Freedomshift

Blackstone Group appears to be trying to oligopolize the business of renting single-family homes in the U.S.. As Bloomberg reports , after the housing crash left more than 7 million foreclosed homes in its wake, the investment firm has spent more than $7.8 billion purchasing about 41,000 single-family homes for rental conversion. The world's largest private equity firm has quickly become the largest landlord (of rental homes) in the U.S. and in October, Blackstone offered the first-ever "rental-home-backed" security on Wall Street. Read more: here

Barely half of American Meteorological Society meteorologists believe global warming is occurring and humans are the primary cause, a newly released study reveals. The survey results are the latest in a long line of evidence indicating the frequently asserted global warming consensus does not exist. More than 1,800 Meteorologists The American Meteorological Society, working with experts at George Mason University and Yale University, emailed all AMS members for whom the AMS had a mailing address (excluding associate members and student members) and asked them to fill out an online survey on global warming. More than 1,800 AMS meteorologists filled out the survey, providing a highly representative view of scientists with meteorological, climatological, and atmospheric science expertise Read more: here

Intelligence leaker Edward Snowden "has a point" if his exposure of the NSA's data collection program is upheld by the Supreme Court, talk show host Joe Scarborough said Tuesday. "If, let's say, this is held up to the United States Supreme Court. If somebody exposes, like, something that would be deeply offensive to James Madison and the framers of the Constitution, I think Edward Snowden has a point," Scarborough said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/snowden-whistleblower-morning-joe/2013/12/17/id/542295#ixzz2nkj9gPRl

CHILLICOTHE, OH — The American Drug War claimed another casualty when a woman was shot in the head while sitting on a couch by an incompetent police officer, who fired his weapon through an exterior wall prior to raiding the home. Krystal Barrows from Chillicothe, OH. (Source: Myspace ) At about 10:30 p.m. on December 11th, a group of cops calling themselves the U.S. 23 Task Force swarmed the residence and prepared to break in and capture people for possessing drugs.   One of the officers, Sgt. Brett McKnight, an 11-year-veteran of the Ross County Sheriff’s Office, negligently handled his weapon and fired a round through the exterior wall of the mobile home. The bullet traveled into the residence and struck a woman sitting on a couch.  Krystal Marie Barrows , 35, of Chillicothe, was “in critical condition” and flown by helicopter to Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center, where she died the following day . Read more: here

Fifteen people who had been heading to a wedding in Yemen have been killed in an air strike. Local media reported that a drone attack had been responsible, and the party-goers had been hit instead of an Al-Qaeda convoy. “An air strike missed its target and hit a wedding car convoy, ten people were killed immediately and another five who were injured died after being admitted to the hospital,” a Yemeni security official told Reuters. Five more people were injured in the attack which took place in Radda, central al-Bayda province on Thursday, the source added. The group had been en route to the the village of Qaifa, the site of the wedding, when it was hit. The assault left charred bodies strewn in the road and vehicles on fire, officials told AP. While officials would not identify the source of the air strike, local and tribal media sources attributed the deaths to a drone attack. Read more: here

China just dropped an absolute bombshell, but it was almost entirely ignored by the mainstream media in the United States.  The central bank of China has decided that it is "no longer in China’s favor to accumulate foreign-exchange reserves".  During the third quarter of 2013, China's foreign-exchange reserves were valued at approximately $3.66 trillion .  And of course the biggest chunk of that was made up of U.S. dollars.  For years, China has been accumulating dollars and working hard to keep the value of the dollar up and the value of the yuan down.  One of the goals has been to make Chinese products less expensive in the international marketplace.  But now China has announced that the time has come for it to stop stockpiling U.S. dollars.  And if that does indeed turn out to be the case, than many U.S. analysts are suggesting that China could also soon stop buying any more U.S. debt.  Needless to say, all of this would be very bad for the United States.

