I’ve been thinking about shakiness. Actually I’ve been thinking about earthquakes, the US dollar, the February 2008 trade numbers, our trade deficits, our energy deficits, interest rates/ the “auction,” and inflation. Official numbers for our energy imports and our trade deficit(s) for this past February, and the cumulative trade deficit(s) for the calendar year thus far were released last week. While the media may have focused on the anomalies of a growing cluster of hundreds of unexplained quakes in the Pacific Ocean off the State of Oregon and the Friday morning 5.2 shaker in Southeastern Illinois, the real “shakiness stories” should have chronicled the further downward slide of the US Dollar relative to the other major world currencies. Unfortunately there is presently no “Richter Scale” for the precarious shakiness of the Buck. The Dollar is having major seizures! Please read on...

From Black Agenda Report

It is happening. The plans for the Bush administration to begin mass murder of the Iranian people have been put in motion. The plot was stalled temporarily by the National Intelligence Estimate report released last fall, a report which said that Iran did not have a nuclear weapons program. Bush and Cheney were thrown off their game, but not by much and not for long. They were inconvenienced but ultimately took the small set back in stride because they both knew they had nothing to worry about.

From Freedom Rider Blog

I think we can stop asking if Bush will attack Iran. This little gem was reported by the German news service DPA.

"The Saudi-based King Abdul-Aziz City for Science and Technology has prepared a proposal that encapsulates the probabilities of leaking nuclear and radiation hazards in case of any unexpected nuclear attacks in Iran, the Okaz Saudi newspaper said."

Well, that little NIE report last fall was just a minor inconvenience. Bush and Cheney know that if they keep lying they get their way. They also know that the Democrats will do nothing. John Conyers swears that he really, really means it this time. He claims he will hold impeachment hearings if Bush attacks Iran. Puhleeze. Spare us. The Democrats will do nothing and Bush knows it.

Labor

Since the end of World War II in the United States buying a house that was more than you could afford was an honored tradition because wages routinely went up and made the mortgage affordable, it should also be noted that during this time period a substantial down payment was also required so, should the borrower experience unforeseen trouble, his house would be worth more than the mortgage allowing him to sell his home and pay off the mortgage. Finally housing values appreciated slightly faster than inflation so a well maintained house would always be worth more than the balance on the mortgage. Several factors have changed in the last twenty years that have altered this pattern.

I’ve been thinking about benchmarks. Actually I’ve been thinking about the December 2007 trade numbers, the recession, our trade deficits, our energy deficits, a line drawn in the water, and mushrooms. The “official” numbers for our energy imports and our trade deficit(s) for this past December, and the cumulative trade deficit(s) for the calendar year just ended were released last week. There are some real eye openers in the figures. These should be filed away for comparison because 2008 is already shaping up for US/us to be a year of many changes – mostly downward! Please read on.

— from Truthdig

Why is it that George W. Bush gets only a 12 percent favorability rating in Saudi Arabia? Even Osama bin Laden and Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad scored higher in a poll last month by the nonpartisan Terror Free Tomorrow group, which counts both Republican Sen. John McCain and Democrat former Rep. Lee Hamilton on its advisory board. What ingrates those Saudis are. Didn't the Bush family save them twice from Saddam Hussein?

What more can this president do to curry favor with the Saudis? He forgave them for nurturing the Wahhabism that spawned al-Qaida, and he never embarrasses them with the fact that bin Laden and 15 of the19 hijackers who attacked America on 9/11 were born and raised in the kingdom. Nor did Bush let the inconvenient fact that the Saudi government had backed the Taliban until 9/11 intrude on his cozy relations with the royal family. That warmth, displayed at ranching cookouts in both countries, has now been reinforced by $20 billion in U.S. arms sales to the Saudis and their Persian Gulf allies, officially announced by Bush on Monday.

Last night I had an interview with Hannes Artens author of the recently published novel "The Writing on the Wall". Hannes is an experienced political analyst that has worked for the Carter Center in Atlanta and has been a political analyst for the German Government in middle Eastern political affairs.

Artens has come out with a novel "The Writing on the Wall" that centers around a fictionalized account of a war between Iran and the United States. In the interview he state that fiction was a way to get people to listen to the truth about how the nations in the Middle East and in other areas view our actions on the world arena since George W. Bush has been in the White House.

The ruler of Saudi Arabia, the elderly and despotic King Abdullah, recently visited Britain and was given the right Royal treatment, which doesn't mean to say that Queen Elizabeth herself approves of his two dozen (or so) wives and his family's personal habits, most of which would disgrace an ape colony. It happens that Her Majesty is head of state of a democracy and has to do what the grubby politicians in London 'advise' her. In this case they arranged that she should entertain a man who recently told editors of his well-disciplined newspapers that publishing photographs of women is "inappropriate" and who approves of women being whipped 200 times after being raped.

