As I mentioned in
my last entry, the two biggest, most enduring, and most credible “conspiracies”
in the financial world revolve around gold manipulation (See GATA's website (Gold Anti-Trust Action
Committee)) and naked short selling (See DeepCapture.com).
Although they are treated as distinct from and unrelated to each other, these
two conspiracies are in fact ONE.
Let's begin with a quick overview of gold manipulation and naked short selling in
order to show how they are connected.
SUMMARY OF THE GOLD MANIPULATION CONSPIRACY
GATA provides a summary of the gold
manipulation conspiracy.
A Summary of GATA's Work - Andrew Hepburn
Submitted by Administrator on Mon, 2004-01-12 08:00.
By Andrew Hepburn
The Gold Anti-Trust
Action Committee (GATA) believes that central banks, acting through certain
investment banks, have surreptitiously
manipulated the price of gold. Such
activity appears to have started in the mid-1990s and continues to this
day. Prominent entities involved include J.P. Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs,
Deutsche Bank, the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, and the Bank for
International Settlements. GATA specifically alleges that the
U.S. Treasury's Exchange Stabilization Fund
[ESF] has been used, contrary to official
denials, for gold market
interventions. Furthermore, GATA
believes that the official sector intervened in the late 1990s to prevent an
impending gold derivative crisis, the result of excessive
short positions accumulated over many years.
These claims are based on analyses of publicly available government documents
and statistics, trading abnormalities, and material presented in a GATA-backed
lawsuit. Howe vs. Bank for
International Settlements et al. accusing the BIS,
Federal Reserve, U.S. Treasury, and four bullion banks of gold market manipulation. Though the suit was
dismissed in 2002 on two technicalities, the evidence
presented in it is recognized by many knowledgeable observers as having
sufficiently proven the price-fixing allegations. …
…
Central banks lease gold either by making
gold deposits with, or by making gold loans to, bullion
banks, the largest of which are international banks or other
financial institutions. In both cases, the gold is placed
with a bullion bank usually at a very low rate of interest, often 2% or less. This
so-called "leased" gold is then sold into the market and the currency
proceeds delivered for investment or other use by the bullion bank and/or its
customer. When the gold deposit is called or the gold loan comes
due, the physical gold required for repayment must generally
be repurchased in the market.
…
The benefit to the bullion banks lay in the difference between gold
lease rates and prevailing interest rates. By borrowing gold
cheaply, selling it into the spot market, and investing
the proceeds in interest-bearing instruments, the gold borrowers
realized substantial gains. …
Understanding
the mechanics of the gold leasing (gold manipulation)
The Goldseek article below does a Forensic Examination of
the Gold Carry Trade.
Forensic Examination of the Gold Carry Trade
-- Posted Wednesday, 13 May
2009
By: Rob Kirby
… Central Banks “swap” and “lease” gold is an undeniable matter of public
record. …
… Central Banks claim to
“officially” have somewhere in the neighborhood of 30,000 metric tonnes of gold
bullion in their vaults. However, the reality is
that Central Banks possess LESS physical gold than they officially report
– how much less is a matter of speculation and a closely guarded secret.
The following formula explains the
mechanics of the Gold Carry [lease] Trade:
** Do not confuse the Gold Forward Rate
[GOFO] with the Gold futures price – they are not related.
…
What Happens When Gold Is Leased?
When
Central Banks lease gold, it PHYSICALLY
leaves the vault and the recipient / borrower sells
the physical metal into the marketplace to raise cash –
to invest or to finance capital expenditures. In this regard, we can say that
“GOLD LEASING” is a means by which physical bullion is made available in the
market place – thereby lowering the gold price. After the
gold physically leaves the vault of the Central Bank, it is replaced with an I.
O. U. and the Central Bank, for accounting purposes, “double counts” by
continuing to claim that they still possess the same amount of physical bullion
in the vault. It is
notable that fraudulent accounting practices relating to gold is promoted by
lawmakers the world over. This is contrary to generally
accepted accounting practices and promotes market opacity instead of the much
talked about need for transparency. Explicitly, it serves to
promote the supremacy of the fiat U.S. Dollar as the world’s reserve currency.
I’ve circled the 10 % spike in lease rates on
the chart below:
…
Now, let’s stop and consider WHO did the lending of metal in Sept. 1999 – expelling physical
precious metal, intentionally at a loss, in the face of a RISING PRICE of GOLD. Remember folks, 3 month GOFO
[the gold forward rate] is the return “earned” by the lender of bullion:
So ask yourself WHO would lend
physical gold bullion to ANYONE with a guarantee that you would
get LESS
bullion back in 3 months????????????
…
What
to take away from the passage above is that the gold lease rate is an indicator of how much central
bank gold is being leased out. The higher the lease rate,
the more leased gold is being sold
It is also key to note that when leased gold is sold to investors around the
world, the money collected is brought to the US and put into “interest-bearing
instruments”. This means more gold is leased out, the more demand is
created for dollars and US treasuries.
Time Frame of the gold leasing fraud
The gold leasing that was rampant in the 1990s was ended by the “Washington
Agreement”. The gold sextant explains how this happened.
February 1, 2000. Two Bills: Scandal and Opportunity in Gold?
…
On September 26, 1999, 15 European
central banks, led
by the ECB, announce that they will limit their total combined
gold sales over the next five years to 2000 tonnes,
not to exceed 400 tonnes in any one year, and will not increase their gold
lending or other gold derivatives activities. Besides the
ECB and the 11 members of the EMU, Britain, Switzerland and Sweden are parties.
