www.organizedpolitics.com

(CBS)  This is the story of a blood feud, a battle between brothers. As we told you when we first reported this story last November, the Koch family of Wichita, Kansas is among the richest in the United States, worth billions of dollars. Their oil company, Koch Industries, is bigger than Intel, Dupont or Prudential Insurance, and they own it lock stock and barrel.

About three weeks ago, a bill was signed into law that may have a long-term impact on the culture of policing in New York State and New York City. The state's labor law has been amended so that no employer shall penalize an employee who is a police officer solely because of the employee's failure to meet a quota of tickets or summonses, arrests or stops of individuals suspected of criminal activity within a specified period of time.

An experiment by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology is believed to be the first detailed examination of robot deception.

The team developed computer algorithms that would let a robot ‘decide’ whether it should deceive a human or another robot and gave it strategies to give it the best chance of not being found out.

  Bollywood Superstar Aamir Khan Shines the Spotlight on What's Caused an Estimated 150,000 Farmer Suicides in India

Britain's former deputy prime minister pressed Friday for police to reveal more about what is alleged to have been a pattern of illegal eavesdropping at a major tabloid newspaper.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/09/03/ap/world/main6831822.shtml 

As the privacy controversy around full-body security scans begins to simmer, it’s worth noti

A group of influential conservative members of the behemoth social media site Digg.com have just been caught red-handed in a widespread campaign of censorship, having multiple accounts, upvote padding, and deliberately trying to ban progressives.

http://blogs.alternet.org/oleoleolson/2010/08/05/massive-censorship-of-digg-uncovered/ 

Randy Luth was surprised to learn in 2006 that Cerberus Capital Management wanted to buy his St. Cloud (Minn.) business. What would Manhattan financiers known for investing in distressed debt and troubled companies want with DPMS Firearms, a manufacturer of semiautomatic rifles?

Washington Post:

The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.

The National Security Agency has begun work on an "expansive" spy system that will monitor critical infrastructure inside the United States for cyber-attacks, in a move that detractors say could end up violating privacy rights and expanding the NSA's domestic spying abilities.

CAIRO (AFP) – An oil spill off the Egyptian Red Sea coast of Hurghada threatening to damage marine life in the area has prompted 

by Ernest A. Canning, Brad Blog:

(AP) -- Independent scientists and government officials say there's a disaster we can't see in the Gulf of Mexico's mysterious depths, the ruin of a world inhabited by enormous sperm whales and tiny, invisible plankton. 

Video: Ralph Nader says the central political issue of our time is giant corporate power and its take over of our government, plus the spread of commercial values into every nook and cranny of our culture including the commercialization of childhood, the universities and almost everything these large corporations touch. Speaking at the Washington, DC Green Festival, he also details what we can and must do about it.

A good idea that was quickly abandoned:

Congressional Democrats are pushing their first legislative response to the Gulf Coast oil spill, proposing to vastly raise the liability cap on companies that are responsible for offshore disasters. 

May 10 (Bloomberg) -- European policy makers unveiled an unprecedented loan package worth almost $1 trillion and a program of bond purchases to stop a sovereign-debt crisis that threatened to shatter confidence in the euro. 

WASHINGTON – Chalk one up for the pharmaceutical lobby. The U.S.

The report, issued March 3 by the DOD's inspector general, found that between late 2008 and mid-2009, KBR performed less than 7 percent of the work it was expected to do, but still got paid in full.

In a 2007 article for the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, Colonel Bart Johnson explained how state-level intelligence “fusion centers” collect data from a range of sources and connect “seemingly unrelated” incidents that could be precursors of terrorist activity. 

  When David Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski founded the Trilateral Commission in 1973, the intent was to create a "New International Economic Order" (NIEO).

 Feb. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Non-performing loans in China have risen into the “trillions of renminbi” because of poor lending practices, an insolvency lawyer said.

  http://www.cspan.org/Watch/Media/2009/12/17/WJE/A/27404/Rep+Jack+Kingston+RGA.aspx

Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Member Rep. Jack Kingston goes over the defense appropriations bill that the House passed Thursday, by a vote of 395-34.

  WASHINGTON—Democrats are exploring ways to counter a Supreme Court ruling that threw out a century of limits on corporate political spending, hoping it will hand them a populist issue to stem a Republican tide rising on public anger.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Corporations can spend freely to support or oppose candidates for president and Congress, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday, a landmark decision denounced by President Barack Obama for giving special interests more power. 

As the first journalists to enter Kabul in 1981 for CBS News following the expulsion of the Western media the previous year, we continue to be amazed at how the American disinformation campaign between Hollywood, Washington and Wall Street built around the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan lives on. 

http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2009/12/22/charlie-wilson’s-war-is-a-f...

