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Why Terrorists Aren’t Hitting the U.S. Now
The ‘Downton Abbey’ Generals
How a Candidate’s Mega-Donors Get Served After the Election
How TTIP Threatens UK’s Ability to Enforce Fair Taxes on Corporations
President Obama Fights for Global Warming Even While Talking Against It
Italy hit by banking crisis
Video: Night at one UK asylum center costs more than most exclusive hotels
Corporations Killed Medicine. Here’s How to Take It Back.
Hillary Clinton’s Hawkish Record
Making Corrupt Killers Fat and Happy
Stop ‘damaging’ attacks on lawyers investigating soldiers’ abuse of Iraqis – human rights groups
‘Single Payer Saves Money by Saying No to the Insurance Industry’
Want Endless War? Love the U.S. Empire? Well, Hillary Clinton’s Your Choice
Feeding the Military-Industrial Complex
An American Big Lie About ‘Terrorism’
Turning Our Backs
The Pentagon’s Pricey Culture of Mediocrity
George Soros Finally Suspends His Lifelong War Against Russia
The Reason Why ‘Reparations to Blacks’ Is a Stupid Idea
25 Years of the US at War in Iraq: Tragic Legacy, Dubious Prospects
One quarter of young Americans are too obese to qualify for military service; junk...
How Candidates’ Mega-Donors Get Served After the Election
This Month Marks 25 Years the U.S. Has Been at War in Iraq
Obama Takes a Walk on the Greener Side
Digging Up a Mountain of Debt
The U.S. Has an Empire of Bases in the Middle East – and It’s...
In OtherWords: January 20, 2016
Secretary of State Clinton Disobeyed President Obama
A Balanced View of the Obama Presidency
Watch as UK police storm peaceful anti-fracking protest camp
Councils failed to spend millions intended for impoverished people — report
German media and politicians demand increased state powers in response to Cologne assaults
The Real Terrorists: The .01%
TransCanada’s $15B Lawsuit Against U.S. on Keystone XL Presents Strong Case
Trans-Canada Sue US Government for $15 Billion over Tar Sands Pipeline Cancellation
Nations of the world are drowning in debt, and a massive global avalanche of...
The Sauds’ Impunity
US media agency BBG chief says more taxpayer money needed ‘to counter RT’
America’s richest 400 households paid a 16.7 percent tax rate in 2012
The Origin of Jihadism
Inside the U.S. Drone War on the Islamic State
For Democrats, Debate Night Means Being Quizzed From the Right by Corporate Media
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Russia Losing Its Battle Against Jihadists in Syria
What the GOP’s Putting Under Corporate America’s Tree
Twenty Years of Truth-telling
Inequality in America, the Fish that Rots from the Head
Pentagon Spent $150 Million on Afghanistan "Villas," Security for Lavish Compounds
Victory to the junior doctors! Defend the NHS!
America’s Awesome Corruption – Especially in the Military
Hang Onto Your Wallets: Negative Interest, the War on Cash, and the $10 Trillion...
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Over half of US military assistance goes to Israel: US government report
Jewish lobby focused on US military assistance to Israel: Analyst
Tory who had moat cleaned on parliamentary expenses sworn into House of Lords
How Ukraine’s Finance Chief Got Rich
Human Rights Act abolition would shield soldiers from abuse claims
TPP Ignores Global Warming & Allows Murder of Labor Union Organizers
EU and NATO Set to Destabilize Russia by Anti-Putin Propaganda Operation
America’s $43 Million Afghan Gas Station
Shaker Aamer should be denied Gitmo compensation — Tory MPs
The U.S. Government Is Spending 400,000 Dollars On A Single Helmet
AP/GfK Poll: Americans Want Gov’t. Shutdown Unless Federal Spending Is Cut
US Violence Breeds a Language of the Grotesque
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The Most Criminal Treaty in History Is Now Presented for Signing
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The Western Alliance Is Crumbling
Obama v. Putin: Their Debate on Crimea
Why The British Establishment Wants Jeremy Corbyn Buried
Parry to Receive I.F. Stone Award
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Leader of US war effort against Islamic State stepping down
How Britain’s Propaganda Machine Controls What You Think
Get Parry’s Classic Book, ‘Fooling America’
Sex, fraud, retaliation: ‘Pervasive misconduct’ found at US Census Bureau
Are Neocons an Existential Threat?
Donald Trump’s Nativist Impulse
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Is 200 years of Tory corruption about to come to an end?
Can Jeremy Corbyn Stem the Tide of Neoliberalism and Militarism?
Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News Says Refugee Crisis Is Putin’s Scheme. The Backstory
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Third World Invader Threatens Beheading Live on TV in Budapest
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UK psychologists campaign against cuts and social inequality
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Western Democracy Is An Endangered Species On Its Way To Extinction
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George Soros’s Fakery
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Jeb Bush won’t rule out torture tactics, says they’re effective
Appeals Court Rules That KBR Can Keep Evidence Of Contract Fraud Secret
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Obama Gitmo plan: Kick out half, bring in half
Scott Walker’s Big Lie
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Agency to Enslave Greeks Is Established
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New IMF Report on Greece Says Projections Are Unrealistically Optimistic
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Top bankers’ pay rose 17 percent in 2014
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IMF Violates IMF Rules, to Continue Ukraine Bailouts
‘Fatally flawed’ Bank of England stress tests peddle myth of financial security — report
Truth Is Washington’s Enemy
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Issa is also the moron who has wasted taxpayers’ money for years trying to hang the blame for Benghazi on Hillary Clinton. Spurred on by the liars at FOX News, Issa’s committee tried desperately to found any evidence of Obama/Clinton incompetence or corruption in the deaths of U.S. embassy employees. The investigation has turned up absolutely nothing. But Issa did get the satisfaction of publicly grilling Hillary in his congressional hearings. In so doing, he proved himself to be a misogynist lout, treating our Secretary of State with disrespect, disdain, and derision. In the end, though, Issa’s work was eviscerated by a bi-partisan Senate Intelligence committee which found that the State Department was not to blame for the attacks on our foreign embassy and the deaths of American diplomatic employees. There was no stand-down order at the time of the attacks, and no cover-up of the facts ensued. To wit: "There was no singular 'Tactical Warning' in the intelligence reporting leading up to the events on September 11, 2012, predicting an attack on U.S embassies. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence review found that no specific warnings predicted the attack in Benghazi…[and]there were no efforts by the White House or any other Executive Branch entities to 'cover-up' facts or make alterations for political purposes…[and] there were no U.S. military resources in position to intervene in short order in Benghazi to help defend The Temporary Mission Facility."
Issa should resign in disgrace for wasting millions of dollars, money which could have been used to assist the poor. Oops, I forgot. American poor people don’t need our help because they already have it so good.
http://www.amazon.com/Presidents-Mortician-Tim-Fleming-ebook/dp/B00I6GNPD4
1,335 Americans give up passports in first quarter of 2015
The US Internal Revenue Service has announced an increase over the number of Americans living abroad who decided to renounce their citizenship.
A total of 1,335 Americans renounced their citizenship in the first quarter of 2015, which is 18 percent higher than the previous record, Bloomberg reported on Thursday.
The figure comes after 3,415 Americans gave up their passports in 2014.
Americans living outside the US renounce their citizenship due to the country’s tax laws.
The US is the only country within the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that taxes citizens wherever they reside.
About six million American citizens are living abroad.
The surge is tied to a 2010 law that gives the Internal Revenue Service access to US citizens’ foreign bank accounts.
Tax laws were rarely enforced for decades, but scrutiny of Americans abroad is intensifying because of the country’s budget deficit that spiked after the Great Recession.
The campaign was intended to target American taxpayers who hide assets in secret foreign accounts in order to pay less taxes, but it also complicated the financial lives of the US citizens living abroad.
Earlier this year, the mayor of London, who holds dual US-British nationality, decided to renounce his American citizenship, citing his bid to run for the UK’s premiership.
“The reason I’m thinking I probably will want to make a change is that my commitment is, and always has been, to Britain,” Boris Johnson said.
However, Johnson’s aides were cited in local media reports as saying that the mayor’s top priority in abandoning his American citizenship was a bid to avoid paying more taxes to US authorities after had recently been forced to settle a large capital gains tax payment statement.
AGB/AGB
Pentagon employees used govt credit cards for ‘gambling, escorts,’ audit reveals
Major Media Keep Propagandizing for Hillary Clinton
The U.S-Israel Alliance: War, Chaos and Netanyahu’s Big Lie
Timothy Alexander Guzman, Silent Crow News – The relationship between the U.S. and Israel in the last 6 years under the Obama administration has never been stronger. In 2012, The National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) declared that President Obama’s aid package for Israel was the largest in U.S. history, a fact that is hard to ignore:
President Barack Obama requested a record $3.1 billion in military assistance to Israel for the 2013 fiscal year. The requested amount is not just the largest assistance request for Israel ever; it is the largest foreign assistance request ever in U.S. history
President Barack H. Obama and Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s alleged tenuous relationship is not what it seems. Sure they probably annoy each other, but Obama has provided U.S. foreign aid just as every U.S. President before him. The invitation granted by the speaker of the house John Boehner to Netanyahu so that he can present his case against Iran to the U.S. congress to prove that Obama’s negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program was a “bad deal.” According to Netanyahu, Iran threatens Israel’s existence and the world. Netanyahu’s speech was political theater. Several democrats did not attend Netanyahu’s show. Those that did criticized Netanyahu for trying to undermine the Obama administration is once again, all political theater. The democrats who skipped Israeli Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent speech to show solidarity with President Obama’s policy towards Iran were going to attend the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) event featuring an appearance by Netanyahu the following week as the Washington Examiner reported earlier this month:
All of the members skipping Netanyahu’s congressional speech the Examiner interviewed were quick to say their anger toward the prime minister and his attempt to scuttle the Obama administration’s negotiations with Iran on its nuclear program did not extend to pro-Israel committee.
“Why would I not want to meet with my friends? They’re coming to see me next week and why wouldn’t I see them?” asked Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., referring to two American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobbyists he’s known and worked with for 25 years
Since 1948, U.S and Israeli actions taken in the Middle East has proven to be a tragic period for all people of the Middle East whether Arab, Christian, Jew, Kurdish, Sunni or Shiite. Nothing but wars and Sectarian conflicts, poverty and Western-funded extremists has destroyed Arab countries and killed millions of Muslim men, women and children that are physically and emotionally scarred for the rest of their young and innocent lives.
Can anyone think of the U.S. and its Democratic ideals as a success? The U.S. has done everything it can to create “order out of chaos.” In 1947 following the “creation of Israel” by Great Britain when the Foreign secretary Arthur James Balfour confirmed a “national home of the Jewish People” when he sent the Balfour Declaration to Walter Rothschild, head of the Rothschild banking dynasty, the Palestinian people have been living in hell. Palestine became a prison enforced by Israel’s security apparatus that resembles what George Orwell described as a total police state in his classic book “1984.” Palestine has been divided; 1.7 million Palestinians live in an open air prison in the Gaza strip while others live in the West Bank under a police state controlled by heavily armed Israeli soldiers and police. The Palestinians have been losing lands in an unprecedented fashion and in recent decades only to be accelerated under Netanyahu’s watch with a 40% increase in 2014 alone, outpacing the prior year.
Israel’s ambitions for nuclear weapons capability began after Israel became a Western sponsored state with the U.S, U.K. and France as its main allies. Many conflicts in the Middle East soon followed. The Israeli war of Independence against the Arab countries included Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria which led to the 1949 Armistice which outlined the borders of Israel. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soon began military operations against Egypt, Lebanon and Jordon to prevent terrorist attacks against its Jewish citizens. In 1956, Great Britain and France joined Israel in attacking Egypt after its government decided to nationalize the Suez Canal after the U.S. and Great Britain declined to fund the Aswan Dam. Israel was forced to retreat from the attack by the U.S. and the USSR. Soon after, the Six-Day War in 1967 began when Israel fought againstEgypt, Syria and Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and others contributed weapons and troops to the Arab forces. Israel defeated the Arab armies and expanded its territory in the West Bank which included East Jerusalem to Jordan, the Golan Heights in Syria, the Sinai and the Gaza strip. Then the War of Attrition (1967-1970), the Yom Kippur War (1973) and the War in Lebanon (1982) which the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) invaded Southern Lebanon to eliminate Palestinian guerrilla fighters (the resistance) from the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) which led to the Israeli Security Zone in South Lebanon. Then the South Lebanon conflict with Hezbollah that lasted for at least 20 years. It still continues today. The first and Second Intifadas began with the Palestinian uprising against a brutal Israeli occupation and the disappearance of their lands. Several wars soon followed. The last war called ‘Operation Protective Edge’ which Israel launched against the Gaza Strip. According to the State of Palestine Ministry of Health who reported on August 17, 2014 that there were 2,300 deaths and over 19,000 injured in Gaza which was a devastating conflict that traumatized the Palestinian people especially the children. It is a tragic consequence that will last a lifetime for many.
During all of the conflicts, Israel was seeking weapons to defend their new “Jewish” nation. Israel was eventually exposed as an undeclared nuclear power thanks to an Israeli man named Mordechai Vanunu who spent 18 years in the Shikma Prison in Ashkelon, with 10 of those years in solitary confinement. Mordechai exposed Israel’s secrets nuclear program to the British press in 1986.
Israel is the aggressor. It’s an illegal occupation which began under the British government and it is supported by other Western-powers, mainly the U.S. and France. Israel’s history is filled with conflicts and terrorism against the Arab world. Israel has committed political assassinations, supported extremists to topple governments including its current support to “moderate rebels” to oust Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. It has control over the natural resources including vital water supplies that Palestinians solely depend on to survive. So my question is why everyone is surprised by Netanyahu’s speech he recently gave in the U.S. House of congress? Several members of congress were “appalled” or “upset” because he disrespected U.S. lawmakers, but the reality is that the majority of elected officials in congress and every administration even before Obama have approved military aid for Israel’s security since Israel was created in 1948. Who are they fooling? Netanyahu sounded like he was the U.S. president with constant standing ovations and thunderous applauds by the AIPAC controlled congress. Those on both sides of the aisle whether democrat or republican always look forward to Jewish (Zionist) support for campaign funds. There are several members of congress who have dual citizenships that seek to protect Israel at all costs (although the actual “costs” come at the expense of U.S. taxpayers). The U.S. has been involved in the Middle East for a long time. Do not expect peace or stability. War and conquest is the true nature of both the Americans and Israeli’s regarding Middle East policies. ISIS is a perfect example of how the U.S. operates by bringing democracy to an already volatile region with its support of the Syrian rebels, al-Nusra and the decade old “al-Qaeda” with weapons to topple governments not in line with Washington only proves that war is on the agenda. Not only does the U.S. and its allies support ISIS and other terrorist organizations to topple Arab governments they protect them according to an article by Michel Chossudovsky titled ‘Obama’s “Fake War” against the Islamic State (ISIS). The Islamic State is protected by the US and its Allies’ and made an important point when he said:
What would have been required from a military standpoint to wipe out an ISIS convoy with no effective anti-aircraft capabilities? Without an understanding of military issues, common sense prevails. If they had wanted to eliminate the Islamic State brigades, they could have “carpet” bombed their convoys of Toyota pickup trucks when they crossed the desert from Syria into Iraq in June
The U.S. and Israel clearly want chaos in the Middle East. It is obvious. However, Netanyahu did say that:
The remarkable alliance between Israel and the United States has always been above politics. It must always remain above politics. Because America and Israel, we share a common destiny, the destiny of promised lands that cherish freedom and offer hope. Israel is grateful for the support of American — of America’s people and of America’s presidents, from Harry Truman to Barack Obama
Yes, the alliance between the U.S. and Israel is “above politics” and I agree it’s supposed to achieve “Full Spectrum Dominance” with the West and Israel controlling every aspect of Arab life including its lands, economy, and its natural resources in the Middle East. This is the “destiny” which Netanyahu speaks of. There is a vast amount of resources including the obvious oil, water and natural gas in the Middle East for which both the U.S. and Israel is solely interested in. It also provides a market for the Military-Industrial Complex and corporate interests. Netanyahu’s speech in Washington resembles what a genuine hypocrite that will claim it is he who is a victim of hatred, while committing heinous crimes against those he hates. Netanyahu thanked President Obama for his support over the years which are no surprise:
We appreciate all that President Obama has done for Israel.
Now, some of that is widely known. Some of that is widely known, like strengthening security cooperation and intelligence sharing, opposing anti-Israel resolutions at the U.N. Some of what the president has done for Israel is less well- known.
I called him in 2010 when we had the Carmel forest fire, and he immediately agreed to respond to my request for urgent aid. In 2011, we had our embassy in Cairo under siege, and again, he provided vital assistance at the crucial moment. Or his support for more missile interceptors during our operation last summer when we took on Hamas terrorists
‘Operation Protective Edge’ was supported by the Obama administration. They have collaborated on various programs including Israel security forces that provided training to U.S. Police forces. I was not surprised by the recent revelations in Chicago, Illinois concerning its secret black sites used by the Chicago police department to detain and even torture suspects. This happened under former White House Chief of Staff and also an IDF civilian volunteer and Israel supporter Rahm Emanuel whose father Benjamin M. Emanuel was once a member of the Irgun, a terrorist organization that operated in Mandate Palestine. As Netanyahu continued:
But Iran’s regime is not merely a Jewish problem, any more than the Nazi regime was merely a Jewish problem. The 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis were but a fraction of the 60 million people killed in World War II. So, too, Iran’s regime poses a grave threat, not only to Israel, but also the peace of the entire world. To understand just how dangerous Iran would be with nuclear weapons, we must fully understand the nature of the regime.
