Jeff Cox - Time Bomb? Banks Pressured to Buy Government Debt

US and European regulators are essentially forcing banks to buy up their own government's debt—a move that could end up making the debt crisis even worse, a Citigroup analysis says.

Regulators are allowing banks to escape counting their country's debt against capital requirements and loosening other rules to create a steady market for government bonds, the study says.

While that helps governments issue more and more debt, the strategy could ultimately explode if the governments are unable to make the bond payments, leaving the banks with billions of toxic debt, says Citigroup strategist Hans Lorenzen.

"Captive bank demand can buy time and can help keep domestic yields low," Lorenzen wrote in an analysis for clients. "However, the distortions that build up over time can sow the seeds of an even bigger crisis, if the time bought isn't used very prudently."

"Specifically," Lorenzen adds, "having banks loaded up with domestic sovereign debt will only increase the domestic fallout if the sovereign ultimately reneges on its obligations."

Read More:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/47633576

Andrew J. Bacevich - Unleashed: Globalizing the Global War on Terror

As he campaigns for reelection, President Obama periodically reminds audiences of his success in terminating the deeply unpopular Iraq War.  With fingers crossed for luck, he vows to do the same with the equally unpopular war in Afghanistan.  If not exactly a peacemaker, our Nobel Peace Prize-winning president can (with some justification) at least claim credit for being a war-ender.

Yet when it comes to military policy, the Obama administration’s success in shutting down wars conducted in plain sight tells only half the story, and the lesser half at that.  More significant has been this president’s enthusiasm for instigating or expanding secret wars, those conducted out of sight and by commandos.

President Franklin Roosevelt may not have invented the airplane, but during World War II he transformed strategic bombing into one of the principal emblems of the reigning American way of war.  General Dwight D. Eisenhower had nothing to do with the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb.  Yet, as president, Ike’s strategy of Massive Retaliation made nukes the centerpiece of U.S. national security policy.

Read More:

http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175547/

Congress to Re-legalize War Propaganda

Just in time for Memorial Day (the day set aside to remember those brutally killed in the racket that is war) the Congress has voted to once again allow the federal government the ability to domestically distribute propaganda.

Michael Hastings of BuzzFeed.com reports, “The new law would give sweeping powers to the government to push television, radio, newspaper, and social media onto the U.S. public. 'It removes the protection for Americans,' says a Pentagon official who is concerned about the law. 'It removes oversight from the people who want to put out this information. There are no checks and balances. No one knows if the information is accurate, partially accurate, or entirely false.'”

It's not enough that the National Guard pays $26.5 million per year to sponsor Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s #88 race car ($136 million over the past 5 years, making him the highest-paid military contractor that has nothing to do with the military). That represents a small fraction of the roughly $667 million spent per year by the military on advertising. Now that the prohibition on domestic propaganda has been repealed, instead of seeing ads where the Marine climbs the mountain and grabs the sword, you could see an ad where the Marine tells you all the reasons to invade Iran, or some other country that is not a threat to your safety.

Read More:

http://www.freepatriot-press.com/2012/05/congress-to-re-legalize-war-propaganda.html

Elizabeth Rose - The Pentagon’s Spending Spree

Are you wondering where your tax dollars are going? Then take a look at the $642.5 billion stuffed into the National Defense Authorization Act, which the House of Representatives recently approved.

House Republicans may spout plenty of concern about the nation's budget deficit, but their version of the Pentagon's budget tops the spending levels they had agreed to a few months ago by $8 billion. It's also $4 billion above the total that President Barack Obama and the Pentagon requested.

These politicians are trying to fund Cold War-era weapons that our military doesn't want and that have been dismissed as outdated and unnecessary by the top brass — leaders like Gen. James Cartwright, the retired vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a former commander of the country's nuclear forces.

The U.S. military budget is six times that of China, and tops the next 17 highest-spending countries combined.

Military spending has played a significant role in increasing the national debt. Over the last decade, the Pentagon's budget has nearly doubled.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have also contributed to this soaring increase in defense spending and to record deficits.

The drawdown of troops from Afghanistan and Iraq should mean the Pentagon will spend less. But giant military contractors have dumped a fortune into campaign contributions and lobbying, making sure that any and all anticipated savings are going to expensive weapons systems — all paid for by you through your taxes.

