Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Machine gun-toting robots blast targets with M240 machines during live-fire demo at Fort Benning

http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,47,0"> name="movie" value="http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1&isUI=1" />http://admin.brightcove.com
" />http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1&isUI=1" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" flashVars="videoId=2737585176001&linkBaseURL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.computerworld.com%2Fs%2Farticle%2F9243164%2FMachine_gun_toting_robots_may_soon_back_up_U.S._soldiers%3FtaxonomyId%3D128%26pageNumber%3D1&playerID=111570790001&playerKey=AQ~~,AAAAAFCTNY4~,lZgU7-jWxPmAazF72msOJGtCA5HiBrle&domain=embed&dynamicStreaming=true" base="http://admin.brightcove.com" name="flashObj" width="480" height="270" seamlesstabbing="false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowFullScreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" swLiveConnect="true" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash">>

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Foreign Policy or Road Kill?

It is apparent that although then candidate Obama evinced an obvious dislike for war in the name of nation building, somewhere along the line after being awarded the Nobel Peace prize, his views vehemently altered - in particular pertaining to areas of Africa and Middle Asia. The query for me is does the present administration have any concern for Americans or even comprehend the concept of national security with regards to foreign policy, now given our interest of military conflict with Syria? I know the Obama administration considered action before since it is on the record that in July of 2012, Syrian rebel lobbyists reported that the Obama Administration had told them they would not be able to intervene in a seriously way until after the November election. Even so what is the policy, outside of Assad must go?

With respect to Syria, the only benefit I imagine is that such would show support for Israel and that our intervention would give the US government a chance to topple Iran’s only ally in the region. With Obama’s strong words and recent reconsideration of the “staged” red line, the only thing America has been doing has been using the CIA to smuggle other nations’ military assets into Syria.

Not to mention that what President Obama calls the Free Syrian Army (FSA) is mainly comprised of Syrian military deserters and criminals, al-Qaeda insurgents, Salafis and jihadists. It has been estimated by US intelligence sources that about 80% of the units recognize their spiritual leader Sheikh Adnan Al-Arouri dwelling in Saudi Arabia. To date thousands of these FSA have been killed and documented to have come from more than 20 nations including the United States and in Europe.

Data indicates that hose fighters who are from Syria, come from mainly the southeastern region near Dayr Al-Zawr on the Iraqi-Syrian border, the northwestern region of Idlib near the Turkish-Syrian border, and Dar'a in the south near the Jordanian-Syrian border. Areas that a 2007 West Point study described as “regions” that “ now serve as the epicenter for a similar Libyan-style uprising, with fighters” defined as "pro-democracy" "freedom fighters." More importantly, is that it is these very regions that serve as the points of entry for the majority of foreign fighters from Saudi Arabia via Jordan, and from Libya via Turkey, or through Egypt and/or Jordan.

The Obama Administration has to know all of this. We have seen car bombs that have killed at least 20 people in a Damascus suburb that was an act of terrorism aimed at Syria's civilian population , the vast majority of which are Christians to Druze, from Shia'a Muslims to moderate Sunnis, whom are being specifically targeted by Israel, US and Saudi backed Wahhabi indoctrinated terrorists.

We have seen beheadings, mass hangings and executions of Christians, Alawites, and Shia’a that only support secular insurrection more than fighting for Democracy. The Obama Administration has even given Syrian Al Qaeda operatives a political front in Doha, Qatar. Its US-Qatari appointed leader, Moaz al-Khatib, has been revealed as not only involved with Western oil corporations, but also has declared on Al Jazeera his intentions of establishing an "Islamic state."

The Obama administration has spent the past year in secret talks and have helped piece together this group of folk aimed at building a new Syrian opposition leadership structure that it wishes can win the support of minority groups still backing President Bashar al-Assad. In the meantime, the tiny gas-rich state of Qatar (Sunni) has spent as much as $3bn supporting the rebellion in Syria, far exceeding any other government for the past 2 years. This is the methodology that was used in Libya. Just as in Libya, in Syria, the West, despite acknowledging the existence of Al Qaeda in Benghazi, Libya, is using these militant Islamic networks to send fighters to Iraq, in route to Syria. This, after these same Libyan Islamist were implicated in an attack that left a US ambassador dead on September 11, 2012.

Again, the Libyan example applies directly to Syria. Libya is suffering the aftereffects of a western manufactured conflict, which killed tens of thousands of people. Two years after the Arab Spring uprising ousted Gadhafi, Libya’s central government the bloodshed has not stopped; recently a senior judge was killed in the town of Derna, and at least 27 people in the southwestern town of Sebha during a confrontation between protesters and the members of a pro-government militia called Libyan Shield. Then there is the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG).

The LIFG is a known terrorist organization which is sending fighter and weapons on a massive scale into Syria. In November of last year the Telegraph reported that “Abdulhakim Belhadj, head of the Tripoli Military Council and the former leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, "met with Free Syrian Army leaders in Istanbul and on the border with Turkey, and admitted that he was sent there by "Mustafa Abdul Jalil, then interim Libyan president.

