September 23, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the percentage of young adults (16-29 years of age) who’re unemployed is 44.7%, the highest since the end of World War 2.
Also, the number of households living in poverty, where the parents are younger than 25, hit 37%!
September 22, Toys R Us announced they will not hire as many holiday employees as in the past.
“It looks to me like they are preparing for lowered spending and will be very cautious about hiring people until they really know they need them.”-John Challenger, analyst
Last end of year holiday season, Toys R Us hired about 45,000 temporary employees. This year Toys R Us will be hard pressed to hire 40,000.
“I know many of you are frustrated by the lack of progress. I assure you, so am I…. There is no short cut to the end of a conflict that has endured for decades. Peace is hard work.”-Barack Obama, President of the United States
No “short cut”!?! What an ass hole!!! U.S. President Barack Obama gave the Palestinians a big middle finger the other day at the United Nations!
Let see, how long have the U.S. backed Libyan rebels been fighting for their bull shit ‘liberation’? Six friggin’ months, and already Obama, and the whole world through the United Nations has officially recognized the rebel NTC as the official government of Libya! Bull shit!!!
Palestinians have been fighting Israeli oppression since the creation of Israel in 1948!!! On top of that they’ve been fighting the invasion of European Zionism since the end of World War 1!!!
World War 1 ended in 1918, for those of you who’re lacking in the history department. It was then that the British took over Palestine and began shipping English Zionist Jews from Great Britain to Palestine. By the way, it’s not just Palestinian Muslims who’re being oppressed by the Israelis, Palestinian Christians, and Palestinian Jews are being oppressed as well!
So you’re talking almost a hundred years of fighting oppression, and fighting for recognition within the international community! And the President of the United States tells the Palestinians they can’t take short cuts?!? What an ass hole!!!
September 21, Iraqi Vice President Khudair al-Khuzaie (apparently Iraq has three VPs) said U.S. forces need to withdraw from Iraq as scheduled by the end of 2011.
Khuzaie met with the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, James Jeffrey. Khuzaie said the United States needs to focus on “cooperation and partnership with Iraq in the fields of investments and reconstruction.”
U.S. military is supposed to withdraw completely from Iraq by the end of 2011, according to the Status of Forces Agreement signed late in 2008.
However, officials from the Obama administration are pressuring Iraqi politicians to let a small force of U.S. troops stay in Iraq beyond the deadline.
“So long as the Libyan people are being threatened, the NATO led mission to protect them will continue. And those still holding out must understand the old regime is over, and it is time to lay down your arms and join the new Libya.”-Barack Obama, President of the United States
September 21, U.S. led NATO agreed to extend their air campaign in Libya by another 90 days. Here’s the hypocrisy in Obama’s statement: He says Libyan people are threatened, well “those still holding out” are on the defensive, it’s the U.S. backed rebels that are (and have been) on the offensive. On top of that NATO has been bombing the shit out of anyone who doesn’t want to join the rebels! It looks to me that it’s the U.S. backed rebels that’re doing the threatening!
So, warmonger Obama, is NATO gonna start bombing the rebels, in earnest (they’ve already ‘accidentally’ bombed the rebels a few times)?
“There’s a major divide between the rich and the poor in this country. One in 10 people are unemployed and my vote is nullified by corporate lobbyists.”-Alexander Holmes, from Oakland, California
People from main street U.S.A. are protesting on corporate America’s Wall Street. They started on September 17, and they’re still going!
New York Times reported at least six arrests by September 19. Two men and a woman were arrested for wearing ski masks. It is illegal in New York city for two or more people to wear masks in public, I wounder what’s gonna happen at Halloween?
Another man was arrested after he told police that he was having trouble walking. Another woman was arrested after she wrote something on the sidewalk with chalk.
The New York Times confirmed that people are coming from all over the U.S. such as Massachusetts, Michigan, Virginia, New Jersey and Washington State.
Protesters say they’ve been inspired by the Arab Spring uprisings, and they hope to continue protesting just as long as their Arab peers have.
“Wall Street is energized about its profits, and it makes its profits by arbitraging labor. So if you lay off an American worker who makes $20.00 an hour, and you hire a Chinese or Indian worker who earns $1.00 and hour, you can put $19.00 an hour in your profit pocket! And that is what has been going on for 15 years.” -Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of U.S. Treasury
Roberts says there is nothing that the President, or Congress can do to stop the fall of the United States, unless they can stop U.S. corporations from moving jobs overseas: “Interest rates are near zero. There are no home buyers because between 1/4th and 1/5th of the work force is unemployed! And millions of Americans have been dispossessed of their homes…And the Middle Class jobs, millions of Middle Class jobs have been moved, by the corporations, abroad.”
