This is a call to all white people. Racialist action, is the only solution. Go to www.stormfront.org, listen to the Jamie Kelso show. 1am-3am every morning.
June 19, 2009 “Information Clearing House” — David Ray Griffin, the nemesis of the collection of disinformation known as the 9/11 Commission Report, has taken up the question of Osama Bin Laden, Dead or Alive?
On the basis of the available evidence, Griffin concludes that bin Laden died in December 2001, most likely of kidney failure. He has been kept alive in the media by US government PSYOPS as a useful bogyman to justify America’s illegal wars of aggression. The messages received from bin Laden since his death appear to be conveniently timed fabrications designed to advance US government purposes.
Osama bin Laden is likely to become a mythical person, like the Georgia Tech student, George P. Burdell, who will be sighted from time to time over a period that exceeds the length of a human life.
It was less than one year ago that Americans were subjected to PSYOPS disinformation from their government concerning the Russia-Georgia conflict over South Ossetia.
Soviet ruler Joseph Stalin incorporated South Ossetia, formerly a part of Russia, into his home province of Georgia. When the Soviet Union broke up, Georgia became independent and retained South Ossetia. Secession movements arose in South Ossetia and in Abkhazia. These secession movements were the reason European members of NATO rejected the US government’s attempt to make Georgia a NATO member in order to extend the US/NATO military presence on Russia’s borders in contravention of previous US government agreements with Russia.
To terminate the secession movement and, thereby, remove the barrier to Georgia becoming a NATO member, the US, with Israel’s help, trained and equipped the Georgian military and gave the American puppet ruler, installed in the aftermath of one of the US-orchestrated color revolutions, the green light to attack South Ossetia.
Under mutual agreement, Russia and Georgia both provided peace-keeping troops in South Ossetia to prevent violence by secessionists. On the night of August 7-8, 2008, Georgian troops attacked South Ossetia, destroying a town and killing many Russian Ossetians and some Russian soldiers who were part of the peace-keeping force. Large numbers of South Ossetians fled across the border to Russia.
The US government, in its hubris, assumed that Russia would accept the ethnic cleansing of Russians from South Ossetia. Instead, Russian troops arrived and quickly destroyed the American trained and equipped Georgian army and could easily have taken control of Georgia, but refrained.
Defeated in its aim, the US government unleashed a PSYOPS disinformation war against the Russian government, claiming falsely that Russia had initiated the conflict by attacking Georgia. The US government’s blatant and transparent lies were force-fed to the American public by the US media.
British disinformation services cooperated with their American masters, but the rest of the world blew the whistle. The real facts emerged, and an American disinformation campaign experienced a rare failure.
Now ten months later, US “black ops” is at it again, pumping out disinformation about the “stolen” Iranian election. The US media is again serving the government’s disinformation campaign. This despite the fact that on May 23, 2007, Brian Ross and Richard Esposito reported on ABC News: “The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert “black” operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell ABC News.”
On May 27, 2007, the London Telegraph independently reported: “Mr. Bush has signed an official document endorsing CIA plans for a propaganda and disinformation campaign intended to destabilize, and eventually topple, the theocratic rule of the mullahs.”
A few days previously, the Telegraph reported on May 16, 2007, that Bush administration neocon warmonger John Bolton told the Telegraph that a US military attack on Iran would “be a ‘last option’ after economic sanctions and attempts to foment a popular revolution had failed.”
On June 29, 2008, Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker: “Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership.”
The Iranian election protests, essentially by the westernized youth of Tehran who wish to be free of Islamic moral codes, have the hallmarks of orchestration. The protesters are color-coded with green wristbands. Their protest signs are in English and are obviously directed at the western media. Their chants are propagandistic and bear no relation to facts known by every Iranian.
And again, the US media and various experts, whose ambitions depend on government-related careers, are force-feeding the American public the disinformation designed to further isolate and weaken, if not overthrow, the Iranian government.
Until 1978 the US ruled Iran through the Shah. The US intends to again rule Iran through puppets. The only two remaining independent governments in the region are Iran and Syria. If the US doesn’t first bankrupt itself, both countries will fall to US black ops destabilization.
The limitless gullibility of the American people guarantees carte blanche to the US government’s schemes. Americans seemingly cannot put two and two together. They have already forgotten the lies about weapons of mass destruction that have resulted in the destruction of Iraq. They have forgotten Secretary of State Colin Powell’s publicly expressed remorse at the lies he told the UN. Americans blithely accept the conflation of Talliban with al Qaeda and terrorists and the new war that the Obama regime has started in Pakistan, a war that has already produced 2 million refugees.
It can fairly be said that there is not much difference between the American public and the fictional one under Big Brother in George Orwell’s 1984. The few independent voices that do exist are simply drowned out by the constant flow of disinformation.
The US government’s success in spinning 9/11 guaranteed the government’s success in pursuing a hegemonic agenda under a cloak of lies. Although a large percentage of the US population does not believe the government’s account and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of experts and informed and well-connected people have challenged the government’s tale, the US media has shown no interest despite the official account of 9/11 bearing every known hallmark of a coverup.
High-ranking fire marshals have complained that legally required forensic procedures were not followed by authorities entrusted with investigation.
The testimony of more than 100 policemen, firemen, and maintenance personnel who were in the towers at the time and report hearing and experiencing a series of explosions was ignored and withheld from the public until the government got its story in place.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology studiously avoided testing for evidence of explosives. The severed steel beams were quickly collected and sold abroad as scrap.
As a number of observers have complained, the crime scene was destroyed, not investigated.
The government’s story of the destruction of the towers is based on computer simulations that produce results in keeping with the assumptions.
The collapse of the third building is not even mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report.
No one abroad believes the US government’s story. Europeans have produced documentary films that laugh at the official explanation.
Recently, an international team of scientists reported on their two year examination of dust samples from the debris. They report that they found nano-thermite in the samples. To my knowledge no mainstream US media reported the finding.
One would think that such a finding would lead to a real investigation. Instead, within the US the finding is dismissed by debunkers of “conspiracy theories” (except of course the government’s own conspiracy theory) with the charge that the dust samples have not been in controlled environments since collected and could have been contaminated by those who volunteered the samples. In other words, the nano-thermite, if actually in the samples, was planted.
One wonders how residents of lower Manhattan obtained nano-thermite with which to contaminate the dust. Indeed, who has access to nano-thermite other than government ?
Why doesn’t the National Academy of Science choose a team to examine the samples? If the finding of nano-thermite is verified, the issue of contamination can be investigated. If it turns out that the people who volunteered the samples have no possible access to nano-thermite, the case for a real investigation is established.
There is little prospect of such a development in the US. American science and the careers of scientists are heavily dependent on US government funding. It would be a career-ending event for American scientists to get involved with this matter other than as a contributer to a cover-up. Professor Steven Jones, a physicist at BYU who first raised the issue of explosives being used to bring down the three WTC buildings, was terminated, despite his tenure, by BYU. Many believe Jones was terminated because of political threats to the university’s funding.
In the US truth is an ineffective means by which to hold government accountable. Consider, for example, the fate of whistleblowers. Daniel Ellsberg who leaked the Pentagon Papers was perhaps the last successful whistleblower and that was three decades ago. Since then the government has put in place many defenses against whistleblowers.
The American public has looked to government for its salvation since Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. Government provides education, health care (Medicare, Medicaid), pensions (Social Security), food stamps, housing subsidies, child care and protects Americans from a long list of demonized villeins ranging from spouse abusers and child molesters to terrorists. Americans see themselves and their government as the salt of the earth, an image supported by American generosity to other peoples who suffer natural calamities. Most Americans believe that their government does stupid things, but not evil things except perhaps by accident.
The right-wing believes that America was attacked on 9/11 because we are so good, hubris to which Bush successfully played with his statement that “they hate us for our freedom and democracy.”
The left-wing finds emotional satisfaction in its belief that 9/11 was deserved blow-back from peoples oppressed by US foreign policy who rose up and struck back.
Truth is so impotent in America that the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty 42 years ago is still covered up by the US government despite the best efforts of Admiral Tom Moorer, who was Chief of Naval Operations and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and by decades of effort by the Liberty survivors.
This raises the question: Why do some people blow whistles? Why do those few write books and columns that challenge the lies and deceptions? There is probably more than one answer. For some, hope springs eternal. Others naively destroy their careers thinking that truth will be honored. Still others speak from a sense of responsibility to truth and not from a hope that anything will actually change.
In October 1987 John Stockwell, a former CIA covet operative who ran the CIA’s covert war in Angola, gave a lecture [ http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4068.htm ] in which he said he abandoned his career when he realized that CIA covert operations resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people and were totally unconnected to any US national security interests. “I concluded that I just couldn’t see the point.”
Nothing has changed. What was the point of the US invasion of Iraq? Even President Bush eventually conceded that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
What was the point of the US invasion of Afghanistan and what is the point of Obama’s escalation of the war there? The Taliban is not al Qaeda and was totally focused on unifying Afghanistan under an Islamic government. The US was not on the Taliban’s radar screen.
What is the point of the war that the US has started in Pakistan?
What is the point of the destabilization of the Iranian government? After the stolen elections of the Karl Rove/Bush era, why does the US think it must overthrow the Iranian government because of allegations that Ahmadinejad stole an election?
If the answer is that these wars and interventions serve the interest of US hegemony, the obvious reply is that US hegemony is more likely to be lost from the massive red ink in the government’s budget that is likely to be monetized, thus destroying the dollar as reserve currency, the main source of US hegemony.
If the US wants to have an empire in the Middle East or elsewhere, the government should come out and say so. At least then Americans could revel in the glories of empire. As it is, the pleasure must be gained surreptitiously under the table, pretending that we are protecting the world from evil-doers while we do evil ourselves.
An Astounding Law That
Came Within One Vote of Passing
in Montana This Month!
2009 Montana Legislature
Additional Bill Links PDF (with line numbers)
HOUSE RESOLUTION NO. 3
INTRODUCED BY MORE
A RESOLUTION OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE STATE OF MONTANA ARTICULATING THE RIGHTS OF THE STATE OF MONTANA AND OF THE SEVERAL STATES OF THE UNITED STATES.
WHEREAS, the Constitution of the State of Montana declares and secures that the people of this state have the sole and exclusive right to govern themselves as a free, sovereign, and independent state; and
WHEREAS, that right may never be delegated to the United States; and
WHEREAS, the Montana Constitution documents that in 1889 the people of Montana agreed to form a free, sovereign, and independent body politic, or state, by the name of “The State of Montana”; and
WHEREAS, the people of the State of Montana agree that all powers not expressly delegated to the federal government in the United States Constitution must be reserved to and exercised by individual states; and
WHEREAS, when Montana entered into statehood in 1889, that entrance was accomplished by a contract between Montana and the several states, with Congress and the President concurring and acting as the agent for the several states. That contract is known as the “Compact with the United States”, archived as Article I of the Montana Constitution; and
WHEREAS, the sovereignty of those individual tribal governments of American Indians currently existing within the State of Montana is likewise guaranteed by that same Compact with the United States; and
WHEREAS, a contract, compact, or treaty must be implemented consistent with the terms and understandings in place at the time it was entered into; and
WHEREAS, the protection of these states’ rights is enumerated in amendments to the United States Constitution, which state that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”; and
WHEREAS, this resolution follows and expands into principle the position Montana established in its 60th legislative session when it rejected the federally mandated “Real ID” as an unwarranted assumption of federal power and as an unacceptable incursion into the right to privacy that the people of Montana have reserved to themselves in the Montana Constitution.
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE STATE OF MONTANA:
(1) That the several states of the United States are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to general government, but by ratifying the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights the several states constituted a general government for special purposes and delegated to that government certain definite powers, while reserving all other rights.
(2) That when the general government assumes undelegated powers, its IT acts in excess of its authority are void and of no force.
(3) That the government created by the United States Constitution was not granted the authority to determine the extent of the powers delegated to itself because such a grant of authority would have made the discretion of Congress and not the United States Constitution, and the limitations contained in the Constitution, the measure of Congress’s powers.
(4) That the several states delegated to Congress via the United States Constitution a power to punish treason, counterfeiting of the securities and current coin of the United States, piracies, felonies committed on the high seas, offenses against the law of nations, slavery, and no other crimes.
(5) That all acts of Congress that assume to create, define, or punish crimes other than those enumerated in the United States Constitution are void and of no force.
(6) That the power to create, define, and punish other crimes is reserved to the states.
(7)(4) That the power of the federal government over individual liberties is restricted and the power is reserved by the states to determine whether liberties may be abridged without lessening their useful freedom and how far those abuses that cannot be separated from their use should be tolerated, rather than allowing the use to be destroyed.
(8)(5) That states retain the right of protecting all freedoms of individual persons from federal incursion.
(9)(6) That any acts of Congress that abridge protected individual freedoms are not law and are void.
(10)(7) That excessive exercise of those parts of the United States Constitution by the federal government that delegate to Congress a power “to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States” and “to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper” to regulate “commerce among the states” or that declare federal laws to be ultimately supreme has served to destroy the limits of power imposed on Congress by its creators, the several states.
(11)(8) That those powers given to Congress in the United States Constitution detailed above have been amended, modified, and limited by the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.
(12)(9) That if Montana accepts these inappropriate applications of power and continues to allow Congress to exercise unbridled authority, it would be surrendering its own form of government, its sovereign power, and its responsibility to its citizens.
(13)(10) That the people of this state will not accept undelegated and consequently unlimited powers assumed by the federal government.
(14)(11) That every state has a right to ignore or reject all unwarranted assumptions of power by other entities within its boundaries and that without this right, states and sovereign tribes would become mere administrative subdivisions of their intended servant, the federal government that the states created.
(15)(12) That this state calls on the other several states for an expression of their sentiments on acts of the federal government not authorized by the United States Constitution.
(16)(13) That the rights and liberties of Montana, its tribal governments, and Montana citizens and of the other several states must be protected from any dangers by declaring that Congress is limited by the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights.
(17)(14) That any act by the Congress of the United States, Executive Order of the President of the United States, or Judicial Order of the United States that assumes a power not delegated by the United States Constitution and diminishes the liberty of this State or its citizens constitutes a breach of the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights by the government of the United States, which would also breach Montana’s “Compact With the United States”. Acts that would cause such a breach include but are not limited to:
(a) establishing martial law or a state of emergency within a state without the consent of the legislature of that state;
(b) moving federal military personnel or units into a state without the consent of the legislature of that state or with the intent to enforce federal laws or to assert the supremacy of the federal government;
(c) requiring involuntary servitude or governmental service other than a draft during a declared war or pursuant to or as an alternative to incarceration after due process of law;
(d) requiring involuntary servitude or governmental service of persons under the age of 18 years, other than pursuant to or as an alternative to incarceration after due process of law; or
(e) surrendering any power delegated or not delegated to any corporation or foreign government.
(18)(15) That if any act of Congress becomes law or if an Executive Order of the President of the United States or Judicial Order of the United States is put into force beyond the reservations expressed in this resolution, OR IF ANY TREATY IS ENTERED INTO BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT THAT NULLIFIES THE RIGHTS OF THE PEOPLE OF MONTANA AS EXPRESSED IN THE UNITED STATES OR MONTANA CONSTITUTIONS, Montana’s “Compact With the United States” may be considered breached and all powers previously delegated to the United States via the United States Constitution revert to the states individually.
