01 Poverty – Page 24 – Public Intelligence Blog

2013/05/012013/05/01

Eagle: Emerging Evidence Mortgage Industry Targeted & Exploited Maryland Residents with Security Cleances

01 Poverty, 07 Other Atrocities, Commerce, Corruption

300 Million Talons... — 300 Million Talons…

No direct knowledge, but this is starting to come out as worthy of investigation.

From an experienced mortgage attorney specializing in helping those being foreclosed:

I have friend that has been on electronic intel side most of his career (Army, then contractor to one of the agencies) and he told me how many 3 ltr agency employees couldn't afford to live near D.C. during the false boom years, and most had to fall for those 3yr “option ARM's” just to swing the payment every month. (payments way below P&I, negative amortization)

They were all told by the complicit Realtors “don't worry, real estate always goes up, when the note resets you can refinance….”

You probably already know they were the highest profit “loans” to sell. All those guys with security clearances can't afford to “strategically default” or even to question the purported “debt” after the ARM's reset since their clearance/ job would be at risk.

This friend said he knows a ton of them that are working insane hours just to keep up with the adjusted payments, otherwise risk their career.

It's despicable how they were set up to keep them in that bondage to keep them in line.

Phi Beta Iota: Our understanding is that the security clearance process has improved dramatically in the past decade, and that short sales and foreclosures are not fatal if the 360 whole person otherwise passes muster. Both the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and the adjudicating authorities appear to have risen to the challenge and are NOT holding well-intentioned individuals responsible for being victimized by mortgage fraud.

Eagle: International Consortium of Investigative Journalists May Look at Corrupt Judges in Foreclosure Cases, Beginning in Maryland

2013/04/14

DefDog: North Korea — No War, Leaders in Luxury, Country in Famine

01 Poverty, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 06 Family, 08 Wild Cards, 11 Society

A good read, ring of authenticity.

Never mind nuclear war, says North Korean defector Joo-il Kim, the reality of famine is bad enough

Joo-il Kim believes the rhetoric is just a distraction

Rob Hastings

Independent, 14 April 2013

EXTRACT

While he agrees that the current stand-off is more serious than previous events, he remains confident there will not be conflict. “This current regime does not want a war,” he tells me through a translator. “The people don’t have anything, so they don’t have anything to lose if they went to war – but the regime, they have wealth.” Living in luxury, he says, the leaders will not want to risk what they have.

After he escaped a closed and impoverished society, one imagines his greatest surprises in the outside world would have been at technology. Instead, it was the uneaten fruit he found in Chinese forests while running away that amazed him most. “There were apples just dangling in the trees, falling on the ground. In North Korea, even the smallest apple will be eaten because the people are starving. But China had abundant food,” he says.

Starvation and hunger is a topic he returns to several times, and with good reason. The death of his four-year-old niece from malnutrition, after he had already seen many others dying in an economy wrecked by the regime’s agricultural policies, convinced him to defect. The world might be concerned by the threat of nuclear war, but Mr Kim believes the dictatorship is using this to distract the international community and its own people from the problems they face.

Read full article.

2013/03/01

John Steiner: “A Place at the Table” – 50 Million Children in USA Are Hungry

01 Poverty, Corruption, Government

The film, “A Place at the Table,” cites a sobering statistic: 50 million children in the United States don't know where their next meal is coming from.

The film features the story of Leslie Nichols, a teacher in Collbran whose students – including fifth-grader Rosie, who also is featured – struggle with hunger in the classroom. Nichols said children such as Rosie have all sorts of hunger-related problems such as being unable to keep up with classes or concentrate on schoolwork.

“The reality is, their world is consumed worrying about those big-fix people things like ‘What am I going to eat?' ‘Mom and dad are stressed out about how to make ends meet.' That adds additional burdens to a kid.”

That means those children don't often put a priority on doing well in school,” Nichols said.

“A Place at the Table” is in theaters now, and will be released Friday OnDemand and on iTunes. For the first 100,000 tickets, downloads or books purchased March 1-3, Plum Organics will donate one essential nutrition pouch to a baby or toddler.

Learn more.

2013/01/16

SchwartzReport: Criminalization of Preganancy Among Poor — Mental Institutionalization, Criminal Proceedings, and Forced Medical Procedures on Rise in Radical Right States

01 Poverty, 06 Family, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Law Enforcement

This story should horrify, and outrage you. I read it early this morning, in my first pass for today's SR. It upset me so much that I had to just stop and sit, and meditate for some moments. And it worried me that I knew nothing about this. That's how deeply buried this part of the war on women has been.

As you can see, this is where personhood amendments take us.

Notice that this is 75 per cent a Red value state issue. For this reason I see it as also part of the Great Schism trend. Not only on the basis of values, but because the Blue value states are tiring of financially supporting the lunacies of the Red value states.

