TiLTNews Network: Earth Watch -
Freedom is defined by the ability of citizens to live without government interference,
not by safety. It is easy to clamor for government security when terrible things happen; but liberty is given true meaning when we support it without exception, and we will be safer for it ~ Dr. Ron Paul
President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran continues to inflame those paying attention to the safety and security of America, Israel and beyond.
It is coming to light that Iran will walk away from the negotiations more dangerous than ever, a situation leaving many to wonder how Obama could allow it to happen.
Now it is being reported that retired U.S. Adm. James A. Lyons wrote in an article that the negotiations with Iran are “a sham.” Lyons also says that the result of these negotiations are not a surprise, as they were “pre-ordained by Obama in secret communications with the Iranian leaders in 2008.” (H/T Western Journalism)
Lyons reached this conclusion from a report written by Iran expert Michael Ledeen. In this report, Leeden claims that Obama used a “secret back channel to Tehran during his first presidential campaign in 2008… to assure the mullahs that he was a friend of the Islamic Republic.
With this information, Lyons is calling for Obama’s impeachment. It’s about time Congress begins having this discussion. After all, there are some that see Obama’s deal with Iran as nothing but dirty.
They include Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said the deal confirmed all of their concerns, and Israeli Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz, who said the deal had holes in it. Even U.S. House Speaker John Boehner believes the deal is a bad one.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said the deal wasn’t strict enough adding he wanted a solid deal that kept Iran and other Gulf countries from initiating nuclear proliferation.
It’s clear that the mainstream media is not going to give this story the attention it deserves, but we will.
The higher financial markets rise, the harder they fall. By any objective measurement, the stock market is currently well into bubble territory.
Anyone should be able to see this – all you have to do is look at the charts. Sadly, most of us never seem to learn from history. Most of us want to believe that somehow “things are different this time”. Well, about the only thing that is different this time is that our economy is in far worse shapethan it was just prior to the last major financial crisis. That means that we are more vulnerable and will almost certainly endure even more damage this time around. It would be one thing if stocks were soaring because the U.S. economy as a whole was doing extremely well. But we all know that isn’t true. Instead, what we have been experiencing is clearly artificial market behavior that has nothing to do with economic reality. In other words, we are dealing with an irrational financial bubble, and all irrational financial bubbles eventually burst. And as I wrote about yesterday, the way that stocks have moved so far this year is eerily reminiscent of the way that stocks moved in early 2008. The warning signs are there – if you are willing to look at them.
The first chart that I want to share with you today comes from Doug Short. It is a chart that shows that the ratio of corporate equities (stocks) to GDP is the second highest that it has been since 1950. The only other time it has been higher was just before the dotcom bubble burst…
Does that look like a bubble to you?
It sure looks like a bubble to me.
In order for the corporate equities to GDP ratio to get back to the mean (average) level, stock prices would have to fall nearly 50 percent.
If that happens, people will be calling it a crash, but in truth it would just be a return to normalcy.
As I’ve noted before, the single best predictor of stock market performance is the cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings ratio orCAPE ratio.
Corporate earnings are heavily influenced by the business cycle. Typically the US experiences a boom and bust once every ten years or so. As such, companies will naturally have higher P/E’s at some points and lower P/E’s at other. This is based solely on the business cycle and nothing else.
CAPE adjusts for this by measuring the price of stocks against the average of ten years’ worth of earnings, adjusted for inflation. By doing this, it presents you with a clearer, more objective picture of a company’s ability to produce cash in any economic environment.
Based on a study completed Vanguard, CAPE was the single best metric for measuring future stock returns.
When the CAPE ratio is too high, that means that stocks are overpriced and are not a good value. And right now the CAPE ratio is the 3rd highest that it has been since 1890. That only times it has been higher than this were in 1929 (we all remember what happened then) and just before the dotcom bubble burst…
The funny thing is that stocks have continued to rise even as corporate revenues have begun to fall.
According to Wolf Richter, in the first quarter of 2015 corporate revenues are projected to decline at the fastest pace that we have seen since the depths of the last recession…
Week after week, corporations and analysts have been whittling down their estimates. By now, revenues of the S&P 500 companies are expected to decline 2.8% in Q1 from a year ago – the worst year-over-year decline since Q3 of crisis year 2009.
