gmane.politics.communism.environmental

[BillTottenWeblog] How America Became a Third World Country

Bill Totten — 2013-05-26T00:01:56

2013 to 2023

by Mattea Kramer and Jo Comerford

TomDispatch (May 21 2013)

The streets are so much darker now, since money for streetlights is rarely available to municipal governments. The national parks began closing down years ago. Some are already being subdivided and sold to the highest bidder. Reports on bridges crumbling or even collapsing are commonplace. The air in city after city hangs brown and heavy (and rates of childhood asthma and other lung diseases have shot up), because funding that would allow the enforcement of clean air standards by the Environmental Protection Agency is a distant memory. Public education has been cut to the bone, making good schools a luxury and, according to the Department of Education, two of every five students won't graduate from high school.

It's 2023 - and this is America ten years after the first across-the-board federal budget cuts known as sequestration went into effect.  They went on for a decade, making no exception for effective programs vital to America's economic health that were already underfunded, like job training and infrastructure repairs. It wasn't supposed to be this way.

Traveling back in time to 2013 - at the moment the sequester cuts began - no one knew what their impact would be, although nearly everyone across the political spectrum agreed that it would be bad. As it happened, the first signs of the unraveling which would, a decade later, leave the United States a third-world country, could be detected surprisingly quickly, only three months after the cuts began. In that brief time, a few government agencies, like the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), after an uproar over flight delays, requested - and won - special relief.  Naturally, the Department of Defense, with a mere $568 billion to burn in its 2013 budget, also joined this elite list. On the other hand, critical spending for education, environmental protection, and scientific research was 
 not spared, and in many communities the effect was felt remarkably soon.

Robust public investment had been a key to US prosperity in the previous century. It was then considered a basic part of the social contract as well as of Economics 101. As just about everyone knew in those days, citizens paid taxes to fund worthy initiatives that the private sector wouldn't adequately or efficiently supply. Roadways and scientific research were examples. In the post-World War Two years, the country invested great sums of money in its interstate highways and what were widely considered the best education systems in the world, while research in well-funded government labs led to inventions like the Internet. The resulting world-class infrastructure, educated workforce, and technological revolution fed a robust private sector.

Austerity Fever

In the early years of the twenty-first century, however, a set of manufactured arguments for "austerity", which had been gaining traction for decades, captured the national imagination. In 2011 and 2012, a Congress that seemed capable of doing little else passed trillions of dollars of what was then called "deficit reduction". Sequestration was a strange and special case of this particular disease.  These across-the-board cuts, instituted in August 2011 and set to kick in on January 2 2013, were meant to be a storm cloud hanging over Congress. Sequestration was never intended to take effect, but only to force lawmakers to listen to reason - to craft a less terrible plan to reduce deficits by a wholly arbitrary $1.2 trillion over ten years. As is now common knowledge, they didn't come to th
 eir senses and sequestration did go into effect. Then, although Congress could have cancelled the cuts at any moment, the country never turned back.

It wasn't that cutting federal spending at those levels would necessarily have been devastating in 2013, though in an already weakened economy any cutbacks would have hurt. Rather, sequestration proved particularly corrosive from the start because all types of public spending - from grants for renewable energy research and disadvantaged public schools to HIV testing - were to be gutted equally, as if all of it were just fat to be trimmed. Even monitoring systems for possible natural disasters like river flooding or an imminent volcanic eruption began to be shut down.  Over time the cuts would be vast: $85 billion in the first year and $110 billion in each year after that, for more than $1 trillion in cuts over a decade on top of other reductions already in place.

Once lawmakers wrote sequestration into law they had more than a year to wise up. Yet they did nothing to draft an alternate plan and didn't even start pointing out the havoc-to-come until just weeks before the deadline. Then they gave themselves a couple more months - until March 1 2013 - to work out a deal, which they didn't.  All this is, of course, ancient history, but even a decade later, the record of folly is worth reviewing.

If you remember, they tweeted while Rome burned. Speaker of the House John Boehner, for instance, sent out dozens of tweets to say Democrats were responsible: "The president proposed sequester, had eighteen months to prioritize cuts, and did nothing", he typically wrote, while he no less typically did nothing. For his part, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid tweeted back: "It's not too late to avert the damaging sequester cuts, for which an overwhelming majority of Republicans voted". And that became the pattern for a decade of American political gridlock, still not broken today.

Destruction Begins

March 1st came and went, so the budgetary axe began to fall.

At first, it didn't seem so bad. Yes, the cuts weren't quite as across the board as expected. The meat industry, for example, protested because health inspector furloughs would slow its production lines, so Congress patched the problem and spared those inspectors. But meat production aside, there was a sense that the cuts might not be so bad after all.

They were to be doled out based on a formula for meeting the arbitrary target of $85 billion in reductions in 2013, and no one knew precisely what would happen to any given program. In April, more than a month after the cuts had begun, the White House issued the president's budget proposal for the following year, an annual milestone that typically included detailed information about federal spending in the current year. But across thousands of pages of documents and tables, the new budget ignored sequestration, and so reported meaningless 2013 numbers, because even the White House couldn't say exactly what impact these cuts would have on programs and public investment across the country.

As it happened, they didn't have to wait long to find out. The first ripples of impact began to spread quickly indeed. Losing some government funding, cancer clinics in New Mexico and Connecticut turned away patients. In Kentucky, Oregon, and Montana, shelters for victims of domestic violence cut services. In New York, Maryland, and Alabama, public defenders were furloughed, limiting access to justice for low-income people. In Illinois and Minnesota, public school teachers were laid off. In Florida, Michigan, and Mississippi, Head Start shortened the school year, while in Kansas and Indiana, some low-income children simply lost access to the program entirely. In Alaska, a substance abuse clinic shut down. Across the country, Meals on Wheels cut four million meals for seniors in need.

Only when the FAA imposed furloughs on its air traffic controllers did public irritation threaten to boil over. Long lines and airport delays ensued, and people were angry. And not just any people - people who had access to members of Congress.  In a Washington that has gridlocked the most routine business, lawmakers moved at a breakneck pace, taking just five days to pass special legislation to solve the problem. To avoid furloughs and shorten waits for airline passengers, they allowed the FAA to spend funds that had been intended for long-term airport repairs and improvements.

Flights would leave on time - at least until runways cracked and crumbled.  (You undoubtedly remember the scandal of 2019 at Cincinnati International Airport, when a bright young candidate for Senate met her demise in a tragic landing mishap.)

And then, of course, the Pentagon asked for an exemption, too. We're talking about the military behemoth of planet Earth, which in 2013 accounted for forty percent of military spending globally, its outlays exceeding the next ten largest militaries combined.  It, too wanted a special exemption for some of its share of the cutbacks.

Meat inspectors, the FAA, and the Department of Defense enjoyed special treatment, but the rest of the nation was, as the history books recount, not so lucky. Children from middle-class and low-income families saw ever fewer resources at school, closing doors of opportunity. The young, old, and infirm found themselves with dwindling access to basic resources such as health care or even a hot dinner. Federal grants to the states dried up, and there was less money in state budgets for local priorities, from police officers to lowly streetlights.

And remember that, just as the sequestration cuts began, carbon concentration in the atmosphere breached 400 parts per million.  (Climate scientists had long been warning that the level should be kept below 350 for human security.) Unfortunately, as with the groundbreaking research that led to the Internet, it takes money to do big things, and the long-term effects of cutting environmental protection, general research, and basic infrastructure meant that the US government would do little to stem the extreme weather that has, in 2023, become such a part of our world and our lives.

Looking back from a country now eternally in crisis, it's clear that a Rubicon was crossed back in 2013. There was then still a chance to reject across-the-board budget cuts that would undermine a nation built on sound public investment and shared prosperity. At that crossroads, some fought against austerity. Losing that battle, others argued for a smarter approach: close tax loopholes to raise new revenue, or reduce waste in health care, or place a tax on carbon, or cut excessive spending at the Pentagon. But too few Americans - with too little influence - spoke up, and Washington didn't listen.  The rest of the story, as you well know, is history.

_____

Mattea Kramer is Research Director at National Priorities Project, where Jo Comerford is Executive Director. Both are TomDispatch regulars.  They wrote A People's Guide to the Federal Budget (2012).

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook or Tumblr. Check out the newest Dispatch book, Nick Turse's The Changing Face of Empire: Special Ops, Drones, Proxy Fighters, Secret Bases, and Cyberwarfare (2012).

Copyright 2013 Mattea Kramer and Jo Comerford

(c) 2013 TomDispatch. All rights reserved.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175702/

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Equality's Brutal Backlash

Ed Pearl — 2013-05-25T14:36:37

From:  <mailto:SECULARHUMANIST< at >yahoogroups.com>
SECULARHUMANIST< at >yahoogroups.com  On Behalf Of Dominick
 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michelangelo-signorile/equalitys-brutal-backla
sh_b_3303860.html?utm_hp_ref=fb
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michelangelo-signorile/equalitys-brutal-backl
ash_b_3303860.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false>
&src=sp&comm_ref=false
 
Equality's Brutal Backlash: The Murder of Mark Carson and the Rise in
Violence Against Gays 
 
Michelangelo Signorile
HuffPost: 05/20/2013 

A few months ago, I wrote about
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michelangelo-signorile/what-my-partner-and-i-
did_b_2424253.html>  how my partner and I were called "disgusting" by a man
on the street as we shared a quick goodbye kiss in the middle of the
afternoon in the very gay Manhattan neighborhood of Chelsea. That has turned
out to be less an aberration than a symptom of far more horrific things to
come. We've seen reports of violent attack
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/18/new-york-gay-hate-crime-shooting-_
n_3299277.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices>  after violent attack
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/14/nyc-gay-attack-pieces-_n_3272716.h
tml>  in New York against gays in recent weeks, and now, this past weekend,
we've experienced the brutal killing
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/18/new-york-gay-hate-crime-shooting-_
n_3299277.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices>  of 32-year-old Mark Carson in an
alleged anti-gay shooting in Greenwich Village. 

"You want to die tonight?" the alleged gunman reportedly said
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/20/nyregion/greenwich-village-alleged-antiga
y-killing.html?ref=nyregion>  after repeatedly calling Carson and a male
companion "faggots" while they were walking down the street, before fatally
shooting Carson in the face.

This killing has kept me up the past two nights. It's sickening and
enraging. And perhaps the shock I'm seeing expressed about it, particularly
among younger LGBT people, underscores that many of us have been living with
a false sense of security, intoxicated by the wins on marriage equality in
the states and in the federal courts. It's way too easy to grow complacent,
fed by the desire to have the fight done with as well as by the seductive
message of some in the media who've simplistically declared victory for the
LGBT rights movement.

Victory is very far off, however, if we can't walk the streets of even the
most LGBT-friendly cities holding hands or expressing ourselves without fear
of being taunted and violently assaulted. And for hundreds of thousands
living in less tolerant places all across the country, openness has never
been a reality. Until it is, we're nowhere near victory. 

We may be seeing solid majorities in national polls supporting
anti-discrimination laws for gay and transgender people, and even majorities
supporting marriage equality. But the minorities are still substantial. And
they are getting more desperate. For years, those who are anti-gay have been
emboldened by the often hateful declarations of homophobic religious leaders
and by the attacks by groups like the National Organization for Marriage,
which have demeaned gays. After decades of struggle, we're finally beating
them back in the courts, in legislatures and even at the ballot box. And
perhaps the frustration and anger by those who oppose us is now further
empowering the thugs who take their hate and rage to the streets.

It shouldn't come as a surprise then that in New York City, in a state that
passed marriage equality in 2011, hate crimes against LGBT people so far in
2013 are almost double
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/nyregion/killing-in-greenwich-village-loo
ks-like-hate-crime-police-say.html?_r=0>  what were at this point in 2012.
And 2012 itself was a notable year nationally, with outbreak of anti-LGBT
violence in some of the country's most gay-friendly cities, like New York,
Washington
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/us/anti-gay-crime-persists-in-capital-des
pite-special-police-unit.html> , Los Angeles
<http://www.edgeboston.com/index.php?ch=news&sc=crime&sc2=features&sc3=&id=1
41716> , Dallas
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/15/dallas-anti-gay-hate-crime-men-bea
ten-baseball-bats_n_1348728.html>  and Atlanta
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/07/atlanta-anti-gay-gang-beating_n_12
60080.html> . 2011 saw the highest number
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/02/anti-gay-hate-crimes-murders-natio
nal-coalition-of-anti-violence-programs_n_1564885.html>  of anti-LGBT
murders ever reported, with transgender people the hardest-hit victims. At
least 13 transgender Americans were reported to have been murdered
<http://www.advocate.com/politics/transgender/2012/11/20/13-transgender-amer
icans-murdered-2012>  in 2012 alone.

We sometimes forget that getting laws passed and getting court rulings
declared is, comparatively, the easy part -- as monumentally difficult as
that has been and continues to be. One reason we in fact get the laws
passed, in addition to protecting ourselves, is to change attitudes for
future generations. But that part doesn't happen overnight and surely not
without a backlash, which can sometimes be violent, as it has been in just
about every other movement for equality. The hate is still out there and the
haters are getting more desperate. Our worst enemies right now are
complacency and the seductive message that we've "arrived."

Follow Michelangelo Signorile on Twitter: www.twitter.com/msignorile
<http://www.twitter.com/msignorile> 

 
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[BillTottenWeblog] The Vicious New Bank Shakedown ...

Bill Totten — 2013-05-25T12:02:33

... That Could Seriously Ruin Your Life

by Lynn Stuart Parramore

AlterNet (May 12 2013)

It's hard to imagine a more loathsome figure than the mob debt collector, aka the "hired muscle". It was this bruiser's job to get the money owed to the Boss, by whatever methods he saw fit. That might include coming to your house in the dead of night to break your kneecaps. Whatever it took. The collector was promised a cut of that money, and he was going to get it.

Gangsta-style big banks have taken up where this character left off. They may not send a guy to break your kneecaps, but they are working in the shadows, chasing down debts from credit cards using methods that are both fraudulent and unlawful. They do this whether you actually owe the money or not.

Here's the skinny: After widespread outrage over the big banks' last crime wave against the American consumer - the "robo-signing" scam in which homeowners were hustled out of their houses by banks that sent fraudulent paperwork through the courts, they are at it again. This time, banksters are accused of helping debt collectors pursue faulty judgments against credit card customers by various dirty tricks that include - surprise! - robo-signing {1}.

California Attorney General Kamala Harris, who filed suit against JPMorgan Chase last Thursday {2}, says that from January 2008 to April 2011 - just as people were reeling from the Wall Street-driven financial crisis - the megabank unleashed over 100,000 lawsuits against consumers over uncollected credit-card debt in the state of California alone. That includes 469 lawsuits in a single day. Now, it usually takes time and money to pursue lawsuits through the court system. So how in the world did Chase keep up this breakneck pace? The lawsuit claims that the bank took a number of little shortcuts, like robo-signing, in which bank employees produce sworn documents and other legal filings without bothering to check bank records or examine cases for accuracy.

Another nasty trick Chase is accused of deploying is what's known, appropriately, as "sewer service". This means that Chase failed to properly serve notice of debt collection lawsuits against consumers (it dumped the notices "in the sewer"), but then lied and said it did. This means, you, as a consumer, have no idea that a lawsuit has been launched against you. So here's what happens: you get a default judgment that automatically favors the debt collector. The credit card company can then garnish your wages or freeze your bank account to get the money it says you owe. And you might not even owe it! Banks are sometimes chasing down consumers who have already paid their debts. Other times they are jacking up the size of the debts by adding bogus fees and interest costs.

All of this, of course, is unlawful. But it's happening on a massive scale.

Last summer, a civil court judge in Brooklyn who presides over as many as 100 credit card cases a day told the New York Times {3} that a whopping ninety percent of the credit card lawsuits that came across his desk were flawed and could not prove that a person owed the debt. Here's the kicker: The errors in credit card suits often go undetected because the borrowers usually don't show up in court to defend themselves (how can they, if they don't know the suit has been filed?). As a result, an estimated 95 percent of lawsuits result in default judgments in favor of lenders.

