French Plans to Topple Gaddafi on Track since last November

According to right-wing Italian journalist Franco Bechis, plans to spark the Benghazi rebellion were initiated by French intelligence services in November 2010. As Miguel Martinez from the progressive ComeDonChisciotte website observes, these revelations which have the blessing of the Italian secret services should be interpreted as the sign of existing rivalries within the European capitalist camp. Voltaire Network wishes to point out that Paris promptly paired up with London in its scheme to overthrow Colonel Khadafi (Franco-British expeditionary force). This plan was recalibrated in the context of the Arab revolutions and taken over by Washington, which imposed its own objectives (counter-revolution in the Arab world and landing AFRICOM on the African continent). Therefore, the current coalition arises from a diversity of ambitions, which accounts for its internal contradictions. The timeline of events which set the stage for the military intervention against Libya is presented below.

Timeline of events

October 6, 2011

Nouri Mesmari turned himself over to the French secret service and, according to the Italians, he masterminded the revolution against Gaddafi. The document was leaked to Italian newspaper Libero.

In the documents, the French secret services refer to Mesmari as ‘The Libyan Wikileak’ because he gave them all the inside information about the regime as well as account of who’s who in Libya and who they should or should not contact.

With all the inside information, the Italians claim that by mid-January the French had paved the way for the beginning of the revolution against Gaddafi. November 18, 2010

A French ‘commercial’ delegation leaves for Benghazi. In the delegation there are officials from the Ministry of Agriculture and representitives from Cam Cereals, France Export Cereals, Cargill, Glencore, France Agrimer, Soufflet, Louis Dreyfous, and Comagra. Among the delegation, posing as government officials, there are French secret service agents and military staff. Their ‘business’ was meeting army officers fingered by Mesmari as being willing to defect from the Libyan army.

While in Benghazi, contact is made with Libyan air defence colonel Abdallah Gehani, who was designated by Nouri Mesmari as an army officer who is ready to collaborate in toppling Muammar Gaddafi. Gehani had good contacts in Tunisia too.

It is a secret operation but the Libyan regime suspects that a double game was being played and that something was about to happen.

November 28, 2010

An international warrant of arrest is issued by the Libyan government for Nouri Mesrami. Foreign Minister Musa Koussa is held responsible for the defection of Mesrami and his passport is withdrawn by the authorities.

December 2, 2010

French authorities announce that they have arrested a collaborator of Gaddafi. Word reaches Gaddafi that Mesrami is under house arrest at the Concorde Lafayette Hotel and is furious that his former friend and colleague asked for political asylum in France, where he still resides to this date. In fact during the first week of the uprising in Libya Mesrami gave interviews to Al Jazeera from a Paris studio.

Muammar Gaddafi sends messages to Nouri Mesrami to win him back saying that he forgives him for what he did and invites him back to Libya.

December 16, 2010

An Gaddafi emissary, Head of state media Abdallah Mansour, is arrested at the Hotel Concorde Lafayette trying to contact Mesrami.

December 23, 2010

A delegation of Libyans arrives in Paris for meetings with Mesrami and other French officials. The Libyans are Ali Ounes Mansouri, Farj Charrant and Fathi Boukhris. These three men will be known later together with Ali Hajj as leaders of the revolution, that started from Benghazi.

The Libyan delegation together with Mesrami and French military and secret service personnel dined at an elegant French restaurant at the Champs Elisée.

December 25 – 31, 2010

Between Christmas and the start of the New Year, the French are in possession of all the details and available inside information; in the compilation of the Maghreb Confidential document, it is stated that “the situation in Benghazi is boiling”.

Januray 22, 2011

Colonel Abdallah Gehani is arrested by the chief of the secret service in Cerenaica, Aoudh Saaiti. Two days later the Colonel is transferred to a prison in Tripoli and accused of treason with the aim of holding back any dissent. But it was too late, the ball was already rolling and the first signs of the revolution were seen a few days after a prominent lawyer, Fathi Tarbel, was arrested. The protest soon turned into clashes and as army officials deserted, the rebels advanced and took over important cities, but so far they have failed to take Tripoli.

The French government led the airstrikes over Libya, was the first European state to recognise the new Libyan National Council and establish diplomatic relations. Since the Italian government was made aware of the documents, it started to take the back seat in the Libya crisis, and Prime Minister Berlusconi said that Italian military planes will not be engaged in airstrikes and that he hopes that it does not end in war

Global Research Articles by Voltaire Network

Economic Depression in America: Housing’s Double Dip

The housing market is now in full retreat. This week, the Commerce Department reported that sales of new homes plunged nearly 17 percent in February to a 250,000 annual pace. That’s a record low. At the same time, the median price fell 8.9 percent from February of last year. The news comes on the heels of Monday’s equally-dismal report that showed existing home sales dropped 9.6 percent in February. These are Depression era stats and builders know it which is why they’re unloading homes as cheaply as possible. It’s been 5 years since housing prices peaked in July 2006, and the market is still nowhere near the bottom. In fact, the rate of decline is accelerating. This is shaping up to be the worst spring in history.

If you want to know where the housing market is headed, keep an eye on inventory. That’s the whole ball of wax. When inventory balloons, prices go down. At present, inventory is rising (8.9 month’s supply) which means that prices have further to fall. But these figures don’t include the vast shadow inventory that the banks are holding off-market. Many analysts think there could be another 5 to 6 years of inventory stacked up on bank’s balance sheets. The Wall Street Journal’s Mark Whitehouse takes an even grimmer view. He thinks the backlog could be in the vicinity of 9 years. Here’s a clip from his article in the WSJ:

“Banks’ vast pile of foreclosed homes doesn’t appear to be diminishing. That’s a troubling sign for the future of the housing market.

Back in April, this column tallied up all the foreclosed homes sitting in banks’ inventory, as well as the “shadow” inventory of homes in the foreclosure process or on which owners had missed at least two mortgage payments. At the time, we reported that at the current rate of sales, it would take 103 months to unload it all.

Over the past six months, that number has actually risen. Banks managed to pare down the shadow inventory, but largely by taking possession of foreclosed homes. As of September, they owned nearly 994,000 foreclosed homes, up 21% from a year earlier. The shadow inventory stood at 5.2 million homes, down 7% from a year earlier. Grand total: 107 months of inventory.

The numbers aren’t exactly comparable to the April analysis, as the providers of data have changed. The inventory data now come from RealtyTrac, the shadow inventory data from LPS Applied Analytics, and the sales data from Core Logic. But no matter how you slice it, the housing market faces almost nine years of foreclosure hangover…..

The mountain of foreclosed homes casts a long shadow.” (“Number of the Week: 107 Months to Clear Banks’ Housing Backlog”, Mark Whitehouse, Wall Street Journal)

If this glut of homes was suddenly dumped onto the market, prices would go into freefall and the banks would be swallowed up by the red ink. That would force the Fed would to initiate another bailout. (which Bernanke definitely does not want) So the banks are releasing homes in dribs and drabs while concealing the number of non-performing loans they’re holding from shareholders. It’s all a giant coverup.

This is from Bloomberg:

“The number of homes in foreclosure rose to a record 2.2 million in January, according to Lender Processing Services Inc. in Jacksonville, Florida. About 23 percent of homeowners with mortgages had negative equity in the fourth quarter, meaning their home-loan balances were higher than the value of their properties, CoreLogic Inc. said in a March 8 report.”

Prices are falling, home equity is drying up, foreclosures are at record highs, and the incentive to “walk away” and let the bank take the mortgage-loss has never been greater. All of the mortgage modification programs have been a total failure. The Fed purchased $1.7 trillion of garbage mortgage-backed securities (MBS) from the banks, but hasn’t lifted a finger to help homeowners. All of the pain from the $8 trillion housing bubble has all been shunted onto the backs of ordinary working people.

Present policy continues the same pattern of relentless class warfare. Since Bernanke announced his bond purchasing program (QE2) in November, the Fed has bought $440 billion of US Treasuries notes from the banks. This has pushed equities up nearly 15 percent which (according to the Fed’s flow of funds report) makes it look like consumers are rebounding from the deep losses they experienced during the financial crisis. But the figures are misleading. The wealthiest 5 percent of Americans control more than half of all the nation’s financial assets whereas the bottom 50 percent have almost none. So the uptick in stocks doesn’t improve their situation nearly as much as a boost in home values. When housing prices go up, homeowners are more apt to spend which increases economic activity and stimulates growth. The New York Fed just released a working paper last week which showed that “Between 2000 and 2007, consumer borrowing added an annual average of about $330 billion to the cash they could spend; by 2009, consumers were diverting $150 billion away from potential spending in order to reduce the debts they had built up. This represents a remarkable $480 billion reversal in cash flow in just two years.” (NY Fed)

So housing prices are critical to getting the economy back on track. But in a time when all the gains in productivity are upwardly-transferred to management, workers are more dependent than ever on rising asset values in order to increase their consumption. That’s why consumer spending will stay flat until housing prices go up.

