"IF YOUR'E GOING TO PUT YOUR FAMILY IN A NURSING HOME... YOU BETTER VISIT THEM AT LEAST EVERY TWO DAYS, YOU BETTER LIVE NEAR THEM, YOU BETTER BRING THEM LUNCH, YOU BETTER SIT THERE AND WATCH TV WITH THEM, YOU BETTER SIT THERE AND RUB THERE FEET AND LOVE YOUR PARENTS (voice raises in anger) THAT WIPED YOUR BUTT, THAT TOOK CARE OF YOU, YOU SCUMBAG YUPPIES!!!"
-Alex Jones speaking to yuppies (and all Americans for that matter)
"What a bunch of garbage, liberal, Democratic, conservative, Republican, it's all there to control you, two sides of the same coin! Two management teams, bidding for control of the CEO job of Slavery Incorporated!"
--Alex Jones
We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost 40 years......It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supernational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries.
Author: David Rockefeller, Source: Trilateral Commission meeting, June, 1991
I'm fully aware that Paulson and Bernanke have some nefarious scheme in mind to reverse the thrilling defeat of their criminal bailout package, a package shot down by independent members of Congress on both sides. But reflect for a few minutes on what it means that the House did this. It was a revolutionary act in the best sense of that term.
The entire establishment was united in favor of what was surely the most horrible and outrageous bill to ever come before Congress. The Fed, the Treasury, leadership of the Democrats and Republicans, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, all the major think tanks, most talking heads, the wealthiest corporations, important academics – in short, the whole of the power elite – were united in favor of this awful thing that proposed the following: Americans were to be stripped of their earnings and their future to prop up failed enterprises.
Forget back-door socialism: this was right through the front door. The consequences would have been dreadful and very scary. It was to be the first of many bailouts, since of course it cannot and would not work. Bad debts can't be made good by legislation. This means that more money would be necessary, as the middle class was sucked dry by the vampire state for years to come. Deeper and deeper economic depression – a repeat of the 30s – was certain. Best to put a stop to this now.
The administration might have tried to do its wicked deeds through executive order rather than asking Congress. But there are two problems here. One is that they wouldn't be able to share the blame when the plan flops. The other is economic. The Fed and Treasury are actually very worried that they are incapable of injecting more credit into a banking structure averse to lending right now. They would rather have the congress authorize the money directly and run up the debt.
In any case, no matter how you look at it, the defeat of the bill is a victory for freedom. The defeat of the power elite is essential for liberty to thrive. For the free market to function, we need the government/corporate cabal to lose its capacity to get its way in every area of life. They need to feel fear. They need to lose security. They need to have a sense of uncertainty as to whether their every wish is our command. The House defeat of the bailout is a magnificent rebuke in that sense.
But does it mean that the economy is going to tank and we will all suffer? On the contrary, it could mean that we can begin an economic recovery from the Fed-generated bubble that should have and would have burst years ago but for artificial props by the Fed. If the stock prices of these troubled institutions can fall to where they need to be, they can be taken over, and their assets used productively and traded by the market. Once this deleveraging takes place, we will be ready for a new round of economic growth.
You have to understand how ridiculous this whole debate looks to anyone who understands the price system. Let's change the example from houses to apples to see how silly it is to suggest that falling prices can be made to rise. Let's say that the Fed created an apple hysteria that drove the price from $3 per pound to $10. Stores loaded up and even used them as collateral for expansion. Suddenly the price collapsed to $5 and finally to $2.
Now government takes notice. What can government do to deal with the problem? It can try to boost the price of apples by forcing stores to raise their prices. But what about consumers? They won't buy at $10. So the apples sit and rot. Maybe government should buy them all or force consumers to buy them. Also perhaps stores will just not buy any more at all. Government could force them to. But it can't force them to stay in business. People can always walk away. So perhaps government can just buy the stores, all in the interest of keeping the price of apples up. But it will have to buy the apple-leveraged stores at a much higher price than the market would offer, so this is a bad economic deal on the face of it.
The tangles can get ever more complicated and billions and trillions can be spent. You can put everyone in a prison camp and force people at the point of a gun to buy and sell apples at $10. But in the end, the problem is still the same: the price of apples wants to fall. Nothing government does changes that one fact. To attempt to change it is like trying to change gravity. Of course, the government’s central bank can raise all prices through inflation to the point that apples do in fact cost $10, but this is purely cosmetic. In fact, in real terms, the price of apples is still $2. It is a pointless and destructive activity to try changing this. You only cause massive damage in the attempt.
More great things happened after the bailout failed. Commodity prices including oil fell dramatically. This is a magnificent thing. Right now, consumers are not threatened by the possible failure of another paper-addicted investment-banking house. Consumers are threatened by ever-higher prices for all goods. If we are in a recession, especially if it lasts and lasts, low prices are precisely what we need to start economic recovery again.
It is not entirely clear why prices fall. It could be the worldwide economic slowdown. It could be that the markets are beginning to doubt the capacity of the Fed to actually achieve the hyperinflation that it wants, since banks have become quite risk averse. In any case, we need ever-lower prices on all things, including gas and groceries – and, yes, houses. This is the basis for economic recovery.
The failure of the bailout bill was the precondition for economic recovery. It should make believers in liberty realize that we can change history, that tyranny is not our fate, that the leviathan state can be beaten back.
Recently we have urged readers to look to books on money and banking. Now it is time to look at books like the Discourse on Voluntary Servitude by 17th century French writer Étienne de La Boétie. It was his view that the state is the least plausible institution on earth, one that would be overthrown in a day but for propaganda and ideological error. He explained all this in his book, introduced by Murray Rothbard. We just so happen to have a new edition out.
Yesterday was one of the worst days in decades for the power elite. It was one of the best for liberty.
Some people have blamed those who oppose the bailout for the crash in the stock market. Are they right?
Well, first of all, the overwhelming majority of Americansrejected the bailout. So if you start trashing those who opposed the bailout, your dissing America.
Third, the bailout doesn't address the fundamental issues which need to be addressed to actually stabilize the U.S. economy, such as the trillions of dollars being spent in Iraq and the phony war on terror, the national debt, derivatives, lack of savings, the loss of our manufacturing base, the fact that the wealthiest people have collected all of the poker chips so that regular people can't keep playing, and gaming of the markets by the super-rich and the government.
And last but not least, investors who are dumping stocks because a quick "fix" wasn't approved don't understand what is going on. hey don't understand the real, fundamental problems with the economy. For example:
They don't get that America is broke due to spending trillions in Iraq and trillions more in the phony war on terror, and the bailout would only make matters worse.
They don't understand that unless the derivatives bomb is diffused, it will take out the world's economy when it explodes, bailout or no.
They haven't learned that speculation is not real economic growth, and that until America restores its productive economy, it will remain a house of cards in a storm
Are those who oppose the bailout responsible for the stock market crash?
No . . . those who got us into Iraq and the war on terror based on lies, who have run up the national debt into the stratosphere, those who hawked derivatives as a safe bet (including Alan Greenspan), those who have encouraged borrowing instead of saving, those who argued it was good for America to ship our manufacturing jobs overseas, those who have been so greedy that they've taken all the chips, and those who have been gaming the markets are responsible.
The financial elite will propose a "new, improved" version of the bailout bill in the next couple of days. Here is some advanced ammunition to use against the proposal:
Unless the new bailout proposal will actually help Americans, use the above proven lies by the proponents of the original bailout monster to argue that the liars cannot be believed, and that the fruit of the poisonous tree is itself poisonous.
Sept. 30 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Senate will try to salvage a $700 billion financial-rescue package after the measure was defeated in the House of Representatives. The lawmakers won't have a lot of room to negotiate.
While the legislation will need to be tweaked enough to win over reluctant House Republicans, the lawmakers will risk losing votes from Democrats if they veer too far from the delicate compromise that congressional leaders hammered out with the U.S. Treasury.
``They're not going to totally revamp the bill,'' said Pete Davis, president of Davis Capital Investment Ideas in Washington, who spoke to House and Senate leaders yesterday. ``They'll make some minor changes and pass it. This is all about political cover.''
The House rejected the legislation yesterday in a 228 to 205 vote, sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbling 778
points for its biggest point drop ever and erasing more than $1 trillion in market value. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index fell 8.4 percent, the most since Oct. 26, 1987. The S&P 500 today rose 40.09 points, or 3.6 percent, at 11:51 a.m. in New York. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 291.27 or 2.81 percent to 10,656.72.
`A Different Result'
Senators say they have no choice but to revive the measure, which is designed to restore confidence in the nation's banking system.
``We don't intend to leave here without the job being done,'' said Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat. He said lawmakers will ``hopefully come back Wednesday and get a different result.''
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, vowed that the lawmakers would take action soon.
``We intend to pass this legislation this week and we will pass it on a broad bipartisan basis,'' he said today on the chamber floor. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, said approving the legislation is the top priority.
Money-market rates jumped in Europe today, with lenders hoarding cash as the third quarter ends. Rates on three-month loans in dollars were as high as 10 percent as of 10:50 a.m. in London, said Ronald Tharun, a money-market trader at Landesbank Baden-Wuerttemberg in Stuttgart.
To pick up the 12 votes needed to pass the bill in the House, the bill will need cosmetic changes, lawmakers and analysts say. Ninety-five Democrats joined the 133 Republicans who voted against the bill. Both sides are looking for changes.
Expanded FDIC Role?
House Republican conservatives are likely to keep pressing for a mandatory insurance program they initially proposed for mortgage-backed securities. They may also try to force the Securities and Exchange Commission to suspend mark-to-market accounting and require bank regulators to assess the real value of the troubled assets, lawmakers say.
Either measure could drive away Democratic votes.
The Senate may also consider expanding the authority of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., Dodd said today.
Under one plan, pushed by House Republicans, the FDIC would issue lenders certificates they could use as capital, which the banks would have to pay back with interest. The proposal would give the FDIC more say in how the institutions are run.
Democrats say they may also seek stronger oversight on the rescue plan, tougher limits on executive compensation and more relief for homeowners facing foreclosure.
Bankruptcy Provision
Some Democrats want a provision that would allow bankruptcy judges to alter the terms of a home mortgage for individuals in bankruptcy, even reducing the principal balance. That would be a deal-killer for many Republicans, a danger that presidential nominee Barack Obama recognized: He opposed including that in the original bill, angering fellow Democrats.
The Senate won't hold any roll-call votes today because several lawmakers will be celebrating Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Gregg and Dodd urged investors not to view that pause as inaction.
``We can certainly work,'' said Dodd.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said he expects his chamber to be ready to take up the plan again after a Senate vote. ``We're not out of business until this is addressed,'' Hoyer said.
Hoyer said he has spoken with Republican Whip Roy Blunt and both are committed to working together on a compromise.
Some lawmakers are proving tough to sell on the plan.
`Better Bill'
``We can craft a much better bill,'' said Representative Brad Sherman, a California Democrat who voted against the bill. He objected to the ``tens of billions of dollars'' that could go to foreign companies and said the oversight board the plan would create would be powerless.
Sherman wants more relief for homeowners and stronger restrictions on executive compensation, among other measures.
Representative Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican, said most Republican conservatives oppose the idea of Treasury purchasing troubled assets, because it puts too much of the expense on taxpayers.
``That is a model that House conservatives feel is fundamentally flawed,'' said Hensarling, the chairman of a group of more than 100 House Republican conservatives called the Republican Study Committee.
Still, the markets may dictate that Congress act now.
``It's just not acceptable for Congress to essentially tell Main Street or Wall Street to drop dead,'' said Chris Lehane, a Democratic consultant who was former Vice President Al Gore's communications director. ``The Dow dropping 777 points is a pretty powerful force to find another 12 votes.''
Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX) reports from the floor of the House that the Republicans have been cut out of the process and called unpatriotic for not blindly supporting the fraudulent bailout. He says the only debate has been about what talking points to use on the American people. The most ominous revelation is when he claims the Speaker has declared martial law.
“I have been thrown out of more meetings in this capital in the last 24 hours than I ever thought possible, as a duly elected representative of 825,000 citizens of north Texas.” Said Congressman Burgess.
Burgess asks the Speaker of the House to post the bailout bill on the internet for at least 24 hours instead of passing the largest piece of legislation in US financial history in the “dark of night.”
The most frightening part of Rep. Burgess’ one-minute floor speech is when he says, “Mr. Speaker I understand we are under Martial Law as declared by the speaker last night.”
Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur boldly slammed the bailout bill this past weekend as the work of criminal insiders who have shut down the normal legislative process to commit “high financial crimes” and defraud the American people, while Rep. Michael Burgess warns that “martial law” has been declared.
The two Congress members are part of a growing minority of representatives sounding the alarm about the dictatorial nature of the bailout bill, which is expected to be up for a vote in the House today, with most in Congress having not had the opportunity to even read the legislation.
The bill is expected to reach the Senate on Wednesday as a raft of outraged politicians cry foul about being strong-armed and accused of being unpatriotic for opposing the carte-blanche passage of a piece of legislation that fundamentally centralizes control of the financial infrastructure of the country into the hands of the government and the Federal Reserve.
“We are Constitutionally sworn to protect and defend this Republic against all enemies foreign and domestic. And my friends there are enemies,” Kaptur told the House floor.
“The people pushing this deal are the very ones who are responsible for the implosion on Wall Street. They were fraudulent then and they are fraudulent now.”
“My message to the American people don’t let Congress seal this deal. High financial crimes have been committed,” added the Democrat from Ohio.
“The normal legislative process has been shelved. Only a few insiders are doing the dealing, sounds like insider trading to me. These criminals have so much political power than can shut down the normal legislative process of the highest law making body of this land,” Kaptur concluded.
Elsewhere, Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX) said that the only information he had received about the bailout was what talking points to use on the American people and that he had been thrown out of meetings for not blindly supporting the bill.
Ominously, Burgess also comments, “Mr. Speaker I understand we are under Martial Law as declared by the speaker last night.”
Absent any proper hearings concerning the legislation, Burgess called for the legislation to at least be posted on the Internet for 24 hours so that the American people could “see what we have done in the dark of night.”
Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet
Monday, September 29, 2008
In Missouri, if you “lie” about Barack Obama the cops may arrest you. “The effort appeared to be part of a move by the Obama campaign to block advertisements to which it objects. The campaign also sent ‘threatening’ letters to several news agencies in Pennsylvania and Ohio demanding they stop airing ads exposing Obama’s gun stance, according to the National Rifle Association,” writes WorldNetDaily, never mind Obama is a gun-grabber who claims to support the Second Amendment.
Obama told http://whynotbarackobama.bl... target="_blank">ABC he supports the D.C. handgun ban. His campaign told the Chicago Tribune “Obama believes the D.C. handgun law is constitutional.” Obama served on the board of the Joyce Foundation, probably the largest private funder of anti-gun and pro-ban groups and research in the country. In addition, Obama voted for a bill that would “expand the definition of armor piercing ammunition” and “support[ed] banning the sale of ammunition for assault weapons,” including 223 and .308 caliber bullets, the most common rifle ammunition. He supported the Illinois Firearms Owners Identification (FOID) Card, mandatory for residents when they buy any firearm in the state. (For more information on Obama’s assault on the Second Amendment, see Analysis: Fact-Checkers Fall Short in Criticizing NRA’s Anti-Obama Ads.)
In other words, if you cite Obama’s voting record or his publicly stated opinions and this rubs his “truth squads” wrong, they will sic the cops on you. “We want to keep this campaign focused on issues,” Jennifer Joyce, a Missouri prosecutor, told told KMOV (see video). “We don’t want people to get distracted. Missourians don’t want to be distracted by the divisive character attacks,” that is to say she does not want the sheep distracted by the truth — Obama is a gun-grabber who pretends to respect the Second Amendment. In addition to Joyce’s warming, Obama lawyer Robert Bauer threatened Missouri television and radio station managers that he would rat them out to the Federal Communication Commission if they dared tell the truth.
This is precisely how political campaigns are run in despotic third world countries and dictatorships that pretend to be democracies. In Bolivia, Madagascar, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Burma, Georgia, Haiti — there is no shortage of recent examples — the opposition is routinely arrested, even killed, but we are supposedly above such tactics here in America. Instead, we just fix the voting machines and nix thousands of voters from the rolls.
It appears all of this has changed under Obama. Isn’t this the sort of behavior Hitler’s goons engaged in before he swept into power and killed millions of people, beginning with his political opponents? Isn’t this the sort of thing Stalin and Mao did, eventually graduating to mass murder and genocide? Didn’t East Germany’s Stasi encourage people to turn in their neighbors, even their family and friends, for holding the wrong political opinions?
Of course, Obama is no Stalin and his opponents are not showing up dead on the side of the road. But with this effort to silence the critics through coordinated police action we can see such fascism in a germination stage. Remember, Hitler’s brownshirts started out by intimidating communists, anarchists, and Social Democrats and then graduated to beatings, murder, and finally death camps.
3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team returning from Iraq for homeland patrols to help with “civil unrest” and “crowd control,” training in use of non-lethal weapons
Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
U.S. troops returning from duty in Iraq will be carrying out homeland patrols in America from October 1st in complete violation of Posse Comitatus for the purposes of helping with “civil unrest and crowd control” - which could include dealing with unruly Americans after a complete economic collapse.
This shocking admission was calmly reported on September 8th by the Army Times website, which reports that from the beginning of next month the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team “Will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.”
The article notes that the deployment “marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities.”
The purpose of the unit’s patrols includes helping “with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack.”
The unit will be on homeland patrol for at least 20 months before returning to Iraq or Afghanistan in early 2010, according to the report.
Training for homeland operations has already begun at Fort Stewart and at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs.
Ominously, the report states that, “The 1st BCT’s soldiers also will learn how to use “the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded,” 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.”
The unit would also be deployed to deal with hostile crowds of Americans in the aftermath of a massive economic depression, potential food riots and race riots, if one defines the term “crowd control” to match its reasonably applicable scenarios.
The open admission that U.S. troops will be involved in law enforcement operations as well as potentially using non-lethal weapons against American citizens is a complete violation of the Posse Comitatus Act and the Insurrection Act, which substantially limit the powers of the federal government to use the military for law enforcement unless under precise and extreme circumstances.
Section 1385 of the Posse Comitatus Act states, “Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.”
Under the John Warner Defense Authorization Act, signed by President Bush on October 17, 2006, the law was changed to state, “The President may employ the armed forces to restore public order in any State of the United States the President determines hinders the execution of laws or deprives people of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by law or opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws.”
The original text of the Insurrection Act severely limits the power of the President to deploy troops within the United States.
For troops to be deployed, a condition has to exist that, “(1) So hinders the execution of the laws of that State, and of the United States within the State, that any part or class of its people is deprived of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by law, and the constituted authorities of that State are unable, fail, or refuse to protect that right, privilege, or immunity, or to give that protection; or (2) opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws. In any situation covered by clause (1), the State shall be considered to have denied the equal protection of the laws secured by the Constitution.”
Is the Bush administration and Northcom waiting for such a scenario to unfold, an event that completely overwhelms state authorities, before unleashing the might of the U.S. Army against the American people?
The deployment of National Guard troops to aid law enforcement or for disaster relief purposes is legal under the authority of the governor of a state, but using active duty U.S. Army in law enforcement operations inside America absent the conditions described in the Insurrection Act is completely illegal.
With the promise of an “October surprise” on behalf of Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda being bandied about by the media and the potential for civil unrest should a complete collapse of the U.S. economy unfold, the presence of U.S. troops inside America, returning fresh from kicking down doors, arresting “insurgents” and taking them to internment camps in Iraq, should put Americans on alert and provoke urgent questions about the legality of U.S. Army units engaging in law enforcement operations against American citizens.
The International Herald Tribune is a widely read English language international newspaper. It combines the resources of its own correspondents with those of The New York Times and is printed at 33 sites throughout the world, for sale in more than 180 countries. The IHT is part of The New York Times Company. It has been based in Paris since its founding in 1887.
"Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency," the original draft of the proposed bill says.
And with those words, the Treasury secretary - whoever that may be in a few months - would be vested with perhaps the most incredible powers ever bestowed on one person over the economic and financial life of the United States. It is the financial equivalent of the Patriot Act, after 9/11.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Jr.'s $700 billion proposal to bail out Wall Street is both the biggest rescue and the most amazing power grab in the history of the American economy.
