It seems America’s bankers are tired of all the abuse.
They’ve decided to speak out.
True, they’re doing it from behind the ropeline, in front of friendly crowds at industry conferences and country clubs, meaning they don’t have to look the rest of America in the eye when they call us all imbeciles and complain that they shouldn’t have to apologize for being so successful.
But while they haven’t yet deigned to talk to protesting America face to face, they are willing to scribble out some complaints on notes and send them downstairs on silver trays. Courtesy of a remarkable story by Max Abelson at Bloomberg, we now get to hear some of those choice comments.
Home Depot co-founder Bernard Marcus, for instance, is not worried about OWS:
“Who gives a crap about some imbecile?” Marcus said. “Are you kidding me?”
Former New York gurbernatorial candidate Tom Golisano, the billionaire owner of the billing firm Paychex, offered his wisdom while his half-his-age tennis champion girlfriend hung on his arm:
“If I hear a politician use the term ‘paying your fair share’ one more time, I’m going to vomit,” said Golisano, who turned 70 last month, celebrating the birthday with girlfriend Monica Seles, the former tennis star who won nine Grand Slam singles titles.
The largest transfer of wealth from the public to private sector is about to begin. The federal government will be bulk-selling the massive portfolio of foreclosed homes now owned by HUD, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to private investors — vulture funds.
These homes, which are now the property of the U.S. government, the U.S. taxpayer, U.S. citizens collectively, are going to be sold to private investor conglomerates at extraordinarily large discounts to real value.
You and I will not be allowed to participate. These investors will come from the private-equity and hedge-fund community, Goldman Sachs and its derivatives, as well as foreign sovereign wealth funds that can bring a billion dollars or more to each transaction.
In the process, these investors will instantaneously become the largest improved real estate owners and landlords in the world. The U.S. taxpayer will get pennies on the dollar for these homes and then be allowed to rent them back at market rates. (Source)
Here we finally see the hidden motivation and the real purpose of crashing the real estate market: creating an excuse to force people out of their homes, making it easy for lenders to grab their homes. The lenders then are “bailed-out” by the Federal Reserve, who passes the bill on to the tax payers. Once the lenders are bailed out they no longer want to hold actual properties, so they quickly sell all their repossessed homes to giant hedge funds for pennies on the dollar. The lenders know they have to sell quickly before anyone realizes what they did, before anyone files legal actions. Lol! Once the homes are sold off just try and get them back. Can’t be done. Bwahahahaha !!
Crashing the real estate market was necessary to take homes from ordinary people, so they could then transfer them to the wealthy–who will turn around and rent them back to the very people who lost homes.
Voila! Wealth transfer mission $$ accomplished.
Ahem, why not just give the discount on the homes to the folks who live in them?
A new Rasmussen survey has found that 85 percent of Americans believe that members of Congress “are more interested in helping their own careers than in helping other people.
Many have had the sneaking suspicion that our elected “leaders” in Congress are not going to Washington D.C. to represent us…but for their own personal gain. This video may just validate that assessment!Using the net worth data compiled by the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics we found a disturbing trend. The analysis of the information in this video has not been seen by anyone…not on Fox News…not on CNN…and you have not read about this in the Wall Street Journal…yet. After watching the video click HERE to view “The List” (Source)
Transocean Ltd., the company that owns the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that caused immeasurable damage to the Gulf, recently gave its top executives “two thirds of their total possible safety bonuses.”
This was despite the explosion of its oil rig that killed 11 people and spilled over 200 million gallons of toxic oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
Why did execs get “safety” bonuses?
For achieving the “best year in safety performance in our company’s history.”
Note: Please do not confuse this with the Transocean, Ltd world headquarters building.
Update 3/17/2011: More Tax Cuts for the Rich: Congressman Dave Camp (R-MI), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, wants to cut the tax rate for the richest of the rich to 25%. To pay for it he would like to see popular middle class tax deductions eliminated. This would add $2 trillion to the public debt over a decade, but well worth it in terms of campaign contributions. (Source)
Our choice is this. Find the money or lose our civilization. If we want safety, hire cops; if we want education, hire teachers; if we want roads, pay construction workers; if we want clean air, food, drugs and water, pay inspectors. If we want chaos, don’t. (Source)
Wall Street banks caused the economic crisis that has left millions unemployed, foreclosed-on, and without prospects in the worst economy since the Great Depression.
This crisis has, in turn, caused massive tax revenue shortfalls for the federal government and for state governments across the country: nearly $300 billion combined for 50 states in the years since the crisis began.
To deal with these budget woes, politicians are cutting public spending: laying off teachers, attacking public sector workers, raiding pensions, closing hospitals, and eliminating essential services for children, veterans, and the elderly. Download full report here
Corporations can now buy their own congressman or senator “donate” any amount of money to any election, as decided recently by the US Supreme Court “Citizens United” ruling.
Why make donations to politicians? To influence outcomes.
Campaign Cash Seating Charts
What if members of Congress were seated not by party but according to their major business sponsors–the industries which gave them the most money over their entire careers? (Source)
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Who Owns donates the most to the US Senate?
The US Senate Campaign Cash Seating Chart
The Senate: Ruled by finance/insurance/real estate
A huge upwelling is happening in the heart of humanity and it is an internal thing. It is coming from an unseen place and it can’t be defended against by those seeking to hinder its growth. . . We are awakening and we are seeing that we have a deeply shared common cause. (Source)
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Why is Wisconsin Governor Walker leading such a visible attack on Wisconsin’s public employees?
Bashing public employee unions is a smokescreen to hide yet another fat cat scam to grab State assets.
Smokescreen
Right now everyone thinks this is about unions and collective bargaining and the rights of the worker. BUT, what Wisconsin Governor Walker really wants is for Democrats to just “compromise” and pass his budget law “as is”–a budget law that authorizes selling off of Wisconsin’s state-owned power plants for pennies on the dollar in closed unsolicitated bids for which there will be no oversight.
It’s Enron-style cronyism all over again.
Here’s how the scam is set up:
1) Koch Brothers get their puppet Governor Walker in power
2) Governor Walker gins up a crisis
3) Democrats and Progressives take the bait and counter-protest on collective bargaining
4) Governor Walker will compromise on collective bargaining if the rest of the budget is passed as is
5) Bill passes, with trojan horse give-a-way to the Koch Brothers nested in
6) Koch Brothers will buy Wisconsin state-owned power plants for pennies on the dollar in closed unsolicitated bids for which there will be no oversight
7) Koch Brothers get the best vertical monopoly in a generation (Source)
Here’s the actual language in Governor Walker’s pending budget law. Read it for yourself. It will authorize him to sell off Wisconsin’s state-owned power utilities for pennies on the dollar, in closed unsolicitated bids, for which there will be no oversight:
Strange Bedfellows: The right, which usually sees the government as the villain, now wants states to have the right to declare bankruptcy and default on their payments to bondholders. Of course their goal is not the losses to the bondholdrs (who will turn out to mostly be pension funds – the middle class), but to enable “restructuring contracts” and thus force government workers, police, firemen, etc. to accept vastly lower wages and benefits. But the big prize is letting/forcing states to privatize everything. Roads, water systems, parks… Look at it this way, if Grover Norquist is for it, it cannot be good for the great majority of us. (Source)
If ever there was a "mandate" from "the people" . . .
For, By and Of the People: About 60% of the electorate want us to get out of both wars, so of course the Administration plans on hanging onto both for a few more years despite promises to withdraw. And to pay for these, we’ll have to cut Social Security, gut Medicare and downgrade veteran’s benefits. I’m not really sure who won the election but I’m pretty sure who lost. (Source)
We learn the Democrats and President Obama are likely going to fold to Republican demands and extend all the Bush tax cuts. A move that will cost the government hundreds of billions. From the Huffington Post, ”White House Gives In On Bush Tax Cuts”
Three more years of war
We also are hearing rumors Obama plans to spend hundreds of billions to keep troops in Afghanistan for several more years—because, for some reason, we need to prop up a deeply corrupt and unpopular government. “U.S. Tweaks Message on Troops in Afghanistan”
Cut the middle class’s Social Security, Medicare and veteran’s benefits
The necessary antidote to the toxin of fear is a wholehearted embrace of the principles of freedom, equality, and co-operation. (Source)
Ever wonder why there’s so much fear mongering?
