Free Republic

The stunned Iran cannot believe it’s happening: The worst nightmare for the Ayatollah regime is taking shape right before its eyes, in the form of a complete chokehold on Iran’s economy within a few months. Iran’s soft underbelly is in the sights – oil and gas. The arrogant Ahmadinejad thought this day shall never come, yet the “higher power” that guides him, in his view, apparently no longer works. The US and Europe have decided to suffocate Iran’s economy, no less. This is no longer about playing games here and there or about lukewarm sanctions against Iranian companies here and...

In January, Hovensa entered into a consent decree with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Justice Department in which the company agreed to invest $700 million on pollution controls after a series of chemical releases affected people living downwind from the refinery. Hovensa also agreed to pay a $5.4 million penalty for violating the Clean Air Act. It is unclear how the agreement will be affected by the closure.

Who’s Really To Blame For America’s Catastrophic Financial Meltdown And Devastating National Recession? Contrary to what the “Occupy Movement” might tell you, it’s not greedy Wall Street executives. No, as one of America’s top financial professionals reveals in this shocking new book, the real culprit is economic warfare, with our foreign enemies exploiting our lurking financial weaknesses. In Secret Weapon, Kevin D. Freeman unveils how all the evidence – including motive, means, and opportunity – points to America’s foreign enemies as deliberately pushing our economy over the brink. In this stunning expose, Freeman reveals: * The evidence linking Communist China...

Recently the US Congress voted, seemingly without regard to easily foreseen consequences, to increase the amount of debt it may issue by trillions of dollars. The amount of the increase in debt this vote permits is almost equal to the total US debt from just a few years ago. The vote did not go unnoticed. Here in Tennessee, the same voters who just months ago sent Republican Diane Black to the US House, were protesting in front of her office. Abroad, it was not unnoticed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC), currently the largest holder of US debt. As...

Economic Slavery: Modern-Day Indentured Servitude By Frank Ryan The "tax the rich" hysteria gripping this nation is absolute insanity. Cries to raise taxes on those with incomes over $250,000 or some other magical number are unbelievable. As a CPA, I find the "tax the rich" schemes to be pure junk science. To that end, the illogical precepts underpinning these arguments must be exposed. (Incidentally, by way of full disclosure, I would not be personally affected by these tax increases. I merely want to expose the scheme for the fraud that it is.) Many in Congress have attempted to make earning...

The September11 terror attacks in the US were staged to overcome disunity in al-Qa'ida, confidential computer records reveal. Alan Cullison reports on what happened after his laptop was wrecked while he was covering the combat in Afghanistan IN the autumn of 2001, I was one of scores of journalists who ventured into northern Afghanistan to write about the US-assisted war against the Taliban. After losing use of my computer in an accident, I scrawled stories by candlelight with a ballpoint pen and read dispatches to my editors at The Wall Street Journal over a satellite phone. When the Taliban's defences...

...A traveler from Ghana tried to bring 14 Giant African Land Snails into the US...one of the worst invasive species...could have been devastating to crops.

Russia proposed to China that the two nations should sell Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds in 2008 to force the US government to bail out the giant mortgage-finance companies, former US Treasury secretary Hank Paulson has claimed. The allegation is in his memoir On the Brink in which he also suggests that Alistair Darling, the UK chancellor, blocked a rescue takeover of Lehman Brothers by Barclays Bank when he refused to support special treatment by UK regulators. “Russian officials had made a top-level approach to the Chinese, suggesting that together they might sell big chunks of their GSE holdings...

Paulson: Crazy Putin Pushed China To Dump Fannie Bonds And Crush The U.S. Financial System Vincent Fernando | Jan. 29, 2010, 9:59 AM | 3,478 | comment 32 Tags: Economy, Markets, China, Credit Crisis, Politics Some scary details have emerged from Hank Paulson's memoirs. Allegedly, it appears Russia may have tried to conspire with China in a bid to collapse the U.S. financial system. They were hoping to sell Fannie and Freddie bonds during a time when the U.S. economy was on the ropes. This happened back around the Beijing Olympics, when the U.S. was supporting Georgia against Russia in...

n the wake of the crumbling of certain sandcastles in the sky, sovereign wealth funds in the middle east have baited our analytic gaze over the last month or so. It takes very little, therefore, to prompt us to take careful notice now just about whenever one is mentioned. Today, the Kuwait Investment Authority (hereinafter the "KIA") and its brutal body-blow to Citi demand our attention. While pinning solid figures on any of the sovereign wealth funds in the middle east is a speculative effort at best, it is difficult to come up with figures much smaller than $150-200 billion...

