Stooges Used Everywhere: It's Been Planned From 9/11 With Cyber Technology Contracts? How Your Vote (Life) Was Pre-Determined For Your Enjoyment

And you thought there was nothing good coming out of the foreclosure madness?

Silly you. From my buddy at Who Hijacked Our Country? (Emphasis marks added - Ed.)

During 2009, David J. Stern’s foreclosure mill processed more than 70,000 foreclosures. One of Stern’s former employees gave a deposition describing how the foreclosure mill achieved such a high quota.

For one thing, the process-serving part of this — informing the homeowner that his/her bank is opening foreclosure proceedings — was skipped. Stern’s ex-employee said: “People were not served. Some of them would go to do modifications on loans, or go to take out other things, and it would come up that they were in foreclosure. And they would end up finding out that way that there was no actual service on them.... Service was a complete mess.”

The same ex-employee also testified that once a bank had referred a foreclosure case to Stern’s office, any subsequent payments by the homeowner were ignored. She also said that whenever she tried to give any kind of help or advice over the phone to a homeowner, she’d get yelled at or threatened by a supervisor. As in, get off the phone and start rubber-stamping some more documents.

But on the bright side, these thousands of ruined homeowners have provided unimaginable wealth and splendor for David J. Stern: A $15 million mansion, a yacht, four Porsches, four Ferraris and a $1 million Bugati. These things don’t come cheap, so God Damn It, get moving on those foreclosure documents. Faster!

Need one more reason to know why Obama said at the beginning of his term that he wouldn't mind being a one-term President if he would be known historically as someone who made the hard choices? No? I may be jumping off the economic cliff early, but it seems to be to be a pretty good warning of what's ahead. And even if they can "ease" the easing to their pleasure, I'm pretty sure it won't be to ours.

So, the stimulus - that would have been generating jobs and demand within the US - is being exported to countries that want to keep the dollar propped up to maintain the present arrangement, that is, they want to continue to expand their manufacturing base and keep unemployment low while the US languishes in a permanent recession.

Bretton Woods 2, by the way, is the arrangement under which the US willingly runs large current account deficits with the assurance that trade partners would recycle the proceeds into US Treasuries, Agencies and equities. Naturally, this turned out to be a real boon for Wall Street as surplus capital has helped to fuel massive bubbles in all manner of garbage bonds that enriched the principles at the big brokerage houses.

Do you really need more? (Coming with today's announcements from Bernanke?)

Bernanke's zero-rate policy and the prospect of ongoing rounds of quantitative easing have put finance ministers everywhere in a frenzy. Some countries - notably South Korea and Brazi l- have already taken steps to slow capital flows. As yet, the effectiveness of these measures remains unknown.

Naturally, capital seeks the best rate of return, which is why it is exiting the US (which is in the throes of a long-term slowdown) for greener pastures in China and emerging markets. That movement drives up the value of local currencies and creates lethal asset-price bubbles. The Fed is intensifying this process (via QE) to break the back of Bretton Woods 2 and force the dollar down. Eventually, the flood of liquidity will force foreign trade partners to accept a cheaper dollar thus restoring US export competitiveness and a way out of recession without raising workers wages. (The Fed's approach is grounded in class warfare.)

Tim Duy sums it up in a brilliant post that shines a light on the Fed's real objectives. The article should be read in its entirety, but here's a brief clip:

"Consider the enormity of the situation at hand. The Federal Reserve is poised to crank up the printing press for the sake of satisfying their domestic mandate. One mechanism, perhaps the only mechanism, by which we can expect meaningful, sustained reversal from the current set of imbalances is via a significant depreciation of the dollar. The rest of the world appears prepared to fight the Fed because they know no other path.

Bad things happen when you fight the Fed. You find yourself on the wrong side of a whole bunch of trades.

. . . The time may finally be at hand when the imbalances created by Bretton Woods 2 now tear the system asunder. The collapse is coming via an unexpected channel; rather than originating from abroad, the shock that sets it in motion comes from the inside, a blast of stimulus from the US Federal Reserve. And at the moment, the collapse looks likely to turn disorderly quickly. If the Federal Reserve is committed to quantitative easing, there is no way for the rest of the world to stop (the) flow of dollars that is already emanating from the US. Yet much of the world does not want to accept the inevitable, and there appears to be no agreement on what comes next. Call me pessimistic, but right now I don't see how this situation gets anything but more ugly."

