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Two Supermarket Executives Charged With Hoarding in Venezuela | venezuelanalysis.com - 0 views

venezuelanalysis.com/11294 war & peace Venezuela U.S.-foreign-policy hoarding litigation
shared by Paul Merrell on 25 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Two managers of the private supermarket chain Dia Dia were formally charged by the Venezuelan state prosecutor yesterday with the alleged crimes of boycott and destabilization of the economy. Manuel Andrés Morales Ordosgoitti and Tadeo Arriechi Franco were arrested at the beginning of February after state authorities uncovered ton loads of basic items in a Dia Dia warehouse in Caracas. The indictments are part of a ramped up effort on the part of the Venezuelan government to crack down on hoarding and speculation by large private retailers, which is a primary contributing factor to inflation and widespread scarcities of basic goods.
  • The Bolivarian government has regulated the prices of everyday goods for years, in order to ensure access by the majority of Venezuelans for whom they were unaffordable under previous administrations. Nonetheless, the government has accused the private sector of exploiting this policy by hoarding cheap subsidized goods, creating consumer gaps, then selling them at exorbitant prices on the black market in what President Maduro has termed an “economic war” waged to destabilize the socialist government. Last month, board members of the private firms Dia Dia and Carnica 2005 were arrested for their companies’ role in a massive hoarding operation.
  • Carnica 2005 was nationalized and integrated into the state food distribution network PDVAL. Dia Dia operates 35 supermarkets throughout Venezuela, which are largely found in low-income communities.
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  • On Monday, Venezuelan Vice-President Jorge Arreaza inaugurated the first of the nation’s “people’s military commands” in Lara state, which will be charged with “generating a victory in the economic war.” Last month, President Nicolas Maduro unveiled his plan for the creation of “peoples’ military commands” throughout the nation designed to combat “economic sabotage” at the local level by ensuring the supply of basic food and hygiene products as well as medicines. “The men and women who form these commands have the responsibility of attending to the denunciations of the people and safeguarding their access to food, medicine, and all necessary products,” declared the vice-president.
  • The people’s commands will reportedly operate in coordination with social movements, communal councils and communes, and state security organs, although details remain limited as the project is gets off the ground. 
  • Paul Merrell on 25 Mar 15
     
    It's a big problem in Venezuela. The government subsidizes the purchase of consumer goods so that they can be priced lower for those with low incomes. But the right-wing "capitalists" aligned with U.S. covert agencies hoard the goods, creating artificial market shortages, then sell the goods on the black market at inflated prices. The current response by the government is criiminal prosecutions coupled with nationalization of businesses that don't hear the message. I suspect that the government may be forced at some point to drop the subsidies and begin writing welfare checks to low income citizens instead. The Bolivarian government is absolutely committed to ending poverty in Venezuela. Of course this smells too much of socialism for U.S. government tastes, which has been attempting to overthrow the Bolivarian government ever since it nationalized the oil industry. 
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My Blog - 0 views

kingworldnews.com/...German_Gold_Hoard_Is_Gone.html
shared by Gary Edwards on 02 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 02 Nov 12
     
    Extensive explanation of how the Banksters and fellow globalists work.  this time with the focus on the Federal Reserve and Treasury activities in the Gold Market.   At the heart of this explanation though is the discovery that the German Bundesbank has emptied the vaults holding the entire German Gold horde.  The leased vaults were located in NYC, deep under the Manhattan Federal Reserve Bankster headquarters.  It's gone.  And the German people have yet to wake up to that fact.  Amazingly, Italy and Greece have more Gold than Germany - the country whose Banksters they owe billions in debt to. Business Insider has an Aug 2012 list, form the World Gold Council, of the 10 Countires with the biggest Gold Reserves: http://goo.gl/IGU3n Italy is #3, and Germany is #2.  The USA is #1.  Notably, according this BI report, Germany has refused to use their Gold to bolster the European Financial Stability Fund (EFSF).  Maybe it's because they do not have any GOLD?  Inquiring minds need to know :) "Turk added, "Half of the gold they (the Germans) leased themselves.  The other half of Germany's gold hoard was eventually leased into the market as well through complicated swaps with the US.  But the reality is that as of 2001, all of that German gold was gone.  Meaning all German gold worldwide, which was supposed to be stored in vaults, the vaults were emptied of German gold and the gold was leased into the market." Turk went on to say, "It's uncertain if any of that leased gold has ever been returned to those vaults.  Meaning, the vaults which are supposed to be storing the German gold hoard may still be empty." Incredibly, 11 years ago James Turk had diagnosed the problems of the missing German gold hoard.  Here is the 2001 piece titled, "Behind Closed Doors" in which he exposed the German gold was in fact missing: "
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Venezuelan Conglomerate to Halt Beer Production | venezuelanalysis.com - 0 views

venezuelanalysis.com/11944 war & peace Venezuela U.S.-foreign-policy coup boarding
shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • Polar, Venezuela’s largest private food and beverage provider, released a statement on Thursday that it will stop beer production, citing its inability to import raw materials. The company alleged the Venezuelan government has not issued sufficient US currency to purchase equipment and raw goods necessary to continue its production past this April. 
  • “Our current situation is this: We have not been able to replenish the inventory, and we only have malted barley to produce until April 29. Under those circumstances, we are obliged to suspend the production of beer and malts until we get access to the currency needed to procure the raw materials,” Polar’s statement continued.   Polar produces approximately 80 percent of beer consumed in Venezuela; however, due to rising beer prices, many artisanally crafted and traditional alcohols have become increasingly popular across the country.
  • While a complete halt to production would be a significant blow to workers; on other occasions, factory workers have taken over company plants following unexpected closures. Such was the case of the Clorox factory in Los Valles del Tuy, Miranda on the outskirts of Caracas in 2014. In recent years, the Venezuelan government as well as grassroots have denounced the hoarding of raw materials and alleged shortages are tactics used by private companies to instigate destabilization and the economic war. Polar along with other corporations have been among those accused of such actions. Polar is also well-known for its cornmeal flour product Harina Pan, used to make the national dish “arepas” which is now a rare sight on supermarket shelves and often sold at speculated prices.   The government and Venezuelan grassroots have also denounced Polar’s owner, Lorenzo Mendoza of hoarding, misappropriating state-subsidized dollars as well as conspiration against the government. Mendoza has denied these allegations.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • In February, protestors in Catia on the west side of Caracas known for its working class roots also took-over Polar distribution trucks to demand that the company stop hoarding basic food and goods.
  • Paul Merrell on 24 Apr 16
     
