News Items

The Truth About Drones

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A lot of Americans have an impression that drone strikes are less damaging to civilian populations that conventional airstrikes. This would be false. In fact, earlier this month I highlighted an article from the Guardian that demonstrated how in reality drone strikes are 10x more likely to harm civilians per incident. Now, thanks to a recently leaked document we find that many more civilians including children have been killed in these strikes than many of us would like to admit. In fact, of the 746 people killed in drone strikes in Pakistan from 2006-2009, an incredible 20% were civilians and 94 (13% of the total) were children. More from the Huffington Post:

London’s Bureau of Investigative Journalism released a leaked Pakistani report on Monday that details numerous civilian casualties by drone strikes in the country’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). The document provides crucial new data on civilians casualties of U.S. and NATO strikes in Pakistan.

The 12-page dossier was compiled for the the authorities in the tribal areas, the Bureau notes, and investigates 75 CIA drone strikes and five attacks by NATO in the region conducted between 2006 and 2009. According to the document, 746 people were killed in the strategic attacks. At least 147 of the victims were civilians, and 94 were children.

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Google’s Ultimate Goal: A Chip Inside Your Brain

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I know many of you will see this headline and assume I am about to link to some unknown conspiracy theory website with questionable sources, but you’d be wrong. This post is based on an article from the UK’s Independent that ran this past weekend. In it, reporter Ian Burrell visits Google’s headquarters and essentially … Read more

Gold Backwardation (GOFO) Goes Mainstream

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Back on April 19, I highlighted an excellent write up by Professor Antal Fekete on gold backwardation and the end of fractional reserve bullion banking titled: Who Said the Hydra Would Take it Lying Down. In it he wrote:

In waking up too late that there was a problem after gold futures markets have been flirting with backwardation for a year or so, officialdom was forced to act. Act it did in a typically haphazard fashion. A few days ago, on April 12 and 15 the paper gold market was demoralized by a ferocious attack on the lofty gold price. This in and of itself is proof that Bernanke is fully aware that permanent gold backwardation is imminent, and that it will create and unmanageable situation. It’s got to be stopped in its track at all hazards.

In fact, however, a lower gold price is making the problem more intractable, not less. The Fed is diving from the frying pan into the fire. This is the point missed by almost all observers and market analysts. They ignore the underlying flight into physical gold that continues unabated, in spite of (or, better still, because of) the panic in the paper gold market. The Fed’s intervention in bankrolling short interest is going to back-fire, for the following simple reason. The Fed’s strategy is inherently contradictory. A lower price for paper gold makes it easier, not harder, to demand delivery on maturing futures contracts. 

Several months later it appears Professor Fekete’s comments have been spot on, and the “hydra” has continued to employ brute force on the paper gold market in an effort to shake whatever supply they can from the financial trees. Unfortunately for them, it’s not working and gold’s backwardation continues to expand. Zerohedge has done a great job covering this ahead of the mainstream media as usual, most recently here.

Amazingly , it appears the mainstream media is now picking up on this huge development. In an article two days ago Reuters wrote:

July 19 (IFR) – A dislocation in the gold futures market indicating that demand for physical delivery of the metal is now far outweighing supply has intensified in recent weeks, increasing concern in the market that the change may not be a momentary blip and participants may have become over-leveraged.

Gold went into backwardation in comparison to the three-month futures contract in early January, meaning the spot price rose above the short-dated future contact. Now that process looks set to creep out the futures curve to longer-dated maturities, signalling some cause for alarm.

“The fact that has remained and widened … indicates that the physical market has tightened up substantially, a postulation that is corroborated by the growing premiums being paid … and the ongoing wholesale delays in the delivery of substantial bullion tonnage,” wrote Ned Naylor-Leyland of Cheviot Asset Management in a report this month.

“What is happening now is that the absolutely inevitable ‘run’ on the 100:1 leveraged bullion banking system is truly underway.”

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The Drone That Killed My Grandson

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I’ve covered the death of Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16 year old son Abdulrahman previously. They were both American citizens killed without a trial using our latest preferred war toy, drones. While Anwar was on the U.S. “kill list,” his teenage son was not and he was killed by a drone in an entirely separate incident two weeks after the death of his father. The U.S. government has never explained his murder, and all I can recall hearing is Eric Holder statement that he wasn’t “specifically targeted.” Last week, his grandfather wrote a powerful and impassioned Op-Ed in the New York Times. Here are some excerpts:

SANA, Yemen — I LEARNED that my 16-year-old grandson, Abdulrahman — a United States citizen — had been killed by an American drone strike from news reports the morning after he died.

The missile killed him, his teenage cousin and at least five other civilians on Oct. 14, 2011, while the boys were eating dinner at an open-air restaurant in southern Yemen.

I visited the site later, once I was able to bear the pain of seeing where he sat in his final moments. Local residents told me his body was blown to pieces. They showed me the grave where they buried his remains. I stood over it, asking why my grandchild was dead.

The attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., said only that Abdulrahman was not “specifically targeted,” raising more questions than he answered.

