Sales of Japanese beer, and beer based drinks, hit all time lows in February, 2012.
Japanese brewers shipped less than 360,000 kiloliters (95,101,938 U.S. liquid gallons), that’s the lowest amount in February since such record keeping was started in 1992.
Nippon beer makers blame the cold weather! They say demand dropped in the areas of Japan that were hit hard by unusual cold temps and heavy snowfall. They also blame being forced to make more non-alcoholic drinks.
South Korea officials reporting that bird flu has hit their country. 45 chickens died from bird flu, however, they are conducting more thorough tests to determine which strain of bird flu it was.
In Vietnam, officials thought they got things under control after more than 400 poultry died in February, but now, a new outbreak has been reported to the UN’s World Health Organization.
Bangladesh is reporting a fourth case of human H5N1 infection. The man was found to be infected, on February 26, after government mandated testing for live poultry market workers. So far no deaths.
Indonesia has seen another human death from H5N1. A 12 year old boy died on 21 February 2012. He was in contact with poultry, but investigators say none of the birds are showing any sign of H5N1.
As of the beginning of March, farmers in Bhutan have killed off more than 1,300 poultry to stop the spread of H5N1 there.
Officials in Hong Kong are reporting an increase in the number of wild birds dying from H5N1. Normally H5N1 attacks domestic birds. It’s believed that wild birds can get it from eating contaminated chicken feed. However, most of the dead wild birds in Hong Kong were not near any poultry farms.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says H5N1 can be spread by rubbing your eyes after handling sick birds. The CDC said several types of flu viruses can travel through your eye and cause upper respiratory infection.
I looked and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.
PALE GREEN HORSE & H1N1: MEXICO HAS 166 DEATHS SO FAR FOR 2012, COSTA RICA SAYS FLU “UNUSUAL” THIS YEAR
“They’re very worried about the consumer. If we go into another recession, a lot of risk officers feel this is where the damage will be done.”-Paul Miller, former Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, currently working for FBR Capital Markets
It appears the Federal Reserve is losing patience with the Too Big To Fail Banks (TBTFB). It’s questioning the TBTFBs’ desire to pay out huge dividends, and buy back their stocks.
“If the Fed fights back and disagrees and is more aggressive in their stance on cards and mortgages, it would mean banks wouldn’t be able to pay out as much.”-Glenn Schorr, Nomura Securities
Schorr says bank investors are almost demanding 50% to 60% earnings this year!
The problem is that the latest bank stress tests are conflicting with the TBTFB’s own financial claims. The stress tests are designed to see if a bank has enough cash on hand to handle a sudden huge drop in the economy.
So far unnamed insiders, involved with analyzing the tests, say things aren’t looking good for banks. When the variable of consumer debt is considered in the stress tests, some banks would suffer almost double the loses than their own in-house projections!
31 TBTFBs are currently undergoing the Federal Reserve stress test.
“We all wish we didn’t have to build such a facility. But we’re in a certain situation due to certain circumstances, and we need a facility to address these needs.”-unnamed Israeli Defense official
According to an article in The Independent, Israel is about to build the World’s largest “detention center”, designed to hold 8,000 Black African “migrants”!
“[it was time]…to stop this growing influx that threatens Israelis’ jobs and changes the character of the state.”-Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel
Most of the migrants are actually fleeing the wars in Sudan and Eritrea. Israel has a policy of not returning refugees fleeing wars, so now they’ve decided to put them all in prison!
“People fleeing for their lives… will not stop coming because they face three years in detention.”-Reut Michaeli, Hotline for Migrant Workers
I wounder how many U.S. tax dollars are going to be used to build this World’s largest immigrant detention center?
The 1961 U.S. Foreign Assistance Act states: “No security assistance may be provided to any country the government of which engages in a consistent pattern of gross violation of internationally recognized human rights.”
