Facebook is Likely Just the DARPA LifeLog Project Re-Named

Facebook is Likely Just the DARPA LifeLog Project Re-Named

These are tense times for the friendly folks at Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of the social media dictatorship, has steered his multi-billion dollar corporation into the stormy seas of multiple civil courtroom battles over violating user rights.

There is no question that Facebook is guilty of numerous civil rights violations. The Cambridge Analytics scandal of 2018 caused Facebook shares (FB) to plummet. Subsequent scandals have created a continuous decline in the company’s shareholder value.

But that doesn’t seem to matter to a company which seems to be fueled by higher sources, perhaps related to the federal surveillance state.

CORRECT, they don’t care.
Millie Weaver – Shadowgate Documentary Exposes This as an intentional ‘Ploy’ to restructure data sharing

In a video dated March 9, 2019, PeterOfEngland spoke out in an earnest warning about “the criminal behavior of Facebook, its data collection network, and its working with the United States government – the Pentagon initially – to begin what’s called an ontological data collection point on what’s called ‘designated targets.’”

We the People of the World are the designated targets who were selected by the U.S. government, the CIA, and the Pentagon, according to Peter.

Was it a mere coincidence that on the very same day that Facebook launched – February 4, 2004 – a Pentagon civilian spy project called LifeLog shut down?

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Pentagon-sponsored Project LifeLog was set up to collect data on all individuals. DARPA functions as the Defense Department’s research branch and is responsible for spending oodles of legally unaccountable taxpayer dollars to conduct Black Operations, secret from public scrutiny.

The data our government was interested in was – and still is – “every conceivable and imaginable platform possible,” said Peter.

LifeLog is “an ontology-based (sub)system that captures, stores, and makes accessible the flow of one person’s experience in and interactions with the world in order to support a broad spectrum of associates/assistants and other system capabilities.”

LifeLog was designed to be an all-encompassing personal data vacuuming system “aimed to gather in a single place just about everything an individual says, sees or does: the phone calls made, the TV shows watched, the magazines read, the plane tickets bought, the e-mail sent and received.”

Why bother with this massive collection of individual citizen’s personal, professional, and social activities, you ask? “Out of this seemingly endless ocean of information, computer scientists would plot distinctive routes in the data, mapping relationships, memories, events and experiences.”

Back in 2004, civil rights activists immediately opposed the surveillance scheme, raising the red flag that LifeLog could be turned against Us the People and “become the ultimate tool for profiling potential enemies of the state.”

The U.S. government responded by shutting down Project LifeLog. Or did they? In February 2004, “Researchers close to the project say they’re not sure why it was dropped late last month. Darpa hasn’t provided an explanation for LifeLog’s quiet cancellation. ‘A change in priorities’ is the only rationale agency spokeswoman Jan Walker gave to Wired News.”

Observers such as PeterOfEngland wonder if LifeLog was replaced by Facebook, which, oddly enough, launched on February 4, 2004 – the very same day DARPA announced the termination of their public surveillance Project LifeLog.

The thinking here is that the determined masterminds at DARPA realized that people might not flock to divulge their personal information to a cold, hard-hearted government agency. But Facebook was warm and inviting: “Sign up for a free account and make Friends” – thumbs up!

The public did flock to Facebook. We were told, in 2004, that the social media platform was the brainchild of a couple of Harvard students (Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin) who wanted a face-pic-based school directory to keep in touch with classmates and other associates. The “social networking service launched as FaceMash in July 2003, but later changing to TheFacebook on February 4, 2004.”

Just look at Facebook now! Some people post every intimate detail of their daily lives as well as vital information: name, address, phone, email, web address, family names, veterinarian’s name, etc.

Harvard students made up the initial test base, followed by “other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and gradually most universities in the United States and Canada, corporations, and by September 2006, to everyone with a valid email address along with an age requirement of being 13 and older.”

Facebook’s growth and social acceptance were nothing short of phenomenal. This makes perfect sense if Facebook is actually a government-sponsored psyop (psychic operation or mind control). It appears, more and more, that this is the case, as Facebook “Community Standards” are suppressing free speech about anything anti-establishmentarian.

Not surprisingly, other world governments and the NSA also got on board with the covert agenda to ease user-friendly Facebook into the role of Global Personal Information Gatherer.

But Facebook got sloppy about user privacy and security concerns and is now staring down the barrel of lawsuits brought by large numbers of angry users whose personal information was abused by the social media spy site.

Perhaps foreshadowing the fate of Facebook, on February 1, 2019, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that Facebook can be sued for allowing users’ private data to fall into the hands of third-parties such as Cambridge Analytics.

U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria ruled briefly that “The injury is the disclosure of private information.”

We couldn’t agree more. But will this flagrant violation of civil rights shutter Facebook for good? Only time will tell.

There is one way to shut down Facebook for good. What if they have a social media platform and nobody came?

Why Did Hundreds Of CEOs Resign Just Before The World Started Going Absolutely Crazy?

Why Did Hundreds Of CEOs Resign Just Before The World Started Going Absolutely Crazy?

In the months prior to the most ferocious stock market crash in history and the eruption of the biggest public health crisis of our generation, we witnessed the biggest exodus of corporate CEOs that we have ever seen.  And as you will see below, corporate insiders also sold off billions of dollars worth of shares in their own companies just before the stock market imploded.  In life, timing can be everything, and sometimes people simply get lucky.  But it does seem odd that so many among the corporate elite would be so exceedingly “lucky” all at the same time.  In this article I am not claiming to know the motivations of any of these individuals, but I am pointing out certain patterns that I believe are worth investigating.

One financial publication is using the phrase “the great CEO exodus” to describe the phenomenon that we have been witnessing.  It all started last year when chief executives started resigning in numbers unlike anything that we have ever seen before.  The following was published by NBC News last November

Chief executives are leaving in record numbers this year, with more than 1,332 stepping aside in the period from January through the end of October, according to new data released on Wednesday. While it’s not unusual to see CEOs fleeing in the middle of a recession, it is noteworthy to see such a rash of executive exits amid robust corporate earnings and record stock market highs.

Last month, 172 chief executives left their jobs, according to executive placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. It’s the highest monthly number on record, and the year-to-date total outpaces even the wave of executive exits during the financial crisis.

By the end of the year, an all-time record high 1,480 CEOs had left their posts.

But to most people it seemed like the good times were still rolling at the end of 2019.  Corporate profits were rising and the stock market was setting record high after record high.

Yes, there were lots of signs that the global economy was really slowing down, but most experts were not forecasting an imminent recession.

So why did so many chief executives suddenly decide that it was time to move on?

The following are just a few of the big name CEOs that chose to step down in 2019

United Airlines — Oscar Munoz

Alphabet — Larry Page

Gap — Art Peck

McDonald’s — Steve Easterbrook

Wells Fargo — Tim Sloan

Under Armour — Kevin Plank

PG&E — Geisha Williams

Kraft Heinz — Bernardo Hees

HP — Dion Weisler

Bed, Bath & Beyond — Steven Temares

Warner Bros. — Kevin Tsujihara

Best Buy — Hubert Joly

New York Post — Jesse Angelo

Colgate-Palmolive — Ian Cook

MetLife — Steven Kandarian

eBay — Devin Wenig

Nike — Mark Parker

Of course the mass exodus of chief executives did not end there.

In fact, a whopping 219 CEOs stepped down during the month of January 2020 alone.

By then, it was starting to become clear that the coronavirus that was ripping through China could potentially become a major global pandemic, and I certainly can understand why many among the corporate elite would choose to abandon ship at that moment.

Some of these CEOs have made absolutely absurd salaries for many years, and it is much easier to take the money and run than it is to stick around and steer a major corporation through the most difficult global crisis that any of us have ever experienced.

The following are just a few of the well known CEOs that have resigned so far in 2020

Bob Iger, CEO of Disney

Ginni Rometty, CEO of IBM

Harley-Davidson CEO Matt Levatich

T-Mobile’s CEO John Legere

LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner

Mastercard CEO Ajay Banga

Keith Block, co-CEO of Salesforce

Tidjane Thiam, CEO of Credit Suisse

Hulu CEO Randy Freer

It is important for me to say that I do not have any special insight into the personal motivations of any of these individuals, and every situation is different.

But I do think that it is quite strange that we have seen such an unprecedented corporate exodus at such a critical moment in our history.

Meanwhile, top corporate executives were dumping billions of dollars worth of shares in their own companies just before the market completely cratered.  The following comes from the Wall Street Journal

Top executives at U.S.-traded companies sold a total of roughly $9.2 billion in shares of their own companies between the start of February and the end of last week, a Wall Street Journal analysis shows.

The selling saved the executives—including many in the financial industry—potential losses totaling $1.9 billion, according to the analysis, as the S&P 500 stock index plunged about 30% from its peak on Feb. 19 through the close of trading March 20.

In the stock market, you only make money if you get out in time, and many among the corporate elite seem to have impeccable timing.

Perhaps they just got really lucky.  Or perhaps they were reading my articles and understood that COVID-19 was going to cause the global economy to shut down.  In any event, things worked out really well for those that were able to dump their stocks before it was too late.

And it turns out that several members of Congress were also selling stocks just before the market went nuts…

Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California and three of her Senate colleagues reported selling off stocks worth millions of dollars in the days before the coronavirus outbreak crashed the market, according to reports.

The data is listed on a U.S. Senate website containing financial disclosures from Senate members.

Of course most ordinary Americans were not so “lucky”, and the financial losses for the country as a whole have been absolutely staggering.

The good news is that there was a tremendous rally on Wall Street on Tuesday, and that will provide some temporary relief for investors.

But the number of confirmed coronavirus cases continues to escalate at an exponential rate all over the globe, and this crisis appears to be a long way from over.

About the Author: I am a voice crying out for change in a society that generally seems content to stay asleep. My name is Michael Snyder and I am the publisher of The Economic Collapse BlogEnd Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. I have written four books

Insider Leaks Statement: Facebook Was NOT Created By Mark Zuckerberg!

Insider Leaks Statement: Facebook Was NOT Created By Mark Zuckerberg!

Definitely worth a listen!  We all know that Facebook had some shady beginnings.. stolen code.. angel investment via outed CIA ‘front company’ In-Q-Tel, and it goes on..  What if Zuck really was just the chosen puppet leader of what would ultimately be the worlds largest ‘voluntary citizen dossier’?  Give it a listen and decide for yourself.  These statements certainly seem to ring true with plenty of background info to give reasonable merit.

     Highlights:

    • Mark’s real name is not even Zuckerberg.
    • Mark was chosen ahead of time and ‘placed’ at Harvard to fit the story.
    • Mark did not create the Facebook brand name nor did he write any code.
    • Mark has ‘handlers’ that dictated (and still do) his every move.
    • Mark’s lack of any moral compass made him the perfect figure-head.
    • Mark is the just the face of a much bigger agenda at work.

    Interesting ‘Top Comment’

    ” So, Zuckerberg’s Harvard professor, James P. Chandler, is one in the same patent attorney who stole Michael McKibben’s Leader Technology ideas that he was supposed to help get a patent and instead STOLE the information! WOW, all these deep stater’s are totally intertwined, like a huge cancer. How do you kill a cancer? STARVE IT! “

    FACTS ABOUT THE GLOBAL BANKING MACHINE

    FACTS ABOUT THE GLOBAL BANKING MACHINE

    FACTS ABOUT THE GLOBAL BANKING MACHINE

    GLOBAL BANKING MACHINE The global banking industry is the largest organised crime syndicate in human history – getting away with it because of our ignorance, their forceful control of our governments and almost everything else in our lives.

    Courtesy to the activist from Occupy Wall Street who sent a strong message to the world.
    1. All the major banks in the world are owned and controlled by the banking families.
    2. They control the entire process of the creation, the printing, and supply of money around the world.
    3. The three biggest names in this cartel are the Rothschilds; Rockefellers and Morgans, and they ultimately own or control all the banks in the world, together with a small number of other powerful banking families, like Carnegie, Harriman, Schiff, and Warburg.
    4. Collectively they have become known as the “banksters” by those who became aware of their devious activity.
    5. All the major central banks of the world, including the Reserve Bank of South Africa, just like the Federal Reserve Bank in the USA, are privately owned corporations with complete control of the financial markets.
    6. These banking families and central banks are a law unto themselves and do not have to answer to anyone. For example, section 33 of the South African Reserve Bank Act allows them to keep their actions secret.
    7. The global financial system created around the supply of money is so convoluted and complex that only a few people truly understand it. This is always used as an excuse to exclude the involvement of  ordinary people.
    8. The deeply complex legal system is used in the same way to manipulate and support this structure, denying the ordinary person access to lawful justice.
    9. Lawful justice cannot exist under the situation where the country is a corporation; the president appoints the judges, therefore the judges work for the corporation and have to uphold the wellbeing of the corporation – not the  people. And the courts are mere enforcers of the banking policy.
    10. Banks officially do not work with money. They work with Bills of Exchange, Negotiable Instruments and Promissory Notes.
    11. The word ‘money’ does not even have a definition in the Bank Act of South Africa, neither is the word ‘payment’ defined.
    12. All the major money of the world is ‘FIAT’ money – this basically means that it has no intrinsic value AND it is not supported by any precious metals like gold or silver, as it was a long time ago. FIAT money is created by banks, out of thin air, when you take out a “loan.” There is actually no real loan – nothing physical is exchanged – this is the equivalent of counterfeiting. South Africa’s money supply has quadrupled in the past decade, and yet this increase supply has not seen a parallel increase in gold, silver or other real commodity reserves.
    13. This means that the paper/plastic money we use is completely worthless. They are just fancy pieces of paper with some fancy logos printed on them with no value at all. The ‘value’ is derived purely from the masses of people who have confidence in their currency and keep using it as a method of exchange.
    14. For example, very few people know that a payment / commission / legal bribe is paid to the South African government every time a worn note or coin is returned to the SA Reserve bank. This payment is called seigniorage and allows our government to profit from the exploitation of the people by the paper/plastic money controlled by the Reserve Bank, and ultimately the Bank For International Settlements from whom our Reserve Bank receives their orders.
    15. Yet it is illegal to destroy these worthless pieces of paper, and people who introduce alternative pieces of paper, or copy these pieces of paper are jailed for infringement of its copyright.
    16. The only reason our money has any value, is because we give it value – our perception of value is the only value it has. If the people lose faith in their money, the money will collapse, because nothing supports it. In fact the word ‘credit’ comes from the Latin credere which means “to believe.” Evidence of this is found almost every time a central bank governor opens their mouth. You will hear the word “confidence” uttered over and over and over again because the prime directive of a central bank governor is to maintain confidence in banking at all costs. Erosion in confidence leads to the collapse of the system. This is precisely why they placed Nelson Mandela’s face on the new South African notes – to instil and renew confidence in our money and abuse the man’s commitment to freedom.
    17. Banks create money out of “THIN AIR” by simply creating debits and credit on the accounting computer system. This is called the Matching Principle and is governed by the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP).  A “loan” is not a loan in the ordinary sense of the word, it is an instruction that you, the customer signs, in the process creating a promissory note, which you “submit” to the bank authority, giving the bank permission to issue one of their promissory notes in return. Their promissory note (which comes in the form of a computer generated bank statement) is designed to look like a loan. So, their promise back to you (in exchange for your promise to them) is the loan you are receiving. So, in essence, you instructed the bank to make money out of thin air. Because you are none the wiser, you agree to the exploitative terms and conditions outlined in the agreement which, of course, the courts will enforce in their favour.
    18. Banks do not have money of their own to lend you as most people believe. No money existed in the system before the so called “loan” was granted to you.
    19. Banks create money on the signatures of their clients and the so-called contracts and loans they make the customer sign. These contracts are sold in a process called securitisation to third parties, who in turn sell it on the global stock markets. This is a highly secretive and well guarded technique in which they profiteer and create undue enrichment. Then they bundle such loans and sell them back to the people via pensions funds and insurance policies. Are you confused yet? You should be – many lawyers and most judges do not understand this and this is why we had to study this ourselves to be able to defend ourselves in the courts against those lawyers who defend the banksters and understand it well. The people have to know.
    20. By selling your signature or ‘promissory note’ or mortgage bond contract, they lose all legal rights to any property that they financed. In legal terms this is called losing ‘locus standi’.
    21. When the bank securitises a loan, they get paid the full capital amount of the loan, plus interest, up front. This means that your loan has actually been pre-settled by a third party who is insured in case you default, while you have no idea that this is going on behind the scenes.
    22. The banks break contract law by claiming to lend what they do not possess – money. They only create money, in most cases cyber-money, after you signed all the documents and they sold your promissory note to the third party who then on-sells it, sometimes many times, to other parties by trading it on the global stock markets. This is why securitisation is a ponzi / pyramid scheme that everyone must become aware of. It is also known as “shadow banking” which is easy to research online.
    23. They do not disclose any of this to their customers, keeping us in the dark. You believed that they actually loaned real money. This is a lie. They never loaned you anything of any value and therefore there was never “equal consideration” where both you and the bank stands to lose something. This flies in the face of basic contract law, never mind common morality among people. But then banks are not people – they are legal fiction corporations.
    24. You created all the value with your own mind and it was your signature that caused the release of money from the third party buyer, which the bank received on your behalf – except they never informed you of that, did they?
    25. The banks act as intermediaries, like estate agents, because they do not lend us THEIR money. Since they do not lend us anything, but only obtain it on the strength of our signatures, from a third party, any interest they charge is pure extortion and fraud. Disclosure must take place for a valid agreement to occur.
    26. The money in South Africa is printed by the South African Mint – also a private company that simply profiteers on the hard work of our people. However, recently this has been outsourced to Sweden which was a disaster, causing huge embarrassment for the Reserve Bank after several billion Rands worth of notes were printed incorrectly with the wrong dimensions and had to be destroyed.
    27. The Reserve Bank, which is a private company, is in charge of printed money, which it sells or loans it to the banks at a fraction of the face value of the bank notes.
    28. When the banks return the used bank notes to the Reserve Bank, they get paid almost the entire full face value of those bank notes, creating enrichment out of thin air for themselves, by creating money out of thin air from shuffling paper.
    29. Banks practice what is called “Fractional Reserve Banking”. This means that they only have to retain a small percentage of any deposit and can lend out the rest many times over to the public, creating a spiral of debt on money that does not even exist.
    30. For example: For every $100 you deposit, the bank lends out about $900 of imaginary fictitious money to their clients. The real fraud is that they charge compounded interest on this non-existent money. This is blatant fraud and anyone else would be jailed for a long time for doing this.
    31. Interest is charged up front. Interest is considered “real money” by the bank, and so they can make more loans, out of thin air, against that interest, that did not exist in the first place.
    32. As it stands today, there is not enough money in the world to pay off all the debt in the world, because of interest. This is exactly the situation the banksters wanted to create. A situation that gives them complete control over property and other assets that can be repossessed by the banks only to re-sell it to another naive person who will most likely end up in the same debt situation.
    33. All this activity is continually supported by the legal system and the ignorant judges who just perpetuate the fraud in the face of clear evidence.
    34. In some countries, hard working people are jailed for not being able to repay their debt. This a blatant crime against humanity for which the bankers should be jailed and the judges should be answerable to the people they serve. But then, they don’t serve the people, they serve the corporation that employs them – THE REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA and other corporations that masquerade as countries.
    35. The printed notes we call money are really instruments of debt and should be illegal. Money as we know it today can only be issued as debt. In fact, about 40% of the debt of the USA is fictitious / counterfeit debt, owed to the Federal Reserve Bank who initially created it out of nothing and then charged interest on that debt. All the income tax collected in the US is used to pay off just the interest portion of the debt to the Federal Reserve Bank owners.
    This is just a small taste of the convoluted web of deception that has been created to keep us ignorant and completely enslaved to the global control of the banksters.
    There is no reason why we, the people, cannot create our own new form of money as an alternative to the banks’ tools of enslavement and use this new money as an interim tool to stabilise the economic crisis. A lawful kind of money that serves the people.

