Are You Prepared For The Coming Economic Collapse And The Next Great Depression?
JP Morgan And Citigroup Agree That The U.S. Economy Is Steamrolling Toward A Recession
By Michael Snyder, on December 6th, 2015
As we approach the end of 2015, researchers at both JP Morgan and Citigroup agree that the probability that the U.S. economy will soon plunge into recession is rising. Just last week, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives asked Janet Yellen about Citigroup’s assessment that there is a 65 percent chance that the United States will experience an economic recession in 2016. You can read her answer below. And just a few days ago, JP Morgan economists Michael Feroli, Daniel Silver, Jesse Edgerton, and Robert Mellman released a report in which they declared that “the probability of recession within three years” has risen to “an eye-catching 76%”…
“Our longer-run indicators, however, continue to suggest an elevated risk that the expansion is nearing its end, and our preferred model now puts the probability of recession within three years at an eye-catching 76%.”
The good news is that the economists at JP Morgan believe that a recession will probably not hit us within the next six months. But due to steadily weakening economic conditions, they are convinced that one is almost certain to strike within the next few years…
“When we first wrote, only manufacturing sentiment was signaling an above-average probability of imminent recession,” they said. “But recent weakening in the Richmond Fed services survey and the ISM nonmanufacturing index have now pushed the nonmanufacturing sentiment probability up somewhat as well.”
In the short term, the note says that the 6-month likelihood is only 5%, but within a year it stands at 23%, in two years 48%, and in three years the “eye-popping” 76%.
To be honest, I believe that this assessment is far too optimistic, and it appears that researchers at Citigroup agree with me. According to them, there is a 65 percent chance that the U.S. economy will plunge into recession by the end of next year. Last week, Janet Yellen was asked about this during testimony before Congress…
In testimony before Congress’ Joint Economic Committee, Yellen was asked by Rep. Pat Tiberi about a piece of research released by Citigroup’s rates strategy team Monday.
Specifically, Tiberi, an Ohio Republican, wanted to know what Yellen made of Citi’s conclusion that there is a 65 percent chance of a U.S. recession in 2016.
“The economists said that they would assign about a 65 percent likelihood of a recession in the United States in 2016. Now, 65 percent sounds high to me, but I’m not an economist and I’m not the Fed chair. But zero risk might be too low as well. So what would you assign a risk level of a recession next year?” Tiberi asked.
Investment banker jumps to death from JP Morgan’s headquarters in Central
PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 18 February, 2014, 4:49pm
UPDATED : Wednesday, 19 February, 2014, 9:32am
George Chen, Clifford Lo and Jeanny Yu
..
The man stands on the roof of Chater House in Central as police try to talk him down. Photo: SCMP Pictures
An investment banker at JP Morgan jumped to his death from the roof of the bank’s headquarters in Central yesterday.
Witnesses said the man went to the roof of the 30-storey Chater House in the heart of Hong Kong’s central business district and, despite attempts to talk him down, jumped to his death.
Out of respect for those involved, we cannot yet comment further. Our thoughts and sympathy are with the family that’s involved at this difficult time
JP Morgan spokesman
Shocked witness said the 33-year-old – believed to be a junior-level employee at the bank – climbed onto the roof shortly after lunchtime.
Police said a man was found in a dangerous position on the roof of Chater House on Connaught Road Central at about 2pm. He threw himself off the building before emergency crews arrived.
He landed on the four-lane westbound carriageway outside the building. A police spokeswoman said the man was taken to Ruttonjee Hospital in Wan Chai, where he was declared dead at 2.31pm.
According to several JP Morgan employees, the man worked for the firm’s investment-banking business in Hong Kong.
Police warn pedestrians near Chater House in Central. Photo: SCMP Pictures
An initial police investigation showed he had recently told a colleague he was under heavy work-related stress, according to a police source involved in the investigation. The police said no suicide note was found.
HONG KONG (INTELLIHUB) — All month we have been reporting on the suspicious string of apparent suicides that have hit the financial industry. Multiple bankers have been found dead in recent weeks, all of them have been ruled suicides despite the fact that little information has been released in some of the cases.
Those who had high profile deaths, like the man who jumped from the top of the JP Morgan HQ building in Europe are highly publicized, but overall, very few details about any of these deaths have been made public. Now this week, another investment banker has jumped from a different JP Morgan HQ, on a different continent, this time in Hong Kong, China.
The fact that many of these deaths seem to be tied to JP Morgan is arousing further suspicion that there is more to this story than meets the eye.
String of suspicious deaths:
1 – William Broeksmit, 58-year-old former senior executive at Deutsche Bank AG, was found dead in his home after an apparent suicide in South Kensington in central London, on January 26th.
2- Karl Slym,51 year old Tata Motors managing director Karl Slym, was found dead on the fourth floor of the Shangri-La hotel in Bangkok on January 27th.
3 – Gabriel Magee, a 39-year-old JP Morgan employee, died after falling from the roof of the JP Morgan European headquarters in London on January 27th.
New Clues In Suicide Of JP Morgan Banker Add To Mystery
Posted about 2 days ago
(Paul Joseph Watson) Friends of the JP Morgan banker who leapt to his death from a high rise building in Hong Kong this week, becoming the 7th financial worker to die under strange circumstances in recent weeks, suggest that he was planning to return to Canada, adding to the mystery of the suicide.
33-year-old Dennis Li Junjie plunged to his death on Tuesday after jumping from the roof of Chater House, which serves as JP Morgan’s Asia headquarters. Junjie worked for JP Morgan as a back up services associate.
His suicide was blamed on ”the stressful environment of investment banking,” although its timing, just three weeks after JP Morgan senior manager Gabriel Magee jumped 500ft from the top of the bank’s headquarters in central London, and amidst a number of other strange banker deaths, has prompted speculation that something more insidious may be afoot.
Just two days before his suicide, Junjie told a friend that he planned to return to Toronto, where he had worked as an analyst at the Royal Bank of Canada.
“RIP … What happened to all the promises and plans you made? What happened to your return to Toronto? I didn’t know you were that upset! I will miss you always,” remarked the friend.
Junjie had recently bought a HK$5.5 million apartment in Hong Kong and friends commented on how he always had a smile on his face.
Unemployment hangs stubbornly at more than 8 percent, yet, defying election history, U.S. President Barack Obama would handily win a second term if voters went to the polls today.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney hasn’t capitalized on the stagnant economy because after sewing up the GOP nomination, he failed to move quickly on issues critical to key demographic groups and act on the challenger’s imperative to offer a better alternative to the president’s policies.
To win conservative primary voters, Romney rejected the Dream Act, which enjoyed bipartisan sponsorship in Congress and would permit young adults brought to America illegally as children to earn citizenship by completing two years of college or military service.
After securing the nomination, Romney failed to define a compromise position more acceptable to Hispanic voters and permitted Obama to pre-empt the issue by suspending deportation of those young adults. Obama enjoys an overwhelming lead among Hispanic voters.
Romney vows to repeal ObamaCare but is vague about what would replace it. The president’s healthcare reforms may be too expensive and encourage private firms to offshore jobs to escape costly coverage for employees; however, the law contains provisions popular among the elderly and with women — for example, much improved Medicare prescription drug coverage and coverage for children with chronic conditions.
No surprise! Obama leads Romney in Florida — a must-win state for any Republican candidate, along with Texas, given the Democrats’ lock on California and New York. And the president enjoys a significant lead among women in battleground states.
On the economy, Romney sounds like a broken record, repeating an annoying theme and undermining his appeal. Constantly harping Obama’s economic policies have failed, he asserts his business experience qualifies him to create millions of new American jobs.
Voters recognize Obama inherited a bigger mess than any president since FDR, managed to stabilize the economy and created more than 3.6 million jobs since the recovery began in October 2009.
At Bain Capital, Romney earned his fortune reorganizing troubled companies — often shutting facilities, outsourcing jobs and firing employees. Little in that history indicates he knows much about shaping public policies to encourage new industries, attract private investment, instigate innovation and generally help U.S. companies compete in global markets and bring jobs to America.
During the early days of his campaign, he talked a lot about the right things — dealing with unfair competition from China and developing domestic oil — but since, he has loaded up on Bush administration economic advisers and emphasized broader themes like deregulation and tax and spending cuts.
Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court on Tuesday froze a decree issued by President Mohamed Morsi reinstating the Islamist-led parliament, a judicial source said.
The decision is expected to raise tensions between Morsi, the top court and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) which handed over power to the new president at the end of June.
“The court ordered the freeze of the president’s decree,” the source said.
On Sunday, just eight days after taking office, Morsi, a former member of the powerful Muslim Brotherhood, ordered the lower house to reconvene.
His move highlighted the power struggle between the president and the Supreme Constitutional Court which last month said certain articles in the law governing the parliament elections were invalid, annulling the lower house.
The judicial source added: “The court ordered that its previous ruling (invalidating the elections and annulling the lower house) be implemented.”
This edition of News Analysis reviews US President Obama’s move to issue a new executive order allowing the White House to control all private communications in case of emergencies.
Putin and the Future of Russia – Eric Draitser on GRTV
Eric Draitser of StopImperialism.com joins us to discuss the geopolitical significance of the reelection of Vladimir Putin as Russian President. We talk about the differences between Putin and Medvedev, the future of Russian-American relations under Putin, and the future of Syria.
New York Police Department (NYPD) has attacked and brutalized OWS protesters near Zuccotti Park
As the US presidential election draw near, the New York Police Department (NYPD) has attacked and brutalized OWS protesters near Zuccotti Park, not sparing journalists who were beaten and detained.
Press TV has conducted an interview with Giles Clarke, OWS Photographer from New York about the escalation in motivation by police to crackdown violently on unarmed peaceful protesters of the OWS movement and the systematic absence of coverage of OWS in US mainstream media as the US presidential election approaches.
Romania’s PM in Brussels to defend bid to oust president
http://www.euronews.com/ Romania’s Prime Minister, Victor Ponta, has held talks with EU leaders in Brussels to explain his bid to oust President Triane Basescu.
