A new website launched this week expands the information war and fires yet another salvo of missiles straight at the enemy’s stronghold! The new website will be the flagship for resistance at the University of South Carolina and will serve as a center for activists.

Chicago Citizens Reject Terror Drill Fearmongering
Just 350 out of expected 4,000 participate in bio-attack “processing” exercise at Sears Center Arena

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
May 14, 2008

The latest opportunity for authorities to grandstand, fearmonger and practice processing citizens through a de facto internment camp fell flat on its face yesterday after just 350 out of an expected 4,000 turned up to participate in a mock terror drill at Chicago’s Sears Center Arena.

“An elaborate public-health drill Tuesday that organizers had hoped would use thousands of volunteers to help test the Chicago area’s response to a possible bioterrorism attack instead drew fewer than 350 people - and one beleaguered Cook County Board president,” reports the Chicago Tribune.

“The exercise, estimated to cost $80,000, was mandated and funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which has called for health departments nationwide to coordinate drills since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.”

Authorities practiced processing citizens through a de facto internment camp and giving them mandatory pharmaceutical products.

Perhaps the people of Chicago’s lack of enthusiasm for the drill can be explained by them waking up to the fact that these exercises are nothing more than an excuse for fat enforcers to practice shoving people around in internment camps while the local TV news displays images of people being rounded up and processed by men with big guns - all part of the conditioning for an attack we are constantly assured is “inevitable.”

Or maybe it was because the only “terrorists” found in Chicago were a group out of Miami that supposedly planned to “wage a full ground war against the United States,” but who actually turned out to be “seven dipshits living in a warehouse,” as The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart described them.

As in every single case we have studied, the men supposedly terrorists turned out to be a semi-retarded street gang that were provocateured by the FBI agents into spewing violent rhetoric yet barely had the capacity to make a cheese sandwich, never mind “wage full ground war.”

As the Miami New Times newspaper described it, the “ragtag group couldn’t wage a ground war on a jar of peppercorns.” The whole case descended into a farce as judges repeatedly declared a mistrial while the government tried to save face.

The fact that there terrorism is an over-hyped, staged hysteria is a moot point for government minions that get off on pathetic power trips and bossing people around under the pretext that they are the heroes saving the day.

As is the fact that the only bio-terror attacks against U.S. citizens in America were run by the U.S. military-industrial complex itself - the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis experiments, nerve-gassing unsuspecting sailors in Project SHAD, and even the 2001 anthrax attack which was traced directly back to Fort Detrick, Maryland.

In addition, according to the Miami Herald, “The United States held open-air biological and chemical weapons tests in at least four states - Maryland, Florida, Alaska and Hawaii - during the 1960s,” during which they used artillery shells and bombs filled with nerve agents such as sarin and VX.

And in September 2000, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz helped co-author the PNAC document Rebuilding America’s Defenses which stated, “Advanced forms of biological warfare that can target specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically-useful tool.”

Given that history, preparing for a bioweapons release on behalf of invisible al-Qaeda agents like our warehouse friends seems like a waste of time when the real threat has always been from the inside.

Unnecessary Wars: How Empires Fall

PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
Counterpunch
Tuesday, May 13, 2008

In a new book that will infuriate the fake conservatives who inhabit the Republican party, Patrick J. Buchanan documents how British self-righteousness, delusion and hubris destroyed both the British Empire and Western ascendancy and two unnecessary wars launched by a small cabal of criminals that ruled Britain.

Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War shows that the two world wars that destroyed European civilization began when England declared war on Germany, thus dragging in the Empire, Commonwealth and the United States. This was a strategic blunder unparalleled in history. Mighty Britain emerged from World War II as an American dependency.

The Americans quickly adopted Churchill’s criminal policy of attacking civilians, culminating in the outrageous use of nuclear weapons against two Japanese civilian targets, the killing of Vietnamese civilians, and the ongoing slaughter of Afghan and Iraqi civilians.

A popular American myth is that “the greatest generation” saved the world from Nazi tyranny. As Buchanan points out, the fact of the matter is that the Normandy invasion in June 1944 played little, if any, role in Germany’s defeat. By the end of 1942 Hitler had lost World War II in Stalingrad, long before any American troops appeared on the scene. What the Normandy invasion achieved 18 months later was to keep the Red Army from over-running all of Europe.

