Is Obama a Marxist or Socialist? None, he works for the Bankers

July 31, 2010 1 Comment

When it comes to who the president serves, Obama is no different from Bush, Clinton, Bush Sr., Carter or Reagan

Kurt Nimmo

Glenn Beck, the Fox News talking heads, and no shortage of Tea Party activists like to characterize Barry Obama as a Marxist. In an article gaining a lot of traction across the blogosphere, Wayne Allyn Root, who considers himself a Libertarian Republican, says Obama is purposely overwhelming the U.S. economy to create systemic failure in order to turn the U.S. into a socialist/Marxist state.

Obamacare, cap-and-trade, legalizing 12 million illegal aliens, increased taxation, and endless bailouts and stimulus boondoggles, Root argues, are schemes designed to overwhelm the system and pave the way for a Marxist takeover of America.

It cannot be denied these schemes will destroy America. It also cannot be denied they are intentional. However, it has nothing to do with Marxism.

Marx advocated a proletarian revolution. He said that in order to overcome the restraint of private property the working class must seize political power through a social revolution and expropriate the capitalist classes around the world and place the productive capacities of society into collective ownership. Marx said the ultimate goal is a a classless and stateless form of communism beneficial to the interests of the proletariat or the working class.

Is it possible the Federal Reserve and Goldman Sachs operatives in the Obama administration truly desire a communist revolution as Glenn Beck and Wayne Allyn Root insist?

During the 2008 election cycle, Goldman Sachs donated nearly a million bucks to Obama. Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase donated nearly $1.5 million to the Obama campaign while Morgan Stanley pitched in over a half million dollars. “When you break it out by individual companies, you find that employees of Goldman Sachs gave more to Obama than workers of any other employer. The Goldman Sachs geniuses are followed by employees of the University of California, UBS, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, National Amusements, Lehman Brothers, Harvard and Google. At many of these workplaces, Obama has a three- or four-to-one fund-raising advantage over McCain,” the New York Times wrote on July 1, 2008.

Is it possible all these folks are clueless about the supposed Marxist philosophy of Obama? Is it possible transnational corporations and international banks savvy enough to game the system for trillions of dollars support a communist system that would ultimately strip them of that wealth?

Goldman along with the Federal Reserve rule the Obama administration. William C. Dudley was the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and a partner and managing director at Goldman. Gary Gensler, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, spent 18 years at Goldman. Mark Patterson, chief of staff to Tim Geithner, is a former Goldman lobbyist. Philip Murphy, nominated for ambassador to Germany, is a former Goldman executive. Diana Farrell, deputy director of the National Economic Council, is a former Goldman employee. Emil Michael, White House fellow, used to be an investment banker at Goldman.

Obama functionaries are connected to the CFR and the Trilateral Commission, two organizations established to implement world government. Tim Geithner, Susan Rice, Pete Peterson, Gen. James Jones, Thomas Donilion, Paul Volker, Dennis Blair, Richard Haass, Dennis Ross, Richard Holbrooke and others have connections to the Trilateral Commission, the Federal Reserve, the CFR, and Bilderbergers.

“We can be quite sure that somewhere between 400 to 500 high-level members of the Obama administration will be members of the CFR. How can we say that? Because that’s about how many CFR members occupy the current Bush administration (beginning with Vice President Dick Cheney, an in-again, out-again member of the CFR board of directors). And about the same number occupied posts in the Clinton administration,” John F. McManus wrote in November of 2008 after Obama was selected to be the front man for the banksters.

Obama’s mischaracterized socialism is a control mechanism created by the bankers. It has nothing to do with liberating downtrodden workers. The Soviet system was financed by Wall Street, as Rep. Louis T. McFadden, chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee throughout the 1920-30s, explained: “The course of Russian history has, indeed, been greatly affected by the operations of international bankers… The Soviet Government has been given United States Treasury funds by the Federal Reserve Board… acting through the Chase Bank.”

