Bail-out Is Out, Bail-in Is In: Time for Some Publicly-Owned Banks

“[W]ith Cyprus . . . the game itself changed. By raiding the depositors’ accounts, a major central bank has gone where they would not previously have dared. The Rubicon has been crossed.”
—Eric Sprott, Shree Kargutkar, “Caveat Depositor”

By Ellen Brown: The crossing of the Rubicon into the confiscation of depositor funds was not a one-off emergency measure limited to Cyprus.  Similar “bail-in” policies are now appearing in multiple countries.  (See my earlier articles here.)  What triggered the new rules may have been a series of game-changing events including the refusal of Iceland to bail out its banks and their depositors; Bank of America’s commingling of its ominously risky derivatives arm with its depository arm over the objections of the FDIC; and the fact that most EU banks are now insolvent.  A crisis in a major nation such as Spain or Italy could lead to a chain of defaults beyond anyone’s control, and beyond the ability of federal deposit insurance schemes to reimburse depositors.
The new rules for keeping the too-big-to-fail banks alive: use creditor funds, including uninsured deposits, to recapitalize failing banks.
But isn’t that theft?
Perhaps, but it’s legal theft.  By law, when you put your money into a deposit account, your money becomes the property of the bank.  You become an unsecured creditor with a claim against the bank.

Nobel Peace Prize for The Heroic Whistleblower Bradley Manning

We're proud of him!

Share this action on Facebook

Share this action on Twitter

RootsAction: The heroic whistleblower Bradley Manning was selected as an honorary grand marshal of this year's San Francisco Gay Pride Parade. But the president of the board of SF Pride, Lisa L. Williams, immediately reversed the decision -- announcing that someone responsible for it had been "disciplined" and that "even the hint of support" for Manning "will not be tolerated."

Click here to offer more than a hint of support.

Williams promoted the baseless and endlessly debunked claim that Manning endangered U.S. troops -- something that in fact the U.S. government does by keeping them in wars based on deception.

With enormous courage, Manning has enabled the world to see vast quantities of documents that reveal government falsehoods as well as human rights abuses and war crimes by the U.S. military.

It is crucial that the United States and the rest of the world know of our support for Manning's whistleblowing.

Italian showdown with Germany as Enrico Letta rejects 'death by austerity'

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Italy’s new premier Enrico Letta is on a collision course with Germany after vowing to end death by austerity, and warned that Europe itself faces a “crisis of legitimacy” unless it charges course. 

“Italy is dying from fiscal consolidation. Growth policies cannot wait any longer,” he told Italy’s parliament. He said the country is in “very serious” crisis after a decade of stagnation and warned of violent protest if the social malaise deepens.

The grand coalition of Left and Right - the first since the late 1940s - will abolish the hated IMU tax on primary residences, a wealth levy imposed by ex-premier Mario Monti, and push for tax cuts for business and young people to pull the country out of perma-slump. A rise in VAT to 22pc in July may be delayed.

Vice-premier Angelo Alfano - the appointee of ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi - said he agreed with every word from “beginning to end”, as the Berlusconi camp claimed “total victory” over the policy agenda.

Mr Letta said Italy would abide by EU budget pledges and but in reality he seems to have broken with the core demands of the EU fiscal compact.

No Illuminati, just those who swap, rig & fix - Max Keiser with Satyajit Das + Marijuana, Tide Detergent, Chewing Gum & Bitcoin: A Basket Of Currencies For The Near-Future?

Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert are off to see the price fixers, who rig and rig and rig and rig and rig - but only for Jamie, Lloyd and Blythe! They look at how amateur the Illuminati and Bilderbergers are compared to the modern day Fixers of Oz who control all prices from behind their golden kimono. In the second half of the show Max talks to Satyajit Das, author of Extreme Money, about Japan's extreme monetary policy and about extreme price fixing at the heart of the global economy.

