Threshold of a Dream: Fracked, Compassionate Conservative David Cameron ...

Threshold of a Dream: Fracked, Compassionate Conservative David Cameron ...: The press in America has been touting the losses of the Labour Party in the UK and the reelection of David Cameron as a lesson for Democ...

All Monsanto’s Men: Part VIII: UK Gets Fracked, Compassionate Conservative David Cameron Slashes Pensions, Childcare and Wages

The press in America has been touting the losses of the Labour Party in the UK and the reelection of David Cameron as a lesson for Democrats.  Cameron campaigned on a platform of protecting billionaires’ largess and exacting crippling austerity for working people while slashing pensions, childcare and education.  

We in America are told, that the people in the UK have spoken loud and clear, they want more pain and less gain.  The people in the UK love unfettered capitalism, corporations raping and polluting their natural resources and depleting their treasury.

But what has been omitted from the conversation is the overwhelming rejection of those same bankrupt ideologies in the right-wing, most polluted Province in Canada, Alberta.  I guess the seismic shift that took place in Alberta, is hardly worth a mention in the press.

In the UK and US there is no free press to question dubious elections that are conducted on behalf of central banks and unregulated Wall Street capitalists.  For instance, this is the headline in America from Politico, a “news” organization founded by Wall Street after the collapse of actual news organizations following the coup.

Excerpt:

Wall Street warns Hillary Don’t be like Ed Miliband

In British election, bashing bonuses and hedge funds didn’t work for Labour leader.

Senior financial executives say the Labour leader’s anti-bank, soak the rich rhetoric helped sink his party in the United Kingdom elections and assure a surprisingly big reelection win for Prime Minister David Cameron and his Conservative Party last week…

“Cameron embraced the role of the financial sector in growing the U.K. economy and creating jobs, never once criticizing hedge funds, banks or the wealthy,” said a top executive at one of Wall Street’s largest firms.  “Miliband ran against hedge funds and bankers, promising bonus and mansion taxes and lost big. Is that a lesson for Hillary as well?”

Just like in the reelection of George W. Bush in 2004, although all the polls showed a resounding defeat for Bush, he like Cameron managed to rack up a “huge” win.  My, my I wonder how that happened. 

Bush’s Rasputin, Karl Rove used the mail system to disenfranchise voters, especially military voters fighting abroad, ensuring a Bush victory and it  looks like Cameron is using the Rove Playbook. 

According to the Daily Mail, the fix was in before the election:

Excerpt:

Postal voting is ‘wide open to fraud’ and should be scrapped in its current form, a top judge warned last night.  Judge Richard Mawrey, who sits in judgment on election fraud cases, said ballot-rigging was now a ‘probability’ in some parts of Britain due to the extension of postal voting.

Mr. Mawrey, a deputy high court judge, said the introduction of ‘on demand’ postal voting had failed to boost turnout. But he warned it had made Britain’s electoral system vulnerable to fraud on ‘an industrial scale’….

Mr. Mawrey presided over a notorious 2004 ballot-rigging case in Birmingham which uncovered evidence of abuse he said would ‘disgrace a banana republic’.

Oh yes, a “made in America sham election” has taken place in the U.K.  But Cameron had to call in the big guns of voting fraud, American Republicans and staffers from the Obama campaign. From CNN:

Excerpt:

(CNN)A group of Republicans visited the UK during its recent election campaign to work for the Conservative Party….

The victory of the Conservative Party in this week's British elections came as a surprise to all of us. I was at a right-wing dinner in London just before the results came out and we found ourselves slipping into talk of what to do after the Conservatives had lost…. 

So when the results came in and showed Prime Minister David Cameron winning handsomely, we suddenly had to think about what went right rather than what went wrong.

Oooh, oooh, I know, it was the mail fraud election that was responsible for Cameron winning handsomely.  That and Obama’s henchmen sabotaging the campaign of labour.

Labour's hapless campaign was run by David Axelrod, the genius who helped bring the world President Barack Obama (Jim Messina, another Obama man, helped out the Conservatives).

Yes, the biggest of crooks in American elections ensured that working people would get the shaft in the UK election, pensions would be slashed and the UK’s natural resources opened up to exploitation.

So now, let’s look at the election that took place in Alberta, Canada during the same timeframe, without the help of election crooks from America.  According to the Guardian, the election of the New Democratic Party was a “seismic shift.” 

Excerpt:

Canada's political landscape undergoes seismic shift with election in Alberta

Canada’s rockbound political landscape has undergone a seismic shift with the election of a leftwing government in oil-rich Alberta, the country’s wealthiest and – until now – most conservative province.

The once-marginal New Democratic Party swept to victory in the western province on Tuesday night, humiliating the Progressive Conservative party that has ruled the province since the first term of US president Richard Nixon.

