GERMANY MULLS WORLD CARBON TAX ON CITIZENS

The coat of arms of the Nordic EU battlegroup depicted a castrated lion (Photo: Mil.se)(EU OBSERVER PICTURE)



INFOWARS.COM-GERMAN WANTS GLOBAL CARBON TAX-Joachim Schellnhuber







WORLD GOVERNMENT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnq5cQMiAB8&feature=related
http://britanniaradio.blogspot.com/2009/07/we-are-already-under-global-government.html#links
DICK MORRIS-This truly creates a global economic system. From now on, don’t look to Washington for the rule making, look to Brussels.

EPHESIANS 6:10-13
10 Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might.
11 Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.
12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities,(DEMONIC ANGELS IN HIGH PLACES) against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.(SPIRTIUAL DEMONIC PERSONS)
13 Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.

LUKE 4:5-7(BECAUSE SATAN OFFERS WORLD POWER, WORLD ORDERERS HAVE ACCEPTED SATANS GIFT)
5 And the devil, taking him (JESUS) up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.
6 And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it.
7 If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine.

DANIEL 7:23-25
23 Thus he said, The fourth beast shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth, which shall be diverse from all kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, and shall tread it down, and break it in pieces.
24 And the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings that shall arise: and another shall rise after them; and he shall be diverse from the first, and he shall subdue three kings.
25 And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time.

DANIEL 12:4,1
4 But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.
1 And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book.

REVELATION 13:1-3,7,8,12,16-18
1 And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.
2 And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.
3 And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast.
7 And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.
8 And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
12 And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed.
16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.

REVELATION 17:3,7,9-10,12,18
3 So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.
7 And the angel said unto me, Wherefore didst thou marvel? I will tell thee the mystery of the woman, and of the beast that carrieth her, which hath the seven heads and ten horns.
9 And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth.
10 And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space.
12 And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast.
18 And the woman which thou sawest is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth.

We shall have World Government, whether or not we like it. The only question is whether World Government will be achieved by conquest or consent.James Paul Warburg appearing before the Senate on 7th February 1950

Like a famous WWII Belgian General,Paul Henry Spock said in 1957:We need no commission, we have already too many. What we need is a man who is great enough to be able to keep all the people in subjection to himself and to lift us out of the economic bog into which we threaten to sink. Send us such a man. Be he a god or a devil, we will accept him.And today, sadly, the world is indeed ready for such a man.

DANIEL 7:23-24
23 Thus he said, The fourth beast(THE EU,REVIVED ROME) shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth,(7TH WORLD EMPIRE) which shall be diverse from all kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, and shall tread it down, and break it in pieces.(TRADE BLOCKS)
24 And the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings that shall arise:(10 NATIONS) and another shall rise after them;(#11 SPAIN) and he shall be diverse from the first, and he shall subdue three kings.(BE HEAD OF 3 KINGS OR NATIONS).

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/vetted
v. vet·ted, vet·ting, vets
v.tr.
1. To subject to veterinary evaluation, examination, medication, or surgery.
2. To subject to thorough examination or evaluation: vet a manuscript.
v.intr.To engage in the practice of veterinary medicine.

THE NEW WORLD ORDER REPLYED TO MY SEPTEMBER 4TH SAYING ABOUT THEM THREATENING ME AND MY FAMILY TODAY WHEN I PUT MY SITE STORY IN FACEBOOK TODAY.HERE WAS THE WORDS IN THE CONFIRMATION BOX TODAY.

VETTED-5SB

I BELIEVE THE VETTED IS #2,SEPTEMBER 4TH WAS 5 DAYS AGO COUNTING BACK AND OF COURSE THE SB IS STAN BOWMAN.THE NEW WORLD ORDER NUTCASES ARE CALLING ME A LIER TO BE EXACT.

CHARLIE SHEEN CONFRONTS BARACK OBAMA ABOUT 911 BEING A COVERUP.(INTERVIEW)(TRANSCRIPT)AND JONES HAS A BIG WEEK IN STORE,I BELIEVE MYSELF CHARLIE SHEEN WILL BE ON JONES SHOW ALL WEEK BUT WE WILL SEE AT NOON EST ON HIS SHOW
http://www.infowars.com/twenty-minutes-with-the-president/
http://www.infowars.com/

BECK IS A NEOCON
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6C6E6ayh4U&feature=player_embedded

Brussels is a shining symbol of where the real power lies ,As Westminster MPs lick their wounds, their European counterparts grow ever more confident, says Boris Johnson.By Boris Johnson Published: 6:14AM BST 07 Sep 2009

Cor, I thought. This is what it must be like to be in one of those films. You nod off for 10 minutes and you wake up in 200 years' time. We had just pitched up at the Gare du Midi in Brussels and the transformation was incredible. It was 20 years ago that this paper despatched me to the Belgian capital to be its Common Market Correspondent, and in those days the Gare du Midi was a wonderfully dingy place with feral cats and trod-on chips and Turkish taxi drivers snoozing in their battered Mercs and trains departing slowly for First World War destinations like Poperinge.

Now the future had arrived. A vast space-age Eurostar terminal loured over the ancient quartier, and as we headed into the heart of Euroville I couldn't believe my eyes. Poor old Brussels took a terrible pasting in the Fifties, when ruthless British developers moved in and razed so many lovely maisons de maître, whacking up anonymous office blocks in their place. That was nothing to the destruction now taking place in the name of Europe. As you get to the sites of the burgeoning European institutions, it is as though gigantic alien motherships of glass and steel have crash-landed on the city, dwarfing the cobbled streets and crushing out the patisseries and the gloomy little bars I used to love.Take the Euro-parliament, which in my day had a fairly poky office on Rue Belliard. Look at it now. To call it a palace is a wild understatement. It is a series of palaces, a city within a city, with bars and restaurants and coiffeurs, and arcing passerelles linking one modernist monstrosity with another. In my time the Euro-parliament was an amiable backwater, the mother-in-law of parliaments, a herbivorous habitat of oddballs – German ex-stormtroopers, retired Italian porn stars, long-haired Flemish greens, the young Geoff Hoon. The agenda broadly consisted of having lunches in Strasbourg before issuing strongly worded and cosmically irrelevant denunciations of African famines or Latin American earthquakes.All that is changed, changed utterly. There may have been a bar in the old Brussels Euro-parliament office, but not even the most desperate journalist would have gone there in search of a story. Today that parliament bar is heaving, and so are all the innumerable places of refreshment, pullulating with animated young thrusters of both sexes, their Christian Dior spectacles glittering with lust for – lust for what? Power, that's what. For the first time in the 30-year history of this much-mocked institution I had a sense of the power that seeps from the brown moleskin walls, and as I watched huissiers scuttling softly to and fro, I saw an assembly newly drenched and glistening with a rich béarnaise of self-confidence.And I could not help thinking, of course, of the pitiful comparison with Westminster, the parliament in which I recently served. Woe to the Westminster MPs, the vast majority of whom are – at least in my experience – decent and hard-working public servants. They have been so bullied, burned and beaten by the media that they seem to have had a collective nervous breakdown. Many of them are retiring, shell-shocked by the expenses scandal, their confidence permanently shredded by the detonation of public anger.

As for their replacements, they must cope with an unloved unreformed Gormenghast of a parliament, in which they are still forced to use their archaic third-person form of address, still forced to vote by an ancient procedure that means 15 minutes of halitotic shuffling round wood‑panelled lobbies.What a contrast with Brussels. In Brussels and Strasbourg (and Luxembourg, where heaven knows what they get up to), the MEPs just turn up and ker-ching, they claim their per diems. They vote at the push of a button, they are attended by every possible comfort, they have minimal interaction with their constituents, and in general the great Euro-gravy train rolls on at très grande vitesse.In Brussels the parliament is growing in physical splendour and size, with about 750 Euro-MPs now browsing in its pastures. In London the tendency is all in the opposite direction. Not only are there plans to reduce Parliament from 659 to about 400, but British MPs face a protracted humiliation, of being forced by the whips to fill in weird prep-school forms giving an account of how they have spent every hour of every day.In Brussels the lunching seems as uninhibited as ever; in London it's humble pie all round – and the kicker of the whole affair is that this change is not just symbolic. It reflects the underlying reality. It reflects the shift in the balance of power and the fact that the laws of this country are no longer determined by Parliament at Westminster.

You do not need to understand the detail of the directive on Alternative Investment Fund Management, for instance, to grasp that it is aimed at businesses in London, and risks doing considerable damage to such businesses, and yet our Parliament in London is wholly irrelevant. These hedge funds, private equity and venture capital firms had little or nothing to do with the financial meltdown of last year. But it happens that they have long been unpopular with certain European governments, who took advantage of the crisis to dust down an old plan of attack – rather as George Bush took advantage of 9/11 to launch an irrelevant attack on his father's bugbear, Saddam Hussein.The result is a directive that threatens to drive such businesses outside the European Union. Of course there is a case for sensible regulation, and there is still time for that directive to be improved. But who is going to do that work? There is no point in the venture capitalists and the hedge funds lobbying any British ministers. Under the new co-decision powers of the Euro-parliament, those crucial amendments will be made in Brussels by Euro-MPs.Indeed, with more directives in the pipeline, the future of the whole UK financial services industry is probably in their hands. That is why it is so telling to see the physical contrast between desiccated Westminster and sleek, self-confident Brussels. Power has passed, is passing, and under the Treaty of Lisbon, will pass further to the Euro-parliament.

EUROPEAN UNION ARMY

DANIEL 7:23-25
23 Thus he said, The fourth beast (EU,REVIVED ROME) shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth,(7TH WORLD EMPIRE) which shall be diverse from all kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, and shall tread it down, and break it in pieces.(TRADING BLOCKS)
24 And the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings(10 NATIONS) that shall arise: and another shall rise after them;(#11 SPAIN) and he shall be diverse from the first, and he shall subdue three kings.( BE HEAD OF 3 NATIONS)
25 And he (EU PRESIDENT) shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time.(3 1/2 YRS)

DANIEL 8:23-25
23 And in the latter time of their kingdom, when the transgressors are come to the full, a king (EU DICTATOR) of fierce countenance, and understanding dark sentences,(FROM THE OCCULT) shall stand up.
24 And his power shall be mighty, but not by his own power:(SATANS POWER) and he shall destroy wonderfully, and shall prosper, and practise, and shall destroy the mighty and the holy people.
25 And through his policy also he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand; and he shall magnify himself in his heart, and by peace shall destroy many: he shall also stand up against the Prince of princes;(JESUS) but he shall be broken without hand.

DANIEL 11:36-39
36 And the king (EU DICTATOR) shall do according to his will; and he shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every god, and shall speak marvellous things against the God of gods, and shall prosper till the indignation be accomplished: for that that is determined shall be done.
37 Neither shall he regard the God of his fathers,(THIS EU DICTATOR IS JEWISH) nor the desire of women, nor regard any god: for he shall magnify himself above all.(CLAIM TO BE GOD)
38 But in his estate shall he honour the God of forces:(WAR) and a god whom his fathers knew not shall he honour with gold, and silver, and with precious stones, and pleasant things.
39 Thus shall he do in the most strong holds with a strange god,(DESTROY TERROR GROUPS) whom he shall acknowledge and increase with glory: and he shall cause them to rule over many,(HIS ARMY LEADERS) and shall divide the land for gain.

