January 2011 – Page 3 – Infinite Unknown

Former Governor Jesse Ventura Sues Homeland Security And TSA For Sexual Assault Over Unconstitutional Body Scans And Pat-Downs

February 9, 2011January 27, 2011 by Infinite

Yes! Take care Jesse!

Jesse Ventura sues TSA for Sexual Assault

Added: 25. January 2011

– Jesse Ventura Sues TSA in Pat-Down Smackdown:

In a complaint filed Monday morning in the U.S. District Court for Minnesota, Ventura is suing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its secretary, Janet Napolitano, as well as the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), and its administrator, John Pistole.

Ventura accuses the agencies of violating his “basic rights to privacy and dignity, and his right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures,” after he received a pat-down by a TSA agent at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport in November 2010.

Ventura, who said he has a titanium implant after hip replacement surgery in 2008, alleges the pat-down included “warrantless, non-suspicion-based offensive touching, gripping and rubbing of the genital and other sensitive areas of his body,” which, the lawsuit contends, met “the definition for an unlawful sexual assault.”

Ventura’s Minneapolis-based attorney, David Olsen, told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS this afternoon, “The security procedures are going too far. There’s a line somewhere and he believes that line has been crossed.”

Olsen said Ventura no longer flies on commercial aviation because he is unwilling to submit to either a pat-down or a full-body scan, putting his job as host of cable television’s Conspiracy Theory show, in jeopardy.

“He’s made a decision that someone needs to make a stand and he’s not one to back down from a fight,” said Olsen. “He sees the erosion of civil liberties here and he’s willing to stand up not only for himself, but for others.”

Click here to read Ventura’s lawsuit.

MINNEAPOLIS – Former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura sued the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration on Monday, alleging full-body scans and pat-downs at airport checkpoints violate his right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures.

Ventura is asking a federal judge in Minnesota to issue an injunction ordering officials to stop subjecting him to “warrantless and suspicionless” scans and body searches.

The lawsuit, which also names Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and TSA Administrator John Pistole as defendants, argues the searches are “unwarranted and unreasonable intrusions on Governor Ventura’s personal privacy and dignity . and are a justifiable cause for him to be concerned for his personal health and well-being.”

According to the lawsuit, Ventura received a hip replacement in 2008, and since then, his titanium implant has set off metal detectors at airport security checkpoints. The lawsuit said that prior to last November officials had used a non-invasive hand-held wand to scan his body as a secondary security measure.

But when Ventura set off the metal detector in November, he was instead subjected to a body pat-down and was not given the option of a scan with a hand-held wand or an exemption for being a frequent traveler, the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit said the pat-down “exposed him to humiliation and degradation through unwanted touching, gripping and rubbing of the intimate areas of his body.”

It claims that under TSA’s policy, Ventura will be required to either go through a full-body scanner or submit to a pat-down every time he travels because he will always set off the metal detector.

Ventura, who was Minnesota governor from 1999 through 2002 and is now the host of the television program “Conspiracy Theory,” did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment.

President Obama May Get Power to Shut Down Internet Without Any Court oversight

January 27, 2011January 27, 2011 by Infinite

A bill giving the president an Internet “kill switch” during times of emergency that failed to pass Congress last year will return this year, but with a revision that has many civil liberties advocates concerned: It will give the president the ability to shut down parts of the Internet without any court oversight.

The Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act was introduced last year by Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Susan Collins (R-ME) in an effort to combat cyber-crime and the threat of online warfare and terrorism.

Critics said the bill would allow the president to disconnect Internet networks and force private websites to comply with broad cybersecurity measures. Future US presidents would have those powers renewed indefinitely.

According to a report Monday at CNET News, the bill will be back on the Senate agenda in the new year. But a revision introduced into the bill in December would exempt the law from judicial oversight. According to critics, this change would open the law to politically-motivated abuse by any administration, no matter how narrowly the law is interpreted.

“The country we’re seeking to protect is a country that respects the right of any individual to have their day in court,” Steve DelBianco, director of the NetChoice coalition, which represents online companies such as eBay and Yahoo, told CNET. “Yet this bill would deny that day in court to the owner of infrastructure.”

Italy Seizes $20 Billion More Fake US Government Bonds

January 27, 2011January 27, 2011 by Infinite

Flashback:

– Another $100 Billion of U.S. Government Bonds Seized in Italy

– The Bearer Bond Saga: It Gets More Odd

– The Japanese Bond Smugglers Are Missing

– The US Bearer Bonds ‘Coincidence’

– The Saga Of The Bearer Bonds; Smuggled Bonds Are Probably Genuine

– Italy Seizes $135 BILLION Of US Bonds: Smuggling Or Counterfeit-Printing?