This next chart I want to share with you shows how the Nasdaq has performed over the past decade. Looking at this chart alone, you would think that the U.S. economy must have been absolutely roaring since the end of the last recession. But what is really going on is rampant speculation. Some of the tech companies that make up the Nasdaq are not making any profits at all and yet they are supposedly worth billions of dollars. If you cannot see a bubble in this chart, you need to get your vision checked…
And this kind of irrational euphoria is not just happening in the United States.
For example, Chinese stocks are up nearly 80 percent over the past nine months.
Meanwhile, the overall Chinese economy is growing at the slowest pace that we have seen in about 20 years.
Right now, we are in the calm before the storm. We are right at the door of the next great financial crisis, and most of the people that work in the industry know this.
And once in a while they let the cat out of the bag.
For example, consider what Hans-Jörg Vetter, the CEO of Landesbank Baden-Württemberg in Germany, had to say during one recent press conference…
“Risk is no longer priced in,” he said. And these investors aren’t paid for the risks they’re taking. This applies to all asset classes, he said. The stock and the bond markets, he said, are now both seeing “the mother of all bubbles.”
This can’t go on forever. Or for very long. But he couldn’t see the future either and pin down a date, which is what everyone wants to know so that they can all get out in time. “I cannot tell you when it will rumble,” he said, “but eventually it will rumble again.”
By “again” he meant the sort of thing that had taken the bank down last time, the Financial Crisis. It had been triggered by horrendous risk-taking, where risks hadn’t been priced into all kinds of securities. When those securities – mortgage-backed securities, for example, that were hiding the inherent risks under a triple-A rating – blew up, banks toppled.
What Vetter is telling us is what I have been warning about for a long time.
George Washington pointed out, “Overgrown military establishments, which under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to Republican Liberty.
Wise words by the father of our country, but ones, unfortunately, rejected by modern-day Americans, who love and idolize the enormously overgrown military establishment that now characterizes our federal governmental system.
Eastern Europeans are getting a gander at America’s overgrown military establishment. Yesterday, the New York Times reported that a huge contingent of U.S. military forces is winding its way through Eastern Europe as some sort of good-will tour and also to serve as a message to Russia that the United States is ready to go to war to protect Eastern Europe from Russia’s aggressive designs.
Never mind that it is America’s overgrown military establishment that gave rise to Russia’s so-called aggressive designs. Ever since the end of the Cold War, NATO has been absorbing Eastern European countries with the ultimate aim of absorbing Ukraine, which would enable the U.S. military to place bases and missiles on Russia’s borders.
There was never a possibility that Russia was going to let that happen, any more than the U.S. national-security establishment would permit North Korea to place military bases and missiles on Mexico’s side of the Rio Grande. In the eyes of those who believe that America’s overgrown military establishment can do no wrong, that makes Russia the aggressor in the crisis.
But let’s face it: These people are ingenious at producing crises and then playing the innocent. The fact is that NATO should have been dissolved at the end of the Cold War. It wasn’t dissolved for one big reason: in order to produce endless crises with Russia so that Americans would feel the need to keep their overgrown, Cold War-era, military establishment in existence.
Moreover, under what authority is America’s overgrown military establishment telling Eastern Europeans that the United States will come to their defense in a war against Russia? I thought that under the U.S. Constitution it is the responsibility of Congress to decide when America goes to war. The U.S. military march through Eastern Europe is just another sign of how the national-security branch of the federal government — the most powerful branch — calls its own shots when it comes to foreign policy.
Moreover, it’s a sign of the times when America’s overgrown military establishment is our country’s good-will ambassador. It used to be that the American private sector served that purpose. Not so anymore. Now, it’s U.S. generals and other military personnel who serve that purpose, as they parade through Eastern Europe showing off their tanks and other military equipment, just like the Soviets did in their May Day parades.
Meanwhile, America’s overgrown military establishment is also engaged in a massive military exercise called Operation Jade Helm, only this one isn’t in some foreign country but instead right here at home. With more than 1200 participants, including Army Special Forces, Navy Seals, and Marine Special Operations, this large-scale military operation is slated to launch in around 20 cities in the American Southwest.
