The Red Pill

[Pro-Life]

Russia Bans U.S. From International Space Station: A Golden Opportunity for Elon Musk and SpaceX?
By Rich Smith | May 18, 2014

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/05/18/russia-bans-us-from-international-space-station-a.aspx

Russia Bans US from International Space Station

Published on May 14, 2014

In response to sanctions issued after the Crimea annexation, Russia announced that it will refuse to allow American astronauts to hitch rides to the International Space Station.

[the cork]

“EU Officially Adopts the Bail-In”
Graham Mehl, Friday, 18 April 2014

My Two Cents
By Andy Sutton

It has now been more than a year since that fateful weekend in the Mediterranean when everything changed. However, like most of the big changes we’ve seen lately, there is a subtlety afoot that somehow results in few noticing. This should surprise no one really. How the world can change in such dramatic ways without any type of mass awakening is a topic more for the psychologists who help pull the strings and the evil they represent than for anyone involved in the analysis of economics and events, but I say the above so that you know you’re not kidding anyone.

Even a year later, the subtlety continues and ignorance abounds. Most still don’t know the ramifications of the passage of the Dodd-Frank bill back in 2010. They take it at its word that it is a consumer protection act, but is nothing of the sort. They’ll reap what they sow.

The evidence has been plentiful, the analysis outstanding. There have been countless opportunities for people to learn of the truth. Ours is not to concern ourselves with those who refuse to have their eyes opened, but for those who are seeking knowledge. After all, nobody can fault someone who doesn’t know, but wants to. There are plenty who do, especially in light of the EU’s passage of a new set of bail-in ‘rules’ this week. Much of this was already known and previously agreed to, but there are some more interesting spin-offs and it is definitely worth revisiting. The mere fact that they’re spending so much time prepping for another bank blowup essentially guarantees that one is coming at some point. These things tend to become self-fulfilling prophecies in and of themselves, and when there is so much potential looting and pillaging to be done, all the more so!

We want to state up front that this is an extensive subject and that it is impossible to provide a comprehensive look at all the facets of the emerging truth regarding the bail-in mechanism and the entire associated minutia in a single essay. Our commitment is to dedicate our remaining articles to this topic alone in the hopes of providing a singular source of information on the topic.

A Palliative Diversion – Exhibit I

Since there was a bit of an uprising in certain corners of the alternative media, evidently some folks in the EU decided that it was necessary to pass a few laws stating exactly how future resolution of failed banks would happen. What is interesting is the reporting of how all this took place versus what we already know to be true. The latest gem comes from the NY Times – the self-proclaimed gold standard of media honesty. Perhaps their gold is laden with tungsten as well. Or maybe it is just pyrite. You be the judge.


“The approvals — which had been expected after arduous negotiations among the union’s regulators, governments and legislators — come more than five years after problems in the American housing market, and the discovery of a big hole in Greece’s finances, set loose a wider banking crisis that led countries including Britain and Portugal to use public money to bail out their troubled lenders.

In one case, in Cyprus, the authorities were initially prepared to trim depositors’ savings to bail out banks before an outcry by Cypriots and European legislators forced a change of tactics.”

So if we’ve got this right, the bail-in in Cyprus never actually happened ? Ok, this is good, so we go back a year to the same putrid fool’s gold standard and get the following:

“Desperate times call for desperate measures, and when you are an offshore banking center, whose banking assets represent 800 percent of your host country's G.D.P. and are about to collapse, you have to take the least bad deal you can get. This is what the Cypriot government did when it agreed to an international bailout, despite being forced to raise almost six billion euros – a third of its G.D.P. – through an unprecedented levy on bank depositors.”

Desperate times call for desperate measures - an “unprecedented levy on bank depositors”. These folks obviously think you are stupid. Or else they think you’ve got a memory like a sieve or don’t know how to spend 5 seconds using an Internet search engine. Such is the brazen nature of the press today.

We digressed a bit, but we needed to lay a foundation of prior falsehoods before analyzing the rest of this story. Perhaps a bit more groundwork is in order. It is well known that much of Europe is Socialist in nature. However, there is a unilateral nature to that socialism. It is fine to take from someone else to give to us, but don’t you dare take from us to give to someone else. This is the by-product of a welfare state and the same mindset is becoming very popular in America. The seeds of class warfare are easily sown in such an environment.

So to encapsulate unilateral socialism, you’ve got the little guy in the EU saying it is ok to rob a big guy to pay for the welfare state, but don’t take my bank account. Then you’ve got the big guy saying hey, my gains are private and they’re mine, but my losses are public, meaning they’re yours. And ne’er the twain shall meet. So what we have here is an impossible task – to please everyone. Ultimately, in a capitalistic society, the risk takers should be the ones who pay, but unfortunately, because we have criminals running the governments of the West, we’ve got a system where the risk-takers are able to leverage everyone else along with themselves. They take hostages, but no prisoners. Instead, they make everyone a risk-taker, and most participants don’t even realize it.



So when it goes wrong, the original risk takers can’t bear all the losses because the losses are far in excess of their ability to repay. Hence the bailout/bail-in mess. Let’s connect some dots here. We had the situation in Cyprus. Deposits were looted regardless of the tripe the NYT wants to print. They admitted it themselves. Then we come up with what is called the SRM, or Singular Resolution Mechanism, for the EU. I am referencing a working paper, again from the IMF from April 24, 2012, linked here.

The above-referenced paper defines a bail-in as the following:

“Bail-in is a statutory power to restructure the liabilities of a distressed SIFI by converting and/or writing down unsecured debt on a “going concern basis.”

(Author’s Note: A ‘SIFI” is a ‘Systemically Important Financial Institution’. Aka G-SIFI where ‘G’ means ‘Global’)


“In bail-in, the concerned SIFI remains open and its existence as an ongoing legal entity is maintained. The idea is to eliminate insolvency risk by restoring a distressed financial institution to viability through the restructuring of its liabilities and without having to inject public funds (except for the provision of liquidity support as a backstop). This would require restoring capital to a level over and above regulatory requirements to ensure the institution’s survival, including under stressed assumptions. It could be achieved either by converting existing debt to equity as part of the debt restructuring or by injecting capital brought in by new shareholders, or by a combination of the two. The aim is to have a private- sector solution as an alternative to government-funded rescues of SIFIs.”

So let’s get this straight and then see what exactly it is this new idiotic measure is supposed to be protecting the EU commoners from and why we called it palliative. Say you have a bank with a billion in assets. This includes all assets, but NOT deposits since deposits are a liability where the bank is concerned. Pay attention here. So the idea of the SRM is to basically maintain a façade of sorts, to keep the status quo going while the powers that be try to shuck and jive their way into a ‘solution’. And they will need to because many times the liabilities are many multiples that of assets thanks to the miracle of unrestrained leverage.

This is done by possibly converting debt to equity, bringing new capital to the table, or both, according to the IMF. So who exactly is going to race to invest in a failed bank? Answer – you. We reference an earlier essay from this year that mentions the term ‘lending by captive domestic audiences’. This concept was outlined in yet another IMF whitepaper. Granted, the term was used in the specter of ameliorating government debt blowouts, but could easily be applied to banks as well and we believe it will. Could your pension fund, IRA, or 401 be snagged either in part or in its entirety to make a bank whole? Certainly. There are already three live examples of segregated customer funds being stolen to make brokerage operations whole, so what’s the big jump to doing it for a bank or even a sovereign?

The second reason why the answer is ‘you’ is because when the bank’s debt is converted to equity, your deposits are liabilities of the bank and fall into the same category on the balance sheet as debt. So instead of being a depositor in a failed institution, you might end up being a shareholder, which is far worse. At least creditors get the first swipe at things in a bankruptcy. There is rarely anything left for equity holders. Take a look at the share prices of any of the failed banks of 2008 and tell us how you’re going to get made whole. You’re not. It gets better, especially in America and we’ve signed onto this same charade. Once your deposits get converted to equity and you become a shareholder, any hope of FDIC protection that might have existed goes right out the window because that insurance specifically excludes equity holders. Of course the media and powers that be will assure you that all is well; that the SRM will guarantee that there will be no bankruptcy proceedings. This is more nonsense. One quick look at the liabilities of medium sized institutions points out the fact that there aren’t nearly enough deposits – or public money for that matter – to put even these Humpty Dumpty’s back together again.

And, for the record, the EU signed onto the SRM last June. So we’ll say this one more time – for the cheap seats. Just because it is that important that it is worth saying again. When you dump your paycheck in a bank, you’re no longer an uninterested party. You’ve become a risk-taker. An investor. Whether you know it or believe it doesn’t matter. Your bank goes poof because of a London whale or some other Corzine-ish trading gaffe and suddenly you’re in big trouble. And you know the big guys aren’t going to go down for this; you are.

A Palliative Diversion – Exhibit II


Now we’ll get into what the Europeans have supposedly done to ‘protect’ the little guy from the evils of the insolvency of a G-SIFI. Before you’re even done, you’ll probably wonder what all the fanfare is about; this is essentially what they agreed to last year. And you’d be right. Sometimes the lack of news is news itself. According to the NYT, this is the essence of what has been passed:

“The measures approved on Tuesday, which some critics said did not go far enough to protect taxpayers, include a law confirming a guarantee on deposits up to 100,000 euros, or $138,000.

Another law, a bank recovery and resolution directive, gives the 28 states in the union a common rule book for handling failing banks. That law would also oblige creditors to take extensive losses before state funds are used.

The other main law voted on Tuesday, a regulation for a single-resolution mechanism, establishes a board to ensure that the owners and creditors of major lenders in the euro zone pay first in cases of failure. That regulation would also establish a common fund of €55 billion, to be built up over eight years, financed by all euro zone banks to help cover the costs of closings.”

Just a couple of questions here:

First, who are the creditors? For the answer to that one, which by the way is never answered in any of the media releases about these new laws, we just go back to the original SRM agreement – co-written by the FDIC and Bank of England. Depositors are clearly indicated as creditors since, from an accounting perspective, that is precisely what they are. Deposits are on-demand liabilities of the bank because it must pay them on demand.

Second, has anyone bothered to consider the magnitude of a G-SIFI failure? We know that the not-so-USFed pledged up to and possibly over $20 trillion to deal with the mess back in 2008 and that was only the first shock. As alluded to above, US bank deposits total around $950 billion, give or take. Is there anyone out there with a brain that thinks there is enough capital to even cover these clowns when a big one goes down???

Just take a look at the derivatives books of the largest banks. If even one goes down, it takes out every depositor on Earth several times over. Not to mention that it won’t be just one; it’ll likely be a bunch of them. This is like the cold war days when the US/USSR had enough nukes to destroy the world a hundred times over or whatever it was and openly bragged about it. That is basically what is going on here, just in a different setting.

Thirdly, does anyone think 55 billion Euros is going to be enough to cover anything? This is like taking on a forest fire with a garden sprinkler. But see, it won’t be the banks who ultimately stock this fund; it’ll be the consumer. The Proletariat. It is just another way to get a pound of flesh from the little guy. Sure the banks have to put the money up, but they are merely conduits and will simply pass along the costs of stocking the fund to their customers either in the form of fees or in the lack of interest payments.

Along these lines, the not-so-USFed’s ‘stress tests’ of the banks are somewhat telling. Even these watered down tests are showing plenty of cracks and there is no rush to fix the problems and no penalties for either delay or outright non-compliance. Keep in mind that not a single criminal charge has been filed as a result of the 2006-2008 mess or any subsequent events. Not one head has rolled. None will. The stress tests, in our opinion, are just a face-saving tactic for when the inevitable happens. Again, remember who works for whom. The fox is truly guarding the hen house in this regard. How many people would give any credibility to an audit that was done by an outfit that is wholly owned by the firm they are auditing? That’s precisely what we’ve got here.

The hacks that wrote these ‘laws’ know all of the above and they also know it would make more sense to let the Proletariat keep their pittance and at least keep the economies going, but they don’t want that. They want to bring the whole mess down so they can create their utopia. We see it here in Europe and we see it in America as well. To sum it up, the ‘news’ of the passage of new laws in Europe this week really isn’t all that significant with regards to what was done. It is what wasn’t done that is all the more important.

A Palliative Diversion – Much Ado About Nothing


The whole ‘going concern’ idea mentioned in the above-referenced IMF staff discussion note (another type of whitepaper) is merely doublespeak for maintaining the status quo. It extends the denial and undoubtedly the lying. Instead of admitting that institution X is defunct, broke, and irretrievably shattered, we’ll put up a farce instead, pretending that all is fine, all the while trying to prevent a fire sale. See below directly from the document (page 5):


“i. reduce the likelihood of government bail-out by ensuring that shareholders and creditors bear losses, thereby limiting moral hazard risk and improving market discipline;


ii. minimize systemic risks by quickly restoring confidence, thereby reducing the need for fire sales or disorderly liquidations of financial contracts, and preserving the going-concern value of the distressed institutions; and


iii. achieve effective cross-border resolutions.”


If you watched during the fall of 2008, you saw how opportunistic the banksters are. They are vultures. They will feed off the carcass of their competitor before the competitor is even dead. This is their nature. If anyone thinks that a bunch of guidelines based on ‘going-concern value’, and the prevention of ‘disorderly liquidations’ mentioned above is going change that, then they need to get the Naïve Nellie of the year award. And at the end of the day, the root of the problem STILL has yet to be addressed.

Why are we letting G-SIFIs even become systemically important in the first place? Why are they continuously allowed to leverage the rest of us to the brink on a daily basis? That we admit their role and its danger and try to contain the potential devastation rather than putting them back in their proper role is proof positive who is really in charge here. It is proof of a system run amok. It is proof of a heads we win, tails you lose mentality on the part of these folks. More importantly, it is proof that we need to take responsibility for ourselves and understand that we are our own best protection.

The ‘authorities’ are there to help; they’re just not there to help you.


Graham Mehl is a pseudonym. He currently works for a hedge fund and is responsible for economic forecasting and modeling. He has a graduate degree with honors from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania among his educational achievements. Prior to his current position, he served as an economic research associate for a G7 central bank.



Andy Sutton is the Chief Market Strategist for Sutton & Associates, LLC – a Registered Investment Adviser in Pennsylvania. His focuses are econometric modeling and risk management. The firm specializes in wealth preservation and growth and recognizes the validity of non-paper assets in achieving a balanced approach. The firm is also currently working with a growing clientele towards avoiding the risks routinely visited in this column.

http://news.goldseek.com/GoldSeek/1397848486.php

[Pro-Life]

Commodities have been going crazy... 52 week performance:

http://finviz.com/fut_image.ashx?relative_y1.png&rev=634332251862238750%3Ca%20href=

[Pro-Life]

Flight 370 passengers may still be alive; 'pirated' Boeing 777 may return to skies as stealth nuclear weapon
Friday, March 14, 2014
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/044307_flight_370_passengers_alive_air_piracy.html#ixzz2zNGZdLVq

This article is a lengthy must read... see the link above...

[shermann7]

IMF Seals Ukraine's Implosion - Joaquin Flores (VIDEO)

Shermann

[the cork]

Another mysterious Banker Suicide ???
(special thanks to investor15)

Another Banker Drama: ABN AMRO
April 5, 2014

Correlation Economics

You can't count them on your fingers anymore. Jan Peter Schmittmann (former CEO of ABN AMRO) has been found dead in his house along with his wife and daughter. We don't know what happened yet, could be suicide, could be murder? Probably suicide because most of the deaths are suicides.

I think we need to chart the amount of dead bankers on a timeline, could be a correlation there. Apparently it started to get serious around February 2014, which was also the month where the stock market was the lowest in 2014.



CEO Daniel Eicher, 53 — suicide, left two notes — week of 6/10/2013

CEO Carsten Schloter, 49 — suicide, found hanging — 7/23/13

Intern Moritz Erhardt, 21 — seizure due to exhaustion — week of 8/12/2013

CFO Pierre Wauthier, 53 — suicide, found hanging, left two notes — 8/26/2013

Hedge fund exec Robert Wilson, 87 — suicide, jumped from 16th floor — 12/23/2013

Wallstreet Reporter David Bird, 55 – missing/disappeared – 1/11/2014

Swiss Re AG director Tim Dickenson, 39 — cause not released — week of 1/19/2014

Executive William Broeksmit, 58 — apparent suicide, found hanging— 1/26/14

Banker Gabriel Magee, 39 — jumped or fell from building — 1/28/14

Chief economist Mike Dueker, 50 — found dead next to Bridge — week of 1/26/2014

Executive Ryan Crane, 37 — no cause given — 2/3/14

CEO Richard Talley, 57 — suicide by nail gun,7 or 8 self-inflicted wounds — 2/7/14

Banker Dennis Li Junjie 33 — jumped from from a buidling— 2/18/14

CEO Autumn Radtke, 28, — was found dead in her Singapore apartment— 2/28/2014

Banker Kenneth Bellando, 28 — found dead outside his apartment . — 3/12/2014

CEO Jan Peter Schmittmann, one of the 3 dead found in a home — 4/5/2014

Geplaatst door Albert Sung op 22:36
http://katchum.blogspot.com

[the cork]

I hope we survive the weekend.

