AMTV News: LIBOR Scandal, Big Drug Banks, Iran Black Market Oil

Topher Morrison

PurpleSerf.com

 

This is AMTV News, I’m your host Topher Morrison.  Today is Tuesday July 10^th 2012.

Drug Cartels Launder with B of A, Again

Huffington Post

After being caught laundering $3 billion in 2006 from one branch, Bank of America officially rejoins an infamous list of big banks including Wells Fargo, Wachovia, and of course the British Crown’s original repository of opium proceeds – HSBC.  These are just a few among countless others in the Laundromat of the War on Drugs.  FBI affidavit submitted to a Texas federal court linked the Las Zetas Mexican drug cartel, a local racehorse business and several B of A accounts.  Should any unscrupulous banking practices be exposed expect B of A to receive a slap on the wrist.  In 2010 Wachovia settled a nearly $400 billion laundering binge to the tune of merely $160 million.

Bank Runners Vote With Their Wallets

Guardian

It’s been said Barclay’s LIBOR scandal was like finding your house was built on quicksand, rampant rate manipulation by the world’s leading financial institutions and yet again nobody sees a jail cell.  Well, its time to stop having Tea Parties and occupying Wall Street and vote with your wallet!  There has been an explosion of requests to move money from the ‘big five’ banks to smaller more responsive and hopefully more ethical alternatives like co-ops, building societies and credit unions. 

The Rate Heard Round the World

CNBC

The outbreak of negative interest rates in Europe is a telltale sign the second shoe has dropped in the ongoing global financial saga, central banks don’t want you saving they want you risking your money in the markets.  The negative rates is ultimately an effort to depreciate sovereign currency, driving global money parkers elsewhere and hopefully spurring exports and growth.  Problem is this hurts the local banks reliant on interest from loans and savings accounts to stay afloat.  This also runs the risk of competing with the biggest depreciator of them all – the Federal Reserve.

Iran’s Black Market Oil

RT 

In the face of EU sanctions Iran is still selling its oil to Europe through a private Iranian consortium.  Selling up to 20% of its average volumes to privately-owned European refineries it is likely the union of exporters, under an agreement with Iran’s central bank and oil ministry, will offer minor privileges and discounts to buyers in light of international restrictions.  Japan and China are also eager to bypass sanctions approving insurance and offering tankers to secure their energy. Don’t expect the transactions to be in US dollars though, which reminds me how did that work out for Hussein and Ghaddafi again?

Yes, Obamacare IS the Biggest Tax Increase in History

Reason

From Kevin Drum at Mother Jones, to Ezra Klein at the Washington Post, to Bloomberg’s Elizabeth Dwoskin, to the New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn and all the links back to Drum and Klein herd journalism of the left claims Obamacare isn’t the largest tax hike in US history, problem is – it’s the biggest tax increase in the history of the world.  According to page 36 of Drum’s cited CBO analysis it’s $525 billion worth of new taxes.

 

Catch our in depth commentary and analysis of stories like these at GreeneWave.com part of the AMTV network.

Hell on Earth: Mexican Drug War Yields 49 Headless Bodies

Topher Morrison

www.PurpleSerf.com

In what is widely believed to be the latest clash between two of Mexico’s main crime syndicates, the Zetas gang and the Sinaloa Cartel, officials struggle to identify 49 bodies.   The Associated Press (AP) reports that although the bodies were found without gunshot wounds some were heavily decomposed, decapitated and totally dismembered.

Victims of the latest carnage, the “Cadereyta 49” as they are coming to be referred, highlights the alarming notion that Mexico is teetering on the brink of narco-genocide, a type of national bloodletting of a wholly different order than previous eras. Rather than a government carrying out a policy of ethnic cleansing or oppression the devastation being experienced in Mexico is due almost entirely to a black market in the violent throws of realignment after the 2008 financial crisis blew a hole in the U.S. economy.

“Drug violence has killed more than 47,500 people since President Felipe
Calderon launched a stepped-up offensive when he took office in
December 2006. The campaign has seen the two cartels emerge as
 Mexico’s two most powerful. At least one of the two cartels
is present in nearly all of Mexico’s 32 states.”
 – Associated Press

Astonishingly, it was been reported the people of northern Mexico sometimes have no one protecting them as some municipalities, including Cadereyta, have been without law enforcement for years allowing cartels to move in to fill the void.  When police are there, however, they are often corrupt to the point were an entire police force was fired and disbanned.  According to BorderLandBeat.com:

Though hard to imagine the cruelty of cartels to gather large groups of innocents for shock and attention thereby highlighting messages or a perception of power, another perspective is it is far easier, and efficient in their viewpoint.

By targeting a bus load of migrants, or giving corrupt police the task to collect innocent victims off the streets.  Compliant and respectful of authorities, they are easy prey, no bullets, no fighting, no bloodshed sustained on the part of the criminals.

Effectively, like lambs to the slaughter.

The recent slayings are only the last of four massacres in the last month.  The most horrific detail is these victims are not believed to be rival gangsters or meddling journalists, but innocent bystanders.  According to the AP:

Some victims in earlier body dumps have turned out to be bakers, brick layers, even students – anyone who could be snatched off the streets in mass killings that one captured gang member said were designed to ‘cause terror.’

The mass murder of 35 last year in Boca del Rio, Veracruz is a testament to this gruesome tactic.  The very same city whose police officers were purportedly rounding up children for the massacre.

The Cadereyta municipality has seen homicides of this nature increase 10-fold over the past three years.  Another example of why Mexico’s border region was the most violent place on the planet last year, more so than even war torn Afghanistan.  More from the AP story:

"[In Cadereyta] there have been 74 killings in the first four months of this year in, compared to 27 over the same period in 2011 and seven in 2010, according to figures from Nuevo Leon state prosecutors.

The massacre follows the discovery of 14 men left in a van in downtown Nuevo Laredo on April 17 and 23 people found hanged or decapitated in the same border city May 4.

Eighteen dismembered bodies were left near Mexico’s second-largest city, Guadalajara, last week. Among the nine people identified in that attack were bricklayers, waiters and at least one student. None had criminal records."

This is all part of a sadistic strategy of “heating up the plaza” a way of luring local law enforcement, state police and Mexican military to crack down on a rival cartel’s activities.  A black market false flag so to speak.

The cartels are of course known for their barborous gambits.  Last year it was reported that Mexican drug lords are forcing innocent civilians into gladiatorial death matches.  Once a victor emerges they are “rewarded” by being forced to run a veritable kamakazi mission into a rival cartel’s territory.  According to Paul Thompson of the Daily Mail:

"Almost 200 bodies were found near the Mexican city of San Fernando with most having died from blunt force trauma.

Many are thought to be victims of the blood sport where cartel chiefs re-enact the gladiator contests."

In a country were citizens are defenseless, where the black market makes up a sizable portion of the economy, according to Havoscope $126.08 billion, and the state controls much of the rest it is hard to see a way forward.  There have been serious talks of legalizing illicit drugs throughout Central and South America, but without the major consumer, the United States, following suit all these efforts accomplish is open season for Cartels.

Some wonder why we don’t use our growing arsenal of drones to expidite justice.  The only question would be: when do the cartels get their own?  After all, they already have planes, trains, tanks and submarines.