September 30, 2011

Palestinians Have Secured Eight Security Council Votes and Are Working on the Ninth Vote Needed for UN Membership Bid

The UN Security Council opened talks on the Palestinian application for full membership on September 30, 2011. Security Council members met for about 75 minutes, making the decision to have a committee of experts meet several times to examine whether the bid fits the criteria for membership. The review process may drag on for weeks or months (before it comes to a final vote in the council) while the Mideast Quartet mediating group -- the U.S., European Union, Russia and the UN -- tries to restart direct peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. Still, a council member may call for a vote within 24 hours at any time. The U.S. has vowed to veto the measure should it receive the necessary nine of 15 council votes in favour of membership for Palestine.

U.S. Economic Clout May Sink Palestinian Quest at UN Council

September 30, 2011

Bloomberg - Economics and political expediency may trump historical connections to determine whether two swing votes on the United Nations Security Council, Nigeria and Gabon, back the Palestinians’ bid for membership.

The two African nations were among the more than 100 countries that responded to Yasser Arafat’s 1988 declaration of independence by recognizing Palestine. This has led Palestinians to look to them for the ninth vote needed for approval by the 15-member council.

While the Palestinians have dispatched diplomats to the capitals of both nations to plead their case, they carry neither the economic heft nor the far-reaching influence of the U.S., which is working to block the Palestinians’ UN initiative.

“This is now realpolitik, pure and simple,” said Calestous Juma, a professor of international development at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Security Council members today met for about 75 minutes on the Palestinian application. They decided to have a committee of experts meet several times to examine whether the bid fits the criteria for membership.

The review process may drag on for weeks or even months while Mideast Quartet mediating group -- the U.S., European Union, Russia and the UN -- tries to restart direct peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. Still, a council member may call for a vote within 24 hours at any time.

U.S. Market

Both African nations have reasons to disappoint the Palestinians.

“Their market is the U.S., so why would they want to spoil that relationship?” said Juma.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki told reporters yesterday that they have secured eight votes, and that they are lobbying for more support for their bid for UN membership. Approval requires nine votes, though passage would be blocked by a promised U.S. veto.

The stakes are also high for the U.S., keen to avoid further fallout from having to wield its veto. Such action might enrage an Arab population already disappointed by President Barack Obama’s refusal to endorse the Palestinian quest for statehood.

“The Americans are desperate not to have it go to a vote,” said Robert Danin of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former aide to Mideast Quartet envoy Tony Blair, the former U.K. prime minister. “Having to veto is the nightmare scenario for them.”

Obama, Clinton Lobby

Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pressed their opposition to the Palestinian vote when they met with Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan last week in New York. Clinton repeated the message yesterday in talks with Nigerian Foreign Minister Olugbenga Ashiru in Washington.

“We have certainly made it clear to all of our friends that we want to see a return” to Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, Clinton said, standing alongside Ashiru. “Anything which is done which disrupts that or detours that is a postponement of the outcome we are all seeking.”

Nigeria has multifaceted ties with the U.S. Last year, Jonathan got Obama administration backing when he broke an unwritten rule that leadership of the country had to rotate back to a Muslim. Africa’s most populous country is roughly split between a mainly Muslim north and a predominantly Christian south.

Domestic Matters

Moreover, the U.S. and Israel have offered him counter- terrorism assistance to quell a surge in attacks by Islamic militants, which has become his foremost domestic priority after the Aug. 26 suicide car-bomb attack on a UN compound in Abuja killed 23 people.

Nigeria received $632 million in U.S. aid this year, making it the second-biggest recipient in sub-Saharan Africa after Kenya.

As Africa’s top oil producer, Nigeria supplies 8 percent of U.S. oil imports. U.S. imports from Nigeria totaled $30.5 billion in 2010, up 60 percent, and exports to Nigeria -- mainly vehicles, wheat and machinery -- totaled $4 billion, up 10 percent, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

During last week’s General Assembly debate, when the Palestinian situation took center stage, Jonathan used his address to world leaders to welcome South Sudan as the UN’s 193rd member and didn’t mention the Palestinian issue.

‘Not Twistable’

Nigeria, which takes over the rotating Security Council presidency from Lebanon in October, has indicated its neutrality.

“Our arms are not twistable,” Nigeria’s Ambassador Joy Ogwu said in New York yesterday. “Every nation has its national position on this issue, on principle.”

Gabon is seated on the Security Council for the first time, giving it rare influence.

For Gabonese President Ali Bongo Ondimba, whose first wife was American, cultivating ties with the U.S. has been a policy cornerstone since taking over power in 2009 following the death of his father, who was Africa’s longest-serving dictator.

Obama met with Ondimba in the White House three months ago, an Oval Office session the Gabonese leader called an “unqualified success.” While his father had only visited the White House twice in 41 years in power, most recently in 2004 under President George W. Bush, the new 52-year-old leader wasted no time traveling to the U.S. Last year, he met with Clinton in Washington.

Oil Exports

Gabon’s exports to the U.S., almost entirely oil, increased 80 percent to $2.2 billion last year, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. U.S. exports to Gabon, mainly machinery, totaled $243 million in 2010, up 42 percent.

In May 2009, the U.S. dispatched a Navy ship to help train Gabonese naval officers in maritime security.

Other Security Council members also will weigh economics and history.

In the case of Colombia, Israel and the U.S. are among the government’s top weapons suppliers in its fight against the drug-fueled FARC, Latin America’s biggest and oldest insurgency. Israeli advisers also assisted in the July 2008 rescue of 15 hostages including politician Ingrid Betancourt.

Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington, a research group, said the Colombians would be doing the Americans and Israelis a “huge favor” by staying neutral.

Trade Accord

Colombia has a pending free-trade agreement with the U.S. that has been stalled since 2008. Colombian Finance Minister Juan Carlos Echeverry said in an interview with Bloomberg Television yesterday that the U.S. would be making the “worst mistake” by not honoring a free trade agreement with the Latin American nation.

The U.S. has similar agreements already in force with 17 nations, including Mexico and Chile.

Unlike Brazil, the only other Latin American country in the Security Council, Colombia has set itself apart from its neighbors in the region and withheld recognition of Palestine.

Bosnia, another first-timer on the Security Council, recognized Palestine in 1992 when it also declared its own independence before plunging into three-year war. Its position today is complicated by the divisions along ethnic and religious lines. Bosnia’s Muslims and Catholic Croats tend to side with the Palestinians while the Serbs support Israel.

The U.S. also has close ties to Bosnia given its instrumental role in ending the 1992-1995 war there, which culminated in a 20-day negotiating session at the Wright- Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. The resulting Dayton peace accords, as the agreement came to be known, divided Bosnia into a Muslim-Croat federation and a Serbian republic.

'We Have Eight Security Council Votes': Palestinians

The UN Security Council on September 28, 2011, pushed back a decision on the Palestinian bid to join the United Nations in a move that will give more time to international efforts to revive direct talks. The 15-member Security Council sent the bid made by Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas last Friday to a special membership committee to give its verdict. A full session of the council met for barely two minutes in the first public discussion of the bid that the United States has vowed to veto when it comes to a vote. "Unless I hear a proposal to the contrary I shall send the application of Palestine to the committee on new members," said Lebanon's UN ambassador Nawaf Salam, president of the council for September. No comments were made and Salam hurriedly brought the gavel down to get the meeting over. The membership committee, made up of all 15 council nations, will hold its first meeting on Friday. - UN Council buys time on Palestine membership bid, AFP, September 29, 2011

September 28, 2011

AFP - The Palestinians have secured eight Security Council yes votes for their UN membership bid, just one short of the nine they need, the Palestinian foreign minister said on Thursday.

