Puppet MastersS


Top Secret

Judge orders pink slime silence to protect company

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Iowa State University has conducted food safety research of the beef product deemed "Pink Slime" by the mass public.

Lean-finely-texturized-beef (LFTB) is a meat filler made from ammoniated boneless lean beef scraps, connective tissue or similar products, which are considered unfit for human consumption until ammonium hydroxide has been added - due to e.coli and salmonella. It was dog food until the meat industry lobbied its use as meat filler for us.

South Dakota-based company Beef Products, Inc. (BPI) filed legal action in 2010 to block records release after they were requested by a Seattle food safety law firm and the New York Times. Last month, District Judge Dale Ruigh upheld the block and ruled that releasing those records would do "irreparable harm" and reveal information about proprietary food-processing techniques.

The harm to both company and consumer has already been done. What is so scandalous that we don't already know?

Megaphone

Exposed: Monsanto's chemical war against indigenous Hawaiians

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Hawaiians are fighting back against the GMO giant.

At 9 am on an overcast morning in paradise, hundreds of protesters gathered in traditional Hawaiian chant and prayer. Upon hearing the sound of the conch shell, known here as Pū, the protesters followed a group of women towards Monsanto's grounds.

"A'ole GMO," cried the mothers as they marched alongside Monsanto's cornfields, located only feet from their homes on Molokai, one of the smallest of Hawaii's main islands. In a tiny, tropical corner of the Pacific that has warded off tourism and development, Monsanto's fields are one of only a few corporate entities that separates the bare terrain of the mountains and oceans.

This spirited march was the last of a series of protests on the five Hawaiian islands that Monsanto and other biotech companies have turned into the world's ground zero for chemical testing and food engineering. Hawaii is currently at the epicenter of the debate over genetically modified organisms, generally shortened to GMOs. Because Hawaii is geographically isolated from the broader public, it is an ideal location for conducting chemical experiments. The island chain's climate and abundant natural resources have lured five of the world's largest biotech chemical corporations: Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow AgroSciences, DuPont Pioneer and BASF. In the past 20 years, these chemical companies have performed over 5,000 open-field-test experiments of pesticide-resistant crops on an estimated 40,000 to 60,000 acres of Hawaiian land without any disclosure, making the place and its people a guinea pig for biotech engineering.

Dollar Gold

The entire economy is a Ponzi scheme. The global financial system is insolvent

financial elites
© unknown
Ponzinomics

Bill Gross, Nouriel Roubini, Laurence Kotlikoff, Steve Keen, Michel Chossudovsky, the Wall Street Journal and many others say that our entire economy is a Ponzi scheme.

Former Reagan budget director David Stockton just agreed:

So did a top Russian con artist and mathematician.

Even the New York Times' business page asked, "Was [the] whole economy a Ponzi scheme?"

In fact - as we've noted for 4 years (and here and here) - the banking system is entirely insolvent. And so are most countries. The whole notion of one country bailing out another country is a farce at this point. The whole system is insolvent.

As we noted last year: Nobel economist Joe Stiglitz pointed out the Ponzi scheme nature of the whole bailout discussion:

Handcuffs

Prison state: California governor given ultimatum to reduce overcrowding

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© Federal court records
The governor of California and other leading authorities will be held in contempt of court in 20 days unless they find a way to release thousands of prisoners from the overcrowded state corrections system.

A panel of federal judges gave Gov. Jerry Brown and the state's top corrections officials an ultimatum this week, ordering they come up with solution to the rampant overcrowding epidemic that has caused critics to condemn the treatment endured by prisoners as "cruel and unusual" - or else face the consequences.

If Gov. Brown and his colleagues cannot come up with a plan in the next three weeks that will slash the number of inmates in the state's 33 prisons by December, the court says they will take legal action against the officials.

According to a corrections department report released this week, the state prison system presently counts 119,542 inmates as residents of those facilities, or 149.5 percent of the number those buildings were designed to hold. In a 71-page ruling described by the Los Angeles Times as "blistering," a panel of three judges says that portion must be brought down to 137.5 percent by the end of the year. That could mean releasing roughly 9,500 inmates by December if no other solution is found.

Comment: The US has the highest rate of imprisonment in the world, with 743 people incarcerated for every 100,000 Americans. No other nation even comes close to these figures. One reason may be that the prison industry is quite lucrative and spends heavily on lobbying.
Why Are So Many Americans in Prison?
U.S. prison population seeing "unprecedented increase"
Private Prisons: The more Americans they put behind bars the more money they make


Stormtrooper

Tennessee Sen. Stacey Campfield withdraws welfare bill after run-in with girl, protesters

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© Shelley Mays / The TennesseanAamira Fetuga, 8, gives Sen. Stacey Campfield a petition signed by critics of his welfare bill. He said, 'I love it when people use children as props.'
After a confrontation with an 8-year-old girl and other activists, along with mounting opposition from fellow Republicans, state Sen. Stacey Campfield dropped his effort to tie welfare benefits to grades, asking that the legislation be held for further study.