In all reality and simplest terms, the foreign policy of the Obama Administration is more road kill than policy. As it stands, all across middle Asia, Obama policy has turned a major portion of the region into a vast hub for terrorist and Al Qaeda in particular. Regardless if it is Libya, Eastern Lebanon, Southern Turkey, Iraq, Egypt and now Syria. For unlike the narrative promulgated in Western mainstream outlets, objectively speaking those who support Al Qaeda - the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia seem to be the biggest fans of state-sponsored terrorism.

All that has been done is to shield the hypocrisy of the US policy in Middle Asia. We charge the leadership of Libya and Syria as being despotic and autocratic regimes but hold the hands of the autocratic leadership, guilty of equal atrocities in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and Bahrain. The only difference is that the hands we hold are Sunni, and the ones we vilify are Shia’a. Washington has stated that weapons will not go into the hands of Salafist jihadis although it is impossible to stop this from happening. Our policy is really just fueling a sectarian war between Sunni and Shai’a. The governments of the West have decided to partner with with Sunni Muslims against both the Shiite and Christian minorities the most volatile of region of the world today. Last September Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan stated, “What happened in Karbala 1,332 years ago is what is happening in Syria today.”

What US foreign policy fails to realize is that the main differences between Sunni and Shiite Muslims is that Shiite’s are secular and accept the existence of other religions, their women may participate in society by being employed, driving, voting, and hold political office, their acceptance of alcohol consumption, and their openness to democratic-type elections.

I do not understand this, it is as if the US government and present administration view outcomes and practice as monolithic. This includes the complete ignoring of the flame fanning by Israel, who may be behind the recent car bomb that exploded in the heart of Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah’s southern Beirut. A perfect cloak knowing that many will think that it is a response to Hezbollah fighting alongside with Assad in Syria and that many will see it as extremist spreading the war in Syria throughout the region. What many in mainstream media and politics forget is that most Sunni and Shiite are moderates and nowhere as violent as portrayed – another factoid often abrogated from conversation.

The same can be said about the claim about Syria using chemical weapons. A good start for a false flag if you want sympathy and desire to start a war, but you cannot ignore all the evidence of Al Qaeda using and making chemical weapons from Iraq, even on video in Syria. And don’t give me that false flag is conspiracy shit. History has shown that the Gulf of Tonkin incident (or the USS Maddox incident) never occurred and that Hitler burned his own Parliament for example. But because of Israel, America is at incessant war with Shiite run nations like Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Syria and support Sunni backed nations like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, and Egypt which continue to outlaw freedom for women, openly persecute Christians and Jews, do not allow their citizens to vote in free elections, and are now calling for a “Global Jihad” against all Jews, Christians and Shiites. Even Alawites, who associate themselves with Shiite Muslims, are ordered to be “killed on sight” by the US supported FSA and all leading Sunni religious and political leaders.

The US has no stable policy objective in Syria and surrounding areas openly discussed outside of Assad must go, all again to benefit Israel over US national security. Maybe this is why Seymour Hersh wrote in 2007 that "To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has cooperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda." -The Redirection, Seymour Hersh (2007).

No common sense policy would have US at war against Al Qaeda while at the same time they are our allies.

Monday, April 08, 2013

Mayflower, Arkansas New Oil Lake

Federal Government Forgets I am a man

This week reminds me of why Martin Luther King, Jr. was in my home town when he met his untimely murder. It was because of the garbage strike, I suspect many folk don’t know about it to even care, or even understand its corollary with today’s US economic crisis.

Ask any Black person, and they will say the economy is growing. They will also say that it is all because of the policies of President Barack Obama. Ask the same folk how the dollar is doing in the world and the present US economic picture for employment prospects, and they will say he is doing his best and that it will take time, or that he is not just the President for Black Americans. But you never hear such pronouncements with respect to Jewish people, Gay or Lesbians or even Hollywood. They get mentioned and African Americans are conveniently left out of the conversation.

Now I am writing about the economic situation America finds itself in but I want to make this lucidly terse - I was objectively as critical about former commanders in chief starting with Regan and I will continue to be until my dying years as long as I can both read and write. But never have I been attacked prior (and I expected to be attacked) by my own folks for pointing out mathematical facts. For I know some uppity progressive, quasi-liberal, libertarian hating black political pundit will take aim and me and ridicule my suppositions, even if they don’t have facts on their side, all to protect the current Teflon President.

Again, proponents blinded by party affiliation will say the economy is growing and will give the President Props and if it is doing bad will blame it on the GOP. I think both are equally responsible but if it is so good, then tell that to the average African American or college student who is under employed or unemployed.

Fact is many recent college graduates are working at coffee shops and tend to be very skilled workers with higher degrees. In addition, each day they are increasingly ending up in lower-skilled jobs that don't really require a degree. This means they are making it even harder for unskilled workers who usually get such jobs out of the work force and yet, the present administration has offered no policy response to deal with this phenomenon. And by the way, the unskilled can be a synonym for the African American worker.

