for the United States is whether China will tire of investing only indirectly in our country and begin to sell its dollar-denominated reserves. Doing so could have spectacularly bad implications for the value of the dollar and the level of U.S. interest rates.”

By “spectacularly bad implications,” Kotlikoff means the value of the U.S. dollar would plummet, the level of U.S. interest rates would skyrocket, and hyperinflation would be well underway. U.S. citizens would find not only their dollars to be near-worthless on the global market, but their savings to be all but wiped out as well. Sure, you’ll still have the same number of dollars in your bank account, but they won’t be worth anything.

This is what eventually happens, by the way, when a government eliminates the gold standard and separates its currency from precious metals. The U.S. dollar, a green piece of paper, technically stands for nothing other than the U.S. government’s promise to pay. But when push comes to shove, the government will have no choice but to hyperinflate its way out of financial obligations, thereby rendering all currently-held U.S. dollars to be virtually worthless. Those investors or citizens who hold savings in U.S. dollars will be wiped out by a government that will essentially steal their wealth without having to snatch a single physical dollar from their hands.

Future obligations cannot be met And yet, despite the seriousness of the U.S. fiscal situation, Americans and their elected representative live their merry lives oblivious to financial reality. National newspaper headlines even add to the denial, running headlines that claim the nation’s economy is strong because the 2006 budget deficit will be “only” $296 billion.

That this is considered a success by the Bush Administration is testament to the psychotic fiscal self-deception that now serves as the norm in the United States. It’s like a family that owes $1 million on a $200,000 home announcing “success” because it has just reduced its monthly credit card borrowing from $15,000 to $12,000. And that’s if you actually believe the numbers, because if there’s one area where Washington has proven its skill, it’s the expert deployment of smoke and mirrors on all things involving numbers.

Cutting the annual budget deficit won’t save us anyway. It only means that we’re barreling head-first into a brick wall at a slightly slower pace than before. The entitlements will still come due:

“There are 77 million baby boomers now ranging from age 41 to age 59. All are hoping to collect tens of thousands of dollars in pension and healthcare benefits from the next generation. These claimants aren’t going away. In three years, the oldest boomers will be eligible for early Social Security benefits. In six years, the boomer vanguard will start collecting Medicare. Our nation has done nothing to prepare for this onslaught of obligation. Instead, it has continued to focus on a completely meaningless fiscal metric—“the” federal deficit—censored and studiously ignored long-term fiscal analyses that are scientifically coherent, and dramatically expanded the benefit levels being explicitly or implicitly promised to the baby boomers.”

The result of this is not in question: The United States government is already running on fumes, and in a few more years, it will suffer financial collapse.

“Countries can and do go bankrupt,” says Kotlikoff, and the U.S. is no exception to the laws of economic reality.

Oblivious to what’s coming.

The American people, as usual, remain oblivious to the financial future that awaits them. Even as the housing bubble is now beginning to burst in the nation’s most overpriced real estate markets, most people don’t have a clue what “hard times” really means. To today’s debt-ridden yuppie spenders, “hard times” means shuffling six different credit card accounts to cover the payments on an overpriced house, two new SUVs in the driveway and a vacation to Paris, none of which the yuppie couple can afford.

The idea of ever having to pay back their debt and live within their means is as foreign to most Americans as it is their own government. Financial consequences have been put off so habitually, for so long, that people forget they even exist. And thus the reality awakening becomes ever more rude when it finally appears. To say that most Americans will be in a state of shock when their life savings are suddenly wiped out is an understatement: These people will have never even imagined such an event is possible, much less contemplated how it might affect them.

Rome is burning

It’s too late to save the United States from its financial meltdown, I believe. For starters, there is a complete lack of willingness to make tough financial decisions and begin paying off the national debt. Such an idea is so foreign to the U.S. that no presidential candidate in the last two decades has even seriously proposed such a plan, save perhaps Ross Perot, a man with such well-grounded ideas of cutting government spending that he was immediately branded a crackpot by the status quo.

Even worse, there’s not even recognition among the masses that a financial problem exists. As long as the President continues to proclaim the economy is in good shape, and the press remains complicit with its printing of economic half-truths, few will recognize any problem at all. Besides, any such recognition of the financial problems now facing this nation requires the observers to actually be able to do basic math. Our public education system, which is now largely considered institutionalized day care for nutritionally-deficient children, has seen to it that mathematics instruction never gets in the way of diagnosing children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and drugging them up on amphetamines so powerful that they actually have a street value as recreational drugs.

Thus, few young Americans can even do math. And none of them lived through the Great Depression, nor did they understand the study of it in school, meaning they are precisely the kind of naive, overconfident yuppie spenders who are ripe for being financially obliterated by an economic meltdown. When their ignorance turns to fear, the ever-widening spiral of financial panic becomes unstoppable until the whole system hits rock bottom. And “rock bottom” is far, far below the relatively luxurious lifestyle to which American consumers have become so smugly accustomed.

Protecting yourself from the inevitable

The timetable for this economic collapse is unknown, but it’s very unlikely to happen in the next year or two. A collapse by 2012 is certainly possible, and seeing it by 2020 is almost certain.

That leaves the more intelligent among us plenty of time to prepare. But the usual preparatory actions by Americans won’t suffice in such a large-scale collapse. FDIC-insured banks, for example, will almost certainly collapse and take the DFIC down with them. Even if you are repaid by the FDIC, you’ll only be paid in worthless U.S. dollars anyway.

Beating the odds on this financial hurricane requires exceptional planning and preparedness. I’ll publish practical solutions and strategies on this website in the months and years ahead. If you’d like to stay informed, subscribe to the free NaturalNews email newsletter (see below) and make sure you select either “All topics” or the “CounterThink” topic.

The Beginning of the End for Jobs

The Transition of Steve Jobs

by Patrick Hunt

I finally got around to watching the stream of Wednesday’s iPad announcement at about 11:30 local time last night. Of course, I couldn’t wait until the bitter end to go to bed, and falling asleep was a bit challenging even at that late hour. After a short but good night’s rest, I awoke with a thought that had absolutely nothing to do with the iPad, and everything to do with the iPad all at the same time.

I have a strange sense that we were watching what is perhaps the penultimate performance by the master of the keynote. Please understand, this is entirely an intuitive sense that something wasn’t quite business as usual. I have no knowledge of any such information, nor am I making a prediction. I’m just offering my take on what I saw. And I saw several telltale signs that Steve Jobs may be on his way to relinquishing his CEO role at Apple. Here are my thoughts.

Jobs went out of his way to point out that Apple is a $50 billion company.

There were a couple of historical references, including the great black-and-white photo of Jobs and Woz and the first PowerBook.

Though they weren’t necessarily presented in this manner, that sounds a lot like personal legacy to me. Reading between the lines, the unspoken message is “I’ve turned this garage band into one of the most powerful companies in the world today.”

With one quick comment and supporting slide, Jobs made a major strategic shift and repositioned Apple as a mobile products company, which has a much more exciting future than computers.

He also made a clear effort to convince the media in attendance that they could sell this device. The subtle message is that if they can get traction on the iPad while growing or maintaining the other three product lines, they can succeed well into the future without him.

Schiller and Forstall played pretty significant roles in the iPad announcement and Jobs is nowhere to be found in the announcement video. Neither of these unprecedented, but noteworthy nonetheless.