It took police about 4 minutes after the first 911 call at 9:35 a.m. Dec. 14, 2012, to arrive at the scene of Sandy Hook Elementary School, and Adam Lanza is believed to have killed himself about a minute after they arrived on scene. Police waited another five minutes before entering the building, where they found 20 children and six educators dead from Lanza’s gunfire and two more educators injured. Police were in part distracted by the scene outside, which included encountering an “unknown male running” along the east side of the school with “something in his hand.” The timeline is detailed in a long-awaited report released by the state’s attorney’s office in Danbury on Monday. Read more: here

There is a reason why US consumer revolving (credit card) credit growth is getting lower and lower and lower and at last check posted a mere 0.2% annual increase . That reason is that as the NY Fed disclosed moments ago , federal student loans officially crossed the $1 trillion level for the first time ever. Notably: the quarterly student loan balance has increased every quarter without fail for the past 10 years ! More here

In her recent hit song “Slow Down,” pop princess Selena Gomez attempts to make TSA molestation sound sexy and trendy. Gomez sings; Now that I have captured your attention. I wanna steal you for a rhythm intervention. Mr. TSA, I’m ready for inspection. Show me how you make a first impression. What kind of sick deviant would think that being groped by a blue-gloved TSA goon could in any way be sexy? What’s next? Is Selena going to regale us with tales of how alluring it is to be molested by a rapist?  More: here

The LAX TSA shooting story is beginning to fall apart as the government and its propaganda dispensing media jostle to exploit the incident as a pretext to further militarize TSA procedures and also demonize official enemies, including Alex Jones and Glenn Beck. In similar fashion to the government generated narrative on the Boston Bombing and “active shooter” incidents over the last two years, the cover story for the murder of a TSA agent in Los Angeles has a number of glaring incongruities and oddities. It was initially reported that the shooter was a fellow TSA agent. “Law enforcement sources told the Los Angeles Times that the gunman was a Transportation Security Administration employee at LAX,” the media reported shortly before noon on Friday. “The gunman was killed by authorities after he opened fire Friday morning. He allegedly shot and killed a fellow TSA employee.” Less than an hour later, it was reported that a “federal law enforcement official said that the

Link: here "We have to pass bill to find out what's in it" - Nancy Pelosi

(CNSNews.com) - Americans who were recipients of means-tested government benefits in 2011 outnumbered year-round full-time workers, according to data released this month by the Census Bureau. They also out-numbered the total population of the Philippines. There were 108,592,000 people in the United States in the fourth quarter of 2011 who were recipients of one or more means-tested government benefit programs, the Census Bureau said in data released this week. Meanwhile, according to the Census Bureau, there were 101,716,000 people who worked full-time year round in 2011. That included both private-sector and government workers. See more at: cnsnews

MONTGOMERY – A homeschooling family from Montgomery, Alabama is wowing many across the nation as six of their ten children have enrolled in college by the age of twelve, and the four remaining hope to do the same. Kip and Mona Lisa Harding state that they are simply raising the “average family,” but credit their children’s success to homeschooling and encouraging their children to pursue their passions at a young age. “We just felt like it was our responsibility,” mother Mona Lisa told reporters about the decision to homeschool. “That’s a big choice, and [we] wanted to be totally in control and make sure they had the right upbringing, and they accelerated because of it.” Read more: here

The government shutdown isn’t slowing down the warmongers.  For example: The CIA is ramping up covert training program for Syrian rebels President Obama has waived a ban on aiding regimes that use child soldiers The Department of Defense awarded 94 new contracts  worth a combined total of more than $5 billion dollars the day right before the government shutdown DoD will continue to award contracts during the shutdown … but will stop publicly announcing them The giant $2 billion dollar NSA spying center in Utah is still opening (the NSA is part of the Department of Defense , which carries out assassination and cyber-warfare campaigns, as well as destroying the privacy of American citizens) As Ron Paul notes , military spending will increase 18% even after the sequestration “cuts”: Read more: here

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Edward Snowden said yesterday: The success of economies in developed nations relies increasingly on their creative output, and if that success is to continue we must remember that creativity is the product of curiosity, which in turn is the product of privacy . He’s right. Anonymity and privacy increase innovation. Anyone who has ever played a musical instrument knows that you need time to experiment and try new things in the privacy of your home – or your band’s garage – in order to improve. If every practice was at Carnegie Hall in front of a big crowd, you would be too self-conscious to experiment and try something new. Same with every other field. Think of an artist painting in the middle of a major museum. Or a beginning programmer (think of a young Bill Gates or Steve Jobs) whose code is being livecast all over the Internet. Or a brilliant inventor (such as a leaner Elon Musk) whose first rough sketch is being dissected in real time. Read more: here

http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/dhs-contingency-plan-component-summaries.pdf

