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Greedy overlords: Over $41bn in student loan profits for US government


Press TV
Tue, 26 Nov 2013 03:18 UTC
Student loan protests
© Unknown
The US government books $41.3bn in student loan profits
The federal government of the United States made a profit of $41.3 billion on student loans for the 2013 fiscal year.

Although the profit is $3.6 billion less than the that the US government reaped from distressed borrowers the previous year, it is a profit higher than that made by all but two companies, Exxon Mobil and Apple, in the world.

According to David Jesse, who writes for the Free Press, the profit is enough to pay for the tuition of nearly 3,000,000 Michigan residents at the University of Michigan for one year.

Earlier in July, the US Senate approved a bill that would link federal student loan rates to financial markets.

The bill, which was passed 81-18 and was endorsed by the White House, would lower the interest rates on federal student loans to 3.86 percent down from the fixed rate of 6.8 percent but interest rates could increase if the financial market improves as expected.

Comment: To say that "It's actually neither accurate nor fair to characterize the student loan program as making a profit," is an outright lie. Student loans work as a money making machine for the government.

Especially considering that government borrowing interest rates are as close to nil as possible.As an example, the interest on US treasury bills is 0.13% for 1 year loans:

Selected Interest Rates - Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve

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Bomb

Israeli nukes threatening region, world

Dr. Kevin Barrett
Press TV
Mon, 25 Nov 2013 20:58 UTC
Dimona Nuclear Facility
© Press TV
A view of the Israeli regime’s Dimona nuclear facility located in Negev Desert.
The so-called "Iran nuclear crisis" is over. Now, what will the nuclear non-proliferation specialists do to occupy their time?

Maybe they should target a dangerous, fanatical, hyper-aggressive, expansionist Middle Eastern regime that really IS building nuclear weapons.

That would be Israel.

There was never any real nuclear crisis in Iran, but there is a very real nuclear crisis in Israel.

Even the American CIA, which holds no love for the Islamic Republic, has repeatedly admitted that Iran is not building nuclear weapons. That hasn't stopped Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from saying that Iran is just months away from a bomb. According to Netanyahu, Iran has been months away from a bomb for decades. Fifty years from now, whoever is in charge of Israel's Likud Party - in the unlikely event that Israel and its Likud Party exist - will still be screaming from the rooftops that Iran is just months away from a bomb.

The reason Israel will probably not exist in fifty years has nothing to do with Iranian bombs. The real threat to Israel is the insanity of its leaders.

It's as if the Zionists have walked into a time warp. For them, the clock has stopped; they are permanently stuck in an alternative reality in which the only hour is "three months to Iran-bomb."
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Play

Israeli officials knew White House was holding secret talks with Iran

Sheera Frenkel
Buzzfeed
Sun, 24 Nov 2013 20:07 UTC
Image
© Olivier Douliery/Abaca Press / MCT
President Barack Obama meets Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Sept. 30 meeting in which he revealed he had authorized secret talks with Iran.
"We felt like we were being stabbed in the back."

Israeli officials knew they were being kept in the dark as the U.S. conducted secret talks with Iran, and the knowledge that the White House was "going behind Israel's back" was one of the key sources of tension between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Barack Obama, according to a senior Israeli minister and other Israeli officials.

"We did not know from the beginning, but we knew, we had intelligence that these meetings were happening," said the Israeli minister, who spoke to BuzzFeed by phone from his Jerusalem office. He said that a "friend in the Gulf" shared intelligence with Israel that the meetings were taking place, and urged Israel to find out more. "I would like to say we knew the content of the talks, but we didn't. What we knew was that the U.S. was choosing not to tell us about them and that was very worrying."

That "friend," one foreign ministry official said, was Saudi Arabia, which along with Israel has most strongly objected to the nuclear deal reached between Iran and the West over the weekend.
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Attention

Military-industrial-political complex: The Carlyle connection

VPROinternational
Youtube
Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:00 UTC
A revealing documentary about the international world of private equity banking.