(19)(16) That any future federal government of the United States shall require ratification of three-fourths of the states seeking to form a federal government and shall not be binding upon any state not seeking to form or join a federal government.
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Secretary of State send a copy of this resolution to the President of the United States, to each member of the United States Congress, and to the Secretary of State of each of the other several states and territories of the United States.
- END -
——————————————————————————–
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(406) 444-3064
By David Barrett, Home Affairs Correspondent
Last Updated: 10:35AM BST 05 Oct 2008
In comments which will reignite a row over controversial European Arrest Warrants, Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said that the arrest of Dr Fredrick Toben at Heathrow on Wednesday conflicted with Britain’s tradition of free speech.
Mr Huhne said the affair exposed weaknesses in the system and called on the Government to lead a campaign to reform it. He is writing to Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, and Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, urging them to lobby Brussels for a rewrite of what he described as “rough edges” in the treaty which underpins the warranges.
He called for Dr Toben’s case to be dropped and said the case demonstrated that the legislation wrongly allowed people to be arrested for actions which do not breach British law. CLICK BELOW LINK FOR FULL ARTICLE Click on the you tube clips below to start thinking free!!!!
YOU MUST WATCH THIS CLIP, OF DAVID COLE, A JEW EXPOSING THE HOLOCAUST. DAVID IS A BRILLIANT, JEWISH, HOLOCAUST REVISIONIST!!!! Isn’t that something, even they know it’s a lie.
Barring a catastrophe – a terrorist attack on American soil, a calamitous gaffe, or the documented
revelation that he really is a Muslim after all – it looks like Barack Obama is going to be the 44th president of these United States. Not only that, but I’d bet the farm we’ll have a Democratic Congress, one with a working majority that relegates the Republicans to the role of back bench naysayers whose dissent barely registers. Last year, Paul Craig Roberts expressed the hopes of many American voters when he wrote:
“If we are fortunate, Republicans will complete their self-destruction before they extinguish the Constitution and destroy America.”
It looks like he’s going to get his wish. CLICK BELOW LINK FOR FULL STORY
We never landed on the moon!
(The Moon Landing Hoax)
These links, photographs, are a quick overview of the “so called” facts the public was given about our exploration of the moon. With, just, these few oppositions, it is common sense based, that would make one completely question the “Moon Walk”. Yes it is obvious that we have gone to space, along with every other nation. Just remember our current state, at the time of the supposed moon landing. We (America), were, in the midst of, Communism VS. capitalism (the cold war), we had something to prove to the world, and we could prove it by beating Russia, via the space program. So we did. We won, with theatrics, costumes, and back drops that make, even the dumbest drone question the authentic nature of this visual. See for yourself, and decide. -The Florida Rebel. (click on links, and photographs for literature based uopn this theory.
Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong in NASA’s training mock-up of the Moon and lander module. Hoax proponents say the entire mission was filmed on sets like this training mock-up.
The U.S. global financial crisis has gone global, which illustrates the still potent impact of the U.S. economy on the rest of the world. It also highlights the fact that central banks and other financial institutions in other parts of the world were too highly leveraged, or too highly exposed to investments whose risks had not been properly assessed, and that corrections were necessary. The danger, already apparent in the manic response of U.S. government officials and the widespread failure to understand that the stock market is not coterminous with the real economy, is that instead of the crisis leading to more sensible policies it will lead to foolish policies that not only don’t address underlying problems but assure future crises. CLICK BELOW LINK FOR FULL STORY
Look at the gas chamber method. No photographs were ever taken of homocidal, and I repeat homocidal gas chambers. No blue prints, maps, or building plans are in existance that show the structures known as “homicidal Gas Chambers”. With no pictures, no physical structures, and no traces of the zyklon-B gas anywhere around the supposed murder rooms (this is confirmed by the non-existance of the color “prussian blue” this is the color that zyklon-B emits), yet we still believe millions of jews were gassed, and burned to death in ovens. Please think about this notion…………………. consider the state of existance,………….then still agree with the MASS gassings and body burnings daily. Six million bodies, made up of 75% water, stacked on top of each other, burning…HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM. Water burning water???? How many ovens were in Aushwitz, better yet, how many “homicidal gas chambers ever existed? Gas chambers did exist for deloucing reasons, but even jews themselves have never claimed, the deloucing chambers were used to murder people. Fortunatly, the rooms the zionists Chose to market as “homicidal gas chambers, are rediculious, and impossible. Of course, what jew at the time, would have ever assumed revisionists would argue this “horrible genocide known as the holocaust. Seems odd to me that, Gas chambers did exist, in concentration camps (for fumigating, prisoners clothing, and bedding, such as matresses. These chambers used hot steam to fumigate, and they also used the pesticide “zyklon-B”. However, the fumigation chambers have never been identified by any (extermenationist), (holocaust supporter), (holocaust survivor) as homicidal gas chambers. The chemical the zionists said was used to, kill millions of jews, is the pesticide “zyklon-B. Zyklon-B gives off a staining color known as “prussian blue”(mentioned earlier) . This stain existed in the fumigate chambers, but not in the supposed murder chambers. This, rhetorical, jargon, makes sence to who? Oh yes, the children in our halls of academia, educated by school books, school books written, and published by who? Listining to radio, watching television, owned by who?? One would say “hey, if their so powerful, they deserve to win, But I say, due to our loving, non invasive, nurturing nature we let them win. WHITE PEOPLE WAKE UP!! Smash the jewish lobby with every ounce of energy you can muster; jewish theif, GO HOME!! Get out of my yard. I call for the truth, and truth be told, “JEW GET LOST”!!!! No jewish lobby, no Zionist teachings, and no distrust. For without the jew, we are free. “Let Israel fight its own wars”! Death to Zionism, life to freedom!!!! (examine the video clip below). If you still dont get it, im sorry. yours truly, TFR.
Remember the good old days when the economic threat was mere recession? The Federal Reserve would encourage the economy with low interest rates until the economy overheated. Prices would rise, and unions would strike for higher benefits. Then the Fed would put on the brakes by raising interest rates. Money supply growth would fall. Inventories would grow, and layoffs would result. When the economy cooled down, the cycle would start over.
The nice thing about 20th century recessions was that the jobs returned when the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates and consumer demand increased. In the 21st century, the jobs that have been moved offshore do not come back. More than three million U.S. manufacturing jobs have been lost while Bush was in the White House. Those jobs represent consumer income and career opportunities that America will never see again.
In the 21st century the US economy has produced net new jobs only in low paid domestic services, such as waitresses, bartenders, hospital orderlies, and retail clerks. The kind of jobs that provided ladders of upward mobility into the middle class are being exported abroad or filled by foreigners brought in on work visas. Today when you purchase an American name brand, you are supporting economic growth and consumer incomes in China and Indonesia, not in Detroit and Cincinnati.
In the 20th century, economic growth resulted from improved technologies, new investment, and increases in labor productivity, which raised consumers’ incomes and purchasing power. In contrast, in the 21st century, economic growth has resulted from debt expansion.
Most Americans have experienced little, if any, income growth in the 21st century. Instead, consumers have kept the economy going by maxing out their credit cards and refinancing their mortgages in order to consume the equity in their homes.
The income gains of the 21st century have gone to corporate chief executives, shareholders of offshoring corporations, and financial corporations.
By replacing $20 an hour U.S. labor with $1 an hour Chinese labor, the profits of U.S. offshoring corporations have boomed, thus driving up share prices and “performance” bonuses for corporate CEOs. With Bush/Cheney, the Republicans have resurrected their policy of favoring the rich over the poor. John McCain captured today’s high income class with his quip that you are middle class if you have an annual income less than $5 million.
Financial companies have made enormous profits by securitizing income flows from unknown risks and selling asset backed securities to pension funds and investors at home and abroad.
Today recession is only a small part of the threat that we face. Financial deregulation, Alan Greenspan’s low interest rates, and the belief that the market was the best regulator of risks, have created a highly leveraged pyramid of risk without adequate capital or collateral to back the risk. Consequently, a wide variety of financial institutions are threatened with insolvency, threatening a collapse comparable to the bank failures that shrank the supply of money and credit and produced the Great Depression.
Washington has been slow to recognize the current problem. A millstone around the neck of every financial institution is the mark-to-market rule, an ill-advised “reform” from a previous crisis that was blamed on fraudulent accounting that over-valued assets on the books. As a result, today institutions have to value their assets at current market value.
In the current crisis the rule has turned out to be a curse. Asset backed securities, such as collateralized mortgage obligations, faced their first market pricing in panicked circumstances. The owner of a bond backed by 1,000 mortgages doesn’t know how many of the mortgages are good and how many are bad. The uncertainty erodes the value of the bond.
If significant amounts of such untested securities are on the balance sheet, insolvency rears its ugly head. The bonds get dumped in order to realize some part of their value. Merrill Lynch sold its asset backed securities for twenty cents on the dollar, although it is
unlikely that 80 percent of the instruments were worthless.
The mark to market rule, together with the suspect values of the asset backed securities and collateral debt obligations and swaps, allowed short sellers to make fortunes by driving down the share prices of the investment banks, thus worsening the crisis. With their capitalization shrinking, the investment banks could no longer borrow. The authorities took their time in halting short-selling, and short-selling is set to resume on October 3 or thereabout.
If the mark to market rule had been suspended and short-selling prohibited, the crisis would have been mitigated. Instead, the crisis intensified, provoking the US Treasury to propose to take responsibility for $700 billion more in troubled financial instruments in addition to the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and AIG bailouts. Treasury guarantees are also apparently being extended to money market funds.
All of this makes sense at a certain level. But what if the $700 billion doesn’t stem the tide and another $700 billion is needed? At what point does the Treasury’s assumption of liabilities erode its own credit standing?
This crisis comes at the worst possible time. Gratuitous wars and military spending in pursuit of US world hegemony have inflated the federal budget deficit, which recession is further enlarging. Massive trade deficits, magnified by the offshoring of goods and services, cannot be eliminated by US export capability.
These large deficits are financed by foreigners, and foreign unease has resulted in a decline in the US dollar’s value compared to other tradable currencies, precious metals, and oil.
The US Treasury does not have $700 billion on hand with which to buy the troubled assets from the troubled institutions. The Treasury will have to borrow the $700 billion from abroad.
The dependency of Treasury Secretary Paulson’s bailout scheme on foreign willingness to absorb more Treasury paper in order that the Treasury has the money to bail out the troubled institutions is heavy proof that the US is in a financially dependent position that is inconsistent with that of America’s “superpower” status.
The US is not a superpower. The US is a financially dependent country that foreign lenders can close down at will.
Washington still hasn’t learned this. American hubris can lead the administration and Congress into a bailout solution that the rest of the world, which has to finance it, might not accept.
Currently, the fight between the administration and Congress over the bailout is whether the bailout will include the Democrats’ poor constituencies as well as the Republicans’ rich ones. The Republicans, for the most part, and their media shills are doing their best to exclude the ordinary American from the rescue plan.
A less appreciated feature of Paulson’s bailout plan is his demand for freedom from accountability. Congress balked at Paulson’s demand that the executive branch’s conduct of the bailout be non-reviewable by Congress or the courts: “Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion.” However, Congress substituted for its own authority a “board” that possibly will consist of the bailed out parties, by which I mean Republican and Democratic constituencies. The control over the financial system that the bailout would give to the executive branch would mean, in effect, state capitalism or fascism.
If we add state capitalism to the Bush administration’s success in eroding both the US Constitution and the power of Congress, we may be witnessing the final death of accountable constitutional government.
The US might also be on the verge of a decision by foreign lenders to cease financing a country that claims to be a hegemonic power with the right and the virtue to impose its will on the rest of the world. The US is able to be at war in Iraq and Afghanistan and is able to pick fights with Iran, Pakistan and Russia, because the Chinese, the Japanese and the sovereign wealth funds of the oil kingdoms finance America’s wars and military budgets. Aside from nuclear weapons, which are also in the hands of other countries, the US has no assets of its own with which to pursue its control over the world.
The US cannot be a hegemonic power without foreign financing. All indications are that the rest of the world is tiring of US arrogance.
If the US Treasury’s assumption of bailout responsibilities becomes excessive, the US dollar will lose its reserve currency role. The minute that occurs, foreign financing of America’s twin deficits will cease, as will the bailout. The US government would have to turn to the printing of paper money as did Weimar Germany.
For now this pending problem is hidden from view, because in times of panic, the tradition is to flee into “safety,” that is, into US Treasury debt obligations. The safety of Treasuries will be revealed by the extent of the bailout.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
This, pulldown of his pants, showing of his worthless cheeks, is bad, bad, bad!! Mccain is using the age old excuse we used to use, when in first grade, and didn’t do our homework; “um, i dont know what happened to my homework, i think my dog ate it”. I guess Mccains dog ate his rhetoric, to say the least. What an identifying factor of Mccains old age; What mass of existance, desires an unprepared leader. If Mccain can’t prepare for a debate; how can he prepare for the leadership of “the free world”. Just because Mccain was given to you as the Republican elect, doesn’t mean you must accept his folly. The same goes for Democrats, and Obama. Unless we confront the lies, we will always be supporters of untruth.
At the time of this writing, the U.S. House and Senate are poised to pass a $700 billion bailout to Wall Street. At the behest of President George W. Bush, the U.S. taxpayers are going to be on the hook for what can only be referred to as the biggest fraud in U.S. history. Click the link below for the rest of the article.
How Israeli Backdoor Technology Penetrated the U.S. Telecom System and Compromised National Security
By Christopher Ketcham
Since the late 1990s, federal agents have reported systemic communications security breaches at the Department of Justice, FBI, DEA, the State Department, and the White House. Several of the alleged breaches, these agents say, can be traced to two hi-tech communications companies, Verint Inc. (formerly Comverse Infosys), and Amdocs Ltd., that respectively provide major wiretap and phone billing/record-keeping software contracts for the U.S. government. Together, Verint and Amdocs form part of the backbone of the government’s domestic intelligence surveillance technology. Both companies are based in Israel – having arisen to prominence from that country’s cornering of the information technology market – and are heavily funded by the Israeli government, with connections to the Israeli military and Israeli intelligence (both companies have a long history of board memberships dominated by current and former Israeli military and intelligence officers). Verint is considered the world leader in “electronic interception” and hence an ideal private sector candidate for wiretap outsourcing. Amdocs is the world’s largest billing service for telecommunications, with some $2.8 billion in revenues in 2007, offices worldwide, and clients that include the top 25 phone companies in the United States that together handle 90 percent of all call traffic among U.S. residents. The companies’ operations, sources suggest, have been infiltrated by freelance spies exploiting encrypted trapdoors in Verint/Amdocs technology and gathering data on Americans for transfer to Israeli intelligence and other willing customers (particularly organized crime). “The fact of the vulnerability of our telecom backbone is indisputable,” says a high level U.S. intelligence officer who has monitored the fears among federal agents. “How it came to pass, why nothing has been done, who has done what – these are the incendiary questions.” If the allegations are true, the electronic communications gathered up by the NSA and other U.S. intelligence agencies might be falling into the hands of a foreign government. Reviewing the available evidence, Robert David Steele, a former CIA case officer and today one of the foremost international proponents for “public intelligence in the public interest,” tells me that “Israeli penetration of the entire US telecommunications system means that NSA’s warrantless wiretapping actually means Israeli warrantless wiretapping.” (more…)
“The only way to fix this economic mess that the international bankers have created is to return America to sound money principles, as prescribed in the U.S. Constitution.”
