In Germany, a Better Vaccine for Politicians?
2009-10-27, Time magazine
Posted: 2009-11-19 02:28:16
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1932366,00.html

As Germany launched its mass-vaccination program against the H1N1 flu virus on Monday, the government found itself fending off accusations of favoritism because it was offering one vaccine believed to have fewer side effects to civil servants, politicians and soldiers, and another, potentially riskier vaccine to everyone else. The German government prepared for its mass-vaccination campaign earlier this year by ordering 50 million doses of the Pandemrix vaccine. The vaccine, manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline, contains an immunity-enhancing chemical compound, known as an adjuvant, whose side effects are not yet entirely known. The Interior Ministry confirmed that it had ordered a different vaccine, Celvapan, for government officials and the military. Celvapan, which is made by U.S. pharmaceutical giant Baxter, does not contain an adjuvant and is believed to have fewer side effects.

Note: For a revealing article exposing more on this critical issue, click here. Other thoroughly researched articles suggesting a major cover-up around the swine flu vaccine are available here.

Italy Convicts 23 Americans for C.I.A. Renditions
2009-11-05, New York Times
Posted: 2009-11-19 02:25:40
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/world/europe/05italy.html

In a landmark ruling, an Italian judge ... convicted a base chief for the Central Intelligence Agency and 22 other Americans, almost all C.I.A. operatives, of kidnapping a Muslim cleric from the streets of Milan in 2003. The case was a huge symbolic victory for Italian prosecutors, who drew the first convictions involving the American practice of rendition, in which terrorism suspects are captured in one country and taken for questioning in another, often one more open to [torture]. The fact that Italy would actually convict intelligence agents of an allied country was seen as a bold move that could set a precedent in other cases. Judge Oscar Magi handed an eight-year sentence to Robert Seldon Lady, a former C.I.A. base chief in Milan, and five-year sentences to the 22 other Americans, including an Air Force colonel and 21 C.I.A. operatives. Three of the other high-ranking Americans were given diplomatic immunity, including Jeffrey Castelli, a former C.I.A. station chief in Rome. Citing state secrecy, the judge did not convict five high-ranking Italians charged in the abduction, including a former head of Italian military intelligence, Nicolò Pollari. All the Americans were tried in absentia and are considered fugitives. Armando Spataro, the counterterrorism prosecutor who brought the case, said he was considering asking the Italian government for an international arrest warrant for the fugitive Americans. Tom Parker, Amnesty International’s United States point man for terrorism issues, called on the Obama administration to “repudiate the unlawful practice of extraordinary rendition.”

Note: The US government has refused to extradite to Italy the 23 Americans convicted in absentia of kidnapping. Yet the US is pressing for the extradition of 76-year-old Roman Polanski for fleeing the US after serious judicial malfeasance. For an analysis of these contradictions by US authorities over extradition, click here.

1,600 are suggested daily for FBI's list
2009-11-01, Washington Post
Posted: 2009-11-19 02:20:11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/31/AR20091031021...

Newly released FBI data offer evidence of the broad scope and complexity of the nation's terrorist watch list, documenting a daily flood of names nominated for inclusion to the controversial list. During a 12-month period ended in March this year, for example, the U.S. intelligence community suggested on a daily basis that 1,600 people qualified for the list because they presented a "reasonable suspicion," according to data provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee by the FBI in September and made public last week. The ever-churning list is said to contain more than 400,000 unique names and over 1 million entries. Nine percent of those on the terrorism list, the FBI said, are also on the government's "no fly" list. Before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the FBI needed initial information that a person or group was engaged in wrongdoing before it could open a preliminary investigation. Under current practice, no such information is needed. The inquiries can be opened by individual agents "proactively," meaning on his or her own or in response to a lead about a threat.

Note: For lots more from major media sources on the growing government threats to civil liberties, click here.

Who's in Big Brother's Database?
2009-11-05, New York Review of Books
Posted: 2009-11-19 02:17:33
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23231

On a remote edge of Utah's dry and arid high desert ... hard-hatted construction workers with top-secret clearances are preparing to build [a] mammoth $2 billion structure. It's being built by the ultra-secret National Security Agency ... to house trillions of phone calls, e-mail messages, and [electronic data trails of all kinds]. The NSA is also completing work on another data archive, this one in San Antonio, Texas, which will be nearly the size of the Alamodome. Just how much information will be stored in these windowless cybertemples? A recent report prepared by the MITRE Corporation, a Pentagon think tank, [states] "Sensor data volume could potentially increase to the level of Yottabytes [10-to-the-24th-power bytes] by 2015." Once vacuumed up and stored in these near-infinite "libraries," the data are then analyzed by powerful infoweapons, supercomputers running complex algorithmic programs, to determine who among us may be — or may one day become — a terrorist. Emerging [after 9/11] as the most powerful chief the spy world has ever known was the director of the NSA. He is in charge of an organization three times the size of the CIA and empowered in 2008 by Congress to spy on Americans to an unprecedented degree. These new centers in Utah, Texas, and possibly elsewhere will likely become the centralized repositories for the data intercepted by the NSA in America's version of the "big brother database."

Note: James Bamford, the author of this review of a new book on the history of the NSA, has himself written three important books on the agency. For many revealing reports from reliable sources on the developing capacity by government and corporate surveillance to construct a "Big Brother" states, click here.

The Halliburton Loophole
2009-11-03, New York Times
Posted: 2009-11-19 02:05:53
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/opinion/03tue3.html

Among the many dubious provisions in the 2005 energy bill was one dubbed the Halliburton loophole, which was inserted at the behest of — you guessed it — then-Vice President Dick Cheney, a former chief executive of Halliburton. It stripped the Environmental Protection Agency of its authority to regulate a drilling process called hydraulic fracturing [commonly referred to as "fracking"]. Invented by Halliburton in the 1940s, it involves injecting a mixture of water, sand and chemicals, some of them toxic, into underground rock formations to blast them open and release natural gas. Hydraulic fracturing has been implicated in a growing number of water pollution cases across the country. It has become especially controversial in New York, where regulators are eager to clear the way for drilling in the New York City watershed, potentially imperiling the city’s water supply. Congress last week approved a bill that asks the E.P.A. to conduct a new study on the risks of hydraulic fracturing. An agency study in 2004 whitewashed the industry and was dismissed by experts as superficial and politically motivated. This time Congress is demanding “a transparent, peer-reviewed process.” Cumbersomely named the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act, it would close the loophole and restore the E.P.A.’s rightful authority to regulate hydraulic fracturing. It would also require the oil and gas industry to disclose the chemicals they use.

Note: Energy-development corporations using the fracking process will not disclose the chemicals they inject into the subsurface because of the chemicals' high toxicity when they penetrate groundwater supplies. For many more examples from reliable sources of corporate and government secrecy, click here.

Long-range Taser raises fears of shock and injury
2009-11-02, New Scientist
Posted: 2009-11-19 02:03:21
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427325.600-longrange-taser-raises-fea...

A Pentagon project to perfect a projectile capable of delivering an electric shock to incapacitate a person tens of metres away [is now in its final stages]. It will be fired from a standard 40-millimetre grenade launcher. The projectile, being developed by Taser International under a $2.5 million contract, is known as a Human Electro-Muscular Incapacitation or HEMI device. Taser will deliver the first prototypes for testing and evaluation early next year. The ... cartridges should be able to hit targets 60 metres [200 feet] away. However, the impact force of the projectile remains a worry. "There is a known risk of severe injury from impact projectiles, either from blunt force at short ranges or from hitting a sensitive part of the body," says security researcher Neil Davison, who has recently written a book on non-lethal weapons. The duration of the shock which the HEMI will deliver to its target has also raised concerns. Marksmen will need time to reach the incapacitated target, and because the weapon is designed for long-range use this could be considerable. "We should be worried about undesirable effects if people are going to be subjected to bouts of prolonged incapacitation," says Steve Wright, a specialist in non-lethal weapons at Leeds Metropolitan University in the UK.

Note: For lots more on "non-lethal weapons" from major media sources, click here.

Fed Rejects Geithner Request for Study of Governance, Structure
2009-09-21, Bloomberg News
Posted: 2009-11-19 01:57:17
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601068&sid=adjvXg1zP.zY

The Federal Reserve Board has rejected a request by U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner for a public review of the central bank’s structure and governance, three people familiar with the matter said. U.S. lawmakers have also called for a review of the Fed’s power and structure, saying Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke overstepped his authority as he bailed out creditors of Bear Stearns Cos. and American International Group Inc. while battling a crisis that led to $1.62 trillion in writedowns and losses at financial firms. While the report requested by the Treasury hasn’t been formally scrapped, no work has been done on the project, which was due Oct. 1. Treasury spokesman Andrew Williams declined to comment, as did Fed spokeswoman Michelle Smith. Congressional leaders have balked at the notion of giving the Fed more power and are leaning toward vesting authority over capital, liquidity and risk-management practices of big banks in a council of regulators.

Note: To understand how business corrupts politicians watch the heated MSNBC News clip at this link.

Fed Urges Secrecy on Banks in Bailout Programs
2009-08-27, ABC News/Reuters
Posted: 2009-11-19 01:53:30
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=8426669

The U.S. Federal Reserve asked a federal judge not to enforce her order that it reveal the names of the banks that have participated in its emergency lending programs and the sums they received, saying such disclosure would threaten the companies and the economy. The central bank filed its request ... two days after Chief Judge Loretta Preska of the U.S. District Court in Manhattan ruled in favor of Bloomberg News, which had sought information under the federal Freedom of Information Act. Preska said the Fed failed to show that revealing the names would stigmatize the banks and result in "imminent competitive harm." Underlying this case and a similar one involving News Corp's Fox News Network is a question of how much the public has a right to know about how the government is bailing out a financial system in a crisis. The case arose when two Bloomberg reporters submitted FOIA requests about actions the Fed took to shore up the financial system in 2007 and early 2008, including an expansion of lending programs and the sale of Bear Stearns Cos to JPMorgan.

Note: Don't tax payers have a right to know to which bankds the trillions of tax dollars are going in the bank bailout? For lots more on government secrecy, click here.

Have We Visitors From Space?
1952-04-07, Life magazine
Posted: 2009-11-16 23:57:11
http://books.google.com/books?id=ElYEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA80&lpg=PA80&dq=%22four+yea...

For four years the U.S. public has wondered [about] the strange and insistent tales of eerie objects streaking across American skies. Last week the U.S. Air Force made known to LIFE the following facts: As a result of continuing flying saucer reports the Air Force maintains constant intelligence investigation and study of unidentified aerial objects. A policy of positive action has been adopted to find out, as soon as possible, what is responsible for observations that have been made. For the first time the Air Force (while in no way identifying itself with any particular conclusions) has opened its files for study. Out of this exhaustive inquiry these propositions seem firmly shaped by the evidence: * 1. Disks, cylinders and similar objects of geometrical form, luminous quality and solid nature for several years have been, and may be now, actually present in the atmosphere of the earth. * 2. Globes of green fire also, of a brightness more intense than the full moon's, have frequently passed through the skies. * 3. These objects cannot be explained by present science as natural phenomena -- but solely as artificial devices, created and operated by a high intelligence. * 4. Finally, no power plant known or projected on earth could account for the performance of these devices.

Note: This is a copy of the Apr. 7, 1952 Life magazine article as reproduced by Google at the link above. Another copy of the article with several letters to the editor added at the bottom is available here.

9/11's delayed legacy: cancer for many of the rescue workers
2009-11-11, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
Posted: 2009-11-16 23:22:59
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/11/cancer-new-york-rescuers

A spate of recent deaths of New York police and fire officers who took part in the emergency operation at Ground Zero after the 9/11 attacks has heightened fears that it could be the start of a delayed epidemic of cancer-related illness. Five firefighters and police officers, all of whom were involved in the rescue and clear-up at the site of the collapsed Twin Towers, have died of cancer in the past three months, the oldest being 44. Three died last month within a four-day period. Up to 70,000 people took part in the massive operation at Ground Zero, including police, firefighters and construction workers who came to New York voluntarily from all over the US. Many worked for months amid a toxic soup of dust and chemicals. Amid the pollutants within the giant pile of 1.8m tons of debris and the surrounding air were ... about 1,000 tons of asbestos that was used in the construction of the Twin Towers, pulverised lead from computers, mercury and highly carcinogenic by-products from the burning of plastics and chlorinated chemicals. No official tally is available for the number of those who have died as a result of the 9/11 clear-up. The New York state health department has recorded 817 deaths of emergency workers. Claire Calladine, a campaigner who runs the organisation 9/11 Health Now, said the fear was that the recent rise in cancer cases was just the start. "We have only seen the tip of the iceberg. How bad will it get – that is the big question."

Note: To read important questions raised by hundreds of government officials, academics and professionals about what really happened on 9/11, click here and here.

Report: Blackwater Sent $1M Bribe to Iraq
2009-11-11, CBS News/Associated Press
Posted: 2009-11-16 23:18:36
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/11/11/national/main5611339.shtml

[Four] former top executives at Blackwater Worldwide say the U.S. security contractor sent about $1 million to its Iraq office with the intention of paying off officials in the country who were angry about the fatal shootings of 17 civilians by Blackwater employees. Iraqis had long complained about ground operations by the North Carolina-based company, now known as Xe Corp. Then the shooting by Blackwater guards in Baghdad's Nisoor Square in September 2007 left 17 civilians dead, further strained relations between Baghdad and Washington and led U.S. prosecutors to bring charges against the Blackwater contractors involved. The State Department has since turned to DynCorp and another private security firm, Triple Canopy, to handle diplomatic protective services in the country. But Xe continues to provide security for diplomats in other nations, most notably in Afghanistan. The former executives told the [New York Times] that the payments were approved by the company's then-president, Gary Jackson. They did not know if he came up with the idea. Any payments would have been illegal under the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bans bribes to foreign officials. Two of the former executives said they were directly involved in discussions about paying Iraqi officials, and the other two said they were told about the discussions by others at Blackwater.

Note: For lots more from reliable sources on corporate corruption, click here.

Justice Dept. Asked For News Site's Visitor Lists
2009-11-10, CBS News
Posted: 2009-11-16 23:15:04
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/11/09/taking_liberties/entry5595506.shtml

In a case that raises questions about online journalism and privacy rights, the U.S. Department of Justice sent a formal request to an independent news site ordering it to provide details of all reader visits on a certain day. The grand jury subpoena also required the Philadelphia-based Indymedia.us Web site "not to disclose the existence of this request" unless authorized by the Justice Department, a gag order that presents an unusual quandary for any news organization. Kristina Clair, a 34-year old Linux administrator living in Philadelphia who provides free server space for Indymedia.us, said she was shocked to receive the Justice Department's subpoena. The subpoena ... demanded "all IP traffic to and from www.indymedia.us" on June 25, 2008. It instructed Clair to "include IP addresses, times, and any other identifying information," including e-mail addresses, physical addresses, registered accounts, and Indymedia readers' Social Security Numbers, bank account numbers, [and] credit card numbers. Clair [called] the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, which represented her at no cost. Making this investigation more mysterious is that Indymedia.us is an aggregation site, meaning articles that appear on it were published somewhere else first, and there's no hint about what sparked the criminal probe. Clair, the system administrator, says that no IP (Internet Protocol) addresses are recorded for Indymedia.us, and non-IP address logs are kept for a few weeks and then discarded. "This is the first time we've seen them try to get the IP address of everyone who visited a particular site," [EFF's Kevin] Bankston said. "That it was a news organization was an additional troubling fact that implicates First Amendment rights."

Note: For many reports from major media sources of growing government threats to civil liberties, click here.

A National Disgrace
2009-11-11, New York Times
Posted: 2009-11-16 23:10:47
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/opinion/11wed1.html

Two courts, one in Italy and one in the United States, ruled recently on the Bush administration’s practice of extraordinary rendition, which is the kidnapping of people and sending them to other countries for interrogation — and torture. The Italian court got it right. The American court got it miserably wrong. In Italy, a judge ruled that a station chief for the Central Intelligence Agency and 22 other Americans broke the law in the 2003 abduction of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, a Muslim cleric who ended up in Egypt, where he said he was tortured. Two days earlier, a federal appeals court in Manhattan brushed off a lawsuit by Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen who was seized in an American airport by federal agents acting on bad information from Canadian officials. He was held incommunicado and harshly interrogated before being sent to Syria, where he was tortured. He spent almost a year in a grave-size underground cell before the Syrians let him go. It has long been established that Mr. Arar was not guilty of anything. Canada admitted that it had supplied false information to American authorities, and in 2007, it apologized and offered Mr. Arar $10 million in damages. Written by Chief Judge Dennis Jacobs, the 59-page majority opinion held that no civil damages remedy exists for the horrors visited on Mr. Arar. The ruling distorts precedent and the Constitutional separation of powers to deny justice to Mr. Arar and give officials a pass for egregious misconduct. The overt disregard for the central role of judges in policing executive branch excesses has frightening implications for safeguarding civil liberties, as four judges suggested in dissenting opinions.

Note: For many reports from major media sources of growing government threats to civil liberties, click here.

Court to reconsider CIA torture flight ruling
2009-10-28, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
Posted: 2009-11-16 23:07:56
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/28/BAMQ1AB9KF.DTL

A federal appeals court granted the Obama administration's request ... to rehear a case over a Bay Area company's alleged participation in CIA torture flights, setting the stage for a critical test of government claims of secrecy and national security. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco had reinstated a suit in April by five men who accused the company, Jeppesen Dataplan of San Jose, of taking part in the CIA's extraordinary rendition program that led to their imprisonment and torture. The 3-0 ruling rejected arguments by the Bush and Obama administrations that the case concerned secrets too sensitive to disclose in court. The full appeals court set aside that ruling. President Obama criticized the practice [of extraordinary rendition] but refused to disavow it, promising only that no prisoners would be tortured. Ben Wizner, an ACLU attorney, said ... that he was "disappointed that the Obama administration continues to stand in the way of torture victims having their day in court. This case is not about secrecy. It's about immunity from accountability," Wizner said. In the April ruling reinstating the lawsuit, the three-judge appeals court panel said the government and Jeppesen could take steps to protect national secrets as the case proceeded. The panel said the administration's argument, if accepted, would "cordon off all secret government actions from judicial scrutiny, immunizing the CIA and its contractors from the demands and limits of the law."

