First Iceland, then the World

Written by Michael Collins

SOURCE: DailyCensored.com

Michael Collins
The public is angry. Why should the public pay for the bankers mistakes. Iceland blogger Halldor Sigurdsson

Who cleans up the mess when ignorant, greedy bankers rack up massive debt then go broke? The people of Iceland made a strong statement Saturday. The sins of big bankers and government regulators shouldn’t fall on the citizens. By a 93% to 2% margin, they voted down a proposal requiring them to cover bad debt incurred by one of the nation’s oldest and largest banks. Covering the debt would have cost Iceland’s 317,000 citizens around $17,000 each.

Iceland’s national referendum was the first opportunity for the people of any nation to vote directly on who pays when the financial elite fail.

As citizens voted, Iceland’s Prime Minister was dismissing the importance of the vote and promising to negotiate a payment scheme obligating citizen subsidies for bad debt created by Iceland’s beyond-bad bankers.

SOURCE: OpEdNews

February 23, 2010 By Joan Brunwasser

More Ellsberg: The Pentagon Papers and John Dean, Then and Now

My guest today is "the most dangerous man* in America" whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. When you released the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times, you knew that you could be facing life in prison. Luckily, that turned out not to be the case. But, if you were to have done comparable actions since the passage of the Patriot Act, they would have tossed you in prison and thrown away the key. That's a sobering, concrete example of where we are almost forty years later. Do you ever think about that?

Good question. Actually, although (unknown to me and almost everyone else) the prior law was on my side in 1971-73, I came pretty close to spending 115 years in prison then. With good behavior, I would have gotten out (after 35 years) in 2008. It took a lot of luck, and a handful of individuals who told the truth (John Dean about the burglary, someone in the FBI about the electronic overhearing) to overcome the attempts of the president to bribe my judge with the directorship of the FBI.

And even before the Patriot Act, the trend of legal opinions--the terrible judgments in the Samuel Loring Morison case in 1984, an increasing disregard of legislative history which had weighed against using the Espionage Act as an Official Secrets Act--was against the chances for a future leaker of classified information. The Patriot Act itself didn't affect this situation that much. It doesn't include an Official Secrets Act--almost by oversight--though another 9-11 could almost surely get us one, even from Obama.

However, the Patriot Act and related legislation do have the effect of legalizing most of the actual crimes against me by Nixon. Sneak-and-peek entries and burglaries of a doctor's office, in search of information to use against a "terrorist suspect"? (i.e., someone like me who opposes and resists a president's terrorism). Legal, now. Warrantless wiretaps? Legal. Use of CIA against an American citizen? Legal.

SOURCE:Rollingstone

Wall Street's Bailout Hustle

Goldman Sachs and other big banks aren't just pocketing the trillions we gave them to rescue the economy - they're re-creating the conditions for another crash

MATT TAIBBI

Posted Feb 17, 2010 5:57 AM

Read all about the seven cons. Confidence games are perpetrated by people who take advantage of a person's trust and deprive him of his goods. They are difficult to prosecute in the law because the victim appears to have been a willing participant.

What's to be done? We the people have to take control of our money and cut out the middlemen.

What follows is an explanation of how the transfer of the American people's assets into the pockets of a few is carried out--what I have taken to calling "Deprivation Under Cover of Law", for the simple reason that it's all legal.

Deprivation of rights under color of law is a well-recognized, if not frequently prosecuted crime. Indeed, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has a comprehensive explanation and some interesting statistical data, including a list of the most common categories in which these crimes occur:

• excessive force;

• sexual assaults;

• false arrest and fabrication of evidence;

• deprivation of property; and

• failure to keep from harm.

However, that's not the topic I want to address today. I want to focus on what I call "deprivation of rights under cover of law." But, first it seems important to consider what "deprivation" means.

This is what happens when you privatize your government

SOURCE: Rollingstone.com

A scheme to flood the market with counterfeit stocks helped kill Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers — and the feds have yet to bust the culprits

BY MATT TAIBBI, Posted Oct 14, 2009 9:30 AM

Watch Matt Taibbi break down short-selling vs. naked short-selling on his blog, Taibblog.

n Tuesday, March 11th, 2008, somebody — nobody knows who — made one of the craziest bets Wall Street has ever seen. The mystery figure spent $1.7 million on a series of options, gambling that shares in the venerable investment bank Bear Stearns would lose more than half their value in nine days or less. It was madness — "like buying 1.7 million lottery tickets," according to one financial analyst.

But what's even crazier is that the bet paid.

Somehow the agents of law enforcement have come to believe that the punishment of one person acts as a deterrent to prevent others from committing similar crimes. That’s, indeed, the underlying justification for the state killing people who killed. That this belief is unsupported by fact and that, indeed, when the state kills as an act of punishment, lots of other people feel empowered to do the same–i.e. kill people who don’t follow orders and agree with them–has, so far, had no impact on the law.

In any event, because of the belief that punishing some people makes other people behave as they ought, admitting that the agents of law enforcement have been in error from beginning to end is a no-no. The whole crime prevention justification for the existence of law enforcement agencies would be undermined.

