Documented Plans US Military To Use Weather As Weapon

January 31, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
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Source: prisonplanet.com.  Back in 1996, a document titled “Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025” was submitted to the director of the United States Air Force, under a disguised notion that it was a fictional report and was not intended to be applied to real-life scenarios. The document was a detailed research analysis paper which described the potential of developing aerospace technologies, and more importantly, how they might best be used to harness, control and manipulate the natural forces of weather on this planet. The technologies and capabilities described in this report have now become a reality, and have been documented all over the world.

The “Space Preservation Act of 2001″ was introduced on the floor of the House of Representatives by Dennis Kucinich and was an attempt to legislate the use of certain types of advanced weaponry, and not surprisingly, did not pass. Although Kucinich is just another gear in the NWO mechanism, the first-draft edition of this bill contains some very startling admissions to the types of weaponry the United States Air Force has been developing since the end of WWII, including such categories of weaponry as “biological”, “electromagnetic”, “tectonic”, and most disturbingly, “chemtrails.” This film attempts to show that chemtrails are not a hoax, they are real, and they are part of an international conspiracy aimed not only at controlling the elements, but also at ascribing this new technology immediately to war-fighting applications. The 2nd Cold War has arrived here in the 21st century, and it will now be a race for total technological dominance of Earth’s atmosphere. All chemtrail documentation in the this film was shot by me in the skies of South-Eastern New York and Western Connecticut between December ‘ 06 and March ‘ 07. This film contains unlicensed footage from NBC, Sr. Rosalie Bertell, Clifford E. Carnicom, and Walt Disney.

Aircrap.org: In case you’ve wondered why we used a photo of an atomic bomb blast, here’s an excerpt from the Executive Summary of “Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025“:

“A high-risk, high-reward endeavor, weather-modification offers a dilemma not unlike the splitting of the atom. While some segments of society will always be reluctant to examine controversial issues such as weather-modification, the tremendous military capabilities that could result from this field are ignored at our own peril. From enhancing friendly operations or disrupting those of the enemy via small-scale tailoring of natural weather patterns to complete dominance of global communications and counterspace control, weather-modification offers the war fighter a wide-range of possible options to defeat or coerce an adversary.
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Al Jazeera Network Banned In Egypt

January 31, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
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The Egyptian authorities are revoking the Al Jazeera Network’s licence to broadcast from the country, and will be shutting down its bureau office in Cairo, state television has said.

“The information minister [Anas al-Fikki] ordered … suspension of operations of Al Jazeera, cancelling of its licences and withdrawing accreditation to all its staff as of today,” a statement on the official Mena news agency said on Sunday.

In a statement, Al Jazeera said it strongly denounces and condemns the closure of its bureau in Cairo by the Egyptian government. The network received notification from the Egyptian authorities on Sunday morning.

“Al Jazeera has received widespread global acclaim for their coverage on the ground across the length and breadth of Egypt,” the statement said.

An Al Jazeera spokesman said that the company would continue its strong coverage regardless.

‘Designed to stifle’

“Al Jazeera sees this as an act designed to stifle and repress the freedom of reporting by the network and its journalists,” the statement said.

“In this time of deep turmoil and unrest in Egyptian society it is imperative that voices from all sides be heard; the closing of our bureau by the Egyptian government is aimed at censoring and silencing the voices of the Egyptian people.

“Al Jazeera assures its audiences in Egypt and across the world that it will continue its in-depth and comprehensive reporting on the events unfolding in Egypt.

“Al Jazeera journalists have brought unparallelled reporting from the ground from across Egypt in the face of great danger and extraordinary circumstances. Al Jazeera Network is appalled at this latest attack by the Egyptian regime to strike at its freedom to report independently on the unprecedented events in Egypt.”