The Bush administration’s impending attack on Iran has always been about Saudi Arabia, Israel, oil, and regime change. Iran’s supposed nuclear program was just a convenient excuse for the attack.

America’s disintegrating economy, the plunging dollar, and a probable blowout by the democrats in 08 make a Bush administration attack on Iran an almost certainty, Bush will attempt to create his own scapegoat to blame for the mess his policies have created by attacking Iran.

What I expect to happen now that he can no longer use Iran’s nuclear program as an excuse is that we will get a new round of propaganda from the administration; “Iran is arming Iraqi militias with Explosive Formed Penetrators and they’re killing our soldiers” or a false flag incident which “America must respond to protect our honor.” Either way there is no way Bush is going to give up on attacking Iran. Israel wants it, the Saudi Royal family wants it, the American Neocons want it and with Halliburton’s new digs in Dubai within missile range of Iran, Halliburton wants it.

— from the Niagara Falls Reporter

DETROIT -- The news that Saudi Arabia is the nation providing the greatest number of foreign fighters in Iraq underscores the lies and duplicity at the foundation of President George W. Bush's policies in the Middle East.

When the undersecretary of the Treasury in charge of tracking terror financing points to Saudi Arabia as a continuing conduit for millions of dollars to al-Qaeda, and the president ignores the assessment and then certifies that "Saudi Arabia is cooperating with efforts to combat international terrorism," you know the fix is in.

This criminal administration has been beating the war drums on Iran for a long time now. The Democrats have been debating about “What to do with Iran”. Of course most Americans jump in with their own versions about this “Iranian problem” , but what the majority of Americans fail to see, is that whatever Iran does or doesn’t do, is absolutely none of our business.

The UN Charter that the United States is a signatory of, expressly states that the use of force, or the threat of the use of force, is prohibited unless a country has been attacked, and we have not been attacked by Iran. The Bush Administration also broke the UN Charter when he attacked Iraq. This is something that the American people will have to live with forever.

It had to happen at some point. The fiasco that started with the stolen election of 2000 has turned into a hornet's nest.

Today it was revealed that Bush's former press secretary Scott McClellan is accusing Bush, Cheney, Rove, Libby, and others of intentionally lying and misleading him and the public about the "outing" of CIA operative Valerie Plame. For the unaware, revealing the name of an intelligence agent is an act of treason. For the president and the vice president to engage in such criminality is the kind of perfidy that rises to the level of capital crime. For the unaware, this is punishable by the death penalty. I favor life without parole at hard labor.

Also, our chief "ally" in the Mideast, "Saudi Arabia," is showing its true colors, sentencing a rape victim to 200 lashes with a whip, presumably a cat o' nine tails. "Saudi Arabia" is also where Osama bin Laden and thirteen of the suspected September 11, 2001 hijackers called home.

Our national institutions - the Congress, the Judiciary, the mass media, the corporate elite - all have served to keep the Bush regime in power, and will likely do so until his term runs out, should he not declare martial law before then. These are the same national institutions that would have us believe that
this guy is the "mastermind" who conceived, planned, and carried out the worst attacks on the "U.S." in its entire history - completely outsmarting the strongest, most technologically advanced security apparatus known to mankind.

Meanwhile, we have a "horse race" to determine who will be the next president. There's advertising money to be made, careers to be made, fame and fortune to be made, and distractions to be conjured up. So let's all go along with it, eh?

Except there's too much going on. Global warming is looming, the economy is in decline, gas prices are going up, the "wars" in "Iraq" and "Afghanistan" are quagmires, and now we have proof that the country is run by traitors. Actually, the proof has been there all along. We just have evidence from the inside now.

Our great national institutions may not want to put the Bush gang where they belong, but I think it's safe to say they would like to. Bush has become the national albatross around our collective necks. As long as George W. Bush is president, the whole world knows that its "only superpower" is run by criminals of the worst kind.

So, as the hornet's nest becomes more disturbed, maybe even more truth will come out. Maybe we will finally be embarrassed into bringing the Bush gang to justice. The game is afoot.
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Here's a little light reading.
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Always look on the bright side of life.

You're a 19-year-old girl. Like most teenagers, you occasionally disobey orders, as you're trying to find your place in the world.

This time, you get into a car with a male acquaintance. Then a group of seven men kidnap and gang-rape you both. Repeatedly.

You would expect the authorities to provide you with all the appropriate support and social services to help you deal with the trauma, while they prosecute the rapists, right?