My gut tells me that the earnings and iPad announcements this week was the first real indication that the public reveal of Apple succession is underway. I expect Jobs to become non-executive chairman, maintaining a public profile and involvement as inspirational leader and assurance for investors. Cook will take over as CEO and Oppenheimer remaining CFO. Cook will remain the behind-the-scenes operational genius, with Schiller, Forstall, and to a lesser extent Madsen being the public personae for products. Schiller is the Mac guy (yesterday, his role was relegated to iWork, which is a port of a desktop suite of apps). Forstall is the iP guy (iPhone, iPod, iPad). If the future of the company is truly as a mobile products company, that suggests Forstall will have an increasingly visible role with the company, with Schiller taking a back seat. Indeed, Forstall seems more at ease leading a major presentation, save for his inability to hide the remote while clicking to change slides or averting his eyes to the confidence monitor. The wild card is designer Jonathan Ive, but my guess he is very passionate about the design side of the company and doesn’t want the hassles of the business.

Apple doesn’t need a breakthrough device for some time. If it continues to execute well on its current product lineup–something Cook excels at–they should be in great shape. Right now or soon after the iPad ships might very well be the perfect time for Jobs to announce his successor.

Head Of Davos Security “Suicided” As Global Banking Collapse Nears

By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers

FSB reports circulating in the Kremlin today are stating that the Swiss Police Commander heading security at the World Economic Forum inSwitzerland, Markus Reinhardt, was “suicided” after his discovering that the Davos summit was planning for the “final collapse” of the Global Banking system in preparation for Total War.

Markus Reinhardt, 61, had headed the police force in the Swiss canton of Graubünden and protected the Davos summit since 1984 before his death on Tuesday.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) is a Geneva-based non-profit foundation founded in 1971 by the German economist Dr. Klaus M. Schwab [photo top left] who is best known for establishing the annual meeting in Davos which brings together top business leaders, International political leaders, selected intellectuals and journalists to discuss the most pressing issues facing the World including health and the environment.

Important to know about Dr. Schwab is that according to his FSB (current Russian) and KGB (former Soviet) files (which have codenamed him “The Czar Maker”) he is one of the most powerful men in the Western World who has been “primed” for Global leadership since his birth in 1938 in the strategic German city of Ravensburg, which was one of the first of the Holy Roman Empires Free Imperial Cities.

In Dr. Schwab’s “training” for Global leadership he has obtained a Doctorate in Economics (summa cum laude) from the University of Fribourg, a Doctorate in Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, a Master of Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, has been the recipient of seven honorary doctorates, is an honorary professor of the Ben-Gurion University of Israel and the China Foreign Affairs University in Beijing.

Important to note about Ravensburg, Germany is its central role in being the model upon which the other “modern” Free Imperial Cities of Amsterdam, London, New York and Hong Kong have been built to control human society through the use and manipulation of what are called fiat currencies andfinancial markets which today are being used to plunge our World towards the abyss of Total War.

Also important to note about Ravensburg is that during World War II the Allied Powers were under “strict orders” not to bomb or attack this most important of cities which enabled it to survive with no destruction whatsoever as it had been the “main conduit” for Western money from which the Nazi Leaders of Germany were able to rebuild their Nation from the catastrophic hyperinflation imposed on them after their surrender to the Allies at the ending of World War I.

Note: There can no be no understanding whatsoever of any World event without you knowing what war is, and, perhaps, best articulated by the United States Marine Corps Major General Smedley Darlington Butler who saved President Franklin D. Roosevelt from being overthrown in the 1933 Business Plot Coup (intended to “unite” the right wing American forces with those of Nazi Germany) and in his book “War Is A Racket” stated:

“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.”

For the reason(s) behind the suiciding of Reinhardt, these reports continue, was his deployment of what is called a “passive acoustical defense system”to protect those attending Davos by monitoring sounds that may be associated with pending, or actual, attacks (gun shots, ticking bombs, footsteps in unauthorized areas, etc.) but which (mistakenly?) recorded “highly sensitive” conversations of “Global policy makers” planning the total collapse of the World’s banking system.

Upon Reinhardt’s retrieval of the “sensitive conversations” picked up his new listening system, and his presumed listening to them, he was then“suicided” by two bullets to the back of his head and all of the recordings he had made were “disappeared”.

To the coming collapse of the Global Banking system it appears to be in acceleration as the giant ratings agency Standard & Poor’s “warned Tuesday that it might downgrade its credit rating for Japan’s sovereign debt, saying efforts to put the public finances in order were slowing under the new government.” And not for Japan’s sovereign debt alone are the Americans alarmed at Japan, but also for their new Prime Minister, Yukio Hatoyama, continued threats to throw out US Military forces from his Nation entirely as being the “will of the people”.

Even worse for the Global Banking System are new reports showing that the United States, being unable to unload its surging debt on the World, has during this past year bought over 80% of it themselves through its Federal Reserve, a situation warned to get much worse after President Obama defied the Americans largest holder of debt, China, yesterday by announcing new arms sales to Taiwan.

And in, perhaps, the most cynical move against any peoples by their leaders, President Obama, and in his knowing of the coming collapse of the Global Banking System, this past week slammed his own American Banking System which (coincidentally?) caused the already obscene bonuses paid to Goldman Sachs employees to rise even further.

Important to note is that Goldman Sachs has been accused of engineering “every major market manipulation since the Great Depression”, were President Obama’s top contributor for his election and have paid Obama’s top aides hundreds of thousands of dollars for speeches and “consulting” services, not to mention that nearly all of Obama’s top economic advisors, including US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, are all former Goldman Sachs executives.

Equally important to note about Goldman Sachs is that it stands to be a major financial gainer, along with former President Bush’s Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff, by Obama’s ordering into American airports of body scanners, who are made (coincidentally?) by a company called the Chertoff Group owned by “8 members including 3 former senior executives from Homeland Security, 2 from the CIA, 3 from the NSA, 1 from FEMA, and 1 from Goldman Sachs.”

Woodrow Wilson, the 28th President of the United States, once warned his people by saying: “Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the U.S., in the field of commerce and manufacturing, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.”

Dr. Klaus Schwab is one of these “powers” Wilson warned about and whose words should always be listened to with the utmost attention, including those he wrote this past week for London’s Guardian News Service, and as we can read:

“There is a real danger that the financial and economic crisis will develop into a social crisis. Difficult times lie ahead. If we want to keep society together, a sense of community and solidarity are more important now than ever before. This communitarian spirit is the basis of the stakeholder principle. We need to embrace that stakeholder principle, not just within the narrow confines of companies, but at a national and global level as well.”

It goes without saying, of course and as always, that the American people will continue to ignore warnings such as these, but then again who can blame them as their own propaganda media won’t even let them know anything…such as one of their top Generals admitting this week that their war in Afghanistan was all but lost, and as we can read as reported by the BBC News Service:

“US Gen Stanley McChrystal told the UK’s Financial Times newspaper that there had been “enough fighting”. He said a political solution in all conflicts was “inevitable”. His remarks came as the top UN envoy in Kabul said it was time to talk to the militants.”

Sadly for General McChrystal, and the American people too, the fighting has just begun….they just don’t realize it yet.

Why Class Warfare Will Dominate Obama’s Presidency

There are always haves and have-nots in America, and the poor always envy the rich. That means there’s an ambient level of class warfare, even when times are good.

The hostility intensifies when times are tough, which is obviously the case now. And we should probably get used to it, because Americans have good reason to get more angry, not less.

The outrage makes sense. Since World War II, living standards have mostly risen, with each generation better off than the one that came before. The rising tide has continually lifted the middle class, and a lot of people felt satisfied as long as they felt they were getting ahead.