Perhaps it would be wise to review America’s founding principles regarding overgrown military establishments and the threat they pose to the liberty of the citizenry, in addition, that is, to the sentiments against overgrown military establishments expressed by America’s first president, George Washington:
James Madison: “A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence agst. foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.”
Patrick Henry: “A standing army we shall have, also, to execute the execrable commands of tyranny; and how are you to punish them? Will you order them to be punished? Who shall obey these orders? Will your mace-bearer be a match for a disciplined regiment?”
Henry St. George Tucker in Blackstone’s 1768 Commentaries on the Laws of England:“Wherever standing armies are kept up, and when the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.”
Commonwealth of Virginia in 1788: “… that standing armies in time of peace are dangerous to liberty, and therefore ought to be avoided, as far as the circumstances and protection of the community will admit; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to and governed by the civil power.”
Pennsylvania Convention: “… as standing armies in time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; and that the military shall be kept under strict subordination to and be governed by the civil power.”
U.S. State Department website: “Wrenching memories of the Old World lingered in the 13 original English colonies along the eastern seaboard of North America, giving rise to deep opposition to the maintenance of a standing army in time of peace. All too often the standing armies of Europe were regarded as, at best, a rationale for imposing high taxes, and, at worst, a means to control the civilian population and extort its wealth.”
Finally, let’s wrap up this piece with the warning that President Eisenhower issued in his 1961 Farewell Address regarding America’s new, Cold War-era, overgrown military establishment:
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. . . .Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. . . . In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted.
Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. He has advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the country as well as on Fox News’ Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows and he appeared as a regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s show Freedom Watch. View these interviews at LewRockwell.com and from Full Context. Send him email.
The federal government and the U.S. Army have been readying for domestic unrest for decades
Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones Prison Planet.com March 27, 2015
The establishment media’s reaction to the upcoming Jade Helm military exercise has characterized concerns about the drill as being founded in nothing more than “right-wing paranoia,” but the exhaustive history of how the federal government and the U.S. Army have made preparations for martial law in America is beyond denial.
Jade Helm, a “realistic” military training exercise which will involve the Green Berets, Navy Seals, and the 82nd Airborne Division, is set to take place from July 15-Sepember 15 and will cover at least nine U.S. states.
As we reported yesterday, the exercise will involve soldiers operating “undetected amongst civilian populations,” to see if they can infiltrate without being noticed.
The drill stoked concerns after Texas and Utah were labeled “hostile” territory in documents related to the exercise. However, when Infowars drew attention to the issue, numerous mainstream news outlets reacted by regurgitating Army talking points about how the drill was solely focused on preparing U.S. troops for overseas missions. Those same outlets also demonized anyone who questioned that narrative as engaging in alarmism and paranoia.
The history of the federal government and the U.S. military’s preparations for martial law in America is manifestly provable. That is not to say that a military takeover is imminent, but to dismiss the militarization of law enforcement and verifiable plans for using troops to deal with domestic unrest as “alarmist” or mere “conspiracy theory” is completely erroneous.
Despite assurances by the Army that Jade Helm is to prepare troops for overseas missions, Army documents in the past have made clear that plans for martial law are in place for within the Continental United States (CONUS).
As we exhaustively documented, the training manual explicitly states in numerous places that these programs are for both overseas and domestically “within the United States or U.S. territories during civil support operations”.
- In 2009 it was revealed how the National Guard posted a number of job listings looking for “Internment/Resettlement Specialists” to work in “civilian internee camps” within the United States.
- Jade Helm has also drawn comparisons to a 2012 scenario outlined by retired Army colonel Kevin Benson, in which the U.S. Military is used to crush an insurgent rebellion overseen by Tea Party militia members who take over the city of Darlington, South Carolina.
Preparations for using troops to deal with mass civil unrest on U.S. soil, in addition to interning American citizens, have been in the works for decades.
- In the late 1990′s Alex Jones attended numerous urban warfare training drills where U.S. troops were trained to raid, arrest and imprison U.S. citizens in detention camps as well as taking over public buildings and running checkpoints. During role playing exercises, actors playing prisoners would scream “I’m an American citizen, I have rights” as they were being dragged away by troops.
