ACTA: The Corporate Usurpation of the Internet

Nile Bowie
http://www.activistpost.com/2012/01/acta-corporate-usurpation-of-internet.html

In the wake of a public outcry against internet regulation bills such as SOPA and PIPA, representatives of the EU have signed a new and far more threatening legislation yesterday in Tokyo. Spearheaded by the governments of the United States and Japan and constructed largely in the absence of public awareness, the measures of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) dramatically alter current international legal framework, while introducing the first substantial processes of global internet governance. With complete contempt towards the democratic process, the negotiations of the treaty were exclusively held between industry representatives and government officials, while excluding elected representatives and members of the press from their hearings. …

Robert Reich
Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino owner, … had, before the South Carolina Republican primary, donated $5 million to the pro-Gingrich Super Pac “Winning Our Future” …

Adelson has … cut another $5 million check for Gingrich to go negative on Romney in Florida. …

And, who knows? … They might decide to put in another $5 million or perhaps $20 million into Gingrich’s Super Pac. …

Do you know who Sheldon and Marian Adelson are? Do you know what Gingrich has promised them, or what they think they’ll get out of a Grinch presidency? I don’t. But if Newt becomes President of the United States … Newt will owe them big time. …

(But I know the newt would not yield to pressure like that. His character is too pure; his morals too high.)

Newt Gingrich? Really?

… In the first place, Newt Gingrich is the personification of the word “globalist.” Gingrich is a longtime member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Gingrich never saw a globalist agenda-item that he did not enthusiastically support such as: NAFTA, GATT, the WTO, FTAA, the North American Union (by whatever name it’s called at the moment), the NAFTA Superhighway, ad infinitum. Gingrich is as much committed to open borders as is Bill Clinton, Al Gore, or Barack Obama. Gingrich is as committed to the advancement of the George Soros-sponsored Agenda 21 “green” initiatives as any person living today.

In the second place, Newt Gingrich’s actual record is fundamentally opposite his constant “conservative” rhetoric. … voting for every kind of welfare program imaginable …

And let’s not forget that, after orchestrating the “Contract With America” … it was Newt Gingrich that quickly abandoned those promises–which led to his eventual resignation following the 1996 elections, when voters fled the GOP in disgust after Gingrich’s compromises. …

William Jasper also reported … at:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/73600337/Speaker-for-Whom-12Dec1994

In the third place, if the current trend toward … a police state disturbs you, Newt Gingrich is the last person in the world you would want to elect President of the United States.

Devvy Kidd writes, “On October 22, 1991, Gingrich voted for … a National Police Corps. … As Rep. Susan Molinari (R-NY), one of Newt’s cheerleaders, explained to Michael Kinsley on CNN’s Crossfire, ‘If it wasn’t for Newt Gingrich, you wouldn’t have a crime bill.’

“Indeed. The Gingrich-led opposition ‘threw’ the game, failing to challenge the bill’s fundamental flaw–that the federal government has no constitutional authority … . ‘That crime bill stank to high heaven,’ charged Pat Buchanan. ‘It federalizes crimes such as spousal abuse, giving the feds police power the Constitution reserves to the states.’”

See Devvy Kidds’ report at:

http://www.newswithviews.com/Devvy/kidd449.htm

The contents of Newt Gingrich’s record in this report are merely the tip of the old proverbial iceberg. … And this is the man Christians and conservatives in South Carolina want to be the next President of the United States? …

Newt Gingrich wants to continue the Wilsonian foreign entanglement philosophy by continuing to send troops to fight undeclared, unconstitutional wars; by continuing to entrap and enrage foreign capitols into conflicts that only serve the interests of international bankers and the military-industrial complex …

If the Republican Party has a death wish, they will nominate Newt Gingrich as their Presidential candidate. Gingrich is a snake-oil salesman … and he will sell America’s sovereignty to an international New World Order and turn our country into a police state. Christians, of all people, should know better.

Newt Gingrich? Really?

January 24, 2012 by The Guru Investor

Top forecaster Norman Fosback says “the market’s fundamental position has evolved to the most favorable alignment in 20 years,” and sees big gains for stocks over the next year and the next five years. … almost 14% annualized. … He says corporate profitability is at an all-time high, but market P/E ratios are back where they were in 1990. As for the European debt crisis, Fosback doesn’t think it will take down U.S. markets …

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report January 23, 2012

India is the first buyer of Iranian oil to agree to pay for its purchases in gold instead of the US dollar … Sources expect China to follow suit. India and China take about one million barrels per day, or 40 percent of Iran’s total exports of 2.5 million bpd. …

By trading in gold, New Delhi and Beijing enable Tehran to bypass the upcoming freeze on its central bank’s assets and the oil embargo which the European Union’s foreign ministers agreed to impose Monday, Jan. 23. …

Delhi is to execute its transactions … through two state-owned banks: the Calcutta-based UCO Bank, … and Halk Bankasi (Peoples Bank), Turkey’s seventh largest bank which is owned by the government. …

Turkey announced publicly last week that it would not adhere to any sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program unless they were imposed by the United Nations Security Council. … China for its part has declared its opposition to sanctions against Iran. …

China and Russia (will buy Tehran’s) oil in currencies other than US dollars. (They) are keeping the workings of those (payment) mechanisms top secret.

