Gadaffi forces lay mines: Human Rights Watch

 

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Muammar Gaddafi‘s forces have laid both antipersonnel and antivehicle mines during the current conflict with armed opposition groups, Human Rights Watch confirmed today.

“Libya should immediately stop using antipersonnel mines, which most of the world banned years ago,” said Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at Human Rights Watch. “Gaddafi’s forces should ensure that mines of every type that already have been laid are cleared as soon as possible to avoid civilian casualties.”

The mines – two dozen antivehicle mines and roughly three dozen antipersonnel mines – were found on the eastern outskirts of Ajdabiya, a town of 100,000 residents that government forces held from March 17 until March 27, 2011.

Abdal Minam al-Shanti, electricity director for Eastern Libya, told Human Rights Watch that his employees discovered the mines around 11 a.m. on March 28, when their truck ran over and detonated two antipersonnel mines laid underneath power pylons about one kilometer from town. The mines destroyed one front tire and one back tire of the truck, but no one was wounded or killed, al-Shanti said.

After detonating the mines, the electrical workers notified local civil defense workers who began searching for more mines in the area, al-Shanti said. In the immediate area where the mines had detonated, a civil defense team found and disarmed 24 antivehicle mines and an estimated 30 to 40 plastic antipersonnel mines, he said.

The mines were found a few yards off the main road between Ajdabiya and Benghazi, in an area frequented by civilians in vehicles and on foot, Human Rights Watch said, and thus posed a direct threat to the civilian population. Given the pedestrian and vehicular traffic in the area, the mines were clearly laid while government forces were in Ajdabiya, Human Rights Watch said.

Human Rights Watch has photos of the mines found near Ajdabiya, as well as video from the clearance operation.

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Libya is one of 37 nations that has not joined the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty. A total of 156 nations are parties to the treaty, and another two have signed but not yet ratified. The treaty comprehensively bans the use, production, and transfer of all antipersonnel mines, requires destruction of stockpiles within four years and clearance of mined areas within ten years, and calls for assistance to landmine victims. In recent years, the only government forces that have continued to lay antipersonnel mines are Burma’s.

In keeping with the international norm being established by the Mine Ban Treaty, Human Rights Watch condemns any use of antipersonnel mines by any party at any time. While antivehicle mines are not banned by the treaty, such mines are often used in violation of international humanitarian law, notably when they are used indiscriminately or deliberately to target civilians, or when adequate precautions are not taken to avoid civilian casualties.

Prior to the March 28 discovery of the mines near Ajdabiya, Human Rights Watch had confirmed on March 24 that government forces left behind plastic antivehicle mines in the area around Ghar Yunis University in Benghazi during their retreat from the city on March 19. Those mines, which had not been armed and planted, were found by local residents and brought to an arms collection point in downtown Benghazi, where they were inspected by Human Rights Watch. At a military arms depot in Benghazi, a demining expert from the United Nations located 12 warehouses filled with tens of thousands of antivehicle mines.

Rebel forces in Benghazi, now in control of the stockpile of antivehicle mines in the city’s arms depot, told Human Rights Watch that they will not use any type of mines. The pledge was made by Gen. Khalifa Hufter, commander of the rebel forces in Eastern Libya, during a meeting in Benghazi on March 25.

At this point, Human Rights Watch cannot independently confirm media reports that government forces have deployed mines around their stronghold of Sirte, and in the Wadi al-Ahmar area, 80 kilometers east of Sirte, where rebel forces are currently battling government forces.


Libya has said in the past that it insists on the right to defend its extensive borders with mines. It has also said that it would cost too much to clear mines, as required by the treaty, and criticized the treaty for not requiring those who laid mines in the past to pay for clearance.

Prior to this conflict, Libya is not known to have used antipersonnel mines since its war with Chad ended in 1987. Libya has said that it has never produced or exported mines. According to standard reference works, however, Libya imported antipersonnel mines in the past from the former Soviet Union and the former Yugoslavia.

Libya still has large numbers of uncleared landmines and explosive remnants of war as a result of World War II, as well as conflicts with Egypt (1977) and Chad (1980–1987).

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Libya: War for World Government

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Rebels

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“It is a test that the international community has to pass. Failure would shake further the faith of the people’s region in the emerging international order and the primacy of international law.”–Brookings Institute’s “Libya’s Test of the New International Order,” February 2011.The media expects you to believe placard waving peaceful demonstrators have somehow, in just days, transitioned into tank driving, jet flying rebel forces – just like in Hollywood. Photo: BRQ Network.While a parade of politicians and pundits cite the “international community,” the UN, and the “Arab street” as giving them the justification to not only wage illegal war on Libya, but to threaten illegal war against Syria as well, it should be remembered that it was neither the UN nor the “international community” that laid the ground work for this campaign.What started out, supposedly, as spontaneous, simultaneous uprisings across the Middle East, has transformed clearly into an aggressive Western-backed blitzkrieg of destabilization and regime change. This was a plan that was years in the making, talked about in 2007 by then, presidential hopeful, CFR member, and International Crisis Group trustee Wesley Clark.