As their signals have been taken off Nilesat, our Arabic sister channels are now broadcasting on the following new frequencies:

1) New frequency for AJA & AJM on Nilesat 7W:
10949 vertical   (new)
SR: 27.500 Msps
FEC: 3/4

2) New frequency for AJA & AJM on Arabsat 26E:
11585 vertical   (new)
SR: 27.500 Msps
FEC: 3/4

3) Arabic and Mubasher on Hotbird:
12111 MHz Vertical (Old)
SR: 27.500 Msps
FEC: 3/4

4) Arabic and Mubasher on Arabsat Badr4 (Old):
12034 MHz Horizontal
SR: 27.500
FEC: 3/4

5) Arabic and Mubasher on Arabsat Badr4 (Old):
11996 MHz Horizontal
SR: 27.500
FEC: 3/4

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Egypt Torn In Clashes, Over 100 Dead

January 31, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
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More than a hundred protesters have been killed in Egypt since Tuesday in what is the biggest challenge to President Hosni Mubarak’s three decade rule.

Early Sunday morning 10 people were killed while trying to break into the interior ministry – this brings the total number of dead to some 110, although the official death toll is much lower. Many Egyptians who have taken to the streets have reported being beaten by police following their arrests. Mobile clinics throughout capital Cairo continue to operate. Despite the imposed curfew on January 29, thousands took out in the streets in defiance of authorities.

Meanwhile, the Egyptian military moved into the resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh on Sunday. Foreign nationals have been urged to leave the turbulent area as soon as possible.

At the same time thousands of prisoners have broken out of jails around the country. Among them are Muslim extremists and militants. Some of them have reportedly made their way back to Palestine. Egypt country has shut its border with Gaza amid the uprising against the government.

The famed Cairo museum was looted, with mummies ransacked. People in various neighborhoods also say their homes were broken into and goods stolen.

Gunshots were heard on the Cairo University Bridge as protesters clashed with the army there.

Protesters say they are going nowhere until Hosni Mubarak himself steps down. The opposition forces in the country have chosen the ex-head of the International Atomic Energy Agency and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mohamed ElBaradei to negotiate with tthe President. That is according to the Muslim Brotherhood – Egypt’s largest opposition group. The new opposition leader addressed the protesters on Sunday evening, urging President Mubarak to step down to allow a new phase in the country’s development to begin.

Meanwhile, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has tried to address the protesters’ demands by appointing the country’s first vice-president – the intelligence chief and confidante Omar Suleiman. The new prime minister, Ahmed Shafik, has been tasked with forming a new government. However, protesters still insist President Mubarak should step down.

The international community, particularly European countries and Unites States, have called on Mubarak to implement reforms and to refrain from violence.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague has called for Hosni Mubarak to listen “urgently” to his people.

In a statement made on Saturday, Hague expressed deep concern about the level of violence in the country.  “We called on the government to exercise restraint and on the Egyptian people to pursue their legitimate grievances peacefully,” he said. On Friday, British PM David Cameron said that Egypt needed reforms.

There have been protests and demonstrations around the world particularly with Egyptians showing support for their families and friends back home.

Thousands of people gathered outside the Egyptian embassy in London following uprisings in Cairo on January 29. Supporters of the monitored hardliner Islamic group Hizb-ut-Tahrir were calling on the Egyptian leader to step down. Peaceful protests, with doctors and students among the groups, have also been held near the Egyptian embassy in Mayfair to support the demonstrations in Cairo.

According to diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks the US government had been planning to topple the Egyptian President for the past three years. The files show Washington had secretly been backing leading figures behind the uprising.

Analysts have pointed fingers at the US, accusing it of trying to change the politics of Egypt’s regime.

“It’s obvious that the US and the UK are behind the recent events in Africa,” said Nikolay Starikov, an author and publisher. “We all know that a major transport oil artery is running through Egypt. The US only benefits from high oil prices, as all global gas and oil trade is carried out in dollars. Thus, the dollar demand is only growing. I don’t believe in spontaneous revolutions – when hundreds of thousands, millions of people come out onto the streets at the same time, taking into account there’s been no serious or immediate change to their standards of living.”

Ken O’Keefe, an activist based in Gaza, said the uprising in Egypt is no surprise, taking into consideration the situation in the country.

“Wherever you oppress people, wherever you deny them basic human rights, wherever the inequity in the distribution of wealth is as perverse as it is in North Africa, the people will eventually rise up and it’s promising to see that people have started the process of shedding off the brutal and corrupt dictate of Mubarak,” he said.

