Tuesday, May 3, 2011

AUDIT THE FED

The Federal Reserve: History of Lies, Thievery, and Deceit

Did You Ever Wonder Why The National Debt Keeps Going Up and Up?

One of the most ungodly and fraudulent institutions ever perpetrated on the American people and the world, is the Federal Reserve System which through deceit became the central bank of the United States in 1913. The idea came about on a meeting in Jekyll Island off the coast of Georgia in 1910. The bankers in this country, especially J.P. Morgan, created a currency panic in 1907 in order to get the American people to accept the idea of a central bank.

A central bank already existed in England from as far back as 1694. The Rothschilds completely dominate the banking system. It is estimated their wealth goes into the trillions.
Baron Nathan Mayer Rothschild boasted:
• "I care not what puppet is placed upon the throne of England to rule the Empire on which the sun never sets. The man that controls Britain's money supply controls the British Empire, and I control the British money supply."

The idea of a central bank is to so enslave the people of the country to a debt money system that you continue to collect taxes continuously which just covers the interest. The duped people of the United States are paying about $400 billion dollars per year to the IRS which is the collection agency for the Federal Reserve. By the way, the Federal Reserve is a privately owned bank with 10 private members. The Chase Manhattan Bank is a member which is owned by the Rockefellers who are Rothschild Agents. I will list the ten member banks at the end of this article
..
At this point the citizens of the United States falsely owe these lemmings over 13 trillion dollars. Have you ever asked the following question?

WHO HAS THAT MUCH MONEY TO LOAN TO THE UNITED STATES?

History of Lies
During the time of the Babylonian captivity of Judah, a man named Jacob Egibi became the founding father of modern banking. While Judah was in captivity, Jacob began a business of loaning out money for a rate of interest. During the Reign of King Kandalanu of Babylon (circa 648-625 B.C.) a new phenomenon appeared on the scene which Jacob Egibi played a major part, and that was the invention of private banking. There were 2 prominent families at this time, they were the Egibi family and the Iranu families. These 2 families are not a figment of imagination as their names have appeared in many cuneiform tablets discovered by Archaeologists. It is believed that the Egibi family was taken with the first captivity into Assyria and then later migrated to Babylon. At the time of the 70 year captivity, Jacob Egibi already had an ongoing private banking business in which he collected large sums of interest. Now we have secular insight as to why many of the Jews did not want to return with Nehemiah to rebuild the temple at Jerusalem.

By the time of the end of the captivity, many of the others who were in captivity with the Egibi families learned this evil business practice and began to set up shop. A good example of this are the moneychangers which the Lord Jesus Christ threw out of the temple. As a friend of mine said to me many times, "Christ drove the moneychangers from the temple and was crucified 4 days later." (Matthew 21:12-17; Mark 11:11-19; Luke 19:41-48)

During the time of the Persian period, loan sharking became a business where interest rates of anywhere from 30-50% were charged. As time went on, the writings of the Roman historian Tacitus, tells us that during the reigns of Caesar Augustus (27 BC - 14 AD) and Tiberius (14-32 AD) records of the Roman empire reveal deposits, withdrawals, brokers fees and loans. When the western Roman Empire fell, banking continued to thrive in Egypt, Byzantium, and the Arab nations of the Red Sea.

When the Christian era began to take hold and the church became a powerful entity, she returned to the Old Testament Edict of not charging usury and this idea continued up until the time of the Renaissance when banks began appearing across Europe. To show you how some kings despised usury, I offer 2 quotations:

...if any man is found taking usury, his lands will be confiscated, and he will be banished from England...
Alfred the Great, King of England; 849-901 A.D.

...If a man is found taking usury, his lands will be confiscated. It is like taking a man's life, and it must not be tolerated...
James 1, King of England; 1566-1625 A.D.

With the rise of international trade which commenced at the end of the medieval period, many of the banks were allowed to coin money for their transactions. At that time, there was no such thing as national money and when the banks minted coins, they were all of different value which created a dilemma for international trade. The first "Christian" gold coins were struck by Emperor Frederick II in 1225 A.D. Then came the "ducats'' of Portugal, the "florins" of Florence, the "agnels" of France, and the "sequins" which became the official coins of Genoa and Venice.
Europe then progressed from the Feudal system and with this came trade between different nations which resulted in foreign moneys accumulating in the various cities in Europe.