As hard as our “leadership” tries to act surprised, the current Middle Eastern conflagration has been years in the making.We now know that the protesters from Tunisia to Egypt had been trained by US created and funded CANVAS of Serbia. We have learned that the US State Department openly admits to providing funding to tech firms to assist protesters across the Middle East and Northern Africa to circumvent cyber-security inside target nations. Perhaps most alarming of all, we now know that the US State Department is also funding corporations like BBC to undermine the governments of China and Iran, revealing the full-scope of their ambitions.The “international community” that feckless stooges like Joe Lieberman talk about, or his French equal in impotency, Nicolas Sarkozy’s “new post-UNSC 1973 model of world governance” are concepts not born of these “elected representatives,” but rather the product of the corporate think-tanks that hand them their talking points. It is the corporate-financier oligarchy that constitutes the “international community” and who aspires to rule through “world governance.” Their goal is to eliminate national sovereignty and assert their agenda and the laws & regulations to achieve it homogeneously across all national borders.To see who Lieberman and Sarkozy are channeling, we look to the Brookings Institute report “Libya’s Test of the New International Order” back in February 2011. In it, it talks about the primacy of international law over national sovereignty and considered it being at stake in Libya. Allowing Libya to defy the “international community,” they worried, could ultimately threaten its “resolve and credibility.”Another telling Brookings Institute report, “Bifurcating the Middle East,” mentions rallying “the Arab street” to confront defiant states like Libya, Syria, and Iran, all of which are mentioned by name. Nowhere was oil mentioned, nor the tremendous profits defense contractors would surely reap, and while these are primary motivators to garner support for the regional campaign within the corporate combine, they are by no means the primary motivators for the campaign itself. The final goal is world government, the elimination of borders, and a monopolistic corporate-financier cartel that can systematically eliminate all challenges to its hegemony – in other words, the dream of all oligarchs since the beginning of time.In Syria, resistance to the Western-backed opposition is a similar direct challenge to the corporate-financier oligarchs. Nations like Syria, Iran, Libya, Burma, Belarus, and many others are demonized and systematically isolated and undermined not because they are a threat to the world, but because their independence and refusal to acquiesce is an obstacle before a corporate-financier ruled world government.We are given childish explanations that prey on the most ignorant and feeble of minds as to why we are fighting in Libya, and why we are threatening war with Syria and Iran. Nowhere in Lieberman or Sarkozy’s ranting statements is talk of who these rebels are; that they’ve been fighting on and off against Qaddafi for nearly three decades with US help, that their opposition is based in London and the United States, and that they have overt ties to Al-Qaeda, with rebel leaders themselves openly admitting their affiliations to the terrorist group. We are now told that recently returning to Libya to lead the rebels is Khalifa Hifter, who has spent the last 20 years in “suburban Virginia,” and has spent his time in America lending support to anti-Qaddafi groups.After fighting a decade in Afghanistan and Iraq at the cost of nearly 6,000 US lives, supposedly to stop the ubiquitous “Al Qaeda,” an organization the US itself created in the mountains of Afghanistan in the 1980′s to fight the Soviets, we have come full circle, with CIA/Al-Qaeda assets fighting side-by-side in Libya, complete with US air support.Do regular folks forget that Syria was mentioned as part of George Bush’s “Axis of Evil” and that Obama is merely carrying on a continuous agenda that has transcended administrations up to this very day? Considering the agenda revealed by Wesley Clark in 2007, we see how seamlessly “Obama’s war” against Libya fits in. If we are to believe Obama and Bush are ideological opposites, what other explanation can be given as to why this agenda, scorned by the political left under Bush, has now found a new home in Obama’s administration?Quite clearly politics in America is but a mere illusion. So to is the “War on Terror,” as the US helps Al-Qaeda sweep westward towards Tripoli. It is all empty rhetoric carrying the agenda of global government forward. Despite losing nearly 6,000 of their brothers in arms, the US military carries on, following orders despite the absolute, overt absurdity of their mission. They are literally providing air support now for the men that helped send their buddies back in pine boxes from Iraq. They do this while the media that lied them into a decade of war now celebrates their enemy, these rebels of Benghazi, as heroes of democracy. Again – we come full circle as the Mujaheddin fighting the Soviets were once “heroes” of the West as well.None of this makes any sense from the political left or right perspective. None of this makes sense from a West verses “Muslim extremist” perspective. The only perspective from which it makes sense, is if a cartel of corporations has been lying to us all along, saying anything and everything to get us to jump through the appropriate hoops. With their plans becoming bolder, perhaps even desperate, they have begun to mix up their narratives to the extent that they are bombing “Al Qaeda” in Pakistan and giving “Al Qeada” air support in Libya. They are admittedly strafing civilians from the air in Pakistan, but imposing no fly zones on Qaddafi over unverified claims of doing the same.