There is one thing that everyone in the world can understand and sympathize with, no matter what their culture or ethnicity: The need to run away if you are being chased by giant robots.
Threat to survival is the “least common denominator” across humanity.
Since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved. – Niccoli Machiavelli
It is impossible to chain man merely by enslaving his body; the mind also must be held, and to accomplish this, fear is the accepted weapon. The common man must fear life, fear death, fear God, fear the devil, and fear most the overlords, the keepers of his destiny. – Manley P. Hall
. . . or why so much of politics is fear mongering?
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When the government wants to extend its grip on the population it applies the always successful ‘be afraid, be afraid’ card. No evidence is required, just the repeating the mantra “terrorists, terrorists”. (Source) For example: (more…)
Arguing with the forces that appear to be, legitimizes them. They are illegitimate and have no real basis for existence as they are. They are parasitical entities. They are ticks. (Source)
PhD economist Michael Hudson says that the financial “parasites” are “sucking as much money out” as they can before “jumping ship”. . . The problem with parasites is not merely that they siphon off the food and nourishment of their host, crippling its reproductive power, but that they take over the host’s brain as well. The parasite tricks the host into thinking that it is feeding itself. (Source)
Sacculina Carcini parasite
Saculina Carcini is an extraordinary creature, a barnacle that degenerates practically into a plant. It starts life as a free-swimming larva that invades a crab then changes into a microscopic slug, which plunges into the crab’s underside and sprouts “roots” that draw in nutrients from the crab’s blood.
The crab’s immune system cannot fight off Sacculina. but continues living with the parasite filling its entire body and begins to change into a new sort of creature. One that exists to serve the parasite. Externally it appears the same, but internally it is merely a puppet controlled by the intruder. (Source)
See any parallels?
But one cannot defend the actions of Team Obama on taking office. Law, policy and politics all pointed in one direction: turn the systemically dangerous banks over to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Insure the depositors, replace the management, fire the lobbyists, audit the books, prosecute the frauds, and restructure and downsize the institutions. The financial system would have been cleaned up. And the big bankers would have been beaten as a political force.
Team Obama did none of these things. Instead they announced “stress tests,” plainly designed so as to obscure the banks’ true condition. They pressured the Federal Accounting Standards Board to permit the banks to ignore the market value of their toxic assets. Management stayed in place. They prosecuted no one. The Fed cut the cost of funds to zero. The President justified all this by repeating, many times, that the goal of policy was “to get credit flowing again.”
The banks threw a party. Reported profits soared, as did bonuses. With free funds, the banks could make money with no risk, by lending back to the Treasury. (Source)
Economic collapse just happens–no one is at fault. Don’t listen if you hear otherwise.
There was no wrong doing at all in the current economic crash, nor in the subsequent $X trillion dollar giveaways bailouts:
Did you know that in the aftermath of the Savings and Loan (Thrifts) scandal there were more than a thousand felony convictions of financial elites? The cost of the wrongdoing associated with the rip-off and closure of nearly 800 Thrifts cost taxpayers more than $160 billion. The current sub-prime/mortgage-backed security scandal is 40 times bigger according to Economics professor William Black.
Who could have known?
Can you guess how many indictments there have been on financial elites who created this enormous mess? Zero, none, nada, zip. Yes, not one single prosecution or conviction has been started or achieved.
That is simply outrageous considering the width and breadth of the many crimes committed. (Source)
Where are the fact finding commissions, the grand juries?
Trust us . . .
Where is any accountability at all?
Relax, ok? . . . Now, repeat after me: there was NO wrong doing--at all. None. No one is at fault.
“The banks — hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created — are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. They frankly own the place.” — U.S. Senator Dick Durbin, Democratic Party Whip, April 30, 2009 (Source)
People have an incentive sometimes to behave badly, because they can make more money if they can cheat. If our economic system is going to work then we have to make sure that what they gain when they cheat is offset by a system of penalties. . . . We cannot solve the economic crisis unless we throw the criminals who committed fraud in jail. (Source)
Nobel prize winning economist George Akerlof has demonstrated that failure to punish white collar criminals – and instead bailing them out- creates incentives for more economic crimes and further destruction of the economy in the future. See this, this and this. (Source)
One of the things that’s most troubling to people is there seems to be very little relationship between who drove this crisis, the big financial institutions, the CEOs, regulators who didn’t do their job, and the people who are paying the price, which are millions of people who have lost their jobs, lost their homes, lost their life savings. (Source)
Check out the sweetheart deal the Indymac boys were given by the FDIC. The billion dollar question is…“Does the government really wanna clean up this mess?”
According to the US Department of Housing, the seasonally adjusted annual rate of new houses sold for the month of May was 267,000. A record low. The lowest number since data collection started in 1963. Our REAL GDP (using 2005 dollars) is now OVER 4 TIMES what it was in 1963 and we now have over 60% MORE people living in the US …. Yet annualized new home sales rate in May 2010 was HALF what it was in 1963.
The headline “New home sales up 24%” still makes June the worst June on record, and still is almost 25% below the previous record low.
See the little up blip near the bottom right corner? See it? Hooray!!
Let me put this another way. The 24% increase in sales since May represents a mere 63,000 homes; a number which is small enough to have been rounded away in 2005 when the rate was 1,283,000 and the press reported “1.3 million” NYTimes.
The number for May has been revised down since its initial posting by the US Department of housing. Furthermore, April was revised downward TWICE since it’s debut. What do you think the likelihood is of the June number seeing downward revision within the next few months?
This is just the headline information, the “easy” stuff. New home prices are down 1.4% and the stated supply is still over 7.5 months … and that doesn’t account for shadow inventory (Look at the number of houses for sale or empty on your street, then try and find them on Zillow).
So how would you expect this information to be presented to you by the media? How would you want it presented?
The mass media sounds like a pillow-soft, demented lullaby from a parent who really only wants you to fall asleep so that they can set the house on fire and then write some sensational and entertaining copy about it; copy you won’t be reading. Lately I have been going to MSNBC.com to read the comments that follow the articles. Out of a hundred responses you might find two that attempt to alert the readers to what’s actually going on. When that happens, the rest of those commenting jump of them with the usual tin foil hat, conspiracy theory, nut job tags. It’s proof positive that the majority of people will defend those oppressing them as if the news were actually the news instead of manufactured horseshit woven into crowd control medleys of the kind of elevator music that was probably playing in the Twin Towers on 9/11. (Source)
When you set about repressing people’s freedom of speech and movement, you have created a problem. When you make their jobs and their savings disappear you have created another problem. When you send men and women to fight wars for profit or to serve the interest of a foreign nation that sees them as less than human, you have created another problem. When you fail to see to the aftercare of these soldiers you have created yet another problem.
The very rich and powerful have put themselves in a most undesirable position. Instead of making sure that the underclass has enough to get by and then keeping all the usual distractions in operation, they have overstepped themselves. Their greed and lust for power and wealth and their disdain for public opinion, which they demonstrate by their arrogant disregard for what others think; believing themselves to be above the reach and judgment of those they consider beneath them, is going to come back on them with a fury. The King Louis and Marie Antoinette mindset never goes out of style with those driven mad by vanity and self-interest. It comes with the territory.
Most of the time, they can keep this in check and go right on living their privileged lives by recognizing the limits to which they can abuse the ordinary lives. In this age of material darkness they have lost their perspective. They have over reached themselves. They have put themselves in peril by placing themselves too far above their fellows and basically… sucking the oxygen out of the living room of life.
They have continued to steal when they already had more than they could ever need or ever spend. They made public displays of their wealth, while showing a calloused indifference to the plight of the people they stole their money from.
They have awakened a beast in the hearts of the populace.
