The decline and eventual fall of the USA as world superpower?

[Dainin]

The world is going towards its end with a great speed. There is very little time left.

 

 

People have been saying this throughout recorded history, in many cultures. Last year during the "2012" hysteria, I read a small interesting book, "Apocalypse Not" by John M.Greer that described the history of this line of thinking.

 

The challenges facing the world today are very real, but so were the challenges of yesterday, and those may have been even worse: plagues, rampaging hordes, feudalism, etc.

[Isimsiz Biri]

People have been saying this throughout recorded history, in many cultures. Last year during the "2012" hysteria, I read a small interesting book, "Apocalypse Not" by John M.Greer that described the history of this line of thinking.

The challenges facing the world today are very real, but so were the challenges of yesterday, and those may have been even worse: plagues, rampaging hordes, feudalism, etc.

 

It is rather true that people have been saying this throughout recorded history. As far as I know, around 1000 A.D. people in Europe really waited for it.

 

I also 100 % agree that December 21, 2012 was a hysteria. The actual reason for this hysteria is the negative side.

 

If you make people believe that there will be the end of world at a fake date and when this date comes, nothing happens. Then you make people say "The end of world is not real" This is exactly what negative side is after for. The exact purpose of December 21, 2012 end of world hysteria is this. When the real day of Resurrection comes, people will say "They had said that world would have ended on 21 December 2012, it simply did not happen. It will not happen this time too."

 

If you search internet, there are countless channelings starting from 2007 about three day darkness, mega tsunamis, etc to be happened on 21 December 2012. All of these information was negative thus, the psychics and mediums who got these information were obsessed by negative bodiless beings. (Please refer to following link for the definition of Obsession in Spiritism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsession_(Spiritism))

 

One example is Princess Kaoru Nakamaru of Japan. On Youtube video dd. January 06, 2012, eleven months before December 21, 2012 she made some announcements about end of the world on 21 December 2012. Yet, nothing happened (at least physically) She is also a medium obsessed by negative beings.

 

 

Of course, for the real end of world, there are some signs. Scientists are also becoming of such signs gradually.

Edited November 9, 2013 by Isimsiz Biri

[Formless Tao]

It is rather true that people have been saying this throughout recorded history. As far as I know, around 1000 A.D. people in Europe really waited for it. I also 100 % agree that December 21, 2012 was a hysteria. The actual reason for this hysteria is the negative side. If you make people believe that there will be the end of world at a fake date and when this date comes, nothing happens. Then you make people say "The end of world is not real" This is exactly what negative side is after for. The exact purpose of December 21, 2012 end of world hysteria is this. When the real day of Resurrection comes, people will say "They had said that world would have ended on 21 December 2012, it simply did not happen. It will not happen this time too." If you search internet, there are countless channelings starting from 2007 about three day darkness, mega tsunamis, etc to be happened on 21 December 2012. All of these information was negative thus, the psychics and mediums who got these information were obsessed by negative bodiless beings. (Please refer to following link for the definition of Obsession in Spiritism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsession_(Spiritism)) One example is Princess Kaoru Nakamaru of Japan. On Youtube video dd. January 06, 2012, eleven months before December 21, 2012 she made some announcements about end of the world on 21 December 2012. Yet, nothing happened (at least physically) She is also a medium obsessed by negative beings. www.youtube.com/watch?v=uG2SkhSp0G8 Of course, for the real end of world, there are some signs. Scientists are also becoming of such signs gradually.

 

Yes, influenced by the mayan calendar...

[Isimsiz Biri]

Yes, influenced by the mayan calendar...

 

 

Oh yes, thank you for mentioning it. The real Maya Shamans are also aware that we are close to Apocalypse as far as I know. However, the Maya Calendar simply did not tell that world would end on December 21,2012. And as you see, world still exist. I find the 260 day Mayan Calendar and Mayan Zodiac pretty interesting.

 

As a side note, shamans of central asia, (mainly Turkic origin) also say that we are close to Apocalypse.

Edited October 25, 2013 by Isimsiz Biri

[Thunder_Gooch]

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/10/proof-that-nsa-spying-is-not-really-focused-on-terrorism.html

 

 

Proof that NSA Spying Is Not Very Focused On Terrorism

Power, Money and Crushing Dissent Are Real Motives

Edited October 25, 2013 by More_Pie_Guy

[Thunder_Gooch]

http://dailycaller.com/2013/10/25/exclusive-feds-confiscate-investigative-reporters-confidential-files-during-raid/


Exclusive: Feds confiscate investigative reporter’s confidential files during raid

[Thunder_Gooch]

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/oct/25/armed-agents-seize-records-reporter-washington-tim/

 

 

Armed agents seize records of reporter, Washington Times prepares legal action

[ralis]

[Thunder_Gooch]

'It took him a long time to die': drone operator traumatized by killing missions

 

http://www.smh.com.au/world/it-took-him-a-long-time-to-die-drone-operator-traumatised-by-killing-missions-20131025-2w75x.html

 

When he quit the air force in 2011 after six years' service, he was presented with a list of achievements for his squadron's missions that counted the number of enemies killed in action as 1626. ''The number made me sick to my stomach,'' he said.

[JustARandomPanda]

Found something far more interesting than my insignificant musings on the prior topic.

 

The Fed Can Only Fail
And we'll all lose



by Chris Martenson
Friday, October 25, 2013, 12:34 AM

The basic predicament we are in is that the current crop of leaders in the halls of monetary and political power does not appear to understand the dimensions of our situation.