    Money for the people by the people – Tax-free and Interest-free – no inflation – no levies – no duties – no vat – no debt slavery.

    The Vanguard Corporation Source of Secret Power

    The Vanguard Corporation Source of Secret Power

    Russian research on the Vanguard corporation, the secret power controller of the much of the Western corporate power structure.The four companies that are present in all cases below and in all decisions: Vanguard, Fidelity, BlackRock and State Street. All of them “belong together”, but if to check out carefully the balance of shares, it turns out that in reality all these companies controlled by Vanguard. So, all of these partners or “competitors” of Fidelity, BlackRock and State Street belong to Vanguard Group.Please, look at the largest, companies in various industries, controlled by the “Big Four”, and upon closer inspection control by Corporation Vanguard: Alcoa Inc. Altria Group Inc., American International Group Inc., AT & T Inc., Boeing Co., Caterpillar Inc., Coca-Cola Co., DuPont & Co., Exxon Mobil Corp., General Electric Co., General Motors Corporation, Hewlett- Packard Co., Home Depot Inc., Honeywell International Inc., Intel Corp., International Business Machines Corp., Johnson & Johnson, JP Morgan Chase & Co., McDonald’s Corp., Merck & Co. Inc., Microsoft Corp., 3M Co., Pfizer Inc., Procter & Gamble Co., United Technologies Corp., Verizon Communications Inc., Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Time Warner, Walt Disney, the corporation «Halliburton», Viacom, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, CBS Corporation, NBC Universal …To date, tens of trillions of dollars are controlled by these investors, and all of the major global corporations controlled by the group of investors that own asset management group Vanguard: Dick Cheney, the Rothschilds, the Bushes, the Rockefellers, Clintons, Donald Rumsfeld and many other influential people and owners of the Federal Reserve. They virtually monopolized foreign and US defense policy and almost all of the major defense corporations.

    Group Vanguard, itself, also controls the major world media. In addition, Corporation Vanguard is working on a number of key figures of the Central Intelligence Agency, including the namesake of a President of Vanguard , the CIA Director John Brennan.

    It is important to know who really controls the major banks, and we will start from the United States.

    In the first place -JP Morgan Chase with 2.39 trillion dollars of assets. Its large institutional investor is Vanguard Group, Inc. Between the top ten investors the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund, Vanguard Institutional Index Fund and the Vanguard 500 Index Fund.

    In second place – Bank of America with assets 2.17 trillion. Its large institutional investor is Vanguard Group, Inc. The top ten investors – investment funds – Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund, Vanguard Institutional Index Fund, Vanguard 500 Index Fund and Vanguard / Windsor II.

    The third place — Citigroup with assets 1,88 trillion. The biggest investor —Vanguard Group, Inc. First ten: Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund, Vanguard Institutional Index Fund, Vanguard 500 Index Fund, Vanguard/Windsor II, Vanguard/Wellington Fund, Inc. и Fidelity Contra Fund, Inc. We should consider that some of them, for example, «Fidelity» – this is also Vanguard, and some others, for example, «JPMorgan», is fully controlled by Vanguard, as well. «Fidelity» and its structures belong to Vanguard…

    And finally, Warren Buffett’s favorite–Wells Fargo. Assets: 1.44 trillion, deposits: 1.01 trillion. The list of the largest institutional investors: Vanguard Group, Inc. is only in second place, but this is offset by the top ten investors – investment funds: Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund, Fidelity Contra Fund, Inc., Vanguard Institutional Index Fund, Vanguard 500 Index Fund and Vanguard / Wellington Fund, Inc. (All of them are Vanguard’s “daughters”)

    That’s what the picture of the investigation loomed today. The largest companies in the world- are banks Bank of America, JP Morgan, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley. Let’s see who their major shareholders. Bank of America, State Street Corporation, Vanguard Group, BlackRock, FMR (Fidelity), Paulson, JP Morgan, T. Rowe, Capital World Investors, AXA, Bank of NY, Mellon.

    JP Morgan: State Street Corp., Vanguard Group, FMR (it is Fidelity), BlackRock, T. Rowe, AXA, Capital World Investor, Capital Research Global Investor, Northern Trust Corp. and Bank of Mellon.

    Citigroup: State Street Corporation, Vanguard Group, BlackRock, Paulson, FMR, Capital World Investor, JP Morgan, Northern Trust Corporation, Fairhome Capital Mgmt and Bank of NY Mellon.

    Wells Fargo: Berkshire Hathaway, FMR, State Street, Vanguard Group, Capital World Investors, BlackRock, Wellington Mgmt, AXA, T. Rowe and Davis Selected Advisers

    Check yourself again: As I mentioned above, the leading financial company is fully controlled by ten institutional and/or stock shareholders of which are the nucleus of the four companies that are present in all cases and in all decisions: Vanguard, Fidelity, BlackRock and State Street.

    All of them “belong together”, but if to check out carefully the balance of shares, it turns out that in reality all these companies controlled by Vanguard. So, all of these partners or “competitors” Fidelity, BlackRock and State Street belong to Vanguard Group..
    Monsanto

    The corporation «Monsanto» hated by millions of people around the world, and especially in the US, but its owners did not care about it for a simple reason: no one thought about its real hosts. August 26, 2014. As the owners of «Monsanto» public perceives individuals: William U. Parfet, owning, 284,642 shares of the company, Hugh Grant – 253715, Robert T. Fraley- 95212, Brett D. Begemann – 103523 and David F. Snively to 62072 shares. Impressively, all of them – are very rich and influential people. Total all individuals – the owners of the corporation «Monsanto» have 799,164 shares.

    However, the first in the list of institutional shareholders is (who would you think ?) Vanguard Group, Inc. from 31201773 shares, that is 39 or more times greater than the leading “owners” of the company in total.

    Let’s see another list of shareholders «Monsanto» – mutual funds: Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund – 8118741 action, Vanguard / Primecap Fund – 6663460, Vanguard Institutional Index Fund – 5226511 and Vanguard 500 Index Fund – 517 086.

    At this point, there are not any of the new players, but one new company involved: Fidelity Grows Company Fund with 4072871 shares. The trick is that the mutual fund Fidelity Investment Services working closely with Vanguard Group.

    Go down to the list: Vanguard Specialized-Dividend Appreciation Index Fund – More shares 3641513. Do your eyes dazzle by Vanguard? But there is no questions for regulatory agencies: the shares are distributed among the different funds, and all of them are different legal entities!

    As a leading figure of «Monsanto» known by the public is Mr. Hugh Grant with the aforementioned 253,715 shares of the corporation. He served as a President, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Grant does not explain to any nobody, in whose hands are the reins of Monsanto’s power in reality!

    GoogleGoogle!?! You search, and you guess that Google owns by a Russian Jew, Mr. Sergey Brin.
    First, find a list of the owners. There are Eric E. Schmidt -1240463 shares, John L. Doerr -2767 shares, Sergey Brin -75000 shares, David C. Drummond -21332 stocks and shares Paul S. Otellini -643. Tough Guys.Go down below to the most important institutional investors, and in the first place is State Street Corporation with 22757690 shares, constituting 6.73% of the company as much as Google. So who is the real owner ?!In second place with a certain abbreviation is FMRLLC with its 20368861 shares and 6.02%. Nothing mysterious. This is Fidelity Management and Research.

    The third –Vanguard Group, Inc. with 14624137 shares and 4.32%. At this stage of counting the total share of Vanguard and Fidelity is already 10.34%. Big Boys.

    Important!However, we go further: among the most important investment funds of the investors of Google: first is Fidelity Contra fund Inc. with 6925967 shares or 2.05%, on the fourth –Fidelity Growth Company Fund (1,809,678, 0.54%) and on the sixth -Vanguard / Primecap Fund (1,417,843, 0.42%).Total aggregate Vanguard and Fidelity Corporations shares of Google on August 28, 2014 is 45,146,486 (forty-five million one hundred forty-six thousand four hundred eighty-six shares), while the whole world “knows” that Mr. Sergey Brin owns the Google. Mr. Brin has seventy five thousand shares. I informed you already that Vanguard owns the FidelityIn contrast to the Vanguard and Fidelity, holding voting shares, Brin interests in income rather than in control, so all of his shares belong to the category B that filed under section 14 (A) of the Act of 1934 “On Securities Exchanges ” declaration signed by Eric Schmidt. The number of category A shares that owned by Sergey Brin is 0.

    However, Brin as a Director, who voting by proxy uses not his shares, but information about the owners of these shares I did not find, and it is possible that among owners of these shares would be the same Vanguard.

    MicrosoftPlease, see who controls Microsoft. To do this again we will use “boring” German data, this time on
    https://de.finance.yahoo.com/q/mh?s=MSFT.List of Direct owners—individuals as of on August 28, 2014: Steven A. Ballmerc 333,254,734 shares, William H. Gates III -c 297992934, Mason G. Morfit -827 shares, Brian Kevin Turner -1295454, and Steven J. Sinofsky to 1176195 shares.List of major institutional investors opens Vanguard Group, Inc. to 386749214 shares, and in fourth place here FMR (Fidelity!), LLC to 272942627. In the first place on the list of the most important foundations Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund with 115,585,047 shares, and below there are Vanguard Institutional Index Fund-Institutional Index Fund -75214603 and Vanguard 500 Indexm Fund -74414992.

    AT&T
    Now, we will take a quick look at the AT&T. The top ten institutional investors it looks like: The Vanguard Group, Inc., State Street Corporation, Evercore Trust Company, NA, BlackRock Institutional Trust Company, NA, Bank of New York Mellon Corporation, BlackRock Fund Advisors, Northern Trust Corporation, Dimensional Fund Advisors LP, Capital Research Global Investors and BlackRock Group Limited. Only the owners of Evercore Trust Company are not recognized, but the other nine are Vanguard.The Top Ten institutional investors – investment funds
    The top ten institutional investors – investment funds: Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund, Vanguard 500 Index Fund, SPDR S & P 500 ETF Trust, Vanguard Institutional Index Fund-Institutional Index Fund, Capital Income Builder, Inc., Franklin Custodian Funds-Income Fund, Spartan 500 Index Fund, Shares Core S & P 500 ETF, DFA US Large Cap Value Series and Vanguard Index-Value Index Fund. From this list it is not clear to me who owns the Shares Core S & P 500 ETF and the DFA US Large Cap Value Series. Other eight out of ten are Vanguard.https://de.finance.yahoo.com/q/mh?s=T%2C+&ql=1Comcast
    Please ask me about Comcast and its purchase of 100% shares of Time Warner Cable, of a “daughter” of its alleged largest competitor, media conglomerate AT&T Cable. This “daughter”, Time Warner Cable controls 60% of both the Internet and cable television in the United States.96.69% stake in Comcast is in the hands of institutional investors. Here are the first five: STRS Ohio – 150,105,674, Capital World Investors – 134,729,551, Vanguard Group, Inc. – 125 644 169, State Street Corp. – 104 763 362, and FMR LLC -73 866 510.http://www.nasdaq.com/de/symbol/cmcsa/ownership-summaryI show to you above, but not many of other Americans know that State Street and Fidelity (FMR) are Vanguard, too.
    Facts on Ebola
    Gilead Sciences,
    I do not remember if the FBI agents requested me to investigate transmitted contactless Virus Ebola, which was developed in CIA’s secret laboratory in Guinea by specialists of the American biotechnology company «Gilead Sciences», after which the epidemic was spread covering several countries.The Headquarter of «Gilead Sciences» is located in Foster City, California. If the FBI agents requested me to investigate Ebola, I inform you below about the real owners of the «Gilead Sciences»! If the FBI did not request me to investigate Ebola, please, delete the information below.The nominal owners—individuals: Dr. John C. Martin (President, Chief Executive Officer), Norbert W. Bischofberger, John F. Milligan, Etienne Davignon and James M. Denny.The real control of major institutional shareholders of «Gilead Sciences» belongs to Vanguard Group, Inc. Other major shareholders of mutual investments: Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund; Vanguard Institutional Index Fund, and Vanguard 500 Index Fund.
    El Chapo Guzman Didn’t Escape, He Was Released

    El Chapo Guzman Didn’t Escape, He Was Released

    El Chapo Guzman’s Release

    So I’m certain you’ve seen the news non stop, Chapo escaped, again. Happened on a Saturday night, he disappeared from the view of a surveillance camera in his cell and went underground into a tunnel under the Altiplano maximum security prison and wasn’t seen again. That’s the summary of the official story, and the video does appear to show that he went out through the tunnel dug where his shower was located. The story being spun is that since they couldn’t see him escape because Chapo was in a blind spot for the cameras. The authorities stated that out of respect for “human rights” they didn’t want to invade a prisoner’s privacy by placing a surveillance camera that could look into the shower area. That’s their trick up their sleeve, and the one that brings the story down.

    An ex prisoner of the very same jail Chapo was doing time in said there is no respect for human rights let alone privacy rights in that prison. The authorities made it seem like they thought Chapo might have just been getting ready to shower. The ex prisoner explained that showers at night are not allowed. You can only shower once, at six in the morning. So there goes that part. He also states that there are indeed cameras that can see into the shower, even the toilet. That you’re only allowed ten minutes in the shower but really about 8 since the guards rush the prisoners to finish. He says the only blind spot in a jail cell at Altiplano is under your bed. You have to take into account that the authorities have stressed that the reason for these so called blind spots, is their concern for human rights. Okay.

    If you’ve read enough about the Mexican government and their many hands, then you know that the last thing on their mind is a concern for human rights for its citizens. You can look at a photo of what police did to a young student that will verify that, Google that if you would like to but a face ripped off isn’t something I recommend you look at. The Mexican authorities aren’t concerned with human rights for its citizens let alone prisoners. The conditions at that jail and many others throughout Mexico are nightmarish. Put aside that we all know they don’t care about privacy, because don’t forget about this right here.

    Secretary of the Interior Osorio Chong had repeatedly stated that the reason for the blind spots was out of respect for human rights, that turned into backlash as people began to say they looked the other way. He had to state that respecting human rights for a prisoner is not the same as helping them escape. That is true, it isn’t the same thing, but he wasn’t respecting human rights, so let’s get that straight.

    It was obvious from the beginning of the story that Chapo must have had help from the inside, and you could ask any Mexican if they thought he had bought his way out and they’ll laugh and explain to you how reasoning works. It was confirmed that several prison workers including the director of Altiplano were detained for their alleged roles in Chapo’s escape. The former prisoner however stated that Chapo needed to have four departments under his control in that prison because of its maximum security status. He needed to control the federal, the prison guards, the prison officials and the special guards. So obviously he was able to do that, since he’s out of prison. Outside the prison is another link of the story of how Chapo was released.

    The house at the end of the tunnel had no permit to be built. How could a maximum security prison not notice a building being built not far from its walls? You can say that Mexican authorities are very relaxed with their regulations, but a maximum security prison that houses the most wanted criminals is something else. Not only did it house Chapo, it had the leader of The Zetas Cartel, leader of the Knights Templar Cartel, “La Barbie” of the Beltran-Leyva Cartel, it is the prison of the most high profile cartel leaders. Surely they would notice a house being built about a mile from their walls, right? People familiar with the area have stated how secure that entire area is, you can’t even pick up radio signals there. With regards to how Chapo could’ve pulled this off, again, it isn’t how but why. Chapo didn’t escape if the authorities allowed all the pieces to be put into place for him to leave. He didn’t escape, he just left. He left behind a nice gift at least. That little bracelet used to monitor his location.

    The bracelet that kept track of him doesn’t work outside the prison walls, pretty neat feature there for a maximum security prison. That’s another story in itself, the bracelet isn’t of importance because he removed it before going down the tunnel. How did he remove it so easily? What kind of bracelet for prisoner monitoring be so easily removable? Well, it was left behind and even if he couldn’t remove it, it would have stopped working once he was out. To be honest, he could have a huge lighthouse blaring out his location on top of his head and the authorities will still not find him, because they’re not looking for him. They released him. Well, for certain the local authorities did.

    Shit rolls downhill, and so does money. This is an embarrassment for the upper echelons of power. President Enrique Peña Nieto is looking like quite the fool for being en route to France as the most prolific drug trafficker in the world just slipped out of prison on a motorcycle through a tunnel. Secretary of the Interior Osorio Chong looked like he was about to suffer an anxiety attack as he held a press conference over Chapo’s escape. They might not be happy about it, but certainly the lower level officials have quite a nice family retirement plan because of this. Sorry, us Mexicans usually think about, “I hope my family is taken care of” not, “I hope the president and the top brass is happy.” I can assure you, anyone involved in letting Chapo go aren’t worrying about the future of their family. They might go to jail, but just like those who sacrifice their being to work endlessly in the US to send money back home to ensure their families are taken care of, that’s all that matters. Speaking of money, that might be the key to the whole story.