    Having failed in two violent coup attempts that were thwarted, the U.S., UK, and Israel, acting in convert with Venezuelan oligarchs have succeeded in inflicting enough misery that the Opposition has won a controlling majority in the Venezuelan legislature. The Bolivarian Revolution lives on at least for now in the executive and justice branches of government. A presidential impeachment process is about to begin without any impeachable offense being alleged. The U.S. has been pushing very hard diplomatically and via stiff economic sanctions to secure the release of principles in the previous violent coup attempts. A bill declaring amnesty for them was found unconstitutional by the Venezuelan high court. (I haven't checked but I suspect Venezuela's constitution  resembles that of the U.S. in placing the pardon power strictly in the hands of the Executive.) Watch out, Venezuela, if Hillary becomes the U.S. PreZ. 
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The Money Changers Serenade: A New Bankers' Plot to Steal Your Deposits | Global Research - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5359018 banksters fraud electronic-currency Summers
shared by Paul Merrell on 25 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Writing in the Wall Street Journal (“Confessions of a Quantitative Easer,” November 11, 2013), Andrew Huszar confirms my explanation to be the correct one. Huszar is the Federal Reserve official who implemented the policy of QE. He resigned when he realized that the real purposes of QE was to drive up the prices of the banks’ holdings of debt instruments, to provide the banks with trillions of dollars at zero cost with which to lend and speculate, and to provide the banks with “fat commissions from brokering most of the Fed’s QE transactions.” (See: www.paulcraigroberts.org) This vast con game remains unrecognized by Congress and the public. At the IMF Research Conference on November 8, 2013, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers presented a plan to expand the con game. Summers says that it is not enough merely to give the banks interest free money. More should be done for the banks. Instead of being paid interest on their bank deposits, people should be penalized for keeping their money in banks instead of spending it. To sell this new rip-off scheme, Summers has conjured up an explanation based on the crude and discredited Keynesianism of the 1940s that explained the Great Depression as a problem caused by too much savings. Instead of spending their money, people hoarded it, thus causing aggregate demand and employment to fall.
  • Summers says that today the problem of too much saving has reappeared. The centerpiece of his argument is “the natural interest rate,” defined as the interest rate at which full employment is established by the equality of saving with investment. If people save more than investors invest, the saved money will not find its way back into the economy, and output and employment will fall. Summers notes that despite a zero real rate of interest, there is still substantial unemployment. In other words, not even a zero rate of interest can reduce saving to the level of investment, thus frustrating a full employment recovery. Summers concludes that the natural rate of interest has become negative and is stuck below zero. How to fix this? The way to fix it, Summers says, is to charge people for saving money. To avoid the charges, people would spend the money, thus reducing savings to the level of investment and restoring full employment. Summers acknowledges that the problem with his solution is that people would take their money out of banks and hoard it in cash holdings. In other words, the cash form of money provides consumers with a freedom to save that holds down consumption and prevents full employment. Summers has a fix for this: eliminate the freedom by imposing a cashless society where the only money is electronic. As electronic money cannot be hoarded except in bank deposits, penalties can be imposed that force unproductive savings into consumption.
  • for Summers, the plight of the consumer is not the problem. The problem is the profits of the banks. Summers has the solution, and the establishment, including Paul Krugman, is applauding it. Once the economy officially turns down again, watch out.
  • Paul Merrell on 25 Nov 13
     
    Paul Craig Roberts exposes Larry Summers formula for the banksters to grab money from everyone: eliminate all but electronic-currency and penalize savings. Not mentioned by Roberts, but much of the infrastructure for this is already in place. For example, late last year all recipients of Social Security and VA benefit checks were notified that after March 1, 2013, they would be in violation of the law if they continued to receive paper checks. They were required to enroll in approved electronic deposit programs, all of which are offered by banks. Until about two years ago, people could merely state in writing that they didn't want it and could continue receiving paper checks. But Congress closed that loophole.  (I remain out of compliance.) Debit card is now mandatory, although they have not yet enacted penalties for non-compliance.  So the banksters now get the "float" on virtually all federal SS and VA benefit payments until spent. That's as opposed to the prior Treasury Department drafts whose funds were not in the banking system.   More to the point, the web portal for the federal "Go Direct" program to sign up for direct deposit is in place and debugged. It wouldn't take much beyond a bigger data set to issue debit cards for everyone in the U.S. during a transition to a cashless economy.  The Constitution says gold and silver only for payment of debts; paper currency paved the way for financial abuse of the economy by banksters. Now Summers wants to do away with cash entirely in favor of digital currency with penalties for saving? My life savings must be surrendered to a bank so I can be penalized for saving? And of course moving to all-digital currency would give the spy agencies a much more detailed record of your purchases to work with. The location where you bought that last cup of coffee is instantly available to the NSA? Gimme a break!    
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Offshore Cash Hoard Expands by $183 Billion at Companies - Bloomberg - 0 views

www.bloomberg.com/...-183-billion-at-companies.html
shared by Paul Merrell on 09 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • The largest U.S.-based companies expanded their untaxed offshore stockpiles by $183 billion in the past year, increasing such holdings by 14.4 percent, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
  • A report last year by analysts at JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) estimated that all U.S.-based companies had $1.7 trillion in accumulated offshore profits. In the data compiled by Bloomberg, 83 companies had about 75 percent of last year’s total, which suggests that the total for all companies now exceeds $1.9 trillion.
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FBI Source: Clinton Foundation Can Bring Down Entire Government » Alex Jones'... - 1 views

www.infowars.com/n-bring-down-entire-government Hillary
shared by Gary Edwards on 08 Jul 16 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 08 Jul 16
     
    "The Clinton Foundation is a "massive spider web of connections and money laundering implicating hundreds of high-level people," according to an anonymous insider who revealed why the FBI stopped short of indicting Hillary Clinton. Before FBI Director James Comey announced the FBI wouldn't recommend pressing charges against Clinton, an insider with "intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the Clinton case" hosted an little-publicized AMA session on 4Chan, and the statements he made on July 2 corroborate with later developments of the scandal. "There is enough for her and the entire government to be brought down," he revealed. "People do not realize how enormous this whole situation actually is." "Whether she will be [indicted] or not depends on how much info others involved gets out, and there are a lot of people involved." Since then, both the FBI and the DOJ declined to press charges against Clinton, and other sources revealed the Clinton Foundation is now under scrutiny. "The problem is with the Clinton Foundation as I mentioned, which you should just imagine as a massive spider web of connections and money laundering implicating hundreds of high-level people," the source said. "Though I do not have a high opinion of Hillary, she is just a piece - albeit a big piece - of this massive sh*tstorm." Those implicated extends to the Justice Dept. "The DOJ is most likely looking to save itself," he continued. "Find everyone involved in the Clinton Foundation, from its donors to its Board of Directors, and imagine they are all implicated." This would explain why Bill Clinton forced himself on Attorney General Loretta Lynch's plane at the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport last week; Clinton insider Larry Nichols said blackmail was likely involved. "Bill Clinton met with Lynch, and he was there to assure her that when Hillary gets to be president she'll be able to keep her job," said Nichols on the Alex Jones Sh
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What the hell just happened? 'Tyranny By Executive Order' | by Constitutional Attorney ... - 0 views

www.redflagnews.com/...l-attorney-michael-connelly-jd Tyranny-by-Executive-Order
shared by Gary Edwards on 18 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 18 Aug 13
     
