Direct From Globalist Enviro-nazis.

Mikhail Gorbachev, leader of one of the most oppressive governments in history, somehow became head of the International Green Cross, which is supposedly dedicated to environmental issues. Gorbachev has never denounced collectivism, only the label of a particular brand of collectivism called Communism. His real interest is not ecology but world government with himself assured a major position in the collectivist power structure.

In a public appearance in Fulton, Missouri, he praised the Club of Rome, of which he is a member, for its position on population control. Then he said:

One of the worst of the new dangers is ecological. … Today, global climatic shifts; the greenhouse effect; the “ozone hole”; acid rain; contamination of the atmosphere, soil and water by industrial and household waste; the destruction of the forests; etc. all threaten the stability of the planet

Gorbachev proclaimed that global government was the answer to these threats and that the use of government force was essential. He said: “I believe that the new world order will not be fully realized unless the United Nations and its Security Council create structures … authorized to impose sanctions and make use of other measures of compulsion.”

Here is an arch criminal who fought his way up through the ranks of the Soviet Communist Party, became the protégé of Yuri Andropov, head of the dreaded KGB, was a member of the USSR's ruling Politburo throughout the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and who was selected by the Politburo in 1985 as the supreme leader of world Communism. All of this was during one of the Soviet's most dismal periods of human-rights violations and subversive activities against the free world.

Furthermore, he ruled over a nation with one of the worst possible records of environmental destruction. At no time while he was in power did he ever say or do anything to show concern over planet Earth.

All that is now forgotten. Gorbachev has been transformed by the CFR-dominated media into an ecology warrior. He is calling for world government and telling us that such a government will use environmental issues as justification for sanctions and other “measures of compulsion.”

The use of compulsion is an important point in these plans. People in the industrialized nations are not expected to cooperate in their own demise. They will have to be forced. They will not like it when their food is taken for global distribution. They will not approve when they are taxed by a world authority to finance foreign political projects. They will not voluntarily give up their cars or resettle into smaller houses or communal barracks to satisfy the resource-allocation quotas of a UN agency.

Club-of-Rome member Maurice Strong states the problem:

In effect, the United States is committing environmental aggression against the rest of the world. … At the military level, the United States is the custodian. At environmental level, the United States is clearly the greatest risk. … One of the worst problems in the United States is energy prices – they're too low. …

It is clear that current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class … involving high meat intake, consumption of large amounts of frozen and `convenience' foods, ownership of motor-vehicles, numerous electric household appliances, home and work-place air-conditioning … expansive suburban housing … are not sustainable.

Mr. Strong's remarks were enthusiastically received by world environmental leaders, but they prompted this angry editorial response in the Arizona Republic:

Translated from eco-speak, this means two things: (1) a reduction in the standard of living in Western nations through massive new taxes and regulations, and (2) a wholesale transfer of wealth from industrialized to under-developed countries. The dubious premise here is that if the U.S. economy could be reduced to, say, the size of Malaysia's, the world would be a better place. Most Americans probably would balk at the idea of the U.N. banning automobiles in the U.S.

Waxman Sneaks Anti-vitamin Amendment into Wall Street Reform Bill

http://www.naturalnews.com/028687_Henry_Waxman_health_freedom.html


(NaturalNews) Of all the sneaky tactics practiced in Washington D.C., this recent action by Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) is one of the most insidious: While no one was looking, he injected amendment language into the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009 (H.R. 4173) that would expand the powers of the FTC (not the FDA, but the FTC) to terrorize nutritional supplement companies by greatly expanding the power of the FTC to make its own laws that target dietary supplement companies.

This is a little-known secret about the FTC and the nutritional supplements business: The FTC routinely targets nutritional supplement companies that are merely telling the truth about their products. Some companies are threatened by merely linking to published scientific studies about their products.

For example, here's an important article that describes how to FDA criminally extorts money out of supplement companies: http://www.naturalnews.com/024567_h...

The FTC does much the same thing. They target a particular company that's having success in the natural products marketplace, then they accuse that company of "inferring" that their products have some health benefit. From there, the FTC demands that the company engage in paying a massive fine to the FTC, which the FTC calls "consumer redress" even though none of the money actually goes to the consumers.

If you try to fight the FTC, they haul you into their own special "FTC courts" which are not public courts where you have the benefit of a jury, but rather they are courts where the judges are actually FTC employees and you have no rights. You are essentially guilty until proven innocent, and virtually no one has been found innocent by the FTC.

