por Nick Timiraos

JJoselin Reyes and other supporters listened while citizens affected by the foreclosure crisis gave testimonials at the Wells Fargo demonstration yesterday.  (PHOTO FROM RICHMOND CONFIDENTIAL)

Banks trying to foreclose on homeowners are hitting another roadblock, as some delinquent borrowers are successfully arguing that their mortgage companies can’t prove they own the loans and therefore don’t have the right to foreclose.

These “show me the paper” cases have been winding through the courts for several years. But in recent months, some judges have been siding with borrowers and stopping foreclosures after concluding that banks’ paperwork problems are more serious than previously thought and raise broader ethical questions.

This year, cases in California, North Carolina, Alabama, Florida, Maine, New York, New Jersey, Texas, Massachusetts and others have raised questions about whether banks properly demonstrated ownership.

During the fall, banks temporarily suspended foreclosures to address so-called robo-signing problems, where employees were approving legal documents without properly reviewing them. They said that in weeks they could fix what they considered to be simple clerical errors. But borrowers are uncovering new types of document problems, further delaying banks’ efforts to get foreclosures back on track.

In some cases, borrowers are showing courts that banks failed to properly assign ownership of mortgages after they were pooled into mortgage-backed securities. In other cases, borrowers say that lenders backdated or fabricated documents to fix those errors.

“Flawed mortgagebanking processes have potentially infected millions of foreclosures, and the damages against these operations could be significant and take years to materialize,” said Sheila Bair, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., in testimony to a Senate committee last month .

Last month, the Maine Supreme Court reversed the foreclosure of Dana and Robin Murphy of Auburn, Me., after concluding that the mortgage company, a unit of HSBC Holdings PLC, filed “inherently untrustworthy” documents. An HSBC spokesman declined to comment.

The case began in 2008 when HSBC filed to foreclose on the Murphys, who hadn’t made a mortgage payment in two years. A trial judge initially rejected HSBC’s foreclosure because the bank couldn’t show it owned the promissory note—in effect, the borrower’s IOU.

The court later granted the foreclosure after HSBC submitted new ­paperwork. However, the Murphys found discrepancies and alleged that the documents were backdated. The court voided the foreclosure and sent the case back to the lower court to determine potential penalties.

Attorneys for borrowers reject the view that they are using arcane legal rules to secure free houses for clients who aren’t paying their bills. Efforts to gloss over incomplete or falsified evidence “can’t be tolerated by a free society,” says Thomas Ice, an attorney in Royal Palm Beach, Fla., who has a similar case before the Florida Supreme Court. “This is a huge assault on our legal system” that risks “turning us into a banana republic.”

by Ethan A. Huff,

Natural News

A landmark new study out of Canada exposes yet another lie propagated by the biotechnology industry, this time blowing a hole in the false claim that a certain genetic pesticide used in the cultivation of genetically-modified (GM) crops does not end up in the human body upon consumption. Researchers from the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Sherbrooke Hospital Centre in Quebec, Can., have proven that Bt toxin, which is used in GM corn and other crops, definitively  makes its way intothe blood supply, contrary to what Big Bio claims — and this toxin was found in the bloodstreams of 93 percent of pregnant women tested. Published in the journal Reproductive Toxicology, the study explains that Bt toxin enters the body not only through direct consumption of GMOs, but also from consumption of meat, milk and eggs from animals whose feed contains GMOs. Among all women tested, 80 percent of the pregnant group tested positive for Bt toxin in their babies’ umbilical cords, and 69 percent of non-pregnant women tested positive for Bt toxin.

The only reason many countries even approved GM crops in the fi rst place was because they were told that GM crops were no different than conventional crops. The biotechnology industry has purported for years that the alterations and chemicals used in GM crop cultivation pose no risk whatsoever to human health, and that any GM substances that remain in food are broken down in the digestive system. Now that it has been revealed that such claims are complete fabrications, many groups are urging governments to pull GMOs from their food supplies.