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As the globalists admittedly strafe civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan, they have lobbied for war with Libya over verified lies of doing the same.Indeed, this is not a war of America, the UN, NATO, or the European Union. The feckless politicians that pose as our leadership are merely taking orders from the powers that be – the corporate-financier oligarchs. If we are to frustrate these oligarchs, we would be wise to waste little time on their front men and instead get straight to the issue. Boycott these corporations and systematically replace them on a local level. While they wage war to eliminate the nation state, from its borders down to our own individual rights and liberties, we must wage a campaign to undermine and eliminate them, from their crass consumerist networks that infest our towns, to the parasitic monstrosity that is the international banking system which infests this planet.While they must wage their battle through murder, lies, and deceit, we must wage our battle through constructive pragmatic solutions, ingenuity, hard work, community, and self-sufficiency. This is not a war for Libya – this is a war for world government, that if won by the globalists, means our defeat as well.

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• Joe Lieberman: Hey, Let’s Go To War In Syria Too! (outsidethebeltway.com)
• Libya Rebels Near Sirte as Jets Bomb Qaddafi Hometown – BusinessWeek (news.google.com)
• ‘Al-Qaeda snatched missiles’ in Libya (atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com)
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• NATO war in Libya still run by America (rt.com)
• Why are we in Libya? A look into our failure to understand the Middle East. (whynotnashville.wordpress.com)
• Obama Lauds ‘Historic’ War in Libya (news.antiwar.com)
• “Person(s)” of the Week: Al-Qaeda in Libya (panamericanworld.wordpress.com)
• Libya’s multilateral war: Are we serving our values, our interests, or the wishes of Europe? (slate.com)
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• War Against Libya Constitutionally Illegal; Obama Now Impeachable (current.com)
• Don Kraus: Time for a UN With a Protection Force in Libya (huffingtonpost.com)
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Weather Models Show High Levels of Radiation Entering U.S. from Japan

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On Saturday, Yukiya Amano, the director of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency, said the Japanese nuclear crisis could go on for weeks, if not for months.

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Test conducted Friday showed iodine 131 levels in seawater 30 km (19 miles) from the coastal Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant had spiked 1,250 times higher than normal. Japanese officialdom insisted this unusual level does not pose a threat to marine life or food safety, according toReuters.

“Ocean currents will disperse radiation particles and so it will be very diluted by the time it gets consumed by fish and seaweed,” said Hidehiko Nishiyama, a senior agency official.

A number of countries have banned milk and produce from areas around the Fukushima Daiichi plant, while others have been monitoring Japanese seafood.

Amano told the media the Japanese have no idea if the reactor cores and spent fuel were covered with the water needed to cool them and prevent the release of radiation. “More efforts should be done to put an end to the accident,” he said and was carefully not to criticize Japan’s lackadaisical response.

An official from plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) told a Sunday news conference experts still are not certain where to put the contaminated water.

Scientists quoted by the corporate media continue to insist that radioactive particles crossing the Pacific are far too diluted to cause any harm.

In fact, scientists are complaining that the Japanese have not fowarded sufficient information on the nuclear meltdown. They say the quality and quantity of information coming out of Japan has left gaping holes in their understanding of the disaster nearly two weeks after it began.

Independent researchers, however, dispute claims that the radiation now lofting over the northern hemisphere is not dangerous. The Weather Online website has posted a number animated models showing dangerous concentrations of iodine 131 and caesium 137 entering the United States with prevailing weather and the jet stream.

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The site notes that since the continuous release rate is very uncertain, the calculations have to be interpreted qualitatively.

Here is a video posted earlier today showing the animations:

Addendum

“An international advisory body has recommended the Japanese government temporarily raise the annual limit of radiation exposure for the general public in light of the ongoing crisis at the quake- and tsunami-crippled nuclear power plant in Fukushima Prefecture,” reportsThe Mainichi Daily News.

“The government stipulates that regular citizens in Japan should be exposed to no more than 1 millisievert of radiation per year, but the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) on March 21 recommended the limit be tentatively raised to 20 to 100 millisieverts per year, with the nuclear crisis showing no signs of abating.”