And now:

– 20 billion USD bond fraud (Croatian Times):

A 20-billion US dollar haul of fake US government bonds has been seized by police in Italy in a raid on a counterfeiting gang.

The bogus bearer bonds were unearthed when police doing routine traffic checks stumbled across them in a car they had stopped in Fermo.

Six people have been arrested and are being quizzed by police over the 40 bonds, each for 500 million US dollars.

“They are very good, very detailed forgeries,” said a police spokesman.

Italian authorities have confiscated $20 billion in counterfeit U.S. government bonds.

Authorities say the bonds were of a quality that theoretically could have defrauded financial institutions.

But a stop at a highway rest area where a group of Carabinieri military police were taking a break proved to be the undoing of the group.

A Carabinieri statement said officers did a routine search of the vehicles after the “suspicious” behaviour of the men and found “to their surprise” a briefcase with 40 bonds 0each valued at $500 million.

Officials said Wednesday that U.S. officials confirmed the bonds were counterefeit. The six men are under investigation for receiving stolen goods.

The Associated Press January 26, 2011, 10:15AM ET

Source: BusinessWeek

Goldman Sachs Banksters Got Billions From AIG For Its Own Account, Crisis Panel Finds

January 27, 2011January 27, 2011 by Infinite

More info on the criminal Goldman Sachs banksters at the end of the following article.

That is what Goldman Sachs CEO Blankfein calls ‘doing God’s work‘.

Goldman Sachs collected $2.9 billion from the American International Group as payout on a speculative trade it placed for the benefit of its own account, receiving the bulk of those funds after AIG received an enormous taxpayer rescue, according to the final report of an investigative panel appointed by Congress.

The fact that a significant slice of the proceeds secured by Goldman through the AIG bailout landed in its own account–as opposed to those of its clients or business partners– has not been previously disclosed. These details about the workings of the controversial AIG bailout, which eventually swelled to $182 billion, are among the more eye-catching revelations in the report to be released Thursday by the bipartisan Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.

The details underscore the degree to which Goldman–the most profitable securities firm in Wall Street history–benefited directly from the massive emergency bailout of the nation’s financial system, a deal crafted on the watch of then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who had previously headed the bank.

“If these allegations are correct, it appears to have been a direct transfer of wealth from the Treasury to Goldman’s shareholders,” said Joshua Rosner, a bond analyst and managing director at independent research consultancy Graham Fisher & Co., after he was read the relevant section of the report. “The AIG counterparty bailout, which was spun as necessary to protect the public, seems to have protected the institution at the expense of the public.”

Bank of England’s Mervyn King Warns Inflation Could Reach 5 Percent Within Months

January 27, 2011January 27, 2011 by Infinite

Mervyn King ‘nuked’ the UK with quantitative easing, using what economists call the ‘nuclear option’:

– Quantitative Easing Explained

Just exchange the Fed with the BoE and ‘THE BEN BERNANK’ with ‘THE MERVY KING’.

Quantitative easing = printing money = creating money out of thin air = increasing the money supply = inflation = hidden tax on monetary assets = theft!

– Bank of England extends quantitative easing to £200 billion (Guardian)

And now Mervyn King warns of the fallout of quantitative easing, which is inflation!

Wake up Britain!

Mervyn King is a criminal and an elite puppet.

Britain’s “uncomfortably high inflation” is of more concern to the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) than the surprise fall in gross domestic product, Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, has said.

Mervyn King said the idea that the Bank of England could have preserved living standards by preventing a rise in inflation was ‘wishful thinking’ Photo: REUTERS

Mr King warned that inflation was likely to rise to between 4pc and 5pc over the next few months, before falling back next year. He said that inflation has climbed to its current level of 3.7pc because of rising import and energy prices and taxes, and that these factors had squeezed real take-home pay by around 12pc.

In a speech in Newcastle that included references to both Ken Dodd and Leo Tolstoy, Mr King said the shock 0.5pc fall in GDP over the fourth quarter of 2010 served as a reminder of his comment last year that the recovery would be “choppy”. But he added: “Of more immediate concern to the MPC is that we are experiencing uncomfortably high inflation.”

Wheat Futures At 29 Month High As Developing Country Demand Surges In Aftermath Of Tunisia Revolution

January 27, 2011January 27, 2011 by Infinite

Dow Jones reports that wheat futures just hit a 29-month highs on “strong global demand.”

Per the newswire, Algeria bought 800,000 tons of milling wheat, with traders estimating the nation’s purchases for January at about 1.8M. Turkey and Jordan bought wheat last week after rising food prices helped fuel unrest in Tunisia.