“This research is a major surprise as it shows that the Bt proteins have survived ­the human digestive system and passed into the blood supply — something that regulators said could not happen,” said Pete Riley from GM Freeze, an alliance of organizations united against GMOs. “Regulators need to urgently reassess their opinions, and the EU should use the safeguard clauses in the regulations to prevent any further GM Bt crops being cultivated or imported for animal feed or food until the potential health implications have been fully evaluated.”

Most of the studies that have been used to validate the safety of GMOs have been conducted by the companies that created them in the fi rst place, so they are hardly a credible source for reliable safety data. Governments in North and South America, as well as throughout Europe, have essentially welcomed GMOs into the food supply based on fl imsy reassurances rather than sound science.

by the El Reportero’s news services

Porfirio Lovo

Two developments, in two small neighbours in Central America, in the space of a week will cause serious domestic and international repercussions. Honduras is poised to shake off its pariah status and rejoin the Organization of American States (OAS) after President Porfirio Lobo finally managed to strike a deal with Manuel Zelaya nearly two years after he was ousted in a coup.

Meanwhile El Salvador, one of the top allies of the US in Latin America even after the left-wing Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN) came to power in 2009, has been rocked by startling revelations about an entrenched organised crime network implicating business leaders, politicians, judges and the security forces.

Mexico considers cancelling state election

On 25 May the national leaders of the country’s three main parties announced that instead of allowing the electors of Michoacán to pick the next governor they may agree on a joint candidate. The proposal is a demonstration of how weak President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa now is and how vulnerable his key policy of using the army to combat drug trafficking gangs has become.

Michoacán has been the scene of a major upswing in gang violence in the past 10 days and the politicians now fear that elections, due this November, would be impossible. This admission raises questions for other state elections this year, especially in Nayarit, where 28 people were killed by gangsters on 25 May and which goes to the polls on 3 July, and also for the congressional and presidential elections due in July 2012. The US government has a clear understanding of what is happening in Mexico: on 24 May the US President nominated Earl Anthony Wayne, currently deputy ambassador to Afghanistan, ­to be the next ambassador to Mexico. Wayne, a career diplomat, was ambassador to Argentina from 2006 to 2009.

Paraguay, closer to becoming the region’s energy hub

Recent efforts by Brazil and Argentina to promote greater energy integration within the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) by providing concessions to their smaller partners, Paraguay and Uruguay, have finally made an integrated regional energy market a distinct possibility. In particular, both countries appear more inclined to accede to Paraguay’s longstanding demand to regain sovereignty over its hydroelectric output.

However, a fi nal decision, which rests in the hands of Argentina, has been stalled for political reasons, as the two Mercosur powerhouses assess the implications.

Cuba’s (r)evolution

On 19 April President Raúl Castro closed the ruling Partido Comunista de Cuba (PCC)’s sixth party congress with a defi ant vow “to defend, preserve and continue perfecting socialism, and never permit the return of capitalism”. It’s unclear what the 79-year old Castro meant by “capitalism”, but it’s certainly the case that the ruling gerontocracy that was (re-) confi rmed in the leadership may well struggle with the planned transition to a mixed system, whereby a centrally planned economy run by a one party state is expected to co-exist in harmony with a limited private entrepreneurial sector for the fi rst time in fi ve decades. (Latin News contributed with this report.)

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­­The Compulsive liar – The Internet site where all the fun starts. And your daily dose of entertainment

by Lhurey

The head of our media

Renowned critic and always MIT linguist Noam Chomsky, one of the classic voices of intellectual dissent in the last decade, has compiled a list of the ten most common and effective strategies resorted to by the agendas “hidden” to establish a manipulation of the population through the media. Historically the media have proven highly efficient to mold public opinion.

Thanks to the media paraphernalia and propaganda, have been created or destroyed social movements, justified wars, tempered financial crisis, spurred on some other ideological currents, and even given the phenomenon of media as producers of reality within the collective psyche.

