I just got back from a long trip to the VA so I will make this short and sweet! As usual I woke this morning to hear the nights supply of horror stories mostly fueled by Bush. Palestine is now contemplating a Declaration of Independence and a Kosovo style force to keep the peace. Thanks Bush! I went through the news and was struck that on Faux News every single person was focused on bad mouthing Obama. That means they are scared and he is a threat to their hegemony!
Every single story I turned to was an attempt to tear down Obama!
Bill Oreilley was focused on Michelle Obama! I agree with her and will go into detail in a minute.
Brit Hume was also tearing into Michelle for speaking the truth!
John Gibson was harping on Obama's sup[posed verbal missteps saying his charmed life was over!
Sean Hannity, Neil Cavutto more of the same.
Bush 41 chimed in!
McCain added his two cents going after Obama's character! I don't care what they say nothing will stop Obama unless!
First let me show you where I agree with Michelle! Barack Obama’s wife, Michelle, is under fire for leaving the impression that she hasn’t been proud of her country until now, when Democrats are beginning to rally around her husband’s campaign. Speaking in Milwaukee, Wis., on Monday, she said, “People in this country are ready for change and hungry for a different kind of politics and … for the first time in my adult life I am proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback.” Greeted with rousing applause after making the comment in Milwaukee, Obama delivered an amended version of the speech later that day in Madison, Wis.
Every single story I turned to was an attempt to tear down Obama!
Bill Oreilley was focused on Michelle Obama! I agree with her and will go into detail in a minute.
Brit Hume was also tearing into Michelle for speaking the truth!
John Gibson was harping on Obama's sup[posed verbal missteps saying his charmed life was over!
Sean Hannity, Neil Cavutto more of the same.
Bush 41 chimed in!
McCain added his two cents going after Obama's character! I don't care what they say nothing will stop Obama unless!
First let me show you where I agree with Michelle! Barack Obama’s wife, Michelle, is under fire for leaving the impression that she hasn’t been proud of her country until now, when Democrats are beginning to rally around her husband’s campaign. Speaking in Milwaukee, Wis., on Monday, she said, “People in this country are ready for change and hungry for a different kind of politics and … for the first time in my adult life I am proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback.” Greeted with rousing applause after making the comment in Milwaukee, Obama delivered an amended version of the speech later that day in Madison, Wis.
“For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country … not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change,” she said. “I have been desperate to see our country moving in that direction and just not feeling so alone in my frustration and disappointment.” Obama was born in 1964, meaning her adult life began in 1982. Critics quickly seized on the newfound national pride. “I am proud of my country,” John McCain’s wife, Cindy, said at a campaign stop in Brookfield, Wis., Tuesday. “I don’t know if you heard those words earlier but I am proud of my country! During a follow up press conference, the Arizona senator was asked if they were responding to Michelle Obama and he deferred to his wife.
McCain responded: “I just wanted to make the statement that I have and always will be proud of my country.” Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the candidate’s wife wasn’t trying to knock her country, only underscore the meaning behind her husband’s campaign. “The point is that of course Michelle is proud of her country, which is why she and Barack talk constantly about how their story wouldn’t be possible in any other nation on Earth,” she said. “What she meant is that she’s really proud at this moment because for the first time in a long time, thousands of Americans who’ve never participated in politics before are coming out in record numbers to build a grassroots movement for change.”
But conservative outlets aren’t so ready to let her off the hook. “Can it really be there has not been a moment during that time when she felt proud of her country?” reads an article in Commentary magazine. “Forget matters like the victory in the Cold War; how about only things that have made liberals proud — all the accomplishments of inclusion? How about the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1991? Or Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s elevation to the Supreme Court?”
The article then says Michelle Obama’s comments suggest “the pseudo-messianic nature of the Obama candidacy is very much a part of the way the Obama's themselves are feeling.” Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol said the comment “was sort of revealing.” “She was an adult when we won the Cold War without firing a shot. She was an adult for the last 25 years of economic progress, social progress,” he told FOX News. “I think the Democrats have to be careful … they’re running against the status quo … You have to be careful not to let that slide into a kind of indictment of America. Because I don’t think the American people think on the whole that the last 25 years of American history is a narrative of despair and nothing to be proud of.”