“They’re saying, ‘Boy we’ve got to eat. We don’t know where wheat is going to be in a month,’ says PFG Best. CBOT March wheat ends up 18 1/4c at $8.56 1/2 a bushel, while KCBT March climbs 22 1/2c to $9.40 and MGE March jumps 21c to $9.77.

The chart shows the UBS Bloomberg constant maturity Wheat index which confirms the vicious loop of what surging prices and geopolitical instability means to wheat prices.

The higher the prices, the greater the scramble by developing (and soon developed) countries to acquire as much wheat as possible and hoard it, hoping to avoid Tunisia’s fate, which of course will lead to even greater price surges. And all of this ignores the impact of the Goblin in Chief, whose money printing fetish has earned him, in our books, the adjective ‘genocidal’.

Once China figures out what is going on, and rice prices finally explode as we fully expect they will, the world will figure out just why…The only silver lining – soon farming will be the most profitable profession in the world. And as bankers only go where the money is, Bernanke’s strategy may in fact lead to the first net natural outflow of bankers from Wall Street in history.

Frozen Cars In New York City

January 27, 2011January 27, 2011 by Infinite

Added: 25. Januar 2011

MPs Slam ‘Secretive’ Climategate Probes

January 27, 2011January 27, 2011 by Infinite

Labour MP Graham Stringer said Lord Oxburgh appeared to have a “conflict of interest”

TWO inquiries into claims that scientists manipulated data about global warming were yesterday condemned by MPs as ineffective and too secretive.

The row, which became known as Climategate, erupted in 2009 over allegations that researchers had deliberately strengthened evidence suggesting human activity was to blame for rising temperatures.

MPs on the Science and Technology Committee have now concluded that both probes into the scandal had failed to “fully investigate” claims that scientists had deleted embarrassing emails.

The investigations were set up after around 4,000 leaked emails and documents appeared to show that scientists at East Anglia University’s Climate Research Unit had manipulated data to strengthen the case for man-made global warming.

Nobel Laureate: DNA Performs Teleportation

January 27, 2011January 27, 2011 by Infinite

A Nobel prizewinner is reporting that DNA can be generated from its teleported “quantum imprint”

A STORM of scepticism has greeted experimental results emerging from the lab of a Nobel laureate which, if confirmed, would shake the foundations of several fields of science. “If the results are correct,” says theoretical chemist Jeff Reimers of the University of Sydney, Australia, “these would be the most significant experiments performed in the past 90 years, demanding re-evaluation of the whole conceptual framework of modern chemistry.”

Luc Montagnier, who shared the Nobel prize for medicine in 2008 for his part in establishing that HIV causes AIDS, says he has evidence that DNA can send spooky electromagnetic imprints of itself into distant cells and fluids. If that wasn’t heretical enough, he also suggests that enzymes can mistake the ghostly imprints for real DNA, and faithfully copy them to produce the real thing. In effect this would amount to a kind of quantum teleportation of the DNA.

Many researchers contacted for comment by New Scientist reacted with disbelief. Gary Schuster, who studies DNA conductance effects at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, compared it to “pathological science”. Jacqueline Barton, who does similar work at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, was equally sceptical. “There aren’t a lot of data given, and I don’t buy the explanation,” she says. One blogger has suggested Montagnier should be awarded an IgNobel prize.

China to Create Largest Mega City in The World With 42 Million People

January 27, 2011January 27, 2011 by Infinite

China is planning to create the world’s biggest mega city by merging nine cities to create a metropolis twice the size of Wales with a population of 42 million.

City planners in south China have laid out an ambitious plan to merge together the nine cities that lie around the Pearl River Delta.

The “Turn The Pearl River Delta Into One” scheme will create a 16,000 sq mile urban area that is 26 times larger geographically than Greater London, or twice the size of Wales.

The new mega-city will cover a large part of China’s manufacturing heartland, stretching from Guangzhou to Shenzhen and including Foshan, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Zhuhai, Jiangmen, Huizhou and Zhaoqing. Together, they account for nearly a tenth of the Chinese economy.

Over the next six years, around 150 major infrastructure projects will mesh the transport, energy, water and telecommunications networks of the nine cities together, at a cost of some 2 trillion yuan (£190 billion). An express rail line will also connect the hub with nearby Hong Kong.

Canada: Dead Herring Wash Ashore On Second Beach In Cedar

January 27, 2011January 27, 2011 by Infinite

Another beach in Cedar has been found covered with hundreds of dead herring that washed ashore.

The fish were found Monday near the beach house in Cedar-By-The-Sea, a short distance from the beach north of Boat Harbour where Will Meeks found a large number of dead herring on Friday.

Brenda Spence, a spokeswoman for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, speculated early Monday — before the latest discovery — that sea lions eating through nets used in the food and bait herring fishery in the Georgia Strait was the likely cause of the first incident.

