Friday, May 15, 2015

Barclays, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and the Royal Bank of Scotland PLEAD GUILTY TO FELONY CHANGES!

5 BANKS EXPECTED TO PLEAD 'GUILTY' TO FELONY CHARGES !!

Ben Protess and Michael Corkery

Thursday, 14 May 2015 | 5:47 AM ET The New York Times

For most people, pleading guilty to a felony means they will very likely land in prison, lose their job and forfeit their right to vote.

But when five of the world's biggest banks plead guilty to an array of antitrust and fraud charges as soon as next week, life will go on, probably without much of a hiccup.

The Justice Department is preparing to announce that Barclays, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and the Royal Bank of Scotland will collectively pay several billion dollars and plead guilty to criminal antitrust violations for rigging the price of foreign currencies, according to people briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Most if not all of the pleas are expected to come from the banks' holding companies, the people said -- a first for Wall Street giants that until now have had only subsidiaries or their biggest banking units plead guilty.

The Justice Department is also preparing to resolve accusations of foreign currency misconduct at UBS. As part of that deal, prosecutors are taking the rare step of tearing up a 2012 non-prosecution agreement with the bank over the manipulation of benchmark interest rates, the people said, citing the bank's foreign currency misconduct as a violation of the earlier agreement.

UBS A.G., the banking unit that signed the 2012 non-prosecution agreement, is expected to plead guilty to the earlier charges and pay a fine that could be high as $500 million rather than go to trial, the people said.

The guilty pleas, scarlet letters affixed to banks of this size and significance, represent another prosecutorial milestone in a broader effort to crack down on financial misdeeds. Yet as much as prosecutors want to punish banks for misdeeds, they are also mindful that too harsh a penalty could imperil banks that are at the heart of the global economy, a balancing act that could produce pleas that are more symbolic than sweeping.

Holding companies, while appearing to be the most important entities at the banks, are in less jeopardy of suffering the consequences of guilty pleas. Some banks worried that a guilty plea by their biggest banking units, which hold licenses that enable them to operate branches and make loans, would be riskier, two of the people briefed on the matter said. The fear, they said, centered on whether state or federal regulators might revoke those licenses in response to the pleas.

Behind the scenes in Washington, the banks' lawyers are also seeking assurances from federal regulators -- including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Labor Department -- that the banks will not be barred from certain business practices after the guilty pleas, the people said. While the S.E.C.'s five commissioners have not yet voted on the requests for waivers, which would allow the banks to conduct business as usual despite being felons, the people briefed on the matter expected a majority of commissioners to grant them.

In reality, those accommodations render the plea deals, at least in part, an exercise in stagecraft. And while banks might prefer a deferred-prosecution agreement that suspends charges in exchange for fines and other concessions -- or a non-prosecution deal like the one that UBS is on the verge of losing -- the reputational blow of being a felon does not spell disaster.

''For any company there's a huge reputational difference between a deferred-prosecution agreement and a guilty plea,'' said David A. O'Neil, a partner at Debevoise & Plimpton and former senior Justice Department official who helped secure a guilty plea to a financial crime last year from the French bank BNP Paribas. ''But the government needs to be careful that it doesn't turn a guilty plea into a D.P.A. with just another name.''

The foreign exchange investigation, which centers on accusations that traders colluded to fix the price of major currencies, will test the Justice Department's strategy for securing guilty pleas on Wall Street.

In the case of UBS, the bank will lose its non-prosecution agreement over interest rate manipulation, the people briefed on the matter said, a consequence of its misconduct in the foreign exchange case. It is unclear why that penalty will fall on UBS but not on other banks suspected of manipulating both interest rates and currency prices.

The action against UBS underscores the threats that Justice Department officials issued in recent months about voiding past deals in the event of new misdeeds, a central tactic in a plan to address the cycle of corporate recidivism. Leslie Caldwell, the head of the Justice Department's criminal division, recently remarked that she ''will not hesitate to tear up a D.P.A. or N.P.A. and file criminal charges where such action is appropriate.''

Still, the bank is expected to avoid pleading guilty in the foreign exchange case, the people said, though it will probably pay a fine. While UBS was unlikely to plead guilty to antitrust violations because it was the first to cooperate in the foreign exchange investigation, the bank was facing the possibility of pleading guilty to fraud charges related to the currency manipulation. The exact punishment is not yet final, the people added.

The Justice Department negotiations coincide with the banks' separate efforts to persuade the S.E.C. to issue waivers from automatic bans that occur when a company pleads guilty. If the waivers are not granted, a decision that the Justice Department does not control, the banks could face significant consequences.

