Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, July 11, 2012


Well, folks... back to work!

(Well... blogging at least; though I do have a run tonight...)

(Also... my best intentions are to make it to the gym today...)

(*GRIN*)

I tell ya, folks... post-holiday return to drudgery is tough...

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6 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0711-san-bernardino-20120711,0,5646419.story

San Bernardino on Tuesday became the third California city in less than a month to seek bankruptcy protection, with officials saying the financial situation had become so dire that it could not cover payroll through the summer.

(*PURSED LIPS*)

[T]he interim city manager, Andrea Miller, said "the city faces a $46-million deficit and depleted coffers."

Mayor Patrick Morris (D) called the decision, passed on a 4-2 vote, a "stain" on the city. But he said the only other option was "draconian cuts" to all city services, including the police and fire departments. "It means the bills will be paid," said a dejected Morris, who is not a voting member of the council.

* UMM... (*SCRATCHING MY HEAD*)... NO... IT MEANS JUST THE OPPOSITE - THE BILLS WON'T BE PAID! THAT'S WHAT BANKRUPTCY MEANS!

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD IN DISGUST*)

The city's fiscal crisis has been years in the making, compounded by the nation's crushing recession and exacerbated by escalating pension costs, lucrative labor agreements, Sacramento's raid on redevelopment funds and a city reserve that is tapped out, officials said.

* BLAH, BLAH, BLAH... BOTTOM LINE... THOSE RUNNING CITY GOVERNMENT DESTROYED THE CITY! AND WORST OF ALL, THEY WERE HANDSOMELY "COMPENSATED" TO DO SO! THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ARE SUCKERS. IT'S THAT FRIGGIN' SIMPLE.

Miller told the council that the city faced major deficits for the next five years.

(*SIGH*)

The deficits remain even after the city negotiated $10 million in concessions from employees and slashed the workforce 20% over the last four years. Miller...said that even if the council eliminated all services except for the police department, it would not be enough to pull the city out of its financial tailspin.

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

City Atty. James Penman said city budget officials had falsified documents presented to the mayor and council for 13 of the last 16 years, masking the city's deficit spending.

* SO WHO'S GOING TO JAIL? (*SMIRK*)

"For the last 16 years the budget prepared for the council showed the city was in the black," Penman said, not naming those allegedly responsible. "The mayor and the council were not given accurate documents."

* WELL... (*SNICKER*)... I GUESS NO ONE IS GOING TO JAIL SINCE NO ONE IS ACTUALLY BEING NAMED, LET ALONE BEING LED OUT OF CITY HALL IN HANDCUFFS.

(*JUST FEELING SICK TO MY STOMACH*)

July 11, 2012 at 9:36 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/10/us-mali-crisis-timbuktu-idUSBRE8690O420120710

Islamist militants destroyed two tombs on Tuesday at the famous 14th century Djingareyber mosque in Timbuktu, classified by UNESCO as a world heritage site, residents said.

The new destruction comes after attacks last week on other historic and religious landmarks in Timbuktu that UNESCO called "wanton destruction."

July 11, 2012 at 10:08 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/raymond-ibrahim/muslim-brotherhood-destroy-the-pyramids/

According to several reports in the Arabic media, prominent Muslim clerics have begun to call for the demolition of Egypt’s Great Pyramids — or, in the words of Saudi Sheikh Ali bin Said al-Rabi‘i, those “symbols of paganism,” which Egypt’s Salafi party has long planned to cover with wax.

Most recently, Bahrain’s “Sheikh of Sunni Sheikhs” and President of National Unity, Abd al-Latif al-Mahmoud, called on Egypt’s new president, Muhammad Morsi, to “destroy the Pyramids and accomplish what the Sahabi Amr bin al-As could not.”

This is a reference to the Muslim Prophet Muhammad’s companion, Amr bin al-As and his Arabian tribesmen, who invaded and conquered Egypt circa 641. Under al-As and subsequent Muslim rule, many Egyptian antiquities were destroyed as relics of infidelity.