- In 1999, San Antonio Chief of Police Al Philipus told Alex Jones that officials tried to bribe him to allow Army Delta Force to conduct training exercises in the town which had caused consternation amongst residents in other areas of Texas. “Offers were made to give money, cash money to elected officials’ charities if they could get us to change our minds. As one of my deputy chiefs said, in some circles, that’s called bribery,” said Philipus.
- In 2006 we exclusively exposed a nationwide FEMA program which was training pastors and other religious representatives to become secret police enforcers who teach their congregations to “obey the government” in preparation for a declaration of martial law, property and firearm seizures, and forced relocation. Over a year later, a KSLA news report confirmed that that Clergy Response Teams are being trained by the federal government to “quell dissent” and pacify citizens to obey the government in the event of a declaration of martial law.
- Back in 2008, U.S. troops returning from Iraq were earmarked for “homeland patrols” with one of their roles including helping with “civil unrest and crowd control”.
- In December 2008, the Washington Post reported on plans to station 20,000 more U.S. troops inside America for purposes of “domestic security” from September 2011 onwards, an expansion of Northcom’s militarization of the country in preparation for potential civil unrest following a total economic collapse or a mass terror attack.
- A report produced that same year by the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Institute warned that the United States may experience massive civil unrest in the wake of a series of crises which it termed “strategic shock.”
“Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security,” stated the report, authored by [Ret.] Lt. Col. Nathan Freir, adding that the military may be needed to quell “purposeful domestic resistance”.
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In an article published in the May/June 2012 issue of Foreign Affairs, the mouthpiece for the influential Council on Foreign Relations, Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, General Raymond T. Odierno, advocated the army be “transitioned” into a more “flexible force” by deploying in situations normally reserved for domestic law enforcement officials. He argued that by doing so, troops will be better equipped to deal with conflict elsewhere.
- A February 2013 Department of Defense instruction altered the US code applying to the military’s involvement in domestic law enforcement by allowing US troops to quell “civil disturbances” domestically without any Presidential authorization, greasing the skids for a de facto military coup in America along with the wholesale abolition of Posse Comitatus.
- Rex 84, short for Readiness Exercise 1984, was established under the pretext of a “mass exodus” of illegal aliens crossing the Mexican/US border. During the Iran-Contra hearings in 1987, however, it was revealed that the program was a secretive “scenario and drill” developed by the federal government to suspend the Constitution, declare martial law, assign military commanders to take over state and local governments, and detain large numbers of American citizens determined by the government to be “national security threats.”
- In December 2011 it was revealed that Halliburton subsidiary KBR was seeking sub-contractors to staff and outfit “emergency environment” camps located in five regions of the United States. In 2006, KBR was contracted by Homeland Security to build detention centers designed to deal with “an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S,” or the rapid development of unspecified “new programs” that would require large numbers of people to be interned.
While preparations for martial law continued behind the scenes, the Department of Homeland Security was busy characterizing conservatives and libertarians as domestic extremists or even terrorists.
- A study which leaked in 2012 that was funded by the Department of Homeland Security characterized Americans who are “suspicious of centralized federal authority,” and “reverent of individual liberty” as “extreme right-wing” terrorists.
- The infamous 2009 MIAC report, published by the Missouri Information Analysis Center and first revealed by Infowars, framed Ron Paul supporters, libertarians, people who display bumper stickers, people who own gold, or even people who fly a U.S. flag, as potential terrorists.
- Over the last eight years, the DHS has also released a series of videos to promote the See Something, Say Something campaign in which almost all of the terrorists portrayed in the PSAs were white Americans.
- Police departments across the country have also identified returning veterans as a major domestic terror threat and are “armed for war” to combat them with military-style vehicles and weaponry.
- An April 2009 DHS intelligence assessment listed returning vets as likely domestic terrorists. Just a month later, the New York Times reported on how Boy Scout Explorers were being trained by the DHS to kill “disgruntled Iraq war veterans” in terrorist drills.
