3.21.2009

US Navy vessels collide in the Strait of Hormuz

Two US navy vessels have collided in the Strait of Hormuz near Iran, lightly injuring 15 sailors, the US navy said.

A nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Hartford, and amphibious transporter the USS New Orleans collided early on Friday, the US Navy Fifth Fleet said.

The incident is being investigated and damage to both ships is being evaluated, a navy statement said.

Read more @ BBC News


3.20.2009

What?? Trouble in Paradise?!?!?

In Israel, recession pressures boil over into looting

By Richard Boudreaux
March 19, 2009
Reporting from Hatzor Haglilit, Israel -- First came the employees, shortchanged two months' pay and laid off by the supermarket called God's Blessing. They rifled through their shuttered workplace, helping themselves to crates full of groceries.

As word spread through the small town, the store's jilted creditors joined in. They dismantled the light fixtures, ripped out wiring and absconded with the cash registers, even as television cameras rolled.

Read more @ LA Times

The end of US support of Israel? (Don't hold your breath.)

From Gizmodo (my emphasis in red; the reference is indeed at page 37 of this pdf):
"After years of ignoring the Israeli nuclear program - which was denounced in 1986 by former nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu - the United States' Department of Defense has acknowledged Israel nuclear power status for the first time.

Israel has neither confirmed nor denied the existence of its own nuclear arsenal, but page 37 of the US Joint Forces Command report recognizes the fact, putting it in the same group as Pakistan, India, China, North Korea, Russia, along with an "emerging Iran," Taiwan, and Japan having "the capability to develop nuclear weapons quickly."

Read more @ xymphora

Israeli soldiers admit to deliberate killing of Gaza civilians

Oh but don't worry. The Israelis are looking into it. Expect justice any minute. - Ed.

The Israeli army has been forced to open an investigation into the conduct of its troops in Gaza after damning testimony from its own front line soldiers revealed the killing of civilians and rules of engagement so lax that one combatant said that they amounted on occasion to “cold-blooded murder”.

The revelations, compiled by the head of an Israel military academy who declared that he was “shocked” at the findings, come as international rights groups are calling for independent inquiries into the conduct of both sides in the three-week Israeli offensive against Palestinian Islamists.

Read more @ TimesOnline

9/11, the gift that keeps on giving

Groundbreaking National Service Legislation Introduced in U.S. House of Representatives Advocates Establishing September 11 as an Annually Observed National Day of Service

March 10, 2009 3:02 PM EDT

WASHINGTON, March 10 /PRNewswire/ -- More than seven years after terrorist attacks on America left nearly 3,000 people dead, U.S. Congress took a major step today toward establishing 9/11 as an annually recognized National Day of Service.

Language to designate 9/11 as a National Day of Service and Remembrance has been included as an important provision in the Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act, or GIVE Act, (H.R. 1388), which was introduced today and authorizes groundbreaking federal support for many innovative national service programs. Under the GIVE Act, the anniversary of 9/11 would be observed in ways similar to Martin Luther King Day. People would voluntarily engage in remembrance through personal and organized service activities and reflection, but 9/11 would not become a federal holiday. U.S. Senator Charles Schumer (NY) and U.S. Rep. Peter King (NY-3), both of whom have long supported establishing 9/11 as a national day of service, worked with GIVE Act sponsors U.S. Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (NY-04) and U.S. Rep. George Miller (CA-07), Chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, to develop the 9/11 language for the bill.

Read more @ streetinsider.com

AIG sues US for return of $306m in tax payments, blah blah blah

As the New York Times notes:

A.I.G. sued the government last month in a bid to force it to return the payments, which stemmed in large part from its use of aggressive tax deals, some involving entities controlled by the company’s financial products unit in the Cayman Islands, Ireland, the Dutch Antilles and other offshore havens....

Read more @ George Washington's Blog

AIG office flies under radar of CT town

WILTON, Conn. — The money managers who helped ignite the world financial crisis didn't operate in a gleaming corporate penthouse overlooking New York Harbor, but on a trading floor in a two-story brick office building with a view of a Mobil station.

At AIG Financial Products here, the riskiest of business was conducted in the blandest of settings.

...

When it comes to AIG Financial, people in this affluent town of about 18,000 are angry, protective, embarrassed or even oblivious to the notion that their town figured so prominently in the financial meltdown.

"I can't believe it — I had no idea they were here," says Marilyn Gould, a former member of the Board of Selectmen, a Planning and Zoning Commission member and director of the Wilton Historical Society.


