Holy Shroud of Turin
Lord Stirling's news blog EUROPE
Please forward this site to several friends, thanks. Stirling
1,047 daily postings to this news blog as of today.
Global Changes from the Dying Gulf Stream and already dead North Atlantic Current
LIFE ON THIS EARTH JUST CHANGED - Death of the North Atlantic Current ~ link ~ The coverage that this article that Dr. Deagle and myself wrote, has been great on the Internet. However, the corporate owned Mainstream News Media have embargoed the story. Please forward the story to as many sites and people as you can, and to your local newspaper UPDATED 5 October 2010 - Thanks
Three Video Interviews With Lord Stirling by Renowned Video Webcaster Morris Herman of England ~ link ~ link ~ link ~
Video on the Gulf Stream and its connection to any future Ice Ages ~ link
Current status of the Gulf Stream ~ link
RTOFS (Atlantic) Graphic Nowcasts/Forecasts - Latest Surface Horizontal Current ~ link ~ This shows North Brazil Current beginning to loop back into itself. Possible death of entire Thermohaline Circulation System. Updated to latest setting.
RTOFS (Atlantic) Graphic Nowcasts/Forecasts - Latest Surface Temperature ~ link
RTOFS (Atlantic) Graphic Nowcasts/Forecasts - Latest Surface Temperature ~ link
Three Video Interviews With Lord Stirling by Renowned Video Webcaster Morris Herman of England ~ link ~ link ~ link ~
Video on the Gulf Stream and its connection to any future Ice Ages ~ link
Risk of Global Climate Change By BP Oil Spill by Dr. Gianluigi Zangari ~ link
The Battle of Europe*.
*The Strike Wave in Europe and The Decay of "Democracy" ~ link ~
The growing struggles of the working class in Europe and internationally against mass unemployment and government austerity policies are exposing the reality behind the façade of bourgeois democracy. In every country, the government, whether conservative or nominally “left,” is cutting jobs and wages and slashing social programs in complete disregard for the overwhelming opposition of the population.
Elections, parliamentary debates have no effect on policy. The state does the bidding of the financial aristocracy, tearing up the living standards of the masses in the interests of the bankers who are responsible for the economic crisis. The financiers and corporate executives are making more money than ever by exploiting mass unemployment and growing social distress to slash wages and increase the exploitation of the working class.
Where the best efforts of the trade unions do not suffice to hold the workers in check and struggles break out that challenge the plans of the capitalists, most prominently in France and Greece, the state uses its powers of repression to smash strikes and protests. In France, the Sarkozy government has deployed riot police to break up workers’ blockades of oil depots and attack protesting students with tear gas and rubber bullets, arresting hundreds across the country.
In Greece, the social democratic PASOK government, elected with the support of the unions, deployed the military to break a strike by truckers in August. Last week, the same government used riot police and tear gas against culture ministry employees occupying the Acropolis to protest mass layoffs.
Despite these attacks, the resistance of the working class is growing. The current wave of strikes and protests in France is the most developed expression of a new stage in the international class struggle. It marks a shift in the world political situation of historic proportions. The working class is once again entering into battle against the capitalists.
Recent days have seen the spread of the strike movement in France, the outbreak of a strike in Greece that has paralyzed the country’s rail system, and a demonstration of hundreds of thousands in Rome protesting the policies of the Berlusconi government.
There have been one-day general strikes and mass protests in Spain, Portugal and Ireland, strikes by workers in Romania, and powerful strikes by auto workers in China and by workers in India, Cambodia and Bangladesh.
In Britain, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government is imposing historically unprecedented cuts totaling 83 billion pounds, which will mean the loss of at least 500,000 jobs in the public sector and another 500,000 in the private sector.
British workers have repeatedly sought to resist the government-corporate onslaught, but have to this point been stymied by the treachery of the trade unions, which oppose any serious strike action or social mobilization. London tube workers have struck against privatization and mass layoffs, prompting the government to draw up anti-strike legislation. BBC and British Airways workers have voted for strike action, but the union leaders have refused to call them out.
In the US, Obama, who came to power by appealing to the intense hatred among working people and youth for the pro-corporate, militarist policies of Bush and the Republicans, is carrying out uniformly right-wing, anti-working class policies, shattering the illusions of millions who voted for him. The inability of the White House and the Democratic Party to in any way distance themselves from the corporate-financial elite has been underscored by the administration’s actions over the past week, just two weeks before the congressional elections.
The administration has lifted the moratorium on Gulf oil drilling, announced that Social Security recipients will receive no cost-of-living increase, and rejected calls for a moratorium on home foreclosures.
The growing opposition of the American working class is finding expression in an incipient rebellion by workers against the United Auto Workers union, which is seeking to make the 50 percent wage cut for newly hired workers worked out last year between itself, the auto bosses and the Obama administration the new baseline for the industry.
The contempt of the American ruling class for the democratic will of the people was summed up in an editorial on the events in France published Tuesday by the New York Times. The major organ of the “liberal” Democratic Party establishment acknowledged that there is broad support in the French population for the strikes and protests against Sarkozy’s plans to raise the retirement age. “Despite the widespread inconvenience and economic losses,” it wrote, “public opinion has remained sympathetic to the unions.” (French polls show upwards of 70 percent supporting the strikers).
This did not prevent the Times from insisting, “France’s Parliament should give final approval to the retirement age reform bill this week,” and adding, “Even with the age raised to 62, further painful adjustments would be needed before the end of this decade.”
*French Senate Votes Pension Cuts Over Mass Opposition ~ link ~ This attempt to force workers via national defense 'requisition' is fascist/communist in the extreme and is apt to provoke a powerful backlash. Stirling
The French Senate voted 177-153 yesterday to approve President Nicolas Sarkozy's pension cuts in the face of overwhelming popular opposition and continuing strikes. The government at the same time stepped up the use of the police to smash strikes in the oil sector, which have caused severe fuel shortages, carrying out a massive police raid on an occupied refinery at Grandpuits, near Paris.
Police vans arrived at Grandpuits at 3 a.m. yesterday and demanded to “requisition” strikers—that is, force them back to work. At 4:30 a.m., 50 striking workers joined their colleagues at the refinery.