As for the diplomatic cables disclosed by WikiLeaks, O’Keefe said he wouldn’t doubt that the US had been involved, but the blame should still be laid on the Egyptian leadership. He also added that he is not going to give credence to all WikiLeaks cables.

“WikiLeaks has perpetuated all sorts of illusions, including the illusion that Iran is the threat. Iran is not the threat. Israel is the threat, American imperialism is the threat, British complicity and support for those institutions is the threat, not Iran, and WikiLeaks has been instrumental in perpetuating that threat,” O’Keefe said. “Also, the so-called leader of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, has marginalized and attempted to ridicule those of us who can see the truth of 9/11. So, I am not going to buy everything that WikiLeaks produces.”

Unrest in Egypt comes weeks after a month of chaos in Tunisia, which saw 80 deaths and the president being toppled before fleeing into exile. But observers insist it is still too soon to say whether the Tunisia’s experience will be replicated in Egypt.

View Article with video interviews here

UFO Sighting Over Mount Zion in Jerusalem

January 31, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
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A second independent video and news report emerged today on January 30, 2011 confirming the authenticity of the UFO orb over Mount Zion and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem at 1 AM on the morning of January 28, 2011.

On January 28, 2011 at 1 AM, a UFO orb appeared over the Mount Zion and the Dome of the Rock-Temple Mount in Jerusalem.  A video of the UFO orb states, “Two men capture a film of what might be one of the most interesting UFO clips ever caught.

“Witnesses noticed the large oval shaped UFO suspended on the night skyline. At about one minute into the clip the UFO descends almost to ground level directly over the Dome of the Rock-Temple Mount. The oval UFO hovers there for a short while, flashes lights into surrounding buildings then shoots upwards at an incredible speed.  Witnesses were totally taken back and amazed at what they had just seen.”

View both independent videos of Dome of the Rock UFO orb side by side

To view a video with both independent videos of the Dome of the Rock Video seen side by side, please view the embedded video above, or click this URL:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrmPTnhaHzs

One UFO specialist in UFO orbs after viewing this video wrote the following to this reporter, “Presumably you noted the lights on the Mothership near the end of the second video.”

View 2nd independent video of Dome of the Rock UFO orb over Jerusalem on January 28, 2011

To view the 2nd independent video of the Dome of the Rock UFO orb over Jerusalem on January 28, 2011, please click on the URL below.  The UFO orb shoots upward at tremendous speed at 42 seconds into the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a89NLhHS7Mw&feature=player_embedded#

View original video of Dome of the Rock UFO orb over Jerusalem on January 28, 2011

To view the original video of the Dome of the Rock UFO orb over Jerusalem on January 28, 2011, please click on the URL below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0lEqR1Oy3I&feature=player_embedded

Original video of Dome of the Rock UFO orb, slowed and Zoom:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BwS4zwOnpc

Three questions now linger for UFO and Exopolitics experts and observers around the world

Question #1:  Is the Dome of the Rock UFO orb a genuine ET phenomenon?

Question #2:  Is the ET or interdimensional intelligence behind the Dome of the Rock UFO Orbs sending an intentional, meaningful “context communication” to humanity by this UFO event?

Question #3:  Does the Dome of the Rock UFO event fit the pattern predicted by former NORAD officer Stanley A. Fulham in his Dec. 3, 2010 communiqué that [Extraterrestrial] “Interventions will then accelerate, not so much over our cities, but dispersed over our continents with sightings increasing in duration. The intent of these interventions is to increase mankind’s acceptance of the alien phenomena, so that hopefully, we will be prepared to accept a face-to-face encounter and communicate, perhaps as early as next year (2011).”

Please see:

http://www.examiner.com/exopolitics-in-seattle/more-predicted-ufo-sightings-over-new-york-confirm-et-will-intervene-ecology

Question #1: Is the Dome of the Rock UFO orb a genuine ET phenomenon?