    Not going to get into specifics here, but the biggest buzz from the Left in Mexico on this story is, the bigger picture.  Yeah Chapo is the head of arguably the biggest and most powerful cartel in the world. It was that way when he was in jail, and when he wasn’t in jail. So why all the effort to find him, arrest him, jail him? Well, the biggest bit on that has to do with a general goal with the EPN administration. Privatization and more oversight from the US government over Mexico. There has been talks about the need to privatize Mexican prisons, among other neoliberal proposals such as in the education sector which has met with fierce resistance from education workers. There’s lots of quotes in US media from law enforcement agents saying this is an embarrassment for the corrupt and weak Mexican judicial system, that it needs more US assistance, and you get the idea. This of course is the US lead war on drugs, and they have the final say and if need be, final action. Loretta Lynch went as far to say that the US is ready to “help” Mexico find and capture Chapo. Anytime the US says they’re ready to help another country find “justice” well you know how that story ends. Sovereignty or any resemblance to it not only flies out the window, it leaves a bloody mess. Wow, sorry but I’m looking at this post and it is rather long and tedious to write and I’m certain it’s getting tedious to read as well so I’ll break this down to the core, just a moment.

    The rumors, Chapo was allowed to walk right out the front door of the prison. Let’s say that was the truth, that the tunnel was just a prop to assist this novela like story streaming from the TV networks. Even if it wasn’t, his release, yes release, serves a powerful purpose. Either the Mexican state is weak and corrupt, it is. Or, it’s another excuse for a “soft” intervention from the US. It can be both, it most certainly feels that way. We forget the War on Drugs is an actual war, and propaganda is a tool of war. You can point to the bad guy and say that’s enough reason to go to war, but at least recognize that this is part of a war. So treat it like one. Bin Laden was sought after in the War on Terror and many innocent people died going after the bad guy. Remember that lives are a factor here, it’s war after all.

    source: MexicanAnarchist.WordPress.com

    Dark Fiber and the Future of the Internet

    Dark Fiber and the Future of the Internet

    A mere cursory glimpse into the future foretells of a world in which the Internet has been integrated into almost every facet of our lives. However, the flood of smartphones, laptops, and “Internet of Things”-enabled devices in recent years has led it to expand at a rate far beyond the expectations of its original creators. With today’s generation of technology pushing the limits of current fiber optic capacity, in the next decade, radical new solutions to the “capacity crunch” are crucial to the sustained success of the web.

    The domain of all things digital is evolving quickly, and tomorrow’s Internet promises to be in places it never was before: inside our appliances, in far-flung villages, even in space. While some of these needs are practical (“smart” healthcare devices, learning thermostats, rural WiFi) others are purely for amusement (Netflix, the introduction of Oculus Rift). All in all, coming changes to the constantly-expanding role of the net stand to make our world a much different place than it was just several years ago.

    As much of the world races to improve Internet connection speeds, researchers are concerned that the fiber optic cables which form the physical backbone of the global Internet are reaching their peak capacity and may run out of bandwidth in as soon as five to eight years. According to UK scientists, the cables and fiber optics that deliver data to users will have reached their limit by 2023. No longer able to transmit information, this may trigger an Internet collapse of epic proportions. This is a massive problem, of course, especially taking into account the fact that much of the developing world still needs to be brought online, even as Western superpowers continue to demand greater bandwidth and faster Internet speeds.

    This issue has made it to the mainstream, as doomsday predictions from scientists, physicists and engineers warning of a “full” Internet summoned the attention of all who depend on the web (for cat videos, or other perhaps more worthwhile pursuits). Until now, Internet providers have kept up with increased demand simply by sending more and more data down a single line of optic fiber. But now, the optical fibers have reached maximum capacity, and cannot transfer any additional information. Some of the world’s largest providers of fiber optic connections, such as VerizonFiOS, Google, and Microsoft, have recently worked to improve their networking infrastructure to keep up with our insatiable desire for faster, stronger Internet. However, this does not change the fact that computer-to-computer interactions are growing at an exponentially faster rate than anyone had predicted.

    earth-fiber-optic-networksAs reported by the media, there are several Internet initiatives afoot which may serve to mitigate this issue completely. Some of the biggest names in technology today have a stake in the race to develop better and faster forms of Internet delivery, implementing some wild schemes in an attempt to move beyond broadband. From Google’s Loons to Elon Musk’s lofty plan for individual Internet satellites, some plans are perhaps less “grounded” in reality than others. However, the key to fighting capacity crunch might already be beneath our feet.

    “Dark fiber” is a term used to refer to networks of unlit optical cable infrastructure, laid down and left unused during the dotcom era. In the city of San Francisco alone, over 110 miles of fiber optic cable run underground. Only a fraction of that fiber network is currently being put to use. Right now, networks of dark-fiber primarily serve corporate entities, in high-density urban centers. But experts say that putting them to use residential communities wouldn’t be tough.

    Robert Steele, former intelligence officer with the CIA, has proposed another idea to solve this problem: open source everything. As the growth of online media consumption – through streaming sites such as Netflix and Youtube – promises to further skyrocket in years ahead, his solution may make the most sense.

    Steele spoke on the matter, saying:

    “Sharing, not secrecy, is the means by which we realise such a lofty destiny as well as create infinite wealth. The wealth of networks, the wealth of knowledge, revolutionary wealth – all can create a nonzero win-win Earth that works for one hundred percent of humanity. This is the ‘utopia’ that Buckminster Fuller foresaw, now within our reach.”

    Does reaching the end of the current optical fiber limit mean an Internet apocalypse will occur within our lifetimes? Personally, I’m optimistic that engineers will soon ameliorate the problem and clean up the mess – hopefully before I have to cancel my Netflix subscription.

    We’re Being Robbed Every Time We Fly

    We’re Being Robbed Every Time We Fly

    robbed-every-time-we-fly

    In less than 15 years, the United States’ airline industry has shrunk from ten airlines in the sky to just the big four that are left today. (Photo via Shutterstock)

    There’s a stunning lack of choice for American consumers today, and nowhere is that more evident than in our nation’s ever-shrinking airline industry.

    According to a new report from the AP, the average roundtrip ticket to anywhere in the US was over $509.15, including taxes, in the first half of this year. That’s up $14 from the same period last year.

    The AP also points out that domestic airfare pricing is outpacing inflation, up 2.7 percent compared to the 2.1 percent increase in the Consumer Price Index.

    And, according to data from the Airlines Reporting Corporation, airfare costs have shot up 10.7 percent during the past five years alone.

    So, what’s behind these sky-high airfare prices?

    Well, as the AP piece points out, airlines have discovered that thanks to the economic recovery, more people want to fly, so airlines have dropped the number of available seats on their planes, which all translates to higher ticket prices.

    The airlines are taking advantage of simple supply-and-demand economics.

    But that’s just one piece of the puzzle.

    The real reason that airfare costs are so high is because of the stunning lack of competition in the airline industry today.

    Back in 2001, there were 10 major airlines flying through American skies: American Airlines, TWA, America West, US Airways, Delta, Northwest, United, Continental, Southwest, and AirTran.

    All those airline choices meant more completion in the marketplace, which translated into lower airfare prices for American consumers.

    However, slowly but surely, the competition in the airline industry has disappeared.

    In 2001, American Airlines bought out TWA.

    In 2005, America West bought up US Airways, keeping the US Airways name.

    In 2008, Delta officially began the process of merging with Northwest.

    In 2010, United and Continental announced that they were joining forces, and just a few months later, Southwest announced that it was taking over AirTran.

    And finally, last year, US Airways and American Airlines announced that they were merging to form the world’s largest airline.

    So, in less than 15 years, the American airline industry has shrunk from ten airlines in the sky to just the big four that are left today.

    Similarly, as the number of airlines has dwindled, airfare prices have shot up, because there’s so little competition in the marketplace.

    The disappearing competition in the airline industry isn’t just some strange phenomenon.

    In fact, this same sort of thing is happening in just about every other industry in America.

    Look at America’s media and telecom industries.

    Back in 1983 – 90 percent of American media was owned by 50 companies.

    As of 2011 – that same 90 percent was controlled by just six massive corporations: GE, Newscorp, Disney, Viacom, Time-Warner and CBS.

    Similarly, right now, there are just 10 giant corporations that control, either directly or indirectly, virtually all American consumer products.

    And then there’s America’s banking industry.

    As Mother Jones points out, 37 banks and financial institutions back in 1990 have slowly transformed into the big four banks we see today (Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo).

    And we all know how much damage those big banks have done to the American economy.

    From fewer airlines in the skies, to fewer banks on Main Street, competition has disappeared from the American marketplace, and it’s all because Ronald Reagan, in 1982, stopped enforcing the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.

    Ever since Ronald Reagan came to Washington, “mergers and acquisitions” became the main way to do business, and we’ve all suffered as a result, in the form of things like higher airfare costs.

    The steady aggregation of big businesses taking over entire industries over the past 34 years in just about every major commercial sector has concentrated far too much power in the hands of too few players.

    Americans deserve choice.

    We shouldn’t have to feel like we’re being robbed every time we fly home to see family members or jet off for vacations.

    And the only way to bring that choice back is by undoing the damage that 34 years of failed Reaganomics has caused, by starting again to enforce the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, by breaking up America’s giant corporations, and by thus bringing competition back into our marketplace.

    This article was first published on Truthout and any reprint or reproduction on any other website must acknowledge Truthout as the original site of publication.

    Blackwater Threatens to Kill State Dept Investigator, Trying to Investigate

    Blackwater Threatens to Kill State Dept Investigator, Trying to Investigate

    blackwater_xe_academiEven the mightiest have their come-uppance when their internal logic spews out destructiveness returning on the self—“blowback” in a way perhaps not seen before. I refer to James Risen’s extraordinary article in the New York Times, “Before Shooting in Iraq, a Warning on Blackwater,” (June 30), in which the customary meaning of “blowback” refers to policies, e.g., the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the confrontation with Russia over Ukraine, the “pivot” of military power to the Pacific intent on the encirclement, containment, isolation of China, produce unintended, or if intended, still unwelcome, consequences for the initiator of the policy or action.

    Thus: Iraq, out-of-control (from the US standpoint, a raging civil war negating massive intervention and alerting the world to America’s hegemonic purposes); Afghanistan, original support of the Taliban against the Soviet Union, resulting in their material strengthening now turned against the US, endangering its power-position in the region; use of Ukraine as a basis for bringing NATO forces to the Russian border, now an overreach which may disrupt the EU and weaken US dominance over it; and blatant confrontation with China, both military and trade, with potential for war leading to nuclear annihilation. The status and role of world policeman is losing its blackjack, its reputation as global bully being challenged through the rise of multiple power-centers and industrial-commercial-financial patterns no longer defined, supervised, indeed controlled, by American global interests and military implementation.

    That is blowback in its familiar guise. Less so, the self-chosen instruments of repression spilling out of behemoth’s mouth because America’s dependence on repression to secure its aims makes it dependent as well on the executors of repression, in this case, given the extreme stress on privatization (the core of the monster’s functional existence), Blackwater at your service, a private army on hire to USG for pursuit of the dirty work, deemed necessary, yet, delegated to official forces, the cause of embarrassment and shame. Browbeating indigenous populations, with an overwhelming swagger and display in the grand tradition of conquerors, in addition to protecting representatives of the conquerors, is a mission worthy, as here, of billion dollar contracts to the private militias (euphemism: “security guards”) as insurance the military victory and occupation will hold.

    Here Blackwater is, and is treated as, inseparable from the intervention (read: conquest) itself, at times assisting in the fighting on an informal basis—it has not yet been invited to join NATO(!)—but more to the point, the intimidating presence in the post-military phase, as though instilling the message: You Iraqis think the military is bad, well don’t mess around, for far worse awaits you, we former Navy SEALS know nothing can touch us. Our motto might as well be, A Law Unto Ourselves, even USG—beyond the status-of-forces agreement it forced your government to sign—afraid of us. Blowback: the cancer in the bowels of behemoth rapidly spreading to the extremities, spinal column, brain. Soon we shall all be made over in the image of Blackwater, or rather, as Blackwater would like to see, as its actions show, America become, a nation subservient to its thugs, extolling martial glory for its own sake and for the sake of global dominance. Authoritarianism once off the ground knows no limits and demands the complete adherence of its subjects. America has lived with CIA for decades; Blackwater is icing on the cake.

    ***

    Before turning to the evidence contained in James Risen’s article, it is important to see how events from the past are converging on the present. His credentials as a whistleblower are borne out by his previous record (exposure of CIA dirty tricks, in his book State of War, with respect to Iran’s nuclear program) and current circumstances (he faces a possible jail sentence for refusing to disclose, from that account, the identity of an anonymous source). In the Bush doghouse for exposing the use of warrantless wire taps in 2005, and now, Obama contemplating more serious action, jail time for not complying with a DOJ subpoena, possibly leading to an Espionage Act prosecution, for which Obama excels over all of his predecessors combined (liberals, of course, furiously denying the sordid record), Risen not only stares down his persecutors, Obama, Holder, DOJ, but here presents an exposure in some ways more damning of US baseness from the top down, nurturing a murderous nest in the structure of government.

    As for the administration hounding, Jonathan Mahler’s New York Times article, “Reporter’s Case Poses Dilemma for Justice Dept.,” (June 27), implies that Risen’s refusal to be intimidated is causing Obama and Holder second thoughts about pushing for his imprisonment. According to John Rizzo, CIA’s acting general counsel, Bush people wanted State of War kept off the market—too late, however. Risen then was subpoenaed to testify against the suspected leaker—and refused. “More than six years of legal wrangling,” in what Mahler terms “the most serious confrontation between the government and the press in recent history,” is coming to a head. Risen “is now out of challenges. Early this month, the Supreme Court declined to review his case, a decision that allows prosecutors to compel his testimony.”

    But The Times, in defending its own man, cannot strongly protest, lest it antagonize the White House. Yes, Obama appears to be in a bind: “Though the court’s decision looked like a major victory for the government, it has forced the Obama administration to confront a hard choice. Should it demand Mr. Risen’s testimony and be responsible for a reporter’s being sent to jail? Or reverse course and stand down, losing credibility with an intelligence community that has pushed for the aggressive prosecution of leaks?” If Obama and USG were truly democratic (small “d”), there should not be a choice but only one course of action, moreover reigning in the “intelligence community” serving under their control.

    The reporter, I believe reflecting the paper’s view, however, credits the Obama administration with actually weighing alternatives and being capable of making moral choices: “The dilemma comes at a critical moment for an administration that has struggled to find a balance between aggressively enforcing laws against leaking and demonstrating concern for civil liberties and government transparency.” What balance? What concern? Everything points the other way, on both civil liberties (e.g., due process and habeas corpus rights for detainees) and government transparency (simply, a thick protective shield in place, symbolized by the high art of redaction—and, as with Blackwater’s killing sprees, the refusal or half-heartedness about prosecution). Its reporter’s back against the wall, NYT ignores the Espionage Act prosecutions of whistleblowers.

    Mahler succinctly describes the reporting: “The failed C.I.A. action at the heart of Mr. Risen’s reporting was intended to sabotage Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Intelligence officials assigned a former Russian scientist who had defected to the United States to deliver a set of faulty blueprints for a nuclear device to an Iranian scientist. But the Russian scientist became nervous and informed the Iranians that the plans were flawed.” One readily appreciates the dangers to the National Security State, especially revelations of the stupidity and dangerousness of its crown jewel, CIA, posed by investigative journalism. The Times, to its everlasting shame, bowed to Coldoleezza Rice’s request to withhold publication of the article. As a Times spokesperson later declared, “We weighed the government’s concerns and the usual editorial considerations and decided not to run the story.” Hence, James Risen—enemy of National Security; he “broke the story” later in State of War. Yet Bush is not the only culprit in this story; Obama ordered two additional subpoenas to force Risen to testify, his DOJ going after him hammer-and-tongs: “After a trial court largely quashed his third subpoena [the first under Bush] in late 2010, the Justice Department successfully challenged the ruling in a federal appeals court, arguing that the First Amendment does not afford any special protections to journalists.” Enough said about the dedication to civil liberties and freedom of the press: “The administration then urged the Supreme Court not to review Mr. Risen’s case.”

    ***

    iraq-blackwater-civilians-killedI have already discussed the mass killings in Nisour Square, Baghdad, in a previous article. Now we learn that this was part of a pattern in Blackwater’s behavior—again, Risen’s reporting. Even for one who is a seasoned critic, it is painful for me to write about. Organized thuggery knows no limits particularly when working for the highest authority, immunity from punishment worn as a badge of honor, as meanwhile government officials hide their eyes. Risen writes, “Just weeks before Blackwater guards fatally shot 17 civilians in Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007, the State Department began investigating the security contractor’s operations in Iraq. But the inquiry was abandoned after Blackwater’s top manager there issued a threat: ‘that he could kill’ the government’s chief investigator and ‘no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq,’ according to department reports.” A private contractor threatens the life of a State Department investigator! No reprisal, punishment, cancellation of the contract, not even disclosure of the threat—yet Blackwater still in place years later, as part of the silence on atrocities in the Obama-Hillary era.

    Those 17 killed are on America’s hands, bloody hands. There was a clear warning about what to expect: “After returning to Washington, the chief investigator wrote a scathing report to State Department officials documenting misconduct by Blackwater employees and warning that lax oversight of the company, which had a contract worth more than $1 billion to protect American diplomats, had created ‘an environment full of liability and negligence.’” Even more outrageous, Risen notes, the investigators become the criminals gumming up the security works: “American Embassy officials in Baghdad sided with Blackwater rather than the State Department investigators as a dispute over the probe escalated in August 2007, the previously undisclosed documents show. The officials told the investigators that they had disrupted the embassy’s relationship with the security contractor and ordered them to leave the country, according to the reports.”

    Jean Richter, lead investigator, wrote, in a memo to the State Department only weeks prior to Nisour Square: “’The management structures in place to manage and monitor our contracts in Iraq have become subservient to the contractors themselves. Blackwater contractors saw themselves as above the law…. ‘hands off’ [management meant that] the contractors, instead of Department officials, are in command and in control.’” Now, nearly seven years later, four Blackwater guards are on trial, facing, if ever convicted, watered down charges, this being “ the government’s second attempt to prosecute the case in an American court [I wonder how serious the effort under Holder and Obama] after previous charges against five guards were dismissed in 2009.” Much of the time this is on Obama’s watch, yet, “despite a series of investigations in the wake of Nisour Square, the back story of what happened with Blackwater and the embassy in Baghdad before the fateful shooting has never been fully told.”

