Puppet MastersS

Dollars

Smoking gun evidence that the New York Fed serves the interests of Goldman Sachs

New York Fed
© The Economic Collapse Blog
For years, many people have suspected that the New York Fed is more or less controlled by the "too big to fail" banks. Well, now we have smoking gun evidence that this is indeed the case. A very brave lawyer named Carmen Segarra made a series of audio recordings while she was working for the New York Fed. The 46 hours of meetings and conversations that she recorded are being called "the Ray Rice video for the financial sector" because of the explosive content that they contain.

What these recordings reveal are regulators that are deeply afraid to do anything that may harm or embarrass Goldman Sachs. And it is quite understandable why Segarra's colleagues at the New York Fed would feel this way. As a recent Bloomberg article explained, it has become "common practice" for regulators to leave "their government jobs for much higher paying jobs at the very banks they were once meant to regulate." If you think that there is going to be a cushy, high paying banking job for you at the end of the rainbow, you are unlikely to do anything that will mess that up.

To say that the culture at the New York Fed is "deferential" to big banks such as Goldman Sachs would be a massive understatement.

Roses

โ€‹Another mass grave reportedly found in Donestk, Ukraine

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© Reuters/Maxim ShemetovAn unmarked grave at Savur-Mohyla, a hill east of the city of Donetsk.
Another mass grave has been found in eastern Ukraine by the Donbass self-defence forces near Nyzhnia Krynka village, days after the OSCE confirmed the discovery of 3 mass burials in areas recently abandoned by Kiev forces.

The new site of suspected murders is not far from the town of Makeevka, Donetsk People's Republic first deputy Prime Minister Andrey Purgin told Itar-Tass. The number of bodies and their identities have yet to be determined.

"Another grave discovered ... How many bodies and how these people died will be established during the exhumation," Purgin said.

An international monitoring mission has arrived at the new burial site, including experts from France and Russia, which insist on an immediate investigation of the suspected war crimes, RIA reports.

Several weeks ago, before a ceasefire was agreed, this area of Ukraine was under the control of the Ukrainian army and the National Guard's Aidar battalion. Earlier this month, an Amnesty International report has confirmed that war crimes including abductions, executions and extortion were committed by this particular Ukrainian battalion.

Last week RT crew went to investigate the previously discovered site where four bodies have been found buried in shell craters behind a burnt-out coal mine, days after the OSCE confirmed that three mass graves, allegedly with many bodies, have been found near Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.

Comment: RT witnesses exhumation of mass graves in village outside Donetsk, Ukraine - 'hands taped, gunshots to head and body'


Snowflake Cold

Winter is coming and Ukraine can't afford it

Ukraine is broke, and that's the sad legacy of this year's tumult. The question now is: will its western "friends" and Russia save Kiev from the abyss?
Ukraine factory destroyed
© Reuters / Marko DjuricaPeople stand inside a steel art factory that was recently shelled in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine, September 16, 2014
One day, during the credit-fueled economic madness of the early Noughties, I got a credit card in the post. I hadn't ordered it: the bank had just forwarded it without any prompting. That sounds crazy now, but was considered normal back then. I was a student and it wasn't Christmas, but it sure felt like it. Armed with my plastic pal and its โ‚ฌ3,000 limit, I hit Dublin's luxury Brown Thomas store and purchased designer gear with all the intent of a puppy on amphetamine.

A few raucous nights out followed, "More champagne? No bother!" and a trip to Paris. Then reality dawned and I had to pay it back. That wasn't fun - in fact, it was extremely difficult. However, while grazing on baked beans and toast, I had my memories of the "good times."

Countries often experience similar short-term periods of paper wealth, followed by a humongous hangover when the debt collectors come calling. There are a myriad of current examples in Europe: Greece, Spain and my own Ireland for starters. Others didn't have much of a party, but still got the furry tongue - Hungary, Cyprus and Portugal spring to mind.