Top House-Senate lawmakers are putting the finishing touches on a $626 billion Pentagon spending bill that Democratic leaders hope to clear for Obama's signature by Friday. 

House Democrats are also likely to pass a separate so-called jobs package with funding for infrastructure, help for state and local governments and a variety of other spending items aimed at boosting the economy. But it's clear that measure would not pass the Senate. 

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Congress-readies-defense-apf-1584122423.ht...

A recent discovery -- in October of 2009 -- has been suppressed by the main stream media but has been circulating among the "big money" brokers and financial kingpins and is just now being revealed to the public. It involves the gold in Fort Knox -- the US Treasury gold -- that is the equity of our national wealth. In short, millions (with an "m") of gold bars are fake!

Who did this? Apparently our own government.

http://www.viewzone.com/fakegold.html 

 In an unprecedented defeat for the Federal Reserve, an amendment to audit the multi-trillion dollar institution was approved by the House Finance Committee with an overwhelming and bipartisan 43-26 vote on Thursday afternoon.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/19/fed-beaten-bill-to-audit_n_3645...

Statements by more than a dozen lawmakers were ghostwritten, in whole or in part, by Washington lobbyists working for Genentech, one of the world’s largest biotechnology companies.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/us/politics/15health.html?_r=1

Insider trading scandal:

“Information is the lifeblood of the market,” says Christopher Miller, chief executive of Allenbridge Hedginfo, the hedge fund due diligence firm. “The [Securities and Exchange Commission] is flexing its muscles. Regulators around the world want to be feared and now they’ve started frightening people.”

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/163732ea-ca3b-11de-a3a3-00144feabdc0,dwp_uuid=...

The economic crisis revealed late-capitalism's central offense: Human beings are being transparently treated if they were mere transactions. And they're going postal over it.

http://www.alternet.org/world/143813/as_foreclosure_nightmares_increase%...

"In Atlanta, Ga., you'll find southern gentility, a world-class music scene -- and 21,000 tons of environmental waste.

http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/forbes-rates-atlanta-most-185466.html

If things had gone according to plan, Lindsay Murphy would be a big-city tax lawyer by now. Instead, the recent law school graduate found herself doing legal aid, listening to complaints about raw sewage bubbling up into the bathtubs of a Mississippi Delta housing project.

http://www.miamiherald.com/business/breaking-news/story/1296482.html 

On Tuesday, March 11th, 2008, somebody — nobody knows who — made one of the craziest bets Wall Street has ever seen. The mystery figure spent $1.7 million on a series of options, gambling that shares in the venerable investment bank Bear Stearns would lose more than half their value in nine days or less.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/30481512/wall_streets_naked_s...

Leftist Latin American leaders agreed here on the creation of a regional currency, the Sucre, aimed at scaling back the use of the US dollar.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.e97a6addcd4c089b8a907e80e5a2...

John M. Cole, an FBI spy catcher who retired in 2004, says that from 1993 to 1995 alone, he had “125 open cases” of Israeli espionage, representing nearly half of all the investigations carried on in his Global Unit, part of the now-defunct National Security division.

In this article, Marc Grossman, a former high-level State Department official, is confirmed by a former FBI agent to have been one of these cases.

http://123realchange.blogspot.com/2009/09/grossman-confirmed-as-fbi-targ...

Richard Padilla Cramer, a 26-year veteran anti-drug official, is behind bars, arrested after officials accused him of directing a massive cocaine shipment to Spain via the United States, and selling important information in law enforcement databases to a vicious Mexican drug cartel.

http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/09/17/report-top-anti-drug-official-was...

"Let me just leave you with this thought," he said, "and that is that I think Panetta, and to a degree President Obama, are afraid --- I never thought I'd hear myself saying this --- I think they're afraid of the CIA."...

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7408

A DC-based consulting firm has been exposed for forging letters in opposition to the American Clean Energy and Security Act.

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/07/31/bonner-forgery/

Bank that is repossessing homes by the hundred, turns a massive profit

http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&It...

It has been brewing for a few years and will transform the world economy.

The U.S. as such will loose its predominance, but the multinational companies will make the rules.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aeFVNYQpByU4

A majority of the U.S. House of Representatives is now in support of a historic bill by Republican lawmaker Ron Paul to audit the Federal Reserve (the Fed), the privately run central bank that sets monetary policy for the United States.

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47431

A story that sounds apocalyptic but (unfortunately) has a very sound reasoning and facts to back it up.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090614_the_american_empire_is_bank...

