Layoffs Rise 68 Percent in April

Reuters
May 1, 2008

NEW YORK (May 1) - U.S. companies’ planned layoffs jumped 68 percent in April from the prior month to the highest since September 2006, pointing to further deterioration in the labor market, a report showed on Thursday.

Planned job cuts in U.S. companies totaled 90,015 last month, up from 53,579 in March and up 27 percent from a year earlier, employment consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. reported.

The April layoffs were the steepest since the 100,315 cuts announced in September 2006.

Most of the announced job cuts came from the financial sector, due to the housing slump and about $300 billion in write-downs on bad mortgages and investments, the firm said.

The financial services industry announced 23,106 cuts in April with almost half of them occurring in a two-day period that saw hefty planned layoffs from Citigroup (C.N) and Merrill Lynch (MER.N), it said.

The telecommunications sector was second in announced layoffs in April with 8,007, followed closely by 7,954 planned cuts in the transportation industry.

Employers have announced 290,671 jobs to be eliminated in the first four months of 2008, up 9 percent from the 266,658 cuts recorded during the same span in 2007, the firm said.

Going forward, the fallout from record oil prices may result in more layoffs than the housing slump, John A. Challenger, chief executive officer of Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

"The impact of high gasoline prices is rippling through the economy much faster than the housing collapse ever did or will," Challenger said in a statement.

The Lords of Capital Decree Mass Death by Starvation

Glen Ford
Counter Currents
May 1, 2008

“No amount of emergency aid is sufficient to make up for the wild price rises that have already occurred.”

Fidel Castro called biofuels “genocide,” and he was right. And there can be no question as to the identity of the perpetrators of this global genocide: the Lords of Capital that formulate the foreign and domestic policy of the United States. That policy calls for 20 million acres of corn from states like Iowa to be converted from food to fuel. As should have been expected, such a massive diversion almost immediately pushed up the price of all other basic foodstuffs - a global disaster made quick and easy by the fact that, over the past several decades, planetary food production has been taken over by agribusiness - the speculative human parasites that control how food is bought and sold, and to whom, and for what purpose. These Lords of Capital are killers on a mass scale.

“Hot” money has totally distorted the “marketplace” for life-sustaining goods, causing millions of the desperately poor in scores of countries to take to the streets. “In less than a year,” writes the Guardian newspaper, in Britain, “the price of wheat has risen 130 per cent, soya by 87 per cent and rice by 74 per cent.”

These are nothing less than crimes against humanity, and cannot help but destroy the lives of millions who are already at the very edge of the precipice.

“The Lords of Capital have imposed a triage of death by starvation on the planet.”

The so-called “market” - which is actually a club of super-rich men who distort and destroy everything of value to humanity that they touch - will be the death of us all, and much quicker than through the effects of global warming, which is also greatly accelerated by the ghoulish, greedy rush to grow food for cars rather than people. In such a murderous environment -manipulated purely for the profits of the Lords of Capital - neither trees nor peasants stand a chance. The United Nations says it needs about half a billion dollars for the most critical cases of starvation, but no amount of emergency aid is sufficient to make up for the wild price rises that have already occurred - and which will put trillions in the pockets of the Lords of Capital.

Agribusiness wiped out small farmers in the U.S., and impoverished and pushed off the land untold millions of peasants, worldwide. Now the Lords of Capital have imposed a triage of death by starvation on the planet. The people who live on two dollars or less per day will have to die, and then, as prices rise, the three dollar people will follow.

The men who profit from such mass murder use terms like “structural adjustment” and “economic fundamentals” to attach a veneer of rationality to a chaotic system they have created on the fly for the sole purpose of mega-theft. In the end, the Lords of Capital have mastered only one art: the production of overlapping calamities, each more lethal than the last. Soon, if not already, the Haitian poor will have no cooking oil to mix with clay for their diet of dirt pies. The Lords of Capital will have turned them into dirt for another Haitian’s consumption and demise.

DC Madam Predicted She Would Be Suicided

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Thursday, May 1, 2008

Click here to listen to Palfrey clearly state that she would not commit suicide.

DC Madam Deborah Jeane Palfrey predicted she would be "suicided" on several occasions both recently and as far back as 17 years ago - comments that now appear ominous in light of the announcement that the former head of a Washington escort service allegedly killed herself today.

"If taken into custody, my physical safety and most probably my very life would be jeopardized," she wrote in August 1991 following an attempt to bring her to trial, "Rape, beating, maiming, disfigurement and more than likely murder disguised in the form of just another jailhouse accident or suicide would await me," said Palfrey in a handwritten letter to the judge accusing the San Diego police vice squad of having a vendetta against her.

During several recent appearances on The Alex Jones Show, Palfrey also said that she was at risk of being killed and that authorities would make it look like suicide. She made it clear that she was not suicidal and if she was found dead it would be murder.

Palfrey had threatened to release the names of well-known clients of her upscale call girl ring in the nation’s capitol, and had indicated that Dick Cheney may be one of them.

"We now know it goes at least as high as a United States Senator," Palfrey told The Alex Jones Show, "I’m hearing rumors now from other people that there are other possibilities in that stratosphere so to speak, on that level."

"No I’m not planning to commit suicide," Palfrey told The Alex Jones Show on her last appearance in July, "I’m planning on going into court and defending myself vigorously and exposing the government," she said.

"Blanche Palfrey had no sign that her daughter was suicidal, and there was no immediate indication that alcohol or drugs were involved, police Capt. Jeffrey Young said," according to an AP report.

Click here to listen to Palfrey clearly state that she would not commit suicide.