Common Garden Weed ‘Cures Skin Cancer’, Say Scientists: Petty Spurge (Euphorbia peplus L.)

January 27, 2011January 27, 2011 by Infinite

Common garden weed ‘cures skin cancer’, say scientists

Petty Spurge miracle: You can find this weed invading gardens beds across the UK, but it has great cancer-fighting properties

A common weed could help cure skin cancers, claim researchers.

The sap from a plant known as petty spurge (Euphorbia peplus L.) – found by roadsides and in woodland – can ‘kill’ certain types of cancer cells when applied to the skin.

It works on non-melanoma skin cancers, which affect hundreds of thousands of Britons each year.

They are triggered by sun damage and, although not usually fatal, can be disfiguring without treatment.

The plant has been used for centuries as a traditional folk medicine to treat conditions such as warts, asthma and several types of cancer.

Germany Suspends Payments to Corrupt Global Health Fund

January 27, 2011January 27, 2011 by Infinite

BERLIN (AP) — Germany says it is suspending payments to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria until it gets answers about corruption allegations raised in articles by The Associated Press.

Development Minister Dirk Niebel said in a statement late Tuesday the serious questions raised about the $21.7 billion development fund’s work require a thorough investigation.

The ministry added Wednesday that this year’s pledge to the Geneva-based fund of €200 million ($270 million) will be withheld pending a full investigation.

Germany is the fund’s third largest government donor behind the U.S. and France, having pledged €600 million for 2011-13.

Seymour Hersh: Many Within Joint Special Operations Command ‘Are All Members Of, Or At Least Supporters Of, Knights Of Malta’, ‘Many Of Them Are Members of Opus Dei’ … ‘It’s A Crusade, Literally’

March 1, 2011January 27, 2011 by Infinite

In a speech billed as a discussion of the Bush and Obama eras, New Yorker journalist Seymour Hersh delivered a rambling, conspiracy-laden diatribe here Monday expressing his disappointment with President Barack Obama and his dissatisfaction with the direction of U.S. foreign policy.

“Just when we needed an angry black man,” he began, his arm perched jauntily on the podium, “we didn’t get one.”

It quickly went downhill from there.

Hersh, whose exposés of gross abuses by members of the U.S. military in Vietnam and Iraq have earned him worldwide fame and high journalistic honors, said he was writing a book on what he called the “Cheney-Bush years” and saw little difference between that period and the Obama administration.

He said that he was keeping a “checklist” of aggressive U.S. policies that remained in place, including torture and “rendition” of terrorist suspects to allied countries, which he alleged was ongoing.

He also charged that U.S. foreign policy had been hijacked by a cabal of neoconservative “crusaders” in the former vice president’s office and now in the special operations community.

“What I’m really talking about is how eight or nine neoconservative, radicals* if you will, overthrew the American government. Took it over,” he said of his forthcoming book. “It’s not only that the neocons took it over but how easily they did it — how Congress disappeared, how the press became part of it, how the public acquiesced.”

Hersh then brought up the widespread looting that took place in Baghdad after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. “In the Cheney shop, the attitude was, ‘What’s this? What are they all worried about, the politicians and the press, they’re all worried about some looting? … Don’t they get it? We’re gonna change mosques into cathedrals. And when we get all the oil, nobody’s gonna give a damn.'”

“That’s the attitude,” he continued. “We’re gonna change mosques into cathedrals. That’s an attitude that pervades, I’m here to say, a large percentage of the Joint Special Operations Command.”

He then alleged that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who headed JSOC before briefly becoming the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and his successor, Vice Adm. William McRaven, as well as many within JSOC, “are all members of, or at least supporters of, Knights of Malta.”

Hersh may have been referring to the Sovereign Order of Malta, a Roman Catholic organization commited to “defence of the Faith and assistance to the poor and the suffering,” according to its website.

“Many of them are members of Opus Dei,” Hersh continued. “They do see what they’re doing — and this is not an atypical attitude among some military — it’s a crusade, literally. They see themselves as the protectors of the Christians. They’re protecting them from the Muslims [as in] the 13th century. And this is their function.”

“They have little insignias, these coins they pass among each other, which are crusader coins,” he continued. “They have insignia that reflect the whole notion that this is a culture war. … Right now, there’s a tremendous, tremendous amount of anti-Muslim feeling in the military community.”

Canada: Freeman in Court – Judge Bows to Sovereign

January 27, 2011January 27, 2011 by Infinite

Mind Control with Lasers

January 27, 2011January 27, 2011 by Infinite

Several months ago I hosted a GitHub meetup in Boston to which tons of local geeks attended and drank free beer. During that meeting, I talked to a local graduate student in biophysics at Harvard named Andrew Leifer who told me that he loved GitHub and was in fact using it to collaborate on a program that accomplished mind control. with lasers. on worms.

