Posts
Goodbye, Dan, old friend. Fare thee well.
Dan Hicks, Founder of the Hot Licks, Dies at 74
ACLU Pries Torture Photos Out Of Washington (2/5/2016)
One Billionaire's 'Megayacht' Destroyed 80% of West Bay's Protected Caribbean Coral Reef
News from the outside inside? Or just more disinfo to redirect embarrassing attention?
Just remember, never speak negatively of the Mossad or Israel (or should that be vice versa?).
‘Mistake piled on mistake’
The year 2004 was a mixed bag for Iranian espionage. A high point was “rolling up” an entire CIA spy network through the bungling of a Langley Air Force-based junior communications officer. Yet it was also the year that Iran lost one of its most senior Israeli agents, a high-level Mossad agent betraying his country, a knowledgeable Israeli security source tells MintPress News.
In his 2006 book “State of War,” James Risen relayed the amazing tale of the CIA operative who, instead of sending a message to a single Iranian agent, broadcast it to the entire spy network. Coincidentally, one member of the network was a double agent who worked for Iranian intelligence while pretending to work for the CIA. This spy reported the communication to his or her superiors, betraying the entire network.
The "New York Times" journalist wrote:_ _ _ _ _ _ _
“The CIA officer had made a disastrous mistake. She had sent information to one Iranian agent meant for an entire spy network; the data could be used to identify virtually every spy the CIA had inside Iran.Mistake piled on mistake. As the CIA later learned, the Iranian who received the download was actually a double agent. The agent quickly turned the data over to Iranian security officials, and it enabled them to ‘roll up’ the CIA’s agent network throughout Iran. CIA sources say that several of the Iranian agents were arrested and jailed, while the fates of some of the others is still unknown.”
Real information:
“The One Percent”
by Jamie Johnson
“This 80-minute documentary focuses on the growing "wealth gap" in America, as seen through the eyes of filmmaker Jamie Johnson, a then 27-year-old heir to the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical fortune. Johnson, who cut his film teeth at NYU and made the Emmy®-nominated 2003 HBO documentary “Born Rich,” here sets his sights on exploring the political, moral and emotional rationale that enables a tiny percentage of Americans - the one percent - to control nearly half the wealth of the entire United States. (Dated figure, they've done very nicely since this film was made. How about you? - CP)
"The 62 Richest People On Earth Now Hold As
Much Wealth As The Poorest 3.5 Billion”
And...
"The Astonishing Gift Of The Money Printers-
The World’s Richest 1% Now Have More Wealth Than The Rest Of Humanity"*
- Emily Peck
_ _ _ _ _ _ _"All the money in the world is growing ever more concentrated in the hands of just a few people, a report released Sunday night makes clear. Just 62 ultra-rich individuals- a list that is primarily made up of men and includes Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, the Koch Brothers and the Walmart heirs- have as much wealth as the bottom half of humanity. Five years ago, it took 388 rich guys to achieve that status. The wealth of the richest 62 has increased an astonishing 44 percent since 2010, to $1.76 trillion. Meanwhile, the wealth of the bottom half of the world dropped by 41 percent. “This is terrible,” Gawain Kripke, Oxfam's Policy Director, told The Huffington Post. “No one credible will say this is good for the world or good for the economy.”
While the wealthy might argue that their rising wealth is just a fabulous sign of economic prosperity (the "you're just jealous" rationale), the disproportionate growth at the top is keeping those on the bottom from climbing out of poverty, Oxfam notes in its report. "It is unjust that people living in poverty are not getting the boost to their incomes that they desperately need, while already privileged capital owners receive a greater share of income and wealth," the report says.
Ordinary people (citizens without important family or financial connections) are deemed road kill by the "extraordinary" people. Sociopaths?
Which type do you want making your country's decisions?
Careful now.
The effects may be long lasting.
At least until the next election; and even then it's not a sure thing that you will get a better choice.
Ordinary people aren't just overemotional and dumb, they're also zombies! They don't have grievances, just blood lusts.
The attitude shared by Lloyd and Geithner and Bill Clinton is that the mindless quality of public discontent means that there's no point in worrying about it, or negotiating with it. This is funny because Blankfein is the one complaining that people like Sanders and his followers don't want to compromise with him.
Lloyd apparently thinks politicians should naturally reside in a state of more or less constant accommodation with Wall Street. Thomas Jefferson would have compromised with us, he says!
