US Suspends Constitution in Permanent World War on Terror

Two disturbing developments have occurred in the last couple of days that have gone relatively unnoticed compared to the recent IRS, AP, and Benghazi scandals.

First, the senate is debating an expansion of the already broad powers of the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) so the U.S. can essentially engage any area in the world in the war on terror, including America. Which brings us to the second development: the Pentagon has recently granted itself police powers on American soil.

Assistant Secretary of Defense Michael Sheehan told Congress yesterday that the AUMF authorized the US military to operate on a worldwide battlefield from Boston to Pakistan.  Sheehan emphasized that the Administration is authorized to put boots on the ground wherever the enemy chooses to base themselves, essentially ignoring the declaration of war clause in the US Constitution.

Senator Angus King said this interpretation of the AUMF is a "nullity" to the Constitution because it ignores Congress' role to declare war.  King called it the "most astoundingly disturbing hearing" he's been to in the Senate.

THE COLLAPSE OF FIAT MONEY BY A FALLING ENERGY SUPPLY

However, faith in the dollar is waning as debts, derivatives and dishonesty plague the financial system.  Most analysts (including many in the precious metal camp) are wasting time debating over the mere symptoms and not the disease itself.We must remember, debts are nothing more than “Energy IOU’s.”  To pay back a debt, energy has to be burned so the market can generate goods and services.  Thus, this allows for  growth to continue which provides a surplus of wealth enabling the repayment of debts.The problem the world is facing, is not the huge amount of derivatives or debts, but the availability and affordability of its future energy supply. Actually, the world has not been able to afford the energy that it has been consuming for quite some time now.  Basically, the world (especially the U.S.) cannot not afford its way of life, so it has created a system of debts and derivatives to cover up and mask the problems.

The collapse of the dollar is already taking place.  It has more to do with energy… than most realize.

Marx and Lenin as the New Go-To Economists

In the Time Between Crises

by ROB URIE

The working premise of politicians and economists in the ‘developed’ world of the West is a basic economic stability has been achieved by way of the depth and breadth of the political-economic institutions created over the last 75 years. The storyline coming out of Washington, London and Brussels is of degrees of economic ‘recovery,’ if halting, from the Great Recession. But missing are the institutions on which stability was based. They were removed in recent decades in favor of ‘market’ based reforms. What remains are institutions—the political establishment and the Federal Reserve, that support and foster the worst excesses of unfettered capitalism. This suggests periods of economic ‘recovery’ are now whatever lies between the periodic crises endemic to capitalism. To be clear, this isn’t a forecast. It is more nearly a look at history with and without the institutions of ‘managed’ capitalism to infer likely outcomes.

Latin Without Cicero

by Fred Reed

Ouch! Due to having someone look up a photo for me, I managed to put a French bridge in this column as Mexican. This probably shows that even if Latins don't have low IQs, I do. Apologies.

The Forbidden History of Smuggling

by Paul Rosenberg

Smuggling has been one of the most common economic activities of all time, yet it is all but absent from the historical record. Smuggling has fed the poor and provided a half-decent living to the workers of the world when they faced no other choice but grinding poverty. It was the one way to get affordable goods.

Smuggling was the one and only ‘discount store’ at nearly every place and in every period of history. It made life bearable. One of the very few historians to acknowledge smuggling writes this:

“Smugglers and their customers probably outnumber legal traders in many societies around the world; this is nothing new, they always have.”

Gold And Silver - The True Story Is About Time. Be Prepared.

We are going to start off with one of the most eye-popping pictures of just one central bank, the privately owned corporate Federal Reserve, and its purported gold holding.

