A case of disproportionate response:
The clash happened just before sunset when North Korean soldiers fired two bullets toward South Korean guard post in the eastern part of the Demilitarized Zone and South Korean soldiers immediately fired back six rounds, the top commanders said.
The Oregonian carries a story, Soaring costs throw Oregon road projects a curve, by James Mayer outlining the rapidly increasing costs of highway construction and repair since 2004, up 13%. However, in some cases the increases are staggering:
The average price the state paid for liquid asphalt in Portland jumped 61 percent in the first seven months of this year, from $207 a ton to $333 a ton. The asphalt bill on some projects has doubled.
Bottom line higher oil prices have added $100 million or more to state highway projects on the books.
Officials say money to complete current work will have to be diverted from future projects, upsetting plans to repave aging freeways, repair or replace crumbling bridges and relieve traffic jams.
But, the government tells us there is no inflation!
The North American Union, SPP, and NASCO: Erasing America’s Borders
By Heidi at Euphoric Reality
Our government has undertaken some monumental legislation that fully impacts the American way of life, our freedom, and our sovereignty. The purpose of such legislation is to homogenize Canada, Mexico, and the United States into a North American Union - and we’re all going to sleep through it.
Have you heard of a little-known program called the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America? This tri-lateral partnership was signed by President Bush last year without Congressional oversight or public approval. Opponents of the SPP have called it NAFTA on steroids - and we all know how disastrous NAFTA has been for everyone except Mexico. It also appears to be modeled on the ineffective and highly unpopular European Union (unpopular with the people, that is).
I went to the website, www.spp.gov, to begin my research. There are, indeed, no boundaries between Mexico, Canada, and the U.S. when it comes to the cooperation of financial, trade, and foreign affair departments. Though some of the PR language on the website sounds fairly benign, the commissions are picking up momentum. And you know what happens when bureaucrats start grasping at influence and power! Except that now we don’t have to just worry about our own greedy bureaucrats - but Canada’s and Mexico’s too.
This is not some weird and obscure conspiracy website, it is our government’s plan to literally give away or sell our national sovereignty. What is most galling is that we will share responsibility for security across North America. It is very conceivable that we could see our troops deployed to secure the southern border of Mexico. Yes, you read that right - not OUR unsecured warzone of a southern border - but Mexico’s border with Belize and Guatemala. That is the conclusion of an investigative report done by Lou Dobbs on CNN:
Robert B. Murray notes:
President George W. Bush, President Vicente Fox of Mexico, and former Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin agreed in March 2005 to create this union by executive regulations and agreements rather than by treaty to bypass Congress. Twenty working groups were formed and are well on their way to establishing a super-government for North America that will not be bound by our Constitution. The web site for this new bureaucracy—located at www.spp.gov—provides a look at their plans and accomplishments thus far. The plan is to have this arrangement implemented by 2010.
Behind its innocuous title, the “Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America,” the United States will surrender its Constitution. According to Jerome R. Corsi, an author and political commentator, our nation-state prerogatives would be superseded by the authority of a North American court and parliamentary body and our dollar would become the “Amero.”
Possibly the strongest leg of the SPP is NASCO - North America’s SuperCorridor Coalition - otherwise known as the NAFTA Superhighway. Airily dismissed by some public officials as internet rumors and hype and completely unaffordable, NASCO has quietly been amassing funding and already begun preliminary construction in Texas.
…already underway is the plan for a NAFTA Superhighway: 1,200 feet wide, stretching from Lazaro Cardenas on the west coast of Mexico, entering the United States at Laredo, Texas, and continuing straight north to Winnipeg, Canada, with another route to Kansas City thence north easterly to Detroit and Montreal.
Containerized goods from Asia will be offloaded onto Mexican trucks, with Mexican drivers, and distributed throughout the economic system. Go to www.nascocorridor.com to view the plan and progress. There will be no internal boundaries to restrict the flow of people, goods or services.
In fact, the first customs stop on the Superhighway will be in the heart of America - Kansas City! Along the way, primary U.S. labor unions will be by-passed in favor of Mexican labor, including the Longshoremen’s Union, the railroad United Transportation Union, and the Teamsters.
How will such a massive flow of goods and foreign traffic be monitored? According to author Jerome Corsi,
“Across the NAFTA Super-Highways will flow millions more Mexicans, now armed with North American border passes and biometric identification, as defined by the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America working groups organized within the Department of Commerce.”
Similar toll systems snaking their way from the southern and northern borders cutting through major American cities will force American citizens to submit to having RFID enabled identification cards which contain an ever-increasing array of information about their personal lives.
