WHO Lists Cell Phones as Cancer Hazard, May 31 2011

Kurt Nimmo
Prison Planet.com


The United Nations’ health agency, the World Health Organization, now lists mobile phone use in the same “carcinogenic hazard” category as lead, engine exhaust and chloroform.

But no adverse health effects have been established, the agency explains.

The decision to list cell phones as a cancer hazard came after a team of 31 scientists from 14 countries examined peer-reviewed studies on cell phone safety.

“The biggest problem we have is that we know most environmental factors take several decades of exposure before we really see the consequences,” said Dr. Keith Black, chairman of neurology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

Numerous studies indicate prolonged cell phone use is hazardous. The European Environmental Agency has pushed for more studies. It says cell phones may be as big a public health risk as smoking, asbestos and leaded gasoline.

In 2009, WHO reached the same conclusion. A decade-long, $30 million study into cell phones found a link between long term use and brain tumors.

The WHO’s Interphone investigation’s results showed “a significantly increased risk” of some brain tumors “related to use of mobile phones for a period of ten years or more,” the Telegraph reported.

The study showed participants in the study who used a cell phones for 10 years or more had doubled the rate of brain glioma, a type of tumor. To date, there have been no long-term studies on the effects of cell phone usage among children.

In response to a number of studies revealing the dangers of cell phones, the industry now advises consumers to hold the devices away from their bodies.



The study showed participants in the study who used a cell phones for 10 years or more had doubled the rate of brain glioma, a type of tumor. To date, there have been no long-term studies on the effects of cell phone usage among children.

In response to a number of studies revealing the dangers of cell phones, the industry now advises consumers to hold the devices away from their bodies.

Texas' Dewhurst Calls for Special Session, May 31 2011

Kurt NimmoPrison Planet.com

Image: Wikipedia.

Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, who played a pivotal role in sabotaging a bill that would have criminalized TSA groping in the state’s airports, has written a letter to Gov. Rick Perry asking for a special session.

Only the Governor may call the Legislature into special sessions, unlike other states where the legislature may call itself into session.

Dewhurst wants a number of legislative issues taken up in the special session, most notably redistricting and Rep. David Simpson’s bill making groping without probable cause a felony.

After federal intimidation – threatening to shut down air traffic in Texas – Simpson’s bill failed to get the two thirds vote necessary. The Western Texas Division U.S. District Attorney’s office sent the threatening letter prior to a vote on HB 1937.

“The Texas Sam Houston fought for and governed apparently is learning submission,” Simpson said after the bill went down in flames.”

In response to federal intimidation and meddling in state politics, Alex Jones spearheaded a rally at the capitol in Austin. See his video covering the event below.

For more on Dewhurst’s effort to sink the bill, see Paul Joseph Watson’s Republican Lt. Governor Killed TSA Bill For Obama.

Dewhurst’s letter to Perry follows.

Dear Governor Perry,

Unfortunately, despite the very hard work and determination of the majority of Members of both the House and Senate, the Legislature was unable to pass a number of important bills, including SB 1811 needed to fund the budget, before the deadline of midnight last night.

Still, there is still an outside possibility that SB 1811 could pass the Texas Senate today with the bipartisan support of four-fifths of the Members. However, if this vote should fail − forcing us into Special Session − I believe that it would be in the best interest of all Texans to start tomorrow and ask you to consider including the following bills in your call:

SB 1811 – Relating to certain state fiscal matters and making necessary appropriations; providing penalties;

SB 8 – Relating to improving the quality and efficiency of health care;

SB 23 – Relating to the administration of reforms, efficiency, cost-saving, fraud prevention, and funding measures for certain health and human services and health benefits programs;

HB 5 – Relating to establishing an Interstate Health Care Compact;

HB 12 – Relating to the enforcement of state and federal laws governing immigration by certain governmental entities;

HB 272 – Relating to the operation of the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association and to the resolution of certain disputes concerning claims made to that association;

SB 12/HB400 – Relating to the flexibility of the Board of Trustees of a school district in the management and operation of public schools in the district and theflexibility for public schools to administer primary and secondary education efficiently;

HB 1937 – Relating to prosecution and punishment for the offense of official oppression by the intrusive touching of persons seeking access to public buildings and transportation; and

HB 900/SB 308 – Relating to the composition of the congressional districts for the State of Texas.

As you know, certain Senate procedures – such as the two-thirds tradition – exist to bring Democrats and Republicans together, encouraging Members to work in good faith in order to achieve positive outcomes for the people of Texas. Given that a small number of Senate Democrats have demonstrated their unwillingness to find consensus on these important legislative items, I can see no other alternative than to operate under a simple majority vote in the Special Session.

I look forward to working with you and Speaker Straus to finish the important business Texans elected us to accomplish.

 

Nanny State Betrays Decline and Fall of America, May 31 2011

Firework ban, tree ordinance latest examples of rampant authoritarian assault on all levels of society

Paul Joseph WatsonPrison Planet.com
Two more ridiculous examples of the nanny state kicking into high gear add to the overwhelming weight of evidence indicating that America is in a state of terminal decline, with an overtly authoritarian big government enforcing a command and control system at every level of society.

Government environmental permits will now be required in San Diego for any kind of fireworks display, meaning state permission will be required for fireworks at birthday parties or any other outdoor event. Small-scale gatherings would now require an “environmental assessment” before they can take place.

“According to the strictest interpretation of this, jumpy-jumps and everything else would be subject to environmental review if this ruling stands,” said lawyer Robert Howard, who represented the La Jolla Community Fireworks Foundation in the case. “It’s a breathtaking ruling.”

Meanwhile in Charlotte, North Carolina, the Albemarle Road Presbyterian Church was fined $4,000 dollars by the city government for “improperly pruning its trees.”

“I just couldn’t believe it when I heard about it,” church member Eddie Sales said. “We trim our trees back every three years all over our property, and this is the first time we have been fined.”

The church was fined $100 for each “improperly cut” branch, bring the total fine to $4,000.