The US Labor Department reports that approximately 280,000 Americans with bachelor’s degrees and 37,000 with advanced degrees were working minimum-wage jobs in 2012 and that the number of college-educated Americans working such jobs has risen 70 percent in the past 10 years ( a figure double the number who worked minimum-wage jobs before the Great Recession).

The reality is that the high-wage, middle-skilled job — the thing that sustained the middle class in the past no longer exist. Although the mantra of the economy is getting better is batted around like a whiffle ball, the math shows us that the U.S. economy is in a bubble inflated by money created out of thin air by the federal reserve, and all of this money, instead of creating jobs, is going into the stock market by already well-off and wealthy folks. And this cannot and will not last. Obama’s approach is just as Regan’s economic approach - “trickle down.” When the Federal Reserve prints new money, it is basically reducing or stealing the value of the dollar (all the money you have in your bank accounts and wallet).

The math shows us that the Federal Reserve Bank is buying approximately $85 billion in assets every month, while at the same time keeping its key interest rate near zero. This does nothing to reduce unemployment or create jobs but rather only serves investors and big wig traders in the various stock and bond markets. This is why corporate profits and Stock prices are up. The question remains, why isn’t anyone hiring?

Fifteen percent of Americans are on food stamps according to the latest USDA report for November 2012. To put it plainly, in America, there are two economies - one for the rich, and the other for everyone else. The number of Americans on food stamps now exceeds the combined populations of "Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming." If one is lucky to have a job, it goes on deaf ears that the average worker’s hourly wages, after accounting for inflation, were nearly 2 percent lower this year than last year, and in total is taking home less than $800 a week.

As it stands one in four of every US citizens that is employed has a job that pays $10 an hour or less and for the first time ever, more than a million public school students in the United States are homeless. To top it all off, the U.S Dollar is losing its status as the world reserve currency. Just last week, five of the top ten economies in the world, decided to no longer use the dollar as an intermediary currency for trade. Last week the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) agreed to set up a development bank to compete with the IMF, indicating it's gearing up to compete in a post-dollar world. In addition, Australia (the world's 12th-ranked economy), China (2nd behind the U.S.), Japan (3rd), Brazil (6th), India (9th), and Russia (10th), have agreed to bypass the dollar in bilateral trade with China.

President Obama and Geithner’s toxic asset plan has enabled one of the biggest transfer of wealth in history allowing for big banks to transfer their toxic debts from fraudulent activities to the American People. All the banks are doing is redistributing the nation’s wealth to shareholders and their top executives. This what President Obama has done, even with all his flossy rhetoric is assist the wealthy in get richer at everyone else’s expense. All of the monetary and economic policy of the last 3 years has helped the wealthiest and penalized everyone else. Wall Street is good but Main Street isn’t. How can it be when the richest 10% own 98.5% of all financial securities like stocks and bonds?

But for some reason or another, our economic prowess is always, or in most cases obviated by the inability to be critical of the current administration. For it seems as for most black folk, politics involved talking about President Obama and even his policies in the affirmative only, Trayvon Martin or the GOP. I don’t hear any of the TV propagandists of the African American community dare mention the president’s name in the same sentence with growing equity disparities, employment and poverty as a function of race. And you shole wont here nothing asserting that under the Obama administration, crony capitalism has gotten worse. As President, Obama is prosecuting fewer financial crimes than Bush, or his father, Clinton or even Ronald Reagan.

I recall of this as I said, on the week in which one of the greatest men to ever live was killed. King was in Memphis, marching with sanitation workers on strike for a living wage when he was killed. No one remembers the words he stated while delivering a speech a Stanford University a year before his death: “In this America people are poor by the millions. They find themselves perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.” And no one remembers how he frequently spoke about poverty and how that during his time, America had about 40 million people living in poverty. Obama seems to ignore that in America, the richest nation in the world today, there are almost 100 million people who are in poverty.

The sanitation strike in Memphis started because two sanitation workers, Echol Cole and Robert Walker died when they were crushed to death with the garbage and nobody noticed – crushed in the back of a garbage truck because during a sever rain storm, they were not allowed by the city to seek shelter from storms. Why because white folks in Memphis at the time didn’t like or want any of the all black sanitation workers to stop in their neighborhoods. Cole and Walker couldn’t fit inside of the truck, so they crawled in the back where the garbage was placed and a broom fell on the lever which resulted in them being crushed to death with the garbage.

I would wish that folks knew this and would never forget this, for this is where the slogan “I am a man. I am a man, not a piece of garbage" originated. It seems that the Federal Government in all of its aspects seems to forget that African Americans are people and that we are men, not the refuse and waste or cheap labor for the rich.

Wednesday, April 03, 2013

Video: The EU Banking Crisis Contagion is Spreading

Video: POLICE Disarming Citizens BY FORCE

Civil Rights Protest Now Super-Illegal Under Obama Administration-And No One Noticed

As a child growing up in the 1960s in Memphis, my mother and her brothers and sisters and her friends were frequently involved in protest affiliated with the civil rights movement. Whether if it involved getting arrested at the public libraries (which they did), or in front of city hall, it was never against the law to assemble. Them there days are over.