By Chuck Baldwin
At the time of this writing, the U.S. House and Senate are poised to pass a $700 billion bailout to Wall Street. At the behest of President George W. Bush, the U.S. taxpayers are going to be on the hook for what can only be referred to as the biggest fraud in U.S. history.
Virtually our entire financial system is based on an illusion. We spend more than we earn, we consume more than we produce, we borrow more than we save, and we cling to the fantasy that this can go on forever. The glue that holds this crumbling scheme together is a fiat currency known as the Federal Reserve Note, which was created out of thin air by an international banking cartel called the Federal Reserve.
According to Congressman Ron Paul, in the last three years, the Federal Reserve has created over $4 trillion in new money. The result of all this “money-out-of-thin-air” fraud is never-ending inflation. And the more prices rise, the more the dollar collapses. Folks, this is not sustainable.
Already, Bear Stearns was awarded a $29 billion bailout, followed quickly by the bailout of Freddie and Fannie that will cost the taxpayers up to $200 billion. Then the Fed announced the bailout of AIG to the tune of $85 billion. Mind you, AIG is an enormous global entity with assets totaling more than $1.1 trillion. Moreover, the Feds agreed to pump $180 billion into global money markets. And the Treasury Department promised $50 billion to insure the holdings of money market mutual funds for a year. Now, taxpayers are being asked to provide $700 billion to Wall Street. (I hope readers are aware that, not only will American banks be bailed out, but foreign banks will also be bailed out. Then again, at least half of the Federal Reserve is comprised of foreign banks, anyway.) In other words, the Federal Reserve is preparing to spend upwards of $1 trillion or more. Remember again, this is fiat money, meaning it is money printed out of thin air. (more…)
The financial commentators and analysts of Wall Street aren’t unaware of what has caused the present economic crisis. The crash started with the collapse of the subprime mortgage market, which is effectively a code word for Blacks and non-White Hispanics. They’re just scared to say it out loud. Fox News recently ran a story more or less admitting this was the case, a long article that spent paragraph after paragraph dancing around the truth.
Subprime loans originally were higher interest loans for people with poor credit. Gradually government pressure was applied to increase the number of minority loans for the sake of political correctness. To make this happen, the quality controls on subprime loans were thrown out one by one. Eventually, people with bad credit histories and who couldn’t make down payments and who verbally stated what their income was (without any proof) were allowed to get home loans. For the first few years these insane procedures went unnoticed because housing prices kept going up. What made it all come crashing down, was the current housing slump. As soon as housing prices dropped millions of mostly Black and Latino subprime lenders walked away from their mortgages. They had nothing to lose because they had made no down payment. They weren’t worried about destroying their credit rating because they already had bad credit ratings.
A recent Fox News article reports “Obviously some sectors of the economy have been doing well, while others, such as housing, have been in a real mess. With the government takeover of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae as well as other bankruptcies in the financial sector, there are a lot of questions. The strangest fact is that the housing sector is having such problems when the economy otherwise has been doing well. Why have there been so many defaults when the economy has not been in a recession? Defaults have been at historically high rates despite reasonable economic growth and a relatively low unemployment rate of 6.1 percent. Some, such as James H. Carr, the CEO of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, argue that the high default rates are a result of ‘unfair and deceptive practices, steering customers to high price loans… Surprisingly, research done by economists a decade ago in 1998, particularly by Professors Ted Day and Stan Liebowitz at the University of Texas at Dallas, predicted the current problems and tried to warn people of a different cause. Starting during the early 1990s, mortgage-underwriting standards have been consistently weakened…”
Do you see which way the wind is beginning to blow in this first paragraph?) (more…)
This is a banker’s coup cooked up and facilitated by the deep-money guys who operate stealthily behind the political sideshow. The only time they emerge from their stinkholes is when they’re flushed out by a crisis that threatens their continued dominance. Photo by Jeremy Scahill, from the bailout protest in New York, September 25, 2008. http://www.infowars.com/?p=4914
While the American people are consumed with the news on the home front – economic implosion, job loss, a record number of foreclosures, failed banks – and a presidential election in which the usual amount of smoke is being blown, if you look behind the headlines the outline of an emerging crisis in – where else? – the Middle East is beginning to take shape.
What the heck is going on in Syria? The news of a huge explosion in Damascus, caused by a car bomb, has shaken the region, and it isn’t at all clear who or what is responsible. Whatever the source, however, the attack – which killed 17 bystanders, including possibly a top Syrian intelligence official – augurs ill for the future of peace in the Middle East (an increasingly elusive goal).
The attack occurred Saturday morning, near a major Syrian intelligence facility, although news reports in the West are focusing on the proximity of the Shi’ite shrine. Israeli media are emphasizing the possibility of an internal struggle within the Syrian regime itself, while the Iranians are saying the blast was the work of the Mossad and/or CIA. Suffice to say that this incident is shrouded in mystery, as the Syrians hint of attackers from beyond their borders, and the context – a series of equally mysterious attacks on targets in Syria over the past few years – indicates they may be correct.
In August, Syrian army Gen. Mohammad Suleiman was assassinated by a sniper in the city of Tartus. Suleiman was reputed to be the Syrian regime’s chief liaison to Lebanon’s Hezbollah organization – a job description that would point to Israel as the culprit. Last February, an explosion in Damascus knocked off Imad Mughniyeh, a Hezbollah military commander. Hezbollah and Syria have close ties.
Add to this recent Israeli allegations that the Syrians were trying to build a nuclear facility – accusations debunked in this space, and later proven to be entirely bogus – and the circumstantial evidence certainly points in the direction of Tel Aviv.
The key to understanding what is going on in the Middle East today – including the American invasion and occupation of Iraq and the stepped-up pressure on the Iranians – is to be found in a seminal paper published in 1996 by an Israeli think-tank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies: “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for the Realm.” In it, five U.S. academics and policymakers – many of whom hold (or held) high positions in the U.S. government, including Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and David Wurmser – outline a strategic perspective that posits a policy of regime change throughout the region. The premise is that Israel is caught in a bind, hemmed in by hostile neighbors and unfavorable demographic facts on the ground. Israel, the authors aver, must break out of its box, or perish in the attempt. The first item on the agenda: regime change in Iraq. The rationale for this was that the road to Damascus must first pass through Baghdad. Syria is the primary “frontline state” engaged in destabilizing the occupied territories and fomenting the Palestinian uprising, so it must be eliminated. Damascus has always been the primary target of the Israelis, whether they are engaged in Lebanon or the occupied territories, and now that Iraq is out of the way, thanks to Uncle Sam, it makes sense that the Israelis are moving against Damascus.
It also computes in a broader sense: the Israelis have always targeted the more secular elements among their many enemies in the region. Saddam Hussein was their first target, and his regime was notably irreligious, although in its latter years the Ba’athists tried to assume the mantle of Islamic legitimacy. Earlier, you’ll remember, the Israelis also went after Yasser Arafat hammer and tongs, while helping Hamas – at least, in its initial stages – to gain a foothold. Now they are going after the secular Ba’ath Party of Syria, which has ruled that country with an iron hand since the days of the late Hafez al-Assad. Assad’s son, Bashir, a UK-educated ophthalmologist, is generally seen as an ineffective ruler, and is reportedly in the midst of a power struggle between the old guard and his own supporters. Israeli news outlets portray the mysterious explosions as being a function of this purported internal struggle, but it is more likely that the Israelis are using their new position of strength to exert enough pressure to cause the brittle Syrian regime to implode.
That this would introduce chaos into the region and unleash the forces of Islamic extremism – including al-Qaeda, which reportedly has a Syrian adjunct – concerns them not at all. Better to fight al-Qaeda, which has narrow support among in the Arab world, than to face a secular anti-Zionist force such as the PLO or the Syrian Ba’athists, who enjoy some degree of popular support.
In Israel itself, there are disturbing developments aplenty. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, upon leaving office in the wake of a financial scandal, denounced the rising tide of “extremism, ” exemplified by the recent attack on a prominent academic critic of the settler movement. We warned about that, too, in this space, and the gathering ultra-rightist sentiments in the Israeli electorate at large do not bode well for the future. The present Israeli government reportedly asked for a green light from the Bush administration to go ahead and bomb Iran, ostensibly to take out its nuclear facilities. The answer, according to the British newspaper the Guardian, was no. A future Israeli government, run by extremists, might not be in the mood to ask permission before striking.
There is trouble afoot in the Middle East, and the source of it consists of two major mischief-makers: on the one hand, we have al-Qaeda (and affiliated Sunni extremists), and on the other we are witnessing the rising tide of extremism in Israel, both in government and in the general population. These two forces, ostensibly antithetical, are objectively allied in the sense that they both share a number of common goals: the elimination of Arab moderates, the defeat of Arab secularism, and opposition to all nationalism. Regarding this last, the Israelis oppose Arab nationalism because it inspires military resistance to their predations, and al-Qaeda disapproves of it because it often comes packaged with secularism or what they regard as heretical versions of Islam (such as the Alawite sect that the ruling caste in Syria belongs to). Nationalism also flies in the face of Osama bin Laden’s vision of a Sunni caliphate stretching from the straits of Gibraltar to the steppes of Central Asia.
Another reason for Israeli concentration on secular Arab targets it the American factor: U.S. public opinion is much more likely to side with the Jewish state if the enemy is seen as a fanatical religious movement that cannot be reasoned with. That Israel itself is coming to resemble this caricature is not something the authors of the “Clean Break” scenario took into account. Nor has Israel’s lobby in the U.S., which has yet to react to – or take seriously – the upsurge in extremist activity in Israel.
If Syria implodes, the consequences for the U.S. will be incalculably awful. With 150,000 troops in neighboring Iraq, we will soon be hearing that al-Qaeda has established a base in Syria, and the war will spread. We will also be hearing that Syria, too, needs “liberation,” and all sorts of figures will be brought forth as likely candidates for U.S. support, including, no doubt, the Reform Party of Syria, which has been promoted and nurtured by the neocons in Washington for the past few years.
There is an alternative to this mess, and it consists of preventive diplomacy. Although the Syrians have cooperated with the U.S. in fighting al-Qaeda – including providing some vital intelligence early on in the fight against Sunni extremism – we have not reciprocated. Instead, for the past eight years, U.S. government officials have refused to talk with the Syrians, and that country’s ambassador to the U.S. is reportedly the loneliest man in Washington, D.C. Not only that, but Donald Rumsfeld, when he was defense secretary, routinely threatened the Syrians with military action, claiming that they deliberately kept their border porous to facilitate the passage of Iraqi insurgents, supposedly based in Damascus. Yet there is no more fearsome and effective foe of al-Qaeda-type organizations than the Ba’athist dictatorship, which, under old Hafez, slaughtered some 30,000 inhabitants of the city of Hama, where members and fighters of the Muslim Brotherhood had risen up against him. Not very nice, but the Middle East is a rough neighborhood, and any upset in the balance of forces – including the stability of the Syrian regime – would likely produce a result far worse than the status quo.
The Iraq war’s consequences are still rippling outward, and the destabilization of Syria is perhaps the most perilous, as far as U.S. interests are concerned. If and when whomever is trying to upset the Syrian apple cart succeeds, it is Americans – after, of course, the poor Syrians – who will be paying the price. The only solution: diplomatic engagement and the dropping of economic sanctions, followed by a policy that encourages the opening up of Syria to Western influence. This has been the dearest wish of the Syrian government, which has been earnestly, if ineffectively, trying to repair relations with the West. Yet the Israel lobby has such a powerful stranglehold on policymaking, including Congress and the White House, that this has proved impossible. Whether or not the election of Barack Obama – who supposedly will talk to anyone – will mean a fundamental break with the failed policies of the past remains to be seen. For the moment, however, we can only hope that Washington will rein in the Israelis before they do irreparable damage and Syria comes unraveled.
CARACAS, Venezuela — President Hugo Chavez said Sunday that Russia will help Venezuela develop nuclear energy — a move likely to raise U.S. concerns over increasingly close cooperation between Caracas and Moscow.
Chavez said he accepted an offer from Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin for assistance in building a nuclear reactor.
“Russia is ready to support Venezuela in the development of nuclear energy with peaceful purposes and we already have a commission working on it,” Chavez said. “We are interested in developing nuclear energy.”
Putin offered Chavez assistance in developing nuclear energy during a meeting in the Russian city of Novo-Ogaryovo last week. The prime minister did not specify what kind of cooperation he could offer Venezuela, but Russia is aggressively promoting itself as a builder of nuclear power plants in developing nations.
Russia has ramped up its cooperation with Venezuela since last month’s war with Georgia, which badly damaged Moscow’s already strained ties with the West, particularly the United States.
During Chavez’s visit to Russia last week, a Russian naval squadron sailed for the Caribbean Sea in preparation for joint exercises with Venezuela later this year — a move that appeared retaliatory after the U.S. sent warships to deliver aid to Georgia.
The deployment is expected to represent the largest Russian naval maneuvers in the Caribbean — and perhaps the Western Hemisphere — since the Cold War.
Chavez says that stronger ties with Russia will help build a multi-polar world — a term the two allies use to describe their shared opposition to what they claim is U.S. global domination.
Since 2005, Venezuela has agreed to buy more than US$4.4 billion worth of weapons from Russia including fighter jets, combat helicopters, and 100,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles. And President Dmitry Medvedev has offered Chavez a loan to purchase additional weapons.
Chavez argues the United States and European Union do not have the right to prevent developing countries from pursuing nuclear technology, and he has strongly defended Iran’s nuclear program despite the Western powers’ fear that Tehran may be building nuclear weapons.
Before taking Russia up on its offer, Chavez had expressed interest in acquiring a nuclear reactor from Argentina and working with Iran, among other countries, to research nuclear energy.
Mysterious New ‘Dark Flow’ Discovered in Space By Clara Moskowitz
Staff Writer posted: 23 September 2008
12:46 pm ET
As if the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy weren’t vexing enough, another baffling cosmic puzzle has been discovered.
Patches of matter in the universe seem to be moving at very high speeds and in a uniform direction that can’t be explained by any of the known gravitational forces in the observable universe. Astronomers are calling the phenomenon “dark flow.”
The stuff that’s pulling this matter must be outside the observable universe, researchers conclude.
When scientists talk about the observable universe, they don’t just mean as far out as the eye, or even the most powerful telescope, can see. In fact there’s a fundamental limit to how much of the universe we could ever observe, no matter how advanced our visual instruments. The universe is thought to have formed about 13.7 billion years ago. So even if light started travelling toward us immediately after the Big Bang, the farthest it could ever get is 13.7 billion light-years in distance. There may be parts of the universe that are farther away (we can’t know how big the whole universe is), but we can’t see farther than light could travel over the entire age of the universe.
Mysterious motions
Scientists discovered the flow by studying some of the largest structures in the cosmos: giant clusters of galaxies. These clusters are conglomerations of about a thousand galaxies, as well as very hot gas which emits X-rays. By observing the interaction of the X-rays with the cosmic microwave background (CMB), which is leftover radiation from the Big Bang, scientists can study the movement of clusters.