Speaking to reporters in Ramallah, Riyad al-Malki said he had received assurances from two additional nations -- Nigeria and Gabon -- that they would vote in favour of the Palestinian bid for full state membership at the UN.

"We have eight states that will vote for Palestine in the Security Council," he said. "We are working hard to have a ninth and a tenth."

Malki said the Palestinians have assurances of "yes" votes from Lebanon, Russia, China, India, South Africa and Brazil, in addition to the new confirmations from Nigeria and Gabon.

"We are working on Bosnia, Colombia and Portugal," he added, saying he was scheduled to visit Bosnia shortly, and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas will make stops in Colombia, Portugal, Honduras and the Dominican Republic in October.

Abbas will also deliver an address in Strasbourg on October 6, he said.

The Palestinians need to secure at least nine Security Council votes in favour of their membership bid for it to be approved and advanced to the General Assembly.

Even with the requisite nine votes, the United States has pledged to use its veto to block the request, but the Palestinians hope they can at least claim a diplomatic victory by securing a majority in the Security Council.

Abbas submitted the bid on Friday, shortly before he delivered a historic address to the General Assembly, urging their support for the request.

After closed-door debate on Monday, the Security Council on Wednesday referred the request to a committee set to meet on Friday.

The bid has attracted criticism from Washington and divided the membership of the European Union, raising the prospect that the Security Council might seek to delay a vote altogether to avoid embarrassing its members.

But Malki said the Palestinians would not accept any delay "for political reasons."

US and EU representatives sought to head off the bid before it was submitted to the United Nations, trying to put together a proposal for new peace talks that would convince the Palestinians to drop their request.

Instead, they announced their new proposal shortly after the request was submitted, calling for talks to resume within a month with the goal of achieving a deal before the end of 2012.

Negotiations have been on hold for just over a year, grinding to a halt shortly after they began over the issue of Israeli settlement construction.

The Palestinians say they will not hold talks while Israel builds on land they want for their future state, but Israel says negotiations should restart without preconditions, and declined to renew a 10-month partial settlement freeze that expired shortly after the talks began last year.

Both sides have responded cautiously to the Quartet proposal, with the Israelis saying they are studying the offer and the Palestinians emphasising that they will not hold talks without a settlement freeze.

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81% Unhappy With Government

The present U.S. government doesn’t exist to help you or to help me — it exists primarily to continue its own existence and to take over an ever larger chunk of our lives. The fringe establishment media protects the criminal one percent that has taken America hostage and refuses to question political leaders in Washington about the crimes they commit and the lies they tell.



Poll: 81% Unhappy With Government

September 26 2011

POLITICO - A record-high number of Americans say they are dissatisfied with the way the nation is being governed, a new poll says.

An overwhelming majority of respondents, 81 percent, said that they are not satisfied with the governance of the country, compared with 19 percent who are satisfied, according to Gallup.

“Americans’ various ratings of political leadership in Washington add up to a profoundly negative review of government — something that would seem unhealthy for the country to endure for an extended period,” Gallup wrote. “Nevertheless, with another budget showdown looking inevitable and a contentious presidential election year getting under way, it appears the ratings reviewed here could get worse before they improve.”

Dissatisfaction with the government is a relatively new trend. As recently as 2003, 59 percent were satisfied with the way the nation was being governed, compared to 39 percent who were not.

Especially frustrated in the latest poll were Republicans, 92 percent of whom were dissatisfied with the governance of the nation, while 65 percent of Democrats were similarly dissatisfied.

A majority of Americans — 53 percent — also have lost confidence in the people who are running for or hold elected office.

A key source for this lack of confidence is the legislative branch of government, of which 69 percent of those surveyed said they had little or no confidence. That figure is up from 63 percent in 2010.

The Gallup Poll also showed a record high number of people who thought that the federal government poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens, with 49 percent agreeing with the sentiment, and 50 percent disagreeing. The percentage of those who agreed with the sentiment was as low as 30 percent in 2003.

Meanwhile, Americans are more willing to believe that the government can solve international problems than domestic problems. Fifty-seven percent of individuals said they had trust and confidence in the federal government when it came to handling international affairs, but 43 percent said the same about domestic issues.

The poll was based on interviews conducted Sept. 8-11, with a sample of 1,017 adults. The margin of error is plus or minus 4 percent.

DHS and D.C. Department of Human Services Test Disaster Planning Using RFK Stadium as a 'Mega-shelter' for 'Displaced Residents'

The number of people arrested in London rose to 922 since trouble began on August 6th, with 401 suspects charged. The huge number drew notice. Peter Tapsell, a veteran Conservative Party lawmaker, called on Cameron to draw inspiration from the response of U.S. authorities to anti-Vietnam protests in the 1970s. Tapsell said he recalled law enforcement in Washington, D.C., rounding up demonstrators and imprisoning them in a sports stadium. He did not elaborate, but authorities in 1971 set up an emergency detention center next to Washington's RFK stadium to hold demonstrators after the largest mass arrest in U.S. history. Tapsell asked Cameron if Britain's Wembley Stadium, the country's showpiece soccer arena could be used. Cameron insisted the stadium would be used only for "great sporting events," not the detention of rioters. - UK to Deploy Military, Grant New Police Power, Restrict Social Networking, and Use Facial Recognition to Hunt Rioters and Looters, August 11, 2011

D.C. Tests Disaster Planning in City-wide Drill

September 28, 2011

WTOP.com - Hurricane Zoe, a Category 2 storm, damaged a large number of District homes, caused major roads to flood and left more than 87,000 D.C. residents without power.

That fabricated scenario was the setting for a full-scale exercise performed by D.C.'s Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency Wednesday, allowing a wide swath of District agencies to practice their response to a massive city-wide emergency.

On the grounds of RFK Stadium, members of the Metropolitan Police Department, D.C. Fire and EMS and the D.C. Department of Human Services were on hand to perform various drills in order to coordinate and execute emergency operations, gathering data to refine the city's procedures in the event of a real emergency.

In the concourse of the stadium, the D.C. Department of Human Services was in charge of a "mega-shelter" that filled with volunteers mimicking the roles of displaced residents.

Representatives from DHS and the D.C. Department of Health were on hand to assist "residents" with food, communications and medical problems as they entered the facility.

Randy Moses, an emergency management officer with DHS, says no matter what situation the practice scenarios involve, his department gains the necessary experience needed to deal with the fallout should a real emergency occur.

"We don't get nervous when the real thing happens," Moses says. "The training keeps up sharp, keeps us prepared, keeps us on the ready."

In the parking lots surrounding RFK, other D.C. emergency agencies assembled and operated a temporary morgue, cleared overturned cars, gathered trash and operated a temporary pet shelter.

Millicent West, director of the D.C. HSEMA, says Wednesday's exercise allows the city to examine flaws in its emergency operation and invest in ways to fix issues as they arise.

"If there are challenges in making sure that things aren't working, we let people know where the redundancies are so that they can know immediately, if this is not working, this is my trigger to say 'I need to do something else,' " West says.

The exercise was the not the first time D.C. has tested its emergency response. In May, the city ran a drill centered around a "man-made" catastrophe. West says the May exercise exposed the need to have a number of organizations outside the realm of public safety trained on how to react in the wake of a disaster.