Those who have brought the world to this state and who press for even greater injuries are long past the point where reason and understanding can have any impact on their iniquities. They believe they are beyond judgment and they are determined to reap the ultimate degree of suffering from the lives of those they torment for their profit and pleasure. – Les Visible (Source)
They have awakened a beast in the hearts of the populace – Les Vision
For example, recently, an unknown person has been hacking into Facebook and putting this “wake up” video (re-posted below) onto many people’s Facebook profile pages:
A few comments posted on ATS regarding this video (Source):
The video is a powerful wake-up call, and is allegedly being posted to people’s facebook pages without their consent, and without knowledge of who did it. The video is very good. So is the message.
WTF IT’S NOT FUNNY!!! This crap is really annoying and everyone who has it, including me, doesn’t know what is doing. Changed my password but this crap really annoys me!
I love this guy. Heroes are awesome. America needs hope!
I’d like to note – This why they want an internet kill switch…. Because imagine a day where almost 20% of the videos being posted on youtube are of this sort of stuff….. It would be as if someone walked into the cave with a torch.
I think the video and hack was a wasted effort. Only like %5 of the worlds population will even understand what the guy said, the rest wont even care.
Cart / Horse: The Roberts Supreme Court has ruled that Monsanto can continue to sell its genetically modified seeds while it conducts safety tests. If the GM products turn out to ruin agriculture around the world, cause birth defects and contaminate the bio-sphere, then further testing could be undertaken by the survivors. (Source)
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Want a couple more examples? Try these:
Excuse Me? A federal judge (and investor in drilling companies), U.S. District Judge Martin L. C. Feldman, has ruled that the administration’s moratorium on deep water drilling was “arbitrary” and that the government had not provided evidence that there was any danger from continued drilling. (Source)
Get Out Of Jail Free: In Skilling v. United States (on June 24,2010) the US Supreme Court “narrowed” the statute regarding “honest services” to apply only to activity such as bribery and kickbacks, and says the former head of Enron, Jeff Skilling did not violate the statute. (Source) In 2006 Skilling was convicted of multiple federal felony charges relating to Enron’s financial collapse, and is currently serving a 24-year, 4-month prison sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Englewood, Colorado.
The most important lesson to be learned from the 9-0 Supreme Court decision in the Skilling/”honest services” case has nothing to do with the Court telling our corporate masters that boardroom theft and managerial looting of companies is acceptable, but rather that if you are among the privileged class in the US, there is no such thing as settled law. The law is malleable and can be changed to serve the rich and powerful. (Source)
Racial and ethnic tension is a persistent human calamity. Kyrgyzstan is only a recent example of explosive racial/ethnic conflict–in the last few weeks around 400,000 people have been displaced and about 2,000 are estimated to have been killed. The circumstances leading to this problem aren’t completely unlike the United States. The violence in Kyrgyzstan started with extreme frustration, took root in land disputes, and then was fueled by government corruption and increases in living expenses. Source (http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2010-06/19/c_13358406.htm)
Sound familiar?
The environment, culture and economy in the United States today is tense, and many are extremely frustrated.
There are upwards of 1 in 5 people who are unemployed but want a job. Many are simultaneously struggling to pay down debt. Compounding the stress over personal finances is the government’s questionable management of public finances. Volcanoes, earthquakes, and oil spills aren’t helping either. Source (http://www.gallup.com/poll/139346/No-Improvement-Gallup-Underemployment-Rate-May.aspx)
History shows us that under such apprehensive circumstances groups of people may lash out at others–irrationally laying blame on other groups.
Illegal immigration along the United States’ southern border has been a festering sore to many Americans for decades.
I feel illegal immigration may be coming to a head and, if it does, could easily erupt into violence.
What makes me think illegal immigration may be coming to a head now?
Yahoo news gives us easy access into the thoughts of the online public. How? The online comment section for each news article provides not only a mechanism for open discourse, but also a “Thumbs up” and “Thumbs down” rating system where each reader can indicate their approval or disapproval of a specific comment. Although not a random sample it serve as a readings of sentiment–as sign posts.
I’ve done a little research on Yahoo News articles and found an astonishing number of hateful comments getting voted up, with copious approval ratings. Many times hateful comments were favored 10 to 1 over more subdued, rational comments. I do not agree with the hateful sentiment being expressed. I find it an ominous sign.
Here’s a few examples illustrating America’s festering frustration and malevolence–from Yahoo News:
Example 1–Yahoo News Headline: “Mexico teen killed by US Border Patrol, anger high”
387/40 “Lets invade Mexico and give them something to complain about.”
762/28 “hey i got an idea,,,,,,,dont cross the border!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
321/9 “When we finally decided to crack down on some of these illegals, you knew there would be violence. I just hope and pray we don’t back down now”
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Example 3–An Online Game: An online “game” requiring the shooting of Mexicans crossing the United States Border has been played over 923,000 times on one web site alone. The game is called “Border Patrol.” It has a rating of 3.5 stars and over 18,000 votes. There are many racial comments made between Mexican/Latino and (mostly) white individuals on this site are explicitly stating they will kill members of the opposing ethnicity. Check it out. Source: http://nerdnirvana.org/g4m3s/borderpatrol.htm
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Examples 4 & 5–Yahoo News Headlines: Many to most comments on the following two stories involve further acts of violence, and some outright killing, of Mexicans. Check out the comments for yourself:
Americans may take little notice of international ethnic hate crimes (such as is currently happening in Kyrgyzstan), but how will Americans react when if it erupts at home?
Afterward, if it explodes into violence, we’ll all chant together: “Who could have known?“
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More examples of specific hate crimes committed recently:
About sixty Mexican soldiers attacked a training camp of the armed group Los Zetas in Nuevo Leon
How explosive? What do you think? The following pics are from a May, 2010 raid on drug traffickers by the Mexican army near Nuevo Leon, in the province of Higueras, Mexico, less than 100 miles south of the US-Mexican border. (Source)
See anything here that might pose a problem?
Can drug violence become racial/ethnic violence?
Can drug lords become warlords?
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Over 200 assualt rifles
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Uniforms and hundreds of ammo clips
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Other seized equipment
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The city of Ciudad Juarez was recently designated the most dangerous city in the world after Mogadishu. Yeah, that’s in Somalia, where the US lost two Blackhawks and the crews got hacked up with machetes. Juarez, second best death hole on the planet today, beats out Baghdad and Kabul and adjoins the US city of El Paso. The politicians are too busy in Iraq and Afghanistan, air dumping trillions of dollars for our ’freedom’, while here at home Ciudad Juarez is inches south of sovereign US territory and is a war zone? Yeah. (Source)
Mexican Drug Territories
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There are quite a few Cartels controlling different areas but by far my favourite group are Los Zetas. These motherfuckers scare the shit out of me. These guys started out as a legit group of elite Mexican military officers trained in counter insurgency ops, small group and aerial assault, advanced comms, fuck, you name it, these guys have gotten training in it at Bragg and at the euphemistically named “School of the Americas” which is basically a South American assassin training school in Georgia that makes Amnesty International want to rage quit the whole game.
They went rogue in the late 80s after witnessing the huge profits they were missing out on by staying legit. These guys are even better equipped then the Mexican army, wearing body armor, fielding AKs, ARs, 50cals, Stinger missiles and RPGs. They also operate helos and have shitloads of up armored SUVs and are experts in demo and advanced comms. These guys wiretap the Mexican government to make sure any bribes made get delivered on. They also employ armies of teen look out kids and hordes of prostitutes who suck cock for intel from unsuspecting targeted customers. Los Zetas are not only involved in drug smuggling, but extortion rackets, kidnapping, jail breakouts and human trafficking. (Source)
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Deconstructing the sovereign United States
Our southern border remains unsecured allowing millions to enter the country at will. At the same time and since 1990 with the creation of free trade zones, what can only be estimated at hundreds of thousands if not millions, of foreign nationals are transplanted into the US under the EB-5 visa program.