[Pro-Life]

And this should be the reason for impeachment:
Obama Regime Seizes Control Over All Food, Farms, Livestock, Farm Equipment, Fertilizer And Food Production Across America Per Executive Order

Obama seizes control over all food, farms, livestock, farm equipment, fertilizer and food production across America (Natural News, March 20, 2012):

http://www.infiniteunknown.net/2012/03/21/obama-regime-seizes-control-over-all-food-farms-livestock-farm-equipment-fertilizer-and-food-production-across-america-per-executive-order/

“We told ya so” just doesn’t quite cut it anymore. As the American sheeple slept, selfishly refusing to take a stand against tyranny, the Obama administration has been plotting what can only be called a total government takeover of America.

On March 16, 2012, President Obama issued an executive order entitled, “NATIONAL DEFENSE RESOURCES PREPAREDNESS.” (http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/03/16/executive-order…)

This executive order states that the President alone has the authority to take over all resources in the nation (labor, food, industry, etc.) as long as it is done “to promote the national defense” — a phrase so vague that it could mean practically anything.

The power to seize control and take over these resources is delegated to the following government authorities:

(1) the Secretary of Agriculture with respect to food resources, food resource facilities, livestock resources, veterinary resources, plant health resources, and the domestic distribution of farm equipment and commercial fertilizer;

(2) the Secretary of Energy with respect to all forms of energy;

(3) the Secretary of Health and Human Services with respect to health resources;

(4) the Secretary of Transportation with respect to all forms of civil transportation;

(5) the Secretary of Defense with respect to water resources; and

(6) the Secretary of Commerce with respect to all other materials, services, and facilities, including construction materials.

This takeover is designed, in part, to “stockpile supplies” for the U.S. military. Authority for this total takeover of all national resources is granted with nothing more than the writing of a single statement that claims these actions are necessary to “promote the national defense.” As stated in the order:

the authority delegated by section 201 of this order may be used only to support programs that have been determined in writing as necessary or appropriate to promote the national defense:

(a) by the Secretary of Defense with respect to military production and construction, military assistance to foreign nations, military use of civil transportation, stockpiles managed by the Department of Defense, space, and directly related activities;

What all this means is that the U.S. government now claims the power to simply march onto your farm with guns drawn and demand all your crops, seeds, livestock and farm equipment.

Think I’m exaggerating? Read it yourself!

And for those living in denial who refuse to accept the reality of what’s happening in America, remember the following:

• When NaturalNews reported on the existence of the NDAA, we were told our reporting was misleading because Obama opposed it and wouldn’t sign it.

• When Obama betrayed America and signed the bill, we were told our reporting was misleading because “it didn’t apply to Americans.”

• When Obama admitted it did apply to Americans, he announced that he would choose “not to use it on Americans” but only by the grace of his restraint. Nobody who previously accused us of misleading the public had the integrity to offer us an apology and say, “Gee, you were right, it DOES apply to Americans!”

• Now Obama has seized control over all food, farms, livestock, water and transportation across America. How many brain-dead Americans will continue to live in denial and try to convince themselves this is not happening? Sticking your head in the sand does not make this go away…

What California did to Rawesome Foods, the Obama administration can do to everyone

Remember the armed raids on Rawesome Foods? With guns drawn, California authorities assaulted the food distribution center, arrested the farmers, then proceeded to destroy $50,000 worth of food including milk, eggs, cheese and watermelons. (http://www.naturalnews.com/033220_Rawesome_Foods_armed_raids.html)

As outrageous as that raid was, it’s only the beginning. Now, thanks to Obama’s executive order, the federal government can conduct Rawesome-style raids on all farms, all grocery stores, all food co-ops and even individual home gardens.

It’s written in plain English. This is no longer debatable and it’s not a conspiracy theory. It’s Obama administration policy. For what other purpose would this be issued in an executive order if it was not seen as actionable by the government? This piece of paper, you see, gives them the (false) authority to do whatever they want and then have the front-line soldiers who carry it out claim “we’re only following orders.”

Sound familiar? Heil Hitler!

Understanding the fraud

This executive order starts out by stating that the U.S. President is the “Commander in Chief” of the U.S. military. This is false. He is not the commander in chief unless and until Congress declares an Act of War. No acts of war have been declared in recent memory, and certainly not under Obama who doesn’t even seek congressional approval for war.

So Obama is in no way a “Commander in Chief.” In fact, it is questionable whether he is even a U.S. citizen.

The phrase “national defense” can be twisted to mean almost anything. It could be invoked from something as harmless as a barge sinking in the harbor. It could even be invoked based on fabricated intelligence such as a fake website post from someone alleged to be “Bin Laden’s second in command” who appears to shout some sort of threat against the United States of America. So the claim that this seizing of national resources will only be done under some sort of national defense emergency is pure bunk — both Obama and Bush before him have already declared we are living under a national defense emergency! Thus, the conditions described in this executive order have already been triggered. It is already in effect!

Notice how nothing in this document talks about protecting the People? Serving the People? Supporting the People? It’s all about protecting the government! The government needs stockpiles of weapons, food and resources — but YOU don’t! Such is the philosophy of current government which sees itself as all powerful and the People as helpless, mindless slaves of the state.

Tyrannical governments concern themselves with important concepts such as continuity of government but never the continuity of liberty for the People. At the first drop of a hat, liberty gets thrown out the window to keep government in power.

Other signs of the takeover

• Last year, I interviewed Farmer Brad in central Texas, who openly stated, on camera, that FEMA has already started calling farms across Texas and demanding an inventory list of all their crops and seeds. Watch this interview yourself at: http://tv.naturalnews.com/v.asp?v=72620642EB2DE54931674ED4857C08EC

• Yesterday in Chicago, the police arrested NBC reporters outside a hospital, screaming that their First Amendment rights could be taken away from them at any time:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/cop-arrests-nbc-reporters-says-your-first…

• Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta recently revealed in U.S. Senate testimony that the Obama administration takes its orders from the UN and that the U.S. Congress is now null and void. (http://wethepeoplefree.com/constitution/senator-sessions-leon-panetta…) and (http://www.infowars.com/coup-detat-pentagon-obama-declare-congress-ce…)

• When MF Global head Jon Corzine stole billions of dollars from investors (many were farmers), there were absolutely no investigations, no indictments and no criminal arrests! Massive financial theft is now openly tolerated in America as long as those doing the stealing are politically connected to the Obama administration. (http://www.prisonplanet.com/the-cojones-defense-of-jon-corzine.html)

Of course, it’s not an Obama thing. Bush was much the same. It’s not the name of the person in the Oval Office who matters, it’s the fundamental lack of principles and ethics reflected across government today. Instead of protecting the rights of the People, today’s corrupt governments are little more than criminal gangs who steal power and resources for themselves (and their connected buddies) while destroying the economy and stealing everything in sight from the real workers upon whose sweat-drenched backs America was built.

[the cork]

Ukraine Shocking Riot Videos and Pics: Watch Protesters Destroy Armored Vehicle With Molotov Cocktails http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/shocking-riot-videos-and-pics-watch-protesters-destroy-armored-vehicle-with-molotov-cocktails-graphic-images_02182014?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SHTFplan+%28SHTF+Plan+-+When+It+Hits+The+Fan%2C+Don%27t+Say+We+Didn%27t+Warn+You%29

USA beware. The 99% won't forget. Back to the future.

[the cork]

DOJ Sued For Crony Justice - Presenting "A Decade of Illegal Conduct by JP Morgan Chase"
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 02/10/2014 15:26 -0500

Earlier today, the non-profit organization Better Markets did what so many others have only dreamed of doing - they sued the Department of Justice.

Specifically, as they disclose in the fact sheet posted on their website, they are "challenging the historic and unprecedented $13 billion settlement agreement between the U.S. Department of Justice and JP Morgan Chase (“Agreement”). Better Markets alleges in its complaint that the DOJ violated the Constitution and laws of the United States by using a mere contractual agreement to resolve claims of historic importance without subjecting the Agreement to independent judicial review. In effect, the DOJ acted as investigator, prosecutor, judge, jury, sentencer, and collector, without any check on its authority or actions, even though the amount is the largest in the 237 year history of the United States.

Because the DOJ has declared its intention to use the Agreement as a “template” in future similar cases, it is imperative that the DOJ’s unlawful and secretive approach in the settlement process be subjected to judicial review."

We wish them the best of luck, as in a "crony justice" system as corrupt as this one - perhaps best described, paradoxically enough by the fictional movie The International - where the same DOJ previously implicitly admitted it will not prosecute "systemically important" firms like JPM to the full extent of the law and instead merely lob one after another wrist slap at them to placate the peasantry, any hope for obtaining true justice is impossible.

That said, the key aspects of the Better Markets lawsuit deserve attention. They are broken down as follows:

For years leading up to the financial crisis of 2008, JP Morgan Chase allegedly engaged in pervasive fraud in the packaging and sale of thousands of mortgage-backed securities to investors. Those securities were stuffed with subprime loans that failed to meet applicable underwriting criteria. Employees, managers, and potentially high-level executives of JP Morgan Chase knew that the securities were riddled with toxic loans, but they allegedly concealed the truth from investors when they marketed and sold the securities. Investors lost huge but still unknown sums of money as a result of the fraud, and the bank’s illegal conduct contributed directly to the biggest financial crash since 1929 and the worst economy since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

After negotiating the Agreement in complete secrecy, the DOJ announced the $13 billion deal on November 19, 2013, claiming that it was holding JP Morgan Chase accountable for its illegal activities. Under the Agreement, DOJ grants JP Morgan Chase broad civil immunity in exchange for a $2 billion civil penalty, along with $4 billion in “consumer relief” for the benefit of homeowners with problem mortgages. The Agreement also allocates $7 billion to eight other agencies or states to resolve their claims against JP Morgan Chase.

Key Allegations in the Complaint

The Agreement was struck under the most extraordinary circumstances. For example—

THE HISTORIC CLAIMS: The Agreement resolved claims of pervasive fraud that contributed to the worst financial crash since 1929 and the worst economy since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
THE LARGEST AMOUNT EVER: The settlement amount was the largest in U.S. history from any single entity by more than 300%.
THE BIGGEST BANK: JP Morgan Chase is the largest, richest, and most well-connected Wall Street bank in the United States.
THE HIGHEST-LEVEL NEGOTIATORS: The Attorney General and other senior DOJ political appointees negotiated directly and entirely in secret with the CEO of JP Morgan Chase, someone who was considered a possible Treasury Secretary just a few years ago.
THE $10 BILLION PHONE CALL: The cellphone of DOJ’s third highest ranking official rang with the “familiar” phone number of JP Morgan Chase’s CEO, who called to offer billions of dollars to stop DOJ from holding a press conference and filing a lawsuit in just a few hours. The call worked, and the press conference and lawsuit were both called off.
THE UNPRECEDENTED AGREEMENT: DOJ gave complete civil immunity to JP Morgan Chase for defrauding thousands in exchange for $13 billion, via a contract that was negotiated and finalized in secret without any review or approval by a federal court.

? Notwithstanding the historic nature of the settlement, the Agreement was never subjected to judicial review, so there has been no independent evaluation of its terms. Furthermore, the vague settlement documents fail to disclose critically important information about every aspect of the deal. For example, the Agreement fails to identify or explain—

THE LOSSES: How much did JP Morgan Chase’s clients, customers, counterparties, investors, and others lose as a result of its fraudulent conduct? $100 billion? $200 billion? More?
THE PROFITS: How much revenue, profits, and other benefits did JP Morgan Chase receive as a result of its fraudulent conduct, and was it all disgorged? $10 billion? $20 billion? More?
THE BONUSES: Who received what amount of bonuses for the illegal conduct?
THE INVESTIGATION: What was the scope and thoroughness of the investigation that provided the basis for the Agreement?
THE FRAUD: What are the material facts of the illegal conduct by JP Morgan Chase and the specific violations of law that were committed?
THE CULPRITS: What exactly did the individual executives, officers, managers, and employees involved in the illegal conduct actually do to carry out the fraud, and do any of them still work for the bank?
THE CORRECTIVE ACTION: Why did the contract fail to impose on JP Morgan Chase any obligation to change any of its business or compliance practices, which are standard conduct remedies that regulators routinely require? And how can the sanctions effectively punish and deter JP Morgan Chase, given its wealth and its extensive history of lawless conduct?
THE LACK OF ADMISSIONS: Why are there no admissions of fact or law by JP Morgan Chase, and what, if any, are the concrete legal implications of their so-called “acknowledgment”?

By entering the Agreement without seeking any judicial review and approval, the DOJ violated the Constitution and laws of the United States.

The Executive Branch, acting through the DOJ, violated the separation of powers doctrine by unilaterally striking a bargain with JP Morgan Chase to resolve unprecedented matters of historic importance, without seeking any judicial review and approval of the Agreement.
The DOJ violated the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989 (“FIRREA”) by failing to commence a civil action in federal court so that the court could, among other things, assess the civil penalty.
The DOJ acted arbitrarily and capriciously by, among other things, entering the Agreement without seeking judicial review and approval.

* * *

But perhaps the most informative aspect of the lawsuit fact sheet is simply stepping back and observing the relentless illegal transgressions by Jamie Dimon's firm. Better Markets summarizes them best as follows:

