Privatization Is a Ramp for Corruption
and Insouciance Is a Ramp for War
Libertarian ideology favors privatization. However, in practice privatization is usually very different in result than libertarian ideology postulates. Almost always, privatization becomes a way for well-connected private interests to loot both the public purse and the general welfare.
Most privatizations, such as those that have occurred in France and UK during the neoliberal era, and in Greece today and Ukraine tomorrow, are lootings of public assets by politically-connected private interests.
Another form of privatization is to turn traditional government functions, such as prison operation and many supply functions of the armed services, such as feeding the troops, over to private companies at a large increase in cost to the public. Essentially, the libertarian ideology is used to provide lucrative public contracts to a few favored persons who then reward the politicians. This is called “free enterprise.”
The privatization of prisons in the US is an example of the extraordinary cost and injustice of privatization. Privatization of prisons requires ever-higher rates of incarceration in order to build profitability. The US, supposedly “a land of liberty” has by far the highest incarceration rates of all countries. The “free” US has not only the highest percentage of its population in prison but also the highest absolute number.
“Authoritarian” China with four times the US population has fewer citizens in prison.
This article shows how well prison privatization works for well-connected private interests: http://www.globalresearch.ca/privatization-of-the-us-prison-system/5377824
It also shows the extraordinary shame, corruption, and discredit that prison privatization has brought to the US.
A few years ago I wrote about the conviction of two judges who were paid by privatized juvenile detention facilities to sentence kids to their facilities.
As Alain of Lille and later Karl Marx said, “Money is all.” In America money is all that is
important to the political system and to the bulk of the population. Essentially, America has no other values.
Another great libertarian fantasy is Wall Street. In the libertarian mythology Wall Street is the mother of entrepreneurs and of the start-up companies that blossom into industrial, manufacturing, and commercial giants. In actual fact, Wall Street is the mother of enormous corruption. As Nomi Prins shows in All The President’s Bankers, it has always been the case.
Recently, there has been a spate of Wall Street whistleblowers. Many are reported by Pam Martens on her site, Wall Street On Parade, http://wallstreetonparade.com/2014/04/insiders-tell-all-both-the-stock-market-and-the-sec-are-rigged/
Unlike libertarian ideologues, Prins and Martens are former Wall Street insiders and know what they are talking about.
All US financial markets are rigged for the benefit of a few. We have had the exposure of high frequency trading front-running buy and sell orders. We have had the exposure of the big banks rigging the LIBOR interest rate and the London gold price fix. We have had the exposure of the Federal Reserve rigging via its dependent bullion banks the price of gold in the futures market. We have had the exposure in Congressional hearings of the rigging of metal and commodity prices. The dollar’s exchange value is rigged. And so forth. Yet no heads have rolled. Recently a SEC prosecuting attorney, James Kidney, retired. Upon his retirement, he proclaimed that his cases against the criminal big banks have been suppressed by SEC higher ups who have their eyes fixed on big jobs with the banks they are protecting while in government service.
So there you have it. The United States government is so overwhelmingly corrupt that even the financial regulatory agencies have been corrupted by the money of the private capitalists they are supposed to regulate.
America the corrupted. That is what we have become.
Not even Vladimir Putin understands how totally corrupt and insensitive to humanity Washington is.
Putin’s response to the Ukraine crisis created by Washington’s coup in Kiev is to rely on
“Russia’s Western partners,” the UN, the Obama regime, John Kerry, etc., to work out a reasonable solution to the crisis.
Putin’s hope for a diplomatic solution is unrealistic. The NATO governments are bought-and-paid-for by Washington. For example, Germany is not a country. Germany is a mere piece of Washington’s empire. The German government will do as Washington says. The German government represents Washington’s agenda. The European governments to whom Putin is speaking are not listening.
Paul Wolfowitz, the neoconservative who as Deputy Secretary of Defense presided over the orchestration of the false evidence used by the Bush regime to launch Washington’s wars in the Middle East, declared the minimization of Russian power as the “first objective” of US foreign and military policy:
“Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.”
What Wolfowitz means by “hostile power” is any power independent of Washington’s hegemony.
Washington overthrew the elected Ukraine government in order to orchestrate a crisis that would distract Russia from Washington’s adventures in Syria and Iran and in order to demonize Russia as an invader rebuilding an empire that is a danger to Europe. Washington will use this demonization in order to break up growing economic relationships between Russia and Europe. The purpose of sanctions is not to punish Russia, but to break up economic relationships.
Washington’s strategy is audacious and brings risk of war. If the West had an independent media, Washington’s plan would fail. But instead of a media, the West has a Ministry of Propaganda. The New York Times has even found a replacement for Judith Miller. As you might have forgot or never known, Judith Miller was the New York Times reporter who filled the Times with Bush regime neoconservative lies about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Instead of examining and exposing the Bush regime’s false claims, the New York Times bolstered the regime’s case for war by using the newspaper’s credibility to advance the neoconservative war agenda.
The new Judith Miller is David M. Herszenhorn, with accomplices Andrew Roth, Noah Sneider, and Andrew Higgins. Herszenhorn dismisses the totality of Russian media accounts of events in Ukraine as “an extraordinary propaganda campaign” designed to hide the fact from the Russian population that the entire Ukraine crisis is the fault of the Russian government: “And so began another day of bluster and hyperbole, of the misinformation, exaggerations, conspiracy theories, overheated rhetoric and, occasionally, outright lies about the political crisis in Ukraine that have emanated from the highest echelons of the Kremlin and reverberated on state-controlled Russian television, hour after hour, day after day, week after week.” http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/16/world/europe/russia-is-quick-to-bend-truth-about-ukraine.html?ref=davidmherszenhorn&_r=0
I have never read a more blatant piece of propaganda than Herszenhorn’s. He bases his report on two “authorities,” Lilia Shevtsova of the American-funded Carnegie Moscow Center, and Mark Galeotti, a NYU professor.
According to Herszenhorn, the widespread protests in eastern Ukraine are entirely the fault of the protesters who are putting on a show for propaganda purposes. The protests are not a response to words and deeds of the Washington-installed stooge government in Kiev. Herszenhorn dismisses reports of extreme nationalist neo-nazi Russophobia as “sinister claims” and regards the Washington-imposed unelected government in Kiev as legal. However, Herszenhorn regards governments formed as a result of referendums to be illegal unless approved by Washington.
If you place your faith in Herszenhorn, you will dismiss all reports such as those below as lies and propaganda:
http://rt.com/news/eu-no-russian-interference-ukraine-844/
http://news.antiwar.com/2014/04/15/poland-nato-must-ignore-russia-send-ground-troops/print/
http://news.antiwar.com/2014/04/15/eastern-offensive-ukraine-pounds-kramatorsk-killing-four/print/
http://news.antiwar.com/2014/04/15/white-house-endorses-ukraine-crackdown-on-protesters/
http://rt.com/news/ukrainian-tanks-kramatorsk-civilians-840/
http://rt.com/news/putin-ukraine-military-operation-740/
http://www.globalresearch.ca/natos-pet-nazis-savage-ukrainian-presidential-candidate/5377948
http://rt.com/news/ukraine-troops-withdraw-slavyansk-940/
The Western World is the World of the Matrix protected by the Ministry of Propaganda. Western populations are removed from reality. They live in a world of propaganda and disinformation. The actual situation is far worse than the “Big Brother” reality described by George Orwell in his book, 1984.
The ideology known as neoconservatism, which has controlled US governments since Clinton’s second term, has the world set on a path to war and destruction. Instead of raising questions about this path, the Western media hurries the world down the path. Read what medical doctors report will be the result of the neoconservative Obama regime’s belief that nuclear war can be won: http://original.antiwar.com/lawrence-wittner/2014/04/14/your-doctors-are-worried/
The Chinese government has called for “de-americanizing the world.” The Russian legislature understands that being part of the dollar payments system is a Russian subsidy to American Imperialism. The Russian legislator, Mikhail Degtyaryov told Izvestia that “The dollar is evil. It is a dirty green paper stained with blood of hundreds of thousands of civilian citizens of Japan, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Korea and Vietnam.” http://rt.com/politics/russian-dollar-abandon-parliament-085/
However, Russian industry spokesmen, possibly on Washington’s payroll but likely just people without a clue, said that Russia was bound by contracts to the dollar system and that perhaps in 10 or 15 years Russia could take a more intelligent approach. That is assuming that Russia would still be capable of acting in its own interests after suffering 10 or 15 years more of US financial imperialism.
Every country that wishes to have an independent existence without living under Washington’s thumb should immediately depart the dollar payment system, which is a form of US control over other countries. That is the only purpose that the dollar system serves.
Many countries are afflicted by economists trained in the US in the neoliberal tradition.
Their US education is a form of brainwashing that ensures that their advice renders their governments impotent against Washington’s imperialism.
Despite the obvious threats that Washington poses, many do not recognize the threats because of Washington’s pose as “the greatest democracy.” However, scholars looking for this democracy cannot find it in the US. The evidence is that the US is an oligarchy, not a democracy. http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-u-s-is-not-a-democracy-it-is-an-oligarchy/5377765
An oligarchy is a country that is run for private interests. These private interests–Wall Street, the military/security complex, oil and natural gas, and agribusiness–seek domination, a goal well served by the neoconservative ideology of US hegemony.
