by zerohedge.com

Spain’s financial system is at truly apocalyptic levels. If you’ve been reading me for some time, you know that Spain has already experienced a bank run equal to 18 percent of total deposits this year alone (another story the mainstream media is avoiding). However, what you likely don’t know is that an on annualized basis, Spain has experienced portfolio and investment outflows greater than 50 percent of its gdp.

To give this number some context, Indonesia only saw outflows equal to 23 percent of its GDP during the Asian Financial Crisis. Spain is experiencing more than DOUBLE this.

I’ve long averred that Spain will be the straw to break the EU’s back. By the look of things this is not far off. The country’s regional bailout fund has only less than €1 billion in funding left. As the below chart shows, this will barely make a dent in the regions’ debt problems:

Indeed, things are far far worse than is commonly know. Valencia for instance owes its pharmacies over €500 billion. In some areas there is no longer insulin. In the region of Andalusia some government workers haven’t been paid in eight months and are working for free while begging for food.

And Catalonia is pushing to secede from Spain entirely. Indeed, its pro-secessionist leader, President Artur Mas, just won the most recent election. And over 1.5 million of Catalonia’s 7.5 million inhabitants turned out for an independence rally in September.

Again, Spain as a country is finished. Things are so bad that British Airways (many wealthy Brits vacation in Spain) is putting a contingency plan for SPAIN to leave the Euro. Worst of all, it is clear EU and Spanish leaders have no clue how to deal with any of this. Their latest plan is for the country to cut the balance sheets of three nationalized banks by 50 percent sometime in the next five years. How will they do this? By dumping their toxic property assets into a “bad bank.”

The idea here is that somehow someone will want to buy this stuff. Spain already had to postpone the launch of the bad bank by a month because no one wanted to participate in it (despite the mainstream media claiming that the idea was popular which is untrue).

So, here we have Spain proposing that it can somehow unload a ton of garbage debts onto “someone” even though there is no “someone” to buy them. And the whole point of this exercise is to meet conditions so that Spain would qualify for another €40 billion in aid. €40 billion in aid… when Spain has experienced portfolio and investment outflows of more than €700 billion.

Indeed, things are so bad that the ECB has put the entire Spanish banking system on life support to the tune of over €400 billion Euros. To put this number into perspective, the entire equity base for every bank in Spain is only a little over €100 billion. Oh, and the country needs to issue over €200 billion in debt next year.

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com

A shocking report by McClatchy Newspapers’ David Enders reveals that the militants now on the front lines of the rebel uprising in Syria – supported by the Obama administration and other western powers – are Al-Qaeda terrorists who killed U.S. troops in Iraq and openly espouse their desire to “fight the U.S.” after they topple Bashar Al-Assad.

The official narrative at first attempted to deny the existence of Al-Qaeda terrorists in Syria altogether, before being forced to admit they were present but downplaying their role as limited and not characteristic of the rebel uprising.

However, Enders documents how Jabhat al Nusra, a group directly affiliated with Al-Qaeda, “has become essential to the frontline operations of the rebels fighting to topple Assad,” that the group is “critical to the rebels’ military advance” and how it conducts the “heaviest frontline fighting” in “battle after battle across the country.”

A journalist cited in the article also discovered “Nusra’s fighters on every frontline he visited.”

Jabhat al Nusra has claimed responsibility for numerous suicide bombings and other attacks that have killed hundreds of innocent people. Last weekend, disturbing footage emerged of one of their members slaughtering prisoners in cold blood. Extremist militants have also ransacked Christian churches and carried out sectarianbeheadings.

The article quotes one of the members of the group, who stated unequivocally, “When we finish with Assad, we will fight the U.S.!”

The journalist who heard the comment considered that it could have been a “joke,” but it didn’t appear to be much of a laughing matter when Syrian rebels were shown on camera proudly burning U.S. flags on two separate occasions recently.

As we previously documented, rebel supporters chanted anti-American slogans as they torched the American flag in Homs and Aleppo.