The NGO said the level of permissible radiation should be increased “in order to prevent residents of Fukushima Prefecture from abandoning their hometowns.”

 

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Air Raids Force Gaddafi Retreat; Rebels Seize The East

 

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AJDABIYA, Libya – Libyan rebels clinched their hold on the east and seized back a key city on Saturday after decisive international airstrikes sent Moammar Gadhafi‘s forces into retreat, shedding their uniforms and ammunition as they fled.

Gaddafi Retreats

Ajdabiya’s initial loss to Gadhafi may have ultimately been what saved the rebels from imminent defeat, propelling the U.S. and its allies to swiftly pull together the air campaign now crippling Gadhafi’s military. Its recapture gives President Barack Obama a tangible victory just as he faces criticism for bringing the United States into yet another war.
In Ajdabiya, drivers honked in celebration and flew the tricolor rebel flag. Others in the city fired guns into the air and danced on burned-out tanks that littered the road.
Their hold on the east secure again, the rebels promised to resume their march westward that had been reversed by Gadhafi’s overwhelming firepower.
“Without the planes we couldn’t have done this. Gadhafi’s weapons are at a different level than ours,” said Ahmed Faraj, 38, a rebel fighter from Ajdabiya. “With the help of the planes we are going to push onward to Tripoli, God willing.”
The Gadhafi regime acknowledged the airstrikes had forced its troops to retreat and accused international forces of choosing sides.”This is the objective of the coalition now, it is not to protect civilians because now they are directly fighting against the armed forces,” Khaled Kaim, the deputy foreign minister, said in Tripoli. “They are trying to push the country to the brink of a civil war.”
Ajdabiya’s sudden capture by Gadhafi’s troops on March 15 — and their move toward the rebel capital of Benghazi — gave impetus to the U.N. resolution authorizing international action in Libya, and its return to rebel hands on Saturday came after a week of airstrikes and missiles against the Libyan leader’s military.
Airstrikes Friday on the city’s eastern and western gates forced Gadhafi’s troops into hasty retreat. Inside a building that had served as their makeshift barracks and storage, hastily discarded uniforms were piled in the bathroom and books on Islamic and Greek history and fake pink flowers were scattered on the floor.
Saif Sadawi, a 20-year-old rebel fighter with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher in his hands, said the city’s eastern gate fell late Friday and the western gate fell at dawn Saturday after airstrikes on both locations.
“All of Ajdabiya is free,” he said.
Rebels swept into the city and hauled away a captured rocket launcher and a dozen boxes of anti-aircraft ammunition, adding to their limited firepower. Later in the day, other rebels drove around and around a traffic circle, jubilantly firing an assortment of weapons in the air — anti-aircraft weapons, AK-47s, RPGs.
Outside the city, Muftah el-Zewi was driving away, his back seat loaded with plastic bags filled with blankets and clothes that he picked up after going to his home in Ajdabiya for the first time in days.
“We went and checked it out, drove around the neighborhood and it looked OK. Hopefully we’ll come back to stay tomorrow,” he said.

The turnaround is a boost for Obama, who has faced complaints from lawmakers from both parties that he has not sought their input about the U.S. role in the conflict or explained with enough clarity about the American goals and exit strategy. Obama was expected to give a speech to the nation Monday.
“We’re succeeding in our mission,” Obama said in a radio and Internet address. “So make no mistake, because we acted quickly, a humanitarian catastrophe has been avoided and the lives of countless civilians — innocent men, women and children — have been saved.”
The U.N. Security Council authorized the operation to protect Libyan civilians after Gadhafi launched attacks against anti-government protesters who demanded that he step down after 42 years in power. The airstrikes have crippled Gadhafi’s forces, but rebel advances have also foundered, and the two sides have been at stalemate in key cities.
Ajdabiya, the gateway to the opposition’s eastern stronghold, and the western city of Misrata have suffered under sieges of more than a week because the rebels lack the heavy weapons to push out Gadhafi’s troops. Residents lack electricity, phone lines and water.
A doctor in Misrata said airstrikes there on Saturday put an end to two days of shelling and sniper fire from Gadhafi’s forces. The city was quiet Saturday afternoon, said the doctor, speaking on condition of anonymity because he feared for his safety if the city should fall. For now, he said, rebels control the city center, just as they have throughout in Ajdabiya.

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A resident of Zwara, a former rebel stronghold in the west, said the regime has the town firmly in its grip again. He said pro-Gadhafi forces are dragging away people there and in the town of Zawiya who participated in protests that began Feb. 15.
“They have lists of demonstrators and videos and so on and they are seeking them out. We are all staying home and waiting for this to be over,” said the resident, who did not want to be named because he feared for his safety if discovered. He said a friend who helped coordinate checkpoints when the opposition held the city was taken away Friday.
“They came with four or five cars with four people in each one, all of them armed to the teeth with Kalashnikovs. They surrounded the house and took him out,” he said, adding that the whole thing was seen by a common friend.

