In addition, according to a poll by Time Magazine, 86% of Americans held the conviction that Wall Street and its lobbyists exert undue influence over the U.S. political class.

Still, both major U.S. political parties remain unmoved by the opinions of their constituents and unresponsive to their needs. To vote for either a Democratic or Republican candidate (i.e., the well vetted stooges of the 1%) is to cast a vote in favor of the only political party allowed in the rigged process–The Big Money, Perpetual War Party.

Believing that replacing one of these candidates with the other…is in any way propitious is analogous to believing that the hanging of new wallpaper within a house with a rotted-out foundation constitutes renovating the structure.

[Excerpt of article by Phil Rockstroh]

Obvious examples include those portions of the three major war-justifying religions of the world: fundamentalist Islam, fundamentalist Judaism and fundamentalist Christianity.

I use the term fundamentalist in the sense that the religious person, who ascribes to a fundamentalist point of view, believes, among other dogmatic belief, that their scriptures are inerrant and thus they can find passages in their holy books that justify homicidal violence against their perceived or fingered enemies, while simultaneously ignoring the numerous contradictory passages that forbid violence and homicide and instead prescribe love, hospitality, mercy, forgiveness and reconciliation.

Behind the scenes, of course, there are hidden elites — amoral, politically and financially motivated operatives who are embedded in these religious organizations — who, through the strength of their political power, can easily manipulate the followers into clamoring for war, not against their enemies, but rather against the enemies of the ruling elites: the politicians, the financiers and the other exploiters of natural resources.

But I do have to take exception to the blanket condemnation of the entirety of the religion by pointing out one reality — that the original form of Christianity, the church of the first generation after Jesus and even most of the first three centuries was a religion of pacifists, oppressed women, orphans, those forced into prostitution, despised people of all stripes and others of those called “the least.”

Though this history has long since been forgotten or ignored, the earliest followers of Jesus rejected violence, tried to return good for evil, fed the hungry, did acts of mercy and unconditional love and tried to make friends out of their enemies (by caring for them, feeding them, praying for them and certainly refusing to kill them).

[Excerpt of article by Gary G. Kohls, MD]

Yes, that’s right, the Fed is actually not in the business of printing money. The actual, physical printing presses are owned and operated by the Treasury Department…not the Fed.

So the Federal Reserve is actually not in the business of printing money…. the Fed does however control the money supply.

Think of the Fed as a bank — but just for other banks. The Fed lends money to banks, which determines the rate which banks charge the rest of us for everything from car loans to mortgages to credit card rates and pretty much every other loan you can think of (and some fees only a banker can dream up.)

By setting the rate banks can borrow from the Fed, non-ironically called “the discount rate”, the Fed helps determine whether rates are high or low for the rest of us. And those rates help determine whether people want to borrow money or not.

Another way the Fed controls the money supply — again, which is different than the actual amount of dollars in circulation — is via its “open market operations”, through which it buys and sells bonds in the open market. If you’ve read news stories about the Fed buying Treasuries to help boost the economy, that’s an example of ‘open market operations’ in action and is an example of “quantitative easing” or QE. When it buys bonds, the money supply increases because the banks exchange their bonds for cash and then have more money — aka liquidity — to lend to businesses or individuals. The opposite occurs when the Fed sells bonds to the banks, who typically can’t refuse any offer from the Fed.

In addition, the Fed controls the money supply by raising or lowering “reserve requirements,” which is the amount of money banks are required to keep “on reserve” at the Fed, sort of like a rainy-day fund for the banking system. Raise those requirements and banks have less money for other stuff — like lending; the opposite is true when the Fed lowers reserve requirements…or keeps them low as has been its recent practice.

So while the Fed doesn’t technically (or actually) print physical dollars, it has an enormous impact in the amount of money and credit in our economy.
The real scandal is the banks pretty much have to do what the Fed wants, which makes Ben Bernanke the equivalent of a “Godfather” figure in the world of high finance.

And you thought Wall Street was powerful?

[Excerpt of Daily Ticker article by Aaron Task]

There’s simply too much truth in that headline; it says a lot about how Wall Street and Washington have colluded to create the winner-take-all economy that rewards the very few at the expense of everyone else.

The story behind it is that Jack Lew is President Obama’s new chief of staff — arguably the most powerful office in the White House that isn’t shaped like an oval. He used to work for the giant banking conglomerate Citigroup.

His predecessor as chief of staff is Bill Daley, who used to work at the giant banking conglomerate JPMorgan Chase, where he was maestro of the bank’s global lobbying and chief liaison to the White House.

Daley replaced Obama’s first chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who once worked as a rainmaker for the investment bank now known as Wasserstein and Company, where in less than three years he was paid a reported eighteen and a half million dollars.