Obama’s unwillingness to seriously address the housing crisis has extended the period of household deleveraging and added to economic sluggishness. He needs to force the banks to negotiate cramdowns (principle reduction) and keep more people in their homes. That’s Job#1. Then he needs to boost fiscal stimulus to lower unemployment and increase demand for housing. The Fed’s quantitative easing (QE2) can’t fix this problem. It can buoy stocks and lower long-term interest rates, but it can’t create jobs, patch household balance sheets, or stabilize housing prices. This week’s plunging new home sales proves that Bernanke’s strategy is a flop. It’s time to move on to Plan B.

The Al Qaeda Connection: Who are we Helping in Libya? Here are Some Answers.

The following press excerpts by the Fabius Mazimus website provide information on the nature of the Libyan opposition, including its links to Al Qaeda.

——————————————————————————–

Summary: This post looks at some of what little public information we have about the Libyan rebels. It’s not encouraging, and forms a weird foundation for our interventionists dreams about Libya.

Contents

Who are the rebels? – Libya’s Opposition Leadership Comes into Focus, Stratfor, 20 March 2011
Confident guessing: “A Libyan Fight for Democracy, or a Civil War?“, New York Times, 21 March 2011
A cautionary note: “Libyan rebel commander admits his fighters have al-Qaeda links”, The Telegraph, 25 March 2011
About the rebels organization and military skills: Libya: rebels without a hope?, Martin Ottmann, website of the School of International Relation at the U of Nottingham, 21 March 2011
About the rebels military resources: “Libyan rebels’ weapons deficit”, International Institute of Strategic Studies, 8 March 2011
For more information
Excerpts

(1) Libya’s Opposition Leadership Comes into Focus, Stratfor, 20 March 2011 — It”s coming into focus, but still remains vague. We’re fighting to bring a new regime into power, of a nature To Be Determined Later. Excerpt:

One of the biggest problems Western governments have faced throughout the Libyan crisis has been identifying who exactly the “eastern rebels” are. Until the uprising began in February, there was thought to be no legitimate opposition to speak of in the country, and thus no contacts between the United States, the United Kingdom, France or others. Many of those who now speak for the rebel movement are headquartered in Benghazi. There have been several defections, however, from the regime of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi to the eastern rebel leadership, and it is men like these with whom the West is now trying to engage as the possible next generation of leadership in Libya, should its unstated goal of regime change come to fruition.

The structure through which the Libyan opposition is represented is the National Transitional Council. The first man to announce its creation was former Libyan Justice Minister Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, who defected from the government Feb. 21 and declared the establishment of a “transitional government” Feb. 26. At the time, Abdel-Jalil claimed that it would give way to national elections within three months, though this was clearly never a realistic goal.

…The National Transitional Council officially came into being March 6. … The transitional council asserts that it derives its legitimacy from the series of city councils that have been running the affairs of the east since the February uprising that turned all of eastern Libya into rebel-held territory.

… It is important to note that little of the territory that fell into rebel control in the early days of the insurrection was actually occupied through conquest. Many military and security forces in the east either deserted or defected to the opposition, which brought not only men and arms, but also the territory those troops ostensibly controlled. Most fighting that occurred once the situation transitioned into what is effectively a civil war, particularly in the main population centers along the coastal stretch between Benghazi and Sirte, consisted of relatively small, lightly armed formations conducting raids, rather than either side decisively defeating a major formation and pacifying a town.

(2) “A Libyan Fight for Democracy, or a Civil War?“, New York Times, 21 March 2011 — Confident guessing with one cautionary note. Excerpt:

The question has hovered over the Libyan uprising from the moment the first tank commander defected to join his cousins protesting in the streets of Benghazi: Is the battle for Libya the clash of a brutal dictator against a democratic opposition, or is it fundamentally a tribal civil war?

… “It is a very important question that is terribly near impossible to answer,” said Paul Sullivan, a political scientist at Georgetown University who has studied Libya. “It could be a very big surprise when Qaddafi leaves and we find out who we are really dealing with.”

(3) “Libyan rebel commander admits his fighters have al-Qaeda links“, The Telegraph, 25 March 2011 — “Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, the Libyan rebel leader, has said jihadists who fought against allied troops in Iraq are on the front lines of the battle against Muammar Gaddafi’s regime.” Excerpt:

In an interview with the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, Mr al-Hasidi admitted that he had recruited “around 25″ men from the Derna area in eastern Libya to fight against coalition troops in Iraq. Some of them, he said, are “today are on the front lines in Adjabiya”. Mr al-Hasidi insisted his fighters “are patriots and good Muslims, not terrorists,” but added that the “members of al-Qaeda are also good Muslims and are fighting against the invader”.

His revelations came even as Idriss Deby Itno, Chad’s president, said al-Qaeda had managed to pillage military arsenals in the Libyan rebel zone and acquired arms, “including surface-to-air missiles, which were then smuggled into their sanctuaries”.

Even though the LIFG is not part of the al-Qaeda organisation, the United States military’s West Point academy has said the two share an “increasingly co-operative relationship”. In 2007, documents captured by allied forces from the town of Sinjar, showed LIFG emmbers made up the second-largest cohort of foreign fighters in Iraq, after Saudi Arabia.

Earlier this month, al-Qaeda issued a call for supporters to back the Libyan rebellion, which it said would lead to the imposition of “the stage of Islam” in the country.

Mr al-Hasidi admitted he had earlier fought against “the foreign invasion” in Afghanistan, before being “captured in 2002 in Peshwar, in Pakistan”. He was later handed over to the US, and then held in Libya before being released in 2008.

US and British government sources said Mr al-Hasidi was a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, or LIFG, which killed dozens of Libyan troops in guerrilla attacks around Derna and Benghazi in 1995 and 1996.

(4) Libya: rebels without a hope?, Martin Ottmann, Bullets & Ballots — website of the School of International Relation at the U of Nottingham, 21 March 2011 — Excerpt:

… many hope the Libyan rebels will finish the job of removing Gaddafi from power on their own. As in Afghanistan in 2001, airstrikes could pave the way for an advance of rebel troops towards the capital. But are these hopes realistic? To answer this question you have to assess the military and political capabilities of the Libyan rebels, something I have done as part of my PhD research on rebels in sub-Saharan Africa.

According to the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS), the Libyan rebels possess only very moderate military means. … The rebels also rely on taxis taking their troops to the frontline. This is no match for Gaddafi’s well-equipped forces. Therefore, even if the rebels manage to beef up their military capabilities … they will at best only be capable of holding on to their strongholds in Eastern Libya. Ultimately, this would result in a stalemate and cement a partition of the country.

However, as my research suggests, civil wars are not decided solely on the battlefield: the competition between government and rebels over popular support is also of great importance for the outcome of such a conflict. In the case of Libya, popular support for the rebels could lead to further defections of government units thereby decisively changing the military balance. The question is whether the rebels can create this support on a significant scale.

My research suggests that it is often the political leadership of a rebel movement and its population base that are the most important influences behind building popular support. Regarding the first factor, the Libyan rebels appear to be considerably fragmented over political objectives and strategy. It is unclear whether they can formulate a coherent alternative able to muster widespread support. Moreover, a combination of obscure dissidents and former members of Gaddafi’s ruling clique presently form the rebel leadership. It is questionable whether Libyans will be willing to put their fate in the hands of such men.

Finally, it is vital to remember that Libyan politics often equates with tribal politics: loyalty and allegiance runs along tribal lines. This is something that might favour Gaddafi. As the rebel strongholds of Benghazi and Tobruk have opposed the Colonel’s rule in the past, he might play the tribal card to divide his opponents. But even if he fails, tribal divisions mean it will be difficult for the rebels to create widespread national support.

The Libyan rebels therefore, seem to lack the necessary political and military capabilities to remove Gaddafi from power. Hopes that the imposition of a no-fly-zone will lead to anything other than stalemate are based more on wishful Western thinking than rational analysis.

(5) “Libyan rebels’ weapons deficit“, International Institute of Strategic Studies, 8 March 2011 — Excerpt:

Fighting in Libya between pro- and anti-Gadhafi forces has preoccupied the world’s media for the past few weeks. A completely clear picture of the relative balance of forces has not been available. However, image intelligence (IMINT) analysis of Libyan military bases can shed some light on the current situation and offer indicators as to what might follow.

… From satellite imagery, the differences between the military units stationed in the east of the country, which has traditionally been anti-Tripoli, and those in the west are stark. Apart from a few mechanised units in Benghazi and Tobruk, and a few armoured battalions near Albayda, rebel-controlled areas lack any substantial hardware with which to take on the pro-Gadhafi stronghold of Tripoli.

By comparison, a ring of forces is stationed in the south-eastern suburbs of Tripoli, with a large armoured formation of possibly brigade strength 50 kilometres south of the city. The pro-Gadhafi regions are also well garrisoned with artillery, anti-aircraft and mechanised formations.

