What's In Your Food

Juarez King Pin Captured in Chihuahua City

El Paso Times is reporting that Rogelio Segovia "El Royser" Hernandez was arrested on Tuesday in Chihuahua City in possession of weapons and grugs. Police report that Segovia is the key cartel player in drug trafficking, kidnapping and homicides. The arrest comes on the back of the killing of top Sinaloa cartel leader Ignacio "Nacho" Coronel who was shot by Mexican military on Thursday.

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Banking Disaster Largely Ignored by Mainstream Media

from USAwatchdog

by Geg Hunter

Last week, bank failures quietly passed the 100 milestone for the year. I say “quietly” because the bank failure story has gone largely unreported or, at least, under-reported by the mainstream media. Just to give you an idea of how fast the bank insolvency problem is accelerating, last year, at this time, 64 banks had been taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. So far, this year, 103 banks have already been taken over by the FDIC. There is no question the bank failures the FDIC will have to deal with will be greater than the 140 insolvent banks closed last year. At this point, we just don’t know how many more, but dozens more than last year for sure.

One big bank negative I see is the loss of business in the Gulf because of the oil spill catastrophe. I don’t think it is a stretch to say that the loss of revenue from fishing, deep-water oil drilling, tourism and spoiled coastal property will probably have a negative effect on the balance sheet of Gulf Coast banks. Just 2 weeks ago, a Wall Street Journal story documented tail spinning Florida banks asking for a break from federal regulators. It said, “Florida banks—already weakened by the real-estate bust and hit again by customers suffering from the BP PLC oil spill—are asking federal regulators for a reprieve from government-ordered capital raising as they struggle to stay alive.” (Click here for more on the WSJ article) There are currently 775 “problem” banks on the FDIC’s list, and I don’t think that list will be shrinking anytime soon.

In order for the FDIC to close the banks, it has to spend cash to make depositors whole. It is also entering into what are called “loss share” agreements. It is a way to keep problem loans and foreclosed property in a banking environment and not become the full responsibility of the government. It also caps the loss for the buying institution. Here’s how the “loss share” basically works. The FDIC writes down the assets to an estimated value. Then, the FDIC covers any potential losses in an 80/20 split, with the FDIC covering 80% of any potential loss. These loss share agreements were used in the S&L crisis in the early 90’s. Since this crisis began, there have been $173.5 billion of loss share agreements through May of 2010. (The total now stands at more than $178 billion.) According to FDIC spokesman David Barr, if loss share agreements were not used, the failed bank assets might sell for “pennies on the dollar.” The idea is to wait and sell the assets in the future when they might be worth more. Barr told me just last week, “As the FDIC turns those losses into real losses when we sell those, then the loss at the failed bank is adjusted accordingly, some go up and some go down.”

If the economy continues to tank, make no mistake, there will be some liability to the FDIC. We just will not know how much until the assets are sold. There might be no future liability at all, but I don’t think that’s likely given the serious and prolonged problems facing the economy. This is probably a multi-billion dollar future write down, but who knows?

The bank closings are also taking a toll on the FDIC’s Deposit Insurance Fund, or DIF. In May, it was reported to be $20.7 billion in the red. Back then, I wrote a post called, "FDIC Insurance Fund still $20 billion in Hole." I said, “I talked with FDIC spokesman David Barr yesterday about the shortfall in the DIF. He said, “The FDIC is not broke.” It has an additional “$63 billion in cash.” He told me there is about $46 billion in three years of prepaid deposit insurance premiums and an additional $17 billion in cash for a grand total of $63 billion in “liquid resources” to close insolvent banks.”

If you subtract the $20.7 billion deficit of the DIF from the roughly $63 billion in “liquid resources,” you end up with a little more than $42 billion. FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair was quoted, around the same time, saying the FDIC expects to spend “$40 billion” closing banks in the next year. (Remember, this was before anyone knew how big the Gulf oil spill calamity was going to be.) My math says that would leave a little more than $2 billion in “liquid resources.” According to an email from David Barr yesterday, after that $2 billion is used, there is a “. . . 100 billion line of credit (from the Treasury). The FDIC also has some $35 billion in assets from failed banks that we must sell.”

That means in about a year, the FDIC will be closing banks with borrowed money and what it can get from selling the assets of failed banks. If that doesn’t paint a dire picture of bank insolvency in this country, I don’t know what does. It is amazing to me how little time the mainstream media is spending on this unfolding financial disaster and how much time it is devoting to things like Mel Gibson’s rants.

ARCHIVE: Forced Adoption is a Truly Dreadful Scandal

from Telegraph UK Jul. 3, 2010

by Christopher Booker

[SWClarion note: Some alarming news items have come to light in the UK claiming that Social Services are operating in a quota system for taking new born babies directly from their parents. In the US we are getting closer to the point where poverty itself will be enough to criminalize parents.]