He said neighbors now fear each other.
“During the demonstrations, many people contributed to the community, doing anything they could. This shows that the regime has collaborators to give them names. It’s a Big Brother type of show, so they can come in and take whomever they want.”
The government’s grip has even tightened in Tripoli, its seat of power, where almost nightly airstrikes have hammered military bases, missile storage and even Gadhafi’s residential compound.
Rahma, a Libyan-American in the capital, said only about one in 20 stores was open and food supplies were dwindling by the day.
“My own family, we’ve just been staying inside, but we had a friend who went to Friday prayers and they could see people ready to shoot them hiding behind the bushes,” she said. She did not want her surname used, for fear of retaliation. “This is at every mosque, so if they start to protest, they’ll get shot right away.”

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Julian Assange police investigator a friend of sex assault accuser

Officer and Miss A met through political party and corresponded over internet months before WikiLeaks chief was accused

Julian Assange‘s lawyers used the link between the police investigator and one of the sexual assault accusers to argue against his extradition to Sweden. Photograph: Lewis Whyld/PA

The police investigator who first interviewed two Swedish women about allegations of rape and sexual assault against Julian Assange is a friend and political associate of one of the women, a Swedish newspaper has claimed.


The female officer became friends with the woman referred to in court as Miss A through Sweden‘s Social Democratic party, in which both are involved, according to Expressen. The pair corresponded on the internet 16 months before the allegations were made against Assange.

Miss A commented on a Facebook update on the police officer‘s page as recently as 10 February, the paper said, and Miss A links to the officer’s private blog from her personal page.

The paper said the officer had made anti-Assange comments on the internet.

The WikiLeaks founder is appealing against a British magistrate’s decision last month to extradite him to Sweden to answer the accusations, which include an allegation of rape against another woman, Miss B. Miss A alleges Assange had sex with her without a condom, against her wishes. He has not been charged with any offence.

His legal team has argued that the Swedish judicial process is unfair and a number of those involved in the prosecution are politically motivated.


According to Expressen, Miss A and the police interrogator had internet contact in April 2009, when Miss A wrote a blog about white men “who take the right to decide what is not abusive”. The officer commented that the author “puts her finger on the bottom line and speaks out”, to which Miss A replied: “Hello! Thanks for the compliment. And like you say, white men must always defend the right to use abusive words. Then they of course deny that these very words are part of a system that keeps their group at the top of the social ladder.”

The paper said that when another newspaper, Aftonbladet, hosted a recent webchat with Assange, the officer commented “What the heck is this! Judgment zero!” The previous day she had commented on the same page: “Way to go, Claes Borgstrom!” Borgstrom is the lawyer representing the women and a former SDP politician, who Assange’s team has argued is acting from political motives.

The paper says the officer had just started her shift at Klara police station in Stockholm on 20 August when Miss A and Miss B arrived to make a complaint against Assange. It says she did not declare a conflict of interest. The police say that the officer in question did not interview Miss A and she played no further part in the investigation. On the basis of the interrogations, duty prosecutor Maria Häljebo Kjellstrand ordered Assange’s arrest, a decision overturned by a more senior prosecutor. Borgstrom appealed against that decision and the case was reinstated by prosecutor Marianne Ny.Mark Stephens, Assange’s lawyer, said they had been aware of the relationship, which had informed their arguments in court last month that the Swedish judicial process had been improper.

“There are a whole raft of issues like this which should cause reasonable people a bit of concern,” he said. “I’m delighted that the Swedes, who objected so strongly to our criticisms of the case, have started to acknowledge that there are systemic problems in their judicial process which allow this sort of thing to happen.”

Police superintendent Ulf Göranzon told Expressen he was not aware of any relationship between the two women, and would not comment on rumours.


The Swedish prosecutor’s office also declined to comment, citing the ongoing extradition process in the UK.

Julian Assange

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QE is the End of America as We Know It

End of America?

Each time we begin to approach the end of an announced QE period, the nervous jitters of financial markets start to set in. Will Bernanke continue with QE (n+1) or won’t he? Now it’s true that professional traders live and die by their ability to front run rumor and perception, but for long term investors who fret over such decisions, it demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding of what QE really is. To put it succinctly, QE is an economic deal with the Devil. Once it is begun in earnest there can be no turning back. It must be played to its ultimate conclusion.In Bernanke’s 2009 interview on 60 Minutes, he suffered a momentary lapse into honesty and stated that Quantitative Easing was effectively money printing. So why then the complicated euphemism of Quantitative Easing? Because that is what modern central banking sponsored economics is all about – the intentional obfuscation of otherwise simple economic principles to cause the eyes of normal people to glaze over. Once accomplished, the central bankers (and their financial community brethren) are able to pursue policies that greatly benefit themselves but are devastating to everyone else. .

