News Items

NEVER Talk to the FBI Without a Lawyer…Here is Why

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This is a great talk with the civil libertarian and defense attorney Harvey Silverglate.  He is the same person that was mentioned in my recent post: A Broken Justice System: “Most Americans Commit About Three Felonies a Day.”  This video is not just for those that fear they may one day be paid a visit … Read more

Corrupt Chinese Politicians are Buying Billions in U.S. Real Estate

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Many of us spent much of 2012 confused about how the U.S. real estate market was improving within the context of a broke and unemployed citizenry.  Well as time has passed the answers to our questions have been revealed.  The criminals are piling in.  I first explained a couple of weeks ago how the financial oligarchs in the United States are currently in a bidding war to become America’s slumlords in my post:  America Meet Your New Slumlord: Wall Street.

Now we also discover that part of the bid to U.S. real estate has come from another criminal class. In this case, we are talking about corrupt Chinese officials who are pulling their ill gotten gains from their homeland and desperately placing it in real estate all over the globe.  From The Telegraph:

As China’s new leaders intensify a campaign to root out corruption, thousands of Communist party officials have been panicked into a fire sale of their illicit properties while billions of pounds have been smuggled overseas.

It said the volume of deals had intensified by “a hundred times” after Xi Jinping, the incoming Chinese president, warned that corruption could kill the Party and put one of the country’s most vigorous and resolute politicians, Wang Qishan, in charge of stamping out graft.

It also claimed that an astonishing $1 trillion (£630 billion), equivalent to 40 per cent of Britain’s annual GDP, had been smuggled out of China illegally in 2012.

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New Study Shows: Food Fraud Soared 60% Last Year

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So what is food fraud anyway?  Well, it’s sort of what you would expect.  It’s when companies label food one way, but the truth turns out to be completely different.  I have been predicting an escalation in this trend for years, since it was obvious that as inflation led to increases in food prices, companies would resort to this type of behavior to keep margins inflated.

So in their latest study, the non-profit food fraud detectives at the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention (USP) show us the extent of this extremely dangerous trend.  From ABC News:

It’s what we expect as shoppers—what’s in the food will be displayed on the label.

But a new scientific examination by the non-profit food fraud detectives the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention (USP), discovered rising numbers of fake ingredients in products from olive oil to spices to fruit juice.

In a new database to be released Wednesday, and obtained exclusively by ABC News today, USP warns consumers, the FDA and manufacturers that the amount of food fraud they found is up by 60 percent this year.

So what are the most commonly faked products?

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How Much Power Does the Queen of England Have? Answer: A Lot

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It’s amazing how this article flew so far under the radar.  I will never forget a conversation with my dad when I was a little kid in which I asked about the Queen of England.  Something in my DNA even at a very young age was disturbed by the concept of royalty.  I remember his answer like it was yesterday:  “Michael, the Queen is largely just ceremonial, she has no real power.”  I was probably nine years old or so when he told me that.  I thought it was strange at the time and I never forgot his answer.  It wasn’t his fault of course, that is what everyone is very intentionally taught to believe.  Well, it turns out that little old lady with a crown on her head running around the bucolic fields of England has some power after all.  Who would’ve thought!  From the UK’s Guardian:

The extent of the Queen and Prince Charles’s secretive power of veto over new laws has been exposed after Downing Street lost its battle to keep information about its application secret.

Whitehall papers prepared by Cabinet Office lawyers show that overall at least 39 bills have been subject to the most senior royals’ little-known power to consent to or block new laws. They also reveal the power has been used to torpedo proposed legislation relating to decisions about the country going to war.

The internal Whitehall pamphlet was only released following a court order and shows ministers and civil servants are obliged to consult the Queen and Prince Charles in greater detail and over more areas of legislation than was previously understood.

“This is opening the eyes of those who believe the Queen only has a ceremonial role,” said Andrew George, Liberal Democrat MP for St Ives, which includes land owned by the Duchy of Cornwall, the Prince of Wales’ hereditary estate.

“It shows the royals are playing an active role in the democratic process and we need greater transparency in parliament so we can be fully appraised of whether these powers of influence and veto are really appropriate. At any stage this issue could come up and surprise us and we could find parliament is less powerful than we thought it was.”

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Rapper Lupe Fiasco Escorted Off Stage for Anti-Obama Message: My Thoughts

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What can I say; we simply need more people in America like Lupe Fiasco.  While the mass awakening of the global population has continued at a breakneck pace for the past several years, one of the things that has disappointed me most about the United States has been the lack of courage demonstrated by high profile celebrities, as well as wealthy and successful people generally, to place their own best interests on the line in order to do what is right for the country.  Most of them simply choose to pick a pet issue overseas and criticize foreign governments rather that look introspectively at the decaying carcass at home.  That is the easy way out and is simply cowardice.  Not Lupe Fiasco.  From the Washington Post:

Rapper Lupe Fiasco was escorted off stage by security during a performance at StartUp RockOn’s inauguration celebration Sunday night.

