New Street Lights To Have “Homeland Security” Applications

October 27, 2011

InfoWars

By Paul Joseph Watson

New street lights that include “Homeland Security” applications including speaker systems, motion sensors and video surveillance are now being rolled out with the aid of government funding.

The Intellistreets system comprises of a wireless digital infrastructure that allows street lights to be controlled remotely by means of a ubiquitous wi-fi link and a miniature computer housed inside each street light, allowing for “security, energy management, data harvesting and digital media,” according to the Illuminating Concepts website.

According to the company’s You Tube video of the concept, the primary capabilities of the devices include “energy conservation, homeland security, public safety, traffic control, advertising, video surveillance.”

In terms of Homeland Security applications, each of the light poles contains a speaker system that can be used to broadcast emergency alerts, as well as a display that transmits “security levels” (presumably a similar system to the DHS’ much maligned color-coded terror alert designation), in addition to showing instructions by way of its LED video screen.

The lights also include proximity sensors that can record both pedestrian and road traffic. The video display and speaker system will also be used to transmit Minority Report-style advertising, as well as Amber Alerts and other “civic announcements”.

With the aid of grant money from the federal government, the company is about to launch the first concept installation of the system in the city of Farmington Hills, Michigan.

Using street lights as surveillance tools has already been advanced by several European countries. In 2007, leaked documents out of the UK Home Office revealed that British authorities were working on proposals to fit lamp posts with CCTV cameras that would X-ray scan passers-by and “undress them” in order to “trap terror suspects”.

Dutch police also announced last year that they are developing a mobile scanner that will “see through people’s clothing and look for concealed weapons”.

So-called ‘talking surveillance cameras’ that use a speaker system similar to the Intellistreets model are already being used in UK cities like Middlesborough to bark orders and reprimand people for dropping litter and other minor offenses. According to reports, one of the most common phrases used to shame people into obeying instructions is to broadcast the message, “We are watching you.”

The transformation of street lights into surveillance tools for Homeland Security purposes will only serve to heighten concerns that the United States is fast on the way to becoming a high-tech police state, with TSA agents being empowered to oversee that control grid, most recently with the announcement that TSA screeners would be manning highway checkpoints, a further indication that security measures we currently see in airports are rapidly spilling out onto the streets.

The ability of the government to use street lights to transmit “emergency alerts” also dovetails with the ongoing efforts to hijack radio and television broadcasts for the same purpose, via FEMA’s Emergency Alert System.

The federal government is keen to implement a centralized system of control over all communications, with the recent announcement that all new cell phones will be required to comply with the PLAN program (Personal Localized Alerting Network), which will broadcast emergency alert messages directly to Americans’ cell phones using a special chip embedded in the receiver. The system will be operational by the end of the year in New York and Washington, with the rest of the country set to follow in 2012.

The notion of using the street lights as communication tools to broadcast “alerts” directly from the federal government is also consistent with Homeland Security’s program to install Orwellian ‘telescreens’ that play messages by Janet Napolitano and other DHS officials in Wal-Mart stores across the country.

The fact that the federal government is funding the implementation of ‘Intellistreets’ comes as no surprise given that the nation’s expanding networks of surveillance cameras are also being paid for with Department of Homeland Security grants.

Click here for the full report from InfoWars.Com.

Top 1 Percent’s Income Grew 275 Percent From 1979 to 2007

October 27, 2011

ABC News

By SUSANNA KIM

The income of the richest 1 percent in the U.S. soared 275 percent from 1979 to 2007, but the bottom 20 percent grew by just 18 percent, new government data shows.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a study this week that compared real after-tax household income between 1979 and 2007, which were both after recessions and had similar overall economic activity.

While the income of the richest 1 percent nearly tripled, increases were smaller down the economic ladder. After the 1 percent, income for the next highest 20 percent grew by 65 percent, much faster than it did for the remaining 80 percent of the population but still lagging well behind the top percentile.

The changes illustrate how the better off have captured the bulk of income gains over the past three decades. The top quintile has seen its share of income rise while the other four quintiles have suffered declines in their shares, according to John Bowler, director of country risk service with the Economist Intelligence Unit.

The report states that without the growth of the top percentile, income inequality still would have increased, “but not by nearly as much.” The study was prepared at the request of Sens. Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.

The CBO said the reasons for the rapid growth at the top are “not well understood,” though some possibilities include technical innovations that have changed the labor market for superstars, “such as actors, athletes, and musicians,” changes in executive compensation, and increasing scale of financial-sector activities.

Technology creates opportunities for highly skilled workers while making some routine tasks redundant, said Bowler. The role of globalization, he added, is “controversial.”

“Even some policymakers who would traditionally be in the free trade camp are now questioning the benefits of globalization to the middle and lower-income U.S. households, even if they have benefited from cheaper imported manufactured goods,” he said.

Matthew Dowd, ABC News political analyst and former strategist for President George W. Bush, said while Americans have accepted income disparities in the country, they are becoming more frustrated at the perception that their economic opportunities, or that of their children, are diminishing.

“They don’t feel any ability to move up. They feel stuck and don’t feel there’s a lottery ticket to take them to a higher class,” Dowd said.

What makes the frustration worse is that Americans feel the wealthy, especially in business, receive preferential treatment by the government.

“They watch Wall Street, government bailouts and feel like the rich play by different rules,” he said. “They think, ‘Here I am, trying to make payments on my house with my own small business, trying to make ends meet, but if I need help, no one will help me.’”

