“Some people think that they can trouble Iran through oil sanctions but I should say that we have so much reserves that even if we don’t sell oil for two to three years, the country will be administered easily.”-Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of Iran, April 10, 2012
April 11, 2012, Iran follows through on threat to cut off oil to Germany, now Italy is next.
Iran also announced sanctions against 100 European Union companies. Sasan Khodaei, Deputy President of Iran Trade Promotion Organization, said the companies will no longer be able to sell products to Iran.
One reason for the sanctions is that Iran is now able to make the products for themselves.
Hydraulic Press Manufacturing (HPM) was a 135 year old Ohio plastics company, but it went bust in 2009.
However, you can still buy products with the HPM brand, but it’s not a U.S. company anymore.
In 2011 a Chinese company called Guangdong Yizumi Precision Machinery, bought all the rights to HPM and all its products. Production has been started in southern China.
The Chinese company says they’ve even hired former U.S. employees of HPM. They are setting up shop in the United States and already have contracts in north America worth $3 million USD.
“…with the decision of Ministers of Protection and Finance, the Greek police is available for hire by private clientele. However, this means if the Greek police is hired by those who can afford it, there are no available forces for those who cannot.”-Proto Thema, Greek news media outlet
The Greek news media outlet Proto Thema reporting that Greek cops will now be rented out.
Greek officials claim this is the only way they can continue to fund law enforcement.
The cost: About $39 USD per hour for one cop, additional $13 if you need a cop car.
Police patrol boat $261 per hour.
Police helicopter $1,960 per hour.
As you can see, only the elites can afford police protection now, and the “people” are still being forced to pay taxes for such “police protection” that they now won’t get!
Greek officials say they have to go with the rent-a-cop plan because crime has skyrocketed, no shit Sherlock, youth unemployment in Greece is at 50%!
April 9, 2012, Gerard Canino, president of New York’s First Class Equities, pled guilty to $66 million USD mortgage fraud scheme.
“As the president and owner of First Class Equities, Gerard Canino should have promoted responsible home ownership and protected the integrity of the mortgage finance industry. Instead, he used his firm to commit a massive mortgage fraud scheme that left scores of foreclosed properties in its wake.”-Preet Bharara, U.S. Attorney
Canino and his firm recruited “straw buyers”; people who posed as home buyers to purchase distressed properties but who had no intention of paying the mortgages. The bank loans meant for buying the properties actually went to Canino and his co-conspirators. Court papers said the Long Island based firm ran the fraud from 2004 to 2009.
If you think about it, $66 million is a drop in the big bucket of home foreclosures.
“It’s a hard cut off, there is no phase out. Nobody gets squat after December 31!”-Bob Fick, U.S. Department of Labor
The U.S. government is ending long term unemployment help (stop calling it “benefits” main stream U.S. media!!!). Emergency unemployment compensation is being reduced from 53 weeks, to just 13. Another program known as extended benefits is being ended altogether.
As a result, in the state of Idaho overall maximum unemployment help will drop from 99 weeks to 39!
The official U.S. unemployment rate is at 8.2%, Idaho’s official unemployment rate is around 8%. But that doesn’t mean companies are hiring enough people.
April 9, 2012, U.S. stock markets dropped because of news that hiring is not what everyone thought it was. The U.S. Department of Labor announced that 120,000 jobs were created in March. That’s 80,000 less than expected!
Many “experts” were sure it would be more than 200,000! In fact many of those “experts” now think the job gains of the previous three months were temporary, and more losses are to come: “We’re thinking that the economic data is going to lose some momentum from here going forward.”-Bob Baur, Principal Global Investors
Even Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke said the recent drop in official unemployment numbers was “out of sync”.
Teenagers continue to get hit hard with lack of jobs. The official rate of unemployment for them is 25%! The highest rate since last year, and getting close to the all time record of 25.5% in 2009 (the highest since 1948)!
Here’s a fact: There are 5.1 million less U.S. jobs now, than in December 2007! The U.S. economy needed to create at least 4.7 million new jobs since then, in order to “recover”, and it has not!
Here’s another interesting fact about the official unemployment numbers game: New York City is considered to have made a faster “recovery” than the rest of the country, yet their unemployment numbers have gone up! They’re now around 9.6% unemployment, close to the 10% they hit in 2009.
This is just an example of how you can’t trust the “official” numbers. Remember, the official unemployment rate does not count people who have been unemployed for so long they no longer qualify for unemployment assistance. Also, the Department of Labor issues at least six different “unemployment numbers”.
U-3 is the one the main stream U.S. media runs with. It’s the one giving us the 8.2% rate for March. The Department of Labor calls it the “official unemployment rate”.
But there is also U-6, and it says the unemployment rate is 14.5%! It’s also known as the “under-employed”, which means people who are working part time but want full time work. The Department of Labor said there were 7.7 million under-employed people in March 2012.
U-1 is also the “employment to population rate”, which looks at how many people have jobs, and it says 58.5% of the people have jobs.
Then there’s U-4 and U-5 (aka “long term unemployment” or “discouraged workers”) numbers which tries to count people who’ve been out of work for more than six months. It’s now at 5.3 million long term unemployed.
There’s also U-2 which tries to count people who just lost their jobs.
It’s confusing, especially when you get to the “discouraged” calculations. Examples: U-4 is U-3 + “discouraged workers”. U-5 is U-4 + “marginally attached workers”. U-6 is U-5 + “part time workers who want full time work”.