1694: The Year which Doomed the World's Economies
The government of King William III was in desperate need of money. When learning of this situation, a man named William Patterson put together a cartel of wealthy men, of which he was the leader. Patterson and cronies agreed to loan the King 1,200,000 pound sterling which would have been approximately 6 million dollars at 8% interest per annum on the condition that the king would grant 2 things:
 
1) He would grant Patterson and his associates a charter which would name them "The Bank of England," and
2) This bank shall have the "sole and exclusive right" to issue notes to the fullest extent of its capital.
The people were having a problem with their gold and silver coins of which the bankers quickly came to the rescue. The solution is aptly described by Professor Carroll Quigley in his book, Tragedy and Hope:
• ...for generations men had sought to avoid the one drawback of gold, its heaviness, by using pieces of paper to represent specific pieces of gold. Today we call such pieces of paper "gold certificates." Such a certificate entitled its bearer to exchange it for pieces of gold on demand, but in view of convenience of paper, only a small fraction of certificate holders ever did make such demands. It early became clear that gold need be held on hand only to the amount needed to cover the fraction of certificates likely to be presented for payment; accordingly the rest of the gold could be used for business purposes, or, what amounts to the same thing. A volume of certificates could be issued greater than the volume of gold reserved for payment....Such an excess volume of paper claims against reserves we now call bank notes. In effect, this creation of paper claims greater than the reserves available means that bankers were creating money out of nothing...
The King literally granted the Bank of England the legal right to print all the money that would be used in commerce by the people and the government. In other words the Bank of England became the sole money source of any currency that was used in English commerce by either the people or the government. If they needed more money, they simply printed it. It is said that by 1698 British government owed 16 X 10 to the 6 power pounds sterling to the Bank of England. Keep in mind this was only 4 years.

1773: The Second Date of Infamy
In 1773, a wealthy goldsmith and coin dealer named Mayer Amschel Bauer (1743-1812) summoned 12 wealthy and influential men to his place of business in Frankfurt, Germany. His purpose for the meeting was to impress upon these men that if they pooled their resources, it was possible to gain control of the wealth, natural resources, and manpower of the entire world. He then outlined a 25 point plan on how to accomplish it.
The plan was put into operation and evidentiary information exists that Bauer aligned himself with Adam Weishaupt who was the founder of the Illuminati whose aim was and still is world domination. Bauer later changed his name to Rothschild which means "red shield." He took it from the red sign which hung outside his place of business. The eagle was clutching 5 golden arrows in its claws. It was supposed to symbolize his five sons. Presently the red shield represents the official coat of arms of the city of Frankfurt, Germany.

Later on each of the five sons were dispatched to a major city in Europe to establish a branch of the Rothschild banking firm.
Son #1 - Amschel - Remained in Frankfurt and propelled Germany to financial success under Bismarck.
Son #2 - Salomon - Went to Vienna, Austria. he became a leader in the Austria-Hungary Empire.
Son #3 - Nathan Mayer - Went to England where he took control of the Bank of England.
Son #4 - Carl - Went to Naples where he became the most powerful man in Italy through his banking skills.
Son #5 - James Jacob - Went to Paris where he established the central bank. He was credited with dominating the financial destiny of the nation of France.
By 1850, the House of Rothschild represented more wealth than all the families of Europe. Shortly after he formed the Bank of England, William Patterson lost control of it to Nathan Rothschild and here is how he did it:
• Nathan Rothschild was an observer on the day the Duke of Wellington defeated Napoleon at Waterloo, Belgium. He knew that with this information he could make a fortune. He later paid a sailor a big fee to take him across the English Channel in bad weather. The news of Napoleon's defeat would take a while to hit England. When Nathan arrived in London, he began selling securities and bonds in a panic. The other investors were deceived into believing that Napoleon won the war and was eyeing England so they began to sell their securities too. What they were unaware of is that Rothschild's agents were buying all the securities that were being sold in panic. In one day, the Rothschild fortune grew by one million pounds. They literally bought control of England for a few cents on the dollar. The same way the Rockefeller's went into Japan after World War 2 and bought everything 10 cents on the dollar. SONY=Standard Oil New York, a Rockefeller Company.
Frederick Morton wrote in his book, The Rothschilds:
• "...the wealth of the Rothschilds consists of the bankruptcy of nations."
There were other wealthy families in Europe and America which were allowed to join "the international banking club" such as John D. Rockefeller and John Pierpont Morgan.