The tide has stopped rising–and the causes go far beyond the latest recession. Americans are enduring hardship that’s more painful and more prolonged than they ever anticipated. Economists point to statistics showing a “recovery,” but for millions, there’s no turnaround in sight. The double-digit unemployment rate is the most obvious indicator. People have also watched their household wealth and retirement savings evaporate. Job security is weak, and the old rules of getting ahead–get a decent education, work hard, live modestly–no longer seem to apply. People who thought they were doing all the right things have still ended up unemployed, broke, and scared.

The surprise election of Republican Scott Brown in the Massachusetts Senate race is one sign of Americans’ frustration with their own dimming prospects; he ran against the program in tone-deaf Washington, where profligate spending has made life better for a few and done little for the masses. Fury over banker bonuses is another obvious sign. Bankers have been pulling down exorbitant pay for years, without much fanfare. As long as most people felt their own prospects were improving, they didn’t care that much if prospects were improving a lot more for those at the top. But now the bankers are soaring while millions of others are sinking–and combustible fumes are building in the growing gap between those getting ahead and those falling behind.

President Obama and most of the politicians in Washington have underestimated the distress of millions who are falling out of the middle class. The White House has formed a “middle-class task force,” led by Vice President Joe Biden, which pays lip service to the problem but also has overtones of beltway absurdity. (Unemployed? Don’t worry, we’re studying it.) New measures like child-care subsidies and breaks on student-loan payments will be meant to show that Washington feels middle-class pain. Obama is also trying to get on the right side of voter fury through his proposed new rules and taxes on banks and fiery rhetorical attacks on “fat-cat bankers.” Maybe it will work, but these predictable Washington measures are starting to feel like an umbrella held out to fend off a tidal wave.

Middle-class discontent predated the recession, although it was masked by the housing bubble, unsustainable borrowing, and overamplified lifestyles that made people feel better off than they really were. Beneath the facade, real incomes have been falling for several years–reversing a 60-year trend of consistent improvements in living standards. American workers are being outhustled by foreigners willing to work harder and develop stronger skills for less money. Many disenfranchised Americans would move to more favorable economic climates if they could. But they can’t unload homes that are worth less than the mortgages on them, which disrupts the “labor mobility” that allows people to follow opportunity and keeps a free-market economy healthy.

It’s hard to see how this ends well for Obama. The Congressional Budget Office predicts that the unemployment rate will average 10.2 percent this year and 9.1 percent in 2011, then fall to 6.4 percent in the hazier 2012-2013 time frame. If so, that will probably mark a longer period of double-digit unemployment than the 10 months in 1982 and 1983 that until now represented the worst job market since the Depression. And the United States isn’t the dominant industrial power that it was in the 1980s, which means it could take longer to get back to an acceptable unemployment rate of 5 percent or so.

It’s possible it could take a lot longer. Economist Gary Shilling, for example, predicts that the economy will weaken, not strengthen, in 2010, as all the stimulus spending and other government subsidies wear off, with growth for the year close to zero and a double-dip recession possible. That’s a more dire view than most economists hold, yet predicted rebounds in housing, consumer spending, and hiring have been consistently slow to materialize. If Shilling’s right, then instead of recovering lost wealth, even more Americans will fall behind over the next few years. More pitchforks will be aimed at the few who escape the noose. Political upsets will become the norm. The have-nots will have even less, but for once they’ll be a force that can’t be ignored.

There are always haves and have-nots in America, and the poor always envy the rich. That means there’s an ambient level of class warfare, even when times are good.
The hostility intensifies when times are tough, which is obviously the case now. And we should probably get used to it, because Americans have good reason to get more angry, not less.

The outrage makes sense. Since World War II, living standards have mostly risen, with each generation better off than the one that came before. The rising tide has continually lifted the middle class, and a lot of people felt satisfied as long as they felt they were getting ahead.

The tide has stopped rising–and the causes go far beyond the latest recession. Americans are enduring hardship that’s more painful and more prolonged than they ever anticipated. Economists point to statistics showing a “recovery,” but for millions, there’s no turnaround in sight. The double-digit unemployment rate is the most obvious indicator. People have also watched their household wealth and retirement savings evaporate. Job security is weak, and the old rules of getting ahead–get a decent education, work hard, live modestly–no longer seem to apply. People who thought they were doing all the right things have still ended up unemployed, broke, and scared.

The surprise election of Republican Scott Brown in the Massachusetts Senate race is one sign of Americans’ frustration with their own dimming prospects; he ran against the program in tone-deaf Washington, where profligate spending has made life better for a few and done little for the masses. Fury over banker bonuses is another obvious sign. Bankers have been pulling down exorbitant pay for years, without much fanfare. As long as most people felt their own prospects were improving, they didn’t care that much if prospects were improving a lot more for those at the top. But now the bankers are soaring while millions of others are sinking–and combustible fumes are building in the growing gap between those getting ahead and those falling behind.

President Obama and most of the politicians in Washington have underestimated the distress of millions who are falling out of the middle class. The White House has formed a “middle-class task force,” led by Vice President Joe Biden, which pays lip service to the problem but also has overtones of beltway absurdity. (Unemployed? Don’t worry, we’re studying it.) New measures like child-care subsidies and breaks on student-loan payments will be meant to show that Washington feels middle-class pain. Obama is also trying to get on the right side of voter fury through his proposed new rules and taxes on banks and fiery rhetorical attacks on “fat-cat bankers.” Maybe it will work, but these predictable Washington measures are starting to feel like an umbrella held out to fend off a tidal wave.

Middle-class discontent predated the recession, although it was masked by the housing bubble, unsustainable borrowing, and overamplified lifestyles that made people feel better off than they really were. Beneath the facade, real incomes have been falling for several years–reversing a 60-year trend of consistent improvements in living standards. American workers are being outhustled by foreigners willing to work harder and develop stronger skills for less money. Many disenfranchised Americans would move to more favorable economic climates if they could. But they can’t unload homes that are worth less than the mortgages on them, which disrupts the “labor mobility” that allows people to follow opportunity and keeps a free-market economy healthy.
It’s hard to see how this ends well for Obama. The Congressional Budget Office predicts that the unemployment rate will average 10.2 percent this year and 9.1 percent in 2011, then fall to 6.4 percent in the hazier 2012-2013 time frame. If so, that will probably mark a longer period of double-digit unemployment than the 10 months in 1982 and 1983 that until now represented the worst job market since the Depression. And the United States isn’t the dominant industrial power that it was in the 1980s, which means it could take longer to get back to an acceptable unemployment rate of 5 percent or so.
It’s possible it could take a lot longer. Economist Gary Shilling, for example, predicts that the economy will weaken, not strengthen, in 2010, as all the stimulus spending and other government subsidies wear off, with growth for the year close to zero and a double-dip recession possible. That’s a more dire view than most economists hold, yet predicted rebounds in housing, consumer spending, and hiring have been consistently slow to materialize. If Shilling’s right, then instead of recovering lost wealth, even more Americans will fall behind over the next few years. More pitchforks will be aimed at the few who escape the noose. Political upsets will become the norm. The have-nots will have even less, but for once they’ll be a force that can’t be ignored.

In 2010, America’s future will depend upon the righteous

by Marie Jon

“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” —Ephesians 6:12

There is no doubt left in the minds of many Christians. They acknowledge the fact that America will not survive the political and social travails that are imminent if they are not engaged in protecting our country from tyranny. The righteous and humble understand that The Almighty has given them spiritual gifts and unique weaponry. We will wear the whole armor of God, and use it to take back America. The “salt of the earth” will seek His face and pray for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

The Constitution of the United States was written based on the “Word” of God. Forthright citizens will restore its power and meaning. Patriots will not allow aggressive and arrogant “progressives” to continue having their way while ruining our country. Christians will put their faith into action. For without a “Spiritual Renewal,” America will continue to fail in every aspect possible. Without God’s intervention, our economy will not bounce back, nor will jobs be created. The American dream will be destroyed by those who want to create an entirely different nation out of the ash heap of this historic land.