“The purpose of the tree ordinance is to protect trees,” Charlotte Land Development Division’s Tom Johnson said. “Charlotte has always been known as the city of trees. When we take down trees, we need to replace these trees,” adding that people whose trees are opposite a public street or on commercial land need to apply to the government for permission to landscape their own property.

The only way the church can avoid the fine is to replace all of the trees, a bizarre demand that illustrates how the farce is about nothing else other than the government deliberately abusing its power to make an example out of the church and intimidate others into blind subservience and acceptance of any ordinance no matter how bizarre.

As we have documented, a shocking acceleration of the nanny state in recent months confirms that the government has launched a total takeover of society under the pretext of keeping everyone safe, when in reality the move is a calculated coup d’état against individuality and is designed to oppress and enslave the American people.

A brief recap of recent developments confirms America’s slide into an authoritarian command and control society, where big government steps in to regulate every aspect of people’s lives.

- A school in Chicago has banned parents from giving their children packed lunches, forcing kids to eat in the cafeteria in order to “protect students from the potential for unhealthy homemade lunches”.

- Parents who attempt to take their kids out of their predatory public school system by home schooling are being spied on by authorities. A Mississippi state judge recently ordered that state officials gather the names of every single child is being home schooled in the state in order that they be kept on a list.

- Mayor Bloomberg is forcing food manufacturers in New York to reduce the amount of salt content in food under the National Salt Reduction Initiative, while at the same time spending $25 million on a program to fluoridate the water supply with a toxic waste, sodium fluoride, that contributes to lowering IQ and has been linked to cancers as well as disorders affecting teeth, bones, the brain and the thyroid gland. Food additives like aspartame and MSG, which are a far deadlier health threat than salt, are not being targeted by the government.

- Indeed, New York is the model for the rest of the country. The Department of Health has slapped strict regulations on anything deemed “risky recreational activities” conducted by programs or organizations. Wiffle ball, dodge ball, kick ball, freeze tag, red rover, frisbee tossing and tug of war have all been placed under the new rules. If an organization offers two or more recreational activities, with just one being on the “risky” list, it is deemed to be a summer camp and comes under state regulation which entails fees and the necessity to provide medical staff. “Classics like Capture the Flag, Steal the Bacon and Red Rover are also deemed dangerous in new state regulations for day camps,” reports the New York Daily News. This is all part of the process of the state replacing the parents as guardians of the children and it is designed to ensure that kids become nothing more than drug-addled, dependent slobs with no energy and no life experience, perfectly molding them to grow up as obedient, video-game playing, Clockwork Orange-style droogs.

- If your kids manage to tear themselves away from the video games in an effort to try and become young entrepreneurs by setting up a cookie stall on their own front lawn, the government won’t waste any time in slapping a ban on such activity, as happened recently in the city of Hazelwood, where two young girl scouts were told they were violating a city ordinance that prohibited “the sale of commodities” from a home. The girls were reported to the authorities by one of their own neighbors.
- The government is also busy protecting us from Thomas Edison’s iconic invention, the incandescent light bulb, by banning the traditional bulb and forcing Americans to buy mercury-filled CFL bulbs that should be “kept as far away as possible from the human environment,” according to a new scientific study because they contain cancer-causing carcinogens.
- In their infinite wisdom, health authorities are pushing for Americans to be mass medicated against their will by putting statin drugs in the water supply, despite the fact that scientific studies have linked them to liver dysfunction, acute kidney failure, cataracts, muscle damage, depression, mood swings and memory loss.
- If any of the zombies break their conditioning and dare complain about their treatment, they are treated as criminals or terrorists. If you don’t like TSA agents putting their hands down your child’s pants or simply have an attitude deemed negative by a TSA “behavioral detection” officer, you will be subject to special harassment.

These examples barely scratch the surface of the nanny state offensive that has been launched as part of the establishment’s social engineering program.

The state is deliberately being extreme in its smothering takeover of society so as to shock and awe Americans into obeying without question. The move is akin to how a stallion horse is castrated and gelded in order to alter their behavior by making them docile.

These developments represent a total power grab on behalf of the federal government as it bids to become the supreme authority over Americans from cradle to grave. This is about a complete transformation and re-engineering of society.

It is imperative that Americans re-assert their individuality and the right to make their own choices and live their lives as they wish by resisting every encroachment the state makes as it tramples personal freedom.

Ron Paul "We Are Enabling a Future Dictatorship", May 31 2011

Steve Watson
Prisonplanet.com
2012 Presidential candidate Ron Paul has warned that a lack of oversight from Congress, the media and the American people is enabling the rise of a dictatorship in the US.

The Congressman issued the warning via his weekly Texas Straight Talk column, noting that in light of current attitudes within the executive and legislative branches, “it would be incredibly naïve to think a dictator could not or would not wrest power in this country” at some point in the future.

“Americans who are not alarmed by all of this are either not paying close attention, or are too trusting of current government officials to be concerned.” Paul writes,

“Our Presidents can now, on their own: order assassinations, including American citizens; operate secret military tribunals; engage in torture; enforce indefinite imprisonment without due process; order searches and seizures without proper warrants, gutting the 4th Amendment; ignore the 60 day rule for reporting to the Congress the nature of any military operations as required by the War Power Resolution; continue the Patriot Act abuses without oversight; wage war at will; and treat all Americans as suspected terrorists at airports with TSA groping and nude x-rays. ” The Congressman urges.

The Congressman also specifically pointed to last weeks passage by Congress of a National Defense Authorization Act that contains an alarming worldwide war provision, noting that it “explicitly extends the president’s war powers to just about anybody.”

The ACLU declared that the provision: “has no expiration date and will allow this president — and any future president — to go to war anywhere in the world, at any time, without further congressional authorization. The new authorization wouldn’t even require the president to show any threat to the national security of the United States. The American military could become the world’s cop, and could be sent into harm’s way almost anywhere and everywhere around the globe.”

Section 1034 of the Defense Authorization bill that says were are at war with the “associated forces” of al Qaeda and the Taliban.

“Would it be so hard for someone in the government to target a political enemy and connect them to al Qaeda, however tenuously, and have them declared an associated force?” writes Congressman Paul.
Paul warned that future leaders will ” inherit all the additional powers we cede to the current position holders.”