Although Buchanan’s book is about how the British destroyed themselves, Buchanan is clearly thinking about America. In the closing pages Buchanan shows how the Bush Regime has broken from the sound policy of President Reagan and is replicating the British folly of self-destruction. “There is hardly a blunder of the British Empire we have not replicated,” laments Buchanan.

The distinct American hubris that we are “the indispensable nation” and the braggadocio that we are an “omnipower” has us overcommitted in alliances that we cannot fulfill. Despite 25% of the Iraqi population killed, injured or displaced, the “world’s superpower” cannot even control Baghdad. To deal with the pointless ground invasion of Afghanistan, we have had to sucker our NATO allies into a conflict that is no concern of theirs. With the military overextended, the economy faltering and a currency collapsing, the cabal of criminals that rules America still hopes to attack Iran, Syria and drive Hezbollah from Lebanon. Meanwhile, the policymakers in think-tanks are busy at work drawing up plans detailing how the US is going to check China and prevent her emergence as a power beyond US control. John McCain has boasted that he will challenge Russia and bring Putin to heel.

God help us.

The world’s greatest debtor is going to take on two superpowers with the largest trade surpluses. According to the World Factbook, an annual publication of the CIA, Russia’s 2007 current account surplus is $465 billion and China’s is $363 billion. In contrast, the US current account deficit is $987 billion. By any numbers, the US is the world’s greatest credit risk. The “mighty” US relies on foreigners to finance its consumption, its wars, and in fact the daily operation of its government.

When Buchanan looks at the gaggle of crooks that comprise America’s ruling class, he despairs.

In truth, American power is already broken, and the country is already lost.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review.

Housing Predictor: Economy on the Edge of Depression

PR-USA.net
Tuesday, March 18, 2008

TrendPointers Investment Sentiment Signals indicate that reality and psychology have finally met and embraced one anotther. Truly negative sentiment is at an all-time high in the media.

We track investment and economic sentiment in three major media sources, but the business media is the one we watch most. The gurus may be early, the mass media are usually too late, but once the trend becomes apparent in the business media its time to think about some actions. Now, all three media sentiment trends are definitely negative and positive views have nearly disappeared.

- Guru media: Positive Sentiment 5% vs. Negative 43%

- Business media: Positive 10% vs. Negative 45%

- Mass media: Positive 13% vs. Negative 34%

TrendPointers’ Sentiment Signals has reported the predominately negative/uncertain mood since April of 2007, it took a turn for the worse in the fall of 2007, and the reality has now caught up with the news. 90% of the business media sentiment is at best uncertain or convinced that the economy is in serious trouble.

The long feared collapse of the U.S. housing market and the sub-prime crunch is real - oil is well over $100 a barrel, the continuing fall of the dollar and employment woes loom. There is little consensus about how the “rebates” will help. There is little agreement about what could support a genuine rebound. Historical evidence is often cited regarding the length of recessions, but many are now concerned about what appears to be a “perfect storm” of economic troubles emerging, perhaps on the verge of triggering a Second Great Depression.

Sentiment Signals is a proprietary method for interpreting the content of public news with regard to the message, advice, warnings and other aspects of “sentiment.” The cumulative flow and impact of media sentiment influences decisions. TrendPointers captures the sentiment shifts first.

IMF chief says contagion risk ‘very high’

Reuters
Tuesday, March 18, 2008

The global economic outlook is worsening and the risk of contagion from a financial market crisis that began in the United States is now very high, IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn said on Monday.

At a news conference in Paris, he welcomed the overnight steps taken by the US central bank and said the International Monetary Fund would be cutting its growth forecasts again soon.

He also said the European Central Bank and the US Federal Reserve were managing the market liquidity troubles well, and that the situation in currency markets, while tricky, did not in his view call for central bank intervention.

“Obviously the financial markets crisis which started in the United States is now more serious and even more global than it was a few weeks ago. The risks of contagion are very high,” he said.

Greenspan: Economy worst since WWII

CNN
Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Today’s economic condition could likely be seen as “the most wrenching since the end of the second world war,” wrote former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan in the Financial Times on Monday.

The U.S. financial crisis won’t end until housing prices stabilize, but that won’t happen for months, wrote Greenspan.

The models used by the finance industry to determine risk and measure economic strength are too simple to fully account for human responses, he said. “We cannot hope to anticipate the specifics of future crises with any degree of confidence,” he wrote.

However, Greenspan said that he hoped the fallout would not take away the finance industry’s ability to regulate itself. Market flexibility and free competition are the most reliable safeguards against economic trouble, he said; the system which is supposed to guard against unanticipated losses will need to overhauled.