Not in Saudi Arabia.

The female victim, whose only real "crime" was to get into a car with a man who was not a relative, has been sentenced to six months in prison and 200 lashes. 200 lashes! For getting into a car with someone she knew.

I first addressed this concern about the US dollar in August of 2004. The following column appears to be one of the very earliest written which identified the OPEC pricing monopoly a major linch pin in the dollar's status as the world's reserve currency. At the time, I was suggesting how this was a significant factor behind the invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam. Hussein had first proposed Iraq's break with the US dollar pricing in early November of 2000, but implementation didn't really actually follow until December 2002. The US invasion of Iraq followed on March 19th, 2003. The very first official order of business for the "Coalition" for Provisional Authority (the CPA) was to "restore the dollar" to its former position in Iraq's limited oil and distillate sales. Please read on.

Who is an American? I hope the question is never answered too certainly. To answer it puts fences around the idea, contradicting the essence of America’s plural identity. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about being an American who once was an immigrant, it’s that the attempt to judge who is a proper American is in itself an act of profound ignorance that seeks to couch exclusion in the language of patriotic doctrine. So I’ve always found it more useful — more American — to question the questioner than to answer the question.

One thing I do believe in is keeping the President's children out of the controversy - and respecting his wish that his children be left alone. President Clinton felt the same way, and I concur. I also strongly believe that a President's sexual business is his own, just as it is with Corporate CEO's who run Fortune 500 Corporations; Investors could care less what the CEO does in his free time, but are only concerned with the bottom-line, and I believe this concept should be applied to sitting President's as well. Run our country and keep the nation prosperous and free from danger, and I personally don't care what they do in their spare time.

You would think that a prediction of a full-scale attack on Iran orchestrated by Israel and The United States with an exact date would be on every News Channel in the country, but so far I haven't seen even an honorable mention in regard this story; Why? It's evidently no secret in Europe, and although it was published by The New York Sun - there still hasn't been any meaningful reporting of this allegation. Now that France, the nation of my ancestry, has joined-in with Bush and Cheney's war-like rhetoric against Iran, a French weekly known for their investigative reporting published this startling story just two days ago:

I received a book from the publishing house Nimble Books called Red Zone Blues written by a journalist, Pepe Escobar, who has spent years in Iraq learning the nuances of the Iraqi Nation in covering the war for The Asia Times. This is a small book, and if you get it, which I highly recommend, you can finish it in a day, knowing more about Iraq than most people at the State Department.

The story that Escobar tells is one of pure angst. The situation of the Iraqi People is worse under the American occupation than it ever was under Saddam Hussein. The unemployment rate in Iraq is at a stunning 60%, with most people in Baghdad, once the crown jewel of Islam, begging in the streets trying to feed their families. Escobar writes about the different factions in Iraq and he puts down the US notion that it is “sectarian” violence, he says it is not. Escobar tells of Sunni’s supporting Shia and vice versa. He talks about the Sadr Army and Sadr City, poor but stable. He explains why the Sadr Army is “laying low” not confronting the Americans, but waiting and calling on them to leave.

Something I stumbled across,hope it wasn't posted here before!

Fidel Castro: The Empire and Falsehood

http://www.escambray.cu/Eng/Special/Reflections%20by%20Fidel%20Castro/Cfalsehood070912850.htm

It was Reagan who created the Cuban American National Foundation, whose sinister involvement in the blockade and in terrorist actions against Cuba would be revealed years later, when the United States declassified secret documents, albeit full of information that had been shamefully crossed out. Had these documents come to light earlier, our conduct would not have been different.

When, on March 30, 1981, we received news in Cuba that Reagan had been shot with a low-caliber weapon in an assassination attempt, we sent him a message condemning the act. The 22-caliber lead bullet lodged in one of his lungs was causing him pain and putting his life at risk. The message is contained in the conversation that, following precise instructions, our then minister of foreign affairs, Isidoro Malmierca, had with Wayne Smith, former head of the US Interests Section in Havana.

People might not want to hear this, but there is no clear solution to what this administration has brought to us in Iraq. A sudden pullout would in fact leave many Iraqi civilians in harm’s way in an all out offensive by sectarian violence. This is unavoidable; we are seeing this while our troops are still there. Nothing except committing more troops, which at this point is impossible will stop this carnage.

Iran on the other hand, will have an unparalleled opportunity to become the dominant power in the Middle East by exploiting the weakness of the Iraqi central government. This is a fact friend, not fiction. As a student of history I can just about guarantee that Iran will be the de facto ruler of Iraq. They had a six year war with Iraq and had over a million casualties. The United States backed that war and Iran will not forget. This poses a serious problem for The United States.