Link: http://usawatchdog.com/bernanke-admits-printing-1-3-trillion-out-of-thin-air/

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke admitted the central bank created $1.3 trillion out of thin air to buy mortgage backed securities. This shocking admission came from the Joint Economic Committee hearing on Capital Hill last week. I was dumbfounded when I saw Bernanke shake his head in the affirmative as Representative Ron Paul said, “Well, where did you get the money? You created this money. So you did monetize debt, and that went into the banking system.” I was amazed he admitted this. I looked up the original hearing on C-Span to make sure the clip was not edited. It was not. What is even more shocking is I could not find a single mainstream news agency that covered this revelation. Congress just finished voting on the bitterly contested Obama health care bill that is supposed to cost nearly a trillion dollars over ten years. (Some contend it will be more than twice that amount.) The mainstream media doesn’t even bat an eye over the Fed creating $1.3 trillion in a little more than a year to buy worthless debt no one else will touch. I do not get it. I guess we could have asked the Fed to print up a trillion dollars to pay for health care and avoided that drawn out battle in Congress.

Link: http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1363.htm

A most chilling report circulating in the Kremlin today prepared by the Russian Academy of Medical and Technical Science for Prime Minister Putin states that a “mysterious die-off” in the United States has claimed over 2,000,000 lives since 2008 and is “more than likely” linked to a “crossover” plant disease linked to genetically modified grains and foods. According to these reports this mysterious, and as yet unidentified, lung disease responsible for this mass die-off began during the spring of 2008 in the US agricultural State of Iowa... Important to note about Iowa is that it is one of the largest corn producing regions in the World harvesting over 2 billon bushels of this valuable grain farmed on nearly 32 million acres of its farmland, over 99% of which are genetically modified varieties made by the US agricultural giant Monsanto and idententifeid by their trade names of Mon 863, insecticide-producing Mon 810, and Roundup® herbicide-absorbing NK 603. Further supporting the findings of Russian scientists was Greenpeace International, who in their report titled “MON 863: A chronicle of systematic deception” warned that the campaign to unearth and evaluate data about this most dangerous of genetically modified grains demonstrates, beyond all doubt, that MON863 is unfit for consumption.

Link: http://www.halfpasthuman.com/RadioSpecial.html

Warning: Adults ONLY! Ok, I am looking at it this way...things, meaning the times we live in, are damn strange, and getting stranger by the minute. Not only are the Powers That Be running around building 'end of the world seed vaults', they are also privately and in groups, buying up large amounts of farm lands in very high altitude places. And trying to shove 'swine flu' vaccine up everyone's snout. Then there is the issue of the rapid, and oscillating climate changes here on earth, as well as the alterations of the climates on all the other planets in the solar system. And then there are the tremendous changes in the sun over this last decade. Which continue. Then there are the various huge levels of changes to the earth itself, such as the giant earthquakes, the resulting tsunami's, and other indications of major changes such as global glacial melt. To shorten the huge list of things wrong in these strange times, suffice it to say that everything from the health of the oceans and atmosphere, to the behavior of the self appointed ruling elite is all screwed up. And that then brings us to 2012. Not simply the end of the Mayan Long Count 'calendar', but also a central focus of number codes in dozens of ancient myths that actually span the planet. the 2012 'end date' seemingly puts the capstone on our pyramid of changes noticeable in these remaining days prior to the Winter Solstice of December 21, 2012.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Klqv9t1zVww&feature=player_embedded

The United States is now recognized globally as one of the most oppressive police states on earth. And it's only getting worse. POLICE STATE 4 chronicles the sickening depths to which our republic has fallen. Veteran documentary filmmaker Alex Jones conclusively proves the existence of a secret network of FEMA camps, now being expanded nationwide. The military industrial complex is transforming our once free nation into a giant prison camp. A cashless society control grid, constructed in the name of fighting terrorism, was actually built to enslave the American people. Body scanners, sound cannons, citizen spies, staged terror and cameras on every street corner -- it's only the beginning of the New World Order's hellish plan. This film exposes how the "Continuity of Government" program has established an all powerful shadow state. Prepare to enter the secretive world of emergency dictatorship, FEMA camps and a shredded Constitution. Witness police and military savagely attacking innocent citizens as our own government unleashes false flag operations to justify its oppression. Then watch as Alex Jones takes on corrupt mercenary police and exposes mainstream media brainwashing. THE POLICE STATE ISN'T COMING, IT'S HERE!