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Long term investors who worry about whether QE will continue clearly recognize the fact that everything is now correlated to the Fed’s balance sheet. What they don’t understand is how QE is related to the larger economic cycle and its mission of preventing economic recessions.
Keeping the tent inflated
Sometimes physical analogies are the most helpful in understanding complex relationships. Let’s think of the economy as a large inflated tent. The extent of the tent’s inflation is the health of the economy. Under normal economic conditions the tent is fully inflated. In the course of time, events take place that cause the need for a correction to the economic system. New technology can come along which obsoletes old industries, bad investments and debt must be liquidated etc. When this happens a free market economy will correct itself. Capital tied up in failed industries will be reallocated and invested in new businesses. New jobs will ultimately be created and people will go back to work. Of course this reorganization takes place over time and this is what a recession is – a healing process for the economy. In our tent we can think of this as a tear that forms in the fabric. While this hole is being repaired, air escapes and the tent begins to sag a little. The extent of the drooping is the extent of the recession. Once fixed, the tent and the economy go back to normal.
QE is a wholly different method of keeping the tent propped up. It does not repair the hole, but rather attempts to keep the tent inflated by pumping more air in than is escaping through the hole. This is the new money being created and pushed into the economy to offset the credit destruction in the banking system. This is a dynamic process that must be maintained. The catch is that the hole doesn’t just stay a fixed size. The tear begins to lengthen allowing greater amounts of air to escape. The economic tent begins to sag until the volume of air being pumped in is increased to overcome the outflow. This is why QE can never end. To stop now, with such a large hole, would result in a severe and frightening recession. The tent would lose a tremendous amount of air in the time it takes to make such an extensive repair.This process continues until eventually the hole is so large that the tent collapses around the massive flow of pumping air. This is the ultimate fate of money printing as policy – a currency crisis – the endless flow of new money loses purchasing power faster than it can be created. We are left with an inflationary depression in which savings are decimated and the standard of living of most Americans is dramatically lowered.

QE is economic central planning
When an institution such as the Federal Reserve is allowed to create as much money as it wants and do with it whatever it pleases, without any oversight or transparency, then the free market and its self correcting mechanisms no longer exist. How can capital from failed business and banks be reallocated to more efficient uses when these institutions are bailed out and not allowed to fail? Prices and interest rates are the nervous system of a free market economy. They are the feedback mechanisms that direct all of the individual participants to behave in the most productive and efficient manner. There can no free market when prices and interest rates are de-linked from supply and demand. We are now a centrally planned economy run by our central bank.

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But here’s the really insidious part of QE that almost no one in the general public understands: A free society cannot exist independent of free markets. There is a disequilibrium that occurs between the two and over time one will win out over the other. And so here we are, stuck in a decaying economic system that prevents resources from being used in their most efficient manner. We simply can no longer compete with freer markets in other parts of the globe. We are saddled with the weight of central economic planning much like the old Soviet Union was. There will be no recovery and no rush of new jobs created. We will live under the burden of a burgeoning Federal government that operates completely independent of the will of its citizens. It is now beholden only the money manufacturers at the Federal Reserve and will spend money as fast as Bernanke can add zeros to its account.The problems we are experiencing have been a long time in the making. They began in earnest in 1913 with the formation of the Federal Reserve. It’s taken several generations for the Federal government and its central bank to usurp the world’s monetary system and as such few have noticed. But what’s different now is that we have hit the knee in the curve, the point at which events start to accelerate dramatically as we approach the end of the line. Those who understand QE realize that America as we knew it is already gone. Over the next decade the rest of America will become painfully aware of that fact as well.

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Primary Purpose of DHS Checkpoints Revealed

 

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While traveling back from a remote worksite on the afternoon of Thursday January 20, 2011 along SR86 in Southern Arizona, I had an experience at the Homeland Security checkpoint located near mile marker 147 that pretty much summed up many of my encounters at this internal suspicionless checkpoint over the past few years.

As I was coming to a stop at the checkpoint, the resident K-9 handler recognized me and yelled out the following warning to his fellow agents:
“It’s that guy, guys”
Having been duly warned, the Border Patrol agent who appeared to be in training at the primary stop location asked in response:
“What do we usually do? Just f_ck with him?”

