Sovereign Debt is Everybody’s Problem

Source: USAWatchdog
Greg Hunter

The most pressing problem on the planet right now is the European sovereign debt crisis.  It is a gigantic highly leveraged mess caused by greedy reckless bankers.  It was nurtured with the help of regulators who turned a blind eye and allowed the problem to mushroom into an uncontrollable financial cancer.  The European Union is struggling to come up with a plan or bailout fund big enough to truly end the crisis, but there is none in sight.  Every time there is a plan, it is shot down or falls apart.  There was talk of Germany backing the EU bailout fund with its gold reserves, but that was rejected by the Germans.  (Germany is the world’s number two holder of gold with 3,412 tonnes.)  Can you blame them?  It is ironic this so-called bailout fund is looking for tangible backing and that world leaders would turn to the yellow metal.  Didn’t they all have a pact to sell gold not so many years back?  This tells me any country with toxic sovereign debt that wants a bailout better be considering putting up its gold reserves.

The first troubled country that comes to mind is Italy.  It has the fourth largest gold reserve in the world with 2,451 tonnes.  Spain is in just as much debt and trouble as Italy, but only has 281 tonnes of gold.  It ranks around 17th on the list.  These two countries have ten times the sour debt of Greece.  I predict Germany will not be the last country to be asked to put up its gold.  I suspect there is not a country on earth that will elect to give up control of its yellow reserves.  What else is there?  I don’t think Italy would put up the island of Sicily for collateral, no more than the U.S. would post the Hawaiian Islands as security for a loan.

They call this a sovereign debt crisis, but it is the banks that are really at the heart of the problem.  This leaves the EU with very limited options.  They can allow the banks holding this sovereign debt to default, or print money to bail them out.  Laws have been passed in Europe that allow the banks to count toxic sovereign debt as an asset.  It is a novel idea–overwhelming debt that doesn’t have a prayer of being fully repaid counted as a store of value.  (Oh wait, what was I thinking, this is the same thing the American government allows U.S. banks to do!)  That means you can also say the sovereign debt crisis is bank solvency crisis.  If you mark all sour debt for what banks can get for it today, many European financial institutions would be insolvent.  End of story.

U.S. Military Adds Armed Robotic Helicopters to Fleet

Source: AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US military plans to add a new lethal drone to its fleet -- a robotic helicopter for the US Navy equipped with laser-guided rockets, defense giant Northrop Grumman said Wednesday.

The armed Fire Scouts will mark a new era in naval warfare, offering an alternative to pilots flying attack helicopters or fighter jets off ships and reflecting a broader shift to robotic technology across the US military over the past several years.

Pepe Escobar: Iran Would Be an Excellent New Field for Predatory Capitalism

Source: RT
Pepe Escobar

The International Atomic Energy Agency, a UN watchdog, released a report claiming Iran conducted computer modeling that would only be relevant to nuclear weapons. The allegations for many are just another pretext for going to war with Iran. Are the Western powers planning an attack on Iran? Pepe Escobar, correspondent for Asia Times, gives his take on the situation.

Paving The Way For A North American Union

Source: Press For Truth.ca
Dan Dicks

The agenda for a North American Union is underway and a new security perimeter deal will blur the lines at the border and further erode the sovereignty of Canadians and Americans. On November 13th Stephen Harper, Barack Obama and Felipe Calderon will meet for the North American Leaders Summit to discuss their plans for the NAU. 

Meanwhile CETA the Canadian-European Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement presents itself as a major step towards a New World Order and the centralization of power.
Get “United We Fall” on DVD– an expose of the North American Union agenda.

Threat to China: Will Corporatists in U.S. Goverment Move Forward to Assist Big Oil in Vietnam Discovery

Source: Activist Post

Brandon Turbeville

It is now almost universally accepted among the general population and political commentators as a foregone conclusion that the United States and China will eventually face off in direct conflict at some point in the future. The decline of the American Empire and the simultaneous rise of the Chinese Empire will no doubt cause the two imperialist nations to butt heads eventually, most likely resulting in currency wars, diplomatic disputes, proxy military battles and, ultimately, direct military confrontation.

The massive amount of U.S. Treasury bills held by China, as well that of other Western countries, is becoming an increasingly unstable situation economically the world over. Indeed, China has expressed antipathy toward being considered the worthless currency recycling bin, and is a powder keg that is almost ready to blow. Especially as holding on to Western currency becomes less and less advantageous for Chinese economic policy. When the powder keg does blow, Western currency  - American currency in particular – will be smashed to pieces.

Not only that, but with the acceleration of foreign policy disagreements between the U.S. and China also on the rise, specifically but not limited to areas like Tibet, Taiwan, Libya, Africa (as a whole), North Korea, and Iran, the likelihood of direct military conflict looms even heavier as time progresses and as each empire marches forward in imposing their wills on masses of people who merely wish to be left alone to control their own destiny.

However, yet another issue has arisen that will only serve to heighten the tension between the United States and China. Interestingly enough, as has so often been the case in recent years, the United States will find itself tangled in another affair centered around oil and initiated at the behest of the large multinational oil companies. 