The American Oligarchs win even when they lose. Finally, Washington’s notorious torture prison, Abu Ghraib, has been closed. But not by Washington. The Iraqi city fell last week to “defeated” al-Qaeda. Remember, we won the war in Iraq. $3 trillion wasted, but that’s not the way the military/security complex sees it. The war was a great victory for profits. http://news.antiwar.com/2014/04/15/after-al-qaeda-expansion-iraqs-infamous-abu-ghraib-finally-closes/
How much longer will dumbshit Americans fall for the flag-waving deception?
The Republicans used the wars in order to create huge budget deficits and national debt that are now being used to dismantle the social safety net, including Social Security and Medicare. There’s talk of privatizing Social Security and Medicare. More profits for Oligarchs in the offering. The gullibility of the American population is really without compare.
The gullibility of the American public will doom the world to extinction.
Remembering Michael C. Ruppert: Wall Street, the CIA and 9/11: “The CIA Had Complete and Perfect Knowledge of the Attacks”
Interview with Michael C. Ruppert–with Kellia Ramares and Bonnie Faulkner
We pay tribute to Michael C. Ruppert, an outstanding author and friend, committed to 9/11 Truth.
Below is the transcript of Michael Ruppert’s interview on Guns and Butter, which was aired on KPFA, one month after the tragic events of 9/11. Ruppert was first to reveal the forbidden truth: speculative trade on airline stocks based on foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks
The CIA’s Wall Street connections; with Michael C. Ruppert on Guns and Butter: The Economy Watch with Kellia Ramares and Bonnie Faulkner
FAULKNER: On September 29, The San Francisco Chronicle reported that investors had yet to collect more than $2.5 million in profits they made trading options in the stock of United Airlines before the Sept 11 terrorist attacks. The uncollected money raises suspicions that the unidentified investors had advance knowledge of the attacks. The securities and exchange commission is investigating high levels of short sales and purchases of “put” options, on the stocks of United Airlines and American Airlines in the three business days before the attacks. Short sales and put options are bets that a stock will fall in price.
Meanwhile, the Interdisciplinary Center, a counter-terrorism think tank headed by former Israeli intelligence officers, has issued a report on Osama bin Laden’s finances, saying insiders profited by nearly $16 million dollars on transactions involving the two airlines and the investment banking firm Morgan Stanley, which occupied 22 floors of the World Trade Center. And that report excluded other unusual trading activity involving insurance companies with significant exposure to damage claims resulting from the attacks.
Joining us by phone from Southern California is Michael C. Ruppert. Ruppert is a former Los Angeles Police Department field officer and narcotics investigator whom the CIA twice tried to recruit.
In the course of investigations in the mid 1970s, he came across information the CIA was trading drugs in order to fund covert operations. He was forced out of the LAPD in November 1978 after being shot at and threatened for speaking out about CIA drug activity.
At a Town Hall meeting on November 15, 1996, Ruppert publicly confronted then-CIA director John Deutsch with information about three specific CIA drug operations. The confrontation led to an invitation to appear before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, where he spoke and presented written evidence concerning the CIA’s infiltration of and illegal relationships with a number of police departments throughout the country.
Michael Ruppert publishes “From The Wilderness,” a magazine which deals with the effects of illegal covert operations on our society.
He’s here today to discuss his latest article for that magazine . . . about the CIA’s knowledge of, and connections to, the suspect trading that occurred in the days prior to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Michael Ruppert, welcome to “Guns and Butter: The Economy Watch.”
RUPPERT: Good to be here.
FAULKNER: Good to have you. Do you think the CIA had advance knowledge of the attacks? Did they know a specific attack was coming?
RUPPERT: I am absolutely convinced that the Central Intelligence Agency had complete and perfect foreknowledge of the attacks, down to date, time place and location, yes.
FAULKNER: Tell us how the CIA monitors the stock market.
RUPPERT: Well, I have written several stories about this over the years. One of the primary functions of the Central Intelligence Agency by virtue of its long and very close history of relationships with Wall Street, I mean to the point where the current executive vice president of the New York Stock Exchange is a retired CIA general counsel, has had a mandate to track, monitor, all financial markets worldwide, to look for anomalous trades, indicative of either economic warfare, or insider currency trading or speculation which might affect the US Treasury, or , as in the case of the September 11 attacks, to look for trades which indicated foreknowledge of attacks like we saw.
One of the vehicles that they use to do this is a software called Promis software, which was developed in the 1980s, actually 1979, by Bill Hamilton and a firm called INSLAW, in [the] Washington D.C. area. And Promis is very unique for two reasons: first of all, it had the ability to integrate a wide range of databases using different computer languages and to make them all into one readable format. And secondly, in the years since, Promis has been mated with artificial intelligence to even predict moves in markets and to detect trades that are anomalous, as a result of those projections. So, as recently as last year, I met with members of the RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] national security staff, who came down to Los Angeles where I am, who are investigating stolen applications of Promis software and its applications, and we reconfirmed at that time that, not only the US, but Israel, Canada, and many other countries use Promis-like software to track real-time trades in the stock markets to warn them of these events.
RAMARES: Kellia Ramares here. Mike, is it possible that the terrorists could have gotten hold of this software?
RUPPERT: Uh, no, it’s, well, it is and it isn’t. The key piece of evidence around September 11 is not that the software would have had any impact. The key evidence, as I heard you describing, was the trades themselves, the so-called put options and the short selling of American Airlines, United Airlines, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and a couple of reinsurance companies in Europe, which are just really off the maps. You wouldn’t need software to look at these trades and say, “Oh my God, this is directly connected to World Trade Center.”
RAMARES: OK, but hindsight is 20–20. United Airlines had a lot of trouble last year: labor disputes, lots of cancellations. We were on a verge of a recession going into the attacks and Morgan Stanley’s an investment banking firm. Some day traders could have seen some activity and joined the party entirely innocently. How can you make a prediction of an attack?
RUPPERT: Herzliyah, International Policy Institute in Israel which tracks counter-terrorism, also tracks financial trading. That’s a clear cut sign about how closely the two are related. And their reports are very clear that between September 6 and 7 the Chicago Board Options Exchange, CBOE, saw purchases of 4,744 put options on UAL, but only 396 call options. On September 10, the day before the attacks, 4,516 put options were placed on American Airlines, against only 748 calls, calls being bets that the stock will go up, puts being that the stock will go down. No similar trading in any other airlines occurred on the Chicago Exchange in the days immediately preceding Black Tuesday. That means that someone had advance knowledge that only the stocks of these two airlines would be adversely impacted. Had it just been an industry-wide slump, then you would have seen the same kind of activity on every airline, not just these two. But what is also very anomalous, very out of whack here, is the fact that the number of put options placed, that the level of these trades was up by 1,200 percent in the three days prior to the World Trade Center attacks.
RAMARES: Give us a brief overview, really, of the connections between the CIA and the banking and investment community. Your article suggests there is a revolving door between Wall Street and the CIA.
RUPPERT: Oh, indeed there is. First of all, it’s very important to note right up front that European investigators, who are tracking trades in the insurance companies, as well as the Israeli institute, have disclosed that the UAL put options were primarily held by Deutsche Bank-A.B. Brown. And its very important to note that the current Number Three at CIA, the Executive Director, a man by the name of A.B. “Buzzy” Krongard, was, until 1998, the chairman of A.B. Brown. The company went from being owned by Banker’s Trust to being owned by Deutsche Bank. But this is a man effectively running CIA, who came from the bank that handled the trades.
Historically speaking, we go back to 1947, we look at Clark Clifford, who wrote the National Security Act, in 1947. He was a Wall Street banker, and a lawyer from Wall Street. He was the chairman of First American Bancshares that brought BCCI onto US shores in the late 1980s. He was given the design for the CIA by John Foster and Allen Dulles, two brothers: John Foster becoming Secretary of State, Allen becoming director of Central Intelligence, who was fired by John Kennedy. They were partners in what is until this day the most powerful law firm on Wall Street: Sullivan Cromwell. Bill Casey, the legendary CIA director from the Reagan/Iran Contra years, had been chairman of the Securities and Exchange commission under Ronald Reagan. He, in fact, was a Wall Street lawyer and a stockbroker. I’ve already mentioned Dave Doherty, the Vice President of NYSE [New York Stock Exchange] who is the retired CIA general counsel. George Herbert Walker Bush is now a paid consultant to the Carlyle Group, the 11th largest defense contractor in the nation, very influential on Wall Street. “Buzzy” Krongard is there. John Deutsch, the former CIA director, who retired a couple of years ago, a few years ago, is now on the board of Citibanc or Citigroup. And his number three, Nora Slatkin, the Executive Director at CIA is also at Citigroup. And Maurice “Hank” Greenburg, who is the chairman of AIG insurance, which is the third largest investment pool of capital in the world, was up to be the CIA director in 1995 and Bill Clinton declined to nominate him. So there is an inextricable and unavoidable relationship between CIA and Wall Street.
FAULKNER: Michael Ruppert, this is Bonnie Faulkner. Does the CIA itself invest in the stock market?
RUPPERT: That’s unknown. What is known, and what was disclosed by hearings chaired by Senator Frank Church in 1976, is that the CIA was known and proven in the Congressional Record to operate proprietary companies, some of which do trade their stock on Wall Street. One of these, Southern Air Transport, excuse me, was at it during the Iran Contra years. There are others: Evergreen Air, which may or may not be a proprietary, but has strong CIA connections; there are tons of these companies out there. It’s not known if CIA manipulates markets, although I really believe that they do.
FAULKNER: Is the CIA’s budget public knowledge?