REVELATION 19:19
19 And I saw the beast,(EU LEADER) and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against him that sat on the horse,(JESUS) and against his army.(THE RAPTURED CHRISTIANS)

TEXTS ADOPTED BY THE EUROPEAN SECURITY & DEFENCE ASSEMBLY
http://www.assembly-weu.org/en/documents/sessions_ordinaires/txt/2009/836.php
http://www.assembly-weu.org/en/documents/sessions_ordinaires/txt/2009/837.php
http://www.assembly-weu.org/en/documents/sessions_ordinaires/txt/2009/838.php
http://www.assembly-weu.org/en/documents/sessions_ordinaires/txt/2009/136.php
http://www.assembly-weu.org/en/documents/sessions_ordinaires/txt/2009/840.php
http://www.assembly-weu.org/en/documents/sessions_ordinaires/txt/2009/841.php
http://www.assembly-weu.org/en/documents/sessions_ordinaires/txt/text.php?annee=2009
FINANCIAL CRISIS,WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT-EU STYLE
http://www.alde.eu/fileadmin/webdocs/key_docs/Finance-book_EN.pdf

Sweden seeks scrutiny of EU battle groups-The coat of arms of the Nordic EU battlegroup depicted a castrated lion (Photo: Mil.se)VALENTINA POP
Today SEPT 8,09 @ 09:29 CET

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The Swedish EU presidency wants defence ministers to have a closer look at the bloc's quick response forces, which so far have never been deployed due to a lack of consensus among member states.The concept of EU battlegroups is good, but they have not been used until now. We want to have a political discussion on why this is the case, Olof Skoog, a diplomat representing the Swedish EU presidency told members of the security and defence committee in the European Parliament on Monday (7 September).Since January 2007, the EU has in theory always had two battlegroups on call, each comprising at least 1500 combat soldiers from one or several member states. The two battlegroups on call rotate every six months and are selected from a total of 18.Set up for deployment within 5-10 days, the battlegroups are designed as rapid response forces in emergency situations, when the United Nations or Nato cannot intervene quickly enough. They need the unanimous approval of all EU member states in order to be deployed, which is the main reason why they have not been used so far.Defence ministers will discuss the matter at the end of the month and possibly consider ways of making the mechanism more flexible, for instance by deploying just parts of a battlegroup when needed. The Swedish diplomat talked about variations in the political commitment of member states when it comes to making the battlegroup they contribute to really deployable.The lack of sufficient strategic airlift in most member states meant that you might have the troops, but no means of putting them on the ground - which defeats the very rationale of a quickly deployable force.As most of the Nato countries are also EU members, it is obvious that troops and technical equipment is scarce for both EU battlegroups and Nato missions, some MEPs noted.Co-operation with Nato is fundamental to the functioning of the battle groups, Socialist MEP and former Romanian defence minister Ioan Mircea Pascu said.The same troops are used for the Nato reaction force and the EU battle groups, so it would be a nightmare for military planners if they didn't know what troops they are counting on.British Conservative MEP Geoffrey van Orden called the EU battlegroups, as well as the whole European security and defence policy a distraction from Nato and what is really meaningful and deplored the Europeans' lack of interest in Afghanistan.

Coat of arms

Last year, Stockholm co-ordinated the set-up of the Nordic battle group in the first half of last year, comprising 2,800 soldiers mostly from Sweden and also from Finland, Norway, Ireland and Estonia. The endeavour cost Sweden more than €100 million.We made the investment in order for the battlegroup to be used,he said, noting that not all member states saw this in the same way.Back then, Sweden had hoped to see the Nordic battlegroup deployed in the context of the Darfur crisis, but the EU countries could not agree on sending it. Instead, the EU took months to deploy the EUFOR mission to Chad and the Central African Republic.Meanwhile, the Nordic battlegroup made headlines when its commander decided to castrate the lion on the coat of arms. With civilian women often falling victim to sexual abuse in the war zones of the world, the commander explained, he did not consider the penis an appropriate symbol for his troops to wear into battle.

TEXTS ADOPTED 839 TABLE OF CONTENTS RECOMMENDATION 839 on European Union military operations - reply to the annual report of the Council

RECOMMENDATION 8391
on European Union military operations - reply to the annual report of the Council2
The Assembly,
(i) Fully supporting the European Union's efforts in the framework of its European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP);
(ii) Recognising the scope of the missions being conducted under the ESDP for calming conflict at various points around the globe;
(iii) Fully supporting international and regional organisations in the work they are doing to establish stability and security, for instance in Bosnia and Herzegovina or in Darfur and the neighbouring regions;
(iv) Emphasising the important contribution the international community is making towards protecting civilians in conflict zones and in seeking lasting solutions to humanitarian crises;
(v) Stressing furthermore that it is crucial to establish the rule of law in those areas;
(vi) Recognising the importance of the international community's role in promoting the rule of law and creating a sound, stable and effective legal system and judicial infrastructure in conflict zones;
(vii) Expressing its support for the peace process launched by the various parties to the conflict in Chad and the Darfur region;
(viii) Considering that Europe has a responsibility to help calm conflict in Africa, keep the peace and protect civilians, pursuant to the relevant UN Security Council resolutions;
(ix) Noting the difficulties encountered during the force generation phase in finding a sufficient number of contributors of troops and equipment;
(x) Noting furthermore that certain non-EU member states had difficulty participating in the EUFOR mission for financial reasons;


(xi) Noting also that due to those financial difficulties some troops were deployed without suitable equipment in a hostile region;
(xii) Recognising that the contribution of non-EU member states made it possible to complete the arrangements needed to ensure the success of the EUFOR Tchad/RCA mission;
(xiii) Considering with regard to funding that the ATHENA mechanism is no longer satisfactory, particularly for missions involving the deployment of thousands of troops for an indeterminate period;
(xiv) Noting that the ATHENA mechanism, which covers only the common costs of the EUFOR mission amounting to less than 120 million euros, meets only a fraction of the total mission costs estimated at more than half a billion euros;
(xv) Considering that in its deliberations on establishing a strategic partnership with Africa, the European Union must develop medium- and long-term visions that are coherent in terms of the simultaneous use of its economic, legal, civil and military crisis-management instruments;
(xvi) Considering, in the light of the experience with EUFOR RD Congo and EUFOR Tchad/RCA, that the principles, structures and mechanisms for operational planning, force generation and the conduct and funding of civil and military crisis-management operations should be reviewed as a matter of urgency, particularly in so far as Africa is concerned;
(xvii) Considering that the governments of the member states must coordinate more closely with their national parliaments prior to the decision to launch a military crisis-management operation in the EU or NATO frameworks, in order to better define the mission objectives and conditions of deployment (rules of engagement), given the different national interests and priorities involved,

RECOMMENDS THAT THE COUNCIL INVITE THE WEU NATIONS AS MEMBERS OF THE EUROPEAN UNION TO

1-Actively support the efforts of the United Nations MINURCAT II mission and of international humanitarian organisations in Darfur and the neighbouring regions;

2-Pursue efforts at national, EU and NATO level with a view to developing and strengthening the European forces' intervention and support capabilities, above all in regard to deployability, mobility, logistics, weapons systems, interoperability and multinationality, and in particular in the framework of the Berlin Plus arrangements;

3-Maintain close relations with the United Nations so that the European Union is able to respond swiftly once the launch of a peacekeeping operation has been agreed;

4-Ensure that EU member states and non-member countries wishing to contribute troops are informed during force generation conferences of the equipment that will be required for an operation;

5-Ensure that from now on, in so far as practicable, the national parliaments are consulted before any decision to launch a military crisis-management operation and kept regularly informed of progress;

6-Monitor developments as regards the refugee situation in the Darfur region and contribute to setting up supplies and communications infrastructure that would encourage refugees to return to their home villages;

7-Encourage the MINURCAT II command to draw on the lessons learned by EUFOR and to follow the same practices as regards communicating with the villages and refugee camps and guaranteeing a visible and reassuring presence on the ground;

8-Draw up proposals for the rapid reform of the ATHENA mechanism for the funding of European Union military crisis-management operations, in order to secure at least a financial participation on the part of all states involved in the decision to launch an operation;

9-Review the principles for the selection of the framework nation as well as its role, in view of the major difficulties encountered during the force generation phase;

10-Take the necessary measures to ensure that the European Union acquires a genuinely permanent and responsive operational planning and command capability;

11-Keep the Assembly informed about the status of the EU and NATO crisis-management missions involving the deployment of the national forces of the WEU member states.

1 Adopted by the Assembly on 4 June 2009 at the 4th sitting.
2 Explanatory memorandum: see the report submitted on behalf of the Defence Committee by Andrea Rigoni, (Italy, Liberal Group) and René Rouquet (France, Socialist Group) Rapporteurs, Document 2038.

RECOMMENDATION 8351 on new opportunities for EU-US foreign and security policy cooperation - reply to the annual report of the Council2 The Assembly,

(i) Welcoming the fact that the election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States has brought a wind of change in international relations and convinced it has opened up new opportunities for transatlantic foreign and security policy cooperation;
(ii) Aware that it will be vital to make the best use of these opportunities amidst a financial and economic crisis that will absorb policy makers' time and energy;
(iii) Recalling that governments, parliamentarians and citizens around the globe took an exceptionally strong interest in the US presidential elections, but aware also that the new president, who is accountable only to the US people, will continue to defend US interests;
(iv) Noting that many of the new president's initial foreign policy decisions directly address longstanding concerns on the part of Europeans;
(v) Welcoming the fact that the Obama administration has adopted a new tone and style, showing renewed trust in multilateral institutions and being more willing to listen to and consult with Europeans;
(vi) Urging Europeans to show more unity, take on a greater share of responsibility and act more decisively in order to play their part at a valuable moment which offers the opportunity to create a new dynamic in transatlantic relations;
(vii) Aware that the imperative for change in the face of the numerous foreign and security policy challenges that lie ahead is one that does not only apply to the United States;
(viii) Believing that it is above all Europe that can offer the United States partnership in resolving those challenges;
(ix) Anticipating that an approach involving listening and consultation that yields tangible results will enhance US partnership with Europe;
(x) Welcoming the review by the US of its strategy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan, believing that the situation in the region offers a serious threat to not only regional but also to global peace and security and thus affects the United States and Europe;


(xi) Recalling that the need for a comprehensive approach to Afghanistan requires a significantly enhanced commitment by Europe to civil action and a sustained international military effort;
(xii) Welcoming the new administration's wish to re-establish a result-oriented relationship with Russia, in particular with respect to disarmament, arms control and non-proliferation;
(xiii) Finding it useful that there should be a dialogue with Russia on President Medvedev's proposal for improving the existing security architecture in Europe on the basis of the principle of equal security for all, in the belief that such dialogue offers the EU and US the opportunity for improving their relations with Russia, but aware that the Russia's invasion of Georgia, its subsequent recognition of the breakaway regions, its military build-up there and its continued failure to observe international commitments reached after the conflict breach the very principles set out by the president;
(xiv) Believing it is Moscow's responsibility to review its relations with its neighbours, which are marked by lack of confidence, suspicion and tension and overshadowed by Russia's heavy and not always constructive involvement in the frozen conflicts and by the way it conducts its energy policy particularly with respect to Ukraine and Moldova;
(xv) Welcoming the new president's awareness of the crucial importance of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict both for peace and stability in the wider region and for the United States' reputation in the Muslim world;
(xvi) Concerned by the great difficulty in relaunching the process for establishing lasting peace and stability in the Middle East, but applauding the increasing and positive involvement of the Arab states and institutions;
(xvii) Concerned by the lack of progress made in the reconciliation talks between Fatah and Hamas brokered by Egypt, aiming at the establishment of a Palestinian unity government, which is indispensable to a successful reconstruction of Gaza as well as for peace negotiations with Israel;
(xviii) Encouraging the new US Administration in its efforts to find a new and more balanced role in facilitating peace negotiations among all parties concerned and securing the mutually agreed results;
(xix) Welcoming the decision by the US Government to participate directly in the international talks about Iran's nuclear activities in the E 3 plus 3 framework and a greater readiness to enter into dialogue with Iran but disappointed by Iran's hesitant reaction and lukewarm attitude towards these initiatives and concerned by the further development of Iran's ballistic missile capability;
(xx) Welcoming President Obama's announcement on the closure of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay and the banning of unlawful interrogation techniques;
(xxi) Noting the new administration's appeal for Europe's support in helping offer Guantanamo detainees a new future,
(xxii) Noting the necessity of renewing the EU-US dialogue on civil liberties and legal values and addressing controversial counter-terrorism measures;
(xxiii) Recalling the need to develop common rules between the US and its allies to be applied in crisis-management intervention and law-enforcement operations combining elements of warfare and policing,

