TBR News May 2, 2017

The Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C. May 2, 2017: “”There is an issue carefully hidden which will create awesome economic chaos if it ever becomes known, and accepted, by the American public. I am speaking here of the great mortgage scandal being covered up by a official front called MERS. When Countrywide Mortgage company was defrauding everyone with its humped mortgages, many banks bought what they thought were valid mortgages. They made the colossal error of mixing up millions of mortgages and stuffing them into “investment packages” like sausage meat. And then these packages were sliced thin and sold to unsuspecting investors around the globe. The result of this is that a person in America who buys a piece of property, be it a house or a business, that has MERS on the mortgage will never, ever, be able to own the property, no matter how much they have paid on it. Because of the slice-and-dice program, the actual of the mortgage can never be found. No one in Washington wants to discuss this or allow their captive press to comment on it. Then official Washington, deafened by the roaring of a swindled population, would have to address the matter and allow mortgagees a clear title if the owners of the mortgage could not be found. This would enrage the banks who would be stuck with the loss and banks will not be stuck with such losses. And so the politicians tread very lightly around the stacks of smouldering dynamite.”

Table of Contents

• Supreme Court says cities can sue big banks over housing bubble damages
• MERS
• Emmanuel Macron has taken French voters for granted. Now he risks defeat
• ‘Out of control’: Murder rate in Baltimore worst ever, Chicago paces record high
• ISIS Militant Reportedly Burned Alive in Act of Revenge by Members of Bedouin Tribe in Egypt’s Sinai
• The Folly of Wilsonism
• Turkey’s EU dream is over, for now, top official says
• Erdogan says Turkey has nothing to discuss with EU unless new accession chapters opened
• Nixon’s Revenge
• Wall Street Firm Paying Obama $400,000 Faced Internal Controversy After Pocketing Huge 9/11 Settlement

 Supreme Court says cities can sue big banks over housing bubble damages

May 1, 2017

by Robert Barnes

The Washington Post

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that federal anti-discrimination law allows cities to sue a bank over lending practices they allege led to urban blight but said they face a high standard in proving those practices directly harmed the local governments.

The ruling was a mixed one for Miami, which was at the forefront of a move by cities nationwide to sue big lending institutions under the federal Fair Housing Act.

Banks have previously been sued by individuals and taken to task by the federal government for lending practices. But these new cases are the first in which cities are the plaintiffs and are demanding that banks be held accountable for harming their communities.

A majority of the justices agreed that cities, not just individuals, can sue under the Fair Housing Act.

This court has repeatedly written that the FHA’s definition of person ‘aggrieved’ reflects a congressional intent to confer standing broadly,” Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote for himself and four other justices.

But the justices unanimously decided that a lower court had incorrectly allowed Miami’s lawsuit against Wells Fargo and Bank of America to go forward without more proof that the bank practices had directly harmed the city by, for instance, reducing the amount of property taxes it received.

Instead, cities must show “some direct relationship between the injury asserted and the injurious conduct alleged,” Breyer wrote.

The half-full, half-empty opinion seemed to reflect an effort at compromise among the eight justices who heard the case. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joined the four liberals in the majority opinion that cities could sue under the Fair Housing Act, but the justices did not describe what would constitute the direct relationship that must be shown. That hard work was left for the lower court on remand.

Miami and other cities have pursued a novel approach under the Fair Housing Act to recover what they lost as a result of lower tax revenue and greater demand for services after the housing collapse.

The banks countered that Congress never intended for the law to be used for such purposes.

“Municipal suits like this one were unheard of until recently, when enterprising contingency-fee counsel began pushing them,” Bank of America told the court in its brief. Baltimore settled a suit it had filed against banks, and there is litigation underway by Cook County, Ill., Oakland, Calif., Los Angeles and other cities.

The law allows an “aggrieved person” to file a civil action seeking damages, and the first question for the court was whether cities qualified.

Breyer said the court’s precedents show that it has interpreted the law in a broad fashion, because that is what Congress intended.

Civil rights groups pointed to the finding that cities could sue as the most important takeaway from Monday’s court decision.

“Today’s Supreme Court decision reinforces the critical role that states and cities must play in holding banks and other actors accountable for actions that continue to harm communities, particularly minority communities that have borne the brunt of the crisis,” said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

Breyer recounted the city’s argument: Predatory lending practices in minority neighborhoods led to a concentration of foreclosures. That caused stagnation and decline. “They hindered the city’s efforts to create integrated, stable neighborhoods. And, highly relevant here, they reduced property values, diminishing the city’s property tax revenue and increasing demand for municipal services,” he wrote.

But Breyer, joined by Roberts and liberal justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, said that only got the city into the courthouse.

To prevail, the city must prove the direct causal link, and they hinted it might be difficult to do that.

“The housing market is interconnected with economic and social life. A violation of the FHA may, therefore, be expected to cause ripples of harm to flow far beyond the defendant’s misconduct,” Breyer wrote. “Nothing in the statute suggests that Congress intended to provide a remedy wherever those ripples travel.”

Previously, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit said Miami only had to show that its damages were “foreseeable” by the banks to proceed to trial. The Supreme Court unanimously said that was the wrong standard.

Robert S. Peck of the Center for Constitutional Litigation, which represented Miami, said the city is ready to prove the banks’ action directly led to the city’s problems. “We’re capable of doing it,” he said.

But Wells Fargo and Bank of America said the new standards will be hard to meet. The city’s charges “are without merit,” said Bank of America’s spokesman Lawrence Grayson.

The three dissenting justices also said Miami could not prove its case.

Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and Samuel A. Alito Jr. signed on to Justice Clarence Thomas’s dissenting opinion that Miami should not be able to bring suit under the Fair Housing Act. Even if it could, he wrote, the city’s injuries are “exceedingly attenuated.”