The 2000 tonnes include the remaining 365 tonnes of British sales and 1300
tonnes of previously proposed Swiss sales, leaving only 335 tonnes of possible new sales.
The
announcement, made in Washington following the IMF/World
Bank annual meeting, is ironically christened the "Washington
Agreement" although the government in Washington played no role.
However, the BIS, IMF, U.S. and Japan are all expected to abide by it, and the
BIS is expected to monitor it.
…the
agreement was hammered out secretly among the members of the EMU, the BIS and
Switzerland, that
the British were given a chance to sign on after the fact, and that the U.S. was not
informed until just before the Sunday announcement. For
references to European press commentary on the genesis of the agreement, see W.
Smith, "Operation Dollar Storm," www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_99/wsmith111099.html.
…
The
notion, shared by many, that the EMU
would forever acquiesce in the trashing of its gold reserves by
bullion banks operating in the largely paper gold markets of London, New York
and Tokyo appears in retrospect to have been incredibly naive. … With the euro
successfully launched, they quickly lost reason to continue capping the gold
price…
… Currently the European central banks through
the BIS and within the limits
of the Washington Agreement are engaged
in a tightly controlled feed of modest amounts of gold into the market.
…
Verifying timing through gold lease rate data
The gold lease rate data going back to 1990 can be found by visiting the
LBMA's website (LBMA = The London Bullion Market Association), as seen
below.
By graphing this data, we see the gold leasing really took off in the
1990s. However, after the 1999 Washington agreement, the flow of leased
gold started to die off until it ended completely in the 2001/2002 period.
(Remember: The gold lease rate is
an indicator of how much central bank gold is being leased out. The higher
the lease rate, the more leased gold is being sold.)
Full Resolution
SUMMARY OF THE NAKED SHORT SELLING CONSPIRACY
Deedcapture explains that miscreants
are selling billions of dollars of stock that simply does not exist (phantom
stock).
The Story of Deep Capture
You can download
a printable version of The Story of Deep Capture here.
By Mark Mitchell, with reporting by the Deep Capture Team
Introduction - by Mark
Mitchell
…
August 12, 2005…the proudest day
of Patrick Byrne’s life. … Patrick is on a
conference call with 500 blue chip investors and a few journalists. He tells his telephone
audience that he’s been talking to this fellow named Bob …, and … he’s laid out
this scheme, he’s made some predictions… so everybody please download Patrick’s
computer generated slide show and follow along from home.
The first slide reads, “The Miscreants’ Ball.” Patrick says the
miscreants are selling billions of dollars of stock that simply does not exist – phantom
stock. They have destroyed hundreds of public companies for profit.
Some journalists, meanwhile, are “crooked.” They’re “lickspittles.”
They are famous journalists and they cover up the miscreants’ crimes. They attack all who oppose them. …
And that’s not all, follow along please with the slides — they show how the
miscreants and the journalists have ties to government agencies and private
investigators, maybe the Mafia, and also an arms dealer, an undercover mole, a
corrupt law firm, and Eliot Spitzer. …
…
The crimes are the work of Wall Street hedge fund managers
and brokers who engage in a common trading strategy known as short-selling. A short sale is a way
of making money when the price of a stock goes down.
You borrow shares from someone else and immediately sell them off. If the price
drops, you buy the shares back and return them to the original owner, pocketing
the difference. If a company goes out of business, short-sellers hit the
jackpot.
This is perfectly legal and unobjectionable. But some short-sellers do not play
by the rules. A small group of powerful hedge fund
managers stop at nothing to annihilate the companies they sell short. Their tactics include:
blackmail, smear campaigns, espionage, fraud, harassment, extortion, bribery,
rumor-mongering, sabotage, off-shore money laundering, political cronyism,
frivolous lawsuits, witness tampering, biased financial research, false
identities, bogus credit ratings, bribery, libelous blogs, bad science, forgery,
wiretapping, counterfeiting, collusion, lying, cheating, threats and theft.
Their most egregious trick is to sell
“phantom stock.” By exploiting a glitch in Wall Street’s
computerized trading system, and a loophole in federal regulations, some hedge
funds sell virtually unlimited
amounts of stock that they have not yet borrowed or purchased. This is often referred
to as “NAKED SHORT SELLING.” Hedge funds use this
tactic to flood the market with supply and drive down prices – which
is blatantly illegal.
Patrick has written a blog
explaining how this works in laymen’s terms. An economist has
written a detailed
history of “FAILURES TO DELIVER” (i.e. stock sold and
not delivered, because it is phantom stock) for Regulation magazine, published by the Cato Institute. A
former SEC Chairman has spoken
extensively against the problem. Many other researchers, several
professors, a former SEC economist, and a former deputy secretary of commerce
have also written papers on the subject. If you are interested in the mechanics of
the crime, read some of those papers here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
and here.
…
In addition to the 300-plus companies on the SEC’s list, as
many as 1,000 companies have already been wiped off the map by illegal
short-selling, according to some experts.
…
Understanding
the mechanics of stock “failures-to-deliver” (naked short selling)
Deedcapture describes the
process through which naked short selling is used to destroy US companies.