Read more @ USA Today


Bibi, take your time

JERUSALEM (AFP) — Israeli prime minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu was granted an extra two weeks on Friday to form a government he hopes will be as broad as possible, the presidency said.

The hawkish Likud leader wants to avoid giving too much clout to far-right and religious parties and will use the extra time to try to convince the centre-left Labour party of outgoing Defence Minister Ehud Barak to join his coalition.

Read more @ AFP


What Obama's message to Iran means

Excerpt:

These issues were not directly mentioned by Mr Obama but this is what he is referring to

  • Iran to give up uranium enrichment and accept international offers to provide fuel for nuclear power
    • Iran to stop arming Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza
    • Iran to help in achieving peace in Afghanistan and Iraq
    • Iran to stop threatening Israel.

    Read more psychodelic news @ BBC.co.uk

    The Global Financial Crisis: What caused it? Where is it heading?

    by Ravi Batra

    © November 15, 2008

    Professor, Department of Economics

    Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas 75275, USA

    Two thousand eight was year extraordinaire. It started off in a rather nonchalant way, but ended with a bang. Its myriad and breathtaking events caught the world off guard, but please allow me to say, arrogant as it sounds, that they did not surprise me, including the epoch-making victory of Barack Obama in the US presidential election. I had anticipated them all in two books more than two years ago. The first, Greenspan’s Fraud, was written in 2005, and the second, The New Golden Age: The Coming Revolution against Political Corruption and Economic Chaos, was finished before October 2006. In fact, the title of the second work itself reveals that I had anticipated an Obama-like revolution in the United States.

    Read more @ ravibatra.com


    The Real AIG Conspiracy

    It's refreshing to see so many articles noting the red herring nature of the current media obsession. - Ed.

    It may seem odd, but the public outrage against $135 million in AIG bonuses is a godsend to Wall Street, AIG scoundrels included. How can the media be so preoccupied with the discovery that there is self-serving greed to be found in the financial sector? Every TV channel and every newspaper in the country, from right to left, have made these bonuses the lead story over the past two days.

    Read more @ SOTT

    Lay Institute

    Collection of articles on mind control, HAARP, non-lethal and energy weapons, etc.

    Visit site.
    h/t usexpat

    3.19.2009

    "Getting Tough" with predator financial institutions

    AIG, Larry Summers and the Politics of Deflection
    by William Engdahl

    Finally the US authorities have gotten ‘tough’ with the predator financial institutions. The world has been waiting for such decisive intervention since an unending series of Government bailouts of financial institutions began early in 2008 amounting to now trillions of taxpayer dollars. Now, with the world’s largest insurance giant, AIG, the White House Economic Council chairman, Larry Summers has expressed ‘outrage.’ President Obama himself has entered the fray to promise ‘justice.’ US Senators have threatened a law to change the injustice. The only problem is they are all exercising ‘politics of deflection,’ taking attention away from the real problem, the fraudulent bailout.

    The issue is over AIG announcing it was obligated to pay its traders in its high-risk London unit a sales bonus totaling $165 million for the year. Obama Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner has announced a novel strategy for ‘justice.’ AIG will ‘reimburse’ the taxpayers up to $165 million for bonuses the company is giving employees. AIG will pay the Treasury an amount equal to the bonuses, and the Treasury will deduct that amount from the $30 billion in government (taxpayer) assistance that will soon go to the company. But he said that the Obama administration hasn't given up on efforts to recoup the money from the employees who got the bonuses. Good luck.

    Read more @ Global Research

    Follow the Money: Madoff, Mossad, AIG and 9/11

    The Madoff investigation is very similar to the 9-11 investigation in that evidence of a larger conspiracy is being avoided and ignored. It is possible that the billions that Madoff stole, and is still unaccounted for, was being used to finance Israel’s vast global spy and sabotage network Mossad with connections to both AIG and quite possibly 9/11 itself: Allen L Roland

    Read more @ Allen Roland's Radio Weblog

    Terrorism by another name: AIG is blackmailing America

    AIG's CEO, Edward Libby, admitted today that credit default swaps brought down the company:

    Mistakes were made at AIG, and on a scale that few could have imagined possible. The most egregious of those began in 1987, when the company strayed from its core insurance competencies to launch a credit-default-swaps portfolio, which eventually became subject to massive collateral calls that created a liquidity crisis for AIG.
    But instead of letting AIG go quietly into the dark night, Liddy is trying to blackmail America and the world by using a threat. As Salon notes:

    Read more @ George Washington's Blog

    Dodd facing fresh political firestorm

    Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) looks like he may be facing a fresh political firestorm.

