Banksters are Coming for Your Retirement Next

First, the banksters hoodwinked an angry public into bailing out their collateralized-debt obligations and derivative Ponzi scheme to the tune of what may turn out to be over $600 Trillion dollars. Derivatives are nothing more than bets on other bets, on other bets, that are all completely worthless. So, we can assume that the taxpayer will be victimized for at least that amount for derivatives alone. That’s about $2 million dollars for every man, woman, and child in America, or $100,000 for every person in the world.

They bet big with your investment money, got fat, then lost thousands of times more than everything real on Earth combined. Then, representatives of the people bailed gave them out (including bonuses) while they laughed all the way to their respective banks. Since government officials are doing their best to reject transparency, we can also only assume this number is much, much larger.

Sadly, their derivative Ponzi scheme is the least of the public’s current problems regarding the banks. The international banks’ economic hit men have successfully enslaved-by-debt everything from nations, entire industries, state and local governments (who will need their bailout soon), and nearly every person on the planet. Even if an individual doesn't have any bank financing or credit cards, they still pay the private Federal Reserve through inflation. As author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins, would say: the time has come for the banks to collect their “pound of flesh” from average citizens by way of your pensions. For an enlightening explanation of how economic hit men enslave entire countries please watch the video below:



Today, the word “austerity” is becoming commonplace in European countries, and America may indeed be next on the chopping block. The IMF is pushing economically-weak European countries into austerity measures that target average citizens for debts their government owes to banks, including slashing and looting pension guarantees. Incidentally, the U.S. national debt, plus unfunded liabilities and personal and private debt, puts America in far worse shape than all European countries combined.

As we near the End Game, the banksters and their government accomplices are coming for the last of your wealth -- your retirement money. Recent headlines about the IMF “pressing the U.S.“ to reduce its debt is the first sign of things to come. They have already methodically gutted the assets of most public pension funds by knowingly investing those funds in toxic junk. In late 2009, Mark Brenner wrote an excellent article titled Pensions: The Next Casualty for Wall Street which gave a breakdown of the dismal state of pensions:

Nearly $4 trillion worth of retirement savings were wiped out in the first weeks of the 2008 financial freefall. Half of the drop was concentrated in traditional pension plans, also known as defined-benefit plans. While most workers in these plans haven’t had their monthly benefits cut, unlike the 46 million people riding the stock market with 401(k) defined-contribution plans, the storm clouds are gathering.

Furthermore, we’ve also seen the captains of “private” industry pump their bottom line for years with their worker’s pension contributions (much like the federal government has done with Social Security receivables). When it comes time to pay the pensions they dump the obligation onto the taxpayer through the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation which was reported to be $12.9 in the red for 2009. Once again, the taxpayers are funding their own servitude while the ownership class pillages on the way up and on the way down.

I can’t help but be reminded that warnings of this day went unheard. This George Carlin clip below sternly warned that the “owners of this country” will ultimately come for your retirement -- but, hey, who was listening to a comedian?



That’s right, the day is rapidly approaching where they’ll come for your retirement. Screw your guarantees you thought you worked your whole life for. Apparently, contractual law does not apply to the servant class. However, we all remember Hank Paulson and Tim Geithner arguing that the reason they must use taxpayer money to pay 100-cents-on-the-dollar for AIG’s rancid obligations was because it would be wrong to break contractual laws. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that they only respect contractual law when they are taking from the poor and giving to their rich partners in crime.

California transit cop verdict sparks looting

California (Reuters) - A white former transit police officer was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in a videotaped shooting death of an unarmed black man last year in Oakland, California, sparking a wave of looting and destruction in the city on Thursday.

The verdict prompted a peaceful protest by up to 1,000 people in downtown Oakland, which gave way after nightfall to some people looting stores, smashing car windows, throwing powerful fireworks at police and lighting fires in trash cans.

The police, numbering in the hundreds, made more than 50 arrests, but Oakland police expected that figure could double.

"This city is not the wild, wild West," Oakland Police Chief Anthony Batts told a televised news conference. "This city will not tolerate this activity."

A Los Angeles jury deliberated for about six hours over two days before reaching their decision about the shooting on a train platform in Oakland, indicating they deemed it a tragic accident rather than the intentional act of a rogue cop.

The defendant in the racially charged trial, Johannes Mehserle, 28, testified that he mistakenly drew his gun instead of his electric Taser and shot Oscar Grant, 22, while trying to subdue him during a confrontation on New Year's Day 2009.

But prosecutors, who sought a conviction for second-degree murder, said Mehserle had "lost all control" and shot Grant on purpose because he thought Grant was resisting arrest.

Jurors can render an involuntary manslaughter conviction if they believe the defendant lacked an intent to kill but engaged in conduct so grossly negligent that it amounts to a crime.