Early American Wisdom
The Americans had won their political independence but their financial independence was in jeopardy. The international bankers had an agent in place and his name was Alexander Hamilton who wanted a central bank. Thomas Jefferson lobbied vehemently against the central bank stating it was contrary to the Constitution. However, a central bank was formed in 1781 known as the Bank of North America which was patterned after the Bank of England. The colonists wanted nothing to do with it so it folded in 1790. The international bankers countered the closing of the Bank of North America by gaining a charter for the Bank of the United States which was chartered on February 25, 1791. The Bank of France desired the formation of the US Bank also and it was chartered for 20 years.
In 1826, the second bank's charter was soon to expire and presidential candidate Andrew Jackson campaigned strongly against a central bank which was owned and operated by the international banking element. Here is Jackson's opinion of those bankers:
• "You are a den of vipers. I intend to wipe you out, and by the Eternal God I will rout you out...If people only understood the rank injustice of the money and banking system, there would be a revolution by morning."
In 1836, the charter did expire but that was not the end of the international banking influence in this country. The Civil War was planned in England as far back as 1809. Slavery was not the real cause of the Civil War. The Rothschilds (who were heavy into the slave trade) used the slavery issue as "a divide and conquer strategy" which almost split the United States in two. The Bank of England financed the North while the Paris branch of the Rothschild bank funded the South. In 1863, the National Banking Act was passed despite protest by President Lincoln. This act allowed a private corporation the authority to issue our money.

Enter 1913
In November of 1910, some of these vultures came together at the Jekyl Island Hunt Club on Jekyl Island, Georgia. What were they hunting? The biggest prize of all, the absolute and complete control of all the money in America which means control of all America and with it the power to make slaves of all the people.

Those who attended were: Senator Nelson Aldrich (Nelson Rockefeller's maternal grandfather); A. Piatt Andrew, Economist and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury; Frank Vanderlip, President of the National City Bank of New York; Henry P. Norton, President of Morgan's First National Bank of New York; Paul Moritz Warburg, a German who was partner in the New York banking house of Kuhn, Loeb Co.; Benjamin Strong, an aid to J. P. Morgan.
Paul Warburg was credited as the architect of the bill which was passed by Congress and signed by traitorous Woodrow Wilson. It was entitled the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. America once again had a central bank but this time they had placed America under an absolute dictatorship. President James Garfield had insight into this situation:
• "It must be realized that whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolutely master of all industry commerce."
The Federal Reserve was incorporated in 1914 and has been creating a completely unnecessary national debt ever since. In simple terms, the Fed creates money as debt. They create money out of thin air by nothing more than a book entry. Whenever the members of the Fed make any loans, that debt money is our money supply.

The United States went bankrupt in 1938 because of this system. It took the Fed only 25 years to bankrupt the USA. Can you imagine how little time it would take these vultures to bankrupt a developing nation? The American people are paying about $300 billion dollars a year in interest to this phony organization. When you look in the Washington, D.C. phone book, you will not find the Federal Reserve in the Government section as they are a private concern.

The national debt is increased about $1.71 billion dollars every day (as of October 12, 2004) . Have you taken a look at your money? It says "Federal Reserve Note" which means it is an instrument of debt. There is no real money in circulation.

The Assassination of President Kennedy
One of the greatest coverups in history was the Killing of the President. If you believe the Mafia did it, then I have ocean front land in Kansas for you to buy. President Kennedy was murdered over money, $4 billion dollars worth. You see, he had printed $4 billion worth of non-interest bearing money which meant he began to chop at the profits of the vultures. Interest free money means the national debt is eliminated and the power of the international banking element is broken. So to prevent Kennedy from abolishing the illegal Fed, he was assassinated. Coincidence? As soon as the traitor Johnson was in office, he recalled all the debt free notes and continued our country in the same path of ruin. There, the mystery of the killing is over. Just follow the trail of the money.
War
Now that the Federal Reserve was firmly in place, schemes had to be constructed to get the government to borrow so a continuously growing national debt would happen. So here are some coincidences: The Federal Reserve is created in 1913, then in 1914 we have World War 1. Right at the end of World War 1, we have a depressed economy especially in the Weimar Republic where 2 billion marks could buy a loaf of bread. In 1917, we had the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. A man named Lord Alfred Milner was a front man and paymaster for the Rothschilds in Petrograd during the revolution. He later headed a secret organization called The Round Table which was dedicated to a one world government run by wealthy financiers under socialism.