    So much for transparency, civil liberties, and prosecuting the crimes of a predecessor (the cardinal rule of presidents, at least this one, cover-up WAR CRIMES past and present, a solemn command of the National Security State). Silence and deniability, in all matters large and small, characterize the responses of USG and private principals: “The State Department declined to comment on the aborted investigation. A spokesman for Erik Prince, the founder and former chief executive of Blackwater, who sold the company in2010, said Mr. Prince had never been told about the matter.” The $1B contract itself testifies to the fusion of patriotism, secrecy, repression, and yes, corporate profit: “After Mr. Prince sold the company, the new owners named it Academi. In early June, it merged with Triple Canopy, one of its rivals for government and commercial contracts to provide private security. The new firm is called Constellis Holdings.” Like war, private security stands to make a killing (pardon the pun), no doubt in flight from the original name for damage-control and public-relations purposes.

    Previous to Nisour Square (Sept. 16, 2007) Blackwater guards “acquired a reputation…for swagger and recklessness,” but complaints “about practices ranging from running cars off the road to shooting wildly in the streets and even killing civilians typically did not result in serious action by the United States or the Iraqi government.” After firing in the Square, there was closer scrutiny, the Blackwater claim that they were fired on even US military officials denied, and “[f]ederal prosecutors later said Blackwater personnel had shot indiscriminately with automatic weapons, heavy machine guns and grenade launchers.” To no avail, given the symbiotic relationship between the company and the government. In fact, Blackwater had itself been run by Prince as a nation in microcosm, its people shortly before Nisour Square gathered by him at company headquarters in Moyock, North Carolina and made to “swear an oath of allegiance” like the one required of enlistees in the US military. They were handed copies of the oath, which, after reciting the words, were told to sign.

    The State Department investigation into Blackwater in Iraq, which began Aug. 1, 2007 and was slated for one month, led early to the “volatile” situation (including the death threat), our knowledge coming from “internal State Department documents” furnished “to plaintiffs in a lawsuit against Blackwater that was unrelated to the Nisour Square shootings,” seemingly by accident then and fleshed out by Risen. In that month—or that part of it before being forced to leave– the investigators discovered “a long list of contract violations by Blackwater,” staffing changes of security details “without State Department approval,” reducing the number of guards on details, “storing automatic weapons and ammunition in their private rooms, where they were drinking heavily and partying with frequent female visitors,” and, for many, failing “to regularly qualify on their weapons” or “carrying weapons on which they had never been certified” nor “authorized to use.” Extravagance for mayhem abroad, less than peanuts for critical needs at home, education, health care, employment, beyond the means or reach of Imperial grandeur as the national obsession.

    In addition to “overbilling the State Department by manipulating its personnel records, using guards assigned to the State Department contract for other work and falsifying other staffing data on the contract,” (no wonder the investigators’ poor reception by Blackwater’s resident head in Iraq), one of its affiliates forced “third country nationals” who did the dirty work at low wages “to live in squalid conditions, sometimes three to a cramped room with no bed,” according to the investigators’ report. Their conclusion: “Blackwater was getting away with such conduct because embassy personnel had gotten too close to the contractor.”

    Ah, the denouement; we have a name to go with the face of the project manager who threatened Richter’s life, Daniel Carroll, who said he could kill him without anything happening to himself “as we were in Iraq” (this was witnessed by Donald Thomas, the other investigator), and Richter, in his memo to the Department stated: “I took Mr. Carroll’s threat seriously. We were in a combat zone where things can happen unexpectedly, especially when issues involve potentially negative impacts on a lucrative security contract.” Nicely put, and corroborated by Thomas, who wrote in a separate memo that “others in Baghdad had told the two investigators to be ‘very careful,’ considering that their review could jeopardize job security for Blackwater personnel.” The wonder perhaps is that Richter and Thomas were not prosecuted under the Espionage Act for spoiling the show. It didn’t matter. No one at State listened.

    The two men were ordered to leave (Aug 23), and “cut short their inquiry and returned to Washington the next day.” Finally, on Oct. 5, after the Nisour Square scandal, State Department officials responded to Richter’s “August warning,” and took statements from him and Thomas about “their accusations of a threat by Mr. Carroll, but took no further action.” A special panel convened by Rice on Nisour Square “never interviewed Mr. Richter or Mr. Thomas.” The official who led the panel “told reporters on Oct. 23, 2007, that the panel had not found any communications from the embassy in Baghdad before the Nisour Square shooting that raised concerns about contractor conduct.” Voila, vanished in thin air. This State Department officer deserves the last word: “We interviewed a large number of individuals. We did not find any, I think, significant pattern of incidents that had not—that the embassy had suppressed in any way.” And my last word: fascism. Beyond all structural-cultural-societal considerations about wealth-concentration, industrial-financial consolidation, foreign expansion through preponderant power and the spirit of militarism, the rampaging privatization with government consent witnessed here, which has wreaked havoc on another people, only to be covered over by the state, aka, the National Security State, disregarding its Constitutional protections to the individual, as in sponsoring massive surveillance, is enough for me to satisfy the working definition of that single word.

    via Norman Pollack has written on Populism. His interests are social theory and the structural analysis of capitalism and fascism. He can be reached at [email protected].

    The Lightbulb Conspiracy – A Lesson in Planned Obsolescence

    The Lightbulb Conspiracy – A Lesson in Planned Obsolescence

    Planned obsolescence (OR PROGRAM) is the deliberate reduction of the useful life of products, to ensure frequent repurchases and consumption.

    In the past, products were built to last. Then, in early 1920, a group of industrial reached the following conclusion:

    “An article that refuses to goes down is a tragedy for the business”, especially in the modern consumer society, which is based on accelerated production cycles, repurchase and disposal.

    This documentary combines research work with rare footage, stored under lock and key, on the practice of planned obsolescence by large companies in the world from 1920 to the present day.

    The film, spoken in English, French, Spanish and German, travels the world interviewing witnesses who experienced the beginning of this practice, now applied worldwide, which harms consumers, generates mountains of waste and feeds the cemeteries of electronic equipment, which never stop growing.

    http://youtu.be/vfbbF3oxf-E

    Google AdSense Payout Policy: Anonymous Leaker Speaks

    Google AdSense Payout Policy: Anonymous Leaker Speaks

    google-dont-be-evil-art

    I am a former Google employee and I am writing this to leak information to the public of what I
    witnessed and took part in while being an employee. My position was to deal with AdSense accounts,
    more specifically the accounts of publishers (not advertisers). I was employed at Google for a period of
    several years in this capacity.

    Having signed many documents such as NDA’s and non-competes, there are many repercussions for me,
    especially in the form of legal retribution from Google. I have carefully planned this leak to coincide with
    certain factors in Google such as waiting for the appropriate employee turn around so that my identity
    could not be discovered.

    To sum it up for everyone, I took part in what I (and many others) would consider theft of money from
    the publishers by Google, and from direct orders of management. There were many AdSense employees
    involved, and it spanned many years, and I hear it still is happening today except on a much wider scale.
    No one on the outside knows it, if they did, the FBI and possibly IRS would immediately launch an
    investigation, because what they are doing is so inherently illegal and they are flying completely under
    the radar.

    It began in 2009. Everything was perfectly fine prior to 2009, and in fact it couldn’t be more perfect from
    an AdSense employees perspective, but something changed.

     

    Google Bans and Ban Criteria

    Before December 2012:

    In the first quarter of 2009 there was a “sit-down” from the AdSense division higher ups to talk about
    new emerging issues and the role we (the employees in the AdSense division needed to play. It was a
    very long meeting, and it was very detailed and intense. What it boiled down to was that Google had
    suffered some very serious losses in the financial department several months earlier. They kept saying
    how we “needed to tighten the belts” and they didn’t want it to come from Google employees pockets.
    So they were going to (in their words) “carry out extreme quality control on AdSense publishers”. When
    one of my fellow co-workers asked what they meant by that. Their response was that AdSense itself
    hands out too many checks each month to publishers, and that the checks were too large and that
    needed to end right away. Many of the employees were not pleased about this (like myself). But they
    were successful in scaring the rest into thinking it would be their jobs and their money that would be on
    the line if they didn’t participate. The meeting left many confused as to how this was going to happen.
    What did they mean by extreme quality control? A few other smaller meetings occur with certain key
    people in the AdSense division that furthered the idea and procedure they planned on implementing.
    There were lots of rumors and quiet talking amongst the employees, there was lots of speculations,
    some came true and some didn’t. But the word was that they were planning to cut off a large portion of
    publisher’s payments.

    After that point there was a running gag amongst fellow co-workers where we would walk by each other
    and whisper “Don’t be evil, pft!” and roll our eyes.

    What happened afterwards became much worse. Their “quality control” came into full effect. Managers
    pushed for wide scale account bans, and the first big batch of bans happened in March of 2009. The
    main reason, the publishers made too much money. But something quite devious happened. We were
    told to begin banning accounts that were close to their payout period (which is why account bans never
    occur immediately after a payout). The purpose was to get that money owed to publishers back to
    Google AdSense, while having already served up the ads to the public.

    This way the advertiser’s couldn’t claim we did not do our part in delivering their ads and ask for money
    back. So in a sense, we had thousands upon thousands of publishers deliver ads we knew they were
    never going to get paid for.

    Google reaped both sides of the coin, got money from the advertisers, used the publishers, and didn’t
    have to pay them a single penny. We were told to go and look into the publishers accounts, and if any
    publisher had accumulated earnings exceeding $5000 and was near a payout or in the process of a
    payout, we were to ban the account right away and reverse the earnings back. They kept saying it was
    needed for the company, and that most of these publishers were ripping Google off anyways, and that
    their gravy train needed to end. Many employees were not happy about this. A few resigned over it.
    I did not. I stayed because I had a family to support, and secondly I wanted to see how far they would
    go.

    From 2009 to 2012 there were many more big batches of bans. The biggest of all the banning sessions
    occurred in April of 2012. The AdSense division had enormous pressure from the company to make up
    for financial losses, and for Google’s lack of reaching certain internal financial goals for the quarter prior.
    So the push was on. The employees felt really uneasy about the whole thing, but we were threatened
    with job losses if we didn’t enforce the company’s wishes. Those who voiced concerned or issue were
    basically ridiculed with “not having the company’s best interest in mind” and not being “team players”.
    Morale in the division was at an all-time low. The mood of the whole place changed quite rapidly. It no
    longer was a fun place to work.

    The bans of April 2012 came fast and furious. Absolutely none of them were investigated, nor were they
    justified in any way. We were told to get rid of as many of the accounts with the largest
    checks/payouts/earnings waiting to happen. No reason, just do it, and don’t question it. It was heart
    wrenching seeing all that money people had earned all get stolen from them. And that’s what I saw it as,
    it was a robbery of the AdSense publishers. Many launched appeals, complaints, but it was futile
    because absolutely no one actually took the time to review the appeals or complaints. Most were simply
    erased without even being opened, the rest were deposited into the database, never to be touched
    again.

    Several publishers launched legal actions which were settled, but Google had come up with a new policy
    to deal with situations such as that because it was perceived as a serious problem to be avoided.
    So they came up with a new policy.

    After December 2012: The New Policy

    The new policy; “shelter the possible problem makers, and fuck the rest” (those words were actually
    said by a Google AdSense exec) when he spoke about the new procedure and policy for “Account
    Quality Control”.

    The new policy was officially called AdSense Quality Control Color Codes (commonly called AQ3C by
    employees). What it basically was a categorization of publisher accounts. Those publisher’s that could
    do the most damage by having their account banned were placed in a VIP group that was to be left
    alone. The rest of the publishers would be placed into other groupings accordingly.
    The new AQ3C also implemented “quality control” quotas for the account auditors, so if you didn’t meet
    the “quality control” target (aka account bans) you would be called in for a performance review.
    There were four “groups” publishers could fall into if they reached certain milestones.

     

    They were:

    Red Group: Urgent Attention Required
    Any AdSense account that reaches the $10,000/month mark is immediately flagged (unless they are part
    of the Green Group).
    – In the beginning there were many in this category, and most were seen as problematic and were seen
    as abusing the system by Google. So every effort was taken to bring their numbers down.
    – They are placed in what employees termed “The Eagle Eye”, where the “AdSense Eagle Eye Team”
    would actively and constantly audit their accounts and look for any absolute reason for a ban. Even if
    the reason was far-fetched, or unsubstantiated, and unprovable, the ban would occur. The “Eagle Eye
    Team” referred to a group of internal account auditors whose main role was to constantly monitor
    publisher’s accounts and sites.
    – A reason has to be internally attached to the account ban. The problem was that notifying the
    publisher for the reason is not a requirement, even if the publisher asks. The exception: The exact
    reason must be provided if a legal representative contacts Google on behalf of the account holder.
    – But again, if a ban is to occur, it must occur as close to a payout period as possible with the most
    amount of money accrued/earned.
    Yellow Group: Serious Attention Required
    Any AdSense account that reaches the $5,000/month mark is flagged for review (unless they are part of
    the Green Group).
    – All of the publisher’s site(s)/account will be placed in queue for an audit.
    – Most of the time the queue is quite full so most are delayed their audit in a timely fashion.
    – The second highest amount of bans occur at this level.
    – A reason has to be internally attached to the account ban. Notifiying the publisher for the reason is not
    a requirement, even if the publisher asks. The exception: The exact reason must be provided if a legal
    representative contacts Google on behalf of the account holder.
    – But again, if a ban is to occur, it must occur as close to a payout period as possible with the most
    amount of money accrued/earned.
    Blue Group: Moderate Attention Required
    Any AdSense account that reaches the $1,000/month mark is flagged for possible review (unless they
    are part of the Green Group).
    – Only the main site and account will be place in queue for what is called a quick audit.
    – Most bans that occur happen at this level. Main reason is that a reason doesn’t have to be attached to
    the ban, so the employees use these bans to fill their monthly quotas. So many are simply a random pick
    and click.
    – A reason does not have to be internally attached to the account ban. Notifying the publisher for the
    reason is not a requirement, even if the publisher asks.
    – But again, if a ban is to occur, it must occur as close to a payout period as possible with the most
    amount of money accrued.
    Green Group: VIP Status (what employees refer to as the “untouchables”)
    Any AdSense account associated with an incorporated entity or individual that can inflict serious
    damage onto Google by negative media information, rallying large amounts of anti-AdSense support, or
    cause mass loss of AdSense publisher support.
    – Google employees wanting to use AdSense on their websites were automatically placed in the Green
    group. So the database contained many Google insiders and their family members. If you work or
    worked for Google and were placed in the category, you stayed in it, even if you left Google. So it
    included many former employees. Employees simply had to submit a form with site specific details and
    their account info.
    – Sites in the Green Group were basically given “carte blanche” to do anything they wanted, even if they
    flagrantly went against the AdSense TOS and Policies. That is why you will encounter sites with AdSense,
    but yet have and do things completely against AdSense rules.
    – Extra care is taken not to interrupt or disrupt these accounts.
    – If an employee makes a mistake with a Green Level account they can lose their job. Since it seen as
    very grievous mistake.
    New Policy 2012 Part 2:

    Internal changes to the policy were constant. They wanted to make it more efficient and streamlined.
    They saw its current process as having too much human involvement and oversight. They wanted it
    more automated and less involved.

    So the other part of the new policy change was to incorporate other Google services into assisting the
    “quality control” program. What they came up with will anger many users when they find out. It
    involved skewing data in Google Analytics. They decided it was a good idea to alter the statistical data
    shown for websites. It first began with just altering data reports for Analytics account holders that also
    had an AdSense account, but they ran into too many issues and decided it would be simpler just to skew
    the report data across the board to remain consistent and implement features globally.
    So what this means is that the statistical data for a website using Google Analytics is not even close to
    being accurate. The numbers are incredibly deflated. The reasoning behind their decision is that if an
    individual links their AdSense account and their Analytics account, the Analytics account can be used to
    deflate the earnings automatically without any human intervention. They discovered that if an individual
    had an AdSense account then they were also likely to use Google Analytics. So Google used it to their
    advantage.

    This led to many publishers to actively display ads, without earning any money at all (even to this day).
    Even if their actual website traffic was high, and had high click-throughs the data would be automatically
    skewed in favor of Google, and at a total loss of publishers. This successfully made it almost impossible
    for anyone to earn amounts even remotely close what individuals with similar sites were earning prior
    to 2012, and most definitely nowhere near pre-2009 earnings.
    Other policy changes also included how to deal with appeals, which still to this day, the large majority
    are completely ignored, and why you will rarely get an actual answer as to why your account was
    banned and absolutely no way to resolve it.
    —-
    The BIG Problem (which Google is aware of)
    There is an enormous problem that existed for a long time in Google’s AdSense accounts. Many of the
    upper management are aware of this problem but do not want to acknowledge or attempt to come up
    with a solution to the problem.

    It is regarding false clicks on ads. Many accounts get banned for “invalid clicks” on ads. In the past this
    was caused by a publisher trying to self inflate click-throughs by clicking on the ads featured on their
    website. The servers automatically detect self-clicking with comparison to IP addresses and other such
    information, and the persons account would get banned for invalid clicking.

    But there was something forming under the surface. A competitor or malicious person would actively go
    to their competitor’s website(s) or pick a random website running AdSense and begin multiple-clicking
    and overclicking ads, which they would do over and over again. Of course this would trigger an invalid
    clicking related ban, mainly because it could not be proven if the publisher was actually behind the
    clicking. This was internally referred to as “Click-Bombing”. Many innocent publishers would get caught
    up in bans for invalid clicks which they were not involved in and were never told about.

    This issue has been in the awareness of Google for a very long time but nothing was done to rectify the
    issue and probably never will be. Thus if someone wants to ruin a Google AdSense publishers account,
    all you would have to do is go to their website, and start click-bombing their Google Ads over and over
    again, it will lead the servers to detect invalid clicks and poof, they get banned. The publisher would be
    completely innocent and unaware of the occurrence but be blamed for it anyways.

    —-

    Their BIG Fear
    The biggest fear that Google has about these AdSense procedures and policies is that it will be publicly
    discovered by their former publishers who were banned, and that those publishers unite together and
    launch an class-action lawsuit.