'There will be more wealth confiscation, without a doubt' + Eurozone Stockholm Syndrome: Cyprus Parliament To Vote On Bailout Today + Bankster Shill Cypriot Parliament Approves Bailout

Savers and investors face further "wealth confiscation" in Europe as the continent struggles to resolve the fiat ponzi single currency's problems, a bankster chief has said. 

By Richard Evans: European politicians will take the "easy option" of taking money from the rich rather than raising taxes and cutting spending to deal with the continent's debt problem, Lars Christensen, the head of Saxo Bank, said.

Asked if the raid on uninsured savings in Cyprus would be repeated, he told City AM: "There will be future bail-ins [loss of deposits] and other types of confiscation of wealth in the eurozone, without a doubt.

"There's no other realistic way forward if politicians continue to fail to deal with the basic indebtedness problem across Europe. They will either have to raise taxes and cut spending, or politicians will take the easier route and take money from the rich."

Earlier this week savers at Bank of Cyprus saw 37.5pc of their balances above €100,000 converted into worthless shares, with a further 22.5pc at risk and 30pc frozen.

Following the Cyprus deal, several senior German economists proposed that middle class wealth taxes be used to fund future bankster bail-outs in the eurozone, with British owners of holiday homes potentially in the line of fire.

Time for Change - Bankstered Britain

Press TV's documentary program "Time for Change" explains how major cities of England have descended into chaos and fear, triggered by police killing a man for unclear reasons, which ultimately led to mass corruptions. Source

US WISHES, FANTASIES, DELUSIONS & DUMBASSES - We Wish

By James Howard Kunstler:

       Wishful thinking now runs so thick and deep across the USA that our hopes for a credible future are being drowned in a tidal wave of yellow smiley-face stories recklessly issued by institutions that ought to know better. A case in point is the Charles C. Mann’s tragically dumb cover story in the current Atlantic magazine — “We Will Never Run Out of Oil” * — setting out in great detail the entire panoply of techno-narcissistic “solutions” to our energy predicament. Another case in point was senior financial writer Joe Nocera’s moronic op-ed in last week’s New York Times beating the drum for American “energy independence.”

       You could call these two examples mendacious if it weren’t so predictable that a desperate society would do everything possible to defend its sunk costs, including the making up of fairy tales to justify its wishes. Instead, they’re merely tragic because the zeitgeist now requires once-honorable forums of a free press to indulge in self-esteem building rather than truth-telling. It also represents a culmination of the political correctness disease that has terminally disabled the professional thinking class for the last three decades, since this feel-good propaganda comes from the supposedly progressive organs of the media — and, of course, the cornucopian view has been a staple of the idiot right wing media forever. We have become a nation incapable of thinking, or at least of constructing a consensus that jibes with reality.

Australia’s New Gold (and Silver) Rush

AbcBullion

OMFG!!! HMRC?? Kate Middleton screaming on BBC Sucks O Breakfast News + **Govern: control Ment: mind special**

The artist taxi

Karzai admits to being on secret US payroll

RT: Top Afghan officials have been on the CIA’s payroll for over a decade, receiving tens of millions of US dollars in cash. Afghan President Hamid Karzai admitted to receiving the clandestine financial support, but dismissed the sum as a “small amount.”

A New York Times report has revealed that unparalleled corruption in the Afghan government has been encouraged by the US Central Intelligence Agency. Since the start of the decade-long war, CIA agents have delivered cash to Afghan officials in “suitcases, backpacks and, on occasion, plastic shopping bags.”
“We called it ‘ghost money,’”

US Activists protest Boeing annual shareholder meeting in latest of many anti-drone demonstrations

Madison Ruppert: Recently there have been many anti-drone demonstrations across the United States and around the world, with the latest at Boeing’s annual shareholder meeting in Chicago.
Boeing is one of the United States’ largest defense contractors, spending a whopping $17.89 million on lobbying efforts in 2010 alone.
The company is also heavily involved in the drone program with their A160 Hummingbird, the drone-borne EMP missile, the small ScanEagle, the highly secretive X-37B and much more.
This latest protest focused on the annual meeting at the Field Museum of Natural History and was made up of activists from the Anti-War Committee of Chicago,