Quietly, out of sight of most of the public, the deconstruction of the sovereign United States is underway. Already at work was the Security & Prosperity Partnership begun by Bush which creates the North American Union and obliterates our borders with Canada and Mexico for the free movement of goods and people (referred to as “human capital”) to benefit corporate business. It is this agreement that stands in the way of our southern border being secured. The S&PP is still rolling on out of the public’s eye as working groups continue planning the evisceration of the US for corporate interests
Prior to the creation of S&PP was the “Enterprise for the America’s” established in 1990 by George HW Bush which created the now prolific and pervasive “Free Trade Zones” (FTZ’s) that exist right here in virtually every state of the US. While these zones must obey local and state laws special permission must obtained and a request for entry into the FTZ has to be initiated in the event of any investigation. These can of course be denied by questioning jurisdictional authority as the FTZ has essentially been redefined and protected as foreign sovereign territory.
To accommodate these zones, trans-model transportation centers are being constructed at airports across the country. Billed as transportation hubs to centralize services, these airports also include taxi, bus, train and trucking and warehousing and manufacturing centers. They also include something most people are not at all aware of; free trade zones where the unemployed from other countries are ferried into the US under EB-5 visas. Once here under the visa, the investor and his mobile work force can move unhindered into any other free trade zone in the US. (Source)
Another series of leaked State Department cables made public this week by WikiLeaks lend credence to investigative reports on gun trafficking and the drug war published by Narco News as far back as 2009.
The big battles in the drug war in Mexico are “not being fought with Saturday night specials, hobby rifles and hunting shotguns,” Narco News reported in March 2009, against the grain, at a time when the mainstream media was pushing a narrative that assigned the blame for the rising tide of weapons flowing into Mexico to U.S. gun stores and gun shows.
Rather, we reported at the time, “the drug trafficking organizations are now in possession of high-powered munitions in vast quantities that can’t be explained by the gun-show loophole.”
Those weapons, found in stashes seized by Mexican law enforcers and military over the past several years, include U.S.-military issued rifles, machine guns, grenade launchers and explosives.
The State Department cables released recently by WikiLeaks support Narco News’ reporting and also confirm that our government is very aware of the fact that U.S military munitions are finding their way into Mexico, and into the hands of narco-trafficking organizations, via a multi-billion dollar stream of private-sector and Pentagon arms exports.
Narco News, in a report in December 2008 [“Juarez murders shine a light on an emerging Military Cartel”] examined the increasing militarization of narco-trafficking groups in Mexico and pointed out that U.S. military-issued ammunition popped up in an arms cache seized in Reynosa, Mexico, in November 2008 that was linked to the Zetas, a mercenary group that provides enforcement services to Mexican narco-trafficking organizations.
Tosh Plumlee, a former CIA asset who still has deep connections in the covert world, told Narco News recently that a special-operations task force under Pentagon command, which has provided training to Mexican troops south of the border, has previously “… found [in Mexico] hundreds of [U.S.-made] M-67s [grenades] as well as thousands of rounds of machine gun-type ammo, .50 [and] .30 [caliber] and the famous [U.S.-made] M-16 — most later confirmed as being shipped from Guatemala into Mexico as well as from USA vendors. …”
Similarly, an AP video report from May 2009 confirms that “M16 machine guns” have been seized from Mexican criminal groups engaged in the drug war.
“It’s unclear how cartels are getting military grade weapons,” the AP report states.
Narco News offered an answer to that question in March 2009, when it reported that the deadliest of the weapons now in the hands of criminal groups in Mexico, particularly along the U.S. border, by any reasonable standard of an analysis of the facts, appear to be getting into that nation through perfectly legal private-sector arms exports, measured in the billions of dollars.
Those exports are approved through the State Department, under a program known as Direct Commercial Sales. A sister program, called Foreign Military Sales, is overseen by the Pentagon and also taps U.S. contractors to manufacture weapons (such as machine guns and grenades) for export to foreign entities, including companies and governments.
Between 2005 and 2009, a total of $41 billion worth of U.S. defense articles were exported under the FMS program and a total of nearly $60 billion via the DCS program, according to a recent U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report. The bulk of those exports went to seven nations, including South Korea, but Mexico, too, was a receiving nation, with some $204 million in military arms shipments approved for export in fiscal year 2008 alone, according to the most recently available DCS report.
So, based on that evidence, it is clear that there is a grand river of military-grade munitions flowing out of major gun factories in the U.S. and being exported globally — completely bypassing the mom-and-pop gun store. That river of doom, however, does not bypass the drug war in Mexico.
The WikiLeaks Cables
Two separate diplomatic cables that came out of the U.S. consulate in Monterrey, Mexico, in early 2009 discuss drug war-related attacks on the U.S. consulate in that city as well as on a Monterrey TV station — with each incident involving the use of U.S. military grenades.
From a State Department cable created on Jan. 12, 2009, by the American Consul General in Monterrey and sent to the Secretary of State, U.S. Northcom and other U.S. consulates:
On January 6 the Televisa TV station in Monterrey was attacked by unknown assailants, who shot eight .40 caliber rounds into the station wall and threw a grenade over a fence into the parking lot, which exploded but did not injure anyone.
… The Consulate [in Monterrey] was attacked in a similar manner on October 11, 2008, and is located approximately one mile from the Televisa station.
… The investigators recovered the grenade fuse spoon, which appears to be from a US military M67 fragmentation grenade. ATF is investigating if any M67 grenades from this lot were exported to foreign militaries. The M67 grenade is different than the M26 grenade [an older U.S.-made grenade from the Vietnam era] used to attack the Consulate on October 11, but five M67 grenades were recovered during a raid several days after the Consulate attack in a Gulf Cartel warehouse. [Emphasis added.]
So the State Department cable makes clear that the attacks on the TV station and on the consulate itself involved military grade explosives made in the USA that somehow found their way to Mexico. A second cable issued in March 2009 lays out the plausible path those grenades followed on their journey to Mexico’s drug war.
From a cable issued by the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey on March 3, 2009, and sent to the Secretary of State, the FBI as well as various other consulates:
AmConsulate General Monterrey’s ATF Office, the ATF Explosives Technology Branch, and AmEmbassy Mexico DAO have been working with Mexican law enforcement authorities to identify the origin of various grenades and other explosive devices recovered locally over the past few months, including the unexploded M26A2 fragmentation grenade hurled at the Consulate itself during the October 11, 2008 attack. Other ordnance recovered includes 21 grenades recovered by Mexican law enforcement on October 16, 2008 after a raid at a narco-warehouse in Guadalupe (a working class suburb of Monterrey), and twenty-five 40mm explosive projectiles, a U.S. M203 40mm grenade launcher, and three South Korean K400 fragmentation grenades recovered the same day in an abandoned armored vehicle that suspected narco-traffickers used to escape apprehension.
Local Mexican law enforcement has recovered a Grenade spoon and pull ring from an exploded hand grenade used in a January 6, 2009 attack on Televisa Monterrey, a Monterrey television station. Based upon ATF examination, it appears that the grenade used in the attack on the Consulate has the same lot number, and is of similar design and style, as the three of the grenades found at the narco-warehouse in Guadalupe. On January 7, 2009, the Mexican Army recovered 14 [U.S.-made] M-67 fragmentation grenades and 1 K400 fragmentation grenade in Durango City, Durango. ….
The lot numbers of some of the grenades recovered, including the grenade used in the attack on Televisa, indicate that previously ordnance with these same lot numbers may have been sold by the USG [U.S. Government] to the El Salvadoran military in the early 1990s via the Foreign Military Sales program. We would like to thank AmEmbassy San Salvador for its ongoing efforts to query the Government of El Salvador as whether any of its stocks of grenades and other munitions have been diverted or are otherwise unaccounted for. [Emphasis added.]
Again, this is the U.S. state Department confirming that it suspects U.S. military munitions sold in the 1990s to a foreign military were subsequently diverted to Mexican narco-traffickers.
‘A secret operation to run guns across the border to Mexican drug cartels — overseen by U.S. government agents — threatens to become a major scandal for the Obama administration.
The operation, called “Fast and Furious,” was run out of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) office in Phoenix, Arizona. ATF sanctioned the purchase of weapons in U.S. gun shops and tracked the smuggling route to the Mexican border. Reportedly, more than 2,500 firearms were sold to straw buyers who then handed off the weapons to gunrunners under the nose of ATF.
