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NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. prosecutors asked a judge to jail accused swindler Bernard Madoff on Monday, saying he sent jewelry and other items worth more than $1 million to...
DETROIT (Reuters) - U.S. auto sales plunged by 36 percent in December led by outsized declines at Chrysler LLC, Hyundai Motor and Toyota Motor Corp as the battered industry closed...
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Apple Inc Chief Executive Steve Jobs sought to soothe investor concerns about his health on Monday, saying his weight loss was caused by a hormone imbalance...
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Top economists at the Allied Social Sciences Association's annual meeting have been searching -- in some cases, in vain -- for signs of life in the...
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks fell on Monday as investors booked profits after last week's run-up, while concerns about slowing cell phone sales hit shares of the biggest telecommunications companies.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Health insurer Cigna Corp said on Monday it will cut 1,100 jobs, or about 4 percent of its workforce, and consolidate certain operations as it...
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Solar wafer maker LDK Solar Co Ltd warned on Monday of lower-than-expected fourth quarter and 2009 revenue, saying the global economic crisis and tight credit markets...
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve on Monday kick-started its latest unconventional program to boost the moribund economy, this time taking aim at the heart of the slumping housing...
NEW YORK (Reuters) - General Electric Co's finance arm on Monday launched a $10 billion sale of FDIC-backed debt, the largest sale under the government guarantee program since its...
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Former eBay Inc Chief Executive Meg Whitman has resigned from three corporate boards for personal reasons, a turn-of-the-year move that would free her to run for...
The Home Office has quietly adopted a new plan to allow police across Britain routinely to hack into people’s personal computers without a warrant.
The move, which follows a decision by the European Union’s council of ministers in Brussels, has angered civil liberties groups and opposition MPs. They described it as a sinister extension of the surveillance state which drives “a coach and horses” through privacy laws.
The hacking is known as “remote searching”. It allows police or MI5 officers who may be hundreds of miles away to examine covertly the hard drive of someone’s PC at his home, office or hotel room.
Material gathered in this way includes the content of all e-mails, web-browsing habits and instant messaging.
The Internet stings police consider key to protecting minors from sexual predators may lose some of their power after two recent Court of Appeals rulings.
The use of undercover investigators as bait in Internet chats has become routine in Central Indiana. But the attraction for law enforcement -- the lack of an actual victim -- also became the basis for the reversal of two convictions against a Shelbyville man Wednesday by the Indiana Court of Appeals. That leaves in place a third related conviction. Read More...
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – In a survey of a random sample of U.S. emergency physicians, virtually all said they believed that law enforcement officers use excessive force to arrest and detain suspects.
The sample included 315 respondents. While 99.8 percent believed excessive force is used, almost as many (97.8 percent) reported that they had managed cases that they suspected or that the patient stated had involved excessive use of force by law enforcement officers.
The research arm of the US Department of Justice is working on two portable non-lethal weapons that inflict pain from a distance using beams of laser light or microwaves, with the intention of putting them into the hands of police to subdue suspects.
The two devices under development by the civilian National Institute of Justice both build on knowledge gained from the Pentagon's controversial Active Denial System (ADS) - first demonstrated in public last year, which uses a 2-metre beam of short microwaves to heat up the outer layer of a person's skin and cause pain. Read More...
And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense and myrrh.
-- Matthew 2:11
Matthew doesn't spell them out, so we can only guess at the reasons of the Magi. The first gift to the holy child was gold. But jewelry or monetary gold? The noble metal of sovereign kings, the wealth preserver of sovereign individuals, or the currency of the persecuted and the refugee, such as the child and his parents shortly would become? Scripture seems to affirm only gold's universality. But that is quite enough -- indeed, the whole point.
