United Nations Declaration (Articles 1 - 30):

Article 1: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 2: Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.

Incoming UN chief names three women to top posts

Incoming UN chief names three women to top posts
Nigerian Minister of the Environment Amina Mohammed, seen in 2015, will be the UN's number two official (AFP Photo/Mireya ACIERTO)

Sustainable Development
"A Summary" – Apr 2, 2011 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Religion, Shift of Human Consciousness, 2012, Intelligent/Benevolent Design, EU, South America, 5 Currencies, Water Cycle (Heat up, Mini Ice Ace, Oceans, Fish, Earthquakes ..), Middle East, Internet, Israel, Dictators, Palestine, US, Japan (Quake/Tsunami Disasters , People, Society ...), Nuclear Power Revealed, Hydro Power, Geothermal Power, Moon, Financial Institutes (Recession, Realign integrity values ..) , China, North Korea, Global Unity,..... etc.) -
"The Timing of the Great Shift" – Mar 21, 2009 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) - (Text version)

“ … Here is another one. A change in what Human nature will allow for government. "Careful, Kryon, don't talk about politics. You'll get in trouble." I won't get in trouble. I'm going to tell you to watch for leadership that cares about you. "You mean politics is going to change?" It already has. It's beginning. Watch for it. You're going to see a total phase-out of old energy dictatorships eventually. The potential is that you're going to see that before 2013. They're going to fall over, you know, because the energy of the population will not sustain an old energy leader ..."
"Update on Current Events" – Jul 23, 2011 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) - (Subjects: The Humanization of God, Gaia, Shift of Human Consciousness, 2012, Benevolent Design, Financial Institutes (Recession, System to Change ...), Water Cycle (Heat up, Mini Ice Ace, Oceans, Fish, Earthquakes ..), Nuclear Power Revealed, Geothermal Power, Hydro Power, Drinking Water from Seawater, No need for Oil as Much, Middle East in Peace, Persia/Iran Uprising, Muhammad, Israel, DNA, Two Dictators to fall soon, Africa, China, (Old) Souls, Species to go, Whales to Humans, Global Unity,..... etc.)
(Subjects: Who/What is Kryon ?, Egypt Uprising, Iran/Persia Uprising, Peace in Middle East without Israel actively involved, Muhammad, "Conceptual" Youth Revolution, "Conceptual" Managed Business, Internet, Social Media, News Media, Google, Bankers, Global Unity,..... etc.)


The Declaration of Human Freedom

Archangel Michael (Via Steve Beckow), Feb. 19, 2011

Every being is a divine and eternal soul living in a temporal body. Every being was alive before birth and will live after death.

Every soul enters into physical life for the purpose of experience and education, that it may, in the course of many lifetimes, learn its true identity as a fragment of the Divine.

Life itself is a constant process of spiritual evolution and unfoldment, based on free choice, that continues until such time as we realize our true nature and return to the Divine from which we came.

No soul enters life to serve another, except by choice, but to serve its own purpose and that of the Divine from which it came.

All life is governed by natural and universal laws which precede and outweigh the laws of humanity. These laws, such as the law of karma, the law of attraction, and the law of free will, are decreed by God to order existence and assist each person to achieve life’s purpose.

No government can or should survive that derives its existence from the enforced submission of its people or that denies its people their basic rights and freedoms.

Life is a movement from one existence to another, in varied venues throughout the universe and in other universes and dimensions of existence. We are not alone in the universe but share it with other civilizations, most of them peace-loving, many of whom are more advanced than we are, some of whom can be seen with our eyes and some of whom cannot.

The evidence of our five senses is not the final arbiter of existence. Humans are spiritual as well as physical entities and the spiritual side of life transcends the physical. God is a Spirit and the final touchstone of God’s Truth is not physical but spiritual. The Truth is to be found within.

God is one and, because of this, souls are one. They form a unity. They are meant to live in peace and harmony together in a “common unity” or community. The use of force to settle affairs runs contrary to natural law. Every person should have the right to conduct his or her own affairs without force, as long as his or her choices do not harm another.