But once across the border, the agency seemed to lose track of the weapons. Hundreds of AK-47s and Barrett .50 caliber rifles — favorites of warring drug cartels —made it easily into the hands of some of Mexico’s most ruthless crime organizations.’
February 11, 2011: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently told Mexican reporters that drugs like marijuana can never be legalized because “there is just too much money in it.” (Source) [But] Legalization would actually drive down drug prices, which would in turn be a disincentive to drug lords to continue selling as they currently do. . . There is so much money to be made by selling illegal drugs precisely because they are illegal.” . . . Others say that Clinton’s statements were not birthed out of ignorance, but rather are a clear reflection of central government efforts to protect the illegal drug market. A 1998 PBS investigation, for instance, explains how the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) relies on international drug dealing to finance covert operations, which offers insight into the real reasons for the war on drugs (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/front…). (Source)
CIA Drug Smuggling:
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This Florida based Gulfstream II jet aircraft # N987SA crash landed on September 24, 2007 after it ran out of fuel over Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula it had a cargo of several tons of Cocaine on board now documents have turned up on both sides of the Atlantic that link this Cocaine Smuggling Gulfstream II jet aircraft # N987SA that crashed in Mexico to the CIA who used it on at least 3 rendition flights from Europe and the USA to Guantanamo’s infamous torture chambers between 2003 to 2005. (Source)
The war on terror destroyed the bill of rights. Corporations destroyed the electoral process. Wall Street destroyed the economic system. Dogmatic partisanship destroyed the judicial system. Globalization destroyed America’s manufacturing strength.
And no one is accountable, no one is responsible. Greedy self-interest is not enough to maintain a civilization. (Source)
Maureen Dowd of the New York Times jeered that Obama’s “Yes we can” slogan had been downgraded to “Will we ever?”
It Begins: The IMF-sponsored looting of Greece has begun. They will “privatize” the railways, the water and sewerage services, the postal service, the airports, cut the wages and pensions for public workers, and increase sales, fuel and alcohol taxes and send them directly to the banks. (Source)
Greece plans to sell stakes in railway and water companies and the postal service to raise 3 billion euros ($3.7 billion) and help reduce a budget deficit that sparked the debt crisis across southern Europe.
“We decided to accelerate the privatizations process,” Greek Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou told reporters in Athens today. The government aims to raise 1 billion euros a year for the next three years from the sales. (Source)
That the Obama administration continues to place Goldman Sachs executives in government positions illustrates how little effort is devoted to hiding what is really taking place. (Source)
The list below shows the pervasive influence of Goldman Sachs and its units in the Obama government. Combined, this is the largest and most comprehensive list of such ties yet published. Source: http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/46267 (see also here):
Obama and Buffett
ALTMAN, ROGER.
BERKOWITZ, HOWARD P.
BIDEN, JOE.
BRAINARD, LAEL.
BUFFETT, WARREN.
CLINTON, HILLARY.
CRAIG, GREGORY.
DONILON, THOMAS.
Rahm Emanuel
DUDLEY, WILLIAM C.
EFFRON, BLAIR W.
ELMENDORF, DOUGLAS.
EMANUEL, RAHM.
FARRELL, DIANA.
FRIEDMAN, STEPHEN.
FROMAN, Michael.
FUDGE, ANNE.
FURMAN, JASON.
Tim Geithner
GALLOGLY, MARK.
GEITHNER, TIMOTHY.
GENSLER, GARY.
GEPHARDT, RICHARD
GREENSTONE, MICHAEL
HAMILTON PROJECT, THE
HORMATS, ROBERT.
KAGAN, ELENA.
KASHKARI, NEEL.
Elena Kagan
KORNBLUH, KAREN.
LEW, JACOB (AKA “JACK”) J.
LIDDY, EDWARD MICHAEL.
LIPTON, DAVID A.
MINDICH, ERIC
MURPHY, PHILLIP.
NIEDERAUER, DUNCAN.
OBAMA, BARACK H.
ORSZAG, PETER.
Adam Storch, Head of SEC Enforcement
PATTERSON, MARK.
PERRY, RICHARD.
RATTNER, STEVE.
REISCHAUER, ROBERT D.
RIVLIN, ALICE.
RUBIN, JAMES.
RUBIN, ROBERT.
SHAFRAN, STEVEN.
SPERLING, GENE.
STORCH, ADAM.
SUMMERS, LARRY.
THAIN, JOHN.
TYSON, LAURA D’ANDREA.
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FURTHER READING:
1. Greg Gordon (McClatchy Newspapers), “Goldman’s White House Connections Raise Eyebrows” April 21, 2010.
Revenue for April, the biggest revenue month because it is when most Californians pay their taxes, lagged projections by nearly 30% — roughly $3 billion, according to state officials.
“One pillar of the budget solution just got destroyed, and there’s nothing that can happen between now and June that can get back the $3 billion,” said Stephen Levy, director of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy.
The retraction could mean even deeper cuts in government services — schools, healthcare for the poor and services for the elderly. Lawmakers may also be forced to consider more reductions in funds for public universities, as well as tax hikes. (Source)
Update 1/2/11: According to the Washington Postsixteen (16) airports have fired TSA and hired independent security firms, due to “recent public outrage over security screening”.
Washington (CNN) — A program that allows airports to replace government screeners with private screeners is being brought to a standstill, just a month after the Transportation Security Administration said it was “neutral” on the program.
TSA chief John Pistole said Friday he has decided not to expand the program beyond the current 16 airports, saying he does not see any advantage to it. (Source)
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Israeli tells MPs high-tech full-body scanners can be easily fooled.
Full-body scanners
A leading Israeli airport security expert says the federal government has wasted millions of dollars to install “useless” imaging machines at airports across the country.
“I don’t know why everybody is running to buy these expensive and useless machines. I can overcome the body scanners with enough explosives to bring down a Boeing 747,” Rafi Sela told parliamentarians probing the state of aviation safety in Canada on Thursday. “That’s why we haven’t put them in our airport.”
Sela, former chief security officer at the Israel Airport Authority and a 30-year veteran in airport security and defence technology, helped design the security apparatus at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport. He spoke to MPs on the House of Commons transport committee via video conference from Kfar Vradim, Israel. (Source)
Why? A terrorist who conceals explosives in a body cavity, crevice, adult diaper, feminine protection, etc., will walk through a full-body scanner completely undetected. (Source)
The body scanners are just one more obsolete technology that does not provide any more security…it can be circumvented not only in body cavities but in other ways that I do not want to share with the public. (Source)
Now documents have emerged, on the US government’s own web sites, raising questions as to whether the scanner machines are:
. . . little more than overpriced metal detectors with a “beam me up Scotty” futuristic design. . . . [because] while metal objects (like guns and knives) can be easily visualized in the body scanner images, there is “poor detection capability for a wide range of dangerous objects composed of low atomic number elements, such as plastics or ceramics. . . . [and] objects in body cavities will not be detected by these machines. (Source)
Tests of the full-body scanner at Suvarnabhumi Airport have left Airports of Thailand Plc (AoT) unimpressed, raising doubts about its effectiveness and cost. The machine was supposed to allow screeners to see through clothing to create an image of the body. The microwave imaging equipment was removed from the departure hall after only a few days of trial runs in late January as it was unable to detect objects including a piece of metal 2.25 square inches concealed on a person. (Source)
One security expert, Conservative MP Ben Wallace told IoS that scientists at the UK defense firm Qinetiq, a powerhouse in the “homeland security” market in Britain and the U.S., demonstrated that “the millimetre-wave scanners picked up shrapnel and heavy wax and metal, but plastic, chemicals and liquids were missed.” —precisely what the underwear bomber had stuffed in his briefs. (Source)
The London Independent reported on “authoritative claims that officials at the [UK] Department for Transport and the Home Office have already tested the scanners and were not persuaded that they would work comprehensively against terrorist threats to aviation.” (Source)
Security Theater
Security theatre
TSA Too Busy Groping, Perving, Playing God To Notice Guns And Bombs: TSA agents at a Houston airport failed to stop an Iranian-American with a loaded handgun passing through security and boarding a plane, yet they did stop a woman directly behind him who was carrying liquids in her hand luggage.