Thomas noted that the “chain of causation” in Miami occurred between 2004 and 2012. “The court of appeals will not need to look far to discern other, independent events that might well have caused the injuries Miami alleges,” Thomas wrote.

The case was argued before Justice Neil M. Gorsuch joined the court, and he took no part in the decision.

The case is Bank of America v. Miami.

MERS

Mortgage Electronic Registration System

The Myth Exposed

The first time I heard the term “MERS” was in April 2003. Not one person I have asked since knows what it is even though a few people acknowledge hearing the term before. “MERS” is short for Mortgage Electronic Registration System. It has quickly become the single most threatening thing to Homeland Security along with the 9th Circuit Courts in the United States. Why? Simple, both MERS and the 9th Circuit Courts are being manipulated and used to commit fraud. Unfortunately, the uninformed public will be left to bear the burden if the insanity doesn’t end soon. In the case of MERS, when JQ public borrows money to buy a home, the lender takes a second loan for the exact same amount as well. Since the lender is generally a bank, as long as they can balance the collateral against their outstanding loan obligations, they take as much as they want. Effectively, doubling the consumer debt by 100% for each real estate transaction made in the United States today. The purchase contracts are written up on VPN contracts (Virtual Private Network) agreements, which look like a normal escrow form with VPN on the bottom left hand corner of each page. What the hell am I taking about? MERS………… Lets start at the beginning.

*Excerpt from CTA Federal Legislative and Regulatory Committee White Paper written by James E. Cornwall, Chairman (in italics)

In 1993, a “Whole Loan Book Entry White Paper” was published jointly by the Mortgage Bankers Association of America, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Ginnie Mae. The paper outlined a concept for a national registry system for tracking mortgage loans. The original concept is now a reality and is known as MERS (Mortgage Electronic Registration System).

CTA’s involvement in MERS began in 1994 when they began monitoring various news releases concerning the subject of electronic loan registration. In November 1995, CTA hosted a MERS meeting, which was attended by approximately twenty-five of our members and featured Dr. Leilani Allen of Tenex Consulting, representing MERS.

WHAT IS MERS?

MERS is an industry-owned electronic registry and clearinghouse that revolutionizes the way the mortgage market works by eliminating paper, and cutting the cost of the mortgage process. A loan registered with MERS will receive a permanent 18-digit mortgage identification number (MIN) as early as loan application. The MIN will be a loan’s identifier throughout the life of the loan, even if ownership or servicing rights are transferred. Currently, a lender records the mortgage or deed of trust with the County Recorder and this step will remain the same. In addition, an assignment will be recorded with the County Recorder reflecting MERS as the mortgagee of record. The MERS database will reflect the name of the actual owner of the loan.

TECHNOLOGY PARTNER

In April 1996, MERS selected EDS of Plano, Texas as its official information technology partner to develop the systems needed to make MERS work. MERS also held its inaugural meeting of the MERS Advisory Council in April 1996. The Council is made up of representatives from the broader real estate finance industry that is not directly engaged in originating, funding or servicing mortgage loan. (CTA is a member of the Advisory Council)

MERS TODAY

On April 28th, MERS production software was delivered to its first users, Norwest Mortgage, Inc. and Allied Group Mortgage Company. Both companies were the first companies to register mortgages electronically with MERS, Paul Mullings, Chief Executive Officer of MERS, said “MERS represents the culmination of a dream that those of us in the mortgage industry have long had, and that is to transform our business through the cooperative application of advanced business process and technologies. Many have been skeptical about our chances of bringing the entire industry together to create something that would be beneficial to all parties involved.

To date, more than 130 entities, including mortgage companies, data processing companies and trustees have signed on to become part or MERS. Several CTA members, including First American Title Company, Stewart Title Company, Cal-Western Reconveyance Corporation and T.D. Service Financial Corporation are listed as MERS members.

I’m not sure if this “White Paper” is accurate or not. I found it on the Internet during my research of MERS. Assuming it is accurate, than why hasn’t anyone heard about MERS? According to their website, MERS recently celebrated its 20 million recording. Twenty million real estate loans recorded and no one’s ever heard of it. I will tell you what it is. It’s white-collar crime. It is greed orchestrated through the use of technology unregulated and gone wild. It’s E-commerce controlled by imposters of our Federal and Local Governments in Cyber World. Every day of the business week, five thousand plus recordings are recorded with the County Recorder of Clark County, Nevada. This is the average per day, 5,000 recordings. That’s 25,000 per week, 100,000 per month, 1,300,000 per year. How is that possible? Its only possible if 50% of the recordings are fraudulent, and they are. Clark County is the center of the e-recording world where fraudulent transactions are recorded to offset the transactions taking place in Cyber Space. MERS is a major factor in these recordings. Still, no one knows what MERS is. Or do they? The only people that know about MERS are the insiders using it for ill-gotten gain. It is nothing more than a database of mortgage loans that are kept track of nationally in one place and are still recorded in the County where the property exists.

*According to the “MERS Quality Assurance Procedures Manual, Version 2.0 November 17, 2003: (in italics)

Legal title to the mortgage lien or the lien of other security agreements must be vested in the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc.; a Delaware stock corporation with its principal offices at 1595 Spring Hill Road, Suite 310, Vienna, VA 22182.