The mind-boggling part about all this is that it's not really all that hard to grasp.
Our collective predicament is simply this: Nothing can grow forever.

Sooner or later, everything must cease growing, or it will exhaust its environs and thereby destroy itself. The Fed is busy doing everything in its considerable power to get credit (that is, debt) growing again so that we can get back to what it considers to be "normal."

But the problem is – or the predicament, I should more accurately say – is that the recent past was not normal. You've probably all seen this next chart. It shows total debt in the U.S. as a percent of GDP:

 

Somewhere right around 1980, things really changed, and debt began climbing far faster than GDP. And that, right there, is the long and the short of why any attempt to continue the behavior that got us to this point is certain to fail.

 

It is simply not possible to grow your debts faster than your income forever. However, that's been the practice since 1980, and every current politician and Federal Reserve official developed their opinions about 'how the world works' during the 33-year period between 1980 and 2013.

 

Put bluntly, they want to get us back on that same track, and as soon as possible. The reason? Because every major power center, be that in D.C. or on Wall Street, tuned their thinking, systems, and sense of entitlement during that period. And, frankly, a huge number of financial firms and political careers will melt away if/when that credit expansion finally stops.

 

And stop it will; that's just a mathematical certainty. It's now extremely doubtful that the Fed or D.C. will willingly cease the current Herculean efforts towards reviving this flawed practice of borrowing too much, too fast. So we have to expect that it will be some form of financial accident that finally breaks the stranglehold of failed thinking that infects current leadership.

 

 

The Math

 

As a thought experiment, let's explore the math a little bit to see where it leads us. After all, I did just say that a poor end to all of this is a "mathematical certainty," so let's test that theory a bit. I think you'll find this both interesting and useful.

 

To begin, Total Credit Market Debt (TCMD) is a measure of all the various forms of debt in the U.S. That includes corporate, state, federal, and household borrowing. So student loans are in there, as are auto loans, mortgages, and municipal and federal debt. It's pretty much everything debt-related.

What it does not include, though, are any unfunded obligations, entitlements, or other types of liabilities. So the Social Security shortfalls are not in there, nor are the underfunded pensions at the state or corporate levels. TCMD is just debt, plain and simple.

 

As you can see in this next chart, since 1970, TCMD has been growing exponentially and almost perfectly, too. (The R² is over 0.99, for you science types):

 

 

I've pointed out the tiny little wiggle that happened in 2008-2009, which apparently nearly brought down the entire global financial system. That little deviation was practically too much all on its own.

Now debts are climbing again at a quite nice pace. That's mainly due to the Fed monetizing U.S. federal debt just to keep things patched together.

 

As an aside, based on this chart, we'd expect the Fed to not end their QE efforts until and unless households and corporations once more engage in robust borrowing. The system apparently 'needs' this chart to keep growing exponentially, or it risks collapse.

Okay, one could ask: Why can't credit just keep growing?

Here's where things get a little wonky. But if you'll bear with me, you'll see why I'm nearly 100% certain that the future will not resemble the past.

 

Let's start in 1980, when credit growth really took off. This period also happens to be the happy time that the Fed is trying to (desperately) recreate.

 

Between 1980 and 2013, total credit grew by an astonishing 8% per year, compounded. I say 'astonishing' because anything growing by 8% per year will fully double every 9 years.

So let's run the math experiment as ask what will happen if the Fed is successful and total credit grows for the next 30 years at exactly the same rate it did over the prior 30. That's all. Nothing fancy, simply the same rate of growth that everybody got accustomed to while they were figuring out 'how the world works.

 

 

What happens to the current $57 trillion in TCMD as it advances by 8% per year for 30 years? It mushrooms into a silly number: $573 trillion. That is, an 8% growth paradigm gives us a tenfold increase in total credit in just thirty years:

 

 

Again, What might we borrow (only) $128 trillion for, over the next 30 years?

 

 

When I run these numbers, I am entirely confident that the rate of growth in debt between 1980 and 2013 will not be recreated between 2013 and 2043. With just one caveat: I've been assuming that dollars remain valuable. If dollars were to lose 90% or more of their value (say, perhaps due to our central bank creating too many of them?), then it's entirely possible to achieve any sorts of fantastical numbers one wishes to see.

 

 

Think it could never happen?

 

 

Conclusion (to Part I)

This is the critical takeaway from all of the math above: For the Fed to achieve anything even close to the historical rate of credit growth, the dollar will have to lose a lot of value. I truly believe this is the Fed's grand plan, if we may call it that, and it has nothing to do with what's best for the people of this land. Instead, it's entirely about keeping the financial system primed with sufficient new credit to prevent it from imploding.

 

That is, the Fed is beholden to a broken system; not anything noble.

....

 

Amidst the ensuing unpleasantness will be an awakening within today's hyper-financialized markets to the huge imbalance now existing between paper claims and ownership of real things. A massive wealth transfer from those with 'paper wealth' (stocks, bonds, dollars) to those owning tangible assets (the productive value of which can't easily be inflated away) will occur – and quickly, too.

Edited October 27, 2013 by JustARandomPanda

[JustARandomPanda]

From JMG's ArchDruid blog

 

 

 

 

The recent round of gridlock in Washington DC may seem worlds away from the mythological visions and spiritual perspectives that have been central to this blog over the last few months. Still, there’s a direct connection. The forces that have driven American politicians into their current collection of blind alleys are also the forces that will make religious institutions very nearly the only structures capable of getting anything done in the difficult years to come, as industrial civilization accelerates along the time-honored trajectory of decline and fall.