It generally carries a sentence of two to four years in prison, but the jury also accepted a sentencing "enhancement" for Mehserle's use of a handgun.

"We are outraged that the jury did not find guilty of murder in a case that is so egregiously excessive and mishandled," said Benjamin Todd Jealous, head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Mehserle, who had been free on $3 million bond, showed no reaction as the verdict was read and was immediately taken into custody. The former police officer for the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) rail system faces sentencing on August 6.

FAMILY FURY

Relatives of Grant, a young father who worked as a grocery store butcher, reacted with outrage.

"My son was murdered, and the law hasn't held the officer accountable the way he should be," Grant's mother, Wanda Johnson, shouted outside the courthouse.

About 1,000 people gathered in a peaceful protest in downtown Oakland on early Thursday evening. Many expressed anger, with a huge banner strung over an intersection on a traffic light pole reading "Oakland says Guilty."

"It's unbelievable this guy is getting less jail time than someone who wrote a bad check," said Barbara Plantiko, a 41-year-old immigration lawyer at the protest. "I just don't buy he got confused. I don't think that it was an accident."

Some protesters wore masks depicting Grant's face.

Looters targeted stores selling jewelry and beauty supplies and grabbed shoes from a Foot Locker store in downtown Oakland, while the phrase "Riot for Oscar" was spray-painted on a bank building, according to a Reuters eyewitness.

"It's definitely chaotic," said Sgt. J.D. Nelson, an Alameda County Sheriff spokesman, adding that Oakland's police were being helped by officers from other municipalities.

The killing had unleashed charges of police brutality and unrest in Oakland in January 2009, when people smashed windows and set cars on fire, leading to about 100 arrests then.

Video footage of Grant lying face down as Mehserle shot him in the back was taken by onlookers and shown over the Web and television. Mehserle was seen holstering his gun immediately afterward and putting his hands on his head as in disbelief.

The judge in the case, which was moved to Los Angeles due to heavy pretrial publicity in the Bay Area, held there was too little evidence to show the killing was premeditated, ruling out a first-degree murder conviction.

Had he been convicted of second-degree murder, Mehserle would have faced 15 years to life in prison. The jury could alternatively have found him guilty of voluntary manslaughter or acquitted him entirely.

(Additional reporting by Dan Whitcomb and Carolina Madrid in Los Angeles, Peter Henderson in Oakland, and Alexandria Sage and Jim Christie in San Francisco; Writing by Steve Gorman and Braden Reddall; Editing by Eric Walsh)

Oakland Braces for Violence - Ex-transit cop guilty of involuntary manslaughter in Oakland Oscar Grant Bart shooting

Black Bloc loots/ sets fires on cue! - Live Stream


Shoe store looted, police declare unlawful assembly‎


mp3 here
_paraphrased from feed__news anchor_you mean police are in view and arent stopping the looting at the shoe store or fires?

on scene reporter

I wouldnt say they are allowing this to happen, but um...



Oakland Riots Brewing? (Live Police Scanner Link )
a few TAC channels the Sheriff is using for the OAKLAND RIOT CONTROL, Big Crowds at 14th & Broadway in Oakland. I will be home at 9PM PST, and will be switching the feed to Oakland also.

http://www.radioreference.com/apps/audio/?feedId=5375

LOS ANGELES — A white former transit officer was convicted of involuntary manslaughter Thursday in the shooting death of an unarmed black man on an Oakland train platform in a 2009 encounter
that set off days of rioting in the city.

Prosecutors had wanted Johannes Mehserle convicted of murdering 22-year-old Oscar Grant, who was shot as he lay face-down.

AP file

Oscar Grant, 22, is the transit rider shot and killed by Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer on New Year's Day 2009.

Grant's mother, Wanda Johnson, stared at jurors and appeared upset then later denounced the verdict outside the courthouse.

"My son was murdered! He was murdered! He was murdered," she said.

Microsoft layoffs: Marketing, Office, partner groups all reportedly hit

A new round of Microsoft layoffs is, indeed, happening on July 7, as long-rumored and expected.

According to various comments I’ve seen — all anonymous from those infamous “people knowledgeable about the situation” — the latest round is going to be less gruesome and more broadly spread than last year’s two waves of cuts that totaled more than 5,000 people.

I’ve been watching the growing stream of comments on the Mini Microsoft blog and gathering reports (direct and indirect) from individuals in the trenches today. It looks as if Microsoft’s Central Marketing Group (CMG), Enterprise Partner Group (EPG), the SharePoint/Office team and the search/advertising teams all have made cuts. Most of the cuts I’ve heard about have been in the marketing/sales organizations.