    "What the hell just happened? That is the question that many Americans should be asking themselves following the news conference where Obama unveiled his plan for destroying the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution. At first glance it appeared to be a case of Obama shamelessly using the deaths of innocents, and some live children as a backdrop, to push for the passage of radical gun control measures by Congress. Most of these have no chance of passing, yet, Obama's signing of Executive orders initiating 23 so called Executive actions on gun control seemed like an afterthought. Unfortunately, that is the real story, but it is generally being overlooked. The fact is that with a few strokes of his pen Obama set up the mechanisms he will personally use to not only destroy the Second Amendment to the Constitution, but also the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments. It will not matter what Congress does, Obama can and will act on his own, using these Executive actions, and will be violating both the Constitution and his oath of office when he does it. Here are the sections of the Executive Order that he will use: "1. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background-check system." What exactly is relevant data? Does it include our medical records obtained through Obamacare, our tax returns, our political affiliations, our military background, and our credit history? I suggest that all of the above, even if it violates our fourth Amendment right to privacy will now be relevant data for determining if we are allowed to purchase a firearm. "2. Address unnecessary legal barriers, particularly relating to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, that may prevent states from making information available to the background-check system." This should be read in conjunction with section 16 of the order that says: "16. Clarify that the Affordable Care Act does not prohibit doctors
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U.S. Wages Have Fallen EVERY Quarter of the 'Recovery' - Jeff Nielson | Sprott Money - 0 views

www.sprottmoney.com/...the-recovery-jeff-nielson.html economy U.S. stats
shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Aug 15 - No Cached
  • For 6 ½ long years, we have been bombarded with the mythology known as “the U.S. economic recovery” by the mainstream media. Exposing this fantasy is simple, since the gulf between myth and reality has grown to such absurd proportions.There is no better starting point than the farcical claim by Barack Obama that “10 million new jobs” have been created during this non-existent recovery. In fact, the U.S. government’s own numbers show that the total number of employed Americans has fallen by more than 3 million over that span, in spite of the population growth over those past 6 ½ years.
  • Updated, the U.S. civilian participation rate has now fallen to a 36-year low, and as the chart clearly shows, it has fallen at a faster rate since the start of this mythical recovery.The lie: “10 million new jobs created”. The fact: more than 3 million jobs lost. This is a reality-gap of 13 million jobs, or exactly 2 million jobs per year. The U.S. economy hasn’t been “creating” 1.5 million new jobs per year. It’s been losing roughly ½ million jobs every year of this fantasy-recovery.Then we have the “heartbeat” of the U.S. economy, its velocity of money. A chart of this heartbeat shows that it has plummeted far lower than at any other time in the 56-year history of this data series. This doesn’t merely show a dying economy, it shows a dead economy.
  • As for the supposed “GDP growth” over this 6 ½ year span, falsifying this statistic requires nothing more than lying about the rate of inflation. Here again, the lie is obvious. The U.S. (and other Western governments) pretend that inflation is near-zero, while in the real world, food and housing prices have been soaring at the fastest rate in our lifetime over the past 10 – 15 years.Then we have U.S. energy consumption. Again the picture is clear. Overall U.S. energy consumption peaked in 2007 and has been falling since then, while official gasoline consumption has been plummeting for several years. Growing economies use more energy. Shrinking economies use less energy. Case closed.All this is old news to regular readers, however. What has been less easy to document in any sort of definitive way has been the fall in U.S. wages. The problem is that to express wages meaningfully, we must use “real dollars”, i.e. we must adjust these wages for inflation. With the U.S. government only providing nominal data about U.S. wages, and consistently lying about the actual inflation rate; we have lacked the data to make any conclusive statement.A recent boast by the U.S. government/Corporate media (i.e. another false claim) has now provided us with a clearer picture here, going back to the beginning of this imaginary recovery. In trying to downplay the absence of any wage-growth in the U.S. in Q2 of this year; the propaganda machine made this claim:…That is down from a 2.6 percent increase in the first quarter [of 2015], which was the biggest in 6 ½ years. [emphasis mine]
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • The claim is that nominal wages in the U.S. rose at the fastest rate “in 6 ½ years” in the first quarter of 2015, i.e. the highest rate during the entire pseudo-recovery. Now let’s discount that number with the (real) rate of inflation, in order to get a real-dollar number for U.S. wages.
  • Thus the U.S. government itself has now provided us with a definitive picture on U.S. wages. During Q1 of this year, the high-water mark for U.S. wage “growth” during the entire Recovery; U.S. wages were still falling. Ipso facto, U.S. wages have been falling every quarter of this recovery.Now we begin to see the whole truth in the U.S. labour market, versus the absurd, official claim of lots of “new jobs” and “rising wages”. U.S. employment has been falling, not rising, every quarter, every year. U.S. wages have been falling, not rising, every quarter, every year. But that picture is still incomplete.The total number of hours worked by the Working Poor is also falling, and in 18 out of 20 of the U.S.’s industrial sectors, total number of hours worked is still lower than during the so-called Great Recession. This is also reflected in the fall in the percentage of full-time employees.
  • To summarize: since the beginning of the imaginary U.S. economic recovery, there are millions fewer Americans who are now employed. Their wages have been falling for every quarter of the “recovery”, and they are also working fewer hours. Growing economies create more jobs; shrinking economies lose jobs. Strong economies have rising (real) wages; weak economies have falling wages. Once again we see the supposed U.S. recovery is pure mythology.However, with respect to the destruction of the U.S. standard of living, to truly appreciate what has been done to the U.S. population (and the populations of nearly all of the Corrupt West), we must look at the picture over a much longer term. In the 40 years before the beginning of this imaginary recovery, the wages of the Average American fell by roughly 50% (in real dollars).
  • Now the descent of the majority of the U.S. population to Third World status becomes crystal clear. From 1970 to the beginning of 2009 (i.e. the current “recovery”), U.S. wages fell roughly 50%. Then came the mythical Recovery, and U.S. wages have continued to fall, quarter after quarter after quarter. The Great Recovery has been worse than the Great Recession which came before it.What do we call it when a nation experiences a “great recession”, and then the economy continues to crumble at an even faster rate after that, year after year? We call it a Greater Depression.Shrinking economy. Losing jobs. Falling wages. Declining energy consumption. No “heartbeat”. Has anything been left out, in describing this U.S. economic Armageddon? Certainly.The U.S. government is obviously bankrupt. The U.S. dollar is obviously worthless. The U.S. economy has been run completely into the ground. When the current, assorted bubbles are deliberately popped (almost certainly in 2016, or late-2015), and Old-Man Buffett goes on a massive shopping spree with the $60+ billion he is now currently hoarding; there will be nothing left but economic rubble. And Milton Friedman will be smiling, from (way) down in his final, resting place.
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Why Are We So Afraid To Fix Banks The Right Way?* | Clusterstock Henry Blodgett - 0 views

