Prodigy-Alex Jones

 

 

 

 

Alex talks with Grammy Award–winning rapper Prodigy, who is one half of the hip-hop duo Mobb Deep and has spoken out on the Illuminati and secret societies.

@ColonelSixx

 

Gerald Celente: Obama’s ‘Super Congress’ Will Achieve Orwellian Omnipresence

 

 

 

 

@ColonelSixx

Libya as always in war civilians pay highest price

“Serpents, thirst, heat, and sand … Libya alone can present a multitude of woes that it would beseem men to fly from.” Lucan, Pharsalia

Zlitan, Libya (CNN) — A grown man sobbed as friends led him out of the mosque. Mustafa Naji al-Mrabet’s left hand and feet were bandaged, there were bloodstains on his robes, and the valve for an intravenous needle still stuck out of his arm. He was both a husband and a father, deep in mourning.

Nearby, his brother-in-law, 26-year-old Abubakr Ali cried like a child. Ali pulled back the blankets covering two small coffins. Inside lay the bloody bodies of his nephews, Mohamed and Motez al-Mrabet, ages 5 and 3. Their mother Ibtisam lay in a coffin beside them.

All three were killed early Thursday morning as they slept, neighbors and relatives said, when their house on the outskirts of this coastal city was hit by a NATO airstrike. Family members said a third child, 8-year old Naji, was in intensive care after suffering serious injuries.

Officials from Moammar Gadhafi’s embattled government brought journalists to the ruins of al-Mrabet family’s 2-story villa in a residential neighborhood on Thursday.

“In all my 36 years I’ve never seen a day like this,” said a neighbor named Salah Buharto. He said the 6:30 a.m. blast was so powerful, he initially thought his own house had been hit.

When asked about the suspected air strike, a NATO spokesman told CNN: “NATO made a strike in Zlitan at 6:30 a.m. (Thursday) local time. The target was a command and control facility held by government forces.

“We have had no reason to believe that there were any civilian casualties,” said another NATO spokesman to CNN, also speaking on condition of anonymity. “But we take these reports very seriously and we are looking into the matter. We have a process that we go through.”

READ MORE:

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/08/04/libya.family.killed/

China downgrades America

4 Aug 2011

 

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Today is Thursday August 4, 2011

By James Kwantes

The line jumped out at me from a recent CMC Markets morning note:

“China’s credit rating agency Dagong downgraded the U.S. to A from A+ with a negative outlook, citing the increased debt limit and questions over creditor protection in the current political and economic environment.”

America, you’ve been Dagonged. Here’s the Daily Mail story.

The move “suggests that China may be getting more concerned about its U.S. exposure and that it may be stuck holding the bag should another financial or political crisis flare up,” according to CMC Markets analyst Colin Cieszynski. China’s problems have been well-documented — including, depending on whom you talk to, a residential real estate bubble, rising inflation and questionable corporate governance. But the Asian powerhouse is also the top foreign holder of U.S. debt. That would be the debt that narrowly escaped getting downgraded by American ratings agencies in the wake of the theatrical U.S. debt ceiling fiasco.

So China has a direct stake in what happens south of the border, just as the rest of the world — including Canada, increasingly — has a direct stake in China’s economy. Some commentators contend that the Chinese economy is sailing along on a bubble inflated by cheap government money and real estate speculation — sound familiar, Canada? But it’s hard to argue that in a world where the power balance is shifting from west to east, China’s economic clout is rising as quickly as America’s is falling.

On the stock markets today, the S&P/TSX Composite Index was getting hammered in early trading. The TSX was down more than 450 points, or 3.5%, as investors fled for the exits in the face of global economic worries. Crude oil prices reflected fears that the economic recovery has stalled: North American crude was down more than $2 to $89.88 US a barrel.

Gold was holding steady at $1,660 US an ounce but mining stocks were down across the board: First Quantum Minerals was down more than 8% to $114.97, Teck Resources dropped more than 6% to $43.06, Goldcorp was down 3% to $45.50 and Lundin Mining was down 17% to $5.55.