America’s New Role as the Dark Force

Source: Boiling Frogs Post

Elizabeth Gould & Paul Fitzgerald

As the U.S. becomes more and more the kind of country it has traditionally opposed, the answer to where we are headed may lie more in the arcane traditions of a dim past than in a bright future.

"‘We’re the dark matter. We’re the force that orders the universe but can’t be seen,’ a strapping Navy SEAL, speaking on condition of anonymity, said in describing his unit."

 

If anyone (correctly) thought that the war on terror and Washington’s response to it had taken on a fantastical otherworldly quality, this recent quote on the front page of the Washington Post seemed to confirm it.

Following 9/11, the elected government of the United States of America delivered the country to a whole department (of Homeland Security) dedicated to expanding the government’s fear of darkness into everybody’s life (remember the 2003 duct tape and plastic sheeting craze?) Now we also have a top secret military operation known as the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) that thinks it is the dark.

Begun as a modest hostage rescue team, JSOC has morphed into a veritable heart of darkness, with the power to murder at will and with immunity from American legal jurisdiction (which apparently still maintains that such assassinations are illegal). 

Even within the military, JSOC operates as a “Stovepipe,” operation, meaning that it operates completely in the black, reports to no one and continues to employ rogue ex-CIA professionals such as indicted Iran Contra operative Dewey Clarridge.  The Navy Seal Team that took out Osama bin Laden operated under JSOC. Retired military personnel refer to JSOC as “Murder, Incorporated” and the “most dangerous people on the face of the earth.”   

 

But if JSOC’s reputation for secrecy, vengeance and death from above can’t be explained from within the context of traditional U.S. military operations or U.S. law, then what set of rules is it operating from? Or is it simply that the traditions of rationalism and law that most Americans took for granted about the United States are subject to deeper, religious, or perhaps even mystical rules, whose anachronistic logic has found a renewed acceptance in an irrational world of  personal, private and holy war?

Farrakhan Blasts Media & Reporters During Radio Interview Commercial!

Source: The Daily Bell


Minister Louis Farrakhan was interviewed on Chicago radio station WVON 1690. During a break, he let his real feelings show. Highlights ...

• "[The people] don't know ... the media's bought and paid for."

• "This is a hell of a betrayal of the American people when you will not tell them the truth because you're afraid that if you tell the truth your bosses will take your job from you. That's a hell of a thing. You don't have a democracy when you don't have a free press."

• "You're all slaves and you love it so you deserve what you get, the erosion of your democracy. You'll soon be the laughingstock of the world. It's a damn shame."

• "I'm glad. Hell, I'm not hiding nothing. You need somebody to tell the truth. You need somebody that's not afraid to die for the truth that you could be made free – because you're not free and you don't really know what it means to be a free white person, a free black person, a free Mexican, a free Arab."

US to Use S. Korean Base to Project Power Against China?

Source: Global Research.ca
Matthew Hoey

This handout picture released by the Republic of Korea (ROK) Navy shows ROKS DDH-981 Choi Young, a Chungmugong Yi Sun-shin class South Korean destroyer, firing during a joint military exercise between US and South Korean navies in the Sea of Japan (East Sea) on July 27, 2010 (AFP Photo / Roknavy)

Residents on the South Korean Island of Jeju are continuing to resist the siting of a huge naval base there. Critics fear it will be used not as a shield against North Korea, but as a base for the US to target rising world power, China.

On Tuesday, four activists protesting against the base in Jeju’s Gangjeong village were arrested.

Matthew Hoey, an international co-ordinator of the Campaign to Save Jeju Island, told RT that the activists were peacefully protesting outside a hotel where the 10th Annual South Korea-UN Disarmament Conference, known as the Jeju process, was taking place. His friends were among those arrested.

Iran Threatens to Retaliate If Attacked

Source: Arutz Sheva

Gavriel Queenann 

Iran has threatened to start a 'street war' in Tel Aviv - and in the US and Europe - should its nuclear program be attacked.

"Israel is not big enough to launch a military strike on Iran, but if it takes such a foolish decision, the Iranian military will fight with the Zionist soldiers in Tel Aviv streets... and will force them out of the Palestinian soil," Seyed Hossein Naqavi said.

Naqavi also warned, should Tehran's nuclear program be attacked, the battlefield won't be in Iran, but "the entirety of Europe and the US."

"Iranian forces will fight with the enemies with maximum might and power all throughout the European and US soil, if Iran comes under attack," he reiterated.

Naqavi also responded to reports Britain might strike Iran's nuclear sites, saying "a look at the history reveals that the British regime has been using threat, intimidation, terror and colonialism all throughout the last 500 years."

"Now a country with such a long record of crimes and colonialist actions should know very well that the Islamic Republic enjoys a high military capability today," he added.

Naqavi's remarks have become a part of Tehran's mantra of threatening counter-strikes as international criticism of its nuclear aspirations continues to mount.