Those of us who pursue gold's ancient monetary purposes do not worship the cold, dead metal, no matter how beautiful its presentation; we are not idolaters. We pursue what the metal's monetary function advances: individual liberty and fair dealing irrespective of nation or tribe. We would grant that to all regardless of whether this holiday means anything to them. And far from rooting for or betting on the end of civilization, as apologists for the current international monetary system accuse us of doing, we pursue a better day -- a day, for those who can envision it, with nice capital gains, to be sure, but capital gains that do not have to be spent on guns, ammunition, freeze-dried food, and ventilation equipment. For we like living above ground; we are not the gnomes of Zurich. And of course what has driven the world into the ground lately is not gold but a system of central banking that has sought to destroy gold. Gold, the gift of the Magi, increasingly looks like a big part of the world's way back up.
So merry Christmas to our Christian friends, happy Hanukkah to our Jewish friends, and fraternal greetings to all our other friends in the golden circle around the world. The Magi had their reasons and we have ours.
CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
"We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately." Benjamin Franklin, at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776
Not too long ago, I said in a column that if the states of the Union do not stand up to the federal machine they are going to find themselves little more than occupied territories before the next year is gone. For years I have beat the drum to get states to reconstitute the constitutional militia because our very freedom depends on it. The proper role of our military is not to be used against we the people, but to protect and defend against foreign and domestic enemies of this republic.
We've all seen the increase by police using tasers for even a minor encounter with law enforcement. The number of deaths continues to grow.
We've seen law "enforcement" raids that kill innocent people: November 23, 2007. Kathryn Johnston: "A Year Later. 92-year-old woman's death has done little to curb the use of paramilitary police tactics around the country. "It was one year ago this week that narcotics officers in Atlanta, Georgia broke into the home of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston. They had earlier arrested a man with a long rap sheet on drug charges. That man told the police officers that they'd find a large stash of cocaine in Johnston's home. When police forced their way into Johnston's home, she met them holding a rusty old revolver, fearing she was about to be robbed. The police opened fire, and killed her."
Taking the word of a felon, and without checking to see who lives at that home, the cops go in blazing and gun down an old lady. And, for that you expect we the people to respect you?
Earlier this month there was another raid that should have brought maximum outrage by the American people:
"On Monday, December 1, a SWAT team with semi-automatic rifles entered the private home of the Stowers family in LaGrange, Ohio, herded the family onto the couches in the living room, and kept guns trained on parents, children, infants and toddlers, from approximately 11 AM to 8 PM. The team was aggressive and belligerent. The children were quite traumatized. At some point, the “bad cop” SWAT team was relieved by another team, a “good cop” team that tried to befriend the family. The Stowers family has run a very large, well-known food cooperative called Manna Storehouse on the western side of the greater Cleveland area for many years."
SHAME on law enforcement for these Nazi-style assaults on American families. As I said in a column long ago, men and women who wear a uniform in civilian law enforcement had better remember one thing: One day you will no longer wear that uniform. Is this the kind of tyranny you want to live under when you no longer wear the badge? Do you want your family and freedom assaulted by officers who operate as if the Bill of Rights doesn't exist? Think you will be immune to this kind of tyranny? Think again. Is your paycheck more important than honor and the oath you took?
I have repeatedly warned in columns that as more and more Americans become aware of the growing police state and laws that strip us of our God given rights, the closer we get to civil unrest. No one wants it, but when you push a real man's back to the wall, bad things can happen. For those who might have missed those columns, let me give it to you real straight so there's no misunderstanding how bad the situation is becoming.
It was announced today that Trinidad is going to get nearly 30 police cameras as part of a private-funded policing effort. WTOP reports the funding is coming from a project called Safe City and is funded by Target and Sprint Nextel.
Although privately funded, police would be charged with monitoring the cameras. The cameras can be monitored in real time. The city already uses 94 cameras. The increase would make Trinidad the most watched neighborhood in the District. Creepy? We wondered if the cameras are worthless. We also published this terrific take on cameras. Read More...
It was a little before 8 at night when the breaker went out at Emily Milburn's home in Galveston. She was busy preparing her children for school the next day, so she asked her 12-year-old daughter, Dymond, to pop outside and turn the switch back on.
As Dymond headed toward the breaker, a blue van drove up and three men jumped out rushing toward her. One of them grabbed her saying, "You're a prostitute. You're coming with me."