Another opposition fighter recently spoke of his desire to see the Al-Qaeda flag fly over the White House once the rebels are victorious across the region. Suffice to say, he didn’t appear to be joking.

Syrian rebel fighters are routinely photographed wearing the Al-Qaeda motif. There are also innumerable You Tube videos that show opposition forces flying the Al-Qaeda flag – the same distinctive black flag with white Arabic lettering that was flown by rioters during anti-U.S. demonstrations in numerous countries earlier this year.

French Surgeon Jacques Bérès, who worked at a hospital in Aleppo commented that at least half of the militants he treated for injuries were Al-Qaeda terrorists whose goal is to impose sharia law across Syria and the whole region.

A German report estimated the figure of foreign fighters in Syria to be even higher – a staggering 95 per cent.

As we have also documented at length, the McClatchy piece emphasizes the fact that Jabhat al Nusra was responsible for killing U.S. troops in Iraq, noting how the group relies on, “the same people and tactics that fueled al Qaida in Iraq – an assertion that is borne out by interviews with Nusra members in Syria.”

“Among Nusra fighters are many Syrians who say they fought with al Qaida in Iraq, which waged a bloody and violent campaign against the U.S. presence in that country and is still blamed for suicide and car bombings that have killed hundreds of Iraqis since the U.S. troops left a year ago,” writes Enders.

The article asserts that the presence of these terrorists in Syria, “worries U.S. and other Western officials,” although it obviously wasn’t too much of a concern when the Obama administration signed off on over $200 million dollars in aid to the FSA rebels.

Nor was it much of a worry for the CIA when it helped the likes of Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar funnel heavy arms to rebel groups in the region.

Although the establishment media has billed the rebels’ cause as a democratic uprising, one of the leaders of Jabhat al Nusra quoted in the McClatchy piece, Iyad al Sheikh Mahmoud, made it clear that there would be no free elections in Syria once Assad is toppled.

“Eighty percent of Syrians want Islamic law,” he said, referring to sharia law, an arcane and inherently brutal system of justice, with harsh punishments for those deemed to have broken its moral code, including torture and execution for sins such as adultery, homosexuality and robbery. The law also stifles free speech as it criminalizes criticism of Islam, the Quran, and the prophet Muhammad.

Why is the Obama administration supporting armed thugs who have not only killed U.S. troops in Iraq on behalf of Al-Qaeda, but also advocate the imposition of sharia law across the entire middle east and the overthrow of the United States and its replacement with an extremist Muslim dictatorship?

(Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a host for Infowars Nightly News).

by Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com

In response to widespread outrage over the National Defense Authorization Act passed last year, Congress is said to be working on a more Constitution friendly version of the legislation. The latest version was overwhelmingly approved by the House Armed Services Committee on May 8 and introduced the following week.

“This year, through the incorporation of the Right to Habeas Corpus Act, the bill makes clear beyond a shadow of a doubt that every American will have his day in court,” a press release issued by the Armed Services Committee states.

Is the NDAA 2013 an improvement over the previous version? At first glance, it would seem so. Consider the following clause included in the bill:

Nothing in the AUMF [Authorization for the Use of Military Force] or the 2012 NDAA shall be construed to deny the availability of the writ of habeas corpus or to deny any Constitutional rights in a court ordained or established by or under Article III of the Constitution for any person who is lawfully in the United States when detained pursuant to the AUMF and who is otherwise entitled to the availability of such writ or such rights.
However, according to Bruce Afran, a lawyer for a group of journalists and activists suing the government over the NDAA 2012, this is merely smoke and mirrors.

Because there are no established rules allowing a citizen to exercise the right to a civilian trial, as guaranteed by the Constitution (specifically, the Sixth Amendment), detained citizens have no way to gain access to lawyers, family or a civilian court after they are detained by the military.

“The biggest thing about the [2012] NDAA was that you weren’t getting a trial … Nothing in here says that you’ll make it to an Article III court so it literally does nothing,” Dan Johnson, founder of People Against the NDAA, told Business Insider on Thursday. “It’s a bunch of words, basically.”