Day Of Financial Infamy As Cyprus Depositors Flushed

Eric King:  “Jim, we now know the answer to the ‘Cyprus Solution.’”
Sinclair:  “Yes, Cyprus depositors have now been flushed.  The Bank of Cyprus, the island’s largest bank said it has converted 37.5% of deposits exceeding 100,000 euros into a Class A share, with an additional 22.5% held as a buffer for possible conversion in the future. 
Another 30% will be temporarily frozen and held as a deposit.  So the amount of money that has been taken from the Cyprus depositors is in all practicality almost their entire accounts.  Major depositors funds have now been taken in grand style.
Depositors everywhere are now defined as lenders to the banks.  Today is a day of financial infamy.  History will see this event as serious as the flushing of Lehman Brothers....

God is the Universe!

 Stefan Molyneux

0:00 - Are there any subjects that you've changed your views on?
1:01 - Should you try to deconvert a religious person on their deathbed?
2:31 - Would you attend a funeral in a church as an atheist?

THE PAEDOFILE: What connects Welsh care home tragedies to the Secret Family Courts?

Britain treats its frail children as pawns 
in a ghastly game of privilege. 
We should all be ashamed.

The Slog: On April 13th 2010, in a moment of optimistic triumphalism, and following an investigation by Judge Nicholas Wall, I wrote:

‘It’s taken many years, hundreds of articles and thousands of hours of hard legal work and appeals, but if today’s Times is to be believed, the end is in sight for the Secret Social Worker State.’

Well, it didn’t turn out that way. Judge Nicholas Wall – then newly appointed to investigate the Secret Family Courts – obviously made rather too many enemies in the higher echelons of political paedophile protectors. On December 1st 2012, he ‘retired as president of the Family Division and head of family justice on the grounds of ill health’, the Ministry of Justice announced.

His replacement, however, has been no less outspoken in criticising Family Court secrecy, and how such a thing is a gift for systemic paedophilia. Soon after taking over, Lord Justice Munby opined:

“Both principle and pragmatism demand that we open the family courts, that we drastically relax the present access restrictions….we need both more people going into the family courts, and more information coming out. Each of these is essential; neither alone is sufficient.”

A shift in YouTube silver

SilverFuturist: Babbling at the babbling brook.

Iceland Just Says "Nei" To Pro-European Party

Submitted by Tyler Durden: During the crisis Iceland was held up as one of the best examples of what was so wrong with the bubble that was created and sold to any and all. The party in power during this debacle was summarily dismissed by the people. However, a mere few years later, and given the apparent abhorrence with all things European, the Icelandic people have just ousted the incumbent pro-Europe party in favor of the Independence and Progressive parties that governed during the crisis. As the WSJ reports, the Social Democratic Alliance, which had overseen economic recovery and pushed for European Union membership, saw support tumble as the electorate's concern about personal finances overshadowed the ruling coalition's ability to stabilize the economy. Couple this with the promises of the two parties to cut taxes and the sweell of nationalist sentiment and the Social Democrats were summarily crushed. The leader of the Progressive party perhaps summed up the poeple's views best: "deeper integration with a Europe in "historic decline" isn't necessarily the best for Iceland," and that "economic crisis in Iceland and Europe has taught us the importance of being able to control your own destiny." Of course, as with any election, lots of promises are made; "they have really been promising the moon, people might get dissatisfied when they see that not everything can be realized."

A Blatant Screwing: Things are getting steadily better than even worse, even though the good signs are worse than when things were bad.

Why do our economic headlines 

suggest headless chickens?

