Why Are the Bankers and Ex-Intel Types Running For Their Lives? (Confirmed for MONTHS by my vanishing sources)

[GoodETxSG]

Hundreds Of Armored Tanks On Trains; Movement In Salem, Oregon
http://beforeitsnews.com/war-and-con...rect-b4in.info
Monday, December 16, 2013 9:50
0
(Before It's News)

In what is being called ‘very unusual for this area’, a military train has been spotted and videotaped as shared in the video below in Salem, Oregon. These are heavy duty tanks being transported, moving North to South, with no military installations in the area according to our videographer. Are they moving all of these tanks in preparation of martial law in America after our inevitable economic collapse or beefing up for some kind of altercation with China and/or Russia? From our videographer.:

Train with military vehicles in transport through Salem Oregon 12-15-13 about 3:30 p.m.There are no military installations nearby. Traveling North to South. Missed the first portion of the train, about 20 seconds before video began. Very unusual for this area.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=699_1387174044
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=699_1387174044

[Redstar Kachina]

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[GoodETxSG]

Decent Lehman Explanation IMHO... & Some other perspectives of people we have discussed... Others we haven't... for obvious reasons. I have heard some of the most strong and credible information from the most UN-Credible sources during times such as this. That is how Dis-Info works at its core. Look for correlations and try to discern truth like I said in Post #1.

As usual hoarding Gold/Silver is mentioned... I believe Gold/Silver is on the list of things to be confiscated (Such as it was in 1933) just after/during the first part of the collapse. But if you think you can buy some, hide it until you can bring it out in the open again after the economic transition then go for it. I think it is worth a try.


Global Currency Reset What does this mean for you

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=SnVgmUcTCFc

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Just Before the Global Monetary Reset

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=AvomXfW9_8Y

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The Global Reset 2014 [Full] - Steve Quayle and "V" The Guerrilla Econom

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=KY_KO_zO08g

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[Redstar Kachina]

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[GoodETxSG]

Some have told me that I have given too much credit to a traitor, some say not enough... Talking about Snowden again. Of course I was told that he did have help and that he has an incredible amount of info. Not only he but other people that operated w/him MAY have some of this DOOMS DAY DATA and MAY be using it to make some major things happen right now. It is happening in the background mostly as the world leaders try to figure out how to close Pandora's Box and do it in a face saving quiet manner. They believe until the very end that they may be one last dirty trick away from their fates. Not this time IMHO.

BRAZIL... THE B in BRICS;

Edward Snowden offers to help Brazil over US spying in return for asylum

http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...-spying-asylum

The info is in the hands of groups or people with strong idea's and beliefs about how Humanity should be living. A crazy lot is riding on a crazy few people right now. It has enough chance to work that it has some major people that would be accountable making exit strategies and further actually taking steps. Things are super quiet right now. Eyes and ears open!

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“Damage Of Biblical Proportions”: Obama Official Lets Cat Out Of Bag On Edward Snowden Damage

http://beforeitsnews.com/obama/2013/...rticalresponse

Wednesday, December 18, 2013 6:12

The latest information that we have gotten on the Edward Snowden case continues to highlight what a bombshell this information ‘stolen’ by Edward Snowden has become to the Obama administration; using terminology like ‘damage of biblical proportions’ and ‘doomsday cache’, we’re told that Edward Snowden stole everything…literally everything…” Several newly released video reports on this unfolding issue below.

Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden stole vastly more information than previously speculated, and is holding it at ransom for his own protection.

“What’s floating is so dangerous, we’d be behind for twenty years in terms of access (if it were to be leaked),” a ranking Department of Defense official told the Daily Caller.

“He stole everything — literally everything,” the official said.

Last month British and U.S. intelligence officials speculated Snowden had in his possession a “doomsday cache” of intelligence information, including the names of undercover intelligence personnel stationed around the world.

“Everything you don’t want the enemy to know, he has,” the official said. “Who we’re listening to, what we’re after — they’d shut us down.”

The damage would be “of biblical proportions,” the official said.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=uuQzcwgztoY

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=4emK0pgCZj0

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=gt1GxX1ytno

[Redstar Kachina]

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[GoodETxSG]

Perfect Cartoon Picture with the Quote (Child with Imaginary Friend, Stuffed or otherwise).
I saw this posted once before and it made me think. Oh to be young, innocent and of that perspective again. In that age or perspective all Expereinces are shared, or Stories... All ideas are Notions... All nightmares are based on what our protectors failed to shield us from (For the most part)...

Then we chose paths and grow up and have experiences, some stay close to home and safety and others venture out and far away from home where it may not have ever been so safe. Those are the types that end up on paths that lead to the shadowy corners of society.

These paths take them to the feet of those that were raised to feel entitled or that they are the elite and in control over the rest of the useless eaters in society that are necessary to be beasts of burden who's sorrows needn't be concerned about. They just are a bunch of statistics, graphs and charts that are a part of the daily manipulation that's all.

For the most part they are normal enough looking people. They do not have horns or wear red dress shirts under their black suit coats. Are there some that are truly Evil? Oh YES (People that work with or around them are never the same after)... Are there some that are who are straight up Sociopaths and Psychopaths? YES (The number of them working for the government alone is scary, those working for the "Elite" is astounding!)... For the most part these are people who have let themselves be brainwashed into believing this is the way it is and always will be, why not profit and be one of the "Have's"? They sell out and after so long the lingo numbs them to the plight of the rest of "US riff raff" and they go about playing a very real game of "Monopoly".

Some of the people that have worked with the Elite (Hate the word, but it is a self proclaimed title) and "Get Out" are never the same. Think of that childhood friend or relative you grew up with who went into the military. They were excited to see the world, the shipped off and saw and did the worst things in the world. When they came back they were just a shadow of their former selves. They could never explain to you who didn't experience what they did what it was like. They will never be the same again. They will never look at you or this world they have been brought back into the same again as well.

So, to some it is a nice break from that world to visit sites and have intellectual debates and shoot a few barbs here in there in a clever way with a smirk on our faces as we type... To some who have walked the shadowy path and had these experiences they know this is not a hobby or time to test out their best scify ideology. It is too real. And no matter how they try they cannot explain it to those that didn't experience it.

Ahh, to be that child on a branch pondering things with an imaginary tiger... I would like to see a fast forward of the same kid all grown up after he grabbed that "Tiger by the Tail"...

These people have a giant house of cards, through GREED they let themselves build it beyond self sustaining or fixing. The QE's are just pumping Digital Currency into the system, not even REAL bills are being printed (Well placed Computer Viruses, future EMP/Power Outages and HW Failures will assist w/this). The bubble is so incredibly huge and the elasticity of the system stretched beyond its capacity that IT MUST ALL FALL! It is beyond a controlled demolition at this point. THEY are stuck... Other groups have their heads over a barrel (Finally)... They are fighting up unto the end to KEEP things on the Babylon System for ever, but it is not to be. It will fall and they are doing all they can to make sure that ONLY us beasts of burden bear the weight.

The thing about black mailing others is that you keep documentation, their dirt, dirt of friends, dirt of enemies and even dirt enemies have on you (To be able to hopefully manipulate yourself out of it)... But the bad thing about documentation is that IF a 3rd/4th party gets their hands on it and has nothing to lose and wants the House of Cards to fall... They might be able to force it to fall in the way they want. I worry about motivations of the new people coming in. I worry about the Asian Societies and Syndicates...

I worry about BRICS (Not a big history of their treatment of Humanity in their Countries)... I worry about the White Hat's in our Military and the Turncoats from the Shadow side that are working in backrooms right now for deals and to get on top of all of this. After seeing first hand the worst of humanity I am not convinced the next "System" will be an honorable one... But I have hope. A word that was recently mis and over used.

IMHO/Experience this go around on Earth

Posted by addsub (here)
Attachment 24198.....

[GoodETxSG]

IF?


http://gonzalolira.blogspot.com/2013...n-in-2014.html
What If There’s A Recession in 2014?

MONDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2013
If policymakers were gunfighters, they’d be out of bullets: They have run out of effective policy tools to improve the economy.

So the question is simple: If there is a recession in 2014, and policymakers are out of bullets, how will it play out across the American economy?



What the Fed is looking at.

Recently, Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid very astutely pointed out that the current “expansion” of the U.S. economy is on its fifth year—the seventh longest in history.

We are due for a recession.

Now, before facing up to a possible 2014 recession, let’s ask ourselves: What happened during the last recession?

No one can quite agree as to the specific causes of the 2007–09 recession—and fighting that particular fight isn’t the point of this essay. But we can all more or less agree that global overindebtedness caused a mini-Minsky Moment, whereby borrowers could no longer borrow enough to keep from defaulting on their previous loans. Hence September 2008. Hence the collective global “Ahhh!!!!” moment that we all recall with such sweet and fond nostalgia.

To stave off what looked like financial and economic Armageddon, the Treasury Department first under Henry Paulson and then under Timothy Geithner, and the Federal Reserve under Ben Bernanke, basically threw money into the economy: The Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) originally authorized $700 billion to buy up toxic assets, while the Fed created the Maiden Lane vehicles, lowered interest rates to zero (zero interest-rate policy, ZIRP), and simultaneously created money by way of the various iterations of Quantitative Easing (QE).

Combined, these Treasury and Fed programs prevented the bankruptcies of the so-called “systemically important” (a.k.a., “Too Big To Fail”) banks, and provided the U.S. Federal government with the cash to carry out the 2009 stimulus program. After all, had it not been for the Fed’s purchases of Treasury bonds by way of QE, the yields on the government’s bonds would have risen so high that the stimulus program could not have been financed, let alone the +$1 trillion deficits of 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012.

But screw the deficit—the Treasury and Fed measures saved everybody’s bacon. Equities crashed? Houses underwater? 401(k)’s in the toilet? Thanks to TARP, ZIRP and QE, they rebounded.

Rather than take the hit, work out the bad loans, and organically regrow the economy, the Treasury and Fed measures were essentially morphine—or heroin—to dull the pain of the Global Financial Crisis: They made us feel great, but the disease is still there.

Overindebtedness. Bad debts piled on top of bad debts.

Now because of the Treasury’s and especially the Fed’s morphine/heroin drip, starting in Q3 of 2009, the American economy’s gross domestic product has been expanding, which economists hail as the end of the 2007–09 recession, and the beginning of the current “expansion”.