Official inquiries and investigations into U.S. military aid to Israel, over the past few decades, have revealed that U.S. taxpayer money, and U.S. weapons have been directly used to kill Palestinians and steal their land!
A new report by US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation has revealed that it’s gotten worse since the year 2000.
Between 2000 and 2009 “With this taxpayer money, the United States licensed, paid for and delivered more than 670,903,390 weapons, rounds of ammunition and related equipment to Israel, valued at $18.866 billion.” During that same time period “….the Israeli military killed at least 2,969 Palestinians who took no part in hostilities….Among these fatalities were at least 1,128 Palestinian children less than 18 years of age.”
“These statistics do not include an estimated 1,191 Lebanese who…..were killed by the Israeli military during its July-August 2006 war against Lebanon.”
Peace prize winning Barack Obama said this year he wants to give Israel $3.1 billion! And I thought we were having economic problems, I guess I was wrong.
“From fiscal year 2000 to 2009, the State Department licensed – and U.S. taxpayers funded – the delivery of more than 595,000 tear gas canisters and other ‘riot control’ equipment to the Israeli military, valued at more than $20.5 million!”
It’s not just Palestinians getting hurt by the tear gas: “On March 13, 2009, 37-year-old U.S. citizen Tristan Anderson was critically injured after an Israeli soldier shot him in the head with a high-velocity tear gas canister in the West Bank village of Ni’lin while he was observing a nonviolent Palestinian protest. The tear gas canister made a large hole in his forehead, causing brain damage and leaving him largely paralyzed. On May 31, 2010, 21-year-old U.S. citizen Emily Henochowicz was also struck in the face by a high-velocity tear gas canister fired by an Israeli soldier during a demonstration against Israel’s attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla at the Qalandia checkpoint outside of Jerusalem. She lost her left eye as a result.”
Since 1985, no thanks to Ronald Reagan, the United States ended military aid “loans” to Israel, and instead simply gives the taxpayers’ money away!
“Take, for example, a typical mid-size U.S. city like Ft. Wayne, Indiana (population 254,000), whose residents are responsible for paying an estimated $40.9 million of their federal taxes to finance U.S. military aid to Israel from 2009 to 2018 under the terms of the MOU [2007 Memorandum of Understanding, a pledge of 30 billion of your tax dollars from the U.S. government to Israel]. With that same amount of money, the federal government could instead each year: Provide 497 low-income families in Fort Wayne with affordable housing vouchers; or Retrain 697 unemployed workers in Fort Wayne to enter the green jobs economy; or Teach early reading skills to 1,209 disadvantaged Fort Wayne school children; or Provide basic health care to 33,125 Fort Wayne residents without insurance.”
Now remember that Peace prize winner Barack Obama singed into law NDAA 2012. U.S. citizens are the target of that one.
In one city, Rikuzentakata, Iwate Prefecture, there are 26 statues. They represent the bodies who could not be identified. 1,555 residents of Rikuzentakata died on March 11, 2011.
Al Jazerra Rikuzentakata report.
Visit Foreign Volunteers Japan.
In Minamisanriku Town, Miyagi Prefecture, relief volunteers are still working there one year later. Before they started yet another day of work, 300 volunteers gave a sunrise prayer for the thousands of missing and dead.
Minamisanriku Town was one of the hardest hit by the tsunami. It’s where Miki Endo stayed at her Disaster Center post blasting evacuation orders over the town’s loudspeaker system, until the tsunami blasted away the three story building she was in. Watch haunting Japanese video report here: Minamisanriku, hometown of Heroine Miki Endo is becoming Atlantis
But Miki was not alone in that Disaster Center, she had dozens of co-workers as well as her boss, all hoping they could help.
One co-worker was at the hill top Evacuation Center, but he couldn’t bear seeing what was happening and returned to the Disaster Center. He led many of his co-workers to the top of the three story building, unfortunately the tsunami was four stories tall, and all were killed.
The skeletal remains of the Disaster Center has become a shrine.
Visit savemiyagi.org.