(The Final End of Bretton Woods 2?, Tim Duy, Fed Watch)

So world economists have been talking among themselves for a very long time, and the dumbed-down U.S. MSM, which doesn't even report on the easiest indicators of economic data in a timely fashion (and don't bore me with the fantastical stock market numbers), will never be able to explain how we've lost everything while our populace was captivated by the "Dancing American Losers." But they have figured out how to control the noise once the crowd is aroused.

As they walked along the busy, yellow-lit tiers of offices, Anderton said: "You're acquainted with the theory of precrime, of course. I presume we can take that for granted." Philip K. Dick, The Minority Report

And you still use Google? I know I do. It's just tooooo gooooood to let go. Right? Remember how important the word to get out was that Google would never be evil? I guess everyone just goes where the money goes. Evil or not. (Emphasis marks added - Ed.)

Invasive Cyber Technologies and Internet Privacy: Big Brother is only a "Ping" or Mouse Click Away

Tom Burghardt

What do Google, the CIA and a host of so-called "predictive behavior" start-ups have in common?

They're interested in you, or more specifically, whether your online interests - from Facebook to Twitter posts, and from Flickr photos to YouTube and blog entries - can be exploited by powerful computer algorithms and subsequently transformed into "actionable intelligence."

And whether the knowledge gleaned from an IP address is geared towards selling useless junk or entering a name into a law enforcement database matters not a whit. It's all "just data" and "buzz" goes the mantra, along what little is left of our privacy and our rights.

Increasingly, secret state agencies ranging from the CIA to the National Security Agency are pouring millions of dollars into data-mining firms which claim they have a handle on who you are or what you might do in the future.

And to top it off, the latest trend in weeding-out dissenters and nonconformists from the social landscape will soon be invading a workplace near you; in fact, it already has.

Welcome to the sinister world of "Precrime" where capitalist grifters, drug- and torture-tainted spy shops are all laboring mightily to stamp out every last vestige of free thought here in the heimat.

The CIA Enters the Frame

In July, security journalist Noah Shachtman revealed in Wired that "the investment arms of the CIA and Google are both backing a company that monitors the web in real time - and says it uses that information to predict the future."

Shachtman reported that the CIA's semi-private investment company, In-Q-Tel, and Google Ventures, the search giant's business division had partnered-up with a dodgy outfit called Recorded Future pouring, according to some estimates, $20 million dollars into the fledgling firm.

A blurb on In-Q-Tel's web site informs us that "Recorded Future extracts time and event information from the web. The company offers users new ways to analyze the past, present, and the predicted future."

Who those ubiquitous though nameless "users" are or what they might do with that information once they "extract" it from the web is left unsaid. However, judging from the interest that a CIA-connected entity has expressed in funding the company, privacy will not figure prominently in the "new ways" such tools will be used.

Wired reported that the company, founded by former Swedish Army Ranger Christopher Ahlberg, "scours tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts to find the relationships between people, organizations, actions and incidents - both present and still-to-come."

"The cool thing is" Ahlberg said, "you can actually predict the curve, in many cases."

And as for the search giant's interest in "predicting the future" for the secret state, it wouldn't be the first time that Google Ventures sold equipment and expertise to America's shadow warriors.

. . . Datamation reports that "following the current trend lines," rooted in the flawed logic of information derived from data-mining and link analysis, "social networking spiders and predictive analytics engines will be working night and day scanning the Internet and using that data to predict what every employee is likely to do in the future. This capability will simply be baked right in to HR software suites.

. . . Elgan tells us that unlike a criminal proceeding where you stand before the law accused of wrongdoing and get to face your accuser, "you can't legally be thrown in jail for bad character, poor judgment, or expectations of what you might do in the future. You have to actually break the law, and they have to prove it."

"Personnel actions aren't anything like this." You aren't afforded the means to "face your accuser." In fact, based on whether or not you sucked-up to the boss, pissed-off some corporate toady, or moved into the "suspect" category based on an algorithm, you don't have to actually violate comapny rules in order to be fired "and they don't have to prove it."

Datamation tells us, "if the social network scanning, predictive analytics software of the future decides that you are going to do something in future that's inconsistent with the company's interests, you're fired."

