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Saturday, October 16, 2010

The Chamber of Corruption - 3

In this series we focus on the sham organization "U.S. Chamber of Commerce" (The Chamber), that is more and more becoming a political action committee in disguise.

In this post we will focus on foreign copy cat chambers in the middle east that have a common addiction with The Chamber, namely, oil-power addiction.

These foreign copy cat chambers exist to perpetuate the addiction to oil and war, but above all to profit from those addictions.

Take for example one foreign copy cat chamber entity from that region, an entity that works very closely with The Chamber.

First notice some of the founding members of that foreign nation's copy cat chamber:
Bechtel, The Boeing Company, BP, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Fluor Corporation, General Dynamics, General Electric, Goldman Sachs, Halliburton, KBR, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon ...
(U.S.-U.A.E. Business Council, Founding Members). Their stated aim and purpose is:
The U.S.-U.A.E. Business Council provides its diverse membership unparalleled access to senior decision makers in business and government in the U.A.E. and in the U.S.
(U.S.-U.A.E. Business Council, About, emphasis added). Read a Dredd Blog post that points out we should now know how Dubai came to be characterized by:
Who rules the nation that has the largest man made harbor on earth and the busiest U.S. Navy port of call?

Who rules the nation that was given permission to take over a military hardware producing U.S. company?

Who rules the nation that has the tallest building on earth?

Who rules the nation that has the largest airport in the world?

Who rules the nation that received billions of U.S. taxpayer money in the TARP bailout?

Who rules the nation that has the headquarters for Dick Cheney's company Halliburton?

Who rules the nation where AIG did a lot of shady business?

Who rules the nation that would have ruled over U.S. ports if Bush II had his way?

Who rules the nation that has luxurious villas purchased by U.S. taxpayer dollars, gushing from the U.S. Treasury into Afghanistan, then to this ruler's realm?
(The Islamic Ruler of Dubai). The Chamber has been expanding into the middle east for some time, and continues to do so:
Ambassador Shaun Donnelly ... is the new vice president for Middle East Affairs ... He was also a career diplomat for over 35 years in the Foreign Service, where he rose to become U.S. ambassador ... and later an assistant U.S. Trade Representative for the Middle East ... Donnelly will be responsible for the Chamber’s overall engagement in the Middle East, including expanding relationships with American Chambers of Commerce ... in the region.
(The Chamber Website). Some are all aTwitter about a small think progress contribution these mid eastern folk have made to U.S. elections through their comrades in The Chamber.

But I like to remember Bush II holding hands with them as the big picture in all of this.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

Friday, October 15, 2010

Banker Jekyll Will Hyde Your Money - 6

In this series we have been dealing with the things the public does not know about the way the banksters have conducted themselves in closed, smoky back rooms where "the real deals are made".

For a few examples, see: Banker Jekyll Will Hyde Your Money - 5, Banker Jekyll Will Hyde Your Money - 4, Banker Jekyll Will Hyde Your Money - 3, Banker Jekyll Will Hyde Your Money - 2, Banker Jekyll Will Hyde Your Money, Getting Caught Is The Only No No, and Banque AIG & Family.

Now we focus on one of the many aftermaths of that debacle, the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. (MERS) potential catastrophe:
The growing furor in the United States over improper foreclosure documents is focusing intense attention on MERS, a mortgage-record service company that tracks more than 60 million mortgages.

Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems has filed thousands of foreclosure actions around the country on behalf of lenders. Its right to do that is under challenge. Several courts around the country recently have ruled that MERS lacks the right to file such cases. Federal regulators say they are investigating its role. On Tuesday JPMorgan disclosed that it had stopped using MERS.
(Reuters, emphasis added). I read some depositions of MERS officials to come out with the impression that it borders on sham, has a fundamental flaw in its concepts, and should be avoided until massive repair is done.

I don't like the avoidance of the filing of deeds and such in county records of the state where the real property is located, because that system is far more safe and secure.

The officials under oath intimated that one of the purposes of creating MERS was to avoid state filing fees, but a closer look indicates that there is more to it than that.

The potential catastrophe caused by this drive-thru McMortgage approach is made apparent by the fact that state laws govern much of the scenario, and those state laws can vary:
MERS was convenient for the mortgage industry, but courts are now questioning the impact of all of this financial juggling when it comes to mortgage ownership. To foreclose on real property, the plaintiff must be able to establish the chain of title entitling it to relief. But MERS has acknowledged, and recent cases have held, that MERS is a mere “nominee” — an entity appointed by the true owner simply for the purpose of holding property in order to facilitate transactions. Recent court opinions stress that this defect is not just a procedural but is a substantive failure, one that is fatal to the plaintiff’s legal ability to foreclose.

