Thursday, January 29, 2009

Did Obama Refuse A Taliban Peace Offer?

Christoph R Horstel is a German expert on Afghanistan and has made some explosive charges against the outgoing Bush and incoming Obama administrations. Herr Horstel has worked for the German government and for the German television network ARD. He is an expert on terrorism and has advised ISAF forces in Afghanistan. He has a masters degree from Basel University in Switzerland and has taught at the Hamburg University Peace Research Institute. He was the last war correspondent remaining in Kabul when Bush's coalition forces took the capitol from the Taliban. I probably am doing an injustice to his resume as I do not speak German and am relying on a Google machine translation.

As best as I can understand from the poor quality translation I have from Google, Mr Obama was approached while he was still President-elect with a peace offer from the Taliban. Apparently, this peace offer from the Taliban had some backing from Hamid Karzai, the current President of Afghanistan. The peace plan was rejected. And we do not even have any prospect for peace talks.

Herr Horstel has also charged that NATO is leasing opium fields to Afghan warlords in exchange for their support. It does not appear to me that this plan is working very well as the Taliban controls most of the territory outside Kabul and NATO ISAF military bases. To his credit Karzai is trying to get control of the NATO troops at ISAF (International Security Assistance Force). What Mr Karzai wants to do is to stop all the high altitude bombing that is killing so many Afghan civilians. The US has bombed multiple wedding parties in less than a week's time.

Christoph Horstel also said that NATO's presence in Afghanistan is intended to destabilize the region and is not intended to bring peace. I would like to point out the role played by Zbignew Brzezinski in the Carter and Obama administrations. He was the National Security advisor to President Carter and in 1979 wrote a note to Jimmy Carter saying that a 25 million dollar appropriation for the Mujahideen would force the Soviets to invade Afghanistan which they did just prior to Christmas of that same year.

Because millions of Afghanis have died in perpetual war since 1979 that decision alone should disqualify Mr Brzezinski from any government office or from even talking to a presidential candidate.

Before we can proceed further we need to get a better translation so if you or someone you know speaks German please take a look at the two Part interview in the original language here:

http://alles-schallundrauch.blogspot.com/2009/01/interview-mit-christoph-r-hrstel.html

and part two here:

http://alles-schallundrauch.blogspot.com/2009/01/interview-mit-christoph-r-hrstel-teil-2.html

The name of that blog translates as All is Sound and Smoke.

After we get a more reliable translation, the next step would be to share it with as many people as possible and then to make a list of radio and cable programs that might be willing to interview Mr Horstel over American air waves so he can reach a larger audience.

As soon as soemone sends me a better translation, I will post it here.

We need to get peace talks going with the Taliban so we can remove our troops from both Iraq and Afghanistan. That would be a first step towards peace in the Mideast and might even help stop World War III before it starts.

The national radio programs I am thinking of contacting are Democracy Now with Amy Goodman and Alex Jones of Prison Planet. Locally both Flashpoints and Guns and Butter at KPFA might be receptive to breaking the biggest story to date of 2009.

You most likely have your own network of contacts so feel free to forward this information to them in your own words and in your own style in order to get an interview with Christoph Horstel in front of an American audience.

Labels:

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Stay Tuned

Let me first say that I personally feel safer after Obama's inauguration than before. My long time readers know that the FBI has been to my house. When a friend of mine was deported back to Africa, he was allowed one phone call to work. He told them that he was being deported by the Department of Homeland Security and they questioned him about me. I do realize that this feeling of increased safety might be extremely temporary and even illusionary.

I should also say I understand why many people from minority groups gave told me that they are going to take over this country. It remains to be seen if there will be an America to take over and if it does not devolve into the dictatorship Wall Street would prefer.

I have written an essay about the incoming Obama administration but have decided not to publish it until after he has a few days to reveal himself to us. I formed my conclusions about Obama when he selected Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff and nominated Timothy Geithner, the President of the New York Federal Reserve bank, to be Treasury Secretary. I do not care that he cheated on his taxes. At this point in history, I would love to get someone out of federal prison for income tax evasion to serve as Treasury Secretary.