Senior European officials remain deeply concerned over the political turmoil unfolding in Bucharest.
Promising to address those concerns Ponta said:
“I’ve committed myself to give answers on this either on Friday or on Monday, to once again offer reassurances that this political battle will not undermine the rule of law, the constitution and the stability of Romania’s governing institutions in terms of European standards.”
The visit to Brussels by Ponta follows Tuesday’s ruling by Romania’s Constitutional Court to uphold Basescu’s suspension last week.
It means a referendum to impeach the centre-right president will go ahead at the end of the month.
Basescu is accused of acting against the government and parliament by blocking Ponta’s policies.
Further political rallies are set to take place in Romania in the coming weeks to bolster support for Basescu, who could hang on to his job if the turnout in the referendum is less than fifty percent.
Wells Fargo pays $175M to settle race discrimination probe
By msnbc.com staff and news services
The Justice Department says Wells Fargo & Co. will pay at least $175 million to settle accusations that it allegedly discriminated against qualified African-American and Hispanic borrowers in its mortgage lending from 2004 through 2009.
The settlement, which needs approval from a judge, would end the investigation into whether the fourth largest U.S. bank between 2004 and 2009 knowingly targeted minorities for risky mortgages that came with higher costs, according to documents filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
“The Department of Justice today filed the second largest fair lending settlement in the department’s history to resolve allegations that Wells Fargo Bank, the largest residential home mortgage originator in the United States, engaged in a pattern or practice of discrimination against qualified African-American and Hispanic borrowers in its mortgage lending from 2004 through 2009,” said a statement from the U.S. Department of Justice.
The settlement will provide $125 million in compensation for minority borrowers the DOJ said were steered into subprime mortgages, which usually carry higher fees. Wells Fargo will pay $50 million more in direct down payment assistance to borrowers in parts of the country where the DOJ identified large numbers of discrimination victims.
At a news conference, Deputy Attorney General James Cole said the government will ensure that borrowers hit hard by the housing crisis will have an opportunity to access homeownership.
Cole said the bank’s discriminatory lending practices resulted in more than 34,000 African-American and Hispanic borrowers in 36 states and the District of Columbia paying higher rates for loans solely because of the color of their skin.
Wells Fargo in May said it could face civil charges under laws that prohibit discrimination against minority homebuyers. At the time, the lender said in a securities filing it believed the charges should not be brought and said it was seeking to show the department that it is in compliance with fair lending laws.
The government investigation found that loans submitted to Wells Fargo by mortgage brokers had varied interest rates, fees, and costs based only on race and not correlated to the borrowers’ creditworthiness, according to the court document.
Wells Fargo noted in a statement that it has denied the claims.
“Wells Fargo is settling this matter solely for the purpose of avoiding contested litigation with the DOJ,” it said, “and to instead devote its resources to continuing to provide fair credit services and choices to eligible customers and important and meaningful assistance to borrowers in distressed U.S. real estate markets.”
JPMorgan investors wait to hear about the ‘London Whale’s’ splash
Eduardo Munoz / REUTERS
Commuters are reflected in stone as they walk past the JP Morgan headquarters in New York.
By Roland Jones
When JPMorgan reports its quarterly results Friday morning, most investors will be eager to hear just one key piece of information: How much of a splash did the London Whale make for the bank?
In mid-May, the bank announced it had sustained a multibillion-dollar loss that originated in its London office because of a failed hedging strategy undertaken by Bruno Iksil, nicknamed “The London Whale” because of the size of the trading positions he took.
“Investors want to understand what happened, who knew what and when,” Betsy Graseck, a managing director for Morgan Stanley, told CNBC Thursday.
Bank earnings don’t usually attract much attention outside the Wall Street community of analysts, traders and other financial industry observers. The JPMorgan report is likely to spur greater interest because of the massive trading loss, which has enraged public opinion and led to Dimon appearing on television and two Congressional panels to own up to his company’s mistakes.
Graseck said it will be important for Dimon, for investors and for the public to set the record straight on the trading loss. He needs to detail exactly how much of the disastrous trade has been “unwound” so the company can move ahead and avoid any future volatility in its stock price that may arise from uncertainly over deeper losses.
“The question is how much [of the trade] is left to go, and what is the volatility on what’s left,” Graseck said.
Investors and the public will want to hear details of how much money will be recovered from top executives at the bank involved in the botched trade.
When he appeared before lawmakers last month to explain his bank’s multi-billion dollar losses, Dimon said the trading debacle will lead to “clawbacks” — efforts to recover compensation paid to employees whose performance was later found to have harmed the company and shareholders.
Stocks closed Thursday’s choppy session lower, as diminished chances of monetary stimulus from major central banks prompted investors to shy away from risky assets.
The Dow Jones industrial average closed down 31 points, having lost over 100 points earlier in the day.
Market sentiment was weak, especially after the lack of any monetary easing by the Bank of Japan on Thursday, and few clues in the minutes from the Federal Reserve’s June policy meeting, released on Wednesday. The lack of policy moves suggested major central banks were still cautious about the need for further easing.
Technology shares have been among the worst performers recently, bogged down by profit warnings from companies such as Advanced Micro Devices Inc and Applied Materials Inc.
Investors in the U.S. appear to have shrugged off the news that the city of San Bernardino has voted to file for bankruptcy. This blue collar city fifty miles East of Los Angeles had already slashed salaries and cut twenty percent of its employees. San Bernardino still faced a 45 million dollar deficit when the city council called an emergency session and voted to file for bankruptcy. Al Jazeera’s Brian Rooney reports from San Bernadino.
Car makers’ dilemma: too many plants, too few buyers
http://www.euronews.com/ Peugeot’s 8,000 job cuts and closure of a plant near Paris comes as cash strapped Europeans buy fewer new cars and the region’s manufacturers ponder what to do about their surplus of factories with too much capacity.
In addition, unemployment is highest among young people – under 25-year-olds – which means a lost generation of drivers.
In France deliveries of cars and light vans fell by 0.9 percent in June after a 17 percent plunge in May.
In the first half of the year Peugeot Citroen was hit hard with a 13 percent slump in deliveries.
Fellow French carmaker Renault’s sales slipped by 3.3 percent, while Germany’s Volkswagen increased its market share in France and overall sales rose 10.2 percent.
Analyst Brenda Kelly with CMC Markets blamed austerity: “You’re seeing the effect (of austerity measures) on the private sector at the moment, and of course, as the demand for these goods (cars) goes down, so there will be an effect on the employment levels. So you would expect to see unemployment in France rise somewhat over the next quarter or so.”
Around Europe carmakers say they need help from governments to reduce their overcapacity.
It is estimated more than a third of the region’s factories are not using enough of their capacity to be profitable so the industry expects more layoffs and plant closures.
http://www.euronews.com/ Challenging Spain for the worst jobless total in Europe Greek unemployment has hit a record 22.5 percent of the workforce.
That was the figure for April, which was the latest available. Analysts said the country’s economy has worsened since then and unemployment will likely go higher.
Thirty-two year old Filia, an educated jewellery maker, has been out of a job for a year and has a 10-month-old daughter. ”It’s difficult. The parents help, I use my savings that I have put aside,” she said.
Michalis, 34, lost his job in Athens at a supermarket two years ago. He then went to France and found a job there, but was forced to return to Athens for family reasons and has not been able to find a job since his return a few months ago. ”There is always hope. But in Greece you see how things are, you cannot always save, save, save, that is why we want a united Europe, there has to be a social network, why don’t they go chase the people who spent all the money,” he said.
Bianca Tampouri, a translator, cannot find work, and her husband and 18-year-old daughter are also unemployed. “All my family we all have a problem, so yes I am concerned. About the future, our jobs, our lives, our psychology, you know dignity, everything,” she said.
But some Greeks are more optimistic; Nikos Govas, who was unemployed but opened a coffee shop, said: “If you want a job, you’ll find something. The problem here is everyone wants to work in a doctor’s office or as a civil servant. But it’s not like that. A rubbish collector or a CEO, they’re both jobs and bring in a wage.”
There could be some respite from jobs created by the summer tourism season, but even that is not guaranteed as visitors numbers and revenue were down earlier this year.
Strikes and violent anti-government protests have deterred tourists from visiting.
Tourism is a key sector which accounts for about one in five jobs in Greece.
By Christopher Torchia, The Associated Press July 11, 2012
ISTANBUL – The Syrian ambassador to Iraq has defected and is on his way to Turkey, the most senior diplomat to abandon President Bashar Assad during the 16-month-old uprising, a Syrian opposition figure said Wednesday.
Nawaf Fares, a former provincial governor, would be the second prominent Syrian to break with the regime in less than a week. Brig. Gen. Manaf Tlass, an Assad confidant and son of a former defence minister, fled Syria last week, buoying Western powers and anti-regime activists, who expressed hope that other high-ranking defections would follow.
Appointed to the Baghdad post four years ago, Fares was the first Syrian ambassador to Iraq in 26 years. Like Tlass, he is a member of the privileged Sunni elite in a regime dominated by Assad’s minority Alawite sect.
“It’s certain. Fares has defected. He declared his defection. … He’s moving toward Turkey,” said Khaled Khoja, a member of the opposition Syrian National Council who is based in Istanbul. Asked for details, Khoja said the information came from his own sources on the ground in Iraq.
There was no immediate confirmation from either Iraq or Syria. An operator who answered the phone at the Syrian Embassy in Baghdad said there was nobody at the embassy. When asked if the ambassador is currently in Iraq, the operator said he did not know.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said the U.S. had no confirmation of the defection as of Wednesday afternoon. But he said recent high-level defections from the Assad regime were “a welcome development.”
“That is an indication of the fact that support for Assad is crumbling,” Carney said.
State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said that if true, Fares would be the first senior diplomat from the regime to defect.
Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh also said he could not confirm whether Fares had defected.
Thousands of soldiers, most of them low-level conscripts, have deserted and joined the rebels. But despite the latest high-profile defections, Assad’s regime has largely held together in the face of the uprising — particularly compared with the swift hemorrhaging of Moammar Gadhafi’s inner circle in Libya in 2011.