RUPPERT: No. By law. Under the National Security Act of 1947 the CIA’s budget is hidden in the budgets of all the other departments of government. We’ve never been able to pin down, because it’s a secret, exactly how much money CIA gets. But the best estimates available—and these are from very good sources—are that it’s around 30 billion dollars a year.
FAULKNER: So I’m assuming then that no one knows where they keep their budget. I mean, do they keep it in the bank drawing interest? I guess we don’t know.
RUPPERT: Well, no, the way it would work under the NSA—National Security Act—is that if the budget is $30 billion , $10 billion may be in the Department of Defense, five in the Department of Justice, three in US Treasury. That’s how they hide the funds.
RAMARES: Michael, Kellia Ramares again. You’ve laid out a scenario which would suggest that the CIA is so involved in Wall Street, they knew these trades were happening; they knew why. Why would the CIA let such a horrendous thing happen if they knew about it? All the loss of life, all the economic damage that we led off our show with that’s going to happen to everyday people, state and local governments, small investors, businesses. Why did they let it happen if they knew?
RUPPERT: Well, first of all, let’s look at history. I’m a great addict of the History Channel and all this year on “The Secrets of World War II,” one of their series, they have run maybe three, four, five times, a documentary showing clearly that Franklin Roosevelt had absolute knowledge that the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor on December the seventh. Navy had broken the codes. That information was made Top Secret. And Roosevelt allowed the attacks to happen with the express purpose of bringing the US into World War II. So there is historical precedent for this. What I have been writing in “From the Wilderness” for more than two years, and we’ve been publishing four years now, was of huge economic inconsistencies, bubbles that were about to burst, about a pending collapse of the US economy that was going to happen anyway.
Just two days before the attacks, I sent a bulletin to my subscribers saying there’s a monstrous derivatives bubble, to the tune of about 20 trillion dollars that’s about to burst. The price of gold has been manipulated, and the stock market’s ready to crash. And in fact, we had seen the Dow drop by almost 900 points in the three weeks prior to the attack. So, in point of fact, the economic crash was going to happen anyway. As a result of the attacks, now there are two benefits for the government: Number One, there is a convenient enemy upon whom to place the blame for the economic crash. And second, the legislation passed by Congress has unleashed a torrent of short term, and what are going to be extremely expensive, solutions which are keeping the US economic bubble inflated. This incentive: now it’s about 100 billion dollars so far I believe, between 40 for the military and another 60 in tax cuts, is robbing Peter to pay Paul. And I am absolutely convinced that Social Security is toast and this was their way to get their foot in the door on that.
RAMARES: Yes, but what about their plans to privatize Social Security? I don’t want my retirement in the stock market after what you’ve said and even what I saw before.
RUPPERT: I sure don’t either. You have to remember that the current Bush administration is a reincarnation of the administration we saw during Iran-Contra, and during the years of President Bush’s presidency from ’89 to ’93. These are the people who brought us the savings and loan crisis, which took $500 billion dollars out of US taxpayer pockets. These guys know how to loot an economy. There are very credible, well-documented stories from GAO [General Accounting Office] that have been written even in the Washington Times [a very conservative newspaper] showing that the Department of Defense has, and this is the right word, has lost more than three trillion dollars in the last two years. That money is not lost; it’s been stolen.
More than 59 billion dollars has been taken out of HUD [US Department of Housing and Urban Development]. There are monstrous economic costs which are going to fall on the American taxpayer. But they will not fall on the administration or its allies on Wall Street.
RAMARES: Speaking of Wall Street, it doesn’t feel like it’s a level playing field for the small investor, the person who has their kid’s college fund in something in Wall Street to try to make it grow.
RUPPERT: No. It absolutely is not. In 1929, some 15 percent of all the stock in circulation was owned by households. In 2001, 75 percent of the stock in circulation was owned by households. That tells you who’s carrying the burden.
If you look at some of the market activity in recent years, for example, two years ago, Goldman Sachs went public. And that means that households bought their stock but Goldman Sachs took the money and cashed out. There has been a strong trend in the movement of money by the very rich offshore, out of the country, into safe havens, so that when the bubble does break, it’ll be the taxpayer holding the bag.
RAMARES: Is Congress knocking on your door to look more into this? Are we going to see congressional hearings into possible knowledge of the CIA of the attacks? I mean we’re talking about they let mass murder happen.
RUPPERT: Yes . . . I have spoken confidentially to two members of the House of Representatives. And I have to tell you that my take on their view, and these are members who I consider to be allies and very progressive and awake: they’re basically frightened. The climate is one of near hysteria. There is an overwhelming attitude in the general public of wave the flag and kill the bad guys. And it’s not politically wise, I guess, in their viewpoint, to risk their careers by raising questions. But some of them have to and some of them must.
Everyday, there are more and more holes in all of the stories surrounding September 11, and this avoids people from looking at a broader agenda in Central Asia, which has to do with the drug trade and the oil. Bear in mind that Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.) has documented that 300 billion dollars a year in drug money moves through the US banking system. And that was in a minority report to the Senate Banking Committee released this February, I believe it was. But that money is now an integral component to sustaining the bubble. And that’s why we’re seeing CIA operatives moving willy-nilly into Uzbekistan, to give us immediately another Laos, just like we had in the Vietnam era with Air America planes flying with tons of heroin to markets in the US and Western Europe. And that’s what’s coming out of this. Also, there’s a huge grab for oil and a major pipeline to run from Uzbekistan down to the Pakistani coast, which will weaken Russia’s grip on the region. And I believe, long term, the economic motive is to Balkanize Russia. But members of Congress now faced with this are kind of overwhelmed. There have been a few voices speaking up here and there to oppose civil rights legislation that was punitive, to address issues of the war-making powers. But Congress needs to find its legs and its lungs real quickly.
FAULKNER: Michael Ruppert, this is Bonnie Faulkner. We have one minute left. You’ve mentioned when the bubble is going to burst. A lot of people think that the bubble has already burst . . .
RUPPERT: Oh no.
FAULKNER: What do you expect to see?
RUPPERT: I was already predicting that the Dow would be at 8,000 or below by the end of October. Now the . . . who knows what the short-term impacts of all of the money that’s being poured out of the Treasury are going to have. But bear in mind there is still a huge bubble. According to Russian economists—I was in Russia in March—there’s 300 trillion dollars in derivatives waiting to pop. Now what that means is one more good terrorist attack and we could really understand what a bubble is.
RAMARES: And the FBI has said watch out for terrorist attacks in the next few days and the CIA says that we’re at 100 percent risk of terrorist attacks. Give us your web site and little bit about your magazine for those who might be interested in learning more.
RUPPERT: OK, the web site is www dot cop v like in Victor CIA dot com. Copvcia.com. “From the Wilderness” is a newsletter we publish 11 times a year. We’re read in 17 countries, by 16 members of the US Congress, including the Intelligence Committees of both houses, as well as by professors at 11 universities in the US and Canada. It’s a monthly subscriber. The web site is free; the subscribers get a little more information and a little newer. But we take great pride in the fact that we document everything that we publish so we don’t ask anybody to take anything on faith.
RAMARES: OK, Thank you very much for joining us. You have been listening to Michael C. Ruppert, publisher of “From the Wilderness” magazine and author of an article on the CIA, the stock market and the terrorist attacks. Again his web site is www.copvcia.com. Again, thank you for joining us.
RUPPERT: My pleasure.
9/11 Attacks: Criminal Foreknowledge and Insider Trading Lead Directly to the CIA’s Highest Ranks
CIA Executive Director “Buzzy” Krongard managed Firm that handled
“Put” Options on UAL
We pay tribute to Michael C. Ruppert, author and former LAPD detective, who passed away on April 13.
The following text by Michael C. Ruppert published on GR in October 2001 brings to the forefront the issue of foreknowledge and insider trading pertaining to airline listings on the Chicago Board Options Exchange including United Airlines and American Airlines.
Suppressed Details of 9/11 Criminal Insider Trading lead directly into the CIA`s Highest Ranks
CIA Executive Director “Buzzy” Krongard managed Firm that handled “put” Options on UAL
by Michael C. Ruppert
FTW Publications, 9 October 2001, Centre for Research on Globalisation, globalresearch.ca, 20 October 2001
Although uniformly ignored by the mainstream U.S. media, there is abundant and clear evidence that a number of transactions in financial markets indicated specific (criminal) foreknowledge of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. That evidence also demonstrates that, in the case of at least one of these trades — which has left a $2.5 million prize unclaimed — the firm used to place the “put options” on United Airlines stock was, until 1998, managed by the man who is now in the number three Executive Director position at the Central Intelligence Agency. Until 1997 A.B. “Buzzy” Krongard had been Chairman of the investment bank A.B. Brown. A.B. Brown was acquired by Banker’s Trust in 1997. Krongard then became, as part of the merger, Vice Chairman of Banker’s Trust-AB Brown, one of 20 major U.S. banks named by Senator Carl Levin this year as being connected to money laundering. Krongard’s last position at Banker’s Trust (BT) was to oversee “private client relations.” In this capacity he had direct hands-on relations with some of the wealthiest people in the world in a kind of specialized banking operation that has been identified by the U.S. Senate and other investigators as being closely connected to the laundering of drug money.
Krongard (re?) joined the CIA in 1998 as counsel to CIA Director George Tenet. He was promoted to CIA Executive Director by President Bush in March of this year. BT was acquired by Deutsche Bank in 1999. The combined firm is the single largest bank in Europe. And, as we shall see, Deutsche Bank played several key roles in events connected to the September 11 attacks.
