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Posts Tagged ‘government’

Buy Gold, But Don’t Store It In The US Because ‘The Fed Will Take It Away From You One Day’

September 18, 2012 Comments off

businessinsider

Today’s AM fix was USD 1,767.25, EUR 1,349.36 and GBP 1,089.42 per ounce.
Friday’s AM fix was USD 1,772.50, EUR 1,359.70 and GBP 1,093.53 per ounce.

Silver is trading at $34.52/oz, €26.44/oz and £21.36/oz. Platinum is trading at $1,699.00/oz, palladium at $685.50/oz and rhodium at $1,050/oz.

Gold rose $5.30 or 0.3% in New York and closed at $1,771.60. Silver climbed to $34.91 then dropped before bouncing back higher, and finished with a loss of 0.06%. Gold was up 2.02% for the week and silver another 3% for the week.

Gold is slightly weaker today but hovering near a 7 month high, as the US Fed’s announcement of QE3 has led to some investors diversifying into bullion as a hedge against inflation risk.

The yellow metal rose as high as $1,777.51 on Friday, a high not seen since February 2012 when it hit this year’s peak.  Last September 2011, it reached a nominal high of nearly $1,920/oz.

QE3 will allow the Fed to print dollars to buy Read more…

Categories: GOLD, GOVERNMENT Tags: , ,

Is Privacy Dead? 4 Government and Private Entities Conspiring to Track Everything You Do Online and Off

September 12, 2012 Comments off

alternet.org

Americans’ personal privacy is being crushed by the rise of a four-headed corporate-state surveillance system.  The four “heads” are: federal government agencies; state and local law enforcement entities; telecoms, web sites & Internet “apps” companies; and private data aggregators (sometimes referred to as commercial data warehouses).

Conventional analysis treats these four domains of data gathering as separate and distinct; government agencies focus on security issues and corporate entities are concerned with commerce. Some overlap can be expected as, for example, in case of a terrorist attack or an online banking fraud.  In both cases, an actual crime occurred.

But what happens when the boundary separating or restricting corporate-state collaboration, e.g., an exceptional crime-fighting incident, erodes and becomes the taken-for-granted operating environment, the new normal?  Perhaps most troubling, what happens when the traditional safeguards offered by “watchdog” courts or regulatory organizations no longer seem to matter?  What does it say that the entities designed to Read more…

DARPA’s Plan to Nanochip Soldiers Has a Darker Agenda Behind it 1/2

May 8, 2012 Comments off

DARPA is at it again. This time, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has announced plans to create nanochips for monitoring troops health on the battlefield.

Kate Knibbs at Mobiledia reports the sensors are targeted at Read more…

Pentagon confirms plan to create new spy agency

April 25, 2012 Comments off

foxnews.com

panetta_hearing_030712.jpg

March 7, 2012: Defense Secretary Leon Panetta testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP)

The Pentagon confirmed Tuesday that it is carving out a brand new spy agency expected to include several hundred officers focused on intelligence gathering around the world.

At a time of budget cutbacks, particularly in the military, it’s unclear how the Defense Department has been able to move around the money to afford a new agency. The Pentagon wouldn’t get into specifics saying only that the so-called “Defense Clandestine Service” wouldn’t involve “significant new resource requirements.”

The service would be an offshoot of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Officers drawn from that agency would be sent to beef up U.S. intelligence teams in areas that are now receiving more attention. They include Africa, where Al Qaeda is increasingly active, as well as parts of Asia, where the North Korean missile threat and Chinese military expansion are causing increasing U.S. concern.

Pentagon spokesman Capt. John Kirby called the Read more…

Big Government on Steroids: Senate Bill Calls for Black Box Recorders on All New Cars

April 19, 2012 Comments off

economicpolicyjournal.com

The same Senate bill, 1813, known as MAP-21, that calls for the Secretary of State to revoke or deny a passport to any US citizen that the IRS Commissioner deems as having ‘seriously delinquent tax debt’, also calls for, in section 31406 of the bill. the mandatory installation of ‘black box’ event recorders to be installed in every new passenger vehicle starting with model year 2015:

SEC. 31406. VEHICLE EVENT DATA RECORDERS.
(a) Mandatory Event Data Recorders-

(1) IN GENERAL- Not later than 180 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary shall revise part 563 of title 49, Code of Federal Regulations, to require, beginning with model year 2015, that new passenger motor vehicles sold in the United States be equipped with an event data recorder that meets the requirements under that part…