Click here to listen to the entirety of the last interview with Palfrey.

UPDATE: In an almost uncanny development, as soon as this article started to go viral on the Internet, Time Magazine released a story claiming that Palfrey told author Dan Moldea that she would rather commit suicide than go to jail. What a funny coincidence!

RELATED: Palfrey Considered Call Girl’s "Suicide" Possible Murder

FLASHBACK: D.C. Madame: "Big Names" May Be On Client List

Developing…..

Oliver North: Rev. Wright “A Recruiting Campaign for Al Qaeda And All The Enemies Of America”

News Hounds
May 1, 2008

In the second-to-last segment of an entire Hannity & Colmes show devoted to Rev. Jeremiah Wright last night (4/29/08), convicted liar Oliver North (his conviction was later overturned on appeal) joined race-obsessed Sean Hannity in the Rev. Wright pile-on. Instead of the racial angle that Hannity harps on, North accused Wright of being “a recruiting camaign for Al Qaeda and all the enemies of America.” With video.

Hannity has spent night after night attacking Wright but when Wright complained at the National Press Club that Oliver North, as part of the Iran Contra scandal, sold arms to the Contras who were killing the peasants and indigenous peoples, Hannity got on his Hanctimonious high horse and declared, “There he is, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, taking a shot at our own friend, Col. Oliver North!”

North and Hannity were full of bullboy swagger about being proud of being attacked by Wright.

With hammy outrage, Hannity said, “He attacked me in a eulogy at a funeral, for crying out loud!”

Funny, but Hannity had no compunction about smearing his supposed friend, Rev. Joseph Lowery and his eulogy for Coretta Scott King because Hannity thought it too critical of President Bush.

North hyperbolically said, “("Wright) has gone after everything that is good and decent in America.”

Hannity, never one to slavishly stick to the facts when he’s on a smear campaign, claimed that Wright had “basically” accused North of “murder and atrocities.”

"Patriotic" North added, "And what this man has become is a recruiting campaign for Al Qaeda and all the enemies of America.”

Kudos to Alan Colmes for stepping up to the plate and telling North “This is an effort to just blast Obama, blast Wright, denounce these people when they have done nothing wrong.”

Colmes continued, “Was there an Iran Contra scandal? Was he right about that?"

North agreed there was, then neatly sidestepped the issue by saying, “Nobody ever accused me of murder.”

North continued, “The reality of life is that America supported Democratic movements all over the world and we did so in Nicaragua and thank God they won.” In other words, he has no regrets about what he did.

Referring to the accusations against Obama for serving on a board with former radical William Ayers, Colmes pointed out that Bush 41 sits on the board of The Carlyle Group with a member of the Bin Laden family. “Do we go after him for that? …Do we play that game of guilt by association?”

Then North went on to smear Wright for having bought “about a $10 million mansion in an all white neighborhood.” That kind of puts the lie to his being a racist, eh? But somehow North missed that.

“Good for him,” Colmes said. “Aren’t you a capitalist?”

North said, “I certainly am, but I don’t do it on a public charity”

Oh, yes he does! His Freedom Alliance charity was given an F last year for its meager spending on veterans relative to the monies received. Furthermore, out of the hefty ticket price charged for the so-called "benefit" Freedom Concerts that Hannity puts on for North’s charity each year, less than 1% goes to the charity.

CIA Chief Sees Unrest Rising With Population

By Joby Warrick

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 1, 2008; Page A15

Swelling populations and a global tide of immigration will present new security challenges for the United States by straining resources and stoking extremism and civil unrest in distant corners of the globe, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said in a speech yesterday.

The population surge could undermine the stability of some of the world's most fragile states, especially in Africa, while in the West, governments will be forced to grapple with ever larger immigrant communities and deepening divisions over ethnicity and race, Hayden said.

Hayden, speaking at Kansas State University, described the projected 33 percent growth in global population over the next 40 years as one of three significant trends that will alter the security landscape in the current century. By 2050, the number of humans on Earth is expected to rise from 6.7 billion to more than 9 billion, he said.

"Most of that growth will occur in countries least able to sustain it, a situation that will likely fuel instability and extremism, both in those countries and beyond," Hayden said.

With the population of countries such as Niger and Liberia projected to triple in size in 40 years, regional governments will be forced to rapidly find food, shelter and jobs for millions, or deal with restive populations that "could be easily attracted to violence, civil unrest, or extremism," he said.

European countries, many of which already have large immigrant communities, will see particular growth in their Muslim populations while the number of non-Muslims will shrink as birthrates fall. "Social integration of immigrants will pose a significant challenge to many host nations -- again boosting the potential for unrest and extremism," Hayden said.

The CIA director also predicted a widening gulf between Europe and North America on how to deal with security threats, including terrorism. While U.S. and European officials agree on the urgency of the terrorism threat, there is a fundamental difference -- a "transatlantic divide" -- over the solution, he said.

While the United States sees the fight against terrorism as a global war, European nations perceive the terrorist threat as a law enforcement problem, he said.

"They tend not to view terrorism as we do, as an overwhelming international challenge. Or if they do, we often differ on what would be effective and appropriate to counter it," Hayden said. He added that he could not predict "when or if" the two sides could forge a common approach to security.

A third security trend highlighted by Hayden was the emergence of China as a global economic and military powerhouse, pursuing its narrow strategic and political interests. But Hayden said China's increasing prominence need not be perceived as a direct challenge to the United States.

"If Beijing begins to accept greater responsibility for the health of the international system, as all global powers should, we will remain on a constructive, even if competitive, path," he said. "If not, the rise of China begins to look more adversarial."