The Dow Jones industrial average was down more than 2.5% to 11,570 and the Nasdaq dropped 90 points to 2,603. The Canadian dollar was more than 1.3 cents lower to 102.63 cents US and gold was down slightly to $1,660 US an ounce.

More on the markets here.

Follow me on Twitter: @jameskwantes

TX declares new ‘energy emergency’; Soaring temps stretch supplies

Heat waves pushes Texas power grid into red zone

By Eileen O’Grady

HOUSTON | Thu Aug 4, 2011

(Reuters) – The Texas power grid operator has scrambled this week to meet soaring electricity demand in the face of a brutal heat wave, and residents of the second most populous U.S. state are one power plant shut-down away from rolling blackouts.

Power demand for Electric Reliability Council of Texas, Inc, or ERCOT, which runs the power grid for most of the state, hit three consecutive records this week as Texans cranked up air conditioners to escape one of the hottest summers on record.

The grid operator on Thursday cut power to some big industrial users, and businesses and households face a repeat of the rolling blackouts they faced in February, when a bitter cold snap interrupted power supplies.

Though ERCOT has done a good job balancing supply and demand, “You always have to expect the unexpected can happen,” said Arshad Mansoor, senior vice president at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). “A unit can shut. The wind may not blow.”

It’s been a year of extreme weather for the Lone Star State, already suffering from the worst drought on record.

Ice storms in February crippled dozens of power plants, forcing ERCOT to impose rolling blackouts for hours as electric supplies dropped below demand for the juice.

Now a protracted heat wave with temperatures topping 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 Celsius) for several weeks in a row in many cities has stretched power supplies to the limit.

Power usage in ERCOT reached its highest level ever on Wednesday at 68,294 megawatts, almost 4 percent over last year’s peak.

The Texas grid faces at least one more day of extreme stress before temperatures cool a bit over the weekend. Temperatures in Houston, the state’s biggest city, should return to near normal levels in the upper 90s over the weekend, according to AccuWeather.com.

The state’s biggest power generators, including units of Energy Future Holdings, NRG Energy, Calpine Corp and others, have been running flat out to cash in real-time prices that have hit the $3,000/MWh cap in recent days.

But the state’s reserve margins have been running razor thin. On Wednesday ERCOT came within 50 megawatts of interrupting flows to industrial customers. That’s equal to the output of about 25 industrial-scale windmills.

One megawatt powers about 200 homes in Texas during hot weather when air conditioners are running for long periods.

More generation supplies would come in handy, but state power generators can’t be expected to prepare for every extreme, said Kent Saathoff, ERCOT’s vice president of system planning and operations.

“You have to determine if it is worth spending millions or billions to avoid a one in 10-year event,” Saathoff told reporters on Wednesday.

RECORD BREAKING PRICES

With record-breaking demand came record-breaking prices. Prices for Thursday power topped $400 per megawatt hour, the highest in at least a decade. Friday’s power prices approached $600.

Real-time prices also hit the $3,000 market cap over the past few days.

ERCOT has about 73,000 MW of natural gas, coal, oil, nuclear and wind generating facilities, but not all of that capacity is available all the time.

Texas has the most wind power in the country, but the wind does not blow during the summer. Ercot said it got about 2,000 MW from wind during the peak hour on Wednesday. Those wind farms can produce about 9,000 MW when all turbines are spinning.

Moreover, the ERCOT power grid is a virtual island with only a few small transmission links to neighboring electric grids, making it tough for Texas to pull energy from neighboring states in times of need.

Connecting Texas wires to the rest of the U.S. grid would cost at least as much as a state transmission investment program to carry Texas wind supplies to cities like Dallas and Houston, pegged at about $6 billion, Saathoff said.