clusterstock.alleyinsider.com/...aid-to-fix-banks-the-right-way finacial-crisis
shared by Gary Edwards on 21 Jan 09 - Cached
  • a debt-equity swap
  • LIF said: Jan. 19, 3:17 PM MY PLAN 1. Mandate a 12-1 leverage cap for all financial institutions to take effect within 180 days. This 12-1 leverage cap has to be calculated using real market prices, not mark-to-model prices. 2. Temporary ban on capital raising by banks – water can’t dilute poison. You eliminate the poison first then add more water. 3. Force banks, etc to reach this 12-1 leverage cap by selling their toxic assets within 180 days via a US Govt Auction. The US Govt will be the Auctioneer but will NOT bid for assets 4. Any bank that is unable to sell sufficient assets to bring it under the 12-1 leverage cap will automatically nationalized by the US Govt at a price of $1. All shareholdrers and bond holders forfeit their assets. This will provide an incentive to the banks/financial institutions to sell these assets. 5. The US Govt will now hold all the toxic assets to maturity - this will prevent private market bidders from low-bidding in (3) above. Private market bidders in essence are being told, you buy the assets during the auction or you will not have another opportunity to buy the assets, as the US Govt will sieze them at an effective rate of ZERO and then hold them to maturity. 6. Any bank that falls under nationalization will also have its CEO, Board of Directors and members of the Management committee for the past 5-10 years disgorge all compensation earned during the past 5-10 years. 7. Create standardized CDS products that traded on an electronic exchange. All non-standard CDS products should be liquidated in the OTC market or swapped into standardized CDS products prior to the commencement of the new CDS exchange. The exchange will commence within180 days. 8. New Mortgage Financing Rules: 20-30% minimum govt mandated down payments. Strict Debt to Income limits, etc. These rules must be codified into federal law. 9. New Credit Card/Auto Finance rules: strict rules on the amount of credit card/Auto finance debt available to consumers.
  • Gary Edwards on 21 Jan 09
     
    You don't have to subsidize banks and their stakeholders at taxpayer expense to avoid another Lehman.  You just have to fix the banks the right way. What's the right way? * Temporarily seize the banks * Write their assets down to nuclear-winter levels (or, if desired, put them in a big bad bank, as Sheila Bair wants to do.) * Convert enough of their debt to equity to put them in a strong capital position. That's it.  No taxpayer money.  No citizen outrage.  No comical "Yes, we're lending" assurances when what the banks are really doing is, sensibly, hoarding everything. We could do this to Citigroup and Bank of America tomorrow afternoon, and on Wednesday morning, two of our biggest banks would be rock solid (they could also still be publicly traded, under the same ticker symbols, with different shareholders). 
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Derivatives - The $600 Trillion Time Bomb Set to Explode | InvestorPlace - 0 views

www.investorplace.com/...llion-time-bomb-set-to-explode Banksters Derivative-time-bomb financial-collapse
shared by Gary Edwards on 19 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • The world’s gross domestic product (GDP) is only about $65 trillion, or roughly 10.83% of the worldwide value of the global derivatives market, according to The Economist. So there is literally not enough money on the planet to backstop the banks trading these things if they run into trouble.
  • Gary Edwards on 19 Oct 11
     
    Pay Attention Alert!  This is why the Banksters are hoarding cash and not lending ...... excerpt:  Do you want to know the real reason banks aren't lending and the PIIGS have control of the barnyard in Europe? It's because risk in the $600 trillion derivatives market isn't evening out. To the contrary, it's growing increasingly concentrated among a select few banks, especially here in the United States. In 2009, five banks held 80% of derivatives in America. Now, just four banks hold a staggering 95.9% of U.S. derivatives, according to a recent report from the Office of the Currency Comptroller. The four banks in question are JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM), Citigroup (NYSE:C), Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) and Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS). Derivatives played a crucial role in bringing down the global economy, so you would think that the world's top policymakers would have reined these things in by now - but they haven't. Instead of attacking the problem, regulators have let it spiral out of control, and the result is a $600 trillion time bomb called the derivatives market.
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Maduro Makes Moves toward Economic Reform as New Poll Predicts PSUV Win | venezuelanaly... - 0 views

venezuelanalysis.com/11599
shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro unveiled  a series of economic measures on Tuesday following the release of a new poll predicting a victory for the ruling United Socialist Party (PSUV) in December parliamentary elections. Among the measures are various modifications to Venezuela’s Fair Price Law aimed at fighting speculation by private retailers, which has become rampant amid soaring inflation.
  • A new category of maximum price will applied to all goods and services, stipulating a 30% maximum profit for retailers determined on the basis of “real costs of production and commercialization”. Within this new schema, importers will be entitled to a maximum profit of 20%, while domestic producers will be allowed to take in a 30% maximum gain in an effort to stimulate national production. By capping profits in each rung of the production chain, the government aims to put a halt to the speculative spiral rapidly driving up the prices of everyday goods, which constantly erodes the purchasing power of Venezuela’s popular sectors. Additionally, Maduro announced a modification applying to food and health services, a category, which the government says has been manipulated by private retailers. The new “Fair Price” registry will be determined unilaterally by Venezuela’s National Superintendence of Fair Prices over the next 30 days. In order to enforce the new “fair price” regime, Maduro also unveiled tougher punishments for speculation, which will be detected by evaluating the net income of private firms in light of new regulations on maximum price and maximum profit. The government will now impose steeper penalties on retailers who remark the price of goods, which may include jail time. Furthermore, the common practice of fixing prices on the basis of the parallel dollar will now be considered an offense. Apart from measures against speculation, Maduro also announced a 30% across-the-board salary increase for public sector workers and armed forces personnel, which comes on the heels of a 30% raise in the national minimum wage announced last week. The salary adjustment was coupled with the approval of 110,000 new pensioners as part of the national pension system, which has been massively expanded under the Bolivarian administrations of Chávez and Maduro.
  • Lastly, the Venezuelan president indicated that the ministries of industry and commerce would be fused in order to better coordinate efforts to combat speculation and guarantee the distribution of essential goods.
  • Paul Merrell on 24 Oct 15
     