On Wednesday, Douglas Elmendorf, CBO director, also revealed in prepared remarks to the congressional super-committee that the government spent about $200 billion, or 15 percent of total discretionary spending, on federal workers’ salaries and benefits in the fiscal year that ended in September, the Washington Post reported.

Dowd said that frustration with increasing inequality has led to growing movements on the “right and left,” such as the Occupy Wall Street protests.

“Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street both come from the same place: anger at a small group of people who are operating by a different set of rules,” he said. “Americans always say they don’t like the income gap, but they didn’t mind the gap. But they just don’t like that they don’t have any ability to rise.”

Bowler said he agreed that, traditionally, Americans have not envied the material success of others, as growing rich or at least becoming better off is part of the American dream.

Click here for the full report from ABC News.

Elite Controls Global Economy

October 27, 2011

RT Network

Bankers really do control the world! That’s according to Swiss researchers who, in an exhaustive scientific study, mapped out a blueprint showing the real architects of global economic power.

­

From freemasons to the Council on Foreign Relations to Bilderberg, the belief that secretive groups control the world’s economic and political system are quite possibly as old as human civilization itself.

But while Occupy Wall Street protestors may be slightly exaggerating in calling themselves the 99 per cent, a recent study conducted by the Swiss Institute of Technology in Zurich shows that they aren’t too far off the mark.

Drawing from a 2007 Orbis database, which lists 37 million companies and investors spanning the globe, the researchers focused on 43,000 transnational corporations and the share ownership which connected them. Based on their analysis, the Swiss team found that a core of companies, the majority of which are in the banking sector, yield excessive power over the global economy, the weekly New Scientist magazine reports.

Within this group, 1,318 companies with intertwined ownership structures were on average connected to 20 other companies.

Representing some 20 per cent of global operating revenues, the study also shows this group of 1,318 controls the bulk of the largest blue chip and manufacturing firms. In terms of the real economy – the part which produces actual goods and services – they take in some 60 per cent of global revenues.

The team was further able to break down this group into what they described as a “super-entity” of 147 companies that controls some 40 per cent of the network’s wealth.

“In effect, less than one per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network,” says James Glattfelder, one of the researchers behind the study, as cited by the New Scientist.

And when it comes to the top 50 groups within the super-entity, more than a few would be familiar to those who have been camping out in downtown Manhattan over the last month.

Bank of America Corporation, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs Group Inc, Merrill Lynch & Co Inc, and JP Morgan Chase & Co were included among the top 25.

Quick to dismiss criticism that they are merely concocting another conspiracy theory, Glattfelder insists that their research is evidence-based.

“Reality is so complex, we must move away from dogma, whether it’s conspiracy theories or free-market,” says James Glattfelder. “Our analysis is reality-based, “he said, as cited by the weekly.
­Money makes money

­The most recent study of the Swiss researchers builds on past economic theories which also recognized such systemic concentrations of wealth.

In 1906, an Economist named Vilfredo Pareto discovered that around 20 per cent of the population in his native Italy controlled around 80 per cent of the land. This observation has come to be known as Pareto’s Principle.

Pareto also found that while individual ratios of wealth and control might vary from country to country, the actual distribution is always the same. That is to say, natural wealth, regardless of human effort, tends to accumulate rather than spread around. That accumulation leads to wealth condensation, a theory more commonly understood as the idea that money makes money. And if less than one per cent of the surveyed companies control 40 per cent of the network, it appears that a slim few have managed to concentrate an astronomical level of wealth into their few hands.

For the researchers, however, the issue of wealth concentration is less important than how deeply the network is integrated.

As the 2008 financial crisis has shown, when a relatively small group yields tremendous power over the global economy, their mistakes will ripple across the world.

Ultimately, those invested in studying the network which controls the bigger part of our world economy hope that through greater understanding, they will be able to make the financial system more stable.

For example, Yaneer Bar-Yam, head of the New England Complex Systems Institute, has suggested taxing firms if their interconnectivity becomes excessive in order to discourage risk, the New Scientists reports. Others have proposed global anti-trust laws to help regulate the level of connectivity.

One question not answered by the study is just how much political power the financial elite are able to wield. John Driffill, a macroeconomics expert at the University of London, told the New Scientist that the interests of 147 companies would most likely be too diverse to sustain collusion.

But while the capitalist network which controls our economy might not be an active conspiracy, they will inevitably have some interests that correspond. The desire to fight any attempts to regulate the network most likely remains a point they can all agree on.

Click here for the full report.

Military Sexual Assault And Rape ‘Epidemic’

October 27, 2011

Al Jazeera

By Sarah Lazare

“My experience reporting military sexual assault was worse than the actual assault,” says Jessica (a pseudonym for her protection), a former marine officer and Iraq veteran who left the military because of her command’s poor handling of her assault charges. “The command has so much power over a victim of sexual assault. They are your judge, jury, executioner and mayor: they own the law. As I saw in my case, they are able to crush you for reporting an assault.”

Jessica is joining a civil lawsuit bringing claims against former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, charging that under their watch the military failed to adequately and effectively investigate rapes and sexual assaults within the ranks.

The litigation, which was filed in Virginia district court in February of this year by the law office of Susan Burke, is set to go to trial in the coming months. The initial suit named 16 plaintiffs, all former or current military service members – but in recent months that number has swelled to more than 30, as more and more veterans come forward as survivors of sexual assault.