    Dodd just admitted on CNN that he inserted a loophole in the stimulus legislation that allowed million-dollar bonuses to insurance giant AIG to go forward – after previously denying any involvement in writing the controversial provision.

    Read more @ Yahoo News


    Goldman has enough money to lead buy-out of Japan's Universal Studio's theme park

    Hmm. Maybe it's me, and I just don't understand. But isn't this kind of like claiming you can't feed your children, begging for handouts, and then going to buy a jet-ski or something? WTF? I mean, I could be wrong, but it just seems unseemly to me. - Ed.

    TOKYO, March 19 (Reuters) - USJ Co Ltd (2142.T), the operator of Japan's Universal Studios theme park, said on Thursday it will go private in a 111.2 billion yen ($1.16 billion) buyout led by a Goldman Sachs (GS.N) fund.

    USJ is held about 40 percent by Crane Holdings Ltd, a subsidiary of Goldman Sachs.

    Crane's 100 percent-owned unit will offer 50,000 yen per share to buy the remaining 60 percent between March 23 and May 21 as well as its new share rights. ($1=95.99 Yen) (Reporting by Nathan Layne)

    Reuters

    Somehow our government allows legions of sham auditors and accountants to work in the financial sector.

    Weird, huh? How do you think that happened? - Ed.

    March 19 (Bloomberg) -- The arrest of Bernard Madoff’s accountant highlights the peril posed by bogus auditors at the heart of Ponzi schemes that have bilked investors out of billions of dollars.

    David Friehling’s arrest for securities fraud yesterday followed at least four other cases this year in which money managers accused of defrauding clients created sham auditors or hired accountants not up to the job. Investors may have avoided about $74 billion in losses if they had examined, or just tried to shake hands with, accountants supposedly verifying the books.

    “Due Diligence 101 should demand that you check out the auditing firm and find out if it exists,” said Richard Dietrich, an accounting professor at Ohio State University in Columbus. “Then, you have to find out if they are qualified.”

    Read more @ Bloomberg


    Oooh, you hurt my feelings you meanie

    March 19 (Bloomberg) -- American International Group Inc. Chief Executive Officer Edward Liddy finds himself fighting to prevent the insurer from tarnishing his reputation, a fate suffered by his three predecessors.

    Facing another barrage of congressional criticism over bonuses for AIG managers yesterday, Liddy repeatedly reminded lawmakers that he took the job after the U.S. government stepped in with an $85 billion loan in September. He’s agreed to a salary of $1 this year.

    Read more @ Bloomberg

    Winter Patriot: Screwed Again, Sy Hersh spins it

    Famed investigative reporter Seymour Hersh ruffled a few feathers last week with comments in Minnesota regarding an alleged "executive assassination ring" -- a squad of elite killers who have allegedly been infiltrating foreign countries and murdering ... well, officially, nobody knows who their victims have been, really, but if this story were officially acknowledged (whatever that means these days), we would no doubt be told that the alleged victims of the alleged murders were "the worst of the worst", without whom America will now be safer, huzzah huzzah.

    Read more @ Winter Patriot

    Military Laser Hits Battlefield Strength

    Huge news for real-life ray guns: Electric lasers have hit battlefield strength for the first time -- paving the way for energy weapons to go to war.

    Read more @ Wired.com

    ...Peasant here....
    OK, look. I know Noah Shachtman is a (presumably) well-paid, well-connected journalist working for a respected media outlet, and I am a nobody blogger with no connections doing this for free. So take it for what it's worth, but if you think these guys are just working out the kinks now and will have some trouble rustling up $100 million to "get it right," take another hit off that crack pipe.

    Here's a little sample of my laser library. Click through some of the links in these posts to see what I mean. When I wrote this stuff, the Pentagon showed up in my stats, and I had about 3 readers at the time. So what does that tell you?

    Who Killed Benazir Bhutto? 3/1/08

    Use Your Imagination 1/8/08

    Laser Technology 1/5/08

    A Laser Beam? 1/4/08

    Excerpt from Laser Technology:

    JOURNALIST: Mr. Secretary, can I ask you a question about some of the technology that you’re developing to fight the war on terrorists, specifically directed energy and high-powered microwave technology? Do you—when do you envision that you can weaponize that type of technology?

    DONALD RUMSFELD: Goodness, it is in—for the most part, the kinds of things you’re talking about are in varying early stages. Do you want to—do you have anything you would add?