Then, lo and behold, in the 1920's we see a little known corporal with 12 men meeting in a beer hall in Munich while in America the Roaring 20's were in progress until October, 1929. Then the Federal Reserve withheld money from circulation so bills could not be paid, while simultaneously they were calling in all their loans which caused the stock market to crash. By 1932 the price of stocks had plummeted 80%. When the bankers plunged this nation into a depression on that fateful day in October, at the New York Stock Exchange was a visitor, his name was Winston Churchill who stated after the crash of '29, "Now I know who wields the real power." The key to understanding the Great Depression is to realize that when the Federal Reserve had contracted the money supply, there was not enough money in circulation to pay bills, to hire people, to pay back loans, etc. The crash of the stock market was the symptom but the cause was the Fed restricting the money supply. This is their weapon which is used today. When they flood the country with money, this causes inflation.

Then we come into the 1930's and the rise of Hitler. Hitler was also funded by Wall Street through the Industrialist I.G. Farben. Let's test the theory of follow the money. Here is a little known corporal with no money meeting in a beer hall in Munich with only about 12 men. In a seriously depressed and defeated country, there begins to rise another military dictatorship. By 1934 the Nuremberg Rallies were in place and Germany was rebuilt. In that countries' economy who had that much money to rebuild Germany into a powerful country which marched across Europe and almost defeated Russia in the first 24 hours of Case White (The invasion of Russia)? The answer is the bankers of the USA and England. In fact, a banker named Bernard Baruch was President Roosevelt's personal advisor during World War 2. Baruch made $200 million dollars as a result of World War 2. During WW2 the Rockefellers were selling oil to the Germans from their Standard Oil concern in Argentina.

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) was formed in 1919 in Paris, France by Colonel Edward Mandell House who was known as Woodrow Wilson's alter ego. The CFR was and still is dedicated to the one world rule under a new world order. In fact, every war has been planned by the CFR. Every American President since 1919 has had their cabinet filled with CFR members. Also our traitorous Presidents fill their cabinets with not only CFR members but those of the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderbergers, the Yale Fraternity of the Skull and Bones (George Bush was a member of this).

These members insure that the will of the bankers are done, even if the President is not a member of any group. After WW2, was fought another war was created known as the Korean War (which was started by a phone call from John Foster Dulles), then the Vietnam War. During the Vietnamese War, the Rockefellers had a metals processing plant going full blast in North Vietnam. The Rockefellers have the blood of thousands of Americans on their hands because of their supplying the Russians with weapons and metals. The North Vietnamese received their weapons from Russia. The only reason these rats are never indicted for treason, is because since WW2 there has never been a declared war which means if we have no official enemy, there can be no aiding the enemy AKA treason.

Presently we have skirmishes such as the Gulf War of 1990 which was an experiment by the New World Order crowd to see how fast they can assemble an army in case a country does not choose to obey the dictates of the banker bosses. Of course funding for the gulf war came from borrowing money from the Fed. Wherever you hear of a limited war, or some type of political destabilization, think of the money trail. Wars are started in foreign countries, then our President goes there and gives millions of dollars of borrowed money which normally goes into the pockets of the dictators.

Nowhere in our Constitution is it written that our government is to borrow money and give it away.

At this point I want you to click on the following web site and see the reality of the death of America:


Final Thoughts

The American economy has been sucked dry by the Federal Reserve System. Americans think they own property but the truth is the entire United States has been mortgaged to the bankers. The Rothschilds and Rockefellers become richer while the peoples of the world become poorer. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are also designed to loan money to developing nations with the understanding that they will never be able to repay so with every loan made to a country, it becomes their death knell. The entire world has been plunged into a debt economy which means 6 billion people are in debt to about 250 men.

But keep in mind that all their wealth is phony because it is created money without any gold backing.

I really laugh when Wall Street bows down to Ben Bernanke who is nothing more than a boot licker of the International Banking element who takes his orders by phone too. So many people rejoice when the Federal Reserve has a policy meeting and no interest rate increase happens. The truth is that we should never have a Federal Reserve to begin with. They print money, loan it into circulation, and the American people are strapped with more debt.