(Re. the “expansion”: Nevermind that unemployment was scrapping 10% as late as Q3 of 2011, and that as of Q4 of 2013, we are still at 7% U-3 unemployment—and this U-3 figure ignores the long-term unemployed, who have simply given up, reducing the employment participation rate to historic lows, thereby skewing the real unemployment figure something awful.)

So here we are in Q4 of 2013, staring down the barrel of 2014, suspecting—fearing—that we might have a recession staring right back at us.

Question: What could the Federal government and the Federal Reserve realistically do, to avert a recession in 2014? Or if not avert it, at least ameliorate its effects?

Oh boy . . .

Insofar as the Federal government is concerned, realistically, nothing. In 2008, facing what appeared to be the end of the financial world, Congress was snookered into agreeing to the Bush Administration’s $700 billion TARP bailout. Then in 2009, the incoming Obama Administration had two winds at its back—the Global Financial Crisis, which required the incoming administration to do something, anything; and the fact that Obama was the new prez, who’d won decisively with his deceptive talk of “hope”. Thus the $787 billion stimulus package.

Combined, the Bush TARP and the Obama stimulus were some $1.5 trillion mainlined into the American economy.

Today, five years after his inauguration, and after the Government shutdown and the botched Obamacare launch, Obummer just doesn’t have the pull. More to the point, the Democratic caucus does not trust him. So Democrats on the Hill will not stick their necks out for an Obama stimulus program. So the O-Administration’s economic brain trust might come up with all sorts of plans to preëmptively stop a 2014 recession—but they don’t have the votes to make these plans happen.

As to a repeat of the Henry “Give-us-all-your-money-or-the-banks-will-die!” Paulson scare tactics—they won’t work today, not after the nasty taste left by the one in 2008.

So macro-economically speaking, Barack Obama is walking around with an empty peashooter: He can’t even wave the threat of using it without seeming foolish.

Turning now to the Federal Reserve: They might be packing a big ol’ .45 Magnum, but they are most definitely out of bullets. They can’t lower interest rates any further than they have—what are they going to do, start charging people who deposit money in banks? This is the problem with hitting the lower bound: You can’t go any lower than ZIRP. At best, the Fed could expand QE even further, and buy up even more Treasury debt. But then any impact from more QE will be marginal, assuming it has any effect at all.

So if the Federal government and the Federal Reserve are essentially out of bullets, what’s going to happen to us law-abiding citizens when the Big Bad Recession comes rolling into town?

First off, no one can seriously or responsibly doubt that a recession will not come. Even if the American economy by some miracle manages to sneak through 2014 with positive numbers, a downturn will hit in 2015 anyway. Don’t believe me? Check out this chart:


Click to enlarge.

I have grounded, non-orthodox reasons to think that a recession will hit in 2014, reasons which I will expand upon during my live presentation next Thursday (see here). But even if you don’t buy my heterodox reasons, the orthodox business cycle would confirm that a recession is on its way.

So to weather it, you’d have to know what’s going to happen.

A basic outline is pretty clear:

Stocks will take the brunt of the beating, once recession-fever hits—after all, equities are floating on nothing but QE, and everybody knows it.

Bonds won’t do so well either, at least not corporate issuance. Treasury bonds will continue trending with flat yields, if only because the Federal Reserve will probably signal that it will continue (or even expand) QE. Treasury bonds will also continue high because of a simple safe-haven play . . . but there won’t be the sense of today’s Treasuries being the rock-solid Treasuries of yore: There will be more volatility in the T-bond markets. A greater willingness to exit Treasuries at a moment’s notice, especially if there are hints of inflation.

Real estate? Forget it—it’ll be another popping bubble, with the same damage as the last one.

The only store of value will be commodities. Not just precious metals, but all commodities: Industrials, agros, and fossil fuels. It will simply make more sense for the investment community to rotate out of iffy stocks and dodgy bonds, and rotate into physical commodities. Why? Because there is too much liquidity.

If there is such a rotation from equities and bonds into commodities, then the prices of food and transportation will rise—precipitously.

Thus we will have inflation, possibly severe inflation. But the Fed will be loathe to rein in inflation via interest rate hikes.

You know the saying about owning a hammer, and everything looking like a nail? The Fed cannot conceive of any way in which to help the economy that does not involve keeping interest rates low. The Fed under Bernanke (and Greenspan previously, who was guilty of the same sin) does not understand that it is not the job of the Fed to maintain full employment, stable prices, and a solvent banking sector. The Fed’s only mission is to ensure the stability of the fiat currency. Full employment? That’s the Federal government’s problem. Banking sector solvency? That’s not the government’s problem, that’s the free market’s problem.

But the Fed, blinded, thinks that it has to support the banking sector and try to do something about employment. Thus it has lowered interest rates to laughable/insane levels. And it cannot raise them because of its own bias: “You don’t raise interest rates during a recession” is practically a Zen koan with the Fed economists.

If commodities start to rise, as a market reaction to falling stock prices and a need to find an investment safe-haven, then inflation will rear its ugly head and hurt the American economy very, very badly. But the Fed—repeating exactly the same error that brought us stagflation—will not raise interest rates to quell it. The Fed will be too frightened of smothering the economy during a recession to raise rates and defend the currency.

Thus the Fed will stand pat with ZIRP and QE, come a recession in 2014.

In other words, the government will not be able to save the economy. This is the single point I’m trying to make here: If you think for a second that the Federal government and the Federal Reserve will step in once again and save everyone’s bacon (like the last time), then you have not been paying attention to what I’ve been saying—or been paying attention to how truly helpless the Obama Administration and the Fed really are.

The Federal government and the Federal Reserve are out of bullets.

Which means we are on our own come a recession. And we’ll be paying not only for the recession of 2014, but also for the recession of 2007-09, which was deferred, but not worked out.

In other words, a recession in 2014 just might well be The Big One.

Oh boy . . .

Okay, that’s my thinking—here’s my pitch: This coming Thursday, at 8pm EST, I’m going to give a live presentation that’s going to look into all these issues in a lot more detail—really start us thinking seriously about what to do, if and when a recession hits the American economy. The title of this web seminar? Simple:

“What A Recession in 2014 Will Look Like”

Click on the link—and in case you missed it, here it is again. In this live presentation, I will expand on this brief essay, and will take audience questions, too.

If you’re not sure if I’m an idiot or not, check out my appearance on Max Keiser last year and see for yourself:

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=lSLIeoaTTjY

[Carmody]

the only way to end this cycling is to end debt based currencies. to end central bank debt based currencies.

this question has been correctly answered many a time, and that was the outcome: providence, opening, and expansion..open skies and unending horizons... for the groups involved.

No one with control of a debt based financial system wil tell you that or allow you to be shown that.

It really is that simple.

None of this has one single bit to do with any financial situation locally or in the world. Not one word or thought.

This is about control, plain and simple.

[gripreaper]

Posted by Carmody (here)
The only way to end this cycling is to end debt based currencies. To end central bank debt based currencies. This question has been correctly answered many a time, and that was the outcome: providence, opening, and expansion..open skies and unending horizons... for the groups involved. No one with control of a debt based financial system will tell you that or allow you to be shown that. It really is that simple. None of this has one single bit to do with any financial situation locally or in the world. Not one word or thought. This is about control, plain and simple.

This is never the topic when these pundits discuss recessions, the Federal Reserve or the Goobermints. They hawk about 'too much debt', when a fiat based system is built on and depends on exponentially ever increasing debt! All currency enters commerce as debt, which the primary driver of this debt is housing. People get mortgages, and these mortgages are bundled, marginalized, securitized, sold, leveraged, insured, and turned into derivatives.

The derivatives bubble is somewhere over a quadrillion dollars worldwide. This debt ponzi scheme is being held together, at least here in the US, by pumping 75 to 85 billion a month down this rat hole and it does NOTHING to boost the economy, pay down existing debt, or stabilize markets. All it does is feed the derivatives, which is nothing more than a gambling "bet" for or against it. The bet moves in small increments, the 80 billion is skimmed off into the banksters pockets, and more slavery is induced.

Lehmans and MF Global are good examples of how the house of cards can collapse if interest rates move at all over 1.5% in either direction. The whole ponsi collapses, or "there is not enough QE " that could stop the stagflation. Paulson was correct, pay up or the whole enchilada goes down and we have chaos and Marshall law in the streets by tomorrow morning.

So, all asset classes will continue to be taken out behind the woodshed and severely beaten, and all capital that is parked on the sidelines will come out of hiding and feed the monster to try and shore it up. That means, all savings, all IRA's, all bonds, all equities, anywhere that anyone makes the assumption that they have stored up wealth. That will all disappear. Deflation will take care of the tangibles. You wont be able to give away that Mercedes or that McMansion.

So, quit it with all the talk about how to weather the storm, how to preserve assets, where is the smart money going to go, and all other derivations of trying to save the old system. THE ONLY answer is to default on all debt, reset to zero through jubilee, and send the banksters where the sun don't shine. Any other answer just shores up a corrupt and antiquated and bankrupt system, and fails to get to the core of the problem.

Back in 1933 when the banksters pulled the same crap, people at least could go back to the farm and hunker down and survive, although they finally acquiesced to the theft and allowed the "New Deal" to take hold, giving the last of all tangible and intangible assets to the banksters, including themselves via the birth certificate bond, and all future production in perpetuity. They already got it all folks 80 years ago.

If you think 9-11 was about terrorism, or imperialist expansion, or some other newsworthy notion, you are mistaken. It was about the expiration of the bankruptcy of the 1930's and how we were to come out of receivership and be restored, but instead we "re-upped" the bankruptcy for another 70 years, maintain a military state of emergency, and corporate executive privilege via the United Nations!

There is no representative government, there are no national assets, there is NOTHING tangible backing anything you "think" you own, or you "think" is a sovereign country, and there are no tribunals or courts which operate under Common Law or the laws of equity. There's is only one creditor and the rest of us are debt slaves. PERIOD. There is no way to service the current bankruptcy. This time will be much worse as people do not know how to feed themselves and are completely dependent of a centralized system. They're screwed.

The rest of it is all just bullsh1t

[ThePythonicCow]

Posted by Carmody (here)
the only way to end this cycling is to end debt based currencies. to end central bank debt based currencies.

The proper amount of debt behind currencies is the same as the proper amount of CIA provided crack cocaine we should provide our children.

Zero.