RECOMMENDS THAT THE COUNCIL INVITE THE WEU NATIONS AS MEMBERS OF THE EUROPEAN UNION TO

1-Develop a common European political response to the overtures of the President of the United States, one based on more unity, a willingness to take on a greater share of responsibility and the resolve to act more decisively;

2-Invite the United States to recognise the value of such a coherent coordinated and common response, particularly in the field of foreign, security and defence policy, and confirm it has a genuine interest in direct EU-US relations by being willing to strike a new balance between bilateral ties with individual European allies and relations with the EU as a regional entity;

3-Forge a common EU-US strategy for joint action within existing and emergent forums for global governance such as, for example, G 20;

4-Prepare for an open-ended dialogue, involving all Euro-Atlantic countries willing to participate, on ways and means to improve the existing European security architecture and new measures for building mutual confidence and transparency while preserving the transatlantic link;

5-Significantly increase Europe's commitment to civil action in Afghanistan and also maintain an increased military presence there after the presidential elections for as long as necessary;

6-Put relations between the European Union and Pakistan on a new footing, with the objectives of strengthening commercial ties, reforming the country's civil and security institutions and improving its capability for fighting terrorism and securing its nuclear installations;

7-Review Europe's strategy in the Middle East so that it can be fully supportive of the ongoing effort to establish a truce between Gaza and Israel as part of a step by step process leading towards a lasting peace in which all relevant actors are involved;

8-Endeavour to improve the living conditions of the population in Gaza, develop the economic and commercial infrastructure of the West Bank and address demographic developments;

9-Actively pursue their contacts with the Iranian Government in order to promote the E3 plus 3 proposals on cooperation in the civil nuclear field but also leave no doubt about the capacity to impose intensified sanctions if necessary;

10-Show a readiness to seek a more comprehensive relationship with Iran on the basis of mutual respect, shared interests and Iran's strategic importance in the region;

11-Launch a dialogue with the United States on civil liberties and legal values with a view to developing new standards for the treatment of men and women captured in the course of crisis-management operations, including operations to counter terrorism and piracy;

12-Speed up the process of formulating a common and positive European response to the United States' request for Europe to take in former detainees from Guantanamo Bay;

13-Explore further opportunities for EU-US foreign policy cooperation, including for making progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals, the improvement of the African Union's crisis-management capabilities and the strengthening of good governance, social and economic development and regional coherence in the western Balkans.

1 Adopted by the Assembly on 2 June 2009 at the 1st sitting.2 Explanatory memorandum: see the report submitted on behalf of the Political Committee by Jordi Xuclà i Costa, Rapporteur (Spain, Liberal Group), Document 2040.

Right turn ahead: Ireland, the Lisbon Treaty and the New World Order
Published September 7, 2009
http://mediabite.wordpress.com/2009/09/07/right-turn-ahead-ireland-the-lisbon-treaty-and-the-new-world-order/ (LINKS)

Here we go again

These days in Ireland, people are mostly either a Yes or a No.There are also, crucially, the Dont Knows.This situation has come about because the disobedient citizens of Ireland defeated the European Union’s proposed Lisbon Treaty in a referendum in 2008.The Nos had won and the solidly Yes establishment consensus was furious with us.We were ungrateful and ignorant.We were liars.We would be sent to detention and our pocket money would be withheld.None of our European friends would want to play with us any more and would want to punish us severely, what is more. They would hold their party without us in future and we would have to wait outside the door looking longingly in at the feast.The Lisbon Treaty has far greater significance than any of this.If it is not also the focus of popular attention in the US, China, Russia, India and the Middle East among others then it really should be, though it’s certain that there are plenty of powerful people in those places who are watching its progress carefully.For its own constitutional reasons, Ireland had to put the treaty to its electorate for approval.Alone among all of the member states of the union, this pesky little country of just over 4 million people had delivered a verdict which should, because of a requirement for unanimity among EU states, have seen the EU go back to the drawing board or abandon the treaty altogether.But things seldom work like they are supposed to round these parts and now we are being told instead to go back to the polling booth to do as ordered last time and vote yes in a re-run referendum on the exact same treaty.This has all resulted in a heated public debate that it had been intended should never take place but which has gone some way to exposing the enormous underbelly of the Lisbon Treaty project.And so we find ourselves in Ireland with the fate of many millions of European people in our hands, many of them begging us not to approve the treaty.We have had to do this vote/re-vote routine with two earlier pieces of European legislation already as Irish people try to resist the increasingly but now utterly discredited liberal or free market economics which the EU is now trying to foist on us permanently.But the Irish have obstinately refused to learn the lesson being rammed down our throats: get it right first time.Each time around, however, the electorate appears to lose its collective nerve and we submit in the second vote to the prescribed view.We have a bit of a shout about things and then settle down to behaving like compliant Europeans, though at the time of writing there is a possibility that the outcome will be different this time.The Nos comprise mainly working people, trade unionists and peace activists for example, who fear a reduction in employment rights and a militarised, less democratic Europe.The make-up of the first Lisbon Treaty vote was no exception – although it was notable that a large majority of women had voted against it.Right -wing opponents of the treaty, though far fewer in number, had been the focus of hysterical pro-treaty media attention, as they are again now, but that did nothing to persuade the majority who had different reasons for saying no to Lisbon.

Whatever criticism might have been made about the commerce and trade focused-EU in the past (and there are many that can be made) there was a time when we in Ireland looked to its legal and other institutions to secure employment and other rights because our government were resisting EU rights initiatives with every means at its disposal.Domestically, Ireland’s relationship with the EU as a member state has always been ambivalent depending on whether it was the beneficiary of financial largesse or having to meet unwanted EU-wide obligations - which it tries with all its considerable wile to wriggle out of – and frequently only conforms to nominally. Irish people have been denied many of the now diminishing benefits of membership by the cartel-like way much business is conducted here.Insurance, banking and other sectors frequently do not respect either the spirit or letter of earlier EU law which should have afforded citizens greater protection and opportunity than it does in many instances.

Modern Ireland

Like all colonial governments, the British were nothing if not careful to ensure that whoever ended up in charge after they had gone would protect landowners and established business interests first and foremost.That approach was a welcome one generally, too, among the shopkeepers, trades people and exporters who stood to benefit from trade with England.The leaders of the 1916 uprising – particularly those who envisaged an inclusive, egalitarian Ireland – were almost all executed. In declaring a republic at the time of the rising this is what they had said:The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and all of its parts, cherishing all of the children of the nation equally and oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien government, which have divided a minority from the majority in the past.

Eamon De Valera who was a member of this group was spared from execution for his part in the rebellion and went on to become Taoiseach (prime minister) – and later President - having fomented civil war when the country voted in favour of the establishment of the 26-county state -though he never did anything to undo that outcome for the rest of his political career.He also, in effect, stole an estimated $2m of funds he had raised while campaigning in the US beforehand.The modus operandi of his party, now known as Fianna Fail (The Soldiers of Destiny), who have led the country for most of the time since then, was set in stone.If democratic processes might not secure your preferred outcome, there are ways around them.If you need money, diverting public and private funds to your personal and political causes is always an option.The encouraging aims of the heroes of 1916 were abandoned and the would-be-priest and infamous chauvinist, Dev, drove the country into a stifling, ultra- Catholic, decades-long bleakness during which time censorship was rife and the Catholic church was enshrined in the constitution to the prejudice of people of other faiths and of none.Thousands of Irish children were systematically raped, vilely neglected and beaten in Church-run institutions right up into the 1980s. This was a veritable industry – 170,000 children passed through the industrial schools - enabling the religious orders to make money out of the labour of children often arbitrarily seized and forced into care – whole families of them at a time. This issue is illustrative. Though the other political parties are culpable too, more than any of them Fianna Fail facilitated and covered up the actions of the religious.It is the Fianna Fail party who, as late as 2002 actually indemnified all of the 18 institutions and surviving perpetrators involved in the abuse against prosecution and who just a few weeks ago defended their retrospective protection of the abusers on sickeningly spurious grounds.This was after they had spent decades publicly and legally humiliating victims who had tried to sue for damages.The party has also been mired in a succession of ugly corruption scandals over the last two decades which have dominated politics, wearied the electorate and seen two Fianna Fail Taoiseachs disgraced. Both of them were implicated in the give-away of all our rights to our considerable oil and gas reserves in circumstances not explained to this day. The Irish version of the economic crash is the worst of any developed country, not least because of the corrupt relationship between Fianna Fail and a clique of wealthy Irish property developers who have been funding the party in return for obscenely favourable treatment at the expense of the rest of the indigenous economy.The government is currently trying to railroad through a piece of legislation which many believe is an attempt to bury the evidence of what has gone on and also to pay off backers who are calling in favours having run themselves into staggering debt.If passed, the legislation would see the Irish government owning the largest property asset company in the world, much of it irredeemably toxic speculative debt.The Irish people are being asked to guarantee and pay for this plan which will be used to compensate the banks and developers involved.This is all on top of enormous bailouts and guarantees already given.The government claims that because of commercial sensitivity, we who will be paying for this for two or three generations cannot be told who is involved or how much they are each to be paid.As with the child abuse scandal, total indemnity for the perpetrators is the order of the day. All this and much more besides has resulted in a deeply chauvinistic and administratively corrupt society.There is of course much more to the Irish people than to their business and political elites and we assert ourselves everywhere in spite of them.But the best of what we could be as a society has never been appreciated by our mean and narrow politicians, let alone encouraged or enabled to flourish.There is a core minority of voters who stubbornly return Fianna Fail to government again and again, unwilling or unable to extricate themselves from the old civil war mindset. For them, and because of them, Ireland still functions in De Valera’s image and likeness.

Ireland in the EU

The original European Economic Community, in this context,was a god-send to Ireland. If the treatment of the victims of institutionalised child abuse is anything to go by, women for example, would even now in all probability be without the rights which the conservatively Catholic, male government had to be dragged screaming and kicking to confer in line with European Directives emananating from a pool of capitalist thought which, unlike in Ireland, had at least some sense of humanity about such issues, whatever its ultimate objectives.In the midst of our present economic disaster, the Minister for Justice, Dermot Ahern, has been occupying himself with forcing a retrograde blasphemy law onto the statute books. Recently, measures have been taken to rebalance the gender quota for entry into training for medicine where young Irish women have been succeeding better than young men.This has resulted in the rejection for medical training of bright, well-adjusted and hard working women who achieved the highest possible results in their Leaving Certificate examinations - 600 points – in favour of young men who scored as few 480.There is no concern to rebalance the gender quota at the top levels of the same profession or in public, political and business institutions across the board - still heavily male-dominated.Plans are now afoot to conduct similar rebalancing exercises in the professions of law and education, amongst others.Employment rights too have been subjected to sustained attack.Trade Union leaders here have grown frustratingly supine in the face of the onward march of neo-liberalism, caving in to angry treatment by government, business interests and a deeply compliant media. The Irish Congress of Trade Unions recently saw to it that a motion for a national strike against pay and other cuts which have devastated the incomes of the lower paid, was defeated.In years gone by, workers might have sought recourse at the European Court of Justice but increasingly employer-friendly rulings and interpretations there have seen a slow erosion of entitlements.The Lisbon Treaty is the culmination of this trend at EU level - a result of concerted efforts by big business to take the union in an irreversible, neo-liberal direction.It includes provision for enshrining worker-unfriendly case law into its terms.