It was in October 2004, and the
Easter Bunny [Patrick Byrne's anonymous Wall Street
informant] … made some predictions. He said that Gradient
would continue to publish outrageous information at Rocker’s behest. He said the
same information that had ended up in The Wall Street Journal, would soon get
into the hands of specific reporters at Fortune, Forbes, MarketWatch.com,
Barron’s magazine, and TheStreet.com – all of whom would
call in the coming weeks. And he said that Overstock
would soon become the target of a nonsensical federal investigation.
The Easter Bunny also laid out THE MECHANICS OF
SOMETHING CALLED "NAKED SHORT SELLING." He predicted that OVERSTOCK
WOULD SUDDENLY BE LISTED, WITHOUT ITS AUTHORIZATION, ON A BUNCH OF FOREIGN
STOCK EXCHANGES—making it easier for hedge funds to sell phantom
stock. And he predicted that Overstock would appear on the SEC’s
Reg SHO list of victim companies, scheduled to appear for the first time in
January, 2005.
Over the next two weeks, Patrick received calls from precisely
the predicted journalists at Forbes magazine, Barron’s, The Wall
Street Journal, The New York Post, and Fortune magazine – all of them
reading the same list of questions supplied to them by Gradient. …
Within a few weeks, the Federal Trade Commission in San
Francisco began a bizarre investigation into Overstock that went nowhere. Within a couple of
months, OVERSTOCK HAD
MYSTERIOUSLY APPEARED ON EXCHANGES IN STUTTGART, MUNICH, FRANKFURT, BERLIN, AND
AUSTRALIA. And come January, the company was
indeed on the SEC’s victim list (along with three other companies that
Rocker had just hammered in a column for Barron’s magazine).
“The power of any theory is its ability to
make predictions,” Patrick later says in his “Miscreants’
Ball” presentation. “It doesn’t matter how
wacky a theory sounds, if it makes predictions that are confirmed, you’ve got
to pay attention to it.”
There are two important points to note here about the naked
short selling crimes outlined above:
1) The targets of naked short sellers
get listed on foreign exchanges
Before companies are
attacked by naked short selling, they are listed on foreign exchanges without their
knowledge. This 2005 Euromoney article offers confirmation of this process.
Naked
shorting: Stung by the German connection
April 2005
by Peter Koh
Thousands of US stocks are being traded on a little-known
Berlin exchange, without the knowledge of many of the companies involved. …
A YEAR AGO Ted Noble, chief financial officer at Advanced ID Corporation, a
Calgary-based microchip-tracking company, received some surprising news.
"We were congratulated
by a third party who saw that our shares
were trading on the Berlin Stock Exchange,"
he recalls. "That came
as news to us because WE'D NOT DONE
ANYTHING TO GET LISTED IN GERMANY. I talked to a
few people and we couldn't figure out whether it was good or bad."
Noble soon found out when his company's shares started behaving oddly on the US
OTC bulletin board. "April 29 [2004] was a slow day, and only about 10,000
of our shares had traded. Then
370,000 shares traded in the last 20 minutes before the close. It knocked our
stock price down from 58 cents to 41 cents, before closing nearly 20% down at
48 cents. That
was very unusual for our stock. I'd never seen anything...
2) The money from
selling "phantom shares" doesn’t go to the naked short sellers
When stock IOUs are sold by naked short sellers, the money paid by the buyer
goes into collateral (US treasuries) to backup the stock IOUs. This
letter to the SEC confirms that “phantom shares” are
collateralized.
Ms. Florence
Harmon Acting Secretary Securities and Exchange Commission 100 F. Street, NE
Washington, DC 20549-9303 Re: Release No. 34-58773; File No. 87-30-08 Amendment
to Regulation SHO Interim Final Temporary Rule
Dear Sirs,
…
The foundation for the DTCC-administered clearance and settlement system in use
in the U.S. has been illegally converted to one based upon mere
“collateralization versus payment” or “CVP” wherein the seller of securities is
only asked to collateralize the monetary amount of the failed delivery
obligation on a daily marked to market basis.
This policy invites abusive naked short selling activity in that the failures to
deliver shares results in the procreation of what are referred to as
“securities entitlements” that are allowed to be readily sellable as if they
were legitimate “shares” of a corporation due to the
wording unfortunately incorporated into the text of UCC Article
8-501.
…
So
when "phantom shares" of US companies are sold “on exchanges in Stuttgart,
Munich, Frankfurt, Berlin, and Australia”, the money collected from buyers is transferred
to the US and put into treasury securities. The more "phantom
shares" are sold abroad, the more demand is created for dollars and US treasuries.
Time Frame of the naked short selling fraud
Naked short selling wasn’t a major problem during the 1990s. It was only
more recently that companies started getting wiped out of existence by “phantom
shares”. To see exactly when, we need to look at the data.
While the DDTC only started releasing failures-to-deliver (naked short selling)
data for stocks after 2006, it is possible to get an idea when naked short
selling started to be a problem by looking at the failures-to-deliver data for
treasury securities, agency debt, and MBS. This data is readily available
on the
Fed's website going back to 1990, as seen below.
By graphing this data, we see that naked short selling problem started in the 2001/2002
period.
Full Resolution
Comparing the gold lease rate and failure-to-deliver data
If we combine the gold lease rate and failure-to-deliver data into one graph,
we get a pretty interesting result, as seen below.
Full Resolution
The graph above shows how naked short selling sprung up after the 1999
Washington agreement and became epidemic as gold leasing died out. The
odds of this being a coincidence are astronomically low. Essential, the
gold leasing fraud was replaced by the naked short selling fraud.