In a sense, the crime prevention model is a precursor of the preventive health care model–a strategy to generate more public support for an enterprise for whom success (no crime, no early death) spells the possibility of demise.

And yes, a whole bunch of Senators actually voted to continue contracting with companies prohibiting employee legal and civil rights

Sen. Franken Questions an Arbitration Lawyer about Binding Arbitration

Justice Antonin Scalia is entirely correct. Charging public officials for failing to deliver "honest services" to the people who employ them should be a standardized procedure throughout the land. That may not be the Justice's intent in calling for a reconsideration of the law, but I think it's a grand idea. Even better is that this novel approach to dealing with dishonest public servants was unearthed, in a manner of speaking, by a conservative Department of Justice. Justice Scalia's concern that the honest services law

“invites abuse by headline-grabbing prosecutors in pursuit of local officials, state legislators and corporate C.E.O.’s who engage in any manner of unappealing or ethically questionable conduct.”

is understandable. Historically, "honest services fraud" used to be routinely charged against individuals who tried to abscond from a restaurant without paying or wrote checks on accounts without sufficient funds--clearly a more appropriate class of people to hold accountable to the law, than the heads of corporations or public servants.

This acquisition is the latest action in a series of events which have created a concentration in the electronic voting industry. This acquisition will exacerbate and burden an already non-competitive and restrictive situation for our public elections, which under the Constitution are an essential part of our democratic system of government. This acquisition, in addition to overconcentrating the industry, will put a single company in a position to shut down federal elections at will. Thus, this overconcentration also creates a potential national security problem.~Black Box Voting antitrust complaint

Black Box Voting has sent a 21-page carefully documented letter of complaint and request for investigation to the United States Dept. of Justice Office of Antitrust and to the Federal Trade Commission regarding the acquisition of Diebold/Premier Election Solutions by Election Systems & Software.

We need and appreciate your donations. We believe we are continuing to earn your support.
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/donate.html
mailing address 330 SW 43rd St Suite K PMB 547 Renton WA 98057

Black Box Voting filed an antitrust complaint to the US Department of Justice requesting they investigate the proposed merger of e-voting companies Diebold and ES&S. Long before this merger, however, New Hampshire initiated its own antitrust situation with Diebold Corporation. Like so many other unconstitutional aspects of NH's election systems, the virtual monopoly over e-voting in New Hampshire was legislated with a wink and a nod and nary an objection from the office of the NH Attorney General, Secretary of State, the news media, or most public officials. In fact, the legislation itself that handed NH elections to Diebold on a silver platter, was written in consultation with John Silvestro of Londonderry, NH, President of Diebold's New England affiliate, LHS Associates. The legislation was passed under the direction of then Chair of the NH Election Law Committee, Don Stritch, with the full support of the office of the Secretary of State.

Former Representative Stritch is now Commissioner of Rockingham County, where LHS President John Silvestro resides. Stritch's interest in the e-voting industry is apparent in his subsequent unsuccessful appeal to be appointed by the NH Secretary of State to the Standards Board, a national board of state election officials reporting to the White House agency, the Election Assistance Commission (EAC). The Standards Board and the EAC maintain quite a bit of influence over national adoption of electronic voting technology, from advising on the design specifications for the technology to participating (formally and informally) in a disturbingly intimate network with e-voting industrialists.

Following the 2007 establishment of the NH "Electronic Ballot Counting Device Advisory Committee" (aka electronic voting technology committee), Stritch was appointed Chair of that committee by Secretary of State Bill Gardner. This e-voting committee was created by legislation passed after the Election Law Committee, under the chairmanship of Representative Jane Clemons (D-Nashua) killed several pieces of citizen-proposed legislation calling for open and public vote counting. Clemons, working with Deputy Secretary of State Dave Scanlan, instead orchestrated passage of this single bill forming the technology voting committee, effectively putting legislative stamp of approval on concealed vote counting by computers rather than the constitutional mandate for public and open vote counting. The following excerpt provides details on the shameful dealings that gave away NH's public elections to a Diebold monopoly.

more below the fold

SOURCE: Black Box Voting Letter of Complaint - Request for Investigation to AG Holder

Black Box Voting is writing to express our objection to, and to request your investigation of, the proposed acquisition of Diebold's Premier Election Solutions by Election Systems
& Software, Inc. (ES&S).

This acquisition is the latest action in a series of events which have created a concentration in the electronic voting industry. This acquisition will exacerbate and burden an already non-competitive and restrictive situation for our public elections, which under the Constitution are an essential part of our democratic system of government. This acquisition, in addition to overconcentrating the industry, will put a single company in a position to shut down federal elections at will. Thus, this overconcentration also creates a potential national security problem....

...The permitted sale of Premier Election Solutions to ES&S will consolidate this not-verycompetitive process for years to come based on the historical process timeline. In addition, certain states have added their own purchasing restrictions. The states of Texas and Ohio, for example, do not permit Sequoia Voting Systems to sell systems to their counties. The state of Florida does not permit Hart Intercivic to sell voting systems in Florida. And the state of New Hampshire has established an unusual ballot design requirement which precludes all vendors except Diebold/Premier. Some states, like (9) See e-mail documents from ES&S employee John Groh, above. Georgia, Maryland, New Mexico, Arkansas, West Virginia and Utah require all local counties to purchase a system from a single vendor selected by state officials.