As I have said many times before, billions of dollars are stolen each week from unaudited federal spending and the NY FED is the official depository of the US government which means the billions of dollars went through Mr Geithner's bank every week before it went missing.

I have instead decided to write the following to give us an early warning test of what to expect from the 44th President of the United States. These are all things he could do by executive action.

He could instruct the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to ban all Credit Default Swaps (CDS). Currently, we taxpayers are exposed to tens of trillions of dollars in possible losses. These swaps are a cross between insurance and derivatives. You make payments to continue coverage so if we ban all payments they will expire thus ending our exposure to this egregious risk.

The Bailout of AIG due to swaps cost us 150 billion dollars so far. Try and wrap your mind around the real meaning of an 8.5 trillion dollar Bailout. Only 100,000,000 Americans have full time jobs that pay much more than the minimum wage. If all 100,000,000 of them took one hundred dollars a week and sent it to New York, it would take us one hundred weeks to pay off a trillion dollar Wall Street binge. It would take 850 weeks to pay off the proposed Bailout if Wall Street did not demand we pay them interest to rescue them. If the dollar crashes as expected and interest rates go to 15% we would never ever finish paying off the Bailout.

There are other early warning signs we can look for in the new administration. Will they close Guantanamo? That is just one high profile prison. But what about the secret prisons? Will they be closed? Will the prisoners be released or will they be executed without trial? What about the men we sent to Egypt and other such countries to be tortured. Will these men be freed? Will we pay their medical bills? Will we pay for the rehabilitation and therapy for the men we tortured? Will we pay for the support of those men who were so badly tortured they can no longer work? I don't think so but, as I said, we need to put the ending of torture on that wish list alongside the restoration of our civil rights.

The incoming administration could announce the end of the the National Security Administration (NSA) wiretapping program. This NSA program currently enlists AT&T and Verizon as partners who both sub-contract the actual wiretapping out to two separate Israeli companies. This means Israel has a tape recording of every telephone conversation we made in America. He could say that this program is beyond the limits imposed on government intrusion by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and is terminated forthwith.

The new President could eliminate the Slow Fly list at the airports and drastically reduce the numbers on the No Fly List without harming national security. It would be a sign that we were returning to the respect of the individual above the government. Previously I wrote about Naomi Wolf and the Slow Fly List. Let's keep an eye on her travels.

Another sign would be a call for an international conference to eliminate the laundering of drug money. The top 300 banks launder 500 billion dollars a year in political bribes, a trillion dollars in drugs and up to 400 billion dollars a year in illegal weapons. How many American families, neighborhoods and towns must be destroyed by drugs and drug related crime before we say “No” to Wall Street's money laundering that made it all possible?

I think that at the present moment of history all of the above is too much to ask for. We will have to wait for what I have called the rebellion of the Spirit against the the Powers That Be for everything except the revision of the No and Sloe Fly lists and the abolition of Credit Default Swaps. As I have said before, the plans Wall Street have made for our future are so odious that the human spirit will rebel against these maniacal plans. I make no predictions as to what will be after that rebellion takes place but as I said before Wall Street's deepest and darkest desires will never become our reality.

For now we can settle on the ban of Credit Default Swaps as the litmus test for Change. We can wait until the Rebellion of the Spirit succeeds for the rest. For now I just want President Obama to outlaw Credit Default Swaps so we can reduce the transfer of wealth from those of us who work for a living to the parasites of Wall Street thus putting a limit to the starvation Americans will have to endure until this nation rises up and says “No” to the bankers.

If Credit Default Swaps are not banned immediately, then we will know that Wall Street is still in control in the new administration. And they will soon fulfill their plan to drown Americans in trillions of dollars in debt transferring all wealth to them. We will soon know if we can expect Change or just more hot air.

We cannot eat hot air.