One can assume that his model of a "compromising" politician is Hillary Clinton, who took $675,000 to give three speeches to his company. "Look, I make speeches to lots of groups," Hillary explained. "I told them what I thought."
Asked by Anderson Cooper if she needed to take $675,000 to tell Goldman what she "thought," Hillary shrugged. "I don't know," she said. "That's what they were offering."
Matt Taibbi lets us in on what the owners think of their zombies.
No, not their Wall Street zombies.
The rest of US.
On CNBC this week, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein expressed dismay that Bernie Sanders has no interest in 'compromising' with Wall Street. (photo: Adam Jeffery/CNBC/Getty Images)
The Vampire Squid Tells Us How to Vote
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
06 February 2016
Lloyd Blankfein charges for investment advice — but his political wisdom is free
loyd Blankfein, Chief Executive Cephalopod of Goldman Sachs, issued a warning about the Bernie Sanders campaign this week.
"This has the potential to be a dangerous moment," he said on CNBC's "Squawk Box."
The Lloyd was peeved that Sanders, whom he's never met, singled him out in a debate last week. "Another kid from Brooklyn, how about that," he lamented.
He ranted about how frightening it is that a candidate like Sanders, who seems to have no interest in "compromising" with Wall Street, could become so popular.
"Could you imagine," he asked, "if the Jeffersons and Hamiltons came in with a total pledge and commitment to never compromise with the other side?"
The slobbering Squawk Box hosts went on to propose firing all the academics in the country, because clearly it is their fault that so many young people are willing to support a socialist.
"I'm ready," said co-host Joe Kernen, "to send my daughter to Brigham Young or Liberty or something."
Then Kernen, Becky Quick and Blankfein all made jokes about how socialism doesn't work and how all those Berniebots should take a trip to Cuba.
"The best real-time experiment is, I went to Cuba," said Lloyd.
"I haven't been," Kernen said proudly.
"You should go," said Lloyd. "You go there, stop in Miami and you just see the Cuban community and how much wealth they've generated.
Of course the politics of Sanders is closer to what you'd find in Sweden or Denmark than Cuba, but they were rolling by then.
Lloyd added that the current popular discontent with Wall Street was just something that happens randomly, like the weather. "There's a pendulum that happens in markets and it happens in political economy as well," he said.
He added that he didn't want to pick a candidate because "I don't want to help or hurt anybody by giving an endorsement."
For people who so very pleased with themselves for ostensibly being so much smarter than everyone else, people like Blankfein are oddly uncreative when it comes to deflecting criticism.
The people who don't like them are always overemotional communists. All those young people who are flocking to the Sanders campaign? Dupes, misled by dumb professors who've never been to Cuba.
And their anger toward Wall Street? Causeless and random, just a bunch of folks riding an emotional pendulum that brainlessly swings back and forth. Don't take it personally, people are just moody that way.
Bill Clinton apparently agrees. A story about the former president's thoughts on the subject appeared in Stress Test, the vile battle memoir of the financial crisis penned by infamous Wall Street toady and former treasury secretary Tim Geithner.
In the book, Timmy goes on at length about how sad it made him that the public was so upset about the bailouts and other policies he engineered to make the Blankfeins of the world whole again. Looking for a way to not feel so hated, he went to Clinton to "discuss the politics of populism with the master practitioner."
It's an important detail. Geithner's instinct for figuring out how to deal with ordinary people was not to go talk to any, but instead to talk to someone who'd had success marketing himself to them.
This squares with accounts I heard after 2008, about the Treasury Department in the Geithner years. In one story I remember, it took a presentation from a major retail company about expected lower holiday spending levels to enlighten Geithner's staff as to the level of economic pain in the population. Until they saw the graphs from executives, they had no clue.
Anyway, according to his book, Geithner got good advice from Clinton. The former president advised him to press for tax hikes on the rich, but to "make sure I didn't look like I was happy about it." Then Clinton added that Timmy shouldn't take the public-anger thing too hard:
"You could take Lloyd Blankfein in an alley and slit his throat, and it would satisfy them for about two days," Clinton said. "Then the blood lust would rise again."
Ordinary people aren't just overemotional and dumb, they're also zombies! They don't have grievances, just blood lusts.
