A horrendous switch

This is what has happened all over Europe and Canada and it is coming to the USA faster than you can imagine!

The following is a copy of an article written by Spanish writer Sebastian Vilar Rodrigez and published in a Spanish newspaper on Jan. 15. 2011. It doesn't take much imagination to extrapolate the message to the rest of Europe - and to the rest of the world.

THIS WAS IN A SPANISH NEWSPAPER:
"EUROPEAN LIFE DIED IN AUSCHWITZ "

By Sebastian Vilar Rodrigez

"I walked down the street in Barcelona and suddenly discovered a terrible truth - Europe died in Auschwitz ...We killed six million Jews and replaced them with 20 million Muslims. In Auschwitz we burned a culture, thought, creativity, and talent. We destroyed the chosen people, truly chosen, because they produced great and wonderful people who changed the world.

The contribution of this people is felt in all areas of life: science, art, international trade, and above all, as the conscience of the world.

These are the people we burned.

And under the pretence of tolerance, and because we wanted to prove to ourselves that we were cured of the disease of racism, we opened our gates to 20 million Muslims, who brought us stupidity and ignorance, religious extremism and lack of tolerance, crime and poverty, due to an unwillingness to work and support their families with pride.

They have blown up our trains and turned our beautiful Spanish cities into the third world, drowning in filth and crime. Shut up in the apartments they receive free from the government, they plan the murder and destruction of their naive hosts.

And thus, in our misery, we have exchanged culture for fanatical hatred, creative skill for destructive skill, intelligence for backwardness and superstition. We have exchanged the pursuit of peace of the Jews of Europe and their talent for a better future for their children, their determined clinging to life because life is holy, for those who pursue death, for people consumed by the desire for death for themselves and others, for our children and theirs.

What a terrible mistake was made by miserable Europe.. A lot of Americans have become so insulated from reality that they imagine America can suffer defeat without any inconvenience to themselves. Recently, the UK debated whether to remove The Holocaust from its school curriculum because it 'offends' the Muslim population which claims it never occurred. It is not removed as yet. However, this is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and how easily each country is giving in to it.

It is now more than sixty years after the Second World War in Europe ended. This e-mail is being sent as a memorial chain, in memory of the six million Jews, twenty million Russians, ten million Christians, and nineteen-hundred Catholic priests who were 'murdered, raped, burned, starved, and beaten, experimented on and humiliated.' Now, more than ever, with Iran, among others, claiming the Holocaust to be 'a myth,' it is imperative to make sure the world never forgets.

obama and the price YOU pay for gas

If you can remember when Senator obama was running for President, one of his major campaign promises was on the price at the pumps! He said that gasoline at $3+ a gallon was seriously hurting American business and how he would change that. The fact that this, along with almost every other promise he made is and was a LIE, should come as NO surprise after seeing how low he has brought this country in 3 very long, financially draining years. 

Under Bush the average price of a barrel of oil was $35 a barrel and gas averaged $2.10  a gallon, under obama it is $96 a barrel and $3.52 a gallon! Now I know that the POTUS has minimal power over the price of oil [this didn't stop the dems calling for the head of Bush on a platter when it briefly went to $144 a barrel, nor did they give him credit when he brought back down to $33 a barrel BEFORE he left office] but he has gone out of his way to keep gas ABOVE $3 a gallon. 

His EPA and tree-hugger supporters have gone out of their way to shut down every refinery expansion, nuclear expansion, pipeline expansion and are now moving against natural gas, fracking, and shale gas/oil development. He and his cronies have lost hundreds of billions of YOUR tax dollars on subsidies for windmills and solar panels and bio fuels. If you took away the bio-fuel subsidies alone the price of corn [which is in 1/2 the food products in this country] would fall by half and the money he is taking from big oil to help pay for this would take a $1.50 of the price of a gallon of regular gas alone.