The late Antony Sutton’s exhaustive research demonstrates how Wall Street bankers supported and financed the Russian revolution, supported the Soviet Union financially, technologically and military both before and after the Second World War, and also supported Hitler and Nazi Germany financially and military both before and during the Second World War.

The monopoly men who exported jobs from America to slave labor gulags in China and are now in the process of looting the financial system are not dedicated Marxists. The late Gary Allen wrote:

If you wanted to control the nation’s manufacturing, commerce, finance, transportation and natural resources, you would need only to control the apex, the power pinnacle, of an all-powerful socialist government. Then you would have a monopoly and could squeeze out all your competitors. If you wanted a national monopoly, you must control a national socialist government. If you want… a worldwide monopoly, you must control a world socialist government. That is what the game is all about. “Communism” is not a movement of the downtrodden masses but is a movement created, manipulated and used by power-seeking billionaires in order to gain control over the world…. first by establishing socialist governments in the various nations and then consolidating them all through a “Great Merger,” into an all-powerful world, socialist super-state.

The Obama banker-CFR-Trilat-Bilderberg administration is the process of forging this “Great Merger” and is moving inexorably toward an all-powerful world, socialist super-state. Obama’s socialism will not emancipate the workers of America. It will further impoverish and enslave them.

As we approach the mid-term elections, the deceptive claim that Obama is a Marxist will pick up steam and will be exploited by the Tea Party movement as it attempts to get Republicans masquerading as patriots and constitutionalists elected to office.

Glenn Beck and Wayne Allyn Root need to reexamine and stop chanting the ludicrous Obama is a Marxist mantra and point out what Obama really is — a sock puppet reading a teleprompter for his employer: the control freaks at the international banks and multinational corporations.

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Gaúchos sendo pulverizados como Baratas

July 31, 2010

Por Luis R. Miranda
The Real Agenda
Julho 31, 2010

Ha algumas semanas os cidadãos do Rio Grande do Sul, mais especificamente, São Leopoldo e cidades vizinhas foram despertados para a realidade das Trilhas Químicas. Em 03 de junho de 2010, centenas testemunharam a pulverização maciça de produtos químicos sobre o céu azul de suas cidades. As trilhas expandiram-se rapidamente e causaram a turvação dos céus. Pouca ou nenhuma atenção foi dada pela imprensa local e regional, e as notas e cometários escritos sobre o assunto foram pouco explicativas. Mais trilhas químicas foram vistas no céu quase diariamente desde 03 de junho.

Trilhas químicas são uma combinação de produtos químicos pulverizados por aviões. Estes produtos químicos são adicionados ao combustível dos aviões, ou armazenados em tanques a bordo dos aviões para ser lançado sobre as cidades e vilas. A meta estabelecida desta prática é criar teias de nuvens artificiais que podem-se expandir no céu para refletir a luz do sol. Os cientistas vêem as trilhas químicas como uma forma de retardar ou parar os efeitos do aquecimento global antropogênico. Em muitos países, as empresas privadas oferecem flotilhas de aviões especialmente concebidos para realizar a pulverização em massa em grandes áreas, mas também é sabido que os governos operam aviões, ou pedem para o exército executar a pulverização.

O problema é que, mesmo se o aquecimento global fosse real, bloqueando o sol não iria fazer nada para detê-lo, porque o dióxido de carbono que os globalistas e os burocratas culpam o CO2 pelo aquecimento, este não vem do sol, mas da biosfera. O aquecimento global antropogênico foi provado uma farsa, porque os cientistas mentiram e usaram dados falsos para apoiar suas conclusões. O auge do escândalo do falso aquecimento global culminou quando centenas de e-mails e milhares de documentos da Universidade de East Anglia foram publicados. Esses e-mails e documentos provaram que os cientistas da ONU e do IPCC haviam manipulado informações para esconder o fato que o planeta Terra tinha se esfriado na última década.

