Florida Army National Guard Air Defense Artillery Unit Deploys to Washington DC
August 26th, 2007Routine shifting of the Noble Eagle chess pieces, or something else?
Via: WESH:
Members of the 1st Battalion 265 Air Defense Artillery have mobilized and are on a plane headed first to Ft. Bliss, then for federal active duty in the capital region.
The troops will be deployed for a year.
…
The 265th is part of Operation Noble Eagle.
They are ordered by the president to the nation’s capital, where they will operate high-tech weapons systems against any potential air threat.
The Gathering Storm: Interesting Email from the Director of BullionVault
August 26th, 2007WARNING: This is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any financial instrument.
As you probably know, I use BullionVault to hold a small quantity of gold for diversification and cash hedging purposes. Several Cryptogon readers also use BullionVault for their professional gold vaulting needs. I have heard from some of them in private, and, like me, they are also very pleased with BullionVault. If you are looking for professional precious metal vaulting services (that includes Switzerland as a vault location), I know of no better option than BullionVault.
Click here to see what BullionVault has to offer. If you decide to sign up, Cryptogon will receive a small commission on your transactions. Note: I will receive no information about you at all if you do this, and your costs are the same whether you choose to sign up using the above affiliate link or not.
Paul Tustain’s email follows:
Dear BullionVault user,
Once everyone gets back from vacation and starts to focus on
what’s really going on, we may be in for a torrid few months in
the financial markets.
I believe the current lull in gold prices could offer a good
opportunity to defend yourself before the real trouble begins.
Since the end of June there has been huge damage done to the finances
of hundreds of organizations worldwide. But much of this pain is
still hidden inside investment funds holding obscure financial
instruments which are now unmarketable.
Too many investment professionals have been backing the same
short-odds gamble – residential housing – and the aggressive
financial arrangements they set up are unravelling a little more
every day.
The underlying problem of non-paying U.S. mortgage debt is getting
worse, not better, but this fact is being forgotten in the current
rate-cut induced rally in shares and bonds. Short of organized
double-digit inflation I don’t believe there is a force capable of
halting the slide in subprime U.S. property prices.
On top of that, we still have the extended pain of increasing
rates hitting more U.S. home-buyers as their “teaser” deals end.
The Financial Times says this trend has barely begun. It won’t
peak until the end of summer next year.
The world’s largest financial organizations have already taken
big hits – quietly, for the moment – but it really is hurting, and
we are seeing things that just shouldn’t happen in a well-ordered
financial world.
** Fund managers are not producing credible fund valuations; they
have frozen values using old prices, and are forbidding the normal
result, which is investors exiting.
** No-one can price mortgage-backed derivatives at the moment,
and no-one really knows how the underwriters of credit default
swaps are pricing the insurance time-bomb they’re sitting on.
These horrible investments are in many cases worth nothing, and in
the case of credit-default swaps, less than nothing.
The current lull might prove an opportunity for the prospective
gold buyer. Gold has not yet moved up – in fact, it has dipped a
little as stretched investment funds have sold whatever they can
to raise cash and reduce their margin calls.
I cannot sign off without remarking on the apparent “flight to
quality” which on Monday this week saw U.S. Treasuries put in their
strongest day since Black Monday 1987.
U.S. Treasury bonds are part of the fast-growing and utterly
irredeemable $9 trillion public debt now outstanding in the
United States. The U.S. trade deficit was also on record-breaking
form again last month. Only a few short weeks ago these dreadful
statistics drove the U.S. Dollar to record lows against a basket
of major world currencies.
Only a lack of imagination would allow investors to think suddenly
of the U.S. Dollar as today’s “quality” refuge. Any respite for
the Dollar will surely be temporary; indeed, the bounce we saw
during the sharpest stock-market losses so far may have simply
been short-covering by Dollar bears (of which there are plenty)
rather than fresh buying of “qualityâ€.