Motive behind gold manipulation and naked short selling
To find the connection between gold leasing and naked short selling, all you
need to do is "follow the money".
Gold leasing: Investors around the
world pay billions in foreign currencies to buy the thousands of tons of gold
being leased out. These foreign currencies are than converted into
dollars (helping keep the US currency strong) and used to buy US treasuries
(helping the US treasury finance the federal deficit) to serves as collateral
for the loaned gold.
Naked short selling: Investors
around the world pay billions in foreign currencies to buy the millions of
phantom stock in midsize companies listed on foreign exchanges. These
foreign currencies are then converted into dollars (helping keep the US
currency strong) and used to buy US treasuries (helping the US treasury finance
the federal deficit) to serves as collateral for the phantom stock.
The naked short selling fraud, which began after the 1999 Washington Agreement,
was meant to replace the enormous flow of money into the dollar and US treasury
market that was about to be lost due to the end of gold leasing.
The party responsible for both frauds
Since gold leasing and naked short selling both support the dollar and the US
treasury market, the obvious party responsible is the Treasury's Department's Exchange
Stabilization Fund (ESF) which is officially in charge of defending the dollar.
The ESF role in gold manipulation has long been recognized by GATA and others, as explained by the Golden
Sextant.
February 1,
2000. Two Bills: Scandal
and Opportunity in Gold?
…
Evidence is accumulating that … the Clinton
administration has effectively
capped the gold price by using the ESF to backstop the selling of gold
futures and other gold derivative products by politically well-connected
bullion banks. …
…
The odd behavior of the gold
price over the past five years, including
massive gold leasing and heavy bouts of futures
selling apparently timed to abort threatened rallies, has generated considerable speculation regarding
intentional manipulation by governmental authorities. …
The
Fed and the ESF are the only arms of the U.S. government with broad statutory
authority "to deal in gold" and thus by reasonable extension in gold
futures and derivatives. Were the Fed to engage in such
activities, it would of necessity have to do so subject to all the
institutional safeguards that govern its more important functions. Unlike the Fed, the ESF is virtually without institutional structure
or safeguards. It is under the exclusive control
of the Secretary of the Treasury, subject only to the approval of the
President. Indeed, direct control and custody of the ESF must rest at all times
with the President and the Secretary. The statute further provides (31 U.S.C.
s. 5302(a)(2)): "Decisions of the Secretary are final and may not be
reviewed by another officer or employee of the Government."
Originally funded out of the profits from the 1934 gold confiscation, the little known
ESF is available for intervention in the foreign exchange markets.
…
… the allegation that knowledgeable gold market participants and observers are
making … is that the ESF -- by writing gold call options or
otherwise -- is making sufficient gold cover available to certain
bullion banks to allow them safely to take large short positions in gold,
thereby putting downward pressure on the price and in the process
making huge profits for themselves.
…
While
the ESF’s role in gold manipulation is recognized, its role in naked short
selling, on the other hand, is not.
Patrick Byrne and Deep Capture unfortunately seem to believe that naked short
selling is a wall street crime motivated by greed. That isn't
right. It isn't the government regulators (SEC, etc...) that have been
"deep captured" by Wall Street Interest. It is Wall Street
(DTCC, primary dealers, hedge funds, etc) that has been corrupted by the
treasury department (specifically the ESF).
Conclusion: It is all ONE conspiracy
The gold manipulation conspiracy alledged by GATA
and the naked short selling conspiracy alledged by Deepcapture
are one and the same, and the Treasury's Exchange Stabilization Fund (ESF) is
the force behind gold leasing and "phantom stocks".
(for the more about the Treasury's ESF, see my entry *****What
I have been afraid to blog about: THE ESF AND ITS HISTORY*****)
Techdirt.com
reports that you should Call
Your Senators Today: Tell Them To Vote Against Censoring The Internet.
(emphasis mine) [my comment]
Call Your Senators Today: Tell Them To Vote Against Censoring
The Internet
from the make-this-stop-already
dept
As mentioned last week, there's
a big push going on by the MPAA and the US Chamber of Commerce (the largest lobbying
organization in the world) to get PROTECT IP
voted on and approved in the next few days or weeks. Some
in the Senate leadership have decided that with everything
else going wrong in the economy these days, they
can repackage this as a "jobs" bill, and pretend that they're
"helping the economy." Of course, nothing is further from the
truth. PROTECT IP (PIPA) is a sure
jobs killer in that it will significantly hinder innovation on the internet,
including those responsible for millions of new jobs over the past decade. On
top of that, IT WILL SET UP THE
VERY FIRST MASSIVE INTERNET CENSORSHIP PROGRAM WITHIN THE US. It's hard to see how
that's helpful for jobs at all.
The backers of this bill are hoping that since SOPA is even
worse than PIPA, there will be less protest and some may see it as a
"compromise." That's ridiculous. It's a very dangerous
bill that will have long-lasting consequences. If
you're an American citizen and believe in the importance of innovation online,
today is the day to call your Senators. The folks at Fight for
the Future have
set up a very easy system to do that. You just put in your info, and it
will first give you a quick summary of key points, and then connect you to your
Senators. If the Senate realizes
that the public really is against this bill, then hopefully they'll finally
dump it.
New
York Times reports about Stopping
the Great Firewall of America.