Occasionally, we drop a bit of history that most people either ignore  or simply do not believe, but this one cannot be conveniently shunted aside. One of the provisions in the FEDERAL Constitution, the 14th Amendment, [the original,

organic Constitution had only 10 provisions, aka The Bill Of Rights], a hornet's nest foran unsuspecting public, we our focus in on the one germane to the graph below. tates, authorized by law, including 

Guest Post: The Great "American" Divide

We have often spoken of the disconnect between Wall Street and Main Street.   While asset prices are inflated by continued interventions of monetary policy from the Federal Reserve, boosting Wall Street profits and widening the wealth gap between the top 20% of Americans and the rest, "Main Street" continues to suffer a from a rising cost of living and falling wage growth. "How long can the disconnect last between Wall Street and Main Street?" There is no clear answer for that as consumers have shown a willingness to draw down savings rates to historically low levels while quickly returning to cheap credit forgetting the disaster that it caused them not so long ago.  However, in reality, when you have a family to feed, clothe and house - it really doesn't matter what is logical, but what is necessary, regardless of the consequences down the road.  Of course, for many American's today, the only real difference between now and the "bread lines" of the 30's is that the "bread" is delivered in the mail rather than at the "soup kitchen" on the corner.

The “Chumps ‘R Us” Club

Are you one of those people that believes US Government (USG) narratives about anything and everything because the you think the USG is there to help you and would never lie?

If so, please stop reading this article right now and move along. Without realizing it you are a satisfied card-carrying member of the “Chumps R Us Club” and at present have a completely closed and cloned mind.

05/17/2013

The Trick To Suppressing Revolution: Keeping Debt/Tax Serfdom Bearable

The 30 million whose labor funds the parasitic status quo don't have to rebel; they simply have to stop going to work, stop starting enterprises, stop being productive.

 

Parasites must balance their drive to maximize what they extract from their host with the risk of losing everything by killing their host. This is the dilemma of the parasitic partnership of the central state and financial Elites everywhere: to extract the maximum possible in debt payments and taxes without sparking rebellion and revolution.

 

I have often commented on the current class structure, which paradoxically unites the interests of the top 1/5% of 1% and their political-class toadies and the bottom 50% who are drawing transfer payments/benefits from the state: both support the status quo because both receive direct benefits from it.

 

The 20% who pay most of the tax and service much of the debt are in the middle, a political minority of debt/tax serfs who finance the status quo, i.e. cartel-crony capitalism owned and operated by the financial and political Elites:

What TARP Boss Neil Barofsky Told Me Yesterday Should Shock You

by Bill Bonner

The financial news is getting boring. The Dow goes only one way – up. But gold fell below $1,400 per ounce yesterday.

Rather than trying to figure it out, yesterday evening we drove down to Zombietown. A friend in Washington had promised to introduce us to Neil Barofsky, inspector general of the TARP program.

You remember TARP? It was the feds' $700 billion program to rescue the US economy from a correction. Neil Barofsky was in charge of it. So we decided to go down and ask him how it turned out...

Meanwhile, in yesterday's International Herald Tribune was a small note: "Economists agree that spending cuts and tax increases have slowed the US recovery."

Readers will recognize this as the usual claptrap.

Government spending does not bring a genuine "recovery."

Higher Numbers of Americans Take Their Lives than During the Depths of the Great Depression

Suicide rates are tied to the economy.

The Boston Globe reported in 2011:

A new report issued today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds that the overall suicide rate rises and falls with the state of the economy — dating all the way back to the Great Depression.

The report, published in the American Journal of Public Health, found that suicide rates increased in times of economic crisis: the Great Depression (1929-1933), the end of the New Deal (1937-1938), the Oil Crisis (1973-1975), and the Double-Dip Recession (1980-1982). Those rates tended to fall during strong economic times — with fast growth and low unemployment — like right after World War II and during the 1990s.

Shock: CFR Floats Neo-Bretton Woods to Create a New Monetary System

According to the economic history books, the one great conference that resolved [global economic] tension – for a quarter century – was "Bretton Woods," a convocation of 44 countries in the White Mountains of New Hampshire less than a month after D-Day and the beginning of the end for the axis powers in World War II. What would the post-war world economy look like? That was the question in July of 1944. The answers were a loosely dollar-based world currency regime, the International Monetary Fund and what was to become the World Bank. So, do we need another Bretton Woods today? Benn Steil, editor of the scholarly journal "International Finance," has written a book that ponders this and other questions: "The Battle of Bretton Woods: John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order." Paul Volcker has called it "full of lessons relevant today." Alan Greenspan said it's "a must-read work of economic and diplomatic history" and The New York Times wrote that "it should become the gold standard on its topic." – PBS

Why is SA importing tons of gold from the US?