While many companies hire lobbyists to win earmarks, General Electric’s unmatched lobbying force has secured a tax increase — or its equivalent — in President Barack Obama’s budget. Labeled “climate revenues” and totaling $646 billion over eight years, this line item in Obama’s budget has inspired confidence in GE Chief Executive Officer Jeff Immelt. As Immelt put it in a letter this week, he believes that the Obama administration will be a profitable “financier” and “key partner.” On page 115 of Obama’s fiscal 2010 budget is Table S-2, titled “Effect of Budget Proposals on Projected Deficits.” The chart forecasts the...

The Pentagon sponsored a first-of-its-kind war game last month focused not on bullets and bombs — but on how hostile nations might seek to cripple the U.S. economy, a scenario made all the more real by the global financial crisis... But instead of military brass plotting America’s defense, it was hedge-fund managers, professors and executives from at least one investment bank, UBS – all invited by the Pentagon to play out global scenarios that could shift the balance of power between the world’s leading economies... In the end, there was sobering news for the United States – the savviest economic...

China is moving into the merger-and-acquisition major leagues, as its star corporations shop for American household names like Unocal, Maytag and IBM, looking for bigger profits through global ambitions. China's growing appetite for Western corporate icons is reflected computer maker Lenovo Group Ltd's recent takeover of IBM's personal computer business and two big deals reportedly in the making for Unocal Corp. and Maytag Corp. "I'd expect at least a half a dozen similar deals by the end of the year," said Jack J.T. Huang, chairman of international law firm Jones Day's Greater China practice. But the deals are not without...

China Cos. Show Appetite for Brand Names By ELAINE KURTENBACH, AP Business Writer Wed Jun 22, 8:50 AM ET China is moving into the merger-and-acquisition major leagues, as its star corporations shop for American household names like Unocal, Maytag and IBM, hoping that global ambitions will mean bigger profits. State media reports quoted unnamed officials at China National Offshore Oil Corp., or CNOOC, as saying the company's board would meet this week and decide whether to go ahead with a $20 billion bid for Unocal Corp., the ninth-biggest U.S. oil and gas company. The CNOOC purchase, if it went through,...

US Economic Intelligence Policy and Global Competition By Garth Hancock (When this was written --Mr. Hancock was a second year graduate student working towards his MA in International Policy Studies. Prior to attending the Institute he worked as a small company vice-president. His concentration was in trade, with a particular interest in govemment-private relations. "It would not surprise me that intelligence agencies in all countries are involved in examining what their international competitors are doing, but I'm not aware of any such activities on behalf of the US intelligence agencies." - US Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, October 19, 1995. Many...

Insight on the News - World Issue: 11/12/02 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Special Report Economic Warfare Can Win Terror War By J. Michael Waller Al-Qaeda recently announced economic warfare against the United States and other Western countries. U.S. intelligence expects years of attacks on the economic infrastructure of the civilized world. For its part, the United States has an arsenal of economic weapons for this war, but critics fear it may have forgotten how to use them strategically — an important point, because proponents believe that strategic economic warfare thoughtfully applied by the United States could save innocent lives and avoid military conflict...

From: "John Schiltz" John.Schiltz@idals.state.ia.us> Content-Length: 949 Colleagues- I have been informed that the infectious agent Actinobacillus (Hemophilus) pleuropneumoniae (APP) may have been acquired by unauthorized individuals from a laboratory in the United States. This particular strain causes encephalitis and rapid mortality in pigs. The bacteria is not known to cause a threat to human health. Producers and veterinarians should pay specific attention to swine populations and be alert to any unusual symptoms in pigs such as encephalitis, acute pneumonia, and sudden death. Any APP diagnosis that causes unusual clinical conditions, encephalitis, and sudden death must be reported to the State...