Democratic strategist Bob Beckel said Obama “shouldn’t have said it the way she said it” but she gets the benefit of his doubt. He added that she most likely was just referring to the grassroots movement that’s swelled to support her husband, but she needs to be more careful.“The Obama’s have to recognize they are now front-runners, and everything they say, it’s now open hunting season for people,” he said. Michelle Obama taking the heat
Democratic strategist Bob Beckel said Obama “shouldn’t have said it the way she said it” but she gets the benefit of his doubt. He added that she most likely was just referring to the grassroots movement that’s swelled to support her husband, but she needs to be more careful.“The Obama’s have to recognize they are now front-runners, and everything they say, it’s now open hunting season for people,” he said. Michelle Obama taking the heat
Faux is really threatened and running an all out campaign to bring down Obama but it will not work! He cleaned up in Wisconsin and Hawaii and only one thing can stop him if he gets past the Super Delegates. I heard reference also this morning that nothing but a speeding Bullet can stop him and it stopped me cold! I said many times that whoever is behind the Right will not allow another unifier in power to endanger them! you saw what happened to the last one! I thought it too prophetic when the Kennedy's came out in favor of Obama saying he was another President Kennedy. I became very concerned about assassination.
** That concern was heightened this morning when I heard everyone on Faux and the right trying to besmirch Obama and the Coup De Grace being the statement that only a speeding Bullet can stop him! Obama is at the moment our greatest hope to unify, save our America, and put an end to bush's mess and the promise by McCain to continue it.We must Keep Hope Alive! Barack!
12 comments:
Yeah, this new bout of witch hunting is amusing!
I responded to yor comment at my blog, clarifying that Ahmadinejad has no say on religious fatwas, he neither has the authority nor the inclination to like a religious fatwa or dislike it. Abortion in Iran is not a part of politics, it really is a matter of people's moral preference.
naj
I haven't checked my comments yet because I have been going around checking other sites so sorry, I'm doing that next! I know he has no say in a Fatwa. I just thought he would speak his mind like all our mindless idiots do. That's pretty good!
Abortion should not be part of Politics but you see the crap here. They interest themselves where they shouldn't and ignore there real work. I friggen hate it!
Check this out Jim:
Crusade of Surge and Siege: Part Two: Cages of Conquest
Manuel Valenzuela
Hear No Evil, See No Evil
Americans’ ever-enduring, catatonic sleepwalk through the Empire’s vast array of bread and circus, as always produced by the Ministry of Truth and the Department of Propaganda, better known as the corporatist media, has succeeded in the creation of an ignorant, incurious and dumbed down populace completely bereft of knowledge of what is done in its name. With no concern for or understanding of geography, cultures, history, alien societies, the outside world and of the imperial aspirations of the Empire, Americans have proved easy targets to the manipulations and deceptions of the corporatist world. Seemingly unwilling to gain knowledge of anything outside American Idol or the weekly NASCAR rat race, the soldier ants and worker bees of the Empire are content to circumvent the horrors of war and the myriad crimes against humanity committed in their name in order to maintain their beautiful minds at peace.
Indeed, the corporatist media has triumphed in completely erasing America’s two disastrous occupations of Muslim lands from the peoples’ conscious and concern, in effect shifting the ongoing debacles away from the daily reality of Americans and towards the abyss of a most cavernous memory hole. Methodically and systematically, the quagmires of Iraq and Afghanistan, with all their inconvenient truths, with all their disturbing realities, with all their corresponding death, suffering and destruction, have virtually vanished into a vacuum of nothingness, transported by the corporatist state into a clandestine and secretive reality, making of these disasters non-existent nightmares that vanish upon the waking of a new day.
This propaganda by omission, this “out of sight, out of mind” machination has virtually erased from American reality the disasters unfolding in Iraq and Afghanistan, thus guaranteeing in the public mind a complete ignorance in or understanding of a barbaric continuation to occupations stuck in the quicksand of fierce resistance and never-ending guerilla warfare. Thus, America’s aggressive wars, its imperial occupations, its crusade of surge and siege that has done so much harm to millions of people, not to mention to the moral standing of the nation, have become non-existent memories under cover of fog and haze.
To the American people, the hegemonic occupations now descending further into quagmire have become invisible creations that only surface in the rare instance that a branch of the corporate media goes off script and produces footage of death, destruction or suffering. Otherwise, the war against West Asia remains a figment of our imagination, a reality when our beautiful minds want it to be, an inconvenient truth that becomes fiction the moment we decide it is so.
