The New American Republic

Current News and Analysis

2012-01-24T14:43:00.001-08:00

Current News and Analysis

Zionist fabrications, smears intensify ahead of Penn BDS conference

Does this look like “incitement” to you?

By Ali Abunimah | The Electronic Intifada | January 24, 2012

In the run-up to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) conference at the University of Pennsylvania in early February, at which I will be spearking, the defamation and fabrication machines of anti-Palestinian groups have gone into over-drive.
In December, StandWithUS attempted to smear me as an “anti-Semite” with fabricated quotes.
And just yesterday, my colleague Ben White was subjected to prominent smears that he is an “anti-Semite” in the Israeli press. That in turn is part of an escalating campaign against human rights and equality champion Haneen Zoabi.

The latest smear against me comes in a column by Emily Schrader in The College Fix which slyly accuses me of “incitement to violence against Israelis.” … continue

LAPD: Joint Military Drills In Downtown LA Won’t Disrupt Public’s ‘Daily Routines’

Helicopter exercises designed to “prepare forces for upcoming overseas deployments”

CBS | January 24, 2012

LOS ANGELES — If you notice a heavy military presence around downtown Los Angeles this week, don’t be alarmed — it’s only a drill.
Joint military training exercises will be held evenings through Thursday, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.
The LAPD will be providing support for the exercises, which will also be held in other portions of the greater Los Angeles area, police said. … Full article

Rebellion vs Rebels: ‘Libyans kick NTC out of Bani Walid’

RussiaToday | January 24, 2012

GOP Frontrunner Boasts Israel Support and Netanyahu Ties

By Nathan Guttman and Josh Nathan-Kazis – The Forward – issue of December 16, 2011

… Ties between Gingrich and Netanyahu date back to the mid 1990s, when both shared a goal of countering a drive by then-president Bill Clinton to advance the peace process. Netanyahu, as leader of the opposition, maintained close relations with Gingrich and the Republican leadership.
“At the time, Bibi used him [Gingrich] to pressure the president when it came to issues relating to the peace process,” recalled Itamar Rabinovich, Israel’s ambassador to Washington from 1993 to 1996. …
… Gingrich hasn’t cornered the market on right-wing, pro-Israel supporters. Philip Rosen, former national chairman of American Friends of Likud, hosted a $10,000-per-head fundraiser for Romney in September. And Romney’s foreign policy team includes such neoconservative stalwarts as former defense policy advisory board member Eliot Cohen and Dan Senor, former spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. … Read full article
Also read the Forward’s coverage of Gingrich’s vow to support Israel more strongly

New Sabra hummus ad uses images of Arabs, Africans to cover up Israel army connection

By Ali Abunimah | The Electronic Intifada | January 24, 2012

The Strauss Group, the company that openly supports the Israeli army and makes Sabra brand hummus, is trying a new advertising strategy to hide its Israeli connections and combat a growing boycott movement.
It is to depict Arabs and Muslims in its ads as a form of cover. Should we call this “Arabwashing?” … continue

Veolia must stop assisting the occupier and leave Jerusalem, says Hamas spokesperson

By Adri Nieuwhof | The Electronic Intifada | January 24, 2012

On his visit to Switzerland, Hamas spokesperson Mushir al-Masri unequivocally condemned the Jerusalem Light Rail project. French companies Veolia and Alstom should stop assisting the occupier and leave Jerusalem, he said.

Al-Masri headed a delegation of members of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) to the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Geneva. The Electronic Intifada reported on the first official visit of Hamas members to a European country since the 2006 PLC elections. I interviewed Al-Masri on Thursday, 19 January, about his views on the Israeli Jerusalem Light Rail project.

The first line of the light rail connects West Jerusalem with the illegal settlements of Pisgat Ze’ev and French Hill in occupied Palestinian East Jerusalem. Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and the annexation of East Jerusalem are illegal under international law. This status has been confirmed repeatedly by numerous UN resolutions and the 2004 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on Israel’s wall in the occupied West Bank. … continue

Israeli forces seize MP in Ramallah

Ma’an – 24/01/2012

RAMALLAH – Israeli forces detained Palestinian lawmaker Abul Jabbar Fuqaha from his Ramallah home on Tuesday morning, the fourth MP from a Hamas-affiliated party seized by Israel in five days.
Early Tuesday, Israeli soldiers ransacked Fuqaha’s home in the Al-Maysoun neighborhood of West Bank city Ramallah, before detaining the lawmaker.

Fuqaha, 43, was released from Israeli jail in February 2011 after serving two years administrative detention without charge. [...]
There are now 27 members of the Palestinian Legislative Council detained in Israeli jails, according to prisoners rights group Addameer. – Full article

Speaker Of Palestine Parliament Receives Six Months Administrative Detention

By Saed Bannoura | IMEMC & Agencies | January 24, 2012

The Israeli Military Court at the Ofer Israeli prison, near the central West Bank city of Ramallah, decided to imprison the elected head of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), Dr. Aziz Dweik, to six months administrative detention.
On Sunday, a court was held to look into the possibility of placing him under administrative detention, without any charges officially filed against him.
Both Dr. Dweik and legislator Khaled Tafesh, from the southern West Bank city of Hebron, were taken prisoner on Friday.
Representing Dr. Dweik, Lawyer Fadi Al-Qawasmi stated that the court issued the administrative detention order despite the fact that no charges were brought against his client. … Full article

Israeli warplanes blast targets in southern, northern Gaza

Palestine Information Center – 24/01/2012

GAZA — Israeli warplanes launched four air raids on mainly deserted areas in northern and Gaza Strip at dawn Tuesday with no casualties reported.
Local sources told the PIC reporter that Israeli F-16s fired three missiles at uninhabited areas in northern Gaza in two raids.
Israeli warplanes launched two other raids to the east of Khan Younis and fired two missiles at greenhouses on the Khan Younis – Deir Al-Balah road in further escalation in the ceaseless Israeli aggression on the Strip.

Arab League plan ‘outrageous meddling’ in Syria

Press TV – January 24, 2012

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem says a new Arab League proposal that calls on President Bashar al-Assad to step down is “outrageous interference” in Syria’s internal affairs.

Muallem said in a press conference in the capital Damascus on Tuesday that Syria “will not accept the plan that infringes upon Syria’s sovereignty.”
On Sunday, the Arab League issued a statement after a meeting in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, calling on President Assad to “transfer power to the vice president to form a government of national unity within two months.”
Sudanese General Mohammed Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi, the head of the observer mission in Syria, said in a press conference in Cairo on Monday the situation has improved in Syria since the monitoring mission began on December 26, 2011.
The Syrian foreign minister said the Arab League has made “political decisions instead of discussing its observer mission’s report on Syria.”
Muallem added that the report proves that “armed gangs are still active in Syria and that the Syrian government is decisively fighting against them.”
Muallem’s remarks come as the (Persian) Gulf Cooperation Council member states jointly announced on Tuesday that the countries have decided to “follow Saudi Arabia’s decision to pull out its observers from the Arab League mission in Syria.” … Full article

Connect with the Palestinian Students’ Campaign for Academic Boycott of Israel

23 January 2012 | US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel

A collective of students in Gaza has formed the Palestinian Students’ Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel (PSCABI). These students are seeking to expand their collaboration and participation in events and activities with solidarity activists at international universities.
PSCABI members participate in many activities here in Gaza and are heavily involved in supporting the international student solidarity movements, especially with the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaigns. PSCABI members frequently write letters out of Gaza, some of which we have listed below, encouraging people to participate in the boycott and thanking people who have supported the Palestinian cause.
PSCABI members are available to share ideas, participate via Skype or other technology in remote events, organize and strategize together, hear about your activities and provide information and narratives as Palestinian university students for your distribution, and provide access to voices speaking directly from besieged Gaza.
please contact us at pscabi@usacbi.org … Past Letters from PSCABI

Jeffrey Goldberg pushes false neocon smear scrubbed by Washington Post

By Max Blumenthal – Al Akhbar – 2012-01-24

For nearly a month, a group of foreign policy researcher-bloggers at the Center for American Progress (CAP), an influential liberal think tank based in Washington DC, have faced an unrelenting smear campaign. The smears, initiated by former AIPAC spokesman Josh Block, focused on a few sardonic tweets by CAP bloggers that raised the ire of the pro-Israel and neoconservative political community. One tweet that included the term “Israel Firster” received special attention.

“This kind of demagoguery, anti-Israel invective, and in some cases actual hate speech, is absolutely wrong whether it comes from the extreme Right or Left, and like cancer, it has to be cut out before it metastasizes and destroys the whole body,” Block complained to Jennifer Rubin, a neoconservative columnist for the Washington Post who has accused CAP of “anti-Semitism” and who was recently scolded by the paper’s ombudsman for endorsing a screed advocating the slaughter of Palestinians.
Block’s campaign was transparently designed to force the Democratic establishment to disown a group of researchers who had generated an effective and factually solid counter narrative to the case for a military strike on Iran. And it was well orchestrated, receiving robust and sustained amplification from the right-wing of the pro-Israel community. By January 19, after a who’s who of neoconservative writers and right-leaning Jewish American groups called for the firing of the researchers, and weeks after the small handful of “controversial” tweets had been deleted and apologized for, the smears graduated onto the pages of the Washington Post. … continue

Israeli special forces kidnap Jerusalemite MP, minister from Red Cross premises

Palestine Information Center – 23/01/2012

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israeli special forces stormed the Red Cross premises in occupied Jerusalem on Monday and kidnapped MP Mohammed Totah and former Jerusalem minister Khaled Abu Arafa, the PIC reporter said.
He said that the Israeli forces took both officials to an unknown location, quoting relatives as expressing fears that they would be banished from Jerusalem similar to their colleagues Mohammed Abu Tir and Mohammed Attoun.
The Israeli intelligence warned Totah and Abu Arafa in a telephone call two weeks ago that they should leave the Red Cross premises and occupied Jerusalem within 48 hours.
The kidnap coincides with an escalation in the targeting of Hamas lawmakers in the West Bank the latest being a few days ago when the Israeli occupation soldiers arrested Palestinian parliament speaker Dr. Aziz Dweik and MP Mohammed Tafesh.

Obama Set to Use Military Intervention Against Longshoremen

By Ben Schreiner | Dissident Voice | January 23rd, 2012

A decisive struggle promising to shape the fate of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), West Coast dockworkers, and all organized labor is swiftly nearing a climax in Longview, Washington.
Within weeks, if not days, the international conglomerate EGT Development will seek to commence operations at its new $200 million export grain terminal at the Port of Longview. In refusing to use ILWU labor, EGT is breaking the precedent in place since the 1930s, which holds that all public port docks up and down the West Coast are to be worked by the ILWU.
As ILWU Local 21 in Longview maintains, the union’s struggle against EGT’s scab facility is indicative of “the fight of working people everywhere.” It is, as the union continues, “a make-or-break struggle for all organized labor.”

Yet, as the ILWU and its allies ready to fight EGT’s union busting, the US military lies in wait to intervene on the behalf of the conglomerate.
As ILWU International President Rob McEllrath disclosed in a January 3 letter:

We have been told that this vessel will be escorted by armed United States Coast Guard, including the use of small vessels and helicopters, from the mouth of the Columbia River to the EGT facility.

The revelation that the Coast Guard (one of the five armed forces of the United States, and the lone military organization within the Department of Homeland Security) will be utilized to guard the EGT ship has drawn outrage and harsh condemnation from many within the labor community. … continue

British Jews cancel Abbas meeting

Ma’an – 23/01/2012

TEL AVIV – Jewish community leaders in Britain canceled a meeting with President Mahmoud Abbas during his visit to London last week, an Israeli newspaper reported Monday.
The meeting was supposed to be one of several Abbas has held with Jewish leaders around the world in an effort to increase pressure on Israel to move forward with peace talks, Haaretz reported.
However, the meeting in Britain was called off following a request from representatives of the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office and the Israeli Embassy in London, according to the report.
The British government sought to convince the Jewish leaders to hold the meeting, Haaretz said.

The report says the Palestinian envoy in London sought to arrange the meeting several weeks ago. Manuel Hassassian and British Foreign Office officials asked leaders of the Jewish community to attend.

UN rights chief urges US close Guantanamo

Al Akhbar | January 23, 2012

UN rights chief Navi Pillay on Monday lamented the United States’ failure to close the detention facility at its naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, three years after incoming President Barack Obama pledged to shut the camp.
“It is 10 years since the US government opened the prison at Guantanamo, and now three years since January 22, 2009, when the president ordered its closure within 12 months,” the High Commissioner for Human Rights said.
“Yet the facility continues to exist and individuals remain arbitrarily detained – indefinitely – in clear breach of international law,” she said in a statement.

Pillay said new legislation had only entrenched the system of arbitrary detention at Guantanamo Bay, that accepted its first prisoners on 11 January 2002.
The National Defense Authorization Act, signed into law in December 2011, “effectively codifies” indefinite military detention without charge or trial, she said.
“This piece of legislation contravenes some of the most fundamental tenets of justice and human rights, namely the right to a fair trial and the right not to be arbitrarily detained.” … Full article

US drone raids kill 5 in Pakistan

Press TV – January 23, 2012

At least five people have been killed in two strikes carried out by a US assassination drone in the Pakistani tribal area of North Waziristan, Press TV, reports.

Security officials said on Monday that the American drone targeted a vehicle and a house with two missiles, killing five people at Degan village near Miranshah, the main town of North Waziristan on the Afghan border.
The death toll is expected to rise, and the rescue operation is underway in the area, local residents say. … Full article

Iran To Survive US Oil Embargo

Experts regard all this as an attempt by Washington to economically undermine the EU

By Konstantin Garibov | Voice of Russia | January 21, 2012

The ongoing US pressure on the European Union, Turkey, Japan, China and India to halt imports of Iranian oil and suspend any related financial transactions is facing resistance by oil importing companies and nations.
Last week India and Turkey refused to sign up to a proposed embargo on the import of Iranian crude, just days after the same had been announced by China.
Moreover, just as the EU is bracing itself for a decision on halting Iranian oil imports it will have to make on January 23, a number of Western companies are hastily extending their contracts with Iranian partners to avoid being hit by the proposed sanctions.
In an affront to Washington, India and Turkey have said although they would comply with the standing UN sanctions against Tehran, they would ignore oil embargoes introduced by individual countries. Iranian oil accounts for just under 10% of India’s needs and a hefty 30% of Turkish imports. … continue

Gingrich’s Major Backer Arch-Zionist Sheldon Adelson

America Hijacked | January 22nd, 2012

Gingrich’s faltering presidential campaign was completely resuscitated by a 5 million donation from Las Vegas casino king and super-Zionist Sheldon Adelson. (According to Wikipedia, Adelson is currently the 8th wealthiest American and 16th wealthiest person in the world, with a net worth of $23.3 billion.) Rising from the ashes, Gingrich now has won the South Carolina primary and has a decent chance of becoming the Republican presidential nominee.
Adelson has been the major backer of Gingrich for some time. A Washington Post article on the Adelson-Gingrich connection (though kept out of the first section of the paper) states: “Perhaps no other major presidential candidate in recent times has had his fortunes based so squarely on the contributions of a single donor, as Gingrich has on Adelson, who has spent millions in support of Gingrich and his causes over the past five years.” … continue

Israeli occupation forces arrest Palestinian human rights team

Palestine Information Center – 21/01/2012

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israeli occupation forces arrested a Palestinian human rights team in occupied Jerusalem while documenting the arrest of a Jerusalemite boy on Friday night.
Wadi Hilwa human rights center said in a statement on Saturday that its director Jawad Siyam, researcher Ahmed Qara’in, and cameraman Ahmed Siyam were arrested.
The center said that the detention was made while the team was documenting the arrest of the Jerusalemite boy Majd Hammad near the Maghareba gate of the Aqsa Mosque.

Soldiers raid community center, arrest local activist

Ma’an – 22/01/2012

HEBRON – Soldiers ransacked the office of a Palestinian community center in Hebron on Saturday and arrested the coordinator of a local coalition group.
Issa Amr, leader of a group called Youth Against Settlements, was blindfolded and detained.
“Soldiers took me to a military base in Tel Rumeida, they handcuffed and blindfolded me where I was brutally beaten for no reason. They also threatened to kill me, and settlers spat on me several times.
Then they chanted hate slogans and things like ‘each Arab dog will have its day’. After that, soldiers steered me in the streets as they chanted that Golani battalion is the best in the Israeli army,” Issa Amr told Ma’an after he was released. … continue

Facebook shows its tyrannical face, blocks solidarity page of hunger striker

Palestine Information Center – 22/01/2012

RAMALLAH — The facebook controllers erased a solidarity page protesting Israel’s arbitrary detention of Islamic Jihad leader Khader Adnan who has undergone open hunger strike since the first day of his arrest.
Facebook claimed the page was blocked because it was used to incite against Israel.
Information technology expert Ali Sa’eed said Zionist parties could be behind this unjust facebook decision.
He noted it was not the first time, facebook blocked pages supporting the Palestinian national cause and called for reopening other facebook pages to challenge its racist behavior.

No more back room deals — Users must have a voice in governing the Internet

By Kurt Opsahl | EFF | January 20, 2012

MPAA Chairman Chris Dodd gave an interview to the New York Times yesterday, in which “Mr. Dodd said he would welcome a summit meeting between Internet companies and content companies, perhaps convened by the White House, that could lead to a compromise.” While framed by the Times as his acceptance of defeat (the MPAA had rejected a prior meeting), the article shows that Dodd still doesn’t get it.

The former Senator hopes for a return to the traditional levers of power, where the laws are written by lobbyists, and sold by back-room deals negotiated behind closed doors. He wants to frame the debate as the comfortable story of a dispute between companies in Silicon Valley and companies in Hollywood, that would doubtless be resolved on the basis of who’s more connected or has better lobbying budgets ‒ or so he hopes. … continue

Corn Prices Rise Worldwide Due to U.S. Ethanol Policy

By Rudy Ruitenberg – Bloomberg – January 22, 2012

The use of corn to make ethanol in the U.S. is helping to lift the grain price worldwide, said Jose Graziano da Silva, the new director general of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization. [...]
Corn futures closed at $6.115 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade on Jan. 20, almost triple the $2.1175 a bushel for the grain a decade ago. Part of the U.S. corn production is used to make ethanol for blending into gasoline as a fuel while rapeseed is used in Europe to make biodiesel. … Full article

Mobile nuclear meltdowns: Coming soon to a town near you?

By Vladimir Slivyak – Translated by Maria Kaminskaya | Bellona | January 18, 2012

MOSCOW – Some three hundred nuclear time bombs are to cross the vast expanses of Russia within the next dozen years as Moscow embarks on its plan to send special-purpose trains with spent nuclear fuel (SNF) burnt at the country’s commercial reactors to a storage facility in Siberia. That’s the “solution” the nuclear industry has come up with for the ever mounting problem of nuclear waste – take it cross-country and pile it up where it will threaten the environment and public health for generations to come.
The first train bound for Krasnoyarsk Region in Central Siberia – where a repository is being built for both Russia- and foreign-produced nuclear waste – will carry spent nuclear fuel generated at Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant (NPP), a site near Russia’s second largest city of St. Petersburg, in the country’s northwest.
The date of departure – the first in a large-scale series of shipments devised to scoop up and stow away nuclear waste from all over the country – is being kept secret. The State Nuclear Corporation Rosatom plans to move some 22,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel to Siberia before 2025. This means three new trains loaded with dangerous waste – 300 shipments in total – will be arriving in the closed town of Zheleznogorsk, also known as Krasnoyarsk-26, every second month for the next thirteen years.

Shipments like these threaten the safety of residents of more than 15 large Russian cities that will happen to be on the way, urban centers like the Russian capital, Moscow, as well as St. Petersburg, Penza, Samara, Kirov, Perm, Yekaterinburg, Tyumen, Omsk, Novosibirsk and so on – virtually every industrial hub on Russia’s enormous map. Even though the shipping routes have not been disclosed, simple logic suggests moving trains loaded with cargoes as massive and logistically sensitive as these will require major railroads – such as those that involve stations, links, and depots serving heavy-traffic areas. … continue

The Radioactive Waste Crisis

By LINDA PENTZ GUNTER | CounterPunch | January 20, 2012

Before the month of January is out, the US Department of Energy’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future will unveil the result of its two year-long investigation into what to do with the accumulated radioactive waste at the country’s nuclear power plants. By this year’s end, that waste will constitute a mountain 70 years high, with the first cupful generated on December 2, 1942 at the Fermi lab not far from Chicago when scientists first created a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction.

There remains no viable solution for either the management or certainly the “disposal” of nuclear waste. Yet, the one recommendation that will not be contained in the DOE report is to stop making any more of it. While a child would never be allowed to continue piling up toys in his or her room indefinitely, failing to tidy up the mess, the nuclear industry continues to be permitted to manufacture some of the world’s most toxic detritus without a cleanup plan.
A sneak peak last July at the Commission’s draft report confirms that no new miracles are to be unveiled this month. Its preferred “solution” appears to be “centralized interim” storage, an allegedly temporary but potentially permanent parking lot dumpsite for highly radioactive waste that, based on past practices, will likely be targeted for an Indian reservation or a poor community of color. “Centralized interim” storage sites for the country’s irradiated reactor fuel rods could easily become permanent if no suitable geological repository site is found. It will mean transporting the waste from reactors predominantly located east of the Mississippi to a likely more remote, western location. And these wastes would then have to be moved again, transported past potentially 50 million homes, en route to a “permanent” dump site… continue

US to send old warship to Persian Gulf

Press TV – January 22, 2012

US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has vowed to maintain a fleet of eleven warships despite budget pressures, mostly to project sea power against Iran.
On board of the oldest US aircraft carrier, the USS Enterprise, Panetta told the crowd of 1,700 sailors that the 50-year-old ship is heading to the Persian Gulf region in a direct message to Tehran.

“The reason we maintain a presence in the Middle East … We want them to know that we are fully prepared to deal with any contingency and it’s better for them to try to deal with us through diplomacy,” Panetta said.
The USS Enterprise is the oldest active duty ship in the American naval fleet and its mission dates back to the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 and the Vietnam War.
The decision to maintain 11 warships comes at a time when the US economy is facing a national debt of more than USD 15 trillion after a decade of costly wars in Afghanistan and Iraq… Full article

Is Israel Planning ‘Pearl Harbor’ False Flag Attack in the Persian Gulf?

By Maidhc Ó Cathail | The Passionate Attachment | January 21, 2012

In a January 9 op-ed in the Jerusalem Post magazine, Avi Perry, a former intelligence expert for the Israeli government, appears to be hinting how Israel plans to induce the United States into attacking Iran:

Iran, just like Nazi Germany in the 1940s, will take the initiative and “help” the US president and the American public make up their mind by making the first move, by attacking a US aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf.
The Iranian attack on an American military vessel will serve as a justification and a pretext for a retaliatory move by the US military against the Iranian regime. The target would not be Iran’s nuclear facilities. The US would retaliate by attacking Iran’s navy, their military installations, missile silos, airfields. The US would target Iran’s ability to retaliate, to close down the Strait of Hormuz. The US would then follow by targeting the regime itself. … continue

The Boot That Stamps On Your Face

2010-09-17T13:52:00.000-07:00

False footprint of history misleads
our brains, destroys our lives

"Whoever controls the volume of money in our country is absolute master of all industry and commerce, and when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate."--James A. Garfield, 20th U.S. president, two weeks before he was assassinated in 1881.

http://rense.com/general92/stamps.htm
by John Kaminski
9-17-10

This is the fact we can't get straight.

One side - one entity, one organization - funds BOTH sides in all the wars.

Failure to comprehend this one stark truth has diminished human life beyond comprehension. For openers, it has cost millions of human lives throughout the 20th century and into the 21st in the form of wars that were cynically fomented to mask the massive robberies of other countries. And all of them - every single one - has been manipulated into being, not for geopolitical or philosophical purposes, but for robbery, pure and simple. All done under some patriotic rubric and all done by the same bunch, money controllers of that certain stripe whose name it is not permitted to mention in that society they call polite.

The way to see that picture of one central controlling financial octopus slithering down through history with backroom bribes and secret assassinations is to take the core syllabus of Eustace Mullins and Archibald Maule Ramsay, edit it, and lay it out like an outline.

1645: Portuguese Jewish bankers in Holland Solomon de Medina and Fernando Carvajal secretly fund Oliver Cromwell to readmit the Jews to England, where they had been banished for loansharking for almost 400 years. This drama leads to the killing of the king, the debauching of Ireland, and the capture of the British treasury by the Jews, which is why the [Rothschild] City of London is the power center of the world today.

1791: The great liberation - peace, freedom and brotherhood. Run secretly by Jewish bankers inside British intelligence, the French overthrew their corrupt and bankrupt king by burning churches and slaughtering each other in the streets while the newly powerful Rothschild dynasty paraded one murderous puppet after another and completely erased the heroic history of the Gauls that had made France an empire. Today France has a Jewish president who reportedly works for the CIA. [Controlled by the Israeli Mossad]

1917: A trainload of Jews from Brooklyn carrying $40 million in gold bullion steamed across Europe and wound up occupying 363 of the 388 seats in the new Bolshevik assembly after these humanitarian Jewish revolutionaries cut up the czar and his family into little pieces and burned them. You may not have noticed, but these are the people in charge of the United States now. [MM: YES, I have noticed!!!]

1945: Hitler had been assisted in his drive to power by notable U.S. interests, whose descendents were to include future U.S. presidents. It was all part of a long-range plan to have a second German war, but more than that, it was a perfect example of how the international money machine was funding both sides in the same conflict, for the obvious purpose of making money off the consumption of weaponry, armaments, and the other amenities of war.

1967: Nelson Rockefeller smiles in Moscow while delivering trucks to the USSR, who forwarded them to North Vietnam, where they were used to kill American troops.

2010: Al Qaida shows up as designated enemy all over the world. Invented by Zbigniew Brzezinski after he recruited the Mujaheddin to drive the Russians out of Afghanistan, the created terrorist group was really a list, a data base, of Arab thugs who could be bought and used as double agents. Although a cynical fiction, this "base" was blamed for the 9/11 attack, and used to justify wars all over the world. It was the creation of "the perfect enemy," one which could never be caught because it did not really exist, except as a department of the Jewish intelligence agencies.

Many other entries of salient significance could be added to this list, but for purposes of comprehension and future use, this pattern, this syllabus, should be used to illustrate and verify the secret political pattern that has dominated the world since the Age of Enlightenment, the time of Shakespeare, a period of almost 400 years.

These other entries might include:

* 1815: Nathan Rothschild's capture of the British money exchange after the battle of Waterloo, in which France's Napoleon was defeated by Britain's Wellington, and Rothschild increased his fortune by a factor of 5000 by misrepresenting the outcome. The founder of this Rothschild dynasty that has controlled the world for 200 years began when Nathan's father killed the 25-year-old Prince William of Hesse and stole his fortune.

* 1847: At a wedding in London, Britain's Jewish PM Benjamin Disraeli, inventor of the term Zionism, told James and Lionel Rothschild that the U.S. would be divided into two parts: the north for James and the South for Lionel. That next year came the Worldwide Jewish Revolution of 1848, when revolutions occurred in every country in the world and the organization later known as B'nai Brith hooked its financial tentacles into literally every corner of the world. That was the year Marx wrote the Communist manifesto.

* 1913: German Jewish banker Paul Warburg ramrodded the Federal Reserve Act and the Income Tax through a paid-off Congress, and World War I, finally with enough money to build the weapons of war, introduced an era where permanent, continuous war would become a financial necessity simply to pay the armies it had created.

* 1932: Hitler did not have the money to seriously prepare for war until he sent his Jewish lawyer Rosenberg to London to enlist the help of American industrialists to fund the Nazi war machine. Shortly thereafter, America declared a bankruptcy it has never resolved, and also confiscated all the gold in the country.

Even today as high-tech sadists use weather wars to destabilize enemy countries and oppress the populations into grateful submission, we see in the pattern of the world that is being formed before our eyes the same basic falsehood that has been perpetrated on the public these last four centuries - that it is countries who are fighting each other, whereas really it has been clever bankers establishing institutions and manipulating situations to make it appear these countries needed to be fighting each other, when in fact the only reason for these wars was to make money, usually by stealing things.

So when I hear people talking about Republicans and Democrats,

or this celebrity or that, I kind of shut it all out now, because I know

the real news is really taking place on another level. It does us no good to understand the parliamentary blather that accomplishes certain

tasks, as long as we don't know what the original orders are from the bankers to the politicians. Understanding what passes for political news in mainstream media (in any era) guarantees that you DON'T understand the real forces at play.

The testament of suppressed history from Mullins, Ramsay and other forgotten martyrs to the cause of truth clearly shows a master plan that has survived and prospered down through history. This dominant force has profoundly diminished our lives through regimentation and hypocrisy, not to mention unleashing the nastiest plagues ever known to man and killing people for fun, just because they like blood.

Most importantly, now is the time to clearly identify this potentially fatal influence on world society, because not to do so guarantees no problem of meaningful significance will ever be solved, because the underlying, motivational forces of them remain undiscussed. It's impossible to really know anything under these circumstances. And that's where the public remains today - permanently in the dark.

Lastly, in the study of human nature, let us remember our traditions are descended from the seed of Abraham, the famous banker who sold his wife to Pharoah and begat a tradition of sabotaging other countries by stealth that venerated blood ties over honesty, and righteous murder over the compassion they pretended to preach.

If we are to have a future that involves individual liberty, understanding the nature of the boot on our faces is the most important thing to know.

John Kaminski is a writer who lives on the Gulf Coast of Florida, who for eight years on the Internet, and thirty-some years before that in newspapers, has been trying to tell people that the world is hooked into an artificial reality that has been constructed for them by people who don't have their best interests at heart.

http://johnkaminski.info/ Contributions to and comments about his work may be directed to 250 N. McCall Rd. #2, Englewood FL 34223.

pseudoskylax@gmail.com

http://johnkaminski.info/

http://rense.com/general92/stamps.htm

Obama To Unveil A New(er) Deal: Here Comes $50 Billion For Rails, Roads And Runways

2010-09-06T11:44:00.000-07:00

source: Tyler Durden...

The New Deal cost America $50 billion in 1930s dollars. How the times have changed - today the White House will announce a new and improved New(er) Deal, which will invest $50 billion in a 3Rs sequel - road, rail and runway, infrastructure developments. It will have roughly one thousandth the impact of the Roosevelt plan, demonstrating once again that in 80 years the only thing that has actually worked in America is the ongoing devaluation of the dollar. But don't call it failed fiscal surplus infinity +1, that would certainly not help the Democrats' InTrade odds this November. But since ARRA has now failed and GDP is stalling, and the Fed is pretty much powerless to create anything except a huge spike in gold prices once it goes full retard on monetary policy, what does one expect the president to do (aside from the obvious which is whatever the teleprompter tells him)? At least Paul Krugman will be giddy: there go two more $25 billion bond auctions to spike the economy for one or two days, only to cause another output vacuum shortly thereafter. And since no Obama plan could be complete without the creation of a czar or a bank to act as chief administration of fund misappropriation and embezzlement, the plan will also see the creation of an "Infrastructure Bank" which Wall Street is already actively plotting how to frontrun and to vicious rob blind at the expense of future generations. So congratulations America: ten days of total tax revenue were just washed down the drain to keep a few road workers busy: we'll skip the obligatory "Change you can..." jokes at this point. We also won't mention the imminent receipt of Warren Buffett's "thank you" card by the administration - that's a given.

More from Politico:

Seeking to bolster the sluggish economy, President Barack Obama is using a Labor Day appearance in Milwaukee to announce he will ask Congress for $50 billion to kick off a new infrastructure plan designed to expand and renew the nation’s roads, railways and runways.

The goals, according to the White House: “Rebuild 150,000 miles of roads — renewing our commitment to the backbone of our transportation system … . Construct and maintain 4,000 miles of rail — enough to go coast-to-coast … . Rehabilitate or reconstruct 150 miles of runway — while putting in place a NextGen system that will reduce travel time and delays.”

The measures include the “establishment of an Infrastructure Bank to leverage federal dollars and focus on investments of national and regional significance that often fall through the cracks in the current siloed transportation programs," and “the integration of high-speed rail on an equal footing into the surface transportation program.”

“To jumpstart job creation, this long-run policy front-loads — through a $50 billion up-front investment — a significant share of the new infrastructure resources,” the White House said in a fact sheet. “As with other long-run policies, the Administration is committed to working with Congress to fully pay for the plan.”

White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel has been pushing an infrastructure plan in West Wing meetings for weeks. But with the November midterms looming, officials were having trouble finding a way for the effects to be felt immediately.

A White House official said: “Today in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, President Barack Obama will announce a comprehensive infrastructure plan to expand and renew our nation’s roads, railways and runways. This proposal is among a set of targeted initiatives that the president will outline in Cleveland on Wednesday to support our economic recovery and ensure long-term sustainable growth.

“The plan builds upon the infrastructure investments the president has already made through the Recovery Act, includes principles the president put forth during the campaign, and emphasizes American competitiveness and innovation.”

At 3:10 p.m. Eastern time, Obama is to deliver remarks on the economy at Milwaukee Laborfest, in Henry Maier Festival Park.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/obama-unveil-newer-deal-here-comes-50-billion-rails-roads-and-runways

Badge-Toting Pyschotic Shoots Up Home, Gets Off Scot-Free

2010-09-05T11:00:00.001-07:00

source: William Grigg...

“This guy … just tried to run my husband over!” exclaimed Arkansas resident Cindy Nelson in a frantic 911 call on July 21. “Oh, my God — he’s shooting at us! Oh, my God!”

A few minutes later, Fred Ensminger — the deranged assailant — placed a 911 call of his own.

“This is Diamondhead 1106…. I have been shot and I need medical at my front gate ASAP.”

Ensminger, as we will see anon, is a recidivist criminal, but he is no run-of-the-mill psychotic. He is employed by the Police Department of Diamondhead Arkansas, a gated community located south of Hot Springs.

A few minutes before Cindy Nelson told a 911 dispatcher that a “guy with a badge” was trying to murder her husband, she had passed Ensminger’s pickup truck, which was parked by the side of the road.

As Nelson started to go around the truck, Ensminger pulled out in front of her. According to an eyewitness, Ensminger “stopped suddenly,” causing Nelson to slam on her brakes to avoid a collision.

According to the witness, Ensminger climbed out of his pickup truck and began to harangue Nelson. She reacted by pulling around him and proceeding down the road. An infuriated Ensminger followed in close pursuit.

With Ensinger’s pickup truck looming in her rear-view, Nelson called her husband, Jerry Chambliss, and told him that she was being followed. She had no idea at this point that her stalker was an off-duty police officer.

After Nelson entered the gated community, Chambliss went into the driveway “with my arms up, palms out, hollering stop, stop, stop, what are you doing?” he later told investigators.

Ensminger gunned the pickup forward, striking Chambliss and knocking him down. He then compounded this act of attempted vehicular homicide by grabbing a shotgun and firing several rounds into the garage. At some point Ensminger punctuated his acts of attempted criminal homicide by flashing his state-issued costume jewelry.

Chambliss raced into the house and retrieved a loaded 9mm handgun and returned fire, striking Ensminger in the shoulder and forcing the assailant to withdraw.

After Ensminger called for backup, Nelson made a second 911 call requesting a police officer. When the dispatcher replied that an officer was already on the premises, Nelson suggested that it might be worthwhile to send someone other than the person who had just perforated her home with gunfire.

Following surgery to remove the bullet he had received as a consolation prize for finishing second in a shoot-out, Ensminger filed the predictably perjurious official report. He claimed to have observed Nelson driving erratically, and that she had attempted to run him over when he displayed the trinket denoting his supposed authority.

That claim was demolished by contradictory eyewitness testimony, which established that while Ensminger screamed at Nelson and wagged a finger in her direction, he never flashed his badge.

Ensminger offered a similarly mendacious version of his encounter with Chambliss. In the officer’s account, he was confronted by an “angry unknown man” who slammed on the hood of his car telling him to get out of the driveway.

In this depiction, Chambliss shot Ensminger without provocation, and the off-duty cop returned fire in self-defense. Once again, that account couldn’t be reconciled with the evidence assembled during an investigation by the Arkansas State Police.

In his official report, state Prosecuting Attorney Steve Oliver concluded that Chambliss “was justified in using deadly physical force in the defense of himself and his wife on July 21, 2010…. Under Arkansas law, Mr. Chambliss was not required to retreat if he was not the original aggressor.”

This of necessity means that Fred Ensminger, the “original aggressor,” committed multiple acts of criminal assault, and thus be subject to prosecution — correct?

Well, no.

Oliver ruled that Ensminger displayed “poor judgment in his aggressive pursuit of Ms. Nelson to her residence but he acted with the belief that he was justified under color of law.”

This unsupportable, invalid “belief” appears sufficient to exculpate Ensminger’s repeated attempts to murder Jerry Chambliss. Oliver doesn’t provide any other explanation for his decision not to file criminal charges of any kind against Ensminger, who not only remains free but is still on active duty with the Diamondhead Police Department.

“Just because he has a badge he does not have the right to come down and kill citizens,” Chambliss complained to Little Rock’s Fox affiliate. According to Oliver, that state-issued bauble does indeed confer the authority to commit acts of discretionary murder. Oliver’s report clearly suggests that if Ensminger had displayed his chintzy totem of official privilege during the highway confrontation with Cindy Nelson, Chambliss would be facing criminal charges.