Don’t forget the eight firefighters of Otsuchi, Iwate Prefecture. The 57 year old firefighter, Fujio Koshita, rang a warning bell even as the tsunami headed right for him! Seven other firefighters died helping people get to higher ground.
They say Fujio violated his own rule about personal safety: “Don’t die. Rescuers must stay alive.”
Watch the Brian Barnes video of Otsuchi tsunami. In the video you can see that water levels rose even before the tsunami hit, it caught videographers by surprise. At 6:20 into the video they realize the city was already flooding. At 8:00 in the tsunami finally hits, you can hear cracking sounds as buildings break.
Visit otsuchi.org
According to the latest official Japanese government numbers, more than 19,000 people were killed. Many more are still without permanent places to live. 3,000 people are still listed as missing. I’m sure there are many dozens of other heroes and heroines that we will never hear about. But true heroes never die: “…The fireman was brave. I’m proud of him.”-16 year old Kaito Yamasaki
On March 11, 2011, a 17 ton tourist bus was left on top of a two story community hall building, after the tsunami sucked itself back out to sea.
That was in Ishinomaki City, Miyagi Prefecture, Honshu, Japan (Nippon).
On March 10, 2012, nearly one year later, the bus was finally removed from the roof. Many survivors said it was a bad reminder of the tsunami. The owner of the bus company said the sight of his bus on the roof drove him to swear that he will operate his bus line again.
The bus had been sitting in a garage, 500 meters (1,640 feet) from its resting place, when the tsunami swept it away. Watch NHK reporter who filmed as she ran from disaster video to see the bus immediately after the tsunami.
It’s been revealed that Leonie Industries owes the United States $4 million in taxes, yet has been awarded Defense Department contracts worth at least $120 million.
The company is supposed to be providing marketing and media services, as well as intelligence and information operations.
U.S. Senators Tom Carper (D-Delaware) and Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) have demanded that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta explain how a company that owes taxes gets awarded so many contracts.
Steve Keen is Professor of Economics & Finance at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. He was named by Forbes as the most accurate economic forecaster in this economic disaster. He received the Revere Award from the Real World Economics Review, also for his accurate predictions. He wrote the book Debunking Economics.
Now in a recent interview with former Wall Street broker, Timothy Maxwell “Max” Keiser, Keen says there is nothing governments can do to save the economy, because it is actually an inherent part of the banking system’s sinister operations!
No amount of tax increases, or government spending cuts (austerity), or government spending increases (Keynesian spending), or even corporate bailouts will help save the economy. It’s called deleveraging: “The reason it hasn’t worked….this is massive deleveraging. The private sector has borrowed its way into enormous levels of debt over about 40, 50 year period….from owing about half a year’s GDP as the debt level in the 1950s to [owing] three years GDP now!”
I’ve already written about the IMF’s order to continue deleveraging of households (that’s you and me), Keen is saying this is part and parcel of the too big to fail banks policies.
Deleveraging (retracting credit) means the banks try to get rid of their debts. Those debts include the mortgages and credit cards they’ve issued to the general public.
They deleverage households by calling in your chips, saying pay up now. It doesn’t matter if you’re credit rating is good or not. Many of the foreclosures involved people who had never missed payments, even people who had paid off their homes! And deleveraging attacks corporations as well.
A recent case of deleveraging, involving a major corporation, was the shut down of Air Australia. The airline was shut down when it’s creditors (too big to fail banks) refused to leverage (issue credit) for Air Australia’s fuel purchases.
Steve Keen says the too big to fail banks are now deleveraging everyone because the too big to fail banks became addicted to debt themselves! This goes back to the 1980s, and includes personalities like Alan Greenspan and Mitt Romney.