Highlights From A Decade of Illegal Conduct by JP Morgan Chase

United States v. JPMorgan Case Bank, NA, No-1:14-cr-7 (S.D.N.Y. Jan 8, 2014) ($1.7 billion criminal penalty); In re JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., OCC Admin. Proceeding No. AA-EC-13-109 (Jan. 7, 2014) ($350 million civil penalty); In re JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., Dept. of the Treasury Financial Crimes Enforcement Network Admin. Proceeding No. 2014-1 (Jan. 7, 2014) ($461 million civil penalty) (all for violations of law arising from the bank’s role in connection with Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, the largest in the history of the U.S.);
In re JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., CFTC Admin. Proceeding No. 14-01 (Oct. 16, 2013) ($100 million civil penalty); In re JPMorgan Chase & Co., SEC Admin. Proceeding No. 3-15507 (Sept. 19, 2013) ($200 million civil penalty); In re JPMorgan Chase & Co., Federal Reserve Board Admin. Proceeding No. 13-031-CMP-HC (Sept. 18, 2013) ($200 million civil penalty); UK Financial Conduct Authority, Final Notice to JP Morgan Chase Bank, N.A. (Sept. 18, 2013) (£137.6 million ($221 million) penalty); In re JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., OCC Admin. Proceeding No. AA-EC-2013-75, #2013-140 (Sept. 17, 2013) ($300 million civil penalty) (all for violations of federal law in connection with the proprietary trading losses sustained by JP Morgan Chase in connection with the high risk derivatives bet referred to as the “London Whale”);
In re JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., CFPB Admin. Proceeding No. 2013-CFPB-0007 (Sept. 19, 2013) ($20 million civil penalty and $309 million refund to customers); In re JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., OCC Admin. Proceeding No. AA-EC-2013-46 (Sept. 18, 2013) ($60 million civil penalty) (both for violations in connection with JP Morgan Chase’s billing practices and fraudulent sale of so-called Identity Protection Products to customers);
In Re Make-Whole Payments and Related Bidding Strategies, FERC Admin. Proceeding Nos. IN11-8-000, IN13-5-000 (July 30, 2013) (civil penalty of $285 million and disgorgement of $125 million for energy market manipulation);
SEC v. J.P. Morgan Sec. LLC, No. 12-cv-1862 (D.D.C. Jan. 7, 2013) ($301 million in civil penalties and disgorgement for improper conduct related to offerings of mortgage-backed securities);
In re JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., CFTC Admin. Proceeding No. 12-37 (Sept. 27, 2012) ($600,000 civil penalty for violations of the Commodities Exchange Act relating to trading in excess of position limits);
In re JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., CFTC Admin. Proceeding No. 12-17 (Apr. 4, 2012) ($20 million civil penalty for the unlawful handling of customer segregated funds relating to the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings, Inc.);
United States v. Bank of America, No. 12-cv-00361 (D.D.C. 2012) (for foreclosure and mortgage-loan servicing abuses during the Financial Crisis, with JP Morgan Chase paying $5.3 billion in monetary and consumer relief);
In re JPMorgan Chase & Co., Federal Reserve Board Admin. Proceeding No. 12-009-CMP-HC (Feb. 9, 2012) ($275 million in monetary relief for unsafe and unsound practices in residential mortgage loan servicing and foreclosure processing);
SEC v. J.P. Morgan Sec. LLC, No. 11-cv-03877 (D.N.J. July 7, 2011) ($51.2 million in civil penalties and disgorgement); In re JPMorgan Chase & Co., Federal Reserve Board Admin. Proceeding No. 11-081-WA/RB-HC (July 6, 2011) (compliance plan and corrective action requirements); In re JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., OCC Admin. Proceeding No. AA-EC-11-63 (July 6, 2011) ($22 million civil penalty) (all for anticompetitive practices in connection with municipal securities transactions);
SEC v. J.P. Morgan Sec., LLC, No. 11-cv-4206 (S.D.N.Y. June 21, 2011) ($153.6 million in civil penalties and disgorgement for violations of the securities laws relating to misleading investors in connection with synthetic collateralized debt obligations);
In re JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., OCC Admin. Proceeding No. AA-EC-11-15, #2011-050 (Apr. 13, 2011) (consent order mandating compliance plan and other corrective action resulting from unsafe and unsound mortgage servicing practices);
In re J.P. Morgan Sec. Inc., SEC Admin. Proceeding No. 3-13673 (Nov. 4, 2009) ($25 million civil penalty for violations of the securities laws relating to the Jefferson County derivatives trading and bribery scandal);
In re JP Morgan Chase & Co, Attorney General of the State of NY Investor Protection Bureau, Assurance of Discontinuance Pursuant to Exec. Law §63(15) (June 2, 2009) ($25 million civil penalty for misrepresenting risks associated with auction rate securities);
In re JPMorgan Chase & Co., SEC Admin. Proceeding No. 3-13000 (Mar. 27, 2008) ($1.3 million civil disgorgement for violations of the securities laws relating to JPM’s role as asset-backed indenture trustee to certain special purpose vehicles);
In re J.P. Morgan Sec. Inc., SEC Admin. Proceeding No. 3-11828 (Feb. 14, 2005) ($2.1 million in civil fines and penalties for violations of Securities Act record-keeping requirements); and
SEC v. J.P. Morgan Securities Inc., 03-cv-2939 (WHP) (S.D.N.Y. Apr. 28, 2003) ($50 million in civil penalties and disgorgements as part of a global settlement for research analyst conflict of interests).

Did we mention that nobody from JPM has gone to prison, and instead as of late last week, one of the biggest JPM culprits was set to become a member of the CFTC's advisory panel before the people and not the regulators, were forced to step in? Why? #AskJPM

Average:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-02-10/jpmorgan-sued-crony-justice-presenting-decade-illegal-conduct-jp-morgan-chase

[the cork]

20 Reasons Why a Global Meltdown is Upon Us
(courtesy Michael Snyder)

Michael Snyder provides a great post on the deteriorating conditions inside Argentina,Venezuela Brazil, the Ukraine, and Turkey. He gives his 20 reasons why a global meltdown is upon us.

Have you been paying attention to what has been happening in Argentina, Venezuela, Brazil, Ukraine, Turkey and China? If you are like most Americans, you have not been. Most Americans don’t seem to really care too much about what is happening in the rest of the world, but they should.

In major cities all over the globe right now, there is looting, violence, shortages of basic supplies, and runs on the banks. We are not at a “global crisis” stage yet, but things are getting worse with each passing day. For a while, I have felt that 2014 would turn out to be a major “turning point” for the global economy, and so far that is exactly what it is turning out to be. The following are 20 early warning signs that we are rapidly approaching a global economic meltdown…

#1 The looting, violence and economic chaos that is happening in Argentina right now is a perfect example of what can happen when you print too much money…

For Dominga Kanaza, it wasn’t just the soaring inflation or the weeklong blackouts or even the looting that frayed her nerves.
It was all of them combined.

#2 The value of the Argentine Peso is absolutely collapsing.
#3 Widespread shortages, looting and accelerating inflation are also causing huge problems in Venezuela…

Economic mismanagement in Venezuela has reached such a level that it risks inciting a violent popular reaction. Venezuela is experiencing declining export revenues, accelerating inflation and widespread shortages of basic consumer goods. At the same time, the Maduro administration has foreclosed peaceful options for Venezuelans to bring about a change in its current policies.

President Maduro, who came to power in a highly-contested election last April, has reacted to the economic crisis with interventionist and increasingly authoritarian measures. His recent orders to slash prices of goods sold in private businesses resulted in episodes of looting, which suggests a latent potential for violence. He has put the armed forces on the street to enforce his economic decrees, exposing them to popular discontent.

#4 In a stunning decision, the Venezuelan government has just announced that it has devalued the Bolivar by more than 40 percent.
#5 Brazilian stocks declined sharply on Thursday. There is a tremendous amount of concern that the economic meltdown that is happening in Argentina is going to spill over into Brazil.
#6 Ukraine is rapidly coming apart at the seams…

A tense ceasefire was announced in Kiev on the fifth day of violence, with radical protesters and riot police holding their position. Opposition leaders are negotiating with the government, but doubts remain that they will be able to stop the rioters.

#7 It appears that a bank run has begun in China…

As China’s CNR reports, depositors in some of Yancheng City’s largest farmers’ co-operative mutual fund societies (“banks”) have been unable to withdraw “hundreds of millions” in deposits in the last few weeks. “Everyone wants to borrow and no one wants to save,” warned one ‘salesperson’, “and loan repayments are difficult to recover.” There is “no money” and the doors are locked.

#8 Art Cashin of UBS is warning that credit markets in China “may be broken“. For much more on this, please see my recent article entitled “The $23 Trillion Credit Bubble In China Is Starting To Collapse – Global Financial Crisis Next?”
#9 News that China’s manufacturing sector is contracting shook up financial markets on Thursday…

Wall Street was rattled by a key reading on China’s manufacturing which dropped below the key 50 level in January, according to HSBC. A reading below 50 on the HSBC flash manufacturing PMI suggests economic contraction.

#10 Japanese stocks experienced their biggest drop in 7 months on Thursday.
#11 The value of the Turkish Lira is absolutely collapsing.
#12 The unemployment rate in France has risen for 9 quarters in a row and recently soared to a new 16 year high.
#13 In Italy, the unemployment rate has soared to a brand new all-time record high of 12.7 percent.
#14 The unemployment rate in Spain is sitting at an all-time record high of 26.7 percent.
#15 This year, the Baltic Dry Index experienced the largest two week post-holiday decline that we have ever seen.
#16 Chipmaker Intel recently announced that it plans to eliminate 5,000 jobs over the coming year.
#17 CNBC is reporting that U.S. retailers just experienced “the worst holiday season since 2008“.
#18 A recent CNBC article stated that U.S. consumers should expect a “tsunami” of store closings in the retail industry…

Get ready for the next era in retail—one that will be characterized by far fewer shops and smaller stores.
On Tuesday, Sears said that it will shutter its flagship store in downtown Chicago in April. It’s the latest of about 300 store closures in the U.S. that Sears has made since 2010. The news follows announcements earlier this month of multiple store closings from major department stores J.C. Penney and Macy’s.
Further signs of cuts in the industry came Wednesday, when Target said that it will eliminate 475 jobs worldwide, including some at its Minnesota headquarters, and not fill 700 empty positions.

#19 The U.S. Congress is facing another deadline to raise the debt ceiling in February.
#20 The Dow fell by more than 170 points on Thursday. It is becoming increasingly likely that “the peak of the market” is now in the rear view mirror.

And I have not even mentioned the extreme drought that has caused the U.S. cattle herd to drop to a 61 year low or the nuclear radiation from Fukushima that is washing up on the west coast.
In light of everything above, is there anyone out there that still wants to claim that “everything is going to be okay” for the global economy?

Sadly, most Americans are not even aware of most of these things.

All over the country today, the number one news headline is about Justin Bieber. The mainstream media is absolutely obsessed with celebrity scandals, and so is a very large percentage of the U.S. population.

A great economic storm is rapidly approaching, and most people don’t even seem to notice the storm clouds that are gathering on the horizon.

In the end, perhaps we will get what we deserve as a nation.

http://harveyorgan.blogspot.com/2014/01/jan-24gld-and-slv-remain.html

[shermann7]

BBC Newsnight exclusive interview with journalist Glenn Greenwald on Edward Snowden, the PRISM revelations and mass surveillance (VIDEO)

This is Quite the Exchange!!!

Shermann

[shermann7]

BBC Newsnight exclusive interview with journalist Glenn Greenwald on Edward Snowden, the PRISM revelations and mass surveillance (VIDEO)

This is Quite the Exchange!!!

Shermann

[shermann7]

Obama defense bill to facilitate transfer of prisoners from Gitmo

Thank-You President Obama!!!

http://rinf.com/alt-news/breaking-news/%E2%80%8Bobama-defense-bill-to-facilitate-transfer-of-prisoners-from-gitmo/

Barack Obama has signed a bill to speed up the repatriation of prisoners from Guantanamo in a possible step towards the closure of the facility. He also put pen to legislation that will reduce the possibility of another government shutdown.

The American President signed the legislation into law while holidaying with his family in Hawaii.

"I am encouraged that this act provides the executive greater flexibility to transfer Guantanamo detainees abroad, and look forward to working with the Congress to take the additional steps needed to close the facility," Obama said in a statement. The president said that the continued operation of the prison was detrimental to the US economy and its relationship with its allies.

The bill still does not allow for the transfer of Guantanamo prisoners onto US soil. Obama has voiced his opposition to this on a number of occasions.

“For the past several years, Congress has enacted unwarranted and burdensome restrictions that have impeded my ability to transfer detainees from Guantanamo,” Obama said in a written statement. As part of his presidential campaign in 2008 Obama pledged to take steps to close down the facility, however, he has made little headway during his time in power.

Although a number of the restrictions governing repatriation have been lifted, the process remains slow and fraught with difficulties. As there is no set procedure for the monitoring of repatriated detainees in their new country, the US often has to conduct negotiations to keep track of the former prisoners.

As well as smoothing out the process for transferring detainees from Guantanamo, the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2014 will also make changes to the military budget. As part of the act the Pentagon will be granted a budget of $526.8 billion for 2014.

Moreover, the document also provides for changes in how the military justice system deals with cases of sexual assault. This comes in response to an increase in offenses over the last couple of years. The Pentagon estimated that last year over 26,000 members of the US military were affected by sexual assault and rape.
The threat of another shutdown

Obama also signed into law economic measures aimed at avoiding another possible government shutdown after January 15 – the date when Republicans and Democrats will have to negotiate a number of spending bills for 2014.

The legislation raises the $967 billion limit for 2013 spending to $1.012 trillion next year and $1.014 trillion in 2015, and reduces the deficit by about $23 billion over 10 years.

The government shutdown in October this year paralyzed the US for 16 days and could cost the US up to $50 billion, Moody’s analytics estimates.

[NYBob]

ECONOMY CRISIS ARREST ALL BANKERS who ROB THE ECONOMY -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIBRbsGE_58

Rothschild's Own America and Everything in it! So Know Your Roll $LAVE$!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_Cg6JTv-nY

Rothschilds Banksters Control America Full Documentary -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDg2QDa4inQ

Rothschilds have been in control of the world for a very
long time, their tentacles reaching into many aspects of our
daily lives, as is documented in the following timeline.

However, before you jump to the timeline, please read this
invaluable introduction which will tell you who the Rothschilds
are as oppose to who they claim to be.
The Rothschilds claim that they are Jewish, when in fact they
are Khazars.
They are from a country called Khazaria, which occupied the
land locked between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea which is
now predominantly occupied by Georgia.
The reason the Rothschilds claim to be Jewish is that the
Khazars under the instruction of the King, converted to the
Jewish faith in 740 A.D., but of course that did not include
converting their Asiatic Mongolian genes to the genes of the
Jewish people.

http://www.iamthewitness.com/DarylBradfordSmith_Rothschild.htm

http://www.reformation.org/adolf-hitler.html

GLOBAL TOTALITARIANISM dream BANKERSTER Rothschild's 666 NWO Cult -

http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/False%20Religions/Illuminati/quotes_on_the_new_world_order.htm

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-12-20/dictating-christmas

US The largest DEBT nation in the WORLD! Is it time to move AWAY from DOLLER(HD)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MideoRay8-U

Max Keiser Discusses QE & Rigged Global Markets -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taQ7X0jcH7s

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=95178050

Chinese Gold demand will be well over 2500 tons -

Reading/In this MUST WATCH clip, Bloomberg Industry’s Kenneth
Hoffman shockingly reveals that London’s gold vaults are
“virtually empty“:

“You could go into a vault in London a couple of years ago.
The vaults were packed to the rafters with gold, and
the gold would trade from me to you to somebody else.

You can walk into those vaults today and
they are virtually empty.

All that gold (26 million ounces) has been transferred from
London and has gone to Switzerland where it
has been recast to higher grade formats and
shipped off to Hong Kong and
then to China never to return.”

Hoffman discusses What’s Happening to All the Gold? also..
Cesium-137 Found in Strawberries, Mushrooms And More In
Northern California–Including Baby Food!

Stay Long Gold & Slver!

Read more at
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=95170160


God Bless

[the cork]

You're right IxCimi. Sadly, you're right.

[IxCimi]

As I said some time ago.

A bridge too far...

This is the rot that will eat away the core.

Only a new Heaven and a new Earth will stop this, this time.

Arrogant, ignorant mankind.

[the cork]

Fukushima? 98% Of The Pacific Ocean Floor Covered By Dead Sea Creatures
December 18, 2013 By The Doc

Fukushima According to an absolutely shocking study that has just been released, one area of the Pacific Ocean floor was 98 percent covered by decomposing sea creatures in July 2012. But in March 2012, only 1 percent of that same section of the Pacific Ocean floor was covered by dead sea creatures.

The scientists that are studying this section of the ocean floor have never seen anything quite like this before. And when you consider this in conjunction with all of the other reports that have been coming in of sea creatures dying all over the Pacific Ocean, it is only natural to start asking some hard questions.
Could radiation from Fukushima be responsible for all of this death?




From The Truth Wins:

This study has been going on for 24 years, and the scientists that are running this study say that during “the past 2 years” they have seen “the biggest amounts of this detritus by far”.

National Geographic recently published a very interesting article about this study of the Pacific Ocean floor. The scientists running the study cannot really explain the very strange changes that they have observed since 2011…

In March 2012, less than one percent of the seafloor beneath Station M was covered in dead sea salps. By July 1, more than 98 percent of it was covered in the decomposing organisms, according to the study, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The major increase in activity of deep-sea life in 2011 and 2012 weren’t limited to Station M, though: Other ocean-research stations reported similar data.

Although climate change is a leading contender for explaining the major increases in 2011 and 2012, Huffard says that these spikes could be part of a longer-term trend that scientists haven’t yet observed.

Even though they do not have a “scientific explanation” for what is happening, the scientists are admitting that they have never seen a die-off of this magnitude in the 24 years that this study has been going on…

“In the 24 years of this study, the past 2 years have been the biggest amounts of this detritus by far,” said study leader Christine Huffard, a marine biologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California.

Could this phenomenon possibly be related to what has been going on at Fukushima?

It should be a fair question to ask. Especially in light of all of the other sea creature deaths that have been happening all over the Pacific. The following is a short excerpt from a recent CNN article…

“One of my favorite sayings right now is we may be experiencing global weirding,” Jim Covel at the Monterey Bay Aquarium said.

The Pacific recently has seen its fair share of weird. Last year, there was an invasion of Humboldt squid around coastal California and sea lion dying off in worrying numbers. And in recent weeks, disturbingly, sea stars – from Alaska to San Diego are wasting away, literally melting.

So what in the world would cause sea stars to begin “literally melting”?

Once again, scientists do not have an answer.

But clearly, something definitely appears to be significantly affecting life throughout the Pacific Ocean. In fact, one very experienced Australian adventurer has stated that he felt as though “the ocean itself was dead” as he journeyed from Japan to San Francisco recently…

The next leg of the long voyage was from Osaka to San Francisco and for most of that trip the desolation was tinged with nauseous horror and a degree of fear.