    Socialist (and populist) Venezuela is under siege by right wing businessmen and the U.S. government, with two attempted coups in the last few years, one earlier this year. Hoarding of goods by businessmen opposed to the government in an attempt to undermine government support has been a big problem. The profit-capping measures just announced are directed at that problem. 
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The Daily Dot - The NSA has nearly complete backdoor access to Apple's iPhone - 0 views

www.dailydot.com/...ne-access-camera-mic-appelbaum surveillance state NSA NSA-targets iPhone
shared by Paul Merrell on 31 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • The U.S. National Security Agency has the ability to snoop on nearly every communication sent from an Apple iPhone, according to leaked documents shared by security researcher Jacob Appelbaum and German news magazine Der Spiegel.  An NSA program called DROPOUTJEEP allows the agency to intercept SMS messages, access contact lists, locate a phone using cell tower data, and even activate the device’s microphone and camera. 
  • According to leaked documents, the NSA claims a 100 percent success rate when it comes to implanting iOS devices with spyware. The documents suggest that the NSA needs physical access to a device to install the spyware—something the agency has achieved by rerouting shipments of devices purchased online—but a remote version of the exploit is also in the works. Appelbaum says that presents one of two possibilities: “Either [the NSA] have a huge collection of exploits that work against Apple products, meaning they are hoarding information about critical systems that American companies produce, and sabotaging them, or Apple sabotaged it themselves,” Appelbaum said at the Chaos Communication Conference in Hamburg, Germany. 
  • “Do you think Apple helped them with that?” Appelbaum asked. “I hope Apple will clarify that.”
  • Paul Merrell on 31 Dec 13
     
    Nice image of a very revealing NSA document and an embedded video of Appelbaum's presentation at the annual Chaos Communication Conference in Hamburg, Germany.  Much of this year's conference was devoted to issues raised by this year's outing of the NSA's activities. 
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Amend the Federal Reserve: We Need a Central Bank that Serves Main Street | Global Rese... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5360637 banksters federal-reserve Federal-Reserve-reform
shared by Paul Merrell on 11 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • December 23rd marks the 100th anniversary of the Federal Reserve. Dissatisfaction with its track record has prompted calls to audit the Fed and end the Fed.  At the least, Congress needs to amend the Fed, modifying the Federal Reserve Act to give the central bank the tools necessary to carry out its mandates. The Federal Reserve is the only central bank with a dual mandate. It is charged not only with maintaining low, stable inflation but with promoting maximum sustainable employment. Yet unemployment remains stubbornly high, despite four years of radical tinkering with interest rates and quantitative easing (creating money on the Fed’s books). After pushing interest rates as low as they can go, the Fed has admitted that it has run out of tools. At an IMF conference on November 8, 2013, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers suggested that since near-zero interest rates were not adequately promoting people to borrow and spend, it might now be necessary to set interest at below zero. This idea was lauded and expanded upon by other ivory-tower inside-the-box thinkers, including Paul Krugman. Negative interest would mean that banks would charge the depositor for holding his deposits rather than paying interest on them. Runs on the banks would no doubt follow, but the pundits have a solution for that: move to a cashless society, in which all money would be electronic. “This would make it impossible to hoard cash outside the bank,” wrote Danny Vinik in Business Insider, “allowing the Fed to cut interest rates to below zero, spurring people to spend more.”
  • Business Week quotes Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office: “We’ve had four years of extraordinarily loose monetary policy without satisfactory results, and the only thing they come up with is we need more?” Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, calls the idea “harebrained.” He is equally skeptical of quantitative easing, the Fed’s other tool for stimulating the economy. Roberts points to Andrew Huszar’s explosive November 11th Wall Street Journal article titled “Confessions of a Quantitative Easer,” in which Huszar says that QE was always intended to serve Wall Street, not Main Street.  Huszar’s assignment at the Fed was to manage the purchase of $1.25 trillion in mortgages with dollars created on a computer screen. He says he resigned when he realized that the real purpose of the policy was to drive up the prices of the banks’ holdings of debt instruments, to provide the banks with trillions of dollars at zero cost with which to lend and speculate, and to provide the banks with “fat commissions from brokering most of the Fed’s QE transactions.”
  • Bernanke created debt-free money and bought government debt with it, returning the interest to the Treasury. The result was interest-free credit, a good deal for the government. But the problem, says Lounsbury, is that: The helicopters dropped all the money into a hole in the ground (excess reserve accounts) and very little made its way into the economy.  It was essentially a rearrangement of the balance sheets of the creditor nation with little impact on the debtor nation. . . . The fatal flaw of QE is that it delivers money to the accounts of the creditors and does nothing for the accounts of the debtors. Bad debts remain unserviced and the debt crisis continues.
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  • Bernanke delivered the money to the creditors because that was all the Federal Reserve Act allowed. If the Fed is to fulfill its mandate, it clearly needs more tools; and that means amending the Act.  Harvard professor Ken Rogoff, who spoke at the November 2013 IMF conference before Larry Summers, suggested several possibilities; and one was to broaden access to the central bank, allowing anyone to have an ATM at the Fed. Rajiv Sethi, Barnard/Columbia Professor of Economics, expanded on this idea in a blog titled “The Payments System and Monetary Transmission.” He suggested making the Federal Reserve the repository for all deposit banking. This would make deposit insurance unnecessary; it would eliminate the need to impose higher capital requirements; and it would allow the Fed to implement monetary policy by targeting debtor rather than creditor balance sheets. Instead of returning its profits to the Treasury, the Fed could do a helicopter drop directly into consumer bank accounts, stimulating demand in the consumer economy. John Lounsbury expanded further on these ideas. He wrote in Econintersect that they would open a pathway for investment banking and depository banking to be separated from each other, analogous to that under Glass-Steagall. Banks would no longer be too big to fail, since they could fail without destroying the general payment system of the economy. Lounsbury said the central bank could operate as a true public bank and repository for all federal banking transactions, and it could operate in the mode of a postal savings system for the general populace.
  • The Federal Reserve Act was drafted by bankers to create a banker’s bank that would serve their interests. It is their own private club, and its legal structure keeps all non-members out.  A century after the Fed’s creation, a sober look at its history leads to the conclusion that it is a privately controlled institution whose corporate owners use it to direct our entire economy for their own ends, without democratic influence or accountability.  Substantial changes are needed to transform the Fed, and these will only come with massive public pressure. Congress has the power to amend the Fed – just as it did in 1934, 1958 and 2010. For the central bank to satisfy its mandate to promote full employment and to become an institution that serves all the people, not just the 1%, the Fed needs fundamental reform.
  • Paul Merrell on 11 Dec 13
     