Op-Ed
Contributor
Stop the Great Firewall of America
By REBECCA MacKINNON
Published: November 15, 2011
China operates the world’s most elaborate and opaque system
of Internet censorship. But Congress, under pressure to take
action against the theft of intellectual property, is
considering misguided legislation that would strengthen China’s Great Firewall
and even bring major features of it to America.
The legislation — the Protect
IP Act … has been introduced in the Senate, and a House version known as
the Stop Online Piracy Act. … The solutions offered
by the legislation, however, threaten
to inflict collateral damage on democratic discourse and dissent both at home
and around the world.
The bills would empower the
attorney general to create a blacklist of sites to be blocked by Internet
service providers, search engines, payment providers and advertising networks, ALL
WITHOUT A COURT HEARING OR A TRIAL. The House version goes
further, allowing private
companies to sue service providers for even briefly and unknowingly hosting
content that infringes on copyright — a sharp change from
current law, which protects the service providers from civil liability if they
remove the problematic content immediately upon notification. The
intention is not the
same as China’s Great Firewall, a nationwide system of Web censorship, but the practical
effect could be similar.
Abuses under existing American law serve as troubling predictors
for the kinds of abuse by private actors that
the House bill would make possible. Take, for example, the
cease-and-desist letters that Diebold, a maker of voting machines, sent in
2003, demanding that Internet service providers shut down Web sites that had published
internal company e-mails about problems with the company’s voting machines. The
letter cited copyright violations, and most of the
service providers took down the content without question, despite the strong case to be made that the material
was speech protected under the First Amendment.
…
The potential for abuse of power through
digital networks — upon which we as citizens now depend
for nearly everything, including our politics — is
one of the most insidious threats to democracy in the Internet age. We live in a time of
tremendous political polarization. Public trust in both government and
corporations is low, and deservedly so. This
is no time for politicians and industry lobbyists in Washington to be devising
new Internet censorship mechanisms, adding new
opportunities for abuse of corporate and government power over online speech. …
The Digital
Journal reports that Blacklist Bill
allows Feds to remove websites from Internet.
Op-Ed: Blacklist Bill allows
Feds to remove websites from Internet
By Nancy Houser
Oct 27, 2011
The House version of the Internet Blacklist Bill was released
October 26, 2011, with no effort to fix problems that existed in the Senate
version. A violation of the First Amendment, it is contrary to
official positions of internet freedom and censorship.
“Under the Internet
Blacklist Bill — S.968, formally called the PROTECT IP
Act — the Department of
Justice would force search engines, browsers, and service providers to block
users’ access to websites that have been accused of copyright infringement — without even giving them a day in court.” (Demand
Progress)
The S.968
bill is considered dangerous and short-sighted due to its broad writing
that covers a multitude of issues, bringing danger to not only Internet
security but is considered a serious threat to free online speech and
innovation. The Censorship-galore Department describes it as an attempt to
build the Great Firewall of
America, requiring service providers to block access to certain websites.
…
With the Internet Blacklist Bill literally shoved through the House, those same copyright holders will be able to cut off advertising and
payment processing to such sites. WITHOUT COURT REVIEW.
EFF.org
reports that Disastrous
IP Legislation Is Back - And It's Worse than Ever.
Disastrous IP Legislation Is Back – And It’s Worse than Ever
October 26, 2011 - 4:08pm
By Corynne McSherry
We’ve reported here often on efforts to ram through Congress legislation that would authorize massive interference with the
Internet, all in the name of a fruitless quest
to stamp out all infringement online. Today Representative Lamar Smith
upped the ante, introducing legislation, called the Stop Online Piracy Act,
or “SOPA,” that would not only
sabotage the domain name system but would also threaten to
effectively eliminate the DMCA safe harbors that, while
imperfect, have spurred much economic growth and online creativity.
As with its Senate-side evil sister, PROTECT-IP, SOPA WOULD
REQUIRE SERVICE PROVIDERS TO "DISAPPEAR" CERTAIN WEBSITES, endangering Internet
security and sending a troubling message to the world: it’s okay to interfere with the Internet, even effectively
blacklisting entire domains, as long as you do it in the name of IP
enforcement. Of course blacklisting entire domains can
mean turning off thousands of underlying websites that may have done
nothing wrong. …
But it gets worse. Under this
bill, service providers (including hosting services)
would be under new
pressure to monitor and police their users’ activities. Websites
that simply don’t do enough to police infringement (and it is not at all
clear what would qualify as “enough”) are now under threat, even though the
DMCA expressly does not require
affirmative policing. It creates new enforcement tools
against folks who dare to help users access sites that may have been
“blacklisted,” EVEN WITHOUT ANY KIND OF
COURT HEARING. The bill also requires that search engines, payment providers (such as credit
card companies and PayPal), and advertising services join in the fun in shutting down entire
websites. In fact, the bill seems mainly
aimed at creating an end-run around the DMCA safe harbors. Instead of complying
with the DMCA, a copyright owner may now be able
to use these new provisions to effectively
shut down a site by cutting off access to its domain name, its search
engine hits, its ads, and its other financing even if the safe harbors
would apply.
And that’s only
the beginning: we haven’t even started on the streaming
provisions.
We’ll have more details on the bill in the next several days but suffice
it to say, THIS IS THE WORST
PIECE OF IP LEGISLATION WE'VE SEEN IN THE LAST DECADE —
and that’s saying something. This would be a good time to contact your Congressional representative and tell
them to oppose this bill!