“After we left Japan, it felt as if the ocean itself was dead,” Macfadyen said.

“We hardly saw any living things. We saw one whale, sort of rolling helplessly on the surface with what looked like a big tumour on its head. It was pretty sickening.

“I’ve done a lot of miles on the ocean in my life and I’m used to seeing turtles, dolphins, sharks and big flurries of feeding birds. But this time, for 3000 nautical miles there was nothing alive to be seen.”

In place of the missing life was garbage in astounding volumes.

“Part of it was the aftermath of the tsunami that hit Japan a couple of years ago. The wave came in over the land, picked up an unbelievable load of stuff and carried it out to sea. And it’s still out there, everywhere you look.”

Shouldn’t someone out there be trying to put all of the pieces together and asking if Fukushima could somehow be responsible for all of this?

For much more on the epidemic of death that we have been witnessing in the Pacific Ocean lately, please check out some of my previous articles about Fukushima…

-”28 Signs That The West Coast Is Being Absolutely Fried With Nuclear Radiation From Fukushima”

-”Something Is Killing Life All Over The Pacific Ocean – Could It Be Fukushima?”

-”What Is Happening To Alaska? Is Fukushima Responsible For The Mass Animal Deaths?”


And this is a crisis that is not going away any time soon. In fact, it just keeps getting worse. The Japanese government has estimated that approximately 300 tons of highly radioactive water is pouring into the Pacific Ocean from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear facility every single day, and according to a recent RT article, outdoor radiation levels at Fukushima recently hit a new all-time high…

Outdoor radiation levels have reached their highest at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant, warns the operator company. Radiation found in an area near a steel pipe that connects reactor buildings could kill an exposed person in 20 minutes, local media reported.

So the total amount of radioactive material that has been released into the Pacific Ocean is constantly going up, and considering the fact that some of these radioactive particles have a half-life of about 30 years, all of this nuclear material is going to be sitting in the Pacific for a very, very long time.

And guess what? Even more highly radioactive water may soon be released into the Pacific Ocean. The Japanese are running out of places to store the radioactive water that they have been able to capture, and the IAEA is actually recommending that the “storage problem” should be solved by dumping the water into the ocean…

In an attempt to solve the storage problem the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) proposed on Wednesday to consider dumping toxic water into the ocean after lowering the level of radioactive materials.

It is almost as if they consider the Pacific Ocean to be a giant trash dumpster.

And the mainstream media has been greatly misleading the public as to the true nature of the disaster at Fukushima.

According to nuclear expert Mycle Schneider, the lead author of the World Nuclear Industry status reports, the rest of the world should be very alarmed by what is happening…

“It is much worse than we have been led to believe, much worse.”

But the mainstream media in the United States really doesn’t talk much about Fukushima anymore.

They seem to believe that it isn’t a crisis worth talking about anymore.

Meanwhile, dangerous radiation levels are being measured all over the country.

NETC, an independent organization that collects and monitors radiation data from locations all over America, recently issued an alert for Austin, Texas and Grand Junction, Colorado…

RADCON 5 Alerts have been reported in both Austin, Texas as well as Grand Junction, Colorado as shared in the screenshots below from the Nuclear Emergency Tracking Center – NETC. Radiation levels are also way above normal background levels in St. George, Utah and Augusta, Georgia.

Posted below is a picture of what the NETC map looked like when those alerts were issued…



NETC December 2013

Over the past couple of years, radiation levels have been abnormally high in the U.S. – especially in the western half of the country.

So why isn’t the mainstream media talking about this?

And is all of this something that we should be deeply concerned about?

http://www.silverdoctors.com/fukushima-98-of-the-pacific-ocean-floor-covered-by-dead-sea-creatures/

[the cork]

Zombies Make Dangerous Neighbors
Wednesday, 27 November 2013 |
By Doug French, Contributing Editor

On March 16, 2009, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), a private-sector organization that establishes financial accounting and reporting standards in the US, turned the stock market around and at the same time motivated banks to become the worst slumlords and neighbors imaginable.

Most people believe accounting is conservative, the rules cut and dried. Accountants make economists look frivolous. But accountants are people too, and FASB succumbed to pressure from Capitol Hill in the wake of the 2008 financial crash.

How It All Started

The S&P 500 hit a devilish low of 666 on March 6, 2009. More major bank failures seemed a certainty. Somebody had to do something—and in stepped the accounting board prodded by the House Committee on Financial Services.

The board changed financial accounting standards 157, 124, and 115, allowing banks more discretion (?) in reporting the value of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) held in their portfolios and losses on those securities. Floyd Norris reported at the time for the New York Times,

The change seems likely to allow banks to report higher profits by assuming that the securities are worth more than anyone is now willing to pay for them. But critics objected that the change could further damage the credibility of financial institutions by enabling them to avoid recognizing losses from bad loans they have made.

"With that discretion," fund manager John Hussman writes, "banks could use cash-flow models ("mark-to-model") or other methods ("mark-to-unicorn")."

And author James Kwak wrote on his blog "The Baseline Scenario" just after FASB amended their rules: "The new rules were sought by the American Bankers Association, and not surprisingly will allow banks to increase their reported profits and strengthen their balance sheets by allowing them to increase the reported values of their toxic assets."

Banks were loaded with securities containing subprime home loans. When borrowers stopped paying en masse, the value of these securities plunged. Until the change in March 2009, these losses had to be recognized. With financial institutions leveraged at upwards of 30-1 at the time, the sinking valuations made much of the industry insolvent… until March 16, 2009. Since then the S&P has nearly tripled.

Bad-Neighbor Banks

Nobody has more friends on Capitol Hill than bankers, who are not wild about free-market capitalism when it works against them.

"Bankers bitterly complained that the current market prices were the result of distressed sales and that they should be allowed to ignore those prices and value the securities instead at their value in a normal market," Norris wrote for the New York Times on April 2, 2009.

The change in the rules first of all allowed banks to remain in business. Second, with banks having wide discretion in valuing mortgage-backed securities, they had little incentive to care for the collateral of the loans contained in those MBSs. It may even be in a bank's best interest to leave houses in what the Sun Sentinel newspaper called "legal limbo."

Last year the Florida paper devoted a three-part series to "Bad-Neighbor Banks." When homeowners walk away, one would think it would be in the banks' best interests to gain legal possession as soon as possible and either sell as is, or repair and sell quickly.

Apparently that's not the case. All across Florida, banks "have halted foreclosure proceedings because the remaining equity in the properties is deemed inadequate to cover the banks' costs to reclaim title and maintain, refurbish and sell them," Megan O'Matz and John Maines wrote for the Sun Sentinel.

When pressed about weed- and rodent-infested abandoned properties, banks often pointed the finger at mortgage servicers. South Florida attorney Ben Solomon, who represents condos and community associations in foreclosure cases, stated, "We see bank delays every day. They really continually have been getting worse. More and more time is going by."

As banks sit on assets indefinitely without having to recognize a loss, homes get lost in vast bank bureaucracies. When the banks finally figure out what they have, "lenders also have been walking away from foreclosure actions involving homes with low market values, after their cool-headed calculation that the homes cannot resell for enough to offset the costs of foreclosing, repairing, maintaining and marketing them," O'Matz and Maines wrote.

Now banks have rebuilt their balance sheets and are able to withstand losses from bad property loans. Enough banks are walking away from properties that the Treasury Department issued "guidance" in 2011, advising to do so cautiously.

Banks that do foreclose with tenants living in a property are notorious for not maintaining their newly acquired properties. "Some banks are failing to follow local and state housing codes, leaving tenants to live in squalor—without even a number to call in the most dire situations," writes Aarti Shahani for NPR.

I'm not sure why anyone would expect banks to be good property managers. "Banks don't want to take your home and own it," Paul Leonard, senior vice president of the Housing Policy Council, told NPR. "They're stuck with plumbing and electrical maintenance that is well beyond their mission. They have to hire a property manager to take care of the property."

Global banking behemoth Deutsche Bank foreclosed on 2,000 houses in the Los Angeles area between 2007 and 2011. The big bank was such a bad landlord, the city filed suit and the bank recently settled the case by paying $10 million—which the bank didn't even have to pay itself. According to Deutsche Bank officials, "The settlement will be paid by the servicers responsible for the Los Angeles properties at issue and by the securitization trusts that hold the properties."

If banks, not to mention Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and FHA, had been allowed to fail, the housing market would have cleared and stories like these would be a thing of the past. However, one intervention begets another, and the market is held stagnate.

Auctions: Bids Coming Up Short

While there are housing booms popping up in various cities, Bloomberg just reported a failed auction by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

After successfully selling 50,000 non-performing, single-family FHA-insured loans since 2010, HUD deemed the bids for $450 million too low to accept at their October 30 sale.

(As an interesting aside, the FHA was a product of Roosevelt's administration during the Great Depression and hasn't required the help of taxpayers until this September when the agency asked for a $1.7 billion bailout to keep operating… a piece of news that got drowned out by the looming government shutdown, the slowly developing Obamacare train wreck, and the Breaking Bad series finale.)

HUD has another $5 billion auction scheduled and is currently qualifying bidders. The auctions run through the website DebtX, which has compiled a Bid-Ask Index to compare recent years' buyers' bid performance versus seller expectations. For the last three years, bids have come up short of sellers' ask prices. The index prior to the failed auction was -5.7%.

Meanwhile, the banking industry purrs right along earning a record $42.2 billion in the second quarter.

The Banks Are the Only Ones Profiting

For the banks, this was the 16th consecutive quarter of year-over-year increases. A primary driver of the record earnings is less money being socked away in loan-loss reserves. Banks put away the lowest loss provision since the third quarter of 2006. The banking industry's coverage ratio of reserves to noncurrent loans is still only 62.3%, far below what was once the standard of greater than 100%.

Remember when President Obama and the Treasury Department claimed the bank bailouts were generating a profit? Special Inspector General Christy Romero overseeing TARP said, "It is a widely held misconception that TARP will make a profit. The most recent cost estimate for TARP is a loss of $60 billion. Taxpayers are still owed $118.5 billion (including $14 billion written off or otherwise lost)."

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have turned things around and are generating huge profits, you say?

Not so fast.

According to bank analyst Chris Whalen, "If we were to implement the guidance from FHFA today, it is pretty clear that the profits of the GSEs [government-sponsored enterprises] would have been largely offset by the allocations needed to replenish the reserves." GSE profits would disappear, and $10 to $20 billion would need to be added to reserves.

"Not only does FNM [Fannie Mae] seem to be unprofitable under the new FHFA guidance, but payments made to Treasury might need to be reversed," writes Whalen.

A zombie government armed with accounting tricks has bailed out a zombie banking industry using even more financial phoniness. A few numbers pushed here and there, and the industry is earning record profits. But out in the real world where people live and work, things aren't so rosy.

Zombies make negligent landlords and dangerous neighbors.

Read more from Doug French, former president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, in the Casey Daily Dispatch—different writers, different topics, different investment sectors each day of the week. Get it free of charge in your inbox, Monday through Friday—click here.

http://news.goldseek.com/GoldSeek/1385572291.php

[mrfence]

[shermann7]

Conspiracy Theory W/ Jesse Ventura: JFK Assassination [Season 2, Episode 5] (Full Length • HD) (VIDEO)

This is Entertaining!!!

http://12160.info/video/conspiracy-theory-w-jesse-ventura-jfk-assassination-season-2

Shermann

[shermann7]

Pepe Escobar discusses what went wrong in Geneva. Why did the French sabotage the peace agreement with Iran? (VIDEO)

Incredible Info Here!!!

http://ancreport.com/podcasts/podcast.php?id=46

Shermann

[shermann7]

Peter Schiff: Greenspan Blames Housing Bubble on Fall of the Berlin Wall! (VIDEO)

Would You Believe - LOL!!!

http://xrepublic.tv/node/5950

Shermann

[shermann7]

Tracking Obama's Recent Lies: Summarized In 4 Minutes (VIDEO)

Pretty Accurate ...

http://xrepublic.tv/node/5932

Shermann

[the cork]

(special thanks to basserdan)

[the cork]

Nobody Should Shed a Tear for JP Morgan Chase
By Matt Taibbi
POSTED: October 25, 1:05 PM ET


Was Bernie Madoff's pyramid scheme really so different from what some of the biggest banks have done?
Hiroko Masuike/Getty Images

A lot of people all over the world are having opinions now about the ostensibly gigantic $13 billion settlement Jamie Dimon and JP Morgan Chase have entered into with the government.

The general consensus from most observers in the finance sector is that this superficially high-dollar settlement – worth about half a year's profits for Chase – is an unconscionable Marxist appropriation. It's been called a "robbery" and a "shakedown," in which red Obama and his evil henchman Eric Holder confiscated cash from a successful bank, as The Wall Street Journal wrote, "for no other reason than because they can and because they want to appease their left-wing populist allies."

Look, there's no denying that this is a lot of money. It's the biggest settlement in the history of government settlements, and it's just one company to boot. But this has been in the works for a long time, and it's been in the works for a reason. This whole thing, lest anyone forget, has its genesis in a couple of state Attorneys General (including New York's Eric Schneiderman and Delaware's Beau Biden) not wanting to sign off on any deal with the banks that didn't also address the root causes of the crisis, in particular the mass fraud surrounding the sale and production of subprime mortgage securities.

Those holdouts essentially forced the federal government's hand, leading Barack Obama to create a federal working group on residential mortgage-backed securities (widely seen as the AGs' price for okaying the $25 billion robosigning deal), headed up by Schneiderman, whose investigation of Chase and its affiliates led to the deal that's about to be struck. Minus all of that, minus those state holdouts in those foreclosure negotiations, this settlement probably would never even take place: The federal government seemed more than willing previously to settle with the banks without even addressing the root-cause issues that are at the heart of this new Chase deal.

So let's not forget that – that even this $13 billion settlement, which is actually a $9 billion settlement (see below), came very close to never happening. But now it is happening, and the business press is going nuts about how unfair it all is.

In fact, this deal is actually quite a gift to Chase. It sounds like a lot of money, but there are myriad deceptions behind the sensational headline.

Read Matt Taibbi's Feature on the Gangster Bankers Who Are Too Big to Jail

First of all, the settlement, as the folks at Better Markets have pointed out, may wipe out between $100 billion and $200 billion in potential liability – meaning that the bank might just have settled "for ten cents or so on the dollar." The Federal Housing Finance Agency alone was suing Chase and its affiliates for $33 billion. The trustee in the ongoing Bernie Madoff Ponzi scandal was suing Chase for upwards of $19 billion.

Obviously, those plaintiffs may never have gotten that kind of money out of Chase. But just settling the mere potential of so much liability has huge value for the bank. It's part of the reason the company's share price hasn't exactly cratered since the settlement was announced.

Moreover, the settlement is only $9 billion in cash, with $4 billion earmarked for "mortgage relief." Again, as Better Markets noted, we've seen settlements with orders of mortgage relief before, and banks seem to have many canny ways of getting out of the spirit of these requirements.

In the foreclosure settlement, most of the ordered "relief" eventually came in the form of short sales, with banks letting people sell their underwater houses and move out without paying for the loss in home value. That's better than nothing, but it's something very different than a bank working to help families stay in their homes.

There's also the matter of the remaining $9 billion in fines being tax deductible (meaning we're subsidizing the settlement), and the fact that Chase is reportedly trying to get the FDIC to assume some of Washington Mutual's liability.

But overall, the key to this whole thing is that the punishment is just money, and not a crippling amount, and not from any individual's pocket, either. In fact, the deal that has just been completed between Chase and the state represents the end, or near the end, of a long process by which people who committed essentially the same crimes as Bernie Madoff will walk away without paying any individual penalty.

What Washington Mutual and Bear Stearns (Chase's guilty acquisitions) were doing in the mortgage markets was little more than an elaborate take on a Madoff-style Ponzi scheme. Actually, most of the industry was guilty of the same thing, but in the cases of these two banks in particular the concrete evidence of fraud is extensive, and the comparison to a Madoff-style caper isn't a fanciful metaphor but more like evidentiary fact.

Madoff's operational fiction was his own personality. He used his charm and his lifestyle and his social status to con rich individuals into ponying up money into an essentially nonexistent investment scheme.

In the cases of both WaMu and especially Bear, the operating fictions were broad, carefully-crafted infrastructures of bogus guarantees, flatlined due diligence mechanisms, corrupted ratings agencies and other types of legal chicanery. These fake guarantees and assurances misled investors about they were buying. Most thought they were investing in home mortgages. What they were actually investing in was a flow of cash from new investors that banks like Bear and WaMu were pushing into a rapidly-overheating speculative bubble.