Note: For many reports from major media sources of growing government threats to civil liberties, click here.

U.S. readies plan to ID departing visitors
2009-11-08, Washingon Post
Posted: 2009-11-16 23:04:14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/07/AR20091107031...

The Department of Homeland Security is finalizing a proposal to collect fingerprints or eye scans from all foreign travelers at U.S. airports as they leave the country, officials said, a costly screening program that airlines have opposed. The plan ... would collect fingerprints at airport security checkpoints, departure gates or terminal kiosks, allowing the government to track when roughly 35 million foreign visitors a year. In a concession to industry, DHS said it probably will drop plans to require airlines to pay for the bulk of the program and is looking to cut costs, which could reach $1 billion to $2 billion over a decade, largely to be paid by taxpayers or foreign travelers. In addition, the program would not operate for now at land borders, where 80 percent of noncitizens enter and leave the country, because fingerprinting travelers there could cost billions more and significantly delay commerce. Congress focused on inbound travelers after the [September 11, 2001 attacks,] appropriating $3 billion since 2003 on the US-VISIT tracking program. The program collects biological identifiers, such as fingerprints and digital photographs, from all arriving foreigners except Canadians and Mexicans with special border-crossing cards. By the time Bush administration officials unveiled a $3.5 billion program in April 2008, however, political impetus for changes had weakened.

Note: For many reports from major media sources of growing government threats to civil liberties, click here.

Key oil figures were distorted by US pressure, says whistleblower
2009-11-09, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
Posted: 2009-11-16 23:01:35
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/09/peak-oil-international-ener...

The world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit, according to a whistleblower at the International Energy Agency who claims it has been deliberately underplaying a looming shortage for fear of triggering panic buying. The allegations raise serious questions about the accuracy of the organisation's latest World Energy Outlook on oil demand and supply. In particular they question the prediction in the last World Economic Outlook ... repeated again this year, that oil production can be raised from its current level of 83m barrels a day to 105m barrels. External critics have frequently argued that this cannot be substantiated by firm evidence. "The IEA in 2005 was predicting oil supplies could rise as high as 120m barrels a day by 2030 although it was forced to reduce this gradually to 116m and then 105m last year," said the IEA source, who was unwilling to be identified for fear of reprisals inside the industry. "Many inside the organisation believe that maintaining oil supplies at even 90m to 95m barrels a day would be impossible but there are fears that panic could spread on the financial markets if the figures were brought down further." A second senior IEA source ... said a key rule at the organisation was that it was "imperative not to anger the Americans" but the fact was that there was not as much oil in the world as had been [claimed].

Chrysler drops three electric vehicles despite having touted them to get billions in government bailout cash
2009-11-09, USA Today
Posted: 2009-11-16 22:58:51
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/driveon/post/2009/11/620001133/1

If you believed all the talk from Chrysler about how our tax dollars would help finance its fast-track electric-vehicle future, you're in for a big disappointment. Chrysler has disbanded the engineering team that was trying to bring three electric models to market as a rush job. Chrysler [had] cited its devotion to electric vehicles as one of the key reasons why the Obama administration and Congress needed to give it $12.5 billion in bailout money. The change of heart on electric vehicles has come under Fiat. At a marathon presentation of Chrysler's five-year strategy, CEO Sergio Marchionne talked about just about everything on Chrysler's plate ... except its earlier electric-car plans. With the group's disbanding, Chrysler's electric plans will be melded into Fiat's. Marchionne is apparently no fan of electric power. He says electrics will only make up 1% or 2% of Fiat sales by 2014 and that he doesn't put a lot of faith in the technology until battery developments are pushed forward. As a result, Chrysler won't have an electric car on sale as soon as next year, such as the Dodge Circuit sports car concept it had unveiled. The change has come so fast that Chrysler's website has been still featuring pictures of the electric vehicles. As late as August, Chrysler took $70 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop a test fleet of 220 hybrid pickup trucks and minivans, vehicles now scrapped in the sweeping turnaround plan for Chrysler.

Note: For reports from reliable sources on promising new developments in electric automobile technologies, click here.

Chemicals in Our Food, and Bodies
2009-11-08, New York Times
Posted: 2009-11-16 22:55:42
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/opinion/08kristof.html

Your body is probably home to a chemical called bisphenol A, or BPA. It’s a synthetic estrogen that United States factories now use in everything from plastics to epoxies — to the tune of six pounds per American per year. More than 92 percent of Americans have BPA in their urine, and scientists have linked it ... to everything from breast cancer to obesity, from attention deficit disorder to genital abnormalities in boys and girls alike. Now it turns out it’s in our food. Consumer Reports magazine tested an array of brand-name canned foods for a report in its December issue and found BPA in almost all of them. The magazine says that relatively high levels turned up, for example, in Progresso vegetable soup, Campbell’s condensed chicken noodle soup, and Del Monte Blue Lake cut green beans. The magazine also says it found BPA in the canned liquid version of Similac Advance infant formula ... and in canned Nestlé Juicy Juice. The BPA in the food probably came from an interior coating used in many cans. More than 200 other studies have shown links between low doses of BPA and adverse health effects, according to the Breast Cancer Fund, which is trying to ban the chemical from food and beverage containers. “The vast majority of independent scientists — those not working for industry — are concerned about early-life low-dose exposures to BPA,” said Janet Gray, a Vassar College professor who is science adviser to the Breast Cancer Fund.

Note: For more on BPA and other health issues, click here.

The Five Biggest Lies in the Health Care Debate
2009-08-29, Time magazine
Posted: 2009-11-16 22:47:13
http://www.newsweek.com/id/214254

To the credit of opponents of health-care reform, the lies and exaggerations they're spreading are not made up out of whole cloth—which makes the misinformation that much more credible. Instead, because opponents demand that everyone within earshot (or e-mail range) look, say, "at page 425 of the House bill!," the lies take on a patina of credibility. Take the claim in one chain e-mail that the government will have electronic access to everyone's bank account, implying that the Feds will rob you blind. The 1,017-page bill passed by the House Ways and Means Committee does call for electronic fund transfers—but from insurers to doctors and other providers. There is zero provision to include patients in any such system. Five other myths that won't die: [1] You'll have no choice in what health benefits you receive. [2] No chemo for older Medicare patients. A related myth is that health-care reform will be financed through $500 billion in Medicare cuts. This refers to proposed decreases in Medicare increases. [3] Illegal immigrants will get free health insurance. [4] Death panels will decide who lives. [5] The government will set doctors' wages. To be sure, there are also honest and principled objections to health-care reform. Some oppose a requirement that everyone have health insurance as an erosion of individual liberty. And many are simply scared out of their wits about what health-care reform will mean for them. But when fear and loathing hijack the brain, anything becomes believable.

Note: For lots more on health issues from major media sources, click here.

Officers accused of inciting violence to testify before police ethics panel
2009-10-23, Globe and Mail (One of Canada's leading newspapers)
Posted: 2009-10-31 19:15:43
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/officers-accused-of-inciting-vio...

Three undercover officers accused of inciting protesters to attack riot police at the 2007 North American leaders summit in Montebello are being summoned to testify before Quebec's independent police ethics committee. The decision from the committee released this week overrules an independent review that exonerated the officers. It also comes more than two years after the black-clad trio were first exposed on YouTube. Dave Coles, the union leader who confronted the men at the time and filed a complaint against the police ... said he suspects an inquiry would find there was political involvement. “This is the big question: Who sent them in?” asked Mr. Coles. “And don't give me some lame excuse that it was a low-level officer.” Video images of the incident posted on YouTube showed three officers disguised as protesters wearing black tops and camouflage pants. Their faces were covered by black and white bandanas. One of them, wearing a sideways ball cap marked with graffiti, held a large stone in his hand. Mr. Coles yelled at them to show their faces and the officer carrying the rock responded with a two-handed shove.

Note: Click on the link above to watch the astonishing YouTube video of this police provocation. This is just one case that happened to be caught on film. Why are undercover police infiltrating activist groups and inciting violence at demonstrations around the world?

Police in £9m scheme to log 'domestic extremists'
2009-10-25, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
Posted: 2009-10-31 19:09:09
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/oct/25/police-domestic-extremists-database

Police are gathering the personal details of thousands of activists who attend political meetings and protests, and storing their data on a network of nationwide intelligence databases. The hidden apparatus has been constructed to monitor "domestic extremists". Detailed information about the political activities of campaigners is being stored on a number of overlapping IT systems, even if they have not committed a crime. Senior officers say domestic extremism, a term coined by police that has no legal basis, can include activists suspected of minor public order offences such as peaceful direct action and civil disobedience. Three national police units responsible for combating domestic extremism are run by the "terrorism and allied matters" committee of the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo). In total, it receives £9m in public funding, from police forces and the Home Office, and employs a staff of 100. The main unit, the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU), runs a central database which lists thousands of so-called domestic extremists. It filters intelligence supplied by police forces across England and Wales, which routinely deploy surveillance teams at protests, rallies and public meetings. Vehicles associated with protesters are being tracked via a nationwide system of automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras. Police surveillance units, known as Forward Intelligence Teams (FIT) and Evidence Gatherers, record footage and take photographs of campaigners as they enter and leave openly advertised public meetings. Surveillance officers are provided with "spotter cards" used to identify the faces of target individuals who police believe are at risk of becoming involved in domestic extremism. Targets include high-profile activists regularly seen taking part in protests.

Note: This important article should be read in its entirety. For further revelations of the magnitude of this surveillance and "rebranding protest as extremism " program, click here.

Swine Flu Cases Overestimated
2009-10-21, CBS News
Posted: 2009-10-31 19:06:13
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/21/cbsnews_investigates/main5404829.shtml

If you've been diagnosed "probable" or "presumed" 2009 H1N1 or "swine flu" in recent months, you may be surprised to know this: odds are you didn’t have H1N1 flu. In fact, you probably didn’t have flu at all. That's according to state-by-state test results obtained in a three-month-long CBS News investigation. Why the uncertainty about who has and who hasn't had H1N1 flu? In late July, the CDC abruptly advised states to stop testing for H1N1 flu, and stopped counting individual cases. CBS News learned that the decision to stop counting H1N1 flu cases was made so hastily that states weren't given the opportunity to provide input. When CDC did not provide us [CBS News] with the material, we filed a Freedom of Information request with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). More than two months later, the request has not been fulfilled. We also asked CDC for state-by-state test results prior to halting of testing and tracking, but CDC was again, initially, unresponsive. We asked all 50 states for their statistics on state lab-confirmed H1N1 prior to the halt of individual testing and counting in July. The vast majority of cases were negative for H1N1 as well as seasonal flu, despite the fact that many states were specifically testing patients deemed to be most likely to have H1N1 flu, based on symptoms and risk factors, such as travel to Mexico. With most cases diagnosed solely on symptoms and risk factors, the H1N1 flu epidemic may seem worse than it is.

Note: Some states found that less than 2% of cases claimed to be swine flu turned out to be the real thing. The numbers have been greatly exaggerated. For more reliable information on this, click here.

TARP on steroids
2009-10-30, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
Posted: 2009-10-31 19:03:39
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/30/EDTG1ACEDE.DTL

It was 9/29/08 - a moment when a rare blast of populist democracy briefly singed the economic terrorists who hold the Capitol hostage. It had been a dark and stormy month of financial collapse, culminating in an attempted power grab. Pushed by his fellow Wall Street Ponzi schemers, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson - a former Goldman Sachs CEO - was threatening Armageddon unless Congress ratified his ... decree for a no-strings-attached bank bailout. Today, the episode seems merely to have set minimum standards for chicanery. As evidenced by two little-noticed sections of the Obama administration's Wall Street "reform" bill, presidents and their bank benefactors are back to thinking they can pilfer whatever they want by burying their demands in the esoterica of lengthier bills. Finding this latest giveaway means digging all the way down to sections 1109 and 1604 of the White House's mammoth proposal. At a recent hearing, Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Sherman Oaks (Los Angeles County), called the language "TARP on steroids," noting the provisions would deliberately let the executive branch enact even bigger, more unregulated bailouts than ever - and by unilateral fiat. TARP on Steroids includes no specific oversight or executive pay constraints. TARP on Steroids allows taxpayer cash to go only to the behemoths (which, not coincidentally, tend to make the biggest campaign contributions). TARP on Steroids would let [the Treasury Secretary] spend as much as he wants.

Note: For many revealing reports from reliable sources on the continuing Wall Street bailout, click here.

Loosening of F.B.I. Rules Stirs Privacy Concerns
2009-10-29, New York Times
Posted: 2009-10-31 19:00:45
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/29/us/29manual.html

After a Somali-American teenager from Minneapolis committed a suicide bombing in Africa in October 2008, the Federal Bureau of Investigation began investigating whether a Somali Islamist group had recruited him on United States soil. Instead of collecting information only on people about whom they had a tip or links to the teenager, agents fanned out to scrutinize Somali communities. The operation unfolded as the Bush administration was relaxing some domestic intelligence-gathering rules. The F.B.I.’s interpretation of those rules was recently made public when it released, in response to a Freedom of Information lawsuit, its “Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide.” The disclosure of the manual has opened the widest window yet onto how agents have been given greater power in the post-Sept. 11 era. But the manual’s details have alarmed privacy advocates. “It raises fundamental questions about whether a domestic intelligence agency can protect civil liberties if they feel they have a right to collect broad personal information about people they don’t even suspect of wrongdoing,” said Mike German, a former F.B.I. agent who now works for the American Civil Liberties Union. The manual authorizes agents to open an “assessment” to “proactively” seek information about whether people or organizations are involved in national security threats. Assessments permit agents to use potentially intrusive techniques, like sending confidential informants to infiltrate organizations and following and photographing targets in public. When selecting targets, agents are permitted to consider political speech or religion as one criterion.

Note: To read the FBI's recently-released and redacted new "Domestic Investigations and Operation Guide", described by the New York Times as giving "F.B.I. agents the most power in national security matters that they have had since the post-Watergate era," click here.

Novartis Expects Swine Flu Boost In Q4
2009-10-22, New York Times/Reuters
Posted: 2009-10-31 18:56:52
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2009/10/22/business/business-uk-novartis.html

Swiss drugmaker Novartis said sales would grow faster than expected this year, even without a shot in the arm of up to $700 million from its H1N1 swine flu pandemic vaccine. Third-quarter net profit at Novartis ... nudged up 1 percent to $2.1 billion. This year is turning out to be better than initially feared for Novartis and other major pharmaceutical companies, thanks to hefty price increases and windfall sales arising from the H1N1 outbreak. Both Pfizer, the world's biggest drugmaker, and Eli Lilly topped earnings forecasts this week. Roche reported a sharp jump in sales of its Tamiflu drug for flu last week and analysts expect GlaxoSmithKline's Relenza will also see strong sales in the third quarter. On the vaccine front, Glaxo, Sanofi-Aventis and AstraZeneca are all expected to highlight an expected jump in fourth-quarter sales due to swine flu. The H1N1 flu vaccine is expected to contribute about $400-700 million of sales in the fourth quarter.

Note: Donald Rumsfeld personally made millions as a direct result of the avian flu scare a few year ago. For more on this, click here. For more on pharmaceutical corporation profiteering from swine flu vaccines, click here.

Brother of Afghan Leader Said to Be Paid by C.I.A.
2009-10-28, New York Times
Posted: 2009-10-31 18:54:07
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/world/asia/28intel.html

Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials. The C.I.A.’s practices ... suggest that the United States is not doing everything in its power to stamp out the lucrative Afghan drug trade, a major source of revenue for the Taliban. The relationship between Mr. Karzai and the C.I.A. is wide ranging. He helps the C.I.A. operate a paramilitary group, the Kandahar Strike Force, that is used for raids against suspected insurgents. On at least one occasion, the strike force has been accused of mounting an unauthorized operation against an official of the Afghan government. Mr. Karzai is also paid for allowing the C.I.A. and American Special Operations troops to rent a large compound outside the city. “He’s our landlord,” a senior American official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. A former C.I.A. officer with experience in Afghanistan said the agency relied heavily on Ahmed Wali Karzai, and often based covert operatives at compounds he owned.

Note: To read an analysis of these revelations, which argues that there is a much bigger story of "heavy dependence by U.S. and NATO counterinsurgency forces on Afghan warlords for security", click here.

N.Y. Fed pushed AIG on contracts
2009-10-28, Washington Post
Posted: 2009-10-31 18:51:06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/27/AR20091027039...

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York said ... that it had no choice but to instruct American International Group last November to reimburse the full amount of what it owed to big banks on derivatives contracts, a move that ended months of effort by the insurance giant to negotiate lower payments. The New York Fed, led at the time by then-President Timothy F. Geithner, directed AIG to make the payments after it received a massive government bailout. The officials said AIG lost its leverage in demanding a better deal once the company had been saved from bankruptcy. Lawmakers and financial analysts critical of the payouts say it amounted to a back-door bailout for big banks. AIG, the recipient of a $180 billion federal rescue package, ended up paying $14 billion to Goldman Sachs over months and $8.5 billion to Deutsche Bank, among others. Before the New York Fed intervened, AIG had been trying to persuade the firms to take discounts. [A Bloomberg] report concluded that the government needlessly overpaid $13 billion. The Federal Reserve has declined to detail the terms of the deals and specifics about negotiations with creditors. The Bloomberg report quoted an unnamed AIG executive who said he was pressured by New York Fed officials to refrain from filing any documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission that would divulge the deals' details.

Note: For many revealing reports from reliable sources on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.