Not only did he say we have to stop relying on hostile foreign countries for our energy needs [another lie] by turning down CANADA, our biggest trading partner proves this, he is keeping the price of fossil fuels deliberately high by making our new #1 export, .....you guessed it [or maybe not] FUEL! Here is the latest from Yahoo News:

In a first, gas and other fuels are top US export

For the first time, the top export of the United States, the world's biggest gas guzzler, is — wait for it — fuel.

Measured in dollars, the nation is on pace this year to ship more gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel than any other single export, according to U.S. Census data going back to 1990. It will also be the first year in more than 60 that America has been a net exporter of these fuels.

Just how big of a shift is this? A decade ago, fuel wasn't even among the top 25 exports. And for the last five years, America's top export was aircraft.

The trend is significant because for decades the U.S. has relied on huge imports of fuel from Europe in order to meet demand. It only reinforced the image of America as an energy hog. And up until a few years ago, whenever gasoline prices climbed, there were complaints in Congress that U.S. refiners were not growing quickly enough to satisfy domestic demand; that controversy would appear to be over.

Still, the U.S. is nowhere close to energy independence. America is still the world's largest importer of crude oil. From January to October, the country imported 2.7 billion barrels of oil worth roughly $280 billion.

Fuel exports, worth an estimated $88 billion in 2011, have surged for two reasons:

— Crude oil, the raw material from which gasoline and other refined products are made, is a lot more expensive. Oil prices averaged $95 a barrel in 2011, while gasoline averaged $3.52 a gallon — a record. A decade ago oil averaged $26 a barrel, while gasoline averaged $1.44 a gallon.

— The volume of fuel exports is rising. The U.S. is using less fuel because of a weak economy and more efficient cars and trucks. That allows refiners to sell more fuel to rapidly growing economies in Latin America, for example. In 2011, U.S. refiners exported 117 million gallons per day of gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and other petroleum products, up from 40 million gallons per day a decade earlier.

There's at least one domestic downside to America's growing role as a fuel exporter. Experts say the trend helps explain why U.S. motorists are paying more for gasoline. The more fuel that's sent overseas, the less of a supply cushion there is at home.

Gasoline supplies are being exported to the highest bidder, says Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at Oil Price Information Service. "It's a world market," he says.

Refining companies won't say how much they make by selling fuel overseas. But analysts say those sales are likely generating higher profits per gallon than they would have generated in the U.S. Otherwise, they wouldn't occur.

The value of U.S. fuel exports has grown steadily over the past decade, coinciding with rising oil prices and increased demand around the globe.

Developing countries in Latin America and Asia have been burning more gasoline and diesel as their people buy more cars and build more roads and factories. Europe also has been buying more U.S. fuel to make up for its lack of refineries.

And there's a simple reason why America's refiners have been eager to export to these markets: gasoline demand in the U.S. has been falling every year since 2007. It dropped by another 2.5 percent in 2011. With the economy struggling, motorists cut back. Also, cars and trucks have become more fuel-efficient and the government mandates the use of more corn-based ethanol fuel.

The last time the U.S. was a net exporter of fuels was 1949, when Harry Truman was president. That year, the U.S. exported 86 million barrels and imported 82 million barrels. In the first ten months of 2011, the nation exported 848 million barrels (worth $73.4 billion) and imported 750 million barrels.

IRS Bows to Reason... For Now

For those of you that think that offshore accounts only hurt the rich...think again! It severely limits your choice on how and who you can do business with. This includes ALL foreign investments and stock exchanges. Basically it FORCES you to do business ONLY in the USA. Seeing we are pushing for globalization, it only applies to everyone EXCEPT the US. Many companies now will NOT list themselves on the American Stock Exchanges because of this. Facebook will register in Europe, an American company that you might not be able to invest in! Now isn't that special! Canada is fed up, our biggest trading partner, that supplies us with most of our oil and gas!

It is not often that the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) bows to reason and changes its collective mind on a given tax enforcement issue, even a little bit.

Last week, in one of those rare instances, the IRS announced that the original January 1, 2013 effective date for the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) has been dropped.