I remember leaving materials on the Federal Reserve at a meeting of Concerned Women for America. The next day I went back and not one copy was taken. The reason given me was because it was not approved material. Groups like Concerned Women for America and the Christian Coalition and Rush Limbaugh are something known as controlled opposition. They are allowed to exist as long as they do not bring up the real issues. If they stick to the created liberal Democrat Vs. conservative Republican agenda, they can exist and the bankers will even make them famous. But you will never hear a Beverly LaHaye, Tim LaHaye, Jim Dobson, Billy Graham, Gary Bauer, or any other famous Christians ever tackle the real issues like the illegal Fed which causes all the poverty in every country. If these people would think for a minute that if $350 billion dollars a year was not being sucked out of the economy and was used for the people in this country, we would surely have enough to help other nations and our own problems. Crime would almost be non-existent with a monetized money system. The Great Commission would also be funded without worrying if there will be enough left over to feed the children.

THE TEN MEMBER BANKS OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE
All owned by the Rothschilds
  1. Rothschild Bank of London
  2. Warburg Bank of Hamburg
  3. Rothschild Bank of Berlin
  4. Lehman Brothers of New York
  5. Lazard Brothers of Paris
  6. Kuhn Loeb Bank of New York
  7. Israel Moses Seif Banks of Italy
  8. Goldman, Sachs of New York
  9. Warburg Bank of Amsterdam
  10. Chase Manhattan Bank of New York
THE NATIONAL DEPT IS PHONY!!!
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Sunday, May 1, 2011

Your Cell Phone Company is Stalking You

Verizon to put location-tracking warning sticker on phones

By Julianne Pepitone
 

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- In the wake of a giant brouhaha over the news that Apple's iPhones record and store users' locations, Verizon Wireless says it will start slapping 'we can track you!' warning stickers on its products.

Verizon's announcement came in the form of a letter to Representatives Ed Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, and Joe Barton, a Texas Republican. In March, they asked the four major wireless carriers to explain how and why they track mobile location data.

All four carriers acknowledged that they store location data for varying periods of time, but Verizon (VZ, Fortune 500) was the only company to suggest a warning label.

The company says it will begin including the removable sticker on all new devices it sells.

The sticker warns: "This device is capable of determining its (and your) physical, geographical location and can associate this location data with other customer information. To limit access to location information by others, refer to the User Guide for Location settings and be cautious when downloading, accessing or using applications and services."


 
Verizon also disclosed that it stores location data and other customer information for seven years. Sprint (S, Fortune 500) keeps the details for three years, while AT&T (T, Fortune 500) retains it for anywhere from a few days to five years. T-Mobile did not give a timeframe.

The carriers' responses came earlier in the month, but Congress first released them Thursday.
Each of the letters pointed to third-party applications as the real culprit.

Verizon said location-based apps "should give customers clear and transparent notice," while Sprint complained that it could no longer act as consumers' "trusted carrier with whom they have a trusted relationship to answer all of their questions."

Markey was unimpressed. In a statement on his site, he said the carriers' responses left him "with a feeling of uneasiness and uncertainty ... the disconnect is when third-party applications come in to play."

Meanwhile, Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) has been cleaning up the PR mess made after two British researchers released an open source application that let Apple's customers see the location data stored on their iPhones and 3G iPads.

The smartphone maker released a 10-part Q&A and statement on Wednesday admitting to a lack of transparency. It also promised a software update to fix a "bug" that retained data for more than a year instead of the intended few days


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Wednesday, April 20, 2011

BP's Secret Blowout

BP's

Secret Deepwater Blowout
by Greg Palast

Only 17 months before BP's Deepwater Horizon rig suffered a deadly blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, another BP deepwater oil platform also blew out.

You've heard and seen much about the Gulf disaster that killed 11 BP workers. If you have not heard about the earlier blowout, it's because BP has kept the full story under wraps. Nor did BP inform Congress or US safety regulators, and BP, along with its oil industry partners, have preferred to keep it that way.


The earlier blowout occurred in September 2008 on BP's Central Azeri platform in the Caspian Sea.

As one memo marked "secret" puts it, "Given the explosive potential, BP was quite fortunate to have been able to evacuate everyone safely and to prevent any gas ignition." The Caspian oil platform was a spark away from exploding, but luck was with the 211 rig workers.

It was eerily similar to the Gulf catastrophe as it involved BP's controversial "quick set" drilling cement.

The question we have to ask: If BP had laid out the true and full facts to Congress and regulators about the earlier blowout, would those 11 Gulf workers be alive today - and the Gulf Coast spared oil-spill poisons?

Greg Palast investigating BP's blowout in the Caspian, Baku, Azerbaijan 2010.

The bigger question is, why is there no clear law to require disclosure? If you bump into another car on the Los Angeles freeway, you have to report it. But there seems no clear requirement on corporations to report a disaster in which knowledge of it could save lives.