Even
the Business Software Alliance now backpedaling on SOPA support (Ars
Technica)
European
Parliament joins criticism of SOPA (Macworld UK)
Congress
seeks to tame the Internet (Salon)
Filtering
and Blocking Closer To The Core Of The Internet? (Intellectual Property
Watch)
Why
SOPA Will Destroy the Internet As We Know It (The Faster Times)
The
US joins China in censoring the Internet (The Voice of Russia)
SOPA
Could Kill the Internet: Experts (TheStreet.com)
INTERNET CENSORSHIP IS ALREADY GETTING WORSE
Technorati reports that Google
Censorship Rising Faster Than Ever.
Google Censorship Rising Faster Than Ever
Author: Stephen
Alexander
Published: November 28, 2011 at
5:25 pm
Google is rapidly becoming the internet
police in regards to censorship on the internet. Google
has complied with nearly two-thirds of the requests for removing content
between January and June, according to a recent transparency
report. As compared to the previous reporting period this
is an huge increase from the lowly forty percent rate.
The report said that there were 757 items to be removed by
request and 92 content removal requests
from government agencies and courts. The reasons for removal
range from allegations of defamation, copyright, privacy, and security. In
addition, there are claims that content is unlawful as hate speech and
pornography.
…
WHAT
INTERNET CENSORSHIP LOOKS LIKE
Economic Policy Journal reports that Deepcapture
Web Site Shut Down.
Saturday, October 22,
2011
Deepcapture Web Site Shut Down
[deepcapture.com = GATA (in terms of credibility)]
The web site, Deepcapture.com, founded by Overstock's
Patrick Byrne to battle and report from an anti-short seller perspective, parts
of the Wall Street underworld, appears to be
shutdown.
According to Stockwatch.com, Vancouver promoter Altaf Nazerali has
won a court order that has at least temporarily shut down the deepcapture.com
website. He complained that the
site, which purports to expose[s] stock
market wrongdoing, posted material portraying him as a
criminal and a fraud artist [HE IS
A CRIMINAL AND A FRAUD ARTIST!]. The
order, handed down in the Supreme Court of British Columbia on
Wednesday, Oct. 19, instructs the
site's host to block access to any material referring to Mr. Nazerali and
prohibits the domain's registrar from allowing a transfer of the domain.
While it is not clear how much of deepcapture.com directly referred to Mr.
Nazerali, ATTEMPTS TO ACCESS ANY
PART OF THE SITE ONLY RETURNED A BLANK SCREEN ON FRIDAY. THE
ORDER WAS GRANTED WITHOUT ANY PRIOR NOTICE TO DEEPCAPTURE.COM. …
My reaction: Congress is considering misguided
legislation will set up the very first massive internet censorship program
within the US.
1) The bills, PROTECT-IP and SOPA, would empower the attorney general to
create a blacklist of sites to be blocked by Internet service providers, search
engines, payment providers and advertising networks, all without a court hearing or a
trial.
2) private companies will be able to sue service providers for even
briefly and unknowingly hosting content that infringes on copyright.
3) This is the worst piece of IP legislation we've seen in the last
decade.
4) Google censorship is already rising faster than ever.
5) PROTECT-IP and SOPA would require service providers to
"disappear" certain websites, effectively blacklisting entire domains.
6) The deepcapture.com has
already been "disappeared" from the web. (I will write more on naked
short selling in a later entry)
7) Today is the day to call your elected representative tell them to vote
against censoring the internet.
Conclusion: The two biggest, most enduring, and most credible “conspiracy”
websites in the financial world were GATA's
website (Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee) and DeepCapture.com (about illegal naked short
selling). Now one of those two is gone.
It appears that in there desperation to keep Americans unaware its rampant
corruption, the government is now trying to simply censure the internet. If
those two bills above pass, it won’t be long before GATA's
website and MarketSkeptics.com end up like DeepCapture.com, A BLANK SCREEN.
The Examiner
reports about the
article Newsweek gutted.
(emphasis mine) [my comment]
The article Newsweek gutted--more proof of FBI corruption
Anthony Martin,
Conservative Examiner
November 25, 2011
When citizen investigative journalist Mike Vanderboegh reported
earlier this week that an article that appeared
in Newsweek Magazine [See Newsweek article titled My
Life as a White Supremacist] this week was
supposed to contain explosive information damaging to the current
Administration and that of Bill Clinton, he had a good idea of
what was cut by editor Tina Brown due to his numerous contacts in the
government. Today, however, Vanderboegh has an unedited
copy of the original version of the article, complete with credible
evidence of corruption that exposes Eric Holder, Janet Reno, the FBI, and two
Administrations as threats not only to the truth but to
the very lives of American citizens.
The original article
was written by reporter
R.M. Schneiderman and approved by his immediate editor John Solomon is extensive. An abbreviated
step-by-step overview of that article is provided below.
1. Schneiderman uncovered revelations concerning
the Oklahoma City bombing that not only implicate Clinton Administration
officials in mass murder but contain a
direct link to the Obama Administration, the current FBI, and Attorney-General
Eric Holder, who worked for Janet Reno at the Department
of Justice during the 1990s. Two informants, John Matthews and Jesse
Trentadue, provided the FBI and
DOJ with information showing that Timothy McVeigh had worked in tandem with
other persons, thereby blowing the theory of the 'lone
bomber.'