These plaintiffs join the growing crescendo of veterans, military service members, spouses and their advocates speaking out against the problem of widespread sexual assault and rape in the US military.

As the war in Afghanistan passes its ten-year mark, sexual assault runs rampant within the ranks, with an estimated one in three female service members raped during their service, according to at least one peer-reviewed study. This is in a military where women comprise more 11 per cent of active duty service members deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan and more than 15 per cent of the total military, with at least 200,000 active duty women currently serving. This epidemic also affects men: 60 per cent of women serving in the National Guard and Reserve, along with 27 per cent of men, are estimated to have experienced Military Sexual Trauma (MST). Perpetrators rely on a chain of command that appears to offer virtual impunity for sexual assaults committed against lower-ranking service members.

Military reports and Congress-appointed task forces acknowledge that sexual assault within the military is widespread. While the Department of Defense (DoD) has repeatedly said it is attempting to curb the problem, the most recent evidence shows that it has failed to adequately address the spread of this outbreak.

The most significant change made by the military in the past decade was the creation of the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office (SAPRO) in 2005. This office, which encompasses the entire DoD, is responsible for oversight of sexual assault policies and the implementation of prevention and response programs. However, SAPRO is rife with problems. The primary role of the office is to track rapes and sexual assaults and release annual reports. According to the US Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) own evaluation, SAPRO has failed to work with the disciplinary arm of the DoD, giving its reports and findings little muscle. Furthermore, the Report of the Defense Task Force on Sexual Assault in the Military December 2009, which was ordered by congress, found that funding of SAPRO had been “sporadic and inconsistent”.

SAPRO introduced a system of restricted reporting, allowing survivors of sexual assault to make confidential reports, to avoid outing themselves in a hostile environment.

While this step has increased the number of reports and created avenues for survivors to seek personal care, it does not launch an investigation into the assault. “Restricted reporting allows the military to ignore criminal aspects of sexual assault and to just take care of it,” says Greg Jacob, a former Marine and the current policy director for the Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN), an organisation dedicated to advocacy and providing a healing community for military service women.

Military officials claim that improvements have been made since the Defense Task Force’s 2009 report. “DoD has a zero tolerance policy on sexual assault,” says Cynthia Smith, SAPRO press spokesperson. “Over the past two years, DoD has affirmed its commitment to preventing and effectively responding to sexual assault. The department’s focus has been on reducing the stigma associated with reporting, providing sufficient training for commanders, and ensuring adequate training and resources for prosecutors and investigators.”

Yet, the prosecution rates of sexual assault in the military remains at eight per cent, a dismal percentage in light of the staggering number of assaults that are believed to go unreported. This compares to a 40 per cent prosecution rate for sexual assault charges in civilian courts, which itself is considered low. For cases that do make it to trial, sexual assault conviction rates are astoundingly low. According to SAPRO’s most recent annual report, in 2010, of 3,158 reports of military sexual assaults, only 529 alleged perpetrators were convicted, while 41 per cent were acquitted or had charges dismissed. Some six per cent were discharged or resigned in lieu of courts-martial, which means that they were allowed to leave their jobs in order to avoid sexual assault charges.

Some survivors of sexual assault claim that SAPRO’s “zero tolerance” policy has only succeeded in creating an environment where the command has incentive to deny and cover up sexual assault. “They have all of these generic catch phrases that sound great,” says Jessica. “But in reality, ‘zero tolerance policy’ means that when you make a complaint, it is hidden. Assault reflects badly on the command. What results is cover ups.”

Furthermore, critics charge that SAPRO’s educational materials are ineffective and often serve to reinforce the mentality that victims are to blame for their own assault. According to the Defense Task Force’s 2009 report, “the Task Force’s interactions with Service Members suggest training is only marginally effective”.

A sexual assault prevention poster released by SAPRO reportedly urges soldiers to “wait until she’s sober” before propositioning a woman for sex. “The military believes falsely that if you eliminate alcohol you can eliminate sexual assault,” says Jacob. “There is perception that it is the result of bad decision making on the part of the victim.”

Critics charge that SAPRO fails to address the rape culture that permeates all aspects of military life. “Rape culture separates service members from a group of people that they can consider others, victims, weaker beings,” insists Maggie Martin, Army veteran and member of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), an anti-war group comprising active duty service members and veterans who have served since September 11, 2001. “The rape culture in the military is another way that some service members reduce real life trauma to a joke that they can pretend is not real. It is a way for some to try to prove they are ‘hardcore’ to the point of inhumanity.”

Many insist that the military, which is largely allowed to investigate itself, is still not telling the full story. A 2010 lawsuit filed by SWAN and the ACLU against the DoD and Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) was filed after the military refused requests for government records concerning rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment in the military.

“When I heard about women who had accused someone of rape or sexual assault it was always framed as some personal vendetta the women were taking out on those they accused,” says Martin.

Selena Coppa, a former Army Sergeant of eight years and a current member of IVAW tells of an Army Specialist who was molested by another Army Specialist while drunk and passed out. “The woman who was assaulted found out the next morning what had happened. She wanted to do something or say something. Everyone was like, what are you talking about? That is not sexual assault, only sex counts as sexual assault.”