The new guy, Jack Lew – said by those who know to be a skilled and principled public servant – ran hedge funds and private equity at Citigroup, which means he’s a member of the Wall Street gang, too. His last job was as head of President Obama’s Office of Management and Budget, where he replaced Peter Orzag, who now works as vice chairman for global banking at – hold on to your deposit slip — Citigroup.

All this brings back memories of Hank Paulson, doesn’t it? Hank Paulson, the $700 million man who became secretary of the treasury for President Bush. Paulson had been head of Goldman Sachs, the rich investment bank. As his successor at Goldman Sachs, Paulson chose Lloyd Blankfein. Several times, according to Bloomberg News, Rolling Stone, and Paulson’s own memoir, the treasury secretary made sure Blankfein and Goldman got privileged inside information.

President Obama may call bankers “fat cats” and stir the rabble against them with populist rhetoric when it serves his interest, but after the fiscal fiasco, he allowed the culprits to escape virtually scot-free.

And get this. It turns out, according to The New York Times, that as President Obama’s inner circle has been shrinking, his “rare new best friend” is Robert Wolf. They play basketball, golf, and talk economics when Wolf is not raising money for the president’s campaign.

Robert Wolf runs the U.S. branch of the giant Swiss bank UBS, which participated in schemes to help rich Americans evade their taxes.

And so it goes, the revolving door between government service and big money in the private sector spinning so fast it becomes an irresistible force hurling politics and high finance together so completely it’s impossible to tell one from the other.

[Excerpts of article by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, Public Affairs Television, Inc.]

The U.S. is an occupied territory that could more accurately be described as the Corporate States of America. The systems of power do not allow the voice of working people to be heard or their collective will to be acted upon.

Despite the subterfuge of freedom and democracy, the rights of corporations have consistently superseded the sovereign rights of the individual and those of the community. Labor history and a litany of environmental catastrophes bear this out.

For instance, government agencies, ostensibly created to protect the public welfare, are allowing hydraulic fracturing of Marcellus shale, even when it poisons municipal drinking water and causes incalculable harm to the environment. Our diverse forests are commodified, measured in board feet to be clear-cut and off-shored at prodigious bargain rates, like a liquidation sale.

The world and the people who live in it are treated like products to be exploited. We are told that nothing is sacred, save for the dollar and markets.

Through lifelong indoctrination, Americans are persuaded that self-interested greed is in their best interest. The rich and powerful have decreed that corporate profits, the Holy Grail of American capitalism, are more precious than life itself.

We are literally sacrificing the Earth’s life support systems and mortgaging the future, while attempting to satiate the greed of a few grotesquely wealthy individuals. Nevertheless, it is an inescapable fact that no human being, including corporate CEOs and members of Congress, can live without potable water or breathable air.

Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich of Meriden, Conn., led the Marine squad in 2005 that killed 24 Iraqis in the town of Haditha after a roadside bomb exploded near a Marine convoy, killing one Marine and wounding two others.

It was a stunning and muted end to a case once described as the Iraq War’s version of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam.

The incident in Iraq is considered among the war’s defining moments, further tainting America’s reputation when it was already at a low point after the release of photos of prisoner abuse by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison.

Eight Marines were charged with killing the Iraqis, with Wuterich facing the possibility of life behind bars. In the end, seven Marines were acquitted or had charges dropped, and Wuterich pleaded to the single, minor charge.

The killings still fuel anger in Iraq after becoming the primary reason behind demands that U.S. troops not be given immunity from their court system.

In case you missed it:
Ten-year-old Iman Walid witnessed the killing of seven members of her family in an attack by American marines last November.

Paul spokesperson Moira Bagley said. “The image scan went off; he refused patdown.”

Paul’s father, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), tweeted out news of the incident, saying that there had been an “anomaly” with a body scanner.

After he was first stopped, Paul told The AP in a telephone interview that he asked for another scan after setting the scanner off but refused a pat-down, after which he was “detained” at a small cubicle and missed his flight to Washington.

Paul, a Republican, was traveling to Washington, when he was detained. He noted earlier on his Twitter that he was planning to speak at the March for Life. “Today I’ll speak to the March for Life in DC. A nation cannot long endure w/o respect for the right to Life. Our Liberty depends on it,” tweeted Rand Paul at 9:49 A.M.

Like his father, Rand Paul has libertarian leanings and has been a fierce critic of TSA’s pat-downs of passengers at airports, which he views as government overreach.

The senator grilled TSA Administrator John Pistole last year after a 6-year-old girl from Paul’s hometown, was patted down by airport security. “I guess this little girl would be part of the random pat-downs, this little girl from Bowling Green, Kentucky, one of my constituents,” Paul said, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader.

