* Porsche schedules 8 days of production stops at main plant
* Volkswagen may stop production in Wolfsburg for 3 weeks
* Audi says production halts are a precaution
* BMW says will cut further 400 temporary jobs in Leipzig
* Porsche shares down 8.8 pct, VW down 17.7 pct

Joseph Farah
Way back in 1971, the English rock band the Who had a hit song called “Don’t Get Fooled Again.”
It was an interesting song for the times – with the air of revolution wafting through America’s campuses and streets. This was a song that said it was all futile – with the key lyric [...]

Washington is Fostering Political Divisions between India and Pakistan
by Michel Chossudovsky
November 30, 2008
The Mumbai terror attacks were part of a carefully planned and coordinated operation involving several teams of experienced and trained gunmen.

By Charles Peña
November 30, 2008
While the Fourth Amendment guarantees “the right of the people to be secure in their persons … and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures,” the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) made it clear earlier this month that the Constitution does not apply in D.C. According to Metro Transit Police Chief [...]

By Jane Black
Fueled by rising unemployment and food prices, the number of Americans on food stamps is poised to exceed 30 million for the first time this month, surpassing the historic high set in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina.
The figures will put the spotlight on hunger when Congress begins deliberations on a new economic stimulus [...]

By Judy Keen, USA TODAY
Donations to many of the USA’s food banks are not keeping pace with growing demand as the sour economy forces more people to seek help, charitable organizations say.
“We have seen a 100% increase in demand in the last year … and food donations have dropped precipitously,” says Dana Wilkie, CEO of [...]

By Joe Nocera
A few weeks ago, I published an e-mail message sent to me from an executive who works in the banking industry — and had become disgusted by what he sees all around him. This weekend, that same banker sent me another e-mail message, which he has also agree to let me publish. It’s [...]

• Shutdowns planned at factories across continent
• Companies see biggest crisis in 60 years
David Gow in Brussels and Dan Milmo in New York
November 28 2008
Europe’s motor industry is in a blind panic. In boardrooms across the continent, the talk is of the biggest emergency for 60 years - or at least since the 1973 [...]

By Fred Pals and Maher Chmaytelli
Nov. 29 (Bloomberg) — OPEC members delayed a decision on whether to cut production again this year until mid-December, giving them more time to assess previous attempts to halt a plunge in prices.
OPEC, the producer of more than 40 percent of the world’s oil, will take any “additional action” [...]

by Clif Droke
November 29, 2008
After suffering through the biggest stock market correction since the 1930s, many are wondering if the market - that great discounting mechanism - foresees depression in 2009.
The thinking behind this interpretation of the 45% correction is that the stock market envisions a collapse in GDP and the biggest downturn in consumer [...]

(This is for “Entertainment Purposes…This has some “interesting’ thoughts…Paul)
As early as autumn 2009 the economic crisis may lead to a civil war in the USA and then to its division into parts. Igor Panarin, doctor of political science, dean of the foreign affairs department at the Diplomacy Academy of the Russian Foreign Ministry, presented this [...]

by Mike Adams
November 28, 2008
An internal memo from a top Citibank analyst reveals what the banks really think about the global financial situation, and the outlook is grim.
“The world is not going back to normal after the magnitude of what they have done. When the dust settles this will either work, and the money they [...]

Rubin Clones and Other Fakers
By MIKE WHITNEY
November 28-30, 2008
Things are getting crazier by the day. On Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson announced that the Fed would commit another $800 billion to fight the financial crisis which has spread to the broader economy and is causing sharp declines in consumer spending. The Fed plans [...]

By JILL LAWLESS
Nov 29
REYKJAVIK, Iceland (AP) - Iceland’s prime minister on Saturday defied calls to step down in the wake of his country’s economic meltdown, as protesters gathered for an eighth consecutive week to demand his resignation.
Geir H. Haarde said he intended to lead Iceland through a crisis that has seen the spectacular collapse [...]

by Doug French
Modern financial history is a long series of spectacular asset bubbles followed by equally dramatic crashes. Before, during, and after, the question always arises – whether it’s stocks, bonds, real estate, or collateralized debt obligations – what is the cause of such, as it appears in hindsight, folly?

by Michael Tennant
It’s 2:00 AM. You are aroused from your slumber by the sound of someone’s pounding on your front door. You stumble to the door and open it to find three men in expensive, pin-striped suits who haul you off to a warehouse and, under the threat of “sleeping with the fishes,” force you [...]

by Jacob G. Hornberger
As Barack Obama prepares to assume the presidency, it would be appropriate today to remember that the original Thanksgiving celebrated the demise of the “spread-the-wealth” economic system that the colonists at Plymouth Rock initially established.

