Julian Assange, Infinite Justice Barack Obama, His Mother, And The CIA

I’m sure most Americans are mighty proud of the fact that Julian Assange is so frightened of falling into the custody of the United States that he had to seek sanctuary in the embassy of Ecuador, a tiny and poor Third World country, without any way of knowing how it would turn out. He might be forced to be there for years. “That’ll teach him to mess with the most powerful country in the world! All you other terrorists and anti-Americans out there — Take Note! When you fuck around with God’s country you pay a price!”

How true. You do pay a price. Ask the people of Cuba, Vietnam, Chile, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Iran, Haiti, etc., etc., etc. And ask the people of Guantánamo, Diego Garcia, Bagram, and a dozen other torture centers to which God’s country offers free transportation.

You think with the whole world watching, the United States would not be so obvious as to torture Assange if they got hold of him? Ask Bradley Manning. At a bare minimum, prolonged solitary confinement is torture. Before too long the world may ban it. Not that that would keep God’s country and other police states from using it.

You think with the whole world watching, the United States would not be so obvious as to target Assange with a drone? They’ve done it with American citizens. Assange is a mere Aussie.

And Ecuador and its president, Rafael Correa, will pay a price. You think with the whole world watching, the United States would not intervene in Ecuador? In Latin America, it comes very naturally for Washington. During the Cold War it was said that the United States could cause the downfall of a government south of the border … with a frown. The dissolution of the Soviet Union didn’t bring any change in that because it was never the Soviet Union per se that the United States was fighting. It was the threat of a good example of an alternative to the capitalist model.

For example, on January 21, 2000 in Ecuador, where almost two-thirds live in poverty, a very large number of indigenous peasants rose up in desperation and marched to the capital city of Quito, where they were joined by labor unions and some junior military officers (most members of the army being of indigenous stock). This coalition presented a list of economic demands, seized the Congress and Supreme Court buildings, and forced the president to resign. He was replaced by a junta from the ranks of the new coalition. The Clinton administration was alarmed. Besides North American knee-reflex hostility to anything that look or smells like a leftist revolution, Washington had big plans for a large military base in Manta (later closed by Correa). And Colombia — already plagued by leftist movements — was next door.

The US quickly stepped in to educate the Ecuadorean coalition leaders as to the facts of Western Hemispheric imperial life. The American embassy in Quito … Peter Romero, Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America and Western Hemispheric Affairs … Sandy Berger, National Security Adviser to President Clinton … Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering … all made phone calls to Ecuadorian officials to threaten a cutoff in aid and other support, warning that “Ecuador will find itself isolated”, informing them that the United States would never recognize any new government the coalition might set up, there would be no peace in Ecuador unless the military backed the vice president as the new leader, and the vice president must continue to pursue neoliberal “reforms”, the kind of IMF structural adjustment policies which had played a major role in inciting the uprising in the first place.

Within hours the heads of the Ecuadorian army, navy and air force declared their support for the vice president. The leaders of the uprising fled into hiding. And that was the end of the Ecuadorian revolution of the year 2000.¹

Rafael Correa was first elected in 2006 with a 58% majority, and reelected in 2009 with a 55% majority; his current term runs until August 2013. The American mainstream media has been increasingly critical of him. The following letter sent in January to the Washington Post by the Ecuadoran ambassador to the United States is an attempt to clarify one of the issues.

Letter to the Editor:

We were offended by the Jan. 12 editorial “Ecuador’s bully,” which focused on a lawsuit brought by our president, Rafael Correa, after a newspaper claimed that he was guilty of ordering troops to fire on innocent citizens during a failed coup in 2010. The president asked the publishers to release their evidence or a retraction. When they refused, he sued, as any citizen should do when recklessly wronged.

No journalist has gone to prison or paid a significant fine in the five years of the Correa presidency. Media criticism — fair and unfair, sometimes with malice — of the government appears every day. The case involving the newspaper is on appeal. When the judicial process ends, the president has said, he will waive some or all of the penalties provided he gets a retraction. That is a common solution to libel and slander cases in the United States, I believe.

Your writer uses obnoxious phrases such as “banana republic,” but here is the reality of today’s Ecuador: a highly popular, stable and progressive democracy for the first time in decades.

Nathalie Cely, Washington

No shelter from the drones of infinite justice or the bacteria of enduring freedom

Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai said recently that he had had an argument with Gen. John Allen, the top US commander in Afghanistan, about the issue of American drone attacks in Afghanistan, following yet another deadly airstrike that killed a number of civilians. Karzai asked Allen an eminently reasonable question: “Do you do this in the United States?” The Afghan president added: “There is police action every day in the United States in various localities. They don’t call an airplane to bomb the place.”²

Karzai’s question to Allen was rhetorical of course, for can it be imagined that American officials would bomb a house in an American city because they suspected that certain bad guys were present there? Well, the answer to that question is that it can be imagined because they’ve already done it.

In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. On May 13, 1985, a bomb dropped by a police helicopter burned down an entire block, some 60 homes destroyed, 11 dead, including several small children. The police, the mayor’s office, and the FBI were all involved in this effort to evict an organization called MOVE from the house they lived in.

The victims were all black of course. So let’s rephrase our question. Can it be imagined that American officials would bomb a house in Beverly Hills or the upper east side of Manhattan? Stay tuned.

And what else can we imagine about a society that’s been super militarized, that’s at war with much of the world, and is convinced that it’s on the side of the angels and history? Well, the Boston transit system, MBTA, recently announced that in conjunction with Homeland Security they plan to release dead bacteria at three stations during off-hours this summer in order to test sensors that detect biological agents, which terrorists could release into subway systems. The bacterium, bacillus subtilis, is not infectious even in its live form, according to the government.³

However, this too has a precedent. During five days in June, 1966 the Army conducted a test called “A Study of the Vulnerability of Subway Passengers in New York City to Covert Attack with Biological Agents”. Trillions ofbacillus subtilis variant niger were released into the subway system during rush hours, producing aerosol clouds. The report on the test noted that “When the cloud engulfed people, they brushed their clothing, looked up at the grate [at street level] and walked on.”⁴ The wind of passing trains spread the bacteria along the tracks; in the time it took for two trains to pass, the bacteria were spread from 15th Street to 58th Street.⁵ It is not known how many people later became ill from being unsuspecting guinea pigs because the United States Army, as far as is known, exhibited no interest in this question.

For the planned Boston test the public has not been informed of the exact days; nor is it known how long the bacteria might linger in the stations or what the possible danger might be to riders whose immune system has been weakened for any reason.

It should be noted that the New York subway experiment was only one of many such experiments. The Army has acknowledged that between 1949 and 1969, 239 populated areas from coast to coast as well as US overseas territories were blanketed with various organisms during tests designed to measure patterns of dissemination in the air, weather effects, dosages, optimum placement of the source, and other factors. Such testing was supposedly suspended after 1969.⁶

Government officials have consistently denied that the biological agents used could be harmful despite an abundance of expert and objective scientific evidence that exposure to heavy concentrations of even apparently innocuous organisms can cause illness, at a minimum to the most vulnerable segments of the population — the elderly, children, and those suffering from a variety of ailments. “There is no such thing as a microorganism that cannot cause trouble,” George Connell, assistant to the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, testified before the Senate in 1977. “If you get the right concentration at the right place, at the right time, and in the right person, something is going to happen.”⁷

The United States has used biological weapons abroad as well, repeatedly, not for testing purposes but for hostile purposes.⁸ So what will the land which has the highest (double) standards say when such weapons are used against it? Or when foreign drones hit American cities? Or when American hi-tech equipment is sabotaged by a cyber attack as the US has now admitted doing to Iran? A year ago the Pentagon declared that “computer sabotage coming from another country can constitute an act of war. … If you shut down our power grid, maybe we will put a missile down one of your smokestacks,” said a US military official.⁹

“The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity.” – André Gide, French Author, 1869-1951

Barack Obama, his mother, and the CIA

In his autobiography, Dreams From My Fathers, Barack Obama writes of taking a job at some point after graduating from Columbia University in 1983. He describes his employer as “a consulting house to multinational corporations” in New York City, and his functions as a “research assistant” and “financial writer”.

Oddly, Obama doesn’t mention the name of his employer. However, a New York Times story of October 30, 2007 identifies the company as Business International Corporation. Equally odd is that the Times did not remind its readers that the newspaper itself had disclosed in 1977 that Business International had provided cover for four CIA employees in various countries between 1955 and 1960.¹⁰

The British journal, Lobster — which, despite its incongruous name, is a venerable international publication on intelligence matters — has reported that Business International was active in the 1980s promoting the candidacy of Washington-favored candidates in Australia and Fiji.¹¹ In 1987, the CIA overthrew the Fiji government after but one month in office because of its policy of maintaining the island as a nuclear-free zone, meaning that American nuclear-powered or nuclear-weapons-carrying ships could not make port calls.¹² After the Fiji coup, the candidate supported by Business International, who was much more amenable to Washington’s nuclear desires, was reinstated to power — R.S.K. Mara was Prime Minister or President of Fiji from 1970 to 2000, except for the one-month break in 1987.

In his book, not only doesn’t Obama mention his employer’s name; he fails to say exactly when he worked there, or why he left the job. There may well be no significance to these omissions, but inasmuch as Business International has a long association with the world of intelligence, covert actions, and attempts to penetrate the radical left — including Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)¹³ — it’s reasonable to wonder if the inscrutable Mr. Obama is concealing something about his own association with this world.

Adding to the wonder is the fact that his mother, Ann Dunham, had been associated during the 1970s and 80s — as employee, consultant, grantee, or student — with at least five organizations with intimate CIA connections during the Cold War: The Ford Foundation, Agency for International Development (AID), the Asia Foundation, Development Alternatives, Inc., and the East-West Center of Hawaii.¹⁴ Much of this time she worked as an anthropologist in Indonesia and Hawaii, being in good position to gather intelligence about local communities.

As one example of the CIA connections of these organizations, consider the disclosure by John Gilligan, Director of AID during the Carter administration (1977-81). “At one time, many AID field offices were infiltrated from top to bottom with CIA people. The idea was to plant operatives in every kind of activity we had overseas, government, volunteer, religious, every kind.”¹⁵ And Development Alternatives, Inc. is the organization for whom Alan Gross was working when arrested in Cuba and charged with being part of the ongoing American operation to destabilize the Cuban government.

How the owners of a society play with their property

The Supreme Court of the United States has just upheld the constitutionality of President Obama’s health care law, the Affordable Care Act. Liberals as well as many progressives are very pleased, regarding this as a victory for the left.

Under the new law, people can benefit in one way or another depending on the following factors:

Their age; whether their income is at or below 133 percent of the federal poverty level; whether their parents have a health plan; whether they use tobacco; what state they live in; whether they have a pre-existing medical condition; whether they qualify to buy health insurance through newly-created market places known as “exchanges”; and numerous other criteria … They can obtain medical insurance in a “competitive insurance market” (emphasis on the “competitive”); they can perhaps qualify for various other kinds of credits and tax relief if they meet certain criteria … The authors of the Act state that it will save thousands of dollars in drug costs for Medicare beneficiaries by closing a coverage gap called the “donut hole” … They tell us that “It keeps insurance companies honest by setting clear rules that rein in the worst insurance industry abuses.”

That’s a sample of how health care looks in the United States of America in the 21st century, with a complexity that will keep a small army of lawyers busy for years to come. Ninety miles away, in the Republic of Cuba, it looks a bit different. If you feel sick you go to a doctor. You’re automatically qualified to receive any medical care that’s available and thought to be suitable. The doctor treats you to the best of his or her ability. The insurance companies play no role. There are no insurance companies. You don’t pay anything. You go home.

The Affordable Care Act will undoubtedly serve as a disincentive to the movement for single-payer national health insurance, setting the movement back for years. The Affordable Care Act was undoubtedly designed for that purpose.

Notes

1. Washington Post, January 23, 2000, p.1; “The coup in Ecuador: a grim warning”, World Socialist Web Site, February 2, 2000; Z Magazine (Massachusetts), February 2001, pp.36-7 ^↩
2. Washington Post, June 12, 2012 ^↩
3. Beacon Hill Patch (Boston), “MBTA to Spread Dead Bacteria on Red Line in Bio-Terror Test”, May 18, 2012 ^↩
4. Leonard Cole, Clouds of Secrecy: The Army’s Germ Warfare Tests over Populated Areas (1990), pp.65-9^↩
5. New York Times, September 19, 1975, p.14 ^↩
6. “Biological Testing Involving Human Subjects by the Department of Defense”, 1977, Hearings before the Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research of the Committee on Human Resources, US Senate, March 8 and May 23, 1977; see also William Blum, Rogue State, chapter 15 ^↩
7. Senate Hearings, op. cit., p.270 ^↩
8. Rogue State, op. cit., chapter 14 ^↩
9. Wall Street Journal, May 30, 2011 ^↩
10. New York Times, December 27, 1977, p.40 ^↩
11. Lobster magazine, Hull, UK, #14, November 1987 ^↩
12. Rogue State, op. cit., pp.199-200 ^↩
13. Carl Oglesby, Ravens in the Storm: A Personal History of the 1960s Antiwar Movement (2008), passim^↩
14. Wikipedia entry for Ann Dunham ^↩
15. George Cotter, “Spies, strings and missionaries”, The Christian Century (Chicago), March 25, 1981, p.321

Taking The Temperature of The Department of Consumer Affairs–Diagnosis: DEADLY

Reichel Everhart, the Deputy Director of the California Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA), has declined to respond to questions as to the functioning of the Professional Fiduciaries Bureau, which is housed in the DCA. Nor will she respond to written requests to direct the Bureau to respond to public records act requests in a manner which would be considered legal. The two records requests in question, one made to the PFB in January of 2012 and the other made in April of 2012, produced email responses which were highly problematic.

The proper format to respond to a public records act request is by letter, as emails may not be considered legal tender. In fact, if there were a legal challenge to the content of the responses, the emails might not be admissable in a court of law.

In an email dated January 27, 2012, DCA Press Officer Russ Heimerich replied to a public records act request for the policies and procedures manual in use by the PFB, admitting there were no such written records. Clearly, for a government agency to be operating in a vacuum of written guidelines is unheard of. The terminology used for such an absence of written procedures is “underground guidelines,” which, according to attorney Bruce Ebert, are simply illegal.

The request was made due to the mounting evidence that the PFB has gone rogue. Top of the list of concerns is the fact that the agency is closing complaints with no legal basis to do so. The tiny PFB, staffed by only one analyst, Angela Bigelow, and a part-time bureau chief, Gil DeLuna, serves the critical function of overseeing and licensing professional conservators and fiduciaries. The complaints which have been closed by the Bureau include allegations of theft, embezzlement and profound physical and medical abuse. A number of the complaints have alleged that the abuse of the elderly or disabled person resulted in death. Queries made as to the reason for complaint closure have met with silence.

