Tag Archives: economy

Business/Economics, International

What Economic Recovery: G20 says no more money for the IMF, until Greece makes even more draconian cuts! Wants U.S. to end Volcker Rules!

27 February 2012

The Group of 20 finance ministers and central bank chiefs, meeting in Mexico, said they will not provide the International Monetary Fund anymore money until Europe, specifically Greece, makes more even drastic government cuts.

This follows reports that the World Bank will issue a report warning China to privatize its remaning government held businesses.  Many analysts believe what the G20 really wants is total privatization of governments.

Yesterday I speculated that the problems of Greece are actually related to its lack of participation in the developing of the Leviathan gas and oil fields. Greece is also being pushed to privatize many government services.

The G20 also demanded that the United States back off of its Volcker banking rule, which was created to tighten the regulation of runaway too big to fail banks!  The Volcker rule is supposed to stop banks from using customer deposits to make investments strictly for the banks own profit! G20 officials claim the Volcker rule are interfering with international banking!

The Volcker rule doesn’t even go into effect until July, 2012!

 

 

Business/Economics, International, U.S.

Global Economic War: World Bank threatens China, more proof of conspiracy to privatize world governments!

The Wall Street Journal says a report titled China 2030, to be released on February 27, indicates that China’s booming economy will soon go bust if it doesn’t implement radical reforms.

The report comes from the World Bank, and a think tank supposedly connected to the Chinese government.

The China 2030 report will be released in China on Monday.  It calls for the officially communist Chinese government to sell off the last of its state owned businesses, possibly including its four major banks.

Allegedly the China 2030 report says China’s economy will begin to go bust by 2015, if it does not fully privatize its industries.

 

 

 

International

Red Horse, Leviathan & World War 3: It’s about the Oil & Gas, huge reserves found off the coast of Cyprus, Gaza, Greece, Egypt, Israel, Libya, Lebanon, Turkey & Syria. The real reason for War with Iran!

“…its gas resources are bigger than anything we have assessed in the United States!”-Brenda Pierce, U.S. Geological Survey, statement about the Levant Basin Province (aka Leviathan)

The discovery of huge natural gas reserves in the Mediterranean Sea is the true cause of warmongering between the United States, Europe, Cyprus (which is divided into Greek and Turkish halves), Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Iran and Palestinian Gaza Strip.

In 2009, Texas U.S.A. based Noble Energy (formerly known as Noble Affiliates, and not to be confused with Nobel Energy Management) discovered a huge gas field while under hire by Israel.  It was the biggest gas field discovery of 2009, called Tamar.

Image via Noble Energy.

In October 2010, Noble Energy discovered an even bigger gas field. Israel declared the area an Exclusive Economic Zone.  It’s part of an even bigger area known as the Leviathan Gas Field. The problem is that Lebanon says the field extends into its territory and on August 2010, almost two months before the second discovery by Noble Energy, petitioned the United Nations to protect their rights.

Lebanon’s Parliament Speaker, Nabih Berri, said Israel is “…ignoring the fact that according to the maps the deposit extends into Lebanese waters.”

Lebanon is justified, as Israel (along with the United States) never ratified the 1982 UN Convention on Law of the Sea.  Under that law Lebanon has a right to the gas, in the field called Tamar.

Israeli officials responded with threats of war: “We will not hesitate to use our force and strength to protect not only the rule of law but the international maritime law.”-Uzi Landau, Minister of National Infrastructure of Israel

Note how Israeli officials always make claims of enforcing international laws, yet they have refused to sign onto most of those laws!

In fact Israel periodically sends military aircraft into Lebanon’s air space, and even drops a few bombs now and again.

But, the Leviathan Gas Field doesn’t involve just Israel and Lebanon. In December 2011, NATO-Turkish warships began firing on an area of the Mediterranean where Cyprus had just discovered an extension of the Leviathan Gas Field.  Cyprus declared the area an Exclusive Economic Zone, it is also known as Block-12 of the Leviathan Gas Field.

Greek Cypriot officials issued not only words of war, but threats of Ethnic Cleansing: “If Turkey does not change its gunboat diplomacy and stop playing the part of regional police officer, there will be consequences which, for sure, will not be good, either for the whole region or the Turkish people and first and foremost for Turkish Cypriots.”-Dimitris Christofias, Greek President of Cyprus

For some reason the Western media has not reported much of anything about the disputes over the Leviathan Gas Field.

2011 was also the year that NATO-Turkey went from being Israel’s only ally in the region, to becoming an enemy.  Turkey officially blamed it on Israel’s blockade of humanitarian aid ships to Gaza, but it looks like it’s really about the gas.  By the end of 2011, Israel canceled a $90-million military contract with Turkey, because Israeli officials felt Turkey was after their portion of the gas field.