    GEN. RICHARD MYERS: I don’t think I would add much. I think they are in early stages and probably not ready for employment at this point.

    DONALD RUMSFELD: In the normal order of things, when you invest in research and development and begin a developmental project, you don’t have any intention or expectations that one would use it. On the other hand, the real world intervenes from time to time, and you reach in there and take something out that is still in a developmental stage, and you might use it. So the—your question’s not answerable. It is—it depends on what happens in the future and how well things move along the track and whether or not someone feels it’s appropriate to reach into a development stage and see if something might be useful, as was the case with the unmanned aerial vehicles.

    JOURNALIST: But you sound like you’re willing to experiment with it.

    GEN. RICHARD MYERS: Yeah, I think that’s the point. And I think—and it’s—we have, I think, from the beginning of this conflict—I think General Franks has been very open to looking at new things, if there are new things available, and has been willing to put them into the fight, even before they’ve been fully wrung out. And I think that’s—not referring to these particular cases of directed energy or high-powered microwave, but sure. And we will continue to do that.

    I don’t know how you read that, but to me it sounds like these gentlemen had no qualms about using live human beings as guinea pigs for their cool new weapons toys that US taxpayers pony up a half a billion dollars a year to develop.

    Think of it this way. If someone parked a Lamborghini in your driveway, left the keys in the ignition, and passed out in a drunken stupor on your couch at 3am, would you take the car out for a spin? Just around the block for shits and giggles?

    Oh, and by the way, you’re a cop. Does that help you decide?

    Feds undercut ammo supply

    Responding to two Democratic senators representing outraged private gun owners, the Department of Defense announced last night it has scrapped a new policy that would deplete the supply of ammunition by requiring destruction of fired military cartridge brass.

    Read more @ World Net Daily

    Army investigating how and why troops were sent into Alabama town after murder spree

    I was beginning to wonder why the U.S. Army didn’t write back. *snort* I guess they’ve been busy trying to figure out how to eat such a giant shit sandwich.

    Via Cryptogon

    3.18.2009

    Aha!! The true psyop comes out in the Washington Post

    AIG hires renta-cops to protect bankers against "mob effect" (hint hint hint hint hint....I think they want us to do the "mob effect" thing soon.... - Ed.)

    A tidal wave of public outrage over bonus payments swamped American International Group yesterday. Hired guards stood watch outside the suburban Connecticut offices of AIG Financial Products, the division whose exotic derivatives brought the insurance giant to the brink of collapse last year. Inside, death threats and angry letters flooded e-mail inboxes. Irate callers lit up the phone lines. Senior managers submitted their resignations. Some employees didn’t show up at all.

    “It’s a mob effect,” one senior executive said. “It’s putting people’s lives in danger.”

    Read more @ Pimpin Turtle

    More Kabuki Coming: AIG's Liddy faces grilling on Capitol Hill

    SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Edward Liddy may wish he'd stayed on as a partner at private-equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice come Wednesday.
    The former Allstate chief executive and ex-Goldman Sachs director -- who became chief of American International Group Inc. when the giant insurer collapsed into the arms of the U.S. government in September -- will face the grilling of his career on Capitol Hill at a hearing likely to be dominated by outrage over its latest bonus scandal.

    Read more @ Market Watch

    The Real AIG Scandal

    It's not the bonuses. It's that AIG's counterparties are getting paid back in full.

    Everybody is rushing to condemn AIG's bonuses, but this simple scandal is obscuring the real disgrace at the insurance giant: Why are AIG's counterparties getting paid back in full, to the tune of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars?

    Read more @ Slate


    Congressional Hypocrisy

    Excerpt:

    Senator Grassley is a ranking member of the Senate Finance Committe. As such, he presided over a decade of erosion of safeguards and balance in our financial system.

    He is also a member of a political party and a government that had the lead in ruining our country, undermining the Constitution, and allowing financial racketeers like AIG to flourish.

    The fellows at AIG are indeed amoral pigs, and they make no pretentions to be otherwise, whereas Chuck Grassley and his ilk are venal hypocrites who are attempting to deflect attention from their own significant role in the current financial crisis, and a disastrous foreign policy conducted under false pretenses for the enrichment of private interests and corporations.

    Those who take his pious pronouncements seriously are born to be shorn, over and over, again and again.

    Read more @ Jesse's Cafe Americain

    Business collapse can end union contracts, but not AIG bonus contracts

    When psychopaths make the laws, this is what you get: screwed. Nice to see people noticing. - Ed.

    by Chris Steller

    Contracts guaranteeing bonuses to executives at collapsing businesses — like American International Group (AIG) — are held inviolable, while labor union contracts regularly get voided or reneged-on when corporations declare (or even threaten) bankruptcy. Labor experts say it’s the law of the land.