The conflict in Syria has defied every international attempt to bring peace. Although the Assad government’s crackdown has turned the Syrian president into an international pariah, he still has the support of strong allies such as Russia, Iran and China.
A prominent Syrian opposition leader said Wednesday during a visit to Moscow that Russia’s resistance to international intervention in the conflict was bringing misery and “suffering” to the violence-torn country.
Two Syrian opposition delegations visited Moscow this week, raising hopes that Russia could be pushed to accept the ouster of Assad. But Syrian National Council head Abdelbaset Sieda said he saw “no change” in Moscow’s stance after meeting with officials including Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
“The Syrian people are suffering because of Russia, because of the position it has taken, because of its veto in the U.N. Security Council,” Sieda said at a news conference. “The current regime uses Russian weapons against its own people.”
Activists estimate 17,000 people have been killed since the uprising began, and as the conflict continues, the rebellion appears to be getting more and more radicalized and violent, making any peaceful resolution or transfer of power a long-shot.
Confusion and fear has gripped Goma as rebels near the main eastern city.
The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo has expressed alarm as rebel forces advance towards the country’s main eastern city of Goma.
Witnesses told the BBC that rebels of the M23 group were 40km (25 miles) from the city, near the Rwandan border.
They said rebels appeared to be taking towns and villages with ease, with government troops usually melting away.
The Congolese government and the UN say Rwanda is backing the rebels, a claim Rwanda denies.
DR Congo has accused its neighbour of wanting to keep it unstable so it can exploit its rich mineral wealth.
The Congolese government has called on the international community to condemn Rwanda.
On Sunday, rebels were reported to have seized the strategic town of Rutshuru, 70km north of Goma.
A senior official at a national conservation park speaking on Monday just 40km north of Goma, told the BBC that “the rebels are very much in control of this area”.
Flexing muscles
Troublesome neighbors
April-June 1994: Genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda
June 1994: Paul Kagame’s Tutsi rebels take power in Rwanda, Hutu fighters flee into Zaire (DR Congo)
Rwanda’s army enters eastern Zaire to pursue Hutu fighters
1997: Laurent Kabila’s AFDL, backed by Rwanda, takes power in Kinshasa
1998: Rwanda accuses Kabila of not acting against Hutu rebels and tries to topple him, sparking five years of conflict
2003: War officially ends but Hutu and Tutsi militias continue to clash in eastern DR Congo
2008: Tutsi-led CNDP rebels march on North Kivu capital, Goma – 250,000 people flee
2009: Rwanda and DR Congo agree peace deal and CNDP integrated into Congolese army
2012: Mutiny led by former CNDP leader Bosco “Terminator” Ntaganda
BBC international development correspondent Mark Doyle says it is not clear if the rebels intend to attack the city.
If they do, there will be a new and massive humanitarian crisis, he says.
However, the rebels may only be flexing their muscles to strengthen their negotiating position with the government, our correspondent adds.
The rebels – who took up arms in April – named themselves the M23 after a failed peace agreement signed on 23 March three years ago.
They are supporters of renegade Gen Bosco Ntaganda, who is wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Gen Ntaganda is an ethnic Tutsi – like the majority of Rwanda’s leadership – and a recent UN report accused Rwanda of backing the rebels.
Kikaya Bin Karubi, the Congolese Ambassador to the UK, told the BBC: “The United Nations Group of Experts last week published a report that says clearly that the so-called M23 are using Rwandan soldiers – and that’s the United Nations talking, not us.”
Rwanda has vehemently denied the accusations.
The M23 rebels defected from the army amid pressure on the government to arrest Gen Ntaganda.
An estimated 200,000 people have fled their homes since April, with about 20,000 crossing the border to Uganda and Rwanda.
Eastern DR Congo has been plagued by years of fighting.
In 1994, more than a million Rwandan ethnic Hutus crossed the border following the genocide in which some 800,000 people – mostly Tutsis – were slaughtered.
Rwanda has twice invaded its much-larger neighbour, saying it was trying to take action against Hutu rebels based in DR Congo. Uganda also sent troops into DR Congo during the 1997-2003 conflict.
US warns China of ‘conflict’ if it doesn’t agree to maritime code
Bosniaks hold another mass funeral on 17th anniversary of Srebrenica massacre, Bahraini activists rally in solidarity with Saudi protestors, suicide attack targeting police academy kills 25 in Yemen, and more.
Today’s headlines in full:
Bosniaks hold another mass funeral on 17th anniversary of Srebrenica massacre
BBC Arabic, UK
Bahraini activists rally in solidarity with Saudi protestors
Al-Alam, Iran
Yemeni tribal leaders meet to discuss US intervention in Yemen
Press TV, Iran
Suicide attack targeting police academy kills 25 in Yemen
Press TV, Iran
Saudis hold funeral for slain protestor
Press TV, Iran
Bicycle bomb attack targets Pakistan space researchers; one dead
Press TV, Iran
Syrian opposition and Russia fail to bridge gap in Moscow
New TV, Lebanon
Egyptians call for referendums on parliament dissolution, constitutional declaration
Dubai TV, UAE
Israeli state prosecutors debate proceeding with Olmert charges in real estate scandal
IBA, Israel
Israel: Migron outpost appeal hearing delayed for two weeks
IBA, Israel
Freed Palestinian soccer player Sarsak returns to Gaza
Al Jazeera, Qatar
Image: A Bosnian Muslim man sits and cries near the coffin of his relative at Memorial Center in Potocari before a mass burial, near Srebrenica July 11, 2012: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic
Mosaic is a Peabody Award-winning daily compilation of television news reports from the Middle East, including Egypt, Lebanon, Israel, Syria, the Palestinian Authority, Iraq and Iran. Watch more Mosaic at http://www.linktv.org/mosaic
The Vatican on Tuesday said it was excommunicating a Chinese bishop ordained last week by state-sanctioned Church authorities in northeast China without Pope Benedict XVI’s consent.
“The Reverend Joseph Yue Fusheng, ordained without pontifical mandate and hence illicitly, has automatically incurred the sanctions laid down by canon 1382 of the Code of Canon Law,” the Vatican said in a statement.
Under religious law, both the bishop ordained and the bishop celebrating the ceremony without papal consent are excommunicated, meaning that they can no longer receive the Eucharist or take an active part in the liturgy.
“Consequently the Holy See does not recognise him as bishop of the Apostolic Administration of Harbin, and he lacks the authority to govern the priests and the Catholic community in the Province of Heilongjiang,” it added.
With just 16 days before the Olympic Games kick off in London, there’s been a major hitch in the much-hyped security plans. Thousands of extra British soliders have had to be drafted in after a private firm failed to supply promised guards. The company’s been paid almost 300 million pounds – but hasn’t trained enough staff. RT’s Sara Firth has more.
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Colony collapse disorder threatens food crops valued at $15 billion a year. New research says farm chemicals put our food system at risk.
Newly published scientific evidence is bolstering calls for greater regulation of some of the world’s most widely used pesticides and genetically modified crops.
Earlier this year, three independent studies linked agricultural insecticides to colony collapse disorder, a phenomenon that leads honeybees to abandon their hives.
Beekeepers have reported alarming losses in their hives over the last six years. The USDA reports the loss in the United States was about 30 percent in the winter of 2010-2011.
Bees are crucial pollinators in the ecosystem. Their loss also impacts the estimated $15 billion worth of fruit and vegetable crops that are pollinated by bees in the United States.
The studies, conducted in the United States, France, and the United Kingdom, all pointed to neonicotinoids, a class of chemicals used widely in U.S. corn production, as likely contributors to colony collapse disorder. The findings challenged the EPA’s position – based on studies by Bayer CropScience, a major producer of the neonicotinoid clothianidin – that bees are only exposed to small, benign amounts of these insecticides.
The new studies found that bees are exposed to potentially lethal amounts of neonicotinoids in pollen and in dust churned up by farm equipment. They also found that exposure to neonicotinoids can reduce the number of queen bees and disorient worker bees.
An alliance of beekeepers and environmental groups filed a petition on March 21 asking the EPA to block the use of clothianidin in agricultural fields until the EPA conducts a sound scientific review of the chemicals.
Meanwhile, farm chemicals and the biotech industry have come under fire for the problem of pest resistance. Some weeds and bugs have become less susceptible or immune to the chemicals or biotechnology used to control them.
In March, national experts on corn pests published a letter to the EPA describing how rapidly rootworms are becoming resistant to the larvae-killing gene in Monsanto’s genetically engineered “Bt” corn. The letter warns that the EPA should move to regulate Bt corn – by requiring, for example, non-GM buffer zones – with “some sense of urgency.”
In a similarly alarming trend, Monsanto’s “Roundup Ready” soy and corn, which are genetically modified to tolerate the active ingredient in Roundup, are associated with the creation of “super weeds.” The widespread use of these crops has led farmers to vastly increased use of the herbicide, leading to the development of resistant weeds.
The agriculture industry has responded to Roundup’s failure by developing new crop varieties resistant to another pesticide/herbicide, 2,4-D. An ingredient of Agent Orange, 2,4-D is linked to birth defects, hormone disruption, and cancer. Last December, Dow AgroSciences LLC asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture to approve the new varieties for cultivation.
In response, the Pesticide Action Network, Union of Concerned Scientists, Center for Food Safety, and Food and Water Watch are gathering public comments for a petition to the USDA against Dow AgroSciences’ request.
ALEC Slips Exxon Fracking Loopholes into New Ohio Law
By Connor Gibson
Wake up and smell the frack fluid. But don’t ask what’s in it, at least not in Ohio, cause it’s still not your right to know.
Ohio is in the final stages of making an Exxon trojan horse on hydrofracking into state law, and it appears that the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) connected Exxon’s lawyers with co-sponsors of Ohio Senate Bill 315: at least 33 of the 45 Ohio legislators who co-sponsored SB 315 are ALEC members, and language from portions of the state Senate bill is similar to ALEC’s “Disclosure of Hydraulic Fracturing Fluid Composition Act.”
…disclosure of fracking fluids? On behalf of ExxonMobil?