Study finds widespread ‘criminalisation of pregnancy' in US institutions

Study cites misinterpretation of Roe v Wade in array of cases where women were denied rights based on pregnancy status

NEW YORK — Hundreds of women have been arrested, convicted, jailed, detained in mental institutions or forced to endure medical procedures as a result of the “criminalisation of pregnancy” over the last four decades, a new report has found.

In the first study of its kind, to be published on Tuesday, researchers from the National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW) identified 413 criminal and civil cases across 44 states involving the arrests, detentions and equivalent deprivations of pregnant women's liberty between 1973 and 2005. NAWP said that it is aware of a further 250 cases since 2005. Both figures are likely to be underestimates, it said.

The report, which will appear in the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, found that women were denied a wide range of basic human rights, including the right to life, liberty, equal protection and due process of law “based solely on their pregnancy status”.

It found a wide range of cases in which pregnant women were arrested and detained not only if they ended a pregnancy or expressed an intention to end a pregnancy, but also after suffering unintentional pregnancy loss.

The cases of detention and forced medical intervention varied widely and included one in which a judge in Ohio kept a woman imprisoned to prevent her having an abortion.

Another involved a woman in Oregon who refused a doctor's recommendation for additional testing for gestational diabetes. She was held in a locked psychiatric ward. Another case involved a court in Washington DC, which ordered a critically ill woman to undergo caesarian section over her objections. Neither she nor the baby survived.

Read full article.

2012/11/172012/11/17

Berto Jongman: Western-Imperial Violence — Detailed Dismantling of Steven Pinker’s Apologetics

01 Poverty, 02 Infectious Disease, 03 Environmental Degradation, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 06 Genocide, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 09 Terrorism, 10 Transnational Crime, Cultural Intelligence, IO Deeds of War, Peace Intelligence

Reality Denial : Steven Pinker's Apologetics for Western-Imperial Volence

By Edward S Herman and David Peterson

ZNET, Wednesday, 25 July 2012

It is amusing to see how eagerly the establishment media have welcomed Steven Pinker’s 2011 tome, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined,[1] which explains not only that “violence has been in decline for long stretches of time,” but that “we may be living in the most peaceful era in our species' existence.”[2] A professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University since 2002 and a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist in the general nonfiction category,[3] Pinker’s lovable theme coincides with the Nobel Peace Laureate’s current engagement in wars on at least four separate continents (Asia, Africa, Europe, and South America); his regretful partial withdrawal from invaded and occupied Iraq; his victorious termination of the 2011 war in Libya; his buildup and threats to engage in even larger wars with Syria and Iran, both already underway with aggressive sanctions and an array of covert actions;[4] his semi-secret and ever-widening use of remote-controlled aerial gunships and death squads in global killing operations;[5] and his declaration of the right to kill any person anywhere for “national security” reasons—officially making the entire world a U.S. free-fire-zone.[6] The Barack Obama regime, and before it the Bush-Cheney regime, have also supported and protected Israel’s escalated ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and the hostile U.S. actions and threats involving Iran and Syria are closely geared with those of Israel.

Read full article with detailed notes.

2012/10/282012/10/28

Rickard Falkvinge: Wendy Cockcroft on The Next Big Battles – Secret Trade Agreements Bad for People

01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, Commerce, Corporations, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Government, IO Impotency

The Next Big Battles

Posted: 27 Oct 2012 11:26 AM PDT

Activism – Wendy Cockcroft: Since ACTA was decisively beaten on 4th July 2012, the first time a free trade agreement had been scuppered by the people of EU member nations, the big business lobbyists have taken heed and resolved to change in order to be more successful. Hence the secrecy. CETA and the EU-India trade agreement are the next big battles. We need your help.

The term “Free Trade Agreement” is a misnomer. The idea is to remove barriers, taxes, and tariffs, but since people can end up being shackled to a multinational corporation’s agenda, the only freedom is in the ability of the corporations to operate in ways that often end up utterly destroying local economies or harnessing law enforcement agencies to protect their interests. The worst part is that we the taxpayers have to foot the bill for our losses of national sovereignty and civil rights. We saw ACTA off in July, but there are two more major agreements to deal with and we need to be ready to contact our M.E.P.s when the time comes.

Continue reading “Rickard Falkvinge: Wendy Cockcroft on The Next Big Battles – Secret Trade Agreements Bad for People”

2012/10/172012/10/17

NIGHTWATCH: Switzerland Prepares for Refugees & Civil Unrest

01 Poverty, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Transnational Crime, Civil Society, Corruption, Government, Ineptitude, Law Enforcement, Military, Policies

Switzerland: In September, Swiss authorities launched a military exercise to test its preparedness to deal with internal civil unrest as well as refugees from the Eurozone crisis, according to international media.

Comment: The Swiss are not prone to overreact to threats. They do not spend defense funds in order to be prepared for potential threats. They prepare for real threats.

The exercise is significant because it means the Swiss have determined that internal civil unrest coupled with refugees from Eurozone countries represent real threats for which their security forces must be prepared. The Swiss understand the meaning and significance of early warning and know about indicators.

NIGHTWATCH KGS Home

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