Exclusive: Leaked government data concerning next five years shows hidden costs of austerity drive

George Osbourne's austerity budget will result in the loss of up to 1.3m jobs across the economy over the next five years according to a private Treasury assessment of the planned spending cuts, the Guardian has learned.

Unpublished estimates of the impact of the biggest squeeze on public spending since the second world war show that the government is expecting between 500,000 and 600,000 jobs to go in the public sector and between 600,000 and 700,000 to disappear in the private sector by 2015.

The chancellor gave no hint last week about the likely effect of his emergency measures on the labour market, although he would have had access to the forecasts traditionally prepared for ministers and senior civil servants in the days leading up to a budget or pre-budget report.

A slide from the final version of a presentation for last week's budget – seen by the Guardian – says: "100-120,000 public sector jobs and 120-140,000 private sector jobs assumed to be lost per annum for five years through cuts".

The job losses in the public sector will result from the 25% inflation-adjusted reduction in Whitehall spending over the next five years, while the private sector will be affected both through the loss of government contracts and from the knock-on impact of lower public spending.

The Treasury is assuming that growth in the private sector will create 2.5m jobs in the next five years to compensate for the spending squeeze. Osborne said in last week's speech that tackling Britain's record peacetime budget deficit would help keep interest rates low and boost job creation. "Some have suggested that there is a choice between dealing with our debts and going for growth.

Click to read more...

Tropical Storm Alex Strengthens in Gulf as Center Issues Hurricane Warning

 Tropical Storm Alex, the first named system of the Atlantic hurricane season, strengthened today, forcing the evacuation of rigs in the Gulf of Mexico and pushing swells toward the worst U.S. oil spill.

The storm, packing maximum sustained winds of 70 miles (110 kilometers) per hour, was 460 miles southeast of Brownsville, Texas, before dawn today, moving north-northwest at 8 mph, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said in an advisory. The circulating winds were near reaching hurricane status of 74 mph.

A hurricane warning was issued for the coast of Texas near Padre Island to the mouth of the Rio Grande and south of the Mexico border to La Cruz, the hurricane center said. The storm will strengthen and turn more to the northwest today, moving further from the oil spill, it said. BP Plc said efforts to contain the spill may be disrupted as weather conditions worsen.

“Alex is likely to become a hurricane later today,” the center said. Five to 10 inches of rain was forecast for southern Texas and northeastern Mexico over the next few days, some of which could cause deadly “flash floods and mudslides, especially in mountainous terrain,” it said. Landfall near the U.S.-Mexico border was expected late tomorrow or early July 1.

A hurricane watch means storm conditions may develop within 36 hours. A tropical storm warning remains in effect for the low-lying coastal area from Baffin Bay to Port O’Connor, Texas. A storm system is named once sustained winds reach 39 mph.

“Alex will be a large hurricane,” Jim Rouiller, senior energy meteorologist for Planalytics Inc., said yesterday. “Current projections place the destructive right forward quad of Alex across southeast Texas, possibly up to Corpus Christi.”

Click to read more...

The Coming Gulf Coast Firestorm

It's hurricane season in the Atlantic, and that means Mother Nature could be whipping up fierce storms and sending them charging into the Gulf Coast any day now. In a normal hurricane season, that's bad enough all by itself... remember Katrina? But now there's something even more worrisome in the recipe: There's oil in the water.

So what happens when a Katrina-class hurricane comes along and picks up a few million gallons of oil, then drops that volatile liquid on a major U.S. city like Galveston or New Orleans?

Now, before we pursue this line of thinking any further, let's dismiss the skeptics out there who think oil can't drop from the sky because oil doesn't evaporate. Actually, if you look at the history of hurricanes and storms, you'll find thousands of accounts of lots of things that don't evaporate nonetheless falling out of the sky. The phrase "raining cats and dogs" it's entirely metaphor, you know: There are documented accounts of all sorts of things raining down from the sky: Fish, frogs, large balls of ice, and so on.

If rain storms can pick up fish out of the ocean, then drop them on land, then they certainly have the capacity to pick up oil, too.

Besides, as any chemist will tell you, the various petrochemicals found in crude oil evaporate even without a storm picking them up! Oil, in other words, does evaporate into the air. Or, more accurately, some of the lighter chemicals in crude oil evaporate even at temperatures of around 100 degrees (F). Those are Gulf Coast temperatures.

Click to read more...