Read More:

http://www.nationofchange.org/pentagon-s-spending-spree-1338198664 

Judicial Watch Obtains DOD and CIA Records Detailing Meetings with bin Laden Raid Filmmakers

Judicial Watch, the organization that investigates and fights government corruption, announced today that it has obtained records from the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) regarding meetings and communications between government agencies and Kathryn Bigelow, Academy Award-winning director of The Hurt Locker, and screenwriter Mark Boal.  According to the records, the Obama Defense Department granted Bigelow and Boal access to a “planner, Operator and Commander of SEAL Team Six,” which was responsible for the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden, to assist Bigelow prepare her upcoming feature film.

 The records, obtained pursuant to court order in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed on January 21, 2012, include 153 pages of records from the DOD and 113 pages of records from the CIA (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Defense (No. 1:12-cv-00049)).  The documents were delivered to Judicial Watch late last Friday (May 18). The following are the highlights from the records, which include internal Defense Department email correspondence as well as a transcript from a key July 14, 2011, meeting between DOD officials, Bigelow and Boal:

• A transcript of a July 14, 2011, meeting between DOD officials, including Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Michael Vickers, Bigelow and Boal indicates that Boal met directly with White House officials on at least two occasions regarding the film: “I took your guidance and spoke to the WH and had a good meeting with Brennan and McDonough and I plan to follow up with them; and they were forward leaning and interested in sharing their point of view; command and control; so that was great, thank you,” Boal said according to the transcript. Vickers asks if the meeting was a follow-up, to which Boal responds, “Yes correct; this was a follow-up.”  The documents seemingly reference John O. Brennan, Chief Counterterrorism Advisor to President Obama and Denis McDonough, who serves as President Obama’s Deputy National Security Advisor.

Read More:

http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/13421/

Gareth Porter - U.S. Hard Line in Failed Iran Talks Driven by Israel

Negotiations between Iran and the United States and other members of the P5+1 group in Baghdad ended in fundamental disagreement Thursday over the position of the P5+1 offering no relief from sanctions against Iran.

The two sides agreed to meet again in Moscow Jun. 18 and 19, but only after Iran had threatened not to schedule another meeting, because the P5+1 had originally failed to respond properly to its five-point plan.

The prospects for agreement are not likely to improve before that meeting, however, mainly because of an inflexible U.S. diplomatic posture that reflects President Barack Obama's need to bow to the demands of Israel and the U.S. Congress on Iran policy.

The U.S. hard line in the Baghdad talks and the failure to set the stage for an early agreement with Iran means that Iran will not only increase but accelerate its accumulation of 20-percent enriched uranium, which has been the ostensible reason for wanting to get Iran to the negotiating table quickly.

Iran's enrichment to 20 percent, which Tehran has justified over the past two years as needed by its Tehran Research Reactor to produce medical isotopes, can be turned into high enriched uranium more quickly than the 3.5 percent enriched uranium for Iran's nuclear power programme.

Read More:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/gareth-porter/43412/u-s-hard-line-in-failed-iran-talks-driven-by-israel

Tom Engelhardt - How to Forget on Memorial Day

It’s the saddest reading around: the little announcements that dribble out of the Pentagon every day or two -- those terse, relatively uninformative death notices: rank; name; age; small town, suburb, or second-level city of origin; means of death (“small arms fire,” “improvised explosive device,” “the result of gunshot wounds inflicted by an individual wearing an Afghan National Army uniform,” or sometimes something vaguer like “while conducting combat operations,” “supporting Operation Enduring Freedom,” or simply no explanation at all); and the unit the dead soldier belonged to.  They are seldom 100 words, even with the usual opening line: “The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom.” Sometimes they include more than one death.

They are essentially bureaucratic notices designed to draw little attention to themselves.  Yet cumulatively, in their hundreds over the last decade, they represent a grim archive of America’s still ongoing, already largely forgotten second Afghan War, and I’ve read them obsessively for years.