The Slog: For two months now, I have felt that the best thing is to stay short in long, but also sell short while holding folding, just in case the long game stops spreading portfolios from broadening bond yield concentrations in the eurozone – or of course, narrowing interest-rate swaps take the heat off derivative swaps in Asia. It’s also pretty clear (to me at least) that falling gold prices and rising unemployment are a sure sign of something, and could be a wake-up call for all those silver fans anxiously looking to buy Portuguese Escudo futures in the absence of any present danger they can link to the past.  It could therefore be a good time to play the currency markets, or even float the idea of a Yuan market-play hedged against the Dollar-price of dark liquidity clouds within virtually platformed American Eagle instruments.
I got to this clarified strategy by each day reading the online, TV and press headlines that are there to guide investors like me: that is, those who have only a functioning left brain and a firm grip on reality to guide them. Today’s efforts have so far been in the same vein:

The 'monarchs of money' and the war on savers + They Rig

Power Shift: First in a series on the rise of the central banksters and the global imposition of cheap credit

By Neil Macdonald: Quietly, without much public fuss or discussion, a new ruling class has risen in the richer nations.

These men and women are unelected and tend to shun the publicity hogged by the politicians with whom they co-exist.

They are the world's central bankers. Every six weeks or so, they gather in Basel, Switzerland, for secret discussions and, to an extent at least, they act in concert.

The decisions that emerge from those meetings affect the entire world. And yet the broad public has a dim understanding, if any, of the job they do.

In fact, these individuals now wield at least as much influence over the lives of ordinary citizens as prime ministers and presidents.

The truth about shale: it’s a fracking nightmare

The oil business disinformation campaign about hydraulic fracking continues apace

The Slog: There is a hilariously unintended irony in an FT (£) headline to the Editorial on its website about shale fracking. The article – pure pro-shale propaganda from tip to toe – begins, ‘Ignorance is the biggest enemy in the shale war’. It then goes on to show that fracking doesn’t cause earthquakes. Er, that’s it.

Informed observers have never really taken that charge seriously, so the ignorance irony is indeed pretty major. But this seems increasingly to sum up the FT these days: it reads more like a trumpet than a magnifying glass. When it runs editorials like this one, it’s more strumpet than trumpet.

There are really only two critiques of Shale fracking which, for my money, remain compelling.

The first is that shale gas well production tends to drop by 50% or more after the first year, and the reason is simple: the first year gets out all the easy stuff: after that, it’s more haystack and fewer needles until it’s not worth carrying on. Early last year, shale gas production in the U.S. was at 27 billion cubic feet per day….and its share of energy production was rising steeply. But even with new fields coming on stream, as US States scramble to solve their fiscal problems via fracking finds – that production has continued to level off.

In this context, FT boldly asserts that ‘The US shale boom has brought natural gas prices down by two-thirds in four years’. Has it? The gas price dropped close to $2 per MBTU last year, but has doubled since then to just under $4 today. Ignorance is bliss. Or PR.

Gold-silver ratio in phase space

By mickeyman: The reconstructed phase space portrait is one tool that can be used to gain insight into the dynamics of complex systems, whether these systems be natural or man-made.
Today we will use these tools to look at precious metals.

The near-constant slope over long stretches of this plot tells us that gold is already increasing in price exponentially. So don't say that gold price will increase exponentially during a financial crisis. It is already doing so, and has been since early 2001 (notwithstanding the recent turmoil).


The break in slope in late 2005 tells us that the gold price suddenly began to increase more rapidly.

Would you buy a used car from Mario Draghi?

Why Mario the Messiah is really Draghi the Devil

The Slog: As head of the Bank of Italy from 2005-11, Mario Draghi was directly responsible for regulating the country’s banks. The seeds of Montei dei Peschi di Sienna’s (MPS) demise were sown at the time. Draghi had the information and the powers to stop what was happening – and block the deal that sealed MPS’s fate. But he chose to do nothing about it.
In fact, The Bank of Italy under Mario Draghi in 2010 spotted the very accounting irregularities that allowed Banca Monte to mask losses, and later forced it to restate profit. In December 2008, MPS borrowed €1.5 billion from Deutsche Bank AG (DBK) as part of a derivative deal codenamed Project Santorini, that helped it disguise losses. Draghi has since contended that Monte Peschi hid documents, impeding his analysis of the “true nature” of the company’s dealings. But both corporate and academic opinion-leaders have gone on the record to assert that this defence is weak and incredible: Draghi, they argue, must have known.
My reliable source in Madrid insists that the end of any belief in Draghi’s honesty came when he subordinated the bondholders as part of the second Greek rescue: “What [Draghi] did was fraud, pure and simple. Going that obligatory route was simply a crooked way of avoiding Greek default. There’s nothing he wouldn’t do to save the euro, and every bond buyer and dealer now knows that.”