In recent months, I have been reporting on what is one of the most alarming scandals in Britain today – the secretive system that allows social workers to remove children from loving families without any proper justification, and to send them for adoption or fostering with no apparent concern for their interests.

Four more examples have come to light in the past week. The first came to my attention via Lynn Boleyn, a former councillor from Dudley, who first became concerned about "forced adoption" when she sat on various committees concerned with child care. Last week, she was in court with a mother of five girls, whose family tragedy began when her partner was sentenced to 14 years for abusing the eldest girl, who was sent to live with a relative. Although there was no evidence of their mother harming them in any way, the other four girls were seized by Dudley social services and placed in foster care. Three were kept together, separated from their two-year-old sister whom the council now wants to put out for adoption.

The three girls, aged 11, 10 and 7, are desperately unhappy, constantly asking to be reunited with their mother. But on Friday, a judge said he had no power to stop social services summarily withdrawing them from their local school to be sent to a new home. The 11-year-old was looking forward to being in the school play and the end of term Leavers' Service. She has now been torn away from friends she has known since she was four, the nearest thing to stability left in her life. The children's wishes were not taken into account.

A second case concerns another woman, for 20 years an NHS nurse who served with the Royal Army Medical Corps in the first Gulf War. Until recently, she was a semi-professional dog breeder, living happily at home with her eight-year-old son (his father having walked out when she was pregnant).

In March, their home was raided by two RSPCA officials and five policemen, complaining she had too many dogs in the house. Her home was untidy because she was clearing an attic, but the seizing of the dogs (breaking the leg of one of them) left it a befouled mess.

Acting on a tip-off from the RSPCA, Leeds social workers then intervened, and expressed surprise that the house was tidier than they expected. Nevertheless, they told the mother to bring her son's clothes to school, from where he was taken into foster care.

After three months, during which he has only been allowed short supervised "contact" with his mother, the boy is miserable, constantly asking when he can return home. His mother has repeatedly had to draw the social workers' attention to various conditions, such as head lice and threadworm, which indicated that he was not being properly cared for. Last week they announced that they were moving him to another foster home.

Although there was no evidence that she was anything other than an admirable mother, apart from the temporary mess made of the house in March, the social workers say her son cannot be allowed home until they have both undergone "psychiatric assessments". These cannot be arranged until October. Nor has the boy yet been given a guardian to represent him, as the law lays down.

My other two cases come from Ian Josephs, the former county councillor and businessman who runs the Forced Adoption website and has helped hundreds of families in a similar plight. When, in January, a couple brought their newborn son to hospital with a fractured arm, Coventry social services were called in on suspicion that the child might have been injured by his parents. After the mother had been arrested, handcuffed and held by the police for nine hours, the couple were terrified that their baby would be taken from them. Although not charged with any offence, they are on police bail, which prevents them from leaving the country.

The child's Irish grandmother took the baby to Ireland, where he is now surrounded by a large, supportive family. Social services are attempting to get an order through the courts for the grandmother to return to England with the baby.

My last case is so shocking that I will return to it in more detail at a later date. It centres on a London couple who, earlier this year, had their six children seized by social workers on what appears to be flimsy hearsay evidence (I have seen the court papers).

The mother was pregnant again. Last month, after the boy was born, three social workers and five policemen entered the hospital ward where she was breastfeeding at 3am, wresting the baby from her by force. They then discovered that they had nowhere to keep him. The boy was put into intensive care, where his mother was taken to breastfeed him for four days, until she was fit to leave the hospital. She saw her baby for the last time two weeks ago.

I will return to this story when I have had some explanation from the council responsible.

ARCHIVE: Marvin Bryer Follows the Money Trail Through the LA Superior Court

from Insight on the News Dec. 6, 1999

by Kelly Patricia O'Meara

Insight has more details on an alleged slush fund for the L.A. Superior Court Judges Association and the possible extortion of civil litigants by some officers of the court.

As the old Neil Diamond song has it, "L.A.'s fine, the sun shines most the time and the feeling is laid back." Sunny L.A. is so laid back that alleged corruption within the Superior Court of Los Angeles goes unchecked and nary a thought is given to investigate possible connections of ongoing criminal indictments to schemes and players already exposed (see "Is Justice for Sale in L.A.?" May 3).

But Marvin Bryer of La Crescenta, Calif., is anything but laid back. A retired computer analyst, Bryer spent years collecting court and bank documents concerning suspicious financial relationships between attorneys, court professionals and judges of the Superior Court. After Insight exposed the secret "coffee-and-flowers" bank account of the Los Angeles Superior Court Judges Association, or LASCJA, Bryer filed a lawsuit against the Family Court Services Special Fund, one of the names used by the LASCJA.

