Category: Uncategorized

Central America: World’s Most Dangerous Place Fights Back

Larry Luxner

Washington Diplomat, January 2, 2012

EXTRACT:

Earlier this year, Gen. Douglas Fraser, chief of the U.S. Southern Command in Miami, declared that “the northern triangle of Central America — Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras — has become probably the deadliest zone in the world outside of active war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota:  A very well developed overview.  The US Government, “in our name,” has abused Central and South America–and disgraced us all in Haiti–by failing to apply intelligence with integrity.  The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) has been created to push Canada and the USA away.  Obama learned nothing from Hugo Chavez handing him Open Veins of Latin America (see also Savage Capitalism).  We do not have a government that represents We the People–we have a government that exists solely to enrich elected members of the two-party tyranny in passing, while transferring public wealth to the private 1%.  This corrupt bi-opoly has “lost” South America and failed to create a Western Hemisphere that is at peace and prosperous.  Now it turns its attention to Asia.  This is criminal insanity.

Various media pieces on defense.

Gutting defense

Obama to shrink armed forces

The President's Risky Defense Strategy

President Obama’s defense strategy rests on shaky assumptions

Obama military strategy: Is it bipartisan enough?

U.S. right to focus on Asia

The battle for the Pacific will reshape the world

Military fighting force strategy set, but what will it mean?

Phi Beta Iota:  4% of the force (the infantry) takes 80% of the casualties and receives 1% of the budget.  This FACT alone gives the lie to all of the above pontifications.  Both the US Government and the US media are inept and misrepresenting reality to the American people.  99% of the Pentagon budget is fraud, waste, and abuse–the policy is based on ideology rather than reality; acquisition is broken–we simply transfer money from the taxpayer to the corporations without thinking about it; and operations are mostly theater.  We do not have a strategy–we have a collection of criminally insane people posturing for the public and getting away with it.  For those who lived through the same thing in the 1970's, remember the movie King of Hearts?  There are only two candidates that are both informed and honest on this matter:  Ron Paul and Robert Steele.

See Also:

Chuck Spinney: Bin Laden, Perpetual War, Total Cost + Perpetual War RECAP

Chuck Spinney: Israel To Bomb Iran Soon + RECAP

DefDog: Defense Contractors Start the Big Lie Again–Jobs PLUS Winslow Wheeler Defense Budget Facts RECAP

DefDog: Over-Stating China – Close Down PACOM + RECAP

Defense Science Board to DoD: Get Brain + RECAP

Dr. Russell Ackoff on IC and DoD + Design RECAP

G.I. Wilson: Killer Drones, Moral Disengagement, + War Crimes RECAP

Marcus Aurelius: SecDef to McCain on Sequester + RECAP on DoD Fraud, Waste, & Abuse

Marcus Aurelius: US at Permanent “War” + War RECAP

Reference: American Soft Power is Vanishing + RECAP

Reference: Cutting the Defense Budget + RECAP

Reference: Invisible Empire New World Order DVD + RECAP

Reference: On WikiLeaks and Government Secrecy + RECAP on Secrecy as Fraud, Waste, & Abuse

Robert Steele: Cutting the US Military Budget – and Firing the Civilian and Uniformed “Leaders” Betraying the Public Trust + RECAP

Robert Steele: Global Trends 2030 – Gaps + RECAP

Search: cost of corruption + Corruption RECAP

USA National Military Strategy 2011 + RECAP

December Payroll Jobs Report

The following report is based on the work of statistician John Williams of shadowstats.com.

Today’s (Friday, January 6) payroll jobs report of 200,000 new jobs in December is overstated by at least 82,000 jobs. As approximately 130,000 new jobs are needed each month to stay even with population growth, the December job figures actually indicate that the US economy fell another 12,000 jobs behind.

Forty-two thousand of the reported jobs are the result of a glitch in the BLS seasonal adjustment model that produces a false jump in December “couriers and messengers” jobs.