By around 7 a.m., a “citizen’s picket” of 80 people, including workers from other factories and nearby residents, had formed to block the requisition. At 9 a.m., police charged the site. Three workers were wounded in the scuffle, according to CGT union sources.
Michel Guillot, the regional police chief for the Seine-et-Marne area, came in person to requisition the entire staff of the refinery and, in the name of “national defense,” force workers to re-supply oil firm Total’s gas stations in the area.
Charles Foulard, an official of the Total oil section of the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), denounced police for preventing “the exercise of the constitutionally protected right to strike” and pointed out that “national defense” did not legally apply, as France is neither in a state of war nor of siege. However, the CGT, which is politically linked to the French Communist Party (PCF), issued a statement declaring it would mount only “symbolic actions” against the breaking of the Grandpuits occupation.
*Thank God for France ~ link ~ Thank God for France. While American liberals tremble at the idea of sending an angry e mail to congress for fear that their name will appear on the State Department's list of terrorists, French workers are on the front lines choking on tear gas and fending off billyclubs in hand-to-hand combat with Sarkozy's Gendarmerie. That's because the French haven't forgotten their class roots. When the government gets too big for its britches, people pour out onto to the streets and Paris becomes a warzone replete with overturned Mercedes Benzs, smashed storefront windows, and stacks of smoldering tires issuing pillars of black smoke. This is what democracy looks like when it hasn't been emasculated by decades of propaganda and consumerism. Here's a blurp from the trenches:
Headline: "French Energy Sector Crippled by Nationwide Strike... French energy facilities are close to total disruption in the wake of nationwide strike against the raise of the retirement age.....France has been hit by numerous protests across the country against a controversial pension reform that would rise the retirement age to 62 from 60....On October 22 morning 80 protesters blockaded Grandpuits oil refinery outside Paris, key supplier for Charles de Gaulle and Orly international airport." (The Financial)
They're shutting 'em down.
Take note, Tea Party crybabies who moan about restoring "our freedoms" while stuffing the backyard bunker with seed corn and ammo. Glenn Beck won't save you from the "mean old" gov'mint. Liberty isn't free anymore. If you want it, get out of the barko-lounger and organize. The amount of freedom that any nation enjoys is directly proportionate to the amount of blood its people spilled fighting the state. No more, no less. The man who is willing to accept the blunt force of a cop's truncheon on his back is infinitely more praiseworthy than the leftist/rightist scribe crooning from the bleachers. The state isn't moved by lyrical editorials or prosaic manifestos. It responds to force alone, which is why it takes people who are willing to "throw themselves on the gears" of the apparatus and stop it from moving forward. Unfortunately, most of those people appear to live in France.
The resistance is steadily building in France. The budding rebellion is cropping up everywhere---"secondary schools, train stations, refineries and highways have been blockaded, there have been occupations of public buildings, workplaces, commercial centers, directed cuts of electricity, and ransacking of electoral institutions and town halls..." And the big unions are calling for more strikes, more agitation, more ferment.
For more than a week, transportation has been blocked across the France due to the protests by students and workers. Sarkozy's popularity has plummeted. 65% of people surveyed don't like the way the French president is handling the strikes. 79% of the people would like to see Sarkozy negotiate with the Union on terms and conditions, but he won't budge. Thus, the cauldron continues to boil while the prospect of violence rises.
"STRIKE, BLOCKADE, SABOTAGE"
*Sarkozy Should Retire, says France ~ link ~ The demonstrations that have rocked France this past week highlight some of its differences from the United States. The photo here, for example shows the difference between rioting in baseball-playing versus soccer-playing countries. In the US, we would pick up the tear gas canister and throw it, rather than kick it, back at the police.
*Thank God for France ~ link ~ Thank God for France. While American liberals tremble at the idea of sending an angry e mail to congress for fear that their name will appear on the State Department's list of terrorists, French workers are on the front lines choking on tear gas and fending off billyclubs in hand-to-hand combat with Sarkozy's Gendarmerie. That's because the French haven't forgotten their class roots. When the government gets too big for its britches, people pour out onto to the streets and Paris becomes a warzone replete with overturned Mercedes Benzs, smashed storefront windows, and stacks of smoldering tires issuing pillars of black smoke. This is what democracy looks like when it hasn't been emasculated by decades of propaganda and consumerism. Here's a blurp from the trenches:
Headline: "French Energy Sector Crippled by Nationwide Strike... French energy facilities are close to total disruption in the wake of nationwide strike against the raise of the retirement age.....France has been hit by numerous protests across the country against a controversial pension reform that would rise the retirement age to 62 from 60....On October 22 morning 80 protesters blockaded Grandpuits oil refinery outside Paris, key supplier for Charles de Gaulle and Orly international airport." (The Financial)
They're shutting 'em down.
Take note, Tea Party crybabies who moan about restoring "our freedoms" while stuffing the backyard bunker with seed corn and ammo. Glenn Beck won't save you from the "mean old" gov'mint. Liberty isn't free anymore. If you want it, get out of the barko-lounger and organize. The amount of freedom that any nation enjoys is directly proportionate to the amount of blood its people spilled fighting the state. No more, no less. The man who is willing to accept the blunt force of a cop's truncheon on his back is infinitely more praiseworthy than the leftist/rightist scribe crooning from the bleachers. The state isn't moved by lyrical editorials or prosaic manifestos. It responds to force alone, which is why it takes people who are willing to "throw themselves on the gears" of the apparatus and stop it from moving forward. Unfortunately, most of those people appear to live in France.
The resistance is steadily building in France. The budding rebellion is cropping up everywhere---"secondary schools, train stations, refineries and highways have been blockaded, there have been occupations of public buildings, workplaces, commercial centers, directed cuts of electricity, and ransacking of electoral institutions and town halls..." And the big unions are calling for more strikes, more agitation, more ferment.
For more than a week, transportation has been blocked across the France due to the protests by students and workers. Sarkozy's popularity has plummeted. 65% of people surveyed don't like the way the French president is handling the strikes. 79% of the people would like to see Sarkozy negotiate with the Union on terms and conditions, but he won't budge. Thus, the cauldron continues to boil while the prospect of violence rises.
