Push of a Button: This Is How Fast They Can Lock Down the Entire Banking System Mac Slavo SHTFPlan.com December 24, 2013
Late last week it was learned that some 40 million charge cards were obtained using physical processing systems located in Target retail locations nationwide. Though no details of the how the hack attack was executed have been released by Target, the FBI or other agencies investigating the breach, it is likely that the processing machines themselves were compromised. Target claims that the hack was sophisticated, but on the technical side, once hackers found a way into the credit card processing machines, probably via remote entry from servers somewhere in Eastern Europe or Russia, the theft of credit card data itself would have been fairly straight forward by using scripts or applications that simply capture the data and send it off to servers owned by the hackers. This was probably one of the largest credit card thefts in history, though it is not at all surprising. Two years ago we noted that cyber attacks would soon be targeting America’s e-commerce systems and just a few months ago it was noted that rogue terrorist groups were specifically working on sabotage operation to bring down the U.S. economy. While this latest attack on Target stores and their customers fell far short of crashing our economy or financial system, it proves, as did recent breaches of Pentagon military networks, that even the most highly secured systems in the world can be compromised. Furthermore, what this attack highlights is that with the right type of “event” the economy and financial system of the United States can be shut down… almost instantly.
If you are a JP Morgan Chase banking customer and happened to use your debit card at Target stores between November 27th and December 15th, then you got a first-hand taste of what a shutdown of the banking system might feel like and how fast in can happen. It was done with the push of a button and impacted some two million holiday shoppers: JPMorgan Chase has notified card holders impacted by the Target breach that their cards will be restricted to $100 ATM cash withdrawals and $300 card purchases until replacement cards can be issued. The new limits impact nearly 2 million debit card accounts, but not credit card holders. Chase bank made no announcement to their customers of the coming restrictions just days before Christmas. They simply obtained a list of the potentially compromised cards, uploaded them into their system, and with the flick of a finger shut down electronic access to customers’ funds. Whether Chase’s actions were a bad business move is not necessarily at issue, though it was probably quite inconvenient for those affected. What is at issue is what many in alternative media have been warning about for some time – that the entire financial system of the United States can be shut down within a matter of minutes should the right set of events be realized. Most Americans don’t believe it can happen. Likewise, most people didn’t think that American domestic security agencies could shut down our borders and put transportation across the country on lock-down within a few hours – until it happened on September 11, 2001. Former national security coordinator Richard Clarke has warned that America’s cyber infrastructure is so fragile that it could literally be brought down by a coordinated cyber attack in a matter of 15 minutes. It sounds absurd to suggest that our country could potentially be crippled that quickly, until you realize that China, Russia, and Iran have long been mapping our entire utility, commerce and communications grids, all of which would be the first targets in any large-scale confrontation. Because cyber space is now considered a national asset, the President of the United States has the authority to completely shut down the internet (and all of the components attached to it) with what experts call a “kill switch.” If this executive action is ever implemented the President would need very little justification to shut it all down – the financial system, commerce systems, and all personal web surfing – for a period of up to four months, and then indefinitely if he can provide a justifiable reason to Congress. We live in a world that is, for those paying attention, completely out of our control. Our entire way of life could change overnight for any number of reasons. A war with a foreign power, a rogue terrorist attack, or a false flag event could all be a trigger event for something so debilitating that it would cause pandemonium from coast to coast. Former Department of Homeland Security head Janet Napolitano recently said that a massive and serious attack on the homeland is imminent. It makes no difference why it happens. Only that it does. And when it does, you’d better be ready for it.