Even at an event celebrating President Obama’s second term, Lupe didn’t hesitate to criticize the president, announcing that he did not vote for him. Thirty minutes into the anti-war song, Lupe was approached by guards and taken off stage. 

It shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise. In 2011, Lupe called Obama “the biggest terrorist.” On his latest album, he explained that claim, referring to drone strikes in Afghanistan. Last year he described the president as “someone who is a great speaker, but kills little children.”

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Mr. President, Please Come to Chicago.

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Another powerful article pointing out the obvious hypocrisy of Barack Obama on the gun issue.  The vast majority of gun violence in the country occurs in areas where the citizens are already disarmed and only criminals have guns.  The entire concept of trying to stop crazy people or criminals from doing awful things with guns by passing some law that such people will not adhere to anyway is asinine.  The question Americans must ask is; if we outlawed guns would we become more like Japan or Mexico?  I’d say Mexico, where only the cartels and gangs have them and they terrorize their fellow men and women on a daily basis.

Of course he will not be “coming to Chicago,” it’s so much easier to manipulate people’s emotions on television while reading letters from 3rd graders.  From Real Clear Politics:

In Washington on Wednesday, as you rolled out a slate of gun control measures quickly cobbled together in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre, you said, “If there is even one thing we can do to reduce this violence, if there is even one life that can be saved, then we’ve got an obligation to try.”

If you believe those words, Mr. President, here is a heartfelt suggestion: Come back to your adopted hometown and personally host a summit that grapples seriously with the causes of — and crafts meaningful solutions to — gang violence in America’s big cities.

It’s really not much of an exaggeration to say that parts of Chicago resemble a war zone. The numbers are grim. Unofficially, there were 513 homicides in Chicago in 2012, nearly 100 more than New York City, which recorded 414 killings but which has a population three times larger. Chicago’s body count is 200 more than the number of U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan last year. The carnage has continued unabated into the New Year.

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The Latest Victim of Inflation: Subway’s “Footlong” Sub

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In what has now become a series of posts on how people in the western world are being shortchanged by stealth inflation, we now find out that: “four out of seven Footlongs — purchased at Subway locations in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens — measured only 11 or 11.5 inches.”

Subway

Not to worry.  The stock market is near all time highs and the politburo’s statistics agencies continue to ensure us that there is no inflation.  From the New York Post:

Stingy Subway sandwich honchos are shorting customers by serving 11-inch “Footlong” subs, hungry New Yorkers say.

Four out of seven Footlongs — purchased at Subway locations in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens — measured only 11 or 11.5 inches, according to the test.

And that’s not the only corner Subway is cutting — the shops have sliced their cold-cut sizes by 25 percent in the past few months, a Manhattan franchise owner told The Post.

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West Point Issues Report on the “Far Right” Terrorists in America

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If this article does not serve as a wakeup call for all those on the fence regarding who your loving government now considers a “terrorist” I don’t know what will.  The power structure loves to use language to divide and conquer their subjects, and this report is a perfect example of that technique.  These days, when the term “far right” is used in the mainstream media or in government/military reports, they are talking about those that believe in the Constitution as the supreme law of the land.  A preeminent set of laws that must be followed by everyone, including the President, Congress, large corporations and the military.  Meanwhile, the “moderate right” is defined as Neo-cons.  You know, the torture loving, Constitution-ignoring, militaristic chicken-hawks that still hold on to the reins of power within the Republican establishment.  This is supposedly the “moderate right,” while the “far right” just wants to uphold the Constitution and Bill of Rights.  Of course, the power structure doesn’t want to have to deal with the Constitution any longer, so of course those that defend it are “far right” or “terrorists” in the mind of the state.

The report I am referring to was just released by the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy and it is titled: “Challengers from the Sidelines: Understanding America’s Violent Far-Right.”  From the Washington Times:

A West Point think tank has issued a paper warning America about “far right” groups such as the “anti-federalist” movement, which supports “civil activism, individual freedoms and self-government.”

Those seem like the types of things only an America terrorist would support, right? (see my piece You Know You Are a Conspiracy Theorist If…)

The report issued this week by the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., is titled “Challengers from the Sidelines: Understanding America’s Violent Far-Right.”

The center — part of the institution where men and women are molded into Army officers — posted the report Tuesday.

The West Point center typically focuses reports on al Qaeda and other Islamic extremists attempting to gain power in Asia, the Middle East and Africa through violence.

But its latest study turns inward and paints a broad brush of people it considers “far right.”

No more Al Qaeda, you are the terrorist now.  I and others have been predicting this for many, many years.  We have arrived.

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