The really chilling message sent in this new plot to squeeze cash out of hard-pressed Americans is that the big banks are completely undaunted by their exposure in the foreclosure robo-signing scam. Whatever penalties or bad publicity they have received have not restrained them one iota from pulling the exact same fraud again on hapless consumers. Neither has the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which now hangs in limbo with the endlessly delayed confirmation of Richard Cordray as head. The CFPB knows what's going on, and it sent a friendly little note to Congress {4} saying that "we are concerned about the system-wide problems in the debt collection market ... and we want to see good practices come to dominate the market, including improved data integrity". Well, goll
y, that's reassuring.

There's a half-baked law dating back to 1977 called the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act {5} which states, among other things, that debt collectors can't call your house after 9 pm {6}. But until somebody actually enforces it, citing it to a goon hired by a big bank is about as effective as telling the mob's hired man that he's trespassing on your doorstep. And it's certainly not preventing big banks from flooding the courts with bogus lawsuits that get decided in their favor before the consumer knows what's hit her. Ironically, the American people are being hounded by the same big banks whose reckless activities stripped them of the jobs, pensions and financial security that they needed to pay off their credit card debts in the first place.

It's interesting to hear what President Obama has to say about this. Oh, wait. The President didn't say anything at all. He is completely missing in action, apparently still sticking by his gushing praise {7} for JPMorgan Chase honcho Jamie Dimon as "one of the smartest bankers we've got". Sure, if by smart you mean presiding over a bank that rips off consumers and loses billions in reckless derivatives trading - and managing to keep your job.

Of course it's not just JPMorgan Chase. Citigroup, Bank of America and other big banks are in on the action. The big banks work as an oligopoly, so if one bank gets away with a scam, the others quickly jump on board. They have little fear of prosecution, as US Attorney General Eric Holder helpfully informed us recently. California's Attorney General is thankfully showing some guts, but will her counterparts around the country follow her lead? Unlikely. Many are bought and paid for by the financial sector.

The current abuse and criminal behavior of the big banks is unprecedented in American history. It's anybody's guess how far it will go, and how many consumers will be basically required to transfer their wealth to a group of gangsters.

At this point, what's at stake is not just our financial well-being, but our very lives. We've seen a startling spike in suicide rates across the United States {8} - 28 percent in the last decade. The rise is particularly acute among middle-aged Americans. More people now die from suicide than by car accidents. Financial woes have been frequently cited as a factor in this ghastly trend - and it's not hard to guess that being hounded by debt collectors to whom the law doesn't apply would not tend to improve the situation.

"Your money or your life" is the fabled threat of highwaymen who used to lay in wait for travelers on dark nights. The outlaw is no longer hiding behind a tree, but the man in the bank boardroom is just as determined to extract his pound of flesh. And he's getting away with it.

Links:

{1} http://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/infographic-robosigning-credit_card-debt-1701.php

{2} http://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-kamala-d-harris-announces-suit-against-jpmorgan-chase

{3} http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/08/12/problems-riddle-moves-to-collect-credit-card-debt/

{4} http://www.consumerfinance.gov/blog/category/debt-collection/

{5} http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Debt_Collection_Practices_Act

{6} http://www.consumerfinance.gov/askcfpb/search?selected_facets=category_exact:Debt%20Collection

{7} http://www.infowars.com/obama-head-over-heels-for-jamie-dimon-and-jp-morgan-chase/

{8} http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/health/jan-june13/suicide_05-03.html

_____

Lynn Parramore is an AlterNet senior editor. She is cofounder of Recessionwire, founding editor of New Deal 2.0, and author of Reading the Sphinx: Ancient Egypt in Nineteenth-Century Literary Culture (2008). She received her PhD in English and Cultural Theory from New York University, where she has taught essay writing and semiotics. She is the Director of AlterNet's New Economic Dialogue Project. Follow her on Twitter < at >LynnParramore.

http://www.alternet.org/economy/vicious-new-bank-shakedown-could-seriously-ruin-your-life

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[BillTottenWeblog] No Bear Market In Gold

Bill Totten — 2013-05-25T00:01:22

by Paul Craig Roberts

Institute for Political Economy (May 20 2013)

You know that gold bear market that the financial press keeps touting? The one George Soros keeps proclaiming? Well, it is not there. The gold bear market is disinformation that is helping elites acquire the gold.

Certainly, Soros himself doesn't believe it, as the 13-F release issued by the Securities and Exchange Commission on May 15 proves. George Soros has significantly increased his gold holding by purchasing $25.2 million of call options on the GDXJ Junior Gold Miners Index.

http://bullmarketthinking.com/soros-reports-over-239mm-in-gold-positions-buys-25mm-in-call-options-on-juniors/

In addition the Soros Fund maintains a $32 million stake in individual mines; added 1.1 million shares of GDX (a gold miners ETF) to its holdings which now stand at 2,666,000 shares valued at $70,400,000; has 1,100,000 shares in GDXJ valued at $11,506,000; and 530,000 shares in the GLD gold fund valued at $69,467,000 [values as of May 17].

The 13-F release shows the Soros Fund with $239,200,000 in gold investments. If this is bearish sentiment, what would it take to be bullish?

The misinformation that Soros had sold his gold holdings came from misinterpreting the reason Soros' holdings in the GLD gold trust declined. Soros did not sell the shares; he redeemed the paper claims for physical gold. Watching the gold ETFs, such as GLD, being looted by banksters, Soros cashed in some of his own paper gold for the real stuff.

The giveaway that Soros is extremely bullish on gold comes not only from his extensive holdings, but also from his $25.2 million call option on junior gold stocks. This is a highly leveraged bet on the weakest gold mines. With high production costs and falling gold price from constant short selling in the paper market, Soros' bet makes no sense unless he thinks gold is heading up as the short raids concentrate gold in elite possession.

In previous articles I have explained how heavy short-selling triggers stop-loss orders and margin calls on investors in gold ETFs. Scared out of their shares or forced out by margin calls, investors' add to the downward price pressure caused by the shorts. Bullion banks and prominent investors such as Soros are the only ones who can redeem GLD shares for physical metal. They purchase the shares that are sold in response to the falling gold price, and present the shares for redemption in gold metal.

Insiders familiar with the process describe it as looting the ETFs of their gold basis.

In my last column I described how the orchestration of a falling gold price in the paper market protects the dollar's value from the Federal Reserve's policy of printing 1,000 billion new ones annually. The other beneficiary of the operation is the financial elite who buy up at low prices the ETF shares sold into a falling market and redeem them for gold. Like all other forms of wealth in the West, gold is being concentrated in fewer hands, while the elite shout "bear market, get out of gold".

The orchestrated decline in gold and silver prices is apparent from the fact that the demand for bullion in the physical market has increased while short sales in the paper market imply a flight from bullion. As a hedge fund manager told me, it is a Wall Street axiom that volume follows price. Bull markets are characterized by rising prices on high volume. Conversely bear markets feature declining prices on low volume. The current bear market in gold consists of paper gold declining steadily while demand has escalated rapidly for physical metal. This strongly indicates that demand for physical gold continues to be in a bull market despite the savage attacks on paper gold.

If the orchestration is apparent to me, a person with no experience as a gold trader, it certainly must be apparent to federal regulators. But don't expect any action from the Commodities Future Trading Corporation. It is headed by a former Goldman Sachs executive.

And don't expect any investigation from the financial press. The financial press sees a bear market while supplies of bullion decline, premiums over spot rise, and even publicly declared bears such as George Soros make highly leveraged bets that will fail in the absence of a bull market in gold.

_____

Dr Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. His latest book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is now available.

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2013/05/20/no-bear-market-in-gold-paul-craig-roberts/

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'Harry Bridges & Thomas Paine' Open in Los Angeles & Venice!

Ed Pearl — 2013-05-24T21:51:49

Forgive a brain freeze about the location of Saturday's performance of 'The
InsideOUT Writers: A noble Vision.'
It's at the Silverlake Library, not the Glendale one; but still at 2411
Glendale Bl, corner of Silver Lake Bl. 2 pm.
Thanks to the five folks who caught it, including the head librarian at the
beautiful, still new Silver Lake Library. -Ed



 
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<http://cts.vresp.com/ls?7f06f3d5ce/326d33585c/http%3A%2F%2Fapi.addthis.com%
2Foexchange%2F0.8%2Fforward%2Flinkedin%2Foffer%3Ftemplate%3D%257B%257Btitle%
257D%257D%2B%257B%257Burl%257D%257D%26url%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fhosted-p0.vre
sp.com%252F562980%252F7f06f3d5ce%252FARCHIVE%26shortener%3Dbitly%26title%3DT
heatre%2BRun%2BFlyer>  
From Wharf Rats to Lords of the Docks
"Ian Ruskin captures Harry Bridges brilliantly." Howard Zinn, Historian &
Social Activist

&
To Begin the World Over Again: the Life of Thomas Paine
"Spectacular!!!"  Harvard Law School
 
Are coming to the Lillian Theater, Hollywood in May
& The Electric Lodge, Venice in June
With Ian Ruskin as
Harry Bridges          &            Thomas Paine
 Sitting2 2
<http://img-ak.verticalresponse.com/media/4/1/6/4164670349/7f06f3d5ce/2bd7be
b6c3/library/Sitting2%202.jpg>  Ian_Headshot_LoOp
<http://img-ak.verticalresponse.com/media/4/1/6/4164670349/7f06f3d5ce/2bd7be
b6c3/library/Ian_Headshot_LoOp.jpg>  AtDesk3
<http://img-ak.verticalresponse.com/media/4/1/6/4164670349/7f06f3d5ce/2bd7be
b6c3/library/AtDesk3.jpg> 

- General admission $20 - Seniors, Students and the Unemployed $10
- May 30th and June 23rd Pay What You Can - Opening nights with reception -
$50
- All performances followed by a Q & A with the Audience
 
To buy your tickets please go to 
 
<http://cts.vresp.com/c/?TheHarryBridgesProje/7f06f3d5ce/326d33585c/405b40e9
eb> http://www.brownpapertickets.com/profile/63869   or  call 1-800-838-3006
 
May-June 2013 at The Lillian Theatre, 1076 Lillian Way, Los Angeles
Thursday May  23 Friday May 24 Saturday May 25 Sunday May
26
8 PM
OPENING NIGHT
HARRY BRIDGES 8 PM
OPENING NIGHT
THOMAS PAINE 8 PM
THOMAS PAINE 3 PM
THOMAS PAINE
Thursday May 30 Friday May 31 Saturday June 1 Sunday June 2
8 PM
HARRY BRIDGES
Pay What You Can 8 PM
THOMAS PAINE 8 PM
THOMAS PAINE 3 PM
THOMAS PAINE
 
 
June 2013 at The Electric Lodge, 1416 Electric Avenue, Venice

Thursday June 20 Friday June 21 Saturday June 22 Sunday June
23
8 PM
OPENING NIGHT
HARRY BRIDGES 8 PM
OPENING NIGHT
THOMAS PAINE 8 PM
THOMAS PAINE 7 PM
THOMAS PAINE
Pay What You Can
Thursday June 27 Friday June 28 Saturday June 29 Sunday June
30

8 PM
HARRY BRIDGES
  8 PM
THOMAS PAINE 8 PM
THOMAS PAINE 3 PM
THOMAS PAINE
 
BIO: Ian Ruskin trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He has
performed From Wharf Rats to Lords of the Docks about Harry Bridges over 200
times. The film version directed by Haskell Wexler, has aired on PBS for the
past 4 years. He has produced film and radio documentaries and is currently
working on a radio documentary about the life and music of singer/activist
Barbara Dane. Ian wrote To Begin the World Over Again: the Life of Thomas
Paine with a COLA Fellowship from the City of Los Angeles. First
performances were at the Floyd and Delores Jones Playhouse, Seattle, opening
night of Grand Performances in Los Angeles, followed by the National Nurses
United Convention, the American Philosophical Society, Harvard Law School,
the California Judges Association Annual Meeting, and many more.  View Media
here:
<http://cts.vresp.com/c/?TheHarryBridgesProje/7f06f3d5ce/326d33585c/48b98570
62/v=ysfz71XihXQ> HARRY BRIDGES &
<http://cts.vresp.com/c/?TheHarryBridgesProje/7f06f3d5ce/326d33585c/ce83c117
34> THOMAS PAINE &
<http://cts.vresp.com/c/?TheHarryBridgesProje/7f06f3d5ce/326d33585c/b20fbf22
90> IAN RUSKIN
 




http://www.brownpapertickets.com/profile/63869

The Harry Bridges  <http://theharrybridgesproject.org/index.html> Project
Facebook <http://www.facebook.com/theharrybridgesproject>  | LinkedIn
<http://www.linkedin.com/in/ianruskin>  | YouTube
<http://www.youtube.com/harrybridgesproject>  

The Life of Thomas  <http://www.facebook.com/thelifeofthomaspaine> Paine
facebook

youtube.com/thelifeofthomaspaine 







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Egypt - Rebels Without a Pause

Steven L. Robinson — 2013-05-24T18:10:59

Rebels Without a Pause

By Ursula Lindsey
International Herald Tribune
May 21, 2013

Cairo — In Egypt these days, young people are gathering signatures.

At the subway station in Tahrir Square, they are asking commuters to fill out photocopied pieces of paper with the heading: "Rebel Campaign: To Withdraw Trust from the Brotherhood's Regime." It's a petition calling for early presidential elections.

The document addresses President Mohamed Morsi directly. "Because security still isn't back," it says, "we don't want you." "Because the poor still have no place, we don't want you. Because we're still begging the outside, we don't want you."

Launched on May 1, the Tamarrud (Rebel) campaign claims to have gathered three million signatures, both on the street and online, inside and outside Egypt. Its goal is to reach 15 million by June 30, the anniversary of Morsi's first year in office. The group has also scheduled protests for that day.

The Muslim Brotherhood questions the number of signatures Rebel claims to have collected and says it could get even more people to sign a statement of support for Morsi. It has called the campaign illogical and illegal. Writing in the state-run newspaper Al Ahram, one Islamist columnist has compared Egypt to a large and crowded ship, and the Rebel campaigners to pirates who have tied up the captain-president and are "spreading lies" among the passengers.

Talk-show hosts on private TV stations have filled out the petition on the air. Leaders of Egypt's political opposition have also expressed their support — as usual, trailing behind the latest expression of popular discontent.

The petition has no legal power to dislodge Morsi. But it has moral authority and symbolic power.

It's an expression of deep dissatisfaction with the country's leadership. Although a majority of Egyptians, according to a recent Pew Research Center Poll, still express a favorable view of the president and the Brotherhood's performance, most believe their lives have not improved in the last few years. Only 30 percent of respondents said the country was headed in the right direction: the same percentage as before the uprising against President Hosni Mubarak, when public confidence in the authorities was at a nadir.

The Rebel campaign is also a rejection of the entire formal political process that has taken place since Mubarak's ouster. Yes, it is extraordinary that Egyptians today can organize a street campaign to dismiss the president — a president they freely elected last year. But this new freedom has not solved any of Egypt's dreary daily problems: corruption, insecurity, poverty, human rights abuses. No wonder 56 percent of the respondents in the Pew poll said they were

If anything, the kind of democracy Egyptians have experienced — four rushed votes in two years, as well as legal maneuvers, back-room deals and shocking violence — has been a means to constrain and even undermine the revolution's goals. The army has kept all its prerogatives. Islamists, who had only a small role in the uprising, have won control of the government and practiced a divisive kind of identity politics.

The country remains ruled by a handful of middle-aged men who, despite belonging to slightly different ideological or social backgrounds, share the same old-fashioned presumption that they alone know best. Yet all the evidence points to the contrary. They have delivered none of the revolution's promises: greater economic equality, justice, freedom, dignity.

This is why Egyptians, especially young ones, are trying to re-boot the revolution. That might seem like magical political thinking, but it worked once before.

