US Corporations Getting Iraqi Oil After All -- But Of Course the War Had Nothing to Do With That

Tell the FBI: Don't map me or my community!

You'll be outraged by what we found out.

The ACLU has uncovered and analyzed thousands of FBI documents and found that America's most powerful law enforcement agency is using its vastly expanded investigative authority to collect racial and ethnic information and "map" American communities around the country — based on crude stereotypes about which groups commit different types of crimes.

The last thing America needs is the FBI running unconstitutional investigations of innocent Americans and mapping communities based on racial stereotypes and suspicion not backed by a shred of evidence.

Tell Attorney General Holder: Put an immediate end to the FBI's unconstitutional use of racial profiling to map American communities. 

The evidence of abuse the ACLU has gathered results from Freedom of Information Act requests filed by ACLU offices in 33 states and the District of Columbia. In Michigan, New Jersey and California, we had to enforce compliance with our requests through lawsuits.

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New Street Lights To Have “Homeland Security” Applications

New street lights that include “Homeland Security” applications including speaker systems, motion sensors and video surveillance are now being rolled out with the aid of government funding.

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Europe: Grimmer by the minute

On Wednesday, government heads from all 27 members of the European Union will gather for a second time, following a summit over the weekend that failed to produce a definitive accord.

EU politicians have promised to deliver an ambitious and durable solution to a crisis that poses the biggest threat to the euro since the common currency was launched over a decade ago.

"The sovereign debt crisis threatens the very existence of the eurozone," said Howard Archer, chief European economist at IHS Global. "It is therefore absolutely imperative that European policymakers finally deliver a major package of measures at the conclusion of their summit on Wednesday."

The latest talks have focused on a trio of interconnected challenges: restructuring the Greek government's crushing debt load, strengthening European banks and boosting the effectiveness of a limited rescue fund.

While the stakes are exceedingly high, expectations for bold and swift action are dim. It took three months for comparatively modest crisis measures announced in July to be approved by all 17 euro area governments.

Some experts have already dismissed Wednesday's meeting as a prelude to the Group of 20 summit in early November, when the world's most powerful leaders will gather in Cannes, France, to discuss economic affairs, among other things.

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Italian government on brink of collapse

FT

Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right coalition government in Italy appears in danger of collapsing over European Union demands for a demonstration of concrete action on economic reform by Wednesday’s summit of eurozone leaders.

The EU ultimatum delivered to Mr Berlusconi in Brussels on Sunday risks breaking his coalition instead of giving it an external impetus to move ahead on measures to cut Italy’s debt and promote economic growth.

The ultimatum was delivered as part of efforts to resolve the eurozone sovereign debt crisis, but the Italians’ failure to reach agreement on reform threatens EU leaders’ stated goal of finalising at Wednesday’s summit a comprehensive solution to the crisis.

Talks on Tuesday morning between Mr Berlusconi and his Northern League coalition partners failed to resolve the deadlock – centred on proposed pension reforms – after negotiations into Monday night made little progress.

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Bank’s Collapse in Europe Points to Global Risks

NY TIMES

As Europe’s debt crisis has deepened, a recurring question is how much risk it poses to the United States economy, and especially American banks.

While American financial institutions have sought to limit any damage by reducing their loans and thus lowering their direct exposure to Europe’s problems, the recent rescue of the Belgian-French bank Dexia shows that there are indirect exposures that are less known and understood — and potentially worrisome.

Dexia’s problems are not entirely caused by Europe’s debt crisis, but some issues in its case are a matter of broader debate. Among them are how much of a bailout banks should get, and the size of the losses they should take on loans that governments cannot repay.

Among Dexia’s biggest trading partners are several large United States institutions, including Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter. To limit damage from Dexia’s collapse, the bailout fashioned by the French and Belgian governments may make these banks and other creditors whole — that is, paid in full for potentially tens of billions of euros they are owed. This would enable Dexia’s creditors and trading partners to avoid losses they might otherwise suffer without the taxpayer rescue.

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Ron Paul Wins 1st in Ohio GOP Straw Poll with 53.5%

Libya meets the China Sin-drome

Alicia Hope

The US Govt is so afraid of China that any chess move on the board that temporarily gives the appearance of a victory is considered strategic. The long term consequences, of all moves on the board, should be an integral part of the mind set of a true champion. But... we're not talking about champions.

The game of chess is supposed to be intellectual, not haphazard. When a piece is moved it's suppose to be well-thought out. What we have in DC is what I'd call knee-jerk reaction politics. It's so transparent that even a child could see the motivation.