- During a New Hampshire city council meeting in 2013, former Marine Corps Colonel Peter Martino, who was stationed in Fallujah and trained Iraqi soldiers, asserted that the Department of Homeland Security was working with law enforcement to build a “domestic army,” because the federal government is afraid of its own citizens. Martino was responding to the city’s Police Chief, who justified the necessity for the acquisition of an armored ‘Bearcat’ vehicle by citing the “threat” posed by libertarians, sovereign citizen adherents, and Occupy activists in the region.
- Fort Hood soldiers are also being taught by their superiors that Christians, Tea Party supporters and anti-abortion activists represent a radical terror threat, mirroring DHS rhetoric.
In 2013, former Navy SEAL Ben Smith warned that the Obama administration is asking top brass in the military if they would be comfortable with disarming U.S. citizens, a litmus test that includes gauging whether they would be prepared to order NCOs to fire on Americans.
The sight of U.S. troops, National Guard, military vehicles and helicopters patrolling residential areas in America is becoming normalized as a result of urban warfare training drills like Jade Helm.
- In 2012, a photo showing fully armed U.S. National Guard troops patrolling a quiet residential street in Crookston, Minnesota went viral. Guard troops from the local Crookston Armory routinely take part in off-base exercises which train the local population to accept the sight of armed soldiers patrolling their neighborhoods as normal.
- A May 2012 joint drill between military and police in South Florida involving troops storming a building in the middle of the night, unannounced to local residents, was characterized by local media coverage not as a frightening example of how Americans are being acclimatized to accept a state of martial law but as a ‘cool tourist story’.
- During a 2012 U.S. Army exercise, St Louis City residents were told not be alarmed at the sight of U.S. Army tanks rolling down residential neighborhoods after sightings of the vehicles provoked fears of martial law. Local news media channels featured interviews with residents who praised the sight of troops on the streets as a valuable crime-fighting tool similar to that used in foreign countries.
- In March 2014, the Department of Defense conducted military training in Broward County, with exercises involving low flying helicopters designed to ‘scare the crap out of people’, according to one local reporter. Residents were shocked to see Navy SEALS practicing storming a university building from a Black Hawk chopper.
- Last year we reported on how the U.S. Army has built a 300 acre ‘fake city’ in Virginia complete with a sports stadium, bank, school, and an underground subway in order to train for unspecified future combat scenarios. As the Telegraph reported, “The subway carriages even carry the same logo as the carriages in Washington DC,” suggesting that the site was built to double both as a foreign city and a mock domestic town.
- Alarmed residents who reported low-flying black helicopters with their lights turned off buzzing downtown Dallas last December were witnessing U.S. Special Forces drills intended to allow troops to get a feel for “realistic urban sites”. The maneuvers were part of preparedness training for U.S. Special Operations Forces.
- Blacked out helicopters also buzzed Kentucky and Cincinnati residents in May 2014 as part of an unannounced military drill, with one eyewitness telling Infowars the maneuvers resembled something out of a “war zone”.
- As preparations for martial law continue, the DHS, the Army and other federal agencies have been acquiring huge amounts of riot gear in preparation for “public demonstration(s)” and “civil disturbances”.
- Weeks before the Mike Brown shooting that sparked the Ferguson riots, we reported on a promotional video touting FEMA’s emergency response capabilities which showed U.S. Army and National Guard troops training to detain unruly African-American citizens in prison camps before handing them over to police.
- Despite innumerable indications that the federal government is making preparations for riots, the Department of Homeland Security denied last year that it was gearing up for domestic disorder. In 2011, DHS chief Janet Napolitano directed ICE to prepare for a mass influx of immigrants into the United States, calling for the plan to deal with the “shelter” and “processing” of large numbers of people.
As the deluge of evidence presented in this article clearly demonstrates, the notion that the U.S. Army and the federal government do not at least have plans in place to deal with civil unrest in America is beyond naive.
Training exercises like Jade Helm are clearly designed to be dual purpose in nature, both for overseas combat and for the potential that martial law may be declared domestically in the aftermath of a massive economic collapse of other national emergency.
America, Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Mark Pocan (D-Wi.) need your support because earlier this week they introduced legislation to abolish the PATRIOT Act.