Significantly, the shootout between Ensinger and Chambliss was originally described by the Diamondhead Police and the local media as growing out of a “domestic dispute.”

Chief Pat Mahoney and Garland County Deputy Judy Daniel told Little Rock’s Fox 16 News that they were concerned about their injured comrade, who had been stricken in the line of duty as he was “investigating” a purported episode of domestic violence.

That official lie is indigestibly rich in irony, given the fact that Ensminger — a “gypsy cop” who has been repeatedly fired and punished for disciplinary infractions and criminal acts — was himself arrested on a domestic violence charge in 2006. The victim in that assault, which took place in front of the police station in Alexander, Arkansas, was a female police officer.

“We are very happy that the officer is OK and extremely glad that the suspect is in custody,” stated Deputy Daniel shortly after that heroic defender of public order tried to murder Jerry Chambliss. “It just makes it easier on everybody, the other officers, his family.”

Note how this description of “everybody” refers exclusively to those employed as agents of government coercion. The “civilian” who used righteous force to repel Ensminger’s criminal assault apparently doesn’t count. Mere Mundanes never do.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/65017.html

Obama Administration Reverses Course, Forbids Sale of 850,000 Antique Rifles

2010-09-03T01:32:00.000-07:00

By Maxim Lott for FoxNews.com

A photo of M1 Garands (National Park Service)

The South Korean government, in an effort to raise money for its military, wants to sell nearly a million antique M1 rifles that were used by U.S. soldiers in the Korean War to gun collectors in America.

The Obama administration approved the sale of the American-made rifles last year. But it reversed course and banned the sale in March – a decision that went largely unnoticed at the time but that is now sparking opposition from gun rights advocates.

A State Department spokesman said the administration's decision was based on concerns that the guns could fall into the wrong hands.

"The transfer of such a large number of weapons -- 87,310 M1 Garands and 770,160 M1 Carbines -- could potentially be exploited by individuals seeking firearms for illicit purposes," the spokesman told FoxNews.com.

"We are working closely with our Korean allies and the U.S. Army in exploring alternative options to dispose of these firearms."

Gun control advocates praised the Obama administration for taking security seriously.

"Guns that can take high-capacity magazines are a threat to public safety," said Dennis Henigan of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. "Even though they are old, these guns could deliver a great amount of firepower. So I think the Obama administration's concerns are well-taken."

But gun rights advocates point out that possessing M1 rifles is legal in the United States -- M1s are semi-automatics, not machine guns, meaning the trigger has to be pulled every time a shot is fired -- and anyone who would buy a gun from South Korea would have to go through the standard background check.

"Any guns that retail in the United States, of course, including these, can only be sold to someone who passes the National Instant Check System," said David Kopel, research director at the conservative Independence Institute. "There is no greater risk from these particular guns than there is from any other guns sold in the United States."

M1 carbines can hold high-capacity ammunition clips that allow dozens of rounds to be fired before re-loading, but Chris Cox, chief lobbyist for the National Rifle Association, noted that is true about any gun in which an ammunition magazine can be inserted -- including most semi-automatics.

"Anything that accepts an external magazine could accept a larger capacity magazine," Cox said.

"But the average number of rounds fired in the commission of a crime is somewhere between 1 and 2 … this issue just shows how little the administration understands about guns."

He called the administration's decision "a de facto gun ban, courtesy of Hillary Clinton's State Department."

Asked why the M1s pose a threat, the State Department spokesman referred questions to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. ATF representatives said they would look into the question Monday afternoon, but on Wednesday they referred questions to the Justice Department. DOJ spokesman Dean Boyd referred questions back to the State Department.

According to the ATF Guidebook on Firearms Importation, it would normally be legal to import the M1s because they are more than 50 years old, meaning they qualify as "curios or relics." But because the guns were given to South Korea by the U.S. government, they fall under a special category that requires permission from the State Department before any sale.

Kopel said that he hopes the State Department spokesman's statement that it is working to "dispose" of the guns does not mean they want to melt them down.

"It seems to have this implication of destruction, which would be tremendously wasteful," he said. "These are guns that should be in the hands of American citizens for marksmanship and safety training."

Asked whether melting the guns down would be a good option, Henigan said: "Why let them into the country in the first place? If there is a legally sufficient way to keep them out, we think it's perfectly reasonable to do so."

Past administrations have also grappled with the issue of large-scale gun imports.

The Clinton administration blocked sales of M1s and other antiquated military weapons from the Philippines, Turkey and Pakistan. It also ended the practice of reselling used guns owned by federal agencies, ordering that they be melted down instead.

In contrast, 200,000 M1 rifles from South Korea were allowed to be sold in the U.S. under the Reagan administration in 1987.

A decision like that would be better for everyone, Cox said.

"M1s are used for target practice. For history buffs, they're highly collectible. We're going to continue to make sure that this backdoor effort that infringes not only on lawful commerce but on the Second Amendment is rectified."

Henigan disagrees.

"They clearly were used as military guns, and the fact that they likely can take high-capacity magazines makes them a special safety concern," he said.

The White House referred questions on the issue to the Pentagon, which referred questions to the U.S. Embassy in South Korea, which deferred back to the State Department.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/09/01/obama-administration-reverses-course-forbids-sale-antique-m-rifles/

Public Employee Unions Guarantee National Bankruptcy

2010-08-31T11:03:00.000-07:00

SARTRE – August 29, 2010

“The Assembly Public Safety Committee today is considering one of the most noxious, special-interest pieces of legislation we’ve seen in a while—one that will endanger public safety, tread on the California constitution and reinforce the perception that some government workers are part of a special, coddled group that’s exempt from the normal legal and ethical standards that are applied to other Californians.” The Registry

Public Employee Unions Guarantee National Bankruptcy
SEIU.jpg

Presidential executive orders have a long history. Both Democratic and Republican presidents exercise such commands. Are EO’s a privilege in law or are they simply a technique to skirt passing a Congressional statute? The executive branch adopts a pattern of rule that undermines the fundamental purpose of separation of power. The historic result is that the legislature is relegated to a junior collaborator in their partnership of crime. The bureaucracy has developed into a full-fledged imperial juggernaut that has a life of its own. Who started such an ill-conceived practice?

“Executive Orders have two main functions: to modify how an executive branch department or agency does its job (rule change) or to modify existing law, if such authority has been granted to the President by Congress. Executive orders are not mentioned by the Constitution, but they have been around a long, long time. George Washington issued several Presidential Proclamations, which are similar to EO’s . EO’s and Proclamations are not law, but they have the effect of statutes. Executive orders are subject to judicial review, and can be declared unconstitutional”.

The Kennedy pandering to government “hired help” put the bankruptcy of state and federal budgets into motion. Consider for a moment the absurdity of encouraging a permanent class of government slackers who conspire to steal from the productive wealth creators of society. Anyone who accepts that state or federal employees provide invaluable and necessary public services must be a “civil servant” or come from the long tradition of government parasites.

One of the most destructive of initiatives encourages the unionization of state and federal public employees.

“In 1959, the state of Wisconsin enacted the first state statute permitting municipal employees the right to form, join, and be represented by labor organizations. Three years later, President John F. Kennedy issued Executive Order 10988, which granted federal employees the right to join and form unions and to bargain collectively. The order established a framework for collective bargaining and encouraged the expansion of collective bargaining rights to state and local government employees. Beginning in 1976, the federal courts have ruled that the First Amendment’s freedom of association prohibits states from interfering with public sector employees’ right to join and form unions. These decisions invalidated the sovereignty doctrine, contributing to the growth of unions.The Supreme Court held in Smith v. Arkansas State Highway Employees, Local 1315 (1979), (3) however, that nothing in the U.S. Constitution requires public employers to either recognize or collectively bargain with public employee unions. Employees can form and join unions without the benefit of protective legislation, but public employers are not compelled to recognize or bargain with unions. Public employers are required to bargain only under laws that mandate bargaining. The duty to bargain can be imposed only by statute“.

A Baron’s cover article, The $2 Trillion Hole lays out the dire dilemma.

“According to a survey last month by the Pew Center on the States, a nonpartisan research group, eight states — Connecticut, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Rhode Island and West Virginia — lack funding for more than a third of their pension liabilities. Thirteen others are less than 80% funded.

According to the latest compensation survey by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average state and local employee out earns his counterpart in the private economy with an hourly wage of $26.11, versus $19.41. That’s before benefits (pensions, health care, paid vacations and sick days and leaves) drive the disparity even higher, to $39.60 an hour for public employees and $27.42 for private workers.

Besides the politicians, the primary culprits are the public-employee unions, which have used their growing power to dramatically enhance pension benefits. They curry favor with sympathetic politicians, lavishing them with large donations and manning campaign phone banks. They also engage in full-court-press lobbying at all levels of state and local government”.

>
Watch the video Plunder! by journalist Steven Greenhut, who details a number of ploys that both workers and management use to maximize their retirement checks. The brilliant WSJ article, Public Employee Unions Are Sinking California by Mr. Greehut points out the insane aftermaths from allowing public employee unionization.

“Approximately 85% of the state’s 235,000 employees (not including higher education employees) are unionized. As the governor noted during his $83 billion budget roll-out, over the past decade pension costs for public employees increased 2,000%. State revenues increased only 24% over the same period. A Schwarzenegger adviser wrote in the San Jose Mercury News in the past few days that, “This year alone, $3 billion was diverted to pension costs from other programs.” There are now more than 15,000 government retirees statewide who receive pensions that exceed $100,000 a year, according to the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility.

Many of these retirees are former police officers, firefighters, and prison guards who can retire at age 50 with a pension that equals 90% of their final year’s pay. The pensions for these (and all other retirees) increase each year with inflation and are guaranteed by taxpayers forever—regardless of what happens in the economy or whether the state’s pensions funds have been fully funded (which they haven’t been).

A 2008 state commission pegged California’s unfunded pension liability at $63.5 billion, which will be amortized over several decades. That liability, released before the precipitous drop in stock-market and real-estate values, certainly will soar”.

If you think that there are exceptions within the public sector unions that are above criticism you are wrong. Teachers like to cling to the myth that they are essential and sacrifice to educate the children. By any objective and empirical standards the results of their social engineering and indoctrination is an underclass of illiterate and brain dead idiots. Government schools are tombs for zombie reproduction. NJ Governor Chris Christie is spot on in his assessment of the Teachers Union video.It is beyond common sense and pragmatic necessity to sit back and allow the “dumbing down” of America by a system that rewards failure and steals tax dollars to pay the Teacher Unions blackmail. If you think reform is possible, forget it.

In, The Teachers’ Unions’ Last Stand, Steven Brill writes.”The teachers’ unions have become accustomed in recent years to fighting off reform efforts by Republicans and think-tank do-gooders. They ignore the rhetorical noise, while sticking to the work of negotiating protectionist contracts with the politicians who run school systems and depend on their political support”.The fact that the education bureaucracy comprises a union paradise is obvious. Why citizens swallow this insult might best be explained that most feudal subjects were trained to accept unlimited abuses from the state in government schools.

Municipal jurisdictions do not fare any better. View the Public Sector Union Bosses’ Stranglehold on Mayors video. America does not need cradle to grave government services and certainly cannot afford its cost.

The Freeman sums up the essential problem in Government Workers Are America’s New Elite.

“The bottom line: Public-safety officials have many ways to gin up their already generous retirements benefits to astronomical levels. Most garden-variety government employees get lucrative pensions also. It is common for them to retire at age 55 with more than 80 percent of their final year’s pay. Most public employees receive defined-benefit retirement plans, in which the taxpayer promises a set rate of return, as opposed to private-sector workers who have 401(k)s and other defined-contribution plans in which the market sets the return”.

Public Employee Unions came into being because of harebrained executive orders. The legislature has the authority to put an end to the abuse of power from the executive. Indeed the theory is sound. The election of courageous representatives dedicated to unwinding of the tyranny from the public sector is remote even under the best of circumstances. The lobbying and funding from public service unions keep a stranglehold on the process.

The U.S. is broke. Public Employee Unions refuse to void their unconscionable contracts. The taxpayer can no longer afford this destructive fraud. Society can only be rejuvenated through a total downsizing of all public services. The biggest deadbeats that skim off the system are your phony public servants. The only bright spot from a collapse and natural bankruptcy is the evaporation of the public sector. Can you say Bye Bye to those decadent pensions? The government wants total control and public employees have made their – UNION – bargain with the devil.

SARTRE – August 29, 2010

How A Hero in New Orleans Was Arrested, Labeled A Terrorist And Imprisoned

2010-08-29T14:35:00.000-07:00

August 28, 2010 by politicaltheatrics

Today, a personal story of a national tragedy. Five years ago, Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans. Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a Syrian-born New Orleans building contractor, stayed in the city while his wife and children left to Baton Rouge. He paddled the flooded streets in his canoe and helped rescue many of his stranded neighbors. Days later, armed police and National Guardsmen arrested him and accused him of being a terrorist. He was held for nearly a month, most of which he was not allowed to call his wife, Kathy. Today, in a rare broadcast interview, Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun join us to tell their story, along with the man who chronicles it in the book Zeitoun, Dave Eggers. [includes rush transcript]

AMY GOODMAN: It was five years ago that Hurricane Katrina was barreling towards the Gulf Coast. Today, a Democracy Now! global broadcast exclusive: we spend the hour on the story of one family from New Orleans, the Zeitouns, not only experienced the widespread displacement caused by the storm, but they were also victimized by the so-called “war on terror.” Their story forms the basis of the critically acclaimed novel Zeitoun by the celebrated writer Dave Eggers, who just won the American Book Award for his book.

Abdulrahaman Zeitoun is a Syrian-born immigrant to the United States who lived in New Orleans with his wife Kathy, an American convert to Islam, and their children. Together, they ran a successful painting and contracting business and are well known in the local community of New Orleans.

As the storm approached the city in late August 2005, Kathy and her kids fled to Baton Rouge to her sister’s house. They then proceeded to a friend’s home in Phoenix, Arizona, where they waited out the storm. Meanwhile, Abdulrahman Zeitoun was ready with his sixteen-foot aluminum canoe when Katrina made landfall as a Category 3 storm on August 29th.

The book tells the story of how Zeitoun spent days rescuing people stranded in the storm, until he was picked up by an armed squad who accused him of being a terrorist. He was held for three weeks without any contact with his family. They thought he was dead.

In an exclusive broadcast interview, I spoke with Abdulrahman Zeitoun and his wife Kathy yesterday, as well as the bestselling writer, publisher, Dave Eggers, whose numerous works include A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, also the founder of the independent publishing house and literary journal McSweeney’s.

I began the interview by asking Dave Eggers to explain how he first came across the story of what the Zeitouns went through in the aftermath of Katrina.

DAVE EGGERS: At McSweeney’s, we have a small publishing company in San Francisco, and we have a series called Voice of Witness that uses oral history to illuminate human rights crises around the world. And the first book in the series was about the wrongfully convicted and exonerated here in the US. And right when that book was coming out, Katrina hit, and so we talked to a lot of friends that we had in Houston, Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Atlanta, and people fanned out and began interviewing New Orleanians who had fled the storm. And when we started getting the transcripts back and the tapes back from the interviewers, I saw the story of the Zeitouns, and I was struck by it on so many levels. And so, the next time I was in New Orleans a few months later, I met the family, and we spent many hours together, and I got to know the kids.

And I think even—you know, I was struck by it on this—on the level of—you know, I don’t think many of us knew of this intersection, this improbable intersection of the war on terror and Katrina, and how the folding of FEMA into Homeland Security affected the response to Katrina. And there were so many sort of political aspects of it, and I was interested in it on a journalistic level. But it was also getting to know this family that I connected to almost immediately. And also, you know, their story goes so deep, you know, and Zeitoun’s family story in Syria was so fascinating. And Kathy’s conversion to Islam was, I think, a really valuable way to introduce Islam to readers that might not know too much about it.

And so, they’re this all-American family. They encompass the immigrant experience, the American Dream, all these all-American values in New Orleans. And then, at the same time, you know, he was put in this moment in time where he rose to a challenge and became a hero. And then, of course, something terrible happened that I hope could never happen again in this country, that it was a moment in time when we didn’t live up to our highest values and aspirations. And so, there were so many aspects of it that interested me. But again, most of it was a personal connection to the family, that, you know, now it’s five years on, and we’re inextricably woven together and very close. And so, it was their faith in me and their trust in me and their courage in telling their story that made it possible.

AMY GOODMAN: Dave Eggers, could you tell us a little bit of what you just told us in shorthand, where Zeitoun—where Abdulrahaman Zeitoun was born, how he grew up, how he ended up here and then went from the horror of the storm to the horror of the prison, after being considered a hero?

DAVE EGGERS: Well, you know, some of the—one of the great parts of researching a book like this was to go back to his hometown of Jableh on the coast of Syria and see this—what was, at the time, when he was growing up, a pretty small fishing village. And it’s grown somewhat since then. But I was able to meet his brothers and sisters, all of whom—or most of whom are still there, and also see their—his grandmother’s home town, which is on an island called Arwad Island, which is just off the coast to near Tartus, and get to know everybody and see, you know, and get to know generations of the Zeitouns. And they—it’s an incredibly illustrious family that has—you know, they’ve achieved so many things. You know, they’re professors, and they’re principals of schools and doctors, and, you know, his brother Ahmed is a ship captain, and I got to spend time with him in Spain.

And so, you know, Zeitoun grew up there, and he eventually became a merchant sailor, sailing around the world on many different vessels, helping to load and unload. And he saw the world that way and finally stopped in the US. You know, he first settled in Baton Rouge, and then New Orleans. And he built this business from scratch, because he had grown up around a lot of different trades, and he got to know masonry and painting and carpentry. And he was—you know, he worked for a lot of other contractors, and he was the hardest working guy that they had ever seen. And so, pretty soon he had his own business. Soon after, he married Kathy, and they built this business together as, like, equal partners in, you know, handling different sides of the business.

And so, in every way, they really do embody the American Dream: hard work, family and a dedication to one’s neighbors. You could see how one of the reasons that he stayed behind when the storm hit was to take care of his clients’ homes. He has keys to every one of them. He’s got, you know, hundreds of keys to homes all over the city, because he’s taken care of these houses, and so—and everybody trusts him with them, so—which makes it all the more tragic, I think, and exasperating that he is the model citizen in so many ways and he was victimized this way.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about that day, September 6th, and the different men who, oh, Zeitoun had been going around with, helping others with. Talk about Nasser and Todd and, from your research, what happened that day.

DAVE EGGERS: Well, Nasser was a friend of Zeitoun’s who also was Syrian, and he—they had gone back. They knew each other for many, many years. And he had been living in the city as a—you know, first came here as a graduate student at Tulane. And they ran into each other after the storm. And Nasser helped distribute supplies with Zeitoun in the canoe, and they spent many days together. And Nasser was living at that house on Claiborne, too. And then, Todd Gambino is a resident there, and he—you know, a whole book could be written about Todd, because he saved many, many lives and—going around on a motorboat. And then there was this relative stranger named Ronnie that none of them knew, but who had stopped by once or twice to use the phone.

And, you know, after all of this happened, I was sure—I got a copy of the arrest record, and I wanted to see who the officers were on the arrest record. There were two there. And so, I tracked down both of them, one of whom was a veteran officer from New Mexico who had come to New Orleans after the storm, and then the main officer was a New Orleans police officer who had been going around up and down Claiborne and had been—he says that he—in my interview with him, he said that he observed them looting, all four of them looting a Walgreens. And in the end, there was no evidence of any looting. He didn’t recover any stolen goods at the house or anything like that. And so—but he went to Napoleon-St. Charles, where many military and other officers were gathered, and he got a team together, and then they came into the house and raided it and arrested all four of them. And so, I found it totally important to interview these two officers.

And I think, you know, had the whole system been working, had there been due process, had there been public defenders available and a rational bail set and phone calls available to people and people being able to be visited by or contact their relatives or family, and had any of these other things that we take for granted been in place, a lot of the injustices would have been mitigated to some extent. But none of these were—none of these systems were working. And so, once they were arrested and brought, you know, in this van, driven by our National Guardsmen, brought to Camp Greyhound, they got lost in the system. That’s when the system was broken down. And even if the arrest had been wrongful and the evidence wasn’t there, under normal circumstances, they would have been free on bail, and the charges would have been dropped momentarily. But in this case, because none of these other systems were working, that’s how they and hundreds of others were lost in the Louisiana prison system. And, you know, Todd Gambino did many months in prison, and Nasser did many months in prison. And hundreds of others did what was known as “Katrina time,” where they were lost in the system. Records weren’t kept. Some people weren’t allowed to make phone calls or meet with lawyers—or anyone—for upwards of a year. And so, it was a complete meltdown of the system, unfortunately.

AMY GOODMAN: Dave Eggers has just won the American Book Award for his book Zeitoun. He’s joining us from New Orleans. We’re going to come back to Dave, but before we do, we’re going to hear from the Zeitouns themselves in their own words. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: In this Democracy Now! global broadcast exclusive, the first time Dave Eggers and the subjects of his book, the Zeitouns, have joined together in a studio to tell their story. It’s the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. And we go to Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun themselves. Abdulrahman is known in New Orleans by his last name, Zeitoun. I spoke to Zeitoun and his wife Kathy yesterday. i

AMY GOODMAN: Describe the day that life as you know it completely changed. Of course, life had already changed. You were alone there trying to help people, your family in Baton Rouge.

ABDULRAHMAN ZEITOUN: This day, we come from around—around noon, like maybe around 3:00. And I got to the house, and I go to the bathroom, and I open the water, and I see the water running. You know, before one week, don’t see water running. And I jump, take a shower right away. And I have the couple guys—there was one guy, apart from me, from other place, and I tell him, “Go ahead. Jump in the shower, because I have water running.” And I got outside and start making my phone calls. And he got out, and someone started talking to him. I can’t see who’s talking, but I hear just somebody talking. I say, “Who’s outside?” He said, “Someone ask us if we need any water.” I said, “Tell him we have enough, and maybe somebody else need it more than us.”

And this guy—I mean, he uses the way, if we need water, to keep coming to the house. And the guys keep talking and come closer slowly to the house. And I see five, six guys, military, with the policemen, jump in the house with all the weapon. And the guys ask us, “What you guys doing here?” I says, “It’s my house.” He says, “You have ID?” I say, “Yes.” I show him my ID. I don’t think he have enough time to see—to read my name. He just saw my picture and, like, sees a strange name, and he said, “Go to the boat.” On the table in the middle of my room, I have my note with my wife—where she’s staying, phone numbers. Only way in touch with—only way I can touch with her, because the cell phone doesn’t work. I can ask him if I can get the note. He said, “No, just go on the boat.” I tried to get it anyway, and he is appearing to shoot. And I said, “OK, this is not good.”

And I got to the boat, and then he’s—I have other two guys there also. Say, “All of you get on the boat now.” Happened that Gambino, he’s outside, coming from somewhere. And then, as I get there, he asked, “What? How? What’s going on?” He said, “Who are you?” He said, “I live here.” Said, “Get on the boat.” And they brought him with us. And—

AMY GOODMAN: Their guns are drawn?

ABDULRAHMAN ZEITOUN: Yes, have an army ready to shoot. You know, have a, like, military, like, ready—like these guys coming for—like prepared for war. And brought us to St. Charles and Napoleon. As soon we got there, we have like, every one of us, being five, six guys jump on him and tied him down. Like I saw something like only thing you see it in the movies. Anyway, brought us to one van—

AMY GOODMAN: That they jump on each one of you and tie you down.

ABDULRAHMAN ZEITOUN: Yes. Yes, ma’am. I mean, I don’t know what happens in these guys’ mind. I feel something not good. And after, brought us to the van. Before that, when we were in the boat, I said, “Where are you taking us?” He said, “You know, just we take you, talk to our boss.” When we got there and see this motion action, where we in the van waiting, have one guy come behind the wheel. And I ask him, “What’s going on? What’s wrong?” He said, “We’re from Indiana. We’re doing our job.” That’s the only thing he have to say. And I stay quiet almost like for fifteen minutes, we sitting and waiting. After that, he got the order to move. He brought us to the bus station there and processed us—

AMY GOODMAN: The Greyhound station.

ABDULRAHMAN ZEITOUN: Yes, the Greyhound station. And we stay almost like hour in the lobby there, where—and taking pictures and checking us and strip us naked and, I mean, then all the kind of—and have guys surround us like with the dog and the sort of like security, very high security, you know? I don’t know how to describe it. I was just very—we can’t move. We have to stand, our leg open and our foot in place and our arm on the seat. I mean, you can’t have any movement.

And after we finish, brought us to the—where the bus line up, have like—been designed like Guantánamo Bay jails, you know, like wire and like fence wires and almost like, I think, fifteen-, twenty-foot-high, and we have like cages. Brought us ourself with one of the cage. The first—I remember exactly first cage, I got next to the station, next to the engine for the train. We stay next to the engine three days, right in our ears. I mean, I think I’m becoming deaf after that, because imagine you be three days next to the engine running, because the engine generates electricity for the station.

AMY GOODMAN: Zeitoun, just to understand here, you had been looking for help to save your neighbors, over these days that you were saving people. Now you were brought to the Greyhound station, and you say it was built like Guantánamo, which means they must have been spending time since the storm turning this bus station into a prison. You had been traveling a lot in your canoe. Had you seen this happening?

ABDULRAHMAN ZEITOUN: No, because I never got this close to the bus station, although what I saw over there, have not just—I mean, I spend some time. You have all kind of very high-tech equipment there, have a lifter, a crane, have a machine with big wheels to prepare to drive in the water. I mean, very high-tech equipment there, and this can be used to rescue people, better to build a jail. I mean, I was surprised. I mean, all kind of machineries you can imagine is there.

AMY GOODMAN: Why did they tell you you had been arrested, you had been detained, that you were stripped naked, that you were being imprisoned with the other men that you had been traveling around with to help others? What was your crime, did they say?

ABDULRAHMAN ZEITOUN: This is what I tried to find out. Every time we asked someone, and they start to throw a name at us: “You guys Taliban. You’re al-Qaeda.” I mean, each one guy is passing by, give us, like—I don’t know. Is it like he throw it like a joke or like a serious? We don’t know what this—you know, been telling us like that. And I finally had discovered—

AMY GOODMAN: They said you were Taliban and al-Qaeda?

ABDULRAHMAN ZEITOUN: Yes, this is what they were accusing us for at first. And this is why, when first day we In the bus station, these people called—what you call it, the Homeland Security on us, and have two guys come there, interview us inside. And this guy, like, shake his head, and he left. He said, “We don’t have nothing with these people.” You know, just left. That’s why these guys think he have like when brothers from there have a big fish. And I don’t know what this guy is thinking.

And also, after three days, we’ve been tranferred to Baton Rouge, also have to, after like a week from being transferred to Baton Rouge, we have FBI or some high official guys, very, very, very intelligent people come to us and interview me and other—my friends. And he tell maybe like that. He said, “Look, we don’t have nothing on you. We never have anything on you. Just up to these people, you know, what they do.” He asked me, “What I can do to help you?” And I request for him to call my wife, tell her I’m OK. And he did. And the people in jail in Baton Rouge—and anywhere in New Orleans, too—nobody give us chance to call or just to pass message to my wife to say I’m here or I’m alive. Every time I ask somebody, “Please call my wife,” he say, “We can’t do that.” “Give me—let me make phone call.” “We can’t let you do that.” And it happened almost like three weeks. I never have a chance to call my wife, let her know where I am.

AMY GOODMAN: Kathy Zeitoun, talk about this time, from September 6th, when you stopped hearing from your husband, for these weeks. Where were you when the calls stopped? And what happened to you and your kids afterwards?

KATHY ZEITOUN: At this time, we were in Arizona, Chandler, Arizona. I kept waiting for him to call. He didn’t. Every time the phone would ring, I would rush to the phone hoping that it was him. It wasn’t. By the next day, we didn’t hear from him. Then we went to the Red Cross building, and then we put in a missing person’s report. And also, we put our name over at—I think they have a coliseum over there. We had to go there and file a missing person’s report over there, as well. And his brother at this point was calling, asking if I had heard from him, because he could no longer get in touch with him, as well. So then we had his brother and then the rest of his family calling, because they couldn’t get in touch with him, as well. And everybody was worried about him at this point.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, at what point did you start to give up hope? And what were you telling your children?

KATHY ZEITOUN: I think by the second week, I was really horribly nervous. And I would just tell my children, when I saw that it was affecting them so horribly at this point, I was telling them—they would hear me speak with my sister, and it was affecting them, especially my youngest daughter. It affected her horribly. I mean, she stopped eating. She wasn’t sleeping very well. Her hair was falling out when I would brush it. You would hear her talking to her cousins. She would say, “We have so much water in our house and in so much of the street, and we don’t know where my dad is.” So, finally, when I saw that my emotions are playing on my children, then we just had to tell them, “No, I heard from Daddy. Daddy is with a friend. He’s going to be home soon.” But maybe they believed it, maybe not. It didn’t settle her nerves any. So that’s—it was a really bad time for all of us.

AMY GOODMAN: You were a well-known developer in New Orleans. How is it that no one knew you, from all the houses you had built and rebuilt and rented? Who were these people who were holding you?

ABDULRAHMAN ZEITOUN: All of them not from—not from our town. I think most of them come from—what’s call it?—Angola, what I heard, and other people. The military people from Indiana, that’s what he tell me. Say, “We from Indiana. We’re doing our”—

AMY GOODMAN: Angola, meaning the prison in Angola, Louisiana?

ABDULRAHMAN ZEITOUN: Yeah, Angola prison. Yeah, this what I heard this, the people around the prison in New Orleans from Angola, Angola prison. And also, the most of the military, the one pick me up is from—the guy tell me, “We’re from Indiana.” This is what he say we do. “From Indiana. We’re doing our job.” I don’t think anybody from our city around.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the man, the old African American missionary, who was giving out Bibles at the Hunt prison, who finally you got to make the critical call to Kathy.

ABDULRAHMAN ZEITOUN: Yeah, believe it or not, anybody pass by me, I will, you know, try to just encourage him to make this phone call, not just him. I have everybody, includes, you know, the lady, she distributes the medicine for the people with the prescription or the—and also I have one lady in security. I say, “Well, man, this lady maybe have softer heart from the guys. Let her try.” I try. Well, say, “No, I can’t.” I say, “I don’t want you to—just call my wife and tell her I’m here, I’m alive. That’s it.” She say, “I can’t do it.” And we—I’m talking about we’re in Baton Rouge, and I know—I heard people making calls from there. Just for us, she said, “The phone broken.” Never let us—you know, every time call for phone.

After three weeks, gave us chance to make phone call, and when I go to make the call, because only number I have, my wife’s cell phone—I don’t know where she is. The number she’s staying, the land phone, I don’t have the number, because I left it on the table in the house where I used to be. And he gave me one chance to make phone call, and we can’t call a cell phone. We have to be land phone. And I come back with empty-handed.

AMY GOODMAN: But this man did make the call to Kathy?

ABDULRAHMAN ZEITOUN: No, this man—yeah, this man, when he passed by, and, you know, I just—this guy, you know, giving religious advice and things, and I asked him if he can do this call for me. He say, “OK,” and he writes the number. And, I mean, I’ve been trying everybody. I mean, I give up. Just, I keep trying. And he did. And days later, when the government official come and interview us, and he asked me if I need any help. Well, even I don’t want him to take me out, I don’t ask him to get me outside, I just go, “Call my wife.” I mean, he’s—I mean, if he want to take me out, I’m sure he can, because this is, you know, one from high position, officer. And all I ask him, just—because I know if I get out, nothing to do. All I need is to my wife to know I’m safe.

AMY GOODMAN: Kathy, when you got that call—Kathy, when you got that call, what did it mean to you? And how did you begin to track down your husband? You didn’t still—you didn’t know where he was.

KATHY ZEITOUN: No, I didn’t know where he was at the time. When I got the phone call, it was a big relief. I didn’t want to let the man off the telephone, to be honest. I tried to hold him as much as I can, ask him as many questions as I could. But in reality, I think we were only on the phone for like a few minutes. And he told me, “Don’t worry. Everything is going to work itself out, and most likely the charges are going to be dropped.” But not too long after that, Homeland Security called me, as well, and told me, “Look, your husband is here. Don’t worry. The charges are going to be dropped. We have no interest in him. We’ve never had any interest in him. And don’t worry. Everything’s going to be fine soon. You know, just all the charges are going to be dropped. Don’t worry. He’s here.”

As soon as I found out where he was, I called the lawyer, Raleigh Ohlmeyer. And we started trying to track him down. You know, it was really hard to track him down, even though we knew where he was, because they didn’t have the names of the people in a computer. It was just on a piece of paper on the side of a desk or in a file. It wasn’t—I mean, I would call the prison and try to find out what kind of rights I would have. They’d say, “He’s not our prisoner.” So, I guess because he wasn’t their prisoner, FEMA was paying them to keep him there. He did not have the same rights as everybody else had. He didn’t have the right to the phone call or medical or visitation or proper eating. So it’s really sad that the system shut itself down so bad at this time of need.

AMY GOODMAN: And Kathy, your feelings today, after having gone through this experience, from your husband being considered an American hero for so many to being called a terrorist and being imprisoned? That’s five years ago. This is today. How do you feel?

KATHY ZEITOUN: Well, we don’t feel that he’s actually a hero. We just feel that he’s a man who was at the right place at the right time who did the right thing. As far as what happened to him, it’s very disappointing, and it’s very sad, you know? But things happen and, God willing, people will learn from them. And hopefully these mistakes won’t happen again.

AMY GOODMAN: Are you suing?

KATHY ZEITOUN: We are. From the beginning. Because I was so angry. I was—I can’t describe the feelings that I had. And again, I thought it was revenge that I wanted, but it really wasn’t revenge. It was justice. But I think we’re at peace with it now. I think—I’m not angry anymore about it. And we still don’t know what’s going to happen with the lawsuit anyway. I know they threw it out one time, and it was brought back in. I mean, they could still throw it out. Who knows? We don’t know what’s going to happen with it. It’s just sitting there, just like my husband did.

ABDULRAHMAN ZEITOUN: The main reason the story got out, because our lawyer, because he wanted her—

KATHY ZEITOUN: Yes.

ABDULRAHMAN ZEITOUN: —to put everything on paper.

AMY GOODMAN: And what do you hope to accomplish with the lawsuit?

KATHY ZEITOUN: Well, I think some things have already been accomplished, thank God. I think they learned their mistakes from Katrina. I saw that with Gustav. They did things a lot of differently—a lot differently, actually. I would hope that they wouldn’t stereotype as bad. I think there was a lot of stereotyping, intentionally or not, unfortunately. It did happen. And I say this because my husband was at this house, our house, and he was arrested, and our neighbor across the street, who was at his house, he was picked up and sent to a different place, wherever he wanted to go. So, unfortunately, there was a lot of stereotyping, and I hope that they learned their lessons, at least from this story, that—you know, don’t judge somebody just by appearance.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Zeitoun, has it shaken your faith in America?

ABDULRAHMAN ZEITOUN: Not—I mean, the life, I think, moving forward, because now the life getting better. Now we have—we see a lot of improvement in the city. And the children—I mean, for me, like myself, I like to forget all about it now. I keep look for in the future to—with a smile, because—I mean, and the past doesn’t take us anywhere. We should just go ahead, focus about rebuild, do right things and build relationship with everybody else, especially with—we have a new—a lot of new people in the city. And we have some—I mean, most of the original people back. We have, like now, in my neighborhood, we have plenty new neighbors, we have the original neighbors. We back together, and everything go back close to normal.

AMY GOODMAN: Abdulrahaman and Kathy Zeitoun, speaking to us from New Orleans. When we come back from break, we’ll return to Dave Eggers, the celebrated writer who chronicled their story in his latest book Zeitoun. It just won the American Book Award. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: We return now to our global broadcast exclusive. We go back now to writer Dave Eggers, whose nonfiction work Zeitoun tells the story of Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina five years ago—Zeitoun going from American hero to terrorist in the eyes of the US authorities. I spoke to Eggers Thursday and asked him to describe the conditions under which Abdulrahman Zeitoun was held when he was arrested in New Orleans in the aftermath of the storm.

DAVE EGGERS: The prison had been erected by trustees of Angola, and the guards were manning it along with it being a home base for a lot of National Guardsmen. And so, once they were handed off, that was the last the arresting officers saw of them. And then they were in the hands of this whole other body that took a look at—our assumption is that they took a look at the last names and origins of Nasser and Zeitoun, in particular, and thought, “Huh, we might have something really interesting on our hands.” And so, that’s when there were visited by Homeland Security representatives, and that’s when they had a very strange circumstance where another man was put in their cage and sort of—in an attempt, Zeitoun believes, to get them talking, would try to provoke them with anti-American rhetoric. It was very strange.

But I think that this—again, the successive nature of handing them off from one body to the next, and once they were put on a bus and sent to Hunt Correctional Facility, then they were lost even deeper in the system. No one was really tracking them and others, because very good record keeping was not being kept. And they weren’t subject to the same rights of prisoners at Hunt, who had been processed adequately.

