The Alex Jones Channel
In a few days it will be the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001.
How well has the US government’s official account of the event held up over the decade?
Archive for August, 2011
Video: PCR On 9/11 Anniversary – Have We Learned Anything?
Friday, August 26th, 2011Libya: NATO Humiliation Increasing per Airstrike
Friday, August 26th, 2011
Tony Cartalucci
You don’t bomb a “captured” city.
Each NATO warplane that passes over Libya’s coast and releases its ordnance upon the city of Tripoli is a glaring reminder that not only have the NATO-backed rebels failed to take the city, but the fighting there is beyond their ability to face without constant air support. As each bomb tears through Tripoli’s already NATO-battered infrastructure – most recently destroying a fire station in the Abu Salim district – the world is given daily affirmations of just how duplicitous and premature NATO’s desperate claims of “victory” were, made now nearly a week ago. To add injury to insult, UK’s Foreign Secretary William Hague was imploring South Africa to release funding to NATO’s proxies in Benghazi and suggested that failing to do so would be “risking a humanitarian disaster.” Hague has not yet explained how the persistent aerial bombardment of a heavily populated city isn’t already causing a verified humanitarian disaster.
Photo: The rebels, led on ground by NATO special forces and protected by NATO planes in the air have still failed to take Tripoli after a week of fighting. Attempts to seize other cities still under Libyan government control are also significant tactical failures. The media, unable to point to a victorious rebel government seated in Tripoli is now attempting to sell the “chaos” angle – that combat is degenerating into genocide, in hopes the world will beg for a stabilization force. The only problem is that “genocidal” rebels are led, armed, trained, and organized by NATO officers on the ground.
….
There are now reports that NATO’s Al Qaeda brigades have been stalled before entering the coastal cities of Sirte and Bin Jawad, both lying between Benghazi and Misrata. In fact, by reading between the rhetoric, we see that the rebels have not only failed to achieve anything beyond the most symbolic of victories amidst immense chaos sown throughout Tripoli, they are in fact in a more tenuous position than ever before, with their forces stretched in multiple locations facing an entrenched Libyan army on multiple fronts.
By claiming victory while conducting daily air strikes upon a “captured city,” for those that are able to put the pieces together, NATO exposes a tenuous grip on a bungled drawn out campaign. Of course there is no possible way NATO believed Libya could be taken over within days, not weeks, and must be acutely aware that even if Tripoli fell tomorrow – which it most likely won’t – there will still be entire cities under Libyan government control along with Libya’s vast southern interior. Occupation was NATO’s true endgame from the beginning, waiting only for the proper pretext to begin landing troops on the ground. Getting that pretext has proven to be difficult.
Occupation cannot begin until either Benghazi’s terrorist leaders are able to squat in Tripoli long enough to call in NATO forces for assistance, or if NATO can create enough chaos, murder, and mayhem to get the “international community” to beg for a “stabilization force.” However it appears that the rebel forces are incapable of producing either result without NATO’s constant bombardments from overhead, betraying media reports that “Tripoli has fallen” or that NATO has achieved any sort of victory.
AP reported what they claim were rebels binding and executing activists who erected a tent near Bab al-Aziziya compound as a sign of solidarity with Qaddafi. Such a report, if true, would certainly seem like the beginnings of the genocide geopolitical analysts like Dr. Webster Tarpley had predicted if Benghazi terrorists ever reached Tripoli. NATO perhaps hopes this will be the catalyst it needs to sway Western political camps resistant to the idea of a “stabilization force.” There is one complication however.
France, the US, UK, and Qatar have all admitted they have special forces on the groundleading, assisting, arming, and training the rebels. Any chaos or atrocities attributed to these rebels would then directly implicate NATO’s own forces leading them. NATO’s premature victory celebration has turned into humiliation mired by ineffectual rebels on the ground, exposed lies, and a public now aware that Western special forces are in fact leading the unpredictable, brutal rebels.
