International Forecaster Weekly

Deserters

Deserters... by cowardice or conscience?... jail indefinitely, at the President's discretion... social INsecurity...the cruelest bubble of all... absolutely no economic or financial reform by our government... destroying historical awareness... $600 Million in fines and no-one goes to jail... geo-engineering... post-tramautic stress... and more...

Bob Chapman | December 19, 2004

Our Pentagon tells us more than 5,500 servicemen have deserted since the war started in Iraq. The majority of them say conscience, not cowardice, made them American deserters.

Morale in the US forces is the pits, because few believe in the mission. Without motivation, you cannot win. There has been a lessening of faith. That is why military personnel have challenged our Secretary of Defense face to face on issues. Some are suing the Army. Some are deserting to Turkey and Canada. Re-enlistment and retention is terrible. $30,000 bonuses are necessary to temp soldiers and Marines to stay. Who can blame them when mercenaries are getting $100,000 to $250,000 a year? Rome had the same problem. Then there is the back door draft, forcing servicemen to be held involuntarily after their enlistment contracts have expired. There is also lack of equipment. Equipment that does not work and suicide missions. Bush says like any wimp politician, “they deserve the best,” but we know he does not give them the best. Tensions are rising as a drop in optimism at home that a stable democratic government can be established in Iraq. We are in a quagmire, and now people are beginning to realize it.

We are happy to see Bernard B. Kerik abruptly withdraw his name from contention to be Secretary of Homeland Security. The excuse was that he had once employed a nanny, for which he did not pay taxes. Give us a break. Do they really expect us to believe such lies? Kerik was already a liability.

We are yet to figure out why the public has not cried out that their government is insane. Perhaps it is because; half our population is equally insane. George and the neocons trade in abuse, torture, terror, atrocity and tyranny. George’s captives get only a single hearing alone before a military tribunal without legal council, to access the evidence against them, just as prisoners were treated under Stalin and Hitler. Our leaders in Washington torture those who they believe disagree with them, after they are snatched from foreign countries. George’s stooges have put the world on notice that they have the power to seize anyone on earth - even little old ladies in Switzerland. Anyone can now be declared as an enemy combatant, including you and your family. That is even if you have not taken up arms against the government. Even if you do not know your actions were related to terrorism in any way, you can be abducted anywhere, tortured, and imprisoned just for disagreeing with our resident lunatic in the White House. They can hold you in jail indefinitely, at the President’s discretion. You have no rights left under your Constitution, or the Geneva Convention, thanks to the Patriot Acts; your women will be jailed, tortured, and raped just as they have been in Iraq by the CIA, mercenaries and the Mossad. That, they believe will make dissidents talk. In Iraq, they now have forced labor camps. Our government, for the first time in its history, has justified torture and unrestricted presidential power. They have put themselves above the law, both domestic and foreign. If you do not do something about it now, you will end up fighting tyranny in the streets later.

Over the past three years, residential property in developed economies has increased by one-third to $60 trillion. That is double the appreciation of 1997-8-9 prices. Prices have surged 35% in just this year in S. Africa, and they are up 31% in Hong Kong. Spain is up 17%, but prices have begun to fall in Australia. Year-to-year prices are off 1.5%. Prices are starting to fall in Ireland and New Zealand. Barclays Bank says prices could sink 20% over the next three years. Taking the average ratio of house prices to incomes in 1975-2000 as a baseline, American house prices are now at least 30% overvalued. We believe that continued low interest rates will not continue to add to appreciation. Conversely, as you know, we believe interest rates are headed higher. In case you do not believe we can have a real estate price correction, in 1989-93 house prices fell 15% to 60% and in Japan house prices have fallen for 13 consecutive years, or 35% from their 1991 peak. We live in a world with a bubble mentality, and that bubble is in the process of being broken.

Our VA in the US is incapable of servicing our many veterans. Iraq has a similar problem. The Army has less than 50 general surgeons and 15 orthopedic surgeons to serve more than 138,000 troops. These professionals are overwhelmed by the scope of severity of injuries occurring among troops in Iraq. Our military was unprepared for war, and so was the military medical establishment. The result is that, urologists, plastic surgeons and cardio-thoracic surgeons are performing general surgery. That also means civilian casualties go untreated. Making matters worse is an epidemic of multi-drug resistant bacterial infections, which is running at 8-10% of casualties. At least as many US troops have been wounded in combat in the 18-month Iraq war, as in the first five years of Vietnam. Ninety percent are surviving, compared with 76% in Vietnam. More are saved, but their future prospects are uncertain. This was an unnecessary war and this suffering did not have to happen.