O escândalo conhecido como Climategate, acabou com o acordo de Copenhague no início de 2010 devido ao fato que os países em desenvolvimento aprenderam as mentiras sobre o que o Tratado de Copenhague queria implementar. Nenhum acordo foi alcançado na Dinamarca.

Em 30 de julho de 2010, uma enorme trilha quúmica foi vista novamente sobre São Leopoldo. Uma única trilha química tornou um céu azul e claro em um nebuloso em questão de minutos. A trilha química começou como uma pluma única e, em seguida, estendeu-se para os lados até que cobriu parcialmente o sol. Não muito tempo depois, o céu estava coberto por uma névoa e uma hora e meia mais tarde, o céu sobre a cidade ficou parcialmente nublado ao invés de azul e claro como estava pouco antes do meio-dia.

Alguns dos produtos químicos pulverizados em trilhas químicas são bário, alumínio e enxofre. Em outros países, a pulverização dos produtos químicos criou uma pandemia de doenças respiratórias na população que é pulverizada. Uma das conseqüências mais perigosas da pulverização é a doença Morgellons. É uma infecção que parece parasitária, que literalmente faz que a pele da pessoa infectada tenha a sensação que insetos caminham sobre eles. A doença já foi encontrada em milhares de pacientes na Flórida, Texas e Califórnia. “Eu estava na cama e senti como se um exército de formigas rastejava sobre a cama, e todo o meu corpo”, diz um sofredor da doença Morgellons. “Ela nunca vai embora”, diz outro. “Não morre, não desaparece.”

Entre alguns dos principais problemas das trilhas químicas estão: alterações neurológicas e comportamentais, comprometimento da circulação sanguínea, problemas cardíacos, doenças nos olhos e a visão, problemas reprodutivos, danos ao sistema imunológico, gastrintestinal, danos ao fígado e da função renal, deficiências de audição, distúrbios do metabolismo, lesões dermatológicas, asfixia (muitas vezes confundidas com alergias) e embolia pulmonar. “Sabemos também que determinados tipos de produtos químicos podem prejudicar a saúde humana e dos animais, especialmente o sistema imunológico,” diz a médica Ilya Sandra Perlingieri. “Os perigos nas mudanças hormonais são agora mais plenamente explicadas, mas não são bem conhecidas pelas pessoas que ouvem a mídia tradicional. A maioria destes produtos químicos altamente tóxicos são invisíveis e, portanto, estão facilmente fora do nosso radar coletivo “.

Com todos os efeitos negativos que as trilhas químicas têm sobre as populações, muitos cientistas fizeram pronunciamentos sobre os perigos que este tipo de geo-engenharia representa para o ambiente e as pessoas. Dan Schrag, da Universidade de Harvard, alertou que qualquer tentativa de mudar o ambiente, incluindo o próprio ecossistema, poderia ter conseqüências desastrosas, como secas e outros desastres naturais. Alan Robock, professor da Rutgers University, diz que as consequências poderão ir muito mais longe do que secas. Essas experiências, diz ele, “poderiam criar catástrofes”, danificando a camada de ozônio e, potencialmente, alterando a estratosfera, eliminando os padrões climáticos, tais como a estação das chuvas a partir da qual bilhões de pessoas dependem de suas colheitas e para alimentar suas famílias. “O problema é que este é exatamenete o objetivo que as trilhas químicas têm: mudar os padrões meteorológicos.

O cientista David Suzuki diz que a geo-engenharia é “uma loucura” e vai mais longe ao dizer: “Se nós aprendemos alguma coisa do passado, é que apesar de ser muito hábeis para inventar novas tecnologias, nosso conhecimento de como o mundo funciona e como as coisas estão interligadas é quase zero. “Então, da próxima vez, quando você sinta que está tendo um ataque de asma, ou qualquer tipo de problema respiratório, seja consciente que é provável que esses problemas, bem como outros relacionados ao coração, os sistemas imunológico e neurológico são causados pelos produtos químicos que são pulverizados desde aviões sobre a sua cidade.

