The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
The Libyan War, American Power and the Decline of the Petrodollar System
by Prof. Peter Dale Scott
Centre for Research on Globalization, 29 April 2011
EXTRACT:
As Ellen Brown has pointed out, first Iraq and then Libya decided to challenge the petrodollar system and stop selling all their oil for dollars, shortly before each country was attacked.
Continue reading “Looting Libya: Insider View of Reasons for War….”
Just got fired from Wells Fargo. RE: the following email
So…here's what I wrote. It's missing a handy chart where it depicts the average Wells employee's hourly salary vs. the CEO's salary, but you get the gist.
Full disclosure, I had been working here for a few months and this was to be my last week. I wouldn't recommend anyone else do this, but I gotta admit, it felt damn good and maybe someone will step up and do something about it.
Good Morning All,
Last week a friend of mine was fired for sending an inappropriate email to pretty much the whole building. Despite the fact that it was harmless, accidental, and largely ignored message, she will now join the ranks of the unemployed. If she is your average unemployed Oregonian she will remain unemployed for at least 18 months and when/if she gets rehired somewhere it will be for less money than she was making here.
Now my friend was definitely in the wrong, and I’m not writing this email to argue her situation. However, in an attempt to hold our company to a similar standard consider the following:
We work for one of the largest financial institutions in the world, we are essential to its operations, yet economic security is completely at the mercy of its senior executives. They are squeezing our salaries, reducing our benefits, and lobbying our politicians to make it harder for us to improve our financial positions despite our contributions to Wells Fargo’s successes. It means more profits for them, but less choice, less freedom and more importantly, less money for us.
In 2010, our CEO, John G. Stumpf received $18,973,722 in total compensation. By comparison, the median worker made $33,190 in 2010. John G. Stumpf made 571 times the median worker's pay.
Tip of the Hat to George Donnelly at Facebook.
See Also:
Wells Fargo Standard Poverty Salaries
Phi Beta Iota: We note with interest that this executive is only 220th on the Forbes executive pay rankings. We hold the corporations blameless in one sense: they get to do this because the US Government has lost its integrity and has not been in the business of the public for decades, Grover Cleveland may have been the last truly honest holistic President. What that says about the American public is for reflection. At the same time, we point to William Greider's book Come Home, America: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country in which he discusses the documentations on how the financial industry (Mr. Stumpf's industry) inflated by 17 times base value while the “real” asset-based economy inflated by five times. This means that Mr. Stumpf and his colleagues cheated the US and global customers by 12 times….and for this, the government bails them out and nobody goes to jail. See also Matt Taibbi's Griftopia–Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America.
There’s a Secret Patriot Act, Senator Says
WIRED, May 25, 2011
You may think you understand how the Patriot Act allows the government to spy on its citizens. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) says it’s worse than you’ve heard.
Congress is set to reauthorize three controversial provisions of the surveillance law as early as Thursday. But Wyden says that what Congress will renew is a mere fig leaf for a far broader legal interpretation of the Patriot Act that the government keeps to itself — entirely in secret. Worse, there are hints that the government uses this secret interpretation to gather what one Patriot-watcher calls a “dragnet” for massive amounts of information on private citizens; the government portrays its data-collection efforts much differently.
Phi Beta Iota: Further to our comment on Part I, we strongly believe the time has come to discontinue funding for the US Intelligence Community as a whole, beginning with the National Security Agency (NSA), which is in our view the most mis-managed and corrupt (as well as grotesquely expensive for lack of any reasonable return) part of the US Government. The fact that they are abusive of the Constitution and devoid of any common sense at all is the other half of their crime against humanity. An honest President actually interested in the public interest would create an Open Source Agency, and then on the basis of sound decision-support shareable with the public and Congress, cut the secret world as well as the defense and homeland security worlds by 20% each year for each of five years, restoring 10% each year to new initiatives that pass all common sense tests for need, relevance, and affordability. All it takes is INTEGRITY.
U.S. official cites misconduct in Japanese American internment cases
By David G. Savage, Washington Bureau
Los Angeles Times, May 24, 2011
Acting Solicitor Gen. Neal Katyal says one of his predecessors, Charles Fahy, deliberately hid from the Supreme Court a military report that Japanese Americans were not a threat in World War II.
Phi Beta Iota: We are totally fed up with this”Empire of Lies and Secrecy.” Anyone who has sworn an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies domestic and foreign, who LIES to Congress or the Courts, should be indicted for treason [just as individual members of Congress should be IMPEACHED for any abdication of their Article 1 responsibilities]. The US public needs to demand INTEGRITY of its officials.
(AP) – 25 May 2011
ROME (AP) — Seven scientists and other experts were indicted on manslaughter charges Wednesday for allegedly failing to sufficiently warn residents before a devastating earthquake that killed more than 300 people in central Italy in 2009.
Please do consider sharing this one with everyone you know!
Phi Beta Iota: Actionable part right here up front, strongly recommended to one and all. It's time we put the various “complexes” out of business.
If we can create a worldwide outcry in the next few days to support the bold calls of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, we can overpower the stale excuses for the status quo. Our voices hold the key to change — Sign the petition and spread the word:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/end_the_war_on_drugs_a/?vl
Dear friends,
In days, a group of powerful world leaders will ask the UN to end the war on drugs and move towards regulation. But politicians say that the public will not support alternative drug policies. Let's give this unique opportunity massive public support and get urgent action. Sign below, and tell everyone:
In days, we could finally see the beginning of the end of the Œwar on drugs¹. This expensive war has completely failed to curb the plague of drug addiction, while costing countless lives, devastating communities, and funneling trillions of dollars into violent organized crime networks.
Continue reading “Vote Now to End the Drug War–Regulate & Save”
Keeping Palestine Cool: A Different Kind of Underground Movement
YouTube – TEDxRamallah – Khaled Al Sabawi
In Passing:
Why Palestinians Have Time on Their Side
By Jeffrey Goldberg Bloomberg, May 24, 2011 7:28 PM ET
