Date: June 29, 2012
Reporting From: Tel Aviv, Israel

SOURCE: http://www.sovereignman.com/
 
This week may very well go down as ‘connect the dots’ week. Things have been moving so quickly, so let’s step back briefly and review the big picture from the week’sevents:

1) After weeks…months… even years of posturing and denial, Spain and Cyprus became the fourth and fifth countries to formally request aid from Europe’s bailout funds on Monday. In doing so, these governments have officially confessed to their own insolvency and the insolvency of their respective banking systems.

Meanwhile,Slovenia’s prime minister said that his country may soon ask for abailout. (Humorously, Slovenia’s Finance Minister denied any such plans.)

Spain’s 10-year bond yield jumped to over 7% again in response, and many Spanish banks were downgraded to junk status by Moodys.

2) Over in the US,the city of Stockton, California filed for bankruptcy this week… the largest so far, but certainly a mere drop in the proverbial bucket.

3) JP Morgan,considered to be among the few ‘good’ banks remaining in the US, conceded that the $2 billion loss they announced several weeks ago might actually be more like $9 billion.

4) The Federal Reserve reported yesterday that foreigners are reducing their holdings of US Treasuries.

5) Countries from Ukraine to Kazakstan to Turkey announced that they have purchased gold in recent months to bolster their growing reserves.

6) Chile has joined a growing list of countries that has agreed to bypass the US dollar and settle all of its trade with China in renminbi.

7) China has further announced plans to create a special zone in Shenzhen, one of its wealthiest cities, to allow full exchange and convertibility of the renminbi.

8) World banking regulators from the Bank of International Settlements to the FDIC are proposing that gold bullion be treated as a risk-free cash equivalent by commercial banks.

So… what we can see from this week’s events is:

- European governments are insolvent
- European banks are insolvent
- US governments are heading in that direction
- Even the best US banks are not as strong as believed
- Foreigners are abandoning the US dollar and seeking alternatives
- Gold is money

These events are all connected, and the trend is becoming so clear that even the most casual observers are starting to wake up.

When you connect the dots, the next steps lead to what may soon be regarded as an obvious conclusion: the system, as it exists right now, is crumbling.

No amount of self-delusion can make this go away.

Rational thinking and measured action, on the other hand, can make the consequences go away… turning people from victims into spectators of the greatest bubble burst in modern times.

  Until tomorrow,  

Simon Black
 Senior Editor, SovereignMan.com 

Publius 21st Century unearthed this tidbit:

Bizarre: U.S. Home Loan Banks Overexposed in Europe
Thursday, June 28, 2012

The U.S. Federal Home Loan Banks’ unsecured lending to foreign institutions skyrocketed last year as the European sovereign debt crisis intensified, raising concerns about their risk management, an auditor’s report said today, reports Bloomberg

Several Home Loan Banks last year made short-term loans totaling about $3 billion to two European banks that had received government bailouts and were on a credit watch, according to the report. That’s crazy enough. But, it gets worse.

At the end of 2011, FHLB had $41 billion unsecured lending to foreign banks. (That’s $41,000,000,000 UNSECURED; NO COLLATERAL!!)

The volume of unsecured lending, particularly to foreign institutions, rose in part to offset a decrease in the Home Loan Banks’ traditional activities providing funding to domestic lenders for home mortgages, according to the report.

(I wonder who is stuck with the loss; oh, wait.  That’s FEDERAL Home Loan Banks.  I guess that’s the taxpaying citizens who had no control over what they did).

Publius 21st Century found this scary item:

That’s minus 13.635 BILLION Euros (probably a very optimistic estimate — lowflyer)

That’s after previous bailouts.

This is the beginning of more to come; worldwide.

READ MORE AT: Bankia Valued at EUR -13.635 Billion; Spain Becomes Sole Owner, Shareholders Totally Wiped Out; Entire Bankia Board Resigns

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/303981/after-arizona-nro-symposium?pg=3
June 26, 2012 4:00 A.M.

After Arizona Looking at the Supreme Court’s decision about S.B. 1070.
By NRO Symposium

What do you make of today’s Supreme Court ruling? What does it mean for Arizona and the rest of us? What is the state of immigration policy today? We asked some experts.

HANS VON SPAKOVSKY

This was unquestionably a significant loss for the Obama administration, no matter how much they try to spin it as a win. After all, the Court upheld the core provision of S.B. 1070 that the Justice Department had challenged and the administration publicly attacked: the requirement that law-enforcement officials find out the immigration status of individuals they arrest or detain if they have a “reasonable suspicion” that the person is illegally in the U.S.
The other provisions that the Court threw out were relatively minor parts of S.B. 1070, regarding misdemeanor violations of the law by aliens who look for work or who don’t carry their registration documents as already required by federal law. None of these is as important in the overall scheme of things as Arizona’s ability to identify illegal aliens as such when they are being arrested for committing other crimes.

Administration officials claimed that the arrest provision of S.B. 1070 would interfere with their policies. Thus, the Court completely rejected the administration’s claim that regardless of federal immigration law and the immigration system set up by Congress, it can do whatever it wants based on its own enforcement priorities. This is the same argument that President Obama just used for his executive implementation of the congressionally rejected DREAM Act.

