With the Obama administration pushing for cap-and-trade legislation, former Clinton and Obama adviser Franklin Raines has positioned the government-sponsored mortgage giant Fannie Mae to make millions by selling carbon credits from American homes.
Two patents applied for by Raines as one of several "co-inventors" – Nos. 6904336 and 7133750 – create a "method for identifying, quantifying, and aggregating reductions in residential emissions into a tradable commodity." The patents are identically titled "System and Method for Residential Emissions Trading."
The idea appears to be for Fannie Mae to create "Collateralized Carbon Obligations," or CCOs, by utilizing a methodology similar to its system for combining individual home loans into Collateralized Loan Obligations, or CLOs.
The patents give Fannie Mae the methods for identifying and measuring energy savings in homes that can be packaged and sold to carbon polluters as credits on a carbon exchange.
A website supporting a Swedish family whose son was taken into custody by social-services agents almost exactly one year ago says the court case over the dispute now is being rushed before a human-rights activist can be restored to the case.
photo: A thriving Dominic is shown in a passport photograph, left, just before he was taken into custody by Swedish social-services agents. The right photo, obtained by the Dominic Johansson website, shows a "not-so-thriving Dominic" some months after he was forcibly placed in the Swedish foster-care system.
The report comes from the DomenicJohansson.com website backing the family of Christer and Annie Johansson and their son.
"Close observers of the Johansson state-sponsored 'kidnapping' case believe the Visby Social Board is pushing Swedish courts to fast-track a new series of court challenges in an effort to have the cases quashed long before Ruby Harrold-Claesson wins her way back as counsel to Dominic's parents," the new report on the website states.
It also has posted a photographic comparison of the boy shortly before he was taken into custody by police and several months after he was placed in foster care under government orders.
"June 25, 2010, marks the one-year anniversary of the violent seizure of the … child," the report states. "So traumatized was Dominic by the acts of armed police on behalf of the Visby Social Services board, witnesses tell us he vomited during and shortly after the shocking scene when uniformed Swedish police stormed an India-bound jetliner just moments before takeoff."
The family was in the process of emigrating to India, Annie's home country, at the time.
Citizen with camera pulled over by Louisiana police at BP's request
Written by Editor
Friday, 25 June 2010 10:17
Editor: It wasn't enough that they destroyed our Gulf waters and wrecked the fishing and tourism industries -- now they are in virtual control of huge swatches of sovereign U.S. territory and even giving orders to our law enforcement.
Everyone knows by now that BP is still blocking press access to oil-spill sites even though they're not supposed to anymore. I've been blathering about it for weeks, and it's been all of three days since four contractors wouldn't let me through the Pointe Aux Chenes marina outside Montegut, Louisiana. And though as of June 16 the federal government was saying helicopters could fly reporters as low as 1,500 feet around spill sites, on June 17 I was on a helicopter that was prohibited from flying below 3,000 feet (and whose pilot flipped silent birds at the "military guys" coming over the radio and hassling him about being in the area at all). But a Louisiana sheriff's deputy* pulling over a video camera-wielding private citizen because the head of BP security wanted to ask him some questions is a whole other level of alarming.
Last week, Drew Wheelan, the conservation coordinator for the American Birding Association, was filming himself across the street from the BP building/Deepwater Horizon response command in Houma, Louisiana. As he explained to me, he was standing in a field that did not belong to the oil company when a police officer approached him and asked him for ID and "strongly suggest[ed]" that he get lost since "BP doesn't want people filming":
Wheelan: "Am I violating any laws or anything like that?"
Officer: "Um...not particularly. BP doesn't want people filming."
Wheelan: "Well, I'm not on their property so BP doesn't have anything to say about what I do right now."
Officer: "Let me explain: BP doesn't want any filming. So all I can really do is strongly suggest that you not film anything right now. If that makes any sense."
Not really! Shortly thereafter, Wheelan got in his car and drove away but was soon pulled over. ...
Man arrested for taking picture of police officer in the man's own home
Written by Editor
Friday, 25 June 2010 09:57
A Texas man has sued his local police department, saying he was arrested for taking a picture of a police officer when the officer entered his home without permission.