Without any mainstream media coverage, HR 347 was passed by a margin of 388 to 3and signed into law by President Barack Obama. This law makes it against the law to protest anywhere where the secret service is present. In addition, it specifically cites major public events, such as Inaugurations and Presidential campaigns. Yes even the Whitehouse or more specifically anywhere the President of the United States is present. What we saw in the 60s with civil rights or in the 70s with Roe V. Wade or the Vietnam War, where civil assembly as a form of free speech, can no longer occur if a President and his collective corpus of Secret Service are gathered.

Strange thing is it didn’t just happen yesterday, but last March 2012. Called the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act, it has been described by some as making the First Amendment illegal or criminalizing the Occupy protests.

Even if the President or Vice President is not present, this law has some lasting draconian effects. For example, where ever world leaders are in the US visiting from abroad, they are normally assigned secret service agents for their protection. This now means that at meetings of the the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Secret Service can be used to suppress protests in or around certain restricted zones near individuals under its protection. This is consistent with anything that is defined to be a “National" by the Department of Homeland Security.

The types of conduct covered by the law amended by H.R. 347 includes: entering or remaining in one of these zones without "lawful authority"; Engage in "disorderly or disruptive conduct" in or near one of these zones that "impedes or disrupts the orderly conduct of Government activities or official functions “and blocking or otherwise impede an entrance or exit to one of these zones (but you must again intend to disrupt government activities or official functions); or (4) Engage in any act of physical violence against person or property in any restricted zone.

In theory, HR347 is a re-write of a trespass law, originally passed in 1971 and amended a couple of times since. However, it still remains that the bill makes it easier for the Secret Service to overuse or misuse the statute to arrest lawful protesters. In the past, the government had to prove a certain state of mind for arrest and prosecution for most crimes.” Under the original language of the law, you had to act "willfully and knowingly" when committing the crime. In short, you had to know your conduct was illegal. Under H.R. 347, you will simply need to act "knowingly," which here would mean that you know you're in a restricted area, but not necessarily that you're committing a crime.”

In the Bill of Rights, there is a statement that reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” As a constitutional scholar, I wonder if the President is aware of this.

Thursday, March 28, 2013

F*** you Pay Me (International Bankers Anthem)

There is a new law of the land that has the blessing of some of the most evil minds in the world – bankers. Along with their political flunkies, they have finally devised a way to get all of the money in the world not only from nation states but also the citizens of said nations. And the strange and sad part about it is that it was the bankers who created these problems. Like magic the result of their gross malpractice, out of thin air, similar to the manner in which the Federal Reserve Bank creates money, it has been decided that anyone who saves 100,000 euros is now considered rich. Thus a new era, an era in world finance and international banking where for the first time ever, a major banking system will take and steal from depositors to pay for the government/bank interactions that created the mess in the first place.

For an average mind such as mine, what has happened in Cyprus will not be a mere caduceus act, but eventually common practice. Eventually all citizens, of every nation with massive debt, no matter where you live, in particular in Europe, now no personal/private bank account anywhere in the world is safe. If the big wigs of the EU (Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank (ECB), Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), José Barroso, the president of the European Commission (EC) and Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council), can pull this off, you can best believe some similar folk of status are meeting around the United States in the board rooms of the twelve Federal Reserve banks.

The precedent set by the Eurozone to go for depositors is a reflection of how uncertain the world of derivatives and complex papers is. What we see, what we understand, are the images of long lines in front of ATMs and for what – all to save the institutions that gave us the economic downturn, just to save the banks. Around the world, just in the US the banks are what are important and not the people even if they are the criminals, they only get larger and are even beyond incarceration [see JP Morgan Note below].

NOTE: [The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control found that JPMorgan had illegally aided dictatorships in Cuba, Sudan, Liberia and Iran, including transferring 32,000 ounces of gold bullion for an Iranian bank. Not to mention misleading investors, making fake and false trades, wrongfully foreclosed on soldiers charged veterans hidden fees for refinancing, illegally increased their collection of overdraft fees by processing large transactions before smaller ones or by switching its fixed-rate debt to variable helping push Jefferson County, Alabama into bankruptcy.]

Although under the guise of a bailout, what we see in Cyprus is an indication of things to come worldwide. If another bailout is need for another EZ nation, the likes of Spain and Italy, then the savings accounts of the citizens in Spain, Italy and other countries will be raided. Now some will say its different because in Europe, many nations are way over leveraged and that they are taking these steps to preserve the Euro by aiding insolvent and failing banks. I will agree but would ask how that is any different from the situation with the US dollar and “too big to fail banks?”

As during the time of the great depression and what America is dealing with now, it is common knowledge that excessive leverage was one of the primary causes of both – folk buying stocks and other complex papers on margin. And excessive leveraging undermines financial stability because the goal of the banker is to always transfer credit risk to those better able to absorb losses. When it is impossible to do the aforementioned, the financial sector becomes weak and breaks.

Ironic that I just finished reading Richard Bookstaber’s “A Demon of our own Making.” He describes this so aptly. He notes that new forms of investment strategies like portfolio insurance, based on the Black-Sholes formula of making it possible to set a price on an option and features such as “greenmail” gave us the crisis of not only the past but today.

