USS Enterprise just days away from its final place of anchor

That final place of anchor is...the Arabian Sea, where the Vinson and Lincoln are already anchored.

I'm sure it's perfectly normal to have 3 aircraft carriers operating in the same sea at the same time.

The Bernank lies to Americans about inflation

"I think what we're witnessing today is the end stages of a grand experiment."
-Dr. Ron Paul

Congressman Paul asks the Bernank if he does his own shopping...since the Bernank says that there is no inflation.
LMAO!

I am not endorsing Ron Paul, but I can't help but notice that the mainstream media is pretending like he isn't running a very successful national campaign.
I would love to see Dr. Paul, an anti-Wall Street, anti-war Republican, go head-to-head against Obama, a pro-Wall Street, pro-war, pro-martial law Democrat.
Heads would explode.
Literally.

“The system is broken”

The Federal government may be turning a blind eye to Mortgage Industry jankiness, but at least local officials aren’t.
Last week, San Francisco Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting released a report documenting that 85% of the nearly 400 foreclosures that his office has audited have “serious problems or were outright illegal".

"We really wanted to take a look at what the documents would tell us and whether or not it was something systemic," Ting said. "We had a lot of anecdotal information but never knew if the problems represented 5 percent or 20 percent or 80 percent of the cases. What we have for the first time is hard data about the level of systematic problems going on in the mortgage industry."
-Huffington Post

Ting joins a small handful of other local officials who have, over the past year, gone public with similar findings.
Earlier this month, after federal officials conducted more than 10,000 hours of research and poured through more than 2 million documents, the Obama Administration and 49 state attorneys general announced a $25 billion settlement with five of the nation's largest banks that had gotten caught committing document fraud and wrongful foreclosures on homeowners.
None of the findings from that research have been released to the public.
As hard as it may be to fathom, it is very likely that systemwide fraud may just be the tip of the iceberg...

Cities dealing with more and more vacant land

Here's a excerpt from a great read about collapse in Chicago. This section touches on the most important reason why land becomes vacant.

Meanwhile, hundreds of properties are being deposited every month into the city’s land bank by foreclosure-minded mortgage companies and banks who are seeking to rid their books of delinquent homes and apartments.

The process typically starts with abandonment, boarding up, and then foreclosure. But the blight and foreclosed properties are far from forgotten by the neighbors and the community.

With no hope for a resale to recoup the investment, the banker’s neglect results in abandonment of the property. The weeds grow, the windows are smashed, and the building becomes an unsafe place for homeless people to squat, a drug house, or the site of a fire.

Eventually, this scenario forces the city to raze the property and reduce the bank’s real estate tax classification from improved property to vacant land, which is taxed at a much lower level. Often the land is just donated to the city for back taxes, or picked up in the tax scavenger sale.

Typically, the abandoned building also becomes a resource for Chicago’s underground economy and is stripped of its valuable appliances, furnaces, light fixtures, copper pipe and electrical wire. Often, the urban pirates even take the hardwood floors, fireplace mantels and doors.

Even if an investor buys the abandoned building, secures it with guard dogs to protect the building’s improvements and begins to renovate the property, it sometimes isn’t a happy ending. It is not uncommon for the dogs to be poisoned and killed by the urban pirates to scavenge the profits within.
Chicago Journal

Greek Police Union Threatens Bankstas

"Since you are continuing this destructive policy, we warn you that you cannot make us fight against our brothers. We refuse to stand against our parents, our brothers, our children or any citizen who protests and demands a change of policy."

"We warn you that as legal representatives of Greek policemen, we will issue arrest warrants for a series of legal violations ... such as blackmail, covertly abolishing or eroding democracy and national sovereignty."
-Greek Police Union to the Bankstas

A new era

Occupy Oakland has paid its dues, and is now truly and officially an Oaklander. The movement is diverse and foward-thinking, is committed to working together to move forward into the future, cares about everyone in its community, has been scapegoated and misrepresented in the media, has been evicted twice, has been repeatedly shot and grenaded and teargassed, is ALWAYS being watched by the police (and most likely the feds as well), and now has a major case of PTSD that no one else seems to care about, and actually seems to blame them for. Most importantly though, despite all of the state repression/oppression and harassment and intimidation, the movement is still alive and well (even though homeless and misunderstood). That's about as Oakland as it gets.