And so—and I think that, you know, you take a lot of National Guardsmen, many of whom—and military personnel—many of whom had been in Iraq and Afghanistan, and many of whom were believing the hype, that the city was out of control and that they were entering a war zone. And it’s no wonder that they would say to Zeitoun and Nasser, “You guys are al-Qaeda, you guys are Taliban,” and suspect them. And I think that that climate right then was very troubling, and so it led to this military solution to a humanitarian problem. And I think that there was paranoia in the air that didn’t serve anybody very well. And Ralph Gonzales, one of the arresting officers from New Mexico, told me—he said he had been led to believe that they were entering a war zone and that what they were sent there to do, fully armed with machine guns and body armor and, you know, armed to the teeth, was an operation for command and control. But what they found, within hours of landing in the city, was that they were needed mostly for search and rescue. And so, I think that as much as so many agencies tried to do their best, I think that the climate and the misinformation and the misplaced priorities led to some very unfortunate results.

AMY GOODMAN: Zeitoun got very sick in the jail and in the prison.

DAVE EGGERS: Yeah, you know, first he had, you know, a very bad cut on his foot, and it was getting infected while he was at Camp Greyhound. And here’s a guy—he’s old school. He’s incredibly resilient. He’s not one to complain about an injury. But he couldn’t get help. Doctors would go to and fro, and they wouldn’t stop to help him. And then, once he was at Hunt, he couldn’t get any help at all, and he was—he felt like he had an incredible pain in his side that was eating away at him, and he didn’t know what it was. And so—but, of course, he got no medical attention there. And, you know, again, he was left there to think, because nothing was improving, he had no reason to believe that he might ever be released. If you haven’t gotten adequate legal representation and you’re not able to contact your family, what reason does he have to believe that he will ever get out? And I think a lot of the prisoners that did Katrina time were in the same circumstance, where none of the rights that we expect were there. And it turned into a Kafkaesque situation.

AMY GOODMAN: Dave Eggers, when Kathy finally learned that he was alive and then started to make calls and even had a lawyer and even knew he was at Hunt, but told he wasn’t, how long was that time, from when he had been picked up, September 6th, to when he was finally released?

DAVE EGGERS: It was three weeks before she heard from him. That was when the missionary who Zeitoun had given his phone number to called Kathy. And that’s when she first knew that he was even was alive. And what was interesting was that, even then, it was extremely difficult to extract him from Hunt. And it was only because they had means to hire a private lawyer, they had a property that they could put up against the bail and—because they had set bail for all of those charged after Katrina with minor offenses—looting or, you know, stealing a sausage in one case—the bail was astronomical in some cases, $100,000 for stealing a small piece of food. And so, this was the case with Zeitoun, too. The bail was, I think, about $100,000. And so they had to put up their office building as collateral to get him out. And even then, when there was a court hearing finally set, Kathy wasn’t told where it was, couldn’t find where the courthouse was, where they were holding these hearings. And when she called to find out, they told her that she couldn’t be told where the court hearing would be, that that was, quote-unquote, “private information.”

And iIt’s interesting that what Kathy says is that after all of this and all that she went through, it was that moment that really broke her, that she knew that her husband was alive, finally, and all she wanted to do was reach him and be able to see him again. And that’s when, even then, the bureaucracy and this sort of humanity and this callousness sort of prevented her from doing so, and that they wouldn’t even tell her where he was, you know, where the trial would be held. And so, I think—you know, I do hope that everybody learned something from this. But I think it’s a lesson in how sort of everyday inhumanity or everyday—you know, what might seem like small abuses of power or the lack of recognition of our common humanity can cause incredible suffering.

AMY GOODMAN: How is it that Todd Gambino and Nasser ended up in prison for so many more months, up to, in Todd’s case, a year?

DAVE EGGERS: They didn’t have the—they and hundreds of others didn’t have the money to hire private lawyers. And without that, they didn’t have a prayer. There were a lot of really great public defenders who took it upon themselves to search out these prisoners who were lost in the system and to try to track them and find out what they were charged with and give them representation, but that took many, many months to sort out. And the Zeitouns did what they could for their friends, but it was—you know, there’s only so much that you can do, and there were so many others that wee in the same situation. So, you know, Todd is out now, and he’s doing fine. He’s actually working in a shallow oil rig off the Gulf, just work that he had done before. And Nasser went back to Syria. And it’s a shame, but there are hundreds of other stories like it.

AMY GOODMAN: And now, the lawsuit, to—as Kathy said, to bring some kind of justice to stop this from happening again.

DAVE EGGERS: Well, what one lawyer said was that they had better get in line. There are thousands of civil suits against the city, the state, FEMA, Homeland Security, government. And there isn’t a whole lot of movement with any of these civil suits. The most famous among them is the case of the two men who were shot on the Danziger Bridge and the officers who are being held responsible for that. Obviously that case is moving forward on both levels, on a criminal level and a civil level, but I don’t think—I don’t have—I’m not holding my breath that the rest of these civil cases are going to result in compensation or any sort of, you know, satisfaction anytime soon.

I think that the Zeitouns have put it behind them, and I think that telling their story created, I think, a sense of peace and closure, if you will, and also the fact that, you know, they helped create the Zeitoun Foundation, which has been able to give grants to a number of nonprofits all over New Orleans that, like themselves, are helping rebuild the city. And I think that that gives them some sense of wholeness, too. And so—but the civil suit, I think we could find ourselves ten years from now saying the same, and it would not have moved a great deal. But I know that Kathy, especially, wanted to do it as a gesture just to make sure that this wasn’t forgotten.

AMY GOODMAN: Dave Eggers, you certainly will ensure that this story is not only not forgotten, but is learned about, is read, all over the world, both with Zeitoun and also with Voice of Witness. I’m wondering, as we conclude—we’ll lose the satellite in a minute—how you fit the story of Zeitoun, of the Zeitouns, into all your Voice of Witness series—Underground America: Narratives of Undocumented Lives, Surviving Justice: America’s Wrongfully Convicted and Exonerated, Out of Exile: Narratives from the Abducted and Displaced People of Sudan, and, of course, what we’re talking about today on this fifth anniversary, Voices from the Storm: The People of New Orleans on Hurricane Katrina and Its Aftermath.

DAVE EGGERS: Well, I think—I just believe in the right of people and, I think, the need for people to be able to be heard. I think that what we found with Voice of Witness is, again and again, when you give the opportunity to people to tell their story from beginning to end, from—we ask them, “Where were you born? What were you like as a child? Who were your friends? What was your family like? What was your home life like?” We go all the way from birth to where they are now. And I think that when you give people control over their story a bit and you give them a sense of ownership over their story, and that we’re not going to publish it until you’ve approved of every word and make sure that it’s completely accurate and that we fact-checked it independently, I think that, again and again, you find people that have been victimized and who have, you know, suffered a good deal—when finally they can get their story on paper, on the record, completely right, I think that there is an incredible sense of relief that comes to them. That’s what we—our narrators tell us again and again. It’s like finally this burden that they’ve felt for so long, this story that they’ve carried around, is finally out there. And maybe those who are responsible for this might be less likely to do it again, or the system that’s responsible might be closer to being corrected or addressed, because they spoke up.

AMY GOODMAN: Dave Eggers, author of Zeitoun. It just won the American Book Award. He’s also founder of the independent publishing house and literary journal, McSweeney’s. The book is being adapted into an animated movie, directed by Jonathan Demme next year. On Monday, we’ll continue in New Orleans to mark the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

http://www.politicaltheatrics.net/2010/08/how-a-hero-in-new-orleans-was-arrested-labeled-a-terrorist-and-imprisoned/

Obama Hauls Arizona Before the UN Human Rights Council

2010-08-28T12:02:00.000-07:00

Ben Johnson, Floyd Reports

Apparently Barack Obama is not content to make a federal case out of his immigration feud with Arizona; he just made it an international one.

The president’s first-ever report on U.S. human rights to the UN Human Rights Council contains a rich vein of offensive material. So far, one aspect has not been reported: our petty president used the situation to bash Arizona’s immigration law — and possibly transfer jurisdiction over the law from Arizona to the UN. Throughout the report, which sounds like an Obama campaign speech, the president discusses “the original flaw” of the U.S. Constitution, America’s tolerance for slavery, and his version of our long and despicable history of discriminating against and oppressing minorities, women, homosexuals, and the handicapped. After each complaint, he addresses how he is delivering us from ourselves, patting himself on the back for such initiatives as ending “torture,” promoting Affirmative Action, and passing health care legislation.

In his section on “Values and Immigration,” he praised the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to provide better medical care for detainees and increase “Alternatives To Detention” (e.g., letting them go). Then he turned to the one state that has had the temerity to stand in his way of fundamentally transforming the American electorate:

A recent Arizona law, S.B. 1070, has generated significant attention and debate at home and around the world. The issue is being addressed in a court action that argues that the federal government has the authority to set and enforce immigration law. That action is ongoing; parts of the law are currently enjoined.

On Obama’s command, Attorney General Eric Holder has sued the State of Arizona for passing a law that he criticized without reading, and which merely upholds federal law. (He gave sanctuary cities a pass.) He now threatens an additional lawsuit against Sheriff Joe Arpaio for “racial profiling” when arresting illegal immigrants near the Mexican border.

Obama’s turns his skirmish with Jan Brewer from a states rights dispute into an international human rights cause. It also places Arizona’s law in the hands of the United Nations.

The national report is but the first step of the international government’s review process. On November 5, the United States will be examined by a troika of UN bureaucrats from France, Japan, and Cameroon (an oppressive nation which is a member of the Organization of Islamic Conference). This trio will consider three items: Obama’s self-flagellating report, reports written about America by UN tribunals or international governing bodies, and testimony from NGOs with a pronounced anti-American bias. It will also consider “voluntary pledges and commitments made by the State,” such as suspending an Arizona state law.

Then the French, Japanese, and Cameroon diplomats will draw up a plan of action for the United States to implement.

Nations are re-examined every four years. The Human Rights Council looks for voluntary compliance. However, its website asserts, “The Human Rights Council will decide on the measures it would need to take in case of persistent non-cooperation by a State with the” World Body.

When the Left cannot win at the ballot box (virtually every time), it overrules the people in the courts. Now that Obama is not sure he can prevail in the courts, he has overruled the American people by hauling Arizona and the two-thirds of Americans who support its law before the United Nations.

The Elites Have Lost The Right to Rule

2010-08-28T08:08:00.000-07:00

H/T Tyler Durden
By Michael Krieger

A government always finds itself obliged to resort to inflationary measures when it cannot negotiate loans and dare not levy taxes, because it has reason to fear that it will forfeit approval of the policy it is following if it reveals too soon the financial and general economic consequences of that policy. Thus inflation becomes the most important psychological resource of any economic policy whose consequences have to be concealed; and so in this sense it can be called an instrument of unpopular, that is, of antidemocratic policy, since by misleading public opinion it makes possible the continued existence of a system of government that would have no hope of the consent of the people if the circumstances were clearly laid before them. That is the political function of inflation. When governments do not think it necessary to accommodate their expenditure and arrogate to themselves the right of making up the deficit by issuing notes, their ideology is merely a disguised absolutism.

- Ludwig von Mises

How Wall Street Died

Let me take you back to the fall of 1999. I was a senior in college without a clue what I wanted to do with my life. Wall Street was in a boom and seemed exciting. I had always loved the financial markets since I had first discovered them years earlier; however, I wasn’t convinced this was the profession I wanted. I had majored in Economics at school for practical purposes but I found almost all of the courses to be extraordinarily uninspiring with the exception of a few like Corporate Finance and the Economic History of China. It was the general micro and macro economics courses that I found the most painful to sit through. I wasn’t alone in this assessment. Many of my close friends were Economics majors as well and we all felt the same way (I later found out this was because we were being indoctrinated in voodoo Keynesian economics) . So even with the Economics degree I wasn’t sure that I wanted to pursue a career in finance given the fact that I found myself more interested in subjects such as English , History and Philosophy. Nevertheless, the firms were hiring, I had the degree and it would allow me to move back to New York City without living at home.

What I discovered as I interviewed for jobs disturbed me right away. Every single firm with the exception of one was completely obsessed with math. Entire interviews revolved around “how quantitative are you” and the like. Although I hadn’t had much experience with investing I had enough to know this line of thinking seemed preposterous. It seemed to me only basic math skills are necessary to be a successful equity investor. Besides that, it seemed that the key is understanding that the world is always changing rapidly under the surface and therefore what is a good business today might be bankrupt tomorrow and what is a start up today could be the next Microsoft. This seems obvious but the skill set to figuring all this out is more geared to an appreciation of human psychology, historical cycles and cultural shifts (both fads and structural changes) than math. What I realized later is the reason they were so focused on mathematicians and Phd’s is that Wall Street was moving away from what it was always meant to be - a conduit between the holders of capital and those that wish to deploy that capital in productive economic activity. Rather than trying to hire a well rounded workforce of intelligent college graduates the firms were hiring a cadre of quantitative robots that would play an instrumental roll in blowing up the world’s financial system.

When you get too many people of a particular mindset (in this case highly quantitative and academic) to aggregate in a field that is very much a people business and one where “street smart” common sense is of extreme importance you are asking for serious trouble. When you couple that with a Federal Reserve that keeps interest rates too low what you get is a bunch of quants inventing products that provide a yield sufficient for pensions and others struggling to earn a return. Products that are completely mispriced for the risk inherent in them. I am not placing all of the blame on the Wall Street firms (although they deserve a lot and the fact people haven’t been punished severely is a huge reason why there is no confidence on main street), rather I believe the Federal Reserve deserves 95% of it. If it wasn’t for them manipulating the price of money to absurdly low levels you wouldn’t have had the rush into toxic products in a search for yield. While the newly enthroned Wall Street quant army would surely have done their damage nonetheless it wouldn’t have resulted in the complete destruction of the financial and monetary system that we face today. In a nutshell, this is how I think Wall Street died and until it gets its act together will remain a corpse.

The Elites Have Lost Their Right to Rule

One of my favorite quotes is from Joseph Schumpeter who said “everyone has elites the important thing is to change them from time to time.” Of course, this is what happens in a well functioning democracy. The problem today and the reason why the United States is on the verge of some sort of revolution (I believe it will manifest as a revolution of ideas and not an armed one) is that the election of Obama has proven to everyone watching with an unbiased eye that no matter who the President is they continue to prop up an elite at the top that has been running things into the ground for years. The appointment of Larry Summers and Tiny Turbo-Tax Timmy Geithner provided the most obvious sign that something was seriously not kosher. Then there was the reappointment of Ben Bernanke. While the Republicans like to simplify him as merely a socialist he represents something far worse.

Of course it is not just Obama. He is at the end of a long line of Presidents that think they have some sort of divine right of kings to rule. Think about the Presidency of the United States since 1988. Bush, Clinton, Bush…If Obama had not won the Democratic primary we would have ended up with President Hilary Clinton. Catch my drift? Something is not right here. This is the United States not some sort of petty monarchy. There is no divine right of any family or group of families to rule. When this starts to happen you get the disaster we are now faced with. That said, the bigger point is this. What Obama has attempted to do is to wipe a complete economic collapse under the rug and maintain the status quo so that the current elite class in the United States remains in control. The “people” see this ploy and are furious. Those that screwed up the United States economy should never make another important decision about it yet they remain firmly in control of policy. The important thing in any functioning democracy is the turnover of the elite class every now and again. Yet, EVERY single government policy has been geared to keeping that class in power and to pass legislation that gives the Federal government more power to then buttresses this power structure down the road. This is why Obama is so unpopular. Everything else is just noise to keep people divided and distracted.

Getting Into the Mind of Ben Bernanke

I do not have a clear window into the highest levels of power in many areas such as the military or the intelligence community but I do have a very good understanding of it when it comes to the financial system and the economy. At the end of the day everyone knows that those who can create the money and credit have the ultimate power over any political system. Therefore, at the top of the economic power of the world is the Federal Reserve and at the top of that is Ben Bernanke. This is why I took a great deal of interest in reading the full text of his speech today. Much will be written about it but I want to tackle it from two points. First, who is Ben Bernanke?

You can really see into his head from reading this speech. He is an academic who thinks he is smarter than everyone else which is why he is in the position he is in. He thinks the key to monetary policy is to trick people into doing things that will hurt them in the end. He believes the mal-investments he intends to push people and institutions into equals economic growth. What surprises me so much about the investment community and the American public in general is that so many fail to understand that we live in a top down centralized economic system much more similar to China in more ways than people want to admit. We look at how the government steers the economy in China and sneer. How are we so different right now?

As far as the speech itself, it confirms something I mentioned several weeks ago. Banana Ben absolutely wants to do a massive QE2 program. The only thing holding him back is gold is near an all time high. What he wants is gold much lower and stocks much lower to give him cover. Gold has not cooperated so he is in a bind. He cannot print a massive amount of money with gold here and stocks at 1055 because what happens if gold soars and stocks sell-off in the days that follow such an announcement? What if the response in the treasury market is not as desired? He is scared to do it here and he is right to be scared because such a reaction would be the end of the Fed right then and there. The Fed will be gone anyway within a few years in my opinion but it’s going to fight hard to survive and if you want to make money in this market you need to understand that. The most powerful institution in the world is fighting for its survival. Never forget that.

So what is he going to do? I believe that the Fed and government are doing a lot more than people think to manipulate all markets behind the scenes. After all, they have publicly announced their manipulation in many other ways so does it make any sense whatsoever to assume they aren’t doing a plethora of other things behind the scenes? Of course not. I think that with the Fed in a bind they will accelerate and become ever more aggressive in behind the scenes games. This will make markets even more volatile and extraordinarily challenging. This is financial war make no mistake about it. The only way in my opinion to survive this is to buy all dips in precious metals, agriculture and oil. It is in these three areas that I expect to see the most price inflation as money eventually figures out the end game. The end game is more and more people will eventually wake up to the fact that the markets are a hologram put in front of you by the magicians at the Fed. That what constitutes real wealth in the years ahead will be owning food, energy and a means of exchange that will be accepted should a black market economy arise as it has in virtually all nations at one time or another throughout history.

In the end, the elites will be overthrown and a power vacuum will form. The transition period will be extremely difficult as the elites will fight their demise to the end. For you see, they care nothing for you they care about their power and control. Nevertheless, rulers have always only ruled by the will (or apathy) of the people and when the people become overly taxed and abused they always rebel. The main thing to think about is what kind of society do we want to rebuild from the ashes. I am of the view that it must be a return to the Constitution and an elimination of central banking power and secrecy. Let’s not fall for a demagogue or be pushed into a war when things are at their worst.

Have a great weekend,
Mike

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/elites-have-lost-right-rule
08/27/2010
H/T Tyler Durdan

'Pain ray' in California prison amounts to 'torture' of US prisoners

2010-08-27T09:41:00.000-07:00

By Stephen C. Webster....

Pain ray in California prison amounts to torture of US prisoners" The American Civil Liberties Union is outraged over the application of a "pain ray" recently installed in a Los Angeles County Jail -- a technology first seen used by American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, which relies upon beams of microwave energy to inflict an intense burning sensation upon anyone in its path.

Inmates at the Pitchess Detention Center's North County Correctional Facility will likely soon know what it is to face the "Assault Intervention System," according to reports by local media.

According to The Pasadena Star-News

fires a directed beam of invisible "millimeter waves" that cause an unbearable burning sensation by penetrating 1/64 of an inch into the skin, where pain receptors are located, said Mike Booen, Raytheon's vice president of advanced security and directed energy systems.

The beam, which is about the diameter of a compact disc, causes an instant and intolerable burning sensation when it touches skin, but the sensation stops instantly when the device is turned off or the target moves out of the beam.

At a news conference, several people volunteered to feel the effects of the machine first-hand.

Sheriff's Deputy David Judge manned the controls and fired the beam, using a joystick and a monitor, not unlike a video game, to aim the ray gun's camera.

"The idea that a military weapon designed to cause intolerable pain should be used against county jail inmates is staggeringly wrongheaded," said Margaret Winter, Associate Director of the ACLU National Prison Project, in a media advisory. "Unnecessarily inflicting severe pain and taking such unnecessary risks with people's lives is a clear violation of the Eighth Amendment and due process clause of the U.S. Constitution."

The group mailed a letter (PDF link) to the sheriff in charge, demanding he never use the energy weapon against inmates.

Speaking to trade publication Government Technology, Sheriff Lee Baca presented the counter argument.

"We believe that technology can help solve problems facing the corrections community, including addressing issues of inmate violence," Sheriff Lee Baca said in a statement. "This device will allow us to quickly intervene without having to enter the area and without incapacitating or injuring either combatant."

The technology, developed by Raytheon Co., stems from a family of bigger, more powerful military solutions created for the battlefield. These larger versions work the same way, but on a grander operational scale, such as creating a protective zone to safeguard aircraft or using lasers to disrupt shoulder-fired missiles from combat helicopters. In L.A. County, the device will be installed near the ceiling in a dormitory that houses about 65 inmates at the Pitchess Detention Center's North County Correctional Facility (NCCF).

This suppression tool appeals to law enforcement agencies because when inmates fight in a dormitory, dining room or exercise yard, jail officials often have to wait for backup before they can intervene. The technology would allow them to act sooner, potentially reducing injuries and curbing violence.

"You don't want to send one deputy in with 65 fighting inmates," said Bob Osborne, commander of the Sheriff's Department's Technology Exploration Program, "which means he's restricted to watching them fight and waiting for backup to show up to do something about it. We thought it would be better to do something a little more proactive."

The ACLU, for its part, adds in the letter to Sheriff Baca:

As we are sure you are aware, the military incarnation of this device (the Active Denial System) ("ADS") was briefly fielded in Afghanistan in June and then withdrawn in July without ever being used. The military version can be mounted on a truck and was intended to be used against protesters outside American
military bases. While the device was being tested by the Air Force, a miscalibration of the device's power settings caused five airmen in its path to suffer lasting burns, including one whose injuries were so severe that he was airlifted to an off-base burn treatment center.

According to a 2008 report by physicist and less-lethal weapons expert Dr. Juergen Altmann, "the ADS provides the technical possibility to produce burns of second and third degree . . . over considerable parts of the body, up to 50% of its surface," and "without a technical device that reliably prevents re-triggering on he same target subject, the ADS has the potential to produce permanent injury or death." As the report also points out, "the possibility of re-triggering the same target subject puts avoidance of bums at the discretion of the weapons operator."

The microwave tech has been in development for years, and while it was first deployed in warzones by the U.S. Department of Defense, the tehcnology seems to be better suited to this type of crowd control.

Back when it was better known as the "Active Denial System," a report [PDF link] by the German Foundation for Peace Research noted...

Concerning use of the ADS against combatants in armed conflict, there seem to be no technical arguments that would result in its exclusion, given that the weapon would be lethal only after relatively long exposure, and considering that flame-throwers - which can produce severe burn injuries and death much faster - are an accepted means of combat. Thus, specific limitations under international humanitarian law do not seem appropriate. (Of course, the general rules - avoid unnecessary suffering, do not attack combatants hors de combat or surrendering etc. - would apply here as with all other means of warfare.)

However, use of the ADS in armed conflict is not very probable: the system presents a large, relatively immobile target that due to its line-of-sight propagation cannot take cover easily. It seems vulnerable to many kinds of light weapons, above rifle range a machine gun may be needed to attack it. A second reason is that armed forces could prepare for millimetre-wave weapons of an opponent relatively easily by adding electromagnetic shielding material to the battle dress, covering the hands, and providing a transparent, but conductive face shield. The latter will be not so easy to achieve for non-state actors.

The down-scaled version being installed in Los Angeles County has the impact radius of roughly "a DVD," according to Sheriff Baca.

Regardless of its size, the ACLU insists use of such a device on American prisoners is "tantamount to torture."

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/214321-Pain-ray-in-California-prison-amounts-to-torture-of-US-prisoners

Raw Story
Fri, 27 Aug 2010 07:18 CDT

Obama Needs Your 401(k) to Balance His Budget

2010-08-27T03:56:00.000-07:00

By Bob Adelmann...

The Obama administration is “taking the first steps to confiscate retirement dollars,” according to Dr. Jerome Corsi who predicts that the end result will be retirees with 401(k) plans holding near-worthless government debt “that will be paid off in a devalued currency worth … pennies on the dollar.”

The move to confiscate those retirement dollars for government purposes was best illustrated by Christina Kirchner, President of Argentina, in 2008 when she announced plans to seize her citizens’ private pension funds. Writers at the Heritage Foundation said that while Kirchner claimed such seizure was necessary to protect her citizens’ investment accounts from the global meltdown, “most observers believe[d] her real motive [was] to use the $30 billion in seized assets to ease the massive debt obligations her leftist spendthrift government [had] run up.” The Wall Street Journal agreed, saying that “taking over the … pension fund assets [would] ease the cash crunch faced by [her] government.”

Corsi said he has a letter from the Treasury Department, Bureau of Public Debt, informing U.S. citizens that the federal government is rolling out a new program called “Treasury Direct” that will allow citizens “to purchase, manage, and redeem…savings bonds” electronically, as well as offering an option to purchase such bonds automatically through payroll savings or a personal checking account. This happened to coincide nicely, according to Corsi, with a bill offered by Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) to create “Automatic IRAs” that would require all employers and employees to invest in IRAs using that automatic deduction option, “whether they want to do so or not.”

And this happened to coincide also with a program being pushed by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) called “Retirement USA” which would create a government-forced retirement program with assets being directed into special Treasury Retirement Bonds, or R-Bonds. “Retirement USA” is promoting the idea that all workers have a “right” to a government retirement account, in addition to Social Security and any private pension plans those workers already have in place. Others behind “Retirement USA” also support more government dependency for workers, including the AFL-CIO, the Economic Policy Institute, the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare and the Pension Rights Center.

All of this is being promoted by the idea that individual citizens aren’t saving enough for their retirement, and that consequently government has to “do something.” Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash., above photo), Chairman of the House Ways and Mean’s Committee’ Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, is confused about whose money is in those 401(k) plans: the individual contributor, or the government. He said that “since the savings rate isn’t going up for the investment [Congress is making] of $80 billion [in 401(k) tax savings], we have to start to think about whether or not we want to continue to invest that $80 billion for a policy that’s not generating what we now say it should.”

The world view of Rep. McDermott is revealing, and brings clarity to the point of view of many in the Washington establishment that the $4.5 trillion currently invested in 401(k) plans and other private pension plans that enjoy tax breaks actually belong to the government, and that when Congress loses $80 billion that would otherwise flow to Washington due to those tax breaks, it’s an “investment” that must “generate what we say it should”, or else it must be replaced with something else that works better.

The real “story behind the story” was revealed by Joe Wolverton here when he said,

…since the day of his inauguration, Barack Obama and his congressional co-conspirators have consistently and unapologetically set out to systematically nationalize the economy of the United States: first the banks; then the insurance companies; then the auto industry; then healthcare; and now the piece de resistance, the private savings accounts of millions of middle-class Americans.

But, thanks to the SEIU and their program “Retirement USA,” it’s all dressed up to look like a good deal for unsuspecting owners of retirement plans. In “Making the Case for a New System” they take the view that “A secure retirement is part of the American dream. Yet our retirement system is failing many Americans. Social Security is the cornerstone of our system, but as currently structured, is not meant to be our only retirement program. Pensions and savings plans are supposed to fill the gap, but too many workers don’t have plans, and too many plans don’t do the job.” They complain that:

Private retirement plan coverage is not UNIVERSAL…

For millions of Americans, private retirement benefits are not SECURE…

And Private retirement benefits are not ADEQUATE…

And, continues “Retirement USA”’s website, “Social Security must be preserved and strengthened… [and] we must encourage employers to offer and maintain them.”[emphasis added]

Underlying all of this is, of course, the statist presumption that government knows best what’s good for the citizens, and when the citizens’ behavior fails to meet government expectations, then mandates and force must be used to do for those citizens what the government thinks is best.

And the fact that Washington is looking at annual trillion-dollar deficits “for as far as the eye can see,” that $4.5 trillion of private monies is just too tempting to ignore.

Wednesday, 25 August 2010 16:40

Ron Paul Calls for Audit of US Gold Reserves

2010-08-25T03:42:00.000-07:00

24 August 2010
By Daniela Cambone
ORIGIONAL ARTICLE

Ron Paul
"If there was no question about the gold being there, you think they would be anxious to prove gold is there," said U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of the Federal Reserve.

Editor's Note: Catch Dr. Ron Paul at the upcoming Kitco Metals eConference September 12-13, 2010. A not-to-be missed event featuring Marc Faber, James Dines and other industry heavyweights. The eConference is free with Pre- Registration www.kitcoeconf.com.

Texas (Kitco News) -- U.S. Rep. Ron Paul , R-Tex., plans to introduce a new bill next year that will allow for an audit of US gold reserves, he told Kitco News in an exclusive interview.

Paul dropped the news in the interview, indicating that the bill still does not have an official name yet but will be unveiled at the start of the new U.S. Congress.

“If there was no question about the gold being there, you think they would be anxious to prove gold is there,” he said of the Federal Reserve.

This is not the first time the congressman has made his pitch. “In the early 1980s when I was on the gold commission, I asked them to recommend to the Congress that they audit the gold reserves – we had 17 members of the commission and 15 voted not to the audit,” said Paul. “I think there was only one decent audit done 50 years ago,” he said.

Though Paul did not say whether there is any truth to claims that there is no gold in Fort Knox or the New York Federal Reserve, he said, “I think it is a possibility.”

“If we ever get around to deciding we should use gold in relationship to our currency we ought to know how much is there,” said Paul. “Our Federal Reserve admits to nothing and they should prove all the gold is there. There is a reason to be suspicious and even if you are not suspicious why wouldn’t you have an audit?” he said.

The gold audit follows his crusade last year looking to audit the Federal Reserve, which he says is the chief culprit behind the economic crisis.

“I don’t think the Federal Reserve should exist – it would be best for congress to exert their responsibilities and that is find out what they are doing”' said Paul. "It is an ominous amount of power they have to create money out of thin air and being the reserve currency of the world and be able to finance runaway spending whether it is for welfare or warfare; it seems so strange that we have been so complacent not to even look at the books. If we knew exactly what they were doing, who they were taking care of, there would be a growing momentum to reassess the whole system,” he told Kitco News.

Before the creation of the Federal Reserve however, the US saw 16 recessions from 1850 to 1910; they averaged 22 months long. During this time, the U.S. was in recession 60 out of 91 months. Many would argue that the severity of these recessions led to the creation of the Federal Reserve System.

“I think they would be exaggerating what happened before 1913,” Paul responds. “We had some panics …they were usually short and there were no long depressions,” he said. “The Fed creates the bubbles and they are much worse since 1913, if you think of the size of the government and the valuation of the dollar, we are down to about a 2 cent dollar from the 1913 dollar.”

Paul said everyone accuses him of wanting the gold standard but he said he doesn't accept that. “I accept the idea of a gold coin standard and I think we can do much better than what we had," he said. "There was a lot that they did pre-Fed that was not exactly right but we never had a disastrous loss of purchasing power long-term, we didn’t have a great depression, we didn’t have the 1970s with stagflation and we wouldn’t have what we have right now.”

Since the Fed’s creation in 1913 the dollar has lost more than 96% of its value, and by inflating the money supply the Fed continues to distort interest rates and intentionally erodes the value of the dollar said Paul.

Paul’s solution is to not replace the Fed with anything. “It would make the dollar strong… who wants money to be devalued? I want a strong dollar and if it were equivalent to gold it would remain strong.”

Paul also said he wants to legalize the freedom for people to choose. “My proposal for now is to legalize the constitution to use gold and silver as legal tender in a parallel standard and have it compete with paper money. If people get tired of using the paper standard they can deal in gold or silver,” he said.

On the topic of gold price manipulation, Paul said, “I think it is probably true.”

“I am not the one to lay out proof of this, others have done a lot of investigation. One of the reasons I don’t dwell on that is they are not going to listen to us" he said. "But I think it is very important somebody talks about it and emphasizes it just as a warning to be careful; you don’t have to only anticipate what the markets are doing, but you have to anticipate what the government is doing.”

The best example of manipulating the ratio of gold to paper would have been from the late 1950s to 1971, said Paul. “We printed money like currency, we printed too many dollars against the gold, so they said, ‘we will take your gold.’ …if they are capable of that they are capable of doing this as well, because they don’t want their cover blown, ” said Paul. If the markets are saying not to trust paper money, they have to do everything they can to “destroy gold,” said Paul.

Recounting a visit with Paul Volcker, former Chairman of the Fed Reserve, Rep. Paul said the Chairman walked straight into the room, went immediately to his staffer and asked what the price of gold was. “They know gold is important. I think they are quite willing to manipulate it. That is the only way they can maintain this false illusion about gold.”

“If they are involved isn’t it pretty amazing what has happened in past year? What will happen if they throw in the towel?” said Paul.

The current economic situation is very healthy for gold, said Paul. “You see people rushing just to put their money in any place …they don’t even care about making money.”

New Regulations

When asked what regulations the Congressman is currently worried about, he said, “All of them.” However, Paul specifically points to the 1099 provision, a portion of the health-care act, passed earlier in the year. “For every transaction of over $600, gold dealers have to fill out a form, it is a lot of paperwork,” said the congressman. Entities must file a Form 1099 with the Internal Revenue Service whenever they make transactions paying out $600 a year to another party.

US economy

It is going to continue to go downhill said Paul on the US economy. “I don’t believe in a double dip, I believe we have single-dip and it has been continuous.”

“The only reason it doesn’t look so bad is if you spend $2 trillion dollars and you have a $5 hundred billion increase in some GDP figures, you didn’t get much for your trillion dollars but it might improve your statistics, so it was a fake recovery.”

As for another presidency run, Paul says it is too early to tell.

By Daniela Cambone dcambone@kitco.com

If you want to know what tyranny is like, look around.

2010-08-24T08:21:00.000-07:00

By Sheldon Richman
campaignforliberty.com
Published 08/24/10

The national government -- specifically the executive branch -- can do pretty much what it wants. It could bomb Iran tomorrow without a declaration of war from Congress. It can -- and does -- conduct secret wars and covert operations against countries that have done nothing to us. Of course, they are secret only to the ignorant taxpayers who must finance them and perhaps suffer when the provoked retaliation occurs. It can have men behind PlayStation consoles in Nevada fire Hellfire missiles from aerial drones on people in Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere.

This tyrannical government can send any foreigner picked up anywhere in the world to third countries known for torturing prisoners. It can hold people accused of nothing indefinitely in prisons in Cuba and Afghanistan and torture them into making false confessions. It can conduct a war crimes trial in a military kangaroo court for a man, Omar Khadr, held captive for eight years after he was picked up at the age of 15 during a U.S. assault on villagers near Kabul. His torture-induced "confessions" will be admissible. All this is in violation of commitments under the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict not to treat children in war as though they were adults.

It can assassinate even American citizens abroad without a scent of due process.

It is a government that can write its own warrants without judicial review -- and call them national security letters -- in order to conduct fishing expeditions in anyone's electronic records. But that isn't enough power for the present Progressive administration, which wants the freedom to examine our browser histories and email correspondents' names. The Bill of Rights, like the Geneva Convention, has become "quaint" and obsolete.

Like any self-respecting tyranny, it tries to keep the truth from its subjects. Comforting words camouflage the 50,000 armed and combat-ready troops that will remain in Iraq after "withdrawal." Their "primary" mission is to train an army whose own general says won't be ready for years. This gross deception follows on the heralded "surge," which supposedly turned things around in Iraq. What "worked," however, was not U.S. military prowess or Gen. David Petraeus's brilliance, but the spreading of American taxpayers' cash to buy off Sunni insurgents and the denouement of ethnic cleansing in Baghdad.

And, again, like any self-respecting tyranny, it bridles at leaks of classified documents that tell the people the truth. Solemn administration officials condemn Wikileaks and its sources for supposedly jeopardizing U.S. troops and Afghan collaborators, while adding that nothing new had been revealed. With no sense of irony, the same officials find blood on the hands of Wikileaks' Julian Assange, ignoring the rivers of blood their policies and weapons have produced in the Middle East and South Central Asia. Without those policies, there would be nothing to leak. Some call for the assassination of Assange, and for all we know he is on President Obama's kill list. Meanwhile a courageous young soldier, Bradley Manning, who apparently leaked video of American troops committing cold-blooded murder in Baghdad, faces 52 years in prison.

Now we are being softened up for the next war, against Iran. As in 2002 with Iraq's phantom WMDs, the empire advance men tell us Iran is building nuclear weapons, and Obama and Secretary of State Clinton say "all options are on the table," which phrase includes hydrogen bombs. Once again a Big Lie is repeated without proof. The reason is simple: all evidence runs the other way. The government's own intelligence agencies say Iran has no nuclear-weapons program, and the International Atomic Energy Agency is on the scene. But no matter. If it suits the tyrannical administration or its partner in empire, Israel, bombs of some kind will fall. The consequences all around will be horrible.

Can it really be tyranny if we get to vote? Yes. Thomas Jefferson warned of "elective despotism." How valuable is your one vote when the government manipulates and distorts the flow of information, when Congress capitulates, and when the "adversarial" mainstream media act like government press agents, if not adoring lapdogs. The ugly truth is out there, but you have to want to know it.

Copyright © 2010 Future of Freedom Foundation
http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=1072

Three Devastating Tax Waves Will Destroy Many

2010-08-24T02:41:00.000-07:00

Joan Pryde
Americans for Tax Reform
8-23-10

In just six months, on January 1, 2011, the largest tax hikes in the history of America will take effect.

