News Video from Xinjiang Riots
The authorities in China have now killed over 140 demonstrators in the riots in the Xinjiang province.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Dylan Ratigan's MSNBC Show Premieres June 29th
Dylan Ratigan's new show on MSNBC is due to launch on Monday, June 29th, at 9 a.m.
Dylan Ratigan Joins MSNBC
Ratigan had said in the interview with Henry Blodget that he wanted "to cover a systemic failure", basically in U.S. economic policy, "from a wider base", in other words, a bigger rating and not a narrow-demographic such as CNBC's.
[from Wikipedia]
"Dylan Ratigan, born Dylan James Ratigan in Saranac Lake, NY, is a journalist covering the political angle of the financial markets and the broader economy for MSNBC.
Phil Griffin, president of the network, announced on May 6, 2009, that Ratigan would create a two-hour show for the network which he will host. The show, Morning Meeting with Dylan Ratigan, will air weekday mornings from 9 to 11 A.M. ET and is due to launch Monday, June 29, 2009. Ratigan will also contribute to other NBC News programs. Ratigan previewed the show in thanking Griffin for the opportunity "to discuss any and all political issues with no directive other than to provide compelling content."
[Let's see, from CNBC, an NBC affiliate, to MSNBC, an NBC affiliate.. hmmm - not much of a leap was it? How did I miss this happening, oh, no one cared or covered it I guess, it was in May - Jose]
Monday, June 22, 2009
Government of, by, and for the Corporations
China blocks all blogs, and totally censors all the information for its citizens, and they're our #1 supporter and trade partner. Yet we protest about human rights in Iran and North Korea, as they aren't important sources of funds for us. It's become obvious that the US can be bought by anyone with any money remaining. Individual rights, liberties, the Constitution are all now rendered meaningless - we no longer have any philosophy or ethics, just debt. We're now the wandering beggar of the world, taking handouts from everyone that will give. This kind of reminds me of churches, like the Vatican being in bed with the Mafia in Italy, the only possible reason could be financial.
This is the problem with depending on money as your basic religion, philosophy, or national system. When the flow of money your way stops, you have nothing to fall back on. So not knowing anything else, they just print more money! Why not change the system that has failed instead? Oh yeah, those with the power and who still have financial clout won't allow the system to be changed, because they are the beneficiaries of everyone else's losses. Someone made money while others lost, I'm still hearing of hedge fund managers getting 500 million for one year.
We all know that politicians are funded by major corporations, and each member of Congress is courted by 4-5 lobbyists, and that all the major media are owned by big corporations. Check out the film Thank You for Smoking for a hilarious satire of this situation. There's no way they want this system changed, they make big profits when things are good, then get bailed out by the government officials they own when times are bad. Meanwhile, the citizens, ie consumers, lose money in each scenario to these corporations. We pay all their profits in good times, then just hand them free money in bad times. Why can't individuals get the same breaks when we can't find jobs?
Like FDR and Ike told us, we truly have a government of, by, and for the corporations. How about one for small businesses and individuals instead, that would help more people survive. That 100 million a year income can go a lot further if not given to one corporate CEO, and instead went to a thousand small businesses (100k each), who hire more people in the country overall.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
The 9/11 Trainer Was an FBI Informant
[This was a Peter Dale Scott talk in Palo Alto, October 27, 2006.]
This is a well-documented article, and I've heard parts of this from other sources. I also remember the CIA saying they wrote 80% of all the news we hears, so maybe this is their own black ops? I don't think so, it points the finger at them.
I also remember a time when al Queda reps were on the US radio, allowed to go nationwide, begging for money from citizens to fight the Russians in Afghanistan. We gave them money, weapons, sting missile launchers (which can bring down helicopters), basically whatever they wanted.
For years, Saddam Hussein was the U.S.'s ally and basically fought the war with Iran for us, to get our aid. When that failed he predictably became "the enemy".
Believe this or not, personally I think we only find out about 5% of the overall picture, that things are a lot more planned and orchestrated than they want us to believe. He not only was an FBI informant, but also had worked for the CIA, and was a member of the U.S. Army.
The 9/11 Trainer Was an FBI Informant
Saturday, May 23, 2009
The Memory Loss Tapes, Alzheimer's Project on HBO, Sunday 9pm
HBO is going to repeat this series often, and sometimes the signal will be unscrambled, allowing everyone to see "The Alzheimer's Project". Part one is "The Memory Loss Tapes".