The Scope of Known Insider Trading
Before looking further into these relationships it is necessary to look at the insider trading information that is being ignored by Reuters, The New York Times and other mass media. It is well documented that the CIA has long monitored such trades – in real time – as potential warnings of terrorist attacks and other economic moves contrary to U.S. interests. Previous stories in FTW have specifically highlighted the use of Promis software to monitor such trades.
It is necessary to understand only two key financial terms to understand the significance of these trades. “Selling Short” is the borrowing of stock, selling it at current market prices, but not being required to actually produce the stock for some time. If the stock falls precipitously after the short contract is entered, the seller can then fulfill the contract by buying the stock after the price has fallen and complete the contract at the pre-crash price. These contracts often have a window of as long as four months. “Put Options,” purchased at nominal prices of, for example, $1.00 per share, are sold in blocks of 100 shares. If exercised, they give the holder the option of selling selected stocks at a future date at a price set when the contract is issued. Thus, for an investment of $10,000 it might be possible to tie up 10,000 shares of United or American Airlines at $100 per share, and the seller of the option is then obligated to buy them if the option is executed. If the stock has fallen to $50 when the contract matures, the holder of the option can purchase the shares for $50 and immediately sell them for $100 – regardless of where the market then stands.
A “call option” is the reverse of a put option, which is, in effect, a derivatives bet that the stock price will go up.
A September 21 story by the Israeli Herzliyya International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism, entitled “Black Tuesday: The World’s Largest Insider Trading Scam?” documented the following trades connected to the September 11 attacks:
- Between September 6 and 7, the Chicago Board Options Exchange saw purchases of 4,744 put options on United Airlines, but only 396 call options… Assuming that 4,000 of the options were bought by people with advance knowledge of the imminent attacks, these “insiders” would have profited by almost $5 million.
- On September 10, 4,516 put options on American Airlines were bought on the Chicago exchange, compared to only 748 calls. Again, there was no news at that point to justify this imbalance;… Again, assuming that 4,000 of these options trades represent “insiders,” they would represent a gain of about $4 million.
- [The levels of put options purchased above were more than six times higher than normal.]
- No similar trading in other airlines occurred on the Chicago exchange in the days immediately preceding Black Tuesday.
- Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co., which occupied 22 floors of the World Trade Center, saw 2,157 of its October $45 put options bought in the three trading days before Black Tuesday; this compares to an average of 27 contracts per day before September 6. Morgan Stanley’s share price fell from $48.90 to $42.50 in the aftermath of the attacks. Assuming that 2,000 of these options contracts were bought based upon knowledge of the approaching attacks, their purchasers could have profited by at least $1.2 million.
- Merrill Lynch & Co., which occupied 22 floors of the World Trade Center, saw 12,215 October $45 put options bought in the four trading days before the attacks; the previous average volume in those shares had been 252 contracts per day [a 1200% increase!]. When trading resumed, Merrill’s shares fell from $46.88 to $41.50; assuming that 11,000 option contracts were bought by “insiders,” their profit would have been about $5.5 million.
- European regulators are examining trades in Germany’s Munich Re, Switzerland’s Swiss Re, and AXA of France, all major reinsurers with exposure to the Black Tuesday disaster. [FTW Note: AXA also owns more than 25% of American Airlines stock making the attacks a “double whammy” for them.]
On September 29, 2001 – in a vital story that has gone unnoticed by the major media – the San Francisco Chronicle reported, “Investors have yet to collect more than $2.5 million in profits they made trading options in the stock of United Airlines before the Sept. 11, terrorist attacks, according to a source familiar with the trades and market data.
“The uncollected money raises suspicions that the investors – whose identities and nationalities have not been made public – had advance knowledge of the strikes.” They don’t dare show up now. The suspension of trading for four days after the attacks made it impossible to cash-out quickly and claim the prize before investigators started looking.
“… October series options for UAL Corp. were purchased in highly unusual volumes three trading days before the terrorist attacks for a total outlay of $2,070; investors bought the option contracts, each representing 100 shares, for 90 cents each. [This represents 230,000 shares]. Those options are now selling at more than $12 each. There are still 2,313 so-called “put” options outstanding [valued at $2.77 million and representing 231,300 shares] according to the Options Clearinghouse Corp.”
“…The source familiar with the United trades identified Deutsche Bank Alex. Brown, the American investment banking arm of German giant Deutsche Bank, as the investment bank used to purchase at least some of these options…”
As reported in other news stories, Deutsche Bank was also the hub of insider trading activity connected to Munich Re. just before the attacks.
CIA, the Banks and the Brokers
Understanding the interrelationships between CIA and the banking and brokerage world is critical to grasping the already frightening implications of the above revelations. Let’s look at the history of CIA, Wall Street and the big banks by looking at some of the key players in CIA’s history. Clark Clifford – The National Security Act of 1947 was written by Clark Clifford, a Democratic Party powerhouse, former Secretary of Defense, and one-time advisor to President Harry Truman. In the 1980s, as Chairman of First American Bancshares, Clifford was instrumental in getting the corrupt CIA drug bank BCCI a license to operate on American shores. His profession: Wall Street lawyer and banker.
John Foster and Allen Dulles – These two brothers “designed” the CIA for Clifford. Both were active in intelligence operations during WW II. Allen Dulles was the U.S. Ambassador to Switzerland where he met frequently with Nazi leaders and looked after U.S. investments in Germany. John Foster went on to become Secretary of State under Dwight Eisenhower and Allen went on to serve as CIA Director under Eisenhower and was later fired by JFK. Their professions: partners in the most powerful – to this day – Wall Street law firm of Sullivan, Cromwell.
Bill Casey – Ronald Reagan’s CIA Director and OSS veteran who served as chief wrangler during the Iran-Contra years was, under President Richard Nixon, Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. His profession: Wall Street lawyer and stockbroker.
David Doherty – The current Vice President of the New York Stock Exchange for enforcement is the retired General Counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency.
George Herbert Walker Bush – President from 1989 to January 1993, also served as CIA Director for 13 months from 1976-7. He is now a paid consultant to the Carlyle Group, the 11th largest defense contractor in the nation, and which shares joint investments with the bin Laden family.
A.B. “Buzzy” Krongard – The current Executive Director of the Central Intelligence Agency is the former Chairman of the investment bank A.B. Brown and former Vice Chairman of Banker’s Trust.
John Deutch – This retired CIA Director from the Clinton Administration currently sits on the board at Citigroup, the nation’s second largest bank, which has been repeatedly and overtly involved in the documented laundering drug money. This includes Citigroup’s 2001 purchase of a Mexican bank known to launder drug money, Banamex.
Nora Slatkin – This retired CIA Executive Director also sits on Citibank’s board.
Maurice “Hank” Greenburg – The CEO of AIG insurance, manager of the third largest capital investment pool in the world, was floated as a possible CIA Director in 1995. FTW exposed Greenberg’s and AIG’s long connection to CIA drug trafficking and covert operations in a two-part series that was interrupted just prior to the attacks of September 11. AIG’s stock has bounced back remarkably well since the attacks. To read that story, please go tohttp://www.copvcia.com/stories/part_2.html.
One wonders how much damning evidence is necessary to respond to what is now irrefutable proof that CIA knew about the attacks and did not stop them. Whatever our government is doing, whatever the CIA is doing, it is clearly NOT in the interests of the American people, especially those who died on September 11.
The original URL of this article is:
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/RUP110A.html
Liberty Beacon Radio Covers Geoengineering
The walls are closing in around us all. The ongoing climate engineering is the most direct assault we face. In this episode of Liberty Beacon radio, host Roger Landry and guest Dane Wigington discuss the full ramifications of the lethal climate engineering on the wider global picture.
Listen to MP3 audio: http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/audioPop.jsp?episodeId=848546&cmd=apop
Out of control: Fukushima manager admits to ‘embarrassing failure’
The manager of the stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant has admitted not having full control of the facility. Contrary to the statements of the Japanese PM, TEPCO’s Akira Ono said attempts to plug the leaks of radioactive water had failed.
“It’s embarrassing to admit, but there are certain parts of the site where we don’t have full control,” Ono told reporters touring the plant this week, reported Reuters. Last year, the Japanese PM attempted to assure the world that the situation at the stricken nuclear power plant was under control.
However, over the last couple of months the clean-up procedure at the plant has been fraught with difficulties.
Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), the plant’s operator, has consistently faced contaminated water leaks at the Fukushima plant.
Water has to be pumped over the facilities stricken reactors in order to keep them from overheating, but this process creates large quantities of contaminated water which has to be stored in tanks on the site.
Ono acknowledged to press that in TEPCO’s rush to deal with the stricken facility following the earthquake-triggered tsunami in 2011, the company may have made mistakes.
“It may sound odd, but this is the bill we have to pay for what we have done in the past three years,” he said. “But we were pressed to build tanks in a rush and may have not paid enough attention to quality. We need to improve quality from here.”
TEPCO will have to improve the quality of the tanks so the plant can survive the next 30-40 years of the decommissioning process, Ono went on to say.
The plant’s manager said that the number one aim was to keep the radioactive water from getting into the ocean.
“The ultimate purpose is to prevent contaminated water from going out to the ocean, and in this regard, I believe it is under control,” Ono said. But a series of leaks have obliged officials to “find better ways to handle the water problem.”