The people of Iran are very talented people. They’re heirs to one of the world’s great civilizations. But in 1979, they were hijacked by religious zealots — religious zealots who imposed on them immediately a dark and brutal dictatorship
Netanyahu said that “religious Zealots” imposed a dark brutal dictatorship? Well I guess the Western-backed Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi or the “Shah of Iran” and his secret police force the Savak who terrorized the Iranian people was their preference to keep Iran under their control. Savak was trained and supported by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Israeli Mossad. The most brutal dictatorship in the Gulf States such as Saudi Arabia is an ideal model for the U.S. and Israel. If you look at the dictatorships the U.S. has supported to spread “American-Style Democracy” in the last 100 years. The results of “American-style democracy” were disastrous causing human rights violations, countless deaths and disease. Those same nations the U.S. either invaded or helped overthrow their respective governments (many of them democracies) still suffer from Washington’s “medicine.” From Pinochet in Chile, to the Somoza dynasty in Nicaragua, Papa and Baby Doc Duvalier regime in Haiti to the Gulf Monarchies in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and the list goes on, U.S. policy is about dominating nations for geopolitical interests including for the control of their natural resources. The U.S. and Israel have an interest in the Middle East and that is to dominate it under their so-called “World Order.” If they remove Syria and then Iran, the Middle East would become a region that would look like Iraq or Libya. It would be a cash bonanza for the Military-Industrial Complex if they keep the civil wars among different sects and tribes going, creating a market for weapons exports. Netanyahu said Iran is a “grave threat” to World peace. Can someone say “Samson Option”? Seymour M. Hersh’s ‘The Samson Option’ noted a commentary by Norman Podhoretz that summarizes how Israel would respond if they were on the verge of defeat at the hands of Arab nations in the Middle East:
For Israel’s nuclear advocates, the Samson Option became another way of saying “Never again.” [In a 1976 essay in Commentary, Norman Podhoretz accurately summarized the pronuclear argument in describing what Israel would do if abandoned by the United States and overrun by Arabs: "The Israelis would fight . . . with conventional weapons for as long as they could, and if the tide were turning decisively against them, and if help in the form of resupply from the United States or any other guarantors were not forthcoming, it is safe to predict that they would fight with nuclear weapons in the end. ... It used to be said that the Israelis had a Masada complex . . .but if the Israelis are to be understood in terms of a 'complex' involving suicide rather than surrender and rooted in a relevant precedent of Jewish history, the example of Sarnson, whose suicide brought about the destruction of his enemies, would be more appropriate than Masada, where in committing suicide the Zealots killed only themselves and took no Romans with them."
Podhoretz, asked years later about his essay, said that his conclusions about the Samson Option were just that—his conclusions, and not based on any specific information from Israelis or anyone else about Israel's nuclear capability
What Mr. Podhoretz was describing was a “if we go down, everyone else is going down with us” scenario which is a dangerous policy for the world peace. Netanyahu also says that Assad who is backed by Iran is slaughtering Syrians. This serves the Obama Administration’s long-term goal to remove Assad from power:
Iran's goons in Gaza, its lackeys in Lebanon, its revolutionary guards on the Golan Heights are clutching Israel with three tentacles of terror. Backed by Iran, Assad is slaughtering Syrians. Back by Iran, Shiite militias are rampaging through Iraq. Back by Iran, Houthis are seizing control of Yemen, threatening the strategic straits at the mouth of the Red Sea. Along with the Straits of Hormuz, that would give Iran a second choke-point on the world's oil supply
Netanyahu claim that the Jewish people can defend themselves which I agree especially when you have nuclear weapons that can destroy the entire Middle East:
We are no longer scattered among the nations, powerless to defend ourselves. We restored our sovereignty in our ancient home. And the soldiers who defend our home have boundless courage. For the first time in 100 generations, we, the Jewish people, can defend ourselves
Iran, Syria, Lebanon (Hezbollah) and Palestine (the West Bank and Gaza) are targets for the U.S. and Israel. They want to destabilize Syria and Iran and turn it into an Iraq and Libya with tribal and sectarian infighting among the populations. The U.S. destroyed Iraq with the intention of dividing the people. They create the conflict, develop hatred along Sunni and Shiite sects, and enforce a government subservient to Western interests. How does this benefits Israel? They keep the wars going by destabilizing regimes through ISIS and other Western-funded terrorist groups while Israel expands its territories beyond its borders. Once Syria and Iran are destroyed, the U.S. and Israel will have no use for ISIS. No more weapons will be shipped to ISIS and other groups and the U.S. and Israel with its military capabilities can easily defeat ISIS as Chossudovsky mentioned in his article. It sounds cynical but it’s the truth. It is what I call “Mafia-Style” politics, something the U.S. and Israel are very good at. The world is not fooled by the bickering between the democrats and republicans because as we all know, they are one, united with an “unbreakable bond “with Israel as Obama declared in 2013. We all know that without U.S. support, Israeli occupation of Palestine would end tomorrow. But that will not happen unless the U.S. Empire falls from power and only then, a lasting peace will ensue.
Netanyahu concluded with “May God bless the state of Israel and may God bless the United States of America” And no one else, right Mr. Netanyahu? What kind of God would bless two nations that have committed genocide against its indigenous populations? Why would God bless a nation that lies to its people and declares war on nations that want their sovereignty respected? If this is the God we as humans supposed to honor, then God is not who we think he is.
In conclusion, Netanyahu should listen to an interview conducted by Press TV based in Tehran, Iran in 2014 with Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss, associate director of ‘Neturei Karta International: Jews United against Zionism’ (www.nkusa.org) and was asked about U.N. monitor Richard Falk who accused Israel of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. His response was as follows:
With the help of the almighty, I pray to the almighty to bestow upon me his truth, his wisdom. We are always confounded by this seeming ignorance of the issues and the ignoring of what is happening. The issues are clear from day one. Well over one hundred years ago when this Zionist ideology came about of Jewish people creating their own sovereignty and then eventually deciding to make their sovereignty in the Holy Land, the biblical authorities in the Holy Land, the chief rabbi of Palestine, Rabbi Dushinsky..., of that time, and later in 1947 prior to the ratification of... Israel by the United Nations, the chief rabbi was Rabbi Dushinsky; he went to a meeting in Jerusalem [al-Quds] with the members of the United Nations and he pleaded with them in the name of Judaism and the religious community that we do not want, in any form, a state …, that it is illegal, it is illegitimate. Judaism does not permit us to have to have a Jewish sovereignty, Judaism does not permit us to oppress other people, steal the land, or in any manner being uncompassionate to the people.
On the contrary we were living together with the Muslim community, with the Arabs and Muslims for hundreds and hundreds of years in Palestine and every Muslim state in total harmony without any human rights group to protect us and since this creation of Zionism and then eventually … Israel, there is an endless river of bloodshed. It is impossible to subjugate people and expect that there will be peace. Now, we are condoning what is emanating from this fact that there is a state but the fact is that it defies logic; it flies in the face of …, righteousness and everything that the humanity calls for, by occupying Palestine and so our rabbis universally opposed the existence of … Israel and that the world should totally confuse this issue.
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Empire and Colonialism: Rich Men in London Still Deciding Africa’s Future
Empire And Colonialism: Rich Men In London Still Deciding Africa’s Future
(all links are in italics)
“It’s scandalous that UK aid money is being used to carve up Africa in the interests of big business. This is the exact opposite of what is needed, which is support to small-scale farmers and fairer distribution of land and resources to give African countries more control over their food systems. Africa can produce enough food to feed its people. The problem is that our food system is geared to the luxury tastes of the richest, not the needs of ordinary people. Here the British government is using aid money to make the problem even worse.”
“This is an extension of what the Gates Foundation has been doing for several years – working with the US government and agribusiness giants like Monsanto to corporatize Africa’s genetic riches for the benefit of outsiders. Don’t Bill and Melinda realize that such colonialism is no longer in fashion? It’s time to support African farmers’ self-determination.”
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Zero-Sum Privacy: The More Secrets Government Has, The Fewer We Do
CNN: Palestinians Want to Die
In this latest assault on Gaza, Israel had by Thursday already killed 69 Palestinians including 22 children and 13 women, plus 469 wounded including 166 children and 85 women, and 70 houses destroyed. These numbers have since increased significantly.
In this video from Thursday on CNN, Jake Tapper interviews Diana Buttu, a former advisor to the PLO. After failing to persuade her of Israel's complete innocence, he tells her that Hamas is instructing women and children to remain in their homes to die as Israel bombs them. She responds by expressing doubt that people want to die. Oh no, says Tapper, Palestinians live in a culture of martyrdom; they want to die.
William Westmoreland once remarked on Vietnam, where the United States killed 4 million men, women, children, and infants: "The Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does a Westerner. Life is plentiful. Life is cheap in the Orient."
Banastre Tarleton stood up in Parliament and defended the slave trade on the grounds that Africans did not object to being slaves.
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The view that the people you are abusing don't mind it has a long history of being employed to distract from the evil being done.
Just as powerful, if not more so, is the view that no evil is being done at all.
ABC News' Diane Sawyer told her viewers that scenes of destruction in Gaza were actually in Israel, and was later forced to apologize, but did not note that scenes like those she'd shown do not exist in Israel, rather leaving the impression that a simple mistake had swapped out similar scenes from one country for the other.
Polls have found that people in the United States believe Iraq benefitted from the war that destroyed it and that Iraqis are grateful, while the United States itself suffered.
If people cannot be depicted as evil, because we see images of them, and they are 3 years old and have their limbs ripped off, and if our cruelty cannot be depicted as for their own good, then the cruelty must itself be denied. We must completely avert our eyes or invert the facts. Or we must blame someone else for it. Blame Israel for getting a bit carried away after so many years of innocent suffering.
But it is with billions of dollars of weaponry provided free of cost courtesy of U.S. taxpayers that the Israeli military is bombing civilian neighborhoods in occupied Gaza. The ongoing occupation is at the root of the crisis, but this new turn to large-scale violence was produced by fraud. The Israeli government learned that three Israelis had been killed, falsely blamed Hamas, and falsely claimed to believe the young men might still be alive. This fraud was used to justify a search-and-rescue operation that left numerous dead and hundreds under arrest.
Small-scale violence by Palestinians is not justified by Israel's ongoing brutality. It is deeply immoral as well as absurdly counterproductive. But if individual murders justified the mass killing of war, the United States would have to launch a full-scale war on itself every day of the year. And it is the United States' weaponry, provided under the euphemism of "aid," that is pounding the homes of the people of Gaza.
Jewish Voice for Peace says, in an open letter that you too can sign:
"In this time of tremendous suffering and fear, from Jerusalem to Gaza, and from Hebron to Be’er Sheva, we reaffirm that all Israelis and Palestinians deserve security, justice, and equality, and we mourn all those who have died.
"Our unshakeable commitment to freedom and justice for all compels us to acknowledge that this violence has fallen overwhelmingly on Palestinians. And it compels us to affirm that this violence has a root cause: Israel's illegal occupation.
"We are united in our belief that:
"The denial of Palestinian human rights must end.
Illegal settlements must end.
Bombing civilians must end.
Killing children must end.
Valuing Jewish lives at the expense of others must end."Only by embracing equality for all peoples can this terrible bloodshed end."
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Flying the LCAP Way and Killing JFK, Part II
Rummaging through Lee Harvey Oswald’s past can be a murky and sometimes frightening enterprise, but it is quite necessary if one wants to understand the residue of the tangled plot that took JFK’s life. Even casual perusal leaves no doubt that Oswald and his associates had deep-rooted intelligence ties. Some of Lee’s best friends were CIA operatives, from David Ferrie to the Dallas White Russian community, which included people like Oswald’s best friend in Dallas George DeMohrenschildt and his erstwhile Irving, Texas, landlady Ruth Paine. Obvious patterns of sheepdipping and shepherding emerge as one follows Oswald’s journey from Louisiana to Texas, and to Russia and back. He was a low-level agent on deep-background assignments for the Company. Just the kind of dupe who can be set up as the fall when the Agency needs a patsy. But how did Oswald get to that point? Who picked him out of the hordes of nickel-and-dime operatives the CIA was running in the 1950s and’60s? And why?
It began when Lee was just a teenager and he joined LCAP. On the surface this was a harmless group of post-pubescent wannabe fliers who signed up for air rescue techniques, campouts, and long speeches about duty and country. But in reality LCAP was much more. It was established by David Harold Byrd, a wealthy Dallas businessman and defense industry insider who fancied himself an Air Force Colonel. Indeed he was bestowed this title by none other than his great pal, General Curtis (Bombs Away) LeMay, virulent Kennedy hater and Air Force Chief of Staff under same. Byrd and LeMay made LCAP look like a unit of weekend flyboys to outsiders, just an excuse to make Byrd a colonel and to have an auxiliary pilot training presence in the South. This was merely the cover story, however. US military intelligence and the CIA wanted to train and recruit pilots to make surreptitious flights, into the Caribbean and elsewhere, involving weapons trading, support for paramilitary operations, and drug running (later Air America). Louisiana was a logical location for this (easy access to Cuba, Latin America and South America). Later, of course, Byrd, one of LBJ's most ardent political and financial benefactors, owned the Texas School Book Depository. I have always been confounded by researchers who overlook this one incredible fact (which, in and of itself, screams conspiracy): Byrd, a Texas oil millionaire with nefarious connections to potential suspects, provided the first and last places of employment for Oswald. This is either the most incredible coincidence in history, or Byrd's businesses were being used as fronts for intelligence operations. Think of it, JFK's supposed assassin fires from a building owned by the same man to whose air patrol unit he was attached a decade earlier. And Byrd neither admits to nor is questioned about this suspicious happenstance. Of course, he had plausible deniability because he merely provided the facilities for intelligence assets to perform their operations while keeping a safe distance from the action.
Anyway, back to LCAP. The ideal candidates for CIA recruitment were young, impressionable, adventuresome cadets seeking daring and stealth and lacking morals or a social conscience; or, in the alternative, they were outcasts and misfits, willing to commit abnormal or questionable acts without resistance. Consequently, an unusually high number of Louisiana Civil Air Patrol cadets became psychopathic killers, CIA pilots, or gullible, low-level fall guys. Among them were John Liggett, Charles Rogers, Lee Harvey Oswald, Barry Seal, and James Bath, all of whom were either tangentially or directly connected to the JFK hit.
In order to facilitate its recruitment of LCAP cadets, the CIA needed mesmeric leaders who had sway over young men. It found one such leader in David Ferrie, a defrocked priest, a skilled pilot, a hypnotist, and a pedophile. Oswald was probably directed to Ferrie and LCAP by Dutz Murret, Oswald’s bookmaking uncle who worked for New Orleans crime boss Carlos Marcello. Rogers likewise had a bookmaker in the family, his father Fred, who also paid tribute to Marcello. Ferrie worked for Marcello as a pilot. When Marcello was deported by Bobby Kennedy’s Justice Department in 1961, Ferrie flew a private plane to Guatemala, picked up the gangland boss and flew him back home. Ferrie fancied himself an expert pilot, and loved flying secret missions for the Mafia and the CIA. In LCAP he insisted on being called “Captain Ferrie,” and despite his weird appearance (he wore an orange wig and painted-on eyebrows), his trainees were apparently defenseless against his hypnotic powers. One of “Captain” Ferrie’s most unusual recruits was a future mortician/body reconstructionist/assassin named John Liggett. More on him later.
Ferrie taught his prized pupils the tricks of spycraft. And while most LCAP alums tried to maintain their covers after joining the CIA, Barry Seal was flamboyantly and unabashedly open about his occupation. His remarkable life is well-chronicled in Daniel Hopsicker’s stunning book, Barry and the Boys. Seal was entrusted by the CIA to fly drugs out of Southeast Asia, Central America, and South America; guns in and out of troubled nations across the globe; and operatives to secret CIA missions whenever it needed a democratic or socialist leader overthrown. Hopsicker writes, ‘[Seal] was a high-rolling mercenary, a rogue pilot, an infamous gun-runner, the chief Mena narcotics trafficker, a fast-talking, self-assured, 300-pound pilot and Special Forces veteran, a notorious drug smuggler, a mystery man, and the most valuable informant in DEA history.”
Seal’s abilities as a CIA pilot were so valued that he was protected by powerful interests. He had George H.W. Bush’s private phone number; it was found on Seal’s body after he was mysteriously gunned down in the mid-1980s. Hopsicker writes of a witness overhearing one of Seal’s conversations with Vice President Bush. Seal reportedly threatened to expose the Iran-Contra scheme if the IRS did not stop hounding him. One week after the phone conversation, Seal was dead. The witness goes on to say that the murderers were acting under orders from Oliver North. Seal, according to Hopsicker, was also involved in another monstrous operation—he was one of the getaway pilots flying out of Dallas after JFK was killed.
Facts uncovered by this author indicate that JFK’s body was surreptitiously flown out of Dallas via Red Bird Airport and not Love Field. Here’s where another LCAP grad enters the drama. John Liggett, a Dallas funeral home employee, was present at Parkland Hospital just minutes after the mortally wounded Kennedy arrived there. On November 22, 1963, Liggett was officiating the funeral of his wife’s aunt at Restland Funeral Home, when he was suddenly called away from the graveside. He returned after a few minutes to tell his wife that Kennedy had been shot and he had to go to Parkland Hospital. When his wife asked him if Restland was going to get the job, John replied that he did not know but that she should not try to contact him. This was quite unusual. Normally when Liggett was on a job or on call, his wife and kids visited him at the funeral home. Never before had he instructed them to stay away. His funeral home did not get the JFK job; no matter, Liggett had other intentions. Circumstantial evidence indicates that Liggett, with the assistance of treasonous Secret Service agents, switched JFK’s body for a fake wrapped in sheets in Emergency Room 1. The substitute body was placed in the expensive coffin which publicly left Parkland Hospital on November 22, 1963. The genuine corpse was placed in a cheap shipping coffin and spirited away by John Liggett in a Restland Funeral Home hearst. It was then rushed to Red Bird where Seal or possibly some other CIA pilot flew the body to Washington, DC, for body alteration prior to the autopsy. And, according to Liggett’s peers, there was no one better in the business at altering dead bodies than John Liggett. He even referred to himself as a “reconstruction artist.”