Under the new IRS schedule, offshore private banks, which face the most onerous IRS requirements under FATCA, will not have to provide details on U.S. clients with accounts with more than $50,000 until the middle of 2014. Lower value accounts at private banks do not need to be reported until the end of 2014. Certain other accounts do not have to be reported until 2015. 

What FATCA means for you and me, is that foreign financial institutions - including banks, investment brokerages and insurance companies - are going to be awash in new reporting regulations if they agree to continue to welcome American clients once FATCA becomes law. Adhering to these regulations will cost these companies many millions of dollars. They will have to expand greatly their compliance departments to stay on top of the U.S. government’s complicated tax and reporting rules.

So if you ran a business, would you cater to the clients that cost you more to serve and bring with them more risk of litigation? Or would you say, “Thanks, but no thanks” and  focus your business elsewhere? It seems pretty simple. And, that is the exact decision thousands of foreign institutions are about to make if FATCA passes

Why FATCA Is Detrimental to
the U.S. Economy

No doubt what brought about this delay were the firestorm of anti-FATCA American public opinion and a chorus of vociferous protests, not only from the international financial and banking industry, but also from foreign government officials.

Canadian treasury officials have been attacking FATCA for months, calling it unworkable, far too costly and an unprecedented U.S. intrusion on national sovereignty. Terry Campbell, Canadian Bankers Association head, charged that the act was “conscripting financial institutions around the world to be arms of U.S. tax authorities.”

Typical of these foreign complaints was last Thursday’s statement that if FATCA was imposed on The Bahamas, it would likely mean that offshore financial center dropping most of its American clients.

The Financial Times noted that offshore banks complained they were being deputized as U.S. IRS agents under orders to identify U.S.-linked accounts worth more than $50,000. If they refuse to comply, they would face a choice of paying a punitive 30% withholding tax on payments received from the U.S. or withdrawing completely from U.S. markets.

In a chilling account in his blog, Dan Mitchell, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, points out, “...since the burden largely is falling on foreigners, there’s no groundswell among voters to repeal the law, even though it will impose far more damage on the American economy.”

What many people overlook is that FATCA threatens to cripple foreign investment in the U.S. at a time when our economy needs everyone  and their brother investing and doing business here.  

This is a serious situation. I believe that FATCA could make it so cumbersome to do business in the U.S. that many foreign companies will bypass us entirely. Need I tell you how detrimental that would be to our country’s already fragile fiscal condition?

What this Law Means for Offshore Investors

I know from your comments that FATCA has been a source of great worry for Americans who rightfully fear a 30% tax on their offshore financial activity. It also has deterred others from “going offshore” - no doubt exactly the outcome that the IRS wants - to keep us all at home where we can be watched and controlled. 

In my view, what is needed now is to take advantage of this temporary victory by mounting a massive campaign to convince the U.S. Congress to repeal FATCA completely.

We are conferring with the Center for Freedom and Prosperity and other like groups about forming an international coalition. We will keep you informed.

In the meantime I strongly urge you to join the repeal FATCA movement.

Write and email your U.S. senators and your congressmen and encourage others to do so, especially those you know who are in banking and financial professions. A sample letter prepared by Americans Citizens Abroad can be found here and although it is much too long, it does provide the arguments against FATCA.

As a cynic at heart, I know that some of you will question the efficacy of citizen action these days, but remember in this battle we are joined by a group U.S. politicians always try to please - banks.

Faithfully yours always,

Who Controls the Price of Oil?

Most people do not understand what drives the price of oil but readily accept the explanation pushed by this administration that it is the unbounded greed of oil companies and their “fat cat owners.” Oil companies are publicly traded and many Americans and other foreign nationals or entities can own stock or bonds in these firms.