If we vote yes to Lisbon we can kiss goodbye to what remains of that relatively benevolent EU era.It’s no coincidence that here in Ireland the extreme neo-liberal employers group, the Irish Business and Enterprise Council (IBEC), who have done more than any other group to diminish workers rights in Ireland, are enthusiastic about the Lisbon Treaty. Unelected representatives of IBEC saturate government committees right across the policy spectrum.The Irish media are in a thrall to them. RTE (the national broadcaster) solemnly announce the contents of IBEC press releases as if revealing commandments handed down from on high. IBEC are gleeful:
The Lisbon Reform Treaty creates the legal basis for the liberalisation of services of general economic interest (Art. 106). A yes vote for the Lisbon Treaty creates the potential for increased opportunities for Irish business particularly in areas subject to increasing liberalisation such as Health, Education, Transport, Energy and the Environment.IBEC are the prime movers behind the privatisation of our health service now being ruthlessly modeled on the abject failure that is the US health care system by the ideologically-driven Minister for Health whose former party colleagues have openly preached the notion that a little inequality is a good thing.As in other member states, pharmaceutical companies, GM food manufacturers and a host of other corporate interests, actively lured into Ireland by IBEC, are bending the EU to their agenda.That agenda is the creation of gigantic big business monopolies at the expense of everyone else which will see many high-street businesses devastated if it succeeds.IBEC demands competitiveness - a now globally familiar corporate euphemism for driving both wages and corporate taxes down - the better for their members to achieve higher profits and dividends for themselves.

Ireland has secured an astonishing 25% of all US inward investment in Europe in recent years on the back of its excessively favourable tax-exempting, subsidy-providing and grant-allocating terms to get the multinationals in.The minnow has invited the sharks to sup in the Irish taxpayers fish bowl.Management consultants have made a small fortune out of the public purse – advising both ends of the government/foreign investor relationship while enjoying the most undemocratic and unparalleled direct access to policy-making of any country in the EU.This system has laid waste to the function of our parliamentary democracy and sees elected representatives and civil servants rendered superfluous in policy making.US corporations look for a little more punch and have two key lobbying agencies: The American Chamber of Commerce and the US Ambassador.The American Chamber of Commerce hosts a number of business lunches and special conferences with key decision makers. It boasts that it has excellent access to Irish and European policy networks and can keep Irish decision makers focused on the factors that contribute to the continuing attractiveness of Ireland as a location for foreign direct investment.The Chamber vigorously lobbied against an EU directive, which would oblige employers to consult their staff and provide them with information on issues affecting them.Instead of an automatic right to such consultation, they demanded that it could only be triggered by a written request signed by 10 percent of workers. In this way, the names of the employees might be noted by the very management which was reluctant to consult them in the first place! The Irish state duly agreed and the Employees (Provision of Information and Consultation) Act bore, according to Industrial Relations News, the indelible stamp’ of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ireland. The Chamber works very closely with the US Ambassador, who, it appears, intervenes extensively to lobby for US business interests.One thing we know for certain: all of this inward ‘investment’ has done nothing to protect Ireland from the money-market and property-speculation- induced crash, experienced more severely here than in any other ‘developed’ nation because of abject failures of regulation and government. Many of our fair weather friends have already departed these shores to places like Poland who are now going down the Irish route.Doing something about the EU-IBEC and their European counterparts resolved some while ago that something had to be done about the socialist- leaning EU.

I would like to see Europe doing three things.

For a start, I would like to see it taking on board the need for flexibility in the labour market. If we are going to bring in more legislation that affects the labour market, let’s make sure that it does not deprive people of jobs down the line. I would like to see full liberalisation right across Europe in sectors such as transport, aviation, energy and telecommunications. Competitive provision of essential services can stimulate economic activity and have beneficial consequences for employment.I would like to see an acceptance of the need for tax reform and tax reduction and I would, of course, be delighted to see Europe forgetting about any plans for tax harmonisation.So spake the then Minister for Trade and Enterprise, Mary Harney at an IBEC conference back in 1999.The government has religiously pursued these exact policies and the economy has been savaged by them: approaching 500,000 people are now unemployed and business closures are at an unprecedented level.Harney was and is promoting the exact ethos that has prevailed disastrously in the US and world financial markets acknowledged by former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, the man who could arguably be said to be most responsible for them, to have been a mistake.But the ‘race to the bottom’ continues apace.The great shame of it is that so many are caught up in the hubris.An aggressive cabal already have enormous influence on the EU via direct access to the most powerful and least democratic echelons of the EU hierarchy. There are now some 15,000 corporate lobbyists stationed permanently in Brussels who have so far resisted meaningful attempts by concerned groups to render their activities accountable and transparent.

Enter the Lisbon Treaty

The new liberalized Europe is to be backed up with obligatory expenditure on militarisation so that EU member states can support pre-emptive peace-keeping missions around the world.The Yes side brazenly and vehemently deny this – an aspect of the treaty they are nervous about discussing – but it is all quite clearly there in the text of the treaty.Whether Ireland participates directly in military actions or not, the EU is being beefed up to function as an ally of the US who – aside from its catastrophic economic collapse – was near bankrupted anyway by its trillions of dollars of war spending to secure control of the oil and gas reserves of other nations. Lisbon is also a response to the rising global influence of countries like China, India and Russia – who have in turn formed their own economic bloc to protect their interests from the aggressive US/EU threat. The US is even now deploying war heads in Czechoslovakia pointed eastwards while at the same time vilifying an understandably defensive Russia which is not responsible for this aggressive restarting of the Cold War.It is all very simple.The EU is building up to offer the US third country’ support for its increasingly deadly resource grabs in the Middle East.Follow the routes of the oil and gas pipelines that are being laid by the US across the region and you will be travelling through all of the countries with which it is now violently engaged.(Scroll down at this link to index of maps and images – which can be enlarged.)This is an expensive and personnel-intensive business and the US cannot go it alone indefinitely.This is where its most significant ally comes into play.The EU has also been insistently supportive of US policy in Palestine/Israel where member states like Britain have offshore energy interests promised them by Israel.Unfortunately Gaza is in the way, but that problem is being dealt with, despite official hand-wringing about the Israeli’s having overdone it a bit last Christmas.All of this needs to be defended from the threat of the Middle Eastern countries the US are now bombing to submission.These countries are not about to accept the violent imposition of these objectives.This is our terrorist threat – the people who have no choice but to resist or be raped of their autonomy and resources – resources which have been coveted by Western powers for over a century.

EU militarisation would also be a major bonanza for the powerful EU arms industry which Irish big business is heavily and profitably involved in. The treaty speaks in Orwellian fashion of making obligatory provision for joint disarmament operations, peace-making, support for third countries in combating terrorism in their territories and rapid access to appropriations for urgent financing of civilian and military assets.The proposed obligations on member countries are discussed here by Joe Higgins, MEP an opponent of the Treaty.Wider analysis of treaty text here.

A metaphor for the European Union

The CEO of Ryanair recently announced his support for the treaty in characteristic fashion.Lisbon would indeed be to Europe what Michael O’ Leary is to airline travel. His is an appropriate face for the planned new Europe where people can expect to be treated with as much contempt and arrogance as are his passengers.If the treaty goes through expect to be told, O’ Leary style,we’ve had your votes now you can get lost –because it will be our last opportunity to have a direct say in a treaty referendum of this sort.Yes voters will find out, as with advertised Ryan air flight costs - the hidden charges, exclusion clauses and other terms and conditions that have been deviously woven into this constitution masquerading as a treaty.Public opinion will be led to adopt, without knowing it, the proposals that we dare not present to them directly …all the earlier proposals will be in the new text, but will be hidden and disguised in some way.Former French President V. Giscard D’Estaing, who headed the drafting of the EU Constitution which the French and the Dutch rejected in their 2005referendums, and which is now being implemented through the Lisbon Treaty.
Le Monde, 14 July, 2007

The Irish Media

An analysis of the media coverage of the first Lisbon referendum showed that coverage was massively biased towards the Yes side.RTE Falling at the Feet of Power‘ revealed some interesting statistics.RTÉ’s coverage of the Lisbon Treaty campaign was unbalanced with contributors from the Yes side making up 62.75% of speakers in discussions and news items focusing on the Lisbon Treaty. This suggests that perhaps it was RTÉ policy to deliberately limit coverage of the No side’s arguments. It is to be hoped this research may elicit further explanations.That situation can only be worse now because since then a decision was taken that RTE’s obligation to equal treatment in referendum coverage did not mean equal air time. The Yes campaign this time round has been headed up by the neo-liberal and former Progressive Democrat, Pat Cox who is an adviser to the European Commission.Mr Cox is accused of having potential conflicts of interest in holding this role, though he denies this is the case.A vanguard of shiny-eyed young people have been deployed to persuade their peers.Preened and primed to target the Irish youth vote, Generation Yes are happy clappily on message for the government and the EU.A recent edition of RTE’s current affairs programme, Prime Time, was clearly aimed at women who, as mentioned above, were the biggest demographic grouping in the No side last time.There were more women in that one RTE report than would ordinarily be evident in 6.The graphic was of a track-racing woman.When it comes to women the station is ordinarily guiltier of tokenism.The report was an insultingly superficial treatment of the issue and included inaccurate and false claims about the treaty made by a homely narrator in reassuring tones that were presented as statements of fact.Though the subsequent debate on the programme between Cox and Higgins was conducted fairly by Miriam O’ Callaghan, the programme’s most senior investigative journalist, its overall editing and context was unmistakably pro treaty.RTE’s editing of news and current affairs material is widely regarded as notoriously pro government among media watchers and analysts, not least because of the backlash it will experience if it even accidentally crosses that line. Retribution is swift with journalists finding themselves sidelined or dropped completely.

The neutral Referendum Commission has circulated an information booklet to every home in Ireland carrying a picture of a woman’s hands held prayerfully aloft in a chalice like Y shape, cradling the words The Lisbon Treaty.It too is full of soothing reassurances while being woefully inadequate and misleading in substance. It claims that the legal situation with regard to the treaty has changed.This is completely untrue.The themes of the Yes side are these: it’s just a tidying up exercise; it will create more efficient decision-making procedures;militarisation plans are being exaggerated,it’s only anti-abortionists who are objecting and so on. However, EU leaders themselves say otherwise and it is shocking to see what they have been saying over our heads.

So what’s new?

This is the exact same treaty that was voted on last time.None of the concerns we had about it then have been addressed.In the UK’s House of Lords, Baroness Kinnock confirmed that guarantees offered to the Irish government in a political pantomime aimed at assuaging voters’ doubts, do not and will not have any bearing whatsoever on the Treaty.