U.S. government panel now pushing "vaccinations for all!" No exceptions…

Natural News

An advisory panel to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recommended that every person be vaccinated for the seasonal flu yearly, except in a few cases where the vaccine is known to be unsafe.

"Now no one should say 'Should I or shouldn't I?'" said CDC flu specialist Anthony Fiore.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted 11-0 with one abstention to recommend yearly flu vaccination for everyone except for children under the age of six months, whose immune systems have not yet developed enough for vaccination to be safe, and people with egg allergies or other health conditions that are known to make flu vaccines hazardous. If accepted by the CDC, this recommendation will then be publicized to doctors and other health workers.

The CDC nearly always accepts the advisory committee's recommendations.

Current CDC recommendations call for the yearly vaccination of all children over the age of six months, all adults over the age of 49, health care workers, people with chronic health problems and anyone who cares for a person in one of these groups.

Click to read more...

Report: US overestimated ability of Afghans

WASHINGTON – The U.S. has often overestimated the ability of Afghan military and police units to fight on their own, according to an independent report released Monday that calls into question the strategy to win the war and bring troops home.

The investigation is the first objective look at the rating system the military has used for the past five years to judge the effectiveness of Afghan troops. Its findings seem to contradict upbeat assessments recently provided by senior military commanders overseeing the war.

The capability of Afghan forces is considered the single biggest indicator of whether the war is going well and is seen as the linchpin in the U.S. strategy since the war began more than eight years ago.

Lawmakers are likely to use the latest findings to question President Barack Obama's handling of the war. Democrats say they are frustrated that Obama is sending more U.S. troops into combat without assurances that Afghan forces are close behind.

"I think the worst nightmare for the Taliban is an Afghan army in charge," said Sen. Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who chairs the Armed Services Committee.

The U.S. has spent $27 billion on the effort — about half of the money its poured into rebuilding Afghanistan. But the program has been hobbled by a lack of trainers, available Afghans and spikes in violence.

"The bottom line to this is that the system ... is flawed, it's unreliable and it's inconsistent," said Arnold Fields, who led the study as the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction.

Click to read more...

TORONTO G20 - THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME?

Using an archaic 1939 law, police cracked down on freedom of assembly, freedom of speech and more during the G-20 summit! Are the Canadian citizens going to request hearings about what happened or are they going to succomb to the NWO and globalization?

Exiled Honduran President: US Was Responsible For Last Year’s Coup

“The USA was involved in that coup, yet it was corroborated later on, when the States began directly manipulating the process of halting social reforms in Honduras,” Zelaya stated. “The USA thus forfeited its reputation, and their involvement in that coup cost them the support of most of the Latin America and the entire world. What did the United States gain? Absolutely nothing. The only ones who benefited from that are reactionary rightist groups within the country, with their sectarian, 1980s vision, with the ‘hunt for the ghosts of the past.’ This is what they do all the time and, of course, this has brought no benefits to Obama's administration."

Zelaya was ousted from power in Honduras last June, after planning a referendum to rewrite the constitution which would have allowed him to remain in power for a second presidential term.

Zelaya’s removal prompted worldwide condemnation and repeated calls for his return to power. He still remains in exile in the Dominican Republic.

House Dems, Citing Corruption, Block Reconstruction Funds For Afghanistan

The House Democrat who oversees funding for Afghanistan's redevelopment and reconstruction said on Monday that she is stripping money from her foreign aid bill in reaction to pervasive corruption. Dave Obey, chairman of the Appropriations Committee, supports the move made by subcommittee chairwoman Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), according to an Obey spokesman.

Lowey cited pervasive corruption in Afghanistan as the cause for her decision to pull the funding from the appropriations bill working its way through her State and Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee.

"I do not intend to appropriate one more dime for assistance to Afghanistan until I have confidence that U.S. taxpayer money is not being abused to line the pockets of corrupt Afghan government officials, drug lords and terrorists," said Lowey.

A Lowey spokesman said the restrictions would not apply to direct humanitarian assistance for projects such as refugee camps, but would limit funds for USAID and the State Department, which funnel money to reconstruction efforts -- money that is often siphoned many times over.

The request that Lowey is rejecting amounts to $3.9 billion for the 2011 fiscal year.

On Friday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said she recently traveled to Afghanistan and found the corruption staggering.

Click to read more...

