Shadow Government "Money" Supply Growth from ShadowStats

Chart of U.S. Money Supply Growth

05 November, 2013

The Creepy Line


Poor baby.  Go ogle’s executive chairman isn’t happy.  Seems the criminal organization with which Go ogle has been “sharing” ogled information got him drunk and tool advantage of him.

Let’s recap:  Goldfinger (consisting of ultra-rich megalomaniacs bent on world empire, from whence organizations including ), fronted by the Bush Crime Family, “began” collecting “metadata” on everyone’s phone calls, etc., as early as ’02 (“Echelon”, the cooperative program collecting phone calls, faxes, telexes, etc.,  well before Y2K, and complained of by the European Parliament as early as ’98, is not addressed in this post), and set up data-collection "at the source" in '06.*

Go ogle began its “wi-fi sniffing”  in ’07, and claims it only “discovered” that it was stealing private information (that’s the proper description) in 2010, when Germany’s Data Protection Authority expressed a desire to examine wifi network data collected in Germany.  

Right. Because Go ogle wasn’t smart enough to review its code before it launched the project.  Go ogle said as much.  It seems that in ’06:

“an engineer working on an experimental WiFi project wrote a piece of code that sampled all categories of publicly broadcast WiFi data,” the company wrote. “A year later, when our mobile team started a project to collect basic WiFi network data like SSID information and MAC addresses using Google’s Street View cars, they included that code in their software—although the project leaders did not want, and had no intention of using, payload data.”


Go ogle was stealing private information (again, that’s the proper description) for approximately three years.  We are expected to believe that Go ogle didn’t know it.  For 3 years.  36 (or so) months. 1, 095 days, each consisting of 24 hours.  Not to belabor the point, but how many gigabits can Go ogle transmit in a second?

Now, Eric Schmidt, one of the originators of Go ogle, says "It's really outrageous that the National Security Agency was looking between the Google data centers, if that's true," http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/04/eric-schmidt-nsa-spying-data-centres-outrageous, citing a Wall Street Journal article. http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/11/04/googles-schmidt-on-nsa-china-and-north-korea/.

As stated in a Guardian article, http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/04/eric-schmidt-nsa-spying-data-centres-outrageous, Go ogle “itself has faced repeated accusations of privacy violations, including illicitly tracking web browsing”, and “Schmidt has made no secret that the company tests boundaries of what is acceptable. ‘[Company] policy is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it,’ he said in 2010”; the year Go ogle “discovered” it was stealing private information (again, that’s the proper description) obliterating a line so it needn’t “cross it”.

I now do my best to avoid Go ogle.  Even to the point of replacing my “Android” phone with a BlackBerry (and no, I don’t expect that BB will be “much” better, but minimal improvement is more than none).

The only reason, in fact, that I post this here, on a property of Go ogle (indeed, the only reason I maintain this blogspot blog at all) is because I want Go ogle to know just how disgusted I am.  I want Eric Schmidt to know that businesses I contemplated starting, websites and other internet-related projects, likely won’t be started now, because of Go ogle.

And for all of those who believe “if you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide”, I suggest you look into your ancestry.  You might be related to Goebbels.
* I laugh when I see "smart house" commercials in which the parent locks/unlocks doors, turns lights and appliances on/off, and generally "enjoys the security" provided by AT&T.  That's a special kind of stupid.

27 October, 2013

“Miss Direction! Paging Miss Direction!”


“The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic, and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth becomes the greatest enemy of the State.” 

– Dr. Josef M. Goebbels

Finding itself (themselves?) unable to put the issue of NSA’s blanket surveillance of all Americans phone calls, emails, internet activity – even photographing U.S. Mail envelopes  – completely out of the electorate’s mind (perhaps because so many Americans so distrust “the media” (sic) that even planned distractions like a “government shutdown” didn’t keep the issue in the background), the “media divisions” of all six multinational corporations that own “the media” (from now on, well just call them “THE multinationals”) changed tactics last week, as the news “broke” of ongoing revelations that NSA, on behalf of “the” United States (grammatically correct in certain circumstances; politically important with respect to “these United States”) has “dragnetted”, “vacuumed”, and otherwise consumed the phone calls, emails, and internet activity of, for all intents and purposes, the world. 