In the latest blunder at the plant, TEPCO mistakenly flooded the Fukushima facility’s basements with radioactive cooling-tank water. Earlier this week the Japanese newspaper the Asahi Shimbun reported that around 200 tons of water had found its way into waste disposal facilities under the power plant. TEPCO said they were working to fix the leakage as soon as possible.
Cleaning up Fukushima is becoming an increasing headache for the Japanese authorities. Experts predict that fully decommissioning the stricken plant is a process that could take decades, costing the country billions of dollars.
Following the multiple meltdown of the Fukushima plant in 2011 that was triggered by a tsunami, the Japanese government pledged to abandon nuclear power by 2010. However, in spite of public outrage, the government was forced to reactivate its nuclear power plants because of massive energy shortfalls.
US Fracking Boom Creating Crisis of Illegal Toxic Dumping
Toxic materials from gas drilling industry creating ‘legacy of radioactivity’
Industrial waste from fracking sites is leaving a “legacy of radioactivity” across the country as the drilling boom churns out more and more toxic byproducts with little to no oversight of the disposal process, critics warn.
According to a new report in Bloomberg Wednesday, the controversial oil and gas drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing is “spinning off thousands of tons of low-level radioactive trash,” which has spawned a “surge” in illegal dumping at hundreds of sites in the U.S..
“We have many more wells, producing at an accelerating rate, and for each of them there’s a higher volume of waste,” Avner Vengosh, a professor of geochemistry at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, told Bloomberg. Without proper handling, “we are actually building up a legacy of radioactivity in hundreds of points where people have had leaks or spills around the country.”
Bloomberg reports:
Some states allow the contaminated material to be buried at the drill site. Some is hauled away, with varying requirements for tracking the waste. Some ends up in roadside ditches, garbage dumpsters or is taken to landfills in violation of local rules, said Scott Radig, director of the North Dakota Health Department’s Division of Waste Management.
In that state’s Bakken oilfields, “it’s a wink-and-a-nod situation,” said Darrell Dorgan, a spokesman for the North Dakota Energy Industry Waste Coalition, a group lobbying for stricter rules. “There’s hundreds of thousands of square miles in northwestern North Dakota and a lot of it is isolated. Nobody’s looking at where all of it is going.”
In one recent example piles of garbage bags filled with radioactive debris from a nearby site —including radioactive filter socks that are used to strain wastewater from wells—were found in an abandoned building in North Dakota.
Fracking for oil and gas is particularly radioactive because of shale rock, “the dense formations found to hold immense reserves of gas and oil,” Bloomberg reports. “Shale often contains higher levels of radium—a chemical element used in industrial X-ray diagnostics and cancer treatments—than traditional oil fields.”
Those radioactive elements often mix with wastewater and a list of undisclosed chemicals used in the process. Past reports have shown that water treatment does little to clean this toxic water. In one recent case, wastewater from a hydraulic fracturing site in Pennsylvania, which is treated and released into local streams, was found to have elevated levels of radioactivity in the public water supply.
When radioactive fracking waste is not dumped illegally or buried on site, it is brought with other waste to landfills, but the skyrocketing amounts of fracking waste are pushing those sites to their limits.
“West Virginia landfills accepted 721,000 tons of drilling debris in 2013, a figure that doesn’t include loads rejected because they topped radiation limits,” reports Bloomberg. And in Pennsylvania the industry sent 1.3 million tons to landfills last year, including 16,000 tons of radioactive material.
While some states such as North Dakota scramble to deal with the growing problem, the list of reasons to halt the fracking industry altogether may become more enticing.
A report released on Monday found fracking sites are emitting up to 1000 times the amount of methane than federal regulators previously reported.
Methane is a greenhouse gas that is up to 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
Editorial: “Poverty and Hunger Is Selective…” by Bob of Occupy
Reader, I woke up this morning, turned on the Corporate Enabling Media only to discover that student athletes are going to bed hungry in this country at prestigious colleges and universities.
No Division I college athlete should never go to bed “starving” again. Following a meeting of its Legislative Council on Tuesday, the NCAA announced the removal of meal and snack restrictions on Division I athletes, according to NCAA associate director of communications Michelle Brutlag Hosick.
Whereas previously student-athletes were afforded only three meals per day, they will now have unlimited access to meals provided by on-campus facilities. The privilege will extend to walk-on athletes as well.
Headline news this morning on MSNBC. These starving students will now have “unlimited meals and snacks”. Snacks mind you! Unlimited!
Sometimes, my mind reels at our perverted sense of priorities as a nation. Poverty in this country is at a higher percentage than it has been for decades. Children are going to school and bed hungry. The homeless population has increased. More and more of the dying middle class are joining their ranks. The US Congress had an answer to this dilemma_to cut Food Stamps programs.
Does that even send a momentary synapsis to the frontal lobes of our brains or do we just move on to the next diversion that grabs our frenetic minds or to that dark and worn down gully we call our daily grinding routines?
What does this say about our society? We care more about college athletes on sports scholarships than we do about children, old people, and the homeless among us?
Among those in our institutes of higher learning we are hearing repeated over and over again that the number one determinant of educational failure is Poverty, and that leads to an increase in the prison population and to the coffers of the Prison-Industrial Complex.
And yet, an $875 million dollar a year sports council can open their food lockers to their “starving student athletes” while the US Congress can only slam shut theirs because…why?
And, by the way, that very same Congress has chosen to cut off extending unemployment benefits for working American families who lost their jobs due to the sociopathic gambling of the 1% whose stock portfolios have increased exponentially and who have received bailouts not only from the American people but also from their friendly banksters-cohorts at the Federal Reserve. Corporate welfare for the 1% and “lump it” (I can’t say “fuck you”_guess I just did, huh?) for the 99%.
Is it because these student athletes might just be the source of more revenues for investors down the line? Or is it that these student athletes might be the source of one more star-studded, celebrity-driven diversion for the Masses to take their minds off of their woeful economic conditions while our dystopian culture continues to rush headlong over the cliff of common sense, compassion, cooperation, and community?
–Bob of Occupy
Death of the Bees: Two-Thirds of European Honeybee Pollen Contaminated by Dozens of Pesticides
More than two-thirds of the pollen that honeybees collect from European fields is contaminated by a cocktail of up to 17 different toxic pesticides. These are the shocking findings of a new study released yesterday.
In addition to pesticides-related chemicals, the report also identifies substances used in insecticides, acaricides, fungicides and herbicides, produced by agrochemical companies like Bayer, Syngenta and BASF. To mark the release of the report and protest against the chemical industry’s role in bee decline, more than 20 activists unfurled a giant banner outside the headquarters of Bayer, in Germany.
The study, The Bees’ Burden: An analysis of pesticide residues in comb pollen (beebread) and trapped pollen from honey bees, is the largest of its kind, comprising more than 100 samples from 12 European countries. In total 53 different chemicals were detected.
The study is a snapshot of the toxicity of Europe’s current agricultural system. It demonstrates the high concentrations and wide range of fungicides found in pollen collected around vineyards in Italy, the widespread use of bee-killing insecticides in pollen from rape fields in Poland, the detection of DDE—a derivative of DDT—a pesticide banned decades ago, and the frequent detection of the insect nerve-poison Thiacloprid, a neonicotinoid, in many samples from Germany.
“This study on contaminated pollen reveals the unbearable burden of bees and other vital pollinators,” said Matthias Wüthrich, a Greenpeace ecological farming campaigner. “Bees are exposed to a cocktail of toxic pesticides. This is yet more proof that there is something fundamentally wrong in the current agricultural model which is based on the intensive use of toxic pesticides, large-scale monocultures and corporate control of farming by a few companies like Bayer, Syngenta & Co. It shows the need for a fundamental shift towards ecological farming.”
The report confirms the findings of a recent study carried out by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). In its study, EFSA acknowledges vast knowledge gaps related to the health of bees and pollinators, including on the effects of chemical “cocktails,” and calls on the EU and national governments to fill this gap with further scientific investigation.
In light of its findings on pollen contamination and following EFSA’s recommendations,
- Extend the scope of restrictions already imposed on the use of certain pesticides harmful to bees, namely clothianidin, imidacloprid, thiamethoxam and fipronil, so that their use is completely banned.
- Fully ban all other pesticides harmful to bees and other pollinators (including chlorpyrifos, cypermethrin and deltamethrin).
- Set ambitious Europe-wide action plans to better assess pesticide impacts on pollinators and reduce their use.
- Encourage research and development of non-chemical alternatives to pest management and promote the widespread implementation of ecological farming practices on the ground.
Global Peasant Movement Exemplifies Power of Organized Humanity
Commemorating the International Day of Peasant Struggle
Thousands of Palestinians Rally for Release of 5,000 in Israeli Jails, Including 200 Children
As talks between Israel and Palestine falter, thousands of Palestinians demonstratedThursday on behalf of nearly 5,000 Palestinians imprisoned by Israeli Occupation authorities in 22 Israeli jails, many of them arbitrarily. They include 184 minors and 175 persons being held without any due process.
Many prisoners are subject to “moderate physical pressure,” solitary confinement or on bans from being visited by their families. Some 1400 of the Palestinian prisoners are ill.
Saeb Ereikat, a Palestinian politician and negotiator, said, “The plight of the prisoners reflects the plight of the Palestinian people as a whole.”
The Israeli military routinely arrests Palestinians for peaceably protesting the theft of their land, water and other resources by illegal Israeli squatters. Often they take away minors, and sometimes they haul off the parents without any regard for what will happen to their small children. The 1949 Geneva Convention on the treatment of people in occupied territories forbids the Occupying power from expropriating locals and from flooding its own population into the Occupied territories.