Drone pig army destruction of UK welfare NHS and legal aid + **naked orange sucking Queen pig special** BBC Sucks O Cock News

The artist taxi driver

Angelo: We are proud sponsors of the artist taxi drivers planned documentary 'This is Not a Recession it's a Robbery' ...see you all in London at the special launch preview;)

The MIC: UK starts drone attacks from home soil

Nargess Moballeghi: The City of Lincoln in the north of England. Scenic. Suburban. And suddenly a hub for Britain's imperial war of terror. This week the government announced that it's now conducting drone attacks on Afghanistan from the base behind me - RAF Waddington - where 100 assassins are manning the hi-tech reaper drones carrying 500lb bombs and hellfire missiles. In response to the move, hundreds of anti-war demonstrators have marched through the city to the army site. Drone Expert Chris Coles agrees - that Britain is expanding its drone project - with the help of its imperialist friends. The government defends drones. It says they save lives. It will only admit to one civilian killing. But reality on the ground speaks differently.

Cheap energy and gold/silver

SilverFuturist: "a global collaboration to create an unlimited supply of clean, cheap energy" http://www.independent.co.uk/news/sci...

10 signs that you are one of the American ‘sheeple’

By Locust: Here are 10 behaviors that will identify you as homo ovis, a new mutant breed of beings devolving, who outwardly appear human but behave more and more as herd animals. They are easily frightened, unable to fend for themselves, pathologically needing to conform to the norm, in effect, becoming one of the eX-Men.
I will try to keep the preaching down to a minimum, because I myself am all of these things, and yet, also none of them. I am you and you are me (and we are all together). Well, that’s enough vague philosophizing.
Cue intro music (preferably Devo) — You might be one of the sheeple if…
1. You read this all passively.
2. You are comfortable in your language cage. I get a big kick out of the roller coaster ride that is progressive thought. Up and down they go, around and around. Someone writes an article about how we must “invent our own language” and stop using “the words of our oppressors.”
Someone else then mentions the “Global War of Terror” — re-using, bringing back to life (zombie journalism) a canard invented by the propaganda writers of the moron Bush.
“But, locust, we have to use that term, because everybody else does.” This is the DAFT war, folks, the Defense against Future Terrorism war, and please notice that I am making up language for our own use, because I refuse to use the language of the Powers Really In Charge (PRICs) — see, I just did it again.

Germany's Perspective: "How Europe's Crisis Countries Hide their Wealth"

Submitted by Tyler Durden: Much has been said about the relative disparity of wealth between Germany and the rest of Europe, with the conventional wisdom being that Germans are rich and everyone else poor. This assumption has been challenged to the core recently, with some studies even suggesting that median household wealth in places like Cyprus is far, far greater than that of Germany, contrary to previous assumptions. In turn, this helps to explain the lack of "eagerness" of the Germans to constantly "assist" with the bailouts of peripheral countries by directly funding or assuming debt guarantees, or otherwise be loaded with the primary burden of future inflation if and when the ECB's creeping monetization of European debt, both directly and indirectly via PIIG bank collateral, unleashes the Weimar flashback tsunami. In this context, it is easy why it was the Germans who were intent on demolishing not only Russian billionaire savings (which as the Spiegel article below demonstrates, Germans are convinced are largely ill-gotten and hidden), but also why the punishment should stretch to uninsured depositors.

The least amongst us: the UK liberal democrats + **Sunday dinner special** BBC Sucks O Cocks News "UK Exporting Debt and Death"

The artist taxi driver
"Get this in your fucking nut!"