That means hordes of victims of predatory lending could end up owning their homes free and clear — while the financial industry could end up skewered on its own sword.
...

The latest of these court decisions came down in California on May 20, 2010, in a bankruptcy case called In re Walker, Case no. 10-21656-E–11. The court held that MERS could not foreclose because it was a mere nominee; and that as a result, plaintiff Citibank could not collect on its claim. The judge opined:
Since no evidence of MERS’ ownership of the underlying note has been offered, and other courts have concluded that MERS does not own the underlying notes, this court is convinced that MERS had no interest it could transfer to Citibank. Since MERS did not own the underlying note, it could not transfer the beneficial interest of the Deed of Trust to another. Any attempt to transfer the beneficial interest of a trust deed without ownership of the underlying note is void under California law.
(Power Teams). A case in The Supreme Court of Maine is to the same effect, meaning this is an issue that is as serious as a heart attack.

A blog The Home Equity Theft Report specializes in these and similar issues, and Huffington Post has a post discussing other effects of the problem.

There is little wonder why a Gallup Poll shows that about half of the country thinks the federal government (a.k.a. Department of Just Us) is a danger to the well being of American citizens.

The banks of the banksters are "too big to fail", the banksters are too big to jail, just as the Circle W Cowboys like it.

Perhaps this is a Pogo moment for the government to realize that all these endless wars should cause some self-reflection to come up with the realization "we have met the enemy and it is us".

The next post in this seris is here, the previous post in this series is here.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

A Methanol Economy Way Out Of Here - 2

In the first post of this series, we touched upon the subject of methanol as well as "a methanol economy".

Of course methanol was confused with ethanol as usual, but the two are worlds apart, even though they are from the same chemical "family".

This subject is timely again because our laws have just changed to allow 15% ethanol ("E15" is 15% ethanol, "M15" is 15% methanol) to be used in fuels distributed and sold "at the pump".

We will also discuss the economic energy wars, a struggle of propaganda vs. reality, a struggle between big oil propaganda vs. science, the people, and progressive government officials.

We are already covering, in another Dredd Blog series (The Peak of The Oil Wars), the military invasion type of economic wars that are taking place world wide, or have already taken place, but are now presented in the corporate media as aftermath.

The graphic above is the cover of a book written primarily by Nobel Prize winning scientist Dr. George Olah, a book which has been reviewed in technical publications.

For those who don't want to read a book about it, there is a Wikipedia Article that deals with the issue.

This morning the program Morning Joe, on MSNBC, continued the long term propaganda campaign designed by its owners, General Electric (GE), which is "owned" by the Pentagon.

Bush II regime officials were on that program casting the propaganda campaign around, a propaganda campaign we had coincidently posted about just yesterday concerning The Iraq Oil War, and the Bush II regime's part in it.

We also characterize the oil baron side of the economic wars as MOMCOM in a previous series.

The battle lines show that MOMCOM has the other side outnumbered a hundred to one, meaning that civilization as we know it is not represented equally and fairly in these wars, so civilization will lose this war.

The irony is that as civilization goes down it will take MOMCOM down with it, sorta like a mass murder-suicide case.

Some song lyrics seem appropriate:
Sometimes I feel so low-down and disgusted
Can't help but wonder what's happening
to my companions
Are they lost or are they found,
have they counted the cost it'll take to bring down
All their earthly principles
they're gonna have to abandon ?
There's slow, slow train coming up around the bend.

...

All that foreign oil controlling American soil
Look around you,
it's just bound to make you embarrassed
Sheiks walking around like kings,
wearing fancy jewels and nose rings
Deciding America's future
from Amsterdam and to Paris
And there's slow, slow train coming up around the bend.

...

Well, my baby went to Illinois
with some bad-talking boy she could destroy
A real suicide case,
but there was nothing I could do to stop it
I don't care about economy,
I don't care about astronomy
But it's sure do bother me
to see my loved ones turning into puppets
There's slow, slow train coming up around the bend.
(Slow Train, Bob Dylan). In conclusion, the bottom line is:
1) there are methanol, ethanol, solar, wind, and other ways to avoid the demise of current civilization,

2) MOMCOM rejected them in favor of an oil addiction death,

3) which shows MOMCOM is criminally insane,

4) MOMCOM has the blood guilt on its hands for the murder of an entire civilization.
The guilt belongs to all governments of all nations who do not want to end their denial, and who choose triage as the future of their countries.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Iraq: World's Number One Oil Producer? - 2

Dredd Blog was considered, by many in the MSM (main stream media) to be loony for thinking Iraq would be the number one oil producer in a short amount of time (even though entities like Lloyd's of London did a study which spawned the basis for that "idea").