(Read the whole article here.)

(This trumps the western sanctions. What will the west do next?)

January 22, 2012
Brandon Turbeville

… In the South Carolina Republican primaries on Saturday, there are now questions surrounding the vote counting process that took place … Some individuals who witnessed the actual certification of the vote are beginning to question whether (there was) voter fraud. …

In Pickens County … Chris Lawton, … who came to the Pickens County elections office to witness the vote certification, noticed a series of situations that were either in direct opposition to State voting laws, or, at the very least, highly questionable. …

Mr. Lawton claims he was told that he had to … watch the vote tabulation on the projector … Eventually, he … decided to assert himself as per his rights to witness the count personally under State law. He says, “[They were] very unfriendly and appeared agitated at my presence. When I got my wits I went back and declared State law allowed me to witness all aspects of this process. …”

Mr. Lawton then states that at 8:00 pm a precinct which he believes to be Prater’s Creek came into the office without the “zero” tape; the device that shows the voting machines were started at a vote count of zero. Without the “zero” tape, there is no certainty that the voting machines did not begin operation loaded with votes for specific candidates, a very serious issue to say the least.

Mr. Lawton states that, at 8:02 pm, the Paul campaign called the elections office and was hung up on and given no information regarding the vote-counting process.

At 8:05 pm, Mr. Lawton claims that a box of ballots arrived (Box 216) which he believes were also from Prater’s Creek. This box had a broken security seal. When Lawton asked for the serial number of the machine that these ballots came from, he says he was told to wait. …

These were not the only ballots to come back unsecured. According to Lawton, the discs containing the Powdersville District 2 ballots arrived being carried by a poll worker. These discs were not only missing a seal, but were being carried in a personal folder inside the worker’s left pocket. …

Around 8:55 pm, a lady from Clemson Precinct 1 stated that the boxes and machines for this precinct were actually dropped off at another precinct – Stone Church at University Baptist Church in Clemson.

Lawton says that he asked when the machines and ballots would arrive at the correct precinct and was told that the votes had already been tabulated and would be coming in later. He claims that he was then told, later on, that the machines and ballots would be stored at the church. Lawton says that he never found out where the ballots and machines ended up before he departed his precinct Saturday night.

Yet Pickens County is not the only location where the method of counting votes is questionable.

In Florence County, for instance, a confidential source informed me that the vote certification was seriously flawed and essentially conducted in secret. Those individuals who came to witness the certification were not allowed into the room where the votes were being tallied and could only view the process through a glass window.

The process itself was conducted behind closed doors and witnesses could only view individuals working on computers (there were no paper ballots) – but they were unable to actually see what was on the computers themselves. Because the vote counting took place in a closed room, there was no sound available to any of the witnesses either. Only a computer screen tacked onto the wall was available for witnesses in order to view what was allegedly happening on the computers in the next room.

This is particularly concerning since the South Carolina State Constitution states that, while votes are to be cast in secret, they are to be counted in public.

It is important to note that, at no time, did the witnesses have access to the room in which the ballots were being counted to either corroborate or contest the process in Florence. There was no way for them to even ask questions regarding the vote counting.

As the source stated, “The system is designed so that just a few people have access to the votes and only a few people know what those votes actually are.”

The issue of lack of access granted to vote count witnesses seems to be a trend all across South Carolina.

In addition, Florence County also reported some rather strange voting machine failure as well. Within the first hour of voting, some of the machines in the Florence 35 District began to experience technical failures, forcing the precinct to move to paper ballots. …

In South Carolina, all election results are transmitted through a Spanish owned company, Scytl/SOE Software, before they are reported to the public. This company’s software has been implicated in voter fraud in the past …

Bev Harris, an elections and vote fraud expert, writes on her website BlackBoxVoting.com,

… In South Carolina … results could be incorrect at either end of the pipeline – - from the ES&S iVotronic paperless touchscreen voting machines, which have a history of incorrect totals, or from the private results reporting firm Scytl/SOE Software, which has centralized control over what gets reported.