It turns out that the ominous “government shut down” isn’t so apocalyptic after all since it won’t actually shut down government because the vast majority of federal services and activity will continue as normal. Image: Capitol Hill from the Washington Monument. In addition, the same thing has happened – without dire consequences – no less than 17 times over the past three decades. The dispute over Obamacare means it is  “99.9%”  certain that the US government will “shut down” on October 1st because lawmakers have failed to pass legislation that will authorize the government to spend money to fund its operations from the beginning of the new fiscal year. However, as the  Washington Post highlights , the same “shut down” has occurred 17 times since 1977. Most of the previous shut downs lasted from a few hours to a few days. The longest ran for 21 days from December ’96 to January ’97 during the presidency of Bill Clinton. Read more: here

Of course the scumbags redirect their main pages to http://notice.usa.gov/ but of course subdomains are still up.  Purely a pathetic stunt as the parasitic class socializes our health care, begs for more money and the ability to borrow more money from the Chinese. I guess this site is essential? http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/target/moon

A YouTube video went viral over the weekend showing a parent who got violently arrested for expressing his frustrations about the implementation of the Common Core at a public forum Thursday night in the suburbs of Baltimore. Somehow, Ellicott City parent Robert Small was then charged with assaulting a police officer in the second degree, reports The Baltimore Sun . Read more: here

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By: Peter Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific Capital The Fed's failure today to announce some sort of tapering of its QE program, despite the consensus of an overwhelming percentage of economists who expected action, once again reveals the degree to which mainstream analysts have overestimated the strength of our current economy. The Fed understands, as the market seems not to, that the current "recovery" could not survive without continuation of massive monetary stimulus. Mainstream economists have mistaken the symptoms of the Fed's monetary expansion, most notably rising stock and real estate prices, as signs of real and sustainable growth. But the current asset price bubbles have nothing to do with the real economy. To the contrary, they are setting up for a painful correction that will likely be worse than the one we experienced five years ago. Given the strong anticipation for a taper announcement, today's relief rally should come a

Newtown officials violated state law when they refused to release tapes of 911 calls made during the attack at Sandy Hook Elementary School , a Freedom of Information Commission lawyer has ruled in a preliminary report that chastised both Newtown police and state prosecutors. Kathleen K. Ross, a hearing officer with the commission, said Newtown police offered little evidence supporting their contention that the tapes were exempt from release under the state's Freedom of Information laws. Instead, she wrote, the police department merely deferred to state prosecutors, who instructed Newtown to withhold the tapes because they related to an ongoing investigation. Read more: here

http://rememberbuilding7.org/

Militants tell AP reporter they mishandled Saudi-supplied chemical weapons, causing accident Paul Joseph Watson Infowars.com August 30, 201 Syrian rebels in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta have admitted to Associated Press correspondent Dale Gavlak that they were responsible for last week’s chemical weapons incident which western powers have blamed on Bashar Al-Assad’s forces, revealing that the casualties were the result of an accident caused by rebels mishandling chemical weapons provided to them by Saudi Arabia. Image: YouTube “From numerous interviews with doctors, Ghouta residents, rebel fighters and their families….many believe that certain rebels received chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out the (deadly) gas attack,” writes Gavlak. (back up version here ). Rebels told Gavlak that they were not properly trained on how to handle the chemical weapons or even told what they were

Funeral arrangements are underway for a 68-year-old Air Force veteran who was gunned down in his own garage by a young Blount County, Tenn. deputy sheriff.  Henry C. Taylor was inspecting his garage late at night after it had been robbed multiple times in the past week, according to WATE .  Outside, Deputy Ernest Ragland, 22, peeked through the window and spotted Taylor with his handgun.  That’s when Ragland yelled at Taylor before shooting him multiple times, instantly killing the homeowner and veteran. Read more: here