As incredible as this scenario sounds, several people close to Liggett have come forward to verify this story. It dovetails with the official record in many regards. The Dallas doctors saw wounds on the dead President which were radically different from the ones the Bethesda autopsy doctors saw. The only reasonable explanation for this is that someone, somewhere between Dallas and Washington, got access to Kennedy’s corpse and altered it. This ploy, this diabolical deception was the plotters’ ace in the hole. It is how they intended to forever cover up the truth of the manner of JFK’s death. For in any murder investigation where the victim dies by gunshot wounds, examination of the corpse reveals the direction and number of shots. The Dallas doctors saw evidence of frontal entry and rear exit, indicating Kennedy was shot from the grassy knoll area of Dealey Plaza, a place where Oswald definitely was not positioned. The Bethesda doctors saw evidence of rear entry and frontal exit, indicating Kennedy was shot from the TSBD, a place where Oswald definitely was positioned. At Bethesda Hospital several witnesses saw Kennedy’s body arrive in the cheap shipping casket and the not the expensive public coffin that flew back to Washington aboard Air Force One. One LCAP grad (Liggett) framed another LCAP grad (Oswald).
Liggett did not return home from Washington until the next day. When he arrived he seemed worn and disheveled, quite unlike his customarily cool comportment and dapper dress. He quickly ordered Lois and the kids to pack up; they were going to hit the road. The family traveled south, and along the way Liggett stopped for furtive meetings with unknown parties out of the earshot of his wife and kids. They finally settled on a motel for the evening, and on the morning of November 24, after witnessing Ruby shoot Oswald to death on TV, Liggett breathed a deep sigh of relief and told his family it was okay to return home now. At no time did he let on what he knew about the historic events which had taken place that weekend or that he even knew Oswald, Ferrie, or any other LCAP members.
After the assassination Liggett came into a good deal of money which he used to purchase a home for his family in an upscale Dallas neighborhood. There he was visited on several occasions by Ferrie, whose appearance was so bizarre and amusing that they could not forget him. It is likely that Ferrie was conveying “liquidation” assignments to Liggett, as he was connected to many of the mysterious deaths of assassination witnesses after the fact.
Certainly Liggett did not learn his morturarial talents in the LCAP; instead he joined the Air Force where he served as an attaché, a common euphemism for military intelligence work. At some point after his discharge he was encouraged by his benefactors (possibly Curtis LeMay, possibly D.H. Byrd himself) to enroll in a school for undertakers. Upon graduation, he went to work embalming and burying innocent people by day and underworld/intelligence victims by night. If the CIA or the local Mafia wanted a body disposed of, Liggett was called upon. He interred the poor saps in the “Field of Honor,” a Dallas joke for burial plots of the nefarious. If the unlucky stiff needed a transformation to disguise the manner of death, Liggett was equal to the task.
But Liggett was more than just a mortician; he was a killer, and, like Charles Rogers, he had a preference for bludgeoning his victims with a hammer. The Dallas police caught up to Liggett in 1974, when he was arrested for the attempted murder of Dorothy Peck, wife of Jay Bert Peck. Jay Bert Peck was Lyndon Johnson’s cousin, and he bore a stunning resemblance to LBJ. Liggett never divulged his reasons for viciously beating Peck and burning her home. But according to some researchers, Dorothy was about to talk about how her own husband had been murdered by Liggett. Jay Bert Peck had reportedly stood in for his cousin at the Fort Worth Hotel where the presidential party had stayed the night before the JFK assassination. This allowed LBJ to slip out the back door and attend a “Kill Kennedy” planning session at the home of local oil millionaire Clint Murchison. LBJ’s long-time mistress Madeleine Brown reported seeing many powerful JFK enemies at Murchison’s that night, including H.L. Hunt, J. Edgar Hoover, John McCloy (later a member of the Warren Commission), and George Brown (of Brown & Root, nee Halliburton). If this account is true it would explain the importance of silencing the Pecks. Lyndon Johnson, named by many as the prime mover behind the assassination, certainly had no qualms about killing those close to him if it suited his political purposes. He was once accused by his long-time associate and criminal co-conspirator, Billy Sol Estes, of ordering the executions of many LBJ political enemies. Estes’ lawyer wrote a letter to the U.S. Justice Department in 1984 which named these victims, one of whom was President Kennedy. But I digress.
The Dallas Police eventually caught up to Liggett when they arrested him in 1974. After his arrest, Liggett’s first wife Lois was warned by Liggett’s brother Malcolm to stay away from John and to avoid all contact with him. Malcolm was later appointed to a high-level presidential economic advisory commission by Gerald Ford. (As a side note, Ford was one of four future presidents closely tied to the events in Dallas. He served on the Warren Commission. Three future presidents—Johnson, Nixon and George H.W. Bush--were in Dallas the day of Kennedy’s murder. This was no coincidence. All played a role in the events of November 22, 1963. But that’s another story.)
Liggett’s death is just as fraught with subterfuge and deviousness as his life. In February 1975 the Dallas Times-Herald reported that “John Melvin Liggett died on a Parkland Hospital table about 30 minutes after he was shot by Dallas Police while trying to escape custody.” But Liggett left behind two widows who adamantly contradicted the official version of Liggett’s death. One saw a stranger with facial hair in Liggett’s coffin (Liggett was unable to grow facial hair); the other insisted she saw Liggett in a Las Vegas casino years later. It would be a relatively simple matter for the Agency which killed a sitting U.S. President to fake the death of a mortician, so the reports of Liggett’s death may well be exaggerated.
Another LCAP alumnus who became notorious was Texas native Charles Rogers, CIA pilot and murdering psychopath. Rogers was as brilliant as he was disturbed. A graduate of the University of Houston, Rogers worked as a seismologist for Shell Oil in the 1950s before joining the CIA. It is a seismologist’s job to determine if the underlying rock or substrata of any particular area is fertile ground to drill for oil or natural gas. This was and is vital information to oil companies; thus, seismologists and geologists are in great demand. But that kind of life was apparently not adventurous enough for Charles. So in 1956, he applied with the CIA and was interviewed in the offices of Shell Oil’s law firm, Fulbright-Jaworski (yes, the Leon Jaworski of Watergate fame).
Like other LCAP alums, Rogers graduated to the big-time when he was identified as having direct ties to the JFK murder. Many are convinced he is one of the three tramps who were photographed being escorted by Dallas cops away from the crime scene in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963. The tramp photos have become part of assassination lore and have been the subject of much speculation and guesswork. What we know is the tramps bear a remarkable resemblance to killers Charles Rogers, Charles Harrelson, and the CIA’s E. Howard Hunt. Others claim they are real hobos whom the cops rousted from boxcars behind the grassy knoll. The matter ostensibly could be cleared up with some scientific analysis—comparison of height and weight, facial features, hairlines, arm length, and the like. Lois Gibson, a Houston Police Department forensics expert, performed such an analysis in 1991. Her meticulous study convinced her that Charles Rogers is the short tramp in the infamous photos. This begs the question, what was he doing there? Not likely he just happened to be boxcar-hopping just yards from the site of the murder of the century, at the exact time and day of its occurrence. There is no doubt that Rogers was a psychopath. He murdered his parents in June 1965, chopped them into pieces and stored them in a freezer before disappearing into the murky sub-world of CIA skullduggery.
It was most likely George DeMohrenschildt who recommended Rogers be hired by the CIA. A long-time CIA asset, and Lee Harvey Oswald’s handler in Dallas, DeMohrenschildt was also an expert in knowing where to drill for oil. He had an advanced degree in petroleum engineering, and he was associated with many Texas oil millionaires, including H.L. Hunt. LCAP founder D. H. Byrd once employed DeMohrenschildt at Three States Oil and Gas Company; DeMohrenschildt also was connected to Byrd through Byrd’s wife, whom DeMohrenschildt appointed to the board of his charitable organization in 1962. This would have provided cover for Byrd and DeMohrenschildt to have interaction during the time that Oswald was being shepherded to his tragic fate. DeMohrenschildt also had deep ties to the Bush family. George H.W. actually roomed with DeMohrenschildt’s uncle at Andover in the early 1940s. Later, when Bush was head of the CIA, DeMohrenschildt wrote a desperate letter to his old friend begging for help. DeMohrenschildt feared for his life because he was writing a factual book about his relationship with his old pal Lee Harvey Oswald. A few months later DeMohrenschildt was found shot to death in his home. The address and phone number of George H.W. Bush was on his person. Like Barry Seal, when DeMohrenschildt posed a threat of exposure of Bush secrets he met an untimely end.
Another Bush family intimate, one James R. Bath, turned out to be another “illustrious” grad of Byrd’s Civil Air Patrol. He served in his CAP unit in the mid-1950s, about the time Oswald, Ferrie, Seal and the other CIA recruits were active members. But it’s what he accomplished after his LCAP training that makes him notorious. Bath began a lucrative CIA career sometime in the late 1960s or early 1970s, after leaving active duty with the Air Force. He joined the Texas Air National Guard in 1965 where he met his great pal, George W. Bush, just as the Vietnam War was escalating. The Air National Guard was a great hideout for those pilots who wanted to avoid combat. Bath was George W. Bush's good buddy in the Texas Air National Guard. Like W, Bath refused a medical exam and went AWOL when he pleased. Bath eventually became the Bin Ladens' money man in Texas; this included investments in W's failed oil business--Arbusto. According to author Pete Brewton, Bush claimed that he and Bath never went into business together; however, “…records filed in a Houston lawsuit involving Bath contradict the [Bush’s] son: they show Bath was an investor in a Bush oil and gas enterprise.”
Brewton also claims that Bath became intertwined with some of the wealthiest and most powerful international players in global politics and finance. Among other things Bath became a trustee at a Saudi bank which provided financing for Adnan Khashoggi around the time that Khashoggi was involved in the arms-for-hostages transactions with the Iranians. The Khashoggis and the bin Ladens were intimately acquainted. Bath also went into business with Lan Bentsen, son of Texas politician Lloyd Bentsen. (Bath served in the 147th Fighter Group “Champagne Unit” Air National Guard with Lan Bentsen, George W. Bush, John Connally III—son of Texas governor John Connally, wounded in JFK’s death limo, Al Hill—grandson of H.L. Hunt, and several members of the Dallas Cowboys football team.) Bath formed a Cayman Islands company which moved money around for Oliver North in the Iran/Contra operation. And he worked for the du Pont family’s Atlantic Aviation corporation. Quite a success story for a guy who started out as a lowly cadet in David Ferrie’s LCAP.
Of all the sordid characters mentioned above, Byrd and Bath prospered the most. Byrd, rich beyond reason already, garnered million-dollar defense contracts for his Ling-Temco-Vought weapons company during Vietnam. His good friend LBJ apparently rewarded him for services rendered. Bath bilked American taxpayers for $12 million in Defense Department overcharges for one of his companies in 1990. Neither Byrd nor Bath was ever brought to account for anything. No investigative body—not the Dallas Police, not the Warren Commission, not the House Select Committee on Assassinations—interviewed Byrd. He answered no questions about the nature of his business, his associations, nor his weird connection to Oswald. Not a hint of suspicion was raised about who hired Oswald, nor who had access to the Texas School Book Depository building before, during and after the assassination. In his autobiography Byrd did not even mention the fact that he owned the TSBD, a tidbit he wanted to keep hidden for good reason. He does refer to his citation from General LeMay for starting up the Civil Air Patrol, but he excludes the names of all criminals therein bred. To remove himself as far from suspicion as possible, at the time of Kennedy’s assassination Byrd was on safari in Africa, his first-ever safari on foreign soil. He did not return to Dallas until the smoke had cleared.
Undeniable killers Charles Rogers and John Liggett were never convicted of any crime. Oswald, Ferrie, and Seal, all set up for murder by the covert forces which set their fates in motion, were the unluckiest of the lot.
In retrospect the Louisiana Civil Air Patrol was some sort of nexus of evil CIA recruitment and secrecy. Its founder and members went on to attain almost unfathomable notoriety. The truth of who LCAP members really were, the associations they made, and what they went on to do with their lives is quite provocative, and very dangerous information to the plotters of JFK’s murder. Their actions and connections speak to some sort of subterranean, for-profit enterprise that was dedicated to subverting democracy and creating what Jack Ruby called a “whole new form of government in the United States.” No wonder when the House Select Committee on Assassinations went to investigate the Louisiana Civil Air Patrol it found that all LCAP records prior to 1960 were missing.
http://neverlandpublishing.com/tpm.html
U.S. Mayors Vote for Postal Banking
Posted on June 27, 2014 by ErnieM
DALLAS, TEXAS — At its June 20-23, 2014 annual meeting, the US Conference of Mayors (USCM) adopted a pair of resolutions endorsing postal banking, co-signed by eight mayors from six states. Their goal is to bring $1 trillion of job-creating economic stimulus primarily to low-income neighborhoods, over the next decade, at zero cost to taxpayers.
Filed under: In the News
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Washington’s Iraq “Victory” – Paul Craig Roberts
Washington’s Iraq “Victory” Paul Craig Roberts The citizens of the United States still do not know why their government destroyed Iraq. “National Security” will prevent them from ever knowing. “National Security” is the cloak behind which hides the crimes of…
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Infrastructure Sticker Shock: Financing Costs More than Construction
Funding infrastructure through bonds doubles the price or worse. Costs can be cut in half by funding through the state’s own bank.
“The numbers are big. There is sticker shock,” said Jason Peltier, deputy manager of the Westlands Water District, describing Governor Jerry Brown’s plan to build two massive water tunnels through the California Delta. “But consider your other scenarios. How much more groundwater can we pump?”
Whether the tunnels are the best way to get water to the Delta is controversial, but the issue here is the cost. The tunnels were billed to voters as a $25 billion project. That estimate, however, omitted interest and fees. Construction itself is estimated at a relatively modest $18 billion. But financing through bonds issued at 5% for 30 years adds $24-40 billion to the tab. Another $9 billion will go to wetlands restoration, monitoring and other costs, bringing the grand total to $51-67 billion – three or four times the cost of construction.
A general rule for government bonds is that they double the cost of projects, once interest has been paid.
The San Francisco Bay Bridge earthquake retrofit was originally slated to cost $6.3 billion, but that was just for salaries and physical materials. With interest and fees, the cost to taxpayers and toll-payers will be over $12 billion.
The bullet train from San Francisco to Los Angeles, another pet project of Jerry Brown and his administration, involves a bond issue approved in 2008 for $10 billion. But when interest and fees are added, $19.5 billion will have to be paid back on this bond, doubling the cost.
And those heavy charges pale in comparison to the financing of “capital appreciation bonds.” As with the “no interest” loans that became notorious in the subprime mortgage crisis, the borrower pays only the principal for the first few years. But interest continues to compound; and after several decades, it can amount to ten times principal or more.
San Diego County taxpayers will pay $1 billion after 40 years for $105 million raised for the Poway Unified School District.
Folsom Cordova used capital appreciation bonds to finance $514,000. The sticker price after interest and fees will be $9.1 million.
In 2013, state lawmakers restricted debt service on capital appreciation bonds to four times principal and limited their term to 25 years. But that still means that financiers receive four times the cost of the project itself – the sort of return considered usurious when we had anti-usury laws with teeth.
Escaping the Interest Trap: The Models of China and North Dakota
California needs $700 billion in infrastructure over the next decade, and the state doesn’t have that sort of money in its general fund. Where will the money come from? Proposals include more private investment, but that means the privatization of what should have been public assets. Infrastructure is touted to investors as the next “fixed income.” But fixed income to investors means perpetual payments by taxpayers and rate-payers for something that should have been public property.
There is another alternative. In the last five years, China has managed to build an impressive 4000 miles of high-speed rail. Where did it get the money? The Chinese government has a hidden funding source: it owns its own banks. That means it gets its financing effectively interest-free.
All banks actually have a hidden funding source. The Bank of England just admitted in its quarterly bulletin that banks don’t lend their deposits. They simply advance credit created on their books. If someone is going to be creating our national money supply and collecting interest on it, it should be we the people, through our own publicly-owned banks.
Models for this approach are not limited to China and other Asian “economic miracles.” The US has its own stellar model, in the state-owned Bank of North Dakota (BND). By law, all of North Dakota’s revenues are deposited in the BND, which is set up as a DBA of the state (“North Dakota doing business as the Bank of North Dakota”). That means all of the state’s capital is technically the bank’s capital. The bank uses its copious capital and deposit pool to generate credit for local purposes.
The BND is a major money-maker for the state, returning a sizable dividend annually to the state treasury. Every year since the 2008 banking crisis, it has reported a return on investment of between 17 percent and 26 percent. While California and other states have been slashing services and raising taxes in order to balance their budgets, North Dakota has actually been lowering taxes, something it has done twice in the last five years.
The BND partners with local banks rather than competing with them, strengthening their capital and deposit bases and allowing them to keep loans on their books rather than having to sell them off to investors or farm the loans out to Wall Street. This practice allowed North Dakota to avoid the subprime crisis that destroyed the housing market in other states.