President Obama was called to task by Justice Antonin Scalia on the government’s argument that Arizona’s law also interferes with the “scarce” resources available for enforcement. As Scalia pointed out in relation to Obama’s new executive DREAM Act, the “husbanding of scarce enforcement resources can hardly be the justification for this, since the considerable administrative cost of conducting as many as 1.4 million background checks, and ruling on the biennial requests for dispensation that the nonenforcement program envisions, will necessarily be deducted from immigration enforcement.”

Some may wonder what will be the point of Arizona’s checking on the immigration status of arrestees, since the administration is highly likely to simply tell the state to let illegal immigrants go anyway. Arizona should start publishing those statistics on a monthly basis. That is the kind of politically embarrassing information the administration was really trying to stop by suing over this provision.

Most of S.B. 1070 is now in place, even with the Supreme Court’s tossing out of three provisions. With Arizona’s win last year in U.S. Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting, it has all the tools it needs to make sure that employers in Arizona are not hiring illegal immigrants. Strict enforcement of that provision alone will cause the majority of those illegally in the state to self-deport, solving a substantial portion of the state’s immigration-related problems.

— Hans A. von Spakovsky is senior legal fellow and manager of the Civil Justice Reform Initiative at the Heritage Foundation.

Hans von Spakovsky
Senior Legal Fellow/Manager, Civil Justice Reform Initiative
The Heritage Foundation
214 Massachusetts Avenue, NE
Washington, DC 20002
202-608-6207
Cell: 202-436-6311
heritage.org

Joe Kirkup offers more insightful commentary on a subject of current interest: 

I suspect that most of you didn’t know and/or didn’t care about this, but guys like me have been closely watching the F&F; (Fast and Furious) fiasco for over a year now.  The reason for our concern was not that the narco terrorists were getting guns from ATF, it was based on what we knew was the real, but unspoken motive behind F&F.;  We had watched for several years as the gun control advocates in the US government and the UN had tried in vain to make the case that the drug cartel weapons were all coming from American gun stores thus justifying more onerous gun control laws here.  Unfortunately for them the evidence just wasn’t there. 

   The Mexican government routinely refused to give BATF the serial numbers of captured weapons because it would show that most of them had actually been transferred to the Mexican Federales or Army by our government to support their operations against the cartels.  Unfortunately, due to the spectacular level of corruption in Mexico, those weapons were routinely stolen or purchased from Mexican officials by the drug gangs.  Often, on websites and in magazines that most of you don’t read, we would see photos of Mexican law enforcement guys posing with a cache of captured weapons, most of which you could not purchase in your local gun store.  Examples would be Russian RPG9 rocket launchers and US M16 rifles with three position safety selectors meaning they were the fully automatic types used only by the military and not available at Louie’s Pawn and Gun in Peoria.

    If you think what I’m telling you is simply gun guy paranoia you need to read this carefully then ask yourself some really troubling questions.  Why did ATF sell the straw buyers Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifles which are capable of and ultimately used to shoot down Mexican Army helicopters?  Why not simply sell pistols and AK47s if all you wanted to do was track them?  How did ATF lose control of fully half the weapons that were walked?  Even government, with all it’s faults, is not that inept.  And, the most frightening and telling question of all, why did ATF keep this operation secret from its own agents in Mexico??  Yes, that is correct.  They didn’t tell the guys who were going to be looking down the barrels of those Barrett fifties.  The answer to that one is they wanted US guns from US gun shops to do as much killing, maiming and destruction as possible in Mexico then come back to them as evidence to support gun control laws.

    Even if you hate guns and want them outlawed does it justify this level of government deceit?  What else are they doing we haven’t found out about yet?

    JK 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
FLASHBACK: ‘Fast and Furious’: How botched operation spawned fatal results
Overseer promised skeptical agents ‘most fun’ with ATF

The central characters in the failed “Fast and Furious” firearms investigation were 19 men and one woman, all legal residents of the U.S., accused of laying down hundreds of thousands of dollars in illicit cash at Phoenix-area gun shops to buy an arsenal of high-powered weapons for Mexican drug smugglers.

Between September 2009 and December 2010, congressional investigators said, they purchased or aided in the purchase of more than 2,000 AK-47 assault weapons, Barrett .50-caliber sniper rifles, FN 5.7mm semi-automatic pistols and other assorted rifles, shotguns and handguns that later were “walked” into Mexico. About half the weapons remain unaccounted for.

They paid cash, as much as $900,000, and with each purchase they signed their names on Form 4473, a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) document, swearing under the threat of committing a felony that they were not purchasing the weapons for someone else — that they were not “straw buyers.”

But they were, and the ATF knew it.

Most of the purchases were recorded on video equipment mounted by ATF agents in the shops of cooperating gun dealers; other buys were personally witnessed by undercover agents in the stores. Some ATF officials at the agency’s Washington, D.C., headquarters could watch live video feeds of the weapons being purchased.

The plan

It was part of a plan, a risky strategy to allow weapons to be placed in what agents call the “Iron River” of guns flowing south into Mexico. The goal, of course, was to feed the gun-trafficking network and to identify the big fish, the drug cartel bosses in Mexico who were paying for the weapons.