In order to ascertain whether this Dome of the Rock UFO was a genuine ET phenomenon, this reporter Alfred Lambremont Webre engaged a UFO specialist who is an expert in the orb type of UFO exhibited at the Mount Zion, Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem UFO sighting.

This reporter asked the UFO specialist:  “Do you believe the [Dome of the Rock] UFO sighting is genuine ET?”

After review and consultation of the video of the Dome of the Rock UFO org sighting, the UFO specialist responded,

“Yes, it’s a Plasma Orb Light Entity/Interdimensional Angel, which did the exact same phenomenon [one of] my other contacts, [Name deleted], photographed in March of 2008.

“The entire incident and photographs are contained within the first 20 photo narrative here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/InterdimensionalAngels/SlideShowPhoto1#

“Specifically here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/InterdimensionalAngels/SlideShowPhoto1#5193598374365593618

“Description: ‘The contact then began to line up the frames of the cell phone camera to take a fifth photograph when all of a sudden the POLE shot straight up into the air “like a bullet” and disappeared into the night sky. There was absolutely no noise nor was there any air displacement whatsoever which resulted from the POLE departing the contact’s roof and up into the sky.’

“The YouTube video of these events is here:

POLE photo video narrative

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkQUidRamP0

Evaluation

In the opinion of this reporter, the UFO orb phenomena in the above video display remarkable similarity to the Dome of the Rock UFO orb phenomenon.

The above photographs and video appear, on reasonable review, to sustain the expert opinion of the UFO specialist that the January 28, 2011 Dome of the Rock UFO orb is “a Plasma Orb Light Entity/Interdimensional Angel, which did the exact same phenomenon [one of] my other contacts, [Name deleted], photographed in March of 2008.”

Question #2: Is the ET or interdimensional intelligence behind the Dome of the Rock UFO Orbs sending an intentional meaningful “context communication” to humanity by this UFO event?

The following analysis reasonably demonstrates that the January 28, 2011 Dome of the Rock UFO orb event is an intentional “context communication” by the ET or hyperdimensional intelligence behind the UFO orb event to humanity at large.

The extraterrestrial context communication in the Dome of the Rock UFO orb event appears to be raising issues of significant future impact for the 3.3 billion followers of the Christian, Islam and Judaic religions.

Context communication theory of extraterrestrial communication

The context communication theory of extraterrestrial communication, developed by Alfred Lambremont Webre in 1974, states that many UFO encounters are in fact contextual, symbolic communications by the intelligent source behind the UFO encounter itself to the UFO witnesses or to humanity at large, much in the same way that a dream is a contextual, symbolic communication from the dreamer’s subconscious mind to her or his conscious mind.

For example, as an extraterrestrial context communication, UFO photographer Will Allen’s July 20, 2010 reported encounter with a hyperdimensional ‘slow-moving UFO that emits a ray of light or directed energy beam one mile from the White House’ may be reasonably interpreted within at least three alternative frames.

Continue reading on Examiner.com: Is UFO orb over Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem a context communication by ET? – Seattle exopolitics | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/exopolitics-in-seattle/is-ufo-orb-over-dome-of-the-rock-jerusalem-a-context-communication-by-et#ixzz1CdYPKsqv

First Senate Tea Party Caucus Missing Some Who Were Elected Under Banner

January 28, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
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Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 28, 2011

The Republican senators who rode the tea party wave to victory in the fall are now weighing whether that label will help them on Capitol Hill or become a scarlet letter.

Thursday offered the first clear illustration of their situation as the newly formed Senate Tea Party Caucus held its inaugural meeting without three of the senators who won election under the tea party banner.

“I sprang from the tea party and have great respect for what it represents,” said Sen. Ronald H. Johnson (R-Wis.), a polyester and plastics manufacturer who entered politics last year and defeated Sen. Russell Feingold, a Democrat who had held his seat for 18 years.

Johnson emerged as one of the tea party movement’s bright stars but has decided not to join the Tea Party Caucus because he fears doing so could be divisive. Instead, he wants to bring tea party ideas under the broader Republican umbrella.