My One-Item Christmas List: A Government That Stops Playing Santa Nick Gillespie time.com December 24, 2013
Forget a new car, Beats by Dre, or even affordable health care. You know what I really, really, really want for Christmas? I want a government that spends less money. I’m not alone in such a wish. Even President Obama, who has asked for more and more spending in each of his annual budget proposals, has called the nation’s long-term spending patterns “unsustainable.” We should be cutting small-ticket, medium-ticket, and big-ticket items, and we can do it in a way that doesn’t kick out Tiny Tim’s crutches or leaves us open to terrorist attacks. But first we need to understand the magnitude of the growth in spending over the past 10 years. In 2003, the federal government shelled out about $2.2 trillion in nominal dollars. In 2013, it spent about $3.5 trillion. I have trouble figuring out exactly where that extra $1.3 trillion a year is going, but I do know that whatever money is spent by the generous souls in Washington, D.C. isn’t printed by elves. It comes from current and future taxes that you and I—or our children and grandchildren—will pay. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projections for the next 25 years, the government will never come close to matching outlays with revenues (which CBO already assumes will be significantly higher than the historical average for the past 40 years). So the only path to sustainability is to cut spending. But where to cut? Start with the small stuff. Last week, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) released Wastebook 2013, which lovingly details around $30 billion in spending that amounts to stocking stuffers in the federal budget. These include $10 million in ads for the Army National Guard featuring Superman to $1.5 billion for keeping the lights on in “empty and little used federal buildings” to $7 billion to destroy weapons used
by the U.S. military in Afghanistan. The Pentagon, says the Wastebook, worries that bringing home the old material will depress prices and new orders for defense contractors. Any mention of defense spending suggests a much bigger areas to cut. Defense spending is the second-largest spending item in the budget. It’s part of what’s called “discretionary spending,” meaning that Congress authorizes a specific amount every year. Over the past decade, defense spending has increased by about 50 percent and remains one of the single-largest expenses in the annual budget. In 2013, for instance, the tab came to about $608 billion. With the end of two major wars—and the fact that the United States shoulders about 40 percent of all global expenditures on military might—that figure should come way, way down. Needless to say, the recent bipartisan budget agreement actually increases defense spending—that’s what bipartisan usually ends up meaning. Spending by the Department of Education has grown by about 24 percent over the past decade, with nothing in the way of positive results (test scores for the nation’s high school seniors are exactly the same that they were for decades before there was a Department of Education). Increases can be found in virtually every cabinet-level agency, often without any compelling justification or positive outcome. Even the growth in such seemingly recession-driven expenditures such as food stamps predate anything related to the Great Recession. In fact, between 2000 and 2006, annual spending on food stamps doubled thanks to a pork-laden farm bill passed by George W. Bush and a Republican Congress. Then there’s truly big-ticket items—the entitlement programs that make up the “mandatory” side of the budget, especially Medicare, which pays for health insurance for people who are 65 and older, and the retirement portion of Social Security, which provides income to older Americans. Despite the descriptor, there’s nothing truly mandatory about such programs. It just means that the programs’ costs are on auto-pilot and not subject to annual votes by Congress. That allows them to grow more consistently over time. Social Security and Medicare were designed to help seniors at a time when being old meant being poor. That’s thankfully no longer the case, but the programs haven’t been revised to reflect today’s reality, either through means-testing or a reduction in benefits. They already account for more than one-third of annual outlays and by 2030 will account for more than half of federal expenditures as the population ages and, more importantly, benefits grow in dollar amounts. Between 1975 and 2011, the cost per beneficiary quadrupled in real dollars. Over the next 30 years, it will double again even as the number of people receiving benefits increases by 84 percent. Such massive, across-the-board increases in spending are the very definition of unsustainable. But they also raise a different objection, one that goes beyond mere financial calculation. In a recent Gallup poll, a record-high 72 percent of Americans agreed that “big government” represents “the biggest threat to the country in the future.” Of course it does. The more the government plays Santa Claus, delivering every gift we ask for and many more that nobody seems to want (or can afford), the more it gets to call the shots in your life and mine. Every day is Christmas in Washington, and that’s exactly the problem.