Our nation in free-fall

Many people are finally coming to the frightening conclusion that there will be no comeback as was forecast by the present administration. God-fearing Americans have witnessed what has been purposefully perpetrated upon their great nation. There is a deep realization that we will experience a continuous downward free-fall. Our country will remain a target for Islamic terrorists if we do not change the people who are now in power.

There is no getting around the problems created by President Barack Obama. He is seen as weak by radicalized Islam at home and abroad. By closing Gitmo and putting terrorists on trial using our own judicial system, he and the Democrat Party have made a mockery of justice. When terrorists are caught, they are treated as ordinary criminals. Who is responsible for this new turn of events? Unfortunately, the man who sits in the Oval Office and Attorney General Eric Holder are the culprits. View YouTube — Republican Senator Graham Nails AG Eric Holder

Moral dissolution

The Ten Commandments were written by the hand of God. They are our moral compass. Yet down through the years, godless liberalism has slowly worked its way into society and weakened our nation’s morality and resolve.

Social Justice church denominations have done more harm to their congregations than good. God’s love is distorted and hidden from them. Who can forget Rev. Jeremiah Wright?

The Trinity United Church of Christ is part of The National Council of Churches. They are nothing more than an organ for progressive propaganda. They blatantly use far-left talking points in their sermons on Sunday morning. This type of bombastic, divisive rhetoric does not bolster a strong feeling of patriotism or good citizenship. These same denominations parrot the man they helped elect president.

Socialized medicine

While the Christmas holiday was being observed by Christendom, the Senate passed its version of ObamaCare, joining the House in seeking to enslave both consumers and healthcare providers alike. When this outrageous bill is finally accepted by both houses of Congress and signed by the president, we will regret that day forever. There will be no turning back the clock. Both the young and old will suffer under an inadequate, rationed medical system.

During the debate, unmitigated lies were put forth concerning healthcare reform. Both versions of these incompetent, massive bills are bitter pills to swallow. There is no good reason for government’s unwarranted intrusion into our personal lives. Americans want this matter addressed another day. The majority reject socialized medicine. There are much better solutions that would not destroy the best medical system in the world. Healthcare reform must reflect freedom of choice, not imposition by the federal government. But just like everything else, socialistic bureaucrats will continue to run roughshod over us.

During the summer months, ordinary people for the very first time in their lives felt fear. There was an urgency to stand firm as they took the time to have a talk with their legislators. And many of these same people, including senior citizens, marched into Washington. Yet, with every effort, their voices were ignored. View C-Span — FreedomWorks, March 2009.

Defenders of America, unite!

Americans are tired of being shoved around and told what to do. There will be a backlash beginning in 2010. The momentum will not stop until all is right once again with our beloved country. Big government must be removed from our lives and put back into its proper place. First, we will deal with the mess made by those who wanted to take over our entire healthcare system for political gain.

Excerpts from Investors Business Daily: “Forever Gone” —

“Health Reform: Any law can be repealed, but the Democrats’ radical health bill contains unprecedented language that could wreck the U.S. health system permanently. It’s one of the dirtiest tricks yet.

“‘Page 1,020′ — it may soon be a mantra for one of the most disturbing abuses of legislative power in history. In setting up an Independent Medicare Advisory Board, that page of the Senate health overhaul bill passed in the dead of night early Monday says, “It shall not be in order in the Senate or the House of Representatives to consider any bill, resolution, amendment or conference report that would repeal or otherwise change this subsection.’

“This enters the realm of ‘hyperlaw’ or ‘laws on steroids.’

“As Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., pointed out on the Senate floor, it isn’t lawmaking, but rather ‘creating a Senate rule that makes it out of order to amend or even repeal the law.’

“DeMint is ‘not even sure that it’s constitutional,’ since it affects ‘the fundamental purpose of Senate rules: to prevent a tyrannical majority from trampling the rights of the minority or of future Congresses.’

“Clearly, liberal Democratic leaders will stoop to record depths to expand the federal government’s powers.

“Public support plummets well down into the 30s? They don’t bat an eyelash.

“Mandating an individual’s purchase of a private service like insurance tramples the Constitution? Just watch them do it.” Full Article — View: Senator Jim Demint

“Be not deceived; God is not mocked”

The Lord judges a nation just as He does individual people. RenewAmerica.com is encouraging folks to take stock of their personal lives. America, how is your walk with the Lord doing? Are you yielding to His gentle voice?

America’s future depends on people who are willing to let their light shine and not hide their faith. Let us move forward and remove the scourge of Marxism that was brought to America’s doorstep by ill-unformed voters when President Barack Obama was sworn into office in January 2009.

Hyperinflation Appears Certain for the US Dollar

Jim,

During many years of “hiding, prepping and watching” I’ve tried to determine what series of events may lead to TEOTWAWKI. There are many, but not obvious to most.

Hurricane Katrina and Haiti are examples of either predictable events or unpredictable instantaneous events as would be a single nuclear event such as a “suitcase bomb” . Each of these has a number of things in common, but the most significant is the limited geography associated with each. The biggest difference between Hurricane Katrina and the Haitian earthquake is the lack of adjacent unaffected land. In the case of Hurricane Katrina there was a place to bug out to, on foot or by vehicle, without walking into hostility, and the time to do it. In Haiti, there is no warning and no place to go unless you are a long distance swimmer, but it will be remedied and controlled. There will simply be more deaths and casualties along the way. There will be survivors and they will by and large return to the way things were before the quakes.

By and large, events such as these are attended to with aid being provided from outside the immediate area. How well the aid is administered and how soon it arrives is a subject for another time. Needless to say, it always arrives later rather than sooner; get used to it. Survival during these types of events is always in the relatively “short term”, unless you are in the middle of it; I’m sure it then seems very long term. If not crushed by falling debris, me and mine will get through these types of events. We are prepared to do so.

I’ve quit thinking about those types of events, as I’m either prepared for them or I’m not, but they are not TEOTWAWKI events. I’ve focused on the type of events that creep up on you, but that cause long term and lasting changes to society as a whole. These are on a much larger scale with little or no aid or organization from anyone. The “aid providers” will be worried about providing for themselves, as will everyone else. This concerns me much more than a short term catastrophe. What events could cause this and what kinds of subtle warnings should one be looking for?

Our society is so intertwined that any number of small subtle events can build up to and then spark these events. As with Hurricane Katrina, those signs are out there. You are being warned, and just have to identify what they are and be on the outlook for them. I would compare Haiti to a localized small nuke; no warning, nothing to see coming, it just happens.

People will kill for a number of reasons. Lack of Food, Water and Shelter, and all that it takes to get them, will be the most common reason . Other immediate threats or perceived threats to their loved ones is on the same level or next on the list. All other reasons are subsets of those. We are now seeing, if we are aware and watching, the beginnings of many of those reasons.

It could be a stock market crash, droughts, government failure to renew its short term debt, political upheaval, increased taxes or something as obvious as hyperinflation caused by continued Fed intervention into the economy. It is likely that all of these things and many others, in their own small way, will collectively be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. There is no way to tell which one or ones and when it is likely to happen. History tells us that it will happen. I’ve decided to carefully monitor world events through all media sources and try to weed out the wheat from the chaff.