Guardianship abuse is admittedly a hot button item. The abuses being committed against these vulnerable citizens has reached a critical point and grassroots groups have sprung up across the country in an effort to address this. Activists, such as Bonnie Reiter and Dr. Robert Sarhan, each of whom allege that a conservator caused the untimely death of a parent, have visited D.C., met with Congressmen, written letters to the media, made reports to the FBI, all with no ostensible results.

Another public records request tendered in April asked for interagency memos advising the Bureau that they would be protected for failing to investigate or prosecute claims of conservator crimes. PFB Chief Gil Deluna replied—via email– that there were no such records. DeLuna was repeatedly contacted asking if he would put his reply in the form of a letter and has not replied.

The record of the DCA in prosecuting complaints speaks for itself. The most recent available annual report—for 2010– lists, under the Conviction/Arrest notification category, that there were zero arrests made, zero pending and zero referred for investigation. Zero inspections were conducted and zero citations were issued. There were zero referrals for criminal action made and zero for civil. The report states that, in terms of cost recovery to complainants, zero dollars had been ordered and zero dollars had been collected.

In a conversation several months ago, DCA Deputy Director Reichel Everhart sounded shocked to learn that the PFB had no written guidelines. She promised to speak with PFB Chief DeLuna and get back to this reporter promptly. Since then, Everhart has been unavailable for comment and has not fulfilled her promise.

The Bureau appears to be operating under a cloak of secrecy and provides little transparency as to its functioning. Issues of concern include that agency’s negligence in advising complainants that their complaints were closed. Several complainants, including Joe Quattrochi and Gina Rilke, were surprised to learn that their complaints were closed over a year ago as they were never so informed. Nor will the agency provide the file of the complaint, including any scrap of work product, to the complainant upon request. It’s all hush-hush.

The Professional Fiduciaries Bureau was created by an act of the Legislature in 2006, following an investigative series into conservatorship abuse, published in the Los Angeles Times. The abuses detailed in the series, “Guardians for Profit—When a Family Matter becomes a Business,” produced a public outcry and the Legislature swung into action, passing the Omnibus Conservatorship Reform Act of 2006.The Bureau’s funding was subsequently line item vetoed for two years in a row by Governor Schwarzenegger, and thus only opened its doors for business in late 2008.

The Bureau is tasked with holding public meetings four times a year. Per its own website, there have been no public meetings in eight months, since October of last year. Activists and conservatorship abuse victims became interested in these public meetings and started to attend them last year. The meetings were then apparently discontinued.

Former Assemblyman Dave Jones was a primary author of the legislation which created the Bureau. Jones, now California Insurance Commissioner, has declined to reply to questions as to what has happened to his brainchild. Speaking under conditions of anonymity, Jones’ staffer angrily suggested that such questions were inappropriate.

The White House Secret Kill List

In a recent column, Judge Andrew Napolitano highlighted a recent New York Times investigative report that reveals how President Barack Obama is engaging in secret assassinations worldwide. Judge Napolitano begins, “The leader of the government regularly sits down with his senior generals and spies and advisers and reviews a list of the people they want him to authorize their agents to kill. They do this every Tuesday morning when the leader is in town. The leader once condemned any practice even close to this, but now relishes the killing because he has convinced himself that it is a sane and sterile way to keep his country safe and himself in power. The leader, who is running for re-election, even invited his campaign manager to join the group that decides whom to kill.

“This is not from a work of fiction, and it is not describing a series of events in the Kremlin or Beijing or Pyongyang. It is a fair summary of a 6,000-word investigative report in The New York Times earlier this week about the White House of Barack Obama. Two Times journalists, Jo Becker and Scott Shane, painstakingly and chillingly reported that the former lecturer in constitutional law and liberal senator who railed against torture and Gitmo now weekly reviews a secret kill list, personally decides who should be killed and then dispatches killers all over the world–and some of his killers have killed Americans.

“We have known for some time that President Obama is waging a private war. By that I mean he is using the CIA on his own–and not the military after congressional authorization–to fire drones at thousands of persons in foreign lands, usually while they are riding in a car or a truck. He has done this both with the consent and over the objection of the governments of the countries in which he has killed. He doesn’t want to talk about this, but he doesn’t deny it. How chilling is it that David Axelrod–the president’s campaign manager–has periodically seen the secret kill list? Might this be to keep the killings politically correct?”

The judge concludes, “Since 9/11, the United States government has set up national security systems that function not under the Constitution, not under the Geneva Conventions, not under the rule of law, not under the rules of war, not under federal law, but under a new secret system crafted by the Bush administration and personally directed by Obama, the same Obama who condemned these rules as senator and then extended them as president. In the name of fighting demons in pick-up trucks and wars that Congress has never declared, the government shreds our rights, taps our cellphones, reads our emails, kills innocents abroad, strip searches 87-year-old grandmothers in wheelchairs and 3-year-old babies in their mothers’ arms, and offers secrecy when the law requires accountability.

“Obama has argued that his careful consideration of each person he orders killed and the narrow use of deadly force are an adequate and constitutional substitute for due process. The Constitution provides for no such thing. He has also argued that the use of drones to do his killing is humane since they are ‘surgical’ and only kill their targets. We know that is incorrect. And he has argued that these killings are consistent with our values. What is he talking about? The essence of our values is the rule of law, not the rule of presidents.”

See Judge Napolitano’s column at:

http://lewrockwell.com/napolitano/napolitano56.1.html

Let me begin by offering kudos to Judge Napolitano for his trenchant column, and kudos to New York Times reporters Jo Becker and Scott Shane for their blockbuster report.

Do readers not find it a little curious that hardly anyone in the national press corps–or even in the vast majority of the local media–has not picked up the Times report? After all, the New York Times is the unquestioned flagship newspaper of America. The vast majority of newspapers around the country rely on the NYT for much of their reporting. So, why didn’t we see this report blasted on front pages all across the United States? Do newspaper publishers and editors really think that this report is not Page One worthy? Is not this the kind of story that the freedom of the press was directly designed for? And where were the three major network news shows or even the cable news shows on this report? This is an incredible report, and for all intents and purposes, the story is relegated to media oblivion.

Oh, yes! Maybe we also now know why so many drones are beginning to appear over the skies of America.

One would think that the supposed “anti-Obama” FOX News network would be all over this story. To help enlighten readers, let me quickly point out the sagacious point that Judge Napolitano made in his column, “Since 9/11, the United States government has set up national security systems that function not under the Constitution, not under the Geneva Conventions, not under the rule of law, not under the rules of war, not under federal law, but under a new secret system crafted by the Bush administration.”

Ah! There it is! That’s why FOX News ignores the story. G.W. Bush is just as culpable in this monstrous activity as is Barack Obama. In fact, Bush is the one who created this modern American version of Hitler’s Brown Shirts. When it comes to ignoring the US Constitution and assuming dictatorial Hitlerian policies, Republican and Democrat Presidential administrations of late have been virtual Siamese Twins.

Now, please read this paragraph carefully (taken from HistoryLearningSite.com): “Germany became a nation of snoops. People were employed in each street, in each building complex, etc. with the sole purpose of keeping an eye on others in their ‘area’ and reporting them to the authorities if they believed that something was amiss. [Sounds like America’s Department of Homeland Security, doesn’t it?] The reputation of the Nazi police and the secret police lead by Himmler was such that no-one wished to cause offence. People kept their thoughts to themselves unless they wished to invite trouble. In this sense, Nazi Germany was a nation run on fear of the government. Hitler had created a one party state within months of being appointed chancellor.”

See the report at:

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/Nazi_Germany_dictatorship.htm

And ladies and gentlemen, this is why electing Mitt Romney will change nothing! The same Orwellian, big-government internationalists who are manipulating Barack Obama, and who manipulated G.W. Bush (and Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush) are manipulating Mitt Romney. Ever since President Ronald Reagan, it hasn’t mattered to a tinker’s dam whether a Republican or Democrat has been in the White House. As Sonny and Cher sang, “The Beat Goes On.” For all intents and purposes, America only has one party at the national level. Pat Buchanan was right when he said that the Elephants and Donkeys inside the Beltway were “two wings of the same bird of prey.”

Of course, if the American electorate suddenly got a surge of constitutional electricity and would elect Congressman Ron Paul as President, the story would be much different. Things would change at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue–not to mention in the United States and the entire world–dramatically. However, with the majority of Americans in the hip pockets of the mainstream media, a Romney/Obama showdown in November seems inevitable (although I am still privately cheering for a Ron Paul coup d’etat at the GOP national convention in Tampa).

So, how many people have been or are on this secret kill list–and who are they? With the vast majority of the mainstream media cowering in abject fear of the federal government, and with both major parties in Washington, D.C., walking in lockstep to the drumbeat of an emerging police state, who is left to even sound an alarm of protest? Well, two New York Times reporters did; Judge Andrew Napolitano did; Lew Rockwell did. And now I am, too.

Is this the kind of government that most Democrats want? Is this what they wanted when they elected Barack Obama? Is this the kind of government that most Republicans want? Is this what they wanted when they elected G.W. Bush?

Anyone who cannot see history being repeated is flat not paying attention! I cannot believe my country has turned into this!

Anyway, thank you Judge Napolitano for being a watchman on the wall!

Banks ‘Reaping Billions From Colombian Cocaine Trade

The vast profits made from drug production and trafficking are overwhelmingly reaped in rich “consuming” countries – principally across Europe and in the US – rather than war-torn “producing” nations such as Colombia and Mexico, new research has revealed. And its authors claim that financial regulators in the west are reluctant to go after western banks in pursuit of the massive amount of drug money being laundered through their systems.

The most far-reaching and detailed analysis to date of the drug economy in any country – in this case, Colombia – shows that 2.6% of the total street value of cocaine produced remains within the country, while a staggering 97.4% of profits are reaped by criminal syndicates, and laundered by banks, in first-world consuming countries.

“The story of who makes the money from Colombian cocaine is a metaphor for the disproportionate burden placed in every way on ‘producing’ nations like Colombia as a result of the prohibition of drugs,” said one of the authors of the study, Alejandro Gaviria, launching its English edition last week.

“Colombian society has suffered to almost no economic advantage from the drugs trade, while huge profits are made by criminal distribution networks in consuming countries, and recycled by banks which operate with nothing like the restrictions that Colombia’s own banking system is subject to.”

His co-author, Daniel Mejía, added: “The whole system operated by authorities in the consuming nations is based around going after the small guy, the weakest link in the chain, and never the big business or financial systems where the big money is.”

The work, by the two economists at University of the Andes in Bogotá, is part of an initiative by the Colombian government to overhaul globaldrugs policy and focus on money laundering by the big banks in America and Europe, as well as social prevention of drug taking and consideration of options for de-criminalising some or all drugs.

The economists surveyed an entire range of economic, social and political facets of the drug wars that have ravaged Colombia. The conflict has now shifted, with deadly consequences, to Mexico and it is feared will spread imminently to central America. But the most shocking conclusion relates to what the authors call “the microeconomics of cocaine production” in their country.

Gaviria and Mejía estimate that the lowest possible street value (at $100 per gram, about £65) of “net cocaine, after interdiction” produced in Colombia during the year studied (2008) amounts to $300bn. But of that only $7.8bn remained in the country.

“It is a minuscule proportion of GDP,” said Mejía, “which can impact disastrously on society and political life, but not on the Colombian economy. The economy for Colombian cocaine is outside Colombia.”

Mejía told the Observer: “The way I try to put it is this: prohibition is a transfer of the cost of the drug problem from the consuming to the producing countries.”

“If countries like Colombia benefitted economically from the drug trade, there would be a certain sense in it all,” said Gaviria. “Instead, we have paid the highest price for someone else’s profits – Colombia until recently, and now Mexico.

“I put it to Americans like this – suppose all cocaine consumption in the US disappeared and went to Canada. Would Americans be happy to see the homicide rates in Seattle skyrocket in order to prevent the cocaine and the money going to Canada? That way they start to understand for a moment the cost to Colombia and Mexico.”

The mechanisms of laundering drug money were highlighted in the Observer last year after a rare settlement in Miami between US federal authorities and the Wachovia bank, which admitted to transferring $110m of drug money into the US, but failing to properly monitor a staggering $376bn brought into the bank through small exchange houses in Mexico over four years. (Wachovia has since been taken over by Wells Fargo, which has co-operated with the investigation.)

But no one went to jail, and the bank is now in the clear. “Overall, there’s great reluctance to go after the big money,” said Mejía. “They don’t target those parts of the chain where there’s a large value added. In Europe and America the money is dispersed – once it reaches the consuming country it goes into the system, in every city and state. They’d rather go after the petty economy, the small people and coca crops in Colombia, even though the economy is tiny.”

Colombia’s banks, meanwhile, said Mejía, “are subject to rigorous control, to stop laundering of profits that may return to our country. Just to bank $2,000 involves a huge amount of paperwork – and much of this is overseen by Americans.”

“In Colombia,” said Gaviria, “they ask questions of banks they’d never ask in the US. If they did, it would be against the laws of banking privacy. In the US you have very strong laws on bank secrecy, in Colombia not – though the proportion of laundered money is the other way round. It’s kind of hypocrisy, right?”

 

Dr Mejia said: “It’s an extension of the way they operate at home. Go after the lower classes, the weak link in the chain – the little guy, to show results. Again, transferring the cost of the drug war on to the poorest, but not the financial system and the big business that moves all this along.”

With Britain having overtaken the US and Spain as the world’s biggest consumer of cocaine per capita, the Wachovia investigation showed much of the drug money is also laundered through the City of London, where the principal Wachovia whistleblower, Martin Woods, was based in the bank’s anti-laundering office. He was wrongfully dismissed after sounding the alarm.

Gaviria said: “We know that authorities in the US and UK know far more than they act upon. The authorities realise things about certain people they think are moving money for the drug trade – but the DEA [US Drugs Enforcement Administration] only acts on a fraction of what it knows.”

“It’s taboo to go after the big banks,” added Mejía. “It’s political suicide in this economic climate, because the amounts of money recycled are so high.”

Source: The Guardian

Is Jeffrey Feltman Iran’s Best Friend In Lebanon?

Bullying Hezbollah…

Key Iranian and American officials arrived in Lebanon last week to assess the strength of their local allies in the fast approaching and crucial legislative elections, the escalating spillover effects of the Syrian uprising in North Lebanon and presumably other ways each country can remain key players in this cross-roads/cross-hairs quasi-country.

The Lebanese public and media heard plenty of policy nuances and even similar and seemingly repeated statements by the two well-listened to guests.

But there were plenty of differences. During over-lapping visits one warned and threatened Lebanon, while the second praised Lebanon’s “achievements”. Admittedly, divining these Lebanese ‘achievements” is no mean task.

Making the front page lead paragraph in a number of Beirut and Middle East dailies last Friday were nearly simultaneous summations by the two visitors as they articulated their country’s policy toward Lebanon.