As such, having been conditioned through the corporatist media’s ceaseless dehumanization propaganda to believe Arabs and Muslims sub-human enemies, having been manipulated into hating America’s new enemy and having the corporatist media erase Iraq and Afghanistan from the memory hole, the American people have developed a disturbing, almost criminal indifference for the millions of human beings dying, suffering or otherwise being affected by the Empire’s wars and occupations. To a vast majority of Americans, the malignant tumors that are Guantanamo, Bagram and Abu Ghraib, together with what they represent, are as hazy and as far removed from reality as last week’s episode of a favorite sitcom. These cesspools of immorality rarely, if ever, register in the beautiful minds of most Americans, only bothering the conscious when photos, video or whistleblowers surface to incriminate torturers, leaders and patsies. Only then are we forced to confront one of the myriad number of inconvenient truths the red, white and blue does across the globe.
When truth does not surface, however, we revert back to willful ignorance, aided by the fictions of television and the comfort of consumerism, for deep down, inside the dark recesses of our mind, we know exactly what is done in our name, though we chose, willfully, to erase it from memory, to suppress the reality of American criminality. Using denial and delusion in conjunction with conditioned brainwashing and manipulation, we have decided that crimes against humanity do not exist if those crimes are done to sub-human enemies. Thus the barbarian horde at our gates becomes undeserving of human rights and international laws protecting human beings because they do not fit our definition of human.
Thus, never do we seek to know the ugly realities of places like Guantanamo, nor how America’s gulags, with their brutal methods and tactics, will inevitably affect our way of life, or question why they exist in the first place. For us, America’s black sites are reserved for the evildoers wanting to destroy our way of life. Little do we realize, though, that our way of life is being eroded at these very same sites, one right at a time, done not by terrorists, but by those managing our descent into the breadbasket of despotism. Remaining passive, obedient, silently acquiescent and possessing the attention span of a gnat, hundreds of millions of Americans thus concern themselves only with what new toy they can add to the family collection, or what new product they can obediently purchase next, or what new reality show will entertain them the most. After all, we must preserve our “way of life”.
If Guantanamo and what it stands for does not directly affect us, if torture and perpetual suffering and dehumanizing conditions and sadistic treatment and the destruction of habeas corpus and the Bill of Rights only affects the dreaded dark skinned Arab or Muslim, then America’s beautiful minds need not concern themselves or have empathy, they need not contemplate the inflictions of wickedness on their fellow human beings, they need not realize the crimes done in their name, nor the evisceration of American morality, nor the new normal being established, nor the precedence beings set, nor the trial and error being conducted, nor the techniques being experimented and refined, nor the machinations of tyranny being perfected.
Thus, through our transcendental customs, our American “way of life,” of methodically following the exploits of celebrities dead or dying, of aimlessly producing and consuming, as always becoming hypnotized by modern day court jesters, jousters, gladiators and chariot races, as well as exhibiting idol-worshipping, messianic-like followings and tendencies over the Corporatist Party’s current crop of presidential contenders, we have chosen to ignore the plight of the innocent – for most prisoners are – in Guantanamo and Bagram and Abu Ghraib and other places of ill-repute. We have thus chosen to be good Americans, seeing no evil, hearing no evil, mistaking ashes for snow, and pretending the evil done in our name does not exist.
Reincarnation of the Habitual
To look inside one of America’s gulags is to look back at dark history, to times of brutality and primitiveness, using the tunnel of hindsight to peer at the dungeons of the Roman Empire and of the Middle Ages, with their chained and caged collections of dissidents, enemies and scapegoats, their persecuted and tortured, and their sadism and thirst for blood; it is to step back in time to days of Inquisitions and torture chambers, to eras of witch persecutions and heretic trials, of silencing threats to power and spawning a black cloud of fear and intimidation throughout society.
It is a return to days when humans had no right, to nights of barbarism, to the depravity and indecency of our mammalian past, to the possession of the human mind by the wicked demons inherent in man. Looking inside America’s gulags helps us remember that over and over, for as long as humankind has walked the plains of Earth, when authoritarians rise, as always carried high on the shoulders of fear and insecurity, morality, integrity and human rights become lost in a sea of tyranny. These institutions of immorality help us see beyond the veneer and the hypocrisy that those espousing freedom and liberty propagate, helping erase the fog of deception those claiming to be defenders of human rights engender.