Some Observations:
I could ramble on forever about all of these things, but consider that hyperinflation is absolutely in our future. It’s caused by the Federal Reserve Bank and our government. The only way to decrease the value of what we owe is to print more money, or go to war. Printing more money simply dilutes the value of the dollar in this country. We buy oil with those dollars, and the less they are worth, the more dollars it takes to buy it. All things in our world are directly related to oil. The more it costs, the more everything else costs. Most of our goods are imported from foreign countries. The less the dollar is worth, the more dollars it costs to buy them. As the dollar decreases in value and it takes more dollars to buy the same old necessities, your paycheck never increases proportionately, and if the company you work for fails to make a profit, you’ll be unemployed. That $2 gallon of milk may soon cost $5 or even $10 dollars. As in Zimbabwe, $1,000 or more dollars. Sometimes it can’t be had at any price. Our money today has decreased dramatically in value and purchasing power since the Federal Reserve began in 1913. If you are my age, you’ll remember 15 cent per gallon gasoline. At that time minimum wage was $1.25 per hour. I could buy 8.3 gallons of gas for every hour worked. Today, using the same comparison, I could almost buy only 3 gallons for one hour worked at today’s minimum wage. This applies to all commodities. It’s only going to get worse, much worse.

Schumer rolls down hill. The prevailing attitude is: “When I can’t buy it but have to have it, I’ll steal it. If my kids are starving, I’ll kill for it.” Get the picture? It doesn’t take a single event to cause this, although a single event could get us to the same place.

Suppose that nationwide draughts caused decreased crop harvests. It’s already been happening for years. Food reserves are the lowest they have ever been. Supply and demand dictates price. Less supply equals higher prices. Watch the crop forecasts. The price of oil also dramatically affects the price of fertilizer, cost of food preparation and transportation. Just stop in a convenience store and buy a candy bar. How much does it cost now, compared to a year ago; compared to two years ago? On a very small scale that candy bar represents everything else in your life. Inflation, like many other things (such as loss of freedoms) sneaks up on you.

Protecting our rights by taking yours.

The government is giving away more money than we provide to it. It’s generating unbelievable debt. Taxes have to be increased. This will decrease how much money you have to buy the more expensive goods and services. Watch the M2 and M3 money funds. They are the gauge of how much money the government is borrowing. Watch the roll-over or default of the short term debt at the end of this year. Where will the money come from to pay the $2 trillion in short term debt? Why would China or anyone else loan us this money when even they can se that they will not get repaid in anything other than devalued dollars.

You will never see the truth about any of these topics reported in the mainstream media, and there is a dearth of connecting the dots, even on the Internet. As you read about these things, ask yourself, “what does it really mean” and how does it link the the other current happenings. I can’t list all of the inter-related subjects that have an effect on this, but can only advise you to pay attention. If you don’t, it will sneak up on you and you won’t be ready. – Tom H.

Steve Jobs vs. Barrack Obama

Steve Jobs with the iPad (2010).

Introduction by After America

Today Steve Job’s introduced the new iPad. Basically I would describe it as an iPhone for the rest of us. Apple Computer has come a long way and now with an announced $15.6 Billion in revenues, the company continues with success after success. The technology being introduced by Apple continues to amaze me in terms of ease of use. While Steve Jobs was wowing them in San Francisco, President Obama gave the “State of the Union” speech this evening.

Obama "State of the Union."

While technology continues to “free us,” people living in America are no longer free. Between the Chem-trails in the air, the fluoride in the water supply, the GMO food with MSG and Aspartame, the entire population is now a huge “Eugenics Experiment” in my humble view.

Now for another point of view…………..

Over the past decade the US has steadily, though to much of the world imperceptibly, extended its military reach to most all parts of the world, from subordinating almost all of Europe to NATO through the latter’s expansion into Eastern Europe, including the former Soviet Union, to arbitrarily setting up a regional command that takes in the African continent, and all but one of its 53 nations. from invading and establishing military bases in the Middle East and Central and South Asia to operating a satellite surveillance base in Australia and taking charge of seven military installations in South America. In the vacuum left in much of the world by the demise of the Cold War and the former bipolar world, the US rushed in to insert its military in various parts of the world that had been off limits to it before, and this while Washington cannot even credibly pretend that it is threatened by any other nation on earth. It has employed a series of tactics to accomplish its objective of unchallenged international armed superiority, using an expanding NATO to build military partnerships not only throughout Europe but in the Caucasus, the Middle East, North and West Africa, Asia and Oceania as well as employing numerous bilateral and regional arrangements. The pattern that has emerged is that of the US shifting larger concentrations of troops from post-WW2 bases in Europe and Japan to smaller, more dispersed forward basing locations south and east of Europe and progressively closer to Russia, Iran and China.

The ever-growing number of nations throughout the world being pulled into Washington’s military network serve three main purposes. First, they provide air, troop and weapons transit and bases for wars like those against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq, for naval operations that are in fact blockades by other names, and for regional surveillance. Second, they supply troops and military equipment for deployments to war and post-conflict zones whenever and wherever required. Last, allies and client states are incorporated into US plans for an international missile shield that will put NATO nations and select allies under an impenetrable canopy of interceptors while other nations are susceptible to attack and deprived of the deterrent effect of being able to retaliate. The degree to which these three components are being integrated is advancing rapidly. The war in Afghanistan is the major mechanism for forging a global US military nexus, and one which in turn provides the Pentagon the opportunity to obtain and operate bases from Southeast Europe to Central Asia. One example that illustrates this global trend is Colombia. In early August the nation’s vice president announced that the first contingent of Colombian troops were to be deployed to serve under NATO command in Afghanistan. Armed forces from South America will be assigned to NATO to fight a war in Asia. The announcement of the Colombian deployment came shortly after another: that the Pentagon would acquire seven new military bases in Colombia. When the US deploys Patriot missile batteries to that nation, on its borders with Venezuela and Ecuador, the triad will be complete.

Afghanistan is occupying center stage at the moment, but in the wings are complementary maneuvers to expand a string of new military bases and missile shield facilities throughout Eurasia and the Middle East. On Jan 28, the British government will host a conference in London on Afghanistan that, in the words of what is identified as the UK Government’s Afghanistan website, will be co-hosted by PM Brown, Afghanistan’s Pres Karzai and UN Sec-Gen Ban Ki-moon and co-chaired by British FM Miliband, his outgoing Afghan counterpart Rangin Spanta, and UN Special Representative to Afghanistan, Kai Eide. The site announces that “The international community are coming together to fully align military and civilian resources behind an Afghan-led political strategy.” The conference will also be attended by “foreign ministers from International Security Assistance Force partners, Afghanistan’s immediate neighbours and key regional players.” Public relations requirements dictate that concerns about the well-being of the Afghan people, “a stable and secure Afghanistan” and “regional cooperation” be mentioned, but the meeting will in effect be a war council, one that will be attended by the foreign ministers of scores of NATO and NATO partner states.

In the two days preceding the conference, NATO’s Military Committee will meet at the Alliance’s headquarters in Brussels. “Together with the Chiefs of Defence of all 28 NATO member states, 35 Chiefs of Defence of Partner countries and Troop Contributing Nations will also be present.” That is, top military commanders from 63 nations, almost a third of the world’s 192 countries, will gather at NATO Headquarters to discuss the next phase of the expanding war in South Asia and the bloc’s new Strategic Concept. Among those who will attend the two-day Military Committee meeting are Gen McChrystal, in charge of all US and NATO troops in Afghanistan; Adm Stavridis, chief U.S. military commander in Europe and NATO’s SACEUR; Pakistani Chief of the Army Staff Gen Kayani and Israeli Chief of General Staff Ashkenazi. Former US Sec State Albright has been invited to speak about the Strategic Concept on behalf of the twelve-member Group of Experts she heads, whose task it is to promote NATO’s 21st century global doctrine.