***

Ursula Lindsey, a journalist based in Cairo, blogs at The Arabist.

http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/egyptians-try-to-complete-the-2011-revolution/

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[BillTottenWeblog] Washington Signals Dollar Deep Concerns

Bill Totten — 2013-05-24T12:01:53

by Paul Craig Roberts

Institute for Political Economy (May 18 2013)

Over the past month there has been a statistically improbable concurrence of events that can only be explained as a conspiracy to protect the dollar from the Federal Reserve's policy of Quantitative Easing (QE).

Quantitative Easing is the term given to the Federal Reserve's policy of printing 1,000 billion new dollars annually in order to finance the US budget deficit by purchasing US Treasury bonds and to keep the prices high of debt-related derivatives on the "banks too big to fail" (BTBF) balance sheets by purchasing mortgage-backed derivatives. Without QE, interest rates would be much higher, and values on the banks' balance sheets would be much lower.

Quantitative Easing has been underway since December 2008. During these 54 months, the Federal Reserve has created several trillion new dollars with which the Fed has monetized the same amount of debt.

One result of this policy is that most real US interest rates are negative. Another result is that the supply of dollars has outstripped the world's demand for dollars.

These two results are the reason that the Federal Reserve's policy of printing money with which to purchase Treasury bonds and mortgage backed derivatives threatens the dollar's exchange value and, thus, the dollar's role as world reserve currency.

To be the world reserve currency means that the dollar can be used to pay any and every country's oil bills and trade deficit. The dollar is the medium of international payment.

This is very helpful to the US and is the main source of US power. Because the dollar is the reserve currency, the US can cover its import costs and pay for its cost of operation simply by creating its own paper money.

If the dollar were not the reserve currency, Washington would not be able to finance its wars or continue to run large trade and budget deficits. Therefore, protecting the exchange value of the dollar is Washington's prime concern if it is to remain a superpower.

The threats to the dollar are alternative monies - currencies that are not being created in enormous quantities, gold and silver, and Bitcoins, a digital currency.

The Bitcoin threat was eliminated on May 17 when the Gestapo Department of Homeland Security seized Bitcoin's accounts. The excuse was that Bitcoin had failed to register in keeping with the US Treasury's anti-money laundering requirements.

Washington has stifled the threat from other currencies by convincing other large currencies to out-print the dollar. Japan has complied, and the European Central Bank, though somewhat constrained by Germany, has entered the printing mode in order to bail out the private banks endangered by the "sovereign debt crisis".

That leaves gold and silver. The enormous increase in the prices of gold and silver over the last decade convinced Washington that there are a number of miscreants who do not trust the dollar and whose numbers must not be permitted to increase.

The price of gold rose from $272 an ounce in December 2000 to $1,917.50 on August 23 2011. The financial gangsters who own and run America panicked. With the price of the dollar collapsing in relation to historical real money, how could the dollar's exchange rate to other currencies be valid? If the dollar's exchange value came under attack, the Federal Reserve would have to stop printing and would lose control over interest rates.

The bond and stock market bubbles would pop, and the interest payments on the federal debt would explode, leaving Washington even more indebted and unable to finance its wars, police state, and bankster bailouts.

Something had to be done about the rising price of gold and silver.

There are two bullion markets. One is a paper market in New York, Comex, where paper claims to gold are traded. The other is the physical market where personal possession is taken of the metal - coin shops, bullion dealers, jewelry stores.

The way the banksters have it set up, the price of bullion is not set in the markets in which people actually take possession of the metals. The price is set in the paper market where speculators gamble.

This bifurcated market gave the Federal Reserve the ability to protect the dollar from its printing press.

On Friday, April 12 2013, short sales of gold hit the New York market in an amount estimated to have been somewhere between 124 and 400 tons of gold. This enormous and unprecedented sale implies an illegal conspiracy of sellers intent on rigging the market or action by the Federal Reserve through its agents, the BTBF that are the bullion banks.

The enormous sales of naked shorts drove down the gold price, triggering stop-loss orders and margin calls. The attack continued on Monday, April 15, and has continued since.

Before going further, note that there are position limits imposed on the number of contracts that traders can sell at one time. The 124 tons figure would have required fourteen traders with no open interest on the exchange to sell all together in the same few minutes 40,000 futures contracts. The likelihood of so many traders deciding to short at the same moment at the maximum permitted is not believable. This was an attack ordered by the Federal Reserve, which is why there is no investigation of the illegality.

Note also that no seller that wanted out of a position would give himself a low price by dumping an enormous amount all at once unless the goal was not profit but to smash the bullion price.

Since the April 12 to 15 attack on the gold price, subsequent attacks have occurred at 2 pm Hong Kong time and 2 am New York time. At this time activity is light, waiting on London to begin operating. As William S Kaye has observed, no entity concerned about profits would choose this time to sell 20,000 to 30,000 futures contracts, but this is what has been happening.

Who can be unconcerned with losing money in this way? Only a central bank that can print it.

Now we come to the physical market where people take possession of bullion instead of betting on paper instruments. Look at this chart from ZeroHedge.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-05-16/gold-demand-one-chart-physical-vs-etf

The demand for physical possession is high, despite the assault on gold that began in 2011, but as the price is set in the non-real paper market, orchestrated short sales, as in the current quarter of 2013, can drive down the price regardless of the fact that the actual demand for gold and silver cannot be met.

While the corrupt Western financial press urges people to abandon bullion, everyone is trying to purchase more, and the premiums above the spot price have risen. Around the world there is a shortage of gold and silver in the forms, such as one-ounce coins and ten-ounce bars, that individuals demand.

That the decline in gold and silver prices is an orchestration is apparent from the fact that the demand for bullion in the physical market has increased while naked short sales in the paper market imply a flight from bullion.

What does this illegal manipulation of markets by the Federal Reserve tell us? It tells us that the Federal Reserve sees no way out of printing money in order to support the federal deficit and the insolvent banks. If the dollar came under attack and the Federal Reserve had to stop printing dollars, interest rates would rise. The bond and stock markets would collapse. The dollar would be abandoned as reserve currency. Washington would no longer be able to pay its bills and would lose its hegemony. The world of hubristic Washington would collapse.

It remains to be seen whether Washington can prevail over the world demand for gold and silver. Can the dollar remain supreme when offshoring has deprived the US of the ability to cover its imports with exports? Can the dollar remain supreme when the Federal reserve is creating 1,000 billion new ones each year, while the BRICS, China and Japan, China and Australia, and China and Russia are making deals to settle their trade balances without the use of the dollar?

If the consumption-based US economy deprived of consumer income by jobs offshoring takes a further dip down in the third or fourth quarter - a downturn that cannot be masked by phony statistical releases - the federal deficit will rise. What will be the effect on the dollar if the Federal Reserve has to increase its Quantitative Easing?

A perfect storm has been prepared for America. Real interest rates are negative, but debt and money are being created hand over foot. The dollar's demise awaits the world's decision how to get out of it. The Federal Reserve can print dollars with which to keep the bond and stock markets high, but the Federal Reserve cannot print foreign currencies with which to keep the dollar afloat.

When the dollar goes, Washington's power goes, which is why the bullion market is rigged. Protect the power. That is the agenda. Is it another Washington over-reach?

Bitcoin Note: On May 16, PCWorld reported:

The seizure of funds of the largest bitcoin exchange, Mt Gox, was triggered by an alleged failure of the company to comply with US financial regulations, according to a federal court document. The US District Court in Maryland on Tuesday ordered the seizure of Mt Gox's funds, which were in an account with Dwolla, a payments company that transferred money from US citizens to Mt Gox for buying and selling the virtual currency bitcoin.

Reports subsequent to my column suggest that instead of funds being seized, a money transfer mechanism was shut down. Whatever happened, the government has demonstrated that it can disable or destroy Bitcoin at will. Bitcoin might be tolerated unless it becomes widely used. If the government regards Bitcoin as a refuge from the dollar, it can simply have its agents buy up the Bitcoins, driving the price sky high, and then dump the purchases all at once, just as tons of gold shorts were dumped on the gold market.

Bitcoin showed its vulnerability in April when, according to news reports, someone gave away $13,627 worth of Bitcoins, and Bitcoin values crashed from $265 to $105. Some people who watch this market concluded that the exercise was a covert central bank stress test.

The fact that I reported on Bitcoin does not mean that I oppose Bitcoin. The point of my article is to demonstrate that the government will take all steps to protect the dollar from Quantitative Easing.

_____

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2013/05/18/washington-signals-dollar-deep-concerns-paul-craig-roberts/

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When the IRS targeted liberals

Romi Elnagar — 2013-05-23T23:24:26

When the IRS targeted liberals
Under George W. Bush, it went after the
NAACP, Greenpeace and even a liberal church By Alex Seitz-Wald

While few are defending the Internal Revenue Service for targeting dozens of
conservative groups, there are two critical pieces of context missing
from the conventional wisdom on the “scandal.” First, at least from what we know so far, the groups were not targeted in a political vendetta —
but rather were executing a makeshift enforcement test (an ugly one, mind you) for IRS employees tasked with separating
political groups not allowed to claim tax-exempt status, from bona fide
social welfare organizations. Employees are given almost zero official
guidance on how to do that, so they went after Tea Party groups because
those seemed like they might be political. Keep in mind, the
commissioner of the IRS at the time was a Bush appointee.
The
second is that while this is the first time this kind of thing has
become a national scandal, it’s not the first time such activity has
occurred.
“I wish there was more GOP interest when I raised the
same issue during the Bush administration, where they audited a
progressive church in my district in what look liked a very selective
way,” California Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff said on MSNBC Monday. “I
found only one Republican, [North Carolina Rep. Walter Jones], that
would join me in calling for an investigation during the Bush
administration. I’m glad now that the GOP has found interest in this
issue and it ought to be a bipartisan concern.”
The well-known church, All Saints Episcopal in Pasadena, became a bit of a cause célèbre on the left after the IRS threatened to revoke the church’s tax-exempt status over an anti-Iraq War sermon
the Sunday before the 2004 election. “Jesus [would say], ‘Mr. President, your doctrine of preemptive war is a failed doctrine,’” rector George
Regas said from the dais.
The church, which said progressive
activism was in its “DNA,” hired a powerful Washington lawyer and
enlisted the help of Schiff, who met with the commissioner of the IRS
twice and called for a Government Accountability Office investigation,
saying the IRS audit violated the First Amendment and was unduly
targeting a political opponent of the Bush administration. “My client is very concerned that the close coordination undertaken by the IRS
allowed partisan political concerns to direct the course of the All
Saints examination,” church attorney Marcus Owens, who is widely
considered one of the country’s leading experts on this area of the law, said at the time. In 2007, the IRS closed the case, decreeing that the church violated rules preventing political intervention, but it did not revoke its nonprofit status.
And while All Saints came under the gun, conservative churches across the
country were helping to mobilize voters for Bush with little oversight.
In 2006, citing the precedent of All Saints, “a group of religious
leaders accused the Internal Revenue Service yesterday of playing politics by ignoring its complaint that two large churches in Ohio are engaging
in what it says are political activities, in violation of the tax code,” the New York Times reported at the time. The churches essentially
campaigned for a Republican gubernatorial candidate, they alleged, and
even flew him on one of their planes.
Meanwhile, Citizens for Ethics in Washington filed two ethics complaints against a church in Minnesota. “You know we can’t publicly endorse as a church and would not for any candidate, but I can tell you personally
that I’m going to vote for Michele Bachmann,” pastor Mac Hammond of the Living Word Christian Center in Minnesota
said in 2006 before welcoming her to the church. The IRS opened an audit into the church, but it went nowhere after the church appealed the audit on a technicality.
And it wasn’t just churches. In 2004, the IRS went after the NAACP, auditing the nation’s oldest civil rights group after its chairman
criticized President Bush for being the first sitting president since
Herbert Hoover not to address the organization. “They are saying if you
criticize the president we are going to take your tax exemption away
from you,” then-chairman Julian Bond said. “It’s pretty obvious that the complainant was someone who doesn’t believe George Bush should be
criticized, and it’s obvious of their response that the IRS believes
this, too.”
In a letter to the IRS, Democratic Reps. Charles Rangel, Pete Stark and John
Conyers wrote: “It is obvious that the timing of this IRS examination is nothing more than an effort to intimidate the members of the NAACP, and the communities the organization represents, in their get-out-the-vote
effort nationwide.”
Then, in 2006, the Wall Street Journal broke the story of a how a little-known pressure group called Public Interest Watch —
which received 97 percent of its funds from Exxon Mobile one year —
managed to get the IRS to open an investigation into Greenpeace.
Greenpeace had labeled Exxon Mobil the “No. 1 climate criminal.” The IRS acknowledged its audit was initiated by Public Interest Watch and
threatened to revoke Greenpeace’s tax-exempt status, but closed the
investigation three months later.
As the Journal reporter, Steve Stecklow, later said in an interview, “This comes against a backdrop where a number of conservative groups
have been attacking nonprofits and NGOs over their tax-exempt status.
There have been hearings on Capitol Hill. There have been a number of
conservative groups in Washington who have been quite critical.”
Indeed, the year before that, the Senate held a hearing on nonprofits’ political activity. Republican Sen. Charles Grassley,
the then-chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said the IRS needed
better enforcement, but also “legislative changes” to better define the
lines between politics and social welfare, since they had not been
updated in “a generation.” Unfortunately, neither Congress nor the IRS
has defined 501(c)4′s sufficiently to this day, leaving the door open
for IRS auditors to make up their own, discriminatory rules.
Those cases mostly involved 501(c)3 organizations, which live in a different
section of the tax code for real charities like hospitals and schools.
The rules are much stronger and better developed for (c)3′s, in part
because they’ve been around longer. But with “social welfare” (c)4
groups, the kind of political activity we saw in 2010 and 2012 is so
unprecedented that you get cases like Emerge America, a progressive
nonprofit that trains Democratic female candidates for public office.
The group has chapters across the country, but in 2011, chapters in
Massachusetts, Maine and Nevada were denied 501(c)4 tax-exempt status. Leaders called the situation “bizarre” because in the five years Nevada had waited for approval, the Kentucky chapter was approved, only for
the other three to be denied.
A former IRS official told the New
York Times that probably meant the applications were sent to different
offices, which use slightly different standards. Different offices
within the same organization that are supposed to impose the exact same
rules in a consistent manner have such uneven conceptions of where to
draw the line at a political group, that they can approve one
organization and then deny its twin in a different state.
All of
these stories suggest that while concern with the IRS posture toward
conservative groups now may be merited, to fully understand the
situation requires a bit of context and history.
http://www.salon.com/2013/05/14/when_the_irs_targeted_liberals.

http://www.salon.com/2013/05/14/when_the_irs_targeted_liberals/
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[BillTottenWeblog] Gangster State America

Bill Totten — 2013-05-23T23:23:32

by Paul Craig Roberts

Institute for Political Economy (May 13 2013)

There are many signs of gangster state America. One is the collusion between federal authorities and banksters in a criminal conspiracy to rig the markets for gold and silver.

My explanation that the sudden appearance of an unprecedented 400 ton short sale of gold on the COMEX in April was a manipulation designed to protect the dollar from the Federal Reserve's quantitative easing policy has found acceptance among gold investors and hedge fund managers.

The sale was a naked short. The seller had no gold to sell. COMEX reported having gold only equal to about half of the short sale in its vaults, and not all of that was available for delivery. No one but the Federal Reserve could have placed such an order, and the order came from one of the Fed's bullion banks, one of the entities "too big to fail".

Bill Kaye of the Greater Asian Hedge Fund in Hong Kong and Dave Kranzler of Golden Returns Capital have filled in the details of how the manipulation worked. Being sophisticated investors of many years of experience, both Kaye and Kranzler understand that the financial press runs with the authorized story planted to serve the agenda that has been put into play.