She also writes “There is only one way to immediately find out whether Scytl/SOE reported the right results*, and that is for members of the public to capture evidence of reported precinct results when polls close tonight.” …

Yet, even putting aside the Scytl/SOE Software and ES&S voting machines, vote fraud would still be a major issue in South Carolina.

For instance, South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson recently sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice which was dated Thursday, January 19, 2012, and contained details of voter fraud in South Carolina. The analysis of the fraud was conducted by the Department of Motor Vehicles and was sent to U.S. Attorney Bill Nettles.

As reported by the Associated Press and FOX News, “In a letter dated Thursday, Wilson says the analysis found 953 ballots cast by voters listed as dead. … “

It is an unfortunate reality that election fraud has become commonplace in every state in the Union and South Carolina is no exception. Although, at this time, it is unknown to what extent fraud has been committed in South Carolina or which campaign was hurt the most, one thing is for sure – whenever there is vote fraud, the inevitable losers will always be the voters. (One would assume the “winners” would be the perps.)

(Background:)

by John Rubino on January 22, 2012

… Illinois? It’s more or less the same size as Greece, its finances are in the same generally catastrophic shape, and its leaders are just as feckless and dishonest. It owes tens of billions of dollars to various investors and stakeholders and will clearly have to stiff many of them at some point. …

To summarize, even after a massive tax increase Illinois is looking at a half a billion dollar deficit (and additionally) “… a backlog of about $8.5 billion in unpaid bills … $27 billion in outstanding bonds … roughly $80 billion owed to the state’s public employee pension funds.” …

Why then would anyone buy an Illinois municipal bond, or accept a state contract that requires future payments, or move a business to the state, or keep a business in the state, or do anything else that required faith in the willingness or ability of the state to pay its bills? The only possible answer is that Illinois isn’t Greece; it’s Spain or Italy, an entity so big and important that … when it hits the wall, Washington will have no choice but to step in and cover its (liabilities). In the same way that a Spanish bond is really a German bond because Germany has no choice but to make good on it, the big insolvent US states are wards of the central government.

The bottom line effect of all this stepping up and bailing out is to exchange a solvency/debt crisis for a currency crisis in which the markets at some point figure out that failed states are so numerous and their needs so great that the printing presses will never stop.

Granville: DJIA to fall 4000 pts in 2012

Down to the 8,000 area.

01/20/2012
James A. Kostohryz

…

In various articles I have said that the endgame in Europe will probably take the form of PIIGS economies shrinking more than expected, their revenues shrinking more than expected and fiscal deficits ballooning more than expected. All of this will cause fiscal targets and commitments to be violated on the part of PIIGS. This in turn will lead to a showdown with Germany centered on how such shortfalls will be handled.

Spain has now begun the process of acknowledging publicly that it will violate its commitments under recent accords …

Extraordinary political and economic Pan European efforts were made during the second half of 2011 to cobble together a series of gut-wrenching agreements and compromises that would enable the financing of targeted fiscal deficits for the PIIGS in 2012 – in the case of Spain a deficit of -4.4% of GDP.

Spain will not meet its target … . (It was based on a) forecast of 2.3% economic growth for Spain in 2012. …. In my view, the absolute best-case scenario for Spain’s GDP growth in 2012 will be a contraction of -2.0%. … Spain will be lucky if it can keep its deficit below its 2011 level of -8.0%+. …

If it has been impossible (which it has) to secure mechanisms that would ensure financing of a Spanish fiscal deficit of -4.4% of GDP, how is a fiscal deficit of -9.0% or more going to be financed? …

(And what about) Portugal, Greece, Ireland, Italy, and several other eurozone countries that will not meet their 2012 fiscal commitments. …

The market has not yet come to terms with the (fact that) the size of the fiscal shortfalls will be enormously greater than currently forecast. … I maintain my view that prior to late April of 2012, the S&P 500 will have initiated another leg down that will eventually take it to the 950-1,020 range.

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Staring into the Abyss

John Mauldin
01/21/2012

… When Europe approaches the edge of the Abyss and looks over, the rest of the world gets to take a look, too. We can all be taken to the edge and over. …

Europe has three main problems. …

1. A growing number of its countries are insolvent or close to it. …

2. … Because of growing fears of multiple defaults (just Greece would be bad enough!) most of the banks in Europe are seen to be insolvent and in need of hundreds of billions of euros of new capital. The interbank market in Europe is in a shambles, and banks park their cash with the ECB …

3. The real problem in Europe is the massive trade imbalances between the peripheral countries and the so-called core countries … without the ability to adjust currencies … .