For example, some banks may be seeking waivers to a ban on overseeing mutual funds, one of the people said. They are also requesting waivers to ensure they do not lose their special status as ''well-known seasoned issuers,'' which allows them to fast-track securities offerings. For some of the banks, there is also a concern that they will lose their ''safe harbor'' status for making forward-looking statements in securities documents.
In turn, the S.E.C. asked the Justice Department to hold off on announcing the currency cases until the banks' requests had been reviewed, one of the people said.

As of Wednesday, it seemed probable that a majority of the S.E.C.'s commissioners would approve most of the waivers, which can be granted for a cause like the public good. Still, the agency's two Democratic commissioners -- Kara M. Stein and Luis A. Aguilar, who have denounced the S.E.C.'s use of waivers -- might be more likely to balk.

Corporate prosecutions are a delicate matter, peppered with political and legal land mines. Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, and other liberal politicians have criticized prosecutors for treating Wall Street with kid gloves. Banks and their lawyers, however, complain about huge penalties and guilty pleas.

And lingering in the background is the case of Arthur Andersen, an accounting giant that imploded after being convicted in 2002 of criminal charges related to its work for Enron. After the firm's collapse, and the later reversal of its conviction, prosecutors began to shift from indictments and guilty pleas to deferred-prosecution agreements. And in 2008, the Justice Department updated guidelines for prosecuting corporations, which have long included a requirement that prosecutors weigh collateral consequences like harm to shareholders and innocent employees.

''The collateral consequences consideration is designed to address the risk that a particular criminal charge might inflict disproportionate harm to shareholders, pension holders and employees who are not even alleged to be culpable or to have profited potentially from wrongdoing,'' said Mark Filip, the Justice Department official who wrote the 2008 memo. ''Arthur Andersen was ultimately never convicted of anything, but the mere act of indicting it destroyed one of the cornerstones of the Midwest's economy.''

After years of deferred-prosecution agreements, the pendulum swung back in favor of guilty pleas in 2012. It began modestly with a Japanese subsidiary of UBS pleading guilty to manipulating interest rates. UBS A.G., the main banking unit, reached the non-prosecution agreement.

In pursuing cases last year against Credit Suisse and BNP Paribas, prosecutors confronted the popular belief that banks had grown so important to the economy that they could not be charged. BNP, which was accused of doing business with Iran and other countries blacklisted by the United States, paid a record $8.9 billion fine.
Yet after prosecutors announced the deals, the banks' chief executives promptly assured investors that the effect would be minimal.

''Apart from the impact of the fine, BNP Paribas will once again post solid results this quarter,'' BNP's chief, Jean-Laurent Bonnafé, said.

Brady Dougan, Credit Suisse's chief at the time, said the deal would not cause ''any material impact on our operational or business capabilities.''

Symbol	Price	Change	%Change
RBS	351.80	-3.70	-1.04%
BARC	261.65	-0.45	-0.17%
JPM	65.88	-0.17	-0.26%
C	54.24	-0.36	-0.66%
UBSG	19.36	-0.03	-0.15%

http://www.cnbc.com/id/102677740

House Bill Seeks to Eliminate Online Ammo Sales

Proposed legislation would require “face to face purchases of ammunition”

Adan Salazar
Prison Planet.com
May 14, 2015

A proposed House bill introduced by a freshman democrat would eliminate the ability for consumers to purchase ammo over the internet.
Introduced on Tuesday by New Jersey Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, H.R. 2283 ^[1], known as the “Stop Online Ammunition Sales Act of 2015,” primarily seeks to “require face to face purchases of ammunition.”
“This bill would take the most basic steps to slow the proliferation of guns and ammunition, helping to prevent events like what we saw in Aurora, Colorado three years ago,” Coleman announced in a press release ^[2]. “Congress can, and must do more to keep our families safe, and we’re urging them to do just that.”
The bill, which has already been co-sponsored by 30 House Democrats, would also require the federal government to issue licenses to ammunition dealers, in addition to requiring them to report bulk ammo purchases of over 1,000 rounds by “unlicensed persons.”
“A consumer product that has the potential to kill, like a bullet, should be regulated in a manner similar to cigarettes and certain allergy medicines,” Carole Stiller, president of the Brady Campaign’s anti-gun Million Mom March, added.The proposed legislation has earned the scorn of gun aficionados, who view the bill as ineffective, and ultimately a roundabout way of infringing on the Second Amendment.
Responding to New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone’s remark that someone in the possession of 6,000 rounds of ammo “boggles the mind,” Mark Chestnut writing for Americas1stFreedom.org ^[3] highlighted that competition shooters typically use up 1,000 rounds per day.
“And when you tend to burn through ammo by the caseload each week, buying it online to save even a few cents per round can ease your shooting budget more than just a little,” Chestnut notes.
Additionally, the provision requiring sellers to report purchases of more than 1,000 rounds of ammo, as Chestnut points out, could easily be bypassed.
“If someone wanted to wage such an attack with more than 1,000 rounds… he or she could easily skirt the proposed law by purchasing 950 rounds this week, then 950 again next week.”
Govtrack.us ^[4] gives the bill a “1% chance of being enacted.”