Everything that has just happened in fact makes things worse for
the U.S. currency. At the heart of this current crisis lies the
bubble in poor-quality U.S. home loans. It is U.S. consumers who
are being pinched; it is the return on invested U.S. Dollars which
is now being cut.
Lower U.S. rates on the back of America’s weakening domestic economy
will re-kindle a Dollar slide in due course. So the current lull
may offer only a brief window, in which fewer, stronger Dollars
buy more gold than they soon will.
Don’t forget about your opportunity of owning gold bullion in
a secure, professional vault in London, New York, or Zurich.
It’s easily and safely done through BullionVault.
Kind regards,
Paul Tustain
Director, BullionVault
Risk Warning: Investment ‘experts’ are frequently wrong. Markets
are confusing places reflecting thousands of opposing views. This
email contains opinion about future market moves, and these are
inherently unpredictable. Everything written here is fallible. Gold
prices may go down, and may go up. This email encourages you to
think and act for yourself. Only you can accept responsibility for
your investment or dis-investment actions which might follow.
Help the Iraq: Why 20% of Americans Can’t Locate the U.S. on a World Map
August 26th, 2007You have no chance to survive, make your time: helptheiraq.ytmnd.com
RUSSIA CUTS OIL EXPORTS TO GERMANY BY ONE THIRD
August 26th, 2007Via: International Herald Tribune:
Russian oil supplies to Germany have dropped by as much as one-third in recent weeks, Russian and German officials said Friday, sharply pinching supplies at two major German refineries.
The Russian oil-pipeline monopoly, Transneft, blamed most of the drop on the Russian oil giant Lukoil. Oil traders suggested it was yet another attempt by Lukoil to obtain better terms from Germany’s monopoly importer of Russian crude, Sunimex.
Russia in January cut crude supplies to Europe following a pricing dispute with Belarus, which halted transit shipments along the Druzhba, or Friendship, pipeline to Poland and Germany. One fifth of German supplies arrive via Druzhba.
But traders and analysts said Friday that the most recent development was not overtly political, but linked instead to a trading dispute involving Lukoil and Sunimex, which handles the oil arriving via Druzhba.
Brzezinski Embraces Obama Over Clinton for President
August 25th, 2007So, the Them like Obama. He just seems like Hillary in black face to me. And Hillary is Bush in drag.
Of course, Ron Paul—who’s winning straw poles around the place—might need to be dealt with. That can’t be allowed to continue.
None of this, of course, should be construed as me taking anything to do with this dog an pony show seriously. It just wasn’t clear to me who They wanted to select for Resident.
Now we know.
Via: Bloomberg:
Zbigniew Brzezinski, one of the most influential foreign-policy experts in the Democratic Party, threw his support behind Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy, saying the Illinois senator has a better global grasp than his chief rival, Hillary Clinton.
Obama “recognizes that the challenge is a new face, a new sense of direction, a new definition of America’s role in the world,” Brzezinski said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt.”
“Obama is clearly more effective and has the upper hand,” Brzezinski, who was President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, said. “He has a sense of what is historically relevant, and what is needed from the United States in relationship to the world.”
Related: Zbigniew Brzezinski Before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
Military Whistleblowers on Fraud Facing Penalties: “It Was a Wal-Mart for Guns”
August 25th, 2007I post a lot of stories on Cryptogon, but read this one a bit slower than usual and let this sink in.
Then check out the related stories below.
Via: Forbes:
One after another, the men and women who have stepped forward to report corruption in the massive effort to rebuild Iraq have been vilified, fired and demoted.
Or worse.
For daring to report illegal arms sales, Navy veteran Donald Vance says he was imprisoned by the American military in a security compound outside Baghdad and subjected to harsh interrogation methods.
There were times, huddled on the floor in solitary confinement with that head-banging music blaring dawn to dusk and interrogators yelling the same questions over and over, that Vance began to wish he had just kept his mouth shut.
He had thought he was doing a good and noble thing when he started telling the FBI about the guns and the land mines and the rocket-launchers – all of them being sold for cash, no receipts necessary, he said. He told a federal agent the buyers were Iraqi insurgents, American soldiers, State Department workers, and Iraqi embassy and ministry employees.