No person shall be forced into marriage against his or her will. No woman shall be forced to bear or not bear children, against her will. No person shall be forced to hold or not hold views or worship in a manner contrary to his or her choice. Nothing vital to existence shall be withheld from another if it is within the community’s power to give.

Every person shall retain the ability to think, speak, and act as they choose, as long as they not harm another. Every person has the right to choose, study and practice the education and career of their choice without interference, provided they not harm another.

No one has the right to kill another. No one has the right to steal from another. No one has the right to force himself or herself upon another in any way.

Any government that harms its citizens, deprives them of their property or rights without their consent, or makes offensive war upon its neighbors, no matter how it misrepresents the situation, has lost its legitimacy. No government may govern without the consent of its people. All governments are tasked with seeing to the wellbeing of their citizens. Any government which forces its citizens to see to its own wellbeing without attending to theirs has lost its legitimacy.

Men and women are meant to live fulfilling lives, free of want, wherever they wish and under the conditions they desire, providing their choices do not harm another and are humanly attainable.

Children are meant to live lives under the beneficent protection of all, free of exploitation, with unhindered access to the necessities of life, education, and health care.

All forms of exploitation, oppression, and persecution run counter to universal and natural law. All disagreements are meant to be resolved amicably.

Any human law that runs counter to natural and universal law is invalid and should not survive. The enactment or enforcement of human law that runs counter to natural and universal law brings consequences that cannot be escaped, in this life or another. While one may escape temporal justice, one does not escape divine justice.

All outcomes are to the greater glory of God and to God do we look for the fulfillment of our needs and for love, peace, and wisdom. So let it be. Aum/Amen.


Pope Francis arrives for historic first US visit

Pope Francis arrives for historic first US visit
Pope Francis laughs alongside US President Barack Obama upon arrival at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, on September 22, 2015, on the start of a 3-day trip to Washington (AFP Photo/Saul Loeb)


Today's doodle in the U.S. celebrates Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech on its 50th anniversary (28 Aug 2013)

'Love is love': Obama lauds gay marriage activists in hailing 'a victory for America'

'Love is love': Obama lauds gay marriage activists in hailing 'a victory for America'
The White House released this image, of the building colored like the rainbow flag, on Facebook following the supreme court’s ruling. Photograph: Facebook

Same-sex marriage around the world

"The Recalibration of Awareness – Apr 20/21, 2012 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Old Energy, Recalibration Lectures, God / Creator, Religions/Spiritual systems (Catholic Church, Priests/Nun’s, Worship, John Paul Pope, Women in the Church otherwise church will go, Current Pope won’t do it), Middle East, Jews, Governments will change (Internet, Media, Democracies, Dictators, North Korea, Nations voted at once), Integrity (Businesses, Tobacco Companies, Bankers/ Financial Institutes, Pharmaceutical company to collapse), Illuminati (Started in Greece, with Shipping, Financial markets, Stock markets, Pharmaceutical money (fund to build Africa, to develop)), Shift of Human Consciousness, (Old) Souls, Women, Masters to/already come back, Global Unity.... etc.) - (Text version)

… The Shift in Human Nature

You're starting to see integrity change. Awareness recalibrates integrity, and the Human Being who would sit there and take advantage of another Human Being in an old energy would never do it in a new energy. The reason? It will become intuitive, so this is a shift in Human Nature as well, for in the past you have assumed that people take advantage of people first and integrity comes later. That's just ordinary Human nature.

In the past, Human nature expressed within governments worked like this: If you were stronger than the other one, you simply conquered them. If you were strong, it was an invitation to conquer. If you were weak, it was an invitation to be conquered. No one even thought about it. It was the way of things. The bigger you could have your armies, the better they would do when you sent them out to conquer. That's not how you think today. Did you notice?