    Read more @ The Minnesota Independent

    Tax on Bonuses Eyed

    Isn't it amazing how they can pull together when they want to? It's almost like our congresspeople enjoy making a big show of how outrageous this all is, and how hard they work to protect you, despite the fact that they passed legislation and looked the other way for years to make it all possible in the first place. It's almost like they want you to be really, really angry now, don't you think? - Ed.

    Congressional anger over AIG leads to threat of levy WASHINGTON - Sprinting to get ahead of the public backlash against bonuses paid to American Insurance Group employees, members of Congress vowed yesterday to pass legislation taxing nearly all of the money unless the employees return it.

    At least three bills have been introduced in the House this week seeking to place an excise tax of 95 percent to 100 percent on the $165 million in bonuses paid to about 400 employees of AIG's Financial Products division.

    Read more @ Baltimore Sun

    Obama says Americans will get a good F.U.C.K.I.N.G.

    FAUX News-Washington, DC

    President Obama unveiled his plan to help Americans with the slipping US dollar. "I feel your pain," President Obama stated, "And I am officially releasing my latest plan for righting the economy, called "Fixing Up Currency Keeping It New & Good," or as it will become known as F.U.C.K.I.N.G.

    "Under my watch, Americans will get a good F.U.C.K.I.N.G. from the Treasury Department and my dear friend, Secretary Geithner. The Secretary has assured me this FUCKING will be relentless, in order to bring about a new order to this crisis by inflating our way out of this mess caused by our dear friends at the Federal Reserve

    "Our trusted friends at the Federal Reserve, led by Chairman Ben "Shalom" Bernanke, tells me this FUCKING will be a good one and that at first, Americans should expect a little pain, but only those in the lower or middle income classes."

    Read more @ Goon Squad

    Tribute to Rachel Corrie and Palestine, by Saladin



    Calling All Angels, by Jane Siberry

    Santa Maria, Santa Teresa, Santa Anna, Santa Susannah

    Santa Cecilia, Santa Copelia, Santa Domenica, Mary Angelica

    Frater Achad, Frater Pietro, Julianus, Petronilla

    Santa, Santos, Miroslaw, Vladimir

    and all the rest


    a man is placed upon the steps, a baby cries

    and high above the church bells start to ring

    and as the heaviness the body oh the heaviness settles in

    somewhere you can hear a mother sing


    then it's one foot then the other as you step out onto the road

    how much weight? how much weight?

    then it's how long? and how far?

    and how many times before it's too late?


    calling all angels calling all angels

    walk me through this one

    don't leave me alone

    calling all angels calling all angels

    we're cryin' and we're hurtin'

    and we're not sure why...


    and every day you gaze upon the sunset

    with such love and intensity

    it's almost...it's almost as if ...

    if you could only crack the code

    then you'd finally understand what this all means


    but if you could...do you think you would

    trade in all the pain and suffering?

    ah, but then you'd miss

    the beauty of the light upon this earth

    and the sweetness of the leaving


    calling all angels calling all angels

    walk me through this one

    don't leave me alone

    callin' all angels callin' all angels

    we're tryin' we're hopin'

    we're hurtin' we're lovin'

    we're cryin' we're callin'

    because we're not sure how this goes

    Robert Fisk: Why Avigdor Lieberman is the worst thing that could happen to the Middle East

    Only days after they were groaning with fury at the Israeli lobby's success in hounding the outspoken Charles Freeman away from his proposed intelligence job for President Obama, the Arabs now have to contend with an Israeli Foreign Minister whose – let us speak frankly – racist comments about Palestinian loyalty tests have brought into the new Netanyahu cabinet one of the most unpleasant politicians in the Middle East.

    Read more @ The Independent

    A remarkably blithe discussion of Israel's options for attacking Iran

    A new report has assessed that Israel could use ballistic missiles to attack Iranian nuclear facilities, rather than air power. The report also warns that such action could trigger a response that would escalate to include the use of WMDs.

    Abdullah Toukan of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) wrote that Israel's use of Jericho III missiles to strike Iran's nuclear sites "could look much more feasible than using combat aircraft," because of the lower political and operational risks Israel would face in such an attack, since Iran still lacks an adequate missile defense system.

    Toukan estimated Israel would need about 40 Jericho IIIs for the initial volley, and cautioned that an Israeli-Iranian ballistic missile exchange would turn Jordan and neighboring countries into "Ground Zero."