There was to be no interdiction of the purchased guns before they crossed the border, as frustrated ATF field agents were ordered to “stand down.” There was no interest in prosecuting the straw buyers on charges of “lying and buying.” Those who put the Fast and Furious operation together had bigger targets in mind.

Eventually, hundreds of weapons found their way to drug smugglers and other violent gangs throughout Mexico, some traveling 1,800 miles south to Acapulco with others turning up 1,200 miles east in Reynosa, near the Gulf of Mexico. Some Fast and Furious weapons also were discovered 1,300 miles southwest in La Paz, on the tip of Baja California.

The strategy had neither a stop sign nor a cutoff switch — until Dec. 14, 2010, when the investigation came to an abrupt halt. What had been feared by field agents had happened: At least two Fast and Furious AK-47s purchased at an Arizona gun shop turned up just north of the Arizona-Mexico border at the site of the killing of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian A. Terry.

The agent’s death during a firefight with Mexican bandits in a popular drug-smuggling corridor known as Peck Canyon confirmed the worst fears of at least one of the licensed Fast and Furious gun dealers. The dealer had sought assurances from the ATF on two occasions that weapons he was selling would never end up in the hands of the “bad guys.”
In an email, the dealer told the ATF he understood the investigation was ongoing so information about it would be limited, but since the border was awash in both guns and violence, he was reaching out for assurances that “none of the firearms” he was selling at the Lone Wolf Trading Co. in Glendale, Ariz., “could or would ever end up south of the border.”

The dealer told the ATF he wanted to help the agency with its investigation, “but not at the risk of agents’ safety, because I have some very close friends that are U.S. Border Patrol agents in southern Arizona.”

ATF assurances

The dealer’s email prompted the following response from ATF Group VII Strike Force Supervisor David J. Voth, who oversaw the Fast and Furious operation: “I understand that the frequency with which some individuals under investigation by our office have been purchasing firearms from your business has caused concerns for you.

“However, if it helps put you at ease, we are continually monitoring these suspects using a variety of investigative techniques, which I cannot go into [in] detail,” Mr. Voth wrote.
Later, ATF arranged a meeting between the dealer and Assistant U.S. Attorney Emory Hurley, the lead prosecutor in Fast and Furious, during which the dealer was again assured that safeguards were in place to prevent further distribution of the weapons.

The dealer had sought assurances after selling more than 300 weapons to straw buyers he knew were Fast and Furious targets. After being told by ATF and the U.S. Attorney’s Office that the gun buyers and weapons were being continually monitored, he went on to sell an additional 450 guns.

Less than six months later, the ATF confirmed that two WASR-10/63 assault rifles found at the site of the Terry killing had been traced to Jaime Avila Jr., a suspected straw buyer and one of the Fast and Furious targets.

He had bought the weapons, a Romanian variant of the AK-47, at the Lone Wolf Trading Co.

By the time of the shooting, Mr. Avila had been under surveillance for more than two months. It took ATF less than 24 hours to confirm that he had purchased the weapons found at the site of the Terry killing.

The operation was shut down, and Mr. Avila was arrested, along with 19 others named in a federal grand jury indictment on charges of dealing in firearms without a license, making false statements in connection with the acquisition of a weapon, and smuggling goods from the United States.

Trials for the 20 straw-purchase suspects are pending.

Big purchases

Those identified as the straw buyers in Fast and Furious were nothing if they weren’t ambitious. They bought hundreds of high-powered weapons and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars. Although many of the purchased weapons were not top of the line, they weren’t cheap.

According to government records, the straw buyers spent an average of $648 for each AK-47-type assault rifle they bought. The Barrett .50-caliber sniper rifles went for more than $6,000 each, and the FN 5.7mm pistols cost an average of $1,130 each.

Uriel Patino, a food-stamps recipient, proved to be the most prolific straw buyer, said the indictment, which alleges that he bought 316 weapons, although congressional investigators said the number might be twice as high. Included were 246 AK-47 assault rifles purchased during 24 visits to two Phoenix-area gun shops over a nine-month period.

Mr. Avila and Mr. Patino, the indictment said, shopped together at the Lone Wolf Trading Co.

According to the 43-page indictment handed up in January, Mr. Patino’s buying habits were aggressive.

On Nov. 24, 2009, he purchased five AK-47 assault rifles; on Dec. 11, 2009, he purchased 20 more; on Jan. 15, 2010, he bought 10 more; on Jan. 30, 2010, he purchased 15 more; on March 15, 2010, he purchased 40 more; on March 25, 2010, he bought an additional 26; on April 27, 2010, he bought 10 FN 5.7mm pistols; on June 10, 2010, he bought an additional 10 AK-47s; and on July 8, 2010, he bought 16 more AK-47s.

Mr. Patino came to the attention of ATF in October 2009. Within three weeks, he had purchased a total of 34 weapons, including the AK-47s from gun dealers cooperating in Fast and Furious. The serial numbers of the weapons were logged into the ATF’s Suspect Gun Database, which discovered that one of them had turned up in Mexico just 14 days after it had been bought.

“ATF is supposed to stop criminals from trafficking guns to Mexican drug cartels,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, who began the Fast and Furious probe last year. “Instead, ATF made it easier for alleged cartel middlemen to get weapons from U.S. gun dealers.”