¤=[Post Update]=¤

Posted by gripreaper (here)
This debt ponzi scheme is being held together, at least here in the US, by pumping 75 to 85 billion a month down this rat hole

75 or 85 that we're told about ...

[Redstar Kachina]

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[GoodETxSG]

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=x-hABNSOPlw

[Chester]

Could it be... retirement?

[ThePythonicCow]

Posted by gripreaper (here)

Posted by Paul (here)
Team A: The banking cartel, Rockefellers?, Banksters (JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Barclays, Bank of America, RBS, ...), Zionists ruling Israel, Bushes, ex-(or not so ex)-Nazi's, the Institute of Religious Works (IOR, aka the Vatican Bank) ...

versus

Team B: The Chinese, Russians, BRICSA nations, International Monetary Fund (IMF), Bank of International Settlements (BIS), Ernst & Young (auditor of the IOR, Lloyds of London and the BIS), the City of London and the Rothschilds, the new Pope Francis (who asked Ernst Young to audit the IOR), Jesuits (backers of Francis), and BaFin (the German financial regulators) ...

I have no insider information and am not close to anyone who stands at the gates of power and can see beyond the horizon, but this seems fairly accurate to me. What I don't understand, is how the Rockefeller's, who are (or were) the agents of the Rothschild regime during the last century, turned and became the opposition.

A little history. Back in the late 1800's when oil was just emerging as the primary fuel for industrialization, it was Amschel who financed Standard Oil and basically "allowed" his agents in the US to proliferate and expand. What I'm afraid they miscalculated, was how oil would become the number one commodity this century, surpassing all other streams of revenue and capital accumulaiton and appreciation. Did Rockefellers "et al" (Bush's, Harriman's, Warburgs, JP Morgan, etc) get as big as the Rothchilds in this last century and become a formidable foe, thus they need to be reconciled back to agent status?

Also, why would the Vatican bank side with team A and the Jesuits be on team B? That doesn't seem right. The Vatican is the oldest and most deeply engrained, and all others are agents and subsidiary to them.

What is typical at the top, is no one breaks rank. If it appears that someone does break rank, then are we not being misled and there is something else going on? These are the types of questions I need to ask critically, as I'm not convinced there are two competing factions that high up the food chain. If so, then I'd like to know what the strategies are for both, and whether I want to root for either team. After all, it could just be the grandkids having a bit too much fun.

Yes - Team A is associated with the Rockefellers.

Yes - they don't openly break ranks that high up - but I am confident that serious infighting and power struggles occur behind the scenes.

Another way of looking at this - perhaps the petro-Dollar established by Rockefeller's agent Kissinger (Team A) is being dethroned as king currency, to restore currencies more associated with gold and silver, the "real money" as understood by other elites of the world (Team B), including the Rothschild's and the Chinese elite, whoever they are. Of course, whether gold or oil, dealing in large quantity in the actual basis of whatever is "backing" money is for the elite; ordinary people, corporations and governments get their money by borrowing it from the banksters.

[Calz]

Those wishing to obtain and maintain power will stop at no means to do so ... climb as far up the ladder as you wish.

I *clearly* remember Catherine Austin Fitts talking about money moving from amerika to china in the mid 90's.

Between that and the very obvious plans to take down the usa there should really be no surprises here ...

Yes???


Sickening yes to see with so little opposition ... but surprising no.

[Redstar Kachina]

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[GoodETxSG]

SORRY FULL ARTICLE - http://x22report.com/

The Insiders Are Now Preparing For The Economic Collapse – Episode 244
http://x22report.com/the-insiders-ar...e-episode-244/

Episode 244 - The Insiders Are Now Preparing For The Economic Collapse [ 34:52 ] Hide Player | Play in Popup | Download


youtube_insiders_scrambling_collapse2S&P just cut the credit rating of the EU. Times are so tough that shoppers are spending 40% less this year. The US government is coming for everyone’s money and more countries have turned over depositor accounts to the US government. China has setup a clearing house and they don’t want the dollar anymore and they have emptied UK’s vault. Obamacare is being delayed because it is a complete disaster. The NDAA is being fast tracked to be passed by the end of the year.

Please check the Sentinel Alerts for the latest news on the economic collapse. The Sentinel Alerts are updated throughout the day. If you haven’t already, go to “The People” and join the community of people who are helping each through the economic collapse.

Current News – 12.20.2013

Economy

S&P cuts EU’s top rating because most of Europe is the verge of a depression

Standard & Poor’s has decreased the EU long-term credit rating one step from the highest, citing the worse financial profile and lack of accord among the EU’s 28 member states. The short-term rating remained strong.
“In our view, EU budgetary negotiations have become more contentious, signaling what we consider to be rising risks to the support of the EU from some member states…We are therefore lowering our long-term issuer credit rating on the EU to ‘AA+’. We are affirming the short-term rating at ‘A-1+’,” said an S&P report.
The shift followed a ratings decrease for France, Italy, Spain, Malta, Slovenia, and Cyprus from AA+ to AA, as S&P revised the outlook on the long-term EU rating to negative in 2012.
On November 29, 2013, the ratings agency lowered the rating of the Netherlands, leaving the EU with just six ‘AAA’ rated members.
Since the beginning of the European debt crisis in 2008 ratings have been under pressure. While the European Central Bank President Mario Draghi is doing his utmost to preserve the unity of the euro block, deficits and debts across the member states remain unsustainably high for membership in the euro.
While some European nations, including Ireland and Spain, said they have ended a technical recession, growth across the 17-nation euro currency bloc has so far remained shaky. It fell 0.1 percent in 3Q, as the economy is still slowly stabilizing after nearly 2 years of recession, according to Eurostat data.
Debt, unemployment, and weak exports still plague the continent, especially as periphery zones continue to contract. Unemployment across the euro currency zone is above 12 percent, and more than double that in Spain and Greece.
The European Central Bank unexpectedly cut interest rates to a record low of 0.25 percent in November after inflation suddenly dropped to 0.7 in October, far below the targeted 2 percent, which stirred fears of deflation.
Source: rt.com

Why 40% of consumers will spend less this Christmas despite better job security

So much for a white Christmas. New research from Bankrate.com shows holiday shopping this year might end up being a tight Christmas.
“Only 1 in 7 say they intend to spend more than they did last year, and 38% say they actually intend to spend less this year,” says Greg McBride, senior financial analyst at Bankrate.com in the attached video. “That’s really a reflection of the fact that for so many people, household budgets are still tight. They haven’t seen their income go up.”
What’s interesting is that this finding of frugality comes at a time when Bankrate’s Financial Security Index has rebounded to a 5-month high after dipping before, and during the government shutdown ordeal in October.
McBride explains the disparity, between consumers feeling more secure yet intending to spend less, as the result of better jobs security, comfort with debt levels and rising net worth slamming into the reality that is weak or non-existent wage growth.
“Discretionary spending is driven by what you get in the paycheck,” McBride says. “If their paycheck hasn’t changed, the ability to spend this holiday season – and any other time of the year – is really hemmed in.”
What also stands out, McBride says, is that this tight-fisted trend is not only affecting low-wage earners.
“The tendency to spend less rather than more, wasn’t just confined to one or two pockets of the population. It was evident in every age and every income group that we looked at.”
But even while spending habits remain on-guard, it would seem at some point they should loosen up, as financial security improves and spreads.
“2013 was really the turning point where we saw middle income households really turn the corner and start to feel better about their finances. Up until this year it was just the highest income households and nobody else. Now we’ve seen the middle of the population turn the page and feel more financially secure.”
That may be too late for Christmas, but Easter and Mother’s Day are just around the corner.
Source: finance.yahoo.com

Obama White House ‘Surprised’ by Recent Drops in Unemployment Rate

The nation’s civilian unemployment rate has dropped from 7.6 percent in June to 7.0 percent in November — a development that “surprised” the Obama White House.
“The unemployment rate over the last six months has surprised us by coming down more quickly than we had expected or than other forecasters had expected,” Jason Furman, the chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, told reporters on Thursday.
“[I]t’s come down by an average of one-tenth every month for six straight months, and that was — you know, people expected something like that to happen over more like a year than a six-month period. So I think what you see a number of forecasters doing is saying, given what we’ve seen, you know, maybe we have to revise it going forward and assume it’ll be lower.”
Furman said the bipartisan budget deal will boost job creation by easing the sequester spending caps. “This replaces a substantial amount of the discretionary portion of the sequester, so the converse to that statement would also be true, that this budget agreement will help the economy add more jobs than it otherwise would have in 2014.”
Conservative Republicans strongly oppose boosts in discretionary spending, saying the government already spends and wastes too much taxpayer money.
Although the unemployment rate is going in the right direction, Furman said “it’s still unacceptably high” because of the number of long-term unemployed. He urged Congress to extend long-term unemployment benefits.
At Thursday’s news conference, Furman said Obamacare, far from weighing on the economy, will help it in 2014.
“I think the Affordable Care Act has been helping the economy and will continue to help the economy. I think it has contributed to the slowdown in the overall growth of health costs, which is good for the competitiveness of American businesses.
“I think in 2014, when you have the exchange up and running, that that will further help labor markets by, for example, increasing the ability of workers to move from job to job, so they don’t get locked into one job, just because of the health insurance, which improves mobility and increases productivity and entrepreneurship,” Furman said.
“And finally, the Affordable Care Act is a key part of deficit reduction, especially over the medium and long term, where it’s a much more significant source of deficit reduction over that horizon than the sequester is.”
Source: cnsnews.com

Main Reasons For “Upward Revised” Q3 Personal Spending: Healthcare And Gasoline

Earlier today, the Bureau of Economic Analysis surprised everyone by announcing a final Q3 GDP growth of 4.1% compared to 3.6% in the first revision (and 2.8% originally), driven almost entirely by the bounce in Personal Consumption which rose 2.0% compared to estimates of 1.4%. As a result many are wondering just where this “revised” consumption came from. The answer is below: of the $15 billion revised increase in annualized spending, 60% was for healthcare, and another 27% was due to purchases of gasoline. The third largest upward revision: recreation services. On the flip side, the biggest revision detractors: transportation services and housing and utilities.
In other words, the BEA thought long and hard what it could revise and decided on the following: in Q3 the US economy was revised to the strongest since 2011 because Americans, it would appear, were gassing up more to visit (and pay) their doctor, and then going to the movies.
Source: zerohedge.com

There’s Is Nowhere to Hide Your Money: Six More Jurisdictions Sign Tax Compliance Agreements with US