During silver (SLV) and gold's (GLD) terrific move in 2011, very few analysts warned that a correction could come to shakeout all the Johnny come lately's (momentum traders) who were pushing gold and silver to nosebleed levels. I got nervous as hell back in 2011, when the day traders and mass media started picking up the precious metals story and I warned of a correction. In April of 2011 I was interviewed by CBS Marketwatch and was quoted saying, "I am very concerned that silver may be overheating as the herd tries to force their way into this trade." This drastic move higher was to me a warning sign that we may see a significant shakeout. I wrote articles published all throughout the Internet at the end of 2010/2011 warning my readers to protect themselves from a shakeout or correction. See the article entitled, "Is a Healthy Correction Overdue In Gold and Silver?" These same analysts who told you to buy silver in April 2011 or to buy go

Update: In response to EFF's FOIA lawsuit, the government has released the 2011 FISA court opinion  ruling some NSA surveillance unconstitutional. For over a year, EFF has been fighting the government in federal court to force the public release of an 86-page opinion of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). Issued in October 2011, the secret court's opinion found that surveillance conducted by the NSA under the FISA Amendments Act was unconstitutional and violated "the spirit of" federal law. Today, EFF can declare victory: a federal court ordered the government to release records in our litigation, the government has indicated it intends to release the opinion today , and ODNI has called a 3:00 ET press conference to discuss "issues" with FISA Amendments Act surveillance, which we assume will include a discussion of the opinion. Read more: here

LEANDER, TX  — Leander Police went to the home of James and Renata Simmons acting on a warrant for unpaid vehicle registration on June 17, 2013. The warrant, however, was for a completely different town – Cedar Park, TX, and was for a person named Bradly Neal Simpson, someone the Simmons family, who have lived at this address for the past nine years, have never even heard of. Officers walking around the rear of the property saw Vinny, a German Shepherd therapy dog, running free within his fence along with another German Shepherd. Police fired at Vinny, firing 3 times with one bullet hitting him in the back of his neck. Read more: here

Albert Einstein, a man who knew a thing or two about celestial mechanics, supposedly once called compound interest "the most powerful force in the universe." While the remark was likely meant to be funny (astrophysicists can be hilarious), it sheds light on the often overlooked fact that small changes, over time, can yield enormous results. Over eons, small creeks can carve large canyons through solid rock. The same phenomenon may be at work in our economy. A minor, but persistent under-bias in the inflation gauge used in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) may have created a wildly distorted picture of our economic health. It would be impossible to measure the economy without "backing out," inflation. That is why economists are very careful to separate GDP reports into two categories: "nominal" (which are not adjusted for inflation), and real (which are). Only the real reports matter. The big question then becomes, how do we measure inflation? Just as I rep

A leader of the US congressional insurrection against the National Security Agency's bulk surveillance programs has accused his colleagues of withholding a key document from the House of Representatives before a critical surveillance vote. Justin Amash, the Michigan Republican whose effort to defund the NSA 's mass phone-records collection exposed deep congressional discomfort with domestic spying, said the House intelligence committee never allowed legislators outside the panel to see a 2011 document that described the surveillance in vague terms. Read more: here

After Lavabit was forced to halt operations or violate their user's trust, Silentmail also chooses to shut down. Lavabit's statement from lavabit.com: "My Fellow Users, I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit. After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations. I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot. I feel you deserve to know what’s going on--the first amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this. Unfortunately, Congress has passed laws that say otherwise. As things currently stand, I cannot share my experiences over the last six weeks, even though I have twice made the appropriate requests. What’s going to happen now? We’ve already started preparing the paperwork needed to continue to fight for the Const

If you're an air traveler who feels the urge to pull your hair out every time you enter a security line at the airport, you may have considered taking Amtrak or even the bus instead. If so, you may want to scratch that idea. The Transportation Security Administration, you see, is showing up in train terminals. Perhaps you'd rather drive? TSA has not shown itself to be exceptionally useful for thwarting terrorism. It has never caught a terrorist in its airport checkpoints or anywhere else, as far as anyone knows. But the bureaucratic urge to expand cannot be easily suppressed. Lacking evidence of its value in airline terminals, TSA is branching out to other places where it can be equally ineffective. Read more: here

Newly released transcripts of 911 calls made by eyewitnesses to the fatal crash of Rolling Stone journalist Michael Hastings describe the vehicle blowing up, with one noting that a “giant explosion” took place during the incident. Read more: here