“The new statute actually states that persons lawfully in the U.S. can be detained under the Authorization for the Use of Military Force [AUMF]. The original (the statute we are fighting in court) never went that far,” Afran explained. “Therefore, under the guise of supposedly adding protection to Americans, the new statute actually expands the AUMF to civilians in the U.S.”

Although Kentucky Senator Rand Paul is being portrayed as a savior by offering up language that would “affirm the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution and limit the indefinite detention of Americans,” more than a few observers of his co-sponsored amendment to the NDAA say the effort does not go far enough.

On Thursday evening, the “Senate voted on Amendment No. 3018 to the National Defense Authorization Act sponsored by Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), and co-sponsored by Sen. Rand Paul, which protects the rights prescribed to Americans in the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution with regard to indefinite detention and the right to a trial by jury,” Paul’s Senate web page explainds.

“Senator Paul’s amendment – for all the good that it does – doesn’t go far enough. Read the text of the proposal again. There is not one word of repeal or abolition or revocation of the indefinite detention of Americans from the NDAA,” writes Joe Wolverton for the New American.

A previous attempt to placate critics of the NDAA resulted in the Gohmert Amendment (House Amendment 1126) stating that the NDAA will not “deny the writ of habeas corpus or deny any Constitutional rights for persons detained in the United States under the AUMF who are entitled to such rights.”

“This amendment, like the one offered by Senator Paul last week, displays an indefensible use of vague language that would make it vulnerable to challenge in any court in any state in the Union, but somehow adds to its appeal among the Republicans in Congress,” Wolverton comments.

A handful of efforts to make the NDAA constitutionally friendly are little more than a public relations gimmick to silence critics. The NDAA is essential if the government is going to silence critics and disappear activists and other enemies of the establishment.

The bottom line, Bruce Afran said, is that the latest iteration of the NDAA “is still unconstitutional because it allows citizens or persons in the U.S. to be held in military custody, a position that the Supreme Court has repeatedly held is unconstitutional.”

The indefinate detention section of the NDAA must be repealed entirely. Anything short of that is treason.

by Hispanically Speaking News

Nicaragua will improve the efficiency and safety of its transportation system and advance regional integration with a $39.2 million loan approved by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

The project will help reduce vehicle operating costs, increase travel speeds, reduce accident rates and will conduct studies on the impact of climate change on infrastructure. Other components include institution building, road maintenance and road safety.

Some 437,000 vehicles travel over the national road system, carrying more than 13 million tons of freight annually, of which more than 38 percent is foreign trade cargo.

A major component of this project includes the improvement of 44.6 kilometers of roads from La Paz Centro-Malpaisillo (37.2 km), of the primary trunk network, in the departments of León and Chinandega; and the Miralagos-Cuyalí (7.47 km) highway, of the primary feeder network, located in the Department of Jinotega.

The country’s road network system is characterized by poor conditions of both paved and unpaved roads. This translates into high transport costs, posing an obstacle to national efforts to boost economic growth and reduce poverty.

According to data from the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure (MTI) published in the Red Vial Nicaragua report of 2011, the road network has a total length of 23,647.1 km, of which only 3,150.8 km
(13.3 percent) is paved.

Indigenous textile art meeting in Bolivian sucre

by Prensa Latina

The Third Indigenous Textile Art Meeting entitled “Knitting the People’’s Soul” and Fair in Reverse Order were transferred on today to Plaza 25 de Mayo square in Sucre, capital of the southern Chuquisaca department.

More than 400 craftspeople from 82 communities of the nine departments of the country are participating in the meeting.

The Culture Ministry organized the event, with the objective of knowing the best ways of valuing their fabrics, works of art and obtain the benefits that communities deserve, said Fair in Reverse Order Representative Mora Canal said.

This last part of the Fair is called In Reverse because suppliers offer their products to craftspeople.

This meting began on Saturday in the Tarabuco municipality, to the South of Sucre, also the Bolivian constitutional capital.