The U.S. e Treasury announced that, in the past week, the United States has signed bilateral agreements with six additional jurisdictions to implement the information reporting and withholding tax provisions commonly known as the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act Enacted by Congress in 2010, these provisions target non-compliance by U.S. taxpayers using foreign accounts. With these most recent agreements, the United States has signed 18 FATCA intergovernmental agreements and is engaged in related discussions with many other jurisdictions.
Over the past week, Malta, the Netherlands, The Islands of Bermuda, and three UK Crown Dependencies – Jersey, Guernsey, and the Isle of Man – signed various agreements with the United States to implement FATCA.
“FATCA continues to gather momentum as we work with partners worldwide to combat offshore tax evasion,” said Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Tax Affairs Robert B. Stack. “This large number of signings in one week alone sends a strong signal to tax evaders everywhere: international support for FATCA is growing.”
FATCA seeks to obtain information on accounts held by U.S. taxpayers in other countries. It requires U.S. financial institutions to withhold a portion of certain payments made to foreign financial institutions (FFIs) who do not agree to identify and report information on U.S. account holders. Governments have the option of permitting their FFIs to enter into agreements directly with the IRS to comply with FATCA under U.S. Treasury Regulations or to implement FATCA by entering into one of two alternative Model IGAs with the United States. Today, Bermuda signed a Model 2 agreement, meaning that Bermuda will direct and legally enable FFIs in Bermuda to register with the IRS and report the information required by FATCA about consenting U.S. accounts directly to the IRS. This requirement is supplemented by government-to-government exchange of information regarding certain pre-existing non-consenting accounts on request.
Malta, the Netherlands, and each of the Crown Dependencies that signed this week entered into Model 1A agreements. Under these agreements, FFIs will report the information required under FATCA about U.S. accounts to their home governments, which in turn will report the information to the IRS. These agreements are reciprocal, meaning that the United States will also provide similar tax information to these governments regarding individuals and entities from their jurisdictions with accounts in the United States.
In addition to these FATCA agreements, protocols to the existing tax information exchange agreements with Jersey, Guernsey, and the Isle of Man were also signed.
Source: economicpolicyjournal.com

JPM’s Quiet Scramble To Refill Its Gold Vault

Gold is smacked down again and JPM and other financial institutions are stacking gold.

As we repoted consistently, at times on a daily basis, one of the more memorable stories of the summer of 2013, was the rampant and furious depletion of gold (both eligible and – mostly – registered) stored deep in the gold vault of JPMorgan located under 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza, since sold to a Chinese conglomerate (understandable considering China’s insatiable appetite for the yellow metal in physical, not paper form). This culminated with some truly impressive multi-way vault rearrangements in which the other 4 Comex members would provide gold to JPM on an almost daily basis (see here and here). But while Chinese demand may explain the outflow of physical, what is head-scratching is the just as furious scramble by JPM to obtain gold in the past few weeks.
As persistent trackers of the CME’s daily depository statistics update are well aware, over the past week, JPM has been accumulating an impressive amount of gold, and what is more curious, it has been precisely in increments of 64,300 ounces of eligible gold on a daily basis. Putting this scramble in context, two months ago JPM had only 181K ounces of eliglble gold. And yet, just today, the Comex announced that JPM’s eliglble vault gold rose by almost that amount, increasing by 125K to a reputable 1.2 million eligible ounces.
JPM’s total eligible holdings, and especially the recent surge, are shown below:
It bears pointing out that while eligible gold has been surging higher, JPM’s registered gold has once again contracted, and as of today, it closed at its lowest ever: just 87K ounces of gold!
So with gold plunging to multi-year lows, is JPM just taking advantage of the “blood on the streets” and becoming the helpful bidder of last (or first) resort and replenishing its record low depleted inventory by taking advantage of below production cost fire sales, or… is something else going on here?
Source: zerohedge.com

“The Chinese Don’t Want Dollars Anymore, They Want Gold” – London’s Gold Vaults Are Empty: This Is Why

Today gold slid under $1200 per ounce, dropping to a level not seen in three years. Judging by the price action one would think that gold is not only overflowing from precious metal vaults everywhere, but can be found thrown away on the street, where nobody even bothers to pick it up. One would be wrong. In fact, as Bloomberg’s Ken Goldman reports, “you could walk into a vault in London and they were packed to the rafter with gold, and the gold would trade from me to you to somebody else. You could walk into these vaults today and they are virtually empty. All that gold has been transferred out of London, 26 million ounces….” To find out where it has gone and why it is never coming back, watch the clip below (spoiler alert: listen for the line:“the Chinese don’t want US dollars anymore, they want gold“).
Source: zerohedge.com

Shanghai to host China International Payments System

The China International Payments System (CIPS) will be established in Shanghai in 2014 and will help settle yuan payments worldwide, reports Shanghai’s China Business News.
Wu Jun, deputy director of the city’s finance office, said that 2014 is a critical year as the structure for the CIPS would be finalized during that time.
Wu said that current cross-border renminbi settlements were being made through banks but that all transactions still had to be processed via a clearing system.
Citing the US dollar as an example, Wu explained that New York uses a clearing system called the Clearing House Interbank Payments System (CHIPS) to settle global transactions denominated in the US dollar. It handles 95% of international dollar payments, which has allowed New York to become an international financial center.
Regarding the internationalization of the Chinese currency, Dec. 3 figures from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) showed that global renminbi lending accounted for 8.66% of the market share as of October this year, outpacing the Euro for the first time to become the second largest clearing currency worldwide.
In addition, a Bank for International Settlements report on global trading volumes of foreign exchange showed that the renminbi had become the ninth most-traded currency globally in 2013, up from the 17th, and had spotlighted Shanghai’s role as an international financial hub.
The cross-border renminbi business in Shanghai has expanded significantly since a pilot program for settlements was launched in 2009. Figures showed that banks in Shanghai settled 491.9 billion yuan (US$81 billion) last year, up by 48.5% year-on-year.
The Shanghai pilot free trade zone, which was launched more than two months ago, is also expected to become the best platform for conducting cross-border renminbi transactions. Zhang Yong, deputy director at the Financial Service Bureau in Shanghai’s Pudong New Area, told the paper that the free trade zone in Shanghai was an important stronghold for the export of renminbi, as well as a hub for the return of overseas renminbi capital.
Source: wantchinatimes.com

Rights

Obama Caves, Delays Obamacare As Momentum Fizzles; Customer Pool “Smaller And Sicker

Late last night, with just 4 days left until the December 23 deadline to choose plans that will begin Jan. 1, Washington Post reported that the Obama administration finally caved and “significantly relaxed the rules of the federal health-care law for millions of consumers whose individual insurance policies have been canceled, saying they can buy bare-bones plans or entirely avoid a requirement that most Americans have health coverage.”
The ability to get an exemption means that the administration is freeing these people from one of the central features of the law: a requirement that most Americans have health insurance as of Jan. 1 or risk a fine. The exemption gives them the choice of having no insurance or of buying skimpy “catastrophic” coverage.
As was to be expected, the announcement which made the healthcare ponzi scheme far less powerful triggered an immediate backlash from the health insurance industry and “raised fairness questions about a law intended to promote affordable and comprehensive coverage on a widespread basis.”
“This latest rule change could cause significant instability in the marketplace and lead to further confusion and disruption for consumers,” said Karen Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, the industry’s main trade group.
Another health insurance official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he lacked authorization to discuss the matter publicly, pointed out that the hardship exemption also gives one group the ability to buy coverage whenever they want, rather than during annual open-enrollment periods. As a result, he said, more people might not buy insurance unless they get sick.
Well, Karen: welcome to central-planning, where whatever can go wrong, ultimately does, and as for your profit margins which you had modelled as surging in the coming years: feel free to model them lower.
How did the latest humiliation for the administration come about? WaPo explains:
At a news conference in mid-November, an apologetic Obama relented to the criticism, announcing that the federal government would let insurance companies continue for another year to offer individuals and small businesses health plans that do not meet the new requirements. The decision, however , is up to each state’s insurance regulator, and not all have gone along.
This second change, prompted by a group of Democratic senators — most of whom face tough reelection campaigns next year — goes substantially further in accommodating people upset about losing their policies. The latest rule will allow consumers with a canceled health plan to claim a “hardship exemption” if they think the plans sold through new federal and state marketplaces are too expensive.
To be sure, the 2014 elections played a key role: As The Hill reported, the policy shift was laid out in a letter to Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Mary Landrieu (D-La.), Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), and Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who asked the administration on Wednesday to clarify whether those who had their plans cancelled could qualify for the exemption. The Washington Post pointed out the lawmakersfaced tough reelection campaigns next year, or were from states that President Obama lost in last year’s election. Could it be that Obamacare is actually…unpopular with the broader population? Say it isn’t so!
WaPo also notes that “it is unclear how many people facing canceled policies will choose no insurance, bare-bones coverage or a plan through the insurance exchanges that meet new federal standards.”
Actually, it is clear: according to the WSJ the answer is “very few”, especially when one adds the healthcare law’s rolloug problems. The WSJ adds that ”insurers pressing for last-minute enrollees under the health-care law say they are running into a worrisome trend: Customers who were put off by the insurance marketplaces’ early troubles are proving hard sells. Many people thwarted by the technical problems of HealthCare.gov are reluctant to try again, citing frustration with the federal site, web-security concerns and the pressure of the holidays, several insurers say.
Geisinger Health Plan, a central Pennsylvania insurer, has tracked down more than 4,000 people who expressed interest earlier this fall, urging them to attend sign-up events this week.
So far, few have responded: About a dozen have shown up at each event, said Lisa D. Hartman, the insurer’s director of commercial marketing.
“It might be getting too late for people to make a move,” Ms. Hartman said. “We’ve had some people telling us it’s too close to the holidays.”
Call-center workers at Arches Health Plan, a new Utah plan, have been working through a list of about 4,000 people who unsuccessfully sought coverage in October and November. Insurers have identified about 2,000 people who are still interested and have managed to enroll about 90% of them.
“We definitely have lost a lot of momentum, where people said, ‘You know what, I’m going to come back in January,’” said Shaun Greene, Arches’ chief operating officer.
And the punchline: With only days before the Monday deadline to sign up for coverage that starts Jan. 1, insurers are facing a much smaller, and sicker, pool of customers than hoped for.
Like we said: anything that can go wrong… oh look, over there, the Stalingrad & Propaganda 500 just hit a new all time high!
Source: zerohedge.com

Senate Passes NDAA 2014 via Fast Tracking, President To Sign

The Government has always passed the NDAA quickly and in the dark of the night. We need to remember that this law can pickup anyone suspected of being a terrorist (foreign or domestic) without proof and throw them in prison for 1 year.