(d) Revised Requirements for Event Data Recorders- Based on the findings of the Read more…

Homeland Security hacking into gaming consoles to obtain user data

April 10, 2012 1 comment

thehackernews.com

Homeland+Security+hacking+into+gaming+consoles+to+obtain+user+data
The U.S. government has hired a California-based company to hack into video game consoles, such as Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, to watch criminals, especially child predators, and learn how to collect evidence against them.
The U.S. government has awarded a $177,000 contract to Obscure Technologies to develop tools that can be used to extract data from video games systems.
The $177,000 contract with Obscure Technologies of San Rafael, Calif., is being executed by the U.S. Navy on behalf of the Department of Homeland Security because of the Navy’s expertise in the field, officials said.
Anyone who has ever played a few games of Call of Duty or Halo online knows that communities like Xbox Live aren’t exactly models of good behavior. But the federal government believes the occasional bursts of profanity may not be the worst of what’s going on according with consoles, and it wants a way to dig deeper.
In explaining their case, the government argues that both pedophiles and terrorists alike are using communication modes available only through video game systems to both lure Read more…

The “cashless society” and Total Monetary Surveillance

April 4, 2012 1 comment

marketoracle

Photo Credit Infowars

Economic Collapse writes: Most people think of a cashless society as something that is way off in the distant future. Unfortunately, that is simply not the case. The truth is that a cashless society is much closer than most people would ever dare to imagine. To a large degree, the transition to a cashless society is being done voluntarily. Today, only 7 percent of all transactions in the United States are done with cash, and most of those transactions involve very small amounts of money. Just think about it for a moment. Where do you still use cash these days? If you buy a burger or if you purchase something at a flea market you will still use cash, but for any mid-size or large transaction the vast majority of people out there will use another form of payment. Our financial system is dramatically changing, and cash is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. We live in a digital world, and national governments and big banks are both encouraging the move away from paper currency and coins. But what would a cashless society mean for our future? Are there any dangers to such a system?

Those are very important questions, but most of the time both sides of the issue are not presented in a balanced way in the mainstream media. Instead, most mainstream news articles tend to trash cash and talk about how wonderful digital currency is.

For example, a recent CBS News article declared that soon we may not need “that raggedy dollar bill” any longer and that the “greenback may soon be a goner”…. Read more…

Video: TSA Stopping People On US Highways Without Warrants Or Probable Cause

March 23, 2012 Comments off

Feds Buying Up All Surplus Ammo, Ordering Stores To Cease Sales?

March 23, 2012 6 comments

alexanderhiggins

Source Says Feds Are Buying Up All Surplus Ammo

Source Says Feds Are Buying Up All Surplus Ammo

Just days ago a military ammunition supplier announced that the Department of Homeland Security had entered a contract to purchase 450 million rounds of .40 Caliber ammunition, which is more than on bullet for every man, woman and child in the United States.

ATK Awarded Contract to Supply 450 Million Rounds of .40 Caliber Ammunition to the Department of Homeland Security

ATK has secured a major Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity deal to supply up to 450 million rounds of .40 caliber ammunition to the Department of Homeland Security.

The 1 year contract with four option years comes at a time when many Americans believe that DHS, along with certain aspects of the military, will soon turn their sights on the American people during some sort of martial law scenario.

“We are proud to extend our track record as the prime supplier of .40 caliber duty ammunition for DHS, ICE,” said Ron Johnson, the president of ATK’s Security and Read more…

H.R.347: Goodbye, First Amendment: ‘Trespass Bill’ will make protest illegal

February 29, 2012 1 comment

occupywallst.org

H.R. 347: Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011

11/17/2011–Reported to Senate amended. Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011 – Amends the federal criminal code to revise the prohibition against entering restricted federal buildings or grounds to impose criminal penalties on anyone who knowingly enters any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority. Defines “restricted buildings or grounds” as a posted, cordoned off, or otherwise restricted area of: (1) the White House or its grounds or the Vice President’s official residence or its grounds, (2) a building or grounds where the President or other person protected by the Secret Service is or will be temporarily visiting, or (3) a building or grounds so restricted due to a Read more…