In many ways, it is classic Wall Street: a big, bold roll of the dice that one trade can save the day. But at the same time, the hypocrisy is thick. The lack of transparency and oversight that got our financial system in trouble in the first place seems written directly into the proposed bill, known as TARP, or the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
Just take a look at the original draft: "The Secretary is authorized to take such actions as the Secretary deems necessary to carry out the authorities in this act," the proposed bill read when it was first presented to Congress, "without regard to any other provision of law regarding public contracts."
It goes on to say, "Any funds expended for actions authorized by this Act, including the payment of administrative expenses, shall be deemed appropriated at the time of such expenditure."
Slowly but surely, as new versions of the bill are making the rounds in Washington, some legislators are pressing to include new language to give them at least a modicum of oversight. Democrats have complained that the bill gives the Treasury Department "a blank check" - and they're right.
But given the rush to push the bill through, even if Congress cobbles together some oversight language, it will almost surely be inadequate.
Joshua Rosner, a managing director at Graham Fisher, says TARP should stand for "Total Abdication of Responsibility to the Public." He calls it "a clear abdication of all congressional oversight and fiscal authorities to a secretary of Treasury that has bungled this crisis from the beginning."
He argues that the bill grants "greater powers to the secretary of the Treasury than even the president enjoys."
The bigger issue is that the bill effectively creates protections not just for the Treasury, but for the executives on Wall Street who created this near Armageddon. Rosner says the draft bill "prevents judicial review that could allow the protection of decisions that create false marks, hide prior marks, or could be used to prevent civil or criminal prosecution in situations where a management knowingly provided false marks that aided the growth of this crisis of confidence."
False marks - using mark-to-market accounting to hide the true value of security, rather than disclose it honestly - has a lot to do with why Jeffrey Skilling, the former Enron chief executive, is in jail.
It is absolutely true, of course, that Paulson needed to do something. By Thursday afternoon, less than 48 hours after the bailout of American International Group, the financial system was near meltdown. The mere rumor that Paulson and the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, were devising a big bailout fund cause the stock market to soar.
In truth, I'm not sure I agree with Rosner's assessment of Paulson's job performance. I think he is one of the most competent Treasury secretaries we've ever had, and it is hard to imagine anyone else handling this crisis any better. His predecessors, who lacked his grounding in the world of high finance, would most likely have been like deer in headlights.
And when Paulson says, as he did on all the television talk shows Sunday, "I hate the fact that we have to do it, but it's better than the alternative," I believe him. (It would have looked better, of course, if he had come up with this plan before it looked as if his former firm, Goldman Sachs, was in jeopardy.)
But the question on the table now is whether the government's latest response to this crisis - the way it has been constructed, and frankly, the way it is being crammed down everyone's throat at the eleventh hour - is the right approach. Already the market has its doubts; just look at its performance Monday.
Let put aside the bill's most offensive aspect - the raw power it gives the Treasury Department, and the lack of oversight it provides - and take a closer look at the practicalities. First off, there is nothing in the bill that will prevent these problems from happening again.
The bill doesn't address adding greater transparency in investments in subprime loans and securities and credit derivatives, which led directly to the debacles at Lehman and AIG. The bill does nothing to rein in the credit-default swap market, which has turned out to be the weapon of financial mass destruction that Warren Buffett always said it was.
Nor are the Democrats going to help matters with their own changes.
It is all well and good that they hope to use the bill to restrain executive compensation, and add stipulations to help people in danger of losing their homes. But nothing the Democrats have suggested so far tackles the core issues of oversight, transparency or regulation.
Of course, the sickest part is that Wall Street is lining up at the trough for a piece of the action, lobbying to run some of the $700 billion fund - and take huge fees - for their own mess.
However the bailout is structured, no matter what safeguards are put in place, it is likely to be a conflicted mess. How can we possibly trust that the price the government agrees to buy the securities will be fair?
And then there is the jockeying among the banks so they can sell their absolute worst stuff to the government - even loans that have nothing to do with mortgages - and change the rules in the process.
The Financial Services Roundtable, which represents big financial services companies, wrote an e-mail message to members Sunday suggesting, laughably, that "the government bid for the assets should not count as a mark-to-market value for accounting purposes."
In other words, if the government drives a hard bargain - as it should - the banks don't have to take write-downs based on the price the feds pay to take junk off their balance sheets.
Watching Wall Street double-dip makes even some in the industry's top tier cringe.
"Maybe I should move to Russia," one titan of finance said to me. "It's obscene, the whole thing. I'm embarrassed for myself."
Actually, I've got a better suggestion: Venezuela.
On Friday last week, Hugo Chávez, the Socialist president of Venezuela, gave a speech in Caracas where, according to Reuters, he said, "The United States has spent $900 billion, four times what Venezuela produces in a year, to try to boost the troubled finance system and housing market."
Gloating, he added: "They have criticized me, especially in the United States, for nationalizing a great company, Cantv, that didn't even cost $1.5 billion."
The paper has risen and fallen in prominence throughout its history. The Inquirer first became a major newspaper during the American Civil War when its war coverage was popular on both sides. The paper's circulation dropped after the war, then rose by the end of the 19th century. Originally supportive of the Democratic Party, The Inquirer's political affiliation eventually shifted towards the Whig Party and then the Republican Party before officially becoming politically independent in the middle of the 20th century. By the end of the 1960s, The Inquirer trailed its chief competitor, the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, and lacked modern facilities and experienced staff. In the 1970s, new owners and editors turned the newspaper into one of the country's most prominent, winning 17 Pulitzers in 15 years. Its prestige has since waned because of cost-cutting and a shift of focus to more local coverage.
_____________________
Secretary Paulson's taxpayer hedge fund
Karl S. Okamoto
Philadelphia Inquirer
September 24, 2008Karl S. Okamoto
Posted on Wed, Sep. 24, 2008
Karl S. Okamoto directs the business-law program at Drexel University
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's $700 billion bailout of Wall Street essentially places the federal government at the helm of the world's biggest hedge fund.
After all, isn't that what this bailout is proposing to do with taxpayers' money?
Under the plan, Paulson will invest $700 billion - at his discretion, with no strings - into so-called mortgage-related assets.
That sure sounds like a hedge fund.
So shouldn't we - or the fiduciaries we've elected to Congress - ask some of the same questions an investor would ask before putting his or her money into a hedge fund?
For example: Secretary Paulson, how do you plan to make money?
Apparently, the plan is to buy mortgage-related securities and hold them until the current crisis passes. Everyone understands that a buy-and-hold strategy can make money provided that you buy low and sell higher.
But since the purpose of this new fund is to allow banks to unload inflated securities in order to avoid significant further write-downs, Secretary Paulson is looking to launch his new hedge fund by buying in at prices that are higher than the prevailing market price.
In other words, Paulson seems to be overpaying.
Of course, it may well turn out that in time, as markets stabilize, he still may recover his costs and even earn a profit.
But Paulson is certainly not starting out with the goal of making money.
So how do you manage a hedge fund that isn't trying to make money?
One of the central features of a hedge fund is its compensation structure. Investors see an alignment of the manager's interests with their own in the fact that a significant portion of the manager's upside depends on making money for the investors.
While Secretary Paulson and his tireless staff may well be motivated solely by the public good, the expertise needed to manage a $700 billion hedge fund will want to get paid market wages.
Given that we are telling these managers that we want them to leave money on the table, under what circumstances do they agree to come to work?
The answer will be a fixed fee. A fee of 2 percent of the assets under management is a typical solution. That's $14 billion a year to manage Secretary Paulson's new hedge fund.
But if we aren't going to make money, and we're going to spend $14 billion a year doing it, what are we getting?
I suspect that may explain why Secretary Paulson has included the following language in his bailout proposal: "Decisions by the Secretary . . . are nonreviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency."
Translation: Don't complain later if the bailout turns out to have been a bad idea.
I certainly wouldn't want to explain to investors - the taxpayers - how I lost billions trying to bail out other people's stupidity.
Wouldn't it be a better idea to use the $700 billion to make money from their mistakes?
That way the federal government might actually have some money left over to provide direct help to all the innocent folks who got hurt along the way. And those who will feel the pain.
Well, actually, the White House has admitted that they drew up the bail out plan months ago:
[White House Deputy Press Secretary Tony] Fratto insisted that the plan was not slapped together and had been drawn up as a contingency over previous months and weeks by administration officials. He acknowledged lawmakers were getting only days to peruse it, but he said this should be enough.]
But the government did nothing real to prevent the financial meltdown. Instead, it let the meltdown happen, and now is trying to ram through terrible and counter-productive legislation drafted previously by using fear tactics.
Bernanke used his time to argue for not buying assets at fire-sale prices in the Treasury's $700 billion bailout proposal.
***
Mr. Bernanke said the Treasury plan should have taxpayers buy the assets and hold them at close to their maturity value. Removing the assets, he said, would bring liquidity back to markets, unfreeze credit markets, reduce uncertainty and allow banks to attract private capital. (Reuters has a partial transcript)
Forcing assets down to even lower fire-sale prices would protect taxpayers the most, since the government would own the assets below the value if held to maturity. As long as those securities didn’t flat-out default, the government’s purchase would have a substantial upside. However, Mr. Bernanke essentially argued that doing so would hurt markets even further and wouldn’t solve the problem facing the economy. In pushing back against congressional efforts to change the Treasury proposal, Mr. Bernanke said: “We cannot impose punitive measures on institutions that choose to sell assets.” The beneficiaries would be not just the companies selling, but markets and the overall economy, he said.
Still, he acknowledged that the precise approach to doing so hadn’t been determined, arguing for flexibility. “We do not know exactly what the best design is,” and that would come from consultation with experts, Mr. Bernanke said.
“We believe that strong and timely action is urgently needed to stabilize our markets and our economy,” he said.
In subsequent questioning, Mr. Bernanke distinguished between, on the one hand, “fire sale prices,” the ones that prevail “when you sell into an illiquid market” and, on the other, the prices that holders think the assets are really worth, sometimes described as “fundamental” values or “hold-to-maturity” value.
“The holders have a view of what they think it’s worth. It’s hard for outsiders to know,” Mr. Bernanke said. The point of an auction is to reveal those prices.
So Bernanke is arguing against the government purchasing Wall Street's toxic assets at their real price (which would benefit taxpayers) and for the Wall Street firms themselves to set whatever arbitrary price they like, since they "have a view of what they think it's worth" and "it's hard for outsiders to know".
Further proof of the fact that the bailout is not aimed at helping taxpayers is that even very wealthy, solvent Wall Street (and foreign) firms may get bailout money. See this.
Homeschooling Banned in California as State Turns Parents Into Criminals for Teaching Their Own Children
by David Gutierrez
(NaturalNews) A California appeals court has ruled that homeschooling of children is illegal unless their parents have teaching credentials from the state.
"California is now on the path to being the only state to deny the vast majority of homeschooling parents their fundamental right to teach their own children at home," said Michael Smith, president of the Home School Legal Defense Association.
The court overturned a lower court's finding that homeschooling did not constitute a violation of child welfare laws.
"California courts have held that ... parents do not have a constitutional right to homeschool their children," Justice H. Walter Croskey said.
The decision stunned parents of the state's roughly 166,000 homeschooled children. While the court claimed that it was merely clarifying an existing law and not making a new one, the decision leaves the parents of homeschooled children at risk of arrest and criminal prosecution.
"At first, there was a sense of, 'No way,' " homeschool parent Loren Mavromati said. "Then there was a little bit of fear. I think it has moved now into indignation."
Parents' reasons for homeschooling their children range from religious beliefs to dissatisfaction with the education received at public or private schools. But according to the court, all California children between the ages of 6 and 18 must attend either a full-time public or private school or be taught by a tutor credentialed for their specific grade level.
"A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation," Croskey wrote.
California's largest teachers union welcomed the decision as did the Children's Law Center of Los Angeles.
According to the law center's executive director, Leslie Heimov, children should not be educated at home, because they need to be "in a place daily where they would be observed by people who had a duty to ensure their ongoing safety."
‘Young, Single and Sterilized’ article advertises for birth control clinic founded by Nazi eugenicist Marie Stopes
A popular women’s magazine in the UK recently featured an article entitled, Young, Single and Sterilized, in which women in their 20’s discussed why they had undergone an operation to prevent them from ever having children. The article is little more than PR for a “women’s charity” called Marie Stopes International, an organization that carries out abortions and sterilizations and was founded by a Nazi eugenicist who advocated compulsory sterilization of non-whites and “those of bad character”.
The story appears in a weekly magazine called Love It (click for PDF enlargement). One of the women featured in the article, Chloe, explains why she decided to have herself sterilized at the age of just 20.
“By the time I was 18, I knew I was never going to change. I couldn’t imagine letting something take over my body and then my whole life.”
“I couldn’t even look at a baby without feeling uncomfortable.”
Following the sterilization procedure, Chloe celebrates the fact that “I’ve got a lifetime of going out ahead of me now,” presumably meaning going out, getting mindlessly drunk and having sex with random strangers, as is British culture, while not having to worry about the risk of pregnancy or the responsibility of looking after a child.
Despite admitting that she has not told any of her family and not even her own mother about the sterilization, the article ends with Chloe boldly stating that it was, “the most sensible adult decision I’ll ever make.”
Another ’success story’ as the article skews it is Charlie McCann, who was sterilized on her 30th birthday and, we read, “is happy with her choice, insisting the men in her life have to adjust.” Her then boyfriend decided to adjust by ending the relationship because he couldn’t bear never having children.
Ironically, another woman speaks about how she first became interested in the idea of being sterilized after reading about the subject in a women’s magazine.
Jacquelyn Arnold tells of how she felt “irritation” at the sight of children playing in a garden and decided to go ahead with the operation, which is described in routine and straightforward terms. Arnold says she has no regrets and has ‘taken control of her life’.
Sterilization is lauded as an “excellent method of birth control” by Dr. Patricia Lohr of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service.
The article includes an advertisement that encourages women to seek “more information about sterilization” by contacting Marie Stopes International. We read that, “Over the past year, a quarter of the women who booked a sterilisation consultation with women’s charity Marie Stopes were aged 30 or under.”
Marie Stopes was a feminist who opened the first birth control clinic in Britain in 1921 as well as being Nazi sympathizer and a eugenicist who advocated that non-whites and the poor be sterilized.
Stopes, a racist and an anti-Semite, campaigned for selective breeding to achieve racial purity, a passion she shared with Adolf Hitler in adoring letters and poems that she sent the leader of the Third Reich.
Stopes also attended the Nazi congress on population science in Berlin in 1935, while calling for the “compulsory sterilization of the diseased, drunkards, or simply those of bad character.” Stopes acted on her appalling theories by concentrating her abortion clinics in poor areas so as to reduce the birth rate of the lower classes.
Stopes left most of her estate to the Eugenics Society, an organization that shared her passion for racial purity and still exists today under the new name The Galton Institute. The society has included members such as Charles Galton Darwin (grandson of the evolutionist), Julian Huxley and Margaret Sanger.
Ominously, The Galton Institute website promotes its support and funding initiative for “the practical delivery of family planning facilities, especially in developing countries.” In other words, the same organization that once advocated sterilizing black people to achieve racial purity in the same vein as the Nazis is now bankrolling abortions of black babies in the third world.
While the issue of abortion is an entirely different argument, most would agree that no matter how extreme it sounds, a woman has the right to sterilize herself if she so chooses, just as a man has the right to a vasectomy.
But when a magazine aimed primarily at young women all but encourages girls as young as 20 to have their fallopian tubes tied in order to prevent the “irritation” of children entering their lives and then advertises an organization founded by a Nazi eugenicist that can perform the operation, something has to be amiss.
Even more shocking than this is the fact that the majority of people in the UK routinely express their support for society’s “undesirables” to be forcibly sterilized by the state, harking back to a time when such a thing was commonplace right up to the 1970’s in some areas of America and Europe.
As we highlighted earlier this month, respondents to a Daily Mail article about Royal Mail honoring Marie Stopes by using her image on a commemorative stamp were not disgusted at Royal Mail for paying homage to a racist Nazi eugenicist, but were merely keen to express their full agreement that those deemed not to be of pure genetic stock or of the approved character should be forcibly sterilized and prevented from having children.
“A lot of people should be sterilized, IMO. It’s still true today,” wrote one.
“Just imagine what a stable, well-ordered society we’d have if compulsory sterilisation had been adopted years ago for the socially undesirable,” states another respondent, calling for a “satellite-carried sterilisation ray” to be installed in space to zap the undesirables.
Shockingly, another compares sterilization and genocide of those deemed inferior to the breeding and culling of farmyard animals, and says that such a move is necessary to fight overpopulation and global warming. Here is the comment in full from “Karen” in Wales;
We breed farm animals to produce the best possible stock and kill them when they have fulfilled their purpose. We inter-breed pedigree animals to produce extremes that leave them open to ill-health and early death. It is only religion that says humans are not animals. The reality is that we are simply intelligent, mammalian primates.
The world population of humans has increased from 2 billion to 6.5 billion in the last 50 years. This planet can support 2 billion humans comfortably. 6.5 billion humans use too many resources and leads to global warming, climate change and a very uncertain future for all of us - humans and all other life sharing this planet with us.
Marie Stopes believed in population control and in breeding the best possible humans. So did Hitler. Neither of the aims are bad in themselves. It is how they are achieved that is the problem. The fact that we still remember Marie Stopes is an achievement in itself.
The nature of these comments is so fundamentally sick and twisted that one is tempted to dismiss them as a joke - but these people are deadly serious. Presumably they would also agree with China’s one child policy, which is routinely enforced by intimidation as young pregnant women are grabbed off the streets by state goons and taken to hospitals where forced abortions are carried out.
Now with popular women’s magazines advising women in their 20’s where they can go to be sterilized and ensure a lifetime of partying and carefree sex, it’s no surprise that experts predict that by 2010 one in four western women will be child free for life.
The yearning to have children is the most beautiful, natural and innate emotion either a man or a woman can possibly experience. That is not to say that it’s always wrong for some people not to have children - extreme circumstances can justify such a decision. But to have yourself sterilized because you find children to be an “irritant” and want to live a life free of responsibility or consequences is an awful message to send to young women, especially in the sex-saturated entertainment culture that we are now forced to endure.
Furthermore, the outright promotion of Marie Stopes International as ‘the place to go’ to get sterilized if you’re under 30 is stomach-churning considering the fact that the origins of this organization can be found in Nazi ideology, racist and backward early 20th century eugenics and a long-standing agenda to cull the population of undesirables, an abhorrent belief still held by elites across the planet today.
Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Internet censorship is once again in the news after legendary YouTube user Nuffrespect posted a new video detailing the latest online attack on 9/11 Truth: a user who is creating clones of respected user accounts and truth movement leaders in order to smear 9/11 Truth by posting racist comments. These have already led to the deletion of several well-known accounts in what has been revealed as a coordinated effort to eliminate 9/11 Truth from YouTube.
That CNET admits these videos were removed as a direct result of Lieberman's staff's request is significant, as it was Lieberman who has been urging YouTube to take down "radicalizing" terrorist propaganda since May of this year to bring it into compliance with H.R. 1955, a bill that is currently awaiting approval by the Senate and which would criminalize all dissent of the government. That H.R. 1955 will specifically target the 9/11 Truth community is made obvious by a presentation made to the House Homeland Security Subcommittee in 2007 on "Terrorism and the Internet" which actually listed 9/11 Truth sites alongside terrorist jihad sites as examples of terrorist propaganda on the internet.
At first, YouTube executives made a show of standing up to Lieberman and his tyrannical dictates. "While we respect and understand his views, YouTube encourages free speech and defends everyone's right to express unpopular points of view," a message posted on YouTube said at the time.
Evidently that was mere PR and GooTube—bought out by Google last year—is now showing its roots as a spook-infested CIA front that functions as a virtual branch of government. Now with no warning and little fanfare, they have silently started implementing the government's agenda of taking 9/11 Truth and other forms of dissent off of the premiere video-sharing site.
All of this comes on the heels of numerous blows to free speech on the internet over the preceeding weeks. At the beginning of September, Comcast—America's second-largest internet provider—announced it would set a hard bandwidth limit on its customers in a move that will limit the ability of users to exchange large amounts of data. This of course sets the precedent for other providers to follow suit and it may not be long before the major internet providers are able to squeeze customers' ability to exchange information on the internet in the name of cutting down on bandwidth usage.