Frack fluids include unknown chemicals that gas drillers mix with sand and large amounts of water. The mixture is pumped underground at high pressure in order to retrieve gas and oil by fracturing shale formations. These are the chemicals that have caused widespread concern among residents near gas fracking operations; concerns echoed by doctors who don’t know how to treat patients harmed by exposure to chemicals that oil companies keep secret. Oil companies like XTO Energy, a subsidiary of ExxonMobil, the first company lined up to drill in Ohio’s Utica shale.
Concern over unconventional energy like gas fracking may be the reason by Ohio SB 315 also addresses clean energy standards and drilling regulations. While the new law will allow doctors to obtain disclosure of fracking chemicals, it places a gag order on them…meaning some chemicals aren’t disclosed to the public at all (Cleveland Plain Dealer). Instead, chemicals that subsidiaries of Big Oil use during fracking can remain exempt from public disclosure as “trade secrets,” mirroring language of ALEC’s model law.
What’s most suspicious is that seven of the ten Ohio Senators co-sponsoring SB 315 are ALEC members, as are 26 of the 35 co-sponsoring Representatives.*
Among the co-sponsors are Ohio Senate President Tom Niehaus and state Senator Troy Balderson. Senators Niehaus and Balderson are members of ALEC’s Energy, Environment and Agriculture task force, which approved the fracking “disclosure” bill internally sponsored by ExxonMobil, modeled after a Texas bill (see New York Times and ProPublica).**
Four of the co-sponsors of SB 315 attended ALEC’s meeting in Scottsdale, Ariz., although it is unclear which (if any) of them may have been inside the EEA task force meeting the day that the fracking chemical loophole bill was discussed and approved:***
Rep. Cheryl Grossman
Rep. Casey Kozlowski
Rep. Louis Terhar
Rep. Andrew Thompson
Some co-sponsors became ALEC members in the lead up to ALEC’s late 2011 meeting in Scottsdale, where the fracking disclosure loophole model bill was finalized by ALEC’s Energy, Environmental and Agriculture task force. Emails between representatives of ALEC, an Ohio state legislative aid and Time Warner Cable’s Ed Kozelek show that last-minute recruitment of new ALEC members before the Scottsdale meeting brought in three state legislators who ended out co-sponsoring SB 315 (PDF pp. 71-76): Rep. Lou Terhar, Rep. Brian Hill and Sen. Bob Peterson (who was appointed to the Ohio Senate in 2012).
The notorious hacker collective Anonymous is claiming responsibility for sporadic service failures around the world at Facebook on Thursday evening.
“Some users briefly experienced issues loading the site,” Facebook says in an e-mail statement about the outage. “The issues have since been resolved and everyone should now have access to Facebook. We apologize for any inconvenience.”
However, problems appeared to be lingering Friday morning. When I tried to access my Facebook account around 8 a.m. Eastern time, I could not access the website. The problem lasted about five minutes. When the site did come back online, I had to reenter my username and password to access it.
A website that tracks outages, downforeveryoneorjustme.com, reported Facebook down early Friday morning but service returned between 9 a.m. and 9:40 a.m. Eastern time. According to just-ping.com, packets were being lost Friday morning at Facebook locations in Stockholm, Shanghai, Copenhagen, Oslo, and Lisbon; checkpoints were unavailable in San Francisco and Moscow; and an unknown host message was generated in Beijing.
During the service disruptions Thursday, a tweet was posted to the YourAnonNews Twitter account suggesting the group may be behind the Facebook disruptions. “Oh yeah… RIP Facebook a new sound of tango down bitches,” the tweet said.
While acknowledging the service disruptions, Facebook has been mum on any role Anonymous may have had in the failures.
In March, Facebook experienced a number of outages in Europe. Those outages were attributed to DDoS attacks — a common tactic used by hacktivists — by Belgium’s Cyber Emergency Response Team (CERT). Facebook did not acknowledge any connection between the outages and Anonymous at the time.
Anonymous has threatened to bring down Facebook in the past. In August 2011, the erratic group threatened to “kill Facebook” on November 5. As that date approached, however, it shelved its plans for that attack.
U.S. President Barack Obama ordered the Stuxnet cyberattacks on Iran in an effort to slow the country’s development of a nuclear program, according to a report in The New York Times.
The Times, quoting anonymous sources, reported that, in the early days of his presidency, Obama accelerated attacks related to an effort begun by the George W. Bush administration. The Stuxnet worm, long rumored to have been developed by Israel or the U.S., escaped from Iranian computers in mid-2010 and compromised computers across the Internet.
Obama considered shutting down the cyberattacks after Stuxnet began compromising other computers, but decided to continue with the program, according to the Times. The Stuxnet worm came from a joint U.S. and Israeli effort to target the Iranian nuclear program, the Times said. The newspaper interviewed U.S., Israeli, and European officials currently and formerly involved with the cyberattack program, it said.
Two-Year-Old Mystery Worm
Stuxnet was discovered in July 2010, when a Belarus-based security company detected the worm on computers belonging to an Iranian client. The consensus of security experts at the time was that Stuxnet was built by a sophisticated attacker, likely a nation state, and was designed to destroy something big, such as an Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor. Security experts examining the worm when it was first discovered said that it placed its own code into systems installed with Siemens software, after detecting a certain type of Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) device.
A White House spokesman declined to comment on The New York Times story.
Obama raised concerns that the Stuxnet program, code-named Olympic Games, would embolden other countries, terrorists and hackers to use similar attacks, but concluded that the U.S. had no other options available against Iran, the Times story said.
The goal of the attacks was to gain access to the industrial computer controls in Iran’s Natanz nuclear plant, the story said. The U.S. National Security Agency and a secret Israeli cyberunit developed the Stuxnet worm, the story said.
Predictable — But Risky
The report that the U.S. and Israel were behind the Stuxnet attack didn’t surprise Snorre Fagerland, senior virus analyst with Norman, an IT security vendor in Lysaker, Norway. The Stuxnet worm was “orders of magnitude” more complex and sophisticated than previous cyberattacks, he said, and the creation of the malware would have needed significant resources.
It would have taken a team of 10 to 20 people to write Stuxnet, Fagerland said.
The report of U.S. involvement may lead to an increase in cyberattacks, with other countries stepping up their offensive cybercapabilities, Fagerland said. “It raises the stakes,” he said. “That will cause others to think, ‘They’re doing it, so why shouldn’t we?'”
While several other countries may have offensive cybercapabilities, they appear to be “less organized” than the team that put together Stuxnet, he added.
Grant Gross covers technology and telecom policy in the U.S. government for The IDG News Service. Follow Grant on Twitter at GrantGross. Grant’s e-mail address is grant_gross@idg.com.
This article originally posted on PCWorld.com at 7 a.m. Pacific Time June 1.
While some online services are stepping up their efforts to protect private user data from government requests, there is plenty room for improvement, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) said on Thursday. It is time for all companies that hold private user data to make public commitments to defend their users against government overreach, the foundation said.
The EFF measured the commitment of 18 U.S. companies hosting users’ personal data, including Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft, to protect that data from U.S. government requests. It examined their privacy policies, terms of service, published law enforcement guides if available, and the track record of companies defending user privacy in courts.
The companies were awarded stars and half stars in four categories. The EFF investigated whether users were informed about government data demands, determined whether the companies were transparent about government data requests, whether they were willing to fight for user privacy in courts, and whether the companies were fighting to protect user privacy in the U.S. Congress.
The EFF said it was pleased that Facebook, Dropbox, and Twitter have stepped up their game since last year, when it published its first report on the topic. Twitter was awarded an extra star because it started fighting for user privacy rights in Congress, and showed more effort to fight for users rights in courts, EFF data showed. The microblog service now has 3.5 stars.
Facebook gained half a star for being more transparent about government requests, bringing its total up to 1.5 stars and Dropbox gained two stars for becoming transparent about government requests and telling users about data demands, bringing its total to three out of four stars.
Sonic.net, an ISP based in California, is the first company to receive a full gold star in each category, the EFF said.
Google maintained its position with two whole and two half stars.
Apple, Microsoft, and AT&T still have one star, for fighting for user privacy in Congress, while Comcast picked up its first star for protecting its users’ privacy in the courts, according to the EFF data.
Verizon, Myspace, and Skype failed to score a star in any of the categories.
“The overall poor showing of AT&T, Verizon and Comcast, who provide Internet connectivity to so many people, is especially troubling,” the foundation said.
The EFF added five new companies to the list this year including location based services Foursquare and Loopt. Foursquare was awarded zero stars and Loopt got one for defending privacy in Congress. “We’re hopeful that next year we’ll see more protections for users from location services providers like Loopt and Foursquare, since location information is so sensitive and increasingly sought by the government,” the EFF said.
By publishing the report, the EFF hopes to stimulate companies to improve transparency about what data flows to the government and to encourage the companies to stand for user privacy when it is possible to do so, the foundation said.
Loek covers all things tech for the IDG News Service. Follow him on Twitter at @loekessers or email tips and comments to loek_essers@idg.com.
Your seemingly private information is a public commodity, subject to the dictates of the security state and market opportunists.
You need to know one simple truth: you have no privacy with regard to your electronic communications.
Nothing you do online, via a wireline telephone or over a wireless device is outside the reach of government security agencies and private corporations. Your ostensible personal communication — whether a phone call, an email, a search, visiting a website, a credit card purchase, a 140 character Tweet, a movie download or a Facebook friending — is a public commodity, subject to the dictates of the security state and market opportunists.
Corporate surveillance has begun to raise consumer, Congressional and regulatory concerns – a major case, Amnesty v. Clapper, is now before the Supreme Court. One can only wonder why it is not an issue in this year’s election?
Corporate spying takes a variety of forms. GPS tracking over a wireless device is widespread. Google’s efforts to commercialize its users’ keystrokes resulted in a $25,000 fine from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Potentially more consequential, a growing chorus of criticism over its recently introduced data-harvesting program seems to have contributed to a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigation of Google; the FTC retained Beth Wilkinson, a high-powered outside counsel, to oversee a possible anti-trust prosecution of the company. On March 1st, Google introduced a new program that collects user data from its 60 services. Google stores “cookies” (i.e., code that compiles a record of an individual’s web browsing history) on a growing number of communications devices, whether a home PC, tablet, smartphone and a growing number of TV sets. These cookies track every website a person visits or function s/he uses. As the New York Times wrote, “The case has the potential to be the biggest showdown between regulators and Silicon Valley since the government took on Microsoft 14 years ago.”