Late Thursday night, the Senate passed the NDAA for Fiscal Year 2014, in a sweeping bill now being sent to the president which reports suggest he will sign.
The bill, is infamous for its language on indefinite detention, and “disappearing” of American citizens. Once again, the bill was past via Fast-Tracking while most of the country was sidelined on the Phil Robertson issue with Duck Dynasty.
The bill, now being sent to President Obama, also leaves out an amendment by Sen. Gillibrand on sexual assault prosecution, which in and of itself is curious. The bill passed the Senate in an 85-14 count, with the roll-call unavailable at this time.
“It’s a failure of leadership on the part of the majority leader,” Arizona Sen. John McCain told reporters, echoing Republican colleagues who said the accelerated process was designed to prevent tough votes on Iran sanctions and other controversial issues.
Also, the bill would authorize a release of $527 billion in base defense spending for the current fiscal year, plus funds for the war in Afghanistan and nuclear weapons programs overseen by the Energy Department, among numerous other controversial measures.
With the recent push by PANDA (People Against NDAA), having success on local levels blocking the Indefinite Detention provisions, it is no surprise the defense bill passed quickly, and while so many were distracted.
Source: activistpost.com

Police State

New assault rifles at Boston PD another step toward militarization of US police

Boston PD is distributing AR-15 assault rifles to patrol cars for reinforcement of the police and giving it more power against the street criminals, or so it says. This new development has undoubtedly caused a lot of concern which fact is being dwelled upon in the article titled “Boston PD’s new assault rifles raise concerns over militarization of police” by Al Jazeera America’s Daniel Lovering.
Though there has already been a lot of talk as to how the United States have recently got all gunned up with their drone-flying classes and bomb-disarming robots in small towns. This military recycling program has already left many wondering: isn’t it a little too much put “to serve and protect”?
Boston police department has surprised the citizens purchasing about 30 military-style semiautomatic rifles and training nearly 100 patrol officers to use them. This looks all the more surprising as, according to a local cited by Mr Lovering, Tariq Nazyat, 39, “Gun violence in the neighborhood has declined sharply since his teenage years.”
As always, such situation immediately sparked a debate in Boston. While some – mostly residents of the minority-dominated districts – argued that the gradual militarization of the police force is more of a problem than a solution, others, who supported police, had their reasoning just as justified saying the police needed tools to combat heavily armed criminals and prevent terrorism, that is, to not let the Marathon tragedy become a history repeated.
Mr Lovering quotes Boston Police superintendent Kenneth Fong as saying police “’routinely’ seize semiautomatic assault rifles from the streets.”
“The city and the world we live in now is different than in years past,” Mr Lovering quotes Kenneth Fong as saying. “And we need to have equipment to meet the threat that we’re facing now.”
The Boston Marathon tragedy and its aftermath has only speeded up the process of buying the rifles, as it had already been in process by that time. The actual idea was introduced in 2007 by Edward Davis, a former city’s police commissioner.
Two years later, as part of the federal surplus program, Boston police ordered about 200 semiautomatic M16s, but Mayor Thomas Menino put the plan on hold. Menino’s spokesman John Guilfoil said in an email to Al Jazeera, “The mayor made clear that he doesn’t expect these types of weapons to be used regularly but rather stored securely in police vehicles and used only during necessary emergency situations.” However, 82 police departments with little-to-no crime still purchased over a 1,000 weapons.
The plan provides that two officers per district (and there’s 11) is to be equipped with the long-range AR-15 rifles, Fong said. This is to reinforce the existing groups of four to eight officers patrolling the city in so-called tactical vehicles, each equipped with an M4 rifle and a shotgun.
Mr Lovering quotes Ladd Everitt, director of communications for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, an advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., as saying that “police need the guns because they were facing similarly armed suspects on the streets.” In other words, the general level of violence in the society has been escalating.
Obviously, there are fears that, although initially intended to “fight evil,” all these weapons might one day become a routinely used tool.
“The most disturbing repercussion that we see happening is when officers are dressing up in military garb, camouflage uniforms, military boots and helmets, and now you put M16s in their hands, there’s just a subtle change in their whole mentality when it comes to policing,” he said. “They begin to view the people in the community as adversaries, as the enemy, instead of people who have constitutional rights,” said Tim Lynch, criminal-justice project director at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.
Lynch labeled this decision a “recipe for unnecessary violence and unnecessary injuries and sometimes the loss of life.”
Though recently, shootings have increased in Boston, the rate is still by far below the early 1990s numbers. Also, the state can boast one of the lowest rates of gun-related deaths in the country and some of the nation’s toughest gun laws, and that’s according to the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Kade Crockford, director of the Technology for Liberty Project at the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, was quoted by Mr Lovering as saying “the move reflects a trend nationwide that includes the ‘paramilitarization of the police’ and the federalization of local and state police departments.” However, the question she posed still has no answer regardless of its acuteness.
“Do we want police officers who are sent out into our streets to be trained as if — and equipped as if — the people they encounter on their patrols are enemy hostile targets, as if in a war?” she said. “Or do we want them to see people in our communities as allies and people they are meant to protect and serve?”
Source: voiceofrussia.com

War

Italian President Warns of Violent Unrest in 2014

This is becoming an anti-EU movement”
President Giorgio Napolitano has warned that Italy faces violent civil unrest in 2014 as anti-EU demonstrations intensify in response to the country’s worsening economy and a total loss of faith in the state.
“The crisis affecting the euro zone has put a strain on social cohesion. The most detailed forecasts for 2014 indicate a risk of widespread social tension and unrest: a risk that must been kept in mind and confronted in Italy,” Napolitano said during an address at his presidential palace in Rome, adding that citizens “could get involved in haphazard and even violent protests, in an extreme and unfruitful surge of total opposition to politics and institutions”.
As we reported last week, anti-EU sentiment is now so prevalent amongst Italians that riot police sent to harass protesters in some cities are removing their helmets and joining with the demonstrators.
The country has been rocked with a prolonged “pitchfork” (Forconi) revolt over fuel prices, globalization, soaring unemployment, and the European Union’s draconian austerity measures, with a diverse group of Italians, from farmers to students, coming together under one umbrella.
The Telegraph’s Ambrose Evans-Pritchard notes how, “This is becoming an anti-EU movement. One of the Forconi leaders has just been arrested for climbing up the EU offices in Rome and ripping down Europe’s blue and gold flag.”
Italian youth unemployment is over 40 per cent as the country remains embroiled in a deep recession, while the overall jobless figure hit a record high of 12.5 per cent at the end of October. A staggering 134 retail outlets in Italy are closed every day and business failures are up 10 per cent since last year alone.
Evans-Pritchard also points out that while Napolitano is concerned about the potential for domestic disorder, he offers no solution whatsoever for Italy’s predicament because he remains a vehement supporter of the very same EU-friendly economic policies that got the country into this mess in the first place.
While the threat of violent domestic disorder across the European Union has been voiced by analysts for years, it’s rare for presidents to join the chorus.
The potential for mass civil unrest spilling over borders as a result of a collapse of the euro single currency prompted the Swiss Army last year to mobilize extra troops as a safeguard against the turmoil spreading.
Source: thedailysheeple.com

North Korea threatens to strike South

Warning comes after South Koreans held rallies to denounce the North’s human-rights record.
North Korea has threatened to strike South Korea “without notice” in response to anti-Pyongyang rallies earlier this week, officials said.
The warning was communicated in a message sent on Thursday by the secretariat of the National Defence Commission, the North’s highest military body, through a military hotline, the South’s defence ministry said.
The message comes after South Korean conservative groups staged protests against North Korea’s human-rights record, marking the two-year anniversary of former leader Kim Jong-il’s death by burning his photograph.
North Korea regularly issues idle threats of violence against South Korea and the United States.
In the latest threat, North Korea’s military warned of a possible strike and condemned the South Korean rallies as an insult to North Korea’s “highest dignity” – a reference to leader Kim Jong-un, the South’s Yonhap news agency reported.
In response, the South Korean government vowed to “sternly react” to any provocation, the report noted.
Heightened tensions
The news comes a week after the North announced it had executed Kim Jong-un’s politically powerful uncle, Jang Song-thaek, who was branded a traitor and stripped of all his powers.
Despite the political uncertainty now gripping the country, North Koreans gathered earlier this week for a remembrance ceremony to honour Kim Jong-il.
Top US officials, meanwhile, have speculated that Jang’s execution could be a prelude to some kind of provocation by Pyongyang.
“These kind of internal actions by dictators are often a precursor to provocation to distract attention from what they’re doing inside of that country,” General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Pentagon news conference on Thursday.
Tensions were heightened earlier this year during US-South Korean military drills that Pyongyang branded a “rehearsal for invasion”.
Source: aljazeera.com