    And your problem is......?????? - Ed.

    Read more @ Jerusalem Post
    http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1237114853776&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

    Rabbi tells Pope not to wear a cross to the Western Wall. "Crosses are a symbol that hurt Jewish feelings."

    Ahead of Pope Benedict XVI's May visit to Israel, the rabbi of the Western Wall, Shmuel Rabinovitch, has said that it is not proper to come to the site wearing a cross.

    ...
    "My position is that it is not fitting to enter the Western Wall area with religious symbols, including a cross," said Rabinovitch in a telephone interview with The Jerusalem Post Monday. "I feel the same way about a Jew putting on a tallit and phylacteries and going into a church."

    Read more @ Jerusalem Post
    http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1237114844980&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull

    3.17.2009

    Oath Keepers: Active military people you can support without worrying about them following orders to kill or imprison you.

    YES!

    Declaration of Orders We Will NOT Obey

    1. We will NOT obey orders to disarm the American people.

    2. We will NOT obey orders to conduct warrantless searches of the American people

    3. We will NOT obey orders to detain American citizens as “unlawful enemy combatants” or to subject them to military tribunal.

    4. We will NOT obey orders to impose martial law or a “state of emergency” on a state.

    5. We will NOT obey orders to invade and subjugate any state that asserts its sovereignty.

    6. We will NOT obey any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps.

    7. We will NOT obey any order to force American citizens into any form of detention camps under any pretext.

    8. We will NOT obey orders to assist or support the use of any foreign troops on U.S. soil against the American people to “keep the peace” or to “maintain control.”

    9. We will NOT obey any orders to confiscate the property of the American people, including food and other essential supplies.

    10.We will NOT obey any orders which infringe on the right of the people to free speech, to peaceably assemble, and to petition their government for a redress of grievances.

    (Read the full declaration here)



    Read more @ Oath Keepers

    Urban Survival: Technology Breakthrough to watch

    Web Bot Hit: The New Electrics Arriving

    THE Tech Breakthrough To Watch

    You ought to be keeping an extremely sharp eye on Carbon Nanotubes (CNT's) because it turns out that CNT's may replace copper wire in some applications.

    ---
    Of course, if you're into electronics, you caught the bit about transmitting 'both AM and FM radio signals" which is akin to saying a straw can carry water or milk, but they key thing is that CNT's are the future. Sorta like the movie Mrs. Robinson where the fellow says "I have one word for you: "Plastics".

    Seems, since the linguistic reports of HalfPastHuman (which you may find useful if you're trying to live ahead of the future, instead of under it) say we're right now in the dawning of a period called 'the New Electrics", CNT's are where to place your bets.


    Read more @ Urban Survival


    ABC News: Don't you dare complain, because it could have been worse. You're lucky we don't screw you twice as bad. Suckers.

    When AIG chief executive officer Edward M. Liddy argued that legal obligations made it nearly impossible for the bailed-out firm not to pay $165 million in retention bonuses, critics found it hard to imagine a worse scenario for taxpayers whose money has already been used to keep the company afloat.

    But AIG and legal experts agree that, as far as payouts to employees go, it could indeed be worse -- twice as bad, to be exact.

    If the crumbling insurance giant didn't make good on its retention packages, employees could sue the firm for at least $330 million -- double the total size of the bonuses.

    Read more @ ABC News

    Fire Sale of bank assets will hurt taxpayers

    Statement of SEIU Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger on Secretary Geithner's latest TALF proposal

    Washington, DC --Treasury Secretary Geithner's plan to invite private equity and hedge fund investors to a fire sale of bank assets is a return to the very same policies and practices that triggered the financial crisis in the first place.

    Secretary Geithner's proposal for the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF) would enable private equity firms and hedge funds to buy up higher quality loan securitizations, including auto, consumer, student and small business loans. The Federal government would provide low-cost financing for up to 95% of the purchase price, with private firms putting down as little as 5% and the securitizations as collateral. The hope is then to expand this proposal to include toxic mortgage-backed securities.

    Read more @ SEIU
    h/t Greg Bacon

    Ray McGovern: Obama caves to Israel lobby

    On Tuesday morning Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Dennis Blair, employed the indicative mood in describing the high value that Chas Freeman, his appointee to head the National Intelligence Council (NIC), will bring to the job – "his long experience and inventive mind," for example. By five o'clock in the afternoon, Freeman announced that he had asked that his selection "not proceed."

