The death of the dollar is coming, and it will probably be China that pulls the trigger. What you are about to read is understood by only a very small fraction of all Americans. Right now, the U.S. dollar is the de facto reserve currency of the planet. Most global trade is conducted in U.S. dollars, and almost all oil is sold for U.S. dollars. More than 60 percent of all global foreign exchange reserves are held in U.S. dollars, and far more U.S. dollars are actually used outside of the United States than inside of it. As will be described below, this has given the United States some tremendous economic advantages, and most Americans have no idea how much their current standard of living depends on the dollar remaining the reserve currency of the world. Unfortunately, thanks to reckless money printing by the Federal Reserve and the reckless accumulation of debt by the federal government, the status of the dollar as the reserve currency of the world is now in great jeopardy.

As I mentioned above, nations all over the globe use U.S. dollars to trade with one another. This has created tremendous demand for U.S. dollars and has kept the value of the dollar up. It also means that Americans can import things that they need much more inexpensively than they otherwise would be able to.

The largest exporting nations such as Saudi Arabia (oil) and China (cheap plastic trinkets at Wal-Mart) end up with massive piles of U.S. dollars...

Instead of just sitting on all of that cash, these exporting nations often reinvest much of that cash into low risk securities that can be rapidly turned back into dollars if necessary. For a very long time, U.S. Treasury bonds have been considered to be the perfect way to do this. This has created tremendous demand for U.S. government debt and has helped keep interest rates super low. So every year, massive amounts of money that gets sent out of the country ends up being loaned back to the U.S. Treasury at super low interest rates...

And it has been a very good thing for the U.S. economy that the federal government has been able to borrow money so cheaply, because the interest rate on 10 year U.S. Treasuries affects thousands upon thousands of other interest rates throughout our financial system. For example, as the rate on 10 year U.S. Treasuries has risen in recent months, so have the rates on U.S. home mortgages.

Our entire way of life in the United States depends upon this game continuing. We must have the rest of the world use our currency and loan it back to us at ultra low interest rates. At this point we have painted ourselves into a corner by accumulating so much debt. We simply cannot afford to have rates rise significantly.

A new investigation has revealed that the United States' ethanol mandate is severely harming the environment without producing enough tangible benefits.

Since the Obama administration began implementing the ethanol mandate - requiring a certain level of the biofuel to be added to the gasoline supply - the Associated Press found that the damage done by the program has dwarfed any suspected benefits, many of which failed to materialize in the first place.

Since President Obama took office, roughly five million acres of land set aside for conservation have been lost in the drive to harvest more corn for ethanol, the investigation found. Farmers have plowed into land previously unused for farming, releasing amounts of carbon dioxide into the air that would take native plants decades to reduce naturally.

Billons of pounds of fertilizer were also used on land, some of which has leaked into drinking water, rivers, and has expanded the Gulf of Mexico's dead zone, which can no longer support life.

"This is an ecological disaster," said Craig Cox with the Environmental Working Group to the AP. Cox's group, once a White House ally, now opposes the administration's ethanol policies.

The Bushes and The Lost King
The assassination of John F. Kennedy is a lot like the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Since that terrible day, almost 43 years ago, there have been over 2,000 books written about the JFK assassination. There have also been numerous television programs and several movies. There is endless theorizing and speculation as to why John F. Kennedy was executed by what amounts to a firing squad, in broad daylight, in the middle of Dallas Texas, on a sunny day in November. Additionally, there have been a lot of myths created and propagated seemingly to muddy the waters. The only thing that most of the proponents of various theories can agree on is that the FBI and the CIA did little to help the Warren Commission solve the crime. Well, that also sounds a lot like the official 9/11 Report. Both events were dealt with in the same way, by a "select group of bureaucrats with an agenda of lies".

HMS Daring and USS George Washington lead military push to help relief effort with drinking water and air support
Britain and the US are sending warships to help relief efforts in the Philippines after typhoon Haiyan left thousands dead.

The Philippine government raised the official death toll to 1,744 on Tuesday, but the figure is expected to climb drastically, with authorities estimating that the storm killed 10,000 or more across a vast region of the country, and displaced about 660,000 others.

David Cameron said HMS Daring, which carries equipment to make drinking water from seawater, would provide humanitarian assistance and flights from its onboard helicopter. At least one Boeing C-17 military transport aircraft would be allocated to move humanitarian aid to areas that are most in need and hardest to reach, the prime minister said.

"HMS Daring, currently deployed near Singapore, will shortly be heading at full speed towards the disaster zone with further support from an RAF C-17 which will be a powerful help to the relief operation," Cameron told a dinner attended by business leaders in London.

US Secretary of State John Kerry has famously stated the US "is not blind" or "stupid" in its push to clinch a historic deal over the Iranian nuclear program. [1] So now that the world has been informed, he must, cryptically, have been talking about France.

The failed Geneva negotiations this past weekend over a temporary nuclear deal at least carried the merit of revealing who is really blocking it: the axis of fear and loathing composed by the Likudniks in Israel, the House of Saud, and the Francois Hollande administration in France.

Torrents of bytes have already detailed how Israel routinely hijacks US foreign policy. Here's yet one more graphic demonstration of how Wag the Dog works. Last Friday evening, President Barack Obama called Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu asking him not to derail Geneva. Bibi then duly picked up the phone and called, in succession, British Prime Minister David Cameron, Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Hollande and asked them ... to derail Geneva.

