Our Commentary on the year past and the year ahead

2006 was the year that the United States died. Over the course of a year, just a few seconds in the span of a country, it’s civilization and their way of life, we have witnessed the premature death of America. The underpinnings, the basic canons and the tenets of the United States, as well as it’s physical borders, are gone.

But they can be brought back.

The problem is denial. You cannot put something right until you identify it as a wrong. The New World Order has won a major victory, but because the country is made up of living tissue, each and every one of us out there, every man woman and child, it can rise from the dead. We can revive the country by passing electricity through its heart.

Until recently Europe was deep in the EU but as the final steps were being implemented, the people pulled back and voted down EU expansion in every country. The same has happened in South America. So we do see whole regions, countries and areas rising from the dead in this sense. (more…)

An international trade union, working in at least three countries, could be created within a decade, the leader of one of Britain’s biggest unions has predicted.

Amicus, which has 1.1 million members and is soon to merge with the T&G, has forged solidarity agreements with IG Metall in Germany and two American unions, the Machinists and the United Steel Workers. The T&G also has links with the SEIU, the US service industry union.

Derek Simpson, general secretary of Amicus, said: “Our aim is to create a powerful single union that can transcend borders to challenge the global forces of capital. I envisage a functioning, if loosely federal, multinational trade union organisation within the next decade.”

One of Amicus’s predecessor unions, the AEEU, held merger talks with IG Metall seven years ago but the idea was put on ice.

Unions are increasingly keen to forge international links in an attempt to match up to globalised industry. Their intention is to force multinational companies to deal with one union rather than be able to make changes in one country and not consult unions elsewhere. (more…)

Protesters in Germany have attacked a luxury hotel where the next G8 summit will be held in June. The action comes just days after an arson attack on a politician’s house. Meanwhile politicians bicker over who will pay for the massive security operation.

Anti-globalization protests have become a routine part of the annual G8 economic summits, and activism against the meeting in Germany planned for June 2007 has already started — with attacks this week on a politician’s house and the luxury hotel that will host world leaders.

The Kempinski Grand Hotel in Heiligendamm on Germany’s Baltic coast was attacked with paint balls in the early hours of Thursday morning. According to the interior minister of the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where the hotel is located, the attack caused damage to a value of €1,900 ($2,500). Leaders from the G8 member states will meet in the hotel at the summit in June 2007.

An unnamed group sent a letter to the German news agency DPA claiming responsibility and writing that the attack was a prelude to a series of protests against the summit. “It doesn’t matter how many police are on the ground,” the letter read. “There are more of us and we want to be at the site. And we will manage to do that.” (more…)

On January 1, 2007, Europe celebrates the fifth anniversary of the launch of euro notes and coins by welcoming a thirteenth member of the eurozone – Slovenia, the tiny former Yugoslav republic. But the eurozone’s geographical expansion is modest in comparison with the rapid growth in euro notes in circulation within the region and beyond.

Earlier this month, the value of euro notes pushed through the €600bn (£402bn; $787bn) level – roughly double the value of the then-national currencies in circulation at the end of 2001. The signs are that in December the currency came of age by overtaking the US dollar in terms of the value of notes in circulation. The figures used for the comparison by the Financial Times include notes held in the vaults of commercial banks but exclude reserves of notes held by central banks.

Slovenia’s small size – its population is just 2m – means that the impact of its entry will be hard to separate from the usual spike in demand for cash around Christmas and New Year, according to Antti Heinonen, head of the European central bank’s bank notes directorate. So what has driven rapid growth in euro notes?

After the 2002 launch, the rate of increase slowed, but has remained at or above 10 per cent a year. The exact reasons are unclear; even central banks do not know where their notes are or for what purposes they are used. (more…)

I’ll give you a hint - it won’t be at The Ritz.

[T]he administration is preparing plans to bolster the nation’s permanent active-duty military with as many as 70,000 additional troops.

But, WHERE will they come from???

The government doesn’t have very many options.

Support for the war, especially in Iraq, is at an all time low, they can’t reinstitute the draft, or they might have a domestic revolution on their hands, and there are only so many desperate young men who are willing to risk their lives for a few bucks and a college education.

But, thanks to persistent inflation, relentless job cuts, and other benefits and perks of globalization, there ARE increasing numbers of desperate young single mothers, who will do anything to support their children. (more…)

I just returned from a week in Washington, D.C., with a group of concerned women where we learned about the Security and Prosperity Partnership, also known as “The North American Union.”

This partnership was agreed upon at a private meeting held in Waco, Texas, on March 23, 2005, among then-president of Mexico Vicente Fox, U.S. President George Bush and then-Prime Minister Paul Martin of Canada.

The SPP is an agreement to merge our United States of America with Mexico and Canada.

I am outraged about what the Bush administration is doing with this partnership behind Congress’ back. (more…)

WASHINGTON — Pushed up by soaring oil prices, America’s trade deficit surged to a record high in the summer, but analysts predicted a slowly improving imbalance in the months ahead.

The current account trade deficit increased 3.9 percent to an all-time high of $225.6 billion in the July-September quarter, the Commerce Department reported Monday.