The surveillance state is a multi-headed hydra. Corporate spying is intimately linked to the surveillance state, an omnipresent system consisting of federal, state and local security agencies. This spying system is made up of many of the leading private telecommunications and Internet companies working closely with the Department of Justice (DoJ), NSA, FBI, DHS, FCC and still other entities. This increasingly integrated federal system is complemented by an ever-growing army of state and local police “intelligence” agencies. Individual entities work either on their own, together with others and/or with private companies, many that financially benefit from commercial data harvesting.
Jon Michaels, a law professor at UCLA, warned in an invaluable 2008 study: “[P]articipating corporations have been instrumental in enabling U.S. intelligence officials to conduct domestic surveillance and intelligence activities outside of the congressionally imposed framework of court orders and subpoenas, and also outside of the ambit of inter-branch oversight.” His warning rings louder in 2012.
All the President’s Spies: Private-Public Intelligence Partnerships in the War on Terror
The attacks of 9/11 provided the rationale for the institutionalization of the security state. Now, a decade later, the U.S. is in a perpetual state of war, fighting threats both foreign and domestic, thus providing the ongoing rationale for expanding surveillance.
The principle vehicle for this policing action is the National Security Letter (NSL), an administrative demand letter or subpoena requiring neither probable cause nor judicial oversight. In effect, an NSL overrides 4th Amendment guarantees safeguarding an American’s right from unreasonable search and seizure. Between 2000 and 2010 (excluding 2001 and 2002 for which no records are available), the FBI was issued 273,122 NSLs; in 2010, 24,287 letters were issued pertaining to 14,000 U.S. residents. (Nicholas Merrill received an NSL; his experience should be a warning to us all.)
Even more alarming, if a company, journalist, person or attorney receives an NSL, they are barred from informing anyone, including the press, about the order. And the NSL is but one of an expanding number of means employed by the surveillance state to spy on an ever-growing, in effect unknowable, number of Americans.
The policies of today’s security state were instituted by a Republican, George W. Bush, and continued with even-greater vigilance by a Democrat, Barack Obama. Whoever wins in November will, if the economic suffering persists and austerity further imposed, the security state will be extended, particularly to spy on alleged domestic “threats.”
* * *
21st century surveillance is a multi-headed hydra united by a string of 0s and 1s.
Some of this spying is banal. Two U.S. malls — Promenade Temecula in southern California and Short Pump Town Center in Richmond, VA – are tracking guests’ movements by monitoring the signals from their cell phones. Using a FootPath Technology’s application, the malls capture a guest’s phone’s unique identification number and follow a shopper’s path from store to store.
Some of this spying is sci-fi. According to a CNET report, the FBI has used an innovative means of electronic surveillance in criminal investigations. It remotely activates a mobile phone’s microphone and uses it to eavesdrop on a nearby conversation. The technique is known as a “roving bug” and was approved for use by top DoJ officials in a New York organized crime case.
And some of this spying is good-old business as usual. The ACLU uncovered a lucrative scheme involving the security state outsourcing data gathering to the major telecommunications companies. The documents provides detailed information on the practices of Alltel, AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint/Nextel, Microsoft/Skype, Vonage, U.S. Wireless, Comcast, Embarq and Cricket.
The major telcos charge hundreds of dollars per wireline telephone wiretap and charge extra for the tracking of voicemail, text messages, GPS locations and other services. Profiles of some of these activities and the fees charged follow:
AT&T – charges a $325 per wiretap activation fee, plus $5 per day for data and $10 for audio; it gets $150 for access to a target’s voicemail; it charges $75 per “tower dump” (these allow police to see the numbers of every user accessing a certain cell tower and charges are on a per hour basis, with a minimum of two hours); location tracking costs $100 to activate and then $25 a day.
Verizon — charges a $50 administrative fee plus $700 per month, per wiretap, per target; it charges $50 for access to text messages; it charges between $30 and $60 per hour for each cell tower dump; it doesn’t charge police in “emergency cases, nor do we charge law enforcement for historical location information in non-emergency cases.” The company insists that it doesn’t “make a profit from any of the data requests from law enforcement.”
T-Mobile – charges law enforcement a flat fee of $500 per target per wiretap; it charges $150 per cell tower dump per hour; and charges a much pricier $100 per day for location tracking.
Sprint/Nextel – charges $400 per wiretap per “market area” and per “technology” as well as a $10 per day fee, capped at $2,000; it also charges $120 for pictures or video, $60 for email, $60 for voice mail and $30 for text messages; it also charges $50 per tower dump and $30 per month per target for location tracking. The company says it doesn’t charge law enforcement for data requests in “exigent circumstances.” It adds: “Fees are charged to law enforcement in other circumstances such as court ordered requests and it’s important to note that any fee charged is for recovery of cost required to support these law enforcement requests 24/7.”
Equally revealing, the ACLU uncovered a DoJ chart detailing how long wireless companies retain personal data. Some of what it details follows:
AT&T — keeps data indefinitely per cell towers used by a phone call; text messages are kept for 5 to 7 years, although it claims no to retain the text message content; and ISP session and destination info is only retained per non-public ISPs for 72 hours and not retained if a public ISP is used.
Verizon — stores cell-site data for “1 rolling year”; holds onto text message detail for “1 rolling year” and actual text content for 3 to 5 days; it keeps ISP session information for 1 year but ISP browsing destination history information for 90 days.
T-Mobile — does not retain the message content, but hangs onto your text details for “pre-paid: 2 years; post-paid: 5 years”; it does not keep ISP browsing destination history information.
Sprint/Nextel — keep cell-site data for 18 to 24 months and stores ISP addresses and browsing history for 60 days.
Virgin Mobile (owned by Sprint) — keeps text detail for “60 to 90 days” and the text message content for 90 days; it claims that a search warrant is required with “text of text” request”; it does not keep ISP browsing destination history information.
Christopher Soghoian, a leading Internet security scholar, provides an invaluable overview of this situation in a recent talk he gave at TED X.
* * *
The ACLU, through Freedom of Information requests, secured documents revealing that more than 200 police departments around the country have been engaged in (often warrantless) surveillance activities. Local and state police regularly track cell phone locations. Perhaps more disturbing, local police brass often instructs their officers to not discuss cell-tracking technology with the public.
As the ACLU reminds all Americans: “Traditionally, the government should have to obtain a warrant based upon probable cause before tracking cell phones. That is what is necessary to protect Americans’ privacy, and it is also what is required under the Constitution.” Those days are quickly slipping away.
A sampling of how state and local police employ surveillance tools is revealing.
Arizona – localities have acquired cell surveillance tracking equipment to avoid the time and expense of working through the commercial carrier.
California — state prosecutors advised local police departments on ways to get carriers to “clone” a phone and download text messages while it is turned off.
Michigan – police are using “extraction devices” to download data from the cell phones of motorists that they pull over; extractions take place even if the motorists that are pulled over are not accused of doing anything wrong. In addition, a cell locator was used to find a stabbing victim who was in a basement hiding from his attacker.
Nevada, North Carolina and other states — police departments have gotten wireless carriers to track cellphone signals back to cell towers as part of nonemergency investigations.
In 2004, Mark Klein, a recently retired AT&T technician, revealed that in 2003 the NSA built a secret room at the company’s San Francisco facility on Folsom Street. The facility’s purpose was to monitor and copy all phone calls, emails, web browsing and other Internet traffic to and from AT&T customers and provides the information to the NSA. This story exposed the deeply hidden secret about federal surveillance of ordinary Americans known as the warrantless wiretap.
The Patriot Act, a draconian, anti-terrorist piece of legislation hurriedly enacted on October 26, 2001, legitimized the use of warrantless surveillance by federal agencies on U.S. citizens who the government suspected of communicating with a hostile foreign national. The Act allows the FBI to obtain telecommunication, financial and credit records without a court order.
In the wake of the popular outrage over the revelations of AT&T-NSA spying, the Congress amended the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in 2008 to retroactively grant U.S. companies immunity from being sued by their customers when they conduct warrantless wiretaps and provide the information to government agencies.
In a recent article in Wired, James Bamford described in detail the NSA’s new “Utah Data Center,” a massive complex that will serve as a global surveillance hub. In the article, Bamford cites a revelation from William Binney, a former NSA senior official and now a whistleblower, that the agency has intercepted “between 15 and 20 trillion” communications (or “transactions” in NSA-speak) over the last decade.
The federal government draws its authority to spy on citizen from a Prohibition-era Supreme Court decision, Olmstead vs. U.S. The Court found that federal wiretapping of the private telephone conversations of a bootlegger without a prior court warrant and the subsequently use of this information as evidence in court did not violate the defendant’s 4th or 5th Amendments protections.
The 1994 adoption of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) extended federal spying authority.
The Act requires telecommunications carriers to provide “back doors” so that law enforcement agencies and federal intelligence organizations can capture any domestic or international telephone conversations carried over their networks. In 2004, the FCC extended these provisions to apply to broadband networks. Thus, spying expanded from conventional telephone calls to Internet services (e.g., VoIP services like Vonage), peer-to-peer systems (e.g., Skype), caller-ID spoofing (i.e., false number posting) and phone-number portability.
The FBI began building its high-tech surveillance system, the Digital Collection System Network (DCSNet), in 1997. Documents obtained by the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) reveal that DCSNet can execute near-instantaneous wiretaps on almost any telephone, cellphone and Internet communications device. It also connects FBI wiretapping facilities to switches controlled by wireline operators, VoIP companies and cellular providers.
DCSNet allows the FBI to monitor recorded phone calls and messages in real time, create master wiretap files, send digital recordings to translators, track the location of targets in real time using cell-tower information and stream intercepts to mobile surveillance vans. Sprint operates the system over a private, secure and self-contained backbone.