Dymond grabbed onto a tree and started screaming, "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy." One of the men covered her mouth. Two of the men beat her about the face and throat.
Strauss-Kahn says advanced countries would see violent civil unrest
if elite continue to exploit financial chaos for their own ends
The head of the International Monetary Fund has warned that advanced nations will be hit by violent civil unrest if the elite continue to restructure the economy around their own interests while looting the taxpayer.
During a speech in Madrid, Dominique Strauss-Kahn said that “social unrest may happen in many countries - including advanced economies” if governments failed to adequately respond to the financial crisis.
“He added that violent protests could break out in countries worldwide if the financial system was not restructured to benefit everyone rather than a small elite,” reports the Guardian.
Strauss-Kahn’s comments echo those of others who have cautioned that civil unrest could arise, specifically in the U.S., as a result of the wholesale looting of the taxpayer and the devaluation of the dollar.
Widely respected trends forecaster Gerald Celente recently told Fox News that by 2012 America will become an undeveloped nation, that there will be a revolution marked by food riots, squatter rebellions, tax revolts and job marches, and that holidays will be more about obtaining food, not gifts.
Back in October, Senator Chris Dodd said that revolution would unfold if banks refused to lend money.
“If it turns out that they are hoarding, you’ll have a revolution on your hands. People will be so livid and furious that their tax money is going to line their pockets instead of doing the right thing. There will be hell to pay,” Dodd told the New York Times.
Last month, leading economist Nouriel Roubini said that food riots would be the ultimate consequence of the Federal Reserve and the Treasury’s current policies.
Riots and demonstrations have gripped normally sedate Iceland following a financial catastrophe that has wiped out half of the krona’s value and put one third of the population at risk of losing their homes and life savings.
Expectations of violent civil unrest have not gone unnoticed by the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Institute, who recently issued a report warning that the United States may experience massive civil unrest in the wake of a series of crises which it terms “strategic shock.”
The consequence?
The necessity to use “military force against hostile groups inside the United States,” according to the report.
Tens of thousands of active duty military personnel returning from Afghanistan and Iraq are set to conduct “homeland patrols” inside the U.S. and their duties will include tackling “civil unrest and crowd control,” according to a Northcom announcement earlier this year.
A recent report produced by the U.S. Army War College's Strategic Institute warns that the United States may experience massive civil unrest in the wake of a series of crises which it has termed "strategic shock."
"Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security," the report, authored by [Ret.] Lt. Col. Nathan Freir, reads.
"Deliberate employment of weapons of mass destruction or other catastrophic capabilities, unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters are all paths to disruptive domestic shock." it continues.
"An American government and defense establishment lulled into complacency by a long-secure domestic order would be forced to rapidly divest some or most external security commitments in order to address rapidly expanding human insecurity at home..."
"Already predisposed to defer to the primacy of civilian authorities in instances of domestic security and divest all but the most extreme demands in areas like civil support and consequence management, DoD might be forced by circumstances to put its broad resources at the disposal of civil authorities to contain and reverse violent threats to domestic tranquility. Under the most extreme circumstances, this might include use of military force against hostile groups inside the United States." Lt. Col. Freir concludes.
A unanimous federal appeals court on Monday narrowed the scope of when telecommunications companies must keep the self-issued FBI search-warrant requests secret.
But the court limited when it was necessary for judges to review a secrecy order.
Iraq's justice system is to probe the case of the journalist who hurled his shoes at US President George W. Bush, officials said on Tuesday, as his brother said he had been beaten up by security agents.
"Muntazer al-Zaidi has been transferred to the judicial authorities who have opened an investigation. But it is too soon to say who was behind this act," General Qassem Atta, spokesman for a Baghdad security plan, told AFP. Read More...
Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo and his mother-in-law were detained, and his dogs were shot and killed during a July raid that sparked concern over the way raids are handled in Prince George's County. Five months later, the mayor says county officials are refusing to provide documents that would help him understand why sheriff's deputies stormed into his house — and would determine his next course of action.
"Rather than defending their actions, they've chosen to hide them," said Calvo, who is considering legal action against the county. "We're left with no other options and that's a little sad."