Our President is considering cutting future Social Security benefits by 6%, even after the phantom potential gains from his so-called private accounts, which is nothing less than a subsidy for Wall Street and the economy. He tells us he expects significant sacrifices from every American. That is after he and his predecessors threw away the money paid into the system for our benefits. We do not believe he can raise the needed $2 trillion to get the private plan off the ground. In addition, what he is not telling us is that he will need a total of $10 trillion; that is if the stock and bond markets go up. Goodness knows how much he will need if we are right and the markets collapse. This is all a very bad idea. Our President, without a doubt, intends to reduce the planned growth of Social Security benefits. The reason again is that politicians have stolen your contributions and diverted them to projects calculated to get them reelected. One of Mr. Bush’s plans is to change the method of calculation of benefits from the current system of wage indexing to one that relies on price indexing, usually significantly lower. This, of course, is simply another method of screwing the public. Investing borrowed money into the shock market for future benefits is a sure loser. What is really galling is that no one, and we mean no one, is exposing the fact that Social Security revenues have been looted, stolen, and once the economy tanks, we can promise you benefits for all will be cut. Everyone in Washington knows that. The sale of $2 trillion in bonds is just another infusion to keep the stock market from collapsing.

The cruelest bubble of all is in the process of bursting, that is the real estate bubble. Prohibitively low interest rates has killed national savings, created massive indebtedness and caused a record current account deficit, which in turn is destroying our dollar. Economists, bankers, analysts, Wall Street, the Fed and government refuse to recognize the problem. Our Fed and our government have turned American consumers into profligate spenders with the help of the banks. Savings are 1.2% of GDP and that is why foreigners have to lend us $2.4 billion daily. That is while borrowers daily extract purchasing power from over-valued property, and then spend it. As prices decline, many will lose their homes and end up in the streets. This bubble bursting will be far worse and more costly then the bursting of the equity bubble. The value of real estate is $14 trillion, twice the value of stocks. Bubbles feed on each other. As real estate heads down, so will stocks and bonds as interest rates, gold and silver move higher. You had best put your house in order. Get as much out of debt as you can and buy gold, silver coins and shares. If you get caught under this steamroller, you have no one to blame but yourself. If you are not in the game, you cannot win. Remember, there is no painless way out of this mess.

We are paying for the excess of the past 50 years. Over the last 20 years, with the use of a strong dollar, we have driven American industry out of the country and now we hear about labor market reforms. That is a euphemism for taking 50 to 70% pay cuts or living like those in the third world. Incidentally, Europe is presented with the same choice. Since 1998, Asia has had just about everything their own way. They have not taken on any part of the burden of the weakening. It has been a one-way street. Asia is about to find out, as is everyone else that the adjustment game has just begun. The dollar has begun stage two of its decline and before this is over Asia with all those dollar assets, will lose 30 to 50% of the value of those dollar assets they bought to keep their currencies cheap. In the process, they will also see their exports to Europe and the US drop 30 to 50%. Debt will be liquidated, excesses will be purged, consumption will fall and savings will begin anew. It will be a long way back and those with the gold will make the rules. This is an economic 9/11. The chief economist at Morgan Stanley, Stephen Roach, Robert Reich, Larry Summers, Paul Krugman, China and the currency markets are warning us that the US economy is about to collapse. Americans, you are about to begin your worst economic nightmare.

We see absolutely no economic or financial reform by our government. All we see is elitist big business demanding tort, Social Security and Medicare reform. They do not seem to care whether the dollar collapses and loses its place, as the world’s reserve currency, because their real goal is world government. Shortly after these measures are implemented, we will get a flat tax that will burden the poor and the middle class, or value-added tax. This will finally bring economic slavery. Our resident fascists have a long four years with a purchased Congress to bury us. In the meantime, we will have a draft and perpetual war for perpetual peace to keep our young warriors in foreign lands, so there will be no one at home to defend our domestic freedom. In addition, keep in mind the people in control are not right-wing conservatives, they are national socialist fascists. They deliberately create crisis, they are the terrorists. We do not have a two party bipartisan Congress; we have a covey of whores who sold out upon command. We are not cynical; these are the facts. The elitists in Washington believe they are a new empire and that they can create their own reality. Well, we have news for them; they will not win because real Americans will not let them win.