The Terrorists Have Been Identified

corbettreport: The specter of terror is once again being raised to haunt the collective consciousness of the American/western psyche. But as the terror meme rears its ugly head, we see an understanding of false flag terrorism creeping into the mainstream discourse. Join us this week on The Corbett Report as we explore the real terror paradigm and examine who really hates you for your freedoms. Source

War [unofficially] declared on gold and silver!

By: Michael Noonan: The gloves are off, and central banksters are on a full frontal assault against all [paper] holders of gold and silver. Ironically, that very overt assault is the biggest clue of how fearful those in power really are. Fear, a sign of weakness, and the New World Order does not want anyone snooping behind their curtain of Oz.
Remember the adage, "Follow the money," the paper trail? All of the Western countries drowning in debt, being force-fed to take on more debt as the only solution, are symptoms, and that is where central bankers want you to remain focused. They do not want anyone to follow the money in reverse to discover the cause: their fiat power is purely imaginary, just like the true value of what they issue, worthless paper!
This is the Rothschild formula that has worked ever since Mayer Amschel Bauer turned fiat alchemy into gold and built the House of Rothschild. Lend, lend, lend money, and demand gold as payment in return is the essence of how it works. People refuse to learn from history. "Give me control of a nation's money, and I care not who makes the laws."

What if all the bitcoin exchanges were shut down?

Max Keiser: Here’s a thought exercise. What if all bitcoin exchanges were shut down by various governments? What would the current value of a bitcoin be?
This is an important question because of the implied outcome of the current trend by governments to shut down - or prevent the creation of - bitcoin exchanges.
The mining of bitcoin would continue but transferring them and spending them becomes a problem since there would be no quoted price. The bitcoin protocol is about mining bitcoin not pricing bitcoin. There is nothing in the protocol about establishing a market price for bitcoin; you need a market for that, but what if all the exchange markets are shut down?
As a medium of exchange and barter, those looking to transact using bitcoin who name their price in individual transactions would continue to do so. And these transactions, in aggregate can be reported to give market participants a general idea of where the price per bitcoin generally is; like beaver pelts in early American history. But will this approach satisfy bitcoin’s aspirations to take on the Dollar, Yen, Pound and Euro? I don’t think so.

"I Can Only Die Once." Genocidal Jews Poison Palestinians Water Well

UK Banned Press TV: Villagers in the South Hills of Hebron-Al Khalil were attacked by Israeli settlers from a nearby settlement when they poured a toxic poison into their water well.

Front-Line Observations from a Seasoned Gold & Silver Bullion Dealer - Robert Mish

The game is finally changing

By Adam Taggart: Spikes and plunges in the U.S. dollar price of gold; this is not new. It goes back to the early 1970s. We remember that for most of the past 40 years, physical gold and silver investors, particularly in the U.S., tended to chase big rallies and buy late, while too often selling after plunges or after long periods of price erosion. Gold was sold then primarily as an inflation hedge. When it was working, speculators bought much more. When it stopped working as an inflation hedge, they first became puzzled and frustrated, then fearful, and they sold out at bottoms.
So, fast-forward to this month, and today’s gold community starts to look a bit different as the breakdown below previous gold and silver price support levels began, and especially last week, with gold going below $1400. Physical buyers were outnumbering sellers in our store by at least 5 to 1. And some of the unfortunate sellers had not changed their thinking about gold long-term; they just needed fast liquidity, which is another benefit of gold.

The Secret of the Seven Sisters - how a secret pact formed a cartel that controls the world's oil

Al Jazeera: Three men had an appointment at Achnacarry Castle - a Dutchman, an American and an Englishman.

The Dutchman was Henry Deterding, a man nicknamed the Napoleon of Oil, having exploited a find in Sumatra. He joined forces with a rich ship owner and painted Shell salesman and together the two men founded Royal Dutch Shell.