Israel has allied itself with Greek Cyprus, when it comes to extracting the natural gas.  While Noble Energy is officially a Houston, Texas, company, most of the company stocks are actually held by petroleum companies of Greek Cyprus (Cypriot national energy company) and Israel (Delek Drilling LP & Avner Oil Exploration LLP).

Noble Energy claims there is 33-trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the Leviathan fields, enough to provide Israel with 100 years worth!  In fact, the United States government is so interested that the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) was sent in to confirm its size.

You might remember that, in 2011, for a short time it looked like Israeli-U.S. relations were deteriorating. Again, the Western media failed to report that U.S. officials told Lebanese officials that the U.S. supported their claim to the Tamar gas  fields!

The U.S. mended their relations with Israel, by taking a stand against Turkey’s desire to control a portion of Leviathan.  U.S. officials did this by supporting Israel’s new ally Greek Cyprus.

U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, told the Greek Cyprus Foreign Minister, Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis, to go full bore on drilling their gas field.     Kozakou-Marcoullis told a crowd at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars that Turkey was “the neighborhood bully”, and that the United States was fully supporting Greek Cyprus (thus, in a round-a-bout way Israel) in their gas field operations.

February 16, 2012, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a historic first time visit to Greek Cyprus.  He called the new alliance a “natural relationship”, and added:  “I came here to develop our bilateral ties, our economic ties and ties in the field of energy.”

Oh, but wait, Turkey now looks to be Israel’s ally again. In fact Turkey has switched from supporting Syria to supporting military action against Syria!   What happened?

Turkey has realized that by connecting a relatively short pipeline to Leviathan, they could potentially become self sufficient in natural gas, and maybe even oil.  This would end their current dependence on petroleum from the Black Sea (Russia, Romania), and make it no longer a necessity to connect to the planned pipeline coming from Iran.

What about NATO-Greece? Ever notice how this economic disaster just keeps dragging on? It could be because Greece is a transit rout for oil and gas pipelines coming from the Caspian Sea, and Middle East (namely Iran).  These so called bail out negotiations are more likely efforts to get Greece to join Leviathan.

The problem for Greece is that it would need a very long expensive pipeline to connect to the known gas/oil reserves of Leviathan, meaning it’s still cheaper to get their petroleum from the Middle East!  It’s also still cheaper to continue getting their petroleum from the Middle East, than to buy it from those countries (Israel, Cyprus, etc) that are planning to mine Leviathan for everything it’s got.

This is the real reason Greece is being run into the ground.

By the way, want to know what the USGS found when they explored the Eastern Mediterranean?  Potentially, 345-trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 3.4-billion barrels of oil!!!

This sheds new light on the real reasons for the 2011 overthrow of the Egyptian and Libyan governments in North Africa!  The people of those countries were justified, but look what it’s got them; increasing instability in Libya, and a pro-U.S.-Israel military government in Egypt.

And what about the almost daily Israeli military attacks on the Gaza Strip, for the past two years, that the Western-NATO news-media is not reporting!?  The latest attack, on February 26, saw Israeli planes bomb a cement factory.  The week prior saw Israeli forces cut off electrical power to Gaza.  On and on.  Yet barely any mention in Western mainstream news-media.

What countries surround the Eastern Mediterranean?  Cyprus, Gaza, Greece, Egypt, Israel, Libya, Lebanon, Turkey and Syria!!!

And what about this urgent need to go to war with Iran? It’s not about anything nuclear!  Lebanon & Syria (Eastern Mediterranean countries) and Iraq & Iran are a few years away from completing the largest natural gas pipeline in the Middle East.  It would rival anything that could be immediately extracted from Leviathan.

“A trilateral agreement between the three countries on the transit of gas has been reached….The first official contract is ready to be signed soon…We plan to transit gas from the South Pars field through Iraq, Syria and then Lebanon to the Mediterranean area and Europe.”-Javad Oji, National Iranian Gas Company

The pipeline from Iran could carry 110-million cubic meters of natural gas per day, for the next 80 years (Iran has the world’s second largest reserves of natural gas)!  If this was completed, then it would make developing the Leviathan (new drilling rigs, pipelines, etc) a waste of money.  And, the money made off the Iranian dominated pipeline would not be going to the West (ie no benefit to the U.S./U.K./Saudi Arabian U.S. PetroDollar monopoly)!

It would also destroy Israel’s hopes of finally joining the petroleum club.