It is up to the alternative media to expose these facts ad infinitum so that NATO is unable to sell their lies about achieving victory or portraying the rebels as “murderous loose cannons” requiring NATO’s intervention. Of course there is the concerted attempt to repackage February’s verified lies regarding Qaddafi’s alleged atrocities against civilians, coupled with the classical feigned fears of “WMDs,” and use this as a pretext to land troops. These lies too must be vigorously exposed, forcing NATO to either continue its tactical stalemate until its September deadline or forcing it to continue destroying its reputation and exposing its true criminal agenda before the world as it ham-handedly stumbles through the finish line.
While NATO and its corporate sponsors believe a victory in Libya will pave the way for operations in Syria and beyond, the globalists and their propaganda machine have never taken a beating as badly as they have in Libya, a nation of only six million people. Activism, informing others, and boycotting the Fortune 500 corporations lurking behind these wars does indeed make a difference and are things we can all do even just 10 minutes a day.
34 Pieces Of Evidence That Prove That The Middle Class In America Is Rapidly Shrinking
Friday, August 26th, 2011
A confluence of very troubling long-term economic trends has created an environment in which the middle class in America is being absolutely shredded. Today, most American families would be absolutely thrilled if they could live as well as past generations did. The dream of receiving a solid education, getting a good job, owning a beautiful home and enjoying the good things that America has to offer is increasingly becoming out of reach for a growing number of Americans. The reality is that even though our population has grown, there are less jobs than there used to be. A much higher percentage of the jobs that remain are low income jobs. Millions of middle class American families are desperately trying to hang on as inflation far outpaces the growth of their paychecks. Millions of others have fallen completely out of the middle class and are now totally dependent on the government for survival. We once had the largest, most vibrant middle class in the history of the world, but now way too much unemployment, way too much inflation, way too much greed and way too much debt are all starting to catch up with us. America is changing, and not for the better.
When most of us were growing up, we understood that there was an unspoken promise that if we got good grades, stayed out of trouble, worked really hard and did everything we were told to do, the system would reward us.
Well, today there are millions of Americans that have done all of those things but don’t have anything to show for it.
As large numbers of hard working people continue to fall out of the middle class, there is a growing sense that “the system” has betrayed us all.
Sadly, the truth is that the U.S. economy is dying. The endless prosperity that we all enjoyed in the past is gone and it is never going to come back.
The following are 34 pieces of evidence that prove that the middle class in America is rapidly shrinking….
#1 In 1980, 52 percent of all jobs in the United States were middle income jobs. Today, only 42 percent of all jobs are middle income jobs.
#2 Back in 1980, less than 30% of all jobs in the United States were low income jobs. Today, more than 40% of all jobs in the United States are low income jobs.
#3 Only 63.5 percent of all men in the United States had a job last month. According to Bloomberg, that figure is “just slightly above the December 2009 nadir of 63.3%. These are the lowest numbers since 1948.”
#4 In 1969, 95 percent of all men between the ages of 25 and 54 had a job. Last month, only 81.2 percent of men in that age group had a job.
#5 According to one recent survey, 64 percent of Americans would be forced to borrow money if they had an unexpected expense of $1000.
#6 The wealthiest 1% of all Americans now control 40 percent of all the wealth in this country.
#7 The poorest 50% of all Americans now control just 2.5% of all the wealth in this country.
#8 The wealthiest 1% of all Americans now own over 50% of all the stocks and bonds.
#9 According to the Washington Post, the average yearly income of the bottom 90 percent of all U.S. income earners is just $31,244.
#10 The average yearly income of the top 0.1% of all U.S. income earners is 5.6 million dollars.
#11 Between 1969 and 2009, the median wages earned by American men between the ages of 30 and 50 dropped by 27 percent after you account for inflation.
#12 Only the top 5 percent of all U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
#13 During this economic downturn, employee compensation in the United States has been the lowest that it has been relative to gross domestic productin over 50 years.