Five months prior to the Deepwater Horizon explosion, BP's Chief of Exploration in the Gulf, David Rainey, testified before Congress against increased safety regulation of its deepwater drilling operation. Despite the company's knowledge of the Caspian blowout a year earlier, the oil company's man told the Senate Energy Committee that BP's methods are, "both safe and protective of the environment."

Really? BP's quick-dry cement saves money, but other drillers find it too risky in deepwater. It was a key factor in the Caspian blowout. Would US regulators or Congress have permitted BP to continue to use this cement had they known? Would they have investigated before issuing permits to drill?

This is not about BP the industry Bad Boy. This is about a system that condones silence, the withholding of life-and-death information.

Even BP's oil company partners, including Chevron and Exxon, were kept in the dark. It is only through WikiLeaks that my own investigations team was able to confirm insider tips I had received about the Caspian blowout. In that same confidential memo mentioned earlier, the US Embassy in Azerbaijan complained, "At least some of BP's [Caspian] partners are similarly upset with BP's performance in this episode, as they claim BP has sought to limit information flow about this event even to its [Caspian] partners."

In defense of its behavior, BP told me it did in fact report the "gas release" to the regulators of Azerbaijan. That's small comfort. This former Soviet republic is a police state dictatorship propped up by the BP group's oil royalties. A public investigation was out of the question.

In December, I traveled to Baku, Azerbaijan's capital, to investigate BP and the blowout for British television. I was arrested, though, as a foreign reporter, quickly released. But my eye witnesses got the message and all were too afraid tell their stories on camera.

BP has, in fact, never admitted a blowout occurred, though when confronted by my network, did not deny it. At the time, BP told curious press that the workers had merely been evacuated as a "precaution" due to gas bubbles "in the area of" the drilling platform, implying a benign natural gas leak from a crack in the sea floor, not a life-threatening system failure.

In its 2009 report to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), BP inched closer to the full truth. Though not mentioning "blowout" or "cement," the company placed the leak "under" the platform.

This points to a cruel irony: the SEC requires full disclosure of events that might cause harm to the performance of BP's financial securities. But reporting on events that might harm humans? That's not so clear.

However, the solution is clear as could be. International corporations should be required to disclose events that threaten people and the environment, not just the price of their stock.

As radiation wafts across the Pacific from Japan, it is clear that threats to health and safety do not respect national borders. What happens in Fukushima or Baku affects lives and property in the USA.

"Regulation" has become a dirty word in US politics. Corporations have convinced the public to fear little bureaucrats with thick rulebooks. But let us remember why government began to regulate these creatures. As Andrew Jackson said, "Corporations have neither bodies to kick nor souls to damn."

Kicking and damning have no effect, but rules do. And after all, when international regulation protects profits, as in the case of patents and copyrights, corporate America is all for it.

Our regulators of resource industries must impose an affirmative requirement to tell all, especially when people, not just song lyrics or stock offerings, are in mortal danger.


*********
Greg Palast directed the fraud investigation of BP and Exxon in the grounding of the Exxon Valdez for the Chugach Natives of Alaska. Palast's investigative reports can be seen on BBC Television Newsnight. See them at
www.GregPalast.com.

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Monday, April 18, 2011

Food Prices on the Rise again

Why you're paying more for groceries


NEW YORK ( CNNMoney ) -- After holding steady for two years, food prices in the United States are rising once again, due to growing demand and tight supplies of wheat, corn and other key commodities.
 
That means American consumers are being hit with higher grocery bills at a time when gas prices are already starting to dent household budgets. On the bright side, economists say the recent spike in fuel prices isn't yet translating into higher costs at the supermarket.

For the moment, food producers and retailers have been absorbing higher energy costs and have pledged not to pass them on.

Still, according to the U.S. government's Consumer Price Index, food prices in January rose 1.8% from the prior year, marking the fastest pace since 2009.

 "We are already starting to see food inflation kick in," said Brian Todd, president of the Food Institute, a nonprofit research group in Elmwood Park, NJ.

A 16 oz. bag of potato chips, for example, sold for an average price of $4.79 nationwide, according to January CPI data. That's up 5 cents from the same month last year, and nearly $1.40 more than in 2001. Prices for bread, bacon, eggs and many other consumer staples were also significantly higher.

Those increases can add up quickly for consumers already struggling with rising gas prices, high unemployment and stagnant wage growth. In 2008, the average taxpayer earned just $33,000 a year, which is actually down from twenty years ago.