    They also fear those whose primary monthly earnings are from AdSense, because in many countries if a
    person claims the monthly amount to their tax agency and they state the monthly amount and that they
    are earning money from Google on a monthly basis, in certain nations technically Google can be seen as
    an employer. Thus, an employer who withholds payment of earnings, can be heavily fined by
    government bodies dealing with labor and employment. And if these government bodies dealing with
    labor and employment decide to go after Google, then it would get very ugly, very quickly ….. that is on
    top of a class-action lawsuit.

    original link

    Breast Cancer Charities are Hiding the Truth

    Breast Cancer Charities are Hiding the Truth

     

    Boycott Breast Cancer CharitiesIt’s time to demand an end to the cover-up of the leading cause of breast cancer – tight bras.

    It’s been 20 years since our research showing a major link between breast cancer and the wearing of tight bras for long periods of time daily was announced to cancer experts in our book, Dressed To Kill: The Link Between Breast Cancer and Bras.

    Cancer charities don’t care about a cure

    This breakthrough information was promptly ignored, ridiculed, and censored by the very people and organizations whose mission is to find a cure and cause of this modern day epidemic.

    Despite the resistance, our message did get out to millions of women, some of whom discovered on themselves that ending the habit of constricting their breasts with bras improved overall breast health – including reducing breast pain, cysts, and tenderness.

    Boycott breast cancer charities: Send you’re your bra instead of money!

    While the cancer industry still thinks of the lymphatic system as merely the pathway for the spread of cancer, leading them to remove lymph nodes creating painful and disabling lymphedema in their patients, there are now more healthcare providers who understand the vital role the lymphatic system plays in disease prevention.

    They understand how constriction of the lymphatic drainage from the breasts caused by tight bras can result in tissue toxification, cysts, pain, and ultimately, cancer.

    But, despite the successes of women regaining breast health by altering their bra wearing habits, the cancer detection and treatment industry has consistently and arrogantly dismissed the bra-cancer link.

    Does a bra really contribute to breast cancer?

    It does, according to at least 5 research studies and numerous healthcare providers, including oncologists and MD’s. Even some lingerie manufacturers have developed new bra designs hoping to minimize lymphatic constriction and thereby help prevent breast cancer – citing the bra-cancer theory for their patents.

    But it doesn’t, according to the American Cancer Society (ACS) and the Susan G. Komen Foundation, fundraising giants of the cancer detection and treatment world – which consider the link absurd and unworthy of serious consideration, and unquestionably assume that research showing a link must have some other explanation besides bras.

    Shrugging off the bra-cancer link is killing hundreds of thousands of women and wasting billions of dollars in unnecessary detection and treatment.

    As breast cancer researchers, we are calling for a boycott of these organizations until they stop dismissing the bra-cancer link, and begin educating doctors and women about the cancer hazards of wearing tight bras.

    What is the risk of wearing a bra?

    Our research showed that bra-free women have about the same incidence of breast cancer as men, and that the tighter and longer a bra is worn the higher the incidence rose, up to 100 times greater for 24/7 bra wearers.

    Why are women not hearing about this from the ACS and Komen Foundation? Why are these organizations, so eager to fund raise for a cure, so opposed to preventing this disease by addressing the bra-cancer link?

    Could it be because lingerie companies donate to their charities? Could it be that preventing this disease by challenging the cultural norm of bra wearing is too taboo for these detection and treatment focused organizations?

    Whatever their reason, it is wrong for the bra-cancer link to be dismissed and ignored. Because of this unscientific stonewalling of this information, over the past 20 years 2,000,000 women in the United States alone have gotten breast cancer – which may have been prevented by simply loosening their bra and wearing it less often, each day.

    So, when the ACS or Komen Foundation ask for a donation, send them your bra, instead. This will give them the message, and help you prevent breast cancer at the same time.

    About the author: Sydney Ross Singer is a world-renown medical anthropologist, author, and director of the Institute for the Study of Culturogenic Disease, located in Hawaii. A pioneer in the field of applied medical anthropology, Sydney, along with his wife and co-author, Soma Grismaijer have written numerous groundbreaking books that provide new theories, research, and revelations on disease causation and prevention, including the internationally acclaimed book, Dressed To Kill: The Link Between Breast Cancer and Bras. For more information – visit:KillerCulture.com

    References:
    http://ww5.komen.org/BreastCancer/FactorsThatDoNotIncreaseRisk.html

    “Scientific evidence does not support a link between wearing an underwire bra (or any type of bra) and an increased risk of breast cancer. There is no biological reason the two would be linked, and any observed relationship is likely due to other factors.”

    http://www.cancer.org/cancer/breastcancer/detailedguide/breast-cancer-risk-factors

    Internet e-mail rumors and at least one book have suggested that bras cause breast cancer by obstructing lymph flow. There is no good scientific or clinical basis for this claim.

    http://www.killerculture.com/breast-cancer-is-preventable

    Studies that support the bra/cancer link:

    1991 Harvard study (CC Hsieh, D Trichopoulos (1991). Breast size, handedness and breast cancer risk. European Journal of Cancer and Clinical Oncology 27(2):131-135.). This study found that, “Premenopausal women who do not wear bras had half the risk of breast cancer compared with bra users…”

    1991-93 U.S. Bra and Breast Cancer Study by Singer and Grismaijer, published in Dressed To Kill: The Link Between Breast Cancer and Bras (Avery/Penguin Putnam, 1995; ISCD Press, 2005). Found that bra-free women have about the same incidence of breast cancer as men. 24/7 bra wearing increases incidence over 100 times that of a bra-free woman.

    Singer and Grismaijer did a follow-up study in Fiji, published in Get It Off! (ISCD Press, 2000). Found 24 case histories of breast cancer in a culture where half the women are bra-free. The women getting breast cancer were all wearing bras. Given women with the same genetics and diet and living in the same village, the ones getting breast disease were the ones wearing bras for work.

    A 2009 Chinese study (Zhang AQ, Xia JH, Wang Q, Li WP, Xu J, Chen ZY, Yang JM (2009). [Risk factors of breast cancer in women in Guangdong and the countermeasures]. In Chinese. Nan Fang Yi Ke Da Xue Xue Bao. 2009 Jul;29(7):1451-3.) found that NOT sleeping in a bra was protective against breast cancer, lowering the risk 60%.

    2011 a study was published, in Spanish, confirming that bras are causing breast disease and cancer.http://www.portalesmedicos.com/publicaciones/articles/3691/1/Patologias-mamarias-generadas-por-el-uso-sostenido-y-seleccion-incorrecta-del-brassier-en-pacientes-que-acuden-a-la-consulta-de-mastologia- It found that underwired and push-up bras are the most harmful, but any bra that leaves red marks or indentations may cause disease.

    Studies that refute the bra/cancer link:

    None.

    – See more at: http://www.naturalhealth365.com/cancer_treatments/0957_breast_cancer_komen_acs.html#sthash.RI7Lw9se.dpuf

    Palantir 101: InfoSec Gov Deployed Malware Explained

    Palantir 101: InfoSec Gov Deployed Malware Explained

    War

     

    For those who are completely new to the Palantir Platform or could simply use a refresher, this talk will start from scratch and provide a broad overview of Palantir’s origins and mission. A live demonstration of the product will help to familiarize newcomers with Palantir’s intuitive graphical interface and revolutionary analytical functionality, while highlighting the major engineering innovations that make it all possible.  -Palantir

    This -Formerly Secret- Group Controls the World

    This -Formerly Secret- Group Controls the World

    By Jimmy Mengel, Outsider Club 

    “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”  — Aldous Huxley

     

    So who really controls the world?

     

    The Illuminati? Freemasons? The Bilderberg Group?

     

    Or are these all red herrings to distract your prying eyes from the real global elite? The answer, like most topics worth exploring, is not quite so simple. Have no doubt, there aresecretive global powers whose only goal is to keep and grow that power. But it really may not be as secretive as you’d think. And that’s what makes it even more nefarious…

     

    But don’t take my word for it, we have both science and insider testimony to back it up…

     

    We’re going to break this down into three categories: Financial, Political and Media. This is a harder task than you may imagine, since they all work in concert by design.

     

     

     

    Financial Elite

     

    Thanks to the science of complex system theory, the answer may actually be right in front of our faces.

     

    This scientific process sheds light on the dark corners of bank control and international finance and pulls some of the major players out from the shadows.

     

    And it goes back to the old credo: Just follow the money…

     

    Systems theorist James B. Glattfelder did just that.

     

    From a massive database of 37 million companies, Glattfelder pulled out the 43,060 transnational corporations (companies that operate in more than one country) that are all connected by their shareholders.

     

    Digging further, he constructed a model that actually displays just how connected these companies are to one another through ownership of shares and their corresponding operating revenues.

     

     

    The 1318 transnational corporations that form the core of the economy.

     

    Superconnected companies are red, very connected companies are yellow. The size of the dot represents revenue.

     

    I’ll openly admit that this graphic almost scared me off. Complex scientific theories are not my forte, and this looks like some sort of intergalactic snow globe.

     

    But Glattfelder has done a remarkable job of boiling these connections down to the main actors — as well as pinpointing how much power they have over the global market. These “ownership networks” can reveal who the key players are, how they are organized, and exactly how interconnected these powers are.

     

    From New Scientist:  Each of the 1318 had ties to two or more other companies, and on average they were connected to 20. What’s more, although they represented 20 per cent of global operating revenues, the 1318 appeared to collectively own through their shares the majority of the world’s large blue chip and manufacturing firms — the “real” economy — representing a further 60 per cent of global revenues.

     

    When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a “super-entity” of 147 even more tightly knit companies — all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity — that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network.

     

    According to his data, Glattfelder found that the top 730 shareholders control a whopping 80% of the entire revenue of transnational corporations.

     

    And — surprise, surprise! — they are mostly financial institutions in the United States and the United Kingdom.

     

    That is a huge amount of concentrated control in a small number of hands…

     

    Here are the top ten transnational companies that hold the most control over the global economy (and if you are one of the millions that are convinced Big Banks run the world, you should get a creeping sense of validation from this list):

     

    1) Barclays plc

     

    2) Capital Group Companies Inc.

     

    3) FMR Corporation

     

    4) AXA

     

    5) State Street Corporation

     

    6) JPMorgan Chase & Co.

     

    7) Legal & General Group plc

     

    8) Vanguard Group Inc.

     

    9) UBS AG

     

    10) Merrill Lynch & Co Inc.

     

    Some of the other usual suspects round out the top 25, including JP Morgan, UBS, Credit Suisse, and Goldman Sachs.

     

    What you won’t find are ExxonMobil, Microsoft, or General Electric, which I found shocking. In fact, you have to scroll all the way down to China Petrochemical Group Company at number 50 to find a company that actually creates something.

     

    The top 49 corporations are financial institutions, banks, and insurance companies — with the exception of Wal-Mart, which ranks at number 15…

     

    The rest essentially just push money around to one another.

     

    Here’s the interconnectedness of the top players in this international scheme:

     

     

     

     

    Here’s a fun fact about the number one player, Barclays:

     

    Barclays was a main player in the LIBOR manipulation scandal, and were found to have committed fraud and collusion with other interconnected big banks. They were fined $200 million by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, $160 million by the United States Department of Justice and £59.5 million by the Financial Services Authority for “attempted manipulation” of the Libor and Euribor rates.

    Despite their crimes, Barclays still paid $61,781,950 in bonuses earlier this year, including a whopping $27,371,750 to investment banking head Rich Ricci. And yes, that’s actually his real name…

    These are the guys that run the world.

    It’s essentially the “too big to fail” argument laid out in a scientific setting — only instead of just the U.S. banks, we’re talking about an international cabal of banks and financial institutions so intertwined that they pose a serious threat to global economics.

    And instead of “too big to fail,” we’re looking at “too connected to fail”…

    Glattfelder contends that “a high degree of interconnectivity can be bad for stability, because stress can spread through the system like an epidemic.”

    Industrialist Henry Ford once quipped, “It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and money system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”

    It’s one thing to have suspicions that someone is working behind the scenes to control the world’s money supply. It’s quite another to have scientific evidence that clearly supports it.

    But these guys can only exist within a political system that supports their goals. And those political systems are pretty much operating in the open…

    POLITCAL ELITE

    For the sake of brevity, let’s cut right to the chase. Every major geopolitical decision of the last few decades has been run through one of these three organizations: the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations and the World Bank/International Monetary Fund (IMF).

    The Trilateral Commission

    In 1973, the infamous David Rockefeller created a group of the world’s power brokers to work together — outside of any official governmental or political allegiance — to bring about cooperation of North America, Western Europe and Japan.

    They launched under the guise of working together to solve the world’s problems. A noble goal — but “problems” are very subjective.

    Here’s the rundown of members:

    The North American continent is represented by 120 members (20 Canadian, 13 Mexican and 87 U.S. citizens). The European group has reached its limit of 170 members from almost every country on the continent; the ceilings for individual countries are 20 for Germany, 18 for France, Italy and the United Kingdom, 12 for Spain and 1–6 for the rest. At first, Asia and Oceania were represented only by Japan. However, in 2000 the Japanese group of 85 members expanded itself, becoming the Pacific Asia group, composed of 117 members: 75 Japanese, 11 South Koreans, 7 Australian and New Zealand citizens, and 15 members from the ASEAN nations (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand). The Pacific Asia group also included 9 members from China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Currently, the Trilateral Commission claims “more than 100″ Pacific Asian members.

    It’s a global who’s-who of power brokers. And while the Trilateral Commission excludes anyone currently holding public office from membership, it serves as a revolving door of the rich and powerful from the financial, political and academic elite.

    Most suspicions of the group began during the Jimmy Carter administration, when Carter — himself a member of the Trilateral Commission — made Zbigniew Brzezinski his National Security advisor. Brzezinski was the Trilateral Commission’s first executive director. Carter’s Vice President Walter Mondale was also a member.

    And perhaps most importantly, Trilateral member Paul Volker served as Carter’s Chair of the Federal Reserve. He is still the North American Honorary Chairman.

    Such a concentration of power in a U.S. president’s cabinet obviously made people nervous,

    Notable recent additions include Austan Goolsbe — former chairman for Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors. I’d suggest you familiarize yourselves with the entire member list here.

    You’ll be shocked at who else is part of this secretive organization.

    Follow the Outsider Club  for Part II of this important subject.

     

     

    One Bank to Rule Them All: World Bank Whistle-blower Reveals Bank Conspiracy

    By Jimmy MengelOutsider Club 

    If you had any doubt, we now have science and first-hand testimony to prove it.

    Note: This is not some wild conspiracy theory. It’s systems theory, a serious scientific discipline, used by researcher James B. Gladfelder to prove that a small group of banks essentially control the world’s finances.

    Gladfelder’s research proved that the top 730 shareholders control a whopping 80% of the entire revenue of transnational corporations.

    But the truth is the global banking elite simply cannot maintain a stranglehold on the world’s power all by themselves. And so, while they run off with the money, their lackeys in the political sphere acts as gatekeepers.

    Again, we’re not relying on labyrinthine explanations and vague fears of domination; we’re looking at the matter through scientific discipline and actual admissions from the power brokers themselves.

    The fact is we simply cannot talk about global control without talking about the World Bank…

    The World Bank represents 188 different countries from Albania to Zimbabwe. However, it is controlled by a small number of powerful countries, each with its own serious economic interests.

    Since there is no voting for the leadership and chief economists at the bank, the United States and other large countries have complete control to appoint who they’d like to do their bidding — and they have appointed some highly questionable folks to run the behemoth:

    Robert McNamara – JFK’s former secretary of defense and president of Ford Motor Company was chosen to lead the Bank in 1968, fresh off his disastrous handling of the Vietnam War.

    Lewis T. Preston – a bank executive with J.P. Morgan. We all know J.P. Morgan doesn’t have the interest of the working poor at heart, as evidenced by years of abuse of regular folks, culminating in their record $13 billion fine this year.

    Robert Zoellick – a bank executive with Goldman Sachs. Again, if the head of Goldman Sachs is at the helm, you know the bidding of the powerful will get its due… After all, you don’t earn a nickname like “The Great Vampire Squid” for your altruism.

    Paul Wolfowitz – Much like McNamara, Wolfowitz was handed the reigns to the World Bank after helping orchestrate George Bush’s outrageous war on Iraq. While president of the Bank, he gave his girlfriend massive pay raises — more than double what she was entitled to! The fact that the head of the World Bank could engage in such petty corruption doesn’t bode well for the bank at large, considering the immense power they wield. Wolfowitz was eventually forced to resign.

    Perhaps more alarmingly, the World Bank also receives complete immunity from any and all countries it does “business” with, so it cannot be held legally accountable for its actions.

    The United States has complete veto power over the Bank’s actions as well, which it can use to block any action by the Bank that may threaten national interests — and the interests of the global financial powers that control them.

    The World Bank’s stated purpose is to help poor and developing countries by providing loans.

    The catch? To obtain one of these loans, you have to comply with the Bank’s draconian wish lists.

    Examples of the conditions countries must meet to gain access to a loan include suppressing wages, cutting programs like education and health care, and easing limits on foreign investment.

    How do the results stack up with its stated mission?

    Not well. In fact, data shows most countries that have taken the World Bank’s money and agreed to its terms are no better off today then they were when they received their first loan — and many are actually worse off.

    From the Heritage Foundation:

    Of the 66 less-developed countries receiving money from the World Bank for more than 25 years (most for more than 30 years), 37 are no better off today than they were before they received such loans.

    Of these 37 countries, most (20 in all) are actually poorer today than they were before receiving aid from the Bank.

    Former less-developed countries that have prospered over the past 30 years did so by freeing up the productive forces of their economies. The best examples are Hong Kong and Singapore: Even though a country like Singapore received a small amount of money from the World Bank, the evidence shows that what most affected economic growth was not World Bank aid, but economic freedom.

    What’s more, an ex-World Bank employee described something far more nefarious than ineptitude…

    Karen Hudes watched first-hand as the World Bank manipulated and covered up corruption in its economic development projects.

    It’s important to know Hudes wasn’t some disgruntled lackey; she served as Senior Counsel and worked for the bank for 20 years. During those two decades at the World Bank, Hudes saw systematic and widespread corruption.

    “It’s a mafia,” she told the New American.

    “These culprits that have grabbed all this economic power have succeeded in infiltrating both sides of the issue, so you will find people who are supposedly trying to fight corruption who are just there to spread disinformation and as a placeholder to trip up anybody who manages to get their act together. Those thugs think that if they can keep the world ignorant, they can bleed it longer.”