Institutional investors who have bullion in their portfolio do not want the expense associated with storing it securely. Instead, they buy into Exchange Traded Funds (ETF) and hold their bullion in the form of a paper claim. The largest, the SPDR Gold Trust or GLD, trades on the New York Stock Exchange. The trustee and custodian is a bankster, and only other banksters are able to turn investments into delivery of physical bullion. Only shares in the amount of 100,000 can be redeemed in gold.

The price of bullion is not set in the physical market where individuals take delivery of bullion purchases. It is set in the paper futures market where short selling can drive down the price even if the demand for physical possession is rising. The paper gold market is also the market in which people speculate and leverage their positions, place stop-loss orders, and are subject to margin calls.

When the enormous naked shorts hit the COMEX, stop-loss orders were triggered adding to the sales, and margin calls forced more sales. Investors who were not in on the manipulation lost a lot of money.

The sales of GLD shares are accumulated by the banksters in 100,000 lots and presented to GLD for redemption in gold acquired at the driven down price.

The short sale is leveraged by the stop-loss triggers and margin calls, and results in a profit for the banksters who placed the short sell order. The banksters then profit again as they sell the released gold into the physical market, especially in Asia, where demand has been stimulated by the sharp drop in bullion price and by the loss of confidence in fiat currency. Asian prices are usually at a higher premium above the spot prices in New York-London.

Some readers have said "don't bet against the Federal Reserve; the manipulation can go on forever". But can it? As the ETFs such as GLD are drained of gold, their ability to cover any of their obligations to investors diminishes. In my opinion, these ETFs are like a fractional reserve banking system. The claims on gold exceed the amount of gold in the trusts. When the ETFs are looted of their gold by the banksters, the gold price will explode, as the claims on gold will greatly exceed the supply.

Kranzler reports that the current June futures contracts are 12.5 times the amount of deliverable gold. If more than eight percent of these trades were to demand delivery, COMEX would default. That such a situation is possible indicates the total failure of federal financial regulation.

What the Federal Reserve has done in order to maintain its short-run policy of protecting the "banks too big too fail" is to make the inevitable reckoning more costly for the US economy.

Another irony is the benefactors of the banksters sale of the gold leeched from the gold ETFs. Asia is the beneficiary, especially India and China. The "get out of gold line" of the US financial press enables China to unload its excess supply of dollars, accumulated from the offshored US economy, into the gold market at a suppressed price of gold.

Kranzler points out that not only does the Fed's manipulation permit Asia to offload US dollars for gold at low prices, but the obvious lack of confidence in the dollar that the manipulation demonstrates has caused wealthy European families to demand delivery of their gold holdings at bullion banks (the bullion banks are essentially the "banks too big to fail"). Kranzler notes that since January 1, more than 400 tons of gold have been drained from COMEX and gold ETF holdings in order to satisfy world demand for physical possession of bullion.

Again we see that institutions of the US government are acting 100% against the interests of US citizens. Just who does the US government represent?

_____

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2013/05/13/gangster-state-america-paul-craig-roberts/

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The InsideOUT Writers: A noble Vision

Ed Pearl — 2013-05-23T21:24:39

Hi.  Here's some background on the program AshGroveMusic is featuring this
Saturday,
2-4 pm, at the Glendale Library aud, 2411 Glendale Bl. where Silverlake
Blvd. crosses.
it's free, as is parking across Glendale in the B of A's 2 parking lots.
-ed
 
http://www.insideoutwriters.org/links.php?id=aboutus

InsideOUT Writers (IOW) was founded in 1996 and incorporated as a 501(c)(3)
non-profit organization in 1999.  IOW grew out of the vision of juvenile
hall chaplain, Sister Janet Harris, former Los Angeles Times journalist
Duane Noriyuki and several other professional writers who volunteered to
teach creative writing in Los Angeles County's Central Juvenile Hall.  IOW's
long-term goal is to reduce recidivism among juvenile offenders by providing
youth and young adults with tools for pro-social means of self-expression,
self-reflection and positive inter-group communications. 

Today, IOW offers two innovative programs for incarcerated and formerly
incarcerated youth and young adults.  The Writing Program offers 39 weekly
and bi-weekly creative writing classes for youth incarcerated at four Los
Angeles juvenile detention facilities.  The Alumni Program provides a
continuum of care for former Writing Program participants (Alumni) who have
been released from detention.

WRITING PROGRAM 

The Writing Program was designed to provide youth incarcerated at Los
Angeles juvenile detention facilities with activities that discourage
violence and support positive social values.  Youth are encouraged to
express themselves through writing and other pro-social activities rather
than through violence.  The Writing Program offers: 

*

39 weekly and bi-weekly creative writing classes led by volunteer
teachers. Quarterly newsletters of the students' writings.  
*

 
*

 Annual Writers' Retreats for all IOW students at each facility to
come together as writers to celebrate their accomplishments.

ALUMNI PROGRAM 

The Alumni Program is comprised of five interconnected components which work
in concert to address the multitude of risks, opportunities, influences and
needs that impact an alumni's successful re-entry back into their
communities:

*

Case Management - Transitional support services and referrerals,
including assistance with housing, transportation, employment and education.

*

 
*

Mentoring Program - One-to-one mentoring program provides Alumni
with access to positive adult role models, acknowledging that family and
social connections are vital to successful re-entry.

  <mailto:drfertig< at >yahoo.comWriting> Writing Circle - Creative
writing classes provide opportunities for self-reflection and
self-discovery. 
*

 
*

Enrichment Sessions - Alumni participate in a year-long series of
activity based, interactive sessions that focus on developing their life,
social and leadership skills. 

*

Leadership Development Opportunities - Positive social and civic
activities that support and enhance an alumni's continued personal
development.


Board of Directors, Advisory Board and Staff 





Board of Directors

Michael Mandelbaum, Chair
Ian Graham, Vice-Chair
Dellene Arthur, Treasurer
Honorable Joseph Brandolino, Secretary

Zev Borow
Lucy Firestone
Ian Fischler
Brian Leuchtenburg
Barry Nugent
Todd Rubenstein

Advisory Board

Dr. Joan Dusa
Martha Escutia
David Gale
Richard Gant
Jedd Gold
Claudia Gracioso
Gigi Levangie-Grazer
Sister Janet Harris
Flo McAfee
Dr. Walter McMillan
Marlon Rivera
Eric Roth
Van Gordon Sauter
Mark Salzman
Eva Stern

Staff

Wendelyn P. Killian, Esq., Executive Director
Leslie Diane Poston, Writing Program Director 
Liza Bray, Alumni Program Director
Alex Montes, Writing Program Assistant (on-site, Central Juvenile Hall)
Mindy Velasco, Writing Program Assistant
Wendy Gough Soroka,  Manager of Administration & Special Projects
Jimmy Wu, Alumni Case Manager


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Vendana Shiva and the March against Monsanto, May 25, 2013

Romi Elnagar — 2013-05-23T20:00:27

Please forward.

Video: Vandana Shiva and the March against Monsanto, May 25, 2013
Liked this article43
By Anne Sewell
May 20, 2013

On May 25, 2013, there will be a worldwide March
against Monsanto, protesting the giant pesticide company's attempts to
take over the world's food supply. Vandana Shiva speaks about the
movement against Monsanto and why it is necessary.
On May 25, 2013, people across the world will be
hitting the streets to stand up against the agricultural pesticide
company, Monsanto. Please note that in the video, the date of March 25 is mentioned in error - the correct date of the March against Monsanto is May 25. Dr Vandana Shiva says, "The march against Monsanto is inspired by the
love for freedom and democracy, the love for the Earth, the soil, the
seed. And it is our deep love for life on Earth in freedom that makes
all of us march against Monsanto and we stand in solidarity with
everyone, from the Seed Freedom Movement catalyzed by Navdanya ." Shiva goes on to say that Monsanto has become the center stage for the
destruction of the world's seeds, our diversity, our food and our
freedom. Shiva explains that in the 1980's Monsanto started imposing laws,
drafting patents on life, even though life cannot be invented and
therefore is not patentable. More recently the Supreme Court of the USA has upheld Monsanto's totally illegitimate patent right on seed in the Bowman vs Monsanto case.
Further to this Monsanto has written a "Monsanto Protection Act" making
the company immune from any court action, whether to protect diversity,
to prevent contamination or to protect the rights of organic seed
producers. She explains that India has a very strong law, under the Environment
Protection Act, predating any other laws and protocols, which is meant
to regulate GMOs. India used the law to stop the BT aubergine, or
brinjal. Shiva speaks of an act that Monsanto tried to pass in India,
which would effectively throw citizens in jail for challenging GMOs. Shiva speaks of the European Commission, which has become "an extension of Monsanto," trying to bring about yet
another Monsanto Protection Act to make it illegal for European
gardeners and farmers to have or save their own seeds. She states that this is a new form of fascism, a new form of
dictatorship over all life itself, and its diversity. Unlike Nazism,
its not like controlling one religion or one race, it is wanting to
outlaw all diversity of all life on Earth and also the rights of the
food producers. Shiva brings up the huge onslaught by Monsanto against any labeling of
GMO products in the USA, saying that this is part of this Monsanto
dictatorship. This is why the March against Monsanto is a march for freedom. And this march is not just for the 25th. Shiva states that we will have to
carry on this fight for every day of our lives as we plant and save our
seeds. She refers to us standing up with our "gardens of resistance",
growing healthy food, nurturing the soil and the seed, thanking the
ancestors of those seeds and the future generations. "Handing over to our future generations the care and custody of our
precious diversity. Let us plant gardens of resistance against this new form of fascism. We will set the Earth in her diversity, and people
with their diversities, free." Shiva concludes: "This dictatorship must end. The March against Monsanto is a call to end the dictatorship over seeds, over life, over food and
over our freedom." For anyone wishing to participate, a list of the cities and countries participating in the March against Monsanto can be viewed here.

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/350472#ixzz2U9DTxgHs
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looming nuclear disaster in Paducah

Mitchel Cohen — 2013-05-23T17:16:33

From: Sandra Griffin <suregriffin< at >hotmail.com>

Disaster is about to strike in western Kentucky, a full-blown nuclear 
catastrophe involving hundreds of tons of enriched uranium tainted 
with plutonium, technetium, arsenic, beryllium and a toxic chemical 
brew. But this nuke calamity will be no fluke. It's been foreseen, 
planned, even programmed, the result of an atomic extortion game 
played out between the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the most 
failed American experiment in privatization, the company that has run 
the Paducah plant into the poisoned ground, 
<http://ecowatch.org/gsea-articles/>USEC Inc.


Read more 
here:   http://ecowatch.com/2013/countdown-to-nuclear-ruin-at-paducah/







http://www.MitchelCohen.com

Mitchel Cohen's book, "What Is Direct Action? Lessons from (and to) 
Occupy Wall Street" (foreword by Richard Wolff) (596 pages) is now 
available at:
http://www.lulu.com/shop/mitchel-cohen/what-is-direct-action/paperback/product-20937425.html


Ring the bells that still can ring,  Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack, a crack in everything, That's how the light gets in.
~ Leonard Cohen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-vSfwIJkjY






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Obama Administration's Media Surveillance Unleashes Wave OfCondemnation

Ed Pearl — 2013-05-23T14:05:42

From: SECULARHUMANIST< at >yahoogroups.com  On Behalf Of Greg Dempsey
Sent: Wednesday, May 22, 2013 7:01 PM
Subject: [SECULARHUMANIST] *? 2 ALL: OBAMA ADMINISTRATION'S MEDIA
SURVEILLANCE UNLEASHES WAVE OF CONDEMNATION - WHAT ARE YOUR COMMENTS?*

<http://www.freepress.net/sites/default/files/styles/390wide_nocrop/public/f
ield/image/press-freedom_govt-attack_blog.jpg?itok=VyJXtLLR> 

Video at  <http://tinyurl.com/oa7uvm4> http://tinyurl.com/oa7uvm4

Hi Team!

*? 2 ALL: 

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION'S MEDIA SURVEILLANCE UNLEASHES WAVE OF CONDEMNATION -

<http://25.media.tumblr.com/748bc15a72f0dca2474b54b7fe3009fb/tumblr_mmrbgfVY
9P1sprbe1o1_500.jpg> 

Rebecca Shapiro and Jack Mirkinson report:

The Justice Department's investigation and surveillance of the Associated
Press and Fox News have led to perhaps the most sustained wave of criticism
for the Obama administration's media policies since the president took
office.

On Wednesday, the New York Times became one of the more influential voices
to say what many others have been saying: that the administration's methods
are an attack on press freedom.

<http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/519a4ffc6bb3f7500b000001-1366-1024
-400-/james-rosen-fox-news.png> 

Fox News

In a scathing editorial, the Times wrote that, "With the decision to label a
Fox News television reporter (James Rosen) a possible 'co-conspirator' in a
criminal investigation of a news leak, the Obama administration has moved
beyond protecting government secrets to threatening fundamental freedoms of
the press to gather news."

<http://s3.amazonaws.com/dk-production/images/32677/lightbox/TMW2013-05-22co
lor.png?1368800971> 

The Times editorial described the Obama administration as going "overboard"
with its investigations into leaks and threatening press freedom. The board
added: 

Obama administration officials often talk about the balance between
protecting secrets and protecting the constitutional rights of a free press.
Accusing a reporter of being a 'co-conspirator,' on top of other zealous and
secretive investigations, shows a heavy tilt toward secrecy and insufficient
concern about a free press.

The Times editorial was just one in a chorus of hard-hitting attacks on
Obama's media policy that have surfaced in the wake of the Justice
Department investigations. Journalists were outraged by both the AP and the
Rosen cases, particularly the labeling of Rosen as a possible
"co-conspirator" in a leak case for the crime of trying to get a source to
give up information.

  <http://0.tqn.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/w/g/3/Increased-Surveillance.jpg> 

The New Yorker reported on Tuesday that the investigation into Rosen was
even broader than previously suspected, as the DOJ seized records from at
least five different numbers used by Fox News and two different White House
lines. 

That followed the Associated Press' revelation that the DOJ had secretly
obtained months of phone records for at least seven individual journalists
across 20 phone lines while searching for the government official
responsible for leaking information about a CIA-thwarted terror plot.

<http://dmnewsi.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/article-0-19a22b5a000005dc-707_6
34x401.jpg?w=1000> 

Obama's hyper-aggressive leak policy-and his administration's potential
equation of routine journalistic interaction with criminality-is nothing
new. But the fury in the pages and on the websites of elite outlets about
these positions certainly is.

The Times' criticism echoed that of many other journalists and press freedom
groups.

<http://www.trunews.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/r-ONLINE-SURVEILLANCE-CSI
S--200x224.jpg> 

Obama administration's media surveillance unleashes wave of condemnation -
what are your comments?

Greg Dempsey
 <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SECULARHUMANIST/>
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SECULARHUMANIST/
Voice of the People 

=====
Obama Administration's Media Surveillance Unleashes Wave Of Condemnation 

The Huffington Post  |  By  <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rebecca-shapiro>
Rebecca Shapiro and Jack Mirkinson  <http://twitter.com/rebeccashap>
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/22/nytimes-obama-white-house-doj-inve
stigations_n_3318748.html#> Posted: 05/22/2013 9:05 am EDT  |  Updated:
05/22/2013 1:04 pm EDT

...On Tuesday, the board of the Committee to Protect Journalists
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/21/cpj-obama-holder-ap-fox-news_n_331
4817.html?utm_hp_ref=media> sent an outraged letter to Attorney General Eric
Holder, in which it warned that the DOJ's secret subpoenas for over 20 AP
phone lines "represent a damaging setback for press freedom in the United
States." This came on the heels of a letter
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/14/media-organizations-doj-ap-phone-r
ecords_n_3275001.html> signed by over 50 media outlets which made similar
arguments.

Wednesday also saw Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-in-ap-rosen-investigati
ons-government-makes-criminals-of-reporters/2013/05/21/377af392-c24e-11e2-91
4f-a7aba60512a7_story.html?hpid=z2> lash out at Obama:

The Rosen affair is as flagrant an assault on civil liberties as anything
done by George W. Bush's administration, and it uses technology to silence
critics in a way Richard Nixon could only have dreamed of. 