The loans are vested in MERS recorded in the MERS database but not on the recordings in the County where the property exists. MERS is supposed to be the beneficiary on the note and not the lender. In my case, MERS is not listed anywhere on the title or note but apparently are listed as beneficiary on the MERS database for my properties. This double recording creates the opportunity for fraud. By changing the beneficiary on the MERS recording, they are essentially creating another record for the same loan. This enables them to issue two loans, one for the borrower and one for the lender. The second loan is collaterized by the same property as the first loan. Since the beneficiary is listed as the lender on the recordings made in the local County where the property exists, the borrower sees the lender or trustee listed as the beneficiary and has no reason to question the recording. At the same time, the mortgage is recorded on MERS with MERS as the beneficiary essentially creating two recordings for the same property. The MERS recording is used to keep up with the cross-collaterization that has just happened. Another place to track the double recordings is at www.knowx.com This is owned by Choice Point in Atlanta, GA. Know X is a national public records database open to the public. It is a fee based search engine and is used extensively by law firms and credit managers in the United States. The MERS recording comes up as a (trustee deed forclosure) on record with knowx if you have a loan that is recorded with MERS and with the county recorder. Essentially, it keeps track of the fraud. If you have a loan listed on knowx.com with (trustee deed forclosure) beside it, the property has been double-mortgaged. The second loan, which the consumer doesn’t know about, is a mirror loan. It will be exactly the same amount, issued the same date, etc. etc. as the originating transaction. This is done so that if there is a cross up and the consumer somehow gets a statement or invoice for the second loan, it appears to be information concerning the first loan. If the second loan is the same amount, same interest rate, issued the same day, then the amortization schedule will be exactly the same. This makes the second loan basically undetectable.

*Excerpts from MERS Commercial quality Assurance Procedures Manual Version 2.0 November 17, 2003

Obligations and Reliances:

Section 6.1: RELATIONSHIP OF BORROWER, MERS AND LENDER.

The relationship between Borrower and Lender is solely that of debtor and creditor. The relationship between Borrower and MERS is solely that of mortgagor and mortgagee. Neither the Lender nor MERS has any fiduciary or other special relationship with Borrower, and no term or condition of any of the Note, this Security Instrument and the Other Security Documents shall be construed so as to deem the relationship between Borrower and MERS to be other than that of debtor and creditor, and the relationship between Borrower and MERS to be other than that of mortgagor and mortgagee. The grants, assignments and transfers to MERS made in Article I are for the benefit of the Lender and its successors and assigns. Borrower understands and agrees that MERS holds only legal title to the interests granted, assigned and transferred by Borrower in the his Mortgage and Security Agreement, but if necessary to comply with law or custom, MERS (for the benefit of the Lender and its successors and assigns) has the right to exercise any or all of those interests, including without limitation, the right to foreclose and sell the Property, and take any action required of Lender, including without limitation, a release, discharge or reconveyance of this Mortgage and Security Agreement.

In the event of a sale, by foreclosure, power of sale, or otherwise, Lender, or MERS on behalf of Lender, may bid for and acquire the Property and, in lieu of paying c ash therefore, may make settlement for the purchase price by crediting against the Obligations the amount of the bid made therefore, after deducting therefore the expenses of the sale, the cost of any enforcement proceeding hereunder and any other sums which Lender, or MERS on behalf of Lender, is authorized to deduct under the terms thereof, to the extent necessary to satisfy such bid. Notwithstanding the provisions of this Section 11.1 to the contrary, if any Event of Default as described in the clause (i) or (ii) of Subsection 10.1 (g) shall occur, the entire unpaid Debt shall be automatically due and payable, without any further notice, demand or other action by Lender, or MERS on behalf of the Lender.

Section 11.2 Application of Proceeds:

The purchase money, proceeds and avails of any disposition of the Property, or any par thereof, or any other sums collected by Lender, or MERS on behalf of Lender, pursuant to the Note, this Security Instrument or the Other Security Documents, may be applied by Lender to the payment of the Debt in such priority and proportions as Lender in its discretion shall deem proper. Upon any foreclosure sale or sales of all or any portion of the Property under the empower of sale herein granted (if any), Lender, or MERS on behalf of Lender, may bid for and purchase the property and shall be entitled to apply all or any part of the Debt as a credit to the purchase price.

This must be illegal. If a borrower defaults on his mortgage, the property goes into foreclosure and a non-judicial foreclosure sale takes place. This sale is supposed to be open to the public. The sale price is determined by high bid and once the bid is accepted, all encumbrances on the property including liens, mortgages, etc. are all wiped clean and clear title is presented to the highest bidder. If the Lender or agent of the lender is allowed to bid on the property and add the outstanding debt owed by the borrower as a credit to the purchase price, the lender is going to be the highest bidder every time. Basically, none of the money bid for the property goes towards satisfying the borrowers debt with the lender since the outstanding debt owed is factored in the bid by the lender. This effectively eliminates most or all-potential bidders from outbidding the lender since the lender is using the debt owed as part of the bid price. This must be illegal. Any vehicle such as this that makes foreclosure a more lucrative situation for the lender than actually servicing the loan as originally intended promotes fraud by design.

Problems:

• EDS was given the contract in April 1996, to create the software used for MERS. According to my research, (Exhibit ) All but 3 EDS companies located @ 5400 Legacy Drive, Plano Texas are foreign entities. I would be surprised if the Federal Government through Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac would award the software development contract to a non-US foreign entity. Where is official government endorsement of the MERS system? Nowhere to be found!
• MERS is an industry owned entity.

What Industry? The Real Estate industry? If there is no clear ownership defined and the industry as a whole owns the system, who is responsible for the monitoring the system for accuracy and possible fraudulent recordings? The only way a national registry database makes since is if the federal government is in control of MERS and to my knowledge, they are not.

Who Owns MERS?

The main reason stated as the benefit of MERS is that the recordings will be cheaper. If the property still records in the County where the property is located, and another recording is required in the MERS database as well, how could it save anybody any money? There are now two recordings required instead of one. How can two recordings cost less than only one?

I don’t believe that Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac or any other real government agency approved or endorsed MERS and agreed to include government subsidized loans in this registry. I believe the Fannie Mae referred to in the MERS documents is an imposter. “In the name of” Fannie Mae is whom these people are, not the Fannie Mae which is a division of Housing and Urban Development, an agency of the United States Government Where’s the proof?