Gary Webb is dead at 49. He was the Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter, who wrote a controversial series of stories linking the CIA to crack cocaine trafficking in Los Angeles. He was found with a gunshot wound to his head, a supposed suicide. He is one of several investigative reporters who have been found dead under mysterious circumstances over the past several years. What these reporters fail to realize is the power of those they pursue in government and if they cannot silence them through the industry, they do so otherwise.

The Pentagon wants to undertake a program that uses disinformation (lies) to shape perceptions abroad, which of course, will lead to false coverage by the media and deceive the public. Under intense criticism, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld closed the Office of Strategic Influence three years ago, but it has continued to operate elsewhere within the military and the Pentagon. The legitimization would involve secret propaganda programs, such as planting news stories and creating false documents to undermine what is conceived to be the enemy. This would be an advanced form of psychological warfare. This is not about democratic ideal; it is about spreading lies. It may influence, deter or confuse adversaries, but it would also deny the truth to the American public. The Joint Chiefs of Staff want to create a director of Central Information who would have the authority to control all messages whether public or covert, across all government operations that deal with national security and foreign policy, which is truly Orwellian.

The British Foreign Office reports fresh allegations about a regime of torture and humiliation inflicted on detainees by their American captors at Guantanamo Bay - they have been made by a Briton still held there. What is still going on at the American base is in violation of law and human rights. Unfortunately, torture has been part of official interrogation guidelines set up by the US government for many years.

The secret life of former nominee, to be Fuehrer of Fatherland Security Bernard Kerik, is now coming to light. We called him a scumbag and that is what he is. He carried on two extra marital affairs simultaneously using a secret Battery Park City apartment for passionate liaisons; one with a county correction’s officer, and the other with a famed publishing titan. He also accepted thousands of dollars in cash and gifts (graft) without proper disclosure and he was linked to the mob. We had the story before the media, but could not release it. Our source would have been killed. Another nanny story. This shows you the kind of scum the administration is involved with. It also shows what kind of friends Rudy Giuliani has. We exposed that crook’s mafia connections years ago. This is really how America works.

On Wednesday, the Treasury Department reported that foreigners bought a net $48.1 billion of U.S. securities in October, the lowest figure in a year and down from $67.5 billion in September. Foreign securities purchases have been the most important factor holding up the U.S. economy despite its huge trade deficit and savings shortfall. The October capital flow data were notable in that they no longer exceeded the trade deficit, which came in Tuesday at a record $55.5 billion.

The US economy has lost one million jobs a year for each of the last four years and there is no end in sight. At this rate in five years we will be a second world country and in ten years, a third world country. All of these countries are being allowed to take our jobs via free trade, globalization, and with the assistance of George and the neocons and our Congress. The third world attitude is; it is about time you Americans joined us at the poverty level in the third world. They relish what our leadership is doing to our once great country. Jobs are moving away at the speed of light, and 2005 will be a year of progressively high unemployment. Our country is being deliberately dismantled and the elitist, transnational, conglomerates could care less. They want us all to be slaves to them, and to the new world order. Worse yet, our Congress has upped the H-1B entry visas another 20,000 again this year. That is in spite of massive unemployment of American IT workers. The politicians from both parties did this and you keep reelecting them. Those unemployable IT refugees have gone where the jobs are, into the construction industry. On those sites, Spanish is the language of choice. The ratio of Anglos to Mexicans is 98% Mexican and most are illegal aliens paid off the books. We are dumb Americans looking around trying to figure out what is going on. Corporations break our laws everyday, and nothing is done about it. They do not collect taxes from these illegal aliens and nothing is done about it.

As we lurch headlong into the abyss, fascism feeds on destroying historical awareness. It destroys much of historical identity and culture, the better to recreate it as a Disney theme park ride. Why bother with real cultures when you can go to Vegas, tour them all, and get a free buffet lunch to boot. Club Med thinking, the illusions of empire and a tightly wrapped new world order, built on the loss of memory. It has been the year of total acceptance, of total amnesia. Give me my Prozac and tell me what you think, what to believe, and explain again why abstinence is good. Lap dancing is big business, so is pornography and prostitution in most of the world, but then again we are moral people, people with values. People who think we understand democracy even if it is fascism. The revisionists of world government will not win, but our price for victory will be high. Millions will remember what happened in Abu Ghraib prison, in spite of elitist efforts to bury it. The world is not the way they say it is. It is the way it is and we will prove that by reporting the truth. We will not allow these fascists to destroy our philosophy and culture. We will not be blinded by their headlights. We know there is a spot to shoot at, between those headlights.