The other factor, that has most of the European Union in favor of Leviathan (except Greece, by the way some NATO-German officials are now saying Greece needs to get out of the EU), is the fact that current eastern European pipeline projects are turning out to be more expensive than first thought.  So much so that some reports (including reports by British Petroleum [BP]) say it would be cheaper to dump those projects in favor of developing Leviathan.  But of course, that’s only if Leviathan didn’t have to compete with the huge pipeline coming from Iran.

In fact, as of February 26, Leviathan now has to compete with several gas lines coming from Iran. Iranian gas officials announced they are now building secondary pipelines to Iraq, Syria and on to Europe!

Because the Western media does not report what’s really going on regarding the recently discovered Eastern Mediterranean oil and gas fields, and only reports propagandist lies meant to rally people in support of unjust wars for the benefit of the oil industry,  it shows that the Western news media is a tool of deceit for the Red Horseman.

“Then another horse came out, a fiery red one. Its rider was given power to take peace from the earth and to make men slay each other.”-Revelation 6:4

Business/Economics, International, U.S.

College student? Need Job? Japan needs You!

On February 25, 2012, a record number of Japanese companies held a conference to hire foreign college students.

145 companies held a conference in Tokyo, which attracted more than 3,000 students from China, South Korea and other Asian countries.

A rep for an auto parts maker said his company wants half of its new workers to be international students, especially since it is planning to increase operations outside of Japan.

Many hopeful college students were told that they should learn honorific Japanese expressions which are essential for conducting business in Japan.

Business/Economics, International, U.S.

Global Economic War: CELAC & BRICS tells IMF no more money until you reform, no help for Europe until IMF reforms

“The emerging markets will only help once two conditions are met…they reinforce the firewall, which means doing more than what they’re doing with the European fund of stability… and on top of that….they carry out the reform of the International Monetary Fund.”-Guido Mantega, Finance Minister of Brazil

CELAC (Comunidad de Estados Latinoamericanos y Caribeños, or Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) and BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) are telling the U.S. based IMF that if it wants any more money to help Europe, it needs to clean up its act!

One of the reforms CELAC & BRICS are demanding is that they have more say in how the IMF is managed.

Business/Economics, International, U.S.

World War 3: France announces the European Union will steal the money from Syria’s Central Bank

“Starting from Monday, we will take new strong measures, notably a freezing of the assets of the Syrian Central Bank.”-Alan Juppe, Foreign Minister of France

Another “unbiased” announcement made as the Friends of Syria conference commenced: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is calling on all countries to steal Syrian assets and boycott oil from the country.

Business/Economics, International, U.S.

World War 3: Japan demands exemption from U.S. oil embargo against Iran, prepares for short U.S. war with Iran

“…officials are working hard in order to win a waiver from the sanctions by the end of this month.”-Osamu Fujimura, Chief Cabinet Secretary for Japan’s Prime Minister

Since January, 2012, Japan has been trying to get an exemption from the U.S. oil sanctions against Iran.  Japan’s economy depends on it.

“We have not yet reached an agreement in principle, although we have deepened mutual understanding.”-Koichiro Gemba, Foreign Minister of Japan

Since there is no progress in getting the exemption, Japan is now preping for a possible war in the Persian Gulf, which would cut off 10% of their oil supplies.

Foreign Minister Gemba claims Japan is making preparations that would make any cut off of oil, due to the closing of the Strait of Hormuz, have little affect on Japan’s industries. But that’s because Gemba believes any war with Iran would be short.  Does he know something we don’t?

Gemba explained that Japan has 200 days of oil reserves and 70 days worth of liquid natural gas.  Apparently Japan was told (during their negotiations to get exempted from the U.S. oil sanctions?) by U.S. officials not to worry about a long war.

Gemba added that the Japanese government is going over various scenarios to reduce the impact the war will have on people’s daily lives.

Business/Economics, U.S.

What Economic Recovery? Yet another airline ends service in Idaho

Frontier Airlines has ended its Boise to Denver route.  In the past two years the airline temporarily stopped service due to a seasonal drop in passengers, but they officially announced they will not restart service, for 2012.

For the past two years, the seasonal drop in business happens in winter, and Frontier restarts flights in April.  Passenger numbers have been steadily dropping since 2007, and Frontier decided it wasn’t worth it to restart the Boise-Denver route for 2012.

Back in December, 2011, SeaPort Airlines announced they were ending their Idaho Falls-Boise route.  Not enough sales were the official reason.  That claim was news to Idaho Falls airport airlines director Len Nelson, who said: “We were really, really disappointed to see them leave. We were just starting to fill the airplanes up. Out of nine seats, we were filling it a lot of times, and averaging five, six passengers a flight.” Nelson’s reasoning is out of touch.  Filling five to six seats, out of nine, is not enough for an airline to justify the route.