Rouhani Takes on Revolutionary Guards in Iran Power Test

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, a business empire as well as the country’s most powerful military force, have been a vocal critic of recent nuclear diplomacy. President Hassan Rouhani is fighting back, setting up a contest that may shape his presidency.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps expanded under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, benefiting from multi-billion-dollar contracts to build Iran’s nuclear facilities and develop the world’s biggest natural-gas field at South Pars in the Persian Gulf. Former officers, who made up more than half of Ahmadinejad’s cabinet, are down to four out of 18 ministerial jobs under Rouhani.
Guards leaders, in their role as defenders of the Islamic revolution, have denounced the new president’s breakthrough phone call with Barack Obama and sniped at Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif as he negotiated a nuclear accord with world powers in Geneva last month.
Rouhani, in turn, is seeking to ease them out of politics and the economy. He’s curbing the Guards’ role in industries from road-building to petrochemicals and cutting the budget of their paramilitary Basij force, used to suppress protests in 2009. The contest may determine whether the president gets to enact the platform he was elected on, which includes loosening religious and political restrictions, or is thwarted by opponents of change.
‘DIRTY WORK’
“One of the two will be defeated,” said Ali Alfoneh, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington and author of several studies of the Guards.
The Guards report directly to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who encouraged their participation in politics to counter the reformist movement that emerged around President Mohammad Khatami in 1997.
Khamenei typically plays different factions against one another to ensure no group gets too powerful, said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran specialist with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. He may use the Guards to put the brakes on Rouhani’s plans, Sadjadpour said.
“Khamenei doesn’t want to be seen blocking Rouhani but he’s betting Sepah will do his dirty work for him,” he said, referring to the Persian name for the Guard Corps.
Equally, the supreme leader will sometimes back the president because “he wouldn’t mind seeing Rouhani roll back some of the influence of the Guards,” Alfoneh said.
POWERFUL ACTOR
The Guards are Iran’s “most powerful economic actor,” Adam Szubin, director of the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, said in testimony to Congress last year. The group dominates energy, construction and banking, he said.
Its business empire began when Iran was seeking to rebuild after the eight-year war with Iraq that ended in 1988. The government decided to use the Guards’ experience in building roads and bridges to help restore civilian infrastructure. As the projects grew, the Guards set up an engineering arm, Khatam al-Anbia, in 1992.
Khatam, which is blacklisted under U.S. and European sanctions, now has more than 800 subsidiaries and employs almost 200,000 people, according to the state-run Iranian Students’ News Agency.
Rouhani is clipping its wings. The government removed Khatam from the management of Asalouyeh, a hub of petrochemical plants and refineries on the Persian Gulf, and terminated its contract to build a highway north of Tehran, Solh News, a website close to the Guards, reported Dec. 4. It said the Energy Ministry is also seeking to remove Khatam from dam-building and power projects.
‘FINANCIAL DISASTER’
Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh has criticized Khatam for failing to produce gas at South Pars. The company was awarded contracts worth as much as $21 billion in 2010 to develop the field, according to the ministry.
“The South Pars failure is a national financial disaster,” said Mehrdad Emadi, a London-based Iranian economist at BetaMatrix consultants. “About 80 percent of energy projects run by these companies were incomplete.”
Iran’s Mehr news agency said more than $40 billion had been spent on the development.
Ebadollah Abdullahi, a Guards commander and head of Khatam, has defended its record. Khatam took over contracts from Western companies such as Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Total SA (FP)which pulled out due to sanctions, and the same sanctions have held back Khatam’s work at South Pars, he said, according to Mehr.
EXPECT ESCALATION
The Guards are pushing back in the political arena. Their commander, Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, said Rouhani “erred” in speaking to Obama by phone during his September visit to the U.S. When Zarif, defending the Geneva accord at Tehran University on Dec. 3, argued that Iran’s military isn’t powerful enough to deter the West, Jafari riposted: “He doesn’t have experience in the military field to make these statements.”
Rouhani also cut funding of the Basij force, leading its head, Brigadier-General Mohammad Reza Naghdi, to criticize the move.
Jafari has warned Rouhani to expect resistance, saying the Guards “cannot sit quietly” in the face of developments they oppose.
“I expect escalation of the conflict,” said Alfoneh, of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “I’m not capable of predicting the outcome.”
Source: stratrisks.com

Report: Saudi anti-tank missile order could bolster Syrian rebels

Saudi Arabia has requested thousands of U.S. anti-tank
guided missiles in a move that could help Sunni rebels in Syria.
A leading U.S. news website asserted that Saudi Arabia’s request for
15,000 TOW [tube-launched, optically tracked, wire-guided missiles] ATGMs
could be used to bolster the flagging Sunni revolt against Syrian President
Foreign Policy said the $1 billion Saudi order does not appear to be linked to the kingdom’s military requirements.
“It’s a very large number of missiles, including the most advanced version of the TOWs,” Jeffrey White, a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, said. “The problem is: What’s the threat?”
In a report on Dec. 12, Foreign Policy said the Syrian rebels were desperate for ATGMs. Riyad has already supplied Croatian anti-tank weapons to and was training Syrian rebels in Jordan. The rebels were said to have been deploying the Chinese-origin HJ-8 ATGM.
Analysts said Saudi Arabia, which bought more than $75 billion worth of U.S. weapons since 2004, was unlikely to send the TOWs to the Syrian rebels. Instead, the new missiles could enable Riyad to exhaust its current ATGM stockpile.
“I would speculate that with an order of this size, the Saudis were
flushing their current stocks in the direction of the opposition and
replacing them with new munitions,” former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia,
Charles Freeman, said.
Source: worldtribune.com

Cyber Attacks

Cyber Threats to Bank Accounts on the Rise

On the same day that news broke that 40 million customer account records were stolen from retail giant Target, the regulator of the nation’s largest financial institutions warned that customers’ financial information is increasingly under assault in their banks as well.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency on Thursday, in its Semiannual Risk Perspective, warned that “Cyber-threats continue to increase in sophistication and frequency.” The agency noted, “Known impacts include … identity theft, fraud, and theft of intellectual property.”
Related: Data Breach May Impact 40M Target Customers
The report found that one new tactic employed by hackers is to target a bank’s home page with a so-called “denial of service” attack, in which thousands of hacked computers try to log on to the web site simultaneously, thereby disabling it for regular customers’ use. While security experts are distracted by the DOS attack, the report found, the hackers go after their real target by, for instance, draining customer accounts through fraudulent wire transfers.
“It’s an increasing problem,” agreed Richard F. Cross, a former vice president and director of bank security at Bank of New York, now a private consultant. “You have to assume that the crooks are always one step ahead of what the financial community is doing to protect itself.”
The OCC cautioned that small banks appear to be more frequent targets of hackers, because criminals perceive them as being less likely to have strong security measures in place.
Cross said that in his experience, that tends to be true. “The problem usually is with small community banks,” he said. “I hate to say it, but sometimes they don’t want to spend the money.”
Related: The Coming Cyber Attack That Could Ruin Your Life
Protection doesn’t come cheap, the OCC found. While the tools necessary to reduce the risk of a cyber attack are “readily available,” according to the report, “the costs and resources needed to manage the risks continue to increase.”
Banks that are at increased risk, the agency said, are early adopters of new technologies, and banks that hire third parties to provide certain information technology-related services, both of which create additional risks that are difficult to measure and to manage.
The good news for consumers is that they can do a lot to protect themselves. Most cases of identity theft and bank fraud begin with the customer making the mistake of providing personal information, willingly or unwillingly, to crooks – although they often won’t know it until later.
Related: Why Cyber Crime Is Now the Top Threat Facing the U.S.
One of the most common methods is through “phishing” – a technique in which an official-looking email is sent to a bank customer either directly soliciting account information or carrying a hidden computer virus that will give hackers access to the customer’s computer.
Cross cautioned that consumers can’t rely solely on banks to protect them – and have to be aware of everything they do while online.
“If an email comes in and it looks even a wee bit suspicious, you have to ignore it,” he said. “But people are busy. They see an email and they click on it, then it’s too late.

[GoodETxSG]

Current Economic Collapse News – News Brief – Episode 245
http://x22report.com/current-economi...f-episode-245/



youtube_newsbriefeconomic_collapse2In this news brief we will discuss the latest news on the economic collapse. We look to see if things are really that different. The central bank will not stop at just confiscating your wealth they will want your life. They want to enslave the people.

Please check the Sentinel Alerts for the latest news on the economic collapse. The Sentinel Alerts are updated throughout the day. If you haven’t already, go to “The People” and join the community of people who are helping each through the economic collapse.

Current News – 12.21.2013

Economy

Greek lawmakers approve property tax law amid protests


The Greek parliament has approved a controversial law on property tax demanded by the austerity-hit country’s international lenders, amid widespread protests against the legislation.
On Saturday, Greek lawmakers passed the bill with a narrow majority of 152 votes in the 300-seat parliament. Critics have described the new law as a final blow to Greece’s shaky economy.
Following the vote, Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras said Vyron Polydoras, a conservative lawmaker and former minister, has been expelled from the ruling New Democratic Party after he voted against the bill.
The move reduced the already slim majority of Greece’s coalition government to 153 in the parliament.
The new law, which is to take effect on January 1, 2014, will fix a tax on agricultural plots larger than 1,000 square meters (10,764 square feet).
Greece Finance Ministry says the tax is aimed at raising some 2.65 billion euros (USD 3.6 billion dollars) in 2014. However, unions and left-wing parties in the country have criticized what they call an over-taxation of real estate.
Main opposition leader, Alexis Tsipras, lashed out at Athens for carrying out a “heist” against landowners, saying, “You tax every inch of home yard and garden, and then come here and talk of growth.”
On Friday, several hundreds of Greek farmers marched towards the parliament building in Athens, carrying banners that read, “Not one euro for the fields” and “No to the double taxation.”
The protest was held as lawmakers were debating the law, which is required by Greece’s troika of international lenders – the European Union, the European Central Bank (ECB), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Athens has been dependent on bailout funds from international “rescue loans” since May 2010, when it was first granted a 110-billion-euro (USD 145 billion) package and was followed by another 130-billion-euro (USD 170 billion) package in February 2012.
Source: presstv.ir

Retailers panic and slash prices amid low sales

Retailers have slashed their prices this weekend in the hope that shoppers will finally flood Britain’s high streets today after one of the slowest Christmases on record.
With Christmas Day falling on a Wednesday this year, the traditional cat-and-mouse fight between shoppers and retailers has been pushed right to the wire with an extra weekend seeing customers waiting to see if stores will start discounting early.
And it seems like the shoppers have won, with vast swathes of stores hitting the panic button and slashing prices in a desperate attempt to shift their wares.
Fashion stores in particular have been struggling, with Marks & Spencer starting a 30 per cent off sale today across its entire non-food section, with some even considering returning presents they have bought and re-purchasing them at the discounted rate.
Debenhams, H&M, Mothercare, Austin Reed, Gap, BHS, House of Fraser, Argos and Currys PC World have all started heavy discounting, offering between 50 and 75 per cent off some lines. The few retailers still selling at full price include Next and Zara.
In total, only around one in four stores is holding out from offering discounts. Mark Hudson, a retail consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers, said: “Some retailers are still holding their nerve and will be looking to pick up on a big final weekend – and once online shopping activity is no longer a threat.
“However, expect to see further sale activity on the final two days as savvy last-minute shoppers hold out for pre-Christmas bargains.”
The final posting day for first-class deliveries to be delivered before Christmas was yesterday, so bricks and mortar retailers are hoping to win customers from now on.
Nick Bubb, a senior independent retail analyst, expressed surprise at the high levels of discounting, particularly at Marks & Spencer.
He said: “Marks & Spencer has just thrown away all their pricing power by launching a ‘Mega Day’ so close to Christmas. We thought of burning the ashes of an M&S pink coat at Marble Arch to mourn the death of full-price retailing.”
Cash withdrawals are expected to peak today between noon and 1pm, with around £27,000 being withdrawn every second, and up to £1bn taken out across the day, according to Barclaycard.
Last week, shopping centres saw 5.5 per cent more customers than the week before, with retail parks experiencing a 4.8 per cent boost. However, compared with a year earlier, footfall dropped 2.3 per cent in shopping centres and 2.1 per cent on high streets.
Source: independent.co.uk