North Dakota has the lowest unemployment rate in the country, the lowest default rate on credit card debt, one of the lowest foreclosure rates, and the most local banks per capita of any state. It is also the only state to escape the credit crisis altogether, boasting a budget surplus every year since 2008.
Consider the Possibilities
The potential of this public banking model for other states is huge. California’s population is more than 50 times that of North Dakota. California has over $200 billion stashed in a variety of funds identified in its 2012 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR), including $58 billion managed by the Treasurer in a Pooled Money Investment Account earning a meager 0.264% annually. California also has over $400 billion in its pension funds (CalPERS and CalSTRS).
This money is earmarked for specific purposes and cannot be spent on the state budget, but it can be invested. A portion could be invested as equity in a state-owned bank, and a larger portion could be deposited in the bank as interest-bearing certificates of deposit. This huge capital and deposit base could then be leveraged by the bank into credit, something all banks do. Since the state would own the bank, the interest would return to the state. Infrastructure could be had interest-free, knocking 50% or more off the sticker price.
By doing its own financing in-house, the state can massively expand its infrastructure without imposing massive debts on future generations. The Golden State can display the innovation and prosperity that makes it worthy of the name once again.
___________________________
Ellen Brown is an attorney, founder of the Public Banking Institute, and a candidate for California State Treasurer running on a state bank platform. She is the author of twelve books, including the best-selling Web of Debt and her latest book, The Public Bank Solution, which explores successful public banking models historically and globally.
Filed under: Ellen Brown Articles/Commentary Tagged: | infrastructure financing, public banking
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“Key sectors – traditionally held to be the preserve of the state – such as ports, roads, rail and power have been handed over to corporate capital. This has meant, inevitably, that the government has abdicated all decision making powers, as well as functional and financial control over such projects. Nowhere else in the country has this abdication of responsibility been so total, nowhere else has the state given over the economy so entirely to the corporates and private investors.” (13)
“Since the cross-ownership of businesses is not restricted by the ‘gush-up gospel’ rules, the more you have, the more you can have... corporations buy politicians, judges, bureaucrats and media houses, hollowing out democracy, retaining only its rituals. Huge reserves of bauxite, iron ore, oil and natural gas worth trillions of dollars were sold to corporations for a pittance, defying even the twisted logic of the free market... leading to the siphoning off of billions of dollars of public money. Then there’s the land grab – the forced displacement of communities, of millions of people whose lands are being appropriated by the state and handed to private enterprise.” Arundhati Roy (20).
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British Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Secretary Owen Paterson is a staunch supporter of the GM sector (1). Despite criticisms of him being an industry puppet (2) and content to ignore the devastating, deleterious health, environmental, social and agricultural impacts of GMOs (3), both he and other officials like the EU’s chief science advisor Anne Glover (4) have been more than happy to act as mouthpieces for the GM sector by making false statements and claims about the benefits and safety of GMOs that fly in the face of scientific findings.
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There is no need to sequester funds urgently needed by Main Street to pay for Wall Street’s malfeasance. Californians can have their cake and eat it too – with a state-owned bank.
Governor Jerry Brown is aggressively pushing a California state constitutional amendment requiring budget surpluses to be used to pay down municipal debt and create an emergency “rainy day” fund, in anticipation of the next economic crisis.
On the face of it, it is a sensible idea. As long as Wall Street controls America’s finances and our economy, another catastrophic bust is a good bet.
But a rainy day fund takes money off the table, setting aside funds we need now to reverse the damage done by Wall Street’s last collapse. The brutal cuts of 2008 and 2009 shrank the middle class and gave California the highest poverty rate in the country.
The costs of Wall Street gambling are being thrust on its primary victims. We are given the draconian choice of restoring much-needed services or maintaining austerity conditions in order to pay Wall Street the next time it brings down the economy.
There is another alternative – one that California got very close to implementing in 2011, before Jerry Brown vetoed the bill. AB750, a bill for a feasibility study for a state-owned bank, passed both houses of the state legislature but the governor refused to sign it. He said the study could be done by the Assembly and Senate Banking Committees in-house; but 2-1/2 years later, no further action has been taken on it.
Having a state-owned bank can substitute for a rainy day fund. Banks don’t need rainy day funds, because they have cheap credit lines with other banks. Today those credit lines are at the extremely low Fed funds rate of 0.25%. A state with its own bank can take advantage of this nearly-interest-free credit line not only for emergencies but to cut its long-term financing costs in half.
That is not just California dreaming. There is already a highly successful precedent for the approach. North Dakota is the only state with its own state-owned depository bank, and the only state to fully escape the credit crisis. It has boasted a budget surplus every year since 2008, and its 2.6% unemployment rate is the lowest in the country. Contrast that to California’s, one of the highest.
In a 2009 interview, Bank of North Dakota President Eric Hardmeyer stated that when the dot-com bust caused North Dakota to go over-budget in 2001-02, the bank did act as a rainy day fund for the state. To make up the budget shortfall, the bank declared an extra dividend for the state (its owner), and the next year the budget was back on track. No massive debt accumulation, no Wall Street bid-rigging, no fraudulent interest-rate swaps, no bond vigilantes, no capital appreciation bonds at 300% interest.
California already has a surfeit of surplus funds tucked around the state, which can be identified in state and local Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports (CAFRs). Clint Richardson, who has made an exhaustive study of California’s CAFR, writes that he has located nearly $600 billion in these funds. California’s surplus funds include those in a Pooled Money Investment Account managed by the state treasurer, which currently contains $54 billion earning a mere 0.24% interest – almost nothing.
The money in these surplus funds is earmarked for particular purposes, so it cannot be spent on the state budget. However, it can be invested. A small portion could be invested as capital in the state’s own bank, where it could earn a significantly better return than it is getting now. The Bank of North Dakota has had a return on equity ranging between 17% and 26% every year since 2008.
California has massive potential capital and deposit bases, which could be leveraged into credit, as all banks do. The Bank of England just formally admitted in its quarterly bulletin that banks don’t lend their deposits. They simply advance credit created on their books. The deposits remain in demand accounts, available as needed by the depositors (in this case the state).
The Wall Street megabanks in which California invests and deposits its money are not using this massive credit power to develop California’s economy. Rather, they are using it to reap short-term profits for their own accounts – much of it extremely short-term, “earned” by skimming profits through computerized high-frequency program trading. Meanwhile, Wall Street is sucking massive sums in interest, fees, and interest rate swap payments out of California and into offshore tax havens.
Rather than setting aside our hard-earned surplus to pay the piper on demand, we could be using it to create the credit necessary to establish our own economic independence. California is the ninth largest economy in the world, and the world looks to us for creative leadership.
“As goes California, so goes the nation.” We can lead the states down the path of debt peonage, or we can be a model for establishing state economic sovereignty.
___________________
Ellen Brown is an attorney, founder of the Public Banking Institute, and a candidate for California State Treasurer running on a state bank platform. She is the author of twelve books, including the best-selling Web of Debt and her latest book, The Public Bank Solution, which explores successful public banking models historically and globally.
Filed under: Ellen Brown Articles/Commentary
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Sanctions on Russia’s Energy Sector: Shale Gas ‘Fracking’ Will Invade Europe?
Timothy Alexander Guzman, Silent Crow News - Fracking will be “good for our country,” was a statement made by British Prime Minister David Cameron at a recent Nuclear Security Summit in The Hague according to the UK based news agency The Guardian. Cameron believes that the fracking industry will have the public’s support since reliance on Russia’s energy sources will be halted if sanctions are imposed due to the political crisis in the Ukraine. The Obama administration is also proposing a joint US-EU trade deal with its European partners that would reduce Europe’s dependence on Russia’s energy resources. The Guardian reported Cameron’s statement regarding shale gas fracking in Europe:
The prime minister said that once wells are up and running later this year, there would be more public enthusiasm, and exploiting shale gas reserves could help Europe wean itself off reliance on exports from Russia” and that “The Ukraine crisis has increased the urgency of European efforts to find alternative sources of energy to reduce the leverage Russia’s oil and gas supplies give it across the continent
Has the Ukraine crisis opened the doors for shale gas fracking in Europe? The United States and the European Union are currently negotiating an agreement since July of 2013. In a recent report titled ‘No Fracking Way: How the EU-US trade agreement risks expanding fracking’ by Friends of the Earth Europe, Corporate Europe Observatory and the Transnational Institute among others stated what the Transalantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is capable of in terms of the rights of corporations involved in the fracking industry:
The TTIP deal threatens to give more rights to companies through a clause called an ‘investor-state dispute settlement’ (ISDS). If included in the deal, this would enable corporations to claim damages in secret courts or ‘arbitration panels’ if they deem their profits are adversely affected by changes in a regulation or policy. This threatens democratically agreed laws designed to protect communities and the environment. Companies which claim their investments (including expectations of future profits) are affected by a change in government policies could have the right to seek compensation through private international tribunals. US companies (or any company with a subsidiary in the US) investing in Europe could use these far-reaching investor rights to seek compensation for future bans or other regulation on fracking. These tribunals are not part of the normal judicial system, but are specifically set up for investment cases. Arbitrators have a strong bias towards investors – and no specialised knowledge about our climate or fracking. Companies are already using existing investment agreements to claim damages from governments, with taxpayers picking up the tab. Investor-state dispute settlement is becoming increasingly controversial as mining and energy firms use it to challenge public policies. For example, the Swedish energy giant Vattenfall is seeking more than €3.7 billion from Germany in compensation after the country voted to phase out nuclear power; Pacific Rim, a Canadian-based mining company is demanding US$315 million in compensation from El Salvador after the government refused permission for a potentially devastating gold mining project4; and Lone Pine Resources is suing Canada for Cdn$250 million over a fracking moratorium in the Canadian province of Quebec
“Claim damages in Secret courts” should be worrisome for communities all across Europe who is in opposition to fracking on their lands. The European Commission’s fact sheet ‘Investment Protection and Investor-to-State Dispute Settlement in EU agreements’ describes one of the provisions within the agreements:
In addition, in EU trade agreements the key investment protection standards are drafted in a detailed and precise manner, in particular making clear that the States’ right to regulate is preserved.
In this context clarifications to two key provisions are made:
Firstly, ‘indirect expropriation’ is one of the most controversial provisions in the investment protection system. Indirect expropriation is when government measures, while not directly taking property away, have the effect of doing so (e.g. the removal of a license required to operate a factory). This provision has been used by some investors to challenge public authorities’ bans for health reasons of chemical products or the introduction of new stricter environmental legislation.
Future EU agreements will provide a detailed set of provisions giving guidance to arbitrators on how to decide whether or not a government measure constitutes indirect expropriation, thus aiming at preventing abuse of the system.
In particular, when the state is protecting the public interest in a non-discriminatory way, the right of the state to regulate should prevail over the economic impact of those measures on the investor. These much needed clarifications will make sure that companies cannot be compensated just because their profits have been reduced through the effects of regulations enacted for a public policy objective. The Commission has negotiated provisions with Canada and Singapore which makes this clear, and the language will also be included in future agreements
If the European Union and the United States finalize the TTIP agreement then the anti-fracking opposition will grow through a grassroots movement. With Austerity measures being met with protests and violence throughout Europe, fracking would sure add fuel to the fire in an already tense situation. This past week the “March of Dignity” in Spain took place ending in violent clashes between the police and protesters. In the UK, anti-fracking protesters are growing despite PM David Cameron’s recent statement when he said that “I think something positive should come out of [the situation in Ukraine] for Europe which is to take a long hard look at its energy resilience, and its energy independence. And I hope it will lead to some really useful work being done” he continued “Britain is not reliant on Russian gas to any extent, it’s just a few percentage points of our gas intake. But the variety around Europe is very, very wide. Some countries are almost 100% reliant on Russian gas so I think it is something of a wake-up call and I think action will be taken.” New energy sanctions imposed on Russia will affect the European Union economically, environmentally and politically as the realization of the fracking technology breeds grassroots awareness in Europe’s already fragile state.
European leaders are not interested in democracy for the Ukrainian people or in their own countries economic woes; it is interested in profits that would generate jobs and growth. The UK based ‘The Independent’ reported in 2012 what Lord Browne, a former BP chief executive, who is a director of the shale gas “fracking” company Cuadrilla said regarding shale gas fracking “We could potentially double the reserves of gas in the UK, we could add 50,000 jobs maybe, and probably even reduce the price of gas.” In an article released by www.ecowatch.com in 2013, disagrees with the shale gas fracking industry’s assessment on job creation. “Industry supporters have exaggerated the jobs impact in order to minimize or avoid altogether taxation, regulation and even careful examination of shale drilling” said Frank Mauro, executive director of the Fiscal Policy Institute in New York” according to the article:
Shale drilling has created jobs, particularly in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, and cushioned some drilling-intensive areas in those states from the worst effects of the Great Recession and the weak recovery. As this report documents, however, the number of shale jobs created is far below industry claims and remains a small share of overall employment
Fracking will be at the expense of local communities throughout Europe that would eventually lead to violent demonstrations against their governments who are interested in corporate profits over the people and the environment. Sanctions on the resource rich Russian Federation will backfire on the citizens of the European Union most of all. The US-EU plan to surround Russia with American and NATO bases over the crisis in the Ukraine is not the only intended goal. It also supports the idea to force the European community to accept shale gas fracking as an alternative right under their feet without depending on Russia’s natural resources. How convenient!
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Bundy Champion Rand Paul Now Exposed For What He Really Is
All those right-wing politicians and FNC (Fascist News Channel) commentators who sang the praises of racist Nevada cattleman Cliven Bundy have now been forced to eat crow. How do right-wing idiots eat crow? Like cowards. They issue statements (not in person, of course, because they can’t face tough questions) which mildly and obtusely distance themselves from talk like “I know this about theNegro…they was better off during slavery. They didn’t get no more freedom.”
The grammar is almost as horrifying as the pro-slavery stance. And all right wingers who came to Bundy’s defense should forever wear the stench of his ignorance and hate. That means you, Sean Hannity. How did Hannity handle Bundy’s remarks? He simply ignored them. Now Hannity has never heard of Cliven Bundy. He’s no longer the gun-toting hero of the Old West, shooting it out for the glory of Old Glory. He’s persona non grata now. But we should never let Hannity off the hook for this. He should be forever linked to right-wing hate and racism.
Same goes for Rand Paul. Paul call himself a Libertarian, and now we know what a Libertarian really is: a gussied up right-wing extremist. Libertarianism has always been nothing more than Fascism with a facelift anyway, a system that promotes the absolute reign of corporations and free- market oppression of the poor. And a disdain for minorities. Paul was out front with Bundy before Cliven opened his racist yap. Now Paul can’t be bothered with him. But Paul has given his opponents ammunition. They can associate Paul with Bundy forever. I can see the campaign ads now—Paul praising Bundy, and quick cut to Bundy telling us his views on the Negro.
Bundy and his militia crazies should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. They are welfare cheats who have grazed cattle at the taxpayers’ expense long enough. It’s time for Bundy to stop sucking at the government’s teat and looking for a handout. You would think right-wing politicians and media would excoriate welfare queens like Bundy. I guess their hypocrisy knows no bounds.
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Sixteen of the world’s largest banks have been caught colluding to rig global interest rates. Why are we doing business with a corrupt global banking cartel?
United States Attorney General Eric Holder has declared that the too-big-to-fail Wall Street banks are too big to prosecute. But an outraged California jury might have different ideas. As noted in the California legal newspaper The Daily Journal:
California juries are not bashful – they have been known to render massive punitive damages awards that dwarf the award of compensatory (actual) damages.For example, in one securities fraud case jurors awarded $5.7 million in compensatory damages and $165 million in punitive damages. . . . And in a tobacco case with $5.5 million in compensatory damages, the jury awarded $3 billion in punitive damages . . . .
The question, then, is how to get Wall Street banks before a California jury. How about charging them with common law fraud and breach of contract? That’s what the FDIC just did in its massive 24-count civil suit for damages for LIBOR manipulation, filed in March 2014 against sixteen of the world’s largest banks, including the three largest US banks – JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup.
LIBOR (the London Interbank Offering Rate) is the benchmark rate at which banks themselves can borrow. It is a crucial rate involved in over $400 trillion in derivatives called interest-rate swaps, and it is set by the sixteen private megabanks behind closed doors.
The biggest victims of interest-rate swaps have been local governments, universities, pension funds, and other public entities. The banks have made renegotiating these deals prohibitively expensive, and renegotiation itself is an inadequate remedy. It is the equivalent of the grocer giving you an extra potato when you catch him cheating on the scales. A legal action for fraud is a more fitting and effective remedy. Fraud is grounds both for rescission (calling off the deal) as well as restitution (damages), and in appropriate cases punitive damages.
Trapped in a Fraud
Nationally, municipalities and other large non-profits are thought to have as much as $300 billion in outstanding swap contracts based on LIBOR, deals in which they are trapped due to prohibitive termination fees. According to a 2010 report by the SEIU (Service Employees International Union):
The overall effect is staggering. Banks are estimated to have collected as much as $28 billion in termination fees alone from state and local governments over the past two years. This does not even begin to account for the outsized net payments that state and local governments are now making to the banks. . . .
While the press have reported numerous stories of cities like Detroit, caught with high termination payments, the reality is there are hundreds (maybe even thousands) more cities, counties, utility districts, school districts and state governments with swap agreements [that] are causing cash strapped local and city governments to pay millions of dollars in unneeded fees directly to Wall Street.
All of these entities could have damage claims for fraud, breach of contract and rescission; and that is true whether or not they negotiated directly with one of the LIBOR-rigging banks.