Some 30 Palestinians are still being held in Israeli prisons since before the Oslo Peace Accords of 1993. As part of those accords, Israel had committed to releasing them, but it never has. Palestinians made it a requirement of their participation in the current round of talks (which began last August) that Israel finally abide by this commitment. Israel did release some 78 of these long-term prisoners, but declined to let the last batch go. As a result, Palestine signed the Geneva Conventions and other UN human rights treaties and instruments, a step preparatory to going to the International Criminal Court over Israel’s systematic war crimes in the Occupied Territories. That step in turn caused the talks to collapse. Sec. of State John Kerry blamed Israeli continued squatting activity along with the reneging on the prisoner release for the faltering of negotiations.
Some 4/5s of the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are from the West Bank. Only 9% or so are from the Gaza Strip.
Since 1967, when Israel seized the West Bank and Gaza, some 800,000 Palestinians have circulated through Israeli jails, about 13,000 of them women.
Thursday’s protests were also held abroad, including in Argentina, where there is a large Arab immigrant population.
Clashes during mass eviction in crisis-hit Rome
Riot police clashed with 350 squatter families as security forces evicted people from abandoned offices in Rome. This is the latest incident in the rising tide of violence over the mounting economic crisis.
A few people were injured in the clashes as security forces armed with truncheons broke through a crowd of protesters outside. The squatters barricaded themselves inside the building and took to the roof.
Around 100-150 officers entered the building and dragged the residents out, an AFP photographer reported. The families were put into 10 police vans.
The squatters complained about the violence the police inflicted on them.
“They broke in, throwing our belongings out of the window, dragging us along the floor and kicking those who resisted,” one squatter, who did not want to be named, told La Repubblica daily.
“They clubbed us wildly, it was brutal,” Cristiano Armati, a member of the Coordinamento association which had helped occupy the building, told AFP by telephone from hospital, where he was being treated for a broken elbow and cuts to the head.
“It doesn’t end here though. The fight for housing rights will go on,” Armati added.
Another protester was reported to have a broken leg.
It came nine days after the squatters first occupied the building, which is a former state-owned insurance agency.
Currently, 90 properties in Rome are occupied by squatters, and 3,346 evictions were carried in the first six months of 2013 – a 10 percent jump from the first half of 2012 – the city council stated.
The squatters represent a mix of Italians and immigrants, many of whom lost their jobs in the economic crisis.
Meanwhile, Italy’s Panorama magazine investigated property that is currently empty during the crisis, and put the number at 50,000.
To deal with the housing crisis, the government started a new housing plan in March, pledging to double rent subsidies for low earners to 200 million euros ($280 million) for 2014 and 2015. However, the plan came under fire, with critics saying that the sums aren’t enough to tackle the problem.
People deploy a banner reading “Our plan for Housing – Occupy Everything” during the occupation of a building by associations that campaigns for housing rights on April 16, 2014 in Rome (AFP Photo / Alberto Pizzoli)
Ecuadorian Military Breaks Yasunidos Blockade
Yasunidos Defends Signatures and Denounces Electoral Irregularities
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE | April 17, 2014
For more information, contact:
Leila Salazar-López, 510.281.9020 ext 303, leila@amazonwatch.org
Adam Zuckerman, 207.838.5806, adam@amazonwatch.org
Quito, Ecuador – Just five days after turning in more than enough signatures to qualify for a national referendum to stop oil drilling plans in a critical part of Ecuador’s Yasuni National Park, Yasunidos, the civil society collective spearheading the grassroots effort is denouncing what appear to be egregious irregularities by the National Election Commission (CNE).
According to Yasunidos, the chain of custody of the boxes with more than 755,000 signatures was broken. In a visit to the CNE yesterday, members of Yasunidos discovered boxes of signatures with seals broken and tops off. The boxes only were to be opened in front of a monitoring team trained by CNE and organized by Yasunidos. The National Electoral Commission, appointed by the government, has 30 days to verify the signatures.
“The chain of custody is a critical component of ensuring a transparent and non-partisan process, Esperanza Martinez, a member of Yasunidos and president of Acción Ecológica. “We are asking the CNE to explain why the chain of custody was broken. We will not continue with the process until we are satisfied with their explanation,” she declared.
As soon as word got out this morning that the Ecuadorian military was attempting to remove boxes of signatures from the CNE headquarters, Yasunidos put out a call to defend signatures asking supporters to contact President Correa, CNE and Ecuadorian Embassies around the world. Yasunidos mobilized and blocked military trucks for hours. The military has now begun to remove some boxes and said that they are taking them to a site at the former national airport where counting and verifying will begin.
Additionally, irregularities have surfaced over the copies of national IDs of signature gatherers. The CNE appears to have “misplaced” or “lost” photocopies of the national IDs of over one hundred signature gatherers. The copy is a requirement for signature gatherers, and the lack of the photocopy ID would result in the nullification of every signature they gathered. In total, that number could be over one hundred thousand, which would put the collective very close to the minimum 600,000 or 5% of the population needed to force the referendum. According to the CNE, Yasunidos only turned in 1,275 copies of IDs, while collective claims they submitted 1,426. But, in a telling example, the photocopy of Esperanza Martinez’s ID was said to not have been turned in, only to be found later.
“It is extremely troubling to see these kinds of irregularities so soon into the verification process. It calls into question whether the CNE can indeed be objective and non-partisan. The eyes of the world are watching – this is a critical moment for Ecuador’s democracy and the credibility of Correa’s administration,” said Kevin Koenig, Ecuador Program Director of Amazon Watch.
Over the 6 months that Yasunidos had to collect signatures, members of the collective reported repression and intimidation from the government and supporters of drilling. The Correa administration and local municipalities sought to restrict where signatures could be collected, and launched its own pro-drilling signature gathering effort that had little public support, but copied Yasunidos’ materials to confuse citizens trying to sign in favor of defending Yasuní.
President Correa challenged Yasuni supporters to get the needed signatures in a national television address after announcing drilling plans. “If you want a referendum, don’t be lazy, go get the signatures,” he told the nation. Now, the government is in the uncomfortable position that the issue may indeed be up for a vote.
In August of last year, Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa abandoned its revolutionary plan which had sought to keep the ITT (Ishpingo, Tambococha, Tiputini) oil fields permanently in the ground in exchange for international financial contributions to help offset the country’s forgone revenues. In August, perhaps due to pressure from China, he authorized drilling. In response, thousands of Ecuadorians have taken to the streets to collect signatures and defend Yasuní ITT, the most biodiverse and culturally fragile part of Yasuní National Park, an area of extremely high biodiversity located in the Amazon region of Ecuador. The park was declared a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 1989 and contains what are thought to be the greatest number of plant and animal species anywhere on the planet including one of the biggest populations of jaguars. It is also home to numerous indigenous peoples including two nomadic Waorani clans, the Tagaeri and Taromenane, who shun contact with the outside world.
17 Apr 2014
All links are here:
http://www.legitgov.org/#breaking_news
I’m Confused, Can Anyone Help Me?
By Neil Clark
Why was the occupation of government buildings in Ukraine a very good thing in January, but it is a very bad thing in April? Continue
The Mass Marketing Campaign For World War III
By Paul Joseph Watson
The establishment has begun a new mass marketing campaign for World War III, equating Vladimir Putin with Adolf Hitler. Continue
Congress Investigates “Slush Fund”
USAID Used To Get Lawmakers To Pass Reforms
By Jonathan Turley
It appears that in the handshake shown on the USAID seal, there is often a sawbuck or two in the palm. Continue
Friedman Prepares American Jews for a Divorce from Zealot Israel
By Philip Weiss
Here are two pieces in the mainstream press that reflect the paradigm shift that is upon us with the smashup of the Kerry effort. Continue
BBC In The Service Of Israeli Propaganda
By Amena Saleem
“There is no mandate to report every killing.” Continue
Ron Paul Warns that Bundy Ranch Standoff isn’t Over Just Yet
By Russia Today
“They may come back with a lot more force like they did at Waco with the Davidians,” Continue
Ukraine Crisis: Geneva Talks Produce Agreement On Defusing Conflict
By Julian Borger in Geneva
US, Russia, Ukraine and EU agree measures including end of violence, disarming of illegal groups and amnesty for protesters. Continue
Ukraine Agreement: ‘Propaganda’ and Low Expectations?