Military money on chopping block

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, left, accompanied by Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, gestures during a news conference  at the Pentagon, Thursday, Aug. 4,  2011. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

4 August 2011

By LOLITA C. BALDOR and DONNA CASSATA
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon got nearly everything it asked for during a decade of two wars shadowed by the Sept. 11 terror attacks and the rise of al-Qaida. No more.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen acknowledged that reality Thursday, saying the military is resigned to budget cuts of around $350 billion over a decade to meet the public clamor for reducing the nation’s debt. But they quickly warned that more than doubling those cuts along the lines of the “doomsday mechanism” spelled out in the new debt-limit law would undermine the military.

“If it happened – and, God willing, that would not be the case – but if it did happen, it would result in a further round of very dangerous cuts across the board, defense cuts that I believe would do real damage to our security, our troops and their families, and our military’s ability to protect the nation,” Panetta told reporters at his first Pentagon news conference.

READ MORE:

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_DEBT_SHOWDOWN_DEFENSE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-08-04-17-27-55

Syrian Revolution – Security Forces Gangs throw bodies in Orontes River – Hama

 

Qaddafi: NATO can’t stop war

http://colonel6.com/2011/08/03/millions-in-harlem-march-aims-to-stop-us-nato-warmaking-in-libya/

COLONEL SIXX:  THIS IS A SITUATION THAT THE  U.S. SHOULD  TAKE ADVANTAGE OF.  IN AS MUCH AS THE BOMBING IS BEING DONE ONLY BY THE BRITISH AND FRANCE,  THE U.S.  CAN WALK AWAY AND BE SPARED. NORWAY AND ITALY ARE OUT.  THE U.S. CANNOT AFFORD, IN LIVES OR MONEY, TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS FARCE ANY LONGER.

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
– Sun Tzu

Aug 2 (Reuters) – Muammar Gaddafi’s forces counter-attacked rebels in a strategic town on Tuesday, killing seven insurgents, as the Libyan leader vowed to crush a Western-backed uprising.

A son of Gaddafi said the conflict would go on until the rebellion was wiped out, whether or not NATO stopped its bombing campaign, leaving little room for diplomacy to end a war that has killed thousands and divided Libya.

The rebels and their foreign backers kept up the pressure on the veteran leader as the Muslim holy month of Ramadan began, with NATO planes bombing military targets and dropping leaflets over the capital calling on loyalists to give up.

In return, the government urged former allies turned rebels in the east to switch sides again, offering them an amnesty, promotions and other benefits, the state news agency said.

The front lines are in the Western Mountains near Tunisia, around the eastern oil hub of Brega and close to Zlitan, 160 km (100 miles) east of Tripoli and near rebel-held Misrata, Libya’s third-largest city.

The rebels, who have seized about half Libya but lose ground to attacks by better armed and trained Gaddafi forces, had been seeking to consolidate recent gains around Zlitan.

But hospital sources in Misrata said a counter-attack by Gaddafi forces on Tuesday killed seven rebels and wounded 65 fighters. A Reuters reporter between the two towns saw plumes of smoke and heard intermittent gunfire coming from Zlitan.

FIGHT ON

Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam seemed to remove a government offer of ceasefire talks if NATO stopped bombing.

“Regardless of whether NATO leaves or not, the fighting will continue until all of Libya is liberated,” he said in comments made on Sunday and broadcast on Monday.

A U.N envoy was dispatched to Libya last week but made little visible progress and said the two sides were far apart.

Gaddafi’s call for eastern rebels to return to the fold may also be a sign he senses an opportunity to exploit divisions caused by the slaying last week of the rebel military commander in as yet unexplained circumstances.

General Abdel Fattah Younes family said on Tuesday their powerful tribe might take justice into its own hands if the rebel leadership failed to come clean over who had killed him.

The killing, after Younes was summoned back from the front by his superiors, has prompted speculation of conspiracies and raised fears among Western governments about the rebels’ reliability.

“The rebels that the West has been counting on to replace the Gaddafi regime apparently cannot even control their base territory in eastern Libya, let alone govern the entire country,” Stratfor, a global intelligence company, said.

The Muslim holy month began in Libya on Monday, with many saying it might lead to a lull in fighting. But rebels in Zlitan were optimistic after their first day of fasting.