According to Army policy, sexual assault includes sexual contact when the victim “does not or cannot consent.” Yet, rules in the books are seemingly meaningless in an environment where sexual assault appears to go unreported and unacknowledged.

Impunity of high-ranking males

For those who do seek redress for sexual assault and rape through the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), the legal code governing military service members, many face an uphill battle in which they are pressured to drop their charges at every step along the way.

When Jessica was raped by a senior officer and his friend, she reported the assault to her command. However, she says that the ensuing investigation was nothing more than a retaliatory measure inflicted by a command that was more interested in covering up assaults and protecting their own reputations. “My command, and the [military lawyer] ordered to do it, produced not a thorough, but a voluminous – as cover ups often are – investigation that proved that I was routinely called disgusting denunciatory names by junior and senior Marines alike, but that because I wore make up and running shorts in the summer, that I therefore welcomed the harassment and subsequent assault and did not deserve protection,” she says.

Jessica says she requested a deployment to Afghanistan to get away from the harassment and isolation she faced after filing her report, but when this was denied, she decided to leave the Marines, which she was able to do because of her status as an officer. Jessica joined the lawsuit against Rumsfeld and Gates because, she says: “No one right now is holding commanders accountable.” Meanwhile, Jessica says that she is still pursuing charges against her alleged perpetrator through the UCMJ.

Lower enlisted service members who are raped or sexually assaulted, however, often do not have the option of leaving, with many forced to continue serving alongside their perpetrators, including in war zones. “They are putting people in a situation where they are totally dependent on their peers, and when their battle buddies rape them, their superiors are not doing anything about it, explains Johanna (Hans) Buwalda, a mental health provider who has worked with survivors of war for more than twenty years. “There is no safe place for them to go. They can’t even leave the military. They have to fulfill their contract.” Some researchers say that military sexual trauma compounds deployment-related traumas by excluding women from military camaraderie and fraternity.

These military sexual assaults are in addition to the countless rapes and sexual assaults that have been carried out against civilians at the 800 US military bases around the world, including within occupied populations in Iraq and Afghanistan. While there have been several high-profile scandals exposing US military rapes and slayings of Iraqi and Afghan civilians, as well as sexual assault and humiliation as a tool of torture, there is little information about overall rates of military sexual assault of civilian populations overseas. If sexual assault rates within the military are any indicator, sexual violence would seem to be endemic to the US’ global military presence.

Last April, Jennifer (a pseudonym for protection), who is a civilian, reported sexual assault by her then-boyfriend after he returned from a tour in Afghanistan with the Marine Corps. Her alleged assaulter’s sergeant major told her that she sounded like a “crazy ex-girlfriend” and that her sexual assault charges were not viable. Jennifer spent the next year and a half contacting everyone she could think of in hope that the military would take her charges seriously. She watched as her assault charges were ignored and dismissed by SAPRO, the NCIS, and even the Pentagon. After navigating countless meetings and phone calls with caseworkers, sexual assault survivor advocates, and even several congressional representatives, Jennifer feels that she has made little progress in her effort to get a fair process through military channels, and, to date, there is no indication that her charges will bear any consequences for her alleged assaulter. Within two months of her report, her alleged assaulter was promoted, and she says that he may be deployed any day, if he is not already.

Jennifer says that the process of attempting to press charges has been deeply traumatising. “When you have been assaulted, talking about it is hard enough,” she says. “And having to wait to hear back from someone for help makes you want to give up.”
In Depth

“I do not trust the US military at all. Their rules and regulations are nothing more than words on paper,” she says. “I am a woman and a civilian, and I have been treated like nothing more than a dog.”

The 1996 Federal Lautenberg Amendment, which makes it illegal for people convicted of domestic violence to carry a weapon, extends to the armed forces. With many forms of sexual assault falling under the rubric of domestic violence, assault convictions could preclude a service member from carrying a weapon.

Yet, if these assaults go unreported and untried, little stands in the way of perpetrators serving in combat, sometimes alongside those they have assaulted.

Furthermore, the military often blatantly ignores this federal law and sends convicted sex offenders and domestic abusers into war in a climate where the military is overextended, from fighting two ongoing wars. Since September 11, 2001, the DoD has been granting an increasing amount of “moral waivers” which permit soldiers convicted of domestic violence and sexual assault to serve in combat.

High rates of sexual assault take a profound toll on the mental health of service members. Sexual assault is the number one predictor for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder for women serving in the military, according to a study in the Journal of Rehabilitation Research and Development. Yet the difficulty and stigma against reporting sexual assaults creates significant obstacles for survivors seeking care and disability benefits through the VA. A study by Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America shows that approximately 40 per cent of homeless female veterans report having been sexually assaulted in the military.

Members of IVAW are drawing attention to the problem of sexual assault and rape that plagues the military. “IVAW’s campaign Operation Recovery is focused on raising awareness about sexual assault and gender-based violence,” explains Martin. “We are building a healing community where veterans and service members can challenge military leadership and stand up for the right to heal and the right to access the care survivors of trauma need.”

“As an organiser I believe that the best way for us to combat military sexual trauma is to tell the truth about it,” insists Martin. “We need to tell the truth that all types of people are sexually assaulted and that no one deserves it. We need to start looking to the perpetrators of sexual assault and the military environment for answers, not look to victims to see how they can be blamed for their own assault.”

Click here for the full report.