Stop Online Ammunition Sales Act of 2015 ^[5]

B.B. King - The Thrill Is Gone Live From Crossroads Festival 2010

TRIBUTE TO THE LATE AND GREAT B B KING

who quietly passed away evening of May 14 2015
at 89 years of age

UN AND JOHN KERRY BUSY AT WORK BEING TRAITORS TO THE UNITED STATES

The UN Has Invaded 190 American Cities with Covert and Unscreened Jihadists

15 May 2015 Dave Hodges

The United States is the equivalent of a four letter word in the Middle East. Many people in that region of the world detest and loathe our very existence. Why? Because our government, on behalf of the bankers and the oil companies, have plundered their resources, manipulated their governments, killed millions of Muslims without justification as the U.S. has invaded the region three times in recent history. The CIA may be responsible for funding most terrorism in the Middle East, but there is no shortage of willing participants to join such organizations as al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and now the latest threat, ISIS.

In short, the people in the Middle East hate America’s guts, yet the Obama administration is placing hundreds of communities at risk by transplanting the victims of United States tyranny right into American backyards without a thought or care to the welfare for the citizens of this country. This article addresses the insanity and/or the treasonous nature of this issue.

Obama’s Policy of Suicide by Immigration

Presently, there is a tsunami of unscreened Muslims into 190+ American communities from war-torn areas filled with the victims of American imperialism who believe that the only good American, is a dead American. The most striking aspect of this silent invasion is that the Federal government has admitted under oath that they have no idea who these people are and what their intentions consist of.
When we juxtapose Obama’s position to the multiple scenarios of Christian persecution and genocide in some areas of the Middle East, Obama has not lifted a finger to help Christians who are being slaughtered at the hands of Muslim extremist groups such as ISIS. Obama plays golf…

Meanwhile, our self-created enemies are engaged in getting even with innocent Christians.

Paul Sperry’s “Infiltration” How Muslim Spies and Subversives have Penetrated Washington

Researcher, Paul Sperry, the author of Infiltration has detailed the type of immigrants that we are importing from the Middle East. Here, Paul Sperry, details the threat to our communities while appearing on C-SPAN2.

Sperry cites how we know from the testimony offered from the FBI officials who are in charge of that type of vetting immigrants are not being allowed to perform their duties of protecting American communities from would-be unscreened terrorists as expressed in a recent radio interview in which FBI agents have admitted, under oath, that they have no idea who and what they are letting into the country.

The United Nations and the State Department Are Behind This Invasion of America

The following is one of the most stunning videos I have seen in some time with regard to the radical unscreened, extremist Muslim invasion of America. The program has its roots with the United Nations and the State Department is its willing accomplice.

The man’s name is Antonio Guterres and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. His job is the deculturalization of European nations and the United States. Leo Hohmann, from World Net Daily, has another in what is turning into a series on Obama’s plan to change America by changing the people. This invasion has impacted 190 American communities and it is growing by the day. There are over 10,000 anti-American Somali refugees in ten years who have settled in Minnesota, alone. In the first 4 months of this year, we have admitted 4,425 Somalis to America.
ABC News reported the following:

“A mysterious ISIS recruiter known online as “Miski” was in close and repeated social media contact with Elton Simpson for months before the Sunday attack in Garland, Texas, an ABC News investigation has found”. “Miski is well known to FBI officials who say his real name is Muhammed Hassan, a fugitive since 2009 when he fled Minneapolis as a teenager to join terror groups in Africa”. This begs the question: Who are we keeping out?

Antonio Guterres is the head of the UNHCR and he is responsible for sending 9,000 Muslims from anti-America Syria to Boise and Twin Falls, Idaho. This man and his organization is your enemy!

John Kerry and Anne C. Richards are the UN’s accomplices in these devastating immigration policies. Is this why we are seeing with ever-greater frequency these kinds of scenes inside of the United States?

Secretary of State, John Kerry and Anne C. Richards are the UN's accomplices in these devastating immigration policies.

Fifth Column Watch

We have already had an ISIS attack on American soil in Garland, Texas. The FBI Director has admitted to the fact that the FBI has open ISIS in all 50 states. Last summer, I documented the flow of MS-13 gang members into the United States. For 30 months, I have detailed a Russian troop presence in our country, complete with pictures, eye witnesses, government documents and videos.