Food prices are currently being driven higher by spiraling costs for basic agricultural goods, which have been impacted by bad weather in many parts of the world. Tight supplies of grains have in turn pushed up prices for the livestock that eat them, resulting in higher prices for beef and pork.

In addition, growing prosperity in China, India and other developing economies has led to increased demand for meat and other higher-end food items. 

Overall, retail food prices are expected to rise between 3% and 4% this year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That would follow a more modest increase in 2010, when food prices rose 1.5%, and a slight decrease in 2009, as the global recession took hold.
 
But the outlook for food inflation is still only slightly above the historical average of between 2% and 3%, said Ephraim Leibtag, an economist at the USDA's Economic Research Service.

The 2011 forecast is also below the 5.9% rise in food prices that occurred in 2008, when oil and gas prices surged to all-time highs.

"There are some similarities with 2008," this year, said Leibtag. "There's the potential for prices to rise over the year, but there's also time to readjust."
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Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Americans Targets of Mexican Drug Gangs

U.S. Warns of Mexico Peril
Consulate Says Americans May Be Targets of Drug Gangs; 32 More Bodies Found
By NICHOLAS CASEY And JOSé DE CóRDOBA

MEXICO CITY—For the first time in Mexico's drug war, the U.S. government said its employees and citizens could be the targets of drug gangs in three Mexican states, a disclosure that could signal danger for Americans south of the border.

The little-noticed warning, published last Friday in a warden's message from the U.S. Consulate General in Monterrey, said U.S. officials had "information that Mexican criminal gangs may intend to attack U.S. law-enforcement officers or U.S. citizens in the near future in Tamaulipas, Nuevo León and San Luis Potosí."

In Tamaulipas state, 32 bodies were found in mass graves on a ranch on Tuesday, bringing the total discovered there since last week to 120, authorities said. On Friday, the U.S. State Department said an American man was reported kidnapped from a bus in the state, but it wasn't known if he was among the dead.

The Consulate's message could have major implications for Americans across Mexico, who have lived in and visited the country under assurances from both governments that drug-related violence wasn't directed toward them. An estimated one million U.S. citizens live in Mexico and millions more visit each year.

Among the cities covered in the warning is Monterrey, the country's northern business hub where U.S. companies like Whirlpool Corp. and General Electric Co. have their regional bases.

Tamaulipas state shares 230 miles of border with Texas and handles important cross-border traffic through Nuevo Laredo and Reynosa; San Luis Potosí is a popular tourist destination, famous for its silver mines.

Whirlpool declined to comment on the warning. GE didn't immediately have a comment.

A division president of one major U.S. company canceled a planned visit to Monterrey scheduled for the end of April after the Consulate warning, company officials said.

U.S. State Department officials wouldn't comment on what triggered the warning.

"My guess is that this is a generic threat that they want to take seriously but not send people into panic mode," said Eric Olson, a senior associate at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. "Phrases like 'may intend' and 'near future' sound very unspecific to me, although worrisome nonetheless."

Mexican officials had no immediate comment on the warning, which seemed sure to add to rising tensions between Washington and Mexico City over the drug war. U.S. Ambassador Carlos Pascual was pressured to resign recently after comments he made about the Mexican army's inefficiency in diplomatic cables and published by WikiLeaks angered President Felipe Calderón.

Until recently, experts and officials on both sides of the border agreed that Mexican drug cartels focused their attacks on rivals and the occasional Mexican law-enforcement official but had little incentive to target outsiders.

Recent events have begun to call that assumption into question, including the killing of a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer and the wounding of another in San Luis Potosí in February by gunmen from a drug gang.

"This is definitively an increase in the level of concern," said Jay Cope, a senior fellow at Washington's National Defense University. The incidents involving Americans make people wonder if "we are beginning to see a pattern begin to emerge now that hadn't seemed to be a pattern before," Mr. Cope said.

Last year, 107 American citizens were victims of homicide in Mexico, according to the State Department, up from 77 homicides the year before.

The warning followed the recent grisly discovery of mass graves on a ranch in the Tamaulipas county of San Fernando. The fact that there are at least a dozen graves suggests victims may have been killed in separate incidents.

Mexican authorities are pointing to a criminal gang known as Los Zetas, one of Mexico's most powerful and barbaric drug gangs, which officials say had stopped buses on state highways and kidnapped passengers.