The Minister for Europe (Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead):My Lords, the June European Council discussed and agreed the guarantees that the Irish Government wanted in order to address the concerns of the Irish people about the Lisbon treaty. The European Council conclusions say that the decision,gives legal guarantee that certain matters of concern to the Irish people will be unaffected by the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon.Those guarantees do not change the Lisbon treaty; the European Council conclusions are very clear on them. The Lisbon treaty, as debated and decided by our Parliament, will not be changed and, on the basis of these guarantees, Ireland will proceed to have a second referendum in October.Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, has reiterated this in the UK’s House of Commons. The guarantees are manifestly meaningless, though Taoiseach Brian Cowen had unsuccessfully tried to have them added to the Treaty as a protocol.They are now reduced to the status of mere declarations with no certainty about when or if they would ever have any legal effect.Relations between the UK and Irish leaders were somewhat strained during these and other negotiations.If people are concerned to preserve whatever vestige of fairness and equity the EU has had up to now, the last thing they should do is to vote this wretched, big business-favouring constitution onto the statute books. The referendum is due to take place on October 2nd and the level of media bullying of No voters is now at an increasingly snarling and feverish pitch.The small and silly Catholic group COIR who oppose the Treaty for fear it will usher in abortion and immigrants are the focus of intense media ridicule in an attempt to caricature all no campaigners.It’s a contest between rich and poor, the powerful and the weak - with a wavering middle class in the driving seat as ever - unsure which way to jump.It seems the answer may come down to nothing more than the degree to which many in this group feel economically insured enough to take a gamble on accepting the promises and reassurances of politicians about the Lisbon Treaty. Others again are prepared to take the Lisbon Treaty and its proponents at face value.Or maybe some of them will be betting on the idea that their personal boats will be floated even if others are sunk.Whatever their thinking, they hold our futures in their hands.Miriam Cotton, September 2009

FIRES AND EXPLOSIONS

REVELATION 8:7
7 The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.

Post-wildfire worries: floods, damaged ecosystem By JOHN ANTCZAK and ALICIA CHANG, Associated Press Writers – SEPT 7,09

LOS ANGELES – Southern California's huge wildfire has turned nearly a quarter of the 1,000-square-mile Angeles National Forest into a moonscape of barren mountains looming above thousands of homes that now face the threat of flash floods and mudslides.Experts are already evaluating the extent of risk to lives and property as well the impacts of the wildfire on a forest ecosystem that in some areas may not have burned in at least a century.Sprawled across the San Gabriel Mountains, the Angeles is both a playground for millions in greater Los Angeles and a true wilderness ranging from arid desert to alpine forests and peaks topping 10,000 feet. Skiers dare its steeps in winter; bears wander out of its chaparral cloak in summer for dips in suburban pools.The chief concern is the impact the 246-square-mile Station Fire is having on the watershed. Countless canyons, ravines and gullies funnel watercourses toward communities at the forest's edge.The Los Angeles County Department of Public Works maintains a legendary flood-control system including 14 major dams, 500 miles of open storm channel and a nearly 3,000-mile network of underground storm drains capable of carrying storm water and debris through the metropolitan region to the ocean.The system also includes basins — 30 to 40 in the area impacted by the fire — that intercept debris-laden flows from the canyons and trap mud and vegetation before the water continues on.

Our concerns are that we will have a larger quantity of debris than normal being captured by our flood control system and, primarily, that individual property owners may be impacted by mudslides or mudflows to their properties,said Mark Pestrella, public works deputy director.An overall assessment to predict the water flow has already begun. The basins are being examined to determine how much they may need to be cleaned out to create capacity, and channels are being examined to make sure they are free of obstruction such as overgrowth, Pestrella said.That work will be done by Oct. 15, which the department marks as the start of the storm season, he said.Teams will also fan out to assess burned slopes to warn homeowners and determine if temporary structures need to be built.In Big Tujunga Canyon, Joseph Stachura can already see the danger: The fire left boulders unsupported on a barren slope above his home.That's pretty scary, he said.I'm going to have to send the wife and kids out again when it rains because there's a good chance this hillside is going to move.

Rocks have already fallen on forest roads.

Although the Station Fire is now the biggest in county history, each element of the flood-control system was engineered for its portion of the watershed and has been tested by previous fires, Pestrella said.The system is nearing 100 years old and it has quite a track record for performing during these kind of events, he said.The biggest defense against disastrous flooding this winter may be the weather trend.On June 30, most of southwestern California completed its fourth consecutive season of below-normal rainfall. Precipitation in downtown Los Angeles has been only 64 percent of normal in those years, according to the National Weather Service.The region is in for more of the same, said Bill Patzert, the veteran Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist who investigates how climate variation is linked to oceans, including the El Nino warming phenomenon that sometimes leads to dramatically heavy rains in California. The current El Nino is definitely wimping out on us,Patzert said.The dice are definitely loaded. When you have a weak El Nino or a disappearing El Nino, it's a below-normal rainfall year,he said.Patzert cautioned that it doesn't take an El Nino to bring heavy rains and the full picture of the risk the region will face from winter rains won't be known until after the fall — the major fire season in Southern California. He is certain there's trouble enough already. Any kind of rain is going to be a mess,he said.In the forest, the consequences of the fire range from loss of wildlife and habitat to an indefinite closure of a vast area used for hiking, fishing, hunting, mountain biking and even commuting.

For the thousands of hikers, much of the forest may no longer resemble the descriptions in Trails of the Angeles,the bible for trekkers in the San Gabriels since the early 1970s.I think you have a hard time designing a more destructive fire from a hiker's standpoint,said Doug Christiansen, now co-author of the guide originated by John W. Robinson.All that country that it took out contains some of the most heavily used ... and some of the oldest hiking trails on the mountain range.
Christiansen said he and his wife hiked in the Angeles a few days before the fire. I feel like that was probably my last glimpse of the mountain range as I knew it. It's going to be generations before it comes back,he said. County health authorities, meanwhile, are warning people to keep themselves and pets away from any wildlife that may have been forced out of the forest.There's no doubt the massive fire killed off thousands and thousands of animals, mostly small mammals that could not escape the flames, said Pepperdine University biologist Lee Kats, who has investigated the impact of wildfires on wildlife. We have some animals that don't have the best escape mechanism. While birds and larger animals can certainly flee, a lot of smaller ones can't,Kats said.Of particular concern are rodents, reptiles and raccoons — animals that don't get a lot of attention, but play an important role in forest wildlife diversity.Scientists say it is too early to know what kind of long-term damage the Station Fire wrought on the forest ecosystem. Chaparral generally is highly adapted to a fire-prone environment.But researchers are concerned that if chaparral burns too often, invasive weeds and flammable grasses could crowd out native shrubs, transforming the landscape.

If we end up with these areas burning again in a couple of years for whatever reason, then you can end up actually changing native vegetation to exotic vegetation,said Travis Longcore, research associate professor of geography at the University of Southern California.Many ecosystems can bounce back from devastating fires as long as the blazes are not frequent.The reality is there have been fires in the past and there will be fires in the future. Unless you want to pave the mountain, we have to accept that fact,said Longcore, who is also the science director of the nonprofit Urban Wildlands Group.Jon Keeley, a research ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey's Western Ecological Research Center, said burned areas should sprout without trouble since they haven't faced repeated fires, and recovery is likely to be very quick.Next spring, assuming we get reasonable rain, most of those hills should be green with regrowth,Keeley said.He said the forest will also see an increased diversity of native plants since many seeds lie dormant in the soil waiting for a fire to pass through in order to grow.Associated Press Writer Greg Risling contributed to this report.

EARTHQUAKES

MATTHEW 24:7-8
7 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.
8 All these are the beginning of sorrows.

MARK 13:8
8 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom:(ETHNIC GROUP AGAINST ETHNIC GROUP) and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows.

LUKE 21:11
11 And great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven.

Quake off coast of Indonesia; no tsunami, no damage Mon Sep 7, 1:09 pm ET

JAKARTA (Reuters) – A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Java, Indonesia, the U.S. Geological Survey said on Monday, but the Indonesian authorities said there was no tsunami warning and no reports of any damage.The strong quake, which occurred at 11:12 p.m. local time, was centered about 167 miles south of Yogyakarta, Java, Indonesia, at a depth of nine miles, USGS said.Jaya Murjaya, a spokesman at Indonesia's meteorology agency, said there was no tsunami warning and no reports of any damage or casualties.A 7.0 magnitude quake which struck off the coast of West Java on Wednesday killed more than 70 people, and damaged thousands of homes.(Reporting by Telly Nathalia; Writing by Sara Webb; Editing by Jon Hemming)

STORMS HURRICANES-TORNADOES

LUKE 21:25-26
25 And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity;(MASS CONFUSION) the sea and the waves roaring;(FIERCE WINDS)
26 Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.

Tropical depression forms far out in Pacific Mon Sep 7, 10:46 am ET

MIAMI – A tropical depression has formed far out over the Pacific Ocean and forecasters say it could become a tropical storm.According to the National Hurricane Center in Miami, the depression has maximum sustained winds near 35 mph (55 kph) but is expected to strengthen.The tropical depression was centered about 1,190 miles (1,910 km) west-southwest of the southern tip of Mexico's Baja California peninsula early Monday. It's moving west-northwest near 8 mph (13 kph).

Rain floods Mexico City homes, subway SEPT 7,09

MEXICO CITY – Heavy rains have flooded hundreds of homes in the Mexico City metropolitan area and turned streets into rivers that dragged cars in their currents.
Officials say the downpour briefly closed Mexico City's airport and swamped four subway stations that were out of operation on Monday.In the suburb of Tlalnepantla, a water drain broke, knocking down walls and sending cars floating down streets with water 5 feet (1 1/2 meters) deep.Drought-plagued Mexico City has been begging for rain. Officials say up to 84 millimeters (3.5 inches) fell Sunday, but it was not enough to fill dams and allow an end to water rationing.

SAVING JEWISH YOUTH
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPYGdgIxIe4&feature=player_embedded
NIGEL FARAGE INTERVIEW
http://britanniaradio.blogspot.com/2009/09/nigel-farage-interviewed-on-andrew-marr.html#links
JOHN LOEFFLER PLANNING THE FUTURE BY REFORMING THE PAST
http://britanniaradio.blogspot.com/2009/09/john-loeffler-steel-on-steel-planning.html#links


Monday, September 07, 2009 china confidentialSurvey Shows Surge of Support for Israel as Obama Fails to Turn Americans Against Jewish State.

In spite of President Obama's outreach to the Muslim world, and relentless pressure on Israel to withdraw to indefensible borders and surrender to Hitlerian Hamas, a new poll shows a surge of support among Americans for the beleaguered Jewish State--the only democracy in the Islamizing Middle East. Click here for the story.

Ironically, Jewish left-wingers and liberals are increasingly hostile to Israel. Enthralled by America's first Muslim-born President (he was born a Muslim according to barbaric Islamic law, which traces religion through the father), these self-hating Jews are abandoning Israel. Many of them seem to believe that they can insulate themselves against the rising tide of Islamist extremism and violence--which the Obama administration is effectively encouraging--by distancing the Diaspora from Jerusalem.The American Jewish betrayal of Israel--in sharp contrast with the strong support for Israel among Bible-believing Christians and non-Jewish patriots in general--looms as one of the darkest moments in Jewish history. Not since American Jews turned their backs on their brethren in Europe on the eve of the Holocaust--fearing an anti-Semitic backlash in the U.S. at a time when pro-Nazi and pro-fascist sentiment was strong and widespread--has anything this shameful happened across the Jewish world.