Listen to the Congressman’s warning in full below:

——————————————————————

Pentagon Declares War on Cyber Enemies, May 31 2011

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com


The Pentagon has announced that computer intrusions from abroad are to be considered acts of war against the United States and will be answered with conventional military force.

“If you shut down our power grid, maybe we will put a missile down one of your smokestacks,” a military official told The Wall Street Journal. In part, the Pentagon intends its plan as a warning to potential adversaries of the consequences of attacking the U.S., according to the Journal.

The Pentagon document is 30 pages in its classified version and 12 pages in the unclassified one. It concludes that the Laws of Armed Conflict are applicable in cyberspace as in traditional warfare.

The Pentagon established a new command last year, headed by Gen. Keith B. Alexander, director of the NSA, to consolidate military network security and attack efforts. Alexander told the Washington Post last November that the new outfit wants maneuvering room to mount what he called “the full spectrum” of operations in cyberspace.

The NSA announced its ambitious cyber security plan last year. Dubbed “Perfect Citizen,” it is designed to detect cyber assaults on private companies and government agencies running such critical infrastructure as the electricity grid and nuclear-power plants, according to theNew York Times.

According to the Post, offensive actions may include shutting down part of an opponent’s computer network to head off a cyber-attack or changing a line of code in an adversary’s computer to render malicious software harmless. They are operations that destroy, disrupt or degrade targeted computers or networks, the newspaper reported.


Alex Jones talked with RT about the Pentagon’s cyber army.

The United States and Israel apparently employed this doctrine when they inserted theStuxnet worm on a computer network associated with Iranian nuclear facilities. Iran had not attacked the United States or Israel, thus demonstrating that U.S. cyber warfare efforts against official enemies are not limited to offensive capability.

Since at least 2003, the Pentagon has considered cyberspace a battlefield. A Pentagon document entitled the Information Operation Roadmap was released to the public after a FOIA request by the National Security Archive at George Washington University in 2006.

On October 30, 2003, then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld signed a secret order for the classified 74-page directive. “DoD’s ‘Defense in Depth’ strategy should operate on the premise that the Department will ‘fight the net’ as it would a weapons system,” the report states.

Rumsfeld’s directive notes the importance of psychological operations. “In the battle of perception management, where the enemy is clearly using the media to help manage perceptions of the general public, our job is not perception management but to counter the enemy’s perception management,’ said the chief Pentagon spokesman, Lawrence Di Rita in December 2004.

The reported attacks on the Pentagon’s computer network have served to further boost the impression that crafty enemies are at war in cyberspace with the United States. It provided an impetus to attack official enemies. “Recent attacks on the Pentagon’s own systems – as well as the sabotaging of Iran’s nuclear program via the Stuxnet computer worm – have given new urgency to U.S. efforts to develop a more formalized approach to cyber attacks,” writes the Journal.

The Pentagon has publicized a number of alleged attacks, including “the most significant breach of U.S. military computers ever,” a 2008 episode in which a foreign intelligence agent used a flash drive to infect computers, including those used by the Central Command in overseeing combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan, the New York Times reported last August.

In May of 2010, Richard Clarke, a former adviser to both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, warned that the United States should prepare for a cyber attack that he claims could cause destruction on the scale of 9/11 in less than 15 minutes.

Prior to the announcement by the Pentagon today, major defense contractor Lockheed Martin reported over the weekend that its computer network was infiltrated by shadowy adversaries.

“Officials had no information on the origin on the attack, but one of the US diplomatic cables released by the WikiLeaks website suggested that China had jumped ahead of the US when it came to cyber-espionage,” The Telegraph reported on Saturday, two days before the Pentagon announcement.

The government and the corporate media have hyped the marginal threat of computer attacks over the last few years.

In late February of 2010, CNN rolled out a slick propaganda presentation called “Cyber Shockwave” that posited a cyber attack on the United States. The aired scenario was created by former CIA Director, General Michael Hayden, and the co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission, former Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-IN) and former Gov. Thomas Kean (R-NJ). Other government insiders and establishment types participated, including former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff and former CIA director John McLaughlin. The scenario sketched out a dire scenario of knocked out power grids and the prospect of the United States being pitched into the Dark Ages.

Dire cyber threat propaganda.

“How should the government deal with the threat?” we asked at the time. “Federalize the National Guard to deal with unruly mobs freaking out over the loss of electricity. Nationalize utility companies so the NSA and the government get electricity. The participants also recommended new powers be granted to the president. Not surprisingly, they declared the president has the authority to take unprecedented action against the states and the private sector under the Constitution.”

In April of last year, CIA director Leon Panetta said that the next “Pearl Harbor” is likely to be an attack on the United States’ power, financial, military and other internet systems, the Sacramento Press reported. Panetta said the United States faces thousands of cyber attacks daily on its internet networks. The attacks are originating in Russia, China, Iran and from even hackers.

The government and the corporate media are overplaying the threat of a cyber attack for political reasons. It is a key component of an effort to install a sprawling surveillance grid.

“It is alarming that so many people have accepted the White House’s assertions about cyber-security as a key national security problem without demanding further evidence. Have we learned nothing from the WMD debacle? The administration’s claims could lead to policies with serious, long-term, troubling consequences for network openness and personal privacy,” writes Evgeny Morozov for the Boston Review. “Much of the data are gathered by ultra-secretive government agencies — which need to justify their own existence — and cyber-security companies — which derive commercial benefits from popular anxiety. Journalists do not help.

Gloomy scenarios and speculations about cyber-Armageddon draw attention, even if they are relatively short on facts.”

The supposed cyber threat now hyped by the Pentagon is not limited to foreign adversaries. Last October, Obama instructed the Pentagon to attack “cyberthreats” within the United States. “The Obama administration has adopted new procedures for using the Defense Department’s vast array of cyberwarfare capabilities in case of an attack on vital computer networks inside the United States, delicately navigating historic rules that restrict military action on American soil,” the New York Times reported.