To make sense of the connection, it’s necessary to start with certain facts, rarely mentioned in current media coverage, that put the last few weeks of government shutdown and potential Federal default in their proper context. These days the US government spends about twice as much each year as it takes in from taxes, user fees, and all other revenue sources, and makes up the difference by borrowing money. Despite a great deal of handwaving, that’s a recipe for disaster. If you, dear reader, earned US$50,000 a year and spent US$100,000 a year, and made up the difference by taking out loans and running up your credit cards, you could count on a few years of very comfortable living, followed by bankruptcy and a sharply reduced standard of living; the same rule applies on the level of nations.

Were you to pursue so dubious a project, in turn, one way to postpone the day of reckoning for a while would be to find some way to keep the interest rates you paid on your loans as low as possible. This is exactly what the US government has done in recent years. A variety of gimmicks, culminating in the current frenzy of “quantitative easing”—that is to say, printing money at a frantic pace—has forced interest rates down to historically low levels, in order to keep the federal government’s debt payments down to an annual sum that we can pretend to afford. Even a fairly modest increase in interest rates would be enough to push the US government into crisis; an increase on the same scale as those that have clobbered debt-burdened European countries in recent years would force an inevitable default.

Sooner or later, that latter is going to happen. That’s the unmentioned context of the last few cycles of intractable financial stalemates in Washington. For more than a decade now, increasingly frantic attempts to kick the can further and further down the road have thus been the order of the day. In order to prevent a steep economic contraction in the wake of the 2000 tech-stock crash, the US government and the Federal Reserve Board—its theoretically independent central bank—flooded the economy with cheap credit and turned a blind eye to what became the biggest speculative delusion in history, the global real estate bubble of 2004-2008. When that popped, in turn, the US government and the Fed used even more drastic measures to stave off the normal consequences of a huge speculative bust.

None of those measures has a long shelf life. They’re all basically stopgaps, and it’s probably safe to assume that the people who decided to put them into place believed that before the last of the stopgaps stopped working, the US economy would resume its normal trajectory of growth and bail everyone out. That hasn’t happened, and there are good reasons to think that it’s not going to happen—not this year, not this decade, not in our lifetimes. We’ll get to those reasons shortly; the point that needs attention here is what this implies for the federal government here and now.

At some point in the years ahead, the US government is going to have to shut down at least half its current activities, in order to bring its expenditures back in line with its income. At some point in the years ahead, equally, the US government is going to have to default on its $8 trillion dollars of unpayable debt, plus however much more gets added as we proceed. The shutdown and default that have absorbed so much attention in recent weeks, in other words, define the shape of things to come. This time, as I write these words, a temporary compromise seems to have been slapped together, but we’ll be back here again, and again, and again, until finally the shutdown becomes permanent, the default happens, and we move on into a harsh new economic reality.

It’s probably necessary at this point to remind my readers again that this doesn’t mean we will face the kind of imaginary full stop beloved by a certain class of apocalyptic theorists. Over the last twenty years or so, quite a few countries have slashed their government expenditures and defaulted on their debts. The results have included a great deal of turmoil and human suffering, but the overnight implosion of the global economy so often predicted has failed to occur, and for good reason. Glance back over economic history and you’ll find plenty of cases in which nations had to deal with crises of the same sort the US will soon face. All of them passed through hard times and massive changes, but none of them ceased to exist as organized societies; it’s only the widespread fixation on fantasies of apocalypse that leads some people to insist that for one reason or another, it’s different this time.

I plan on devoting several upcoming posts to what we can realistically expect when the US government has to slash its expenditures and default on its debts, the way that Russia, Argentina, and other nations have done in recent decades. For the moment, though, I want to focus on a different point: why has the US government backed itself into this mess? Yes, I’m aware of the theorists who argue that it’s all a part of some nefarious plan, but let’s please be real: to judge by previous examples, the political and financial leaders who’ve done this are going to have their careers terminated with extreme prejudice, and it’s by no means impossible that a significant number of them will end up dangling from lampposts. It’s safe to assume that the people who have made these decisions are aware of these possibilities. Why, then, their pursuit of the self-defeating policies just surveyed?

That pursuit makes sense only if the people responsible for the policies assumed they were temporary expedients, meant to keep business as usual afloat until a temporary crisis was over. From within the worldview of contemporary mainstream economics, it’s hard to see any other assumption they could have made. It’s axiomatic in today’s economic thought that economic growth is the normal state of affairs, and any interruption in growth is simply a temporary problem that will inevitably give way to renewed growth sooner or later. When an economic crisis happens, then, the first thought of political and financial leaders alike these days is to figure out how to keep business as usual running until the economy returns to its normal condition of growth.

The rising spiral of economic troubles around the world in the last decade or so, I suggest, has caught political and financial officials flatfooted, precisely because that “normal condition of growth” is no longer normal. After the tech-stock bubble imploded in 2000, central banks in the US and elsewhere forced down interest rates and flooded the global economy with a torrent of cheap credit. Under normal conditions, this would have driven an investment boom in productive capital of various kinds: new factories would have been built, new technologies brought to the market, and so on, resulting in a surge in employment, tax revenues, and so on. While a modest amount of productive capital did come out of the process, the primary result was a speculative bubble even more gargantuan than the tech boom.

That was a warning sign too few people heeded. Speculative bubbles are a routine reality in market economies, but under ordinary circumstances they’re self-limiting in scale, because there are so many other less risky places to earn a decent return on investment. It’s only when an economy has run out of other profitable investment opportunities that speculative bubbles grow to gargantuan size. In the late 1920s, the mismatch between vast investment in industrial capital and a wildly unbalanced distribution of income meant that American citizens could not afford to buy all the products of American industry, and this pushed the country into a classic overproduction crisis. Further investment in productive capital no longer brought in the expected rate of return, and so money flooded into speculative vehicles, driving the huge 1929 bubble and bust.