That third-quarter deficit was equal to 6.8 percent of the total economy, up from 6.6 percent of gross domestic product in the second quarter. (more…)

Robert Pastor, a leading intellectual force in the move to create an EU-style North American Community, told WND he believes a new 9/11 crisis could be the catalyst to merge the U.S., Mexico and Canada.

Pastor, a professor at American University, says that in such a case the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, or SPP – launched in 2005 by the heads of the three countries at a summit in Waco, Texas – could be developed into a continental union, complete with a new currency, the amero, that would replace the U.S. dollar just as the euro has replaced the national currencies of Europe.

In May 2005, Pastor was co-chairman the Council on Foreign Relations task force that produced a report entitled “Toward a North American Community,” which he has claimed is the blueprint behind the SSP declared by President Bush, Mexico’s then-President Vicente Fox, and Canada’s then-Prime Minister Paul Martin. (more…)

In May of 2005, a Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) task force released “Building a North American Community”, a blueprint for merging the United States, Mexico and Canada into one country called “North America”. The plan, which is being implemented via the Security and Prosperity Partnership agreement signed last year between the leaders of the three countries, will destroy the sovereignty of the USA. The United States will cease to exist as an independent nation. The United States Constitution , including the Bill of Rights, will be extinct. Implementation of such a plan is, therefore, by definition, an act of TREASON. No other word fits the crime.

Critical to the execution of this high crime is the careful application of propaganda. To that end, the academic community within the United States is being enlisted to sell the idea that destroying America is a good idea. On page 29 of “Building a North American Community” is a recommendation to “Develop a network of centers for North American studies…We recommend that the three governments open a competition and provide grants to universities in each of the three countries to promote courses, education, and research on North America…”

Arizona State University is one of the first academic traitors to volunteer to sell out American sovereignty. ASU have put up a website, http://www.asu.edu/clas/nacts/bna, intended to be an instructional tool to assist and encourage professors to teach the concept of “North America” to their unwitting student body. (more…)

The Bangladeshi banker Muhammad Yunus, who invented the practice of making small, unsecured loans to the poor, warned today that the globalized economy was becoming a dangerous “free-for-all highway.”

“Its lanes will be taken over by the giant trucks from powerful economies,” Dr. Yunus said during a lavish ceremony at which he was awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. “Bangladeshi rickshaws will be thrown off the highway.”

While international companies motivated by profit may be crucial in addressing global poverty, he said, nations must also cultivate grassroots enterprises and the human impulse to do good.

Challenging economic theories that he learned as a Ph.D. student at Vanderbilt University, in Nashville in the 1970s, he said glorification of the entrepreneurial spirit has led to “one-dimensional human beings” motivated only by profit. (more…)

Think deep recession likely regardless of Fed’s actions

Two analysts who have reconstructed money supply data after the Fed stopped publishing it argue a coming dollar collapse will set the stage for creating the amero as a North American currency to replace the dollar.
The reconstructed M3 data – the broadest measure of money – published on econometrician Gary Kuever’s website, NowAndFutures.com, shows M3 increased at a rate of 11 percent in May, compared to 9 percent when the Federal Reserve quit publishing M3 data earlier this year.

Asked why the Fed decided to stop publishing M3 data, Kuever told WND, “The Fed probably wants to hide how much liquidity is being pumped into the market, and I expect the trend to keep pumping liquidity into the market will continue, especially since the economy is slowing down.” (more…)

An investigation by a government oversight agency recently revealed that in 2005 U.S. immigration authorities either “lost” or could not account for an estimated 111,000 files on immigrants to the United States, resulting in tens of thousands gaining citizenship without any indication as to whether authorities had checked to see if any of them had a criminal history.

The shocking loss was discovered in a study by the Government Accounting Office (GAO) sought by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). As many as 30,000 immigrants obtained citizenship with limited scrutiny as a result.

“In 2002, we had a person who was a threat to the United States that got citizenship and the file wasn’t even reviewed,” Grassley said on the Lou Dobbs TV show Dec. 4.

“How can this happen? Basic incompetence of paperwork or the fact that even paperwork exists as opposed to having this stuff on computer where it can be saved.” (more…)

Factories in Bangladesh are breaking pledges to workers made by big UK retailers

Some of Britain’s best-known high street brands are selling “cheap chic” clothes at the expense of workers in Bangladesh who are paid 5p an hour despite pledges to protect basic labour rights, an investigation by War on Want will reveal today.

Employees in Bangladesh are forced to work excessive hours, refused access to trade unions and face abuse and sacking if they protest, says the report, Fashion Victims, based on interviews with 60 garment workers from six factories.

War on Want says that although Primark, Asda and Tesco have stated publicly they will limit the working week and pay a “living wage” overseas, these commitments are flouted in their suppliers’ factories. The Guardian, which interviewed workers in Dhaka, confirmed the allegations of excessive hours and poor working conditions in the report. Employees making clothes for the three retailers said they had no choice but to work longer than the agreed 60 hours a week. (more…)