Wall Street Follies: The Next Act
2009-10-25, New York Times
Posted: 2009-10-31 18:48:25
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/weekinreview/25morgenson.html

Hoping, perhaps, to persuade a dubious public that curbing reckless business practices is indeed a Washington priority, the Obama administration and Congress produced a hat trick of financial reforms last week. For all the apparent action in Washington, some acute observers say that it was much ado about little. Last week’s moves, they say, were tinkering around the edges and did nothing to prevent another disaster like the one that unfolded a year ago. The white-hot focus on pay, for example, looks like a way for the government to reassure an angry public that they are making genuine changes. But compensation is a trifling matter compared to, say, true reform of derivatives trading. “The American public understands the immorality of paying people huge bonuses for failures that damaged the economy,” said Michael Greenberger, a law professor at the University of Maryland and a former commodities regulator. “What they don’t understand is that those payments are only a small fraction of the irregularities that took place and that, in essence, the compensation problems, as bad as they are, are a sideshow to the casino-like nature of the economy as it existed, pre-Lehman Brothers, and as it exists today.” Regulating derivatives is far more important to those interested in eliminating the possibility of future billion-dollar bailouts. But the derivatives bill generated by the House Agriculture Committee contains a sizable loophole. Many derivatives would not trade in the light of day.

Note: For many revealing reports from reliable sources on the realities of the continuing bank bailout, click here.

Man who shot Dziekanski video gets journalism award
2009-10-28, CBC News
Posted: 2009-10-31 18:45:46
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2009/10/28/bc-taser-video-cjf...

The man who used a digital camera to record the death of Robert Dziekanski at the Vancouver airport says he feels guilty he didn't try to help the Polish immigrant. Dziekanski, 40, died Oct. 14, 2007, following several shocks from a Taser four RCMP officers used to subdue him after he caused a disturbance. The incident might never have received much attention if Paul Pritchard had not decided to grab his digital camera and start recording the actions of the distraught Dziekanski before police arrived. The release of the 10-minute video, which contradicted the police version of the incident, led to widespread public outrage around the world and diplomatic tensions between Canada and Poland. The 10-minute Pritchard video [showed that] four RCMP officers rushed in and confronted Dziekanski, who backed up toward a counter. Dziekanski then faced the officers with what later turned out to be a stapler in one hand. Immediately, there was a loud crack from a Taser, followed by Dziekanski screaming and convulsing as he stumbled and fell to the floor. Another loud crack can be heard, as an officer appears to fire the Taser at Dziekanski again. Then, as the officers kneel on top of Dziekanski and handcuff him, he continues to scream and convulse on the floor. One officer is heard to say, "Hit him again. Hit him again," and there is another loud cracking sound. Evidence at the inquiry revealed the Taser was eventually fired five times at Dziekanski. After he was subdued, the RCMP left him handcuffed on the floor, where he died before medical help arrived.

Note: If these police would be so brutal in front of the public, imagine what they might have done when no one is looking. And note that the complete text of this article reveals that their brutal actions were covered up at high levels in the police department.

Mum's the Word for NASA's Secret Space Plane X-37B
2009-10-22, Fox News
Posted: 2009-10-31 18:43:00
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,569143,00.html

You would think that an unpiloted space plane built to rocket spaceward from Florida atop an Atlas booster, circle the planet for an extended time, then land on autopilot on a California runway would be big news. But for the U.S. Air Force X-37B project — seemingly, mum's the word. There is an air of vagueness regarding next year's Atlas Evolved Expendable launch of the unpiloted, reusable military space plane. This Boeing Phantom Works craft has been under development for years. Several agencies have been involved in the effort, NASA as well as the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency (DARPA) and various arms of the U.S. Air Force. The tight-lipped factor surrounding the space plane, its mission, and who is in charge is curious. Such a hush-hush factor seems to mimic in pattern that mystery communications spacecraft lofted last month aboard an Atlas 5 rocket, simply called PAN. Its assignment and what agency owns it remains undisclosed. "The problem with it [X37-B] is whether you see it as a weapons platform," said Theresa Hitchens, former head of the Center for Defense Information's Space Security Program, now Director of the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) in Geneva, Switzerland. "It then becomes, if I am not mistaken, a Global Strike platform. There are a lot of reasons to be concerned about Global Strike as a concept," Hitchens [said].

VeriChip shares jump after H1N1 patent license win
2009-09-21, Reuters
Posted: 2009-10-31 18:39:30
http://www.reuters.com/article/hotStocksNews/idUSTRE58K4BZ20090921

Shares of VeriChip Corp tripled after the company said it had been granted an exclusive license to two patents, which will help it to develop implantable virus detection systems in humans. The patents, held by VeriChip partner Receptors LLC, relate to biosensors that can detect the H1N1 and other viruses. The technology will combine with VeriChip's implantable radio frequency identification devices to develop virus triage detection systems. The triage system will provide multiple levels of identification -- the first will identify the agent as virus or non-virus, the second level will classify the virus and alert the user to the presence of pandemic threat viruses and the third level will identify the precise pathogen, VeriChip said in a white paper published May 7, 2009. Shares of VeriChip were up 186 percent.

Note: Beware of efforts to scare you into getting microchipped for your own safety. Click here for more on this. For more on pharmaceutical corporation profiteering from swine flu vaccines, click here.

Netherlands to close prisons for lack of criminals
2009-05-20, NRC International (One of the Netherlands' leading newspapers)
Posted: 2009-10-31 18:35:32
http://www.nrc.nl/international/article2246821.ece/Netherlands_to_close_priso...

The Dutch justice ministry has announced it will close eight prisons and cut 1,200 jobs in the prison system. A decline in crime has left many cells empty. During the 1990s the Netherlands faced a shortage of prison cells, but a decline in crime has since led to overcapacity in the prison system. The country now has capacity for 14,000 prisoners but only 12,000 detainees. Deputy justice minister Nebahat Albayrak announced on Tuesday that eight prisons will be closed. The overcapacity is a result of the declining crime rate, which the ministry's research department expects to continue for some time.

Note: Isn't it interesting that this country, which is one of the very few to have legalized marijuana and prostitution, has a shortage of criminals?

Safe websites let you embarrass people in high places
2008-05-08, New Scientist magazine
Posted: 2009-10-31 18:29:11
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19826555.400-safe-websites-let-you-emba...

Just how accurate are GPS-guided precision bombs, and what is most likely to send them off-target? Now you can find out by simply reading the smart bomb’s tactical manual on the internet. No, the Pentagon didn’t slip up and post the instructions online. Rather, a whistle-blower leaked the manual via Wikileaks, a website that uses anonymising technology to disguise the source of leaked information. Launched online in early 2007, Wikileaks is run by an informal group of open government and anti-secrecy advocates who want to allow people living under oppressive regimes, or with something to say in the public interest, to anonymously leak documents that have been censored or are of ethical, political or diplomatic significance. Thanks to Wikileaks, potential whistle-blowers are now far more willing to come forward, says John Young, who runs the long-standing site Cryptome.org, which specialises in posting documents on espionage, intelligence and cryptography issues. “We started getting a lot less information after 9/11 as people became more cautious when law enforcement agencies got more draconian powers. So we are very happy to see Wikileaks doing what they are doing so aggressively.” This flood of leaked documents has been made possible by internet technology that allows whistle-blowers to post documents online without revealing their identity or IP address.

Note: To read the full article for free, click here.

C.I.A. Is Still Cagey About Oswald Mystery
2009-10-17, New York Times
Posted: 2009-10-29 20:20:58
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/17/us/17inquire.html

Is the Central Intelligence Agency covering up some dark secret about the assassination of John F. Kennedy? For six years, the agency has fought in federal court to keep secret hundreds of documents from 1963, when an anti-Castro Cuban group it paid clashed publicly with the soon-to-be [alleged] assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. The files in question, some released under direction of the court and hundreds more that are still secret, involve the curious career of George E. Joannides, the case officer who oversaw the dissident Cubans in 1963. In 1978, the agency made Mr. Joannides the liaison to the House Select Committee on Assassinations — but never told the committee of his earlier role. That concealment has fueled suspicion that Mr. Joannides’s real assignment was to limit what the House committee could learn about C.I.A. activities. The agency’s deception was first reported in 2001 by Jefferson Morley, who has doggedly pursued the files ever since. Mr. Morley, 51, [is] a former Washington Post reporter and the author of a 2008 biography of a former C.I.A. station chief in Mexico. After losing an appeals court decision in Mr. Morley’s lawsuit, the C.I.A. released material last year confirming Mr. Joannides’s deep involvement with the anti-Castro Cubans who confronted Oswald. But the agency is withholding 295 specific documents from the 1960s and ’70s, while refusing to confirm or deny the existence of many others. The deceptions began in 1964 with the Warren Commission. The C.I.A. hid its schemes to kill Fidel Castro and its ties to the anti-Castro Directorio Revolucionario Estudantil, or Cuban Student Directorate, which received $50,000 a month in C.I.A. support during 1963. In the years since Oswald was named as the assassin, speculation about who might have been behind him has never ended.

Note: For WantToKnow.info team member Peter Dale Scott's analysis of the extraordinary significance of this New York Times article, click here. For two revealing clips suggesting the official explanation of the JFK assassination was manipulated, click here (for a five-minute clip from the History Channel) and here (for a highly revealing documentary from a CBS affiliate).

Key drug facts left off labels, experts say
2009-10-21, MSNBC/Associated Press
Posted: 2009-10-29 20:18:26
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33419377/ns/health-more_health_news

Did you know that Lunesta will help you fall asleep just 15 minutes faster? Or that a higher dose of the osteoporosis drug Zometa could damage a cancer patient’s kidneys and raise their risk of death? Chances are you didn’t, and neither did your doctor. Much of what the Food and Drug Administration knows about a drug’s safety and effectiveness is not included on the label, say two drug safety experts who are calling on the agency to make that information more accessible. In ... the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers ... argue that drug labels don’t reflect the nuanced decisions the FDA makes when deciding to approve a drug. The editorial from Drs. Lisa Schwartz and Steven Woloshin recommends easy-to-read fact boxes to help patients weigh the benefits and risks of medications. If drug labels sometimes exaggerate benefits and play down drug risks, the authors say there’s a very good reason: they are written by drugmakers. While FDA must approve the final labeling, the actual language is drafted by the manufacturer, with input from FDA scientists. The labeling is based on results from company studies, which generally compare results for patients taking the drug versus those taking placebo. If FDA decides the drug’s ability to treat or prevent a disease outweighs its side effects, the agency is obligated to approve it. But Schwartz and Woloshin point out that benefits may be slim and potential harms may not be fully understood. “The take home point is that just because a drug is approved doesn’t mean it works very well,” said Schwartz, in an interview with the Associated Press. “You really need to know more to see whether it’s worth the cost.” Schwartz and Woloshin say FDA labeling frequently fails to provide a full picture of a drug’s effects.

Note: For a powerful summary of corruption in the pharmaceutical industry, click here.

Bailout Helps Fuel New Era of Wall Street Wealth
2009-10-17, New York Times
Posted: 2009-10-29 20:16:09
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/17/business/economy/17wall.html

Even as the economy continues to struggle, much of Wall Street is minting money — and looking forward again to hefty bonuses. Many Americans wonder how this can possibly be. How can some banks be prospering so soon after a financial collapse, even as legions of people worry about losing their jobs and their homes? It may come as a surprise that one of the most powerful forces driving the resurgence on Wall Street is not the banks but Washington. Many of the steps that policy makers took last year to stabilize the financial system — reducing interest rates to near zero, bolstering big banks with taxpayer money, guaranteeing billions of dollars of financial institutions’ debts — helped set the stage for this new era of Wall Street wealth. Titans like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase are making fortunes in hot areas like trading stocks and bonds, rather than in the ho-hum business of lending people money. They also are profiting by taking risks that weaker rivals are unable or unwilling to shoulder — a benefit of less competition after the failure of some investment firms last year. So even as big banks fight efforts in Congress to subject their industry to greater regulation — and to impose some restrictions on executive pay — Wall Street has Washington to thank in part for its latest bonanza. “All of this is facilitated by the Federal Reserve and the government,” said Gary Richardson, a research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. “But we have just shown them that they can have the most frightening things happen to them, and we will throw trillions of dollars to protect them. I have big concerns about that.”

Note: For lots more on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.

Derivatives: Don’t Let Exceptions Kill the Rule
2009-10-18, New York Times
Posted: 2009-10-29 20:13:47
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/business/economy/18gret.html

Congress began the work of reforming our troubled financial system last week, and a bill aimed at regulating derivatives passed the House Financial Services Committee on Thursday. Derivatives — contracts that theoretically protect buyers from unforeseen financial calamities but more often are used to fuel raw speculation — were ... at the heart of the banking crisis. Credit default swaps ... propelled the American International Group off the cliff. Those swaps also linked millions of trading partners, creating a web in which one default threatened to produce a chain of corporate and economic failures worldwide. And derivatives aren’t going away. So reforming the $42 trillion market for credit swaps is crucial if taxpayers are to be protected from future rescues of institutions deemed not only too big but also too interconnected to fail. The best aspect of the House bill is that it requires many swaps to be traded on exchanges just like stocks, subjecting them for the first time to the light of day. But elsewhere in the bill, ... exceptions to this exchange-trading rule undermine its regulatory power. Big banks dealing in swaps don’t want exchange trading, where pricing and the identities of participants would be more publicly transparent. Michael Greenberger, a University of Maryland law professor and an expert in derivatives, criticized the House bill. “The plain language of the legislation can only be read as a Christmas tree of decorative gifts to the banking industry,” he said. “And this is being done when people acknowledge the unregulated O.T.C. derivatives market was a principal reason for the meltdown.”

Note: For lots more on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.

F.D.A. Reveals It Fell to a Push by Lawmakers
2009-09-25, New York Times
Posted: 2009-10-29 20:07:32
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/health/policy/25knee.html

The Food and Drug Administration [has admitted] that four New Jersey congressmen and its own former commissioner unduly influenced the process that led to its decision last year to approve a patch for injured knees. The agency’s scientific reviewers repeatedly and unanimously over many years decided that the device, known as Menaflex and manufactured by ReGen Biologics Inc., was unsafe because the device often failed, forcing patients to get another operation. But after receiving what an F.D.A. report described as “extreme,” “unusual” and persistent pressure from four Democrats from New Jersey ... agency managers overruled the scientists and approved the device for sale in December. All four legislators made their inquiries within a few months of receiving significant campaign contributions from ReGen, which is based in New Jersey, but all said they had acted appropriately and were not influenced by the money. Dr. Andrew C. von Eschenbach, the former drug agency’s commissioner, said he had acted properly. The agency has never before publicly questioned the process behind one of its approvals, never admitted that a regulatory decision was influenced by politics, and never accused a former commissioner of questionable conduct. The report, written by top agency officials, said that Dr. von Eschenbach, who resigned as F.D.A. commissioner in January, became as a result of political pressure “personally engaged in the details of a process usually coordinated” by scientific staff. One agency manager concluded that Dr. von Eschenbach “was demanding not only an expedited process but also an outcome in favor of ReGen,” the report stated.

Note: For a powerful summary of corruption in the pharmaceutical industry, click here.

U.S. Deficit Rises to $1.4 Trillion; Biggest Since 1945
2009-10-17, New York Times
Posted: 2009-10-29 20:04:22
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/17/us/17deficit.html

The Obama administration [has said] that the federal budget deficit for the fiscal year that just ended was $1.4 trillion, nearly a trillion dollars greater than the year before and the largest shortfall relative to the size of the economy since 1945. The shortfall for the fiscal year 2009, which ended Sept. 30, translates to 10 percent of the economy, according to a joint statement from the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, and the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Peter R. Orszag. For the 2008 fiscal year, the deficit of $459 billion was 3.2 percent of the economy, as measured by the gross domestic product. At 10 percent of the gross domestic product, the 2009 deficit is the highest since the end of World War II, when it was 21.5 percent. The overall national debt, which is the accumulation of annual deficits, is nearly $12 trillion, and projected deficits for the next decade will add an estimated $9 trillion more. Administration officials say two-thirds of that is due to Bush administration policies.

Note: The current debt of $12 trillion equals $40,000 for every man, woman, and child in the U.S. Most of the increased deficit is due to the government bailout of the biggest Wall Street banks and investment houses. For lots more on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.

Justice Says Scientist Tried to Share US Secrets
2009-10-20, New York Times/Associated Press
Posted: 2009-10-29 20:01:32
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/10/20/us/politics/AP-US-Espionage-Charge...

A scientist who allegedly tried to sell classified secrets to Israel had worked on the U.S. government's Star Wars missile shield program, and the Justice Department declared Tuesday that he had tried to share some of the nation's most guarded secrets. Arrested in an FBI sting operation, Stewart David Nozette was jailed without bond and accused in a criminal complaint of two counts of attempting to communicate, deliver and transmit classified information. In an interview, Scott Hubbard, a former colleague, said that Nozette was primarily a defense technologist who had worked on the Reagan-era Star Wars effort formally named the Strategic Defense Initiative. ''This was leading edge, Department of Defense national security work,'' said Hubbard, a professor of aerospace at Stanford University who worked for 20 years at NASA. Nozette held a special security clearance equivalent to the Defense Department's top secret and ''critical nuclear weapon design information'' clearances. Authorities became worried about possible espionage activity by Nozette after an investigation by NASA's inspector general in 2006 began looking at whether Nozette submitted false claims for expenses that were not actually incurred. In probing Nozette's finances in that case, investigators found indications he might be working for a foreign government, and they launched a national security investigation that eventually led to the undercover FBI sting.

Note: There's definitely something strange going on here.