The X-rays scatter photons in the CMB, shifting its temperature in an effect known as the kinematic Sunyaev-Zel’dovich (SZ) effect. This effect had not been observed as a result of galaxy clusters before, but a team of researchers led by Alexander Kashlinsky, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., found it when they studied a huge catalogue of 700 clusters, reaching out up to 6 billion light-years, or half the universe away. They compared this catalogue to the map of the CMB taken by NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) satellite.
They discovered that the clusters were moving nearly 2 million mph (3.2 million kph)toward a region in the sky between the constellations of Centaurus and Vela. This motion is different from the outward expansion of the universe (which is accelerated by the force called dark energy).
“We found a very significant velocity, and furthermore, this velocity does not decrease with distance, as far as we can measure,” Kashlinsky told SPACE.com. “The matter in the observable universe just cannot produce the flow we measure.”
Inflationary bubble
The scientists deduced that whatever is driving the movements of the clusters must lie beyond the known universe.
A theory called inflation posits that the universe we see is just a small bubble of space-time that got rapidly expanded after the Big Bang. There could be other parts of the cosmos beyond this bubble that we cannot see.
In these regions, space-time might be very different, and likely doesn’t contain stars and galaxies (which only formed because of the particular density pattern of mass in our bubble). It could include giant, massive structures much larger than anything in our own observable universe. These structures are what researchers suspect are tugging on the galaxy clusters, causing the dark flow.
“The structures responsible for this motion have been pushed so far away by inflation, I would guesstimate they may be hundreds of billions of light years away, that we cannot see even with the deepest telescopes because the light emitted there could not have reached us in the age of the universe,” Kashlinsky said in a telephone interview. “Most likely to create such a coherent flow they would have to be some very strange structures, maybe some warped space time. But this is just pure speculation.”
Surprising find
Though inflation theory forecasts many odd facets of the distant universe, not many scientists predicted the dark flow.
“It was greatly surprising to us and I suspect to everyone else,” Kashlinsky said. “For some particular models of inflation you would expect these kinds of structures, and there were some suggestions in the literature that were not taken seriously I think until now.”
The discovery could help scientists probe what happened to the universe before inflation, and what’s going on in those inaccessible realms we cannot see.
ABC News’ Matthew Jaffe reports: Sen. Joe Biden met with Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili Friday in Milwaukee, pledging American support for Georgia and promising not to “let the intentions of the Russian government to bring down the democratically-elected government” of Georgia.
Biden and Saakashvili met privately for about 45 minutes, but, despite an Associated Press report to the contrary, members of Biden’s traveling press pool were in fact permitted in for a five-minute portion beforehand, giving reporters a chance to hear from the two long-time friends.
“We’re old friends, we’ve known each other for some time,” said Biden. “Before President Saakashvili was president, we knew one another and we had been in close contact before and during and after Russia tried to topple a democratically-elected government.”
If the presidential debate Friday night told us anything, it was that whichever of these candidates is elected, we can expect more wars, or at least more conflicts that put U.S. forces or citizens in danger for dubious reasons. Neither John McCain nor Barack Obama came close to questioning the “bipartisan” consensus on U.S. foreign policy, that the U.S. should be the prime mover and shaker in the world at large. They differ, and in some ways that are fairly important, on details. But on the central question of whether it is the United States’ job to go out there and fix the world, there was no disagreement.
To be sure, taking candidates at their word during a debate is not necessarily advisable for one who would be so foolish as to try to predict what they will do once in office. Politicians as a breed are not noted for being especially candid on the campaign trail, of course. Furthermore, every president faces unexpected foreign-policy challenges (Truman didn’t expect Korea, Carter didn’t expect Iran, Dubya didn’t expect 9/11, etc.). Still, the Bushlet has left some open sores out there in the rest of the world. So the next president is likely to have to deal with winding down the war in Iraq and figuring out what to do in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which will require reaching some kind of accommodation with Iran. Neither candidate seems to realize this, so they competed to see who could say the most childishly nasty things.
Whether it’s necessary or not, the next president is likely to figure he will have to pay attention to both Iran’s and Korea’s nuclear ambitions and cope in some way with the Russian resurgence (not as strong as Putin wants us to believe, but notable, and showing up just now in Venezuela, which should have been predictable but seems to have caught the U.S. off-guard). They will have to do all this with very few bargaining chips, thanks mainly to the Iraq war, and in addition figure out what kind of stance to take toward a disunited Europe.
There are hints in the records and attitude of the two major parties that suggest genuine differences as to which parts of the world they consider crucial and how a president from that party might deal with them. Despite the impression one might get from current rhetoric, historically the Democrats have not been shy about fighting wars. However, they tend to want a coalition and prefer to have an international agreement or a new international organization that will really, really keep the peace this time – see the UN and, before that, the League of Nations – as an outcome. Since Vietnam, of course, the Democratic coalition has included a strong antiwar strain. Clinton did humanitarian intervention, but that may be a dead letter now. The challenge of Russia will test these proclivities, as will focusing on Afghanistan, if Obama really wants to do so (as he has said). Getting out of Iraq is likely to take longer than Obama thinks.
The Republicans have their own traditions and contradictions. One can discern the strains of Teddy Rooseveltian muscular nationalism, neoconservative nation-building and democracy-promotion (muscular Wilsonianism), along with a persistent isolationist strain. There are differences between “idealists” (democracy-expanding) and “realists” (national interest, reluctance about adventures, e.g., Scowcroft-Baker, maybe Kissinger) within the GOP. McCain identifies with Roosevelt, but to act like a Great Power he might have to make deals with the Taliban to avoid chaos in Afghanistan, or make concessions to the Russians despite his moralistic inclinations.
Neither candidate seemed to be the least bit interested in discussing the likelihood, especially in light of the current financial crackup, that the new president will have to deal with the fact that economic power, and thus eventually political power, will be more dispersed in the very near future. It won’t be a unipolar world in which the U.S. can call the shots, if it ever really was, partly because of Bush’s missteps and partly because of trends neither he nor anybody else could have controlled.
This urge to intervene was especially apparent when it came to Pakistan and Afghanistan. On those tragically interrelated countries, both Obama and McCain simply puffed up their chests and promised they would set things right – without offering anything resembling a hint as to what would constitute such a happy outcome.
McCain seemed to be trying to make the point that he is not a knee-jerk warmonger in every instance by mentioning how, earlier in his career, he opposed sending troops to Lebanon and was for changing the mission in Somalia, but he didn’t say what potential conflicts he might want to avoid. Anyway, that was then. He seems to have gone through a sea-change in his foreign-policy attitudes sometime in the late 1990s, when he decided Bosnia and Kosovo were worth doing, even with a Democratic president leading the way.
Neither seemed to notice what is absolutely true: if the U.S. really wants to have anything resembling success in Afghanistan, it will have to bring in Iran, which helped in Afghanistan after 9/11, or we’ll simply be wasting blood and treasure. That means we’ll have to talk to them, marvel of marvels. During the wandering discussion of talking with nasty foreign leaders with or without preconditions or preparation, Obama seemed to be suggesting that we should talk with Iran for the sake of diplomacy, apparently quite unaware that the U.S. and Iran have any common interests, such as preventing the Taliban from taking over Afghanistan, something that Iran would most definitely not like to see.
Perhaps the most striking thing about the debate came toward the end, when Jim Lehrer invited the two candidates to spend all of two minutes talking about Russia. Despite the recent Putin muscle-flexing, most Americans seem to be in the 1990s, when Russia was weak and not especially well situated to push back as the U.S. and other countries relentlessly expanded NATO.
At this point, however, the Middle East and al-Qaeda are minor problems compared with the resurgence of Russia. Neither candidate had anything but chest-puffing to offer. Perhaps it would have been impolitic – or maybe not for a candidate seeking to separate himself from the Dubster, which all the pundits said both were determined to do. But there was no acknowledgment that the reason we didn’t do anything about the Russia-Georgia war was because we didn’t have the resources to do anything but bluster, and Europe is in no mood to do anything even if it had the military resources, which it doesn’t.
Of course neither seemed to know enough history to entertain the thought that Russia, which has no obvious defensible borders and was invaded by Napoleon and Hitler, just might have reason to be concerned about its “near abroad,” and that any realistic policy would have to take this into account. It doesn’t necessarily mean we should give them carte blanche to invade their neighbors. But to pose and posture rather than say something like “We understand your concerns, so how can we work something out that doesn’t lead to war?” seems astoundingly shortsighted.
In short, it was fascinating that both of these guys have no hint of a doubt that the United States is supposed to run the world, tell other regimes how to behave, pay attention to every sparrow that falls, be the avatars of what we self-centered Americans choose to call democracy, and worry about other peoples’ problems incessantly. They have only minor differences as to which countries and which perceived threats are more important and how they should be handled.
The idea that the United States might be better off simply minding its own business and dealing only with actual threats – of which, truth to tell, there are very few – doesn’t seem to have penetrated either skull. No matter who is elected, we will be spending blood and treasure to try to resolve disputes that are not our own.
Washington Mutual was seized by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Thursday evening, in what CNN Money is calling the biggest bank failure in US History. It appears as though JPMorgan Chase & Co. will acquire Washington Mutual for $1.9 billion. The deal was brokered to have JPMorgan Chase take over the company to avoid depleting the FDIC insurance fund, which is not expected to contribute any money in the deal.
What does this mean to Washington Mutual Customers?
This deal combines the operations of two banks and most customers should be completely unaffected by this deal. Friday morning should be the same as any other day and customers should still be able to access funds and maintain their normal banking privileges. Customers should not panic as the only thing really happening is a change on the letterhead on their statements.
Washington Mutual is also covered by FDIC insurance, but since the bank was basically absorbed by JPMorgan Chase, the FDIC insurance will not be used. Stockholders and some bond holders will lose the entirety of their investments.
This deal saves taxpayer money
Because the sale of Washington Mutual was brokered by the FDIC, the bank wasn’t allowed to fail to the point that the FDIC insurance was used. This could have cost taxpayers nearly $30 billions of dollars and depleted the FDIC deposit insurance fund. Instead, JPMorgan Chase purchased the bulk of Washington Mutual, including the bank’s deposits and loans, and it’s risky mortgage portfolio, which played a large role in WaMu’s failure.
It’s good to be WaMu’s CEO. According to the New York Times (update: this article now requires free registration to read), Washington Mutual’s CEO, Alan Fishman, who has been on the job for less than three weeks, is eligible for $11.6 million in cash severance and will get to keep his $7.5 million signing bonus.
OK, it’s really not good to be the Alan Fishman right now. He does get a lot of money out of his contract, but it really has to be heartbreaking to see your company falter so soon after taking the helm.
Editor’s note: This column was originally published in The Independent on Saturday.
It was a weird week to be in the United States. On Tuesday, secretary of the treasury Henry Paulson told us that “this is all about the American taxpayer – that’s all we care about.” But when I flipped the page on my morning paper, I came across the latest gloomy statistic which Americans should care more about. “As of Wednesday evening, 4,162 U.S. service members and 11 Defence Department civilians had been identified as having died in the Iraq war.” By grotesque mischance, $700bn – the cost of George Bush’s Wall Street rescue cash – is about the same figure as the same President has squandered on his preposterous war in Iraq, the war we have now apparently “won” thanks to the “surge” – for which, read “escalation” – in Baghdad. The fact that the fall in casualties coincides with the near-completion of the Shia ethnic cleansing of Sunni Muslims is not part of the story.
Indeed, a strange narrative is now being built into the daily history of America. First we won the war in Afghanistan by overthrowing the evil, terrorist-protecting misogynist Islamist crazies called the Taliban, setting up a democratic government under the exotically dressed Hamid Karzai. Then we rushed off to Iraq and overthrew the evil, terrorist-protecting, nuclear-weaponised, secular Baathist crazies under Saddam, setting up a democratic government under the pro-Iranian Shia Nouri al-Maliki. Mission accomplished. Then, after 250,000 Iraqi deaths – or half a million or a million, who cares? – we rushed back to Kabul and Kandahar to win the war all over again in Afghanistan. The conflict now embraces our old chums in Pakistan, the Saudi-financed, American-financed Interservices Intelligence Agency whose Taliban friends – now attacked by our brave troops inside Pakistani sovereign territory – again control half of Afghanistan.
We are, in fact, now fighting a war in what I call Irakistan. It’s hopeless; it’s a mess; it’s shameful; it’s unethical and it’s unwinnable and no wonder the Wall Street meltdown was greeted with such relief by Messrs Obama and McCain. They couldn’t suspend their campaigns to discuss the greatest military crisis in America’s history since Vietnam – but for Wall Street, no problem. The American taxpayer – “that’s all we care about”. Mercifully for the presidential candidates, they don’t have to debate the hell-disaster of Iraq any more, nor US-Israeli relations, nor Exxon or Chevron or BP-Mobil or Shell. George Bush’s titanic if mythical battle between good and evil has transmogrified into the conflict between good taxpayers and evil bankers. Phew! No entanglement in the lives and deaths of the people of the Middle East. Until the elections – barring another 9/11 – they are yesterday’s men and women.
But truth lurks in the strangest of airports. I’m chewing my way though a plate of spiced but heavy-boned chicken wings – final proof of why chickens can’t fly – at John Wayne airport in Orange County (take a trip down the escalator and you can actually see a larger-than-life statue of the “Duke”), and up on the screen behind the bar pops Obama himself. The word “Change” flashes on the logo and the guy on my left shakes his head. “I got a brother who’s just come back from Afghanistan,” he says. “He’s been fighting there but says there’s no infrastructure so there can be no victory. There’s nothing to build on. We’re not wanted.” At California’s San Jose University, a guy comes up and asks me to sign my new book for him. “Write ‘To Sergeant ‘D’,” he says with a sigh. “That’s what they call me. Two tours in Iraq, just heading out to Afghanistan.” And he rolls his eyes and I wish him safe home afterwards.
Of course, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict no longer gets a look into the debate. McCain’s visit to the Middle East and Obama’s visit to the Middle East – in which they outdid each other in fawning to the Israeli lobby (Obama’s own contribution surely earning him membership of the Knesset if not entry to the White House) – are safely in the past. Without any discussion, Israeli and U.S. officials held a three-day security-technology forum in Washington this month which coincided with an equally undebated decision by the dying Bush administration to give a further $330m in three separate arms deals for Israel, including 28,000 M72A7 66mm light anti-armour weapons and 1,000 GBU-9 small diameter bombs from Boeing. Twenty-five Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets are likely to be approved before the election. The Israeli-American talks were described as “the most senior bilateral high-technology dialogue ever between the two allies”. Nothing to write home about, of course.
Almost equally unreported in major U.S. papers – save by the good old Washington Report – was a potential scandal in good old Los Angeles to which Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa recently returned after a $225,000 junket to Israel with three council members and other city officials (along with families, kids, etc). The purpose? To launch new agreements for security at Los Angeles international airport. Council members waffled away on cellphones and walked out of the chamber when protesters claimed that the council was negotiating with a foreign power before seeking bids from American security services. One of the protesters asked if the idea of handing LAX’s security to the Israelis was such a good idea when Israeli firms were operating security at Boston Logan and Newark on 9/11 when a rather sinister bunch of Arabs passed through en route to their international crimes against humanity.
But who cares? 9/11? Come again? What’s that got to do with the American taxpayer?
Ian Traynor, The Guardian (Manchester), September 29, 2008
Austria was shaken by a political earthquake yesterday when the neo-fascist right emerged from a general election as a contender to be the strongest political force in the country for the first time.