… Clearly, however, the rebel forces are not without supplies. The large arms depots outside Benghazi (Ar Rajmah), Misratah and Ajdabiya should provide enough heavy machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), and mortars for a light fighting force. There is also a large artillery depot in the Western Fwayhat district of Benghazi, stocked with what appears to be BM21 Grad multi-launch rocket systems. However, without proper planning and training, it would be difficult to bring these to bear in the eventual showdown at Tripoli.

From the disposition of forces, it is clear that Gadhafi has long neglected the military formations in the east; the dilapidated bases and installations there contrast sharply with the well-kept barracks and tank parks outside Tripoli. Thus far, the few armoured units deployed by the rebels have been obsolete T55 tanks, while pro-Gadhafi units are on the streets of the capital in relatively modern T72s. This goes a long way towards explaining why the momentum generated by the revolution has yet to overwhelm pro-regime forces.

The geographically dispersed nature of the uprising means a lack of proper frontlines. This has made normal military logistical support for either side difficult to maintain beyond basic fuel and ammunition supplies. Few large formations are being deployed by either side. Recent fighting around the strategic oil town of Ras Lanuf demonstrated this clearly, with only a few hundred participants on both sides.

As well as T55 tanks, rebel forces have employed some ZSU 23mm anti-aircraft guns and Type 63 107mm rocket launchers. The rebels have also been modifying civilian pick-up trucks by installing large-calibre machine guns on the back, generally referred to as ’technicals’; some of the weapons seem to have been removed from armoured vehicles. Beside this, the various militias and volunteers are equipped with an assortment of small arms, mortars and RPGs.

In turn, forces in Tripoli have employed T72 and T62 tanks, plus BMP1 infantry fighting vehicles, based around the capital. Pro-Gadhafi infantry have also used ‘technicals’. Air assets used against rebel positions have so far included MiG23 Flogger and Mi-25/35 Hind attack helicopters. Self-propelled artillery guns such as the 2S1 have also been deployed on the roads towards Tripoli. These are considerably more powerful than anything the rebels can muster.

Although government forces appear to have an enormous armament advantage, the fighting so far shows they are lacking in morale. In recent skirmishes in small coastal towns the rebels have easily repelled the pro-government forces’ largely uncoordinated attacks with the most rudimentary of weapons. The loyalty of the air force has also been called into question as many bombs have been reportedly dropped miles from their targets.

Even though the militias and volunteer groups are largely uncoordinated, a small group of former soldiers and officers have been attempting to organise a core of recruits trained in the fundamentals of warfare in Benghazi. The time needed to ready these men will have a tremendous effect on the final assault on Tripoli.

The other main concern for the rebels beside the lack of organisation is the lack of logistical support. Because of their reliance on civilian vehicles for the movement of men and equipment, rebel pushes towards government-controlled areas have been restricted to the main coastal roads. This means they can be flanked if the tracked mechanised forces of the government decide to bypass the roadblocks on the road to Benghazi.

(6) For more information

Studies about Libya:

“Al‐Qa’ida’s Foreign Fighters in Iraq: A First Look at the Sinjar Records“, Joseph Felter (Lieutenant Colonel, former Special Forces, now Director of the CTC; bio here) and Brian Fishman (Instructor, bio here), the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) at West Point, 19 December 2007
Posts about recent events in the Middle East:

The Middle East scorecard, 18 March 2011
Events in the Middle East expose the nature of US foreign policy. There is yet time to change before we hit the rocks., 20 March 2011
Posts about Libya:

Libya’s people need uninvited infidel foreigners to save them!, 1 March 2011
“You just have not seen enough people bleed to death”, 8 March 2011
About attacking Libya – let’s give this more thought than we did Afghanistan and Iraq, 6 March 2009
Our geopolitical experts see the world with the innocent eyes of children (that’s a bad thing), 14 March 2011
A war monger review, looking at the articles advocating a US war with Libya, 22 March 2011
What will the world’s tyrants learn from the Libyan War? Get nukes., 25 March 2011
Posts about Egypt:

“The Revolution Is Not Yet Over”, Yasmine El Rashidi, blog of the New York Review of Books, 23 February 2011
“Volcano of Rage“, Max Rodenbeck, New York Review of Books, 24 February 2011
Important information about the riots in Egypt, FM website, 30 January 2011
Why do we fear the rioters in Egypt?, FM website,30 January 2011
Sources of information about the situation in Egypt, FM website, 6 February 2011

Truth, Propaganda and Media Manipulation

by Global Research

Global Research, March 27, 2011

Never before has it been so important to have independent, honest voices and sources of information. We are – as a society – inundated and overwhelmed with a flood of information from a wide array of sources, but these sources of information, by and large, serve the powerful interests and individuals that own them. The main sources of information, for both public and official consumption, include the mainstream media, alternative media, academia and think tanks.

The mainstream media is the most obvious in its inherent bias and manipulation. The mainstream media is owned directly by large multinational corporations, and through their boards of directors are connected with a plethora of other major global corporations and elite interests. An example of these connections can be seen through the board of Time Warner.

Time Warner owns Time Magazine, HBO, Warner Bros., and CNN, among many others. The board of directors includes individuals past or presently affiliated with: the Council on Foreign Relations, the IMF, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Warburg Pincus, Phillip Morris, and AMR Corporation, among many others.

Two of the most “esteemed” sources of news in the U.S. are the New York Times (referred to as “the paper of record”) and the Washington Post. The New York Times has on its board people who are past or presently affiliated with: Schering-Plough International (pharmaceuticals), the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Chevron Corporation, Wesco Financial Corporation, Kohlberg & Company, The Charles Schwab Corporation, eBay Inc., Xerox, IBM, Ford Motor Company, Eli Lilly & Company, among others. Hardly a bastion of impartiality.

And the same could be said for the Washington Post, which has on its board: Lee Bollinger, the President of Columbia University and Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; Warren Buffett, billionaire financial investor, Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway; and individuals associated with (past or presently): the Coca-Cola Company, New York University, Conservation International, the Council on Foreign Relations, Xerox, Catalyst, Johnson & Johnson, Target Corporation, RAND Corporation, General Motors, and the Business Council, among others.

It is also important to address how the mainstream media is intertwined, often covertly and secretly, with the government. Carl Bernstein, one of the two Washington Post reporters who covered the Watergate scandal, revealed that there were over 400 American journalists who had “secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency.” Interestingly, “the use of journalists has been among the most productive means of intelligence-gathering employed by the CIA.” Among organizations which cooperated with the CIA were the “American Broadcasting Company, the National Broadcasting Company, the Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps-Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald-Tribune.”

By far the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA officials, have been with the New York Times, CBS and Time Inc. The CIA even ran a training program “to teach its agents to be journalists,” who were “then placed in major news organizations with help from management.”

These types of relationships have continued in the decades since, although perhaps more covertly and quietly than before. For example, it was revealed in 2000 that during the NATO bombing of Kosovo, “several officers from the US Army’s 4th Psychological Operations (PSYOPS) Group at Ft. Bragg worked in the news division at CNN’s Atlanta headquarters.” This same Army Psyop outfit had “planted stories in the U.S. media supporting the Reagan Administration’s Central America policies,” which was described by the Miami Herald as a “vast psychological warfare operation of the kind the military conducts to influence a population in enemy territory.” These Army PSYOP officers also worked at National Public Radio (NPR) at the same time. The US military has, in fact, had a strong relationship with CNN.

In 2008, it was reported that the Pentagon ran a major propaganda campaign by using retired Generals and former Pentagon officials to present a good picture of the administration’s war-time policies. The program started in the lead-up to the Iraq War in 2003 and continued into 2009. These officials, presented as “military analysts”, regurgitate government talking points and often sit on the boards of military contractors, thus having a vested interest in the subjects they are brought on to “analyze.”

The major philanthropic foundations in the United States have often used their enormous wealth to co-opt voices of dissent and movements of resistance into channels that are safe for the powers that be. As McGeorge Bundy, former President of the Ford Foundation once said, “Everything the Foundation does is to make the world safe for Capitalism.”

Examples of this include philanthropies like the Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation providing immense financial and organizational support to Non-Governmental Organizations. Furthermore, the alternative media are often funded by these same foundations, which has the effect of influencing the direction of coverage as well as the stifling of critical analysis.

This now brings us to the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and Global Research.

As an institution which acts as a research centre as well as a source of alternative news through the website www.globalresearch.ca, the CRG has become a much needed voice of independence seeking to break through all the propaganda and misinformation.

To maintain our independence, Global Research does not accept assistance from public and private foundations. Nor do we seek support from universities and/or government.

While the objective is to expand and help spread important and much-needed information to more people than ever before, Global Research needs to rely upon its readers to support the organization.

Thank you, dear readers, for your tireless support.

Supporting Global Research is supporting the cause of truth and the fight against media disinformation.

Thank you.