America’s archipelago of gulags proves, once again, that the “western” mantra of values, modernity and morality is nothing but an empty shell built on self-adulation, delusion and echoes of ethnocentrism and exceptionalism. This hollow and cynical vociferation falls flat upon the challenge of evolving human rights, for in its claim of moral superiority, hiding behind the theoretical wonders of Judeo-Christian tradition, supposedly progressing away from the primitiveness of our past, the “western” tradition has been one of continuous mass murder, repression, tyranny, oppression, exploitation, suffering and destruction, most aimed directly at the peoples of the “south,” most directed at people not possessing the genetic mutation that turned skin color pale.
American gulags and its system of extraordinary renditions, green lighted at the very top of the food chain, proves to anyone not blinded by delusions and propaganda that America is not now and has never been morally superior to the rest of the world. From the very beginning of the republic, morality has given way to imperialism. Whether done through proxy, by puppets or by America’s own hands, control over the peoples of the world has usually involved some form of tyranny, as always dependent on the vast funding, financing, political support and training of the Empire. However, where once hidden under the veneer of democracy and freedom, under the ruthlessness of puppet dictators, America’s sordid, though clandestine, past has come to the surface thanks to the exposure of its methods and techniques, becoming an open acknowledgement of past indiscretions and present malfeasance.
From the School of the Americas, to research into psychological and physical torture at McGill University, to perfecting the art of “enhanced interrogation techniques,” to support of every tin pot dictator and junta in Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa, to the training of their thugs, enforcers and torturers, America has always possessed the wickedness of human malevolence. Its claims of being the defender of human rights is and has always been hypocritical at best and farcical at worst. Today we can see the real America at Guantanamo and its extension of gulags and torture chambers, the America the world entire has known for the last century but that Americans are just now waking up to. For today’s gulags are evolved creations of yesterday’s criminality, just as they will be the inspirations for tomorrow’s tyranny.
Entrapment
Guantanamo, with its cages and sensory deprivation and barking dogs and dehumanization and its stress positions and forced feeding and extremes of cold and hot and its isolation and its medical/psychological experimentation and its waterboarding and its darker, more sinister methods of torture yet to be exposed magnifies American tyranny and her hypocrisy, her injustice and depravity, her criminality and arrogance. It exposes, more and more, the charade that the war on terror is, how the purpose of Guantanamo is not the imprisoning of terrorists, for most there are guilty only of bad luck, persecution, retribution and being at the wrong place at the wrong time, but the methodical evisceration of the Constitution.
For Guantanamo, and its siblings, are a culmination of desperation, an attempt to rationalize the supposed existence of Arab and Muslim evil, an attempt to validate a fictional war on terror by incarcerating people falsely labeled “terrorists.” It is as much a torture center as it is a public relations and propaganda institution, a way to manipulate the American public both that Arab and Muslim terrorists exist, and that the American government is succeeding in bringing the terrorist threat to justice. It is a Hollywood-style set with its corresponding fictions and illusions of reality, a scam to convince Americans that a war that is concocted is indeed real, that it is being won.
The reality of the gulags exposes how an initial hunger for vengeance immediately after 9/11 has led to the imprisonment, suffering and torture of thousands, and how, knowing the falsity of charges and the innocence of men, America steadfastly continues shackling injustice, deciding to stage-manage the illusion of guilt as well as sacrifice the innocent to the continued myth of the so-called war on terror.
Kidnapped, traded in for money, picked up by a giant net of vengeance and imprisoned thanks to false accusations by rivals, the men at Guantanamo have become patsies in a world unconcerned for their rights. They are caged in a land of limbo, lost to the outside world, made to disappear, their lives practically an empty shell of their former selves . They are the scapegoats of American mendacity, labeled “terrorists” so that we can feel secure and protected, so that we can believe that evildoers hate us for our freedom, for our way of life. They are the poster children that grant the military-industrial complex a perpetual stream of blood money, a ceaseless parade of war, an endless flow of propaganda. They are, quite simply, the bread that gives authoritarianism sustenance, the wine that makes drunk with joy the enablers of fascism. They are, for all intents and purposes, dead men walking, ghosts without closure, phantoms forgotten by humanity.
Innocent of criminality, these individuals have been subjected to brutal and sadistic torture, as always leading to false confessions, their barbaric imprisonment and systemic dehumanization more a manifestation of American culture than of their resistance and human spirit. Many have been physically tortured, yet it is the more corrosive damage of psychological torture that has destroyed their minds, and their lives. Many will never return to normalcy, for what their minds have surely been subjected to no human brain should have to endure. Many have become the guinea pigs of psychologists and doctors experimenting with various methods of torture, trying to make torture more effective, more efficient.