References:

This is a ten minute video on the NSA spying program:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hI_k9Xt00YE

This is my standard reference on Wall Street's theft of billions of dollars each week from unaudited federal government spending:

http://solari.com/archive/missing_money

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

David Smick: Right But Missed The Point

David Smick, the author of The World Is Curved, was interviewed by George Noory Monday night on the nationwide Coast To Coast Am radio show. What he said stunned his interviewer and the audience. But the man did not understand the meaning of our present financial crisis.

The author said the sub-prime mortgage at 1.5 trillion dollars is probably the smallest bubble we are facing. He mentioned eight bubbles from emerging markets to Credit Default Swaps. The total figure is 200 trillion dollars. The total world Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is only 50 trillion dollars.

Before proceeding I would like to point out that Mr Smick missed the ninth bubble which just happens to be the one most likely to burst in 2009. Smick told Mr Noory how difficult it is for an investor to buy US Treasuries. The 90 day T-bill is paying a near zero interest rate. The ten year Treasury bond is mow 2.4%. But PIMCO, the world's top bond fund, has warned investors to get out of bonds. If interest rates go up, the value of existing bonds will plummet because bond values vary inversely with interest rates. A massive sell off in long term Treasury bonds would cause the dollar to collapse and force the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates even further to persuade foreigners to finance our deficits and Bailouts. And higher interest rates would crash our economy making taxing collections go down and our deficits go up.

George asked Mr Smick how we just happened to develop eight bubbles totaling 200 trillion dollars in risk. This is where David Smick missed the point. He said the bank regulators fell asleep. I say the same thing Catherine Austin Fitts said about Bernard Madoff and his 50 billion dollar swindle. He stole 50 billion dollars and is still living at home in his Manhattan penthouse. Ms. Fitts said Madoff could not have done what he did without his banks, brokers, the IRS and the federal regulators knowing what he was doing. They do not care about us.

This same observed behavior we saw in the Madoff scandal can explain that 200 trillion dollar bubble which was seen by bank regulators in several nations, by the SEC, the CFTC, the IRS, the media and professional traders. The obvious answer is that they wanted to create a 200 trillion dollar bubble so that when it collapses all real wealth is transferred from the people who work for a living to Wall Street.

There are 435 men and women in the House and 100 in the Senate. Which one of the 535 has condemned Credit Default Swaps even after having voted to bail out AIG for 150 billion dollars?

We just had a Presidential campaign and both men voted for a 750 billion dollar Bailout and neither candidate bothered to ask that Credit Default Swaps be regulated as derivatives and insurance are.

Nor am I aware of any journalist who has asked even one politician when they plan to regulate Credit Default Swaps which have exposed the taxpayers to tens of trillions of dollars in potential losses.

I have spoken before of what I call The Glorious Day. That is the day when all assets and all real wealth belong to the bankers and we who toil for a living are left out in the cold without a vote.

There is no other reason for the bank regulators, the auditors, the IRS, the SEC and the CFTC to have allowed a 200 trillion dollar bubble than to fulfill the dream that all wealth would one day belong to Wall Street.

As I have said in previous essays, the human spirit will rebel as we near the day Wall Street has been dreaming of for the past hundred years. It is beyond my abilities to predict what will be after the coming rebellion of the spirit. I am merely outlining Wall Street's methods and motives so the world will be prepared for their adversaries next couple of moves.





References:

To read an excerpt from David Smick's book please go to his website here:

http://www.theworldiscurved.com/TWIC_Excerpts.html

To read about the perils of the bond market collapsing please go here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/4218210/The-bond-bubble-has-long-since-burst-investors-ignore-this-at-you-peril.html

Or to Bloomberg's article here:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aLpnpOvxekBY&refer=home

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Thursday, January 08, 2009

Predictions 2009

I have decided to give you my predictions for 2009. I have put the most likely events at the top and the least likely at the bottom.

1) World War III will not start this year though some might date its actual beginning from 9-11-2001.