The Global Research Team

FOR ONLINE DONATIONS

For online donations, please click below:

VISIT THE DONATION PAGE

Reasons and False Pretexts: Why are They Making War on Libya?

Reason Number One: Regime change.

This was announced as the real objective the moment French president Nicolas Sarkozy took the extraordinary step of recognizing the rebels in Benghazi as “the only legitimate representative of the Libyan people”. This recognition was an extraordinary violation of all diplomatic practice and principles. It meant non-recognition of the existing Libyan government and its institutions, which, contrary to the magical notions surrounding the word “dictator”, cannot be reduced to the personality of one strongman. A major European nation, France, swept aside all those institutions to proclaim that an obscure group of rebels in a traditionally rebellious part of Libya constituted the North African nation’s legitimate government.

Since factually this was clearly not true, it could only be the proclamation of an objective to be reached by war. The French announcement was equivalent to a declaration of war against Libya, a war to defeat Qaddafi and put the mysterious rebels in power in his place.

False Pretext Number One: “to protect civilians”.

The falsity of this pretext is obvious, first of all, because the UN Resolution authorizing military action “to protect civilians” was drawn up by France – whose objective was clearly regime change – and its Western allies. Had the real concern of the UN Security Council been to “protect innocent lives”, it would have, could have, should have sent a strong neutral observer mission to find out what was really happening in Libya. There was no proof of rebel claims that the Qaddafi regime was slaughtering civilians. Had there been visible proof of such atrocities, we can be sure that they would have been shown regularly on prime time television. We have seen no such proof. A UN fact-finding mission could have very rapidly set the record straight, and the Security Council could then have acted on the basis of factual information rather than of claims by rebels seeking international aid for their cause.

Instead, the Security Council, now little more than an instrument of Western powers, rushed ahead with sanctions, referral of alleged present or expected “crimes against humanity” to the International Criminal Court, and finally an authorization of a “no-fly zone” which Western powers were certain to interpret as a license to wage all-out war against Libya.

Once the United States and its leading NATO allies are authorized to “protect civilians”, they do so with the instruments they have: air strikes; bombing and cruise missiles. Air strikes, bombing and cruise missiles are not designed to “protect civilians” but rather to destroy military targets, which inevitably leads to killing civilians. Aside from such “collateral damage”, what right do we have to kill Libyan military personnel manning airports and other Libyan defense facilities? What have they done to us?

Reason Number Two: Because it’s easy.

With NATO forces bogged down in Afghanistan, certain alliance leaders (but not all of them) could think it would be a neat idea to grab a quick and easy victory in a nice little “humanitarian war”. This, they can hope, could revive enthusiasm for military operations and increase the flagging popularity of politicians able to strut around as champions of “democracy” and destroyers of “dictators”. Libya looks like an easy target. There you have a huge country, mostly desert, with only about six million inhabitants. The country’s defense installations are all located along the Mediterranean coast, within easy reach of NATO country fighter jets and US cruise missiles. Libyan armed forces are small, weak and untested. It looks like a pushover, not quite as easy as Grenada but no harder than Serbia. Sarkozy and company can hope to strut their victory strut in short order.

False Pretext Number Two: Arabs asked for this war.

On March 12, the Arab League meeting in Cairo announced that it backed a no-fly zone in Libya. This provided cover for the French-led semi-NATO operation. “We are responding to the demands of the Arab world”, they could claim. But which Arab world? On the one hand, Sarkozy brazenly presented his crusade against Qaddafi as a continuation of the democratic uprisings in the Arab world against their autocratic leaders, while at the same time pretending to respond to the demand of… the most autocratic of those leaders, namely the Gulf State princes, themselves busily suppressing their own democratic uprisings. (It is not known exactly how the Arab League reached that decision, but Syria and Algeria voiced strong objections.)

The Western public was expected not to realize that those Arab leaders have their own reasons for hating Qaddafi, which have nothing to do with the reasons for hating him voiced in the West. Qaddafi has openly told them off to their faces, pointing to their betrayal of Palestine, their treachery, their hypocrisy. Last year, incidentally, former British MP George Galloway recounted how, in contrast to the Egyptian government’s obstruction of aid to Gaza, his aid caravan had had its humanitarian cargo doubled during a stopover in Libya. Qaddafi long ago turned his back on the Arab world, considering its leaders hopeless, and turned to Africa.

While the Arab League’s self-serving stance against Qaddafi was hailed in the West, little attention was paid to the African Union’s unanimous opposition to war against the Libyan leader. Qaddafi has invested huge amounts of oil revenues in sub-Saharan Africa, building infrastructure and investing in development. The Western powers that overthrow him will continue to buy Libyan oil as before. The major difference could be that the new rulers, put in place by Europe, will follow the example of the Arab League sheikhs and shift their oil revenues from Africa to the London stock exchange and Western arms merchants.

Real Reason Number Three: Because Sarkozy followed BHL’s advice.

On March 4, the French literary dandy Bernard-Henri Lévy held a private meeting in Benghazi with Moustapha Abdeljalil, a former justice minister who has turned coats to become leader of the rebel “National Transition Council”. That very evening, BHL called Sarkozy on his cellphone and got his agreement to receive the NTC leaders. The meeting took place on March 10 in the Elysée palace in Paris. As reported in Le Figaro by veteran international reporter Renaud Girard, Sarkozy thereupon announced to the delighted Libyans the plan that he had concocted with BHL: recognition of the NTC as sole legitimate representative of Libya, the naming of a French ambassador to Benghazi, precision strikes on Libyan military airports, with the blessings of the Arab League (which he had already obtained). The French foreign minister, Alain Juppé, was startled to learn of this dramatic turn in French diplomacy after the media.

Qaddafi explained at length after the uprising began that he could not be called upon to resign, because he held no official office. He was, he insisted, only a “guide”, to whom the Libyan people could turn for advice on controversial questions.

It turns out the French also have an unofficial spiritual guide: Bernard-Henri Lévy. While Qaddafi wears colorful costumes and dwells in a tent, BHL wears impeccable white shirts open down his manly chest and hangs out in the Saint Germain des Près section of Paris. Neither was elected. Both exercise their power in mysterious ways.

In the Anglo-American world, Bernard-Henri Lévy is regarded as a comic figure, much like Qaddafi. His “philosophy” has about as many followers as the Little Green Book of the Libyan guide. But BHL also has money, lots of it, and is the friend of lots more. He exercises enormous influence in the world of French media, inviting journalists, writers, show business figures to his vacation paradise in Marrakech, serving on the board of directors of the two major “center-left” daily newspaper, Libération and Le Monde. He writes regularly in whatever mainstream publication he wants, appears on whatever television channel he chooses. By ordinary people in France, he is widely detested. But they cannot hope for a UN Security Council resolution to get rid of him.

Investor Portfolio Preparation for Hyperinflation, Assets for Protection and Profit

Investor Portfolio Preparation for Hyperinflation, Assets for Protection and Profit
Commodities / Gold and Silver 2011

ldquo;Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value – ZERO” Voltaire, 1729

“Happy days are here again! Stock markets are strong, company profits are up, bankers are making record profits and bonuses, unemployment is declining, and inflation is non-existent. Obama and Bernanke are the dream team making the US into the Superpower it once was.

Yes, it is amazing the castles in the air that can be built with paper money and deceitful manipulation of all economic data. And Madame Bernanke de Pompadour will do anything to keep King Louis XV Obama happy, including flooding markets with unlimited amounts of printed money. They both know that, in their holy alliance, they are committing a cardinal sin. But clinging to power is more important than the good of the country. An economic and social disaster is imminent for the US and a major part of the world and Bernanke de Pompadour and Louis XV Obama are praying that it won’t happen during their reign: ‘Après nous le déluge’…

…most nations seem to have the uncanny knack of selecting the political individuals who will put fuel on the fire and make the situation catastrophically worse.

Greenspan was one such individual. During his 19 years as Chairman of the Fed, he could have limited the economic and social damage that the US would suffer. Instead he took every single measure possible to ensure that there would be a catastrophe with uncontrollable consequences. But we shouldn’t just blame the incompetence of Greenspan. It was sickening to watch every sycophantic congressman and senator licking Greenspan’s boots and praising his wisdom. Because Greenspan’s money printing and incompetent interest rate management created one of the biggest financial bubbles in world economic history. But the politicians loved this. It made the stock market boom, and house prices surge… And Bernanke de Pompadour is continuing the same disastrous policies of creating money out of thin air. When will they ever learn that creating money out of thin air and running astronomical deficits that never will be repaid with normal money leads to the road of total ruin?… therefore they are leading the world into a hyperinflationary depression that will have uncontrollable and cataclysmic consequences for current and future generations.