Also this month, reports emerged of a shadowy United Nations group known as "Q6/17" which is working with China and the NSA to develop a system to trace the source of all internet communications. Of course, as the linked article points out, such a feature would be useless as all serious hacking attempts these days rely on spoofed addresses in the first place and such traceback features are likely to be used by the very people they are designed to detect. But perhaps creating chaos on an internet that is increasingly becoming an overglorified wiretap is itself part of a much larger plan.
Indeed, the myriad ways in which the internet is under attack is too large to list in one article, but some more ideas of just how 9/11 Truth and free speech on the internet in general is being suppressed may be gleaned from the video below:
The Department of Homeland Security has previewed new technology that they promise will help rout out terrorists and other dangerous people in public places by covertly bio-scanning subjects as they walk past sets of cameras.
It may seem Orwellian, but on Thursday, the Homeland Security Department showed off an early version of physiological screeners that could spot terrorists, reports USA Today.
According to DHS officials, the scanners work like polygraphs but without the subjects having to be wired up to them. They measure body temperature, pulse and breathing regularity. Any sudden changes recorded could indicate “the kind of anxiety exuded by a would-be terrorist or criminal.”
According to the report, the new technology will not just be limited to use in airports:
The system would be portable and fast, said project manager Robert Burns, who envisions machines that scan people as they walk into airports, train stations or arenas. Those flagged by the machines would be interviewed in front of cameras that measure minute facial movements for signs they are lying.
Law experts have charged that the technology constitutes a government enforced “medical exam” which would violate civil rights.
There can be no doubt that this technology is part of Homeland Security’s Project Hostile Intent (PHI) program, on which we reported just over one year ago.
Scientists were tasked by the DHS to develop technology by 2010 that can scan the bodily functions of citizens, without them knowing, and uncover any possible hostile intent or deception.
The DHS revealed to The New Scientist that it wishes to develop a lie detector-type test that can be used remotely, which was described as “an advantage because it would not interfere with the flow of a crowd and it could be used without the target’s knowledge.”
Other technology to be used for PHI includes lasers, cameras, eye trackers, microphones and heart rate and breathing sensors.
In addition, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) started conducting random additional at-gate screening earlier this year of airline passengers who display “involuntary physical and physiological” actions indicating stress, fear or deception.
To anyone who remembers Poindexter’s gait analysis this is pretty disturbing stuff.
We are being acclimatized to these things, first within airports and stations. Technology and measures that you don’t even see used in prisons or high security facilities are being passed off as completely normal in public places.
Furthermore, from the wording in these reports, it is clear that the intention is to roll out the exact same measures throughout public places in major cities and subject the general public to intense airport style harassment on the city streets.
How long before we see checkpoint officials inspecting internal passports and consumers body scanned merely to enter a supermarket or a sports arena?
By Sky News SkyNews - Friday, September 19 03:10 pm
Communities of homeless people living in tents are cropping up across the US as the effects of rising unemployment, repossessions and the credit crunch bite.
From Seattle to Athens, Georgia, homeless advocacy groups and city agencies are reporting the most visible rise in homeless encampments in a generation.
Nearly 61% of state-run organisations in the sector have seen a rise in homelessness since the economic downturn first started in 2007, a report says.
The study, by the National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH), says the problem has worsened since the report's release in April, with repossessions mounting, fuel and food prices rising and the job market tightening.
One of the so-called "tent cities" is based by the side of the railway tracks in the city of Reno, populated by people who lost their jobs to the ailing US economy, or newcomers who had moved there for work and discovered no-one was hiring.
Out of a dozen people interviewed in the tent city, six had come to Reno from California or elsewhere over the last year, hoping for casino jobs.
"I figured this would be a great place for a job," said Max Perez, a 19-year-old from Iowa.
He could not find one and ended up taking showers at the men's shelter and sleeping in a tent barely big enough to cover his body.
The relatively posh California city of Santa Barbara has given over a car park to people who sleep in cars and vans.
The city of Fresno, California, is trying to manage several growing tent cities, including an encampment where people have made shelters out of scrap wood.
In Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, homeless groups have paired with non-profit or faith-based groups to manage tent cities as outdoor shelters.
Other cities where tent cities have either appeared or expanded include Chattanooga, Tennessee, San Diego, and Columbus, Ohio.
"It's clear that poverty and homelessness have increased," said NCH acting executive director Michael Stoops.
"The economy is in chaos, we're in an unofficial recession and Americans are worried, from the homeless to the middle class, about their future."
When the financial markets started coming undone earlier this week, the Treasury Secretary and the Federal Reserve stepped in, and with $85 billion of our money (actually our children's money, since they borrowed it from China and Saudi Arabia), bought foundering AIG, the world's largest insurance company, and assumed its colossal pile of crap debt.
That didn't help, and the stock market crashed further, falling to levels not seen in three years. Banks, meanwhile, stopped lending, figuring to just hold onto their money and try to weather the crash. The US Treasury and the Fed stepped in again, this time pumping nearly $300 billion more of our money into foreign money markets, and getting European and other governments to do the same in an effort to get the credit markets open again and to stop the stock market swoon. That was on top of some $700 billion already spent on bailouts.
It didn't work. Thursday, the markets continued to fall, well into the afternoon, and it looked like another seriously down day. But then Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson came up with a new idea. He said he and the Bush administration were considering setting up a new agency to assume all the bad debt of the banking sector--meaning all those bad loans they made, and that they lured unsuspecting consumers into taking out, by way of deceptive marketing techniques and outright fraud.
Note that we're talking about perhaps half a trillion dollars here--of our money again. And remember, much or even most of this money will never get repaid, and we're talking about money that could have funded reduced class sizes in every school in America, a national healthcare system, a crash R&D program into non-carbon energy and (not or) a strengthened Social Security and Medicare program.
The drones in the Democratic Party leadership in Congress immediately jumped on the bandwagon, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) urging her charges to act quickly to get some kind of a bill out there to facilitate the bail-out, which could cost anywhere from $600 billion to $1 trillion, but most estimates.
The thing to remember here is that this is not a rescue of the little guy (though the Democrats say their rescue plan, when it appears, will include some kind of relief for people unable to pay their mortgages). Don't hold your breath. Odds are those people facing foreclosure will still be unable to pay their mortgages, and besides, there's no way there will be relief for the majority of homeowners who aren't missing their mortgage payments, but who are struggling mightily to meet them each month.
Primarily, who gets helped by this enforced taxpayer largesse are the fat cats who own all the stock in these financial institutions, all the executives who pay themselves outsize salaries each year for their lousy management records, all these hotshot traders who make the deals that later turn sour, long after they've run off to another job taking their bonuses with them.
We ordinary people, who live from check to check, will feel the pain of this "rescue" in the form of higher taxes in coming years, and in a devalued dollar--because you can bet that all that money they're printing, and all that added debt they're piling on to the mountain of debt already out there is going to make the rest of the world pretty queasy about holding onto dollar-denominated debt, or about buying any more of it.
When you hear a banker say he's going to help you, it pays to hang onto your wallet. When you hear a politician say he's going to help you, hang onto your wallet. If they're both saying the same thing, and especially if one of them is the head of the Federal Reserve Bank, then you better really hang on tight.
Not that that will do any good.
The real answer to this crisis is, firstly, a massive dose of trust-busting, so that no bank or investment bank or insurance company is so big that its failure becomes a threat to the financial system, and thus the government has to rescue it with taxpayer money, and secondly, a return to the era of Glass-Steagall, when it was illegal for banks to also be in the investment banking busiiness.
All the talk of "efficiencies" and of "better service to the customer" that has been endlessly parroted to justify mergers like Citicorp and Travelers, or JP Morgan and Chase Bank, or now Bank of America and Merrill Lynch is fraudulent. Just to give an example, my bank, once known as Willow Grove Bank, a small family-owned institution, was bought by another bank and became Willow Financial. Almost immediately the staffing levels went down. Recently, the combined entity, which ran into trouble, was bought by another institution, Harleyville Bank. Now there are half as many tellers most of the time. As one teller confided, "Every time we get bought, they lay people off."
Of course they do. That's what mergers always do. To recoup the costs of the merger, management cuts back on service and employment.
The truth is, for all the talk about the efficiencies of bigness, getting a mortgage today isn't any cheaper than it was in the 1950s, when there wasn't even any such thing as a national bank that would be "too big to fail."
The real reason we have mega financial institutions is that mega financial institutions pay mega bucks to managers and make mega donations to the campaign coffers of politicians. They also get to put some of those mega-buck managers into key advisory positions in each administration, Republican and Democrat, to ensure that government polices allow them to get even bigger and even richer--and to ensure that when they screw it up, they get rescued at the taxpayers' expense.
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006 and now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net
An interview with EX president of Mexico Vicente Fox at Wayne State University September 12, 2008 where he tells American workers to “get over it”, that their jobs are gone forever and that they must retrain for GLOBAL work. The news report also calmly mentions that he wants a North American Union (you know, that thing that doesn’t exist) and a single Amero currency - before moving on to the weather and a segment about owning a horse.
By MARK THOMPSON / WASHINGTONMon Sep 15, 1:35 PM ET
Soldiers barking orders at each other is so 20th Century. That's why the U.S. Army has just awarded a $4 million contract to begin developing "thought helmets" that would harness silent brain waves for secure communication among troops. Ultimately, the Army hopes the project will "lead to direct mental control of military systems by thought alone."
If this sounds insane, it would have been as recently as a few years ago. But improvements in computing power and a better understanding of how the brain works have scientists busy hunting for the distinctive neural fingerprints that flash through a brain when a person is talking to himself. The Army's initial goal is to capture those brain waves with incredibly sophisticated software that then translates the waves into audible radio messages for other troops in the field. "It'd be radio without a microphone, " says Dr. Elmar Schmeisser, the Army neuroscientist overseeing the program. "Because soldiers are already trained to talk in clean, clear and formulaic ways, it would be a very small step to have them think that way."
B-movie buffs may recall that Clint Eastwood used similar "brain-computer interface" technology in 1982's Firefox, named for the Soviet fighter plane whose weapons were controlled by the pilot's thoughts. (Clint was sent to steal the plane, natch.) Yet it's not as far-fetched as you might think: video gamers are eagerly awaiting a crude commercial version of brain wave technology - a $299 headset from San Francisco-based Emotiv Systems - in summer 2009.
The Army doesn't move quite as fast as gamers though. The military's vastly more sophisticated system may be a decade or two away from reality, let alone implementation. The five-year contract it awarded last month to a coalition of scientists from the University of California at Irvine, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Maryland, seeks to "decode the activity in brain networks" so that a soldier could radio commands to one or many comrades by thinking of the message he wanted to relay and who should get it. Initially, the recipients would most likely hear transmissions rendered by a robotic voice via earphones. But scientists eventually hope to deliver a version in which commands are rendered in the speaker's voice and indicate the speaker's distance and direction from the listener.
"Having a soldier gain the ability to communicate without any overt movement would be invaluable both in the battlefield as well as in combat casualty care," the Army said in last year's contract solicitation. "It would provide a revolutionary technology for silent communication and orientation that is inherently immune to external environmental sound and light."
The key challenge will be to develop software able to pinpoint the speech-related brain waves picked up by the 128-sensor array that ultimately will be buried inside a helmet. Those sensors detect the minute electrical charges generated by nerve pathways in the brain when thinking occurs. The sensors will generate an electroencephalogram - a confusing pile of squiggles on a computer screen - that scientists will study to find those vital to communicating. "We think we can train a computer to understand those squiggles to the point that they can read off the commands that your brain is issuing to your mouth and lips," Schmeisser says. Unfortunately, it's not a matter of finding the single right squiggle. "There's no golden neuron that's talking," he says.
Dr. Mike D'Zmura of UC-Irvine, the lead scientist on the project, says his task is akin to finding the right strands on a plate full of pasta. "You need to pick out the relevant pieces of spaghetti," he says, "and sometimes they have to be torn apart and re-attached to others." But with ever-increasing computing power the task can be done in real time, he says. Users also will have to be trained to think loudly. "How do we get a person to think something to themselves in a way that leaves a very strong signal in EEGs that we can read off against the background noise?" D'Zmura asks. Finally, because every person's EEG is different, persons using "thought helmets" will have to be trained so that computers intercepting their unspoken commands recognize each user's unique mental pattern.
Both scientists pre-emptively deny expected charges that they're literally messing with soldiers' minds. "A lot of people interpret wires coming out of the head as some sort of mind reading," D'Zmura sighs. "But there's no way you can get there from here," Schmeisser insists. "Not only do you have to be willing, but since your brain is unique, you have to train the system to read your mind - so it's impossible to do it against someone's will and without their active and sustained cooperation."
And don't overlook potential civilian benefits. "How often have you been annoyed by people screaming into their cell phones?" Schmeisser asks. "What if instead of their Bluetooth earpiece it was a Bluetooth headpiece and their mouth is shut and there's blessed silence all around you?" Sounds like one of those rare slices of the U.S. military budget even pacifists might support. View this article on Time.com
John McCain is a primary example of the fact politicians will say anything to get elected. In a new TV ad directed against rival Barack Obama, McCain says the economic security of American workers is at risk due to the “greed of Wall Street” and declares he will “reform Wall Street and fix Washington” if elected. In addition, he promises “a 9/11 commission-style inquiry into the state of the economy and into possible ways to solve any problems that might be identified,” reports RTT News.
If McCain’s commission ever gets off the ground after his election, we can expect the result to be similar to that produced by the 9/11 commission — a whitewash churned out by a gaggle of hand-picked insiders.
For those who understand how the system works, McCain’s declaration represents the height of absurdity. Boom and bust cycles and depressions like the one we are confronting are deliberately created by the bankers McCain promises he will take to the woodshed. They are scams designed to produce trillions of dollars.
“From now on depressions will be scientifically created,” said Charles A. Lindberg Sr. after the creation of the Federal Reserve. Since congressman Lindberg made this comment, the bankers have turned the scientific creation of recessions and depressions into an art form. They use the central bank to stage manage alternating periods of inflation and deflation, thus whipsawing the public for the sake of obscene and criminal profits.
It really is a sick joke to believe McCain will go up against this powerful cartel of international bankers. His commission, if it ever gets off the ground, may go after a few hapless brokers and middle level managers, but it will never go after the monopolistic cartel in control of the economy.
As CFR historian and Georgetown professor Carroll Quigley has noted, this cartel was devised “to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world’s central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank… sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the levels of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world.”
Enter the doddering sock puppet, John McCain, who expects us to believe if elected he will go after this criminal cartel. McCain would be able to take out this cartel in one fell swoop by eliminating the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks, but of course this will never happen.
McCain is simply yanking your chain. He can get away with this absurdity because the American people have zero understanding of the international banking cartel.
It’s just more snake oil sold to a nation of suckers.
Addendum
Both McCain and Obama are in the pocket of the bankers. In regard to McCain, he is in the pocket of Lord Rothschild, as reported back in March. “Sen. John McCain plans at least one campaign event on his week-long congressional trip to Europe and the Middle East: a March 20 fundraiser in London. An invitation sent out by the campaign says the luncheon will be held at Spencer House, St. James’s Place, ‘by kind permission of Lord Rothschild OM GBE and the Hon Nathaniel Rothschild,’” the Washington Post reported.
An Open Letter to Christian Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan
America is Now Rome
By STAN GOFF
September 16, 2008
On February 1, 1996, I retired from the United States Army. I had served in the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Vietnam as an infantryman, the 82nd Airborne Division, the 4th Infantry Division, 2nd Ranger Battalion, the Jungle Operations Training Center, 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment - Delta, the United States Military Academy at West Point, 1st Ranger Battalion, 7th Special Forces Group, 75th Ranger Regiment, and finally 3rd Special Forces Group. I worked all over "hot spots" in Latin America during the 80s and early 90s. I participated in Grenada and Somalia; and I was the team sergeant for a Special Forces A-Detachment during the 1994 invasion of Haiti. In all that time, I was one of those atheists in the foxholes they say don't exist. I could never have known that I'd find the faith to follow Christ and be baptized on Easter of my 56th year. But I did, even when I'd never grasped for spiritual reassurance as I slogged through the Central Highlands of Vietnam, leapt from airplanes into the night, or had helicopters shot out from under me. I've been taking up residence close to death for a long time. My faith isn't about jumping over death. It's about reconciling with God, who Jesus Christ showed us is Love.
When I was baptized I continued to carry my history; but one identity was sloughed off in the water and a new one born out of it. I write this open letter to troops, brothers and sisters -- of all branches -- who profess the faith of Christ. I write you to ask that you remember your baptism, because at that baptism you declared your renunciation of evil. * The big preposition Note the preposition. I didn't say faith in Christ, I said faith of Christ. Christian is a diminutive term; it means "little Christ." To be a Christian is not to merely have faith in Christ. That's too easy, and Jesus of Nazareth was not about easy. To be Christian is to aspire to have the faith of Christ. Christ's call is not to go along with the program, say the magic words, then be rescued from death. Christ did not merely command belief. Christ commands you to follow him. That command does not wait until death for it to become effective in your life. "Love your enemy." This is not an etching at some altar that you visit; it is your path laid before you by the footsteps of Christ in this world. This is an action religion, not an abracadrabra religion. Christ tells us to take up the cross. That means be willing to risk all, to suffer all when suffering can heal the brokenness in the world. The brokenness of 1st Century Palestine was not altogether different from the brokenness of the world now. Jesus' ministry was conducted in the teeth of a Roman military occupation. Like Nuri al Malaki's "government," the Palestinian Jewish upper-class then lived in an uncomfortable collaboration with that occupation. There were also Jewish insurgents who fought the Roman occupation, who fought among themselves, and who attacked collaborating Jewish sects as well. One particular nationalist party that emerged prior to the revolt with Rome was known as the Zealots. You may recall that Jesus had such folk among his small band of disciples. "And when day came, he called his disciples and chose twelve of them, whom he also named apostles: Simon, whom he named Peter, and his brother Andrew, and James, and John, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James son of Alphaeus, and Simon, who was called the Zealot..." (Luke 6:13-15)
We can't beat around the bush about this comparison. It's clear.
We Romans
America is now Rome. You are Rome's army of occupation. To the Roman soldier, when Jesus passed down the dusty byways of his occupied land, he appeared no more or less than a random Iraqi or Afghan appears to you. What do you look like to them? Jesus himself looked at the Jewish resistance to Roman occupation, then looked at the corpses rotting on crosses along the roads as Roman examples to the Palestinian Jew,; and he chose a new way. His way was neither passivity, nor counter-violence, but non-violent resistance, just like Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, who both cited Jesus' ministry in their own prophetic missions. Jesus looked at the violence-counterviolence cycle, and determined that each person in that system was redeemable as an individual - each a child of God, each beloved of God. Jewish, Roman, Samaritan, male, female... no matter. He also looked at how the system itself -- operating with a self-reinforcing dynamic that transcends the individual -- led people into the cycles of accusation and violence; and he proposed to undermine that system with this radical doctrine of spiritual equality, a redemption open to all through grace, and a redemption never imposed at the point of a sword... or under threat of a bomb. In the original story, written in Greek, Jesus says, "I am not of this world." At least that's how many interpretations go. But the original Greek word kosmos means world, flesh, or system, depending on context. "I am not of this system." Not simply the system of Roman occupation, but the system of violence-counterviolence... all systems of domination, because domination breeds the cycle of violence-counterviolence.
Pretensions of the devil
Scripture has been interpreted to suit plenty that is the very evil you renounced at your baptism. The subjugation of women. Slavery. War. Even the white supremacist sects have quoted Scripture. But in order to do so, literalism and decontextualizaton have been used to distort the essence and spirit of the Scriptures for the most impure of motives. In America, we hear much about a few references to sex in the Bible, but little about the many references to poverty, and less about Jesus' provocations on peace. When Jesus says his way will break the dominance of one generation over another within the family, between slave and master, between male and female, he does not confine this vision to heaven - where the upside-down "kingdom" without oppression lives in the dimension of Spirit. He says "on earth as it is in heaven." Jesus was an earthy guy. He bathed in rivers, shat on the ground, and broke bread with fishmongers, tax-collectors, outcasts, prostitutes, Zealots... and he showed mercy to the child of a Roman soldier.