To understand why, it is necessary to understand how swaps work. As explained in my last article here, interest-rate swaps are sold to parties who have taken out loans at variable interest rates, as insurance against rising rates. The most common swap is one where counterparty A (a university, municipal government, etc.) pays a fixed rate to counterparty B (the bank), while receiving from B a floating rate indexed to a reference rate such as LIBOR. If interest rates go up, the municipality gets paid more on the swap contract, offsetting its rising borrowing costs. If interest rates go down, the municipality owes money to the bank on the swap, but that extra charge is offset by the falling interest rate on its variable rate loan. The result is to fix borrowing costs at the lower variable rate.
At least, that is how they are supposed to work. The catch is that the swap is a separate financial agreement – essentially an ongoing bet on interest rates. The borrower owes both the interest onits variable rate loan and what it must pay on its separate swap deal. And the benchmarks for the two rates don’t necessarily track each other. The rate owed on the debt is based on something called the SIFMA municipal bond index. The rate owed by the bank is based on the privately-fixed LIBOR rate.
As noted by Stephen Gandel on CNNMoney, when the rate-setting banks started manipulating LIBOR, the two rates decoupled, sometimes radically. Public entities wound up paying substantially more than the fixed rate they had bargained for – a failure of consideration constituting breach of contract. Breach of contract is grounds for rescission and damages.
Pain and Suffering in California
The SEIU report noted that no one has yet completely categorized all the outstanding swap deals entered into by local and state governments. But in a sampling of swaps within California, involving ten cities and counties (San Francisco, Corcoran, Los Angeles, Menlo Park, Oakland, Oxnard, Pittsburgh, Richmond, Riverside, and Sacramento), one community college district, one utility district, one transportation authority, and the state itself, the collective tab was $365 million in swap payments annually, with total termination fees exceeding $1 billion.
Omitted from the sample was the University of California system, which alone is reported to have lost tens of millions of dollars on interest-rate swaps. According to an article in the Orange County Register on February 24, 2014, the swaps now cost the university system an estimated $6 million a year. University accountants estimate that the 10-campus system will lose as much as $136 million over the next 34 years if it remains locked into the deals, losses that would be reduced only if interest rates started to rise. According to the article:
Already officials have been forced to unwind a contract at UC Davis, requiring the university to pay $9 million in termination fees and other costs to several banks. That sum would have covered the tuition and fees of 682 undergraduates for a year.
The university is facing the losses at a time when it is under tremendous financial stress. Administrators have tripled the cost of tuition and fees in the past 10 years, but still can’t cover escalating expenses. Class sizes have increased. Families have been angered by the rising price of attending the university, which has left students in deeper debt.
Peter Taylor, the university’s Chief Financial Officer, defended the swaps, saying he was confident that interest rates would rise in coming years, reversing what the deals have lost. But for that to be true, rates would have to rise by multiples that would drive interest on the soaring federal debt to prohibitive levels, something the Federal Reserve is not likely to allow.
The Revolving Door
The UC’s dilemma is explored in a report titled “Swapping Our Future: How Students and Taxpayers Are Funding Risky UC Borrowing and Wall Street Profits.” The authors, a group called Public Sociologists of Berkeley, say that two factors were responsible for the precipitous decline in interest rates that drove up UC’s relative borrowing costs. One was the move by the Federal Reserve to push interest rates to record lows in order to stabilize the largest banks. The other was the illegal effort by major banks to manipulate LIBOR, which indexes interest rates on most bonds issued by UC.
Why, asked the authors, has UC’s management not tried to renegotiate the deals? They pointed to the revolving door between management and Wall Street. Unlike in earlier years, current and former business and finance executives now play a prominent role on the UC Board of Regents.
They include Chief Financial Officer Taylor, who walked through the revolving door from Lehman Brothers, where he was a top banker in Lehman’s municipal finance business in 2007. That was when the bank sold the university a swap related to debt at UCLA that has now become the source of its biggest swap losses. The university hired Taylor for his $400,000-a-year position in 2009, and he has continued to sign contracts for swaps on its behalf since.
Investigative reporter Peter Byrne notes that the UC regent’s investment committee controls $53 billion in Wall Street investments, and that historically it has been plagued by self-dealing. Byrne writes:
Several very wealthy, politically powerful men are fixtures on the regent’s investment committee, including Richard C. Blum (Wall Streeter, war contractor, and husband of U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein), and Paul Wachter (Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s long-time business partner and financial advisor). The probability of conflicts of interest inside this committee—as it moves billions of dollars between public and private companies and investment banks—is enormous.
Blum’s firm Blum Capital is also an adviser to CalPERS, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, which also got caught in the LIBOR-rigging scandal. “Once again,” said CalPERS Chief Investment Officer Joseph Dear of the LIBOR-rigging, “the financial services industry demonstrated that it cannot be trusted to make decisions in the long-term interests of investors.” If the financial services industry cannot be trusted, it needs to be replaced with something that can be.
Remedies
The Public Sociologists of Berkeley recommend renegotiation of the onerous interest rate swaps, which could save up to $200 million for the UC system; and evaluation of the university’s legal options concerning the manipulation of LIBOR. As demonstrated in the new FDIC suit, those options include not just renegotiating on better terms but rescission and damages for fraud and breach of contract. These are remedies that could be sought by local governments and public entities across the state and the nation.
The larger question is why our state and local governments continue to do business with a corrupt global banking cartel. There is an alternative. They could set up their own publicly-owned banks, on the model of the state-owned Bank of North Dakota. Fraud could be avoided, profits could be recaptured, and interest could become a much-needed source of public revenue. Credit could become a public utility, dispensed as needed to benefit local residents and local economies.
__________________
Ellen Brown is an attorney, founder of the Public Banking Institute, and a candidate for California State Treasurer running on a state bank platform. She is the author of twelve books, including the best-selling Web of Debt and her latest book, The Public Bank Solution, which explores successful public banking models historically and globally.
Filed under: Ellen Brown Articles/Commentary
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The Global Banking Game Is Rigged, and the FDIC Is Suing
The Global Banking Game Is Rigged, and the FDIC Is Suing
Taxpayers are paying billions of dollars for a swindle pulled off by the world’s biggest banks, using a form of derivative called interest-rate swaps; and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has now joined a chorus of litigants suing over it. According to an SEIU report:
Derivatives . . . have turned into a windfall for banks and a nightmare for taxpayers. . . . While banks are still collecting fixed rates of 3 to 6 percent, they are now regularly paying public entities as little as a tenth of one percent on the outstanding bonds, with rates expected to remain low in the future. Over the life of the deals, banks are now projected to collect billions more than they pay state and local governments – an outcome which amounts to a second bailout for banks, this one paid directly out of state and local budgets.
It is not just that local governments, universities and pension funds made a bad bet on these swaps. The game itself was rigged, as explained below. The FDIC is now suing in civil court for damages and punitive damages, a lead that other injured local governments and agencies would be well-advised to follow. But they need to hurry, because time on the statute of limitations is running out.
The Largest Cartel in World History
On March 14, 2014, the FDIC filed suit for LIBOR-rigging against sixteen of the world’s largest banks – including the three largest US banks (JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Citigroup), the three largest UK banks, the largest German bank, the largest Japanese bank, and several of the largest Swiss banks. Bill Black, professor of law and economics and a former bank fraud investigator, calls them “the largest cartel in world history, by at least three and probably four orders of magnitude.”
LIBOR (the London Interbank Offering Rate) is the benchmark rate by which banks themselves can borrow. It is a crucial rate involved in hundreds of trillions of dollars in derivative trades, and it is set by these sixteen megabanks privately and in secret.
Interest rate swaps are now a $426 trillion business. That’s trillion with a “t” – about seven times the gross domestic product of all the countries in the world combined. According to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, in 2012 US banks held $183.7 trillion in interest-rate contracts, with only four firms representing 93% of total derivative holdings; and three of the four were JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Bank of America, the US banks being sued by the FDIC over manipulation of LIBOR.
Lawsuits over LIBOR-rigging have been in the works for years, and regulators have scored some very impressive regulatory settlements. But so far, civil actions for damages have been unproductive for the plaintiffs. The FDIC is therefore pursuing another tack.
But before getting into all that, we need to look at how interest-rate swaps work. It has been argued that the counterparties stung by these swaps got what they bargained for – a fixed interest rate. But that is not actually what they got. The game was rigged from the start.
The Sting
Interest-rate swaps are sold to parties who have taken out loans at variable interest rates, as insurance against rising rates. The most common swap is one where counterparty A (a university, municipal government, etc.) pays a fixed rate to counterparty B (the bank), while receiving from B a floating rate indexed to a reference rate such as LIBOR. If interest rates go up, the municipality gets paid more on the swap contract, offsetting its rising borrowing costs. If interest rates go down, the municipality owes money to the bank on the swap, but that extra charge is offset by the falling interest rate on its variable rate loan. The result is to fix borrowing costs at the lower variable rate.
At least, that is how it’s supposed to work. The catch is that the swap is a separate financial agreement – essentially an ongoing bet on interest rates. The borrower owes both the interest onits variable rate loan and what it must pay out on this separate swap deal. And the benchmarks for the two rates don’t necessarily track each other. As explained by Stephen Gandel on CNN Money:
The rates on the debt were based on something called the Sifma municipal bond index, which is named after the industry group that maintains the index and tracks muni bonds. And that’s what municipalities should have bought swaps based on.
Instead, Wall Street sold municipalities Libor swaps, which were easier to trade and [were] quickly becoming a gravy train for the banks.
Historically, Sifma and LIBOR moved together. But that was before the greatest-ever global banking cartel got into the game of manipulating LIBOR. Gandel writes:
In 2008 and 2009, Libor rates, in general, fell much faster than the Sifma rate. At times, the rates even went in different directions. During the height of the financial crisis, Sifma rates spiked. Libor rates, though, continued to drop. The result was that the cost of the swaps that municipalities had taken out jumped in price at the same time that their borrowing costs went up, which was exactly the opposite of how the swaps were supposed to work.
The two rates had decoupled, and it was chiefly due to manipulation. As noted in the SEUI report:
[T]here is . . . mounting evidence that it is no accident that these deals have gone so badly, so quickly for state and local governments. Ongoing investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice and the California, Florida, and Connecticut Attorneys General implicate nearly every major bank in a nationwide conspiracy to rig bids and drive up the fixed rates state and local governments pay on their derivative contracts.
Changing the Focus to Fraud
Suits to recover damages for collusion, antitrust violations and racketeering (RICO), however, have so far failed. In March 2013, SDNY Judge Naomi Reece Buchwald dismissed antitrust and RICO claims brought by investors and traders in actions consolidated in her court, on the ground that the plaintiffs lacked standing to bring the claims. She held that the rate-setting banks’ actions did not affect competition, because those banks were not in competition with one another with respect to LIBOR rate-setting; and that “the alleged collusion occurred in an arena in which defendants never did and never were intended to compete.”
Okay, the defendants weren’t competing with each other. They were colluding with each other, in order to unfairly compete with the rest of the financial world – local banks, credit unions, and the state and local governments they lured into being counterparties to their rigged swaps. The SDNY ruling is on appeal to the Second Circuit.
In the meantime, the FDIC is taking another approach. Its 24-count complaint does include antitrust claims, but the emphasis is on damages for fraud and conspiring to keep the LIBOR rate low to enrich the banks. The FDIC is not the first to bring such claims, but its massive suit adds considerable weight to the approach.
Why would keeping interest rates low enrich the rate-setting banks? Don’t they make more money if interest rates are high?
The answer is no. Unlike most banks, they make most of their money not from ordinary commercial loans but from interest rate swaps. The FDIC suit seeks to recover losses caused to 38 US banking institutions that did make their profits from ordinary business and consumer loans – banks that failed during the financial crisis and were taken over by the FDIC. They include Washington Mutual, the largest bank failure in US history. Since the FDIC had to cover the deposits of these failed banks, it clearly has standing to recover damages, and maybe punitive damages, if intentional fraud is proved.
The Key Role of the Federal Reserve
The rate-rigging banks have been caught red-handed, but the greater manipulation of interest rates was done by the Federal Reserve itself. The Fed aggressively drove down interest rates to save the big banks and spur economic recovery after the financial collapse. In the fall of 2008, it dropped the prime rate (the rate at which banks borrow from each other) nearly to zero.
This gross manipulation of interest rates was a giant windfall for the major derivative banks. Indeed, the Fed has been called a tool of the global banking cartel. It is composed of 12 branches, all of which are 100% owned by the private banks in their districts; and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has always been the most important by far of these regional Fed banks. New York, of course is where Wall Street is located.
LIBOR is set in London; but as Simon Johnson observed in a New York Times article titled The Federal Reserve and the LIBOR Scandal, the Fed has jurisdiction whenever the “safety and soundness” of the US financial system is at stake. The scandal, he writes, “involves egregious, flagrant criminal conduct, with traders caught red-handed in e-mails and on tape.” He concludes:
This could even become a “tobacco moment,” in which an industry is forced to acknowledge its practices have been harmful – and enters into a long-term agreement that changes those practices and provides continuing financial compensation.
Bill Black concurs, stating, “Our system is completely rotten. All of the largest banks are involved—eagerly engaged in this fraud for years, covering it up.” The system needs a complete overhaul.
In the meantime, if the FDIC can bring a civil action for breach of contract and fraud, so can state and local governments, universities, and pension funds. The possibilities this opens up for California (where I’m currently running for State Treasurer) are huge. Fraud is grounds for rescission (terminating the contract) without paying penalties, potentially saving taxpayers enormous sums in fees for swap deals that are crippling cities, universities and other public entities across the state. Fraud is also grounds for punitive damages, something an outraged jury might be inclined to impose. My next post will explore the possibilities for California in more detail. Stay tuned.
______
Ellen Brown is an attorney, founder of the Public Banking Institute, and a candidate for California State Treasurer running on a state bank platform. She is the author of twelve books, including the best-selling Web of Debt and her latest book, The Public Bank Solution, which explores successful public banking models historically and globally.
Filed under: Ellen Brown Articles/Commentary Tagged: | FDIC, interest rate swaps, JPMorganChase, LIBOR manipulation
Ranch Standoff Is Over — Victory As BLM Pulls Out Of #BundyRanch!
By Susan Duclos
[UPDATE]
From the director of the BLM, Neil Kornze:
“As we have said from the beginning of the gather to remove illegal cattle from federal land consistent with court orders, a safe and peaceful operation is our number one priority. After one week, we have made progress in enforcing two recent court orders to remove the trespass cattle from public lands that belong to all Americans.
“Based on information about conditions on the ground, and in consultation with law enforcement, we have made a decision to conclude the cattle gather because of our serious concern about the safety of employees and members of the public.
“We ask that all parties in the area remain peaceful and law-abiding as the Bureau of Land Management and National Park Service work to end the operation in an orderly manner.
Ranching has always been an important part of our nation’s heritage and continues throughout the West on public lands that belong to all Americans. This is a matter of fairness and equity, and we remain disappointed that Cliven Bundy continues to not comply with the same laws that 16,000 public lands ranchers do every year. After 20 years and multiple court orders to remove the trespass cattle, Mr. Bundy owes the American taxpayers in excess of $1 million. The BLM will continue to work to resolve the matter administratively and judicially.”
Original article and updates below.
There are reports saying that Fox News just announced that the Bureau of Land Management is pulling out of Bundy Ranch in Nevada and if true this is a major victory for Americans over the overreach and tyranny of the fderal government.
[Update] First video below added is of the Fox News report!
Looks like America wins and BLM, Harry Reid, China and tyranny loses!!
The report says that BLM told them that they are pulling out and have declared the operation over!
[Update] We cannot take our eyes off this, the BLM and Feds don't like losing, they may wait until everyone leaves and attempt it again. EYES ON THE BALL PEOPLE.
Cross posted at Before It's News
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The EU’s “Economic Time Bomb”
Banking Union Time Bomb: Eurocrats Authorize Bailouts AND Bail-Ins
“As things stand, the banks are the permanent government of the country, whichever party is in power.”
– Lord Skidelsky, House of Lords, UK Parliament, 31 March 2011)
On March 20, 2014, European Union officials reached an historic agreement to create a single agency to handle failing banks. Media attention has focused on the agreement involving the single resolution mechanism (SRM), a uniform system for closing failed banks. But the real story for taxpayers and depositors is the heightened threat to their pocketbooks of a deal that now authorizes both bailouts and “bail-ins” – the confiscation of depositor funds. The deal involves multiple concessions to different countries and may be illegal under the rules of the EU Parliament; but it is being rushed through to lock taxpayer and depositor liability into place before the dire state of Eurozone banks is exposed.
The bail-in provisions were agreed to last summer. According to Bruno Waterfield, writing in the UK Telegraph in June 2013:
Under the deal, after 2018 bank shareholders will be first in line for assuming the losses of a failed bank before bondholders and certain large depositors. Insured deposits under £85,000 (€100,000) are exempt and, with specific exemptions, uninsured deposits of individuals and small companies are given preferred status in the bail-in pecking order for taking losses . . . Under the deal all unsecured bondholders must be hit for losses before a bank can be eligible to receive capital injections directly from the ESM, with no retrospective use of the fund before 2018.
As noted in my earlier articles, the ESM (European Stability Mechanism) imposes an open-ended debt on EU member governments, putting taxpayers on the hook for whatever the Eurocrats (EU officials) demand. And it’s not just the EU that has bail-in plans for their troubled too-big-to-fail banks. It is also the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other G20 nations. Recall that a depositor is an unsecured creditor of a bank. When you deposit money in a bank, the bank “owns” the money and you have an IOU or promise to pay.
Under the new EU banking union, before the taxpayer-financed single resolution fund can be deployed, shareholders and depositors will be “bailed in” for a significant portion of the losses. The bankers thus win both ways: they can tap up the taxpayers’ money and the depositors’ money.