US Trade data shows billions of dollars of unwrought gold coming into SA.

PRETORIA: South Africa, by nature a big exporter of commodities, has received two very big shipments of unwrought gold from the US in the last nine months. Unwrought gold is impure gold which needs further processing, mainly refining, before it can be used for manufacture of other articles.In a story by the digital news outlet Quartz, data from the US Census Bureau was analysed and showed that the trade balance of South Africa with the United States has changed drastically in the last couple of months. This data was verified by Moneyweb.According to the US Bureau, South Africa had a $110m trade surplus with the US in March 2012 and a $401.5m surplus in January 2013. In March 2013 this changed to a deficit of $688.8m. (The tables below show the surplus/deficit ratio from the US perspective)

“The refinery has recently formed an alliance with U.S. company Dillon Gage Group Inc. to market and sell gold- and silver-minted bars in the country,” Chief Executive Officer Howard Craig said in an e-mailed response to questions yesterday.

The refinery, which is jointly owned by South African gold producers AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. (ANG), Gold Fields Ltd. (GFI), DRDGOLD Ltd. (DRD) and Harmony Gold Mining Co., plans to reduce its reliance on locally produced gold on concern that there isn’t sufficient supply and will 

05/16/2013 

Top Constitutional Experts: Obama Is Worse than Nixon

Objective Analysis: Obama Versus Nixon

In the wake of the twin scandals of the IRS targeting conservative groups and the Department of Justice spying on AP reporters, the comparisons between Obama and Nixon are everywhere.

But what do experts say?

Former New York Times general counsel James Goodale – who represented the paper during its Pentagon Papers fight with the Nixon administration – said in an interview yesterday that Obama is worse than Nixon when it comes to press freedoms. And see this.

Former constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald noted last year:

We supposedly learned important lessons from the abuses of power of the Nixon administration, and then of the Bush administration: namely, that we don’t trust government officials to exercise power in the dark, with no judicial oversight, with no obligation to prove their accusations. Yet now we hear exactly this same mentality issuing from Obama, his officials and defenders to justify a  far more extreme power than either Nixon or Bush dreamed of asserting: he’s only killing The Bad Citizens, so there’s no reason to object!

The Federal Reserve Will Panic and Climb Even Higher

By Bill Bonner

Whoa! Investors are acting like it's 2007 all over again.

USA Today has the story:

‘NEW YORK — Emboldened by soaring stock prices and record-low borrowing costs, stock investors are taking out loans against their portfolios at the fastest pace since before the Great Recession hit.

‘So-called margin debt hit $379.5 billion in March, the highest level since July 2007 when such debt hit an all-time record of $381.4 billion, according to the most recent data available compiled by the New York Stock Exchange.

‘The trend signals that investors are more comfortable with stocks and are more willing to use borrowed money to buy more securities in hopes of garnering fatter returns in a hot market that has pushed the Dow Jones industrials up more than 15% in 2013.’

Gold Demand in China Surges 20% to Record in First Quarter

By Bloomberg News

China’s gold demand jumped to a record in the first quarter as sentiment regarding the country’s economy underpinned consumption during the Lunar New Year, according to a report today by the World Gold Council.

Consumption reached 294.3 metric tons in the first three months, up 20 percent from a year earlier, the council said. Purchases of bars and coins grew at a faster pace than jewelry consumption and more than doubled the five-year quarterly average, the report said.

Global demand fell 13 percent to 963 tons in the quarter from a year earlier, the group said. Prices that rallied as much as sevenfold in the past 12 years entered a bear market last month as inflation failed to accelerate and as equities climbed on optimism that the U.S. will lead a global economic recovery.

Lions And Tigers And Terrorists, Oh My!

The debate over what actions actually constitute “terrorism,” I believe, will become one of the defining ideological battles of our era. Terrorism is not a word often used by common people to describe aberrant behaviors or dastardly deeds; however, it is used by governments around the world to label and marginalize political enemies. That is to say, it is the government that normally decides who is a “terrorist” and who is a mere “criminal,” the assertion being that one is clearly far worse than the other.