"What we want to do is not focus on folks who do this every day, but folks who are dealing with residents every day for other human service needs," West says.

West says that focus will better prepare the District no matter what situation arises.

"If you can understand how to respond to a flood, you can understand how to respond to an earthquake, you can understand how to respond to a hurricane, you can understand how to respond to a man-made event," she says.

Elsewhere in the city as part of the response drill, a wide array of District and federal agencies -- along with area utilities -- were in communication with each other as if Hurricane Zoe actually occurred.

D.C. HSEMA says the District will continue to run exercises similar to Wednesday's event, including two planned drills in March and September of 2012. West says smaller ward-based drills focusing on resident interaction also are scheduled.

The Superdome in New Orleans after Katrina was meant to be a hurricane refuge, but those who sought shelter there described it as a lawless "concentration camp." "People were locked in the dome like prisoners," said a 13-year veteran of the New Orleans police force who asked not to be identified. Much of the frustration voiced by the evacuees concerned the lack of information. People were prevented from leaving the arena and were desperate for news of what had happened to their friends, neighbors, family members and homes. Many blamed the officials for failing to give them any updates on the situation. "We were treated like this was a concentration camp," said Audrey Jordan of the Superdome. "One man couldn't take it. He jumped over the railing and died." - Stadium Hurricane Refuge Like a 'Concentration Camp', Agence France Presse, September 2, 2005

The Superdome During Katrina

A disaster medical assistance team, DMAT, from San Francisco area, CA-6, served in the Superdome during the Katrina Hurricane. Conditions were horrific.

Greta Van Susteren of Fox interviewed Dr. Charles Burnell, an emergency room physician who was providing medical care in the Superdome. Asked about the level of violence among the 20,000 displaced residents who sought shelter inside the giant stadium, Dr. Burnell said: "We had three murders last night. We had a total of six rapes last night. We had the day before, I think, there were three or four murders. There were half-a-dozen rapes that night. We had one suicide last night. We had one military policeman shot." Dr. Burnell described the Superdome situation as "very unstable, very high tension, a very dangerous environment." While National Guardsmen were on hand for protection, he said that "every time there was an incident that broke out, they had to tend to that, which left us uncovered." Burnell said the task of treating people inside the stadium became impossible after they ran out of supplies. "We did not have oxygen, we did not have any medications to speak of," he said. But what forced the New Orleans doc to finally abandon the giant evacuation center was the threat of violence. "Until I can insure that I'm not putting my life in any significantly dangerous situation — as I was before — I will not be back in the Superdome," he told Fox. - Doc: 6 Murders, 12 Rapes Inside Superdome, Newsmax.com, September 1, 2005

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U.S. Army Developing Drones to Tag, Track, Locate and Identify 'Adversarial Intent'



Army Tracking Plan: Drones That Never Forget a Face

September 28, 2011

Wired - Perhaps the idea of spy drones already makes your nervous. Maybe you’re uncomfortable with the notion of an unblinking, robotic eye in the sky that can watch your every move. If so, you may want to click away now. Because if the Army has its way, drones won’t just be able to look at what you do. They’ll be able to recognize your face — and track you, based on how you look. If the military machines assemble enough information, they might just be able to peer into your heart.

The Pentagon has tried all sort of tricks to keep tabs on its foes as they move around: tiny transmitters, lingering scents, even “human thermal fingerprints.” The military calls the effort “Tagging, Tracking, and Locating,” or “TTL.” And, as the strategy in places like Afghanistan has shifted from rebuilding societies to taking out individual insurgents, TTL has become increasingly central to the American effort. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been devoted to it.

The current technologies have their limits, however. Transmitters can be discovered, and discarded. Scents eventually waft away. Even the tagged can get lost in a crowd.

But there are some things that can’t be so easily discarded. Like the shape of your face. Or the feelings you keep inside. That’s why the Army just handed out a half-dozen contracts to firms to find faces from above, track targets, and even spot “adversarial intent.”

“If this works out, we’ll have the ability to track people persistently across wide areas,” says Tim Faltemier, the lead biometrics researcher at Progeny Systems Corporation, which recently won one of the Army contracts. “A guy can go under a bridge or inside a house. But when he comes out, we’ll know it was the same guy that went in.”

Progeny just started work on their drone-mounted, “Long Range, Non-cooperative, Biometric Tagging, Tracking and Location” system.

The company is one several firms that has developed algorithms for the military that use two-dimensional images to construct a 3D model of a face. It’s not an easy trick to pull off — even with the proper lighting, and even with a willing subject. Building a model of someone on the run is harder. Constructing a model using the bobbing, weaving, flying, relatively low-resolution cameras on small unmanned aerial vehicles is tougher still.

But it could be of enormous military value.

“This overcomes a basic limitation in current TTL operations where … objects of interest only appea[r] periodically from sheltered positions or crowds,” the Army noted in its announcement of the project.

That’s what Progeny claims it can do: take an existing drone, like the hand-held Raven, and turn it into a TTL machine.

“Any pose, any expression, any lighting,” Faltemier says.
Progeny needs an image with just 50 pixels between the target’s eyes to build a 3D model of his face. That’s about the same as what it takes to traditionally capture a 2D image. (Naturally, the model gets better and better the more pictures are taken during enrollment.) Once the target is “enrolled” in Progeny’s system, it might only take 15 or 20 pixels to identify him again. A glance or two at a Raven’s camera might conceivably be enough.

And if the system can’t get a good enough look at a target’s face, Progeny has other ways of IDing its prey. The key, developed under a previous Navy contract, is a kind of digital stereotyping.

Using a series of so-called “soft biometrics” — everything from age to gender to “ethnicity” to “skin color” to height and weight — the system can keep track of targets “at ranges that are impossible to do with facial recognition,” Faltemier says.
Like 750 feet away or more.

But if Progeny can get close enough, Faltemier says his technology can even tell identical twins apart. With backing by the Army, researchers from Notre Dame and Michigan State Universities collected images of faces at a “Twins Days” festival. Progeny then zeroed in on the twins’ scars, marks, and tattoos — and were able to spot one from the other. The company says the software can help the military “not only learn the identity of subjects but also their associations in social groups.”

The Pentagon isn’t content to simply watch the enemies it knows it has, however. The Army also wants to identify potentially hostile behavior and intent, in order to uncover clandestine foes.

Charles River Analytics is using its Army cash to build a so-called “Adversary Behavior Acquisition, Collection, Understanding, and Summarization (ABACUS)” tool. The system would integrate data from informants’ tips, drone footage, and captured phone calls. Then it would apply “a human behavior modeling and simulation engine” that would spit out “intent-based threat assessments of individuals and groups.” In other words: This software could potentially find out which people are most likely to harbor ill will toward the U.S. military or its objectives. Feeling nervous yet?

“The enemy goes to great lengths to hide his activities,” explains Modus Operandi, Inc., which won an Army contract to assemble “probabilistic algorithms th[at] determine the likelihood of adversarial intent.”
The company calls its system “Clear Heart.” As in, the contents of your heart are now open for the Pentagon to see. It may be the most unnerving detail in this whole unnerving story.

Bank of America to Charge $5 Monthly Debit Card Use Fee

U.S. Consumers Get Swiped in Debit Fee Crackdown

September 30, 2011

Reuters - A government crackdown on debit card "swipe fees" is unlikely to benefit consumers' wallets, as banks seek makeup fees and retailers take the savings down to their own bottom line.