    Hudes saw large-scale enrichment of the powerful, while the poor the Bank was supposed to be helping were getting stiffed.

    “I realized we were now dealing with something known as state capture, which is where the institutions of government are co-opted by the group that’s corrupt,” she noted.

    Hudes was eventually fired after she spoke out against the Bank’s attempt to cover up a botched bailout of a crooked bank in the Philippines.

    Here are a few choice examples of what happens to the $2.5 billion in U.S. taxpayer money that is funneled into the World Bank each and every year, from the American Enterprise Institute:

    38 countries have amassed $71 billion in unpayable multilateral loans, encouraged by the Bank’s self-serving projections of country growth, on which rich-country taxpayers must now make good.

    Corruption has been exposed both within the World Bank and in its programs, and is now estimated at more than $100 billion.

    Protest is rising among leading African scholars who seek to stop all aid because it serves only to entrench and enrich a series of corrupt elites. Massive anecdotal evidence of waste, ineptitude, and outright theft can no longer be ignored.

    Not exactly the poverty-fighting superhero the institution makes itself out to be.

    The World Bank works in conjunction with the International Monetary Fund, which operates in the same vein of enriching Wall Street and supporting dictators. We’ll pull the curtain back on the IMF next week.

     

    See more from Jimmy Mengel at the Outsider Club

     

     @mengeled on Twitter

     

    Jimmy is a managing editor for Outsider Club and the Investment Director of the personal finance advisory The Crow’s Nest. You may also know him as the architect behind the wildly popular finance and investing website Wealth Wire, where he’s brought readers the stories behind the mainstream financial news each and every day. For more on Jimmy, check out his editor’s page.

    Making A Killing With Cancer: A $124.6 Billion Industry

    Making A Killing With Cancer: A $124.6 Billion Industry

    blood-money-cancer-industryIf you had a business selling something that made you well over a hundred billion dollars per year, would you take steps to eradicate the need for your business? Or would you make every effort for that money continue rolling in?

    Take cancer, for example. Don’t let all the media hype about “The Cure” fool you. No one who is in a position to do so wants to end cancer because they are all making a killing on the big business of treatment, while ordinary people go broke, suffer horribly, and die.

    There will never be a “cure” brought to market because there just isn’t enough profit in eradicating the disease entirely. There will never be a governing body that protects consumers from being subjected to known carcinogens, because that, too, will stop the cash from rolling in. A great deal of research is covered up and many potential cures are ignored and discredited because there is far more money in perpetuating illness than in curing it. In 2012, the reported spending on cancer treatment was 124.6 billion dollars. Blood money.

    The Grim Statistics

    Just the word “cancer” sends a frisson of fear down the spine of the most stalwart optimist. Terrifyingly, almost one in two people will get the dreaded disease, and the numbers are only getting worse. Here are some quick stats for background:

    • Nearly half of all Americans will develop cancer in their lifetime. (source) Quick math tells us that is an astonishing 157 million victims.
    • Over half a million people in America died of cancer in 2012. (source)
    • In 2011, cancer was the #1 cause of death in the Western world, and #2 in developing countries. (source)
    • Cancer is the #1 cause of childhood death in the United States. (source)

    This is a fairly recent increase. A hundred years ago, the number was far different. At that time, 1 in 33 people was stricken with the disease. And despite billions of dollars being spent to find “the cure”, the World Health Organization predicts that deaths from cancer will DOUBLE by the year 2030.

    It’s being normalized. The news is full of photos of babies who are missing an eye, of beautiful bald children who have lost their hair to chemo, and of people who have had to have body parts removed in order to survive a few more years. But cancer is NOT normal. It isn’t something that “just happens.” Researchers know the things that cause cancer. Government protection agencies do, too, but they do nothing to limit these toxins in the marketplace.

    Why?

    Because, cancer is big business and those who are profiting have great financial interest in seeing the deadly trend continue to increase.

    Poisoned for Profit

    So what has changed? How did we go from a 3% chance of contracting cancer to a 41% chance?

    It’s the advent of Big Pharma, Big Agri and Big Business. They are getting rich off of poisoning Americans through the manufacture of toxic elements that we are exposed to on a daily basis.

    Unless you live in a bubble and have no contact with manufactured items, outside air, or the sun, you are exposed to a staggering number of known and suspected carcinogens every day. (Check out THIS LIST to see the known and suspected carcinogens that are readily available in the United States.)

    The statistics support that the cumulative build up of all these different toxins in the human body eventually results in cancer in many people.

    First, the manufacturers and the “food” producers profit when we buy their poisoned goods.

    Then the medical system and pharmaceutical companies profit when we become ill and must fight cancer.

    The drugs alone can cost over $100,000 per year, and that is on top of exorbitant costs for radiation, chemotherapy, and physicians’ bills. In the United States, cancer is the #1 most expensive “per person” illness to treat. (source)

    Why would those who profit want to prevent cancer when 95.5 BILLION DOLLARS PER YEAR is spent on treating it? There is a vested interest in this increase in illness and the people benefiting from it have no intention of reducing the cases of cancer.

    Don’t Count on Obamacare

    Don’t look to Obamacare to be the saving grace of cancer victims, either. With this type of government-controlled medicine, budgets will be strictly adhered to and the decisions on how to proceed and what will be paid for will NOT be in the hands of the ill person. Treatments, medications, and funds will be strictly allocated through what many people are referring to as “death panels.”

    Furthermore, Obamacare only covers 60% of your medical costs in most cases (after a hefty deductible) and none of your medication is covered. If you don’t have $50,000 or more kicking around for your co-pay, you will be out of luck, despite diligently paying your worthless monthly premiums.

    Prevention: Your Only Defense

    Avoiding carcinogens as diligently as possible is your best defense against becoming the “1 in 3″, but it isn’t easy. Furthermore, you’ll be considered an “extremist” or a “kook” by those around you who have buried their heads in the sand.

    Basically, a spending day in the Western world is a like spending a day running a gauntlet of toxins and carcinogens. Big Pharma, Big Agri and Big Business are getting rich off of poisoning Americans.

    There are steps you can take to limit your exposure but be prepared for many people to consider your actions extreme. Very few people are committed enough to their health and the health of their family to do the research required to identify the dangers around them and then go against the current to avoid those perils. (source)

    Since most of us don’t live in a bubble, we will be subjected to some of these toxins – they’re impossible to avoid entirely. However, you can limit your exposure by taking the following steps to reduce your exposure to everyday poisons. (This list is expanded from the article, “The Great American Cancer Cluster” with permission from The Daily Sheeple.)

      • Purchase organic foods as often as possible. GMOs and pesticides are proven carcinogens.
      • Load your plate with colorful antioxidants. Opt for organic versions of foods like berries, colorful veggies, dark chocolate, and coffee, to name a few, are loaded with powerful, cancer-fighting antioxidants and will boost your immune system against other types of illness and disease as well.
      • Avoid processed foods. Many of the additives and preservatives featured abundantly in North America are banned in other countries precisely because of the health risks they represent.
      • Select non-toxic cookware. Nonstick cookware contains Teflon and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), which emit at least toxic gases within 5 minutes of heating up that nonstick pan. Once the pans become scratched, toxic particles are leached directly into the food you’re preparing. Aluminum cookware is also potentially toxic. Cast iron, ceramic, glass, and clay are all better cookware options.
      • Don’t smoke.
      • Consume alcohol only in moderation.

     

    • Limit the use of plastic in your home. BPA or Bisphenol-A are petrochemical plastics that are a major component of many water bottles, lines the inside of canned goods, and makes up the hard material of many reusable food containers, including some brands of baby bottles. They leach cancer causing endocrine disruptors into food, especially if the food is hot. Use glass containers whenever possible.
    • Select personal care products that do not contain petrochemicals. Many cosmetics and other health and beauty aids contain petrochemicals. The danger of this is their byproduct, 1,4-dioxane, a proven carcinogen. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency classifies dioxane as a probable human carcinogen California state law has classified dioxane to cause cancer. Animal studies in rats suggest that the greatest health risk is associated with inhalation of vapors. Avoid the following ingredients:
    • Paraffin Wax
    • Mineral Oil
    • Toluene
    • Benzene
    • Phenoxyethanol
    • Anything with PEG (polyethylene glycol)
    • Anything ending in ‘eth’ indicates that it required ethylene oxide (a petrochemical) to produce e.g. myreth, oleth, laureth, ceteareth
    • Anything with DEA (diethanolamine) or MEA (ethanolamine)
    • Butanol and any word with ‘butyl’ – butyl alcohol, butylparaben, butylene glycol
    • Ethanol and word with ‘ethyl’ – ethyl alcohol, ethylene glycol, ethylene dichloride, EDTA (ethylene-diamine-tetracetatic acid), ethylhexylglycerin
    • Any word with “propyl” – isopropyl alcohol, propylene glycol, propylalcohol, cocamidopropyl betaine
    • Methanol and any word with ‘methyl’ – methyl alcohol, methylparaben, methylcellulose
    • Parfum or fragrance – 95% of chemicals used in fragrance are from petroleum
    • Opt for natural, biodegradable food grade cleaning products. According to the website Natural Pure Organics, the average household contains up to 25 gallons of toxic materials, most of which are in cleaning products. When you use these cleaners, they linger in the air and on the surfaces, increasing your exposure to carcinogens as you inhale the toxins into your lungs or absorb them through your skin.
    • Avoid artificial sweeteners. Aspartame, for example, is a known carcinogen that breaks down into formaldehyde in the human body.
    • Refuse vaccines. Many vaccines contain formaldehyde and mercury, both of which are known carcinogens. By the age of two, if a child has received all of the recommended vaccines, he or she has received 2,370 times the “allowable safe limit” for mercury (if there is such a thing as a safe level of poison). The HPV vaccine can actually increase the risk of reproductive cancer. The polio vaccine most recently came under fire for its cancer-causing ingredients. (Learn more about the cancer causing ingredients in vaccines HERE.)
    • Avoid tap water. If you have municipal water, drink it at the risk of ingesting loads of toxins. First, there is the willful addition of sodium fluoride, a pesticide which is labeled as “deadly to humans.” Not only has the consumption of fluoride been linked to cancer, but it also lowers IQs, causes infertility, and causes hardening of the arteries. Then there is the addition of chlorine, which is used to kill bacteria that could make us sick. Unfortunately, according to Dr. Michael J. Plewa, a genetic toxicology expert at the University of Illinois, chlorinated water is carcinogenic. “Individuals who consume chlorinated drinking water have an elevated risk of cancer of the bladder, stomach, pancreas, kidney and rectum as well as Hodgkin’s and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.”
    • Maintain a healthy body weight. Obesity has been linked to increased risks of cancers of the esophagus, breast, endometrium, uterus, colon and rectum, kidney, pancreas, thyroid, and gallbladder.
    • Exercise daily.

    The mindboggling thing is that those who strictly avoiding carcinogens and toxins are labeled “crazy” or “hysterical”. I can’t tell you how many times I have watched people roll their eyes or scoff when I refuse to partake in things that are hazardous. Somehow, drinking water from my own BPA-free water bottle is considered to be “extreme”. Not taking my children to McDonald’s or feeding them hot-dogs and Doritos is “mean”. Making our body care products and cleaning products from wholesome, non-toxic ingredients is “silly”.

    I believe that knowingly ingesting toxic ingredients is “crazy”. I believe that rubbing carcinogens on my body or spraying them around my house is “ridiculous”. I think that having poison injected into my defenseless children or feeding it to them on a colorful plate is “mean”.

    Never forget that the bottom line is profit. Don’t expect the FDA or the EPA to step in. They’ve proven time and again that their purpose is to serve the interests of Big Business, not the consumers.

    Cancer represents big money to the pharmaceutical companies and the health industry. They do NOT have a vested interest in prevention. So, maybe, just maybe, subjecting your body to the tender mercies of Big Pharma and the AMA and lining their already loaded pockets is just a little bit sillier than taking steps to avoid illness altogether.

    This article is dedicated to some beloved people in my life, one of whom fought it and won and the other who is fighting the good fight and will not go quietly… much love to SD and JS, and all who are touched by this icy finger.

    Daisy Luther is a freelance writer and editor. Her website, The Organic Prepper, where this article first appeared, offers information on healthy prepping, including premium nutritional choices, general wellness and non-tech solutions. You can follow Daisy on Facebook and Twitter, and you can email her at [email protected]

    Bitcoins: A Fully-Compliant Currency The Government Can Love

    Bitcoins: A Fully-Compliant Currency The Government Can Love

    bitcoinsI’m finishing up a novel, a piece of speculative fiction in a genre you could call “economic-thriller”.

    The Mark of the Beast?

    In the book, the dollar crashes in a hyperinflationary fire (natch), replaced by a new currency called the american. The exchange rate at the time of the changeover is $1,000 equals ₳1. To illustrate its purchasing power, ₳1 buys you a candy bar. 

    However, americans don’t exist as physical currency. There are no “american bills” like there are dollar bills, and no coins either. Instead, americans are a fully digital currency: They exist in the ether. You need a card—be it a credit card, debit card, or EBT card—to spend americans. And to receive americans, either from employers, customers, government, etc., you need a “central account” which is tethered to your Social Security number. 

    The rationale for these measures is convenience—but the implication is, no one can earn, save or spend money without the government being aware of exactly what you are doing. 

    Since the government can easily access all your spending and earning of americans, no one can launder money, or evade taxes, or even so much as fail to pay all their bills on time. Law-makers and politicians and pundits say it’s no big deal that the government will know everything about the citizen’s finances, because, “If you’re not doing anything wrong, you’ve got nothing to hide! If you’re paying all your bills and your taxes and your loans, you got nothing to worry about!

    Another feature of this virtual currency: With americans, you can never again be late with your bills. Payments you have to make are automatically deducted from your central account. And if you take out a loan for whatever purpose, not only is that information in your central account, but your ability to spend money is automatically prioritized: Taxes get paid first, followed by private loans, then bills, then food, then “etc.” 

    In the novel, law-makers use this compulsory “compliance” as a selling point for the american. “Think of the convenience! No more worrying about paying your bills—your bills are all paid for you!

    However, if you don’t have enough money for “etc.”—entertainment, booze, an ice-cream sundae with the kids, what have you—you don’t get any. And if after paying off your loans and bills there isn’t enough left over for food—then no food for you. Ditto with bills: No money for electricity, or water, or heat? Then no electricity, or water, or heat for you. And if perchance you can’t fully pay off your loans, then you are declared in “non-compliance”. And if you can’t pay off your taxes, then you are charged as being in “criminal non-compliance”—and then woe is you. 

    In the language of the novel, it is a “fully-compliant currency”—and it forces the people to be “fully-compliant citizens” of the dictates of the government and the banksters. 

    This is of course a fiction I invented for my upcoming novel—but I couldn’t help notice how lawmakers and banks are all of a sudden getting on the bitcoin bandwagon. 

    For something that was supposed to be a threat to the established order, which is what bitcoin and the other cryptocurrencies promised to be, the established order sure seems to be happy with it: The U.S. Senate hearings on bitcoins were pretty much of a success for bitcoins, and banks are starting to throw nothing but love in bitcoin’s direction. The mainstream media isn’t putting down bitcoins, as it did a few years back. 

    In short, and unlike what a lot of cryptocurrency proselytizers have been saying—that the powers that be would be against bitcoins—the establishment seems to be fully in favor—or at least accepting—of bitcoins. 

    Makes you go Hmm . . ., now doesn’t it?

    Me, I’ve already explained here and here why I think that bitcoins are in a bubble, and why bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies will never be currencies per se, only an asset class. My thinking is, cryptocurrencies represent a new class of assets whose value is highly unstable so long as they are not actually tethered to some good or service people both need to buy and have to sell. Until that day happens, cryptocurrencies are nothing but speculative investments that can plummet to zero at a moment’s notice. 

    However, thinking about cryptocurrencies from the point of view of the Federal Reserve, or a senator on the Banking Committee, or a trader at a bank’s prop desk, cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin have a lot of advantages—they’re not something to be dismissed out of hand. 

    All of bitcoin’s benefits to the establishment revolve around its blockchain. 

    In simple terms, a blockchain is a registry of all transactions carried out in bitcoins. Thus is resolved the problem of double-spending one particular bitcoin: It can’t be done (at least in theory) due to the blockchain. 

    But the blockchain is in fact a register—a trail—of bitcoins. So it’s a relative cinch to piece together each and every transaction of any particular wallet in the bitcoin universe. And since exchanges need detailed personal information about a bitcoin user in order to comply with money-laundering laws before issuing a new user with a wallet, the government or other interested parties could determine what any one particular person has been doing in the bitcoin marketplace. 

    In other words: Imagine that the government knew each and every cent you earned and spent, without a single exception. 

    That cannot be done with dollars, at least not easily. The dollar’s inefficiencies when compared to bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency are exactly what make tracking dollar transactions so hard. That’s why money-laundering in fact exists: Criminals are taking advantage of inefficiencies in the dollar to hide their profits and thus not get caught.

    But with bitcoins as they currently exist, it is a snap to keep people compliant. Once some simple baseline limitations are imposed on users of bitcoins—such as the rules implemented by exchanges so as to comply with money-laundering laws—a user’s transactions are as transparent as glass. 

    Which is what a government would want, in order to get every bit of tax revenue it wants. Which is what a bank would want, in order to properly gauge the risk of a loan it is extending, and thereby maximize its profits. 

    Not only that, being able to track people’s spending completely, in real time, as can be done with bitcoin and conceivably every cryptocurrency, the government could easily rescind someone’s ability to earn money. 

    Witness how the government shut off WikiLeaks’ source of funding—took them less than a week. WikiLeaks depended exclusively on donations made via credit card payments—so by “encouraging” the credit card companies, Visa and Mastercard, to refuse to process donations to the organization, the U.S. government shut down Wikileaks just days after the first big document leaks of 2010. 

    With bitcoin or some similar cryptocurrency, the government wouldn’t even need to take the step of contacting credi card companies to “encourage them to do the right thing”: The government could simply make any payment to a targeted group invalid. (And perhaps get a notice of whoever it was who donated to the targeted group?)