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Law of the Sea Treaty and the National Ocean Council

July 30, 2010 2 Comments

by Cassandra Anderson

Thirty states will be encroached upon by Obama’s Executive Order establishing the National Ocean Council for control over America’s oceans, coastlines and the Great Lakes. Under this new council, states’ coastal jurisdictions will be subject to the United Nations’ Law Of Sea Treaty (LOST) in this UN Agenda 21 program. America’a oceans and coastlines will be broken into 9 regions that include the North East, Mid-Atlantic, South Atlantic, the Gulf Coast, West Coast, the Great Lakes, Alaska, the Pacific Islands (including Hawaii) and the Caribbean.

Because of the decades of difficulty that the collectivists have had trying to ratify the Law Of Sea Treaty (LOST), Obama is sneaking it in through the back door, by way of this Executive Order establishing the Council. Because LOST is a treaty, Obama’s Executive Order is not Constitutional as treaty ratification requires 2/3 approval from the Senate. Michael Shaw said that the Agenda 21 Convention on Biodiversity treaty of 1992 failed to pass Congress so it was executed through soft law and administratively on local levels, and Obama’s Executive Order is a similar soft law tactic to enact the LOST treaty.

In fact, our Constitutional form of government is being completely destroyed because buried in the CLEAR Act (HR 3534) there is a provision for a new council to oversee the outer continental shelf- it appears that this Regional Outer Shelf Council will be part of the National Ocean Council. This means that if Congress makes the CLEAR Act into law, then the implementation of the UN Law Of Sea Treaty, as part of the National Ocean Council’s agenda, will be “ratified” in a convoluted and stealth manner, in full opposition to the Constitution and its intent.(1)

The excuse for this extreme action is because of the emergency in the Gulf of Mexico. Obama and Congress have always had the legal and military power to force BP Oil to take all necessary action to stop the gusher and clean the oil spew. While there is evidence that the problems in the Gulf have been a result of collusion and planned incompetence, it begs the question, why in world should America’s oceans and resources be controlled by Obama appointees?

NATIONAL OCEAN COUNCIL MEMBERS:

John Holdren, Obama’s science and technology advisor, is the co-chairman of this new council. He is also a depopulation enthusiast and advocates sterilization by way of using infertility drugs in water and food as well as forced abortions which he describes in his book “Ecoscience”.(2)

Ken Salazar, Secretary of theDepartment of Interior, and its subagency, MMS (Minerals Management Service) has authority over offshore drilling and responsibility for enforcing spill prevention measures.(3) The Department of Interior’s BLM (Bureau of Land Management) is the entity that controls federally managed land extending across 30% of America in 11 western states. Last week, Congressman Louie Gohmert said that Ken Salazar personally prevented drilling on land in Utah, Wyoming and Colorado, thereby also preventing energy independence. In addition, the federal lands have been grossly mismanaged and present fire dangers. The federal government is $3.7 billion in arrears for maintenance of the federally managed lands.

US Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, by way of the US Forestry Service and US Fish & Wildlife Service, has been complicit in the decline of our country’s food independence. For example, US Fish & Wildlife (along with the Department of Commerce) shut the water off in California using Endangered Species Act; it was later proven that partially treated sewage was the primary culprit in killing the salmon and delta smelt that was previously blamed on farmers. This is phony environmentalism. The US Forestry Service has also misused the Endangered Species Act to limit farmers and ranchers. Remember that the USDA co-owns the Terminator Gene patent with Monsanto that makes seeds sterile.

Lisa Jackson is the EPA administrator who has threatened to impose 18,000 pages of new regulations to curb global warming which is based on lies,claiming that carbon dioxide is a danger to human health.(4)

Department of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano: it is unclear how these two federal appointees will enhance environmental ’sustainability’ over oceans and coasts. Traditionally, national security threats (like the War on Terror) have been used by the federal government to take control of resources. For example, many years ago when the interstate highway systems were first being built, the Feds got in on the action by claiming that they were building a defense highway system, and they encroached into an area that belonged to the states. Interestingly, there were no overhead structures on highways originally because of the Feds’ claim that large missiles would be transported on these “defense” highway systems.

Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, a leading globalist, is likely to plunge our country into international entanglements and subjugation, based on her past performance; an example is her support of the UN Small Arms Treaty, which is contrary to the Constitution.

Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Department of Commerce Secretary Gary Locke are logical choices for this destructive council as some of the planned funding for this program will come from permits and leases (oil drilling leases, for example). These agencies will limit America’s energy independence.

The full list is footnoted at the end of this article.(5)

THE SMOKING GUN:

Agenda 21 Sustainable Development is the overarching blueprint for depopulation and total control, and the National Ocean Council is clearly an Agenda 21 program:

The National Ocean Council is headed by John Holdren, an avowed eugenicist which is selective breeding through brutal means like forced abortion.

The National Ocean Council’s own report (Coastal and Marine Spatial Planning, pg. incorporates a section of the 1992 Rio Declaration which is an original Agenda 21 document!

In fact, the report says that it will be guided by the Rio Declaration in cases “Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.” (pg. This means that regulations will be imposed even if the science is not understood or if the science is based on global warming manipulated data.(6)

The 3 primary tools of Agenda 21’s phony environmentalism are global warming, water shortages and the Endangered Species Act; the National Ocean Council intends to exploit all of these tools to their full extent.

The National Ocean Council’s main objective is to sink American sovereignty through the United Nations Law Of Sea Treaty (LOST) with the intended result of domination by the UN over our coasts and the Great Lakes. LOST originated in the 1970s as a wealth redistribution plan to benefit Third World countries. LOST sets rules for commercial activity beneath the high seas and establishes new international bureaucracies and a tribunal to interpret and apply rules to sea activity. And LOST can proceed with those rules, even against US objections! LOST threatens to complicate deep sea mining. LOST sets a precedent that US rights are dependent upon the approval of international entities. LOST also extends to ocean flowing rivers. (7)

REGIONALISM:

Michael Shaw pointed out that non-elected councils are increasingly expanding their jurisdiction through air quality boards, water quality boards, sewer systems, transportation districts, metropolitan planning, etc. to gain control over resources. Often, large corporations and financial interests form Public- Private Partnerships with the government within these councils.

Breaking areas into regions and placing authority with non-elected councils is a Communist trick used to hijack resources, thereby usurping local and state power by re-zoning the areas that do have Constitutional authority. Appointed bureaucrats are untouchable because their jobs are not dependent upon serving the voting population. And they are usually inaccessible to the public and do not have to face those who are affected by their “insider” decisions. When state and local governments become corrupt, the public is able to confront them eye to eye, but distant bureaucrats can avoid accountability. Regionalism is used as a psychological tactic to intimidate state legislatures into creating the system for a new political and economic order. (8)

Obama’s Executive Order that has created the 9 new regions amounts to re-zoning, and his appointed bureaucrats are answerable only to him. In David Horton’s testimony in 1978 on regionalism, he said that the State of Indiana made this declaration, “Neither the states nor Congress have ever granted authority to any branch or agency of the federal government to exercise regional control over the states.” Horton further stated that Congress holds alllegislative power that is granted in the Constitution, as opposed to Executive Orders that are not legislative. Therefore, Obama’s Executive Order for re-zoning and appointing a governing body to usurp state and local power is Constitutionally invalid. (9)

The public must become aware of state sovereignty and the Tenth Amendment to demand that state and local governments assert these Constitutional laws and principles.

COASTAL AND MARINE SPATIAL PLANNING REPORT:

This is a general overview of the new National Ocean Council’s goals based on its 32-page report that uses indirect language and acronyms in order to confuse the public and local lawmakers. Depopulation advocates, globalists and collectivists, like John Holdren, faced opposition a few decades ago when they clearly expressed their objectives, so now documents are written in complicated and clouded language to fool those they wish to control. (10)

This report states that the Council’s jurisdiction will extend from the continental shelf to the coast AND additional inland areas will be involved. The National Ocean Council identifies “partners” as members of each regional planning body that will include federal, state, local and tribal authorities, with a top-down hierarchy of control.