The parallel bubble-and-bust economy that we’ve seen since 2000 or so followed similar patterns on an even more extreme scale. Once again, income distribution in the United States got skewed drastically in favor of the well-to-do, so that a growing fraction of Americans could no longer support the consumer economy with their purchases. Once again, returns on productive investment sank to embarrassing lows, leaving speculative paper of various kinds as the only option in town. It wasn’t overproduction that made productive capital a waste of investment funds, though—it was something considerably more dangerous, and also less easy for political and financial elites to recognize.

The dogma that holds that growth is the normal state of economic affairs, after all, did not come about by accident. It was the result of three centuries of experience in the economies of Europe and the more successful nations of the European diaspora. Those three centuries, of course, happened to take place during the most colossal economic boom in all of recorded history. Two factors discussed in earlier posts drove that boom: first, the global expansion of European empires in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries and the systematic looting of overseas colonies that resulted; second, the exploitation of half a billion years of stored sunlight in the form of coal, petroleum, and natural gas.

Both those driving forces remained in place through the twentieth century; the European empires gave way to a network of US client states that were plundered just as thoroughly as old-fashioned imperial colonies once were, while the exploitation of the world’s fossil fuel reserves went on at ever-increasing rates. The peaking of US petroleum production in 1972 threw a good-sized monkey wrench into the gears of the system and brought a decade of crisis, but a variety of short-term gimmicks postponed the crisis temporarily and opened the way to the final extravagant blowoff of the age of cheap energy.

The peaking of conventional petroleum production in 2005 marked the end of that era, and the coming of a new economic reality that no one in politics or business is yet prepared to grasp. Claims that the peak would be promptly followed by plunging production, mass panic, and apocalyptic social collapse proved to be just as inaccurate as such claims always are. What happened instead was that a growing fraction of the world’s total energy supply has had to be diverted, directly or indirectly, to the task of maintaining fossil fuel production. Not all that long ago, all things considered, a few thousand dollars was enough to drill an oil well that can still be producing hundreds of barrels a day decades later; these days, a fracked well in oil-bearing shale can cost $5 to 10 million to drill and hydrofracture, and three years down the road it’ll be yielding less than 10 barrels of oil a day.

These increased costs and diminished returns don’t take place in a vacuum. The energy and products of energy that have to be put into the task of maintaining energy production, after all, aren’t available for other economic uses. In monetary terms—money, remember, is the system of tokens we use to keep track of the value and manage the distribution of goods and services—oil prices upwards of $100 a barrel, and comparable prices for petroleum products, provide some measure of the tax on all economic activity that’s being imposed by the diversion of energy, resources, and other goods and services into petroleum production. Meanwhile fewer businesses are hiring, less new productive capital gets built, new technologies languish on the shelves: the traditional drivers of growth aren’t coming into play, because the surplus of real wealth needed to make them function isn’t there any more, having had to be diverted to keep drilling more and more short-lived wells in the Bakken Shale.

The broader pattern behind all these shifts is easy to state, though people raised in a growth economy often find it almost impossible to grasp. Sustained economic growth is made possible by sustained increases in the availability of energy and other resources for purposes other than their own production. The only reason economic growth seems normal to us is that we’ve just passed through an era three hundred years long in which, for the fraction of humanity living in western Europe, North America, and a few other corners of the world, the supply of energy and other resources soared well past any increases in the cost of production. That era is now over, and so is sustained economic growth.

The end of growth, though, has implications of its own, and some of these conflict sharply with expectations nurtured by the era of growth economics. It’s only when economic growth is normal, for example, that the average investment can be counted on to earn a profit. An investment is a microcosm of the whole economy; it’s because the total economy can be expected to gain value that investments, which represent ownership of a minute portion of the whole economy, can be expected to do the same thing. On paper, at least, investment in a growing economy is a positive-sum game; everyone can profit to one degree or another, and the goal of competition is to profit more than the other guy.

In a steady-state economy, by contrast, investment is a zero-sum game; since the economy neither grows nor contracts from year to year, the average investment breaks even, and for one investment to make a profit, another must suffer a loss. In a contracting economy, by the same logic, investment is a negative-sum game, the average investment loses money, and an investment that merely succeeds in breaking even can do so only if steeper losses are inflicted on other investments.

It’s precisely because the conditions for economic growth are over, and have been over for some time now, that the US political and financial establishment finds itself clinging to the ragged end of a bridge to nowhere, with an assortment of alligators gazing up hungrily from the waters below. The stopgap policies that were meant to keep business as usual running until growth resumed have done their job, but economic growth has gone missing in action, and the supply of gimmicks is running very short. I don’t claim to know exactly when we’ll see the federal government default on its debt and begin mass layoffs and program cutbacks, but I see no way that these things can be avoided at this point.

Nor is this the only consequence of the end of growth. In a contracting economy, again, the average investment loses money. That doesn’t simply apply to financial paper; if a business owner in such an economy invests in capital improvements, on average, those improvements will not bring a return sufficient to pay for the investment; if a bank makes a loan, on average, the loan will not be paid back in full, and so on. Every one of the mechanisms that a modern industrial economy uses to encourage people to direct surplus wealth back into the production of goods and services depends on the idea that investments normally make a profit. Lacking those, the process of economic contraction becomes self-reinforcing because disinvestment and hoarding becomes the best available strategy, the sole effective way to cling to as much as possible of your wealth for as long as possible.

