Sunday, December 28, 2014

Stock Market Soars past 18,000 as US-NATO Tee Up For Ukrainian Russian War



Happy days are here again, the stock market has just soared past 18,000 on news that in the waning hours of December 16th 2014, the United States Senate passed a spending bill, and Barack Obama signed into law a declaration of war on Russia.



Wound all through the bill are all kinds of devastating poison pills for the American people; starting with $700 trillion in derivatives trading backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. Treasury; that is, the Senate put up Social Security and Medicare funds along with $3 trillion from the PBG (Pension Benefit Guaranty Fund)’s Multi-Employer Pension Plan funds as collateral for war.  The U.S. and NATO are now teed up for war against Russia through their proxy Ukraine.  


The CIA, operating through the office of Vice President Joe Biden, along with all the financial resources of the State Department under John Kerry and Victoria Nuland, staged a coup that ousted the elected leader of Ukraine.  During the ouster of Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych, $3 billion in gold was removed from Ukraine and shipped to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. 


In April 2014 this was how the heist was described by Global Research:  




Excerpt:


At 2 a.m. this morning [March 7] an unmarked transport plane was on the runway at Borispol Airport (right) [east of Kiev]. According to airport staff, before the plane came to the airport, four trucks and two Volkswagen minibuses arrived, all the truck license plates missing.


Fifteen people in black uniforms, masks, and body armor stepped out, some armed with machine guns. They loaded the plane with more than 40 heavy boxes…..


Later a returned call from a senior official of the former Ministry of Revenue reported that tonight, on the orders of one of the new leaders of Ukraine, the United States had taken custody of all the gold reserves in Ukraine.”



Well guess what, seems it’s official, American intervention may be harmful to your financial health. 


From Zero Hedge


Excerpt:


Ukraine Admits Its Gold Is Gone: "There Is Almost No Gold Left In The Central Bank Vault"


Back in March, at a time when the IMF reported that Ukraine's official gold holdings as of the end of February, so just as the State Department-facilitated coup against former president Victor Yanukovych was concluding, amounted to 42.3 tonnes or 8% of reserves...


... and notably under the previous "hated" president, Ukraine gold's reserves had constantly increased hitting a record high just before the presidential coup...


In an interview on Ukraine TV, none other than the head of the Ukraine Central Bank made the stunning admission that "in the vaults of the central bank there is almost no gold left. There is a small amount of gold bullion left, but it's just 1% of reserves."


And that is not the only atrocity to befall the people of Ukraine since the US/NATO coup, with their gold reserves missing Ukraine was bankrupted and forced into an IMF loan with devastating caveats, like opening the country up to Monsanto:  From Popular Resistance:


Excerpt:



In August 2011, WikiLeaks released U.S. diplomatic cables showing that the U.S. State Department has been lobbying worldwide for Monsanto and other biotechnology corporations like DuPont, Syngenta, Bayer and Dow….


The report showed the U.S. State Department has “lobbied foreign governments to adopt pro-agricultural biotechnology policies and laws, operated a rigorous  public relations campaign to improve the image of biotechnology, and challenged commonsense biotechnology safeguards and rules – even including opposing laws requiring the labeling of genetically-engineered (GE) foods……”


The U.S.-Ukraine Business Council’s 16-member Executive Committee is packed with U.S. agribusiness companies, including representatives from Monsanto, John Deere, DuPont Pioneer, Eli Lilly, and Cargill.


My, my, my.  So now we see this headline in the New YorkTimes:


Ukraine Vote Takes Nation a Step Closer to NATO


MOSCOW — With a Russian-backed separatist insurgency still gripping eastern Ukraine, the Ukrainian Parliament voted on Tuesday to take steps toward joining NATO….


The Parliament, firmly controlled by a pro-Western majority, voted overwhelmingly, 303 to 8, TO RESCIND a policy of “nonalignment” and to instead pursue closer MILITARY and STRATEGIC TIES with the West.


Former President Viktor F. Yanukovych, who was toppled in February and fled to Russia after months of protests in Kiev, the capital, pushed Parliament to adopt the policy in 2010, shortly after he took office.

THE LAW HAD DEFINED NONALIGNMENT AS “NONPARTICIPATION OF UKRAINE IN THE MILITARY-POLITICAL ALLIANCES.”


Yes, Yanukovych was an impediment to the imperialistic goals of NATO and the U.S. so they held a “made in America” sham election and some billionaire bankers were elected, like Petro Poroshenko.  