Kept in the dark

While Fast and Furious was supposed to monitor the purchased weapons as they headed to buyers in Mexico, ATF agents assigned in Mexico had been kept in the dark about the operation.

“I would like to apologize to my former Mexican law enforcement counterparts and to the Mexican people for Operation Fast and Furious,” Darren Gil, former ATF attache to Mexico, told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. “I hope they understand that this was kept secret from most of ATF, including me and my colleagues in Mexico.”

During a rancorous five-hour hearing, ATF agents assigned in Mexico said they discovered the Fast and Furious investigation only after documenting that an alarming rate of guns found at violent crime sites in Mexico were being traced to Arizona gun dealers.
Mr. Gil said he found it “inconceivable” that any competent ATF agent would allow “firearms to disappear at all,” especially on an international border. As a result, he said, Mexico will continue to suffer the consequences of drug-related firearms violence.

Agent Carlos Canino, ATF’s acting attache to Mexico, angrily told the committee that “walking guns” was not a recognized investigative technique, adding that hundreds of weapons ultimately went to ruthless criminals in Mexico.

“It infuriates me that people, including my law enforcement, diplomatic and military colleagues, may be killed or injured with these weapons,” he said, adding that “never in my wildest dreams” would he have thought that ATF agents would allow guns to be walked to Mexican criminals.

Noting that Fast and Furious ended with the killing of a U.S. Border Patrol agent, one high-ranking former Border Patrol official described the operation as “scary.”

“The only thing I can figure is that the politicians in the upper management of the agencies involved decided it would work,” the official told The Washington Times on the condition of anonymity for fear of being reprimanded. “They sure as hell couldn’t have run it by the agents in the field who would have known what would happen.”

‘The most fun you have’

Not only were the ATF agents in Mexico unaware of the Fast and Furious investigation, several ATF agents involved in the operation itself had their own concerns.

Agent Olindo James Casa testified before the House committee that as a member of the Group VII Strike Force, he discovered that straw buyers were purchasing numerous firearms, that “no law enforcement activity” had been planned to stop them, and that numerous firearm traces had put many of the weapons in Mexico.

Because they were “increasingly concerned and alarmed,” he said, he and several other strike force agents took the matter to their bosses, including Mr. Voth, but to no avail. Instead, he said, they received an email they regarded as a “direct threat to the agents who were not in agreement” on how the operation should be run.

“Based on my 18 years of experience with the ATF, I did not think the email was an empty threat. I took it very seriously,” Mr. Casa said.

In that March 12, 2010, email, Mr. Voth told the agents that “close attention” was being paid to Fast and Furious by “people of rank and authority” at ATF headquarters in Washington.
“It may sound cheesy, but we are ‘The tip of the ATF spear’ when it comes to Southwest border firearms trafficking. I will be damned if this case is going to suffer due to petty arguing, rumors or other adolescent behavior,” Mr. Voth wrote. “If you don’t think this is fun, you’re in the wrong line of work — period!

“This is the pinnacle of domestic U.S. law enforcement techniques. After this, the toolbox is empty,” he wrote. “Maybe the Maricopa County Jail is hiring detention officers, and you get paid $30,000 (instead of $100,000) to serve lunch to inmates all day. We need to get over this bump in the road once and for all and get on with the mission at hand. This can be the most fun you have with ATF, the only one limiting the amount of fun we have is you!”
Mr. Voth summed up the Fast and Furious program in an April 2010 memo, saying the violence in Mexico“is severe and without being dramatic, we have a sense of urgency with regards” to Fast and Furious. He noted that the straw buyers had purchased 359 firearms during the month of March 2010 alone, including numerous Barrett .50-caliber rifles.

“I believe we are righteous in our plan to dismantle this entire organization, and to rush in to arrest any one person without taking into account the entire scope of the conspiracy would be ill-advised to the overall good of the mission,” he said.

The repercussions

William McMahon, ATF deputy assistant director for field operations in Phoenix and Mexico, and William Newell, former ATF special agent in charge of the Phoenix field division, also defended the operation in their committee testimony.

Mr. Newell testified that ATF had good intentions when it began the operation in 2009 and that it was not its purpose to permit the transfer of firearms to Mexico. He said he would do such an investigation again with some changes.

In a supplemental statement to the committee, Mr. Newell said that after reviewing his testimony, he concluded he “should have conducted more frequent assessments” of the operation during which he could have “articulated to my staff the need to be proactive in ascertaining the quantity of guns being purchased that we were not able to intercept.”
Mr. Voth, Mr. Newell and Mr. McMahon all have since been moved to administrative duties.

Knowledge on high

President Obama has said he did not authorize Fast and Furious, and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. told the House Judiciary Committee in May that he first became aware of it in April. “I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks,” he said.

But Mr. Grassley and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell E. Issa, California Republican, said Mr. Holder received at least five weekly memos beginning in July 2010 describing the Fast and Furious investigation.

The July 2010 memo from Michael Walther, director of the National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC), specifically identifies the Fast and Furious operation, says when it began, names the law enforcement agencies involved, and identifies the major investigative targets.

Sent to Mr. Holder through the office of the acting deputy attorney general, the memo also noted that the operation involved a Phoenix-based firearms-trafficking ring and said “straw purchasers” were responsible for buying 1,500 firearms “that were then supplied to Mexican drug-trafficking cartels.”