Many have quietly, and conveniently, under cover of darkness or media blackout, been returned to their native countries, their innocence confirmed by their release, and by the silence of America. Forced to sign papers preventing them from speaking of their horrors, or from suing their torturers, they return a shell of their former selves, damaged beyond repair, scarred for life, forever to relive the horror they experienced in their nightmares and flashbacks. Yet many remain, shackled to American propaganda, held hostage to the illusions of the war on terror. As long as the fiction lives their guilt is assured, their imprisonment guaranteed. As long as tyrants fear persecution and imprisonment for criminality, they will live in cages. As long as they are used as the meat feeding the dogs of tyranny, they will remain encaged. As long as the authoritarian leadership seeks the continued erosion of the Constitution, and of our rights and freedoms, they will linger in perpetual purgatory, becoming the rotting carcass fed to the vultures of fascism.
Guantanamo’s cages cannot yet be opened and made empty, for to do so would be to expose the fictions, the charades, the method to the madness, the sheer immorality of the Empire. It would be to acknowledge injustice of innocence, the depravity of liberators, the criminality of leadership. Guantanamo’s gates cannot yet be closed, for the Crusade of Surge and Siege must continue, the enemy must exist, profits must remain, our rights and freedoms and liberties must be destroyed. New precedents of American legality must be established, kangaroo courts must convict, enemies must be punished, propaganda must manipulate and the innocent must be executed in order to increase leadership popularity, to refresh propaganda, to feed fear and to politicize elections.
America’s leadership is fully aware of the innocence of the vast majority of prisoners, yet cannot force itself to act against its own inhumanity. For to do so would be to admit mistakes, acknowledge criminality, condemn policies and destroy the authoritarian dream. Closing Guantanamo would expose the façade, the hall of smoke and mirrors, ending the subtleties of fear and intimidation being built around the American public. Perhaps more than anything, freeing the innocent and closing America’s torture centers would confirm the monstrosity of what America has become, destroying the foundations of a new normal being developed, maybe even shattering the bubble of manipulation cast over the population.
As long as Guantanamo remains the motives of fascists will survive, and the indifference of the American people will be assured. As long as its cages are occupied, as long as its torture rooms resonate with the screams of agony and suffering, Guantanamo will be the symbol of a new Amerika, one at war with the Arab and Muslim world, an Amerika at war with its people, and itself. As long as it remains a stain on humanity, America’s clandestine past and her immediate present will be exposed to more and more people, thereby freeing truth and knowledge, liberating the brainwashed and emancipating the manipulated.
Inside America’s gulags the future of the nation is being determined, one malevolent policy at a time, one sadistic interrogator at a time, one tortured soul at a time. It is here where our way of life is being altered, perhaps forever, not by terrorist evildoers hating us for our freedoms, but by fascism’s enablers doing the work of those domestic evildoers that hate us for our freedoms, for our way of life. In this Crusade of Surge and Siege, the Arab and Muslim victims have become a bridge of precedence set and normalcy born reaching out towards America, becoming the scapegoats and patsies granting access, and an omnipresent reach, to tyranny rising over that city on a hill once known as the United States of America.
Look at this Jim:
In a time when immigration and border security are on the minds of most Americans, the North American Development Bank (NADbank) has spent more than $2 Billion on border infrastructure enhancement projects with Mexico. NADbank was developed under the auspices of NAFTA.
Launched in January 2001, Nadbank initially looked like a good thing for the residents of SW Texas, S. Arizona, S. New Mexico and S. California. The main goal at the time was to bring the residents of these areas up to the living standards of the rest of the US.
By signing agreement after agreement with local governments throughout the Southwest United States, NADbank has developed an extensive network of wastewater treatment facilities at taxpayers expense.This seemingly good initiative quickly turned into something far more sinister, of which NADbank doesn’t want you to know about.
Immediately following the September 11th attacks on the world trade towers, Nadbank stepped up their development schedule. Agreements were being signed so fast that nobody paid any attention to the overall ideology being set in place.
The fact that these agreements included a boundary limit some 186 miles into Mexico, was slid right under the rug at a time when most Americans were still in shock over 9/11.
In December of 2001 the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) joined with NADbank on the Mexican Rio Conchos Watershed Project. This is Canada’s first appearance on the US-Mexican border infrastructure program.What does Canada have to do with US-Mexico relations?
More important, why does Mexico and Canada have anything to do with wastewater treatment projects developed to enhance the lives of US citizens?
More than $160 million was funneled into the border program during 2001, most within 6 weeks after 9/11.