By: Alan Stang
Saturday, November 29, 2008
The event that will determine whether or not this nation survives was not the popular vote for Illegal-Alien Elect Hussein. It will be the decision the U.S. Supreme Court makes on whether he is eligible to serve. Some people in the other branches have said the Constitution is dead. The [...]

By: Justin Raimondo
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Of course there’s nothing all that unusual about a spy going to work for a Washington thinktank. Ex-CIA employees do it all the time: so do all sorts of other spooks, who would otherwise be haunting the world’s darkest corners. No big deal. But what I’ve never seen, and don’t [...]

Erica Carle
November 29, 2008
Sociology is not a science. It is a system of strategies being used to reach a particular goal.
What is that goal?
“the entire systematisation of human life on the basis of the preponderance of the heart over the intellect.”

By Cliff Kincaid
November 29, 2008
“Mortgage Rates Fall as U.S. Expands Rescue” was the page-one headline in the November 26 Wall Street Journal. The story concerned a promise from federal officials to “pump” another $800 billion into the economy, bringing the grand total of the cost of various bailouts to something over $8 trillion. The term [...]

by Butler Shaffer
Chaos is found in greatest abundance wherever order is being sought. Chaos always defeats order because it is better organized.~ Terry Pratchett
My last words on the gallows will be to praise the study of chaos. For the sake of our very survival as a species, the destructive and dysfunctional nature of our [...]

by Patrick J. Buchanan
November 27, 2008
Barack Obama and George W. Bush seem to have come away from their study of the Great Depression with similar conclusions:
To wit: After the Crash of 1929, the Federal Reserve did not move fast enough to save the banks and inject cash into the economy. Second, the New [...]

Yes, they’re connected…
by Justin Raimondo
One is hardly ever shocked anymore: that seems to be the defining characteristic of modernity. Yet I got to experience that rare sensation the other day when I read this blog item on LewRockwell.com. Aha! I thought. So that’s why the MSNBCers are hailing the Big Bailout at the top of [...]

By Julia Werdigier
November 28, 2008
LONDON: The British government took control of Royal Bank of Scotland on Friday after investors shunned the lender’s share sale, paving the way for a larger government role in Britain’s banking sector.
Investors only signed up for 0.24 percent of the shares, which were offered as part of a plan to [...]

Patrick Hosking
Is Britain simply a bigger version of Iceland? Certainly the City of London is starting to look a bit too much like Reykjavik, but with taller buildings and fewer cod. It is an exaggeration, but not that much of an exaggeration, to liken the UK to the broken, bankrupt North Atlantic island.

Socialist activist Bonier reportedly being considered for Labor secretary
By Aaron Klein
November 28, 2008
President-elect Barack Obama recently appointed to his economic transition team a known socialist activist who has previously urged the creation of a North American Parliamentary Union, a governing body to consist of Mexico, Canada and the U.S.

A forum of top economists from banks and institutes across Europe have called for drastic cuts in interest rates to head off a slump in the eurozone, slamming the European Central Bank for reacting too slowly to the fast-moving crisis.
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
28 Nov 2008

Denial of Letters of Credit
by Andy Hughes
November 28, 2008
The Baltic Dry Index continues to lower as the demand for raw materials continues to drop to unseen levels.
“Capesize Vessels” weigh from 175,000 tons to 400,000 tons and count as some of the largest craft in the World. They typically carry raw materials such as Iron [...]

by F. William Engdahl
November 26, 2008
Just weeks after President George W. Bush signed the Order creating a new US military command dedicated to Africa, AFRICOM, events on the mineral-rich continent have erupted which suggest a major agenda of the incoming Obama Presidency will be for the son of a black Kenyan to focus US resources, [...]