"STRIKE, BLOCKADE, SABOTAGE"
*Sarkozy Should Retire, says France ~ link ~ The demonstrations that have rocked France this past week highlight some of its differences from the United States. The photo here, for example shows the difference between rioting in baseball-playing versus soccer-playing countries. In the US, we would pick up the tear gas canister and throw it, rather than kick it, back at the police.
More importantly, the French have decided to take to the streets in the millions – including large-scale strikes and work stoppages – to defend hard-won retirement gains. (It must be emphasised, since the media sometimes forgets to make the distinction, that only a tiny percentage of France's demonstrators have engaged in any kind of property damage and even fewer in violence, with all but these few protesting peacefully.) French populist rage is being directed in a positive direction – unlike in the United States where it is most prominently being mobilised to elect political candidates who will do their best to increase the suffering of working- and middle-class citizens.
I have to admit, though, that it was perplexing to watch the French elect Nicolas Sarkozy president in 2007, a man who campaigned on the idea that France had to make its economy more "efficient", like America's. In reality, he couldn't have picked a worse time to peddle this mumbo-jumbo. The housing bubble was already bursting in the United States and would soon cause not only our own Great Recession, but also drag most of the world economy into the swamp with it. So much for that particular model of economic dynamism.
But Sarkozy had a lot of help from the major media, which was quite enchanted with the American model at the time and helped promote a number of myths that formed part of his campaign. Among these were the idea that French social protections and employment benefits were "unaffordable in a global economy", and that employers would hire more people if it were easier to fire them, and if taxes were cut for the rich.
Globalization and Militarization: The Root Causes of Worldwide War Against Humanity ~ link ~ This is an excellent article, but I would also include the fact that this is also a spiritual battle at the highest levels. Stirling
Peres: Israel Needs US for Existence ~ link
Oil and Empire: The Great Game of Geopolitics ~ link ~ Interesting article!
Global Military Agenda: Increased US-NATO Militry Presence in Southeast Asia, Completing plans for Asian NATO ~ link ~
Peres: Israel Needs US for Existence ~ link
Oil and Empire: The Great Game of Geopolitics ~ link ~ Interesting article!
As I have noted here before, the value of "hard power" (military dominance) and "soft power" (cultural, financial, diplomatic) cannot be assessed until you don't have any.
That establishes a conundrum: one must maintain these quite different forms of global power without knowing if the cost is justified, until the moment arrives when others would pay ten times over to hold what you have in hand.
If that moment never arrives, it may be because you maintained an overwhelming advantage. Wars are launched when one side perceives a rough balance has been achieved; no nation is so suicidal that it chooses to attack a far superior power.
While I don't approve of the American Global Empire, I respect the intelligence and drive of those tasked with maintaining and expanding it--and they number in the millions.
There is only one nation-state which can project hard power: the U.S. A missile is not power-projection, because it exerts control over nothing; it is deterrence or threat, but not power that can be projected. Only aircraft carrier groups and the ability to transport an army by sea and air to any locale in the world is power projection.
The U.S. has 11 carrier groups, China has zero. The U.S. has the ability to transport a small army by air, China does not. The U.S. has the sealift capability to transport a large army by sea. China does not, and neither does Russia or the E.U.
Power projection is far more costly than defensive Armed Forces, and the U.S. is the only great power with true power projection because it alone has hegemony over the world's reserve currency. The U.S. skims a stupendous arbitrage profit from creating dollars and exporting them in exchange for real goods.
China and other aspiring great powers must actually make real profits. Just to put costs in context: China's huge $1.8 trillion in foreign reserves would cover the costs of global power projection for about two years.
We should also stipulate that an aircraft carrier alone is simply a sitting duck; it projects nothing but vulnerability. It is a carrier group which projects power, and that requires an enormous infrastructure: a small fleet of other vessels, satellite communications, anti-submarine capabilities, global bases to refuel/ reprovision, and so on.
When two carrier groups steam offshore, they are the largest air force in the world save a very few. The U.S. could trim its 11 carrier groups to 8 or 9 and still have the only large-scale, globally decisive 8 or 9 carrier groups in existence.
The same infrastructure is required to airlift or sealift troops: you need AWACS aircraft, global communications, global bases, and so on.
Why is all this important? because when push comes to shove, there is only nation which can project hard power in a meaningful, decisive manner: the U.S. Bankrupt, wounded, in decline, however you wish to characterize the U.S., it holds decisive dominance in hard power. And as long as the world accepts dollar hegemony, then the U.S. can afford its Empire.
As noted above: the true value of hard power cannot assessed until you don't have any.
Global Military Agenda: Increased US-NATO Militry Presence in Southeast Asia, Completing plans for Asian NATO ~ link ~
In keeping with the global trend manifested in other strategically vital areas of the world, the United States and its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization - a consortium of all major Western military (including nuclear) powers and former colonial empires - are increasing their military presence in Southeast Asia with special emphasis on the geopolitically critical Strait of Malacca.
The latter is one of the world's most important shipping lanes and major strategic chokepoints.
In an opinion piece The Times of London granted to George Robertson and Paddy Ashdown - the first a former NATO secretary general and current Baron Robertson of Port Ellen, the other a past intelligence officer and the West's viceroy in Bosnia at the beginning of the decade who nearly reprised the role in Afghanistan two years ago - in June of 2008 which in part rued the fact that "For the first time in more than 200 years we are moving into a world not wholly dominated by the West." [1]
In fact for the first time in half a millennium the founding members of NATO in Europe and North America are confronted with a planet not largely or entirely under their control.
With the elimination of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and its network of allies around the world a generation ago, the prospect of the West reestablishing uncontested worldwide domination appeared a more viable option than it had at any time since the First World War.
"Zionism and Peace are Incompatible" ~ link ~ At last somebody has said it in the most explicit way possible. The somebody also said: “The problem is Zionism and the solution is dismantling the Zionist framework and instituting a secular democracy that does not discriminate between Israelis and Palestinians.”
The latter is one of the world's most important shipping lanes and major strategic chokepoints.