To treat a reporter as a criminal for doing his job - seeking out
information the government doesn't want made public - deprives Americans of
the First Amendment freedom on which all other constitutional rights are
based. Guns? Privacy? Due process? Equal protection? If you can't speak out,
you can't defend those rights, either. 

http://truthaholics.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/free-speech1.jpg?w=584&h=689

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[BillTottenWeblog] Everything is Rigged, Continued

Bill Totten — 2013-05-23T12:09:16

European Commission Raids Oil Companies in Price-Fixing Probe

by Matt Taibbi

Rolling Stone Taibblog (May 15 2013)

We're going to get into this more at a later date, but there was some interesting late-breaking news yesterday.

According to numerous reports, the European Commission regulators yesterday raided the offices of oil companies in London, the Netherlands and Norway as part of an investigation into possible price-rigging in the oil markets. The targeted companies include BP, Shell and the Norweigan company Statoil. The Guardian explains that officials believe that oil companies colluded to manipulate pricing data:

    The commission said the alleged price collusion, which may have been going on since 2002, could have had a "huge impact" on the price of petrol at the pumps "potentially harming final consumers".

    Lord Oakeshott, former Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, said the alleged rigging of oil prices was "as serious as rigging Libor" – which led to banks being fined hundreds of millions of pounds.

The inquiry also involves Platts, the world's largest oil price reporting agency. The concept here is very similar to both the LIBOR scandal, which involved banks manipulating the benchmark rates for interest rates, and to the possible rigging of interest rate swap prices through the manipulation of ISDAfix, the benchmark rate for those instruments, which is also the subject of a regulatory probe.

We wrote about both of those scandals in last month's Rolling Stone article, "Everything is Rigged": http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/everything-is-rigged-the-biggest-financial-scandal-yet-20130425

In that piece, finance professionals talked about the potential for manipulation in other markets that involve voluntary price reporting:

    What other markets out there carry the same potential for manipulation? The answer to that question is far from reassuring, because the potential is almost everywhere. From gold to gas to swaps to interest rates, prices all over the world are dependent upon little private cabals of cigar-chomping insiders we're forced to trust.

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

    That includes the markets for gold (where prices are set by five banks in a Libor-ish teleconferencing process that, ironically, was created in part by N M Rothschild & Sons) and silver (whose price is set by just three banks), as well as benchmark rates in numerous other commodities - jet fuel, diesel, electric power, coal, you name it.

One analyst I spoke to for that piece talked specifically about Platts (and another, similar price assessment company), noting that they "do benchmarks for the entire oil market, the entire refined products market" and "you name it" - any of these benchmarks that rely on voluntary reporting could be manipulated.

It's not clear yet exactly what is alleged to have occurred, but Europeans have long complained that retail gas prices have not seemed to match wholesale prices. In fact, complaints that wholesale prices at gas stations were noticeably slow to fall when wholesale prices fell prompted the UK-based Office of Fair Trading last year to conduct a cursory inquiry into possible anti-competitive behavior in the fuel markets. Early this year, they announced that they hadn't found enough evidence to warrant a full-blown investigation. But complaints persisted.

The story is obviously hugely significant in its own right, just as the LIBOR story was. But both are even more unpleasant in conjunction with each other, and the other price-fixing scandals that have cropped up in the financial markets in the last year or two. We've had other price-fixing scandals involving gas in the UK and here in the US, just a few weeks ago, it came out that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) concluded that JPMorgan Chase used "manipulative schemes" to tinker with energy prices in Michigan and California.

FERC last year also recommended a massive $470 million fine against Barclays for similar activity. (Barclays has vowed to fight the penalty.) Deutsche Bank, meanwhile, settled with FERC for $1.7 million after the commission alleged that the German bank was involved with manipulation in the California energy markets for several months during 2010.

More on all this later ...

Links:

The original version of this article, at the URL below, contains links to further information not included here.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/everything-is-rigged-continued-european-commission-raids-oil-companies-in-price-fixing-probe-20130515

TO POST A COMMENT, OR TO READ COMMENTS POSTED BY OTHERS, please click
the appropriate link at the top or bottom of
http://billtotten.wordpress.com/2013/05/23/everything-is-rigged-continued/
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Barry Sheppard on War Without End Anywhere

Steven L. Robinson — 2013-05-23T03:08:08

War Without End Anywhere


By Barry Sheppard
May 22, 2013

The Obama administration asserts that he and all future presidents have 
the power to wage endless war anywhere in the world, without permission 
or hindrance from Congress.

This claim is a reiteration of the position taken by the Bush 
administration, which was most vociferously enunciated by Bush's 
Vice-President, Dick Cheney. It is another example of the seamless 
transition from Bush to Obama in foreign affairs.

The assertion came out in a Senate hearing on May 16 revisiting the 
Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) enacted by Congress days 
after the attacks of September 11, 2001. Only one Senator, Angus King, 
an Independent from Maine, raised any concern.

"This is the most astounding and most astoundingly disturbing hearing 
that I've been to since I've been [in the Senate]," King said. "You guys 
have essentially rewritten the Constitution here today."

One could think that would at least deserve some major coverage in the 
capitalist press. But where it was mentioned, it was buried. It was 
hardly noticed by the population at large.

All this came out in questioning of Pentagon officials -- Michael 
Sheehan, the assistant secretary of defense in charge of special 
operations; Robert Taylor, acting general counsel, Department of 
Defense; Brigadier General Richard Gross and General Michael Nagata. 
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham questioned them.

Graham: Do you agree with me, the war against radical Islam, or terror, 
whatever description you like to provide, will go on after the second 
term of President Obama?

Sheehan: Senator, in my judgment, this is going to go on for quite a 
while, and, yes, beyond the second term of the president.

Graham: And beyond this term of Congress?

Sheehan: Yes, sir. I think at least 10 to 20 years.

Graham: So from your point of view, you have all of the authorization 
and legal authorities necessary to conduct a drone strike against 
terrorist organizations in Yemen without changing the AUMF.

Sheehan: Yes, sir, I do believe that.

Graham: You agree with that, General?

Gross: I do, sir.

Graham: General, do you agree with that?

Nagata: I do, sir.

Graham: OK. Could we send military members into Yemen to strike against 
one of these organizations? Does the president have the authority to put 
boots on the ground in Yemen?

Taylor: As I mentioned before, there's domestic authority and 
international law authority. At the moment the basis for putting boots 
on the ground in Yemen, we respect the sovereignty of Yemen and it would -

Graham: I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about: Does he have the 
legal authority under our law to do that?

Taylor: Under domestic authority, he would have that authority.

Graham: I hope that Congress is OK with that. I'm OK with that. Does he 
have authority to put boots on the ground in the Congo?

Sheehan: Yes sir, he does.

Graham: Do you agree with me that when it comes to international 
terrorism, we're talking about a worldwide struggle?

Sheehan: Absolutely, sir.

Graham: Would you agree with me the battlefield is wherever the enemy 
chooses to make it?

Sheehan: Yes, sir, from Boston to the FATA [Federally Administered 
Tribal Areas in Pakistan, along the Afghan border].

Graham: I couldn't agree with you more. Do you agree with that, General?

Gross: yes, sir. I agree that the enemy decides where the battlefield is.

Graham: And it could be anyplace on the planet and we have to be aware 
and able to act. And do you have the ability to act, and are you aware 
of the threats?

Sheehan: Yes, sir. We do have the ability to react, and we are tracking 
threats globally.

Besides the obvious, there are two things to note. When the Defense 
Department lawyer tried to talk about the sovereignty of other nations, 
he was told to shut up. The other is the reference to Boston as a 
battlefield.

The Democrats on the panel rushed to agree with Graham after King raised 
his objections.

King correctly said that the AUMF only referred to Al Queda as a target. 
But clearly the "war on terror" has gone way beyond that to include the 
countries Afghanistan and Iraq and any other person or organization the 
government declares is "terrorist." King said, "…you are reading [the 
AUMF] to cover everything and anything." The Pentagon officials and the 
Democratic and Republican Senators clearly endorse the more expansive 
(indeed global) view of what the AUMF authorizes.

King also said, "The Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11, 
clearly states that Congress has the power to declare war."

The last time the Congress declared war was for the Second World War. 
That was back when the Department of War was its name. It was changed to 
"Department of Defense" after the U.S. and Britain launched the Cold War 
against the Soviet Union.

Except for a brief period after the Second World War, when there was a 
massive revolt of U.S. soldiers against plans to continue the war in 
Asia by invading China, the U.S. has been engaging in acts of war such 
as trade sanctions and blockades, and actual wars including the Cold War 
which saw permanent threats of atomic annihilation, ever since. None of 
these wars was declared by Congress. Instead it passed vague "enabling" 
resolutions after the fact, to endorse the wars launched by the 
executive branch.

The U.S. invasion of Korea wasn't even called a war. It was a "police 
action" by the United Nations.

The U.S. was involved in France's war against Vietnam from 1945, and 
later directly with the U.S. invasion. Congress never declared war 
against Vietnam, but did pass an "enabling" resolution at President 
Johnson's demand, called the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. It referred to a 
supposed attack on U.S. warships off Vietnam's shores, an attack it was 
later revealed never happened.

When the U.S. under President Kennedy organized the invasion of Cuba by 
Cuban counterrevolutionaries living in Miami under U.S. law, there was 
no Congressional declaration of war against Cuba. During the Cuban 
Missile Crisis, the U.S. came to a hair's breadth of launching an atomic 
attack on the Soviet Union, according to then Secretary of Defense 
McNamara, without a Congressional declaration of war.

The wars against Nicaragua and El Salvador under President Ronald Reagan 
using proxy troops trained, armed and organized by Washington were not 
the result of a Congressional declaration of war. Indeed, Congress did 
pass a resolution to halt the funding of these wars, but Reagan just 
laughed at this Congressional display of impotence and circumvented it.

The first Gulf war against Iraq was not declared either, but done under 
UN auspices. The attack on Somalia and Serbia by President Clinton found 
other fig leaves.

The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the bombing of Libya, the special 
forces attacks in Pakistan, the drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, 
etc. and etc. all come under the AUMF - broadly interpreted - and no 
Congressional declaration of war.

In any case, the U.S. no longer wages "war," it wages "defense."

This usurpation of power by the executive branch at the expense of the 
U.S. Congress and Constitution is part of a broader phenomenon since the 
rise of modern capitalist imperialism in the late 19th century. The 
power of the executive in the imperialist countries has mushroomed along 
with the massive increase in the armed forces of the state. This was 
glaring in the fascist regimes, but was evident in the imperialist 
democracies, too.

This is crystal clear in the massive U.S. military machine with its 
nearly 1,000 bases spread around the world, in its nuclear arsenal on 
hair-trigger, and in the absolute military power concentrated in the 
executive branch, with "Congressional oversight" a joke.

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Imminent Constitutional Court Judgments May Affect GuatemalanGenocide Conviction

Romi Elnagar — 2013-05-23T00:33:47

Imminent Constitutional Court Judgments May Affect Guatemalan Genocide Conviction

The conviction of former de facto head of state Efrain Rios Montt for genocide and crimes against humanity faces continuing challenges. The verdict was issued on Friday, May 10, with the court imposing an 80-year sentence; a full judgment is due to 
be released in a hearing on Friday, May 17. However, Guatemala’s 
Constitutional Court plans to release various judgments in advance of 
Friday’s hearing which threaten to complicate matters, and even 
potentially annul the trial.
Uncertain impact of anticipated Constitutional Court judgments
The Constitutional Court was reportedly due to release four judgments on Wednesday at midday. Chaos reigned at the court at the time the 
Constitutional Court had set for the release of the judgments:  there 
was a pro-Rios Montt demonstration outside and a purported bomb threat inside. After four hours of deliberation, the Constitutional Court announced that 
it would not release any rulings on Wednesday, but instead could release up to six rulings on Thursday due to the “complexity of the subject 
matter.”
Martin Guzman, General Secretary of the Constitutional Court, in an interview with Emisoras Unidas, recounted that the Constitutional Court is reviewing four legal 
challenges which could result in the annulment of the trial or the 
dismissal of the trial court judges.
Guzman also noted that the Court still needs to review two legal challenges related to the application of the country’s 1996 National Reconciliation Law, enacted subsequent to the Peace Accords. (The National Reconciliation Law 
includes a limited amnesty provision which explicitly prohibits the 
application of amnesty to genocide and other international crimes.)
During the trial, the Constitutional Court did not intervene to 
prevent the process from advancing, and issued judgments which permitted it to continue when it stalled. However, their judgments were often 
only partially responsive to the major challenges presented, and opened 
up additional questions. For instance, during a nearly two-week 
suspension of the trial, called to seek constitutional review of the 
order of a pre-trial judge to annul the trial in its entirety, the 
Constitutional Court issued various decisions but no judgment on the 
substantive merits of the annulment order.
The Constitutional Court did reject the annulment order eventually, in a May 8 judgment, but only when the trial court had already 
re-opened the trial and initiated closing arguments. (Judge Carol 
Patricia Flores, the same pre-trial judge who had issued the initial 
annulment order, relied on the Constitutional Court’s May 8 rejection of her first annulment order to issue another, identical, annulment order in the seven-hour window between the official close of the trial and the issuance of the verdict.)
Also, the pending and new challenges highlight some issues already addressed, at least in part, by the Constitutional Court.
Government statements regarding international interference
The government, subsequent to the verdict, has largely aimed to 
emphasize in public statements that the trial demonstrates Guatemala’s 
judicial independence and ability to prosecute complex cases. However, 
on Tuesday, in an official announcement from the Foreign Ministry, 
Guatemala also called on foreign governments to avoid interfering with Guatemala’s sovereignty. (“…[S]e debe ver reflejado en un actuar correspondiente a las costumbres y 
normativas diplomáticas aceptadas por todos los Estados y, en 
particular, en la no injerencia en asuntos nacionales y judiciales que 
se conocen, deliberan y resuleven con absoluta libertad, independencia y autonomia.”)
President Otto Perez Molina reiterated these calls on Wednesday, 
though asserting that the Foreign Ministry’s statement was not intended 
to point to any specific instance of wrongdoing.
The President’s spokesperson, Francisco Cuevas, also criticized NGOs, “with 
international support,” for supporting the polarization in the country, noting that many foreigners, belonging to these NGOs, attended the 
trial. Cuevas implied that this might constitute inappropriate 
“pressure” or interference in the judicial process. (“Es evidente la 
presencia de personas que no son guatemaltecas durante el proceso que se realizó en la sala de vistas de la Corte Suprema de Justicia; 
consideramos que la Justicia debe ser imparcial, sin presiones.”)
Guatemalan business lobby seeks to have genocide conviction overturned
The powerful business association CACIF continues in its public campaign to challenge the verdict and seeks its annulment. In a paid public statement issued on Tuesday, CACIF claimed that the genocide conviction tarnished all Guatemalans, and Guatemalans should challenge it to avoid being 
perceived internationally as on par with the Nazis.
A Wednesday blog by Philip Chicola, hosted by CACIF, expanded upon this argument: 
 “Guatemala has joined the select club of genocidal states, together 
with Nazi Germany, the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Cambodia,” with 
major implications for international perceptions of Guatemala, the 
threat of further prosecutions, and likely obligations of significant 
future financial or land transfers to the Ixil population. Chicola’s 
blog also described the planned 2014 elections of judges and the 
Attorney General as “the mother of all battles”—in light of the outcome 
of the genocide trial.
International actors continue to hail the judgment
Prominent international voices continue to recognize the judgment as 
demonstrative of the possibility of effective domestic prosecution of 
international crimes.
On Wednesday, a group of United Nations experts released a statement emphasizing that “justice is the best guarantee to prevent the recurrence of these crimes.” Pablo de Grieff, a UN Special 
Rapporteur joining the statement, called Guatemala’s trial court 
judgment an “example for many other countries struggling to address the 
rights of victims to truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of 
non-recurrence after periods of mass atrocities.”
The International Crisis Group on Monday identified the conviction as a sign that “no one is above the law and everyone – including indigenous communities long marginalized 
by discrimination and poverty – has the right to seek justice in the 
courts.”
Rios Montt remains hospitalized
Meanwhile, the Military Medical Center where Rios Montt has resided 
since Monday after spending a weekend in Matamoros Prison immediately 
following his conviction, announced that Rios Montt may spend longer in the hospital than originally thought in light of various medical tests.

http://www.riosmontt-trial.org/2013/05/imminent-constitutional-court-judgments-may-affect-guatemalan-genocide-conviction/
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[BillTottenWeblog] Is EVERY Market Rigged?