The UN’s Refugee/ Resettlement is merely the latest in the implantation of 5th column forces inside of the United States. However, this invasion has reached 190 American cities and towns. In a future article, these groups will be tied together with regard to their common purpose as well as detailing how Jade Helm will factor into this scenario.

WHY HAS THE 'GOOD MILITARY' NOT ARRESTED AND ELIMINATED THE TRAITORS TO AMERICA - JOHN KERRY - ANN RICHARDS - CLINTONS - MCCAIN - REID - ET AL???

http://www.thecommonsenseshow.com/2015/05/15/the-un-has-invaded-190-american-cities-with-covert-and-unscreened-jihadists/

‘Kentucky 10’ Mom Addresses Allegations, Says Life Without Her Children ‘Extremely Difficult’

Written by: Off The Grid News Staff Current Events May 14, 2015

The mother of the 10 children taken by state and local authorities posted an update to her Facebook page Thursday, responding to critics on several issues.
“Whether you agree with us or not you can imagine our heartbreak as we miss our children terribly,” Nicole Naugler wrote. “Please try to consider that. We designed our life to be with them as much as possible. It’s extremely difficult being without them.”
Sheriff deputies took the children last week, and the state version of CPS followed by placing the children in four foster homes in four different counties. The living conditions of the off-grid home apparently were the state’s primary concern, although the state did mention in its initial complaint that the kids were not in school – leading many to wonder if their homeschooling also was a target.
In her post, Naugler addressed:
Allegations that their home has only three walls. “The cabin has FOUR walls. It also has a metal roof as you can see from the aerial shots taken yesterday by a local news crew. The one wall that open is open for good weather. If we didn’t we would have frozen to death. Thankfully we had a wood stove and a cozy cabin.”
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Allegations that the father, Joe, abused an estranged son, Alex, 15 years ago. Alex, 19, doesn’t live with the family and is the son of Joe and a woman from a previous relationship. He testified against Joe and Nicole in court. “Alex was taken at the age of 5 due to default of court,” Nicole wrote. “No charges were ever filed, and not once did anyone come to investigate the home to check on the other 2 children. If Alex’s allegations were true, someone (the courts or family who initiated this) along the way would have had us investigated for that. If what Alex said was true, why wouldn’t they make sure the other children were safe? Did they not have concern? Or was there nothing to investigate. Just something you should ponder.”
Allegations that the family steals water. “We don’t steal water. At least one person has come out and said we get it at her place free. We have others we barter with so we don’t exhaust any one source. But we don’t need to steal anything.”Her pet grooming salon. “The pet salon is funded by a private loan. My job is what secures our finances for our family. Yes the salon is nice. It’s not designed for me, it’s for the clients. I have a service based business.”
Her pet grooming salon. “The pet salon is funded by a private loan. My job is what secures our finances for our family. Yes the salon is nice. It’s not designed for me, it’s for the clients. I have a service based business.”The family’s goals for upgrading their home. “We didn’t have the funds to just do it all at once. We were building slowly as a family. We have been asked when we will upgrade the cabin. Once the donations have been received and my children are home, we will resume with our goals and build the new cabin with our children.”
The family’s goals for upgrading their home. “We didn’t have the funds to just do it all at once. We were building slowly as a family. We have been asked when we will upgrade the cabin. Once the donations have been received and my children are home, we will resume with our goals and build the new cabin with our children.”
She added, “I am focusing on the business right now. Without it I don’t have the means to support our family. This was the plan from the beginning.”
Naugler also said the “courts aren’t requiring any improvements be made with exception to us fencing the trash/recycling area.”
Visit her Facebook page here.
What do you think? Share your thoughts in the section below:

This Huge FDA Loophole Allows 1,000 Untested (And Unsafe) Ingredients In Your Food

Written by: Tricia Drevets Off-Grid Foods

Image source: IMGKid.com

In order to serve your family healthy and nutritious food, you know to eat whole foods, including lean meats and fresh fruits and vegetables. When you use packaged foods, you read the label, seeking to avoid artificial ingredients as much as possible.
If you’re like most of us, you assume that the ingredients in that box of pasta or that cereal are safe. That’s what the FDA does, right? It tests ingredients to make sure they are safe.
Well, it turns out that the answer to that question is, “not necessarily.”
A new study by the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan, nonprofit investigative news organization founded in 1989, found that about 1,000 ingredients found in products on our grocery store shelves were not approved by the FDA. How can this be?
Since 1958, food manufacturers have been able to use a loophole, called the Food Additives Amendment, to sometimes get around FDA approval. With this amendment, companies can say a product’s ingredients are “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS), and thereby bypass the lengthy FDA approval process and any special package warnings that the agency might require.
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“We simply do not have the information to vouch for the safety of many of these chemicals,” Michael Taylor, the FDA’s deputy commissioner for foods, told The Washington Post last year.
Many food manufacturers, food industry scientists and lawyers contend that food safety issues are overblown and that more government oversight would prevent the food innovations that consumers seek.
Tell that to the family of Miles Bengco. The 11-year-old boy was watching a basketball game on TV with his family and eating a burger made with a veggie product called Quorn when he had a severe allergic reaction. By the time an ambulance arrived, he had stopped breathing, and he died the next day.