These banks created huge masses of mortgage securities they knew to be highly risky and/or fraudulent. At Bear, one deal manager jokingly nicknamed one pool of mortgages, SACO-2006-08, the "SACK OF SHIT" deal. In another case, Bear's securitization company, EMC, obtained a pool of mortgages from a sketchy mortgage originator called AHM, and found out that as much as 60 percent of the batch was delinquent.

Yet they continued to buy these mortgages and throw them into the great hamburger-machine, turning them into securities that would in turn be bought by everyone from pension funds to Fannie and Freddie. And then they pushed sales even harder, relying upon the influx of new buyers of these securities to keep the value of the old securities stable.

This is exactly what Bernie Madoff did, it's what Charles Ponzi did, and it's what Allen Stanford did – using cash from new investors to pay off the old investors. The supermarket-bank version of this game was just more elaborate, involved more moving parts and threatened indescribably greater damage.

Bernie Madoff ultimately caused about $18 billion in losses. When he got caught, the state threw the book at him, giving him a 150-year jail sentence.

Meanwhile, just the subset of Bear Stearns defendants, according to a complaint against Chase filed last year by Eric Schneiderman, caused $22.5 billion in losses in just two years, 2006 and 2007.

And while it is true that the federal government in this latest $13 billion settlement is ostensibly reserving the right to continue to pursue criminal charges, don't hold your breath. The arc of this story suggests that the whole purpose of this agreement has been to find the highest price Chase is willing to pay to a) stay in business b) keep employees out of jail.

So again, $13 billion sounds like a lot of money. But Bernie Madoff is doing 150 years, and nobody in this cast of characters will personally pay a dollar in fines. Nobody will do one day in jail. That's a huge, huge discrepancy.

Of course, Bernie Madoff today is reviled on Wall Street, even by papers like the Wall Street Journal. This is mainly because he ripped off other finance-sector hotshots, but also because he gave Wall Street a bad name.

Post-2009 coverage of Madoff from the financial press has focused intently on the failure of the government (and in particular the SEC) to aggressively investigate the scandal in a timely fashion. This has followed a rhetorical line that frequently emanates from the finance sector, in which white-collar crime is somehow less the fault of criminals than of the police who failed to stop it(?).

These "Where were the regulators?" cries generally never show up in financial-press coverage of Wall Street scandals until those same pundits have first exhausted all attempts to argue that no crime was ever committed by the bank/broker/hedge fund in question.

Remember, for instance, that there was a time when papers like the Journal thought Bernie Madoff was one of their own, didn't want to make trouble for him, and bluntly refused to investigate him.

The Journal was infamously given the whole seedy Madoff story by investigator Harry Markopolos in 2005 (see p. 16 of this devastating testimony), and though reporter John Wilke wanted to follow up on the piece, it appeared his superiors at the paper never gave him the go-ahead.

But after Madoff came forward weeping and confessing in late 2008, and there was no longer any possibility of denying his monstrous guilt, suddenly the Journal turned into an ardent critic of soft government enforcement, ragefully denouncing everyone from Eliot Spitzer to the SEC for failing to catch Madoff. In its December 17th, 2009 editorial, To Catch a Thief, for instance, the paper blasted the financial cops of the world for failing to protect Madoff's investors and the good name of honest Wall Street business:

The real lesson is that financial enforcement nearly always fails to protect investors, and this Ponzi scheme is merely typical . . . In 1999, trader Harry Markopolos wrote that "Madoff Securities is the world's largest Ponzi Scheme," in a letter to the SEC. More recently, multiple SEC inquiries and exams in 2005 and 2007 found only minor infractions… Neither current AG Andrew Cuomo nor Mr. Spitzer appears to have had a clue about Mr. Madoff's conduct.

As noted by multiple media outlets at the time, the paper conveniently left out of these thundering denunciations the damning fact that the Journal itself had been contacted by Markopolous years before, and had blown him off even more completely than the SEC.

So now we, and they, are talking about the Chase scandal. This is Madoff all over again, only on a much huger scale. Ten years from now, bet on it, the Wall Street Journal will be denouncing everyone from Eric Holder to Lanny Breuer to the SEC and DOJ officials in the Bush administration for failing to protect investors from predatory companies like Bear Stearns, Washington Mutual and their parent, JP Morgan Chase.

Right now, however, these papers are still stuck in the denial phase, which is to be expected, I suppose. But it doesn't mean we have to take these ridiculous editorials about Chase's victimhood seriously.

A few more notes on the deal. This latest settlement reportedly came about when CEO Jamie Dimon picked up the phone and called a high-ranking lieutenant of Attorney General Holder, who was about to hold a press conference announcing civil charges against the bank. The Justice Department meekly took the call, canceled the presser, and worked out this hideous deal, instead of doing the right thing and blowing off the self-important Wall Street hotshot long used to resolving meddlesome issues with the gift of his personal attention.

Only on Wall Street does the target of a massive federal investigation pick up the telephone and call up the prosecutor expecting to make the thing go away – and only in recent American history would such a tactic actually work.

Considering the scale of the offenses involved (one could make the argument that Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual by themselves did enough damage and cranked out enough toxic loans to cause the 2008 crash) the state could have taken the hardest of hard lines. Instead, they once again took a big fat check to walk away.

Papers like the Journal have particularly complained that Chase should not be held responsible for the offenses committed by companies long before Chase acquired them. What they forget is that Chase has made a fortune off its acquisitions of Bear and Washington Mutual, two purchases which were massively subsidized by the state. Nobody complained about potential liability back when all those two deals were doing for Chase was helping its executives buy overpriced art and summer homes.

And remember, this sort of liability was basically the only risk Chase took in these deals. The government took on most of the rest, in order to make the acquisitions happen.

Chase got to buy Bear Stearns with $29 billion in Fed guarantees, with the state setting up a special bailout facility, Maiden Lane, to unwind all of the phony-baloney loans created through Bear's Ponzi-mortgage-mechanism described above. So Chase got to acquire one of the world's biggest investment banks for pennies on the dollar, and then got the Fed to buy up all the toxic parts of the bank's portfolio, essentially making the public the involuntary customer of Bear's criminal inventory.

Later on, Chase took $25 billion in TARP money, bought Washington Mutual and its $33 billion in assets for the fire-sale price of $1.9 billion, and then repeated the Bear scenario, getting another Maiden Lane facility to take on the deadliest parts of Washington Mutual's portfolio (including, for instance, a pool of mortgages in which 94 percent of the loans had limited documentation).

Incidentally, the notion that Chase was somehow dragged kicking and screaming by the government and forced to buy these two massive companies essentially for free is almost as laughable and ridiculous as the oft-cited explanation for the financial crisis, that the government forced banks to lend to the poor.

Chase, as has been reported by multiple outlets, had already tried on its own to buy both companies before the state arranged its infamous shotgun weddings. Only after both firms collapsed, the economy was in crisis, and Chase was able to get the Fed to eat the toxic portfolios of both companies did these already-longed-for acquisitions take place.

Chase was too big to fail before the crash, but it's even Too-Bigger-To-Failier now, thanks to the expanded market share afforded by these two Fed-sterilized acquisitions. Bloomberg reported that Bear's book value has soared by $36 billion since it swallowed up those two firms with the public's help. Its retail banking earnings have soared nearly 1000 percent. It has more than doubled the size of its banking deposits. Chase didn't have a single branch in Florida or California before this deal: It's now a top-5 banking presence in both states.

So nobody should be crying for poor Chase now, just because it's no longer able to simply sit back and collect gobs and gobs of essentially free cash from the ill-gotten market share "won" by its two crooked acquisitions.

Incidentally, I don't remember hearing anything from Jamie Dimon at the time Chase was acquiring these banks about any reluctance to buy up two firms that had just spent years helping to blow up the world economic system with phony loans. As one friend of mine on Wall Street noted earlier this week, if there was a single document anywhere with Dimon's name on it expressing reluctance about these new bedfellows, it would have been produced ages ago and "that dickhead Sorkin would have put it in his movie."

These guys at Chase knew exactly what they were buying when they took on these companies. They just thought they were getting the deal of the century, by taking on the still-functioning businesses of two finance giants for a song, giving Chase a state-subsidized push into the pole position of American banking. And they figured, very nearly correctly, that they would never have to pay any serious freight for all the offenses committed by their new acquisitions.

Now they'll have to write a big check, which sucks for them, but what about the victims? To those critics crying about a "shakedown": Would you prefer that Chase merely be required to pay back every dollar to those investors wiped out by these schemes? Because that would be a hell of a lot more than $13 billion.

It would be great if everyone covering Wall Street could sign a pact, and agree: No more crying, please, about no-jail, no-individual-penalty settlements in which companies use shareholder money to pay fines at huge discounts relative to the actual damage they caused. And again, wake me up when even one of these guys goes to jail.

There are only about a million Americans doing time for less.

Related

Looting the Pension Funds


Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/nobody-should-shed-a-tear-for-jp-morgan-chase-20131025#ixzz2iwbkAuPx

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/nobody-should-shed-a-tear-for-jp-morgan-chase-20131025

[shermann7]

WARNING! U.S. Government Shutdown Again Feb. 2014 (VIDEO)

Accurate!!!

Shermann

[shermann7]

I'd Dump the Israelis Tomorrow --Ex-CIA Michael Scheuer (VIDEO)

A Spirited Debate!!!

Shermann

[the cork]

China's Official Press Agency Calls For New Reserve Currency, And New World Order
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/13/2013 14:32 -0400

We assume it is a coincidence that on the day in which we demonstrate China's relentless appetite for gold, driven by what we and many others believe is the country's desire to have a call option on a gold-backed reserve currency when the time comes, just posted in China's official press agency, Xinhua, is an op-ed by writer Liu Chang in which he decries the "US fiscal failure which warrants a de-Americanized world" and flatly states that the world should consider a new reserve currency "that is to be created to replace the dominant U.S. dollar, so that the international community could permanently stay away from the spillover of the intensifying domestic political turmoil in the United States."

Of course, if China were serious, and if the world were to voluntarily engage in such a (r)evolutionary reserve currency transition, then all Magic Money Tree theories that the only thing better than near infinite debt is beyond infinite debt, would promptly be relegated to the historic dust heap of idiotic theories where they belong.

Some of China's (which as a reminder is the single largest offshore holder of US Treasury paper, and the second largest of all only second naturally to the Federal Reserve whose $85 billion in monthly monetizing "flow" is what is keeping rates from exploding higher) thoughts as captured in the Xinhua Op-ed:

* Reform of the world’s financial system should include the introduction of a new internatonal reserve currency to replace the U.S. dollar
* The international community could thus permanently stay away from the spillover of intensifying domestic political turmoil in the U.S.
* Fiscal impasse in the U.S. is a good time for “befuddled world” to start considering building a “de-Americanized world”
* Impasse has left many nations’ dollar assets in jeopardy and the international community agonized
* Other cornerstones should be laid to underpin a de-Americanized world, including respect for sovereignty, recognizing authority of UN in handling global hotspot issues and giving developing and emerging market economies more say in major international financial institutions
* Purpose of such changes is not to “completely toss the United States aside,” rather to encourage Washington to play a much more constructive role in addressing global affairs

Of course, if and when the day comes that the USD is no longer the reserve currency, kiss America's superpower, or any power, status, which is now based purely on the USD's reserve currency status, and the ability to fund half the US budget deficit with debt promptly monetized by the Fed, goodbye.

Finally, as a reminder...


U.S. fiscal failure warrants a de-Americanized world

As U.S. politicians of both political parties are still shuffling back and forth between the White House and the Capitol Hill without striking a viable deal to bring normality to the body politic they brag about, it is perhaps a good time for the befuddled world to start considering building a de-Americanized world.

Emerging from the bloodshed of the Second World War as the world's most powerful nation, the United States has since then been trying to build a global empire by imposing a postwar world order, fueling recovery in Europe, and encouraging regime-change in nations that it deems hardly Washington-friendly.

With its seemingly unrivaled economic and military might, the United States has declared that it has vital national interests to protect in nearly every corner of the globe, and been habituated to meddling in the business of other countries and regions far away from its shores.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government has gone to all lengths to appear before the world as the one that claims the moral high ground, yet covertly doing things that are as audacious as torturing prisoners of war, slaying civilians in drone attacks, and spying on world leaders.

Under what is known as the Pax-Americana, we fail to see a world where the United States is helping to defuse violence and conflicts, reduce poor and displaced population, and bring about real, lasting peace.

Moreover, instead of honoring its duties as a responsible leading power, a self-serving Washington has abused its superpower status and introduced even more chaos into the world by shifting financial risks overseas, instigating regional tensions amid territorial disputes, and fighting unwarranted wars under the cover of outright lies.

As a result, the world is still crawling its way out of an economic disaster thanks to the voracious Wall Street elites, while bombings and killings have become virtually daily routines in Iraq years after Washington claimed it has liberated its people from tyrannical rule.

Most recently, the cyclical stagnation in Washington for a viable bipartisan solution over a federal budget and an approval for raising debt ceiling has again left many nations' tremendous dollar assets in jeopardy and the international community highly agonized.

Such alarming days when the destinies of others are in the hands of a hypocritical nation have to be terminated, and a new world order should be put in place, according to which all nations, big or small, poor or rich, can have their key interests respected and protected on an equal footing.

To that end, several corner stones should be laid to underpin a de-Americanized world.

For starters, all nations need to hew to the basic principles of the international law, including respect for sovereignty, and keeping hands off domestic affairs of others.

Furthermore, the authority of the United Nations in handling global hotspot issues has to be recognized. That means no one has the right to wage any form of military action against others without a UN mandate.

Apart from that, the world's financial system also has to embrace some substantial reforms.

The developing and emerging market economies need to have more say in major international financial institutions including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, so that they could better reflect the transformations of the global economic and political landscape.

What may also be included as a key part of an effective reform is the introduction of a new international reserve currency that is to be created to replace the dominant U.S. dollar, so that the international community could permanently stay away from the spillover of the intensifying domestic political turmoil in the United States.

Of course, the purpose of promoting these changes is not to completely toss the United States aside, which is also impossible. Rather, it is to encourage Washington to play a much more constructive role in addressing global affairs.

And among all options, it is suggested that the beltway politicians first begin with ending the pernicious impasse.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-10-13/chinas-official-press-agency-calls-new-reserve-currency

[shermann7]

The Political Relevance and Global Impact of Mahatma Gandhi

http://www.veteransnewsnow.com/2013/10/15/228625the-political-relevance-and-global-impact-of-mahatma-gandhi/

The 21st Century finds our world confronting new challenges, no less apocalyptic than in the 20th Century, despite the industrial, scientific technological, and information revolutions , no longer confined to the traditional heartlands of Europe and North America. We are witnessing the financial and economic collapse of regions which owed the most to capitalist development, even as amazing transformations have radically changed the day to day lives of many in the world for the better, and in many respects for the worse. Simultaneously we have seen the most barbaric wars in human history to once again restructure, re-colonize and control many regions of the world; to seize by military or non military means every nation’s resources and budget, the savings of citizens, and the entire economic space and markets of vulnerable countries, directly targeting for mass elimination or displacement the civilian population, considered rivals for the seizure, consumption and use of resources, as we have seen in Iraq, Libya and Somalia among other countries. Even as the world is threatened with run away militarization, satanic weapon systems and pre-emptive strikes with atomic weapons are accepted military doctrine of some governments; simultaneously we face imminent threats to the earth’s ecosystem in several regions, adversely impacted by the relentless and unending search for more and more profits. Human lives as a consequence have become the collateral of the pattern of capital accumulation known today by the sanitized expression, the “Market economy”, with the killings of millions recorded as mere statistics, and national and international legal systems rendered powerless.

Gandhi 460 X 391
Mahatma Gandhi

In times such as these, even though it is more than half a century since the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, wherever in the world individuals and social movements have struggled for answers, whether at ‘Tahrir Square’ or elsewhere, to surmount moral and political decay, to overturn entrenched exploitative systems or racial institutions, which sometimes appear to be difficult to defeat, in many political frontlines and arenas the world over, wherever citizens gather in mass to defy tyrannical systems, the moral political principles and strategies of Mahatma Gandhi continue to guide humanity, along with his critique of the human ravages of colonialism and capitalism as economic systems; his political strategy of mass political education, of ‘satyagraha’ ( the struggles for truth ), and ‘nonviolent civil disobedience and non–cooperation’, as methods to overturn unjust political systems, to alter the status quo of injustice; methods which Gandhiji adopted, successfully defeating the most tyrannical of tyrants, an entrenched Empire. In recent years Bolivia witnessed its Indigenous citizens resorting to civil disobedience, blockading the seat of government, with successive governments having to resign until the government of Evo Morales was elected. This was not a coloured revolution; the people of Bolivia changed their government through a mass movement for political and economic justice of the Indigenous people of Bolivia.

