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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