Bryer contends in his lawsuit that, among other things, the LASCJA was using a "bogus" name to mute money to its own bank account gained from minimum continuing legal education, or MCLE, classes and other lawyer-supported ventures associated with the Superior Court. Because the LASCJA illegally was using the County of Los Angeles employer identification number, or EIN, it still is unclear whether the money deposited into the judges' account belonged to the taxpayers of Los Angeles or to the judges -- a question Bryer hopes to have answered by his lawsuit.

Bryer's lawsuit also names Alf Schonbach, manager of the Finance, Accounting and Internal Audits Section of the Superior Court, in an attempt to determine why Schonbach's statements to Insight that the funds collected from lawyers for the MCLE classes and deposited into the LASCJA account contradict his previous declarations that they came from "donations."

"I want the truth about the accounts," says Bryer, "and the money illegally collected by the judges' association returned to the taxpayers of the County of Los Angeles."

Bryer thinks he sees an intricate financial connection in ongoing criminal cases he believes may be related to his investigation into the LASCJA and the county personnel who handled the judges' bank accounts.

For instance, Bryer has included in his lawsuit Gregory Pentoney, an auditor in the Los Angeles Superior Court finance office. A subordinate to Schonbach, Pentoney was arrested in August 1998 on multiple counts, including grand theft, receiving and offering a bribe and preparing false documentary evidence. Pentoney, along with Encino attorney Robert Fenton, is accused of participating in stealing more than $1.4 million from the Los Angeles County by recovering money that the county owed to various municipalities and kept it in condemnation trust accounts.

Condemnation funds are monies deposited into trust accounts that are equal to what is offered by the municipality for property condemned under eminent domain. Pentoney is accused of providing a list of condemnation cases to Fenton, who then submitted requests for disbursements of more than $5 million from the trust accounts on behalf of various municipalities. Fenton allegedly collected $1.4 million in finder's fees from the municipalities and kicked back $463,000 to Pentoney.

At the time Pentoney allegedly was working with Fenton to convert money from the condemnation funds, he also was sparring with Bryer over the LASCJA's bank account. In response to a 1996 lawsuit filed by Bryer, Pentoney claimed in a deposition that while in the finance office he had no knowledge of the Family Court Services Special Fund, which now is known to be one of the names used by the LASCJA for its accounts. Perhaps, but Pentoney's legal representation was provided not by his employer, the County of Los Angeles, but by Robert Traver of Collins, Collins, Muir & Traver in Pasadena -- the law firm that represents the judges. Bryer suspects a cover-up.

Today, Pentoney is being sued in a civil action in the Van Nuys Superior Court and criminally charged in Los Angeles Superior Court for his alleged participation in the condemnation trust-fund scheme. Also, as a defendant in the civil lawsuit filed by Bryer concerning checks processed by the finance office for the Family Court Services Special Fund, Pentoney is being represented by Michael Bergfeld -- another attorney with Collins, Collins Muir & Traver.

Bergfeld says in court documents that he was hired by the County of Los Angeles to represent Pentoney. "This is weird," says Bryer, "because this guy is being both represented and prosecuted by Los Angeles County. How can this be?" Pentoney's supervisor tells Insight he, too, is receiving similar assistance from the county through Collins, Collins, Muir & Traver. Schonbach also is a defendant in Bryer's lawsuit and is a witness in Pentoney's criminal case.

Although some see representation of Pentoney and Schonbach by the judges' law firm as a conflict of interest, Superior Court Presiding Judge Victor Chavez doesn't have a problem with it. "If he was working for the judges' association at the time I don't see a problem. I don't see an ethical issue," says Chavez. In fact, Schonbach was working for the judges' association -- but he was being paid by the County of Los Angeles.

UPDATE ON RICHARD FINE: Judge Yaffe admits to fraudulent filing

Richard Fine has now been incarcerated in the LA Men's Central Jail for 529 days

Former attorney Richard Fine filed a Writ of Habeas Corpus one day after his incarceration on March 6, 2009. That motion has been denied from the state through the federal courts. One reason that has been cited by the various courts for denial is that on March 18, 2008 Judge Yaffe (the judge residing over Marina Strand Colony II vs County of Los Angeles) ordered that Richard Fine had no standing in petitioning that Judge Yaffe disqualify himself on grounds that Judge Yaffe received benefit payments from LA County because Richard Fine was no longer an attorney. It has come to light that Judge Yaffe filed a Minute Order with the US District Court on July 13, 2010 in which he states that The March 18, 2008 order does not exist. Richard Fine insists that this fact should nullify later orders and should nullify US Courts decisions to deny his Writ of Habeas Corpus. Read more about Richard Fine on the Full Disclosure Network.

Read my related article.