Arrest Puts Focus on Protesters’ Texting
2009-10-05, New York Times
Posted: 2009-10-29 19:58:03
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/nyregion/05txt.html

As demonstrations have evolved with the help of text messages and online social networks, so too has the response of law enforcement. On Thursday, F.B.I. agents descended on a house in Jackson Heights, Queens [NY], and spent 16 hours searching it. The most likely reason for the raid: a man who lived there had helped coordinate communications among protesters at the Group of 20 summit in Pittsburgh. The man, Elliot Madison, 41, a social worker who has described himself as an anarchist, had been arrested in Pittsburgh on Sept. 24 and charged with hindering apprehension or prosecution, criminal use of a communication facility and possession of instruments of crime. The Pennsylvania State Police said he was found in a hotel room with computers and police scanners while using the social-networking site Twitter to spread information about police movements. He has denied wrongdoing. American protesters first made widespread use of mass text messages in New York, during the 2004 Republican National Convention. Messages, sent as events unfolded, allowed demonstrators and others to react quickly to word of arrests, police mobilizations and roving rallies. Mass texting has since become a valued tool among protesters, particularly at large-scale demonstrations. Mr. Madison [may be] the first to be charged criminally while sending information electronically to protesters about the police. “He and a friend were part of a communications network among people protesting the G-20,” Mr. Madison’s lawyer, Martin Stolar, said on Saturday. “There’s absolutely nothing that he’s done that should subject him to any criminal liability.”

Note: For many reports from reliable sources on increasing government erosion of civil liberties, click here.

Climate change activist stopped from travelling to Copenhagen
2009-10-14, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
Posted: 2009-10-29 19:29:41
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/oct/14/climate-change-activist-held

UK border police used anti-terrorist legislation to prevent a British climate change activist from crossing over into mainland Europe where he planned to take part in events surrounding the forthcoming United Nations summit in Denmark. Chris Kitchen, a 31-year-old office worker, said he feared his treatment by police could mark the start of a clampdown on protesters, hundreds of whom are planning to travel to Copenhagen for the climate change talks in December. [He had hoped] to take part in discussions organised by a network of protest groups coming together under the banner Climate Justice Action. He said he was prevented from crossing the border ... when the coach he was travelling on stopped at the Folkestone terminal of the Channel tunnel. Kitchen said police officers boarded the coach and, after checking all passengers' passports, took him and another climate activist to be interviewed under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000, a clause which enables border officials to stop and search individuals to determine if they are connected to terrorism. The passports were not initially scanned, Kitchen said, suggesting the officials knew his name and had planned to remove him from the coach before they boarded. During his interview, he was asked questions about his family, work and past political activity. The police also asked him what he intended to do in Copenhagen. When Kitchen said that anti-terrorist legislation does not apply to environmental activists, he said the officer replied that terrorism "could mean a lot of things". Police are understood to be monitoring protesters on a number of databases, some of which highlight individuals when they pass through secure areas, such as ports.

Note: For many reports from reliable sources on increasing government erosion of civil liberties, click here.

Rich NYC Mayor: Drug CEOs Don't Make Much Money
2009-08-28, ABC News/Associated Press
Posted: 2009-10-17 20:41:55
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=8382748

Billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg defended multibillion-dollar pharmaceutical companies and their chief executives on Friday, declaring that they "don't make a lot of money" and shouldn't be scapegoats in the health care debate. The mayor — and wealthiest person in New York City with a fortune estimated at $16.5 billion — made the comments on his radio show Friday. "You know, last time I checked, pharmaceutical companies don't make a lot of money, their executives don't make a lot of money," Bloomberg said. Pharmaceutical CEOs are known to make millions, with generous salaries, stock options and other perks. Abbott Laboratories Inc. Chairman and Chief Executive Miles White's compensation was $25.3 million in 2008. The North Chicago, Ill.-based company saw profit rising 35 percent to $4.88 billion. Merck & Co.'s chief executive, Richard T. Clark, received a $17.3 million compensation package for 2008. The company's profit more than doubled to $7.8 billion. The mayor ... often battles criticism that he is out of touch with regular people. Earlier this year he declared "we love the rich people" while arguing against raising taxes on the wealthy. It was clear that Bloomberg or one of his aides realized his gaffe while he was still on the air Friday. The mayor, who has sought to cast himself as a financial and business expert, came back from a break and said he had looked up the pay of some pharmaceutical executives. "Some of them are making a decent amount, more than a decent amount of money," he said.

Open Letter To New York State Over Mandatory Vaccination
2009-09-30, CBS News blog
Posted: 2009-10-17 20:38:31
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/09/30/taking_liberties/entry5353611.shtml

As a group of healthcare workers, we are being mandated by a new New York state law to receive the seasonal flu vaccine and H1N1 vaccines. If we do not receive these vaccines by November 30th, that inaction is to be considered our resignation. We must sign a consent for the vaccines prior to their administration. The manufacturers have been granted immunity by the government; they cannot be sued for untoward effects. We do not want to receive these vaccines. Our educated studies of risks versus benefits conclude that the risks of the vaccine are greater than the possible benefits. All health care workers with direct patient care are mandated to receive the vaccine, so the coercion is real -- we cannot just go find a job "somewhere else." And the job market of 2009 does not offer opportunity in a different arena where we could still feed our families. We understand the fear that swine flu and influenza has generated. While our sources of information indicate that swine flu is not a pandemic, we know that the slanted research fed by the media offers results intended to frighten the public. We do not have the power to stop the fear that mass hype is able to generate. We hear the hype you are fed. We do not want to bring you harm, but we should not be forced into harm's way ourselves.

Note: For more on mandatory flu vaccinations, click here.

Dollar Reaches Breaking Point as Banks Shift Reserves
2009-10-12, Bloomberg News
Posted: 2009-10-17 20:13:20
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aOTmsmEQpY6A

Central banks flush with record reserves are increasingly snubbing dollars in favor of euros and yen, further pressuring the greenback after its biggest two- quarter rout in almost two decades. Policy makers boosted foreign currency holdings by $413 billion last quarter, the most since at least 2003, to $7.3 trillion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Nations reporting currency breakdowns put 63 percent of the new cash into euros and yen in April, May and June. That’s the highest percentage in any quarter with more than an $80 billion increase. World leaders are acting on threats to dump the dollar while the Obama administration shows a willingness to tolerate a weaker currency in an effort to boost exports and the economy as long as it doesn’t drive away the nation’s creditors. The diversification signals that the currency won’t rebound anytime soon after losing 10.3 percent on a trade-weighted basis the past six months, the biggest drop since 1991. “Global central banks are getting more serious about diversification, whereas in the past they used to just talk about it,” said Steven Englander, a former Federal Reserve researcher who is now the chief U.S. currency strategist at Barclays in New York. “It looks like they are really backing away from the dollar.” The dollar’s 37 percent share of new reserves fell from about a 63 percent average since 1999. America’s currency has been under siege as the Treasury sells a record amount of debt to finance a budget deficit that totaled $1.4 trillion in fiscal 2009 ended Sept. 30.

Note: For insightful analyses of the US financial crisis, click here.

Do-nothing committees at state Capitol
2009-10-12, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
Posted: 2009-10-17 18:38:32
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/12/EDUN1A3LQ7.DTL

It's always interesting to look behind the curtain at the state Capitol and marvel at the California Legislature's ingenuity at spending our money or avoiding accountability. It's just too bad this creative brilliance could not be applied to addressing fiscal crises or solving the state's water problems. The latest little outrage came in the scrutiny of the Legislature's 77 select committees by Chronicle staff writers Wyatt Buchanan and Matthew Yi. What they found was that 32 of these committees have paid staffers, with a combined payroll of $4.3 million. It may not be a lot of money in the context of a state that keeps encountering deficits in the tens of billions, but it does seem to represent a bit of clever accounting. To put it in plain terms: It's a way for elected officials to pad their staffs. For example, state Sen. Lou Correa, D-Santa Ana, has six people working for him who are paid through three select committees. Total number of hearings those committees have held this year: zero. Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, chairs two select committees ... with four paid staff members. Total number of hearings this year: zero. Californians who are not so immersed in the culture of the Legislature might wonder why it needs 77 select committees in addition to the standing committees that are assigned to cover areas such as transportation, energy and myriad other issues. At least 19 of the 32 with paid staff have not met at all this year.

Note: For lots more on government corruption from reliable sources, click here.

Anti-war activist's works banned at prison camps
2009-10-11, Miami Herald
Posted: 2009-10-17 18:28:28
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/guantanamo/v-fullstory/story/1275646...

Professor Noam Chomsky may be among America's most enduring anti-war activists. But the leftist intellectual's anthology of post-9/11 commentary is taboo at Guantánamo's prison camp library, which offers books and videos on Harry Potter, World Cup soccer and Islam. U.S. military censors recently rejected a Pentagon lawyer's donation of an Arabic-language copy of the political activist and linguistic professor's 2007 anthology Interventions for the library. Chomsky, 80, who has been voicing disgust with U.S. foreign policy since the Vietnam War, reacted with irritation and derision. "This happens sometimes in totalitarian regimes," he told The Miami Herald by e-mail after learning of the decision. "Of some incidental interest, perhaps, is the nature of the book they banned. It consists of op-eds written for The New York Times syndicate and distributed by them. The subversive rot must run very deep." Prison camp officials would not say specifically why the book was rejected. A rejection slip accompanying the Chomsky book did not explain the reason but listed categories of restricted literature to include those espousing "Anti-American, Anti-Semitic, Anti-Western" ideology, literature on "military topics." Prison camp staff would not say how many donated books have been refused.

The Flu Pandemic
1992-11-29, New York Times
Posted: 2009-10-17 17:56:53
http://www.nytimes.com/1992/11/29/magazine/the-flu-pandemic.html

The existence of the influenza vaccine ... may give us a sense of false security when it comes to the possibility of a pandemic outbreak of influenza. In fact, the flu vaccine must be reformulated each year to keep pace with the newest variants of this fast-mutating virus. The recipe for making the flu vaccine is simple. Take the current year's variant of the influenza virus, throw it into a stew with a strain of virus that leads to rapid proliferation. Incorporate the fast-growing strain into its own genes and start replicating it. From there, it's an easy matter to take those plentiful viruses and attenuate them for a flu vaccine. But the scientists who must determine what virus will cause the next year's illness run a high chance of being wrong. Some observers have put the odds of success at no better than 50-50. Even when they are right, the vaccine lasts only as long as that year's strain. Experts thought they saw big-league trouble coming in February 1976, when a few cases of severe swine flu broke out among young military recruits in Fort Dix, N.J. One of them, Pvt. David Lewis, 19, died. Lewis and four others were shown to be infected with the same H1N1 influenza virus as was responsible for the 1918 pandemic. But the swine-flu pandemic never materialized. In retrospect, some critics now say 40 million Americans were vaccinated for nothing. In fact, the only real illness to result from the swine flu adventure was caused by the vaccine: about one thousand people developed Guillain-Barre syndrome, a serious paralytic disease that could be traced directly to an immunological response to the inoculation.

Note: This article also discusses how new, intensified farming techniques for chickens, pigs, and ducks are the prime breeding ground for viruses which spread around the world. A powerful CBS 60 Minutes clip on the 1976 swine flu scare is available here. The intrepid 60 Minutes team shows how greed and blatant corruption led to the death of hundreds and paralysis of thousands as a direct result of the vaccine developed that year, while only one person died from the flu. For lots more, click here.

State lifts limit on mercury preservative in swine-flu shots
2009-09-25, Seattle Times (Seattle's leading newspaper)
Posted: 2009-10-12 14:51:15
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/health/2009938638_vaccine25m.html

In preparation for swine-flu vaccinations next month, Washington's Health Department ... temporarily suspended a rule that limits the amount of a mercury preservative [called Thimerosal] in vaccines given to pregnant women and children under the age of 3. Thimerosal has been eliminated from most vaccines in the United States, but it will be added to the bulk of the swine-flu vaccine. A vocal minority believes the compound could be linked to autism. About 15 percent of the vaccine supply will be mercury-free. Thimerosal will be added to the vaccine because it is being produced in vials that contain enough medication for 10 shots. The mercury compound kills bacteria, lowering the risk that the drug will be contaminated by needles used to withdraw separate doses. "Every time you introduce a needle, you run a risk of introducing a potential contaminant," said Dr. Tony Marfin, state epidemiologist for infectious disease. Mercury-free vaccine will be produced in single-dose vials. Nasal sprays do not contain mercury but are not recommended for children under the age of 2 and pregnant women, because they contain live, weakened virus. The law limiting the mercury preservative will be suspended for six months and applies only to the swine-flu vaccines. Once common in vaccines, thimerosal has been largely phased out in most wealthy nations. Children's vaccines in the United States are almost exclusively mercury-free, single-dose injections. After 1976's mass vaccination against a different swine-flu strain, about 500 people developed a neurological disorder called Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS), and some died. Scientists still haven't figured out why.

Note: To watch a vitally important 10-minute clip from CBS's 60 Minutes revealing government complicity in the deaths of 300 Americans and permanent paralysis of thousands more from the vaccine during the 1976 swine flu scare, click here. This is the most revealing clip by far on the swine flu that we've seen. For much more information on the dangers of thimerosal in vaccines, click here.

The demise of the dollar
2009-10-06, The Independent (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
Posted: 2009-10-12 14:48:33
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/the-demise-of-the-dollar-1798...

In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar. Secret meetings have already been held by finance ministers and central bank governors in Russia, China, Japan and Brazil to work on the scheme, which will mean that oil will no longer be priced in dollars. The plans, confirmed to The Independent by both Gulf Arab and Chinese banking sources in Hong Kong, may help to explain the sudden rise in gold prices, but it also augurs an extraordinary transition from dollar markets. The Americans ... are sure to fight this international cabal which will include hitherto loyal allies Japan and the Gulf Arabs. Against the background to these currency meetings, Sun Bigan, China's former special envoy to the Middle East, has warned there is a risk of deepening divisions between China and the US over influence and oil in the Middle East. "Bilateral quarrels and clashes are unavoidable," he told the Asia and Africa Review. "We cannot lower vigilance against hostility in the Middle East over energy interests and security." This sounds like a dangerous prediction of a future economic war between the US and China over Middle East oil – yet again turning the region's conflicts into a battle for great power supremacy.

Note: The publication of this article caused the value of the dollar to fall and the price of gold to rise worldwide. For important ideas on how to reform the role of money in the world, click here.

Voices of Power: Elizabeth Warren
2009-10-08, Washington Post
Posted: 2009-10-12 14:45:22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/08/AR20091008007...

LOIS ROMANO: Welcome, Elizabeth Warren, Chairman of the Congressional Oversight Committee that is tasked with scrutinizing how the Treasury Department has spent $700 billion to shore up our failing financial institutions. There's a wonderful moment [in the movie "Capitalism: a Love Story"] when [Michael Moore] asks you where the $700 billion is, and you look at him and you say, "I don't know." So the question is: why don't you know? WARREN: Well, we don't know where the $700 billion is because the system was initially designed to make sure that we didn't know. When Secretary Paulson first put this money out into the banks, he didn't ask "what are you going to do with it?" He didn't put any restrictions on it. He didn't put any tabs on where it was going to go; in other words, he didn't ask. And if you don't ask, no one tells. And so we have a system that originally put more than $200 billion into the financial institutions basically saying just take it. ROMANO: And that money is gone. You have not been able to track where that money is? WARREN: Well, we don't know where the money went from the financial institutions. The big conversation at the time was that the credit markets are frozen; if we put money into the financial institutions, they will start lending it because that's what they do when they receive money. It was called the "Healthy Banks Program." Secretary Paulson kept saying, over and over, these are investments in healthy financial institutions, no one needs any subsidy, that [the] money was going to be used in lending to small businesses and consumers and kind of get our whole credit market going again. That didn't happen.

Note: To watch a powerfully revealing, five-minute video showing the Inspector General of the Federal Reserve testifying that she doesn't know where trillions of dollars are, click here. For a comprehensive overview of the realities underlying the government's bailout of the biggest financial institutions, click here.

Government Watchdog Says Treasury and Fed Knew Bailed-Out Banks Were Not Healthy
2009-10-05, ABC News
Posted: 2009-10-12 14:42:43
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/lied-watchdog-treasury-fed-knew-bailed-banks-h...

The Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve lied to the American public last fall when they said that the first nine banks to receive government bailout funds were healthy, a government watchdog states in a new report released today. Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP), says that despite multiple statements on Oct. 14 of last year that these nine banks were healthy and only receiving government funds for the good of the country's economy, federal officials knew otherwise. "Contemporaneous reports and officials' statements to SIGTARP during this audit indicate that there were concerns about the health of several of the nine institutions at that time and, as detailed in this report, that their overall selection was far more a result of the officials' belief in their importance to a system that was viewed as being vulnerable to collapse than concerns about their individual health and viability," Barofsky says. In announcing the initial $125 billion provided to these banks, former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson on Oct. 14 said, "These are healthy institutions. As these healthy institutions increase their capital base, they will be able to increase their funding to U.S. consumers and businesses." That same day, the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve and the FDIC also released a joint statement reiterating that "these healthy institutions are taking these steps to ... enhance the overall performance of the US economy." Barofsky finds, however, senior officials at the Treasury and the Fed had serious concerns about the health of some of these banks.

Note: For a comprehensive overview of the realities underlying the government's bailout of the biggest financial institutions, click here.

U.S. FDIC chief: 'too big to fail' must end for all
2009-10-04, International Business Times/Reuters News
Posted: 2009-10-12 14:38:55
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/20091004/too-big-to-fail-must-end-for-all-fdi...

The head of the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said on Sunday that she wanted to end the "too big to fail" doctrine and shrink the shadow banking system that operates outside the reach of regulators. FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair ... said a U.S. proposal to create the authority to shut down failing systemically important financial firms may need to be extended to insurers and hedge funds. "We need to end 'too big to fail' and this needs to be an overarching policy that applies to everyone," Bair said. Bair said she believed that bank holding companies with subsidiaries that are shut down by regulators also should be made to pay the price of failure by being subject to the same wind-down process. "I believe that the new regime should apply to all bank holding companies that are more than just shells and their affiliates regardless or not whether they are considered to be systemic risks," she said, adding that including only systemically important firms in the shut-down regime could reinforce the 'too big to fail' doctrine. Financial firms subject to systemic risk shutdown authority should likely also be required to publish "living wills" -- details on how an orderly wind-down would play out -- on their websites to provide more clarity to shareholders and customers. And by applying the resolution authority more broadly outside of normal regulated bank holding companies, it would help shrink the shadow banking system by discouraging regulatory arbitrage under which financial firms shop for the most lenient supervisors. "If you tighten regulation of the banks even more without dealing with the shadow sector you could make the problem even worse," she said.