Ukraine gas plant
© Reuters / Konstantin Grishin
Nevertheless, there is one European state that bucks all trends by having had no shindig at all before getting its medicine from the markets - Ukraine. That is, unless you count a civil war, a violent revolution and a horrifically divided nation as a party. Incredibly, some in Ukraine actually do. To them, Maidan and its consequences is all a big celebration. Well, the hijinks are over now and the DJ has just played "My Way."

Ukraine is broke. It was already treading water before the "revolution" - helped by corruption that ranged from the small scale to the incredibly large. Now, however, it's completely banjaxed. Meanwhile, the "do-gooders" in the mainstream media ignore this while they crack on about "nation building" and "reforms."

Comment: Ukraine was broken by design to fulfill the Neocon dream of subduing Russia, one way or the other.

Saker analysis: The Russian response to a double declaration of war
"The original plan was simplistic in a typically US Neocon way: overthrow Yanukovich, get the Ukraine into the EU and NATO, politically move NATO to the Russian border and militarily move it into Crimea. That plan failed. Russia accepted Crimea and the Ukraine collapsed into a vicious civil war combined with a terminal economic crisis. Then the US Neocons fell-back to plan B.

Plan B was also simple: get Russia to intervene militarily in the Donbass and use that as a pretext for a full-scale Cold War v2 which would create 1950's style tensions between East and West, justify fear-induced policies in the West, and completely sever the growing economic ties between Russia and the EU. Except that plan also failed - Russia did not take the bait and instead of intervening directly in the Donbass, she began a massive covert operation to support the anti-Nazi forces in Novorussia. The Russian plan worked, and the Junta Repression Forces (JRF) were soundly defeated by the Novorussian Armed Forces (NAF) even though the latter was suffering a huge deficit in firepower, armor, specialists and men (gradually, Russian covert aid turned all these around).
Mr. MacDonald' is right not to hold his breath on any partnership to relieve the suffering of the Ukrainian people. Russia will likely do what it can, but it must hold the larger picture in view. The article above outlines the various dilemmas facing Vladimir Putin in his quest for a fairer, multi-polar world.


Alarm Clock

Fracking trespass law changes move forward despite huge public opposition


Comment: This got buried by the govt. by announcing it on the eve or the attack Iraq vote. Despite 92% rejecting proposals, we get this: "Fracking will take place below Britons' homes without their permission after ministers rejected 40,000 objections to controversial changes to trespass laws." Notification to British citizens: you no longer own your land or the land on which your house is built. It can be destroyed with impunity by the government and corporate psychopaths to enrich themselves. You are a slave.


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Psychopath, liar, all round sniveling creep for the elite classes - Prime Minister David Cameron.
Ministers reject 40,000 objections to allow fracking below homes without owners' permission

Fracking will take place below Britons' homes without their permission after ministers rejected 40,000 objections to controversial changes to trespass laws.

The UK government argued that the current ability for people to block shale gas development under their property would lead to significant delays and that the legal process by which companies can force fracking plans through was costly, time-consuming and disproportionate.

There were a total of 40,647 responses to a consultation on the move to give oil and gas companies underground access without needing to seek landowners' permission, with 99% opposing the legal changes. Setting aside the 28,821 responses submitted via two NGO campaigns, 92% of the remaining responses objected to the proposals.

Evil Rays

Five Colorado schools plan to remove 'negative US history' from curriculum - students walk out in protest

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A protesting student holds an placard with a quote from Aldous Huxley
Jefferson county school board members proposed that "materials should not encourage or condone civil disorder, social strife or disregard for law"

Hundreds of students poured out of at least five Jefferson County schools on Tuesday to protest what they say is the Jeffco School Board's attempt to whitewash history. Protests also continued on Wednesday at two other schools.

About 200 students walked out of Pomona High School in Arvada at 8:30 a.m. gathering at Wadsworth Boulevard, 7NEWS Reporter Tyler Lopez observed.