In May 2002 NADbank and the Mexican company Industrial Papelera Solar (Grupo Solar) signed a US$8.59 million loan agreement for the construction of a paper recycling facility and wastewater treatment plant in Región CincoManantiales, Coahuila.
Quote:“This loan is the second one to be signed with a private company in Mexico,” commented Raúl Rodríguez, NADbank Managing Director. “It is a good indication that we are also working hard to finance a larger number of environmental infrastructure projects through private companies interested in investing in the environmental sector.”
The $20.98 million project contemplates integrating a paper production process using cardboard waste as the principal raw material instead of virgin wood resources.After this agreement with Grupo Solar the projects in Mexico accelerate rapidly into the 186 mile boundary zone. Tijuana, Sonora, Coahuila, Chihuahua, and Tamaulipus are just a few of the Mexican territories covered by these border projects.
Now is when the violence among Mexican drug cartel members and NADbank project workers escalates. Kidnappings and murder are the daily norm. Mexico soon sends in their army to curb the violence and insure progress of NADbank projects.
In October of 2002 the Multilateral Development Bank hosts the 5th annual Environmental Business Opportunities Seminar. More than 100 seminar participants from the United States, Mexico, and Canada met with representatives from the North American Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank, the U.S. Trade and Development Agency, and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.
The seminar represented an important opportunity to meet with several multilateral banks and agencies in one session to explore opportunities for business in Mexico, Latin America and Asia.
Quote:“There are extraordinary opportunities for United States companies to participate in projects and do business with the multilateral development banks,” said Holland. “Private sector economic growth and development is best facilitated in partnership between the U.S. and foreign firms. The development of emerging economies is of critical importance to both those economies and the U.S. economy.”
We are now almost completely removed from the original purpose NADbank was formed. Wastewater and treatment facility projects for US border citizens has turned into “opportunity” within Mexico.
Throughout 2003 the wastewater projects continue to mount. Water distribution and air quality projects are launched in Mexico using NADbank funding. The citizens of the SW United States continue to foot the bill for these projects under the guise of enhancing their own lives. An additional $160 million is funneled into projects during the first 9 months of 2003.
In June 2004 the North American Development Bank signed separate financing agreements with the water utilities in Mexicali and Tijuana, Baja California totalling over $30 million. Things are starting to slow down a bit as some projects near completion and new ones are set to begin.
August 2005 The State of Baja California and NADbank signed financing agreements totaling $9.3 million to continue construction of water and wastewater projects in the cities of Mexicali and Tecate. NADbank also announced the approval of grant funding to carry out studies for the development of future environmental projects in the state.
June 2006 the Board of Directors of the Border Environment Cooperation Commission (BECC) and NADbank met in San Antonio to approve the certification of eight new border infrastructure projects, and the financing of a total of 12 projects aimed at improving environmental quality in the U.S.-Mexico border region.
This was the first meeting of the newly established, single board of directors for both institutions. The role of the BECC is to assist communities and project sponsors in project planning, and to certify projects in order to be eligible for financing by NADbank.
Quote:“Today we took an important step in implementing the reform agenda agreed to by Presidents Bush and Fox in 2002. The single Board of Directors of the BECC and NADB met for the first time today. Among our decisions, we’ve approved loans today that more than double the approved lending of NADB to date” stated Board Chairman Kenneth Peel, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury for International Development Finance and Debt. “We hope our work today has put BECC and NADB on a firmer footing going forward” he added.
October 2007 $5.6 million in funding for two environmental infrastructure projects benefiting Playas de Rosarito and Tijuana is authorized by Nadbank.NADB funding consists of a US$3.04 million grant from the Border Environment Infrastructure Fund (BEIF), funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), as well as a US$1.52 million loan.
In addition, Tijuana was awarded a US$500,000 grant from NADbank’s Solid Waste Environment Program (SWEP) for the purchase of solid waste collection equipment. This project, which was certified in June, had already received a US$2.27 million loan from the Bank.
With the certification of the Rosarito project, there are now nine projects in Baja California that are receiving Bank funding. These projects represent a total investment of more than $720 million in environmental improvements with the Bank contributing $145.7 million in grants and loans.
What started out as enhancing the quality of life for the Southwest United States, has almost exclusively turned into Mexican border town infrastructure projects. Road paving, environmental projects and a vast network of what appears to be an extension of United States infrastructure, is headed into areas never thought of by the citizens with the signing of that first agreement.Kind of reminds me of what the US government has and is doing to the Native American Indians.