The Brussels meeting and London conference highlight the centrality that the war in Afghanistan has for the West and for its international military enforcement mechanism, NATO. During the past few months Washington has been assiduously recruiting troops from assorted NATO partnership program nations for the war in Afghanistan, including from Armenia, Bahrain, Bosnia, Colombia, Jordan, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Ukraine and other nations that had not previously provided contingents to serve under NATO in the South Asian war theater. Added to forces from all 28 NATO member states and from Partnership for Peace, Mediterranean Dialogue, Istanbul Cooperation Initiative, Adriatic Charter and Contact Country programs, the Pentagon and NATO are assembling a coalition of over fifty nations for combat operations in Afghanistan. Almost as many NATO partner nations as full member states have committed troops for the Afghanistan-Pakistan war: Afghanistan itself, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Colombia, Egypt, Finland, Georgia, Ireland, Jordan, Macedonia, Mongolia, Montenegro, New Zealand, Pakistan, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden, Ukraine and the UAE. The Afghan war zone is a colossal training ground for troops from around the world to gain wartime experience, to integrate armed forces from six continents under a unified command, and to test new weapons and weapons systems in real-life combat conditions. Not only candidates for NATO membership, but all nations in the world the US has diplomatic and economic leverage over, are being pressured to support the war in Afghanistan. AFPS featured a story last month about the NATO-led ISAF’s Regional Command East which revealed:

In addition to French forces, Polish forces are in charge of battle space, and the Czech Republic, Turkey and New Zealand manage provincial reconstruction teams. In addition, servicemembers and civilians from Egypt, Jordan and the UAE work with the command, and South Korea runs a hospital in the region.

With the acknowledgment that Egyptian forces are assigned to NATO’s Afghan war, it is now known that troops from all six populated continents are subordinated to NATO in one war theater. How commitment to the Alliance’s first ground war relates to the Pentagon securing bases and a military presence spreading out in all directions from Afghanistan, and how worldwide interceptor missile plans are synchronized with both developments, can be shown region by region.

After the US Operation Enduring Freedom attacks on and subjugation of Afghanistan began in Oct 2001, Washington and its NATO allies acquired the indefinite use of air and other military bases in Afghanistan, including Soviet-built airfields. The West also moved into bases in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, and with less fanfare in Pakistan and Turkmenistan. It has also gained transit rights from Kazakhstan, and NATO conducted its first military exercise in that nation, Zhetysu 2009, last September. The US has lobbied the Kazakh government to supply troops for NATO in Afghanistan, as it had earlier in Iraq, under the bloc’s Partnership for Peace provisions.

The year after Romania was brought into NATO as a full member in 2004 the US signed an agreement to gain control over four bases in Romania, including the Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base. The next year a similar pact was signed with Bulgaria for the use of three military installations, two of them air bases. The Pentagon’s Joint Task Force East, which operates from the above-named base, conducted nearly three-month-long joint military exercises last summer in Bulgaria and Romania in preparation for deployment to Afghanistan. On Jan 24, eight Romanian and Bulgarian soldiers were wounded in a rocket attack on a NATO base in Southern Afghanistan. Three days earlier Romania announced that it would deploy 600 more troops to that nation, bringing its numbers to over 1,600. Bulgaria has also pledged to increase its troop strength there and is considering consolidating all its forces in the country in Kandahar, one of the deadliest provinces in the war zone. Late last November, Bulgarian Foreign Minister Zheleva was in Washington to “hear the ideas of Obama’s administration on the strategy of the anti-missile defense in Europe.” During the same month, State Secretary for Strategic Affairs in the Romanian Foreign Ministry Aurescu stated that “The new variant of the US anti-missile shield could cover Romania.” A local newspaper at the time commented on Washington’s new “stronger, smarter, and swifter” missile shield plans that “A strong and modern surveillance system located in Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey could monitor three hot areas at once: the Black Sea, the Caucasus and the Caspian and relevant zones in the Middle East.” Also last November, Komsomolskaya Pravda wrote:

Anonymous sources in the Russian intelligence community say that the US plans to supply weapons, including a PAC-3 air defense system and shoulder-launched Stinger missiles, worth a total of $100m, to Georgia.

In October, the US led the two-week Immediate Response 2009 war games to prepare the first of an estimated 1,000 Georgian troops for counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan, prompting neighboring Abkhazia, which knew who the military training was also aimed against, to stage its own exercises at the same time. US PAC-3 interceptor missiles in Georgia would be deployed against Russia, as they will be 35 miles from its border in Poland. Former head of the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency Lt-Gen Obering stated two years ago that Georgia and even Ukraine were potential locations for US missile shield deployments.

Last October and November, the US and Israel held their largest-ever joint military exercise, Operation Juniper Cobra 10, which established another precedent in addition to the number of troops and warships involved: The simultaneous testing of five missile defense systems. A US military official present at the war games was one of several sources acknowledging that the exercises were in preparation for the Obama administration’s more extensive, NATO-wide and broader, missile interception system. Juniper Cobra was the initiation of the US X-Band radar station opened in 2008 in Israel’s Negev Desert. Over 100 US service members are based there for the foreseeable future, the first US troops formally deployed in that nation. In December, the JPost quoted an unnamed Israeli defense official as saying:

The expansion of the war in Afghanistan opens a door for us. The NATO-US plan to deploy a cross-continent missile shield in Europe also represents an opportunity for the Jewish state to market its military platforms.

Xinhua added:

Meanwhile, recent months have seen several senior NATO officials travel to Israel for discussions that reportedly focused on, among other things, how Israel could help NATO troops fight in Afghanistan.

Last June, Israeli Pres Peres led a 60-member delegation that included Defense Ministry Dir-Gen Buchris to Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, on opposite ends of the Caspian Sea. A year ago “Kazakhstan’s defense ministry said it had asked Israel to help it modernize its military and produce weapons that comply with NATO standards.”

The UAE is the first Arab country to provide troops to NATO for Afghanistan. It has a partnership arrangement with NATO under provisions of the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative for Gulf Cooperation Council members. Early this month the UAE National reported:

The UAE became the largest foreign purchaser of US defence equipment with sales of $7.9bn, ahead of Afghanistan ($5.4bn), Saudi Arabia ($3.3bn) and Taiwan ($3.2bn). The spending included orders for munitions for the UAE’s F-16 fighter jets as well as a new Patriot defensive missile system and a fleet of corvettes for the navy.

Nine days later the same newspaper reported on a visit by Lt-Gen Hostage, commander of CENTCOM USAF, to discuss “the possibility of setting up a shared early warning system and enhancing the region’s ballistic-missile deterrence.” Hostage was quoted as saying “I am attempting to organize a regional integrated air and missile defense capability with our GCC partners.” An Emirati general added, “The GCC needs a national and multinational ballistic missile defence to counter long-range proliferating regional ballistic missile threats.” The missile shield is aimed against Iran. According to World Tribune of Sep 30 2009, Gates said in a Sep 17 briefing:

The reality is we are working both on a bilateral and a multilateral basis in the Gulf to establish the same kind of regional missile defense [as envisioned for Europe] that would protect our facilities out there as well as our friends and allies. The US has already formed a Gulf missile defense network that consists of PAC-3 and the Aegis sea-based systems. The UAE has ordered the THAAD system, designed to destroy nuclear missiles in the exoatmosphere. Over the last two years, the Pentagon has been meeting GCC military chiefs to discuss regional and national missile defense programs. At the same time, the US military has been operating PAC-3 in Kuwait and Qatar. The US Army has also been helping Saudi Arabia upgrade its PAC-2 fleet.