#14 According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, health care costs accounted for just 9.5% of all personal consumption back in 1980. Today they account for approximately 16.3%.
#15 Total credit card debt in the United States is now more than 8 times larger than it was just 30 years ago.
#16 There are fewer payroll jobs in the United States today than there were back in 2000 even though we have added 30 million people to the population since then.
#17 Since the year 2000, we have lost approximately 10% of our middle class jobs. In the year 2000 there were about 72 million middle class jobs in the United States but today there are only about 65 million middle class jobs.
#18 The competition for even the most basic jobs has become absolutely brutal. Approximately 7 percent of all those that apply to get into Harvard are accepted. At a recent “National Hiring Day” held by McDonald’s only about 6.2 percent of the one million Americans that applied for a job were hired.
#19 It now takes the average unemployed worker in America about 40 weeksto find a new job.
#20 According to a report released in February from the National Employment Law Project, higher wage industries are accounting for 40 percent of the job losses in America but only 14 percent of the job growth. Lower wage industries are accounting for just 23 percent of the job losses but 49 percent of the job growth.
#21 Half of all American workers now earn $505 or less per week.
#22 The cost of college tuition in the United States has gone up by over 900 percent since 1978.
#23 In the United States today, there are more than 100,000 janitors andmore than 317,000 waiters and waitresses that have college degrees.
#24 17 million college graduates are doing jobs that do not even require a college degree.
#25 According to one recent survey, 36 percent of Americans say that they don’t contribute anything at all to retirement savings.
#26 Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today, one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid.
#27 As 2007 began, there were 26 million Americans on food stamps. Today, there are more than 45 million Americans on food stamps, which is a new all-time record.
#28 The number of Americans on food stamps has increased 74% since 2007.
#29 Today, one out of every four American children is on food stamps.
#30 In 1980, just 11.7% of all personal income came from government transfer payments. Today, 18.4% of all personal income comes from government transfer payments.
#31 The number of Americans that are going to food pantries and soup kitchens has increased by 46% since 2006.
#32 One out of every six elderly Americans now lives below the federal poverty line.
#33 In the United States, over 20 percent of all children are now living in poverty. In the UK and in France that figure is well under 10 percent.
#34 According to the Federal Reserve, the richest one percent of all Americans have a greater net worth than the bottom 90 percent combined.
As the middle class continues to shrivel up and die, the number of desperate people is going to continue to grow.
In the past, I have written extensively about how many Americans are already becoming so desperate that they will do just about anything for money.
Well, here are a couple more examples….
One unemployed man down in the Phoenix area that had reportedly robbed 12 banks told police the following about why he did it….
“I rob to survive.”
As millions more Americans fall into poverty, we are going to see a lot more crime.
Most of these people are not going to commit crimes because they enjoy them. Rather, they will be doing what they feel they need to do in order to survive.
Not all of the shady activity will be so violent. Desperation comes out in different ways. For example, there are now actually websites where women advertise their “services” to potential “sugar daddies” that will help them with college expenses or support them financially.
Hopefully those reading this article will never resort to those kinds of things.
Yes, things are going to be tough, but there are always good alternatives if you are willing to look hard enough for them.
If you really need a job right now, pay close attention to the next couple of points. Good jobs are very hard to come by in most areas at the moment, so you may have to be willing to make some sacrifices if you are desperate.
According to Bloomberg, there is a substantial shortage of truck drivers across the nation right now.
Driving a truck is really hard work, and it would take you away from home for extended periods of time, but the pay is pretty good.
If you are desperate for a job, this is something that you may want to look into. There really is a shortage of truck drivers, and a paycheck is a paycheck.
Also, there are reportedly lots of jobs up in North Dakota right now. Thanks to the oil boom up there, money is flowing and job opportunities are plentiful.
Just check out the following excerpt from a recent CNBC article about the employment boom going on in North Dakota right now….
Unemployment is a national problem in the U.S., but you wouldn’t know that if you travel through North Dakota.