The terrorist label elicits emotional firestorms and fearful brain-quakes in the minds of the masses. It causes the ignorant and unaware to abandon principles they would normally apply to any other malicious enterprise. They begin to reason that a criminal should be afforded justice, while a terrorist should be afforded only vengeance, even though the act of branding a person a “terrorist” is often completely arbitrary. This vengeance is usually pursued by any means. Thus, the terrorist moniker becomes a rationalization for every vicious and inhuman policy of the establishment, as well as for the citizenry.

The Surveillance State: Is This the Price of Living in a ‘Free, Safe’ Society?

“If you’re not a terrorist, if you’re not a threat, prove it. This is the price you pay to live in free society right now. It’s just the way it is.”—Sergeant Ed Mullins of the New York Police Department  

Immediately following the devastating 9/11 attacks, which destroyed the illusion of invulnerability which had defined American society since the end of the Cold War, many Americans willingly ceded their rights and liberties to government officials who promised them that the feeling of absolute safety could be restored.

In the 12 years since, we have been subjected to a series of deceptions, subterfuges and scare tactics by the government, all largely aimed at amassing more power for the federal agencies and extending their control over the populace. Starting with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, continuing with the torture of detainees at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, and coming to a head with the assassination of American citizens abroad, the importing of drones and other weapons of compliance, and the rise in domestic surveillance, we have witnessed the onslaught of a full-blown crisis in government.

Still Americans have gone along with these assaults on their freedoms unquestioningly.

US dictatorship and its free fall

By Gordon Duff and Press TV 

“New information on the 2000 election, information now in the hands of top military officials in the US, conclusively proves that America’s government is in “free fall.””

In 2000, a criminal conspiracy overthrew the government of the United States through violence, threats of violence and massive fraud.

In light of what many believe to be the upcoming collapse, world war, economic meltdown, climate sabotage, global pandemics and radiation threats, key evidence has been brought forward.

The oft spoken of New World Order is now much more than conspiracy or myth. The United States is now and has been little more than a colony, to be bled dry.

It is now clearly recognized that this organization stands ready to destroy the last vestiges of human civilization in service of some indiscernible goal. Ascribing the term “reptilian” to these machinations is an insult to a viper.

05/15/2013

The European Shift PUBLIC to PRIVATE

Investment inside Europe has been shifting in very interesting ways. The pension funds have shifted their sovereign debt holdings to predominantly Germany, which now makes up about 71% of government debt holdings. We are also seeing a shift to private assets and as we illustrated at the Berlin conference, private assets in Greece looked like they would rise. Interestingly, banksNEVER get the economy right and ALWAYS lend wildly right into the highs and refuse to lend right into the lows.

Banks in Greece, have remained cautious and they have failed to support Greek businesses pretty much at all. American capital is just starting to arrive after years on the sidelines beginning the bottom picking process. The same is true in Spain, where there is good infrastructure in place and the last five years into this crisis has sent massive collapses in real estate values in particular again because of the mismanagement of banks.

Why Has $1 Billion in Gold been Shipped from New York to South Africa?

In  what may be the strangest story I have seen in a while related to the gold market, it appears $982 million worth of gold has left JFK international airport in New York to some undisclosed location in South Africa.  While it remains unclear what purpose this gold serves, it seems the most likely explanation is to fulfill demand for Krugerrands (South Africa’s popular gold bullion coin) to meet elevated demand in the face of constricted mine production.  This story is timely coming on the heels of the article I posted yesterday about how Dubai’s gold demand is running at 10x normal levels.  This is a bizarre story, so if anyone has further color I’d love to hear it.  From Quartz:

Examining US trade data, we were surprised to see that South Africa’s $402 million trade surplus with the United States in January had turned into a $689 million deficit by March. Why?

Lonmin's workers strike for second day

Production at all Lonmin's 13 shafts in South Africa was halted Tuesday as protesters demanded the closure of the NUM offices, the once dominant workers union.