This isn’t merely a theoretical possibility, by the way. It occurs reliably in the twilight years of other civilizations. The late Roman world is a case in point: by the beginning of the fifth century CE, it was so hard for Roman businessmen to make money that the Roman government had laws requiring sons to go into their fathers’ professions, whether they could earn a living that way or not, and there were businessmen who fled across the borders and went to work as scribes, accountants, and translators for barbarian warlords, because the alternative was economic ruin in a collapsing Roman economy. Meanwhile rich landowners converted their available wealth into gold and silver and buried it, rather than cycling it back into the economy, and moneylending became so reliable a source of social ills that lending at interest was a mortal sin in medieval Christianity and remains so in Islam right down to the present. When Dante’s Inferno consigned people who lend money at interest to the lowest part of the seventh circle of Hell, several notches below mass murderers, heretics, and fallen angels, he was reflecting a common belief of his time, and one that had real justification in the not so distant past.

Left to itself, the negative-sum game of economics in a contracting economy has no necessary endpoint short of the complete collapse of all systems of economic exchange. In the real world, it rarely goes quite that far, though it can come uncomfortably close. In the aftermath of the Roman collapse, for example, it wasn’t just lending at interest that went away. Money itself dropped out of use in most of post-Roman Europe—as late as the twelfth century, it was normal for most people to go from one year to the next without ever handling a coin—and market-based economic exchange, which thrived in the Roman world, was replaced by feudal economies in which most goods were produced by those who consumed them, customary payments in kind took care of nearly all the rest, and a man could expect to hold land from his overlord on the same terms his great-grandfather had known.

All through the Long Descent that terminated the bustling centralized economy of the Roman world and replaced it with the decentralized feudal economies of post-Roman Europe, though, there was one reliable source of investment in necessary infrastructure and other social goods. It thrived when all other economic and political institutions failed, because it did not care in the least about the profit motive, and had different ways to motivate and direct human energies to constructive ends. It had precise equivalents in certain other dark age and medieval societies, too, and it’s worth noting that those dark ages that had some such institution in place were considerably less dark, and preserved a substantially larger fraction of the cultural and technological heritage of the previous society, than those in which no institution of the same kind existed.

In late Roman and post-Roman Europe, that institution was the Christian church. In other dark ages, other religious organizations have filled similar roles—Buddhism, for example, in the dark ages that followed the collapse of Heian Japan, or the Egyptian priesthoods in the several dark ages experienced by ancient Egyptian society. When every other institution fails, in other words, religion is the one option left that provides a framework for organized collective activity. The revival of religion in the twilight of an age of rationalism, and its rise to a position of cultural predominance in the broader twilight of a civilization, thus has a potent economic rationale in addition to any other factors that may support it. How this works in practice will be central to a number of the posts to come.

Edited October 27, 2013 by JustARandomPanda

[Thunder_Gooch]

[Thunder_Gooch]

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/10/26/2245217/federal-prosecutors-in-a-policy-shift-cite-warrantless-wiretaps-as-evidence

 

 

schwit1 sends this quote from the NY Times "The Justice Department for the first time has notified a criminal defendant that evidence being used against him came from a warrantless wiretap, a move that is expected to set up a Supreme Court test of whether such eavesdropping is constitutional. The government's notice allows the defendant's lawyer to ask a court to suppress the evidence by arguing that it derived from unconstitutional surveillance, setting in motion judicial review of the eavesdropping. ... The practice contradicted what [solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr.] had told the Supreme Court last year in a case challenging the law, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. Legalizing a form of the Bush administration’s program of warrantless surveillance, the law authorized the government to wiretap Americans’ e-mails and phone calls without an individual court order and on domestic soil so long as the surveillance is “targeted” at a foreigner abroad. A group of plaintiffs led by Amnesty International had challenged the law as unconstitutional. But Mr. Verrilli last year urged the Supreme Court to dismiss the case because those plaintiffs could not prove that they had been wiretapped. In making that argument, he said a defendant who faced evidence derived from the law would have proper legal standing and would be notified, so dismissing the lawsuit by Amnesty International would not close the door to judicial review of the 2008 law. The court accepted that logic, voting 5-to-4 to dismiss the case."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

UNDER THE POLICE STATE ... (Score:4, Insightful)

by Taco Cowboy (5327) on Saturday October 26, 2013 @10:00PM (#45248743) Journal

... there is NOTHING FREE !!!

I am speaking on experience.

I am an American, a naturalized American citizen.

I came from China.

I, and many others, risking our lives and swam to Hong Kong back in the 1970's. They were shooting at us, back then.

We risked our lives not because we were poor (and we were) but because there was NO FREEDOM for the people.

Everything that we did - who your friends were, where you been to, what you did, why you did what you did, everything - was under the watchful eyes of the BIG BROTHER.

I went to the United States precisely because, back then, the United States of America was the only country that could guarantee my freedom, because, back then, the government of the United States of America still had respect for The Constitution.

I became an American citizen precisely because I found the freedom that I had longed for.

That was back then.

Not now.

Nowadays, the so-called "freedom" has all but evaporated.

When the prosecutors (or rather, persecutors ) can charge people with warrantless wiretaps , what is the difference between the United States of America and the former East Germany under Stasi or China under CCP ?

Back when I became a naturalized citizen of the United States of America, my new government was still operating under the Constitution of the United States.

No more.