In an opinion piece The Times of London granted to George Robertson and Paddy Ashdown - the first a former NATO secretary general and current Baron Robertson of Port Ellen, the other a past intelligence officer and the West's viceroy in Bosnia at the beginning of the decade who nearly reprised the role in Afghanistan two years ago - in June of 2008 which in part rued the fact that "For the first time in more than 200 years we are moving into a world not wholly dominated by the West." [1]
In fact for the first time in half a millennium the founding members of NATO in Europe and North America are confronted with a planet not largely or entirely under their control.
With the elimination of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and its network of allies around the world a generation ago, the prospect of the West reestablishing uncontested worldwide domination appeared a more viable option than it had at any time since the First World War.
"Zionism and Peace are Incompatible" ~ link ~ At last somebody has said it in the most explicit way possible. The somebody also said: “The problem is Zionism and the solution is dismantling the Zionist framework and instituting a secular democracy that does not discriminate between Israelis and Palestinians.”
The somebody was Miko Peled, a Jewish peace activist who was born in Israel and lives in America.
He is the son of an Israeli war hero, Matti Peled, who was a young officer in the war of 1948 and a general in the war of 1967. After that war, General Peled signalled his own commitment to truth by rubbishing Zionism’s version of events. He did so with the statement that there was not a threat to Israel’s existence and that it was a war of Israeli choice (i.e. aggression not self-defense). General Peled was also one of a number of prominent Jews who called soon after the 1967 war for the immediate establishment of a Palestinian state on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
In his latest article from which my headline for this piece was extracted, Miko says that the two-state solution was clearly viable 40 years ago, but today…? He writes (my emphasis added):
“Now the West Bank is riddled with towns and malls and highways built on Palestinian land for Jews only and Israeli cabinet members openly discuss population transfers, or rather transfer of its non-Jewish population. The level of oppression and the intensity of the violence against Palestinians has reached new heights… Discussing the two-state solution now under these conditions shows an acute inability to accept reality… There is an illusion that a liberal, forward thinking government can rise in Israel and then everything will be just as liberal Zionists wish it to be. They will pick up where Rabin and Arafat left off and we will have the pie in sky Jewish democracy liberal Jews want so much to see in Israel. This illusion is shared by American Jews, liberal Zionists in Israel and around the world and in the West where guilt of two millennia of persecuting Jews still haunts the conscience of many. If only there were better leaders and if only this and if only that… But alas, reality continues to slap everyone in the face: Zionism and peace are incompatible. I will say it again, Zionism and peace are incompatible.”
Miko adds that serious study of the history of modern Israel shows that “the emergence of Netanyahu and Lieberman was perfectly predictable.”
I agree and offer this summary explanation of why.
Zionism is not only Jewish nationalism which created a state in the Arab heartland mainly by terrorism and ethnic cleansing. It is also a pathological mindset. In the deluded Zionist mind the world was always anti-Jew and always will be. It follows that Holocaust II (shorthand for another great turning against Jews) is inevitable. It follows that there can be no limits to what Zionism will do in order to preserve nuclear-armed Greater Israel as a refuge of last resort for all Jews everywhere when the world turns against them.
When I was reflecting on Miko’s main point, that Zionism and peace are incompatible, I found myself wondering why really it is that American presidents will not use the leverage they have to try to call the Zionist state to account for its crimes when doing so would clearly be in America’s own best interests.
I’m beginning to think that the awesome influence of the Zionist lobby and its stooges in Congress is not the complete answer. And the question I am asking myself is this: Could it be that all American presidents know there is nothing nuclear-armed Israeli leaders would not do if they were seriously pressed to make peace on terms which they believed in their own deluded minds would put Israel’s security at risk? Always in my own mind is what Prime Minister Golda Meir said to me in a BBC Panorama interview and from which I quote in my book – in a doomsday situation Israel “would be prepared to take the region and the whole world down with it.”
If it is the case that American presidents are frightened of provoking Israel, the conclusion would have to be that the Zionist state is a monster beyond control and that all efforts for peace are doomed to failure.
Power Shifting from West to Asia and Latin America ~ link ~ Real power is held by a tiny group of central bankers, the global banking families and their associates. Stirling
In Asia, it's a truism that, as Chairman Mao put it, "the wind comes from the East", at least as far as the world economy is concerned.
But what was so shocking about the most recent IMF meeting in Washington was the extent to which Western leaders now openly acknowledge the same reality - not just about the present, but well into the future as well.
Secret human RFID implanting How and Why - video ~ link
Power Shifting from West to Asia and Latin America ~ link ~ Real power is held by a tiny group of central bankers, the global banking families and their associates. Stirling
In Asia, it's a truism that, as Chairman Mao put it, "the wind comes from the East", at least as far as the world economy is concerned.
But what was so shocking about the most recent IMF meeting in Washington was the extent to which Western leaders now openly acknowledge the same reality - not just about the present, but well into the future as well.
Secret human RFID implanting How and Why - video ~ link
The Chances of War with China are Rising ~ link ~ Neither the Obama administration nor the Fed want a full-blown trade war with China. They'd rather see China “assume its position in the global system”. (as US diplomats aver) But that means that China will have to compromise on, what it considers to be, a matter of national sovereignty. And, there's the rub. China is a proud nation and doesn't want to be told what to do. But that's not how the system works. Behind the facade of free markets and international institutions, lies an imperial system ruled from Washington. That leaves Beijing with two options; they can either bow to US pressure and fall in line or shrug off Washington's demands and continue on the same path. If they choose to resist, relations with the US will grow more acrimonious and the probability of conflict will rise.
"Al-Qaeda" Is A Front Group For The US Military-Industrial Complex ~ link ~ American-born Al-Qaeda terror leader Anwar Al-Awlaki, who met with Pentagon officials months after 9/11, is by no means the only patsy handler the Central Intelligence Agency has used over the years to oversee false flag attacks in America and around the world. In fact, just about every major terror attack has been run by an operative with direct ties to the US military-industrial complex.
