VOODOO ECONOMICS: Revealed – the capitalist network that runs the world

  Updated 12:15 24 October 2011 by Andy Coghlan and Debora MacKenzie AS PROTESTS against financial power sweep the world this week, science may have confirmed the protesters’ worst fears. An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global…

How Blackwater Survived Iraq Probes Of Being “Above The Law” – By Threatening To Kill Investigators

Source – zerohedge.com – Just weeks before Blackwater guards fatally shot 17 civilians at Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007, The NY Times reports that the State Department began investigating the security contractor’s operations in Iraq. However, as James Risen reports, a senior official of the notorious private security firm allegedly threatened to kill a government…

Chicago Lamp Posts To Be Fitted With Data-Collection Sensors

Source – chicagotribune.com – Some experts caution that efforts like the one launching here to collect data from people and their surroundings pose concerns of a Big Brother intrusion into personal privacy. In particular, sensors collecting cellphone data make privacy proponents nervous. But computer scientist Charlie Catlett said the planners have taken precautions to design…

16 Ways the Supreme Court Built the Police State and Destroyed Your Rights

Source – activistpost.com, by John W. Whitehead – “[I]f the individual is no longer to be sovereign, if the police can pick him up whenever they do not like the cut of his jib, if they can ‘seize’ and ‘search’ him in their discretion, we enter a new regime. The decision to enter it should…

Consume, Conform, Obey: Homeland Security & The Targeting Of Anti-Consumerist Activities

Source – techdirt.com – At some point in time, the DHS and members of its Joint Terrorism Task Force must have viewed Joe Dante’s John Carpenter’s cult classic “They Live” and saw in it a blueprint for future actions. If you’re not familiar with the premise, an average guy construction worker is given a pair…

CIA Hatched a Plan to Make a Demon ‘Action Figure’ of Osama bin Laden

Source – washingtonpost.com For more than a decade, the CIA has deployed drones, satellites, spies, informants and tracking devices to thwart al-Qaeda in Pakistan. The spy agency also considered a plan to wage war with toys. Beginning in about 2005, the CIA began secretly developing a ­custom-made Osama bin Laden ­action figure, according to people…

Doublespeak – “With mileages of 50, 75, 180 and even 300 MPG, these vehicles ‘don’t meet American standards,’

Source – naturalnews.com – We’ve all heard the negative references to “gas-guzzling SUVs” and Americans’ “reliance on foreign oil,” the inference being that folks living in the U.S. drive too much, and drive vehicles that get horrible gas mileage. Besides the fact that Americans were essentially forced into the driving lifestyle by careless strip mall…

IFR reports record 2013 industrial robot sales & estimates a 12% growth for 2014

Source -.therobotreport.com –  (Happy days are here again – if your a robot) – At a press conference this morning at AUTOMATICA 2014 in Munich, International Federation of Robotics (IFR) President Arturo Baroncelli announced that 179,000 industrial robots were sold in 2013, a 12% jump from 2012 and the highest number of units sold ever.…

Engineered to fail: Why war, drugs, prisons, health care, debt and education are all theatrical scams designed to fail

Source – naturalnews.com – More and more people are wondering today why systems of American government and corporate enterprise don’t seem to be working. The education system fails to educate, the health care system fails to create good health, and the border patrol isn’t even allowed to protect the border. Why are these systems failing…

Report: Middle-class Americans not so middle class – comes in at number 19 for global median wealth

Source – jrn.com  – If you are part of the middle class in the United States, you probably already know this. Even though the United States is among the top five wealthiest nations, America’s middle class is not as well off as you might think. According to the new Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report, the…

Across America, Police Departments Are Quietly Preparing For War

Source: rinf.com – At first blush, the title of this post could be perceived as somewhat hyperbolic by those who still have an impression of America‘s police departments as bastions of safety, designed “to protect and to serve” the population of the “land of the free.” However, said impression would be promptly washed away upon…

What’s the Source of Soaring Corporate Profits? Stagnant Wages

Source: charleshughsmith.blogspot.ca – What if all the low-hanging fruit of outsourcing jobs and financialization have already been plucked by Corporate America? The connection between soaring corporate profits and stagnant wages is both common sense and inflammatory: common sense because less for you, more for me and inflammatory because this harkens back to the core problem…

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is a stockholder in both GEO private prisons, and a top shareholder in the notorious prison profiteer firm – G4S

Source: http://www.addameer.org – British private security company G4S helps the Israeli government to run prisons at which Palestinian political prisoners are detained. Right now, there are more than 5,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails, including 183 children. Human rights organisations have documented widespread torture, including of children, and Palestinians are often held without trial indefinitely. Inside…

Year of the whistleblower: 10 things we didn’t know before Snowden

Source: rt.com/ – Welcome to the post-Snowden era, where everything you say or do can be monitored by secret services – regardless of a court of law. One year on,here are the top 10 revelations showing us how the world has been fundamentally transformed by state snooping. READ MORE: Time to #ResetTheNet and take your…