The Walther memo also said the straw buyers had direct ties to the Sinaloa drug cartel, “which was suspected of providing $1 million for the purchase of firearms in the Greater Phoenix area.”

“Attorney General Holder has failed to give Congress and the American people an honest account of what he and other senior Justice Department officials knew about gunwalking and Operation Fast and Furious,” Mr. Issa said. “The lack of candor and honesty from our nation’s chief law enforcement officials in this matter is deeply disturbing.

“Tragically, it wasn’t until Fast and Furious guns were found at the murder scene of a Border Patrol agent that Justice officials finally ended this reckless and arrogant effort,” he said.
Mr. Holder, in a letter last week, denied that emails sent to his office showed he knew of Fast and Furious before April.

He said public comments about the inquiry and his involvement with it had become “so base and so harmful to interests that I hope we all share,” he had to publicly address the matter.
He said he took “decisive action” when he learned about the program in ordering the Office of Inspector General to investigate the matter. He said he also overhauled the leadership at ATF and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Phoenix.

Last week, Mr. Issa issued a subpoena for Justice Department officials, including Mr. Holder and more than a dozen of his top deputies. He said the department’s top echelon of officials “know more about Operation Fast and Furious than they have publicly acknowledged.”

Publius 21st Century posts this article on manipulation of the silver market with the complicity of the U.S. government:

A Few Questions; One Answer

Theodore Butler – Butler Research
|June 15, 2012 – 9:09am
  
Please read this article carefully because I’m disclosing for the first time that the U.S. government has given JPMorgan the green light to manipulate the silver market. This fact explains the shenanigans in the silver market. It answers all the questions and exposes this tawdry affair for all to see.

The scandal recently became more outrageous. The June Bank Participation Report, as of Tuesday, June 5, along with the COT confirmed that JPMorgan’s silver short position has increased by at least 5,000 contracts in the past two reporting weeks. That is the equivalent of 25 million ounces of silver, truly an enormous amount in a two week period and about equal to all the silver produced and consumed in the world in the same period. I calculate JPMorgan’s net short position in COMEX silver futures to be between 16,000 and 17,000 contracts. JPMorgan has been the sole net commercial silver short seller over the past two weeks. That is the clearest proof yet of manipulation. A market dominated by one buyer or seller is the ultimate definition of manipulation.

Had JPMorgan not sold short 5,000 or more net additional contracts in COMEX silver over the past two weeks, the price of silver would have climbed even higher. Why? Because without JPMorgan selling, someone else would have had to sell in their place. Those sellers would have demanded a higher price. Furthermore, JPM’s short position alone equals the entire 16,500 contract total net commercial short position in COMEX silver. In other words, if JPMorgan did not hold a 16,000 to 17,000 contact net short position, there would be no commercial net short position at all. The additional proof of silver manipulation includes the two massive price takedowns of last year, when the silver price fell more than 30% in a matter of days, benefitting JPMorgan more than any other trader.

How can I continue to get away with accusing JPMorgan, arguably the most powerful bank in the US, of the most serious market crime possible and get no reaction from them? An objective reading of the past four years, since the time I first publicly identified JPMorgan as the big silver short, has resulted in the bank being universally recognized on the Internet as the big silver crook. The reputation of a systemically important financial institution is always of prime concern from the board of director and senior management level on down. Why have I never been threatened by them?

The same question comes to mind when applied to the CME Group, owner and operator of the COMEX, where the silver manipulation is centered. The allegations that the CME is aiding and abetting in the silver manipulation are serious because the CME has been officially designated as a self-regulatory organization (SRO), meaning they have a legal obligation to prevent any attempt at manipulation in their markets. Like JPM, the CME is tough as nails and, presumably, could step on me should they choose to. (Yes, I send everything I write to JPM, the CME and the CFTC).

Unlike JPMorgan and the CME, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has not remained completely silent. The agency has initiated a number of reviews and investigations into allegations of manipulation in silver over the years (at my prodding), including a current Enforcement Division investigation, now approaching the four-year mark. The allegations of a silver manipulation were always credible, since they were based upon data from the agency itself and compared to how the Commission reacted strongly to past instances of concentration. The CFTC had to at least go through the motions of pretending to care. After all, many thousands of silver investors have consistently petitioned the agency on this matter over the years.

It’s been all talk and no action from the Commission when it comes to the silver manipulation. I can’t tell you how many times I have asked myself after I have just explained another undeniable proof of silver manipulation, “why can’t these regulators see this?” Why is the Commission conducting an expensive and formal silver investigation in the first place, when all it has to do is explain why a US bank holding a silver short position equal to 25% to 30% of both the paper and physical total world market wouldn’t be manipulative to the price (in and of itself)?

To this day, I have been baffled by how CFTC chairman Gary Gensler can preach the Holy Gospel of true regulatory reform of transparency, position limits and no concentration, while ignoring the clear evidence of manipulation in silver. I think what has caused his and the agency’s failure to terminate a highly-visible silver manipulation has nothing to do with a lack of understanding of the silver manipulation. It took me a while to figure it out, but better late than never.

