North American Union? Diane Francis Pushes U.S.-Canada Merger
North American Union? Diane Francis Pushes U.S.-Canada Merger.
It’s time for Canada to merge with the United States.
That’s the argument from pundit, author, HuffPost blogger and American-born dual citizen Diane Francis in her new book “Merger of the Century,” and it’s already starting plenty of conversation about the future of a North American union.
Francis’ argument centres around what she sees as the threat posed by state-run economies such as China and Russia to Western prosperity. In her view, these nations are using a variety of nefarious means to buy up Western resources and corporations while barring such purchases in their own nations.
These “giant holding company” nations are “wolves at the door,” Francis told CBC.
In an excerpt from the book published by the National Post, Francis argues that the antidote to this Eastern encroachment is for Canada and the U.S. to become one giant nation.
She lists a number of potential benefits, among them:
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Blackstone’s Private Equity Head Warns: “We Are In The Middle Of An Epic Credit Bubble” | Zero Hedge
Blackstone’s Private Equity Head Warns: “We Are In The Middle Of An Epic Credit Bubble” | Zero Hedge.
Blackstone Group have arguably been at the center of inflating the new echo bubble in real estate by bidding (all cash) for property across the US. So it is somewhat ironic that just two months after we noted that “the smartest money is selling,” the head of Blackstone’s Private Equity Group had the following words for an audience at a Dow Jones Equity conference in New York:
“We are in the middle of an epic credit bubble, in my opinion, the likes of which I haven’t seen in my career in private equity.”
Joseph Baratta had plenty more to say including “the good times are not going to last forever,” and “we are not leveraging US GDP,” as he expects a ‘mean reversion’ in multiples and “that largesse goes to the seller.”
The U.S. is “in the middle of an epic credit bubble,” according to Blackstone Group’s global head of private equity, Joseph Baratta , and that bubble is affecting how one of the world’s largest private equity firm’s invests its billions….
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NSA Central to U.S. Assassination Program | Washington’s Blog
NSA Central to U.S. Assassination Program | Washington’s Blog.
Intelligence Agencies Central In Assassination Programs Carried out Without Oversight
We’ve previously documented that the NSA isn’t just passively spying like a giant peeping tom, but isactively using that information in mischievous ways … such as assassinations.
A lot more information is about to come out on the topic. AP reports:
Two American journalists known for their investigations of the United States’ government said Saturday they’ve teamed up to report on the National Security Agency’s role in what one called a “U.S. assassination .”
***
Jeremy Scahill, a contributor to The Nation magazine and the New York Times best-selling author of “Dirty Wars,” said he will be working with Glenn Greenwald, the Rio-based journalist who has written stories about U.S. surveillance based on documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
“The connections between war and surveillance are clear. I don’t want to give too much away but Glenn and I are working on a project right now that has at its center how the National Security Agency plays a significant, central role in the U.S. assassination program,” said Scahill ….
***…
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Does the Government Only Label Bad Guys As Terrorists? | Washington’s Blog
Does the Government Only Label Bad Guys As Terrorists? | Washington’s Blog.
Government Blurs the Lines Between Bad Guys and Average Americans
Preface: Whether you believe this is a conspiracy by the government – or just over-reaction, incompetence or cronyism – the end result is idiotic … and counter-productive.
Former NSA boss Michael Hayden compared privacy advocates to terrorists:
“If and when our government grabs Edward Snowden, and brings him back here to the United States for trial, what does this group do?” said retired air force general Michael Hayden, who from 1999 to 2009 ran the NSA and then the CIA, referring to “nihilists, anarchists, activists, Lulzsec, Anonymous, twentysomethings who haven’t talked to the opposite sex in five or six years”.
“They may want to come after the US government, but frankly, you know, the dot-mil stuff is about the hardest target in the United States,” Hayden said, using a shorthand for US military networks. “So if they can’t create great harm to dot-mil, who are they going after? Who for them are the World Trade Centers? The World Trade Centers, as they were for al-Qaida.”…
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Marc Faber Warns “We Have Reached The Endgame Of Monetary Policy” | Zero Hedge
Marc Faber Warns “We Have Reached The Endgame Of Monetary Policy” | Zero Hedge.
“One day this whole credit bubble will be deflated very badly – you are going to experience a complete implosion of all asset prices and the credit system…”
Marc Faber was in fine form at the CLSA Investor Forum, dispensing his trademark gloom and doom. The final keynote was a tour de force of the history of debt, asset bubbles and financial markets in the 20th and 21st centuries.
“Unlike the ’50s and ’70s when there was relatively less overall debt, a financial market crash did not inflict great damage on the economy.Debt levels are significantly higher these days, and so a market crash can inflict serious damage on economies.
We’ve gone through a period of huge asset inflation, in stocks, bonds, commodities, and real estate, and we essentially now have in the world, a huge asset bubble.
So everything is grossly inflated.”
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Oxford Professors: Robots And Computers Could Take Half Our Jobs Within The Next 20 Years
Oxford Professors: Robots And Computers Could Take Half Our Jobs Within The Next 20 Years.