HBO calls the series "A new way of looking at the disease". Click here for the HBO Link, and all four episodes can be streamed from here as well.
My lifetime friend, Charlton McMillan, and his wife Shari Cookson were instrumental in creating The Memory Loss Tapes, the first episode of this four-part HBO series. Shari, who is a multiple Emmy nominee for Living Dolls and All Aboard! Rosie's Family Cruise, shares director-producer credit with Nick Doob. Charlton, an Emmy winner for Living Dolls, shares editing credit with Nick. Charlton also did some editing work on the second part of the series, Grandpa, Do You Know Who I Am?
Here are two print reviews for the series:
New York Times
L.A. Times
A blog review from critic James Bawden
Be sure to either watch or record this and let people know about it. We never know when we will have to deal with this disease either within our families or within our own minds. Rather than giving money to corporate gamblers, we should be funding cures and care for humanitarian efforts and documentaries such as these.
The Alzheimer's Organization is at http://www.alz.org/
Patients and families affected by Alzheimer’s can visit Icara Study to see if they might be eligible to enroll. [Thanks to Tracy for this] Read more...
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
How to Save the Economy
Well, everyone's got their own ideas on how to save our economy, which has apparently gone to the brink of armageddon because consumers borrowed money they shouldn't have. It's not the fault of the lawmakers, they just did what the corporations told them to do when they put them into office. It's not the fault of the corporations who lent money because that's their business, moving money around, allowing people to "live the American dream", which includes something for nothing, not paying back loans, and getting out of contracts when you're losing money on the deal.
Bankruptcy is also part of the American Dream. You can fail over and over, declare bankruptcy each time, then when you finally hit it big, the money is yours to keep, forget about all the prior creditors you left holding the bag - covering your own losses is not part of the American Dream.
I've been convinced by Larry Kudlow on CNBC (economic whiz from the Reagan era) and other right-wingers and pro-prosperity neo-religions that here are the steps necessary to save economy:
- Taxes are bad, so no one will have to pay any. It was only necessary when implemented to pay for the Civil War first, then World War I later; we currently don't have a world war to pay for.
- About a million religions and churches survive on nothing but donations, so why not the military and the government? The US military might has far more supporters than any religion, and as "might makes right" in the modern world, citizens will gladly give money to prove they are the "mightiest" alive. God favors those who take what they want, so this will also please God. Military ads already run free on tv, so we'll just make them all ads asking for donations. In return, we will get bumper stickers and lapel pins with "I Support G.I. Joe" on them.
- Corporations can hire more and more cheap labor if they don't have to pay taxes, social security, unemployment insurance, all that other bureaucratic nonsense that keeps them from making a fair profit. Corporations can barely survive anymore, and the days of 10 billion a year in profits are harder to come by. They will assuredly use the extra profits to hire more workers and raise salaries as well. Who needs social security if you can easily find jobs until you die? Only the wealthy deserve retirement.
- Rich people hire everyone else (right, Kudlow?), so they shouldn't have to pay any taxes, which will allow them to hire more and more annually with the savings, called "the trickle down effect". If all the wealthy can hire the rest of us as cooks, chauffeurs, nannies, butlers, gardners, maids, bridge partners, valets, shoe-tiers, dog walkers, ass-kissers, and yes-men, then the pressure will be less on corporations or the "gubbermen" to hire everyone, thus improving their profits as well.
- Allow everyone to sell weapons without any restrictions. We own over 2 guns per capita as a nation, no reason that can't increase to 4 if we allow unrestricted weapon purchases at things like flea markets, church sales, yard sales, social clubs, baby showers, birthday parties, and every other opportunity available. We will be better protected, there will be less criminals because they're afraid of people with guns, and everyone will have more money to spend as a result. We will maintain our personal weapons edge on the rest of the world.
- Remove all restrictions on any company or industry's business. Capitalism will always police itself and keep out the corruption and price-fixing, which only occurs when there's government regulation, they go hand-in-hand. The more successful companies there are, the lower prices will be from all the competition. If someone like Exxon or IBM makes a trillion, this will foster and encourage competition. Imagine if we all drilled for oil or built our own super-computers, we could all succeed like the big guys. Get off your butts!
