Link: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1159159.html

Nearly 300 members of Congress have signed on to a declaration reaffirming their commitment to "the unbreakable bond that exists between [U.S.] and the State of Israel", in a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The letter was sent in the wake of the severe recent tensions between Israel and the U.S. over the prior's decision to construct more than 1,600 new housing units in East Jerusalem, a project it announced during U.S. Vice President Joe Biden's visit to the region. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took advantage of his trip to the United States this week to try to mend the rift with the Obama administration, but he was greeted with cold welcome by the White House. Netanyahu also met during his visit with members of Congress, who welcomed him with significantly more warmth. The letter from Congress expresses its "deep concern" over the U.S.-Israel crisis, and emphasizes that lawmakers had received assurances from Netanyahu that the events leading up to the recent tensions would not be repeated.

Link: http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=633&Itemid=1

Margot McDowell is a sail maker and seamstress in Anacortes, Washington. She has a counterpart here and there in the region, such as a woman in Port Townsend and a woman in Bellingham. Considering the number of sailboats and ongoing demand for more sails and sail repair, these sail makers barely comprise a local industry. This is because the great majority of sails are made in Taiwan -- made out of Dacron, a petroleum product. Margot is anticipating retirement in a few years, but she works alone, in a large sail loft that formerly was a church. She has no apprentice or assistant. When she leaves the business, her customer base will have to look to other islands and towns, possibly encountering less experience or higher prices. For corporate globalists, obtaining all sails and even sail repairs from across the Pacific is fine and dandy. Tradition, local talent and community resilience have almost no value in Free Market ideology. When the few who think about the energy-poor tomorrow to come -- after the last spasms of petroleum-fed gluttony -- wonder about maintaining a modicum of trade, substitutes for petroleum are discussed. Many practices will be ending abruptly. The illogical shipping of raw logs from the Pacific Northwest to Asia, where wood is finished and shipped back to the U.S. at value-added consumer prices, is a prime example. But there is good reason to keep using certain petroleum-based products well into the future even when they are no longer manufactured:

Link: http://www.geopoliticalmonitor.com/billionaires-soar-with-economic-crisis-1

Vladimir Lisin with $15.8 billion

Summary: The current global financial and economic crisis confirms that during economic upheavals the rich get richer and the poor become more destitute. Analysis: On Thursday, Forbes Magazine carried an updated list of the world's wealthiest people. As of late 2009, the number of billionaires soared from 793 to 1,011 and their total fortunes from $2.4 trillion to $3.6 trillion. The number of Russian billionaires almost doubled, from 32 to 62. The list's authors believe that an increase in the number of wealthy people highlights the end of the recession, but it may also signal the appearance of new bubbles in the economy. Mexican telecommunications king Carlos Slim Helu opens the list with $53.5 billion. He is followed by last year's leader, Microsoft founder Bill Gates with $53 billion and American investor, businessman, and philanthropist Warren Buffet with $47 billion.

Link: http://www.asianews.it/view4print.php?l=en&art=17781

By the end of 2010, the US Treasury will have to refinance US$ 2 trillion in short-term debt, plus additional deficit spending for this year, estimated to be around US$ 1.5 trillion (US$ 1.6 trillion today two months after the original article was published). Together, the US Treasury will need to borrow US$ 3.5 trillion (US$ 3.6 according to this writer) in just one year. In 1999, two well-known economists—Alan Greenspan and Pablo Guidotti—published a formula in an academic paper. Kept secret for a long time, it is designed to predict with precision when a country’s public debt will lead it to be insolvent. Called the Greenspan-Guidotti rule, it says that to avoid a default, countries should maintain hard currency reserves equal to at least 100 per cent of their short-term foreign debt maturities. According to the author, the United States holds 8,133.5 metric tonnes of gold (the world's largest holder). At November 2009 dollar values, that is about U$ 300 billion.[5] The US strategic petroleum reserve shows a current total position of 725 million barrels. At current dollar prices, that is roughly US$ 58 billion worth of oil. According to the IMF, the US has US$ 136 billion in foreign currency reserves. Altogether, that is some US$ 500 billion in reserves (US$ 455.5 billion according to AsiaNews). Foreigners hold 44 per cent of US$ two trillion short-term US debt; that is US$ 880 billion. Total domestic savings in the United States are only around US$ 600 billion annually. If the United States needs to sell US$ 3.5 trillion (or US$ 3.6 trillion) in Treasury bills, and all domestic savings combined are put into US Treasury debt, the United States will still fall short by nearly US$ 3 trillion. Where is the rest of the money going to come from?