According to the lawsuit, Sgt. Justin Alderete of the Sealy, Texas, police department arrived at the home of Francisco Olvera in October, 2009, apparently responding to a noise complaint. Olvera had been playing music on his computer speakers while working outside on his patio.
The sergeant asked Olvera for identification. When Olvera went inside his home to grab his ID, Sgt. Alderete followed him inside. Believing the officer didn't have a right to enter his home without permission, Olvera picked up his cellphone and took a photo of the officer. At that point, the lawsuit states, Alderete accused Olvera of "illegal photography" and arrested him.
Mexican gangs now maintaining bases in Arizona hills
Written by Editor
Tuesday, 22 June 2010 12:59
Mexican drug cartels have set up shop on American soil, maintaining lookout bases in strategic locations in the hills of southern Arizona from which their scouts can monitor every move made by law enforcement officials, according to federal agents.
The scouts are supplied by drivers who bring them food, water, batteries for radios -- all the items they need to stay in the wilderness for a long time.
"To say that this area is out of control is an understatement," said an agent who patrols the area and asked not to be named. "We (federal border agents), as well as the Pima County Sheriff Office and the Bureau of Land Management, can attest to that."
Much of the drug traffic originates in the Menagers Dam area, the Vekol Valley, Stanfield and around the Tohono O'odham Indian Reservation. It even follows a natural gas pipeline that runs from Mexico into Arizona.
In these areas, which are south and west of Tucson, sources said there are "cartel scouts galore" watching the movements of federal, state and local law enforcement, from the border all the way up to Interstate 8.
"Every night we're getting beaten like a pinata at a birthday party by drug, alien smugglers," a second federal agent told Fox News by e-mail. "The danger is out there, with all the weapons being found coming northbound…. someone needs to know about this!"
Obama can shur down Internet for 4 months under new Emergency Powers
Written by Editor
Friday, 25 June 2010 15:19
President Obama will be handed the power to shut down the Internet for at least four months without Congressional oversight if the Senate votes for the infamous Internet ‘kill switch’ bill, which was approved by a key Senate committee yesterday and now moves to the floor.
The Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, which is being pushed hard by Senator Joe Lieberman, would hand absolute power to the federal government to close down networks, and block incoming Internet traffic from certain countries under a declared national emergency.
Despite the Center for Democracy and Technology and 23 other privacy and technology organizations sending letters to Lieberman and other backers of the bill expressing concerns that the legislation could be used to stifle free speech, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee passed in the bill in advance of a vote on the Senate floor.
WHO to tax Internet users while funneling money to Big Pharma
Written by Editor
Friday, 25 June 2010 10:07
The United Nations' World Health Organization (WHO) is pushing hard to impose global consumer taxes to help fund its various programs, including a new proposal that would tax the internet in order to pay for vaccines and other pharmaceutical medicines for third-world countries. Yes, you read that right - WHO wants every person in the world to help pay for drugs that make Big Pharma even richer.
Consider it a reverse Robin Hood ploy: They're stealing from the working class and giving to the ultra wealthy drug companies!
Of course this isn't the first time the UN has petitioned governments around the world to illegally tax citizens in order to further its own agenda. This body of unelected officials tried to push "cap and trade" legislation for supposed climate change just last year (but failed to do so because many countries simply refused the idea).
Dearborn, MI, police persecute Christians for handing out Gospel of John on public sidewalk
Written by Editor
Tuesday, 22 June 2010 13:45
Police confiscate camera & cellphone of Christians standing on public sidewalk outside of muslim festival.
A group of Christians discovered that they cannot distribute free Gospels of John booklets on a public sidewalk in Dearborn, MI. Watch the video and see the rapid and heavy-handed response.
Chinese penetrate U.S. classified military computer network
Written by Editor
Tuesday, 22 June 2010 13:34
The Chinese may have been able to develop computer algorithms that will penetrate military computers at the secret level, according to alerts about a "Spear Phishing attack" issued recently to users of a military system.
In one case, users of military computers at the secret, or collateral, level told of a false report of an outbreak of war in Asia beaming across military networks.
"So, it appears they're into our systems at least at the collateral level," one military computer user said of the Chinese.