One visitor was Jeffrey Feltman, the long serving US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, who for all intents and purposes in still US Ambassador to Lebanon and elsewhere in the Levant. Mr. Feltman is well known in Lebanon and many here actually view him as a too frequent visitor, Assistant Secretary Feltman repeated his seven year mantra during a meeting with Prime Minister Najib Mikati, of warnings for the Lebanese government and citizens to break with Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran.

On the arguably more positive side, as he had so many times in the past, Assistant Secretary Feltman renewed the United States’ commitment to “a stable, sovereign and independent Lebanon”. And he repeated these words to the President of the Chamber of Deputies Speaker Nabih Berri, Progressive Socialist Party Leader MP Walid Jumblatt, Lebanese Forces Party President Samir Geagea, Maronite Bishop of Beirut Boulous Matar, and March 14 politicians. All of whom presumably hear the words in their sleep by now as all visiting US officials repeat Feltman’s buzz words.

A few hours earlier, another visitor, the Iranian First Vice President, Mohammad Rida Rahimi, having arrived in Lebanon in a bid to implement agreements signed between the two gentlemen used 67 per cent of the same key words but their meanings appear vastly different and that’s why some of us could use some help from a serious student of the subject.

Feltman told his interlocutors that he came to Lebanon to express his country’s “grave concern” on a number of issues including Hezbollah and its links with Iran and Syria. He also gave instructions on next year’s parliamentary elections which his team, the March 14 opposition, has threatened to boycott. If they do, according to some analysts here, their decision will have resulted from Feltman’s instructions.

The Beirut Daily, As-Safir, reported that Feltman’s sole purpose was to lash out at Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah.
And he did.

Feltman repeatedly warned that “if some sides in Lebanon seek to circumvent the sanctions on Iran then the Lebanese government will face “very serious complicated problems with the international community. The “International Community” is increasingly defined as “US allies”. During his meeting at the obsequious and literally genuflecting pro-Saudi MP Boutros Harb’s house, whose front page photograph showed the MP bowing deeply to Feltman, the latter threatened that “the United States is keen not to allow any exploitation of the bank secrecy in Lebanon, in order to bypass the sanctions on Iran, Hezbollah, and Syria. This enters deep into US strategy.”

Feltman’s threats continued as he sought to pressure businessmen in Syria and Lebanon:”Not abiding by the US and International sanctions will have dangerous repercussions on the Lebanese banking sector.” More than once Feltman warned the Lebanese, with reference to the recent unilateral sanctions imposed on the Central Bank of Iran, not to underestimate the American capacity to monitor and trace deposits and transfers. Most Lebanese are generally aware that US Treasury officials have been swarming through Lebanon the past two years in order to intimidate Lebanon’s banking sector and shore up the failing US sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

Assistant Secretary Feltman, as he has done for the past seven years, repeated to his Lebanese hosts that the US would consider providing arms to the Lebanese army. While nearly everyone in Lebanon realizes that the American Congress will veto even shoe laces for the Lebanese army without Israel’s approval, Iran is ready to help. Lebanese Defense Minister Fayez Ghosn announced this week that Iran is ready to ship weapons to the Lebanese army and that the shipments will begin as soon as Prime Ministers Najib Mikati’s government finalizes its own political decision. “The Iranian weapons are ready Ghosn told a Beirut Daily As-Safir. “ Our request is there [in Iran]. What is missing is a political decision from the Cabinet to provide support for the Lebanese Army.” Mr. Feltman is working diligently to assure that the Cabinet does not give its approval.

While Feltman was busy so was Iranian First Vice-President Rahimi. Rahimi signed three memoranda of understanding agreed upon in previous meetings.

During his meetings, the Iranian first Vice President stressed his country’s “total support for Lebanon on the political, economic, and development levels.

According to sources attending the Joint Lebanese-Iranian Higher Committee meeting, Rahimi discussed Iranian support to Lebanon on the oil, electricity, economic, trade, and agricultural levels, in addition to Iran’s interest in constructing water dams.

To give credence to his words, Rahimi presented a $40 million Iranian grant to Lebanon to pay for the construction of a dam in the Batroun region. He further announced that as the agreement’s executive program has been signed in both Tehran and Beirut, Iranian engineers will soon arrive in Lebanon to begin a project that the American government has discussed since the late 1970’s but has always conditioned US help to Lebanon on “better relations” with Israel.

With respect to Lebanon’s continuing electricity crisis, which leaves many in Lebanon with only 4-8 hours of government electricity per day, an Iranian Energy Ministry official said over the weekend that Iran would begin providing Lebanon with electricity next week. Abdolhamid Farzam, the Iranian Energy Ministry’s official in charge of foreign exchanges, was reported as saying that Iran would supply Lebanon with 50 Megawatts during an initial phase, to be boosted to 200 MW in the second phase.

On the subject of Israel, which is said to deeply concern Feltman, one American stringer for a major US daily who was covering the two envoys visit noted that Embassy sources advised that Feltman was in a bad mood during part of his visit for a few reasons. One was because he was not advised of the Iranian Vice-President’s simultaneous visit. Another was because he not told about the May 12th celebrations organized by Hezbollah and Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah speech that were sure to dominate a news cycle. The Hezbollah mass event was to acknowledge the success of its building and construction unit, WAAD (‘promise), in completing after nearly four years of nearly 24/7 rebuilding, 275 high rise apartment buildings housing more than ten thousand citizens in South Beirut. The destruction was caused by American weapons in the hands of Zionist forces and destroyed with carpet bombing Dahiyeh/Haret Hreik neighborhoods during the 33 days of the July 2006 aggression against Lebanon.

Feltman complained that there were American citizens who were tenants in some of the recently completed buildings that cost more than $ 450 to rebuild, despite both Hezbollah and its construction company, Jihad al Binna being put on US terrorism lists at his initiative. He reportedly demanded an investigation.

According to the same sources, Assistant Secretary Feltman was grousing over discouraging reports that another one of his projects, this one to salvage Camp David, was experiencing turbulence. Specifically, he was briefed that the current front runner in the May 23-24 Egyptian Presidential election, Abdel Moneim Abul Fotouh, has branded Israel a “racist state” and repeated to cheering crowds that the 1979 peace treaty with Israel was “a national security threat” that had to be scrapped and added that Israel and its supporters were “enemies of the Egyptian people.”

To make matters and his mood worse, the American Assistant Secretary was informed that another strong Egyptian presidential candidate, Ahmed Shafiq is exciting crowds with his campaign claim that the former air force chief had shot down two Israeli planes during the War of Attrition which Egypt declared between 1969 and 1970. “General Ahmed Shafiq has a great military record and career,” his campaign statement said.

Priding himself on being an adherent of realpolitik, Feltman is observing Israel being rejected by Arabs, Muslims and increasingly by the grounding swelling movement by people of good will including his own countrymen. He reportedly told one interviewer recently that he sees his role as “trying to staunch the coming tsunami of global rejection and delegitimization of Israel, and it’s not going to be easy.”

Meanwhile, Iran’s Vice-President Rahimi’s program included a meeting with Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, and a visit to the, “Iran” Gardens hugely popular with many Lebanese families, in the southern village of Maroun al-Ras located on Lebanon’s borders with occupied Palestine. From this hillside vantage point, on a clear day one can see Akka and other ethnically cleansed areas.

Similar words from Washington and Tehran to Beirut via experienced envoys. But fundamentally different approaches and deeds as has so often has been the case over the past decade.

Washington has, in important strategic respects, handed Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and soon more of the Persian Gulf countries to Iran’s rising presence and influence.
Next is likely Lebanon.

US Envoys: Losing Lebanon—Visit by Visit?

Beirut – It might require a semanticist with Noam Chomsky’s  erudition to explain to some of  us more obtuse  the meanings, context, and policy nuances of two similar and repeated phases heard  in Lebanon earlier this month by two well listened to guests . During over-lapping visits of top US and Iranian officials to Lebanon; one warned and threatened Lebanon, while the second praised Lebanon’s “achievements”.  Admittedly, divining these Lebanese ‘achievements” is no mean task.

Making the front page lead paragraph in a number of Beirut and Middle East dailies last Friday were nearly simultaneous summations by the two visitors as they articulated their country’s policy toward Lebanon.

One visitor was Jeffrey Feltman, the long serving US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, who for all intents and purposes in still US Ambassador to Lebanon and elsewhere in the Levant.  Mr. Feltman is well known in Lebanon and many here actually view him as a too frequent visitor, who rather like the Li’l Abner comic strip character Joe Btfsplk, personifies the World’s worst jinx who always travels with a dark cloud over his head. Assistant Secretary Feltman repeated his seven year mantra during a meeting with Prime Minister Najib Mikati, of warnings for the Lebanese government and citizens to break with Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran.

On the arguably more positive side, as he had so many times in the past, Assistant Secretary Feltman renewed the United States’ commitment to “a stable, sovereign and independent Lebanon”.   And he repeated these words to the President of the Chamber of Deputies Speaker Nabih Berri, Progressive Socialist Party Leader MP Walid Jumblatt, Lebanese Forces Party President Samir Geagea, Maronite Bishop of Beirut Boulous Matar, and March 14 politicians.  All of whom presumably hear the words in their sleep by now as all visiting US officials repeat Feltman’s buzz words.

A few hours earlier, another visitor, the Iranian First Vice President, Mohammad Rida Rahimi, having arrived in Lebanon in a bid to implement agreements signed between both countries, some since 1996, pledged Iran’s commitment to Lebanon’s  “freedom, independence and sovereignty”.

The two gentlemen used 67% of the same key words but their meanings appear vastly different and that’s why some of us, certainly this observer, could use some help from a serious student of the subject.

Feltman told his interlocutors that he came to Lebanon to express his country’s “grave concern” on a number of issues including Hezbollah and its links with Iran and Syria. He also gave instructions on next year’s parliamentary elections which his team, the March 14 opposition, has threatened to boycott.  If they do, according to some analysts here, their decision will have resulted from Feltman’s instructions.

The Beirut Daily, As-Safir, reported that Feltman’s sole purpose was to lash out at Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah.

And he did.

Feltman repeatedly warned that “if some sides in Lebanon seek to circumvent the sanctions on Iran then the Lebanese government will face “very serious complicated problems with the international community. The “International Community” is increasingly defined as “US allies”.During his meeting at the obsequious and literally genuflecting pro-Saudi MP Boutros Harb’s house, whose front page photograph showed the MP bowing deeply to Feltman, threatened that “the United States is keen not to allow any exploitation of the bank secrecy in Lebanon, in order to bypass the sanctions on Iran, Hezbollah, and Syria. This enters deep into US strategy.”

Feltman’s threats continued as he sought to pressure businessmen in Syria and Lebanon:  “Not abiding by the US and International sanctions will have dangerous repercussions on the Lebanese banking sector.”  More than once Feltman warned the Lebanese, with reference to the recent unilateral sanctions imposed on the Central Bank of Iran, not to underestimate the American capacity to monitor and trace deposits and transfers. Most Lebanese are generally aware that US Treasury officials have been swarming Lebanon the past two years in order to intimidate Lebanon’s banking sector and shore up the failing US sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

Assistant Secretary Feltman, as he has done for the past seven years, repeated to his Lebanese hosts that the US would consider providing arms to the Lebanese army.  While nearly everyone in Lebanon realizes that the American Congress will veto even shoe laces for the Lebanese army without Israel’s approval, Iran is ready to help.  Lebanese Defense Minister Fayez Ghosn announced this week that Iran is ready to ship weapons to the Lebanese army and that the shipments will begin as soon as Prime Ministers Najib Mikati’s government finalizes its own political decision.  “The Iranian weapons are ready Ghosn told a Beirut Daily As-Safir. “ Our request is there [in Iran]. What is missing is a political decision from the Cabinet to provide support for the Lebanese Army.”  Mr. Feltman is working diligently to assure that the Cabinet does not give its approval.

While Feltman was busy so was Iranian First Vice-President Rahimi.  Rahimi signed three memorandums of understanding agreed upon in previous meetings.

During his meetings, the Iranian first Vice President stressed his country’s “total support for Lebanon on the political, economic, and development levels.”

According to sources attending the Joint Lebanese-Iranian Higher Committee meeting, Rahimi discussed Iranian support to Lebanon on the oil, electricity, economic, trade, and agricultural levels, in addition to Iran’s interest in constructing water dams.

To give credence to his words, Rahimi presented a $40 million Iranian grant to Lebanon to pay for the construction of a dam in the Batroun region. He further announced that as the agreement’s executive program has been signed in both Tehran and Beirut, Iranian engineers will soon arrive in Lebanon to begin a project that the American government has discussed since the late 1970’s but has always conditioned US help to Lebanon on “better relations” with Israel.

With respect to Lebanon’s continuing electricity crisis, which leaves many in Lebanon with only 4-8 hours of government electrify per day, an Iranian Energy Ministry official said over the weekend that Iran would begin providing Lebanon with electricity next week. Abdolhamid Farzam, the Iranian Energy Ministry’s official in charge of foreign exchanges, was reported as saying that Iran would supply Lebanon with 50 Megawatts during an initial phase, to be boosted to 200 MW in the second phase.

On the subject of Israel, which is said to deeply concern Feltman, one American stringer for a major US daily who was covering the two envoys visit noted that Embassy sources advised that Feltman was in a bad mood during part of his visit for a few reasons. One was because he was not advised of the Iranian Vice-Presidents simultaneous visit. Another was because he not told about the May 12th celebrations organized by Hezbollah and Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah speech that were sure to dominate a news cycle.  The Hezbollah mass event was to acknowledge the success of its building and construction unit, WAAD (‘promise), in completing after nearly four years of nearly 24/7 rebuilding, 275 high rise apartment buildings housing more than ten thousand citizens in South Beirut. The destruction was caused by American weapons in the hands of Zionist forces and destroyed with carpet bombing Dahiyeh/Haret Hreik neighborhoods during the 33 days of the July 2006 aggression against Lebanon.

Feltman complained that there were American citizens who were tenets in some of the recently completed buildings that cost more than $ 450 to rebuild, despite both Hezbollah and its construction company, Jihad al Binna being put on US terrorism lists at his initiative.  He reportedly demanded an investigation.

According to the same sources, Assistant Secretary Feltman was grousing over discouraging reports that another one of his projects, this one to salvage Camp David, was experiencing turbulence.  Specifically, he was briefed that the current front runner in the May 23-24 Egyptian Presidential election, Abdel Moneim Abul Fotouh, has branded Israel a “racist state” and repeated to cheering crowds that the 1979 peace treaty with Israel was “a national security threat” that had to be scrapped and added that Israel and its supporters were “enemies of the Egyptian people.”

To make matters and his mood worse, the American Assistant Secretary was informed that another strong Egyptian presidential candidate, Ahmed Shafiq is exciting crowds with his campaign claim that the former air force chief had shot down two Israeli planes during the War of Attrition which Egypt declared between 1969 and 1970. “General Ahmed Shafiq has a great military record and career,” his campaign statement said.