The beauty of having billionaires elected to office is that they can afford private armies like Blackwater.  That way you don’t have to pay pensions or take care of the soldiers, and what if the soldiers don’t want to kill their neighbors? 


The revised law, which was a priority of President Petro O. Poroshenko, REQUIRES Ukraine to “deepen cooperation with NATO in order to achieve the criteria required for membership in this organization.” For now, it still seems unlikely that Ukraine will join NATO, in part because of Russia’s strong opposition.


Bullshit it seems “unlikely” Ukraine will join NATO, you ass holes have all the pieces in place, from manipulating the price of iron to crashing oil prices.  Just look at the “$1.1 Trillion Dollar Spending Bill” passed on December 16th.  That “emergency spending” bill provides funding for World War III. 


What is so stunning is that because of “Senate” rules war can be declared on a country along with funding without ever having to go through the process of bills being debated and having votes by representatives of the people.  That is stunning.  From USA Today:


Excerpt:


17 items tucked into a trillion-dollar spending bill


2. $64 billion in war funds to combat the rise of the Islamic State and overseas operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.


Yeah, $64 billion to fight the Islamic State that was created by the CIA to overthrow the elected leader of Syria.   I wonder where that money will end up. 


3. $94 billion for new military equipment, including 87 Blackhawk helicopters, 38 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters and two attack submarines….


Why are we now spending $94 billion for new military equipment when “surplus” war equipment is being given to states to militarize their police forces?


9. $485 million in aid to countries to counter Russian aggression in the region.


What a joke, “emergency” $485 million in funds to countries to “counter Russian aggression” probably countries like Latvia, from Time Magazine:



Excerpt:


Latvia and U.S. Play War Games as Tensions with Russia Grow


After an €80,000 anti-tank missile and a volley of mortar and artillery fire launch the drills, a U.S. Black Hawk transports Latvian soldiers into the war games scenario, where they go house-to-house searching for a high-value target.


Going house-to-house searching for a “high value target”, what kind of warfare is that?  It sounds a lot like that RAND Corporation plan for Ukraine.  Like Stage 1 in RAND’s plan for Poroshenko:


             Excerpt:


The document provides three stages for the conduct of a military operation in eastern Ukraine.


The first stage implies total isolation of the region considering that all local citizens are terrorists or sympathizers.


The Region should be encircled with troops and sealed off entirely from any flow of goods and persons. Broadcasting services, Internet connection, telephone and mobile communications in the region shall be shut down.


So if you were to make a transparency of RAND Corporation’s Plan for Poroshenko in Ukraine including internment camps and executions and place it over the U.S. Senate’s emergency spending bill you would see how they line up. 


Take the part of RAND’s Stage I, “encircled with troops and sealed off entirely from any flow of goods and persons”. Broadcasting services, Internet connection, telephone and mobile communications in the region shall be shut down.  Now let’s look at this article in Radio Free Europe:


Ukraine Suspends Trains, Buses To Crimea, Citing Security Concerns


Ukraine says it is halting all train services to Russian-annexed Crimea because of security concerns.


The decision by Ukraine's state rail company comes 10 days after Russia decided to suspend its own train service to Crimea due to low ticket demand.


Separately, Ukraine's Infrastructure Ministry ordered bus companies to stop bus services to Crimea starting December 26.


The total suspension of train and bus services means most of the peninsula's 2.3 million residents will only be able to reach mainland Ukraine by car or cross into Russia using an outdated ferry service.


Some Russian flights are continuing to Crimea's central city of Simferopol despite European Union sanctions against the air companies depriving them of aircraft insurance and service contracts.


Meanwhile, Russian authorities have blamed Ukraine for cutting off electricity supplies to Crimea on December 26, for the second time this week.


Widespread blackouts hit Crimea on December 24 after Ukraine cut power supplies, blaming the region for exceeding electricity consumption limits.


Really?  On Christmas Eve?  So what else has been going on in these NATO Latvia war games the U.S. Senate has been secretly funding?  



             Excerpt:


Not far away in the Latvian capital of Riga, officials were getting to work in the newly-inaugurated NATO Strategic Communications Center of Excellence, a hub aimed at countering information warfare by enemies of the 28-member military alliance….


Earlier this year 600 U.S. troops from the 173rd Airborne Brigade So deployed to Poland, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia and this week, U.S. tanks returned to Latvian soil for the first time since the Second World War. 


Joint military exercises have increased in size and frequency. At a NATO summit last month, leaders pledged increased funding for cyber and information warfare units, while also announcing the formation of a Rapid Reaction Force which could deploy to allied nations within days.