For months, retailers, card network companies and big banks brawled in Washington over the fees and even launched nationwide advertising campaigns. Consumers were often portrayed by retailers as the ones victimized by the billions of dollars in debit card processing fees that banks charge merchants.

On the eve of the mandated lower fees, it appears the skeptics who feared the measure would backfire on consumers were correct.

Bank of America said on Thursday it plans to charge customers who use their debit cards to make purchases a $5 monthly fee.

Representative Barney Frank, co-author of last year's Dodd-Frank financial oversight law, said he opposed including the crackdown in the legislation.

He said in an interview with Reuters on Friday that shoppers are unlikely to benefit.

"I regard this as mostly a dispute between two groups of businesses, banks and retailers, and the consumer gets squeezed," Frank said. "The banks will charge you more, and I don't think the retailers are going to charge you less, which is why I didn't want to put it in the first place."

Some retailers are not shy about plans to pocket the savings.

Dave Ratner, founder of Dave's Soda & Pet City chain in Massachusetts, said he will save thousands of dollars annually on swipe fees. Nearly 2 percent of his revenue currently goes to banks for debit and credit card swipe fees.

"This is just a huge relief and is getting back what is mine anyway," said Ratner, who noted that merchants have been powerless to negotiate processing fees with banks until now.

"My customers would laugh at me if I said, 'We are going to give you a dime off if you use a debit card.'"

Senator Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, led the charge to include the swipe fee limits in Dodd-Frank. He has maintained that the legislation will decrease prices for consumers and help small merchants struggling to meet processing fees that amount to about 400 percent of the processing cost.

Dodd-Frank called on the Federal Reserve to craft the limits, which set the stage for a massive lobbying campaign. Banks and card network companies tried to get the cap set as high as possible, while retailers pressed for a low cap.

The Fed capped "interchange fees" at an average of 24 cents per debit card purchase. The current average fee is 44 cents on a typical debit card purchase of $38.

That translates into a $6.6 billion annual hit to financial firms, according to an August study by Javelin Strategy and Research.

Javelin also noted that seven of the top 10 banks had announced plans to eliminate free checking and the so-called Durbin amendment has banks rethinking their customer services.

WINNERS, LOSERS

The writing was on the wall for consumers. A November 2009 report from the Government Accountability Office found that limiting swipe fees would be good for retailers but not necessarily for consumers.

The independent congressional watchdog found that it would be difficult to tell whether retailers were passing along any savings to consumers, and that consumers may face higher card use costs as banks made up for lost income.

"If you are a consumer, and you are caught in the middle of this, you are going to end up having to pay more as a result of this sloppy legislation for a debit card," said Trish Wexler, a spokeswoman for the Electronic Payments Coalition, which represents card networks Visa, MasterCard, and several large banks.

Retail trade groups are steadfast that the windfall for them will not necessarily be a loss for customers.

Mallory Duncan, senior vice president of the National Retail Federation, said merchants will likely pass on savings because their industry is so competitive.

"The average net profit margin in the retail industry is approximately 2 percent," said Duncan. "This reduction (in swipe fees) is another tool they can use to compete for customers."

Dave Koenig, a director at the National Restaurant Association, agrees.

"We do think that ultimately the consumer will get a reduction in prices just because of the competitive nature of the industry."

A recent survey from Direct Response Forum, an annual meeting of payment professionals, provided a different assessment. Its survey of 169 retail executives found that 41 percent of merchants said they won't pass on the savings, and 56 percent weren't sure.

Durbin is standing by the fee limits. He issued a statement on Thursday blasting Bank of America and touting the benefits of the rules once they go into effect on October 1.

"Small business and merchants will benefit from fee relief and consumers will benefit from lower prices," Durbin said. "And banks that try to make up their excess profits off the backs of their customers will finally learn how a competitive market works."

Bank of America to Charge Debit Card Use Fee

September 30, 2011

Reuters - Bank of America Corp plans to charge customers who use their debit cards to make purchases a $5 monthly fee beginning early next year, joining other banks scrambling for new sources of revenue.

U.S. banks have been looking for ways to increase revenue as regulations introduced since the financial crisis limited the use of overdraft and other fees.

The Dodd-Frank Act's Durbin amendment, due to go into effect on October 1, caps fees banks can charge merchants for processing debit card transactions at 21 cents per transaction from an average of 44 cents, potentially costing banks billions of dollars.

Banks also face broader operational challenges as low interest rates and higher capital requirements hit profitability, and the sluggish economy depresses loan demand.

Other large U.S. banks including Wells Fargo & Co, JPMorgan Chase & Co and SunTrust Banks Inc are testing or planning monthly debit card fees.

"The economics of offering a debit card have changed," Bank of America spokeswoman Anne Pace said on Thursday.
Bank of America is the largest U.S. bank by assets.

Senator Richard Durbin, architect of debit card interchange fee reform, bashed the proposed monthly fee.

"Bank of America is trying to find new ways to pad their profits by sticking it to its customers," he said in a statement. "It's overt, unfair, and I hope their customers have the final say."

A FEE TOO FAR?

Even before introduction of the Durbin amendment's rules on debit fees, Bank of America's fee income was dropping at its deposits and card services units. The bank's deposits unit reported fee income of $1 billion in the second quarter of 2011, down 34 percent from $1.5 billion a year before.

Card services, which includes the bank's credit and debit card operations, reported fee income of $1.9 billion, down 23 percent from $2.5 billion in second quarter 2010.

"This might be a fee too far," said Ed Mierzwinski, director of the consumer program for the U.S. PIRG, a federation of state public interest research groups.

Mierzwinski said such fees could push customers to smaller banks that have not introduced checking and debit-related fees.

Pace said customers expect certain features for their accounts, like overdraft and fraud protection, and the fee would offset some of those costs.

The fee will be waived for the bank's premium or platinum privileges accounts tied to its Merrill Lynch brokerage. It will also not be charged for using the card to access the bank's ATMs, Pace said.

She declined to say how much the bank expects to earn through these fees or how many customers would be affected.

Some banks have pushed back against debit fees. Citigroup Inc said earlier this month that it would not impose debit card usage fees as part of a broader account restructuring.

The head of banking products for Citi's U.S. consumer bank said customers had told the bank that a debit card fee would be "a huge source of irritation."

September 28, 2011

In a Few Years, Life is Not Going to be the Same in America

Christians Need to Take a Biblical Stand, for Christ’s Sake! (Excerpt)

September 27, 2011

Don Koenig - Things are going to change radically in this country very soon. In a few years, life is not going to be the same. America will be judged. God is going to severely chastise the Church in America and take away their worldly “christian” idols that they love so much.

In case you do not know it, we are going to have a world war very soon. We are going to see Christian persecution; we are going to have massive civil upheavals, perhaps even civil war; and we are going to have economic collapse. And it will all take place this decade, and it can begin at anytime.

So then why are Christians buying self help books and fluff when in just a few years they will be struggling to even survive in this country?

How are they going to deal with the forced government rationing — or worse — during the next world war that will be against, at least, the radical nations and elements in Islam? What are they going to do when government tells them where to live and what they have to do?

What seems so important to many people today really is trivial silliness. Those into this nonsensical fluff are an embarrassment to the saints of the past and present who put their life on the line daily for their faith.

Christian people learned nothing from world history, or they are totally deceived by the progressives. They have the idea that things in the world constantly progress and man is getting more moral. Anything can be further from the truth.

The world goes through regular major periods of war to purge evil and to get people to depend on God. We are not exempt because some are not old enough to personally have seen a world war or a civil war in their life. We are not exempt from wars and troubles because we are Americans.