The result marks the latest and most surprising setback to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s signature diplomatic effort to transport bitumen from Alberta’s tar sands to world markets through the controversial Keystone XL pipeline.

Huh, where’s Politico’s admonitions to Republicans and Democrats to abandon the Keystone XL Pipeline or suffer the same defeat as Harper in Canada?  Seems like the New Democratic Party in Canada rejected the polluting, filthy dirty platform shoved down America’s throat by the corrupt parties that control America’s elections.

Notley led her party from a four-seat toehold in the provincial legislature to a commanding majority of 54….

The election of the NDP is “completely devastating”, declared financier Rafi Tahmazian of Canoe Financial LP in Calgary, Canada’s oil capital….

Among other effects, Alberta’s unexpected revolution casts a shadow over the federal government’s imminent proclamation of sweeping new anti-terrorism legislation, which has provoked opposition from all corners of the political landscape.

How sweet it is.  But it doesn’t stop with the election, let’s take a look at how Cameron interprets his “sweeping election mandate” compared to Notely’s overwhelmingly seismic election mandate.  Cameron has kicked off his victory with payback for his “constituents” fox hunters and billionaire bankers.  But what do ordinary people get?  Slashed pensions and pay cuts.

So, let’s take a look at who Cameron is lining his cabinet with, according to the Guardian it’s the first Tory-only government in 18 years and they are going after the press, just like Obama has in America.

Excerpt:

The BBC was given warning that it faced a tough fight in the negotiations over the renewal of the licence fee and its royal charter when the Thatcherite veteran MP John Whittingdale was appointed culture secretary.

Whittingdale, a former political secretary to Margaret Thatcher, and chairman of the Commons culture select committee since 2005, has described the £145.50 licence fee as “worse than poll tax” and unsustainable in the long term. He replaces Sajid Javid, who takes over as business secretary, one of five cabinet posts held by the Liberal Democrats in the coalition….

So, this Whittingdale guy has been chairman of the Commons “culture” select committee since 2005.  That’s interesting since the 2004 UK ballot-rigging in the election was called by deputy high court judge, Mr. Mawrey “fraud on an industrial scale that would disgrace a banana republic.”

The prime minister also said the Tories needed to show they were the party of compassion by pressing ahead with reforms to welfare and education….

Well that’s good, Cameron wants the Tories to show they are a party of “compassion”, like George W. Bush’s Republican party of “compassionate conservatives” that destroyed America.  So who else is in the cabinet of compassionate Tories?

George Osborne, who has been given the additional title of first secretary of state, said after the meeting: “There was a very serious message. There is an opportunity for the Conservative party now to deliver the manifesto upon we stood…

Amber Rudd, the modernising and pro-European minister for climate change, is promoted in her department to the post of secretary of state with a seat in cabinet.

Priti Patel, the Treasury minister, is promoted to replace Esther McVey as minister for employment at the Department for Work and Pensions….

My, my my.  Well we in America know what compassionate conservatives look like so let’s take a look at these British “compassionate conservatives” starting with Amber Rudd.  What’s old Amber got up her compassionate sleeve for the people of the UK?  According to DeSmogBlog:

Excerpt:

Fracking Industry Celebrates Amber Rudd Promotion to Energy Secretary

Fracking wells will be popping like champagne corks across Britain during the next five years following the promotion of shale gas supporter Amber Rudd to secretary of state for the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC)….

The shale gas industry has been eagerly awaiting the post-election fracking go-ahead…

With a majority government, the Conservative party has enthusiastically embraced the prospects for shale gas to provide a domestic source of energy. Following last week’s election outcome, shares in Centrica – which has stakes in North Sea oil as well as UK shale gas exploration – jumped 9 percent.

Look at the bright side Britain, you can heat your home by lighting a match to the drinking water coming out of your faucet, how compassionate is that?  And since Cameron has been in office since 2004 what is the shape of the pension system in the UK as part of the European Union?  According to the Economic Times of India:

Excerpt:

LONDON: The European Union's pensions and insurance watchdog aims to complete stress tests on pension funds by the end of 2015, its chairman said, in one of the world's first examinations of how the funds can cope with market dislocations…. 

The tests on the EU's 3 trillion euro ($3.4 trillion) pension fund sector follow the first stress tests on insurers… 

In the low interest rate environment of the past few years, pension funds have found it difficult to earn sufficient returns on bond investments to pay their pensioners, encouraging a move into riskier assets such as equities or real estate.

The situation has got worse this year, with some bonds posting negative yields, as the European Central Bank started a 1 trillion euro bond buying programme.

Hmmm, it sounds like the Wall Street Banks and Central Bank of Europe have unloaded their worthless mortgage backed derivatives into the $3 trillion dollar EU pensions, like a sack of worthless magic beans. 