We now know that the NATO excursion in Libya was motivated by fear. That's right. The fear of China is palpable. China has been very proactive in Libya as well as other parts of Africa. But the Chinese would come with gifts and incentives, not bombs and bullets.

Beijing, which has significant economic interests in the oil-rich North African country, had long helped prop up the Qaddafi regime before the uprising began.

China has invested billions of dollars in rail, oil and telecoms in Libya .

Beijing has commercial and strategic reasons for not wanting the West to exert too much influence in Libya and has said in the past it wants the United Nations to lead reconstruction efforts.

China is a major oil importer and needs to secure stable supplies of the resource to help keep its huge economy moving.

The powers that be want to stop their economy from growing or at least slow it down! The wing-tipped, corporate cabal of thugs in Washington don't care about the cost in lives or taxpayer money.

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Just a reminder

The fed has stolen more money from the American people than Colonel Gaddafi allegedly stole from the people of Libya. What are we going to do about the evil here in America?

Obama Team’s Al-Awlaki Memo Furthered Bush Legacy: Noah Feldman

Killing terrorists with drones is great politics. To the question, “Is it legal?” a natural answer might well be, “Who cares?”

But the legal justifications in the war on terrorism do matter -- and not just to people who care about civil liberties. They end up structuring policy. As it turns out, targeted killing, now the hallmark of the Barack Obama administration’s war on terrorism, has its roots in rejection of the legal justifications once offered for waterboarding prisoners.

The leaking of the basic content (but not the text) of an Obama administration memo authorizing the drone strike that killed U.S. citizen Anwar Al-Awlaki therefore calls for serious reflection about where the war on terrorists has been -- and where it is headed next.

The George W. Bush administration’s signature anti-terror policy after the Sept. 11 attacks (apart from invading countries) was to capture suspected terrorists, detain them, and question them aggressively in the hopes of gaining actionable intelligence to prevent more attacks.

In the Bush years, after the CIA and other agencies balked at the interrogation techniques being urged by Vice President Dick Cheney, the White House asked the Department of Justice to explain why the most aggressive questioning tactics were legal. Lawyers at the Office of Legal Counsel -- especially John Yoo, now a professor at the University of California at Berkeley -- produced secret memos arguing that waterboarding wasn’t torture.

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Clinton Laughs About Murder of Gaddafi

Secretary of State Clinton was unable to keep her professional composure yesterday when told about the alleged murder of deposed Libyan leader Gaddafi at the hands of al-Qaeda. She had a good laugh over the gruesome act.

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Libyan rebels could face war crime charges over Gaddafi's 'execution'

Libya's rebel army has been accused of executing both Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and his son Mutassim in cold blood as the United Nations suggested their deaths amounted to war crimes.

Human rights groups and Gaddafi's wife Safia called for an independent investigation into the deaths, which robbed victims' families of the chance to see Gaddafi put on trial for his murderous acts.

Both Gaddafi and his son were filmed or photographed alive and relatively uninjured after their capture on Thursday, before both died of multiple gunshot wounds.

On Friday, at the refrigeration units in Misrata where the two bodies are being kept before their burial, young men queued for the chance to see the corpses and take pictures of them on their mobile phones.

Libya's interim president, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, is expected to declare the country officially liberated today, though the fate of Saif al-Islam, Gaddafi's chosen heir and the only man who could continue the fight, remains unclear.

Within Libya, Gaddafi's death has been a cause for celebration, but its new leaders have been warned that summary executions will not be tolerated by the international community.

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New Radar Technology: Military Could See Through Walls

Looking through walls is no longer something we read about in comic books or watch in Superman movies.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Laboratory has presented new radar technology that would allow humans to see through a solid wall.

The device is 8½ feet long. It consists of an array of antennae arranged in two rows -- including eight signal receiving elements on the top and 13 signal transmitting elements at the bottom. Other components include cabling, a low-power radar transmitter, a sensitive radar receiver, a filoscope (used as a small screen purely for diagnosing problems) and of course a larger screen, similar to the average 24 inch computer screen, where one can actually view images transmitted.

All this equipment is mounted onto a movable cart that can stand at a range from 15 to 40 feet from the location you're observing.

Researcher and leader of the project, Dr. Gregory Charvat, tells ABC News the technology was conceived with the notion that it would be used by U.S. soliders during war time.

"It can be powerful during military operations especially in urban combat situations," said Charvat.