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7pCaK0aASE&feature=PlayList&p=6B738A9C3006D23E&index=0&playnext=1

When you are denied health insurance Sometimes even healthy people can't get a company to sell them a policy. Jacqueline Ruess was lying on a bed inside a hospital in Boca Raton, Florida, still woozy from anesthesia but hoping that, maybe just this once, she'd caught a break. She'd had laparoscopic surgery in order to examine a growth her gynecologist thought might be ovarian cancer. Ruess, who was 34 at the time, in the fall of 2001, feared that her two young boys, whose father died from a congenital heart defect three years earlier, were on the verge of losing her as well. "It was probably the darkest week of my life since my husband passed away," she recalls.

Link: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2009/10/04/76477/domestic-violence-as-pre-existing.html

Eight states and the District of Columbia don't have laws that specifically bar insurance companies from using domestic violence as a pre-existing condition to deny health coverage, according to a study from the National Women's Law Center. The states are Idaho, Mississippi, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota and Wyoming. The study by the nonpartisan, nonprofit center focused on individual coverage, not group coverage. Some of the states, particularly North Carolina, argue that other statutes on their books address the issue. At least one of the health care bills circulating in Congress includes a specific federal prohibition on the use of domestic violence as a pre-existing condition. Other bills include blanket bans on pre-existing conditions.

Link: http://www.blacklistednews.com/news-7546-0-8-8--.html

According to the ACLU of Maryland, a 13-year-old female student at Roberto Clemente Middle School in Germantown refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance on Jan. 27. The teacher reportedly ordered the girl out into the hallway, where he threatened the girl with detention and then sent her to the school counselor's office. The next day, when the student again refused to stand for the pledge, the teacher called school officers to remove her from the classroom and take her to the counselor's office once again. "When the student’s mother reached out to an assistant principal for help in dealing with the teacher’s abusive and improper actions, the official said her daughter should instead apologize for her 'defiance.' The student did apologize, twice," the ACLU states. The right to sit silently during the Pledge of Allegiance has been held up by the US Supreme Court, and is enshrined in Maryland state law and Mongtomery County Public Schools' own policies, reports the Washington Post.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/11/liz-cheney-keep-america-safe

Not long after the Twin Towers fell, Dick Cheney declared the death of more than two centuries of American tradition. "It will be necessary for us to be a nation of men, and not laws," he said. The then vice-president did his best to follow through by riding roughshod over the constitution and international laws by promoting torture, indefinite detention without trial and support for secretive military tribunals in which defendants were stripped of many of their rights.

Link: http://trueslant.com/allisonkilkenny/2010/03/07/normalizing-the-police-state-and-how-it-ends-with-taser-firing-drones/

Kathryn Winkfein, a 72-year-old great-grandmother, was tasered (twice) by an officer for getting shouty after she was pulled over for a traffic offense. Youtube commenters — ever the empathetic bunch — said Winkfein was “asking to be tasered.” Another said Winkfein clearly has to take some “responsibility” for being tasered. Worse than the police state itself are the people who can’t rush to defend the oppressors quickly enough. That student was asking for it. Grandma shoulda kept her mouth shut. Digby calls this the “normalizing of torture.” Not only are people unsurprised by tasering these days, but they watch it for entertainment on Youtube. This normalizing goes beyond tasering, however. It’s now normal for the state to monitor citizens, and for any kind of mass protest to be immediately restricted by the government.