Nobel Prize Winner: Fears we are in the early stages of a depression

Forget all the talk about an economic recovery - the U.S. just might be headed in the opposite direction.

Paul Krugman - who has a Nobel Prize in economics - writes in the New York Times that he fears we are in the early stages of a depression.

Krugman says a failure of policy is to blame - that it's a mistake for governments around the world to raise taxes and cut spending at this time. Krugman says nations should be spending more to stimulate the economy.

And, at the end of the day - it is the unemployed and their families who will pay the high cost of this depression. Krugman writes about the "tens of millions of unemployed workers, many of whom will go jobless for years, and some of whom will never work again."

Speaking of the unemployed - almost one million Americans are losing their unemployment benefits because the Senate failed to extend the deadline.

The bill didn't get the 60 votes needed to pass because lawmakers are looking for ways to put the brakes on skyrocketing deficits.

The same bill also contained another $24 billion for Medicaid funding for various states. And since they won't be getting that money right now, they will be forced to cut hundreds of millions of dollars, on top of what they've already cut.

It's getting very ugly out there.

Click to read more ...

NWO Protest: Police arrest more than 500 at Toronto summit

TORONTO (AP) - Police conducted a large raid and rounded up more protesters Sunday in an effort to quell further violence at the global economic summit after black-clad youths rampaged through the city, smashing windows and torching police cruisers.

Police said they have arrested more than 500 demonstrators, many of whom were hauled away in plastic handcuffs and taken to a temporary holding center constructed for the summit.

Thousands of police in riot gear formed cordons to prevent radical anti-globalization demonstrations from breaching the steel and concrete security fence surrounding the Group of 20 summit site.

Toronto Police Sgt. Tim Burrows said police made at least 50 arrests in a Sunday morning raid on a building on the campus of the University of Toronto, where they seized a cache of "street-type weaponry" such as bricks, sticks and rocks.

"We think we put a dent in their numbers with this and with the arrests that happened overnight," Burrows said.

The disorder and vandalism occurred just blocks from where U.S. President Barack Obama and other world leaders were meeting and staying.

Click to read more...

UN Report: US Drone Attacks Killing Civilians Are Extra-Judicial Killings

Targeted killings pose a rapidly growing challenge to the international rule of law. They are increasingly used in circumstances which violate the relevant rules of international law. The international community needs to be more forceful in demanding accountability,” said Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions.

In a 29-page report to the United Nations Human Rights Council presented early June, the official, Philip Alston, the United Nations special representative on extrajudicial executions, called on the United States to exercise greater restraint in its use of drones in places like Pakistan and Yemen, outside the war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“I’m particularly concerned that the United States seems oblivious to this fact when it asserts an ever-expanding entitlement for itself to target individuals across the globe,” Mr. Alston said in an accompanying statement. “But this strongly asserted but ill-defined license to kill without accountability is not an entitlement which the United States or other states can have without doing grave damage to the rules designed to protect the right to life and prevent extrajudicial executions.”

The report calls on nations like Pakistan to publicly disclose the scope and limits of any permission granted for drone strikes on their territories. It also calls on drone operators like the United States to disclose the legal justification for such killings, the criteria and safeguards used when selecting targets, and the process for investigating attacks that kill civilians.

In an earlier report by Asian Tribune Harold Koh Obama administration’s chief legal counsel in the State Department outlining the administration’s legal rationale said the United States obeyed legal limits on the use of force when selecting targets, and he defended drone killings as lawful because of the armed conflict with Al Qaeda and because of the nation’s right to self-defense.

Click to read more...

White House Preparing National Online ID Plan

The Obama administration is set to propose a new system for authenticating people, organizations and infrastructure on the Web. The online authentication and identity management system would be targeted at the transactional level -- for example, when someone logs into their banking website or completes an online e-commerce purchase.

Making such a system effective, however, will require creating an "identity ecosystem," backed by extensive public/private cooperation, said White House cybersecurity coordinator Howard Schmidt, delivering the opening keynote speech at the Symantec Government Symposium 2010 in Washington on Tuesday.

"This strategy cannot exist in isolation," he said. "It's going to take all of us working together." Furthermore, "we should not have to dramatically change the way we do business -- this should be a natural path forward," he said.

That path forward will hinge on a new draft of the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, due to be released Friday for the first time to the public, for a three-week comment period. Formerly known as the National Strategy for Secure Online Transactions, the report offers specific strategy and implementation recommendations, and may also recommend more sweeping policy and privacy changes.