. . . underscores how the enhanced and invasive TSA security procedures are pure theater and do nothing to make anyone safer. (Source)
Prominent public figures have slammed the slap-dash introduction of invasive naked body scanners at airports, with Congressmen and security experts labeling them a stupid and pointless measure that does nothing but harass innocent travelers.
Minnesota Congressman Collin Peterson slammed the hasty introduction of the scanners yesterday as nothing more than an example of security theatre that doesn’t even counter any supposed threat.
“I think we’ve gone way overboard,” Peterson told the Minneapolis Post. “I think a lot of what goes on at the airport is for show. It’s almost like we’re harassing passengers so they feel better.”
Crippled boy
Peterson pointed out that every time an alleged terror attack is foiled, the terrorists simply change their tactics, meaning the measures introduced as a response only inconvenience innocent people and do nothing to make anyone safer. (Source)
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported February 15 that the four-year-old disabled son of a Camden, NJ police officer “wasn’t allowed to pass through airport security” until he took his leg braces off.
The TSA has been lying to the American people about full-body scanners. The agency has insisted that these “digital strip search” machines are incapable of saving, storing or transmitting the images they take. This, we are told, makes it okay for people to be digitally strip-searched.
But secret documents uncovered by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (www.EPIC.org) have revealed that these machines do indeed posses precisely such capabilities. According to TSA specification requirement documents that have been uncovered by the EPIC, all full-body scanners purchased by the TSA must have the ability to both save and transmit the scanned images of air passengers.
The documents were obtained by EPIC through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. They have also been shared with CNN, which has viewed the documents and published a story about what they reveal. These documents contradict the claims of the TSA, which include the statement that “the system has no way to save, transmit or print the image.” (Source)
All full-body scanners purchased by the TSA must have the ability to both save and transmit the scanned images of air passengers (that includes children)
The TSA has been lying to the American people about full-body scanners. The agency has insisted that these “digital strip search” machines are incapable of saving, storing or transmitting the images they take. This, we are told, makes it okay for people to be digitally strip-searched.
Full-body scan printout
But secret documents uncovered by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (www.EPIC.org) have revealed that these machines do indeed posses precisely such capabilities. According to TSA specification requirement documents that have been uncovered by the EPIC, all full-body scanners purchased by the TSA must have the ability to both save and transmit the scanned images of air passengers.
The documents were obtained by EPIC through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. They have also been shared with CNN, which has viewed the documents and published a story about what they reveal. These documents contradict the claims of the TSA, which include the statement that “the system has no way to save, transmit or print the image.” (Source)
The scanners show such personal accessories as back braces, maxipads, adult bladder control pads,and apparently fake breasts, according to Politics Daily author, Sandra Fish, who’s article also relates that a friend of hers was forced to lift his shirt to reveal his colostomy bag to TSA screeners. Elderly travelers, who often face the stigma and ridicule of a youth obsessed culture, will now also face having to reveal the intimate details of their failing health to complete strangers or announce their personal ills before an audience of onlookers in order to avoid having to show what’s concealed beneath their clothes. (Source)
Relax, stored naked body images are of no interest to TSA officers–because they are professionals. Lol!
TSA Airport Security Staff have already started saving and printing full-body scans:
Shahrukh Khan
Celebrity actor’s airport body scan disseminated by security staff at Heathrow: The recent controversy in which body scan images of Indian Actor and celebrity Shahrukh Khan were printed and traded among security staff at Heathrow International Airport raises serious privacy concerns for many. (Source)
Claims on behalf of authorities that naked body scanner images are immediately destroyed after passengers pass through new x-ray backscatter devices have been proven fraudulent after it was revealed that naked images of Indian film star Shahrukh Khan were printed out and circulated by airport staff at Heathrow in London. (Source)
Despite official denials that the images produced by the devices show details of genitalia, journalists who have investigated trials of the technology have reported that details of sexual organs are “eerily visible”.
When the scanners were first introduced at Australian airports in 2008 it was admitted that the X-ray backscatter devices don’t work properly unless the genitals of people going through them are visible. “It will show the private parts of people, but what we’ve decided is that we’re not going to blur those out, because it severely limits the detection capabilities,” said Melbourne Airport’s Office of Transport Security manager Cheryl Johnson. (Source1, Source2)
TSA admits they can even “see sanitary napkins in naked body scans.” (Source)
A mere month after London Heathrow introduced full body scanners, the first harassment case is already being investigated by the authorities:
“Love those gigantic tits” remark lands airport scanner operator in hot water. (Source)
I spy . . .
One can only marvel at the full cultural import of widely available “x-ray vision” technology being deployed. Indeed, for those who remember the old X-ray Specs advertised on the back of comic books to see through women’s clothes, it is apparently a longstanding boyhood fantasy now set to become national policy. This is essentially a form of high-tech voyeurism masking as security, and it portends more such incursions into liberty and privacy. (Source)
“We don’t need to look at naked 8-year-olds and grandmothers to secure airplanes,” Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) said last week. “I think it’s a false argument to say we have to give up all of our personal privacy in order to have security.” (Source)
Biometric Data Is Collected From Passengers and Stored in Government Databases
Law enforcement in fact illegally saves naked images produced by the machines. “The U.S. Marshals Service admitted this week [August 2010] that it had surreptitiously saved tens of thousands of images recorded,” Declan McCullagh wrote for CNet News.
The government has a keen interest in collecting and compiling biometric data on citizens. The FBI announced a $1 billion effort to build the world’s largest computer database of peoples’ physical characteristics, a project that would give the government unprecedented abilities to identify individuals in the United States and abroad, the Washington Post reported in December of 2007.
The Department of Homeland Security has collected biometrics for years, including the use of iris scans at certain airports under the guise of identity verification of travelers who have passed background checks and want to move through lines quickly. “The department is also looking to apply iris- and face-recognition techniques to other programs,” the Post added. (Source)
Roundup Ready: The Federal government is using Homeland Security, the FBI, state and local police, the credit card processors, Google, Facebook and probably those two beagles down the street to collect information (let’s not dignify it with the word ‘intelligence’) on each and every citizen. The goal? Right, our safety. To protect our freedoms… (Source)
Get Harassed If You say, “I opt out” (i.e., decline the sacnner)
The opt-out process seems to be designed to bring humiliation to passengers, because once you announce you’re opting out of the naked body scanners, TSA agents yell, “Opt out! Opt out!” in order to draw attention to you. Following that, they now feel up your crotch and private parts with their fingers and palms. The message is clear: Go through the naked body scanner or we will sexually molest you. (Source)
At ACLU.org, the nonprofit organization reports it has received 900 complaints and has posted over 38 graphic accounts that can only be described as sexual molestation. Brief examples include: (Source)
“The TSA agent used her hands to feel under and between my breasts. She then rammed her hand up into my crotch until it jammed into my pubic bone.”
“I cried throughout the groping and have had intrusive thoughts since. It was humiliating.”
“The procedure was violating, degrading, invasive and humiliating.”
“It was so rough that I felt the effects of it throughout the day.”
While the agents are busy singling out the elderly and the disabled for enhanced screening, groping women’s breasts, telling people they are “God”, and locking travelers in glass boxes over liquids such as breast milk, other passengers are being allowed to waltz through security with loaded guns and even explosive material. (Source)
Full body scanners at airports could increase your risk of skin cancer, experts warn. (Source)
Allied Pilots Association president Dave Bates to avoid “the repeated radiation from the ‘advanced imaging technology’ body scanners used at many airports.” (Source)
Airport Body Scanning Raises Radiation Exposure, Committee Says
IAEA
(Bloomberg) — Air passengers should be made aware of the health risks of airport body screenings and governments must explain any decision to expose the public to higher levels of cancer-causing radiation, an inter-agency report said. The group includes the European Commission, International Atomic Energy Agency, Nuclear Energy Agency and the World Health Organization.