Hummm, in October they pledged an increase in funding for cyber and information warfare and bingo, it’s an emergency on December 16th and next thing you know, “The Interview” was cancelled and blamed on North Korea.  


But guess what, according to the Daily Beast,Sony’s Michael Lynton, who is on RAND’s Board of Directors had input all the way through production from RAND.   And with North Korea set up as the perpetrator, now the U.S. claims moral authority to knock out North Korea’s internet communications.


So what else was in the “emergency must pass spending law?


13. Cuts funding for the Environmental Protection Agency by $60 million and further reduces staffing levels to its lowest point since 1989. ALSO INCLUDES A PROVISION PREVENTING THE REGULATION OF LEAD USED IN AMMUNITION.”


What??  The EPA is cut reducing staffing to 1989 levels and makes it illegal to regulate lead in ammunition.  You may say what’s that about?  Well, let’s see, just look at this December 2013 headline from Fox News:

Excerpt:

MILITARY

End of the line for the lead bullet? Regulations, bans force switch to 'green' ammo

It seems that the lead in ammunition can cause irreparable damage to humans on or near shooting ranges and military firing ranges across the entire United States and its territories.

When the last bullet-producing lead smelter closes its doors on Dec. 31, it will mark a major victory for those who say lead-based ammunition pollutes the environment, but others warn 'green' bullets will cost more, drive up copper prices and do little to help conservation.


The bid to ban lead bullets, seen by some as harmful to the environment, started slowly more than a decade ago. But with two dozen states, including California, banning bullets made of the soft, heavy metal, the lead bullet's epitaph was already being written when the federal government finished it off.


First, the military announced plans to phase out lead bullets by 2018.
 So, the United States Senate on December 16th voted under the guise of an “emergency” must pass or else everyone dies spending bill and Barack Obama signed into Federal law a measure that legally “prevents the regulation of lead used in ammunition.”  So how harmful is lead and who is at risk?  According to Mother Jones:


Excerpt:

The most ubiquitous danger at firing ranges has a lot to do with bullets but nothing to do with getting shot.


……Lead is so damaging because it mimics calcium, an ion with essential roles everywhere in the body from bones to nerve cells. (It's especially dangerous for children with developing brains, which is why you hear so much about lead paint.) The report devotes more than 70 pages to detailing lead's many toxic effects in nearly every organ in the body, including the brain, blood, kidneys, heart, and reproductive organs.



Lead is found in bullets as well as the explosive that ignites gunpowder. When a bullet is fired, it gets so hot that that lead actually vaporizes. Firing range employees breathe in the lead fumes, as well as ingest lead dust that settles on their body and clothes…

…. lead is an element, so it doesn't degrade or become less toxic over time. Old bullets (or paint or gas or any other cause) leach lead into the soil; from there the metal gets into groundwater and plants and the bodies of animals. The military has been cleaning up some 700 of its shooting ranges, and while that's not cheap, Kevin Drum's "America's Real Criminal Element: Lead" makes a compelling case that it's far less expensive than the costs that come with lead exposure—including violent crime, lower IQs, and ADHD.

And remember that provision in the absolute must pass, with no time to think, no debate just pass or else $1.1 Trillion spending bill regarding Social Security, Medicare and private pensions ensured through the Pension Guarantee Fund totaling trillions of dollars?  From Latin Post:  

Excerpt:

$1 Trillion Federal Budget Bill Threatens Pensions, Has "No Opportunity for Public Input," Says Rep. Louis Slaughter


House Rules Committee member Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., said about the over 1,600 page bill, that it was "released in the middle of the night. Not one member of the committee has been able to read all the way through it or anything of it, I suppose. 

No opportunity for public input. No hearings. No committee markups. And no time to adequately consider $1.1 trillion in spending…."

Yep, that’s what Naomi Klein calls the “Shock Doctrine” Disaster Capitalism.

Multiemployer pension funds were created where a group of businesses in the same industry join unions to provide pension coverage for employees. The plans cover 10 million U.S. workers, according to The Washington Post.


Many of the multiemployer pension funds were targeted by institutional investors by financial companies and banks in the pre-crash years, and they bought mortgage-backed securities, which subsequently imploded. They pension funds were sold a fraudulent product, which ended up depleting the fund.

