News Items

Guess What’s Hidden in the Immigration Bill? A National Biometric Database for Citizens

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Oh just another eight hundred page “bipartisan” bill that nobody will read,  mainstream media will refuse to cover, and that will merely further destroy any remnants of freedom left in these United States.  Never forget the George Carlin quote on bipartisanship:

“Bipartisan usually means that a larger-than-usual deception is being carried out.”

From Wired:

The immigration reform measure the Senate began debating yesterday would create a national biometric database of virtually every adult in the U.S., in what privacy groups fear could be the first step to a ubiquitous national identification system.

Buried in the more than 800 pages of the bipartisan legislation (.pdf)  is language mandating the creation of the innocuously-named “photo tool,” a massive federal database administered by the Department of Homeland Security and containing names, ages, Social Security numbers and photographs of everyone in the country with a driver’s license or other state-issued photo ID.

This piece of the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act is aimed at curbing employment of undocumented immigrants. But privacy advocates fear the inevitable mission creep, ending with the proof of self being required at polling places, to rent a house, buy a gun, open a bank account, acquire credit, board a plane or even attend a sporting event or log on the internet. Think of it as a government version of Foursquare, with Big Brother cataloging every check-in.

“It starts to change the relationship between the citizen and state, you do have to get permission to do things,” said Chris Calabrese, a congressional lobbyist with the American Civil Liberties Union. “More fundamentally, it could be the start of keeping a record of all things.”

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Robin Williams on Wall Street Junkies…Absolutely Hilarious!

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The new Geithner $20 bill will be instead of “In God We Trust,” it’ll just say “Trust Me!” and it will have a picture of the monopoly man on it. – Robin Williams in the priceless interview with Charlie Rose embedded below This is from late 2009, but I had never seen it and it … Read more

NYPD States you are Guilty Until Proven Innocent

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Thanks to a crazed overemphasis on financial parasitism as it’s number one economic export, NYC has already lost much of its heart and soul and no longer resembles the city I once knew and loved.  Unfortunately, this is still not enough for the authoritarians running the city, led by the increasingly insane oligarch Mayor Michael Bloomberg.  The spiritual death of NYC is one of many reasons I decided to leave it for Colorado in late 2010, an emotional move I described in my post:  The Biggest Trade of My Life.

The most recent exploiter of the Boston tragedy is a Sergeant Ed Mullins of the NYPD who stated:

Using a zero tolerance approach to track domestic terrorists online is the only reasonable way to analyze online threats these days, especially after the Boston Marathon bombing and news that the suspects had subsequently planned to target Times Square in Manhattan, Mullins says. The way law enforcement agencies approach online activity that appears sinister is this: “If you’re not a terrorist, if you’re not a threat, prove it,” he says.

Wait, what was that?  I’m pretty sure the most basic tenet of our rule of law is you are assumed innocent until proven guilty.  Apparently not in New York City.  Tim Cushing at Techdirt does a great job reporting on this frightening statement.  He writes:

“Zero tolerance” is never “reasonable.” It never has been and it never will be. In fact, it’s the polar opposite. Zero tolerance policies simply absolve the enforcers of any responsibility for the outcome and grant them the privilege of ignoring mitigating factors. It allows them to bypass applying any sort of critical thinking skills (the “reason” part of “reasonable”) and view every infractions as nothing more than a binary IF THEN equation. 

Believe it or not, Mullins is not done talking. What he says next doubles up on the “dangerous” and “stupid.  “This is the price you pay to live in free society right now. It’s just the way it is,” Mullins adds.

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No Joke…This is What the ACLU Received from the Government on Text Surveillance Policy

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Fifteen pages of black squares.  How’s that freedom tasting?  Take that terrorists! Most. Transparent. Ever. Like this post? Donate bitcoins: 35DBUbbAQHTqbDaAc5mAaN6BqwA2AxuE7G Follow me on Twitter.

Rasmussen: 81% of Americans are Paying More for Groceries

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What?!  Someone get the Bernanke on the line ASAP!  Apparently the remaining 19% of Americans work at TBTF banks and the Federal Reserve.  From Rasmussen: Most adults continue to say they are paying more for groceries than they were a year ago, and they expect that amount to be even higher next year. A new … Read more

Bitcoin Startup Coinbase Raises $5 Million…Major Venture Capital Players Getting Involved

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Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Coinbase has raised $5 million, which represents the largest funding round to date for a Bitcoin startup.  The funding is being led by the highly respected Union Square Ventures, and despite the fact that 90% of financial “journalists” and mainstream “economists” continue to bash Bitcoin as a bubble and a ponzi scheme, some of the brightest minds in venture capital are getting involved.  From the Wall Street Journal:

Eleven-month-old startup Coinbase announced Tuesday the largest funding round to date for a Bitcoin startup, a $5 million investment led by Union Square Ventures.

Coinbase is an online platform that allows users to buy Bitcoin, the virtual currency taking the tech world by storm. Users can also store Bitcoin in a digital wallet and pay merchants for goods or services with it. About 300 merchants have signed up with Coinbase so far, including content-aggregation site Reddit.com and dating siteOKCupid.com.

In April, Coinbase’s co-founders said the company claimed about 116,000 members who converted $15 million of real money into Bitcoin, up from $1 million in January. Ehrsam said the volume of dollars it’s converting to Bitcoin is increasing at a rate of about 15% a week, and its user base is growing at a weekly rate of about 12%.