The fact that the warning focuses on three states where Los Zetas is active suggests that gang might be the one to potentially target U.S. citizens, analysts said. In the past year, Los Zetas have come under intense pressure from rivals in the trade and Mexico's army and police forces.

"The Zetas have become so disorganized or so desperate that they could take action against U.S. citizens," said Andrew Selee, director of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, adding that the discovery of the mass graves "suggests their behavior has now passed the bounds of rational thinking, even for criminal enterprise."

Not everyone agreed. Raul Benítez, a security expert at National Autonomous University of Mexico, doubted that U.S. law enforcement agents or tourists are in danger of becoming targets for the cartels. "The narcos don't target gringos—they are too scared of U.S. intelligence services," he said.

An exodus of Americans already began last year in the business hub of Monterrey, as some executives and their families moved north to Texas or south to Mexico City. Caterpillar Inc. said last year it had relocated some 40 employees and their family members from places in Mexico, including Monterrey.

Dave Long, the pastor at the Union Church in Monterrey, said a few of his church members had expressed worry about the new consular warning. Mr. Long said the church has lost about 50 families of the congregation in the past year, the vast majority Americans leaving due to security concerns. For his part, Mr. Long said he is staying in Monterrey and takes normal precautions, like not driving late at night or to the border through neighboring Tamaulipas state. "I survived Idi Amin in Uganda, so we aren't planning to leave," he said.

In a recent survey of businesses by the American Chamber of Commerce in Mexico, 67% reported their member company felt less secure than the year before, with more than half attributing the problems to organized crime groups.

This year has included some grisly slayings of Americans. In January, Nancy Davis, a 59-year-old missionary was shot in the head after being ambushed in her car near San Fernando. Her husband raced her car across a border bridge against traffic into Texas, where she later died.

And last year David Hartley, an American riding a jet ski on the Mexican side of a lake on the Texas border was abducted, his body never found. Shortly afterward, the severed head of a detective on the case was found in front of a Mexican army barracks.

Mr. Benítez said the target audience of the Warden statement could be the Mexican government. "It's a warning to the Mexican government to better control those areas," Mr. Benítez said.

—James R. Hagerty, Clare Ansberry and David Luhnow contributed to this article.

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Saturday, April 9, 2011

Another Day Another Dollar

Last-minute deal averts government shutdown

Congressional negotiators strike a deal to fund the government for the rest of the year. The agreement includes $39 billion in cuts and does not include provisions on Planned Parenthood or the Environmental Protection Agency.


By Michael A. Memoli

Congressional negotiators struck a last-minute deal to fund the government for the rest of the fiscal year, congressional leaders and the White House said late Friday, averting a threatened shutdown.

The House and Senate are expected to approve a five-day stopgap measure to keep the government running until the final details of the agreement can be worked out.

Talks continued deep into the evening until, finally, House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) met with his caucus to outline the details of the proposed compromise, one in which Republicans succeeded in securing $39 billion in cuts from current spending levels.

The GOP avoided a shutdown that many Republicans feared would damage the party politically in the eyes of the American public, one that would have resulted in the furloughs of 800,000 federal workers, the closing of national parks, and the disruption of many government services.

Democrats could take solace that none of the Republican House's proposed policy provisions, including one to defund Planned Parenthood that consumed much of the attention of the final day of negotiations, along with riders that would have limited the power of the Environmental Protection Agency, were included in the final package.


Appearing briefly before reporters to announce the deal, Boehner said a final vote would take place next week.

"This has been a lot of discussion and a long fight," Boehner said. "We fought to keep government spending down." He did not take questions.

Moments later, President Obama hailed the tentative agreement from the Blue Room of the White House.

"Americans of different beliefs came together again," he said, the Washington Monument visible behind him. "The government will be open for business."

As part of the accord, the Senate will hold standalone votes on the Planned Parenthood provision as well as a measure that would defund President Obama's healthcare initiative. Neither vote is likely to pass.

The possible deal comes after a day of private negotiations and public posturing over how and how much the federal government should spend for the rest of the fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.

Both sides said they wanted to avoid a government shutdown. On the floors of the House and Senate and before television cameras throughout the Capitol, members of Congress expressed deep regret over a looming shutdown while pointing fingers across the aisle.

Congressional leaders had shuttled between the Capitol and the White House all week, but Obama did not take part in direct talks on Friday. He had canceled a planned trip to Indiana to discuss energy, and also a planned weekend getaway with his family to Williamsburg, Va.




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