Note: For a comprehensive overview of the realities underlying the government's bailout of the biggest financial institutions, click here.

Pakistan kept billions in US aid from military
2009-10-05, Boston Globe/Associated Press
Posted: 2009-10-12 14:33:55
http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2009/10/05/pakistan_kept_billi...

The United States has long suspected that [many] of the billions of dollars it has sent Pakistan to battle militants has been diverted to the domestic economy and other causes, such as fighting India. Now the scope and longevity of the misuse is becoming clear: Between 2002 and 2008 ... only $500 million of the $6.6 billion in American aid actually made it to the Pakistani military, two army generals said. At the time of the siphoning, Pervez Musharraf, a Washington ally, served as chief of staff and president, making it easier to divert money intended for the military to bolster his image at home through economic subsidies. "The army itself got very little,'' said Mahmud Durrani, a retired general who was Pakistan's ambassador to the United States under Musharraf. "It went to things like subsidies, which is why everything looked hunky-dory." Generals and ministers say the diversion of the money hurt the military in several ways. Helicopters critical to the battle in rugged border regions were not available. At one point in 2007, more than 200 soldiers were trapped by insurgents in the tribal regions without a helicopter lift to rescue them. Equipment was broken, and training was lacking. The details on misuse of American aid come as Washington again promises Pakistan money. Legislation to triple general aid to Pakistan cleared Congress last week. "We don't have a mechanism for tracking the money after we have given it to them,'' said Lieutenant Colonel Mark Wright, a Pentagon spokesman.

Note: For lots more on government corruption from reliable sources, click here.

U.S. aid often misses targets in Afghanistan
2009-10-04, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
Posted: 2009-10-12 14:29:24
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/04/MN8L19NHRM.DTL

When built in 2004, the agricultural storage facility in Nangarhar province was supposed to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people. The U.S. government paid for its construction along with several other so-called "market centers" that would enable farmers to store crops and boost exports to nearby Pakistan. But construction and design flaws left it unusable, one of many dozens of similar failures in the country, critics say. Opponents say the Nangarhar project is just one example of massive waste of taxpayer dollars in aid programs since the U.S.-led invasion ousted the Taliban government in 2001. A Washington, D.C., company, Chemonics International, won the bid for [a] $145 million program - known as Rebuilding Agricultural Markets Program, or RAMP - that ran from 2003 to 2006. Chemonics then subcontracted the training and construction work to other Americans, who in turn subcontracted to numerous Afghan companies who did the work. At each level, the subcontractors deducted costs for salaries, office expenses and security. Only a small percentage of the original RAMP contract money actually reached farmers and other intended recipients. The exact percentage may never be known because neither Chemonics nor the U.S. government tracks such figures. Moreover, opponents note, many constructed market centers have deteriorated or are not being used for their original purpose. Afghanistan's foreign minister, Rangeen Dadfar Spanta, sharply criticized how U.S. aid is spent in his country. He estimates that only "$10 or $20" of every $100 reaches its intended recipients.

Note: For lots more on corporate corruption from reliable sources, click here.

Pittsburgh police used acoustic warfare during G-20 protests, drawing legal groups' ire
2009-10-01, ABC News/Associated Press
Posted: 2009-10-12 14:26:46
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=8719560

Police ordered protesters to disperse at the Group of 20 summit last week with a device that can beam earsplitting alarm tones and verbal instructions that the manufacturer likens to a "spotlight of sound," but that legal groups called potentially dangerous. The device, called a Long Range Acoustic Device, concentrates voice commands and a car alarm-like sound in a 30- or 60-degree cone that can be heard nearly two miles away. The volume measures 140-150 decibels three feet away – louder than a jet engine. During the Pittsburgh protests, police used the device to order demonstrators to disperse and to play a high-pitched "deterrent tone" designed to drive people away. It was the first time the device was used in a riot-control situation on U.S. soil. Those who heard it said ... the "deterrent tone" as unbearable. Joel Kupferman, who was at Thursday's march as a legal observer for the National Lawyer's Guild, said he was overwhelmed by the tone and called it "overkill." "When people were moving and they still continued to use it, it was an excessive use of weaponry," Kupferman said. Witold "Vic" Walczak, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union in Pennsylvania, said the device is a military weapon capable of producing permanent hearing loss, something he called "an invitation to an excessive-force lawsuit." Catherine Palmer, director of audiology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, said 140 decibels can cause immediate hearing loss. ["Public safety"] officials said the complaints prove the device worked as designed.

Note: To watch a disturbing 10-minute clip of the use of this weapon at the G-20 meeting, click here. For many revealing reports from major media sources on increasing threats to civil liberties, click here.

Media destruction of ACORN
2009-09-24, MSNBC 'The Rachel Maddow Show'
Posted: 2009-10-12 14:21:21
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33020911

MADDOW: Tonight, a dash of truth. Seriously rich corporate interests are out to paint ACORN as a vast left-wing conspiracy against the American way of life. You can look at ACORN‘s primary political sin as they‘re trying to raise the minimum wage. ACORN has been caricatured by people, like Congressman King, as a corrupt, criminal enterprise that steals elections and turns a blind eye to prostitution. That‘s the story line the mainstream media has latched on to, as well. What you might not know from all of the breathless ACORN damnation coverage is what ACORN actually does. They do things like advocating for a higher minimum wage. They do things like helping low-income families file their taxes. They do things like helping low-income families find jobs. And as we discovered most recently in the healthcare debate, when industries sense a threat to their profits, they go into kill mode. They create corporate-funded purportedly grassroots organizations to derail and destroy whomever they believe to be the source of that threat. Say you‘re a company that doesn‘t really want the minimum wage to be raised. But you also don‘t want to be seen fighting ACORN yourself. What you do is you hire Richard Berman. And what you get is "RottenACORN.com," a grassroots-ish looking Web site dedicated to destroying ACORN. "RottenACORN.com" is run by something called the Employment Policies Institute, a nonprofit think-tank that happens to be run by Richard Berman, who also happens to be the man behind grassroots-ish Web sites like the anti-labor one, "UnionFacts.com." Also, "MercuryFacts.org." which assures people that there really isn‘t that much mercury in that fish.

Note: A video of this segment is available at this link.

US relinquishes control of the internet
2009-09-30, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
Posted: 2009-10-12 14:10:03
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/sep/30/icann-agreement-us

After complaints about American dominance of the internet and growing disquiet in some parts of the world, Washington has said it will relinquish some control over the way the network is run and allow foreign governments more of a say in the future of the system. Icann – the official body that ultimately controls the development of the internet thanks to its oversight of web addresses such as .com, .net and .org – said today that it was ending its agreement with the US government. The deal, part of a contract negotiated with the US department of commerce, effectively pushes California-based Icann towards a new status as an international body with greater representation from companies and governments around the globe. Icann had previously been operating under the auspices of the American government, which had control of the net thanks to its initial role in developing the underlying technologies used for connecting computers together. But the fresh focus will give other countries a more prominent role in determining what takes place online, and even the way in which it happens – opening the door for a virtual United Nations, where many officials gather to discuss potential changes to the internet. The new agreement comes into force immediately. It replaces the old version which had been in place since 1998 and was scheduled to expire today.

Military to get mandatory swine flu shots soon
2009-09-29, MSNBC/Associated Press
Posted: 2009-10-03 22:35:46
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33079725/ns/health-swine_flu

U.S. military troops will begin getting required swine flu shots in the next week to 10 days, with active duty forces deploying to war zones and other critical areas going to the front of the vaccine line. Air Force Gen. Gene Renuart also [said] that as many as 400 troops are ready to go to five regional headquarters around the country to assist federal health and emergency management officials. The Pentagon has bought 2.7 million vaccines, and 1.4 million of those will go to active duty military. National Guard troops on active duty are also required to receive the vaccine, as are civilian Defense Department employees who are in critical jobs. "Because I can compel people to get the shots, larger numbers will have the vaccine," said Renuart, commander of U.S. Northern Command. "They will, as a percentage of the population, be vaccinated more rapidly than many of us. So we may see some objective results, good or not, of the vaccinations." Shots will be doled out on a priority basis, with troops preparing to deploy first, followed by other active duty forces, particularly any who might be needed to quickly respond to a hurricane or other emergency. Inoculating the military is a key requirement of the Pentagon's emergency plan, as a way to ensure that troops are available to protect the nation. They also will be on tap to provide help to states if problems come up as the flu season continues.

Note: It is not made clear by this article precisely how military personnel will "assist" civilian authorities handle a mass swine flue vaccination program. The plans to use the military for this purpose are unprecedented and formerly illegal. For lots more from reliable sources on the dangers of vaccines, click here and here.

Health Care Workers Protest Mandatory H1N1 Vaccination
2009-09-29, CBS News
Posted: 2009-10-03 22:33:29
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/09/29/taking_liberties/entry5349581.shtml

Health care workers are planning to take to the streets Tuesday at a rally in front of the Albany, N.Y. state capitol to protest mandatory vaccination. The rally is intended to call for "freedom of choice in vaccination and health care" and to protest mandatory vaccination for influenza and the H1N1 swine flu. "This vaccine has not been clinically tested to the same degree as the regular flu vaccine," Tara Accavallo, a registered nurse on Long Island, told Newsday. "If something happens to me, if I get seriously injured from this vaccine, who's going to help me?" While physicians, nurses, and medical technicians may not be known for their willingness to march on state capitols, a recent New York Department of Health requirement has sparked an unusually intense response. The August 13 regulations say that all health care workers who "could potentially expose patients" must be vaccinated for influenza by November 30 unless it would be "detrimental" to the recipient's health. This raises an obvious and important question: Under what circumstances can government officials order mandatory vaccination? And could the general public be ordered to roll up their sleeves for injections, even if there might be side effects beyond a sore arm or mild fever? The concern in New York also comes as skepticism of vaccination in general seems to be on the rise.

Note: For more on this protest, click here. Note that the U.S. government has granted immunity from lawsuits to the drug companies manufacturing the vaccines. So who will be responsible if there is a repeat of the 1976 swine flu vaccination campaign, where hundreds died and thousands were paralyzed by the vaccines?

Study prompts provinces to rethink flu plan
2009-09-30, Globe and Mail (One of Canada's leading newspapers)
Posted: 2009-10-03 22:30:48
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/science/study-prompts-province...

A “perplexing” Canadian study linking H1N1 to seasonal flu shots is throwing national influenza plans into disarray and testing public faith in the government agencies responsible for protecting the nation's health. Distributed for peer review last week, the study confounded infectious-disease experts in suggesting that people vaccinated against seasonal flu are twice as likely to catch swine flu. The paper has since convinced several provincial health agencies to announce hasty suspensions of seasonal flu vaccinations, long-held fixtures of public-health planning. “It has confused things very badly,” said Dr. Ethan Rubinstein, head of adult infectious diseases at the University of Manitoba. “And it has certainly cost us credibility from the public because of conflicting recommendations. Until last week, there had always been much encouragement to get the seasonal flu vaccine.” On Sunday Quebec joined Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Nova Scotia in suspending seasonal flu shots for anyone under 65 years of age. Quebec's Health Ministry announced it would postpone vaccinations until January. B.C. is expected to announce a similar suspension during a press conference Monday morning. Other provinces, including Manitoba, are still pondering a response to the research. Dr. Rubinstein, who has read the study, said it appears sound. “There are a large number of authors, all of them excellent and credible researchers,” he said. “And the sample size is very large – 12 or 13 million people taken from the central reporting systems in three provinces. The research is solid.”

Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the dangers of vaccines, click here.

Material missing from Oklahoma bombing tapes, lawyer says
2009-09-27, USA Today/Associated Press
Posted: 2009-10-03 22:27:23
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-09-27-okla-city-bombing-tapes_N.htm

Long-secret security tapes showing the chaos immediately after the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building are blank in the minutes before the blast and appear to have been edited, an attorney who obtained the recordings said Sunday. "The real story is what's missing," said Jesse Trentadue, a Salt Lake City attorney who obtained the recordings through the federal Freedom of Information Act as part of an unofficial inquiry he is conducting into the April 19, 1995, bombing that killed 168 people and injured hundreds more. The tapes turned over by the FBI came from security cameras various companies had mounted outside office buildings near the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. They are blank at points before 9:02 a.m., when a truck bomb carrying a 4,000-pound fertilizer-and-fuel-oil bomb detonated in front of the building, Trentadue said. "Four cameras in four different locations going blank at basically the same time on the morning of April 19, 1995. There ain't no such thing as a coincidence," Trentadue said. He said government officials claim the security cameras did not record the minutes before the bombing because "they had run out of tape" or "the tape was being replaced." "The absence of footage from these crucial time intervals is evidence that there is something there that the FBI doesn't want anybody to see." Trentadue said he is seeking more tapes along with a variety of bombing-related documents from the FBI and the CIA. An FOIA request by Trentadue for 26 CIA documents was rejected in June. A letter from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which reviewed the documents, said their release "could cause grave damage to our national security."

Note: This revealing article also tells how Trentadue's brother was murdered by FBI agents who mistakenly thought his brother was the bomber. For more valuable information on this and other evidence challenging the official story of the Oklahoma City bombing, click here.

An Incomplete State Secrets Fix
2009-09-29, New York Times
Posted: 2009-10-03 22:24:08
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/29/opinion/29tue1.html

One of the ways that the Bush administration tried to avoid accountability for its serious misconduct in the name of fighting terrorism was the misuse of an evidentiary rule called the state secrets privilege. The Obama administration has essentially embraced the Bush approach in existing cases, trying to toss out important lawsuits alleging kidnapping, torture and unlawful wiretapping without any evidence being presented. The other day, Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. issued new guidelines for invoking the state secrets privilege in the future. They were a positive step forward, on paper, but did not go nearly far enough. Mr. Holder’s much-anticipated reform plan does not include any shift in the Obama administration’s demand for blanket secrecy in pending cases. Nor does it include support for legislation that would mandate thorough court review of state secrets claims made by the executive branch. It remains to be seen whether, and to what extent, the new regimen will succeed in avoiding flimsy claims of secrecy. Much depends on how the rules are interpreted and enforced, and the Justice Department’s willingness to stand up to insistent intelligence agency demands. Since assuming office, Mr. Holder has reviewed the administration’s position in ongoing cases and has continued broad secrecy claims of the sort that President Obama criticized when he was running for president. Senator Russ Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat, noted that without a clear, permanent mandate for independent court review of the administration’s judgment calls, Mr. Holder’s policy “still amounts to an approach of ‘just trust us.’”

Note: For more on the Obama administration's proposed rules, click here.

Rush for Clues Before Charges in Terror Case
2009-10-01, New York Times
Posted: 2009-10-03 22:21:48
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/01/nyregion/01terror.html

Federal prosecutors have said they possess a trove of evidence in their terrorism case against Najibullah Zazi, a set of damning accusations laid out in a powerful narrative. But interviews with people briefed on the case — and an examination of court papers filed by prosecutors — show that a great deal of the evidence presented against Mr. Zazi was not the result of a lengthy investigation. Instead, much of it was collected on the fly in the last two weeks, with hundreds of F.B.I. agents, federal prosecutors and detectives rushing to fashion a mosaic of details into a case that could be brought to court. The review of the government’s presentation, which is largely contained in a preliminary court document filed last week, suggests that many important facts asserted by prosecutors were discovered after Mr. Zazi was told by a Queens imam on Sept. 10 that investigators were looking for him. Moreover, several crucial discoveries were made after Mr. Zazi, a 24-year-old airport shuttle bus driver, had returned on Sept. 12 to Colorado, with his mission, if he had one, aborted. Some store and hotel employees in the Denver area said F.B.I. agents did not ask about Mr. Zazi’s purchases of beauty salon products that contained the raw materials to make explosives or his stay in a hotel suite to mix them until Sept. 17, five days after his return to Colorado. The lawyer who appeared beside him in Brooklyn, J. Michael Dowling, said after the hearing that prosecutors could not secure a conviction of his client on the conspiracy charge based solely on the evidence presented in the detention memorandum, because it contained no proof that he conspired with anyone to commit a crime.

Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the highly dubious "evidence" presented by federal authorities in their prosecutions of domestic "terror" cases, click here. For a powerful BBC documentary which shows how cases like these are used by politicians to manipulate public opinion to their advantage, click here.

In Harsh Reports on S.E.C.’s Fraud Failures, a Watchdog Urges Sweeping Changes
2009-09-30, New York Times
Posted: 2009-10-03 22:18:57
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/30/business/30sec.html

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s independent watchdog called for a sweeping overhaul of the agency’s investigation and enforcement practices on Tuesday, after a blistering report on the S.E.C.’s failure to detect Bernard L. Madoff’s extensive Ponzi scheme. Two reports, released by the S.E.C.’s inspector general, H. David Kotz, recommended dozens of changes in the way the agency evaluates tips, trains investigators and documents examinations of securities firms. The first report, which covers the S.E.C.’s inspections and examinations office, outlines 37 improvements that would revamp nearly every aspect of the division’s operations, including how investigators follow up on tips and creating step-by-step procedures in identifying potential violations of securities laws. Mr. Kotz also issued 21 recommendations to the S.E.C.’s division of enforcement, including the start of a formal process for handling complaints and improving working relationships within the division. One measure would mandate that tips and complaints be reviewed by at least two individuals experienced in the subject before taking further action. The proposed changes come after Mr. Kotz’s office completed an exhaustive investigation this month of the S.E.C.’s failure to detect the Madoff fraud despite many warnings and a flood of complaints from credible sources. At nearly every turn, the investigation found, the agency had failed to properly examine Mr. Madoff’s firm and had not adequately followed up on tips from as far back as 1992 that could have unearthed the estimated $65 billion scheme.

Note: For a treasure trove of key revelations on the realities behind the Wall Street crash and bailout, click here. Contact your political representatives urging them to support these recommendations.