Leo Lewis
November 26, 2008
Toyota Motor, the world’s biggest automaker and a towering icon of Japanese industrial power, has been stripped of its AAA credit rating under the darkening global economic storm.
The downgrade, said analysts at Fitch Ratings, effectively passes sentence on the entire worldwide auto industry, showing that the business of building cars can [...]

Collectively and individually, we all learn through crises. But only after a crisis is over do we recognize the lessons learned and become thankful for the fundamental and needed changes such crises bring. When this crisis is over, we too will be thankful for its gifts. But this crisis is not yet over. It has [...]

By MADLEN READ
November 25, 2008
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said Tuesday the list of banks it considers to be in trouble shot up nearly 50 percent to 171 during the third quarter — yet another sign of escalating problems among the institutions controlling Americans’ deposits.

By Timothy R. Homan and Shobhana Chandra
Nov. 26 (Bloomberg) — Orders for U.S. durable goods fell twice as much as forecast in October as the credit freeze deepened and sales tumbled.
The 6.2 percent drop in bookings of goods meant to last several years was the biggest in two years and followed a revised 0.2 [...]

by William Norman Grigg
Recalling the death of Alexander Hamilton at the hands of Aaron Burr, one is inevitably prompted to borrow the line from Shakespeare’s Scottish Play: “Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it.”
After examining the legacy of the first U.S. Treasury Secretary in Thomas DiLorenzo’s timely and indispensable new book [...]

By Philip Delves Broughton
NOVEMBER 25, 2008
How quickly could the United Kingdom go bankrupt? Given the speed at which countries and companies have been brought to their knees in recent months, it is no longer hard to envision a scenario in which foreign investors become spooked by the UK’s soaring debts and flee.

By Aluf Benn
26/11/2008
WASHINGTON - Israel is asking U.S. President George W. Bush to describe to his successor, Barack Obama, the American commitment to ensure that its strategic deterrence is not compromised. The subject was the focus of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s farewell meeting in the White House on Monday with Bush and top [...]

Tony Halpin
November 26, 2008
Russian warships received a 21-gun salute in Venezuela yesterday as they made their first show of force in America’s backyard since the end of the Cold War.

24/ 11/ 2008
MOSCOW, November 24 (RIA Novosti) - A leading Russian political analyst has said the economic turmoil in the United States has confirmed his long-held view that the country is heading for collapse, and will divide into separate parts.

By Michael Cutler
November 26, 2008
I have read a commentary that appears in today’s edition of ILW.com that is focused on immigration and the needs of immigration attorneys.
You will notice that the term “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” is nowhere to be found in the article. The alias now being used to describe Comprehensive Immigration Reform is “CIR.” [...]

By Neal Ross
November 26, 2008
The other day at work I got into a discussion with a woman about firearms. It all began when I mentioned that I intend to buy a new pistol. This person told me that I shouldn’t buy another gun, in fact nobody should have any guns because guns kill too many [...]

By: Phil Brennan
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Thanksgiving, nowadays often known irreverently as Turkey Day, is a religious and not a civic holiday and I don’t give a doodly damn if that fact offends those poor demented folks who can’t abide the thought that there is a Divine entity overseeing mankind’s affairs who needs to be thanked [...]

O give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever. O give thanks unto the God of gods: for his mercy endureth for ever. O give thanks to the Lord of lords: for his mercy endureth for ever (Psalm 136:1–3)
by Gary North

by Chris Brown
If man is really free, how can we account for his inability to fly, to travel through time, to leap across the ocean, for not being omniscient or omnipotent? In short, wouldn’t man have to be more like Superman to actually be free? Man is constrained in some ways, isn’t he? Is man [...]

Police Get 1,000 Firearms In Gun Buy-Back Programs
CLEVELAND — The cities of Cleveland and Akron got more than 1,000 firearms off the streets in gun buy-back events this weekend.
The city of Cleveland’s 2008 gun buy-back program netted 324 firearms Saturday at the Cleveland Convention Center, Lt. Thomas Stacho said. Last year, police collected 421 firearms.

By Mark Gilbert
Nov. 25 (Bloomberg) — Food prices will rise next year, prompting a revival of protectionism from food-growing nations and risking a renewed bout of rioting, according to Jochen Hitzfeld, an analyst at UniCredit SpA in Munich.
“Agricultural commodities will outperform the broad commodity indices in 2009,” Hitzfeld wrote in a research note this [...]