Although I couldn’t quite make out what was said, one of the other agents ran up to the back of my vehicle and told the agent at primary to essentially wave me through. The agent at primary turned his attention back to me and with a dismissive gesture stated:
“All right…get out! Go ahead!”
As I started pulling away from the checkpoint without saying a word, I heard a thump towards the rear of my vehicle. As I looked back to see what had happened, I saw the agent who had just dismissed me smiling at his fellow agents while pulling his hand away from the place he had just struck.
As I continued to pull away, it occurred to me that the reactions of the agent at primary were probably the most honest ones I had encountered during my compelled interactions at these checkpoints over the past three years. He most likely understood that given their abysmally low interdiction rate, the checkpoint wasn’t really there to interdict illegal immigrants which is its only lawful function. And it wasn’t really there to interdict illegal drugs or stop other criminal activity either (assuming it’s all right to engage in illegal enforcement operations to stop non-government sanctioned illegal activity to begin with).
What the agent at primary understood and re-iterated for the world to hear was that the primary purpose of internal homeland security checkpoints is to f_ck with people to make them compliant to arbitrary interference in their daily lives.

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Arbitrary interference in the form of arbitrary orders from government agents wearing shiny badges on their chests and sporting nifty compliance weapons on their hips or their shoulders. In other words, the primary purpose of internal homeland security checkpoints is to engage in general public obedience training much like pet owners will train their dogs.
With this understanding, it’s easier to understand how agents like the one at primary in this video ever make it far enough in the Border Patrol hiring process to be standing in the middle of a public highway representing the best the Border Patrol has to offer to the people the agency claims to be serving. It also makes it easier to understand the quotes from a former Border Patrol agent appearing below:
“We have lowered our standards to an all-time low to fill positions.”
“Think we won’t hire you? Think again.”
“We have recently hired known criminals, drug smugglers, gang bangers, people out of drug rehab, pizza delivery guys (from a national chain), people who write on a fifth-grade level, and, yes, even illegal aliens.”
– (former) Border Patrol Agent Joseph Dessaro
When I first came across these quotes several years ago, I thought they were merely an exaggeration regarding Border Patrol hiring practices. Given that the quotes originated from a well-regarded Border Patrol agent who also served as the President of the San Diego Sector Local 1613 Border Patrol Union forced me to re-evaluate however.


When these quotes were initially made in 1998, they represented a time in which the Border Patrol had doubled in size from ~4,000 agents to ~8,000 in a four year period. Today, there are approximately 20,000 agents in the Border Patrol while the hiring practices condemned by Agent Dessaro more than a decade earlier are very much alive and well.
Agent Dessaro stayed in the service for several years after condemning evolving Border Patrol hiring practices. He finally resigned in disgust in 2005 however, two years after the Border Patrol was moved from legacy INS to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). A quote from his resignation letter summed up his reasons well:
“On the Border Patrol; during my tenure with this agency, I watched the Border Patrol mature into something it should not be: one of the most inefficient and misleading agencies in the history of government. The merger into the Department of Homeland Security only exasperated previously existing problems under the legacy Immigration and Naturalization Service. Subsequently, I believe this agency, as a government organization and employer, is beyond redemption”
– (former) Border Patrol Agent Joseph Dessaro
Quite a strong condemnation of the U.S. Border Patrol by Agent Dessaro. Unfortunately, given what we know about the agency years later, it would appear he was right on in his analysis.
The first comprehensive news articles I came across on the subject appeared in the Tucson Citizen in 2002. The three articles that initially caught my attention included the following:
Screening of job-seekers minimal
Crossing the line
Watchdog Overwhelmed
Since 2002, things have only gotten worse as the agency continues to hire unqualified and unscrupulous individuals to fill open slots. The results have been disastrous with a constant flow of news articles highlighting Border Patrol agent malfeasance and report after report from the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General’s Office detailing ever-increasing corruption throughout DHS generally and within the Border Patrol specifically.
So what does all this have to do with the video appearing above? It provides background information needed to understand how it is that some random individual is in a position to (legally?) seize people inside the country absent suspicion under threat of lethal force along a public highway for the primary purpose of f_cking with them and messing with their private property. All with the full support of the Department of Homeland Security.
Welcome to Checkpoint USA.

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War with Libya

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In an unsurprising move that was all but inevitable, the UN has decided to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya to save the globalist-backed rebellion sputtering in failure and bordering on a “Bay of Pigs” disaster. Canadian, US, French, Arab, and UK jets are already reported to be preparing for the operation.
The Libyan rebellion began on February 17, 2011 after a call from London based Libyan opposition leaders of the NCLO for a “Day of Rage” (Arabic link: use Google Translator). The call was fashioned after the US State Department recruited, trained, funded, and supported uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. The most recent admission of US involvement in the “Arab Spring” came from Hillary Clinton herself who admitted the US State Department, the Department of Defense, and the Broadcasting Board of Governors have been funding tech firms providing the revolutions with tools to circumvent cyber security employed by various Western targeted regimes.
Unlike in Egypt and Tunisia, Libya lacked the seditious “civil society” underlay to reinforce the ficticious narrative that the people merely wanted “freedom and democracy.” Indeed for Libya, this is just one of many foreign backed violent uprisings designed and supported by the West to oust Qaddafi over the last three decades.