Campfield withdrew his proposal to reduce payments to families whose children are failing in school before a vote could be taken on the Senate floor Thursday. But the measure appeared to be headed toward defeat after several senators - including a few former supporters - expressed doubts.

Before Thursday's session, activists organized a demonstration in the corridors of Legislative Plaza and the state Capitol. An 8-year-old girl confronted Campfield with a petition signed by opponents of the bill, and a choir of about 60 people, including some in clerical garb, sang "Jesus Loves the Little Children" outside the Senate chamber as lawmakers filed in.

Campfield walked away from the confrontation, saying repeatedly that he didn't think children should be used as political props. But it was a long walk, and the confrontation extended over several minutes as video cameras recorded the back-and-forth.

Bad Guys

As Exxon censors local media, citizen journalists document Arkansas oil spill. Can the pros be doing more?

arkansas
© Tar Sands Blockade/CC BY 2.0
In the two weeks since Exxon's Pegasus pipeline ruptured on March 29th in Mayflower, Arkansas, spilling some 300,000 gallons of oil, I have tried to watch every news report posted on the websites of the three main local television news outlets, THV, KARK and KATV. Having consumed all this media, I've come to realize that there is a stark contrast in what visual evidence has been presented by the local media compared to what has been documented by residents and citizen journalists. Here's why this matters.

What would your impression of the severity of the Exxon Mayflower oil spill be if the video of the oil flowing through the neighborhood simply did not exist? Or how confined to the neighborhood would you think the damage was if we didn't have this aerial footage? How would you gauge Exxon's progress cleaning this spill if you had only seen these photos and local news video of freshly graded dirt, new grass and power-washed streets and we didn't have this video of the oil-soaked wetlands? And would we still believe the claims from Exxon and local officials that Lake Conway is not contaminated if we didn't have this video taken Wednesday night showing water from the cove being pumped into the main body of the lake?

I believe that absent these four videos, especially the first three, our understand of how much damage Exxon Mobil has caused to Arkansas would be greatly limited. This is important and troubling, because none of these videos came from the local media and even now, two weeks after the spill, Exxon is still limiting access to the press and intimidating media to try and control what the public can learn about this disaster.

Kate Sheppard at Mother Jones had a good summary of the way Exxon has intimidated the media, going so far as to threaten reporters with arrest for daring to seek answers on behalf of the public. Yesterday, we learned Exxon has threatened legal action against local TV outlets to censor an ad critical of the company. We also learned that Arkansas law enforcement officers have been paid by Exxon to work as "private security" during their off-duty hours, while remaining in their uniform, creating a serious conflict of interest that blurs the lines between which parties they serve, the people of Arkansas or the most profitable corporation in the world.

It is a legal and ethical mess that only benefits Exxon Mobil.

Eye 1

IRS says American have "no privacy" online, can read all communications

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© Getty ImagesThe IRS continued to insist on warrantless e-mail access, internal documents obtained by the ACLU show, even after a federal appeals court said the Fourth Amendment applied.
The Internal Revenue Service doesn't believe it needs a search warrant to read your e-mail.

Newly disclosed documents prepared by IRS lawyers say that Americans enjoy "generally no privacy" in their e-mail, Facebook chats, Twitter direct messages, and similar online communications -- meaning that they can be perused without obtaining a search warrant signed by a judge.

That places the IRS at odds with a growing sentiment among many judges and legislators who believe that Americans' e-mail messages should be protected from warrantless search and seizure. They say e-mail should be protected by the same Fourth Amendment privacy standards that require search warrants for hard drives in someone's home, or a physical letter in a filing cabinet.

An IRS 2009 Search Warrant Handbook obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union argues that "emails and other transmissions generally lose their reasonable expectation of privacy and thus their Fourth Amendment protection once they have been sent from an individual's computer." The handbook was prepared by the Office of Chief Counsel for the Criminal Tax Division and obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

Star of David

Zionist lunacy taking world to hell in handbasket

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© PressTVA foreign-backed militant in Syria
Zionism. Of course, you can be forgiven for thinking it's extreme lunacy. Extreme lunacy is beyond nightmares; beyond the ravings of perverted murderers; beyond grotesque, drug-induced hallucinations; beyond that which could be conceived by a drunken Nero; beyond something thought up for Caligula's birthday party.