The report builds on the Obama-commissioned Cyberspace Policy Review, which analyzed the government's information and communications infrastructure defensive capabilities. One of the report's recommendations was to "build a cybersecurity-based identity management vision and strategy that addresses privacy and civil liberties interests, leveraging privacy-enhancing technologies for the nation."

Click to read more...

Gulf oil spill: Could 'toxic storm' make beach towns uninhabitable?

CS Monitor

>Ron Greve expects the worst is yet to come in the oil spill drama that is haranguing beach towns all along the US Gulf Coast. So, like a growing number of residents, the Pensacola Beach solar-cell salesman took a hazardous materials class and received a “hazmat card” upon graduation.

Those cards, says Mr. Greve, could become critical in coming weeks and months. In the case of a hurricane hitting the 250-mile wide slick and pushing it over sand dunes and into beach towns, residents fear they’ll face not only mass evacuations, but potential permanent relocation.

Storm-wizened locals know that it can take days, even weeks, for roads to open and authorities to allow residents to return to inspect the damage and start to rebuild after a hurricane moves through.

In the case of a “toxic storm,” only residents with hazmat cards would be allowed to cross bridges to return home, Greve says, since toxicity risks would be too high for untrained residents.

“You’d have to have these cards to be able to return,” says Mr. Greve. “In these classes, they basically tell you that swallowing even a small amount of the oil or getting some on your hands and then having a smoke could be deadly.”

Fears about ecological damage have dominated concerns around the spill, which began when the Deepwater Horizon rig, leased by BP, exploded on April 20, killing 11 people. The rig sank two days later and oil began rushing into the open Gulf.

Click to read more...

Explosive Evidence at WTC Cited by Former CDI Employee

Having had the privilege of speaking with Tom Sullivan, an actual explosive-charge placement technician, we have some new insights to pass along as to how controlled demolition works, where it started, and the effect that 9/11 had on the demolition industry. Sullivan gained his experience as an employee of the leading firm in this field, Controlled Demolition, Inc. (CDI).  Sullivan stresses though “I do not in anyway represent CDI and what I have to say is based on my own experience and training,”

Sullivan attended high school with Doug Loizeaux of the Loizeaux family. The Loizeaux family, through the father Jack, independently started the whole controlled-demolition industry and turned it into a highly profitable business. Sullivan, before he became connected to CDI, was an independent photographer during his early years in Maryland. He would be sent to CD sites and take still pictures of the jobs.  He became infatuated with the CD industry. The time came when he would do both, being the placer of the “cutter charges” on the primary joints, and photographing the jobs for promoting the business. Soon he would switch to full-time employee status of CDI -- as verified by AE911Truth’s verification team.

Click to read more...

MSNBC: Oil Spill Unstoppable?

Editor's Note: Here is the actual DougR posting that Olbermann is referring to from TOD:

Click to read more ...

G20 Law Gives Police Sweeping Powers To Arrest People

The province has secretly passed an unprecedented regulation that empowers police to arrest anyone near the G20 security zone who refuses to identify themselves or agree to a police search.

A 31-year-old man has already been arrested under the new regulation, which was quietly passed by the provincial cabinet on June 2.

The regulation was made under Ontario’s Public Works Protection Act and was not debated in the Legislature.

Click to read more ...

Is Petraeus McChrystal’s replacement or Obama’s?

by Paul Craig Roberts

Our petulant president’s ego can’t handle a general letting off steam. Neither can any of the spoiled children who comprise “our” government in DC, the capital of the “superpower.”

Generals have to fight wars that civilians start, either from the incompetence of their diplomacy or the arrogance of their hubris. Generals have to get young troops killed because of the stupidity or ambition or corruption of civilian government officials.

All McChrystal did was to let off steam. A real president would have realized that and let it go.

Don’t get me wrong. McChrystal is a militarist, and I am pleased to see him gone.

However, McChrystal didn’t restart America’s aggression against Afghanistan. Obama did.

People elected Obama because they were tired of Bush’s wars based on lies. So Obama gave us a new war in Pakistan and reignited the Afghan war. No one knows what these wars are about or why the bankrupt US government is wasting vast sums of money, which it has to borrow from foreigners, in order to murder the citizenry in two countries that have never done anything to us.