Shopping Malls Closing – Shortly after Christmas we will start to see shopping malls of varying sizes declare bankruptcy and close. Shopping malls are driven by the larger “anchor” clients. These are the stores that would bring in the foot traffic. And these stores are closing in massive numbers. The little guys cannot keep a mall going. They do little or no advertising. This will hit the banks hard since shopping malls are very costly. It is doubtful anyone will come along to buy them soon. The banks will have to do maintenance on the malls, carry insurance and maintain security, which means more expenses for the banks.
Cities and States Going Bankrupt – The cities and states are in trouble and some are even asking for bailouts. What happened is their spending was up due to increased revenue from property taxes. Think real estate boom, high values, high property taxes, lots of real estate sales resulting in sales tax revenues. Now with foreclosures, lower values, reduced real estate sales, bankruptcies etc their revenue is way down. Delinquency rates on tax payments are high. Also regular city and state sales tax revenue is way down. Retail sales are low.
Businesses are closing in wholesale quantities. This is going to mean layoffs in the public sector. Bailouts may help for a while but layoffs are going to come. We have already seen some pensions going into default and bankruptcies from the public sector pensions as well. More doom and gloom on the way. Bear in mind this should affect the City, County and State law enforcement agencies as well. They are not immune, not even the corrections system which may need to be downsized.
Higher Taxes – This seems inescapable. The Fed, Cities, Counties and States all prefer to raise taxes rather than downsize. You can’t always get what you want so they will have their tax raise and it will not work and then they will downsize. Getting blood from a stone is not going to work. Governments run by non-business people do not understand this very well. Who are they going to tax – the homeless, those without jobs, those in foreclosure, the retail stores that closed, the record numbers of people in bankruptcy – get the idea. Those that are still trying to live the dream and work are going to be getting hit with more and more taxes on the local and federal level. Eventually they will be busted out or living at a lower standard of living than those on public assistance.
Public assistance is not going to be cut into due to fear of riots, which cost even more money. The net effect of this will be the emergence of a black market economy based on cash, barter and precious metals keeping the various governments out of the transactions. This will reduce government revenues from taxes even further. Reduced government payrolls combined with more hungry and homeless people generally leads to higher crime rates.
Now add into the equation less police and corrections workers leading to early release programs from the prisons. California who is currently saying they are bankrupt tried this in the recent past but backed off before execution. There are millions of people in jail running about $25,000 a year each in expenses. This is a big drain that will need to be done away with. When released these people for the most part will be unemployable due to their skill set and prison record, which means more crime. The people on probation and parole will also be released early to cut expenses, again more crime.
Health Care – Fifty million people without health care coverage is a bad thing and that is the count in the USA now. When they are out of work, out of credit and have no health care they will become desperate. Not that many sick people are content to just go home and go to bed until they get sick enough to die. Health care companies are paying the health care providers 90 days late now. This will only get worse.
As more and more people lose their jobs fewer people will have health care. Rates will go up. Enrollments will then drop more. The end of this cycle is health care providers going bankrupt. Doctors and hospitals will not get the payments owed them, which by then would be at least 120 days worth. This will mean more trouble for the already financially distressed hospitals. And so the story goes on.
Martial Law, Riots, and Extreme Gun Control – These are all possibilities. Hard to say for sure what will develop. A bad economy can lead to riots. Riots are expensive, more debt results. Riots can lead to martial law and extreme gun control laws as emergency measures. All this is bad and very hard to predict with any accuracy. It is reasonable to expect some of these things.
Apparently undaunted by past legal rebukes, the Ohio Department of Agriculture recently raided a food coop in La Grange that was providing grass-fed beef, lamb, pastured poultry and other Weston-Price-style foods. Raw milk was not specifically mentioned, so we don’t know whether that might have been a factor. But the extent and style of the regulator action in this case bears a definite resemblance to what happened at Michael Schmidt’s Glencolton Farms back on Nov. 21, 2006. The Bovine learned about this incident from a comment on the Complete Patient blog by Don Neeper. Here’s part of what Don said: Read More...
