Movements in Money Supply Indicates Possible Foreknowledge of Catastrophe Ahead

[kyser_soze]

The 'Summer Pulse 04' joint military exercises will deploy almost the entire US fleet at sea. It's a well known maxim of naval warfare that when conflict threatens then the fleet leaves port. Seven aircraft carrier strike groups will be simultaneously deployed this month. There's never been an naval "exercise" deploying that many carrier groups before!

Summer Pulse 04 had been planned for 2 years and was originally supposed to be shown in 05, dependent on the tension level in the Pacific.

All it is is a 'Look what we can do excercise' by the USN. Bearing in mind that this doesn't (AFAIK) include the deployment of ATLFLT (cos they're in harbour being refitted) and when it was originally conceived (around '99) it's there to show the Chinese that the USN PACFLT is the most potent naval borne attack force ever assembled...

And it is...I know I should be grown up and *progressive* enough not to get remotely childish about this but...ug...7 full strength Carrier Battle Groups, 5 of which are defended by the Aegis system...you could literally fight a 2 theatre war with this lot...but

Seven of these

Sorry...just can't help the UG factor that the USN inspires...

 

[bigfish]

Media suppresses news of Bush’s moves to cancel US elections

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jul2004/usel-j14.shtml

The WSWS ... sought to contact the ombudsmen of the Washington Post and the New York Times to obtain an explanation for the failure of these newspapers to seriously report, investigate or comment on the government moves to close down the elections.

On Tuesday, the WSWS received a reply from Daniel Okrent, the public editor at the Times. He sent an email stating that “the positions taken by the editorial board of The Times are not within my purview” and asserting that the editorial board was “entitled to its views.” He concluded by saying he had forwarded our email to editorial page editor Gail Collins.

The dismissive attitude of the major media will only encourage those in the Bush administration and the political establishment who are determined to destroy the democratic rights of the people. A spokesman for the media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) expressed astonishment and anger over the media coverage of the election delay issue.

Contacted by the WSWS, Steve Rendell, FAIR’s senior analyst and co-host of the organization’s national radio program “CounterSpin,” said:


“We are surprised to see that this isn’t a more urgent story. The White House has no power to suspend elections. After the whole recent history of god-awful intelligence, so we’re now supposed to suspend a centerpiece of our democracy? They’re not going to tell us what’s behind the terror threats.

“To us [at FAIR] the outrage is that we’re not seeing more reports questioning the right of the White House to have such authority. This is a White House that’s made momentous decisions based on faulty intelligence and tried to keep the facts of those decisions secret, under wraps.

“In a healthy journalism culture this would have been a lead story. It’s outrageous. I suppose if we’re setting up Allawi as the leader in Iraq, maybe they’re taking a cue from him. This begs so many journalistic questions. You’re talking about martial law, a dictatorship.”

 

[hipipol]

The Fed is obviously ALL SEEING

What a heap of crap, if anything its surely down to creating a fav environment for Dubyas re-election
You realease a load of wdge, essentially giving free access to cash, everybody feels good
OR
The actually subscribe to the notion that commodity prices are going to fuck the system, and they want make us feel good before the fall?
I suspect neither, the Fed has a priome responsibiltiy to ensure low inflation and to guard the value of the dollar
The US Govt however seems bent on debt funding massive overspends
Perhaps they are trying to do a Viemar- ah well we'll see eh/

 

[bigfish]

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jul2004/wash-15j.shtml

[E]ditorials in a number of major daily newspapers denouncing the Bush administration’s preparations to postpone the elections, in some cases in scathing terms (have appeared). These are staid bourgeois newspapers, conformist and “respectable” in their editorial views, most of them owned by giant media corporations. None can be said to be prone to “hysterical reactions” when it comes to criticism of the Bush administration. But they are concerned—and rightly so—that an attempt to call off the November election could produce a social and political explosion.

The San Francisco Chronicle published an editorial on July 12 headlined “Don’t Even Think About It.” The Cleveland Plain-Dealer declared, “This is a horrible idea. It should be stopped now. Today.” The Chicago Sun-Times raised concerns about the longer-term precedent, asking “what security comes from pushing elections back two weeks or a month? What prevents terrorists from attacking again, and then what would we do? Keep postponing elections? That’s a terrifying thought.”