In short, Obama gave the Pentagon orders to attack a supposed cyber threat within the United States.

Cyber Warfare Gets Real, May 31 2011

UK Daily Mail
A cyber-weapons programme to counter growing threats to national security from cyberspace is being developed by the Government, it emerged today.

The scheme will provide the UK with a ‘toolbox’ of offensive options to fight online hackers targeting the country’s critical services and government departments.

Armed forces minister Nick Harvey admitted that cyber-weapons have become ‘an integral part of the country’s armoury’ as he admitted the programme exists.

‘Action in cyberspace will form part of the future battlefield,’ he told the Guardian.

‘We need a toolbox of capabilities and that’s what we are currently developing.’

The exact nature of the weapons being developed is being kept secret, but Mr Harvey confirmed they would be governed by the same rules that apply to the deployment of other military assets.

Full article here

Gaddafi Offers Truce, May 31 2011

UK Daily Mail

South African President Jacob Zuma has appeared on television in Libya to say Muammar Gaddafi’s is open to a truce.He told the country’s media the tyrant wanted a ceasefire including an end to Nato bombing, terms already rejected last month after an earlier mediation mission by Zuma.
Speaking in Tripoli, Zuma added: ‘We discussed the necessity of giving the Libyan people the opportunity to solve their problem on their own.’

State television broadcast pictures of the embattled leader welcoming Zuma and walking along a corridor to a large room where they sat talking in grand white chairs. It did not say where the meeting took place.

Gaddafi, seen by the outside world for the first time since May 11, was shown thrusting his fist in the air as he bid farewell to the president, who was seen boarding a plane at the end of the visit. It was Zuma’s second visit since the conflict began in February.

Full article here

Footage of Western Troops Confirms Criminality, May 31 2011

NATO forces have broken the terms of their own resolution, Obama deceived nation in speech

Paul Joseph WatsonPrison Planet.com
Proof that armed western forces are on the ground in Libya advising rebels confirms that the entire legal premise behind the NATO-led intervention has been shattered and the campaign is now a criminal act of warfare that has nothing whatsoever to do with the original justification of protecting civilians.

Video footage of armed westerners on the ground in Libya has been cited as the “first apparent confirmation that foreign special forces are playing an active role in the Libyan conflict,” and yet US, British and French special forces were already on the ground nearly three months ago, weeks before the initial UN resolution, as we reported at the time.



Images taken by Al-Jazeera released yesterday showed a group of six westerners talking to Libyan rebels west of the town of Misrata, confirming that the entire premise behind the United Nations’ ridiculously misnamed “no fly zone” has been eviscerated, and that NATO forces are engaged in direct warfare. All pretenses of “humanitarian aid,” which from the very beginning was a ludicrous hoax, can now be dispensed with.

“A group of six westerners are clearly visible in a report by al-Jazeera from Dafniya, described as the westernmost point of the rebel lines west of the town of Misrata. Five of them were armed and wearing sand-coloured clothes, peaked caps, and cotton Arab scarves,” reports the Guardian.

“The sixth, apparently the most senior of the group, was carrying no visible weapon and wore a pink, short-sleeve shirt. He may be an intelligence officer. The group is seen talking to rebels and then quickly leaving on being spotted by the television crew.”

The original UN resolution that imposed a “no fly zone” over Libya, which quickly became a euphemism for constant bombardment, specifically forbade aiding rebel fighters in any way.

In addition, shortly after the US began its involvement, President Barack Obama stated on the record that there would be “absolutely” no boots on the ground.

As Dave Schuler wrote at the time, the resolution “authorizes member states to act as required to prevent harm to Libyan civilians, authorizes the establishment of a no-fly zone in Libyan air space, strengthens the arms embargo against Libya, and strengthens the freeze on Libyan assets in foreign banks.”

“It does not authorize member states to support rebels, defend armed insurgent groups, remove Qaddafi from office, or take steps to prevent Qaddafi’s use of mercenaries.”

However, that’s precisely what NATO and EU forces are now doing, breaking their own legal justification for involvement in Libya, and in the process arming and supporting Al-Qaeda terrorists.

But as we reported at the time, NATO forces didn’t even wait until their meaningless UN resolution was passed before putting boots on the ground in anticipation of the bombardment.

According to a report in the Pakistan Observer, hundreds of special forces personnel from the US, Britain and France arrived on February 23 and 24 in “American and French warships and small naval boats off Libyan ports of Benghazi and Tobruk.”

Their role was to set up bases and training centers for the rebels who were preparing to oust Gaddafi.
Even as Obama promised back in March not to send US troops into another warzone, 2,200 Marines from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit were dispatched to Libya.

Furthermore, in April the EU announced that it had rubber stamped an invasion force of ground troops that would be sent into Libya under the cooked up pretense of “humanitarian aid” and empowered to fight if Gaddafi forces threatened to impede their mission to “secure sea and land corridors inside the country,” a clear military purview that had nothing to do with protecting civilians.

40 Signs Chinese Economy Beating Up US Economy, May 31 2011

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Bigger Dance Party Planned at Jefferson Memorial, May 31 2011

Justin JouvenalWashington Post
So, you and four protesters get arrested and roughed up for dancing at the Jefferson Memorial over the weekend. How do you get revenge?

Try an encore performance with 1,600 of your closest friends.

If you’re just coming to this budding controversy, Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin and Iraq War veteran Adam Kokesh and others staged the booty shaking to draw attention to a recent U.S. Court of Appeals ruling that dancing is forbidden at memorials because it distracts from the “solemn commemoration” at such sites.
[...]
The new event, which organizers say is not a protest, is scheduled for this Saturday. It’s billed as “Dance Party @ TJ’S!!!” As of Monday morning, more than 1,600 people had said on Facebook that they were planning to attend.