Empty stomachs are rioting

We have for years warned about hyperinflation leading to famine, misery and social unrest. Well, this is exactly what is happening in many parts of the world. The protests and overthrowing of regimes in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya are primarily due to a major part of the peoples of these nations having no job, no money and little food. It is their empty stomachs that are rioting…

Although food and fuel inflation is rampant worldwide already, we are only seeing the very beginning…

The Continuous Commodity Index – CCI, (60% food, 17% energy and 23% metals) has almost doubled since the low in early 2009 and has gone up 42% in the last 12 months. The almost vertical rise of the CCI is one of the best indicators of hyperinflation being imminent. A catastrophe of astronomical proportions is looming…

Hyperinflation Watch

The following are INDISPUTALBLE FACTS:

* The US dollar is down 82% against gold since 1999

* The US dollar is down 49% against the Swiss Franc since 2001

* The Dow Jones is down 81% against gold since 1999

* The Continuous Commodity Index is up 100% since 2009

The above facts are clear evidence of an economy that has been totally mismanaged. But more importantly most of these trends are now starting to accelerate – a clear sign that hyperinflation is just around the corner…

‘There is no means of avoiding a final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.’ – Ludwig von Mises”

“APRES NOUS LE DELUGE”

Egon von Greyerz, Gold Switzerland, 3/6/11

“End of Dollar as Reserve ‘Disastrous’

Billionaire real-estate magnate Sam Zell warns that Americans should brace for a “disastrous” 25 percent decline in the standard of living if the U.S. dollar’s reign as the global reserve currency ever ends.

“Frankly, I think we’re at a tipping point. What’s my biggest single financial concern is the loss of the dollar as the reserve currency,” he told CNBC in an interview. ‘I can’t imagine anything being more disastrous to our country than if the dollar lost its reserve-currency status.’”

Sam Zell, CNBC Interview, 3/2/11

If one considers the Real Numbers, and not the Bogus Official Statistics (see below) or Main Stream Financial Media Talking Heads’ Spin, one realizes that we are at The Very Threshold of Hyperinflation.

In the U.S. for example, Real Consumer Price Inflation is over 9% (see below).

Furthermore, given ongoing Monetary Inflation (e.g. QE 2, and, notwithstanding official Denials, a prospective QE 3 and possibly 4 and 5) Hyper-Price Inflation is probably baked into the Financial and Markets’ Cake.

The recent nearly Vertical Rise of the Continuous Commodity Index (CCI) provides Objective Confirmation of our recent Subjective Experience – Prices of Essential Commodities, Food and Energy, have skyrocketed recently.

Indeed, the Weimar Experience provides further confirmation of our being on the Hyperinflationary Threshold.

The Monetary Explosion in Weimar preceded the Actual Price Explosion by a couple of years. And, we must recall, that Weimar Hyperinflation was then followed by The Great Depression.

Another Hyperinflationary Harbinger is the continuing swoon in the Purchasing Power of the Worlds Reserve Currency – the U.S. Dollar, a Fiat Currency nonetheless. Thus, it is critical to compare the Real Numbers with the Bogus Official Ones.

Shadowstats.com calculates Key Statistics the way they were calculated in the 1980s and 1990s before Official Data Manipulation began in earnest. Consider

Bogus Official Numbers vs. Real Numbers (per Shadowstats.com)

Annual U.S. Consumer Price Inflation reported February 17, 2011
1.63% 9.07% (annualized January, 2011 Rate)

U.S. Unemployment reported March 4, 2011

8.9% 22.1%

U.S. GDP Annual Growth/Decline reported February 25, 2011

2.70% – 2.21%

U.S. M3 reported March 4, 2011 (Month of February, Y.O.Y.)

No Official Report – 2.06%

And when we compare the past decades’ Stellar performance of Gold and Silver in all Major Fiat Currencies, we begin to realize that Voltaire’s Observation that “Paper Money returns to its Intrinsic Value – Zero” may well reflect Ultimate Fiat Currency Reality. And perhaps even provide… Intimations of Zimbabwe in our Future?

And just one more consideration is relevant before providing Guidelines for portfolio Preparation for the Coming Great Hyperinflation.

Historically, and logically, the Run-ups to Hyperinflation are preceded by a period of Price Run-ups for Risk Assets such as Commodities and Stock Markets.

This provides The Illusion of (a Return to) Financial and Economic Health, just as we are seeing now.

But, inevitably, when, as a result of the preceding Monetary Inflation, Price Inflation begin to skyrocket, that Dramatic Price Inflation Chokes Economic Activity, leading to Economic Stagnation and then Contraction. Voila, a Hyperinflationary Depression – “Mega-Stagflation” to Coin a Term.

[We must note here that there is an Alternative Explanation to von Greyerz’ – that the “incompetence of Greenspan and Bernanke is the cause of the impending Catastrophe”. Namely, that the Catastrophe has been planned by Globalists who wish to facilitate the Adoption of One World Currency as a Stepping Stone to One World Government. (See this evidence in Deepcaster’s article – “Saving Investments, Sovereignty, & Freedom from The Cartel ‘End-Game’ (1/13/11)” in the ‘Articles by Deepcaster’ Cache at www.deepcaster.com)]

At this point, it is essential to add one further consideration for Portfolio Construction – Timing.

Consider Energy for example. Early on in a Hyperinflationary Run-up Energy Prices Soar because the Fed-Created (or Eurozone created, etc.) Monetary Hyperinflation (which started the whole process) causes the Purchasing Power of Fiat Currencies to decline (as we are now seeing). Early on, this results in soaring Energy (and other Commodities) prices.

But as the Price Increases in Energy start to Bite, Demand is Reduced, thus slowing Economic Activity, Energy prices are then likely to drop suddenly and dramatically as Demand swoons.

So what Assets are not only resistant to such a Mega-Stagflation, but also provide Profit Potential?

Fortunately, there are three Assets which provide Protection and Substantial Profit Potential for Portfolios.

Gold

First and Foremost is Gold. Throughout the Process from Monetary Inflation (QE 1, 2…3? 4?) to Price Inflation (e.g. beginning now) to Price Hyperinflation and Depression, Gold tends to appreciate (Caveat: But beware of “Paper Gold” and Cartel* Price Suppression Attacks).

*We encourage those who doubt the scope and power of Overt and Covert Interventions by a Fed-led Cartel of Key Central Bankers and Favored Financial Institutions to read Deepcaster’s December, 2009, Special Alert containing a summary overview of Intervention entitled “Forecasts and December, 2009 Special Alert: Profiting From The Cartel’s Dark Interventions – III” and Deepcaster’s July, 2010 Letter entitled “Profit from a Weakening Cartel; Buy Reco; Forecasts: Gold, Silver, Equities, Crude Oil, U.S. Dollar & U.S. T-Notes & T-Bonds” in the ‘Alerts Cache’ and ‘Latest Letter’ Cache at www.deepcaster.com. Also consider the substantial evidence collected by the Gold AntiTrust Action Committee at www.gata.org, including testimony before the CFTC, for information on precious metals price manipulation. Virtually all of the evidence for Intervention has been gleaned from publicly available records. Deepcaster’s profitable recommendations displayed at www.deepcaster.com have been facilitated by attention to these “Interventionals.” Attention to The Interventionals facilitated Deepcaster’s recommending five short positions prior to the Fall, 2008 Market Crash all of which were subsequently liquidated profitably.

Initially, in the Fiat Currency Monetary Hyperinflation phase, Gold, as The Ultimate Money, appreciates because all Fiat Currencies (albeit in varying Degrees) decline in Purchasing Power vis a vis Gold.

And then, as price Inflation becomes Price Hyperinflation, Gold Soars as Fiat Currencies’ Purchasing Power Plunges.

Then, as Economic Depression Sets in (and thus when Fiat Currencies have lost much of their value) Gold tends to Retain its value vis a vis the damaged or Destroyed Fiat Currencies.

One other consideration relates to Gold (and other Precious Metal) Mining Shares. Their Value tends to track Bullion more or less, except that they are after all, and above all, Stocks. Thus, overall Stock Market performance is likely to be a greater determinant of their Value, than their value as actual or potential Precious Metal producers.

Maximizing Value in Precious Metal shares (as opposed to Bullion) is thus in large part a matter of Timing… Generally speaking, they are better purchased near the Bottom of Equities Markets Downlegs.

Silver

Silver, The Poor Man’s Monetary Metal, can in the Hyperinflationary Process, be expected to perform similarly to Gold, except for the fact that it is also an Industrial Metal, used, and used up, by Industry.

While Gold has recently powered up to trade around its recent all-time Nominal High around $1435ish, Silver is stronger even yet, recently trading around its 21 st Century high of $36/oz.

But it is important to note Silver has recently been acting more like the Monetary Metal that it is, rather than the Industrial Metal that it also is.

The prospect of sustained Higher Oil Prices justifiably exacerbates fears that such high prices will dampen Economic Activity, thus dampening demand for Industrial Metals. But Silver as Safe Haven Money has spiked UP along with Gold and Crude. Indeed, Silver prices are spurred by a Critical and Worsening Supply Shortage of Physical.