- Send every citizen about $100,000, then they can pay off credit cards and car loans, then spend like crazy on liquor, fast food, iPhones, downloadable music, new DVDs, expensive SUVs, 60" TVs, air Nikes, Haagen-Daas, and other necessitities currently only available to executives, criminals, bankers, preachers, and congressmen. The $600 rebate stimulated the economy so well that 100k ought to do a great job. Why not, they print money daily, as much as they want - it can be done!
Hey, it's just a start, this is my first day at saving American capitalism, and I'm still waiting for my government stimulation check so I can hire a staff to help me with the next post! and live The American Dream. Read more...
Monday, May 11, 2009
Iran Frees Journalist Saberi
Saberi, 32, a freelance reporter for National Public Radio, British Broadcasting Corp. and others, had been held in Tehran's Evin prison since Jan. 31, evoking an international response as well as a European Parliament petition, and Saberi's own hunger strike.
Here's the full story in the Usa Today release:
Saberi Freed by Iran
Friday, May 8, 2009
Free Roxana Saberi
Update: Roxana was freed by Iran on Tuesday 5.12
Group at Facebook to free U.S. journalist Roxana Saberi - jailed in Iran for buying a bottle of wine, now charged with spying, given 8 yrs in prison.
Free Roxana Saberi Group
If we are jailed for our opinions, then we're all guilty!
More information:
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Fed Refuses to Help Credit Card Holders
If you needed any more proof that the U.S. is now a "Corporate welfare state", the Fed is refusing to implement any regulations to preven credit card companies from gouging individuals with interest rate hikes and the other shenanigans they pull.
Fed Refuses to Help Credit Card Holders
All the Senate is asking for is some semblance of fairness. When card issuers can borrow money at 2% from the government, there seems to be an element of organized crime at work when they can charge over 20% interest. When did banking get to the point that they can mark up credit at 1000% over costs? What philosophy allows us to give trillions to corporations that gambled away their money and ours, yet not help individual consumers who have not frittered away their wealth at all but are now being punished further by corporations, under the guise of "we can't survive otherwise"? Maybe they shouldn't survive if they can't make money fairly.
If our nation refuses to help individuals, then they've become what Jefferson warned about, "tyrannical and unresponsive to the people." When do the rights of companies who can't survive on their own usurp the rights of individuals, of consumers?
What bothers me is that corporations are nothing more than legal entities, "paper tigers". When they need money, they simply print more stock. This in itself is inflationary and dilutive to current owners of the equity. Apparently both the fed and all corporations can print money, and the latter without any special permission or with any checks and balances.
This system is completely insane. How we let ourselves come to be both governed and gouged by corporations is a lengthy history of gradually letting the crooks have all the keys to the "national bank".
For me, the way to stop this is several steps: (a) do not allow corporations to issue "secondary offerings" of stock unless under financial duress of survival, and only with SEC approval (b) remove the "one share, one vote" rule, which allows a few wealthy individuals to "buy votes" by buying more shares, then the major shareholders can collude to completely control all the other shareholders and override their wishes, then finally (c) declare corporations unconstitutional, which is a bill that comes up in Congress annually, but since the politicians are all owned by corporations through campaign donations, will never happen.
As the current crisis shows, they will rob us blind, gamble away the money, then expect the consumers to pay that back as well as continuing to pay high costs as well. When legal entities become more important than individuals then we have NO democracy, no freedom, and we all become slaves to the whims of big money, who can continue to rob us through the legal system.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Zodiac Killer Revealed by Daughter?
A very interesting story is now developing in regards to the Zodiac killer.
A 42 year old woman named Deborah Perez claims that her father was the Zodiac killer in northern California, Guy Hendrickson. She says she wrote one note to the police, and still has the first victim's glasses, from a cabbie, that her dad kept as a souvenir.
Here's the USA Today version of today's story:
Woman's Dad the Zodiac Killer?
Now, I hope that everyone interested in this case or well-made films has seen the 2007 movie Zodiac, excellent examination by director David Fincher of both the police and a journalist's investigations into the serial killings.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Are Foreign Enemies Crushing Our Markets?