Abdulrahman was born in Denver. He lived in America until he was 7, then came to live with me in Yemen. He was a typical teenager — he watched “The Simpsons,” listened to Snoop Dogg, read “Harry Potter” and had a Facebook page with many friends. He had a mop of curly hair, glasses like me and a wide, goofy smile.

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MIT Moves to Block the Release of the Aaron Swartz Files

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Unfortunately, this is just further proof that most of our celebrated institutions, including prestigious palaces of “higher learning,” are nothing more than apologists and gatekeepers for plutocratic power. It was only a little less than two weeks ago that I wrote a story celebrating how a U.S. judge decided the government must release thousands of pages of secret service files on the late Aaron Swartz. Apparently, MIT isn’t comfortable in the many skeletons they likely have in their closet coming out, so they have moved to block the release. The plaintiff in the case, Kevin Poulsen explains below in a Wired article:

Lawyers representing MIT are filing a motion to intervene in my FOIA lawsuit over thousands of pages of Secret Service documents about the late activist and coder Aaron Swartz.

I am the plaintiff in this lawsuit. In February, the Secret Service denied in full my request for any files it held on Swartz, citing a FOIA exemption that covers sensitive law enforcement records that are part of an ongoing proceeding. Other requestors reported receiving the same response.

When the agency ignored my administrative appeal, I enlisted David Sobel, a top DC-based FOIA litigator, and we filed suit. Two weeks ago U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ordered the government to “promptly” begin releasing Swartz’ records. The government told my lawyer that it would release the first batch tomorrow. But minutes ago, Kollar-Kotelly suspended that order at MIT’s urging, to give the university time to make an argument against the release of some of the material.

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Congressman: Did You Think This Program Could be Indefinitely Kept Secret from the American People? Government Attorney: “Well we Tried”

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Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), the chairman of the committee, said he was surprised that the programs had been kept secret for so long.

“Do you think a program of this magnitude gathering information involving a large number of people involved with telephone companies could be indefinitely kept secret from the American people?” Goodlatte asked.

“Well,” ODNI general counsel Robert S. Litt said with a slight smile, “we tried.”

– From a Washington Post article yesterday

The backlash in Congress against the government’s monstrous spy program and the ridiculous notion that a secret court (the FISA court) grants any sort of oversight is growing, and it is a bipartisan effort. More from the Washington Post:

Lawmakers of both parties expressed deep skepticism Wednesday about the government’s bulk collection of Americans’ telephone records and threatened not to renew the legislative authority that has been used to sanction a program described as “off the tracks legally.”

“This is unsustainable, it’s outrageous and must be stopped immediately,” said Rep. John Con­yers Jr. (Mich.), the highest-ranking Democrat on the panel.

Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) — who sponsored the USA Patriot Act, which ostensibly authorized the collection — warned that the House might not renew Section 215 of the act, a key provision that gives the government its authority.

“You’ve got to change how you operate 215. . . or you’re not going to have it anymore,” Sensenbrenner said.

When the sponsor of the Patriot Act says it’s gone too far, you know you are in totalitarian territory.

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Department of Homeland Security Warns Employees: They Face “Legal Action” for Clicking on a Link

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You know a government has lost all credibility and is nothing more than a rotting carcass of corruption and criminality when it starts taking draconian steps to prevent its own employees from knowing the truth about what it is doing. Incredibly, an internal memo from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) last Friday to employees … Read more

Richard Stallman: “Facebook is a Monstrous Surveillance Engine”

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If you want to have the possibility of some privacy someday, you’d better join the fight now, because now a bunch of other people are joining the fight. Now is the moment when you can make a difference. If you wait until the day you wish you had some privacy and only then try to do … Read more

Mega Banks Go After Credit Unions

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The rampant hypocrisy in the position of the mega banks on the issue of credit unions is so glaring it’s almost hard to believe. Then again, there is nothing we shouldn’t assume when it comes to mega bank criminality and culturally destructive behavior after these last fews years of unlimited nerve, gall and theft. Why? They are above the law and they know it. From the LA Times:

WASHINGTON — Credit unions have been snatching customers from banks amid consumer frustration over rising fees and outrage over Wall Street’s role in the financial crisis.

Now banks are fighting back by trying to take away something vital to credit unions — their federal tax exemption.

Bankers long have complained the tax break is an unfair advantage for large credit unions. Now they see an opportunity to get rid of it as lawmakers begin work on a major overhaul of the tax code that is aimed at eliminating many corporate exemptions and lowering the overall tax rate.

Bankers complaining about an unfair advantage. Well isn’t that special.

Credit unions said the effort to take away their tax exemption was simply an attempt to stifle competition and remove one of the only checks on bank fees for consumers.

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McDonald’s Math: You Can’t Survive Working for Us

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This ridiculously condescending budget put out by McDonald’s in partnership with Visa has been making the rounds today. I’ll allow excerpts from the Gothamist article on it and their corresponding video do most of the explaining, but the key point I want to hammer into people is that food stamps are corporate welfare. They actually … Read more