    Read more @ SOS

    Gardening industry sees boom as families grow their own veggies to save on groceries

    Excerpt:

    Food is the gateway through which clarity on many other issue areas can flow. Once people understand how they’re being shaken down with regard to food, lots of other topics come into view. Energy, alternative health, deep politics, money/debt on and on.

    Masses of people deciding to produce even a small amount of their own food has got to be the ultimate pants shitting event for the elite. Small scale food production is a very dangerous path. It can lead to a near wholesale rejection of the programming that makes the status quo horror show possible. It’s inevitable that people who never thought that it would come to “this” are going to start bartering, trading and selling food to each other, despite what the Legion of Doom has in mind. If the government is actually stupid enough to try to stop this under the auspices of food safety… I don’t know. I guess we’ll see.

    Read more @ Cryptogon


    A different kind of revolution

    Mike Whitney: I have been beating the same dead horse for three or four years now and many people are getting tired of the endless iterations of collapsing markets, rising unemployment and growing pessimism. What's needed is a vision of the future and a concrete plan of action, but I don't have one. So, tell me, what is to be done?

    Bede Vincent Curley: I do not know what is to be done in the US.... Thinking people can see that most Americans veer between manic-depression and paranoid-schizophrenia. While they know they are getting kicked around by the rich, there's such a strong tradition of obedience to authority in America that most people just take it in stride and just get on with their lives. This is a population with an severe "abuse" problem. I compare it to the compulsive behavior among women and children who've lived in abusive relationships. The sickness passes from one generation to the next without interruption. It is a condition that has to be treated, which means creating a process where the person can see that the violence being done to them is violence and not love. America is a nation badly in need of therapy.

    Read more @ The Truth Seeker

    Madoff 'Ponzi scheme' scam: Jews avoiding American taxes?

    Is the Madoff 'Ponzi scheme' itself just another misdirection to cover up a massive plan by rich American Jews to avoid paying American taxes? The Jews don't mind having American taxpayers pay for the Wars For The Jews, but perhaps they'd prefer to pay their taxes to another country, say, Israel. Consider:

    It was scammer Madoff himself who immediately fessed up and labeled his operation a 'Ponzi scheme'. 'Ponzi scheme' has become the way Madoff's operation is always described by the Jew-controlled media. People understand that a Ponzi scheme is a method whereby victim investors are cheated by an unscrupulous financier.

    Read more @ xymphora

    Goon Squad: Making "Mad Money" from gaming the stock market in 1929 and 2008

    CNBC's Jim Cramer screams that "Bear Stearns is fine!" and "NO! NO! NO!" ... "Bear Stearns is not in trouble" ... "Don't move your money from Bear! That's just silly! Don't be silly! to investors while Bear Stearns was still trading at over $60 a share, down from a high of $171 just over a year ago.

    This just 5 days before Bear Stearns sold to JP Morgan for $2 a share, in a Fed brokered bailout.

    Read more @ Goon Squad

    March 13 Daily Show: Jim Cramer unedited interview

    March 9 Daily Show: In Cramer we trust

    March 4 Daily Show: CNBC gives financial advice

    3.16.2009

    Actual Journalists Expose Chemtrails in Germany

    Watch video.

    AIG Reveals over $100B of payments to banks, states

    LONDON (Dow Jones) -- American International Group said over the weekend it had paid over $100 billion of its bailout funds to U.S. states and international banks including Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and Societe Generale.

    The cash was used to cover collateral payments, cancel derivative contracts and meet obligations at its securities lending business after the firm had to be bailed out last year.

    Most of the major U.S. and European banks were represented on the list, but AIG (AIG) revealed that Goldman Sachs was the biggest single beneficiary from the payments, receiving $12.9 billion.

    Read more @ CNN Money

    Classic - the amazing elasticity of the "Rule of Law"

    THEY CHANGED THE LEDE ON THIS STORY ALREADY, MOVED IT DOWN AFTER THE FLUFFING BY BERNANKE. SOMEBODY OVER THERE MUST HAVE REALIZED THAT IT WAS JUST A LITTLE TOO FUCKING OUTRAGEOUS AS WRITTEN, OR MAYBE NOT. HOW DID IT GET PAST THE EDITOR IN THE FIRST PLACE? WELL, YOU KNOW. THESE PEOPLE ARE ALL ON THE DOLE THEMSELVES, SO THEY HAVE A LITTLE TROUBLE RECOGNIZING HOW OFFENSIVE THEY ARE TO US WORKING STIFFS. SORRY FOR THE CAPS I'M SPITTING NAILS CAN YOU TELL? - ED.