    In my view, the Fed is beyond salvage. It needs abolition, not a new role. The Constitution grants Congress the power to mint and coin money, not a group of rent-seeking banksters. 
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If GCHQ wants to improve national security it must fix our technology | Technology | th... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...q-national-security-technology surveillance state cyberwar vulnerabilities secure-computing Doctorow
shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • In a recent column, security expert Bruce Schneier proposed breaking up the NSA – handing its offensive capabilities work to US Cyber Command and its law enforcement work to the FBI, and terminating its programme of attacking internet security. In place of this, Schneier proposed that “instead of working to deliberately weaken security for everyone, the NSA should work to improve security for everyone.” This is a profoundly good idea for reasons that may not be obvious at first blush.People who worry about security and freedom on the internet have long struggled with the problem of communicating the urgent stakes to the wider public. We speak in jargon that’s a jumble of mixed metaphors – viruses, malware, trojans, zero days, exploits, vulnerabilities, RATs – that are the striated fossil remains of successive efforts to come to grips with the issue. When we do manage to make people alarmed about the stakes, we have very little comfort to offer them, because Internet security isn’t something individuals can solve.
  • I remember well the day this all hit home for me. It was nearly exactly a year ago, and I was out on tour with my novel Homeland, which tells the story of a group of young people who come into possession of a large trove of government leaks that detail a series of illegal programmes through which supposedly democratic governments spy on people by compromising their computers.
  • I explained the book’s premise, and then talked about how this stuff works in the real world. I laid out a parade of awfuls, including a demonstrated attack that hijacked implanted defibrillators from 10 metres’ distance and caused them to compromise other defibrillators that came into range, implanting an instruction to deliver lethal shocks at a certain time in the future. I talked about Cassidy Wolf, the reigning Miss Teen USA, whose computer had been taken over by a “sextortionist” who captured nude photos of her and then threatened to release them if she didn’t perform live sex shows for him. I talked about the future of self-driving cars, smart buildings, implanted hearing aids and robotic limbs, and explained that the world is made out of computers that we put our bodies into, and that we put inside our bodies.These computers are badly secured. What’s more, governments and their intelligence agencies are actively working to undermine the security of our computers and networks. This was before the Snowden revelations, but we already knew that governments were buying “zero-day vulnerabilities” from security researchers. These are critical bugs that can be leveraged to compromise entire systems. Until recently, the normal response to the discovery of one of these “vulns” was to report them to the vendor so they could be repaired.
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  • But spy-agencies and law-enforcement have created a bustling marketplace for “zero-days,” which are weaponised for the purpose of attacking the computers and networks of “bad guys”. The incentives have shifted, and now a newly discovered bug had a good chance of remaining unpatched and live in the field because governments wanted to be able to use it to hack their enemies.
  • Last year, when I finished that talk in Seattle, a talk about all the ways that insecure computers put us all at risk, a woman in the audience put up her hand and said, “Well, you’ve scared the hell out of me. Now what do I do? How do I make my computers secure?”And I had to answer: “You can’t. No one of us can. I was a systems administrator 15 years ago. That means that I’m barely qualified to plug in a WiFi router today. I can’t make my devices secure and neither can you. Not when our governments are buying up information about flaws in our computers and weaponising them as part of their crime-fighting and anti-terrorism strategies. Not when it is illegal to tell people if there are flaws in their computers, where such a disclosure might compromise someone’s anti-copying strategy.But: If I had just stood here and spent an hour telling you about water-borne parasites; if I had told you about how inadequate water-treatment would put you and everyone you love at risk of horrifying illness and terrible, painful death; if I had explained that our very civilisation was at risk because the intelligence services were pursuing a strategy of keeping information about pathogens secret so they can weaponise them, knowing that no one is working on a cure; you would not ask me ‘How can I purify the water coming out of my tap?’”
  • Because when it comes to public health, individual action only gets you so far. It doesn’t matter how good your water is, if your neighbour’s water gives him cholera, there’s a good chance you’ll get cholera, too. And even if you stay healthy, you’re not going to have a very good time of it when everyone else in your country is striken and has taken to their beds.If you discovered that your government was hoarding information about water-borne parasites instead of trying to eradicate them; if you discovered that they were more interested in weaponising typhus than they were in curing it, you would demand that your government treat your water-supply with the gravitas and seriousness that it is due.The public health analogy is suprisingly apt here. The public health threat-model is in a state of continuous flux, because our well-being is under continuous, deliberate attack from pathogens for whom we are, at best, host organisms, and at worst, dinner. Evolution drives these organisms to a continuously shifting array of tactics to slide past our defenses.Public health isn’t just about pathogens, either – its thorniest problems are about human behaviour and social policy. HIV is a blood-borne disease, but disrupting its spread requires changes to our attitudes about sex, pharmaceutical patents, drugs policy and harm minimisation. Almost everything interesting about HIV is too big to fit on a microscope slide.
  • And so it is for security: crypto is awesome maths, but it’s just maths. Security requires good password choice, good password management, good laws about compelled crypto disclosure, transparency into corporate security practices, and, of course, an end to the governmental practice of spending $250M/year on anti-security sabotage through the NSA/GCHQ programmes Bullrun and Edgehill.
  • But for me, the most important parallel between public health and internet security is their significance to our societal wellbeing. Everything we do today involves the internet. Everything we do tomorrow will require the internet. If you live near a nuclear power plant, fly in airplanes, ride in cars or trains, have an implanted pacemaker, keep money in the bank, or carry a phone, your safety and well-being depend on a robust, evolving, practice of network security.This is the most alarming part of the Snowden revelations: not just that spies are spying on all of us – that they are actively sabotaging all of our technical infrastructure to ensure that they can continue to spy on us.There is no way to weaken security in a way that makes it possible to spy on “bad guys” without making all of us vulnerable to bad guys, too. The goal of national security is totally incompatible with the tactic of weakening the nation’s information security.
  • “Virus” has been a term of art in the security world for decades, and with good reason. It’s a term that resonates with people, even people with only a cursory grasp of technology. As we strive to make the public and our elected representatives understand what’s at stake, let’s expand that pathogen/epidemiology metaphor. We’d never allow MI5 to suppress information on curing typhus so they could attack terrorists by infecting them with it. We need to stop allowing the NSA and GCHQ to suppress information on fixing bugs in our computers, phones, cars, houses, planes, and bodies.If GCHQ wants to improve the national security of the United Kingdom – if the NSA want to impove the American national security – they should be fixing our technology, not breaking it. The technology of Britons and Americans is under continuous, deadly attack from criminals, from foreign spies, and from creeps. Our security is better served by armouring us against these threats than it is by undermining security so that cops and spies have an easier time attacking “bad guys.”
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Peter and Lou Berryman on Vimeo - 0 views