Well, it turns out that I had not in fact been drinking too much and the project is real. Andrew’s research is called CoLBeRT: Controlling Locomotion and Behavior in Real-Time and works by running real-time analysis on video of a 1mm long specially bred light-sensitive C. elegans worm. The CoLBeRT system tracks the worm as it moves and shines laser light on specific neurons as the worm is moving to stimulate or inhibit those neurons.

The system can make the worm paralyzed, lay eggs, back up, speed up or sense touch in different areas of its body, all by directing laser light into specific neurons. That’s right, I said lay eggs. Check out this kick-ass laser:

If you aimed that at me, I’d probably lay eggs too.

Andrew’s research has recently been published in Nature Methods and covered in Science News and Scientific American and true to his word the source code for laser worm mind control is on GitHub, aptly named MindControl, and is open source.

Arizona To Pass 2012 Presidential Eligibility Law: Obama Will Have To Produce Birth Certificate To Run Again

January 26, 2011 by Infinite

Don’t miss:

– Hawaii Official Now Swears: No Obama Birth Certificate Exists

It could be a game-changer.

A plan in Arizona to require presidential candidates to prove their eligibility to occupy the Oval Office is approaching critical mass, even though it has just been introduced.

The proposal from state Rep. Judy Burges, who carried a similar plan that fell short last year only because of political maneuvering, was introduced yesterday with 16 members of the state Senate as co-sponsors.

It needs only 16 votes in the Senate to pass.

In the House, there are 25 co-sponsors, with the need for only 31 votes for passage, and Burges told WND that there were several chamber members who confirmed they support the plan and will vote for it, but simply didn’t wish to be listed as co-sponsors.

The proposal, which also is being taken up in a number of other states, is highly specific and directly addresses the questions that have been raised by Barack Obama’s occupancy of the White House. It says:

Within ten days after submittal of the names of the candidates, the national political party committee shall submit an affidavit of the presidential candidate in which the presidential candidate states the candidate’s citizenship and age and shall append to the affidavit documents that prove that the candidate is a natural born citizen, prove the candidate’s age and prove that the candidate meets the residency requirements for President of the United States as prescribed in article II, section 1, Constitution of the United States.

The critical phrases are “natural born citizen” and the requirements of “article II, section 1, Constitution of the United States,” which imposes on the president a requirement not demanded of other state and federal officeholders.

At the time the Constitution was written, many analysts agree, a “natural born citizen” was considered to be a citizen born of two citizen parents. If that indeed is correct, Obama never would have been qualified to be president, as he himself has confirmed his father was a Kenyan subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom, making Obama a dual citizen with Kenyan and American parentage at his birth.

Other definitions have called for a “natural born citizen” to be born of citizen parents inside the nation.

Russia Threatens NATO to Deploy ‘Offensive’ Nuclear Weapons

January 26, 2011 by Infinite

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev

The Russian president has called on NATO to clarify Moscow’s role in a European missile system, warning if no agreement is reached, Russia will be forced to deploy “offensive” nuclear weapons.

“So this is not a joking matter. We expect from our NATO partners a direct and unambiguous answer,” Dmitry Medvedev said during a meeting with Russia’s NATO envoy Dmitry Rogozin.

“In either case, we are either together with NATO, or we separately find an adequate response to the existing problem,” he said.

FEMA Wants to Buy 140 Million Blankets For A Catastrophic Disaster Event Within The New Madrid Fault System

January 26, 2011January 26, 2011 by Infinite

And the government already has the ‘FEMA coffins’:

– Jesse Ventura Conspiracy Theory: Police State (And FEMA Concentration Camps) (Must-see!)

Is there a link to the recent mystery animal deaths?

– Mass Death of Birds and Fish: Is There a Cover Up? (FOODCONSUMER – Dr. Mercola)

New Madrid Fault Line: Could it be related to the recent earthquake activity along a fault line that runs along the mid-eastern section of the U.S.? Could it have dispersed pollutants into the water and atmosphere?