Mahatma Gandhi was far from politically passive; neither was he a narrow nationalist or a bigoted leader, attempting to convince the world of the superiority of his own political path, faith or religion. Gandhi was above all a seeker of truth, who believed in the essential oneness of mankind and humanity; yet at the same time, a practical political leader committed to learning from his own experiments in the political field, testing the many strategies for political action, as any kind of political passivity was alien to him. It was in South Africa, that Mahatma Gandhi arriving as a Barrister to assist in a legal dispute, went on to first become a cautious rebel when personally faced with racial discrimination, and then gradually assumed the leadership of the entire Indian community, when steps were initiated by the then South African racist government, to disenfranchise all Indians by the legislative assembly of Natal to prevent them from voting. This was followed by other discriminatory acts, such as the “The Asiatic Law Amendment Ordinance”, issued in the province of Transvaal, which provided for racist and discriminatory finger printing and registration cards for all Indians, making it mandatory for all Indians to carry such cards among other degrading and discriminatory provisions introduced. Gandhiji seized the initiative, urging the Indian community that nonviolent civil disobedience should be resorted to, as unjust laws must be opposed; even as he tested the strength of his political principles and organizational capacity. The Natal Indian Congress was established by him to oppose such measures and organize resistance. Very few leaders could rival Gandhiji’s organizational abilities.

Gandhiji’s influence on all sections and classes of the Indian community in South Africa was predominant.

“In South Africa he found a people not only disarmed and enslaved, but used to it and accepting insults, a people apparently subdued and degraded. His first act was to make them aware of their dignity, their duties and their legitimate rights….the Durban affair” and later developments in Transvaal in South Africa, “revealed to the astonished Europeans, and to the Indians themselves, that they had a moral backbone capable of resistance.” This struggle exposed all those participating including Gandhiji, to physical attacks, jail, and even the possibility of death, however the civil disobedience and resistance went on till a satisfactory agreement was reached, though the sacrifice included several jail terms and the loss of lives of the some of the volunteers. Gandhi who had come to South Africa for a few months, was to spend 21 years of his life in this struggle.

Jan Christiaan Smuts 280 X 263
Jan Christiaan Smuts

The impact of this struggle on Gandhi’s formidable political opponents in South Africa, including General Smuts, is to be found in a letter to a friend written by General Smuts after Gandhiji left South Africa for India in 1914. General Jan Christiaan Smuts, who as Colonial Secretary and thereafter Secretary of the Interior was responsible for implementation of some of the discriminatory laws passed against Indians, wrote:

“The saint has left our shores, I hope forever”.

Several years later, when an exasperated Winston Churchill demanded to know from General Smuts who was twice Prime Minister of South Africa, as to why General Smuts had not assassinated Gandhi in South Africa itself, before the ‘half naked Fakir’ could threaten the British Empire in India; General Smuts replied – “How could I do this to a man who made sandals for me with his own hands when I imprisoned him”.

In later years remembering the Mahatma, General Smuts was to record: “…I have worn these sandals for so many summers since then, even though I may feel that I am not worthy to stand in the shoes of so great a man.”

The impact of Gandhiji’s work in South Africa has been abiding. Even though the Mahatma never returned to South Africa after 1914, his political inspiration later led directly to the civil resistance movement of the Indian Community against the racist “Ghetto” act in 1946, which institutionalized racial segregation in South Africa, until South Africa was liberated. Even after Gandhi’s assassination, in 1952 the African National Congress and the South African Indian Congress were united in their ‘Campaign of Defiance against Unjust Laws’, when thousands courted arrest. However in the years that followed, due to the political intransigence and brutality of the apartheid government, imposing ‘White’ racist minority rule, the political struggles in South Africa became increasingly bitter, leading even to an armed resistance movement, despite the support of the International movement for the liberation of South Africa, in which India continuing the legacy of the Mahatma, was to play a leading role in the United Nations. The United Nations repeatedly censured South Africa’s apartheid and racist laws and imposed sanctions, which gradually led to the isolation of the apartheid government in all International fora. Gandhiji’s inspiration in South Africa continued well beyond the liberation struggle, influencing the establishment of the “ Truth and Reconciliation Commission” by the African National Congress, after South Africa was finally liberated, to assist racial reconciliation, to avoid the violence of a racial war to settle past scores for brutalities committed on the African and Asian people. The success of this Commission is reflected in the absence of racial strife in South Africa today, despite lack of complete agreement on present day policy.

There was always a moral angle to the political struggle of Mahatma Gandhi which was irresistible, making it difficult to defeat. Gandhi kept the attention focused on the injustices of society and the political system enslaving humanity, rather than obsession with individuals or his political opponents , de-personalizing issues, as a consequence all the energy and direction of his political battles were always correctly directed at the defeat of the system, which sought to enslave.

Though Gandhiji’s cultural and spiritual roots were rooted in the Indian philosophic and religious tradition, as articulated in the great Indian epics, in particular the philosophy of the Bhagwad Gita ,and the influences of the spiritual poet and personal friend Shrimad Rajchandra, Gandhiji was far from an Indian revivalist; the sources of his inspiration were not confined to India, they were global and universal, and included political essays such as Henry David Thoreau’s “ Resistance to Civil Government”, John Ruskin’s essay on economy – ‘Unto This Last’, Tolstoy’s personal philosophical work, ‘The Kingdom of God is Within You’ and Christ’s ‘ Sermon on the Mount’. While accepting these influences, he tested and applied them in the context of conditions on the ground in South Africa and India, to communicate the political and social message of emancipation. Throughout his life, Gandhi did not perceive any conflict between his individual religious beliefs and other religious philosophies of the world which he equally respected, consequently his political and spiritual impact was widespread, among diverse races and nations, as his moral and political ideals and sources of inspiration had a universal appeal. People of diverse faith and nationality were to become his closest companions, some sharing his commitment to his political causes in South Africa, and others to his political struggles for freedom from colonial rule in India. The Scotsman C.F. Andrews an invaluable member of India’s Freedom struggle, also assisted Gandhiji with some of the negotiations relating to the struggle in South Africa; Sonja Schlesin of Russian origin as his Law clerk ran his Law Office in South Africa, while the Englishman Henry Polak was an editor of a newspaper at Johannesburg , assisting Gandhi. Hermann Kallenbach, the architect of German origin in South Africa, one of his closest friends, worked at the Tolstoy farm at Transvaal and at Phoenix in Natal; whereas the French writer and peace activist Romain Rolland was the bridge between Gandhiji and Europe. There was also the British Admiral’s daughter Madeline Slade, a sincere disciple, whom Gandhi referred to by the Indian name he had given her, Mirabehn. These were among the many, who shared his life’s journey at different stages, men and women of different nationalities, who worked with him, along with his committed colleagues and disciples in India. Their nationalities, cultures and religions made no difference to him, they were an integral part of his movement and life’s work and as close as members of his family.

Leo-Tolstoy 261 X 261
Leo Tolstoy

It was to Gandhiji, his sincere disciple, that the great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, addressed his last letter, in which the writer summing up his life’s philosophy wrote:

“The longer I live, and especially now, when I feel the nearness of death, I want to tell others what I feel so particularly clearly and what to my mind is of great importance, namely that which is called “ passive resistance” but which is in reality nothing else than the teaching of love uncorrupted by false interpretations….This law was proclaimed by all–by the Indians as by the Chinese , Hebrew , Greek and Roman sages of the world. I think that this law was clearly expressed by Christ…the people of the Christian world have accepted this law whilst at the same time they have permitted violence….Therefore, your activity in the Transvaal, as it seems to us at this end of the world, is the most essential work, the most important of all the work now being done in the world, wherein not only the nations of the Christian, but of all the world, will unavoidably take part.”

Tolstoy had chosen his apostle, and bequeathed to him a legacy, and this philosophy was spread by Gandhi through his struggles and example, to every corner of the world.

All Prophets are human, yet distinguished by their spiritual ability to be far seeing when others can barely look a few steps ahead. It was not surprising that Gandhiji possessed this quality. When most intellectuals of the day, world wide and even in India, were carried away by the munificent magnificence of the Industrial and Technological revolution which had ushered in the age of Capital, as best represented by Western technological progress and its ‘civilizing mission’ which it had usurped; the Mahatma with his uncanny insight and understanding of the political, economic, cultural and social impact of the Imperialism of the British Empire he was opposing, looked far ahead and beyond the glitter, to the world wide pillage of resources, the degradation and incipient fascism at the heart of the system for millions in the world; its capacity for waste amidst plenty, its vast income differentials that made people of the same society inhabit different worlds; observing aptly that when the inhabitants of a small island had caused so much misery to the world by pursuing such a system, what would happen if millions in India and other parts of the world emulated and replicated the same system. Gandhiji was convinced that it was necessary to transcend capitalism.

Romain Rolland 280 X 396
Romain Rolland

It was the Mahatma’s moral force and example, his incisive political understanding and mass mobilization, his innovative strategies to defeat a system which had enslaved millions, that made the eminent French writer Romain Rolland, one of the most passionate voices of the anti–war movement of Europe in the pre Second World War period, declare in the agonizing years of the nineteen thirties, when Europe was plunged into despair, and drifting towards an economic abyss and another world war, that in the 20th Century there were only two paths to liberation, one was the Socialist Revolution of 1917 and the other was that of Mahatma Gandhi. According to this renowned author, these two paths could not be said to be antagonistic, they were merely different roads.

Several years earlier, as the debate was on in the International Communist Movement, on the strategies adopted by the Indian struggle for Independence against British colonial rule, as the first Socialist Revolution supported all anti-colonial and national liberation struggles; the other great revolutionary of the 20th Century Lenin, opined, that the tactical and wider unity forged by the leadership of the Indian National Congress, the mainstream anti-colonial struggle in India, among several other smaller streams, as having a better chances of victory, than the sectarian path proposed by M.N. Roy, a revolutionary from India. This was political recognition of the correct political path forged by Mahatma Gandhi for Independence, despite the social complexity of feudalism in India, and its fragmentation of society into castes and classes, with widely different interests, which Gandhiji painstakingly and strategically united into the political struggle for Indian Independence.

It is not widely known that Gandhi sympathized with the objectives of the first Socialist Revolution of 1917, though he had reservation on some of the methods adopted. This sympathy with socialist objectives was not surprising, as Gandhi’s paramount concern was not only freedom from colonial rule, for him that was only the first step in the objective to abolish hunger, unemployment and the social practice of untouchability, which was a scourge in India; as Gandhi stood for egalitarian ideals and the overall economic emancipation and social reform of Indian society. What distinguished the Indian Freedom Movement from other political movements, was Gandhi’s emphasis on social reform of the still feudal Indian society and its backwardness, as an integral part of the movement, which embraced all weaker sections, with mass participation of women encouraged at every level.

Gandhiji’s moral and political influence in the world had reached such heights, that leaders and heads of State of fascist movements in Europe, desired a meeting with the Mahatma to increase their own political respectability, when the Mahatma visited Europe in 1931, on his return from the political negotiations at the Round Table Conference convened in London. Politically curious about fascist political movements spreading across Europe, Gandhiji met Mussolini at a request from the dictator, but declined to give Mussolini the political respectability Mussolini sought, the Mahatma had already chosen his path. While attempting to build the widest coalition to overthrow foreign rule, Gandhi’s genuine and evolving spirituality made him consciously seek out the weakest and the most exploited of society, to communicate to them his political message for social, economic and political emancipation, as it is to them he was closest, as the political leader of the Scheduled Castes, and one of the main architects of the Constitution of India, Dr. B.R.Ambedkar, a renowned scholar and constitutional expert was to admit in the Constituent Assembly, after Gandhi’s assassination, while paying him homage. It is not surprising that workers of the Lancashire Textile factories in Britain, with whom Gandhi stayed in a working class district in England, while attending the negotiations at the Round Table Conference, came out and cheered Gandhiji, wholly sympathetic to his movement, and understanding when the Mahatma explained, that the political movement for the boycott of foreign cloth in India, which included the cloth manufactured by them in Lancashire, was absolutely necessary to emancipate the poorest of the poor working people and peasantry of India, who were much worse off than the textile workers of Britain. It is not only in England that he had admirers, but among all anti-colonial movements in Africa, in Egypt and the entire Arab world, which recently once again became visible, when millions in Egypt gathered at Tahrir Square, with many declaring that they were inspired by Mahatma Gandhi.

In a world engulfed by “unending war” which has destroyed millions and so many societies, with thousands of bombing sorties on each of the countries destroyed including on Afghanistan; our understanding of the political truth Gandhi represented, would not be complete without recalling the public stand taken by Mahatma Gandhi at Lausanne in Switzerland in 1931, even as war clouds hung over Europe and fascist political forces were on the ascendancy, with their shrill war cries. To the media in Europe interacting with the moral and spiritual leader of India’s political struggle, this is what he said:

“I observe throughout the West a sickness of heart. You seem to be tired of the military burden under which Europe is groaning, and also tired of the prospect of shedding the blood of your fellowmen. The last war, falsely called great, has taught you and humanity many a rich lesson. It taught you some surprising things about human nature. You also found that no fraud , no lies, no deceit was considered too bad to use in order to win the war; no cruelty was considered too great; there were no unfair ways and means for encompassing the destruction of your so-called enemy. Suddenly, as in a flash, the friends of your youth became enemies, no home was safe, nothing spared. This civilization of the West was weighed in the balance and found wanting…”

In this context, to us, Private Bradley Manning, the United States soldier, unjustly convicted by court martial under the Espionage Act among other laws, for exposing the videos of war crimes, despite the War Crimes Act of the USA and its Constitutional provisions, when there were no other avenues for disclosing some of the worst crimes in the annals of the world, which it was mandatory in accordance with the Nuremberg principles to disclose, is a Gandhian prisoner of conscience , among others ,who must not be forgotten.

Gandhiji placed before the people of Europe , an alternative to acquiescing in aggressive wars, that is absolute ‘Civil Disobedience’ and ‘Non-Cooperation’ with the state which militarizes to wage aggressive wars, emphasizing that “the refusal of military service was only a secondary episode in the real fight which needs to be fought, which involves a total refusal to co-operate with the exploiting and militarist State …refusal to pay taxes, refusal to hold posts, refusal of even the apparent or superficial benefits which the State confers or claims to confer….There must be total void round that State making it impossible to function” that mere non-co-operation with the Army of such a state “was too little”; it was absolutely necessary in such circumstances to non-co-operate with every activity of such a state, when it resorted to aggressive warfare. During the course of the same visit in the context of the political issues confronting Europe, when Gandhiji was asked questions on Capitalism, he replied: ”Labour does not know its own power”….”Did it know , that it would only have to rise to have capitalism crumble away. For labour is the only power in the world.”

The eminent French writer, Romain Rolland, a biographer of Mahatma Gandhi, who supported India’s freedom movement and was a link between the people of Europe and Mahatma Gandhi, whose life and work the writer had followed and supported for forty years on that continent, in a period critical for Europe, kept urging Gandhiji to influence and attempt to reverse with his acknowledged world wide moral authority, the disastrous events in Europe and the drift towards a world war. This writer and anti – war activist has left us some vignettes of the Mahatma in his writings and correspondence:

“…in any judgment passed on him, this one essential must be borne in mind: he is in constant evolution. There’s nothing fixed about him, nothing settled once and for all….This has always been his method of self–instruction and action; direct social experimentation, repeated and verified, step by step, and broadening his circle at each step. There’s no doubt that his thoughts have been modified in the course of these experiments. By way of a symbolic example, let me quote you a thing he admits to himself, his transformation four or five years ago of an ideological formula dear to him : “God is truth” into: “ Truth is God“ which is his present motto….India was in the lowest degree of serfdom and discouragement, and it was Gandhi who by his heroic example (he has often been imprisoned, beaten and threatened with death ), gave her a sense of pride and dignity, and revived in her the powerful breadth of independence. This was no mean task; imagine three hundred million human beings reawakened by the tireless propaganda….his deepest sympathies lie with the labouring people and the millions of disinherited and oppressed…”

Martin Luther King Jr. 281 X 294
Martin Luther King, Jr.