The powers that be are LYING about the movement. The J28 "Move-in Day" action, and the criminally violent suppression of that attempted action, have forced a major rift in the broader society between those who instinctually trust the police, and those who know better.
J28 was the epitome of the class war that has been raging in the country for generations: a homeless movement was attempting to peacefully occupy a blighted, unused public space, and the police showed up armed for war. The video evidence alone proves whose agenda was actually carried out that day.

The Occupy Oakland movement is about democracy. Period. It is about an inclusive process where anyone who wants in can be in, and no one is left out. Anyone who says otherwise is a LIAR.
Resident livestreaming videojournalist Spencer Mills extended a polite invitation to Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan to participate in tonite's community forum on police actions. Hojo, of course, declined. OPD has never and will never be interested in dialog. Just ask Bobby Hutton and Judi Bari.
Even back when Mayor Quan was trying to "dialog" with the labor council (her best attempt at trying to understand the movement was to call in the usual suspects, most of whom had NOTHING to do with the actual movement on her front lawn) OPD was calling for violent action rather than talk. When she realized that she couldn't bully big labor into controlling the movement (i.e. when she realized that they weren't in charge), she ignored the progressive voters who got her elected, and let OPD have their way. Rather than waiting her turn to speak to a general assembly and having genuine dialog, she conspired via teleconference with Homeland Security to help orchestrate a nationwide series of violent assaults on Occupy camps. That's her interpretation of democracy apparently.

The funny thing is, her blatant subservience to the radical right has earned her no respect in their eyes either. A recall campaign to oust her from office is currently underway, and its backers all represent "business" interests. Clearly, it was an incredibly stupid move on her part to try to make them happy...they didn't want her elected in the first place.

Oakland City Hall could learn a lot from the Oakland Raiders, who are risking short-term criticism from their fan base in exchange for long-term success. The Raiders are cleaning house in a quest for better communication, more discipline, improved teamwork and increased productivity (the same values that Occupy Oakland has prioritized since its inception).
It is painfully clear that OPD needs a similar cleansing.

Only one person had to die in order for the Raiders to move forward.
How many will it take before OPD and Oakland City Hall clean up their act?

Does this look "peaceful"?

Pic above from http://twitpic.com/75mjjh/full

Early this morning, sometime around 5am, the rumored and expected police raid came in swiftly and violently. As protestors chanted "You are the 99%!" to the police, their cries were silenced with tear gas, flash bang grenades, batons, rubber bullets, several hundred cops in riot gear and gas masks....the cops trashed the camp and aggressively arrested 75 some people, perhaps more.
The camp now looks like a tornado swept through it....i.e. it now looks how the mainstream media has been presenting it all along.
Protestors who are returning to the camp to get their belongings are allegedly being arrested.
This is one of the saddest days in American history.

More pics here.


Here are two nice before-and-after shots of the camp.

World Revolution Update

World Revolution Update

This is how you waste $1.6 billion

I often have to drive down 880 to San Jose for work. For the past few years, I couldn't help but notice the gargantuan Solyndra campus near the county border. Set in a relative lull between two brutal stretches of stop-and-go traffic, I'm usually whizzing by the solar panel manufacturer quickly without taking a good look. What I recall though, is that I'm always amazed by not only how big, but how shiny and ornate the main building is, complete with a fancy water feature that seems to scream, "We're doing quite well, thank you."
Apparently, it was all a lie.
Despite $1.6 billion in funding, half a billion of which came from the American tax-payer, Solyndra has suddenly gone belly up, leaving 1,100 employees out in the cold.

Solyndra was one of about 40 projects funded since 2009 through a U.S. Department of Energy loan program that helped major wind, solar, nuclear and ethanol projects. Together, those projects are expected to create about 60,000 jobs, according to the DOE.