Hollande was the only one who followed Bibi's marching orders. And all this after Kerry himself had been lectured by Bibi at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport on Friday morning.

Since the formation of Israel and even before that, Tel Aviv has always resorted to lobbying to pursue its illegitimate objectives, including efforts to earn recognition for its so-called government.

Israel's most active lobby is in the US, but it is also highly active in European countries such as Britain, Germany, France and even Italy and Spain.

The present article seeks to discuss the influence of the Zionist lobby and France-Israel ties.

After a book by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt about the influence of the Israeli lobby on US foreign policy was published in 2007, French daily Le Monde published an article in October that year describing the Zionist lobby in France as a non-transparent and deceitful group. From that point, the issue of the Zionist lobby in France and its influence on the country's foreign and domestic policy has been taken into consideration.

The Zionist lobby in France has extensive influence in three sections:

A: Media and their affiliate companies, including Eutelsat;
B: Political parties who receive campaign funding and media sponsorship from the Zionist lobby;
C: Oil and arms companies

Disgraced Chinese politician sentenced to life in prison on corruption charges named chairman of Zhi Xian party

A supporter of disgraced Chinese politician Bo Xilai says she has set up a new political party and named the imprisoned former official its chairman.

Wang Zheng said in a phone interview that the Zhi Xian party was established last Wednesday in Beijing with the objective of bringing "common prosperity" - a fairer distribution of wealth - to China.

Wang, a Beijing-based lecturer, said she wrote letters to Bo about her plan to start the party - whose name roughly translates as "supreme authority of the constitution" - but named him chairman without his express consent. She also refused to provide further details about the party's membership except saying indirectly that there were at least a dozen members.

"I can only tell you that we have more members than the number of people who attended the Communist party's first congress after it was established," Wang said. Twelve deputies attended the Communist party's first congress in Shanghai in 1921.

The intelligence and security committee's questioning made Sir David Frost's gentle sofa technique look like Klaus Barbie

Another historic milestone in the battle for parliamentary oversight was passed when Britain's spy chiefs summoned a committee of MPs and peers to justify their behaviour and reassure the public they are not a threat to national security.

To the average Ukip voter watching on almost-live TV, the nine members of the intelligence and security committee (ISC) must have looked a shifty bunch. The chairman, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, is a Scot, so he must be some kind of traitor. Labour's George Howarth sports a beard (communist?). Tory Mark Field was born in Germany (Hun?).

As for that Hazel Blears ("His and Hers" as Sir Malcolm called her in his rough Edinburgh accent), she rides a motorbike. Yes, there is plenty there for the spook community to get their digital teeth into.

Obviously it would have been more appropriate if the committee had been kitted out in orange jump suits and taken to M16 HQ at Vauxhall Cross or to GCHQ in Cheltenham for their interrogation. But constitutional niceties must be respected, so the three intelligence chiefs came to Westminster's Boothroyd Room and pretended to be grilled by the ISC. Even then they insisted on a two-minute TV pause button in case anyone blurted out a SECRET.

A Weatherford, Texas resident is facing a $3 million defamation lawsuit by Ft. Worth fracking company Range Resources. In 2011, Steve Lipsky exposed the company for contaminating his water supply with methane and benzene, DeSmog Blog reports.

In 2010, Lipsky discovered that he could light his well water on fire after the company that drilled the well came to determine why it wasn't working properly. Peck's Well Service found gas building up inside the well and lit Lipsky's water on fire to demonstrate the problem. At that time, the company installed a vent to allow some of the gas to escape.

Lipsky checked the Texas Railroad Commission's website and found that two natural gas wells run practically beneath his home. He hired an environmental consultant to test his water, along with an investigator from the Railroad Commission. Lipsky's water "effervesced like Alka-Seltzer," according to the Dallas Observer. Test results found the water had been polluted by nearby fracking operations.

For months prior, Lipsky had felt as if something wasn't right. He often felt nauseated and fatigued. At times he feared he had cancer. He testified that his submersible pump would sputter and cough and struggled to fill their 5,000-gallon holding tank. Lipsky first showed local Fire Marshall Shawn Scott that his water was flammable. Scott and his assistant fire marshall decided to measure the amount of gas coming from the well.

"We got within 20 feet of that well and the hydrocarbon detector was going bonkers, full indication," Scott told the Observer. "I couldn't get any closer because you risk burning up the sensors. This is open air. It's not like we were in a house."

Scott used another monitor to gauge the gas concentration and found that it measured 12 to 14 percent instantly - within the explosive range. "Anything above 5 percent, we start getting nervous," Scott said.

Worried for the safety of his family, Lipsky ultimately shut off the well and began trucking in water at an average cost of $1,000 a month. He sued Range Resources after an extremely rare order was issued by the Environmental Protection Agency under the Safe Water Drinking Act, determining that Range Resources' nearby fracking operations had contaminated Lipsky's well and engendered the health of his family.Summary

Europe and the US are in negotiations which they hope will result in a much needed boost to their cash flows. They're sitting down to hammer out the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, which would remove a number of regulations that currently create barriers to trade. The successful adoption of the agreement promises both parties substantial gains.