Evil rears its ugly head like clockwork in the world; and it just so happens that the symptoms of evil today are already far worse than they were even just before the Second World War.

What Bible are most Christians reading? The bookstore Bible comic books? If people do not take biblical stands in our churches, you’re not going to just lose Christians out of your congregations — your going to lose most of your youth. You will lose your own freedom to preach on certain topics. You may lose your freedom to assemble at all. Your own youth will become your own enemies and turn you in to government, or they will be killed in foreign or civil wars.

Christians had better get their heads out of their collective churchanity butt. Things are about to change radically in this country and in the world, and it is going to happen much sooner than you think. If you stand for nothing in America then, for Christ’s sake, what makes you think that an antichrist spirit will not take over America?

If you want to accomplish something like a move — or to get some formal education, or develop some skill, or make a career change — don’t act like you have decades to get that accomplished. What is not done in the next couple of years toward that end is not likely to take place in the more distant uncertain future either.

The symptoms of this are already evident. We now have an antichrist government that our “Christian” people helped to elect. We have sexual perversion being taught in our government indoctrination centers called schools because Christians will not take a stand against government-sponsored perversion.

Many people are on drugs, and drug warlords run your big cities. They have corrupted most everything, including your government. We have the highest incarceration rate in the world, and very few people that commit crimes even go to prison.

Wake up! America is a powder keg. The riots can start at any time.

All media is becoming antichrist, and true Christians and truth is labeled as crazy; and nobody in Christianity can be concerned enough to take a stand for their faith. Nor will they take a stand against those that are practicing and sponsoring all these evils in our nation.

All these things are happening, and they must get worse because nobody will take a stand against evil. If Christians will not take biblical stands on issues in this country, it is obvious that we will reap the consequences for our harlotry with the world.

We have seen nothing yet. It is time to get serious. It is time to take a biblical stand on issues for Christ’s sake!

Pseudo-government Entity, ICLEI, Undermines Our Constitutional Rights as Americans

The 'Sustainable' Plot to Erode American Prosperity, Liberty and Independence

September 5, 2011

Right Angles - Colorado is on the verge of succumbing to a virulent plague that's disguised with the innocuous label of “sustainability.” The pestilence is spreading across the entire country. The primary infecting agent is the International Council on Local Environmental Initiatives USA, commonly known as ICLEI USA.

Once the pathogenic ICLEI invades a host community, citizens experience seemingly benign symptoms such as smart growth plans that concentrate population centers and initiatives to reduce CO2 and greenhouse gases.

But as the sustainability infection rapidly strengthens, the evidence of a potentially terminal illness is apparent. American citizens are being stripped of liberty, subjected to quasi-government control, and forced into dwindling prosperity.

More than 600 local governments in the United States use taxpayer dollars to pay membership dues to ICLEI USA. In Colorado, member communities include Denver, Fort Collins, Aspen and Carbondale.

On its website, ICLEI unabashedly reveals that it advocates “participatory, long-term, strategic planning processes that address local sustainability while protecting global common goods … and therefore links local action to global goals and targets such as Agenda 21.”

Agenda 21 (aka Agenda for the 21st Century) is the social engineering blueprint of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

According to Agenda 21, the goals of sustainable development are integration of economic, social, and environmental policies to reduce consumption, restore biodiversity and attain social equity.

For the record, social equity is synonymous with social justice, which asserts that all people have the right “to benefit equally from the resources afforded us by society and the environment.”

The clear-stated goals of ICLEI are rooted in the core principles of Agenda 21. In that regard, sustainability balances three interrelated aims: environment, economy and social equity. Societal decisions are to be made from a global holistic standpoint, casting aside the narrow perspectives of individual liberty, national sovereignty and free-market economics.

In the United States, ICLEI advocates are increasingly occupying staff positions within local governments. Aided by community activist groups, these staffers push elected leaders to sanction membership in ICLEI USA. The organization offers money and resources to member communities that adopt sustainability plans per ICLEI guidelines.

Sustainability plans typically include a climate action plan with measures like energy efficiency audits of municipal buildings, streetlight retrofits, public transit expansion, and renewable energy projects. Other common initiatives are affordable housing, green jobs programs, and bans on products like plastic bags. The entire globalist agenda is enacted without voter approval.

In addition to membership dues, ICLEI is funded by entities such as the U.S. Department of State, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Green Building Council.

At every level, our own government and regulatory agencies are paying this pseudo-government globalist entity to undermine our constitutional rights as Americans. Citizens are letting it happen because media buzzwords, such as climate change and carbon footprint, incite guilt for adherence to constitutional law and preservation of America's founding principles.

In fact, the rash of local sustainability planning has nothing to do with protecting the environment. ICLEI is part of a scheme, sanctioned by United Nations, to erode American independence, liberty and prosperity. It's about power and control for a globalist movement.

The prognosis is grim. ICLEI-sponsored education programs are already entrenched in our schools, teaching kids to be global citizens instead of Americans. Our inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness could atrophy and die in a generation.

Eradication of the ICLEI infection is imperative. The cure must incorporate educating our children about American history and heritage, enlightening our neighbors about the lies of sustainability, and demanding that our leaders act within the framework of the Constitution. Without a concerted effort, our sovereign health is doomed.

Read More...

September 27, 2011

Twelve Triggers Driving World Government

10 Things We Can ALL Do to Fight the Global Power Elite



May 14, 2011

asalbuchi.com.ar - Adrian Salbuchi, Founder of the Second Republic Project describes ten things that we can all do to fight the Global Power Elite and invites all free-thinking people to join the growing Second Republic Project.



The Twelve Triggers Driving Mankind Toward World Government

Second Republic Project - All of this being said, we finally come to the Twelve Transitional Triggers being used by the Global Power Elite to wrap up “Globalisation” and usher in World Government.

These triggers are linked, interfaced and interlocked in a highly complex, holistic matrix that is very flexible in its Tactics but rigidly unbending in its Strategic Objectives. They should be read as a whole, interpreted in their holistic hierarchy and considered in various sequences. The picture that unfolds is a clear case of the whole being far more than the mere sum of its parts.
  1. Financial Meltdown

    The Global Financial System continues on life-support since the crisis exploded on 15 September 2008. Barack Obama, Ben Bernanke of the Federal Reserve System, treasury secretary Timothy Geithner, and the US government’s economic hit team (i.e., Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, Paul Volcker and other entrenched bankers), together with Goldman Sachs, CitiGroup, JPMorganChase, the Bank of England, the European Union, and the G20, have not and will not take one single step to help the people in each country and their ailing national economies. All they do is throw huge monetary lifelines to the banking elite and to themselves. They will do anything to impose their flagrant lies on public opinion, including the myth that certain banks are just “too big to fail” (i.e., Orwellian Newspeak for “too damn powerful to fail”).

    Trillions upon trillions of dollars in toxic debt write-offs with taxpayer money; irresponsible central bank money printing; the IMF milking dozens of national economies in Greece, Ireland, Iceland, Portugal, Argentina and, soon to come, Spain, Italy and many others; Quantitative Easing I & II (and soon to come III), again Newspeak for hyperinflation; all adding up to trillions more for bankster bailouts… Why? Easy: because it’s not governments overseeing, supervising and controlling Goldman Sachs, CitiCorp, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, JPMorganChase, UBS, but exactly the other way around…

    The Global Power Elite are ready and willing to collapse the US Dollar and the Euro at a moment’s notice, replacing them with a global gold-backed currency: a “World Dollar” in all likelihood that will be controlled by a world central bank. In line with their Masonic symbols and style, they even subtly laugh at us all. Take a close look at the new US$100 bill they’re putting into circulation: its design splits the note right down the middle, with the left side carrying symbols that may be interpreted as saying goodbye to FED Fiat money, whilst the right side seems to be saying hello to the coming gold-backed world currency.