Under the Obama administration, I am sorry to say, the Constitution of the United States has become as valuable as soiled disposable diaper.

As an American, I am sad.

As one who was from an oppressed state, risking live in order to gain freedom, I am HORRIFIED.

I am watching THE COUNTRY THAT I ADOPTED turning into just like the one I ran away from.

Edited October 27, 2013 by More_Pie_Guy

[Thunder_Gooch]

[ralis]

One reason we don't have a functioning government. The right wing has blocked almost every nomination that Obama has selected. Furthermore, this Benghazi incident is an obsession with right wing extremists. If memory serves me correctly, embassy attacks happened under Bush and very little was said.

 

 

http://www.policymic.com/articles/40811/13-benghazis-happened-under-president-bush-and-fox-news-said-nothing

 

Graham Promises To Block All Senate Nominations Over Benghazi

 

 

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014633235

[joeblast]

hey ralis, how many new regulations has the obama admin come up with?

 

yeah, its functioning "just fine"

 

embassy attacks? you're forgetting the other 85% of that story, dude. the weapons selling, the cover up, the requests for security, all of the forces veritably right next door being told to stand down while the people in the embassy realized they got sold up the river - the additional coverups, whitewashed invesitgations, clinton lying herself blue in the face on the stand saying hey that was in the past why does this even matter? what about the firing of people who disagreed?

 

well, at least you dont try and portray yourself as impartial.

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LATmPawQR4#t=157

 

When Chris Stevens was killed in Benghazi, Libya, on the anniversary of September 11th last year, it was only the sixth time that the United States had lost an ambassador to its enemies. The events of that night have been overshadowed by misinformation, confusion and intense partisanship. But for those who lived through it, there's nothing confusing about what happened, and they share a sense of profound frustration because they say they saw it coming.

Tonight, you will hear for the first time from a security officer who witnessed the attack. He calls himself, Morgan Jones, a pseudonym he's using for his own safety. A former British soldier, he's been helping to keep U.S. diplomats and military leaders safe for the last decade. On a night he describes as sheer hell, Morgan Jones snuck into a Benghazi hospital that was under the control of al Qaeda terrorists, desperate to find out if one of his close friends from the U.S. Special Mission was the American he'd been told was there.

60 Minutes Overtime Q&A: The 60 Minutes Benghazi investigation »

Morgan Jones: I was dreading seeing who it was, you know? It didn't take long to get to the room. And I could see in through the glass. And I didn't even have to go into the room to see who it was. I knew who it was immediately.

Lara Logan: Who was it?

Morgan Jones: It was the ambassador, dead. Yeah, shocking.

Morgan Jones said he'd never felt so angry in his life. Only hours earlier, Amb. Chris Stevens had sought him out, concerned about the security at the U.S. Special Mission Compound where Morgan was in charge of the Libyan guard force.

Now, the ambassador was dead and the U.S. compound was engulfed in flames and overrun by dozens of heavily armed fighters.

Although the attack began here, the more organized assault unfolded about a mile across the city at a top secret CIA facility known as the Annex. It lasted more than seven hours and took four American lives.

Contrary to the White House's public statements, which were still being made a full week later, it's now well established that the Americans were attacked by al Qaeda in a well-planned assault.

Five months before that night, Morgan Jones first arrived in Benghazi, in eastern Libya about 400 miles from the capital, Tripoli.

He thought this would be an easy assignment compared to Afghanistan and Iraq. But on his first drive through Benghazi, he noticed the black flags of al Qaeda flying openly in the streets and he grew concerned about the guard forces as soon as he pulled up to the U.S. compound.

Morgan Jones: There was nobody there that we could see. And then we realized they were all inside drinking tea, laughing and joking.

Lara Logan: What did you think?

Morgan Jones: Instantly I thought we're going to have to get rid of all these guys.

Morgan Jones' job was training the unarmed guards who manned the compound's gates. A second Libyan force -- an armed militia hired by the State Department -- was supposed to defend the compound in the event of an attack. Morgan had nothing to do with the militia, but they worried him so much, he could not keep quiet.

Morgan Jones: I was saying, "These guys are no good. You need to-- you need to get 'em out of here."

Lara Logan: You also kept saying, "If this place is attacked these guys are not going to stand and fight?"

Morgan Jones: Yeah. I used to say it all the time. Yeah, in the end I got quite bored of hearing my own voice saying it.

Andy Wood: We had one option: "Leave Benghazi or you will be killed."

Green Beret Commander, Lieutenant Colonel Andy Wood, was one of the top American security officials in Libya. Based in Tripoli, he met with Amb. Stevens every day.

The last time he went to Benghazi was in June, just three months before the attack. While he was there, al Qaeda tried to assassinate the British ambassador. Wood says, to him, it came as no surprise because al Qaeda -- using a familiar tactic -- had stated their intent in an online posting, saying they would attack the Red Cross, the British and then the Americans in Benghazi.

Lara Logan: And you watched as they--

Andy Wood: As they did each one of those.

Lara Logan: --attacked the Red Cross and the British mission. And the only ones left--

Andy Wood: Were us. They made good on two out of the three promises. It was a matter of time till they captured the third one.

Lara Logan: And Washington was aware of that?

Andy Wood: They knew we monitored it. We included that in our reports to both State Department and DOD.

Andy Wood told us he raised his concerns directly with Amb. Stevens three months before the U.S. compound was overrun.

Andy Wood: I made it known in a country team meeting, "You are gonna get attacked. You are gonna get attacked in Benghazi. It's gonna happen. You need to change your security profile."