Further, Market Intelligence indicates that the Alleged Major Silver Manipulator JP Morgan Chase has recently added 6,000 Short Silver contracts to bring its short holdings to 25,000 contracts – one fourth of total world production! This is either in preparation for a Major Cartel Price Suppression Attack and/or because Silver threatens a Very Serious Breakout. Short-term there will likely be a Takedown Attempt. (See our latest Forecasts at www.deepcaster.com)

Thus we have, and will continue to have, this Very Volatile situation in the Precious Metals Arena with the Contenders being: The Cartel vs. Economic and Financial Reality.

Any perceived diminishment of The Chaos and/or a Major Equities Takedown will surely bring renewed and intensified Cartel Suppression Attacks on the Precious Metals Prices.

As we earlier Forecast, we expect an even more Vigorous Cartel Attack on Precious Metal prices to launch in the next few weeks. Indeed, it may have launched today March 10, 2011, as we write.

We expect the next few weeks will provide a test of The Cartel’s Price Suppression Power.

In the Middle and Long Run, Gold and Silver are likely going higher, much higher.

Caveat: but Consider that Precious Metal Miner and Explorer shares are stocks, and thus tend to mimic overall Equities Market Movements to a degree. In other words, an Equities Takedown would tend to take down Precious Metals shares prices also, but Bullion would tend to be less affected.

And, this is The Key Point, since Silver is an Industrial Metal, we expect Silver Shares would be taken down harder in any equities Takedown. But the Severe Silver Bullion Crunch would tend to keep Bullion Prices elevated.

In sum, we consider Silver Bullion a “Buy” and Silver Shares are a Buy too at the right time.

Food

The Third Protective Category with Profit Potential is Agricultural Products (and Producers) in Inelastic Demand. Whether in a Hyperinflation, or in a Depression, people will buy Food first above all else.

In this Sector, there is one Extraordinary Investment Opportunity, still a “Sleeper” Sector to some degree, which, some would argue, is, at this time, even better than Gold and Silver.

Indeed, we are among those who agree that Gold and, with the right timing, Silver, are Two of the Three Best Investment Opportunities for the Next Decade.

But we must also agree that this “Sleeper” Opportunity may at this time be the Best of All, because there are still several companies in this Sector which are quite undervalued.

Indeed, Deepcaster recently recommended two — one trading at just over $5/share and the Other at just under $2/share in his most recent Alerts.

And recently, we recommended a third ‘Sleeper’ Sector Industry leader, which has a huge and expanding Asian Market and a recent P/E Ratio of under 4, and which trades under 70 cents/share (in $U.S.) and has Tremendous Appreciation Potential.

To Consider these three “Best of the Best” Sleeper Sector Investments, read our latest Letter – “Main Gold, Silver & ‘Sleeper’ Sector Price Movers; ‘Sleeper’ Buy Reco.; Forecasts: Gold, Silver, Equities, Crude Oil, U.S. Dollar, and U.S. T-Notes & T-Bonds; March 2011 Letter”, and Alert — “Golden Green Opportunity Buy Reco.; Forecasts: Commodities, Gold, Silver, Equities, Crude Oil, U.S. Dollar, and U.S. T-Notes & T-Bonds” in the ‘Alerts Cache’ at www.deepcaster.com.

In sum, in the Medium and Long Run, we see the aforementioned Equities Bearish Factors overwhelming the Bullish Ones, which will have Severe Negative Consequences for Equities-in-General and for certain Commodities which are in Elastic Demand.

Given this Negative Scenario Safe Havens with Great Profit Potential are Gold, Silver (with Timing Caveats for Shares) and Agricultural Commodities in relatively inelastic demand (such as Wheat and Foodstuffs in general), and businesses focusing on them.

Another important Guideline is that Financial and Economic Conditions are such that we do not recommend shorting Gold and Silver, even in advance of a likely Cartel* Takedown attempt.

Deepcaster’s recommended response to Cartel Market Manipulation (i.e. especially in the Precious Metals Market) is fivefold:

1.Buying on Dips, coupled with a Willingness to Tolerate Great Price Volatility
2.The Core Holdings of Ones’ Precious Metals Position are best held in one particular form (see our Precious Metal Recommendations) of the Physical Metals, in Personal Possession
3.that Well Managed reasonably priced Miners with Substantial Reserves be bought on Dips, and, if one is a Trader, a portion sold near interim highs
4.that a portion of One’s Holdings be in a Dividend Paying Precious Metals Fund such as one which we have Recommended, and
5.Regarding Silver, since it is also an Industrial Metal, it is especially vulnerable to Slowdown in Economic Activity and (especially for the Shares) Takedowns in the Equities
Markets.

In sum, we expect another Markets Crisis will launch in 2011 (and may well already have) and Gold, Silver and Food are the place to be.

Gold and Silver and Essential Food Products and Producers are the most important Means to Profit and Protect regardless of Economic, Financial, or other Market Conditions, when preparing one’s Portfolio for Hyperinflation.

We reiterate, finally, that, given the aforementioned Negatives, a Crisis is likely already “baked into the cake.” The Fed’s (and Eurozone Bankers) Price boosting via Q.E. can not go on forever, and, in any event, Q.E. worsens the Inevitable Crash because it serves only to pile more Debt upon already Unpayable Debt.

Moreover, the Bond Markets have already been Signaling that Q.E. will result in increasing Inflation and Interest Rates which will Seriously Injure the Equities Markets, and Burst Equities and other Key Asset Bubbles.

The Bond King, Bill Gross (PIMCO) exiting the long-dated U.S. Treasury Market should be a warning to all.

More bad news from Japan

The news from Japan keeps getting worse.

In the aftermath of Friday’s earthquake, Japanese stocks plunged on Monday, with the Nikkei 225 down 6.18 percent, and early on Tuesday, an explosion was heard at another nuclear reactor.

Economic reports have also not been as positive as in recent weeks.

Reuters reports that Japan’s industrial production in January has been revised down.

Japan’s industrial output rose 1.3 percent in January, revised data showed on Monday.

The figure compared with an initial reading of a 2.4 percent rise and a 3.3 percent increase in December.

And consumer confidence fell in February. Nikkei reports:

Japan’s consumer confidence index fell 0.5 point on the month to 40.6 in February, for the first drop in two months, the Cabinet Office said Monday.

 

The Bank of Japan did agree to pump in more funds at its meeting on Monday though. From AFP/CNA:

The Bank of Japan said it would pump a record 15 trillion yen (US$184 billion) to help stabilise the short term-money market, making good on its pledge Sunday that it would unleash “massive” funds following the quake.

An additional 3 trillion yen will be deployed Wednesday. The BoJ will double a five trillion yen asset purchase scheme to buffer the economy from Japan’s strongest ever quake, and left its key rate left at between zero and 0.1 percent.

There was some good news from Europe on Monday though. From Bloomberg:

European industrial production increased in January for a fourth month as companies in Germany, the region’s largest economy, boosted output to meet surging export orders.

Production in the euro area rose 0.3 percent from December, when it also increased 0.3 percent, the European Union’s statistics office in Luxembourg said today. That matched the median forecast of 23 economists in a Bloomberg News survey. Production rose 6.6 percent in the year…

European leaders agreed over the weekend to broaden the size and scope of their 440 billion-euro ($614 billion) bailout fund to defuse the region’s debt crisis. They also eased the terms of rescue loans to Greece.

Emergency Special Report: Japan’s Earthquake, Hidden Nuclear Catastrophe

The Wave, reminiscent of Hokusai’s masterful woodblock print, blew past Japan’s shoreline defenses of harbor breakwaters and gigantic four-legged blocks called tetrapods, lifting ships to ram through seawalls and crash onto downtown parking lots. Seaside areas were soon emptied of cars and houses dragged up rivers and back out to sea. Wave heights of up to10 meters (33 feet) are staggering, but before deeming these as unimaginable, consider the historical Sanriku tsunami that towered to 15 meters (nearly 50 feet) and killed 27,000 people in 1896.

Nature’s terrifying power, however we may dread it, is only as great as the human-caused vulnerability of our civilization. Soon after Christmas 2004, I volunteered for the rescue operation on the day after the Indian Ocean tsunami and simultaneously did an on-site field study on the causes of fatalities in southern Thailand. The report, issued by Thammasat and Hong Kong Universities, concluded that high water wasn’t the sole cause of the massive death toll. No, it’s buildings that kill – to be specific, badly designed structures without escape routes onto roofs or, in our greed for real estate, situated inside drained lagoons and riverbeds, or on loose landfill. In the Tohoku disaster, an ultramodern Sendai Airport sat helplessly flooded on all sides while nearby a monstrous black torrent swept entire houses upstream.

Other threats are built into the vulnerabilities of our critical infrastructure and power systems. The balls of orange flames churning out of huge gas storage tanks in Ichihara, Chiba, should never have happened if technical precautions had been properly carried out. Whenever things go wrong, underlying risks had led to a liability and, in a responsible society, accountability.