Or, put another way, it's what the USA, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Jordan, UK, the CIA, Mossad and a few others are up to in Syria. Yes, claiming that they are responsible and rational, these self-righteous, corrupt countries and organizations are engaged in financing, training and arming the very Wahhabis, Jihadists, Salafists and al-Qaeda rebels who wish to destroy not only Syria but them as well.

Claiming they are promoting democracy (and if Saudi Arabia is a democracy then I am Caligula's horse) they are financing, training and arming those who would destroy democracy as well as life, liberty, human rights, tolerance, decency, standard of living, female integrity - you name it. And, oh yes, the Wahhabis, Jihadists, Salafists and al-Qaeda want to kill all Christians, Sikhs, Hindus, Jews and, in particular, Shia Muslims.

Of course, the West is claiming that it is only financing and arming the 'good' terrorists in Syria but the facts on the ground are that the 'bad' ones (e.g., the Jabhat al-Nusra [Victory Front] of throat-slitting, choking gas bent) are, one way or another, getting more and more weapons.

Snakes in Suits

French fiscal scandal widens: Finance Minister Moscovici feels the heat as it emerges he knew of Budget Minister Cahuzac's secret offshore accounts

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© AP Photo/Thibault Camus, File In this May 17, 2012 file photo, French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici, left, and then Budget Minister Jerome Cahuzac arrive for the weekly cabinet, at the Elysee Palace in Pari
He feels hounded and, like a marked man, says he changes locations every few days.

Less than a month ago, Jerome Cahuzac, France's disgraced former budget minister, was the hunter, with an eye out for any citizen who cheated tax authorities by hiding cash abroad. He was devoted to President Francois Hollande's effort to fill the government's depleted coffers as the economy sputtered.

Cahuzac's belated admission that he kept his own secret offshore accounts is now destabilizing France's Socialist government, less than a year after Hollande assumed office with pledges to replace the perceived "bling-bling" of his conservative predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, with moral rectitude.

The scent of scandal expanded this week to Cahuzac's boss, Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici, with allegations by a weekly magazine that he knew of his colleague's guilt in December - a claim Moscovici denies.

And Cahuzac, 60, who was formally expelled from the Socialist Party this week and says he is on the run from paparazzi, may not be done causing havoc.

Chart Bar

Why bank bail-in and bail-out wont work: Case study Iceland and Greece

banking, government
As most of us can remember that Iceland was the first country that went down during the last Global Financial Crisis in 2008. During that time Iceland had done something remarkable and that is during the five years prior to the crisis, managed to transform its economy from a fishing industry to a mega hedge fund country. Many of its citizens left their traditional trade which is fishing to become fund managers and salesman. As a result Iceland's banking assets (physical assets + Loans + Reserves + Investment securities) grown to more than 10x its GDP of $14 billion. With such high leverage, when the financial crisis struck it is unable to defend its economy and hence its house of cards collapsed.

The purpose of this article is a post-event analysis of the performance of the Icelandic economy that refuses a bailout as compared to Greece which went for a bailout with the injection of funds from Troika. To simplify matters, we shall coin the bail-in and bail-out as (BIBO) for short. Of course in the short term it helped stabilized the Greek economy for a while but we want to know to what extent it had transformed the Greek economy in the long run with the accompanying terms and conditions and austerity measures. In this article we shall compare the performance of both the economies of Iceland and Greece with the economic indicators or metrics below from the year 2002 to the present. We believed we have been fed with too much toxics by the mainstream medias which are also own by them that capitalized on the age old investment axiom of good-to-good.

Does Government do what's right for us?

We have led to believed or should we say brought up with the perception that when someone does well then he/she will be blessed in return. Hence it gave rise to an old age investment axiom of good-to-good and bad-to-bad reaction which can be translate to good action leads to good reaction. So we always believed that whatever our Government does it will be for the better of us. So when they bailed out the banks, we believed that they are doing the right thing and we should leave everything in their good hands and expect good reaction. Right? WRONG ! We shall show you on our analysis below that whatever our Government does is not necessary the right thing to do. We have based our analysis on the following indicators or metrics.
  1. GDP per Capita
  2. Inflation rate
  3. Balance of Trade
  4. Government Debt to GDP
  5. Government 10Y bond
  6. Government Spending
  7. Consumer Spending
The following is a review of the Icelandic economy which not only refuses a bailout of its banks but instead bankrupting them. They are taking a big risk to take things into their own hands instead of letting the bankers running their country. They are going off the beaten path and from our analysis we reckoned that they have done the right thing. Below we compare the economies of two different countries that have taken different paths - one that receive bailouts (Greece) and the other (Iceland) refuses bailouts. The first metric we are using is the GDP per Capita.