Any country that thinks this way today will not survive, for humanity has discovered that the world goes far better by putting things together instead of tearing them apart. The new energy puts the weak and strong together in ways that make sense and that have integrity. Take a look at what happened to some of the businesses in this great land (USA). Up to 30 years ago, when you started realizing some of them didn't have integrity, you eliminated them. What happened to the tobacco companies when you realized they were knowingly addicting your children? Today, they still sell their products to less-aware countries, but that will also change.

What did you do a few years ago when you realized that your bankers were actually selling you homes that they knew you couldn't pay for later? They were walking away, smiling greedily, not thinking about the heartbreak that was to follow when a life's dream would be lost. Dear American, you are in a recession. However, this is like when you prune a tree and cut back the branches. When the tree grows back, you've got control and the branches will grow bigger and stronger than they were before, without the greed factor. Then, if you don't like the way it grows back, you'll prune it again! I tell you this because awareness is now in control of big money. It's right before your eyes, what you're doing. But fear often rules. …

Merkel says Turkey media crackdown 'highly alarming'

Merkel says Turkey media crackdown 'highly alarming'
Reporters Without Borders labels Erdogan as 'enemy of press freedom'

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Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Too Big To Jail: Wall Street Executives Unlikely To Face Criminal Charges, Source Says

The Huffington Post, Ben Hallman, 09/08/2012

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, accompanied by Attorney
 General Eric Holder, speaks at the Justice Department in Washington,
Friday, Jan. 27, 2012, after Holder announced the formation of the Residential
Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)

A last-ditch effort by federal and state law enforcement authorities to hold Wall Street accountable for nearly bringing down the U.S. economy is unlikely to lead to any criminal charges against big bank executives, according to a source close to the investigation.

Barring a "hail mary pass," said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is still ongoing, the members of a task force President Barack Obama formed in January to investigate fraud in the residential mortgage bond industry will instead most likely bring civil lawsuits against some of the banks involved, though it isn't clear when these cases might come.

That means any penalties for those accused of fraud or other misconduct would be measured in dollars, not jail terms.

A spokesman for New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, a co-head of the task force and the driving force behind its formation, declined to comment.

Adora Andy, a Department of Justice spokeswoman, said in a statement that "all appropriate remedies, civil and criminal, are on the table."

"As always, if working group members uncover evidence of fraud or other illegal conduct, we will pursue such conduct aggressively," Andy said.

The subprime mortgage bubble popped more than five years ago, triggering a full-fledged economic meltdown. Since then, the question confronting regulators and government prosecutors has been whether the banks that drove the market's expansion simply made terrible business decisions, or committed fraud in order to reap short-term profits. 

The Securities and Exchange Commission, in a number of civil lawsuits, has alleged the latter (as a regulatory agency, the SEC cannot bring criminal suits). But with the exception of one failed case against Bear Stearns in 2009, the Department of Justice, which historically would lead any criminal effort, has declined to criminally prosecute those who created the financial instruments built out of toxic mortgage loans.

By pooling investigative resources, it was hoped that the Justice Department, the SEC and a handful of state attorneys general, led by Schneiderman, could accomplish what the agencies had mostly failed to deliver on their own: a sense of justice, however fuzzily defined.

But from the start, the task force -- officially, the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group -- has been dogged by critics questioning the seriousness of the effort, and by concerns that the legal timeframe in which investigators must bring cases is coming to a close.

Civil cases, if and when they are filed, could lead to large financial penalties and possibly aid for struggling homeowners. Yet it seems unlikely that such a result will satisfy those whose anger sparked the Occupy Wall Street movement, or even many middle-class Americans who may wonder how, in contrast to other financial crises, this one could end with none of the people who seemingly helped orchestrate it behind bars.

"Without accountability, the unending parade of megabank scandals will inevitably continue," Neil Barofsky, the former watchdog over the $700 billion bank bailout fund and a frequent critic of the Obama administration's response to the financial crisis, recently told The Huffington Post.