Full article here

Irate Germany Summons Iranian Ambassador, May 31 2011

Tyler DurdenZero Hedge
It appears that even a Stuxnet-crippled Iran can strike back. As the WSJ reports, “Germany summoned the Iranian ambassador in Berlin Tuesday after Iran temporarily blocked a plane carrying German Chancellor Angela Merkel from entering its airspace” in what has the making of a major diplomatic scandal. Merkel, along with a large German delegation was en route to India for an official visit, and had expected to get an uncontested green light to fly in Tehran-controlled skies, when the permission was granted… for over two hours. NDTV has more: “In an incident that could have serious diplomatic consequences, Iran temporarily refused to allow German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s plane to enter its airspace on Tuesday. The plane reportedly had to circle over Turkey for two hours before being given permission to enter. The government aircraft was denied overflight rights in the early hours of Tuesday. The exact reason for the denial of overflight rights is unclear. But before the plane left Berlin on Monday evening, it was reportedly given permission by Iranian authorities. Germany along with the US and its other allies in NATO has long been at loggerheads with Iran essentially over its nuclear arms policy and alleged support to terror.” Who could have possibly conceived that a country ostracized by the global community can possibly strike back. All we can say is that Air Force One better fly the friendly skies when it travels over the Middle East going forward or else it may be forced to discover just how efficient its flare and chaff Electronic Counter Measures truly are…

Offshoring Has Destroyed US Economy, May 31 2011

Nobel Economist Michael Spence Says Globalism Is Costly For Americans

Paul Craig RobertsPrisonplanet.com
These are discouraging times, but once in a blue moon a bit of hope appears. I am pleased to report on the bit of hope delivered in March of 2011 by Michael Spence, a Nobel prize-winning economist, assisted by Sandile Hlatshwayo, a researcher at New York University. The two economists have taken a careful empirical look at jobs offshoring and concluded that it has ruined the income and employment prospects for most Americans.

To add to the amazement, their research report, “The Evolving Structure of the American Economy and the Employment Challenge,” was published by the very establishment Council on Foreign Relations.
For a decade I have warned that US corporations, pressed by Wall Street and large retailers such as Wal-Mart, to move offshore their production for US consumer markets, were simultaneously moving offshore US GDP, US tax base, US consumer income, and irreplaceable career opportunities for American citizens.

Among the serious consequences of offshoring are the dismantling of the ladders of upward mobility that made the US an “opportunity society,” an extraordinary worsening of the income distribution, and large trade and federal budget deficits that cannot be closed by normal means. These deficits now threaten the US dollar’s role as world reserve currency.

I was not alone in making these warnings. Dr. Herman Daly, a former World Bank economist and professor at the University of Maryland, Dr. Charles McMillion, a Washington, DC, economic consultant, and Dr. Ralph Gomory, a distinguished mathematician and the world’s best trade theorist, understand that it is strictly impossible for an economy to be moved offshore and for the country with the offshored economy to remain prosperous.

Even before this handful of economists capable of independent thought saw the ruinous implications of offshoring, two billionaires first recognized the danger and issued warnings, to no avail. One of the billionaires was Roger Milliken, the late South Carolina textile magnate, who spent his time on Capital Hill, not on yachts with Playboy centerfolds, trying to make our representatives aware that we were losing our economy. The other billionaire was the late Sir James Goldsmith, who made his fortune by correcting the mistakes of America’s incompetent corporate CEOs by taking over their companies and putting them to better use. Sir James spent his last years warning of the perils both of globalism and of merging the sovereignties of European countries and the UK into the EU.

Sir James book, The Trap, was published as long ago as 1993. His book, The Response, in which he replied to the “free trade” ideologues in the financial press and academia who denigrated his warning, was published in 1995. (For readers who wish to hear a speech given by Sir James to the US Senate in 1994 warning of the perils of globalism, go here. Also here.)

Sir James called it correct, as did Roger Milliken. They predicted that the working and middle classes in the US and Europe would be ruined by the greed of Wall Street and corporations, who would boost corporate earnings by replacing their domestic work forces with foreign labor, which could be paid a fraction of labor’s productivity as a result of the foreign country’s low living standard and large excess supply of labor. Anytime there is an excess supply of labor, or the ability of corporations to pay labor less than its productivity, the corporations bank the difference, Share prices rise, and Wall Street and shareholders are happy.

All of this was over the heads of “free trade” ideologues, who threw accusations such as “protectionist” at Sir James, Roger Milliken, Herman Daly, Ralph Gomory, Charles McMillion, and myself. These “free trade” ideologues are economically incompetent. They do not know that the justification for free trade is based on the principle of comparative advantage, which means that a country specializes in those economic activities in which it performs best and trades for those goods that other countries do best. Instead, the ideologues think that free trade means the freedom of capital to seek absolute advantage abroad in lowest factor cost. In other words, the free trade incompetents have never read David Ricardo, who formalized the case for free trade.
Other economists, especially those high profile ones in high profile academic institutions, were bought and paid for. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28189.htm In exchange for grants from offshoring corporations these hirelings invented “the New Economy,” in which everyone would prosper as a result of getting rid of “dirty fingernail jobs.” The New Economy wouldn’t make anything, but it would lead the world in innovation and in financing what others did make. The “new economists” were not sufficiently bright to realize that if a country didn’t make anything, it couldn’t innovate.

Let’s go now to Michael Spence and Sandile Hlatshwayo, who have provided an honest report for which we should give thanks. Professor Spence could have made many millions using the prestige of his Nobel Prize to lie for the Establishment, but he chose to tell the truth.

Here is what Spence and Hlatshwayo report:

“This paper examines the evolving structure of the American economy, specifically, the trends in employment, value added, and value added per employee from 1990 to 2008. These trends are closely connected with complementary trends in the size and structure of the global economy, particularly in the major emerging economies. Employing historical time series data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. industries are separated into internationally tradable and non-tradable components, allowing for employment and value-added trends at both the industry and the aggregate level to be examined. Value added grew across the economy, but almost all of the incremental employment increase of 27.3 million jobs was on the non-tradable side. On the non-tradable side, government and health care are the largest employers and provided the largest increments (an additional 10.4 million jobs) over the past two decades. There are obvious questions about whether those trends can continue; without fast job creation in the non-tradable sector, the United States would already have faced a major employment challenge.