Bill Totten — 2013-05-23T00:01:35

European Union Launches Investigation Into Manipulation of Oil Prices Since 2002

by Washingtons Blog (May 19 2013)

CNN reports {1}:

    The European Commission raided the offices of Shell, BP and Norway's Statoil this week {2} as part of an investigation into suspected attempts to manipulate global oil prices spanning more than a decade.

    None of the companies have been accused of wrongdoing, but the controversy has brought back memories of the Libor rate-rigging scandal that rocked the financial world last year.

    ...

    A review ordered by the British government last year in the wake of the Libor revelations cited "clear" parallels between the work of the oil-price-reporting agencies and Libor.

    "They are both widely used benchmarks that are compiled by private organizations and that are subject to minimal regulation and oversight by regulatory authorities", the review, led by former financial regulator Martin Wheatley {3}, said in August . "To that extent they are also likely to be vulnerable to similar issues with regards to the motivation and opportunity for manipulation and distortion".

    ...

    In a report issued in October, the International Organization of Securities Commissions - an association of regulators - said the ability "to selectively report data on a voluntary basis creates an opportunity for manipulating the commodity market data" submitted to Platts and its competitors.

    Responding to questions from IOSCO last year, French oil giant Total said the price-reporting agencies, or PRAs, sometimes "do not assure an accurate representation of the market and consequently deform the real price levels paid at every level of the price chain, including by the consumer". But Total called Platts and its competitors "generally ...  conscientious and professional".

    ...

    "Even small distortions of assessed prices may have a huge impact on the prices of crude oil, refined oil products and biofuels purchases and sales, potentially harming final consumers", the European Commission said {4} this week.

USA Today notes {5}:

    The Commission  ...  said, however, that its probe covers a wide range of oil products - crude oil, biofuels, and refined oil products, which include gasoline, heating oil, petrochemicals and others.

    ...

    The EU said it has concerns that some companies may have tried to manipulate the pricing process by colluding to report distorted prices and by preventing other companies from submitting their own prices.

    ...

    Unlike oil futures, which set prices for contracts, the data used in the MOC process is based on the physical sale and purchase of actual shipments of oil and oil products.

    ...

    According to Statoil, the EU investigation stretches back to 2002, which is when Platts launched its MOC price system in Europe. The suspicion is that some companies may have provided inaccurate information to Platts to affect the oil products' pricing, presumably for financial gain.

Fox points out {6}:

    At issue is whether there was collusion to distort prices of crude, refined oil products and ethanol traded during Platts' market-on-close (MOC) system - a daily half-hour "window" in which it sets prices.

    But the European Commission also is examining whether companies were prevented from taking part in the price assessment process.

The Guardian writes {7}:

    The commission said {8} the alleged price collusion, which may have been going on since 2002, could have had a "huge impact" on the price of petrol at the pumps "potentially harming final consumers".

    Lord Oakeshott, former Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, said the alleged rigging of oil prices was "as serious as rigging Libor" - which led to banks being fined hundreds of millions of pounds. {9}

    He demanded to know why the UK authorities had not taken action earlier and said he would ask questions of the British regulator in Parliament. "Why have we had to wait for Brussels to find out if British oil giants are ripping off British consumers?" he said. "The price of energy ripples right through our economy and really matters to every business and families".

    ...

    Shadow energy and climate change secretary Caroline Flint said: "These are very concerning reports, which if true, suggest shocking behaviour in the oil market that should be dealt with strongly.

    "When the allegations of price fixing in the gas market were made, Labour warned that opaque over-the-counter deals and relying on price reporting agencies left the market vulnerable to abuse.

    "These latest allegations of price fixing in the oil market raise very similar questions. Consumers need to know that the prices they pay for their energy or petrol are fair, transparent and not being manipulated by traders".

    Shadow financial secretary to the Treasury Chris Leslie said: "If oil price fixing has taken place it would be a shocking scandal for our financial markets".

The Telegraph reports {10}:

    "97 per cent of all we eat, drink, wear or build has spent some time in a diesel lorry", said a spokesman for FairFuel UK, the lobbyists. "If it is proved, they have been gambling with the very oxygen of our economy"

    ....

    Platts - to determine the benchmark price - examines just trades in the final thirty minutes of the trading day. A group of half a dozen analysts gather round a trading screen and decide on the final price. As with much that goes on in the City, it is a surprisingly old-fashioned method, reliant on gentlemanly conduct. Critics say it leaves the market open to abuse, and the price can suddenly spike or fall in the final minutes of the day.

The New York Times notes {11} of agencies like Platt and Argus Media:

    Their influence is extensive. Total, the French oil giant, estimated last year that 75 to eighty percent of crude oil and refined product transactions were linked to the prices published by such agencies.

The Observer writes {12} that manipulation of the oil markets has long been an open secret:

    Robert Campbell, a former price reporter at another PRA, Argus - he is now a staffer at Thomson Reuters, which also competes with Platts and others on providing energy news and data - said this a few days ago in a little-noticed commentary: "The vulnerability of physical crude price assessments to manipulation is an open secret within the oil industry. The surprise is that it took regulators so long to open a formal probe."

Reuters points out {13} that the probe may be expanding to the US:

    In Washington, the chairman of the Senate energy committee asked the Justice Department to investigate whether alleged price manipulation has boosted fuel prices for US consumers.

    "Efforts to manipulate the European oil indices, if proven, may have already impacted US consumers and businesses, because of the interrelationships among world oil markets and hedging practices", Senator Ron Wyden (Democrat, Oregon), chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, wrote in a letter to Attorney General Eric H Holder Jr.

    Wyden also asked Justice to investigate whether oil market manipulation was taking place in the United States.

Not only are petroleum products a multi-trillion dollar market on their own, but manipulation of petroleum prices would effect virtually every market in the world.

For example, the Cato Institute notes {14} how many industries use oil:

    US industries use petroleum to produce the synthetic fiber used in textile mills making carpeting and fabric from polyester and nylon. US tire plants use petroleum to make synthetic rubber. Other US industries use petroleum to produce plastic, drugs, detergent, deodorant, fertilizer, pesticides, paint, eyeglasses, heart valves, crayons, bubble gum and Vaseline.

The India Times explains that {15}:

    The price variation in crude oil impacts the sentiments and hence the volatility in stock markets all over the world. The rise in crude oil prices is not good for the global economy. Price rise in crude oil virtually impacts industries and businesses across the board. Higher crude oil prices mean higher energy prices, which can cause a ripple effect on virtually all business aspects that are dependent on energy (directly or indirectly).

The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco points out {16}:

    When gasoline prices increase, a larger share of households' budgets is likely to be spent on it, which leaves less to spend on other goods and services. The same goes for businesses whose goods must be shipped from place to place or that use fuel as a major input (such as the airline industry). Higher oil prices tend to make production more expensive for businesses, just as they make it more expensive for households to do the things they normally do.

    ...

    Oil price increases are generally thought to increase inflation and reduce economic growth.

    ...

    Oil prices indirectly affect costs such as transportation, manufacturing, and heating. The increase in these costs can in turn affect the prices of a variety of goods and services, as producers may pass production costs on to consumers.

    ...

    Oil price increases can also stifle the growth of the economy through their effect on the supply and demand for goods other than oil. Increases in oil prices can depress the supply of other goods because they increase the costs of producing them. In economics terminology, high oil prices can shift up the supply curve for the goods and services for which oil is an input.

    High oil prices also can reduce demand for other goods because they reduce wealth, as well as induce uncertainty about the future (Sill 2007 {17}). One way to analyze the effects of higher oil prices is to think about the higher prices as a tax on consumers (Fernald and Trehan 2005 {18}).

The Post Carbon Institute notes (via OilPrice.com {19}) that high oil prices raise food prices as well:

    The connection between food and oil is systemic, and the prices of both food and fuel have risen and fallen more or less in tandem in recent years (Figure 1). Modern agriculture uses oil products to fuel farm machinery, to transport other inputs to the farm, and to transport farm output to the ultimate consumer. Oil is often also used as input in agricultural chemicals. Oil price increases therefore put pressure on all these aspects of commercial food systems.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Food-and-Oil.jpg
Figure 1: Evolution of food and fuel prices, 2000 to 2009
Sources: US Energy Information Administration and FAO.

Economists Nouriel Roubini and Setser {20} note that all recessions after 1973 were associated with oil shocks.

Interest Rates Are Manipulated

Unless you live under a rock, you know about the Libor scandal.

For those just now emerging from a coma, here's a recap:

* The big banks have conspired for years to rig interest rates  ...  upon which $800 trillion in assets are pegged {21}

* This was the largest insider trading scandal ever {22} ...  and the largest financial scam in world history {23}

* Local governments got ripped off bigtime {24} by the Libor manipulation

* Libor is still being manipulated {25}

Derivatives Are Manipulated

The big banks have long manipulated derivatives {26} ...  a $1,200 Trillion Dollar market {27}.

Indeed, many trillions of dollars of derivatives are being manipulated in the exact same same way {28} that interest rates are fixed: through gamed self-reporting {29}.

Gold and Silver Are Manipulated

The Guardian and Telegraph report that gold and silver prices are "fixed" in the same way as interest rates and derivatives - in daily conference calls by the powers-that-be {30}.

Everything Can Be Manipulated through High-Frequency Trading

Traders with high-tech computers can manipulate stocks {31},  bonds, options, currencies and commodities {32}. And see this {33}.

Manipulating Numerous Markets In Myriad Ways

The big banks and other giants manipulate numerous markets in myriad ways {34}, for example:

* Engaging in mafia-style big-rigging fraud against local governments. See {35}, {36} and {37}

* Shaving money off of virtually every pension transaction they handled over the course of decades, stealing collectively billions of dollars from pensions worldwide. Details {38}, {39}, {40}, {41}, {42}, {43}, {44}, {45}, {46}, {47}, and {48}

* Charging "storage fees" to store gold bullion  ...  without even buying or storing any gold {49}. And raiding allocated gold accounts {50}

* Committing massive and pervasive fraud both when they initiated mortgage loans and when they foreclosed on them {51} and {52}

* Pledging the same mortgage multiple times to different buyers.  See {53}, {54}, {55}, {56} and {57}.  This would be like selling your car, and collecting money from ten different buyers for the same car

* Cheating homeowners {58} by gaming laws meant to protect people from unfair foreclosure

* Pushing investments which they knew were terrible, and then betting against the same investments to make money for themselves. See {59}, {60}, {61}, {62} and {63}

* Engaging in unlawful "frontrunning" {64} to manipulate markets. See {65}, {66}, {67}, {68}, {69} and {70}

* Engaging in unlawful "Wash Trades" to manipulate asset prices. See {71}, {72} and {73}

* Otherwise {74} manipulating markets. And see {75}

* Participating in various Ponzi schemes. See {76}, {77} and {78}

* Charging veterans unlawful mortgage fees {79}

* Cooking their books {80} and {81}

* Bribing {82} and bullying {83} ratings agencies to inflate ratings on their risky investments

Links:

{1} http://money.cnn.com/2013/05/17/news/economy/oil-price-libor/index.html

{2} http://money.cnn.com/2013/05/14/news/oil-prices-rigging/index.html?iid=EL

{3} http://money.cnn.com/2012/09/27/investing/libor-wheatley/index.html?iid=EL

{4} http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-13-435_en.htm

{5} http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/05/16/oil-price-fixing-scandal/2166857/

{6} http://www.foxbusiness.com/news/2013/05/16/platts-in-lockdown-as-investigators-continue-oil-probe/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+foxbusiness%2Fmarkets+%28Internal+-+Markets+-+Text%29

{7} http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/may/14/bp-shell-oil-price-rigging

{8} http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-13-435_en.htm

{9} http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/feb/06/rbs-fined-libor-rigging-scandal

{10} http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/oil/10059231/Price-fixing-Is-slick-trading-pushing-up-the-cost-of-oil.html

{11} http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/16/business/global/inquiry-on-potential-oil-price-manipulation-intensifies-in-europe.html?_r=0

{12} http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/may/19/everyone-knew-oil-market-brussels

{13} http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/european-oil-price-probe-widens-us-senator-calls-for-justice-help/2013/05/17/ab65314e-bf3f-11e2-9b09-1638acc3942e_story.html

{14} http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/oil-prices-cause-effect

{15} http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2008-05-18/news/27734891_1_oil-producers-and-consumers-opec-countries-prices-in-global-markets

{16} http://www.frbsf.org/education/activities/drecon/2007/0711.html

{17} http://www.philadelphiafed.org/files/br/2007/br_q1-2007-3_oil-shocks.pdf

{18} http://www.frbsf.org/publications/economics/letter/2005/el2005-31.html

{19} http://oilprice.com/Energy/Oil-Prices/How-Oil-Prices-Affect-The-Price-Of-Food.html

{20} http://people.stern.nyu.edu/nroubini/papers/OilShockRoubiniSetser.pdf

{21} http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/07/big-banks-criminally-conspire-to-rig-800-trillion-dollar-market.html

{22} http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/07/libor-the-largest-insider-trading-scandal-ever.html

{23} http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/07/the-biggest-banking-scam-in-world-history.html

{24} http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/07/the-big-losers-in-the-libor-rate-manipulation.html

{25} http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21523989

{26} http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/08/a-cartel-of-big-banks-is-harming-the-world-economy-by-manipulating-derivatives.html

{27} http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/05/top-derivatives-expert-finally-gives-a-credible-estimate-of-the-size-of-the-global-derivatives-market.html

{28} http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-10/icap-brokers-on-treasure-island-said-to-reap-isdafix-rewards.html

{29} http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-04-18/meet-isdafix-the-libor-scandals-sequel

{30} http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/03/gold-and-silver-prices-are-set-with-libor-like-daily-conference-call-with-a-handful-of-big-banks.html

{31} http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/04/84-of-all-stock-trades-are-by-high-frequency-computers-only-16-are-done-by-humans.html

{32} http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/07/libor-is-not-the-only-manipulated-economic-indicator.html

{33} http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/07/goldman-sachs-admits-its-software-can-manipulate-markets-in-unfair-ways%E2%80%9D.html

{34} http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/07/big-banks-are-criminal-enterprises.html

{35} http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-scam-wall-street-learned-from-the-mafia-20120620

{36} http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/notes-on-wall-streets-bid-rigging-scandal-20120622

{37} http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-14/governments-using-swaps-emulate-subprime-victims-of-wall-street.html

{38} http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/28/bny-mellon-case_n_1172575.html

{39} http://www.nydailynews.com/money/2009/02/21/2009-02-21_bank_of_new_york_mellon_scored_3b_bailou.html

{40} http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/05/business/new-york-state-says-bank-of-new-york-mellon-cheated-pension-funds.html

{41} http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2011/10/6_Madoff_Whistleblower_Tells_KWN_Banks_Stealing_From_Pensions.html

{42} http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-10-07/wall_street/30253397_1_trial-dates-bny-mellon-bank

{43} http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703652104576122220220538048.html

{44} http://blogs.reuters.com/financial-regulatory-forum/2011/02/04/analysis-madoff-whistleblower-tries-new-shield-tactic-in-bank-fraud-suits/

{45} http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/wsj_on_harry_markopolos_whistl.php