They will hit families and small businesses in three great waves.

On January 1, 2011, here's what happens... (read it to the end, so you see all three waves)...

First Wave

Expiration of 2001 and 2003 Tax Relief

In 2001 and 2003, the GOP Congress enacted several tax cuts for investors, small business owners, and families. These will all expire on January 1, 2011.

Personal Income Tax Rates Will Rise

The top income tax rate will rise from 35 to 39.6 percent (this is also the rate at which two-thirds of small business profits are taxed).

The lowest rate will rise from 10 to 15 percent.

All the rates in between will also rise.

Itemized deductions and personal exemptions will again phase out, which has the same mathematical effect as highermarginal tax rates.

The full list of marginal rate hikes is below:

The 10%
bracket rises to an expanded 15%

The 25%
bracket rises to 28%

The 28%
bracket rises to 31%

The 33%
bracket rises to 36%

The 35%
bracket rises to 39.6%

Higher Taxes On Marriage And Family

The "marriage penalty" (narrower tax brackets for married couples) will return from the first dollar of income.

The child tax credit will be cut in half from $1000 to $500 per child.

The standard deduction will no longer be doubled for married couples relative to the single level.

The dependent care and adoption tax credits will be cut.

The Return Of The Death Tax

This year only, there is no death tax. (It's a quirk!) For those dying on or after January 1, 2011, there is a 55 percent top death tax rate on estates over $1 million. A person leaving behind two homes, a business, a retirement account, could easily pass along a death tax bill to their loved ones. Think of the farmers who don't make much money, but their land, which they purchased years ago with after-tax dollars, is now worth a lot of money. Their children will have to sell the farm, which may be their livelihood, just to pay the estate tax if they don't have the cash sitting around to pay the tax.

Think about your own family's assets. Maybe your family owns real estate, or a business that doesn't make much money, but the building and equipment are worth $1 million. Upon their death, you can inherit the $1 million business tax free, but if they own a home, stock, cash worth $500K on top of the $1 million business, then you will owe the government $275,000 cash! That's 55% of the value of the assets over $1 million! Do you have that kind of cash sitting around waiting to pay the estate tax?

Higher Tax Rates On Savers And Investors

The capital gains tax will rise from 15 percent this year to 20 percent in 2011.

The dividends tax will rise from 15 percent this year to 39.6 percent in 2011.

These rates will rise another 3.8 percent in 2013.

The Second Wave
Obamacare

There are over twenty new or higher taxes in Obamacare. Several will first go into effect on January 1, 2011. They include:

The "Medicine Cabinet Tax"

Thanks to Obamacare, Americans will no longer be able to use health savings account (HSA), flexible spending account (FSA), or health reimbursement (HRA) pre-tax dollars to purchase non-prescription, over-the-counter medicines (except insulin).

The "Special Needs Kids Tax"

This provision of Obamacare imposes a cap on flexible spending accounts (FSAs) of $2500 (Currently, there is no federal government limit). There is one group of FSA owners for whom this new cap will be particularly cruel and onerous: parents of special needs children.

There are thousands of families with special needs children in the United States , and many of them use FSAs to pay for special needs education.

Tuitiion rates at one leading school that teaches special needs children in Washington , D.C. ( National Child Research Center ) can easily exceed $14,000 per year.

Under tax rules, FSA dollars can not be used to pay for this type of special needs education.

The HSA (Health Savings Account) Withdrawal Tax Hike.

This provision of Obamacare increases the additional tax on non-medical early withdrawals from an HSA from 10 to 0 percent, disadvantaging them relative to IRAsand other tax-advantaged accounts, which remain at 10 percent.

The Third Wave

The Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) and Employer Tax Hikes

When Americans prepare to file their tax returns in January of 2011, they'll be in for a nasty surprise-the AMT won't be held harmless, and many tax relief provisions will have expired.

The major items include:

The AMT will ensnare over 28 million families, up from 4 million last year.

According to the left-leaning Tax Policy Center , Congress' failure to index the AMT will lead to an explosion of AMT taxpaying families-rising from 4 million last year to 28.5 million. These families will have to calculate their tax burdens twice, and pay taxes at the higher level. The AMT was created in 1969 to ensnare a handful of taxpayers.

Small business 'expensing' will be slashed and 50% expensing will disappear.

Small businesses can normally 'expense' (deduct) rather than slowly-deduct or 'depreciate' equipment purchases up to $250,000.

The traditional $250,000 figure will be cut all the way down to $25,000!

Larger businesses can currently expense half of their purchases of equipment. In January of 2011, ALL of it will have to be "depreciated." (The depreciation period over which a business must write off a major expense is often THIRTY YEARS.)

Taxes will be raised on all types of businesses

There are literally scores of tax hikes on business that will take place. The biggest is the loss of the "research and experimentation tax credit," but there are many, many others. Combining high marginal tax rates with the loss of this tax relief will cost jobs.

Tax Benefits for Education and Teaching Reduced

Teachers will no longer be able to deduct classroom expenses.

Coverdell Education Savings Accounts will be cut.

Employer-provided educational assistance is curtailed.

The student loan interest deduction will be disallowed for hundreds of thousands of families.

Charitable Contributions from IRAs no longer allowed

Under current law, a retired person with an IRA can contribute up to $100,000 per year directly to a charity from their IRA.

This contribution also counts toward an annual "required minimum distribution." This ability will no longer be there.

PDF Version Read more:

And Worse Yet?

Now, your insurance will be INCOME on your W2's!

One of the surprises we'll find come next year, is what follows - - a little "surprise" that 99% of us had no idea was included in the "new and improved" healthcare legislation . . . the dupes, er, dopes, who backed this administration will be astonished!

Starting in 2011, (next year folks), your W-2 tax form sent by your employer will be increased to show the value of whatever health insurance you are given by the company. It does not matter if that's a private concern or governmental body of some sort.

If you're retired? So what... your gross will go up by the amount of insurance you get.

You will be required to pay taxes on a large sum of money that you have never seen. Take your tax form you just finished and see what $15,000 or $20,000 additional gross does to your tax debt. That's what you'll pay next year.

For many, it also puts you into a new higher bracket so it's even worse.

This is how the government is going to buy insurance for the15% that don't have insurance and it's only part of the tax increases.

Not believing this??? Here is a research of the summaries.....

On page 25 of 29: TITLE IX REVENUE PROVISIONS- SUBTITLE A: REVENUE OFFSET PROVISIONS-(sec. 9001, as modified by sec. 10901) Sec.9002 "requires employers to include in the W-2 form of each employee the aggregate cost of applicable employer sponsored group health coverage that is excludable from the employees gross income."

Joan Pryde is the senior tax editor for the Kiplinger letters.

http://rense.com/general91/esd.htm

“Reading constitution was a mistake” – former US sheriff

2010-08-24T00:19:00.000-07:00

Russia Today
Published 24 August, 2010, 09:11

The US constitution is violated daily, and the main perpetrators are the president and top federal government officials.

That is the view of Richard Mack, a former Arizona Sheriff who is now advocating state sovereignty as the only way to keep constitution-abiding America intact.

In 1994, he made national headlines when he filed a law-suit against the federal government. Since then, he has been encouraging state law enforcement officials to rise up against federal agents.

“When I was a cop I made a huge mistake – I actually read the constitution, and specifically the Bill of Rights. And I saw, on the one hand, what the constitution says and I saw, on the other hand, what the government is actually doing,” he said in an interview to RT.

http://rt.com/Top_News/2010-08-24/constitution-richard-mack-sheriff.html#

A United Iran Against A Collapsing Israel

2010-08-23T13:46:00.000-07:00

opinion-maker.org
23. Aug, 2010
by Raja Mujtaba in Opinion

Kourosh Ziabari

As the racist regime of Israel moves toward greater international isolation due to its aggressive, belligerent policies, Iran receives wider support from the world’s nations for its uncompromising resistance against the bullying superpowers and annulling their mischievous plots. The world is witness to the growth of Iran’s popularity while hatred and disgust against Israel builds up progressively. Iran is reaching out to the hearts and souls around the world while Israel ignites denunciation and deprecation in the four corners of the globe.

Since Israel raided the Gaza Freedom Flotilla on May 31, the flimsy existence of Tel Aviv began to splinter as the world nations collectively and categorically reacted to the atrocious mass killing of 9 peace activists in the international waters by the Israel Defense Forces.

Israel’s unlawful, brutal killing of the unarmed civilians aboard the Freedom Flotilla sparked such a remarkable international condemnation that even the most stalwart allies of Tel Aviv in the EU zone recalled their ambassadors from Israel and called for a thorough, detailed investigation of the incident which they described as offensive and violent. The international condemnations were so extensive and intensive that even the most pessimistic Israeli politicians couldn’t envisage. Four countries downgraded their diplomatic relations with Israel – in addition to the four countries that had cut their diplomatic ties with Israel during the 22-day Gaza war of 2008-2009, Twelve Latin American countries condemned the Israeli actions, Twenty-one European countries protested Israel and Twelve non-Arab Asian countries officially disapproved Tel Aviv.

The precursor of global protests to Israel was Turkey which had lost 9 of its citizens in the raid. In an insightful, thought-provoking and appreciable statement before his country’s parliament, the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan strongly questioned Israel’s impunity from the international laws and called for a decisive end to the illegal actions of this regime: “It is no longer possible to cover up or ignore Israel’s lawlessness. The international community must from now on say ‘enough is enough’. Dry statements of condemnation are not enough … There should be results.”

At the beginning and when the first news was released, the extent of Israel’s violence had not become clear to the public opinion; however, as the international peace activists began retelling the stories of their ordeal upon being deported by Tel Aviv to their respective countries, the world realized that a great calamity had taken place.

Upon his extradition to Istanbul, the Irish historian and activist Dr. Fintan Lane told the media about his terrible experience on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla which was unjustifiably attacked by the Israeli commandos on May 31: “when they boarded our boat, we resisted entirely peacefully. I sat on the floor and tried to reason with them, but the Israeli commandos physically attacked us. Fiachra (one of the Irish passengers aboard the flotilla) was dragged around the ground and I had a gun pointed in my face by a screaming commando. His mania was so intense that I genuinely feared for my life. Others received beatings.”

The American peace activist and anti-imperialist speaker Kenneth O’Keefe was another passenger on board the Gaza aid convoy. He witnessed the death of two of his Turkish colleagues in person and was brutally harassed, tortured by the Israeli forces: “while in Israeli custody I, along with everyone else was subjected to endless abuse and flagrant acts of disrespect. Women and elderly were physically and mentally assaulted… in stress positions while hand cuffed to the point of losing circulation of blood in our hands. We were lied to incessantly, in fact I am awed at the routineness and comfort in their ability to lie, it is remarkable really. We were abused in just about every way imaginable and I myself was beaten and choked to the point of blacking out… and I was beaten again while in my cell.”

Hassan Ghani, the 25-year-old Scottish journalist and media correspondent of the Press TV was also among the flotilla travelers. He was ruthlessly punished by the Israeli commandos in what he described as the “brutal Israeli assault” on the flotilla: “we didn’t expect a ship with 32 different nationalities on board, with aid from 50 different countries on board, would be attacked in such a brutal manner… They began by throwing stun grenades on to the deck of the ship when people were in the middle of morning prayers. Then they began using rubber bullets, they tried to come aboard the ship from the side. People repelled the commandos with water cannons they had set up on the side of the ship. Then the Israelis used helicopters to drop people onto roof and there was scuffles on the roof. The Israeli solders had already opened fire on the ship, so people were grabbing anything they could to stop the attack in international waters.”

Another painful account of the flotilla raid was retold by the prominent Swedish author Henning Mankell who described the Israeli actions as “committing murder”: “they got very aggressive and ordered us to come down. There was one older man who was a little slow, so the Israelis attacked him with an electric stun gun. He was in a lot of pain. So was another passenger who was covered in paint after being hit with a paint ball missile. The commandos searched the ship thoroughly and emerged waving a razor and a metal-box cutting tool, which they claimed were “weapons” intended to be used against them. All the passengers were then herded into a group, with armed guards standing watch as the ship was taken to Israel When we got off… we were made to walk down a corridor of armed commandos who filmed all of us with cameras. They stole my mobile phone, my money, my clothes and my credit cards.” Mankell said that he was held in a cell for 24 hours along with a Swedish Member of Parliament and then deported even “without his socks”.

All of these accounts attest to the fact that Israel is being reprimanded by people from the four corners of the world who object to the inhuman policies and actions of Tel Aviv regardless of the nationality they belong to and the political stance they champion.

Today, it’s known to everyone that Israel is a political entity which the United States supports in order to maintain its interests in the Middle East and subject the region’s nations. In the other words, Israel plays the role of America’s permanent representative in the Middle East and is entitled to resort to every possible mean to intimidate and bring under control the independent nations in the region. The fact is that Israel is a fragile and unstable political regime and every day of its shaky survival is hinged on the exertion of force and violating the rights of other nations. As the Iranian journalist Mohieddin Sajedi once noted, Israel cannot live without creating troubles. From mass killing to occupation, from assassination to the construction of illegal settlements, Israel continues to exist with illegal actions and this is what keeps them alive.

The main adversary of Israel is Iran. Israel has repeatedly warned Iran against the use of force and launch of a military strike on its nuclear facilities. The reason is clear. Iran is turning into an inspiring model for the independent nations around the world. Iran’s 30-year-long resistance against imperialism and its courageous confrontation with the bullying superpowers has made it an example of victorious struggle with political arrogance and many independent nations on the face of world see Iran on the frontline of battle with the United States and its colonies such as Israel.

Iran is winning international popularity because it has demonstrated the effectiveness of self-sufficiency in nationalizing the nuclear energy. While Israel possesses up to 200 nuclear warheads in flagrant violation of the international law and Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has made striking advancements in taking over the nuclear power and excelling in using it for peaceful purposes. The fact that Iran has succeeded in nationalizing the nuclear energy without the assistance of Western superpowers is indigestible for Israel which is the sole possessor of nuclear weapons in the Middle East; that’s why it has warned Iran against a preemptive military strike; however, the reality is that a 70-million-strong army stands by the resistance movement of Iran and a coalition of powerful troops consisted of the independent nations around the world, stand by Iran against the collapsing Israel forever.

Kourosh Ziabari is an Iranian freelance journalist. He has interviewed political commentator and linguist NoamChomsky, member of New Zealand parliament Keith Locke, Australian politician Ian Cohen, member of German Parliament Ruprecht Polenz, former Mexican President Vicente Fox, former U.S. National Security Council advisor Peter D. Feaver, Nobel Prize laureate in Physics Wolfgang Ketterle, Nobel Prize laureate in Chemistry Kurt Wüthrich, Nobel Prize laureate in biology Robin Warren, famous German political prisoner Ernst Zündel, Brazilian cartoonist Carlos Latuff, American author Stephen Kinzer, syndicated journalist Eric Margolis, former assistant of the U.S. Department of the Treasury Paul Craig Roberts, American-Palestinian journalist Ramzy Baroud, former President of the American Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Sid Ganis, American international relations scholar Stephen Zunes, American singer and songwriter David Rovics, American political scientist and anthropologist William Beeman, British journalist Andy Worthington, Australian author and blogger Antony Loewenstein, Iranian geopolitics expert Pirouz Mojtahedzadeh, American historian and author Michael A. Hoffman II and Israeli musician Gilad Atzmon.

http://www.opinion-maker.org/2010/08/a-united-iran-against-a-collapsing-israel/

And Now: The Stealth Obama Ocean Grab

2010-08-22T13:54:00.000-07:00

August 19, 2010
By Michelle Malkin
vdare.com

It's not enough that the White House is moving to lock up hundreds of millions of acres of land in the name of environmental protection. The Obama administration's neon green radicals are also training their sights on the deep blue seas. The president's grabby-handed bureaucrats have been empowered through executive order to seize unprecedented control from states and localities over "conservation, economic activity, user conflict and sustainable use of the ocean, our coasts and the Great Lakes."_

Democrats have tried and failed to pass "comprehensive" federal oceans management legislation five years in a row. The so-called "Oceans 21" bill, sponsored by Democratic Rep. Sam Farr of California, went nowhere fast. Among the top reasons: bipartisan concerns about the economic impact of closing off widespread access to recreational fishing. The bill also would have handed environmentalists another punitive litigation weapon under the guise of "ecosystem management." Instead of accepting defeat, the green lobby simply circumvented the legislative process altogether.

In late July, President Obama established a behemoth 27-member "National Ocean Council" with the stroke of a pen. Farr gloated: "We already have a Clean Air Act and a Clean Water Act. With today's executive order, President Obama in effect creates a Clean Ocean Act." And not a single hearing needed to be held. Not a single amendment considered. Not a single vote cast. Who gives a flying fish about transparency and the deliberative process? The oceans are dying!

The panel will have the power to implement "coastal and marine spatial plans" and to ensure that all executive agencies, departments and offices abide by their determinations. The panel has also been granted authority to establish regional advisory committees that overlap with existing regional and local authorities governing marine and coastal planning.

No wonder the anti-growth, anti-development, anti-jobs zealots are cheering. The National Ocean Council is co-chaired by wackadoodle science czar John Holdren (notorious for his cheerful musings about eugenics, mass sterilization and forced abortions to protect Mother Earth and for hyping weather catastrophes and demographic disasters in the 1970s with his population control freak pals Paul and Anne Ehrlich) and White House Council on Environmental Quality head Nancy Sutley (best known as the immediate boss of disgraced green jobs czar/self-avowed communist Van Jones).

Also on the new ocean panel:

*

Socialista and energy/climate change czar Carol Browner, last seen bullying auto company execs to "put nothing in writing, ever" and threatening to push massive cap-and-trade tax hikes during the upcoming congressional lame duck session.
*

Dr. Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and a former high-ranking official at the left-wing Environmental Defense Fund, which has long championed drastic reductions of commercial fishing fleets and recreational fishing activity in favor of centralized control.
*

Attorney General Eric Holder, who will no doubt use his stonewalling expertise to shield the ocean council's inner workings from public scrutiny.
*

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who apparently doesn't have enough to do destroying jobs through his offshore drilling moratorium, blocking onshore development and wreaking havoc on the energy industry.

Given Salazar's fraudulent book-cooking in support of the administration's offshore drilling moratorium (Remember: Obama's own appointed scientists blasted the Interior Secretary for unilaterally contradicting and misrepresenting their conclusions.), his comments on the new ocean grab are more threat than promise: "With two billion acres we help oversee on the Outer Continental Shelf, Interior is a proud partner in this initiative, and we look forward to helping coordinate the science, policies and management of how we use, conserve and protect these public treasures."

"Helping coordinate the science," as interpreted by Obama's Chicago-on-the-Potomac heavies, means doctoring, massaging and ramming through whatever eco-data is necessary "to reduce conflicts among uses, reduce environmental impacts, facilitate compatible uses, and preserve critical ecosystem services to meet economic, environmental, security and social objectives." Translation: drastically limiting human activity from coastal areas to seabeds to achieve the "social objective" of appeasing the enviros and their deep-pocketed philanthropic funders.

Even New York Sen. Charles Schumer slammed the administration's junk science-based fishing limits at a meeting this week between NOAA's Lubchenco and Long Island recreational fishermen. Draconian regulations, he said, according to the New York Post, "put the industry on death's door." Now, the same forces behind such job destroyers will have free reign over a national ocean policy established by administrative fiat. Viva la Summer of Wreckovery.

Michelle Malkin [email her] is the author of Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores. Click here for Peter Brimelow’s review. Click here for Michelle Malkin's website. Michelle Malkin is also author of Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild and the just-released Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies.

COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

How to Be a Hobo

2010-08-21T11:43:00.000-07:00

The Art of Manliness
Brett & Kate McKay
September 10, 2009

Am I the only boy who secretly dreamed of becoming a hobo? Riding the rails, traveling across the country, and carrying everything you own on your back has a romance that appeals to every man’s desire to wander.

In a 1937 issue of Esquiremagazine, an anonymous writer penned an article called “The Bum Handbook.” Unlike most bums, he had chosen his vagabond lifestyle. And he was tired of seeing the sub-par job most other bums were doing. This was during the Great Depression, and many men found themselves homeless, lost, and ignorant of the art of bumliness. The author had being a hobo down to a science and claimed to enjoy 3 meals a day and a comfortable place to sleep each night. While he didn’t desire to return to regular society, he knew that most fellow hobos did, and so he offered these tips in hopes they could maintain confidence and a respectable look and thus find their way back to steady work.

Although much has changed since the 1930′s, if you by chance find yourself a hobo during this Great Recession or desire to become a bum by choice, perhaps you can learn some tips from hobos of old. Enjoy these excerpts from the article and this fun peek into the past.

Keep yourself clean. Filthy men can’t charm the housewife into giving food, the passerby into relinquishing money, the man of business into giving jobs: the housewife is scared and repelled, the passerby is annoyed and anxious to be away, the business man responds curtly. And there is no need to be unwashed. Every gasoline station and railroad depot has a washroom replete with running water, soap and paper towels; anyone may use these facilities, the bum should wash and shave there. In the handbook for bums the first motto is: A bum should be clean.

Stay away from the cities. City people have submerged their humanity. I think the reason for this is their security from the elements, for the family that is sure of food and shelter becomes easily forgetful of other human beings’ needs and thinks vaguely of organized charities…The farm family, on the other hand, knows that deficit of sun or rain may touch more than its comfort, that the house it has built must be a citadel against cold and storms; therefore, their humanity comes more quickly to their mouths and hands. I do not say that city dwellers cannot be “hit” with success, but it is more difficult and only among the poor ones have you a fair chance of receiving hospitality.

Avoid intermediaries. Direct appeal is the best: individual should appeal directly to individual. Once I remember speaking to some soldiers in a town that had only two restaurants. When it was time to eat they insisted on going into one of the restaurants with me and pleading my case with the proprietor. There was much whispering and finally after some minutes the proprietor said, “All right, I’ll give him reduced rates.” Reduced rates and I didn’t have a cent in my pockets! I thanked my well-meaning friends, went into the other restaurant alone, and received a bounteous meal. I am sure that had I spoken to that first man myself, I would have had no trouble obtaining food. Another time, because of the solicitude of some CCC boys, I found myself without a bed at three o’clock in the morning: they had insisted that I sleep at their camp five miles away, and when I had arrived, their superior objected strongly.

Travel by highway and not be rail.Automobiles provide slower travel but the rails have more serious disadvantages, not only the filthy and bumpy riding of the freight cars but also in danger. You may be arrested and locked up for vagrancy, you may be beaten up, you may even encounter that certain railroad detective who stands by the tracks with a rifle and picks off the bums as the cars roll into the freight yard…Another reason for working the highway is that through hitches one learns of jobs to be had. Friendly drivers have informed me that one can earn $1.50 a day and board in a lumber camp, $3.00 a day picking apples, $.06 a barrel picking potatoes (the average worker fills about a hundred barrels a day) et cetera. The field of seasonal labor is tremendous and extends all over the United States. By traveling from state to state one can be employed practically every month of the year, and there is always more demand than supply, the wages are high. Also, people in automobiles sometimes become really interested in you and offer you employment. This does not happen too infrequently. I should say that I average about one offer every three days. I have been a gardener, a waiter, a gravedigger, a fisherman, a lumberman, a farm hand, a clerk, a newspaper reporter, a ghost-writer, a chauffeur, a toy salesman, and garbageman. I never keep these jobs long because I am over-fond of the road, and after a week in one place I long to be on an open truck again, watching houses slip by and the land change.

Speak forthrightly. Do not slink, speak too humbly, or cast your eyes down when you make a request. Address most men as “sir” and speak to them in such a way that they will call you “old man.” Women should be talked to lightly, gallantly. There are of course many exceptions to these rules but one learns to recognize them by their faces.

Do not use hyperbole. To say “I haven’t eaten in two days” just doesn’t convince the average person, or else it scares him. That a man hasn’t eaten in two days is a strange thing to most people and they react unfortunately to the information. Merely to say that you haven’t eaten breakfast that day is enough to provoke the sympathy of the housewife.

How about other necessaries: tobacco, clothing, beer?Well, people never refuse you when you ask for a cigarette; very often they give you three or five. As far as beer is concerned, any number of people you talk to on the street invite you to a bar, particularly if your tales are interesting. Also, bartenders at closing time are apt to be friendly. Clothes are more difficult to obtain. It is best to enter a small haberdashery and explain that you’ve just arrived in town and that you’re looking for a job-obviously you can’t get work when your shirt is so torn, et cetera.

Don’t sleep in dubious jails and flophouses.Try to find a farm house before dusk so that you can ask the farmer to let you sleep in his barn. Hay makes a very warm and satisfactory bed, it molds exactly to the body…But if the farmer refuses to let you use his barn for a bedroom, ask him to give you some newspapers. Then go into a pasture, build a fire, wait for it to die out, spread the ashes, cover them lightly with dirt, and you have prepared a bed that will stay warm all night. For covering, use the newspapers and a poncho (you should always carry a poncho with you, they make excellent raincoats, tents, and blankets). Or you can go to a garage, garagemen will often let you sleep in cars; furnacemen will let you sleep next to the furnace, et cetera.

I did not leave home because of an impossible wife or because I could not get employment-I had no wife and I had a well paying job with a millinery house, a job into which I had been recruited because I had never become excited about a future and planned it. But I was not happy in the city and more than others I looked forward to vacations; at those times I would travel constantly trying to absorb as much as possible. I found it increasingly difficult to return after each vacation. Finally, the inevitable happened. I just didn’t return, I just kept on going. It really made no difference. I had no dependents and milliners could show bad taste without my aid. Now I am completely happy. All the infinite phases of nature I can observe at leisure, all the different types of country I can live with in their optimums. The spring I spend in the West, the summer in the far North, the fall in New England, the winter in the South. In a few years I shall probably want to go to Europe, and I shall go. And since I have been on the road I have in many ways improved myself: my sensitivities have been sharpened (I even write poetry now, and it’s not too bad), my education extended, and my health become superb. I don’t know whether I shall ever settle down again, and I don’t much care.

http://artofmanliness.com/2009/09/10/how-to-be-a-hobo/

Homeowner’s Rebellion: Could 62 Million Homes Be Foreclosure-proof?

2010-08-20T08:04:00.000-07:00

Dissident Voice
Ellen Hodgson Brown
August 20th, 2010

Over 62 million mortgages are now held in the name of MERS, an electronic recording system devised by and for the convenience of the mortgage industry. A California bankruptcy court, following landmark cases in other jurisdictions, recently held that this electronic shortcut makes it impossible for banks to establish their ownership of property titles — and therefore to foreclose on mortgaged properties. The logical result could be 62 million homes that are foreclosure-proof.

Mortgages bundled into securities were a favorite investment of speculators at the height of the financial bubble leading up to the crash of 2008. The securities changed hands frequently, and the companies profiting from mortgage payments were often not the same parties that negotiated the loans. At the heart of this disconnect was the Mortgage Electronic Registration System, or MERS, a company that serves as the mortgagee of record for lenders, allowing properties to change hands without the necessity of recording each transfer.

MERS was convenient for the mortgage industry, but courts are now questioning the impact of all of this financial juggling when it comes to mortgage ownership. To foreclose on real property, the plaintiff must be able to establish the chain of title entitling it to relief. But MERS has acknowledged, and recent cases have held, that MERS is a mere “nominee” — an entity appointed by the true owner simply for the purpose of holding property in order to facilitate transactions. Recent court opinions stress that this defect is not just a procedural but is a substantive failure, one that is fatal to the plaintiff’s legal ability to foreclose.

That means hordes of victims of predatory lending could end up owning their homes free and clear — while the financial industry could end up skewered on its own sword.

California Precedent

The latest of these court decisions came down in California on May 20, 2010, in a bankruptcy case called In re Walker, Case no. 10-21656-E–11. The court held that MERS could not foreclose because it was a mere nominee; and that as a result, plaintiff Citibank could not collect on its claim. The judge opined:

Since no evidence of MERS’ ownership of the underlying note has been offered, and other courts have concluded that MERS does not own the underlying notes, this court is convinced that MERS had no interest it could transfer to Citibank. Since MERS did not own the underlying note, it could not transfer the beneficial interest of the Deed of Trust to another. Any attempt to transfer the beneficial interest of a trust deed without ownership of the underlying note is void under California law.

In support, the judge cited In Re Vargas (California Bankruptcy Court); Landmark v. Kesler (Kansas Supreme Court); LaSalle Bank v. Lamy (a New York case); and In Re Foreclosure Cases (the “Boyko” decision from Ohio Federal Court). (For more on these earlier cases, see here, here and here.) The court concluded:

Since the claimant, Citibank, has not established that it is the owner of the promissory note secured by the trust deed, Citibank is unable to assert a claim for payment in this case.

The broad impact the case could have on California foreclosures is suggested by attorney Jeff Barnes, who writes:

This opinion … serves as a legal basis to challenge any foreclosure in California based on a MERS assignment; to seek to void any MERS assignment of the Deed of Trust or the note to a third party for purposes of foreclosure; and should be sufficient for a borrower to not only obtain a TRO [temporary restraining order] against a Trustee’s Sale, but also a Preliminary Injunction barring any sale pending any litigation filed by the borrower challenging a foreclosure based on a MERS assignment.

While not binding on courts in other jurisdictions, the ruling could serve as persuasive precedent there as well, because the court cited non-bankruptcy cases related to the lack of authority of MERS, and because the opinion is consistent with prior rulings in Idaho and Nevada Bankruptcy courts on the same issue.

What Could This Mean for Homeowners?

Earlier cases focused on the inability of MERS to produce a promissory note or assignment establishing that it was entitled to relief, but most courts have considered this a mere procedural defect and continue to look the other way on MERS’ technical lack of standing to sue. The more recent cases, however, are looking at something more serious. If MERS is not the title holder of properties held in its name, the chain of title has been broken, and no one may have standing to sue. In MERS v. Nebraska Department of Banking and Finance, MERS insisted that it had no actionable interest in title, and the court agreed.

An August 2010 article in Mother Jones titled “Fannie and Freddie’s Foreclosure Barons” exposes a widespread practice of “foreclosure mills” in backdating assignments after foreclosures have been filed. Not only is this perjury, a prosecutable offense, but if MERS was never the title holder, there is nothing to assign. The defaulting homeowners could wind up with free and clear title.

In Jacksonville, Florida, legal aid attorney April Charney has been using the missing-note argument ever since she first identified that weakness in the lenders’ case in 2004. Five years later, she says, some of the homeowners she’s helped are still in their homes. According to a Huffington Post article titled “‘Produce the Note’ Movement Helps Stall Foreclosures”:

Because of the missing ownership documentation, Charney is now starting to file quiet title actions, hoping to get her homeowner clients full title to their homes (a quiet title action ‘quiets’ all other claims). Charney says she’s helped thousands of homeowners delay or prevent foreclosure, and trained thousands of lawyers across the country on how to protect homeowners and battle in court.

Criminal Charges?

Other suits go beyond merely challenging title to alleging criminal activity. On July 26, 2010, a class action was filed in Florida seeking relief against MERS and an associated legal firm for racketeering and mail fraud. It alleges that the defendants used “the artifice of MERS to sabotage the judicial process to the detriment of borrowers;” that “to perpetuate the scheme, MERS was and is used in a way so that the average consumer, or even legal professional, can never determine who or what was or is ultimately receiving the benefits of any mortgage payments;” that the scheme depended on “the MERS artifice and the ability to generate any necessary ‘assignment’ which flowed from it;” and that “by engaging in a pattern of racketeering activity, specifically ‘mail or wire fraud,’ the Defendants … participated in a criminal enterprise affecting interstate commerce.”

Local governments deprived of filing fees may also be getting into the act, at least through representatives suing on their behalf. Qui tam actions allow for a private party or “whistle blower” to bring suit on behalf of the government for a past or present fraud on it. In State of California ex rel. Barrett R. Bates, filed May 10, 2010, the plaintiff qui tam sued on behalf of a long list of local governments in California against MERS and a number of lenders, including Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo, for “wrongfully bypass[ing] the counties’ recording requirements; divest[ing] the borrowers of the right to know who owned the promissory note …; and record[ing] false documents to initiate and pursue non-judicial foreclosures, and to otherwise decrease or avoid payment of fees to the Counties and the Cities where the real estate is located.” The complaint notes that “MERS claims to have ‘saved’ at least $2.4 billion dollars in recording costs,” meaning it has helped avoid billions of dollars in fees otherwise accruing to local governments. The plaintiff sues for treble damages for all recording fees not paid during the past ten years, and for civil penalties of between $5,000 and $10,000 for each unpaid or underpaid recording fee and each false document recorded during that period, potentially a hefty sum. Similar suits have been filed by the same plaintiff qui tam in Nevada and Tennessee.

By Their Own Sword: MERS’ Role in the Financial Crisis

MERS is, according to its website, “an innovative process that simplifies the way mortgage ownership and servicing rights are originated, sold and tracked. Created by the real estate finance industry, MERS eliminates the need to prepare and record assignments when trading residential and commercial mortgage loans.” Or as Karl Denninger puts it, “MERS’ own website claims that it exists for the purpose of circumventing assignments and documenting ownership!”

MERS was developed in the early 1990s by a number of financial entities, including Bank of America, Countrywide, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac, allegedly to allow consumers to pay less for mortgage loans. That did not actually happen, but what MERS did allow was the securitization and shuffling around of mortgages behind a veil of anonymity. The result was not only to cheat local governments out of their recording fees but to defeat the purpose of the recording laws, which was to guarantee purchasers clean title. Worse, MERS facilitated an explosion of predatory lending in which lenders could not be held to account because they could not be identified, either by the preyed-upon borrowers or by the investors seduced into buying bundles of worthless mortgages. As alleged in a Nevada class action called Lopez vs. Executive Trustee Services, et al.:

Before MERS, it would not have been possible for mortgages with no market value . . . to be sold at a profit or collateralized and sold as mortgage-backed securities. Before MERS, it would not have been possible for the Defendant banks and AIG to conceal from government regulators the extent of risk of financial losses those entities faced from the predatory origination of residential loans and the fraudulent re-sale and securitization of those otherwise non-marketable loans. Before MERS, the actual beneficiary of every Deed of Trust on every parcel in the United States and the State of Nevada could be readily ascertained by merely reviewing the public records at the local recorder’s office where documents reflecting any ownership interest in real property are kept….

After MERS, . .. the servicing rights were transferred after the origination of the loan to an entity so large that communication with the servicer became difficult if not impossible …. The servicer was interested in only one thing – making a profit from the foreclosure of the borrower’s residence – so that the entire predatory cycle of fraudulent origination, resale, and securitization of yet another predatory loan could occur again. This is the legacy of MERS, and the entire scheme was predicated upon the fraudulent designation of MERS as the ‘beneficiary’ under millions of deeds of trust in Nevada and other states.

Axing the Bankers’ Money Tree

If courts overwhelmed with foreclosures decide to take up the cause, the result could be millions of struggling homeowners with the banks off their backs, and millions of homes no longer on the books of some too-big-to-fail banks. Without those assets, the banks could again be looking at bankruptcy. As was pointed out in a San Francisco Chronicle article by attorney Sean Olender following the October 2007 Boyko [pdf] decision:

The ticking time bomb in the U.S. banking system is not resetting subprime mortgage rates. The real problem is the contractual ability of investors in mortgage bonds to require banks to buy back the loans at face value if there was fraud in the origination process.

… The loans at issue dwarf the capital available at the largest U.S. banks combined, and investor lawsuits would raise stunning liability sufficient to cause even the largest U.S. banks to fail …

Nationalization of these giant banks might be the next logical step — a step that some commentators said should have been taken in the first place. When the banking system of Sweden collapsed following a housing bubble in the 1990s, nationalization of the banks worked out very well for that country.

The Swedish banks were largely privatized again when they got back on their feet, but it might be a good idea to keep some banks as publicly-owned entities, on the model of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. For most of the 20th century it served as a “people’s bank,” making low interest loans to consumers and businesses through branches all over the country.

With the strengthened position of Wall Street following the 2008 bailout and the tepid 2010 banking reform bill, the U.S. is far from nationalizing its mega-banks now. But a committed homeowner movement to tear off the predatory mask called MERS could yet turn the tide. While courts are not likely to let 62 million homeowners off scot-free, the defect in title created by MERS could give them significant new leverage at the bargaining table.

Ellen Brown is an attorney in Los Angeles and the author of 11 books. In Web of Debt: The Shocking Truth About Our Money System and How We Can Break Free, she shows how a private banking cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Read other articles by Ellen, or visit Ellen's website.

http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/08/homeowners-rebellion-could-62-million-homes-be-foreclosure-proof/

Treason by Members of the United States Congress

2010-08-19T09:09:00.001-07:00

Playing the Never Again Card, Again

2010-08-18T13:34:00.000-07:00

criminalstate.com
August 18, 2010
by Jeff Gates

The phony intelligence used to induce our March 2003 invasion of Iraq has been dusted off. This time it’s being deployed to take us into Iran.

Same scam. Same storyline. Same fraud—even featuring some of the same players.

Except that this time around their deception lacks the broader context required to gain traction for their phony content. That key difference makes today’s perpetrators far more transparent—for those willing to look.

Those foisting on us this latest fraud also face another challenge: Americans now realize it was Israel and its advocates who fixed that false intelligence around a Zionist agenda.