"My daughter and her friends at 80th and Wadsworth. Fighting for education. Pomona High School," Robin Reed Johnson posted on the Denver Channel's Facebook page.

Around 9:40 a.m. about 300 students at Arvada West walked out, holding signs and chanting as they marched along the sidewalk and stood along the street.

At issue is a proposed curriculum review in Jefferson County that could revise AP U.S. History to promote positive aspects of U.S. history and heritage, while avoiding material on civil disorder and social strife.

War Whore

The psychopathic warmongering Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

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© Reuters/Larry Downing
Barack Obama was elected President of the United States on the strength of one fact. As a US Senator in Illinois, he voted against George W. Bush's war against Iraq. Had Obama not done that, he would never have attracted the attention necessary to become a serious candidate for the presidency.

Disgust with Bush's wars and the financial crisis propelled Obama to the White House. A few months later the "anti-war candidate", now President, was rewarded with the Nobel Peace Prize.

It would be difficult to imagine a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and "anti-war" candidate whose actions have been more warlike.

After proclaiming a "reset" in relations with Russia, Obama brought them to the worst point they have seen since the end of the Cold War. In January 2009 Obama said he would close Guantanamo. It remains open. He retained Bush's Defence Secretary Robert Gates. He left many of the staff appointed by Bush's Vice President Dick Cheney (including Victoria Nuland) in their posts. Not a single official from Bush's team who justified or ordered torture has faced legal action. Whenever it has been suggested, Obama has blocked it. By contrast, his administration pursues whistleblowers like Snowden and Manning relentlessly.

Fleets of drones have been dispatched around the world on a scale Bush had never dreamed. Assassinations of supposed opponents of the US have multiplied and become routine. Osama bin Laden was murdered when he could have been captured to stand trial. Obama has even given himself the right - unprecedented in US history - to order the execution of US citizens without trial. He has actually even exercised it against children. Apparently he approves of the lists of those doomed to die himself.

Comment: Psychopathic U.S. corporations have profited from all of these wars - at the expense of massive death, suffering and destruction worldwide. The entire system is under direct governance of the pathocracy.
The key feature of a pathocracy is that psychopaths influence the economic, military, political, and cultural agenda of a nation. Like chameleons, they mask themselves in the features of their surroundings. Within those parameters they stage dramas, creating a new reality according to their desires. And this reality is one of deception, terror, ruthless expansion and complete heartlessness.

In the corporate world a psychopath gets ahead by destroying the careers of those who stand in his way, exploiting the work of others, starting rumors, creating conflicts. He always benefits from these, of course. A competitor falls out of favor. The psychopath is credited with the work of another. The bosses take his word over another who sees that he is a snake. An "enemy" finds herself without a job, blamed for something she didn't do. All the while the psychopath stage-manages. The man behind the curtain.

In politics, the pawns are the people, the chessboard is the world stage. Strategic countries are invaded because of the "threat" they pose. This threat is of course created by the psychopaths in charge using the vast resources of intelligence services. "Terrorist threats" are fabricated. Atrocities are committed and then pinned on imaginary "terrorist groups".
Pathocracy: Brave New World or 1984?


Star of David

Pledging allegiance to the Masters: French PM says, that France without Jews would not be France

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We have been sent video of an extraordinary speech made by the French prime minister, Manuel Valls, in response to widespread reports that Jewish citizens are leaving France in the face of rising anti-semitism.

M. Valls, wearing a skullcap while speaking in a synagogue and referring explicitly to it in his speech, spoke with passion of the role Jews played in the nation and in his personal life.