Priding himself on being an adherent of realpolitik, Feltman is observing Israel being rejected by Arabs, Muslims and increasingly by the grounding swelling movement by people of good will including his own countrymen.  He reportedly told one interviewer recently that he sees his role as “trying to staunch the coming tsunami of global rejection and delegitimization of Israel, and it’s not going to be easy.”

Meanwhile, Iran’s Vice-President Rahimi’s program included a meeting with Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, and a visit to the hugely popular with many Lebanese families, “Iran” Gardens in the southern village of Maroun al-Ras located on Lebanon’s borders with occupied Palestine. From this hillside vantage point, on a clear day one can see Akka and other ethnically cleansed areas.

Similar words from Washington and Tehran to Beirut via experienced envoys. But fundamentally different approaches and deeds as has so often has been the case over the past decade.

Washington has, in important strategic respects, handed Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and soon more of the Persian Gulf countries to Iran’s rising presence and influence.

Next is likely Lebanon.

Can Palestine be far behind?

California Public To Vote On GMO Label Act; Biotech Lies Begin

Stroller-pushing mothers delivered nearly a million signatures in Sacramento on Wednesday, for an initiative to put to populist vote The California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act.

The ten-week signature drive collected nearly double the amount needed to put the R2K Act on the November 6, 2012 ballot.

The state will take between five and seven weeks to validate the signatures, and then certify the results. Of the 555,236 needed, thousands of volunteers collected 971,126, just shy of the hoped-for million.

“In ten weeks, nearly a million registered voters signed the ballot initiative,” said Pamm Larry, who single-handedly started the drive on January 20, 2011. “Even biotech engineers gathered signatures for us.” Having founded LabelGMOs.org, Larry then coordinated with other pro-labeling civic groups across the state and nation.

Victory celebrations were held in Sacramento, San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego today, reported CA Right to Know in a press conference.

If voters approve the measure this fall, beginning July 1, 2014, food makers will be required to label those products that contain genetically modified ingredients.

Significantly, the “natural” term can no longer be used if the product contains GMOs.

There are several exemptions, including GMO-fed and GMO-drugged animals, as well as any raw ag product that was unintentionally contaminated with GMOs. Suppliers and producers may be asked to provide a sworn statement that as far as they know, the food is GE-free.

According to the Act, anyone relying on those sworn statements is off the hook legally if the product turns out to have GMOs.

There is a requirement in the Act that grocery store bins or shelves must also be GE-labeled if any unlabeled raw agricultural GE products (like GE corn) are sold. But there’s no liability to the store owner if the supplier provides a sworn statement that the food is GE-free when it’s not.

Given the biotech industry’s penchant for hyperbole (relating to yield, cost and pesticide use), it’s no surprise tohear them declare the Act will cause food prices to spike.

But, as one of the organizers says, “They have 18 months after the election to change their labels, something that is frequently done in the food industry.” Gary Hirshberg, chairman of Stonyfield which has been organic-certified for 20 years, added, “All they have to do is add some ink.”

Several large organizations opposing the measure have organized behind Stop Costly Food Labeling (SCFL), including the Grocery Manufacturers Assn., the Council for Biotechnology Information, the CA Farm Bureau Federation, and, you guessed it, the Chamber of Commerce.

Another lie right out of their lying mouths is that the R2K Act will require, “prohibiting processed foods from being labeled as natural, even if they contain no GE ingredients.”

No such language exists in the eight-page Act.

Not only that, but there’s still a whole lot of wiggle room for GE-contaminated foods. See pages 4-6 for the list of exemptions, like this one:

“Until July 1, 2019, any processed food that would be subject to section 110809 solely because it includes one or more genetically engineered ingredients, provided that: (i) no single such ingredient accounts for more than one-half of one percent of the total weight of such processed food; and (ii) the processed food does not contain more than ten such ingredients.” §110809.2(e)

This means that food can have up to 5% genetically modified organisms by weight (and up to ten of the little buggers) and remain free of the GE label. Looks like biotech scored big on that exemption. GE-free should be GE-free.

Fundraising to Counter Biotech Lies

Both sides will engage in a media spectacle aimed at swaying voters, using TV and print to promote their positions. If their April 26 press release is any indication, the biotech sector of Big Ag and its supply chain plans to drive a wedge between small operators and consumers who want to know what’s in their food. “It’ll put you out of business!” screams the upcoming headline.

Heaven forbid. Requiring food labels is akin to truth in advertising. Big Pharma certainly hasn’t disappeared because they can’t keep nasty side effects a secret.

Grocery stores have nothing to fear, despite the SCFL’s spin that “right to know” means “right to sue.” Whining they’ll have to follow what’s done in 40 other countries, adding a little ink to food labels in the biggest agriculture state in the US won’t put anyone out of business.

We’re gonna be inundated with a barrage of lies to the point we’ll stand in muted awe at the audacity. Kinda like the informed’s reaction when Condi Rice objected to her “integrity” being impugned after she promoted the wild WMDs lie.

But now is not the time for muted silence. And the media campaign to support California’s initiative must be funded, nationally, says Dr. Mercola, who runs the biggest natural, homeopathic website in the world.

He’s teamed up with several groups including Organic Consumers Assn. and Food Democracy Now! to launch a major fundraising campaign for the upcoming battle of words, explained OCA spokesperson, Katherine Paul, in an email to Food Freedom. “But all of the funds will be turned over to the CARighttoKnow campaign to use for media consultants, advertising, and legal help,” she advised.

Mercola reports:

“Between May 1 and May 26, a broad coalition of food, farming, health groups, and organic food manufacturers, will attempt to raise one million dollars to defeat Monsanto propaganda and get the California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act on the ballot for November 6, and passed into law. Money raised in this Million Dollar Money Bomb on Monsanto campaign will support the California Ballot Initiative and other state GE-labeling campaigns. If donations totaling $1 million is reached by May 26, a coalition of benefactors will MATCH it, bringing the Money Bomb to $2 million!”

According to the opposition, Mercola has already put up $800,000 of his own money. The busy man didn’t get back to me as to whether this is actually true, but it smells right that he’d want to back his own horse.

“We can’t leave California to battle the biotech giants on their own,” he says. “They need your help! Donating funds to this campaign may be the best money you’ll spend all year to safeguard your health, and the health of your children.”

This is all great news… and no one doubts California’s R2K GE Food Act will be on the ballot on November 6, 2012.

Which brings us to the ballot… cast on electronic voting systems that studies funded by Secretary of State Debra Bowen proved are not secure from hack. (See, e.g., here and here.)  Other studies by different states and universities and privately-hired tech firms agreed, but Bowen and her Sec-State peers across the nation all bought those expensive, hackable machines anyway.

Even so, since over 90% of US eaters want their food labeled, the vote result is a foregone conclusion. And, what’s done in the biggest Ag state in the union is sure to be followed in at least some of the 20-some states that allow an initiative process – a tool used by citizens to adopt laws and constitutional amendments without the support of the Governor or the Legislature.

Vermont, another state now undergoing an agricultural renaissance, does not have this freedom, so the GMO-food label bill passed by the legislature will not be enacted, as Governor Shumlin has advised he will veto it. We reported on this in the last half of this news video on Monday.

Robyn O’Brien of Allergy Kids Foundation says:

“My youngest daughter’s face began to swell shut at breakfast one day – and I had no idea why. We were only eating waffles, scrambled eggs, and tubes of blue yogurt…so what was happening to her? Before my daughter had a violent allergic reaction that morning, I honestly hadn’t given a lot of thought to what I fed my kids. I mean, if it was on grocery store shelves, it was all the same, right?But since then, like so many moms, I learned that there are all kinds of new ingredients in our foods that weren’t in what we ate as kids. That’s why we need labels.”

Just Label It is working on the FDA for a national directive requiring GMO-food labels, and sent their congrats to California. They’re still collecting petition signatures until May 13, and have produced this quick little video by Robert Kenner, director of Food, Inc.

But California may beat FDA to the punch, and its Right to Know Act will impact food labeling across the nation. This is the big one from which the biotech-feds’ House of Secrecy begins to crumble.  All those who support GMO-food labeling are going to have to drop a bomb of money on them to counter the war chest of the biotech industry.

The Foreclosure-to-Rental Boondoggle

Another Obama Fleecing…

“The national housing market took a hit in the latter half of 2011, falling to new lows not seen since the housing crisis began six years ago, according to data out Tuesday by S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices……The index is down 33.6 percent from its peak in mid-2006.” – Washington Post

The reason that housing prices have dipped only 33.6 percent in the United States instead of 60 percent as they have in Ireland, is because the big banks have been keeping inventory off the market. If the millions of homes–that are presently headed for foreclosure–were suddenly dumped onto the market, prices would plunge and the biggest banks in the country would be declared insolvent. That’s why the banks have slowed the flow of foreclosures. According to Amherst Securities Group’s Laurie Goodman, “….2.8 million borrowers haven’t made a payment in over a year. Add that to the over 450,000 real estate owned (REO) units and you have approximately 3.2 million that are in the shadows. We are liquidating about 90,000 homes a month. That’s about 36 months of overhang; a really shocking number.” (See the whole interview here.)

Indeed, it is shocking, but what’s more shocking is that the banks are allowed to game the system this way and get away with it. New home buyers are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars more than they would be if the banks were not manipulating inventory, so there are real victims in this scam. . And is it really conceivable that Fed doesn’t know that nearly 3 million people are living in their homes for free? Of course, they know; they’re in on it too. The bankers even have a name for this arrangement; they call it “squatters rent” and they estimate it costs them an extra $60 billion per year. They would rather pay that hefty sum then foreclose quickly and have to write down the losses which would leave them broke.

Some readers will probably dispute the claim that housing prices could dip 60 percent in the US as they have in Ireland. These skeptics may want to read a new study titled “Housing, Monetary Policy, and the Recovery” released by the chief economists from the country’s two largest banks (Find it here.)

On page 29 of the report, the authors conclude that it would take “a 57% fall in housing prices would in our accounting sense eliminate housing overhang”. Their second projection estimates that it would take “a 68%” drop. So, if you bought a house in 2005 for $400,000. That house would currently be worth $128,000, a big enough loss to poke holes in anyone’s retirement plans.

So, what should the government do? Should they force the banks to release the backlog homes so prices can adjust quickly and new buyers won’t feel like they’re being gouged? But–if they do–what happens to all the people who bought homes in the last few years who suddenly discover they’re underwater? Won’t that create a whole new wave of foreclosures?

The best approach would be to reduce the principle on the mortgages of the people who are presently in some stage of foreclosure and make the banks pay for the losses. That would slow the stream of foreclosures to a trickle, stabilize the housing market, and force many of the banks into Chapter 11, which should be real goal of any mortgage modification program. The banks were the perpetrators of this gigantic mortgage laundering scam and continue to pose a threat to the financial security of every American. Dismatling the TBTF banks should be the nation’s highest priority.

The Obama administration has chosen an alternate course in its endless effort to appease the bank lobby. They’ve launched a Foreclosure-to-Rental program that’s aimed at severely reducing the backlog of unwanted homes on the banks books via bulk sales to private investors. The program–which is largely shrouded in secrecy– is being hyped as a common sense way to stabilize the housing market and to ‘lower monthly payments so responsible borrowers can stay in their homes.’ In truth, Obama is just helping the banks slash their mountainous inventory so they can avoid bankruptcy.

Here’s part of the announcement from the FHA:

“The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) today announced the first pilot transaction under the Real Estate-Owned (REO) Initiative, targeted to hardest-hit metropolitan areas — Atlanta, Chicago, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Phoenix and parts of Florida.

With this next step, prequalified investors will be able to submit applications to demonstrate their financial capacity, experience and specific plans for purchasing pools of Fannie Mae foreclosed properties with the requirement to rent the purchased properties for a specified number of years.” (FHA)

So far, 2,500 Fannie Mae-owned properties have been sold to private investors. But–here’s the problem–”85% of the units are already being rented, and almost 60% of the units are on term leases.” (Calculated Risk) So, everything Obama said about the program was a lie. This isn’t a foreclosure-to-rental program; it’s a property-dump proffered to financial insiders who are getting cheap government financing to fatten the bottom line.

“The original idea behind the REO-to-rental program was to sell vacant REO to investors and only in certain areas. These investors would agree to rent the properties for a certain period, and that would reduce the number of vacant units on the market…. This offer doesn’t seem to match that goal,” says Calculated Risk.

Fancy that; another boondoggle-ripoff compliments of President Hopium. Who could have known?

Here’s a clip from the FHA’s Meg Burns:

“The pilot transaction very much gets at the issue at hand-helping to stabilize communities by keeping people in their homes where possible…This helps stabilize neighborhoods because many of the properties will continue as rentals instead of moving quickly to the for-sale market. In addition, it is easiest to price properties with renters already in place, which should help to attract investor interest. “ (Washington Post)

Sorry, Meg, don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining. This is the old switcheroo pure and simple. The fact that the properties already have renters means that the investors will be raking in sizable returns from Day 1. That’s not the way the program was sold to the public. The American people have been hoodwinked again.

Here’s more from the FHA’s February 27 announcement:

“In order to ensure compliance with applicable securities laws and regulations, details of the sales announcement will be sent to prequalified investors per FHFA’s Feb. 1 announcement. Subsequently, investors who post a security deposit and sign a confidentiality agreement will gain access to detailed information about the properties. At that stage, interested investors must submit a comprehensive application, which will be reviewed by an outside firm. Only investors who are qualified through this rigorous process will be eligible to bid.”

Okay. So, John Q. Public–the little investor–is completely excluded from this massive transfer of real wealth to private equity, hedge funds and other deep-pocket Obama campaign contributors. That’s to be expected. But what’s the so called “confidentiality agreement” all about. Does Obama really think he can shower his dodgy friends with hundreds of billions of dollars in dirt-cheap property and keep the whole matter under wraps?

Dream on, Barry. And what about the financing? Are these cutthroat property scamsters digging into their own pile of cash to pay for these foreclosures or is Uncle Sugar providing 60, 70, 80, or 90 percent financing at rock-bottom rates of .01 percent? That’s what we want to know.

This is not how honest people deal with a crisis if they genuinely have the public’s interest at heart. This is just more-of-the-same fleece-job larceny that was perfected by the Bush claque. Wasn’t Obama going to change all that?

We are only half way through the foreclosure crisis. The experts predict there will be another 7 to 11 million mortgage defaults in the next few years. That means we need a game plan that will keep as many people in their homes as possible while reducing the vast overhang of supply that has left the market in a shambles. It’s a tough job, but it can be done provided the interests of the victims are placed above those of the banks. Fat chance of that, eh?