Chavez ready to shelter duplicate Iranian nuclear facilities in Venezuela
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report September 7, 2009, 12:44 PM (GMT+02:00)

Their latest anti-US scheme
DEBKAfile's Iranian sources disclose that Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are working on a wide-raging plan to replicate Iran's key nuclear installations in Venezuela, possibly in the framework of a new program there on the Iranian and North Korean models. Ahmadinejad seeks to keep them safe from possible US or Israeli attack; Chavez wants to rile Washington.

Mass. Health Bill Would Allow Warrantless Arrests, Quarantines
Alex Newman New American September 1, 2009

A pandemic and disaster preparation bill (S. 2028) passed unanimously by the Massachusetts Senate earlier this year is receiving wide-spread criticism as citizens mobilize to oppose its passage in the commonwealth’s House of Representatives.Under this bill, Massachusetts becomes a medical police state. There is no debating it,wrote Natural News editor Michael Adams in an August 28 article entitled Wake Up, America: Forced vaccinations, quarantine camps, health care interrogations and mandatory decontaminations,where he suggested America was delving into medical fascism.The citizens of Massachusetts will have no rights, period. The Constitution is ancient history. You are now the property of the State.The bill contains a number of controversial, alarming, and blatantly unconstitutional provisions. Under an emergency declared by the governor, the statute purports to give the health commissioner, and law enforcement and medical personnel broad authority to mobilize forces, vaccinate the population, enter private property with no warrants, and even quarantine people against their will.

The legislation provides severe penalties — $1,000 fine per day and possible jail time — for not complying with state orders, while also claiming to shield everyone involved from liability. It gives local health authorities the power to restrict or prohibit assemblages of persons and gives government agents the authority to arrest without a warrant any person whom the officer has probable cause to believe has violated an order while using reasonable diligence to enforce such order. Also, law-enforcement authorities shall assist medical personnel in the involuntary transportation of people to treatment centers.The provision on vaccines does give citizens the authority to refuse the vaccination, but people who do can be isolated or quarantined.The same fate awaits those are unable or unwilling to submit to decontamination or procedures necessary for diagnosis.One part of the legislation requires that owners or occupiers of a property permit entry into and investigation of the premises,and another section creates price controls.Draconian measures like this to supposedly deal with pandemics and outbreaks of disease are getting a boost with the hysteria surrounding swine flu, but critics are warning of the dangers of such tactics and fighting back.In this time of fear, we can’t let that fear take away our freedom to make voluntary health decisions,said Barbara Loe Fisher, the president of the National Vaccine Information Center. She offered a chilling analysis of the legislation in Massachusetts and the national situation, saying it looks like few choices will be allowed.But she encouraged people to find out what their rights are.Though it breezed past the Senate with a 36 to 0 vote, the Massachusetts bill is still languishing in the House after being referred to the committee on health care financing.One of the reasons the bill is stalled in the house is because those house reps are being bombarded with phone calls from constituents saying, I will refuse the vaccine, explained writer Devvy Kidd in a piece about important bills to defeat where she said the reaction to this legislation may have been blown out of proportion.

But while opposition to the plan may be mounting, there are many in power who believe — like Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel — that the government shouldn’t let crises go to waste. This bill has been debated in the Massachusetts legislature before, but the House and Senate could never agree on a final version. So some lawmakers are using concern over the swine flu outbreak as a tool for pushing their agenda and getting it passed this time around.It’s too bad that we have to have something like that pending to get us to finally act,said Democratic Massachusetts Senator Richard Moore in a televised interview, referring to the spread of the H1N1 virus.This was actually on the calendar before that became a news story,he explained, but it does give us another reason why it’s a good idea to have this one the books.If the House passes it, a veto by the governor will likely be the last thing that could stop it.Unfortunately, people hoping that the judicial branch will step in an restore some sanity may be left wanting.Judges will not stand in the way of emergency actions taken to protect the public from a clear and present danger, and if they do, the state appeals court will over turn their rulings in a matter of hours,explained a piece written by Louisiana State University director of the program in law, science and public health Edward Richards and Dr. Katherine Rathbun. The history of judicial restraint on emergency powers is one of blind obedience to civil and military authority.A great deal of tyrannical federal statutes dealing with health emergencies already exist, and some other states are considering vast power grabs of their own. Maine recently had its National Guard engaging in swine flu vaccine scenario drills at a school while the military draws up plans to help FEMA with the swine flu situation across the country.But it is past time for citizens to demand that their leaders respect the people’s medical freedom and individual rights. Massachusetts should kill this bill and other states should fight to preserve the liberty of their citizens. Government officials at all levels should finally obey their oaths to the Constitution and the bill of rights, especially in the life-and-death field of healthcare.

DOCTOR DOCTORIAN FROM ANGEL OF GOD
then the angel said, Financial crisis will come to Asia. I will shake the world.

JAMES 5:1-3
1 Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.
2 Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten.
3 Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.

REVELATION 18:10,17,19
10 Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come.
17 For in one hour so great riches is come to nought. And every shipmaster, and all the company in ships, and sailors, and as many as trade by sea, stood afar off,
19 And they cast dust on their heads, and cried, weeping and wailing, saying, Alas, alas that great city, wherein were made rich all that had ships in the sea by reason of her costliness! for in one hour is she made desolate.

EZEKIEL 7:19
19 They shall cast their silver in the streets, and their gold shall be removed: their silver and their gold shall not be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the LORD: they shall not satisfy their souls, neither fill their bowels: because it is the stumblingblock of their iniquity.

REVELATION 13:16-18
16 And he(FALSE POPE) causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:(CHIP IMPLANT)
17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.(6-6-6) A NUMBER SYSTEM

WORLD MARKET RESULTS
http://money.cnn.com/data/world_markets/
CNBC VIDEOS
http://www.cnbc.com/id/15839263/site/14081545/?tabid=15839796&tabheader=false

HALF HOUR DOW RESULTS TUE SEPT 08,2009

09:30 AM +3.12
10:00 AM +34.53
10:30 AM +45.42
11:00 AM +60.68
11:30 AM +56.53
12:00 PM +21.38
12:30 PM +34.91
01:00 PM +30.68
01:30 PM +29.62
02:00 PM +27.73
02:30 PM +37.41
03:00 PM +49.57
03:30 PM +55.54
04:00 PM +56.07 9497.34

S&P 500 1025.39 +8.99

NASDAQ 2037.77 +18.99

GOLD 995.60 -1.10

OIL 71.36 +3.34

TSE 300 11,105.30 +87.83

CDNX 1241.06 +11.81

S&P/TSX/60 667.14 +5.41

MORNING,NEWS,STATS

YEAR TO DATE PERFORMANCE
Dow +7.58%
S&P +12.53%
Nasdaq +28.01%
TSX Advances 893,declines 557,unchanged 246,Volume 412,849,134.
TSX Venture Exchange Advances 499,Declines 370,Unchanged 318,Volume 196,393,198.

Dow +60 points at 4 minutes of trading today.
Dow -1 points at low today.
Dow +71 points at high today so far.
GOLD opens at $1,005.90.OIL opens at $70.42 today.
GOLD OPENS AT OVER $1,000 TODAY

AFTERNOON,NEWS,STATS
Dow -1 points at low today so far.
Dow +71 points at high today so far.

DAY TODAY PERFORMANCE - 12:30PM STATS
NYSE Advances 2,612,declines 988,unchanged 86,New Highs 169,New Lows 43.
Volume 2,959,710,966.
NASDAQ Advances 1,480,declines 1,068,unchanged 134,New highs 64,New Lows 07.
Volume 940,491,506.
TSX Advances 805,declines 535,unchanged 210,Volume 310,237,433.
TSX Venture Exchange Advances 413,Declines 299,Unchanged 287,Volume 149,918,178.

WRAPUP,NEWS,STATS
Dow -1 points at low today.
Dow +71 points at high today.
Dow +0.59% today Volume 202,320,141.
Nasdaq +0.94% today Volume 1,952,417,197.
S&P 500 +0.88% today Volume N/A

UN Calls For Bank Of The World, New Global Currency - Proposals for a new centralized economic world order outlined in globalist report Steve Watson
Infowars.net Monday, Sept 7, 2009

The United Nations has called for the establishment of a new global reserve currency to be overseen by a bank of the world in an effort to reduce the role of the Dollar in international trade.Details of the proposal were outlined in a report from the UN Conference on Trade and Development. The report also calls for the new global reserve bank to monitor and manage the national exchange rates of member states.
There’s a much better chance of achieving a stable pattern of exchange rates in a multilaterally-agreed framework for exchange-rate management, Heiner Flassbeck, co-author of the report and a UNCTAD director, told Bloomberg News.An initiative equivalent to Bretton Woods or the European Monetary System is needed.said Flassbeck.

He also added that while the UN also backed strengthening Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), a synthetic paper currency issued by the International Monetary Fund that was dormant for half a century until earlier this year, that would not be enough to protect emerging markets.This latest call for a new reserve currency from the UN echoes previous efforts by the global body to initiate talks on replacing the Dollar.

Meanwhile, an influential Chinese policy maker has slammed the US Federal Reserve’s policy of printing money to buy Treasury debt, declaring that it threatens to set off a serious decline of the dollar and compel China to redesign its foreign reserve policy.Earlier in the year, China expressed support for a Russian proposal for the creation of a new supra-national global currency as an alternative to the Dollar as the world reserve currency.Other heavyweight elites such as French President Nicolas Sarkozy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, UK Business Secretary and top Bilderberg member Peter Mandelson and EU heads such as Joaquin Almunia, to name but a few, have called for a new economic world order consisting of vastly increased overarching centralization.The creation of a de facto world currency to supplant the Dollar would likely lead to a complete collapse of the greenback, of which trillions are held in in foreign exchange reserves by many foreign countries.As we have repeatedly warned, the introduction of a new global currency system is a key cornerstone in the move towards global government, centralized control and more power being concentrated into fewer hands.Furthermore, a global central bank will establish a de facto financial dictatorship which will wield power over the economies of every country on the planet with no accountability whatsoever.

Irish Government Moves to Impose Carbon Tax
KILIAN DOYLE Irish Times September 7, 2009

The Commission on Taxation has recommended the introduction of a carbon tax to help cut Ireland’s greenhouse gas emissions.In a report published this morning, the commission said this tax should apply to all carbon-based fuels sold for use in Ireland and should be based on the tonnes of CO2 emitted by each fuel. It said the tax could raise €500 million per year.The tax should be clearly visible at the point of final consumption to ensure it is not seen as just another tax, the report said.
The Commission said a carbon tax would encourage polluters to cut emissions to save money and encourage innovation. It is fair in the sense that those who choose to pollute the most, pay the most,it said.While there should be no preferential rates, businesses who are involved in the Emissions Trading Scheme should be exempt, it said.

German Government Advisor Proposes Personal CO2 Budget For Everyone On Planet Says westerners should pay climate reparations to poorer countries Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet.com Monday, September 7, 2009

The top climate science advisor to the German government has proposed that everyone on the planet should have a personal CO2 budget and be forced to pay a tax if they exceed it, adding that westerners have already exceeded their allocations and should pay climate reparations to poorer countries.This is not just another tax being rammed through using the phony pretext of global warming, it’s the entrée for complete government tracking and control over your personal life. This is the inventory that Nancy Pelosi called for during her visit to China in May.On May 28, the Associated Press reported that Pelosi told a Chinese student that in order to cut back on CO2 emissions,Every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory.German climate scientist Joachim Schellnhuber is pushing for the same thing – the nanny state on steroids.How will a personal CO2 budget be enforced? Every plane ticket you buy, every time you fill up at the station, every mile of every journey you make will be fed into a centralized government database, creating a leviathan matrix system to catalogue every aspect of your personal behavior. Exceed your personal carbon budget and you’ll be hit with a hefty fine, with the majority of the proceeds no doubt going straight to the huge international banking interests that own the carbon trading market, mainly N M Rothschild & Sons, as well as people like Maurice Strong and Al Gore.This CO2 tax will bankroll the very same globalist interests, specifically groups like the Club of Rome, that resolved decades ago to invent hysteria surrounding climate change in order to advance their agenda for global government.