Even on the cross, in his final breaths as the Romans' victim, he cries out to God on behalf of those who kill him: "When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, 'Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.'" (Luke 23:33-34) What do you think that means? Certainly the Roman soldiers (soldiers like you) knew they were participating in a crucifixion. The Roman troops had done this many times.
What they did not understand was how their system led them to do this. In Matthew 27:54, it was a Centurion who heard these words -- "forgive them" -- and experienced an earthquake, saying, "Truly, this is the Son of God." (Do you see how the symbolic truth here is more powerful than the literal seismology?) Forgiveness unmasks Satan, who is not the boogyman of popular culture, but the spirit in the culture -- some would call it a zeitgeist -- that acts as God's jealous pretender, that promotes Self as God, that plays the accuser to stir up the mob (weapons of mass destruction?), that sets up idols... so that we will "know not what we do," so we will not know who and whose we are. You can hear the voice of Satan in every instance of boasting, humiliation of another, profaning of what we know to be sacred (like God's Creation), every thought and word of aggression or revenge, every put-down of other people (all beloved of God). Where you are, you can see how the state of war and occupation -- putting you at odds with an occupied population that does not want to be occupied -- amplifies and focuses the malevolent spirit. Now ask yourself why? Why do troops run down civilians with vehicles to avoid slowing down? Why do troops throw bottles and cans at pedestrians to entertain themselves? Why did the massacres like Haditha occur? Why did the utter destruction of Fallujah happen? Why are wedding parties bombed by US aircraft? Why did a whole squad participate in the premeditated half-hour-long rape and murder of a screaming 14-year-old girl? Why is it that approaching an invader's roadblock can carry death sentence for a whole family? Why can children can be woken from their beds by soldiers kicking down the house doors? Why are thousands are held imprisoned without casue? Why are Iraqi and Afghan elders obliged to obey 20-year-old invaders who can't even speak their language? Why do your peers (perhaps even you) refer to all Iraqis or Afghans with epithets? Why do your peers laugh when they retell stories of their own cruelties and their humiliations of the people whose nations they have invaded? Why are you there? What is the spirit in our culture that spins out clever excuses for these evils? It is that same spirit that you renounced at your baptism, which I call on you to remember now. Remember your baptism, where you renounced Satan.
Making and unmaking enemies
Do you really understand -- any better than the Roman soldiers who "did their jobs" at Golgotha -- how this system has led you to where you are today? You are in the system; but that system is not God's. It is a system of human concupiscience, human malice, human domination, human hubris... a system that functions when you follow the crowd against the Holy Spirit. Satan loves a crowd. These are the weapons of the Satanic spirit that seizes the lynch mob, that calls us to domination and calls it self-defense -- even altruism. This is the spirit of our zeitgeist. Remember your baptism. You declared your renunciation of Satan, and you made that declaration to God.
Did you think it would be easy? The Roman soldiers had been convinced, and had convinced themselves, that they were right to do what they did. To make it alright in their own minds to do what they did, they had to withdraw recognition of the Jewish Palestinians' basic humanity. I don't know what they called the Palestinians, but I am sure there was some equivalent of the term "rag head" or "hajji." And in turn, no doubt, many angry Jews in Palestine had dehumanizing epithets for the Romans. That's the cycle. And as Gandhi said, "and eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." Jesus said the same thing. He said that not only were you not to attack your enemies, you are commanded by God to love them. It was on the mountainside, there with His disciples sitting before the crowds, He said, "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous." (Matt 5:43-45) That's how Christ told us to break the cycle of enemy-making. Fight the system by loving the "enemy," but fight the system nonetheless. Provoke with your presence, but do not batter. This is how demonic power is unmasked, and how it was unmasked on the cross, where Christ baited a snare for Satan with his own frail body. Loving the enemy neutralizes the category of enemy.
Unfortunately, even with phalanxes of chaplains ready to distort and press the message of Christ into the business of war, this means that you are now part of an organization that has no reason to exist without an enemy. The ethic of the military is inscribed in the infantry phrase, "close with The Enemy and destroy him." The ethic of Christ is inscribed in neighbor-love -- love of anyone who is near, and enemy-love -- the unmaking of the category of "enemy." These two perspectives - military doctrine and the ethic of Christ -- cannot be reconciled. "For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors (enemies who exploited the people for the economic benefit of Rome) do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles (those who were not of the Jewish nation) do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." (Matt 5:46-48) Christ told you to "love your enemies." Break the cycle of enemy-making.
Yet the armed forces are based, at their very core, on the existence of an enemy to destroy. The very doctrine that governs your organization, your technology, and your methods, cannot exist without The Enemy. To accomplish that, the armed forces must do two things: they must devalue the lives of all who are not members of the nation, and they must set up an idol to supplant God.
The idolatry of nation
In your military chapels hang American flags. But God's Creation does not stop at the border of the United States; and God's love is not extended exclusively to Americans; just as God's love was not extended exclusively to the Jews, but also embraced Samaritans and Gentiles and tax-collectors, and even the Roman soldiery who conducted the crucifixion of Jesus. And when we say we are blessed, we need to understand that blessing is not a reward of material goods or social power. To bless means to make whole... to heal brokenness. The root word in "salvation" is not save, but salve... a healing balm. If God is to bless America, then first and foremost, that means "heal" America -- reconcile America to God. Not put the symbol of political authority in the chapel where it can pose as something holy. America cannot be blessed by God without that same blessing -- that same making whole -- extending to the entire human family, because under God, the human family is indivisible. As theologian Shane Claiborne notes:
No wonder it is hard for seekers to find God nowadays. It is difficult to know where Christianity ends and America begins. Our money says, 'In God we Trust.' God's name is on American money, and America's flag is on God's altars.
The Hebraic tradition of Jesus forbids idolatry. Making the flag of a nation, one that has entered history only recently and will as surely leave it some day, an object of worship is idolatry. For God clearly says, "You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I am a jealous God ..." (Exodus 20:3-6) And at the heart of belief is not whether we have the proper mental acquiesce to a particular religious decree but whether or not we will follow this God who loves so passionately that even the enemy becomes the object of love. Such love is always contrary to the systems of empire and domination. Jesus clearly refuses the claim of Caesar over his life, economically and as a point of worship. Remember, he asks the followers of the Pharisees and Herod to hold up a coin with a graven image, an image of Caesar - the 'divine one,' an image explicitly forbidden by Judaic law, and then says, "give to this image, this false God, what it is due." "...Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's'" (Mark 12:17) Jesus was facing an attempt to entrap him in a debate about not paying taxes to The Enemy (Rome). His reply: Caesar's money? That's part of Caesar's system, not mine, and not God's. The use of this story today to claim one realm for religion and another for obedience to the state, the idea that there were two separate spheres in the state and religion then at all, is a grotesque retrojection of later interpretations into 1st Century Palestine. It is an absurdity that exploits our historical ignorance about that time and place.
This obedience-to-the-state interpretation of the story of the coin with Casear's graven image was proffered when the church was merged with the state... and it is blasphemy, a demonic co-optation of Scripture by principalities and powers to trick subject populations into support for the schemes of power. Christ didn't obey the state; he subverted it. Then the state bowed to the lynch mob and nailed this gentle rabbi to a cross for a slow and painful execution. There are a couple of things that we can never seem to separate from the state, however: money and war. * The pigeon-sellers of war The one time Jesus became physically angry in Scripture was when he overturned the tables of the pigeon-sellers and money-changers who were encamped on the steps of the temple, driving them out when they exploit and abuse and rob the poor ones who only seek obedience to God, corrupting a practice that was meant to connect and honor and instead making it an exploitive practice done in the name of religion and under the sanction of Rome. (Mark 11:15-18) Remember your baptism; and know that God's currency is courage in love, not the currency of Caesar that dissolves communities with obsession and envy and war. Can you see the money-changers at work again? Look around you now at the orgy of war-profiteering, the get-rich(er)-quick schemes that attach to war like pilot fish on a shark. But the shark must have enemies to feed upon. Now, even when there is no credible military threat to the United States that a standing military can prevent, you are being bent to the will of a doctrine that must have The Enemy. If there is no enemy, then one must be created.
The Enemy is the raison d'etre of the armed forces. And so other nations - nations of people who have already suffered terribly - were selected to become The Enemy in order to justify the plundering of their resources and the subsidized economies of war - from no-bid contracts for hi-tech weapons to contractors who pay exorbitant salaries and charge outrageous prices to wash your clothes, feed you, and run facilities that insulate you from the harsh and incessant realities of the nations you now occupy. Do you really think that were it not for oil, you would even be in that region? Do you know how many campaign contributions are funneled to politicians of both parties by "defense" contractors? Enemies make money. Enemies are good business. The business of war is good these days. The structures of evil and the evil of structures are visible to anyone who consents to see. Consenting to see constitutes an entry through the passageway of Grace.
Entering the New Life
You -- as an individual human being -- are redeemable through grace. Faith -- radical trust -- is how we act into Grace. "Consider the lilies of the field..." All the excuses and twisted explanations that are made for these wars of occupation - and that is what they are, lies and excuses - are designed to clear away the psychological and spiritual obstacles to your carrying out this occupation of other peoples' lands. The politicians are creating the twisted logic. The contractors are supporting the twisted logic. The warlike culture in America is directed by the very spirit you renounced at your baptism. The malevolent spirit is not just the devil; it is a devil-maker... a demonizer, an enemy-maker. The devil -- the malevolent within our zeitgeist -- demonizes Arabs (our brothers and sisters before God), demonizes Muslims (our brothers and sisters before God) and expresses these explanations-for-war as pus is expressed from an infected wound. Even some clergy are complicit - as it was in the time of Jesus, when the clergy itself called for his execution. (Mark 11:17) You -- soldier, sailor, airman, marine... and you, officer -- must pray for them; and you must not obey them. You know, many of you, that the ugliness of any description of war can never be equal to the stark and actual obscenity of war. That obscenity is the visible face of Satan that many of us are working very very hard not to see. It's the twisted imitator of God, the demonic spirit, the misleader... that crafts a War Jesus. That millions have been misled does not in any way change what it is. Jesus never gave his sanction to war. The most common quote from scripture used by warmongering government and clergy is Luke 12:49-53, where Jesus says He will sow discord in the family.
I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! But I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is completed! Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law."
He does not say "not peace, but war." He's says "not peace, but division." And the faultline for that division is between generations. Age and gender in 1st Century Palestine defined familial authority. Familial authority was the basis of social stability (the "peace" of Power). Get your head around that.
These divisions are not between brothers and sisters who are the co-children of God, but between generations and the hereditary powers that inhered in the system of human authority. To name this passage a call to war, or its justification, simply because it says he comes not to bring "peace" to domination in the patriarchal household, is a rhetorical acrobatic, just as the return of Caesar's image is not by any stretch a call to obey the government.
This passage is a call to divide human authority in order to reunite authority under a loving God. And it is a clear call. The official doctrine of the armed forces is based on an Enemy. The doctrine of the Kingdom of God "on earth as it is in heaven" has no enemies. Ever since Constantine subverted the church by making it a state religion, the powers and principalities have taken the name of Christ and abused it to make war. Christ invoked to support prejudice and oppression. Christ invoked to line pockets (ignoring that Jesus said you cannot serve God and money at the same time). (Matt 6:24) Look past these centuries of pretenders, because the Word that is the Christ remains unshakable, even when it is a minority view in a broken and warlike culture. You are called to disobey human authority each and every time that authority commands you to increase the brokenness of the world. Refuse to fight. Refuse to support the fighting. Lay down your weapons and refuse to fight, and you will be blessed. "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God." (Matt 5:9). You will be healed and made whole; you will be reconciled to God because you will have begun your reconciliation with the billions of human beings who are -- under God -- one family. You will be reviled -- powerfully at first -- as Christ was on the way to Golgotha. The malevolent spirit will writhe. You will be ridiculed as an extremist, less-than-a-real-man (or whichever other gendered attack), an apostate, just as Jesus was when even his closest friends refused to acknowledge their relation to him while the crowd howled for his blood. And you will enter into conflict with your own families. You will not be nailed to a cross; but you may be jailed, spat on, isolated, abused... but you will also be embraced, accepted, and loved. We already love you. This is what you need far more than the esteem of the demonic macho culture of war that glorifies the taking of human life - God has already forgiven your past and pointed to the path ahead. Do not any longer give the glory to Rome that belongs to God. * From Jerusalem to Baghdad Do not expect praise or stained-glass or elegiac music in the background when you refuse. This path blazed by Christ is gritty and hard. As George MacLeod once said,
I simply argue that the cross should be raised at the center of the [street market] as well as on the steeple of the church. I am recovering the claim that Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral between two candles, but on a cross between two thieves; on the town's garbage heap; at a cross road, so cosmopolitan they had to write His title in Hebrew and Latin and Greek... At the kind of a place where cynics talk smut and thieves curse and soldiers gamble. Because that is where He died. And that is what He died for. And that is what He died about. That is where [Christians] ought to be and what [Christians] ought to be about.
"About" in a place not unlike Mosul or Baghdad or Bagram or Khoust. The mission that made Jesus into the Christ, the anointed, was not cleaned and pressed, not shiny like a supermarket, not sanitary like a freshly scrubbed bathroom, not air-conditioned, not safe. You are at the kind of place where God breaks into the world to the exact degree that you let yourself become a "little Christ" -- the hands and feet and eyes and ears of Christ. Christ doesn't demand your mere belief. Christ demands participation in the work of God. Lay down your weapons, refuse your orders, accept the ridicule and abuse of the mob that "does not know what it is doing," and Christ will walk beside you. You'll be surprised at how many of us will walk beside you, too.
Who would lead a total revolution that would shake off internal oppression as well as the foreign yoke... Jesus' approach stood in unique opposition to the prevailing assumptions of his day. He articulated an altogether different way... He did not come in the sectarian guise of his time, offering redemption only to those belonging to a particular group, nor did he adopt a primarily adversarial stance. He came with a prophetic message concerned for the good of all and with an eagerness to bring God's kingdom within reach of everybody, even the enemy.
[from Jesus and the Non-Violent Revolution, by Andre Trocme] Remember your baptism. Your allegiance is to the eternal God, not the flag of a transient empire. Who and whose are you? You will hear people say that this burnt out veteran has no authority to speak as a Christian on these matters. And I am burnt out; and I did come to Christianity late in life. But I am not making any of this up. Honest and fearless Christian theologians of the ecumenical, prophetic, and evangelical churches have spoken out against war, and in exactly the terms presented here. I bring nothing original to this plea for obedience to the God of the Nazarene. I write to you as one who has shared your experience, not that of the clergy or the Academy. I have known your position, trapped between the regrets and guilt of the past and the anxieties of the future, plodding against the current of Holy Spirit to clutch at the "esteem" of your militarized nation, "proving" yourselves again and again to your peers who define masculinity and human value by the ability to risk one's own safety to dominate or destroy others. That is who I was before I was baptized into who and whose I am, and that is why I can tell you that the risk you must take is the risk not to dominate. It is the risk of losing the esteem of those who "know not what they do." Seek your redemption and the redemption of the world, the flesh, the system... by taking up the cross, walking the painful path to Golgotha, and overcoming your alienation from the triune God, who Paul - himself a violent persecutor of Jesus' followers until his epiphany - called Love, Grace, and Fellowship with your human family. The fellowship you lose if and when you refuse to fight, if you refuse to give another hour of support to this obscene enterprise, will be replaced not seven-fold, but seven-hundredfold by the fellowship of Peace: Christians, non-Christians, veterans, and non-veterans, and from many nations. This Pentecost waits for you. Have faith, knowing that faith is not sorcery... not magic... not abracadabra. Faith is radical trust that God has your back. And trust the evidence not of what those around you try to excuse and explain, but of what you see them actually do. Watch how your institution treats 'the least among us," because that is how the institution is treating Christ (Matt 25:40). You cannot point a gun at another human being, frighten a child, bully a man, demean a woman, violate the sanctity of a threshold, or kill, and not be doing this violence to Christ. There is nothing circumstantial about it. Christ was categorical about this. You must resist; and you must do so without violence and be prepared to love those who abuse you for your refusal. And trust, too, that all will be well, even though you might pass through a dark night first. Your obedience to peer pressure and your obedience to the government are both superceded absolutely by obedience to God. Elections will not stop this war, just shift its emphasis. Only you will stop it, starting with yourself. That is the way Jesus worked; and at your baptism you promised to follow the Christ. Refuse your work. Refuse your orders. Refuse to pick up the weapon and fight; and pray for the redemtion of those who will stand against you when you stand with God. When you do, and do so in the name of Christ, there are thousands more waiting that will follow. And there is One who will walk beside you every step of the way.
A 1971 United States Supreme Court decision broadened U.S. rules beyond religious belief but denied the inclusion of objections to specific wars as grounds for conscientious objection.[22] Some desiring to include the objection to specific wars distinguish between wars of offensive aggression and defensive wars while others contend that religious, moral, or ethical opposition to war need not be absolute or consistent but may depend on circumstance or political conviction. Currently, the U.S. Selective Service System states, "Beliefs which qualify a registrant for conscientious objector status may be religious in nature, but don't have to be. Beliefs may be moral or ethical; however, a man's reasons for not wanting to participate in a war must not be based on politics, expediency, or self-interest. In general, the man's lifestyle prior to making his claim must reflect his current claims."[23] In the US, this applies to primary claims, that is, those filed on initial SSS registration. On the other hand, those who apply after either having registered without filing, and/or having attempted or effected a deferral, are specifically required to demonstrate a discrete and documented change in belief, including a precipitant, that converted a non-CO to a CO. The male reference is due to the current "male only" basis for conscription in the United States. In the United States, there are two main criteria for classification as a conscientious objector. First, the objector must be opposed to war in any form, Gillette v. United States, 401 U.S. 437. Second, the objection must be sincere, Witmer v. United States, 348 U.S. 375. That he must show that this opposition is based upon religious training and belief was no longer a criterion after cases broadened it to include non-religious moral belief, United States v. Seeger, 380 U.S. 163 and Welsh v. United States, 398 U.S. 333. COs willing to perform non-combatant military functions are classed 1-A-O by the U.S.; those unwilling to serve at all are 1-O.
This open letter and other written material (like that found in the enclosed links) opposing war on moral and-or religious grounds "demonstrate a discrete and documented change in belief, including a precipitant, that converted a non-CO to a CO," if they are listed as the persuasive moral, religious, and philosophical arguments leading to your objector status.
He is the author of the books Hideous Dream, Full-Spectrum Disorder: The military in the New American Century and Sex & War. He is also a contributor to Huffington Post.
Former chief economist for the world bank says “you have to be in fantasy land to say that everything is fine”
Steve Watson Infowars.net Wednesday, Sept 17, 2008
Two time Nobel-prize winner and former chief economist of the World Bank, Joseph Stiglitz has warned that the current financial crisis will continue for at least another eighteen months and in many ways represents a worse situation than the one faced by Americans during the great depression of the 1930s.
“You can paper things over for a while but eventually you have to face reality.” Stiglitz told the nationally syndicated Alex Jones show yesterday.
“This is clearly the most serious problem since the great depression and in some ways worse in terms of the financial institutions.” Stiglitz commented, referring to the fact that lenders are unwilling to take risks to finance each other because they no longer have complete access to their own undertakings let alone those of other institutions.
“The reason, in part, is that while some of the same problems that occurred during the great depression and have occurred since, such as excessive leverage, pyramid schemes, bubbles, have happened before, the so called innovation of Wall Street, the financial innovations, that were supposed to manage risk, created a kind of non transparency that is now so great that no one knows exactly the magnitude of the risk they face.”
“It is particularly bad because our financial institutions are based on trust, you put the money in the bank and you trust that you can get your money out, so trust is absolutely essential for the functioning of our financial markets and the functioning of our economy.” he continued.
“The problem is that much of the news on what is going on in the financial markets comes from those who are making money out of the financial markets. So if you were one of the people involved with Lehman Brothers or AIG, you’re going to be talking up the economy. The head of Lehman Brothers was quoted last April as saying we have turned the corner, the economy is on the uptick. And the same thing goes for the president and the secretary of treasury.”