The attitude shared by Lloyd and Geithner and Bill Clinton is that the mindless quality of public discontent means that there's no point in worrying about it, or negotiating with it. This is funny because Blankfein is the one complaining that people like Sanders and his followers don't want to compromise with him.
Lloyd apparently thinks politicians should naturally reside in a state of more or less constant accommodation with Wall Street. Thomas Jefferson would have compromised with us, he says!
One can assume that his model of a "compromising" politician is Hillary Clinton, who took $675,000 to give three speeches to his company. "Look, I make speeches to lots of groups," Hillary explained. "I told them what I thought."
Asked by Anderson Cooper if she needed to take $675,000 to tell Goldman what she "thought," Hillary shrugged. "I don't know," she said. "That's what they were offering."
Even more significant than the $675,000 Hillary took from Goldman, or the $30 million in speaking income she and her husband received combined in the last 16 months, is the account of what Hillary apparently told Goldman she "thought" during those speeches.
According to Politico, who spoke to several attendees, Hillary used the opportunity to tell the bankers in attendance that the "banker-bashing so popular within both parties was unproductive and indeed foolish."
She added that the proper attitude should be, "We all got into this mess together, and we're all going to have to work together to get out of it."
This squares with Geithner's account of what Bill Clinton said. The former president told Geithner that slitting Lloyd's throat would only satisfy "them" for about two days. Them was all those pissed-off regular people, and the we or us were politicians like himself and Geithner.
In her speech, Hillary's we included the executives in her audience. Her message was basically that It Takes a Village to create a financial crisis. This was the Robin Williams breakthrough scene in Good Will Hunting, with Hillary putting a hand on the Goldmanites' shoulders, telling them, "It's not your fault. It's not your fault."
But it was their fault. The crash was caused by a tiny handful of people who spent years hogging fortunes through a bluntly criminal scheme in the home lending markets. The FBI warned back in 2004 of an "epidemic" of mortgage fraud that could have an "impact as big as the S&L crisis," but those warnings were ignored.
What the FBI was talking about back then mainly had to do with smaller local lending operations that were systematically creating risky home loans, falsifying credit applications to get unworthy borrowers into mortgages they couldn't afford.
What they didn't understand back then is that the impetus for that criminal activity was the willingness of massive banking institutions on Wall Street to buy up those bad loans in bulk. They created a market for those fraudulent loans, bought billions' worth of them from local lenders, and then chopped up and resold those bad loans to pension funds, unions and other suckers.
The "village" didn't do this. Lloyd Blankfein and his buddies did this. (Goldman just a few weeks ago reached a deal to pay a $5.1 billion settlement to cover its history of selling bad loans to unsuspecting investors, joining Bank of America, Citi, JP Morgan Chase and others).
People aren't pissed just to be pissed. They're mad because a tiny group of crooks on Wall Street built themselves beach houses in the Hamptons through a crude fraud scheme that decimated their retirement funds, caused property values in their neighborhoods to collapse and caused over four million people to be put in foreclosure.
And they're particularly mad that they got asked to pay for this criminal irresponsibility with bailouts funded with their tax dollars.
What the Clintons have done by turning their political careers into a vast moneymaking enterprise, it's not a value-neutral activity. The money isn't just about buying influence. The money also physically moves people, from one side of an imaginary line to another.
You will never catch Bernie Sanders standing in a room as a paid guest of a bank under investigation for ripping billions off pensioners and investors, addressing the audience in the first-person plural. He doesn't spend enough time with that kind of crowd to be so colloquial.
The Clintons meanwhile have by now taken so much money that when they stand in a room full of millionaires and billionaires, they can use the word "we" and not have it sound odd. The money has irrevocably moved them to that side of the ropeline. On that side of the line, public anger isn't legitimate, but something to be managed and waited out, just as Lloyd suggests.
When people like Blankfein tell us they don't take criticism personally, what they're saying is that it's too brainless and irrational to be taken any other way. He means to be insulting. And we should all take it that way.
Comments:
# 2016-02-06 15:3
Yes, they were great for upper middle class and rich progressives. The rest of us, not so much. Look up how much the standard of living of the middle and poor went up during those years. Remember wellfare reform? NAFTA? Tough on crime (colored folks)? Dismantling Glass Stegal? Remember the continued deregulation of the media? And how was the infrastructure doing after Clinton? Clinton was very successful in terms of stock market and GDP numbers, which allowed the media to crow about how great the economy was doing. But "we the people" got screwed, and we're sick of it. Thats why we support Bernie...at least those of us who don't buy into the MSM bullshit that Bill and Hillary are progressives.