Dr. John Caulfield, 70 years old, who has retired twice, has been called back to active duty in Afghanistan. Thus, he now resides in Bagram.

He is one of about 100 veterans, of 60 known to be serving against their wishes. Even at 70, that makes me prime meat for NSA-CIA-or Army Counterintelligence. Who knows, they just might snatch me. They would shut me up and take advantage of my 185 IQ and Crypto clearance.

Time Warner will make a settlement with the Justice Department in its investigation of advertising between America Online and smaller Internet companies that allowed AOL to lie about its growth. The SEC expects Time Warner to pay $600 million in fines to settle all civil and criminal actions against it. And, of course, none of the elitists go to jail. AOL was funded and run as a government CIA operation from its inception.

Rumor has it that CIA Director Porter Goss was active in covering up the CIA’s Iran-Contra era narcotics trafficking in Florida, while he was a member of the Vice Presidential Task force on drugs in Miami in 1983, which was headed by George Bush. The task force existed to protect and prevent interception of CIA authorized narcotics trafficking.

The Pentagon has made thinly veiled threats suggesting US-German relations could be at risk if a criminal complaint filed in German courts over ABU Ghraib proceeds. The charge has been levied against Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. George and the neocons have called the suit frivolous. In addition, CIA Director George Tenet, Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Steven Cambone, Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez and Brigadier General Janis were named in the action. We believe it is an idle threat. If the US pulls all their troops and facilities out of Europe at this time, they will lose Germany as a way station for troop rotation and hospital facilities. It will end NATO and throw Germany into the arms of Russia along with the rest of the EU. That would be a disaster for the US. This neocon gang has to be stupid.

One of the most important indictors you should be watching is the yield on the ten-year US Treasury note. Lately, it has been all over the place up from 4.06% to 4.45% and back down to 4.08%. On Thursday, it had moved back up to 4.17% inter-day. The note takes into account international opinion on the reliability of government inflation indicators, and the soundness of the dollar and the relentless expansion of debt. The more questionable the financial climate becomes the higher the yield. Gulf War veterans, now on medical disability since 1991, number 518,739 with only 7,035 reported wounded in Iraq in that same 14-year period. In one company, which recently served in Iraq, 8 out of 20 men have malignancies caused by depleted uranium. That means that 40% of the soldiers in that unit have cancer in just 16 months. This is a war crime against our soldiers our fellow Americans and against the innocent Iraqis. Our government is deliberately killing its own soldiers.

In addition, our government is dumping tons of particulate matter, which is geo-engineering into our planetary atmosphere into highly charged electrically conductive plasma useful for military projects. The air we breath is laden with asbestos sized synthetic fibers and toxic metals, including barium salts, aluminum and radioactive thorium, which is a waste product from atomic reactors. These materials act as electrolytes to enhance conductivity of military radar and radio waves. Poisonous on par with arsenic and a proven suppressant of the human immune system, atmospheric barium weakens human muscles, including the heart. Inhaled aluminum goes directly into the brain and medical specialists confirm that it causes oxidative stress within brain tissue, leading to the formation of Alzheimer’s like neuro-fibrillary tingles. Radioactive thorium is known to cause leukemia and other cancers. ELF waves, pulsed at frequencies, effect biological and mental functioning and combinations of viruses, bacteria, fungi, mycoplasma, desiccated blood cells and exotic biological markers so that human, animal and plant responses can be observed. These are life-threatening hazards the crazies in Washington are subjecting you too.

An Army study says one-sixth of the soldiers in Iraq have serious mental health problems and they believe that figure will climb to one-third, which would eventually require mental health treatment for more than 100,000 veterans, for the next 35 years. George and the neocons have created a monster. Post-traumatic stress disorder is running rampant. In the first 16 months, 885 troops were removed from Iraq for psychiatric reasons. Our President has brought devastation to our country; we have only seen the beginning to his madness.