The combined forces of the extreme right took 29% of the vote, with Jörg Haider almost tripling the share of his breakaway Movement for Austria’s Future to 11%, while his successor as Freedom party leader, Heinz-Christian Strache, saw his party soar to 18%.
The far right’s vote doubled compared with the last election in 2006, putting it within less than a point of overtaking the poll victor, the social democrats.
The two big parties, which have run Austria since the second world war, slumped to their worst ever election toll. The Christian democrats (ÖVP), fared particularly poorly at around 26%, down 8%. The social democrats (SPÖ), under a new leader, Werner Faymann, took around 30% and laid claim to the chancellorship.
The early election was triggered by the collapse in June of the coalition of social and Christian democrats after only 18 months. The extreme-right profited from popular disillusion with the two big parties, which took months to form a “grand coalition” in 2006 and then spent the next 18 months paralysed by internal bickering. The same situation may repeat itself now, with both parties under different leaders and struggling to justify legitimacy.
Faymann, the likely new chancellor, is a 48-year-old from Vienna, who was supported by the main rightwing and fiercely anti-EU tabloid, Kronenzeitung, after he promised to put new EU treaties to a referendum in a country that matches Britain in Euro-scepticism.
The far-right triumph was greater than its breakthrough in 1999 when Haider’s Freedom party came second in a general election with 27% of the vote and entered government, sparking a crisis that saw Austria isolated internationally.
Strache, who has been associated with neo-Nazi militants who deny the Holocaust, according to a court ruling, and who wants a new government ministry created to manage the deportation of immigrants, wound up his campaign at the weekend by calling Muslim women who wear the burqa “female ninjas”.
He talked of east European immigrants to Vienna as “European brothers who don’t want to be Islamised”, while another of his party leaders reminisced about the days when the kiosks on Vienna’s squares sold sausage and wiener schnitzel, rather than “the kebab joints selling falafel and couscous, or whatever you call that stuff”.
Last night Strache said he should be the new chancellor. “Today, we are the winners of election night,” he said.
The only realistic options for forming a viable grouping are for another grand coalition or for Faymann to contemplate a coalition with Strache, a Viennese former dental technician who has supplanted Haider as the national extreme-right leader. Senior social democrats said last night that they would not collaborate with the Freedom party. Any such move would trigger a deeper crisis within the SPÖ.
Despite mustering around 30% of the vote between them, Strache and Haider are sworn enemies and are unlikely to be able to work together. Both men are fierce critics of the EU.
This occourance, is one of the most, grotesque, displays, of ignorance, perpetrated, by blacks in America today. May we, as “Americans”, remember this outright attack upon whites, and assume the responsibility to fight back, with no force denied. And I quote the, anthem of truth today: “We must secure the existance of our people, and a future for white children”. -David Lane. Back to my philosiphy, Smash these bringers of “lazy, welfare, leaching, supposed “civil rights advocates”. Not one supporter of “the Jena Six Murder, Support Squad”, could ever speak with, any ounce of intellegence. I beg of you to watch the interviews, and read the text, I am providing below. -the florida rebel
Everyone in America has now heard of Jena, Louisiana. Its racism is said to be so shocking that on September 20 Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton had to lead a massive “civil rights” march through the sleepy town of 3,000 to drag it into the modern era. Young blacks from all around the country took part, many comparing the demonstration to events in Selma or Birmingham half a century ago.
In fact, the “racism” blacks are denouncing is imaginary. The national media have been almost criminally negligent in describing a few harmless events in Jena as if Jim Crow had suddenly risen from the dead. They have painted an entirely ordinary town in false colors, and show no signs of apologizing or even publishing corrections.
Here is the story as the big media saw it: At Jena High School there was a shade tree under which only whites were allowed to sit. When a black student asked if blacks could sit there too, whites hung nooses on the tree to scare them away. The whites were caught, but got only a slap on the wrist. Blacks were understandably annoyed, and rising tensions led to a black/white school-yard fight. Unlike the lenient treatment the white noose-hangers got, six blacks in the fight were charged with attempted murder. This glaring case of double-standard justice has rallied support for the “Jena 6” from around the world, and prompted demands that the criminal charges be dropped immediately.
What actually happened? Craig Franklin is a reporter with the Jena Times who has covered events from the beginning. He confirms that there was no “whites-only” tree. The tree in question was planted in 1986, and only recently grew tall enough to give shade. The school put picnic tables under it, and anyone who wanted, sat at them.
The question about whether blacks could sit under the tree came during a back-to-school assembly for boys on Aug. 30, 2006, to go over the dress code and other routine matters. When a black student asked about the tree, he laughed, and the whole room laughed. Everyone knew that although students sometimes self-segregate, no place on campus was off-limits to anyone. Mr. Franklin of the Jena Times has learned that the boys asked a number of joke questions, partly to keep the assembly going as long as possible, so they would not have to go back to regular classes.
It is true that early the next morning two nooses made of back nylon rope were found hanging from the tree. The school took them down immediately, and hardly any of the students saw them. School authorities quickly found the three white students who hung them. Mr. Franklin says they were not even proper nooses, but crudely tied loops. Why did the boys put them there? They had recently seen the “Lonesome Dove” television series, in which Texas Rangers string up several rustlers. None of the rustlers was black. The nooses on the tree were an innocent prank, directed at white friends.
Mr. Franklin learned in September 2007 from their parents that the boys did not even know nooses had racial significance. Each of the three had been around livestock all their lives, and to them nooses meant cowboys and rustlers. “They didn’t have a clue what nooses mean to blacks,” he says, and were “totally flabbergasted” to learn that they can be seen as symbols of lynching.
Adults understood, however, and realized blacks would be upset. As the school superintendent Roy Breithaupt later explained: “Even though we’d determined their true motivation had nothing to do with racial hate, we had to acknowledge that to the black community it would be perceived in that manner. Therefore, severe action was taken regarding the students and the hanging of the nooses.”
“Severe” is right. The boys were made to attend an off-campus disciplinary school for nine days, and then served two weeks of in-school suspension and several Saturday detentions. They were put through a school discipline court, required to pass psychological evaluation to determine they were not threats to anyone, and referred for monitoring to a family crisis intervention program. The police, the FBI, and federal prosecutors all grilled them. Everyone concluded that the nooses were a prank that had nothing to do with blacks or the question asked in the assembly about sitting under the tree. Difficult as it may be for some to believe, their appearance on the tree the day after the question was a coincidence.
It does appear that the nooses raised racial tensions at the school, but only because the local press reported them as symbols of lynching. On September 6, 2006, a few days after the nooses went up, there was a nasty argument between a black girl and a white girl, and a white boy went to the emergency room for stitches after he was hit in the head from behind. These were exceptional events for Jena High School, where race relations are normally good, and police were assigned to the school on September 7. The next day, there was a report that someone had brought a gun to school. Students were kept in classes for three hours while police searched students and school grounds. All they found were a large number of cell phones, which are forbidden in school by state law.
Given these signs of tension, why didn’t the school set the record straight about the nooses? The facts came to light during an investigation that could have led to expulsion, and state law requires that such proceedings be secret. “We were bound by law to keep the results of the investigation confidential,” explained Superintendent Breithaupt many months later. “That’s the reason we simply could not talk about it publicly.” Also, Jena had not yet become a world-wide news story, so there seemed to be no need to breach confidentiality.
In light of what happened later, it is important to note that from September 9 through the end of November—nearly three months—the nooses faded from memory and there were no racial incidents reported either at the high school or in the city or Jena. In the first days of December, however, there were two off-campus fistfights between several black Jena High School students and white townspeople. No one was seriously injured, and a federal investigation later found that the police response was entirely appropriate.
The crucial event took place back at the high school on December 4, 2006—long after the nooses went up. A black football star named Mychal Bell walked up to a white student named Justin Barker and punched him to the ground from behind. Some eight to ten boys—all black—then started kicking him. Witness statements taken later used phrases like “stomped him badly,” “stepped on his face,” “knocked out cold on the ground,” and “slammed his head on the concrete beam.” According to court documents, Mr. Barker was probably unconscious before he hit the ground, where his attackers stomped his “lifeless” body. The Jena Times calls it “one of the most violent attacks in Jena High School’s history.”
When Assistant Principal Gawan Burgess got to the scene, he thought the boy was dead. He was bleeding from ears and nose and showed no sign of life. An ambulance took Mr. Barker to the hospital, where he was in the emergency room for about 2½ hours and ran up a bill of $5,467. A brain scan showed no anomalies, and he was released.
As LaSalle Parish District Attorney Reed Walters has explained many times, this was not a “school-yard fight.” It was a cold-blooded assault, and he charged six of the attackers with attempted murder. Their supporters claim this was a “racist” overreaction to a “playground fight,” especially in light of the mild treatment—generally reported as “three days of in-school suspension”—said to have been given the “racist” whites who hung the nooses. Supporters of the black attackers have tried to discredit the charge of attempted murder by pointing out that Mr. Barker attended a school function the evening after the beating. It was Jena high’s annual class ring ceremony where, as a junior, he was to get a ring. “I waited 11 years to go to it,” he has since explained. “I wasn’t going to let that get in my way.” Mr. Barker had a swollen face and was in considerable pain. He left the ceremony early, as soon as he got his ring. He says he was blind in one eye for three weeks, and was still suffering from headaches six months after the beating.
Why did the black students beat Mr. Barker? At the trial of his main attacker, Mychal Bell, he said he had no idea. Blacks said Mr. Barker had taunted one of them with having his “ass whipped” at one of the off-campus fights a few days before. A student testified at the trial that just before Mr. Bell attacked Mr. Barker she heard a black say, “There’s that white mother f***er that was running his mouth.”
It should be underlined that Mr. Barker was not one of the three whites who hung the nooses, and that at the time of his attack no one said it had anything to do with them. It was only later that “Jena 6” supporters tried to excuse the beating by tying it to the four-months-old nooses episode.
The victim, Mr. Barker, does not appear to be a choirboy. Just a few days before the end of the academic year—long after the attack—he was expelled from school after a hunting rifle was found in his car on school grounds. Students are strictly forbidden to bring weapons to school.
Blacks were outraged when District Attorney Walters decided to try the first defendant, Mychal Bell, as an adult, but he had reason to. Mr. Bell, who was 16 at the time of the attack, had been on probation since he committed battery on Christmas Day, 2005. Since then, in a period of less than a year, he was found guilty under the juvenile system of three other crimes—two violent assaults and one property crime—and this was even before he attacked Mr. Barker. Bail was set at $90,000, a figure his family could not meet. His father, who is now being portrayed as a deeply caring parent, had been living in Texas for years, and resurfaced only after the boy was charged.
Just before the trial last summer, District Attorney Walters reduced charges to aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy. On June 28, 2007, after deliberating for less than three hours, a jury of five women and one man found Mr. Bell guilty. He was to be sentenced on Sept. 20. Much has been made of the fact that all the jurors were white, but none of the blacks summoned for jury duty that day showed up (plenty of whites dodged jury duty, too). The jury pool was all white, so the jury was all white.
The guilty verdict made Mr. Bell a hero to blacks. He and the other five defendants were soon being touted around the world as classic victims of bigoted, Southern white justice.
On August 5, Al Sharpton came to town with his usual message: “You cannot have some boys assault and charged with nothing, some boys hanging nooses and finish the school year, and other boys charged with attempted murder and conspiracy. That’s two levels of justice, and two levels of justice is an injustice.”
Jesse Jackson showed up on Sept. 10, demanding that the conviction for Mr. Bell be thrown out, and that the charges for the remaining attackers be reduced to misdemeanors. If not, he threatened, there would be a “major demonstration” spurred by the “national and international outrage,” with as many as 40,000 people likely to descend on Jena. “The DA and the judge can go a long way to relieve this tension,” he warned.
Perhaps the judge was listening. On Sept. 14, 28th Judicial District Court Judge J.P. Mauffray Jr. vacated Mr. Bell’s adult conviction, and ordered him retried in juvenile court. As an adult, the longest sentence could have been 22-1/2 years; in juvenile court, Mr. Bell will face a maximum of 15 years. District Attorney Walters did not give in. He intends to try all the defendants on felony charges.
On Sept. 20, Jena got its demonstration, with the usual bombast about racism and unequal justice. Perhaps as many as 15,000 people—almost all black—were bused in from as far away as Dallas, Nashville, St. Louis, Chicago, and Philadelphia. Blacks all across the country are lauding the “Jena 6” as the great civil rights victims of our era.
The New York Times tells us Jena is “a high profile arena in the debate on racial bias in the judicial system.” The London Observer wrote that Jena shows “how lightly sleep the demons of racial prejudice in America’s deep south.” The word went out around the world, and British pop star David Bowie gave $10,000 to the NAACP’s “Jena 6 Legal Defense Fund.”
Robert Bailey Jr. thanks his supporters.
Four hundred thousand dollars reportedly rolled in before lawyers took the case pro bono. Some of the money then ended up on the Internet, where one of the “Jena 6,” Robert Bailey, posted photos of himself and another defendant draped in $100 bills. The word in Jena—and no one is denying it—is that, thanks to the “defense fund,” Robert Bailey’s mother is now driving a BMW, and Mychal Bell’s mother has moved up to a Jaguar.
Politicians are burnishing their anti-racist credentials. Senator Hillary Clinton told the NAACP: “This case reminds us that the scales of justice are seriously out of balance when it comes to charging, sentencing, and punishing African Americans.” Senator Chris Dodd said that Jena proves we still have “de facto segregation,” and urged Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco to overturn any convictions that may result. In September, Congressman John Conyers said he would hold congressional hearings on “the miscarriages of justice that have occurred in Jena, Louisiana,” and the Congressional Black Caucus calls events in Jena “an unbelievable example” of “separate and unequal justice.”
The media are almost entirely to blame for this hideous cavorting. All too ready to assume the worst of whites, all too happy to encourage blacks to scream “racism,” they have, in effect, driven them to demand freedom for thugs who knocked a boy down and stomped him as he lay unconscious. The charges of “racism” that are supposed to justify the attack have now been shown to be just as groundless as the lies with which Tawana Brawley helped Al Sharpton find his true calling.
What are the chances the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and the rest of the world media will correct their stories? Water is more likely to flow uphill. The media have sunk their teeth into what they thought was a juicy story about small-town, Southern racism and there is no pulling back. The “Jena 6” have joined the “Little Rock 9” and the “Scottsboro Boys” as iconic victims of Southern white racism. The whole thing is a contemptible fraud.
I hope the “above article, and video, showed you a small reality, of the racist climate that exists against whites in America today. The next video, is the solution to ending (white victim crimes”)and securing, “our country, for our people”. If you exist in the USA, as a white person, and still find no reason to resist, and destroy: multiculturalism, race mixing, amnesty for illegals, and globalism, “YOU SHOULD GO HOME, and plan a yard of the month club, with your: mexican, jewish, asian, and african american neighbors. WOW, what a great display, of horrible living conditions. Go for it “jena 6″ supporters. I guarantee if, and when, any of the “jena 6″ supporters, spoke a word in a public forum, now, they would be censored. Censorship, due to ignorance. The “jews”, gave them this media, now its time ”we” take it away. -the florida rebel.