KBR seems to be the most organized in crime when it comes to pilfering from the war funds.

http://www.indeonline.com/news/x726831992/APNewsBreak-Major-problems-fou...

This was an important event in history because the mid 1950's newly created states in the Middle-East were electing democratic governments.  By toppling these governments in Iran and Iraq and replacing them with dictatorships was a definite factor in the chaos that we now witness in that region.

http://news.antiwar.com/2009/06/04/obama-admits-to-us-role-in-iran-coup/

Last month, a little-known company where Summers served on the board of directors received a $42 million investment from a group of investors, including three banks that Summers, Obama’s effective “economy czar,” has been doling out billions in bailout money to: Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and Morgan Stanley. 

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/140327/is_larry_summers_taking_kickbac...

The question is not "are the markets being manipulated?", but "who is manipulating the markets?".

http://zerohedge.blogspot.com/2009/05/flagrantly-visible-hand.html

A video from the Real News Network on the North American Free Trade Agreement and the empowerment of the drug cartels.

http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&It...

A small but growing number of cash-strapped communities are printing their own money.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2009-04-05-scrip_N.htm

Car Manufacturers Bailout: The United Senate Republicans Against The United Auto Workers.

By Richard Van Slyke
December 12, 2008

On December 11th, the Senate defeated a bill previously approved by the House to bailout the three major U.S. car manufacturers.  Whether the ill-managed companies deserved to be bailed-out is a relevant question, but what is interesting is the main argument that a united front of Senate Republicans used to reject the bill.  According to them, the main cause for the demise of the carmakers is the cost of labor.

Food, Oil, and Speculators

By Richard Van Slyke
May 12, 2008

The truth is slowly starting to trickle out.  Not thanks to the hard work of the U.S. mainstream media, but just because it’s so real that it can’t remain totally hidden. What is really causing the rise of food and oil prices?
Many reasons have been given over the past few months.
Shortage of oil production turned out to be a false pretext; there is more oil being produced now than in the 1970’s.
The use of corn and soybean for biofuels, a reason given by George Bush a few weeks ago, was retracted days later.  Biofuels do play a part in the rise of food prices, but absolutely not to an extent that would justify the rise that occurred.
So the major factor in food and oil prices jump is slowly emerging in the news: speculators.  Of course, the first reports came from outside the U.S.; then it was picked-up here by alternative medias here, citing foreign sources.  And now some major media are (probably reluctantly) bringing it up.

Grannies arrested for wanting to enlist.

By Richard Van Slyke
March 19th, 2008

Two days ago, 10 members of Grandmothers for Peace were arrested in Atlanta for trying to enlist at an Army recruiting station. I won’t go over all the details of the event as it is best related by Atlanta Progressive News (1), but this story definitely needs close attention. Despite the fact that it is quite hilarious, it is also definitely a serious matter.

The motto was: "We don’t want our grandchildren to go to war, so take us instead."

What started out as a reasonable, though not perfect, stimulus plan has been ruined by Republicans in Congress:

REPORTED STIMULUS PACKAGE WOULD PROVIDE LITTLE IMMEDIATE BOOST DUE TO REMOVAL OF MOST EFFECTIVE PROVISIONS

Changes reportedly made last night in the stimulus package would reduce its effectiveness as stimulus. Although the package includes a reasonably designed tax rebate, the two most targeted and economically effective measures under consideration — a temporary extension of unemployment benefits and a temporary boost in food stamp benefits — were zeroed out, apparently at the insistence of House Republican leaders.

If you live in the U.S., you're rich. Even if you are homeless and reading this article in a public library. How do we know that? Your GDP is high!

What is the GDP?
The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is in economics the leading indicator of the wealth of a country.
It is calculated by adding-up private consumption, business investments, government expenditures, and the difference (positive or negative) between exports and imports.

By dividing that figure by the number of inhabitants, the GDP per capita is also usually used as an indicator of the standard of living in that country.

Help! Could someone please invade us and give us democracy.
By Richard Van Slyke

Democracy is one of the most cherished goods on this earth. It’s hard to find, and when we have it, it’s hard to keep. It appeared at one time that we had plenty of it and that we could relax, just have fun and enjoy it. We felt so secure that we even gave some away.

We gave some to Iran in 1953.
We tried to give some to Vietnam in the 1960’s, but they didn’t want any of it.
We gave some to Chile in 1973.
We gave some to Iraq in 1979.
And again to Iraq in 1991

CPA Officials Posing with $2 Million in Cash

 
Twenty billion dollars, you read it well! Even in military accounting terms, that’s a lot of toilet seats. A tale of total incompetence; as a script it probably would have been turned down by Hollywood for being totally unbelievable (until now).