Turkey’s Hurriyet Daily News reported on Dec 30 2009:

Turkey is set to make crucial defense decisions in 2010 as the US offer to join a missile shield program and multibillion-dollar contracts are looming over the country’s agenda. If a joint NATO missile shield is developed, such a move may force Ankara to join the mechanism despite the possible Iranian reaction. Obama’s administration has invited Ankara to join a Western missile shield system. US officials are also urging Turkey to choose the PAC-3 against Russian and Chinese rivals competing for a Turkish contract for the purchase of high-altitude and long-range antimissile defense systems. A new plan calls for the creation of a regional system in southeastern Europe, the Mediterranean and part of the Middle East. In phase one of the new Obama plan, the US will deploy SM-3 interceptor missiles and radar surveillance systems on sea-based Aegis weapons systems by 2011. In phase two and by 2015, a more capable version of the SM-3 interceptor and more advanced sensors will be used in both sea-and land-based configurations. In later phases three and four, intercepting and detecting capabilities further will be developed.

RIA Novosti reported on US plans to incorporate Turkey into its new missile designs, with Turkey as the only NATO state bordering Iran serving as the bridge between a continent-wide system in Europe and its extension into the Middle East:

According to the Milliyet daily, Obama last week proposed placing a ‘missile shield’ on Turkish soil. Both Russia and Iran will perceive that as a threat,’ a Turkish military source was quoted as saying.

Eurostrategy’s description of the interceptor missile project in progress includes:

Obama’s team has sought to ‘NATO-ise’ the US plan by involving other allies more closely in its development and deployment. The idea is to create a NATO chain of command similar to that long used for allied air defences. That would involve a NATO ‘backbone’ for command-and-control jointly funded by the allies, into which the US sea-based defences and other national assets, such as short-range Patriot missile interceptors purchased by European nations including Germany, the Netherlands and Greece, could be ‘plugged in’ to the NATO system creating a multi-layered defence shield.

The advanced Patriot theater anti-ballistic missile batteries in place or soon to be in Egypt, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Israel, Japan, Kuwait, the Netherlands, Poland, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates describe an arc stretching from the Baltic Sea through Southeast Europe to the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, the Caucasus, the Persian Gulf and beyond to East Asia. A semicircle that begins on Russia’s northwest and ends on China’s northeast.

Poland’s Defense Ministry revealed on Jan 20 that the US will deploy a PAC-3 anti-ballistic missile battery and 100 troops to a Baltic Sea location 35 miles from Russian territory. The country’s foreign minister Sikorski, a former investment adviser to Rupert Murdoch and resident fellow of the AEI, recently pledged to increase Polish troop numbers in Afghanistan from the current 1,955, saying, “We will be at 2,600 by April and 400 additional troops on standby, which we will deploy if there is a need to strengthen security.” Fellow Baltic littoral states Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania combined have almost 500 troops in Afghanistan, a number likely to rise. The Lithuanian Siauliai Air Base was ceded to NATO in 2004 after the three Baltic states became full members. The Alliance has flown regular air patrols in the region, with US warplanes participating in six-month rotations, ever since. Within a few minutes flight from Russia. The three nations will be probable docking sites for US Aegis-class warships and their SM-3 interceptors under new Pentagon-NATO missile shield deployments.

South Korea pledged 350 troops for NATO’s Afghan war last year, and in late December Seoul announced that it would send a ranking officer for the first time “to attend a NATO conference to seek ways to strengthen cooperation with other nations in dispatching troops to Afghanistan and coordinate military operations there,” likely a reference to the Jan 26-27 Military Committee meeting. In the middle of January, the US conducted Beverly Bulldog 10-01 exercises in South Korea, which “involved more than 7,200 US airmen at Osan and Kunsan air bases and other points around the peninsula in an air war exercise” and “about 125 soldiers of the US Army’s Patriot missile unit in South Korea.” On Jan 14, the new Hatoyama government ended Japan’s naval refuelling mission carried out in support of the US war in Afghanistan since 2001. However, pressure will be exerted on Tokyo at the Jan 28 conference in London, particularly by Hillary Clinton, to reengage in some capacity. On last year’s anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec 7, the US and Japan held joint war games, Yama Sakura (Mountain Cherry Blossom), on the island of Hokkaido in northernmost Japan, that part of the country nearest Russia on the Sea of Japan. North Korea was the probable alleged belligerent. Over 5,000 troops participated in drills that included “battling a regional threat that includes missile defenses, air defense and ground-forces operations.” “Japan’s military has been actively developing its anti-missile defenses in cooperation with the US. It currently has deployed PAC-3 missile defenses at several locations and also has two sea-based Aegis-equipped Kongo-class warships with anti-missile interceptors,” the latter having engaged in joint SM-3 missile interceptions with the US off Hawaii.

If support for the war in Afghanistan is linked with deployment of tactical missile shield installations in Israel and Poland, in the first case aimed at Iran and in the second at Russia, the case of Taiwan is even more overt. Almost immediately after announcements that the US would provide it with over 200 PAC-3 missiles and double the amount of frigates it had earlier supplied, with Taiwan planning to use the warships for Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System upgrades, the nation’s China Times newspaper wrote that “Following a recent US-Taiwan military deal, the Obama administration has demanded that Taiwan provide non-military aid for troops in Afghanistan. The US wants Taiwan to provide medical or engineering assistance to US troops in Afghanistan that will be increased.” Dispatching troops to Afghanistan would be too gratuitous an incitement against China, which shares a narrow border with the South Asian nation, but Taiwan will nevertheless be levied to support the war effort there.

The 78-day US and NATO air war against Yugoslavia in 1999, Operation Allied Force, allowed the Pentagon to construct the mammoth Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo and within ten years to incorporate five Balkans nations into NATO. It also prepared the groundwork for US Navy warships to dock at ports in Albania, Croatia and Montenegro.Two years later, the attack on Afghanistan led to the deployment of US and NATO troops, armor and warplanes to five nations in Central and South Asia. The war in Afghanistan and Pakistan has also contributed to the Pentagon’s penetration of the world’s second most populous nation, India, which is being pulled into the US military orbit and integrated into global NATO. The US and Israel are supplanting Russia as India’s main arms supplier and US Sec Def Gates recently returned from India where his mission included “lifting bilateral military relations from a policy-alignment plane to a commercial platform that will translate into larger contracts for US companies.” With the quickly developing expansion of the Afghanistan-Pakistan war into an Afghanistan-Pakistan-Yemen-Somalia theater, NATO warships are in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean, and the US has stationed Reaper drones, aircraft and troops in Seychelles. On the same day as the London conference on Afghanistan a parallel meeting on Yemen will be held in the same city. After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon gained air and other bases in that nation as well, as what it euphemistically calls forward operating sites and base camps in Jordan, Kuwait and the UAE. In less than a decade the Pentagon and NATO have acquired strategic air bases and ones that can be upgraded to that status in Afghanistan, Bulgaria, Iraq, Kyrgyzstan, Lithuania and Romania.