Link: http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com:80/archives/bombshell-whistle-blower-comes-forward-with-solid-proof-the-price-of-gold-and-silver-is-being-manipulated-by-major-financial-institutions

For a long time many of us have had very serious suspicions that the prices of gold and silver were being highly manipulated. But now, thanks to the mind blowing testimony of one very brave whistle blower, the blatant manipulation of the world gold and silver markets is being blown wide open. What you are about to read below is absolutely staggering. Once the American people learn how incredibly corrupt the world financial system is, it is going to change everything. The government that we are all trusting to guard the integrity of the financial system is failing to do that job. It turns out that the Commodities Futures Trading Commission has been sitting on solid evidence that the elite banking powers have been openly and blatantly manipulating the price of gold and silver. Even though they were basically handed a "smoking gun", they have done absolutely nothing with it. But now the information has gone public and the CFTC is red-faced.

Link: http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=12541

If you want to know what life in the Third World is like, just ask Lisa Pack, an administrative assistant who works in the roads and transportation department in Jefferson County, Alabama. Pack got rudely introduced to life in post-crisis America last August, when word came down that she and 1,000 of her fellow public employees would have to take a little unpaid vacation for a while. The county, it turned out, was more than $5 billion in debt — meaning that courthouses, jails and sheriff's precincts had to be closed so that Wall Street banks could be paid. As public services in and around Birmingham were stripped to the bone, Pack struggled to support her family on a weekly unemployment check of $260. Nearly a fourth of that went to pay for her health insurance, which the county no longer covered. She also fielded calls from laid-off co-workers who had it even tougher. "I'd be on the phone sometimes until two in the morning," she says. "I had to talk more than one person out of suicide. For some of the men supporting families, it was so hard — foreclosure, bankruptcy. I'd go to bed at night, and I'd be in tears." Homes stood empty, businesses were boarded up, and parts of already-blighted Birmingham began to take on the feel of a ghost town. There were also a few bills that were unique to the area — like the $64 sewer bill that Pack and her family paid each month. "Yeah, it went up about 400 percent just over the past few years," she says.

Link: http://bellaciao.org/en/spip.php?article19657

How cold and callous can we become? When, as a society and as a nation, we can undergo a massive earthquake under our very feet and before our very eyes, how can we just ignore its victims? RealtyTrac, the California-based authority on property trends and valuations, projects 4.5 million home foreclosures before the end of this year. That’s 4.5 million homes, and with four people to a household that is eighteen million people. Eighteen million men, women and children put out into the road, people who must scramble to find shelter and scramble to find new schools for their children. Last year it was 2.8 million homes or 11.2 million Americans put out into the road. In two years that is 29.2 million people just put out into the road. The corrupt banker class has made hundreds of billions of dollars in profits off this banking failure and subsequent multi trillion-dollar bailout, which in turn collapsed the U.S. economy. The planned and manipulated 'shorting' of a nation by this group of bankers has caused many millions of Americans to lose their jobs and homes. Instead of receiving punishment for looting America into collapse this privileged class of corporate thieves have all become obscenely wealthy. The situation is worse than hopeless for the American people, as Obama, their so-called president has filled his cabinet with the same bankers and corporate thieves who helped orchestrate this massive fraud against the American people and the world. Truly, this is not "a government of, by, and for the people", if it ever was. It is a government of, by, and for the banks, the military industrial complex, and the super rich ruling elite. Ordinary Americans are only slaves in twenty-first century America. They are victims and pawns to be sacrificed in a "never ending war" for power and profit.

Link: http://wanderingvets.wordpress.com/2008/09/21/177-tent-cities-rise-in-usour-dirty-little-secret/

The picture above isn’t one from a third world country. The above picture is a tent city in Reno Nevada and it is just one of the many tent cities that are springing up around the US. The result of the current economy in the US has resulted in an increase of Americans who find themselves homeless. This particular one in Reno is home for 150 homeless citizens who have become the latest statistic in the rise of homelessness in the US. While we read about the current state of ecomonic tumoil in the US, it is a rarity to actually see the results of these hard times that all Americans are facing. Well, guess what folks? Tent cities are on the rise throughout the US and will probably continue to increase as the economy worsens. Tent cities are becoming a landscape of the America of 2008.

Link: http://hiwaay.net/~becraft/mcfadden.html

"Mr. Chairman, we have in this Country one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks, hereinafter called the Fed. The Fed has cheated the Government of these United States and the people of the United States out of enough money to pay the Nation's debt. The depredations and iniquities of the Fed has cost enough money to pay the National debt several times over. "This evil institution has impoverished and ruined the people of these United States, has bankrupted itself, and has practically bankrupted our Government. It has done this through the defects of the law under which it operates, through the maladministration of that law by the Fed and through the corrupt practices of the moneyed vultures who control it. "Some people who think that the Federal Reserve Banks United States Government institutions. They are private monopolies which prey upon the people of these United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers; foreign and domestic speculators and swindlers; and rich and predatory money lender. In that dark crew of financial pirates there are those who would cut a man's throat to get a dollar out of his pocket; there are those who send money into states to buy votes to control our legislatures; there are those who maintain International propaganda for the purpose of deceiving us into granting of new concessions which will permit them to cover up their past misdeeds and set again in motion their gigantic train of crime.

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.