What are human workers going to do when super-intelligent robots and computers are better than us at doingeverything? That is one of the questions that anew study by Dr. Carl Frey and Dr. Michael Osborne of Oxford University sought to address, and what they concluded was that 47 percent of all U.S. jobs could be automated within the next 20 years. Considering the fact that the percentage of the U.S. population that is employed is already far lower than it was a decade ago, it is frightening to think that tens of millions more jobs could disappear due to technological advances over the next couple of decades. I have written extensively about how we are already losing millions of jobs to super cheap labor on the other side of the globe. What are middle class families going to do as technology also takes away huge numbers of our jobs at an ever increasing pace? We live during a period of history when knowledge is increasing an an exponential rate. In the past, when human workers were displaced by technology it also created new kinds of jobs that the world had never seen before. But what happens when the day arrives when computers and robots can do almost everything more cheaply and more efficiently than humans can?
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A Drunken Psychopath At the Wheel: Fukushima Revisited | DailyCensored.com – Breaking Censored News, World, Independent, Liberal News
Like a psychopathic drunk driver careening down a busy street, capitalism on its last legs is creating untold disaster in its wake. One of the most serious is the ongoing example of Fukushima.
The 2011 earthquake in Japan and the resultant tsunami are events largely forgotten or otherwise ignored by the corporate media. Likewise for the disaster of the nuclear plant at Fukushima. Recent events, however, are forcing the corporate media to start to pay attention once again. As they say, the prospect of hanging forces the mind to concentrate wonderfully.
400 metric tons daily of water
The plant’s owner, Tepco, is using some 400 metric tons per day of water to cool the damaged fuel rods in plant number four. However, a greater problem is that an equal amount is flowing from surrounding mountains underground under the plant and into the ocean.1 Some of this runoff is entering the basement of the stricken plant and becoming contaminated. It, along with the used cooling water, is being stored in giant tanks that are on the grounds of the plant. It was discovered that one of these tanks is leaking — at least weeks after the start of the leak.
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Ontario’s Universities and Student Unions Flunk Freedom of Speech Test | Daniel Dickin
Ontario’s Universities and Student Unions Flunk Freedom of Speech Test | Daniel Dickin.
The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedom’s 2013 Campus Freedom Index highlights a disturbing trend that has been observed for many years: Canada’s universities and student unions are abysmally poor at promoting free speech and expression on campus.
The index looks at the policies and practices of universities and student unions across Canada to determine their affinity for free speech, which, unfortunately, continues to be incredibly low. The grading criteria are straightforward:
University policies:
• Is there a clear and unequivocal commitment to free speech?
• Is the university’s anti-discrimination policy used to censor unpopular, controversial, or politically incorrect speech?
• Are security fees used as an indirect method to stifle free speech?
• Does the anti-distruption policy make it clear that the university will not condone students blocking, obstructing, suppressing, or interrupting other students sharing ideas with which they disagree?
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Saudi Arabia “Outraged” At Obama’s Peace Overtures With Syria, Iran | Zero Hedge
Saudi Arabia “Outraged” At Obama’s Peace Overtures With Syria, Iran | Zero Hedge.
Back in August, just after the false flag chemical weapon attack in Syria, we showed that despite all the posturing by the Obama administration (and, of course, France’s belligerent, socialist leader Francois Hollande), the nation behind the entire Syrian campaign was not one of the “democratic”, Western nations but none other than close neighbor Saudi Arabia, and the brain orchestrating every move of the western puppets was one Bandar bin Sultan, the nation’s influential intelligence chief. We also explained the plethora of geopolitical and mostly energy-related issues that Saudi and Qatar had at stake, which they were eager to launch a regional war over, just to promote their particular set of selfish interests. A month later, in clear confirmation that this was precisely the case, the WSJ reported that the recent overtures by Obama, brilliantly checkmated by Putin, to push for a peaceful resolution with not only Syria, but suddenly Iran as well, has managed to infuriate Saudi Arabia: traditionally one of the US’ closest allies in the region and the key source of crude oil to the western world.
From the WSJ:
The Obama administration’s handling of overtures on Syria and Iran have outraged regional ally Saudi Arabia, which is signaling it wants to do more to boost the power of armed Sunni rebel groups on the ground in Syria as the U.S. pursues diplomacy.
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US House defies Obama on funding bill – Americas – Al Jazeera English
US House defies Obama on funding bill – Americas – Al Jazeera English.
The US House of Representatives has brought the federal government closer to a shutdown as it voted to delay President Barack Obama’s landmark health care law for a year as part of an emergency spending bill.
There is now less than 48 hours to avert a shutdown, which will begin on Tuesday if no spending bill is passed.
The Senate is not due to meet again until Monday afternoon.
In a statement issued on Sunday, US Senate Majority leader Harry Reid said that “after weeks of futile political games from Republicans, we are still at square one”.
He added that Republican efforts to change the bill – that would delay the healthcare law for a year and repeal a tax on medical devices – were pointless.
At 11:59pm local time on Monday (03:59 GMT on Tuesday), the US government technically runs out of money to fund many of its programmes in the new fiscal year that starts on Tuesday, unless Congress can agree on a funding bill.
If Congress cannot come to a compromise by midnight on Monday, as many as 800,000 federal workers would be furloughed as part of a partial government shutdown.
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Olduvaiblog: Musings on the coming collapse 