And, Elgan avers, now that "the tools are becoming monstrously sophisticated, efficient, powerful, far-reaching and invasive," the precrime "concept is coming to HR."Big Brother is only a "ping" or mouse click away . . . .

I don't know. Sounds pretty close to the same situation we have in today's waiting-to-be-outsourced world. How many people feel able to actually express their opinions in an office setting today? I think people would be startled at how many opinions used to be expressed in business offices. But I'm sure I'm too pessimistic. I mean, they wouldn't use this software just because they can, right?

"War on Terror" Psychologist Gets Giant No-Bid Contract: The Army earlier this year steered a $31 million contract to a psychologist whose work formed the psychological underpinnings of the Bush administration's torture program.

And then, of course, there's always the real inside information which no one will let you in on, and they gagged Sibel Edmonds to stop her from telling you. Ever started to think about all that new "trouble with Muslims" all over the world beginning right after the loss of the Cold War as the gathering spot for the rightwingers favorite fear-inducing, terror-quaking, warlike noisemaking issue? Are you noticing yet how the game that has been played for over 30 years hasn't been reported on honestly at all?

No wonder Carter was out of there like a shot, and Clinton? Not held in such high esteem in many quarters anymore is he? Still think no one knows why we have pledged to stay in Afghanistan until your grandchildren die? Think it might have to do with the actions documented below? And even more on what ENRON was really all about? And why the GOP can now run clowns for high office without flinching (and advertise them with straight faces on their TV outlets)? Since no one goes to Sibel's site for the facts, I've decided to run her essay below. (Emphasis marks added - Ed.)

The Three-Decade US-Mujahideen Partnership Still Going Strong

By Sibel Edmonds Boiling Frogs - In the last few weeks I’ve been reading and talking about the latest developments in Central Asia and the Caucasus. I am planning to post a few updates on the status of the score board in this region (pipeline rivalries, military base ‘erection’ scores - and what-not). Meanwhile, as I am dealing with all this I keep ending up with riddle-like situations. And instead of trying to solve or get out of these riddles, I’m going to give up and instead share one of them with you, my blogosphere friends.

Our enemies’ enemies are our friends. Many of our nation’s enemies are the enemies of our enemies, so that makes them what? Friends? Enemies? It depends? Both? And what would all this make our ‘real’ foreign policy makers? Enemies? Friends? Both? What?

Seriously! Think about it.

By now we all know, or should know, about our government and mainstream media’s past almost romantic relationship with the Mujahideen, Taliban-al Qaeda, during the 80s. Back then, in the 80s, they were fighting the Soviets, they were the enemies of our enemies, thus, our beloved friends, our trusted, financed and backed allies. Here are a few excerpts from what I wrote and quoted on this topic a while back:

Now let’s go back and search U.S. press coverage of Afghanistan’s ‘Freedom Fighters’ during the 80s and try to find any coverage related to these U.S. backed and supported operations’ intersection with the global narcotics trade. Are there any? I’m afraid we know the answer to this question. Here is further coverage based on the report by FAIR:

“The press coverage of this era was overwhelmingly positive, even glowing, with regard to the guerrillas’ conduct in Afghanistan. Their unsavory features were downplayed or omitted altogether…Virtually all papers favored some amount of U.S. military support; and there was near unanimous agreement that the guerrillas were “heroic,” “courageous” and above all “freedom fighters.”

“According to the L.A. Times (6/23/86): “The Afghan guerrillas have earned the admiration of the American people for their courageous struggle…. The rebels deserve unstinting American political support and, within the limits of prudence, military hardware.”

And here the axis of U.S. Government-U.S. Press - and the information spin or black-out: “Another problem was direct manipulation of reporting by the U.S. government, which was supporting the Mujahiddin guerrillas during both the Carter and Reagan administrations. (Indeed, we now know that U.S. aid to the Mujahiddin was secretly begun in July 1979, six months before the Soviets invaded – International Politics, 6/00.)