Guardian Crimes Get ´Cover´ From Government Agencies

Recent admissions by government agencies pledged to provide oversight for those handling the affairs of the most vulnerable of American citizens, the elderly and disabled, point to systematic ‘cover’ being granted professional conservators and guardians. The degree of ‘cover’ provided those pledged to care for the elderly and infirm could be seen as providing absolute immunity for acts of criminal misconduct.

Guardianships (also called conservatorships in some states) are generally initiated through court proceedings when there are allegations that a person is lacking capacity and unable to care for his own affairs. Upon the appointment of a guardian, the alleged incapacitated person may lose all access to his property and assets and may also lose the rights to make his personal decisions, such as where he will live, whether or not he may see family and friends and whether or not he will receive medical treatment. He also generally loses the right to hire an attorney to defend against this grave revocation of rights. It must be stressed that these guardianships are launched on allegations alone, and no proof of incapacity may be provided or required.

Ernest Moore was alarmed when he received the reply to his complaint to the California State Bar. The Los Angeles man had provided proof to the State Bar that attorneys had lied to the court, misrepresenting assets belonging to his mother, who is under a conservatorship. After denying the merits of his complaint, the responding SB attorney advised him that “the court where the matter is pending is the appropriate forum to determine whether either (attorneys named) engaged in improper conduct. If that court makes a specific factual determination of misconduct….you may contact this office with a copy of the court record for further consideration.”

It has been the long standing mandate of the State Bar to discipline attorneys. A call to the media representative for the California State Bar confirmed the suspicion that there was no legal basis for the statement made by the state bar attorney that the court was the proper venue for Moore’s concerns. Moore’s complaint, incidentally, included transcripts which backed up his contentions that the attorneys lied to the court.

But Moore’s complaint focused on attorney misconduct in the guardianship of his mother and true to the mandates of ‘cover’ for those involved in guardianships, the State Bar denied his complaint.

Similar response letters have been issued by the California Professional Fiduciaries Bureau. When Janis Schock received a notice that her complaint about misconduct by professional conservator Ron Olund had been closed, she was equally surprised to learn that she, too, was advised that the proper forum for her complaint was the court where the proceedings took place. The PFB was so embarrassed by the attention given this misstatement of law by their analyst, Angela Bigelow, that they reopened Schock’s complaint. And shortly thereafter, closed it again.

Schock was actually fortunate. Most complainants to the PFB find that they receive no notification that their complaints have been closed. It was only after three or four requests for information as to the dispensation of his complaint that Joseph Quattrochi learned his complaint had been closed seven months prior. Jamie Lamborn received a phone call advising her that her complaint was being closed. Her requests that this be put in writing have not met with a reply. These illustrations are typical rather than the exception.

The short history of the PFB has been marred by difficulties. A Los Angeles Times series in 2005, “Guardians for profit—when a family matter becomes a business” shocked its readership with disclosures of misconduct and predatory behavior by unlicensed fiduciaries and guardians. Responding to the public outcry, the California legislature passed a package of new laws. Entitled the Omnibus Conservatorship Reform Act of 2006, the Act mandated the formation of a new agency, the Professional Fiduciaries Bureau. This new bureau, housed in the Department of Consumer Affairs, was charged with the responsibility of licensing fiduciaries and conservators and also investigating and disciplining allegations of their misconduct.

Governor Schwarzenegger signed the bill into law in 2006 then proceeded to line- item veto all funding for the new agency for two years running. The PFB did not open its doors for business until 2008.

A recent response to a public records act confirmed what had been suspected concerning the Bureau, which had, according to many complainants, been functioning without any apparent rudder or rationale, in terms of its dispensation of complaints. In an email dated January 27, 2012, DCA press officer Russ Heimerich admitted that the PFB had no written guidelines in terms of a policies and procedures manual.

The implications of that admission deserve further scrutiny. As the PFB deals with matters of alleged criminal misconduct, its functioning could be considered to be quasi-legal. Imagine, for a moment, going to court to discover there were no procedures and no guidelines governing your case. Imagine calling 911 for assistance to find that the police had no guidelines for determining their response to your call. The result would be chaos.

In addition to failing to produce written guidelines for its functioning, there are other notable gaps in the functioning of the PFB. The board which is to oversee the PFB functioning has a glaring omission—the seat on the board reserved for an elder advocate has remained empty now for years. The other board seats, including professional fiduciaries and members of the public, are filled but the board has now met for session after session without the input of someone with the interests of the elderly foremost in mind.

It gets worse. Recent public records act requests by complainants have resulted in a curtain of secrecy being drawn. Complainants who wish to see what sort of investigation and conclusions were conducted by the PFB are finding that their requests to see their files are being denied.

A recent email by PFB chief Gil Deluna cited 6254 f of the Government Code as the justification for his denying the production of the file to a complainant. However, 6254 f affirms the right of a victim to see his complaint file. Deluna has not responded to repeated requests to discuss his interpretation of 6254. Press officer Russ Heimerich has only stated that the perception that a victim may get his file is “wrong” and adamantly refuses to discuss why.

The annual report of the PFB confirms its dismal performance record. The report (http://www.dca.ca.gov/publications/09_10_annrpt.pdf) states that for the fiscal year of 2009-10 there were zero criminal or civil actions filed. There were zero cases initiated by the Attorney General and zero dollars ordered or received for consumer restitution. To its credit, the Bureau reports it did deny one license application for a professional fiduciaries license.

Equally, the office of the California Attorney General recently returned a bundle of complaints by victims of California conservatorships. An email from the Executive office of the AG explained that the office does not cover probate. Requests for the legal authority allowing AG Kamala Harris to ignore crimes committed by conservators have not engendered a reply.

If this all seems very technical, consider the overall picture. Someone goes to court and says you can’t handle your affairs. There is no attempt made to prove this allegation and as a result, you lose all access to your money and cannot hire an attorney to get it back. In addition, you may not be getting medicine you need or you may be getting medicine you don’t need. You have no right to object to this and if a family member tries to intervene, the guardian may have a restraining order issued against him. You are subsequently isolated and may be withheld food and water or you may be visited by a nurse with a hypo full of deadly morphine.

This appears to have been the fate of a growing number of conservatees, including Corinne Bramson, Lawrence Yetzer, Elizabeth Fairbanks and Raymond Horspool, to name just a few.

And after your funeral is paid for, out of your assets of course, the guardian and his attorneys go to the bank.

Is this picture getting clearer?

Set Your Doomsday Clock To 11:51

The National Defense Authorization Act is not a leap from democracy to tyranny, but it is another major step on a steady and accelerating decade-long march toward a police state. The doomsday clock of our republic just got noticeably closer to midnight, and the fact that almost nobody knows it, simply moves that fatal minute-hand a bit further still.

I’m not referring to the “doomsday” predicted by Leon Panetta should military spending be scaled back to the obscenely inflated levels of 2007. I’m talking about the complete failure to keep the republic that Benjamin Franklin warned we might not. Practices that were avoided, outsourced, or kept secret when Bill Clinton was president were directly engaged in on such a scale under president George W. Bush that they became common knowledge. Under President Obama they are becoming formal law and acceptable policy.

Obama has claimed the power to imprison people without a trial since his earliest months in office. He spoke in front of the Constitution in the National Archives while gutting our founding document in 2009. So why not pick the 220th anniversary of the Bill of Rights to further codify its elimination? President Obama has claimed the power to torture “if needed,” issued an executive order claiming the power of imprisonment without trial, exercised that power on a massive scale at Bagram, and claimed and exercised the power to assassinate U.S. citizens. Obama routinely kills people with unmanned drones.

As Obama’s Justice Department has broken new ground in the construction of state secrecy and immunity, the Bush era advancers of imperial presidential power have gone on book tours bragging about their misdeeds. One can expect the next step to involve serious abuse of those who question and resist the current bipartisan trajectory.

So what does the latest bill do, other than dumping another $660 billion into wars and war preparation? Well, it says this:

“Nothing in this section is intended to limit or expand the authority of the President or the scope of the Authorization for Use of Military Force.”

In other words, Congress is giving its stamp of approval to the unconstitutional outrages already claimed by the president. But then, why create a new law at all? Well, because some outrages are more equal than others, and Congress has chosen to specify some of those and in fact to expand some of them. For example:

“Congress affirms that the authority of the President to use all necessary and appropriate force pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40) includes the authority for the Armed Forces of the United States to detain covered persons (as defined in subsection (b)) pending disposition under the law of war.”

And this:

“The disposition of a person under the law of war as described in subsection (a) may include the following: (1) Detention under the law of war without trial until the end of the hostilities authorized by the Authorization for Use of Military Force.”

Jon Stewart explained when those detained without trial under the law might be released: “So when the war on terror ends, and terror surrenders and is no longer available as a human emotion, you are free to go.”

An exception for U.S. citizens was kept out of the bill at President Obama’s request.

So why did Obama threaten to veto the bill initially and again after it passed the Senate? Well, one change made by the conference committee was this:

“The Secretary of Defense President may, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Director of National Intelligence, waive the requirement of paragraph (1) if the Secretary President submits to Congress a certification in writing that such a waiver is in the national security interests of the United States.”

The reference here is to military tribunals. The President – that is, the current one and future ones – need not hand someone over even to a military tribunal if . . . well, if he (or she) chooses not to.

President Obama wanted a bill that limited him in no way, and he is likely to issue a law-altering signing-statement that further removes any offensive limits on absolute tyrannical power. This type of signing statement is another example of something done secretly by Bush, exposed, turned into a temporary scandal, denounced by candidate Obama, then utilized by President Obama, formally established by executive order, and now more or less accepted by everyone as the norm.

That is what will happen with trial-free imprisonment and assassination as well. And the presidents who engage in these practices will be from both major political parties. So readers should weigh the acceptable crimes and abuses of the good tyrants on their team against the risk of presidents from the other team doing the same. Of course, this team loyalty is the main reason the streets of Washington are not filled with protesters. The corporate media believes that outrages agreed to by both parties are not news. Many Democrats believe any power a Democratic president wants he should have, even though all of his successors will have it too. And many Republicans back whatever comes out of a Republican House of Representatives.

A large majority of Republicans in the House voted to eviscerate our Bill of Rights, and the Democrats split 93 to 93. In the Senate both parties overwhelmingly voted “Aye.”

If ever there was a time to build an independent, principled movement based in activism rather than elections and to put a few more minutes back on the doomsday clock, this is it. While Obama’s decision not to veto this bill has discouraged many, at RootsAction we’ve continued demanding a veto because we think the Constitution should be upheld and improved, not dismantled. If signed into law, we will demand that this elimination of our rights be repealed by Congress or overturned in court, and we will use that campaign to educate the public about what just happened.

Source: Veterans Today

Bankers Gamble On Hunger – Food Prices Going Up

Bankers, hedge funds and sovereign wealth funds are gambling on hunger by speculating on food supply.

Last year, the price of global food floated high as ever. That’s bad news for most of us, but not for those who trade commodities. In fact, 2011 was a great year for the traders, who thrive on bad news, currency woes, drought, flood, freeze, fire and all other manifestations of imminent apocalypse.

2011 was a wild ride. One spring morning, cocoa futures dropped 12% in less than a minute. Corn ascended to all-time peaks and sugar fluctuated more in one day than it used to in a month. Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, railed against speculators in coffee, while PepsiCo forecast its own medium-term commodity cost increases to exceed $1bn. All of which meant a bumper crop for the world’s commodity exchanges – even those that used to be backwaters, like the Kansas City Board of Trade and the Minneapolis Grain Exchange, both of which recorded their highest electronic trading volumes in history.

It was a volatile year, and the volatility posed problems for the food industry. Faced with a high-stakes game of price-shifting basic ingredients, the world’s largest food processors and retailers put out the call for maths PhDs and economic modellers to theorise and implement ever-more complex risk-management strategies just so they could keep up with the second-by-second spikes and dips of grain and livestock futures. In the meantime, high-frequency traders and momentum-driven hedge funds made it their business to speculate on food.

There were plenty of ways to get in on the action, but as an increasingly complex amalgam of food-based commodity derivatives piled one on top of the other, the more difficult it became to perceive what it was that lay at the bottom of the speculative scrum. What drove the global food market in 2011 – other than those old faithfuls, fear and greed? I put in a call to Professor Yaneer Bar-Yam, of the New England Complex Systems Institute (Necsi), to see if he might have an answer.

Necsi, based in Cambridge, draws on fields as various as maths, physics and computer science to provide new perspectives on – and perhaps even solve – pressing problems in economics, healthcare, international development, and military and ethnic violence. Last year, Bar-Yam and his colleagues published a paper called The Food Crises: A Quantitative Model of Food Prices Including Speculators and Ethanol Conversion, in which the Necsi crew mathematically isolated and quantified the effects of speculation as a driving force behind the bull market in global food derivatives.

“Prices have been way out of equilibrium in 2011,” Bar-Yam told me. “The bubble has not burst yet.”

According to Bar-Yam, the international thirst for biofuels has put a strain on arable land previously reserved for food production. At the same time as the rise of the biofuel mandate, the rise of investable commodity indexes and other electronically traded funds has offered investors of all stripes a chance to sink their cash in a sparkling new casino of derivative products. As a result, an ever-flowing spring of speculative capital sustains the status quo.

But just as food is no ordinary widget, speculation in commodity markets is not simply a matter of financial predation. “The high prices of food have resulted in accumulations of inventories at the same time as people can’t afford food,” said Bar-Yam, who noted that the Arab spring was triggered by the food-price bubble. In fact, Necsi’s quantitative model of speculation predicted the uprisings in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, and warned that if food prices remain inflated, riots and revolutions will go global sometime between July 2012 and August 2013.

“We are at a critical point,” said Bar-Yam. “We don’t have a stay-the-course option right now.”

He believes the time has come for global regulators to step in and manage the global market. Their first task would be to guarantee transparency and make public information previously shrouded in secrecy – such as who holds the biggest stakes in global commodities. Transparent accounting practices would have made the disappearance of $1.2bn worth of customer money from the books of MF Global less a matter of sleight of hand and more a matter of international crime.

The second part of the speculation solution hinges on a return to traditional position limits in commodities, limits enforced by international laws geared to stop bankers, hedge funds and sovereign wealth funds from going long on the world’s food supply and, in effect, gambling on hunger.

Nothing influences financial regulators like equations, so the reforms we can look forward to in 2012 will ultimately depend on the numbers. Which is a mixed blessing. “One reason people don’t want to understand the math is the deafness of those who are making the money,” said Bar-Yam. “But the old mathematics is manifestly wrong.”

Source: The Guardian

Conservatives Side With Pepper-Spraying Thugs

If you want to know which of your friends or neighbors believe in a free and humane society and which ones believe in a police state, show them the now-gone-viral video of a riot-gear-clad University of California-Davis police officer dousing a peaceful group of Occupy protesters with pepper spray as they sat, arms linked, in the campus quad. Most of us react in horror at what we saw, and at the absurdly dishonest explanations from the campus police chief. But some people think the protesters got what they deserved and even called for heavier-handed tactics.