“Fasting has only increased our determination and resolve to defeat the brigades of the tyrant (Gaddafi),” said frontline commander Husam Hussein.

At a rebel base nearby, off-duty fighters prepared meals of pizzas and pastries as milk and juice were cooled in crushed ice before being sent to the front.

His unit made gains on the eastern outskirts of Zlitan but later said they had to fight off another counter-attack and were more or less back where they had started.

READ MORE:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/02/us-libya-idUSTRE76Q76620110802

Roubini: QE3 Is Coming, But Bernanke Will Be Too Late

“We will get QE3, then QE4 & then QE5”

Aug. 4 2011

Nouriel Roubini, the much heralded NYU economist who has gotten much attention – and the nickname Dr. Doom – for his gloomy predictions in the past few years, isn’t exactly confident in Ben Bernanke or the US economy. Over the past few days he has taken to Twitter to voice his concerns on the recent market free fall, the potential for a double dip and the ongoing crisis in Europe. Today, on the heels of currency market intervention by Japan and Switzerland, Roubini predicted that a third round of quantitative easing here in the United States, tweeting, “QE3 started in Japan & Switzerland via fx action &/or monetary easing. Fed will eventually get to QE3 but it will be too little too late.”

Japan and Switzerland have both gotten involved in currency markets over the past two days, stepping in to prevent outsized appreciation in the yen and the Swiss franc. Switzerland cut interest rates on Wednesday in an attempt to weaken the franc, while the Japanese government and the Bank of Japan collaborated on moves today in an attempt stifle similar appreciation in the yen.

Roubini has previously said that he thinks future rounds of quantitative easing are on the way. As he pointed out in another tweet today, “I argued last year we will get QE3, then QE4 & then QE5 (the Fed, as in the 1950s, targeting the 10yr Treas at 1.5% once all else fails).”

In January, when he sat down with Steve Forbes, Roubini identified states and local municipalities as potential recipients of QE3.

“Until now, we have back-stopped the states through the federal budget – transfer payments of a variety of sorts to make sure that they don’t blow up.  At this point, the political willingness to do more of it is limited,” Roubini explained.

READ THE REST:

http://blogs.forbes.com/chrisbarth/2011/08/04/roubini-qe3-is-coming-but-bernanke-will-be-too-late/

Meltdown: The Relationship between Currencies and Gold – August 4th, 2011

Stock markets around the world continued their brutal slide this morning. Last week proved to be the worst trading week for the DOW in more than 32 months, while other global securities markets followed in suit amidst the US debt ceiling debate. This week has proven to be even worse. Just this morning, the dollar lost more than 1.2% against the Euro, the DOW is down nearly 2%, and the S&P and Nasdaq are down 2.2% and 2.5% respectively. Needless to say, the last 8 trading days have done more damage to stock portfolios than even the most bearish analysts could have expected. The question is: Why?

The debt ceiling debates here in the US clearly shook global confidence in the stability of the American economy and debt picture. The catastrophic default scenario was averted however, when the bill to raise our borrowing limit was signed into law earlier this week. So why are markets responding so poorly? Wouldn’t we expect an upswing in global stock prices as investors breathe a sigh of relief? That’s clearly not happening. There is a more subtle issue at play here that has been mostly overlooked to this point. We’re referring to the effect the debt debates have had on the dollar, and the effect that the dollar has had on other currencies.

If there is one clear lesson to be taken from the circus that was Washington last week, it’s that our political system is in no way prepared to deal with our long term debt loads. We know this, and the rest of the world knows it as well. This is shaking long term confidence in the US dollar, as investors are realizing that the outlook for the greenback may be even worse than they originally thought. So we all know the dollar is going down, but the truly destructive force is actually not the dollar devaluation, but rather the chain reaction that it must cause as it falls.

READ MORE:

http://meritfinancial.com/meltdown-the-relationship-between-currencies-and-gold-%E2%80%93-august-4th-2011/