The bottom line is that there are millions of people in the United States still without jobs, or without good paying jobs, and that is a sign that there is no economic recovery.
U.S. department of Energy reported on April 6, 2012, that radioactive particles of cesium and cobalt are being found on construction materials.
A contractor discovered the contamination. Officials think it could be from the demolition of old buildings in that area of the INL site, which would imply that the buildings were contaminated before being torn down.
A local east Idaho DOE spokesman said there was no concern “…unless you get it onto your skin…” and you had “…prolonged exposure…”
Employees and vehicles are now being checked for contamination as they enter and leave the site.
Not even a week after Japan set tougher limits on radioactive cesium in food, but more mushroom farms are found to be contaminated.
In a town 300 kilometers (186.4 miles) from Fukishima Daiichi, a farm in Kanagawa Prefecture discovered their mushrooms contain 141 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram.
The new safe limits are 100 becquerels (prior to that the government was allowing food with 500 becquerels to be sold!).
Bamboo shoot farms in Chiba Prefecture have also turned up contaminated.
Ibaraki Prefecture also reporting that bamboo shoots and shiitake mushrooms are contaminated.
In Gunma Prefecture, beef is contaminated with 106 becquerels of radioactive cesium, although the new safe limits for beef don’t go into effect until October! Gunma officials say they are still asking cattle ranchers not to ship the beef.
ONE YEAR LATER: SOME FUKUSHIMA FARM ANIMALS WILL BE ALLOWED TO LIVE
“A remarkable increase in the rate of M 3 and greater earthquakes is currently in progress in the U.S. midcontinent. The average number of M >= 3 earthquakes/year increased starting in 2001, culminating in a six-fold increase over 20th century levels in 2011.”-USGS study, Are Seismicity Rate Changes in the Midcontinent Natural or Manmade?
Around the beginning of January 2012, officials from the U.S. Geological Survey testified to Ohio state officials, that the fracking going on in their state was the cause of a sudden string of earthquakes.
In July 2011, the state of Arkansas banned fracking for the same reasons.
Now a new study by USGS geologists, published by Seismological Society of America (SSA), confirms that “…the seismicity rate changes described here are almost certainly manmade…”, due to “…oil and gas production.”
The study will be discussed in more detail at a meeting from April 17-19.
USGS scientists point out that the area of increased quake activity is not normal for that part of the United States: “A naturally-occurring rate change of this magnitude is unprecedented outside of volcanic settings or in the absence of a main shock, of which there were neither in this region.”
The abstract details of the study also say: “The modest increase that began in 2001 is due to increased seismicity in the coal bed methane field of the Raton Basin along the Colorado-New Mexico border west of Trinidad, CO. The acceleration in activity that began in 2009 appears to involve a combination of source regions of oil and gas production, including the Guy, Arkansas region, and in central and southern Oklahoma.”
But this is not the only recent study published by the SSA to link oil production with earthquakes. Another report linked the April 2010 Alice, Texas earthquake to oil production in the Stratton field: “We conclude it is plausible, although not proven definitively, that production in the Stratton field contributed to the occurrence of the 2010 Alice earthquake and an earlier similar earthquake that occurred on 24 March 1997.”
So far most of the quakes are taking place in areas that don’t normally have much seismic activity, but California has plenty of earthquakes, and there’s a lot of oil and gas drilling, including fracking, going on there!
“On the one hand, the Division [California agency regulating petroleum industry] remains in denial about fracking for oil. On the other hand, they ask for and receive funding to regulate it and then don’t do it, and have no plans to do it [‘it’ as in ‘regulate’].”-Bill Allayaud, Environmental Working Group
On March 22, 2012, Hoku Solar (a subsidiary of Hoku Corporation, in turn majority owned by China’s Tianwei New Energy) was selected to build a 7.2 megawatt solar farm in Kaua’i, Hawaii.
In December 2011, Hoku Solar actually delivered a 1.18 megawatt solar energy facility, the largest solar power plant in O’ahu, Hawaii.
After the announcement of the 7.2 megawatt solar farm contract, Hoku Corp stock went up 11%.
Now the bad news, another subsidiary of Hoku Corporation, Hoku Materials, is getting hit again by the construction contractor in charge of completing the southeastern Idaho polysilicon factory.
There are reports that once again Hoku has not fully paid its contractor JH Kelly. This has happened before, and is part of the main cause for many construction delays in the past. JH Kelly officials say they are taking “action” against Hoku.
Hoku Materials has also played the same game with electricity supplier Idaho Power. Their latest battle was settled by an Idaho Public Utilities Commission (IPUC) decision.
According to an 15 March 2012 IPUC statement, Hoku got a new electricity contract which: “… reduces Hoku’s monthly minimum payment to about $800,000 for up to 18 months through June 2013. To protect customers and the company from the lost revenue from the lower minimum payment, Hoku will reimburse the difference between the current and the revised minimum charge in payments spread through November 2014, plus 6 percent interest. Hoku will also make an initial payment of $3.8 million, with $2 million of that coming from a $4 million deposit already provided by Hoku. The remaining $1.8 million will be paid over the next 18 months at $100,000 per month. Hoku must give Idaho Power 30 days’ notice when it plans to exceed 10 MW and six-months’ notice when it plans to exceed 20 MW.”
HOKU MATERIALS’ CUSTOMERS WHO ‘PREPAID’ ARE GETTING IMPATIENT!