Image source: cozybathrooms.com

The Bengco family believes Miles, who had a mold allergy, suffered a fatal allergic reaction to mycoprotein, a fungus-based ingredient in the Quorn burger he ate. Their lawsuit claims that mycoprotein was mislabeled on the package.
In 2002, the FDA approved the GRAS status of mycoprotein for use in certain foods. Since then, consumers have suffered a range of reactions after eating foods that contain mycoprotein, including nausea and anaphylactic shock. In fact, the Center for Science in the Public Interest urged the FDA in 2011 to deny GRAS status to the ingredient.
Another example of how this loophole puts consumers at risks is the use of lupin, a legume that is in the peanut family. In 2008, George Weston Foods, an Australian food manufacturer, sought FDA approval so that it could market its products, including pastries, cereals and breads containing lupin, to US customers. According to the recent CPI report, the FDA refused George Weston’s request, explaining that lupin could cause “life-threatening reactions” in consumers with peanut allergies. The FDA went on to say that warning labels would not be enough to decrease this threat.
Case closed? Not hardly. Products containing lupin flour, lupin protein and lupin fiber can be found on American shelves. Incredibly, many of these products contain no warning labels for people with peanut allergies.
How? Those food manufacturers labeled the ingredients as GRAS. When they did so, they did not have to inform the FDA about the ingredients and did not have to place any special warnings on their packages.
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The FDA does require manufacturers to state when foods include any of the eight recognized allergens that cause 90 percent of allergic reactions in the United States. These allergens include peanuts, tree nuts, eggs, milk, fish, crustacean shellfish, wheat and soy products. The problem is that lupin is not on that list yet.
The FDA website currently states: “The law requires that food labels list the product’s ingredients. When lupin is present in a food, it is therefore required to be listed on the label. So, consumers wishing to avoid lupin — and those with peanut allergies, who need to be particularly careful — can identify its presence by looking for ‘lupin’ or ‘lupine’ on the label.” The website also states that the agency is “actively monitoring complaints of lupin allergies by U.S. consumers.”
Stuart Pape, a Washington, D.C., attorney who consults for companies that manufacture food additives, told CPI that the food additive review process is like a gridlocked highway. “GRAS is the other pathway,” he said.
In February of this year, The Center for Food Safety (CFS), a national non-profit public interest and environmental advocacy group, filed a lawsuit against the FDA, charging the agency has failed to protect the public from dangerous food additives.
In the past five decades since the Food Additives Amendment was put in place, the number of food additives in common products, ranging from muffins to energy bars to soft drinks, has jumped from about 800 to more than 10,000. Yet the average FDA approval process for a new ingredient takes two years.
As a result, more and more companies are turning to the GRAS loophole to get their products on the shelves. Even when ingredients are approved, it is difficult to track any potential long-term health effects they may cause.
So what can we do to keep ourselves and our families safe? Here are two ways:

Avoid processed foods by eating a diet based on whole foods.
Analyze label ingredients on any packaged foods. Visit the Center for Science in the Public Interest website to learn about many food ingredients.

As Marion Nestle, author of the book Safe Food: The Politics of Food Safety, writes, “Additives are in processed foods. … This is another reason to eat ones that have been minimally processed, if at all.”
Do you trust the FDA to police what’s in your food? Share your thoughts in the section below:

Meet The Smart Bullet That Literally Steers To Hit Its Target

Written by: Tara Dodrill Current Events May 15, 2015

Image source: Fox News

Smart bullets that steer to find their targets are coming soon – maybe not to a gun store shelf near you but at least to the military.
The guided bullets program began as a highly classified project seven years ago, but footage of their recent tests is now public.
The guided bullets were developed by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) firearms experts as a part of their EXACTO project. (DARPA is a military agency.) The smart bullets have been able to hit both moving and evading targets repeatedly during testing.
Self-steering bullets underwent live-fire testing by DARPA shooters in February. DARPA noted in a recent public release that the .50 caliber smart bullets have passed their most advanced live-fire tests to date.
The bullets are specifically made for long-distance shots.
“An experienced shooter using the technology … repeatedly hit moving and evading targets,” DARPA said in a press release. “Additionally, a novice shooter using the system for the first time hit a moving target.”
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The bullets literally can turn in mid-air to hit a moving target, even if it is accelerating.
“True to DARPA’s mission, EXACTO has demonstrated what was once thought impossible: the continuous guidance of a small-caliber bullet to target,” Jerome Dunn, DARPA program manager, told CNN.
“This live-fire demonstration from a standard rifle showed that EXACTO is able to hit moving and evading targets with extreme accuracy at sniper ranges unachievable with traditional rounds. Fitting EXACTO’s guidance capabilities into a small .50-caliber size is a major breakthrough and opens the door to what could be possible in future guided projectiles across all calibers.”

The DARPA press release stated:

This video shows EXACTO rounds maneuvering in flight to hit targets that are offset from where the sniper rifle is aimed. EXACTO’s specially designed ammunition and real-time optical guidance system help track and direct projectiles to their targets by compensating for weather, wind, target movement, and other factors that could impact successful hit. The EXACTO program is developing new approaches and advanced capabilities to improve the range and accuracy of sniper systems beyond the current state of the art.

DARPA also stated that the EXACTO smart bullets will allow military snipers to find and hit targets even in extremely unfavorable weather and geographic conditions, such as the rugged terrain found in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan.
What do you think about the smart bullet technology? Would you favor such ammo becoming available on the open market? Share your thoughts in the section below:

'King of the Blues' B.B. King dead at 89 at home in Vegas.....

By KEN RITTER
LAS VEGAS - B.B. King, whose scorching guitar licks and heartfelt vocals made him the idol of generations of musicians and fans while earning him the nickname King of the Blues, died late Thursday at home in Las Vegas. He was 89.
King's attorney Arthur Williams Jr. said Friday that King told him he wanted his funeral to be held in a church in Indianola, Mississippi, near the site where he worked picking cotton as a boy. Arrangements were not complete.
King's eldest surviving daughter, Shirley King of Oak Park, Illinois, said she was upset that she didn't have a chance to see her father before he died.
King continued to perform well into his 80s even though the 15-time Grammy winner had diabetes. He had been in declining health during the past year and collapsed during a concert in Chicago last October, later blaming dehydration and exhaustion. He had been in hospice care at his Las Vegas home.
For most of his career spanning nearly 70 years, Riley B. King was not only the undisputed king of the blues but a mentor to scores of guitarists, including Eric Clapton, Otis Rush, Buddy Guy, Jimi Hendrix, John Mayall and Keith Richards. King recorded more than 50 albums and toured the world, often performing 250 or more concerts a year.
King played a Gibson guitar that he affectionately called Lucille with a style that included beautifully crafted single-string runs punctuated by loud chords, subtle vibratos and bent notes.
The result could bring chills to an audience, no more so than when King used it to full effect on his signature song, "The Thrill is Gone." He would make his guitar shout and cry in anguish as he told the tale of forsaken love, then end with a guttural shouting of the final lines: "Now that it's all over, all I can do is wish you well."
His style was unusual. King didn't like to sing and play at the same time, so he developed a call-and-response between him and Lucille.
"Sometimes I just think that there are more things to be said, to make the audience understand what I'm trying to do more," King told The Associated Press in 2006. "When I'm singing, I don't want you to just hear the melody. I want you to relive the story, because most of the songs have pretty good storytelling."
A preacher uncle taught him to play, and he honed his technique in abject poverty in the Mississippi Delta, the birthplace of the blues.
"I've always tried to defend the idea that the blues doesn't have to be sung by a person who comes from Mississippi, as I did," he said in the 1988 book "Off the Record: An Oral History of Popular Music."
"People all over the world have problems," he said. "And as long as people have problems, the blues can never die."
Fellow travelers who took King up on that theory included Clapton, the British-born blues-rocker who collaborated with him on "Riding With the King," a best-seller that won a Grammy in 2000 for best traditional blues album.
Singer Smokey Robinson praised the music legend.
"The world has physically lost not only one of the greatest musical people ever but one of the greatest people ever. Enjoy your eternity," Robinson said.
Still, the delta's influence was undeniable. King began picking cotton on tenant farms around Indianola before he was a teenager, being paid as little as 35 cents for every 100 pounds. He was still working off sharecropping debts after he got out of the Army during World War II.
"He goes back far enough to remember the sound of field hollers and the cornerstone blues figures, like Charley Patton and Robert Johnson," ZZ Top guitarist Billy Gibbons once told Rolling Stone magazine.
King got his start in radio with a gospel quartet in Mississippi and soon moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where a job as a disc jockey at WDIA gave him access to a wide range of recordings. He studied the great blues and jazz guitarists, including Django Reinhardt and T-Bone Walker, and played live music a few minutes each day as the "Beale Street Blues Boy," later shortened to B.B.
Through his broadcasts and live performances, he quickly built a following in the black community and recorded his first R&B hit, "Three O'Clock Blues," in 1951.
He began to break through to white audiences, particularly young rock fans, in the 1960s with albums like "Live at the Regal," which would later be declared a historic sound recording worthy of preservation by the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry.
He further expanded his audience with a 1968 appearance at the Newport Folk Festival and when he opened shows for the Rolling Stones in 1969.
King was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in 1984, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987 and received the Songwriters Hall of Fame Lifetime Achievement Award in 1990. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush, gave a guitar to Pope John Paul II and had President Barack Obama sing along to his "Sweet Home Chicago."
Other Grammys included best male rhythm 'n' blues performance in 1971 for "The Thrill Is Gone," best ethnic or traditional recording in 1982 for "There Must Be a Better World Somewhere" and best traditional blues recording or album several times. His final Grammy came in 2009 for best blues album for "One Kind Favor."
Through it all, King modestly insisted he was simply maintaining a tradition.
"I'm just one who carried the baton because it was started long before me," he told the AP in 2008.
Born Riley B. King on Sept. 16, 1925, on a tenant farm near Itta Bena, Mississippi, King was raised by his grandmother after his parents separated and his mother died. He worked as a sharecropper for five years in Kilmichael, an even smaller town, until his father found him and took him back to Indianola.
"I was a regular hand when I was 7. I picked cotton. I drove tractors. Children grew up not thinking that this is what they must do. We thought this was the thing to do to help your family," he said.
When the weather was bad and he couldn't work in the cotton fields, he walked 10 miles to a one-room school before dropping out in the 10th grade.
After he broke through as a musician, it appeared King might never stop performing. When he wasn't recording, he toured the world relentlessly, playing 342 one-nighters in 1956. In 1989, he spent 300 days on the road. After he turned 80, he vowed he would cut back, and he did, somewhat, to about 100 shows a year.
He had 15 biological and adopted children. Family members say 11 survive.