Now go peddle your bs elsewhere. We know better.
# 2016-02-06 15:38
I'm so sick of people saying "I like Bernie but I'm voting for Hillary because she can win." We're at the tipping point, Jack. Another 4 or 8 years under Clinton or a Republican and the government will be bought, sold, paid for. Finis. Kaput! I'd rather risk anything at this point to back Bernie. Hell, if he gets elected and starts making real change they'll probably kill him. We are lost as a nation and the only person with a chance to right this sinking freighter is Sanders. And I can't even approach talking about Blankfein. That self satisfied moron. Making a lot of money doesn't make you smart, just rich and the way he makes it is off the backs of others.
# 2016-02-06 15:46
I agree. Stupid people will vote for someone they don't want.
# 2016-02-06 17:25
It is still early in the process. Anything could happen including blue-collar conservatives waking up and realizing that Bernie is the only one out there that gives a damn about improving their lot. If that happens Bernie WILL win with or without Hillary supporters. The black vote could move Bernie's way...Hillary could be indicted on the email foolishness. Most Bernie supporters will vote for Hillary if they have to but why not keep the pressure on? There is nothing stopping Hillary from tacking left and stealing a big chunk of Bernie's platform...exce pt maybe all the money she's pocketed from Wall St. or generally not giving a hoot about anybody but the wealthy.
# 2016-02-06 15:34
OK focus a few moments on rich people and how their rationalize their power and wealth, but then switch gears and go into what are we going to do about this mode. Bernie is right when he says his campaign is just the beginning and by himself, he cannot make the major transformations in power currently controlled by the Blankfein's etc.
Whose help does Bernie need? Ordinary people's help. Who are they? The 99%. Before Bernie started there were already in place a Black Lives Matter! movement, a women's movement, LGBT movements, anti war efforts, $15 minimum wage, single payer health care, $0 tuition in public universities, debt relief for students, progressive taxes (although weakening), and big noise about inequality. That list gets at the idea.
So, people involved in those campaigns need to publicly support Bernie's campaign. If Bernie does not win the primaries, there is the Green Party to support. That party holds many of the positions that Bernie does. Now is not the time to make this a competition, but to build a movement.
Now is the time for vampire squids to start talking about how THEY will compromise for the good of all. No trickle down economics. No more weak charity efforts. Real fundamental change in economic distribution.
Power to the People!
# 2016-02-06 12:04
I think most people interpreted Blankfein's comments as a ringing endorsement of Bernie Sanders.
# 2016-02-06 14:17
Obviously, good advice from a man whose pockets bulge with money taken from even the smallest taxpayers in the country. He makes $$ whether the citizens or the country win or lose.
If you want to give more power to folks who always have their fingers in your pocket, listen to this man. Otherwise, listen to Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
It is time to put the genie back in the bottle, so that it can serve us, not enslave the weakest among us.
# 2016-02-06 14:45
HRC"s words to WS condemn her, as Taibbi points out:
"Even more significant than the $675,000 Hillary took from Goldman, or the $30 million in speaking income she and her husband received combined in the last 16 months, is the account of what Hillary apparently told Goldman she "thought" during those speeches. According to Politico, who spoke to several attendees, Hillary used the opportunity to tell the bankers in attendance that the "banker-bashing so popular within both parties was unproductive and indeed foolish." She added that the proper attitude should be, "We all got into this mess together, and we're all going to have to work together to get out of it."
In other words we're all responsible for the economic breakdown.
Except, as Taibbi counters: "But it was their fault. The crash was caused by a tiny handful of people who spent years hogging fortunes through a bluntly criminal scheme in the home lending markets. The FBI warned back in 2004 of an "epidemic" of mortgage fraud that could have an "impact as big as the S&L crisis," but those warnings were ignored."
# 2016-02-06 16:29
That's why it's so crazy to me that the Clinton supporters just want to ignore this. Hillary didn't get the big bucks to speak to these people for saying things they didn't want to hear. That is why what she did say is important and also why she doesn't want us to know.
# 2016-02-06 14:50
These people have to hang together, or they'll hang apart. These are what are humorously called "mutual admiration societies": no one else likes us so let's like each other (the origin of Facebook), and feel better that way (inside the bubble that is not related in any way to reality - works for us as long as we hang out inside this bubble anyhow).