“The trends in value added per employee are consistent with the adverse movements in the distri- bution of U.S. income over the past twenty years, particularly the subdued income growth in the middle of the income range. The tradable side of the economy is shifting up the value-added chain with lower and middle components of these chains moving abroad, especially to the rapidly growing emerging markets. The latter themselves are moving rapidly up the value-added chains, and higher-paying jobs may therefore leave the United States, following the migration pattern of lower-paying ones. The evolution of the U.S. economy supports the notion of there being a long-term structural challenge with respect to the quantity and quality of employment opportunities in the United States. A related set of challenges concerns the income distribution; almost all incremental employment has occurred in the non-tradable sector, which has experienced much slower growth in value added per employee. Because that number is highly correlated with income, it goes a long way to explain the stagnation of wages across large segments of the workforce.”

What is Spence telling us? Spence is careful not to say that globalism is the intentional result of enhancing capital’s profits at the expense of labor’s wages, but he does acknowledge that that is its effect and that globalism or jobs offshoring has the costs that Daly, Gomory, McMillion, Milliken, Goldsmith, and I have pointed out. Spence uses the same data that we have provided that proves that during the era of globalism the US economy has created new jobs only in nontradable services that cannot be offshored or be produced in locations distant from their market. For example, the services of barbers, waitresses, bar tenders, and hospital workers, unlike those of software engineers, cannot be exported. They can only be sold locally in the location where they are provided.

Tradeable jobs are jobs that produce goods and services that can be exported and thus can be produced in locations distant from their market. Tradeable jobs result in higher value-added and, thereby, higher pay than most non-tradable jobs.

When a country’s tradeable goods and services are converted by offshoring into its imports, it is thrown back on low productivity domestic service jobs for its employment. These domestic service jobs, except for dentists, lawyers, teachers, and medical doctors, do not require a university education. Yet, America has thousands of universities and colleges, and the government endlessly repeats the mantra that “education is the answer.”

But with engineering, design, and research jobs offshored, and with many of the jobs that remain within the US filled by foreigners on HB-1 and L-1 visas, we now have the phenomenon of American university and college graduates, heavily indebted with student loans, jobless, and living with their parents, who support them.

Spence also acknowledges that the change in the structure of American employment from higher productivity to lower productivity jobs is the reason both for the stagnation in US consumer income and for the rising inequality of income. Sending middle class jobs abroad raised the earnings of capital. Spence understands that the lack of growth in consumer income has resulted in a shortfall in domestic demand, resulting in high unemployment. He could have added that jobs offshoring also gave us the Federal Reserve’s policy of pumping up consumer debt as a substitute for the missing growth in consumer income. There is an obvious limit to the ability to maintain the growth of consumer demand via the growth of indebtedness.

The offshored economy is the “New Economy,” which the “free trade” hirelings of Wall Street and the global corporations invented in order to pay, with grants from the offshoring corporations, for their summer homes in the Hamptons.

As a graduate student in economics, I was fortunate to study with a number of professors who had or were subsequently awarded Nobel Prizes. Among these creative people there are two economists whom I did not study under, but whose work I have read, and whose work is of great importance to our economic prospects. The two most important economists of our time, who, without any doubt, deserve the Nobel Prize are Ralph Gomory and Herman Daly.

Ralph Gomory’s book, “Global Trade and Conflicting National Interests,” coauthored with William J. Baumol, a past president of the American Economics Association, is the most important work in trade theory ever produced. This book, and subsequent papers by Gomory, prove beyond all doubt that the free trade theory set out by David Ricardo at the beginning of the 19th century is merely a special case, not a general theory.

Economists learn in their graduate courses that free trade is an unchallengeable doctrine and that only ignorant protectionists dispute the theory. This mindset was sufficient for Gomory’s book to be largely ignored, even though Paul Samuelson, the dean of American economics, acknowledged the critical point that there are situations in which free trade is not mutually beneficial.

The other deserving recipient of the Nobel prize is Herman Daly. On the trade issue, Daly’s point is different from and less revolutionary than Gomory’s. Daly makes the same point that I make, which is that the classic theory of free trade is based on comparative advantage, not on absolute advantage, and that offshoring is based on absolute advantage. Thus, offshoring is not free trade.

Daly’s revolutionary contribution to economics comes from his realization that the production function that is the basis of economic science is wrong.

This production function is known as the Solow-Stiglitz production function. This production function assumes that man-made capital is a substitute for nature’s capital. It follows from this assumption that whatever humans do to use up and destroy the natural environment can be overcome by the resourcefulness of science and technology.

Daly shows that this reasoning is incorrect. If the Gulf of Mexico is destroyed by fertilizer run-offs from agri-business and by oil spills, only nature can correct the problem after many years measured in decades or centuries. In the meantime, humans are without the resource.

Daly’s argument is brilliant in its simplicity. In former times, nature’s capital was enormous, and man’s reproducible capital was small. For example, fish in the oceans were plentiful, but fishing boats were not.

Today fishing boats are in excess supply, but ocean fishing stocks are depleted. Thus, the limiting factor is not man-made capital, but nature’s capital. Daly stresses that by leaving ecological and social costs out of the computation of GDP, economists do not have a reliable measure of the effect of economic activity on human welfare.

All of economics is predicated on the notion that resources are inexhaustible, and that the only challenge is to use them most efficiently. But if resources are not inexhaustible and cannot be replicated by human capital, the world economy is being ruthlessly exploited to its detriment and to the detriment of life on earth.

Thanks to Bush/Cheney/Obama and the wars for military/security profits, we might not last long enough to test Daly’s hypothesis. As American hegemony confronts both China and Russia, hubris can rid the planet of humans before nature does.

To find a Nobel prize-winner documenting the high cost of globalism to developed economies is extraordinary. For the Council on Foreign Relations to publish it suggests that the Establishment, or some part of it, suspects that its hubris has run away with its fortunes, and that different thinking is needed to restore the US economy.

We must hope that Spence’s paper will encourage thought. On the other hand, the bought-and-paid-for-economists will confront Spence with their fantasies that the US would be enjoying full employment if only government did not discourage employment with unemployment compensation, food stamps, income support programs, unions, minimum wages, and regulation.