The  Free Staters  in New Hampshire are among the express reasons given for why the Concord police department is applying to purchase an armored vehicle.  The Free Staters, who are nonviolent, are  lumped into the category of “domestic terrorism.” For not wanting anyone to use violence.  The relevant portion of the application reads: See it: here

Last week, Justin Amash, the two-term libertarian Republican congressman from Michigan, joined with John Conyers, the 25-term liberal Democratic congressman from the same state, to offer an amendment to legislation funding the National Security Agency (NSA). If enacted, the Amash-Conyers amendment would have forced the government’s domestic spies when seeking search warrants to capture Americans’ phone calls, texts and emails first to identify their targets and produce evidence of their terror-related activities before a judge may issue a warrant. The support they garnered had a surprising result that stunned the Washington establishment. It almost passed. Read more: here

Earlier today, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported that mortgage applications dropped another 1.2%, declining for the sixth consecutive week and the 10th of the past 11, which has all but put a nail in the coffin of the housing "recovery" (for some perspective on why, read this ). But does that mean that as demand for mortgages dries up on even the smallest bounce in interest rates, that unless one is flush with cash, one is shut out of the housing market? Not at all. The reason for that is that as demand for conventional mortgages plunges, demand for un conventional ones - those which marked the mania phase of the last housing bubble, Adjustable Rate Mortgages, are back to 2008 levels. Read more: here

Bullet holes in Michael Hastings car?

There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice. — Charles De Montesquieu Cheye Calvo only intended to be home long enough to grab a bite to eat and walk his dogs. Calvo worked full-time at an educational foundation in Washington, D.C., but he also had an unusual part-time job: he was mayor of the small town of Berwyn Heights, Maryland. In 2004, at age thirty-three, he was the youngest elected mayor in the history of Prince George’s County, Maryland. Now thirty-seven, he lived with his wife, Trinity Tomsic, her mother, Georgia Porter, and their two black labradors, Payton and Chase. Calvo was due back in town later that night for a community meeting. Read more: here

In various articles and in my latest book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism And Economic Dissolution Of The West, I have pointed out that the European sovereign debt crisis is being used to terminate the sovereignty of the countries that are members of the EU. There is no doubt that this is true, but the sovereignty of the EU member states is only nominal. Although the individual countries still retain some sovereignty from the EU government, they are all under Washington’s thumb, as demonstrated by the recent illegal and hostile action taken on Washington’s orders by France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Austria against the airliner carrying Bolivia’s President Evo Morales. Flying back to Bolivia from Moscow, Morales’ plane was denied overflight and refueling permission by Washington’s French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese puppets and had to land in Austria, where the presidential plane was searched for Edward Snowden. It was a power play by Washington to kidna

A Purple Heart Marine was groped and swabbed by TSA agents recently at a California airport while on his way to a ceremony to honor him as veteran of the year in his district. Cpl. Nathan Kemnitz sustained severe injuries from a IED detonation while on duty in Fallujah, Iraq in 2004. While traveling to Sacramento, to receive the award, TSA agents at Sacramento International Airport pulled Kemnitz aside for additional screening. When the screeners ordered him to lift up his arms for a full body scan, the decorated veteran told the TSA goons that because of his injuries, he cannot lift up his right arm. ‘My right arm doesn’t work. It’s a lot of hassle for me to do that,’ Kemnitz told The Military Times. The screeners then proceeded to probe underneath Kemnitz’s medals, while feeling under the Marine’s waistband and swabbing his shoes for explosives. Disgusted with his treatment, Kemnitz’s escort Patricia Martin snapped photos of the search and made them public. Read more: here

Wondering how the blow out in interest rates is impacting commercial banks, which just happen to have substantial duration exposure in the form of various Treasury and MBS securities, not to mention loans, structured products and of course, trillions in IR swap, derivatives and futures? Read more: here

We as a nation had an unparalleled, historic opportunity to set things right in the aftermath of the 2008 financial meltdown. Alas, we blew it. Instead of tearing down what had failed spectacularly, we chose to do more of what failed spectacularly: cartel-crony capitalism, centralized wealth and power and an expansion of our financialized debtocracy. Gordon Long and I discussed this epic miss in  Window of Opportunity: Blown! While it's certainly easy to blame our corrupt, self-serving leadership, we have tolerated their "more of the same." It's been said that a people get the government they can tolerate (as well as the one they deserve), and the American people have tolerated an expansion of everything that is systemically destructive because we dared not risk our share of the Savior State swag. Read more: here