# 2016-02-06 14:51
What's the price of rope in Lower Manhattan, or as my Jacobin amigos would say "Aiguiser les Guillotines!". See you at the barricades.
# 2016-02-06 16:38
"We all got into this mess together." Oh yeah, I forgot that I packaged toxic loans in my basement and sold them to pensions, trusts, 401Ks and my grandmother. I forgot that I too crashed the economy in 2008 because of the billions of dollars worth of fees I bilked out of my friends and neighbors. Wait a minute! That was Wall Street. Oh yeah, that was my retirement account that took the hit. So I guess it wasn't all of us.
# 2016-02-06 16:40
# 2016-02-06 16:48
I see the French revolution on the horizon and it's heading our way.
# 2016-02-06 17:21
Matt, Matt, Matt ... why all the vitriol directed at Blankfein? After all, he was "Doing God's Work." He said so himself, so you know it must be true.
 USDA Forces Whole Foods to Accept Monsanto Why Don't You Try This News 03 February 2016 |
 Cruz Victory Gives Hope to Despised People Everywhere Andy Borowitz, "The New Yorker" 04 February 2016 |
 Ten Things You Should Know About Marco Rubio 06 February 2016 |
 04 February 2016 |
 One Crazy Hour With Buddy Cianci Matt Taibbi, "Rolling Stone" 03 February 2016 |
Speaking of "doing God's work," how do you like the work of all those industrial food inventor/suppliers?
Monsanto must sit at God's right hand, too, no?
Infographic: A Useful Tool to Find Out Who Owns Organic Food
Consider this fact: In 1995, 81 independent organic processing companies existed in the United States. Ten years later, Big Food had gobbled up all but 15 of them.
The newly updated “Who Owns Organic?” infographic, originally published in 2003, provides a snapshot of the structure of the organic industry, showing the acquisitions and alliances of the top 100 food processors in North America.
According to The Cornucopia Institute, this chart — authored by Dr. Phil Howard, an Associate Professor in the Department of Community Sustainability at Michigan State — empowers consumers to see at a glance which companies dominate the organic marketplace.
See the updated version below. (Click on the image to view a larger version, and then click on it again for even larger detail.) Or see a PDF version here.
Major changes since the last version in May 2013
- WhiteWave’s December 2013 acquisition of Earthbound Farm, the nation’s largest organic produce supplier, for $600 million.
- Coca-Cola acquired a 10% stake in Green Mountain Coffee for $1.25 billion.
- Bimbo Bakeries (Mexico) purchased Canada Bread from Maple Leaf Foods (Canada) for $1.7 billion.
The Corporate Takeover of Organic Food
According to a press release from The Cornucopia Institute,
“The chart shows that many iconic organic brands are owned by the titans of junk food, processed food, and sugary beverages — the same corporations that spent millions to defeat GMO labeling initiatives in California and Washington. General Mills (which owns Muir Glen, Cascadian Farm, and LaraBar), Coca-Cola (Honest Tea, Odwalla), J.M. Smucker (R.W. Knudsen, Santa Cruz Organic), and many other corporate owners of organic brands contributed big bucks to deny citizens’ right to know what is in their food.”
“Consumers who want food companies that embody more of the original organic ideals would do well to seek out products from independent organic firms,” Dr. Howard advises. “Given the very uneven playing field they are competing in, independent organic processors are unlikely to survive without such support.”
What do you think about the corporate takeover of natural food brands?_ _ _ _ _ _ _
Today, one of the main sources of human exposure to radioactive iodine is nuclear power reactors. Not only from accidents like the ones at Chernobyl and Fukushima, but from the routine operation of reactors. To create electricity, these plants use the same process to split uranium atoms that is used in atomic bombs. In that process, waste products, including I-131, are produced in large amounts and must be contained to prevent exposure to workers and local residents. Some of this waste inevitably leaks from reactors and finds its way into plants and the bodies of humans and other animals.The highest rates of thyroid cancer in the United States, according to federal statistics, are found in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York, states with the densest concentration of reactors in the nation. In a study conducted in 2009, one of this article’s authors (Janette Sherman) found the highest rates of thyroid cancer occurring within 90-mile radiuses of the 16 nuclear power plants (13 still operating) in those states.
All The Best AH