Solicitation Number: HSFEHQ-11-R-Blankets

Notice Type: Sources Sought

Synopsis: Added: Jan 20, 2011 4:54 pm

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) procures and stores blankets to support readiness capability for immediate distribution to disaster survivors routinely. The purpose of this Request for Information is to identify sources of supply for blankets in support of disaster relief efforts based on a catastrophic disaster event within the New Madrid Fault System for a survivor population of 7M to be utilized for the sustainment of life during a 10-day period of operations. FEMA is considering the following specifications (14M blankets per day):

South Africa Flood Death Toll Rises As Government Declares 33 Disaster Zones

January 26, 2011January 26, 2011 by Infinite

Warnings of humanitarian crises after flooding claims more than 100 lives and threatens rest of southern Africa

The Vaal dam overflows near Johannesburg earlier this month. Seven of South Africa’s nine provinces have been affected by flooding. Photograph: Jon Hrusa/EPA

Flooding in South Africa has killed more than 100 people, forced at least 8,400 from their homes and prompted the government to declare 33 disaster areas.

With unusually heavy rainfall forecast until March, the UN has warned that almost every country in southern Africa is on alert for potentially disastrous flooding.

The government said that 88 deaths in the rising toll were in the eastern KwaZulu-Natal province. The costs of damage to the infrastructure in the seven of the country’s nine provinces affected is estimated at 160bn rand (£14bn).

Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Slams Greenspan, Bernanke, Geithner, Paulson, Summers, SEC, Rating Agencies and Big Banks for Causing Crisis

January 26, 2011January 26, 2011 by Infinite

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission is releasing its report Thursday.

The New York Times has a preview of the report, which shows that the Commission will slam the right people for causing the financial crisis.

Barry Ritholtz gives a good summary of the Times’ article:

The many causal factors highlighted in the FCIC report:

• Alan Greenspan’s malfeasance — his refusal to perform his regulatory duties because he did not believe in them — allowed the credit bubble to expand, driving housing prices to dangerously unsustainable levels; Greenspan’s advocacy for financial deregulation was a “pivotal failure to stem the flow of toxic mortgages” and “the prime example” of government negligence;

• Ben S. Bernanke failed to foresee the crisis;

• The Bush administration’s “inconsistent response” — saving Bear, but allowing Lehman to crater — “added to the uncertainty and panic in the financial markets.”

• Bush Treasury secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. wrongly predicted in 2007 that subprime meltdown would be contained.

• The Clinton White House, including then Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, made a crucial error in “shielding over-the-counter derivatives from regulation [CFMA]. This was “a key turning point in the march toward the financial crisis.”

• Then NY Fed President, now Treasury secretary Timothy F. Geithner failed to “clamp down on excesses by Citigroup in the lead-up to the crisis;” Further, a month before Lehman’s collapse, Geithner was still in the dark about Lehman’s derivative exposure;

• Low interest rates brought about by the Fed after the 2001 recession “created increased risks” but were not chiefly to blame, according to the FCIC (I place some more weight on Ultra-low rates than they do);

• The financial sector spent $2.7 billion on lobbying from 1999 to 2008, while individuals and committees affiliated with the industry made more than $1 billion in campaign contributions. The impact of which an incestuous relationship between bankers and regulators, Congress and bankers, and classic regulatory capture by the industry.

• The credit-rating agencies “cogs in the wheel of financial destruction.”

• The Securities and Exchange Commission allowed the 5 biggest banks to ramp up their leverage, hold insufficient capital, and engage in risky practices.

• Leverage at the nation’s five largest investment banks was wildly excessive: They kept only $1 in capital to cover losses for about every $40 in assets;

• The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency along with the Office of Thrift Supervision, “federally pre-empted” (blocked) state regulators from reining in lending abuses;

• The report documents “questionable practices by mortgage lenders and careless betting by banks;”

• The report portrays the “bumbling incompetence among corporate chieftains” as to the risk and operations of their own firms:

-Citigroup executives admitting that they paid little attention to the risks associated with mortgage securities.
-AIG executives were blind to its $79 billion exposure to credit default swaps;
-Merrill Lynch top managers were surprised when mortgage investments suddenly resulted in billions of dollars in losses;

JP Morgan Sold Investors MBS Covered By ‘SACK OF SHIT’ Loans … Then Shorted All Those With Exposure: A Goldman-AIG Redux

January 26, 2011 by Infinite

“In a nutshell: JPM committed fraud through misrepresentation, then wilfully and maliciously traded AGAINST the entities it had sold misrepresented securities to, and lastly, when even all this failed to rescue the failed bank, it was rescued, courtesy of the US taxpayers. Only in America will this lead to absolutely no jail time whatsoever.”

