The News First

Oil Washing Ashore By The Ton

admin — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 21:51:00 +0000

BILOXI — Out of curiosity, James and Cathy Adams drove 380 miles from Pontotoc to see the oil coming ashore in Harrison County.

At the water’s edge behind Snapper’s Seafood Restaurant, Cathy Adams peeled a pancake of oily material from the beach and held it in her hands. It was like soft caramel, she said.

“This is the first tar balls we’ve seen,” she said.

The Adamses are saddened to find the deposits along what should be clean, white sand.

“It’s just ruined,” she said. “This is one of the best vacation places Mississippi has.”

Shoreline Cleanup Assessment Team workers scoured the beaches in Harrison County, scooping more than a ton of contaminated sand mixed with tar patties, mats and balls into clear-plastic garbage bags

Bob Chapman: We Are Entering Our Final Journey

admin — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 21:26:00 +0000

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We are now entering the next to last phase of our journey. The wanton creation of wealth, inflation and perhaps hyperinflation, which will rob you of your assets. A stealth attack on what you have left by the people who control your government. Such monetary creation is the only way these people can keep the game going. They know it won’t last, but they proceed anyway. For awhile they’ll keep the multitudes at bay with extended unemployment and food stamps, but that will fade in time for lack of financial control, as the system begins to break down.

You already see all fiat currencies under fire, as is sovereign debt. Can it get any worse? Of course it can, and it will. Implosion is the word everyone is going to discover and understand. An event that cannot be hidden by zero interest rates and endless supplies of money and credit. That word implosion will describe what will happen as a result in the machinations of the Federal Reserve.

Now that you have seen a glimpse of your future we will move on to the deteriorating world that we now live in.

CNBC and the mainline media tells us all is well irrespective of a failing recovery, climbing unemployment, which has just recently been assisted by trillions of dollars in stimulus. The question is what comes next? More of the same, of course. There is no other avenue to pursue even though Mr. Bernanke knows such stimulus is not going to get the desired results. These players behind the scenes know history. They know what we know. They depend on 98% of the people not discovering what they and we know, and that is where this is all headed. The important people in Wall Street, banking, insurance and in transnational corporations know, but they are not about to tell you. The market doesn’t like what it sees, but it knows it cannot do much about it.

Americans are fighting back as millions have not made mortgage payments for a year and are living for free in their homes. As an antidote Washington is now considering charging them rent, something they should have done four years ago. If you add in the disaster that is commercial real estate, personal and corporate debt, and sovereign debt, you have an insolvable problem that can only end in great grief. The choice to expose Greece’s weaknesses from behind the scenes looks to be a fatal mistake. The elitists never envisioned the firestorm that the exposure has led too. Greece is about to explode, not because of the reduced socialist benefits, but because the people are finally realizing that they and others have been taken for a ride by the bankers and others behind the scenes and from within their own government. Discovery by the Greek people and others is not something the illuminists expected. They now are forced again to expedite their programs – when they have to do that they make mistakes, often-big mistakes, which gives us pursuers an advantage we could never hoped to have had. After their latest mistakes the bankers are scrambling to preserve the current system. It is not to be. There are far to many who now know what they are up too.

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Dozens Of Americans On Hit List: White House

admin — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 18:51:00 +0000

National Security Adviser says there’s ‘dozens of U.S. persons who are in different parts of the world, and they are very concerning.’

June 29, 2010 |

When it was confirmed last winter by then-Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair that the Obama administration had authorized the assassination of American citizens working with terrorist groups overseas, it appeared that no more than three Americans were being targeted in this manner.

In an interview last week with theWashington Times,however, Deputy White House National Security Adviser for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism John O. Brennan suggested the number might actually amount to “dozens.”

“There are, in my mind, dozens of U.S. persons who are in different parts of the world, and they are very concerning to us,” Brennan stated, “not just because of the passport they hold, but because they understand our operational environment here, they bring with them certain skills, whether it be language skills or familiarity with potential targets, and they are very worrisome, and we are determined to take away their ability to assist with terrorist attacks,”

“If an American person or citizen is in a Yemen or in a Pakistan or in Somalia or another place, and they are trying to carry out attacks against U.S. interests, they also will face the full brunt of a U.S. response,” Brennan continued. “What we need to do is to apply the appropriate tool and the appropriate response.”

Salon’s Glenn Greenwald quickly seized upon Brennan’s remarks as a fresh example of the extension of unrestrained presidential powers. “I’ve written at length about the reasons why targeting American citizens for assassination who are far away from a ‘battlefield’ is so odious and tyrannical, and I won’t repeat those arguments here,” Greenwaldwrote. “Suffice to say — and I’m asking this literally — if you’re someone who believes, or are at least willing to acquiesce to the claim, that the U.S. President has the power to target your fellow citizens for assassination without a whiff of due process, what unchecked presidential powers wouldn’t you support or acquiesce to? More Here..