Schellnhuber is proposing the creation of a CO2 budget for every person on the planet, regardless whether they live in Berlin or Beijing, reports Der Spiegel, a breathtaking idea according to Czech physicist Dr. Lubos Motl, who said Schellnhuber’s proposal helped him “to understand how crazy political movements such as the Nazis or communists could have so easily taken over a nation that is as sensible as Germany.Schellnhuber goes further, claiming that westerners have already exceeded their CO2 allocations and will need to pay climate reparations to poorer countries amounting to no less than $142 billion dollars a year, every year.
Humankind has to limit itself to emit only fixed amount of carbon into the atmosphere until 2050. [...] Because the industrialized nations have already exceeded their quotas if you take into account past emissions. [...] With the current output you see that Germany, the US and other industrialized nations have either already used up their permissible quota, or will do so within the next few years. [...] The industrialized nations are facing CO2 insolvency. This means that they have to notch up their efforts to reduce climate change, otherwise they will use up the CO2 budget actually designated to poorer countries and future generations,he told Der Spiegel.The proposal mirrors similar measures called for by MP’s in Britain, which would force every adult to use a carbon ration card when they pay for petrol, airline tickets or household energy.The next step has also already been floated. Should you become a serial carbon offender, no doubt your thermostat will be forcibly turned down by the government via remote control. Sound too far fetched? According to a January 2008 New York Times report, “State regulators are likely to have the emergency power to control individual thermostats, sending temperatures up or down through a radio-controlled device that will be required in new or substantially modified houses and buildings to manage electricity shortages.

September 7, 2009, 10:01 am France Mulls CO2 Taxes on Citizens
By James Kanter Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

President Nicolas Sarkozy is considering what amounts to a CO2 tax on citizens.
The French government plans next year to begin making heavy users of household and transport fuels bear more of the tax burden. President Nicolas Sarkozy is expected to say in coming weeks that such a shift is necessary to nudge French citizens toward cleaner alternatives. The tax would reportedly start at about 14 euros (or $20) for each ton of CO2 emitted, and could rise to levels of around 100 euros ($143) for each ton by 2030. That could mean substantial increases in the price of gasoline and diesel, as well as a sizable jump in the cost of keeping homes warm. But skeptics say the idea may have less to do with clean energy, and more to do with a desire on the part of Mr. Sarkozy’s government to find new ways to keep the national debt in check.In addition, members of the opposition Socialist party have slammed the plan, suggesting it would unfairly burden lower income citizens — particularly those who are obliged to use their cars.Segolene Royal, a former presidential candidate, has instead called for direct taxes on gasoline and other energy companies.

Central bankers empower global standards, raise liquidity requirements
Raw Story Monday, Sept 7th, 2009

Leading central bank governors said on Sunday they had agreed on a package of measures to strengthen on a global scale the supervision of the banking industry, raising liquidity requirements for all its member nations and pushing smaller institutions to develop countercyclical cash buffers to prevent future collapses.The measures should substantially reduce the probability and severity of economic and financial stress,a statement released by the Basel-based Bank for International Settlements (BIS) said.The approval sets in motion and enhances revised Basel II measures finalized in July, that require banks to bolster capital and remedy flaws exposed by the collapse in credit and financial markets last year.Basel II is a framework for global capital monitoring and measurement.The U.S. has pushed for the framework to include stronger capital requirements for smaller institutions.A U.S. Treasury official recently told Dow Jones that the framework will be fully implemented by 2011.The agreements reached today among 27 major countries of the world are essential as they set the new standards for banking regulation and supervision at the global level,said European Central Bank chief Jean-Claude Trichet, who presided the meeting.National financial supervisors were also urged to ensure that pay or compensation for commercial bankers was properly aligned with long-term performance and prudent risk-taking,added Nout Wellink, the chairman of the Basel Committee and Dutch central bank chief.

However, the meeting did not set a firm date for implementation of the package, which will be fleshed out over the coming months.The central bank governors and supervisors who met in Basel form the oversight body of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision.A draft of the measures was first unveiled in January.The principles agreed notably to bolster standards for key tier one capital requirements for commercial banks to raise their quality, consistency and transparency, the statement said.Banks will be required to move expeditiously to raise the level and quality of capital to the new standards, but in a manner that promotes stability of national banking systems and the broader economy,it added.The central bankers endorsed the principle of a minimum global standard to fund liquidity, as well as a framework to oblige banks to build permanent countercyclical capital buffers that can be used during periods of financial turmoil.These measures will result over time in higher capital and liquidity requirements and less leverage in the banking system, less procyclicality, greater banking sector resilience to stress,said Wellink.The measures will be detailed by the end of the year and tested and refined through to the end of 2010, according to the statement.They will be phased in in a manner that does not impede the recovery of the real economy.

The central bankers meeting came swiftly on the heels of a meeting of G20 finance ministers in London on Saturday that painfully hatched a compromise on bankers’ pay and left several financial issues outstanding.US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner notably went to London seeking an agreement ensuring that banks were better prepared for tough times.But he admitted afterwards: We still need to reach agreement on the level of capital ratio.Amid disagreement in their ranks, the G20 ministers fell short of capping bankers’ pay but pledged to reward long-term, not short-term success.Most of the issues were left for a crucial meeting of G20 leaders in the US city of Pittsburgh on September 24-25.

Capital requirements underpin a bank’s business and deposits.

Adequate capital reserves should help avoid sudden collapses like those which occurred a year ago, precipitating the financial crisis and massive state support packages for big banks in several major economies.The existing Basel II accord, finalised in 2004, had already bolstered and expanded on earlier international capital standards for banks.But it took several years to negotiate amid resistance to some of the criteria in the banking industry.With AFP

Jose Manuel Barroso: plan for EU tax to appear on all receipts All shopping and petrol station receipts in Britain could in future include the amount of VAT or fuel duty that goes directly to Brussels as an EU tax, according to Jose Manuel Barroso. By Bruno Waterfield in Brussels Published: 6:15AM BST 07 Sep 2009

The European Commission President said in an interview with The Daily Telegraph the idea of an EU tax will be discussed in the autumn as part of a major rethink about of how European funding is collected.There will be no taboos, with every radical option left on the table for discussion, he said.Mr Barroso said under the proposals,EU and national VAT should appear as separate taxes on the invoices or receipts every time consumers make a purchase, buy fuel or pay for an airline ticket.

We will come with our financial review and we will have debate without taboos,he said.Mr Barroso emphasised that proposals for the EU's own resources, controlled by the commission and collected across Europe, will not mean a new tax burden but would earmark a ring-fenced percentage of existing consumer taxes for EU expenditure, set to be £121 billion next year.I think we should have some way to address own resources, that does not necessarily mean speaking about new taxes for Europe, he said.Officials also hope that listing a new EU tax on receipts would make funding more transparent to the public.The proposal reflects the nature of the EU as a Union of member States and citizens by clarifying the link between the taxpayer and the EU budget,said a senior official.Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party, suggested that the move would drive British voters further away from the EU.He is really out of touch if he thinks it will popular to alert people to the fact they have just made a cash contribution to the EU every time they go shopping, he said.Thank you, Mr Barroso.The Commission President is concerned that the current system of negotiating EU contributions from strained national budgets leads to resentment and a who pays and who benefits blame culture.It always becomes a question of how much one pays and how much one receives, I think this has always been very divisive. I think we should consider the options for own resources, he said.

Mr Barroso faces a battle over the plan for direct taxation to raise the EU's budget which will be resisted as an encroachment on the jealously guarded tax-raising powers of national treasuries.Commission officials have long argued for a fixed system of own resources to take the sting out of talks for seven year financial perspectives, negotiations that begin in 2011 for the period 2014 to 2020.During talks, grudging national governments which pay almost three quarters of Brussels contributions from treasury coffers traditionally focus on costs rather than the strategy for EU spending.While VAT rates or fuel duties in member states would not increase, cash would be divided into two separate components, the national rate and the EU rate, directly going to Brussels.

Wall Street Cashes In On Death
CBFE Economics September 7, 2009

The New York Times published a pretty creepy article on Saturday (September 5th). The article focuses on Wall Street’s new plan to make money. What’s so bad about Wall Street making money? Well, their new plan is to buy life insurance plans from elderly and sick people for cash. The example that the New York Times gives is someone selling a million dollar policy for a $400,000 payout, but the payout amount would all depend on the seller’s life expectancy. These life settlements would then be bundled together to form bonds that can be sold to investors. The investors would start paying for the person’s policy from then on. When the person dies, the investors collect on the policy. Apparently, the faster the person dies, the more money the investors make. However, regardless of whether you die sooner or later, Wall Street firms will profit off of fees collected from creating the bonds and facilitating transactions. You could say that Wall Street is planning to securitize people’s lives (or deaths, as it may be) into a kind of CDO. And we all know how great that whole CDO adventure played out for Wall Street, right? What could be dangerous about creating a similar class of financial products with sick people’s life expectancy as the focus?

Apparently, these type of life settlement investments aren’t new for banks. They already exist in a lot of portfolios. Whats new is the plan to securitize these life settlements and market them as a big-time asset class of their own. Keep in mind, this isn’t something banks are just talking about potentially doing. The Times states that Credit Suisse is building a financial assembly line to buy large numbers of life insurance policies, package and resell them — just as Wall Street firms did with subprime securities.Estimates are putting the market for this class of investment product at $500 Billion, according to the article. I don’t doubt it one bit. Considering how many people are losing their jobs or facing pay cuts and how high medical bills are these days, does anyone really doubt that there are a whole lot of elderly and sick people out there who would be eager to sell their life insurance policies for an immediate cash payout? Especially if they foresee a future inability to pay their premiums? So what’s the upside? Right now a lot of people just let their life insurance policies lapse. If they’re lucky they’ll still get a small payout but its usually not much compared to the premiums they’ve payed up to that point. Under this life settlement proposal, policy sellers get a bigger payout and eventually investors get their payout too. So insurance companies end up paying out on their policies more often than they do now. But, insurance companies could end up just raising rates and premiums to make up for the difference, which could end up leaving the average policyholder worse off. Wall Street profits. Insurance companies profit. The consumer pays up.Still, its hard to really get that angry over a proposal like this. As I pointed out, these type of life settlements are already held in a lot of investment bank portfolios. And, who am I to say what kind of financial relationships elderly and sick people should or shouldn’t engage in?

But there are so many disturbing ramifications that come out of this proposal that I can’t help but be worried. The article mentions that investors lost out on these type of investments in the 80s when people with AIDS ended up living longer thanks to new medications. It also mentions that risk managers are planning on diversifying these bonds based on illness type. If one bond happens to represent too many people who all have one type of illness, then that bond could prove to be unprofitable if a cure for that illness is ever discovered. Am I the only one who finds it disturbing that it’ll now be in the interest of some Wall Street investors for sick and old to people to die faster and for certain medications or medical procedures to be suppressed or kept inacessible to the public if they’re too successful at actually making people live longer? I mean, don’t some of these major banks also have large stakes in pharmaceutical and healthcare companies? Couldn’t that present a very serious and disturbing conflict of interest? The article doesn’t address these questions.