Most economists agree that the oil industry is an oligopoly, a market dominated by a few sellers, synonymous in developed countries with “big business.” An insidious form of oligopoly, which dominates the oil industry, is the cartel. The cartel’s firms join forces to control production, sale, and the price of oil.OPEC, the most notable and successful cartel, controls 44 percent of the world’s crude oil production and 79 percent of world’s crude oil reserves. By restricting output, its members, Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Venezuela, quadrupled the price of oil between 1973-1974 and 1979-1980.

OPEC should not be able to burden consumers to the same extent now because large oil reserves were discovered in Alaska, North Sea, Canada, and the Gulf of Mexico. However our business-killing EPA regulations and Obama’s seven-year moratorium on drilling in the Gulf do.
When oligopolists organize themselves in a successful cartel such as OPEC, prices will be higher and outputs lower. Cartels are illegal in the U.S. even though some companies such as railroad and gas pipeline transportation behave like cartels under regulations that prevent firms from undercutting prices. According to the Wall Street Journal, Exxon’s margin of profit for both oil and gas ranks #60. There are 59 more profitable industries than the oil industry. Oil and gas firms profit 8 cents per dollar of sales.Pharmaceuticals profit 20 cents and banks profit 18 cents per dollar of sales  According to the Report to Congress made in April 2008 called “Oil Industry and Profit Review,” the factors contributing to high gas prices were:

• world unrest
• increases in the price of crude oil that pushed the spot price of West Texas Intermediate (a key oil price in determining market prices)
• tight market conditions
• demand growth in China, India and other parts of the developing world
• political unrest in Nigeria, Venezuela, Iraq, Iran and other parts of the world
• the decline of the value of the U.S. dollar on world currency markets
• investment strategies of financial firms on the oil futures markets
• volatility of the world oil and financial markets

The refining segment of the market performed relatively poorly during the same period. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, there are 148 operable refineries in the U.S., down from 150 in 2009.  Only 137 refineries are actually operating, down from 141 in 2009. Eleven refineries are idle for various reasons. The atmospheric crude oil distilling capacity is 16,937,024 barrels per calendar day of actually operating refineries.


We have not built new refineries in the U.S. in the past 25 years. The last refinery built was in Garyville, Louisiana and it started in 1976. In the mid 1970s, a refinery construction was proposed in Portsmouth, Virginia. The company canceled the project in 1984 after a nine-year court battle with environmentalists. Even if we drilled more, we could not refine the excess supply of crude.
There are three reasons why oil refineries are not built:

• refineries are not particularly profitable
• environmentalists fight planning and construction every step of the way
• government red tape makes the task almost impossible

According to Investor’s Business Daily, the cost of building a new refinery is $2-$4 billion. Twenty billion dollars have to be dedicated over a ten-year period to reducing the sulphur content in gasoline.  Additionally, 800 different permits have to be collected. The long-term rate of return on capital is just 5 percent.


“I’m sure that at some point in the last 20 years someone has considered building a new refinery,” says James Halloran, an energy analyst with National City Corp. “But they quickly came to their senses.”


The current administration keeps pushing the euphemism “green energy” although there are no plans in the foreseeable future for such affordable energy. Any hybrid or electric car uses electricity generated with fossil fuels, including the maligned coal, which the president promised to put out of business. The electric Volt is only popular with the die-hard leftists since less than 500 were sold so far.


Today’s oil prices are twice as high as they were in 2008 and nine times as high as they were in 1998.  The price of oil also hinges on the perceived replacement cost of the next barrel of oil and nobody is quite sure what that price will be. 


 In Canada, it costs $40-$60 per barrel to extract the oil from the sands. It costs Chevron $15 per barrel to deep drill crude from the Gulf of Mexico. It is even cheaper in the Middle East. The political and physical risk of extracting the oil in war zones is even higher.


The volatility factor depends on the volatility of our economy. None of Obama’s economic stimulus has worked. In March, during intense fighting in Libya, he said that there was no supply shortage and rising oil prices was not a good reason to tap reserves. He changed his mind on June 23, when he released oil from our Strategic Petroleum Reserves under the excuse of turmoil in Libya. Again, it was a failed economic stimulus.