The intentions of the Council are stated on page 8 of the report that include implementing LOST and other international treaties. The report also states that the Council’s plans shall be implemented by Executive Orders, in addition to federal and state laws. This section mentions ‘global climate change’ which is a new term substituted for ‘man made global warming’ after manipulated data and lies were exposed in numerous global warming scandals. ‘Climate change’ is blamed for sea level rise and acidification of oceans; evidence exists that these are global warming deceptions. (11)  Read more details…

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CIA, Google to monitor the web in real time, predicting the future

July 29, 2010 2 Comments

CIA and Google are both backing a company that monitors the web in real time — and says it uses that information to predict the future.

WIRED

The company is called Recorded Future, and it scours tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts to find the relationships between people, organizations, actions and incidents — both present and still-to-come. In a white paper, the company says its temporal analytics engine “goes beyond search” by “looking at the ‘invisible links’ between documents that talk about the same, or related, entities and events.”

The idea is to figure out for each incident who was involved, where it happened and when it might go down. Recorded Future then plots that chatter, showing online “momentum” for any given event.

“The cool thing is, you can actually predict the curve, in many cases,” says company CEO Christopher Ahlberg, a former Swedish Army Ranger with a PhD in computer science.

Which naturally makes the 16-person Cambridge, Massachusetts, firm attractive to Google Ventures, the search giant’s investment division, and to In-Q-Tel, which handles similar duties for the CIA and the wider intelligence community.

It’s not the very first time Google has done business with America’s spy agencies. Long before it reportedly enlisted the help of the National Security Agency to secure its networks, Google sold equipment to the secret signals-intelligence group. In-Q-Tel backed the mapping firm Keyhole, which was bought by Google in 2004 — and then became the backbone for Google Earth.

This appears to be the first time, however, that the intelligence community and Google have funded the same startup, at the same time. No one is accusing Google of directly collaborating with the CIA. But the investments are bound to be fodder for critics of Google, who already see the search giant as overly cozy with the U.S. government, and worry that the company is starting to forget its “don’t be evil” mantra.

America’s spy services have become increasingly interested in mining “open source intelligence” — information that’s publicly available, but often hidden in the daily avalanche of TV shows, newspaper articles, blog posts, online videos and radio reports.

“Secret information isn’t always the brass ring in our profession,” then CIA-director General Michael Hayden told a conference in 2008. “In fact, there’s a real satisfaction in solving a problem or answering a tough question with information that someone was dumb enough to leave out in the open.”

U.S. spy agencies, through In-Q-Tel, have invested in a number of firms to help them better find that information. Visible Technologies crawls over half a million web 2.0 sites a day, scraping more than a million posts and conversations taking place on blogs, YouTube, Twitter and Amazon. Attensity applies the rules of grammar to the so-called “unstructured text” of the web to make it more easily digestible by government databases. Keyhole (now Google Earth) is a staple of the targeting cells in military-intelligence units.

Recorded Future strips from web pages the people, places and activities they mention. The company examines when and where these events happened (“spatial and temporal analysis”) and the tone of the document (“sentiment analysis”). Then it applies some artificial-intelligence algorithms to tease out connections between the players. Recorded Future maintains an index with more than 100 million events, hosted on Amazon.com servers. The analysis, however, is on the living web.

“We’re right there as it happens,” Ahlberg told Danger Room as he clicked through a demonstration. “We can assemble actual real-time dossiers on people.”

Recorded Future certainly has the potential to spot events and trends early. Take the case of Hezbollah’s long-range missiles. On March 21, Israeli President Shimon Peres leveled the allegation that the terror group had Scud-like weapons. Scouring Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s past statements, Recorded Future found corroborating evidence from a month prior that appeared to back up Peres’ accusations.