Roberts says Corporate America is actually screwing over the U.S. government in the long run: “As the jobs move off, what moves with it is the tax base, the consumer income that formerly supported the American consumer demand, and the Gross Domestic Product of the economy.”
Roberts sees no hope for the U.S. main street economy as long as Wall Street gets its way: “So as long as Wall Street and the corporations profit by moving American jobs to countries where labor costs are substantially lower, there can be no recovery of the American economy!”
Paul Craig Roberts is the second former U.S. Treasury official to come out and make such statements. Recently, former U.S. Treasury Secretary, Lawrence Summers, said the United States is “collapsing”.
Lawyers in France accuse President Nicolas Sarkozy, of committing crimes against humanity. The attorneys say they witnessed it with their own eyes in Libya: “They are using missiles with depleted uranium, which cause cancer. In Tripoli I saw people crippled by NATO attacks, office workers who have nothing to do with the fighting. That is why we are suing President Sarkozy for crimes against humanity.”-Jacques Verges, attorney
The attorneys say the NATO air strikes were against civilians to begin with, there were no military targets, only “Books, videos, Spiderman toys, cultural books, nothing military.”
One French attorney said the bombing of Libyan civilians by NATO is a tactic in the strategy to overthrow Gaddafi: “After five months of daily NATO bombs and thousands of deaths, people will stop supporting the [Gaddafi] regime, because they just can’t take it anymore.”-Marcel Ceccaldi, attorney
By the way such a policy of attacking the civilian population to undermine their support for their government, was created by Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman, during the War Between the States (U.S. Civil War 1861-1865). It’s still official U.S. military policy, it’s justified by using the term “dual use” targets.
Another French lawyer is so convinced of a conspiracy against Gaddafi, by France, that he’s willing to defend Gaddafi in court, if he’s ever caught:“If they find him they’ll kill him. Like Bin Laden. Some states are now claiming the right to kill, against all international law.”-Roland Dumas, former French Foreign Minister
To further complicate matters, new captured documents reveal that Gaddafi was sold a French modified armored German Mercedes 4×4, that has the capability to act as a military command & control center, and avoid tracking by NATO: “It’s a huge embarrassment for the French government, as it emerges that President Sarkozy sold, in 2008, a 3.5 million pound (U.S. $5.5 million) car to Colonel Gaddafi which has allowed him to escape. It is a state of the art armored vehicle. It’s equipped with a commander system which allows Colonel Gaddafi to keep in touch with his forces. But it is also equipped with an anti-tracking system which makes it impossible for NATO surveillance to pick up any signals, and indeed to locate and target the car.”-Nabila Ramdani, journalist/political analyst
It’s also becoming clear that part of the French desire to get rid of Gaddafi is partly because he backed out of military deals with France, in favor of deals with Russia: President Sarkozy was hoping to sell Colonel Gaddafi fighter jets, Rafale jets at that time, but the deal fell through when Colonel Gaddafi was able to buy those jets from Russia instead.”-Nabila Ramdani
International Criminal Court: EUROPEAN UNION NOW ADMITS TO HELPING THE UNITED STATES COMMIT WAR CRIMES
Since the beginning of the year, tensions have grown over territorial rights to oil fields in the South China Sea. Now Vietnam is making a deal with India, to counter China’s military might.
India and Vietnam agreed in Hanoi, on September 16, to strengthen security ties and jointly develop oil fields in the South China Sea. China claims sovereignty over most of the South China Sea.
Recently the new Prime Minister of Japan, Yoshihiko Noda, indicated that his national security plan would involve taking territories that Japan believes is theirs. That includes islands in the South China Sea.
The South China Sea has potentially the largest oil reserves in the world (it’s the real reason the U.S. was at war in Vietnam). China, Japan, Philippines and Vietnam (now along with India) have been rushing to develop the oil fields for their own use.
September 19, gas prices in Idaho are about 70 cents above the national average. One local TV station tried to give the usual explanation by saying it’s a mix of regional demand and state taxes. FAIL!
I just checked on demand, and according to the latest numbers from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, demand for gasoline across the country is still below last year’s numbers. On August 26, 2011, the four week average demand for gasoline was at 9.169 million barrels per day. Compare that to the four week average of a year ago at 9.261 million barrels. So there is a slight decrease in demand.
Regarding fuel taxes; there has been no increase in Idaho fuel taxes since 1996!
What is happening is that production of fuels has been dropping. In other words, production is falling faster than demand, and that has the same effect as demand going up; prices go up (when there is less of something, in relation to demand, it becomes more valuable).
According to U.S. Energy Information Administration, PADD 4 gasoline production is down from last year. PADD 4 includes Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Utah and Wyoming. The four week average for “finished gas” production, for August 2011 was 0.273 million barrels per day. Compared to last year’s production of 0.296.
In other words, fuel producers are deliberately keeping production just under ‘demand’ in order to keep prices high.