Why is www.knowx.com listing thousands of trustee deed forclosures on properties where no foreclosures have take place? These foreclosures are not recorded in the county records where the property is located. Show me proof of these foreclosures and identify the new owners of these properties.

Sixty Million loans recorded to date with MERS and no one knows who they are. Who is MERS and why can’t anybody answer that question? Does MERS own our properties?

MERS Quality Assurance Procedures Manual contains language and instructions for handling mortgages that is against State and Federal Consumer Protection laws.

MERS is part of the Enron debacle. It represents the awards taken through the bankruptcies as unsecured debt. It represents recorded documents that generate the instruments to steal with. Essentially, they are borrowing from the past, debt registered owing in the future, collect the Money today.

Many major financial houses including Wells Fargo are included on the MERS memberships list (See Attached)

MERS is the master database tracking recordings that are offset for stolen loan funds.

MERS is recorded on loan documents that have VPN in the bottom left corner.

VPN stands for Virtual Private Network

MERS members are all committing fraud if they record the lender as the beneficiary on the county recorders office and MERS as the beneficiary on the MERS recording.

Emmanuel Macron has taken French voters for granted. Now he risks defeat

In theory Macron should beat Marine Le Pen hands down. But he has little commitment from the electorate

May 1, 2017

by Olivier Tonneau

The Guardian

I had lunch in a Parisian cafe recently with a journalist who had spent the whole French presidential campaign vilifying the leftwing candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon and trumpeting the merits of the centrist Emmanuel Macron in the columns of a respected (if declining) centre-left weekly.

I asked him if had there been a deliberate effort among intellectuals and mainstream politicians to engineer a run-off between Macron and the far-right Marine Le Pen in the second round of the presidential election. “Why, of course,” he laughed. “We’ve been at it for a year.” Considering how obvious the strategy had been, I cannot claim to have revealed much of a secret. Still, it’s nice to know I was not being paranoid.

We finished our lunch, the journalist commenting on every passing woman with the old-fashioned sexism characteristic of the French ruling class, while I reflected on the astonishing irresponsibility of the strategy. It may have seemed like a good idea: pitting Macron against the Front National leader was the surest way to ensure the former’s victory. Yet the tactic could be about to backfire, with terrifying consequences.

The rise of Macron is characteristic of the age of spin doctors: it illustrates both their power and their limits. It is truly astonishing that the man who inspired (as personal secretary) and implemented (as finance minister) the policies of President François Hollande could be branded as something radically new.

To achieve this feat, spin doctors resorted to celebrity-building in ways previously unknown in French political life. Macron was new because he was young and handsome, and because he had never been elected before. He appeared repeatedly on the front pages of Paris Match with his wife, whose name is chanted by his supporters at his rallies. In the final weeks of the campaign Macron was so careful not to expose the true nature of his programme (which amounts to little more than the unpopular liberalism-cum-austerity implemented by Hollande) that his speeches degenerated into vacuous exercises in cliche and tautology.

The strategy worked up to a point: he qualified for the second round. Yet its limits are also clear.

Last spring, France saw nationwide protests against the labour laws that Macron had largely designed. The opposition was not only to their content, but also to the manner in which they were passed: the government bypassed a parliamentary vote. During these demonstrations police used high levels of violence, yet Macron never uttered a word to calm things down. He has already announced that he would resort to governing by decree if needed, and it is easy to anticipate increased social tensions by the autumn. To those who would oppose him, Macron would answer that he is implementing the programme on which he was elected.

Theoretically, Macron should defeat Le Pen hands down. The problem is that the meaning of such a result would be unclear: how many would have voted for him, and how many against her? Because it is impossible to answer this question, it would be impossible for Macron to take a hard line against social protests on the grounds that the election validated his programme.

Of the four frontrunners in the first round, Macron had the fewest “conviction” voters. According to a poll, fewer than half of those who voted for him did so because they believed his programme would change life for the better. Thus he needs to get his validation in the second-round count, and hence cannot do what Jacques Chirac did when facing Jean-Marie Le Pen in the 2002 run-off: Chirac immediately made clear that he would not interpret votes in his name as expressions of support.

Macron has done the opposite: he boldly stated that he only wanted votes based on genuine commitment. In so doing, he has run a major risk: he has dared people who oppose him (and there are many) to abstain. An astonishing proportion of voters seem ready to call his bluff. The situation has become so alarming that a Le Pen victory is becoming less implausible every day.

Journalists are now rushing to the rescue, desperately admonishing the French: they must stop Le Pen from coming to power. But the calls may be falling on deaf ears. It is not difficult to understand why. A few weeks before the election, something important happened that was largely unnoticed: an opinion poll showed that the main concern of the people was neither unemployment nor immigration, but the reform of state institutions (institutional issues are rarely brought up in polls). There is a deep resentment towards a state they perceive as oppressive, corrupt and violent.

Mélenchon achieved his impressive first-round result because he campaigned on the promise of a radical reform of the state. He was thus able to bring back to politics people who had abstained for years, and also to claw back Le Pen voters. (He cut her lead over him from seven percentage points in 2012 to less than two this year). These voters are not interested in the comparative merits of a Le Pen or a Macron government; their anger is directed at the “deep state” (police, justice, administration). They are even less inclined to vote Macron, because they know – everyone knows – that the second round was deliberately staged. They feel they were set up, and abstention seems to them a dignified act.

Macron has just days to take stock of their anger and adopt the only strategy that can secure his victory against Le Pen: showing humility, and reducing the severity of his programme. The only problem is that he might not be aware how serious the situation is. There is a certain Dangerous Liaisons charm about the microcosm of journalists, intellectuals and politicians who shape (or think they shape) the political destiny of France. According to my lunch companion, Macron has infinite confidence in his charisma and is blissfully unaware of the threat.

