por Gerald Celente

KINGSTON, NY, 9 August 2011 — On June 13, Trends Journal subscribers received this Trend Alert®: “Collapse It’s Coming! Are You Ready?”

In that Trend Alert®, Gerald Celente accurately predicted that a global economic collapse was imminent. “The economy is on the threshold of calamity … another violent financial episode is looming,” he wrote.

Celente warned that the trends of the Summer of 2011 paralleled those in play during August of 2007, trends that had culminated in the “Panic of ’08.”

He dismissed the assurances of world leaders that policies were in place to mitigate the escalating European and US debt crises. He discounted “media experts” promoting an imaginary recovery or debating the prospects of a double-dip recession.

It was all bogus. Those assurances were hot air, and the “recovery” talk and “double-dip recession” debates were just red herrings.

In that Trend Alert®, Celente urged readers to resist the urge to lapse into a vacation state of mind. And he warned that the coming panic was going to be distinctly different!

In the Summer of 2007, before the “Panic of ‘08” set in, the Dow had hit a high of 14,000, the real estate and credit bubbles had not yet burst, and unemployment was a manageable 4.7 percent. People actually still felt prosperous.

The “Collapse of 2011” follows four years of relentless economic decay. The combination of plummeting real estate values, intractable unemployment, and a US/European government debt crises dwarfs the banking/financial institution turmoil of 2008.

Back then, Washington and the Federal Reserve treated the critically wounded economy with trillions of stimulus dollars, low interest rates, and quantitative easing. But in 2011, those fiscal and monetary bandaids are not viable options.

It’s a tale told in chapter and verse in Trends Journals, in Trend Alerts and Trends in The News: the promised recovery was no more than a “cover-up.” We correctly forecast that gold prices would soar, the dollar would dive against the Swiss Franc, the European debt crisis would worsen dramatically, the vaunted emerging markets would submerge, and the “House made of BRICS” would not escape the turmoil.

In forecasting the collapse well in advance, Celente provided an accurate timeline and supported his conclusions with quantifiable data and in-depth analysis. However, now that the collapse is underway, history is already being brazenly reengineered, right in front of our eyes. Blaming the S&P downgrade for triggering the global sell-off/ financial panic – as the majority of pundits are doing – is as bogus as blaming the onset of World War I on the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. The downgrade was no more than the proverbial last straw that broke the nation’s financial back. Trendpost: Trends Journal subscribers take notice. You know that Gerald Celente predicted the collapse.

He now maintains there are no substantive DC/ FED/ECB/IMF financial cards left to play to reverse the irreversible. Despite today’s Fed announcement to keep interest rates near zero through mid-2013 – and use policy tools to bolster the economy “as appropriate” – he forecasts that future Fed schemes will, at best, provide only temporary relief and, as with its previous attempts, are doomed to fail.

True to form, the economic propaganda mill is churning at full speed ­and the media coverage is mostly “bull.” Tune into any business show, pick up any newspaper and what you will get is the economic equivalent of the notorious 9/11 advice from the authorities as people fled the World Trade Center: “Go back to your offices, the fire in the North Tower is under control.” So now, with some $8 trillion of equity destroyed in just a few days, the authoritative counsel is: “The market is oversold. Get back in. It’s a buying opportunity.” (Gerald Celente is the Director of the Trends Research Institute.)

by José de la Isla
Hispanic Link News Service

MEXICO CITY– Two military-grade weapons were found alongside the murdered body of U.S. Border Patrol agent in December. The guns were part of an arsenal ATF agents were presumably tracking but lost track of.

Evidently, similar weapons were allowed from Houston and Tampa.

About 2000 weapons were allowed illegal movement from Phoenix into drug-cartel hands in an odd, deadly intended entrapment operation to track how the guns moved into organized crime’s hands in Mexico, and showed up in crime scenes.

At the July 26 House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing, the intention was to trace the guns backwards, to find out which U.S. government officials knew what and when, because agents involved in operation Fast and Furious, as it was known, lost track.

The implausible reason for the operation in the first place is that crime scene investigators in Mexico would know where the weapons originated and in which crime syndicate’s hands they ended up—after the crooks caused mayhem.

The hearing, so far, seems to dwell on the number of weapons (2000, 1800 or 1600), but the more important unasked question is how many innocents were killed, wounded, injured or suffered through use of these weapons, like the murdered border agent.

This is a humanitarian matter. It is entirely plausible that many individuals were victims from those towns and villages that got shot up by organized crime. They could file wrongfuldeath and other lawsuits against each link in the chain of death and injury.

These types of suits should be brought — in Mexico, the United States and before international tribunals.

Also there is now good reason to ask U.S. State and Defense Department officials what really was the basis for their reports claiming failed state projections and pronouncements of destabilization before Fast and Furious.

Other concerns need investigation, such as the sale of weapons to cartel front organizations from State Department inventories, and shipments by organized crime from the same airport the DEA used in Texas. All this could be coincidental. But some plausible explanations are needed.