Physician Speaks Out: Gardasil Vaccine Dangerous, Completely Useless At Preventing Cervical Cancer

October 27, 2011

Natural News

By Ethan A. Huff

The massive controversy over Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s appalling 2007 executive order mandating that all young girls in his state receive Merck & Co.’s Gardasil vaccine before entering school has brought the issue of the vaccine’s safety and effectiveness, or lack thereof, back to the forefront of the national conversation. And a European physician has now openly spoken out against Gardasil, claiming that it is both dangerous and completely ineffective at preventing cervical cancer.

Dr. Christian Fiala, a general practitioner from Vienna, Austria, told WorldNetDaily (WND) in a recent report that Merck’s Gardasil does not actually work to prevent cervical cancer, and that it is not safe. According to Dr. Fiala, “there is no proof of a causal relationship of HPV (human papillomavirus) and cervical cancer, and there is no evidence that HPV vaccine reduces the overall number of cervical cancer (cases).”

Assuming for a moment that the Gardasil vaccine actually does help prevent HPV, Dr. Fiala asserts that HPV is not even itself responsible for causing cervical cancer, which makes the vaccine completely useless at accomplishing the very thing for which it is marketed. And as we previously reported, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has also known since at least 2003 that HPV is not associated with causing cervical cancer as well.

But none of this has stopped Merck and its lackeys in the government and media from continuing to endorse the “money-making machine without any benefits for patients,” as Dr. Fiala calls it. And this was made abundantly clear when the mainstream media went on its rampage against Rep. Michele Bachmann following her recent comments about Gardasil’s dangers at the GOP presidential debates.

Dr. Fiala has been fighting against Gardasil in Austria for years, especially after several otherwise healthy and vibrant young girls in his country died just days after receiving their Gardasil vaccines. And while Gardasil is still legal in Austria, Dr. Fiala says it is “used infrequently,” thanks to widespread awareness of its potential to seriously injure and kill those who receive it.

“To say Gardasil has a suspect safety record is a big understatement,” said Tom Fitton, president of Washington watchdog group Judicial Watch, to WND. His group uncovered documents back in 2008 revealing that the FDA has known for a while that Gardasil is responsible for causing anaphylactic shock, foaming at the mouth, grand mal convulsions, coma, and paralyzation, among other things.

“These reports are troubling and show that the FDA and other public health authorities may be asleep at the switch.”

Click here for the full report from Natural News.

Chocolate Reduces Stroke Risk In Women, Study Finds

October 26, 2011

Natural News

By Mary West

Swedish researchers have contributed the latest glad tidings to a growing number of studies indicating chocolate is beneficial for the cardiovascular system. According to a study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, scientists found that women, who ate the most chocolate, had a 20 percent reduction in their stroke risk: USA Today reports. In this case, the quantity consumed was approximately two candy bars per week.

Author Susanna Larsson explains that the healthful components of cocoa are compounds called flavonoids, which have antioxidant activity and the ability to impede the harmful oxidation of low-density lipoprotein (LDL), known as “bad cholesterol.” Since the oxidation of LDL leads to the formation of plaque that causes cardiovascular disease, the hindrance of this process reduces the risk of stroke. In addition to this advantage, previous studies have shown dark chocolate consumption can lower blood pressure and insulin resistance, as well as help prevent the formation of blood clots.

In spite of the positive findings, Larsson cautions against eating too much chocolate. She advises that it be consumed in moderation, due to its high content of calories, fat and sugar. Larsson also states that dark chocolate is superior to milk chocolate because it has more cocoa and less sugar.

The researchers at Karolinska Institute studied 33,000 women between the ages of 49 and 83 over a 10-year period. Scientists compared data from the participants’ questionnaires about their chocolate consumption with their stroke risk to determine if a correlation existed. Results revealed the more chocolate the women consumed, the less stroke incidence they incurred. The findings were significant because those who ate 2.3 ounces of chocolate per week had a 20 percent reduced stroke incidence compared to those who seldom ate chocolate.

Although the study does not prove chocolate was responsible for the reduced incidence, after controlling for other stroke risk factors, the results persisted: Larsson relayed to CBS News. Additionally, she expects the results to apply to men also. Regardless of the suggested benefit, experts are advising people to keep the results in perspective and not substitute chocolate for vegetables.

Click here for the full report from Natural News.

Women With High Cholesterol Live Longer, Have Fewer Heart Attacks And Strokes

October 26, 2011

Natural News

By Elizabeth Walling

If the diagnosis of high cholesterol sounds like a death sentence to your ears, you may be the victim of cholesterol propaganda. It’s not uncommon to believe that lower is better when it comes to cholesterol, but new research shows otherwise. In fact, a recent study in Norway says women with high cholesterol live longer and suffer from fewer heart attacks and strokes than those with lower cholesterol.

Can High Cholesterol Save Your Life?
Researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology looked at 52,087 individuals between the ages of 20 and 74. After adjusting for factors like age, smoking and blood pressure, researchers found women with high cholesterol (more than 270 mg/dl) had a 28 percent lower mortality risk than women with low cholesterol (under 193 mg/dl). Risk for heart disease, cardiac arrest and stroke also declined as cholesterol levels rose.

The researchers involved in the study admit this contradicts commonly accepted beliefs about cholesterol. They say current guideline information is misleading because the role of cholesterol in heart disease is overestimated.