Bubble!  Stay away!

He added that he thinks Bitcoin is poised to be a true game-changer for the business world, and the tech community in particular. “Hackers are the animals that can detect a storm coming or an earthquake,” he said. “They just know, even though they don’t know why, and there are two big things hackers are excited about now and can’t articulate why–Bitcoin and 3D printing.”

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Godfrey Bloom of UKIP: Central Bankers Should be Arraigned as “War Criminals”

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Coming off the heels of a fantastic performance in recent local elections, the UKIP under the leadership of Nigel Farage continues to make waves in both the UK and the Continent itself. In this case, I refer to a recent powerful performance at the European Parliament courtesy of Godfrey Bloom (UKIP), member of the European Parliament. … Read more

Remember Zero Dark Thirty? Turns Out it was a CIA Propaganda Film After All

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In 1977, Carl Bernstein, famed for his Watergate reporting, disclosed that more than 400 journalists and executives of mostly liberal US media organisations had worked for the CIA in the past 25 years. They included journalists from the New York Times, Time and the big TV broadcasters.

– John Pilger in his powerful article, The New Propaganda is Liberal

This isn’t the first time I’ve used the above quote to kick off a post. I also used it in late March for the article:  How Hollywood Became “Propagandist in Chief” by John Pilger.  How right he was in that scathing critique of the artistic joke that has become big budget performing arts in America these days.  Now, courtesy of documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act regarding the CIA’s influence on Hollywood blockbuster Zero Dark Thirty, we discover what a total propaganda joke this film really is.  What an utter embarrassment to cinema.  From Gawker:

Kathryn Bigelow’s Osama bin Laden revenge-porn flick Zero Dark Thirty was the biggest publicity coup for the CIA this century outside of the actual killing of Osama bin Laden. But the extent to which the CIA shaped the film has remained unclear. Now, a memo obtained by Gawker shows that the CIA actively, and apparently successfully, pressured Mark Boal to remove scenes that made them look bad from the Zero Dark Thirty script.

The documents include a 2012 memo—initially classified “SECRET”—summarizing five conference calls between Boal and the CIA’s Office of Public Affairs in late 2011. “The purpose for these discussions was for OPA officers to help promote an appropriate portrayal of the Agency and the Bin Ladin operation,” according to the memo.

During these calls, Boal “verbally shared the screenplay” for Zero Dark Thirty in order to get the CIA’s feedback, and the CIA’s public affairs department verbally asked Boal to take out parts that they objected to. According to the memo, he did.

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Judge Sentenced to 28 Years in “Cash for Kids” Scheme

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Cash for kids.  Absolutely disgusting, but in a country where all the financial incentives are aligned toward criminal and immoral behavior, it’s hard to find anything surprising at his point. Think about this case and then think about the growing trend of private prisons in America, prisons that are incredibly being given favorable tax treatment.  From the UK Independent:

An American judge known for his harsh and autocratic courtroom manner was jailed for 28 years for conspiring with private prisons to hand young offenders maximum sentences in return for kickbacks amounting to millions of dollars.

Mark Ciavarella Jnr was ordered to pay $1.2m (£770,000) in restitution after he was found to be a “figurehead” in the conspiracy that saw thousands of children unjustly punished in the name of profit in the case that became known as “kids for cash”.

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18 Year Old Faces 20 Years in Jail on “Terror Charges” for a Facebook Post

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Guess why 18 year old Cameron D’Ambrosio is being held on one-million dollars bail and faces twenty years in prison?  The answer is “terror charges.”  This case is a perfect example of why I am so against using the word “terrorist” in general at this point.  Think about all the pointless wars and erosion of domestic civil liberties that have been justified in the name of this never-ending Orwellian “war on terror.” We’ve been tricked, and in the future anyone that does anything the oligarchs and politicians don’t like will be named a “terrorist” and be subject to the aggressive terror laws that most states passed after 9/11.  We need to take a giant cultural deep breath and react to terrorism in a sane way before we lose what’s left of our dignity and freedom.  Be very suspicious of anyone who uses the word “terror” too often.  They are trying to keep you in fear, and if you are in fear, you are easily controlled.  From Gawker:

Yesterday, D’Ambrosio was absent from school, but messing around online, changing his profile photos and tweaking his status updates. At approximately 12:20 pm, one of his peers alerted MHS administration that the Methuen native had posted “disturbing verbiage” on Facebook, lyrics menacing enough for the school to call the city police.

“He posted a threat in the form of rap where he mentioned the White House, the Boston Marathon bombing, and said ‘Everybody you will see what I am going to do, kill people,'” Methuen Police Chief Joe Solomon paraphrased to the Valley Patriot.

Now, D’Ambrosio is being held on a one-million dollar bail and charged with terroristic threats, a felony punishable for up to 20 years in prison.

It’s unclear what D’Ambrosio wrote exactly, but it’s tough to believe that whatever ill-advised lyrical whimsy he shared justified this response. Even the police are quick to clarify that his verses were vague. “I do want to make clear he did not make a specific threat against the school or any particular individuals but he did threaten to kill a bunch of people and specifically mentioned the Boston Marathon and the White House,” Solomon told the Valley Patriot. “The threat was disturbing enough for us to act and I think our officers did the right thing.”

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