Police officials – and these days, campus security guards have gained the power of full-fledged police officers, complete with those massive pensions and all the usual protections from accountability – claimed that the officer felt that his life was in danger when they he methodically walked down the line of protesters and assaulted them with the spray. “If you look at the video you are going to see that there were 200 people in that quad,” said Chief Annette Spicuzza, who was placed on leave (i.e., additional paid vacation) Monday after a backlash against the brutality. “Hindsight is 20-20 and based on the situation we were sitting in, ultimately that was the decision that was made.”

That’s what police always say no matter the situation. But in this age of video, we can see for ourselves that the officers were in no danger. Multiple officers effortlessly moved in and around the protesters. The burly officer who sprayed the kids strutted slowly in front of them in a way that belies any sort of danger, real or perceived. He, too, was put on administrative leave after the video went viral, along with another officer. Without the video, you know what would have happened – nothing. The lies would have become the official record. This is why police officers have become zealous in their confiscation of video cameras and arrest of people who record them doing their jobs.

Such brutality is par for the course for today’s militarized police and campus security departments. What’s really disgusting is the natural instinct of so many conservatives to stick up for the police. They don’t like the Occupy protesters, so they willingly back brutality against them, without considering the possibility that conservatives at some point might be on the receiving end of this aggression. Then again, this common, vulgar form of modern conservatism almost always sides with the state, even as it champions the empty words of limited government.

A blog called Extreme Conservatives wrote the following, “Sorry libs… You can quit your squawking and take your leftie-indoctrinated butts back to class. The UC Davis pepper spray incident was standard police procedure. On Friday a group of UC Davis students blocked the campus walkway with arms linked and started chanting, ‘From Davis to Greece, F*ck the police!’ Moments later the little darlings were doused with pepper spray. This was only after several attempts by campus police to get them to move. Of course, the liberal media only played the part where the students were sprayed down. But after two days of leftist outrage we find out that this was standard police procedure.”

The idea that this is “standard police procedure” is exactly what makes the video so horrifying. It doesn’t make it acceptable behavior. That’s why so many viewers were offended by it. The cop struts in front of the students and sprays them with massive amounts of pepper spray. He’s not in any danger. This is just standard procedure, ma’am. We treat everyone that way!

According to Rick Hahn from Accuracy in Media, the problem here was, of course, the liberal media, which failed to provide proper context. Hahn, who is identified as having worked for the FBI for 32 years, made the usual law-enforcement case that the cops were really in danger: “Many of the protesters were seated with arms interlocked. This means police would have had to physically engage them. The fact that the protesters were seated leaves police trying to disengage them from one another at a balance disadvantage. The cops have to bend over or crouch down to try to physically disengage any one individual, bring him or her to their feet and affect the arrest. The fact that the protesters had interlocked their arms was surely an effort to avoid any one individual being removed for arrest. There’s no way of knowing how strongly the protesters would have fought disengagement, but the fact is, they were inducing, baiting if you will, physical confrontation from the police.”

Scott Spiegel, writing in Conservative Outpost, joined a growing chorus of conservatives who seemed to want the police to behave even more brutally toward these “animals” and who have a rather authoritarian view of the world: “When cops say move, you move – even if you’re curled in a fetal position on the ground with flowers in your hair listening to Cat Stevens and nursing orphaned kittens. The UC Davis police could have acted a lot more brutally, including prodding or beating protesters with batons. The occupiers should consider themselves warned: Trust fund brat refuses to move, trust fund brat gets spray tanned. Protesters in the UC Davis videos can be heard chanting ‘Shame on you!’ at police after the incident. Actually, shame on patsy mayors like Michael Bloomberg and Jean Quan for not empowering police to clear out these animals ages ago.”

For insight into the modern conservative rabble, one ought to read FreeRepublic. It’s beyond irony. One commenter expressed disbelief at the sight of police backing away rather than engaging the protesters: “Do you get a chill up your spine like I do when you see the police slowly back away as if they are backing down from an impending violent standoff?” Others seemed eager to see violence: “A Billy-club to the ribs would have been just as effective at removing the bums and we would be hearing all this crying about pepper-spray!” Granted, these are anonymous commenters, but they reflect widespread sentiment.

I disagree with most of what the Occupy protesters are saying, quite obviously, but when I see lines of riot-gear-clad officials standing in front of these unbathed wretches, my heart goes out to the wretches. They need a lesson in economics and politics. The policies they advocate – to the degree that many of them have any well-defined grievances – range from the silly to the disastrous. They are inconsistent, foolish and hypocritical. Many of them are lazy freeloaders. Such is life. They do create filth and chaos in public parks, but if one cannot protest in a public park, there are not many places to have a protest. It’s in everyone’s best interest for the authorities to provide as much latitude as possible for protesters of any political persuasion. We still do pretend to live in a free society, right?

Whatever the bigger picture, this was a clear case of abusive and heavy handed behavior by the campus police. The president of the university was right to call for an investigation and the officer and the chief need to be removed from their positions, not just given meaningless and indefinite paid leave. And now it’s time for Californians to take a closer look at issues of police conduct and secrecy. In recent years, Democrats and Republicans have made those issues off limits thanks to their close association with the police unions.

Maybe the Occupiers can become productive and lead a real movement for civil libertarian reform. I know it won’t happen, but who can live in California without embracing a little wishful thinking?

Source: Steven Greenhut | Lew Rockwell

Deja vu Redux: Anat Kamm and Mordechai Vanunu

[Tel Aviv] – On Sunday, the Tel Aviv District Court sentenced former Israel Defense Forces soldier Anat Kamm to four-and-a-half years in prison for “collecting, holding and passing on classified information without authorization”.

Kamm was convicted in February under a plea bargain admitting guilt to gathering and storing of over 2,000 classified military documents from the Central Command office [under Maj. Gen. Naveh] during her army service. Kamm passed on the documents to reporter Uri Blau whoseinvestigative report in Haaretz Magazine exposed misconduct by the Israel Defense Forces/IDF.

“The report reveals that the IDF had approved well in advance the targeted killing of Malaisha [on June 20, 2007, during a routine military raid in the West Bank] contravening the High Court ruling and intentionally misleading the public. The report was attributed to ‘classified IDF documents’ and had been approved by the Military Censor before going to press.”[1]

Blau made use “of classified material from those documents as the basis for two newspaper articles. In the first, published in late October 2008, Blau accused the IDF of defying a High Court of Justice ruling against the targeted killings of Palestinian terrorists. The next article, published a few weeks later, similarly intimated that the IDF had earmarked Palestinian terrorists for targeted killings, and included a photocopy of a targeted-killing order Kamm had given Blau.” [2]

In her own testimony, Kamm described “Maj. Gen. Naveh’s office as ‘embarrassing in terms of information security’ and testified that she had not undergone any security check prior to being assigned to her army role, even though she had access to the most confidential documents.” [Ibid]

Kamm’s trial maybe over, but no decision has been announced whether Israel will prosecute Uri Blau for reporting the brutal truth. Also pending is the Supreme Court decision on or before November 13^th regarding nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu’s request to implement Israel’s citizenship revocation law against himself.

Background:

Twenty-four years after the Mossad kidnapped Vanunu from Rome after luring him from London, they returned to track down another who followed his conscience but was labeled a traitor by a state and public who view truth tellers as a threat to their sense of security.

The prey this time was Uri Blau, who went into hiding after writing a series of reports exposing lawbreaking approved by Israeli army commanders. Blau could face a lengthy jail term for espionage and Israeli security services warned they would “remove the gloves” and track down the “fugitive felon.”

The military censor, who prevents publication of information that they deem could harm Israel’s national security, approved Blau’s story for publication in Haaretz .

Kamm had originally been charged under Israel’s espionage and treason laws but the amended indictment dropped the charge of deliberately intending to harm state security, which carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.

The Israeli court initially gagged all news and details of Kamm’s arrest but after a cyber storm of Internet reporting, the gag order was lifted.

Shortly after her arrest, Kamm admitted to copying the documents while serving in the office in charge of operations in the West Bank, between 2005 and 2007.

The 23 year old said she acted out of conscience to expose war crimes and she believed she would be forgiven for her honesty and integrity.

Another prelude to the Kamm affair began in July 2009, when Kamm’s brothers in spirit from Breaking the Silence, an Israeli human rights group published 54 testimonies from Israeli soldiers regarding their experiences during Operation Cast Lead.

The testimonies exposed the gaps between the reports given by the army in January 2009 regarding the “accepted practices; the destruction of hundreds of houses and mosques for no military purpose, the firing of phosphorous gas in the direction of populated areas, the killing of innocent victims with small arms, the destruction of private property, and most of all, a permissive atmosphere in the command structure that enabled soldiers to act without moral restrictions.” [3]

On February 3, 2010, The Independent reported that a high-ranking officer who served as a commander during Operation Cast Lead, admitted that Israel’s army went beyond its previous rules of engagement on the protection of civilian lives and “that he did not regard the longstanding principle of military conduct known as ‘means and intentions’– whereby a targeted suspect must have a weapon and show signs of intending to use it before being fired upon – as being applicable before calling in fire from drones and helicopters in Gaza last winter.” [4]

The Déjà Vu:

Kamm and Vanunu share the same attorneys. Kamm was initially accused of treason and espionage but Vanunu was convicted of both.

Kamm and Vanunu both acted on moral and ideological grounds in a spirit of dissent from government policies of war and deceptions.

Kamm had been under house arrest for two years and faces 54 months behind prison bars.

Vanunu endured 18 years in a windowless tomb sized prison cell for exposing Israel’s 7-story underground clandestine WMD facility in the Negev.

To this day, the Dimona nuclear plant uninspected by international inspectors and Vanunu remains captive in Tel Aviv.

On April 14, 2010, Vanunu wrote, “The restrictions, not to leave the country for one more year renewed. Now 7 years since my release AFTER 18 YEARS in Israel PRISON. The Israel stupid spies will not get any thing from here.”[5]

The media blackout over Vanunu’s historic freedom of speech trial and resultant 78 days of solitary confinement for speaking to foreign media in 2004 has continued, but on or before November 13^th, the Israeli Supreme Court is to render its decision regarding:

Vanunu Mordechai asking ,CANCEL,Revoking my Citizenship-MAY 5-2011.

On October 10, 2011, Vanunu wrote: “About Nov. 13^th we don’t know what will happen. Because even if they will cancel my citizenship, it doesn’t mean they will send me free, they can still keep me here, but we believe this is the way out from Israel. If they will not cancel my Israel citizenship, then the court will decide to hear the case, and then the judges in the court hearing will decide if they will force the interior minister to follow his Israel laws, and cancel my citizenship. Any way they must let go free after 25 years. VMJC.” vanunuvmjc

Brief Background on Vanunu:

In 1986, after being clubbed, drugged, bound and kidnapped by the Mossad in Rome then transported back to Israel for a closed-door trial.

Vanunu was also rendered defenseless when the court ruled that his motivations were not ideological and they refused to allow Vanunu’s own statements regarding his intentions to be considered in his defense.

In 1986, Nuclear Physicist, Frank Barnaby was employed by the London Sunday Times to interrogate Vanunu and review the 57 photos he had obtained at various restricted/top secret locations in the Dimona. Barnaby spent three days with Vanunu in London before he was lured and abducted by the Mossad from Rome. Barnaby attended Vanunu’s closed-door trial and was called by the defense to give expert testimony. Barnaby testified:

“I found the fact that Vanunu was able to smuggle a camera and films into and out of Dimona and photograph highly sensitive areas in the establishment astonishing…I very vigorously cross-examined Vanunu, relentlessly asking the same questions in a number of different ways and at different times…I found Vanunu very straightforward.

“After questioning him about his motives for violating Israel’s secrecy laws he explained to me that he believed that both the Israeli and the world public had the right to know about the information he passed on. He seemed to me to be acting ideologically. Israel’s political leaders have, he said, consistently lied about Israel’s nuclear-weapons programme and he found this unacceptable in a democracy.

“The knowledge that Vanunu had about Isreal’s nuclear weapons, about the operations at Dimona, and about security at Dimona could not be of any use to anyone today. He left Dimona in October 1985 and the design of today’s Israeli nuclear weapons will have been considerably changed since then…Modern nuclear weapons bear little relationship to those of the mid-1980.”[6]

Blau could be charged with espionage. Vanunu was convicted of it.

In exchange for a promise protecting both him and his source from investigation, Blau returned 50 documents but authorities claimed he still held hundreds more classified documents. While on holiday a friend warned Blau that the Shin Bet had broken into his home and ransacked it. Blau later learned that the Israeli secret police had been monitoring his telephone, e-mail and computer for months.

On February 22, 2006, it was revealed in court that Israel had asked Microsoft to hand over all the details of Vanunu’s Hotmail account before a court order had been obtained.

Vanunu wrote, “Microsoft obeyed the orders and gave them all the details…three months before I was arrested and my computers were confiscated…it is strange to ask Microsoft to give this information before obtaining the court order to listen to my private conversations. It means they wanted to go through my emails in secret, or maybe, with the help of the secret services, the Shaback, Mossad.

“Sfard [Vanunu's attorney] proved that the police had misled the judges who gave the orders to arrest me: to search my room, to go through my email, to confiscate my computers and that they misled Microsoft to believe they are helping in a case of espionage.

“The State came to the court with two special secret Government orders; Hisaion [documents or information that are deemed confidential by the government and kept from the court, the defendant, and lawyers.] This allows the prosecution to keep documents related to my court hearing secret. One was from the Minister for Interior Security and one from the Minister of Defense.”[7]

Vanunu’s secretly taped police interrogations, his 2004 Christmas Eve arrest for “attempting to leave the country” when he attempted to celebrate mass at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, the confiscation of his private property by thirty IDF that stormed into his room at St. George’s Cathedral in 2004, Vanunu wrote had all “been done under the false and misleading statements to the courts of ‘suspicion of espionage’, and yet they are not charging me with spy crimes…and the fact is that I have not committed any crimes.”[Ibid]

Legally Speaking:

Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights upholds that “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention”, including abduction of a person by agents of one state to another state.

Section 99 of the Israeli Penal Code, treason is defined as “an act calculated to assist (an enemy) in time of war…delivering information with the intention that it fall into the hands of the enemy.”

Section 113 defines aggravated espionage as “deliver(ing) any secret information without being authorized to do so and with intent to impair the security of the state” and a sub-clause provides for a penalty of seven years for the unauthorized collection, preparation, recording or holding of secret information; if this is done with intent to impair the security of the state and then, the penalty is increased to 15 years.