Jeb Bush’s campaign headquarters in waiting sees flurry of activity

Posted on May 13, 2015 by Tribune News Service

MIAMI (TNS) — There’s no “Jeb Bush for President” sign — at least, not yet — outside the sturdy, six-story office building on West Flagler Street. But inside, the former Florida governor’s political team has begun to organize his likely 2016 Republican presidential bid.
Bush’s political action committee, Right to Rise, recently leased space on two floors of the Flagler Corporate Center at 9250 W. Flagler St. in West Miami-Dade County. For now, they remain a campaign headquarters in need of a campaign, since Bush has yet to formalize his candidacy.
“Welcome,” reads a placard with Right to Rise’s logo on it inside the building’s lobby, past a security desk that asks visitors to sign in and provide identification before they walk in. Two more Right to Rise signs point to the PAC’s offices on the fifth and sixth floors.
As an unofficial candidate, Bush has been raising big money at events hosted by his PAC and super PAC, both named Right to Rise. Once he launches his campaign, Bush will be limited in his ability to coordinate with the deep-pocketed super PAC, which is nevertheless expected to take an unprecedented role in the race, though it won’t be physically housed with Bush’s operation.
Bush’s communications staff and some of his finance team have already moved into the newly leased Miami headquarters. Team Jeb has only leased a small portion of the building. But it seems ready to house a large operation: It has ample parking and an atrium cafeteria. A large American flag hangs over the fifth-floor balcony.
The 600,000-square-foot building, constructed in 1974, was known until recently as the FP&L Center for its main tenant, Florida Power & Light. While more than half the offices remain under FPL control, other tenants have been moving in since the building was sold last year and began undergoing renovations, said Gordon Messinger, the building’s leasing agent. Messinger said that he leased about 30,000 square feet to Bush’s PAC, though that is likely to grow as needed.
“They’re moving slowly in,” Messinger said. “They’ll be there for as long as the campaign is there.”
Offices in the building have been listed for rent at $26 per square foot, but Messinger wouldn’t say whether that’s the rate being charged to Right to Rise. Commercial property in ritzier neighborhoods — along Brickell Avenue or in Coral Gables, where Bush lives — goes for significantly higher, sometimes more than $40 a square foot, Messinger said.
Bush’s headquarters will be closer to the home of the only declared local presidential candidate so far, Republican Sen. Marco Rubio. Rubio lives in West Miami, about four miles away. Bush is about seven miles away — a 20-minute drive going against rush-hour traffic. Rubio’s team is running his campaign, for now, from Washington, D.C.
Bush previously had a mile-long, five-minute commute to his private office at the Biltmore Hotel. His staff has been relocating to the Miami area — chiefly the Gables — over the past few weeks in preparation for a campaign launch.
At the more budget-friendly location, Bush’s staff won’t be part of the shiny downtown Miami skyline, or anywhere near the beach. Instead, they’ll be close to the city of Sweetwater — which was founded by Russian circus midgets and later became known as Little Managua after its sizable Nicaraguan immigrant population — and south of the city of Doral, Miami-Dade’s industrial center and a Venezuelan- and Colombian-American stronghold.
The building belongs to a corporate entity, Hoffman Flagler LLC, that purchased it for $57.5 million last September. Public corporation records show Hoffman Flagler is jointly owned by Jacob and Abraham Hoffman.
South Florida hasn’t housed a presidential campaign since Bob Graham ran in 2003, out of the northwest suburb of Miami Lakes.
–Patricia Mazzei and Nicholas Nehamas
Miami Herald