These results fly in the face of what most of us have been told about cholesterol. Our misconceptions about cholesterol may in fact be endangering countless lives. For instance, millions of people are prescribed statin drugs to lower their cholesterol levels, believing that this will save their lives. Not only do statin drugs come with a plethora of dangerous side effects, but now the very premise of their existence is also brought into question.

Our focus on lowering cholesterol to prevent heart disease and mortality is misplaced. It also fails to serve in the best interest of our health and wellness. In fact, the dogmatic belief that cholesterol must be lowered appears to best serve pharmaceutical companies, which profit from cholesterol-lowering drugs.

Better results will be achieved when we develop a more well-rounded focus on other risks for heart disease, which include stress, toxins, a sedentary lifestyle and a poor diet. As an added bonus, these factors aren’t treated with dangerous pharmaceutical drugs, but with simple, healthful lifestyle changes.

Click here for the full report from Natural News.

Did Citi Get a Sweet Deal? Bank Claims SEC Settlement on One CDO Clears It on All Others

October 26, 2011

ProPublica

By Jesse Eisinger and Jake Bernstein

In the run-up to the global financial collapse, Citigroup’s bankers worked feverishly to create complex securities. In just one year, 2007, Citi marketed more than $20 billion worth of deals backed by home mortgages to investors around the world, most of which failed spectacularly. Subsequent lawsuits and investigations turned up evidence that the bank knew that some of the products were low quality and, in some instances, had even bet they would fail.

The bank says it has settled all of its potential liability to a key regulator – the Securities and Exchange Commission — with a $285 million payment that covers a single transaction, Class V Funding III. ProPublica first raised questions about the deal in August 2010. In announcing a case, the SEC said it had identified one low-level employee, Brian Stoker, as responsible for the bank’s misconduct.

It made no mention of the dozens of similar collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs, Citi sold to investors before the crash.

A bank spokesman said the SEC would not be examining any of those deals. “This means that the SEC has completed its CDO investigation(s) of Citi,’’ the spokesman asserted in an e mail.

“The $285 million settlement resolves only the Class V Funding III CDO, and we will not hesitate to bring further charges where we determine that there has been unlawful conduct,” an SEC spokesman said.

Did Citi get a sweet deal? Some observers think so.

“Citibank arranged countless CDOs that were built to fail, but the SEC apparently limited its case to a single CDO where they had particularly vivid and powerful proof,” says Stephen Ascher, a securities litigator at Jenner & Block, which has sued Citibank on various structured finance transactions.

“This represents extreme caution, at best — and a failure to grapple with the magnitude and harmfulness of the misconduct, at worst.”

ProPublica has been investigating the practices of the investment banks in the lead-up to the financial crisis for three years. Our research found a number of Citi CDOs similar to the deal featured in the SEC’s Class V complaint, and more information on Citi’s CDO business has emerged in lawsuits and subsequent investigations. Responsibility for these practices did not begin or end with Mr. Stoker. Among the questions still unanswered: How much did Stoker’s immediate bosses know? What did the heads of Citigroup’s CDO business, fixed income business and trading businesses know about Citi’s CDO dealings?

In the settlement announced this week, the SEC charged Citigroup with misleading its clients in the $1 billion Class V Funding III. The regulator said that the bank failed to disclose that it, rather than a supposedly independent collateral manager, had played a key role in choosing the assets in the deal when the bank marketed it to clients. Citigroup also failed to tell its clients that it retained a short position, or bet against, the CDO it created and sold. In addition to the $285 million fine, the SEC also charged Credit Suisse Alternative Capital, which was supposed to choose the assets that went into the CDO, and a low-level executive at that firm, with securities law violations.

Stoker becomes only the second investment banker after Goldman Sachs’ Fabrice “Fabulous Fab” Tourre to be charged by the SEC in conjunction with the business of creating CDOs, which were at the heart of the financial collapse in the fall of 2008. According to the SEC, Stoker played a leading role in structuring Class V Funding III. Stoker declined to comment. His lawyer has said he is fighting the charges.

The SEC complaint shows that Stoker was regularly communicating with other Citi executives about his actions. One top Citi executive coaches employees in an email that Credit Suisse should tell potential buyers of Class V about how it decided to purchase the assets, even though Citi, not Credit Suisse, was making the calls.

In October 2006, people from Citi’s trading desk approached Stoker about shorting deals that Citi arranged. Later, in Nov 3, 2006, Stoker’s immediate boss inquired about Class V Funding III. Stoker told his boss that he hoped the deal would go through. He wrote that the Citi trading group had taken a position in the deal. Citi’s trading desk was shorting Class V Funding III, betting that its value would fall. Stoker noted that Citi shouldn’t tell Credit Suisse officials what was going on, and that Credit Suisse had agreed to be the manager of the CDO “even though they don’t get to pick the assets.’’ Less than two weeks later, this executive pressed Stoker to make sure that their group at Citi got “credit” for the profits on the short.

This Citi official, unnamed in the complaint, was not charged by the SEC.

If Class V Funding III was some outlier, the SEC’s action might make more sense. But it wasn’t. Citigroup’s CDO operation churned out at least 18 CDOs around the same period. Often they were large CDOs, created with credit default swaps, effectively a bet that a given bond will rise or fall. Most of the CDOs included recycled Citi assets that the bank couldn’t sell. By purchasing pieces of its older deals, Citigroup could complete deals and keep the prices for CDO assets higher than they otherwise would be. Some investors helped picked the assets and then bet against them, facts that Citi didn’t clearly disclose to other investors in the deals.

