Fukushima Radiation

Here’s an article to cheer up all our West Coast readers (as well as those around the rest of the world). As we all know Fuck-You-Shima has vanished from the media – a total news black-out – with no up-dates, no information on what’s being done to clean it up (HA!) or, in general, anything about it. N-O-T-H-I-N-G.!

Well here’s an article that tells it all including how one might begin to be wary of eating anything from the Pacific Ocean and – in thinking ahead – what happens outside the Pacific Ocean if they can’t fix the continuing 300 tons of radioactive waste flowing into the Pacific Ocean daily!!

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Friends, we are in much deeper trouble over Fukushima than the media and Governments are letting us know (so we won’t be “frightened). Heavens forbid that the general public of the World begin to get “frightened” over a nuclear accident that could eventually make half the world and its’ largest sea unusable, dangerous, uninhabitable, unable to produce food and we loose the nature resources that the entire Pacific Basin provides the entire bloody World.

It’s time to panic, folks. Not tomorrow – but today.

Muck About

Fukushima Radiation Has Contaminated The Entire Pacific Ocean (And It’s Going To Get Worse)

Continue reading “Fukushima Radiation”

If This Is “Transparency” – We’d Hate To Know What Secrecy Looks Like

Submitted by Claire Bernish via TheAntiMedia.org,

In the spirit of the transparency — of which the Obama administration claims to be a champion — there will be no details regarding the allocation of non-military intelligence spending in the president’s final budget request to Congress.

According to a press release from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), fiscal year 2017’s budget totals $53.5 billion, but don’t ask which agencies or programs will receive the funds — “because such disclosures could harm national security.”

Indubitably.

Of course, the ODNI congratulated the self-titled most transparent administration in history for its laudatory lucidity, anyway.

“Reflecting the Administration’s commitment to transparency and open government, this Budget continues the practice begun in 2012 of disclosing the President’s aggregate funding requests for the [National Intelligence Program],” stated an ODNI fact sheet.

Considering such disclosures became a requirement under the law in 2010, that pat on the back seems superfluous, if not smug.

“That’s a business as usual claim,” said Representative Peter Welch, according to US News & World Report. “There is no transparency there — they’re complying with the thinnest of laws about the [aggregate budget] number. Members of Congress and the American public really are learning nothing.”

US News also reported Welch first learned of the 16 individual intelligence agencies’ budget allocations, along with the rest of the U.S. populace, thanks to Edward Snowden’s disclosures revealed by the Washington Post in 2013.

Welch also explained that although members of Congress aren’t restricted from viewing the specifics of intelligence program appropriations, they are prohibited from discussing the contents — “It’s like going in there with a blindfold and coming out being mute,” he mused. In fact, objecting to the classified budget allotments would mean being “escorted off the House floor in handcuffs” — though it wasn’t entirely apparent whether Welch intended sarcasm in saying so.

Despite the revelations in Snowden’s massive document releases, and his ambitious aspirations to bring transparency to governmental operations, the Obama administration continues to thwart attempts to force the matter — and not only will it continue to do so, but administrations that follow will almost certainly continue the pattern.

In the meantime, it should come as no shock that we will never be completely privy to the intelligence programs we fund through our taxes.

A Multinational Trojan Horse: The Trans-Pacific Partnership

Guest Post by Dave Pruett

“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, … may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” — James Madison in The Federalist Papers.

(Image source: Wikimedia)

You don’t have to know much about the “trade” deal called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) to be more than a little suspicious.

First, there are the very peculiar bedfellows. Supporting the TPP are President Obama and most Congressional Republicans, the same Republicans who’ve vehemently opposed his every initiative for the past six and one-half years.

Against the TPP are most (but not all) Congressional Democrats, Ford Motor Company, virtually all trade unions and environmental groups, watchdog groups such as Public Citizen, and usual Obama allies such as Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, who, in a testy open letter to the President on April 25, called for greater transparency on the TPP.

Furthermore, when asked to lend his support for so-called “Fast Track” authority for the TPP, Obama water-carrier and former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid chafed, “So the answer is not only no, but hell no.”

Also opposed: liberal icon Noam Chomsky, Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders, Republican hopeful Mike Huckabee, many Tea-Party groups, and conservative Republican editorialist and former presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan. Conspicuous by silence: Hillary Rodham Clinton.

What’s going on here? Why the strange alliances?