This press manipulation began early in the conflict. In January 1980, the New York Times (1/26/80) reported that the State Department had “relaxed” its accuracy code for reporting information on Afghanistan. As a result, the Carter administration generated “accounts suggesting Soviet actions for which the administration itself has no solid foundation.“

During the 80s our ‘real’ foreign policymakers couldn’t care less about adjectives such as extremists, terrorists, fanatics, anti-west…They were the beloved enemies of our enemies, and we’d do anything to support and use them. And this wasn’t necessarily about we the people of the US or our benefits or our best interests. After all, in the end the American people were the ones to pay the price for those unholy alliances where we selected, trained and backed the evildoer Bin Laden, our enemies’ enemy, thus, our beloved friend:

Our enemies’ enemies were our friends. Many of our nation’s enemies were the enemies of our enemies back then, so that made them our beloved friends. Now, you may say, ‘that was a long time ago, it had to do with the Cold War, and it is simply not fair to criticize and judge based on this particular example…’

And, I’d say, okay. Let’s fast forward. Let’s look at what we did with these same groups, in the 90s, after the wall came down and the Soviet empire collapsed. The problem is this: without the Cold War excuse our foreign policymakers had a real hard time justifying our joint operations and terrorism schemes in the resource-rich ex Soviet states with these same groups, so they made sure they kept these policies unwritten and unspoken, and considering their grip on the mainstream media, largely unreported.

Now what would your response be if I were to say, on the record, and if required, under oath:

Between 1996 and 2002, we, the United States, planned, financed and help execute every single major terrorist incident by Chechen rebels (and the Mujahideen) against Russia.

Between 1996 and 2002, we, the United States, planned, financed and help execute every single uprising and terrorism related scheme in Xinxiang (aka East Turkistan and Uyghurstan).

Between 1996 and 2002, we, the United States, planned and carried out at least two assassination schemes against pro Russia officials in Azerbaijan. … Those of you who are truly familiar with our real history and foreign policy making past would yawn, and say, ‘but of course. That has been our modus operandi for many decades.’ Unfortunately, the great majority would either be shocked if open minded, or shake their head in disbelief and write it off as another ‘conspiracy theory;’ thanks to our mainstream media.

You may remember one of these foreign policy makers from my State Secrets Privilege Gallery and my under oath testimony in the Krikorian case. Here is a quote from Graham A. Fuller, former Deputy Director of the CIA’s National Council on Intelligence:

‘The policy of guiding the evolution of Islam and of helping them against our adversaries worked marvelously well in Afghanistan against the Red Army. The same doctrines can still be used to destabilize what remains of Russian power, and especially to counter the Chinese influence in Central Asia.’

And this goes to the heart of our ‘real’ foreign policy practices showing our ‘real’ stand on Taliban years after the end of the Cold War and the first World Trade Center bombing:

Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on South Asia, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher – former White House Special Assistant to President Reagan and now Senior Member of the House International Relations Committee – declared that ‘this administration has a covert policy that has empowered the Taliban and enabled this brutal movement to hold on to power’.

The assumption is that ‘the Taliban would bring stability to Afghanistan and permit the building of oil pipelines from Central Asia through Afghanistan to Pakistan’. US companies involved in the project included UNOCAL and ENRON. As early as May 1996, UNOCAL had officially announced plans to build a pipeline to transport natural gas from Turkmenistan to Pakistan through western Afghanistan.

And Chechens are good friends since they are the enemies of our enemy, Russia: From the mid-1990s, bin Laden funded Chechen guerrilla leaders Shamil Basayev and Omar ibn al-Khattab to the tune of several millions of dollars per month, sidelining the moderate Chechen majority. US intelligence remained deeply involved until the end of the decade.

According to Yossef Bodanksy, then-Director of the US Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, Washington was actively involved in ‘yet another anti-Russian jihad, ‘seeking to support and empower the most virulent anti-Western Islamist forces’.

US Government officials participated in ‘a formal meeting in Azerbaijan’ in December 1999 ‘in which specific programmes for the training and equipping of mujahidin from the Caucasus, Central/South Asia and the Arab world were discussed and agreed upon’, culminating in ‘Washington’s tacit encouragement of both Muslim allies (mainly Turkey, Jordan and Saudi Arabia) and US “private security companies”… to assist the Chechens and their Islamist allies to surge in the spring of 2000 and sustain the ensuing jihad for a long time.’

The US saw the sponsorship of ‘Islamist jihad in the Caucasus’ as a way to ‘deprive Russia of a viable pipeline route through spiraling violence and terrorism’. … Okay, so the partnership and joint operations between our operatives and the Mujahideen (including the Taliban & al Qaeda) continued after the Cold War, and even after the first World Trade Center bombing, Khobar Towers, and the 1998 Embassy Bombings.