Breathlessly (with relief?), we’re told that the leaders of Brazil, France, and now, Germany, are very upset, but we’re simultaneously reassured (by a Senator, no less (gasp!)) that such “upset” is “for the domestic consumption of their own public”; “code” for “‘s OK.  They’re not really mad.”  It’s a great setup for the message to follow, delivered by an “assistant to the president for homeland security” in an *editorial* published Friday:

“[N]o one disputes the need for careful, thorough intelligence gathering. Nor is it a secret that we collect information about what is happening around the world to help protect our citizens, our allies and our homeland. So does every intelligence service in the world."

We’re supposed to be relieved, ourselves.  Somebody else is outraged!  And they’re governments!  Surely they’ll put a stop to this! 

We’re also to be resigned.  After all, didn’t Senator Rubio (no friend of the party in power!) just tell us on a multinational media division “ ... Everyone spies on everybody. That's just a fact.”?  We should just understand that it's no BFD.  As he said, striving for a Texas metaphor, “at the end of the day, everyone knew there was gambling going on in Casablanca.”

Right.  Here’s a thought!  Why would the leaders of Brazil, France, and now, Germany, or any (every?) other country want – no, need – to “respond[] to domestic pressures in their own country”;  why would Brazil, France, and Germany, or any (every?) other country want – no, need  to provide for “domestic consumption of their own public”?

On the face of it, the “domestic pressures” to which Senator Rubio off-handedly refers are the anger of Brazilians, Frenchmen, Germans, and people of any (every?) other country, at “the” United States’ outright theft of their privacy, too!  And they want to know how and why their own governments let it happen.

Of course, that’s not what this story, the new story, is supposed to be about.  Because even “angry allies” hasn’t been working the way it should.  The new story is how “documents obtained by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden…might expose [Brazil’s, France’s, and now, Germany’s] own intelligence operations…and their level of co-operation with the U.S.”

I find it hard to believe that Brazilians, Frenchmen, Germans, or any other people, would impose “domestic pressures” over their governments’ “intelligence gathering” about “the” United States.  That makes the blackmail hard to understand.

Could it be that Brazil, France, and Germany, or any (every?) other country, are doing blanket surveillance of all their own countrymen’s phone calls, emails, internet activity – perhaps even photographing mail envelopes   too?

We could ask Senator Rubio.  But we don’t have to.  He already told us.  

“ ... Everyone spies on everybody. That's just a fact.”

There is a subtler, but equally important fact lying in the background.  In Senator Rubio’s reassurances that the leaders of Brazil, France, and Germany are merely “responding to domestic pressures”, providing for the “domestic consumption of their own public”, there are two stark truths:
1.  The government “ ... spies on everybody." Everybody. EverybodyEven youand your kids.
2.  The “leaders” of governments manufacture news. 
That second one is good for “the media”, giving “Goebbles’ Gerbils” a product to bring to market,
It's good for the “multinationals” that own “Goebbles’ Gerbils”.

But it’s not good for America.

20 August, 2013

You've Got To Give Them This: They're Trying

Oh, how they're trying.  The problem is that *they* simply can't stay in front of all the revelations, scandals, and exposés.  And John Kerry (you remember him:  the Vietnam vet turned war protestor who married into the Heinz fortune) has actually admitted (though not in this country...inbreeding makes *them* a little slow sometimes): “[T]his little thing called the Internet...makes it much harder to govern...much harder to organize people...”.  http://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2013/08/213088.htm   (Heads up, Johnny!  Saying it in Brazil no longer means we don't hear it!)

It's come to the point where even those who usually look askance when I walk into the room  are now commenting on how ironically transparent things have become. (Somehow, I don't think this was what he meant when he promised "the most transparent administration in history".) Al quaida (queda? qaida?  qaeda? Jeez, people, figure out a spelling and stick with it!) plans to attack "our" embassies?  Really?

And this "new danger" has nothing to do with the ongoing alphabet soup scandals?  Nothing to do with NSA/IRS/NSA (again)/DEA/NSA (again)/CIA/DOJ//NSA (will it ever stop?)/IRS (again)/NSA, ad infinitum?  This is nothing like "bad news"/threat level orange?  Completely different from "seal your house with duct tape and (suffocate, but) you'll be "safe"?

So, let's look at "recent events":  The government contends that there is a "Fourth-Amendment-Free Zone" that stretches 100 miles inland from the borders.  And coastlines.  A map of where YOU HAVE NO RIGHT to be free from an unwarranted search looks like this:

That's not so bad, though, is it?  After all most of the "geography" is outside that "Fourth-Amendment-Free Zone"; in "the heartland" (where "real" Americans live!).