Today’s mortgage fraud stunner comes from Bloomberg’s Jody Shenn who reports on the ongoing lawsuit between Ambac and former Bear Stearns mortgage unit EMC, now part of JP Morgan. In what can only be classified as fraud-cum-double dipping-cum-AIG/Goldman, “JPMorgan Chase & Co. demanded that a lender repurchase bad mortgages even as it resisted calls to buy back the loans from bonds created by Bear Stearns. “That would be pretty bad” if true, said Joshua Rosner, an analyst at New York-based research firm Graham Fisher & Co. He said such allegations show why “investors and consumers have a right to be distrustful of the banks’ statements.” The bottom line is that JPM, which has so far been able to escape largely unscathed from the fraudclosure scandal, is about to take front and center. The reason: the very first line of the just released Exhibit 1 to the Ambac lawsuit: “In mid-2006, Bear Stearns induced investors to purchase, and Ambac as a financial guarantor to insure, securities that were backed by a pool of mortgage loans that – in the words of the Bear Stearns deal manager – was a “SACK OF SHIT.” But the stunner, and nothing short of a full-blown scandal if proven true, is that Bear Stearns (aka JPM) after funneling misrepresented loans with Ambac’s insurance, “implemented a trading strategy to profit from Ambac’s potential demise by “shorting” banks with large exposure to Ambac-insured securities.” This needs its own congressional hearing right now, followed by a few wristslaps. After all such wholesale fraud can never possibly be prosecuted in the world’s most advanced country.

(photo credit William Banzai)

China vs. JP Morgan: The Battle Over Gold And Silver

January 26, 2011January 26, 2011 by Infinite

Gold is down 6% and silver 12% since the start of 2011. This is the sharpest decline in precious metals since June of last year and with technical support broken at the 50-day moving averages, many are concerned of a deeper correction ahead.

While there are a myriad of factors driving the prices, two of the major opposing forces are Chinese demand for physical gold on the long side and JPMorgan paper schemes on the short side. Which force prevails in the short term remains to be seen, but in the long run the paper shorts will eventually be squeezed, pushing the price for both gold and silver much higher.

Corrections are a healthy and normal part of any secular bull market, allowing the bull to rest its legs, shake out weak hands and prepare for the next phase up. Every correction in precious metals over the past decade has brought so-called “experts” out of the woodwork to proclaim an end to the gold bull market. They were wrong when gold hit $500, $800, $1,000 and will be wrong many times again before gold finally does peak somewhere above $5,000 per ounce.

But the recent slide in gold and silver prices seems like more than the usual correction and profit taking. Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act during July of 2010 and many metals analysts believed it would lead to the CFTC implementing sensible position limits. In addition, the passing of the Volker rule and closing of prop trading desks seemed to jump start precious metals into an impressive and steady advance.

Many gold bugs believed they were witnessing the end of the fraudulent gold and silver manipulation that has been occurring so blatantly over the past several years. This manipulation has been painstakingly exposed by GATA over the years, was detailed in an earlier article that I published and has led to a series of lawsuits against JPMorgan and others.

Gold and silver posted impressive gains in 2010, with gold up 30%, while silver rocketed more than 80% higher! But these advances came to an abrupt halt at the start of 2011 and the decline worsened a few weeks later when the CFTC announced the details of it proposed position limits. First off, the proposed limits were way too high to curb manipulation and more importantly, JPMorgan, HSBC and other large investment banks were granted an exemption to the new position limit rules by being “grandfathered.” The CFTC absolutely caved to the interests of JPMorgan and the price of gold and silver both proceeded to tank and drop through key levels of support.

To what degree the CFTC decision is driving the decline in precious metals is unclear. Gene Arensberg recently pointed out that the large commercial banks have actually been covering their short positions lately and that the swap dealers are the ones that have been uncharacteristically piling on the paper shorts. Regardless, big money has certainly been helping to push prices lower, even as the dollar has weakened significantly in the past few weeks.

While the paper market has been driving the spot price lower, the physical market appears to be as robust as ever. Sales of silver eagle coins for the month of January have already set a new all-time record, with ten days still left in the month. Furthermore, silver demand in China has quadrupled versus last year, as the emerging Chinese middle class looks for a hedge against inflation and the Chinese government encourages its citizens to buy gold and silver.

This is a relatively new phenomenon in Chinese culture, as ownership of precious metals was illegal just a few short years back. But this has all changed as China has become the largest producer of gold in the world and is expected to surpass India as the largest consumer of gold as well.

Demand from China is not only coming from the citizens though, as the Chinese government has been accumulating massive amounts of gold and silver for their reserves. After not reporting gold reserves for six years, the Chinese government in 2009 made a surprise announcement that they had nearly doubled their gold reserves to over 1,000 tons. They have been doing this quietly via buying up the production from Chinese mining companies, as well as making purchases in the open market via intermediaries.

China announced annual gold production of 314 tons in 2010 and this number is expected to be around 320 tons in 2011. If the suspicion that China is buying up most of the country’s gold production is true, there could well be another 600 tons or more moved into ‘unofficial’ reserves before the next announcement. Add in purchases in the international market, and it is conceivable that China’s reserves could effectively be doubled again by the end of 2011 to some 2,000 tons.