The seller, he claimed, was the Iraqi-owned company he worked for, Shield Group Security Co.
“It was a Wal-Mart for guns,” he says. “It was all illegal and everyone knew it.”
So Vance says he blew the whistle, supplying photos and documents and other intelligence to an FBI agent in his hometown of Chicago because he didn’t know whom to trust in Iraq.
For his trouble, he says, he got 97 days in Camp Cropper, an American military prison outside Baghdad that once held Saddam Hussein, and he was classified a security detainee.
Also held was colleague Nathan Ertel, who helped Vance gather evidence documenting the sales, according to a federal lawsuit both have filed in Chicago, alleging they were illegally imprisoned and subjected to physical and mental interrogation tactics “reserved for terrorists and so-called enemy combatants.”
Related: Italy Probe Unearths Huge Iraq Arms Deal
Related: U.S. ‘Loses’ 190,000 Weapons in Iraq
Related: Stolen U.S. Vehicles End Up as Bombs in Iraq
Related: Pentagon Arms its Enemy’s Enemies in Iraq
Related: Guards Steal $282 Million from a Bank in Baghdad
Related: U.S. Sent $4 Billion in Cash to Baghdad Before Handover
Related: Pentagon Can’t Account for $19 Billion Spent on Iraqi Forces
Related: SAS Soldiers Dressed as Arabs, Shoot at Iraqi Police
Related: The Salvador Option Identified by Cryptogon
Incredible Generosity of Cryptogon Readers
August 25th, 2007Three of Cryptogon’s most generous supporters sent the following contributions over the last few days:
JW $300 (Yes, that’s $300.)
AS $75
MW $20
What will we do with this money?
Our ute (pickup) failed its warrant of fitness, again. * sigh * For the 99% of you who aren’t in New Zealand, vehicles here have to be declared road worthy every six months. The person who did ours was extra strict this time, so we went away with a list of things that needed to be fixed before it would pass, including a new ball joint. I fixed everything else, but I couldn’t do the ball joint. Then I filled the ute up with petrol (gas). That was a nearly NZ$300 day. We haven’t done the math, but it would probably be shocking to calculate the cost per kilometer driven on that ute. Registration, fuel, insurance, warrants, failed warrant repairs… We only use the thing for occasional heavy loads/animal transportation. Sometimes, we don’t drive it for weeks. But when you need that thing, you need it. The moral of the story is that having to participate in the car economy without a “normal” level of income can be frustrating.
I need to get the chook (chicken) house built ASAP. It’s ridiculous that I haven’t done this yet, especially as eggs represent a large portion of our food expenses. I look at the cost of materials and I go into a bit of a state of denial. But there’s no escaping the cost of eggs, which actually just went up, again. We don’t buy chicken to eat very often. It’s too expensive. When I eye the delicious looking chicken parts in the store, Becky gently reminds me that, “We need to get that chook house built, don’t we…” If I want to feast on chook carcass, it’s going to be me out there with a hatchet and an Australorp rooster.
We need large barrels to make compost teas. I’ve seen these barrels in town and they cost NZ$50 used. This seems insane for used, food grade plastic barrels, but there’s exactly one option up here, and that’s it. We want to mix up some lovely cow manure tea to pour on our compost piles and garden beds.
We paid our rates (property taxes) in full and early to get the discount. But get this, we make so little money that we qualify for an additional discount on our rates! We applied for and got nearly the theoretical maximum credit of NZ$500 off our rates bill.
