Robert Reich - How to Avoid the Austerity Trap But Still Deal With the Budget Deficit

We now know austerity economics is bad for weak economies facing large budget deficits. Much of Europe is in recession because of budget cuts demanded by Germany. And as Europe’s economies shrink, their debts become proportionally larger, making a bad situation worse.

The way to avoid this austerity trap is to get growth and jobs back first, and only then tackle budget deficits. 

The U.S. hasn’t yet fallen into the trap, but it could soon. Last week the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office warned we’ll be in recession early next year if the Bush tax cuts end as scheduled on January 1, and if more than $100 billion is automatically cut from federal spending, as required by Congress’s failure last August to reach a budget deal. 

Predictably, Capitol Hill is deadlocked. Democrats refuse to extend the Bush tax cuts for high earners and Republicans refuse to delay the budget cuts. 

If recent history is any guide, a deal will be struck at the last moment – during a lame-duck Congress, some time in late December. And it will only be to remove the January 1 trigger. Keep everything as it is, the Bush tax cuts as well as current spending, and kick the can down the road into 2013 and beyond. 

Which means no plan for reducing the budget deficit. 

Read More:

http://robertreich.org/post/23939473049

Alexander Higgins - Exclusive – Wall Street Banks Are Secretly Building A Mega Private Army

Wall Street banks have secretly taken over US firearms and ammunition manufacturers and the world’s largest mercenary firms in a stealth build up private military force.

A Daily KOs article reveals that Wall Street banks have used private equity firms to acquire and launch a massive stealth takeover of private security firms, US ammo and gun manufacturers, uniforms, silencers and an army of mercenaries to build what amounts to the world’s largest private army.

At the same time the private mercenary companies they now control, which include the likes of  Dynacorp and the notorious name changing Blackwater/Xe Services/Academi,  have been authorized under Department of Defense DIRECTIVE NUMBER 3025.18 to actually conduct policing operations inside the United States.

The article reveals Citi Bank, Bank of America, Barclays, and Deutsche Bank have provide huge amounts of funding to two private Wall Street equity firms, Cerebus and Veritas Equity, which in turn have used umbrella companies such as Freedom Corp., to engage in stealth takeovers and weapons stockpiling which has consumed the likes of  several gun manufacturers and ammunition manufacturers including Remington, Cobbs, H&R, Marlin, Dakota, and Bushmaker.

Read More:

http://thetruthisnow.com/archives/political/exclusive-wall-street-banks-are-secretly-building-a-mega-private-army/

Simon Johnson - The End Of The Euro: A Survivor’s Guide

In every economic crisis there comes a moment of clarity.  In Europe soon, millions of people will wake up to realize that the euro-as-we-know-it is gone.  Economic chaos awaits them.

To understand why, first strip away your illusions.  Europe’s crisis to date is a series of supposedly “decisive” turning points that each turned out to be just another step down a steep hill.  Greece’s upcoming election on June 17 is another such moment.  While the so-called “pro-bailout” forces may prevail in terms of parliamentary seats, some form of new currency will soon flood the streets of Athens.  It is already nearly impossible to save Greek membership in the euro area: depositors flee banks, taxpayers delay tax payments, and companies postpone paying their suppliers – either because they can’t pay or because they expect soon to be able to pay in cheap drachma.

The troika of the European Commission (EC), European Central Bank (ECB), and International Monetary Fund (IMF) has proved unable to restore the prospect of recovery in Greece, and any new lending program would run into the same difficulties.  In apparent frustration, the head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, remarked last week, “As far as Athens is concerned, I also think about all those people who are trying to escape tax all the time.”

Read More:

http://baselinescenario.com/2012/05/28/the-end-of-the-euro-a-survivors-guide/#more-10166

David Isenberg - The Globalisation of U.S. Special Operations Forces

It was recently reported that U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) commander Adm. Bill McRaven and Deputy Director of Operations Brig. Gen. Sean Mulholland want to establish a worldwide network linking special operations forces (SOF) of allied and partner nations to combat terrorism.

If created, the network would comprise regional security coordination centres, organised and structured similarly to NATO SOF headquarters in Mons, Belgium. 

According to Mulholland, these centres would not be command-and- control nodes but rather centres for education, networking and coordination to gain regional solutions for regional problems. 

Mulholland estimated it would cost less than 30 million dollars a year to operate and maintain each regional node, although that is a figure that some observers consider laughably small. 

SOCOM plans to stand up the first one in Miami-based U.S. Southern Command later in 2013, with Mulholland tapped to command integrated SOF in Central and South America. 

This plan may seem ultra-ambitious but given the demand on and pace of U.S. SOF activities in recent years it hardly comes as a surprise. The forces will be conducting missions in 120 countries by year's end, up from about 75 currently. And while they account for only three percent of the military as a whole, they make up more than seven percent of the forces assigned to Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Read More:

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=107906

Giuliano Battiston - ‘Green Economy’ - New Disguise for Old Tricks?

Though the current global economic and financial crises are undoubtedly devastating much of the world, they present the perfect opportunity for remodeling our economic system, according to participants at the ninth annual Terra Futura (Future Earth) exhibition of ‘good practices’ in social, economic and environmental sustainability held here from May 25-27.

“What, how, how much and for whom to produce? Those are the questions we urgently need to answer,” said Guido Viale, environmental economist and author of several books on ecological issues. 

“The crisis offers us a chance to ecologically reconvert the ways we produce and use goods and services, paving the way to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels, to respect biodiversity and to create a safe, low-carbon economic system.”