The Great American Bank Heist

On the Day we Reach a Monthly Foreclosure Filing Record Banks Announce Record Profits and the Stock Market is up 80 Percent.

It is rather fitting that on the day we hear about banks reaching record profits once again, because after all it is so difficult to borrow at zero percent and gamble in the stock market and make a gain, that we also find out that March was the highest month of foreclosure filings ever (and we’ve had some bad months).  If there was ever a more clear indication between the split from Main Street and Wall Street this is probably the strongest indicator so far. 

I’ll include the charts below but being blunt about the situation, the bailouts worked.  If we define “worked” as boosting banking profits once again while 40,000,000 Americans are on food stamps and 17 percent remain underemployed then all is well again in the economy.  Yet this isn’t what the American people bargained for in the bailouts.  In fact, they didn’t want the bailouts if you remember the massive anger from both aisles calling their representatives. 

But the cronies didn’t listen since they receive millions in lobbying dollars and $13 trillion went to Wall Street in the biggest wealth transfer witnessed by the disgruntled American public.

Obama to Propose Limits on Risks Taken by Banks

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/business/21volcker.html?hp

President Obama will publicly propose today “giving bank regulators the power to limit the size of the nation’s largest banks and the scope of their risk-taking activities,” an idea “championed by Paul A. Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve and an adviser to the Obama administration. The proposal would prohibit commercial banks from proprietary trading for their own accounts.

More bullshit.

Earlier this year, Obama tried to give the private central bank, the Federal Reserve, these powers.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE5476T220090508
Admin wants Fed to oversee "systemic risk": sources
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration is expected to propose legislation by June calling for the U.S. Federal Reserve to play a central role in regulating systemic risk in the economy, trade association sources said on Friday.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/16/plan-gives-fed-swee...
Federal Reserve to gain power under plan
The Federal Reserve, already arguably the most powerful agency in the U.S. government, will get sweeping new authority to regulate any company whose failure could endanger the U.S. economy and markets under the Obama administration's regulatory overhaul plan.

This is just more banker puppetry to funnel more power and control into fewer and fewer hands. Just as there is a revolving door relationship with bankers, politicians and regulators...any new regulation agency will be mere lip service, a fake security blanket to pacify the American public while keeping actions I have detailed in previous posts from coming to mainstream attention.

Top banks spent big money on lobbying efforts during financial crisis.

http://thehill.com/news-by-subject/finance-economy/77223-banks-spending-big-on-lobbying-efforts-during-financial-crisis

Eight of the nation's largest banks spent nearly $26 million lobbying federal lawmakers in 2009, during one of the most tumultuous periods in financial history.

The banks spent nearly 6 percent more on federal lobbying last year compared with 2008, according to a review of congressional lobbying records. The banks spent $25.8 million on lobbying in 2009 and $24.4 million in 2008, the two years at the heart of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

The eight banks include:

JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Bank of New York Mellon and State Street.

Those eight banks were the first recipients of taxpayer bailouts at the end of 2008.

They have since repaid the aid (read: WE have repaid the aid we were FORCED to give them) and have seen their stock values increase. They are now preparing to pay out massive compensation packages. While the financial industry shows signs of improvement, the broader economy remains bleak with 10 percent unemployment.

The banks are locked in a tough lobbying battle over new financial regulations with other parts of the financial industry, consumer groups, labor unions, congressional Democrats and the White House.

Yes, it costs a lot of money to fight Ron Paul and Alan Grayson when they've got millions of voters clued in to your scam and have them wanting to audit the Fed.

I'd be scared too, if I was a greedy, scumbag, thieving bankster gangster.

The Secret Bank Bailout

Hope you're happy with those record profits, because they come out of your wallet!

http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2010/01/secret-bank-bailout.html

There's one method that the Federal Reserve has been employing to shovel money to the bank elite that is rarely mentioned, though I hear the sums that have been shoveled are in the billions and they are showing up on the books of firms like Goldman Sachs as pure profit. It's really pure scam.

Here's what went on for months, according to traders familiar with the situation.

When the Federal Reserve buys and sells Treasury securities it does so through primary dealers. Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan are among the select elite firms that, naturally, got into this club.

So when the Fed wants to trade it goes to one of these primary dealers. In the past, to earn a profit, the banks would execute the trade and mark up the price a bit on a buy to the Fed (or mark down a bit to the Fed when they were selling for the Fed ). Since Fed traders have screens showing them where market prices are, in the past primary dealers were allowed small mark ups and mark downs in line with what banks were marking up and down for their other clients. It would be difficult for a primary dealer to get away with an outrageous mark up or down because the Fed trader would have a pretty good idea of where a trade should have been made.