The FBI is now urging Internet companies not to oppose a new proposal that would further extend backdoor access to social-networking websites as well instant messaging and e-mail. It would apply spying requirements to Facebook, Twitter and Xbox Live, among many others. The new provisions would apply to encrypted VoIP software from European firms like the Lichtenstein-based Secfone, available on Android-OS devices.
* * *
The battle over what were once considered sacred Constitutional privacy provisions is heating up.
The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) is making its way through Congress; House of Representatives passed it and the Senate is now considering it. Pres. Obama has come out in opposition, warning that he will veto it, insisting: “legislation should address core critical infrastructure vulnerabilities without sacrificing the fundamental values of privacy and civil liberties for our citizens.” As currently drafted, CISPA would undermine the Obama administration’s principal Internet proposal, Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights.
CISPA is conceived as supplanting all current privacy laws by ordering all telecoms, Internet service providers (ISPs) and applications companies to hand over all personal data to the NSA and other federal agencies. Civil liberties groups like the EFF warn that the proposed Act lacks meaningful due process or judicial oversight and will essentially end Constitutional protections against unreasonable electronic search and surveillance.
How this surveillance shell game plays out will likely depend on how the Supreme Court rules in Amnesty v. Clapper. The ACLU is representing a broad coalition of attorneys and human rights, labor, legal and media organizations to determine the limits to federal warrantless wiretapping under FISA.
In 2009, a New York judge dismissed the ACLU’s original suit on the grounds that its clients, including Amnesty International, couldn’t prove that their communications would be monitored under the new law. In 2011, a federal appeals court reversed the 2009 ruling and, in May 2012, the Obama administration asked the Supreme Court to re-impose the state’s right to warrantless wiretaps and other surveillance practices on the basis of national security.
It’s a flip-of-a-coin to prognosticate on how the Court will decide this case. Will it replay it sweeping, conservative Citizens United decision or will it follow the privacy protections extended in the recent Jones decision prohibited GPS tracking of an alleged drug dealer? Stay tuned.
Today’s spy-state recalls the World War I era “red scare,” marked by the roundup of immigrant anarchists and socialist and, in many cases, their deportation. Similarly, it resonates with the anti-communism of the post-World War II era, the age of J. Edgar Hoover, Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon. Today’s politicians, both Democrat and Republican, know how to play the security card to appease popular fears during a period of profound economic restructuring.
These are the words I’ve been saying to myself each morning lately as I leap from my bed. I mindlessly repeat them while working through when to teach homeschool lessons to my daughters, which emails I need to respond to, when I’m going to make soap, how much beeswax I need to rinse and render, when we’re going to photograph and upload our newest farm products to the online shopping cart, which websites need to be updated, whether I’m needed or not at the farm this day or this week, what spices I need to order for sausage making, whether I’ll find time this day to get the weeds out of the raspberries, if I’ve got enough change for this Saturday’s farmers’ market, when I’m going to get to the dairy farm up the road to pick up butter for making pate to sell, what needs to happen to complete the start up of our new yarn business, which essays and articles need to be written, how I’m going to steer my newest book into publication by September, which photographs still need to get taken for the insert, which presentations need to get written for the fall speaking season, whether or not the blueberry bushes need fertilizing, when I’m going to find the time to take the girls into the woods to gather ramps.
In short, as soon as I utter that morning promise, I begin the daily process of failing to honor it as I work myself into a frenzied whirlwind of activity. My life is unusual in that nearly every item on my to-do list is something that I love. But rather than being in-the-moment to enjoy these myriad pleasures, my brain rattles me into a frenzied state, where I am constantly distracted by what else I want to accomplish. Thus, even the act of perpetually doing things I love can leave me cranky, impatient, and difficult to be around.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, Bob and I are creative people, unable to fathom a life where we would do one thing for a living. For the last decade, we have managed to carve out a livelihood for ourselves that matched our eclectic interests and our passion to produce beautiful things in harmony with the earth. We call it gainful unemployment. One of my most important contributions to this adventure has been my ability to perpetually come up with new ideas and business schemes, ensuring that the income stream for our radical homemaking household was always diversified, and thus more secure. For the sake of writing this piece this morning, I sat down for the first time and wrote a list of each of our enterprises. We had 16 different ventures.
That makes for a pretty respectable livelihood for two adults who have decided to stay home full-time with their kids. My trouble is that my most important gift in managing a life like this—my ability to envision and implement new ideas while juggling existing responsibilities—is also my greatest burden. I have a brain that doesn’t rest. I lead a life that honors the rhythms of Mother Nature, but the frenetic pace in my head impedes my soul from resonating with her vibrations.
Bank lines are a form of fishing similar to trot lines. For those that do not know about trot lines, they are a way to fish without being present watching the pole. Below is a diagram of what a bank line usually looks like.
To make a bank line, all you need is some heavy fishing line (I recommend 100+ lb. test), swivels, and hooks. You will also need two anchors, one on land and another for the water. The water anchor can be a rock or branch, make sure the anchor isn’t too small or too large—you will need to throw it out as far as you can in order for this setup to work well. There are many custom things that can be done to a trotline, but at bare minimum you only need line, knot-making skills, swivels, and hooks.
This article is my favorite for making a simple trotline. If you have the time and live in an area where fishing would be important in a survivalist situation, I suggest making an emergency trotline ahead of time. They take up very little space and weigh next to nothing, but can be a fair amount of labor upfront to get it correctly setup.
You need to know about bank lines because they are efficient! People commonly drop off these fishing rigs in the morning and pick them up at night or the next day, thus you can be off getting other things done while the trotlines do the fishing for you. Keep in mind, however, that depending on the presentation, many trot lines and bank lines end up getting stolen by other anglers. This is why I suggest a bank line rather than a trot line—keep the rig low profile.
As citizens of TWAWKI, some of the hardest lessons we can learn is those to which we have limited exposure. To keep our families healthy and safe we have to be sure we can handle any crisis without the luxury of the “supports” we have at this present time. Our family has been displaced from our primary location and our primary medical provider for several months. It is necessary for us to call someone to stay, while we go receive regularly scheduled care. As a result, we have chosen to address much of our medical care by natural or homeopathic methods.
Our family has recently had several health challenges.
First, I had a sinus infection with associated ear aches. For the sinus infection, I used three toes of garlic crushed and consumed in 4 oz. of orange juice, 2 x a day for two days. For the ear ache, which came back two or three times… I did two things and both helped. I hummed for 60 min morning and night,( I learned this from a current show hosted by an M.D.) and second, I took a medium-sized toe of garlic peeled it, and cut off the root end. Placed it in my ear canal.(it felt cool) and l left it for an hour to an hour and a half.
Then, due to my having had a major gastric surgery, years ago, I am blessed with multiple gastric intolerances caused from enzyme imbalances. My symptoms range from gastric discomfort to intestinal twisting.(That requires a hospital!)..and to every thing in between. I will eat a food and it causes no problem, and the next time I partake, it leaves me deathly ill. At least, that’s how I was until I discovered the effects of a herb , everlasting, which causes my wild intestines to calm to a near normal routine. One ounce of the tea, every other day, made from the herb has stopped the effects of not having digestive enzymes in sufficient quantity for normal digestion.
Herbals are medicines and should be treated with due respect. Each person who uses them , should be able to know what they are using and what kind of desired effect they will produce. So, if you have gastric distresses, intolerances, enzyme imbalances, this might be one that you would desire to research.
Our family’s most recent challenge was a badly infected wound on my dh’s right foot– an injury he dismissed as nothing until, it swelled up several days later. Upon reflection, he remembered pulling out some dried sticks that had gotten caught in his sandals a little over a week earlier. He’d had little bleeding and did not realize he needed to be concerned.
I have chosen to make this as descriptive as possible with the goal of assisting anyone required to give wound care to gain a perspective on the difference in an infected wound and an inflamed one. Wounds heal in stages and one must be able to tell when the wound has progressed to the next level, requiring a change in care.
What we did worked, for we had the privilege of going to dh’s attending physician on day 11 of the treatment. He declared it infection free, and had us continue antibiotic cream for three more days. Then, just keep the wound clean and dry. Post TEOTWAWKI, I don’t believe we will have that luxury.
Late one evening, my dh comes up and says, ” ‘Tater, check my foot!” So I have him put it up, and I start the evaluation.
On his left foot I find, an oval blister, on the inner aspect of his second toe that is still closed. This intact blister is even and uniform in color, it has no hardness under the toe. I can’t see any foreign material in it and the redness, approx circumference of an inch, is confined to the 2nd. toe.
BUT, On his right foot I find a very angry-looking 2nd and 3rd toe. They are swelled, so much he can’t bend them. There is redness on top of the foot, extending almost an inch from the base of the two toes. There is a hard lump at the base of the third toe. and there is a huge oval blister, approx 3/4′ tall, and extends the entire swelled depth of the toe…and about 3/4″ long. It is ringed with multiple colors including purple, yellow.
I cleaned it, it appeared to have some foreign material in it. Dh said “open it!”. So I got out a sculpture needle, sterilized it, and proceeded. There was about 1/2 tsp.of foreign material, some debri and thin,blood tinged exudate, removed with the opening. To further clean the wound, I prepared a hot soak with 3 gallons water, as warm as he could tolerate, 1/2 cup epsom salt and 2-Tablespoons,(30cc)6% bleach. We soaked it for 30 min., then dried his feet.
Upon checking the condition of the wound I determined that it was still dirty. There was still some dead material and old blood in the wound. I could not see pink tissue in the bottom of the wound and it was angry and inflamed. So I determined the wound needed debridement (removal of dead material) and I prepared a debriedment paste with… 2 tablespoons granulated sugar, one tablespoon of honey and 1 tablespoon of betadyne.. I packed the wound with this and secured a sterile 2×2.
The other wound (on his Left foot) I protected with a 2×2 and antibiotic ointment. The next morning and evening we soaked both feet,using a fresh solution of epsom salt and bleach.. each time,noticing an improvement with reduction of redness and associated swelling.Then, reapplied the debridement paste.