    All this is to say, bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies are potentially a great step forward for a government looking to impose a Panopticon society on the American people. We can’t travel without TSA’s approval, so why not extend that power to people’s ability to interact in the economy as well? Due to the fact that, with bitcoins, there is a trail from people to their bitcoin wallet to their bitcoin usage, a trail that is relatively easy to read, the government could have this power over each and every citizen—the power to monitor and control our interactions with the economy. 

    Which is why bitcoin—far from being a threat—might just prove to be the fully-compliant currency the U.S. government can come to love. A currency that will let it have unfettered access to each and every financial transaction you carry out. 

    Is that something that we as a people want? More power to the government? Because that’s the promise of bitcoin.

     

    via Gonzalo Lira

    The Secret Meeting that Changed Rap Music and Destroyed a Generation

    The Secret Meeting that Changed Rap Music and Destroyed a Generation

    Rap Music Industry Control & Planning

    Below is a letter claimed to be written by a former music executive who says he witnessed a secret meeting in 1991 where the prison industrial complex encouraged the music industry to promote rap artists who glorify crime with the goal of encouraging listeners to get locked up in prison, so the private prisons could make more money.  It’s a very interesting read, but unless others come forward and confirm his story, there is no way to verify whether or not this meeting took place.  This letter first surfaced on HipHopisRead.com after the admin claims he received it in his email anonymously on April 24, 2012.   The spelling and grammatical errors have been left as they were in the original and have not been corrected. This ‘Dot’ Connects to Others, namely Prisons – for – Profit, Police Militarization, and plans for Martial Law by way of Racial Divide.  All of which we’ve documented for some time.  The buttons below will auto-search those keywords.

    PrisonsPolice

    THE ANONYMOUS LETTER

    Hello,

    After more than 20 years, I’ve finally decided to tell the world what I witnessed in 1991, which I believe was one of the biggest turning point in popular music, and ultimately American society. I have struggled for a long time weighing the pros and cons of making this story public as I was reluctant to implicate the individuals who were present that day. So I’ve simply decided to leave out names and all the details that may risk my personal well being and that of those who were, like me, dragged into something they weren’t ready for.

    Between the late 80’s and early 90’s, I was what you may call a “decision maker” with one of the more established company in the music industry. I came from Europe in the early 80’s and quickly established myself in the business. The industry was different back then. Since technology and media weren’t accessible to people like they are today, the industry had more control over the public and had the means to influence them anyway it wanted. This may explain why in early 1991, I was invited to attend a closed door meeting with a small group of music business insiders to discuss rap music’s new direction. Little did I know that we would be asked to participate in one of the most unethical and destructive business practice I’ve ever seen.

    The meeting was held at a private residence on the outskirts of Los Angeles. I remember about 25 to 30 people being there, most of them familiar faces. Speaking to those I knew, we joked about the theme of the meeting as many of us did not care for rap music and failed to see the purpose of being invited to a private gathering to discuss its future. Among the attendees was a small group of unfamiliar faces who stayed to themselves and made no attempt to socialize beyond their circle. Based on their behavior and formal appearances, they didn’t seem to be in our industry. Our casual chatter was interrupted when we were asked to sign a confidentiality agreement preventing us from publicly discussing the information presented during the meeting. Needless to say, this intrigued and in some cases disturbed many of us. The agreement was only a page long but very clear on the matter and consequences which stated that violating the terms would result in job termination. We asked several people what this meeting was about and the reason for such secrecy but couldn’t find anyone who had answers for us. A few people refused to sign and walked out. No one stopped them. I was tempted to follow but curiosity got the best of me. A man who was part of the “unfamiliar” group collected the agreements from us.

    Quickly after the meeting began, one of my industry colleagues (who shall remain nameless like everyone else) thanked us for attending. He then gave the floor to a man who only introduced himself by first name and gave no further details about his personal background. I think he was the owner of the residence but it was never confirmed. He briefly praised all of us for the success we had achieved in our industry and congratulated us for being selected as part of this small group of “decision makers”. At this point I begin to feel slightly uncomfortable at the strangeness of this gathering. The subject quickly changed as the speaker went on to tell us that the respective companies we represented had invested in a very profitable industry which could become even more rewarding with our active involvement. He explained that the companies we work for had invested millions into the building of privately owned prisons and that our positions of influence in the music industry would actually impact the profitability of these investments. I remember many of us in the group immediately looking at each other in confusion. At the time, I didn’t know what a private prison was but I wasn’t the only one. Sure enough, someone asked what these prisons were and what any of this had to do with us. We were told that these prisons were built by privately owned companies who received funding from the government based on the number of inmates. The more inmates, the more money the government would pay these prisons. It was also made clear to us that since these prisons are privately owned, as they become publicly traded, we’d be able to buy shares. Most of us were taken back by this. Again, a couple of people asked what this had to do with us. At this point, my industry colleague who had first opened the meeting took the floor again and answered our questions. He told us that since our employers had become silent investors in this prison business, it was now in their interest to make sure that these prisons remained filled. Our job would be to help make this happen by marketing music which promotes criminal behavior, rap being the music of choice. He assured us that this would be a great situation for us because rap music was becoming an increasingly profitable market for our companies, and as employee, we’d also be able to buy personal stocks in these prisons. Immediately, silence came over the room. You could have heard a pin drop. I remember looking around to make sure I wasn’t dreaming and saw half of the people with dropped jaws. My daze was interrupted when someone shouted, “Is this a f****** joke?” At this point things became chaotic. Two of the men who were part of the “unfamiliar” group grabbed the man who shouted out and attempted to remove him from the house. A few of us, myself included, tried to intervene. One of them pulled out a gun and we all backed off. They separated us from the crowd and all four of us were escorted outside. My industry colleague who had opened the meeting earlier hurried out to meet us and reminded us that we had signed agreement and would suffer the consequences of speaking about this publicly or even with those who attended the meeting. I asked him why he was involved with something this corrupt and he replied that it was bigger than the music business and nothing we’d want to challenge without risking consequences. We all protested and as he walked back into the house I remember word for word the last thing he said, “It’s out of my hands now. Remember you signed an agreement.” He then closed the door behind him. The men rushed us to our cars and actually watched until we drove off.

    A million things were going through my mind as I drove away and I eventually decided to pull over and park on a side street in order to collect my thoughts. I replayed everything in my mind repeatedly and it all seemed very surreal to me. I was angry with myself for not having taken a more active role in questioning what had been presented to us. I’d like to believe the shock of it all is what suspended my better nature. After what seemed like an eternity, I was able to calm myself enough to make it home. I didn’t talk or call anyone that night. The next day back at the office, I was visibly out of it but blamed it on being under the weather. No one else in my department had been invited to the meeting and I felt a sense of guilt for not being able to share what I had witnessed. I thought about contacting the 3 others who wear kicked out of the house but I didn’t remember their names and thought that tracking them down would probably bring unwanted attention. I considered speaking out publicly at the risk of losing my job but I realized I’d probably be jeopardizing more than my job and I wasn’t willing to risk anything happening to my family. I thought about those men with guns and wondered who they were? I had been told that this was bigger than the music business and all I could do was let my imagination run free. There were no answers and no one to talk to. I tried to do a little bit of research on private prisons but didn’t uncover anything about the music business’ involvement. However, the information I did find confirmed how dangerous this prison business really was. Days turned into weeks and weeks into months. Eventually, it was as if the meeting had never taken place. It all seemed surreal. I became more reclusive and stopped going to any industry events unless professionally obligated to do so. On two occasions, I found myself attending the same function as my former colleague. Both times, our eyes met but nothing more was exchanged.

    As the months passed, rap music had definitely changed direction. I was never a fan of it but even I could tell the difference. Rap acts that talked about politics or harmless fun were quickly fading away as gangster rap started dominating the airwaves. Only a few months had passed since the meeting but I suspect that the ideas presented that day had been successfully implemented. It was as if the order has been given to all major label executives. The music was climbing the charts and most companies when more than happy to capitalize on it. Each one was churning out their very own gangster rap acts on an assembly line. Everyone bought into it, consumers included. Violence and drug use became a central theme in most rap music. I spoke to a few of my peers in the industry to get their opinions on the new trend but was told repeatedly that it was all about supply and demand. Sadly many of them even expressed that the music reinforced their prejudice of minorities.

    I officially quit the music business in 1993 but my heart had already left months before. I broke ties with the majority of my peers and removed myself from this thing I had once loved. I took some time off, returned to Europe for a few years, settled out of state, and lived a “quiet” life away from the world of entertainment. As the years passed, I managed to keep my secret, fearful of sharing it with the wrong person but also a little ashamed of not having had the balls to blow the whistle. But as rap got worse, my guilt grew. Fortunately, in the late 90’s, having the internet as a resource which wasn’t at my disposal in the early days made it easier for me to investigate what is now labeled the prison industrial complex. Now that I have a greater understanding of how private prisons operate, things make much more sense than they ever have. I see how the criminalization of rap music played a big part in promoting racial stereotypes and misguided so many impressionable young minds into adopting these glorified criminal behaviors which often lead to incarceration. Twenty years of guilt is a heavy load to carry but the least I can do now is to share my story, hoping that fans of rap music realize how they’ve been used for the past 2 decades. Although I plan on remaining anonymous for obvious reasons, my goal now is to get this information out to as many people as possible. Please help me spread the word. Hopefully, others who attended the meeting back in 1991 will be inspired by this and tell their own stories. Most importantly, if only one life has been touched by my story, I pray it makes the weight of my guilt a little more tolerable.

    Thank you.

      

    KRS One saw the reality of the situation a long time ago. 

    He tried to warn us.  How relevant are these lyrics today?

    Ask Yourself Why You’ve Never Heard of this OG Truth-Bomb dropper

    Now here’s a little truth, open up your eye
    While you’re checkin’ out the boom-bap, check the exercise
    Take the word overseer, like a sample
    Repeat it very quickly in a crew, for example
    Overseer, overseer, overseer, overseer
    Officer, officer, officer, officer
    Yeah, officer from overseer
    You need a little clarity? Check the similarity!
    The overseer rode around the plantation
    The officer is off, patrollin’ all the nation
    The overseer could stop you, “What you’re doing?”
    The officer will pull you over just when he’s pursuing
    The overseer had the right to get ill
    And if you fought back, the overseer had the right to kill
    The officer has the right to arrest
    And if you fight back they put a hole in your chest

     

    KRS One – Sound of ‘Da Police

    Conscious hip-hop is often confused with its musical cousin, political hip-hop, possibly because they both speak to social turmoil.

    A disdain for commercialism is another common thread that weaves the two styles together. Politically charged songs by rappers such as Dead Prez and Public Enemy are usually delivered in a militant fashion.

    September 6, 2012: Decrypted Matrix with Max Maverick on Revealing Talk Radio

    Prison Industrial Complex Explained: Learn how Corporations are outsourcing & privatizing labor costs to the Prison Industry and how there are massive profits exploding from within this corrupted Incarceration System. Slave Labor Camps, Return of the Debtor Prisons, Products most often created by Prisoners, Recent Wallstreet investments & the Goldman Sachs connection. SERCO, UNICOR, Federal Prison Industries, Inc. and the astronomical nationwide per-capita figures that will make your head spin.

    Today, how many words

    is a picture really worth?

    Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever

    Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever

    price-fixing-central-bankers

    The Illuminati were amateurs. The second huge financial scandal of the year reveals the real international conspiracy: There’s no price the big banks can’t fix

    Conspiracy theorists of the world, believers in the hidden hands of the Rothschilds and the Masons and the Illuminati, we skeptics owe you an apology. You were right. The players may be a little different, but your basic premise is correct: The world is a rigged game. We found this out in recent months, when a series of related corruption stories spilled out of the financial sector, suggesting the world’s largest banks may be fixing the prices of, well, just about everything.

    You may have heard of the Libor scandal, in which at least three – and perhaps as many as 16 – of the name-brand too-big-to-fail banks have been manipulating global interest rates, in the process messing around with the prices of upward of $500 trillion (that’s trillion, with a “t”) worth of financial instruments. When that sprawling con burst into public view last year, it was easily the biggest financial scandal in history – MIT professor Andrew Lo even said it “dwarfs by orders of magnitude any financial scam in the history of markets.”

    That was bad enough, but now Libor may have a twin brother. Word has leaked out that the London-based firm ICAP, the world’s largest broker of interest-rate swaps, is being investigated by American authorities for behavior that sounds eerily reminiscent of the Libor mess. Regulators are looking into whether or not a small group of brokers at ICAP may have worked with up to 15 of the world’s largest banks to manipulate ISDAfix, a benchmark number used around the world to calculate the prices of interest-rate swaps.

    Interest-rate swaps are a tool used by big cities, major corporations and sovereign governments to manage their debt, and the scale of their use is almost unimaginably massive. It’s about a $379 trillion market, meaning that any manipulation would affect a pile of assets about 100 times the size of the United States federal budget.

    It should surprise no one that among the players implicated in this scheme to fix the prices of interest-rate swaps are the same megabanks – including Barclays, UBS, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and the Royal Bank of Scotland – that serve on the Libor panel that sets global interest rates. In fact, in recent years many of these banks have already paid multimillion-dollar settlements for anti-competitive manipulation of one form or another (in addition to Libor, some were caught up in an anti-competitive scheme, detailed in Rolling Stone last year, to rig municipal-debt service auctions). Though the jumble of financial acronyms sounds like gibberish to the layperson, the fact that there may now be price-fixing scandals involving both Libor and ISDAfix suggests a single, giant mushrooming conspiracy of collusion and price-fixing hovering under the ostensibly competitive veneer of Wall Street culture.

    The Scam Wall Street Learned From the Mafia

    Why? Because Libor already affects the prices of interest-rate swaps, making this a manipulation-on-manipulation situation. If the allegations prove to be right, that will mean that swap customers have been paying for two different layers of price-fixing corruption. If you can imagine paying 20 bucks for a crappy PB&J because some evil cabal of agribusiness companies colluded to fix the prices of both peanuts and peanut butter, you come close to grasping the lunacy of financial markets where both interest rates and interest-rate swaps are being manipulated at the same time, often by the same banks.

    “It’s a double conspiracy,” says an amazed Michael Greenberger, a former director of the trading and markets division at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and now a professor at the University of Maryland. “It’s the height of criminality.”

    The bad news didn’t stop with swaps and interest rates. In March, it also came out that two regulators – the CFTC here in the U.S. and the Madrid-based International Organization of Securities Commissions – were spurred by the Libor revelations to investigate the possibility of collusive manipulation of gold and silver prices. “Given the clubby manipulation efforts we saw in Libor benchmarks, I assume other benchmarks – many other benchmarks – are legit areas of inquiry,” CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton said.

    But the biggest shock came out of a federal courtroom at the end of March – though if you follow these matters closely, it may not have been so shocking at all – when a landmark class-action civil lawsuit against the banks for Libor-related offenses was dismissed. In that case, a federal judge accepted the banker-defendants’ incredible argument: If cities and towns and other investors lost money because of Libor manipulation, that was their own fault for ever thinking the banks were competing in the first place.

    “A farce,” was one antitrust lawyer’s response to the eyebrow-raising dismissal.

    “Incredible,” says Sylvia Sokol, an attorney for Constantine Cannon, a firm that specializes in antitrust cases.

    All of these stories collectively pointed to the same thing: These banks, which already possess enormous power just by virtue of their financial holdings – in the United States, the top six banks, many of them the same names you see on the Libor and ISDAfix panels, own assets equivalent to 60 percent of the nation’s GDP – are beginning to realize the awesome possibilities for increased profit and political might that would come with colluding instead of competing. Moreover, it’s increasingly clear that both the criminal justice system and the civil courts may be impotent to stop them, even when they do get caught working together to game the system.

    If true, that would leave us living in an era of undisguised, real-world conspiracy, in which the prices of currencies, commodities like gold and silver, even interest rates and the value of money itself, can be and may already have been dictated from above. And those who are doing it can get away with it. Forget the Illuminati – this is the real thing, and it’s no secret. You can stare right at it, anytime you want.

    If you squint incredibly hard and look at the issue through a mirror, maybe while standing on your head, you can sort of see what Wise is saying. In a very theoretical, technical sense, the actual process by which banks submit Libor data – 18 geeks sending numbers to the British Bankers’ Association offices in London once every morning – is not competitive per se.

    But these numbers are supposed to reflect interbank-loan prices derived in a real, competitive market. Saying the Libor submission process is not competitive is sort of like pointing out that bank robbers obeyed the speed limit on the way to the heist. It’s the silliest kind of legal sophistry.

    But Wise eventually outdid even that argument, essentially saying that while the banks may have lied to or cheated their customers, they weren’t guilty of the particular crime of antitrust collusion. This is like the old joke about the lawyer who gets up in court and claims his client had to be innocent, because his client was committing a crime in a different state at the time of the offense.

    “The plaintiffs, I believe, are confusing a claim of being perhaps deceived,” he said, “with a claim for harm to competition.”

    Judge Buchwald swallowed this lunatic argument whole and dismissed most of the case. Libor, she said, was a “cooperative endeavor” that was “never intended to be competitive.” Her decision “does not reflect the reality of this business, where all of these banks were acting as competitors throughout the process,” said the antitrust lawyer Sokol. Buchwald made this ruling despite the fact that both the U.S. and British governments had already settled with three banks for billions of dollars for improper manipulation, manipulation that these companies admitted to in their settlements.

    Michael Hausfeld of Hausfeld LLP, one of the lead lawyers for the plaintiffs in this Libor suit, declined to comment specifically on the dismissal. But he did talk about the significance of the Libor case and other manipulation cases now in the pipeline.

    “It’s now evident that there is a ubiquitous culture among the banks to collude and cheat their customers as many times as they can in as many forms as they can conceive,” he said. “And that’s not just surmising. This is just based upon what they’ve been caught at.”

    Greenberger says the lack of serious consequences for the Libor scandal has only made other kinds of manipulation more inevitable. “There’s no therapy like sending those who are used to wearing Gucci shoes to jail,” he says. “But when the attorney general says, ‘I don’t want to indict people,’ it’s the Wild West. There’s no law.”

    The problem is, a number of markets feature the same infrastructural weakness that failed in the Libor mess. In the case of interest-rate swaps and the ISDAfix benchmark, the system is very similar to Libor, although the investigation into these markets reportedly focuses on some different types of improprieties.

    Though interest-rate swaps are not widely understood outside the finance world, the root concept actually isn’t that hard. If you can imagine taking out a variable-rate mortgage and then paying a bank to make your loan payments fixed, you’ve got the basic idea of an interest-rate swap.