That realization adds combustibility to the facts now fueling Israel’s fast-fading legitimacy.

Each week brings new insights that undermine generally accepted truths about 911 and our response to that mass murder on U.S. soil. As the costs continue to rise in both blood and treasure, the credibility of those who sold us this “Clash” continues its steady decline.

One key player in this long-running fraud remains unfazed: mainstream media.

In March 2002, Israeli-American Jeffrey Goldberg published in The New Yorker a story alleging an alliance between the jihadists of Al Qaeda and the secular Baathists of Iraq. Though an impossible premise, his account made it appear plausible.

His collaborator was James Woolsey, a former Director of the CIA and an avid Zionist. Woolsey assured us that Iraqi intelligence officials met in Prague with Al Qaeda.

Woolsey’s intelligence was “sexed up” to sound credible. Now we know it was false. All of it.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

In the consistency and common source of this duplicity lies the perilous future of Israel and its fast-shrinking legitimacy as a nation state.

The fast-growing worldwide revulsion at all things Israeli suggests that this latest fraud may yet fail—though not for lack of trying.

The Liars Return

Goldberg is back with another round of “reporting” in the best Goebbels tradition. Woolsey helped hyped his 2002 New Yorker essay, calling it a “blockbuster.” That it was.

Woolsey, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Richard Perle lobbied the Bush White House in May 2004 to retain Iraqi liar Ahmed Chalabi as the U.S.-favored leader for Iraq. Perle took two decades to develop Chalabi as an Israeli asset—at U.S. taxpayer expense.

New York Times “reporter” Judith Miller featured as facts Chalabi’s fabrications about Iraqi WMD. Meanwhile, Perle took over as chair of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board in 2001—on which Woolsey and Gingrich served. None dare call this treason—yet.

Goldberg is now making the Evil Doer case for Iran. Writing in the July 22, 2008 issue of The Atlantic, he argues the Israeli case for bombing Iran and urges that the U.S. again join the fray.

Woolsey, Gingrich and Perle are pushing the same agenda from the periphery. Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman, among Chalabi’s earliest Congressional supporters, are again vocal in their support of expanding the war.

If the U.S. had an honest media, Goldberg would be revealed as a fraud and his cohorts reviled as traitors. Instead he was interviewed on MSNBC by Andrea Mitchell, wife of Alan Greenspan, and lionized by CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer who served 17 years with The Jerusalem Post.

The probability of Goldberg conceding that he served in the Israeli army is as likely as Blitzer conceding that he wrote a sympathetic book on Israeli master spy Jonathan Pollard.

Our Faithful Ally

The November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate confirmed with high confidence that Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program in the fall of 2003. No credible evidence has been offered that Tehran intends to enrich uranium beyond what is required for fuel and medical applications.

In a step scheduled for August 21, Russia will assist Iran in shifting 64 tons of low-enriched uranium from a storage site to the reactor chamber as the first of three steps in the long-delayed start-up of Iran’s nuclear reactor at Bushehr.

If all goes according to plan, Iran’s reactor will begin generating electricity in three to four months. As a condition of completing and fueling the plant, Russia insists that Iran return spent fuel so that the plutonium cannot be extracted for use in developing atomic weapons.

To date, the Iranians have produced only 5,300 pounds of low-enriched uranium. Moscow sees this next step as essential to bringing Tehran’s nuclear activities under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

What’s the Israeli strategy for IAEA compliance? Bomb Iran. What’s the U.S. strategy? Follow the lead of our faithful and reliable ally.

Tel Aviv portrays the Iranian reactor as an “existential threat” and a sure sign of a pending Holocaust. How Likud Party leaders divine that outcome remains obscure. But never mind that minor detail, mainstream American media can fill in the “never again” blanks.

It was during just such a development stage of an Iraqi nuclear facility that Israel attacked and destroyed a nuclear plant at Osirak as it neared completion in June 1981.

Thus the concern that Tel Aviv may attack the Bushehr facility before the reactor rods are lowered into the reactor core. Any attack after the chain reaction begins is certain to release radiation into the atmosphere.

The Perils of Pending Transparency

Other key factors are also driving Israel in this direction, including the need for a diversion.

Tel Aviv is now implicated in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The massive bomb blast left a crater 10 feet deep and 50 feet across. To date, Syria has been blamed for Hariri’s murder, along with Hezbollah.

The ensuing instability was cited by Israel as a rationale for its 2006 invasion of Lebanon with the U.S.—per usual—widely portrayed as guilty by association.

A UN tribunal is now turning the spotlight on Israel’s role. The tribunal will add fuel to the ongoing inquiry into the suspicious death of UK nuclear weapons inspector David Kelly who complained of the “sexed up” intelligence on WMD that induced the war in Iraq.

Meanwhile, ridicule is being heaped on the report of the 911 Commission for its glaring omissions, including its failure to identify U.S.-Israeli relations as a key motivation.

Fast-emerging developments on other fronts also spell trouble for Israel.

Even now, no one dares mention the mysterious collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 which was not hit by hijacked airliners. No one dares repeat the comment of leaseholder Leonard Silverstein on a PBS interview when he conceded the building was “pulled.”

Means, Motive & Opportunity

When waging Information Age warfare, false beliefs are routinely deployed as a form of weaponry to displace facts. That displacement process is much easier when the psy-ops includes an emotionally wrenching component.

Thus the necessity that those selling us an agenda wield influence in mainstream media.

With Israeli dominance also reaching deep into official decision-making, those in our military who question today’s Zionist narrative are routinely cashiered out of the service.

So who remains to counter the disinformation that passes for intelligence? In our tattered system of self-governance, who can deploy the facts required to displace the fictions foisted on us by Woolsey & Co.?

Answer: you and those with whom you share these facts and analyses.

The solution to this corruption requires people willing to tell the truth about what is being done to our country—and by whom. Make it personal—because it is. What you see chronicled in these accounts is how organized crime succeeds in plain sight.

In a system of governance dependent on facts for our informed consent, mainstream media was an early target of those perpetrating these ongoing psy-ops. Their success traces to domination of this key industry by supporters of this purported ally.

The facts are clear and the case is now compelling: Israel is not an ally but a reliable enemy.

Goldberg, Woolsey, Perle, Gingrich, McCain, Lieberman, Miller, Mitchell, Blitzer, Chalabi & Co. comprise an army of agents and assets enabled by an industry taken hostage by those destabilizing and delegitimizing the U.S.—from within.

Should the Zionist state again approach us for assistance—of any sort, the response must be clear and unequivocal: never again.

http://criminalstate.com/2010/08/playing-the-never-again-card-again/

A Permanent Housing Collapse?

2010-08-17T10:31:00.000-07:00

Global Research
by Shamus Cooke
August 17, 2010

The recent chaos that erupted when 30,000 people waited hours in the Atlanta, Georgia heat to receive applications for subsidized housing is a mere symptom of a worsening national problem.

The housing market appears to be on a never-ending downward spiral, with the much-discussed "recovery" always around the next corner.

The reasons that such a recovery is impossible at the moment should be obvious: millions of people do not have jobs; millions of others work only part time; millions more work fulltime but make very little money; and additional millions fear losing their jobs.

Under these circumstances, there can be no recovery in the housing market, which will continue to contribute to the broader depression-like economy in the U.S.

Interestingly, an op-ed article in The New York Times, entitled The 30 year Prison, actually took these realities into account when analyzing the housing crisis. The 30 year mortgage is the cornerstone of the residential housing market, which allowed millions of Americans to become homeowners.

But the economic conditions that allowed such a mortgage are disappearing. According to the op-ed author, Katherine Stone, one crucial problem of the housing crisis is that "...today’s mortgages are designed for yesterday’s borrowers."

Ms. Stone makes clear that "yesterday's borrowers" are people who could expect to have job security and were paid a livable wage. Thus, 30 year Mortgages "...work well as long as homeowners have stable, long-term jobs that enable them to regularly make their monthly payments."

"But these days such careers are increasingly scarce. Therefore, any effort to recover from the crisis must include more flexible mortgages that take today’s employment landscape, with its frequent job-hopping and episodic unemployment, into account." (August 14, 2010).

Of course banks are never very eager to be "flexible" with loans.

Nevertheless, Ms. Stone is part of the recent wave of journalists and politicians who have discovered that there is a "new normal" in the U.S. economy, which will inevitably have profound changes on how millions of people live their life. If the economy continues in the same direction it has been traveling for the last thirty years, with the needs of corporate owners overriding those of the employees, the "new normal" will demand that not only housing, but many other aspects of life be changed to suit the long-term joblessness and low wages that politicians and businessmen would like to make permanent.

Adequate housing is a basic human right. But often basic rights take a back seat to corporate profits.

Sometimes these basic rights must be demanded. The right to decent housing, a job that pays a living wage, health care, and peace could all be easily achieved in the United States if the economy were arranged with this purpose in mind. Sadly, it is not. It will take a mass movement of working people to re-arrange the priorities of those in power, or to put different people in power, so that the country’s resources are directed to those creating the wealth, or in the most need of it.

Helping jump start this movement should be the priority of every working/unemployed person. The first mass demonstrations to achieve working-class demands will be held on October 2nd, in Washington, D.C. and in other cities. Local demonstrations, community forums, or town halls can be held locally to coincide with the larger demonstrations, thus amplifying our voices. One demonstration will not be enough, but hopefully October 2nd will be the first step working people take towards empowerment, greater organization, and political independence. Once we learn to march and shout our demands in unison, greater goals can be achieved.

Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org). He can be reached at shamuscook@yahoo.com

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20659

Victims of Chernobyl disaster

2010-08-17T06:31:00.001-07:00

Mommy, Mommy When I Grow Up I Want to Be A Federal Worker

2010-08-15T14:41:00.000-07:00

Posted by Scott Redler
thedailycrux.com
8 15 2010

Things were sure different when I was growing up. My parents taught me the value of a strong work ethic because that was how you got ahead in life. I shoveled snow off neighborhood driveways starting at age 10, and by the time I hit 13 I was busing tables at a local restaurant where, at 16, I became a waiter. In high school I hit the books hard with dreams of going to college and becoming a doctor, lawyer or fortune 500 CEO. Sadly, our society has allowed itself to drift in an altogether different direction.

“Anyone who wants to work an interesting job, earn a generous salary, enjoy unbeatable, rock-solid job security and, most importantly, advance the public good in pivotal ways would probably favor the federal sector,” said Lily Whiteman, federal careers expert. This quote represents a troubling new reality in today’s American society: the public sector has become more attractive than the private sector. Today, government favoritism towards public workers has skewed the sense of values that is the American capitalist hallmark.

Ms. Whiteman continues on to say, “. . .government employees seem to work shorter hours, have more vacation time, access unbelievable healthcare, never worry about job security and even make more money than people slugging it out in the private sector.” Sounds like a dream job, right? Work less, don’t worry about losing your job over poor performance, get better benefits, and get paid more for doing a job that contributes very little to the nation’s output. So what, now, are parents supposed to tell their kids, “weasel your way into a government job and you will be set for life”? The reality of the situation is that the government always looks out for its own, even when the economy is spinning down the toilet.

The growth of public sector compensation and benefits in the context of a global recession is not only a travesty, it is a serious impediment to the future growth of our country. Why would a graduate from a top university pursue a job in the private sector (in which jobs are now even more scarce) when, after nine years of pay hikes and benefits in the context of a struggling economy, the compensation of federal civil servants is now, on average, twice that of private sector workers?

Recently, another $26 billion has been appropriated to the States, which, President claims, is about “saving the jobs of teachers and other essential professionals”. It wasn’t about saving jobs, it was about using tax payer money to pay off teacher union bosses, reward them for past political favors and to get the votes for the Democrats for the all-important November election. The additional funding is also to help bail out the bloated pension plans that guarantee a healthy yearly gain when the S&P is down over 10%-12% for the decade! Washington doesn’t seem to care about the busted 401k system of the private sector worker, they just want to shove their free-spending agenda down our throats while they raise taxes.

The United States right now needs to be moving in the opposite direction from the one we are currently heading in. We need the brightest college graduates innovating in the private sector, not working as overcompensated, underperforming federal workers. We need lower tax rates to stimulate private industry. We need to reorganize the flawed and broken pension system. We need to stop bailing out the unions in return for votes.

I’m just a technical analyst, but until we restore the core values that have driven this nation since its founding, our country will keep heading down this dangerous and self-destructive path. Until we correct these fundamental problems and get back on the road to growth, the stock market will not reward investors.

http://blogs.forbes.com/greatspeculations/2010/08/12/mommy-mommy-when-i-grow-up-i-want-to-be-a-federal-worker/?partner=dailycrux

August 15th – All day radio marathon on Revolution Broadcasting!

2010-08-15T13:46:00.001-07:00

On August 15th, 2010 we will have a worldwide Radio-Marathon Show on with magnificent guests from the US and Europe.

Guests like: Sheriff Mack, Schaeffer Cox, Joe Bannister, Rick Adams, Jack McLamb, Mike Rivero, Charles Erwin, Larry Becraft, Bev Harris, Max Igan, Luke Rudowski, Jane Burgermeister and many others…

We will discuss all the current issues with the developing tyranny, global enslavement, build-up of police state and fascism not only in the US but all over the world!

http://www.TaxFree15th.com
http://www.UnitedWeStrike.com
http://www.RevolutionBroadcasting.com

Getting a Congress that represents us

2010-08-14T13:50:00.000-07:00

By Ed Martin
opednews.com
8 14 2010

As you know, Congress is a godawful mess. The majority Democrats can't get done what the people want done because of the obstruction of the Republicans. The reason the Republicans obstruct the Democrats? It's because they're Democrats.

Obstructing Democrats is the primary interest of pretty close to half of Congress.

True, the Democrats did get half-assed health care and financial reform bills passed -- both look like bullet-riddled mailboxes on a Texas country road.

The one overriding reason that the Congress doesn't get anything done that is effective for us is that they have no stake in it. Whether you and I have health care or protection from the banksters screwing us over is that the members of Congress don't have to worry about any of that. They don't have their heart in it because they don't have to. They're not affected by it, one way or the other.

The reason they're not is that they make $174,000 per year. They're in the upper 15% of income distribution. We're in the other 85%. They also have expense accounts and health care that we don't have. In other words, they have no worries. We do.

How many people do you know who make $174,000 per year? I don't know any, and chances are that you don't, either. The only people we're allowed to vote for are chosen, not by us, but by one of the two political parties, and those unsatisfactory and limited choices are determined by contributions from the largest corporations and financial institutions.

There's no way a person making that kind of money can represent us. So, who can? Well, it would appear obvious that people like us can represent us if they're people like us.

The one thing that most defines us is how much money we make. And, like it or not, that's because the amount of money determines how we live our lives. We have no choice about that, just as we have no choice about who we vote for. The either A or B choice is the logical fallacy of the excluded middle. It doesn't include all the rest of it besides A and B.

I don't have any representation in Congress for two reasons. One is that all the people from my district and state are Republicans. The other is that they make $174,000 a year and I don't make anywhere near that.

The most reasonable way for us to be represented in Congress is by income distribution. Here's an approximation of how that breaks down as percentages of the population...

Super rich -- 1% Above $500,000
Top middle class -- 14% Above $100,000
Lower middle class -- 34% Above $35,000
Working class -- 35% Above $16,000
Lower class -- 16% $0 to $16,000

As you can see, members of Congress are in the top 15%.

Using these percentages to apportion Congress by income distribution works out to the following five groups of representatives, starting at the top...

House of Representatives:

4
61
148
152
70

Senate:

1
14
34
35
16

In the House there would be 370 out of 435 representing 85% of the people, d 61 representing the top middle class, and 4 representing the super rich.

In the Senate there would be 85 representing 85% of the people, 14 representing the top middle class and 1 representing the super rich.

Don't worry about the super rich having so little representation, they don't need it, they've got lots of money.

I have been selected at random and required to serve my country at jury duty and in the military. These 535 people can be selected in the same way. If I'm good enough to determine whether you're guilty and to protect you from armed invasion, I'm good enough to determine what's best for you and me.

Those selected would serve in the Congress at whatever income they had in each category when they were selected, and be paid the same income they had before being selected. Those in the lower income categories would still have to depend on whatever public assistance they are entitled to, food stamps, etc. and ride the bus or walk to work at Congress. The homeless in the $0 income category would just have to do the best they can, as they do now. The Capitol Police would be instructed to allow them to sleep on the front steps, weather permitting, to be close to work, and beg for petty change during off work hours.

That's right, Senators and Representatives making their way the best they can, just like the rest of us.

With an arrangement like that, we would have full, proportional representation that takes into account all social, cultural and economic categories of all the people.

No more Democrats or Republicans. No more campaign contributions from anybody. Just straightforward equal representation.

I know, it sounds like an entirely unworkable satire on our political system, and maybe it is, but give it some thought. I would accept such a system without hesitation. The reason for that is that I could have picked anyone at random from my block who would have made a much better president than George Bush, or for that matter, just about any of the people serving in Congress.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Getting-a-Congress-that-re-by-Ed-Martin-100813-69.html

"The Secret of Oz"

2010-08-14T11:38:00.000-07:00

From the ashes of capitalism, militarism and elite rule

2010-08-12T14:16:00.000-07:00

By Nick Egnatz
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Aug 11, 2010

Latest estimates are that man has existed for 2.5 million years. Capitalism for only the last couple hundred or so of those years. Before capitalism there was always the understood social contract that the leader or leaders of a society were expected to provide for the general welfare of the society’s people. Whether it was a tribal chief or king, there was always the implication that at some level there was a duty to provide for the safety and general welfare of the people.

Some societies were more egalitarian and shared better than others, but there was always the duty of the strong to provide for the weak. It would be foolish to postulate that the majority of civilizations and societies were more egalitarian than the U.S. after the Revolution. Many were not, but there was always the duty for the strong to protect and provide for the weak. It may not have been done well, but it was there.

When U.S. plutocracy (rule by the wealthy elite) and capitalism entered the scene, the social contract was broken. Contrary to the popular myth, the U.S. has never been a functioning representative democracy; it has always been a plutocracy. The Revolutionary War saw the rule by the British Crown replaced with rule by the wealthy landowners. Native Americans, blacks, women and non-property owning whites were not allowed to vote or hold office in our country. Over the years, the voting franchise has expanded while the choices available have narrowed so the end result is the same: plutocracy or rule by the wealthy elite. We now have the choice of voting for a corporate Democrat or a corporate Republican, both of whom support a continuation of the two-party monopoly they enjoy, U.S. capitalism and its handmaiden, U.S. militarism. Anyone not espousing this worldview is not given any attention by the corporate media or the monopoly political parties and thus has a snowball in hell’s chance of winning a congressional or presidential election.

Capitalism defined: an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market. (Merriam Webster)

It all sounds relatively benign, but let’s examine the results. Private ownership means that the whole concept of promoting the general welfare, called for in the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution, is no longer a concern. As private interests are given special consideration and protection, common interests or the general welfare correspondingly suffers.

Competition in a free market also has a nice ring to it. That is until one realizes that as competition increases and the winners narrow the field, the market becomes less and less free with the winners ruthlessly eliminating competition as monopolies become the norm. Capitalism is nothing more than a justification for the wealthy to exploit the poor and working class. Because of its very nature, it will always result in more and more for the wealthy and less and less for everyone else.

The capitalist’s duty is to increase his capital. He has no duty for social betterment or to make sure that his workers have enough to thrive on. While there are many instances of philanthropy from the capitalist class, there is no duty to do such. The state through the U.S. Constitution is given the duty to protect the capitalist’s private property. The poor and working class, without a basic safety net addressing the general welfare, are instead given the gift of freedom. It’s an easy gift to give, since it costs the wealthy nothing.

We have the freedom to exist without a job. We have the freedom to watch our children starve. We have the freedom to lose our home to foreclosure. We have the freedom to be homeless. We have the freedom of ignorance after receiving our news from the monopoly corporate media. We have the freedom to believe that we as individual employees or consumers can successfully compete against the millions and billions of dollars of corporate wealth in our American system. And finally, we have the freedom to then consent to this system by voting for one of our two political parties to continue it.

Philosopher Johann Goethe said, “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” A fitting epithet for gun-toting, bible-wielding, unemployed U.S. workers who swear by their so-called American freedom as they lose jobs, homes and dignity. Meanwhile, their capitalist masters on Wall Street laugh all the way to the bank.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, of which the U.S. is a member, keeps track of the level of inequality in member nations. The OECD states that the U.S. is the third most unequal developed country on earth, trailing only Mexico and Turkey. Also, that the U.S. is becoming more unequal at a faster rate than any other country. This is the sorry legacy of the country which was founded on the statement that “all men are created equal.” And this world leadership role in inequality was in place before the catastrophe of the Great Recession brought to us by Wall Street ‘banksters’ and paid lackeys in the Democratic and Republican parties.

Official unemployment of 10 percent doesn’t begin to tell the story of the catastrophe that has befallen the working class. The long-term unemployed who are excluded from the official unemployment rate, the part time workers who need to work full time and those working full time but making less than a livable wage would easily bring the number existing on less than it costs to live in the U.S. to the 30 percent range and perhaps much higher.

The primary causes of the Great Recession:

1. Neo Liberal Globalization since 1980 the policy accepted and adopted by both political parties of free trade, free markets, no regulations and tax cuts for the wealthy.

2. Granting the private sector banks the power to create money. This power should reside with the people and be done through the government so that all will benefit. Our system has led to tremendous wealth for the already wealthy and has created a debt based economy in which the wealthy continue to profit by putting the working class further and further in debt. Obama completely agrees with this inequality as his response to financial disaster and unemployment has been to give trillions of dollars to speculative Wall Street financial houses and propose alleviating unemployment by making credit available to small business owners who actually need employed customers with money and not more debt to make their businesses prosper.

3. The deregulation of the financial industry. Allowing capitalism to do what it does naturally; letting the strong eat the weak. When it all crashes, bailing the strong out and letting the working class and poor twist in the wind. Then passing a financial reform bill which does nothing of substance to abolish or regulate the derivative markets created by Wall Street which precipitated the Great Recession.

The economic rule of supply and demand states that in a competitive market, price will equalize the quantity supplied by producers and the quantity demanded by consumers. The supply is increased as productivity increases. Demand increases as wages increase. Historically in the U.S. productivity and wages have increased at approximately the same rate until the advent of the Neo Liberal Globalization period in 1980. “Supply side economics” was the name given to the system championed by Ronald Reagan of deregulation and tax cuts for the wealthy. From 1980 on, workers’ wages adjusted for inflation have remained flat, while productivity has increased dramatically. Workers were forced to work longer hours and to go deeper into debt to maintain the status quo.

That was before the Wall Street economic collapse in September of 2008. While conditions for many in the working class are now desperate, the wealthy have weathered the storm quite nicely. The Forbes Magazine list of U.S. billionaires increased from 359 in 2008 to 403 in 2009. With only 5 percent of the world’s population it’s nice to know that we in the U.S. support 40 percent of the world’s billionaires. Our top two Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have done OK for themselves during these trying economic times for so many others. Gates made $35 million each day of the year in 2009, while Buffet had to scrape by on only $27 million per day.

In 2009, The Equality Trust was founded in the UK by Bill Perry, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett after the publication of Richard and Kate’s book “The Spirit Trust: Why more equal societies almost always do better.”

“Great inequality is the scourge of modern societies. We provide the evidence on each of eleven different health and social problems: physical health, mental health, drug abuse, education, imprisonment, obesity, social mobility, trust and community life, violence, teenage births, and child well-being. For all eleven of these health and social problems, outcomes are very substantially worse in more unequal societies.”

The U.S. the inequality leader also registers the worst results across the spectrum of health and social problems studied. The U.S. trails the rest of the rich industrialized world in child well being! Pitiful, indeed.

Former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said, “We can have great wealth in the hands of a few or we can have a democracy. We cannot have both.”

Can we regulate ourselves out of this inequality matrix? OpenSecrets.org estimates the number of lobbyists in Washington at 12,000, Wikipedia estimates 17,000 and the Washington Post estimates 34,000. This translates into somewhere between 20 and 70 lobbyists paid to influence each and every member of Congress.

The Supreme Court ruled in the Citizens United case that the federal government cannot restrict the amount of money spent by corporations on federal elections. It costs a minimum of several million dollars to run for Congress or the U.S. Senate. Lacking independent wealth, a successful campaign is impossible without corporate backing. The recent Supreme Court ruling now gives the corporate world a double-edged sword to wield in support of the status quo of U.S. capitalism. Not only will anyone challenging the system be denied funding from the golden goose of the corporate world, but well-funded primary and general election opponents will materialize to oppose one who dares to question or attempts to regulate the corporate world in the slightest manner. Independent oversight or regulation from a Congress composed of corporate ‘yes men’ is impossible.

Those who have run campaigns to challenge the system from within have done so with no chance of success. The monopoly corporate media, owned almost entirely by five corporations, is not about to give up their monopoly status by reporting on or covering challengers to the capitalist system. The Ralph Naders (presidential), Cynthia McKinneys (presidential) and Cindy Sheehans (congressional vs. Nancy Pelosi) who have recently attempted to buck the system were doomed to failure.

To buck the system one must deny the legitimacy of an undemocratic U.S. state which:

* Places the property rights of the wealthy over the right to a basic existence for the poor and working class

* Is the third most unequal industrial nation in the world trailing only Turkey and Mexico

* Committed genocide against Native Americans

* Supported slavery of the African American people for two centuries and then segregation of them for another century

* Throughout its history has pursued a policy of U.S. Empire to benefit originally U.S. and now transnational corporations at the expense of the poor and working class at home and abroad

* Has historically pursued a policy of aggressive warfare against the First Americans, Mexico, Spain, Philippines, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Afghanistan and Iraq

* Has historically tortured people from the non European nations we have fought

* Has used its Central Intelligence Agency to overthrow democratically elected governments across the globe in Cuba, Haiti, Chile, Greece, Iran, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Congo and numerous others not democratically elected

Trying to reform such pervasive and all encompassing criminality by acknowledging the legitimacy of the institution responsible for the criminality is a fool’s errand. The U.S. nation and its Constitution have failed its people miserably in both promoting the general welfare called for in the preamble to the Constitution and promoting the doctrine of equality called for in the Declaration of Independence.

People of conscience have a duty to divorce themselves from this criminal system and call for a new nation to emerge from the ashes of capitalism, militarism and elite rule; a new nation conceived in the concept that all men are indeed created equal and that the duty of the state is to promote the general welfare for all its citizens while respecting and supporting the rights of others across the globe to the same.
Nick Egnatz is a Vietnam veteran. He has been actively protesting our government’s crimes of empire in both person and print for some years now and was named “Citizen of the Year” for Northwest Indiana in 2006 for his peace activism by the National Association of Social Workers. Contact Nick at nickatlakehills@sbcglobal.net.

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War Preparations? US Arms ‘Bonanza’ in the Middle East

2010-08-11T08:10:00.000-07:00

Israel and Saudis to buy advanced war planes

by Jonathan Cook
Global Research
August 11, 2010

Two of the United States’ closest allies in the Middle East, Israel and Saudi Arabia, are on the brink of signing large arms deals with the US in a move designed to ratchet up the pressure on Iran, according to defence analysts.

America has agreed to sell Saudi Arabia 84 of the latest model of the F-15 jet and dozens of Black Hawk helicopters. The deal also includes refurbishing many of the kingdom’s older F-15s, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

Israel is believed to have opposed the $30 billion deal. However, in a concession to Israel, the new F-15s, made by the Boeing Company, will not be equipped with the latest weapons and avionics systems available to the US military.

The last such major arms sale by the US to Saudi Arabia was in 1992, when the kingdom received 72 F-15s. On that occasion, Israel tried to block the $9bn deal by lobbying the US Congress, straining relations with the White House of George H W Bush.

Meanwhile, the US is preparing to provide Israel’s air force with the F-35, the latest jet fighter made by Lockheed Martin, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported last week.

The F-35’s stealth technology, which allows it to evade radar detection and anti-aircraft missiles, comes with a hefty price tag of up to $150 million a plane -- a cost that Israel had been balking at.

But, according to the reports, the US has offered Israeli firms defence contracts worth $4bn to supply parts for the F-35 -- a deal some Israeli analysts believe is designed to buy Israel’s silence over the Saudi deal and ensure it gets through the US Congress.

It is one of the largest such deals in Israel’s history and it would offset much of the cost to Israel of buying its first batch of F-35s.

The aircraft is not expected to enter service until 2014. If Israel signs up for a single squadron of 20 F-35s, as expected in the next few weeks, it would be the first country outside the US to secure the jet. Israel has been given an option to buy 55 more.

Last year Israel had threatened to abandon negotiations over the F-35 and opt instead to buy the advanced F-15. Saudi Arabia’s reported purchase of that jet appears to make such a scenario less likely.

The Obama administration has faced heavy lobbying from Israel to prevent the sale of the F-15s to Saudi Arabia.

“Today these planes are against Iran, tomorrow they might turn against us,” Haaretz quoted an unnamed security official as saying last month.

Ehud Barak, Israel’s defence minister, told the Washington Post last month that the US administration was committed to making sure Israel was not left in an “inferior situation” and was “doing a lot to support Israel’s qualitative military edge”.

The Saudis have become one of the largest purchasers of US-made arms since they bought the first AWACS surveillance planes in the 1980s. According to a recent Congressional report, the Gulf kingdom spent $36 billion world-wide on arms in the seven years to 2008.

Today, Saudi Arabia has the third largest air force in the Middle East behind Israel and Iran. The Royal Saudi Air Force has 280 “combat capable” aircraft, according to data compiled by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, compared to Israel’s 424 and Iran’s 312.

The Wall Street Journal did not specify the model of F-15 being bought by Riyadh, but experts widely assumed it to be the upgraded Strike Eagle. The jet, designed for precision air-to-surface attacks, was the main one used by the US in destroying Iraq’s radar and missile systems during the 2003 invasion.

Analysts said the joint strengthening of the Saudi Arabian and Israeli militaries was seen as a key regional interest for the US, given the belief in Washington that Iran is seeking to develop a nuclear warhead and is rapidly amassing a large arsenal of missiles.

If, as Iran reportedly claimed last week, it is in possession of Russian S-300 anti-aircraft missiles, the F-35 stealth technology would give Israel an important advantage in an attack.

However, some analysts have questioned the wisdom of the US arms sales.

Trita Parsi, an analyst at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington and an expert on Israeli-Iranian relations, said it was a “misguided policy” aimed at keeping Tehran “isolated and subdued”.

“All that is achieved by heavily arming Arab states and Israel is to increase Iran’s sense of insecurity and therefore make the region less secure,” he said.

Stephen Zunes, a US-based Middle East policy analyst, accused Washington of setting the stage for another “arms race” in the region.

“This is a pattern we’ve seen before. The US offers Arab states expensive modern armaments, and then turns around to Israel and tells it it needs to have even better weapons to stay ahead in the race. Then the pressure again mounts on the Arab states. It’s a racket that has been a bonanza for US arms manufacturers,” he said.

Israel receives $3bn annually in US military aid, more than any other country and covering about a quarter of Israel’s defence expenditure. Unlike other recipients, Israel is allowed to spend 26 per cent of the aid on the development and production of its own weapons systems.

However, Israeli officials are reported to fear that a combined squeeze on the country’s defence budget and a massive outlay on buying a large number of F-35s would leave the military without money to replenish its stocks of ammunition and bombs.

Last month Washington agreed to an additional military subsidy of $420 million to help Israel develop its “missile shield” programmes, designed to intercept short-, mid- and long-range missiles.

Israel has been concerned by the growing stockpiles of rockets and missiles that Hamas and Hizbullah have accumulated close to its borders as well as the more advanced arsenals of Iran and Syria.

In addition to the question of the price of the F-35, Israel and the US have been at loggerheads over whether Israel should be allowed to install its own avionics and weapons systems. So far the US has refused, and last month denied Israel a test aircraft.

In the past, Tel Aviv and Washington have fallen out over Israel copying and selling on American systems to other regimes.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.

A Cakewalk Against Iran

2010-08-11T00:48:00.000-07:00

by Philip Giraldi
August 05, 2010
Antiwar.com

Everyone who is concerned that yet another war in the Middle East could wreck what remains of the United States economy and probably strip away even more of our liberties should be troubled by the numerous calls for war against Iran. No one believes that Iran is anything but a nation that is one small step away from becoming a complete religious dictatorship, but the country has a small economy, a tiny defense budget, and, as far as the world’s intelligence services can determine, neither nuclear weapons nor a program to develop them. Labeling the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a new Hitler and describing the regime as "Islamofascist" is convenient but hardly conveys the reality of the complex political interaction taking place inside today’s Iran. Ironically, the animus directed against Tehran relates not so much to what it is doing as to what its government might do, hardly an adequate pretext for going to war and a standard of behavior that many countries in the world would fail.

A resolution (HR 1553) is making its way through Congress that that would endorse an Israeli attack on Iran, which would be going to war by proxy as the US would almost immediately be drawn into the conflict when Tehran retaliates. The resolution provides explicit US backing for Israel to bomb Iran, stating that Congress supports Israel’s use of "all means necessary…including the use of military force." The resolution is non-binding, but it is dazzling in its disregard for the possible negative consequences that would ensue for the hundreds of thousands of US military and diplomatic personnel currently serving in the Near East region. Even the Pentagon opposes any Israeli action against Iran, knowing that it would mean instant retaliation against US forces in Iraq and also in Afghanistan. The resolution has appeared, not coincidentally, at the same time as major articles by leading neoconservatives Reuel Marc Gerecht and Bill Kristol calling for military action. Both Gerecht and Kristol insist that action by Israel or the US would be better than doing nothing and both downplay the ability of Iran to counter-attack effectively. One might note that both Kristol and Gerecht have been dramatically wrong in the past, most notably in their analyses of developments in Iraq.

Kristol is a poseur, a foreign policy wannabe, framing policy around his own Straussian beliefs. Gerecht, who actually does know quite a bit about Iran and its internal politics, is the more dangerous of the two as he is able to use his knowledge, which he sprinkles throughout the article, to appear credible. But as is so often the case with the neoconservatives, the thinking is based on false assumptions, optimistic assessments, and leaps of the imagination about what might occur. One might recall neocon predictions of a "cakewalk" in Iraq, a war that still embroils tens of thousands of US troops and that kills Americans nearly every day.

In his article entitled "Should Israel Bomb Iran? – Better Safe than Sorry" Gerecht begins with three paragraphs outlining what might happen if Iran is attacked, to include attacks on US troops, shock oil prices, terrorist attacks worldwide, tumult in the Muslim world, and a rush by Iran to develop a nuclear weapon to defend itself. He concludes, however, that "These fears are mostly overblown."

Why Gerecht thinks that Iranian retaliation would be minimal is not completely clear, but he spends the next seven pages explaining why an attack on Iran might be a positive step. He opines that bombing Iran "remains the only conceivable means of derailing or seriously delaying Iran’s nuclear program…" Bombing would also result in "traumatizing Tehran." And he provides a second reason for staging an attack, his argument that "Iran has already embraced terrorism against Israel and the United States" and that its regime supports the "indiscriminate killing" of Jews. He presumes that Iran is hell bent on acquiring a nuclear weapon and would use it against Israelis "who must live with the Middle East’s merciless power politics…" or give it to terrorist groups to accomplish the same end. Gerecht recommends that Israel should attack Iran to "rock the system" to make the regime "lose face" and suffer a military defeat that could have fatal consequences for its survivability. He returns to the theme, mentioning oddly that "American fear of Iranian capabilities in Iraq and Afghanistan has been exaggerated" and then excoriates "an ugly anti-Israeli reflex" on the part of many Europeans when Israel uses lethal force to defend itself.

Gerecht is doing two things. First, he is ignoring any role that Israel might have had in creating its own predicament vis-à-vis Iran and its other neighbors. Israel is, for him, always the victim and never the instigator meaning that whatever it does is always self-defense and justifiable. Second, he assumes that Iran is manifestly evil and will always choose the most despicable option for its own behavior while he simultaneously only assumes the best motives and best possible outcome for any Israeli or American military action. He ignores the fact that Iran has no nuclear weapons program and assumes that Tehran is willing to bear the enormous expense and risk to develop a nuclear device and use it on Israel or give it to a terrorist even though that would be national suicide. He reflexively judges every group in the Middle East that is opposed to Israel as a terrorist and lumps them in as enemies of Washington as well as of Israel whether or not they have actually carried out attacks against the US. If Iran reacts to being bombed, he notes that "It is entirely possible that Khamenei would use terrorism against the United States after an Israeli strike," an asymmetrical response using available resources that many might consider self-defense against an attacker but which Gerecht chooses to dismiss as terrorism. Gerecht dismisses any legitimate criticism of the actions of the state of Israel as anti-Semitic or "ugly."