Electronic border control
2009-10-02, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
Posted: 2009-10-03 22:16:26
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/02/EDDQ19VF7L.DTL

Suppose you're returning home from a vacation in Cancun. A customs agent asks you to open your suitcase so he can check its contents. So far, so good. Now, the agent asks you to log on to your laptop so he can read your e-mails and personal files and examine which Web sites you've visited. He makes a copy of your hard drive so the government can comb through its contents. You've done nothing to give the agent any cause for suspicion. That can't be legal - can it? Until recently, it would not have been allowed. Long-standing customs directives prohibited agents from reading travelers' personal documents unless they reasonably suspected them to be merchandise or evidence of illegal activity. Then the Bush administration changed the rules, allowing agents to "review and analyze" the contents of electronic devices, including laptops, cell phones and BlackBerrys "absent individualized suspicion." Agents also could make copies of the devices' contents and share them with other government agencies. In a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in May, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano promised to review the policy. Homeland Security has now released a new policy - and it is the same as the Bush policy in almost every relevant respect. The government may still search electronic devices without reasonable suspicion, retain copies indefinitely to complete its search and share information with other agencies. Both administrations have cited national security to justify suspicionless searches. There's no evidence, however, that a suspicionless search has ever turned up a security threat.

Note: The author of this op-ed, Elizabeth Goitein, is the director of the Liberty and National Security Project at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law. For lots more on how politicians use "national security" as a means to protect their own manipulations at the expense of the public good, click here.

Nanomaterials Under Study by the E.P.A.
2009-09-30, New York Times
Posted: 2009-10-03 22:12:59
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/30/science/earth/30nano.html

The Environmental Protection Agency detailed its plans ... for research into the possible health and environmental risks of nanomaterials, tiny substances that are finding growing use in products like sunscreens and industrial adhesives. The document ... calls for work to identify sources of nanomaterials, which can measure as little as perhaps one-10,000th the width of a human hair. Research will also center on how they move in the environment, the problems they might cause for people, animals and plants, and how these problems could be avoided or mitigated. The federal National Nanotechnology Initiative is charged with coordinating research by various agencies on the issue. But in a highly critical report last year, the National Academy of Sciences dismissed its effort as inadequate. Little is known about whether substances engineered at the nano scale persist and accumulate in the environment in unusual and potentially harmful ways. In August, a coalition of groups including Friends of the Earth and Consumers Union issued a report urging people to avoid sunscreens containing nano-forms of zinc oxide, saying their risks were unknown.

Vaccine skepticism is in the air
2009-09-14, Los Angeles Times
Posted: 2009-10-03 22:10:45
http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-hew-no-fear-side14-2009sep14,0,4079...

The nation's political crosscurrents appear to have created vaccine skeptics of many stripes. Many citizens are less inclined than ever to accept the warnings of the Department of Health and Human Services or the recommendations of its Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, says Sandra Quinn, a University of Pittsburgh public health professor who has just completed a national survey of attitudes about the flu vaccine. Vaccine refusers have long decried vaccine mandates and campaigns as an unwarranted intrusion of parents' and local school boards' rights. For a new generation of vaccine skeptics, there are new objects of distrust. For some, it flows from a suspicion of the multinational corporations that develop and manufacture vaccines. For others, it comes from a belief that media outlets have hyped the pandemic flu story to secure the attention of readers and the revenue of advertisers. And many simply doubt the competency and independence of government agencies, which they believe are too inept, overwhelmed or co-opted by corporate interests to secure the safety of the nation's drugs and food supply. Adding to the wariness toward the forthcoming H1N1 vaccine is the fact that the formulations used on patients in the United States might require the use of adjuvants -- special agents added to a vaccine mix that rev up the immune system and foster a stronger immune response. While adjuvants have been used in vaccines in Europe for many years, the FDA has never approved them for widespread use in the United States. Some vaccine critics in Great Britain have charged that one adjuvant used in European formulations -- squalene -- is associated with a wide range of vague but persistent symptoms.

Note: Adjuvants are being added to vaccines, yet the resulting combined formula is not being tested for safety; the individual components are tested separately. The process for the testing of vaccines is endangering our health. For lots more on the dangers of vaccines and squalene in particular, read respected Dr. Joseph Mercola's incisive article available here.

Healthy people with swine flu should not be given Tamiflu, says WHO
2009-08-21, The Telegraph (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
Posted: 2009-10-03 22:07:05
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/swine-flu/6066444/Healthy-people-with-swine...

Healthy people who catch swine flu but show only mild symptoms should not be given Tamiflu, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has said. The advice contradicts British policy on the issue, which has seen hundreds of thousands of doses of the antiviral given to people with the virus. Today's advice, published on the WHO website, said most patients were experiencing typical flu symptoms and would get better within a week. It said Tamiflu (also called oseltamivir) and another antiviral Relenza (also called zanamivir) should not be given to healthy people who have only mild symptoms. The latest WHO advice, from a panel of international experts, comes as new figures show that 45,986 courses of antivirals were given to patients in England in the week ending August 18. In the previous week, 90,363 courses of antivirals were given out. There have been fears that mass use of Tamiflu will encourage the virus to become resistant to the antiviral. Researchers have also expressed concern over the side effects of the drug, including sickness, nightmares and insomnia in children. A team from Oxford University said earlier this month children with mild symptoms should not be given the antiviral to combat swine flu and urged the Department of Health to urgently rethink its policy.

Note: To read an article showing Tamiflu and Relenza may not be safe for children, click here. For other incisive articles revealing major manipulations involving the swine flu, click here.

Judge Rejects Approval of Biotech Sugar Beets
2009-09-23, New York Times
Posted: 2009-10-03 21:53:52
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/23/business/23beet.html

A federal judge has ruled that the government failed to adequately assess the environmental impacts of genetically engineered sugar beets before approving the crop for cultivation in the United States. The decision could lead to a ban on the planting of the beets, which have been widely adopted by farmers. Judge Jeffrey S. White of Federal District Court in San Francisco said that the Agriculture Department should have done an environmental impact statement. He said it should have assessed the consequences from the likely spread of the genetically engineered trait to other sugar beets. The decision echoes another ruling two years ago by a different judge in the same court involving genetically engineered alfalfa. In that case, the judge later ruled that farmers could no longer plant the genetically modified alfalfa until the Agriculture Department wrote the environmental impact statement. Two years later, there is still no such assessment. “We expect the same result here as we got in alfalfa,” said Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the Center for Food Safety, a Washington advocacy group that was also involved in the alfalfa lawsuit. “It will halt almost any further planting and sale because it’s no longer an approved crop.” The Center for Food Safety was joined in the suit by the Sierra Club, the Organic Seed Alliance and High Mowing Organic Seeds, a small seed company. The beets contain a bacterial gene licensed by Monsanto that renders them impervious to glyphosate, an herbicide that Monsanto sells as Roundup. Judge White said that the pollen from the genetically engineered crops might spread to non-engineered beets.

Note: For an excellent overview of the dangers posed by genetically modified foods, click here. For other major media news articles revealing the dangers of already widespread GM foods, click here.

But Who Is Watching Regulators?
2009-09-13, New York Times
Posted: 2009-09-28 19:45:59
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/business/13gret.html

Nothing succeeds like failure, as the saying goes. And nowhere is this dismal truth more evident than in our financial regulatory system, one year after the bankruptcy filing of Lehman Brothers. Even though calamitous lending practices laid waste to the nation’s economy, surprisingly little has changed about how the financial arena operates and is supervised. Sure, a couple of venerable brokerage firms have vanished, but many of the same players remain on the scene, in the same positions of power. Senior regulators who stood idly by for years as financial firms built their houses of cards have been rewarded with even bigger jobs or are jockeying for increased responsibilities. The Federal Reserve Board, for example, wants to become the financial system’s uber-regulator, even though its officials did nothing as banks made deadly decisions to lend recklessly and leverage themselves to the max. Awarding increased power to those who failed in their oversight duties flies in the face of all notions of accountability. Yet those in the public sector ask us to believe that regulators who snoozed during the credit bubble will be alert to emerging problems on their beats when the next mania begins. That’s asking a lot, isn’t it? Here’s a novel thought. Instead of creating more regulations to try to prevent this kind of mess from recurring, why not figure out how to hold regulators accountable when they perform as poorly as they did in recent years? Taxpayers must protect themselves against two things: the corrupting influence of bureaucratic self-interest among regulators and the political clout wielded by the large institutions they are supposed to police. [And] taxpayers must demand that the government publicize the costs of efforts taken to save the financial system from itself.

Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the realities of the Wall Street crash and bailout, click here.

Legislators for sale
2009-08-03, MSNBC
Posted: 2009-09-28 19:42:19
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32276889/ns/msnbc_tv-countdown_with_keith_olbermann

A special comment on health care reform in this country. The insurance industry owns the Republican Party. Not exclusively. Pharma owns part of it, too. Hospitals and HMO's, another part. Sen. John Thune of South Dakota ... has thus far received from the Health Sector, campaign contributions ... amounting to $1,206,176. How about Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite? Are you truly worth every dollar of the $369,000,255 ... you have received over the years from the Health Sector? [And Democrat] Bart Gordon of Tennessee ... $1,173,000 in donations from the Health Sector. [Democratic Senator] Max Baucus of Montana, ... you're supposed to be negotiating all this out with the Republicans and hesitant Democrats? Your price has been ... $414,000 in donations from hospitals, about $667,000 from the insurance companies and just over $1,000,000 from Big Pharma. Mr. Baucus, you are not the Senator from Schering-Plough Global Health Care, even if they have already given you $76,000 towards your re-election. We could bring up Senator Hagan ... who, at $628,000, appears to represent the insurance industry and not North Dakota. I could bring up Sen. Carper, and Sen. Blanche Lincoln. I could bring up all the other Democrats doing their masters' bidding in the House or the Senate. Every poll, every analysis, every vote, every region of this country supports health care reform, and the essential great leveling agent of a government-funded alternative to ... profiteering private insurance corporations.

Note: For an excellent analysis of the huge influence of the pharmaceutical industry over our government by the former editor-in-chief of the esteemed New England Journal of Medicine, click here. It's time to get the money influence out of politics and shift from our current one dollar equals one vote to one person equals one vote.

A New Look at the 9/11 Commission
2009-09-11, Time magazine
Posted: 2009-09-28 19:23:11
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1921659,00.html

Former New Jersey attorney general John Farmer served as senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission, tasked with investigating the government response to the attacks. His new book, The Ground Truth, picks up where the commission left off — taking a deeper look at the government's ... response to the attacks and exposing officials determined to hide their failings from the inquiry. Farmer uses newly released transcripts and recordings to cast doubt on the official version of events. He spoke with TIME about the attacks. [Time:] Why do you think officials tried to obscure [the truth about 9/11]? [Farmer:] It's almost a culture of concealment, for lack of a better word. There were interviews made at the FAA's New York center the night of 9/11 and those tapes were destroyed. The CIA tapes of the interrogations were destroyed. The story of 9/11 itself, to put it mildly, was distorted and was completely different from the way things happened. [Time:] Some of the distortions you've discussed have fed various conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11. Did you ever see any evidence of a conspiracy? [Farmer:] One of the harmful byproducts of not telling the truth about what happened is that it did fuel all sorts of conspiracy theories about what might have happened. If what the government is telling you isn't true, then the truth could be anything. I think there is evidence that the truth wasn't told and that at least some of that was deliberate.

Note: Many respected scholars, officials and professionals have questioned the 9/11 Commission's report. Click here and here to read some of their statements.

WHO: 3BN swine flu vaccine doses available yearly
2009-09-24, Forbes.com/Associated Press
Posted: 2009-09-28 19:14:34
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2009/09/24/general-un-who-swine-flu_6927291.html

Pharmaceutical companies will be able to produce about 3 billion doses of swine flu vaccine a year ... the World Health Organization said. The U.N. agency had previously predicted that companies would be able to make up to 5 billion doses each year. The World Health Organization admits that not everyone may need vaccination. "Most people will do well without the vaccine," WHO vaccine chief Marie-Paule Kieny told reporters. She said most people infected with the pandemic strain of the H1N1 virus have a mild illness and recover by themselves. Addressing concerns about the safety of the pandemic vaccine, WHO said trials to date suggest it is as safe as a regular seasonal flu shot. Kieny said large-scale vaccination programs would probably detect some cases of severe reaction following the vaccination, but that those would likely have occurred anyway without vaccination. The agency is urging countries to monitor the vaccination procedure for possible further side effects. Meanwhile WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan repeated Thursday her recommendation that governments keep up their guard against swine flu but refrain from closing borders or restricting trade.

Note: With the cost of a regular flu vaccine dose ranging from about $20 to $30, do you think the pharmaceutical companies have any vested interest in the public being vaccinated? Let's see, 3 billion X $20 = $60 billion. Hmm. For more on the danger of this vaccine and rampant fear mongering, click here and here.

Glaxo profits soar as drug firm charges NHS £6 for swine flu vaccine that costs £1 to make
2009-07-23, Daily Mail (One of the UK's largest-circulation newspapers)
Posted: 2009-09-28 14:11:11
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1201450/GlaxoSmithKline-accused-profi...

Drugs giant GlaxoSmithKline was accused of cashing in on swine flu after it revealed its profits have risen 10 per cent since the virus was identified. It announced profits yesterday of £2.1billion in the past three months. Sales of vaccines and antiviral drugs could push the figure up even higher. GSK chief executive Andrew Witty admitted the swine flu crisis would be a 'significant financial event for the company'. Sales of the company's Relenza inhaler, an alternative to Tamiflu used by pregnant women among others, are expected to top £600million. And this figure could be boosted by up to £2billion once deliveries of the swine flu vaccine begin in September. But Mr Witty denied Europe's biggest drugs company was gearing up to cash in. He admitted it was planning to charge the UK £6 a jab, but vociferously denied reports it cost a pound to manufacture. Liberal Democrat health spokesman Norman Lamb said: 'This is clearly a bonanza for the company. This is a staggeringly substantial return. I will write to the National Audit Office to determine whether we got the best deal for the taxpayer.' Susi Squire of the TaxPayers' Alliance said: 'We need an assurance from the Government that they have got the most competitive rate out of GlaxoSmith-Kline.' Geoff Martin of London Health Emergency said: 'It's a scandal that any company could use the swine flu pandemic as an opportunity to jack up profits. 'The Government should step in and impose a windfall tax on private companies that have hit the jackpot as a result of the flu crisis.'

Note: For more on profiteering in the vaccination industry, click here.

Patriot Act Provisions Get Obama Support
2009-09-15, ABC News
Posted: 2009-09-22 22:08:23
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/obama-supports-extending-patriot-act/story?id=...

The Justice Department has indicated that the Obama administration is in support of renewing [three] controversial sections of the USA Patriot Act that expire later this year. The provisions that will expire in December include Section 206, that allows "roving" wiretaps so FBI agents can tap multiple phones or computers (with court authorization) that a specific person (target) may use. Another expiring provision, Section 215, is the so-called "library provision," which allows investigators to obtain [library, medical, business, banking and other] records with approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. And the final provision which was nicknamed the "Lone Wolf" authorization, allows intelligence gathering of people not suspected of being part of a foreign government or known terrorist organization. Critics of the Patriot Act protested loudly that the FBI could obtain individuals' library records under the legislation. [But] section 215 is much more expansive than reviewing a suspected terrorist's summer reading list. [It] allows the FBI to obtain any business record, "any tangible things," like credit card and bank statements and also allows access to medical and mental health records. The provision has been used to obtain communication and subscriber information to help set up surveillance and monitoring of computers and telephones.

Note: The American Library Association, the national organization of professional librarians, was the first and strongest defender of civil liberties after the passage of the PATRIOT Act. For a discussion of the concerns of professional librarians over this decision by the Obama administration, click here.

FBI: Murder, Violent Crime Dropped in 2008
2009-09-14, New York Times/Associated Press
Posted: 2009-09-22 22:03:10
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/09/14/us/politics/AP-US-Crime.html

Murder and manslaughter dropped almost 4 percent last year, as reported crime overall fell around the country, according to new data released ... by the FBI. The 3.9 percent decline in killings reported to police was part of a nationwide drop in violent crime of 1.9 percent from 2007 to 2008. Rapes declined 1.6 percent, to the lowest national number in 20 years -- about 89,000. The statistics are based on crimes reported to police, who then forward the information to the FBI. There were 14,180 murder victims in the United States last year. ''What has been impressive has been how flat all the violent crime rates have been since 2000. To a large degree that's still the case, but the striking change this year has been murder,'' said Alfred Blumstein, a professor of criminal justice at Carnegie-Mellon University. The figures show that crime has come way down since its peak in the early 1990's. ''These are rates we haven't seen since the 1960's, even though the change from year to year has been rather small,'' said Blumstein. Property crimes declined overall, by 0.8 percent, but that was driven mostly by a 12.7 percent drop in car thefts. The other major categories of property crime -- burglaries and larceny-thefts -- both rose. Typically, crime is expected to rise during economic hard times, but Blumstein said last year's data was too early in the economic cycle to reflect that, because the most serious economic impacts came toward the end of 2008, and may not have affected teenagers -- the group most likely to turn to crime as their job prospects dwindle.

Note: What this report completely fails to report is that violent crime is down over 50% since 1994! Why does the major media consistently fail to report this awesome news? For verifiable information on this, click here.

Diebold Exits US Voting-Machine Business
2009-09-03, Wall Street Journal
Posted: 2009-09-22 21:53:01
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20090903-714997.html

Diebold Inc. has sold its money-losing U.S. election-systems business, just seven years after acquiring it amid hopes of rising demand for voting technology upgrades in the wake of the 2000 presidential election fiasco. Diebold [said] it sold the voting-machine unit to privately held Election Systems & Software Inc. for $5 million, about one-fifth of what it paid in 2002. "There were assumptions we made in that space that didn't materialize," Diebold spokesman Mike Jacobsen said. Diebold, which was the industry's biggest maker of electronic voting machines heading into the 2004 presidential election, was in the spotlight as concerns increased about the reliability and security of the electronic systems. Diebold also suffered from a perception problem when the company's then-Chief Executive Walden O'Dell very publicly supported and fundraised for President George W. Bush in his re-election campaign.