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_war_economy

The concept of permanent war economy originated in 1944 with an article by Ed Sard (alias Frank Demby, Walter S. Oakes and T.N. Vance, a Trotskyist) who predicted a post-war arms race. He argued at the time that the USA would retain the character of a war economy; even in peacetime, US military expenditure would remain large, reducing the percentage of unemployed compared to the 1930s. He extended this analysis in 1950 and 1951.[1] The term was also used by the CEO of General Electric and vice-chairman of the War Production Board, Charles E. Wilson ("Electric Charlie," not to be confused with "Engine Charlie," Charles Erwin Wilson of General Motors) to refer to an institutionalized war economy —ie. a semi-command economy to be directed by corporation executives, based on military industry, and funded by government. The term refers to the economic component within the military-industrial complex (MIC) (aka. "the Iron Triangle") whereby the collusion between militarism and war profiteering are manifest as a permanently subsidised industry. Wilson warned at the close of World War II that the US must not return to a civilian economy, but must keep to a "permanent war economy."[2]

Link: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/03/a-detention-bill-you-ought-to-read-more-carefully/37116

Why is the national security community treating the "Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010," introduced by Sens. John McCain and Joseph Lieberman on Thursday as a standard proposal, as a simple response to the administration's choices in the aftermath of the Christmas Day bombing attempt? A close reading of the bill suggests it would allow the U.S. military to detain U.S. citizens without trial indefinitely in the U.S. based on suspected activity. Read the bill here, and then read the summarized points after the jump. According to the summary, the bill sets out a comprehensive policy for the detention, interrogation and trial of suspected enemy belligerents who are believed to have engaged in hostilities against the United States by requiring these individuals to be held in military custody, interrogated for their intelligence value and not provided with a Miranda warning.

Link: http://www.whale.to/b/crow.html

by Martha Rose Crow, M.S. Auto comes from the Greek reflexive pronoun while genocide comes from the Latin words gens meaning "race, tribe" and -cidere meaning "kill." (source: http://wikipedia.org) American Autogenocide is the deliberate, systematic and legal murder of American citizens by socially-engineering the die-off of populations that are “problematic” for the interests of wealth and power. Most victims prematurely die from social forces targeted at them to cause them to wear out by stress. This process is called "Weathering Away" or "Attrition By Stress." Although it has to be “legal,” autogenocide is always committed under the radar so the media won’t be compelled to report it and so the people won’t see it or understand it. More, the genocide is blamed on the victims and their deaths are hidden-attributed-to other causes rather than the primary one of autogenocide. What is different between this genocide and other genocides is that this unique genocide doesn't produce mass graves. Instead, the victims are spread over a large geographic area and buried singly, thereby hiding the body count. This keeps the deaths sanitized and homogenized. It also keeps the autogenocide surreal; thus enabling the village to deny It's existence when clues to It's existence are ambundant and abundantly transparent.

Link: http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1338.htm

New reports coming from the United States today are revealing one of the most insidious plots to have ever been perpetrated against the American people and will leave an estimated 30 million of them homeless as their wealth is transferred to the elite bankers currently ruling over them and led by President Obama. To fully understand this plot to destroy the entire middle class of the United States one must know about the banking giant behind it named Goldman Sachs, who put Obama into the American presidency for the express purpose of committing the largest robbery in the entire history of the World, and who in the riveting article about this banking giant by the Rolling Stone Magazine titled “Inside The Great American Bubble Machine” they are blamed for “engineering every major market manipulation since the Great Depression”, and which, in part, states:

Link: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/32255149/wall_streets_bailout_hustle/print

Goldman Sachs and other big banks aren't just pocketing the trillions we gave them to rescue the economy - they're re-creating the conditions for another crash. On January 21st, Lloyd Blankfein left a peculiar voicemail message on the work phones of his employees at Goldman Sachs. Fast becoming America's pre-eminent Marvel Comics supervillain, the CEO used the call to deploy his secret weapon: a pair of giant, nuclear-powered testicles. In his message, Blankfein addressed his plan to pay out gigantic year-end bonuses amid widespread controversy over Goldman's role in precipitating the global financial crisis.