Illegal aliens with cloned RFID transponders will enjoy streamlined access to the US while Americans labor under the financial burden of tolls that go directly to foreign corporations and restrictions that take the right of free travel out of their hands. This and more is occurring without Congressional oversight, but is naturally funded with our state and federal tax dollars.
But our public officials are saying this could never happen, if only because it’s completely unaffordable! Not so, since foreign investment will cover any gaps that taxing the American people leaves. Additionally, the Bush administration has embarked on a policy of selling off key US infrastructure to the highest bidder - in most cases foreign owned corporations.
[K]ey players, including the investment bankers and the worldwide capital investment funds, have a plan to address these fiscal shortcomings with their own resources. On April 30, 1992, President George H.W. Bush signed Executive Order No. 12803 on infrastructure privatization, a move that cleared the way for private capital to invest in U.S. infrastructure projects, including highways.
For instance, the Indiana Toll Road, Virginia’s Pocahontas Parkway, a Texas toll road from Austin to Sequin and The Chicago Skyway have all been sold or leased for 99 years to foreign companies who will all enjoy billions in profits from American citizens forced to pay the tolls. And now the New Jersey Turnpike and the Ohio Turnpike are also under the hammer with foreign interests at the forefront of the negotiations.
An earlier Corsi article cites government websites which carry full planning details of the Super Highway. Its construction has already begun in Texas with no congressional oversight whatsoever. The Trans-Texas Corridor is being overseen by The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) and the contract is owned by the Cintra corporation which in turn is owned by the King of Spain Juan Carlos. The project is being financed by the implementation of a toll that will be collected by means of GPS tracking devices installed in all vehicles and also envelops many connecting roads to the highway. (Toll road info summarized by Paul Watson)
Watson further adds this dire prediction, “To even be allowed to use major roads and highways, US citizens will be subject to a criminal background check and the government will have the ability to pinpoint their particular RFID signal and remotely block it from central computer mainframes - effectively abolishing freedom of mobility in America.”
President Ronald Reagan once said, “A nation without borders is not a nation.” While we’ve been looking elsewhere, our own government has implemented a comprehensive plan to erase our borders with Canada and Mexico. The NAFTA Superhighway will allow vehicles, people and goods to travel from Mexico, into the American heartland, and up to Canada with little impediment, making America’s borders obsolete. Coupled with Bush’s blanket amnesty program, the new North American Union and the NAFTA Superhighway (NASCO) will fully expedite the wholesale dismantling of American sovereignty. It would seem that the while the rest of the world is already lining up to get their piece of the American pie, Americans will be the last to know. It is happening quietly and behind our backs, while our attention is fully engaged by the War on Terror, the upcoming elections, and our personal lives.
_________________________________This has been a production of the Guard the Borders Blogburst. It was started by Euphoric Reality, and serves to keep immigration issues in the forefront of our minds as we’re going about our daily lives and continuing to fight the war on terror. If you are concerned with the trend of illegal immigration facing our country, join our Blogburst! Just send an email with your blog name and url to euphoricrealitynet at gmail dot com.
Hat Tip Free Republic:
Purported Rice plan is a no-go!
# a U.N.-mandated multinational force that can help stabilize in the region
# disarming Hezbollah and integrating the guerrilla force into the Lebanese army;
# Hezbollah’s return of Israeli prisoners;
# a buffer zone in southern Lebanon to put Hezbollah rockets out of range of Israel;
# a commitment to resolve the status of a piece of land held by Israel and claimed by Lebanon;
# and the creation of an international reconstruction plan for Lebanon.
Why would Hezbollah agree to disarmament when they just claimed victory?
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah declared victory on Saturday after Israel announced it was withdrawing its forces from the southern Lebanese town of Bint Jbail, where Israeli troops found unexpected difficulty in dislodging the guerrilla group from its strongholds.
Why on earth would you integrate Hezbollah into the Lebanese army? Do you want to radicalize the Lebanese? Do you have any idea how wide a buffer zone needs to be? Already, the Hezbollah have a new missile that fires over 30 Miles.
In another development noted by Doctor Zin, Iran said there can be no cease-fire deal without Syria and Iran involved and for once I would agree.
The Rome conference (which is meeting today) is to be attended by the US, Canada, Britain, France, Spain, Germany, Turkey, Russia, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan, as well as the UN and the World Bank.
Meanwhile, Israel has run out of time! The Rice plan is a no-go, but the reins are pulling hard on Israel. All the media can do is carry the Hezbollah side regarding casualties and make out Israel as the bad guy. If you are israel you must crush the enemy early and break their will to fight. Now they are fighting a real fight and a PR fight. A cease-fire will only encourage Israel’s enemies.