Christina Romer, former White House chief economic advisor, told a crowd recently that we are in a “growth-less recovery.” Only in a liberal fantasy world is a recovery without growth. The patient is flat-lined but somehow still alive.
Republicans and big business blame Obama’s drilling moratorium as a culprit in the oil price problem. Democrats blame “speculators” on the Chicago Board of Trade for soaring gas prices, particularly Goldman Sachs whose influential analysts move all markets.


The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is investigating manipulation when the price of natural gas dropped 8 percent in 14 seconds in after-hour trading on June 8. The commission charged two traders with swindling $50 million in profits by manipulating oil markets in 2008.
“They bought physical cargoes they did not need to artificially inflate prices while also buying derivatives so they would profit as the prices rose. They bought other derivatives that would pay off later when the prices fell – which they did after they sold the physical barrels, catching other traders off guard.”
Attempting to corner a piece of the market is illegal but can warp prices for a short period, resulting in higher prices for consumers.


Current world supply can also be an expression of consumption growth in China and India by more than half a million barrels of oil per day. There is a world spare capacity of 3-4 million of barrels of oil per day, which can shrink, with more consumption growth, thus resulting in higher prices.
Liberals believe that supplies should be rationed through deliberate higher prices in order to protect the planet from unnecessary pollution. They are not concerned that it would stifle economic growth. Their main concern is how it would affect the re-election of Obama. To prevent a re-election loss, Democrats want to release more strategic reserves into the market in order to keep the gas price lower at the pump and thus please the voters.

Canadian border a bigger threat than the southern border!

 Well once again the American gov. is blowing a smokescreen over the fact that our southern border is "safer" than our northern border. Canada refuses, like it should, to protect its citizenry from the draconian US attempt to treat everyone like a terrorist! Most of these problems stem from the best "POT" in the world coming across the northern border. This so called threat would be eliminated if the USA caught up with the rest of the world and decriminalized the green tobacco! But instead, they accuse Canada of not going along with the American agenda of our ridiculous "War on Drugs" campaign. The figures are below. 

 So we treat our best trading partner with contempt, yet we GIVE mexico's calderon the key to the country with NO questions asked! Come in and sue our states, corporations and individuals with all the blessings of the obama gov. but lets slam Canada because they have far more individual rights than the USA! 

 I am amazed at the roving Canadian street gangs all over the country, killing law enforcement, border patrol, taking hostages, brutal slaying's, and forcing everyone to smoke BC Bud! You must read my last blog to get that joke if your not a Libertarian! Canadians have more guns per capita than the USA, yet less than 1/10 of 1% of gun crime. They also have NOBODY in jail for being in possession of a roach, saving millions a year per Province. 

 Paranoia is nothing new with the US Border Patrol, as many of my friends have been placed on the "No Fly List" for the mere possession of rolling papers. Anyone that knows the price of tobacco in Canada is the highest in the world, also knows that many roll their own instead of $10 a pack "taylor mades". So if you were coming across the border to shop in the US where everything was much cheaper, on a regular basis, tobacco was 1 of those products. So the possession of rolling papers, without "Pouch Tobacco" accompanying it is, and has been since the 1970's grounds for expulsion, never to be eligible to enter the USA ever again. Has anything changed? Nope, but the possession list has now expanded to include everything from papers to tooth paste. The very last sentence just tops the cake, this is a joke. Last rant: Why is that over 100,000 Americans a MONTH are trying to get into Canada? Read this;

Canadian Border Bigger Terror Threat Than Mexican Border, Says Border Patrol Chief

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency has apprehended more suspected terrorists on the nation’s northern border than along its southern counterpart, CBP Commissioner Alan Bersin said Tuesday.

“In terms of the terrorist threat, it’s commonly accepted that the more significant threat” comes from the U.S.-Canada border, Bersin told a hearing of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees, and Border Security.