The state’s unemployment rate hovers around 3 percent, and “Help Wanted” signs litter the landscape of cities such as Williston in the same way “For Sale” signs populate the streets of Las Vegas.
“It’s a zoo,” said Terry Ayers, who drove into town from Spokane, Wash., slept in his truck, and found a job within hours of arrival, tripling his salary. “It’s crazy what’s going on out here.”
Yes, it is really, really cold up in North Dakota. There is very little housing available in the boom areas and for most of you it would require some significant sacrifices to take a job up there.
But there really are lots of jobs available up in North Dakota. If you are desperate, you may want to really consider looking into it.
Now for the bad news. Unfortunately, it is looking increasingly likely that we could have another major financial crisis some time fairly soon.
As I wrote about yesterday, Europe is a financial nightmare right now. I honestly do not see any way that they are going to be able to fix things.
Fear is seemingly everywhere in Europe right now. A recent article in The Telegraph entitled “Market crash ‘could hit within weeks’, warn bankers” postulated that we could be on the verge of a horrifying repeat of the financial crisis of 2008….
“The problem is a shortage of liquidity – that is what is causing the problems with the banks. It feels exactly as it felt in 2008,” said one senior London-based bank executive.
“I think we are heading for a market shock in September or October that will match anything we have ever seen before,” said a senior credit banker at a major European bank.
So you might want to try to get whatever kind of a job that you can right now before the next wave of the financial crisis hits.
Dark clouds are gathering on the horizon and things do not look promising. The coming economic storms are going to be very hard on the middle class in America.
The number of good jobs is going to continue to decline and our paychecks are going to get stretched tighter and tighter.
The “system” is not going to save you.
The “system” is failing.
You better get ready.
Kate Delaney Picks Up More Affiliates For America Tonight, Releases New Book
Thursday, August 25th, 2011
Kate Delaney’s nationally-syndicated “America Tonight” has picked up some new affiliates. Including Cumulus Talk WICC-A/Bridgeport, CT; Universal Broadcasting Talk WVNJ-A/Oakland, NJ (north and west suburban New York); and Jodesha Broadcasting Talk KBKW-A-K234AU-F/Aberdeen, WA.
The new affiliates are aboard in time for as Delaney launched her new book on August 18th.
“Level The Playing Field: Balls, Brats and Other B.S.” is based on her nightly “Sports Shorts” segments of little-known sports facts. Delaney had a book signing at Top Golf in Dallas at a party featuring “world’s fastest reader” Howard Berg reading and reviewing the book in ten minutes.
Kate Delaney is the talk radio host of America Tonight on the GCN Radio Network. The program airs live Sunday – Friday from 11:00 p.m. – 3:00 a.m. CST. Or listen On Demand anytime. Kate is one of only two women to ever host a sports radio talk show in a Top 10 market – WFAN, New York and KRLD, Dallas.
3, 2, 1: Global Debt Meltdown
Thursday, August 25th, 2011
The Economic Collapse
We are steamrolling toward a massive global debt meltdown, and at this point world leaders seem to be all out of solutions.
Over the last 30 years or so, the greatest debt bubble in the history of the planet has produced unprecedented prosperity in the western world. But now that debt bubble is starting to burst and the bills are coming due. Many believe that “ground zero” for the coming global debt meltdown will be in Europe. Unlike the U.S. and Japan, the nations of the EU can’t just print more money to cover their debts. Nations such as Greece, Portugal and Italy must repay their debts in euros, and those nations are rapidly getting to the point where their debts are going to overwhelm them. Unfortunately, major banks all over Europe are very highly leveraged and are also very heavily invested in the sovereign debt of nations such as Greece, Portugal and Italy. If even one EU nation defaults it will start tipping over financial dominoes. If more than one EU nation defaults it could cause a cataclysmic wave of bank failures all over Europe.