Recently, yet another high-level warning came from the International Monetary Fund. The IMF report said that the US economy has been seriously eroded and that the age of America is over.

Will the US business and economic establishments heed these warnings, or will the US become a third world country as I predicted at the beginning of this century?

Texas Standing Up to Blockade, May 31 2011

Andrew Steele
Op Ed News

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U.K. Admits Training Forces to Crush Uprising, May 31 2011

David EdwardsRaw Story
The British Ministry of Defense (MoD) confirmed last week that U.K troops may have trained Saudi Arabia’s national guard before they were used to help crush civil rights protests in Bahrain.

Documents obtained by The Observer under Britain’s Freedom of Information Act revealed that British forces regularly instructed the Saudi national guard in “weapons, fieldcraft and general military skills training, as well as incident handling, bomb disposal, search, public order and sniper training.”

“All BMM personnel, as well as support costs such as accommodation and transport” was paid for by Saudi Arabia, according to the documents. Up to 20 teams a year are sent to the kingdom.

In March, 1,200 Saudi troops entered Bahrain to help quell demonstrations. The Sunni Saudi royal family was reportedly worried that the Shiite majority in Bahrain could gain control there.

Full article here

Big Brother Wants Terror Threats To Cell Phones, May 31 2011

RT
In America, ‘Big Brother’ has a mobile and he’s learnt how to text. The U.S. government now has a system which can send emergency alerts to everyone. From blizzards to terror threats – the warnings will go straight to people’s phones. But as Marina Portnaya reports, many feel it’s creating needless panic.

Debt Ceiling Tragicomedy Resumes, May 31 2011

Tyler DurdenZero Hedge
Today at 7:00 pm the House will hold a very symbolic vote on a $2.4 trillion debt ceiling increase. Symbolic because it is doomed from the beginning as every single republican will vote no. So why is it held?

Supposedly it is to rekindle popular interest in the debt ceiling drama following several weeks of commercial interruptions (i.e., heavy lobbying), and to remind the public that America is still a “democracy.” Below is Goldman’s Alec Phillips with more:

7:00 pm – House votes on raising debt limit by $2.4 trillion. This will be a purely symbolic vote, intended to fail. It is meant to demonstrate to the administration and the public that a “clean” increase lacking any accompanying fiscal restraint lacks the votes to pass, and to give members of Congress a chance to vote against it before many of them are eventually obliged to vote for it. To reduce the likelihood of passage even further, House leadership will bring the bill up for a vote under a process requiring a 2/3 vote to pass (known as “suspension of the rules”).

The expected outcome is that every Republican will vote against the increase, and that some Democrats will vote against it as well. The vote is being held tonight to set the stage for talks tomorrow, when President Obama meets with the entire House Republican caucus. With the Senate out this week, there will be no fiscal talks led by Vice President Biden until next week, so this vote along with tomorrow’s meeting with the president will be the key fiscal events for the week.

We Will Take Your Gold, Then, May 31 2011

RT
This week Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, report on the oil traders puking on markets and the gold confiscators eyeing Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy. In the second half of the show, Max talks to former chief forex trader for VISA, Jon Matonis of TheMonetaryFuture.blogspot.com, about Bitcoin, the new peer-to-peer crypto-currency.

Ron Paul Goes After Huckabee Supporters, May 31 2011

The State Column
Texas Rep. Ron Paul is reportedly courting former supporters of Mike Huckabee.

The Texas Republican, who earlier this month announced his intention to seek the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, said he thinks supporters of Mr. Huckabee would fit right in with his campaign.

“I think that opens up the door for us because he is one that stood for family values and it’s something that we’ve been pushing real hard,” Mr. Paul said Monday. “And I think there’s a chance that we will be able to capture a lot of those votes.”

Mr. Paul’s courting of supporters of Mr. Huckabee comes just weeks after the former Arkansas governor said he will not enter the 2012 race. Mr. Huckabee, who led a number of polls, announced the decision after months of speculation over whether he would run.

Full article here

TSA Image Operators, May 31 2011

Jacob GoodwinGSN
When its screening operators use the latest Automatic Target Recognition software at an airport checkpoint – which presents images of a concealed weapon on a cartoon-like outline of a human body – those TSA operators are no longer required to sit in a remote location.

Instead, under revised privacy procedures, TSA now allows operators of such advanced backscatter X-ray and millimeter wave devices to sit in the same area where the passenger is being inspected.

“Since the technology uses a generic image that provides greater privacy protections for the individual being screened, systems using Automatic Target Recognition will not isolate the operator viewing the image from the individual being screened,” says the latest version of a DHS “privacy impact assessment,” which was updated on January 25, 2011 and summarized in a Federal Register announcement published by the department on May 27.

When the airport uses the older imaging equipment, which presents a picture of a potential weapon or other threat on a more-realistic photo-like image of the traveler’s body, the TSA employee is still required to sit in a remote location, where he or she has no direct contact with the traveling passenger. “To mitigate the privacy risk associated with creating an image of the individual’s body, TSA isolates the TSA officer (the image operator) viewing the image from the TSA officer interacting with the individual,” explains the most-recent DHS privacy impact assessment.

Full article here

N. Mexico Supreme Court Gun Grab, May 31 2011

The Newspaper
Police officers in New Mexico can take guns away from drivers who pose no threat. The state supreme court ruled on May 20 that “officer safety” is more important than any constitutional rights a gun-owning motorist might have. The ruling was handed down in deciding the fate of Gregory Ketelson who was a passenger in a vehicle pulled over on November 13, 2008.

During the stop, Hobbs Police Officer Miroslava Bleau saw a 9mm handgun on the back seat floorboard.

Ketelson and the driver of the car were ordered out and away from the car while Officer Shane Blevins grabbed the gun. The officers later learned that Ketelson, as a convicted felon, could not legally possess a firearm. The court, however, only considered whether the officers acted properly in taking the gun before they had any reason to suspect Ketelson, who was entirely cooperative during the encounter, of committing a crime.