Police State

White House panel: Little to no indication mass NSA surveillance thwarts terrorism

At least one member of the White house panel charged with reviewing the NSA policies unveiled by Edward Snowden admitted he was surprised to learn that there is no evidence the massive collection of phone records has stopped any terrorist attacks.
Geoffrey Stone, a University of Chicago law professor, told NBC he was “absolutely” shocked when the review panel’s findings turned up little to no indication that terrorist activity had been identified by the controversial National Security Agency practiced.
“It was, ‘Huh, hello? What are we doing here?’” he said. “The results were very thin.”
The NSA program was one of the first Snowden leaks to be made public in The Guardian and The Washington Post earlier this year. It was revealed that the agency does not listen in on telephone conversations in the US, but does compel major telecommunication companies like Verizon and AT&T to turn over the records – including the time and length of the call as well as the numbers dialed – belonging to millions of Americans.
Stone was among the five members of the White House review panel who were handpicked by the Obama administration to consider if major changes should be enacted to the NSA programs. The group began work on August 27 and has since met with executives from Google and Facebook, as well as lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union and even the chief judge of the FISA court.
The panel recommended this week that the massive collection of phone records be stopped immediately to protect Americans’ privacy. They issued this recommendation upon finding that it was “not essential in preventing attacks.”
That assertion blatantly contradicts statements made by President Obama and intelligence leaders for over six months.
“Lives have been saved,” Obama told reporters when the Snowden leak was first reported. “We know of at least 50 threats that have been averted because of this information.”
Source: rt.com

Bigger, Badder NDAA 2014 Quietly Passed the House and Senate – On the Way to Obama’s Desk

While everyone is distracted with the holiday festivities, Congress has been hard at work, screwing us over in the name of national security.
Yesterday the 2014 National Defense Authorization Act was fast-tracked through the Senate, with no time for discussion or amendments. And, you know, it’s Christmastime, so they just passed it so that they could recess for the holidays. The new version of the NDAA has already been quietly passed by the House of Representatives.
It authorizes massive spending, including $527 billion in base defense spending for the current fiscal year, funding for the war in Afghanistan, and funding for nuclear weapons programs.
The indefinite detention allowed by the original NDAA is still here, and it’s actually worse now, because there are provisions that will make it easier for the government to target those who disagree.
Section 1071 outlines the creation of the “Conflict Records Research Center”, where the unconstitutionally obtained information that the NSA has collected is compiled and shared with the Department of Defense. The information, called in the wording “captured records,” can be anything from your phone records, emails, browsing history or posts on social media sites.
The New American reports in detail on the expansion of powers:
For two years, the NDAA included provisions that purported to authorize the president of the United States to deploy the U.S. military to apprehend and indefinitely detain any person (including an American citizen) who he believes “represent[s] an enduring security threat to the United States.”
Such an immense grant of power is not only unconscionable, but unconstitutional, as well.
Regardless of promises to the contrary made every year since 2011 by President Obama, the language of the NDAA places every citizen of the United States within the universe of potential “covered persons.” Any American could one day find himself or herself branded a “belligerent” and thus subject to the complete confiscation of his or her constitutional civil liberties and to nearly never-ending incarceration in a military prison.
Finally, there is in the NDAA for 2014 a frightening fusion of the federal government’s constant surveillance of innocent Americans and the assistance it will give to justifying the indefinite detention of anyone labeled an enemy of the regime.
Section 1071 of the version of the 2014 NDAA approved by the House and Senate committees this week expands on the scope of surveillance established by the Patriot Act and the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF).
Section 1071(a) authorizes the secretary of defense to “establish a center to be known as the ‘Conflict Records Research Center.’” According to the text of the latest version of the NDAA, the center’s task would be to compile a “digital research database including translations and to facilitate research and analysis of records captured from countries, organizations, and individuals, now or once hostile to the United States.”
In order to accomplish the center’s purpose, the secretary of defense will create an information exchange in cooperation with the director of national intelligence.
Key to the functioning of this information exchange will be the collection of “captured records.” Section 1071(g)(1), defines a captured record as “a document, audio file, video file, or other material captured during combat operations from countries, organizations, or individuals, now or once hostile to the United States.”
Source: Activist Post

FEMA envisions base camps in Puerto Rico or Virgin Islands for its emergency responders

FEMA is gathering information from prospective vendors who could help the agency in case of an emergency in Puerto Rico or the Virgin Islands by quickly establishing two large “responder support camps” (which could house 11 to 3,000 occupants) and well as five smaller and more “remote camps” (which could accommodate 25 to 100 occupants.)
FEMA has asked potential vendors to answer a series of questions, as part of a Request for Information (RFI) it issued on December 19, which provide a pretty good idea of what kinds of camps FEMA has in mind.
Based on the queries it poses, FEMA apparently wants any future contractors to be able to transport equipment, set up, and make the camps operational within 72 hours of being notified. FEMA wants all camps staffed on a 24/7 basis.
“Does the contractor have the ability to clear an unimproved area, grade the area to prevent pooling of water but maintain level areas to construct the camp?” asks the agency.
FEMA appears to want its camps to have a medical service with a dedicated area and on-site nurses. In addition, FEMA wants a continually staffed kitchen, eating area for at least 60 percent of the occupants at one time, including a “dietary plan comparable to the military’s 14 day menu.”
The vendor must also be able to supply power, fuel, food, water, ablution, solid and black and grey water removal, as well as maintenance, the RFI explains.
Also, the camps should have “multiple buildings that can be connected by covered walk-ways,” laundry services, and workstations for 25 percent of the camp occupants, with access to the Internet.
Vendors with the capability to establish and operate such responder base camps in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands have until February 3, 2014 to describe those capabilities to FEMA.
Source: gsnmagazine.com

War

US Aircraft, UN Helicopter Attacked In South Sudan

With a wave of detente spilling over the Middle East, following the surprising US overture to calm relations with Syria and Iran just months after it nearly launched an offensive war in the country over a few fabricated YouTube clops Looks like Africa will be the next geopolitical hotspot. But while France is the figurehead leading the offensive over west Africa, focusing on Mali and the Central African Republic, where they are “peacekeeping” (with the support of US drones), east Africa appears set for a full-blown flare out, with the Sudan area emerging as the dominant zone of instability and future escalation. Which is perhaps why not only a US aircraft, but a UN helicopter, both came under fire in the Sudan over the past 24 hours in what is assured to generate an “appropriate” response by the US.
First, Reuters reports about a U.S. aircraft which was by gunfire in South Sudan:


A U.S. aircraft came under fire on Saturday on a mission to evacuate Americans from spiraling conflict in South Sudan and four U.S. military service members were wounded.
Nearly a week of fighting threatens to drag the world’s newest country into an ethnic civil war just two years after it won independence from Sudan with strong support from successive U.S. administrations.
The U.S. aircraft came under fire while approaching the evacuation site, the military’s Africa Command said in a statement. “The aircraft diverted to an airfield outside the country and aborted the mission,” it said.
Hundreds of people have been killed in the fighting that pits loyalists of President Salva Kiir, of the Dinka ethnic group, against those of his former vice president Riek Machar, a Nuer who was sacked in July and is accused by the government of trying to seize power.
Fighting that spread from the capital, Juba, has now reached vital oilfields and the government said a senior army commander had defected to Machar in the oil-producing Unity State.
And just to assure a condemning social response is generated, and the public mood against the South Sudan is sufficiently negative, the AP just reported that a UN helicopter in the region had been downed also following gunfire by local militant:


Two officials have told The Associated Press that a U.N. helicopter trying to evacuate peacekeepers and civilians was fired on and sustained significant damage on Friday in the same restive South Sudan state where a U.S. helicopter was hit Saturday.
Rob McKee of Warrior Security said the U.N. helicopter was hit by small arms fire and made an emergency landing while trying to evacuate personnel from a base in Yuai in Jonglei state. A second official who insisted on anonymity because the information hasn’t been released said the helicopter was abandoned and remains unable to fly. No injuries were reported.
A U.N. spokesman didn’t answer a phone call or email seeking comment.
U.S. aircraft were fired on Saturday in Bor, the capital of Jonglei. Four U.S. service members were wounded.
Of course, the question is why the US (and, laughably, French) scramble to get involved militarily in Africa now? The answer is easy: as we reported in June 2012, in the rush for Africa China has a multi-year head start in the colonization race. So what short cuts is a self-determined superpower to do to catch up – why find one pretext after another to send a military force and achieve through brute force what China has been able to attain through infrastructure and domestic investing over the past several years.
From June 2012:
“The Beijing Conference”: See How China Quietly Took Over Africa
Back in 1885, to much fanfare, the General Act of the Berlin Conference launched the Scramble for Africa which saw the partition of the continent, formerly a loose aggregation of various tribes, into the countries that currently make up the southern continent, by the dominant superpowers (all of them European) of the day. Subsequently Africa was pillaged, plundered, and in most places, left for dead. The fact that a credit system reliant on petrodollars never managed to take hold only precipitated the “developed world” disappointment with Africa, no matter what various enlightened, humanitarian singer/writer/poet/visionaries claim otherwise. And so the continent languished. Until what we have dubbed as the “Beijing Conference” quietly took place, and to which only Goldman Sachs, which too has been quietly but very aggressively expanding in Africa, was invited. As the map below from Stratfor shows, ever since 2010, when China pledged over $100 billion to develop commercial projects in Africa, the continent has now become de facto Chinese territory. Because where the infrastructure spending has taken place, next follow strategic sovereign investments, and other modernization pathways, until gradually Africa is nothing but an annexed territory for Beijing, full to the brim with critical raw materials, resources and supplies. So while the “developed world” was and continues to deny the fact that it is broke, all the while having exactly zero money to invest in expansion, China is quietly taking over the world. Literally