Mandatory vaccination bill introduced in Congress

Posted on May 14, 2015May 14, 2015 by Bob Livingston

Government is force. When it finds that soft force doesn’t work, it becomes more aggressive.
Having found itself unable to scare and/or coerce all Americans into “voluntary” vaccination compliance, now Congress has before it a bill titled the “Vaccinate All Children Act of 2015.” Of course, this requirement is being done “in the public interest” and “for the greater good.”
It would accomplish the task of vaccinating all children by withholding federal funds from public elementary and secondary schools that enroll students who are not vaccinated according to recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
Of course, children are required by law to attend school; and most children attend public schools. And people are forced to fund those schools whether they have children attending them or not. Opting out of the public indoctrination camps passing as public schools requires jumping through special hoops and/or forking over large sums of cash to a private school.
And who sits on the Advisory Committee that sets the recommendations? Why, it’s health professionals who benefit — either directly or indirectly — from vaccination programs. And some of them get thousands of dollars from drug makers like Pfizer, Merck and GlaxoSmithKline for “consulting” and “speaking” fees. One member, Marietta Vazquez, M.D., pocketed more than $20,000 for three speeches.
Even if they worked and were without risk, vaccines only stimulate temporary immunity. By trading lifelong immunity for temporary vaccine-induced immunity, people become vaccine dependent. The winners of repeated mandatory vaccinations are the pharmaceutical companies. The losers are the people, who are first put at risk as children for vaccine adverse events and then put at risk as adults for repeated vaccinations that have already failed. The pharmaceuticals have discovered a money machine in mass vaccinations. But they need and have to have your body for the pretense.
The development of asthma, diabetes and autism in children has increased substantially in the past four decades, coinciding with the significant increase in childhood immunizations. People are finally recognizing the link and questioning Big Pharma, and more and more are beginning to “opt out.”
Public awareness has been manipulated. Why does no one question the authority of injecting agents of unknown toxicity into the body? Unbelievably, the general public is satisfied with the disinformation provided by the government. Unfortunately, now is the wrong time for apathy. We are on the verge of a vaccine mania. And by the time our wake-up call comes, it just may be too late.
The worldwide market for human vaccine is now more than $24 billion — and it’s expected by the World Health Organization to rise to $100 billion in 2025 — with the underlying purpose cloaked by the guise of protecting public health.
The act of forcing people through intimidation and deception into dangerous medications is terrorism of the most malicious sort. This act by public authority constitutes assault, violating civil and human rights under national and international law.
There can be no “greater good” in this act of war against the American people.

ONLINE DATA BREACHES ARE ON THE RISE...

Online data breaches are on the rise

Posted on May 14, 2015 by Personal Liberty News Desk

According to the FBI, the U.S. is experiencing a rapid spike in the number of major data breaches as hackers around the world develop increasingly sophisticated skill sets.
FBI’s Cyber Division director James Trainor told a crowd gathered at a Microsoft event that the agency learns of a new massive data breach every two to three days.
“Those types of events, whether they concern a national security threat actor or a criminal actor, are ones we see on a much more regular basis,” Trainor said, according to The Hill.
According to the official, FBI Director James Comey has named U.S. cybersecurity a “top priority” and said the agency is working to build relationships with major U.S. firms that have suffered, or are at risk of suffering, data breaches.
Trainor said the agency is careful to treat breached companies “like a victim, not like they did something wrong.”
Of the massive data breach at Sony last year, Trainor said, “There were a lot of lessons learned from that in a very, very positive way.”
According to a new report out from Juniper Research, data breaches will cost the global economy $2.1 trillion by 2019.
The report cites an “increasing professionalism of cybercrime” as a driving factor.