Business/Economics, International, U.S.

World War 3: United States imposes sanctions on Japan, U.S. been doing business with Yakuza

February 23, 2012, the United States imposes sanctions against the Yamaguchi-gumi.

The U.S. Treasury Department froze the assets held in the United States by the organized crime family. The U.S. has also banned the Yamaguchi-gumi from doing anymore business in the United States.

While this sounds good, it should raise the question: “How long has the U.S. knowingly done business with the Japanese Yakuza?” And I wounder if freezing their assets is just a tricky way to raise cash for a broke U.S. government?  The Obama administration estimates they have billions in their U.S. accounts!

Idaho, International, U.S.

Lessons for the Occupy Movement from the Egyptian January 2011 Revolution: #2 Cyberspace does not win Revolutions! Occupy the land! Keep Lines of Communication open!

I watched the January 2011 Egyptian Revolution from day one.  It did not start with cyberspace, and it did not end with cyberspace.  Rather cyberspace was only a briefly used tool of the Revolutionaries.

“I don’t think the Revolution ever happened in cyberspace…They need physical space, they need public space. Tahrir Square provided that.”-Nezar AlSayyad, Center of Middle East Studies, University of California at Berkeley

The fact that Revolutions need public space is the true reason why local and state governments, in the United Police States of America, are now passing laws that’re making it illegal to gather in public spaces!

On December 9, 2011, the city of Honolulu, Hawaii, created a law that is not only aimed at preventing public gatherings, but is being called “a particularly egregious attack on the homeless”.

On January 24, 2012, Charlotte, North Carolina, passed a “no camping” on city property law.  Even if you’re not camping the law includes things that allow police to have you removed, or arrested, anyway.

On February 21, 2012, the state of Idaho created a law that specifically targets the Occupy movement.  It has extended anti-gathering laws (no demonstrations can last longer than four hours, which only proves what I said in part one) to the state property the Occupy Boise movement is currently using.

The small, and ignorant, Occupy Boise movement has until 17:00 February 27 to clear out.

I say the Occupy Idaho movement is ignorant, because of what they said in a PBS Newshour interview: “I will take it elsewhere. There are a lot of us who recognize that this movement is more important than the place we’re staying.”-Daniel Grad, Occupy Boise, December 8, 2011

In fact, the Occupy Boise movement told local Idaho PBS reporters that they specifically chose the land (land that until now was exempt from the four hour limit law) so as to not cause legal problems!

FAIL!  There’s a saying in the world of business, “location, location, location”!   If there is no need to Occupy land, then what was the point of Egyptian Revolutionaries fighting so hard to control Tahrir Square?

Back to cyberspace.  In Egypt twitter and facebook and other social media tools were not the instigators of the Revolution.  Those tools only became important as Egyptians in one city realized, through their communications, that they were not alone, that Egyptians in other cities were also rebelling.  So cyberspace became a way of communication after the fact.

Even so, as I was watching the live broadcasts, the Egyptian government shut down many cell phone towers, and internet providers (with the help of a U.S. telecommunications company).   Did that stop the Revolution?  Hell no!

Revolutionaries turned to old fashioned land line phones, short wave radios, even the ancient task of running messages by foot.  Some reports said they had taken over radio stations, even broke into police stations to steal the police radios.

But while this proves that cyberspace is not critical, it does prove that communications are critical.

In the military, communications does not refer to just being able to talk or relay messages.  It refers to the ability to keep your forces fed and armed.  (specifically its called: Lines of Communication, called such because supplies tended to follow the same route that hand carried messages, and telegraph lines, did)

The Egyptian Revolutionaries not only took and held land (sometimes losing it, but retaking it later), they kept their Occupiers fed, and they rotated fresh Occupiers in, while the tired Occupiers went out to get rest.  They, without really thinking about it, kept “lines of communication” open to the land they were Occupying.

This is important, because one of the riot control maneuvers used nowadays is called “Kettling”.  This is a way of hemming in protestors, to cut them off from their lines of communication (even though most protestors don’t even know about such things as lines of communication).

The lesson is that you must not rely on high technology, you must Occupy the land, and you must keep your “lines of communication” open!

By the Way, Occupy Boise is appealing to the Federal Court, on the grounds the new Idaho law violates the rights to freedom of speech and assembly guaranteed under the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution.

LESSONS FOR THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT FROM THE EGYPTIAN JANUARY 2011 REVOLUTION: #1; PEACEFUL PROTEST DOES NOT WORK!!!