U.S. Senator John Kerry says that he’s worked out differences between Pakistan and the United States. As a sign he says Pakistan will return the tail rotor of the downed stealth helicopter used in the Osama bin Laden raid.
Kerry also says Pakistan no longer wants an official apology from the U.S. Kerry’s announcements might be too late for the U.S. government, as a Senate panel is deciding if Pakistan is still an ally of the U.S. or not.
The U.S. Commerce Department says overall new home construction dropped 10.6% in April. Also, building permits fell 4% since March.
Construction of multi-family homes, with five or more units, dropped 28%. Economic “experts” expected an increase in housing construction for April.
Pakistan is reporting that two NATO helicopters attacked a Pakistani security checkpoint in North Waziristan. Also, a U.S. drone attack killed 12 people in the same region.
No response so far from NATO forces on why they attacked a security checkpoint. This is not the first time; last year U.S. helicopters did the same thing, killing two Pakistani soldiers.
These attacks come as U.S. Senator John Kerry is in Pakistan, to try an reconcile the May 1/2 Osama bin Laden operation with Pakistani officials.
“…timely action to increase the debt limit in order to protect the full faith and credit of the United States and avoid catastrophic economic consequences for citizens.”-Timothy Geithner, Treasury Secretary
U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, will now use government employee retirement money to pay U.S. government debts. He pointed out that he’s not the first Treasury Secretary to do so.
Even with using retirement money, it’s estimated the government will run out of debt payment options within 11 weeks. The Federal government has spent its way to the legal debt limit of $14.3 trillion.
What Geithner, and Ben Bernanke of the Federal Reserve (a private bank), want is for Congress to raise the debt limit. But, that would only mean that our elected officials could get us even deeper in the hole.
The problem is that our Federal government is running solely on loans. Geithner wants to be able to keep borrowing money. There is a fear that no matter how drastic government spending cuts are, they might not be enough. This is a really really really bad sign.
The Treasury Department has already stopped issuing state and local governments special securities to manage their debts. Where does that leave them?
History shows that Congress loves to raise its debt limit, so it can spend more of YOUR money, and it’s partly the cause of our current situation. Some members of Congress say it’s time to pay the piper.
“The wildfire situation in Alberta remains extreme.”-Ed Stelmach, Premier of Alberta
The wildfires in Alberta, Canada, are not only destroying homes, and even towns, but oil fields as well. The fires are adding to already damaged oil production in Canada.
This year, most oil producers in Canada are dealing with clean ups of major oil spills (ignored by main stream media) and explosions of sand oil fields (also ignored by main stream media). On top of that, and the fires in Alberta, some oil fields are under water because of flooding in Manitoba.
Oil producer Penn West says their oil production is down by 40,000 barrels per day, and that’s before the fires shut down their operation in Alberta.
The Rainbow pipeline (run by Plains All American Pipeline LP) in Alberta, is closed because of a massive oil spill earlier this year, but clean up of the spill is halted because of the wildfires. How long will the wildfires go once they hit the oil?
Reuters reported that at least half a dozen Canadian pipelines developed leaks this year. This is either a case of shoddy maintenance by Canadian companies, or sabotage.
The result of the explosions, pipeline spills, flooding and now fires, is causing several Canadian refiners to shut down. Operators of the Pelican Lake plant say they will have to shut down if they don’t get oil soon. The Marten Mountain plant is already shut down.
Tokyo Electric Power Company says they have reason to believe the cooling systems for Fukushima Daiichi were manually turned off.
They claim that the automatic systems kicked on after the 9.0 quake, but were then manually shut off right before the tsunami hit. It was three hours later before the system was turned back on. TEPCo did not provide evidence, and it sounded like speculation to me.
Basically they’re trying to say a shutdown of cooling systems for slightly longer than three hours caused a total meltdown of fuel rods in Reactor 1. They’re forgetting that there was no power to run the system anyway (according to their own statements weeks ago). Also, TEPCo has recently admitted that dozens of trucks with generators, brought in after the tsunami, failed to provide power to run the plant. It sounds like TEPCo is trying to blame its lower level throwaway employees for the meltdown.
For the first time since the creation of the Republic of Ireland, royalty from the British empire has set foot on the island nation. Queen Elizabeth II is in Ireland.
The government of Ireland has gone to great lengths to provide security for the queen’s visit. The security is not to protect against outside attacks, like maybe from al-Qeada, but to protect the queen from the Irish people.
Already hundreds of Irish have demonstrated their disgust with a visit from their mortal enemy, a royal member of the British empire. Even the Irish military has been called out to provide the queen protection. That is a sure sign that the Republic has slipped back into the hands of the English (just like when Bush Jr paid a visit to the queen during his reign as U.S. President, the first time for a U.S. President).
Why is the queen in Ireland? Officially it’s to “visit” and “pay respects” to those Irish who died fighting for their freedom. Yeah, and who were they fighting against? Elizabeth’s grandmammy and grandpappy’s empire, that’s who! The real reason has to do with deals made in the Northern Ireland peace agreement, and the fact that a pro-empire political party has gained power in the Irish government.
But despite the tiny group of bought off Irish turncoats who’ve gained power in politics, most Irish still hate the English. A recent poll showed Irish interest in anything to do with royalty hit an all time record low, with the recent royal wedding.
An Irish university professor pointed out that it’s not just British royalty the Irish hate, it’s any royalty: “The King of Denmark could arrive and no one would care – it’s the same thing.”-Gerard Casey, University College Dublin
It’s interesting timing that President Barak Obama will visit Ireland after the queen leaves. Most Irish say they can’t wait for that visit (oh well, if they only knew).
A member of the Special Air Service (SAS) has been charged with 31 counts of sex crimes, including raping girls as young as six. The soldier served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It took legal action by British media to make the case public. The court case revealed that the soldier had been committing sex crimes as far back as 1997, years before the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. For some reason the U.K. Ministry of Defense wanted to keep the case from the public.
There is another man being charged along with the SAS soldier, a paramedic. Apparently the two worked together to commit sex crimes. The paramedic is also accused of using drugs to overpower victims.
Could this be the real reason the U.S. doesn’t want to leave Iraq? Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki made it clear that Iraq and Iran are coming together to act as a regional power.
On May 16, Maliki told Iranian media that Iraq and Iran will expand military, as well as economic, cooperation. He said the ongoing situation in the Middle East (caused by Western forces) demands that the ancient powers of Iraq and Iran must work together to create stability in the Middle East.
14 Muslims are suing their government for spying on them. Some of those suing the Japanese authorities actually worked for police to spy on their fellow Muslims.
It’s not just the fact that Muslims are being spied on in Japan, the Japanese police actually published their data on the internet!
This is not the first time police made spy data available to the public, resulting in a lawsuit. In December 2010, a Japanese book publisher was sued for printing a book with recent police spy data in it.