Once the Fed and Treasury started shoveling money in every possible way they could think of to the elite banks, the word came down to Fed traders to "ease up" on the mark ups and down. Let the banks take a "healthy" mark up and mark down, they were told. I'm advised that the "healthy" mark ups and mark downs have resulted in the Fed overpaying on their trades with primary dealers to the tune of billions. These billions are looking like profitable skilled trades, when they are nothing of the kind. They are hidden gifts from the Federal Reserve that are generally unseen, unknown and will never be paid back.

Israel's 10 Worst Errors of the Decade

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bradley-burston/israels-10-worst-errors-o_b_409596.html

1. The Siege of Gaza -
The stated goal of the siege was to undermine Hamas and to goad Gazans into rejecting Hamas rule. The effect of the siege has been to focus and intensify Palestinian anger against Israel, increase Gazans' dependency on Hamas social welfare arms, enrich Hamas coffers through tunnel taxation and foreign donations, and sap Palestinian support for Fatah, which, through its back-channel encouragement for the siege, is seen as a betrayer and a boot-licker in the eyes of many Palestinians.

2. The Siege of Gaza -
The blockade was ostensibly a means to stem the influx of weaponry into Gaza. In practice, with shipments the size of automobiles flowing through the tunnels, the Hamas arsenal has grown ever more sophisticated, now believed to include Iranian-manufactured rockets capable of striking Tel Aviv and Ben-Gurion Airport from the Strip.

3. The Siege of Gaza -
In the eyes of the world community, the overwhelming collective punishment - and the relative silence of Israelis in response - has gutted Israeli claims to the moral high ground. It has undercut sympathy for Israelis living within Qassam range. It has kept open the moral wounds of the Gaza War, cramping rebuilding efforts, enshrining universal unemployment, and ensuring agonizing homelessness as the coastal winter gathers full force. Israeli officials have quietly take steps of astounding insensitivity, arbitrarily barring such goods as school supplies.

4. The Siege of Gaza -
The siege has been presented in the past as a means of pressing Hamas to release Gilad Shalit. Not only does he remain captive, the terms of a prospective deal appear not to include lifting the siege. The siege has been presented in the past as a means of pressuring Gazans to end rocket fire. But rocket fire only increased after the siege was put in place. Finally, Cast Lead, the Gaza war a year ago, might have been prevented altogether, had Israel adhered more closely to the Egyptian-brokered Hamas-Israel truce agreement of June, 2008, and lifted the siege more completely in response to a drop in rocket fire.

5. The Siege of Gaza -
The siege works to the detriment of U.S. support for Israel. In February, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signaled anger at Israel over obstacles to humanitarian aid entering the strip. The message came soon after Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, visiting Gaza, learned that Israel had blocked shipments of pasta, ruling it off the list of permitted humanitarian aid items.

6. The Siege of Gaza -
The fact that the siege has failed so completely in achieving its stated aims, reinforces the impression that its real purpose is punitive.

7. The Siege of Gaza -
The siege places Israeli officials in jeopardy of being charged with violating the Fourth Geneva Convention and other international codes, as outlined in detail in the Goldstone Report. Referring to the siege, paragraph 1335 of the report states that: "From the facts available to it, the Mission is of the view that some of the actions of the Government of Israel might justify a competent court finding that crimes against humanity have been committed."

8. The Siege of Gaza -
With the siege under the direct aegis of Defense Minister Ehud Barak and his deputy, Matan Vilnai, the moral failings of the siege could prove the coup de grace to an already foundering Labor Party.

9. The Siege of Gaza -
The siege threatens to destabilize the rule of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, posing a potential threat to Israeli-Egyptian peace and Israeli security.

10. The Siege of Gaza -
The siege corrupts the moral values of all Israelis, who, whether or not they are aware of what is being done to the people of Gaza, bear ultimate responsibility for all acts being carried out in their name.

Money Well Spent...If You Value Oppression.

U.S. Military Aid to Israel Averages $3 Billion a Year for Last 25 Years

Washington’s generosity towards Israel has amounted to $3 billion a year in military aid since 1985, and extends even further back to the mid-20th century. According to a Congressional Research Service report, no other country has received more foreign assistance from the United States than Israel from World War II until now, and it was the largest annual recipient of U.S. foreign assistance for each year from 1976 to 2004, when Iraq became a high priority.