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Libyan rebels struggled against a “legitimacy deficient” from the beginning with their opposition leaders stationed in Washington and London, and NFSL/NCLO leader Ibrahim Sahad giving interviews literally in front of the White House.

A Time-line of Western meddling in Libya:

1980′s: US-CIA backed National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL) made multiple attempts to assassinate Qaddafi and initiate armed rebellion throughout Libya.

1990′s: Noman Benotman and the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) wage a campaign of terror against Qaddafi with Osama Bin Laden’s assistance, as well as MI6.

2005: NFSL’s Ibrahim Sahad founds the National Conference of Libyan Opposition (NCLO) in London England.

2011: Early February, the London based NCLO calls for a Libyan “Day of Rage,”beginning the “February 17th revolution.”

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2011: Late February NFSL/NCLO’s Ibrahim Sahad is leading opposition rhetoric, literally in front of the White House in Washington D.C. Calls for no-fly zone in reaction to unsubstantiated accusations Qaddafi is strafing “unarmed protesters” with warplanes.

2011: Late February Senators Lieberman and McCain and UK PM David Cameron call for providing air cover for Libyan rebels as well as providing them additional arms.

2011: Early March; it is revealed UK SAS special forces are already operating inside Libya

2011: Mid-March; UN adopts no-fly zone over Libya, including air strikes.

CIA Sends USAID to Japan to Manage Nuclear Disinfo Campaign

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A large scale cover-up of the extent and severity of Japan’s multiple nuclear meltdowns is now underway, according to Yoichi Shimatsu, the former editor of the Japan Times Weekly. Mr. Shimatsu appeared on CCTV, China’s state-run television network.

“Following a high-level meeting called by the lame-duck prime minister, Japanese agencies are no longer releasing independent reports without prior approval from the top,” writes Shimatsu. “The censorship is being carried out following the imposition of the Article 15 Emergency Law.”


Shimatsu contends that the Obama White House sent a team to consult the Naoto Kan government. Instead of dispatching experts from the Department of Energy, Nuclear Safety Agency and Health Department, representatives of USAID were sent to micromanage the cover-up.

Since the 1960s, USAID – short for United States Agency for International Development – has maintained a close working relationship with the CIA, and Agency officers often operated abroad under USAID cover, according to author William Blum (Killing hope: U.S. military and CIA interventions since World War II, p. 142, 200, 234). The close relationship between USAID and the CIA is also documented in the long-suppressed “family jewels” documents (see pages 607 to 613).

The CIA and the spooks are naturally concerned about their foothold on the Misawa Air Force Base in the Iwate Prefecture, hard hit by the earthquake. “Misawa, the hub of US electronic warfare and high-tech espionage in East Asia with its fleet of P-3 Orions and an ECHELON eavesdropping antennae,” Shimatsu notes.

In addition, the establishment is worried about geopolitical aspects of the crisis, most notably in regard to regional “enemies” Pyongyang, Beijing and Moscow. Both China andRussia have both offered aid without strings attached and this is undoubtedly considered a threat by the political establishment in the United States.

The Pentagon also has a vested interest in stage managing information emerging from Japan. In addition to its sprawling military bases in the country since the end of the Second World War, one of the military industrial complex’s major players, Westinghouse, runs a nuclear fuel operation at Tokai in the Ibaraki prefecture.

Westinghouse took control of Japan’s Nuclear Fuel Industries Ltd — the country’s sole producer of fuel for both boiling-water reactors and pressurized-water reactors — in 2009.

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Toshiba Westinghouse closed the plant on Friday after the earthquake struck.

The CIA, through USAID, is running a disinfo campaign on Japan’s earthquake crippled nuclear facilities for geopolitical reasons. The Japanese people will ultimately suffer, as will millions of other people who happen to be downwind from the stricken plants.
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Bank Economist Warns of ‘Food Price Riots in the UK’

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A senior economist at the worldwide bank HSBC has warned of civil unrest in Britain if food prices continue to soar. Speaking on Jeff Randall Live, senior global economist Karen Ward cautioned that the UK could experience the kind of food riots seen in other countries.

“Even in the developed world I think we have very, very low wage growth, so people aren’t getting more in their pay packet to compensate them for food and energy, and I think we could see social unrest certainly in parts of the developed world and the UK as well.”

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