But Germany and the other more financially stable countries of the EU cannot bail out nations like Greece, Portugal and Italy indefinitely. Pouring money into Greece is like pouring money into a black hole. When you take money from financially stable countries and pour it into hopeless messes, you may stabilize things for a little while, but you also cause the financial condition of the financially stable nations to start deteriorating.
Right now, the yield on 2 year Greek bonds is up to 44%. Basically, the market is screaming that these are horrible investments and that they will almost certainly default.
Greece cannot fire up the printing presses and print more money, so they are now totally dependent on others to bail them out.
Just how desperate have things become in Greece? Just consider the following excerpt from a recent article by Puru Saxena….
In Greece, government debt now represents almost 160% of GDP and the average yield on Greek debt is around 15%. Thus, if Greece’s debt is rolled over without restructuring, its interest costs alone will amount to approximately 24% of GDP. In other words, if debt pardoning does not occur, nearly a quarter of Greece’s economic output will be gobbled up by interest repayments!
Can you imagine?
No nation on earth can afford to pay out nearly a quarter of GDP just on interest on government debt.
So just how did Greece get into this position? Well, it turns out that big U.S. banks such as Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase played a big role. The following is an excerpt from a recent article by Andrew Gavin Marshall….
In the same way that homeowners take out a second mortgage to pay off their credit card debt, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase and other U.S. banks helped push government debt far into the future through the derivatives market. This was done in Greece, Italy, and likely several other euro-zone countries as well. In several dozen deals in Europe, “banks provided cash upfront in return for government payments in the future, with those liabilities then left off the books.” Because the deals are not listed as loans, they are not listed as debt (liabilities), and so the true debt of Greece and other euro-zone countries was and likely to a large degree remains hidden. Greece effectively mortgaged its airports and highways to the major banks in order to get cash up-front and keep the loans off the books, classifying them as transactions.
All over the world, politicians love to “kick the can down the road”, and big Wall Street banks love to find creative ways to help them do that.
But now Greece is about to collapse, and the people that helped them get into this mess will probably never be held accountable.
If Greece does default, it is going to have dramatic consequences all over Europe. For a chilling look at what could potentially happen when Greece defaults, just check out this article by John Mauldin.
Sadly, Greece is far from the only problem in Europe. Portugal, Ireland and Italy also have debt to GDP ratios that are above 100%.
The biggest potential problem, at least in the near-term, is Italy.
Italy is the fourth largest economy in the EU, and lately the financial problems of the Italian government and Italian banks have been making headlines all over the globe.
Italy is a far, far larger potential problem than Greece is.
The EU can handle bailing out Greece, at least for now.
If Italy gets to the point where it needs large bailouts, that is going to bring down the whole system. The EU simply does not have enough money to perform an extensive financial rescue of Italy.
As you can see from this chart, the exposure that European banks have to Italian debt is absolutely massive. If Italian debt goes bad, it is going to take down a whole bunch of banks.
Not only that, but many believe that the European Central Bank itself is now in some very dangerous territory.
It is estimated that the European Central Bank is now holding somewhere in the neighborhood of 444 billion euros worth of debt from the governments of Greece, Italy, Portugal, Ireland and Spain.
The financial consequences of a default by one or more of those nations could potentially be catastrophic.
According to London-based think tank Open Europe, the European Central Bankis massively overleveraged….
“Should the ECB see its assets fall by just 4.23pc in value . . . its entire capital base would be wiped out.”
That doesn’t sound good.
Surely the European Central Bank would be recapitalized somehow, but this is just another example that shows just how dangerous huge amounts of leverage can be.
As I wrote about in a recent article about the sovereign debt crisis, if the dominoes begin to tumble in Europe it is going to take everybody down.
The big banks in Europe are leveraged to the hilt, and they are massively exposed to government debt.
If you don’t think that this is a problem, just remember what happened back in 2008.
Back then, Lehman Brothers was leveraged 31 to 1. When things turned bad, Lehman was wiped out very rapidly.
Today, major German banks are leveraged 32 to 1, and those banks are currently holding a massive amount of European sovereign debt.