The pension funds were robbed by Wall Street banks and now the U.S. Senate has hammered a stake through the heart of multiemployer pension funds, from Society of Human Resource Management:


Excerpt:


Law to Let Multiemployer Pensions Cut Benefits Signed


The pension measure included in the omnibus legislation, the Multiemployer Pension Reform Act of 2014, was negotiated by a bipartisan group of congressional leaders but opposed by some retiree advocates and their congressional allies…


The provisions apply only to multiemployer pensions and not to single-sponsor corporate pensions, which are subject to a different set of regulations and higher funding-level requirements. The PBGC maintains a separate insurance fund for single-sponsor pensions.


Multiemployer, or "Taft-Hartley," pension plans commonly are administered by labor unions on behalf of their members and funded by multiple employers in a given industry, subject to collective bargaining contracts with the union.


Cutback Provisions


The measure will allow trustees of financially troubled multiemployer pensions to cut retiree benefits to prevent plan insolvency. Financially troubled plans are those that are expected to not have enough money to pay 100 percent of benefits in 10 to 20 years….


Under the measure:


• Plan trustees have discretion in deciding how to allocate the cuts. For example, they can cut retirees’ benefits more than those of active workers, and decide whether to reduce survivors’ benefits.


Who are these plan trustees, you may ask, well my money is on Wall Street Banks.





Plan trustees are exempt from fiduciary responsibility in making cuts.


What the hell is that???  Plan trustees handling trillions in retiree benefits are “exempt from fiduciary responsibility” when making cuts.


Trustees’ decisions to cut benefits can be reversed only by the Department of Treasury, and then only if the Treasury determines that the trustees’ decision to cut benefits or the extent of the benefit cuts is “clearly erroneous.”


And who controls the Department of Treasury?  Wall Street Banks like JP Morgan Chase and Citi Bank.


There is no provision for automatic restoration of lost benefits if a plan’s funding status improves.


So in other words, if a plan trustee cuts your pension from $1000 per month to $400 per month and the plan becomes flush with cash, the trustee just gets to keep the money instead of sharing the wealth with the pensioners whose money it was to start with.  


There should be a law against that, but wait there was.  That law was repealed in an emergency, must pass, do or die bill on December 16th.



But all roads lead back to Vladimir Putin.  Poor President Putin, he has found himself the star of a reality show based on “Lord of the Flies.”  In October of this year, Putin gave a speech to the Valdai International Discussion Club that was called “the most important speech of his career”, let’s look at the Kremlin announcement. 

Excerpt: 


The meeting’s theme is The World Order: New Rules or a Game without Rules


PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA VLADIMIR PUTIN: Colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, friends, it is a pleasure to welcome you to the XI meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club….


Today’s discussion took place under the theme: New Rules or a Game without Rules. I think that this formula accurately describes the historic turning point we have reached today and the choice we all face.…


Yes, many of the mechanisms we have for ensuring the world order were created quite a long time ago now, including and above all in the period immediately following World War II. 


Let me stress that the solidity of the system created back then rested not only on the balance of power and the rights of the victor countries, but on the fact that this system’s ‘founding fathers’ had respect for each other, did not try to put the squeeze on others, but attempted to reach agreements….


But the United States, having declared itself the winner of the Cold War, saw no need for this. Instead of establishing a new balance of power, essential for maintaining order and stability, they took steps that threw the system into sharp and deep imbalance. 


Pardon the analogy, but this is the way nouveaux riches behave when they suddenly end up with a great fortune, in this case, in the shape of world leadership and domination. Instead of managing their wealth wisely, for their own benefit too of course, I think they have committed many follies.  


We have entered a period of differing interpretations and deliberate silences in world politics. International law has been forced to retreat over and over by the onslaught of legal nihilism. 


Objectivity and justice have been sacrificed on the altar of political expediency. Arbitrary interpretations and biased assessments have replaced legal norms. At the same time, total control of the global mass media has made it possible when desired to portray white as black and black as white…


The measures taken against those who refuse to submit are well-known and have been tried and tested many times. They include use of force, economic and propaganda pressure, meddling in domestic affairs, and appeals to a kind of ‘supra-legal’ legitimacy when they need to justify illegal intervention in this or that conflict or toppling inconvenient regimes….


Let’s ask ourselves, how comfortable are we with this, how safe are we, how happy living in this world, and how fair and rational has it become? Maybe, we have no real reasons to worry, argue and ask awkward questions?


Maybe the United States’ exceptional position and the way they are carrying out their leadership really is a blessing for us all, and their meddling in events all around the world is bringing peace, prosperity, progress, growth and democracy, and we should maybe just relax and enjoy it all?  



But here in America, happy days are here again, the stock market has just soared past 18,000, gas prices are hovering around $2/gallon and The Interview opened in theaters in America.


God bless us all


By Patricia Baeten



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