Most people assume that the meticulous Japanese are among the world’s most responsible citizens. As an investigative journalist who has covered the Hanshin (Kobe) earthquake and the Tokyo subway gassing, I beg to differ. Japan is just better than elsewhere in organizing official cover-ups.

Hidden nuclear crisis

The recurrent tendency to deny systemic errors – “in order to avoid public panic” – is rooted in the determination of an entrenched bureaucracy to protect itself rather than in any stated purpose of serving the nation or its people. That’s the unspoken rule of thumb in most governments, and the point is that Japan is no shining exception.

——————————————————————————–
Helen Caldicott: Conference on the DANGERS OF NUCLEAR WAR AND NUCLEAR POWER
Montreal. March 18. Centre Saint Pierre, 7.00pm Click for details

——————————————————————————–

So what today is being silenced on orders from the Tokyo government? The official mantra is that all five nuclear power plants in the northeast are locked down, safe and not leaking. The cloaked reality is that at least one of those – Tepco’s Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant – is under an emergency alert at a level indicative of a quake-caused internal rupture. The Fukushima powerhouse is one of the world’s largest with six boiling-water reactors.

Over past decades, the Japanese public has been reassured by the Tokyo Electric Power Company that its nuclear reactors are prepared for any eventuality. Yet the mystery in Fukushima is not the first unreported problem with nuclear power, only the most recent. Back in 1996 amid a reactor accident in Ibaraki province, the government never admitted that radioactive fallout had drifted over the northeastern suburbs of Tokyo. Our reporters got confirmation from monitoring stations, but the press was under a blanket order not to run any alarming news, the facts be damned. For a nation that’s lived under the atomic cloud of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, total denial becomes possible now only because the finger on the button is our own.

People are the best defense

Despite the national addiction to nuclear power that keeps the neon lights bright over Shibuya’s famous corner, Japan still remains the most prepared of all societies for earthquakes, tsunami, conflagrations and other disasters. Every work unit, large or small, has an emergency response plan. The Tohoku quake hit on a workday afternoon, meaning the staff in every factory and office could act as a team to quell small fires, shut the gas lines, render first aid and restore their communication system. Even in most homes, residents have a rechargeable flashlight plugged into a socket and emergency bottles of water.

Northeast Japan is better prepared than other localities because in the wake of the Kobe quake in 1995, the regional Keidanren, or federation of industrial organizations, sponsored a thorough risk-management and crisis response study. Tohoku Keidanren staffers, who had known of my reporting on the San Francisco and Kobe quakes, asked me to write an article prioritizing disaster preparedness.

First on my list was a people-based communications network such as the citizen’s band radio that enabled Northern Californians to self-organize despite power blackouts. That point directly led to the fast licensing of new mobile phone towers equipped with back-up batteries. Second was independent power generation inside all major factories so that these large facilities could recharge batteries, provide lighting and pump water for their neighborhoods and, if necessary, offer shelter, sanitation and medical care. These systems must be routinely used at least on weekends so that the equipment is regularly checked and the staff stay familiar with their operation.

.Third, and most important, is the ability of individuals to rally as a self-sustaining community. In Kobe, society collapsed under a sense of personal defeat. In San Francisco, by contrast, neighbors reached out as friends and opened their doors, food stocks and hearts to victims and their kin. Without compassion, each of us is very much alone indeed.

As participants in communities, who can suddenly find themselves naked before unthinkable hazards, we must act to defuse the deadly “bomb” that provides us lighting, energy for appliances and air-con. Prevention of the next Chernobyl or Three Mile Island begins when we stop naively believing in the cost efficiency of uranium, and for that matter the cleanliness and healthiness of “clean” coal.

Japan has vast untapped reserves of offshore wind energy, the only practical alternative to nuclear power and fossil fuel. Yet the nuclear lobby, coal companies and oil majors have strong-armed the government and industry to stubbornly refuse to invest in advanced and efficient turbine engineering, including magnetic-levitation rotors that eliminate the need for energy-sapping bearings.

At certain stages of societal evolution, there arrives an unmistakable message to leave behind our worn-out security blanket and surf the wave of the future. The tsunami is just such a signal arising from the ocean’s depths to awaken Japan, as a global technology leader, to push much faster into a cleaner, greener and safer world.

Emergency Special Report II

Quake Monitor: Meltdown has started – Saturday 12 March (noon Japan time zone)

Meltdown is underway. Japan’s Industrial Nuclear Safety Agency reported that the radioactive isotopes cesium and iodine were detected by a monitoring station in the Fukushima No.1 nuclear power plant. The presence of these substances in air samples is a sure indicator that an uncontrolled chain reaction has started. Overheated uranium rods have eaten through their protective metal casings and have started nuclear fission. The regulatory agency’s announcement overturns the earlier claim of plant operator TEPCO that all uranium rods were intact.

.

The National Institute of Radiological Science, in Chiba outside Tokyo, has flown a team of doctors and nurses by helicopter to a health center 5 km from the Fukushima plant to monitor nuclear exposure in workers, emergency crew and local residents.

Nuclear workers, who this morning restarted the pumping of cold water into the reactor, are being hampered by aftershocks of larger than Richter 6. Plant operator TEPCO ordered the release of steam from the overheated reactor this morning because internal pressure is twice higher than the allowable limits of the original facility design. Plant officials say that the steam is being filtered of radioactive particle. Outside the plant, however, the monitoring station detected outdoor radiation levels 8 times higher than normal, indicating either leakage or filter malfunction.

Three of the six reactors of the TEPCO Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, were operating at the time of the Tohoku quake. The failure of back-up generators caused significant rise in temperatures inside No.1 (46 MW output) and No.2 (784 MW) reactors.

The Japanese government overnight dispatched truck-mounted power generators to both plants in order to restart cooling pumps. On-site back-up batteries that run the control system were depleted of power within 8 hours of the blackout. Authorities are now locating robots to dispatch for remote control repairs to the reactors because the interior is unsafe for human employees.

.

Impact on North America:

The Pacific jetstream is currently flowing due east directly toward the United States. In the event of a major meltdown and continuous large-volume radioactive release, airborne particles will be carried across the ocean in bands that will cross over the southern halves of Oregon, Montana and Idaho, all of California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, the Dakotas, northern Nebraska and Iowa and ending in Wisconsin and Illinois, with possible further eastward drift depending on surface wind direction.

Most of the particles can be expected to travel high in the atmosphere, with fallout dependent on low pressure zones, rainfall and temperatures over the US. If a meltdown can be contained in Fukushima, a small amount of particles would be dispersed in the atmosphere with little immediate effect on human and animal health.

Another climate factor to be taken into account is the potential for an El Nino Variable bulging the jetstream further northward, causing fallout over western Canada and a larger number of American states.

Seasonal rainfall over Japan does not normally begin until mid-April and does not become significant until early June.

If very high radiation releases are detected at some point, a potential tactic to lessen contamination of North America is for the US, Canadian and Russian air forces to seed clouds over the northwest Pacific to create a low pressure front and precipitation to minimize particle mass reaching North America.

.

Emergency Special Report III

Ohoku Quake and Tsunami Monitor 2: “The Good News Guys”

Sunday 13 March 2011 (0800 hrs Tokyo Time)

Following a high-level meeting called by the lame-duck prime minister, Japanese agencies are no longer releasing independent reports without prior approval from the top. The censorship is being carried out following the imposition of the Article 15 Emergency Law. Official silencing of bad news is a polite way of reassuring the public.According to the chief Cabinet Secretary, reactor heat is being lowered and radiation levels are coming down. The Unit 1 reactor container is not cracked despite the explosion that destroyed its building.

The explosion did not erupt out of the reactor.

So what caused the explosion that blasted away the reinforced concrete roof and walls? Silence.

Yes, there’s nothing to worry about if residents just stay indoors, turn off their air-cons and don’t breathe deeply. Everyone, go back to sleep.

The radiation leak at Fukushima No.1 nuclear plant is now officially designated as a “4″ on the international nuclear-events scale of 7. This is the same criticality rating at an earlier minor accident at Tokaimura plant in Ibaraki. Technically, there is no comparison. Tokaimura did not experience a partial meltdown.

Enough of the Good News

The mayor of Tsuruga City, home of the trouble-plagued Monju plutonium-breeder reactor in Fukui Prefecture, isn’t buying Tokyo’s weak explanation about the Fukushima 1 blast and demanded the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency to conduct an all-points investigation immediately.

A specialist medical team from the National Radiology Health Institute, flown by helicopter from Chiba to a field center 5 km from the No.1 Nuclear Plant, found radiation illness in 3 residents out of a sample group of 90. Overnight that number of civilian-nuclear “hibakusha” shot up to 19, but in other counts to 160. The evacuation zone has been further widened from 10 km to 20 km.

A third reactor, Unit 6, has lost its cooling system and is overheating along with Reactors 1 and 2.

Fukushima No.2 plant, further south, is ringed by a wall of silence as a quiet evacuation is being conducted.