So how does Cameron’s astounding reelection affect the $3 trillion dollar EU pensions?  According to the Guardian, the voters of the UK voted to forfeit their pensions for bank profits.  How nice of them. 

Excerpt:

Bank of England holds interest rates at record low

First announcement from the Bank under the new Conservative government leaves interest rates at 0.5%....

The bank rate has been at a record low of 0.5% since March 2009. For the previous coalition government that meant it was the first administration in more than half a century to enjoy unchanged borrowing costs for its entire term.

Well no relief for working people there, but maybe Patel can take a page out of the “compassionate” playbook of the Obama Administration that helped vault Cameron over the finish line.  Maybe try some pension smoothing to make up for the losses.

In America Barack Obama and his Republican supporters have used “pension smoothing” to line the pockets of Wall Street.  From the Wall Street Journal:

Except:

A government accounting maneuver to pay for road repairs, subways and buses will allow many U.S. businesses to delay billions of dollars in pension contributions for retirees.

President Barack Obama on Friday signed a $10.8 billion transportation bill that extends a "pension-smoothing" provision for another 10 months. In short: companies can delay making mandatory pension contributions, but because those payments are tax-deductible some businesses will pay slightly higher tax bills, which will help pay for the legislation.

Companies with 100 of the country's largest pensions were expected to contribute $44 billion to their plans this year, but that could be slashed by 30% next year, estimated John Ehrhardt, an actuary at consulting firm Milliman.

International Paper Co., for example, had planned to set aside $1 billion by 2016 to fund its $12.5 billion U.S. defined benefit plan. The paper company says it now expects to funnel that money into other projects, including share buybacks or investments in new plants.

"It means more cash for us," says Chief Financial Officer Carol Roberts.

See, you don’t have to raise taxes on the rich billionaires to pay for roads and construction, you just steal it from the pension system through accounting gimmicks.  And don’t stop there, there’s some compassionate union busting according to the Mirror:

Excerpt:

Strike on David Cameron's doorstep as No10 gardeners announce first walkout in 37 years

What?? Why are the British striking?  They overwhelmingly voted for more pain and no gain didn’t they?

Staff will walk out for 12 hours for the first time since 1978 over a pay wrangle - and they claim some aren't earning the London living wage…

The famous garden's maintenance contract was handed over to a private firm a year ago, and groundsmen are now angry at the company's pay plans….

And it comes shortly before the government pushes through a new crackdown on unions by making it harder to take industrial action….

All the staff are GMB union members employed by the Royal Parks, who maintain Hyde Park, St James's Park and Green Park in central London.

Regional organiser Gary Carter told Mirror Online: "I hope the Prime Minister now he's supporting 'working people' will support the strike. But that may be too much to ask."

Ha, ha ha.  They think the Prime Minister will support working people on strike, that’s a good one.  Remember, Obama said he put on a pair of comfortable shoes and stand with working people on strike, then when Scott Walker busted the unions in Wisconsin Obama was nowhere to be found. 

The union says OCS is paying two week’s pay as a 'loan' which will be 'recovered' over 12 months.

A spokesman said: "This will put staff into debt and wipe out any pay award. The two weeks' pay will only be paid when staff leave."

The GMB claims OCS won its contract a year ago by offering to run the parks for less money than competitors and is now trying to 'claw it back'.

Mr. Carter said: "The taxpayer will foot the bill if they try and get money out of the Royal Parks. It'll be the same if our members are claiming extra tax credits…

"New starters are getting £35 less a week than current staff. Some people are being paid less than the London living wage. They're earning about £7 an hour."

Meanwhile in Alberta, Canada things are looking up for the people after their election that was untainted by the stench of Obama and Republicans.  According to DeSmogBlog, it is all woe is me, in the oil industry.

Excerpt:

While Jim Prentice and his Progressive Conservative cadre lick their wounds after last night’s landslide victory by the New Democratic Party and leader Rachel Notley, punditry about the oil industry’s place in the transformed province is in full force.

Even before the results were in, Canadians were being warned new leadership in Canada’s oilpatch will mean very scary things for the economy: fleeing investors, abandoned projects, market uncertainty….

Yet many other onlookers are saying fresh leadership in Alberta could bring long-overdue policy changes that not only benefit a broader cross-section of society, but industry itself, by remedying systemic imbalances that have granted an unhealthy amount of power to oil interests for far too long….

Notley, who has promised to review the royalty regime around oil and gas production, raise corporate taxes, ban corporate political donations and stop pushing for the Keystone XL and Northern Gateway pipelines, is poking an exposed nerve for companies already feeling on the outs after the oil economy’s dramatic downturn.