(The usual caveat, re: Mini Microsoft: Given the anonymous comments, it’s impossible to tell whether folks who are reporting in are real Microsoft employees or not. But based on other sources I’ve got — not to mention the relatively high accuracy rate last year, in terms of Mini Microsoft comments regarding which teams/products/projects got cut — , it sounds like the reports there are in line with what’s actually happening.)

So far, there’s no word on what the final tally is likely to be or whether there will be a follow-up Round 2 this year, like there was last year.

In a new blog post, published on July 6, Who Da’Punk (a k a Mini) shared more of the internal back-and-forth over Microsoft’s recent decision to pull the plug on the Kin (”Pink”) phones. So far, I haven’t heard any talk that members of the Kin team were “kinned” today as part of the new round of cuts. Supposedly, Microsoft is moving many of the Kin developers to the Windows Phone 7 team.

USDA Reports Food Shortages: Wall Street 'Caught Off Guard' by Severity

Several recent headlines indicate that food prices will continue their swift climb upward. These troubling new reports show that agriculture production and stored grains are critically low and experts are now predicting food shortages on a grand scale.

Look at a few mainstream headlines: Drought threatens global rice supply in the India Times; VA farmers say heat taking toll on crops, Associated Press; Severe food shortage follows lack of rainfall in Syria; and, finally, Corn prices bolt as USDA downsizes crop estimates, which states that, "Commodity professionals were caught off guard Wednesday by a U.S. Department of Agriculture report showing 1 million fewer acres of corn planted this year than earlier projected, and almost 300 million fewer bushels of corn in storage." And these articles don't begin to address crops being damaged by the toxic rain from the Gulf oil disaster.

We are back to recession economics and rapidly heading toward a deeper, longer “Third Depression.” With all recent economic indicators setting new record lows and deficits at record highs, this ship is only going one way folks, down, down to Chinatown. This WTC-Building 7-style-controlled-demolition of the U.S. economy has long been engineered by the borderless banksters and has been set in the same way to collapse at a free-fall rate. With all of the manufactured confusion it may be difficult to know where best to invest your limited assets, but it seems to be clear that Food is on the march.

There were several trend forecasters and financial firms predicting upwards of $200/barrel of oil before the Gulf oil gusher. The “analysts” said this would occur because of the perception of scarcity and a weakening dollar. The oil disaster and the subsequent outrage at Big Oil will surely take care of selling the perception of scarcity, while the Federal Reserve and Congress will surely take care of weakening the dollar.

We’ve seen this Beta test before when oil prices reached their peak of $147 in 2008 sending the price of food to the stratosphere. Food staples like rice nearly tripled in six months and at times increased 50% in just two weeks, primarily because of record oil prices and a weak dollar in 2008. During this run-up on prices, big box stores like Sam's Club and Costco were rationing the number of bags of rice customers could buy. You can bet that Food Crisis Beta 2.010 will be far more severe.

This third factor of actual Food Scarcity, coupled with high oil prices and a feeble dollar, will multiply the severity of increasing food prices. Whether this scarcity is being engineered to further cull the population or is a genuine imbalance in supply and demand is not important. The fact is that this reality is playing out in the matrix. Being aware of this triple-threat to food costs creates an opportunity to soften the recessionary blow, and perhaps offer some economic freedom from those who would like to reduce us all to serfdom.

You don’t have to be an End Times survivalist to believe that storing food is pragmatic. Everyone with expendable cash can and should design a good food storage and rotation system and buy bulk food as an investment -- in addition to creating self-sufficiency. Many rationalists are touting guns, ammo, and gold as good small-scale investments given the despicable agenda unfolding in our matrix. Certainly those are critical investments in an economy dwindling down to the rationing of necessity, but not everyone is into guns or can afford bundles of gold. And gold, at the end of the day, can only be traded for necessity.

These recent food alerts seem to indicate that food may be the best short-term investment for the “Average Joe.” It's simple: if the retail cost of rice doubles, as it did in 2008, then you (the investor) make 100% return in something that's immediately tangible and usable. It’s time to pay the tax penalty for cashing out your mediocre "I-bought-in-to-the-American-Dream" 401K and invest in Food!

EXCLUSIVE: FBI Expands Probe In Fraud At Holocaust Claims Conference

(POSTED MONDAY, JULY 5, 1:30 p.m.) The Federal Bureau of Investigation has widened its probe into allegedly fraudulent Holocaust-era claims that could have bilked the German government out of millions of dollars, The Jewish Week has learned.

The fraud was discovered in December by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany in New York, which processes Holocaust-era claims for survivors in behalf of the German government. It immediately contacted federal authorities, including the FBI. The fraud initially involved claims submitted to the Hardship Fund but has now been broadened to include the Article 2 Fund, a pension program that may have been defrauded out of about $7 million over the last decade. Both investigations are continuing and the Article 2 Fund pensions of more than 200 people were suspended last Thursday. The individuals were notified by certified mail that the authorities were informed that they were suspected of fraud and that they must return all of the money they had received or file an appeal within 90 days.