    At the right time (for them: i.e., when their banks and interests have positioned themselves to weather the coming financial and monetary storms), they will then pull the plug on the whole circus, unleashing mass pandemonium. The US Dollar will collapse when the mainstream media engineer a run on it by confirming what is obvious to many of us: that the US$ has been irrecoverably and purposely hyper-inflated. The Euro, in turn, will collapse for very different reasons: it will disintegrate as the different European countries are forced to revert to their traditional currencies, notably Germany. If Germany were to go back to the Deutsch Mark, then that would spell the demise of the short-lived Euro. The Global Power Elite will drop the US Dollar and the Euro when they are ready to introduce a new Global Dollar replacing both.

  2. Economic Crises

    Through the on-going massive transfer of wealth, “extreme destructive capitalism” will collapse national and regional economies, rebuilding and reformatting them into international slave labour Gulag-like entities that Joseph Stalin would envy. Remember: today’s woes lie NOT with the Real World of National Economies (which are for the most part intact), but with the Fake Virtual World of finance, banks, derivatives, junk bonds, hedge funds… All propped up through Mass PsyWar via CNN, FoxNews, New York Times, Der Spiegel, Daily Telegraph, Rupert Murdoch, El PaĂ­s, La NaciĂłn, ClarĂ­n, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, The Economist, Time, Newsweek, Washington Post… Readers are strongly recommended to watch Charles Ferguson’s magnificent documentary “Inside Job” describing the names of the architects of today’s financial and economic crises, and the banks that triggered it.

  3. Social Upheavals

    The Greek meltdown, Ireland, UK riots, Iceland’s bank run, Spain’s unemployed, and now the massive social upheavals of the last months in the Middle East and North Africa which are very much fuelled by worsening poverty levels, unemployment, grossly unjust wealth distribution, lack of food, water and education in Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Yemen, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Palestine and other countries. North Africa’s social uprisings are a taste of things to come in the rest of Africa, Asia, Latin America, France and the US. Argentina is clearly up for a land grab as the fires spread.

  4. Pandemics

    Get ready for more “Flu Surprises” leading to mandatory vaccinations that will not only represent a discrete opportunity to slip RFID chips into us, but also intelligent viruses targeting specific DNA strains, i.e., racially and ethnically selective viruses as part of the mass depopulation campaign. As some observers say, entire countries and racial/ethnic groups might very soon “catch colds.”

  5. Global Warming

    As the global economy enters Zero Growth Mode, the main economic driver is shifting from Growth Expansion to Consumption Contraction. The coming “carbon credits” might very well be the scheme that opens the way to full societal control. The Environmental factor which received so much publicity with Al Gore has the virtue of being beyond the control of any one Nation-State and thus justifies full global control by world governing entities.

  6. Terrorist “False Flag” Mega Attacks

    This is a wildcard to be used if the Elite needs to jump start further crises leading to World Government. New events of this sort will no doubt be something huge that dwarfs 11 September 2001 and serves to justify further global upheaval, wars, invasions and genocide. A Nuclear Weapon over a major city that could be blamed on the Global Power Elite’s favourite enemy or a combination of “enemies”: “Muslim Fundamentalists,” Patriot Movements, specific States… This time it will have to be a WMD so that it has the necessary psychological impact.

    The time has come for a full investigation to be made into the covert, secretive dark world of clandestine entities that seem to carry out such attacks throughout the world. This can only be done by researchers who are in no way tied, aligned or associated with Global Power Elite interests and are thus willing and able to dig as deep as necessary in order for the Truth to come out. The key would seem to lie in the existence of virtual mirror structures within “official” intelligence community agencies, notably the CIA, MI6, Mossad, KGB and their counterparts in most every other country that appear to have almost unlimited resources emanating from – amongst other sources – organised crime (notably, arms dealers and drug trafficking).

  7. War in Middle East?

    This has already been unleashed, and Iran is probably the ultimate target. But before that, other dominoes need to fall, notably Libya and Syria… Constant Israeli and US threats of unilateral military attack against Iran have become commonplace since the Israeli defeat in Southern Lebanon in mid-2006 at the hands of Hezbollah.

  8. An Ecological/Environmental “Accident”

    In my initial 2009 YouTube video I described this as a new nuclear “Chernobyl” that would “justify” the need for a world entity controlling all nuclear energy facilities, both civilian and, eventually, even military.

    Then, in April 2010 came the British Petroleum “Deepwater Horizon” oil rig catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico which, although now mostly out of the news, is still generating severe environmental damage in the Gulf and beyond. Yet, the almost complete inability and unpreparedness of the US government was clearly highlighted. This failure by the Obama administration is totally unjustified especially after the 2005 Katrina catastrophe that hit the same region.

    Now, in March 2011, Japan and the world is faced with a much larger accident in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex triggered by the 11 March earthquake and tsunami which, at the time of writing, continues getting worse by the day. There are certain notable aspects referring to this catastrophic event that need to be fully researched, including whether or not the United States’s HAARP installation in Alaska has the potential to trigger seismic events in regions where tectonic plates have built-up potential high tension instabilities. Were this to be proven possible, then we may even be facing some kind of secret/clandestine “earthquake machine” capability, that represents the ultimate Weapon of Mass Destruction.

  9. Assassination of a Major Public Figure that will be blamed on some future enemy-to-come: a Muslim country, North Korea, Venezuela or a Patriot “conspiracy.”

    The social disruption and shock wave would need to be over-powering, so we need to think in terms of somebody very high up in Washington, London, or even Rome. As the John and Robert Kennedy events showed, high profile assassinations are relatively easy to pull, especially when the perpetrators can count on “a little help from their (Mossad, CIA, MI6) friends…”

  10. Attacks on “Rogue States”

    At the time of writing, North Africa and the Middle East in general – Libya in particular – are clear examples of this. The key question today is: who is next on the hit list? Venezuela? Bolivia? North Korea? Somalia? Some “failed State” in Africa or Asia?

  11. Staged “Religious” Event

    This may lie further into the future because other events need to take place before; however, today we have the technology to project three dimensional virtual reality holograms just about anywhere. A staged Hollywood-style “Second Coming passion play” may very well be on the drawing board. Imagine the impact of a credible “mystery play” of a Messianic figure (electronically engineered, of course) sending cryptic messages to the world, conveniently interpreted by “experts” playing in sync with the Global Power Elite’s objectives and interests. Who would dare go against “god” himself? Some of the foreplay to this may already be playing out in certain popular films and “projects” on the Internet that attack the present state of things but then go on to suggest we need to move forward into a borderless, faceless Utopian scheme…

  12. Staged “Alien Contact”

    This too is very likely in the works, especially considering that very large sectors of public opinion believe in extraterrestrial beings. Here too, hologram technology may stage some sort of “space vehicle landing” – on the White House lawn, naturally – which will highlight the absolute “need” for Man to have “unified representation” with a universe populated with extraterrestrial beings. Yet another justification for world government?