2. Matthews, who was working with the government to infiltrate extremist
groups, had provided information to the FBI indicating that one
Tom Posey, who had been a suspect in another crime called the
Brown's Ferry Plot, had collaborated with
Timothy McVeigh. It was Posey who
was the first to talk about the use of weapons of mass destruction to blow up
federal buildings--a prospect that prompted Matthews to go to the FBI.
But there is evidence that Posey was
cooperating with the FBI, providing them key information about
various extremist groups in the U.S.
3. Matthews had also encountered Timothy McVeigh in Texas, in the company
of one Andreas Carl Strassmeier, another suspect in the
planning of the Oklahoma City bombing. McVeigh and
Strassmeier were both involved in the para-military movement and were participating
in training exercises in Texas.
4. Neither Posey nor
Strassmeier were ever pursued by the FBI for their role in the bombing, leading Matthews to
conclude that the entire case of the
FBI against McVeigh as the 'lone bomber' was highly suspect.
5. A racist, neo-Nazi group in Texas called the Texas Light
Infantry is key to understanding the plot to blow up the federal building in
Oklahoma City. It was within this very group that Matthews encountered
McVeigh and Strassmeier. Yet the article in
Newsweek fails to mention the militia group at all. Instead the article
identifies the Texas Reserve Militia. This deft sleight of hand appears to be
aimed at hiding the truth about the Texas Light Infantry, where McVeigh and
Strassmeier laid out their plot.
6. Another FBI informant by the name of Dave Rossi was key to
the plot, yet that information was also cut out of the final copy of
the article that appeared in Newsweek. Rossi knew Posey very well from numerous
encounters at various and sundry meetings of extremist militia groups. Rossi
was also a key operative in the FBI's scandalous and murderous covert program
called PATCON--'Patriot Conspiracy'--which was involved
in all of the major scandals going back decades, including the massacres at
Ruby Ridge and Waco.
7. Newsweek editor Tina Brown also cut out from the final article an
entire section that the reporter had included on Utah Attorney Jesse Trentadue, whose brother was
beaten to death in prison shortly after the Oklahoma City bombing. Trentadue believes that
his brother was killed by the FBI in a case of mistaken identity. The official
report claims that Trentadue hanged himself in the cell. But photos indicate
that his throat had been cut. There were bruises all over his body. A federal judge
later ruled the FBI had lied in court about the case and destroyed evidence. The Trentadue family
was awarded 1.1 million dollars in damages for emotional distress.
Thus, the key facts in the original article
written by R.M. Schneiderman for Newsweek/The Daily Beast/The Washington Post
wound up in the waste basket of editor Tina Brown. Why? Informants
say the FBI, the DOJ, and the Obama Administration pressured the organization
to withhold the information.
And, with the ongoing scandal involving Project Gunwalker [See *****PROJECT
GUNRUNNER?THE BIGGEST SCANDAL SINCE IRAN-CONTRA***** and *****Update
On Growing Gunrunning Scandal*****] --Operation Fast and Furious--the Administration
may be interesting in protecting key figures in high places, particularly given that MANY
OF THOSE INVOLVED IN GUNWALKER WERE ALSO PART OF THE SCANDAL SURROUNDING THE
OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBING.
The Examiner
reports about the
consequences of truth-telling: Newsweek editor explodes at staff.
Consequences of truth-telling: Newsweek editor explodes at
staff
Anthony Martin,
Conservative Examiner
November 27, 2011
The consequences of telling the truth at
Newsweek/Washington Post/The Daily Beast are coming into sharp focus as editor
Tina Brown reportedly exploded in a tirade at the staff of the news
organization. The reason? The
leak of the unedited story Brown refused to allow to be published as originally
written on the FBI scandal involving PATCON, the
Oklahoma City bombing, and Operation
Fast and Furious. [See SSI
Exclusive: Hiding mass murder behind "national security." What
Newsweak & the FBI didn't want you to know about PATCON and the OKC Bombing]
Insider sources say that Brown is furious that someone
on her staff sent a copy of the original article to citizen investigative
reporter Mike Vanderboegh, which he proceeded to publish on his
blog, Sipsey Street Irregulars.
An abbreviated summary of the information Brown cut out of the story is
provided here.
Washington Post reporter R.M. Schneiderman
and his immediate supervisory editor John Solomon had been working on the
explosive story of FBI corruption for months. That story included
details of a sordid, secret
operation of the FBI called 'PATCON,' which has been involved
in murder and scandal for decades going all the way back to the Ruby Ridge and
Waco massacres.
But when Newsweek/The Daily Beast was ready to publish the story, editor
Tina Brown intervened at the last minute, removing all of the key components of
the report and focusing instead on one lone undercover informant who had information
about 'extremist right-wing neo-Nazi groups' in the United States. Sources
inside the government report that Brown
was under intense pressure from the Obama Administration, Attorney-General Eric
Holder, and the FBI to cut key portions out of the story.
Obviously someone at the news
organization was furious that the story was gutted for political purposes. That someone sent
Vanderboegh the complete uncut edition of the story.
The consequences are fear, loathing, and anger on the part of
the White House, the FBI, and Tina Brown. The government parties
involved in the various scandals are afraid of what this information will lead
to. They loathe the persons responsible for leaking the story. And their
anger is on full display, especially that of Tina Brown, who reportedly is
demanding to know who on her staff leaked the story to Vanderboegh.