By IP Accuracy
The problem is that Kiev authorities do not control all neo-Nazi or radical nationalist groups who refused to disarm. Continue
Putin’s Annual Q&A Session 2014
Full Video – English
It’s hard to negotiate with European leaders who choose to whisper even at home amid fears of the US spying on them – Putin. Continue
Nato’s Action Plan in Ukraine is Right Out of Dr Strangelove
By John Pilger
From China to Ukraine, the US is pursuing its longstanding ambition to dominate the Eurasian landmass. Continue
By Patrick Cockburn
The removal of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence chief may signal an effort to reorganise the opposition to President Bashar al-Assad. Continue
Why Israeli Officials are Chuckling
By Ramzy Baroud
Palestinians should be leading their own revolution until they achieve their full rights and freedom. Continue
PA To Fall By End Of Year, Says Palestinian Minister
By Jack Khoury and Barak Ravid
“The PA has no problem giving the keys to Israel, to let Israel oversee administration of Palestinians’ civil affairs, so that Israel can bear the responsibility for the failure of the peace process.” Continue
Privatization Is A Ramp For Corruption and Insouciance Is a Ramp for War
By Paul Craig Roberts
Putin’s hope for a diplomatic solution is unrealistic. The NATO governments are bought-and-paid-for by Washington. Continue
Up Close, Personal, and Bloody
How America’s Wars Came Home With the Troops
By Ann Jones
Since 2002, soldiers and veterans have been committing murder individually and in groups, killing wives, girlfriends, children, fellow soldiers, friends, acquaintances, complete strangers, and — in appalling numbers — themselves. Continue
By G. William Domhoff
“The Triumph of the Corporate Rich,” reflects the success of the wealthy few in defeating all of their rivals (e.g., organized labor, liberals, environmentalists) over the course of the past 35 years. Continue
LA Sheriff’s Dept. On New Surveillance Program
We Knew The Public Wouldn’t Like It, So We Kept It A Secret
By Tim Cushing
The system, known as wide-area surveillance, is something of a time machine – the entire city is filmed and recorded in real time. Continue
April 17, 2014
- AETHER Relativistic Perturbation Mantle – “I have made a discovery in Lightning physics that revealed the very centerpiece of our worlds.” (Free Energy Blog; April 17, 2014)
|
April 16, 2014
- More on Krstan (QMoGen) – Krstan is a credible inventor with a long history. The [QMoGen] received a bronze award on the international innovation fair in Belgrade, 2012. The device is a 6th generation. (Free Energy Blog; April 16, 2014)
|
- Sterling on Alphabetics – Interview with Ethann Fox of Awake and Empowered Radio in February, 2014. Overview of end times prophecies and parables about them; including the role that free energy technology plays. (Free Energy Blog; April 16, 2014)
|
|
Bankers Are Behind the Wars
All Wars Are Bankers’ Wars
Former managing director of Goldman Sachs – and head of the international analytics group at Bear Stearns in London (Nomi Prins) – notes:
Throughout the century that I examined, which began with the Panic of 1907 … what I found by accessing the archives of each president is thatthrough many events and periods, particular bankers were in constant communication [with the White House] — not just about financial and economic policy, and by extension trade policy, but alsoabout aspects of World War I, or World War II, or the Cold War, in terms of the expansion that America was undergoing as a superpower in the world, politically, buoyed by the financial expansion of the banking community.
In the beginning of World War I, Woodrow Wilson had adopted initially a policy of neutrality. But the Morgan Bank, which was the most powerful bank at the time, andwhich wound up funding over 75 percent of the financing for the allied forces during World War I … pushed Wilson out of neutrality sooner than he might have done, because of their desire to be involved on one side of the war.
Now, on the other side of that war, for example, was the National City Bank, which, though they worked with Morgan in financing the French and the British, they also didn’t have a problem working with financing some things on the German side, as did Chase …
When Eisenhower became president … the U.S. was undergoing this expansion by providing, under his doctrine, military aid and support to countries [under] the so-called threat of being taken over by communism … What bankers did was they opened up hubs, in areas such as Cuba, in areas such as Beirut and Lebanon, where the U.S. also wanted to gain a stronghold in their Cold War fight against the Soviet Union. And so the juxtaposition of finance and foreign policy were very much aligned.
So in the ‘70s, it became less aligned, because though America was pursuing foreign policy initiatives in terms of expansion, the bankers found oil, and they made an extreme effort to activate relationships in the Middle East, that then the U.S. government followed. For example, in Saudi Arabia and so forth, they get access to oil money, and then recycle it into Latin American debt and other forms of lending throughout the globe. So that situation led the U.S. government.
Indeed, JP Morgan also purchased control over America’s leading 25 newspapers in order to propagandize US public opinion in favor of US entry into World War 1.
And many big banks did, in fact, fund the Nazis.
The BBC reported in 1998:
Barclays Bank has agreed to pay $3.6m to Jews whose assets were seized from French branches of the British-based bank during World War II.
***
Chase Manhattan Bank, which has acknowledged seizing about 100 accounts held by Jews in its Paris branch during World War II ….”Recently unclassified reports from the US Treasury about the activities of Chase in Paris in the 1940s indicate that the local branch worked “in close collaboration with the German authorities” in freezing Jewish assets.
The New York Daily News noted the same year:
The relationship between Chase and the Nazis apparently was so cozy that Carlos Niedermann, the Chase branch chief in Paris, wrote his supervisor in Manhattan thatthe bank enjoyed “very special esteem” with top German officials and “a rapid expansion of deposits,” according to Newsweek.
Niedermann’s letter was written in May 1942 five months after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the U.S. also went to war with Germany.
The BBC reported in 1999:
A French government commission, investigating the seizure of Jewish bank accounts during the Second World War, says five American banks Chase Manhattan, J.P Morgan, Guaranty Trust Co. of New York, Bank of the City of New York and American Express had taken part.
It says their Paris branches handed over to the Nazi occupiers about one-hundred such accounts.
One of Britain’s main newspapers – the Guardian – reported in 2004:
George Bush’s grandfather [and George H.W. Bush’s father], the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.
The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.
His business dealings … continued until his company’s assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act
***
The documents reveal that the firm he worked for, Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH), acted as a US base for the German industrialist, Fritz Thyssen, who helped finance Hitler in the 1930s before falling out with him at the end of the decade. The Guardian has seen evidence that shows Bush was the director of the New York-based Union Banking Corporation (UBC) that represented Thyssen’s US interests and he continued to work for the bank after America entered the war.
***
Bush was a founding member of the bank [UBC] … The bank was set up by Harriman and Bush’s father-in-law to provide a US bank for the Thyssens, Germany’s most powerful industrial family.
***
By the late 1930s, Brown Brothers Harriman, which claimed to be the world’s largest private investment bank, and UBC had bought and shipped millions of dollars of gold, fuel, steel, coal and US treasury bonds to Germany, both feeding and financing Hitler’s build-up to war.
Between 1931 and 1933 UBC bought more than $8m worth of gold, of which $3m was shipped abroad. According to documents seen by the Guardian, after UBC was set up it transferred $2m to BBH accounts and between 1924 and 1940 the assets of UBC hovered around $3m, dropping to $1m only on a few occasions.
***
UBC was caught red-handed operating a American shell company for the Thyssen family eight months after America had entered the war and that this was the bank that had partly financed Hitler’s rise to power.
Indeed, banks often finance both sides of wars:
(The San Francisco Chronicle also documents that leading financiers Rockefeller, Carnegie and Harriman also funded Nazi eugenics programs … but that’s a story for another day.)
The Federal Reserve and other central banks also help to start wars by financing them .
The most decorated American military man in history said that war is a racket, and noted:
Let us not forget the bankers who financed the great war. If anyone had the cream of the profits it was the bankers.
The big banks have also been laundering money for terrorists. The big bank employee who blew the whistle on the banks’ money laundering for terrorists and drug cartels says that the giant bank is still aiding terrorists, saying:
The public needs to know that money is still being funneled through HSBC to directly buy guns and bullets to kill our soldiers …. Banks financing … terrorists affects every single American.
He also said:
It is disgusting that our banks are STILL financing terror on 9/11 2013.
And see this.
According to the BBC and other sources, Prescott Bush, JP Morgan and other leading financiers also funded a coup against President Franklin Roosevelt in an attempt – basically – to implement fascism in the U.S. See this, this, this and this.
Kevin Zeese writes:
Americans are recognizing the link between the military-industrial complex and the Wall Street oligarchs—a connection that goes back to the beginning of the modern U.S. empire. Banks have always profited from war because the debt created by banks results in ongoing war profit for big finance; and because wars have been used to open countries to U.S. corporate and banking interests. Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan wrote: “the large banking interests were deeply interested in the world war because of the wide opportunities for large profits.”
Many historians now recognize that a hidden history for U.S. entry into World War I was to protect U.S. investors. U.S. commercial interests had invested heavily in European allies before the war: “By 1915, American neutrality was being criticized as bankers and merchants began to loan money and offer credits to the warring parties, although the Central Powers received far less. Between 1915 and April 1917, the Allies received 85 times the amount loaned to Germany.” The total dollars loaned to all Allied borrowers during this period was $2,581,300,000. The bankers saw that if Germany won, their loans to European allies would not be repaid. The leading U.S. banker of the era, J.P. Morgan and his associates did everything they could to push the United States into the war on the side of England and France. Morgan said: “We agreed that we should do all that was lawfully in our power to help the Allies win the war as soon as possible.” President Woodrow Wilson, who campaigned saying he would keep the United States out of war, seems to have entered the war to protect U.S. banks’ investments in Europe.
The most decorated Marine in history, Smedley Butler, described fighting for U.S. banks in many of the wars he fought in. He said: “I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”
In Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins describes how World Bank and IMF loans are used to generate profits for U.S. business and saddle countries with huge debts that allow the United States to control them. It is not surprising that former civilian military leaders like Robert McNamara and Paul Wolfowitz went on to head the World Bank. These nations’ debt to international banks ensures they are controlled by the United States, which pressures them into joining the “coalition of the willing” that helped invade Iraq or allowing U.S. military bases on their land. If countries refuse to “honor” their debts, the CIA or Department of Defense enforces U.S. political will through coups or military action.
***
More and more people are indeed seeing the connection between corporate banksterism and militarism ….
Indeed, all wars are bankers’ wars.
The corporate media is focused on the question of how or if Iran could ever break out of its promise under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to eschew nuclear weapons to use reactors only for civilian purposes. So many headlines refer to sanctions imposed against Iran that millions of people mistakenly think Iran has a nuclear arsenal. It doesn’t.