www.vimeo.com/20319641 wisconsin solidarity forever and lou peter on
shared by Joseph Skues on 17 May 11 - No Cached
  • by luciano M
    • Joseph Skues
      Joseph Skues on 17 May 11
       
      "Solidarity Forever" When the union's inspiration through the workers' blood shall run, There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun; Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one, But the union makes us strong. CHORUS: Solidarity forever, Solidarity forever, Solidarity forever, For the union makes us strong. Is there aught we hold in common with the greedy parasite, Who would lash us into serfdom and would crush us with his might? Is there anything left to us but to organize and fight? For the union makes us strong. Chorus It is we who plowed the prairies; built the cities where they trade; Dug the mines and built the workshops, endless miles of railroad laid; Now we stand outcast and starving midst the wonders we have made; But the union makes us strong. Chorus All the world that's owned by idle drones is ours and ours alone. We have laid the wide foundations; built it skyward stone by stone. It is ours, not to slave in, but to master and to own. While the union makes us strong. Chorus They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn, But without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn. We can break their haughty power, gain our freedom when we learn That the union makes us strong. Chorus In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold, Greater than the might of armies, magnified a thousand-fold. We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old For the union makes us strong.
  • Joseph Skues on 17 May 11
     
    Solidarity Forever
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Works and Days » Zero Jobs 101 - the Psychology of Alienating Employers - 0 views

pajamasmedia.com/...job-killing-101 VDH Obammunism financial-collapse crony-socialism
shared by Gary Edwards on 07 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • Here is the lament I heard: the near $5 trillion in borrowing in just three years, the radical growth in the size of the federal government and its regulatory zeal, ObamaCare, the Boeing plant closure threat, the green jobs sweet-heart deals and Van Jones-like “Millions of Green Jobs” nonsense, the vast expansion in food stamps and unemployment pay-outs, the reversal of the Chrysler creditors, politically driven interference in the car industry, the failed efforts to get card check and cap and trade, the moratoria on new drilling in the Gulf, the general antipathy to new fossil fuel exploitation coupled with new finds of vast new reserves, the new financial regulations, an aggressive EPA oblivious to the effects of its advocacy on jobs, the threatened close-down of energy plants, the support for idling thousands of acres of irrigated farmland due to environmental regulations, the constant talk of higher taxes, the needlessly provocative rhetoric of “fat cat”, “millionaires and billionaires,” “corporate jet owners,” etc. juxtaposed, in hypocritical fashion, to Martha’s Vineyard, Costa del Sol, and Vail First Family getaways — all of these isolated strains finally are becoming a harrowing opera to business people.
  • “This bunch doesn’t like me much and I’m going to hunker down, hoard my cash, and sit out the next year and a half until they are gone.”
  • And the administration’s efforts to counteract these symbols and impressions by courting a high-profile, hyper-capitalist Warren Buffett, or a GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt have proven even more ironic:
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  • the former calls for higher taxes that his firms seek to avoid, or targets his post-mortem wealth to (more efficient?) private foundations that rob the Treasury of billions in lost inheritance taxes, or knows higher taxes won’t much matter to his tens of billions in net worth;
  • the latter’s firm paid no 2010 U.S. income taxes on many of its profits and outsourced jobs overseas.
  • Borrow another $5 trillion?
  • Gary Edwards on 07 Sep 11
     
    Nobody lays it out so quickly and too the point as VDH..... awesome summary of sweeping reach.  I've been hesitant to apply the term "crony capitalism" to Obama even though his Bankster relationships and continuing bailouts scream loudly.  It seems to me that the term "crony socialism" better fits the full range of fascist power brokering Obama engages in.  Big Government, Big Banksters, Big Unions, Big Media, Big Education.  If anything, Obammunism is BIG! VDH excerpt: Here is the lament I heard: the near $5 trillion in borrowing in just three years, the radical growth in the size of the federal government and its regulatory zeal, ObamaCare, the Boeing plant closure threat, the green jobs sweet-heart deals and Van Jones-like "Millions of Green Jobs" nonsense, the vast expansion in food stamps and unemployment pay-outs, the reversal of the Chrysler creditors, politically driven interference in the car industry, the failed efforts to get card check and cap and trade, the moratoria on new drilling in the Gulf, the general antipathy to new fossil fuel exploitation coupled with new finds of vast new reserves, the new financial regulations, an aggressive EPA oblivious to the effects of its advocacy on jobs, the threatened close-down of energy plants, the support for idling thousands of acres of irrigated farmland due to environmental regulations, the constant talk of higher taxes, the needlessly provocative rhetoric of "fat cat", "millionaires and billionaires," "corporate jet owners," etc. juxtaposed, in hypocritical fashion, to Martha's Vineyard, Costa del Sol, and Vail First Family getaways - all of these isolated strains finally are becoming a harrowing opera to business people.
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Sorry for letting them snoop? Dell apologizes for 'inconvenience' caused by NSA backdoo... - 0 views