But *they* consider airports to be "borders", too.  Live within 100 miles of an airport?

But, like the NSA/IRS/NSA (again)/DEA/NSA (again)/CIA/DOJ//NSA (will it ever stop?)/IRS (again)/NSA invasions of privacy, you "got nuttin' to worry 'bout if y'ain't doin' nuttin' wrong", right?

Because you know ALL of the tens-of-thousands of federal laws and regulations, right?  You know that a famous guitar manufacturer was raided, and fined, for using rosewood of "unauthorized" origin, and you're OK with that, right?

You're OK with "your" government claiming FIVE TIMES the number of criminal mortgage fraud prosecutions it actually filed, right?

You're OK with JPMorgan, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and Morgan Stanley running the Treasury Department, the State Department, the S.E.C., the C.T.F.C., and the entire financial system of the country, right

You're OK with them running - owning - Congress?

Do you not wonder why every "good person" elected to office becomes "one of them"?

Look what happened to Eliot Spitzer.  HE was going to take the bankers to task.  HE was going to make them comply with law, and regulation, and what most of us would consider simple decency. 

And you KNOW what happened to him.  And you wouldn't want that - or anything like that - to happen to you.  But HE's fighting back.  HE's running for New York City Comptroller.  READ THIS

We've come a long way.  In the wrong direction.

Most don't know, and they don't want to know.  To know would impart responsibility to do something about what they know.  And no one wants that.

After all, we won't be around that much longer, in the scheme of things.  And who cares that our grandchildren will never know a world where they didn't have to "submit" to every uniformed cretin who wanted to cop a feel?

23 July, 2013

It's A Sight To Behold

The headline is catchy: "A Legal Bane of Wall Street Switches Sides".  Makes it seem almost as if - after a lifetime of "public service" - the noble champion is ready to partake in the benefits of the "frontier" that he (single-handedly, don'tcha know) "tamed".

It's also bullshit.

If you read the article http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/a-legal-bane-of-wall-street-switches-sides/ (I suggest that, like swimming, you should wait awhile after eating), you'll grasp that the headline isn't exactly false.  It's just that "the hero" in this particular story, like pretty much everything about the cartel that is "Wall Street", isn't quite what you might think. 

About a third of the way through, you'll read that "[his] name has circulated around Wall Street for decades. After putting himself through [school], this truck driver / overnight dockworker went to law school and ultimately became a junior lawyer at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft in New York, where he handled securities cases and commercial disputes."

"Ultimately".  Gotta love the irony.  Not that being "a junior lawyer" at a law firm that began during George Washington's first term isn't a big deal ("Paging Mr. Alger, Horation Alger...").  It is. 

And the facts that 1) the Cadwalader in Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft had to "wait" to join the partnership " due to his appointment as assistant secretary of state; and, 2) the Wickersham (of...) was appointed United States Attorney General by President William Howard Taft, brother of 3) the Taft (see a pattern, here?) explains how a "junior lawyer" job "paved the way" to the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan; which led to becoming general counsel for Deutsche Bank (which, as you might remember, GOT SUED by the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan for fraud), where he "steer[ed] the bank through the financial crisis and an investigation into its tax shelters"; which, remarkably, resulted in the S.E.C., "reeling from the crisis..." turning to him (Deutsche Bank's general counsel)  "to revamp its enforcement unit".

I'm reminded of how, a little over a century ago, another "BIG MONEY" lawyer, Philander C. Knox, "gave up" private practice to become Teddy Roosevelt's A.G., and later, Secretary of State (which is another story altogether).

His boss at both Deutsche Bank and Cadwalader, and a former S.E.C. enforcement official himself (did I mention patterns?) praised him for joining S.E.C. "at a time when some lawmakers wanted to abolish" it. (Hmm.  I wonder if any of those lawmakers were Wall Street investors...?)

While he was at its head, "the enforcement division logged a record number of actions, including a case against Goldman Sachs. 

At his new job, he'll head up S.E.C. enforcement cases (gasp!), white-collar criminal matters (daily operations) and crisis management (getting caught) with a former federal judge and United States deputy attorney general;  a former senior lawyer in the Clinton White House and a former United States attorney.

But he expects no "favors".  “You don’t undertake a historic restructuring of the enforcement division and bring a record number of cases if you’re trying to curry favor with the industry,” this bastion of rectitude said.  Apparently, a job that pays more than $5 million a year is standard practice for "creating units to track complex corners of Wall Street and applying prosecutorial tactics to civil cases".