“The reason I ran for the U.S. Senate was to not only stop the Obama agenda but reverse it,” he said in a statement. “I believe our best chance of doing that is to work towards a unified Republican Conference so that’s where I will put my energy.”

The decisions of Johnson and Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.) not to join the Tea Party Caucus underscore the fissures within the Republican Party as it seeks to build an effective governing coalition in Washington while satisfying an emboldened conservative base outside the Beltway. And for the tea party, the new Congress presents a test of whether the movement’s activist momentum can continue within the rhythms and business of governing.

Freshman Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) joined Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) in starting the Tea Party Caucus as a venue for promoting tea party ideals – cutting spending and bringing down the federal debt, for example. The only other senator to join was freshman Jerry Moran (R-Kan.).

“Some people said when the tea party was elected, Washington would co-opt us,” Paul said at Thursday’s meeting. “The interesting thing is we’re already co-opting Washington.”

But Johnson, Rubio and Toomey are avoiding this association and instead working within the Senate’s existing Republican structures to influence the legislative agenda. The three may have rationalized that they would stand a better chance of advancing their ideas from inside the clubby confines of the Senate establishment. Rubio said the reason he was not joining was because he doesn’t want politicians in Congress “co-opting the mantle” of a grass-roots movement.

Rubio and Toomey were fixtures in Republican politics long before the tea party emerged. Rubio was a Florida House speaker who once carried an American Express card issued by the state GOP; Toomey was a former congressman who ran the Club for Growth, a fiscally conservative political action committee.

In not joining the caucus, the three have frustrated some tea party leaders nationally and in their home states.

“Obviously it’s disappointing,” said Amy Kremer, a former flight attendant from Georgia who now chairs Tea Party Express, the national group that organized a cross-country tea party bus tour this past summer. “The people in the movement are wondering why they’re not standing with these other tea party conservatives.”

Read More Here

White House picks Jay Carney as new press secretary

January 27, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
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By Chris Cillizza and Anne E. Kornblut

President Obama has chosen former journalist Jay Carney to replace press secretary Robert Gibbs, a longtime loyalist, when he leaves the post in mid-February — one of a number of staff changes announced today by White House chief of staff Bill Daley.

Daley also named two new deputy chiefs of staff: Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the Office of Health Reform, and Alyssa Mastromonaco, White House director of scheduling and advance. (For a full list of staff changes, scroll to the bottom of this post.)

“I believe these decisions will bring greater clarity to our structure and roles and will enhance coordination and collaboration among us,” Daley wrote in an email announcing the moves.

Carney, now the communications director for Vice President Biden, is the marquee move as he will assume perhaps the most high profile staff job in the White House.

He came to the Administration in 2008 after a long career in journalism that included serving as Washington bureau chief of Time magazine. Carney is married to ABC News’ correspondent Claire Shipman.

The White House had made clear it was interested in tapping an outsider for the post — particularly after Bill Daley was named the new chief of staff. Yet finding a successor to Gibbs has been no easy task. He enjoyed a close relationship with Obama dating back to 2004 when he worked on the president’s Senate campaign.

Gibbs is expected to open his own consulting operation and appear on television as a prominent surrogate for the president. He will also be involved in the planning stages of Obama’s reelection bid, which will be led by current deputy White House chief of staff Jim Messina.

Obama has undergone a major staff transition in recent weeks.

Gone — or soon to be gone — are Messina, senior adviser David Axelrod and political director Patrick Gaspard — all three of whom are leaving the official White House staff to begin preparations for the 2012 presidential campaign.

In are Daley and David Plouffe, who managed Obama’s 2008 race, among others.