Note: This article fails to mention that the merger of Diebold and ES&S creates a major monopoly on US voting machines in the hands of companies owned by staunch conservatives. For more vital information on this and the suspicious death of the principal witness related to Karl Rove in an key Ohio elections case, click here.

Steroids, drink and paranoia: the murky world of the private security contractor
2009-09-01, The Independent (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
Posted: 2009-09-22 21:49:25
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/steroids-drink-and-parano...

Paranoid, competitive and fuelled by guns, alcohol and steroids. That is how one senior contractor in Baghdad describes the private security industry operating in the city's Green Zone. It was the world to which Danny Fitzsimons, a 29-year-old former soldier suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and paranoia, and with an extensive criminal past, returned three weeks ago. Despite rules against alcohol, his ArmorGroup colleagues welcomed him with a drinking session. A fight broke out and he shot and killed two of them – a Briton, Paul McGuigan, and an Australian, Darren Hoare – then wounded an Iraqi, Arkhan Mahdi. He faces a premeditated murder charge and execution if found guilty. Mr Fitzsimons's family is determined to save him and say he was suffering from severe psychiatric problems after a brutal career in the Army and in the security industry. But those on the ground hold little hope. They are already resigned to Mr Fitzsimons's execution and say that he is a tiny pawn in a huge, expensive and vicious game of chess. They say the private security business in Iraq is in a vice-like crush. The gold rush that began with the conflict in 2003 is drying up. Contracts are not as lucrative, the trend is towards employing Iraqis instead of Westerners and, crucially, the Iraqi authorities ... are clamping down. "We are loathed out here. We are the single most hated entity in Iraq," said Ethan Madison, a security contractor who has worked in Baghdad for five years.

Note: For lots more on the illegal activities of US military contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, click here.

Big Food vs. Big Insurance
2009-09-10, New York Times
Posted: 2009-09-22 12:22:15
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/10/opinion/10pollan.html

To listen to President Obama, or to just about anyone else in the health care debate, you would think that the biggest problem with health care in America is the system itself — perverse incentives, inefficiencies, unnecessary tests and procedures, lack of competition, and greed. No one disputes that the $2.3 trillion we devote to the health care industry is often spent unwisely, but the fact that the United States spends twice as much per person as most European countries on health care can be substantially explained, as a study released last month says, by our being fatter. Even the most efficient health care system that the administration could hope to devise would still confront a rising tide of chronic disease linked to diet. That’s why our success in bringing health care costs under control ultimately depends on whether Washington can summon the political will to take on and reform a second, even more powerful industry: the food industry. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, three-quarters of health care spending now goes to treat “preventable chronic diseases.” Not all of these diseases are linked to diet — there’s smoking, for instance — but many, if not most, of them are. We’re spending $147 billion to treat obesity, $116 billion to treat diabetes, and hundreds of billions more to treat cardiovascular disease and the many types of cancer that have been linked to the so-called Western diet. One recent study estimated that 30 percent of the increase in health care spending over the past 20 years could be attributed to the soaring rate of obesity, a condition that now accounts for nearly a tenth of all spending on health care. The American way of eating has become the elephant in the room in the debate over health care.

Note: For a detailed overview of some of the critical risks of the industrially-engineered modern American diet, click here.

Have a Nice Day
2009-09-16, New York Times
Posted: 2009-09-22 12:12:50
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/16/opinion/16friedman.html

Applied Materials is one of the most important U.S. companies you’ve probably never heard of. It makes the machines that make the microchips that go inside your computer. The chip business, though, is volatile, so in 2004 Mike Splinter, Applied Materials’s C.E.O., decided to add a new business line to take advantage of the company’s nanotechnology capabilities — making the machines that make solar panels. The other day, Splinter gave me a tour of the company’s Silicon Valley facility, culminating with a visit to its “war room,” where Applied maintains a real-time global interaction with all 14 solar panel factories it’s built around the world in the last two years. Not a single one is in America. Let’s see: five are in Germany, four are in China, one is in Spain, one is in India, one is in Italy, one is in Taiwan and one is even in Abu Dhabi. The reason that all these other countries are building solar-panel industries today is because most of their governments have put in place the three prerequisites for growing a renewable energy industry: 1) any business or homeowner can generate solar energy; 2) if they decide to do so, the power utility has to connect them to the grid; and 3) the utility has to buy the power for a predictable period at a price that is a no-brainer good deal for the family or business putting the solar panels on their rooftop. Regulatory, price and connectivity certainty, that is what Germany put in place, and that explains why Germany now generates almost half the solar power in the world today and, as a byproduct, is making itself the world-center for solar research, engineering, manufacturing and installation. With more than 50,000 new jobs, the renewable energy industry in Germany is now second only to its auto industry.

Note: For lots more from reliable sources on promising new energy developments, click here.

Stonewalled by the C.I.A.
2008-01-02, New York Times
Posted: 2009-09-22 11:55:24
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/opinion/02kean.html

More than five years ago, Congress and President Bush created the 9/11 commission. Soon after its creation, the president’s chief of staff directed all executive branch agencies to cooperate with the commission. The commission’s mandate was sweeping and it explicitly included the intelligence agencies. But the recent revelations that the C.I.A. destroyed videotaped interrogations of Qaeda operatives leads us to conclude that the agency failed to respond to our lawful requests for information about the 9/11 plot. Those who knew about those videotapes — and did not tell us about them — obstructed our investigation. No one in the administration ever told the commission of the existence of videotapes of detainee interrogations. We did ask, repeatedly, for the kind of information that would have been contained in such videotapes. Beginning in June 2003, we requested all reports of intelligence information ... that had been gleaned from the interrogations of 118 named individuals, including both Abu Zubaydah and Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri, two senior Qaeda operatives, portions of whose interrogations were apparently recorded and then destroyed. The C.I.A. gave us many reports summarizing information gained in the interrogations. But the reports raised almost as many questions as they answered. So, in October 2003, we sent another wave of questions to the C.I.A.’s general counsel. The general counsel responded in writing with non-specific replies. The agency did not disclose that any interrogations had ever been recorded or that it had held any further relevant information, in any form. Government officials decided not to inform a lawfully constituted body, created by Congress and the president, to investigate one the greatest tragedies to confront this country. We call that obstruction.

Note: The authors of this op-ed, Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, served as chairman and vice chairman, respectively, of the 9/11 Commission.

Senate Bill Would Give President Emergency Control of Internet
2009-08-28, Fox News
Posted: 2009-09-14 13:04:56
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/08/28/senate-president-emergency-control...

A Senate bill would offer President Obama emergency control of the Internet and may give him a "kill switch" to shut down online traffic by seizing private networks -- a move cybersecurity experts worry will choke off industry and civil liberties. Details of a revamped version of the Cybersecurity Act of 2009 emerged late Thursday, months after an initial version authored by Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.V., was blasted in Silicon Valley as dangerous government intrusion. "In the original bill they empowered the president to essentially turn off the Internet in the case of a 'cyber-emergency,' which they didn't define," said Larry Clinton, president of the Internet Security Alliance, which represents the telecommunications industry. The new legislation allows the president to "declare a cybersecurity emergency" relating to "non-governmental" computer networks and make a plan to respond to the danger, according to an excerpt published online -- a broad license that rights experts worry would give the president "amorphous powers" over private users. "As soon as you're saying that the federal government is going to be exercising this kind of power over private networks, it's going to be a really big issue," Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Note: For revealing reports from major media sources on threats to civil liberties, click here.

Has Osama Bin Laden been dead for seven years - and are the U.S. and Britain covering it up to continue war on terror?
2009-09-11, Daily Mail (One of the UK's largest-circulation newspapers)
Posted: 2009-09-14 13:02:03
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1212851/Has-Osama-Bin-Laden-dead-seve...

[President] Barack Obama has launched a fresh operation to find [Osama bin Laden]. Working with the Pakistani Army, elite squads of U.S. and British special forces were sent into Waziristan this summer to 'hunt and kill' the shadowy figure intelligence officers still call 'the principal target' of the war on terror. This new offensive is, of course, based on the premise that the 9/11 terrorist is alive. Yet what if he isn't? What if he has been dead for years, and the British and U.S. intelligence services are actually playing a game of double bluff? What if everything we have seen or heard of him on video and audio tapes since the early days after 9/11 is a fake - and that he is being kept 'alive' by the Western allies to stir up support for the war on terror? Incredibly, this is the breathtaking theory that is gaining credence among political commentators, respected academics and even terror experts. Still more questions have been raised with the publication in America and Britain of a book called Osama Bin Laden: Dead or Alive? Written by political analyst and philosopher Professor David Ray Griffin, ... it is provoking shock waves - for it goes into far more detail about his supposed death and suggests there has been a cover-up by the West. The book claims that Bin Laden died of kidney failure, or a linked complaint, on December 13, 2001, while living in Afghanistan's Tora Bora mountains close to the border with Waziristan. His burial took place within 24 hours, in line with Muslim religious rules, and in an unmarked grave, which is a Wahhabi custom. The author insists that the many Bin Laden tapes made since that date have been concocted by the West to make the world believe Bin Laden is alive. Could it be that, for years, he's just been smoke and mirrors?

Note: Hundreds of scholars, officials and professionals have raised questions about bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and other aspects of the official conspiracy about the events of 9/11. Click here and here to read their concerns.

A Year After a Cataclysm, Little Change on Wall St.
2009-09-12, New York Times
Posted: 2009-09-14 12:59:15
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/12/business/12change.html

Wall Street lives on. One year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the surprise is not how much has changed in the financial industry, but how little. Backstopped by huge federal guarantees, the biggest banks have restructured only around the edges. Employment in the industry has fallen just 8 percent since last September. Only a handful of big hedge funds have closed. Pay is already returning to precrash levels, topped by the 30,000 employees of Goldman Sachs, who are on track to earn an average of $700,000 this year. Nor are major pay cuts likely, according to a report last week from J.P. Morgan Securities. Executives at most big banks have kept their jobs. Financial stocks have soared since their winter lows. Banks still sell and trade unregulated derivatives, despite their role in last fall’s chaos. Radical changes like pay caps or restrictions on bank size face overwhelming resistance. Even minor changes, like requiring banks to disclose more about the derivatives they own, are far from certain. Regulators and lawmakers have spent most of the last year trying to save the financial industry, rather than transform it. In the short run, their efforts have succeeded. Citigroup and other wounded banks have avoided bankruptcy, and the economy has sidestepped a depression. But the same investors and economists who predicted, and in some cases profited from, the collapse last fall say the rescue has come at an extraordinary cost. They warn that if the industry’s systemic risks are not addressed, they could cause an even bigger crisis — in years, not decades. Next time, they say, the credit of the United States government may be at risk.

Note: For a treasure trove of reports from reliable sources on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.

Administration Seeks to Keep Terror Watch-List Data Secret
2009-09-06, Washington Post
Posted: 2009-09-14 12:53:39
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/05/AR20090905022...

The Obama administration wants to maintain the secrecy of terrorist watch-list information it routinely shares with federal, state and local agencies, a move that rights groups say would make it difficult for people who have been improperly included on such lists to challenge the government. Intelligence officials in the administration are pressing for legislation that would exempt "terrorist identity information" from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act. Such information -- which includes names, aliases, fingerprints and other biometric identifiers -- is widely shared with law enforcement agencies and intelligence "fusion centers," which combine state and federal counterterrorism resources. Advocates for civil liberties and open government argue that the administration has not proved the secrecy is necessary and that the proposed changes could make the government less accountable for errors on watch lists. The proposed FOIA exemption has been included in pending House and Senate intelligence authorization bills at the administration's request. "Instead of enhancing accountability, this would remove accountability one or two steps further away," said Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy. David Sobel, senior counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy advocacy group, said the government has successfully used existing FOIA exemptions to deny requests for watch-list records. Rather than expanding the list of FOIA exemptions, Congress should pay more attention to improving the procedures for helping people who have been improperly included on the watch list, Sobel said. "There's a serious redress problem," he said. "That's the issue that needs to be addressed."

Note: For lots more on government secrecy from reliable, verifiable sources, click here.

Sheen wants to discuss his 9/11 theories with Obama
2009-09-09, Houston Chronicle (One of Houston's leading newspapers)
Posted: 2009-09-14 12:47:54
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ent/celebrities/6609335.html

Actor Charlie Sheen has written a letter to President Barack Obama requesting a meeting over Sheen's theories about the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The day of Sept. 11, 2001, saw America hit by the worst terrorist atrocities in the country's history, including an attack in New York which killed almost 3,000 people. Sheen has always been outspoken about his views on the attacks, supporting a conspiracy theory that the U.S. government at the time defrauded the public with its official story about the incident. The star has now written to Obama asking him to reopen the investigation into 9/11. The note, entitled "20 Minutes With The President," is written as a fictional meeting with Obama, in which Sheen urges the leader to follow through his promises of change, accountability and government transparency by using his powers to look into the actions of George W. Bush's previous administration. Sheen hopes the president will take note of his campaign and grant him a meeting.

Note: To watch an excellent six-minute video narrated by Sheen asking hard questions to the president, click here. For a powerful summary of many unanswered questions raised by the official account of 9/11, click here.

American embassy contractors in Kabul accused of ritual abuse
2009-09-02, Times of London (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
Posted: 2009-09-14 12:34:58
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/Afghanistan/article6817921.ece

Security contractors at the giant US Embassy in Kabul were accused yesterday of fostering a “Lord of the Flies environment” built on abuse and humiliating initiation rituals. The allegations, made by the independent Project On Government Oversight, are contained in a report submitted to Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State. The report is based on e-mails, some of which describe the alleged abuse of Afghan nationals. Among those implicated are Britons employed by ArmorGroup North America, the contractor providing security at the embassy, where nearly 1,000 diplomats and support staff work. The report quotes an e-mail from a guard currently working for the contractor, describing scenes of guards and supervisors “peeing on people, eating potato chips out of [buttock] cracks” and drinking “vodka shots out of [buttock] cracks”. In another incident, a male Afghan caterer complained last month of being grabbed by a supervisor and told: “You are very good for f***ing.” The supervisor, who was in only his underwear, also brandished bottles of alcohol. The allegations at the Kabul embassy come in the wake of scandals surrounding Blackwater, another security contractor, in Afghanistan and Iraq, where it has been accused of fraud, abuse and involvement in civilian deaths.

Note: For lots more on the illegal activities of military contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq, click here.

The deep state does not respond to FOIA requests
2009-08-22, Chicago Sun-Times News Group/Rock Creek Free Press
Posted: 2009-09-14 12:08:55
http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/beaconnews/news/blogentries/index.html?bbP...

In an attempt to get to the bottom of what really happened on 9/11, citizen investigator Aidan Monaghan has filed dozens of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with federal agencies such as the FBI, SEC, [and] Department of the Navy. Agency after agency has refused to comply with his requests, instead claiming that the information cannot be found, does not exist, [or is "exempt from disclosure."] The FBI has put an exemption on all of their 9/11 information and will release information only if compelled to do so by a lawsuit, of which Monaghan has filed two. The list of FOIAs that Monaghan has filed which have yielded no information is long. He asked the Secret Service for documents that reveal what time former Vice President Dick Cheney entered the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC), as well as documents pertaining to the names of persons admitted to PEOC. Reply: no records or documents pertaining to your request. He asked the SEC for a bibliography of the investigation records that were located in the SEC’s offices on floors 11-13 in World Trade Center 7. The reply: did not locate or identify any information responsive to your request. Monaghan asked the Naval Surface Warfare Center for records about the research and development of nano-sized aluminum powders or nano-sized iron oxide powders. Reply: have not found any records responsive to your request. “I’m beginning to wonder if the FOIA is just a lot of theatre for public consumption to provide a perception that yes, government is accessible, it’s transparent,” said Monaghan. “For two years now I’ve tried to pull as much 9/11 info from the federal government as I can, and the most noteworthy thing I’ve found is the absence of information. Material that should be there just isn’t.”

Note: For lots more on government secrecy from reliable, verifiable sources, click here.

Japan's New First Lady Miyuki Hatoyama Claims Alien Abduction
2009-09-02, ABC News
Posted: 2009-09-14 12:03:31
http://abcnews.go.com/WaterCooler/wireStory?id=8473087

Japan's next prime minister might be nicknamed "the alien," but it's his wife who claims to have had a close encounter with another world. "While my body was asleep, I think my soul rode on a triangular-shaped UFO and went to Venus," Miyuki Hatoyama, the wife of premier-in-waiting Yukio Hatoyama, wrote in a book published last year. "It was a very beautiful place and it was really green." Yukio Hatoyama is due to be voted in as premier on September 16 following his party's crushing election victory over the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party Sunday. Miyuki, 66, described the extraterrestrial experience, which she said took place some 20 years ago, in a book entitled Very Strange Things I've Encountered. When she awoke, Japan's next first lady wrote, she told her now ex-husband that she had just been to Venus. He advised her that it was probably just a dream. "My current husband has a different way of thinking," she wrote. Yukio Hatoyama, 62, the rich grandson of a former prime minister, was once nicknamed "the alien" for his prominent eyes. Miyuki, also known for her culinary skills, spent six years acting in the Takarazuka Revue, an all-female musical theater group. She met the U.S.-educated Yukio while living in America.

Note: For an intriguing ABC special on alien abductions, click here.