While most Western academics argue otherwise, according to early Muslim writers, the great Library of Alexandria itself — deemed a repository of pagan knowledge contradicting the Koran — was destroyed under bin al-As’s reign and in compliance with Caliph Omar’s command.

July 11, 2012 at 10:16 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2171973/Tree-ring-study-proves-climate-WARMER-Roman-Medieval-times-modern-industrial-age.html

Rings in fossilized pine trees have proven that the world was much warmer than previously thought - and the earth has been slowly COOLING for 2,000 years.

Measurements stretching back to 138 BC prove that the Earth is slowly cooling due to changes in the distance between the Earth and the sun.

It is the first time that researchers have been able to accurately measure trends in global temperature over the last two millennia. Over that time, the world has been getting cooler and previous estimates, used as the basis for current climate science, are wrong.

Their findings demonstrate that this trend involves a cooling of -0.3°C per millennium due to gradual changes to the position of the sun and an increase in the distance between the Earth and the sun.

"This figure we calculated may not seem particularly significant," says Esper, "however, it is also not negligible when compared to global warming, which up to now has been less than 1°C. Our results suggest that the large-scale climate reconstruction shown by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) likely under-estimate this long-term cooling trend over the past few millennia."

The finding was based on semi-fossilized tree rings found in Finnish Lapland.

July 11, 2012 at 10:33 AM
William R. Barker said...

* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)

http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/47926?utm_source=CFP+Mailout&utm_campaign=d5f0ad027b-Call_to_Champions&utm_medium=email

* HAT TIP TO CHIP MURRAY!

The chances are good that if you ask someone on the street what LIBOR is, they would guess it to be an obscure country in Africa.

LIBOR is an acronym for the London Interbank Offered Rate, which is the average interest rate set by a group of international banks and charged by and between banks.

LIBOR is something that affects everyone, to the extent that it “sets” the interest rate you’ll be paying for your mortgage, car loan, credit cards, and the rate of return you’ll receive on your pension, 401K, savings and all financial instruments. In total, it establishes the pricing of financial products across the world to the tune of up to $800 trillion. Trillion.

Sixteen (16) banks set the LIBOR rate: Bank of America, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Barclays Bank, Citibank, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, HBOS, HSBC, JP Morgan Chase, Lloyds TSB Bank, Rabobank, Royal Bank of Canada, Norinchukin Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland, UBS, and West LB.

LIBOR sets short and long term interest rates for 10 currencies and for 15 different time spans, ranging from one day to one year. The rate is calculated daily by a company named Thomson Reuters, which is the parent company of Reuters News, and is overseen by the British Banking Association (BBA).

Although based in London, the LIBOR rate impacts all financial products across the globe. In the U.S., for example, there are two “numbers” that play a critical role in our economy: LIBOR and the prime rate. The LIBOR rate particularly affects sub-prime loan rates. Investigation in 2008 established that about 60% of prime adjustable rate mortgages and almost all subprime mortgages were tied to LIBOR.

Through the interest rate process, LIBOR affects investments as well. The daily LIBOR rate is set daily by member banks, and then reported to the British Banking Association (BBA), a trade association of banks and financial services companies. It is then made public to the world. Investors make decisions based on LIBOR rates, whether the investment is short or long term.

Simply stated, a group of about 20 international banks, including many associated with setting the LIBOR rate and a number of U.S. banks have been fraudulently and systematically rigging global interest rates for the past decade, if not longer.

We are now finding out that the entire system has been rigged, enriching the “elect” and financially looting the rest. If you are reading this, you have been robbed, although the corporate media remains silent about who robbed you, how it was done, and which government and non-government officials were complicit and benefited.

Why?

Perhaps the most compelling reason is that when the “average” person learns the depths at which corruption exists between the various banks, governments and government officials, there will be a revolution like the world has never seen.

(Additionally, they too, along with many elected and appointed officials, have aided and abetted the fraud. Yes, it’s that bad, and it’s about to break wide open.)