Bersin attributed the situation, in part, to the fact that the U.S. and Canada do not share information about people placed on their respective “no-fly” lists. As a result, individuals deemed a threat who fly into one country may then cross the land border into the other.

“Because of the fact that we do not share no-fly [list] information and the Canadians will not, we are more than we would like confronted with the fact where a [person designated as a] no-fly has entered Canada and then is arrested coming across one of our bridges into the United States,” he said.

As it screens air travelers, the Department of Homeland Security’s Transportation Security Administration places individuals who are considered a threat to aviation on a no-fly list, which is a subset of the terrorist watchlist.

Bersin’s comments came after the subcommittee’s ranking Republican, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, asked him about the relative numbers of people apprehended along the northern and southern borders.

He responded that the detentions and arrests along the border with Canada were “a small, small fraction” when compared to the number apprehended in the south. "That doesn’t mean that we don’t face significant threats” along the northern border, he added. 

CBP figures for fiscal year 2010 indicate that 447,731 illegal crossers were apprehended along the southwest border and 7,431 along the U.S.-Canada border.

Cornyn noted during the hearing that the FY2010 arrests along the southwest border included 59,000 individuals from countries other than Mexico. Last March, the senator told a conference on border security that of those 59,000 people, 663 came “from special-interest countries like Afghanistan, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen and from countries that have been designated by the U.S. Department of State as state-sponsors of terror – Cuba, Iran, Syria, and Sudan.”

Speaking to reporters after Tuesday’s hearing, Bersin said his agency has recorded more cases of people with suspected terrorist backgrounds or links to terror organizations entering the U.S. from Canada than from Mexico.

“That doesn’t mean that we’re not looking for it on both borders, south and north,” he said.

Bersin said people who are on the no-fly list for a variety of reasons may enter Canada, “because they’re entitled under Canadian laws to do so, and then they attempt to cross into the United States” by way of bridge or tunnel border crossings.

“CBP officers have stopped that,” he said, but without quantifying the number of suspected terrorist arrests by CBP.

Bersin told reporters Canadian authorities do not act on no-fly list information provided by the U.S. government if it affects a Canadian citizen. This, he said, creates a security gap.

“Under the Canadian charter – as that’s been interpreted to me – they do not believe that they can accept information that would affect Canadian citizens, and therefore don’t.

“But we’re constantly working with our Canadian partners to develop mechanism and modes of information exchange [so] that, as far as legally possible, we can close that gap. And we’ll continue to do that.”

An excerpt of a CBP map shows the U.S. Border Patrol sectors along the U.S.-Canadian border (Image: CBP)

‘Known presence of terrorist organizations’

A December 2010 report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) concluded that “the risk of terrorist activity is high” on the northern border.

The report noted that according to the assessment of the U.S. Border Patrol – a component of CBP – only 32 of the nearly 4,000 miles of the U.S.-Canada border “had reached an acceptable level of control” in 2010.

The rest, it said, were “defined as vulnerable to exploitation due to issues related to accessibility and resource availability and, as a result, there is a high degree of reliance on law enforcement support from outside the border zone.”

The GAO report also noted that in the Blaine sector – the Border Patrol sector that includes Oregon and the western half of Washington state – there is a “known presence of terrorist organizations” near the border.

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director John Morton, who testified alongside Bersin Tuesday, told the Senate panel that his agency has about 1,500 enforcement and removal officers on the northern border – the “largest law-enforcement footprint of any U.S agency in Canada.”

“We removed about 47,000 illegal aliens from the northern border region, roughly half of whom are criminal offenders,” added Morton.

The issue of drug-smuggling over the northern border also came up during the hearing. In his prepared remarks, Bersin said that CBP interdicts around 40,000 pounds of illegal drugs each year at and between points of entry along the northern border.

He told lawmakers that the U.S. government will deploy military-grade radars along the northern border in November 2011 in an effort to thwart low-flying aircraft used to smuggle narcotics into the U.S.