Why, then, take the risk of allowing an individual such as Le Pen a path to power, I asked. I received no answer – another woman had caught his attention. France, no doubt, is in good hands.

‘Out of control’: Murder rate in Baltimore worst ever, Chicago paces record high

May 2, 2017

RT

New crime numbers show the murder rate in Chicago is keeping up with the record set in 2016, while homicides in Baltimore have reached such alarming levels that the mayor is getting federal assistance and requesting more support from the FBI.

For the first time in nearly 20 years, the city of Baltimore, Maryland, has experienced more than 100 murders before the end of April. After five people were killed last weekend, the total number of homicides in 2017 ticked up to 108, according to the Baltimore Sun. The last time the city experienced more murders by this point was 1993.

Since the population was greater in 1993, this year marks the city’s highest murder rate per capita ever, according to the Baltimore Sun. The murder rate in the city is up more than 30 percent compared to last year. Violent crime, shootings and robberies have also gone up by double-digit percentages from last year.

At last week’s news briefing, Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh explained how she went to the FBI’s Baltimore office to meet with the special agent in charge and requested assistance in bringing down the murder rate in the city.

“Murder is out of control,” Pugh said at her weekly news briefing Wednesday, according to CNN. “There are too many guns on the streets. We’re looking for all the help we can get.”

In addition, the city is operating with the lowest number of police officers in around a decade. While the city never had less than 2,900 officers on the force throughout the 2000s, there are only 2,500 officers today. The city has been paying $1 million a month in overtime to make up for the difference.

“You get in a crisis mode like we’re in right now with crime out of control and not enough uniformed officers on the street,” Lt. Gene Ryan, president of the Fraternal Order of Police, told WJZ. “I would say it’s at a crisis point.”

Pugh requested additional agents to help fight violent crime in the city, according to the mayor’s spokesman, Anthony McCarthy. He said that could either mean bringing in additional FBI agents or reassigning agents to work with local police. Pugh is also asking the FBI to share its latest crime fighting technologies with the Baltimore Police.

On Tuesday, the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said it plans to assist the Baltimore Police with a gun-tracing van to help solve gun crimes quicker.

“The summers in Baltimore tend to be very violent,” McCarthy said, according to KSAT. “And the mayor wants to get a handle on all the murders, the flood of guns on the streets and the gang activity.”

McCarthy said that Pugh hopes to make an announcement about adding federal officers to the force by next week.

In Chicago, Illinois, more than 1,000 people have been shot and nearly 200 homicides have been reported in the first four months of 2017. As of Monday morning, there were 193 homicides reported, which is 18 more than the 175 reported last year. Last year was the most violent in Chicago for the past 20 years.

In April 2016, there were 36 reported murders compared to 45 this year, an increase of 9 homicides. There were a total of 247 shooting incidents this April, only six shy of the 253 reported in April 2016.

While homicide rates in the city have remained high, Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said that the overall number of people shot has gone down from 1,129 last year to 1,051 so far this year.

“The shooting incidents are down a little bit over 100 from the same time last year, so that’s some encouraging sign. The number of shooting victims is actually down, so if we can keep trending in that direction, then we should be setting ourselves up for a pretty good year,” Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said, according to WBBM.

Johnson hopes the decline in the number of people shot will lead to fewer homicides over the course of the year. He said the new crime tip website and “ShotSpotter” gunshot technology that has been installed in the most violent areas in the city have made a difference.

“We put those new strategic support centers in both of those districts, so a lot of that technology is helping us be more proactive in the way that we deploy,” Johnson said.

ISIS Militant Reportedly Burned Alive in Act of Revenge by Members of Bedouin Tribe in Egypt’s Sinai

The attack was reportedly caught on camera, along with a threat to other ISIS members that they would suffer the same fate

May 1, 2017

Haaretz

Members of the Tarabin Bedouin tribe in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula set an ISIS militant on fire and called on other tribes in the area to join them in their fight against the extremist group, Al Arabiya reported on Friday.

According to the report, the attack was caught on camera, along with a warning to other ISIS members that they would suffer the same fate in retaliation for a threat made by the group to conspire with the army and police against the tribe.

One of the tribe’s members was cited by Al Arabiya as saying that the man they had burned was a top ISIS figure who had set alight and killed three people and a police officer.

In a statement released on Thursday, the tribe said it would combat ISIS “bravely and courageously, as the sons of the tribe do not fear battles,” the report said.

“It is time to get together to face ISIS, which did not have mercy on the elderly or young, and filled the earth with corruption and destruction,” the statement reportedly said, in a call on other tribes in the area to join the fight.

The northern region of Sinai, bordering the Gaza Strip and Israel, has been a battleground between the Egyptian military and Islamic militants since 2011, when the region sank into lawlessness during the 18-day uprising that led to the ouster of longtime autocratic Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

The Folly of Wilsonism

April 26, 2017

by The Editors

The American Conservative

In the midst of the commotion generated by the U.S. missile strikes against Syria’s Al Shayrat air base on April 6, Rex Tillerson’s statement at Sant’Anna di Stazzema, Italy, received less attention than it deserved. Visiting a memorial to victims of Nazi brutality in World War II, the secretary of state declared: “We rededicate ourselves to holding to account any and all who commit crimes against the innocents anywhere in the world.”

Americans should pause to consider the breathtaking sweep of this statement—particularly in light of President Trump’s missile attacks, launched in response to a chemical-weapons assault attributed to Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad. Tillerson apparently wants the United States to respond anytime noncombatants get targeted anywhere in the world by armies or governments engaged in war.