Yes and not only that, looks like the Bank of Canada may be nationalized and debt free.

Yes and not only that, looks like the Bank of Canada may be nationalized and debt free.  According to Global Research: 

There is a very interesting legal case that is playing out in Canada at the moment. William Krehm, Anne Emmett, and COMER (The Committee for Monetary and Economic Reform: http://www.comer.org/) filed a lawsuit on December 12th, 2011, in Federal Court to try to force a restoration of the Bank of Canada to its mandated purposes.

In essence, they want the Bank of Canada to provide interest-free loans to the federal, provincial, and municipal governments, as provided for in the Bank of Canada Act.

This money would be used to finance public expenditures whenever there is a budgetary deficit.

“Two Canadians and a Canadian economic think tank confront the global financial powers in the Canadian federal court. The Canadians plead for declarations that would restore the use of the Bank of Canada for the benefit of Canadians and remove it from the control of international private entities whose interests and directives are placed above the interest of Canadians and the primacy of the constitution of Canada…”

Well yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.  So while the UK slides down the poop chute to the status of “Banana Republic” run by compassionate conservatives, Canada is becoming a modern day Democracy. 

Bravo, good for the Canadians, one giant step for mankind.

By Patricia Baeten

All Monsanto’s Men: Part VII Canada to Send Troops to Aid Monsanto’s Army in Ukraine

Well, well looks like Canada wants to get its’ snout in the U.S. Treasury trough, they’re sending troops to fight with Monsanto’s army in Ukraine.  While American citizens living in bone crushing poverty, poisoned by contaminated water and GM foods, are terrorized by RAND Corporation’s hybrid police force, equipped with excess military equipment, America is paying Monsanto’s army to fight in Ukraine.

The American government was overthrown on December 12, 2000 by the people we “elected” to the United States Senate, who confirmed the corrupt Supreme Court Justices that stopped the vote count and overturned the Presidential election.  Since then endless wars have turned millionaires into billionaires. 

In 2013 I wrote a post to my blog entitled “Is the Secretive Carlyle Group in Charge of Spying for America?” In that post I played this video of JFK:

So, Canada is sending troops to Ukraine.  Their “elected” government voted to condemn Canadians to the kind of hell Americans are living in today with nothing more than a guffaw and a slap on the back. From Global Research:

Excerpt

Unanimous Support for Ukraine War by Parties in Canadian Parliament

Get that?  Unanimous support for war in Ukraine.

On April 29, Canada’s House of Commons held a four-hour, ‘take note’ foreign policy discussion concerning the situation in Ukraine. The discussion was hardly a debate, as ‘take note’ sessions in Parliament sometimes become. No, this was a pat-on-the-back, we’re-all-in-this-together session… 

Canada has decided to send 200 Canadian Forces troops styled as ‘trainers’ to Ukraine, allegedly to prepare the Ukrainian Armed Forces to defend the U.S.-backed regime of fascists and oligarchs against ‘Russian aggression’. Or so says our national media…

…speaker after speaker credited the ultra-nationalist lobby organization, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, with teaching them everything they know on Ukraine.

 

Rafting in Uraine

Yep, Canada has agreed to go to war against the people of Ukraine who refuse to accept the puppet government installed in Ukraine by vulture bankers.  Canada’s troops will join Monsanto’s army to eliminate any resistance, and it’s all paid for by America.

America’s war trough is flush with Federal Reserve Notes and the glut is on.  Get while the getting is good.  The military industrial complex has been replaced with a “Hybrid Vulture Banking” complex, feeding off the carcasses of countries financially emaciated by them. 

Now that the vulture banks have set their sights on Ukraine, it’s time to abandon what remains of the corpse of Ireland. 

 

Carpathian Mountains, Ukraine

From Irish Times:

Excerpt:

‘Juicy’ Irish deals no more as vultures circle Ukraine

The world’s biggest investors came hunting for bargains in Ireland after its economy collapsed. With fortunes made, some are cashing in their chips.

Michael Hasenstab, the Franklin Templeton bond manager who wagered billions of dollars on Irish sovereign debt in 2011, is selling most of his investment in the nation’s bonds, which have returned 142 per cent from their lowest point.

Less than a year after partner Wilbur Ross headed for the exit, Fairfax Financial Holdings five weeks ago cut in half its stake in bailed-out Bank of Ireland Plc after the lender’s shares almost quadrupled since the firm bought them.

Crimean Peninsula

Hmmm, first Wall Street banks create mortgage backed investment products designed to implode, pays the ratings firms to rate these products as triple A (the safest of investments), sells them to governments and pension funds, buys up the debt after the implosion then then demands full payment of the original value of those garbage investment products.   All made legal by the people who overthrew the American Government in 2000.