Yesterday, I received an email from Jane pointing out that Jeffrey Christian had given an interview on TheStreet.com and the emailer asked the question,
I am very confused that why the most of gold stocks keep declining while gold is keeping to go up. Is the situation normal? How long it can keep like this way? Does it suggests that the gold is peaked and need a deep pullback? I was on the wrong side of the market for the gold stock since last year.
Jane, Martin Goldberg writes at FMNN in UNHEALTHY MIX OF TECHNICAL FACTORS ABOUND about a number of factors signaling an unhealthy stock market and includes this section:
Review of the HUI
The daily action in gold and gold stocks has been wild and the down days severe. It pays to look at the long term view as illustrated in the chart of the gold bugs index ($HUI), below. In Elliott terms, the HUI is in Wave 2 of Wave III. Wave 2’s are corrective or counter to the long term trend which is up. The corrective patterns tend to be irregular and tricky, and this describes the daily action in the $HUI. Since Wave 1 lasted about 5 months, it would be expected that Wave 2 would likely last longer than its current age of about 1 1/2 months. It is possible that the approximate 50% retracement (to about 275) was the low price within the Wave 2 correction of Wave 1.
Once Wave 3 gets started, this will be Wave 3 of Wave III and this wave promises to be quite rewarding to gold stock
bulls.For long term investors, the evidence suggests that gold stocks are likely to be good places to preserve wealth or even prosper, because an unhealthy mix of technical factors abound.
I am not a big user of Elliot Wave Theory, I have trouble figuring out all the waves, and sub-waves, but the chart is instructive in a couple of ways.
First, $HUI went sideways for two years in a wide range from Q4, 2003 to Q4, 2005 and then broke out of that range. That alone could make an investor frustrated with gold shares. Second, IMO, we are still testing the breakout. Third, the sideways movement often translates into the same length or longer of an up movement making the next major peak in late 2007 or early 2008. Fourth, Elliot Wave posits five waves in a bull market. That would mean after a correction, wave IV, would come wave V! Fifth, in Gold closed in December, 2003 at $416 and $HUI was about 240. Today Gold is $635 and $HUI is 330. $HUI is up 37% and Gold is up 53%. $HUI not only has underperformed Gold and one reason, costs, like energy, have increased more than Gold has increased, but you’d expect $HUI to outperform Gold because of the leverage. Sixth, $HUI outperforms Gold at times.
IMO, here’s what to expect in the future:
1. Oil stays at this level or goes much higher.
2. Gold continues higher through 2007.
3. Gold traditionally sells at 15 times OIL, yielding a minimum price for Gold of $1,125, a 77% increase.
4. $HUI tracks Gold and only goes up 50% = 495.
5. $HUI outperforms Gold at some point.
What is $HUI? $HUI is:
The AMEX Gold BUGS Index(Basket of Unhedged Gold Stocks) represents a portfolio of 16 major gold mining companies.The Index is designed to give investors significant exposure to near term movements in gold prices - by including companies that do not hedge their gold production beyond 1 1/2 years.
The index consists of
Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd NYSE:AEM
Bema Gold Corp AMEX:BGO
Coeur D Alene Mines Corp NYSE:CDE
Eldorado Gold Corp Ltd AMEX:EGO
Freeport-Mcmoran Copper & Gold Inc NYSE:FCX
Glamis Gold Ltd NYSE:GLG
Gold Fields Ltd NYSE:GFI
Goldcorp Inc NYSE:GG
Golden Star Resources Ltd AMEX:GSS
Harmony Gold Mining Co Ltd AMEX:HMY
Hecla Mining Co NYSE:HL
Iamgold Corp NYSE:IAG
Kinross Gold Corp NYSE:KGC
Meridian Gold Inc NYSE:MDG
Newmont Mining Corp NYSE:NEM
Randgold Resources Ltd NasdaqNM:GOLD
Jane, I hope that answers your question.
One final thought. Go to Yahoo Finance (http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?t=5y&s=%5EHUI&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=) and compare the performance of $HUI to the S&P, DJIA, any Gold stock or any other stock. You will see that in the last 5 years $HUI is up 400% and the Dow is about flat; S&P is about flat; the Gold ETF, GLD, has traded almost 1:1 with $HUI. One reason I own GSS is that at times GSS was up 1000% while $HUI was up 300%. In the last two years GSS is actually down vs $HUI. I think I will get a double bounce with GSS if Gold and $HUI continue to climb. IMO, we will see GSS outperform both $HUI and Gold.