Meanwhile the Congress in January fully funded production of a new B61 thermonuclear gravity bomb, a program dubbed “Life Extension.” This year’s $537 million is the down payment on the 12th version of the B61 that the millionaires in DC agreed should get $11 billion over the next few years.
Dubbed the “solid gold nuke” by critics, the 700-lb. H-bomb is running $28 million apiece at the moment. That much gold bullion is only worth $16 million.
The program to replace today’s B61s with a new “mod12,” is being condemned by our allies in NATO, by Congressional budget hawks and of course by the entire arms control community. Even former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. James Cartwright has said the bombs are “practically nil” in military value. (Gen. Cartwright only is partly right: Since it seems the Department of Defense is in the business of producing suicides by the thousands, among veterans and active duty soldiers, the suicidal mission of deploying B61s across Europe — for detonation there — seems a perfectly ghastly fit.)
“This decision represents the triumph of entrenched nuclear interests over good government. The B-61 is no longer relevant for U.S. national security, but continues to rob billions of dollars from programs that would make America safer,” President Joe Cirincione of the Ploughshares Fund told Hans M. Kristensen for the Federation of American Scientists.
Kristensen reported March 12 that the Pentagon has decided that the new B61 will begin its deployment in Europe next year.
This 300-to-500 kiloton “variable yield” thermonuclear device has 24 to 40 times the destructive power of the US bomb that killed 170,000 people at Hiroshima in 1945. Still, this machine’s threat of meaningless, genocidal, radioactive violence is called “tactical.”
Rush to Deploy New H-bomb Before It’s Killed by Public Opposition
The Air Force budget makes it appear that the older B61s will all be replaced — in Turkey, Italy, Belgium, The Netherlands and Germany — by 2020. This rush job is being hustled through the military-industrial-complex in a very big hurry because the broad international condemnation of the program is gaining depth and breadth.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., along with Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., and Rep Jared Polis, D-Colo., tried to curtail the program last year. Five NATO partners — Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, The Netherlands and Norway — asked four years ago that all B61s be removed permanently from Europe. In Germany, every major political party has formally resolved to pursue final withdrawal of the 20 remaining B61s at Buchel AFB.
Major US allies in Europe informed Gen. Cartwright’s critical opinion. High-level European politicians have been saying the B61s are “militarily useless” since the end of the Cold War. In a widely published op/ed in 2010, former NATO secretary-general Willy Claes and three senior Belgian politicians said, “The US tactical nuclear weapons in Europe have lost all military importance.”
Still, Kristensen reports, “integration” of the new B61 is supposed to take place on Belgian, Dutch, and Turkish F-16 jets and on German and Italian Tornado fighter-bombers soon.
Another reason for the rush to deploy this perfect candidate for dumb bomb retirement is that Germany is considering replacing its Tornado jets in short order. All the expense of refitting its current Tornadoes to carry the “more accurate” and “more usable” B61-mod 12 would be wasted. New B61 production could also be made expensively moot by progress in arms control.
The “nuclear sharing” arrangement with the five technically non-nuclear NATO partners glaringly contradicts, in Kristensen’s words, “the non-proliferation standards that member countries are trying to promote in the post-Cold War world.” In its 2012 posture review, even NATO’s ministers pledged to work for a world without nuclear weapons.
So as the White House and its Secretary of State wag fingers at Iran, we and our NATO friends openly violate the binding promise made in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty “not to receive the transfer from any transferor whatsoever of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or of control over such weapons or explosive devices directly, or indirectly.”
Maybe Iran can arrange for some sanctions to be imposed on us.
‘Zero knowledge privacy’: NSA-proof email service goes online
A new email service that protects its users from the prying eyes of the NSA and other spy agencies has gone online. The service’s creators say it will make encrypted messaging accessible to all and curtail internet snooping.
Germany-based Lavaboom was inspired by Lavabit, the encrypted email service that was believed to have been used by whistleblower Edward Snowden before it shut down its operations in August last year. The service pioneers a new system called “zero-knowledge privacy”, which allows users to personally encrypt and decrypt their mail from their browsers using JavaScript codes.
“Key handling is a very sensitive issue,” Lavaboom said in a technical FAQ section on its website. “We let you download your keypair during registration. This is to ensure that your key remains in your possession.”
In this way, the service only acts as a carrier for already encrypted messages which will prevent government agencies from extracting information. It will also mean Lavaboom will be unable to handover unencrypted mails and codes to government agencies if they request them.
Lavaboom is currently in its beta stage of development and plans to offer users free accounts with 250MB of storage space, while subscribers will receive 1GB for around $11 a month.
The service is aimed at blocking the spying of government agencies like the NSA who gather huge amounts of information using special espionage programs. Lavaboom’s creator, Feliz Muller-Irion, said that unencrypted mails are more often than not caught in the NSA’s information dragnet.
“An email that I sent to my mother can potentially go through Russia, China and the US even though she lives in the same building as me,” he told Spanish publication el Economista. “If you choose not to encrypt your email, it is very possible that the conversation you thought was private will appear on the screens of the NSA or be picked up by PRISM.”
Following the spy revelations divulged by former CIA contractor-turned whistleblower Edward Snowden last year, governments and organizations have adopted measures to try and combat the NSA’s spying antics.
The Brazilian government began the installation of a secure digital communication network earlier this month, following reports the NSA was spying on the personal communications of President Dilma Rousseff and her top aides.
The coordinator of the federal government’s Serpro data processing service, Marcos Mello, said the new service will employ passwords and digital markers to ensure the safety of governmental communications. The system should be fully operational by the end of 2014.
In response to the international uproar caused by the spying revelations, US President Barack Obama stated in a January address that the NSA would no longer keep tabs on foreign heads of state, but said it would continue to gather data on the “intentions” of other governments.
Date: Fri, Apr 18, 2014 at 12:27 AM
Subject: Fw: Michael Tellinger: Ubuntu Movement reborning true democracy for the people! VERY PROFOUND! DO PASS IT ON!!
If the people in First World countries are
Hydrocarbon Fuel/Industrial Complex,
“This is a historic moment, because our entry
“Every South African feels the dire economic
“No politician or government can achieve
1) The private banks;
2) The SOUTH AFRICAN RESERVE BANK; and the
3) PRIVATE MONEY they create out of thin air.
“The fact that our government is aware of this,
“UBUNTU Believes that the country belongs
1. Restructure the entire banking system to
2. Create a PEOPLE’s BANK that creates money
3. Let our scientists and inventors deliver a
4. Support our traditional healers and research
5. Support our farmers on every level to escape
6. Decentralise the government so that people
7. Restructure the judiciary and the legal system,
The path to economic freedom is an exciting new
We plan to introduce the simple principles of
In pure truth,
Michael Tellinger
Date: Wed, Apr 16, 2014 at 1:23 PM
News Links, April 17-18, 2014
“Uncreative” Destruction: The Troika’s Hostile Takeover of Europe
Bail-Ins Approved By EU Yesterday – Coming In UK, U.S. And Globally
Luxury property developers in Singapore are facing their worst sales outlook in six years as a raft of government measures to cool one of the world’s most expensive real estate markets bite.
Startup Israel Suffering Most OECD Poverty as Poor Surge
High jet fuel prices have protected existing airlines from startups, prevented fare wars
## Fault lines/flashpoints/powder kegs/military/war drums ##
Separatists take armoured vehicles, humiliating Ukraine forces
Islamist militants kill 30 in attacks around Iraq
Death From Above: How American Drone Strikes Are Devastating Yemen
AFRICOM Goes to War on the Sly
The U.S. military “pivot” to Africa quickens, albeit under a “veil of secrecy.” AFRICOM “now averages far more than a mission a day on the continent, conducting operations with almost every African military force, in almost every African country, while building or building up camps, compounds, and “contingency security locations.”
Belizian temporary foreign workers docked pay for rent in corporate apartment
Spanish-Style Riots Coming to a Country Near You
Can US get record natural gas storage refill at reasonable prices? (podcast)
## Infrastructure scavenging ##
Thieves take 60,000m of copper cable from Eircom (Ireland)
## Got food? ##
On Your Mark, Get Set, Grow: A Guide To Speedy Vegetables
The End of Employment
Get started now on downsizing. — RF
## Environment/health ##
Coral eating worm plagues reefs
Kill switch: Apple, Google, Microsoft, Samsung and Carriers Back Anti-Theft Measures for Smartphones
## Systemic breakdown/collapse/unsustainability ##
Peak Soil: Are We Taking More Than the Earth Can Give?
Why Japanese bonds look ‘terrible’: Kyle Bass
The government kept a report about a study of individual radiation doses around the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant — including an area recently released from an evacuation order — under wraps for six months.
Real estate prices are dropping in China’s inland cities. This decline could increase the risk of more bad debts as the country’s economic growth slows.
The richest man in Asia is selling everything in China
The Association of Teachers and Lecturers warn that rising numbers of children are unable to perform simple tasks such as using building blocks because of overexposure to iPads
General Motors revealed in court filings late Tuesday that it will soon ask a federal bankruptcy judge to shield the company from legal claims for conduct that occurred before its 2009 bankruptcy.
California Plans For A Hydrogen Future
If Miami real estate is a bubble, it’s still inflating fast.
Some of you may wonder why of all the stories out there today I decided to focus on the $525 fine a construction worker in South Carolina received a for refilling his drink without paying. The reason is to highlight the difference between what happens when a peasant breaks the law versus when a banker does it.