On day 3, after the long soak, the wound was pink inside. The debriedment was complete. The swelling was down to a level that allowed him to move his toes. The redness was reduced to the toes only and no longer to the top of the foot The wound was still angry and there was a persistent red, hard area at the base of that third toe.
Buffalo City Comptroller Mark J.F. Schroeder announced on Thursday that the city would be pulling $45 million in funds from an account with JPMorgan Chase, following concerns raised by members of the Occupy Buffalo movement.
BuffaloNews.com reported that the Buffalo Sewer Authority funds will be deposited into a higher-yielding account with the local bank First Niagara. The new account will earn 0.30 percent interest. The account with JPMorgan had a 0.25 percent interest rate.
“Not only will the funds earn more interest with First Niagara, a major local employer headquartered in Buffalo, but it also sends a crystal clear message to JPMorgan Chase that the City of Buffalo is not happy with their business practices,” Schroeder said in a statement.
Members of the Occupy Buffalo movement and others had urged the Buffalo Common Council to withdrawal their funds from JPMorgan. The group of demonstrators have been critical of the major bank’s foreclosure practices.
“I commend the comptroller for seeking a solution to concerns raised by residents, while at the same time saving taxpayers’ money by doing business with a local bank,” said Council President Richard A. Fontana.
[In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit, for research and/or educational purposes. This constitutes ‘FAIR USE’ of any such copyrighted material.]
Democrats deny parallels between Presidents Obama and Carter
By Alexander Bolton
Democrats say the political prognosis for President Obama is much better than it was at the same point in former President Jimmy Carter’s first term, even though the pace of the nation’s job growth has slowed.
Obama was set back Friday by disappointing jobs numbers but the economy still created jobs at a faster pace than under Carter or former President George H.W. Bush, two of only four presidents to lose re-elections in the last 100 years.
Jobs are growing at a substantially faster clip than they did in 1980, when Carter lost to Ronald Reagan in a landslide, and 1992, when Bush lost narrowly to Bill Clinton.
Obama’s three-month average for 2012 is also better than the job growth former President George W. Bush saw when he was re-elected in 2004.
The economy is creating more jobs than it did in 2000, when former Vice President Al Gore (D-Tenn.) fumbled the handoff of the White House from Clinton, or 2004 when George W. Bush held off a strong challenge from Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.).
But jobs are not growing as fast as 1988, when then-Vice President George H.W. Bush successfully ran on Reagan’s economic record, or 1996, when Clinton won a second White-House term. Bush and Clinton won easily in those years.
While many political experts predicted this year’s presidential election would come down to the economy, the middling nature of the recovery signals that campaign tactics and the candidates’ performances may prove more decisive…..
GOP: Obama, Democrats view energy as ‘hazardous waste’
By Vicki Needham
Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin said President Obama’s policies are the cause of rising gas prices, not a lack of energy resources.
Fallin said Saturday that the problem stems from a lack of leadership and questioned Obama’s role in increasing the nation’s energy output and in the hold up of the Keystone XL pipeline, especially as gas prices hover near an average of $4 a gallon.
In the weekly Republican address, Fallin said “our pro-energy policies stand in stark contrast though to the policies supported by President Obama and the Washington Democrats, who seem to view American-made energy as a hazardous waste rather than a resource.”
“Millions of Americans remain out of work, but President Obama continues to propose job-killing tax hikes and obstruct the basic energy infrastructure projects that would lead to the creation of thousands of new jobs, not to mention more revenue in state budgets,” she said…..
It’s happening right now with the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act — passed two years ago in the wake of our disastrous financial meltdown. Just last week, for example, both parties in the House overwhelmingly approved two bills that already would change Dodd-Frank’s rules on derivatives — those convoluted trading deals recently described by the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission as “the largest dark pool in our financial markets.”
Germany throws weight behind Iran’s nuclear energy program
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle has underlined Iran’s right to develop its nuclear energy program as a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
According to a commentary by the top German diplomat in the Sunday paper Bild am Sonntag, Westerwelle stressed “Iran’s right to have nuclear energy for civilian use.”
Mild winter may have artificially inflated jobs data, economists fear
By Ylan Q. Mui,
As most Americans basked in the warmest, sunniest March in half a century, economists stared at the skies with dread:
Could good weather portend bad news for the economic recovery?
Economists say the mild winter has artificially inflated job growth. February alone stole as many as 72,000 positions from March and future months, according to Macroeconomic Advisers.
Translation: The surge in hiring early in the year may not be as strong as it appeared.
The unusual weather began in January, which was the fourth warmest in more than a century. February ranked in the top 20, according to government data. Weather consulting firm Planalytics said several major cities experienced their warmest March in 118 years, including Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis and Oklahoma City, where temperatures were about 15 degrees higher than average.
For many people, that meant an early debut of open-toed shoes and dinners al fresco, and early mulching and spring cleaning. It also meant more jobs for construction workers and retail employees to keep pace with demand. Planalytics said demand jumped 40 percent last month for lawn mowers, 17 percent for sun care and 5 percent for bottled water…..
Regulators: JP Morgan illegally let Lehman Bros. count customers’ funds as its own
By David S. Hilzenrath,
JP Morgan Chase illegally allowed Lehman Brothers, the investment bank whose 2008 bankruptcy brought the financial system to the brink of collapse, to count customers’ money as its own, according to federal regulators.
The arrangement boosted the amount that Lehman could borrow from JP Morgan, where the customers’ money was deposited, regulators charged Wednesday.
Then, at the height of the financial crisis, JP Morgan refused to release the customer funds for about two weeks, until regulators ordered it to do so, regulators charged.
The charges were spelled out in an enforcement action against JP Morgan by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
American consumers, in short, are hitting a wall. They don’t dare save much less because their jobs are still insecure. They can’t borrow much more. Their home values are still dropping, and many are underwater – owing more on their homes than the homes are worth. The economy has been growing but almost all the gains have gone to the very top. As I’ve noted, this is the most lopsided recovery on record.
Oil drops below $102 per barrel on concerns of economic recovery
NEW YORK (AP) — Oil prices fell Monday on concerns about the economic recovery.
West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark crude, fell $1.92 to $101.39 per barrel. Brent crude, which is used to price oil imported by U.S. refineries, slipped $2.13 to $121.30 per barrel.
The U.S. economy added just 120,000 jobs in March— half as much as each of the previous three months. The government reported the disappointing data on Friday, but Monday was the first day oil markets were open. Stocks also fell.
Credit rating agency Egan Jones downgraded the United States Thursday on concern over the sustainability of public debt. Egan Jones is one of the most important ratings firms in the world; they lowered our credit level from AA+ to AA. The firm reduced America from AAA to AA+ in July 2011, just before Standard & Poor’s did the same.
Egan Jones warned. “Without some structural changes soon, restoring credit quality will become increasingly difficult . . . without some structural changes soon, restoring credit quality will become increasingly difficult.” They added that there was a 1.2% probability of U.S default in the next 12 months. The company cited the fact that the US’s total debt, which now equals its total GDP, is rising and soon will eclipse the national GDP; the company sees the debt rising to 112% of the GDP by 2014.
S.Korea, U.S. Practice Stabilizing N.Korea in Civil War
The annual joint South Korean and U.S. exercises dubbed “Key Resolve” last month for the first time practiced deploying more than 100,000 South Korean troops in North Korea to stabilize the country in case of regime collapse.
The two countries “practiced deploying a large contingent of troops to bring stability in the North in case of civil war in the wake of sudden change there,” a government source said on Thursday. “Seoul and Washington practiced preparing for sudden change in the North for the first time during last year’s Key Resolve drill, but this was the first time we went on the assumption that South Korean troops would be deployed in the North.”
“More Than Three Days Of Nonstop U.S. Backed Air Bombardment Of Southern Yemen”
5 days before talks, Iran rejects key demands
US, Israeli demands on Iran very similar; Barak urges world powers not to “lower the bar” during talks.
With critical talks on the Iranian nuclear program set to begin Friday, Tehran already rejected two key demands on Sunday by the world’s powers: Closing the Fordow underground uranium enrichment facility near Qom and stopping the enrichment of uranium to 20 percent.
Fereydoon Abbasi Davani, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency, called the Western diplomats’ demands “irrational,” according to AFP.
AFP quoted Davani as saying in an interview with the Iranian ISNA news agency that the Fordow facility had to be built underground because of the West’s threats to attack the Islamic Republic’s nuclear facilities.
“If they do not threaten us and guarantee that no aggression will occur, then there would be no need for countries to build facilities underground.
They should change their behavior and language,” he said.
Davani added that Iran would continue to produce uranium enriched to 20%, but not “more than we need, because it is not in our benefit to produce it and keep it.”
Iran claims it needs 20% enriched uranium to produce medical isotopes in its Tehran Research Reactor, while the West believes the 20% enriched uranium is a stepping stone to creating nuclear weapons.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu ridiculed the isotopes claim during his speech to the America Israel Public Affairs Committee Policy Conference last month, saying: “A country that builds underground nuclear facilities, develops intercontinental ballistic missiles, manufactures thousands of centrifuges and absorbs crippling sanctions, is doing all that in order to advance… medical research. So you see, when that Iranian ICBM is flying through the air to a location near you, you’ve got nothing to worry about. It’s only carrying medical isotopes.”
Getting Iran to suspend its high-level uranium enrichment and close the bunker at Fordow are “near-term priorities” for the United States and its allies, a senior US official said on Sunday, confirming an earlier New York Times report.
The BBC Film That Exposed Israel’s Secret Illegal Nuclear Weapons (FULL Documentary)
No More Rule By Slogans And Brands: Public Confidence In The PR State In D.C. Is Collapsing
The brand of Barack Obama is collapsing.
“Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam, Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.” – Percy Bysshe Shelley.
“He who abhors and shuns the light of the Sun,
He who refuses to behold with respect the living creation of God,
He who leads the good to wickedness,
He who makes the meadows waterless and the pastures desolate,
He who lets fly his weapon against the innocent,
An enemy of my faith, a destroyer of Thy principles is he, O Lord!” – Zarathustra.