{46} http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703960804576120544029594566.html?mod=ITP_pageone_0#articleTabs%3Darticle

{47} http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-12/sec-probes-state-street-foreign-exchange-pricing.html

{48} http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/21/business/21street.html

{49} http://uk.reuters.com/article/2007/06/12/morganstanley-suit-idUKN1228014520070612

{50} http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/07/beware-allocated-gold-may-not-really-be-there.html

{51} http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/10/at-the-root-of-the-crisis-we-find-the-largest-financial-swindle-in-world-history-where-counterfeit-mortgages-were-laundered-by-the-banks.html

{52} http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/12/the-fbi-estimates-that-80-percent-of-all-mortgage-fraud-involves-collaboration-or-collusion-by-industry-insiders.html

{53} http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/10/professors-black-and-wray-confirm-that.html

{54} http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/10/mortgages-were-fraudulently-pledged-to-multiple-buyers-at-the-same-time.html

{55} http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/10/was-abacus-the-business-model-for-the-entire-mortgage-industry.html

{56} http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/10/the-fraud-perpetrated-upon-investors-and-insurers-due-to-multiple-pledges-of-collateral-could-be-massive.html

{57} http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/10/how-did-the-banks-get-away-with-pledging-mortgages-to-multiple-buyers.html

{58} http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/08/bank-of-america-whistleblower-idUSL2E8E804820120308

{59} http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/07/goldman-bet-against-entire-european-nations-who-were-clients-the-same-way-it-bet-against-its-subprime-mortgage-clients.html

{60} http://www.zerohedge.com/article/jp-morgan-sold-investors-mbs-covered-sack-shit-loans-goldman-aig-redux

{61} http://www.teribuhl.com/2012/05/12/sec-tells-jp-morgan-enforcement-action-coming-over-bears-mortgage-backed-securities-violations/

{62} http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2010/2010-123.htm

{63} http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/08/bank-of-america-down-20-today-after-being-sued-by-aig-for-massive-fraud-goldman-jp-morgan-and-deutsche-are-next.html

{64} http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_running

{65} http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/09/17/exclusive-nobel-winner-joseph-stiglitz-predicts-recessions-end/

{66} http://www.zerohedge.com/article/whoa-glitch-hft

{67} http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/07/corporate-media-spotlights-distortion-of-market-by-high-frequency-trading.html

{68} http://www.zerohedge.com/taxonomy_vtn/term/8356

{69} http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/07/what-is-high-frequency-trading-and-how.html

{70} http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18809

{71} http://news.yahoo.com/jpmorgan-fined-wash-trades-oil-gasoline-151048338--sector.html

{72} http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-02/rbc-sued-by-u-s-regulators-over-wash-trades-seeking-tax-benefit.html

{73} http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-22/wash-trading-by-high-frequency-firms-said-to-face-u-s-scrutiny.html

{74} http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/07/03/jpmorgan-role-in-power-market-comes-under-scrutiny/

{75} http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/05/will-silver-and-gold-prices-rise-now-that-the-feds-are-launching-criminal-and-civil-investigations-into-manipulation-of-the-silver-market.html

{76} http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/02/15/in-prison-madoff-says-banks-had-to-know-of-fraud/

{77} http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20120417-716851.html

{78} http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/02/28/2665114/55-victims-of-ponzi-schemer-rothstein.html

{79} http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Banks-allegedly-charged-vets-illegal-mortgage-fees-2328659.php

{80} http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304830104575172280848939898.html?mod=WSJ_Markets_MIDDLETopNews

{81} http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/03/lehman-fraudulently-cooked-its-books-accounting-giant-ernst-young-helped-geithner-and-bernanke-winked-and-slapped-them-on-the-back.html

{82} http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/09/credit-rating-agencies-took-bribes-for-higher-ratings.html

{83} http://www.zerohedge.com/news/unsealed-documents-expose-morgan-stanley-forcing-rating-agencies-inflate-ratings

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/05/is-every-market-rigged.html

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Guatemala’s Constitutional Court Overturns Rios Montt Conviction and Sends Trial Back to April 19

Romi Elnagar — 2013-05-22T22:24:22

Guatemala’s Constitutional Court Overturns Rios Montt Conviction and Sends Trial Back to April 19

Only ten days after a trial court issued its historic verdict 
convicting Efrain Rios Montt for genocide and crimes against humanity, 
and sentencing him to prison for 80 years, Guatemala’s Constitutional Court, in a 3-2 ruling, overturned the verdict and set the trial back to where it was April 19. This verdict had been 
the first genocide conviction of a former head of state in a domestic, 
rather than international, court.
Rios Montt was convicted for crimes committed against Guatemala’s Maya Ixil indigenous population during his 17-month de facto rule in 1982 and 1983 following a military coup. On Friday, May 17, the trial court (Tribunal Primero de Sentencia Penal, Narcoactividad y Delitos contra el Ambiente de Mayor Riesgo “A”) released its final 718-page judgment, describing in detail the foundation for Rios Montt’s conviction.
During the course of the trial, more than 90 witnesses testified of 
indiscriminate massacres, rape and sexual violence against women, 
infanticide, the destruction of crops to induce starvation, the 
abduction of children, and the forcible displacement and relocation of 
surviving populations into militarized “model villages”. Experts also 
provided foren sic, military, sociological and other testimony and 
analysis.
The verdict came 30 years after the crimes and 13 years after the 
complaint was brought by survivors to the Public Ministry for 
investigation and prosecution.
The Constitutional Court, in its judgment on Monday, overturned the 
verdict and annulled the final days of the trial—sending the trial back 
to where it was on April 19. (On April 19, the tribunal had heard all 
prosecution witnesses, but still awaited the presentation of some of the defense witnesses, closing arguments and, of course, the final verdict 
and sentence.) The Constitutional Court also ordered the official 
suspension of the trial pending the full resolution of certain legal 
challenges raised by the defense.
At least for now, the Constitutional Court ordered that the same 
trial court – Presiding Judge Yassmin Barrios and her associates Pablo 
Xitumul and Patricia Bustamante – reconvene to consider the case. It 
gave the tribunal 24 hours to comply “exactly” with these orders or risk dismissal from their posts and the possibility of civil or criminal 
sanction. In its judgment, the Constitutional Court did not acknowledge 
explicitly that the trial had already completed, concluding with a 
conviction.
The decision stemmed from a constitutional challenge (amparo) 
raised by Rios Montt’s defense attorneys at the very end of the trial. 
In response to an earlier challenge, both the Constitutional Court and a Guatemalan appeals court ordered the trial court to remedy a due 
process violation from the opening day of the trial—the expulsion of 
Rios Montt’s newly-appointed defense attorney on the middle of that 
first day, leaving him represented only by the attorney for his 
co-accused for several hours, until his prior defense attorneys returned to his side on the morning of the second day. (See below for more 
information.)
In the challenge at issue in Monday’s Constitutional Court judgment 
overturning the verdict, Rios Montt asserted that the trial court had not in fact complied with the orders of the appeals court concerning this due 
process violation, even though the appeals court had recognized the 
trial court as having fully complied, in a judgment issued by the 
appeals court just the day before the release of the verdict. (Rios 
Montt’s challenge was, in effect, a challenge to the appeals court’s 
finding that the trial court implemented fully the appellate court’s 
order.)
Media sources reported last week that the Constitutional Court was delayed in issuing its ruling because of division among the judges of the court. That division was evident in the judgment released on Monday. Three of 
five judges – Hector Perez Aguilera (the President of the Court), 
Alejandro Maldonado and Roberto Molina – supported the ruling, while 
Judges Mauricio Chacon and Gloria Patricia Porras filed strong 
dissenting opinions.
Judge Chacon, in his dissent, affirmed that there was nothing that 
rose to a level of a constitutional violation that should be dealt with 
in this extraordinary way, through an amparo; criticized the 
Constitutional Court’s remedy as disproportionate, particularly as the 
trial court already issued a sentence; and objected to the actions of 
Rios Montt’s defense attorney as intentionally obstructionist. He 
regretted that the Constitutional Court now rewarded these 
obstructionist efforts with an annulment of the verdict, with the 
Constitutional Court blaming the trial court judges when their actions 
“did not invoke anything that suggested a lack of impartiality.” (“…no invoco nada a cerca de la falta de imparcialidad de los integrantes de dicho tribunal.”) Judge Chacon also identified the decision of the Constitutional Court as detrimental to judicial certainty in Guatemala
Judge Porras, for her part, criticized the majority’s decision for 
“leaving the victims’ constitutional right of access to justice 
unprotected.” (“…el Tribunal Constitucional, al resolver sobre la 
anulación y suspensión de las actuaciones del Tribunal de Sentencia, 
está dejando desprotegidas a las víctimas de su derecho constitucional 
de acceso a la justicia.”)
Guatemalan lawyers have described the appropriate mechanisms for a 
challenge to the verdict as through a “special appeals” process (la apelacion especial, described in Articles 415-22 of the Guatemalan Criminal Procedural Code) available within the ten days following the issuance of the trial 
court’s final judgment. The ten-day window for Rios Montt’s appeal thus 
began on Friday. Because of this, some have contested that the 
Constitutional Court did not have jurisdiction to rule here, prior to 
the filing of a “special appeal” and the release of a judgment from the 
appellate court.
However, the Constitutional Court reported various times last week that it was still considering legal challenges from Rios Montt that were pending from when the trial was still in 
session. Rios Montt’s attorney highlighted that, on the day that the 
guilty verdict was released, it had 12 interim legal challenges pending; it filed various more subsequent to the announcement of the verdict. 
Prosecutors and civil parties have consistently asserted that the 
defense strategy has relied excessively on constitutional challenges (amparos) to delay or obfuscate the trial.
During the past week, with the Constitutional Court asserting that it was on the verge of issuing rulings which could annul the verdict, 
there was tension in Guatemala related to the trial; forceful and repeated calls from CACIF, Guatemala’s powerful business association, for the verdict to be overturned; and explicit threats made by Rios Montt’s lawyer of national paralysis if the Constitutional Court did not rule in Rios Montt’s favor, as well as bomb threats at 
the Constitutional Court and other government offices.
Rios Montt had been transported from the trial court to Matamoros 
Prison after the verdict, on Friday, May 10, to begin to carry out his 
sentence. However, by Monday, May 13, he had been transported to a 
military medical facility (el Centro Medico Militar) on account 
of hypertension and other medical problems. The Constitutional Court 
judgment means he will likely not return immediately to Matamoros 
Prison.
Background of the Judgment
The origins of the Court’s judgment on Monday are defense challenges to the trial court’s actions on March 19, 2013, the first day of the trial.
Francisco Garcia Gudiel appeared for the first time as Rios Montt’s 
attorney on the opening day of the trial, notifying the court that Rios 
Montt had substituted him that morning for his entire defense team. 
Garcia Gudiel then proceeded to mount various legal challenges to the 
continuation of the trial. All were rejected by the trial court.
Garcia Gudiel’s final legal challenge that day was a motion to recuse two of the tribunal judges—presiding judge Yassmin Barrios for enmity, 
and her associate judge Pablo Xitumul for amity. The tribunal ruled that Rios Montt was precluded procedurally from seeking a recusal at that 
stage. The trial court then ordered Garcia Gudiel’s expulsion and 
compelled the attorney for Mauricio Rodriguez Sanchez, Rios Montt’s 
co-accused, to defend him if Rios Montt was unable or unwilling to 
introduce his own chosen counsel who would accept the makeup of the 
tribunal.
The following morning, when Rios Montt did not come to court with an 
attorney, Judge Barrios stated that she would seek public defense 
counsel if Rios Montt did not bring in chosen counsel. The general 
quickly stepped out to make a phone call and one of his prior counsel 
soon re-appeared at his side to represent him. Others subsequently 
re-joined his defense team.
This series of events was the source of various legal challenges. On 
March 26, the Third Chamber of Guatemala’s Court of Appeals (Sala Tercera de la Corte de Apelaciones) initially denied that the trial court violated Rios Montt’s constitutional rights on the first day of the trial.
On appeal, the Constitutional Court, on April 22, 2013, ruled in favor of Rios Montt, suspending the trial court’s ruling. Judge Chacon, who dissented from 
Monday’s judgment, also dissented from the April 22 ruling—asserting 
that Garcia Gudiel inserted himself into the case, improperly, in order 
to force the expulsion of two of the judges. (“…asumió la defensa con el objeto especifico de provocar la separación de los jueces que ya intervenian”).
In the interim, the Third Chamber also reversed its earlier ruling. 
On April 18, the Third Chamber ordered provisionally that the trial 
court re-incorporate Garcia Gudiel as defense counsel for Rios Montt; 
and suspend the trial temporarily to allow for resolution of this issue. It left to the trial court the immediate crafting of an appropriate 
remedy.
The Constitutional Court reviewed the Third Chamber’s April 18 judgment. In two May 3 decisions, the Constitutional Court upheld the Third Chamber’s decision. The same two judges dissented from that decision as dissented today. At the time, Judge Porras asserted that there was no violation of a 
fundamental right given the remedies already ordered, and highlighted 
the potential for constitutional challenges (amparos)to be abused. Judge Chacon described the remedy ordered as “manifestly disproportionate”.
On May 6, the Third Chamber again recognized a constitutional violation—this time in a final, rather than provisional, judgment. It ordered the 
trial court to reincorporate Garcia Gudiel as attorney for Rios Montt 
and suspend the trial until the recusal motion posed by Garcia Gudiel 
was responded to.
According to the Constitutional Court’s judgment released on Monday evening, the trial court continued in spite of the suspension order issued on April 18.
However, the trial court did in fact suspend the trial on April 19 for the resolution of various issues. When the trial court eventually reconvened on April 30, it reinstated Garcia Gudiel as Rios Montt’s defense counsel and, as a remedy for the due process violation found by the 
Constitutional Court, the trial court also re-read the indictment to 
Rios Montt, and set aside the testimony of the witnesses heard during 
the first afternoon when Rios Montt did not have his own defense 
attorney present.
On May 8, following the May 6 decision of the Third Chamber, the 
trial court also heard again, and rejected on substantive grounds, Garcia Gudiel’s renewed motion for the recusal of Judges Barrios and Xitumul.
After receiving a report from the trial court, following another 
complaint from Rios Montt’s attorneys, the Third Chamber concluded in a 
May 9 decision – the day before the trial court announced its verdict – 
that the trial court did indeed comply with the Third Chamber’s May 6 
judgment by re-incorporating Garcia Gudiel as defense counsel for Rios 
Montt and hearing and considering the recusal motion.
The Constitutional Court judgment arises from Rios Montt’s challenge (ocurso en queja) to this May 9 judgment—Rios Montt essentially asked the Constitutional 
Court to rule that the Third Chamber was wrong to accept that the trial 
court complied with its orders. The Constitutional Court did so, 
“setting aside” that judgment and issuing the orders described above.

http://www.riosmontt-trial.org/2013/05/constitutional-court-overturns-rios-montt-conviction-and-sends-trial-back-to-april-19/
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Ava Wynne: The Bob Dylan Songbook

Ed Pearl — 2013-05-22T20:54:40

 


My friend Ava Wynne will present an evening of songs from what she calls the
"Bob Dylan Songbook".  Come and hear tunes you may have not really taken in,
songs like "Nettie Moore", "I Don't Believe You", and "Spanish Harlem
Incident", and more, sung by a wonderful singer with a beautiful voice but
importantly,  an intelligent ear and talent for thoughtful, playful, and
dramatic interpretations. Catch her at the M Bar in Hollywood, 1253 Vine St,
next  Wednesday, May 29th, 8 o'clock show. I've attached her flyer for all
the information. 