Like "our hero" Robert S. Khuzami, TR's A.G. Philander Knox took most of his former clients (Morgan; Harriman, et al) to court during The Great Reformer's) administration.

That worked out well, didn't it?



25 March, 2013

You WILL Be "Safe", If They Have To Kill You

You knew it would come to this.  It always does.  It always will. 

It's in their nature.  In their DNA.  Like bacteria, adapting to antibiotics (more like viri/antivirals, given the way they reproduce), "they" (liberals; progressives, etc., and their "bearded" fellows, "law and order" types) just keep coming.

On CameraFraud's blog, at http://camerafraud.wordpress.com/tag/american-traffic-solutions/, one can see what can be accomplished by undaunted, unyielding Freedom activists. In a period of 18 months, "approximately 1,700 volunteers" took on the "red light cameras"; and won.  The network of Redflex spy cameras installed  by Janet Napolitano (yes,  that Janet Napolitano) on Arizona interstates and highways came down.  Jan Brewer canceled the state’s contract with Redflex, one of the two biggest surveillance - sorry, "safety" companies in the business.

But "Arizona Citizens Against Photo Radar" wasn't able to get an initiative on the ballot, to ban the rest of Redflex and American Traffic Solutions’ (the other pickpocket - oops) automated ticketing machines.   In fact, an Arizona "lawmaker" has teamed up with an ATS lobbyist to stage a Transportation Committee hearing "so ridiculous that audible laughing could be heard ".

Whatever must "they" do to keep ATS in business keep us safe in Arizona?

Cue: "The National Coalition for Safer Roads".  Thwarted in their "stated mission ... to 'save lives and protect communities by demonstrating how red light safety cameras can improve driver behavior'", NACSAR (no, they're not calling National Coalition for Safer Roads that, yet, but it's probably too good to pass up) "announced ... a new study that contends the cameras can catch criminals guilty of infractions far greater than rolling through a red light.”
 http://www.wired.com/autopia/2013/03/red-light-cameras-stop-crime/

As wired.com introduced the story, "One way to catch criminals is by giving police departments access to red-light camera footage even when a traffic violation isn’t involved". 

According to the (what'd they call it?  OH YEAH!) "study" FUNDED BY AMERICAN TRAFFIC SOLUTIONS!!!, 46 percent of red-light camera footage requested by 172 local police departments between 2011 and 2012 was "used in collision investigations" (guess how many "rear-enders" from people tryng to avoid a red-light ticket; c'mon), while "5 percent were used in homicide investigations and 10 percent were used in burglary cases."
(OK, a "homicide" can occur anywhere, buy "burglaries"?  Where the hell are they pointing these cameras?)

Quoting one paragraph direcly from Wired (and claiming fair use under 17 U.S.C. § 107):

“Red-light safety cameras bring many benefits to communities — on and off the road,” said National Coalition for Safer Roads executive director David Kelly, a former National Highway Traffic Safety Administration acting administrator under President George W. Bush. “These cameras are proving to be a useful tool in helping police solve crimes and often times putting guilty criminals behind bars.”
 
So, there you have it!  All of those who just won't stop until they "protect" us to death (liberals; progressives, etc.), or throw us in jail for refusing their "protection" ("their" "bearded" fellows, "law and order" types), like the common cold, will just keep on. keeping us "safe".
 
For a price.


07 March, 2013

Can You Hear Me Now?


DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (hey Wired!  it's an acronym, not a name), wants to record, transcribe, and archive every conversation you ever have

For those who really don't know what DARPA is (please join us in the 21st century!), think SciFi's "Eureka".  DARPA (ultimately, that means YOU) funds some crazy ideas, not unlike "Eureka"'s genii.  You almost certainly own something that originated from DARPA research.

Turns out that DARPA has, and has had for awhile, an interest in text-to-speech analysis, programs, and machines.  As contemplated in the Wired.com link, below, "Imagine living in a world where every errant utterance you make is preserved forever."

Now, DARPA has awarded a $300,000 award for a new project, called “Blending Crowdsourcing with Automation for Fast, Cheap, and Accurate Analysis of Spontaneous Speech”, similar to EARS (Effective Affordable Reusable Speech-to-text), an earlier DARPA project.