How and why the government chose this path will be the subject of debate for years to come. Some say prosecutors lacked resources. Others assert that the complexity of the financial transactions makes it virtually impossible to prove criminal intent in court, where prosecutors must convince a jury of guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt." In a civil action, by contrast, the bar is lower: jurors need only conclude that "a preponderance of evidence" indicates guilt.

One former prosecutor said a simpler human dimension may also be preventing government lawyers from filing criminal charges: the basic fear of losing a big case.

"Losing has a chilling effect, because no one wants to take a spin like that and come out on the short end," said Cliff Stricklin, a former prosecutor who worked on the Enron task force and also successfully prosecuted Qwest Communications chief executive Joseph Nacchio for accounting fraud. (Nacchio is currently serving a seven-year sentence in a federal prison.)

"[Losing a case] makes you wonder if there was indeed a crime, and if so, how you go about proving it," Stricklin said. "It is a signal to the public that either the government is jumping to conclusions or isn't competent."

CATASTROPHE OR CRIME?

Mary Jo White, a former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, adheres mostly to the view that the financial crisis was a catastrophe, but not a crime. Now a prominent defense attorney at the law firm Debevoise & Plimpton, White said she thinks calls from some quarters for more criminal prosecutions are unwarranted.

"The financial crisis was so expensive and so many people were injured that one's instinct is to think that there must have been massive wrongdoing from the top on down," she said.

But criminal cases must be built on compelling evidence, not suppositions, and evidence of broad-based misconduct that would rise to that level doesn't exist, White said.

"I don't think the criticism is fair," White said.

William Black, a law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and a prominent former bank regulator, is in the camp that thinks prosecutors have missed a massive opportunity.

"They don't get the whole concept of looting," he said.

Black, who worked with prosecutors to develop some of the 1,100 criminal cases that emerged from the Savings & Loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s, said that Wall Street accounting fraud flows from a simple recipe: grow by buying high-interest loans, leverage the business by borrowing lots of money and keep next to nothing in reserve against losses.

"You are mathematically guaranteed to report record profits," he said.

But those profits are based on a fiction, he said, one that costs investors when the bank collapses -- and in some cases, can cost taxpayers too.

Financial firms like Goldman Sachs profited tremendously by purchasing loans described widely in the industry as "liar's loans," Black said. These loans were made without the borrower having to prove income, or even that he or she had a job.

"It makes no sense that an honest lender would ever make liar's loans," he said. Nor does it make sense that a sophisticated bank like Goldman, which runs an entire business based on the ability to calculate risk, would purchase such dangerous loans without knowing that they were toxic, he said.

Indeed, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission produced evidence last year which suggests that Goldman Sachs traders knew these investments were more dangerous than they were letting on to their customers. Internally, they characterized offerings as "junk" and "monstrosities" even as they offloaded the mortgage bonds onto investors, according to the report.

The SEC came to the same conclusion when investigating whether the bank had misled investors about a product known as Abacus. That probe led to a $550 million settlement in 2010.

The SEC has won $2.2 billion in penalties stemming from financial crisis-related cases, though it has been dogged by complaints -- most notably from federal judge Jed Rakoff -- that its fines are too small and that it doesn't target individuals often enough. An SEC spokesman declined comment.

Still, the agency's efforts to pursue financial crisis fraud far outstrip those of the Justice Department.

The government's lone criminal case related to the creation of complex mortgage investments came in 2009, when a federal jury declined to convict two former Bear Stearns hedge fund managers accused of lying to investors about the soundness of the securities they were selling.

Last month, the Justice Department announced that it had dropped a probe of Goldman Sachs, launched after the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found that the bank sold investments "in ways that created conflicts of interest with the firm’s clients and at times led to the bank's profiting from the same products that caused substantial losses for its clients.”

There was "not a viable basis" to bring criminal charges against the bank or its employees, the Justice Department said in a statement explaining its decision.

LAST CHANCE FOR PROSECUTORS

Obama's multi-agency mortgage task force was supposed to succeed where previous investigations had failed.