Video: It’s A Wonderful Lie 100 Years Of The Federal Reserve Infowars.com December 24, 2013
Mr. Henry F. Potter, the president of the Building and Loan Association in the 1946 film It’s a Wonderful Life, has very striking similarities to the modern day banksters working through the Federal Reserve to sap the nation’s wealth. Infowars Nightly News host David Knight breaks it down in his review of the film: It's A Wonderful Lie — 100 Years of the Federal VIDEO BELOW http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbejXMIFRMg
SF Cops Roust Fed Protesters On Bankster Cartel Anniversary Kurt Nimmo Infowars.com December 24, 2013 Monday was the one hundred year anniversary of the Federal Reserve. In commemoration of two engineered economic depressions, numerous recessions, and a radically devalued dollar, a group of activists gathered outside of the Federal Reserve building in San Francisco on Monday.
Cops sent them packing. “The police action came on the same day that a number of activists had planned to hold a protest Monday, according to the Occupy SF website, on the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the Federal Reserve,” CBS News in San Francisco reported #FEDUP on the Federal Reserve's 100th Birthday VIDEO BELOW http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhubwSPyCTQ Additional protests were held at bankster cartel compounds around the country. They received almost zero coverage from the establishment media. As an interesting note, the San Francisco cops held their bust up of the Fed protest under the cover of rousting a homeless camp. If the Fed is allowed to continue its wrecking ball monetary polices and inflate asset bubbles of destruction at will, most of us will be homeless before long.
Bloomberg: Trans Pacific Partnership Is “Corporatist Power Grab” Washington’s Blog December 24, 2013 “As Democratic And Transparent As A One-Party State,” Shrouded In “Big Brother-Like Secrecy” The U.S. Trade Representative – the federal agency responsible for negotiating trade treaties – has said that the details of the Trans Pacific Partnership are classified due to “national security”. A Congressman who has seen the text of the treaty says: There is no national security purpose in keeping this text secret … this agreement hands the sovereignty of our country over to corporate interests.
It will increase the cost of borrowing, make prescription drugs more expensive, destroy privacy, harm food safety, and – yes - literally act to destroy the sovereignty of the U.S. and the other nations which sign the bill. To give an idea of what would happen to American law if TPP passes, just look at Equador …
It’s courts awarded billions against Chevron for trashing huge swaths of rainforest. But then a private arbitration panel simply ignored the country’s court system. If TPP passes, American courts will be sidelined as well. (Conservatives might want to read this and this.) William Pesek writes at Bloomberg: The Big Brother-like secrecy enshrouding the treaty on the U.S. side [is stunning.] WikiLeaks did what Barack Obama’s White House refuses to: share portions of the document with the public. The draft of the intellectual-property rights chapter by Julian Assange’s outfit validated the worst fears — that TPP is a corporatist power grab. Rather than heed the outcry, the U.S. doubled down on secrecy, refusing to disclose more details. You know you have a transparency problem when citizens of a democracy need to rely on WikiLeaks for details on changes to laws on Internet use, labor, environmental and food-safety standards, and the cost and availability of drugs. It’s worth considering something Google Inc. Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt told CNBC in December 2009: “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” So why is the Obama administration behaving as if it runs a closed Communist Party state? The answer can only be, To circumvent the legislative process. Last month, 151 House Democrats, members of Obama’s own party, sent a letter to the White House stating their opposition to granting him fast-track authority to negotiate trade agreements, citing a lack of congressional consultation. What would America’s founders make of this process? Asians should say no to a trade deal that’s as democratic and transparent as a one-party state. Fiat Empire: Why The Federal Reserve Violates The U.S. Constitution VIDEO BELOW http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5K41O2QfpjA Money, Banking and the Federal Reserve VIDEO BELOW http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLYL_NVU1bg The Truth About Your Birth Certificate VIDEO BELOW http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfnJ1rOFK7o The Secret of Oz VIDEO BELOW http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swkq2E8mswI Zeitgeist Addendum The Scam of The U.S. Banking System VIDEO BELOW http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EewGMBOB4Gg
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