The reality is that an Israeli attack on Iran will trigger an all-out war in the region, which will quickly include the United States. It might or might not eliminate Iran’s technical ability to build a nuclear weapon and it would almost certainly accelerate that process. It would not bring down the Iranian regime and usher in reformers who would embrace Israel and the United States while singing "Kumbaya" around the campfire. It would be extremely nasty, would not solve any problems in the Middle East, and would kill tens of thousands of innocent people, if not more. It could easily lead to the use of nuclear weapons by either the United States or Israel. For the neoconservatives, it is easy to dismiss the possible downside while emphasizing the upside that they perceive, which is protecting Israel by damaging Iran’s nuclear program and possibly bringing about some version of regime change. But we have seen too many times in the past how the neoconservatives can be wrong — think only of the "cakewalk" that has been Iraq now seven years on and still running. A new war in the Middle East would be an unmitigated disaster for Iran, the United States, and even for Israel. It must be avoided at all costs.

http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2010/08/04/a-cakewalk-against-iran/

Google and Verizon Usher in the Internets

2010-08-10T14:47:00.000-07:00

t r u t h o u t
10 August 2010
by: Deb Weinstein

Monday's announcement that Verizon and Google will create a distinct wireless experience put net neutrality discussions not so much on the back burner as in the recycling bin.

Although early speculation suggested that the corporate giants were going to create the equivalent of an E-Z Pass lane for content providers willing to pay for higher content speeds, the actual plan is to create not just what amounts to a distinct "set of pipes" to funnel high-bandwidth content, but to also clearly define the wireless Internet as a rules-free zone that allows providers to determine what content reaches consumers.

According to a statement by the SavetheInternet Coalition, the actual proposal "isn't just as bad as we feared - it's much worse." Like cable television, the Verizon-Google proposal would create a tiered access system for providers, but unlike cable, where consumers can choose what to watch, the decision lies with the carrier. This distinction between consumer control versus a provider-as-filter system is what troubles net neutrality advocates. "It creates an Internet for the haves and an Internet for the have-nots" is how Andrew Jay Schwartzman, senior vice president and policy director at the Media Access Project described it in an interview with The New York Times on Monday.

Critics of the two-tier system say that, despite Google's spin that its proposal would foster innovation in the untethered web, they say this corporate optimism hides a very real potential for censorship. According to media advocacy group FreePress, there is precedent for concern, such as when Verizon blocked text messages from the Abortion Rights group NARAL in 2007, and when Comcast clamped down on peer-to-peer data distributor BitTorrent,. Further, the wireless web's footprint is large: According to a July 7 report by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, almost 47 percent of American adults tap into the wireless Internet with either laptops or a mobile broadband card, and 40 percent of American adults "plug in" to the Internet using cell- and smartphones. Expand the polling to include minors, and Pew says the percentage of wireless Internet users jumps from the almost-half mark to 60 percent of the US population.

With corporations taking on the role of a filter, and with the NARAL text ban as a frame of reference, FreePress says the result would be an Internet "for the private benefit of deep-pocketed special interests."

Google and Verizon's proposal does set up rules regarding filtering. According to the plan, Verizon and Google would invest the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) with authority over wired broadband that it was recently denied. "Our proposal spells out the FCC's role and authority in the broadband space ... and provides a mechanism for the FCC to use," their plans reads. Google and Verizon also say their plan also empowers the FCC - to a certain extent - in the wireless realm because consumers could file complaints and the wireless web would also come under the scrutiny of audits by the General Accountability Office.

Critics say such measures amount to worthless gestures. Speaking with Truthout last week, Public Knowledge's Communications Director, Art Brodsky, said "The mobile Web is obviously the future, the phone company's know it."

Some say it will also turn the wired web into a Potempkin village of content. "They are promising Net Neutrality only for a certain part of the Internet, one that they'll likely stop investing in," SavetheInternet Coalition said.

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BP's oil now oozing out from Beach sand in Louisiana

2010-08-09T13:45:00.000-07:00

That's why they didn't allow photographers...they were just BURYING the oil. I've seen other videos like this...pristine-looking beaches, where all BP did was bring in acres of sand and bulldoze it over the oil. They didn't "clean up" a damned thing, they just buried it.

h/t kdtroxel

Digital Education vs. the Ruling Elite

2010-08-08T10:19:00.000-07:00

lewrockwell.com
by Gary North
August 7 2010

Ruling elites as recently as 1600 appealed to God to justify their continuing rule. This was called the divine right of kings: rulership beyond any earthly court of appeal. That began to be undermined in the second half of the seventeenth century. A century later, Enlightenment democratic theory had replaced the divine right of kings. The divine right of Parliament or the divine right of the People replaced it.

This forced a major strategic change on the ruling elite. The ruling elite has to pretend that it does not exist. It formally acknowledged the legitimacy of the People as the final court of appeal. This involved training and screening the judges.

Basic to maintaining this deception has been control over the media. Also vital has been control over the schools – compulsory attendance laws, teacher certification, tax funding, and school accreditation. Above all has been control over textbooks.

This control is ending in the area of printed media, especially newspapers, which are dying. Control over TV news is fading. Digits are killing them. Now control over education is about to be undermined. Same reason: digits.

COMPETING DIGITAL CURRICULA

I have recommended to Ron Paul that he hire a director of curriculum development in one of his educational organizations. The director should then contract with Ph.D.s to create a comprehensive K–12 curriculum. Once it is ready, Paul's organization can post it online for free. I have presented this plan here.

Some parents will want courses taught live. Paul could also put together a faculty of graduate students with M.A. degrees or retired Ph.D.s to provide real-time lectures. The exams can be administered digitally. Record-keeping is digital.

He could charge a minimal $250 per course and split the money 50–50 with the faculty member who teaches it. This should be a profit-seeking venture. It could easily generate $25,000,000 a year. I have explained this here.

Free academic software now allows this. It's called Moodle. Any medium-size organization can now afford to create an online high school or even a university with this open source software. The Mises Institute now has its own online program called Mises Academy. People pay a minimal $250 to take a weekly class. Dr. Tom Woods is teaching a course on Roosevelt's New Deal this fall.

The existing system of government-funded education is facing a technological challenge. The Web can deliver content for free. The model for this is Salman Khan's wonderful Khan Academy. Students from all over the world start with 1 + 1 = 2, and go from there through calculus. It is all done with free 10-minute YouTube videos.

He did this in his spare time just because he wanted to. Now he has funding to create an entire curriculum.

In contrast, this is the model of today's high school.

Right? Right! You know it. I know it. We have known it all our lives. It never improves. It gets more expensive. It gets less efficient. We know it has no hope. Every few years, reformers announce a "new, improved" approach. It is not widely adopted, and wherever it is adopted, scores get worse. They will call for reforms forever. The system will just get worse.

It is paid to get worse. Tax money is automatic. No one stands up locally and runs for the school board on this platform: "Let's cut the budget by 10% next year, and another 10% the year after next." That would be considered the equivalent of blasphemy. Yet we know the tax-funded schools will not improve. Anyone who is so naïve as to believe that the Next Great Reform will be successful throughout the country probably ought to be institutionalized – at a minimum, he should be kept away from sharp objects.

THE COLLAPSE OF THE ACADEMIC CARTEL

The problem has been that private schools, also burdened with physical classrooms and buildings, are expensive. Not many parents have been willing to pull their children out of the tax-funded schools and enroll them in a private academy. They grin and bear it. "Our schools are not like those other communities' schools. Ours are highly rated." Really? Rated by whom? When? Using what methodology? How long ago?

Who produces the textbooks? New York publishing firms staffed by anti-capitalist Leftists? The same textbooks used in those other communities' schools? You don't say!

With the Web, a PDF file can be downloaded for free. This PDF can be a textbook. If it's in the public domain, it's free. You can print it out. Cost: toner and paper. Maybe you will want to buy a 3-hole punch and a $7 binder. After all, that 3-hole punch is a permanent investment. Amortize it over a 30-year period. You can afford it.

Do you want a video-based course? Salman Khan offers them.

How about MP3 audio files? There are free MP3 hosting sites. Anyone can post lectures.

MIT has put 2,000 mini-courses online for free. Did you know this? It's here.

Local colleges have resisted this. If you were a faculty member of Podunk State University, would you want the whole world to see you and your peers online, 24x7? Would you be confident that parents and students would then be willing to pay $50,000 to get a degree from your backwater institution?

So, university faculties are now in a difficult position. They must justify the absence of online lectures and course plans. Silence is embarrassing. The story of MIT's program is getting out. They will have to argue that MIT's online curriculum is a fluke, that a normal university would not be wise in posting its lectures and course notes for the general public to view free of charge. Yes, MIT can do this, but it's different. It's different because. . . . Well, anyway, it's different. It's not fair to use it as a model. Why not? Because it's the best. The academic world knows it's the best. As an MIT T-shirt says: "Harvard: Because not Everyone Can Get into MIT." The best doesn't count.

By the way, Salman Khan went to MIT and then the Harvard Business School. Now look what he's done. What's Podunk State to do?

Podunk State knows it is delivering a substandard product. It knows that it can keep its doors open only because tax money subsidizes its program. If it is possible to provide digital education, with digital exams, digital grading, and digital record-keeping – and it is – then what does Podunk U bring to the table that (say) the 100 best colleges and universities could not do better? What is the justification for Podunk State?

Accreditation. That's it? That's it.

The collegiate system is a cartel. It is now being threatened by the University of Phoenix, with its 500,000 students at (probably) $10,000 each per semester. The academic community sees the threat of profit-seeking universities. With 15,000,000 students enrolled, it would take only three-dozen University of Phoenixes to teach them all. Let's be generous. Say that 100 schools could do this. What would happen to the other 4,000?

Cartels always collapse. Only the threat of government violence against "cheaters" can sustain cartels. The collegiate cartel in the United States is maintained by a series of Federal government-recognized but privately run accrediting agencies – agencies staffed by members of the cartel. Here is the list.

What breaks cartels? Price competition.

PRICE COMPETITION

Decades ago, management expert Peter Drucker observed that whenever a new production technique lowers costs by 90%, it comes to dominate. The old producers can fight it, but they cannot prevail.

He said that existing producers can fight by pointing to the prestige of owning an expensive version. This is an appeal to the rich. It is an appeal to status. If you want an example of the status-dominated argument, see the response of the faculty at the University of California, Berekey, to the sensible suggestion that the campus offer distance-learing degree programs.

People who are really self-confident about their status do not play this game. I remember seeing an interview of Denzel Washington. He showed his watch: a Casio. "It cost $35, and it keeps perfect time." That kind of statement sends a chill down the spines of people working for Rolex.

Today, the cost of delivering a good education has fallen by far more than 90%. It has fallen to the cost of bandwidth. Bandwidth keeps getting cheaper.

Back in 1997, Drucker gave an interview to Forbes. In that interview, he offered this assessment and prediction.

Thirty years from now the big university campuses will be relics. Universities won't survive. It's as large a change as when we first got the printed book.

Do you realize that the cost of higher education has risen as fast as the cost of health care? And for the middle-class family, college education for their children is as much of a necessity as is medical care – without it the kids have no future.

Such totally uncontrollable expenditures, without any visible improvement in either the content or the quality of education, means that the system is rapidly becoming untenable. Higher education is in deep crisis.

If he was correct, the large physical universities have only 17 years to go.

Do I think they will disappear this fast? No. Why not? Because control over education is the #1 control device of the ruling class. It is even more important than the control over central banking.

The American educational system absorbs something in the range of 6% of the country's GDP, which means over 10% of the private sector's output. The finished product is a curriculum built on the presuppositions favored by the ruling class. State-funded institutions teach respect for state funding and the bureaucrats who control the flow of funds.

If state-funded education were ever to end, the major means of control by the ruling class would end. The ruling class will not surrender this control without a fight. But it will lose this fight.

The tools of this fight are digital. The basis of this fight is ethical: the right of parents to control the content of their children's education. The state-funded bureaucrats know this. They have fought ever since the foundation of the modern educational system in Prussia after 1810 to insulate their class from political control, while collecting tax money. This is the basis of the doctrine of academic freedom. It means freedom from interference by taxpayers and politicians.

By severing payment from control, the educrats have gotten themselves a sweet deal. Like the Congregational ministers in New England before 1819, they are on the state's payroll, but they insist on autonomy.

The cost of this arrangement is skyrocketing. The educational cartel is facing a revolt. Parents who don't like the content of tax-funded education are breaking ranks. They are teaching their children at home. This was fought by the states in the 1980s, but a series of court cases undermined the laws against home schooling.

Now budget cuts are forcing public school districts to adopt distance-learning programs. This is the death knell for the system. The tax-funded schools are facing budget ceilings. Meanwhile, education is getting steadily cheaper.

Dr. Art Robinson's Robinson Curriculum costs $200 for K–12. It's a one-time payment for the entire family. Yet it could be placed online and given away for free. The curriculum is self-taught. Students who pursue it can quiz out of two years of college, as his children did. They can enter college as juniors at the age of 16.

Of course, a wise parent will not send a child off to college at age 16. So, the child can take the last two years in a program such as Louisiana State University's distance learning program, or at Excelsior College, a private online campus.

Total cost of college? Under $11,000. The student can work part-time and pay his way through college.

Or else he can ask his parents to foot the bill of a conventional on-campus program ($50,000 to $250,000). He can also take on $20,000 in personal debt, which is now the national average.

If he flunks out, all this money is down the drain. Yet about half of students who enroll as freshmen do not graduate.

Which approach makes more economic sense?

What are you buying? An education or a shot at status? Is it a Casio or a Rolex?

There are not many Rolex-type watch firms. There are only about three-dozen Rolex-type universities. They enroll about 2% of the college population.

What is the future for the 4,000 others? Extinction or adjustment to the world of digits.

Digits are cheap.

A DIGITAL DAGGER

This is a digital dagger at the heart of the ruling elite. As this spreads, it will be the end of the nearly monolithic educational worldview, a worldview that rests on the assumption that ideas must be controlled, and that this control is best accomplished through screening. Such screening procedures must be in the hands of gatekeepers. These gatekeepers must be certified by other gatekeepers and protected by the state.

The Internet has destroyed most of the walls that give power to control over the gates. The center will not hold. The many competing views of how the world works will act as acid for the worldview of the power elite.

The historical mark of the collapse of the strategy of gatekeeping, after 5,000 years, was Matt Drudge's 1998 story about "Newsweek," which had suppressed the story of the unnamed intern and Bill Clinton. Soon, she was named. Then Clinton was impeached. His Teflon charm let him avoid conviction, but his reputation never recovered. He will always be remembered as the smiling rogue with a roving eye and a cigar. This is not what a member of the ruling elite expects after his successful lifetime effort to shinny up the greased pole of political success. It takes all the fun out of it.

We need an image that represents the digital transformation. I think it ought to be Alex Jones's bullhorn. He posts those video clips of him and some of his supporters standing outside a Bilderberg meeting or some other closed-door conclave of the ruling elite. He has his trusty bullhorn in hand. He shouts at them. He tells them that the People are watching. They don't know what to do about this. The video will be on YouTube within a few days – maybe hours.

Are the People watching? A few may be. Probably not all that many. They are watching funny videos, or pornography, or some other entertainment. But, from the point of view of the ruling elite, nobody is supposed to be watching a Jones video. They hate him and his bullhorn, but they can do nothing about it. Yes, someone hacked Jones's YouTube video of "The Obama Deception" in mid-July, removing it after 6,000,000 hits, but that merely annoyed him. It did not stop him. It is back up.

CONCLUSION

We are living in the era that will go into the textbooks. If I had the influence to name it, the way that historians designated 1946–1991 as "the Cold War," I would call 1995 "the end of the gatekeepers." It is the Berners-Lee era, but that reference is too obscure.

Every ruling elite rules on behalf of a basic idea, and this idea usually has a slogan. I think the ruling idea today is this: "the mixed economy." Digital technology and state bankruptcies are going to unmix it.

Karl Marx called capitalism's system "the cash nexus." Others summarize it as "money talks." I call it price competition.

The ruling elite has justified its claim to sovereignty and therefore legitimacy in terms of superior technological wisdom – the unique possession of an elite. One institution stands as a testimony against such a claim: Wikipedia. I think it will still be around in 2100. I don't think today's ruling elite will be.

August 7, 2010

GORDON DUFF: NEW “AL QAEDA” LEADER MAY BE ISRAELI

2010-08-07T12:36:00.000-07:00

veteranstoday.com
August 7, 2010
by Gordon Duff

PHONY TERRORIST LEADER BEING “BRANDED” BY ASSOCIATED PRESS, THE “VOICE OF ISRAEL”

Adnan Shukrijumah, 35 formerly of Brooklyn, New York and Miami Beach is more likely to carry the real name Levine or Goldstein. The “legend,” intelligence jargon for a false background constructed for an imaginary person, created for Shukrijumah is paper thin. An FBI Agent named Brian LeBlanc in an “exclusive interview” with the Associated Press warned the world of this new “bin Laden” clone.

Another term is “branding.” This is what was done with Osama bin Laden, a former CIA operative and minor player in Afghanistan during the 1980s. He was branded as a terrorist mastermind, blamed for 9/11 though there isn’t a single shred of proof of his involvement and has been chased around the world for the last nine years though he has been dead that long. Bin Laden died December 14, 2001. Adnan Shukrijumah, or whoever he really is, may well be the next “patsy” blamed for a “much too convenient” terror attack meant to send the United States to war with Iran, another war fought for Israeli business.

Now we are told that Adnan Shukrijumah of Miami Beach, probably enraged at the closing of Wolfie’s “Rascal House,” a really excellent deli, is the greatest threat America faces. An FBI agent has crowned him “king of Al Qaeda.”

One other problem is that Al Qaeda doesn’t exist, never has.

We simply made it up. There has never been such an organization, there has never been an organized world terrorist conspiracy of any kind. There have never been terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. Has anyone ever seen a photo of one? Of course not. In our nearly ten years scouring every square foot of Afghanistan, we have never found any of those “monkey bar” things we seeing the the films put on the internet. Journalists joke about these films along with the phony bin Laden videos. We call the Israeli group that puts them out “Bin Laden Studios.”

Arabs with box cutters had nothing to do with 9/11. This is a cover story. It was all made up. There is no proof of their involvement and, quite to the contrary, six of the supposed dead terrorists are alive and well and screaming for press interviews. 9/11 had nothing to do with terrorism, nothing to do with Arabs and everything to do with money. Follow the money.

Why is this game being played, attacks in London and Madrid, New York and Detroit now, why the games? The answer is simple. The Caspian basin has trillions of dollars in gas and oil, controlled by new and highly corrupt countries whose governments turned to Israel years ago for technical support. With Russia, the Gulf States and Nigeria controlling most of the world’s oil supply and money supplies almost exhausted, every loose cent that can be stolen already stashed away, looted by the banksters with the help of the Rothschilds and the Federal Reserve, this is the last great prize.

Chasing trillions of dollars of hydrocarbons, the last great source of collateral in the world, has brought about more than just the creation of phony terrorist organizations, false flag terror attacks and two phony wars.

Yes, we mean up to twelve trillion dollars in gas and oil is sitting there to be stolen from weak and corrupt governments. For this kind of money, we can easily expect another 9/11 or perhaps something worse, something “nuclear.” The people making these decisions care nothing for human life, nothing for America and certainly, one thing I can assure you, not a single one of them is a Muslim.

The process of funding the corruption of these governments has taken billions of dollars. That money has come from the narcotics trade re-instituted by the Bush administration after the invasion of Afghanistan. What was no opium production at all is now, not just opium but heroin, with refining now done in Afghanistan and new poppy fields being planted every day with American guarding, not only the harvest but helping with the export as well. This is why America has used “contractors” to such an extent.

It isn’t only Afghanistan, we are planting poppies in Iraq as well. In case, ok, let’s face it, when America loses the war in Afghanistan, it is likely the Taliban will destroy opium production again. The only thing keeping Afghanistan afloat is drug money, American payoffs to the Taliban to let our supplies into the country, estimated at nearly $800,000,000 a year paid to the enemy by America’s military, keeps them awash in cash. Taliban leaders have to travel to Pakistan. It is the only way they can fly to Dubai to bank their American cash. They share hotels there with the druglords tied to our “friends,” all involved in the same sick game.

In the end, gas and oil will be piped through Afghanistan from the narco-republics of the Caspian. These negotiations have been going on since the 1990s. Our invasion of Afghanistan was only part of it, part of the negotiations. The Taliban was looking for too big a cut of the profits. We thought we could brush them aside and take over. 9/11 and the carefully planned and staged disinformation campaign attempting to tie it to Afghanistan was nothing personal, it was business. People die in business every day. Ask any banker.

This is the reason an FBI agent’s uncontrolled blithering to an AP reporter is now in hundreds of newspapers as the branding of a new leader of a non-existent terrorist organization. It is also the reason we are likely to see a new terrorist attack in the United States after Labor Day. Attacks are time for news cycles. Check on that. We can expect one in September and another one around Christmas with one more on the run up to Easter.

What could we find out about Shukrijumah? Air Force pilots who have flown him and his family, yes, you have it right, United States Air Force, claim the photos and likenesses are totally phony. These pictures are someone else entirely. This isn’t the first time this has happened as the strange transformations of Osama bin Laden showed us. My how much bin Laden changed after his death.

It took minutes to get multiple confirmations on this. Everything about our “terrorist” and his family is being misrepresented. These aren’t even the same people. This is too easy.

If a several questions didn’t just come to mind after reading this, you aren’t getting enough sleep.

There are no people hiding in Afghanistan planning these attacks. There are no terrorist leaders. No, Mullah Omar, the imaginary leader of the Taliban is not planning a major offensive against American troops or attacks on anyone. Even if he does have one of those encrypted Israeli satellite phones that the rest of the insurgents are using to defeat American signals intelligence operations, he is unlikely to be doing anything other than waiting.

America, along with the “Karzai Incorpated” drug cartel has created a monstrous situation in Afghanistan. General Petraeus inherited a nightmare, 9 years of wrong direction, wrong country, wrong everything. Yes, there is corruption, evil. Yes, America is being victimized by violent men, planning the downfall of the United States.

We call them “congress.”

When something blows up, be it a dirty bomb in Cleveland, not too close to Shaker Heights, or a school in Little Rock, a “branded” terrorist leader, one with a storybook background, Saudi born, evil extremist Muslim dad, will be dragged out. As with most of our phony terrorists, he will be a ghost, a Mossad agent like the dozens, maybe hundreds of violent Muslim terrorists they dress up and parade out when needed.

Simply put, there is no Islamic terrorist movement of any kind other than the groups promoting a just and peaceful settlement in Gaza, groups that strike back against Israeli violence, really Israeli terrorism. They have no reason to attack the United States. Millions in the United States support them.

The cover for 9/11, the idea that Americans were “defiling” the religious shrines of Saudi Arabia is equally insane. Nobody in their right mind believes that. Extremists exist. They ran the United States. If you want to ask someone about 9/11, someone who could tell you why, tell you how, go to Dallas. Ask George “W” Bush about 9/11.

Dare to Prepare: Collapse of Civilization Now Guaranteed

2010-08-05T10:55:00.001-07:00

Eric Blair
Activist Post

"It has been written" as the saying goes. For many generations there have been small groups of people who have researched and protested the criminal nature of our rulers who cast their disease on civilization. These activists screamed truth to the masses about humanity's hidden slavery, yet few listened.

However, the injustices have now become too extreme, too obvious, that the truth has risen to near critical mass with the independent-minded population. And indeed many more sheep, who unknowingly fund their own prison, are waking up by the minute.

But can this mass awakening prevent our civilization from collapsing during this detonation period? Sorry folks, the answer is no. Because even if "The Resistance" is successful in swiftly overtaking the controls of government and overturns the Federal Reserve, the dominoes set in motion by the corporate rulers are still likely to fall as they still control the food, the oil, and the heavy weapons. Furthermore, the Federal Reserve will fight it out to the death, and they have the power to simply shut everything down with a flick of the switch.

The excellent story last week by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of Treasury under Reagan, called "The Year America Dissolved" dramatically describes the breakdown of civilization playing out in America:

It was 2017. Clans were governing America.

The first clans organized around local police forces. The conservatives’ war on crime during the late 20th century and the Bush/Obama war on terror during the first decade of the 21st century had resulted in the police becoming militarized and unaccountable.

As society broke down, the police became warlords. The state police broke apart, and the officers were subsumed into the local forces of their communities. The newly formed tribes expanded to encompass the relatives and friends of the police.

With the dollar’s demise, import prices skyrocketed. As Americans were unable to afford foreign-made goods, the transnational corporations that were producing offshore for US markets were bankrupted, further eroding the government’s revenue base.

The government was forced to print money in order to pay its bills, causing domestic prices to rise rapidly. Faced with hyperinflation, Washington took recourse in terminating Social Security and Medicare and followed up by confiscating the remnants of private pensions. This provided a one-year respite, but with no more resources to confiscate, money creation and hyperinflation resumed.

Organized food deliveries broke down when the government fought hyperinflation with fixed prices and the mandate that all purchases and sales had to be in US paper currency. Unwilling to trade appreciating goods for depreciating paper, goods disappeared from stores.

In an interview about the article, Roberts said he tried for years to reach people with facts and figures and hoped some fictional reality would work better. When asked if anything could be done to stop it, he responded "not at this rate." In addition to Roberts' piece comes the elite Rockefeller Foundation's analysis of the future of America. They are strikingly similar in their tone and outcomes:

The years 2010 to 2020 were dubbed the 'doom decade' for good reason: the 2012 Olympic bombing, which killed 13,000, was followed closely by an earthquake in Indonesia killing 40,000, a tsunami that almost wiped out Nicaragua, and the onset of the West China Famine, caused by a once-in a-millennium drought linked to climate change...

Not surprisingly, this opening series of deadly asynchronous catastrophes (there were more) put enormous pressure on an already overstressed global economy that had entered the decade still in recession...prompting the Economist headline: 'Is the Planet Finally Bankrupt?'

These dire circumstances forced tough tradeoffs. In 2015, the U.S. reallocated a large share of its defense spending to domestic concerns, pulling out of Afghanistan... Resource scarcities and trade disputes, together with severe economic and climate stresses, pushed many alliances and partnerships to the breaking point; they also sparked proxy wars and low-level conflict in resource-rich parts of the developing world. Nations raised trade barriers in order to protect their domestic sectors against imports and — in the face of global food and resource shortages — to reduce exports of agricultural produce and other commodities.

With government power weakened, order rapidly disintegrating, and safety nets evaporating, violence and crime grew more rampant. Countries with ethnic, religious, or class divisions saw especially sharp spikes in hostility.

So, the future "has been written" by the masters of the universe and has now entered the collective consciousness of a huge number of people. Whether the motivator is religion, science, economics, philosophy, government, or all of the above; the experts and the commoners alike see it coming, therefore it shall be. And most importantly, the powers-that-be require this rough road in America to pave their global agenda through.

The collapse has even entered into the mainstream debate by default or by popular demand. Given the rapid growth of the the resistance movement on the Internet, the mainstream news outlets know exactly which articles are driving traffic to their respective websites, and it isn't fluff pieces anymore. Sure we may look at a picture of Lindsay Lohan half-naked and wasted in a bar while were on the Huffington Post, but that's not what drove us there. The stories with the sharp fangs of truth and outrage are primarily running the show now and they are fully aware of it.

The Roberts and Rockefeller warnings of complete collapse are a few years out, although we are certainly experiencing the first dominoes falling. It seems futile to try to stop the collapse, therefore the immediate focus should be on preparation. Does that mean we should stop waking people up? No, but we should encourage them to prepare now for a societal breakdown.

To the sheep who happened to stumble upon this radical little article and don't think it can happen in America -- picture your city as Detroit, but without Federal aid, food or fuel . . . and welcome to the new world order!

http://www.activistpost.com/2010/08/dare-to-prepare-collapse-of.html

REALITY REPORT #56 - Rangel's Slavery Bill Exposed

2010-08-04T13:45:00.001-07:00

In this edition Gary Franchi zooms in on Charlie Rangel's Slavery Bill, HR 5741 and Nina Police presents video of Congressman Stark's admission of Federal Power. She also brings you the memo that exposes the US Immigration Service's backdoor amnesty plans, and Ron Paul's new SEC Transparency Bill. We also break a story on the new CIA / Google backed company currently harvesting web data to track you. Gary presents another sneak peek interview from "Enemy of the State: Camp FEMA 2" featuring Stewart Rhodes from Oathkeepers. Plus a new "Enemy of the State" is branded and we take a dip into the mailbag to find out what you think about Wikileaks.

comment by kdtroxel.. WRH

Rockefeller Foundation: Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development

2010-08-03T10:44:00.000-07:00

August 3rd, 2010

This Rockefeller Foundation report lays out four possible scenarios for the near future. I’ll just clip a few passages from each of the four. You’ll love this.

Via: Rockefeller Foundation:

LOCK STEP – A world of tighter top-down government control and more authoritarian leadership, with limited innovation and growing citizen pushback

In 2012, the pandemic that the world had been anticipating for years finally hit. Unlike 2009’s H1N1, this new influenza strain — originating from wild geese — was extremely virulent and deadly. Even the most pandemic-prepared nations were quickly overwhelmed when the virus streaked around the world, infecting nearly 20 percent of the global population and killing 8 million in just seven months, the majority of them healthy young adults. The pandemic also had a deadly effect on economies: international mobility of both people and goods screeched to a halt, debilitating industries like tourism and breaking global supply chains. Even locally, normally bustling shops and office buildings sat empty for months, devoid of both employees and customers.

…

At first, the notion of a more controlled world gained wide acceptance and approval. Citizens willingly gave up some of their sovereignty — and their privacy — to more paternalistic states in exchange for greater safety and stability.

Citizens were more tolerant, and even eager, for top-down direction and oversight, and national leaders had more latitude to impose order in the ways they saw fit. In developed countries, this heightened oversight took many forms: biometric IDs for all citizens, for example, and tighter regulation of key industries whose stability was deemed vital to national interests. In many developed countries, enforced cooperation with a suite of new regulations and agreements slowly but steadily restored both order and, importantly, economic growth.

CLEVER TOGETHER – A world in which highly coordinated and successful strategies emerge for addressing both urgent and entrenched worldwide issues

The recession of 2008-10 did not turn into the decades-long global economic slide that many had feared. In fact, quite the opposite: strong global growth returned in force, with the world headed once again toward the demographic and economic projections forecasted before the downturn.

India and China were on track to see their middle classes explode to 1 billion by 2020. Mega-cities like Sao Paulo and Jakarta expanded at a blistering pace as millions poured in from rural areas. Countries raced to industrialize by whatever means necessary; the global marketplace bustled.

But two big problems loomed. First, not all people and places benefited equally from this return to globalized growth: all boats were rising, but some were clearly rising more. Second, those hell-bent on development and expansion largely ignored the very real environmental consequences of their unrestricted growth. Undeniably, the planet’s climate was becoming increasingly unstable.

Sea levels were rising fast, even as countries continued to build-out coastal mega-cities. In 2014, the Hudson River overflowed into New York City during a storm surge, turning the World Trade Center site into a three-foot-deep lake. The image of motorboats navigating through lower Manhattan jarred the world’s most powerful nations into realizing that climate change was not just a developing-world problem.

That same year, new measurements showing that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were climbing
precipitously created new urgency and pressure for governments (really, for everyone) to do
something fast.

…

A functioning global cap and trade system was also established. Worldwide, the pressure to reduce waste and increase efficiency in planet-friendly ways was enormous. New globally coordinated systems for monitoring energy use capacity — including smart grids and bottom-up pattern recognition technologies — were rolled out.

HACK ATTACK – An economically unstable and shock-prone world in which governments weaken, criminals thrive, and dangerous innovations emerge

Devastating shocks like September 11, the Southeast Asian tsunami of 2004, and the 2010 Haiti earthquake had certainly primed the world for sudden disasters. But no one was prepared for a world in which large-scale catastrophes would occur with such breathtaking frequency. The years 2010 to 2020 were dubbed the “doom decade” for good reason: the 2012 Olympic bombing, which killed 13,000, was followed closely by an earthquake in Indonesia killing 40,000, a tsunami that almost wiped out Nicaragua, and the onset of the West China Famine, caused by a once-in a-millennium drought linked to climate change.

Not surprisingly, this opening series of deadly asynchronous catastrophes (there were more) put enormous pressure on an already overstressed global economy that had entered the decade still in recession. Massive humanitarian relief efforts cost vast sums of money, but the primary sources — from aid agencies to developed-world governments — had run out of funds to offer. Most nation-states could no longer afford their locked-in costs, let alone respond to increased citizen demands for more security, more healthcare coverage, more social programs and services, and more infrastructure repair. In 2014, when mudslides in Lima buried thousands, only minimal help trickled in, prompting the Economist headline: “Is the Planet Finally Bankrupt?”

These dire circumstances forced tough tradeoffs. In 2015, the U.S. reallocated a large share of its defense spending to domestic concerns, pulling out of Afghanistan — where the resurgent Taliban seized power once again. In Europe, Asia, South America, and Africa, more and more nationstates lost control of their public finances, along with the capacity to help their citizens and
retain stability and order. Resource scarcities and trade disputes, together with severe economic and climate stresses, pushed many alliances and partnerships to the breaking point; they also sparked proxy wars and low-level conflict in resource-rich parts of the developing world. Nations raised trade barriers in order to protect their domestic sectors against imports and — in the face of global food and resource shortages — to reduce exports of agricultural produce and other commodities. By 2016, the global coordination and interconnectedness that had marked the post-Berlin Wall world was tenuous at best.

With government power weakened, order rapidly disintegrating, and safety nets evaporating, violence and crime grew more rampant. Countries with ethnic, religious, or class divisions saw especially sharp spikes in hostility: Naxalite separatists dramatically expanded their guerrilla campaign in East India; Israeli- Palestinian bloodshed escalated; and across Africa, fights over resources erupted along ethnic or tribal lines. Meanwhile, overtaxed militaries and police forces could do little to stop growing communities of criminals and terrorists from gaining power. Technology-enabled gangs and networked criminal enterprises exploited both the weakness of states and the desperation of individuals. With increasing ease, these “global guerillas” moved illicit products through underground channels from poor producer countries to markets in the developed world. Using retired 727s and other rogue aircraft, they crisscrossed the Atlantic, from South America to Africa, transporting cocaine, weapons, and operatives. Drug and gun money became a common recruiting tool for the desperately poor.

SMART SCRAMBLE – An economically depressed world in which individuals and communities develop localized, makeshift solutions to a growing set of problems

The global recession that started in 2008 did not trail off in 2010 but dragged onward. Vigorous attempts to jumpstart markets and economies didn’t work, or at least not fast enough to reverse the steady downward pull. The combined private and public debt burden hanging over the developed world continued to depress economic activity, both there and in developing countries with economies dependent on exporting to (formerly) rich markets. Without the ability to boost economic activity, many countries saw their debts deepen and civil unrest and crime rates climb.

The United States, too, lost much of its presence and credibility on the international stage due to deepening debt, debilitated markets, and a distracted government. This, in turn, led to the fracturing or decoupling of many international collaborations started by or reliant on the U.S.’s continued strength.

…

Makeshift, “good enough” technology solutions — addressing everything from water purification and harnessing energy to improved crop yield and disease control — emerged to fill the gaps. Communities grew tighter. Micro-manufacturing, communal gardens, and patchwork energy grids were created at the local level for local purposes. Many communities took on the aura of co-ops, some even launching currencies designed to boost local trade and bring communities closer together. Nowhere was this more true than in India, where localized experiments proliferated, and succeeded or failed, with little connection to or impact on other parts of the country — or the world.

Arizona Sheriff: ‘Our Own Government Has Become Our Enemy’

2010-08-02T11:43:00.000-07:00

CNSNews.com
Monday, August 02, 2010
By Penny Starr, Senior Staff Writer

Sheriff Babeu told CNSNews.com that rather than help law enforcement in Arizona stop the hundreds of thousands of people who come into the United States illegally, the federal government is targeting the state and its law enforcement personnel.

“What’s very troubling is the fact that at a time when we in law enforcement and our state need help from the federal government, instead of sending help they put up billboard-size signs warning our citizens to stay out of the desert in my county because of dangerous drug and human smuggling and weapons and bandits and all these other things and then, behind that, they drag us into court with the ACLU,” Babeu said.

The sheriff was referring to the law suits filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the U.S. Department of Justice challenging the state’s new immigration law.

“So who has partnered with the ACLU?” Babeu said in a telephone interview with CNSNews.com. “It’s the president and (Attorney General) Eric Holder himself. And that’s simply outrageous.”

Last week, U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton placed a temporary injunction on portions of the bill that allowed law enforcement personnel during the course of a criminal investigation who have probable cause to think an individual is in the country illegally to check immigration status. The state of Arizona filed an appeal on Thursday with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

“Our own government has become our enemy and is taking us to court at a time when we need help,” Babeu said.

Babeu and Sheriff Larry Dever of Cochise County Ariz., spoke by phone with CNSNews.com last week about the May 17 ACLU class-action lawsuit, which charges the law uses racial profiling and named the county attorneys and sheriffs in all 15 Arizona counties as defendants. The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit on July 6, charging the Arizona law preempted the federal government’s sole right to enforce immigration law.

“If the president would do his job and secure the border; send 3,000 armed soldiers to the Arizona border and stop the illegal immigration and the drug smuggling and the violence, we wouldn’t even be in this position and where we’re forced to take matters into our own hands,” Babeu said.
Dever said the federal government’s failure to secure the border and its current thwarting of Arizona’s effort to control illegal immigration within its borders has implications for the entire country.

“The bigger picture is while what’s going on in Arizona is critically important, what comes out of this and happens here will affect our entire nation in terms of our ability to protect our citizenry from a very serious homeland security threat,” Dever said. “People who are coming across the border in my county aren’t staying there. They’re going everywhere USA and a lot of them are bad, bad people.”