“I got a lot of Ph.D. types and smart people around me who come into the Oval Office and say, ‘Mr. President, here’s what’s on my mind.’ And I listen carefully to their advice. But having gathered the device (sic), I decide, you know, I say, ‘This is what we’re going to do.’ And it’s ‘Yes, sir, Mr. President.’ And then we get after it, implement policy.”
– President George W. Bush, October 3, 2007
Pity poor President Bush. He’s been pushed aside as The Decider. The Decider’s strut and press entourage, along with the coffers of the United States, were to be handed to Henry M. (Hank) Paulson, U.S. Treasury Secretary, who was to have sweeping authority to share newly augmented plunder with his cronies on Wall Street and set up a vast new bailout bureaucracy, all at taxpayer expense.
But, at last, the People’s House may be listening to the people. The House of Representatives voted yesterday to reject the bailout measure 228 to 205.
What a truly Orwellian message this proposal would have sent to our nation’s children and honest, hard working people everywhere: loot and collapse a 200-year old financial system and you’ll be rewarded with a fresh $700 billion of public money to disperse among your cronies who aided and abetted in the collapse.
Mr. Paulson worked as Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs until he was sworn in as U.S. Treasury Secretary on July 10, 2006. Exotic instruments created and peddled by Goldman around the globe while Mr. Paulson was Goldman’s Decider have contributed to the collapse. His former firm has also benefited to the tune of tens of billions from taxpayer money already doled out by the Federal Reserve. Other firms like Merrill Lynch and Citigroup/Smith Barney that broke the backs of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by selling them billions in explosive derivatives have also seen their prior execs appointed to plum spots in the “rescue” mission.
And expect the bailout proposal to become more corrupted as the days go by. (The proposal reminded me of that cover of BusinessWeek back on May 13, 2002 when the publication posed this question about Wall Street: “How Corrupt Is It?” They answered their own question with a giant picture of a snake encircling the metal pole holding the street sign for Wall Street.) The bailout proposal was so fluid that while I was reading its 106 pages at the web site of CNNMoney on Sunday evening, September 28, 2008, the screen went blank at 7:59 PM. Minutes later, I was reading a different version of the proposal, which had now grown to 110 pages. Fortunately, I had printed out a hard copy of the earlier version and went line by line to see what the Wall Street banksters were up to.
Of particular interest, on page 6, where previously the new Office of Financial Stability would be headed by an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury who would require Senate approval, 13 more words were added at the end of the sentence: “except that an interim Assistant Secretary may serve pending confirmation by the Senate.”
Realistically, all they would need to do is keep sending conflicted candidates for confirmation hearings and many billions could be spent before the Senate vetted and confirmed the candidate. Also changed on pages 14 and 15 was the manner in which The Decider would be policed: previously it said “any action” taken by the Secretary of the Treasury could be reviewed. That was changed to “policies.”
Suspected fraud previously was to be reported to the Inspector General for the Department of the Treasury. That was radically changed to create a brand new position of Special Inspector General for the Troubled Assets Relief Program. (I think we all know that the position would have been filled with another Wall Street crony.)
But the most duplicitous and frightening aspect of the plan, as always, was to found, buried in the back of the document, located there in the hopes everyone would have fallen asleep from the legalese before they made it that far. There’s the innocuous sounding Section 128, which was in both the original and amended versions, and says simply:
“Section 203 of the Financial Services Regulatory Relief Act of 2006 (12 U.S.C. 461 note) is amended by striking ‘October 1, 2011’ and inserting ‘October 1, 2008.’”
What would this effectively do? It was intended to speed up the enactment of this section of the law from 2011 to this week.
And what is the impact of the change in this law? (Take a moment to let this sink in.) This wonderful bipartisan bailout proposal, negotiated into the wee hours of the morning by sleep-deprived members of Congress was designed to come with a furtive Trojan Horse embedded by Wall Street lawyers. Banks already in trouble for lack of capital would get to hold as little as “zero” capital for transactions.
But it does solve one giant mystery. All of Wall Street has been attempting to understand why firms like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, who have concentrated on mergers, acquisitions, stock and bond underwriting for more a cumulative 212 years, decided in a heartbeat to enter the bean counter world of retail banking and transform into bank holding companies. (That’s like asking General Motors to retool overnight for washing machines.) Now we know. Effective this week, if this bailout proposal would have passed in its current form, these firms would have had a new best friend at the Fed that was going to let them hold zero reserves for transactions. No wonder the stock of both firms sold off yesterday when Congress rejected the plan: Goldman closed down 12 per cent; Morgan down 15 per cent.
The Trojan Horse in the bailout plan also solves the mystery of how loss-riddled, serially corrupt Citigroup, now run by the former head of a hedge fund, was allowed by the FDIC yesterday to buy $400 Billion in deposits from Wachovia, giving this crippled global tyrant 30 per cent of insured bank deposits in America.
For once, we can be proud of at least 228 members of our Congress. Yes, we do need swift, reasoned action to stave off a financial collapse. But a plan that allows one man to have unfettered access to $700 billion of taxpayer money, decide which firms survive, to potentially concentrate power in a few crony hands, while pushing off even a discussion of vital regulation until next year, is not a plan. It’s organized crime thinly disguised as legislation.
Pam Martens worked on Wall Street for 21 years; she has no securities position, long or short, in any company mentioned in this article. She writes on public interest issues from New Hampshire. She can be reached at pamk741@aol.com
People will have to be rationed to four modest portions of meat and one litre of milk a week if the world is to avoid run-away climate change, a major new report warns.
The report, by the Food Climate Research Network, based at the University of Surrey, also says total food consumption should be reduced, especially “low nutritional value” treats such as alcohol, sweets and chocolates.
It urges people to return to habits their mothers or grandmothers would have been familiar with: buying locally in-season products, cooking in bulk and in pots with lids or pressure cookers, avoiding waste and walking to the shops – alongside more modern tips such as using the microwave and internet shopping.
The report goes much further than any previous advice after mounting concern about the impact of the livestock industry on greenhouse gases and rising food prices. It follows a four-year study of the impact of food on climate change and is thought to be the most thorough study of its kind.
Tara Garnett, the report’s author, warned that campaigns encouraging people to change their habits voluntarily were doomed to fail and urged the government to use caps on greenhouse gas emissions and carbon pricing to ensure changes were made. “Food is important to us in a great many cultural and symbolic ways, and our food choices are affected by cost, time, habit and other influences,” the report says. “Study upon study has shown that awareness-raising campaigns alone are unlikely to work, particularly when it comes to more difficult changes.”
The report’s findings are in line with an investigation by the October edition of the Ecologist magazine, which found that arguments for people to go vegetarian or vegan to stop climate change and reduce pressure on rising food prices were exaggerated and would damage the developing world in particular, where many people depend on animals for essential food, other products such as leather and wool, and for manure and help in tilling fields to grow other crops.
Instead, it recommended cutting meat consumption by at least half and making sure animals were fed as much as possible on grass and food waste which could not be eaten by humans.
“The notion that cows and sheep are four-legged weapons of mass destruction has become something of a distraction from the real issues in both climate change and food production,” said Pat Thomas, the Ecologist’s editor.
The head of the United Nations intergovernmental panel on climate change, Rajendra Pachauri, also sparked global debate this month when he urged people to have at least one meat-free day a week.
The Food Climate Research Network found that measured by production, the UK food sector produces greenhouse gases equivalent to 33m tonnes of carbon. Measured by consumption – including imports – the total rises to 43.3m tonnes. Both figures work out at under one fifth of UK emissions, but they exclude the indirect impacts of actions such as clearing rainforest for cattle and crops, which other studies estimate would add up to 5% to 20% of global emissions.
The report found the meat and dairy sectors together accounted for just over half of those emissions; potatoes, fruit and vegetables for 15%; drinks and other products with sugar for another 15%; and bread, pastry and flour for 13%.
It also revealed which parts of the food chain were the most polluting. Although packaging has had a lot of media and political attention, it only ranked fifth in importance behind agriculture – especially the methane produced by livestock burping – manufacturing, transport, and cooking and refrigeration at home.
The report calls for meat and dairy consumption to be cut in developed countries so that global production remains stable as the population grows to an estimated 9bn by 2050.
At the same time emissions from farms, transport, manufacturing and retail could be cut, with improvements including more efficient use of fertilisers, feed and energy, changed diets for livestock, and more renewable fuels – leading to a total reduction in emissions from the sector of 50% to 67%, it says.
The UN and other bodies recommend that developed countries should reduce total emissions by 80% by 2050.
However, the National Farmers’ Union warned that its own study, with other industry players, published last year, found net emissions from agriculture could only be cut by up to 50% if the carbon savings from building renewable energy sources on farms were taken into account.
The NFU also called for government incentives to help farmers make the changes. “Farmers aren’t going to do this out of the goodness of their hearts, because farmers don’t have that luxury; many of our members are very hard pressed at the moment,” said Jonathan Scurlock, the NFU’s chief adviser on renewable energy and climate change.
Different diets
The way we eat now (average person in the UK, per week)
1.6kg meat and 4.2 litres of milk, which is equivalent to:
6 sausages (450g)
2 chicken breasts (350g)
4 ham sandwiches (100g)
8 slices of bacon (250g)
3 burgers (450g)
3 litres of milk
100g of cheese and a helping of cream
Future recommended diet (average person, per week)
500g of meat and 1 litre of milk, which is equivalent to:
Millions of voters voice outrage over ill-conceived Bush bailout plan designed for bankers, stock barons
By James P. Tucker, Jr.
The House defeat of the administration’s proposed bailout for big bankers was a triumph for populists throughout America, who bombarded Congress with phone calls, Internet petitions and emails, then took their protests to the streets of America.
Lawmakers had their political pants scared off and did right for their country. While some version of the “rescue” legislation will probably pass, patriots forced Congress to make significant improvements in the pending legislation.
Instead of a blank check for $700 billion, Congress will dole out $200 billion and the administration will have to explain itself to get more.
Frivolous items, such as helping pay off credit cards and making car payments, have been killed.
Unworthy groups are unfunded. For example, a left-wing group called ACORN has received millions of taxpayer dollars for many years to help poor, inner-city people buy homes they can’t afford.
ACORN is also under investigation in several states for vote fraud—turning in phony ballot applications so non-citizens, dead people and imaginary people can vote. ACORN was to get an extra chunk to help with the bailout. Not only are its bailout funds denied, but the annual appropriations are killed.
A lid is placed on paying big bucks for bad work. The “golden parachutes” for the disgraced heads of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are gone. Limits will be placed on the compensation for their successors.
Other bureaucrats will face similar limitations. After five years, the president must submit to Congress a proposal that recoups from the financial industry any projected losses to the taxpayer.
The Treasury is required to receive non-voting stock warrants from participating financial institutions, so taxpayers get money back when the values go back up.
Lawmakers from both parties admitted that it was the American voters who forced them into making these improvements in the bailout proposal. They said their Internet sites, phones and emails all were jammed by voters protesting the bailout.
AFP correspondent James P. Tucker Jr. is a veteran journalist who spent
many years as a member of the “elite” media in Washington. Since 1975 he has won widespread recognition, here and abroad, for his pursuit of on-the-scene stories reporting the intrigues of global power blocs such as the
Bilderberg Group. Tucker is the author of Jim Tucker’s Bilderberg Diary: One Man’s 25-Year Battle to Shine the Light on the World Shadow Government. Bound in an attractive full-color softcover and containing 272 pages—loaded with photos, many never published before—the book recounts Tucker’s experiences over the last quarter century at Bilderberg meetings. $25 from AFP. No charge for S&H in U.S.
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By Shahid Hussain, Correspondent Published: October 02, 2008, 00:07
Islamabad: Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani yesterday said that attacks by US drones on targets inside Pakistan’s tribal region bordering Afghanistan amounted to “terrorism”.
Talking to reporters at his official residence on the first day of Eid, Gilani rebuffed suggestions that the government had not condemned the incursions as forcefully as it should have.
“These attacks are a form of terrorism,” the prime minister said, adding that such actions encourage and strengthen militancy and were thus counter-productive.
Gilani said the US leadership had assured respect for Pakistan’s sovereignty and he hoped that the promise would be kept.
The prime minister said the Pakistani security forces were successfully carrying out operations against militants in Bajur tribal area and tribesmen were supporting them in the campaign to rid their area of militants.
The comments came as a suspected US missile strike within Pakistan killed six people, indicating Washington is pressing ahead with cross-border raids on militant targets despite protests from the new government.
The suspected US missile strike was the first since President Asif Ali Zardari visited New York, where he warned that Pakistan cannot allow its territory to “be violated by our friends”.
Two intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, say the missiles struck the home of a local Taliban commander before midnight Tuesday near Mir Ali. That’s in the North Waziristan region that borders Afghanistan.
The officials cite reports from their field agents in saying six people were killed in the attack. They say a US drone aircraft fired the missiles.
Reuters Photo: Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev (L) visits a missile base in Teikovo in the Ivanovo region,…
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia hopes to deploy a new nuclear missile next year designed to penetrate anti-missile defenses and will build eight submarines to carry it, defense officials said on Thursday. By Michael Stott Thu Oct 2, 10:37 AM ET CLICK LINK BELOW FOR STORY.
The end of the Cold War – the dissolution of the Soviet Union, crash of the Eastern European Soviet
satellites, collapse of the Warsaw Pact, and fall of the Berlin Wall – was an extraordinary moment in human history. Hundreds of millions of people were liberated from tyranny. The threat of conventional war in Europe and especially a global nuclear exchange disappeared. CLICK LINK BELOW TO READ ARTICLE.
The $700 billion bailout for the Wall Street poobahs looks ready to sail through the House of
Representatives, which earlier – and uncharacteristically – listened to the popular will and voted a resounding “No!” heard ‘round the world. After going back to the drawing boards, and doing what they did with the war funding vote – packing plenty of pork into it – the Democratic-controlled Senate gave its assent, as expected. CLICK LINK BELOW TO READ ARTICLE
In my last column I discussed the bailout as proposed and noted that the proposal cannot succeed if it impairs the US Treasury’s credit standing and/or the combination of mark-to-market and short-selling permits short-sellers to prosper by driving more financial institutions into bankruptcy. CLICK LINK BELOW TO READ THE ARTICLE.
In politics, truth telling can be dangerous. Remember when Jimmy Carter was voted out of office, in part,
for telling the American people, in a time of high inflation and unemployment, what they didn’t want to hear – that they were self indulgent and consumed too much? Remember when Larry Lindsey, a top advisor to President George W. Bush, was fired for estimating the cost of the Iraq War to be $200 billion? (At the end of fiscal year 2008, the war has cost $600 billion and the meter is running.) This seemingly good-faith estimate contrasted with the preposterous administration line that the war would cost only $50 billion and that Iraqi oil revenues would pay for war reconstruction. Remember when Eric Shinseki, the Army Chief of Staff, was pushed into retirement for testifying truthfully that occupying Iraq might prove to be a daunting challenge and could require several hundred thousand US combat troops? CLICK LINK BELOW FOR FULL STORY.