Pregnant women and children should not be subject to scanning, even though the radiation dose from body scanners is “extremely small,” said the Inter-Agency Committee on Radiation Safety report, which is restricted to the agencies concerned and not meant for public circulation.
The Committee cited the IAEA’s 1996 Basic Safety Standards agreement, drafted over three decades, that protects people from radiation. Frequent exposure to low doses of radiation can lead to cancer and birth defects, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (Source)
The Backscatter full-body scanner emits T-rays or THz waves (terahertz waves), which is radiation that is positioned between microwaves and infrared rays on the electromagnetic spectrum. Any amount of radiation is dangerous, as it is cumulative, and poses a serious threat to all living cells through which it passes, leaving behind a trail of destruction and genetic mutations.
Boian Aleandrov, of the Center for Nonlinear Studies at Los Alamos National Laboratory, however, has an opinion regarding the dangers of terahertz waves or T-rays:
Although the forces that terahertz waves or T-rays exert are small, their resonant effects can”unzip double-stranded DNA, creating bubbles in the double strand that could significantly interfere with processes such as gene expression and DNA replication. (Physics Letters A, Volume 374, Issue 10, 2010)
MIT’s Technology Review further explains in an article entitled:“Terahertz Waves Tear Apart DNA: A new model of the way the THz waves interact with DNA explains how the damage is done.” (Source)
Leon Kaufman, one of the leading medical physicists in the development of clinical MRI equipment in the 1980s, asks, “Are airport body x-ray scanners a great public health experiment?”
Contrary to every policy enacted since the effects of radiation were understood, we are engaging in a mass experiment of irradiation of not just adults, but also pregnant women, fetuses, children, women of child-bearing age, men who may conceive after exposure—in short, everyone unfortunate enough to have to be in an airport. The results will not be known for 20 years. Imagine if, as an investigator at UCSF, I had asked my IRB to allow me to carry out an experiment involving indiscriminate exposure to x-rays of a randomly selected population with no informed consent. (Source)
TSA Refuses to Release Radiation Safety Inspection Reports
In late November, 2010, USA TODAY requested current inspection reports for the 4,080 X-ray machines used to examine checked and carry-on bags, and for the 221 new full-body X-ray scanners. The TSA insists that all have passed radiation inspections conducted by contractors but has thus far been unwilling to release the reports. (Source)
Some TSA workers have filed complaints about poor maintenance and monitoring of X-ray machines, citing high cancer rates among agency employees that regularly work near the machines. One employee requested that a hazard assessment be conducted, which the TSA denied. (Source)
Members of Congress are now calling on the TSA to release radiation inspection records, and one lawmaker — Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass. — has asked for an investigation into the effectiveness of the TSA’s oversight of its X-ray machines. (Source)
President Barack Obama has pledged $734 million to deploy airport scanners that use x-rays and other technology to detect explosives, guns and other contraband. The U.S. and European countries including the U.K. have been deploying more scanners at airports after the attempted bombing on Christmas Day of a Detroit-bound Northwest airline flight. (Source)
Terror profits
Former DHS secretary Michael Chertoff, who now heads the Chertoff Group, represents one of the leading manufacturers of whole-body-imaging machines, Rapiscan Systems. For days after the attack, Chertoff made the rounds on the media promoting the scanners, calling the bombing attempt “a very vivid lesson in the value of that machinery”—all without disclosing his relationship to Rapiscan. (Source)
This has been a great lobbying-marketing effort on behalf of the manufacturers.” Between 2005 and 2009, Rapiscan spent $1,678,500 on lobbying, according to data compiled at the Center for Responsive Politics (OpenSecrets.org). (Source)
According to the Washington Post:
Ex-Homeland Security chief head said to abuse public trust by touting body scanners
Washington Post (Jan 1, 2010)
Since the attempted bombing of a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day, former Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff has given dozens of media interviews touting the need for the federal government to buy more full-body scanners for airports. Chertoff has been criticized “for using his former government credentials to advocate for a product that benefits his clients. “ (Source)
Probe of Chertoff Urged
One of the Chertoff Group’s clients is a company named Rapiscan. Rapiscan is in the money. Rapiscan makes full-body scanners to protect our airplanes from terrorists.
Michael Chertoff
The trouble is when Chertoff was chief of Homeland Security, Homeland Security started buying scanners from Rapiscan for $160,000—that’s right, for each one. In fact, in 2008 alone, Rapiscan got $26.5 million from Homeland Security—and $41.4 million from all government agencies combined.
Chertoff Group is becoming the most high-powered and deep-pocketed national security consulting firm in the United States. According to insiders, Chertoff took full advantage of the attempted attack on Northwest Flight 253 by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, known as “the crotch bomber.” Chertoff claimed America needed full-body scanners to prevent these types of disasters. Chertoff wanted funding on a large scale, and Chertoff got it. (Source)
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Ratcheting up the police state
According to one commentator the naked body scanners, the useless security theater, and the invasive sexual assaults by TSA are nothing more than “slave training.” (Source)
Consider:
And it’s only getting worse. That TSA agents feel your crotch and breasts with their palms and fingers would have been unthinkable just five years ago. But this is how a police state works: They introduce one element at a time and then wait for everybody to get used to it before adding another layer of intrusion to their lives.
"Security" or "slave training"? Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Today it’s a naked body scanner and an X-rated feel-up. Five years from now, it could be TSA agents stripping off your clothes in a private screening room and inserting their fingers into your anus and other areas to check for “weapons.” If the American people don’t start standing up to these illegal, intrusive and humiliating body searches, there’s no end to where the TSA could take this. Give an agency like the TSA unlimited power to bully the public, and they will inevitably keep pushing the limits until they are stopped.
None of this seems to have anything whatsoever to do with actual air travel security, by the way. It all seems focused on maximizing the humiliation of air travelers while indoctrinating people into a police state mentality (so they get used to government agents strip-searching them on demand).
This is the new Amerika. Your Constitutional rights have been thrown out the window. Any expectation that you might be treated with respect as a law-abiding citizen have been utterly abandoned. You are now treated as a slavilian (a slave / civilian), and the federal government believes it has the right to commit sex crimes against you and your children any time it wishes.
Even our airline pilots are treated as criminals and terrorized by the very agency that claims to be protecting us from terrorism! The TSA is the new Gestapo, and they will absolutely will not stop with these police state tactics until they are forced to.
It is time that We the People stood up against the TSA Gestapo and started suing their agents for sexual molestation, child pornography, kidnapping, conspiracy and violating our Fourth Amendment rights. (Source)
TSA Hired Gang Members, Illegal Aliens, Rapists, and Felons
While the TSA hires rapists to grope and fondle little girls, women, and the physically disabled in the name of security, it gives the green light to illegal aliens to fly planes and work at US airports, emphasizing once again that invasive “pat down” procedures have nothing to do with terrorism and everything to do with treating the American people with less respect than farmyard animals. (Source)
“Behavioral detection” officer Minnetta Walker was arrested Tuesday by federal agents at Buffalo Niagara International Airport on charges that she provided information to suspected drug traffickers and helped them get past security checkpoints with minimum scrutiny,” reports The Buffalo News, yet another sad example among a long history of cases of TSA workers and criminal behavior.
Extending TSA “Security” to Mass Transit, Trains, Ships, etc., etc. . . .
“I think the tighter we get on aviation, we have to also be thinking now about going on to mass transit or to trains or maritime. So, what do we need to be doing to strengthen our protections there?” (Source)
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
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The Bottom Line
These naked body scanners aren’t about preventing terrorism! They are about making money for certain people (eg Chernoff) who are politically connected. (Source)
Airport body scanners are useless by any metric you care to apply:
They are medically dangerous.
They potentially cause more deaths than they would save.