“We have a dangerous precedent here, whereby the handing over of material to an Israeli newspaper … is seen by the prosecutor’s office as equivalent to contact with a foreign agent,” said Eitan Lehman, Ms Kamm’s lawyer. “The very notion of presenting information to the Israeli public alone is taken as an intention to hurt national security.” [8]

After Kamm’s sentencing the state prosecutor Hadas Porrer-Gefni, told reporters the panel of three judges had given a “strong message” to young people on mandatory army service and that young people should be made aware of Kamm’s sentence before embarking on their mandatory IDF service. “The judgement should be learned in every school and every basic training unit in the army, so that anyone who thinks he can take classified documents knows what punishment he will get.” [9]

Blau published stories based on documents provided by Kamm.

The documents exposed how the army command approved policies that broke international law and violated the rulings of Israel’s courts.

Blau’s reports revealed that senior commanders approved extra-judicial assassinations in the occupied territories that were almost certain to kill Palestinian bystanders and the army issued orders to execute wanted Palestinians even if they could be safely captured in violation of a commitment to the high court.

Blau also exposed that the defense ministry compiled a secret report showing that the great majority of settlements in the West Bank were illegal even under Israeli law.

B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, said its research had shown that “in many cases soldiers have been conducting themselves in the territories as if they were on a hit mission, as opposed to arrest operations.”

The crimes of the state are blatant but it is the truth tellers who are convicted as enemies.

Journalists should be a thorn in the side of Governments and Institutions and expose hypocrisy in high places; and healthy democracies thrive on dissent.

In Israel, the SECURITY forces, IDF and Justice system have colluded to make freedom of conscience and freedom of the press “just another word for nothing left to lose” and until whistle blowers are respected as people acting on conscience for the greater good, doing the right thing because it’s the right thing, may just have to be “good enough” for all.

Notes

1. Timeline the Anat Kamm Affair

2. Anat Kamm gets 4.5 years for stealing military documents

3. AROUND 30 ISRAELI SOLDIERS TESTIFY ABOUT THEIR EXPERIENCES IN OPERATION CAST LEAD – A NEW BOOKLET BY “BREAKING THE SILENCE”

4. Israeli Commander We Rewrote The Rules of  War for Gaza

5. www.youtube.com/user/vanunuvmjc

6. www.fas.org/nuke/guide/israel/barnaby.pdf

7. BEYOND NUCLEAR:Mordechai Vanunu’s FREEDOM of SPEECH Trial and My Life as a Muckraker:2005-2010

8. Mossad Operation Threatened Against Reporter

9. Comment: Kamm sentence a deterrent against leaks

Corporatism Is Not Capitalism

7 Things About The Monolithic Predator Corporations That Dominate Our Economy That Every American Should Know…

Right now, there is a lot of talk about the evils of “capitalism”.  But it is not really accurate to say that we live in a capitalist system.  Rather, what we have in the United States today, and what most of the world is living under, is much more accurately described as “corporatism”.  Under corporatism, most wealth and power is concentrated in the hands of giant corporations and big government is used as a tool by these corporations to consolidate wealth and power even further.  In a corporatist system, the wealth and power of individuals and small businesses is dwarfed by the overwhelming dominance of the corporations.  Eventually, the corporations end up owning almost everything and they end up dominating nearly every aspect of society.  As you will see below, this very accurately describes the United States of America today.  Corporatism is killing this country, and it is not what our founding fathers intended.

The following is the definition of “corporatism” from the Merriam-Webster dictionary….

the organization of a society into industrial and professional corporations serving as organs of political representation and exercising control over persons and activities within their jurisdiction

Corporatism is actually not too different from socialism or communism.  They are all “collectivist” economic systems.  Under corporatism, wealth and power are even more highly concentrated than they are under socialism or communism, and the truth is that none of them are “egalitarian” economic systems.  Under all collectivist systems, a small elite almost always enjoys most of the benefits while most of the rest of the population suffers.

The Occupy Wall Street protesters realize that our economic system is fundamentally unjust in many ways, but the problem is that most of them want to trade one form of collectivism for another.

But our founding fathers never intended for us to have a collectivist system.

Instead, they intended for us to enjoy a capitalist system where true competition and the free enterprise system would allow individuals and small businesses to thrive.

In an article that was posted earlier this year on Addicting Info, Stephen D. Foster Jr. detailed how our founding fathers actually felt about corporations….

The East India Company was the largest corporation of its day and its dominance of trade angered the colonists so much, that they dumped the tea products it had on a ship into Boston Harbor which today is universally known as the Boston Tea Party. At the time, in Britain, large corporations funded elections generously and its stock was owned by nearly everyone in parliament. The founding fathers did not think much of these corporations that had great wealth and great influence in government. And that is precisely why they put restrictions upon them after the government was organized under the Constitution.

After the nation’s founding, corporations were granted charters by the state as they are today. Unlike today, however, corporations were only permitted to exist 20 or 30 years and could only deal in one commodity, could not hold stock in other companies, and their property holdings were limited to what they needed to accomplish their business goals. And perhaps the most important facet of all this is that most states in the early days of the nation had laws on the books that made any political contribution by corporations a criminal offense.

Our founding fathers would have never approved of any form of collectivism.  They understood that all great concentrations of wealth and power represent a significant threat to the freedoms and liberties of average citizens.

Are you not convinced that we live in a corporatist system?

Well, keep reading.

The following are 7 things about the monolithic predator corporations that dominate our economy that every American should know….

#1 Corporations not only completely dominate the U.S. economy, they also completely dominate the global economy as well.  A newly released University of Zurich study examined more than 43,000 major multinational corporations.  The study discovered a vast web of interlocking ownerships that is controlled by a “core” of 1,318 giant corporations.

But that “core” itself is controlled by a “super-entity” of 147 monolithic corporations that are very, very tightly knit.  As a recent article in NewScientist noted, these 147 corporations control approximately 40 percent of all the wealth in the entire network….

When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a “super-entity” of 147 even more tightly knit companies – all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity – that controlled 40 percent of the total wealth in the network. “In effect, less than 1 percent of the companies were able to control 40 percent of the entire network,” says Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions. The top 20 included Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group.

Unsurprisingly, the “super-entity” of 147 corporations is dominated by international banks and large financial institutions.  For example, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America are all in the top 25.

#2 This dominance of the global economy by corporations has allowed global wealth to become concentrated to a very frightening degree.

According to Credit Suisse, those with a household net worth of a million dollars or more control 38.5% of all the wealth in the world.  Last year, that figure was at35.6%.  As you can see, it is rapidly moving in the wrong direction.

For a group of people that represents less than 0.5% of the global population to control almost 40 percent of all the wealth is insane.

The dominance of corporations is also one of the primary reasons why we are witnessing income inequality grow so rapidly in the United States.  The following comes from a recent article in the Los Angeles Times….

An economic snapshot from the Economic Policy Institute shows that inflation-adjusted incomes of the top 1% of households increased 224% from 1979 to 2007, while incomes for the bottom 90% grew just 5% in the same time period. Those in the top 0.1% of income fared even better, with incomes growing 390% over that time period.

You can see a chart that displays these shocking numbers right here.

#3 Since wealth has become concentrated in very few hands, that means that there are a whole lot of poor people out there.

At a time when technology should be making it possible to lift standards of living all over the globe, poverty just continues to spread.  According to the same Credit Suisse study referenced above, the bottom two-thirds of the global population controls just 3.3% of all the wealth.

Not only that, more than 3 billion people currently live on less than 2 dollar a day.

While the ultra-wealthy live the high life, unimaginable tragedies play out all over the globe every single day.  Every 3.6 seconds someone starves to death andthree-quarters of them are children under the age of 5.

#4 Giant corporations have become so dominant that it has become very hard for small businesses to compete and survive in the United States.

Today, even though our population is increasing, the number of small businesses continues to decrease.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 16.6 million Americans were self-employed back in December 2006.  Today, that number has shrunk to 14.5 million.

This is the exact opposite of what should be happening under a capitalist system.

#5 Big corporations completely dominate the media.  Almost all of the news that you get and almost all of the entertainment that you enjoy is fed to you by giant corporations.

Back in 1983, somewhere around 50 corporations controlled the vast majority of all news media in the United States.

Today, control of the news media is concentrated in the hands of just six incredibly powerful media corporations.

#6 Big corporations completely dominate our financial system.  Yes, there are hundreds of choices in the financial world, but just a handful control the vast majority of the assets.

Back in 2002, the top 10 banks controlled 55 percent of all U.S. banking assets.  Today, the top 10 banks control 77 percent of all U.S. banking assets.

The “too big to fail” banks just keep getting more and more powerful.  For example, the “big six” U.S. banks (Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo) now possess assetsequivalent to approximately 60 percent of America’s gross national product.

#7 Big corporations completely dominate our political system.  Because they have so much wealth and power, corporations can exert an overwhelming amount of influence over our elections.  Studies have shown that in federal elections the candidate that raises the most money wins about 90 percent of the time.

Politics in America is not about winning over hearts and minds.

It is about who can raise the most cash.

Sometimes this truth leaks out a bit in the mainstream media.  For example, during a recent show on MSNBC, Dylan Ratigan made the following statement….

“The biggest contributor to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is Goldman Sachs. The primary activities of this president relative to banking have been to protect the most lucrative aspect of that business, which is the dark market for credit default swaps and the like. That has been the explicit agenda of his Treasury Secretary. This president is advocating trade agreements that allow enhanced bank secrecy in Panama, enhanced murdering of union members in Colombia, and the refunding of North Korean slaves.”

Later on, Ratigan followed up by accusing both political parties of working for the bad guys….

“But I guess where I take issue is, this president is working for the bad guys. The Democrats are working for the bad guys. So are the Republicans. The Democrats get away with it by saying, ‘Look at how crazy the Republicans are; at the Democrats pretend to care about people.’ BUT THE FACT IS THE 2-PARTY POLITICAL SYSTEM IS UTTERLY BOGUS.”

Wow – nobody is actually supposed to say that on television.

Today, most of our politicians are bought, and most of them actively help the monolithic predator corporations accumulate even more wealth and even more power.

In fact, as I wrote about recently, the big Wall Street banks are already trying tobuy the election in 2012.

Fortunately, it looks like the American people are starting to wake up.  According to one recent survey, only 23 percent of all Americans now trust the financial system, and 60 percent of all Americans are either “angry” or “very angry” about the economy.

Unfortunately, many of them are joining protest movements such as Occupy Wall Street which are calling for one form of collectivism to replace another.

The American people are being given a false choice.

We don’t have to choose between corporatism and socialism.

We don’t have to choose between big corporations and big government.

Our founding fathers actually intended for corporations and government to both be greatly limited.

The following is a famous quote from Thomas Jefferson….

“I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”

Unfortunately, things did not turn out how Jefferson wanted.  Instead of us controlling the corporations, they now control us.

This next quote is from John Adams….

“Banks have done more injury to the religion, morality, tranquility, prosperity, and even wealth of the nation than they can have done or ever will do good.”

But who dominates our economy today?

The big banks.

Perhaps we should have listened to founding fathers such as John Adams.

Lastly, here is another quote from Thomas Jefferson….

“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them (around the banks), will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”

How prescient was that quote?

Last year, over a million American families were booted out of their homes by the big banks.  The financial institutions actually now have more total equity in our homes than we do.

Unemployment is rampant, but corporate profits are soaring.  The number of Americans on food stamps has increased by more than 70 percent since 2007, and yet the incomes of those at the top of the food chain continue to increase.

We need a system that allows all Americans to start small businesses, compete fairly and have a chance at success.

Instead, what we have is a corporatist system where the big corporations have most of the wealth, most of the power and most of the advantages.

We need to get the American people to understand that corporatism is not capitalism.

Corporatism is a collectivist system that allows the elite to accumulate gigantic amounts of wealth and power.

The answer to such a system is not to go to a different collectivist system.

Rather, we need to return as much power as possible to individuals and small businesses.

Our founding fathers intended for us to live in a country where power was highly decentralized.

Why didn’t we listen to them?

Source: The American Dream

Is China Ready To Pull The Plug?

There are two mainstream market assumptions that, in my mind, prevail over all others. The continuing function of the Dow, the sustained flow of capital into and out of the banking sector, and the full force spending of the federal government are ALL entirely dependent on the lifespan of these dual illusions; one, that the U.S. Dollar is a legitimate safe haven investment and will remain so indefinitely, and two, that China, like many other developing nations, will continue to prop up the strength of the dollar indefinitely because it is “in their best interest”. In the dimly lit bowels of Wall Street such ideas are so entrenched and pervasive, to question their validity is almost sacrilegious. Only after the recent S&P downgrade of America’s AAA credit rating did the impossible become thinkable to some MSM analysts, though a considerable portion of the day-trading herd continue to roll onward, while the time bomb strapped to the ass end of their financial house is ticking away.

The debate over the health and longevity of the dollar comes down to one very simple and undeniable root pillar of economics; supply and demand. The supply of dollars throughout the financial systems of numerous countries is undoubtedly overwhelming. In fact, the private Federal Reserve has been quite careful in maintaining a veil of secrecy over the full extent of dollar saturation in foreign markets in order to hide the sheer volume of greenback devaluation and inflation they have created. If for some reason the reserves of dollars held overseas by investors and creditors were to come flooding back into the U.S., we would see a hyperinflationary spiral more destructive than any in recorded history. As the supply of dollars around the globe increases exponentially, so too must foreign demand, otherwise, the debt machine short-circuits, and newly impoverished Americans will be using Ben Franklins for sod in their adobe huts. As I will show, demand for dollars is not increasing to match supply, but is indeed stalled, ready to crumble.

China, being the second largest holder of U.S. debt next to the Fed, and the number one holder of dollars within their forex reserves, has always been the key to gauging the progression of the global economic collapse now in progress. If you want to know what’s going to happen tomorrow, watch what China does today.

Back in 2005, China began a low profile program to issue government debt denominated in the Yuan, called Yuan bonds, or “Panda Bonds”. This move was almost entirely ignored by establishment economists. They should have realized then that China was moving to strengthen the Yuan, expand its use in other markets, and recondition their economic structure away from export dependency and towards consumerism (as they have done with the establishment of the ASEAN trading bloc). Of course, in the MSM at that time, there was no derivatives bubble, no credit crisis, no debt implosion. America was on cloud nine. China, through inside knowledge, or perhaps a crystal ball, knew exactly what was about to happen, and insulated itself accordingly by generating distance between its system and the soon to derail retail based society of the U.S. This dynamic has not changed since the 2008 bubble burst, and Chinese activity is still the ultimate litmus test for economic volatility.

Today, there is widespread confusion in markets over the direction of America’s financial future.In the wake of the credit downgrade, most investors unaware of the bigger picture are desperately clinging to any and every piece of news no matter how trivial, every rumor from the Fed, and every announcement from the government no matter how empty. China’s economic news feeds have been tightly regulated and filtered, even more so than usual (which is cause for concern, in my opinion), while distractions in Europe abound. Let’s take a step by step journey through these issues, and see if we can’t produce some clarity…

U.S. versus EU: A Game Of Hot Potato…To The Death?