I just did an analysis of the leveraged ETFs (exchange traded funds) for YTD in 2009. It doesn't look good, as nearly all are down vs the underlying indices. So whatever is causing this (management fees?), it's not a good bet for the public investor.
Jim Cramer of Mad Money (CNBC, the "Orwellian voice of corporate propaganda", and proud of it) is wrong that they have too much leverage, because options and futures traders have even more leverage (at least 10-1, 40-1 on futures?) and there are options on everything now - so you'd have to ban all leveraged instruments if that argument of his holds water. I've often thought the futures (especially trading off hrs) have way too much influence - a few guys overnight (Al Q on laptops in their caves using sovereign funds?) can sell em off and clobber the market's opening for no reason. I saw the Dow futures down 500 pts once (when worth 4000) simply because Brazil devalued its currency! WHY do we allow this? The futures should only trade when the market is open to allow immediate adjustments. Like allowing invidual investors to get out with a small loss, not wake up suddenly down 15% like the Brazilian pesata day.
No one seems to care, do they? - let's just give our petrodollars to our enemies who then use them to short the mkt and hurt us even more - this is madness! All this is giving "them" the weapon to kill our kind of gambling capitalism, where corporations survive based on market value! (I didn't realize this until the market runs on the most important financial stocks; suddenly their credit was worthless due to low stock prices). Plus they don't pay tax on the capital gains or dividends either - double whammy of investing 'Pearl Harbor'!
"We had to stimulate foreign investment" they would tell us - WHY?? Why not stimulate them buying goods and not wrecking our investment markets? This system of economics baffles me, it places us at the mercy of our enemies, who certainly don't want us to prosper through investing or it looks like our brand of corrupt capitalism succeeds for the average citizen, which I don't believe anyway. This only benefits those with enough capital to make more, pay huge executive salaries that only benefit a few, and also encourages the buying of politicians and agencies like the FDA, and if they NEED to pay off or contribute to all these to "get their policies invoked", then those must NOT be policies benefial to all, or they would have been implemented already.
Common sense, it there's any remaining in the face of total economic collapse.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Can the World Attain Peace?
I often think that since man's evolutionary nature has been established as nomadic hunter-killers (scientists have proven that the herbalist humanoids died off, each time, but the killer-carnivores survived, largely by eating carrion like other animals), we will remain in this state of evolution until something radical changes us all. Perhaps it will take another deadly plague, perhaps another world war that will end with all national borders being eradicated.
One would hope for our evolution into spiritual beings, as in Arthur C. Clarke's "Childhood's End", but that seems still centuries away, sadly. (Kubrick wanted to film this novel, but with existing technology, "2001: A Space Odyssey" was all they could film together at the time, he and Clarke wrote this story just for the film; Clarke, by the way, did not believe in evil, never had a book with any.)
As long as there are invisible national boundaries, we will always have each nation's own sovereignty and security causing wars. Perhaps when the polar caps melt, and 90% of the world's populations are displaced who live along coastlines and major rivers, then we can lose the nationalistic militarism that keeps the world in conflict.
Just because we have the term utopia doesn't mean it cannot be attained. Most of our reality is created from dreams; the future is what we build from these. We also have the opposite term: dystopia, which seems to be the current world state for the last 3000-5000 years at least. If one can be reality, so can its opposite; the Yin-Yang of the universe should always eventually occur to balance each other.
Mankind apparently also finds some sort of validation in the glory and courage necessary for warriors. It seems that women don't have this need as much as the need to create and foster life, thankfully! We all need to assert this feminine grace toward life, and forget about the valor of war, which is attained at the high cost of innocent life. If, rather than "good/evil" struggles, we all just concentrated on progress, exploration, healing, and creating, we might find a better alternative than death and destruction.
A quote from Lawrence of Arabia, "War is for young men of courage and valor, keeping the peace is for old men with nothing else to do." (Alec Guinness as Prince Feisal). Great script, won an Oscar®.
Personally, I would go to jail before fighting in any war or killing another being, nothing is that important. I would die myself before becoming a killer.
Peace to all, José
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
The Daily Market Reversal
Up Friday, down Monday, up Tuesday, down Wednesday (4.22). Just like that terrible commercial, "you buy and sell the same stocks, again and again." Yep, that's what they're doing. Buy em today, sell em tomorrow, ad infinitum.