Will They Seize Internet Sites Too?

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Police Molest Torture Threaten Kids at The G20 In Toronto

admin — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 15:04:00 +0000

Some female protesters detained by police during the G20 Summit claim they were strip searched by male cops and threatened with rape if they didn’t comply.

The detainees, who included three independent journalists, allege one under-aged girl was improperly touched by a male officer while held at an Eastern Ave. detention centre.

Officers with the Integrated Security Unit said the allegations are groundless and there is a system in place for people to file complaints against police.

None of the protesters have filed complaints against police.

“I was throttled by a cop and later threatened with rape,” Amy Miller, of the Alternative Media Centre, said. “I saw young women being strip searched by men.”

Maryam Adriangi, of Toronto Community Mobilization Network, said she was also threatened with rape.

“I was harassed by police and had racist and sexist comments made against me,” Adriangi said.

She claimed she was picked up by police in Parkdale and placed in a prisoners’ wagon and driven around for five hours and released without charges. Network spokesman Sharmeen Khan said the more than 900 inmates were held “in disgraceful conditions” at the former film studio.

“The detainees weren’t given food or medication,” Khan said. “They had to wait hours to see a lawyer.”

She said charges were dropped against most of the activists and they were released.

Adam MacIsaac said he was detained for 12 hours for taking photos of a demonstrator being arrested.

“I was assaulted by four officers even though I wear a pacemaker,” MacIsaac said. “They didn’t care that I have heart problems.”

He alleges his camera was lost or misplaced by police. Other activists have complained their cameras with G20 shots have also gone missing.

More Here..

Get Ready for the Next ‘Great Crash’

admin — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 13:57:00 +0000

NEW YORK: The next Great Crash is coming. Guaranteed. Maybe not today and maybe not tomorrow. But, in all likelihood, sooner than we think.

How can I be so sure? Because the history of modern markets is a story of meltdowns. The stock market crashed in 1987, the bond market in 1994. Mexico tanked in 1994, East Asia in 1997. Long-Term Capital Management blew up in 1998, Russia that same year. Dot-coms dotbombed in 2000. In 2007 — well, you know the rest.

And that was just the last 20 years or so. The stagflation of the 1970s, the Depression of the 1930s, the panics in the 1900s … and back and back and back it goes, all the way to the Dutch and their tulip bulbs.

In those giddy years before the Great Recession, it seemed as if we’d grown accustomed to the wild ride. Wall Street certainly had. Jamie Dimon , the chairman and chief executive of JPMorgan Chase likes to say when his daughter came home from school one day and asked what a financial crisis was, he told her: ”It’s the kind of thing that happens every 5-7 years.”
No one should be surprised, Dimon insists, that booms go bust. That’s the way markets work. Most Americans probably find that answer unsatisfying to put it politely. After all, millions have lost their homes, their jobs, their savings. Perhaps something is wrong if CEOs expect the markets to break down every half decade or so.

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Scrap Dollar As Sole Reserve Currency: U.N. report

admin — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 03:38:00 +0000

(Reuters) – A new United Nations report released on Tuesday calls for abandoning the U.S. dollar as the main global reserve currency, saying it has been unable to safeguard value.

But several European officials attending a high-level meeting of the U.N. Economic and Social Council countered by saying that the market, not politicians, would determine what currencies countries would keep on hand for reserves.

“The dollar has proved not to be a stable store of value, which is a requisite for a stable reserve currency,” the U.N. World Economic and Social Survey 2010 said.

The report says that developing countries have been hit by the U.S. dollar’s loss of value in recent years.

More Here..

Warning Signals of a Double-Dip Recession Flash
Brightly Across the World
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BP Turning Beaches Into Hazardous Dumps?

admin — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 23:54:00 +0000

Man video taping a beach with bulldozed sand to hide the oil that has washed ashore.

Banks Have Financed Mexican Drug Gangs For Years

admin — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 21:49:00 +0000

Just before sunset on April 10, 2006, a DC-9 jet landed at the international airport in the port city of Ciudad del Carmen, 500 miles east of Mexico City. As soldiers on the ground approached the plane, the crew tried to shoo them away, saying there was a dangerous oil leak. So the troops grew suspicious and searched the jet.

They found 128 black suitcases, packed with 5.7 tons of cocaine, valued at $100 million. The stash was supposed to have been delivered from Caracas to drug traffickers in Toluca, near Mexico City, Mexican prosecutors later found. Law enforcement officials also discovered something else.