Lara Logan: Shut down--

Andy Wood: Shut down--

Lara Logan: --the special mission--

Andy Wood: --"Shut down operations. Move out temporarily. Ch-- or change locations within the city. Do something to break up the profile because you are being targeted. They are-- they are-- they are watching you. The attack cycle is such that they're in the final planning stages."

Lara Logan: Wait a minute, you said, "They're in the final planning stages of an attack on the American mission in Benghazi"?

Andy Wood: It was apparent to me that that was the case. Reading, reading all these other, ah, attacks that were occurring, I could see what they were staging up to, it was, it was obvious.

We have learned the U.S. already knew that this man, senior al Qaeda leader Abu Anas al-Libi was in Libya, tasked by the head of al Qaeda to establish a clandestine terrorist network inside the country. Al-Libi was already wanted for his role in bombing two U.S. embassies in Africa.

Greg Hicks: It was a frightening piece of information.

Lara Logan: Because it meant what?

Greg Hicks: It raised the stakes, changed the game.

Greg Hicks, who testified before Congress earlier this year, was Amb. Stevens' deputy based in Tripoli - a 22-year veteran of the Foreign Service with an impeccable reputation.

Lara Logan: And in that environment you were asking for more security assets and you were not getting them?

Greg Hicks: That's right.

Lara Logan: Did you fight that?

Greg Hicks: I was in the process of trying to frame a third request but it was not allowed to go forward.

Lara Logan: So why didn't you get the help that you needed and that you asked for?

Greg Hicks: I really, really don't know. I in fact would like to know that, the answer to that question.

In the months prior to the attack, Amb. Stevens approved a series of detailed cables to Washington, specifically mentioning, among other things, "the al Qaeda flag has been spotted several times flying over government buildings".

When the attack began on the evening of September 11, Amb. Stevens immediately called Greg Hicks, who was back in Tripoli.

Greg Hicks: Ambassador said that the consulate's under attack. And then the line cut.

Lara Logan: Do you remember the sound of his voice?

Greg Hicks: Oh yeah, it's indelibly imprinted on my mind.

Lara Logan: How did he sound?

Greg Hicks: He sounded frightened.

In Benghazi, Morgan Jones, who was at his apartment about 15 minutes away, got a frantic call from one of his Libyan guards.

Morgan Jones: I could hear gunshots. And I-- and he said, "There's-- there's men coming into the mission." His voice, he was, he was scared, you could tell he was really scared and he was running, I could tell he was running.

His first thought was for his American friends, the State Department agents who were pinned down inside the compound, and he couldn't believe it when one of them answered his phone.

Morgan Jones: I said, "What's going on?" He said, "We're getting attacked." And I said, "How many?" And he said, "They're all over the compound." And I felt shocked, I didn't know what to say. And-- I said, "Well, just keep fighting. I'm on my way."

Morgan's guards told him the armed Libyan militia that was supposed to defend the compound had fled, just as Morgan had predicted. His guards -- unarmed and terrified -- sounded the alarm, but they were instantly overwhelmed by the attackers.

Morgan Jones: They said, "We're here to kill Americans, not Libyans," so they'd give them a good beating, pistol whip them, beat them with their rifles and let them go.

Lara Logan: We're here to kill Americans.

Morgan Jones: That's what they said, yeah.

Lara Logan: Not Libyans.

Morgan Jones: Yeah.

About 30 minutes into the attack, a quick reaction force from the CIA Annex ignored orders to wait and raced to the compound, at times running and shooting their way through the streets just to get there. Inside the compound, they repelled a force of as many as 60 armed terrorists and managed to save five American lives and recover the body of Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith. They were forced to fight their way out before they could find the ambassador.

Not long afterwards, Morgan Jones scaled the 12-foot high wall of the compound that was still overrun with al Qaeda fighters.

Morgan Jones: One guy saw me. He just shouted. I couldn't believe that he'd seen me 'cause it was so dark. He started walking towards me.

Lara Logan: And as he was coming closer?

Morgan Jones: As I got closer, I just hit him with the butt of the rifle in the face.

Lara Logan: And?

Morgan Jones: Oh, he went down, yeah.

Lara Logan: He dropped?

Morgan Jones: Yeah, like-- like a stone.

Lara Logan: With his face smashed in?

Morgan Jones: Yeah.

Lara Logan: And no one saw you do it?

Morgan Jones: No.

Lara Logan: Or heard it?

Morgan Jones: No, there was too much noise.

The same force that had gone to the compound was now defending the CIA Annex. Hours later, they were joined by a small team of Americans from Tripoli. From defensive positions on these rooftops, the Americans fought back a professional enemy. In a final wave of intense fighting just after 5 a.m., the attackers unleashed a barrage of mortars. Three of them slammed into this roof, killing former Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty.

Lara Logan: They hit that roof three times.

Andy Wood: They, they hit those roofs three times.

Lara Logan: In the dark.

Andy Wood: Yea, that's getting the basketball through the hoop over your shoulder.

Lara Logan: What does it take to pull off an attack like that?

Andy Wood: Coordination, planning, training, experienced personnel. They practice those things. They knew what they were doing. That was a-- that was a well-executed attack.

We have learned there were two Delta Force operators who fought at the Annex and they've since been awarded the Distinguished Service Cross and the Navy Cross -- two of the military's highest honors. The Americans who rushed to help that night went without asking for permission and the lingering question is why no larger military response ever crossed the border into Libya -- something Greg Hicks realized wasn't going to happen just an hour into the attack.