The sales show the rewards for investors who gambled on a country in the grips of a failing banking system and the worst property crash in Western Europe. Just over four years since the nation was forced to seek an international bailout, Ireland is once more the fastest-growing economy in the euro region.

I hardly call what these bankers/investors were doing gambling because there was NO RISK for the investors.  They bought up Ireland’s debt with the money they stole from governments world-wide, with an absolute guaranteed return in spades.

Now, the billions made in Ireland are rippling around the globe, as the nation’s one-time saviors look to war-torn Ukraine, real estate in Singapore, pet insurance in Canada and Cypriot bonds for the next big score.

Odessa

The nation’s one time SAVIORS are looking to “war-torn” Ukraine???  Huh??  Let’s see, the bank’s bankrolled the removal of Ukraine’s elected President, fomented war in Ukraine, bankrolled Monsanto’s purchase of Blackwater’s army, all paid for with the $5 billion stolen in gold reserves from Ukraine and flown to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.  And the Irish Times calls these vultures saviors??  Maybe I don’t know what “savior” means.

Merriam Webster Dictionary:

Savior

noun sav·ior \ˈsāv-yər also -ˌyȯr\

: someone who saves something or someone from danger, harm, failure, etc.

Savior —used by Christians to refer to Jesus Christ

So what else do these “saviors” of Ireland have in store for Ukraine?

Franklin’s Hasenstab has been the biggest winner from the recovery. In 2011, Hasenstab began an €8 bn wager that made Franklin the biggest private holder of Irish sovereign debt. Now, he’s moving on….

Hasenstab’s firm is now the biggest holder of Ukrainian sovereign debt, after loading up on more than $7 billion of its bonds, and is now negotiating with the government as the nation’s seeks to restructure its debts.

Now that’s rich, Hasenstab’s firm Franklin Templeton, who bought up Ukraine’s debt after Ukraine’s government was overthrown for refusing a debt deal offered by the International Monetary Fund is set to make a killing in “war torn” Ukraine. 

So let’s see the deal that Hasenstab’s firm is “negotiating” with the oligarchs in Ukraine.  From Global Research:

Southern Ukraine

Excerpt:

Ukraine Agreed to a Monsanto “Land Grab” to Get a $17 Billion Loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF)

Whoa, hot diggedy dog $17 Billion dollar shakedown by the IMF.  I wonder what the people of Ukraine get for $17 Billion dollars.

The World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) is helping biotech run the latest war in Ukraine. Make no mistake that what is happening in the Ukraine now is deeply tied to the interests of Monsanto, Dow, Bayer, and other big players in the poison food game….

Previously, there was a ban on private sector land ownership in the country – but it was lifted ‘just in time’ for Monsanto to have its way with the Ukraine.

In fact, a bit of political maneuvering by the IMF gave the Ukraine a $17 billion loan – but only if they would open up to biotech farming and the selling of Monsanto’s poison crops and chemicals – DESTROYING A FARMLAND THAT IS ONE OF THE MOST PRISTINE IN ALL OF EUROPE. Farm equipment dealer, Deere, along with seed producers DuPont and Monsanto, will have a heyday.

Yes, Canadian Government, you have served your people well pledging to send troops to their deaths to preserve the profits of vulture banks and some of the most evil corporations in existence.  Your troops will join Monsanto’s army funded by the American Government with funds that were approved by congress for the rebuilding of Afghanistan.  From The Nation:

Ukraine's Far-Right National Guard

Excerpt:

Blackwater: One of the Pentagon’s Top Contractors for Afghanistan Training

Despite a sordid and deadly reputation in Iraq, the mercenary army that began as Blackwater and is now known as Academi was a top recipient of Pentagon contracts for training Afghanistan’s security forces from 2002 to 2014, a government watchdog reported Tuesday.

The latest report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) also includes the surprising disclosure that IBM—a company not generally known as a defense contractor—was the largest beneficiary of a Pentagon program to stabilize Afghanistan by facilitating private investment in its vast mineral wealth.

That is the government that was installed in America by the United States Senate and the United States Supreme Court in 2001.

Altogether, the government spent $104 billion between 2002 and 2014 for the program. The Pentagon issued the bulk of the contracts, and the rest came from the Department of State and the US Agency for International Development.

Of the $66 billion spent by the Pentagon, however, SIGAR said DoD could only report on $21 billion, or less than one-third of its total. It accounted for the huge “discrepancy” to differences in executing contracts between “DoD and Federal accounting systems.” The Pentagon was also “unable to provide” contract data from the pre-2010 time, SIGAR said.

 

Afghanistan Rebuilt

Around $45 billion is just “walking around money” with no record of who received that Pentagon cash. 