"Sovereign Governments" Versus "The Lords of Finance": Challenging the Bankers Who Operate the Global Casino ~ link ~
The Secularization Scam: Foreclosures and the Mortgage Electronic Registration System (MERS) ~ link ~
The foreclosure crisis has set its sights on MERS, the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, which files almost all of the foreclosure actions in behalf of lenders. The problem never anticipated by lenders is that the company has no legal standing to do such things. In addition they broke the law by not requiring a notarized document of transfer of title signed by the seller and buyer. That is because they did not own the loans. Only the owner of the loan can file. Thus, many of the titles are now subject to fraudulent conveyance. This means that foreclosure proceedings could be subject to legal challenge. Another question is could the foreclosures done since 2007 be nullified? How could a settlement be arrived at in a few months when there are millions of homeowners involved. The banks, which obviously deliberately broke the laws, will be responsible for fines and settlement with injured parties could cost them more than $10 billion. While this scenario moves forward the banks still are acting like goons and violating laws, to get people out of homes.
The question is who has the loan paper and that is the note-holder. He or they are the only ones with legal standing to request a court to foreclose and evict. That all changed with the coming of MBS, mortgage backed securities. Loans were bundled into tranches or REMIC’s, a vehicle designed to hold the loans for tax purposes. These mortgages were cut into bits and pieces to satisfy the different tastes and needs of investors. During this process the note was not signed over to the bondholders, because the mortgage may have been split into pieces and no one could know which part would default first. Therefore the MBS held the note.
The MERS system was a bridge and repository for these mortgages, a shadow holder owned by lenders and Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac. The system located mortgages and was involved in the altering of mortgages. The upshot was a broken chain of title. When that happens the mortgage note is no longer valid. The borrower does not know who to pay and so pays no one. Then come the foreclosure mills and that led to falsification of documents to assist the lender, which is fraud. These actions expedited foreclosures and evictions and that was all the lenders were interested in.
There is no question a massive fraud took place. It was identified by the title insurance companies who the lenders are trying to blame this criminality on. The result was the banks went around the title insurance companies and used foreclosure mills, when the title companies wouldn’t play ball.
The banks terrified that they had gotten caught tried to ram through Congress the Interstate Recognition of Notarizations Act to protect themselves and their criminal acts. The scum in the Senate and House used voice votes to pass the bill and because of the massive complaints the President pocket vetoed the measure. He also knew the bill would have been identified as unconstitutional.
The bottom line is the banks had no legal right to foreclose and evict. That means the evicted can get their homes back. The new buyers are screwed because they have no legal standing because the banks sold them a house they did not own. The fraud committed by the foreclosure mills, at the behest of the banks, puts all foreclosures into question and even the status of those homeowners who are currently paying mortgages. That means if homeowners all stop paying their mortgages, they could end up owning their homes.
This is a mega crisis far bigger than Bear Stearns and Lehman, but not as big as what we will see in the future when the CFTC, LBMA, Comex, GLD and SLV are taken down in their gold and silver scam.
The heart of these criminal acts is anchored in securitization and the scam that it was. We have been demanding criminal action for three years and no one will listen. It was only recently that civil suits have been entered into. We don’t get it. Do we still have a legal system?
This problem can only worsen the problems in the housing sector. About half of homebuyers really qualify to own homes. False appraisals on about 50% of homes littered the landscape just two years ago. Half of the first-time homebuyers didn’t even buy homes, which cost the taxpayers about $15 billion. Inventory over hang is now in the realm of years not months, as homebuilders continue to increase new homes at the rate of 600,000 a year. What can they be thinking of with a further 20% correction ahead? Foreclosures are now 1 in 12 of all mortgages. Four years ago it was 1 in 100. For sure home prices have not bottomed.
It could be the mortgage market is dead and all the bondholders are sunk. If that is the case the financial structure is close to collapse.
We were in the brokerage industry for years and we never saw such criminality. The banks that pulled this off are virtually unregulated.
Some writers believe there will be hundreds of billions in losses and they are correct, unless the government and the Fed bail them out.
Then there are the subprime and ALT-A loans issued over the past two years that are beginning to be reset. Half will go under and Fannie and Freddie guaranteed those loans. This will put further downward pressure on housing prices.
All in all it looks terrible and we see no easy way out. Is it any wonder investors are buying gold and silver bullion, coins and shares.
You cannot tell the players without a program. That fits perfectly in all endeavors, particularly journalism. Last week in the FT Martin Wolf wrote apiece titled “why America is going to win the global currency battle.” What he forgot to tell you is that he is a member of the Bilderberg Group, whose mission is a One-World bank and government.
The plan according to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is for the Fed to continue purchases of Treasury debt and to allow further monetization, which means higher inflation. He tells us inflation officially is too low and unemployment is too high. He doesn’t see either changing much. We believe both are headed higher.
The global currency battle has been going on for years – it’s just it was almost never discussed. The US was happy to tolerate deliberately misaligned, depreciated currencies because it kept US inflation down and foreigners continued to buy US debt, no questions asked. Obviously things have changed.
Nearly half of small-business owners 'may never retire' ~ link
"Al-Qaeda" Is A Front Group For The US Military-Industrial Complex ~ link ~ American-born Al-Qaeda terror leader Anwar Al-Awlaki, who met with Pentagon officials months after 9/11, is by no means the only patsy handler the Central Intelligence Agency has used over the years to oversee false flag attacks in America and around the world. In fact, just about every major terror attack has been run by an operative with direct ties to the US military-industrial complex.
As we reported this morning, Awlaki, the man who helped plot the aborted Christmas Day bombing, the Fort Hood shooting, the Times Square bombing attempt, and who also preached to the alleged September 11 hijackers, dined at the Pentagon just months after 9/11 documents obtained by Fox News show.
Awlaki is just the latest in a long list of Al-Qaeda double agents whose activity proves that the terror organization is little more than a front for the Pentagon and the US war machine. Let’s take a look at just a handful of dozens of examples of terror masterminds working for intelligence agencies.
"Sovereign Governments" Versus "The Lords of Finance": Challenging the Bankers Who Operate the Global Casino ~ link ~
The world has reached a new stage. If governments don’t get together and face down the bankers who operate the global casino, the dominoes will start falling, one by one.
Sovereign governments must heed the lessons of past financial crises described by Liaquat Ahamed in Lords of Finance (2009); Nassim Taleb in The Black Swan (2008); Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff in This Time Is Different (2009); Ellen Brown in Web of Debt (2008); Nomi Prins in It Takes a Pillage (2009); Gillian Tett in Fool’s Gold (2009); and Yves Smith in ECONNED (2010).