We put these nude scanners out in airports early so that when you get sent to the FEMA camps it won’t be so much of a shock. You’ll be used to getting “processed” and seeing others get “processed”. (Source)
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And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? . . . the cursed machine would have ground to a halt. — Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
“We have a choice,” says Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Chris Hedges. “You can either be complicit in your own enslavement or you can lead a life that has some kind of integrity and meaning.” (Source)
Perspective: If the Goal Was To Actually Save American Lives
We have spent $330 million US on new scanners at the airports. The total investment is expected to rise over $2 billion US within a few years for this effort alone. Not one, but several well-supported estimates have indicated that if the same $330 million US was spent to screen people for heart issues (with CRP tests and stethoscopes listening for heart issues), we would probably save a few thousand lives every year from cardiac failure deaths alone, let alone other causes. This is a few thousands of times more effective than any potential risk reduction from terrorism. This isn’t ironic, it’s criminal. (Source: comment)
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Perspective: If the Real Goal Was To Actually Detect Terrorists
America is controlled by what economists call rent-seeking behaviour. Virtually everyone important has a revenue stream, and they don’t want anyone to take that revenue stream away. So pharma and insurance companies, who would have been damaged badly by single payer (they would have lost hundreds of billions) made sure that a plan to provide everyone with better health care for a third less than current costs was never even considered.
The most important game in America today is the contest for control of government, so that government can directly or indirectly give you money. Health care “reform” in which the government decided to force Americans to buy private health insurance or be fined is merely the latest (and most blatant) example. Virtually every industry, from finance to telecom to agriculture is involved in this game. It is in all their interests to make sure the game continues, but they do fight amongst each other for the spoils. (Source)
How the nation’s biggest banks are ripping off American cities with the same predatory deals that brought down Greece
By: MATT TAIBBI
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Our economic crisis is not an accident. It’s the result of unchecked greed run rampant. Matt Taibbi shares the story of how a big NY bank preyed on Jefferson County, AL–exposing a much larger game plan.
Who will join the party next–at our expense?
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While for many Americans the financial crisis remains an abstraction, a confusing mess of complex transactions that took place on a cloud high above Manhattan sometime in the mid-2000s, in Jefferson County you can actually see the rank criminality of the crisis economy with your own eyes . . . our days of laughing at other countries are over. It’s our turn to get laughed at. (Source)
Educate yourself. Click on the link, read his 6-page article:
A March 20, 2010 front-page New York Times article began this way:
American Marines in an opium poppy field in Marja, Afghanistan, last month. The military decided not to destroy the fields. (NY Times)
The effort to win over Afghans on former Taliban turf in Marja has put American and NATO commanders in the unusual position of arguing against opium eradication,
Marjah is located Helmand providence, Afghanistan
pitting them against some Afghan officials who are pushing to destroy the harvest. [emphasis added]
U.S. Marines have advanced into one of the main opium-growing regions of Afghanistan’s Helmand Province since February, but have told villagers there they will not destroy the opium crop that is blossoming this month. [emphasis added]
Afghanistan grows the opium poppies that provide more than 90% of the world’s opium, the raw material for the production of heroin and yet the US has taken a firm position to NOT destroy the opium crop in Afghanistan.
Why?
Alfred McCoy, J.R.W. Smail Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, details what US leaders already know, the drug trade is at the center of war in Afghanistan:
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US troops patroling opium fields in Afghaistan
After five years of the U.S. occupation, Afghanistan’s drug production had swelled to unprecedented proportions. In August 2007, the U.N. reported that the country’s record opium crop covered almost 500,000 acres, an area larger than all the coca fields in Latin America. From a modest 185 tons at the start of American intervention in 2001, Afghanistan now produced 8,200 tons of opium, a remarkable 53% of the country’s GDP and 93% of global heroin supply.
To serve and protect . . .
In this way, Afghanistan became the world’s first true “narco-state.” If a cocaine traffic that provided just 3% of Colombia’s GDP could bring in its wake endless violence and powerful cartels capable of corrupting that country’s government, then we can only imagine the consequences of Afghanistan’s dependence on opium for more than 50% of its entire economy.
. . . in Afghanistan
At a drug conference in Kabul this month, the head of Russia’s Federal Narcotics Service estimated the value of Afghanistan’s current opium crop at $65 billion. Only $500 million of that vast sum goes to Afghanistan’s farmers, $300 million to the Taliban guerrillas, and the $64 billion balance “to the drug mafia,” leaving ample funds to corrupt the Karzai government in a nation whose total GDP is only $10 billion. (Source)
British opium war with China
Opium enslaves people.
The British fought a war with China, the First Opium War of 1839-42, to ensure “free trade” and their “right” to sell opium to the Chinese. Why? Two reasons–profits and enslavement:
The First Opium War was attacked in the House of Commons by a newly elected young member of Parliament, William Ewart Gladstone, who wondered if there had ever been “a war more unjust in its origin, a war more calculated to cover this country with permanent disgrace, I do not know.” The war was denounced in Parliament as unjust and iniquitous. Gladstone criticized Lord Palmerston’s willingness to protect an infamous contraband traffic. Outrage was expressed by the public and the press in the United States and United Kingdom as there was a perception that British interests may well have been simply supporting the drugs trade [16]
Lin Zexu, Governor-General of Hunan and Hubei, recognizing the consequences of opium abuse, embarked on an anti-opium campaign in which 1,700 opium dealers were arrested and 2.6 million pounds of opium were confiscated and destroyed.[21]
Lin Zexu is now viewed as a hero of 19th century China who stood against European imperialism and his likeness has been immortalized at various locations around the world.[23][24][25][26]
See any parallels to US talk about “free trade” and US promise to “not destroy” the opium supply in Afghanistan? What happened to US commitment to “human rights” and “the war on drugs”?
Empire building is empire building.
What was wrong then is still wrong today.
Who’d dare take a stand against opium in 2010–like Lin Zexu did in 1839?
[silence . . . the sound of a moral and ethical vacuum]
Notice the near zero opium production in 2001–while the Taliban were in power in Afghanistan.
Updates:
In December 2009 US President Obama ordered an additional 30,000 US troops into Afghanistan.
In February-March 2010 US troops waged battle and won in Marjah, Afghanistan.
Marjah is located in the middle of the Helmand province in Afghanistan
The Helmand province produces 75% of Afghanistan’s opium and is now arguably the world capitol of opium production.
US military promises to NOT destroy the opium crop in Afghanistan.
March 10, 2010 Afghan President Hamid Karzai invites Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad to Kabul to give a fiery anti-American speech. (Source)
March 28, 2010 President Obama made a “secret” surprise visit to Afghanistan to meet with Afghan President Hamid Karzai to discuss “reducing corruption.” The Wall Street Journal dutifully reported that Obama wore a “bomber jacket” while giving a speech afterward, reminding us that, “America was ‘viciously attacked’ by people who ‘operate within the confines of Afghanistan.’” (Source)
April 6, 2010 MSNBC runs article titled, “Karzai’s mental stability questioned,” which questions Afghan president Karzai’s ability to lead, saying he is “slightly off balance.”
September 28, 2010: US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, formally permits opium farming in Afghanistan, “I hereby waive the requirement in section 7076(d)(2) of the Act to certify that the Government of Afghanistan is cooperating fully with United States efforts against the Taliban and Al Qaeda and to reduce poppy cultivation and illicit drug trafficking and report that it is vital to the national security interests of the United States to do so.” (Source: US Federal Register)
February 11, 2011: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently told Mexican reporters that drugs like marijuana can never be legalized because “there is just too much money in it.” (Source) [But] Legalization would actually drive down drug prices, which would in turn be a disincentive to drug lords to continue selling as they currently do. . . There is so much money to be made by selling illegal drugs precisely because they are illegal.” . . . Others say that Clinton’s statements were not birthed out of ignorance, but rather are a clear reflection of central government efforts to protect the illegal drug market. A 1998 PBS investigation, for instance, explains how the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) relies on international drug dealing to finance covert operations, which offers insight into the real reasons for the war on drugs (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/front…). (Source)
Islam forbids the use of opium and heroin. The Taliban outlawed poppy growing in 2000. Drug lords in Afghanistan today justify the drug production by saying it’s not for domestic consumption but rather to sell abroad as part of a holy war against the West. (Source)
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