The Carlyle Group, one of the largest investment banks in the world, is based in Washington and has accumulated its capital mainly by investments in the defence industry. On their list of employees are people like Lou Gerstner (former chairman of IBM), George Bush Sr., James Baker III, John Major (former British Prime Minister) and Fidel Ramos (former Prime Minister of the Philipines). The Carlyle Group invests in areas that are closely tied to government policy: aero space and defense, telecom, real estate, health care and the banking business. With 16 billion dollar under management they have the reputation of being the best-connected company in the world. Their list of private investors include George Soros, the Saudi Royal Family and the Bin Laden Family. How does the Carlyle Group operate, who are the people behind the Carlyle Group and how much power does Carlyle have? This film explores the fine line between the conflict of interests and a new global way of doing business.


Comment: It's not 'conflict of interest', it's not 'some new way of doing business', it's just 'The American Way'. JFK tried to end it; look how long he lasted.

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Take 2

Secret U.S.-Iran talks set stage for nuke deal

Matthew Lee, Bradley Klapper, and Julie Pace
Associated Press
Mon, 25 Nov 2013 17:52 UTC
Image
© AP Photo/Charles Dharapak
On a warm day in Washington this fall, President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu huddled in the White House, each flanked by a handful of top advisers, including Vice President Joe Biden. Just three days earlier, Obama had held an historic phone call with Iran's new President Hassan Rouhani, the leader of a country Israel sees as a threat to its very existence.

In the confines of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on Sept. 30, just after the high Jewish holidays, Obama revealed to Netanyahu that his administration had been engaged in secret, high-level diplomatic talks with the mortal enemy of the Jewish state. Netanyahu's immediate public reaction betrayed no surprise, but a day later he launched a full-frontal attack on Iran, delivering a blistering speech at the U.N. General Assembly in which he said the Islamic republic was bent on Israel's destruction and accused Rouhani of being a "wolf in sheep's clothing."

The White House meeting had been scheduled for about an hour, but continued on for 30 more minutes, leaving American and Israeli journalists crowded onto the portico outside the Oval Office to speculate about the discussions underway inside. The two men had and still have an uneasy relationship, and each blames the other for inconclusive results in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Yet In statements after the meeting, both leaders tried to display unity rather than airing their differences on Iran in public.
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Bad Guys

Zbig Brzezinski: Obama administration should tell Israel U.S. will attack Israeli jets if they try to attack Iran

Michael James
ABC News
Sun, 20 Sep 2009 17:37 UTC
Image
The national security adviser for former President Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinski, gave an interview to The Daily Beast in which he suggested President Obama should make it clear to Israel that if they attempt to attack Iran's nuclear weapons sites the U.S. Air Force will stop them.

"We are not exactly impotent little babies," Brzezinski said. "They have to fly over our airspace in Iraq. Are we just going to sit there and watch? ... We have to be serious about denying them that right. That means a denial where you aren't just saying it. If they fly over, you go up and confront them. They have the choice of turning back or not. No one wishes for this but it could be a 'Liberty' in reverse."

The USS Liberty was a U.S. Navy technical research ship that the Israeli Air Force mistakenly attacked during the Six Day War in 1967.

Brzezinski endorsed then-Sen. Obama's presidential campaign in August 2007, which at the time was portrayed in the media as a boost to Obama's foreign policy cred. The Washington Post reported: "Barack Obama, combating the perception that he is too young and inexperienced to handle a dangerous world, got a boost yesterday from a paragon of foreign policy eminence, Zbigniew Brzezinski."
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Arrow Up

JFK Assassination: New motorcade footage could challenge lone-gunman theory

Jeff Sneider
The Wrap
Fri, 22 Nov 2013 08:32 UTC
JFK Motorcade
© The Wrap
A Hollywood producer believes the footage may support John Kerry and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s comments doubting that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone

In a development that could shed new light on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, a Hollywood movie producer is shopping new, long-hidden footage of JFK's Dallas motorcade which the producer believes may support the theory that Lee Harvey Oswald didn't act alone, TheWrap has learned.