The Jan 26 Chief of Defense session of NATO’s Military Committee with top military leaders of 63 countries attending, while the bloc is waging and escalating the world’s largest and lengthiest war thousands of miles away from the Atlantic Ocean, is indicative of the pass that the post-Cold War world has arrived at. Never in any context other than meetings of NATO’s Military Committee do the military chiefs of so many nations (including at least five of the world’s eight nuclear powers), practically a third of the world’s, gather together. That the current meeting is dedicated to NATO operations on three continents, and in particular to the world’s only military bloc’s new Strategic Concept for the 21st century and for the planet, would have been deemed impossible twenty or even ten years ago. As would have been the US and its NATO allies invading and occupying a Middle Eastern and a South Asian nation. And the elaboration of plans for an international interceptor missile system with land, air, sea and space components. In fact, though, all have occurred or are underway and all are integrated facets of a concerted drive for global military superiority.

30% of Americans Approaching Poverty, Or Are Already There

America Increasingly Looks Like A Developing Nation As 30% Of Americans Rapidly Approach Poverty, Or Are Already There

A shocking report from Brookings exposes just how massive America’s poverty problem is. While substantial reductions in poverty were made during the 1990’s, America’s poor have been rocked by the dual economic downturns since 2000.

The result is that poverty grew at twice the rate of U.S. population growth from 2000 – 2008, and now encompasses 39.1 million Americans.

If one were to expand the definition of poverty to merely ‘poor’ (yet still very poor), then a eye-popping 30% of the nation lives no higher than twice the poverty base line.

Brookings: In 2008, 91.6 million people—more than 30 percent of the nation’s population—fell below 200 percent of the federal poverty level. More individuals lived in families with incomes between 100 and 200 percent of poverty line (52.5 million) than below the poverty line (39.1 million) in 2008. Between 2000 and 2008, large suburbs saw the fastest growing low-income populations across community types and the greatest uptick in the share of the population living under 200 percent of poverty.

Here’s where it gets even more ridiculous — If you break down the data to individual areas, then there’s at least ten U.S. cities with poverty rates of around 30%. Moreover, Brookings latest research highlights how poverty has been getting worse especially fast in the suburbs, thus the U.S. is faced with the challenges of suburban poverty like never before:

California and Florida have been hit especially hard:

Finally, this bad news has likely become far worse already. This research doesn’t include 2009 since full data hasn’t come out yet. When it does, expect a huge up-tick in poverty rates given since that’s when the real brunt of the recent crisis hit ‘Main St.’.

Unfortunately, our regression analyses suggest that these metro areas are not likely to see such decreases in 2009, a year in which no metro area proved exempt from increased unemployment rates. Although the Census will not officially release poverty rates for 2009 until fall of next year, job losses alone foretell a substantially larger increase in the metropolitan poverty rate than the 0.3 percent reported from 2007 to 2008, when unemployment increases were just beginning to accelerate.

The full story here: http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2010/0120_poverty_kneebone.aspx

Apple launches iPad; revolutionary device starts at $499

Steve Jobs and his new child, "The iPad."

Apple today introduced iPad, a revolutionary device for browsing the web, reading and sending email, enjoying photos, watching videos, listening to music, playing games, reading e-books and much more. iPad’s responsive high-resolution Multi-Touch display lets users physically interact with applications and content. iPad is just 0.5 inches thick and weighs just 1.5 pounds– thinner and lighter than any laptop or netbook. iPad includes 12 new innovative apps designed especially for the iPad, and will run almost all of the over 140,000 apps in the App Store. iPad will be available in late March starting at the breakthrough price of just $499.

“iPad is our most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, in the press release. “iPad creates and defines an entirely new category of devices that will connect users with their apps and content in a much more intimate, intuitive and fun way than ever before.”

iPad features 12 next-generation Multi-Touch applications. Every app works in both portrait and landscape, automatically animating between views as the user rotates iPad in any direction. The precise Multi-Touch interface makes surfing the web on iPad an entirely new experience, dramatically more interactive and intimate than on a computer. Reading and sending email is fun and easy on iPad’s large screen and almost full-size “soft” keyboard. Import photos from a Mac®, PC or digital camera, see them organized as albums, and enjoy and share them using iPad’s elegant slideshows. Watch movies, TV shows and YouTube, all in HD or flip through pages of an e-book you downloaded from Apple’s new iBookstore while listening to your music collection.

iPad runs almost all of the over 140,000 apps on the App Store, including apps already purchased for your iPhone or iPod touch. The iTunes Store gives you access to the world’s most popular online music, TV and movie store with a catalog of over 11 million songs, over 50,000 TV episodes and over 8,000 films including over 2,000 in stunning high definition video. Apple also announced the new iBooks app for iPad, which includes Apple’s new iBookstore, the best way to browse, buy and read books on a mobile device. The iBookstore will feature books from major and independent publishers.

Apple also introduced a new version of iWork for iPad, the first desktop-class productivity suite designed specifically for Multi-Touch. With Pages, Keynote and Numbers you can create beautifully formatted documents, stunning presentations with animations and transitions, and spreadsheets with charts, functions and formulas. The three apps will be available separately through the App Store for $9.99 each.

iPad syncs with iTunes just like the iPhone and iPod touch, using the standard Apple 30-pin to USB cable, so you can sync all of your contacts, photos, music, movies, TV shows, applications and more from your Mac or PC. All the apps and content you download on iPad from the App Store, iTunes Store and iBookstore will be automatically synced to your iTunes library the next time you connect with your computer.

iPad’s brilliant 9.7-inch, LED-backlit display features IPS technology to deliver crisp, clear images and consistent color with an ultra-wide 178 degree viewing angle. The highly precise, capacitive Multi-Touch display is amazingly accurate and responsive whether scrolling web pages or playing games. The intelligent soft keyboard pioneered on iPhone takes advantage of iPad’s larger display to offer an almost full-size soft keyboard. iPad also connects to the new iPad Keyboard Dock with a full-size traditional keyboard.

iPad is powered by A4, Apple’s next-generation system-on-a-chip. Designed by Apple, the new A4 chip provides exceptional processor and graphics performance along with long battery life of up to 10 hours. Apple’s advanced chemistry and Adaptive Charging technology deliver up to 1,000 charge cycles without a significant decrease in battery capacity over a typical five year lifespan

iPad comes in two versions–one with Wi-Fi and the other with both Wi-Fi and 3G. iPad includes the latest 802.11n Wi-Fi, and the 3G versions support speeds up to 7.2 Mbps on HSDPA networks. Apple and AT&T announced breakthrough 3G pre-paid data plans for iPad with easy, on-device activation and management.

Continuing Apple’s dedication to designing and creating environmentally responsible products, each iPad enclosure is made of highly recyclable aluminum and comes standard with energy-efficient LED-backlit displays that are mercury-free and made with arsenic-free glass. iPad contains no brominated flame retardants and is completely PVC-free.

Apple today released a new Software Development Kit (SDK) for iPad, so developers can create amazing new applications designed to take advantage of iPad’s capabilities. The SDK includes a simulator that lets developers test and debug their iPad apps on a Mac, and also lets developers create Universal Applications that run on iPad, iPhone and iPod touch.

iPad will be available in late March worldwide for a suggested retail price of US$499 for the 16GB model, $599 for the 32GB model, $699 for the 64GB model. The Wi-Fi + 3G models of iPad will be available in April in the US and selected countries for a suggested retail price of $629 for the 16GB model, $729 for the 32GB model and $829 for the 64GB model. iPad will be sold in the US through the Apple Store, Apple’s retail stores and select Apple Authorized Resellers. International pricing and worldwide availability will be announced at a later date. iBookstore will be available in the US at launch.