A congressional panel will ask the National Security Agency's internal watchdog to investigate whether the super-secret spy agency eavesdropped without warrants on a Muslim scholar and later hid that evidence in a 2005 terror prosecution that got him a life sentence.
The House Select Intelligence Oversight Panel and the judge overseeing the case want the NSA's inspector general to find out if the government failed to disclose evidence that might have cleared the name of a Northern Virginia spiritual leader Ali al-Timimi, Rep. Rush Holt (D- New Jersey) told the New York Times.
Reporting from Takoma Park, Md. -- To friends in the protest movement, Lucy was an eager 20-something who attended their events and sent encouraging e-mails to support their causes.
Only one thing seemed strange.
"At one demonstration, I remember her showing up with a laptop computer and typing away," said Mike Stark, who helped lead the anti-death-penalty march in Baltimore that day. "We all thought that was odd."
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Mohamed Shommo, an engineer for Cisco Systems Inc., travels overseas several times a year for work, so he is accustomed to opening his bags for border inspections upon returning to the U.S. But in recent years, these inspections have gone much deeper than his luggage.
Border agents have scrutinized family pictures on Shommo's digital camera, examined Koranic verses and other audio files on his iPod and even looked up Google keyword searches he had typed into his company laptop. Read More...
WASHINGTON (AP) - People will soon be able to carry concealed, loaded guns in most national parks and wildlife refuges.
The Bush administration said Friday it is overturning a 25-year-old federal rule that severely restricts loaded guns in national parks.
Under a rule to take effect in January, visitors will be able to carry a loaded gun into a park or wildlife refuge—but only if the person has a permit for a concealed weapon and if the state where the park or refuge is located also allows concealed firearms. Read More...
Ashley Brown : NBC News (originally linked to at Lew Rockwell.com)
A Waldorf, Md., family's dog was euthanized after a deputy shot the dog outside their house Thursday night. The family says two children were watching, including a 2-year-old who was a foot away from the dog when it was shot.
Deputies from the Charles County Sheriff's Office had arrived at the house on St. Peters Church Rd. around 7 p.m. to serve legal papers to a resident who no longer lived at that address.
In 2006, rural Nebraska couple Wayne and Sharmon Stock were killed with shotgun blasts to the head. Early on, the police honed in on Matt Livers and Nick Sampson, cousins of the slain couple. During a heated interrogation, Cass County Sheriff's Investigator Earl Schenk told the mentally-handicapped Livers that unless he confessed, Schenk would do everything in his power to be sure Schenk was executed, threatening to "do my level best to hang your ass from the highest tree."
Livers eventually confessed, implicating himself and Sampson in a crime they didn't commit. According to a lawsuit since filed by Livers, investigators then spoon-fed him details about the crime scene, eliciting from him a narrative that fit the one police had in mind.
PORTSMOUTH – If you've had a medical test involving radioactive material, on your way home you might be pulled over by a state trooper packing a powerful radiation detector.
That's what happened to Wakefield resident Michael Rosenthal.
He was driving home on Route 16 Nov. 21 after getting a PET scan at Portsmouth Regional Hospital when a state police SUV came up behind him. The SUV pulled alongside his car, then in front of it, before falling behind again and then flashing its lights to pull him over, Rosenthal said.
SAN FRANCISCO -– The Bush administration on Tuesday urged a federal judge to dismiss lawsuits against the nation's telecommunications companies accused of complying with the government's once-secret spy program adopted in the wake of the 2001 terror attacks on the United States.
"That was designed to protect from a terrorist attack," Deputy Assistant Attorney General Carl Nichols told U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker. Read More...
Spencer S. Hsu and Ann Scott Tyson : Washington Post
The U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe, according to Pentagon officials.
The long-planned shift in the Defense Department's role in homeland security was recently backed with funding and troop commitments after years of prodding by Congress and outside experts, defense analysts said.
There are critics of the change, in the military and among civil liberties groups and libertarians who express concern that the new homeland emphasis threatens to strain the military and possibly undermine the Posse Comitatus Act, a 130-year-old federal law restricting the military's role in domestic law enforcement.