    In practice, it might be a country like Greece or a regional government like Jefferson County, Alabama, that borrows money at a variable rate of interest, then later goes to a bank to “swap” that loan to a more predictable fixed rate. In its simplest form, the customer in a swap deal is usually paying a premium for the safety and security of fixed interest rates, while the firm selling the swap is usually betting that it knows more about future movements in interest rates than its customers.

    Prices for interest-rate swaps are often based on ISDAfix, which, like Libor, is yet another of these privately calculated benchmarks. ISDAfix’s U.S. dollar rates are published every day, at 11:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m., after a gang of the same usual-suspect megabanks (Bank of America, RBS, Deutsche, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays, etc.) submits information about bids and offers for swaps.

    And here’s what we know so far: The CFTC has sent subpoenas to ICAP and to as many as 15 of those member banks, and plans to interview about a dozen ICAP employees from the company’s office in Jersey City, New Jersey. Moreover, the International Swaps and Derivatives Association, or ISDA, which works together with ICAP (for U.S. dollar transactions) and Thomson Reuters to compute the ISDAfix benchmark, has hired the consulting firm Oliver Wyman to review the process by which ISDAfix is calculated. Oliver Wyman is the same company that the British Bankers’ Association hired to review the Libor submission process after that scandal broke last year. The upshot of all of this is that it looks very much like ISDAfix could be Libor all over again.

    “It’s obviously reminiscent of the Libor manipulation issue,” Darrell Duffie, a finance professor at Stanford University, told reporters. “People may have been naive that simply reporting these rates was enough to avoid manipulation.”

    And just like in Libor, the potential losers in an interest-rate-swap manipulation scandal would be the same sad-sack collection of cities, towns, companies and other nonbank entities that have no way of knowing if they’re paying the real price for swaps or a price being manipulated by bank insiders for profit. Moreover, ISDAfix is not only used to calculate prices for interest-rate swaps, it’s also used to set values for about $550 billion worth of bonds tied to commercial real estate, and also affects the payouts on some state-pension annuities.

    So although it’s not quite as widespread as Libor, ISDAfix is sufficiently power-jammed into the world financial infrastructure that any manipulation of the rate would be catastrophic – and a huge class of victims that could include everyone from state pensioners to big cities to wealthy investors in structured notes would have no idea they were being robbed.

    “How is some municipality in Cleveland or wherever going to know if it’s getting ripped off?” asks Michael Masters of Masters Capital Management, a fund manager who has long been an advocate of greater transparency in the derivatives world. “The answer is, they won’t know.”

    Worse still, the CFTC investigation apparently isn’t limited to possible manipulation of swap prices by monkeying around with ISDAfix. According to reports, the commission is also looking at whether or not employees at ICAP may have intentionally delayed publication of swap prices, which in theory could give someone (bankers, cough, cough) a chance to trade ahead of the information.

    Swap prices are published when ICAP employees manually enter the data on a computer screen called “19901.” Some 6,000 customers subscribe to a service that allows them to access the data appearing on the 19901 screen.

    The key here is that unlike a more transparent, regulated market like the New York Stock Exchange, where the results of stock trades are computed more or less instantly and everyone in theory can immediately see the impact of trading on the prices of stocks, in the swap market the whole world is dependent upon a handful of brokers quickly and honestly entering data about trades by hand into a computer terminal.

    Any delay in entering price data would provide the banks involved in the transactions with a rare opportunity to trade ahead of the information. One way to imagine it would be to picture a racetrack where a giant curtain is pulled over the track as the horses come down the stretch – and the gallery is only told two minutes later which horse actually won. Anyone on the right side of the curtain could make a lot of smart bets before the audience saw the results of the race.

    At ICAP, the interest-rate swap desk, and the 19901 screen, were reportedly controlled by a small group of 20 or so brokers, some of whom were making millions of dollars. These brokers made so much money for themselves the unit was nicknamed “Treasure Island.”

    Already, there are some reports that brokers of Treasure Island did create such intentional delays. Bloomberg interviewed a former broker who claims that he watched ICAP brokers delay the reporting of swap prices. “That allows dealers to tell the brokers to delay putting trades into the system instead of in real time,” Bloomberg wrote, noting the former broker had “witnessed such activity firsthand.” An ICAP spokesman has no comment on the story, though the company has released a statement saying that it is “cooperating” with the CFTC’s inquiry and that it “maintains policies that prohibit” the improper behavior alleged in news reports.

    The idea that prices in a $379 trillion market could be dependent on a desk of about 20 guys in New Jersey should tell you a lot about the absurdity of our financial infrastructure. The whole thing, in fact, has a darkly comic element to it. “It’s almost hilarious in the irony,” says David Frenk, director of research for Better Markets, a financial-reform advocacy group, “that they called it ISDAfix.”

    After scandals involving libor and, perhaps, ISDAfix, the question that should have everyone freaked out is this: What other markets out there carry the same potential for manipulation? The answer to that question is far from reassuring, because the potential is almost everywhere. From gold to gas to swaps to interest rates, prices all over the world are dependent upon little private cabals of cigar-chomping insiders we’re forced to trust.

    “In all the over-the-counter markets, you don’t really have pricing except by a bunch of guys getting together,” Masters notes glumly.

    That includes the markets for gold (where prices are set by five banks in a Libor-ish teleconferencing process that, ironically, was created in part by N M Rothschild & Sons) and silver (whose price is set by just three banks), as well as benchmark rates in numerous other commodities – jet fuel, diesel, electric power, coal, you name it. The problem in each of these markets is the same: We all have to rely upon the honesty of companies like Barclays (already caught and fined $453 million for rigging Libor) or JPMorgan Chase (paid a $228 million settlement for rigging municipal-bond auctions) or UBS (fined a collective $1.66 billion for both muni-bond rigging and Libor manipulation) to faithfully report the real prices of things like interest rates, swaps, currencies and commodities.

    All of these benchmarks based on voluntary reporting are now being looked at by regulators around the world, and God knows what they’ll find. The European Federation of Financial Services Users wrote in an official EU survey last summer that all of these systems are ripe targets for manipulation. “In general,” it wrote, “those markets which are based on non-attested, voluntary submission of data from agents whose benefits depend on such benchmarks are especially vulnerable of market abuse and distortion.”

    Translation: When prices are set by companies that can profit by manipulating them, we’re fucked.

    “You name it,” says Frenk. “Any of these benchmarks is a possibility for corruption.”

    The only reason this problem has not received the attention it deserves is because the scale of it is so enormous that ordinary people simply cannot see it. It’s not just stealing by reaching a hand into your pocket and taking out money, but stealing in which banks can hit a few keystrokes and magically make whatever’s in your pocket worth less. This is corruption at the molecular level of the economy, Space Age stealing – and it’s only just coming into view.

    This story is from the May 9th, 2013 issue of Rolling Stone.

     

     

     

    Facebook Removes & Suspends Pro-Gun Accounts Indefinitely

    Facebook Removes & Suspends Pro-Gun Accounts Indefinitely

    You will notice Decrypted Matrix no longer operates a Facebook Page.  Within the last few days we have willfully resigned from the service and shut down all pages and profiles.  This new information below proves that was an appropriate course of action.  -Max Maverick, Editor

    Facebook is purging accounts that carry pro-second amendment and pro-liberty information in a censorship purge that has accelerated over the past few hours, with innumerable pages being disappeared merely for posting legitimate political content.

    NaturalNews.com’s Mike Adams contacted us to alert us to the fact that “Facebook banned our account for posting this,” with an attached image of a Gandhi quote about how the British disarmed the citizenry during their rule in India.

    ghandi_gun_confiscation_india

    The following is a list of Facebook accounts operated by individuals in the alternative media that have been shut down by Facebook staff over the past 24 hours. Infowars writer Aaron Dykes and political dissident Brandon J. Raub have also had their accounts deleted. Raub was snatched by police and forcibly imprisoned in a psychiatric ward earlier this year for posting political content on Facebook. Infowars editor Kurt Nimmo also had his account suspended this morning.

    Kurt Nimmo (account suspended)
    Aaron Dykes (account inactive)
    Amber Lyon (account suspended)
    Brandon J. Raub (account inactive)
    Michael F Rivero (account inactive)
    Anthony J Hilder (account inactive)
    William Lewis (account inactive)
    Richard Gage (account inactive)
    William Rodriguez (account inactive)
    Infowar Artist (account inactive)
    We are Change (account inactive)
    Wacboston At Twitter (account inactive)
    Michael Murphy Tmp (account inactive)
    Robert M Bowman (account inactive)
    Peter Dale Scott (account inactive)
    Jason Infowars (account inactive)
    Mike Skuthan (account inactive)
    Packy Savvenas (account inactive)
    Sean Wright (account inactive)
    Katherine Albrect (account inactive)

    It is important to stress that most of these accounts have not simply been temporarily suspended, they have been shut down completely. Some are now being reinstated after complaints. Accounts that have been suspended can still be seen but posting rights have been revoked.

    A 24 hour suspension was also placed on the Alex Jones Facebook account due to an image that another user had posted in which Alex Jones was tagged.

    One of the messages being received by users having their accounts suspended is displayed below. In most cases, users are not even being informed of why their page was suspended or deleted, with Facebook merely referring them to the company’s guidelines.

    Last week, we reported on how Facebook was suspending user accounts that questioned the official narrative behind the Sandy Hook school massacre.

    As we have previously highlighted, Facebook occasionally deletes images and posts that it claims violate “Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities,” yet constitute little more than political conjecture or a healthy skepticism of official narratives on current events.

    In September 2011, Infowars reporter Darrin McBreen was told by Facebook staff not to voice his political opinion on the social networking website.

    Responding to comments McBreen had made about off-grid preppers being treated as criminals, the “Facebook Team” wrote, “Be careful making about making political statements on facebook,” adding, “Facebook is about building relationships not a platform for your political viewpoint. Don’t antagonize your base. Be careful and congnizat (sic) of what you are preaching.”

    via InfoWars

    Supreme Court Justice John Roberts Lauded by Knights of Malta for “ObamaCare” Vote

    Supreme Court Justice John Roberts Lauded by Knights of Malta for “ObamaCare” Vote

    Universal socialized healthcare has long been the goal of the Vatican and its Secret Societies. So when U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts single-handedly forced United States citizens to accept President Obama’s unsavory and heavily socialist “ObamaCare” legislation

    Supreme Court Chief Justice arrives at the Knights of Malta building in Malta for his meeting with the Grand Master and other officials. Notice the Knights of Malta logo to right of entrance—the 8-pointed spear cross with red background. (AP Photo/Lino Arrigo Azzopardi)

     

    with his deciding (5-4) vote, the American judge, a devout Roman Catholic, won the immediate acclaim of his brothers in such secretive and infamous groups as the Knights of Malta and Opus Dei.

    Off to the “Impregnable Fortress” in Malta

    Immediately after casting his vote and writing the majority opinion on ObamaCare, John Roberts told the Washington, D.C. press corps that, to escape the furor and controversy that erupted, he was heading to an “impregnable fortress to escape.” Roberts choice of words was carefully coded with secret and embedded meaning.

    That impregnable fortress, as it turns out, was to the Mediterranean island of Malta, the unofficial citadel of the papacy’s Knights of Malta. It was to Malta where, after their stunning defeat in Jerusalem, the Knights and crusaders had retreated to what they referred to as their “impregnable fortress.”

    European Council President Herman Van Rompuy (left) in Malta

     

    Malta and the New World Order

    It was on this same geographic island location where, in 1984, President George H. W. Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev had met on ships in the harbor and forged the “New World Order.” While the two leaders conferred on-ship, Gorby’s wife, Raisa, dressed in a symbolic, Communist red-colored dress, was taken on a pilgrimage to the Knights of Malta’s historic St. John’s Chapel, where a statue of Jesus’ mother, Mary, holds forth as the chosen icon. It sits on the exact spot where there were found ancient ruins of a great temple devoted to Goddess worship.

    At Malta, U.S. Judge Roberts was met by the top potentates of the Rome-headquartered Knights of Malta, including Grand Master Matthew Festig of Great Britain. Also on hand to congratulate Justice Roberts on his monumental socialist “achievement” was Herman Van Rompuy of Belgium, a Bilderberg leader who is currently the President of the European Council.

    After joking about heading to Malta to escape criticism….Chief Justice Roberts heads to Malta as it emerges that he may have written for AND against opinions on Obamacare

    Chief Justice John Roberts fled the country on Tuesday opting to take up temporary residence in an ‘impregnable island fortress’.

    Was it to avoid constant questioning over the Supreme Court’s controversial ruling on health care reform? To get out of the glare of Republican ire after siding with the Court’s liberal judges and deeming the law constitutional?

    He waved such explanations off, saying instead that he was traveling to Malta to teach a two-week class at the Mediterranean island’s University.

    His departure comes as new conspiracies are floated about his supposed flip-flopping on the health care decision, with the latest theory suggesting that he actually wrote both sides of the legal argument for the Affordable Care Act.

    Last Thursday, the Chief Justice became the object of affection for many liberals as he was the deciding swing vote that gave the five-judge majority to allow the law to stand.

    In the following days, numerous reports have revealed various explanations about the months-long debate among the nine judges over the legality of the bill which would effectively force all Americans to buy health insurance.

    On Saturday, a CBS report cited unnamed sources as saying that the Chief Justice started off siding with his fellow Conservative judges during their private debate sessions, but then changed his opinion and went on to write the majority opinion conclusion statement for the liberal approval of the law.

    That report said that the four conservatives, who were then left in the lurch as the minority, went on to write their opinion as a joint effort.

    Such a move is extremely rare in the history of the Supreme Court, where each opinion is typically written by one justice from either side of the legal spectrum. As a result, they sign their name on the verdict and it is credited to them in public discussion and historical records.

    Swing vote: By switching to the liberal side, Roberts effectively insured that the Affordable Care Act passedSwing vote: By switching to the liberal side, Roberts effectively insured that the Affordable Care Act passed

    Because it was supposedly done as a united effort, however, the minority health care opinion was left unsigned.

    Salon reported today, however, that the reason why the minority opinion was left unsigned was because it was written mostly by the Chief Justice before he made the switch to the liberal side.

    Paul Campos wrote that a source ‘within the court with direct knowledge of the drafting process’ said that ‘most of the material in the first three quarters of the joint dissent was drafted by Chief Justice Roberts’ chambers’.

    The question of what role he actually played in the minority’s report will undoubtedly be speculation until one of the nine notoriously tight-lipped justices publicly confirms the rumors.

    As for Mr Roberts himself, he is shying away from any such statements.

    At a conference of 300 judges in Pennsylvania on Friday, he declined to answer any questions about the health care decision. He went on to say that it does not bother him that he cannot directly answer his critics.

    Instead, he was focusing on enjoying his summer break.

    ‘Malta, as you know, is an impregnable island fortress. It seemed like a good idea,’ he said of his then-pending trip.

    via DailyMail

    December 13, 2012 – Decrypted Matrix Radio: Eric Jon Phelps on the Jesuits part VI (Exclusive) Banking Laws Exposed

    December 13, 2012 – Decrypted Matrix Radio: Eric Jon Phelps on the Jesuits part VI (Exclusive) Banking Laws Exposed

     

    Eric Blows the lid on Banking Laws by intentional Mis-direction and Sub-version of the people!

    INCREDIBLE!

     

    Quick Notes From the Show:
    Jesuit Order – Killed Abe Lincoln

    Andrew Johnson, became disobedient [to the Order] Impeached, went to Senate

    John Farrell – US Steel

    Hog Alley Shipyards – WWI Liberty Ships

    Joseph Larkin – Trading with the Enemy, Chase Bank , Knight of Malta
    Financed Hilter, Mussolini, Franco

    Hooverville

    FDR

    30 Years War

    Banking Foundation – Stolen Land – Bankrupted Farmers

    Banking Act – Securities Act –

    FDIC links

    Bank of Italy – (now Bank of America)

    Gold Mining, Virginia City – San Francisco

    Common Law Rights

    Supreme Court Decisions REVERSED!

    Eerie Railroad Case – No more Federal Common Law Process
    1938

    12-13

     

    December 11, 2012 – Decrypted Matrix Radio: Max Maverick Interviews Scott Bartle of Frequently Unanswered Questions (of the Australian Government)

    December 11, 2012 – Decrypted Matrix Radio: Max Maverick Interviews Scott Bartle of Frequently Unanswered Questions (of the Australian Government)

     

     Frequently Unanswered Questions  – of the “Australian” Government

    Which “government” do you presume to be dealing with..?
    Onus rests on those claiming Government authority to prove it…Only if YOU demand the evidence!
    Millions of Australians Deal With “Government” Every Day.

    Whether income tax, carbon tax, drivers licence or marriage license, liquor legislation or car registration – not forgetting GST… Dire threats & penalties loom should one dare step out of line…yet


    12-11

    Every Week Night 12-1am EST (9-10pm PST)

    – Click Image to Listen LIVE –

    Vatican Calls for World Government and a New World Order

    Vatican Calls for World Government and a New World Order

    The leader of the Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI, has called for the establishment of World Government and a New World Order.

    In a speech made at the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace on Monday December 3 2012, the Pope called for the “construction of a world community, with a corresponding authority,” to serve the “common good of the human family”.

    As a means of defending global peace and justice, the pope’s vision for the establishment of World Government and a New World Order is supposedly not to create a new superpower, but new governing body that offers to those (politicians) who are responsible for making decisions, criteria for judgment and practical guidelines.

    The pope was quoted as saying:

    The proposed body (World Government) would not be a superpower, concentrated in the hands of a few, which would dominate all peoples, exploiting the weakest.

    THE pope also described his vision as a “moral force” or moral authority that has the “power to influence in accordance with reason, that is, a participatory authority, limited by law in its jurisdiction.”

    These latest remarks made by the Pope and the Catholic Church come as no surprise considering that in 2010 the Catholic Church sought the establishment of a new Central World Bank that would be responsible for regulating the global financial industry and the international money supply.

    It was reported that the Vatican sought “a supranational authority” which would have worldwide scope and “universal jurisdiction” to guide and control global economic policies and decisions.

    China’s new push for closer ties with Russia, the growing intrusions from the United Nations with regards to control of the internet and the latest remarks made by the catholic church all point to a new world order that will set in stone a path the world may not be able to recover from.