The department on Wednesday defended the Solyndra loan, saying public investment is needed to help U.S. companies keep pace with heavily subsidized Chinese firms.

"The alternative is simply walking off the field and letting the rest of the world pass us by," DOE public affairs director Dan Leistikow wrote in a blog post.
-Inside Bay Area

Uh, so we stayed on the field and got our asses handed to us anyway. Gotta admire that good ol' stubborn American bravado. At least we wasted that money in America, and not in China...

"They are all over the place"

This may be a little nerdy, but if you sit through it, you'll learn that not only did HAARP apparently play a role in the magma pile spewing out radioactivity in Fukushima, but there are also apparently several HAARPs scattered throughout the world.

NMA budget deal impasse cartoon

Obama orders 20,000 troops to patrol US

The police are already out of control.
Will the police sit back and take orders from the military, or will they feel any loyalty to their communities?
Unfortunately, in the ghetto, the cops aren't from the community.
This news is quite unnerving, although not exactly unexpected.

Monday's community press conference in the Bayview

Since following the twists and turns of the ever-changing official version of the story being spewed out by the police and their lapdogs in the corporate media is crazy-making, here's a video of Monday's community press conference in the Bayview. You'll notice that even though people are really passionate about the subject and frustrated with the lack of truth coming out from the police department, listening to them actually makes you feel like the world makes sense.

SF Police Chief booed out of Bayview

SF Police Chief Greg Suhr turned tail and ran while being booed out of a community gathering organized in the Bayview neighborhood to address concerns over the police murder of 19 year-old Kenneth Harding (who was stopped by police as he exited a MUNI train without proof of fare on Saturday afternoon). Unlike Harding, Suhr was not shot in the back as he fled.
An hour and a half into the meeting at the Bayview Opera House, Suhr, who has only been on the job for three months, was "evacuated" by at least 20 officers and his command staff. There was an estimated 300 people in attendance.

“That’s right, walk away,” screamed one man, as the crowd surged around the officers. “You walking out ‘cause you know you not ready to deal with the reality,” a woman shouted into the microphone.

The anger in the predominantly black crowd revealed divisions within the community, with many younger community activists protesting the “establishment” approach of the older religious leaders. They claimed the leaders worked too much with police.
-Bay Citizen

It was the elders whom had organized the community gathering, largely to let the police explain themselves/obfuscate/slander the victim.
Harding ran away from the officers who had detained him, and according to several eyewitnesses, he was doing so at full speed without looking back at the officers. He was clearly running for his life. Media reports have called him a parolee, and have accused him of being linked to a recent violent crime in the Seattle area.
Multiple cell phone videos captured the immediate aftermath of the police shooting on Saturday, and Harding can be seen laying on the ground in a pool of his own blood, hopelessly fighting for his life as multiple officers stand over him with their guns pointed at him. An angry crowd forms, and the officers turn their attention to crowd control rather than providing assistance to the dying victim.

One particular video was used by police as "evidence" that a witness picked up an alleged gun that Harding allegedly fired at the officers during the chase. However, the witness in question clearly points to a flat rectangular object on the ground and can clearly be heard asking, "Is that your phone?" The man picks up the phone and disappears off screen.
Earlier in the video, another shiny object had come into view for less than a second, and police allege that the shiny object is Harding's gun. However, the alleged gun is several yards beyond where Harding lay dying, in the direction that he had been running (i.e. he would have had to have thrown, not dropped, the gun forward before he was shot, which, admittedly, is not exactly implausible). The shiny object is also several feet away from the cell phone that is picked up by the witness in the video. The witness does not look in the direction of, point to, or in any other way signal that he has noticed a gun lying on the sidewalk several feet away. Also, the person shooting the video does not notice the alleged gun, even though he/she appears to walk right next to it.
That didn't stop the police from lying and saying, through their media accomplices, that a video had been posted on youtube which showed a witness picking up Harding's gun. This was their excuse for not being able to find the gun for 6 hours, despite combing the entire area, including nearby rooftops, for the alleged weapon.