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), about 250,000 people were detained in Arizona in the last 12 months for being in the country illegally. Babeu said that that number only reflects the number of people detained and that thousands more enter the country illegally each year.

The CBP also reports that 17 percent of those detained already have a criminal record in the United States.

Both Babeu and Dever said they want to remain involved in the legal battle over the law, which many experts predict will end up being decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Dever has hired an independent attorney to represent him in the ACLU case and his attorney has already filed a motion of intervention in the DOJ lawsuit so the “(Dever) will have a seat at the table.”

A Web site also has been launched by the non-profit, Iowa-based Legacy Foundation to raise money for the Babeu’s and Dever’s legal defense.

Both men said they believe the outcome of the case has national significance.“For us, this is a public safety matter and a national security threat,” Babeu said.

Censored Gulf eyewitness testimonies of coughing up blood and other horror stories

2010-08-01T11:20:00.000-07:00

Examiner Deborah Dupre'

July 31, 10:02
What you can't smell can kill. If you smell Gulf toxins, you've been poisoned says Toxicologist Ott

Coughing up blood is among horrors that eyewitnesses are reporting in south Louisiana where BP medics diagnose the sudden widespread, burning, itching skin, lesions and marks as "scabies" or staph and government health focus on "stress" and mental condition of millions of people poisoned with what scientists report is 11 times more lethal than crude oil toxins now in Gulf and coastal water and air. Americans are still encouraged to eat Gulf seafood.

On July 29 Global Justice Radio Blog Talk Radio program hosted by Rev. T.K. (Kathryn) O'Shannahan-Hyland and Vin Beazel called "Agent Orange Alert," listeners heard eyewitness and personal accounts of internal bleeding from orifices including coughing up blood and nose bleeds.

There was a call-in from a woman stranded and ill with rashes on her body. She was calling for help.

Callers dscribed leg-swelling among other effects since the oil explosion and lethal dispersant spraying operation.

Project Gulf Impact report on IntelHub that 1000's of adults and children in S. Louisiana are reporting scabs, lesions and skin rashes.

One woman, preferring to remain anonymous, interviewed by the Project not only has this skin condition, but also "aching bones, weight loss, stomach pains, inflammation in her leg and sties developing in her eyes." (IntelHub: Thousands in Gulf suffer misdiagnosed skin lesions, Jul 31, 2010)
http://image3.examiner.com/images/blog/replicate/EXID10438/images/DSCF23512-550x500.jpg
Photo: Project Gulf Impact / IntelHub

Micha Walsh was a Gulf Coast volunteer in Grand Isle, Louisiana for four weeks. She then received a heavy toxic exposure during a 3-hour trip research team trip to Barataria Bay.

Walsh explains being unprepared for what she saw that day the team went out to collect water samples. Walsh would not be alone in thinking the she would not witness what she did. Mainstream news is blanketing the world with reports that clean-up workers cannot find oil. Walsh explained that the Barataria Bay area of south Louisiana where she went with the team is heavily oiled.

One of those researchers was soon coughing up blood.

BP's well is still "constantly leaking oil"; "Nothing to see here" by OilFlorida reported by IntelHub follows:

EPA analyst whistleblower Hugh Kaufman recently explained that "we have dolphins that are hemorrhaging. People who work near it are hemorrhaging internally. And that’s what dispersants are supposed to do." (Author's emphasis: See Censored Gulf news: People bleeding internally. Millions poisoned. EPA whistleblower, Dupre, D. Examiner, July 21, 2010 and MSNBC: Corexit injures human plus hides criminal evidence (video))

Walsh said that due to her toxic exposure symptoms, shd needed to go somewhere right after the radio show for detoxing, but has no insurance.

Barefoot Doctors have since reported that they need a network of people of goodwill to offer a room in their homes for Gulf Coast volunteers to detox.

During the program, listeners heard about using their sense of smell to judge severity of air quality and health impact. This is a dangerous myth.

According to authors of Gulf Oil Spill Health Hazards, "In some cases, volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) released from crude oil can be detectable by smell. But not all hazardous airborne chemicals have a detectable odor.

"The absence of oil odors does not mean that there are no crude oil chemicals in the air."

The authors highlight that "children and adults with asthma and other respiratory health problems (e.g., COPD) can experience serious health problems as a result of exposure to irritants, including those from oil spill chemicals below exposure rates the EPA claims could cause short-term health problems."

COPD, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease refers to chronic bronchitis and emphysema that commonly co-exist. It is a serious lung disease that over time, makes it hard to breathe, ("makes it hard to get air in and out") according to the National Institute of Heart Lung and Blood Institute (NIHLB).

"When COPD is severe, shortness of breath and its other symptoms can get in the way of even the most basic tasks, such as doing light housework, taking a walk, even washing and dressing." (NIHLB)

* COPD is the 4th leading cause of death in the United States and causes serious, long-term disability
* COPD kills more than 120,000 Americans each year. That's one death every 4 minutes
* More than 12 million people are diagnosed with COPD
* An additional 12 million likely have COPD and don't even know it (NIHLB)

People such as Dr. Riki Ott and EPA analyst, High Kaufman have been alerting the public about Gulf Coast toxic dangers. Their alerts, however, have been muffled by the petrochemical-military-industrial complex TV and th BP's PR campaign that show no respect for human life, even most basic human rights.

The Gulf PR campaign is thus far successful in that many Americans seem oblivious that genocide is being conducted on people of the Deep South, eerily similar to the Germans who claimed not knowing Nazis were gassing Jews, gypsies and the mentally ill.

Dr. Ott has stated that if people remain in the Gulf Coast area, they need to be wearing respirators. No mention was made during the raio program about the volunteers nor the residents following Ott's advice about respirators.

Humans Helping Humans

On the radio program, Laila Bicksler stated that most people down in south Louisiana haven't the means to even get as far as New Orleans if they want to do so. She agrees that the rest of the public, away from the coast, are unaware of just how dangerous the toxins are that people are being exposed to the point that fund-raisers are solely to pay out-of-work fishermen.

Bicksler is part project in Louisiana's hard-hit Plaquemines Parish. Her organization, Humans Helping Humans of Louisiana and the Earth is a faith-based organization with a simple goal: helping people help themselves.

Founded by a pastor, a social worker and a teacher, the group seeks to give voice to the voiceless and assist them to survive in the wake of natural and man-made disasters.

"Yes, there are many assistance groups out there. We are here to fill the gaps, serving in areas they choose not to go," Bicksler stated.

"Our current project is a family fair. We plan is to have a public BBQ complete with entertainment."

The good Samaritans will have booths for area residents to get school supplies, uniforms, and shoes plus food for their hungry families.

Plight of fishing families and fish eaters

"This is a fishing community – a proud people. They do not like to ask for help," stated Bicksler.

"When they did approach BP for help, they were turned away. Their marina is empty. It should be thriving.

Is the Gulf seafood safe? Gulf seafood safety is questioned not only in the Gulf Coast area, but nationally since the Gulf provides seafood on the tables of Americans throughout the country, seafood possibly tainted with dangerous poisons due to the prolonged use of chemical dispersants applied on oil flowing out of Deepwater Horizon's oil well and sprayed into the air.

The government-BP partnerhship continues to lie that there is no public health crisis in the Gulf Coast region and that the food web is not being altered, yet the Louisiana tourist industry believes and promotes the dangerous cover-up.

Scientists have reported early signs of the Gulf oil catastrophe altering the marine food web by killing or tainting some Gulf water creatures and increasing growth of others that thrive on fouled environments. (See Censored Gulf news: Food web 'not altered' lies in public health crisis D. Dupre, Examiner, July 19, 2010)

In early July, an Imperial College in London study revealed that oil spills can block the ocean's natural ability to filter arsenic out of seawater.

In late July, a Tulane University study revealed that samples of crab larvae from the area tested positive for hydrocarbons. The “orange blobs found lodged in the bodies of tiny blue crab larvae collected from marshes that stretch from Texas to Florida” appear to contain Corexit." (Fox 8 in New Orleans, reported on IntelHub) Not only are blue crabs a favorite Gulf food; other fish eat crab larvae.

Representative Edward Markey (D-MA) tried contacting FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg to confirm Gulf seafood safety, but still hasn't heard back according to Care2 that today, launched a campaign to tell FDA Commissioner Hamburg to come clean about food safety in the Gulf.

New Orleans tourist industry is promoting that y'all come on and eat their Gulf seafood. This weekend, the Louisiana Convention and Business Center launched a new website on This Just In New Orleans featuring the video, Seafood Fresh As Ever (below),

"Now would be the time to try it."

src="http://player.ooyala.com/player.js?embedCode=F0dGRsMTpmQFlvjoHEE5T98L1wuRcGzK&width=640&deepLinkEmbedCode=F0dGRsMTpmQFlvjoHEE5T98L1wuRcGzK&height=360&autoplay=1">

Bicksler stated that owners of only four of the hundreds of boats that dock in Plaquemines Parish "have been hired by BP and its operatives and that they were politically connected. The rest were not."

On the radio program, she explained that other boats that can go out to look for fish return to port empty, and that "the seafood supplies have been depleted."

Bicksler said:

"We have looked deep into the sorrowful eyes of the fishermen.

"We have heard the plaintive pleas of mothers.

"We have smelled the foul noxious odor of the oil.

"We cannot stand idly by and do nothing."

http://www.examiner.com/x-10438-Human-Rights-Examiner~y2010m7d31-Exclusive-Censored-Gulf-news-Coughing-up-blood-Eyewitnesses-horror-stories

Russians say war with Iran is completely unacceptable

2010-07-31T12:32:00.001-07:00

Monsanto: The world's poster child for corporate manipulation and deceit

2010-07-30T11:44:00.000-07:00

Friday, July 30, 2010
by: Jeffrey M. Smith

(NaturalNews) At a biotech industry conference in January 1999, a representative from Arthur Anderson, LLP explained how they had helped Monsanto design their strategic plan. First, his team asked Monsanto executives what their ideal future looked like in 15 to 20 years. The executives described a world with 100 percent of all commercial seeds genetically modified and patented. Anderson consultants then worked backwards from that goal, and developed the strategy and tactics to achieve it. They presented Monsanto with the steps and procedures needed to obtain a place of industry dominance in a world in which natural seeds were virtually extinct.

This was a bold new direction for Monsanto, which needed a big change to distance them from a controversial past. As a chemical company, they had polluted the landscape with some of the most poisonous substances ever produced, contaminated virtually every human and animal on earth, and got fined and convicted of deception and wrongdoing. According to a former Monsanto vice president, "We were despised by our customers."

So they redefined themselves as a "life sciences" company, and then proceeded to pollute the landscape with toxic herbicide, contaminate the gene pool for all future generations with genetically modified plants, and get fined and convicted of deception and wrongdoing. Monsanto's chief European spokesman admitted in 1999, "Everybody over here hates us." Now the rest of the world is catching on.

"Saving the world," and other lies
Monsanto's public relations story about genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are largely based on five concepts.

1. GMOs are needed to feed the world.
2. GMOs have been thoroughly tested and proven safe.
3. GMOs increase yield.
4. GMOs reduce the use of agricultural chemicals.
5. GMOs can be contained, and therefore coexist with non-GM crops.

All five are pure myths -- blatant falsehoods about the nature and benefit of this infant technology. The experience of former Monsanto employee Kirk Azevedo helps expose the first two lies, and provides some insight into the nature of the people working at the company.

In 1996, Monsanto recruited young Kirk Azevedo to sell their genetically engineered cotton. Azevedo accepted their offer not because of the pay increase, but due to the writings of Monsanto CEO Robert Shapiro. Shapiro had painted a picture of feeding the world and cleaning up the environment with his company's new technology. When he visited Monsanto's St. Louis headquarters for new employee training, Azevedo shared his enthusiasm for Shapiro's vision during a meeting. When the session ended, a company vice president pulled him aside and set him straight. "Wait a second," he told Azevedo. "What Robert Shapiro says is one thing. But what we do is something else. We are here to make money. He is the front man who tells a story. We don't even understand what he is saying." Azevedo realized he was working for "just another profit-oriented company," and all the glowing words about helping the planet were just a front.

A few months later he got another shock. A company scientist told him that Roundup Ready cotton plants contained new, unintended proteins that had resulted from the gene insertion process. No safety studies had been conducted on the proteins, none were planned, and the cotton plants, which were part of field trials near his home, were being fed to cattle. Azevedo "was afraid at that time that some of these proteins may be toxic."

He asked the PhD in charge of the test plot to destroy the cotton rather than feed it to cattle, arguing that until the protein had been evaluated, the cows' milk or meat could be harmful. The scientist refused. Azevedo approached everyone on his team at Monsanto to raise concerns about the unknown protein, but no one was interested. "I was somewhat ostracized," he said. "Once I started questioning things, people wanted to keep their distance from me. . . . Anything that interfered with advancing the commercialization of this technology was going to be pushed aside." Azevedo decided to leave Monsanto. He said, "I'm not going to be part of this disaster."

Monsanto's toxic past
Azevedo got a small taste of Monsanto's character. A verdict in a lawsuit a few years later made it more explicit. On February 22, 2002, Monsanto was found guilty for poisoning the town of Anniston, Alabama with their PCB factory and covering it up for decades. They were convicted of negligence, wantonness, suppression of the truth, nuisance, trespass, and outrage. According to Alabama law, to be guilty of outrage typically requires conduct "so outrageous in character and extreme in degree as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency so as to be regarded as atrocious and utterly intolerable in civilized society."(1)

The $700 million fine imposed on Monsanto was on behalf of the Anniston residents, whose blood levels of Monsanto's toxic PCBs were hundreds or thousands of times the average. This disease-producing chemical, used as coolants and lubricants for over 50 years, are now virtually omnipresent in the blood and tissues of humans and wildlife around the globe. Ken Cook of the Environmental Working Group says that based on Monsanto documents made public during a trial, the company "knew the truth from the very beginning. They lied about it. They hid the truth from their neighbors." One Monsanto memo explains their justification: "We can't afford to lose one dollar of business." Welcome to the world of Monsanto.

Infiltrating the minds and offices of the government
To get their genetically modified products approved, Monsanto has coerced, infiltrated, and paid off government officials around the globe. In Indonesia, Monsanto gave bribes and questionable payments to at least 140 officials, attempting to get their genetically modified (GM) cotton accepted.(2) In 1998, six Canadian government scientists testified before the Senate that they were being pressured by superiors to approve rbGH, that documents were stolen from a locked file cabinet in a government office, and that Monsanto offered them a bribe of $1-2 million to pass the drug without further tests. In India, one official tampered with the report on Bt cotton to increase the yield figures to favor Monsanto.(3) And Monsanto seems to have planted their own people in key government positions in India, Brazil, Europe, and worldwide.

Monsanto's GM seeds were also illegally smuggled into countries like Brazil and Paraguay, before GMOs were approved. Roberto Franco, Paraguay's Deputy Agriculture Ministry, tactfully admits, "It is possible that [Monsanto], let's say, promoted its varieties and its seeds" before they were approved. "We had to authorize GMO seeds because they had already entered our country in an, let's say, unorthodox way."

In the US, Monsanto's people regularly infiltrate upper echelons of government, and the company offers prominent positions to officials when they leave public service. This revolving door has included key people in the White House, regulatory agencies, even the Supreme Court. Monsanto also had George Bush Senior on their side, as evidenced by footage of Vice President Bush at Monsanto's facility offering help to get their products through government bureaucracy. He says, "Call me. We're in the 'de-reg' business. Maybe we can help."

Monsanto's influence continued into the Clinton administration. Dan Glickman, then Secretary of Agriculture, says, "there was a general feeling in agro-business and inside our government in the US that if you weren't marching lock-step forward in favor of rapid approvals of biotech products, rapid approvals of GMO crops, then somehow, you were anti-science and anti-progress." Glickman summarized the mindset in the government as follows:

"What I saw generically on the pro-biotech side was the attitude that the technology was good, and that it was almost immoral to say that it wasn't good, because it was going to solve the problems of the human race and feed the hungry and clothe the naked. . . . And there was a lot of money that had been invested in this, and if you're against it, you're Luddites, you're stupid. That, frankly, was the side our government was on. Without thinking, we had basically taken this issue as a trade issue and they, whoever 'they' were, wanted to keep our product out of their market. And they were foolish, or stupid, and didn't have an effective regulatory system. There was rhetoric like that even here in this department. You felt like you were almost an alien, disloyal, by trying to present an open-minded view on some of the issues being raised. So I pretty much spouted the rhetoric that everybody else around here spouted; it was written into my speeches."(4)

He admits, "when I opened my mouth in the Clinton Administration [about the lax regulations on GMOs], I got slapped around a little bit."

Hijacking the FDA to promote GMOs
In the US, new food additives must undergo extensive testing, including long-term animal feeding studies.(5) There is an exception, however, for substances that are deemed "generally recognized as safe" (GRAS). GRAS status allows a product to be commercialized without any additional testing. According to US law, to be considered GRAS the substance must be the subject of a substantial amount of peer-reviewed published studies (or equivalent) and there must be overwhelming consensus among the scientific community that the product is safe. GM foods had neither. Nonetheless, in a precedent-setting move that some experts contend was illegal, in 1992 the FDA declared that GM crops are GRAS as long as their producers say they are. Thus, the FDA does not require any safety evaluations or labels whatsoever. A company can even introduce a GM food to the market without telling the agency.

Such a lenient approach to GM crops was largely the result of Monsanto's legendary influence over the US government. According to the New York Times, "What Monsanto wished for from Washington, Monsanto and, by extension, the biotechnology industry got. . . . When the company abruptly decided that it needed to throw off the regulations and speed its foods to market, the White House quickly ushered through an unusually generous policy of self-policing." According to Dr. Henry Miller, who had a leading role in biotechnology issues at the FDA from 1979 to 1994, "In this area, the U.S. government agencies have done exactly what big agribusiness has asked them to do and told them to do."

The person who oversaw the development of the FDA's GMO policy was their Deputy Commissioner for Policy, Michael Taylor, whose position had been created especially for him in 1991. Prior to that, Taylor was an outside attorney for both Monsanto and the Food Biotechnology Council. After working at the FDA, he became Monsanto's vice president. He's now back at the FDA, as the US food safety czar.

Covering up health dangers
The policy Taylor oversaw in 1992 needed to create the impression that unintended effects from GM crops were not an issue. Otherwise their GRAS status would be undermined. But internal memos made public from a lawsuit showed that the overwhelming consensus among the agency scientists was that GM crops can have unpredictable, hard-to-detect side effects. Various departments and experts spelled these out in detail, listing allergies, toxins, nutritional effects, and new diseases as potential problems. They had urged superiors to require long-term safety studies.(6) In spite of the warnings, according to public interest attorney Steven Druker who studied the FDA's internal files, "References to the unintended negative effects of bioengineering were progressively deleted from drafts of the policy statement (over the protests of agency scientists)."(7)

FDA microbiologist Louis Pribyl wrote about the policy, "What has happened to the scientific elements of this document? Without a sound scientific base to rest on, this becomes a broad, general, 'What do I have to do to avoid trouble'-type document. . . . It will look like and probably be just a political document. . . . It reads very pro-industry, especially in the area of unintended effects."(8)

The FDA scientists' concerns were not only ignored, their very existence was denied. Consider the private memo summarizing opinions at the FDA, which stated, "The processes of genetic engineering and traditional breeding are different and according to the technical experts in the agency, they lead to different risks."(9) Contrast that with the official policy statement issued by Taylor, Monsanto's former attorney: "The agency is not aware of any information showing that foods derived by these new methods differ from other foods in any meaningful or uniform way."(10) On the basis of this false statement, the FDA does not require GM food safety testing.

Fake safety assessments
Monsanto participates in a voluntary consultation process with the FDA that is derided by critics as a meaningless exercise. Monsanto submits whatever information it chooses, and the FDA does not conduct or commission any studies of its own. Former EPA scientist Doug Gurian-Sherman, who analyzed FDA review records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, says the FDA consultation process "misses obvious errors in company-submitted data summaries, provides insufficient testing guidance, and does not require sufficiently detailed data to enable the FDA to assure that GE crops are safe to eat."(11)

But that is not the point of the exercise. The FDA doesn't actually approve the crops or declare them safe. That is Monsanto's job! At the end of the consultation, the FDA issues a letter stating:

"Based on the safety and nutritional assessment you have conducted, it is our understanding that Monsanto has concluded that corn products derived from this new variety are not materially different in composition, safety, and other relevant parameters from corn currently on the market, and that the genetically modified corn does not raise issues that would require premarket review or approval by FDA. . . . As you are aware, it is Monsanto's responsibility to ensure that foods marketed by the firm are safe, wholesome and in compliance with all applicable legal and regulatory requirements."(12)

The National Academy of Sciences and even the pro-GM Royal Society of London(13) describe the US system as inadequate and flawed. The editor of the prestigious journal Lancet said, "It is astounding that the US Food and Drug Administration has not changed their stance on genetically modified food adopted in 1992. . . . Governments should never have allowed these products into the food chain without insisting on rigorous testing for effects on health."(14)

One obvious reason for the inflexibility of the FDA is that they are officially charged with both regulating biotech products and promoting them -- a clear conflict. That is also why the FDA does not require mandatory labeling of GM foods. They ignore the desires of 90 percent of American citizens in order to support the economic interests of Monsanto and the four other GM food companies.

Monsanto's studies are secret, inadequate, and flawed
The unpublished industry studies submitted to regulators are typically kept secret based on the claim that it is "confidential business information." The Royal Society of Canada is one of many organizations that condemn this practice. Their Expert Panel called for "completely transparent" submissions, "open to full review by scientific peers" They wrote, "Peer review and independent corroboration of research findings are axioms of the scientific method, and part of the very meaning of the objectivity and neutrality of science."(15)

Whenever Monsanto's private submissions are made public through lawsuits or Freedom of Information Act Requests, it becomes clear why they benefit from secrecy. The quality of their research is often miserable, and would never stand up to peer-review. In December 2009, for example, a team of independent researchers published a study analyzing the raw data from three Monsanto rat studies. When they used proper statistical methods, they found that the three varieties of GM corn caused toxicity in the liver and kidneys, as well as significant changes in other organs.(16) Monsanto's studies, of course, had claimed that the research showed no problems. The regulators had believed Monsanto, and the corn is already in our food supply.

Monsanto rigs research to miss dangers
(17)
Monsanto has plenty of experience cooking the books of their research and hiding the hazards. They manufactured the infamous Agent Orange, for example, the cancer and birth-defect causing defoliant sprayed over Vietnam. It contaminated more than three million civilians and servicemen. But according to William Sanjour, who led the Toxic Waste Division of the Environmental Protection Agency, "thousands of veterans were disallowed benefits" because "Monsanto studies showed that dioxin [the main ingredient in Agent Orange] was not a human carcinogen." But his EPA colleague discovered that Monsanto had allegedly falsified the data in their studies. Sanjour says, "If they were done correctly, [the studies] would have reached just the opposite result."

Here are examples of tinkering with the truth about Monsanto's GM products:

• When dairy farmers inject cows with genetically modified bovine growth hormone (rbGH), more bovine growth hormone ends up in the milk. To allay fears, the FDA claimed that pasteurization destroys 90 percent of the hormone. In reality, the researchers of this drug (then owned by Monsanto) pasteurized the milk 120 times longer than normal. But they only destroyed 19 percent. So they spiked the milk with a huge amount of extra growth hormone and then repeated the long pasteurization. Only under these artificial conditions were they able to destroy 90 percent.

• To demonstrate that rbGH injections didn't interfere with cows' fertility, Monsanto appears to have secretly added cows to their study that were pregnant BEFORE injection.

• FDA Veterinarian Richard Burroughs said that Monsanto researchers dropped sick cows from studies, to make the drug appear safer.

• Richard Burroughs ordered more tests on rbGH than the industry wanted and was told by superiors he was slowing down the approval. He was fired and his tests canceled. The remaining whistle-blowers in the FDA had to write an anonymous letter to Congress, complaining of fraud and conflict of interest in the agency. They complained of one FDA scientist who arbitrarily increased the allowable levels of antibiotics in milk 100-fold, in order to facilitate the approval of rbGH. She had just become the head of an FDA department that was evaluating the research that she had recently done while an employee of Monsanto.

• Another former Monsanto scientist said that after company scientists conducted safety studies on bovine growth hormone, all three refused to drink any more milk, unless it was organic and therefore not treated with the drug. They feared the substantial increase of insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) in the drugged milk. IGF-1 is a significant risk factor for cancer.

• When independent researchers published a study in July 1999 showing that Monsanto's GM soy contains 12-14 percent less cancer-fighting phytoestrogens, Monsanto responded with its own study, concluding that soy's phytoestrogen levels vary too much to even carry out a statistical analysis. Researchers failed to disclose, however, that they had instructed the laboratory to use an obsolete method of detection -- one that had been prone to highly variable results.

• To prove that GM protein breaks down quickly during simulated digestion, Monsanto uses thousands of times the amount of digestive enzymes and a much stronger acid than what the World Health Organization recommends.

• Monsanto told government regulators that the GM protein produced in their high-lysine GM corn was safe for humans, because it is also found in soil. They claimed that since people consume small residues of soil on fruits and vegetables, the protein has a safe history as part of the human diet. The actual amount of the GM corn protein an average US citizen would consume, however, if all their corn were Monsanto's variety, would be "about 30 billion to four trillion times" the amount normally consumed in soil residues. For equivalent exposure, people would have to eat as much as 22,000 pounds of soil every second of every day.

• Monsanto's high-lysine corn also had unusual levels of several nutritional components, such as protein and fiber. Instead of comparing it to normal corn, which would have revealed this significant disparity, Monsanto compared their GM corn to obscure corn varieties that were also far outside the normal range on precisely these values. On this basis, Monsanto could claim that there were no statistically significant differences in their GM corn content.

Methods used by Monsanto to hide problems are varied and plentiful. For example, researchers:

• Use animals with varied starting weights, to hinder the detection of food-related changes;
• Keep feeding studies short, to miss long-term impacts;
• Test Roundup Ready soybeans that have never been sprayed with Roundup -- as they always are in real world conditions;
• Avoid feeding animals the GM crop, but instead give them a single dose of GM protein produced from GM bacteria;
• Use too few subjects to obtain statistical significance;
• Use poor or inappropriate statistical methods, or fail to even mention statistical methods, or include essential data; and
• Employ insensitive detection techniques -- doomed to fail.

Monsanto's 1996 Journal of Nutrition study, which was their cornerstone article for "proving" that GM soy was safe, provides plenty of examples of masterfully rigged methods.

• Researchers tested GM soy on mature animals, not the more sensitive young ones. GMO safety expert Arpad Pusztai says the older animals "would have to be emaciated or poisoned to show anything."

• Organs were never weighed.

• The GM soy was diluted up to 12 times which, according to an expert review, "would probably ensure that any possible undesirable GM effects did not occur."

• The amount of protein in the feed was "artificially too high," which would mask negative impacts of the soy.

• Samples were pooled from different locations and conditions, making it nearly impossible for compositional differences to be statistically significant.

• Data from the only side-by-side comparison was removed from the study and never published. When it was later recovered, it revealed that Monsanto's GM soy had significantly lower levels of important constituents (e.g. protein, a fatty acid, and phenylalanine, an essential amino acid) and that toasted GM soy meal had nearly twice the amount of a lectin -- which interferes with the body's ability to assimilate nutrients. Moreover, the amount of trypsin inhibitor, a known soy allergen, was as much as seven times higher in cooked GM soy compared to a cooked non-GM control. Monsanto named their study, "The composition of glyphosate-tolerant soybean seeds is equivalent to that of conventional soybeans."

A paper published in Nutrition and Health analyzed all peer-reviewed feeding studies on GM foods as of 2003. It came as no surprise that Monsanto's Journal of Nutrition study, along with the other four peer-reviewed animal feeding studies that were "performed more or less in collaboration with private companies," reported no negative effects of the GM diet. "On the other hand," they wrote, "adverse effects were reported (but not explained) in [the five] independent studies." They added, "It is remarkable that these effects have all been observed after feeding for only 10 to 14 days."(18)

A former Monsanto scientist recalls how colleagues were trying to rewrite a GM animal feeding study, to hide the ill-effects. But sometimes when study results are unmistakably damaging, Monsanto just plain lies. Monsanto's study on Roundup, for example, showed that 28 days after application, only 2 percent of their herbicide had broken down. They nonetheless advertised the weed killer as "biodegradable," "leaves the soil clean," and "respects the environment." These statements were declared false and illegal by judges in both the US and France. The company was forced to remove "biodegradable" from the label and pay a fine.

Monsanto attacks labeling, local democracy, and news coverage
• On July 3, 2003, Monsanto sued Oakhurst dairy because their labels stated, "Our Farmers' Pledge: No Artificial Growth Hormones." Oakhurst eventually settled with Monsanto, agreeing to include a sentence on their cartons saying that according to the FDA no significant difference has been shown between milk derived from rbGH-treated and non-rbGH-treated cows. The statement is not true. FDA scientists had acknowledged the increase of IGF-1, bovine growth hormone, antibiotics, and pus, in milk from treated cows. Nonetheless, the misleading sentence had been written years earlier by the FDA's deputy commissioner of policy, Michael Taylor, the one who was formerly Monsanto's outside attorney and later their vice president.

• Monsanto's public relations firm created a group called the Dairy Coalition, which pressured editors of the USA Today, Boston Globe, New York Times and others, to limit negative coverage of rbGH.

• A Monsanto attorney wrote a letter to Fox TV, promising dire consequences if the station aired a four-part exposé on rbGH. The show was ultimately canceled.

• A book critical of Monsanto's GM foods was three days away from being published. A threatening letter from Monsanto's attorney forced the small publisher to cancel publication.

• 14,000 copies of Ecologist magazine dedicated to exposing Monsanto were shredded by the printer due to fears of a lawsuit.

• After a ballot initiative in California established Mendocino County as a GM-free zone -- where planting GMOs is illegal, Monsanto and others organized to push through laws in 14 states that make it illegal for cities and counties to declare similar zones.

Monsanto's promises of riches come up short
Biotech advocates have wooed politicians, claiming that their new technology is the path to riches for their city, state, or nation. "This notion that you lure biotech to your community to save its economy is laughable," said Joseph Cortright, an Oregon economist who co-wrote a report on the subject. "This is a bad-idea virus that has swept through governors, mayors and economic development officials."(19) Indeed, The Wall Street Journal observed, "Not only has the biotech industry yielded negative financial returns for decades, it generally digs its hole deeper every year."(20) The Associated Press says it "remains a money-losing, niche industry."(21)

Nowhere in the biotech world is the bad-idea virus more toxic than in its application to GM plants. Not only does the technology under-deliver, it consistently burdens governments and entire sectors with losses and problems.

Under the first Bush administration, for example, the White House's elite Council on Competitiveness chose to fast track GM food in hopes that it would strengthen the economy and make American products more competitive overseas. The opposite ensued. US corn exports to Europe were virtually eliminated, down by 99.4 percent. The American Corn Growers Association (ACGA) calculated that the introduction of GM corn caused a drop in corn prices by 13 to 20 percent.(22) Their CEO said, "The ACGA believes an explanation is owed to the thousands of American farmers who were told to trust this technology, yet now see their prices fall to historically low levels while other countries exploit US vulnerability and pick off our export customers one by one."(23) US soy sales also plummeted due to GM content.

According to Charles Benbrook, PhD, former executive director of the National Academy of Sciences' Board on Agriculture, the closed markets and slashed prices forced the federal government to pay an additional $3 to $5 billion every year.(24) He says growers have only been kept afloat by the huge jump in subsidies.(25)

Instead of withdrawing support for failed GM crops, the US government has been convinced by Monsanto and others that the key to success is to force open foreign markets to GMOs. But many nations are also reeling under the false promise of GMOs.

Canola crashes on GM
When Canada became the only major producer to adopt GM canola in 1996, it led to a disaster. The premium-paying EU market, which took about one-third of Canada's canola exports in 1994 and one-fourth in 1995, stopped all imports from Canada by 1998. The GM canola was diverted to the low-priced Chinese market. Not only did Canadian canola prices fall to a record low,(26) Canada even lost their EU honey exports due to the GM pollen contamination.

Australia benefited significantly from Canada's folly. By 2006, the EU was buying 38 percent of Australia's canola exports.(27) Nonetheless, Monsanto's people in Australia claimed that GM canola was the way to get more competitive. They told farmers that Roundup Ready canola would yield up to 30 percent more. But when an investigator looked at the best trial yields on Monsanto's web site, it was 17 percent below the national average canola yield. When that was publicized, the figures quickly disappeared from the Monsanto's site. Two Aussie states did allow GM canola and sure enough, they are suffering from loss of foreign markets.

In Australia and elsewhere, the non-GMO farmers also suffer. Market prices drop, and farmers spend more to set up segregation systems, GMO testing, buffer zones, and separate storage and shipping channels to try to hold onto non-GMO markets. Even then, they risk contamination and lost premiums.

GM farmers don't earn or produce more
Monsanto has been quite successful in convincing farmers that GM crops are the ticket to greater yields and higher profits. You still hear that rhetoric at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). But a 2006 USDA report "could not find positive financial impacts in either the field-level nor the whole-farm analysis" for adoption of Bt corn and Roundup Ready soybeans. They said, "Perhaps the biggest issue raised by these results is how to explain the rapid adoption of [GM] crops when farm financial impacts appear to be mixed or even negative."(28)

Similarly, the Canadian National Farmers Union (NFU) flatly states, "The claim that GM seeds make our farms more profitable is false."(29) Net farm incomes in Canada plummeted since the introduction of GM canola, with the last five years being the worst in Canada's history.

In spite of numerous advertising claims that GM crops increase yield, the average GM crop from Monsanto reduces yield. This was confirmed by the most comprehensive evaluation on the subject, conducted by the Union of Concerned Scientists in 2009. Called Failure to Yield, the report demonstrated that in spite of years of trying, GM crops return fewer bushels than their non-GM counterparts. Even the 2006 USDA report stated that "currently available GM crops do not increase the yield potential of a hybrid variety. . . . In fact, yield may even decrease if the varieties used to carry the herbicide tolerant or insect-resistant genes are not the highest yielding cultivars."(30)

US farmers had expected higher yields with Roundup Ready soybeans, but independent studies confirm a yield loss of 4 to 11percent.(31) Brazilian soybean yields are also down since Roundup Ready varieties were introduced.(32) In Canada, a study showed a 7.5 percent lower yield with Roundup Ready canola.(33)

The Canadian National Farmers Union (NFU) observed, "Corporate and government managers have spent millions trying to convince farmers and other citizens of the benefits of genetically-modified (GM) crops. But this huge public relations effort has failed to obscure the truth: GM crops do not deliver the promised benefits; they create numerous problems, costs, and risks. . . . It would be too generous even to call GM crops a solution in search of a problem: These crops have failed to provide significant solutions."(34)

Herbicide use rising due to GMOs
Monsanto bragged that their Roundup Ready technology would reduce herbicide, but at the same time they were building new Roundup factories to meet their anticipated increase in demand. They got it. According to USDA data, the amount of herbicide used in the US increased by 382.6 million pounds over 13 years. Monsanto's Roundup Ready soybeans accounted for 92 percent of the total increase. Due to the proliferation of Roundup resistant weeds, herbicide use is accelerating rapidly. From 2007 to 2008, herbicide used on GM herbicide tolerant crops skyrocketed by 31.4 percent.(35) Furthermore, as weeds fail to respond to Roundup, farmers also rely on more toxic pesticides such as the highly poisonous 2,4-D.

Contamination happens
In spite of Monsanto's assurances that it wouldn't be a problem, contamination has been a consistent and often overwhelming hardship for seed dealers, farmers, manufacturers, even entire food sectors. The biotech industry recommends buffer zones between fields, but these have not been competent to protect non-GM, organic, or wild plants from GMOs. A UK study showed canola cross-pollination occurring as far as 26 km away.(36)

But pollination is just one of several ways that contamination happens. There is also seed movement by weather and insects, crop mixing during harvest, transport, and storage, and very often, human error. The contamination is North America is so great, it is difficult for farmers to secure pure non-GM seed. In Canada, a study found 32 of 33 certified non-GM canola seeds were contaminated.(37) Most of the non-GM soy, corn, and canola seeds tested in the US also contained GMOs.(38)

Contamination can be very expensive. StarLink corn -- unapproved for human consumption -- ended up the US food supply in 2000 and resulted in an estimated price tag of $1 billion. The final cost of GM rice contamination in the US in 2006 could be even higher.

Deadly deception in India
Monsanto ran a poster series called, "TRUE STORIES OF FARMERS WHO HAVE SOWN BT COTTON." One featured a farmer who claimed great benefits, but when investigators tracked him down, he turned out to be a cigarette salesman, not a farmer. Another poster claimed yields by the pictured farmer that were four times what he actually achieved. One poster showed a farmer standing next to a tractor, suggesting that sales of Bt cotton allowed him to buy it. But the farmer was never told what the photo was to be used for, and said that with the yields from Bt, "I would not be able to buy even two tractor tires."

In addition to posters, Monsanto's cotton marketers used dancing girls, famous Bollywood actors, even religious leaders to pitch their products. Some newspaper ads looked like a news stories and featured relatives of seed salesmen claiming to be happy with Bt. Sometimes free pesticides were given away with the seeds, and some farmers who helped with publicity got free seeds.