    It is no wonder that at the end of September 2010 the UN named what may become a terrestrial ambassadorship for such coming “space contacts.” For the time being, that post is held by Malaysian astrophysicist Dr. Mazlan Othman. Naturally, this would all be part of a giant PsyOps in which Hollywood has so obediently obliged, preparing the public through their hundreds of “space alien” movies for over half a century. We have become used to seeing good ET’s, bad ET’s, cute ET’s, aggressive, wise, monstrous, beautiful, Nazi-like, green, red and blue ET’s. There seems to be a flavour for every taste, the point being this process has definitely helped shape the collective psyche and convince people that flying saucers and ET’s do exist. In fact, saucer technologies probably do exist and one might do well to look way, way down South for that. It may be that such vessels are not manned by little green men (which is something Hollywood would help to explain so public opinion accepts it), but rather by something far more unnerving and dangerous for the Global Power Elite, that seems to put their hair on end…
What do all these interlocking “crises” have in common? Global warming, pandemics, international terrorism, financial collapse, economic and trade depression, even alien contacts? They all serve to show that such crises are beyond the capacity of any one Nation-State to cope with, and thus “justify” the need for World Government from different angles and for different reasons. It would seem that in today’s world, all geopolitical roads and PsyWar highways irrevocably lead to a World Government centred on Rome, London, New York, Washington and Jerusalem.

We would all do well to stay alert and look at things the way they really are and not the way the TV Masters want us to think they are.

California Mandating Vaccinations and Going Door to Door to Find Unvaccinated Students

Natomas School Officials Go Door to Door to Find Unvaccinated Students



September 24, 2011

News 10, Natomas, Calif. - Natomas school officials are going door to door with a traveling nurse to give whooping cough shots to unvaccinated students.

A new state law requires students entering seventh through 12th grades to get vaccinated against the disease by the start of the 2011-12 school year.

The legislature gave districts 30 days beyond the start of the school year to make sure all students were vaccinated or had a formal exemption filed by their parents or guardians.

As the deadline passes, thousands of students remain unvaccinated. Many school districts have been defying state law and allowing them on campus.

But not anymore in Natomas.

District Student Services Director Heyman Matlock has been driving door to door to find unvaccinated students. Despite warnings and several free clinics, dozens of students haven't been inoculated.
"There could be some family dynamics where they're having hardships in the house and this isn't a top priority in them making it day to day," Matlock said.
District superintendent Walt Hanline, who made the decision to allow unvaccinated students on campus, said the law forced school officials to make a difficult choice.
"The state law said I couldn't have these children on campus, but the state law also said I have to educate children," Hanline said.
By 4 p.m. Friday, officials had visited a dozen homes and vaccinated six students, whose parents were home to give permission.

The group will continue to go door to door until they can reach all the students.

Beginning Monday, students who haven't been vaccinated will not be allowed on campus.

District officials said they'll continue making home visits until every child is accounted for and able to go back in the classroom.

Read More...

September 26, 2011

The Establishment Media Fears Ron Paul

Jon Stewart chastised the news media for ignoring Paul's candidacy. "This pretending Ron Paul doesn't exist for some reason has been going on for weeks," Stewart said in a "Daily Show" segment. "How did Ron Paul become the thirteenth floor in a hotel?"Stewart added, "Even when the media does remember Ron Paul, it's only to reassure themselves that there's no need to remember Ron Paul." - Jon Stewart and ‘The Daily Show’ are Not Ignoring Ron Paul, The Cutline, September 22, 2011



5 Reasons Why the Establishment Media Fears Ron Paul Like the Plague

The establishment media protects the criminal one percent that has taken America hostage and refuses to question political leaders in Washington about the crimes they commit and the lies they tell.

September 26, 2011

The Excavator - The establishment media in America has now become the official fringe media. CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, NPR, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time Magazine, and every other “mainstream” media source are all in the same sinking boat. Their boat of greed, lies, hate and hypocrisy is no match for the iceberg of truth.

The fringe establishment media protects the criminal 1 percent that has taken America hostage and refuses to question political leaders in Washington about the crimes they commit and the lies they tell. It covers protests around the world from Iran to China but it does not want to cover the Occupy Wall Street protesters who represent the voice of the American people and the voice of the American founding fathers.

Establishment media clowns try to dismiss 9/11 truth tellers as “conspiracy theorists” and “nut jobs” but they have failed. They try to ignore Ron Paul’s rising popularity and mainstream acceptance but they can’t cover up reality. They fear Ron Paul more than the plague because they know that what he stands for is the exact opposite of what they have supported for the past several decades.

Ron Paul is the 21st century embodiment of the founding fathers and represents the tradition of the American revolution. The fringe establishment media represents the loyalist side that stood by the tyrannical British King in 1776. Establishment journalists and commentators are standing by the criminal oligarchy that owns Washington and wants to destroy America’s liberty and constitution.

Below are five reasons why the fringe loyalist media is so scared of Ron Paul.

  1. Ron Paul is opposed to every government policy that the mainstream media has signed off on by either supporting it outright or by ignoring its ramifications for American society: endless war on terror, criminal bank bailouts, lawless surveillance, torture, Federal Reserve money printing, the 2001 Patriot(Traitor) Act, police state laws, and the illegal war on drugs.

    These elitist and unconstitutional policies have been supported by the now fringe media in the United States (CNN, Fox News, NY Times, Washington Post, etc). Ron Paul wants to end these morally bankrupt policies, restore common sense in Washington, and bring freedom back to America.

  2. Ron Paul is not interested in taking the presidency and continuing business as usual. He is a revolutionary candidate in the tradition of the American founding fathers who wants to save America from financial destruction. He has stated that he wants to “change the course of history.”

    Ron Paul wants to end the empire, bring home the heroic soldiers, and restore the American constitution. The elitist fringe media does not want to cover a revolutionary candidate who wants to represent the vast majority of the American people, protect the Constitution, reaffirm American values on the world stage, and bring peace to the world.

  3. Ron Paul is against elite immunity and the culture of corruption in Washington. If he were elected President a bunch of scoundrels in Washington and the sociopaths who lie for them in the establishment media would be held accountable in a very real way – like being put in jail.
  4. Establishment news agencies like MSNBC profit from the corrupt money printing policies of the Federal Reserve. MSNBC’s parent company, GE, has received billions of dollars of taxpayer money. Under a Ron Paul presidency this illegal activity would be immediately stopped and the looting of the American people would come to an end.

    Ron Paul wants to end the corrupt Federal Reserve System not because he is an ideologue but because the Fed is an unconstitutional, illegal and private central bank that was specifically created to enrich a few politically connected banks on Wall Street. The Fed’s unjust policies are disastrous for the average American taxpayer and American family.

  5. Ron Paul tells the truth and he is for real. The Kremlin in Washington is scared of his ideas and his high popularity. The establishment traitors know just how real, honest and independent Ron Paul is, unlike 99% of the political mercenaries in Washington who hate the American people and the American constitution. The fringe establishment media is on the side of the treasonous oligarchy that has hijacked the federal government and the two political parties.

Ron Paul is the antithesis of the cold-hearted, treasonous, and two-faced establishment that owns Washington, as well as their political, academic and media whores.

Washington’s criminal establishment is responsible for evil crimes against the American people such as the murder of President John F. Kennedy, the false flag 9/11 attacks that started the illegal war on terror, and the 2008 robbery of the American people via bank bailouts and Federal Reserve money printing.