Just as Bush/Cheney and their criminal neocon government deceived the world that Saddam Hussein had “weapons of mass destruction” that threatened white people everywhere, Obama has conflated the Taliban with al Qaeda. Obama has sold the tale to white countries that unless the US determines how Afghanistan is ruled and by whom, white people are in danger of being exterminated by al Qaeda Taliban terrorists.

Click to read more ...

Government Insiders: Get Ready for the Gulf “Dead Zone”

by Wayne Madsen

Bad news concerning the Gulf oil disaster continues to come from WMR's federal government sources in the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the US Army Corps of Engineers. Emergency planners are dealing with a prospective "dead zone" within a 200 mile radius from the Deepwater Horizon disaster datum in the Gulf.

A looming environmental and population displacement disaster is brewing in the Gulf. The oil dispersant used by BP, Corexit 9500, is seen by FEMA sources as mixing with evaporated water from the Gulf and absorbed by rain clouds producing toxic precipitation that threatens to continue killling marine and land animals, plant life, and humans within a 200-mile radius of the Deepwater Horizon disaster site in the Gulf.

Adding to the worries of FEMA and the Corps of Engineers is the large amounts of methane that are escaping from the cavernous grotto of oil underneath the Macondo drilling area of Gulf of Mexico.

On a recent visit to the Gulf coast, President Obama vowed that the Gulf coast will "return to normal." However, federal officials dealing with the short- and long-term impact of the oil disaster report that the "dead zone" created by a combination of methane gas and Corexit toxic rain will force the evacuation and long-term abandonment of cities and towns within the 200-mile radius of the oil volcano.

Plans are being put in place for the mandatory evacuation of New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Mandeville, Hammond, Houma, Belle Chase, Chalmette, Slidell, Biloxi, Gulfport, Pensacola, Hattiesburg, Mobile, Bay Minette, Fort Walton Beach, Panama City, Crestview, and Pascagoula.

Click to read more ...

Morgellons and the CIA’s MK/NAOMI Project

Dr. Edward Spencer, 75- years old, is one of the few physicians in the United States that takes Morgellons disease very seriously. Spencer is a Stanford University and Yale University Medical School educated neurologist, who worked for nearly 40 years at Petaluma Valley Hospital in Northern California.

One day several years ago, Dr. Spencer was summoned to meet with the hospital’s Physicians Wellness Committee. Spencer had no idea what the purpose of the meeting was, but thought perhaps they wanted to discuss his recently expressed concerns about swine flu and vaccines in Eastern Europe. Dr. Spencer had been alarmed to learn that the flu vaccine sent to Eastern Europe was reportedly contaminated with lethal bird flu virus. Additionally, Spencer had been an outspoken advocate for Morgellons patients.

Spencer had earlier stated, “[The] CDC and medical establishment have been totally negligent in studying this system of disorders known as Morgellons, and have provided no treatment, support, or comfort at all to patients afflicted.” He further stated, “Morgellons is not a problem of ‘delusions of parasitosis’; it is an unexplained illness which is characterized by skin manifestations including non-healing lesions, itching, and the appearance of fibers. There appears to be a strong association with Lyme disease.”

Once in the meeting, Spencer recalls, “I naively thought that maybe they actually wanted to discuss some of my findings about swine flu”, but was instead shocked to hear that the committee was greatly concerned about his positions on swine flu and Morgellons, and that they wanted him “to agree to undergo psychiatric evaluation because they felt me to be a possible danger to my patients.”

Read more:  http://www.voltairenet.org/article166027.html

48% See Government Today As A Threat to Individual Rights

Nearly half of American Adults see the government today as a threat to individual rights rather than a protector of those rights.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 48% of Adults see the government today as a threat to rights. Thirty-seven percent (37%) hold the opposite view. Fifteen percent (15%) are undecided.

Most Republicans (74%) and unaffiliateds (51%) consider the government to be a threat to individual rights. Most Democrats (64%) regard the government as a protector of rights.

Additionally, most Americans (52%) say it is more important for the government to protect individual rights than to promote economic growth. Just 31% say promoting economic growth is more important. But again a sizable number (17%) of Adults aren't sure which is more important.

(Want a   free daily e-mail update  ? If it's in the news, it's in our polls).  Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.

This nationwide survey of 1,000 Adults was conducted on June 18-19, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Men strongly believe it is more important for the government to protect individual rights, while women are almost evenly divided on the question.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/june_2010/48_see_government_today_as_a_threat_to_individual_rights