The smugglers had bought the DC-9 with laundered funds they transferred through two of the biggest banks in the U.S.: Wachovia Corp. and Bank of America Corp., Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its August 2010 issue.

This was no isolated incident. Wachovia, it turns out, had made a habit of helping move money for Mexican drug smugglers. Wells Fargo & Co., which bought Wachovia in 2008, has admitted in court that its unit failed to monitor and report suspected money laundering by narcotics traffickers — including the cash used to buy four planes that shipped a total of 22 tons of cocaine.

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Investigation Reveals Possible Criminal Activity Connecting Obama to BP oil spill?

admin — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 18:48:00 +0000

The new line of defense employed by the Obama Administration to deflect criticism of its lackadaisical handling of the BP oil spill is to launch a criminal investigation of the company.

Perhaps this is the best thing that could happen. Such an investigation would, of course, uncover all of BP’s connections to the Democratic Party and Barack Obama, who were the single largest beneficiaries of BP campaign contributions over the last 10 years.

Granted, the Obama Justice Department, under the leadership of Obama lackey Eric Holder, would never delve into any real criminal activity if it involved revelations concerning the Administration’s connections to BP, as well as the cozy relationship the company has with Democrats on the Hill.

Someone else, however, has already done such an investigation and has uncovered explosive information that possibly implicates Barack Obama, certain members of his Administration, and Democrats in Congress, in the committing of crimes.

The key is to follow the money trail.

JoAnne Moretti, along with a team of investigators, delved into records which pointed to a paper trail connecting the major players in this disaster–BP, Deep Water Horizon, Halliburton, Citigroup, Goldman-Sachs, the U.S. Government, and a company called ‘NALCO.’

A few recognizable names of individuals involved in the paper trail also surfaced–Warren Buffet, George Soros, John Holdren, Tony Rezko….and Barack Obama.

At the heart of the scandal which Moretti reveals is the concerted effort by all of these major players to delay the cutting off of the oil flow into the Gulf of Mexico.

Why?

The bottom line–NALCO is the manufacturer of chemical dispersements and water purification systems that are being used in the Gulf to attempt to ‘disperse the oil before it reaches the shoreline.’

This is what is known as ‘the top kill’ method which BP has claimed is the best manner possible of dealing with the spill. The top kill method, however, does nothing to actually stop the flow of oil from its source–the well hidden deep in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

The Obama Administration and BP have been noticeably lazy about stopping the flow of oil into the waters of the Gulf. Obama claimed that as soon as the explosion of the oil rig occurred, Federal SWOT teams were dispatched to the area in order to ‘secure it.’ The notion that the Obama Administration did not know the extent of the leak is contradicted by the announcement that federal teams were ‘on the scene from day one.’

Obama claims that he backed off from doing anything to stop the oil leak in deference to BP, which he claims was better equipped to deal with the situation. And indeed, that much is true. BP did, in fact, say such a thing publicly.

But BP’s interest in actually cutting off the flow of oil into the Gulf is just as suspect as the U.S. Government’s.

And here is where the story takes a sordid, and potentially criminal, turn.

Moretti says the following:

More Here

"The US will ‘Politely Default’ on its Debt"

admin — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 18:27:00 +0000

By Robert Huebscher of Advisor Perspectives

Today’s economic problems, it seems, can be understood through the lens of pop artist Andy Warhol. Warhol, who DoubleLine’s Jeff Gundlach calls an “absolute futuristic genius” in his ability to depict trends in American consumerism, showed through his illustrations of everyday objects, such as Coca Cola cans, that products used by the upper crust of society were accessible to anyone in America. That accessibility made it natural for consumers to borrow money to improve their standard of living, leading to a three-decade long explosion in public debt.

Gundlach delivered the keynote address at last week’s Morningstar Investor Conference in Chicago. He is the chief investment officer of DoubleLine, the firm he founded after leaving TCW last year. DoubleLine now manages just over a $1 billion in bond funds, mostly in mortgage-backed securities, where Gundlach’s expertise is highly regarded. Gundlach’s presentation shared a similar theme with many he gave while he was at TCW, documenting the immensity of U.S. debt obligations and the lack of options for alleviating that burden. As he has stated in the past, he does not consider inflation to be a threat in the capital markets today. He cited six options open to policy makers, but believes a seventh – some form of default – is most likely.

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A final warning

Gundlach concluded his talk by warning that at some points “something bad” could happen relative to risk, causing the dollar to drop and Treasury yields to rise. “That is what you need to watch out for.”

“If the world starts to behave differently,” he said, “you need to sell immediately, because you don’t have much time. So I suggest that all of us watch the way the markets react to bad news regarding risk. If their behavior changes, you have to sell very, very quickly.”

More Here..