    While there's seemingly no shortage of outrage aimed at beleaguered insurance giant AIG's plan to pay out $165 million in executive retention bonuses, it may turn out that the best the country can hope for in response is to learn its lesson for next time and make sure it doesn't happen again.

    You got that, suckers????!!!!??????
    Read more @ ABC NEWS BRING A FUCKING BUCKET.

    Dick Dick Dick...Who cares what you think?

    Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday that President Obama had made the country less safe, asserting that the new administration’s changes to detention and interrogation programs for terrorism suspects would hamper intelligence gathering.

    Read more @ NYT

    Bibi strikes deal with Lieberman

    Look at this glassy-eyed nutbag. - Ed.

    JERUSALEM -- The leader of a controversial nationalist political party in Israel, Avigdor Lieberman, has agreed to join Prime Minister designate Benjamin Netanyahu's government in exchange for an appointment as foreign minister and a handful of other influential cabinet seats, a spokeswoman for Mr. Lieberman said Monday.

    Read more @ WSJ, where they probably consider this great news.

    Ratings Agencies "sold their soul" joining Wall St and the Government

    A Congressional committee is holding a hearing today on the credit rating agencies and their role in the financial crisis.

    Specifically, the big 3 ratings agencies - S&P, Moody's and Fitch - kept companies' credit ratings high for years after they should have been slashed due to inadequate capital, overstated assets, over-exposure to derivatives and other risky investments, and other chronic problems.

    Indeed, emails show that the rating service employees knew they were acting fraudulently

    Read more @ George Washington's Blog

    Message to the Future

    By: Peter Chamberlin

    This is written for you, the survivors. Two or three years ago, I decided to write this message to you. My only intentions were to find the best solutions to the nightmare visions and ease the suffering billions of souls who were scheduled to pay the final price of a world system based on greed. There is no sense in having a nightmare vision of the future that you know is real if it cannot be shared with others today, in real time. Warning of an impending massive fatal mental illness as a timely prescription for avoidance is an act of futility, in a population inured of life and deaf and blind to any signs of greater “Life.”

    Read more @ There Are No Sunglasses


    Embrace a World Currenty, or Not

    It should be obvious to everyone by now that the manufactured world economic crisis has a pre-planned agenda, a one world currency controlled by a world central bank run by a handful of the world's bankers. A cashless, micro-chipped way to further destroy sovereign nations, including our own US, and enslave those that happen to survive.

    Read more @ Kenny's Sideshow

    American foreign aid in the age of the Second Great Depression

    President Obama has called for more transparency in our government.

    What, with the whole earmarks hullabaloo (which was bullshit - the earmarks were only 1% of the bill - what should be examined, really, is the whole bill, not the smokescreen of earmarks, but that is another topic...), with our tax money being spent to help out the elite 0.05% of this country, I believe that this is something I can get behind.

    So lets have some transparency in our government's spending, shall we?

    Read more @ American Goy

    The Satanic Roman Catholic Church in Limbo

    Brazil - Doctors perform life-saving surgery to save 9-year-old girl, raped and pregnant with twins. Bishop of Recife and Olinda excommunicates the girl but not the monster who raped her.

    On International Women’s Day, exactly how does the Roman Catholic Church justify yet another Medieval position divorcing the Vatican from the hearts and minds of Humanity and which does more damage to the Church than Satan himself?

    And what protection has the Church provided for this girl? None.

    Dom Jose Carlos Sobrinho, Bishop of Recife and Olinda, excommunicated the 9-year-old girl, her mother and the doctors who performed the life-saving operation but not the stepfather who raped her, claiming that abortion is a worse sin than rape.

    Read more @ SOS

    The case against Israel's "right to exist"

    An Open Letter to Representative David Price (D) 4th District, NC
    By Roger Tucker

    As you know, Mr. Price, I was invited to join a group of activists who met with you Monday morning to urge you to take action regarding the siege of Gaza, the Occupation and American support for Israel. I declined to attend because my particular focus is on One State advocacy, and you have made it crystal clear that this is not your view, nor is it ever likely to be (unless and until, in the due course of time, it becomes politically expedient). You represent the Triangle (Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill), fondly known as the pat of butter in a sea of grits, a highly educated, liberal, metropolitan area that votes heavily Democratic. You received 63% of the vote in the recent election, and fly under the "progressive" flag. Yet you voted for House Resolution 34, supporting Israel's massacre in Gaza.

    Read more @ Atheo News