Especially since we then went even further to post Iraq: World's Number One Oil Producer?, some felt we had gone over the top.

Can you imagine the MSM scorn toward a lowly blog like ours that dares to consider the possibility that the Afghanistan and Iraq wars had anything at all to do with oil?

I mean, Dredd Blog even did a series The Peak of The Oil Wars, culminating so far in The Peak of The Oil Wars - 3, explaining that we are in the middle of the wars to perpetuate the oil / war addiction until civilization as we know it is destroyed.

In the very near term, an utterly "new reality" may be emerging:
1) now that the Withdrawal of the Meaning of Combat has taken place;

2) the media of MOMCOM is not reporting the Iraq War any more;

3) except as something that is over and done with.
In this new emerging reality that is being invented out of whole cloth, stories about Iraq oil fields will come out as if they are normal business news unrelated to any notions of war.

For example, consider a couple of embryonic stories:
The revival in Iraqi oil production will be a "game-changer" for global oil supplies and a challenge for other big oil producers like Saudi Arabia, the International Energy Agency said Tuesday
(Wall Street Journal). Lets go on to consider the following as well:
Iraq's oil production is increasingly important to meet world energy demand, industry executives meeting in London said Tuesday ...
(Chicago Tribune). You can consider those articles to be talking about the important oil business of Iraq can't you?

Can you say "what Iraq war"?

The whole war episode may be played out after the fact as something that heroically saved the nation from a catastrophe caused by peak oil.

Especially "since all that pie in the sky lefty Al Gore green energy is a thousand years in the future".

The billboard sign of Bush II in Texas asking "Do you miss me yet" will take on a new meaning, and he may be seen as a hero who had the vision to save the nation.

Except to people who are not brain dead to the science, except to people who know that global warming and global climate change are caused by the use of the fossil fuels MOMCOM invaded Afghanistan and Iraq to steal and plunder.

That W "vision" now binds civilization to its own demise as addicts to war and oil consumption.

On the bottom line it deceives and enslaves us with State Crimes Against Democracy (SCAD).

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

The Chamber of Corruption - 2

In the first post in this series, we pointed out that the "U.S. Chamber of Commerce" is a right-wing political propaganda arm of the neoCon warmongers who are ravaging the U.S. Treasury.

They want the congress, the presidency, and "their" country "back" (backwards about a century type of "back").

The neoCon campaign to T-bag the judiciary has worked as planned since The Supreme Five cast their 5 votes for Bush II in the infamous Bush v Gore case.

Since then the rich have gotten more of American wealth than ever before, through the endless wars that plunder money from the taxpayer's treasury to put it into the bank accounts of those who have no honest need for it.

The recent judicial activism of The Supreme Five unleashed foreign money into the election cycle, via The U.S. Chamber of Corruption (a.k.a. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce), as this blog expected and predicted in our post Foreign Citizens United vs FEC.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

Monday, October 11, 2010

The Empire Strikes Back - 4

We have been doing a series about how the federal government strikes at those who would oppose or shine light on its indiscretions.

We have been calling those indiscretions State Crimes Against Democracy (SCAD) at times, propaganda at other times, but in reality they are functionally one and the same.

For example, is the discussion about election system vulnerabilities or foreign money used in our elections talking about SCAD, propaganda, or both?

On the bottom line either SCAD or propaganda creates a bi-partisan concern.

Some of the various posts have pointed out that both left leaning and right leaning news sources have fingered then reported on inexplicable events that reveal massive flaws in the 9/11 Commission Report.

A recent example is the book censorship by the Pentagon brought about by their purchase of all copies of a book at taxpayer expense then burning them, thereby stopping the public from knowing what is in that book.

The book concerns one of the many 9/11 cover ups involving one of the many formats of the propaganda storm surrounding that game changer.

What will probably be considered most strange about this latest censorship is the fact that Fox News is the source for this seemingly leftie type of investigative journalism:
A document obtained and witnesses interviewed by Fox News raise new questions over whether there was an effort by the Defense Department to cover up a pre-9/11 military intelligence program known as "Able Danger."

At least five witnesses questioned by the Defense Department's Inspector General told Fox News that their statements were distorted by investigators in the final IG's report -- or it left out key information, backing up assertions that lead hijacker Mohammed Atta was identified a year before 9/11.
(Fox News Exclusive, emphasis added). A book by John Farmer indicates that even 9/11 commissioners know they were lied to by the government, causing them to cast doubt in whole or in part on their own report's validity now:
The 9/11 Commission now tells us that the official version of 9/11 was based on false testimony and documents and is almost entirely untrue. The details of this massive cover-up are carefully outlined in a book by John Farmer, who was the Senior Counsel for the 9/11 Commission.
(Salem News, The Ground Truth, by John Farmer, emphasis added). Those who read Dredd Blog know that we do not think any "government" black flag op is an act of the entire government, but instead that these types of activity are rogue operations conducted by only a segment within the whole government.