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We were promised by the cognoscenti of PhD economists that higher mortgage rates would not affect the so-called housing recovery. They devoutly prayed to the god of momentum that "rates were still low historically" and "housing is on a self-sustaining path" and numerous other truisms that always fail at the turning points. Well, it appears from mortgage application data that things are not looking so hot. Read more: here

Once again it seems cash is king if the housing recovery is to continue. Despite the surge in prices that we saw yesterday that reflected the long-forgotten days before mortgage rates exploded, the housing recovery meme remains loud and proud. But, mortgage applications are now down for 7 of the last 8 weeks and have collapsed a stunning 29% over that time. - the biggest plunge in 30 months . It appears that the 'rational' buyer has decided that higher rates are not the factor that drives them to snap up that surging priced home? Is it any wonder, as we noted here, in spite of being told every day how 'affordable' housing is with rates this low, their real purchasing power ( given a limited budget as opposed to free money-based finance) has plunged by 16% (for now) . Read more: here

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden said a “continuing litany of lies” from senior U.S. leaders prompted his public uncovering of widespread surveillance of Americans’ phone calls and alleged data sharing between large technology companies and the government. In a two-hour online question-and-answer session on the Guardian website, Snowden was asked about a variety of topics that have surfaced since a June 6 article by the UK newspaper that revealed the extent of data collection against Americans . Snowden, a former NSA contractor in Hawaii working for Booz Allen, re-asserted a number of claims including that NSA analysts have the authority and access to wiretap anyone, that he has had no contact with the Chinese government regardless of his self-imposed exile in Hong Kong, and accused the U.S. government of eroding any chance he had a getting a fair trial by labeling him a traitor. Read more: here

by Walter E. Williams Last week a federal judge ordered Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to allow 10-year-old Sarah Murnaghan, who suffers from cystic fibrosis, to be moved to the adult lung transplant list. That gives her a better chance of receiving a potentially lifesaving transplant. Sarah Murnaghan's fate should force us to examine our organ transplant policy. There are more than 88,000 Americans on the organ transplant waiting list. Roughly 10 percent of them will die before receiving an organ. These lost lives are not so much an act of God as they are an act of Congress because of its 1984 National Organ Transplant Act, as amended, which prohibits payment to organ donors. Reliance on voluntary donations has been an abject policy failure. The mindless

A West Side resident and Iraq War veteran with no criminal record is mourning the loss of his rescue dog who was fatally shot during a Buffalo police narcotics raid that apparently targeted the wrong apartment Monday night. Cindy, a chocolate-brown 2½-year-old pit bull, was shot multiple times while chained up in the kitchen of Adam Arroyo’s apartment on Breckenridge Street near Grant Street, he said in a phone interview. The search warrant that police left for Arroyo, who was not at home at the time of the raid, lists the upper apartment at the Breckenridge Street address, but there are two upstairs apartments at that address, and Arroyo insists that police targeted the wrong apartment. Read more: here

David Francis The Fiscal Times Mon, 03 Jun 2013 00:00 CDT © AP Photo/Gervasio Sanchez    The number of contractors working in Afghanistan now vastly outnumbers American troops stationed there, according to a Congressional Research Service report . CRS, along with the Government Accountability Office , also determined that the Pentagon is unable to properly document the work these contractors are doing. And the information DOD is receiving is often unreliable and inaccurate. According to CRS, there are now 108,000 private workers in Afghanistan, a workforce that dwarfs the 65,700 American troops still stationed there. That means there are 1.6 contractors for every American soldier in Afghanistan. This is an increase from last month, when The Fiscal Times reported that there were 1.4 contractors per American soldier . Given the size of the private forces, it's not surprising that CRS found that in recent years, the Defense Department spent more than any other agency