2) There will be no 911 terror attack on US soil in 2009. As I have said before, these attacks were organized by a Hebrew speaking Mideast nation that thinks it owns the government of the United States. The 911 Truth Movement is so widespread that nobody would believe the proposed car bomb attacks against Americans at popular tourist attractions would be anything other than a Mossad ploy to start another war.

3) There will be no Last Hurrah for Wall Street. Matthias Chang did an in depth study of the Bailout money available and determined there is enough money to run one final pump and dump. I have no doubt that Wall Street would like to fleece us just one more time but market forces would overwhelm them. Instead they have been intervening to keep the dollar and the stock market from crashing.

4) The first two months of 2009 will be the best time for the markets. After that we will see stagflation and then inflation as the dollar crashes. Market forces will begin to overwhelm our Bailout team within 90 days of Inauguration Day.

5) The current United States debt ceiling is 11.3 trillion dollars. It will reach 15 trillion before the end of 2009. This will make our debt equal to our GDP at 15 trillion dollars. The CIA Factbook lists the debt to GDP (Gross Domestic Product) ratio for all the nations of the world using 2007 figures. If we used 2009 year end figures, the US would move from 27th to at least 8th. If we raised the debt ceiling to 17 trillion which is a distinct possibility for 2009, then we would surpass Egypt and Sudan for 5th place. At the current rate of growth in debt we would surpass Zimbabwe and be the number one country in debt to GDP ratio by 12-31- 2011.

6) We are likely to see another war against Lebanon. This will be Israel's sign to the world that they have rejected the Mideast peace process.

7) Gold will reach at least $1,300 an ounce in 2009. Gold Backwardation will change the gold market. Catherine Austin Fitts has said several times in interviews that part of the Bailout money has been used to cover Wall Street's losses from shorting gold, Wall Street stole gold from Fort Know to sell it to drive down the price of gold and to make themselves rich. Then they began shorting gold in the futures market to drive down the price of gold. Gold Backwardation means that the futures price of gold is less than the price of the physical metal itself.

8) Gasoline will reach $4.00 a gallon in California or $3.39 in other parts of the United Sates out of the reach of our state legislature. The world's GDP is contracting and the demand for imported oil which drives the price up is also decreasing. Oil will not be cut off by a war in the Persian Gulf. It will be the drop in the value of the dollar that will drive up the price of all imported commodities.

9) Prices will double by the end of the end of 2009. Inflation will rip through the United States when foreigners dump the dollar. In the Wiemar Republic in 1923 the Velocity of the money unleashed hyperinflation. If the money supply is one billion dollars in country X and the GDP is two billion dollars, then the money turns over twice in a year. This turn over in the money supply is called Velocity. Currently, the American Velocity has dipped below 1.00 which is a sign that the economy is contracting. When foreigners dump dollars and refuse to buy our debts, the price of imported commodities, such as, oil will increase. As prices increase, people holding cash will be losing money. This will force them to get rid of their dollars. This will increase the turn over (Velocity) of the money supply. There is an old formula M x V = P x T where M is Money, V is Velocity , P is Prices and T is transactions. If V goes from 1.00 to 2.00 in the above formula, then prices will double if the number of transactions remains constant. If V or Velocity goes to 3 and then 4, then prices will triple and quadruple. With today;s instantaneous communications it would take only 90 days or less for inflation to destroy our pensions, savings and the purchasing power of our paychecks.

10) Wages in after tax real dollars on 12-31-2009 will be half what they were just five years ago. I made this prediction years ago. I named the actual time frame of 2004 to 2009 prior to 2005. I am 100% certain that the dollar will crash and our wages will be permanently cut in half. The only question is whether or not the dollar will crash before the end of 2009 or early in 2010. If I am wrong, it will only be on the timing of the dollar's demise. A professional economist once said, “never give a number and a date.”

All of the above predictions involving price increases should be based on the honest statistics from John Williams at Shadow Stats (www.ShadowStats.com .) Mr Williams has proven that the official Consumer Price Index (CPI) is a lie told from one administration to the next.