Read the full complaint here

Take action here

SOURCE: OpEd News

August 16, 2009

Caught in the Crosshairs: Former Governor Don Siegelman Talks with OpEdNews

By Joan Brunwasser

Under the George W. Bush administration, hundreds of Democrats were politically prosecuted by the Department of Justice (DoJ). Careers, reputations and finances were ruined in the process, families devastated. Many of the targeted politicians ended up in prison. Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman is one of the most visible targets of the partisan DoJ. A hugely popular Democrat in a Republican state, Siegelman was the only person in Alabama history to be elected to the four top state posts. Political prosecutions were designed to achieve permanent Republican domination by underminingDemocratic infrastructure across the country, particularly in swing states.

SOURCE: Rove "Driving Force" Behind US Attorney Firings

Thursday 13 August 2009

by: Jason Leopold, t r u t h o u t | Report

Karl Rove. (Photo: Charles Dharapak / The Associated Press)

    Political adviser Karl Rove and other officials inside George W. Bush's White House pushed for the firing of a key federal prosecutor because he wasn't cooperating with Republican plans for indicting Democrats and their allies before the 2006 election, according to internal documents and depositions.

    The evidence was released Tuesday and turned over to a special prosecutor by House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers. It contradicts claims by Rove and other senior Bush administration officials that the White House played only a minimal role in the firing of David Iglesias and eight other US attorneys who were deemed by a Justice Department official as not "loyal Bushies."

---

The Cheney-Like Secrecy of the Obama White House posted by John Nichols on 08/08/2009 @ 11:51am

Those of us who proposed the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney for violating his oath of office and engaging in a Nixon-on-steroids spree of high crimes and misdemeanors began to recognize the abusive nature of the previous administration when Cheney refused to release details of the industry insiders with whom he met to craft energy policies.

The refusal of the Bush-Cheney administration to permit public review of White House visitor logs detailing who was meeting with the vice president's energy task force during the very first weeks of their tenure was a deliberate decision made to cloak dirty dealing by officials who were determined to serve corporate rather than public interests.

SOURCE: The BRAD BLOG

LIVE BLOG: Deposition of Sibel Edmonds Completed, DoJ a 'No Show', Bombshells Under Oath

UPDATES INCLUDE: CONGRESS MEMBERS NAMED IN ESPIONAGE, BRIBERY, SEXUAL BLACKMAIL SCHEMES; NEW BREWSTER JENNINGS / VALERIE PLAME DISCLOSURE...

'State Secrets' privilege NOT asserted by DoJ; FBI whistleblower answered ALL questions under oath on Turkish infiltration of U.S. Government...

Posted By Brad Friedman On 8th August 2009 @ 08:51

Live blogging coverage of the Sibel Edmonds deposition at the National Whistleblowers Center (1) in Washington D.C. For background see previous coverage:

• 8/5/09: Sibel Edmonds Subpoenaed, Set to 'Break' Gag Order (2)
• 8/7/09: EXCLUSIVE: FBI Attempts to Block Edmonds Testimony in OH Election Case (3)
• 8/7/09: EXCLUSIVE UPDATE: DoJ Pressures Ohio Election Commission to Block Edmonds Testimony (4)

Updates at bottom...

8:00am PT (11:00am ET): The deposition has now begun inside the National Whisteblowers Center, and has not, apparently, been blocked by an assertion of the "state secrets" privilege by the DoJ.

The BRAD BLOG (5) has some folks covering outside the testimony this morning, and I just spoke to some of the folks on the ground outside the NWC, just before the deposition was set to begin, including David Krikorian who flew in last night from Ohio.

Krikorian said that he hadn't yet seen anybody from the DoJ there yet, and both he and Edmonds confirmed that there hadn't been any new action (that they knew about) since the late-night legal back and forth between the DoJ and OEC on Friday night. Though Krikorian added that he "wouldn't be surprised" if someone from DoJ showed up. We'll find out later today if they did.

He said his team intended to ask detailed questions on the three major points they'd described in their press release (PDF) (6) issued earlier this week, focusing on whether and how "The Government of Turkey had illegally infiltrated and influenced various U.S. government institutions and officials, including the Department of State, the Department of Defense and individual members of the United States Congress."

Krikorian did not seem dissuaded by the FBI's (7) and then the DoJ's (8) attempts to block Edmonds' testimony, and that they intended to be thorough in their deposition. "That's pretty much the whole point of this exercise," he told me.

SOURCE: Truthout.org Opinion

Blackwater Founder Implicated in Murder - Tuesday 04 August 2009

by: Jeremy Scahill  |  Visit article original @ The Nation

    A former Blackwater employee and an ex-US Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company have made a series of explosive allegations in sworn statements filed on August 3 in federal court in Virginia. The two men claim that the company's owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. The former employee also alleges that Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe," and that Prince's companies "encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life."