Then there’s this:Goldman Sachs has developed a tradable index of life settlements, enabling investors to bet on whether people will live longer than expected or die sooner than planned. The index is similar to tradable stock market indices that allow investors to bet on the overall direction of the market without buying stocks.
So, not only will investors be making money when some people die but some investors will also be making money by simply placing bets on life expectancy in a kind of virtual market. Great. Thank God we bailed out these banks, otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to come up with these great investment products that will surely work to make America more economically competitive with the rest of the globe.Seriously, how predatory can Wall Street get? Whats the thought process here? I guess if the American consumer is too tapped out to buy our junk we’ll just reap profit from his death and place secondary bets on the over/under for his life expectancy? I mean, people aren’t going to sell their policies for life settlements just because. Usually its because they have too much debt, lost their job or because they simply can’t afford the medical costs of staying alive otherwise. So the American consumer is really being squeezed for every last cent he can cough up here. All of this almost sounds like a slur a communist would attack American capitalism with (Wall Street profits off of death!) but its reality. I guess that’s how deranged and parasitical some aspects of American so-called free enterprise have gotten.Welcome to the Brave New World, I guess? So let me know, how do you feel about this whole plan? You can find the article here: Wall Street Pursues Profit in Bundles of Life Insurance.

Brussels wants greener, happier economic yardstick than GDP
LEIGH PHILLIPS Today @ 17:33 CET

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The traditional way to measure an economy - that triptych of letters, GDP, that regularly peppers the financial pages of the newspapers and the speeches of politicians - is getting a little outdated, according to the European Commission.Instead, Brussels wants to come up with a new set of metrics that go beyond just what is valued by markets, and integrates those things that are a little less hard to pin a price tag on such as protecting the environment, an inclusive society and even happiness.Gross Domestic Product is a measure of a country's, or in Europe's case, a continent's economic performance represented by the market value of all final goods and services made in a year. But, as the commission said in announcing a fresh effort to devise what it believes will be a better way of gauging progress, the price of stuff alone misses out on other qualities that a society may value.

GDP was not intended to be a measure of well-being. It doesn't pick up on issues that are vitally important to the quality of our lives such as a clean environment, social cohesion or even how happy people are, the EU executive said in a statement on Tuesday (8 September). It is not in itself a sufficient guide for modern policy making that covers social and environmental objectives. This becomes a problem when GDP is understood as the unique yardstick for progress.In a position paper submitted to member states and the European Parliament, the commission said it hopes to see the piloting of an environmental index, to be proposed in 2010, that will cover areas such as greenhouse gas emissions, loss of natural landscapes, air pollution, water use and waste generation. This would complement rather than replace GDP.
Brussels also plans to develop a European Sustainable Development Scoreboard in order to allow the identification of environmental trends and a benchmarking of best practices and is working to complement GDP and national accounts – which present production, income and expenditure in the economy – with environmental and social accounts.

The commission also wants to see more accurate reporting on inequality.

Alongside this, the commission says it aims to produce environmental and social data more rapidly. At the moment, this sort of data is usually published after two to three years while key economic figures are released after just a few weeks. When a country cuts down all its forests and sells them as timber, this will increase GDP, environment commissioner Stavros Dimas told reporters upon publication of the document,but in the medium to long term, destroying this natural capital will not be beneficial for the country, the environment or the people.Hurricane Katrina caused some 1,800 deaths and over $100 billion in damages, the commissioner continued, giving another example of the blindspots of the GDP metric.But the economic activity that followed as a GDP indictor showed positive growth.Civil society groups have long criticised GDP as an accurate measurement of standard of living. Primary amongst their arguments is that GDP does not take disparity in incomes between the rich and poor into account and ignores externalities such as damage to the environment.The measurement is indifferent to what good or service is being produced, so lots of sick people requiring health care and medicines is seen as boosting economic activity even though this is not desirable.And the measurement also excludes the vast array of activities that are not provided through the market, from housework often performed by women to the development of open source software, often produced by volunteers. If a government decides to switch to open source software from proprietary works produced by Microsoft for example, GDP actually records this as an economic decline. The underground economy is likewise ignored.

All talk

Despite the moves to develop a better ‘yardstick', some NGOs noted that talks on moving beyond GDP have been going on a long time and very little change has occurred.
15 years have passed since initial discussions and we are no closer to implementing measures for environmental sustainability, societal progress and well-being, saidTony Long, director of green pressure group WWF's European Policy Office.Mr Long also lamented that other indices developed by academics, such as its own metric, the Living Planet Index, and the Ecological Footprint are not getting much of a look-in.
A world away, the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan has for a number of years employed a metric it developed entitled Gross national happiness that considers living standards, health, education, eco-system diversity and resilience, cultural vitality and diversity, time, good governance, sense of community and psychological well-being - a set of indicators that is prioritised above GDP.

Google online books scheme raises concerns in Europe
HONOR MAHONY Today SEPT 8,09 @ 09:17 CET

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - As the scope of Google's plans to digitise millions of books gradually becomes clear, European publishers, booksellers and authors are up in arms about copyright, data privacy and censorship issues.They aired their fears in Brussels on Monday (7 September) at a European Commission hearing looking into the implications of search engine giant's stated aim of democratising information.Many of the speakers at the day-long event expressed concern that the world's cultural heritage risked being controlled by a single corporate entity, as well as the opaque way in which Google's potential dominance in this area has come about.Google will become the world's de facto bookseller, said Fran Dubruille of the European Booksellers' Federation while Stuart Hamilton, of the International Federation of Library Associations, said we are concerned at the monopolistic nature of the project.The criticism was sparked by a deal last year between the US company and a group of US authors and publishers, who had taken Google to court in 2005 for copyright infringement after it scanned millions of works for its book search service without getting permission.The resulting 'Book Settlement' allows Google to scan out-of-print and orphaned books - books where the copyright holder is not known - and sell them online.The settlement, the implications of which have only slowly come to light, has angered EU publishers who fear European works will be exploited in the US.In addition, they question whether such a wide-ranging issue as copyright, affecting publishers and authors all over the world, should be the subject of a private agreement - something enabled by the US system of class action.

Our members are quite fundamentally opposed to the settlement,said Jessica Saenger from the German publishers' and booksellers' association.She said Google is being rewarded for breaking the law and has been granted a monopoly position concerning orphan and unclaimed works.Sylvie Fodor, director of European picture agency association CEPIC, expressed concern about the copyright on photograhic images, not covered by the settlement. Google has said it will black out images in books its scans, but she said there is no legal security that this will happen.

Pan-European licensing

Censorship concerns were also raised as Google has the power to remove books from its register while others said the digital libary would hand Google a whole set of revealing data on individuals' reading habits.Several other participants, meanwhile, emphasised the huge cultural and economic advantage that the US will gain through this digitisation project, as the works will only be available to US-based consumers, and urged the EU to tackle its complicated patchwork of copyrights. European efforts to create a public online library are only plodding along.Jim Killock, from the Open Rights Group, said that European literature may soon be more available in the US,something he deemed ironic and urged the creation of a pan-European licensing system.European research libraries representative Wouter Schallier spoke about the most serious competitive disadvantage for European universities while another library representative called on the European Commission to make sure legislation in Europe allows us to do something similar here.

Concessions

Google, which has scanned around 10 million books for the Google library of which it estimates 2 to 4 million are European, defended itself at the hearing.You can discover information which you did not know was there, said Google's engineering director Dan Clancy.It is important that these books are not left behind. Google's interest was in helping people to find the books.But in the face of criticism, Google offered a concession to European publishers on Monday, saying it would remove European books that are still commercially available from its scanned catalogues.Up until now, European authors whose books were out of print were automatically included in the digitisation process.Google has also promised to have two non-US representatives on the board of its Books Rights Registry, which oversees the implementation of the settlement.The Brussels hearing was organised after EU member states, particularly France and Germany, raised concerns about the Google's digital library, which is also due for a final hearing by the US justice department in October.Europe's various copyright laws make it impossible for it to have a similar settlement, but a statement by the commission on Monday called for a legislative framework that paves the way for a rapid roll out of services, similar to those made possible in the US by the recent settlement, to European consumers.

First EU institution head to visit Tibet
ANDREW WILLIS 07.09.2009 @ 17:24 CET

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – The president of the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), Mario Sepi, will this week become the first head of an EU institution to visit the Chinese autonomous region of Tibet.Following an invitation from the Chinese Economic and Social Council, Mr Sepi will set out on a fact-finding mission to assess the real economic and social conditions on the ground, with particular emphasis on the areas of employment, education and healthcare.Mr Sepi – who travels with the backing of European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso – says he sees a slow but steady improvement in the area of human rights in the country, despite tensions in the neighbouring region of Xinjiang in recent months. Questioned by journalists as to how free the three-man delegation will be to move around the Tibetan region, the EESC president says so far no requests for meetings have been declined.As soon as I accepted the invitation I insisted on being able to meet whoever I liked,says Mr Sepi, whose visit includes meetings with local leaders and NGOs such as the World Wildlife Fund and Save the Children.Officials in the Brussels institution which represents organised strands of civil society such as trade unions and the business sector, but is frequently criticised for lacking influence, say the less political nature of the body can work to their advantage.They point to a marked increase in candid dialogue between the two sides during their two meetings of 2008, adding that trade interests between the EU and China have held back higher level political and diplomatic discussion.

Hizbullah offered one-third of new Lebanese government Monday, 07 September 2009 14:47 News from Jerusalem

Hizbullah will take 10 of 30 seats in a proposed list for a new national unity government submitted to Lebanese president Michel Suleiman.Prime minister-designate Saad Hariri said Monday that the Western-backed parliamentary majority would get 15 seats out of the 30-member Cabinet.The Hizbullah-led parliamentary minority would get 10 seats, while the president would choose the remaining five seats.The unilateral submission by Hariri could anger Hizbullah and its allies, who have not approved the list. Together they have demanded to head several ministries, and offered several names that Hariri rejected.Hariri has been trying to put together a Cabinet since he was appointed by Suleiman on June 27, but its formation has been prevented by disagreements over the allocation of top ministerial seat.Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu warned Beirut in August that if Hizbullah becomes an official member of the Lebanese government, [Israel] will hold the government accountable for any aggression against Israel coming out of its territory.jpost.

OBAMA SPEECH TO STUDENTS

sbvor.blogspot.com picture-DON'T POISON OUR KIDS IN SCHOOLS,WE NEED THE BIBLE AND 10 COMMANDMENTS IN OUR SCHOOLS NOT GODLESS INDOCTRINATION.



PICTURE FROM WWW.WHITEHOUSE.GOV-SPEECH OBAMA IS GIVING TO THE CHILDREN TODAY TUESDAY AT NOON.

Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama Back to School Event Arlington, Virginia September 8, 2009

The President: Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today? I’m here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we’ve got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I’m glad you all could join us today. I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your first day in a new school, so it’s understandable if you’re a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning.Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I’d fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, This is no picnic for me either, buster.So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I’m here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I’m here because I want to talk with you about your education and what’s expected of all of you in this new school year. Now I’ve given a lot of speeches about education. And I’ve talked a lot about responsibility.I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn. I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.

I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working where students aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve.But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed. And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself. Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide. Maybe you could be a good writer – maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper – but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor – maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine – but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.

And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future. You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.
Now I know it’s not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.
I get it. I know what that’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in. So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.
Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right.

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying. Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future. That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America. Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three. He’s endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer – hundreds of extra hours – to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he’s headed to college this fall.

And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she’s on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.
Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren’t any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same.That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education – and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you’ll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it. I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things.

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.That’s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said,I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying. No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in.Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best. It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country? Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.