But how to detect the most common strategies for understanding these psychosocial tools which, surely, we participate? Fortunately Chomsky has been given the task of synthesizing and expose these practices, some more obvious and more sophisticated, but apparently all equally effective and, from a certain point of view, demeaning. Encourage stupidity, promote a sense of guilt, promote distraction, or construct artificial problems and then magically, solve them, are just some of these tactics.

1 . The strategy of distraction

The primary element of social control is the strategy of distraction, which is to divert public attention from important issues and changes determined by the political and economic elites, by the technique of flood or flooding continuous distractions and insignificant information.

Distraction strategy is also essential to prevent the public interest in the essential knowledge in the area of the science, economics, psychology, neurobiology and cybernetics. “Maintaining public attention diverted away from the real social problems, captivated by matters of no real importance. Keep the public busy, busy, busy, no time to think, back to farm and other animals (quote from text Silent Weapons for Quiet War).”

2. Create problems, then offer solutions

This method is also called “problem -reactionsolution. “It creates a problem, a “situation” referred to cause some reaction in the audience, so this is the principal of the steps that you want to accept. For example: let it unfold and intensify urban violence, or arrange for bloody attacks in order that the public is the applicant’s security laws and policies to the detriment of freedom. Or: create an economic crisis to accept as a necessary evil retreat of social rights and the dismantling of public services.

3. The gradual strategy

Acceptance to an unacceptable degree, just apply it gradually, dropper, for consecutive years. That is how they radically new socioeconomic conditions ( neoliberalism) were imposed during the 1980s and 1990s: the minimal state, privatization, precariousness, flexibility, massive unemployment, wages, and do not guarantee a decent income, so many changes that have brought about a revolution if they had been applied once.

4 . The strategy of deferring

Another way to accept an unpopular decision is to present it as “painful and necessary”, gaining public acceptance, at the time for future application. It is easier to accept that a future sacrifice of immediate slaughter. First, because the effort is not used immediately. Then, because the public, masses, is always the tendency to expect naively that “everything will be better tomorrow” and that the sacrifice required may be avoided. This gives the public more time to get used to the idea of change and accept it with resignation when the time comes.

5. Go to the public as a little child

Most of the advertising to the general public uses speech, argument, people and particularly children’s intonation, often close to the weakness, as if the viewer were a little child or a mentally deficient. The harder one tries to deceive the viewer look, the more it tends to adopt a tone infantilising. Why? “If one goes to a person as if she had the age of 12 years or less, then, because of suggestion, she tends with a certain probability that a response or reaction also devoid of a critical sense as a person 12 years or younger (see Silent Weapons for Quiet War ).”

6. Use the emotional side more than the reflection

Making use of the emotional aspect is a classic technique ­for causing a short circuit on rational analysis , and finally to the critical sense of the individual. Furthermore, the use of emotional register to open the door to the unconscious for implantation or grafting ideas , desires, fears and anxieties , compulsions, or induce behaviors …

7. Keep the public in ignorance and mediocrity

Making the public incapable of understanding the technologies and methods used to control and enslavement. “The quality of education given to the lower social classes must be the poor and mediocre as possible so that the gap of ignorance it plans among the lower classes and upper classes is and remains impossible to attain for the lower classes (See ‘ Silent Weapons for Quiet War ).”

8. To encourage the public to be complacent with mediocrity

Promote the public to believe that the fact is fashionable to be stupid, vulgar and uneducated…

9. Self-blame Strengthen

To let individual blame for their misfortune, because of the failure of their intelligence, their abilities, or their efforts. So, instead of rebelling against the economic system, the individual autodesvalida and guilt, which creates a depression, one of whose effects is to inhibit its action. And, without action, there is no revolution!

10. Getting to know the individuals better than they know themselves

Over the past 50 years, advances of accelerated science has generated a growing gap between public knowledge and those owned and operated by dominant elites. Thanks to biology, neurobiology and applied psychology, the “system” has enjoyed a sophisticated understanding of human beings, both physically and psychologically. The system has gotten better acquainted with the common man more than he knows himself. This means that, in most cases, the system exerts greater control and great power over individuals, greater than that of individuals about themselves.

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