Link: http://www.the-peoples-forum.com/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=17045

SIBEL EDMONDS HAS NAMED NAMES. WHY ISN’T THE MEDIA REPORTING THE STORY? SIBEL EDMONDS, a former FBI translator, claims that the following government officials have committed what amount to acts of treason. They are lawmakers Dennis Hastert, Bob Livingston, Dan Burton, Roy Blunt, Stephen Solarz and Tom Lantos, as well as at least three members of George W. Bush’s inner circle: Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz and Marc Grossman. But is Sibel Edmonds credible? “Absolutely, she’s credible,” Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) told CBS

Link: http://www.croatiantimes.com/news/General_News/2010-02-10/8836/Croat_scientist_warns_ice_age_could_start_in_five_years

A leading scientist has revealed that Europe could be just five years away from the start of a new Ice Age. "Most of Europe will be under ice, including Germany, Poland, France, Austria, Slovakia and a part of Slovenia," said the professor in an interview with the Index.hr. "Previous ice ages lasted about 70,000 years. That's a fact and the new ice age can't be avoided. "They keep warning people about global warming, but half of America no longer believes it as they keep freezing," he said. And he added: "The reality is that mankind needs to start preparing for the ice age. We are at the end of the global warming period. The ice age is to follow. The global warming period should have ended a few thousands of years ago, we should have already been in the ice age. Therefore we do not know precisely when it could start – but soon."

Link: http://www.naturalnews.com/028167_predictions_2012.html

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Ask around and you'll hear this over and over again: People are concerned about what might be coming. They're concerned about a global financial collapse, an ecological crisis and potential disruptions in the food supply. The radical weather patterns now being witnessed across the world are further indication that something's wrong with the world we thought we knew. But what's really going to happen between now and 2012? Is there any way to take an educated guess about which challenges are most likely to appear? That's what I've done here in this collection of thirty-five predictions for 2010 - 2012. Although I can't actually see the future in some sort of crystal ball, I do have a successful track record of predicting many large-scale events years before they happen.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/user/RussiaToday

From: RussiaToday | February 19, 2010 | 52,982 views A UN nuclear watchdog report suggests Iran could be developing a nuclear bomb, apparently confirming long-held suspicions in the West. But Tehran denies the claims, again insisting that its atomic intentions are peaceful. Michel Chossudovsky, who's from an independent Canadian policy research group, believes that what Iran says hardly matters, because the U.S. is planning for war... ... (more info)

Link: http://www.geopoliticalmonitor.com/afghan-heroin-the-cia

This report is about American and British involvement in the Afghan drug trade in opium, focusing on the history of such involvement, and the nature of the drug trade since the 2001 occupation of Afghanistan. Today, Afghanistan supplies “more than 90 per cent of the world's illicit opium, from which heroin is made,”[1] so who’s profiting from the trade? 2. The Anglo-Americans and the Origins of the Taliban The CIA Creates Al-Qaeda In 1998, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser, said in an interview with a French publication, Le Nouvel Observateur, that the US intervention in the Afghan-Soviet war did not begin in the 1980s, but that, “it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul,” which precipitated the Soviet invasion into Afghanistan.[2] From the Soviet invasion, a bloody ten-year war followed.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXhuaTfjTYM&feature=player_embedded

PerrrfictKats: When the Supreme Court gave Corparations the right to fund political canidates, it gave the international corparation owners {i.e. Builderburge} the right to buy out independant canidates for office, or their own people in both controlled [D] {R}parties, the people's vote will be fenced out. This will help them put their people in your State as well, to consoliate Federal control. PerrrfictKats: The Congress should end the privatization of the Federal Reserve and control it according to the Constituion, as well as invalidate and re-form the Federal goverment, for trying to control State Legislatures, and making laws intended to bankrupt the States ,businesses and middle class, our current goverment sytem is a bureaucracy, no longer Constitutionally governed, it should declared illlegal. Many of Obama's cabinet are CFR members, and they get their council the from Builderburge hierarchy.