U.S. Futures, Global Stocks, Dollar Decline After Fed Cuts Rate

Patrick Rial
Bloomberg
Tuesday, March 18, 2008

U.S. stock-index futures, Asian and European equities and the dollar tumbled after the Federal Reserve cut its discount interest rate at an emergency meeting and JPMorgan Chase & Co. agreed to buy Bear Stearns for $2 a share. Bonds, gold and crude oil climbed.

Indexes in Europe and Asia slid, as UBS AG posted its biggest drop in more than nine years in Zurich and Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group fell to the lowest in four years. Europe’s regional benchmark lost 2.9 percent and Hong Kong’s slumped 5.2 percent on mounting concern that other financial companies will run short of cash.

The dollar sank to a record low against the euro and the Swiss franc and fell to the weakest in 12 years against the yen, helping push gold and crude oil to highs.

“This is a serious crisis,” said David Goldman, senior portfolio strategist at Asteri Capital in New York and former head of debt research at Bank of America. “Something is systemically very wrong and we’re at a very dangerous moment.”

Dollar Slump

Standard & Poor’s 500 Index futures expiring in June slumped 1.8 percent to 1,269.7 as of 10:17 AM in London. The index will slip into a bear market should it drop below 1,252.12, 20 percent lower than its Oct. 9 record and 2.3 percentage points from its current level.

Temperature Monitors Report Widescale Global Cooling

Michael Asher
Daily Tech
February 27, 2008

Twelve-month-long drop in world temperatures wipes out a century of warming.

Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all of recorded history. North America has the most snow-cover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record cold temperatures in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Australia, Iran, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina - the list goes on and on.

No more than anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA’s GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.

A compiled list of all the sources can be seen here. The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to .75 C — a value large enough to wipe out nearly all the warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year’s time.

Climatologists quoted in a past DailyTech article link the cooling to reduced solar activity which is a much larger driver of climate change than man-made greenhouse gases. The dramatic cooling seen in just 12 months time seems to bear that out. While the data doesn’t itself disprove that carbon dioxide is acting to warm the planet, it does demonstrate clearly that more powerful factors are now cooling it.

Let’s hope those factors stop fast. Cold is more damaging than heat. Historically, the warm periods such as the Medieval Climate Optimum were beneficial for civilization. Corresponding cooling events such as the Little Ice Age, though, were uniformly bad news.

Oil Spikes Above $102 As Dollar Tumbles

By Adam Schreck, AP Business Writer
February 27, 2008

NEW YORK (AP) - Crude prices spiked above $102 a barrel for the first time Wednesday ahead of a closely watched oil inventory report and as the dollar’s continued slide drove more money into energy futures.

The report by the Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration, due out later in the morning, was expected to show the nation’s crude stocks rose last week by 2.4 million barrels, marking the seventh straight week of gains. Prices could move quickly if that forecast proves far from the mark.

The dollar slumped to a new low against the euro, reaching $1.51 and pushing investors to oil and other commodities as a hedge against inflation. For the time being, investors are ignoring the plentiful supplies of oil. That helped drive the price for light, sweet crude for April delivery up as high as $102.08 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Negative economic news continued Wednesday when the Commerce Department reported that new factory orders for big-ticket manufactured goods tumbled 5.3 percent in January. The worse-than-expected drop was the indicator’s biggest decline in more than five months.

Natural gas futures lost more than 10 cents, fetching $9.097 per 1,000 cubic feet.

Key home price index shows record decline

Associated Press
February 26, 2008

NEW YORK - U.S. home prices dropped 8.9 percent in the final quarter of 2007 compared with a year ago, Standard & Poor’s said Tuesday, the steepest decline in the 20-year history of its housing index.

“We reached a somber year-end for the housing market in 2007,” said one of the index’s creators Robert Shiller. “Home prices across the nation and in most metro areas are significantly lower than where they were a year ago. Wherever you look, things look bleak.”

The S&P / Case-Shiller home price index, which includes a quarterly index, a 20-city index and a 10-city index, reflect year-over-year declines in 17 metropolitan areas with double-digit declines in eight of them.

The 10-city index also set a record annual decline of 9.8 percent in December, while the 20-city index dropped 9.1 percent.

Home prices also plunged 5.4 percent from the previous three-month period, by far the largest quarter-to-quarter decline in the index’s history. The previous record was the revised 1.8 percent drop in the third quarter of 2007.