The Obama brand is collapsing and nothing can save it. This was inevitable because the Obama brand is all surface and no substance. Barack Obama is a pseudo president of a propaganda state that has committed atrocities against innocent people in America and around the world. Obama’s name, image, authority, and charisma were all artificially created by the mind controllers in the mass media.
As the legendary journalist John Pilger said in April 2009, “No one knew what the new brand actually stood for.” Since it stands for nothing, the Obama brand is falling into oblivion. Obama, who was sold as the defender of the rule of law and the rights of the American people, is now being exposed to be a liar and a fraud…..
Meet the ALEC Staffers Who Help Corporations Write Our Laws
Zaid Jilani, Republic Report:
“ALEC is accustomed to hiding its agenda and its legislation behind closed doors. At secretive conferences and over e-mail chains the public never sees, the organization allows its corporate donors to manufacture bills and then send them to be passed in state legislatures without the public ever knowing about their origin. But these ALEC staffers can’t hide who they are, and what they do for an organization that harms almost every area of American life.”
Sheriff Arpaio says Obama’s birth certificate is forged
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said President Barack Obama’s birth certificate is not authentic.
Arpaio revealed the findings of a investigation into the president’s birth certificate at a 1 hour and 20 minute news conference Thursday, calling the certificate “suspect.”
Arpaio’s team of investigators said they found that the long-form birth certificate was created electronically and never existed in paper form.
The president’s Selective Service card was also questioned.
Arpaio’s investigators claimed the document has “failed every test we put it through.”
At Thursday’s news conference, investigators said they will request a criminal investigation. They also said they have identified a person of interest in the forgery of the birth certificate.
Arpaio said he is not accusing the president of the crime. He said they will investigate who is behind the “possible forgery and fraud.”
“I haven’t decided where to go with this yet,” Arpaio said. “I just wanted to get the facts of this situation. We haven’t accused anyone of anything.”
The controversy over the certificate has been widely debunked, but it remains alive in the eyes of some conservatives, namely members of the Tea Party who urged Arpaio to look into the matter.
For the past six months, Arpaio’s “Cold Case Posse” has been investigating the authenticity of those documents to see if there’s been any fraud or forgery involved.
“We conducted a very professional investigation; we have come up with I feel some probable cause, some evidence,” Arpaio said Wednesday.
Arpaio said the investigation was done at no cost to taxpayers.
“Just let me say the results may be interesting without using the word ‘shocked,'” Arpaio said prior to the conference. “I think it will reveal some information no one else has really developed in a professional law enforcement manner.”
The Cold Case Posse comprises volunteers who are former police officers and lawyers.
Arpaio is facing problems of his own, including a federal grand jury probe over alleged abuse of power and Justice Department accusations of racial profiling.
[In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit, for research and/or educational purposes. This constitutes ‘FAIR USE’ of any such copyrighted material.]
Vatican Bank Account Closed At JP Morgan, Image May Be Hurt
By Philip Pullella and Lisa Jucca
VATICAN CITY/MILAN, March 19 (Reuters) – JP Morgan Chase is closing the Vatican bank’s account with an Italian branch of the U.S. banking giant because of concerns about a lack of transparency at the Holy See’s financial institution, Italian newspapers reported.
Bernanke said American banks’ exposure to stresses in Europe’s banking sector remained a “concern,” despite U.S. firms’ moves to allocate offsetting capital.
In his full remarks, Bernanke details those actions.
Fed earned $77 billion last year, 2nd-highest ever
By Steve Goldstein
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The Federal Reserve and its district banks said Tuesday it earned $77.4 billion last year, down from $81.7 billion in 2010 but the second-highest level in the central bank’s history. The bumper earnings allowed the Fed to distribute $75.4 billion to the U.S. Treasury, also the second-highest level ever. The earnings was derived primarily from $83.6 billion in interest income on securities acquired through open market operations, from Treasury securities, federal agency and government-sponsored enterprise mortgage-backed securities, and GSE debt securities. The Fed repeated that it doesn’t expect to record a loss on any of its emergency loan programs. On its portfolio of assets, unrealized losses totaled $4.3 billion, which the Fed attributed to “instrument-specific credit risk” on commercial and residential mortgage loans; the Fed earned $428 million on the securities it did sell.
As Sweden Goes, So Goes the World: The Beginning of the End of Cash
There are many, many things to dislike about analog money. Cash and coins are unwieldy. They’re heavy. They’re dirty. They leave no automatic record of the financial transactions that are made with them.
Here in the U.S., despite Square and PayPal and other services that would seem to herald the end of cash, bills and coins still represent 7 percent of our total economy. In Sweden, however — which ranked first in this year’s Global Information Technology Report from the World Economic Forum — cash is scarcer. And it’s becoming, the AP reports, scarcer still. While Sweden was the first European country to introduce bank notes in 1661, it’s now come farther than any other country in the attempt to eradicate them. In most Swedish cities, the AP notes,
U.S. War Game Sees Perils of Israeli Strike Against Iran
WASHINGTON — A classified war simulation held this month to assess the repercussions of an Israeli attack on Iran forecasts that the strike would lead to a wider regional war, which could draw in the United States and leave hundreds of Americans dead, according to American officials.
The officials said the so-called war game was not designed as a rehearsal for American military action — and they emphasized that the exercise’s results were not the only possible outcome of a real-world conflict
Russian Anti-Terror Troops Arrive in Syria
By KIRIT RADIA (@KiritRadia_ABC) and RYM MOMTAZ
MOSCOW, Russia, March 19, 2012
A Russian military unit has arrived in Syria, according to Russian news reports, a development that a United Nations Security Council source told ABC News was “a bomb” certain to have serious repercussions.
Russia, one of President Bashar al-Assad’s strongest allies despite international condemnation of the government’s violent crackdown on the country’s uprising, has repeatedly blocked the United Nations Security Council’s attempts to halt the violence, accusing the U.S. and its allies of trying to start another war.
The Pirate Bay to Fly ‘Server Drones’ to Avoid Law Enforcement
One of the world’s largest BitTorrent sites is going to put servers on GPS-controlled aircraft drones in order to evade authorities who are looking to shut the site down
By Jason Koebler
The world’s largest and most resilient BitTorrent site plans to redefine “cloud computing” with a plan to move at least some of its servers onto unmanned drones miles above Sweden.
In a Sunday blog post, The Pirate Bay announced new “Low Orbit Server Stations” that will house the site’s servers and files on unmanned, GPS-controlled, aircraft drones.
Why is President Obama Keeping Yemeni Journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye in Prison? 1 of 2
Uploaded by democracynow on Mar 15, 2012
democracynow.org – The Obama administration is facing scrutiny for its role in the imprisonment of a Yemeni journalist who exposed how the United States was behind a 2009 bombing in Yemen that killed 14 women and 21 children. In January 2011, a Yemeni state security court gave the journalist, Abdulelah Haider Shaye, a five-year jail sentence on terrorism-related charges following a disputed trial that was condemned by several human rights and press freedom groups. Within a month of Shaye’s sentencing, then-Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh announced he was going to pardon the journalist. But Saleh changed his mind after a phone call from President Obama. Thirteen months later, Shaye remains behind bars. We speak to Mohamed Abdel Dayem of the Committee to Protect Journalists and award-winning investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill.
Watch Part 2 of 2:
“Abdulelah Haider Shaye [is] a brave journalist who just happened to be on the wrong side of history in the eyes of the U.S.,” Scahill says. “His crime seems to be interviewing the wrong people and having the audacity to publish the other side of the story.”
Activism
As Occupy Arrestees Arraigned, Iris Scans Affect Bail
The first of the more than 70 Occupy Wall Street protesters arrested Saturday afternoon and evening were arraigned yesterday in Manhattan Criminal Court.
Exhausted by a night and day in jail and shaken by the violence of the police response to Occupy Wall Street’s six-month anniversary celebration, many burst into tears of relief when they were finally released to the friendly welcome of the movement’s Jail Support team
“Peace envoy” sits on board with traitors, meddlers, and warmongers.
By Tony Cartalucci
BlacklistedNews.com
“U.N.-Arab League envoy” Kofi Annan has claimed over the last several weeks to be backing “peace efforts” in Syria to end the conflict which has lasted over a year now. In reality, it has been revealed that his function is to simply buy time for a collapsing militant front and the creation of NATO-occupied “safe havens” from which further destabilization and “coercive action” can be conducted against the Syrian government.
This has been confirmed by Fortune 500-funded, US foreign-policy think-tank, Brookings Institution which has blueprinted designs for regime change in Libya as well as both Syria and Iran. In their latest report, “Assessing Options for Regime Change” it is stated:
NH Woman Sued For Planting Flowers In Her Front Yard
By Jim Armstrong, WBZ-TV
PORTSMOUTH, N.H. (CBS) – Kimberly Bois’ tiny front yard garden isn’t much to look at right now. But in a few weeks, it’ll be in full bloom, and every blossom will cost her dearly.
Even though she says her builder gave her permission to do a little planting, the current condo board now says she’s in violation.
They’re charging the Portsmouth, New Hampshire homeowner $50 a day for being so petal pushy. That fine has reached close to $6,000, plus the board’s legal fees.
Follow Max Keiser on Twitter: http://twitter.com/maxkeiser
In this episode, Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, discuss financial hermaphrodites opening their kimonos and JP Morgan swaps occupying Cassino, Italy. In the second half of the show, Max talks to Das, author of Extreme Money, about potemkin villages of credit derivatives and five-year plans for the world economy.
The Hunger Site – Your click helps to feed the hungry
Wheatgrass Kits.com
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By Michael Snyder, on December 6th, 2015
Eduardo Munoz / REUTERS
“Some users briefly experienced issues loading the site,” Facebook says in an e-mail statement about the outage. “The issues have since been resolved and everyone should now have access to Facebook. We apologize for any inconvenience.”
In 
The 
The EFF said it was pleased that Facebook, Dropbox, and Twitter have stepped up their game since last year, when it published its 
Google maintained its position with two whole and two half stars.
Family Survival Protocol - Microcosm News 