 

Israel also benefits from special treatment from Washington, such as the fact that all of its yearly aid is delivered within the first 30 days of the new fiscal year. Most other allies of the U.S. get their assistance through installments that are spread out over the year. Additionally, Israel gets to use some of its U.S. military assistance for research and development in the United States and for military purchases from Israeli manufacturers. But the Jewish state must spend 75% of its help from Washington on military hardware made in the USA, which aids American manufacturers, especially during recessionary times.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel (by Jeremy M. Sharp, Congressional Research Service) (pdf)

US Aid Tied to Purchase of Arms (by Ann Davies, Sydney Morning Herald)

Warming Cult Supported By Big Oil

http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2009/10/02/exxons-tillerson-forget-cap-and-trade-carbon-tax-is-the-answer/

A common charge leveled against global warming skeptics is that they are on the payroll of transnational oil companies, when in fact the opposite is true, oil companies are amongst the biggest promoters of climate change propaganda, emphasized recently by Exxon Mobil’s call for a global carbon tax.

Exxon chief executive Rex Tillerson renewed his attack in a speech last night on a cap-and-trade plan, like that included in the latest Senate climate bill, and again explained his preference for a straight tax on carbon emissions. He’s been down that road before, though now he’s gotten into Washington’s spirit of euphemisms:

“I know that’s hard for a politician to say, so we have given it a new name. We call it a ‘refundable greenhouse gas emissions fee.’”

Tillerson brazenly called out the cap and trade agenda for what it was, an effort to impose a carbon tax camouflaged only by a slick sales pitch and deceptive rhetoric.

“It is easier and more politically expedient to support a cap-and-trade approach, because the public will never figure out where it is hitting them,” said Tillerson.

“They will just know they hurt somewhere in their pocketbook,” he added, pointing out that he disagreed with this convoluted method of introducing a carbon tax, arguing instead that it would be more successful to openly propose a straight carbon tax.

Former UK ambassador: CIA sent people to be ‘raped with broken bottles’

http://rawstory.com/2009/11/ambassador-cia-people-tortured/

The CIA relied on intelligence based on torture in prisons in Uzbekistan, a place where widespread torture practices include raping suspects with broken bottles and boiling them alive, says a former British ambassador to the central Asian country.

Craig Murray, the rector of the University of Dundee in Scotland and until 2004 the UK's ambassador to Uzbekistan, said the CIA not only relied on confessions gleaned through extreme torture, it sent terror war suspects to Uzbekistan as part of its extraordinary rendition program.

"I'm talking of people being raped with broken bottles," he said at a lecture late last month that was re-broadcast by the Real News Network. "I'm talking of people having their children tortured in front of them until they sign a confession. I'm talking of people being boiled alive. And the intelligence from these torture sessions was being received by the CIA, and was being passed on."

Italian Judge Convicts 23 in CIA Rendition/Kidnap Case

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iFK6jJ12W23VZD-Hsw_RZIo67JnwD9BOUKQO0

MILAN — An Italian judge found 23 Americans and two Italians guilty Wednesday in the kidnapping of an Egyptian terror suspect, delivering the first legal convictions anywhere in the world against people involved in the CIA's extraordinary renditions program.

Human rights groups hailed the decision and pressed President Barack Obama to repudiate the Bush administration's practice of abducting terror suspects and transferring them to third countries where torture was permitted.

The Obama administration ended the CIA's interrogation program and shuttered its secret overseas jails in January but has opted to continue the practice of extraordinary renditions.

The Americans, who were tried in absentia, now cannot travel to Europe without risking arrest as long as the verdicts remains in place.

Despite the convictions capping the nearly three-year Italian trial, several Italian and American defendants — including the two alleged masterminds of the abduction — were acquitted due to either diplomatic immunity or because classified information was stricken by Italy's highest court.

Fox News gets okay to misinform public, court ruling

http://ceasespin.org/ceasespin_blog/ceasespin_blogger_files/fox_news_gets_okay_to_misinform_public.html

On February 14, a Florida Appeals court ruled there is absolutely nothing illegal about lying, concealing or distorting information by a major press organization. The court reversed the $425,000 jury verdict in favor of journalist Jane Akre who charged she was pressured by Fox Television management and lawyers to air what she knew and documented to be false information. The ruling basically declares it is technically not against any law, rule, or regulation to deliberately lie or distort the news on a television broadcast.