Workers at platinum producer Lonmin's South African shafts continued a wildcat strike for a second day on Wednesday, raising concerns that the bitter turf war between rival unions could escalate into anarchy and violence.

Production at all Lonmin's 13 shafts was halted on Tuesday as protesters demanded the closure of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) offices at Lonmin, which said last week that the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) now represented over 70 percent of its workforce.

Stay Out of the Stock Market, We’re all Doomed!

By Bill Bonner 

Today, we interrupt our regular coverage of stock markets, morons and mush-head economics to give you a heads-up:

We may all be doomed!

Not just you...not just us...but the whole friggin' human race may soon be on the endangered species list. Boohoo! We're going extinct. So says an article in Newsweek. (More below...)Okay...so you don't care, right? After all, we all have to go sometime. But think of the poor voters with no one to lie to them...the poor stockbrokers with no suckers to call...the empty bars...the jails left idle and abandoned after their prisoners have paid for their crimes.It brings a tear to our eye. No illegal aliens to mow our lawns. No lobbyists to stab us in the back. And no one to watch reality shows. Reality will no longer exist!Just when everything was going so well, too. The Dow had climbed above 15,000. Everybody said it was going higher. The New York Times:

More Vets Join Fukushima Lawsuit

By Dr Stuart Jeanne Bramhall

Navy vets Jaime Plym and Maurice Enis marked the second anniversary of the world’s worst nuclear disaster by joining the lawsuit filed by more than 100 sailors serving on the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan immediately following the nuclear explosion in Fukushima on March 11, 2011. The Ronald Reagan was ordered to Fukushima from South Korea to provide humanitarian assistance to local residents affected by the devastating earthquake and tsunami. The sailors delivering the assistance weren’t informed until after they were irradiated that there had also been nuclear explosions at three of Fukushima’s nuclear plants.

 

Clearly the sailors should have worn protective clothing and taken potassium iodide tablets for protection against I-131, a type of radioactive iodine that causes thyroid cancer. It’s a great mystery why they didn’t. All the ship’s officers were given iodide tablets, despite experiencing significantly less radiation exposure.

05/14/2013

Guess What’s Hidden in the Immigration Bill? A National Biometric Database for Citizens
Oh just another eight hundred page “bipartisan” bill that nobody will read,  mainstream media will refuse to cover, and that will merely further destroy any remnants of freedom left in these United States.  Never forget the George Carlin quote on bipartisanship:
“Bipartisan usually means that a larger-than-usual deception is being carried out.”
From Wired:
The immigration reform measure the Senate began debating yesterday would create a national biometric database of virtually every adult in the U.S., in what privacy groups fear could be the first step to a ubiquitous national identification system.

The Path to National Identification
In my 2008 paper, “Electronic Employment Eligibility Verification: Franz Kafka’s Solution to Illegal Immigration,” I wrote about where “internal enforcement” of immigration law leads: “to a national, cradle-to-grave, biometric tracking system.” More recently, I wrote “Internal Enforcement, E-Verify, and the Road to a National ID” in the Cato Journal. The “Gang of Eight” immigration proposal includes a large step on that path to national identification.
National ID provisions in the 2007 immigration bill were arguably its downfall. Scrapping the national ID provisions in the current bill would improve it, allowing our country to adopt more sensible immigration policies without suffering a costly attack on American citizens’ liberties.
Creating the Stasi American
Wendy McElroy]
The Palm Beach, Florida police program is the first of its kind in America. The Community Partners Against Terrorism (CPAT) initiative sprang out of the half-billion dollars dropped into Urban Area Security grants by the Department of Homeland Security. CPAT's founder Sheriff Ric Bradshaw explains the purpose of the new police hot line that solicits anonymous tips: “We want people to call us if the guy down the street says he hates the government, hates the mayor, and he’s gonna shoot him. What does it hurt to have somebody knock on a door and ask, ‘Hey, is everything OK?’” Bradshaw wants to know who mutters against “the system” and who hangs a “Don't Tread on Me” banner on a bedroom wall. A video on his website urges local citizens to report on suspicious activity such as the photographing of a bridge