A revolutionary is known by his disciples. In the United States of America, Reverend Martin Luther King emerged to follow in the footsteps of Mahatma Gandhi, convinced that “Non-Cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is co-operation with good”, referring to the Mahatma as “the guiding light of our inspiration”. With this Civil Rights Movement of the United States led by Martin Luther King, and inspired by Mahatma Gandhi, was to commence another struggle for the emancipation of the African American people, which the American Civil War had failed to accomplish, despite the abolition of slavery, and which is still an unfinished task, even as Reverend Martin Luther King was to be silenced by assassination in the same manner as Mahatma Gandhi, the Guru and his disciple sharing the same fate. The movement commenced with a single act of non-violent civil disobedience when Rosa Parks refused to vacate the “Whites Only” seat in a bus, a humiliation inflicted routinely on African Americans, leading to the organization of the ‘Montgomery’ bus boycott by all African Americans, under the leadership of Reverend Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), organizing for Civil Rights, which then spread to the whole of the State of Alabama. The boycott continued for 383 days despite the hardship involved, inflicting heavy financial losses on the Transport Company, until the United Supreme Court declared the racial segregation laws unconstitutional. About this struggle and the impact of Mahatma Gandhi on the movement, Reverend Martin Luther King was to write:

“In the summer of 1956 the name of Mahatma Gandhi was well known in Montgomery. People who had never known of the little brown saint of India were now saying that name with an air of familiarity. Non-violent resistance had emerged as the technique of the movement, while love stood as the regulatory ideal. In other words Christ furnished the spirit and the motivation, while Gandhi furnished the method.”

The struggle was unstoppable, spreading rapidly throughout the United States of America, with its leader like Mahatma Gandhi, criticizing the system which imposed segregation, exposing simultaneously all the tendencies within the United States which made for a violent society, including militarism, which Martin Luther King maintained was a continuation and extension of the anti-human policies of economic exploitation and racism within the United States, and against all the working people of the United States of America. At the New York Riverside in a speech titled “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence” on the 4th April 1967, a year before his assassination, Martin Luther King made a historic public indictment of the political system of the United States, in the context of the Vietnam war and the addiction of the system to war, referring to the “United States as the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.”

Mahatma Gandhi believed that in any society where millions were hungry, food was the “divinity” to be installed in every home, and that every religious philosophy in fact mandated respect for all of humanity, cutting across cultures; Martin Luther King his great disciple stressed that:

“True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar, it comes from seeing that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring” and that “any religion that professes to be concerned with the souls of men and is not concerned with slums that damn them, the economic conditions which cripple them, is a spiritually moribund religion, in need of new blood”.

Apart from the Civil Rights Movement of the United States, one of the most important political movements in the world today, the Palestinian struggle for ‘National Self – Determination’, has been inspired among other liberation struggles, by Mahatma Gandhi, with the mainstream of the Palestinian people, adopting and re-adapting Gandhian strategies, resisting inhuman policies till date. It is the pursuance of this difficult Gandhian path, by the people of Palestine, which has sustained them in spirit, through the saga of their trials and tribulations of over half a century against a brutal occupation by the government of Israel and the Zionist movement, in defiance of every resolution of the United Nations, which has claimed ”exceptional” and “chosen people” status, while imposing creeping genocide on the Palestinian people, with the entire Palestinian territory converted into one of the largest concentration camps, in collaboration with the world’s foremost military powers.

Gandhi’s was one of the first voices internationally to be raised against the colonization of Palestine, as he was no stranger to the rights and wrongs of the world. The Mahatma’s was a simple and unequivocal stand, that “Palestine belonged to the Palestinian people”; foreign settlers could not legitimately usurp the lands of the Palestinian people, as wrongly permitted by the Balfour Declaration. This early stand influenced the position of the then government of India in the United Nations in 1948, when India opposed the creation of the State of Israel, and supported only one State of Palestine in all Palestinian territories, even as other world powers and the General Assembly supported the creation of two States, that is a State of Israel along with the Arab State of Palestine on what was Palestinian territory, with majority of the people, still Palestinians. Predictably the Arab state of Palestine was never allowed to be created and despite delimitation by UN resolution, had its territories swallowed up in the creeping aggression through war and colonial settlements, which continues.

Today these diverse strategies of Resistance adopted by the Palestinian people, reinforced by other struggles and developments, have resoundingly defeated the government of Israel morally and politically at the Bar of international public opinion and in international fora, which includes the pronouncement of the International Court of Justice in the Advisory Opinion declaring the Wall constructed by Israel illegal, in violation of Geneva Conventions and International Humanitarian Law.

Reinforcing the mainstream of the Palestinian movement, apart from the spectacular defeat of Israeli aggression on Lebanon in 2006 by the Hezbollah, Lebanese National Resistance, has been the world wide Gandhian strategies adopted by the International Solidarity Movement in support of Palestine, the ‘Free Gaza Movement” of the Gaza Flotillas, and the International Movement for ‘boycott and disinvestment’, directed against the government and companies of the occupying power, aimed at ‘lifting the veil’ of the oppressor’s inhumanity and denying the Israel state respectability. The ‘Flotillas to Free Gaza’, was one of the most imaginative and formidable non-violent armadas ever launched in the world, by citizens of different countries, with the consistent support of a few sympathetic governments, which was equally important in winning the battle for International public opinion, even as some peaceful volunteers on the vessel “ Mavi Marmara”, were murdered by commandoes and other vessels were hijacked on the High Seas in an act of piracy , with all on board courting arrest.

With these diverse strategies, the battle for world opinion and the moral and political victory has already been won by the people of Palestine, which has led to the State of Palestine being granted Observer Status at the United Nations and earlier member status with several UN agencies, what remains is the demolition of the Wall, dismantling by Israel of all institutions of racist state, the right to return for Palestinian refugees and the physical vacation of all occupied Palestinian and Arab territories by the state of Israel. Events have proved Gandhi right on the Palestinian question, whereas most major powers perpetrated a grave injustice, for which not only the people of Palestine but the Arab people as a whole have bled through wars, conflicts and the seizure of the region’s resources , with world peace threatened by a nuclear war on related issues ,which was mostly recently averted.

Yet we cannot conclude that Gandhiji was ignorant of the real causes of political violence. Though the Mahatma consciously sought to avoid violence, he was wholly aware that in the absence of an orderly political mass movement, violence would become a reality in societies where millions were brutalized or exploited. In 1945 almost at the end of his life, in a revised edition of his 1941 ‘Reconstruction Programme’, Mahatma Gandhi warned that:

“A non-violent system of government is clearly an impossibility so long as the wide divide between the rich and the hungry millions persist….”

In every forum , the world over, wherever the political, economic , social and ecological future of humanity and preservation of the planet earth, our common home, is debated and discussed, Gandhiji with his simple precepts provides a guidance for all generations Reverend Martin Luther King, the Mahatma‘s great disciple summed up the Mahatma’s contribution:

“Posterity could not escape him even if it tried. By all standards of measurement, he is one of the…greatest men in world history.”

[shermann7]

State Dept Involvement Before During And After The Attack On U.S. Consulate In Benghazi (CSPAN)

This is the Actual Coverage!!!

http://investmentwatchblog.com/state-dept-involvement-before-during-and-after-the-attack-on-u-s-consulate-in-benghazi/

Shermann

[shermann7]

WW3 Won’t Be Stopped…”It’s Definitely On” (VIDEO)

I HOPE NOT!!!

http://investmentwatchblog.com/ww3-wont-be-stopped-its-definitely-on/

Shermann

[shermann7]

Professor Francis Boyle: IMPEACH OBAMA NOW!!! (VIDEO)

A very interesting interview...

Shermann

[shermann7]

Congressman (Grayson - D) argues against Syria strike

Shermann

[shermann7]

Ray McGovern - Should We Fall Again for ‘Trust Me’?

http://consortiumnews.com/2013/09/03/should-we-fall-again-for-trust-me/

Exclusive: Forgetting lessons from the Tonkin Gulf to the Iraq War, the U.S. news media has mostly elbowed past doubts about whether the Syrian government launched the Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack and now is focused on the political drama of congressional approval for war, a big mistake says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.

By Ray McGovern

In a dazzling display of chutzpah, the White House is demanding that Congress demonstrate blind trust in a U.S. intelligence establishment headed by James Clapper, a self-confessed perjurer.

That’s a lot to ask in seeking approval for a military attack on Syria, a country posing no credible threat to the United States. But with the help of the same corporate media that cheer-led us into war with Iraq, the administration has already largely succeeded in turning public discussion into one that assumes the accuracy of both the intelligence on the apparent Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack in Syria and President Barack Obama’s far-fetched claim that Syria is somehow a threat to the United States.


James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence.

Here we go again with the old political gamesmanship over ”facts” as a prelude to war, a replay of intelligence trickery from Vietnam’s Gulf of Tonkin to Iraq’s nonexistent WMD. Once more, White House officials are mounting a full-court press in Congress, hoping there will be enough ball turnovers to enable the administration to pull out a victory, with the corporate media acting as hometown referees.

And in the weekend talk shows, Secretary of State John Kerry, team co-captain in this transparent effort to tilt the playing field, certainly had his game face on. Kerry left little doubt that he KNOWS that the Syrian government is guilty of launching a chemical weapons attack on suburbs of Damascus on Aug. 21. How do we know he knows? Simple: It’s “Trust me” once again.

Did you not watch Kerry’s bravura performance before the TV cameras on Friday when he hawked the dubious evidence against the Syrian government? Someone should tell Kerry that using the word “know” 35 times does not suffice to dispel well-founded doubts and continuing ambiguities about the “intelligence,” such as it is. The administration’s white paper, issued to support Kerry’s “knowledge,” didn’t provide a single verifiable fact that established Syrian government guilt. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “A Dodgy Dossier on Syrian War.”]

But with his bravado, Kerry’s ploy was obvious – to sweep aside serious questions about the evidence and move the discussion simply to one of how much punishment should be inflicted on Syria. “So now that we know what we know, the question … is: What will we do?” Kerry said Friday.

But, Mr. Kerry, please not so fast with your attempt to do an Iraq War number on us. Frankly, asking us to simply trust you (especially after your 2002 vote for President George W. Bush’s Iraq War resolution) is too much to ask. Given the disease of prevarication circulating like a virus among top intelligence officials, one would have to have been “born yesterday” (to use one of Harry Truman’s expressions) to take you at your word.

And, there are hopeful signs that Congress, which has been fooled more than once before, may see through this latest rush to judgment. “Yes, I saw the classified documents,” Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Texas, told The Hill newspaper. “They were pretty thin.”

Some lawmakers are even stating another obvious point; i.e., that even with congressional approval, a military strike on Syria would be not only an international crime, but also unconstitutional because of the Constitution’s supremacy clause making treaties the supreme law of the land.

Under the United Nations Treaty, signatories like the U.S. pledge not to use – or even threaten to use – military force against another nation without U.N. Security Council approval or unless already attacked or in imminent danger of attack. None of those conditions apply here.

So, even if the “intelligence” against Syria were air-tight (which it isn’t) and if Congress approves a use-of-force resolution, the U.S. Constitution still requires that we abide by the U.N. Treaty and obtain Security Council approval. How can lawyers like Obama and Kerry ignore such basics?

There are also other options for punishing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad if there’s real evidence that he was complicit in the Aug. 21 attack. Like other leaders accused of war crimes, he can be indicted by the International Criminal Court or subjected to a special war-crimes tribunal. Yet, instead of following those legal strategies, which are specifically designed for these sorts of situations, President Obama proposes punishing one alleged war crime by committing another.

Intelligence? A Sow’s Ear

But there remains the key question of establishing the Assad government’s guilt and whether the Obama administration’s “high-confidence” assessment about that point is justified. It is a time-honored (or, better, time-dishonored) custom for White House officials bent on war to distort or even manufacture “intelligence” to justify their aims, especially after they’ve gone public with their “knowledge.”

On this point, I can say – “with high confidence” – that the White House is at it again, perpetrating another fraud on Congress and the American people. And most of the U.S. mainstream press has elbowed past the many questions about the quality of the intelligence and has moved on to discussing whether President Obama will “win” or “lose” the congressional vote, whether partisanship will spill over into foreign policy hurting America’s “credibility” to look tough.

Was it just a little over a decade ago that we watched President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney create out of whole cloth intelligence to “justify” war on Iraq while the U.S. press corps mostly acted as stenographers and cheerleaders? Mistakes are forgivable; fraud is not; neither is cowardice in the face of a misguided rush to war. And the fact that not a single senior Bush administration official was held accountable compounds the problem.

Since many Americans, malnourished as they are by the corporate media, need to be reminded, let’s say it again: The pre-Iraq “intelligence” was not mistaken; it was fraudulent. And, sad to say, then-CIA Director George Tenet and his malleable managers were willing accomplices in that fraud. You need not take my word for it.

Just five years ago, in June 2008, Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Jay Rockefeller, D-West Virginia, announced the conclusions of a five-year committee investigation into pre-Iraq War intelligence approved by a bipartisan majority of 10-5 (Republican Senators Chuck Hagel and Olympia Snowe voting with the Democratic majority).

Emphasizing the committee’s conclusion that the Bush administration made significant claims that were not supported by the intelligence, Rockefeller declared, “In making the case for war, the Administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent.”

Pressure on Intelligence Analysts

My former CIA analyst colleague, Paul R. Pillar, who, as National Intelligence Officer for the Middle East before the attack on Iraq, experienced up-front and personal the extreme pressure that intelligence analysts feel when a president has decided to make war, addressed this problem recently in “The Risk of Distorting Intelligence.” Pillar pointed out that an Associated Press story on the Obama administration’s preparation of the public for a military strike on Syria included these statements:

“The White House ideally wants intelligence that links the attack [with chemical weapons] directly to Assad or someone in his inner circle, to rule out the possibility that a rogue element of the military act[ed] without Assad’s authorization. That quest for added intelligence has delayed the release of the report by the Office of the Director for National Intelligence laying out evidence against Assad. … The CIA and the Pentagon have been working to gather more human intelligence tying Assad to the attack.”

Pillar adds, “When one hears that policy-makers want not just intelligence on a particular subject but intelligence that supports a particular conclusion about that subject, antennae ought to go up. A ‘quest’ for conclusion-bolstering material is fundamentally different from an open-minded use of intelligence to inform policy decisions yet to be made. It is instead a matter of making a public (and Congressional) case to support a decision already made.”

This was the kind of highly politicized “policy kitchen” in which intelligence analysts and other officials were pressured to serve as cooks whipping up the frothy broth labeled “Government Assessment of the Syrian Government’s Use of Chemical Weapons,” lauded by Secretary of State Kerry on Friday. The manner in which it was issued shows it to be a “policy statement,” NOT an “intelligence summary,” as widely described in the media. And, clearly, there were too many cooks involved.

In contrast to key past issuances of similarly high political sensitivity, the “Government Assessment” released on Friday does not appear under the letterhead of the Director of National Intelligence as was the case, for example, with the official statement issued on Sept. 28, 2012, “on the intelligence related to the terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.”

This break in customary practice may have been simply a function of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper being in such bad odor among those lawmakers who still care about truth. Clapper has confessed to telling Congress, under oath, “clearly erroneous” things about the National Security Agency’s surveillance abuses.

Thus, the administration runs some risk in trotting out Clapper this week to testify before the intelligence and national security committees of Congress. Perhaps the White House has decided it has to rely on Clapper’s demonstrated gift for lying with a straight face (though sweaty pate); or it may be counting on short-term memory loss on the part of the many superannuated and/or distracted members of Congress.

Clapper’s Record

Well before Obama appointed him Director of National Intelligence three years ago, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper showed himself to be a subscriber to the George Tenet doctrine of compliant malleability, having helped Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld falsify the intelligence on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Did no one tell Obama about Clapper’s key role in the cooking of intelligence before the Iraq War?

Rumsfeld handpicked Clapper to be the first civilian director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), where he served during the crucial period of September 2001 to June 2006. NGA’s responsibilities included analysis of satellite imagery – the most capable and likely collection resource to discover weapons of mass destruction facilities in Iraq or to verify Iraqi “defector” reports of hidden WMD caches.

So why didn’t NGA point out the absence of WMD evidence or note the many discrepancies in the stories being told by the “defectors” – many of whom were coached by the pro-invasion Iraqi National Congress? The answer: Clapper knew which side his bread was buttered on. Instead of speaking truth to power, he not only fell in with the Tenet school of obeisance, but also glommed onto Donald Rumsfeld’s aphorism: “The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

Working for Rumsfeld, Clapper’s job, pure and simple, was to stifle any untutored-to-the-ways-of-Washington analyst who might ask unwelcome questions like: Could the reason there is not a trace of Iraqi WMD in any of the satellite imagery be that there is none there – and that the Pentagon’s favorite “defectors” are lying through their teeth?