Of course it is extremely rare for all congress members to agree on anything, the same goes for the entire government, or even the entire nation for that matter.

So, the bottom line in this type of inquiry is really "were enough people with authority involved so there could be an application of accountability", should the act be found to have been illegal later on.

(You know, the evil side of the force vs. the good side of the force type of thingy).

The 9/11 episode is unique in that there is an almost universal outrage in the MSM (main stream media) against those questioning the official 9/11 Commission version, even though the commissioners themselves question the official conspiracy theory itself.

Go figure.

Dredd Blog takes the position that the nation has suffered too much mental, emotional, and other damage from government propaganda to be able to deal with much if any SCAD episode effectively these days.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

Sunday, October 10, 2010

You're Doin' A Heckuva Job Browner

This blog was validated by certain Presidential Commission findings concerning the handling of the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, as we reported recently.

That report concerned the aftermath of the event, so in this post we will discuss the validation of Dredd Blog's having gone ballistic prior to the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe.

We went ballistic the very day President Obama announced the lifting of the presidential ban on offshore, deep-water oil drilling.

That was about one month prior to the beginning of the disaster that continues to poison the Gulf of Mexico with the deadly carcinogenic toxins still there.

In the president's announcement photo-op, shown in the photo (Mickey Mouse ears and "W" added by Dredd Blog) was made at a military base in Alaska, the home of "drill baby drill" Sarah Palin.

Dredd Blog immediately posted an admittedly radical post, where we raked President Obama over the coals, specifically stating:
He made a pronouncement that drilling for oil in the waters near the coast of the Atlantic and other places is the right thing to do.

In effect, Sarah Palin and the oil barons are right he said, reversing yet another campaign talking point made not long ago.

Offshore drilling has been banned in those areas for decades, but is coming to an end, even though he said he would not do that when he asked for our votes.
(Extinction Clock Nears Midnight - 2). That is a serious charge, so this post will now back it up.

The New Yorker has a fabulous piece which validates these charges Dredd Blog has made, as it validates the title of this post:
In Barack Obama’s primary-campaign victory speech, in St. Paul, Minnesota, he said that his election would be a historical turning point on two pressing issues: health care and climate change. “We will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick,” he said. “When the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” During the campaign, he often argued that climate change was an essential part of a national energy strategy. “Energy we have to deal with today,” Obama said in a debate with McCain. “Health care is priority No. 2.
(As The World Burns, emphasis added). One immediately wonders "how did that policy directive and campaign promise get turned upside down and inside out so quickly?"

We now have the answer.

First of all, that New Yorker article also explains that the climate legislation, which was to implement the campaign promise, was in reality only actor's make up for senators, Graham, Lieberman, and Kerry, who were pushing the legislation.

To them it was quite important for them to look good first, the Earth and life upon it seemed to be a distant factor in their "mind".

Thus, the typical, mindless, back-room trade deals ended up being the beginning of the capitulation of the democrats to the neoCon republicans, which led to a "strategy":
The strategy had risks, including the possibility that expanded drilling off America’s coast could lead to a dangerous spill. But Browner, the head of the E.P.A. for eight years under Clinton, seemed to think the odds of that were limited. “Carol Browner says the fact of the matter is that the technology is so good that after Katrina there was less spillage from those platforms than the amount you spill in a year filling up your car with gasoline,” the White House official said. “So, given that, she says realistically you could expand offshore drilling.”
(ibid, emphasis added). Wow, Browner had her facts about Katrina all wrong, because Katrina caused major oil and gas spills, destroying large numbers of platforms, damaging many others, as it broke oil and gas pipelines too:
113 platforms totally destroyed, and - more importantly - 457 pipelines damaged, 101 of those major lines with 10" or larger diameter. At least 741,000 gallons were spilled from 124 reported sources (the Coast Guard calls anything over 100,000 gallons a "major" spill).
(Sky Truth). Take note that Carol Browner is the Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change, and that she should be fired yesterday.

Now, not only do we have an ongoing, terrible soap opera As The World Burns, a sequel to Dumb & Dumber as the Earth gets Brown & Browner, but we have institutionalized criminal insanity.

Therefore, Dredd Blog will continue to point out how the federal and state governments are doin' a heckuva job using The W Compass, moving the nation closer to the day when climate change policy will be summed up with the word "triage".

The next post in this series is here.