Sucre’s Mayor Gregorio Ignacio highlighted the presence of farmer indigenous and Afro-Bolivian people, as Chuquitano, Guarayo, Ayoreo, Yampara, Quechua, Aymara, Yuyacare, Jalka and others.

The third meeting of Original Indigenous Textile Art will go on until Dec. 4.

by J. D. Heyes

Likely empowered by a U.S. administration that favors the kind of nanny state politics a ruling global entity would no doubt embrace, the head of the United Nations’ International Narcotics Control Board feels comfortable telling federal officials they should move to challenge measures in Colorado and Washington that decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana for adults 21 and over.

Raymond Yans lectured the voter-approved measures – part of the United States’ democratic process, something most UN member countries are not familiar with – send “a wrong message to the rest of the nation and it sends a wrong message abroad.”

In an interview with The Associated Press, Yans said he would like to see Attorney General Eric Holder “take all necessary measures” to ensure that marijuana possession remains illegal throughout the United States.

Does the UN remember that Obama inhaled?

Currently, both states are awaiting the implementation of plans to regulate and tax the drug because officials there are waiting to see if Washington will assert its federal authority in the matter. At present, pot is a Schedule I controlled substance, in the same category as LSD and heroin.

The federal Drug Enforcement Administration has said that marijuana has a high potential for abuse and “no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States,” the New York Times has reported.

Yans’ outrage makes us wonder here at Natural News if he read reports back in 2006 when then-U.S. Sen. Barack Obama told the American Society of Magazine Editors that he did, in fact, smoke marijuana.

“When I was a kid, Iinhaled,” he said. “That was the point.”

Also, is Yans oblivious to the fact that the Netherlands has essentially legalized pot by decriminalizing both its possession and sale? Or that Portugal, in 2001, became the first European country, according to Time magazine, “to officially abolish all criminal penalties for personal possession of drugs, including marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine?”

At the time, critics of the policy change warned that drug use would skyrocket in a nation where hard drug use was already the highest on the continent. But a subsequent study by the libertarian-leaning CATO Institute in 2009 found no appreciable increase in usage.

In fact, in the years after personal possession of drugs was decriminalized, illegal use among teens in Portugal dropped while rates of new HIV infections caused by the sharing of dirty needles also fell.

The number of people seeking treatment for drug addition; however, more than doubled – but that figure was an acceptable alternative to incarceration because the Portuguese government had previously determined that treating offenders would be cheaper than jailing them.

“Judging by every metric, decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success,” Glenn Greenwald, an attorney, author and fluent Portuguese speaker, who conducted the research, told Time. “It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the drug problem far better than virtually every other Western country does.”

“I think we can learn that we should stop being reflexively opposed when someone else does [decriminalize] and should take seriously the possibility that anti-user enforcement isn’t having much influence on our drug consumption,” Mark Kleiman, author of the forthcoming When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment, and director of the drug policy analysis program at UCLA, told the magazine.

‘If our people really want it, we need to do it right’

A number of U.S. politicians have begun to see it that way.

A year ago, the governors of Washington and Rhode Island – Democrat Christine Gregoire and Republican-turned-Independent Lincoln Chaffee, respectively – petitioned the federal government to reclassify marijuana as a drug with acceptable medical uses, “saying the change is needed so states like theirs, which have decriminalized marijuana for medical purposes, can regulate the safe distribution of the drug without risking federal prosecution,” the Times said.

“The divergence in state and federal law creates a situation where there is no regulated and safe system to supply legitimate patients who may need medical cannabis,” the governors wrote in a letter to Michele M. Leonhart, the DEA administrator.

“What we have out here on the ground is chaos,” Gregoire told the Times. “And in the midst of all the chaos we have patients who really either feel like they’re criminals or may be engaged in some criminal activity, and really are legitimate patients who want medicinal marijuana.”

“If our people really want medicinal marijuana, then we need to do it right, we need to do it with safety, we need to do it with health in mind, and that’s best done in a process that we know works in this country – and that’s through a pharmacist,” she added.