“The fact is that they are involved in salesmanship.”
Describing the current situation as a “top down crisis”, Stiglitz also cited the $3 trillion cost of the Iraq war as a key factor in the economic downturn, saying it has increased the budget deficit and consumed resources that would otherwise promote growth.
“This is the first war in American history that has been totally financed on the credit card… For the last five years as the war has gone on we have been a debt economy. It is the first war since the revolutionary war that we have had to turn to foreigners to finance, 40% of our national debt is now being financed by foreigners… Even as we went into the war we had a big deficit, and yet the president called for tax cuts for upper middle class Americans.” he said.
“And there is another level of trust, those in other countries have to have trust that the American economy is working well, they have to trust that when the president says everything is going well, it is. This administration has really burned that trust, the president said there is no problem, there’s just a few too many houses been built. Well if that is the level of analysis the Untied States is giving about the nature of its economic problems, no wonder everybody around the world is losing confidence. “
Stiglitz is no stranger to positioning himself in opposition to the establishment on the economic front. In October 2001 he caused controversy when he exposed rampant corruption within the IMF and blew the whistle on their nefarious methods of inducing countries to fall under their debt before stripping them of sovereignty and hollowing out their economies.
“It is clear that the Bush administration is not responding to these problems, partly because the problems are of their own making.” Stiglitz asserted.
Over the next twelve months, Stiglitz predicts that house prices will continue to fall, more mortgages will go into foreclosure and more financial firms will be put into crisis.
“I am particularly worried about what I call the ‘real economy’. Basically when the financial system starts getting weak, it is not in a position to provide credit, to provide loans, to provide mortgages and that means in turn that housing prices are going to fall further, businesses are going to contract, unemployment is going to grow and it is a downward vicious cycle… I don’t want to be obsessively pessimistic but you have to be in fantasy land to say that everything is fine, and even to say that we have turned the corner. We’re still in the downward phase of this economic cycle. We should not anticipate emerging from this for a year and a half or longer.”
In a long term prediction 22 months ago, Stiglitz told listeners of the Alex Jones show that he believed a global economic crash would occur within 2 years. With major financial institutions now folding every week, others touting mergers just to stay afloat and stocks continually plummeting on a daily basis it seems that prediction is coming to pass.
Stiglitz stressed that in order to emerge from the crisis, the economy needs a stimulus, that really works, consisting of increased aid for local government, stronger unemployment insurance and more investment in infrastructure.
“I would take advantage of this particular time in order to stimulate our economy in ways that provide the basis of our longer term economic growth. If our economy is growing then we will be better able to manage some of this financial turmoil.” he concluded.
By Steve Doughty
Last updated at 8:27 AM on 16th September 2008
Children as young as five should be taught to understand the pleasures of gay sex, according to leaders of a taxpayer-funded education project.
Heads of the project have set themselves a goal of 'creating primary classrooms where queer sexualities are affirmed and celebrated'.
The ambition was revealed in documents prepared for the No Outsiders project run by researchers from universities and backed with £600,000 of public money provided by the Economic and Social Research Council.
Children as young as five should be taught about gay sex, an education project has said (file picture)
The stated purpose of the project - which is operating in 14 primary schools - is to stop bullying and prejudice aimed at homosexuals.
However, at a seminar at Exeter University tomorrow, supporters of the group will go beyond the anti-bullying agenda and discuss 'pleasure and desire in educational contexts'.
A document prepared for the seminar and couched in convoluted academic jargon says: 'The team is concerned to interrogate the desexualisation of children's bodies, the negation of pleasure and desire in educational contexts, and the tendency to shy away from discussion of (sexual) bodily activity in No Outsiders project work.
'The danger of accusations of the corruption of innocent children has led team members to make repeated claims that this project is not about sex or desire - and that it is therefore not about bodies.
'Yet, at a very significant level, that is exactly what it is about and to deny this may have significant negative implications for children and young people.'
No Outsiders is led by researchers from Sunderland University and also involves academics at the Institute of Education and Exeter University. Books, puppet shows and plays are used to teach children about same-sex relationships.
During the project, the seminar paper says, its members have 'challenged each other to go beyond imagined possibilities into queer practice'.
The seminar will 'question the taken-for-granted of the supposedly sexless, bodiless and desire-less primary classroom' and examine 'the place of the research team members' own bodies, desires and pleasures in this research'.
The discussions provoked a furious reaction from critics of the homosexual rights agenda. Simon Calvert of the Christian Institute said: 'When an adult who is working in a primary school suggests that children should explore their sexuality, that should result in a complaint to the police.'
Patricia Morgan, author of studies of family life and gay adoption, said: 'The proposal is that primary school classrooms should be turned into gay saunas. This is about homosexual practice in junior schools. The idiots who repealed Section 28 should consider that this is where it has got them.'
Project leader Dr Elizabeth Atkinson said the seminar had no connection with No Outsiders work in classrooms. 'The seminar is part of a long-standing academic debate and has nothing to do with schools,' she said. 'It has no connection with sex education.'
Section 28, the law which banned the promotion of homosexuality in state schools, was repealed five years ago. Current guidance on sex education says it should not promote sexual orientation or sexual activity.
Note:Don't just scan the article, click on the links and read the source material. (Self assured Ne'er do wells, go back to hanging out at Tilted Kilt....or wherever you know it all yuppies festoon the latest trinkets & act important)
Immigrants seeking permanent legal residency in the U.S. are now mandated to take an expensive and controversial vaccine that has been linked with thousands of serious complaints and several deaths.
The Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine — known as Gardasil — is one of five the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services recently added to the required list, reports Fox 8 News.
A press release from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Agency confirms that the requirements for the vaccine went into effect on July 1, 2008.
The regulation represents a total dismissal of the recommendation of Dr. Jon Abramson, chairman of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s advisory committee on immunization practices. In February 2007, Abramson said that he and the 15-member panel at the CDC opposed making Gardasil mandatory because the sexually transmitted HPV is not a contagious disease like measles or chicken pox.
At $162 per dose, the three-dose vaccine is set to make millions in profits for Gardasil manufacturer Merck, a company that has a history of both lobbying intensely for state mandates and entering into crony deals to hoodwink Americans into believing HPV vaccinations are compulsory.
Merck were unable to sell the “benefits” of the vaccine to make enough profit out of it, so instead they turned to state legislature and attempted to pay off Governors and other officials to curry favor and force eleven year old girls (and in other states children as young as eight) who aren’t even sexually active to take the shot.
However, the pharmaceutical giant agreed to stop lobbying state legislatures to make it mandatory for schoolgirls to be inoculated with Gardasil after a fierce backlash from concerned parents and religious organizations.
We previously exposed Merck’s role one such crony deal with Texas Governor Rick Perry which saw a resulting media campaign fool parents into thinking that the HPV vaccine had been made compulsory by law for all young girls.
Without consulting and doctors, scientists or medical experts, Perry, who has various close ties to Merck, issued an executive order requiring girls to be vaccinated against HPV. Several Texas lawmakers subsequently petitioned for a reversal of the decision without success.
Almost immediately following Perry’s announcement, newspapers and TV stations began to report that it was “the law” that parents had to have their child vaccinated. This reflects a national and international hoax that is repeatedly being perpetrated shortly before school terms begin each year.
There is no law in America, aside from those applying to medical workers, that says any citizen or their children have to take any vaccine whatsoever, no matter what any executive order, requirement, mandate or policy dictates.
As in the case of all other vaccines, Perry’s executive order merely stated that the vaccine is “recommended,” yet the mass media drumbeat constantly conditions people to believe that if they don’t take their shots they will be kicked out of school, arrested and thrown in jail.
Last November we reported on a case in Prince George’s County, Maryland, where parents of more than 1600 children were told they could be put in jail for failing to get their kids vaccinated. At the time a local Fox News affiliate reported, “A new law was passed last year requiring children from 5th through to 10th grade to have the vaccine,” which was a total lie.
The non-complying parents were not charged not under vaccination laws (because there aren’t any) but under truancy, neglect or child in need of supervision laws, which state that the parent is culpable after 30 days of a child’s unexplained absence from school.
The school itself triggered the truancy violation by unfairly kicking the kids out of school, and failing to inform parents about vaccine waiver forms. A state prosecutor involved in the case then admitted that there is no law that mandates any vaccine.
This trick will continue to hoodwink Americans into taking all manner of dangerous and untested vaccines, the number of which rises every year, until they realize that there is no law that forces them to take any vaccine.
Until this is drilled home with parents we will also keep seeing relatively unchallenged moves to pass legislation to make mandatory all vaccines recommended by the CDC for all children, including infants and toddlers.
As we have previously seen with other controversial schemes such as Real ID, immigrant populations provide a prime testing ground to quietly introduce policies that may later be subject to efforts to make them mandatory for all American citizens.
“Negative side effects of Gardasil, a new Merck vaccine to prevent the sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer, are being reported in the District of Columbia and 20 states, including Virginia. The reactions range from loss of consciousness to seizures,” reported the Washington Times.
“Young girls are experiencing severe headaches, dizziness, temporary loss of vision and some girls have lost consciousness during what appear to be seizures,” said Vicky Debold, health policy analyst for the National Vaccine Information Center, a nonprofit watchdog organization that was created in the early 1980s to prevent vaccine injuries.”
The report quotes physicians who debunk the claim that the HPV vaccine even prevents cervical cancer, as is claimed by Merck and the FDA.
“There is no proof Gardasil will stop cervical cancer,” said Clayton Young, an obstetrician/gynecologist in Texas, “They haven’t been studying it long enough to make that claim.”
Non-profit, public interest group Judicial Watch, released a report at the end of June this year which revealed that there had been 9,749 adverse reactions and 21 reported deaths related to Gardasil in the last two years.
According to the report, there have been 78 severe outbreaks of genital warts, six cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome and at least 10 miscarriages reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) since the approval of Gardasil. However, a study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that clinicians, patients and drug companies report only about 10 percent of side effects to VAERS, so the actual number of Gardasil side effects could be much higher.
The CDC subsequently released a statement on July 22 which stated “Based on ongoing assessments of vaccine safety information, the FDA and CDC continue to find that Gardasil is a safe and effective vaccine… The benefits continue to outweigh the risks.”
Merck also issued a statement in response to the data, saying it “believes that no safety issue related to the vaccine has been identified. These types of events are events that could also be seen in the general population, even in the absence of vaccination.”
The CDC plans to release a study in October that it says will help determine whether a true linkage between Gardasil and the reported adverse reactions exists.
The U.S. distributed 2.2 million doses of the vaccine in 2006 and 11.3 million in 2007.
Note:Don't just scan the article, click on the links and read the source material. (Self assured Ne'er do wells, go back to hanging out at Tilted Kilt....or wherever you know it all yuppies festoon the latest trinkets & act important)
You know it’s bad when Yahoo.com features a story about fiscal Armageddon
You know things are bad when Yahoo.com, the most trafficked website in the world and usually a purveyor of mindless celebrity gossip, cooking tips and dating advice, features a top story about how Americans could lose their bank deposits following the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
For the Internet giant to prominently report that there is already a “slow motion run on banks” is indeed a landmark event, and precludes even the most ignorant American from claiming they were not forewarned about the unfolding economic catastrophe.
The article points out that although the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. guarantees individual accounts up to $100,000, the FDIC fund only has about $50 billion to “insure” about $1 trillion in assets across the nation’s financial institutions.
When Americans realize the fact that banks are “going to run out of money”, the article nonchalantly states, a run on the banks will accelerate.
The warning comes from top economist Nouriel Roubini, of NYU’s Stern School and RGE Monitor, who correctly predicted the severity of the credit crunch. Roubini says there is already a “slow-motion run on retail banks” occurring nationwide.
He advises that people with accounts over $100,000 in value should at least spread them out among different firms.
The use of such inflammatory language like a “run on the bank,” especially from the most visited website on the entire planet, is phenomenal and other news websites as well as financial advisors have been cautious to use such terms in an effort to prevent panic.
For example, we read in today’s Seattle Post Intelligencer that, “Sara Hasan, an analyst with Seattle’s McAdams Wright Ragen Inc., said she didn’t even want to use the word “run” — as in “run on a bank” — during an interview, because “these are very touchy times.”
Other advisors are more up front with their warnings.
“First off, go ahead and make a run on your banks. If you have money with a brokerage firm or bank that is in trouble, get your money the heck out of there!” writes Joe Ponzio.
“In reality, I don’t want to cause a run on the banks; but, I won’t prevent one by saying that everything is fine and that you should wait until it is too late. My recommendation: Move your important savings and checking accounts to banks that have a higher likelihood of weathering the storm,” he adds.
Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Check out the "CIA Family Jewels" and read about 700 pages of redacted documentation released by FOIA request regarding the nearly 20 violations of the CIA charter through the 1960s & 1970s.
This report was originally created by the then head of the CIA to have a comprehensive list of all the infractions that Congress could find out about and use as justification in revoking their Charter.
The number one item on the list is still completely redacted.
What is it I wonder?
Agency Violated Charter for 25 Years,
Wiretapped Journalists and Dissidents
Update - Full Report Now Available and Full Text Searchable
CIA Announces Declassification of 1970s "Skeletons" File,
Archive Posts Justice Department Summary from 1975,
With White House Memcons on Damage Control
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 222
Edited by Thomas Blanton
Posted - June 21, 2007
Updated - June 26, 2007, 1 p.m.
For more information contact:
Thomas Blanton - 202/994-7000
A foundation populated by the giants of business, banking, government and military wants to “vet” websites and limit the spread of information that it says creates “conspiracy theories”.
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), fronted by Internet creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee, says it is worried about the way the web has been “used to spread disinformation”.
Speaking to the BBC, Berners-Lee said that there needed to be a new system that would give websites a “label for trustworthiness” once they had been proved reliable sources. Only then would the rise of “cult thinking” be avoided according to Berners-Lee.
“On the web the thinking of cults can spread very rapidly and suddenly a cult which was 12 people who had some deep personal issues suddenly find a formula which is very believable,” Berners-Lee said. “A sort of conspiracy theory of sorts and which you can imagine spreading to thousands of people and being deeply damaging.”
Deeply damaging to who? one might ask. The answer is revealed in the list of The World Wide Web Consortium’s 400 plus members, the cream of the corporate world in conjunction with government agencies such as National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and military entities like the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA).
Berners-Lee cites two examples of such “disinformation” or “conspiracy theories” in his interview with the BBC, both of which speak volumes about the aims and goals of this elite consortium:
Sir Tim talked to the BBC in the week in which Cern, where he did his pioneering work on the web, turned on the Large Hadron Collider for the first time.
The use of the web to spread fears that flicking the switch on the LHC could create a Black Hole that could swallow up the Earth particularly concerned him, he said. In a similar vein was the spread of rumours that the MMR vaccine given to children in Britain was harmful.
First of all, the fears that the CERN atom smasher could create dangerous miniature black holes was not simply made up out of thin air by tin foil hat wearing kooks. It was a theory cited by preeminent scientists such as Professor Otto Rössler, a German chemist at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, who were so worried they attempted to obtain an injunction from the European Court of Human Rights that would block the collider from being turned on at all.
A further lawsuit was filed by two American environmentalists in the Federal District Court in Honolulu who sought to force the U.S. government to withdraw its participation in the experiment.
The debate and furor over the LHC that followed was in reaction to legitimate news articles and reports surrounding the project and the opposition to it. So you see, far from what the W3C would have you believe, the fears were not unfounded “conspiracy theories” pedaled by basement dwelling internet trolls.
But of course, that wouldn’t matter to W3C given that they proudly list CERN itself as one of their members, thus any dissenting or critical material would naturally be considered “disinformation”.
Example two, the “damaging conspiracy theory” that MMR vaccines are harmful, stems not from paranoid forum postings and misquoted blog entries, but from scientific research into the mercury based preservative thimerosal, developed by Eli Lilly and subsequently used in the MMR vaccine, along with many other vaccines.
Another big pharma kingpin, Merck & Co., Inc, is the world’s largest supplier of the MMR triple jab, which was linked to autism a decade ago by scientists such as Dr Andrew Wakefield, amongst others.
Studies have shown a direct relationship between mercury in children’s vaccines and autism. Further studies have shown a decline in neurodevelopmental disorders after the removal of thimerosal-containing vaccines. The preservative has been banned or limited in Europe, Japan, England and Russia. Furthermore, there are no reported instances of autism amongst religious groups such as the Amish community and very few instances are reported in the third world.
Autism was a practically unknown affliction some decades back, but now one in every 150 children is affected.
Mercury is the second most toxic metal known to man behind Uranium. Thimerosal is used in vaccines not because it is good for you, but purely because it prevents vaccine contamination. Yet some have questioned why thimerosal is even considered for vaccines because there are obviously safer alternatives to preventing contamination.
Many believe the only reason it is still in vaccines is that it allows substantial savings for pharmaceutical companies. Questions also remain about how those companies conduct vaccine research and how the government regulates them.
While the corporate media continues to hype reports that contend the evidence for links between mercury laden vaccines and autism are not concrete, there are scores of studies and testimony from credible figures asserting the exact opposite, some of which we have previously covered in depth.
However, it is little wonder W3C considers such information to be “damaging” given that Eli Lilly and Merck & Co., Inc. are both paid up and approved members of the Consortium!
Other W3C members include Novartis Pharma AG and Pfizer Inc., two more giants of the pharmaceutical industry.
Though it is abundantly clear that the aim of the World Wide Web Consortium is to relegate and eventually eliminate any information that its corporate and government sector members consider dissenting, the BBC article concludes, “The Foundation will also look at concerns that the web has become less democratic, and its use influenced too much by large corporations and vested interests.”
The irony, the horrible horrible irony.
If anyone should be labeled with an “unreliable” rating, it is the WC3, a private interest group with a client list of big pharma titans as long as your arm telling you that their multi million dollar vaccine industry is totally safe and that any dissenting scientific fact or opinion, is a damaging conspiracy theory.
The efforts of groups and movements such as W3C represent an ongoing move to reign in the internet and limit its freedom.
On weekly basis we at Infowars and Prisonplanet receive e mails from across the US and the UK from people who have attempted to visit our websites yet found them to be blocked by filtration software that lists them as “hate” or “violence”. The sites are already categorized as “untrustworthy” on forums and social networks, despite the fact that 90% of the material we post is made up of mainstream news articles.
This precedent is merely the first indication of what is planned for the Internet over the next 5-10 years, with the traditional web becoming little more than a vast spy database that catalogues people’s every activity and bombards them with commercials, and where only government-approved websites that have obtained permission by means of an accepted registration application are allowed to be seen by web users.
Those who comply with centralized control and regulation of content will be free to enjoy the new super-fast Internet mark 2, where DVD quality movies can be downloaded in seconds, but at the cost of the Internet losing its role as the last true outpost of freedom of speech.
Bank of America launches credit card for illegal immigrants
Posted by Mike Carney at 07:48 AM/ET, February 13, 2007
Bank of America, the country's second-largest bank, "has quietly begun offering credit cards to customers without Social Security numbers -- typically illegal immigrants," according to the Wall Street Journal.
Customers can qualify for a credit card if they have had a checking account at the bank for at least three months. They are required to leave a deposit and pay a relatively high interest rate, according to the paper.
The program is controversial. Bank of America says it will help undocumented workers build good credit. But critics say one of the USA's largest financial institutions should not be helping people who violate the country's immigration laws.
"They are clearly crossing the line; they are actually aiding and abetting people who broke the law," says the spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
Make no mistake about it: millions of dollars are at stake.
"If we don't disproportionately grow in the Hispanic [market]...we aren't going to grow" as a bank, a company official told the Journal.
USA TODAY reported last year about the buying power of immigrant customers, including undocumented workers. Bank of America says nearly half of the nation's Hispanic households have one of its credit cards.
-------------------------------------------
Bank of America
just tip of iceberg
U.S. institutions legitimize illegals
by taking Mexican documentation
http://www.bankofamericaboy...>Dozens of major United States banking institutions led by Bank of America are implementing a nationwide amnesty program for millions of illegal immigrants by accepting as valid identification Mexico's matricula consular cards, which are just a "laminated piece of paper," critics of the plan have charged.
The plan, which was outlined in a report by the http://www.cis.org/articles...>Center for Immigration Studies four years ago, is gaining notoriety only now because of the Mexican government's specific goal of flying under the radar by working with local and area jurisdictions, instead of national leaders, according to the CIS report.