Today the US banking system as a whole is leveraged at 13-to-1 compared to about 26-to-1 for the Banks of Europe. The US Federal Reserve has about $2.8 trillion in assets and only $52 billion in capital, meaning the US Central Bank is leveraged at 53 to 1 – worse than Europe. Just keeping it on the level, a recent report from the Comptroller of the Currency, noted that four U.S. banks have $235 trillion of OTC derivative leverage. As a nation, all the US banks are estimated to have a total OTC derivative exposure of $250 trillion.

When banking systems are or become excessively-leveraged, the risk that a crisis in one country will spread to another dramatically increases. Meaning that the reality is that the US financial system could come tumbling down the hill at any time because it is mathematically impossible for just the continuous printing of money alone can go on forever.

Another concern I have is that less than two years ago, all the banks of Europe were given stress test, which by all accounts were way harder than the stress test given to US big banks by the Treasury, and all the banks of Cyprus passed with flying colors. Now within the last two weeks we see such wasn’t the case since Cyprus’ two largest banks, the Bank of Cyprus and the Cyprus Popular Bank (the Laiki Bank), which hold half of all bank deposits in the country are the worse of the bunch, and if this is the case what can we interpret from the weak azz stress test the US Treasury implemented some few years back as well?

In addition to the math, the behavioral antecedents are clear as well – it’s all about the banks, fuck the people and the workers and the average family. The precedent of Cyprus is clear - nothing is safe from being seized by the state, no savings account, but also no house or apartment. The Germans experienced this after World War II, when they were charged an extra real estate tax in the form of compulsory mortgages. Governments have even banned the possession of gold during currency crises, forcing citizens to exchange the precious metal for the national currency.

Even with the aforementioned, the Federal Reserve, Wall Street and Washington Politicians always want to point the finger at the average citizen. Ben Bernanke let it out the hat when he advocated for the elimination of all reserve requirements: “The Federal Reserve believes it is possible that, ultimately, its operating framework will allow the elimination of minimum reserve requirements, which impose costs and distortions on the banking system.”

The simple reality is that no matter what happens, the majority of people will be significantly poorer. As it stands, not only in the US, but around the globe the continuous transfer of wealth from the bottom into the pockets of the wealthiest is a reality unavoidable. Here in America consequently, we must not be fooled by leaders regardless of party affiliation and their words of addressing economic equity because their actions never fit the actual goals they promulgate via their illustrious oratory. No matter what Obama for example says on the political stump, his policy continues to add to the economic inequity in America. For example, no matter what he says his policy will always aid in the disparity for example of the average CEO’s hourly wage of $5000 per hour compared to $7.00 an hour. The point is if in Europe, Cyprus to be more exact, any level of personal savings decided upon by bankers for confiscation, is basically the same as just stealing money from people’s bank accounts.

On top of all of this (and I won’t mention our debt to China) China and Brazil just signed a trade, currency deal ahead of BRICS summit that will allow them to bypass using the dollar by agreeing to trade in their own currencies the equivalent of up to $30 billion per year, moving to take almost half of their trade exchanges out of the US dollar zone. Thus there is a new world post the 1950s, Bretton Woods and the Marshall Plan when the US Dollar became the de facto global reserve currency.

Like the Euro, the reality is that the global exposure to the US Dollar remains by default rather than design and the global (at least European) sovereign debt crisis is placing the US Dollar at risk for the future. Just looking at Cyprus, it should be clear that oligarchs and plutocrats, who are protected by the elected elite, will always be considered over the average citizen. The Bankers (not the people or elected leaders) have decided that citizens, who had nothing to do with the national debt as individuals, will be forced without choice to pay for the faults of the elected elite which sets a truly alarming precedent for other debtor (all nations) around the world.

I am just asking the question and using basic match to formulate a possible answer. I mean there is only one answer, albeit multiple solutions to solve any equation. I just think this may become banking versions of reality TV, and if that show had a name, it would likely be called “F*** you, pay me (the international bankers anthem.)

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Truth Stranger Than Fiction: South Park Bailout Episode - "And...It's Gone!"

Cyprus, Not Cyprus Hill Negro

One of the biggest news stories thus far this year was the lead for the top German, Brazilian, Japanese and Canadian Television outlets yesterday. But it wasn’t even mentioned in the coverage offered by CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, or CBS via broadcast transcripts - Thank God for PBS and the News Hour. Not to mention it wasn’t even a consideration for coverage by African American political bloggers or news sites the likes of The Root, Politics 365, The Grio or any other supposedly political news site that is run by African Americans. And no it was not Obama in Israel, or even Keisha Cole and Beyoncé, rather the run on banks and the EU central bank actions toward Cyprus. Yes to get a bailout from the EU central banks, banks are now allowed to take money from all bank depositors – all account holders.