Brooksley Born, who headed the US Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), warned the US Congress in 1998 that derivatives would blow up the financial system. She was attacked by Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin (then Treasury Secretary), his assistant Larry Summers (now Obama’s chief economic advisor), and Senator Phil Gramm (who pushed through the Enron loophole for their ill-fated energy derivatives). Brooksley Born resigned and now serves on the U.S. Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, set to report its findings by December 2010.
The fate of Greece is caught between the excesses of its previous government and its past Wall Street-friendly policies; the still dominant ideology of market fundamentalism; their bond-holders and market makers; Goldman Sachs and the still-obscure $600 trillion derivatives market – betting on Greece’s eventual default. We have reached the inflection point in the globalized financial casino and its mountains of odious, unrepayable debt. Religious, ethical and humanitarian views will soon be calling for another JUBILEE after the debt cancellations of HIPIC countries in 2000.
How will the new JUBILEE 2010 play out? Clearly, outstanding derivative positions at some $600 trillion while global GDP is only $63 trillion makes today’s global debt levels unrepayable. Central bankers running their money printing presses cannot fill this gigantic hole. So who will lose, beyond taxpayers, so far stuck with the bills ($23 trillion in the USA’s bailouts alone)?
The world’s citizens now see why governments have allowed themselves and their taxpayers to be trapped by the lords of finance. The bankers were their paymasters and funded their elections to office, bribed their officials, manipulated their regulators and public opinion. Through advertising and financing of mass-media, financial moguls and media moguls converged with political moguls worldwide into concentrated conglomerates (matching those in finance and industry): News Corp., Disney, NBC (owned by GE), Viacom, Clear Channel, as well as Comcast, Verizon and ATT now seeking to dominate the internet. All this is textbook fascism.
To save sovereign governments from further co-option and corruption, these government “leaders” and their economic “wise men” must now rise to the occasion. Together, they must act to downsize and curb the rogue global casino. The G-20 Summit in Toronto, June 26-27, is their next opportunity to re-assert control on behalf of their citizens and the global public interest. Will leadership come from Europe, China, India, the USA or Brazil?
Firstly, the derivatives betting on defaults of countries and companies must be shut down, before the players push down Greece to win their bets. This will help curb the “bear raiders” waiting to collect their bets against the other EU countries – Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Spain and others. As George Soros says, such “bear raids” and bets are already in place and these credit-default swaps are “a license to kill.”
The USA, often still seen as a “safe haven,” is on equally rocky ground with its huge trade deficits and external debts to China, Japan and OPEC countries. Most states in the US are running unsustainable deficits, have huge backlogs of now risky bond debts, together with falling tax revenues due to high unemployment levels (nationally at 10% or 17% if all are counted), as well as crumbling bridges, levees and other obsolete infrastructure, needing over $1 trillion to repair.
Only concerted action by the G-20 can arrest the takeover by the lords of finance. This will require a paradigm shift beyond economics and all its theories from left to right – toward a reintegration of knowledge and systems approaches that “connect all the dots.” We are now in a global, system-wide transition from the early, fossil-fueled Industrial Era to the emerging, green, information-rich economies I described in The Politics of the Solar Age (1981, 1988). Old industries in the fossilized sectors are still fighting rearguard actions along with their financiers – trying to preserve their over-valued stock prices and sunk costs.
Economists Say US Must Prepare for "Savage Austerity" - video ~ link
The Secularization Scam: Foreclosures and the Mortgage Electronic Registration System (MERS) ~ link ~
The foreclosure crisis has set its sights on MERS, the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, which files almost all of the foreclosure actions in behalf of lenders. The problem never anticipated by lenders is that the company has no legal standing to do such things. In addition they broke the law by not requiring a notarized document of transfer of title signed by the seller and buyer. That is because they did not own the loans. Only the owner of the loan can file. Thus, many of the titles are now subject to fraudulent conveyance. This means that foreclosure proceedings could be subject to legal challenge. Another question is could the foreclosures done since 2007 be nullified? How could a settlement be arrived at in a few months when there are millions of homeowners involved. The banks, which obviously deliberately broke the laws, will be responsible for fines and settlement with injured parties could cost them more than $10 billion. While this scenario moves forward the banks still are acting like goons and violating laws, to get people out of homes.
The question is who has the loan paper and that is the note-holder. He or they are the only ones with legal standing to request a court to foreclose and evict. That all changed with the coming of MBS, mortgage backed securities. Loans were bundled into tranches or REMIC’s, a vehicle designed to hold the loans for tax purposes. These mortgages were cut into bits and pieces to satisfy the different tastes and needs of investors. During this process the note was not signed over to the bondholders, because the mortgage may have been split into pieces and no one could know which part would default first. Therefore the MBS held the note.
The MERS system was a bridge and repository for these mortgages, a shadow holder owned by lenders and Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac. The system located mortgages and was involved in the altering of mortgages. The upshot was a broken chain of title. When that happens the mortgage note is no longer valid. The borrower does not know who to pay and so pays no one. Then come the foreclosure mills and that led to falsification of documents to assist the lender, which is fraud. These actions expedited foreclosures and evictions and that was all the lenders were interested in.
There is no question a massive fraud took place. It was identified by the title insurance companies who the lenders are trying to blame this criminality on. The result was the banks went around the title insurance companies and used foreclosure mills, when the title companies wouldn’t play ball.
The banks terrified that they had gotten caught tried to ram through Congress the Interstate Recognition of Notarizations Act to protect themselves and their criminal acts. The scum in the Senate and House used voice votes to pass the bill and because of the massive complaints the President pocket vetoed the measure. He also knew the bill would have been identified as unconstitutional.
The bottom line is the banks had no legal right to foreclose and evict. That means the evicted can get their homes back. The new buyers are screwed because they have no legal standing because the banks sold them a house they did not own. The fraud committed by the foreclosure mills, at the behest of the banks, puts all foreclosures into question and even the status of those homeowners who are currently paying mortgages. That means if homeowners all stop paying their mortgages, they could end up owning their homes.
This is a mega crisis far bigger than Bear Stearns and Lehman, but not as big as what we will see in the future when the CFTC, LBMA, Comex, GLD and SLV are taken down in their gold and silver scam.