-Ed

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San Onofre at the No Nukes Brink

Romi Elnagar — 2013-05-22T16:42:48

San Onofre at the No Nukes Brink
  
In January, it seemed the restart of San Onofre Unit 2 would be a corporate cake walk. 
With its massive money and clout, Southern California Edison
was ready to ram through a license exception for a reactor whose botched
 $770 million steam generator fix had kept it shut for a year. 
But a funny thing has happened on the way to the restart:  a No Nukes 
groundswell has turned this routine rubber stamping into an epic battle 
the grassroots just might win. 
Indeed, if ever there was a time when individual activism could have a magnified impact, this is it (see www.sanonofresafety.org and www.a4nr.org). 
This comes as the nuclear industry is in nearly full retreat.  Two US 
reactors are already down this year.  Yet another proposed project has 
just been cancelled in North Carolina.  And powerful grassroots 
campaigns have pushed numerous operating reactors to the brink of 
extinction throughout the US, Europe and Japan, where all but two 
reactors remain shut since Fukushima. 
In California, it's San Onofre that's perched at the brink.  
By all accounts Southern California Edison should have the clout to 
restart it with ease.   The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been a 
notorious rubber stamp for decades.  The California Public Utilities 
Commission, which decides how much the utilities can gouge from the 
ratepayers, has long been in Edison's pocket.  State water quality 
regulations could force Edison to build cooling towers, a very expensive proposition that would likely lead to a quick retirement.  But Gov. 
Jerry Brown has been deafeningly silent on the issue. 
But San Onofre sits in an earthquake/tsunami zone halfway between Los 
Angeles and San Diego.  At least 8 million people live within a 50 mile 
radius, many millions more within 100. The reactors are a stone's throw 
from both a major interstate and the high tide line, with a 14-foot 
flood wall a bare fraction of the height of the tsunami that overwhelmed at Fukushima. 
San Onofre Unit One was shut in 1992 by steam generator issues.   Edison recently spent some three-quarters of a billion dollars upgrading the 
steam generators for Units 2 and 3.  But the pipes have leaked and 
failed.  Units 2 and 3 have been shut since January 2012.  Edison has 
now asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for permission to run Unit 2 at 70% power for five months to see how the reactor might do.  An NRC 
panel has termed the idea "experimental." 
Edison is desperate to get the reactor running before summer.  But in 
the wake of Fukushima, and in the midst of a major boom in solar energy, southern California is rising up to stop that from happening.  
X  A dozen cities, towns and public organizations---including a 
unanimous Los Angeles city council and the public school district of San Diego---have asked that public hearings and/or further in-depth, 
transparent investigations be held before the reactors reopen.    
X  US Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Representative Ed Markey (D-MA) 
have asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to thoroughly investigate 
all relevant issues----and to make them public---before restart can 
occur. The Boxer/Markey inquiry has included some heated dialogue with 
regulatory staff.  It's raised critical questions about whether Edison 
knew it was installing faulty equipment in the first place, a 
potentially explosive revelation given the dangers and costs involved.   
X  Newly revealed correspondence between Edison and Mitsubishi over 
additional steam generator issues reveal persistent unresolved 
disagreements about the technology involved and what needs to be done 
about it, casting further doubt on what might constitute safe operating 
procedures.   
X  In response to a suit by Friends of the Earth, the NRC's Atomic 
Safety and Licensing Board has ruled that Edison's restart application 
in fact constitutes a license amendment, which should require a full 
public hearing.  The NRC Commissioners could overrule its licensing 
board.  But this was a unanimous decision and the public and 
Congressional outcry would be substantial.  It's a huge setback for 
Edison, damaging what's left of its credibility and likely pushing 
restart far into the future.  There's also much Edison is likely to want hidden from the public record. 
X  NRC Chair Allison Macfarlane now says San Onofre cannot be licensed 
to restart at least until late June, which probably pushes any actual 
restart date until after the summer.   
X  So this could become the region's second straight peak season with no power from San Onofre.  Despite utility rhetoric, its absence last 
summer caused no blackouts or significant shortages, and none are 
expected this summer either.  Edison's argument that the reactors are 
needed to keep the region cool and lit will thus disappear. 
X  Edison CEO Theodore Craver now says San Onofre could be permanently 
shut before the end of the year.  "Edison is hemorrhaging cash at San 
Onofre," says FOE's Damon Moglen.  Craver is "a financial guy" who is 
now just "looking for the right numbers to get to shut-down." 
It's common in the nuke blackmail business for a utility to threaten to 
shut a reactor where jobs and power are desperately needed.  But Edison 
now has a more desperate theme.  The spread of solar throughout southern California will bring far more jobs than San Onofre can begin to 
promise.  A new feed-in tariff in Los Angeles has helped spread solar 
panels throughout the region 
( http://prn.fm/2013/04/08/green-power-and-wellness-040813/#axzz2TW6S1BP3 ).   
Edison billed southern California ratepayers roughly $1 billion for San 
Onofre in 2012 even though it generated no juice.  The CPUC would 
probably let them do it again, but public awareness and anger levels 
have soared. Major media throughout the region have been pummeling 
Edison, largely over economic issues. 
Should San Onofre stay dead, its power void will fast be filled by 
cheaper, cleaner, safer green technologies destined to make southern 
California a major focal point in the global march to Solartopia.   
This shutdown would take the number of licensed US reactors down to 
100.  With others on the brink at Indian Point, Vermont Yankee, Oyster 
Creek  and elsewhere, the race to shut the world's nukes before the next Fukushima is turning the so-called nuclear renaissance into an all-out 
reactor retreat.   

http://www.nukefree.org/editorsblog/san-onofre-no-nukes-brink
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Corporate Hunger for Profits Has Devastated American Life --and the World Along with It

Ed Pearl — 2013-05-22T13:18:15

From: earthactionnetwork< at >earthlink.net 
 

<http://www.alternet.org/print/economy/4-big-ways-insatiable-
corporate-hunger-profits-has-devastated-american-life-and- world-along>

 

The 4 Big Ways That Insatiable Corporate Hunger for Profits Has Devastated
American Life -- and the World Along with It

 

By Paul Buchheit

 

Alternate: May 19, 2013    

 

The damage caused by the relentless corporate drive for profits has become
more clear in recent years. In the most important areas of American life,
devastating changes have occurred:

 

Health Care [3]: Almost half of the working-age adults in America passed up
doctor visits or other medical services because they couldn't afford to pay.
The system hasn't supported kids, either. A UNICEF study [4] places the U.S.
26th out of 29 OECD countries in the overall well-being of its children.

 

Education [5]: Student loan balances increased by 75% between 2007 and 2012.

 

Household Wealth [6]: Median wealth fell by 66% among Hispanic households
and 53% among black households between 2005 and 2009, mainly because of the
mortgage banking collapse. Almost half of Americans have ZERO [7]wealth,
with their assets surpassed by debt.

 

Water and Food [8]: Life-giving seeds and drinking water have been
increasingly treated as products to be bought and sold.

 

All these areas of life have been degraded by a free-market system that has
thrived [9] on publicly-funded research, infrastructure, and defense. Yet in
a brazen show of hypocrisy [10], major corporations have ignored all the
problems they've caused, choosing instead to cut their taxes in half despite
doubling their profits, to hold 60% [11] of its cash offshore, to eliminate
workers rather than create jobs, and to reduce the pay of their remaining
employees.

 

An Apple executive explained: "We don't have an obligation to solve
America's problems."

 

Calling Themselves 'Multinationals': No Allegiance to Anyone

 

Big business has found its Utopia, a world in which millions of people are
willing to work for a fraction of U.S. salaries.

 

In this dream world of global capitalism, young people are going from zero
income on the farm to a few dollars a day on a 12- hour factory shift, and
as a result, based on the World Bank's [12] poverty threshold of $1.25 per
day, they're no longer "in poverty." So the media piles on praise for free
markets. The Economist [13] proclaimed that "poverty is declining
everywhere." The Washington Post [14] gushed that "a billion people have
been lifted from poverty through free-market competition."

 

But the reality is very different. Inequality continues to grow, both
between [15] and within [16] countries. Poverty [17] levels haven't changed
much in 30 years, with almost half of humanity [17], up to three billion
people, living on less than $2.50 a day. A quarter of the world's children
[18] - over 170 million kids under age five - are growing up stunted because
of malnutrition.

 

The World Bank estimates the total cost [18] for a successful attack on
malnutrition would be approximately $10.3 to $11.8 billion annually. Apple
[19] alone underpaid its 2012 taxes by $11 billion, based on a 35% rate.

 

It may be time to update the company's quote: "We don't have an obligation
to solve the world's problems."

 

Even if there were no obligation to help solve the world's problems, there
IS an obligation to pay for global energy consumption and infrastructure
usage and industrial pollution. Yet a review of 25 multinational companies
[20] shows clear negligence in meeting that responsibility. The 25
companies, with almost a half-trillion dollars in 2011-12 income, paid just
8% in taxes to the U.S. and 9% to foreign countries. A 35% tax -- paid to
ANY country or countries -- would have generated another $90 billion over
two years, four times the amount needed to battle malnutrition.

 

Even Worse Than Not Paying: Making the World Pay for Them

 

A recent study [21] estimated that toxic pollution [22] affects the health
of more than 100 million people, shortening their productive life spans by
12.7 years on average. A related study [23] concluded that in 2010 over 8
million individuals were at risk of exposure to industrial pollutants at 373
toxic waste sites in three low-income countries (India, Indonesia, and the
Philippines).

 

Some of our largest multinational companies hold top positions on the
federal contractor misconduct [24] list, which recognizes corporate
environmental, ethics, and labor violations. Oil spills are common.
Underdeveloped countries like Nigeria [25] have been ravaged by oil
production. Big firms are buying up farmland [26] in more than 60 developing
countries. Most perversely, multinationals are working hard to pass trade
agreements, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership [27], which would actually
dismantle environmental protections.

 

Absurd as it once seemed, a 1991 quote from the World Bank's Larry Summers
now comes back to haunt us: "Just between you and me, shouldn't the World
Bank be encouraging more migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs
(lesser developed countries)?...I've always thought that underpopulated
countries in Africa are vastly under polluted."

 

And as big business makes its way around the world like a modern-day Attila
the Hun, pillaging and despoiling, it has the U.S. military [28] covering
its back with 900 overseas bases in 130 nations. If one of the countries
kicks up a fuss, the corporations can just move on to the next one.

See more stories tagged with:

economy [29]

Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/economy/4-big-ways-
insatiable-corporate-hunger-profits-has-devastated-american-
life-and-world-along

 

Links:

[1] http://www.alternet.org

[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/paul-buchheit

[3] http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2013/04/26/43-percent-of-
US-working-age-adults-cant-afford-doctor/UPI- 37621367028447/

[4] http://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/rc11_eng.pdf

[5] http://newsroom.transunion.com/press-releases/transunion-
study-finds-more-than-half-of-student-l-979763#.UZOcEUrS81c

[6] http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2011/07/26/wealth-gaps-rise-
to-record-highs-between-whites-blacks-hispanics/

[7] http://epi.3cdn.net/2a7ccb3e9e618f0bbc_3nm6idnax.pdf

[8] http://www.alternet.org/economy/5-ways-privatization- poisoning-america

[9] http://www.nationofchange.org/corporate-betrayal-america- 1365428046

[10] http://truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/17786-
corpocrisy-the-systematic-betrayal-of-american-workers

[11] http://blogs.wsj.com/cfo/2012/05/17/at-big-u-s-companies-
60-of-cash-sits-offshore-j-p-morgan/

[12]
http://econ.worldbank.org/external/default/main?pagePK=64165259&amp;theSiteP
K=469372&amp;piPK=64165421&amp;menuPK=64166093&amp;entityID=000158349_200809
02095754

[13] http://www.economist.com/node/21548963

[14] http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/is-capitalism-
moral/2013/03/15/a9ed66d4-868b-11e2-999e- 5f8e0410cb9d_story.html

[15]
http://www.unicef.org/socialpolicy/files/Global_Inequality_REVISED_-_5_July.
pdf

[16]
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTDECINEQ/Resources/BSutcliffeGlobalizat
ion.pdf

[17] http://www.stwr.org/globalization/world-bank-poverty-
figures-what-do-they-mean.html

[18] http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/resources/online-
library/life-free-hunger-tackling-child-malnutrition

[19]
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/320193/000119312512444068/d411355d10k
.htm

[20] http://www.payupnow.org/GlobalTaxes2011-12.htm

[21] http://www.worstpolluted.org/2011-press-%20release.html

[22] http://www.ipsnews.net/2011/11/toxins-rob-more-than-a-
decade-of-life-from-millions/

[23] http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/1206127/

[24] http://www.contractormisconduct.org/

[25] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4746874.stm

[26] http://m.bangkokpost.com/opinion/294788

[27] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-johnson/upcoming-
trans-pacific-pa_b_3276855.html

[28] http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-
meter/statements/2011/sep/14/ron-paul/ron-paul-says-us-has-
military-personnel-130-nation/

[29] http://www.alternet.org/tags/economy-0

[30] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B

 

--------------------

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/opinion/sunday/climate-
warnings-growing-louder.html

 

Climate Warnings, Growing Louder

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD: May 19, 2013

 

The news that atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, the most
important global warming gas, have hit 400 parts per million for the first
time in millions of years increases the pressure on President Obama to
deliver on his pledges to limit this country's greenhouse gas emissions.

 

America cannot solve a global problem by itself. But as Mr. Obama rightly
observed in his inaugural address, the United States, as both major polluter
and world leader, has a deep obligation to help shield the international
community from rising sea levels, floods, droughts and other devastating
consequences of a warming planet. In his State of the Union speech, he
promised to take executive action if Congress failed to pass climate
legislation.

 

Which is just what he will have to do. The prospects for broad- based
Congressional action putting a price on carbon emissions are nil. The House
is run by people who care little for environmental issues generally, and
Senate Republicans who once favored a pricing strategy, like John McCain and
Lindsey Graham, have long since slunk away. Meanwhile, Republicans on the
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee have spent the last two weeks
trying to derail Mr. Obama's nominee to run the Environmental Protection
Agency - a moderate named Gina McCarthy. Ms. McCarthy has served two
Republican governors (Mitt Romney was one) but is considered suspect by the
right wing because she wants to control carbon pollution, which is driving
global temperatures upward.

 

Hence the need for executive action. Yet we are now four months into Mr.
Obama's second term, and there is no visible sign of a coherent strategy.
One plausible reason is that Mr. Obama has been preoccupied with other
issues and that his key players on climate have not been in place. But that
excuse disappears if Ms. McCarthy can survive a threatened Senate
filibuster; even if she does not, Mr. Obama has sufficient talent in the
E.P.A. and the Energy Department and among his science advisers to get
started.

 

As this page has noted, it is possible to adopt a robust climate strategy
based largely on executive actions. The most important of these is to invoke
the E.P.A.'s authority under the Clean Air Act to limit pollution from
stationary industrial sources, chiefly the power plants that account for
almost 40 percent of the country's carbon emissions. The agency is reworking
a proposed rule to limit emissions from new power plants. A more complex but
no less necessary task is to devise rules for existing power plants, which
cannot be quickly shuttered without endangering the country's power supply,
but which can be made more efficient or phased out over time.

 

Mr. Obama can also order the E.P.A. to curb the enormous leakage of methane,
a potent global warming agent, from gas wells and the pipes that bring
natural gas to consumers. This is critical if America's bountiful supplies
of cheap natural gas are to become a cleaner bridge from coal to alternative
energy sources like wind and solar power.

 

He can hasten the development of less-polluting alternatives to
older-generation refrigerants and other chemicals. He can order the Energy
Department to embark on a major program to improve the efficiency of
appliances and commercial and residential buildings, which consume a huge
chunk of the country's energy supply. And he can ramp up investment in basic
research.

 

All of this will take time, which is why it is important to get started. The
most important of Mr. Obama's first-term environmental initiatives - the
historic fuel economy standards that will double the efficiency of America's
cars and light trucks - took more than three years to complete between the
time they were proposed and when they were finalized last August. New power
plant standards can be expected to take at least as long.

 

Mr. Obama has a firm grasp of the climate issue, and no one doubts that he
cares about it. But as is often the case with this president, the question
is whether he will exhibit a sense of urgency to match his intellectual
understanding.