Iranian oil official, Mohammad Ali Khatibi, has just stated that OPEC will not allow oil prices to fall much further.
Iran currently holds the presidency of OPEC. Khatibi says Iran will call an emergency OPEC meeting if oil prices fall too much.
Iran blames the United States, and Europe, for creating highly unstable markets, that do not reflect the true value of resources.
When orders were finally given to evacuate areas around Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, government officials led people to believe it would only be a few months.
It’s more than five months, and now the government realizes the level of contamination is so bad that it will be “…a long, long time…” before some city and towns can be considered safe for people to live in.
A meeting is being arraigned with local officials to explain the severity of the situation, and to better explain to evacuees why they might never be able to return home.
“It is much worse than a recession, in fact it is even worse than a depression… The White House has told us we have been on a recovery…which is a complete lie.”-Edward Spannaus, Executive Intelligence Review
“…there will be no recovery…until we take steps to deal with the Wall Street gambling casino, the speculators, which is what is really killing our economy.”
“…shutting down the big speculator banks. And the way to do that is by restoring Franklin Roosevelt’s law, the Glass Steagall law, which would shut down the gambling casino, wipe out the phoney debts, and that would enable us to get around to rebuilding our economy…”
“I question even the term ‘investors’ these days, because an investor is someone who invests for the long term. And what you see today in these markets, is very short term speculation.”
“As long as these banks are sitting on huge piles of money, from bailouts, from the Federal Reserve giving them free money, and they’re just speculating with this, they’re not investing, not lending to businesses, they’re not doing anything to create jobs.”
“The State of America’s Children is absolutely horrific and what’s worst of all is that very few people in America know about this…added to this we’re going through what I call a Main Street Depression, it is worse than the 1930s…”-Stephen Lendman, commentator Chicago
The Annie E. Casey Foundation, a non-profit child advocacy group, revealed that 31 million children live in families that are one or two paychecks away from economic catastrophe.
The Casey Foundation’s study also found that between 2007 and 2009, 5.3 million children had to leave their homes due to foreclosure.
The Children’s Defense Fund echo’s the Casey Foundation’s report. The CDF says the bad economy is driving up the number of children involved with dropping out of school, hunger, crime, etc, to record levels.
Many other organizations are coming up with corresponding data.
For the past couple of weeks Berlin has been plagued with car fires. At first police thought it was the usual anti-elitists targeting the cars of wealthy people, but many cars were not owned by the rich.
Now, hundreds of Germans are rioting in Hamburg. It started during a street festival. People began attacking and burning banks.
2,500 police are on the streets, using water cannons. Police don’t relate this to the increasing number of poor people in Germany. Police say these Hamburg riots happen every year.
According to The Metro, recently the NYPD “Disorder Control Unit” held a massive civil unrest exercise involving 180 cops.
One New York City cop arrogantly dismissed recent riots in England: “The London response wasn’t that great, they were outnumbered and taken by surprise.”-Mike Codella, retired NYPD detective
Part of the training involves teaching the cops how to “troll” social media sites. The trolling skills are now mandatory for a newly created juvenile justice unit
The day after the Japanese government announced it was lifting the contaminated cattle ban on Fukushima cows, four cows tested for cesium levels above safe limits.
Then, the very next day five more cows showed up with cesium contamination.
The contaminated cows had already been shipped to a slaughter house in Yokohama. It was there that the beef was found to be highly contaminated.
To make matters worse, the cow farmers swear they were not feeding the cows local rice hay, but more expensive imported hay. The imported hay had been stored indoors.
This means that the cows could be getting contaminated on their way to the slaughter house. Officials are trying to figure it out.
And yes, the Japanese government suspended the lifting of the contaminated cattle ban.
Paramount and Warner Brother’s have both made U.S.$2 billion in profits so far this year, but not here in the U.S.
The two movie studios made those profits overseas. They’re the first U.S. movie companies to hit such a high overseas profit.
If anyone has been paying attention to where U.S. movies are first released, they’d notice that U.S. movie premiers have been taking place overseas first, before being released in the United States.
Afghan officials have told British media that the U.S. and Afghanistan have agreed to keep thousands of U.S. troops in country until 2024!
The deal would allow U.S. forces to use Afghan military bases, provide facilities to store massive numbers of U.S. military equipment, and allow thousands of military personnel to stay, including special forces.
Russian officials pointed out that the deal doesn’t make sense: “If the job is done, if terrorism is defeated and peace and stability is brought back, then why would you need bases? If the job is not done, then several thousand troops, even special forces, will not be able to do the job that 150,000 troops couldn’t do. It is not possible.”-Andrey Avetisyan, Russian Ambassador to Afghanistan
The Russians should know, they got their butts kicked by the Afghans back when Russia was part of the Soviet Union. They did exactly what the U.S. is doing now, trying to train up the Afghan government to take on the “terrorists”. The Soviet Union left Afghanistan in 1989, but continued to supply weapons and trainers to the Afghan government. The Afghan government lasted until 1992, brought down by a civil war that lasted until 1996. The civil war ended in 1996 when the Taliban took control of the country.
“If we do that, it means lower costs – career people leave, more non-careers come in. Much of that will be attrition, but I don’t know if we can do that fast enough.”-Patrick Donahoe, Postmaster General
The U.S. Postal Service is being forced to lay off so many postal workers that it’s asking Congress to cancel current Union contracts. 220,000 postal workers will be laid off by 2014.
The reality of the situation is forcing the many different unions, involved with the Postal Service, to scramble to negotiations, not to save those jobs, but to soften the impact on those who will keep their jobs.
Those unions are the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC), the National Postal Mail Handlers Union (NPMHU), and the American Postal Workers’ Union (APWU).
Not only does the USPS want to get rid of 220,000 employees, but they want to shut down as many as 3,700 post offices, close at least 300 processing facilities, and consolidate as many as 20,000 delivery routes.
All that will affect those people who’re “lucky” enough to still have their jobs. If the negotiations with the unions fails, then it’s on to arbitration. USPS workers can not legally go on strike, because they are considered Federal employees.
One reason the USPS is short on money, is because the U.S. Congress essentially stole $75 billion from the Postal Service. Congress said it was to cover the Postal Service’s portion of the Federal Employees Retirement System. The Postmaster General was able to prove that Congress overcharged the USPS. The U.S. Congress refused to refund the money.
Another reason is that Congress has refused to raise Postal rates to reflect the increased cost of operation. It’s almost as if the U.S. Congress wants the USPS to fail!
The United States Postal Service does not make money off taxpayers, they are solely funded by the postage they charge (prices are controlled by Congress, not the USPS), and other products they sell. The cuts being made to the USPS will have no affect on U.S. government debt.