In my last essay I wrote about some of the realities of 2009. The following can be projected from current events and do not meet my qualifications for predictions. These are the realities of 2009 we must deal with.

I must repeat my warning that I am not an investment advisor and am not giving investment advice.

The Realities of 2009

1) Unemployment will increase in 2009 even requiring federal assistance for state
unemployment compensation funds. I have seen predictions of 25 to 40% unemployment.I doubt that the unemployment rate will more than double in 2009 due to the high number of government workers as compared to 1929.

2) Commercial real estate will tank. Retail sales are dropping. Gerald Celente cites the 35% drop in luxury sales. A local store closed its doors despite a a $3,000 a month cut in rent. As major stores close in shopping malls, the remaining stores will see their foot traffic and sales plummet.

3) In March corporations and non-profits will have to make an accounting of their pension funds. A Reuters study said they are 409 billion dollars short. That is almost 100 billion dollars more than the projected 2009 corporate income tax payments. Also in March quarterly income taxes are due with individual taxes due on April 15th. I do not see the stock market doing well after this time period.

4)Home prices will continue to decline in 2009. Sub-prime mortgages will not be the only ones to default. As I said in my last essay, banks are not allowed to lend to homeowners until the assessed value of their homes is greater than the amount they owe. As I said, Wall Street's solution is to inflate general prices and allow home prices to catch up with mortgages.


5) Foreign countries will cut back on the purchase of Treasuries. China has a 600 billion dollar stimulus package of its own which it can finance from exports and from the sale of Treasuries and other assets. India, Japan and several other nations have similar reasons to stop buying our debts. This will increase pressure on interest rates. Higher interest rates will doom the US economy.


6) Small banks will close by the hundreds. They will be swallowed up by the big banks. There will be no closure of all banks. The plan all along was to centralize control in as few banks as possible.

7) Convertible Default Swaps (CDS) will become a major scandal requiring Congressional investigation. AIG has been bailed out three times for a total of 150 billion dollars of taxpayer money and the Congress has failed to require the federal government to regulate CDS like any other derivatives (i.e. Bets on the future value of bonds, curencies and commodities.) The Congress will fail to act before the taxpayers have been fleeced.

8) State governments and most of the 3,000 county governments will be short tens of billions of dollars in revenues. The state of California is already short tens of billions of dollars. Several Democratic state governors have asked us taxpayers to give the states a two year one trillion dollar Bailout.

9) Food prices will continue to rise even before the dollar crash raises all prices. Small farmers are not getting the credit they need to produce our food. And besides we have been in Global Cooling for the past two years due to a decline in solar activity as evidenced by the reduction in sun spots and should expect shorter growing seasons. Gerald Celente has predicted food riots in America. Soldiers will be used to put down riots but I doubt we will have nationwide martial law in 2009 even though the Powers That Be would love to do away with democracy. There are more of us than them so they are limited in what they can do to us.

10) The Congress will retain its status as Israeli occupied territory.




References


To read Matthias Chang's article on Wall Street's possible Final Pump and Dump please go here:

www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11376

To read why foreigners have every reason to resent the dollar and hence why they WILL DUMP THE DOLLAR please Matthias Chang's article on American Toilet Paper here:

www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11423

To hear Gerald Celente tell you that the next depression will be worse than 1929 please go here:

http://www.trendsresearch.com/

This is the article entitled Ten Major Threats Facing the Dollar in 2009. It is detailed as it is alarming To read the most disturbing analysis of the dollar please go here:

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article8031.html

To read F William Engdahl on why he thinks the Federal Reserve is setting us up for a Wiemar style hyperinflation please go here:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11401

To read about Karl Denninger's take on the ominous development that Velocity has dropped below 1.00 please go here:

http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/703-Uh-Oh.....-Monetary-Flat-Spin.html

To read about Gold Backwardation, the most significant development in the gold market, please go here:

http://www.safehaven.com/article-12012.htm

To read about that demand by the governors for a trillion dollar Bailout please go here:

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE5014F120090102