That’s one of several hypothetical cases Recorded Future runs in its blog devoted to intelligence analysis. But it’s safe to assume that the company already has at least one spy agency’s attention. In-Q-Tel doesn’t make investments in firms without an “end customer” ready to test out that company’s products.

Both Google Ventures and In-Q-Tel made their investments in 2009, shortly after the company was founded. The exact amounts weren’t disclosed, but were under $10 million each. Google’s investment came to light earlier this year online. In-Q-Tel, which often announces its new holdings in press releases, quietly uploaded a brief mention of its investment a few weeks ago.

Both In-Q-Tel and Google Ventures have seats on Recorded Future’s board. Ahlberg says those board members have been “very helpful,” providing business and technology advice, as well as introducing him to potential customers. Both organizations, it’s safe to say, will profit handsomely if Recorded Future is ever sold or taken public. Ahlberg’s last company, the corporate intelligence firm Spotfire, was acquired in 2007 for $195 million in cash.

Google Ventures did not return requests to comment for this article. In-Q-Tel Chief of Staff Lisbeth Poulos e-mailed a one-line statement: “We are pleased that Recorded Future is now part of IQT’s portfolio of innovative startup companies who support the mission of the U.S. Intelligence Community.”

Just because Google and In-Q-Tel have both invested in Recorded Future doesn’t mean Google is suddenly in bed with the government. Of course, to Google’s critics — including conservative legal groups, and Republican congressmen — the Obama Administration and the Mountain View, California, company slipped between the sheets a long time ago.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt hosted a town hall at company headquarters in the early days of Obama’s presidential campaign. Senior White House officials like economic chief Larry Summers give speeches at the New America Foundation, the left-of-center think tank chaired by Schmidt. Former Google public policy chief Andrew McLaughlin is now the White House’s deputy CTO, and was publicly (if mildly) reprimanded by the administration for continuing to hash out issues with his former colleagues.

In some corners, the scrutiny of the company’s political ties have dovetailed with concerns about how Google collects and uses its enormous storehouse of search data, e-mail, maps and online documents. Google, as we all know, keeps a titanic amount of information about every aspect of our online lives. Customers largely have trusted the company so far, because of the quality of their products, and because of Google’s pledges not to misuse the information still ring true to many.

But unease has been growing. Thirty seven state Attorneys General are demanding answers from the company after Google hoovered up 600 gigabytes of data from open Wi-Fi networks as it snapped pictures for its Street View project. (The company swears the incident was an accident.)

“Assurances from the likes of Google that the company can be trusted to respect consumers’ privacy because its corporate motto is ‘don’t be evil’ have been shown by recent events such as the ‘Wi-Spy’ debacle to be unwarranted,” long-time corporate gadfly John M. Simpson told a Congressional hearing in a prepared statement. Any business dealings with the CIA’s investment arm are unlikely to make critics like him more comfortable.

But Steven Aftergood, a critical observer of the intelligence community from his perch at the Federation of American Scientists, isn’t worried about the Recorded Future deal. Yet.

“To me, whether this is troublesome or not depends on the degree of transparency involved. If everything is aboveboard — from contracts to deliverables — I don’t see a problem with it,” he told Danger Room by e-mail. “But if there are blank spots in the record, then they will be filled with public skepticism or worse, both here and abroad, and not without reason.”

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Goldman Sachs Defrauded Investors, sent bailout outside U.S.A

July 29, 2010 1 Comment

by Karen Mracek and Thomas Beaumont

Goldman Sachs sent $4.3 billion in federal tax money to 32 entities, including many overseas banks, hedge funds and pensions, according to information made public Friday night.Goldman Sachs disclosed the list of companies to the Senate Finance Committee after a threat of subpoena from Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Ia.

 Asked the significance of the list, Grassley said, “I hope it’s as simple as taxpayers deserve to know what happened to their money.”