The answer to all the above questions lies with the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets. Largely in response to the great stock market crash in October, 1987, President Ronald Reagan signed an Executive Order in 1988 creating the Working Group to prevent a recurrence of a market crash. http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/codification/executive-order/12631.html

There are four members in the Working Group; the Federal Reserve Chairman, the Treasury Secretary, the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Chairman of the CFTC. The Treasury Secretary is the Chairman of the Working Group. The purpose of the group is to promote market stability and prevent disorderliness by working with the exchanges and major market participants in times of stress.

Such a time for the financial markets existed in March 2008, when the investment bank Bear Stearns failed and, undoubtedly, the Working Group was heavily involved. The Group, along with exchanges and major market participants, oversaw the transfer of Bear Stearns’ giant short positions to JPMorgan, in the process indemnifying JPM from any concerns of dominance and overt control of silver and gold prices. As a result, JPMorgan orchestrated (and was the biggest beneficiary) the more than 50 % decline in silver prices into late 2008 with the Working Group’s permission.

Things then quieted down in silver until the fall of 2010, when prices started to make an historic move into the late-April 2011 price high near $50. At that point, JPMorgan’s giant short position began to hurt and it moved to cover some of the silver shorts into the very top. At that point, it looked like JPMorgan would get crushed by the physical silver shortage and the growing losses on their short positions. Instead, JPM appealed to the Working Group for relief and, working with them and the CME, JPM caused the silver market to crash, starting on Sunday night, May 1. Later, the Working Group teamed with JPMorgan and the CME to smash prices by 35% in 3 days in late September 2011.

The President’s Working Group on Financial Markets answers all my questions. It explains why JPMorgan and the CME remain silent about allegations of manipulation. They have been given legal cover by the Working Group. This also explains why the CFTC says they are conscientiously investigating silver when it is clear they are not. The agency can’t come out and disclose silver was smashed with the full knowledge of the Working Group, so it pretends to go through the motions of investigating. What is going through Gary Gensler’s mind? Is he not tormented by the blatant silver manipulation which runs contrary to all his public utterances? Commodity law is being broken.

If my analysis is correct, what does this mean for silver from here? It will prove to be wildly bullish for the price; maybe not immediately, but on a long term basis. It sets the stage for the really big move in silver. This overt government interference in the silver market will boomerang at some point, just as every attempt at artificial price setting has failed. Just let the word start to spread about Working Group involvement in causing the price of silver to fall and the natural reaction by the world’s investors will be to take advantage of the bargain created.

This is an attempt by the government to influence the price of silver lower by favoring the paper short sellers and not by dumping physical silver on the market. That’s because neither the US Government, nor any other world government has any physical silver to dump. All the Working Group can do is aid the paper silver short sellers by permitting vicious price sell-offs designed to scare existing holders. There is an easy way around that scam and that is buying real silver, not the junk represented by COMEX paper contracts. If, as and when the role of the Working Group in the silver manipulation becomes known, the best reason yet for buying silver will come into focus.

I know that many have long suspected that some type of government involvement was present in gold and silver. But rarely have those suspicions been as clearly documented as they are now in silver. Questions about a silver investigation that never ends, or price moves beyond reason or historical precedent, or why the nation’s most important bank and exchange are up to their eyeballs in the silver manipulation have been explained by the Working Group. Too bad the Working Group took the side of a few short manipulators and not the many silver investors and producers of the world. No doubt someone has sold a bill of goods to the regulators, falsely convincing them that terrible things will happen financially should silver explode to its true market value. Well guess what? The rotten state of world finances has nothing to do with the price of silver currently, nor will it in the future.

Ted Butler
June 15, 2012

http://www.24hgold.com/english/news-gold-silver-a-few-questions-one-answer.aspx?article=3951126854G10020&redirect;=false&contributor;=Theodore+Butler

Keywords : Bank participation report – Bear Stearns – CFTC – COMEX – Commodity Futures – Commodity Futures Trading Commission – COT – executive order – Federal Reserve – Gold – manipulation – Paper silver – physical silver – price-setting – Ronald Reagan – short position – short seller – Silver – Trading Commission – Transparency -

Joe Kirkup offers more thought-provoking insight in his inimitable style:

I’m 66. I’ve been watching this sort of third world brutality all my life, one group of sub-humans slaughters the other for whatever reason or maybe no reason at all. The soft headed liberals in the advanced societies get all worked up over it and want to send in other people’s sons (I was one) to break it up. The military, the press and the bankers go along because it is good for business. The lives of many young men are wasted in the process of removing government power from one tribe of savages and putting it in the hands of their opposition who promptly use it to exercise the same level of wanton cruelty as the original “villains.” In the aftermath the UN steps in with “aid” which allows that pathetic collection of grifters and thieves to siphon off millions for themselves. The last and most damaging stage is mass immigration of “political refugees” to the first world countries.  They bring with them all the cultural chaos that made the original event possible. The examples of this phenomenon are endless.

I suggest we set up an “American Liberal Legion”, a private army that would be financed by the bleeding hearts and manned by idiots and/or mercenaries.  The A.L.L. could go around the third world righting wrongs, arresting cannibals and saving the babies.  The nice people could feel oh so good about themselves for stopping the Hutus from eating the Tutsis and then, a couple years later, the reverse.  The overheated, holier than thou libs who railed against security firms like Blackwater in Iraq could hire the same ex Delta Force commandos to save the Sunnis from the Wasabis in one country and the Wasabis from the Shiites in the next.  The rest of us could go on with our lives in blissful ignorance.  If a real threat to America emerged the libs might then be of some help.