Keen says it’s the vulture capitalist mentality that is destroying the country: “…capitalists in euphoric states, and certainly finance capitalists…they borrow money, they gamble on asset prices, they’ll cause a bubble…of course the borrowing is badly thought out, projects don’t work, they’re ponzi schemes in many ways to begin with…you go through periods of ratcheting up levels of debt, until you get to the point that there’s so much debt the system simply can’t cope with it and you go into a terminal downturn, and that’s where we are right now.”
The 1980s saw the beginning of the trend of vulture capitalists, like Mitt Romney, using leverage (loans) to take over companies, carve them up and sell them off. Not only did it make big money for people like Mitt Romney (while causing millions of U.S. workers to lose their jobs between the 1980s and now) it made big money for the too big to fail banks.
In steps Alan Greenspan. The Federal Reserve is the central bank of the U.S. It actually makes money off issuing loans to the too big to fail banks. So, it is in the interest of the Federal Reserve to keep this game going. It’s not about jobs at all, it’s about making money purely through loans.
Presidential candidate Ron Paul is correct about the Federal Reserve being part of the problem, because Keen says Greenspan is responsible for what is about to become the biggest depression ever: “…Alan Greenspan turned what would have been a garden variety small depression, back in 1987, into the biggest depression in human history by rescuing the financial industry from each of its mistakes. Which simply meant that it [finance industry] would go looking for another social class to lend money to, expanding the level of debt…If the central banks hadn’t been trying to rescue us from each of the individual financial crisis we would’ve had a minor depression…we’re now in for the biggest of all time…now we’re dealing with the biggest financial crisis ever, and we can certainly blame the central banks for the scale of it.”
Keen also discovered, while working through his mathematical models, that when the shit hits the fan it’s not the banks and vulture capitalists who pay for the debt they themselves created, it’s the working class: “…So, as the level of debt rose, it wasn’t the capitalists who paid for it, even though they were the ones doing the borrowing, it was the workers in terms of their income share…the ones who are now paying for it through austerity actually are the ones who’ve been paying for it through a lower share of income, not the capitalists….”
Here’s what Keen had to say about the too big to fail banks: “Having a large financial sector is a sign of a sick economy.” Because banks represent finance capital and “…finance capital doesn’t make money!” Keen explained that banks are there to help true industries operate, and make money the old fashioned way, by earning it through providing products or services. In other words you should not have too big to fail banks making up the majority of your country’s GDP, which is in fact what’s happening in the U.S.
Towards the end of Keen’s interview with Max Keiser, he predicted that Australia’s economy will begin to crash within six to 12 months, and he thinks the Australian government will attempt the same pro-bank, anti-worker, rescue policies as that of the United States. Keen calls the U.S. policy “…rescuing the parasite [banks, Romney style capitalists, etc] rather than rescuing the host [true industries, working class].”
In the early 1990s Keen came up with an economic model that takes into account vulture capitalist debt financing. He used mathematical chaos theory to prove what film maker Oliver Stone tried to warn about in his movie Wall Street: Mitt Romney style capitalism doesn’t work, and doesn’t create more jobs in the long run. Back in 1993 Keen warned that any apparent tranquility caused by the out of control crony capitalist debt financing was actually “…the lull before the storm.”
Check out debtdeflation.com
Days after a UBS oil analyst said ten countries (allies of the U.S.) would be destroyed if Iranian oil was cut off, a dumb U.S. Senator proposes to cut off Iranian oil!
In a Friday interview with C-SPAN’s (Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network) Newsmakers program, democrat Carl Levin says he wants to use the U.S. Navy to blockade Iranian oil shipments.
Levin is inviting other countries to join in: “I think (these are) options that whoever is willing to participate should explore, including Israel and including the United States.”
Levin admitted that alternative oil supplies would have to be found for the allies of the United States. Mmmm, you mean like the United States now that it actually has too much oil on hand (recently the CEO of Exxon Mobil said the U.S. oil “…markets are well supplied.”)? Now we know the real reason for going to war against the World’s second largest petroleum producer (oil from Canada and North Dakota is actually creating a surplus in the U.S.).