I knew that, by and large, TSA agents were a dour, rigid lot with no respect for freedom and human dignity, but until I heard about this latest incident, I didn’t know that they were soulless too. In July of last year, Indiana resident John Gross was flying out of Orlando International Airport on a return trip to Indiana with his grandfather’s remains in an air tight glass container clearly marked “Human Remains”. This shouldn’t have been a problem, folks. TSA has rules about this sort of thing and those rules state that crematory remains are allowed in a carry-on but must be able to pass through x-ray machines. TSA policy also states: “Out of respect to the deceased and their family and friends, under no circumstances will an officer open the container even if the passenger requests this be done.” So that was the end of it, right? Wrong. Read more: here

It now seems clear that the Department of Homeland Security’s stockpiling of ammunition and other warfare supplies can no longer be dismissed as “conspiracy theory,” but is a very real development in the actions of an overreaching federal government. Many have suggested and assumed that the ammo and gun shortage experienced across the country is the result of private citizens’ unprecedented purchases, in recent years, in preparation for impending gun control measures. While this is true in part, it is only half of the logical explanation that can be assessed based upon available facts. This phenomenon has been described as creating a perfect storm for private gun owners when paired with the reality that the DHS and other federal agencies are buying up once-available guns and ammunition like never before. Mainstream news sources such as Rawstory and Media Matters have attacked Fox News’ Lou Dobbs and others for their statements affirming that the government has indeed pu

Washington, DC — October 4, 2011 Judicial Watch, the organization that investigates and fights government corruption, announced today that it has  obtained mission expense records and passenger manifests from the United States Air Force  related to the June 21-27, 2011, trip taken by First Lady Michelle Obama, her family and her staff to South Africa and Botswana. Judicial Watch obtained the documents pursuant to an August 19, 2011, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit ( Judicial Watch v. U.S. Air Force  (No. 11-1496)). Judicial Watch is investigating the purpose and itinerary of the trip as well as a breakdown of the costs to taxpayers. On June 28, 2011, Judicial Watch filed a  FOIA request  seeking the mission taskings, transportation records, and passenger manifests for Michelle Obama’s Africa trip. Documents were only provided after Judicial Watch filed suit: According to U.S. Department of Defense’s published hourly rates for the C-32A aircraft used for the t

A Saudi student with what a neighbor described as a “bullet colored” pressure cooker was questioned by the FBI after the Boston bombing, according to Oukaz, a Saudi newspaper.  Armed FBI agents surrounded the apartment block in Michigan where Talal al-Rouki lives.  It turned out the student was cooking a traditional Saudi rice dish called kabsah. He was carrying it in a pressure cooker to a friend’s house when the neighbor saw him and called the authorities. Read more: here

In yet another example of the massive gap between the American people's perception of what is going on around them (whether by propaganda channels or simply cognitive bias) and the actual reality, Reuters reports that while gun-related homicides are down 39% from the 1993 peak, only 12% of people believe that gun crimes have fallen . Non-fatal firearm crimes declined by 69% to 467,300 in the same period but 56% of Americans believe that gun crime is higher now than it was 20 years ago , the Pew Research Center said its poll showed. The dichotomy between record food stamp usage (and non-employment) and multi-year highs in consumer sentiment comes to mind - we wonder which is more 'real'. Highlights of the report: Firearm-related homicides declined 39%, from 18,253 in 1993 to 11,101 in 2011. Nonfatal firearm crimes declined 69%, from 1.5 million victimizations in 1993 to 467,300 victimizations in 2011. For both fatal and nonfatal firearm victimizations, the majo

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-05-07/visualizing-collapse-fiat-currencies

The police involved the manhunt for the alleged Boston Bombers are now under investigation for unprovoked shootings at other officers which until now have been blamed on the alleged bombing suspects.  For those who listened to the live radio transcripts this is just one of numerous scandals that occurred.  Some provocateur announced over the radio that the suspects had stolen a black State Police SUV which never happened. Read more: Here

We should know at this point that when the government sets out to create an "ownership society" through market and monetary intervention this outcome would be no surprise........... When it comes to the US housing market there appear to be three groups of people: those who who have either unlimited cash and/or access to credit, and like the most rabid of bubble-chasing speculators, are perfectly happy to engage in a game of Flip That House for a short-term profit pending the discovery of a greater fool (often times converting the house into rental properties as numerous hedge funds have been doing on cost-free basis courtesy of the government's REO-To-Rent program) - they are the vast minority of speculators; then there are those who currently rent and are opportunistically looking at home prices, willing to dip their toe at the right price - these too are few and far between and mostly represent a function of the natural growth of the US household offset by