The theatrical seesaw between the U.S. and Europe is not only becoming obvious to the most narrow of economic analysts, it is also becoming kind of boring. The entire ordeal has been subversively exploited as a false example of systemic “contagion”, and with purpose; global banks need to convince average Americans and average Europeans that destabilization in one portion of the world will automatically lead to destabilization everywhere. This concept is true only so far as forced globalization and centralization have made it true. That said, the charade has been somewhat effective in conditioning the populace with ideas of collectivist survival. In other words, we are being trained to take fiscal responsibility for countries outside of our sovereign national boundaries as if we are morally tied to every penny they have or do not have (global socialism/feudalism – here we come!). This process is culminating in worldwide harmonization through fear as well as guilt.

What we are witnessing is NOT contagion. Instead, we are seeing multiple and mostly separate collapses activated simultaneously. Each nation suffering dire straights in Europe is doing so because of its own particular financial problems, not the problems of other countries nearby, and certainly not those of countries on the other side of the world. Contagion arguments are only applicable to those economies overly dependent on exports, yet, China has already shown (at least in the case of the U.S.) that such dangers can be controlled by minimizing exposure to the poisoned portions of the system and reverting to more internalized wealth creation.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and the heads of World Bank and IMF have perpetuated the lie of contagion between the U.S. and the EU primarily to service the progress of globalization, but also to hide the inflationary effects of dollar devaluation. While the greatest threats are stacked squarely against America’s economy and the dollar, somehow we have been led to focus on the comparatively less explosive drama in the EU. U.S. dollars, as well as Chinese funds, are flooding into Europe to support the region, while investment in the U.S. and its debt weakens and disappears. In the meantime, a weaker Euro makes the dollar look more attractive (at least on paper), but in reality, both currencies are on the path to bloody hari-kari.

How much longer can this game of hot potato go on? Again, China decides. Eventually, China is going to have to choose which currency to support; the dollar or the euro. Supporting both is simply not an option, especially when the chance of collapse in both currencies is so high. So far, the most logical path has been the euro. While the EU may suffer an astonishing breakdown, we must take into account that our own Treasury and central bank have seen fit to throw trillions of dollars into propping up Europe (with even more on the way):

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/15/us-eurozone-idUSTRE78B24R20110915

With so much inflation and devaluation being thrust upon the dollar in the name of saving the EU, China’s move towards a stronger economic relationship with Europe at the expense of the U.S. is a no-brainer:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-14/china-willing-to-buy-bonds-from-sovereign-debt-crisis-nations-zhang-says.html

If I were to place a bet on who would come out of the crisis less damaged, my money would be on the EU, everyone else’s money certainly seems to be…

China Discreetly Moving To Dump U.S. Debt

China has been tip-toeing towards this for years, and has openly admitted on numerous occasions that they plan to institute a break from U.S. debt and the dollar in due course. Anyone who continues to argue that a Chinese decoupling from America’s economy is impossible at this point is truly beyond hope. Though increasingly more rare, news on China’s push to drop the U.S. still leaks out. Recently, a top advisor to China’s central bank let slip that a plan is in place to begin “liquidating” (yes, they said liquidate) their U.S. Treasury bonds as soon as possible, and reposition national investments into more physical assets:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ambroseevans-pritchard/100011987/china-to-liquidate-us-treasuries-not-dollars/

But let’s step back for a moment and pretend China hasn’t told us exactly what it is going to do time and time again. Instead, let’s look at the fundamentals.

The primary concern in China right now is inflation. Because China does not yet have the ability to export its fiat to other markets the way the U.S. does, its own liquidity injections in the face of the credit crisis have led to severe price increases. In August alone, overall inflation was rated at 6.2% (always double government produced numbers to get true inflation). Food prices jumped 13.4%, while meat and poultry jumped 29.3%. Because these numbers are around 1% lower than in previous months, the Chinese government has prematurely proclaimed a “cooling period”:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/china-business/8751482/China-inflation-cools-as-food-price-rises-slow.html

With harsh inflation continuing unabated, eventually, the Asian nation will be forced to enact abrupt policies. This will likely take the form of a strong Yuan valuation, or a “floating” of the Yuan. A sizable increase in the value of the Chinese currency is the ONLY way that the government will be able to combat rising prices. By increasing the buying power of its citizens, the government allows them to keep pace with rising prices, and eases the tension within the populace which could otherwise lead to civil unrest. For China to ensure that a floating of the Yuan will lead to a much higher value, their forex and treasury holdings will have to fall. Period.

A dumping of the dollar will give the Chinese room to breath, and this space will be needed very soon. The debt ceiling deal made by Congress in the aftermath of the credit downgrade left the rest of the world unimpressed. While the MSM tries to make us forget that this event ever occurred, most foreign investors have not. Markets are anxiously awaiting an announcement from the Fed for further liquidity injections. If this announcement is not made after meetings next week, then it will certainly be made before the end of the year. Ironically, the same quantitative easing that investors are clamoring for today is liable to become the final signal for China to cut its losses and separate from U.S. securities completely. China has been positioned for many months now to take such measures…

Lights Out…

Delusions of Chinese dependency on the U.S consumer still abound, and those who suggest a catastrophic dump of U.S. debt and dollars in the near term are liable to hear the same ignorant talking points we have heard all along:

“The Chinese are better off with us than without us…”

“China needs export dollars from the U.S. to survive…”

“China isn’t equipped to produce goods without U.S. technological savvy…”

“America could simply revert back to industry and production and teach the Chinese a lesson…”

“The U.S. could default on its debts to China and simply walk away…”

“The whole situation is China’s fault because of their artificial devaluation of the Yuan over the decades…”

And on and on it goes. Though I have deconstructed these arguments more instances than I can count in the past, I feel it my duty to at least quickly address them one more time:

U.S. consumption of all goods, not just Chinese goods, has fallen off a cliff since 2008 and is unlikely to recover anytime soon. China has done quite well despite this fall in exports considering the circumstances. With the institution of ASEAN, they barely need us at all.

China is well equipped to produce technological goods without U.S. help, and if Japan is inducted into ASEAN (as I believe they soon will be), they will be even more capable.

America will NOT be able to revert back to an industrial based economy before a dollar collapse escalates to fruition. It took decades to dismantle U.S. industry and ship it overseas.Reeducating a 70% service based society to function in an industrial system, not to mention resurrecting the factory infrastructure necessary to support the nation, would likely take decades to accomplish.

If the U.S. deliberately defaults on debt to China, the global reputation of the dollar would implode, and its world reserve status would be irrevocably lost. We won’t be teaching anyone a “lesson” then.

Yes, China currently manipulates its currency down, but then again, so does the U.S. though quantitative easing. Both sides are dirty. Taking sides in this farce is pure stupidity…

Now that all that has been cleared up (again), the primary point becomes rather direct; the reason it is difficult to predict an exact time frame for an American collapse is because all the pieces are in place to trigger an event right now! There are, of course, stress points within the system that set a time limit, even on global banks and China, but a full spectrum catastrophe is not only a concern for some distant future. Every element needed for the so called “perfect storm” is ever present and ready to ignite at a moments notice. The destructive potential coming from China alone is undeniable. Everyday that the spark is subdued should be treated as a gift, an extra 24 hours of education and preparation. This is how close we are to the edge.It is not for us to be alarmed, but to be ready, and ever aware.

Source: Brandon Smith | Alt-Market

How The Media Covers Bilderberg Meetings

The mainstream media blackout of the annual Bilderberg meeting is finally crumbling. Yet the prevarication machine continues to reinforce the delusional official line from on high. For decades, the sinister world cabal operated in the shadows of secrecy and disinformation. The timely analogy is the initial way the disgraced Anthony Weiner responded to his self-inflicted indiscretion. Ignore any rogue inquiry about the nature of their agenda or plots on forthcoming plans. High-handedness is the hallmark of their demeanor, just as arrogance is the basic character component of this pit-bull Congressional egomaniac.

For the world’s most powerful elites, Bilderberg meetings are not sessions of chance. Peccadillos in personal affairs often are the norm, but when it comes to controlling the planet, only a strictly managed media message is acceptable. Now that the original denial, ala area 51 nonexistent ploys no longer flies, desperate PR spinning, surfaces. Public apathy used to fuel the secrecy of Bilderberg discussions and decisions. However, media silence was the engine that kept the sleight of hand deception pointing in a different direction.

Weiner everyday and all day long, is symptomatic of the celebrity culture built to keep people living lives of utter desperation. As the government education experiment achieved undisputed success in destroying independent and coherent thought, the Bilderberg overlords felt confident that there would be little blowback to their totalitarian collectivism. Nevertheless, the rapid obliteration of economic and social society is the harsh reality, no longer concealed, from even the most brain dead serf. Case in point is that large media conglomerates cannot exhort their version of political news in the homogeneous manner once enjoyed. Readership and ratings forecast a dying dinosaur.

CNBC is a good example of unwatchable propaganda. Corporatist’s cheerleaders write the business reporting. An article by Peter Guest Rich, Famous and Powerful Converge at Bilderberg spins the truly ridiculous.

Andrew Kakabadse is professor of international management development at Cranfield University. For his recent book “Bilderberg People,” co-authored with Nada Kakabadse and Ian Richardson, Kakabadse interviewed a number of past attendees in order to understand how the network of global influence works.

“The people we talked to are quite genuine. Mostly they don’t understand the conspiracy bit, because they say when you go there what you find is people of all sorts of varying views. But the fact that they’ve been invited is indicative of the position that they’ve reached in life,” he said.

As the world teeters on a fabricated collapse of incalculable debt, the Bilderberg consortium readies the next escalated stage of enslavement. The good news is that a capitalist tool media outlet is beingforced to play a frantic cover-up for their sponsors. If you think that GE really sold off controlling interest of their media empire, the same “global enterprise” of acceptable current events proceeds according to their master designs. The schedule or tactics may alter, but the goal is constant.

None dare call it conspiracy is still a required “PC” composite mindset to get on air. Thinking people know better and call it reality history. In the nearly forty years since Gary Allen wrote his influential book, more citizens have come to understand the nature of pervasive globalism. However, the technological procession towards dependent regimentation is frightening. The wild card in the mix of communication is the internet. Plutocrats are unable to stamp out dissent on the internet. The effective ability to expose, challenge and resist Bilderberg grand scheme causes is these oligarchs’ deepest concern and is a prime objective for elimination.

When an individual awakens from their induced slumber, grass roots activism has the potential to blossom. Mark Dice has a video that suggests a simple strategy in, Pressuring the mainstream media to cover Bilderberg 2011. The key word is PRESSURE.The Drudge Report is setting the real news cycle. Linking to Bilderberg items gets traction. Coverage from the likes of the Alex Jones team is at an all time high. Insider reporting from Jim Tucker is unstoppable. The excuses for remaining ignorant are few. People need to alter their pathetic lifestyle and act upon all this information.

The targeting of activists as terrorists is a basic strategy of the globalist cowards. Apply an elementary test to this outlook. The list of recent attendees to Bilderberg meetings is readily available. These tyrants continue to live privileged lives. Their physical safety is seldom if ever challenged. Their protective measures are formidable. You seldom hear or read about protesters penetrating their private cocoon. In an older age the chant, off with their heads would be acted upon. However, the prey for violent terrorism never includes these elites as objects of harm.The hoax of terrorism, shaped by these elites, only serves their interests. The essence of the threat of extremist oppression originates at the Bilderberg conferences. Since they are virtually immune from terrorist attacks, it is insulting to think that unfeigned militants would leave the Bilderberg clan off the list for retaliation. When the phony media reports that our very existence depends upon exterminating terrorists, they intentionally point to the wrong suspects.

The Anthony Weiner pattern of unaccountable and patronizing behavior demonstrates a sickness in the political class. Required resignation from office for lying in the post Bill Clinton era has become only an option. Even the minimal standard of public shame does not apply to Bilderberg Mattoids. Disgraced politicians may eventually leave or not run for re-election, but if you are on the Bilderberg approved blueblood list, your influence and assignment in the globalist scheme continues.

Weiner gate is not substantial news. It is the typical New York City Metrosexual story of being sexually excited by eggs or maybe Weiner’s wife, Huma Abedin is just a hen. According to the changeling Chris Matthews in “Maybe She’s Partly Responsible” Matthews believes Rep. Anthony Weiner’s wife may be “partly responsible” for his sexual misconduct because the Congressman said she was aware of his behavior before they were married. Transcript below:

CHRIS MATTHEWS, MSNBC: “Yeah, but he says his wife knew. He laid it out on her.”

JOHN FEEHERY, Republican strategist: “Which is a terrible, terrible mistake.”

MATTHEWS: “Well, maybe she’s partly responsible if she knew about it?”

The irrelevance of the Weiner scandal in the greater scheme of things should be self-evident. But what is the responsibility of the typical subjugated slave living on the global plantation, when they know that the Bilderberg elites manipulate the despotic hegemony?

Mark Anderson from the American Free Press video gives a succinct outline.

Steve Watson’s point in the report, Dear Mainstream Media, We Think You Might Want To Cover This… states the obvious about attendee:

” . . . Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO of Amazon.com, Chris R. Hughes, Co-founder of Facebook, Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman of Google, Craig J. Mundie, Chief Research and Strategy Officer at Microsoft Corporation, and Reid Hoffman, Co-founder and Executive Chairman of LinkedIn.

That alone should be enough to focus the attention of the mainstream media.

Alas, apparently, no, that is not enough to perk their collective interest.

Then lets factor in that also in attendance are the Vice President of the European Commission, the President of the European Council, the Director General of the World Trade Organization, the President of the European Central Bank, the President of The World Bank, and the Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Programme.”

The New American draws attention that the blackout stranglehold is softening.

“Other mainstream reports, however, were more friendly to Bilderberg critics. “It’s a shame the attendees are still so phobic of attention, seeing as how this year there’s shaping up to be more press interest than ever. People and the media have finally started noticing this quiet little conference at the centre of the storm,” noted a piece in the U.K. Guardian, pointing out that the cabal played a crucial role in the creation of the European Union.”

Smart money says that Texas Gov. Rick Perry is the anointed Bilderberg selection to butte heads against Obama. His praises in an American Thinker article seems opportune. Yet the political horse race is even more immaterial than the distraction of a weiner gone wild. Nevertheless, the corporatists’ media preoccupations with meaningless elections deserve mention when a menacingjunto shapes the political process.Oppressed people of the world need to force the media into a ”commune state of shame” for protecting Bilderberg sociopaths. A spontaneous effort of applying pressure on the organizations that own and set reporting on programming content is a starting point. Escalation to a national boycott of their media venues and advertising revenue is the common language these elites understand. MSNBC Chris Matthews is a prime enabler who needs to learn the meaning of “I am partly responsible because I knew about Bilderberg“.

The continual breakdown of society is a designed result of the global elites. Each of us has a responsibility to take this warning to friends, family and strangers alike. Become your own media message and use every means of non-violent resistance as a model for your gospel of universal liberation.

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