Just a thought.

On a completely different issue, this thug activity would not and could not happen here in America where nearly every household is armed.  Being a big, chemically altered thug will not save you from the Second Amendment.

JK

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SOURCE: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/syrias-ghost-killers-steroid-mad-thugs-872075

Syria’s ‘Ghost’ killers: Steroid-mad thugs who keep tyrant al-Assad’s murderous regime in power are terrorising civilians

By Nigel Atkins
11 Jun 2012 00:00

Vanishing with the remains of their slaughtered victims, President al-Assad’s pumped up monsters are roaming Syria committing atrocities.

The death squads known as the Ghosts have swooped on villages and massacred women and children – slitting their throats or shooting them at point-blank range.

They disappear with the hacked remains in an effort to cover up their brutality. But experts say there is no mistaking the sickening work of these bearded paramilitary freaks.

Dressed in their unofficial uniform of combat trousers and black T-shirts the muscle-bound thugs are the butchers of Assad’s regime.

Getty

They carry out the government’s dirty work so the President can claim the rampages are not state sponsored.

Armed with AK-47s and machetes they travel behind the military. After the army stops shelling towns, the Ghosts swarm in to kill any survivors.

They are each paid around £130 a day, a fortune in Syria. The funds often come from businessmen who support Assad’s regime.

Established in the 70s, they were a Mafia style gang in the coastal port of Latakia, the centre of the Assad family’s power base.

They are known as Shabiha – meaning “ghosts” – as they operate in the shadows.

“They used to smuggle weapons and drugs but now they are butchers,” said Michael Weiss, a Syria expert at the UK-based Henry Jackson Society. In return for letting them operate above the law, the Shabiha act as Assad’s enforcers. They murder opponents and terrorise Syrians into obedience. The Ghosts are fanatical followers of the Muslim Alawite sect which rules the country and have been brainwashed into thinking the Sunni majority are enemies.
Now the Shabiha, who can be seen in action in videos, are being told they are fighting for their lives as they will face revenge if the regime is overthrown. A source said: “Their mission is to terrorise the civilian population and conduct ethnic cleansing.”

They have been blamed for the murders of 108 civilians – including 49 children – in Houla a fortnight ago. The Shabiha are then reported to have shot dead 12 workers in Qusayr before 78 villagers were slaughtered in Qubair last week.

Dr Mousab Azzawi, who runs the Syrian Network for Human Rights from London but had treated some of the Shabiha in Latakia, said recently: “They were like monsters. They had huge muscles, and big bellies and beards.

“They were very tall and frightening and took steroids to pump up their bodies. I had to talk to them like children as the Shabiha likes people with low intelligence. That is what makes them so terrifying — the combination of strength and blind allegiance to the regime.”

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Syria’s Ghost Killers

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If you think you can trust the electronic voting process just because “they” assure you it is secure and accurate? If you do, then you’d better take a look at this video of testimony by a programmer about rigging elections WAY BACK IN 2000. Don’t bet the machines are more secure today.

In this video a Computer Programmer testified before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee in December 2004, that Tom Feeney while Speaker of the Florida House, and a former U.S. Representative (2003-2009) from Florida’s 24th District tried to pay him to rig election vote counts.

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Joe Kirkup offers the following post:

    I’m not a religious person, but for some reason stuff like this scares the hell out of me.  Whether we like to admit it or not our country was founded on the principles of contemporary Christianity to which Islam is diametrically opposed.  We celebrate INDIVIDUAL liberty not collective submission.  There are those who would point to passages condoning stunning brutality in the Old Testament and rightly so.  We are not following the Old Testament, but in essence the Islamists are.  While we have embraced and encouraged the kinder and more tolerant side of Christianity the Muslims have chosen the opposite.  Now we have an admin which either can not see this or is so obsessed with “global government” it will ignore even the most egregious affronts to our core beliefs to achieve that one goal.
   
 Even I, an avowed Hillary hater, would have admitted that in her heart she and I had some basic common mores which could not be sacrificed for any purpose; that at some point she would draw a line in the sand and tell…Obama he had gone too far.  It grieves and frightens me to see that I was wrong.
    JK

June 10, 2012

State Dept. drops religious freedom from human rights reports

Thomas Lifson

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton should be grilled about why her department has removed the sections on religious freedom from its Country Reports on Human Rights, which are statutorily required. Pete Winn of CNS News notes:

The new human rights reports–purged of the sections that discuss the status of religious freedom in each of the countries covered–are also the human rights reports that include the period that covered the Arab Spring and its aftermath.

Thus, the reports do not provide in-depth coverage of what has happened to Christians and other religious minorities in predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East that saw the rise of revolutionary movements in 2011 in which Islamist forces played an instrumental role.

American Christians have received a gigantic slap in the face, as their co-religionists in the Arab world are being subjected to what amount to pogroms, and Hillary’s State Department suddenly concludes that religious freedom is no longer a significant human right, never mind what the First Amendment and the very founding of our country tell us about this issue.