The Unsettled Question of Deposit Insurance
But at least, you may say, it’s only the uninsured deposits that are at risk (those over €100,000—about $137,000). Right?
Not necessarily. According to ABC News, “Thursday’s result is a compromise that differs from the original banking union idea put forward in 2012. The original proposals had a third pillar, Europe-wide deposit insurance. But that idea has stalled.”
European Central Bank President Mario Draghi, speaking before the March 20th meeting in the Belgian capital, hailed the compromise plan as “great progress for a better banking union. Two pillars are now in place” – two but not the third. And two are not enough to protect the public.As observed in The Economist in June 2013, without Europe-wide deposit insurance, the banking union is a failure:
[T]he third pillar, sadly ignored, [is] a joint deposit-guarantee scheme in which the costs of making insured depositors whole are shared among euro-zone members. Annual contributions from banks should cover depositors in normal years, but they cannot credibly protect the system in meltdown (America’s prefunded scheme would cover a mere 1.35% of insured deposits). Any deposit-insurance scheme must have recourse to government backing. . . . [T]he banking union—and thus the euro—will make little sense without it.
All deposits could be at risk in a meltdown. But how likely is that?
Pretty likely, it seems . . . .
What the Eurocrats Don’t Want You to Know
Mario Draghi was vice president of Goldman Sachs Europe before he became president of the ECB. He had a major hand in shaping the banking union. And according to Wolf Richter, writing in October 2013, the goal of Draghi and other Eurocrats is to lock taxpayer and depositor liability in place before the panic button is hit over the extreme vulnerability of Eurozone banks:
European banks, like all banks, have long been hermetically sealed black boxes. . . . The only thing known about the holes in the balance sheets of these black boxes, left behind by assets that have quietly decomposed, is that they’re deep. But no one knows how deep. And no one is allowed to know – not until Eurocrats decide who is going to pay for bailing out these banks.
When the ECB becomes the regulator of the 130 largest ECB banks, says Richter, it intends to subject them to more realistic evaluations than the earlier “stress tests” that were nothing but “banking agitprop.” But these realistic evaluations won’t happen until the banking union is in place. How does Richter know? Draghi himself said so. Draghi said:
“The effectiveness of this exercise will depend on the availability of necessary arrangements for recapitalizing banks … including through the provision of a public backstop. . . . These arrangements must be in place before we conclude our assessment.”
Richter translates that to mean:
The truth shall not be known until after the Eurocrats decided who would have to pay for the bailouts. And the bank examinations won’t be completed until then, because if any of it seeped out – Draghi forbid – the whole house of cards would collapse, with no taxpayers willing to pick up the tab as its magnificent size would finally be out in the open!
Only after the taxpayers – and the depositors – are stuck with the tab will the curtain be lifted and the crippling insolvency of the banks be revealed. Predictably, panic will then set in, credit will freeze, and the banks will collapse, leaving the unsuspecting public to foot the bill.
What Happened to Nationalizing Failed Banks?
Underlying all this frantic wheeling and dealing is the presumption that the “zombie banks” must be kept alive at all costs – alive and in the hands of private bankers, who can then continue to speculate and reap outsized bonuses while the people bear the losses.
But that’s not the only alternative. In the 1990s, the expectation even in the United States was that failed megabanks would be nationalized. That route was pursued quite successfully not only in Sweden and Finland but in the US in the case of Continental Illinois, then the fourth-largest bank in the country and the largest-ever bankruptcy. According to William Engdahl, writing in September 2008:
[I]n almost every case of recent banking crises in which emergency action was needed to save the financial system, the most economical (to taxpayers) method was to have the Government, as in Sweden or Finland in the early 1990’s, nationalize the troubled banks [and] take over their management and assets … In the Swedish case the end cost to taxpayers was estimated to have been almost nil.
Typically, nationalization involves taking on the insolvent bank’s bad debts, getting the bank back on its feet, and returning it to private owners, who are then free to put depositors’ money at risk again. But better would be to keep the nationalized mega-bank as a public utility, serving the needs of the people because it is owned by the people.
As argued by George Irvin in Social Europe Journal in October 2011:
[T]he financial sector needs more than just regulation; it needs a large measure of public sector control—that’s right, the n-word: nationalisation. Finance is a public good, far too important to be run entirely for private bankers. At the very least, we need a large public investment bank tasked with modernising and greening our infrastructure . . . . [I]nstead of trashing the Eurozone and going back to a dozen minor currencies fluctuating daily, let’s have a Eurozone Ministry of Finance (Treasury) with the necessary fiscal muscle to deliver European public goods like more jobs, better wages and pensions and a sustainable environment.
A Third Alternative – Turn the Government Money Tap Back On
A giant flaw in the current banking scheme is that private banks, not governments, now create virtually the entire money supply; and they do it by creating interest-bearing debt. The debt inevitably grows faster than the money supply, because the interest is not created along with the principal in the original loan.
For a clever explanation of how all this works in graphic cartoon form, see the short French video “Government Debt Explained,” linked here.
The problem is exacerbated in the Eurozone, because no one has the power to create money ex nihilo as needed to balance the system, not even the central bank itself. This flaw could be remedied either by allowing nations individually to issue money debt-free or, as suggested by George Irvin, by giving a joint Eurozone Treasury that power.
The Bank of England just admitted in its Quarterly Bulletin that banks do not actually lend the money of their depositors. What they lend is bank credit created on their books. In the U.S. today, finance charges on this credit-money amount to between 30 and 40% of the economy, depending on whose numbers you believe. In a monetary system in which money is issued by the government and credit is issued by public banks, this “rentiering” can be avoided. Government money will not come into existence as a debt at interest, and any finance costs incurred by the public banks’ debtors will represent Treasury income that offsets taxation.
New money can be added to the money supply without creating inflation, at least to the extent of the “output gap” – the difference between actual GDP or actual output and potential GDP. In the US, that figure is about $1 trillion annually; and for the EU is roughly €520 billion ($715 billion). A joint Eurozone Treasury could add this sum to the money supply debt-free, creating the euros necessary to create jobs, rebuild infrastructure, protect the environment, and maintain a flourishing economy.
_________________
Ellen Brown is an attorney, founder of the Public Banking Institute, and a candidate for California State Treasurer running on a state bank platform. She is the author of twelve books, including the best-selling Web of Debt and her latest book, The Public Bank Solution, which explores successful public banking models historically and globally.
Filed under: Ellen Brown Articles/Commentary Tagged: | EU banking crisis, EU banking union, nationalization, public banking
Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement Consultation: A smokescreen For A Corporate Agenda
The Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA) between the
“Those who reject the undemocratic and dangerous investor-state dispute settlement system will have no opportunity in this consultation to voice their opposition because the Commission’s biased questions provide no option for that. The Commission should make itself available for a real debate, not a cowardly advertising campaign for its corporate agenda.”
“The Commission’s so-called reform agenda does nothing to address the basic flaws of the investor-state dispute settlement system. Therefore foreign companies will continue to have greater rights than domestic firms and citizens. And international tribunals consisting of three for-profit lawyers will continue to decide over what policies are right or wrong, disregarding domestic laws, courts and democracy.”
“The investor-state arbitration system cannot be tamed. Profit-greedy law firms and their corporate clients will always find a way to attack countries for actions that threaten their profits. The corporate super-rights should be abolished – and people inEurope should not miss this crucial opportunity to tell the Commission to do so.”
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Presidential Restraint Is Alive and Well
... among people who are not the president.
On Presidents Day, RootsAction.org set up a petition in response to this news:
"An American citizen who is a member of al-Qaida is actively planning attacks against Americans overseas, U.S. officials say," the Associated Press reports -- "and the Obama administration is wrestling with whether to kill him with a drone strike and how to do so legally under its new stricter targeting policy issued last year."
The petition reads:
"Mr. President, Without making any exception for the president, the Constitution requires adherence to the Fifth Amendment. 'Due process' is mandatory, not optional. Legality is a question of law, not policy. You are not allowed to kill whoever you want on your own say-so."
Within the first several hours, over 10,000 people had signed. You can sign it too.
Here are some of the comments that people have posted:
"Has the CONSTITUTION become an - OPTION ???" —S. Schwenchy, CA
"And we thought Bush was a liar!" —Richard Wilkey, TN
"And you are also not allowed to pass judgement on someone before they are judged by a jury of their peers as you did in the case of Pvt. Manning. I thought you were better than that. My bad." —John Nettleton, OR
"Please, just stop murdering suspicious people. This is like what happened to Trayvon Martin, but there's no trial afterward." —Tim Ferguson, CA
"Expedience is not an excuse. We can't be the good guys just because we say so, we have to act on it too. Killing terrorists just creates more terrorists." —Boola Lomuscio, MA
"A country which can imprison indefinitely its citizens without due process, without ever charging them with any wrongdoing is not a democracy. Period. Let alone the country which can KILL citizens without due process, without ever charging them with any wrongdoing. Obey the law. Obey the Constitution." —Jamil Said, CA
"A President is nothing more than a servant, and if he commits a crime, it is ten times the crime and should have ten times the penalty." —Ronald Denner, MI
"According to the Nuremberg Principles if we remain silent while our government is engaged in illegal activities, then we are complicit, we are equally guilty of being in violation of international law and of going against our most dearly held values. It is our responsibility as citizens, as taxpayers, as voters, to speak out." —Robert Stevens
"All labels aside, ANY president who does not follow his oath needs to be impeached. It really is that simple." —Robert Horan, OH
"All presidents seem to think that the Constitution is for the people to obey, not them. The 5th Amendment provides due process for American citizens. If one suspects criminal activity against the USA, then the suspect must have his day in court. This is part of the democratic process, and NO ONE, NOT EVEN THE PRESIDENT, IS ABOVE THE LAW!" —Robert Glasner, CA
"Amendment IV -- 'The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures' -- Does that include the life of the person?" —David Bean, OR
"America is supposed to have the rule of law, not of men. I don't care how well-intentioned people are; if the precedent is set, then less well-intentioned people will take advantage of it." —Deborah Goldsmith, CA
"Among other reasons, drone strikes kill innocents without exception, and you know it, Mr. President, and that's not something to accept regardless of what your military advisers believe." —Marianne Kenady, WA
"Are we back in the dark ages where the king decides to behead anyone he wants? Seems that way. I don't think that is where we want to be, none of us." —Kenneth Walton, IA
"Are you still a constitutional lawyer? - - Then, why are you acting as you are? That is, choosing and selecting American citizens for annihilation." —William See, OR
"Believe it or not, murder is murder. Murdering a murderer is still murder." —Frank C Benjamin, NY
"Don't stray from the mandates, including the Constitution, you have been sworn to uphold. People accused of crimes are supposed to be tried by a jury of their peers, not one man on a power trip." —John Davis, ME
"Execution of citizens without any due process, especially a jury of peers, is one of the hallmarks of a totalitarian government -- no matter how much the tyrant pleads otherwise." —Robert Anderson, CA
"Execution without arrest and fair trial is unethical, immoral and goes against all American values." —Patricia Robinett, MO
"Extraordinary renditions and torture perpetrated by the Bush Administration was illegal and immoral. Killing without due process, especially an American citizen, is even worse." —Audrey Bomse, FL
"Following our example, I guess it is ok for foreign governments to send drones over our territory to murder dissidents from their country?" —Michael JamesLong, OR
"For a constitutional lawyer, our President does not honor, in any way, shape or form, the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th & 8th amendments to the U.S. Constitution." —Lisbeth Caccese, CA
Read thousands more, pick your favorites, add your own:
http://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=9288
Sandy Hook: Free Homes and “Big Bucks” Incentives for Leaders and Players
By James H. Fetzer (with Wolfgang Halbig)
BREAKING NEWS! New Revelations expose the apparently corrupt motives of Newtown authorities and participants in the staged events at Sandy Hook, including free homes and a cut of $27 million (USD) in donations from a sympathetic but gullible public played for saps through the cynical manipulation of their subconscious fears.
New research on Sandy Hook reveals powerful financial incentives that appear to implicate the highest officials of Newtown in a conspiracy to fabricate the Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting, which extends to survivors of the “victims” and other participants who played key roles in conveying the impression of a massacre of children at Sandy Hook.
In addition, a new player, Wolfgang Halbig, has emerged who by background, experience and qualifications–as a former Florida State Trooper, former school principal and nationally recognized expert on school safety–has brought a new level of expertise to sorting out the illusion, where he is convinced it was a sham and that no one died at Sandy Hook.
These incentives include real estate transactions, whereby valuable homes were deeded to Newtown’s three Selectmen and to other participants for the sale price of $0 dollars on 25 December 2009, which may be the only real estate transactions on Christmas in the nation day, where they constituted very special and high-value-at-no-cost “Christmas presents”. The “survivors” have already raked in $27 million in donations to split. And now we have a new report that 200 Connecticut State Police are going to be rewarded for essentially “doing nothing”.
This information is so extraordinary that, as a journalist for Veterans Today, I have written to Newtown’s Selectmen, Patricia Llorda, William F.L. Rogers and James Gaston, Sr., to either confirm or deny that they were among the recipients of these extraordinary gifts. I am awaiting their replies. And, for the rest, in their eagerness to cash in on the hoax, they seem to have posted a United Way donation request 3 days early.
Who is Wolfgang Halbig?
A former Florida State Trooper, who spent 36 years as a school administrator (including as assistant principal and principal) and a nationally recognized authority on school safety (who also served as an expert witness in the Columbine shooting case), has an impressive biographical sketch, which I am providing here. He is by far the most highly qualified expert to address the questions raised by the Sandy Hook “event”:
The exceptional interview by Dave Gahary with Wolfgang Halbig has been posted on the America Free Press YouTube channel, where it has been drawing rave reviews and, as they say, has “gone viral”, perhaps especially because he has been threatened with prosecution for raising questions with Connecticut state officials. How could anyone of his credentials be threatened simply for asking questions about Sandy Hook?
To listen to the interview of Wolfgang Halbig by David Gahary, click
Wolfgang on YouTube here
The fascinating questions that Wolfgang has raised include, “Why were 26 small Christmas Trees behind the Sandy Hook Volunteer Fire Department on 14 December 2012 and decorated on 15 December 2012?” They do not have, say, 60 or 100 trees because, if they did, it would be obvious that they would be having a Christmas tree sale. But instead we see that they have just 26 small trees all by themselves. That would seem to suggest there was a plan to have 26 “victims” whose deaths were to be observed, but before the event to be commemorated had taken place.
As he wrote of the Sandy Hook Research Group and others, “There are so many of you who have dedicated so much time and effort in seeking the truth which the CT State Police and the Danbury State Attorney refuses to share reminds me of Nazi Germany and East Berlin were many of my family members lived and died. My father spend four years in a Nazi prison camp so I know personally that if you or we ever stop asking questions and stop challenging those in power we the people are no longer free and will no longer be safe.”
Letter to the Newtown Selectmen
It was astonishing to discover that very unusual real estate transactions had taken place on 25 December 2009, where the homes of 15 of the 20 Sandy Hook child victims, 1-2 of the 7 adult victims, and all 6 of the Sandy Hook adult non-victims (the Phelps, Gene Rosen, the three Selectmen) have the mysterious sale date of Christmas Day and $0 sale price. Although not gifted on that same date, even the home of Nancy Lanza, the purported mother of the alleged shooter, Adam Lanza, was bestowed upon her for $0 on 8 February 2011:
Nancy Lanza’s home
Altogether, some 35 homes were “gifted” for $0, where the data base for home sales is a matter of public record. These stunning transactions are so extraordinary and potentially explanatory that they are even being featured on YouTube, where I expect that they will now begin to receive the attention they deserve. I decided to write to the three Selectmen of Newtown, all of whom were recipients of this remarkable largess, for their verification. I had originally sent my inquiry to the members of the School Board, but noticed my mistake and corrected it:
From:James Fetzer
Date: Sat, Feb 15, 2014 at 1:17 PM
Subject: The strange purchase date and price of Sandy Hook homes
To: Patricia Llorda, William F.L. Rogers and James Gaston, Sr.
Cc: wolfgang halbig
Dear Newtown Selectmen,
This is to forward to you a message intended for you as well as the members of the Newtown School Board, since all of you have an interest in accurate and truthful reporting about Sandy Hook and such events as may have transpired at the elementary school.
I was struck by the recent article in which Selectman Llodra complimented the national press for its “respectful professionalism” in covering the observance of those events. Since I want to make sure I have my facts straight about a story that involves the three of you, I would appreciate having your comments on the article that I have just forwarded to the members of the School Board.
Thanks for a prompt response.
Jim
James H. Fetzer, Ph.D.
McKnight Professor Emeritus
University of Minnesota Duluth
http://www.d.umn.edu/~jfetzer/
———- Forwarded message ———-
From: James Fetzer
Date: Sat, Feb 15, 2014 at 1:17 PM
Subject: The strange purchase date and price of Sandy Hook homes
To: Debbie Leidlein, Laura Roche, Keith Alexander, John Vouros, David Freedman, Michelle Embree Ku, Kathy Hamilton
Cc: wolfgang halbig
Dear Newtown School Board Members,
While we are on the subject, I would like to invite your attention to an extremely disturbing article,
“The Strange Purchase Date and Price of Sandy Hook Homes”, http://www.dcclothesline.com/2014/02/14/strange-purchase-date-price-sandy-hook-homes/
which I hope you can clarify for me because, as a journalist, I want to make sure I have things right. It lists some highly unusual real estate transactions on Christman Day of 2009, including these:
20. E. (Elin) Patricia Llodra, 70:
Llodra is the First Selectman and head of Newtown’s 3-member Board of Selectmen who supervise the administration of the town. Like the other two board members (#21 and #22 below), Llodra was elected to a 2-year term (12/1/2011 to 12/1/2013), which means the three were in charge of Newtown at the time of the Sandy Hook massacre. All three were recently reelected to another 2-year term (12/1/2013 to 12/1/2015).