One cannot solve one problem without solving all three (and) Europe is (only)trying to address problems 1 and 2. …

Now, the bankers and leaders of Europe are getting ready to walk to the edge of the Abyss. It will be a long way down, and look like the 7^th level of Dante’s Inferno. Their first real look will come in the next few weeks, as Greece is negotiating aggressively with its lenders (and) Europe … . If they walk away and there is an uncoordinated default, it will guarantee chaos. Bank collateral will collapse and credit default swaps will be triggered, including many sold by European banks that are already essentially insolvent.

The legal euphemism here is that if debtors “voluntarily” accept a 50% haircut, then no credit default swap protections will be triggered … Greece can legislatively force them to take the haircut, but CDS contracts are written in such a way that that action would be seen as a loss, triggering the CDS insurance. The governments involved want everyone to accept, so there is no crisis. …

Europe … can lend Greece more money on promises to turn things around, which can’t happen because of … austerity being imposed and … GDP trade imbalance with the rest of Europe. But if they don’t lend the money … an uncontrolled default (is likely). It will mean hundreds of billions of euros in losses at their banks, which will have to be bailed out eventually by taxpayers. …

If Greece gets a 50% reduction on its debt, will not Portugal point out that they deserve it more? … Yields on Portugal’s 10-year bonds climbed to 14.39% on Thursday. Credit default swaps measuring bond risk have reached 1270 points … Citigroup, says, “Without a sizeable haircut to its debt stock, Portugal will not be able to move into a viable fiscal path. We expect a haircut of 35pc at the end of 2012 or in 2013.”

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, (says,) “Portugal is a troubling case for EU officials, who insist that Greece is a ‘one-off’ case rather than the first of a string of countries trapped in a deeper North-South structural rift. … While all eyes are on Greece, it is the slower drama in Portugal that will ultimately determine the fate of the eurozone.” …

Let’s turn to some charts … (In terms of credit risk) Portugal is where Greece was last year. Then pay attention to the fact that Italy is likewise where Portugal was last year. …

(In terms of labor) Greece (would) have to endure a 30% pay cut relative to core Europe if they want to compete (resolve their trade imbalance). … Greece is not alone. Are you reading of any general pay cuts in the proposed solutions for Italy, where labor costs are now above those of Greece? Likewise, no move in Portugal (not shown in graph). The entire eurozone is out of balance, and no one is making any moves to deal with it or even acknowledge the basic problem. …

Greece has two choices. They can choose Disaster A, which is to stay in the euro, cutting spending (labor and benefits) and raising taxes so they can qualify for yet another bailout (while) getting further behind on their balance of payments; and suffering … a depression for a generation. … There is a run on their banks. Any Greek who can is getting his money out.

Greek voters will then blame whichever political group was responsible for choosing Disaster A and vote them out, as the opposition calls for Greece to exit the euro. Which is of course Disaster B.

Leaving the euro is a nightmare of biblical proportions, equivalent to about 7 of the 10 plagues that visited Egypt. First there is a banking holiday, then all accounts are converted to drachmas …

Whether they opt to go straight to the drachma (Disaster B) is only a matter of timing. They will get there soon enough. … (But) Europe fears a disorderly Disaster B. For the rest of Europe, it is the Abyss. The Greek hope is that Europe (read Germany) keeps funding them in order to keep back from the edge of the Abyss. …

Europe is getting closer to the point where it must make a decision about what to do with Greece. In theory, the deadline is March 29 for the next round of funding. … The markets are getting exhausted. There will be no private market for Greek debt at any number close to what is sustainable. Greece will be on European life support for a very long time if they stay in …

And Europe will all too soon face what to do with Portugal, (and) don’t forget Ireland … I think “polite” Ireland is just waiting until its $60-billion default is seen as small potatoes, which will not be too long, as Italy must raise almost €350 billion just to roll over current debt. … The bottom line is that Italy (and most likely Spain at some point) cannot raise the debt it needs at rates it can afford without massive European Central Bank involvement. … If they go for a haircut, it will be much larger. French banks holds 45% of Italian debt … They cannot even backstop their banks if Italy becomes a solvency risk. … The most recent downgrade of their debt was just the first of many. …

Europe will have to make its choice this year. Either a much tighter, more constrictive fiscal union with a central bank that can aggressively print euros in this crisis, or a break-up, either controlled or not. I don’t think they can kick the can until 2013, as the market will not allow it. … I think this is the year the crisis moment for the euro arrives. …

I know the markets are discounting a happy ending to the euro crisis. I just see the substantial “tail risk” and suggest you manage accordingly. …

(Read the whole article)