"But Mexico's new approach has become a direct challenge to U.S. sovereignty – by aggressively lobbying state and local governments, Mexico is changing America's de facto immigration policy in lieu of congressional action," the report, written by CIS Fellow Marti Dinerstein, said. It's happening through the formal recognition of those matricula cards.
The circumstances at that time, shortly after 9/11, were that the U.S. Patriot Act was being implemented and as part of that, the banking industry was asked about its verification procedures, and how the transfer of terrorist funds could be limited.
The response was that since the U.S. had no absolutely secure ID, the banking industry would be unfairly burdened by having to require one, so the U.S. Treasury Department gave a "tacit" approval for such documents as consular cards, according to an expert in the field.
Treasury said in a report under the Act that, "the proposed regulations do not discourage bank acceptance of the 'matricula consular' identity card that is being issued by the Mexican government to immigrants."
Simultaneously, the report noted, the Mexican government was upset over the U.S. focus on national security and pullback from mass amnesty proposals after 9/11, and turned its "aggressive" grassroots lobbying on local institutions.
Marti Dinerstein, who wrote the CIS report, told WND that the Treasury Department at that time, while it didn't specifically allow the use of matricula consular cards, essentially told banking institutions they wouldn't be stopped but it would be at their own risk.
That, however, conflicts with the general federal ban on "aiding and abetting" illegal activities, including illegal immigration, she told WND. "My position is that banks should not be accepting matricula cards. They are insecure ID documents that facilitate and institutionalize illegal immigration."
Her report documented Mexico's campaign to institutionalize the card to provide "quasi-legal" status for illegals in the U.S "without waiting for action from Washington." She said in addition to banking institutions, local law enforcement also was lobbied by Mexico and hundreds of agencies have begun accepting the card as official for the purpose of obtaining a driver's license.
Once that is obtained, the consular card can be thrown away, because the rest of the official documentation in the U.S. hinges on that license, the report said. But like a building on an unstable foundation, there are huge problems because there aren't safeguards to prevent multiple matricula cards being given to the same person, and the holder's identity never is confirmed when it is issued.
Worse yet, the acceptance of Mexico's card "sets a precedent, making it almost impossible to reject similar cards presented by illegal aliens from other countries, including those which have sent terrorists to the United States in the past," the report said.
The National Illegal Immigration Boycott Coalition is suggesting people close their accounts with banks using the matricula, and sign http://www.bankofamericaboy...>an online petition opposing that precedent.
Organizer William Gheen, president of Raleigh-based ALIPAC, agreed with Dinerstein's assessment that the practice violates federal bans on helping illegal activities.
"Nobody is above the law, including Bank of America," he said.
Reps. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Tom Price, R-Ga., members of the House Financial Services Committee, already have suggested that hearings be held on the plan, because of concerns over promoting illegal immigration and identity theft.
But Bank of America spokeswoman Betsy Weinberger said the card was not "specifically developed or marketed for illegal immigrants," adding the initiative allows customers to build a credit history with a "leading bank."
Dinerstein said a large part of Mexico's interest in establishing the card is so that illegal immigrants have more secure and less costly ways of transferring the billions of dollars they earn in the United States to Mexico and into its economy.
Gheen told WND that his contention is that "What they're doing is either (a) against the law and this is another case of non-enforcement, which seems to be the reason for the illegal alien crisis, or (b) if we're wrong and banks have found a loophole, that loophole needs to be closed immediately."
"Aiding and abetting illegal aliens is a felony under federal law Section 8 USC 1324(a)(1)(A)(iv)(b)(iii). This law has a six year statute of limitations and companies currently violating these laws can be prosecuted up to six years in the future," according to Gheen's organization.
Gheen noted that the penalty for "aiding and abetting" illegal aliens is up to five years in prison, but if done for commercial profit, that increases to 10 years.
"Which is the reason I can't open up a cab stand in a border crossing zone where I would be aid illegals," he said.
He said the end result will be Americans being forced to accept illegal immigrants because business will say, "we've already banked them."
Gheen's coalition has assembled more than 100 anti-illegal immigration groups who in turn compiled the list of banks accepting the Mexican cards.
"We want consumers to know where they can take their money, when they take it out of illegal immigration supporting banks like B of A and Wells Fargo," Gheen said.
The CIS report said the Mexican government had been expecting in September 2001 to obtain its goal of exemption of visa limits and a "regularized" immigration status for Mexicans in the United States. Then 9/11 happened and the national effort was derailed, so it turned to local efforts.
Those promotions of the matricula have been successful, too. "In localities where it is accepted as valid identified, the matricula consular has reduced the chances that illegal Mexican aliens will be arrested and deported, given them entr?e to mainstream banking services, provided access to city and state services – and in 13 states gained them exactly the same driver's licenses as those carried by American citizens," the CIS report said.
However, the report notes, "the matricula is just a laminated piece of paper. Its value derives from the fact that U.S. police departments, banks, local governments, and state motor vehicle bureaus voluntarily have agreed to accept it, no questions asked."
Calling the campaign "brilliant propaganda," Mexican officials at all levels have been lobbying mayors, police chiefs, bank officials, state legislators and others. "They speak at official meetings, court prominent community leaders, meet with the editorial boards of newspapers, and seize every opportunity given for media coverage."
Possession of the card also discourages local authorities from deporting illegal immigrants, in violation of the law, the report said.
"For the police to ignore federal immigration law is tantamount to subverting it. And that is exactly what has been happening since the Mexican government launched its full-court press to get local law enforcement officials to accept the matricula on [an equal] basis with U.S.-issued identification or valid passports," the report said.
"At first blush it seems almost impossible to believe that some of the largest and most prestigious banks in the country are knowingly offering accounts to Mexican illegal aliens," the report said. "The most important reason is that neither banking regulators nor the U.S. Treasury Department have objected to opening banking accounts for Mexican illegals who use the matricula as their identification. In fact, a good case can be made that regulators and the Treasury Department have tacitly encouraged banks to do so."
In fact, the Internal Revenue Service has even issued Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers to foreign nationals who were ineligible to get a Social Security card as a way to encourage compliance with U.S. tax laws.
"The irony is that Mexican banks do not hold the matricula in high regard as an identity document…," the report said.
"No one disputes that Mexico has a right to issue the matricula consular and maintain a registry of its citizens living in other nations. What is in dispute is the wisdom of American institutions and governmental entities accepting as official identification a foreign government’s document, the purpose of which is to make it easier for their nationals to reside in the United States illegally," the report said.
Wall Street crisis: Bank of America buys Merrill Lynch
Monday September 15 2008 09:45 BST
Where there is duplication, the combination of the two companies could result in more layoffs
Bank of America, the largest retail bank in the US, agreed last night to buy troubled stockbroker Merrill Lynch for around $50bn (£27.8bn) in a deal that traders said could resolve the firm's funding crisis.
However, sceptics said the deal may prove disastrous for Bank of America, which continues to wrestle with its own losses from the US sub-prime housing disaster.
Merrill Lynch is the world's largest and most widely recognised stockbroker. Its dominance of retail stockbroking, with an army of 16,000 brokers around the world, and independent spirit on Wall Street earned it the moniker the Thundering Herd. It has also bolted on businesses, such as its hedge fund BlackRock, that are known to have proved enticing to Bank of America.
A combination of the two will create a global financial services giant involved in everything from fixed-income trading to stock underwriting to credit card lending, which will rival Citigroup, the biggest US bank in terms of assets.
Most industry analysts said the merger represented a good fit, with few overlaps between the two institutions. If the deal goes according to plan, Bank of America will be able to offer Merrill's retail stockbroking services to its huge customer base. Bank of America does have an investment bank already, but it has never been terribly strong.
Where there is duplication, however, the combination of the two companies could result in more layoffs. Both Merrill and Bank of America have already cut thousands of investment banking jobs over the past year.
In April Merrill Lynch announced 4,000 jobs cuts - one in 10 of its workforce - after it reported that its losses from the sub-prime lending crisis had reached $24bn.
Bank of America, like most banks in the US and Europe has been accused of burying its head in the sand while its losses have mounted day by day. It also bet on an early end to the credit crunch with its $4bn purchase of Countrywide, one the of the largest lenders in the US and a victim of the collapse in property values in the boom states of California, Florida and the eastern seaboard.
Some analysts said it overpaid for Countrywide and was making the same mistake again with Merrill Lynch
They said the deal differs from JPMorgan Chase's buyout in March of Bear Stearns in that the ailing Bear Stearns was sold at a steep discount and with financial backing from the Fed.
The Fed has ruled any further support for Wall Street's banks, telling them they must resolve the crisis using shareholder funds rather than relying on taxpayers.
Merrill Lynch was a latecomer to the property boom and backed thousands of mortgages for homes bought at the top of the market. It also invested heavily in toxic mortgage backed securities that have been the downfall of all banks. But its financial position is stronger than the dire situation at Bear Stearns.
Richard Bove an analyst at brokers Ladenburg Thalmann, said: "For BofA to step in and offer a premium strikes me as being imprudent. BofA could get a much better deal if they just sat and waited."
Merrill Lynch, whose current CEO is John Thain, striven to end its funding crisis in earnest since July when it sold its stake in financial news and data provider Bloomberg for $4.43bn, and then sold a huge chunk of its toxic asset-backed securities and issued new stock to raise another $8.5bn.
Merrill Lynch, founded in 1914, was the nation's largest workforce of brokers and its name is known in towns across America. It made its reputation investing the funds of millions of Americans, but in recent times has invested its own money, in particular in risky property assets.
Knowing that investors were worried about Merrill, John A. Thain, its chief executive and an alumnus of Goldman Sachs and the New York Stock Exchange, and Kenneth D. Lewis, Bank of America's chief executive, began negotiations. A source briefed on the negotiations said Bank of America had approached Merrill earlier in the summer but Thain had rebuffed the offer. Now, prompted by the reality that a Lehman bankruptcy would ripple through Wall Street and further cripple Merrill Lynch, the two parties proceeded with discussions.
On Sunday morning, Thain and Lewis cemented the deal. It could not be determined if Thain would play a role in the new company, but two people briefed on the negotiations said they did not expect him to stay. Merrill's "thundering herd" of 16,000 brokers will be combined with Bank of America's smaller group of wealth advisers and called Merrill Lynch Wealth Management.
Bank of America's roots go back to the Massachusetts Bank in the late 1700s, but it was better known as a west coast bank, having also evolved from the Bank of Italy, founded in San Francisco in 1904 by A.P. Giannini. A series of acquisitions including New England's Fleet Bank and then Bank of America's purchase by North-Carolina based NationsBank turned it into a bank with a more national presence. Although the combined company's headquarters moved to Charlotte, it retained the famed Bank of America name.
Greenback sinks following news of Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy
With the greenback plummeting after the news of Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy, top investor Jim Rogers predicts that the dollar will lose its status as the world reserve currency status and has resolved to buy more gold despite a recent fall in the price of the commodity.
Rogers, who correctly predicted China’s resurgence as an economic superpower back in the 80’s as well as crude oil surpassing $100, says the global economy is in a recession that is going to get much worse while inflation will continue to skyrocket.
“Frequently, since the prices of the commodities go up before the inflation numbers, one can stay ahead of inflation. But, if you get it wrong you might do worse. So, investing in those commodities, which are going to go up first or selecting the right commodities, is the key to stay ahead of the inflation and make a lot of money.”
Turning to the dollar, Rogers dismissed the greenback as a “flawed currency” that would continue to deteriorate for two to three decades, adding that he would seek to use the dollar’s recent rally as an opportunity to get out of the currency completely.
“I do not want to own any US dollars. Also, I would not urge you to buy US dollars. (The) dollar is going to loose its status as world reserve currency,” said Rogers.
“Some of the OPEC countries have already started and no longer take dollar, like Venezuela no longer accepts the dollar. Other countries are already looking and may be taking a package of basket of currencies instead of the dollar. I am not the only one who knows the dollar is in trouble. Anybody who watches the TV knows that the dollar is in trouble,” he added.
Rogers also said that the bull market in oil has at least another ten years to run and that oil prices will only go higher.
Speaking on the subject of commodities, Rogers recommended sugar, coffee and cotton and also said that he would be buying more precious metals.
“I am trying and want to buy some gold. However, whether this is the low in the gold, I have no idea, but if gold goes lower, I will add some more. Gold is something I do not plan to sell. Gold is something I will gift to my children,” concluded Rogers.
Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet
Monday, September 15, 2008
The United States is mired in a "once-in-a century" financial crisis which is now more than likely to spark a recession, former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan said Sunday.
The talismanic ex-central banker said that the crisis was the worst he had seen in his career, still had a long way to go and would continue to effect home prices in the United States.
"First of all, let's recognize that this is a once-in-a-half-century, probably once-in-a-century type of event," Greenspan said on ABC's "This Week."
Asked whether the crisis, which has seen the US government step in to bail out mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, was the worst of his career, Greenspan replied "Oh, by far."
"There's no question that this is in the process of outstripping anything I've seen, and it still is not resolved and it still has a way to go," Greenspan said.
"And indeed, it will continue to be a corrosive force until the price of homes in the United States stabilizes.
"That will induce a series of events around the globe which will stabilize the system."
Greenspan was also asked whether the United States had a greater-than 50 percent chance of escaping a recession.
"No, I think it's less than 50 percent.
"I can't believe we could have a once-in-a-century type of financial crisis without a significant impact on the real economy globally, and I think that indeed is what is in the process of occurring."
The former Federal Reserve chairman also predicted that the financial crisis would see the failure of more major financial institutions, even as embattled Wall Street investment giant Lehman Brothers scrambled to find a buyer.
"In and of itself that does not need to be a problem.
"It depends on how it is handled and how the liquidations take place. And indeed we shouldn't try to protect every single institution."
On Saturday, Democrat Barack Obama's campaign seized on a warning from Greenspan about John McCain's tax plans to portray the Republican as economically reckless.
In an interview with Bloomberg Television Friday, Greenspan said the nation could not afford 3.3 trillion dollars of tax cuts proposed by McCain without matching cuts in spending.
Greenspan, a long-time friend of McCain and a Republican, said about the Arizona senator's plans to extend massive tax cuts imposed by President George W. Bush: "I'm not in favor of financing tax cuts with borrowed money."
McCain has said he would pay for his cuts by ending pet funding projects for US lawmakers' districts known as "earmarks."
A new poll from a major Russian news outlet reveals that 84% believe that the truth behind the 9/11 attacks is being deliberately hidden by the U.S. government.
At time of writing, the poll on the Russia Today website indicates that only 16% of readers feel that the 9/11 Commission report represents the full extent of the evidence as to who carried out the attacks over seven years ago.
The 84% figure mirrors almost exactly that of similar polls conducted in 2006 and 2004.
The poll comes on the heels of a survey conducted across 17 countries by WorldPublicOpinion.org that revealed less than half of those surveyed believe Al-Qaeda was behind 9/11, with a full 15 per cent believing that the terrorist outrage was directly perpetrated by the U.S. government.
A recent New York Times article also covered the fact that it has become conventional wisdom across the middle east that the official 9/11 story is a fraud.
Russia Today, one of Russia's primary news channels also today features a balanced article and video report documenting the activities of the 9/11 truth movement in New York yesterday.
We Are Change's Luke Rudkowski, and Infowars reporter Jason Bermas have joined hundreds of other activists in promoting the 9/11 truth movement and raising awareness and much needed aid for sick first responders on the seventh anniversary of the atrocities. The events in New York continue today.
The 9/11 truth movement has received much attention in Russia throughout the week with Russian State TV today set to broadcast a feature length documentary that questions the official version of events along with a pre-recorded studio debate on the matter.
Up to 30 million Russians will see Giulietto Chiesa's ZERO, which covers some of the pertinent unanswered questions and inconsistencies surrounding the received reality of 9/11.
The figures that consistently emerge from the now voluminous polls, surveys and reports regarding 9/11 from all over the globe represent a blow to debunkers who have attempted to argue that skepticism towards the official 9/11 story is a radical fringe belief.
In reality, it is now beyond any doubt that a majority of people believe an explanation other than the official story or at least have suspicions about the official version.
But you just want to cover nonsensical stories of McCain and Obama threatening to "get" Osama Bin Laden and fight the "war on terror" more effectively, don't you?
Oh well, that's why your company is losing viewers and readers ... people want real news!
Ron Paul rejects McCain campaign's plea for endorsement
David Edwards Published: Wednesday September 10, 2008
Ron Paul held a press conference urging voters to select a third-party presidential candidate instead of Barack Obama or John McCain.
The Texas congressman said that he fielded a phone call from the McCain campaign on Tuesday asking him for an endorsement.
"They called and it was a bit of a surprise to me," Paul said, "because their request was that I endorse John McCain today."
But he "didn't like the idea of getting two to three million people angry at me," so he turned them down, Paul told the laughing crowd.
"The idea was that he would do less harm than the other candidate," Paul complained.
Paul was accompanied at the news conference with third-party presidential candidates, including Ralph Nader and former Georgia Democratic Rep. Cynthia McKinney.
Olbermann’s Disgust with the Neocon “Tribute” to 9/11
Near the conclusion of the video here, Keith Olbermann voices his disgust with the neocons for their shameless exploitation of the victims of September 11, 2001. Olbermann is of course spot on, but there is so much more about this “tribute” he does not mention.
The RNC video is a propaganda piece in the name of endless war, for the sake of psychotic mass murder, not simply in Iraq and Afghanistan but Iran and Pakistan as well. It is no mistake the neocon “tribute” begins with footage taken from the Iran hostage “crisis,” that is to say footage taken when Iranian students stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979. It is a blatant effort to conflate Iranian revolutionaries with al-Qaeda. It really is ludicrous the way the neocons demonize the Iranians for propaganda purposes.
In fact, the Khomeini revolution was methodically plotted by the Aspen Institute in 1975 while the dreaded Shah was still in power. Aspen is a creation of the Carnegie Corporation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the Ford Foundation.
“In the behind-the-scenes discussion, the plans for reversing the Shah’s industrialization program and for turning Iran into a model dark ages regime were mapped out,” writes Robert Dreyfus (Hostage to Khomeini, p.106, New Benjamin Franklin House, New York 1980). The Aspen Institute, the Club of Rome, and a gaggle of Bertrand Russell operatives consistently agitated against the Shah and pushed “a new, synthetic, zero-growth version of Islam” under the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization long ago compromised by British intelligence and the CIA. As it turns out, according to Dreyfus’ research, the witless and doddering Khomeini held close a coterie of advisers hailing from “the Stanford-Berkeley complex in California or the Harvard-MIT complex in Massachusetts.” Dreyfus notes that an earlier coterie surrounding the mass murderer Pol Pot were trained at the same institutions.
On the heels of footage taken from the “hostage crisis,” the neocons include images of al-Qaeda allegedly in action bombing the U.S. embassy in East Africa and attacking the missile destroyer U.S.S. Cole in Yemen.
The RNC “tribute” does not bother to mention that the embassy bombing may have been avoided entirely, as the FBI, the CIA, the State Department, and Israeli and Kenyan intelligence services knew about the attack well in advance. In fact, the U.S. had “uncovered” the al-Qaeda cell supposedly responsible and this makes absolute perfect sense, as al-Qaeda was at the time and remains a CIA contrivance. It is no coincidence the 9/11 “hijackers” Khalid Almihdhar, Nawaf Alhazmi, and Salem Alhazmi were involved in the attack, since they functioned as primary patsies for the CIA at the time.
As well, the U.S. was told by a CIA informant in Lebanon and an Egyptian informant that al-Qaeda planned to attack an American warship in the Middle East. In addition, the Special Operations Command project, Able Danger, warned specifically of an attack in the port of Aden. All of this makes certain sense, as the attack on the USS Cole was pulled off by the CIA asset al-Qaeda (or more specifically, the Islamic Army of Aden, described as “affiliated” with al-CIA-duh).
According to the corporate media and the government, these events signified intelligence failures when in fact they were successful intelligence operations designed to foment a “clash of civilizations,” that is to say forever war against manufactured enemies. The RNC 9/11 “tribute” video is nothing more than a crude and brazen attempt to rekindle the neocon GWOT. It is, as well, a precursor of things to come if McCain is elected and his neocon handlers take up position in the White House.