When no WMD caches were found, it was Clapper who suggested, without a shred of evidence, that Saddam Hussein had sent the phantom WMD to Syria, a theory that also was pushed by neocons both to deflect criticism of their false assurances about Iraq’s WMD and to open a new military front against another Israeli nemesis, Syria. (It appears that time may have finally come.)

On more substantive issues – like the key one, “why they hate us” – Clapper has advanced some imaginative theories about what makes terrorists tick. It’s “self-radicalization,” you see. Clapper promoted this bedeviling concept while a nominee for the post of Director of National Intelligence, which he – having played fast and loose with the truth, aside – still occupies.

At his nomination hearing Clapper was asked by Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Florida, about lessons drawn from the investigation of Army Major Nidal Hasan, the psychiatrist sentenced to death last week for killing 13 people at Fort Hood. Clapper responded that “self-radicalization” is a “daunting challenge. … I don’t have the answer to the challenge; identification of self-radicalization may not lend itself to detection by intelligence agencies. … It’s almost like detecting tendencies for suicide ahead of time.”

Still Far From a Silk Purse

If intelligence community leaders have any pride left, they may also have been embarrassed by how last Friday’s “Government Assessment” fit the old bureaucratic image of a camel as the arch-typical horse designed by committee. Seldom have my intelligence alumni colleagues and I seen a more meandering, repetitive, fulsome document. Full of verisimilitude, the document nonetheless includes this key acknowledgment: “Our high confidence assessment is the strongest position that the U.S. Intelligence can take short of confirmation.”

It seems a safe bet that during the next two weeks’ testimony before the various national security committees of the Senate and House, Kerry and Clapper will claim that additional intelligence has “confirmed” what until now has been simply the “assessments” of the U.S. government. Let’s hope that lawmakers have the good sense to ask for actual evidence that can withstand independent scrutiny.

Colin Powell’s meretricious U.N. speech on Feb. 5, 2003, was at least well crafted and persuasively presented. In a same-day assessment, we Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) gave him an A for presentation, while almost flunking him (with a C-minus) for substance. In our Memorandum for the President that day, we urged that the discussion be widened beyond the circle of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we saw no compelling reason and from which we believed the unintended consequences were likely to be catastrophic.

If President Obama would let us in the door, we would tell him the same thing today, since he has surrounded himself with a menagerie of “tough guys and gals” as well as some neocons and neocons-lite. Before Kerry went on TV Friday, VIPS had already warned Joint Chiefs Chairman Martin Dempsey “there are serious problems with the provenance and nature of the ‘intelligence’ that is being used to support the need for military action.” Those problems remain.

Tonkin Gulf

From my only personal life experience, there was another good example of how the prostitution of intelligence works: When the Tonkin Gulf incident (used to “justify” the Vietnam War) took place 49 years ago, I was a journeyman CIA analyst in what Condoleezza Rice has called “the bowels of the agency.” As an intelligence analyst responsible for Russian policy toward Southeast Asia and China, I worked very closely with those doing analysis on Vietnam and China.

At the time, the U.S. had about 16,000 troops in South Vietnam, but there was mounting political pressure to dramatically expand the U.S. troop levels to prevent a Communist victory. President Lyndon Johnson feared that Republicans would blame him for “losing Vietnam” the way some tarred Harry Truman for “losing China.” So the Gulf of Tonkin incident – North Vietnamese allegedly firing on a U.S. destroyer in international waters – offered Johnson the chance both to look tough and to get a congressional carte blanche for a wider war.

Those of us in intelligence – not to mention President Johnson, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy – knew full well that the evidence of any North Vietnamese attack on the evening of Aug. 4, 1964, the so-called “second” Tonkin Gulf incident, was highly dubious.

But it fit the President’s purposes. The North Vietnamese could be presented as aggressors attacking a U.S. ship on a routine patrol in international waters. To make the scam work, however, the American people and members of Congress had to be kept in the dark about the actual facts of the case, all the better to whip them into a war frenzy.

Only years later was the fuller story revealed. During the summer of 1964, President Johnson and the Joint Chiefs of Staff were eager to widen the war in Vietnam. They stepped up sabotage and hit-and-run attacks on the coast of North Vietnam. Defense Secretary McNamara later admitted that he and other senior leaders had concluded that the seaborne attacks “amounted to little more than pinpricks” and “were essentially worthless,” but they continued.

Concurrently, the National Security Agency was ordered to collect signals intelligence from the North Vietnamese coast on the Gulf of Tonkin, and the coastal attacks were seen as a helpful way to get the North Vietnamese to turn on their coastal radars. The destroyer USS Maddox, carrying electronic spying gear, was authorized to approach as close as eight miles from the coast and four miles from offshore islands, some of which already had been subjected to intense shelling by clandestine attack boats.

As James Bamford describes it in Body of Secrets: “The twin missions of the Maddox were in a sense symbiotic. The vessel’s primary purpose was to act as a seagoing provocateur — to poke its sharp gray bow and the American flag as close to the belly of North Vietnam as possible, in effect shoving its 5-inch cannons up the nose of the Communist navy. In turn, this provocation would give the shore batteries an excuse to turn on as many coastal defense radars, fire control systems, and communications channels as possible, which could then be captured by the men … at the radar screens. The more provocation, the more signals…

“The Maddox’ mission was made even more provocative by being timed to coincide with commando raids, creating the impression that the Maddox was directing those missions and possibly even lobbing firepower in their support. … North Vietnam also claimed at least a twelve-mile limit and viewed the Maddox as a trespassing ship deep within its territorial waters.”

On Aug. 2, 1964, an intercepted message ordered North Vietnamese torpedo boats to attack the Maddox. The destroyer was alerted and raced out to sea beyond reach of the torpedoes, three of which were fired in vain at the destroyer’s stern. The Maddox’s captain suggested that the rest of his mission be called off, but the Pentagon refused. And still more commando raids were launched on Aug. 3, shelling for the first time targets on the mainland, not just the offshore islands.

Early on Aug. 4, the Maddox captain cabled his superiors that the North Vietnamese believed his patrol to be directly involved with the commando raids and shelling. That evening at 7:15 (Vietnam time) the Pentagon alerted the Maddox to intercepted messages indicating that another attack by patrol boats was imminent.

What followed was panic and confusion. There was a score of reports of torpedo and other hostile attacks, but no damage and growing uncertainty as to whether any attack actually took place. McNamara was told that “freak radar echoes” were misinterpreted by “young fellows” manning the sonar, who were “apt to say any noise is a torpedo.”

This did not prevent McNamara from testifying to Congress two days later that there was “unequivocal proof” of a new attack. And based largely on that, Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf resolution allowing Johnson to escalate the war with intense aerial bombardments and the dispatch of more than a half million U.S. troops, 58,000 who would die along with estimates of several million Vietnamese and other people of Indochina.

Meanwhile, in ‘the Bowels’

However, by the afternoon of Aug. 4, 1964, the CIA’s expert analyst on North Vietnam (let’s call him “Tom”) had concluded that probably no one had fired on the U.S. ships. He included a paragraph to that effect in the item he wrote for the Current Intelligence Bulletin, which would be wired to the White House and other key agencies and appear in print the next morning.

And then something unique happened. The Director of the Office of Current Intelligence, a very senior officer whom Tom had never before seen, descended into the bowels of the agency to order the paragraph deleted. He explained: “We’re not going to tell LBJ that now. He has already decided to bomb North Vietnam. We have to keep our lines open to the White House.”

“Tom” later bemoaned — quite rightly: “What do we need open lines for, if we’re not going to use them, and use them to tell the truth?”

The late Ray S. Cline, who as Deputy Director for Intelligence was the current-intelligence director’s boss at the time of the Tonkin Gulf incident, said he was “very sure” that no attack took place on Aug. 4. He suggested that McNamara had shown the President unevaluated signals intelligence that referred to the (real) earlier attack on Aug. 2 rather than the non-event on the 4th. There was no sign of remorse on Cline’s part that he didn’t step in and make sure the President was told the truth.

Though we in the bowels of the agency knew there was no Aug. 4 attack – and so did some of our superiors – everyone also knew, as did McNamara, that President Johnson was lusting for a pretext to strike the North and escalate the war. And, like B’rer Rabbit, nobody said nothin’.

Let’s hope that, this time on Syria, at least one or two senior intelligence or policy officials will find a way to get the truth out – heeding their own conscience and oath to support and defend the Constitution – rather than succumb to the ever-present temptation to give priority to being part of the President’s “team.”

Ray McGovern works for Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He served in CIA from the administrations of John F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush, including as drafter and briefer of the President’s Daily Brief under Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Reagan. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

[shermann7]

Talk - Dr. Doug Rokke - Depleted Uranium (DU) (VIDEO)

Doug Rokke was in charge of the Gulf War DU Investigation...

Shermann

[shermann7]

Karen Kwiatkowski and Ry on Syria (VIDEO)

http://www.rys2sense.com/anti-neocons/viewtopic.php?f=114&t=32459

Shermann

[shermann7]

Chemical Hypocrisy: Lies and Disinformation on the Road to War (VIDEO)

http://ronpaulnews.net/2013/08/chemical-hypocrisy-lies-and.html

Shermann

[pagello]

Immunity for Bush et al....


http://www.commondreams.org/further/2013/08/26

[shermann7]

Lindsey Williams – New Signs Of The Elite Just Given To Me – DVD – Video – April 2013 (VIDEO)

Great Info Here!!!

http://www.lindseywilliams.net/lindsey-williams-new-signs-of-the-elite-just-given-to-me-dvd-video-april-2013/

Shermann

[shermann7]

Ben Swann interview on the Michael Rivero Radio Show

Great Interview!!!

http://whatreallyhappened.com/podcasts/benswann.mp3

Shermann

[Pro-Life]

Here's The Law That's Driving Record Numbers Of Americans To Renounce Their Citizenship
By Josh Barro | Business Insider – Mon, Aug 12, 2013 3:32 PM EDT

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/heres-law-thats-driving-record-193226792.html

A record number of Americans are giving up their U.S. citizenship. The Wall Street Journal reports that 1,130 Americans renounced their citizenship in the second quarter of 2013, more than did so in all of 2012.

To my surprise, the list of new ex-Americans is publicly available; I didn't recognize any of the names on a quick scan.

According to the Journal, the surge in expatriations seems to be driven by the upcoming implementation of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), a 2010 law that forces foreign financial institutions to disclose more information to the IRS about Americans' accounts and investments. Starting in 2014, foreign financial institutions will have to tell the IRS about income accruing to American clients (or businesses owned by Americans), and they'll have to withhold American income tax as appropriate.

In other words, it's going to become a lot harder to hide your income with a Swiss bank account.
The IRS can't directly tell foreign banks what data to turn over. But it has a pretty big stick — it can impose a 30% withholding tax on payments from the U.S. to foreign financial institutions unless they cooperate. As a result, many foreign banks and foreign countries have been entering into agreements with the IRS to comply with FATCA.

If you're an American living in the U.S. and your strategy for hiding income abroad isn't working anymore, you may have few options but to pay up. But if you live abroad, you have another choice available: Renounce your U.S. citizenship so you're not liable for American income tax.
That's one driver of the surge in renunciations. Another likely factor is the increase in capital gains and income tax rates in 2013, meaning that wealthy American expatriates can get a bigger tax saving by renouncing citizenship than they used to.

But a third factor is that FATCA creates compliance headaches apart from the actual tax bills it leads to. As the WSJ describes:
Some U.S. citizens say they are exasperated by a growing raft of paperwork that forces U.S. citizens living abroad to declare the minutiae of their financial holdings and other assets. That has increased the attraction of becoming a citizen in places such as Hong Kong, where the individual tax rate is capped at 15%.

"My decision was less about the actual amount of taxes I had to pay, and more about the system," said one investment banker, who renounced his U.S. citizenship and is now a Hong Kong citizen. "I'm not an ultrawealthy dude. It was the hassle with all the paperwork."

A few months ago, I attended a dinner where I sat between two Americans living abroad who complained that FATCA has made foreign banks less willing to provide American expatriates with checking accounts, credit cards and mortgages. This has been a major point of complaint for organizations representing American expatriates.

FATCA also complicates matters for foreign businesses with American investors (and for Americans who want to invest in foreign businesses) since American ownership makes a business subject to FATCA reporting.

If you intend to move back to the U.S., you're probably not going to renounce your citizenship because it was hard to get a checking account, or even because you had to forego an investment opportunity. But if you're a dual citizen with weak ties to the U.S. and the law is materially interfering with your financial dealings, it might be a reason to go ahead and quit being an American.

Marie Sapirie, the legal editor at Tax Notes, even says the IRS proposed renouncing citizenship as an option for an American with a complicated tax situation who had long resided abroad.

Last fall, I attended an American Swiss Foundation trip to Switzerland and FATCA was the number one hobby horse for the Swiss participants. The difficulty in evaluating the Swiss complaints is that the Swiss have a combination of good and bad reasons for hating FATCA. The law creates compliance burdens for Americans living in Switzerland and Swiss who do legitimate business with Americans. But it also undermines tax evasion strategies that are the key reason that some Americans were interested in banking in Switzerland in the first place.

Of course, every law has compliance costs, and it's not even clear that it's such a big problem if more Americans, presumably dual citizens living abroad with relatively weak ties to the U.S., are renouncing citizenship. But the benefits of FATCA may also be relatively modest: It's expected to raise $7.6 billion in added taxes over 10 years.

In 1999, the State Department estimated that there are between three and six million Americans living abroad; if those numbers are similar today, that means FATCA will generate about $170 in extra annual taxes per expatriate.

The revenue estimate for FATCA may prove incorrect in either direction; it's based on a guess about how much unreported foreign income will be discovered when the new reporting and withholding requirements come into effect. As the law is implemented next year, we'll start to see how much revenue actually rolls in — and whether the law is worth the compliance costs and expatriations that it causes.

[shermann7]

Former Reagan Treasury Appointee Paul Craig Roberts on – Bin laden Kill Hoax (Audio Cut)

http://deadlinelive.info/2011/05/04/former-reagan-treasury-appointee-paul-craig-roberts-on-bin-laden-kill-hoax/

Shermann

[shermann7]

I have followed current events for a very long time. Fortunately, I am a political atheist, so politics does not interfere.

There is a perfect storm shaping up. I do not know exactly what will transpire, but it will begin happen in the next 3-12 months. It appears there will events that will take place that will make history, and probably be negative for a whole lot of people.

Shermann

[ChrisJP]

I pretty much agree with what you posted. Maybe not 100% but close enough.

Chris

[shermann7]

Lets see....I will do the best I can to respond...The Video was posted because many of the ideas are different than what the MSM broadcasts...I will listen to all versions/opinions, and that would include both Bush and Obama - Which strains my patience greatly.

There are quite a number of things that happened before and during WWII that are not in the history books. My dad told me that, and he served in WWII (and Korea). The Victors always write the History.

I can see no combination of reasons to say that Iran and Syria are the GREATEST cause of instability in the region or even close to that. Remember...Ten Years ago it was Afghanistan and Iraq...Iran was part of the coalition of the willing with the U.S. in the Afghanistan war. BTW - So was Libya...

I would much more specific than the Global Banking System and use the word Rothschild's.

I would also guess that 99.9% of the people in the world are pawns - Either Willing or Unwilling.

And on a Final Note - We have Plenty of Oil in the U.S., Alaska, Canada, and Mexico to last us for over 100 years.

[ChrisJP]

So i watched the video for about 3 minutes. Since he wasn't making any sense almost immediately, 3 minutes was all I could take.

Just in the first minutes, to claim WW II started as little side show wars (like Germany invading Poland or Japan invading China was a side show) is just untrue.

To try and not blame Iran and Syria for being the source of regional instability, and then to try and claim a pacifist/socialist president would start WW III is just ridiculous.

The real enemy is the global banking system and the people controlling it.

The real enemy are the people who keep insisting we need middle eastern oil (because they're getting rich importing it into the US).

Everyone else are just pawns by comparison.

Chris

[shermann7]

"We Need to Wake Up and Realize that Obama is the Enemy" (VIDEO)

Shermann

[shermann7]

Barzani Warns He Will Assist Syrian Kurds - Sound Only

This is an Important Interview...

Shermann

[shermann7]

CIA Insider Tells 911 truth. Time to re-examine your World-view, America! (VIDEO)

Shermann