Arrow Down

ISIS and the corporate state of war profiteering

Ever since World War I, fear of foreign invasions has been an obsession in the American collective consciousness. It is no coincidence that major U.S.corporations have profited from this fear, at the expense of massive death and destruction worldwide.
Kerry
© Allison Shelley, Getty Images/AFP/FileUS Secretary of State John Kerry testifies before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on "The ISIS Threat: Weighing the Obama Administration's Response," on Capitol Hill September 18, 2014 in Washington, DC.
"Every country , every ethnicity, every religion, contains within it the capability for extreme violence. Every group contains a faction that is intolerant of other groups, and actively seeks to exclude or even kill them. War fever tends to encourage the intolerant faction, but the faction only succeeds in its goals if the rest of the group acquiesces or remains silent.

The attacks of September 11 were not only a test for U.S. citizens' attitudes' toward minority/racial groups in their own country, but a test for our relationship with the rest of the world. We must begin not by lashing out at civilians in Muslim countries, but by taking responsibility for our own history and our own actions, and how they have fed the cycle of violence."

Dr. Zoltan Grossman
In the midst of all the fear-mongering that has been generated by the commercial media, what has not been reported are the CEOs of military contractors who are paid more than their overpaid counterparts in the financial sector. Of course, many of these so-called news outfits are heavily bankrolled by the same military contractors. Therefore, 'fair and balanced' journalism is totally out of the question.

What's even worse, is that all of these predatory companies are buying off politicians and 'retired' generals to systematically rob our national treasury and place our sons and daughters, once again, in the line of fire.." CNN pundit, Frances Townsend, a former Bush administration official, has appeared on television calling for more military engagement against the so-called Islamic State. As the Public Accountability Initiative (PAI) reported, Townsend holds positions in two investment firms with defense company holdings, MacAndrews and Forbes, and Monument Capital Group, along with serving as an advisor to defense contractor, Decision Sciences."

Eye 1

FBI to enlist police in huge DNA collection scheme

DNA map
Remember that time the Supreme Court ruled that our DNA is basically just like our fingerprints, and cops can snatch it from us subsequent to arrest? Remember the giant biometrics project the FBI has been spending at least a billion dollars of our money building (with many of the details kept secret), called 'Next Generation Identification'? With those powers and monies combined, the FBI this week announced its plans "to accelerate the collection of DNA profiles for the government's massive new biometric identification database." Like with other biometrics collection schemes, the FBI aims to get local police to do the groundwork.

What could go wrong?

Comment:

The government plans to track us and those we are related to using our DNA

DNA "Genetic Patdown" Introduced to Airports by DHS


Black Magic

RT witnesses exhumation of mass graves in village outside Donetsk, Ukraine - 'hands taped, gunshots to head and body'

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© RTRT Maria Finoshina has managed to reach the burial site near the village of Nyzhnia Krynka, 35 kilometers north-east of the city of Donetsk.
Mass graves with bodies bearing signs of violent death, and grieving relatives of those who were identified: That was the blood-curdling scene witnessed by an RT crew in a village near the city of Donetsk, in eastern Ukraine.

Four bodies were found in two shell craters behind a burned-out coal mine near the village of Nyzhnia Krynka, 35 kilometers northeast of Donetsk. RT's Maria Finoshina reported from the burial site. "All the facilities you can see here were abandoned a long time ago. It's a very remote area and apparently those who did this didn't want these corpses to be found," Finoshina reported. Among the four victims was 21-year-old Nikita Kolomiytsev, a local resident, whose grieving mother arrived at the scene of mass graves to identify her son. "I couldn't stand for him to be killed and thrown like a dog somewhere - I had to come and identify him," Nikita's mother, Galina, told RT.

Galina said she fled to central Ukraine to take her younger 16-year-old son out of harm's way, but she felt she'd "failed to protect" her elder son. "The Ukrainian army took [Nikita] away... my husband went there and told them - take me instead of my son. But they said they had taken him for a further prisoner swap." Galina was waiting for him to be exchanged and brought home, but he never returned to his mother. "No one exchanged anybody for anybody. They just shot them dead here outside the village and threw them into the ground... like dogs," she added, sobbing.