Now I know many will ask, “What does that have to do with me?” A lot and I will attempt to explain, albeit I know it may be difficult for many of us African Americans because we never heard of Cyprus, care or know anything of substance of the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis, but such should be no excuse. See what happened over the weekend was that a group of EZ leaders, the IMF and newly elected President of the small tiny island nation with a GDP the size of Vermont and a population the size of Philly agreed to force all with a bank account to pay for the government’s debt. Banking will never be the same if folk can’t truth the banks and since they saw the could not trust the EZ, IMF, government or the banks they started to pull all of their loot out.

The EU central bank has decided it is ok for big banks to take money out of the accounts of private citizens to pay for the debt of the nation they live in. Yes that right, all under the guise of it being a new tax. Strange since taxes are the result of political legislation and don’t go back in time. But that is what the large global banks are doing and if they can do it there, they can do it here, especially given Obama’s lack of gonads to even prosecute and arrest bankers. Even funnier is the fact that the banks are taking citizen’s money for loans they did not ask for and which the banks knew were bad when they first made them to the government of Cyprus.

Some will naively assert that this is America and it could or would never happen here. Surprise, it already did, last year from on one of Obama’s boys – John Corzine of MF Global. What Corzine did is what we see happening in Cyprus right now – bank account seizure (tax) without due process. Thus if it can be done in Cyprus, it can and will be done in Italy, Ireland, Spain and even the US, since bankers who caused all this nonsense with the assistance of inept politicians will seek to get all their money from the governments they loaned them too to cover for the losses of the zillions of different complex papers they created that were then and still today basically worthless. But yawl don’t hear me though.

What I can say factually that the present Administration, as the last four are for the fat cat bankers and Corporations. Just from IRS statistics we know that Americans who made over $10 million in 2010 paid on average just under 24 percent of their incomes in federal income tax, less than a third what they paid in 1950. The end result of such practices is a nation in which corporate profits are setting records while typical workers continue to make less than they earned a dozen years ago.

You know there was a time in America when corporations paid taxes, no lie. Not anymore even when corporate profits have been growing per annum at a 20 percent rate. In fact, to find a year when corporations were grabbing as great a share of America’s income as they’re grabbing now, you have to go back to 1950. In the 1950s, the average corporation paid about 40 percent in annual taxes. Now, major U.S. corporations actually pay about 12 percent in taxes. Why is this a problem, well in 2011, the Institute for Policy Studies, reported that 25 major U.S. corporations paid their CEOs more than they paid in corporate income taxes.  Then we can take alook at NYC where the number of  residents receiving food stamps has  more than doubled over the past decade under Mayor Bloomberg, according to data released yesterday. Now, 1.8 million receive food stamps, a jump from 800,000 in 2002, and the Independent Budget Office data show. But 99 percent of African Americans believe their President even against fact that the economy is growing. But it is not and if I accept this premise, then for whom is it growing?

First, the cost of the federally funded food-stamp program in places like NYC had increased dramatically to $3.4 billion from $1.28 billion over the past decade. True, naysayers and other average minded individuals reinforced on reciting lessor proofs proffered my weaker minds will say look at the stock market. I in return will say, yes, look at it. But reality notes that the stock market is not a good indicator for overall wealth of Americans since the average American’s wealth, if the happen to own a home is in home equity - real estate values are still down about $5.5 trillion from their peak. So thinking about, one has to ask if the economy is doing so well and growing as Obama describes it, why then are there over 47 million people in the US living on food assistance to survive. It is clear they are not obtaining any of this wealth.

The Administration is a top down machine just like it was when Ronald Reagan started the practice. The US financial system is buttressed upon trillions of dollars of bailouts and loan that result in risky speculation that cause incessantly financial bubble after bubble. Right now, America has a record debt of $16.7 trillion. Maybe this is why as quiet as it is kept, the Obama administration has announced policy that would allow the federal government to control private citizens 401k’s.

Plainly stated, it is the cost of borrowing money itself that has bankrupted Cyprus, Ireland, Spain and Italy. As it stands, the same shackles of debt are on the hands and feet of the US government and if history is any indication from a policy purview, the people will be the ones to pay for it. But this won’t happen, Obama and Bernanke are so stuck on “quantitative easing” even when they know and data points out that it is just making money out of thin air via a few zeroes added via a computer monitor. The problem with today’s QE is that it has put money into the pockets of the big fat Wall Street bankers but not into the pockets of consumers. What we need is to obviate all public debt and let the corporations and banks keep theirs and let them deal with the problems they created as a fiat. I mean default on the public debt has worked in Iceland, Argentina, Ecuador, and Russia, among other countries.

 But this all makes too much sense and we African Americans don’t care if it hasn’t anything to do with a singer, rapper or anything on television. I know, I asked all of my classes if they were aware of what had occurred in Cyprus: one asked, “you mean Cyprus Hill?” I responded “naw Negro, Cyprus not Cyprus Hill.” Cyprus may be just the start. As of now banks are closed until Thursday. We will have to see if a run starts again and if it spreads to other European nations, if so, it could be the end of the Eurozone and the start of the demise of the US economy. Two years ago we exported 40 percent of our goods and services, this year its down to 21 percent.