Conspiracy theorists will immediately jump the gun (excuse the pun). Others have ideological axes to grind. There is certainly material for them to chew on. For instance, Mexican authorities have made it public they were not informed about Fast and Furious.

Nor were ATF’s own agents in Mexico, nor cooperating agencies like the DEA, FBI, Mexican prosecutors Procuraduría General de la República and Agencia Federal de Investigación and the Policia Federal. But the possible reason why things fell apart, given in a Washington Post editorial, is the most untenable.

The paper laid out the lame bureaucratic excuse that operation Fast and Furious became a fiasco because ATF’s “budget has been repeatedly targeted by (the U.S. Congress) and often did not have the means to follow through.”

In other words, high paid government officials could not afford to make a two-cent Skype phone call to alert their own agents about the crooks having guns they could point at them. For another two pennies they could have alerted the Mexican authorities. Carlos Canino, head of ATF operations in Mexico, said at the congressional hearings, “I want to make it perfectly clear … at no time ever did I know that ATF agents were following known (or) suspected gun traffickers…Never, ever… would I imagine…that we were letting that happen.”

But it did happen. This caper should not get turned into something different than it is. It is about illegal gun trafficking, bureaucratic denouement, death, injury, mayhem, social instability. It is not about Houdini- like officialdom tricks so the issue disappears. Keep your eye on the ball for any new disclosures.

That’s my two-cents worth .

[José de la Isla, a nationally syndicated columnist for Hispanic Link and Scripps Howard news services, has been recognized for two consecutive years for his commen­taries by New America Media. His forthcoming book is “Our Man on the Ground.” Previous books include “DAY NIGHT LIFE DEATH HOPE” (2009) and “The Rise of Hispanic Political Power” (2003)].

— Yet, that same week in McAllen, a U.S. district judge in Texas sentence eight people to the maximum term as “buyer ants” for organized crime weapons and there was not budget issue here from competency acted out.

by Jorge Mújica Murias
mexicodelnorte@yahoo.com.mx

“Sanctuary” means, according to the dictionary, 1. Temple in which an image or remains of a saint are worshiped, as in the “the Sanctuary of Lourdes”; 2. Sacred or important valuable place, as in “the Pasteur Institute is a sanctuary of research; and 3. Place used as a refuge, to give protection or asylum, as in “terrorists were arrested at their sanctuary un South France”.

Just because it does not say it, the definition does not include something like “city or county in the United States were undocumented immigrants are free from La Migra”. I wish it said it…

But that’s the definition some people like to use, more inspired by good feelings than reality. And some others use it just to gain credibility among immigrants, promoting “sanctuary laws” without teeth. Some “sanctuary laws” I know of, particularly in Chicago, clearly say that “no authority shall collaborate with Immigration… unless Immigration specifically requests so…” and on and on.

And then it says, quite at the end, that no authority could be sanctioned because of not observing the law… and complaints regarding violations should be taken to … the authorities!

In a few words, the “sanctuary” where immigrants without papers are “safe” from La Migra just do not exist and do not protect, give asylum or refuge to no one.

Out of but really in

And the same is going on with the so called “opt out” of Secure Communities.

“With drums and orchestra it was announces last May that the state of Illinois was opting out of the Secure Communities program”, reports our colleague Fabiola Pomareda in La Raza newspaper. “Never the less, officers of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed they “keep working in Illinois and that the data base exchange continues, to identify undocumented immigrants”.

It could not be clearer. “Secure Communities is a federal program to share information, and the decisions on its operation are taken by the federal government only”, was told Fabiola by Nicole Navas, speaker for La Migra and person in charge of Secure Communities in Washington. “A state can not cancel its participation or ‘opt out’ after the government has already activated the program in the state”.

It is logical. Secure Communities is a data-share program between local police departments, Homeland Security (La Migra), and the FBI. When the local police offi cer arrests someone, fi ngerprints him or her and sends the info the FBI, La Migra gets a copy and boom!

The arrestee is marked as a bad guy, drunk, or plain stupid because his biggest problem was not to stop at a stop light, but he’s also marked as undocumented, and avoiding deportation then is a big big problem.

Even worse, La Migra can check the data bases data of local and state police “from a desk at the Court building or using a laptop in a Starbucks”, Fabiola was told the spokesperson of the Cook County Sheriff, Steve Patterson.

Let’s be clear then. Secure Communities is not a voluntary program for cities and counties, even “sanctuary” cities and counties, and no one can “opt-out” of it.

The solution for La ­Migra to stop arresting immigrant bread winners who had a drink and then drove, or workers who did not stop at the stop sign to get on time to their jobs, is to eliminate Secure Communities, not to create “sanctuary” cities and counties or make them “immigrant friendly”.

But there’s guy who, all together by himself and him alone, could eliminate Secure Communities. His name is Barack Obama and, for the time being, he lives in Washington, D.C.

Other politicians who talk and talk about “opting-out” of Secure Communities are just lying thru their teeth…