Click the below links and brace yourself!! Food for profit has finally taken it’s toll. Invasion into America, via open borders has created a “need for more food”, and a fast need at that. Feeding all of these invaders is at the hands of a zionist, capitalist murder machine. Murder the helpless, to feed the enemy?? Sounds disgusting to me. The American meat, and dairy industry has reached an all time low, to produce an all time high output of food. Murder, torture, and gross, atrocities are being comitted upon animals, inorder to feed our growing, illegal population. Close our borders, and Go VEGAN NOW!!!!. Start rejecting the industry, that has created nutrition as a commidity, not a right. The links below, display the disgusting filth, that exists in our “immigrant feeding death indusy”. STOP DEVELOPMENT NOW. Stop building, stop illegal occupation of America, and stop un needed murder of animals for food, to feed the un needed invaders of our home!! The first link, displays the disgust of “AGRI PROCESSEORS” (cattle), The second link shows you the insane horror of the, (Dairy, Veal) dismay. I call it the “dairy dismay”, because most vegetarians, believe that its ok to consume animal by products because the animal isn’t killed in the process. This is worse. The dairy industry induces, long-suffering, force feeding, and, constant’ machine torture upon these animals, known as “dairy animals” The third link displays, the “American need for assurance, including the best, most nourishing dog food, that their little doggy can get. We, as american consumers have allowed, (media), to convince us that, our dogs, cats, will live longer if we feed them…..certain animal foods, for example IAMS, is a leader in pet food science. (LOOK AT LINK 3, 4 undercover at the IAMS (animal testing facility) If this dosn’t make you angry, im sorry. If you are angry, FIGHT BACK!! the We as a nation are willing to murder, to look good. Watch all of these links, link 3 will make you vomit(WATCH IT)!!! NOW WATCH LINK 5 THIS IS THE BE ALL END ALL OF THE REVOLUTION, starting with the liberation of the voiceless, the liberation, of our animals! Boycott, PETSMART, BOYCOTT IAMS. I beg of you to deny, the indoctrinators of truth, “the jewish, zionist, murder machine”. Let the land of America, be the land of the loving free. The land of closed borders, and hatred of zionism. Let us not kill for profit, let us live for freedom. -The Florida Rebel.
Rights, Freedom, For all that live in America. (Legally). WOW, how on earth did we, as Americans, allow illegal, invasion, into our home, and accept it as commonplace? HMMMM Zion???? Forget that notion now. Lets ask the population; do you love the constitution? Yes? If so, why do you settle for the two, bags of neo-con dirt , that have been placed upon your, alter of “anti-patriot” shame. Choose one or the other………..thats the end? HMMMM???? Only will the greed of America allow its population to choose from two items they despise. Purchace a candidate you dislike, just because thats the only choice? What happened to the good ole ideal stating; if I dont like it, I wont buy it. So why do you, America, buy the garbage that is placed before you. Say no. Save your money, and use it for something you really want. How about freedom?? Dont lie to yourself again, vote your heart.-The Florida Rebel. CLICK LINK BELOW FOR TRUE CONSTITUTION FREEDOM.
As I was sitting in traffic, on the wonderful vehicle exchange in central Florida, known as the I-4 corridor, I read a bumper sticker that forever changed my thought process on commercial construction. Or as I call it, “The Invasion-invitation”. The bumper sticker read, “If you’re leaving Florida, take a developer with you”. WOW, music to my sun kissed ear lobes. A sigh of relief was breathed by me, in rush hour traffic. To grant a soul the “paramount attribute of knowing that a fellow patriot is residing in the vehicle in front of you, is a feeling of a “higher state of, existence”. I assume, this person to be at least patriotic in character. We all, must assume, that all persons who believe in a, non intrusive, closed border state, are patriots; “Freedom fighters for the cause of liberty”. For such a bold statement to be placed on the bumper of ones automobile, implies the “true face of America, speaking through “alternative forms of media’. I mean, the: Jews, (zionist media controlling, shylock, nose having, thieves of free thought). Yes I am referring to the “Israel lobby”. I can’t control our bumper stickers, at least we still have one outlet of media that isn’t getting its: freedom loving, red white and blue; cock sucked by the “Jewish Corporate WHORE”. Thats correct ladies, and gentlemen, the “Jewish Corporate WHORE”, is sucking the skin off of every: living, breathing existance, in America today!! If you are in the market for a cheap trick, then let the whore give it to you. If you embrace your life, and wish to evade all JTD’s (jewish transmitted diseases), resistance is futile. Question everything, and start with academia. What were you taught as a child? its ok to love all people reguardless of race, religion, etc? Religion, well fine. Race is a natural seperation mechanism created by God, to allow us to seperate. My GEEEEZZZZZ, how simple did God make it. He created us different colors, so we could distinguish our own community. A color coded path to life, and some people still try to mix colors, that equal a contrast of , “nothing that exudes beauty”. All colors in original form work fine as is. All races in original form work fine as is. Take for example any major US city. All of them have a: China town, ghetto, suburb, spanish harlem, little havana, etc. Why is it, given the opprutinity to have all races together we still segregate ourselves, into comfortable places of existance. Thats due to human nature. Comfort expressing a buhiddist way of life cannot flourish in a christian community, and vice versa. A white christian cannot feel comfortable, in a black muslim neighborhod. So why must we force integration when the true populist opinion screams segregation. i’ll tell you why, Zionist jews. Research the Jewish path to freedom. How can the jews attain power? By integrating christians and muslims in the name of freedom, knowing the two will combat, the jews create this disguise of diversity, creating a state of war, while stand on the sidelines allowing us to kill each other, when we should be uniting together against our true enemy, the jews. Christians, Muslims, Bhuddists, etc, unite and destroy the instigator of violence, the bringer of hatred, the ZIONIST, JEWS. I have never hated something so dearly as I hate jewish occupation. Words cannot describe the disgust I feel, and thoughts cannot expel the things I wish these devils should go through. Hell isnt enough, for the jews. Destroyers of all cultures, by creating a multiculture society, and staying on the sidelines to reap the benefits. Death, bonecrushing, machines arent enough, I pray you zionist cells, exist in the grotesque world you have created, and destroyed. I bow my head, and ask God to banish, you, his chosen ones(who turned your backs on him) to eternal holocaust. May you all burn one thousand deaths.- The Florida Rebel. CLICK LINKS BELOW FOR THE TRUE VICTORY STANCE. (video) Clip 1 explains the truth on German nationalism, and clip 2 shows how we still fight for it.-The Florida Rebel.
About four years ago, much of the world was shocked when three controversial historians were seized and imprisoned by “anti-hate” thought police. Holocaust reductionists Ernst Zundel, Germar Rudolph, and David Irving all served jail time for the “speech crime” of suggesting the total number of Jewish dead in World War II might not be six million or necessarily caused by gas chambers.
On October 1, well-known historian Dr. Fredrick Toben (pictured), an Australian, was seized for the same “crime” at London ’s Heathrow airport. He is now being held and will probably be deported to Germany. There, he faces almost certain conviction and imprisonment.
How will we respond to this latest assault on the free speech liberties of us all?
There is not much time to answer that question. Toben’s bail hearing is October 10. His final hearing is October 17. If he is delivered to German authorities, there is virtually no hope for his freedom.
Every American, especially Christians, should protest this outrageous attack on freedom of speech. Although most Americans do not think like Dr. Toben, his arrest is just a taste of what will come—for Americans like you and your family—if we do not defend freedom now..
I have to admit once being not enamored of, but hopeful about the candidacy of Barack Obama. In “The
Year of the Insurgents,” I underlined why I thought the conventional wisdom about this election year was dead wrong, and I was right about that. But what I wasn’t right about was the extent to which Obama would be willing to deviate from the foreign policy elite’s party line when it comes to the pressing issues of the day. We all know where Obama is right – or, as we used to say in the Sixties, “right on.” The importance of negotiations, the profound strategic and moral wrongness of the Iraq war, the sheer craziness of a neocon-run foreign policy – these are the basics that have brought many millions to rally ’round Obama’s banner. They were also the reasons for my initial enthusiasm for the previously unknown senator from Illinois, aside, that is, from his apparent thoughtfulness and his seemingly inherent presidential mien. CLICK BELOW LINK FOR FULL STORY.
“Until we question something, nothing is true”-the florida rebel.I recently, just made my (at least, 500th), extremely, high dollar purchase, of something that has never made me, (in the past), feel like it was controlling my life; and I’m now suffering the, syndrome known as, “buyers remorse. I did, however justify this purchase by allowing myself to remember, that I do, indeed, need this to survive. Although, this “high dollar item”, costs me at least $250 a month, I still have to use it, I cannot stop. I cannot suppress, my addiction, to this thief of my future, this criminal of my life, and yet my reliance upon this chemical has caused me to spend all of my earned wages, just to be able to return to work, so I can assume more income, just to buy this chemical, which I am addicted. Yes, I am admitting, the bowed head, somber admittance of an addict. I am asking you, readers of this essay, to please not judge me for spending all of my money, and sometimes, even stooping so low, as to walk, miles, and miles, in the hot sun to get this, just because I ran out and didn’t know what to do. Sometimes, I would expel my supply, and not even be able to get to work. I have accepted this, grotesque, “feeling of freedom”, is controlling me from every angle of my life, and I cant stop spending all of my money on it. Please help me, I’m crying out as an addict; who has been subjected to the worst chemical, drug to ever pass the face of any human being. I will now, at the risk of exposing my secret, tell you what I am talking about. I am talking about the worst chemical ever consumed by human beings; no joke, please keep your children, and loved ones away from this massacre of our entire population. Today this is a more rampant killer than any other drug that has ever graced the noses of the American consumer. Are you ready? This drug I am using everyday is called “PETROL”. I am addicted to petroleum, or as we in America call it: GASOLINE!! No I do not inhale, or huff, gas. I’m referring to our “addiction to the PUMP”. We, as Americans, have, in our laziness, allowed big corporate, government to control our pocketbooks. Please get this essay, and realize; the addiction, to transportation, adhered to, by the population of America, is only going to promote (the big governing bodies), known as “corporate America” . -Patriots revolt, revolution is now, it’s time to get it done.- The Florida Rebel
Part of the psychology of the Greenspan Bubble – a policy of bank credit expansion that distorted market
signals and led to the over-valuation of certain assets, such as real estate – has been the vaunted overestimation of America’s staying power as a global hegemon. Standing alongside the hubris that brought down the financial edifices of Bear Stearns and Goldman Sachs is the foreign policy corollary: the triumphalism of the neoconservatives, who imagined that American military power could solve all the world’s problems: or, at least, most of our own. They sneered at the “declinists,” like Paul Kennedy, who pointed to “imperial overstretch” as the cause of our impending economic and geopolitical demise.
What is clear from the behavior of European financial markets over the past two weeks is that the dramatic stories of financial meltdown and panic are deliberately being used by certain influential factions in and outside the EU to shape the future face of global banking in the wake of the US sub-prime and Asset-Backed Security (ABS) debacle. The most interesting development in recent days has been the unified and strong position of the German Chancellor, Finance Minister, Bundesbank and coalition Government, all opposing an American-style EU Superfund bank bailout.
*There is currently a campaign underway to honor a convicted cop-killer from Philadelphia named Mumia Abu-Jamal.
*Mumia Abu-Jamal was convicted for the 1981 killing of a Philadelphia Police Officer.
*It does a disservice to the citizens of New York City to name a street after an un-repentant murderer.
*The facts of the case are available at danielfaulkner.com
Petition:
We, the undersigned, call upon the New York City Council to not name any street within the city of New York after Mumia Abu-Jamal.
As the convicted murderer of a Philadelphia Police Officer in 1981, Mumia Abu-Jamal is not deserving of such an honor.
To name a street after an imprisoned killer of a civil servant is not only a slap in the face to the law enforcement community, but also the public at large.
Feb 13, 2007 Update-
The speaker of the NYC City Council has commented on the “Mumia Street” issue. To see her response go to http://antimove.blogspot.com
By Frosty Wooldridge
October 9, 2008
NewsWithViews.com
November 4, 2008 marks the first time in U.S. history whereby countless foreign nationals known as illegal aliens or non-citizens—may contaminate the U.S. presidential and Congressional elections. When all it takes to win may be a few percentage points, illegal aliens grow in their power to throw an election.
A recent report shows 80,000 Chicago illegals registered to vote: “But won’t show up at jury summons,” wrote Mark Burkhalter, for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper published on: 07/15/08. Chicago features 2.1 million illegal aliens within Richard Daley’s “Sanctuary City.” Cities such as Los Angeles, with upwards of 3.1 million illegal aliens, feature even more voters swinging the vote for the presidency.
David Simcox, “How many non-citizen voters?” in the Social Contract, summer 2008, Vol. XVIII, No. 4, thesocialcontract.com, said, “…non-citizen voters in 1996 provided the narrow winning margin in Democrat Loretta Sanchez’s upset of long-time incumbent Republican Bob Dornan in California’s 47th Congressional district in Orange County. They believe that the incident was not isolated and that it presaged a growing threat to good government in general.”
Simcox continued, “Indicators of significant registration of non-citizens continue to pop up, and the current vast voter registration campaigns of Hispanic and Asian interests since Congress’s 2006 rejection of mass amnesty may force local registrars to increase their rubber-stamping of applications, producing new legions of non-citizens to vote in 2008.”
One of the most disturbing placards in the LA and Chicago illegal alien marches, read, “Today we march; tomorrow we vote!”
As shown in the Chicago piece by Burkhalter, illegal aliens already vote in large numbers.
In the 2001, an article in “Insight on the News,” read, “Motor-voter Law Responsible for Increases in Voter Fraud.”
“It claimed that two to four percent of votes in the 2000 presidential election were cast by non-citizens, and in some Florida counties 10 to 15 percent of votes were cast by non-citizens,” Simcox said. “To bring this number into perspective, in Florida’s Miami-Dade County, over half the population is foreign born and nearly a third of the voting age population is non-citizen.
“The U.S. Border Control found that between 1994 and 1998, Hispanic voter registration in Florida soared by 557 percent, from less than 100,000 to 655,000. In Miami-Dade County in the same period the number of Hispanic registered voters increased twenty fold.”
Simcox found in 2004 that naturalized citizens make up 61.4 percent of voter registration while non-citizens account for 300,000 of those registrations. That’s a lot of fraud!
“If these figures for non-citizen registration in California, home to more than one-quarter of the country’s non-citizens, are projected, they imply registration of non-citizen voters between 600,000 and 1.71 million,” Simcox said.
He suggests those figures lend toward a total illegal voting population from 1.2 to 2.7 million for the entire USA.
Can illegal aliens determine the outcome of our presidential or Congressional races? You can bet your bottom dollar they can! Ask Al Gore about Florida!
1 – In the 2004 Virginia Senate race, Democrat Jim Webb shaded out George Allen by 7,231 votes. This study estimates 42,000 votes cast by illegal aliens. 2 – In Washington State, Christine Gregoire won the Governor’s race by 261 votes. 3 – In 2004, Democratic candidate John Kerry lost Nevada’s electoral votes by a margin of only 22,000 votes with 25,600 votes cast by non-citizens.
Motor-voter registration laws promote fraud in New York. “In 2004, a large portion of the 250,000 persons issued New York State drivers’ license while providing erroneous social security numbers were illegal aliens who were registered to vote under the procedures of the Motor-Voter law,” Simcox said.
Many states don’t check including Colorado, Iowa and South Dakota. That holds true in “Sanctuary Cities” like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Atlanta, Miami, Denver and 30 more.