The heart of these criminal acts is anchored in securitization and the scam that it was. We have been demanding criminal action for three years and no one will listen. It was only recently that civil suits have been entered into. We don’t get it. Do we still have a legal system?
This problem can only worsen the problems in the housing sector. About half of homebuyers really qualify to own homes. False appraisals on about 50% of homes littered the landscape just two years ago. Half of the first-time homebuyers didn’t even buy homes, which cost the taxpayers about $15 billion. Inventory over hang is now in the realm of years not months, as homebuilders continue to increase new homes at the rate of 600,000 a year. What can they be thinking of with a further 20% correction ahead? Foreclosures are now 1 in 12 of all mortgages. Four years ago it was 1 in 100. For sure home prices have not bottomed.
It could be the mortgage market is dead and all the bondholders are sunk. If that is the case the financial structure is close to collapse.
We were in the brokerage industry for years and we never saw such criminality. The banks that pulled this off are virtually unregulated.
Some writers believe there will be hundreds of billions in losses and they are correct, unless the government and the Fed bail them out.
Then there are the subprime and ALT-A loans issued over the past two years that are beginning to be reset. Half will go under and Fannie and Freddie guaranteed those loans. This will put further downward pressure on housing prices.
All in all it looks terrible and we see no easy way out. Is it any wonder investors are buying gold and silver bullion, coins and shares.
You cannot tell the players without a program. That fits perfectly in all endeavors, particularly journalism. Last week in the FT Martin Wolf wrote apiece titled “why America is going to win the global currency battle.” What he forgot to tell you is that he is a member of the Bilderberg Group, whose mission is a One-World bank and government.
The plan according to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is for the Fed to continue purchases of Treasury debt and to allow further monetization, which means higher inflation. He tells us inflation officially is too low and unemployment is too high. He doesn’t see either changing much. We believe both are headed higher.
The global currency battle has been going on for years – it’s just it was almost never discussed. The US was happy to tolerate deliberately misaligned, depreciated currencies because it kept US inflation down and foreigners continued to buy US debt, no questions asked. Obviously things have changed.
Nearly half of small-business owners 'may never retire' ~ link
Obama's 2010 Campaign: Fake Populism and Right-Wing Policies ~ link ~
President Barack Obama began his longest campaign swing of the 2010 elections Wednesday, a four-day tour of the West Coast and Nevada to urge a vote for beleaguered Democratic Party candidates. At each stop, he warned that the outcome of the November 2 congressional election would set the direction of the country “for the next 20 years,” making dire predictions of the right-wing policies that a Republican-controlled Congress would carry out.
While his pseudo-populist rhetoric against Wall Street won applause at large rallies in Oregon and Washington, packed with college students, there is little practical difference between the policies the Obama administration is already implementing and the measures the Republicans would carry out if they return to power.
Obama suggested that the Republicans would “cut taxes for millionaires and billionaires,” “cut rules for special interests, including polluters” and “cut middle-class families loose to fend for themselves.” These charges would be a fair summary of the domestic policies of his own administration.
Continuing the bailout of Wall Street that was begun under Bush, the Obama administration has carried the largest handout of public funds to the wealthy in American history. This was followed up by the enactment last summer of a financial system “reform” bill so toothless that it punishes no one for the greatest outbreak of swindling in history.
The White House assiduously protected oil giant BP from the repercussions of the greatest environmental disaster in US history and last week lifted its moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
As for leaving ordinary families “to fend for themselves,” the Obama administration has imposed the burden of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression on working class families, rejecting any serious action as mass unemployment, mass poverty and mass foreclosures have become permanent features of American life.
In the month leading up to the November 2 election, Obama has alternated speeches bashing the Republicans as tools of Wall Street with actions that demonstrate that the Democrats are no less committed to the defense of the financial aristocracy.
On the same day Obama boarded Air Force One to travel to the West Coast, the top administration official in the foreclosure crisis, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan, held a White House briefing to declare that “we have not found any evidence at this point of systemic issues” in the manufacture of hundreds of thousands of false legal documents by mortgage bankers.
Donovan rejected any blanket moratorium on foreclosures, claiming, “We are focused on the process early, to keep people in their homes, rather than focusing late, when it is much less likely that people will be able to stay in their homes.” Translated into plain English, the administration policy is to pressure homeowners not to fall behind on their payments, rather than to rescue those who face eviction.
In a column in the New Republic magazine, liberal commentator John B. Judis observed that on the question of home foreclosure, “President Obama’s approach more closely mirrors Herbert Hoover’s than FDR’s.” This was disastrous economically, he argued: “A recovery will depend on increasing consumer demand, not boosting bank capital. And to do that, the administration needs an effective program that will allow working Americans to liquidate their debts without being thrown out on the streets.”
The administration’s indifference was also disastrous politically, he complained, given that the states hardest hit by foreclosures include such electoral battlegrounds as Nevada, Florida, California, Michigan and Ohio. Judis concluded: “It’s the working-class voters who reluctantly backed Obama in 2008, but have been turned off by the impression that the administration cares more about the banks than about them. And there’s little in the administration’s rhetoric to persuade them otherwise.”
Wars are planned, financed and fought by governments, not by groups or ordinary people. Wars are based on political agendas bent on complete control over resources, people and territory. Most wars have multiple reasons, domestic, foreign and global outreach. The U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are fought to maintain US domination worldwide, to occupy the untapped natural resources of the Middle East, in particular oil and gas, and to protect the value of U.S. dollar as a stable international reserve currency. In September 2000, the proactive policy paper written by the neoconservative intellectuals to envision the "Project for the New American Century" (PNAC), sets the milestone, seeking U.S. domination over the rest of the world powers. Its objectives: meeting U.S. energy demands through occupation by force of all the oil and gas resources in the Arab Middle East. The blueprint supports military occupation of the oil-exporting Arab countries and regime change wherever necessary - to fulfill the PNAC policy aims of global domination. Centuries ago, German historian Carl Von Clausewitz wrote On War: “War is not merely a political act but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of the same by other means.”