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Procter & Gamble and the art of tax avoidance

The tax-avoidance spotlight has been shining brightly, via the media, on companies such as General Electric, Exxon Mobil and Verizon, and on the big multinational banks. But some of the most clever and innovative ways to avoid taxes are being used by a company not usually associated with financial wheeling and dealing: Procter & Gamble.

In three deals spread over almost a decade, the owner of Tide detergent, Bounty towels, Gillette shaving products and many other household names, has managed to reopen a loophole that Congress closed in 1997. By my estimate, P&G’s profits on the deals, which involve selling brands it no longer wants, total about $6 billion, are tax-free to the company and are tax-deferred to its shareholders, possibly forever.

A straight-up sale would have triggered a $2 billion federal tax bill and a hefty state tax bill (for details, see fortune.com/sloan). All three involve so-called Reverse Morris Trust transactions, of which more later. “P&G is the most active practitioner of this technique,” tax expert Robert Willens says.

Why isn’t P&G on the tax radar? Because it has kept a low profile, and because the deals have been spread over an extended period: Jif peanut butter and Crisco shortening in a 2002 deal, Folgers coffee in 2008 and Pringles chips in a deal scheduled to close this year. Besides, the deals are so convoluted that you have to be a tax techie (or a masochist) to make your way through them.

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The U.S. Is Headed for Revolution, as Debt Slaves Whisper Treason

Nothing much from the markets yesterday. The Dow fell 72 points. Gold went down $5.

Meanwhile, the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement goes on in America. And 70,000 Greeks “clash with police,” say the news headlines. 

People are upset. They know something is wrong. But they don’t know what. The real explanation is too complicated. They won’t sit still for it. So, they look for scapegoats – the rich…the banks…the Chinese.

There’s a joke making its way around the Internet. Goldman Sachs has decided to try to profit from the OWS protests. They’ve set up a “Rage Fund” that will invest in companies that make police batons, pepper spray, bandages, and glass windows.

It’s a joke. But it may turn out to be a good investment strategy.

We’ve made a number of big predictions here in The Daily Reckoning. Some of what we’ve foreseen has actually come to pass – the crash of the tech bubble…the collapse of the housing market…the Great Correction. Some of what we’ve forecast has not yet happened. Some never will.

But here is our most audacious forecast yet: the US is headed for ruin and revolution. The revolution will almost certainly be put down, violently. But the ruin cannot be stopped.

Yes, dear reader, the empire is following its natural course…with the zombies in control and the debt slaves whispering treason. It can’t afford enough bread to keep the popolo minuto (the little people) happy. It will be forced to get tough on them. It is only a matter of time before the secret police round up the ringleaders and disappear them. Heck, the Obama government has already decided that it has the power to kill citizens without any due process of law. What’s to stop it from killing lots of them?

A friend of ours in Argentina explains:

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The End Of History

By Paul Craig Roberts

Now that the CIA’s proxy army has murdered Gadhafi, what next for Libya?

If Washington’s plans succeed, Libya will become another American puppet state. Most of the cities, towns, and infrastructure have been destroyed by air strikes by the air forces of the US and Washington’s NATO puppets. US and European firms will now get juicy contracts, financed by US taxpayers, to rebuild Libya. The new real estate will be carefully allocated to lubricate a new ruling class picked by Washington. This will put Libya firmly under Washington’s thumb.

With Libya conquered, AFRICOM will start on the other African countries where China has energy and mineral investments. Obama has already sent US troops to Central Africa under the guise of defeating the Lord’s Resistance Army, a small insurgency against the ruling dictator-for-life. The Republican Speaker of the House, John Boehner, welcomed the prospect of yet another war by declaring that sending US troops into Central Africa “furthers US national security interests and foreign policy.” Republican Senator James Inhofe added a gallon of moral verbiage about saving “Ugandan children,” a concern the senator did not have for Libya’s children or Palestine’s, Iraq’s, Afghanistan’s and Pakistan’s.

Washington has revived the Great Power Game and is vying with China. Whereas China brings Africa investment and gifts of infrastructure, Washington sends troops, bombs and military bases. Sooner or later Washington’s aggressiveness toward China and Russia is going to explode in our faces.

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Col Gaddafi killed: convoy bombed by drone flown by pilot in Las Vegas

TELEGRAPH

Nato forces designated Gaddafi as a military target after the former Libyan leader’s forces started firing on civilians as they tried to escape Sirte in a convoy of up to 100 vehicles.