On August 18, 2000, a six-person jury was unanimous in its conclusion that Akre was indeed fired for threatening to report the station's pressure to broadcast what jurors decided was "a false, distorted, or slanted" story about the widespread use of growth hormone in dairy cows.

The court did not dispute the heart of Akre's claim, that Fox pressured her to broadcast a false story to protect the broadcaster from having to defend the truth in court, as well as suffer the ire of irate advertisers. Fox argued from the first, and failed on three separate occasions, in front of three different judges, to have the case tossed out on the grounds there is no hard, fast, and written rule against deliberate distortion of the news.

The attorneys for Fox, owned by media baron Rupert Murdoch, argued the First Amendment gives broadcasters the right to lie or deliberately distort news reports on the public airwaves.

Another View At Goldman's Trading Perfection And Statistical Improbabilities

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/another-view-goldmans-trading-perfection-and-statistical-improbabilities

When a firm's trading performance challenges not only all preconceptions of realistic trading, but also of statistical distributions, one can merely stand back and watch in awe. Attached is a graphic of what a rigged, backstopped and manipulated market is all about. The chart demonstrates Goldman's YTD trading track record: out of 194 trading days in 2009, the firm has made over $100 million on 116 occasions! This alone accounts for $11.6 billion in revenue (and is likely much more as Goldman could have easily had a $1 billion trading day in the rightmost bracket as it is open ended). Assuming midline averages for any given bucket and multiplying by the amount of days that the firm traded within these, Goldman Sachs has made $15 billion courtesy of the skewed and very highly improbable (but not impossible, thank you taxpayers and Ben Bernanke) chart.



And a more granular read, demonstrates that as the year has progressed, Goldman has become much better at extracting larger wins and minimizing losses. The firm lost money on just 3 days in the last two quarters. Is this a ponzi scheme? We surely don't know absent additional information (which will never be forthcoming, despite that GS is a public company). Is this comparable to the returns generated by a ponzi scheme? Absofuckinlutely.



Can the SEC please dissolve itself already and save taxpayers at least a little money?

Obama creates 640,329 jobs at a cost of $323,739.83 per job

Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management.


http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Inquiring minds are asking the question "How many jobs were created out of the various stimulus programs so far and at what cost per job?"

That is a good question. Not that we can believe the reported number of jobs created, but let's assume for the sake of argument that the figures provided by the administration are correct.

Inquiring minds want the official numbers on which to base the cost per job created. So please consider the administration's own numbers as reported on Track The Money Recovery.Gov as of October 30, 2009

Math To Date

Funds paid out so far =

$83.8 billion + $52.1 billion + $71.4 billion = $207.3 billion

$207,300,000,000 / 640,329 = $323,739.83 per job created

Plan Goals Math

Now let's assume this stimulus package will eventually create (or save) 3.5 million jobs and all the money (but no more) will be spent.

Here's the math again.

$787,000,000,000 /
3,500,000 =

---

$224,857.14 per job created

New Doubt Cast on US Claim Qom Plant is Illicit

http://original.antiwar.com/porter/2009/10/02/new-doubt-cast-on-us-claim-qom-plant-is-illicit/

by Gareth Porter

An Iranian assertion that construction on its second enrichment facility began only last year and further analysis of satellite photos of the site have cast fresh doubts on the Barack Obama administration’s charge that the construction of the plant near Qom involved a covert decision to violate Iran’s obligations to report immediately to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on any decision to build a new facility.

At a Sep. 25 briefing on the site, senior administration officials refused to provide any specific information to back up the claim that construction had begun before the March 2007 Iranian withdrawal from an agreement requiring that it inform the IAEA immediately of any decision to build a nuclear facility.

The U.S. charges on the Qom facility, coming a week before the first opportunity for negotiations with Iran on a full range of issues since 1981, appear to have been a deliberate ploy to make the Obama administration appear tough and on the offensive when the talks started.

Iran’s Vice President Ali Akbar Salehi, who is also the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, told a news conference Tuesday that his agency took over a military ammunition dump. in 2008 to begin work on the enrichment facility near Qom

Meanwhile, a new photo analysis by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) of the Qom site in 2004 and 2005 suggests it was not dedicated to building a uranium enrichment facility at that time.

In a brief analysis posted on the ISIS webpage Tuesday, Paul Brannan, a specialist in interpreting satellite photography at ISIS, said he believed that the site on which the Qom enrichment facility was later constructed was "originally a tunnel facility associated with Iran’s military" rather than a "construction site for a uranium plant."