Ketelson and the National Rifle Association argued that even a brief seizure of a firearm without cause violates fundamental, constitutionally protected rights. Ketelson also argued the gun could not have been taken without a search warrant, consent or exigent circumstances. A district court and the court of appeals agreed with this reasoning. State prosecutors countered that anyone with a gun ought to be considered “armed and dangerous” and thus the gun could be seized at any time. The high court agreed with this line of reasoning.

Full article here

Damn! Aussies to be Fined for Swearing, May 31 2011

AFP
Australians may have a love of plain speaking but new laws are set to curtail some of their more colourful language with police issuing on-the-spot fines for obnoxious swearing.

The country’s second most populous state Victoria is due to approve new legislation this week under which police will be able to slap fines of up to Aus$240 (US$257) on people using offensive words or phrases.

Victorian Attorney-General Robert Clark said the penalties, similar to those issued for speeding or parking illegally, would free up police time.

“This will give the police the tools they need to be able to act against this sort of obnoxious behaviour on the spot, rather than having to drag offenders off to court and take up time and money in proceedings,” he said.

Full article here

Food Prices to Double by 2030, May 31 2011

Felicity Lawrence
London Guardian
The average price of staple foods will more than double in the next 20 years, leading to an unprecedented reversal in human development, Oxfam has warned.

The world’s poorest people, who spend up to 80% of their income of food, will be hit hardest according to the charity. It said the world is entering an era of permanent food crisis, which is likely to be accompanied by political unrest and will require radical reform of the international food system.

Research to be published on Wednesday forecasts international prices of staples such as maize could rise by as much as 180% by 2030, with half of that rise due to the impacts of climate change.

After decades of steady decline in the number of hungry people around the world, the numbers are rapidly increasing as demand outpaces food production. The average growth rate in agricultural yields has almost halved since 1990 and is set to decline to a fraction of 1% in the next decade.

Full article here

Texas Gov. Perry Bilderberg's Ace in the Hole?, May 31 2011

James P. Tucker Jr.
American Free Press
Is Texas Gov. Rick Perry the Bilderberg group’s Republican candidate-in-waiting in the 2012 presidential race? The shadowy globalist group is scheduled to meet secretly behind locked doors over the weekend of June 9-12 in St. Moritz, Switzerland, and AFP will be on location to cover it.

It is not without precedent to tap state governors for broader vistas. Bill Clinton at one time was the obscure governor of Arkansas—a land with strong Rockefeller influence since the days of Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller. As governor, Clinton attended his first Bilderberg meeting in 1991 and was elected president about a year later.

Like Clinton, Perry has attended a Bilderberg meeting. In June 2007 Perry attended the Bilderberg confab in Istanbul, Turkey, making the mandatory promise of secrecy and to follow orders. At the time, Perry was chastised in the newly aroused independent press.

Speculation that Perry is the Bilderberg group’s ace card was prompted by the current political climate, which can largely be gleaned from the fact that Perry is a longtime, unwavering supporter of the NAFTA Superhighway and related infrastructure projects. These pave the way for the Bilderberg-supported North American Union (NAU) proposal that would merge the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

The word is that Bilderberg is concerned about the boring field of Republican presidential candidates. One of the current GOP candidates, former Georgia Rep. Newt Gingrich, once told AFP, eyeball to eyeball, that he never had participated and never would participate in Bilderberg or Trilateral Commission meetings, although Gingrich is still a fervent globalist, nonetheless.


President Obama, as AFP has reported, is a tool of Bilderberg. He had been sought out at the 2008
Bilderberg meeting in Chantilly, Va., just before winning the 2008 Democratic nomination. While receiving his instructions from Bilderberg, the dutiful Obama appeared to be bobbing for apples.

But just owning the Democratic nominee won’t do, as Bilderberg likes to own both horses in a two horse race for the White House.

Bilderberg’s GOP favorite, such as he is, is starchy Mitt Romney, but the former Massachusetts governor keeps tripping over his mouth trying to explain his health reform positions. As governor, he imposed the kind of topdown mandatory healthcare reform that Bilderberg likes. As a presidential candidate, Romney is suddenly trying to explain how he opposes it. So, he is unlikely to be nominated. The rest of the field is also weak, but any nominee could be elected if the country remains in recession—something Bilderberg has engineered.

So enter Perry to “save the day” for internationalism.

In 2007, when confronted by the local press on his return from Turkey, Perry insisted that the Bilderberg boys do good work and Americans should be grateful.

But Perry appeared confused when asked about the Logan Act, which outlaws meetings of government officials with private citizens to make public policy unless they are held in public, not behind locked and guarded doors as is the case at the annual Bilderberg meetings.

Foes of the Logan Act argue that it passed in 1789, so it’s “out of date.” To this, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) responds that unless it’s repealed, it remains the law. And it has been amended and strengthened over the years, including in the 20th century.

Paul has called for a criminal investigation into Perry’s Bilderberg trip. “This information about him going over there and violating the Logan Act and getting involved . . . I’m just impressed that that’s in the ordinary media—I think that’s encouraging, too,” he said on a talk radio show, adding that Perry’s attendance was “a sign that he’s involved in the international conspiracy.”

Perry has repeatedly denied that he is running for president, but several campaigns have been put forth to draft the three term Texas governor. In addition, Perry keeps pushing himself as a Bilderberg wild card. At Republican events, he has described the type of nominee the GOP needs (like himself) without naming himself.

The Bilderberg backed NAU that he supports would erase the boundaries between Mexico, the United States and Canada. The plan is to expand the “union” throughout the Western Hemisphere, resulting in an “American Union,” similar to the European Union that is draining Europe dry of its former prosperity, with Switzerland— the location of the 2011 Bilderberg meeting—faring better because it’s neither an EU nor a NATO member.

His support of the Trans Texas Corridor within the state’s boundaries has been unflinching, since that is Texas’s part of the greater NAFTA Superhighway network to connect the NAU nations physically.

Bilderberg, true to form, wants the U.S. recession to continue throughout 2012 and for oil prices to remain high and increase further. This could make Obama a one-term president. But at this point it appears Bilderberg’s “other horse” is headed for the stable, to be groomed as their ace in the hole.