Archive for category Big Money
There’s a strange story out there about Syrian President Bashar Assad’s assassination and possible death. It has little merit but the sourcing is interesting. (Image)
Gateway Pundit reported: BREAKING: Assad Shot By Bodyguard – Hospitalized in Damascus – Posted by Jim Hoft on Sunday, March 24, 2013, 12:22 PM
The sourcing on this leads to a French publication, JSS. Gateway Pundit listed the link as “Translated from JSS News:”
JSS is a French online publication, JSS, cites the “Arab Media” as its source on Assad’s death. This is when the story falls apart.
Michael Collins
Great Britain’s three political parties just made a deal to provide a degree of regulation for the British press. The deal produces a Royal Charter that establishes a press regulator at arms-length from the government plus a regulation regime that the major media companies can join.
The charter is an outgrowth of the Leveson Commission established to get to the bottom of the press abuses in the phone hacking scandal that resurfaced in 2011. Thousands of crime victims, celebrities, and lower profile citizens had their phone hacked by the press and private detectives working for the Murdoch papers and other media outlets. The London Metropolitan Police (the Met) colluded with the Murdoch papers both by ignoring obvious criminal behavior and by using police resources to track and snoop on the news targets of the tabloids.
Why would a news organization join the voluntary regulatory regime if it’s voluntary? Good question. It’s not exactly voluntary. Let’s say The Mirror tabloid failed to join the regulatory organization. Any court cases brought against that paper/company would be subject to extraordinary damages compared to a media outlet that committed the very same transgression but happened to be part of the self-regulatory regime.
(Washington, DC 1/17) The nation’s capital hosted over 40,000 citizens assembled to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. The crowd urged President Obama to bring to reality his lofty words on climate change in the inaugural address just days ago. By stopping the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, the president would deal a blow to the rogue energy companies who, by their actions, are ready to sacrifice everything to transport oil from Alberta, Canada’s tar sands, across the United States, for refinement in Houston, Texas and shipment to China.
The broader concern of the gathered citizens and march sponsors, 350.org, and the Sierra Club, represents the existential issue of our time. We need to get very real, very soon on the manifest threat to the earth’s climate posed by fossil fuels and the threat to the human species embodied by insane ventures like the Canadian tar sands project. The verdict of science is clear. As leading climate scientist James E. Hansen said, the full exploitation of tar sands oil and use by China, or any nation, is “game over for the climate.”
Citizens gathered at the Washington Monument, where speakers outlined the last chance scenario for reversing climate change. While nowhere near the entire solution, stopping the Keystone XL pipeline offers the biggest win in the war for survival. Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, opened the program with the demand that President Obama live up to his campaign rhetoric and stop the pipeline from crossing the Canadian border. That action would devastate the corporate partnership of Enbridge, TransCanada, and the other vultures seeking to profit at the expense of everyone else. Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, argued that the coal and oil industries are on the run. He cited energy use estimates for Texas, Colorado, and other states that show 30% of energy needs will be met by alternative fuels. Brune chained himself to the White House fencing February 14 in the Sierra Club’s first sanctioned act of civil disobedience in 120 years. Read the rest of this entry »
Michael Collins
(Washington, DC 1/21) A long standing Money Party front, the Business Roundtable, wants you to wait until you’re 70 years old before you get Social Security and Medicare benefits. This is just a reprise of the November 2012 dictate from the king of corporate cronyism, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein. (Image: DonkeyHotey) (Greenspan statement)
The boss announced, “So there will be things that, you know, the retirement age has to be changed, maybe some of the benefits have to be affected, maybe some of the inflation adjustments have to be revised. But in general, entitlements have to be slowed down and contained.” Lloyd Blankfein, CBS News, November 2012
That’s easy for Lloyd to say. He makes tens of millions of dollars a year without so much as lifting a finger. You can be sure that Blankfein has a deluxe health insurance and retirement plan. Read the rest of this entry »
Michael Collins
United States and European Union sanctions against Iran prevent much needed medical care for the Iranian people. Those with cancer, for example, have lost the option of treatment through chemotherapy while hemophiliacs are at high risk for any surgery due to a denial of essential pharmaceuticals. There are 85,000 new cases of cancer every year in Iran. Those with cancer and the newly diagnosed will have to do without effective treatments. A large percentage of them will die sooner than anticipated as a result. (Image: Fergal of Calldagh)
The Iranian medical community is unable to get required medicines due to financial restrictions in the sanctions regime. The restrictions effectively blocks pharmaceutical purchases by Iranian medical facilities. No ticket, no laundry is the policy of big and little pharma throughout the world. As a result, right now — as you read this — innocent Iranians are dying, sentenced to death by the U.S.-E.U. sanctions.
Who on earth would initiate and sustain such a policy? Read the rest of this entry »
By Michael Collins
(Washington, DC 1/9/13) Let’s say that on a Monday, you sit down and take a hard look at your finances. Your bills exceed your income, assets are just a feint memory, and there is no relief in sight. Reluctantly, you decide that your only choice is to declare bankruptcy. On Tuesday you say, I think I’ll do some shopping before it’s all over. You proceed to charge $2,000 on your VISA card for some jewelry and other non essentials. On Wednesday, you get a lawyer and file for bankruptcy.
Guess what? You still owe the $2,000 since the court will conclude that you made the purchases fraudulently. You knew you were filing for bankruptcy and made the charges anyway. Even worse, the court may refuse to grant the bankruptcy filing all together as a result of the obvious fraud.
That is exactly what the Republicans in the House of Representatives are doing with their open announcement that they will vote against raising the debt ceiling without their solution to government spending. Since that announcement, has one single deficit hawk stood up and said, We must stop all spending as of this moment since we are proposing to default on those expenditures?
They haven’t said any such thing and they won’t. That would mean an end of all Federal spending in their districts and states. They are more than happy to incur expenditures that they have no intention of paying anywhere close to on time.
Why is the refusal to raise the debt ceiling such a threat to the good faith and credit of the United States of America? Simple. The majority party in the House is engaged in flat out fraud. That party is spending money as it promises to default on the very amounts spent.
It is fraud, pure and simple. The behavior of key leaders attacks the credit worthiness of the country.
You may say, Look, it’s only a temporary default. The loss of confidence still attaches to the action. In fact, the fraud of purchasing after declaring an intention to default is compounded by the grotesque insincerity of the threat. It’s enough to make your head spin.
The Republicans in the House of Representatives are involved in a very real, common conspiracy to commit fraud based on their statements and actions. In addition, they’re lying to the public since a real declaration default is not just extremely improbable, it is impossible. Sovereign states have the ability to issue currency. That unique ability and asset can’t be denied due to a legislative tantrum. Just like individuals and businesses, sovereign states have the very real option to develop a viable plan to work out of a financial crisis
The ever present double standard emerges. It is not OK for us to defraud creditors when we declare bankruptcy but the House can acquire goods and make promises to pay after openly declaring their intention to not pay. Nothing will happen to these politicians as a result of this conspicuous contempt for the law. If it looks like it might, they’ll just pass a law to make their crimes legal.
Every day, we suffer the undeserved indignity of being ruled by fools and fraudsters.
END
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