Closing the book on Citi’s CDO business means the public may never know the true story of Citigroup’s, and Wall Street’s, actions during the financial crisis. One of the largest victims of the CDOs was the bond insurer Ambac. The now-bankrupt firm settled with Citi in 2010, long before it got to the root of the problems with securities Citi convinced it to insure. A shareholder class action lawsuit that is wending its way through the courts has the potential to reveal some details, but often such cases are settled with evidence then sealed from public view.

Among the unresolved questions: What was Citigroup’s role in a series of deals involving Magnetar, an Illinois-based hedge fund that invested in small portions of CDOs and then made big bets against them? Our investigation showed that Citi put together at least 5 Magnetar CDOs worth $6.5 billion. Did Citi mislead the investors who lost big on these deals?

Here are some other questions about Citi CDOs created around the time of Class V Funding III:

888 Tactical Fund. A February 2007, $1 billion deal, it had a significant portion of other Citi deals in it. Did the bank have influence over the selection of the assets, as it did in Class V Funding III?
Adams Square Funding II. A $1 billion March 2007 deal. The pitch-book to clients for Class V Funding III was adapted almost wholesale from this deal, according to the SEC complaint. Was Citigroup shorting this deal, or adding assets that were selected by others to short the deal? And was that adequately disclosed to clients?

Ridgeway Court Funding II. Completed in June 2007, this $3 billion deal contained a mysterious $750 million position in a CDO index. Experts believe that such positions were included for the purposes of shorting the market. Did Citi disclose why it included these assets to the investors in this CDO? As much as 30 percent of the assets in the deal were from unsold Citi CDOs. Was this a dumping ground for decaying assets the bank could not unload, as a lawsuit by Ambac, which was settled, charged?

Armitage. This $3 billion March 2007 CDO looked a lot like Ridgeway II. It had a large portion of other CDOs, much of which came from other Citi deals, including $260 million from Adams Square Funding II. Did Citi adequately disclose to investors what they were buying?

Class V Funding IV. A $2 billion June 2007 deal, Citi appears to have done this directly with Ambac. The SEC complaint about Class V Funding III makes it clear that Ambac was unaware of Citi’s position in that deal. Did the bank disclose more to Ambac in this deal?

Octonion. This $1 billion March 2007 CDO bought some of Adams Square Funding II. Adams Square II bought a piece of Octonion. A third CDO, Class V Funding III, also bought some of Octonion. Octonion, in turn, bought a piece of Class V Funding III. How did Citi and the collateral managers involved in these deals justify this daisy chain of buying?

Click here for the full report from ProPublica.

ACORN Playing Behind Scenes Role In ‘Occupy’ Movement

October 26, 2011

Fox News

By: Jana Winter

The former New York office for ACORN, the disbanded community activist group, is playing a key role in the self-proclaimed “leaderless” Occupy Wall Street movement, organizing “guerrilla” protest events and hiring door-to-door canvassers to collect money under the banner of various causes while spending it on protest-related activities, sources tell FoxNews.com.

The former director of New York ACORN, Jon Kest, and his top aides are now busy working at protest events for New York Communities for Change (NYCC). That organization was created in late 2009 when some ACORN offices disbanded and reorganized under new names after undercover video exposes prompted Congress to cut off federal funds.

NYCC’s connection to ACORN isn’t a tenuous one: It works from the former ACORN offices in Brooklyn, uses old ACORN office stationery, employs much of the old ACORN staff and, according to several sources, engages in some of the old organization’s controversial techniques to raise money, interest and awareness for the protests.

Sources said NYCC has hired about 100 former ACORN-affiliated staff members from other cities – paying some of them $100 a day – to attend and support Occupy Wall Street. Dozens of New York homeless people recruited from shelters are also being paid to support the protests, at the rate of $10 an hour, the sources said.

At least some of those hired are being used as door-to-door canvassers to collect money that’s used to support the protests.

Sources said cash donations collected by NYCC on behalf of some unions and various causes are being pooled and spent on Occupy Wall Street. The money is used to buy supplies, pay staff and cover travel expenses for the ex-ACORN members brought to New York for the protests.

In one such case, sources said, NYCC staff members collected cash donations for what they were told was a United Federation of Teachers fundraising drive, but the money was diverted to the protests.

Sources who participated in the teachers union campaign said NYCC supervisors gave them the addresses of union members and told them to go knock on their doors and ask for contributions—and did not mention that the money would go toward Occupy Wall Street expenses. One source said the campaign raked in about $5,000.

Current staff members at NYCC told FoxNews.com the union fundraising drive was called off abruptly last week, and they were told NYCC should not have been raising money for the union at all.

Sources said staff members also collected door-to-door for NYCC’s PCB campaign — which aims to test schools for deadly toxins —but then pooled that money together with cash raised for the teachers union and other campaigns to fund Occupy Wall Street.

“We go to Freeport, Central Islip, Park Slope, everywhere, and we say we’re collecting money for PCBs testing in schools. But the money isn’t going to the campaign,” one source said.

“It’s going to Occupy Wall Street, and we’re not using that money to get schools tested for deadly chemicals or to make their kids safer. It’s just going to the protests, and that’s just so terrible.”

A spokesman for the United Federation of Teachers told FoxNews.com, “The UFT is not involved in any NYCC fundraising on the PCB issue.”