The ugly truth is that jihadists — the very people who attacked our country on 9/11 — aim to forcibly convert, exterminate, or reduce to dhimmitude non-Muslims whenever or wherever they have the political muscle to do so. They have won big victories in the so-called Arab Spring, and are now taking advantage of the power they have to burn churches, behead Christians, and force submission to their faith, whose very name means “submission.”
And now, Sec. Clinton’s State Department has decided this is no human rights issue of note.

Outrageous, and a move that the major media have no interest in, whatsoever. Instead of her happy face toward Muslim countries that oppress Christians, Mrs. Clinton needs to put on her war paint (maybe Elizabeth Warren can loan her some), and pursue religious freedom for Christians as if it were a goal that actually mattered to her. At one time in her past, Methodism mattered a lot to her. Has she completely lost her attachemnt to the Gospels? Does the fate of Christians in the Arab world no longer count to her?

Mrs. Clinton has a reputation for ferocity. What happened to her to make her so indifferent to religious freedom?  Defending Christianity may be a thankless task, but if our State Department refuses to even comment on the persecution of Christians, there ought to be a public debate on why this change has been made. Americans deserve an answer.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/06/state_dept_drops_religious_freedom_from_human_rights_reports.html#ixzz1xU9oEO54

zerohedge.com
JUNE 02, 2012

http://goldsilver.com/news/the-end-game-2012-and-2013-will-usher-in-the-end-the-scariest-presentation-ever/

And we see a lot of those.

Consider this:

*   We are here…

Joe Kirkup offers another thought provoking post:

    As with all things liberal, this is just another example of white racists trying to stop blacks from exercising their desperate desire to be full participants in this nation’s democratic process.  I can just see some knuckledragging white thug brandishing a night stick to keep that huge percentage of honest, sincere, politically aware blacks from achieving the 100% voter turnout to which they constantly struggle so they can courageously cast their ballot for the best candidate without regard to party or skin color.  You can depend on Eric Holder to personally arrest that brute before innocent blacks are forced at the polls to show that same ID they use to drive or collect welfare.

    And what about the callous disenfranchisement of all those freedom loving dead people, some 53,000 on the voter rolls here in Florida alone.  Many of them have moved here, post mortem, to escape those freezing Chicago winters only to be stripped of their voting rights by heartless republicans in a blatant display of unbridled cadaverism.  Well, you can bet that our man Eric won’t be intimidated or sidetracked by the three legs of republican evil, Truth, Justice and the American Way.

    JK
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Feds to Florida: halt non-citizen voter purge

The Justice Department told Florida election officials that they must stop their non-citizen voters purge. Florida argues it is not violating any law.

Marc Caputo
mcaputo@MiamiHerald.com

The Justice Department ordered Florida’s elections division to halt a systematic effort to find and purge the state’s voter rolls of noncitizen voters.
Florida’s effort appears to violate both the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which protects minorities, and the 1993 National Voter Registration Act – which governs voter purges – T. Christian Herren Jr., the Justice Department’s lead civil rights lawyer, wrote in a detailed two-page letter sent late Thursday night.
State officials said they were reviewing the letter. But they indicated they might fight DOJ over its interpretation of federal law and expressed frustration that President Barack Obama’s administration has stonewalled the state’s noncitizen voter hunt for nine months.
“We are firmly committed to doing the right thing and preventing ineligible voters from being able to cast a ballot,” said Chris Cate, spokesman for Secretary of State Ken Detzner, who was ordered by Gov. Rick Scott to conduct the search for potentially ineligible voters.
DOJ’s written demand came hours after the agency refused to comment on the matter to The Miami Herald. It also followed a federal court ruling Thursday that struck down a Republican voter-registration law that a judge found too onerous.
So far, Florida has flagged 2,700 potential noncitizen voters and sent the list to county elections supervisors, who have found the data and methodology to be flawed and problematic. The list of potential noncitizen voters – many of whom have turned out to be lawful citizens and voters – disproportionately hits minorities, especially Hispanics.
About 58 percent of those flagged as potential noncitizens are Hispanics, Florida’s largest ethnic immigrant population, a Miami Herald analysis found. Hispanics make up 13 percent of the overall 11.3 million active registered voters.
Independent voters and Democrats are the most likely to face being purged from the rolls. Republicans and non-Hispanic whites are the least likely.
Under the Voting Rights Act, Florida needs federal approval before it makes changes to voting because five Florida counties – Monroe, Hillsborough, Collier, Hardee and Hendry – had minority-voting troubles decades ago
“Our records do not reflect that these changes affecting voting have been submitted to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia for judicial review or to the Attorney General for administrative review as required by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act,” Herren wrote.
“Accordingly, it is necessary that they either be brought before that court or submitted to the Attorney General for a determination that they neither have the purpose nor will have the effect of discriminating on account of race, color, or membership in a language minority group under Section 5.”
He gave the state until next Wednesday to inform the Justice Department of its planned course of action.
“Specifically, please advise whether the State intends to cease the practice discussed above, so that the Department can determine what further action, if any, is necessary,” Herren wrote.
Herren also said that the National Voter Registration Act bans Florida’s effort because it says “a State shall complete, not later than 90 days prior to the date of a primary or general election for Federal office, any program the purpose of which is to systematically remove the names of ineligible voters from the official lists of eligible voters.”