Here’s a hoot!
I received this email today:
I was wondering if you could help me with something. I
am looking for large orders of gold bars to buy at a
discount. Very large orders. It’s for an asset
management firm. I am looking for the following :
12.5kg bars (400oz), 999,5% or better. Target price
LMER 2nd fixing. Discount 8%-10% gross.
We will provide LOI, NCND &MFPA after which FCO is
required. Do you know any sellers.
I replied: With Central Banks short 10,000 to 15,000 tons of gold, why in the world would anyone sell you size at a discount? No I can’t help you.
Note to readers: If you are stupid, I can put you in touch with the buyer.
I received today my Early Warning Report by Richard Maybury (by subscription only) and this item caught my attention “What’s the Iraq Embassy for?”
The US embassy in Moscow is a 13-floor office building plus ambassador’s house on 12 acres.The most important US embassy in the world, for a half-century the Moscow operation has been the center for diplomacy, espionage and sabotage against the second most powerful government ever seen ob earth, one with thousands of nuclear weapons. It was also the largest US embassy, until now.
Ten acres is typical for a permanent US emnbassy in a highly important country. The new Iraq embassy is 104 acres with 21 buildings, most of which appear to be at least seven stories high, ringed by a 15-foot thick wall. Not 15 feet high, 15 feet thick. 8,000 workers will staff it.
AP file
Construction cranes loom above the site of the new U.S. Embassy being built in Baghdad. The embassy will sit on 104 acres, six times larger than the United Nations compound in New York and two-thirds the acreage of Washington’s National Mall.
The story broke on MSNBC news on April 14, 2006 and checking Technorati, several blogs covered it. With the announcement in the last few days that the numbers of troops in Iraq will increase, I thought enough attention had not been focused on the structure.
Maybury asks “is this really an embassy, or is it headquarters for a permanent US war throughout the Islamic world?
Hat tips to:
Community, Identity, Stability
dunneIV
Headlines News and Opinion
AND NOW THE APOCALYPSE!
My Buffalo River Home
MAP 2.3 2006/07/28 23:59:15 45.188 -122.806 27.7 1 km ( 0 mi) N of Hubbard, OR
Jeffrey Christian has re-surfaced on TheStreet.com in an interview. You can see it here.
He’s much smaller than I had him pictured. He also admits that his consulting group CPM Group predicted in the fourth quarter of 2005 that gold would average $479 (I love it that these guys can be so precise!).
He’s asked if he is still bearish. Christian says, “clearly, price overshot by a wide margin.” No kidding! It only went to $736 on 5/11.
He did predict late in Q1, 2006 that he had a $600 price target for April. So if you had followed his advice of selling at $600 (though based on his 4th quarter prediction, I don’t have a clue why anyone would be long Gold), but assuming you sold at $600, you would have watched it continue on another $140 or almost 25% before peaking.
So now you are out of Gold at $600. The lowest price since then has been $563 and I don’t have any evidence that he got you back in. Now he is saying that gold ran up in anticipation of the war in the MId East and is down because “Syria and Iran have not been lured in.” What nonsense! I am sure the CIA would like to know Christian’s sources who anticipated that Hezbollah would abduct two soldiers and prompt Israel to counter attack.
“Lured” is another good choice of words. Syria and Iran are already in the mix as support for Hezbollah. It’s a question of whether they will be punished for their actions. Isn’t it nice to know that Syria and Iran won’t be coming into this war. Thanks Christian and the CIA thanks you, too.
Christian is on record saying that yes Gold could pop, but over the long term, gold is over valued and should average $500. Now he is calling for a seasonal AND cyclical peak of somewhere between $700 and $1,000 (why no precision here, I wonder) by April of 2007, because he expects the economic and political environment to continue to deteriorate, helping Gold. Sounds to me like he’s buying into all this garbage we read about Bush and his party taking a big dump at election time.
Why would anyone pay the slightest attention to anything this man says? If you want to hear the truth read Bill Murphy of Le Metropole Cafe, or James Turk or James Sinclair or Dan Norcini or Adrian Douglas or Mover Mike. TheStreet.com should be ashamed for trotting this guy out and then latching on to his highest price of $1,000.
The one reason why Christian will not make you any money: He has no clue that central banks are short 10,000 to 15,000 tons of Gold and they can’t buy it back without sending the price to the moon. You know that PD shorted copper and cost themselves over $500 Million and they are still not clean. We know ABX is short Gold at basically $300 and has a mark to market loss on the books of at least $3 Billion. Who knows how much it cost to get the central banks Gold back.