 He added, “We thought originally we were bailing out AIG. Then later on … we learned that the money flowed through AIG to a few big banks, and now we know that the money went from these few big banks to dozens of financial institutions all around the world.”

 Grassley said he was reserving judgment on the appropriateness of U.S. taxpayer money ending up overseas until he learns more about the 32 entities.

 SETTLEMENT: Goldman Sachs admits it misled investors, pays $550M fine

GOLDMAN CONSENT: SEC vs. Goldman Sachs

JUDGEMENT: Final judgement of defendant

 Goldman Sachs (GS) received $5.55 billion from the government in fall of 2008 as payment for then-worthless securities it held in AIG. Goldman had already hedged its risk that the securities would go bad. It had entered into agreements to spread the risk with the 32 entities named in Friday’s report.

 Overall, Goldman Sachs received a $12.9 billion payout from the government’s bailout of AIG, which was at one time the world’s largest insurance company.

 Goldman Sachs also revealed to the Senate Finance Committee that it would have received $2.3 billion if AIG had gone under. Other large financial institutions, such as Citibank, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley, sold Goldman Sachs protection in the case of AIG’s collapse. Those institutions did not have to pay Goldman Sachs after the government stepped in with tax money.

 Shouldn’t Goldman Sachs be expected to collect from those institutions “before they collect the taxpayers’ dollars?” Grassley asked. “It’s a little bit like a farmer, if you got crop insurance, you shouldn’t be getting disaster aid.”

 Goldman had not disclosed the names of the counterparties it paid in late 2008 until Friday, despite repeated requests from Elizabeth Warren, chairwoman of the Congressional Oversight Panel.

 ”I think we didn’t get the information because they consider it very embarrassing,” Grassley said, “and they ought to consider it very embarrassing.”

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 The initial $85 billion to bail out AIG was supplemented by an additional $49.1 billion from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, known as TARP, as well as additional funds from the Federal Reserve. AIG’s debt to U.S. taxpayers totals $133.3 billion outstanding.

 ”The only thing I can tell you is that people have the right to know, and the Fed and the public’s business ought to be more public,” Grassley said.

 The list of companies receiving money includes a few familiar foreign banks, such as the Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays.

 DZ AG Deutsche Zantrake Genossenschaftz Bank, a German cooperative banking group, received $1.2 billion, more than a quarter of the money Goldman paid out.

 Warren, in testimony Wednesday, said that the rescue of AIG “distorted the marketplace by turning AIG’s risky bets into fully guaranteed transactions. Instead of forcing AIG and its counterparties to bear the costs of the company’s failure, the government shifted those costs in full onto taxpayers.”

 Grassley stressed the importance of transparency in the marketplace, as well as in the government’s actions.

 ”Just like the government, markets need more transparency, and consequently this is some of that transparency because we’ve got to rebuild confidence to make the markets work properly,” Grassley said.

 AIG received the bailout of $85 billion at the discretion of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which was led at the time by Timothy Geithner. He now is U.S. treasury secretary.

 ”I think it proves that he knew a lot more at the time than he told,” Grassley said. “And he surely knew where this money was going to go. If he didn’t, he should have known before they let the money out of their bank up there.”

 An attempt to reach Geithner Friday night through the White House public information office was unsuccessful.

 Grassley has for years pushed to give the Government Accountability Office more oversight of the Federal Reserve.

 U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley, a Waterloo Democrat, said he would propose that the House subcommittee on oversight and investigations convene hearings on the need for more Federal Reserve oversight. Braley is a member of the subcommittee.

 Braley said of Geithner, “I would assume he would be someone we would want to hear from because he would have firsthand knowledge.”

 Braley also noted that the AIG bailout was negotiated under President George W. Bush, a Republican.

 He said he was confident that the financial regulatory reform bill signed by President Obama this week would help provide better oversight than the AIG bailout included.

 ”There was no regulatory framework in place,” Braley said. “We had to put something in place to begin reining them in. I’m confident they will begin to be able to do that.”

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