Keith Olbermann’s disgust with this shameful exploitation of the 9/11 dead has resulted in his removal from a coveted anchor spot on MSNBC, much to the joy of the neocons, who praised the action of corporate “grown-ups” at the network (as Stephen Spruiell at the neocon organ, the National Review, characterized the programming change).
Grown-ups, indeed, never mind likewise psychotic grown-up neocons are responsible for murdering well over a million Iraqis, countless Afghans, and an undetermined number of other innocent Muslims and Arabs. Grown-ups in the corporate media enthusiastically helped facilitate the slaughter fest with lies and obfuscation.
If we’re lucky, these serial murdering grown-ups will be rounded up and brought before a war crimes tribunal. If we’re not lucky — and it looks like we will not be — they will continue their reign after the installment of John McCain, not that Barack Obama’s enshrinement on the sock puppet throne would be much different.
If Sarah Palin is a libertarian as advertised, this will be subsumed by the larger Republican chorus of neocon politics — not limited government, but government on Rockstar Energy Drink: more deficit spending in the name of more invasions of small and defenseless countries.
It’s called the “enthusiasm gap,” when people are not inspired or even casually interested in a political candidate. According to Susan Page of USA Today, the Republican National Convention has closed this gap for McCain, the doddering Senate fixture from Arizona, the statist who loves to spend your money and mine, who enthusiastically supports wars against people who never did anything to us, and calls for more war against more awesome rivals, namely Iran but especially Russia.
“McCain leads Democrat Barack Obama by 50%-46% among registered voters, the Republican’s biggest advantage since January and a turnaround from the USA TODAY poll taken just before the convention opened in St. Paul,” USA Today informs.
Between now and November, of course, the deck will be shuffled again. It’s all part of the show.
According to USA Today, the GOP has been “rejuvenated” with the injection of Sarah Palin. It is said Ms. Palin is a limited government Republican and she likes Ron Paul, but the corporate media is wont to report this. Instead, they ramble on incessantly about troopergate and babygate and other such inanities. Of course, if it’s true — Palin is a libertarian — this will be subsumed by the larger Republican chorus of neocon politics — not limited government, but government on Rockstar Energy Drink: more deficit spending in the name of more invasions of small and defenseless countries.
I wonder, will Ms. Palin complain about the fact the besieged American taxpayer is on the hook for more than $750 billion to the Federal Reserve bankers? As it now stands, or did in 2006 — the latest numbers at my fingertips — I owe the bankers around $2,500. Instead of complaining about Russia, as she did in her speech at the RNC, Palin needs to say something about the fact the federal government spends $7.4 billion a day or $5.1 million every minute of the year. As a supposed libertarian, concern for this sort of borrowing and spending should be her obsession.
“McCain has narrowed Obama’s wide advantage on handling the economy, by far the electorate’s top issue,” notes USA Today.
So, how would McCain “handle” the economy? He’d welcome back the central banker, Alan Greenspan. Back in January, McCain said if elected he’d “establish a bipartisan commission that would capitalize on the gravitas of former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan,” writes Juliet Eilperin for the CIA’s favorite newspaper, the Washington Post.
Mr. Gravitas? More like Mr. Housing Bubble. McCain should be holding Greenspan accountable for the role he played in wrecking the economy, not suggesting he be called up for more service.
How is it the American people, according to this latest corporate media poll, think McCain is a winner on the economy? He has promised to cut taxes for the commoners. But then it depends how you count taxes. McCain voted to raise Social Security payroll taxes and voted for a $1.10 per-pack tax on cigarettes. Some may say that’s not really fair because McCain voted for those tax increases back in the 1990s. However, less than two months ago, McCain told the former Clintonite George Stephanopoulos on ABC that he does not want tax increases, but there is “nothing that’s off the table.” In other words, everything may change on the day he walks into the Oval Office. Imagine my surprise.
At any rate, it should be obvious the polled are not paying attention to such niggling details. Instead, they are watching the tube and digesting the pablum: Ms. Palin is more attractive than Joe Biden.
Joe’s just another clique face, spouting the same old war all the time garbage, albeit with the Dem slant. Joe voted for Lieberman’s attack Iran amendment. He favors the Democrat version of perpetual war for perpetual peace — take the troops out of Iraq and throw them in Afghanistan and go after Pakistan. He wants more FBI agents, more cops, more UAVs in the sky, and more spending “to create a more robust intelligence and military community,” that is to say a more effective control grid for the American people under the guise of the now threadbare GWOT, an acronymn that is more than a recycled rhetorical device.
Obama and Biden will continue — and increase — the confiscatory taxation that never seems to end, no matter what side of the One Party System is in control of the White House. Obama, however, likes to talk about how he’ll screw the American people, whereas McCain prefers to run and hide, as Republicans always do when confronted with the prickly issue of taxation, as they are supposedly the anti-tax party.
Back in February, Obama was so elated with a primary win in Wisconsin, he waxed philosophical, sort of the way dictators do when they are buoyed by confidence. Obama not only wants your money, he wants your soul:
"In the end, this economic agenda won’t just require new money. It will require a new spirit of cooperation and innovation on behalf of the American people. We will have to learn more, and study more, and work harder. We’ll be called upon to take part in shared sacrifice and shared prosperity."-Barack Obama 2/13/08
It should be obvious by now bankers never share the sacrifice. In order to make you feel a little better about anting up even more of your money, the banker’s candidate Obama is pushing the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goal, that is to say a global carbon tax. Part of this levy will likely go to a new Global Cop Corps that will “bring security” to “failed states” around the world. In other words, troops from China and India, infused with your money, will make the world safe for the bankers and “private direct investment,” that is to say more loan sharking at gunpoint.
Now that the RNC is history and we are assured McCain received a “bounce,” we can look forward to these two statists slugging it out on the campaign trail, saying the same thing with little twists of nuance, sort of like two competing snake oil salesmen selling the same brand to clueless rustics.
Sarah Palin may fool some of the people some of the time with her supposed libertarianism and her soccer mom personality designed to appeal to women, but at the end of the day it will be more of the same, albeit it with a brand spanking new Earl Scheib paint job.
Besides, vice presidents are really little more than cigar store Indians, that is unless they are Dick Cheney.
U.S. government scientists bombarding skies with acid-rain causing pollutant in name of fighting global warming
Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet
Friday, September 5, 2008
U.S. government scientists are bombarding the skies with the acid-rain causing pollutant sulphur dioxide in an attempt to fight global warming by “geo-engineering” the planet, despite the fact that injecting aerosols into the upper atmosphere carries with it a host of both known and unknown dangers.
The proposal to disperse sulphur dioxide in an attempt to reflect sunlight was again raised in a London Guardian article this week entitled, Geoengineering: The radical ideas to combat global warming, in which Ken Caldeira, a leading climate scientist based at the Carnegie Institution in Stanford, California, promotes the idea of injecting the atmosphere with aerosols.
“One approach is to insert “scatterers” into the stratosphere,” states the article. “Caldeira cites an idea to deploy jumbo jets into the upper atmosphere and deposit clouds of tiny particles there, such as sulphur dioxide. Dispersing around 1m tonnes of sulphur dioxide per year across 10m square kilometres of the atmosphere would be enough to reflect away sufficient amounts of sunlight.”
Experiments similar to Caldeira’s proposal are already being carried out by U.S. government -backed scientists, such as those at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Savannah River National Laboratory in Aiken, S.C, who this year conducted studies which involved shooting huge amounts of particulate matter, in this case “porous-walled glass microspheres,” into the stratosphere.
The project, which reached its conclusion this past April, is closely tied to an idea by Nobel Prize winner Paul Crutzen, who “proposed sending aircraft 747s to dump huge quantities of sulfur particles into the far-reaches of the stratosphere to cool down the atmosphere.”
Such programs merely scratch the surface of what is likely to be a gargantuan and overarching black-budget funded project to geo-engineer the planet, with little or no care for the unknown environmental consequences this could engender.
What is known about what happens when the environment is loaded with sulphur dioxide is bad enough, since the compound is the main component of acid rain, which according to the EPA “Causes acidification of lakes and streams and contributes to the damage of trees at high elevations (for example, red spruce trees above 2,000 feet) and many sensitive forest soils. In addition, acid rain accelerates the decay of building materials and paints, including irreplaceable buildings, statues, and sculptures that are part of our nation’s cultural heritage.”
The health effects of bombarding the skies with sulphur dioxide alone are enough to raise serious questions about whether such programs should even be allowed to proceed.
The following health effects are linked with exposure to sulphur.
- Neurological effects and behavioural changes
- Disturbance of blood circulation
- Heart damage
- Effects on eyes and eyesight
- Reproductive failure
- Damage to immune systems
- Stomach and gastrointestinal disorder
- Damage to liver and kidney functions
- Hearing defects
- Disturbance of the hormonal metabolism
- Dermatological effects
- Suffocation and lung embolism
According to the LennTech website, “Laboratory tests with test animals have indicated that sulfur can cause serious vascular damage in veins of the brains, the heart and the kidneys. These tests have also indicated that certain forms of sulfur can cause foetal damage and congenital effects. Mothers can even carry sulfur poisoning over to their children through mother milk. Finally, sulfur can damage the internal enzyme systems of animals.”
Fred Singer, president of the Science Environmental Policy Project and a skeptic of man-made global warming theories, warns that the consequences of tinkering with the planet’s delicate eco-system could have far-reaching dangers.
“If you do this on a continuous basis, you would depress the ozone layer and cause all kinds of other problems that people would rather avoid,” said Singer.
Even Greenpeace’s chief UK scientist - a staunch advocate of the man-made global warming explanation - Doug Parr has slammed attempts to geo-engineer the planet as “outlandish” and “dangerous”.
Stephen Schneider of Stanford University, who recently proposed a bizarre plan to send spaceships into the upper atmosphere that would be used to block out the Sun, admits that geo-engineering could cause “conflicts between nations if geoengineering projects go wrong.”
Given all the immediate dangers associated with bombarding the atmosphere with sulphur dioxide, along with the unknown dangers of other geo-engineering projects, many people are concerned that “chemtrails” could be a secret component of the same agenda to alter the Earth’s eco-system.
This graphic proposes, “Spraying aluminum powder and barium oxide into high levels of the atmosphere, again delivered by aircraft, to increase planetary reflectance (albedo) and cloud cover.” High levels of barium have been found in substances associated with chemtrails.
Reports of chemtrails, jet plumes emitted from planes that hang in the air for hours and do not dissipate, often blanketing the sky in criss-cross patterns, have increased dramatically over the last 10 years. Many have speculated that they are part of a government program to alter climate, inoculate humans against certain pathogens, or even to toxify humans as part of a population reduction agenda.
In conducting Google searches, one finds discussion, such as this example, of using sulphur dioxide as a jet fuel additive to be dispersed over the world during routine commercial flights.
“I suggest that both the sulphur dioxide and the silica particles could be delivered into the stratosphere by dissolving an additive in jet aviation fuel,” writes engineer John Gorman, who has conducted experiments to test the feasibility of such a scenario.
“We would want to burn fuel containing the additive specifically when the aircraft was cruising in the lower stratosphere,” he adds.
Earlier this year, KSLA news investigation found that a substance that fell to earth from a high altitude chemtrail contained high levels of Barium (6.8 ppm) and Lead (8.2 ppm) as well as trace amounts of other chemicals including arsenic, chromium, cadmium, selenium and silver. Of these, all but one are metals, some are toxic while several are rarely or never found in nature.
The newscast focuses on Barium, which its research shows is a “hallmark of chemtrails.” KSLA found Barium levels in its samples at 6.8 ppm or “more than six times the toxic level set by the EPA.” The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality confirmed that the high levels of Barium were “very unusual,” but commented that “proving the source was a whole other matter” in its discussion with KSLA.
KSLA also asked Mark Ryan, Director of the Poison Control Center, about the effects of Barium on the human body. Ryan commented that “short term exposure can lead to anything from stomach to chest pains and that long term exposure causes blood pressure problems.” The Poison Control Center further reported that long-term exposure, as with any harmful substance, would contribute to weakening the immune system, which many speculate is the purpose of such man-made chemical trails.
Indeed, barium oxide has cropped up repeatedly as a contaminant from suspected geoengineering experimentation.
KSLA also put aerosolized-chemical testing in its historical context, citing a voluminous number of unclassified tests exposed in 1977 Senate hearings. The tests included experimenting with biochemical compounds on the public. KSLA reports that “239 populated areas were contaminated with biological agents between 1949 and 1969.”
One of the accepted truisms of scientific study is the fact that if scientists are proposing an idea, then those scientists with access to the bottomless pit of black-budget secret government funding are already doing it.
It is highly likely that chemtrails are merely one manifestation of “geo-engineering” that is taking place without proper debate, notification or any form of legality, and with a callous disregard for the potential dangers to both our health and our environment.
Once Obama is in Office,( I don't care if it's McCain or Obama, both are scum) I hope the American sheeple hold him up to this. I bet if elected...I mean (selected) Obama & Biden will get a sudden case of amnesia.
______________________
Obama might pursue criminal charges against Bush administration
· Biden says criminal violations will be pursued
· Democrats have issued subpoenas to Bush aides
· 3 staffers have been held in contempt of Congress
Democratic vice-presidential nominee Joe Biden said earlier this week that he and running mate Barack Obama could pursue criminal charges against the Bush administration if they are elected in November.
Biden's comments, first reported by ABC news, attracted little notice on a day dominated by the drama surrounding his Republican counterpart, Alaska governor Sarah Palin.
But his statements represent the Democrats' strongest vow so far this year to investigate alleged misdeeds committed during the Bush years.
When asked during a campaign event in Deerfield Beach, Florida, whether he would "pursue the violations that have been made against our Constitution by the present administration", Biden answered in the affirmative.
"We will not be stopped from pursuing any criminal offence that's occurred," he continued, going on to praise congressional committees for the deliberate pace of their inquiries into alleged Bush administration misdeeds.
Members of Congress are "doing the right thing, they're not making false accusations about anything … they're collecting data, subpoenaing records, they're building a file", Biden said.
"If there has been a basis upon which you can pursue someone for a criminal violation, they will be pursued – not out of vengeance, not out of retribution, out of the need to preserve the notion that no one, no attorney general, no president -- no one is above the law."
Obama sounded a similar note in April, vowing that if elected, he would ask his attorney general to initiate a prompt review of Bush-era actions to distinguish between possible "genuine crimes" and "really bad policies".
"[I]f crimes have been committed, they should be investigated," Obama told the Philadelphia Daily News. "You're also right that I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt, because I think we've got too many problems we've got to solve."
When asked about his comments by Fox news today, Biden said he has no evidence that criminal charges would be warranted and no intention of pursuing action against the current president.
"What is true is the United States Congress is trying to preserve records on questions that relate to whether or not the law has been violated by anyone," Biden said, adding: "But, you know, there's been an awful lot of unsavoury stuff that's gone on. And the mere fact … that it occurred in a previous administration doesn't mean [a subsequent] Justice Department, if, in fact, there's evidence, shouldn't pursue them. "But I have no evidence of any of that. No one's talking about pursuing President Bush criminally."
Congressional Democrats have issued a flurry of subpoenas this year to senior Bush administration aides as part of a broad inquiry into the authorisation of torturous interrogation tactics used at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.
Three Bush White House veterans have been held in criminal contempt of congressional committees for refusing to respond to subpoenas in an inquiry on the firing of federal prosecutors: former counsel Harriet Miers, former political adviser Karl Rove, and current chief of staff Josh Bolten. The battle over Miers's and Bolten's testimony is currently before a federal court.
Alex welcomes singer-songwriter, spoken word artist, author, and actor Henry Rollins to talk about censorship, government sponsored terrorism, war & more......
(Note: I don't agree with Rollins about man made global warming.)
My last version of this post was "unpublished" because I used the wrong words. So I edited them out.
Here is the email from Bako dot com.
Dear infowar:
Your latest post has been unpublished (so it’s still saved as a draft in your profile manager) because of its use of ---neck and D(edit)bag. As satire, it’s permissible if you edit out those words.
Sincerely,
"You know who"
Bakersfield.com
The dumb red (edit) cks
Of course the tweaker gimps.....
The arrogant yuppie
Retarded gang bangers
The wanna be gang banger sucks too......
And of course there is no shortage of your everyday Dou----(edit) bag.
There are a few of these people around.....I am one of them,I think?
These blogs contain quit a few of these types of people....the old armchair know it all.
Don't forget how many a-holes drive trucks like this to make up for their small packages.
Oh yeah......what about guys like me? I guess I fit in with these types? Right? lol
Bin Laden's, CIA roots. How We Created Our Own Terror
This article, republished from 1998 sheds light on how Bin Laden became a “reliable” partners of the CIA in its war against Moscow. The story reflects how public perceptions have been manipulated in the 4 fears since its original publication.
McCain Attempting To Win Backing Of Ron Paul? Reports suggest GOP nominee worried he cannot win election without votes of Texas Congressman's supporters
Republican nominee John McCain and national party strategists are attempting to win the support of Congressman Ron Paul, fearing that without the votes of his supporters it may be difficult to win the election outright against Barack Obama.
That is the according to a report appearing in the Washington Times today, however, Ron Paul himself seemed somewhat confused by the idea stating "I don't know where they could've gotten a statement like that from."
The Times article suggests that the Republican National Committee and convention officials have been courting the Congressman in an attempt to try and gain an endorsement.
The report reads:
Sen. McCain and national party strategists worry that Mr. Paul's sympathizers will vote for Bob Barr, the Libertarian Party candidate and former Republican congressman who shares many of Mr. Paul's views.
After officials at the Republican National Committee told Paul that he would not be permitted to address the national convention, because of his refusal to alter his opposition to the Iraq war, the Congressman organized his own "Campaign For Liberty" convention.
The RNC also promised to limit Ron Paul's access to the convention floor, and monitor his movements at the hall.
According to Paul's communications director Jesse Benton, the Republican Platform Committee, under the control of McCain's people, also barred Paul from speaking in Minneapolis last week because he wanted to discuss the foreign-policy planks in the platform.
Now Congressman Paul's rally, which takes place today, has sold out and the McCain campaign is seemingly worried that it will win over many young and first time voters.
The Washington Times explains that a deal of sorts was being negotiated whereby Ron Paul has said he will speak respectfully about McCain in return for the convention granting the Congressman's entourage, including his personal security guard, political aides and Benton himself access to the floor of the Xcel Energy Center.
This is as close as McCain could possibly hope to come towards an endorsement from Ron Paul, who fiercely clashed with the Arizona Senator during the debates last year and has consistently criticized his views on foreign policy.
Jesse Benton told reporters that moves to gain anything more from the Paul camp would do the McCain campaign no good because the loyalty of Ron Paul's supporters is "not transferable".
According to further reports however, Benton has said that the party is still yet to agree to the deal which would permit Paul to be accompanied by a political aide and someone to keep watch over him.
“We thought we had an agreement over the weekend” enabling Paul to circulate with two aides on the floor among some 260 delegates in his camp. “It looks like there is a hang-up.” Benton stated.
Ron Paul appeared on CNN this morning and confirmed these details, revealing that the GOP has told him he can come to the convention floor only “under very, very restricted conditions.”
It would be no surprise if the McCain campaign were indeed attempting to win over Ron Paul and his "closet sympathizers" as the Times so derogatorily describes limited government advocates, given the impact the Congressman has had over the past eighteen months.
Paul shocked the party establishment by twice setting single-day fundraising records during his quest for the Republican presidential nomination. He also effectively ended any chance Rudy Giuliani ever had of winning the nomination by consistently polling higher and trouncing him in the debates, leading sections of the neocon bootlicking media to admit he has forever "changed the GOP forever".
It now seems that the previously ever present tactic of blackballing Paul, labeling him a fringe politician and attempting to ignore his strong base of supporters is no longer thought of as an effective way of dealing with the Congressman and his campaign for liberty.
In the months leading up to the Republican National Convention, the FBI-led Minneapolis Joint Terrorist Task Force actively recruited people to infiltrate vegan groups and other leftist organizations and report back about their activities. On May 21, the Minneapolis City Pages ran a recruiting story called "Moles Wanted." Law enforcement sought to preempt lawful protest against the policies of the Bush administration during the convention.