The first step towards a healthier economy and a cleaner environment is "to find cost-effective ways to improve our energy infrastructure and to ‘decarbonize’ our energy supply," said Monica Frassoni, president of the European Alliance to Save Energy (EU-ASE), which was established at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP16) in December 2010 and includes some of Europe’s leading multinational companies, along with a prominent cross-party group of European politicians. 

Read More:

http://www.nationofchange.org/green-economy-new-disguise-old-tricks-1338299239

Joanna Blythman - Vandals! No, not protesters trashing crops but the GM lobby still trying to force increasingly discredited Frankenstein Food down our throats

Genetic modification was supposed to be the ground-breaking science of the future. Its magic wand would feed the world and make toxic pesticides redundant.

But, in reality, it has dismally failed to live up to the expectations of its cheerleaders.

The high crop yields the GM lobbyists promised us just haven’t happened. Farmers are having to use more pesticide, not less, on their GM crops.

Thanks to GM, vigorous new superweeds stalk the fields in countries such as the U.S., where controversial GM crops have been forced onto the market — against the wishes of citizens — at the behest of profit-driven corporations.

What’s more, we now have evidence that GM crops can cross-pollinate with non-GM crops, contaminating land for miles around.

Read More:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2151380/GM-lobby-trying-force-increasingly-discredited-Frankenstein-Food-throats.html

Alex Newman - U.S. & U.K. Taxpayers Funding Forced Sterilization in India

U.S. and British taxpayers are funding brutal forced sterilizations and a growing network of appalling “camps” in India through foreign-aid programs and even the World Bank, according to human rights activists and news reports. But as the scandal surrounding the controversial population-control campaign grows with an Indian Supreme Court investigation into the matter, governments are publicly distancing themselves from the program.  

Citing dubious United Nations theories about “climate change,” population-reduction fanatics — especially in the West — have been working fiendishly around the world for decades to scale back the number of humans. Their methods include everything from promoting abortion and contraception to developing sterilization programs targeting poor women in particular. And the barbarity is largely being bankrolled by taxpayers and elite donors in the U.S. and the United Kingdom.  

According to recent reports, the foreign-aid “family planning” money is being used by Indian authorities to forcibly sterilize Indians using outright deception or even coercion. In some cases, authorities coerce families into consent by threatening to withhold food or other essentials. Sometimes the victims are bribed using Western tax money without being told what the procedures really accomplish — let alone the risks.  

Read More:

http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/asia/item/11372-us-uk-taxpayers-funding-forced-sterilization-in-india

Groundwater Depletion in Semiarid Regions of Texas and California Threatens US Food Security

The nation's food supply may be vulnerable to rapid groundwater depletion from irrigated agriculture, according to a new study by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and elsewhere.

The study, which appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, paints the highest resolution picture yet of how groundwater depletion varies across space and time in California's Central Valley and the High Plains of the central U.S. Researchers hope this information will enable more sustainable use of water in these areas, although they think irrigated agriculture may be unsustainable in some parts.

"We're already seeing changes in both areas," said Bridget Scanlon, senior research scientist at The University of Texas at Austin's Bureau of Economic Geology and lead author of the study. "We're seeing decreases in rural populations in the High Plains. Increasing urbanization is replacing farms in the Central Valley. And during droughts some farmers are forced to fallow their land. These trends will only accelerate as water scarcity issues become more severe."

Three results of the new study are particularly striking: First, during the most recent drought in California's Central Valley, from 2006 to 2009, farmers in the south depleted enough groundwater to fill the nation's largest human-made reservoir, Lake Mead near Las Vegas -- a level of groundwater depletion that is unsustainable at current recharge rates.

Second, a third of the groundwater depletion in the High Plains occurs in just 4% of the land area. And third, the researchers project that if current trends continue some parts of the southern High Plains that currently support irrigated agriculture, mostly in the Texas Panhandle and western Kansas, will be unable to do so within a few decades.

Read More:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120528154857.htm

Ethan A. Huff - Exposed: Monsanto planted GM alfalfa before USDA approved it, federal agency knew all along

A little more than a year ago, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) made the disastrous decision to deregulate Monsanto's Roundup-Ready alfalfa, even though the agency's sham of an environmental impact report failed to prove that GM alfalfa is at all safe or necessary. It has now come to light that Monsanto released GM alfalfa into the wild years before it was initially deregulated in 2005 -- and the USDA was apparently fully aware of this, but did nothing about it.

Reporting for Activist Post, Cassandra Anderson and Anthony Gucciardi explain that a letter to the USDA dated April 5, 2007, from Cal/West Seeds, a California-based seed company, shows that Monsanto's GM alfalfa had been in cultivation years before the first deregulation of the crop in 2005. That letter reveals that Monsanto's GM traits were already turning up in conventional alfalfa seed in 2005, which means GM traits were in use at least two years before that in 2003.

"We first discovered the unintended presence of the Roundup Ready gene in our conventional alfalfa seed in 2005," says the letter. "It was identified in one of our foundation seed production lots grown in California. We tested the foundation seed lot prior to shipping it to a producer who intended to plant it for organic seed production.

Read More:

http://www.naturalnews.com/036023_Monsanto_GM_alfalfa_USDA.html

Sam Rolley - DHS Is Watching

Thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request, bloggers and social media users now know the hundreds of words that they should avoid using online to keep from being scrutinized by the Department of Homeland Security.

The words are included in the DHS’s 2011“Analyst’s Desktop Binder,” which is used by workers at the National Operations Center where agents learn to identify “media reports that reflect adversely on DHS and response activities.” The goal of the agency is to track any remarks that show signs of general dissent against the government or its agencies, though DHS officials insist that the data collection is only to assess threats.

Read More:

http://personalliberty.com/2012/05/30/dhs-is-watching/?eiid=