Three days ago we pointed out that while the story surrounding the alleged Boston Bombers had many gaping holes in it while it was being made up in process, following the filing of the official sworn FBI affidavit making things up out of thin air would become far more complicated. Sure enough, one specific section in the 11 page sworn testimony caught our attention: the one discussing the capture of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev following the boat "shootout". Read more: here

A 61-year-old man was shot to death by police while his wife was handcuffed in another room during a drug raid on the wrong house.  Police admitted their mistake, saying faulty information from a drug informant contributed to the death of John Adams Wednesday night. They intended to raid the home next door.  The two officers, 25-year-old Kyle Shedran and 24-year-old Greg Day, were placed on administrative leave with pay. Read more: here

As we have discussed numerous times over the past year, there is a quiet movement among the world's central banks to diversify their reserves away from the pejorative USD. Whether it is direct trade linkages, hording physical precious metals, or simply buying foreign sovereign debt, there is a trend emerging. The latest defection, as BusinessWeek reports , is Australia's plan to invest about 5% of foreign currency reserves in China . Read more: here

This is what America looks like under martial law: Read more: here

When the law gets bent out of shape for him, it’s easier to bend out of shape of the rest of us. By Emily Bazelon Posted Friday, April 19, 2013, at 11:29 PM Dzhokhar Tsarnaev will not hear his Miranda rights before the FBI questions him Friday night. He will have to remember on his own that he has a right to a lawyer, and that anything he says can be used against him in court, because the government won’t tell him. This is an extension of a rule the Justice Department wrote for the FBI—without the oversight of any court—called the “public safety exception.” There is one specific circumstance in which it makes sense to hold off on Miranda. It’s exactly what the name of the exception suggests. The police can interrogate a suspect without offering him the benefit of Miranda if he could have information that’s of urgent concern for public safety. That may or may not be the case with Tsarnaev. The problem is that Attorney General Eric Holder has stre

Kim Dotcom really is his name these days. He had it legally changed. The federal government shut down his enormously profitable file-sharing business in 2011. It won’t shut down his latest version of file-sharing.His new company, Mega, offers 100% encryption. His company can’t crack it. The U.S. government can’t crack it – not at a price it can afford, anyway. So people can post movies, songs, or anything else on his site. You get 50 megabytes of free storage to start out. His lawyers can now say this: “Our company will cooperate with the governments of the world. But, sorry, we have no idea what people are putting into their accounts.” The federal government opened a gigantic can of worms when it did Hollywood’s bidding and shut him down. It made him mad. He decided to get revenge. Read more: here

** Compare the photos of the bag remains to the contractor's bag with the white square tag ** Paul Joseph Watson Infowars.com April 17, 2013 UPDATE: FBI briefing on Boston bombings postponed. The FBI said it “needs more time to prepare” before speaking to the media. Struggling to get their narrative straight in the aftermath of numerous men with backpacks being identified? Photos collated on the 4chan website show numerous images of suspicious individuals wearing large backpacks present at the scene of the Boston Marathon bombings. Three of the men appear to be Arab or Middle Eastern in appearance, whereas another two of the individuals are white. The images show the men looking away from the marathon runners, talking on cellphones and running from the scene immediately after the blast. Remains of one of the backpacks are also photographed yards from where one of the bombs exploded. The FBI states that at least one of the pressure cooker devices used in th

The US government is already fighting wars on several fronts, including the perpetual War on Terror. "War is the health of the state," as Randolph Bourne stated, and the state has never been healthier , using this variety of opponents as excuses to increase surveillance, curtail rights and expand power. Bruce Schneier highlights a piece written by Molly Sauter for the Atlantic which poses the question, " If hackers didn't exist, would the government have to invent them? " The government certainly seems to need some sort of existential hacker threat in order to justify more broadly/badly written laws (on top of the outdated and overbroad CFAA). But the government's portrayal of hackers as "malicious, adolescent techno-wizards, willing and able to do great harm to innocent civilians and society at large," is largely false. If teen techno-wizards aren't taking down site after site, how is all this personal information ending up in hac