Incrementally, US institutions are integrating the United States and Mexico. Canada and the US are another story entirely but they are well on their way to full integration into the North American Union as well.
This is why the Bush administration will not close the border with Mexico but instead offers a “Smart Border” program, which opens the border to further integration into the Union. One thing I’ve learned over the years, “If it has smart in the title, it ain’t.”
The war on terror is obvious to most as being a front for stealing Middle East oil reserves. The North American Development Bank is only one of many fronts for the North American Union Agenda.
To date more the $2 billion has been spent on border infrastructure enhancement projects with Mexico, and the proposed border fence is still covered in red tape.
It’s time for people to understand that what we face between now and 2012 in the United States of America is more than a loss of national and cultural sovereignty. We are starring down both barrels of the fascism shotgun, on a scale never dreamed of by Adolph Hitler and his Nazi Regime.
Check this out Jim:
America’s economy risks mother of all meltdowns
By Martin Wolf
“I would tell audiences that we were facing not a bubble but a froth – lots of small, local bubbles that never grew to a scale that could threaten the health of the overall economy.” Alan Greenspan, The Age of Turbulence.
Recently, Professor Roubini’s scenarios have been dire enough to make the flesh creep. But his thinking deserves to be taken seriously. He first predicted a US recession in July 2006*. At that time, his view was extremely controversial. It is so no longer. Now he states that there is “a rising probability of a ‘catastrophic’ financial and economic outcome”**. The characteristics of this scenario are, he argues: “A vicious circle where a deep recession makes the financial losses more severe and where, in turn, large and growing financial losses and a financial meltdown make the recession even more severe.”
Prof Roubini is even fonder of lists than I am. Here are his 12 – yes, 12 – steps to financial disaster.
Step one is the worst housing recession in US history. House prices will, he says, fall by 20 to 30 per cent from their peak, which would wipe out between $4,000bn and $6,000bn in household wealth. Ten million households will end up with negative equity and so with a huge incentive to put the house keys in the post and depart for greener fields. Many more home-builders will be bankrupted.
Step two would be further losses, beyond the $250bn-$300bn now estimated, for subprime mortgages. About 60 per cent of all mortgage origination between 2005 and 2007 had “reckless or toxic features”, argues Prof Roubini. Goldman Sachs estimates mortgage losses at $400bn. But if home prices fell by more than 20 per cent, losses would be bigger. That would further impair the banks’ ability to offer credit.
Step three would be big losses on unsecured consumer debt: credit cards, auto loans, student loans and so forth. The “credit crunch” would then spread from mortgages to a wide range of consumer credit.
Step four would be the downgrading of the monoline insurers, which do not deserve the AAA rating on which their business depends. A further $150bn writedown of asset-backed securities would then ensue.
Step five would be the meltdown of the commercial property market, while step six would be bankruptcy of a large regional or national bank.
Step seven would be big losses on reckless leveraged buy-outs. Hundreds of billions of dollars of such loans are now stuck on the balance sheets of financial institutions.
Step eight would be a wave of corporate defaults. On average, US companies are in decent shape, but a “fat tail” of companies has low profitability and heavy debt. Such defaults would spread losses in “credit default swaps”, which insure such debt. The losses could be $250bn. Some insurers might go bankrupt.
Step nine would be a meltdown in the “shadow financial system”. Dealing with the distress of hedge funds, special investment vehicles and so forth will be made more difficult by the fact that they have no direct access to lending from central banks.
Step 10 would be a further collapse in stock prices. Failures of hedge funds, margin calls and shorting could lead to cascading falls in prices.
Step 11 would be a drying-up of liquidity in a range of financial markets, including interbank and money markets. Behind this would be a jump in concerns about solvency.
Step 12 would be “a vicious circle of losses, capital reduction, credit contraction, forced liquidation and fire sales of assets at below fundamental prices”.
These, then, are 12 steps to meltdown. In all, argues Prof Roubini: “Total losses in the financial system will add up to more than $1,000bn and the economic recession will become deeper more protracted and severe.” This, he suggests, is the “nightmare scenario” keeping Ben Bernanke and colleagues at the US Federal Reserve awake. It explains why, having failed to appreciate the dangers for so long, the Fed has lowered rates by 200 basis points this year. This is insurance against a financial meltdown.
Is this kind of scenario at least plausible? It is. Furthermore, we can be confident that it would, if it came to pass, end all stories about “decoupling”. If it lasts six quarters, as Prof Roubini warns, offsetting policy action in the rest of the world would be too little, too late.