Into the Memory Hole

May is the official month of remembrance when it comes to our war dead, ending as it does on the long Memorial Day weekend when Americans typically take to the road and kill themselves and each other in far greater numbers than will die in Afghanistan.  It’s a weekend for which the police tend to predict rising fatalities and news reports tend to celebrate any declines in deaths on our roads and highways.

Read More:

http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175546/

FBI secretly creates Internet police

The FBI was rather public with its recent demands for backdoor access to websites and Internet services across the board, but as the agency awaits those secret surveillance powers, they're working on their own end to have those e-spy capabilities.

Not much has been revealed about one of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s newest projects, the Domestic Communications Assistance Center, and the FBI will probably try to keep it that way. Despite attempting to keep the DCAC largely under wraps, an investigation spearheaded by Cnet’s Declan McCullagh is quickly collecting details about the agency’s latest endeavor.

Governmental agencies have been searching seemingly without end for ways to pry into the personal communications of computer users in America. Congressional approval and cooperation from Internet companies could be an eternity away, of course, but the FBI might be able to bypass that entirely by taking the matter into their own hands. At the Quantico, Virginia headquarters of the DCAC, federal workers are believed to be already hard at work on projects that will put FBI spies into the Internet, snooping on unsuspecting American’s Skype calls, instant messages and everything else carried out with a mouse and keyboard.

Read More:

http://rt.com/usa/news/fbi-communications-dcac-surveillance-250/

The amazing expanding Pentagon

When President Obama and Mitt Romney cross swords on defense policy, it can sound like a schoolyard fight: Who loves the military more? Who is tougher? Who would lead a more muscular America?

This is the way we expect candidates to talk about defense: in terms of power, force, even national pride. But increasingly, when it comes to the role the Department of Defense actually plays for the nation, it misses the point. Over the past decade, the Pentagon has become far more complex than the conversation about it would suggest. What “military” means has changed sharply as the Pentagon has acquired an immense range of new expertise. What began as the world’s most lethal strike force has grown into something much more wide-ranging and influential.

Today, the Pentagon is the chief agent of nearly all American foreign policy, and a major player in domestic policy as well. Its planning staff is charting approaches not only toward China but toward Latin America, Africa, and much of the Middle East. It’s in part a development agency, and in part a diplomatic one, providing America’s main avenue of contact with Africa and with pivotal oil-producing regimes. It has convened battalions of agriculture specialists, development experts, and economic analysts that dwarf the resources at the disposal of USAID or the State Department. It’s responsible for protecting America’s computer networks. In May of this year, the Pentagon announced it was creating its own new clandestine intelligence service. And the Pentagon has emerged as a surprisingly progressive voice in energy policy, openly acknowledging climate change and funding research into renewable energy sources.

Read More:

http://articles.boston.com/2012-05-27/ideas/31837499_1_foreign-policy-pentagon-schoolyard-fight

Turn Out The Lights - The Largest U.S. Cities Are Becoming Cesspools Of Filth, Decay And Wretchedness

Once upon a time, the largest U.S. cities were the envy of the entire world.  Sadly, that is no longer the case.  Sure, there are areas of New York City, Boston, Washington and Los Angeles that are still absolutely beautiful but for the most part our major cities are rapidly rotting and decaying.  Cities such as Detroit, Cleveland, Baltimore, Memphis, New Orleans, St. Louis and Oakland were all once places where middle class American workers thrived and raised their families.  Today, all of those cities are rapidly being transformed into cesspools of filth, decay and wretchedness.  Millions of good jobs have left our major cities in recent decades and poverty has absolutely exploded.    Basically, you can turn out the lights because the party is over.  In fact, some major U.S. cities are literally turning out the lights.  In Detroit, about 40 percent of the streetlights are already broken and the city cannot afford to repair them.  So Mayor Bing has come up with a plan to cut the number of operating streetlights almost in half and leave vast sections of the city totally in the dark at night.  I wonder what that will do to the crime rate in the city.  But don't look down on Detroit too much, because what is happening in Detroit will be happening where you live soon enough.

A recent Bloomberg article described Mayor Bing's plan to eliminate nearly half of Detroit's streetlights....

Read More:

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/turn-out-the-lights-the-largest-u-s-cities-are-becoming-cesspools-of-filth-decay-and-wretchedness