It is understood that RAF Tornados were patrolling over Sirte at the time of the escape attempt but were not directly involved in the operation.

Gaddafi had been under surveillance by Nato forces for the past week after an intelligence breakthrough allowed them to pinpoint his location.

An American drone and an array of Nato eavesdropping aircraft had been trained on his Sirte stronghold to ensure he could not escape.

Intelligence sources have suggested that in his last days Gaddafi broke his rigid rule of telephone silence and was overheard using either a mobile or satellite phone. Voice recognition technology would have instantly picked up any call that he made.

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Foreigners' Sweetener: Buy House, Get a Visa

The reeling housing market has come to this: To shore it up, two Senators are preparing to introduce a bipartisan bill Thursday that would give residence visas to foreigners who spend at least $500,000 to buy houses in the U.S.

The provision is part of a larger package of immigration measures, co-authored by Sens. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.) and Mike Lee (R., Utah), designed to spur more foreign investment in the U.S.

Foreigners have accounted for a growing share of home purchases in South Florida, Southern California, Arizona and other hard-hit markets. Chinese and Canadian buyers, among others, are taking advantage not only of big declines in U.S. home prices and reduced competition from Americans but also of favorable foreign exchange rates.

To fuel this demand, the proposed measure would offer visas to any foreigner making a cash investment of at least $500,000 on residential real-estate—a single-family house, condo or townhouse. Applicants can spend the entire amount on one house or spend as little as $250,000 on a residence and invest the rest in other residential real estate, which can be rented out.

The measure would complement existing visa programs that allow foreigners to enter the U.S. if they invest in new businesses that create jobs. Backers believe the initiative would help soak up an excess supply of inventory when many would-be American home buyers are holding back because they're concerned about their jobs or because they would have to take a big loss to sell their current house.

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The Shadow CIA And Bush White House Assassinated Afghan Hero Ahmad Shah Massoud Two Days Before 9/11

Two days before the events that dramatically altered our perceptions of the Middle East and changed the political landscape in the West, Afghanistan's George Washington, Ahmad Shah Massoud, was killed by the shadow CIA and the Bush White House on September 9, 2001, because he stood in the way of their evil plans for Afghanistan.

Massoud was a genius military leader who was responsible for throwing out the Soviet invaders in the 1980s. The Wall Street Journal said he was "the Afghan who won the Cold War." Sebastian Junger, journalist and documentarian, most known for the amazing award-winning documentary 'Restrepo,' reflected on the meaning of Massoud's death and what his loss meant for the world in the National Geographic. He wrote:

Massoud—who loathed the extremism of the Taliban as much as he did the totalitarianism of the Soviet Union—once told me he was fighting not only for a free Afghanistan but for a free world. There was something about him—the slow nod of his head as he listened to a question, the exhaustion and curiosity engraved on his handsome, haggard face—that made it clear we were in the presence of an extraordinary man.

Nicknamed the "Lion of Panjshir," Massoud embodied the noble traits of the prophet Muhammad and possessed the intellectual gifts to accomplish what now seems impossible ten years after the false flag 9/11 attacks---bringing peace to Afghanistan.

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FDIC now insuring BOA derivatives trades!!!

BLOOMBERG

Bank of America Corp. (BAC), hit by a credit downgrade last month, has moved derivatives from its Merrill Lynch unit to a subsidiary flush with insured deposits, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation.

The Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. disagree over the transfers, which are being requested by counterparties, said the people, who asked to remain anonymous because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. The Fed has signaled that it favors moving the derivatives to give relief to the bank holding company, while the FDIC, which would have to pay off depositors in the event of a bank failure, is objecting, said the people. The bank doesn’t believe regulatory approval is needed, said people with knowledge of its position.

Three years after taxpayers rescued some of the biggest U.S. lenders, regulators are grappling with how to protect FDIC- insured bank accounts from risks generated by investment-banking operations. Bank of America, which got a $45 billion bailout during the financial crisis, had $1.04 trillion in deposits as of midyear, ranking it second among U.S. firms.

“The concern is that there is always an enormous temptation to dump the losers on the insured institution,” said William Black, professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and a former bank regulator. “We should have fairly tight restrictions on that.”

Jerry Dubrowski, a spokesman for Charlotte, North Carolina- based Bank of America, declined to comment on the transfers or the firm’s discussions with regulators. The company “continues to accommodate the needs of our clients through each of our multiple trading entities, including Bank of America NA,” he said in an e-mailed statement, referring to the company’s deposit-taking unit.

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