Yes, things could become really nightmarish if the dominoes start to fall.
Already we are seeing huge signs of trouble at major banks all over Europe.
Major European banks UBS, Barclays, Credit Suisse, RBS, and HSBC have all announced layoffs recently. In fact, when you add them all up, the total number of layoffs announced by these banks just this month is over 40,000. Overall, the grand total of layoffs by European banks so far this year is now up to67,000.
The mood in the financial sector over in Europe is very dark right now. Just consider the following excerpt from a recent Bloomberg article….
“It’s a bloodbath, and I expect things to get worse before they get better,” said Jonathan Evans, chairman of executive- search firm Sammons Associates in London. “I cannot see a lot of those who have lost their jobs getting re-employed. Regardless of how good someone is, no one wants to talk about hiring. Life will be very difficult for two or three years.”
Just like back in 2008 with U.S. banks, we are seeing European banks getting absolutely pummeled right now. A recent article in The Sydney Morning Herald documented some of the carnage….
The 46-member Bloomberg Europe Banks and Financial Services Index has fallen 31 per cent this year. RBS tumbled 49 per cent, Barclays 44 per cent and France’s Societe Generale 48 per cent.
Credit Suisse and UBS both reported a 71 per cent drop in investment-banking earnings in the second quarter. Revenue at Edinburgh-based RBS’s securities unit dropped 35 per cent in the period, while London-based Barclays Capital posted a 27 per cent decline in pretax profit.
Things in Europe continue to get worse and worse and worse.
Do not take your eyes off of Europe. This crisis is just getting started.
Not that there aren’t huge debt problems around the rest of the globe as well.
Japan has a national debt that is now over 200 percent of GDP, and they are really struggling to recover from the recent disasters that devastated that nation.
Moody’s has just downgraded Japanese government debt one notch to Aa3, and more downgrades could be coming. For now Japan is still able to borrow huge piles of money very, very cheaply but if that changes Japan could be wiped out very quickly.
Of course the nation with the biggest debt of all is the United States.
At the moment, the U.S. national debt is sitting at a grand total of$14,649,289,670,347.85.
Fortunately, the U.S. is also able to borrow massive amounts of money very, very cheaply right now. But when that changes it is going to be absolutely cataclysmic for our economy.
Sadly, our politicians continue to act as if this debt binge can go on forever.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the budget deficit for the federal government will be about 1.28 trillion dollars this year. This will be the third year in a row that we have had a budget deficit of over a trillion dollars.
To put that in perspective, from George Washington to Ronald Reagan the U.S. government racked up a grand total of about one trillion dollars of debt. But this year alone we will go 1.28 trillion dollars more into debt.
At the moment, the U.S. national debt is expanding by about 2 and a half million dollars every single minute. It is hard to put into words how absolutely foolish that is.
As I wrote about yesterday, someone needs to wake up America. Our debt is exploding and our economy is dying.
We haven’t even solved the problems caused by the last financial crisis. The real estate market is still a gigantic mess. Purchases of both new and previously existing homes in the United States continue to fall.
But there will never be a housing recovery until there is a jobs recovery, and our politicians continue to stand by and watch as millions of our jobs are shipped overseas.
Unemployment is rampant, and even many of those that do have jobs are barely able to survive.
Back in 1980, less than 30% of all jobs in the United States were low income jobs. Today, more than 40% of all jobs in the United States are low income jobs.
That is not a good trend.
Sadly, it looks like things are not going to get much better any time soon.
Right now, the Congressional Budget Office is projecting that unemployment in the U.S. will remain above 8% until 2014.
That should really scare you, because government numbers are almost always way too optimistic. The folks in the federal government hardly ever project that unemployment will actually go up.
So if they are saying that unemployment will remain above 8 percent until 2014, the truth is that things will probably be worse than that.
We have entered very frightening times. We are on the verge of a massive global debt meltdown, and nobody is sure what is going to happen next.
Let us hope for the best, but let us also prepare for the worst.