A year ago, when I looked up Ellin P. Llodra on people search engines, her address was listed as 90 Riverside Rd, Sandy Hook, CT 06482.
VGS a year ago and today says Owner of Record: Robert M. & Ellin P. Llodra Ownership history: Sold to Robert M. & Ellin P. Llodra on 12/25/2009 for $0. Trulia has no price history on this property.
But when I look up Ellin Llodra on people search today, her address is listed as 3 Primrose St., Newtown, CT 06470, which is the address of the Newtown Municipal Center, and is owned by the Town of Newtown, with a sale date of12/25/2009 and a sale price of $0.
21. William Rodgers (2nd member of Newtown’s Board of Selectmen):
208 Hattertown Rd, Newtown, CT 06470 VGS says Owners: William & Moira Rodgers Ownership history: Sold to William & Moira Rodgers on 12/25/2009 for $0 Trulia’s price history: 4/22/1992 $362,000
22. James Gaston Sr. (3rd member of Newtown’s Board of Selectmen):
18 Main St., Newtown, CT 06470 VGS says Owner: Stephanie A. Gaston Ownership history: Sold to Stephanie A. Gaston on 12/25/2009 for $0 Trulia’s price history: 10/2/1992 $262,500
Frankly, I have never heard of anyone completing a real estate transaction on Christmas Day. The author summarizes his conclusions about these very strange transactions as follows:
“The homes of 15 of the 20 Sandy Hook child victims, 1-2 of the 7 adult victims, and all 6 of the Sandy Hook adult non-victims (the Phelps, Gene Rosen, the three Selectmen) have the mysterious sale date and $0 sale price.
“At the very least, that is interesting. The three Selectmen are especially interesting because if the hypothesis is that the massacre was a contrived event, then Newtown’s highest governing body would have to be “in the know.”
“Your guess is as good as mine as to what all those strange 12/25/2009 sale dates and $0 sale price mean. I’d appreciate input from readers of this blog who are in the real estate business and can shed some light of what the odd sale date and sale price mean.”
Since I am providing you with a link to this stunning article, whose contents you can confirm for yourselves, I would like to know if its author has anything wrong; and if his research is accurate, what in the world is going on? Homes in your area are extremely expensive. Why were you, the three selectmen, for example, deeded homes for $0 on 25 December 2009? Please do explain.
I will be publishing more articles about this and I want to make sure that I have my facts straight.
Thanks for a prompt response.
Jim
James H. Fetzer, Ph.D.
McKnight Professor Emeritus
University of Minnesota Duluth
http://www.d.umn.edu/~jfetzer/
P.S. An interview with Wolfgang Halbig is now up on YouTube. You don’t want to miss it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6roDPt1WYYY&list=UUseEm_OTxRSzs8L_FTFP8Dg
Letter to the Newtown School Board
Learning that all three of the Newtown Selectmen, including Patricia Llodra, had received homes for $0 dollars shed light on the whole bizarre Sandy Hook experience, where it became obvious in retrospect that her expression of appreciation to the main stream media for their “respectful professionalism” in covering the observance was really an expression of appreciation for covering up what had actually happened. When Wolfgang wrote to the School Board, therefore, I sent my own follow up:
On Fri, Feb 14, 2014 at 9:23 AM, James Fetzer <jfetzer@d.umn.edu wrote:
Dear Newtown School Board Members,
As a former Marine Corps officer, retired university professor and especially as a journalist for Veterans Today, who has published several articles about the Sandy Hook event, I would like to have your response to what Wolfgang Halbig has addressed to you. Wolf is a former Florida State Trooper, a former school principal and a nationally recognized expert on school safety. Are you going to respond to his inquiries or will you pretend you never received them?
There are multiple indications that you, the Newtown School Board, have been participating in a cover up of what took place at Sandy Hook Elementary School. As we have observed in “Top Ten Reasons: Sandy Hook was an Elaborate Hoax” (with Vivian Lee, Sofia Smallstorm, James Tracy and other members of the Sandy Hook Research Group), the evidence is simply overwhelming that what happened was a carefully staged drill and not an actual shooting.
The questions that Wolfgang has raised are important ones, especially about the event itself but also about the building, which have been reported in articles that have appeared in the press, including “Widespread Haz-Mat Presence Would Have Hampered Sandy Hook Renovations” by John Voket (2 December 2013), which appeared in The Newtown Bee. And of course First Selectman Pat Llorda has been quoted thanking the press for its coverage of the Newtown event.
The questions that Wolfgang has raised about Sandy Hook Elementary School are obvious and elementary. As a journalist who has published and will continue to publish about this event, I want to be sure that I have my facts straight. So be sure to include me in your response to Wolfgang. And if you were not participating in a massive hoax to mislead the American people, inquiring minds want to know.
Thanks for a prompt response.
Jim
James H. Fetzer, Ph.D.
McKnight Professor Emeritus
University of Minnesota Duluth
http://www.d.umn.edu/~jfetzer/
From: Wolfgang Halbig
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2014 07:38:20 -0500
To: Debbie Leidlein, Laura Roche, Keith Alexander, John Vouros, David Freedman, Michelle Embree Ku, Kathy Hamilton
Subject: Follow the CT Laws on the Ct Freedom of Information Act and please return phone calls
School Board Chairman and Board Members:
I have spend a lifetime as a Florida State Trooper In Miami, Florida from 1974 through 1977 and then realizing that I’m in the wrong profession.
When you work as a Law Enforcement Officer in Miami, Florida it seems as a lifetime even if it is only 3 years or less.
I was putting people in Jail instead of trying to prevent them from going to jail.
So I became a School Administrator for 36 school years.
I became a National School Safety Consultant after retiring form Education in 1999.
I was appointed by former Gov. Jeb Bush to the Florida Safe Schools Commission and confirmed by the Florida Senate.
I am asking you the Board Members to help me in getting your school superintendent to repsond to my Ct Freedom of Information Requests in a timely manner.
Your Facility Director does not even return phone calls after leaving a polite message.
My requests are simple requests and will not place your school district in any danger whatsoever.
I was an Expert witness in the Columbine shooting in 1999 and it causes me to ask the same questions.
I was in the Media Center three days after the shooting and I personally observed the horrific crime scene and I got to see it after they renovated the Media Center for School use again.
The incident at Sandy Hook Elementary School has caused nothing but panic and fear throughout all schools in our country and I believe you have a responsibility as Board Members to tell the truth as to:
Why were NO trauma Helicopters requested that morning when lives could have been saved?
Why No paramedics or EMT’S were allowed into the school building instead they were told to set up Triage?
Who declared all 24 school children and school staff legally dead within the first 11 minutes since only a Doctor can do that not a police officer per CT State Laws?
Two children supposedly died at the hospital which it took over an hour to transport. Why?
Who did the school board contract to remove all Bio-Hazards from the Sandy Hook Elementary School such as 45 to 65 gallons of blood, brain tissues and skull fragments, blood splatter, blood carpet removal etc just as they did at Columbine?
Who was the contractor who installed the security system at sandy Hook Elementary school and the total cost of the project?
Copies of the tri-annual Asbestos inspections that must be conducted by a Certified Inspector from outside the school system and that all parents must be notified of any asbestos, lead or any other dangerous substances that could cause harm to children and school staff on an annual basis.
I have requested those reports from 2002 through current year 2012. Now what is so difficult in providing me with those reports since parents of Sandy Hook should see those every school year?
Please comply.
I am asking you as a former educator and National School Safety Consultant to respond to my Ct Freedom of Information Act requests and return phone calls in a timely manner. You have had Dr. Ron Stephens National School Safety Center speak with you and he will give me a great reference if you check me out.
I will not stop asking as you will see until board members have the courage in sharing the truth.
How can a Lt. from the Newtown Police Department working an off-duty detail on Dec 14, 2012 and hearing that shots are fired at Sandy Hook Elementary School not leave his off duty job to repsond in saving children and school staff lives? He decided to stay until over two and a half hours passed to respond.
How can you [have] allowed that type of response from police in your community. He should be fired and not praised in your meetings?
Please have your school district respond to my requests.
Thanks.
Wolfgang W Halbig
352———
[address]
Wolfgang’s questions for The Newtown Bee
His letter to The Newtown Bee was so completely appropriate and reasonable that it seemed to me a bit more heat was deserved in this case, so I wrote a sequel in which I raised questions about an event as embarrassing relative to Sandy Hook as Jane Standley’s report of the “collapse” of WTC-7, which was broadcast 27 minutes early. So I asked about its very strange report of a phone call from the principal, Dawn Hochsprung, about the shooting, when she was said to be the first victim:
From: James Fetzer
Date: Sat, Feb 14, 2014 at 9:00 AM
Subject: About Wolfgang Halbig’s inquiries to The Newtown Bee
To: [Newtown Bee Staff]
Cc: wolfgang halbig
Dear Bee Editors and Staff,
As a former Marine Corps officer, retired university professor and especially as a journalist for Veterans Today, who has published several articles about the Sandy Hook event, I would like to have your response to what Wolfgang Halbig has addressed to you. Wolf is a former Florida State Trooper, a former school principal and a nationally recognized expert on school safety. Are you going to respond to his inquiries or pretend you never received them?
There are multiple indications that you, The Newtown Bee, have been participating in a cover up of what took place at Sandy Hook Elementary School. As we have observed in “Top Ten Reasons: Sandy Hook was an Elaborate Hoax” (with Vivian Lee, Sofia Smallstorm, James Tracy and other members of the Sandy Hook Research Group), you even published an interview with Dawn Hochsprung after she was officially dead:
Dawn Hochsprung—In an embarrassing fiction, The Newtown Bee reported on 14 December 2013 that Dawn Hochsprung, the Sandy Hook school principal, told the paper that a masked man had entered the school with a rifle and started shooting multiple shots – more than she could count – that went “on and on.” Of course, Dawn Hochsprung was allegedly killed by Adam Lanza and so could not easily have provided this statement. In fact, Dawn was said to have acted heroically, dying while lunging at the gunman—although one wonders who witnessed and reported this act of heroism. On 17 December 2013, The Bee retracted the report and apologized:
An early online report from the scene at the December 14 shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School quoted a woman who identified herself to our reporter as the principal of the school. The woman was not the school’s principal, Dawn Hochsprung, who was killed in the Friday morning attack. The quote was removed from subsequent online versions of the story, but the original story did remain in our online archive for three days before being deleted. We apologize for whatever confusion this may have caused our readers and for any pain or anguish it may have caused the Hochsprung family.
But how in the world could something like that have happened unless someone went off the script? Why in the world would anyone PRETEND TO BE THE PRINCIPAL OF AN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL AND CALL IN TO REPORT A SHOOTING? Surely you can see that your flimsy attempt to explain away an embarrassing gaff by The Newton Bee isn’t going to persuade anyone that you are not complicit in this massive deception and hoax? So be sure to include me in your response to Wolfgang, because I want to have my facts straight. And if you were not participating in a massive hoax to mislead the American people, inquiring minds want to know.
Thanks for a prompt response.
Jim
James H. Fetzer, Ph.D.
McKnight Professor Emeritus
University of Minnesota Duluth
On Fri, Feb 14, 2014 at 7:43 AM, Wolfgang Halbig wrote:
Editor and reporters and Hicks:
How can you as a staff sit back in your offices and allow this to happen under your watch?
Your failure in placing every parent on notice before the Sandy Hook School Shooting about the serious high level of lead, asbestos and PCB’s in that school since it was built in 1956 should have been a warning sign long before they decided to tear it down.
Why did your News Paper not warn every parent and school board members of the serious exposures that every child and school staff member is confronted with on a daily basis and NO one warned the parents or school staff?
As you know by CT State and even Federal laws the Sandy Hook Elementary School is required to have a tri-annual Asbestos inspection by an outside certified asbestos inspector.
Those findings must be reported to parents of the children and school staff of Sandy Hook on an annual basis.
The school district must write a letter to very parent informing them of the high level of lead, Asbestos such as asbestos ceiling tiles, asbestos floor tiles and just as you finally reported before tearing down the school of how bad those Asbestos and Haz-Mat conditions where.
Children and school staff are working in classroom with high amounts of lead paint. Have you ever heard of allergies?
You call this a Vanguard School knowing that every child and school staff member who attended was being exposed to high levels of lead, serious Asbestos violations and many other Has-mat conditions such as PCB’s.
Why would any Elementary School parent allow their child to attend that school unless all those conditions were remediated long time ago?
These are serious conditions that a school district ignored and you must have known or maybe just an oversight in letting parents know of how bad those environmental conditions in that school where.
Did the school district on an annual basis write letters to every parent in informing them of these serious Haz-Mat and Asbestos conditions? You should find out because it is the law.
Wolfgang
352———
So what was Sandy Hook about?
Are the Newtown Selectmen going to move to make real estate records immune from public disclosure, just as the Newtown Clerk moved to keep children’s death certificates out of the public domain? Just how dumb are we supposed to be? As I explained in an earlier article, “Fusion and Fear in America: The Non-Existent Domestic Terrorist Threat”, on the basis of an extensive study by a subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Intelligence, there appears to be no domestic terrorist threat, which may account for why we are subjected to contrived events, such as Sandy Hook and the Boston bombing:
“Despite reviewing 13 months’ worth of reporting originating from fusion centers from April 1, 2009 to April 30, 2010, the Subcommittee investigation could identify no reporting which uncovered a terrorist threat, nor could it identify a contribution such fusion center reporting made to disrupt an active terrorist plot.”–US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.
While this finding appears to be of the greatest importance to the American public, to the best of my knowledge, the mass media has ignored it completely. We know about the 300 or more FEMA camps distributed around the country. We know that Congress has authorized 30,000 drones to conduct surveillance on the American people. We know that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had requisitioned 1.5 billion rounds of .40 calibre hollow-point ammunition, which is not permissible for use in warfare under the Geneva Conventions. And we know that Hitler, like Obama, promoted gun control in the name of “public safety”.
Since DHS does not conduct operations abroad, it must be acquiring that massive stock of ammo for use on us right here in the United States. That much is alarming enough all by itself. What we didn’t know is that DHS is some kind of monstrous joke, that it has been squandering billions of taxpayers’ dollars, and that it has turned up no evidence of any domestic terrorist threat! NONE! The situation is absurd. DHS has no financial oversight and cannot even identify how much it has spent, where there is more than $1 billion difference in its own estimates. So what precisely are we getting for our money?
Perhaps the biggest obstacle to the public’s acceptance of Sandy Hook fakery, in spite of a mountain of evidence that proves it, has been the question of motivation: What could possibly have induced so many to have lied so much about a matter of such immense significance, which has been parlayed into greater restrictions on gun control and new “mental health criteria” that entitle your physician to ask you about gun ownership? The answer, alas, should be obvious to everyone: free homes and free money from playing the American people for suckers. Don’t say no one ever told you, because we just did.
Wolfgang Halbig, a former Florida State Trooper with 36 years of experience as a school administrator, is also a nationally recognized authority on school safety and has been threatened for asking questions about Sandy Hook.
Jim Fetzer, a former Marine Corps officer, is McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth and a journalist and editor for Veterans Today.
This article originally appeared at Veterans Today on February 16, 2014. It is republished here with permission.
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The anonymous Obamacare expert, who provided us a year ago with the most complete account of Obamacare available, http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2013/02/03/obamacare-a-primer/ has returned with an explanation of estate recovery. Obamacare herds the poor into Medicaid which requires some enrollees to forfeit homes…
The post Obamacare: The Final Payment–Raiding the Assets of Low-Income and Poor Americans appeared first on PaulCraigRoberts.org.
Hold Clapper Accountable for any Terrorist Attack on U.S.
Gov Malloy’s “Best Friend” Helped Preserve Sandy Hook Crime Scene
By James F. Tracy, with research provided by MHB Reader and Commenter Beth D.
On the day following the most tragic mass murder events in US history and amidst a cascade of local, state and federal law enforcement officials, Al Barbarotta busied himself inside Sandy Hook Elementary School. Mr. Barbarotta directed the transfer of furniture to a renovated school in the nearby town of Monroe where students would eventually resume classes.
The owner of AFB Construction Management and Conveo Energy, Barbarotta is no stranger to such work. AFB is a longtime recipient of lucrative municipal contracts throughout Connecticut, looking after 11 million square feet of public school facilities in addition to parks and beaches.[1]
After reportedly receiving a request from the Connecticut Commissioner of Education’s office within one day of the massacre, Barbarotta sprang into action. “Instantly, on Saturday,” December 15th, “we started bringing in cleaning crews and moving crews to get the furniture out,” he told the New Haven Register.
I’ve seen things I don’t even really want to talk about,” the contractor declared. “There’s markings on the floor.[sic] There’s blood everywhere. You can see the broken windows in the classroom in the whole area where the shooting took place.[2]
Despite the entire lack of law enforcement or medical credentials, Barbarotta nevertheless gained access to the scene where, just hours earlier, autopsies were performed following the most publicized school shooting in the nation’s history—one that is repeatedly pointed to as the rationale for ratcheting up school safety measures and mental health protocols nationwide.
Yet there was really no need for the Education Commissioner’s office to contact Barbarotta. After all, he’s someone who, according to the Connecticut Post, “Gov. Malloy has on speed dial.”
Connecticut residents have long understood that Al Barbarotta is to Dannel Malloy what Bebe Rebozo was to Richard Nixon. Indeed, Barbarotta is quick to point out that he is the governor’s “best friend,” regularly calling Malloy, “Danny.” And, as the Post observes, “the relationship between the two men extends far beyond the realm of friendship to the world of politics, power–and money.”