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Government Schools and Concentration Camps, I mean Classes

Now I want to make one thing clear. As a child I attended school. With that being said, I was educated at home. I say this because many of us do not or cannot see the difference between school and education. Schooling is just that, sending kids to a building where they will unnaturally be around people their own age, learning to be instructed in whatever the system operating the school desires to be taught.

Me, I was reading before first grade, learned addition, subtraction, division, fractions and square roots all at home. Not to mention I learned every type of rock, plant, animal and chemical there was – all at home and prior to any formal government school instruction. I call it government schools because that is what my folks used to call it. They made it clear that the government public schools (at least in the 1960s) didn’t really want to teach African Americans anything of value. So it was common place to learn at home and hope the school supplemented that lesson. Those days are gone and now we have forgotten the mandates of government public schools – to do the bid of the state. Regardless if that means suspending African America males disproportionately to other races, sending students into severely overcrowded class rooms, and graduating a population with a high school degree but 80 percent of the graduates can’t read or do math on a functional grade level when in college.

Even as a kid (and yes I read Hegel at age eleven), I understood the Hegelian Dialectic or "Consensus Process." Simply put it is plain old brainwashing. To quote William T. Harris, U.S. Commissioner of Education 1889-1906 (1835-1909), “Our schools have been scientifically designed to prevent over-education from happening. The average American [should be] content with their humble role in life, because they're not tempted to think about any other role.” But what could be expected, the political father of the modern day public government education system was Woodrow Wilson. As then president of Princeton and addressing the Federation of High School teachers he stated: 'We want one class of persons to have a liberal education and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks,' thus designing a school system that would prevent 'the masses' from learning anything liberating when they got there. Even the courts assert such. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, in its Palmdale School District opinion, November 2, 2005 read: a “parents…”fundamental right to control the education of their children is, at the least, substantially diminished. The constitution does not vest parents with the authority to interfere with a public school decision as to how it will provide information to its students or what information it will provide, in its classrooms or otherwise [See Yoder, 406 U.S. at 205].

The reality is that with a closed educational system we will never have an open political system. But politicians and leading educators in history didn’t hide this fact. It was John D. Rockefeller, whose family ironically founded the National Education Association, who said: "I don't want a nation of thinkers. I want a nation of workers." Even Dr. Benjamin Rush, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence even advocated that “our pupil be taught that he does not belong to himself, but that he is public property.”

This our hypocrisy, on the one hand broadly proclaiming the importance of individuality yet at the same time ignoring that we promote a one-size-fits-all schooling that is forced on us. Thus we proclaim our schools are free when they are not, over-looking that a "free education" is nothing more than a state-owned and socialized education. I suggest this because if the state pays and provides the area of what should be instructed, then they can only accomplish what John Stuart Mill characterized as shaping “people to be exactly like one another; and as the mold in which it casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government.” This is not hard to see, as a parent or a teacher, it is obvious that as Curriculums become more standardized, government from the county to the feds end up having more and more control in the schooling process – notice how I didn’t say education. And since the public school system is funded by tax dollars, the more teachers and administrators are protected and seen as the main stakeholders as compared to the students and parents. It is supply and demand in reverse.

In last year’s state of the Union address, President Obama advocated that every state should require that “all students stay in high school until they graduate or turn 18,” which in simple terms is a federal. This is a bad idea and an omen. On the real, government public schooling isn’t education at all and serves to advance political dogma in the form of reducing opposition to wealth transfers via the old communist instructional tactic that such is the American democratic way (namely because systems of state-controlled and managed schools will only be free to teach whatever the state desires).

The Public government school System is in creation to continue “social re-engineering of the minds of our children. Folk forget or rather don’t know that the government public education machine prevalent today is rooted in what Massachusetts did around 1850, and that the people resisted, even with guns until the 1880's when the state militia forcibly took children to school. I can even give a real life example. My daughters school is teaching that General Olgethorpe was a great man. Ironically I had talked to her about it when she was in the first grade when she asked “who invented Georgia.” I told her about Oglethorpe, his treachery and the manner in which helped to colonize (take Georgia from the people who lived there) America. I received a not from her teacher indicating that my daughter, all seven years old of her stood up and informed here teacher that General Oglethorpe was not a hero in her eyes as the school was attempting to teach. The teacher shared it with the other teachers in the school and she asked me if we talked about that type of stuff a lot. I responded yeas, and she knows all the halogens on the periodic table also.

If America was truly free, then Obama would not make such a statement - a free nation doesn’t compel parents to send their children to school. If history is any indication and the objectives of the individuals I quoted are on the inside looking out, then it is no wonder that in most cases if one is an African American in an urban areas, our kids generally receive a poor quality of education. Making a segregated world exist even if the law states otherwise for the gap between the haves and have-nots, is growing. Some states are so open with it that they have set different standards of academic performance based on racial ethnicity. Other states have even stopped teaching certain subjects like algebra based on race. Maybe this is why the government and others are against home schooling, because it makes people think for themselves and produces people like me. I do not want to even think of where I would have been if my parents and realitives had not instructed me, or taught me the constitution at age 9 or how to hunt or fish. I know for certain I would not have learned such sitting in a Government Concentration Camps, I mean Classes, especially if I expected them to teach instead of school me.