“Absentee and mail-in ballots,” said Simcox, “reduce the risk to non-citizens of facing challenges at the polling place. A full 31 percent of votes were cast by mail-in for California; 32 percent in Arizona and 29 percent in Colorado. In those jurisdictions, non-citizens can register on-line or by mail and cast ballots without risking face to face challenges or scrutiny at the registration office or at the polls. An extensive report by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement on voter fraud, much of it in Miami-Dade, saw absentee voting as the greatest facilitator of fraud.”
As I said in the past, we face “Third World Momentum” whereby corruption becomes a mechanism that dominates poor countries. When millions of their citizens migrate into the U.S., they manifest their own corruption as a matter of course and personal entitlement. One look at millions of identification forgeries, people smuggling, cock fighting rings, dog fighting syndicates, drug smuggling, voter fraud and anchor babies—all paid for by U.S. citizens—marks a degradation of the rule of law in America.
“DemocraciaUSA, VotoLatino and Project Vote work with La Raza, League of United Latin American Citizens and gain funding by People for the American Way and Pew,” said Simcox. “In Los Angeles, local college chapters of Aztlan Chicano Student movement have joined the Latino get out the vote effort.”
With the current crackdown on illegals, they find a new urgency: “Si no votan, nos botan!” (If you don’t vote, they’ll throw us out!”)
“There is no less urgency for citizens, naturalized and native,” Simcox said. “They must decide whether voting should remain an exclusive attribute of citizenship and demand the safeguards to make it so.”
With as high as 2.7 million illegal aliens voting in this November’s election for president and Congressional candidates, along with very thin margins, it’s quite possible that the next president of the United States may be voted into office by illegal aliens. That harsh reality illustrates America’s degradation toward “Third World Momentum” and the loss of this Republic.
Listen to Frosty Wooldridge on Tuesdays and Thursdays as he interviews top national leaders on his radio show “Connecting the Dots” at republicbroadcasting.org at 6:00 PM Mountain Time. Adjust tuning in to your time zone.
Frosty Wooldridge possesses a unique view of the world, cultures and families in that he has bicycled around the globe 100,000 miles, on six continents and six times across the United States in the past 30 years. His published books include: “HANDBOOK FOR TOURING BICYCLISTS” ; “STRIKE THREE! TAKE YOUR BASE”; “IMMIGRATION’S UNARMED INVASION: DEADLY CONSEQUENCES”; “MOTORCYCLE ADVENTURE TO ALASKA: INTO THE WIND—A TEEN NOVEL”; “BICYCLING AROUND THE WORLD: TIRE TRACKS FOR YOUR IMAGINATION”; “AN EXTREME ENCOUNTER: ANTARCTIA.” His next book: “TILTING THE STATUE OF LIBERTY INTO A SWAMP.” He lives in Denver, Colorado.
U.S. government has lost track of massive private contractor army operating in active U.S. war zones
By Richard Walker
The next president will find that private contractors have not only benefited from the war on terror and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq but they have become an integral and expanding part of America’s military-industrial structure.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO)—says there has been a 78 percent increase in Department of Defense spending on private sector services since 2001. The money spent has exceeded by a wide margin DOD spending on supplies, equipment and weapons systems. This expanding role of the private sector has led to a diminishing government-employee workforce and less oversight of contracts, resulting in numerous examples of fraud and wasteful spending.
Since 2003, the Army’s hiring body, the CCE— Contracting Center of Excellence—has begun to rely on contractor specialists, with the result that contractor employees now represent more than 42 percent of the CCE workforce. Many in Congress fear contractor employees may be perceived to be speaking for the government. They are also paid considerably more than their government counterparts.
A major concern for those investigating fraud is that contractor employees are frequently the point of contact for the DOD when dealing with private-sector contracts. According to a GAO report, the DOD’s growing dependence on private sector goods and services has doubled in seven years and is a trend likely to increase over time. In 2007, the DOD signed $270 billion in contracts and, according to the GAO, “faced vulnerabilities to contracting fraud, waste and abuse due to weaknesses.”
A critical weakness was the growing lack of government control over the massive dollar amount paid private companies. In many instances, the specialists determining the value and terms of contracts were specialists hired from the private sector. One of the most egregious examples of waste was the way the DOD used a technique offering financial incentives to improve the performance of private companies. In effect, the technique resembled rewarding a child for an excellent school project but in this case it wasn’t a matter of a star attached to a project but billions of dollars paid out as performance awards. As a result, an estimated $8 billion in awards was shared among contractors.
“Furthermore, the DOD gave contractors a second opportunity to earn an estimated $669 million of initially unearned or deferred fees on approximately half of the award-fee contracts,” said a GAO report.
The problems of waste and the unregulated growth of the private sector in relation to defense spending has been an issue for decades but the sharp spike in the expansion of the contractor work force, and the shrinking numbers of government employees, were particularly striking in the 1990s. From 1992 until 1999, DOD contracts with the private sector expanded from $39.9 billion to $51.8 billion. The services included repair to equipment, medical care, technical and clerical support and management oversight.
As a consequence, the government workforce declined from 966,000 in 1996 to 682,000 by 2000 but even then it was almost impossible to get accurate figures for the value of contracts awarded to private companies. In 1999, a figure of $96.5 billion was reported by several government employees’ unions but was not confirmed by government.
EXPLOSION IN MILITARY USE OF CONTRACTORS
In subsequent years, the role of the private sector has increased beyond anyone’s expectations. In 2007, $254 billion was funneled directly to approximately 100 companies with 10 of those companies awarded the lion’s share, estimated at approximately $130 billion. The smallest contract awarded to any company was approximately $500 million.
The GAO has softened its stance on the DOD’s growing reliance on the private sector, telling Congress earlier this year that the services provided have helped the ongoing missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. For example, there are now 196,000 contractors in those two war zones. In Iraq alone, there are three brigades of security contractors with another brigade providing them with support.
Other contractors work as interpreters, weapons systems analysts, depot-level maintenance crews, communication specialists and food and housing suppliers. Contractors are also working for the DOD in parts of South East Asia. In essence, GAO reports and statements tend to imply that the modern U.S. military cannot function adequately without a massive private
sector input.
Nonetheless, the GAO has admitted it may be time to examine whether the Pentagon needs to be so dependent on contractors to provide essential services.
It may also be an opportune time to improve the surveillance of the contracting system because the DOD, in the words of the GAO, “will continue to be vulnerable to contracting fraud, waste and abuse.”
In May 2008, Mary Ungone, deputy inspector general of defense, admitted to Congress that the DOD “did not maintain adequate internal controls over commercial payments and that $7.2 billion out of a pool of $8.2 billion did not meet all statutory regulations.”
She conceded that approximately $1.4 billion “lacked the minimum documentation for a valid payment” and 28 transactions worth $35 million appeared to involve criminal activity. The Congressional Oversight and Government Reform Committee chaired by Rep. Henry Waxman, (D-Calif.), was not satisfied with her evidence and suggested there were probably 7,000 potentially criminal cases of fraud to be examined. Waxman also claimed that the IOTC International Oil Company Ltd. was charging the Pentagon $1.08 over the market price of each gallon of jet fuel delivered to the U.S. military in Iraq.
The most striking examples of fraud have involved companies like Kellogg Brown and Root, which was a subsidiary of Halliburton when Vice President Dick Cheney was its CEO. KBR has made huge profits with no-bid contracts that were negotiated without definite time frames and on the basis that cost overruns would be met no matter how high they were. In other words, if KBR were to bill for tens of millions beyond the initial estimate of a contract the DOD would pay up. In one instance, KBR was judged to have fraudulently billed for $1 billion, yet attempts to stop the payment were thwarted with approval from the White House.
Critics argue that the use of a massive private sector army and the expenditure of hundreds of billions for other services are creating a new, out of control military-industrial juggernaut. They point to the late general and president, Dwight Eisenhower, who warned when leaving office in 1961 that Americans should be alert to the growing influence of the arms industry within the military. It was the Cold War and an arms race was under way, yet he saw the danger of private weapons companies acquiring what he called “unwarranted influence” on America’s political and military policy making. He became the first person to use the term, “military-industrial complex,” suggesting that its growth could impact not only the military but the spiritual and economic life of the nation.
Some members of Congress are deeply concerned about the growing privatization of the DOD and argue it is a trend that could have the outcome President Eisenhower warned about. Any decisions on whether to change course on how the U.S. military functions, and how it is financed, will be a task for the next president.
Ultimately, accountability lies at the heart of the matter, following a decade when there has been little oversight of the hundreds of billions of tax dollars that have flowed into the coffers of private corporations, some of whom continue to outsource work to hundreds of companies abroad and rarely provide their books for scrutiny. At the apex of government there is a need for transparency that will allow the public to learn the true financial cost of the expanding contractor phenomenon. Only then can a debate be launched to examine whether this is the right course for the future of the military.
Richard Walker is the nom de plume of a former mainstream news producer who now writes for AFP .
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According to the Britain’s highest military commander in Afghanistan, Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith,
“We’re not going to win this war.” This is in stark contrast to the political rhetoric of our two presidential candidates, who are both calling for more troops to be deployed in Afghanistan. According to Obama, “We’ve got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we’re not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there.” [The sound bite "just air-raiding villages and killing civilians" is being used in a new McCain attack ad painting Obama as "dishonorable." And John McCain claims, "We've got a lot of work to do in Afghanistan. But I'm confident, now that General Petraeus is in the new position of command [as the commander of US Central Command he will oversee US military involvement across the Middle East, including Iraq, as well as Afghanistan, Pakistan and other Central Asian nations], that we will employ a strategy [modeled after the surge in Iraq]… It’s a strategy that will succeed.” CLICK BELOW LINK FOR FULL STORY.
“Until we question something, nothing is true”-the florida rebel. Below is a compilation of links, including: articles, essays, writings, and mp3 clips, based upon the “six million lie”. The lie that claims, six million jews were killed in concentration camps during the time of WWII. No doubt POW camps were built to house internees, that had proclaimed, and declared war on Germany. Was it not, the Jews who declared war on Germany?? Posted in news papers read, “Judea declares war on Germany”. So why is it so hard to realize that when war is declared uopn you, you gather all opponents, and put them in a solitary structure, so they don’t carry out acts of violence against the military who is fighting against the declarers of war? All peoples, of every nationality were interned in the Camps of WWII, including: Polish, German, American, and any others who declared war on Germany. Note to reader, American camps during the war…… wait did I say American camps???? YES I DID. In a pain staking effort to, justify American patricipation in POW acts, as “non-violent”, non-prisoner, related, America called these, Japanese, POW’s, “dislocated people”. As far as the American Propagandist media was concerned, these people were not, prisoners, and they were not internees. Instead of dubbing these places “concentration camps”, which they had defined the facilities in Europe, the American government convientily named these structures, “Relocation facilities”. People being taken from their homes, and placed in a prison. Why are they “relocation facilities”, for the American media, and “concentration camps” for the rest of the world. I sence a bit of American elitist propaganda already. I beg of you to view this video clip showing American camps, and realize the same, propaganda was used for all media releases. If you believe “nazi-concentration camp, video footage, was real, then you must believe this footage is real, leaving you in no place to be upset about concentration camps. If what was done in these camps is true, America is guilty of more crimes than Hitler, due to the fact that the People in the American camps never declared war on America. The POW’s (jews) in the European camps did in fact declare war.
The first clip is American (so called, relocation), camps, showing the Japanese concentration camps, constructed after Pearl Harbor attacks, dubbing all Japanese living in America, as enimies of war. The second clip, proves the declaration of war upon Germany, before Hitler took power, and the third clip, shows how propaganda can infiltrate, fumigate, and rape the minds of unknowing people. Please pay attention to the second clip, the diolague stating, the “jews claimed 6 million dead 20 years before Hitler took power. The second clips host is Dr. Toben, currently imprisoned for thought crimes. He is jailed for thinking. Please, after watching the second clip, watch part 3, 4, 5 etc. The. entire film “Judea declares war on Germany” is on www.youtube.com. If you, now, have an ounce of doubt about the holocaust, please support all holocaust revisionist POW’s. Follow these links to support minds of free thought. Including one of my posts about the”supposed gas chambers”. First read the links of the Thought crime POW’s then explore the literature, on the web to back it up. IF YOU THINK THE GOVERNMENT IS LYING TO US NOW, (and most people do) WHY CANT YOU ASSUME THEY WERE LYING TO US THEN????
LINKS TO REVISIONISTS SITES, (Go to sites)
Ernst Zundel (prisoner of thought) http://www.zundelsite.org/
Fred Leuchter (holohoax gas chambers) http://www.revisionists.com/leuchter/
My short writing( the florida rebel) http://thesixmillionlie.wordpress.com/2008/09/24/zyklon-b-the-pesticide-gas-that-supposedly-killed-six-million-jews/
AND THE SITE FOR ALL REVISIONIST INFORMATION (go to this site) http://www.revisionists.com/
John McCain said it twice, once during the first presidential debate:
“And watch Ukraine. This whole thing has got a lot to do with Ukraine, Crimea, the base of the Russian fleet in Sevastopol. And the breakdown of the political process in Ukraine between Tymoshenko and Yushchenko is a very serious problem. So watch Ukraine, and let’s make sure that we – that the Ukrainians understand that we are their friend and ally.”
And again during the second match-up with Barack Obama:
“I said before, watch Ukraine. Ukraine, right now, is in the sights of Vladimir Putin, those that want to reassemble the old Soviet Union. We’ve got to show moral support for Georgia. We’ve got to show moral support for Ukraine. We’ve got to advocate for their membership in NATO.”
Most Americans have no idea where Ukraine is, much less any interest in watching it, but just on the premise that McCain’s connections with the War Party give him the inside scoop on where the next phony foreign policy “crisis” is going to erupt, let’s take his advice and start watching Ukraine with the help of our Antiwar.com microscope… CLICK BELOW LINK FOR FULL STORY
FORMER beauty queen and Sydney socialite Lady Michele Renouf is the secret force behind a campaign to free an Australian teacher facing jail in Germany for being a Holocaust denier.
Gerald Frederick Toben was arrested at his seat on a plane at Heathrow Airport two weeks ago by British police on a request from German authorities.
He is charged with inciting racism and xenophobia through posting on the internet alleged anti-Semitic and or revisionist views, denying there was a mass murder of Jews during World War II.
He was to represent himself in court for an extradition hearing to send him to Germany from Britain, where he was in transit enroute to Dubai, but Lady Renouf has stepped in and assembled a legal team to not only get him out of British detention but challenge the validity of European warrants that can see people arrested in one country at the behest of another.
Lady Renouf, briefly married to millionaire financier Sir Frank “The Bank” Renouf, said it was a matter of principal her friend Dr Toben got the best help and the Germans not be allowed to curtail freedom of speech.
She said she was not a revisionist and something “bad” did happen to the Jews during the war, but on principal she supported people like Dr Toben and renowned Holocaust denier David Irving for the sake of freedom of expression.
Revisionism, she said, was not an ideology but a historical method. The 61-year-old former model and Miss Newcastle 1968 said people might not like what Dr Toben stood for but it was his and others’ right to freely express themselves.
“My interest is in making sure we don’t have laws that we say we don’t accept and yet we allow to come in to the back door,” she said yesterday.
Dr Toben’s solicitor Kevin Lowry-Mullins said his client was in good cheer and health and was stoic in the face of potentially being extradited and serving up to five years in a German prison.
No Amnesty For Wall Street 
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