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.

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

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.

"U" Now Stands for "Unlimited"; "S" is for "Serfdom"

Even the fellow's title is a little scary: "Civil Liberties Protection Officer".  Add to that his Master's information - "Office of the Director of National Intelligence" - and "the willlies" (sorry, Willie) run amok.
More disturbing is how I came to know that a ClePto exists (ok, klepto is spelled wrong, and it's a bit of a reach, but so are most of the acronyms our supposed servants use; like naming a bill "United and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism" (USA PATRIOT Act) just so they can call it "the Patriot Act", when it has nothing to do with patriotism). 
Seems that the guy in charge at the Department of Jus...(gets progressively harder to finish that phrase as time goes by, so I'll start again).
General Holder (has a kind of military ring, doesn't it?) issued an order "allowing" expansion of the completely anticonstitutional SURVEILLANCE of EVERYONE.
Described by Wired magazine a "a secret government agreement", this blatant violation of the Fourth Amendment (and arguably, the Fifth, in the context of the Right to Privacy - yes, Privacy is a Right, and was declared so by Congress in the Privacy Act) was, in Wired's words, "granted without approval or debate from lawmakers" (who could not, by the way, Constitutionally approve without an amendment) to the "National Counterterrorism Center".
"Oh, well," you say, "if it's to fight terrorism..."
Maybe you didn't catch what I said about SURVEILLANCE of EVERYONE.
The *beauty* of ignoring the contract that created "the government" is that any and all restrictions on the power conferred by that contract effectively disappear.  Can't tell us what to believe, say, print?  You haven't been paying attention.  Can't search without probable cause or a warrant?  You REALLY haven't been paying attention.  Due Process of Law?  Right to counsel? Right to jury trial? Protection against "cruel and unusual" punishment?  Stolen.  Pilfered.  Misappropriated.  Negated.
So, remember, when one of your more vocal friends, or family members, no longer calls, or returns yours...
YOU let this happen.

Just Us Prevails (Again)

Bloods.  Crips.  Eastside Thrillseekers.  Hell's Angels. Mongols.  Bandidos.  As diverse as these might appear, they all have one thing, if only one thing, in common:

They simply aren't big enough yet.

That's the only conclusion that can be reached.  It was curious enough that Forbes magazine published an opinion piece titled

"Is the Federal Reserve Using Money-Laundering Techniques To Cleanse Banks' Balance Sheets?" (http://www.forbes.com/sites/lawrencehunter/2012/10/29/are-federal-reserve-regulated-banks-laundering-dirty-money/

Granted, it wasn't Forbes' own, but a Forbes "contributor"'s opinion, that Forbes published.  But from a non-elite perspective, my observation was that one of "them" (see the subtitle of this blog) was "eating their own":

"Immediately after the 2008 financial meltdown, the Fed laundered more than $2 trillion in worthless assets held on the balance sheets of private banks. According to a watered-down 2011 audit of the Fed by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), there have been $16 trillion in Fed bailouts to banks and corporations around the world since the financial meltdown in 2008. Since that report, Bloomberg has reported on an additional $9 trillion in secret, off-balance-sheet Fed transactions that the central bank refuses to discuss. Now, Ben Bernanke is ginning up assembly-line washing machines at the Fed with QE∞ to spin an opened-ended, $40-billion-monthly cleansing campaign to purchase worthless mortgage backed securities from banks at face value, which could run to an additional $1.3 trillion loan laundering accompanied by downscale resales."

But, in case you were wondering what "THE FED" has to do with the groups mentioned above, I bring you:

HSBC pays $1.9 billion to settle US probe

By James O'Toole and Charles Riley @CNNMoneyDecember 11, 2012: 2:25 PM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

Global banking giant HSBC will pay $1.92 billion in a record settlement with U.S. regulators to resolve money-laundering allegations.

The Department of Justice and U.S. Treasury said Tuesday that HSBC allowed the most notorious international drug cartels to launder billions of dollars across borders. In addition, the government said HSBC violated U.S. sanctions for years by illegally conducting transactions on behalf of customers in Iran, Libya, Cuba, Sudan and Burma.                                           

(fair use claimed under 17 U.S.C. § 107)

After a five-year investigation, involving 9,000,000 documents, and the outright admission (confession) of money laundering, there will be exactly 0 indictments. 

Oh, yes, HSBC will "pay" a LOT of counterfeit "money".  But not one bankster will see the insid of a courtroom, let alone a cell.

Which is where the bankster cartel differs from the groups named above .

 

"Will It Never End?!?" Goldfinger Laments

from the New York Times  ("fair use" authorized under 17 U.S.C. § 107):

"The nation’s largest banks are facing a fresh torrent of lawsuits asserting that they sold shoddy mortgage securities that imploded during the financial crisis, potentially adding significantly to the tens of billions of dollars the banks have already paid to settle other cases."

Apparently, investors take issue with being sold "securities" that weren't, well, "secured".

Who'da thunk? 

And they, along with "regulators" (Goldfinger personnel at SEC, etc., with whom this was all A-OK till the organic matter hit the rotating oscillator), prosecutors (ditto), and insurers (ditto, as long as they didn't have to actually pay out) are on the offensive, taking the TBTFs (BofA, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, et al) to court over more than $1,000,000,000,000.00 (that's what "1 trillion" looks like in actual numbers) in "securities" that were, supposedly, "backed by residential mortgages."

At that, NYT reports that "some in the banking industry" think that losing ALL of these lawsuits could result in "losses" of as mush as 300,000,000,000.00 (30%; gotta love the math!).  But at least one "mucky-muck" (a term that has reached a whole new level of meaning) at Tangent Capital Partners (italics are mine - but you just can't make this stuff up)  admits

“The real price tag is terrifying.” 

Seems that the 25 billion (see how different it looks in words?) that the cartel - um, industry - put up as a "settlement" awhile back just ain't gonna cut it.

In as classic a line as I've ever read, NYT paraphrases "several senior officials in the insustry" as saying "But in the most extreme situation, the litigation could empty even more well-stocked reserves and weigh down profits..." (emphases mine). 

Think about THAT for a moment.  If 1,000,000,000,000.00 will only "weigh down profits", I guess Goldfinger really is "Too Big To Fail".  Then again, the NYT article does overlook one facet of all this, saying,

"The banks are battling on three fronts: with prosecutors who accuse them of fraud, with regulators who claim that they duped investors into buying bad mortgage securities, and with investors seeking to force them to buy back the soured loans."

What NYT overlooks is that the momentum is building from a fourth "front":  the other side.  As time passes, more and more mortgagor-victims are prevailing in their own battles against foreclosure, based upon fraud of varying types.  One recent example is a property owner who had a "securitization audit" done, and obtained verification from SEC of these findings:

"Our search of EDGAR, the Commission’s electronic database of corporate filings, for the CWABS Asset-Backed Certificates Trust Series 2006-23 (http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001381999&owner=include&count=40&hidefilings=) produced no filings referencing the loan number you provided.  We also did not locate a pooling and servicing agreement attached as an exhibit to the Trust’s registration statement.  A Form 15 to terminate the Trust’s registration was filed in January 2007."

Which, if you've been paying attention, leads directly back to the securities-victims discussed above, who, it appears, invested in mortgage "pools" that Karl Denninger, at Market Ticker, calls "empty trusts".

Giddy-up!.










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