Forty thousand of the jobs result from the “birth/death” model that BLS uses to estimate the net effect of unreported jobs lost from business closures and jobs gained from new start-ups. The model is structured to represent normal times. During the bottom bouncing of this protracted downturn, the model over-estimates new jobs from start-ups and under-estimates job losses from business failures.

The official unemployment rates (U3 and U6) no longer measure all of the unemployed. The Clinton administration ceased counting as unemployed workers who had given up looking for a job for one year or longer. No discouraged workers are included in the widely reported U3 measure. The U6 measure includes workers who have been discouraged for less than one year.

In other words, the longer an economy is in the doldrums, the less the official unemployment rates are reliable measures of the extent of unemployment. The unemployment rate in December as measured by U3 is 8.5%; as measured by U6 which includes short-term discouraged workers (less than one year) is 15.2%. John Williams’ measure which includes the long-term unemployed is 22.4%.

In other words, the real unemployment rate is 2.6 times the widely reported U3 rate, which is the rate emphasized by policymakers and the financial press.

The US government has further distanced itself from the American constitution, which will eventually lead to a full-blown ‘American Spring,' an Occupy organizer tells Press TV.

Interview with Tighe Barry, an organizer of the Freedom Plaza Occupation

EXTRACT:

Press TV: Tighe Barry, Sara Flounders pointed quite well that many movements are taking place in the United states as opposed to the two party system here.

Why hasn't there been a movement strong enough to have taken the lead- I know the Occupy protest movements are leaderless- but isn't this a perfect opportunity for there to be a third party representing the 99 percent?

Barry: Well, that's always a possibility. There could come out of this a third party. But let's be clear- our electoral system is bankrupt. The Obama administration stacked up a billion dollars to run their race. The Republicans have stalked up a billion dollars on their side, so it's going to be very difficult.

Full article and video.

Part A:

Nonfarm Payroll +200,000 ; Labor Force Drops Another 50,000 ; Those Not in Labor Force Rises by 194,000 ; Unemployment Rate 8.5%; Notes from Trim Tabs on the BLS Report

Part B:

Hello Mish

On today's labor report: Note how the labor force has flat lined for four years even though population growth has averaged 1.5 million for the past 55 years. From 1993 to 2007 population growth was 1.7 million per year!

Thus, the labor force should not suddenly turn flat since retirements do not even come close to explaining the chart. Yet, suddenly the work force has just been frozen in time although the population continues on the same upward trend.

The work force is literally one million smaller than during Bush's last year in office. This is statistically impossible, at least judging from historic trends.

We also are still 5.6 million people below the employment number of the peak year in 2007. So, practically speaking we have approximately 11.6 million more people unemployed than in 2007.

If we add the additional 6 million that should be counted as available for the labor force, the unemployment number at the U-3 level surges past 11% as you have said numerous times.

Tim

Jack Abramoff critiques OWS, Republicans’ media exposure in Yahoo News interview

By Rachel Rose Hartman

The Ticket, 4 January 2012

EXTRACT:

Abramoff says that since his release, he's been in touch with some of Occupy's “sensible” leaders, as he calls them, via Twitter and other channels of communication.

But Abramoff, once a major conservative Republican figure in Washington, hasn't switched party allegiances. In fact, he said he's pretty certain Occupy Wall Street has no future without political involvement.

“I think the response is ‘while we're revolutionary, we're not in the power structure,' ” Abramoff said of OWS supporters. “…Well, then, in that case, law enforcement is going to come and clear you out and the elected officials will have no fealty to you.”

Read full article (includes VIDEO)

Have the Super-Rich Seceded from the United States?

The Joke is on the Rest of Us

by MIKE LOFGREN

EXTRACT:

There have been hundreds of books about globalization and how it would break down borders. But I am unaware of a well-developed theory from that time about how the super-rich and the corporations they run would secede from the nation state.

I do not mean secession in terms of physical withdrawal from the territory of the state, although that happens occasionally. It means a withdrawal into enclaves, a sort of internal immigration, whereby the rich disconnect themselves from the civic life of the nation and from any concern about its well-being except as a place to extract loot. Our plutocracy now lives like the British in colonial India: in the place and ruling it, but not of it.

Read full article.