The total puts Academi, which acquired Blackwater in 2011, far ahead of the Pentagon’s top contractors…

In 2013… Prince met with the former president of Nigeria and proposed to “assemble a well-trained fighting force of non-Nigerians to battle Boko Haram,” the Islamist army that’s been terrorizing much of the country.

The terror of Boko Haram is nothing compared to the terror associated with Monsanto’s Blackwater army.

The $65 million appropriated to IBM was about 9 percent of the total spent by the Pentagon for a controversial project designed to convince foreign investors and mining companies to develop Afghanistan’s extensive mineral wealth….

The program, run by a Department of Defense Task Force for Business Stability Operations with the US Army’s Corp of Engineers, was first described by New York Times reporter James Risen in 2010.  At the time, Afghan officials estimated that their deposits of copper, gold, lithium and other minerals could be WORTH AS MUCH AS $3 TRILLION…

In December 2014, the special inspector general began what he called a “full-court press” to determine how the Pentagon mismanaged its Business Task Force in Afghanistan. “They’ve spent approximately $700, $800 million, and as far as we can see, they’ve accomplished nothing,” SIGAR John Sopko wrote in a letter to [then] Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel detailing the corruption.

Yes, well those trillions paid out to the vulture bankers for nothing were just sloshing around the bottom of the Pentagon slush fund barrel awarded by congress.  From US News:

Local residents watch the burning NATO supply oil tankers

Excerpt:

The Pentagon's Slush Fund Is Getting Slushier

The idea behind the Overseas Contingency Operations account is just like it sounds – an account for overseas contingencies. And because of the “contingent” nature of these expenses, the account is not subject to spending caps.

But much of the money placed in that account is actually for “base budget” functions and should be funded there, where it is subject to spending caps Congress set. After all, no other federal department is offered the same opportunity to pay for major programs “off-budget.”

When the details of the Pentagon’s latest budget request were made public, the fiscal year 2016 Overseas Contingency Operations request for the Pentagon was $50.9 billion, a decrease of $13 billion from last year.

But the president then provided $38 billion more in “base budget” funding than was legally allowed under the caps….

The House Budget Committee then came up with an overreach of its own: Increase the slush fund from $50.9 billion to $94 billion. Yes, you read that right. The House wants to put $94 billion in the Overseas Contingency Operations account, and off-budget, to avoid the Budget Control Act caps.

That would be the most Overseas Contingency Operations spending since fiscal year 2012, and more than half the amount the Pentagon received for Overseas Contingency Operations funding in fiscal year 2008 ($186.9 billion) in the midst of “the surge” when the U.S. was actively engaged in two shooting wars.

GOP Rep. Aaron Schock had his office decorated like "Downton Abbey"

Must be nice to be a member of congress.  Your campaign is paid for by the billionaires you will serve when your guaranteed election to congress takes place.  Once in congress you will be exempt from the Freedom of Information Act so you won’t have to reveal to the details of the quid pro quo of transferring America’s wealth from the treasury to your donors. 

Also, you will be exempt from insider trading laws, so you will become a billionaire investing in the companies who receive the American treasury largess to spend on weapons of war.  Once you’ve sucked the taxpayers dry you can move on to be a lobbyist, lobbying your replacement on behalf of their campaign donors to ensure the gravy train doesn’t end. 

So Canada, with no more than a few slaps on the back and a few guttural guffaws has committed the lives of their troops to shore up Monsanto’s private army in the slaughter of innocent Ukrainians and the trillion dollar pillage paid for by America.

By Patricia Baeten

Down The Rabbit Hole: Is The Secretive Carlyle Group in Charge of Spying...

Down The Rabbit Hole: Is The Secretive Carlyle Group in Charge of Spying...:   You have to wonder what Edward Snowden saw that was so horrific and egregious it would make him give up everything for noth...

American Think Tanks’ Global Destruction of Democracy and Hybrid Police Forces

American think tanks’ plans for the global destruction of democracies have come full circle.  America, the petri dish where the think tanks laid the foundation for destruction of society, is erupting in civil violence pitting citizens against a hybrid police force that was the brainchild of the RAND Corporation.

Through urban renewal, corporate for-profit charter schools for minorities, destruction of the social safety net and the destruction of families through a for profit prison system created by Wall Street banks, democracy is dead or dying.  

Engorged in wealth stolen from the U.S. Treasury, the Federal Reserve Bank and the Central Banks of the world have used the assets of the EU, NATO and America to fund private mercenary armies marauding across America, the Middle East, Eurasia and the Pacific Rim.

According to Lew Rockwell.com:

Excerpt:

The RAND Corporation, one of the most fecund research arms of the Military-Industrial-Homeland Security Complex, has released a study entitled A Stability Police Force for the United States: Justification and Creating U.S. Capabilities.