Peel back the layers of the TPP and you’ll find what some believe to be a “corporate Trojan horse.” Disguised as “free trade,” the TPP’s provisions and tactics undermine Constitutional safeguards and national sovereignty. But there’s also a silver lining. The TPP exposes who, in the marbled halls of political power, is working for whom. It forces politicians to put their cards on the table, and by their hands you will know them.

Continue reading “A Multinational Trojan Horse: The Trans-Pacific Partnership”

Ultra-Secrecy Surrounds Barack Obama’s New Global Economic Treaty

Submitted by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

Barack Obama is secretly negotiating a global economic treaty which would destroy thousands of American businesses and millions of good paying American jobs. In other words, it would be the final nail in the coffin for America’s economic infrastructure. Obama knows that if the American people actually knew what was in this treaty that they would be screaming mad, so the negotiations are being done in secret. The only people that are allowed to look at the treaty are members of Congress, and even they are being banned from saying anything to the public. American workers are about to be brutally stabbed in the back, and thanks to all of this secrecy and paranoia they won’t even see it coming.

The name of this new treaty is “the Trans-Pacific Partnership”, and it is being touted as perhaps the most important trade agreement in history. But very few people in this country are talking about it, because none of us are allowed to see it. An article that was just released by Politico detailed the extreme secrecy that is surrounding this trade agreement…

If you want to hear the details of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal the Obama administration is hoping to pass, you’ve got to be a member of Congress, and you’ve got to go to classified briefings and leave your staff and cellphone at the door.

If you’re a member who wants to read the text, you’ve got to go to a room in the basement of the Capitol Visitor Center and be handed it one section at a time, watched over as you read, and forced to hand over any notes you make before leaving.

And no matter what, you can’t discuss the details of what you’ve read.

This treaty is going to affect the lives of every man, woman and child living in this nation, and yet it is deemed so “important” that none of us can know what is in it?

Continue reading “Ultra-Secrecy Surrounds Barack Obama’s New Global Economic Treaty”

Janet Yellen Is Freaking Out About “Audit The Fed” – Here Are 100 Reasons Why She Should Be

Submitted by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,

Janet Yellen is very alarmed that some members of Congress want to conduct a comprehensive audit of the Federal Reserve for the first time since it was created. If the Fed is doing everything correctly, why should Yellen be alarmed? What does she have to hide?

During testimony before Congress on Tuesday, she made “central bank independence” sound like it was the holy grail. Even though every other government function is debated politically in this country, Yellen insists that what the Federal Reserve does is “too important” to be influenced by the American people. Does any other government agency ever dare to make that claim?

But of course the Federal Reserve is not a government agency. It is a private banking cartel that has far more power over our money and our economy than anyone else does. And later on in this article I am going to share with you dozens of reasons why Congress should shut it down.

The immense power wielded by the Federal Reserve is clearly demonstrated whenever Janet Yellen speaks publicly. On Tuesday, her comments about interest rates sent stocks to brand new record highs…

Yellen, in her semi-annual testimony before the Senate banking committee, used a word familiar to investors when she reiterated that the central bank will be “patient” on raising interest rates for the first time since the 2008 financial crisis. Traders took that as a sign that interest rates would remain unchanged until autumn.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 92.35 points (0.5%) to 18,209.19, while the Standard & Poors 500 gained 5.82 points (0.3%) to 2,115.48, both eclipsing Friday’s record closes.

But Yellen was also unusually defensive on Tuesday. The “Audit the Fed” bill that is being sponsored by Rand Paul (among others) has her really freaked out. The following comes from the Hill…

Appearing before the Senate Banking Committee, Yellen was on the defensive, as Republicans questioned how the Fed conducts monetary policy and Democrats put forward ideas for getting tougher on Wall Street.

In the midst of all of it, Yellen generally argued the Fed was designed as an independent entity for a reason — and it would be best not to change it.

“Central bank independence in conducting monetary policy is considered a best practice for central banks around the world,” she said. “Academic studies, I think, establish beyond the shadow of a doubt that independent central banks perform better.”

In fact, she went so far as to mention the “Audit the Fed” bill by name…

A GOP-controlled Congress has given the bill its best chances yet of passage, and that renewed interest led Yellen to deliver her most spirited opposition yet.

“I want to be completely clear,” she said. “I strongly oppose Audit the Fed.”

Yellen argued the audit measure would allow politicians to second-guess the Fed’s decisions, which, in turn, would weaken the central bank. And the ultimate victim of that process, she said, would be the U.S. economy.