Lara Logan: You have this conversation with the defense attache. You ask him what military assets are on their way. And he says--

Greg Hicks: Effectively, they're not. And I-- for a moment, I just felt lost. I just couldn't believe the answer. And then I made the call to the Annex chief, and I told him, "Listen, you've gotta tell those guys there may not be any help coming."

Lara Logan: That's a tough thing to understand. Why?

Greg Hicks: It just is. We--, for us, for the people that go out onto the edge, to represent our country, we believe that if we get in trouble, they're coming to get us. That our back is covered. To hear that it's not, it's a terrible, terrible experience.

The U.S. government today acknowledges the Americans at the U.S. compound in Benghazi were not adequately protected. And says those who carried out the attack are still being hunted down.

Just a few weeks ago, Abu Anas al-Libi was captured for his role in the Africa bombings and the U.S. is still investigating what part he may have played in Benghazi. We've learned that this man, Sufian bin Qumu, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee and long-time al Qaeda operative, was one of the lead planners along with Faraj al-Chalabi, whose ties to Osama bin Laden go back more than 15 years. He's believed to have carried documents from the compound to the head of al Qaeda in Pakistan.

The morning after the attack, Morgan Jones went back to the compound one last time to document the scene. He took these photos which he gave to the FBI and has published in a book he has written. After all this time, he told us he's still haunted by a conversation he had with Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith, a week before the attack.

Morgan Jones: Yeah, he was worried. He wasn't happy with the security.

Lara Logan: And you didn't tell him all your worries?

Morgan Jones: No. No, didn't want to--

Lara Logan: Why not?

Morgan Jones: I didn't want to worry him anymore, you know? He's a nice guy. I sort of promised him he'd be OK.

Lara Logan: You think about that?

Morgan Jones: Every day, yeah.

The U.S. pulled out of Benghazi and al Qaeda has grown in power across Libya. When a member of our team went to the U.S. compound earlier this month, he found remnants of the Americans' final frantic moments still scattered on the ground. Among them Amb. Stevens' official schedule for Sept.12, 2012, a day he didn't live to see

[idquest]

On bureaucracy and regulations.

 

I work in an agency that provides service to disable people. As such, the agency is required to pass an accreditation by international (basically USA based) surveyor agency. There are a total of 857 items pf compliance an agency should comply with to pass the accreditation. Among those there is a requirement to maintain cultural diversity for both people the agency serves and the employees. So the surveyors agreed that the agency where I work is fully diverse, there was no questions about it. But there was no PLAN on the cultural diversity in place and/or Policy on diversity. So the agency got a yellow card warning for a possible non-compliance.

[Thunder_Gooch]

http://www.allgov.com/news/controversies/911-suspects-cant-mention-being-tortured-during-trial-testimony-because-their-torture-is-classified-131028?news=851498

 

 

 

9/11 Suspects Can’t Mention being Tortured during Trial Testimony because Their Torture is Classified

[Thunder_Gooch]

http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/even-the-author-of-the-patriot-act-is-trying-to-stop-the-nsa


Even the Author of the Patriot Act Is Trying to Stop the NSA

[xor]

 

US troops turn to liposuction to pass fat test

 

The soldiers often call Dr. Adam Tattelbaum, a plastic surgeon, in a panic. They need liposuction, and fast.

A number of military personnel are turning to the surgical procedure to remove excess fat from around the waist so they can pass the Pentagon's body fat test, which can determine their future prospects in the military.

 

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-10-military-body-fat-criticism.html

[Brian]

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-10-military-body-fat-criticism.html

Astounding.

[Aaron]

The president's proposed discretionary fund is currently projected to spend 57% of our total budget on the military, the next biggest allotments, government at 6%, veteran benefits at 6%, and education at 6%. All needed to continue the military industrial complex that fills the pockets of the 1% that owns the majority of the wealth. People need to be aware of this stuff, but it seems most just want to keep their heads in the sand.

 

Aaron

[Thunder_Gooch]

[Brian]

Mordor on the Potomac?

[zerostao]

why cant we just have the bureaucratic one corporate state that we all dream of?

that would watch our every action and thought? (for our own protection)

(and not necessarily just for marketing purposes)

monsanto!, its not just for breakfast anymore,,,,

i dream of a daring new corporation that has self funded its own research, peer reviewed itself too,

that comes up with the next biggest best thing,

a body fluid that will allow humans to operate (minimially and without questioning) almost half-way alive,

this new corporate body fluid would replace that outdated concept of blood.

the supreme court would rule in favor of the required 'fluid change' for all us citizens.

the corporation of course will self regulate all safety, environmental, health concerns (as corporations do now)

the new advanced 'fluid of life tm' will be available in cold weather only warmer climate variety( becoz that is all we need now)

and it is able to absorb trace levels of CO2, actually it operates better on CO2 additives,

each month or every 3,000 miles there will need to be 'fluid of life tm' change and check up.

this will only cost 33% of your disposable income. but there will be the add on tax to support corporations that have gone multi-national and no longer hire us citizens.

beginning in the year 2017 all citizens will be required to have their old outdated (not to be trusted) blood removed

at authorized corporate blood drainers tm

further good news is that while republicans argue for a blood draining credit voucher to cover this procedure for impoverished citizens (yes! the govt corporate state will even accept(demand) poverty blood)

and the democrats actaully want this procedure included in the new entittlements package.

(actually this will be the main entitlement) so, however bureaucratic corporate state (red, white, and blue) (altho this new entitlement also will take the red out of the red white and blue.) but isnt some dullish industrial gray a better color? and gives us a nostalgic rememberance when there was industry in america.

its the world we always dreamed of and coming soon