Not even Woodrow Wilson ever uttered a statement so Wilsonian in tone and breadth. The essence of Wilsonism stems from the 28th president’s discomfort with American overseas actions conducted in behalf of U.S. interests. But humanitarian interests—now that was a crusade worthy of his countrymen. Even before he took America into World War I, as he sought to put himself forward as an interlocutor for peace among the European belligerents, he made clear in sweeping language that he spoke for a moral authority far higher than mere nationalism. “I hope and believe,” he declared, “that I am in effect speaking for liberals and friends of humanity in every nation … I would fain believe that I am speaking for the silent mass of mankind everywhere.”

Later, as war president, he boasted that U.S. national interests hadn’t entered his thinking. “What we demand in this war,” he said, “is nothing peculiar to ourselves. It is that the world be made fit and safe to live in. … All the peoples of the world are in effect partners in this interest.”

This gauzy humanitarianism was dangerous then, and it is dangerous now. When you include all the peoples of the world in your global project, you end up with an unmanageable foreign-policy remit with no end in sight. The world is a brutal place, full of senseless, horrific killing in multiple locations at all times. Despite Tillerson’s tall talk about protecting innocents everywhere, it isn’t possible.

And when have we ever seen leaders of other countries bend to such frothy admonitions, even when backed up by the threat of military might? They take their guidance from fundamental geopolitical realities and how those realities impinge upon their basic national interests. Consider George W. Bush’s idealistic goal of transforming Iraq into a model democracy and hence into a beacon for other Mideast nations. How has that worked out?

This magazine has been warning since its inception about the Wilsonian ethos and impulse. It isn’t that we don’t care about the sufferings of humanity around the globe. Nor do we think humanitarianism has no place in foreign-policy considerations. But the humanitarian project, as a global policy, holds no reasonable prospect of success. More likely it will draw the country into folly and tragedy. Governments weren’t instituted for such purposes; they exist for the protection and wellbeing of their citizens.

Tillerson should ask himself: who among his countrymen should die in behalf of his wispy notion of helping innocents throughout the world? It’s a fitting question because we know that Americans nearly always die when such projects unfold (Somalia, Iraq, Libya, Yemen).

Donald Trump campaigned on a slogan of “America First.” His America First nationalism can’t mesh with Tillerson’s extreme Wilsonian internationalism. The president will have to choose. The country and the world are waiting.

Turkey’s EU dream is over, for now, top official says

May 2, 2017

by Robin Emmott

Reuters

VALLETTA-Turkey under President Tayyip Erdogan has turned its back on joining the European Union, at least for now, the bloc’s top official dealing with Ankara said, offering economic cooperation instead if both sides can restore friendly ties.

After years of stalemate on Turkey’s bid to join the world’s biggest trading bloc, EU governments say the process is dead, citing Erdogan’s crackdown on dissidents, his ‘Nazi’ jibes at Germany and a referendum giving him sweeping new powers that a rights group says lack checks and balances.

“Everybody’s clear that, currently at least, Turkey is moving away from a European perspective,” European Commissioner Johannes Hahn, who oversees EU membership bids, told Reuters.

“The focus of our relationship has to be something else,” he said in an interview after EU foreign ministers met in Malta and where France and Germany led efforts to consider a new deal with Ankara based on trade and security ties.

“We have to see what could be done in the future, to see if we can restart some kind of cooperation,” Hahn said on Saturday, saying that he had not had meetings on the economy with NATO-member Turkey since January last year, normally a fixture of accession talks.

The EU process is not formally frozen, but EU lawmakers called last week for a formal halt to talks, with some saying Turkey no longer met the democratic criteria to be considered a candidate, let alone a full member, for the EU.

Erdogan told Reuters in an interview last week that Turkey would not wait at Europe’s door forever and would walk away from accession talks if what he said was rising Islamophobia and hostility from some member states persist.

Launched in 2005 after decades of seeking the formal start of an EU membership bid, negotiations dovetailed with Erdogan’s first economic reforms in power as prime minister from 2003.

EU officials say Turkish reforms to enter the EU brought stability and attracted foreign investment, making Turkey an important emerging economy with high-speed trains crossing the strategically-located country bridging Europe and Asia.

That economic success remains part of Erdogan’s popularity with the pious Turkish poor, who saw living standards rise, although Hahn noted the worsening state of Turkey’s economy now.

The European Union is Turkey’s biggest foreign investor and biggest trading partner, while Turkey shares a border with Iraq, Syria and with Russia in the Black Sea.

WHO’S TO BLAME?

Hahn said he would present a report by early next year to EU governments to clarify Turkey’s status. The lack of urgency shows the reluctance of EU states to upset Ankara, given that they rely on Turkey to keep migrants from coming to Europe, diplomats said.

But Hahn said that limits on with press freedoms, mass jailing and shrinking civil rights made it almost impossible at the present time for Turkey to meet EU joining criteria.

Hahn said EU rules “were not negotiable” and the bloc would not “decouple the human rights situation” from discussions.

“There is no version of Turkish democracy. There is only democracy. Turkish people have the same rights to live in freedom as Europeans do,” said Hahn, whose delegation in Turkey has visited dissidents in prison.

A slim majority of 51.4 percent of Turkish voters voted in April to grant the president sweeping new powers, the biggest overhaul of the country’s politics since the founding of the modern republic, amid opposition accusations of vote fraud.

Asked if the European Union was partly responsible for Turkey’s turn towards a more centralized system, Hahn said the drive to change had come from inside the country.

“Nobody can claim to be blameless, but it is always the sovereign decision of a country (to decide policy) … If you have a certain vision in mind, it is difficult to intervene in a meaningful way,” Hahn said.

“All these reform efforts are not done for the European Union but for the sake of (Turkish) citizens,” Hahn said, referring to the process that helped transform former communist countries in central and eastern Europe into thriving market democracies as they sought to join the European Union.

“This is not about serving the Europeans,” he said.