So what is she so concerned about?

We are all accountable to someone.

What is so wrong about the Federal Reserve being accountable to Congress?

Why can’t we find out what is really going on inside the Fed?

Continue reading “Janet Yellen Is Freaking Out About “Audit The Fed” – Here Are 100 Reasons Why She Should Be”

WHY ARE THE GERMANS REPATRIATING THEIR GOLD FROM THE FED?

Guest Post by Koos Jansen from Bullion Star

German Gold Repatriation Accelerating

Headlines are easy to write, a bit of sensation in it and they will surely persuade people to read the accompanying article. Though I’m often disappointed to read articles that contain remarkably little of what the headline promises. On the other hand, I personally have written many articles that were read by few because my headline wasn’t catchy enough in a stream of apocalyptic headers readers a daily thronged upon. I call this the headline problem; no catchy headline, no readers. This might create an incentive for writers to exaggerate a headline just to get their message across. The next step is to sensationalize a headline and the content to go with it to attract even more readers – though this approach has little to do with journalism. Surprisingly, Bloomberg used this approach on June 23, 2014, when they published this article:

German Gold Stays in New York in Rebuff to Euro Doubters

Germany has decided its gold is safe in American hands.

The headline and story suggest that the German gold repatriation schedule – to ship home 300 tonnes of gold from the US and 374 tonnes from France by 2020, in order to have half (1695.3 tonnes) of Germans official gold reserves stored in Frankfurt – will be halted as German politicians decided their gold “is safe in American hands”. The headline and content that comes with it are misleading in every sense of how you look at it. The first Paragraph states:

Surging mistrust of the euro during Europe’s debt crisis fed a campaign to bring Germany’s entire $141 billion gold reserve home from New York and London. Now, after politics shifted in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition, the government has concluded that stashing half its bullion abroad is prudent after all.

At the time the article was written 32.1 % of German sovereign gold reserves were stored in Frankfurt. So, if the government “has concluded that stashing half its bullion abroad is prudent after all“, it would still require 607.214 tonnes to be shipped to Germany in order to have 50 % on German soil. Though the article suggests there will be no more shipments of German gold from the US, which is incorrect as we will see later on.

At the end of the article it’s stated:

Campaigners at “Repatriate Our Gold” also doesn’t see the Bundesbank going further anytime soon.

“Right now, our campaign is on hold,” Peter Boehringer, a Munich-based euro critics who co-founded an initiative to bring home all of Germany’s gold in 2012, said in an interview.

Again, incorrect. After Bloomberg published the story Peter Boehringer promptly responded in the comment section beneath the article (click here to directly read his comment) to ?painstakingly explain all the inaccuracies that the Bloomberg story contains – no need for me to repaet him.

Alas, the Bloomberg story has reached many which are still under the assumption Germany has stopped repatriating its gold from the US and France. To get official confirmation on the continuation of Germany’s gold repatriation I asked the BuBa’s press department a few questions in August, their answers were very clear. The next screen shot should clarify all:

This is the link to the interview with Thiele from February 19, 2014. This is the link to the article of July 11, 2014.

Germany will repatriate 30 to 50 tonnes in 2014, or perhaps even more, from New York to Frankfurt. This was confirmed by the BuBa on July 11, 2014, after the publication of the Bloomberg article. The Buba will continue to repatriate 295 tonnes from the US and 342 tonnes from France in 2014 – 2020 to have 50 % of its reserves on German soil.

The German gold in New York is stored at the Federal Reserve Bank Of New York (FRBNY), that recently reported 24 tonnes of gold had left their vaults in July 2014.

The FRBNY stores gold, free of charge, for 36 sovereign nations and the IMF?. All these accounts are confidential so we don’t know who is withdrawing gold if total inventory is dropping. However, as we can read from the interview with Carl-Ludwig Thiele, Member of the Executive Board of the BuBa, 5 tonnes were repatriated from the FRBNY in 2013. Let’s have a look at data of the FRBNY foreign gold deposits of the last two years.

We can clearly see 5 tonnes had left the FRBNY vaults in 2013, it’s certain this was withdrawn by Germany. Subsequently, the repatriation schedule continued and, therefore, it’s very likely the withdrawals in 2014, in total 54.5 tonnes, have been also transferred to Germany. Although I’m not positive, it’s my assumption the German gold repatriation is accelerating.

Koos Jansen