“They’re still quite unhappy with you guys as well as myself and a lot of other Americans who think you’ve gone overboard, you’re missing the boat on terrorism because you’re doing these invasive searches on six-year-old girls.”

[Read full article]

Using his annual news conference to draw lines in the sand on Syria, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said veto-holding Security Council members Russia and China would stand firm against foreign intervention. “We will insist – and we have an understanding with our Chinese colleagues that this is our common position – that these fundamental points be retained in any decision that may be taken by the U.N. Security Council,” Lavrov said.

Russia has been the most vocal supporter of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during a 10-month government crackdown.

The United States, France and Britain, along with Russia and China, are permanent Security Council members with the power to block any resolution from passage.

A Russian-operated ship carrying what a Cypriot official said was bullets arrived in Tartus last week from St. Petersburg. The United States said it had raised concerns about the ship with Russia, but Lavrov said there was no need for an explanation. “We don’t consider it necessary to explain ourselves or justify ourselves, because we are not violating any international agreements or any (U.N.) Security Council resolutions,” Lavrov told an annual news conference.

An unnamed military source was quoted as saying in December that Russia had delivered anti-ship Yakhont missiles to Syria.

[Reuters]

Read what Jonathan Zittrain of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Internet Society has to say:

According to its advocates, Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), HR 3261, 112th Cong. 2011 (SOPA) will strengthen copyright in the United States by establishing a number of public and private tools to hinder infringement by international “rogue” sites previously unreachable by US law.

The act’s most fervent critics state that SOPA has the potential to kill the internet as we know it, placing the fate of interoperability in the hands of technically unsophisticated judges. Only slightly less fervent critics note that this provision would align US federal internet policy with China and like-minded regimes. DNS blocking is one of the techniques that China uses to prevent access to dissident websites, and has serious technical ramifications.

1. Copyright enforcement against websites, foreign and domestic
SOPA would give tools to the US attorney general to combat “foreign infringing sites”. The definition of this term is unusual; a site with a domain name registered outside the US (eg through a non-US domain name registrar) seems to count as “foreign”, even if it’s run by an US company and hosted on US soil.

The law’s real force is focused domestically. Once a foreign infringing site has been made the subject of a court order, the attorney general may apply the court order, not only at the site, but at US companies that occupy the space between the infringing site and the end user’s browser – specifically, service providers, search engines, payment network providers, and advertising networks.

2. “Notorious foreign infringers” and US investors
The US IP Enforcement Coordinator, along with various agency heads, will identify “notorious foreign infringers” who are causing “significant harm to holders of IP rights in the US”, soliciting suggestions from the public and rights holders This information will be made into a report to Congress, which will examine and analyze various methods of combating IP rights violations, including and up to prohibiting such sites from raising capital in the United States.

3. Amendments to existing criminal copyright laws: Criminal penalties for streaming
Most notable among the many changes, SOPA calls for the criminalization of public performance copyright infringement. This provision is specifically targeted at digital streaming and provides criminal penalties for streaming copyrighted material with ten or more views and a retail value of $2,500. This sweeping and vague change could categorize millions of US computer users as criminals. Videos that teenage Justin Bieber posted of himself singing songs by his favorite artists do indeed appear to qualify as felonies under the act. This is a particular irony, since those videos launched Bieber’s career as a musician – exactly the people the act is intended to protect.

4. Protecting IP rights abroad
In what would potentially be a significant increase in the United States diplomatic corps and its activities, SOPA requires the secretaries of state and of commerce to ensure diplomatic missions or embassies have “adequate resources” to pursue “aggressive support of enforcement action against violations of intellectual property”.

SOPA’s vague language and undue granting of law-like powers to private parties without sufficient public protections make it worthy of a firm “no” vote. SOPA is both overly strong and overly broad; overly strong in the collection of remedies provided, and overly broad for the problems it is attempting to take on.

The likely presence of U.S. special forces inside Syria, a nation descending into civil war, may come as a surprise to the American public. But it’s no secret to many in Congress. According to U.S. Navy Admiral Eric Olson, outdoing chief of Special Operations Command, in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee last year said that the U.S. had special operations troops in 20 countries in the Middle East.

The Nation further reported that Colonel Tim Nye estimated in August that by the end of 2011, the U.S. would likely have special forces deployed in 120 countries. That’s a big jump from June 2010, when the Washington Post reported special operations in 70 countries.

Note: Special Operations teams are used for a variety of missions and always work in small teams. They are used for recon, hostage rescue, infiltration, killing targeted terrorists (as in the Osama bin Ladin raid), forward air control in some cases, as well as a force multiplier.

[Excerpts of East County Magazine article by Nadin Abbott]