* TO BE CONTINUED...

July 11, 2012 at 1:29 PM
William R. Barker said...

* TWO-PARTER... (Part 2 of 2)

The fraud was “discovered” when Barclay’s Bank was found to have been involved in submitting false numbers to LIBOR to enhance their trading position. The “scandal” as it is called in the media, instead of the wholesale fraud and robbery that it is, now involves numerous other banks who reportedly acted in collusion to fix global interest rates.

Manipulating the rate (suppressing the rate, or conversely, inflating the rate) is done to make certain banks’ balance sheets appear healthier than they are, thus allowing the CEOs and heads of such banks to rake in huge bonuses, while essentially robbing real money from real investors. They “rig” the numbers to benefit the member banks and those who run and oversee them, all under the alleged oversight of regulators and government (and non-government) entities. The problem, however, is that the majority of regulators are tied to the very banks that they oversee.

Additionally, as in the U.S., there is a criminally incestuous relationship between the perpetrators, the Federal Reserve, the Secretary of the Treasury, and government officials and officials appointed by the government. The entire financial system is rigged by a group of central banks, bankers, regulators, and elected government officials.

(One has to look no further than Jon Corzine of MF Global, Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke, and others to get an idea of such examples. The LIBOR fraud, however, might be the tripwire that exposes the massive scale of the financial raping of the people.)

Many cities and municipalities have made investments or loans based on the LIBOR rate. For example, the City of Baltimore, Maryland and New Britain Firefighters’ Benefit Fund recently filed a complaint against Citigroup Inc., Credit Suisse AG, Bank of America Corp. and more than a dozen other banks, claiming that they “artificially suppressed” the LIBOR rate, causing them substantial financial loss.

Nearly every city, town and municipality in the U.S. will be victimized by this fraud of epic proportions.

Invested in the stock market? That is a house of cards, with its base partly propped up based on LIBOR. Despite this, few are talking about it, and those in the corporate media are downplaying the severity and scope of this financial terrorist attack by the global banks.

With regard to the aforementioned scandal involving Barclay’s Bank, that’s just the beginning. Barclay’s CEO Bob Diamond resigned last week and the bank was fined a mere $453 million for its role in the scam. Other banks are being “investigated,” and it appears that some perpetrators are running scared. Some are reportedly cooperating with investigators to avoid taking the ultimate fall for what promises to be the mother of all frauds – a completely rigged, compromised and totally unsustainable global financial system that affects everyone.

Soon, the media will be unable to maintain their silence as the global financial Ponzi scheme unravels and as we predict, victims will take to the streets.

* I MUST ADMIT, I FIND IT AMAZING THAT THEY'VE BEEN ABLE TO KEEP THE "JUGGLING" UP FOR AS LONG AS THEY HAVE. PERHAPS THERE'LL BE A RELATIVELY "SOFT" LANDING HERE IN THE U.S. AS WELL WHEN THE SCHEME UNRAVELS... BUT I WOULDN'T COUNT ON IT.

[Violence] will happen when you suddenly find out your money is worthless, the entirety of our economy and our debt is a fraudulent by-product of financial terrorists of the megabanks and the carnival barkers on Wall Street are mere shills for the global financial oligarchy.

* AGAIN... EVEN I FIND "TOTAL COLLAPSE"... TOTAL BREAKDOWN OF SOCIETY AS WE KNOW IT... TO BE A STRETCH. HERE AT LEAST. STILL... WHAT OCCURS OVERSEAS - NOT TO MENTION IN MEXICO - WILL NOT BE PRETTY. DEPENDING UPON HOW HARD CHINA IS HIT... (*SIGH*)... WELL... THE CONTAGION COULD EASILY SPREAD... AND... ALL IT TAKES IS FOR ONE TERRORIST GROUP OR ROGUE GENERAL OR DICTATOR TO GET HOLD OF A NUCLEAR WEAPON AND ALL BETS ARE OFF!

July 11, 2012 at 1:30 PM

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