According
to Vanderboegh,
...the Spanish
Inquisition began at Newsweak within two hours of the
posting Friday of "Hiding mass murder behind 'national security.
What Newsweak & the FBI didn't want you to know about PATCON and the OKC
Bombing." [Here is the
link again]
Tina Brown is said to very angry and is determined to find out who leaked the
details of the story she didn't want to surface. Wombat reports that the
screaming was largely focused on the fact that Tina has decided that she
really, really doesn't like me. Really.
Various editors, reporters and sources are under suspicion.
Vanderboegh further indicates that sources have informed him that the
White House, the DOJ, and the FBI are sore at him as well for putting the story
out there for the public to see. The fear is over possible blow-back...
… there is not much that
can be done in terms of damage control once the genie has been let out of the
bottle.
…
Sipsey
Street Irregulars reports an SSI
Exclusive: Hiding mass murder behind "national security." What
Newsweak & the FBI didn't want you to know about PATCON and the OKC Bombing.
Thursday, November 24, 2011
SSI Exclusive: Hiding mass murder behind "national security." What
Newsweak & the FBI didn't want you to know about PATCON and the OKC
Bombing.
[Read this
article for the actual text that was taken out of the Newsweek article.]
…
When you take the gutted version of the story …, there is one thing
that leaps out at any independent observer -- the
full truth about the FBI's involvement in, and prior knowledge of, the Oklahoma
City bombing has yet to be even scratched.
…
Newsweek is evidently so compromised by
political considerations that it cannot tell these truths.
It remains to be seen if there are any other
"mainstream media" outlets who can, or will.
But at least, gentle readers, you know now the
extent of Newsweek's perfidy in hiding the truth that threatens both the
comfortable bureaucratic existence of the FBI and the reputations of people
such as Eric Holder and Janet Napolitano…
My reaction: For the second time this month (See ‘60 Minutes’ Blows Lid Off Congressional
Insider Trading), investigative reporting is revealing shocking
evidence of government corruption.
What happened
1) An article that appeared in Newsweek Magazine this week (See My
Life as a White Supremacist) was supposed to contain explosive information
damaging to the current Administration and that of Bill Clinton.
2) However before it went to print, the article (written by reporter R.M.
Schneiderman and approved by his immediate editor John Solomon) was gutted by Editor
Tina Brown, who removed credible evidence of corruption on the part of Eric
Holder, Janet Reno, the FBI, and two Administrations.
3) Someone on Newsweek’s staff sent an unedited
copy of the original version of the article to citizen investigative reporter Mike
Vanderboegh who proceeded to publish on his blog, Sipsey Street Irregulars.
What is revealed in the uncut edition of the story
1) Not only are Clinton Administration officials implicated in the
Oklahoma City bombing, but also the Obama Administration, the current FBI, and
Attorney-General Eric Holder.
2) Two informants, John Matthews and Jesse Trentadue, provided the FBI
and DOJ with information showing that Timothy McVeigh had worked in tandem with
other persons.
3) These “other persons” (Andreas Carl Strassmeier and Tom Posey) were ever
pursued by the FBI for their role in the bombing, making the entire case of the
FBI against McVeigh as the 'lone bomber' was highly suspect.
4) Many of those involved in Gunwalker were also part of the scandal
surrounding the Oklahoma city bombing. (See *****PROJECT
GUNRUNNER?THE BIGGEST SCANDAL SINCE IRAN-CONTRA***** and *****Update
On Growing Gunrunning Scandal*****)
How it happened
1) Washington Post reporter R.M. Schneiderman and his immediate supervisory
editor John Solomon had been working on the explosive story of FBI corruption
for months.
2) Editor Tina Brown then intervened at the last minute, removing all of
the key components of the report and focusing instead on one lone undercover
informant.
3) Brown was under intense pressure from the Obama Administration,
Attorney-General Eric Holder, and the FBI to cut key portions out of the story.
4) Someone at the news organization was furious that the story was gutted
for political purposes and leaked the complete uncut edition of the story.
5) Editor Tina Brown has reportedly exploded in a tirade at the staff of
the news organization.
Conclusion: The corruption of US media is
being openly exposed for all to see. The true story here is:
A) That original article exposing FBI corruption
came so close to being published.
B) That the original, uncut edition of the story was leaked at all.
This is further proof that the government’s control over the
media is failing (see *****The ESF's Wurlitzer (Propaganda
Machine) Is Slowly Dying*****).
The long-dead stories of
government corruption are starting to reach the general public
Radioactive topics that have been buried for decades are slowly coming to
the surface: The
Congressional Insider Trading exposed by '60 Minutes', the growing
Gunrunner scandal, the FBI's involvement in (and prior knowledge of) the
Oklahoma City bombing (described above), etc…
In attempting to control the
damage, mainstream media is destroying its credibility
In its efforts to contain the spread of these stories, mainstream media is
being forced to openly display its own corruption (See *****The Extraordinary Lack Of Coverage Of
Ron Paul***** for example). As the article above
states, "Newsweek is evidently so compromised by political considerations
that it cannot tell these truths. It remains to be seen if there are any
other ‘mainstream media’ outlets who can, or will.”
Corrupt mainstream media is the key pillar enabling all the widespread fraud occurring
in America. Once it goes, the whole rotten system goes with it. With
incredibly-damaging, long-dead stories finally reaching the surface, we are
getting very near that point.
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