In late July, Beijing hosted the 5th Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, during which China pledged up to $20 billion to African countries over the next three years. China has proposed or committed about $101 billion to commercial projects in Africa since 2010, some of which are under negotiation while others are currently under way. Together, construction and natural resource deals total approximately $90 billion, or about 90 percent of Chinese commercial activity in Africa since 2010. These figures could be even higher because of an additional $7.5 billion in unspecified commitments to South Africa and Zambia, likely intended for mining projects. Of the remaining $3 billion in Chinese commercial commitments to Africa, about $2.1 billion will be used on local manufacturing projects. While China has proposed $750 million for agriculture and general development aid and about $50 million to support small- and medium-sized business development in addition to the aforementioned projects, it has been criticized for the extractive nature of its relationship with many African countries, as well as the poor quality of some of its construction work. However, since many African countries lack the indigenous engineering capability to construct these large-scale projects or the capital to undertake them, African governments with limited resources welcome Chinese investments enthusiastically. These foreign investment projects are also a boon for Beijing, since China needs African resources to sustain its domestic economy, and the projects in Africa provide a destination for excess Chinese labor
Source: zerohedge.com

China outraged as Japan revamps defense plan

China’s Defense Ministry on Friday issued a strongly worded statement criticizing Japan’s plans to increase defense spending, accusing Tokyo of turning up the temperature on regional tensions.
Amid ongoing territorial tensions between Beijing and Tokyo in the East China Sea, Japan this week announced a five-year defense plan that has attracted an uncharacteristically outspoken response from China.
China “resolutely opposes” the five-year defense plan adopted by Japan on Tuesday, Defense Ministry spokesman Geng Yansheng said in a statement posted on the ministry’s website.
Tokyo is attempting to sell a so-called “proactive pacifism” under the pretext of safeguarding national security, Geng said.
Japan “continues to deny its history of World War II aggression, challenge the post-war order, and harm the feelings of the people of those victimized nations,” he said.
“We urge Japan to reflect deeply on its history, strictly adhere to its commitment to peaceful development, and take concrete measures to improve relations with its neighbors to play a constructive role in maintaining regional peace and development,” Geng said.
Under the plan adopted Tuesday, Japan will boost defense spending by 5 percent over the next five years to purchase new military hardware, including its first surveillance drones, US-made F-35 stealth fighters and Aegis combat systems.
The statement hinted at China’s concern over Japan’s military relationship with the United States, which has recently shifted the weight of its military apparatus to Asia.
Japan is making an effort to ensure the security and prosperity of the international community, but at the same time it is clinging to a Cold War mentality and beefing up its military alliance with relevant countries, he said.
Last year, US President Barack Obama made a speech to the Australian parliament where he said: “As a Pacific nation, the United States will play a larger and long-term role in shaping this region and its future.”
China’s obvious discomfort over Japan’s military buildup is just the latest source of tension between the two Asian powers. Beijing and Tokyo are also at loggerheads over an uninhabited chain of islands in the East China Sea – referred to as the Senkaku Islands by Japan and the Diaoyu Islands by China.
After the Japanese government bought three of the eight islands from a private owner in September 2012, violent protests erupted in several Chinese cities. Since then, Chinese naval vessels have routinely confronted Japanese ships in the area, raising fears of an incident.
Late last month, China warned that all aircraft entering a vast area over the East China Sea should identify themselves and follow China’s instructions.
Source: rt.com

Senate hawks vow veto-proof vote on Iran, bill to skip committee

We need to remember what the Obama administration told the Senate. If new sanctions are implemented he will have only one option open and that is a military strike against Iran. This seems like it is the same “cross the red line” that he used with Syria. Be prepared for a false flag

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has indicated he would
Despite a veto threat from US President Barack Obama, hawkish senators in Congress say they will press forward with additional sanctions against Iran by overriding the president’s veto.
bring a new Iran sanctions bill for a vote.
On Thursday, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-New Jersey), the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, and Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Illinois) introduced a new sanctions bill against Iran which was co-sponsored by 24 other senators across the aisle.
The White House was quick to condemn the new anti-Iran effort by the hawkish senators on Capitol Hill with Obama’s Press Secretary Jay Carney saying that the president would veto the bill “if it were to pass” Congress.
However, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) told Fox News that he was seeking to secure a veto-proof majority of 67 senators for the bill.
“If the president wants to veto [the bill], we’ll override his veto,” Graham said.
During his year-end press conference at the White House on Friday, Obama warned once more against the consequences of any new sanctions passed by Congress against Iran.
“If we’re serious about negotiations we’ve got to create an atmosphere in which Iran is willing to move in ways that are uncomfortable for them and contrary to their ideology and rhetoric and their suspicions of us,” Obama said.
Source: presstv.ir



Cyber Attacks

Las Vegas hotels: Patrons warned of cyberattacks

Las Vegas hotels, among others, have been warned of cyberattacks, according to a Dec. 20Associated Press report. Affinity Gaming, aLas Vegas company that owns casinos in several states including Nevada says it was the victim of credit and debit card cyberattacks at 11 sites.
The cyberattacks affected under 300,000 cardholders, according to the company’s lawyer. While the system is now reportedly secure, Affinity Gaming recommended that customers that visited its hotels and casinos between March and October should check their cards for fraudulent activity.
“Affinity regrets any inconvenience this incident may cause and has established a confidential, toll-free inquiry line to assist its customers,” the company announced on Friday.
Source: examiner.com

False Flag

Alarms Bells Are Going Off As Al Qaeda Networks Spread

As a historian with a long view, I avoid alarming predictions of doom and gloom. Although Militant Islam is very dangerous, I don’t think it has longevity. Wherever Islamists take over, they arouse the intense hatred of their subject people. Muslims in Mali, for example, celebrated when the French Army chased out the jihadis.
It is one thing to fantasize about a restored Islamic Caliphate (religious dictatorship) but quite another to live under it. Like all other meteoric phenomena, this one will undoubtedly crash and burn too.
However, we are in for a very nasty run with this Islamist meteor. Joel Brinkley, a cool-headed foreign policy columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, (October 6, 2013). Al Qaeda is now threatening Americans in Europe, the Middle East, North claims the “the Al Qaeda terror network is spreading like a cancer”Africa, South Asia, Africa and Central Asia—as he notes, practically the entire world. The Senate Intelligence Committee warns the naïve fools among us who believe that this is not a war, but just a criminal issue. We should rethink our hostility to our spy agencies keeping tabs on wanabe jihadis.
One particularly deadly group is al-Shebab, in Somalia, which carried out the attack on the Westgate mall in Nairobi, Kenya last summer. The many jihadi groups can work independently, says Brinkley, but most coordinate their carnage with Ayman al-Zawahri, Bin Laden’s successor, whom we have not yet managed to kill with a drone. We will get him sooner or later.
The State Department warns that “extremists have targeted and attempted attacks on subway and rail systems, aviation, and maritime services; such attacks have already occurred in Moscow, London, Madrid, Glasgow, and New York City. One anonymous Islamic cleric who posts on line predicts that the black Islamic flag will one day fly over the white house. He may also believe that the moon is made of green cheese.
Most alarming is the rise of fifth columns in our midst. Generous, immigrant-welcoming Canada, is now having indigestion. The same is true for the EU countries that have done the same. Thousands of young men are heading to Syria where they hope to die for Allah. I saw one Anglo-Iraqi interviewed on camera who could scarcely sit still, he was so excited to die in Syria “for Allah.” Many of the Islamists are converts, which makes them even more fanatical as jihadis. The Canadian Security and Intelligence Service has reported that Islamist extremists are now radicalizing Canadians in mosques, dinner parties, and even in the family home.
The Canadian Broadcasting Company notes that with the exception of the United States, there are more terrorist groups active in Canada today than in any other country in the world. Since 2006, 25 individuals have been involved in plots against Canadian targets (happily unsuccessful). They plotted to behead Canada’s prime minister, were caught making bombs, planned to bomb an Amtrak train running between New York and Toronto, and planned to celebrate Canada Day (July 1) with pressure cooker bombs to blow up the legislature in Victoria.
The majority of attacks, however, are currently abroad: in Syria; bombing a courtroom in Somalia; joining a Hezbollah attack on a bus in Bulgaria filled with Israeli tourists; and an attack on a gas plant in Algeria. In addition are the usual financial crimes, honor killings, human smuggling, and establishing safe houses for future capers. Most alarming are attempts to establish Sharia law in Canadian society, which a former attorney general, Marion Boyd, actually supported!
Germany is alarmed because 170 German Muslims have gone to join al Qaeda groups in Syria. If they do not die there, they might well return to do mischief in Germany.
French Interior Minister Manuel Vallis estimates that more than 300 French Muslims are fighting with Syrian rebels. Russia reports that 200 fighters have done so as well; the UK claims 100, Denmark, Belgium, Sweden and the Netherlands each number their Muslim nationals at 50-100. This Jihadi Tourism may well come back to bite their hosts. Without the NSA eavesdropping, we might be sorry.
Source: familysecuritymatters.org

Plan Sought to Protect Food Supply From Terrorism

The Food and Drug Administration proposed a rule on Friday to require major food producers to develop a plan to prevent intentional attempts to contaminate the food supply. The agency said it favored the rule, not because such a criminal act is likely, but as an extra precaution. Under the rule, open to public comment until the end of March, companies would need plans to address vulnerabilities in production processes, particularly to acts of terrorism. They would have one to three years to comply.
Source: nytimes.com

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Current Economic Collapse News – News Brief – Episode 245

youtube_newsbriefeconomic_collapse2In this news brief we will discuss the latest news on the economic collapse. We look to see if things are really that different. The central bank will not stop at just confiscating your wealth they will want your life. They want to enslave the people.

Please check the Sentinel Alerts for the latest news on the economic collapse. The Sentinel Alerts are updated throughout the day. If you haven’t already, go to “The People” and join the community of people who are helping each through the economic collapse.

Current News – 12.21.2013

For those that have to multitask:

Current Economic Collapse News -- News Brief -- Episode 245

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=0mIm1XqGytU

Published on Dec 21, 2013

Get economic collapse news throughout the day visit http://x22report.com
More news

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In this news brief we will discuss the latest news on the economic collapse. We look to see if things are really that different. The central bank will not stop at just confiscating your wealth they will want your life.

They want to enslave the people.

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