The Federal Reserve Plans to Monitor Your Online Communication

The “agency” plans to monitor “reactions and opinions of the public” in real-time so it can get the jump on a growing movement dedicated to dismantling the cartel and returning the nation to honest money. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where the Treasury recruits its directors, has published its “Sentiment Analysis And Social Media Monitoring Solution Request for Proposal” on Scribd. - Corporate Media Broadcasts Fed Plan to Surveil Opposition, Infowars.com, October 1, 2011

The Federal Reserve Plans to Identify “Key Bloggers” and Monitor Billions of Conversations About the Fed on Facebook, Twitter, Forums and Blogs

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, History has stopped….nothing exists except the endless present in which the Inner Party is always right.” - George Orwell

September 25, 2011

The Economic Collapse - The Federal Reserve wants to know what you are saying about it. In fact, the Federal Reserve has announced plans to identify "key bloggers" and to monitor "billions of conversations" about the Fed on Facebook, Twitter, forums and blogs.

This is yet another sign that the alternative media is having a dramatic impact. As first reported on Zero Hedge, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has issued a "Request for Proposal" to suppliers who may be interested in participating in the development of a "Sentiment Analysis And Social Media Monitoring Solution".

In other words, the Federal Reserve wants to develop a highly sophisticated system that will gather everything that you and I say about the Federal Reserve on the Internet and that will analyze what our feelings about the Fed are. Obviously, any "positive" feelings about the Fed would not be a problem. What they really want to do is to gather information on everyone that views the Federal Reserve negatively. It is unclear how they plan to use this information once they have it, but considering how many alternative media sources have been shut down lately, this is obviously a very troubling sign.

You can read this "Request for Proposal" right here. Posted below are some of the key quotes from the document (in bold) with some of my own commentary in between the quotes....

"The intent is to establish a fair and equitable partnership with a market leader who will who gather data from various social media outlets and news sources and provide applicable reporting to FRBNY. This Request for Proposal ("RFP") was created in an effort to support FRBNY's Social Media Listening Platforms initiative."

A system like this is not cheap. Apparently the Federal Reserve Bank of New York believes that gathering all of this information is very important. In recent years, criticism of the Federal Reserve has become very intense, and most of this criticism has been coming from the Internet. It has gotten to the point where the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has decided that it had better listen to what is being said and find out who is saying it.

"Social media listening platforms are solutions that gather data from various social media outlets and news sources. They monitor billions of conversations and generate text analytics based on predefined criteria. They can also determine the sentiment of a speaker or writer with respect to some topic or document."

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York intends to listen in on "billions of conversations" and to actually determine the "sentiment" of those that are participating in those conversations.

Of course it will be those conversations that are "negative" about the Federal Reserve that will be setting off the alarm bells.

"Identify and reach out to key bloggers and influencers"

Uh oh. So they plan to "identify" key bloggers and influencers?

What exactly do they plan to do once they "identify" them?

"The solution must be able to gather data from the primary social media platforms –Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Forums and YouTube."

Hopefully you understand this already, but nothing posted on the Internet is ever anonymous. Everything on the Internet is gathered by a vast host of organizations and is used for a wide variety of purposes. Data mining has become a billion dollar industry, and it is only going to keep growing.

You may think that you are "anonymous" when you criticize organizations like the Fed, but the truth is that if you are loud enough they will see it and they will make a record of it.

"The solution must provide real-time monitoring of relevant conversations. It should provide sentiment analysis (positive, negative or neutral) around key conversational topics."

Why do they need to perform "sentiment analysis"?

If someone is identified as being overly "negative" about the Fed, what will they do about it?

"The solution should provide an alerting mechanism that automatically sends out reports or notifications based a predefined trigger."

This sounds very much like the kind of "keyword" intelligence gathering systems that are currently in use by major governments around the globe.

Very, very creepy stuff.

Are you disturbed yet?

For those of us that write about the Federal Reserve a lot, this is very sobering news.

I wonder what the Fed will think about the following articles that I have posted on this site....

*Unelected, Unaccountable, Unrepentant: The Federal Reserve Is Using Your Money To Bail Out European Commercial Banks Once Again

*Celebrating Independence Yet Enslaved To Debt

*19 Reasons Why The Federal Reserve Is At The Heart Of Our Economic Problems

*Is Ben Bernanke A Liar, A Lunatic Or Is He Just Completely And Totally Incompetent?

*10 Things That Would Be Different If The Federal Reserve Had Never Been Created

What is their "Social Media Monitoring Solution" going to think about those articles?

Unfortunately, this is all part of a very disturbing trend.

Recently, a very creepy website known as "Attack Watch" was launched to gather information on those saying "negative" things about Barack Obama.

Suddenly, everyone seems obsessed with what you and I are saying. This just shows how the power of the alternative media is growing. Not only that, but it seems as though the government also wants to gather as much information on all of us as possible.

For example, a new rule is being proposed by the Department of Health and Human Services that would force health insurance companies to submit detailed health care information about all of their customers to the federal government.

Every single day our privacy is being stripped away a little bit more.

But now it is often not just enough for them to know what we are doing and saying. Instead, the "authorities" are increasingly stepping in to silence important voices.

One of the most recent examples of this was when Activistpost was taken down by Google. We are still awaiting word on why this was done.

Sadly, the silencing of Activistpost is far from an isolated incident. Hordes of YouTube accounts have been shut down for their political viewpoints. Quite a few very prominent alternative media websites have been censored or attacked because of what they stand for.

So why is this happening? Well, it turns out that the power of the alternative media is growing. According to a new survey by the Pew Research Center for The People & The Press, 43 percent of Americans say that they get their news on national and international issues from the Internet. Back in 1999, that figure was sitting at just 6 percent.

The American people are sick and tired of getting "canned news", and they are increasingly turning to the Internet in a search for the truth.

As I have written about previously, the mainstream media in this country is overwhelmingly dominated by just 6 very powerful corporations....

Today, ownership of the news media has been concentrated in the hands of just six incredibly powerful media corporations. These corporate behemoths control most of what we watch, hear and read every single day. They own television networks, cable channels, movie studios, newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, music labels and even many of our favorite websites. Sadly, most Americans don't even stop to think about who is feeding them the endless hours of news and entertainment that they constantly ingest. Most Americans don't really seem to care about who owns the media. But they should. The truth is that each of us is deeply influenced by the messages that are constantly being pounded into our heads by the mainstream media. The average American watches 153 hours of television a month. In fact, most Americans begin to feel physically uncomfortable if they go too long without watching or listening to something. Sadly, most Americans have become absolutely addicted to news and entertainment and the ownership of all that news and entertainment that we crave is being concentrated in fewer and fewer hands each year.

The "news" that we get from various mainstream sources seems to always be so similar. It is as if nearly all mainstream news organizations are reading from the same script. The American people know that they are not getting the whole truth and they have been increasingly looking to alternative sources.

The monopoly over the news that the mainstream media once possessed has been broken. The alternative media is now creating some huge problems for organizations that were once very closely protected by the mainstream media.

The American people are starting to wake up and they are starting to get very upset about a lot of the corruption that has been going on in our society.

But it turns out that the "authorities" don't like it too much when Americans try to actually exercise free speech in America today. For example, you can see recent video of female protesters in New York City being penned in by police and then brutally maced right here.

Are you sickened by that?

You should be.

What the "authorities" want is for us to shut up, sit in our homes and act as if nothing wrong is happening.

Meanwhile, they seem determined to watch us more closely than ever.

So are you going to be afraid to talk negatively about the Federal Reserve now that you know that they are going to be watching what you say on the Internet?