Full list of White House staff transitions announced today

* Ron Bloom, Assistant to the President for Manufacturing Policy (National Economic Council)
* Jay Carney, Assistant to the President and Press Secretary
* Stephanie Cutter, Assistant to the President and Deputy Senior Advisor
* Nancy-Ann DeParle, Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy
* David Lane, Assistant to the President and Counselor to the Chief of Staff
* Alyssa Mastromonaco, Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations
* Rob Nabors, Assistant to the President and Director of Legislative Affairs
* Emmett Beliveau, Deputy Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff to the Chief of Staff
* Jon Carson, Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of the Office of Public Engagement
* Danielle Crutchfield, Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Scheduling and Advance
* David Cusack, Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Advance
* Mike Strautmanis, Deputy Assistant to the President and Counselor for Strategic Engagement to the Senior Advisor
* Jessica Wright, Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Scheduling
* Brian Deese, Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Director of the National Economic Council
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Illegal Immigrant Jailed & Released, Rapes 8 year old girl

January 27, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
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Thursday, January 27, 2011

Salvador Portillo-Saravia, a member of the MS-13 street gang, was charged with raping an 8-year-old girl at her Fairfax County home last month. But he never should have been in Fairfax in the first place.

Federal officials deported Portillo-Saravia, of Sterling, to El Salvador in 2003, and he sneaked back in illegally. Now, officials are wondering why a much-touted federal program didn’t catch him before the rape.

Four weeks before the crime, Portillo-Saravia was in the Loudoun County jail for public intoxication. That’s when the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) program, called Secure Communities, should have identified him as an illegal immigrant and he should have been taken into custody.

Loudoun authorities ran Portillo-Saravia’s fingerprints through a federal database, but despite the 2003 deportation, nothing was found. He was released after 12 hours behind bars.

Portillo-Saravia, 29, is now the subject of a manhunt by local police and federal marshals.

Officials involved with Secure Communities and immigration experts said the incident points to confusion about how the program should work and to gaps in the immigration database. Many people who were deported before 2005, including Portillo-Saravia, are not in the fingerprint database, ICE officials said.

Jail officials in Virginia and Maryland who have relied on the program said they were not aware of the gap in the database.

“I was under the impression that everybody they had contact with was in the system,” Henrico County Sheriff Michael L. Wade said.

“Secure Communities is a very good program, but it’s not a magic solution and shouldn’t be sold that way,” said Jessica Vaughan, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington think tank that advocates tighter immigration controls. “This is why you do go after low-level offenders, because it can turn out they are a threat to public safety.”

Secure Communities was rolled out in October 2008 amid much fanfare as a way to transform immigration enforcement, ICE officials said then. Jails would fingerprint all arrestees, not just those suspected of being in the country illegally. Those prints would run through FBI and Department of Homeland Security databases, and ICE would flag immigration offenders for possible deportation.

But it didn’t work in Portillo-Saravia’s case.

Loudoun jail deputies submitted Portillo-Saravia’s fingerprints on Nov. 21 and received a “no match” message. Brian P. Hale, a spokesman for ICE, said Loudoun then should have done a manual record check or contacted ICE if the person was “foreign-born and of concern to local law enforcement.”

Federal Deficit To Reach $1.5 Trillion – Largest Gap In History

January 26, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
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By Lori Montgomery
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 26, 2011; 10:28 AM

The weak economy and fresh tax cuts approved last month will help drive the federal budget deficit to $1.5 trillion this year, the biggest budget gap in history and one of the largest as a share of the economy since World War II, congressional budget analysts said Wednesday.

“Economic developments, and the government’s responses to them, have – of course – had a big impact on the budget,” the Congressional Budget Office said in its semi-annual budget outlook.

“We estimate that if current laws remain unchanged, the budget deficit this year will be close to $1.5 trillion, or 9.8 percent of [gross domestic product]. That would follow deficits of 10 percent of GDP last year and 8.9 percent in the previous year, the three largest deficits since 1945. As a result, debt held by the public will probably jump from 40 percent of GDP at the end of fiscal year 2008 to nearly 70 percent at the end of fiscal year 2011.”

If current laws remain unchanged, the CBO said, budget deficits “would drop markedly over the next few years as a share of output,” averaging 3.6 percent of GDP from 2012 through 2021 and totaling nearly $7 trillion over the decade. However, that projection assumes all the Bush tax cuts will expire in 2012 and that Congress will make other changes to raise taxes — an uncertain bet.

montgomeryl@washpost.com

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Bombings Strike Shiite Pilgrims

January 25, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
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Deadly attacks against religious pilgrims and members of Iraq’s security forces continued on Monday, including three car bombings around the city of Karbala, where as many as 10 million marchers are expected to travel in observance of one of the most sacred holidays on the Shiite Muslim calendar.