The American was Walter C. Teagle and he represents the Standard Oil Company, founded by John D. Rockefeller at the age of 31 - the future Exxon. Oil wells, transport, refining and distribution of oil - everything is controlled by Standard oil.

The Englishman, Sir John Cadman, was the director of the Anglo-Persian oil Company, soon to become BP. On the initiative of a young Winston Churchill, the British government had taken a stake in BP and the Royal Navy switched its fuel from coal to oil. With fuel-hungry ships, planes and tanks, oil became "the blood of every battle".

The new automobile industry was developing fast, and the Ford T was selling by the million. The world was thirsty for oil, and companies were waging a merciless contest but the competition was making the market unstable.

That August night, the three men decided to stop fighting and to start sharing out the world's oil. Their vision was that production zones, transport costs, sales prices - everything would be agreed and shared. And so began a great cartel, whose purpose was to dominate the world, by controlling its oil.

Some of force-fed hunger striking detainees in Guantanamo were cleared for release years ago

Madison Ruppert: Some of the hunger striking detainees being force-fed at Guantanamo Bay were actually cleared for release years ago, according to a report.
Currently, government numbers indicate that 100 of detainees are participating in the hunger strike, and 20 are currently being given tube feedings.
While Guantanamo officials have refused to identify the hunger strikers, the Justice Department has notified attorneys if their clients have become malnourished to the point of requiring tube feedings.
The Miami Herald has learned of the identities of eight of the men through their attorneys, four of those are being held even though they were cleared for release.
These individuals are just a tiny slice of the 55 total men eligible for release that have been identified by the Justice Department separately in federal court filings.
Of the some 166 men in Guantanamo, 46 were identified by a 2009 Guantanamo Review Task Force as “indefinite detainees.” This category means the detainees are people “against whom the United States had no evidence to convict of a war crime but had concluded was too dangerous to let go,”

Manipulation does happen

SilverFuturist: Required viewing: "Enron - the Smartest Guys in the Room."

Anti-drone protest in UK over domestic opening of Reaper control center

RT: Anti-war groups have held a protest at a UK airbase from which the country has begun controlling its fleet of assassination drones in Afghanistan. Previously, the remote pilots were deployed only in the US.

Four anti-war groups – including CND, the Drone Campaign Network, Stop the War and War on Want – are staging a nonviolent protest on Saturday over drone use by the Waddington base in Lincolnshire.
About four hundred peace campaigners marched from the city of Lincoln to RAF Waddington.
The British Royal Air Force (RAF) has opened drone control stations at the base located south of Lincoln this week to work in tandem with those already in place at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada. In 2010, the Ministry of Defence decided it needs the capability to remotely operate its armed drones from its own soil following a strategic security review.

Mr Tepper - The Bankster

Mick Blake: A song inspired by the Irish Government, Bloomberg TV and Mr Tepper. Source

Meet The Idiot Selling Gold - Jamie Dimon Has Issues

MARK MCHUGH: Somebody should explain to the blathering numbskulls at CNBS that when just one firm accounts for 99.3% of the physical gold sales at the COMEX in the last three months it’s not what most of us on this side of the rainbow would consider “broad-based” selling.  Of course discovering this kind of relevant information requires an internet connection, 2nd grade math and reading skills, and the desire to do a teeny-weeny bit of reporting.  Sadly they’ve wandered so far down the rabbit hole that the concept of “physical demand” (i.e. people actually wanting to take possession of the stuff) is puzzling to them because the vast majority of the world’s so-called “gold-trading” takes place in the realm of make believe (which is their natural habitat).  It’s all fun and games until somebody loses their metal and “somebody” has lost one hell of a lot of metal in the last 90 days.

Apartheid: 'Israel seeking Palestinian expulsion'

UK BANNED Press TV: Israel is driving a large number of Palestinian people out of the West Bank in order to grab land and other resources. The comments come as Israeli forces have fired tear gas and rubber bullets at Palestinian demonstrators protesting against settler violence in the West Bank city of Ramallah. The attack ignited as about 500 Palestinian villagers tried to march from the West Bank village of Deir Jarir toward a nearby Jewish settlement outpost on Friday. Violence by extremist Jewish settlers has been on the rise over the years. Over 400 attacks were reported in 2011 compared to about 300 in the year before.