As you read the article linked below, think about these quotes: "make conversational speech more accessible, more part of our permanent record"; "capture all these conversations and make use of them".  Those are from the grant recipient.

EARS was described by the Congressional Research Service  as focusing on speech picked up from broadcasts and telephone conversations, “as well as extract clues about the identity of speakers” for “the military, intelligence and law enforcement communities.”  Those "clues" won't be needed if people record themselves.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/03/darpa-speech/

No Kidding

The headline reads as if it actually announces something, well, new; "newsy"; worthy of note.

But "Banks urge judge to throw out Libor lawsuits" is far from new; "newsy"; worthy of note.

No more so than the revelation that "the banks" (aka "TBTF"; Too Big To Fail) had "manipulated" LIBOR (the London InterBank Overnight Rate), which, as many Americans have learned, rather painfully, was used to "reset" mortgage payments.

It IS funny, though.  If the "news" agency quoted him right, one of "the banks"'s attorneys admitted deceiving investors.

Take a look:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/05/us-bankslibor-lawsuits-idUSBRE9241C220130305

27 February, 2013

A Long, Dark Wait Till Morning

Did you catch the OSCIARS?

The story is captivating. 
Not the fantasy about domestic and international crimes (war crimes) promoted as helping bring to fruition "the hunt" for someone who might or might not have still been alive when, as the story goes, 19 amateurs with boxcutters outwitted the military-industrial complex Ike warned us about 41 years beforehand; the one where this “baddest of bad guys” supposedly hid behind a woman’s skirts (a story later recanted) before he went down in a hail of bullets (or maybe just one or two); the one where his body was, supposedly, “buried” at sea (normally an honor bestowed for exemplary naval service).
The story of which I write is about the first time that a propaganda piece, openly funded by Wall Street, was nominated for an Academy Award.  I write of the first time in history that the “field” of Oscar nominees was so expanded (9 nominees this year) as to make room for a “Lincoln” with enough historical inaccuracies to make one question the protagonist’s very existence; an “Argo” portraying the (purportedly true) story of a successful collaboration between Hollywood and Langley (it does sound like a Hollywood name, doesn’t it? Langley?); and the tale of a "middle-of-the-night raid" (remarkably, not on a private home in an American city, although you couldn't by the raiders' wardrobe) to "capture" (right!) the "most wanted man in the ... our world.  
 OK.  You got me.  It wasn’t funded by Wall Street.  At least, not directly.  It was funded, like the legend it portrays, by Wall Street’s offspring, the Central Intelligence Agency.
I know…you thought the CIA was a government agency.  And on paper, it is.  But what the public, defined by a federal court as “That vast multitude, which includes the ignorant, the unthinking, and the credulous, who¼do not stop to analyze, but are governed by appearance and general impressions” ( J. W. Collins Co. v. F. M. Paist Co., (D.C. Pa.) 14 F.2d 614), doesn’t know, or cares not to, is that the CIA, and the “National Security Agency” (as distinguished from the “Federal Security Agency”, a post for another time), was proposed, promoted, and eventually the product of, Wall Street banks and their lawyers, with support from Yale, Harvard, and the New York and D.C. newspapers (by way of example, do a websearch for "July, 1947" and count how many "Roswell", "flying saucer", and "alien" results precede the first reference to enactment of the National Security Act). 
To fully grasp (insofar as one can grasp such a monumental “servicing”) the whos, whats, whens wheres and hows requires a LOT of research.  But there are four books that I was blessed with obtaining, three of them in the same day, at the same quaint little used book store (the fourth came to me at a church bazaar) that, when read semi-simultaneously, paint as clear a picture as any of us will likely ever have. 
They are: The Roosevelts, by Peter Collier; Wall Street – A History, by Charles R. Geisst; Running the World, The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power, by David Rothkopf; and Legacy of Ashes, The History of the CIA, by Tim Weiner.
So, why is this posted to a blog subtitled "Commentary relating to the ultra-rich megalomaniacs bent on world empire"?  Because of a mention of "earning in excess of $100 million". (100,000,000.00)
Back to that captivating story:
It seems that this CIA “psy-op” (“company”-speak for “psychological operation”) was, like the vast majority of CIA’s very, very, very expensive (lucrative?  Did I mention the Wall Street connection?) “covert” actions Weiner details in Legacy of Ashes, a spectacular failure. See: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/25/zero-dark-thirty-cia-oscars
Ironic that Americans have to rely on a British news organization for this story.