A wounded woman is moved on a stretcher outside a hospital in Karbala after a bomb attack on Shiite pilgrims on Monday.
At War

Notes from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and other areas of conflict in the post-9/11 era. Go to the Blog »

A roadside bomb in Baghdad’s Shula neighborhood wounded another five marchers.

The attacks on pilgrims, which began with two nearly simultaneous blasts in the early morning hours, killed as many as 30 and wounded more than 100.

The blasts raised the tally of Shiite marchers killed in the last week to as high as 85.

The Iraqi authorities provided disparate accounts of the times of the attacks and the numbers of killed and wounded. Initial accounts ranged from as few as 10 deaths to as many as 30. Casualty figures often change in the hours and days after an attack as more information comes to light.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks.

As with other recent attacks, the bombs set off a flurry of theories and recriminations. Some Iraqis speculated they were meant to undermine confidence in security before the Arab League summit meeting scheduled in Baghdad for March. Others thought they might be the work of foreigners or local people, meant to discredit the police or done with the complicity of security forces.

“It is clear that the Baath and Al Qaeda are working together on these explosions,” said Nusaif al-Khatab, deputy head of the Karbala provincial council, referring to Saddam Hussein’s former ruling party.

American and Iraqi security forces have regularly reported discovering collaborations between former Baathists and Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a Sunni extremist group, though the two groups are radically different in their orientations and goals. Recently Lt. Gen. Robert W. Cone, second in command of American forces in Iraq, said he had seen little evidence of such collaboration, though some Baathists might work for Al Qaeda for money.

As with the attacks on Christians late last year, the bombs elicited statements of martyrdom from some members of the group attacked, in this case Shiites. The pilgrimage to Karbala commemorates the martyrdom of Imam Hussein ibn Ali, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, in the seventh century.

“We learn from our imam and say we will be oppressed and not oppressors,” said Ahmed Hashim, 27, a lawyer who marched from Baghdad to Karbala, about 55 miles, in two days.

He said that the attacks were meant not just to kill pilgrims, but also to start a religious war. “And they are sending a message to say that this government is not qualified to control,” he said. But like other marchers, he said he was only more determined in the face of violence.

“This will only increase our numbers to visit the love of our life, our imam,” he said. “It has been so many years and we never stopped, so they will be stupid if they think that they can stop us now.”

Iraq, which was a distinctively secular society until the late years of Saddam Hussein’s rule, has in the last decade followed the rest of the region in becoming more religious, with more religious practice and more religious violence.

Mr. Hussein, a Sunni, banned pilgrimages and other public observances by the country’s Shiite majority. Since the fall of his government in 2003, the marches have become a show of strength for Shiites and a target for attacks.

There were also multiple attacks on lawmakers and members of the security forces on Monday, including an unsuccessful assassination attempt against the governor of Salahuddin Province, north of Baghdad.

In the capital, attackers using guns with silencers — an increasingly common weapon of choice — killed an officer assigned to protect embassies. In Kirkuk, an area disputed by Arab and Kurdish partisans, two men stabbed a police officer, who was evacuated to a nearby hospital.

South of Kirkuk, in the village of Humera, a dawn ambush killed a leader of the Sunni Awakening, the government-backed militia credited with helping to reduce violence in Iraq, according to a police official in Taza.

A roadside bomb killed Brig. Gen. Samer Hassan Saleh near his home in Baghdad.

No one claimed responsibility for the attacks on officials or security force members, but on Monday the Islamic State of Iraq, a Sunni extremist group affiliated with Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, took responsibility on its Web site for attacks against security forces last week in Tikrit and Diyala that killed dozens.

The Web site said the group wanted to kill “stupid apostate policemen,” who were trying “to turn the Sunni places into Shiite.”

Iraqi employees of The New York Times contributed reporting from Hilla, Kirkuk and Samarra.

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Foreign Trade Zone Information

January 25, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
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FTZ page for contact information and map of Foreign Trade Zones in United States

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