Luxembourg Is Not The Next Cyprus, Not Yet, But....

By Wolf Richter: The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, with a population of just over half a million, smaller even than the other speck in the Eurozone, the Republic of Cyprus, ranks in the top three worldwide in per-capita GDP. In a Eurozone wealth survey, it had the highest average household wealth – €710,100. Only Cyprus, a former off-shore banking center in the Eurozone, came close. Yet Luxembourg is threatened with ruin. 

It has 141 banks – bank companies, not ATMs. One bank per 3,808 people. Most of them do private banking. The financial sector added 38% to GDP in 2010 and contributed 30% to the country’s tax revenues, according to the Luxembourg Bankers’ Association (ABBL). All due to bank secrecy and tax laws. But suddenly, after Cyprus had been massacred, Luxembourg buckled.

**the drone pig army special** BBC Sucks O Cocks News

The Artist Taxi Driver

GDP Boosters "Doctors incentive to murder!" - Max and Stacy with Mark Melin

Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert discuss accidental hysterectomies and unexpected heart transplants as GDP boosters, the activist campaign from the Artist Taxi Driver - #wheresdaddyspig - as protest against privatization of the National Health Service in Britain and hospitals in America flying comatose patients out of the country to avoid having to treat them. In the second half of the show Max talks to Mark Melin of UncorrelatedInvestments.com about the latest on the MF Global cover up and the damaged financial system it left behind. Source

The Pirate Bay relocates to Iceland after fascist Greenland rejection

RT: Under pressure from international copyright fascists, The Pirate Bay has relocated to Iceland. The world’s largest file-sharing site moved its servers to Greenland last month but now employs an Icelandic .is domain, which will be harder to take offline. The Pirate Bay’s operators first moved from Sweden to Greenland after anticipating that their domain would be seized by authorities. That fear became a reality after the move to Greenland earlier this month when, just days after making the switch, Tele-Post, the company responsible for domain registrations in Greenland, revoked The Pirate Bay’s rights citing “illegal” use.

The ISNIC, Iceland’s equivalent of Tele-Post, told TorrentFreak that The Pirate Bay will not be in danger of having its domain name suspended. 
“The short answer is no. Such an action would require a formal order from Icelandic court,” said ISNIC’s Marius Olafsson. “ISNIC is not responsible for a registrant’s usage of their domains. This policy applies equally to any .is domain.”

Fight back and buy Silver on May 1st 2013

SoundMoneyCampaign

Condoleezza Rice defends torture, confirms Bush’s role in the program in new video clip

By Madison Ruppert: In a video for the dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum, Condoleezza Rice defends the United States’ torture program and confirms the role of Bush in the program itself.
The fact that Bush authorized waterboarding is not just now being revealed. Indeed, it has been known since he published his memoir.
However, as the ACLU points out, “What comes as a bit of a shock, perhaps, is how candid Rice is about the role of President Bush himself in authorizing torture.”
“Now Rice has confirmed that President Bush himself was involved in vetting the CIA’s request for approval to torture,” Alexander Abdo, staff attorney for the ACLU’s National Security Project writes.
“The president asked two very important questions in the decision to use these techniques,” Rice says. “He asked the CIA if it was necessary and he asked the Justice Department if it was legal. Both departments answered yes.”
“Only when he was satisfied that we could protect both our liberties and our security did he signal that we could go ahead,” former Secretary of State Rice says in the clip.
In the clip originally obtained by Foreign Policy, which is only 49 seconds long, Rice also claims that torture actually kept Americans safe after September 11, 2001.
“The fact that we have not had a successful attack on our territory traces directly to those difficult decisions,” Rice says in the brief portion of the five-minute video presentation.
“We couldn’t disagree more,” Abdo wrote.