(Reporting by Robin Emmott; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

 

Erdogan says Turkey has nothing to discuss with EU unless new accession chapters opened

May 2, 2017

Reuters

President Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday the European Union must open new chapters in Turkey’s accession process, otherwise Ankara had nothing to discuss with the bloc and would say “goodbye”.

His comments came after European Commissioner Johannes Hahn, who oversees EU membership bids, told Reuters Turkey under Erdogan had turned its back on joining the bloc.

“From now on there is no option other than opening the chapters you have not yet opened. If you do not open (them), goodbye,” Erdogan said at a ceremony to mark his return to the ruling AK Party.

(Reporting by Ercan Gurses and Ece Toksabay; Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Tuvan Gumrukcu)

Nixon’s Revenge

May 2, 2017

by Patrick J. Buchanan

The American Cnservative

Saturday’s White House Correspondents Association dinner exposed anew how far from Middle America our elite media reside.

At the dinner, the electricity was gone, the glamour and glitz were gone. Neither the president nor his White House staff came. Even Press Secretary Sean Spicer begged off.

The idea of a convivial evening together of our media and political establishments is probably dead for the duration of the Trump presidency.

Until Jan. 20, 2021, it appears, we are an us-vs.-them country.

As for the Washington Hilton’s version of Hollywood’s red carpet, C-SPAN elected to cover instead Trump’s rollicking rally in a distant and different capital, Harrisburg, Pa.

Before thousands of those Middle Pennsylvanians Barack Obama dismissed as clinging to their Bibles, bigotries, and guns, Donald Trump, to cheers, hoots, and happy howls, mocked the media he had stiffed:

“A large group of Hollywood actors and Washington media are consoling each other in a hotel ballroom. … I could not possibly be more thrilled than to be more than 100 miles away from Washington’s swamp … with a much, much larger crowd and much better people.”

Back at the Hilton, all pretense at press neutrality was gone. Said WHCA president Jeff Mason in scripted remarks: “We are not fake news. We are not failing news organizations. We are not the enemy of the American people.”

A standing ovation followed. The First Amendment guarantee of freedom of the press was repeatedly invoked and defiantly applauded, as though the president were a clear and present danger to it.

For behaving like a Bernie Sanders rally, the national press confirmed Steve Bannon’s insight—they are the real “opposition party.”

And so the war between an adversary press and a president it despises and is determined to take down is re-engaged.

As related in my book Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever, out May 9, that war first broke out in November of 1969.

With the media establishment of that day cheering on the anti-war protests designed to break his presidency, President Nixon sought to rally the nation behind him with his “Silent Majority” speech.

His prime-time address was a smashing success—70 percent of the country backed Nixon. But the post-speech TV analysis trashed him.

Nixon was livid. Two-thirds of the nation depended on the three networks as their primary source of national and world news. ABC, CBS, and NBC not only controlled Nixon’s access to the American people but were the filter, the lens, through which the country would see him and his presidency for four years. And all three were full of Nixon-haters.

Nixon approved a counterattack on the networks by Vice President Spiro Agnew. And as he finished his edits of the Agnew speech, Nixon muttered, “This’ll tear the scab off those bastards!”

It certainly did.

Amazingly, the networks had rushed to carry the speech live, giving Agnew an audience of scores of millions for his blistering indictment of the networks’ anti-Nixon bias and abuse of their power over U.S. public opinion.

By December 1969, Nixon, the president most reviled by the press before Trump, was at 68 percent approval, and Agnew was the third-most admired man in America, after Nixon and Billy Graham.

Nixon went on to roll up a 49-state landslide three years later.

Before Watergate brought him down, he had shown that the vaunted “adversary press” was not only isolated from Middle America, it could be routed by a resolute White House in the battle for public opinion.

So where is this Trump-media war headed?

As of today, it looks as though it could end like the European wars of the last century, where victorious Brits and French were bled as badly and brought as low as defeated Germans.

Whatever happens to Trump, the respect and regard the mainstream media once enjoyed are gone. Public opinion of the national press puts them down beside the politicians they cover—and for good reason.

The people have concluded that the media really belong to the political class and merely masquerade as objective and conscientious observers. Like everyone else, they, too, have ideologies and agendas.

Moreover, unlike in the Nixon era, the adversary press today has its own adversary press: Fox News, talk radio, and media-monitoring websites to challenge their character, veracity, competence, and honor, even as they challenge the truthfulness of politicians.

Trump is being hammered as no other president before him, except perhaps Nixon during Watergate. It is hard to reach any other conclusion than that the mainstream media loathe him and intend to oust him, as they relished in helping to oust Nixon.

If this war ends well for Trump, it ends badly for his enemies in the press. If Trump goes down, the media will feel for a long time the hostility and hatred of those tens of millions who put their faith and placed their hopes in Trump.

For the mainstream media, seeking to recover the lost confidence of its countrymen, this war looks like a lose-lose.

 Wall Street Firm Paying Obama $400,000 Faced Internal Controversy After Pocketing Huge 9/11 Settlement

April 27 2017

by Jon Schwarz

The Intercept

Barack Obama will deliver a speech this September at a swanky healthcare conference for investors run by Cantor Fitzgerald. As Fox Business News first reported on Monday, the firm is paying him $400,000.

The ensuing criticism of Obama for cashing in on his presidency has been thunderous – but has overlooked exactly whose money he is taking.

Cantor Fitzgerald, a major Wall Street brokerage house, lost 658 of its 960 employees when the World Trade Center was destroyed in the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. But when it settled a long-running lawsuit against American Airlines for $135 million in 2013, the proceeds didn’t go to the families of the dead.

At the time of the settlement, Cantor’s CEO Howard Lutnick issued a statement: “For the insurance companies, this was just another case, just another settlement, but not for us. We could never, and will never, consider it ordinary. For us, there is no way to describe this compromise with inapt words like ordinary, fair or reasonable.”