Is this market getting to be like a stuck record, constantly skipping back and forth and ending up in the same places? Sometimes it reverses direction daily for 4-8 days in a row. It makes asolutely no sense. One day financials are 'headed for doom', they and the market plunge. The next day, the feds speak, change some rule, and suddenly financials are covered by shorts, 'scrambling like scalded monkeys' ( thanks to Jeff Macke), and the market goes back up. Lately, it's almost like clockwork. A clock with just two settings: light and dark (up and down).
Someone is obviously playing the same old game with us to get churning, trading, commissions, whatever - and the TV propagandists like CNBC are all part of the disinformation game. They just sit there making up news and rumors, then laugh when the market reverses and some sectors, usually financials, move 20%. It's getting very old, and they are losing investors for good whom they should need.
Apparently not, this has become a poker game for insiders only: floor traders, hedge fund managers, big brokerages. The little investor is unwanted and can't pay the huge buy-in required, apparently millions per entry, or you don't rate being in the game.
I think the market professionals didn't really like having the average person in the market, so they figured out a way to get rid of us - all the millions of small IRA and 401 accounts aren't worth the time and effort to do the bookkeeping. If you don't have millions, and allow the brokerages to leverage that for their own use to manipulate stocks in collusion with their colleagues and hedge fund minions, then you're of little use or value, or "the capitalists don't want you."
This has become a game of and for big money only, who are trying their best to eradicate the lower and middle classes from spheres of influence. What they want and may have created is an autocracy of big money - a government by, of, and for the wealthy only. After all, "they create all the jobs", if you listen to the neo-fascist leader of white America, Larry Kudlow of CNBC - the same bozo that was an economic advisor for Ronald "spend like there's no tomorrow" Reagan, who later admitted after the 1987 crash that "the U.S. economy is a house of cards."
Kudlow thinks if you keep giving capitalists a free reign, their immense wealth will "trickle down" to the little guy. Well, that obviously doesn't work: they take what they can steal and smuggle it out to foreign countries with secretive banking, where the U.S. can't get to it, and they can retire both wealthy and out of reach. The joke on us is that millions still believe this, thinking that capitalism is a "lottery they can win", like the housewives paraded for us on shows like Donny Deutsch's "Big Idea", pretending that "you too can get rich with a good idea". Fat chance, I'd be much better off playing the Don't Pass line at any craps table in Nevada, betting against the shooters and with the casino.
Too bad we can't really bet with the casino here. If you buy the stock of a successful company, there's no guarantee they still won't steal all the money and go bankrupt, it seems to be the true American way. In fact, in 1987 some brokerages also went bankrupt and angry investors had to wait for the feds to get around to paying their money back at a pace even slower than the Katrina victims rescue. Let's just hope it doesn't take half a century like it took the Swiss banks to return money stolen from the Jews by Nazis in WW2; they gave it to Israel because this was money without any living heirs, but they held the billions for over 40 years, and no one knows really how much was there, or how much went to other nations' banks.
Money knows no boundaries or politics, and has no ethics to worry about.
Monday, April 6, 2009
The Dumbest Ongoing Product Bans
Everyone should read this terrific article, about the dumbest bans current invoked by the government.
subtitled: Annual Review of Regulatory Absurdity by Eli Lehrer
The Five Dumbest Product Bans
#1 is the cancer drug Provenge, made by Dendreon (DNDN), of which approval was recommended by the FDA review panel 13-4, with a unanimous vote that "it's safe". However, under suspicious circumstances like conflicts of interest and possible bribery, the FDA itself denied approval, leaving terminal prostate cancer victims with shorter lives and no other promising drug.
This has become just another in a long string of stories involving apparent corporate corruption reaching into the government. Personally, I go in and out of the DNDN stock, thinking one day that justice will prevail and a drug that extends lives will be made available in spite of opposition from big pharma and their lobbyists. I'm currently long the stock once again, since their new test results are supposed to be ready for the feds during 2009.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Thoreau on the State vs the Individual
"There will never be a really free and enlightened State, until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power is derived, and treats him accordingly.. to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor; which even would not think it inconsistant with its own repose, if a few were to live aloof from it. A state which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a more perfect and glorious state, which I have imagined, but not yet anywhere seen."
-- Henry David Thoreau
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