Barbarotta’s AFB Management has raked in $18.5 million for subcontracted work from Stamford, where Malloy was mayor from 1995 to 2009. AFB won its first city contract in 1999. Over the past few years, “AFB has enjoyed unfettered dominance of major city contracts,” the Stamford Advocate reports. AFB most recently sent Stamford taxpayers a $424,000 bill after “replac[ing] all the fluorescent light fixtures with LED bulbs” in one of its schools.”[3]
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the 62-year-old Barbarotta was “a major bundler of campaign cash for Malloy, whose close ties to the governor have previously raised questions of impropriety and cronyism,” according to the Connecticut Post.[4]
In 2003, Malloy was the focus of an 18 month investigation by the Connecticut State Attorney to determine whether the mayor was awarding contracts to those he personally employed for home renovations. AFB figured centrally in the probe, yet Malloy was eventually exonerated.[5]
At Sandy Hook Barbarotta explains that his crews built plywood partitions isolating the crime scene. This must have involved a great deal of plywood, because according to the official story the crime scene extended to the parking lot of the school. As the reader may recall, automobiles like those of teacher Lauren Rousseau were “riddled with bullets,” supposedly caused by one of marksman Adam Lanza’s wayward weapons.[6]
On top of the Obama administration funneling millions to Connecticut officials for their participation in the Sandy Hook massacre event, and Malloy’s office similarly siphoning tens of millions to Newtown pen pushers in an effort to wholly eliminate the crime scene,[7] we now find that a longtime confidante and supporter of Governor Malloy was directly involved in preserving the immediate scene while simultaneously mourning to the press.
It has become almost amusing to observe how yet another “twist” is added to the official narrative—one now including an awkwardly compiled official investigation that overall fails to adequately address any of the unanswered questions brought up in the wake of the initial tragedy.
Notes
[1] Kate King, Neil Vigdor, and Ken Dixon, “The Man Gov. Malloy Has on Speed Dial,” Connecticut Post, August 24, 2013.
[2] Frank Otto and Adam Poulisse, “Contractor Moving Furniture From Sandy Hook Elementary School: ‘I’ve Seen Things I Don’t Really Want to Talk About,” New Haven Register, December 18, 2012. The Newtown Bee reports that Barbarotta’s Conveo Energy was commissioned by the Malloy administration in December 2012 to relocate school equipment from Sandy Hook Elementary School “free of charge.” “State Agency: Logo Misused in Newtown School Move,” Associated Press / Newtown Bee, September 16, 2013.
[3] Kate King, “Board of Ed Under Fire Over Energy Management Services,” Stamford Advocate, January 11, 2014.
[4] “The Man Gov. Malloy Has on Speed Dial.”
[5] Ibid.
[6] Henrick Karolizyn and Larry McShane, “Mother of Substitute Teacher, Lauren Rousseau, Killed in Newtown Massacre Stunned: ‘We survive war, she dies teaching!’’ New York Daily News, December 18, 2012.
[7] “Sandy Hook School Slated for Demolition,” memoryholeblog.com, October 7, 2013; “Obama DOJ in $2.5 Million Sandy Hook Payout,” memoryholeblog.com, September 3, 2013; “Obama DOE in $3.2 Million Sandy Hook Payout,” memoryholeblog.com, January 13, 2014.
The surveillance Wild West – Your secrets for sale
Farm Bill Fiasco
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- $89.8 billion for crop insurance;
- $56 billion for so-called conservation;
- $44.4 billion for commodity programs; and
- another $8.2 billion for everything else.
Britain’s “bedroom tax” puts thousands in financial jeopardy
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What Is Supply-Side Economics? Paul Craig Roberts Supply-side economics is an innovation in macroeconomic theory and policy. It rose to prominence in congressional policy discussions in the late 1970s in response to worsening Phillips Curve trade-offs between inflation and unemployment.…
The post What Is Supply-Side Economics? — Paul Craig Roberts appeared first on PaulCraigRoberts.org.
Enough Is Enough: Fraud-ridden Banks Are Not L.A.’s Only Option
Enough Is Enough: Fraud-ridden Banks Are Not L.A.’s Only Option
“Epic in scale, unprecedented in world history.” That is how William K. Black, professor of law and economics and former bank fraud investigator, describes the frauds in which JPMorgan Chase (JPM) has now been implicated. They involve more than a dozen felonies, including bid-rigging on municipal bond debt; colluding to rig interest rates on hundreds of trillions of dollars in mortgages, derivatives and other contracts; exposing investors to excessive risk; failing to disclose known risks, including those in the Bernie Madoff scandal; and engaging in multiple forms of mortgage fraud.
So why, asks Chicago Alderwoman Leslie Hairston, are we still doing business with them? She plans to introduce a city council ordinance deleting JPM from the city’s list of designated municipal depositories. As quoted in the January 14th Chicago Sun-Times:
The bank has violated the city code by making admissions of dishonesty and deceit in the way they dealt with their investors in the mortgage securities and Bernie Madoff Ponzi scandals. . . . We use this code against city contractors and all the small companies, why wouldn’t we use this against one of the largest banks in the world?
A similar move has been recommended for the City of Los Angeles by L.A. City Councilman Gil Cedillo. But in a January 19th editorial titled “There’s No Profit in L A. Bashing JPMorgan Chase,” the L.A. Times editorial board warned against pulling the city’s money out of JPM and other mega-banks – even though the city attorney is suing them for allegedly causing an epidemic of foreclosures in minority neighborhoods.
“L.A. relies on these banks,” says The Times, “for long-term financing to build bridges and restore lakes, and for short-term financing to pay the bills.” The editorial noted that a similar proposal brought in the fall of 2011 by then-Councilman Richard Alarcon, backed by Occupy L.A., was abandoned because it would have resulted in termination fees and higher interest payments by the city.
It seems we must bow to our oppressors because we have no viable alternative – or do we? What if there is an alternative that would not only save the city money but would be a safer place to deposit its funds than in Wall Street banks?
The Tiny State That Broke Free
There is a place where they don’t bow. Where they don’t park their assets on Wall Street and play the mega-bank game, and haven’t for almost 100 years. Where they escaped the 2008 banking crisis and have no government debt, the lowest foreclosure rate in the country, the lowest default rate on credit card debt, and the lowest unemployment rate. They also have the only publicly-owned bank.
The place is North Dakota, and their state-owned Bank of North Dakota (BND) is a model for Los Angeles and other cities, counties, and states.
Like the BND, a public bank of the City of Los Angeles would not be a commercial bank and would not compete with commercial banks. In fact, it would partner with them – using its tax revenue deposits to create credit for lending programs through the magical everyday banking practice of leveraging capital.
The BND is a major money-maker for North Dakota, returning about $30 million annually in dividends to the treasury – not bad for a state with a population that is less than one-fifth that of the City of Los Angeles. Every year since the 2008 banking crisis, the BND has reported a return on investment of 17-26%.
Like the BND, a Bank of the City of Los Angeles would provide credit for city projects – to build bridges, restore lakes, and pay bills – and this credit would essentially be interest-free, since the city would own the bank and get the interest back. Eliminating interest has been shown to reduce the cost of public projects by 35% or more.
Awesome Possibilities
Consider what that could mean for Los Angeles. According to the current fiscal budget, the LAX Modernization project is budgeted at $4.11 billion. That’s the sticker price. But what will it cost when you add interest on revenue bonds and other funding sources? The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge earthquake retrofit boondoggle was slated to cost about $6 billion. Interest and bank fees added another $6 billion. Funding through a public bank could have saved taxpayers $6 billion, or 50%.
If Los Angeles owned its own bank, it could also avoid costly “rainy day funds,” which are held by various agencies as surplus taxes. If the city had a low-cost credit line with its own bank, these funds could be released into the general fund, generating massive amounts of new revenue for the city.
The potential for the City and County of Los Angeles can be seen by examining their respective Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports (CAFRs). According to the latest CAFRs (2012), the City of Los Angeles has “cash, pooled and other investments” of $11 billion beyond what is in its pension fund (page 85), and the County of Los Angeles has $22 billion (page 66). To put these sums in perspective, the austerity crisis declared by the State of California in 2012 was the result of a declared state budget deficit of only $16 billion.
The L.A. CAFR funds are currently drawing only minimal interest. With some modest changes in regulations, they could be returned to the general fund for use in the city’s budget, or deposited or invested in the city’s own bank, to be leveraged into credit for local purposes.
Minimizing Risk
Beyond being a money-maker, a city-owned bank can minimize the risks of interest rate manipulation, excessive fees, and dishonest dealings.
Another risk that must now be added to the list is that of confiscation in the event of a “bail in.” Public funds are secured with collateral, but they take a back seat in bankruptcy to the “super priority” of Wall Street’s own derivative claims. A major derivatives fiasco of the sort seen in 2008 could wipe out even a mega-bank’s available collateral, leaving the city with empty coffers.
The city itself could be propelled into bankruptcy by speculative derivatives dealings with Wall Street banks. The dire results can be seen in Detroit, where the emergency manager, operating on behalf of the city’s creditors, put it into bankruptcy to force payment on its debts. First in line were UBS and Bank of America, claiming speculative winnings on their interest-rate swaps, which the emergency manager paid immediately before filing for bankruptcy. Critics say the swaps were improperly entered into and were what propelled the city into bankruptcy. Their propriety is now being investigated by the bankruptcy judge.
Not Too Big to Abandon
Mega-banks might be too big to fail. According to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, they might even be too big to prosecute. But they are not too big to abandon as depositories for government funds.
There may indeed be no profit in bashing JPMorgan Chase, but there would be profit in pulling deposits out and putting them in Los Angeles’ own public bank. Other major cities currently exploring that possibility include San Franciscoand Philadelphia.
If North Dakota can bypass Wall Street with its own bank and declare its financial independence, so can the City of Los Angeles. And so can the County. And so can the State of California.
____________
Ellen Brown is an attorney, chairman of the Public Banking Institute, and author of 12 books including The Public Bank Solution. She is currently running for California state treasurer on the Green Party ticket.
Filed under: Ellen Brown Articles/Commentary
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From Austerity to Abundance: Why I Am Running for California Treasurer
Governor Jerry Brown and his staff are exchanging high-fives over balancing California’s budget, but the people on whose backs it was balanced are not rejoicing. The state’s high-wire act has been called “the ultimate in austerity budgets.”
Welfare payments, health care for the poor, and benefits for the elderly and disabled have been slashed. State workers have been downsized. School districts in need of cash have been reduced to borrowing through “capital appreciation bonds” bearing 300% interest. In one notorious case, the Santa Ana school district actually borrowed at 1,000% interest. And the governor acknowledges that California still faces a “wall of debt” amounting to $28 billion. Some analysts put it much higher than that.
At the end of the 20th century, California was ranked the sixth largest economy in the world. By 2012, it had slipped to number twelve. It is coming back up, in part because European countries are falling further into recession; but California’s poverty rate remains the highest in the country. More than eight million Californians struggle to meet their daily needs, and one in four children lives in poverty. Income inequality is higher in the nation’s most populous state than in almost any other.
California cannot solve its budget problems by slashing services that have already been cut to the bone or raising sales taxes that hurt the poor far more than the rich. We are fighting over a pie that remains too small. The pie itself needs to be expanded – and it can be.
How? By reclaiming that portion that is now siphoned off in interest and bank fees. When tallied up at every stage of production, interest has been calculated to claim one-third of everything we buy.
How can that money be recaptured? By owning the bank.
The approach was pioneered in North Dakota, the only state to escape the 2008 banking crisis. North Dakota has the lowest unemployment rate in the country, the lowest foreclosure rate, the lowest default rate on credit card debt, and no state debt at all. It is also the only state to own its own bank.
In the fall of 2011, a bill for a feasibility study for a state-owned bank passed both houses of the California legislature. The Public Banking Institute, which I founded and chair, was instrumental in helping to get the bill as far as it got. But it died when Jerry Brown vetoed it. His rationale was that we already have a banking committee, and that the matter could be explored in-house. Needless to say, however, we have heard no more about it since.
I am therefore running for California State Treasurer on a state bank platform, along with Laura Wells, who is running for Controller. We are throwing our bonnets in the ring for the opportunity to show the Governor or his successor that a state-owned bank can be our ticket to returning California to the abundance it once enjoyed.
I was a recipient of that abundance myself. I got my undergraduate degree at UC Berkeley in the 1960s, when tuition was free; and my law degree at UCLA Law School in the 1970s, when tuition was $700 a year. Today it is $13,000 and $45,000 annually, respectively, for in-state students. In the 1960s, the governor of California was Jerry Brown’s father Pat Brown, a New Deal visionary who believed that investment in education, infrastructure and local business was an investment in the future. Our goal is to revive that optimistic vision in 2014.
We are running on the endorsement of the Green Party – along with Luis Rodriguez for governor and David Curtis for secretary of state – because Green Party candidates take no corporate money. Candidates who take corporate money – and that means nearly all conventional candidates – are beholden to large corporate interests and cannot properly represent the interests of the disenfranchised 99%.
The North Dakota Model: Banking that Supports Rather Than Exploits the Local Economy
California’s revenues are currently parked in those very largest of corporations, Wall Street banks. These out-of-state banks use our giant asset pool for their own speculative purposes, and the funds are at risk of confiscation in the event of a “bail-in.”
In North Dakota, by contrast, all of the state’s revenues are deposited by law in the state-owned Bank of North Dakota (BND). The BND is set up as a DBA of the state (“North Dakota doing business as the Bank of North Dakota”), which means all of the state’s capital is technically the bank’s capital. The bank uses its copious capital and deposit pool to generate credit for local purposes.
The BND is a major money-maker for the state, returning a sizable dividend annually to the treasury. Every year since the 2008 banking crisis, it has reported a return on investment of between 17 percent and 26 percent. The BND also provides what is essentially interest-free credit for state projects, since the state owns the bank and gets the interest back. The BND partners with local banks rather than competing with them, strengthening their capital and deposit bases and allowing them to keep loans on their books rather than having to sell them off to investors. This practice allowed North Dakota to avoid the subprime crisis that destroyed the housing market in other states.
Consider the awesome potential for California, with its massive capital and deposit bases. California has over $200 billion stashed in a variety of funds identified in its 2012 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR), including $58 billion managed by the Treasurer in a Pooled Money Investment Account currently earning a meager 0.264% annually. It also has over $400 billion in its pension funds (CalPERS and CalSTRS).
California’s population of 37 million is more than 50 times that of North Dakota. In 2010, the BND had about $4,500 in deposits and $4,200 in loans per capita. Multiplying 37 million by $4,200, a State Bank of California could, in theory, generate $155.4 billion in credit for the state; and this credit would effectively be interest-free free, since the state would own the bank.
What could California do with $155 billion in interest-free credit? One possibility would be to refinance its ominous “wall of debt” at 0%. A debt that is interest-free can be rolled over indefinitely without cost to the taxpayers.
Another possibility would be to fund public projects interest-free. Eliminating interest has been shown to reduce the cost of public projects by 35% or more.
Take, for example, the San Francisco Bay Bridge earthquake retrofitting boondoggle, which was originally slated to cost about $6 billion. Interest and bank fees wound up adding another $6 billion to the overall cost to taxpayers. Funding through its own bank could have saved the state $6 billion or 50% on this project.
Then there is the state’s bullet train fiasco, which has been beset with delays, cost overruns, and funding issues. As with the Bay Bridge, costs are projected to double as a result of compounding interest on long-term bonds, imposing huge hidden costs on the next generation of taxpayers. By funding the bullet train through a state-owned bank, its costs, too, could be reduced by 50%.
The Challenge of a “Jungle Primary”
As voters become increasingly disillusioned with big-corporate-money candidates, the third party option is gaining traction. According to a recent Gallup poll, in 2013 42% of Americans identified themselves as political independents, significantly outpacing Democrats at 31% and Republicans at 25%.
The growing threat posed by independent and third-party candidates may explain why it is getting harder and harder to run as one. In California we now have Proposition 14, the Top Two primary, sometimes called the “Louisiana primary” or “jungle primary.” It might better be named the Incumbents’ Benevolent Protection Act.
Proposition 14 requires statewide and congressional California candidates, regardless of party preference, to participate in a nonpartisan blanket primary, with only the top two candidates advancing to the general election. Incumbents and heavily-funded candidates have historically reaped the benefits of this arrangement. Third party candidates are liable to get knocked out in the first round in June, eliminating them from the November elections.
But the new system does have the advantage that anyone can vote for any candidate in the June primary; so if we can mobilize voters, we have a shot.
There is, however, another new hurdle imposed by Proposition 14. In place of the 150 signatures-in-lieu-of-filing-fee needed earlier, we now need 10,000 signatures – either that or $2,800. But we’re hoping to turn that requirement, too, to advantage, by using it to build the people power and energy necessary to take the June 3, 2014 primary. If you would like to sign a petition or donate, click here.
There is another way to balance a state budget, one that leads to prosperity rather than austerity. California can stimulate its economy and the job market, restore low-cost higher education, build 21st-century infrastructure, preserve the environment, and relieve the state’s debt burden, by establishing a bank that is owned by the people and returns its profits to the people.
__________________
Ellen Brown is an attorney, president of the Public Banking Institute, and author of twelve books including the bestselling Web of Debt. In The Public Bank Solution, her latest book, she explores successful public banking models historically and globally. Her 200+ credit blog articles are at EllenBrown.com. She is currently running for California State Treasurer on the Green Party ticket.
Filed under: Ellen Brown Articles/Commentary
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