The wars are declared by the few and not the majority masses. The small ruling elite who plans and wages war is often afraid of citizenry reaction and refusal to accept the rationality of a war. Throughout history, European nationalism institutionalized the doctrine of war as a necessary means to promote national interest and racial superiority over "the other". Most proponents of wars have used “fear” as one of the major instruments of propaganda and manipulation to perpetuate allegiance from the ordinary folks to the elite warmongers in a crisis situation. Sheldon Richman (“War is Government Program” ICS, 05/2007), notes that “war is more dangerous than other government programs and not just for the obvious reason – mass murder….war is useful in keeping the population in a state of fear and therefore trustful of their rulers.”
Ordinary citizens do not have passion for war as it disturbs their safety and security, and destroys the living habitats. The ruling elite, the actual warmongers, force people to think in extreme terms of hatred and rejection of others so that people would be forced to align with the rulers to support and finance the war efforts. Sheldon Richman describes how Herman Goering, Hitler’s second in command, understood the discourse of war-making:
The wars are declared by the few and not the majority masses. The small ruling elite who plans and wages war is often afraid of citizenry reaction and refusal to accept the rationality of a war. Throughout history, European nationalism institutionalized the doctrine of war as a necessary means to promote national interest and racial superiority over "the other". Most proponents of wars have used “fear” as one of the major instruments of propaganda and manipulation to perpetuate allegiance from the ordinary folks to the elite warmongers in a crisis situation. Sheldon Richman (“War is Government Program” ICS, 05/2007), notes that “war is more dangerous than other government programs and not just for the obvious reason – mass murder….war is useful in keeping the population in a state of fear and therefore trustful of their rulers.”
Ordinary citizens do not have passion for war as it disturbs their safety and security, and destroys the living habitats. The ruling elite, the actual warmongers, force people to think in extreme terms of hatred and rejection of others so that people would be forced to align with the rulers to support and finance the war efforts. Sheldon Richman describes how Herman Goering, Hitler’s second in command, understood the discourse of war-making:
“Of course the people don’t want war….but after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether, it’s a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a parliament or a Communist dictatorship.” (Sheldon Richman, “War is Government Program”)
Paul Craig Roberts (“The Collapse of America Power”: ICS, 03/2008), attempts to explain how the British Empire had collapsed once its financial assets were depleted because of the 2nd World War debts. Correlli Barnett (The Collapse of British Power, 1972) states that at the beginning of WWII, Britain had limited gold and foreign exchange funds to meet the pressing demands of the war. The British Government asked the U.S. to help finance their ability to sustain the war. Thus, ‘this dependency signaled the end of British power.’ For its draconian wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States is heavily dependent on China, Japan and Saudi Arabia. It is well known that the U.S. treasury owes trillions of dollars to its foreign debtors and therefore, its financial dependency is increasingly becoming an obvious indicator of the end of U.S. global hegemony and its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now that the US financial system has broken down and some of the leading banking institutions have gone into bankruptcy, the roller coaster repercussions can be seen across the U.S. economic, social and political spectrum of life. Under the Bush administration, U.S. capability and vitality has shrunk and in fact the country appears to be dismantled as a superpower in global affairs. It is no wonder that other nations of world no longer seem to take the U.S. and its traditional influence, seriously.
In The Collapse of American Power, Paul Craig Roberts stated:
It is undeniable that the US is “bankrupt” because of the on-going wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. David M. Walker Comptroller General of the US and Head of the Government Accountability Office (December 2007). reported that “In everyday language, the US Government cannot pass an audit.”"Noam Chomsky recently wrote that America thinks that it owns the world. That is definitely the view of the neoconized Bush administration. But the fact of the matter is that the US owes the world. The US 'superpower' cannot even finance its own domestic operations, much less its gratuitous wars except via the kindness of foreigners to lend it money that cannot be repaid."
Left to Die in Jail ~ link ~ How a secret order given by the Pentagon could have led to the death of a detainee who the US knew was being tortured.
Iraq War Logs: Secret Files Show How US Ignored Torture ~ link ~ A grim picture of the US and Britain's legacy in Iraq has been revealed in a massive leak of American military documents that detail torture, summary executions and war crimes.
Iraq War Logs: Secret Files Show How US Ignored Torture ~ link ~ A grim picture of the US and Britain's legacy in Iraq has been revealed in a massive leak of American military documents that detail torture, summary executions and war crimes.
Almost 400,000 secret US army field reports have been passed to the Guardian and a number of other international media organisations via the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.
The electronic archive is believed to emanate from the same dissident US army intelligence analyst who earlier this year is alleged to have leaked a smaller tranche of 90,000 logs chronicling bloody encounters and civilian killings in the Afghan war.
The new logs detail how:
• US authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape and even murder by Iraqi police and soldiers whose conduct appears to be systematic and normally unpunished.
• A US helicopter gunship involved in a notorious Baghdad incident had previously killed Iraqi insurgents after they tried to surrender.
• More than 15,000 civilians died in previously unknown incidents. US and UK officials have insisted that no official record of civilian casualties exists but the logs record 66,081 non-combatant deaths out of a total of 109,000 fatalities.
The numerous reports of detainee abuse, often supported by medical evidence, describe prisoners shackled, blindfolded and hung by wrists or ankles, and subjected to whipping, punching, kicking or electric shocks. Six reports end with a detainee's apparent death.
Seven million without shelter months after Pakistan floods ~ link ~ This is what I mean by the term "Disaster Warfare". The flooding was caused by a change in the Jet Stream which itself was caused by the dying North Atlantic Current, caused by all the hundreds of millions of gallons of crude oil in the Gulf of Mexico that killed the Loop Current. That so long after the flooding seven million souls are still in misery is of absolutely no concern to the bastards that caused it all. Stirling
Use this Common Device and Double your Risk of Brain Cancer ~ link ~ Yes, it is a cell phone, one reason why I don't use them. A buddy of mine is suffering from brain cancer. Stirling
Nanotech organic??? ~ link
This Cooking Oil is a Powerful Virus - Destroyer and Antibiotic ~ link
Use this Common Device and Double your Risk of Brain Cancer ~ link ~ Yes, it is a cell phone, one reason why I don't use them. A buddy of mine is suffering from brain cancer. Stirling
Nanotech organic??? ~ link
This Cooking Oil is a Powerful Virus - Destroyer and Antibiotic ~ link
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