The SPFOR (to use the inevitable acronym) would be a “hybrid” military/law enforcement unit created within the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) for use “in a range of tasks such as crowd and riot control, special weapons and tactics (SWAT), and investigations of organized criminal groups” — both abroad, in UN-directed multilateral military operations, and at home, as dictated by the needs of the Regime….

The RAND study, which was conducted for the U.S. Army’s Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute, recommended using the Marshals Service rather than the US Army’s Military Police as host for the SPFOR in order to avoid conflicts with the Posse Comitatus Act, which forbids (albeit in principle more than in practice) the domestic use of the military as a law enforcement body.

So you have a billionaire think tank making recommendations on how to create an extrajudicial police force for “controlling” the people when they rise up and demand accountability for the destruction of their country and government.

Back in 1961, the U.S. Government produced a document entitled “Freedom From War” that envisioned the creation of a globe-spanning United Nations “Peace Force” that would work in collaboration with a militarized “internal security” force in each country….

While the monstrosity headquartered on the East River is a proper target of our scorn and hostility, the new RAND study underscores the fact that if “peacekeepers” end up patrolling American streets, they probably won’t be foreigners in blue berets, but homegrown jackboots commanded by Washington.

A recent interview in Pacific Rim with John McMurtry, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, describes the destruction of the social systems in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine etc. 

Excerpt:

Whenever any nation has an independent government with fossil fuel, financial, agricultural or strategic resources not yet subjugated to transnational corporate control, there is a US-led campaign to destroy it.

Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Egypt, Libya, Syria have all experienced this over many decades dating from the overthrow of the social-democratic president Mossadegh of Iran in 1953 to Syria’s still mildly independent social state being destroyed to the roots today.

Lebanon was a civilized center of the Middle East before warred upon by Israel in 1982 and has been civil-war divided ever since.

Iraq’s region-leading social state with universal health-care, free higher education, public water and electricity, local agricultural and food subsidies has been subjected to genocidal destruction and civil war imposition from 1990 to now, with Syria being destroyed by foreign-supported civil war from 2011.

Libya’s long-time leader was first welcomed into the Western fold after 2000 and his opponents deported and renditioned by British M-15, then jihadis were joined by massive NATO ‘humanitarian bombing’ in 2011 to overthrow his social state, and Libya too is now in civil war chaos.

Induced civil wars are the divide-and-rule policy across borders, and especially successful social states like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya where their people are clearly better off than neighbouring peoples under US diktat…

All are orchestrated into sectarian insanity and internecine wars. At the same time vast new profits, resources, lands, price climbs, markets, agribusiness and – most of all – looting of public resources and finances by private foreign financiers and corporations proceeds more freely with stable social fabrics destroyed, not only in the victim societies but at home…

The RAND Corporation has been writing guidelines for puppet governments installed after the CIA instigates “riots” and removes the elected governments.  In Ukraine after the CIA removed their elected president Yanukovych, he was replaced with think tank approved billionaire, Poroshenko.  RAND’s plan for Poroshenko was leaked to the press. From Russia Times an interview with activist Don Debar:

Excerpt:

Even if the leaked plan of ‘handling’ Ukrainian crisis was not produced by the RAND corporation, events on the ground very much resemble the shocking points of the memo and the “guidelines for genocide” exported by the US, Don Debar from CPR News told RT.

A memorandum, recently leaked to online media, suggested surrounding eastern Ukrainian cities and placing citizens in internment camps. The document bears a logo of RAND corporation think-tank, but the company denies producing such a report.

RT: What do you make of this leak? How realistic does it sound?

Don Debar: Well actually knowing something about RAND Corporation, that is where reports credit the memo, it rings very true. RAND Corporation in the 1950s, for example, was contracted to take a look at the emerging political power of minorities in the cities.

People were learning, as they got concentrated at the ghettos, people actually learned that they could accumulate political power, elect people to Congress, and state legislators and things. And this became a problem for the status quo.

So RAND basically advised them to destroy neighborhoods, scatter the populations to the four corners of the region and thereby decimate political power. And urban renewal accomplished that. As far as its coming from RAND it is quite credible to me, it is the kind of work that they engage in.

When you look at Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore, Maryland it looks like the RAND plan, destroy neighborhoods and scatter the populations to decimate the power to elect your government.  It works the same in any nation, just like Hermann Goering said in the Nuremburg Trials:

"Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood.

But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders.

That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

Goering is right, it works the same in any country, to provoke a civil war you must have one group of people in a country driven into hatred of another group of people in the country and destroy the country from within. 

So how did think tanks use the “Goering doctrine” in America?  According to an LA Times Article from 1989, Enterprise Zones.  Sounds a lot like what the Republican Party is peddling today as Opportunity Zones.  The same anti-Democratic ideas are as popular today in the GOP as they were in the 80’s.  