On one hand we were declaring these people as our enemies, on the other hand, in Central Asia-Caucaus-Balkans and Xinxiang, they were the enemies of our enemies , thus our good partners and dear old friends.

Except, by this time, the majority of us had stopped considering the Russians and Chinese enemies, instead they were viewed as mere competitors. And with that, the riddle slightly changes here:

Our competitors’ enemies were our friends. Many of our nation’s enemies were willing to become the enemies of our competitors, so that made them our dear friends.

You’d think after the September 11 Terrorist Attacks our foreign policy makers would seriously rethink their past M.O. and cease certain friendships and unholy alliances, despite the severe monetary consequences for a handful in the oil and MIC industries. But no. That doesn’t appear to be the case. And, as always, you won’t get the ‘real’ stories on this from the MSM. Here is a recent example:

Persistent accounts of western forces in Afghanistan using their helicopters to ferry Taleban fighters, strongly denied by the military, is feeding mistrust of the forces that are supposed to be bringing order to the country.

One such tale came from a soldier from the 209th Shahin Corps of the Afghan National Army, fighting against the growing insurgency in Kunduz province in northern Afghanistan. Over several months, he had taken part in several pitched battles against the armed opposition.

“Just when the police and army managed to surround the Taleban in a village of Qala-e-Zaal district, we saw helicopters land with support teams,” he said. “They managed to rescue their friends from our encirclement, and even to inflict defeat on the Afghan National Army.”

This story, in one form or another, is being repeated throughout northern Afghanistan. Dozens of people claim to have seen Taleban fighters disembark from foreign helicopters in several provinces. The local talk is of the insurgency being consciously moved north, with international troops ferrying fighters in from the volatile south, to create mayhem in a new location.

Helicopters are almost exclusively the domain of foreign forces in Afghanistan – the international military controls the air space, and has a virtual monopoly on aircraft. So when Afghans see choppers, they think foreign military.

“Our fight against the Taleban is nonsense,” said the soldier from Shahin Corps. “Our foreigner ‘friends’ are friendlier to the opposition.” … Let’s take a look at certain important northern neighbors in Afghanistan where our ‘real’ policymakers have been facing…hmmm… frustration, thus, in need of friends to get back at those who’ve been causing this…hmmmmm… frustration:

Previously close to Washington (which gave Uzbekistan half a billion dollars in aid in 2004, about a quarter of its military budget), the government of Uzbekistan has recently restricted American military use of the airbase at Karshi-Khanabad for air operations in neighboring Afghanistan.

The relationship between Uzbekistan and the United States began to deteriorate after the so-called “colour revolutions” in Georgia and Ukraine (and to a lesser extent Kyrgyzstan).

When the U.S. joined in a call for an independent international investigation of the bloody events at Andijon, the relationship took an additional nosedive, and President Islam Karimov changed the political alignment of the country to bring it closer to Russia and China, countries which chose not to criticise Uzbekistan’s leaders for their alleged human rights violations.

In late July 2005, the government of Uzbekistan ordered the United States to vacate an air base in Karshi-Kanabad (near Uzbekistan’s border with Afghanistan) within 180 days. Karimov had offered use of the base to the U.S. shortly after 9/11. It is also believed by some Uzbeks that the protests in Andijan were brought about by the U.K. and U.S. influences in the area of Andijan. This is another reason for the hostility between Uzbekistan and the West. … And this to sweeten the deal, or is it turning it into a rather strong vinegar, at least for the ones who count in making and implementing our unwritten and unspoken foreign policy practices:

The leaders of Uzbekistan and China on Wednesday said they had signed deals aimed at increasing cooperation on energy and regional security. Speaking ahead of an annual meeting of the Chinese-led Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting in Tashkent, Chinese President Hu Jintao and Uzbek President Islam Karimov pledged closer ties, particularly on nuclear fuel.

“One of the question we discussed was that of long-term and stable cooperation in the field of … uranium. It’s necessary to work in such a way to develop natural uranium and uranium fields,” Hu told reporters. Although the leaders said they had signed a number of agreements regarding the purchase of energy from Uzbekistan, including uranium and natural gas, they declined to provide specifics details on the deals. … Okay, so you get the general picture on Uzbekistan. Right?

Next, let’s take a quick look at Turkmenistan:

If you really want more of the real details, read on.

As for me, I need some musical release.

NOW!

Suzan

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