Study: Pesticides Are ‘Killing Honeybee Population Worldwide’

January 26, 2011January 26, 2011 by Infinite

Related information:

– BBKA Betrayed Bee Keepers To Pesticide Lobby, Endorsed The Most Deadly Substances For Bees Existing On The Planet As ‘Bee-Friendly’ Or ‘Bee-Safe’ (!)

– Bumblebees in Freefall, Study Shows 96 Percent Decline

– EPA Knowingly Allowed Pesticide That Kills Honey Bees, Leaked Document Shows (!)

– Billons Of Bee Colonies Die Worldwide

– Heavy Honeybee Die-Off Continues; New Study Shows Pollen And Hives Laden With Pesticides

– Study: ‘High-Fructose Corn Syrup and Its Toxicity to the Honey Bee’

– Organic Bees Surviving Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) (!)

Yes, organic bees survive CCD, which almost proves that a pesticide (or maybe GM plants) must be responsible for CCD.

Also living on refined white sugar and high-fructose corn syrup in winter certainly can kill any advanced life-form.

Dying? Honeybees are being wiped out by new pesticides that have left them far more vulnerable to disease, the top U.S. bee expert has warned

A new generation of pesticides ~~could be~~ are to blame for Britain’s vanishing honeybees, a study has shown.

The chemicals, which are routinely used on farms and garden centres, attack the central systems of insects and make bee colonies more vulnerable to disease and pests, researchers say.

The claims, which appear in an unpublished study carried out at the US Department of Agriculture’s Bee Research Laboratory, add to the evidence that pesticides are partly responsible for the mysterious decline of one of the world’s best loved insects.

Wildlife campaigners today called for urgent research into the links between the chemicals and the collapse of bee colonies around the world.

Scientists are baffled by Britain’s disappearing honeybees. Since the 1980s numbers have fallen by half.

The new study, led by Dr Jeffrey Pettis, one of the U.S.’s top bee experts, found that exposure to a class of pesticides called neo-nicotinoids makes bees more susceptible to infection – even at doses too low to be detected in the creature’s bodies.

Food Prices to Rocket By 50% As Global Hunger Epidemic Causes Riots and Famines

January 26, 2011January 26, 2011 by Infinite

The same elite criminals that have intentionally caused famines and all kinds of disasters around the world (and the financial crisis) are now calling for GM food as the solution.

Problem – reaction – solution.

All think-tanks belong to the elite financed propaganda machinery.

We have the dirt-cheap technology to green the entire Sahara desert in almost no time.

And GM food is the solution? Sure!:

– Max Keiser: Monsanto And The Seeds Of Evil

– The GMO Catastrophe In The US, A Lesson For The World

– Monsanto: GM-Corn Harvest of 82,000 Hectares in South Africa Fails

– Exposed: the great GM crops myth (The Independent):

“Genetic modification actually cuts the productivity of crops, an authoritative new study shows, undermining repeated claims that a switch to the controversial technology is needed to solve the growing world food crisis.”

– Natural Farming: Farmer Doubles Production, Cuts Water Use By 30 Percent, Needs NO Fertilizer, Herbicides And Pesticides

Food prices are about to explode:

– ‘The World Is Only One Poor Harvest Away From Chaos’

– Australia Floods: Food Prices to Rise 30% – 50% of Crops Affected, With 20% Wiped Out

– India: Food Inflation Up Over 18 Percent In Just One Year

– Algerian Riots Continue Over Skyrocketing Food Prices And Unemployment

More on GM food at the end of the following elite propaganda article.

The coming global food crisis has been artificially created, like the financial crisis.

* ‘Perfect storm’ of issues will bring widespread starvation if nothing is done
* Food prices to rise by 50 per cent over the next decade
* GM crops will be needed to feed the world
* Global population to grow to 9billion by 2050

Food crisis: A leading Government think tank has warned scaremongering over GM farming is no longer acceptable

The cost of food will soar by 50 per cent over the next few decades as the world becomes racked by famine, mass migrations and riots, experts have warned.

The increase will be triggered by the exploding world population, rising cost of fuel and increased competition for water, according to a leading Government think-tank.

Spiralling food prices will push hundreds of millions of people into hunger, trigger mass migration and spark civil unrest, the report warned.

And in the UK, the price of basics such as bread, rice and milk will spiral to inflation-busting record prices within the next few decades.

The report, from Foresight, a think-tank set up to predict future crises, called for ‘urgent action’ to prevent food shortages, and said genetically modified crops may be needed to prevent famines.

Even a ‘modest’ rise in food prices could push 100million people into hunger, the report warned.