Firefighters are pumping seawater into the three overheated Fukushima 1 reactors. The mandatory freshwater supply is missing, presumably due to tsunami contamination from surging ocean waves. An American nuclear expert has called this desperation measure the equivalent of a “Hail Mary pass”..

So, the Prime Minister should be hoping that Japan’s tiny Christian community is feverishly praying. Because right now, Japan and much of the world are living on a prayer.

Players not prayers

USA: The White House sent in a team to consult withe US-friendly Naoto Kan government. Instead of dispatching in experts from the Department of Energy, Nuclear Safety Agency and Health Department, President Obamas sent representatives of USAID, which is cover for the CIA.

The presence of these paranoiac bumblers only confirms suspicions of a top-level cover up. Why would the Agency be worried about the disaster? There are security considerations, such as regional “enemies” Pyongyang, Beijing and Moscow taking advantage of the crisis. To the contrary, China and Russia have both offered carte blanche civilian aid.

Second, to coordinate a pro-American public campaign synchronized with the US relief effort from the nuclear carrier USS Ronald Reagan. Many Japanese might actually be alarmed by Navy ships offshore, reminding them of the firebombing campaign in the big war, and US helicopters rumbling overhead as if Sendai was Danang Vietnam 1968. The whole “aid” exercise smacks of a con job aimed at keeping US military bases in Okinawa and surreptitiously at a Japanese Self-Defense Force firing range at the foot of Mount Fuji.

Third, to ensure the safekeeping of Misawa Air Force Base in quake-hit Iwate Prefecture. Misawa, the hub of US electronic warfare and high-tech espionage in East Asia with its fleet of P-3 Orions and an ECHELON eavesdropping antennae.

PRC: In contrast to Washington’s ulterior motives, China in an unprecedented move has sent in an emergency team into Japan. Unbeknownst to the world, China has world-leading expertise in extinguishing nuclear meltdowns and blocking radiation leaks at their uranium mines and military nuclear plants. This was discovered on a 2003 visit to a geological research center in the uranium-rich Altai mountain region of Xinjiang, where a scientist disclosed “off the record” China’s development of mineral blends that block radiation “much more than 90 percent, nearly totally”. When asked why the institute doesn’t commercialize their formulas, he responded: “We’ve never thought about that.” That’s too bad because if one of China’s exports was ever needed, it’s their radiation blanket.

Russia: Moscow too, is offering unconditional aid, despite ongoing territorial conflict with Japan over four northern islands. The Russian Air Force, from bases in Kamchatka and the Kuriles, could play a key role in cloud-seeding to prevent radioactive particles from drifting over to the United States. Americans should learn how to act as team players in an international community, especially now their own children’s lives will be at stake in the event of a total meltdown in Fukushima.

Canada: Meteorology is becoming evermore interesting, despite the “what me worry” attitudes of the global-warming skeptics. A freak of nature called El Nino Variable, if it occurs later this spring, could push the Pacific jet stream northward, meaning western Canada and more U.S. states could find themselves along a winding stream of radiation fallout from Japan.

Correction to Monitor 1: In our haste, we blurred over some important details on the use of potassium iodide tablets. These are taken to block radioactive iodine-131 from affecting the human thyroid gland, thus lowering the risk of cancer and other disorders.

On the Brink of Meltdown: The Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant

The devastating Japanese quake and its outcome could generate a political tsunami here in the United States.

In the aftermath of the largest earthquake to occur in Japan in recorded history, 5,800 residents living within five miles of six reactors at the Fukushima nuclear station have been advised to evacuate and people living within 15 miles of the plant are advised to remain indoors.

Plant operators haven’t been able to cool down the core of one reactor containing enormous amounts of radioactivity because of failed back-up diesel generators required for the emergency cooling. In a race against time, the power company and the Japanese military are flying in nine emergency generators. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced today that the U.S. Air Force has provided cooling water for the troubled reactor. Complicating matters, Japan’s Meteorological Agency has declared the area to be at high risk of being hit by a tsunami.

The plant was operating at full power when the quake hit and even though control rods were automatically inserted to halt the nuclear reaction, the reactor core remains very hot. Even with a fully functioning emergency core cooling system, it would take several hours for the reactor core to cool and stabilize. If emergency cooling isn’t restored, the risks of a core melt, and release of radioactivity into the environment is significantly increased. Also, it’s not clear if piping and electrically distribution systems inside the plant have been damaged. If so, that would interfere with reactor cooling.

A senior U.S. nuclear power technician tells me the window of time before serious problems arise is between 12 and 24 hours.

Early on, Japanese nuclear officials provided reassurances that no radiation had been released. However, because the reactor remains at a very high temperature, radiation levels are rising on the turbine building – forcing to plant operators to vent radioactive steam into the environment.

The devastating Japanese quake and its outcome could generate a political tsunami here in the United States. For instance, it may become impossible for the owners of the San Onofre and Diablo Canyon reactors to extend their operating.

These two California reactors are sitting in high seismic risk zones near earthquake faults. Each is designed to withstand a quake as great as 7.5 on the Richter scale. According to many seismologists, the probability of a major earthquake in the California coastal zone in the foreseeable future is a near certainty. The U.S. Geological Survey reports the largest registering 8.3 on the Richter scale devastated San Francisco in 1906.

“There have been tremblers felt at U.S. plants over the past several years, but nothing approaching the need for emergency action,” Scott Burnell, a spokesman at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission told Reuters.

As the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe approaches next month, Japan’s earthquake serve as a reminder that the risks of nuclear power, when things go seriously wrong. The Chernobyl accident required nearly a million emergency responders and cleanup workers. More than 100,000 residents from 187 settlements were permanently evacuated because of radioactive contamination. And area an equal to half of the State of New Jersey was rendered uninhabitable.

Fortunately, U.S. and Japanese reactors have extra measures of protection that were lacking at Chernobyl, such as a secondary concrete containment structure over the reactor vessel to prevent escape of radioactivity. In 1979, the containment structure at the Three Mile Island reactor did prevent the escape of a catastrophic amount of radioactivity after the core melted. But people living nearby were exposed to higher levels of radiation from the accident and deliberate venting to stabilize the reactor. With one hour, the multi-billion dollar investment in that plant went down the drain.

Meanwhile, let’s hope that the core of the Japanese reactor can be cooled in time. We shouldn’t need yet another major nuclear power accident to wake up the public and decision-makers to the fact that there are better and much safer ways to make electricity.

Dangerous Crossroads: The West is ready to invade Libya

David Cameron. Photo: EPA

Britain may lead a military operation against Col.Muammar Gaddafi. Prime Minister David Cameron is demonstrating a profound insight into the situation in the Middle East and a zealous support for austerity sanctions or even a military invasion of Libya.

David Cameron has been dubbed “Blair’s heir” for the tough foreign policy he borrowed from Tony Blair, who without blinking an eye backed the US military campaign against Iraq. Now, Mr.Cameron is ready to lead a campaign against Libya.

Top British strategists are concerned over Cameron’s transformation into a belligerent leader after his crucial role in slashing defense spending and setting the deadline for troops withdrawal from Afghanistan. Now, he is in daily contact with the US president to secure the resignation of Muammar Gaddafi. And encouraged by David Cameron, the EU’s Foreign Minister Baroness Ashton is meeting with NATO officials to discuss a no-fly zone over Libya.

Analysts explain Mr.Cameron’s moves by fears that Gaddafi might return to international terror practices with greater financial capacity than before. Besides, the British prime minister has got several reliable allies in Barack Obama and Nicolas Sarkozy, the latter having assumed the “war hawk” principles too, following a surprise move on Thursday when he recognized the legitimacy of the opposition government in Libya and expressed readiness to carry out pinpoint strikes at Gaddafi’s troops.

The EU leaders have dismissed Sarkozy’s moves as a “sovereign position” which has nothing to do with that of the EU. But military analysts across the globe say that an international military campaign in Libya is imminent. In the opinion of Vice-President of the Institute of Geopolitical Problems Leonid Ivashov, preparations for an air blockade of Tripoli are nearly over.

The Enterprise aircraft carrier is on its way to the region, and so are ships and air defense platforms. These are enough to paralyze Gaddafi’s radar fields, airfields and flight control systems.

Former Bundeswehr Lieutenant Colonel Jurgen Rose thinks along the same lines.

Similar operations have been held before, in so-called no-fly zones in Northern and Southern Iraq. Gaddafi’s fighter planes can be shot down without fearing a response from air defenses and his airfields, and aircraft and runways can be easily destroyed too. Libya’s hopelessly outdated aircraft have no chance.

Many experts agree that while Libya’s air space is easy to seal off, the political aspect of the crisis remains outstanding and both NATO and the EU are aware of that. NATO leaders have made it clear that there will be no more military interventions without a UN mandate. NATO’s reputation in the Islamic world is bad enough. But a carte blanche from the UN Security Council is unlikely as a number of countries, including permanent members, are opposed to such a move.