rt.com/...ell-appelbaum-30c3-apology-027 surveillance state NSA NSA-methods backdoors NSA-backdoors hardware
shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Security researcher Jacob Appelbaum dropped a bombshell of sorts earlier this week when he accused American tech companies of placing government-friendly backdoors in their devices. Now Texas-based Dell Computers is offering an apology. Or to put it more accurately, Dell told an irate customer on Monday that they “regret the inconvenience” caused by selling to the public for years a number of products that the intelligence community has been able to fully compromise in complete silence up until this week. Dell, Apple, Western Digital and an array of other Silicon Valley-firms were all name-checked during Appelbaum’s hour-long presentation Monday at the thirtieth annual Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg, Germany. As RT reported then, the 30-year-old hacker-cum-activist unveiled before the audience at the annual expo a collection of never-before published National Security Agency documents detailing how the NSA goes to great lengths to compromise the computers and systems of groups on its long list of adversaries.
  • Spreading viruses and malware to infect targets and eavesdrop on their communications is just one of the ways the United States’ spy firm conducts surveillance, Appelbaum said. Along with those exploits, he added, the NSA has been manually inserting microscopic computer chips into commercially available products and using custom-made devices like hacked USB cables to silently collect intelligence. One of the most alarming methods of attack discussed during his address, however, comes as a result of all but certain collusion on the part of major United States tech companies. The NSA has information about vulnerabilities in products sold by the biggest names in the US computer industry, Appelbaum said, and at the drop off a hat the agency has the ability of launching any which type of attack to exploit the flaws in publically available products.
  • The NSA has knowledge pertaining to vulnerabilities in computer servers made by Dell and even Apple’s highly popular iPhone, among other devices, Appelbaum told his audience. “Hey Dell, why is that?” Appelbaum asked. “Love to hear your statement about that.”
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  • TechDirt reporter Mike Masnick noticed early Tuesday that Dell’s official customer service Twitter account opted to issue a cookie-cutter response that drips of insincerity. “Thanks you for reaching out and regret the inconvenience,” the Dell account tweeted to Wismeijer. “Our colleagues at @DellCaresPro will be able to help you out.” “Inconvenience? You got to be F*ckin kidding me!” Wismeijer responded. “You place an NSA bug in our servers and call it an inconvenience?”
  • @DellCares @dellcarespro Inconvenience? You got to be F*ckin kidding me! You place an NSA bug in our servers and call it an inconvenience? — Martijn Wismeijer (@twiet) December 31, 2013
  • Appelbaum didn’t leave Dell off the hook after revealing just that one exploit known to the NSA, however. Before concluding his presentation, he displayed a top-secret document in which the agency makes reference to a hardware implant that could be manually installed onto Dell PowerEdge servers to exploit the JTAG debugging interface on its processor — a critical circuitry component that apparently contains a vulnerability known to the US government. “Why did Dell leave a JTAG debugging interface on these servers?” asked Appelbaum. “Because it’s like leaving a vulnerability in. Is that a bugdoor, or a backdoor or just a mistake? Well hopefully they will change these things or at least make it so that if you were to see this, you would know that you have some problems. Hopefully Dell will release some information about how to mitigate this advance persistent threat.” Appelbaum also provoked Apple by acknowledging that the NSA boasts of being able to hack into any of their mobile devices running the iOS operating system. “Either they have a huge collection of exploits that work against Apple products — meaning they are hoarding information about critical systems American companies product and sabotaging them — or Apple sabotages it themselves,” he said.
  • Security researcher Jacob Appelbaum dropped a bombshell of sorts earlier this week when he accused American tech companies of placing government-friendly backdoors in their devices. Now Texas-based Dell Computers is offering an apology. Or to put it more accurately, Dell told an irate customer on Monday that they “regret the inconvenience” caused by selling to the public for years a number of products that the intelligence community has been able to fully compromise in complete silence up until this week. Dell, Apple, Western Digital and an array of other Silicon Valley-firms were all name-checked during Appelbaum’s hour-long presentation Monday at the thirtieth annual Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg, Germany. As RT reported then, the 30-year-old hacker-cum-activist unveiled before the audience at the annual expo a collection of never-before published National Security Agency documents detailing how the NSA goes to great lengths to compromise the computers and systems of groups on its long list of adversaries.
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Venezuelan Opposition Leaders call for Regime Change and "National Transition Agreement... - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...-national-transition-agreement war & peace Venezuela U.S.-foreign-policy color-revolutions coup-attempts pipelinestan-wars
shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Three leading figures of the Venezuelan opposition have released a statement amounting to a demand for regime change and the establishment of a transitional government in the country. Entitled “The Call for a National Transition Agreement,” the statement was circulated this Wednesday and appeals to Venezuelans to unite behind a national plan aimed at supplanting the current socialist administration of President Nicolas Maduro, elected on April 14th 2013 with approximately 51% of the vote.
  • Its signatories include currently jailed leader of the Popular Will Party, Leopoldo Lopez, former National Assembly Legislator, Maria Corina Machado and current Mayor of the Metropolitan Capital District of Caracas, Antonio Ledezma. All of the signatories are linked to the violent guarimbas or barricades which began in February 2014, when violent protestors and paramilitaries blocked the streets for several months in response to calls by Lopez and Machado to force the “exit” of the Maduro government.
  • “Our call is to construct an agreement to take the lead in the transition to peace. It is the obligation of all democrats to help resolve the current crisis, defend the cause of liberty, and prevent the unavoidable fall of the regime from disrupting the peace and constitutionality of the country, to make the transition, that’s to say, the change from one failed system to another which is full of hope,” reads the text. The publication of the statement comes just a day before the first anniversary of the barricades and represents a clear violation of the country’s Bolivarian Constitution, which only allows for the removal of the elected President of the Republic via a national referendum or indictment by the Supreme Court of Justice. In the text, the current government is described as a “failed” “corrupt” and “inefficient” regime, made up of an “elite of no more 100 people” who have pilfered public funds “which could have been used for the benefit of all”. It also states that Venezuela is on the brink of a “humanitarian crisis” whilst the Maduro government is “delegitimised” and in its “terminal phase”. The move comes amidst a mounting economic war against the country’s socialist revolution which has seen private businesses hoarding essential goods in order to cause public unrest, as well as a fresh round of US sanctions imposed on Venezuelan officials earlier in February.
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  • The economic plan of the would-be transitional government is detailed in the last section of the agendas, where the signatories state their intention to designate a new management body for Venezuelan state oil company, PDVSA, and reinsert Venezuela into “international financial organisations, and to secure from them the funds needed to overcome short term difficulties”. The economic agenda also suggests that the future of Venezuela under an opposition government would include a liberalised economy and a reversal of State nationalisations. This would include “reaching an agreement for just reparations for damages caused by arbitrary expropriations, revising the real condition of all non-oil enterprises which ended up in the hands of the State due to the greed of the regime, and deciding on the forms of property and management which they can take on in order to assure their productive recovery”. “It is necessary to dismantle the tangled mess of controls which are strangling the economy and rebuild the juridic and economic bases which are necessary to attract productive investment with guarantees stable growth into the future,” continues the text.
  • All three of the politicians to have signed the document participated in the 2002 attempted coup against President Hugo Chavez.
  • Paul Merrell on 14 Feb 15
     
    Privatization of Venezuela's oil seems to be the big driving force. 
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