We also must pull the trigger on the solar water heater. That’s such a big deal, we’ve just been in denial about that as well. I don’t know if others of you feel like this, but I know people who lived through the Depression, and I’m not saying that Becky and I are that frugal, but even though we probably have more cash saved than most people in New Zealand, I pick up avocados in the store, look at the price and set them down again. Then I look at the cost of that solar water thing, and installation. It’s three to four grand, minimum. But we have to do it. Our hot water is costing something like NZ$70 per month. Just the hot water. It’s criminal. (We actually pay the highest electricity costs in all of New Zealand. It is E X P E N S I V E!) I looked at various half ass methods of doing this and by the time you get through screwing around, you’re going to spend hundreds of dollars on an outlaw piece of crap that won’t work anything like an evacuated tube deal. We’ve just got to do it right and we’re going to have to pay.
Well, these are some of the high finance matters that are going on here at the Cryptogon/Farmlet Headquarters.
Thanks to JW, AS, MW and all Cryptogon and Farmlet contributors for helping to support our work/efforts/antics!
The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products
August 25th, 2007Becky and I wash our hair with vinegar and baking soda. We brush our teeth with toothpaste made from baking soda, vegetable glycerin and salt. We use plant based bar soap for hand washing and bathing and plant based detergents for dishes and laundry. Becky makes a moisturizing lotion out of raw aloe vera. For deodorant, the crystal stick works well, although, it won’t stop your pits from sweating.
At best, the “personal care” and “household cleaners” industries amount to institutionalized insanity. (I think of it more as genocide for profit.) Becky and I have totally turned our backs on that reality and feel as though we’re much better off as a result; never mind the cost savings.
If you’re interested in this issue, you might want to check out Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What’s at Stake for American Power by Mark Schapiro.
Via: Alternet:
American industry would have you believe that taking potentially hazardous and toxic chemicals out of everyday consumer products — removing phthalates from children’s toys and cancer-causing coal tar from hair dye — would damage our economy and result in a loss of American jobs. In his latest book, Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products, Mark Schapiro busts this myth and reveals the grim fact that some companies, whether American or international, often have two production lines: one that manufactures hazard-free products for the European Union and another that produces toxin-filled versions of the same items for America and developing countries.
Schapiro examines how America, once a leader in environmental protection, came to allow potentially toxic and mutagenic chemicals, banned by the EU, into everyday products. He also looks at how the EU’s economy — almost identical to that of America — continued to thrive even after these chemicals were banned, essentially “calling the bluff” of the American industry.
Lots of Simple and Inexpensive Alternatives:
Better Basics for the Home: Simple Solutions for Less Toxic Living by Annie Berthold-Bond
Clean House Clean Planet by Karen Logan
Baking Soda: Over 500 Fabulous, Fun, and Frugal Uses You’ve Probably Never Thought Of
Vinegar: Over 400 Various, Versatile, and Very Good Uses You’ve Probably Never Thought Of
Australia Will Release Convicts to Make Room in Prisons for Mass Arrests During Bush Visit
August 25th, 2007Via: Sidney Morning Herald:
The NSW Government has expanded the number of declared security zones for the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
The new areas include the airport, the RAAF base at Richmond, around Kirribilli and Admiralty houses, Bondi Icebergs and Sheraton on the Park, the Hilton, the Observatory and the Marriott on College Street hotels.
Police will have enhanced stop, search and detain powers in these areas.
Deputy police commissioner, Andrew Scipione, said there were still no plans to close the Harbour Bridge or tunnel, but he urged motorists travelling to the airport to avoid the Eastern Distributor and be prepared for lengthy delays.
The details come as NSW Police admit they are preparing for “mass arrests” during the meeting.
They plan to quarantine at least 500 beds in jail cells ready for protesters who will be denied bail during the week-long forum.
At least 200 prisoners will be allowed to sleep in their own beds over the APEC long weekend of September 7-9 to free up cells after federal and state police asked the NSW Government to make space for the hundreds who might be arrested during the summit in Sydney.
Aaron Russo: Dead from Cancer
August 25th, 2007Aaron Russo, the creator of America: Freedom to Fascism, has died.
Via: Restore the Republic:
Aaron Russo
February 14, 1943 – August 24, 2007
You changed America with your presence, you have awoken millions to the truth, we will finish the game.
Research Credit: PD