Amazon to Add 9,000 Robots to Workforce, Ending Great Robot Depression

Source: betabeat.com – Were you hoping Amazon would go away so you could stop buying things you don’t need solely because they come in two days? Oh well. Amazon is about to multiply their robot army times 10, CNN reported. The online retailing giant announced plans to increase their robot workforce to 10,000 by the…

‘The rich think worker insecurity is a good thing’: Chomsky on class warfare in the US

Source: therawstory, by Scott Kaufman  – Noted leftist thinker and pioneering linguist Noam Chomsky recently sat down at the University of California, Santa Barbara, for a wide-ranging discussion titled “Propaganda Vs. Reality.” The host of the event, Professor Jan Nederveen Pieterse, began by noting that there would be, the next day, “a party celebrating the 1…

Secret Military Device Used By Michigan Police – Federal Homeland Security Act bars officials from discussing the “Hailstorm” device

Imagine if you will,  cruising down Woodward Avenue all smiles and sunshine until you see it; that  red, white and blue flicker in your rear-view mirror. The Oakland County Sheriff has abruptly merged behind you. We’ve all felt that initial rush, the terror of being ‘pulled over’ and treated like a child. Whether you’re a sinner or a saint those lights…

THEATER OF THE ABSURD: U.S. Department of Agriculture to purchase submachine guns

Source: healthimpactnews.com – The USDA is militarizing so that it can more efficiently threaten people who grow lemon trees; impose huge fines on people for selling bunnies; confiscate grapes because they can; and destroy the livelihoods of small farmers. The federal government has taken the official position under the Obama Administration that Americans “do not have…

All internet activity now monitored by ‘pre-crime’ algorithms

Source: shtfplan.com – With revelations that the National Security Agency has collected some 20 trillion phone calls and emails via an expansive nationwide surveillance network, most Americans have already come to the realization that everything they do is being monitored. But many shrug off Big Brother’s prying eyes by suggesting that, since they aren’t doing…

US Crime Rates Have Fallen 45% While Incarceration Rates Jumped 222%

  http://wealthydebates.com by Christina Pazzanese, – The Hamilton Project, an economic policy initiative of the Brookings Institution, published a memo earlier this month that highlighted the economic costs of crime and incarceration in the United States. While crime rates have fallen 45 percent since 1990, the memo said that the incarceration rate is now at a “historically…

The Big Secret Behind the Spying Program – Spying Is Meant to Crush Citizens’ Dissent, Not Catch Terrorists

Source: washingtonsblog.com – In his new book, No Place to Hide, Glenn Greenwald writes: The perception that invasive surveillance is confined only to a marginalised and deserving group of those “doing wrong” – the bad people – ensures that the majority acquiesces to the abuse of power or even cheers it on. But that view…

Colonel Wilkerson: Oligarchy Controls U.S. War-Making

Source: WashingtonsBlog – Who Is REALLY Responsible for America’s Wars? Americans are starting to understand that the U.S. is an oligarchy, rather than a democracy or a republic. (Even the chair of the Federal Reserve can’t really disagree.) That’s true of war-making and foreign policy, as well. Consummate insider Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson – former chief…

Today’s 20-year-olds will need over $7 million in savings to have the same lifestyle as someone retiring today with $1 mill. (In 1970, they would only have needed $166,000)

Source: http://newswatch.us, by Mandi Woodruff – For young people just getting their careers off the ground, saving for retirement can often feel like an exercise in futility. There are bills to pay, debt to be tackled, apartments to rent, and social lives to be had. It’s baffling to imagine putting a piece of our precious…

Will Detroit Be The First Major Chinese City In The United States?

  Source: http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com, by Michael Snyder, on May 5th, 201 – Is Detroit destined to become a Chinese city?  Chinese homebuyers and Chinese businesses are starting to flood into the Motor City, and the governor of Michigan is greatly encouraging this.  In fact, he has formally asked the Obama administration for 50,000 special federal immigration…

Right to farm being stripped from Americans: Michigan to criminalize small family farms with chickens, goats, honey bees and more

Source: offthegridnews.com – Many Michigan residents will lose their right to keep livestock on their own property due to a new ruling from the state’s Commission of Agriculture and Rural Development. The Commission ruled April 28 that local governments have the right to ban livestock from any area zoned residential in the state. The action…

How 2014 Is Shaping Up to be the Darkest Money Election to Date

Source: thedailybeast.com – The 2012 election shattered records for dark money—and those records are already falling. How voters are losing out in the flood of cash from groups that don’t disclose their donors. This article is cross-posted at OpenSecrets.org.When it comes to voters’ knowledge about the deep-pocketed donors who are trying to influence their vote,…

Housing Bubble 2.0 Veers Elegantly Toward Housing Bust 2.0

Source:.zerohedge.com – They’re not even trying to blame the weather this time. “Housing affordability is really taking a bite out of the market,” is how Leslie Appleton-Young, chief economist for the California Association of Realtors explained the March home sales fiasco. “We haven’t seen this issue since 2007.” In Southern California, the median price soared…