Even USA Today, flagship of the Gannett Co., the biggest US newspaper chain, expressed cautious disapproval of the postponement option, writing in an editorial on July 14, “If the US were trying to send a signal that terrorists had won, delaying a national election would certainly do the trick.”

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune directly questioned the good faith of the Bush administration, observing: “given the vagueness of the intelligence on Al-Qaeda plans to date, one has to wonder why this particular contingency, over all those certainly being analyzed, was made public—and whether equal and sufficient effort is being expended to make certain that the elections do take place on Election Day ... given the Florida shenanigans in 2000, voters should be forgiven for feeling skeptical upon hearing about this line of thinking.”

Such editorials reflect serious concerns within the US ruling elite over the implications of a direct move to dictatorship, which is what any suspension of the elections would represent. Nevertheless, the refusal of the most influential media outlets at the center of American financial and political life—including the broadcast networks and such newspapers as the New York Times and Washington Post—to either seriously report and critically investigate government moves to close down the elections, or forthrightly denounce them as a conspiracy against the democratic rights of the people—illustrates the profound and irreparable decay of American bourgeois democracy.

Even if the Bush administration is persuaded to desist from using terrorist threats as the pretext for calling off or disrupting the November election, the very fact that the issue of canceling elections has been raised, with little protest from within the political and media establishment, establishes the most dangerous precedent. There can be little doubt that, at the very least, measures will be taken, either under a second Bush administration or a Kerry presidency, to establish a legalistic cover for calling off elections in the future.

To view the editorials referred to above, see the links below:
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48234-2004Jul13.html
San Francisco Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/07
/13/EDGO37JFBC1.DTL
Cleveland Plain Dealer
http://www.cleveland.com/editorials/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/opinion/
1089711182312790.xml
Chicago Sun-Times
http://www.suntimes.com/output/commentary/cst-edt-edits13.html
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2004-07-13-edit_x.htm
Minneapolis Star-Tribune
http://www.startribune.com/stories/561/4872617.html

 

[bigfish]

Sailing Toward a Storm in China

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6497.htm

U.S. maneuvers could spark a war.

By Chalmers Johnson

July 15, 2004 "Los Angeles Times" -- Quietly and with minimal coverage in the U.S. press, the Navy announced that from mid-July through August it would hold exercises dubbed Operation Summer Pulse '04 in waters off the China coast near Taiwan.*

This will be the first time in U.S. naval history that seven of our 12 carrier strike groups deploy in one place at the same time. It will look like the peacetime equivalent of the Normandy landings and may well end in a disaster.*

At a minimum, a single carrier strike group includes the aircraft carrier itself (usually with nine or 10 squadrons and a total of about 85 aircraft), a guided missile cruiser, two guided missile destroyers, an attack submarine and a combination ammunition, oiler and supply ship.

Normally, the United States uses only one or at the most two carrier strike groups to show the flag in a trouble spot. In a combat situation it might deploy three or four, as it did for both wars with Iraq. Seven in one place is unheard of.*

Operation Summer Pulse '04 was almost surely dreamed up at the Pearl Harbor headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Command and its commander, Adm. Thomas B. Fargo, and endorsed by neocons in the Pentagon. It is doubtful that Congress was consulted. This only goes to show that our foreign policy is increasingly made by the Pentagon.

According to Chinese reports, Taiwanese ships will join the seven carriers being assembled in this modern rerun of 19th century gunboat diplomacy. The ostensible reason given by the Navy for this exercise is to demonstrate the ability to concentrate massive forces in an emergency, but the focus on China in a U.S. election year sounds like a last hurrah of the neocons.*

 

[kyser_soze]

Nowhere in that article is there any support for the headline proposition that Pulse 04 could start a regional war off between China, Taiwan and the US.

Unless the US or Taiwan deliberately fire into Chinese airspace or assets it's all sabre rattling by the Chinese. I mean it's not like you posted loads of similar 'Could lead to war' articles when the Chinese performed a similar set of excercises about a year ago.

 

[bigfish]

That's probably due to the fact that last years Chinese navel exercises you mention weren't held off the California coast and didn't involve virtually the entire Chinese fleet.