In 1989 the plan was called Enterprise Zones, today Barack Obama and the “Reagan Democrats” that shoe horned him into the White House have embraced the plan that has proved to be devastating for America in the past.  From Bloomberg in1992.

Excerpt:

Conservatives have said for a decade that inner cities… The urban solution: Give businesses tax breaks, and they will come.

Now, in the wake of the Los Angeles riots, the "enterprise zones" notion is moving out of right field. Suddenly, much of Washington is working on a plan to sweeten existing, state-sponsored enterprise programs with federal tax breaks. The aim is to create jobs by providing tax relief to businesses that settle in the desolate areas.

Yep, the GOP and the “Reagan Democrats” never get tired of the same old failed idea, it just gets recycled and recycled devastating the world, while enriching the few.

LIGHT INDUSTRY. The program has long been popular outside of Washington: Since 1982, 38 states have created 600 enterprise zones in blighted inner-city neighborhoods. Phoenix Lighting Products Corp., a manufacturer of lighting equipment on Chicago's depressed West Side, opened its doors four years ago with the help of a 57% reduction in state and local taxes. Says co-owner David Hesse: "It would have been really tough to make it without the enterprise zone."

But experts believe that few businesses will want to move into troubled neighborhoods--even if federal aid is available. "The additional cost of doing business in these communities is significant enough that tax incentives alone can't offset the cost of insurance, security, and the ability to recruit a skilled work force," says Chris Walker, a researcher at the Urban Institute, a Washington think tank…

There are some basic drawbacks to enterprise zones. Some businesses move into the zones from outside--a zero-sum game that creates jobs in one area at the expense of another. And the goal of employing residents often isn't met, largely because companies can't find the skilled workers they need in the community.

That’s right, pick winners and losers and then pit them against each other for necessities of everyday life.

In the Benton Harbor (Mich.) enterprise zone, for instance, the 101 companies that get tax breaks are encouraged to hire residents from the community, which has a 28% jobless rate. 

But David J. Yardley, an executive at TRIAX Inc., a custom metal fabricator, says no more than 40% of the 40 jobs at his company go to city residents. Few locals have the required skills for the engineering and support-staff jobs, he says. "It's not the residents' fault," he says. "They're just entrapped in a cycle of poverty."

HALF THE TAX. New Jersey's enterprise-zone program is considered one of the best--and, at nine years, one of the oldest. Nearly 2,500 companies have moved into 10 New Jersey zones, where they're exempt from paying sales tax on personal property and on the cost of materials to renovate buildings.

So with a record like that a prudent person would probably look at the Clinton years of successes, but there are no prudent persons in the GOP nor in the “Reagan Democrats” only think tank lackeys, like Rand Paul.  Paul was front and center in 2013 with his version of “enterprise zones” supported by Barack Obama and Paul Ryan.  From Breitbart:

 Excerpt:

During his trip to Detroit, Paul will also give a speech to the Detroit Economic Club, where he will unveil a new economic empowerment policy called “Economic Freedom Zones.” 

Here we go again.

Some of the idea we took from Jack Kemp who had something called ‘Enterprise Zones.’ But we’ve gone a little bit farther because we think in some ways the ‘Enterprise Zones’ never quite lived up to their potential because they weren’t dramatic enough. 

Oh, so the Enterprise Zones didn’t work, not because it’s a for-shit idea, but it didn’t inflict enough pain on the people, “they weren’t dramatic enough.”  So what does Paul offer to make them “dramatic” enough?

Paul said this kind of a plan would be able to save Detroit without a federal government bailout — something that he had previously told Breitbart News would never happen on his watch…

“The difference is with this is if you leave your money in the hands of successful businesses, you’re not deciding who the winners and losers are; the customer is,” Paul said…

Paul thinks the Republicans should flip these issues on their heads; all while getting results with true conservatives economic policies in the inner city…

Paul said he thinks Republicans need to go out into these communities and actually talk to people, like he has done. “I think one of the best examples of that is Jack Kemp,” Paul said…. He tried to go into the impoverished neighborhoods, visit soup kitchens, visit the community centers and find where there is a place where you connect with people.”

Well after the overthrow of the American government, you won’t have to travel far to visit an impoverished neighborhood.  However, after sequester and slashing all safety nets across the board, you’d be hard pressed to find a soup kitchen with food.

The think tanks in America with their media monopoly, their cable TV funded C-Span programming, Republican operatives on the Supreme Court turning back the clock on civil rights and voting rights laws, plan to spend billions on electing a new lackey to continue with the status quo:  American Think Tanks’ Global Destruction of Democracy And Hybrid Police Forces