The Lying Game

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23597.htm

September 30, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- In 2001, the Observer in London published a series of reports that claimed an “Iraqi connection” to al-Qaeda, even describing the base in Iraq where the training of terrorists took place and a facility where anthrax was being manufactured as a weapon of mass destruction. It was all false. Supplied by US intelligence and Iraqi exiles, planted stories in the British and US media helped George Bush and Tony Blair to launch an illegal invasion which caused, according to the most recent study, 1.3 million deaths.

Something similar is happening over Iran: the same syncopation of government and media “revelations”, the same manufacture of a sense of crisis. “Showdown looms with Iran over secret nuclear plant”, declared the Guardian on 26 September. “Showdown” is the theme. High noon. The clock ticking. Good versus evil. Add a smooth new US president who has “put paid to the Bush years”. An immediate echo is the notorious Guardian front page of 22 May 2007: “Iran’s secret plan for summer offensive to force US out of Iraq”. Based on unsubstantiated claims by the Pentagon, the writer Simon Tisdall presented as fact an Iranian “plan” to wage war on, and defeat, US forces in Iraq by September of that year – a demonstrable falsehood for which there has been no retraction.

The official jargon for this kind of propaganda is “psy-ops”, the military term for psychological operations. In the Pentagon and Whitehall, it has become a critical component of a diplomatic and military campaign to blockade, isolate and weaken Iran by hyping its “nuclear threat”: a phrase now used incessantly by Barack Obama and Gordon Brown, and parroted by the BBC and other broadcasters as objective news. And it is fake.

Value of the Dollar Since Obama Took Office

Not that Obama is personally responsible for the devaluation of the dollar, but...


Versus Gold:

Jan. 20, 2009: 0.0011930
Oct. 7, 2009: 0.0009602

The dollar has lost nearly 20% of it's value since Obama took office.

High: 0.00121
Low: 0.00095


A 21.5% reduction in value.

Troops Question U.S. Presence in Afghanistan

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/Afghanistan/article6865359.ece

American soldiers serving in Afghanistan are depressed and deeply disillusioned, according to the chaplains of two US battalions that have spent nine months on the front line in the war against the Taleban.

Many feel that they are risking their lives — and that colleagues have died — for a futile mission and an Afghan population that does nothing to help them, the chaplains told The Times in their makeshift chapel on this fortress-like base in a dusty, brown valley southwest of Kabul.

“The many soldiers who come to see us have a sense of futility and anger about being here. They are really in a state of depression and despair and just want to get back to their families,” said Captain Jeff Masengale, of the 10th Mountain Division’s 2-87 Infantry Battalion.

“They feel they are risking their lives for progress that’s hard to discern,” said Captain Sam Rico, of the Division’s 4-25 Field Artillery Battalion. “They are tired, strained, confused and just want to get through.” The chaplains said that they were speaking out because the men could not.

34 banks don't pay their quarterly TARP dividends

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/banking/2009-10-07-banks-tarp-dividends_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip

In a sign that more banks are under great pressure from the recession, 34 financial institutions did not pay their quarterly dividends in August to the Treasury on funds obtained under the Troubled Asset Relief Fund (TARP). The number almost doubled from 19 in May when payments were last made, and also raised questions about Treasury's judgment in approving these banks as "healthy," a necessary step for them to get TARP funding.

"The banks are not paying their dividends because they are worried about preserving capital," says Eric Fitzwater, associate director of research at SNL Financial.

The Treasury Department says it cannot force an institution to pay dividends. "For some banks, it may be prudent to exercise their right not to pay dividends in a particular month, and we respect their right to do so," says Meg Reilly, a Treasury spokeswoman. "To draw any broader conclusions about the state of the banking sector from one month is highly premature and speculative."

However, a lot of smaller banks are already under stress. Weighed down by foreclosures and delinquencies, 98 banks have failed so far this year, vs. 25 for all of last year. Besides insurer American International Group and lender CIT Group, most of the other non-payers are smaller institutions that received $400 million or less in TARP funds.

America Continues Whoredom For Israel

http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m58692&hd=&size=1&l=e

Official: US will not support action on Goldstone report at United Nations Security Council

Washington will not support any potential action by the UN Security Council on the Goldstone report on war crimes in Gaza, Former US Permanent Representative to the United Nations Alejandro Wolff has declared.

Wolff said the US believes that the appropriate platform to discuss the report is the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

The announcement came after a closed-door meeting Wednesday, where the UN Security Council decided to push up their next meeting from 20 to 14 October so a discussion on the Goldstone report can be held, UN officials said.