Can the Fed head this danger off? In a subsequent piece, Prof Roubini gives eight reasons why it cannot***. (He really loves lists!) These are, in brief: US monetary easing is constrained by risks to the dollar and inflation; aggressive easing deals only with illiquidity, not insolvency; the monoline insurers will lose their credit ratings, with dire consequences; overall losses will be too large for sovereign wealth funds to deal with; public intervention is too small to stabilise housing losses; the Fed cannot address the problems of the shadow financial system; regulators cannot find a good middle way between transparency over losses and regulatory forbearance, both of which are needed; and, finally, the transactions-oriented financial system is itself in deep crisis.
The risks are indeed high and the ability of the authorities to deal with them more limited than most people hope. This is not to suggest that there are no ways out. Unfortunately, they are poisonous ones. In the last resort, governments resolve financial crises. This is an iron law. Rescues can occur via overt government assumption of bad debt, inflation, or both. Japan chose the first, much to the distaste of its ministry of finance. But Japan is a creditor country whose savers have complete confidence in the solvency of their government. The US, however, is a debtor. It must keep the trust of foreigners. Should it fail to do so, the inflationary solution becomes probable. This is quite enough to explain why gold costs $920 an ounce.
The connection between the bursting of the housing bubble and the fragility of the financial system has created huge dangers, for the US and the rest of the world. The US public sector is now coming to the rescue, led by the Fed. In the end, they will succeed. But the journey is likely to be wretchedly uncomfortable.
The Coming Bush Depression.
I don't believe it!!!!!!!
There is just sooooo much to be proud of in America. We flagrantly flaunt the rule of law and laugh about it. We torture people and say it's not really torture, though we have had people executed in other nations for doing the very same things. We lie and manufacture evidence to stage a pre-emptive attack on a sovereign nation the size of California, yet cannot seem to defeat them. We steal the natural resources of any country not strong enough to defend themselves from us. We have Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of government that not only refuse to uphold the Constitution, but blatantly disregard it. We imprison the highest percentage of our citizens than any country in the world. We give a bad name to the term, 'banana republic'. We allow our maimed and wounded veterans to languish in rat-infested infirmiries, and if they don't like it, they can go sleep under a bridge. We shift all the country's wealth into the pocketbooks of the top 1%, and leave the rest to fend for themselves or starve to death. We excuse away politician's lies as 'campaign promises', like it's somehow acceptable.
Crap, I could go on typing till daybreak about all the things to be proud of! As Yako Smirnoff used to say, "What a Country".
*end snark*
Larry
You know I say it often but it is sickening when you think of all we have done to the muslims and then declare we did not deserver 9/11. What?
I have become increasingly disgruntled over the real motivations of those behind the Presidency and their constant instigtion and intervention around the world as they whine and give the appearance of innocence and being picked on.
At this point I think there is a lot of people who are no longerturning a blind eye but we are powerless to do anything!
Larry
I never cease to be sickened by the underhanded drive at secret agandas. All under the unsuspecting noses of most Americans and of course denied.
I would like to know how we can possibly get away with and justify major projects and expenditures to Ameraericans 186 miles into Mexico. Where is the outrage? Where are the searchers for the truth? It is sick but once again they will simply be lied to and the hidden agenda will continue as sual!
Larry
Martin Roth is right and here too I can only laugh because I have been trying to warn people for so long that this is worse than a damn recession. It is a meltdown that will dwarf 1929.
I just caught this morning that the mindless worthless so called experts expect a recession within a year.
That is putting it mild and is a given. What a coincidence! Timed perfectly for Bush! He didn't have anything to do with setting it up, naw, my rear!
Brother
Yako Smirnoff that's funny! You are where I am. Today especially it is Bush's way or the highway and give me what I want or I'm going to take it. i really have to question how long this has been going on and threal motivations of Presidents in the past!
It really stinks to not be able to feel proud for what your country is doing. We really do seem to be the worlds biggest threat because we are being lied to. We have good intentions as citizens but the Government? Awe crap!
Jim, I read today that the Secret Service stopped screening attendees at an Obama appearance for weapons. I'll post it in the morning.
tc
I'll be over eventually to see what you wrote on it. I put something together on it but I had to put it off until tomorrow. I sent it to Allie who sent it around!
Things are pretty screwed up when you have to set aside something important like a set up for the assassination of Obama. I absolutely expect it and have since he announced his intention to run.
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