Massive Austerity is Coming to the USA

austerity: (n) 1: the quality or state of being austere

2a: an austere act, manner, or attitude b : an ascetic

practice

3: enforced or extreme economy

Merriam-Webster

Let us not forget that President Obama forewarned America during the presidential election by speaking of the 'sacrifice' that all Americans were going to have to endure. What did he mean by this? Shortly after Greece's sovereign debt bonds were downgraded by the three headed monster(Standard & Poors, Moody's and Fitch) the banking cabal came up with a gross acronym to describe Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain, PIIGS. This shows the mentality of the kind of people who have no compunction about compelling sovereign nations to cut jobs, cut spending and slash citizen's way of life by massively cutting pensions and benefits that greatly effect the old and the young. To bankers like the IMF and their GoldmanSachs alumni these people are PIIGS, nothing but dirty swine to be herded into massive pens of austerity.

PIIGS and beyond

Massive austerity did not end with the PIIGS. Shortly after Greece broke out in violent protests against the austerity, economic rumblings began in Spain and Portugal. And just when the white anglo-saxon community thought that it was immune to the sovereign debt crisis, the IMF went after England telling them to cut their debt, thus causing the British Pound to go into near freefall. Just last month Finance Minister George Osborne presented a budget that would cut over a million jobs in the next five years. Ireland is poised to take to the streets over their impending austerity measures. So who will be the next little 'PIIGy'? Could it be the steward of the world's reserve currency? Never!

China and the IMF onslaught

But it's true. Earlier this month the International Monetary Fund(IMF) began urging the US to cut its budget deficit. Then, true to form, the advice proceeded what seems to be inevitable these days to those unfortunate enough to come under the scrutiny of the IMF. Downgrading. Like a German blitzkrieg the dollar is coming under attack from all sides. Recently China's Dagong Global Credit Rating Co. downgraded the US' sovereign debt bonds from AAA to AA status. On June 29 the UN released a report calling for an end to the US dollar as the main global reserve currency, citing its inability to safeguard value. A recent CNN Money article declared, "Central banks start to abandon the US dollar". In the article the author references some names that are the very architects of the financial crisis:

"There are those who would argue that the financial crisis was caused by over-enthusiastic worship of the Almighty Dollar. Call it brutal financial karma, but that church is looking pretty empty these days.

A new report from Morgan Stanley analyst Emma Lawson confirms what many had suspected: the dollar is firmly on its way to losing its status as the reserve currency of the world. We already knew that central banks have preferred gold to dollars, and that they're even selling their gold for cash; now, according to Lawson's data, it seems that those central banks prefer almost anything to dollars."

Financial Karma? Morgan Stanley is one of the major players behind the bank bailouts and the trillions of printed Stimulus dollars that are the basis of driving the value of the dollar into the abyss. This is like a bank loaning an unemployed man money to buy a car, and then turning around and calling the dealership to tell them that the man has no job!

Austerity ghouls

The end result of the tanking of the US dollar is clear. First a major downgrading of US sovereign debt, and then massive austerity measures for the American people. Public and private pension funds and retirement trusts in the US alone are worth multi-trillions of dollars. The hedge fund hyenas and bankster criminals want that money. When austerity comes the money that people collect for their pensions will at the very least be cut in half, some people will lose their pensions outright and future employees will simply have no pensions, all in the name of cutting the budget. Most of the money that will have been accumulated thus far will go to the people at the top. Don't think that this can happen? Just ask the people of Greece.

I recently pondered with a family member, Can the banks really just take your money? I then had to consider the facts:

Dateline 2001 Argentina defaults. When people go to the bank they can't get their money. When they finally do access their money it is only a fraction of what it was.

Dateline 2008 The US economy goes into freefall. This has a drastic impact on the three main banks of the tiny nation of Iceland. The banks completely default. Depositors get their money back but when all is said and done Iceland's stock market falls by 90% and their currency becomes greatly devalued. As of this date their are over 28,000 claims against Kaupthing Bank trying to recover over 40 billion euros

Dateline 2010 Germany's parliament passes a bill that will give 66% of it's annual income tax to banks in the form of interest payments

Dateline 2010 British Prime Minister David Cameron unveils a scheme to pay for public sector expenses. The government will draw from a new bank called, wait for it, the Big Society Bank. Where will the Big Society Bank get its money? The government plans to seize money from private bank accounts that they describe as 'dormant'. The British government wants the Big Society Bank to spend about 400 million pounds, but thus far there is only about 60 million pounds available from 'dormant' accounts. Where will the rest of the money come from?

So there you have it. Big whigs taking money directly from private bank accounts. I wonder what the families of these 'dormant' bank account holders have to say about this. By the way, the British government has told its citizens that if it takes their money accidentally that all they have to do is call them up and get it back. Good luck with that.