But Lutnick and his fellow Cantor partners reportedly kept some of the money for the firm and distributed the rest to themselves, in proportion to their ownership stake. Lutnick, the firm’s biggest partner, may have received as much as $25 million.

And according to Liz O’Brien and Marilyn Rocha-Carmo, widows of two of the Cantor employees killed on 9/11, the firm never informed them of the settlement — nor even that the company had filed the lawsuit in the first place.

Rocha-Carmo, whose husband Antonio was a Cantor bond trader, sounded noticeably taken aback when told of the firm’s actions. “It is a little shocking,” she said, because Lutnick “always made it sound like he was always going to take care of us, and was doing everything in our best interest, and now learning about this doesn’t feel like that anymore.” Rocha-Carmo added that she is in touch with other Cantor victim families via social media, and they do not appear to be aware of the American Airlines settlement.

Cantor declined to comment about the lawsuit’s outcome. Because Cantor is a partnership, little about its finances is publicly available.

Obama’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the settlement.

In a statement released on Wednesday, Obama senior adviser Eric Schultz wrote, “As we announced months ago, President Obama will deliver speeches from time to time. Some of those speeches will be paid, some will be unpaid, and regardless of venue or sponsor, President Obama will be true to his values, his vision and his record.” Schultz also said Obama accepted the invitation “because, as a president who successfully passed health insurance reform, it’s an issue of great importance to him.”

Cantor Fitzgerald, a powerful force in the trading of Treasury securities, suffered extraordinary devastation on 9/11, more than any other business or organization in New York.

The firm’s New York offices were located on floors 101-105 of One World Trade Center. When American Airlines Flight 11 struck the tower between floors 93 and 99 at 8:48 a.m., everyone in the building above that point was trapped with no means of escape. None of the Cantor employees then in its offices survived. According to USA Today, many of those who jumped to their deaths on 9/11 came from the Cantor Fitzgerald floors.

Lutnick himself was not yet at work because he was taking his son to the first day of kindergarten. However, Lutnick’s brother Gary, who also worked at Cantor, was already at his desk and was killed.

Lutnick was initially excoriated when he cut off the paychecks of the 658 missing Cantor employees within days of September 11, even before they were confirmed to be dead.

But he and the firm soon pledged to donate one-quarter of the firm’s profits over the next five years to the families of Cantor’s lost employees and pay for the families’ health insurance for 10 years. Cantor made good on this promise, distributing over $180 million, an average of about $275,000 per Cantor victim.

For years after 9/11, Lutnick received glowing praise from the media for this generosity. When the New York Post asked him on the 10th anniversary of the attacks whether he considered himself a hero, Lutnick said “I’ve never been asked that before” but that he’d prefer to be called “a friend of the families.”

Appearing on CNBC, Lutnick said that “We rebuilt the company in order to help the families. That was the most important thing to me. If you’d asked me a couple years after 9/11, ‘What matters to you?’ I’d say ‘the number.’ ‘What do you mean, the number?’ ‘How much money we’re going to give the families.’”

In late 2014, almost a year after the American Airlines settlement, Fox Business News published an article reporting that Cantor Fitzgerald was keeping the $135 million – about three-fourths of the money it donated to the firm’s 9/11 families.

According to the story’s author, Charlie Gasparino – who also first reported that Obama would be giving the Cantor Fitzgerald speech – some executives at Cantor were “steaming mad” at Lutnick for the decision.

“Speculation in the firm,” Gasparino wrote, “suggests Lutnick took anywhere from $15 million to $25 million from the settlement.”

Cantor had accused American of negligence and sought damages of about a billion dollars for business interruption largely due to the deaths of its “exceptionally talented and liberally compensated” workers, plus harm to its brand identity and destruction of its property and technological infrastructure. The judge overseeing the case eventually ruled that Cantor could only seek business interruption damages caused by the actual physical destruction of its offices rather than the offices’ inhabitants.

A Cantor spokesperson told Fox that “All of the money for the business interruption recovery relating to the American Airlines case went either to strengthen and support the overall business, or to the over 600 Cantor Partners, precisely proportionate with the exact stake in the company, Mr. Lutnick included.” As of 2001, Lutnick reportedly owned one-third of Cantor.

In addition to donations from the firm itself, almost all of the Cantor 9/11 families received payments from the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, which was funded by Congress. The median award was $1.7 million. To receive money from the fund, families were required to agree not to sue the airlines involved on 9/11.

But according to Kenneth Feinberg, who administered the fund, that would not have prevented Cantor Fitzgerald from distributing proceeds of its lawsuit to its employee families. Cantor “could do whatever they want with that money,” said Feinberg.

Feinberg notes in his book “What Is Life Worth?” that Lutnick vociferously criticized him for keeping payments from the fund in a narrow range – and therefore not providing more money to the families of high-earning Cantor workers.

As for Barack Obama, he insightfully wrote in 2006 in “The Audacity of Hope” that when he entered the world of high-level politics, “I became more like the wealthy donors I met, in the very particular sense that I spent more and more of my time above the fray, outside the world of immediate hunger, disappointment, fear, irrationality, and frequent hardship of the other 99 percent of the population.”

“The path of least resistance,” Obama continued, “starts to look awfully tempting, and if the opinions of these insiders don’t quite jibe with those you once held, you learn to rationalize the changes as a matter of realism, of compromise, of learning the ropes. The problems of ordinary people, the voices of the Rust Belt town or the dwindling heartland, become a distant echo rather than a palpable reality, abstractions to be managed rather than battles to be fought.”

When breaking the story of Obama’s speech, Fox Business News reported that its sources at Cantor Fitzgerald believed that “Obama could ultimately back out of the arrangement depending on his schedule and other concerns such as adverse publicity.”