On Tuesday, 3 days after the shooting (and just before a protest that resulted in 43 arrests), the SFPD announced that they had found gunshot residue on Harding's right hand. The funny thing is, they still haven't announced that they have found any slugs or shell casings at the scene, and they haven't found Harding's fingerprints on the alleged gun. All they have is a video of a man picking up a cell phone off the ground, a dead man's police record, and alleged evidence of "gunshot residue" on the victim's hand (which is the easiest evidence to fake, since the police had three days to put that residue there after the fact - not to mention the fact that the presence of residue on someone's hand does not prove when or where a gun may have been fired by that hand).

In the end, whether or not Harding was an innocent saint, a pimp, a parolee, or even a man who shot at police while running away from them at full speed, he was clearly not a threat to the two police officers who shot at him, resulting in his death. It could easily be argued that shooting at a running suspect on a busy street in broad daylight was the most dangerous thing that happened that afternoon, and that type of police work should not be tolerated in any community.
Further, not possessing a $2 transit pass should not cost any human being their life, no matter what they may or may not have done in the past.

Update from the re-birthplace of democracy

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

World Revolution Update

Iraq reconstruction theft may actually be $18 billion

So about that $6.6 billion "largest theft in US history," apparently it was actually more like $18.7 billion. That's almost ALL of the shrinkwrapped bricks of greenbacks that the Bush administration sent over to Iraq to reconstruct a compliant puppet regime in that country. A 2004 agreement established that the US would be responsible for safeguarding the $20 billion in cash that was allegedly sent over. Not surprisingly, almost all of it has disappeared without a trace. US officials have allegedly audited the money 3 times, but still have no clue where it is.

The cash came from an account at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, and was allegedly a combination of Iraqi oil revenue, surplus from the UN's oil for food programme, and sales of Iraqi assets.

The New York Fed is refusing to tell investigators how many billions of dollars it shipped to Iraq during the early days of the US invasion there, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction told CNBC Tuesday.
The Fed's lack of disclosure is making it difficult for the inspector general to follow the paper trail of billions of dollars that went missing in the chaotic rush to finance the Iraq occupation, and to determine how much of that money was stolen.
-CNBC

The Fed is claiming that the money belonged to the Iraqi people, and therefore, they aren't allowed to let anyone else know how much money actually went over to Iraq for reconstruction. However, since the Iraqi people never got the money, and they're wondering where the hell it went, it's a little hard to believe that the Fed can't get authorization from them to disclose how much of their money it allegedly shipped to them.
Clearly, the Fed just doesn't want anyone to know how much money was sent over, because then we'd know how much of it was stolen.

35% spike in infant deaths in Northwestern US

Infant deaths in Northwestern US cities have spiked 35% over the past 10 weeks, and physician Janette D. Sherman, M. D. and epidemiologist Joseph Mangano blame the Fukushima nuclear accident.

The recent CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report indicates that eight cities in the northwest U.S. (Boise ID, Seattle WA, Portland OR, plus the northern California cities of Santa Cruz, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, and Berkeley) reported the following data on deaths among those younger than one year of age:

4 weeks ending March 19, 2011 - 37 deaths (avg. 9.25 per week)
10 weeks ending May 28, 2011 - 125 deaths (avg.12.50 per week)

This amounts to an increase of 35% (the total for the entire U.S. rose about 2.3%), and is statistically significant. Of further significance is that those dates include the four weeks before and the ten weeks after the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant disaster. In 2001 the infant mortality was 6.834 per 1000 live births, increasing to 6.845 in 2007. All years from 2002 to 2007 were higher than the 2001 rate.
-Counterpunch

Similar issues afflicted the region surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear reactor when it exploded and melted down.

We need to measure the actual levels of isotopes in the environment and in the bodies of people exposed to determine if the fallout is killing our most vulnerable. The research is not technically difficult – the political and economic barriers may be greater.
-Counterpunch

Considering how the government doens't really want to know how much radioactivity is making its way across the pacific, it's safe to assume that they don't want to know whether or not such radioactive substances are causing problems in our newborn babies.
Thanks George Washington.

World Revolution Update