Since Friday, local police and sheriffs, working with the FBI, conducted preemptive searches, seizures and arrests. Glenn Greenwald described the targeting of protestors by "teams of 25-30 officers in riot gear, with semi-automatic weapons drawn, entering homes of those suspected of planning protests, handcuffing and forcing them to lay on the floor, while law enforcement officers searched the homes, seizing computers, journals, and political pamphlets." Journalists were detained at gunpoint and lawyers representing detainees were handcuffed at the scene.
"I was personally present and saw officers with riot gear and assault rifles, pump action shotguns," said Bruce Nestor, the President of the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, who is representing several of the protestors. "The neighbor of one of the houses had a gun pointed in her face when she walked out on her back porch to see what was going on. There were children in all of these houses, and children were held at gunpoint."
The raids targeted members of "Food Not Bombs," an anti-war, anti-authoritarian protest group that provides free vegetarian meals every week in hundreds of cities all over the world. They served meals to rescue workers at the World Trade Center after 9/11 and to nearly 20 communities in the Gulf region following Hurricane Katrina.
Also targeted were members of I-Witness Video, a media watchdog group that monitors the police to protect civil liberties. The group worked with the National Lawyers Guild to gain the dismissal of charges or acquittals of about 400 of the 1,800 who were arrested during the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York. Preemptive policing was used at that time as well. Police infiltrated protest groups in advance of the convention.
Nestor said that no violence or illegality has taken place to justify the arrests. "Seizing boxes of political literature shows the motive of these raids was political," he said.
Further evidence the political nature of the police action was the boarding up of the Convergence Center, where protestors had gathered, for unspecified code violations. St. Paul City Council member David Thune said, "Normally we only board up buildings that are vacant and ramshackle." Thune and fellow City Council member Elizabeth Glidden decried "actions that appear excessive and create an atmosphere of fear and intimidation for those who wish to exercise their first amendment rights."
"So here we have a massive assault led by Federal Government law enforcement agencies on left-wing dissidents and protestors who have committed no acts of violence or illegality whatsoever, preceded by months-long espionage efforts to track what they do," Greenwald wrote on Salon.
Preventive detention violates the Fourth Amendment, which requires that warrants be supported by probable cause. Protestors were charged with "conspiracy to commit riot," a rarely-used statute that is so vague, it is probably unconstitutional. Nestor said it "basically criminalizes political advocacy."
On Sunday, the National Lawyers Guild and Communities United Against Police Brutality filed an emergency motion requesting an injunction to prevent police from seizing video equipment and cellular phones used to document their conduct.
During Monday's demonstration, law enforcement officers used pepper spray, rubber bullets, concussion grenades and excessive force. At least 284 people were arrested, including Amy Goodman, the prominent host of Democracy Now!, as well as the show's producers, Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar. "St. Paul was the most militarized I have ever seen an American city to be," Greenwald wrote, "with troops of federal, state and local law enforcement agents marching around with riot gear, machine guns, and tear gas cannisters, shouting military chants and marching in military formations."
Bruce Nestor said the timing of the arrests was intended to stop protest activity, "to make people fearful of the protests, but also to discourage people from protesting," he told Amy Goodman. Nevertheless, 10,000 people, many opposed to the Iraq war, turned out to demonstrate on Monday. A legal team from the National Lawyers Guild has been working diligently to protect the constitutional rights of protestors.
Marjorie Cohn is president of the National Lawyers Guild and a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law. She is author of Cowboy Republic. Her articles are archived at www.marjoriecohn.com.
Climate Scientists: Use Spaceships To Block Out The Sun
Mad professors want fleets of drones to sit between Earth and Sun in name of fighting global warming
Global warming alarmists, who have routinely dismissed evidence that the Sun is the main driver of climate change, are now calling to block out the celestial body that supports all life on Earth in a set of bizarre new proposals to “geo-engineer” the planet.
One idea being promoted is a madcap plan to send a fleet of shiny spaceships to form a physical cloud between the Sun and the Earth, covering half the diameter of the entire planet.
“Political inaction on global warming has become so dire that nations must now consider extreme technical solutions - such as blocking out the sun - to address catastrophic temperature rises, scientists from around the world warn today,” reports the Guardian.
The fact that sunspot activity and solar radiation have driven natural climate change throughout history is routinely dismissed by man-made global warming advocates who insist that human produced CO2 is to blame for global temperature increases, despite the fact that no global warming has been observed for the past 10 years and strong evidence suggests the planet is now embarking on a significant cooling trend. In addition, it was recently revealed that Arctic ice has actually grown by around 30 per cent in the year since August 2007.
But now top university heads and professors are pushing to “geo-engineer” the planet and even block out the sun to prevent what they claim will be a global temperature increase of 4C.
Methods being discussed include a plan to “Insert “scatterers” into the stratosphere….deploy jumbo jets into the upper atmosphere and deposit clouds of tiny particles there, such as sulphur dioxide. Dispersing around 1m tonnes of sulphur dioxide per year across 10m square kilometres of the atmosphere would be enough to reflect away sufficient amounts of sunlight.”
The fact that sulphur dioxide is an an acid-rain causing pollutant that will literally change the color of our serene blue skies doesn’t seem to be a concern for these alleged “environmentalists”.
And if you think Australian professor Tim Flannery’s idea to cut down pristine beautiful old growth forests was hare-brained then listen to this - an even more bizarre proposal is to use a mass fleet of shiny spaceships to sit between the Earth and the Sun, forming a physical cloud and reflecting away sunlight.
“Scientists have suggested launching a constellation of free-flying craft that would sit between the Sun and Earth forming a cylindrical cloud around half the Earth’s diameter and 10 times longer,” reports the Guardian. “Approximately 10% of the sunlight passing through the 60,000 mile length of the cloud, pointing lengthwise between the Earth and the Sun would be diverted away from the Earth, which would uniformly reduce sunlight over the planet by approximately 2%,” writes Stephen Schneider of Stanford University. The cost would be a dazzling $100bn (£55.5bn) a year.”
No it’s not April 1st, this is not a joke. Scientists at top universities are actually proposing that spaceships be sent up into the atmosphere to sit over half of the planet and block out the Sun! Your tax dollars actually fund the research grants that finance this nonsense!
Furthermore, if the Sun has little or nothing to do with global warming as we are constantly told by climate change alarmists, then why the necessity to block it out? You can’t have your cake and eat it.
The upshot of these ludicrous and laughable proposals will be a further erosion of the credibility of climate change alarmists who are becoming increasingly shrill in their dire proclamations amidst general public apathy and hostility to accept extreme measures to fight a problem that is still highly dubious at best.
In absurdly calling for spaceships to be sent up to sit over half of the Earth’s diameter, people like Stephen Schneider are only ensuring that man-made global warming alarmists shred any credibility they have left and lose the debate that they claim is already over.
Feds Directed Preemptive Raids On RNC Protesters National Lawyers Guild seeks judicial review
Raids carried out on what police described as "the headquarters of an anarchist/anti-authoritarian group" ahead of the Republican National Convention in Minnesota, were directed by the Federal Government it has been revealed.
Salon Columnist Greg Greenwald highlights the Federal involvement in a scathing article denouncing the raids as an all out attack on free speech and the right to protest.
Minnesota Public Radio reported yesterday that "the searches were led by the Ramsey County Sheriff's office. Deputies coordinated searches with the Minneapolis and St. Paul police departments and the Federal Bureau of Investigation."
Photographs (see above) taken by a Professor at the University of Minnesota who lives in the neighborhood where one of the homes was raided yesterday, have also confirmed the federal involvement in the raids.
Greenwald adds:
Today's Star Tribune added that the raids were specifically "aided by informants planted in protest groups." Back in May, Marcy Wheeler presciently noted that the Minneapolis Joint Terrorist Task Force -- an inter-agency group of federal, state and local law enforcement led by the FBI -- was actively recruiting Minneapolis residents to serve as plants, to infiltrate "vegan groups" and other left-wing activist groups and report back to the Task Force about what they were doing. There seems to be little doubt that it was this domestic spying by the Federal Government that led to the excessive and truly despicable home assaults by the police yesterday.
According to reports, six activists were arrested when the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Department stormed a rented meeting place of the self penned "RNC Welcoming Committee" in St. Paul on Friday night.
Up to 30 police officers entered the building with semi automatic weapons, leading to the detention and photographing of at least 50 people in total.
Video has also emerged from the scene over the weekend revealing that journalists were also detained.
The dissidents and protesters had committed no acts of violence or illegality whatsoever and have not been charged with any offences, prompting concerns over the police-state like tactics.
Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher later issued a press release which labeled the those detained “criminal anarchists” and suggested that "materials for bombs" and "hazardous materials" had been found in the building, including “assorted edged weapons”, “wrist rockets”, “large amounts of urine” and many others.
St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman defended the actions of the county sheriff’s department as necessary to keep other protesters of the RNC safe.
“We are making sure that people here to legitimately protest have the right to do that, but people engaging in criminal activity are not going to be able to do that,” Coleman said.
The Minnesota Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild is seeking a judicial review into the arrests of the activists during Friday night's raid, the Minnesota Independent reported.
A portion of a statement from the NLG reads:
Three of the arrestees are life-long residents of Minnesota. Two previously worked in early childhood education and passed background checks to obtain that employment. All have extensive ties to Minnesota, including employment and family members. One is a graduate of the University of Minnesota. None of the six arrestees have ever been convicted of a felony or crime of violence. One person arrested on Saturday morning, August 30th, was previously detained on Friday night at the St. Paul convergence center where he was photographed and identified. Despite being labeled a “key member” of a “criminal enterprise” and a planner of a “criminal conspiracy,” he was released on Friday night even though Sheriff Fletcher had conducted a months long investigation, using informants, and presumably identified the “key leaders” who he claims were organizing riots and civil disorder.
An NLG spokesperson told reporters that police are actively attempting to prevent the demonstrators from exercising their right to protest given that no charges or official complaints have been filed.
“If they have evidence of a criminal act, then they should charge them,” Bruce Nestor said. “And if they can charge [my client, Monica Bicking] with a complaint, then we will go defend that in court. But right now they are just holding them. You can’t just hold [Bicking] to prevent her from exercising her free speech.”
Meanwhile thousands of other demonstrators have gathered in St. Paul, Minn. to protest the RNC on its opening day despite events being severely limited due to Hurricane Gustav.
Cops Arrest AP Photographer, Broadcaster At Start Of RNC
Plaudits for the relative restraint of Denver police during last week’s Democratic National Convention are not set to be repeated at the RNC, as cops signaled their intent by arresting an AP photographer as well as Democracy Now host Amy Goodman simply for documenting protests in downtown St. Paul.
Associated Press photographer Matt Rourke was arrested on a gross misdemeanor riot charge simply for taking pictures of a protest yesterday.
“Covering news is a constitutionally protected activity, and covering a riot is part of that coverage,” AP assistant chief of bureau in Washington David Ake said. “Photographers should not be detained for covering breaking news.”
Democracy Now host Amy Goodman was arrested after she complained about the assault and arrest of her colleagues, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar.
According to Democracy Now, “All three were violently manhandled by law enforcement officers. Abdel Kouddous was slammed against a wall and the ground, leaving his arms scraped and bloodied. He sustained other injuries to his chest and back. Salazar’s violent arrest by baton-wielding officers, during which she was slammed to the ground while yelling, “I’m Press! Press!,” resulted in her nose bleeding, as well as causing facial pain. Goodman’s arm was violently yanked by police as she was arrested.”
“During the demonstration in which the Democracy Now! team was arrested, law enforcement officers used pepper spray, rubber bullets, concussion grenades and excessive force against protesters and journalists. Several dozen demonstrators were also arrested during this action, including a photographer for the Associated Press.”
All three were eventually released but face felony charges. Democracy Now has vowed to fight the false charges which they characterized as an intimidation of independent journalists.
Another AP photographer, Evan Vucci, was body slammed, kicked in the ribs and then handcuffed by police, only avoiding arrest by showing his press credentials.
“The police had pushed the protesters into a parking lot where they had police coming from all sides to encircle one area,” Vucci said. “Once they got all the protesters into this one parking lot they kind of rushed and arrested all the protesters in there,” said Vucci.
With 50,000 demonstrators expected to protest the RNC, more incidents of this kind can be expected.
On Friday, the Ramsey County Sheriff’s office, directed by federal authorities and armed with semi-automatic weapons, raided the headquarters of a protest group and detained and photographed 50 people. Six were arrested on charges of organizing a riot. None of the six have been convicted of a felony or crime of violence and all hold respectable positions within the community.
The raids were carried out after moles were planted in the group by the Minneapolis Joint Terrorist Task Force.
“Back in May, Marcy Wheeler presciently noted that the Minneapolis Joint Terrorist Task Force — an inter-agency group of federal, state and local law enforcement led by the FBI — was actively recruiting Minneapolis residents to serve as plants, to infiltrate “vegan groups” and other left-wing activist groups and report back to the Task Force about what they were doing. There seems to be little doubt that it was this domestic spying by the Federal Government that led to the excessive and truly despicable home assaults by the police yesterday,” writes Greenwald.
Amy Goodman arrested for asking questions about the assault and arrest of her colleagues.
Police fire tear gas at protesters as they run away.
Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
I know the police cause you trouble; They cause trouble everywhere. But when you die and go to heaven, You won't find no policeman there.
-- Goebel Reeves, "Hobo's Lullabye"
Glenn Greenwald tells a harrowing tale of police-state tactics in Minneapolis, with armed security forces conducting Baghdad-like raids on the houses of activists, terrorizing many and arresting some for thought crimes -- such as "planning to cause a riot" -- and other bogus charges. The sweeps -- guided and aided by the federal government -- are designed to "ensure domestic tranquility" during the imminent Republican convention in the city. As Greenwald points out, not one of those who were shackled, arrested and hauled out at gunpoint had committed any crime whatsoever.
Heinous indeed, and entirely worthy of the anger that Greenwald marshals in his reports from the scene. But we must disagree with him on one crucial point: his repeated declaration that these incidents are "extraordinary." On the contrary, there is nothing at all remarkable about them. They are all of a piece with the similar tactics employed to cleanse the city of Denver of any unseemly expressions of old-fashioned, long-gone American liberties during the Democratic convention, where any protests that escaped the grotesque official "cage" set aside for them were strangled by militarized police and mass arrests.
Such tactics are not confined to major political events with "national security" implications -- i.e., the presence of afflatus-bloated muckity-mucks who must be spared the slightest confrontation with their crimes and complicities. They are now simply part and parcel of modern American society. Greenwald might be mistaken in regarding the Minnesota Monster Mash as "extraordinary," but he is certainly correct when he notes its deeper implications:
As the recent "overhaul" of the 30-year-old FISA law illustrated -- preceded by the endless expansion of surveillance state powers, justified first by the War on Drugs and then the War on Terror -- we've essentially decided that we want our Government to spy on us without limits. There is literally no police power that the state can exercise that will cause much protest from the political and media class and, therefore, from the citizenry.
Beyond that, there is a widespread sense that the targets of these raids deserve what they get, even if nothing they've done is remotely illegal. We love to proclaim how much we cherish our "freedoms" in the abstract, but we despise those who actually exercise them. The Constitution, right in the very First Amendment, protects free speech and free assembly precisely because those liberties are central to a healthy republic -- but we've decided that anyone who would actually express truly dissident views or do anything other than sit meekly and quietly in their homes are dirty trouble-makers up to no good, and it's therefore probably for the best if our Government keeps them in check, spies on them, even gets a little rough with them.
After all, if you don't want the FBI spying on you, or the Police surrounding and then invading your home with rifles and seizing your computers, there's a very simple solution: don't protest the Government. Just sit quietly in your house and mind your own business. That way, the Government will have no reason to monitor what you say and feel the need to intimidate you by invading your home. Anyone who decides to protest -- especially with something as unruly and disrespectful as an unauthorized street march -- gets what they deserve.
Isn't it that mentality which very clearly is the cause of virtually everyone turning away as these police raids escalate against citizens -- including lawyers, journalists and activists -- who have broken no laws and whose only crime is that they intend vocally to protest what the Government is doing? Add to that the fact that many good establishment liberals are embarrassed by leftist protesters of this sort and wish that they would remain invisible, and there arises a widespread consensus that these Government attacks are perfectly tolerable if not desirable.
True enough. But Arthur Silber, among a few others, was there long ago, in numerous essays over the past few years. Of special note in this regard is a remarkable series sparked by the tasering of Andrew Meyer in 2007 -- a damning and revealing incident that quickly became a national joke ("Don't tase me, bro!") and, for the "left," a national embarrassment to be flushed away as soon as possible. But from this incident -- and the reactions to it -- Silber opened a seam of insights into a thoroughly corroded national consciousness. He also provides copious factual detail on the growing use of tasers as a means of social control (and official murder) by state authority -- a cancerous repression that has only spread and worsened in the ensuing months. From Silber (see original for links):
See the connection, and the similarity: the United States launches criminal wars of aggression against nations which constitute no serious threat to it, and which are known to constitute no serious threat -- for the sole purpose of gaining compliance, that is, of installing governments in other countries that will act in accordance with our demands. This has long been the purpose of our interventionist foreign policy: to ensure that other countries act in accordance with our orders, even when genuine issues of national defense are altogether absent. America is God. God's Will be done. Even after the catastrophe of Iraq, leaders of both political parties threaten war against Iran, another nation that does not threaten us, because Iran dares to thwart our will.
Is it any wonder then that, within our own borders, law enforcement will use potentially lethal weapons in the absence of any serious threat -- simply to gain compliance? When the state decides that your behavior matters, you will obey. Yes, you may engage in debate -- within the parameters established by the state. Yes, you may ask questions -- if the state approves them. If you dare to step outside the boundaries set by the state, you will be brought into line, by force as required -- and by possibly lethal force. The United States government murders a million innocent people who never threatened it; of what significance is the life of a single student, especially since he's a "troublemaker" anyway?
We all know that if, say, Vladimir Putin or Hugo Chavez had put on the kind of display we've seen in Minneapolis and Denver, the entire American media-political establishment would be in full condemnatory cry about such "anti-democratic repression." But of course, there is nothing extraordinary about this blatant and brutal hypocrisy, either; Americans have long exempted themselves from the legal and moral standards they apply to others. (Others who fail to kowtow properly to the Washington line, that is; only they are subject to condemnation for failing to meet these lofty standards. Meanwhile, those those who play ball with the Beltway barons -- such as Egypt, Israel and Saudi Arabia, to name a few -- are allowed to get away with murder. Literally.)
What happened in Minneapolis is neither extraordinary nor surprising. It is simply what happens in a police state, one in which the Leader claims the power to ignore every law, to order torture, murder and wars of aggression as he sees fit, to declare anyone on earth an "enemy combatant" (on criteria that he alone decides) and detain them, without charges, for as long as he wants -- and is never resisted in any of these egregious acts of tyranny by the political "opposition." Instead his crimes and authoritarian encroachments are continually excused, countenanced, justified, immunized, ignored or fully supported by the "opposition," whose leaders refuse to take any legal action against the multitude of state crimes, but instead say openly that their main goal is simply to seize power for their own co-opted and corrupted elite faction.
There are probably any number of names one could call such a system -- but a constitutional Republic is not one of them. Or as I put it last year:
The game is over. The crisis has passed -- and the patient is dead. Whatever dream you had about what America is, it isn't that anymore. It's gone. And not just in some abstract sense, some metaphorical or mythological sense, but down in the nitty-gritty, in the concrete realities of institutional structures and legal frameworks, of policy and process, even down to the physical nature of the landscape and the way that people live.
The Republic you wanted -- and at one time might have had the power to take back -- is finished. You no longer have the power to keep it; it's not there. It was kidnapped in December 2000, raped by the primed and ready exploiters of 9/11, whored by the war pimps of the 2003 aggression, gut-knifed by the corrupters of the 2004 vote, and raped again by its "rescuers" after the 2006 election. Beaten, abused, diseased and abandoned, it finally died. We are living in its grave.
Example two, the “damaging conspiracy theory” that MMR vaccines are harmful, stems not from paranoid forum postings and misquoted blog entries, but from scientific research into the mercury based preservative thimerosal, developed by Eli Lilly and subsequently used in the MMR vaccine, along with many other vaccines.