The Hardship Fund was established in 1980 to compensate Jews who were forced to flee east during the Holocaust and remained in Soviet-bloc countries after the war, denying them German reparations. Three of 10 employees processing claims for the fund were fired in February, and the Claims Conference said at the time that it was not known whether they were complicit in the fraud.

The Claims Conference said the fraud is believed to have involved at least 100 claimants, each of whom received a one-time payment of about $3,500. It said all of the claims involved men and women who claimed to have lived in the former Soviet Union during World War II and who now live in Brooklyn.

Roman Kent, treasurer of the Claims Conference, said Monday that no arrests have yet been made but that as the FBI probe continued, it “became more and more clear that it [the amount of money involved] might be more than we originally estimated.”

“I don’t have a hard figure,” Kent said of the amount defrauded. “We are fully cooperating with the FBI and others. They know what to do and to go after it; they want to find the real culprits in the act.”

In February, Gregory Schneider, the Claims Conference’s executive vice president, stressed that “no money was taken from Holocaust survivors."

“This was done by very sophisticated persons or a group whose aim it was to defraud,” he said. “And the fact that it is connected with the Holocaust makes it even more disgusting.”

Schneider said also that he had directed that neither the New York office nor the other processing offices in Germany and Israel pay Hardship Fund claims in December, January and February while the investigation proceeded. As a result, about 4,500 claims went unpaid.

That figure has increased since then because both Kent and Julius Berman, chairman of the Claims Conference, said only selected claims have since been paid.

“We have paid only claims that we were certain about,” he said, adding that he did not know the figure.

Kent said the German government had been informed of the fraud.

The Claims Conference experienced an increase in Hardship Fund applications after a recent major expansion of the program to include Jews who were in Leningrad at any time during the Nazis’ 900-day siege of the city or who fled during that time – from September 1941 through January 1944. Germany paid 7,000 claims in 2008 and 18,000 last year. After The Jewish Week reported in February on the federal fraud investigation, the number of new applications dropped off appreciably.

There is no deadline for filing an application, and those who were previously rejected because they did not meet all German government criteria may file a second application.

“To me personally as a survivor and as someone who is part of the Claims Conference it is really disgusting that anybody would try to defraud the money designated for survivors,” Kent said. “It is distasteful and I would say for our part that we are fully cooperating with federal authorities. The sooner it is over and we find out the people behind it, the better for everyone; we are not yet sure where it will end.”

Costa Rica’s Opposition Rejects Entry Of US Naval Forces

As is customary, the US asks for authorization of Costa Rica’s legislature before entry of any US warship and soldiers in Costa Rican waters. And as customary, the Costa Rica legislature grants its permission, as was the case on Friday.

The permission allows the entry of 46 US war ships and 7.000 Marines for the balance of the year (July 1 to December 31, 2010).

The permission granted by the Costa Rica legislature could include docking of the USS Freedom (pictured above) on Costa Rica’s shores. Opposition parties say the decade old agreement was to allow entry of US coast guard vessels and not war ships.

Costa Rica’s opposition, however, see it different, describing the permission as illegal and in violation of national sovereignty.

The main opponents to the granting of the authority is the Partido Acción Cuidadana (PAC), the Frente Amplio (FA) and the Partido Unidad Social Cristiana (PUSC), arguing that the destructive force of the ships and manpower, that includes helicopters, is disproportianate to the threat caused by drug traffickers.

The 46 ships carry some 200 helicopters and war planes and includes the USS Freedom, combat submarines and a hospital ship.

Luis Fishman, head of the PUSC party and presidential candidate in the past elections, said the legislative approval was like handing over a “blank cheque”.

“We cannot support the illegal, we cannot allow our Constitution to be trampled”, said Fishman.

The PAC and the FA recalled that the bilateral agreement signed 10 years ago allowed the entry of coast guard vessels, but not war ships that have the capacity for military confrontations and war.

FA legislator José María Villalta questioned the conditions under which the permission was granted, since US personnel “will enjoy freedom of movement and the right to carry out the activities needed to fulfill their mission”.

The FA also urged consideration of the geopolitical situation in which naval forces will be allowed to enter a region considered by Washington as part of its sphere of influence.

The legislator recalled that the US applies in the region a “strategy of complete dominance”, which includes offensive actions such as the coup d’etat in Honduras and the installation of military bases in Colombia.

Opposition Deputies said they may take action, that could include an appeal with the Constitutional Court, against the decision of the Legislative Assembly since the permission for the ships, airships, helicopters and marines to enter the country violates the agreement reached a decade ago.