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Video: Police Brutality -- Graphic

SEO Killed the Validity of African American Urban Media

Recently I was informed that articles and essays I have been writing, content wise, for the past 30 years, would no longer be published in an urban newspaper I have been writing for over the past 20 years since its inception. I would place links but I don't want to reinforce what many already know.

The reason given was that my articles were not receiving enough page views. Never mind that over the past two weeks I cited at least eight that received on average 5000 views – this was the reason I was provided. The specific articles they directed my attention to were on the “sequestration,” the anti-biotic resistant virus becoming for prevenient,” the death of an openly gay black Mississippi mayoral candidate, Chicago Public Schools starting to teach sex education to five year-olds, and new research on how sugar in immediate environment contributes to increase risk of diabetes’s.

I have heard this before; from the same news outlet which once informed me that the essay of health risked associated with eating fast foods wouldn’t be run because many of their advertisers were major fast food corporations. And another urban outlet that which noted that I am too honest in pointing out breeches in President Obama’s social contract and specific neglect of African Americans via his Keynesian economic approach.

Why? All because of what is called Search Engine Optimization – SEO. It is the process of getting traffic from the “free,” “organic,” “editorial” or “natural” listings on search enginesAlong time ago MTV played its first music video – “video killed radio. Today SEO is killing the African American journalist and media platform. I find this both diseased and neglectful of the needs of the African American community. First, being more concerned with page views instead of content implies that we desire for African Americans to be ill-informed, celebrity and reality TV addicted consumerist. Truth be told, this is our problem. Consumption, specifically the consumption of pathology, infection and decay affiliated with taking in mental stimuli that serves no benefit other than to promote, vanity, materialism and downright ignorance in the effort to entertain.

Entertaining the masses is more important, via obtaining page views than empowering the masses. Now what is comical is the content directed towards African Americans as steered by Urban media that gets the most page views include the following: Weekly celebrity instagram photos, what twitter is saying (as if twitter is a person) about Blu Ivy baby pictures, Celebrity boob jobs, Celebrities with fake hair and the ubiquitous reality TV show update. Ironic unlike other ethnic groups, African American community media outlets top web portals typically attended to celebrity, music and entertainment. No other racial breakdown of topical preferences shows similar levels of interest toward celebrity idolization. I mean just take the top ten mainstream web sites and compare them to the top ten African websites (in terms of page views). Meaning our appeal that we direct services is on the pathology of voyeurism, given the top AA blogs content addresses, fashion, celebrity, gossip, music and beauty.

Urban media and news have dropped the ball and have followed the path of radio after the introduction of video (that is in urban communities). SEO and page views and the bottom line is all that matters. So what little kids blow each other’s heads off every day with illegal weapons, let’s play music about killing each other daily, or put and article up to see what’s Drake’s latest instagram post. Urban media is feeding into the massive levels of African American consumerism and excessive voyeurism in a time of higher than ever African American poverty, homelessness, incarceration, HIV and illiteracy not to mention violence. The goal is to spread visual garbage in print media (because posts that get most page views have pictures and no words).

By following the lead of mainstream media, urban media is serving as an accomplice to mental genocide. It pushes the agenda of what is commercial and popular instead of what is essential. In essence waiting for whatever it is mainstream media tells us is important for us to know and accepting their definition of what issues, topics and subjects, and running with the ball. In the past we would be out in front of mainstream government news simply because they left out our story from our perspective. Thus we broke news and information that was important for our community’s survival.

All of this reminds me of something I am often reminded of. It was Carter G. Woodson who said, “If you can control a man’s thinking, you do not have to worry about his action…If you make a man think that he is justly an outcast, you do not have to order him to the backdoor. He will go without being told; and if there is no back door, his very nature will demand one.” Forgetting that in times prior one couldn’t enter through the front door, has lead us to make backdoors today big and wide for all to enter. The demand for page views and being enamored by SEO has destroyed the overall tenor of the distribution of news and information; in fact actually disseminating information by urban media may actually already be in the grave.

Thursday, March 07, 2013

Janet Napolitano Asked About DHS's 2,700 Armored Trucks

Black Eight Year old Girl handcuffed, jailed for two hours

It has been suggested that America is turning into a police state. Each day there is more evidence. One such example deals with Jmyha Rickman, an 8-year-old girl from Alton, Illinois.

 Rickman was handcuffed and held by Alton Police for two hours after throwing a tantrum at Love Joy Elementary School late Tuesday morning school. School officials, not being able to deal with the 70 lbs. Girl called the Alton Police to handle the situation.

She was even taken to jail in the back of a police squad car with her hands cuffed behind her back. The police would not allow her to get her coat. According to KMOV News in St. Louis, Her guardian said, “Her eyes were swollen from her crying and her wrists had welts on them,” said Rickman’s guardian, “They cuffed her feet too and she asked to use the restroom several times and was ignored.”

The police officer believes he took appropriate action. School officials could not be found for a comment.