Multiple sources said NYCC is also using cash donations through canvassing efforts in New York’s Harlem and Washington Heights neighborhoods for union-backed campaigns to fund the Wall Street protests.

“All the money collected from canvasses is pooled together back at the office, and everything we’ve been working on for the last year is going to the protests, against big banks and to pay people’s salaries—and those people on salary are, of course, being paid to go to the protests every day,” one NYCC staff member told FoxNews.com.

Those who contribute don’t know the money is going to fund the protests, the source said.

“They give contributions because we say if they do we can fix things – whatever specific problem they’re having in their area, housing, schools, whatever … then we spend the contributions paying staff to be at the protests all day, every day. That’s where these contributions – the community’s money – is going,” the source said.

“They’re doing the same stuff now that got ACORN in trouble to begin with. And yes, we’re still ACORN, there is a still a national ACORN.”

Another source, who said she was hired from a homeless shelter, said she was first sent to the protests before being deployed to Central Islip, Long Island, to canvass for a campaign against home foreclosures.

“I went to the protests every day for two weeks and made $10 an hour. They made me carry NYCC signs and big orange banners that say NYCC in white letters. About 50 others were hired around my time to go to the protests. We went to protests in and around Zuccotti Park, then to the big Times Square protest,” she said.

“But now they have me canvassing on Long Island for money, so I get the money and then the money is being used for Occupy Wall Street—to pay for all of it, for supplies, food, transportation, salaries, for everything … all that money is going to pay for the protests downtown and that’s just messed up. It’s just wrong.”

Neither Kest, NYCC executive director, nor his communications director returned repeated email and telephone requests for comment, nor did his communications director. A Fox News producer who visited the Brooklyn office on Tuesday was told, “The best people to speak to who are involved with Occupy Wall Street aren’t available.”

In a phone interview on Tuesday, Harrison Schultz, an Occupy Wall Street spokesman, said he knew nothing about NYCC’s involvement in the Occupy movement.

“Haven’t seen them, couldn’t tell you,” he said.

He said he couldn’t comment on the Occupy the Boardroom website’s relationship to the movement and to NYCC.

“It’s a horizontal organization, a leaderless organization, it’s difficult to explain it,” Schultz said, “difficult to explain it to people who haven’t worked in this, who haven’t been part of it.”

Kest publicly threw his organization’s support behind the movement in a Sept. 30 opinion piece on HuffingtonPost.com. But top ex-ACORN staff members and current NYCC officials have been planning events like the Occupy Wall Street protests since February, a source within the group told FoxNews.com.

That’s when planning began for May 12 protests against Chase bank foreclosures, which were followed by the formation of the Beyond May 12 campaign, targeting Wall Street and big banks. That campaign was rolled out by a coalition of community groups and unions and led by the revamped former ACORN group.

“What people don’t understand is that ACORN is behind this — and that this, what’s happening now, is all part of the May 12 and Beyond May 12 plans to go after the banks, Chase in particular,” a source said.

Sources said NYCC was a key player behind a series of recent Occupy Wall Street events, including the Oct. 11 Millionaires March, which brought protests and union and community groups on walking tours of Upper East Side homes of wealthy New Yorkers; and the launch of the “Occupy the Boardroom” website, registered to Kest, which encouraged protesters to contact high-profile bankers, among others.

Click here for the full report from Fox News

Supreme Court Rules That Thousands Of Home Foreclosures Are Invalid Because Banks Do Not Have Promissory Notes

October 26, 2011

Natural News

By Ethan A. Huff

More than five million US homeowners and counting have had their homes foreclosed upon by banks since the “economic crisis” first began several years ago. But the Massachusetts Supreme Court recently ruled that the vast majority of the foreclosures that took place in the Commonwealth (and likely in most other states) within the past five years are illegitimate because the banks did not, and do not, actually hold the promissory notes for the properties.

This means that all mortgage payments made to banks for illegitimately foreclosed upon properties are fraudulent since such banks do not technically own the properties in question. It also means that anyone who purchased a foreclosed property, or who is threatened currently with potential foreclosure, does not necessarily have a legal obligation to continue paying their mortgage.

Even homeowners who do not face foreclosure are not necessarily required to continue paying their mortgages — if their lenders are unable to produce valid promissory notes showing true ownership of the property. Then those who follow through with mortgage payments to such lenders are technically participating in fraud because there is no way to verify whether or not mortgage payments are going to the true note holders, or even who the true note holders are in the first place.

“In essence, the ruling [upholds] that those who had purchased a foreclosure property that had been illegally foreclosed upon (which is virtually all foreclosure sales in the last five years), did not in fact have title to the property,” writes The Daily Bail. “Given the fact that more than two-thirds of all real estate transactions in the last five years have also been foreclosed properties, this creates a small problem.”

Recognizing that the federal government’s bailout plan was beneficial only to banks and not homeowners, Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio told those facing foreclosure back in 2009 to “be squatters in [their] own home” (http://articles.sfgate.com/2009-02-…). Now that these foreclosures have been exposed as largely fraudulent, it turns out that her advice was sound.

“Radical though it may seem, we believe the only way to stop the chaos of fraud and the breakdown of the rule of law in our courts, and most importantly to ensure that we ourselves are not participants in the fraud, is for homeowners who can afford their mortgage to stop paying it,” says The Daily Bail.

Click here for the full report from Natural News.

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