Scientists published a study claiming that Monsanto's cotton increased yields in India by 70 to 80 percent. But they used only field trial data provided to them by Monsanto. Actual yields turn out to be quite different:

• India News(39) reported studies showing a loss of about 18 percent.

• An independent study in Andhra Pradesh "done on [a] season-long basis continuously for three years in 87 villages" showed that growing Bt cotton cost 12 percent more, yielded 8.3 percent less, and the returns over three years were 60 percent less.(40)

• Another report identified a yield loss in the Warangal district of 30 to 60 percent. The official report, however, was tampered with. The local Deputy Director of Agriculture confirmed on Feb. 1, 2005 that the yield figures had been secretly increased to 2.7 times higher than what farms reported. Once the state of Andhra Pradesh tallied all the actual yields, they demanded approximately $10 million USD from Monsanto to compensate farmers for losses. Monsanto refused.

In sharp contrast to the independent research done by agronomists, Monsanto commissioned studies to be done by market research agencies. One, for example, claimed four times the actual reduction in pesticide use, 12 times the actual yield, and 100 times the actual profit.(41)

In Andhra Pradesh, where 71 percent of farmers who used Bt cotton ended up with financial losses, farmers attacked the seed dealer's office and even "tied up Mahyco Monsanto representatives in their villages," until the police rescued them.(42)

In spite of great losses and unreliable yields, Monsanto has skillfully eliminated the availability of non-GM cotton seeds in many regions throughout India, forcing farmers to buy their varieties.

Farmers borrow heavily and at high interest rates to pay four times the price for the GM varieties, along with the chemicals needed to grow them. When Bt cotton performs poorly and can't even pay back the debt, desperate farmers resort to suicide, often drinking unused pesticides. In one region, more than three Bt cotton farmers take their own lives each day. The UK Daily Mail estimates that the total number of Bt cotton-related suicides in India is a staggering 125,000.

Doctors orders: no genetically modified food
A greater tragedy may be the harm from the dangerous GM foods produced by Monsanto. The American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) has called on all physicians to prescribe diets without GM foods to all patients.(43) They called for a moratorium on GMOs, long-term independent studies, and labeling. They stated, "Several animal studies indicate serious health risks associated with GM food," including infertility, immune problems, accelerated aging, insulin regulation, and changes in major organs and the gastrointestinal system. "There is more than a casual association between GM foods and adverse health effects. There is causation…"

Former AAEM President Dr. Jennifer Armstrong says, "Physicians are probably seeing the effects in their patients, but need to know how to ask the right questions." Renowned biologist Pushpa M. Bhargava believes that GMOs are a major contributor to the deteriorating health in America.

Pregnant women and babies at great risk
GM foods are particularly dangerous for pregnant moms and children. After GM soy was fed to female rats, most of their babies died -- compared to 10 percent deaths among controls fed natural soy.(44) GM-fed babies were smaller, and possibly infertile.(45)

Testicles of rats fed GM soy changed from the normal pink to dark blue.(46) Mice fed GM soy had altered young sperm.(47) Embryos of GM soy-fed parent mice had changed DNA.(48) And mice fed GM corn had fewer, and smaller, babies.(49)

In Haryana, India, most buffalo that ate GM cottonseed had reproductive complications such as premature deliveries, abortions, and infertility; many calves died. About two dozen US farmers said thousands of pigs became sterile from certain GM corn varieties. Some had false pregnancies; others gave birth to bags of water. Cows and bulls also became infertile.(50)

In the US, incidence of low birth weight babies, infertility, and infant mortality are all escalating.

Food that produces poison
Monsanto's GM corn and cotton are engineered to produce a built-in pesticide called Bt-toxin -- produced from soil bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis. When bugs bite the plant, poison splits open their stomach and kills them. Organic farmers and others use natural Bt bacteria spray for insect control, so Monsanto claims that Bt-toxin must be safe.

The Bt-toxin produced in GM plants, however, is thousands of times more concentrated than natural Bt spray, is designed to be more toxic,(51) has properties of an allergen, and cannot be washed off the plant.

Moreover, studies confirm that even the less toxic natural spray can be harmful. When dispersed by plane to kill gypsy moths in Washington and Vancouver, about 500 people reported allergy or flu-like symptoms.(52)(53) The same symptoms are now reported by farm workers from handling Bt cotton throughout India.(54)

GMOs provoke immune reactions
GMO safety expert Arpad Pusztai says changes in immune status are "a consistent feature of all the [animal] studies."(55) From Monsanto's own research to government funded trials, rodents fed Bt corn had significant immune reactions.(56)(57)

Soon after GM soy was introduced to the UK, soy allergies skyrocketed by 50 percent. Ohio allergist Dr. John Boyles says "I used to test for soy allergies all the time, but now that soy is genetically engineered, it is so dangerous that I tell people never to eat it."

GM soy and corn contain new proteins with allergenic properties,(58) and GM soy has up to seven times more of a known soy allergen.(59) Perhaps the US epidemic of food llergies and asthma is a casualty of genetic manipulation.

Animals dying in large numbers
In India, animals graze on cotton plants after harvest. But when shepherds let sheep graze on Bt cotton plants, thousands died. Investigators said preliminary evidence "strongly suggests that the sheep mortality was due to a toxin. . . . most probably Bt-toxin."(60) In one small study, all sheep fed Bt cotton plants died; those fed natural plants remained healthy.

In an Andhra Pradesh village, buffalo grazed on cotton plants for eight years without incident. On Jan. 3, 2008, 13 buffalo grazed on Bt cotton plants for the first time. All died within three days.(61) Monsanto's Bt corn is also implicated in the deaths horses, water buffaloes, and chickens in the Philippines.(62)

Lab studies of GM crops by other companies also show mortalities. Twice the number of chickens fed Liberty Link corn died; seven of 40 rats fed a GM tomato died within two weeks.(63) And a farmer in Germany says his cows died after exclusively eating Syngenta's GM corn.

GMOs remain inside of us
The only published human feeding study revealed that even after we stop eating GMOs, harmful GM proteins may be produced continuously inside of us; genes inserted into Monsanto's GM soy transfer into bacteria inside our intestines and continue to function.(64) If Bt genes also transfer, eating corn chips might transform our intestinal bacteria into living pesticide factories.

Hidden dangers
Biologist David Schubert of the Salk Institute says, "If there are problems [with GMOs], we will probably never know because the cause will not be traceable and many diseases take a very long time to develop." In the nine years after GM crops were introduced in 1996, Americans with three or more chronic diseases jumped from 7 percent to 13 percent.(65) But without any human clinical trials or post marketing surveillance, we may never know if GMOs are a contributor.

Un-recallable contamination
In spite of the enormous health dangers, the environmental impacts may be worse still. That is because we don't have a technology to fully clean up the contaminated gene pool. The self-propagating genetic pollution released into the environment from Monsanto's crops can outlast the effects of climate change and nuclear waste.

Replacing nature: "Nothing shall be eaten that we don't own"
As Monsanto has moved forward with its master plan to replace nature, they have led the charge in buying up seed businesses and are now the world's largest. At least 200 independent seed companies have disappeared over 13 years, non-GMO seed availability is dwindling, and Monsanto is jacking up their seed prices dramatically. Corn is up more than 30 percent and soy nearly 25 percent, over 2008 prices.(66)

An Associated Press exposé (67) reveals how Monsanto's onerous contracts allowed them to manipulate, then dominate, the seed industry using unprecedented legal restrictions. One contract provision, for example, "prevented bidding wars" and "likely helped Monsanto buy 24 independent seed companies throughout the Farm Belt over the last few years: that corn seed agreement says that if a smaller company changes ownership, its inventory with Monsanto's traits 'shall be destroyed immediately.'"

With that restriction in place, the seed companies couldn't even think of selling to a company other than Monsanto. According to attorney David Boies, who represents DuPont -- owner of Pioneer Seeds: "If the independent seed company is losing their license and has to destroy their seeds, they're not going to have anything, in effect, to sell," Boies said. "It requires them to destroy things -- destroy things they paid for -- if they go competitive. That's exactly the kind of restriction on competitive choice that the antitrust laws outlaw." Boies was a prosecutor on the antitrust case against Microsoft. He is now working with DuPont in their civil antitrust lawsuit against Monsanto.

Monsanto also has the right to cancel deals and wipe out the inventory of a business if the confidentiality clauses are violated:

"We now believe that Monsanto has control over as much as 90 percent of (seed genetics). This level of control is almost unbelievable,' said Neil Harl, agricultural economist at Iowa State University who has studied the seed industry for decades."

Monsanto also controls and manipulates farmers through onerous contracts. Troy Roush, for example, is one of hundreds accused by Monsanto of illegally saving their seeds. The company requires farmers to sign a contract that they will not save and replant GM seeds from their harvest. That way Monsanto can sell its seeds -- at a premium -- each season.

Although Roush maintains his innocence, he was forced to settle with Monsanto after two and a half years of court battles. He says his "family was just destroyed [from] the stress involved." Many farmers are afraid, according to Roush, because Monsanto has "created a little industry that serves no other purpose than to wreck farmers' lives." Monsanto has collected an estimated $200 million from farmers thus far.

Roush says, "They are in the process of owning food, all food." Paraguayan farmer Jorge Galeano says, "Its objective is to control all of the world's food production." Renowned Indian physicist and community organizer Vandana Shiva says, "If they control seed, they control food; they know it, it's strategic. It's more powerful than bombs; it's more powerful than guns. This is the best way to control the populations of the world."

Our food security lies in diversity -- both biodiversity, and diversity of owners and interests. Any single company that consolidates ownership of seeds, and therefore power over the food supply, is a dangerous threat. Of all the corporations in the world, however, the one we should trust the least is Monsanto. With them at the helm, the impact could be cataclysmic.

source http://www.naturalnews.com/029325_Monsanto_deception.html

Four Shocking Bombshells Bernanke Did NOT Tell Congress About Last Week

2010-07-29T13:56:00.001-07:00

In his testimony before Congress last week, Ben Bernanke lifted the Fed’s skirt and gave us a glimpse of the disasters now sweeping through the U.S. economy.

But there are four bombshells he did NOT talk about:

FIRST and foremost, what’s CAUSING the economy to sink? The stock market has not yet crashed. Interest rates have not yet surged. Gasoline prices have not skyrocketed. There has been no recent debt collapse, market shock, or terrorist attack.

So what is the invisible force that’s suddenly gutting the housing market, driving consumer confidence into a sinkhole, and killing the recovery that Washington was so avidly touting just a few months ago?

Bernanke won’t say. But the answer is clear: The recovery had very little substance to begin with. Rather, it was, in essence, a mirage — a dead cat bounce bought and paid for by Washington’s massive bailouts, stimulus programs, and money printing.

Put another way, the recession never really ended. Yes, we saw some growth in GDP. And yes, thanks to that growth, some companies are still reporting better earnings — the news that spurred a rally in the stock market last week. But at the core of the economy, the fires that started the recession are still burning intensely.

SECOND, Bernanke failed to point how that …

The U.S. Housing Market Is Now LOCKED Into a Chronic, Long-Term Depression
Houseing sector resumes worst collapse in U.S. history!

Housing starts — the most important measure of the housing industry — is still a disaster zone.

Beginning in January 2006, they suffered their worst plunge in recorded history — from an annual rate of 2.3 million to a meager 477,000 in April 2009. Thus …

In just three years, 79 percent of America’s largest industry, impacting more Americans than any other, was wiped away.

Then, despite a series of government agency programs to shore up the industry … plus $1.25 trillion poured in by the Fed to buy up mortgage-backed securities … plus a big tax credit for new homebuyers, housing starts perked up ever so slightly: They recovered to an annual rate of 612,000 in January of this year.

But this recovery was so small, it retraced just 7.5 percent of the prior fall. In other words,

Even after massive government efforts, and even at the highest point in their recovery this year, the housing industry recouped less than one-tenth of its historic three-year bust from 2006 to 2009.

Worse, the housing industry has now resumed its decline.

The most alarming factor: Widespread “strategic defaults” on home mortgages.

These are defaults by homeowners who can afford to meet their monthly mortgage payments, but have deliberately decided to stop paying.

They realize their home is worth less than they owe on the mortgage — transforming it into a dead asset they’re willing to give up. They know their bank, already overwhelmed with foreclosures, won’t get around to evicting them for as long as two years, allowing them to live in the house cost-free. They also know this tactic can give them tens of thousands of dollars in extra cash. So they’re defaulting en masse and getting away with it.

End result:

* New supplies of foreclosed homes hitting the market as far as the eye can see …
* Bankers who would rather cut their wrists than finance new homes, and …
* A new slump in housing that’s worse than even some pessimists were expecting.

THIRD, despite his now-famous quote that this is “the worst labor market since the Great Depression,” Bernanke failed to reveal that …

Official Government Data GROSSLY Understates the Magnitude of Unemployment
Long-term joblessness worst ever recorded!

Bernanke did not mention that the percentage of long-term unemployed in America is the worst it’s been since the government began keeping records in 1948. Two facts:

Fact #1: A record 4.39 percent of the work force — or 46.2 percent of the unemployed — have been out of work for 27 weeks or more. That’s DOUBLE the worst level ever recorded and TRIPLE the peak level seen in five of the past six recessions.

Fact #2: On average, America’s unemployed have been out of work for 35.2 weeks, also the highest on record.

Bernanke did not remind Congress that, based on the government’s own broad measure, the true unemployment rate in the U.S. is not 9.5 percent. It’s 16.5 percent — or seven full percentage points more than the figure Mr. Bernanke likes to refer to.

This broader measure includes workers seeking full-time employment, but temporarily settling for lower paying part-time jobs. Plus, it’s supposed to also include “discouraged workers” — those who have given up looking for work because there are no jobs to be found.

Nor did Bernanke confess that, during the Clinton administration, discouraged workers were “redefined” to EXCLUDE those who had been out of work for more than a year — and that definition continues to be used to this day.

That makes absolutely no sense. If they’re out of work for a year, they’re discouraged. But as soon as they’re out of work for a year and one day, it’s suddenly assumed they’re happily going about their life?!

Thus, precisely when economists now recognize that one of the biggest challenges of this Great Recession is long-term unemployment … the Obama administration, both parties in Congress, and all U.S. government agencies continue to exclude the longest term unemployed from every single one of their unemployment statistics.

This could go down in history as one of the greatest deceptions about the true state of U.S. labor markets. And according to John Williams of Shadow Government Statistics, it’s big:

When you add these long-term discouraged workers back into the jobless count, you find that the real unemployment rate in the U.S. is actually 21.6 percent!

FOURTH, Bernanke failed to point out that all this is happening despite …

The Biggest Government Interventions of ALL TIME!

The full scope of the government’s interventions is now official:

In its July 21 Quarterly Report to Congress, the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP) tabulates the government’s bailouts, stimulus programs, and money printing escapades since the debt crisis struck in 2007, as follows:

Incremental Financial System Support
href="http://images.moneyandmarkets.com/1793/chart1.gif">
by Martin D. Weiss, Ph.D. 07-26-10

According to SIGTARP, at mid-year 2010,

* The Fed has pumped in $1.7 trillion through its massive purchases of mortgage bonds, Treasury bonds, and agency bonds.
* The FDIC has thrown another $300 billion into the pot, shutting down over 100 banks so far this year.
* The Treasury has pumped in a net of $300 billion in TARP money (even after paybacks), plus another $500 billion in money outside of the TARP program.
* Plus, several other government agencies have chipped in another $800 billion.

These official numbers are actually LARGER than we were estimating. We had the total pegged at $3.5 trillion (not billion), including the 2009 stimulus package.

SIGTARP has it at $3.7 trillion, excluding the stimulus but including a myriad other rescue programs — by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), the Government National Mortgage Association (GNMA), the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), and the Veterans Affair (VA).

But no matter how you count it, some outstanding facts are absolutely self-evident:

FACT: The enormous magnitude of the government’s intervention FAR surpasses anything ever witnessed in the history of humankind.

FACT: It’s not working! Housing is still collapsed. Long-term unemployment is the worst ever recorded. And the recovery, already anemic, is aborting prematurely.

FACT: Most important, it’s winding down! Through mid-2009, the government intervention programs tabulated by SIGTARP were being ramped up at a furious pace — a total of $3 trillion overall.

So over the 12-month period from mid-2008 through mid-2009, we estimate they were running at the average monthly pace of about $160 billion.

But since mid-2009, they have been far slower, running at an average monthly pace of only $58 billion, or just one-third the prior level.

And right now, the pace of new funds injected into the economy through these government rescues are merely a trickle compared to their earlier rate:

* No new stimulus is in the works.
* No new TARP funds are forthcoming.
* The Fed has wrapped up its bond buying splurge.
* And the ONLY significant continuing programs are for housing — the one area where the government has admittedly seen the WORST overall results, according to SIGTARP.

Bottom line:

If you were counting on the government to prevent the second major leg in this great double-dip recession, don’t hold your breath. To the contrary, the primary CAUSE of the second dip is the government’s conspicuous absence from sectors where it was, until now, the biggest mover, shaker, buyer, and financier.

Your ACTION

With this rapidly shifting quicksand, you must NOT be lured by Wall Street’s siren songs. You must not get trapped again in vulnerable stocks, mutual funds, or ETFs. Instead …

1. Greatly reduce your exposure to stocks, especially in sectors tied to housing, such as construction, home improvement, consumer appliances, and mortgage finance.
2. Move the proceeds to cash and cash equivalent, regardless of low yields.

Good luck and God bless!

Martin

http://www.moneyandmarkets.com/four-shocking-bombshells-bernanke-did-not-tell-congress-about-last-week-39735

New Study Shows Vaccines Cause Brain Changes Found in Autism

2010-07-29T10:34:00.000-07:00

By Dan Olmsted and Mark Blaxill

Abnormal brain growth and function are features of autism, an increasingly common developmental disorder that now affects 1 in 60 boys in the US. Now researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and Thoughtful House Center for Children in Austin, Texas, have found remarkably similar brain changes to those seen in autism in infant monkeys receiving the vaccine schedule used in the 1990’s that contained the mercury-based preservative thimerosal.

The group’s findings were published yesterday in the journal Acta Neurobiologiae Experimentalis. They used scanning techniques that assessed both brain growth and brain function in the same animals over time. The research team was able to see differences in the way the brains of vaccinated and unvaccinated animals developed. Scans were performed before and after the administration of primary MMR and DTaP/Hib boosters that were given at the human equivalent of 12 months of age.

Throughout the study period, vaccinated animals showed an increase in total brain volume – a feature of the brain in many young children with autism - when compared with unvaccinated animals. However, a specific part of the brain associated with emotional responses that is thought to be important in autism, the amygdala, did not show abnormalities until after the 12-month vaccines had been given. In addition, after the 12-month vaccines only, the functional brain scans showed significant differences between vaccinated and unvaccinated groups. These functional scans looked at the activity of receptors for morphine-like compounds (opioids) that may play a role in the brain of children affected by autism. Vaccine administration was associated with an increase in opioid binding activity in the amygdala compared with a decrease in the unvaccinated group.

The results indicate that multiple vaccine exposures during the previous 3-4 months may have had a significant impact on brain growth and development in ways that are consistent with the published data on autism. For the amygdala, the novel findings of abnormal growth and function appear to be a function of more recent vaccine exposures - the 12-month primary MMR vaccine and the DTaP and Hib boosters.

In an accompanying editorial Dr. Kris Turlejski, the Editor-in-Chief, described the findings as “alarming”, “support[ing] the possibility that there is a link between early immunization and the etiology of autism.”

In the same primate model, the research team has already identified delayed acquisition of vital brainstem reflexes in infants exposed to the thimerosal-containing hepatitis B vaccine on the first day of life, compared with unvaccinated animals. A larger, second phase study is currently underway to see if these findings can be replicated.

Dr. Andrew Wakefield, who is not a listed author but whose support in the design of the study is acknowledged, said “I hope the model will not only provide important insights into the origins of autism, but also ways of safely testing possible new autism treatments and vaccines.”

source http://www.ageofautism.com/2010/07/new-study-shows-vaccines-cause-brain-changes-found-in-autism.html

When Globalism Runs Its Course ... The Year America Dissolved

2010-07-27T13:32:00.000-07:00

The first clans organized around local police forces. The conservatives’ war on crime during the late 20th century and the Bush/Obama war on terror during the first decade of the 21st century had resulted in the police becoming militarized and unaccountable.

As society broke down, the police became warlords. The state police broke apart, and the officers were subsumed into the local forces of their communities. The newly formed tribes expanded to encompass the relatives and friends of the police.

The dollar had collapsed as world reserve currency in 2012 when the worsening economic depression made it clear to Washington’s creditors that the federal budget deficit was too large to be financed except by the printing of money.

With the dollar’s demise, import prices skyrocketed. As Americans were unable to afford foreign-made goods, the transnational corporations that were producing offshore for US markets were bankrupted, further eroding the government’s revenue base.

The government was forced to print money in order to pay its bills, causing domestic prices to rise rapidly. Faced with hyperinflation, Washington took recourse in terminating Social Security and Medicare and followed up by confiscating the remnants of private pensions. This provided a one-year respite, but with no more resources to confiscate, money creation and hyperinflation resumed.

Organized food deliveries broke down when the government fought hyperinflation with fixed prices and the mandate that all purchases and sales had to be in US paper currency. Unwilling to trade appreciating goods for depreciating paper, goods disappeared from stores.

Washington responded as Lenin had done during the “war communism” period of Soviet history. The government sent troops to confiscate goods for distribution in kind to the population. This was a temporary stop-gap until existing stocks were depleted, as future production was discouraged. Much of the confiscated stocks became the property of the troops who seized the goods.

Goods reappeared in markets under the protection of local warlords. Transactions were conducted in barter and in gold, silver, and copper coins.

Other clans organized around families and individuals who possessed stocks of food, bullion, guns and ammunition. Uneasy alliances formed to balance differences in clan strengths. Betrayals quickly made loyalty a necessary trait for survival.

Large scale food and other production broke down as local militias taxed distribution as goods moved across local territories. Washington seized domestic oil production and refineries, but much of the government’s gasoline was paid for safe passage across clan territories.

Most of the troops in Washington’s overseas bases were abandoned. As their resource stocks were drawn down, the abandoned soldiers were forced into alliances with those with whom they had been fighting.

Washington found it increasingly difficult to maintain itself. As it lost control over the country, Washington was less able to secure supplies from abroad as tribute from those Washington threatened with nuclear attack. Gradually other nuclear powers realized that the only target in America was Washington. The more astute saw the writing on the wall and slipped away from the former capital city.

When Rome began her empire, Rome’s currency consisted of gold and silver coinage. Rome was well organized with efficient institutions and the ability to supply troops in the field so that campaigns could continue indefinitely, a monopoly in the world of Rome’s time.

When hubris sent America in pursuit of overseas empire, the venture coincided with the offshoring of American manufacturing, industrial, and professional service jobs and the corresponding erosion of the government’s tax base, with the advent of massive budget and trade deficits, with the erosion of the fiat paper currency’s value, and with America’s dependence on foreign creditors and puppet rulers.

The Roman Empire lasted for centuries. The American one collapsed overnight.

Rome’s corruption became the strength of her enemies, and the Western Empire was overrun.

America’s collapse occurred when government ceased to represent the people and became the instrument of a private oligarchy. Decisions were made in behalf of short-term profits for the few at the expense of unmanageable liabilities for the many. Overwhelmed by liabilities, the government collapsed.

Globalism had run its course. Life reformed on a local basis.

source http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20302

The Last Bastion of American Morality Is Under Assault

2010-07-27T08:37:00.000-07:00

opednews.com
Paul Craig Roberts

The morality of the American people now resides, insecurely, in the Presbyterian Church. Every other institution of American society -- the evangelical churches, the bought-and-paid-for American media, both houses of Congress, the executive branch, both political parties, the corporations, the financial sector, the universities -- all support Israel's genocide against the Palestinians. Only the Presbyterians dissent.

The genocide is cloaked behind the propaganda that no Palestinians lived in Palestine until after the Israelis arrived, that all Palestinians are terrorists who want to murder innocent peace-loving Israelis, and that the terrorist Palestinians are armed by the few remaining Muslim governments that so far have escaped becoming American puppet states.

The solution, of course, is for the few remaining independent countries in the Middle East to be brought by force under US and Israeli hegemony.

The Presbyterian Church, as it is the only US organization that is not under the Israel Lobby's suzerainty, is included among the independent institutions that must be brought to heel.

The Presbyterian Church, which alone in America has a moral conscience, has been disturbed for some time by the Israeli/American policy of Palestinian extermination. In violation of international law and under the protection of US diplomacy and America's UN veto, Israel has evicted Palestinians from their homes and villages since the Israeli occupation of the West Bank in 1967 and even before. The remaining small parts of the West Bank in which Palestinians still reside have been turned by Israel into ghettos cut off from the rest of Palestine.

The Presbyterians, being meek Christians, have only mild criticisms of Israel, which are packaged together in the church's Middle East Study Committee's report with the Presbyterians' commitment to Israel's continued existence and to "our American Jewish Friends." The Presbyterian report even disavows divestment from Caterpillar, the US company that supplies Israel with the machines that destroy Palestinian homes, thus driving Palestinians from their lands so that zionist settlers can confiscate their properties. It was a Caterpillar bulldozer that killed the American Rachel Corrie who was protesting Israel's destruction of Palestinian homes.

The Presbyterian report expresses concern that "the window of opportunity for an end to the occupation and the viability of a two-state solution is rapidly closing." The Presbyterians fear that violence begets violence, and that the two sides are sliding into wanton willful murder of one another in violation of God's commandments.

The Presbyterian document states: "We do affirm the legitimacy of Israel as a state, but consider the continuing occupation of Palestine (West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem) to be illegitimate, illegal under international law, and an enduring threat to peace in the region. Furthermore, we recognize that any support for that occupation weakens the moral standing of our nation internationally and our security."

For Israel and the vast media and American political apparatus that Israel controls, this was too much. Israel is never guilty of anything. Only Palestinians are guilty. Anyone who criticizes Israel is anti-semitic and aligned with terrorists who want a second Holocaust.

The extreme Zionist Jerusalem Post; the moderate American Jewish newspaper, the Forward, and even a Mormon blog declared war on the Presbyterian Christians.

Israel, of course, denies that there is any illegal occupation of Palestine despite this being the finding of every country, the UN, and even Israel's American protector, the US government. The Jerusalem Post accuses the Presbyterians of expressing "contempt for Israel" attempting "to delegitimize Israel" and justifying "Palestinian terror against the Jewish state."

And there you have it. Any person or organization that is not all apologies for Israel's dispossession of Palestinians from their homes, villages, and lands, any person or organization that does not accept that 5-year old Palestinian children shot down in the streets by Israeli soldiers or zionist settlers were terrorists about to bring down the Israeli state, anyone who does not genuflect before the Israeli line on everything is an anti-semite who wants to renew the Holocaust and exterminate the Jewish people.

The Rabbis in every American community will buttonhole the Presbyterian ministers and ask them to explain why they are anti-semites and beat their wives. The Presbyterian General Assembly, which meets in July, will again be intimidated, as it was previously, and vote down the recommendations in the church's report on the Israeli/Palestinian issue.

The weak forces of morality will again be defeated by the Israelis, and the extermination of the Palestinians will continue.

source http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Last-Bastion-of-Americ-by-paul-craig-roberts-100628-809.html

Accused murderer receives liver organ transplant while others wait to die

2010-07-27T07:54:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, July 27, 2010
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger

(NaturalNews) Johnny Concepcion is 42 years old. After divorcing his wife, she was found stabbed to death in their home, suffering at least 15 stab wounds. Concepcion reportedly confessed to his friends that he killed his wife, and he soon found himself the subject of a city-wide manhunt in New York City. On the run from authorities, Concepcion decided to kill himself by drinking a container of rat poison.

But that's not where this story gets weird. The weird part is that after the rat poison destroyed his liver, Concepcion found himself at the top of a liver transplant list at a hospital in New York City. With over 16,000 other people waiting for a liver -- many of whom undoubtedly are not murderers -- somehow Concepcion was chosen to receive the next available liver from an organ donor.

At a cost of several hundred thousand dollars (probably paid by taxpayers), Concepcion was given the new liver transplant and then arrested and taken to jail. He now awaits an August 11 court hearing to face the charge of murder.

Huge problems in the organ transplant industry
I've been an outspoken opponent of the organ transplant industry for several years. While admittedly the industry does save some lives, it has been apparent for a long time that the industry is far more interested in profit than compassion. Organ transplants make hundreds of millions of dollars for the hospitals, surgeons, organ transportation companies and other specialists involved in transplants. The families whose loved ones donate those organs, meanwhile, receive absolutely nothing for the gift of valuable organs they donate to this system.

This is a case where a "product" (the organ) is given freely to an industry that then turns around and seeks to maximize its profits often without regard to quality of life. And this case of Johnny Concepcion demonstrates this perfectly: Rather than giving the liver to a human being who truly deserves a second chance, the doctors decided to give it to a man accused of murder... and a man who destroyed his own liver by drinking rat poison.

To which I say, "Are you crazy?"

Shouldn't organ transplants go to those who deserve them?
If you drink rat poison and destroy your own liver, that should probably disqualify you from the transplant list. Why? Because you've already proven you don't value your own God-given organs. Why should modern medicine hand over a new one?

The answer, of course, is because there's big money to be made in transplants. So even the guy who consciously drinks poison and destroys his own liver is still on the transplant list. I suppose if someone shoots themselves in the chest, they'd still be on the list to receive a heart transplant too, right?

Well, the sad truth of the matter is that -- get this -- most people (but not all) on organ transplant lists have destroyed their own organs!

Yep, I said it. I told the truth: The majority (but not all) of heart, lung, liver and kidney transplant patients are those who suffer from a history of chemical abuse or nutritional abuse of their bodies. These people include lifelong smokers, drug addicts, alcohol abusers and junk food eaters.

Again, this is most but not all organ transplant recipients. Some of those waiting for organ transplants are truly innocent victims who suffered a car crash, for example, or a rare disease affliction through no fault of their own.

Now what I'm proposing here is going to be extremely unpopular in the organ transplant industry, but it makes sense from a human ethics point of view:

Shouldn't transplants first go to those who most DESERVE a second chance?

Commonsense guidelines for organ transplants
In other words, if your hospital has one spare liver, and you have to choose between three people who all need it (and they're all a recipient match), and the first person is an alcoholic who destroyed his own liver with drinking, and the second person destroyed his own liver with rat poison, but the third person was in a construction accident and lost half his liver through no fault of his own, shouldn't the third person get the liver?

Because, let's face it: There are not enough livers to go around. Not by a long shot. Most people on the transplant waiting list never get a transplant. Even some truly deserving people. And far too often, livers go to people who arguably don't deserve them because they decided to destroy their first liver.

In my view, we should start organizing transplant recipients along the lines of medical ethics, rating each person's "deserving" score based on their level of personal responsibility with the organs they already have. Why should taxpayers, in particular, pay for a half million dollar heart transplant procedure for someone who smokes three packs of cigarettes a day and lives on processed junk food while refusing to exercise? Isn't that a terrible waste of health care dollars?

I mean, if a guy wants to kill himself with cigarettes and junk food, that's his choice. And he's got one set of organs to destroy, and that's it. It's not right to give him a second set and let him destroy those too, especially when someone else may put them to a better use.

Seriously. I know these are not popular questions, and if we had enough livers to go around for everyone, we wouldn't need to ask these questions, but in an environment where livers are limited and funds are limited does it make any sense for a murderer to get a liver while some other innocent car crash victim dies while waiting for one?

Of course not. And the fact that the transplant industry awards these precious organs to the wrong people just demonstrates how far it has veered from the path of medical ethics. (The term "medical ethics" is almost an oxymoron these days...)

Let's nail down some simple rules for organ transplants. We'll call these "common sense rules" for an industry that has lost common sense:

• Rule #1) Murderers should not qualify for organ transplants. No brainer.

• Rule #2) People who consciously destroy their own organs (such as by drinking rat poison) should not qualify for organ transplants.

• Rule #3) People who choose to live unhealthy lifestyles by consuming processed junk foods, abusing drugs or avoiding basic self-care (exercise) should not quality for organ transplants either. Why? Because it's a waste to give a valuable organ to someone who isn't going to take care of it.

• Rule #4) Those individuals who lost their own organs through no fault of their own should move up to the top of the organ transplant waiting lists.

• Rule #5) People should be required to sign a contract before receiving an organ transplant, and that contract should commit them to avoiding alcohol and drugs (including dangerous OTC painkillers which cause liver damage, for example) and pursuing a healthful diet that will support their lifelong health.

Trading in human flesh
You might call these the five basic rules for sensible organ transplantation. These rules probably make perfect sense to you and me, but they make no sense whatsoever to the organ transplant industry. That industry, you see, earns the same amount of profit regardless of whether an innocent victim gets the organ or a convicted murderer gets it. It's all the same to them.

In fact, the organ transplant industry is rife with corruption and misdeeds. I've covered stories in the past where doctors and hospitals were caught secretly trading body parts for profit. Many U.S. hospitals now engage in the black market trafficking of illegally harvested organs (http://www.naturalnews.com/028994_o...). In fact, 44 people, including medical personnel, were recently arrested in the United States for their involvement in organ trafficking.

In addition -- here's another horrifying thought -- many of the organs offered up for transplantation are diseased organs to begin with. Sometimes organs are harvested from people who are riddled with cancer! These organs are then transplanted right into recipients with no warnings about the cancer. (http://www.naturalnews.com/027353_h...)

So what you have is an industry that will harvest an organ from just about anybody (cancer patients, smokers, drug users, chemotherapy victims, etc.) and transplant that organ into anybody else (murderers, rapists, smokers, etc.) and earn a hefty profit doing so.

It doesn't sound so nice when you look at the real story here, does it? The organ transplant industry is a lot darker and dishonest than what it's publicly made out to be.

Publicly, it's all sold to you as "saving lives." But behind the scenes, it's really about profiting from human flesh, regardless of whether it actually helps a human being who deserves it.

Reforms desperately needed
Again, this is not to say that the organ transplant industry doesn't sometimes do the right thing. I have no doubt it ends up saving many deserving lives, but this does not seem to be the driving factor behind its (literal) operations. The industry seems a lot more interested in finding any diseased organ it can get its hands on and thrusting it into any living recipient they can find without engaging in any sort of calculation about quality of life or human compassion.

And that's where the industry has gone terribly wrong.

Today, those who donate their organs have to face the very real possibility that their organs could be given to a murderer who may then use them to go out and commit even more murderers.

At the same time, those who receive organ transplants have no way to know whether those organs were harvested from cancer patients, drug abusers or chemotherapy victims. So even if you're "lucky enough" to receive an organ, it might already be riddled with cancer anyway. You're stuck with the transplant bill but might die of cancer from the organ you received!

Read this story, Body part harvesting company sold parts from dead cancer patients, drug users for use in surgery recipients (http://www.naturalnews.com/020109_o...)

Such is the status of the organ transplant industry today.

It doesn't have to be this way, however. There is arguably a place for organ transplants for true victims of accidents or other causes outside of their control. But for people who just eat junk foods, abuse drugs and alcohol, avoid exercise and live a toxic life, an organ transplant makes no scientific sense. But it does make money... and that's why they keep being performed.

Is it ethical to donate your organs to this system?
Make no mistake: Many U.S. hospitals deal in human flesh. They are waiting for car crash victims, suicide victims and other recently dead in order to rip their organs out of their body and transplant them for profit. And although this is beyond the scope of this particular article, I have seen disturbing evidence that if you list yourself as an organ donor on your driver's license, there is a chance your organs may actually be harvested before you are truly dead.

When you're an organ donor, there's a rush, after all, to cut out your heart, liver, lungs, kidneys and other parts before they lose too much oxygen. And the very best way to do that, medically speaking, is to make sure your heart is still beating when they begin harvesting.

I truly believe there are cases where organ donors have been turned over to the organ harvesting team rather than the resuscitation team even when they were not truly dead. But we'll probably cover that in another story on another day.

In the mean time, I strongly urge you to think carefully about your own organ donation status and how your organs could end up in the body of a murderer. I realize that not all organ donations are bad, and some organ transplants truly do save deserving lives, but until the organ transplant industry reforms itself and disavows the abuses outlined here, I personally will not support it, and I will urge others to avoid it.

This is sad because I know that many deserving victims of accidents need organ transplants. But the system in place today too often denies them access to those organs while wasting them on others who simply don't deserve new organs.

Above all, remember this: the best way to save lives is to take care of the organs you were born with. If you don't destroy the liver you already have, you won't need a new one!

What destroys livers? Pharmaceuticals and over-the-counter medications, for one thing. So does chemotherapy. Isn't it fascinating that the treatments of one branch of medicine (oncology) create more business for the transplant industry by destroying livers, hearts and kidneys? That's called repeat business.

If you really want to destroy your liver, by the way, take some acetaminophen painkillers (http://www.naturalnews.com/026565_d...). This common painkiller has also been linked with kidney damage (http://www.naturalnews.com/001523.html).

Think about it: If the medical industry really cared about protecting your liver, they wouldn't keep prescribing medicines that destroy livers!

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Accused murderer receives liver organ transplant while others wait to die