"This new unit will hold accountable those who broke the law, speed assistance to homeowners, and help turn the page on an era of recklessness that hurt so many Americans," Obama said in his State of the Union address in January.

The goal of the new unit was to drill down into the sophisticated financial instruments the banks created to package and sell mortgages in a search for fraud. But the group was met with skepticism from many legal experts, who wondered how this effort would be any different from previous investigations.

The group got off to a rocky start. Three months after its formation, it had failed even to secure office space. In May, Schneiderman told the Wall Street Journal that he wanted more resources and wished that investigators at his partner agencies would pick up the pace.

According to the Justice Department, the investigation is now in full swing.

More than 200 investigators are on the job, "devoting significant resources to investigate and prosecute misconduct by financial institutions in the origination and securitization of mortgages," the agency said in a statement.

The DOJ has issued 30 civil subpoenas in the past four months, it said, and the SEC has issued more than 300 -- though that number includes pre-existing investigations.

The New York attorney general's office, HuffPost previously reported, is now investigating several major institutions.

But if none of these cases yield a criminal indictment, who, if anyone, is to blame?

Schneiderman, though he never promised criminal cases, is likely to attract some criticism for the lack of prosecutions due to his aggressive advocacy for the task force. Last year, Schneiderman led an insurgency against a robo-signing settlement shaping up between state attorneys general and five large banks. His goal, he said, was to preserve his ability to continue an investigation he had opened in the spring into possible fraud that led to the housing bubble and crash.

The states leading the negotiations dispute that Schneiderman's ability to continue his investigation was ever in doubt. Nevertheless, his initial opposition to what became a $25 billion deal led directly to the creation of the task force

Schneiderman co-leads the task force, along with Robert Khuzami, the enforcement director of the SEC; Lanny Breuer, the head of the criminal division at the Justice Department; Stuart Delery, the head of Justice's civil division; and John Walsh, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Colorado.

Though each of these entities are sharing documents and resources, it is up to the individual agencies to file charges.

The biggest challenge for Schneiderman, who took office in January 2011, was the ticking clock. Most mortgage bonds were packaged and sold in 2006 or earlier, and the statute of of limitations on most types of fraud cases is five years from the commission of the alleged wrongdoing.

It is possible to extract "tolling" agreements from a business or individual under investigation that effectively extends the allotted time in which to bring a case, in exchange for more lenient treatment. But Schneiderman would have had to enact tolling agreements in very short order after taking office. It isn't clear whether a bank or an individual would accept such an agreement in a criminal case if they knew the statute of limitations was about to run out.

It is also true that while the New York attorney general's office has the authority to bring criminal fraud cases, it historically almost never does. Like the SEC, the office instead typically files lawsuits with the expectation of wringing a settlement -- and political bragging points -- out of a Wall Street firm. It's part of the recipe that both Andrew Cuomo and Eliot Spitzer used to pave their way to a governorship.

Instead, the attorney general's office typically defers to the Department of Justice, which has a large team of experts parked in the U.S. attorney's office just a few blocks away in lower Manhattan. But instead of taking on Wall Street's top executives, that office has focused on alternate cases -- such as the recent prosecution of hedge fund king Raj Rajaratnam, who was convicted of insider trading.

Stricklin, now in private practice at the Bryan Cave law firm in Denver, said that he doesn't know whether there was criminal conduct in the run-up to the financial crisis.

"The truth is more complicated than can be explained in sound bites," he said.

But he has seen, he said, a decline in the talent level of those working white-collar cases at agencies like the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department, which over the past decade have diverted some of the most talented people over to counterterrorism.

"The government needs to decide if it is really going to tackle white-collar crime or not, and if so it needs to allocate resources," he said.

Otherwise, the result will be fewer cases, and more losses, Stricklin said.

"It always matters to bring solid criminal cases where you are holding people accountable," he said. "But the worst signal is not to do nothing, but to do something partway."

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