Stephen Bowen is a successful Texas-based real estate developer who is a principal at Waterstone Entertainment, represented by the Gersh Agency. Bowen acquired the footage from a local Houston television news producer who has held it for more than 40 years, according to an individual involved in the deal. Bowen decided the 50th anniversary of JFK's death was a good time to bring it to market.

TheWrap has not seen the footage. However, two individuals who have described portions of the tape that could challenge the lone-gunman theory ultimately supported by the Warren Commission. "You can see a guy in the bushes with a gun," said one of those individuals. "It looks like real footage, though I am not an expert."
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Heart - Black

Egypt's coup leaders call for end to subsidies on basic goods


Middle East Monitor
Sat, 23 Nov 2013 17:22 UTC
Image

General Sisi cited examples of austerity measures taken by Germany, South Sudan, South Africa, and those by President Sadat
In a new leaked audio tape, the Egyptian coup leader Gen. Abdul-Fattah al-Sisi has called for an end to subsidies on bread and energy in Egypt, as well as a 50 per cent reduction of public sector salaries.

Gen. Al-Sisi described the measure as "austerity" and pointed to examples in various countries expressing his admiration for them.

In the audio which was broadcasted by Al-Jazeera Mubashir Misr on Friday 22 November, he said: "A gas container is sold to citizens for 62 to 67 Egyptian pounds, (restaurants pay much more). This means that a lot of money is being unintentionally wasted in the country."

He said: "It is impossible to pay 107 billion Egyptian pounds to subsidise energy and 17 billion for bread."
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Dollar

Killing the "we paid our taxes; we earned our benefits" social security Ponzi meme

Gary Galles
Ludwig von Mises Institute
Sat, 23 Nov 2013 17:13 UTC
Image
"We paid our Social Security and Medicare taxes; we earned our benefits." It is that belief among senior citizens that President Obama was pandering to when, in his second inaugural address, he claimed that those programs "strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers."

If Social Security and Medicare both involved people voluntarily financing their own benefits, an argument could be made for seniors' "earned benefits" view. But they have not. They have redistributed tens of trillions of dollars of wealth to themselves from those younger.

Social Security and Medicare have transferred those trillions because they have been partial Ponzi schemes.

After Social Security's creation, those in or near retirement got benefits far exceeding their costs (Ida Mae Fuller, the first Social Security recipient, got 462 times what she and her employer together paid in "contributions"). Those benefits in excess of their taxes paid inherently forced future Americans to pick up the tab for the difference. And the program's almost unthinkable unfunded liabilities are no less a burden on later generations because earlier generations financed some of their own benefits, or because the government has consistently lied that they have paid their own way.
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Road Cone

Snow-job: NSA hit with 888% increase in FOIA requests from citizens enquiring if they're being spied on - The agency's response? 'Sorry, that's classified'!


RT.com
Mon, 18 Nov 2013 17:37 UTC
General Keith Alexander
© Brendan Smialowski, AFP
General Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency and commander of the US Cyber Command
The number of Freedom of Information Act requests filed with the National Security Agency has increased by 888 percent this fiscal year, according to USA Today, indicating an even broader interest exists in the NSA's domestic surveillance programs.

The newspaper reported on Monday that the amount of FOIA requests received by the NSA has surged exponentially in recent months, particularly after former contractor-turned-leaker Edward Snowden began releasing classified internal documents in June detailing the agency's lesser-known intelligence gathering operations.

"Fueled by the Edward Snowden scandal, more Americans than ever are asking the National Security Agency if their personal life is being spied on," Yamiche Alcindor wrote for USA Today.

Comment: Indeed, it is VERY troubling that the government is spying on its own people. What is even more troubling is the fact that despite Snowden's leaks, not a single agency of the government has been prosecuted and no charges were filed against anyone. It's apparent that many US government agencies consider themselves above the law and run illegal operations with little or no public oversight.

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