Trade Secrets: A Moyers Report
2001-03-29, PBS
Posted: 2009-09-14 11:54:08
http://www.pbs.org/tradesecrets/program/overview.html

Twenty-three years to the day after he went to work with vinyl chloride and other toxic chemicals at a plant in Lake Charles, Louisiana, Dan Ross died of a rare brain cancer. He was 46 years old, convinced that his job had killed him. His wife, Elaine, sued her husband's former employer and, over the next decade, the process of legal discovery led deeper and deeper into the inner chambers of the chemical industry and its Washington trade association. Hundreds of thousands of pages of documents were unearthed. In TRADE SECRETS: A MOYERS REPORT, journalist Bill Moyers and producer Sherry Jones investigated the Ross archive – secrets the chemical industry never intended the public to see – and discovered a shocking story. The confidential papers reveal the industry's early knowledge of vinyl chloride's dangerous effects, as well as the industry's long silence on the subject. The program also reports a much larger story. Buried in the thousands of pages of documents – minutes from board meetings, reports from industry scientists, internal memoranda – is a never-before-told account of a campaign to limit the regulation of toxic chemicals and any liability for their effects, at the same that the companies work to withhold vital information about risks from workers, the government – and the public. Over the last five decades, more than 75,000 chemicals have been produced, turned into consumer products or released into the environment. Today, every man, woman and child has synthetic chemicals in their bodies. No child is born free of them. Are they safe? Does anyone know?

Note: This article also mentions that even though Moyers never lived near a chemical plant, tests showed that his body contained a chemical soup of 84 industrial chemicals, including 31 different types of PCBs, 13 different dioxins, and pesticides such as DDT. Why are these chemicals so poorly studied and the dangerous effects hidden from us? For lots more from reliable sources on corporate corruption, click here.

Bush's Search Policy For Travelers Is Kept
2009-08-28, Washington Post
Posted: 2009-09-05 14:30:30
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/27/AR20090827040...

The Obama administration will largely preserve Bush-era procedures allowing the government to search -- without suspicion of wrongdoing -- the contents of a traveler's laptop computer, cellphone or other electronic device. The policy, disclosed ... in a pair of Department of Homeland Security directives, describes more fully than did the Bush administration the procedures by which travelers' laptops, iPods, cameras and other digital devices can be searched and seized when they cross a U.S. border. And it sets time limits for completing searches. Representatives of civil liberties and travelers groups say they see little substantive difference between the Bush-era policy, which prompted controversy, and this one. "It's a disappointing ratification of the suspicionless search policy put in place by the Bush administration," said Catherine Crump, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union. "It doesn't deal with the fundamental problem, which is that under the policy, government officials are free to search people's laptops and cellphones for any reason whatsoever." "Under the policy begun by Bush and now continued by Obama, the government can open your laptop and read your medical records, financial records, e-mails, work product and personal correspondence -- all without any suspicion of illegal activity," said Elizabeth Goitein, who leads the liberty and national security project at the nonprofit Brennan Center for Justice.

Note: For important revelations of government threats to civil liberties, click here.

CIA's black sites, illuminated
2009-08-31, Los Angeles Times
Posted: 2009-09-05 14:28:01
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-cia-detainee31-2009aug31...

The secret overseas "black sites" where the CIA conducted the interrogations are empty now, if not already dismantled. They were never examined by a congressional committee, nor inspected by the international Red Cross. The black sites not only imprisoned men but reduced them to a near helpless state. The aim, as outlined in one document, was to teach every detainee "to perceive and value his personal welfare, comfort and immediate needs more than the information he is protecting." The prisoners' arrival -- almost always in diapers -- was engineered to achieve that end. After being shaved, stripped and photographed nude, detainees were examined by CIA medical and psychological personnel. Then came a preliminary interrogation that would determine the prisoners' fate. Only those considered extremely cooperative would avoid a trio of techniques designed to produce a "baseline, dependent" state: the deprivation of clothes, solid food and sleep. Follow-up sessions would start with the prisoner standing with his back against a wall and a towel or collar to prevent whiplash wrapped around his neck. He could be thrown against the wall just once "to make a point, or 20 to 30 times consecutively." Prisoners so abhorred the repeated slamming that they would remain in so-called stress positions, such as painful kneeling postures, for hours to avoid a return to the wall, according to one Dec. 30, 2004, memo that amounts to a CIA blueprint for breaking a detainee's will. Earlier this year, the Obama administration released a series of Justice Department memos laying out legal rationales for the array of coercive interrogation methods the CIA employed.

Note: For further revelations from major media sources on the illegal methods used by the US government in its wars around the world, click here.

Blackwater Tapped Foreigners on Secret CIA Program
2009-08-31, ABC News/Associated Press
Posted: 2009-09-05 14:25:35
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=8450594

When the CIA revived a plan to kill or capture [alleged] terrorists in 2004, the agency turned to the well-connected security company then known as Blackwater USA. With Blackwater's lucrative government security work and contacts arrayed in hot spots around the world, company officials offered the services of foreigners supposedly skilled at tracking [people] in lawless regions and countries where the CIA had no working relationships with the government. But the CIA's use of the private contractor as part of its now-abandoned plan to dispatch death squads skirted concerns now re-emerging with recent disclosures about Blackwater's role. Blackwater's later hiring of several senior CIA officials who were involved in or aware of the secret program, including one of the men who ran the operation, showed the blurred lines of using a private contractor for such a highly classified and dangerous project. The 2004 decision by CIA officials to entrust the North Carolina-based company with such a sensitive overseas operation struck some former agency officials as highly unusual. "The question remains: Why do we need Blackwater?" said Charles Faddis, a former department chief at the CIA's Counterterrorism Center who retired in 2008 and was not involved in the secret program. "I remain mystified. This is quintessential CIA work. You wonder what it means that the CIA has to rely on Blackwater? Why are we still funding the CIA?" The former senior CIA official who had knowledge of the program explained that "you wouldn't want to have American fingerprints on it."

Note: For lots more on government corruption, click here.

Speculators busier as crude oil cost spikes
2009-08-28, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
Posted: 2009-09-05 14:22:51
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/28/BU1B19EQFS.DTL

Speculators now account for half of all traders in the main U.S. oil market, and their growing presence coincided with this decade's historic rise in the price of crude, according to a new Rice University study. The study does not try to prove that speculators caused the price spike, as many politicians and consumer advocates believe. But the authors note that prices rose steadily along with the number of speculative investors, and fell with them as well. Seven years ago, speculators accounted for 20 percent of oil traders on the New York Mercantile Exchange. That number jumped to 55 percent by the time oil prices reached their all-time peak above $145 per barrel last summer. Now oil costs $72, and speculative investors account for half the traders. The government limits the number of oil contracts that each speculator can hold. But under the Commodity Futures Modernization Act [passed in 2000], trades on electronic exchanges or overseas markets don't count toward those limits. The study uses data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Speculators are defined as traders who use oil strictly as a financial investment, those who will never take delivery of a tanker-full of crude. "This confirms what we and others have said for some time," said Tyson Slocum, director of the energy program at the Public Citizen watchdog group. "The good thing from the oil price run-up of 2008 is it has forced Congress to realize there's a problem in these markets, and the answer is re-regulation." The financial industry opposes tightening the regulations.

Note: To read the full study, click here.

Secret process benefits pet projects
2009-08-26, Houston Chronicle (One of Houston's leading newspapers)
Posted: 2009-09-05 14:17:53
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/hotstories/6587768.html

A sleepy Montana checkpoint along the Canadian border that sees about three travelers a day will get $15 million under President Barack Obama's economic stimulus plan. A government priority list ranked the project as marginal, but two powerful Democratic senators persuaded the administration to make it happen. Despite Obama's promises that the stimulus plan would be transparent and free of politics, the government is handing out $720 million for border upgrades under a process that is both secretive and susceptible to political influence. It wasn't supposed to be that way. In 2004, Congress ordered Homeland Security to create a list, updated annually, of the most important repairs at checkpoints nationwide. But the Obama administration continued a Bush administration practice of considering other, more subjective factors when deciding which projects get money. The results: • A border station in Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano's home state of Arizona is getting $199 million, five times more than any other border station. • A checkpoint in Laredo, Texas, which serves more than 55,000 travelers and 4,200 trucks a day, is rated among the government's highest priorities but was passed over for stimulus money. • The Westhope, N.D., checkpoint, which serves about 73 people a day and is among the lowest-priority projects, is set to get nearly $15 million for renovations. The Whitetail project, which involves building a border station the size and cost of a Hollywood mansion, benefited from two key allies, Montana Sens. Max Baucus and Jon Tester.

Note: For lots more on government corruption, click here.

Pfizer Pays $2.3 Billion to Settle Marketing Case
2009-09-03, New York Times
Posted: 2009-09-05 14:15:19
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/03/business/03health.html

The pharmaceutical giant Pfizer agreed to pay $2.3 billion to settle civil and criminal allegations that it had illegally marketed its painkiller Bextra, which has been withdrawn. It was the largest health care fraud settlement and the largest criminal fine of any kind ever. The settlement had been expected. Pfizer, which is acquiring a rival, Wyeth, reported in January that it had taken a $2.3 billion charge to resolve claims involving Bextra and other drugs. It was Pfizer’s fourth settlement over illegal marketing activities since 2002. The government charged that executives and sales representatives throughout Pfizer’s ranks planned and executed schemes to illegally market not only Bextra but also Geodon, an antipsychotic; Zyvox, an antibiotic; and Lyrica, which treats nerve pain. While the government said the fine was a record sum, the $2.3 billion fine amounts to less than three weeks of Pfizer’s sales. Much of the activities cited Wednesday occurred while Pfizer was in the midst of resolving allegations that it illegally marketed Neurontin, an epilepsy drug for which the company in 2004 paid a $430 million fine and signed a corporate integrity agreement — a companywide promise to behave. John Kopchinski, a former Pfizer sales representative whose complaint helped prompt the government’s Bextra case, said that company managers told him and others to dismiss concerns about the Neurontin case while pushing them to undertake similar illegal efforts on behalf of Bextra. “The whole culture of Pfizer is driven by sales, and if you didn’t sell drugs illegally, you were not seen as a team player,” said Mr. Kopchinski.

Note: For lots more on corporate corruption, click here. For a powerful article on the immense political power of pharmaceutical companies by one of the top MDs in the U.S., click here.

A ‘Little Judge’ Who Rejects Foreclosures, Brooklyn Style
2009-08-31, New York Times
Posted: 2009-09-05 14:07:31
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/31/nyregion/31judge.html

Every week, the nation’s mightiest banks come to his court seeking to take the homes of New Yorkers who cannot pay their mortgages. And nearly as often, the judge says, they file foreclosure papers speckled with errors. He plucks out one motion and leafs through: a Deutsche Bank representative signed an affidavit claiming to be the vice president of two different banks. His office was in Kansas City, Mo., but the signature was notarized in Texas. And the bank did not even own the mortgage when it began to foreclose on the homeowner. “I’m a little guy in Brooklyn who doesn’t belong to their country clubs, what can I tell you?” he says, adding a shrug for punctuation. “I won’t accept their comedy of errors.” The judge, Arthur M. Schack, 64, fashions himself a judicial Don Quixote, tilting at the phalanxes of bankers, foreclosure facilitators and lawyers who file motions by the bale. He has tossed out 46 of the 102 foreclosure motions that have come before him in the last two years. And his often scathing decisions, peppered with allusions to the Croesus-like wealth of bank presidents, have attracted the respectful attention of judges and lawyers from Florida to Ohio to California. At recent judicial conferences in Chicago and Arizona, several panelists praised his rulings as a possible national model. Justice Schack, like a handful of state and federal judges, has taken a magnifying glass to the mortgage industry. Justice Schack’s take is straightforward, and sends a tremor through some bank suites: If a bank cannot prove ownership, it cannot foreclose. “If you are going to take away someone’s house, everything should be legal and correct,” he said. “I’m a strange guy — I don’t want to put a family on the street unless it’s legitimate.”

'Moon Rock' in Dutch Museum Is Fake
2009-08-27, New York Times/Associated Press
Posted: 2009-08-29 22:51:43
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/08/27/world/AP-EU-Netherlands-Not-Moon-R...

It's not green cheese, but it might as well be. The Dutch national museum said Thursday that one of its prized possessions, a rock supposedly brought back from the moon by U.S. astronauts, is just a piece of petrified wood. Rijksmuseum spokeswoman Xandra van Gelder, who oversaw the investigation that proved the piece was a fake, said the museum will keep it anyway as a curiosity. "It's a good story, with some questions that are still unanswered," she said. "We can laugh about it." The museum acquired the rock after the death of former Prime Minister Willem Drees in 1988. Drees received it as a private gift on Oct. 9, 1969, from then-U.S. ambassador J. William Middendorf during a visit by the three Apollo 11 astronauts, part of their "Giant Leap" goodwill tour after the first moon landing. Middendorf, who lives in Rhode Island, told Dutch broadcaster NOS news that he had gotten it from the U.S. State Department, but couldn't recall the exact details. "I do remember that (Drees) was very interested in the little piece of stone," the NOS quoted Middendorf as saying. "But that it's not real, I don't know anything about that." The U.S. Embassy in the Hague said it was investigating the matter. The museum had vetted the moon rock with a phone call to NASA, Van Gelder said. "Apparently no one thought to doubt it, since it came from the prime minister's collection," Van Gelder said. Researchers from Amsterdam's Free University said they could see at a glance the rock was probably not from the moon. They followed the initial appraisal up with extensive testing. "It's a nondescript, pretty-much-worthless stone," Geologist Frank Beunk concluded in an article published by the museum.

Note: For more evidence raising questions about the official account of the Apollo moon landings, click here.

CDC leery of estimates about swine flu's toll
2009-08-26, CBS News/Associated Press
Posted: 2009-08-29 22:48:32
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/08/27/health/main5268541.shtml

U.S. government health officials are urging Americans not to panic over estimates that up to 90,000 people might die in the United States from swine flu this year. "Everything we've seen in the U.S. and everything we've seen around the world suggests we won't see that kind of number if the virus doesn't change," said Dr. Thomas Frieden, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While the swine flu seems quite easy to catch, it so far hasn't been more deadly than the flu strains seen every fall and winter — many people have only mild illness. And close genetic tracking of the new virus as it circled the globe over the last five months so far has shown no sign that it's mutating to become more virulent. Still, the CDC has been preparing for a worst-case flu season as a precaution — in July working from an estimate slightly more grim than one that made headlines this week — to make sure that if the virus suddenly worsened or vaccination plans fell through, health authorities would know how to react. On Monday the White House released a report from a group of presidential advisers that included a scenario where anywhere from 30 percent to half of the population could catch what doctors call the "2009 H1N1" flu, and death possibilities ranged from 30,000 to 90,000. "We don't think that's the most likely scenario," CDC flu specialist Dr. Anne Schuchat said of the presidential advisers' high-end tally. In a regular flu season, up to 20 per cent of the population is infected and 36,000 die.

Note: Like the avian flu several years ago, the swine flu is turning out to be largely fear-mongering which has poured billions of dollars into the deep pockets of the medical/industrial complex. For lots more reliable information from major media reports on this, click here.

Doctors may refuse swine flu vaccine
2009-08-24, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
Posted: 2009-08-29 22:46:22
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/aug/24/doctors-refuse-swine-flu-vaccine

Many GPs, as well as their patients, may be reluctant to be immunised against swine flu once a vaccine is developed, surveys suggest today. A survey of GPs published on Healthcare Republic, the website of GP magazine, found that up to 60% of GPs may decline vaccination. Although the numbers who responded were small – 216 GPs – they are in line with a much bigger survey of nurses published a week ago by Nursing Times, which found that a third of 1,500 nurses would refuse vaccination. A Canadian study published today in the journal Emerging Health Threats suggests the public, too, will have reservations that must be overcome if a vaccination campaign is to be successful in the autumn or winter. The study, which used focus groups to establish the likely response of different people to a vaccine, pointed to the need to win over people who believe that alternative therapies and a good diet are a better option than vaccines. But the biggest problem in persuading people and healthcare professionals to have the jab may be the relative shortage of evidence from trials about its safety and efficacy. Because of the urgent need for a vaccine, testing will be limited. Among the GPs who responded to the survey published by Healthcare Republic, 29% said they would not choose to have the vaccine and 29% said they were unsure whether or not they would. The biggest reason given by those who said they would not have it was concern that the safety trials would not be adequate: 71.3% said they were "concerned that the vaccine has not yet been through sufficient trials to guarantee safety". Half – 50.4% – said they "believe that swine flu is too mild to justify taking the vaccine".

Note: Yet the Massachusetts Senate has now passed a bill which would impose fines up to $1,000 and jail up to 30 days for those who refuse vaccines or quarantine orders in a health emergency. Other states are considering similar legislation. For lots more on the real dangers of the swine flu vaccine, click here.

C.I.A. Abuse Cases Detailed in Report on Detainees
2009-08-25, New York Times
Posted: 2009-08-29 22:44:01
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/25/us/politics/25detain.html

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. named a veteran federal prosecutor on Monday to examine abuse of prisoners held by the Central Intelligence Agency, after the Justice Department released a long-secret report showing interrogators choked a prisoner repeatedly and threatened to kill another detainee’s children. Mr. Holder chose John H. Durham, a prosecutor from Connecticut who has been investigating the C.I.A.’s destruction of interrogation videotapes, to determine whether a full criminal investigation of the conduct of agency employees or contractors was warranted. The attorney general said his decision to order an inquiry was based in part on the recommendation of the Justice Department’s ethics office, which called for a new review of several interrogation cases. He said he was also influenced by a 2004 report by the C.I.A. inspector general at the time, John L. Helgerson, on the agency’s interrogations. The report was released Monday under a court order in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. Although large portions of the 109-page report are blacked out, it gives new details about a variety of abuses inside the C.I.A.’s overseas prisons, including suggestions about sexually assaulting members of a detainee’s family, staging mock executions, intimidation with a handgun and power drill, and blowing cigar and cigarette smoke into prisoners’ faces to make them vomit. The inspector general’s review raised broad questions about the legality, political acceptability and effectiveness of the harshest of the C.I.A.’s methods, including some not authorized by the Justice Department and others that were approved, like the near-drowning technique of waterboarding.

Note: And what do you think might have been in the blacked out portions of the report? For lots more on the use of illegal methods by the CIA and US military in their prosecution of the "war on terror," click here.

Afghanistan Contractors Outnumber Troops
2009-08-22, Wall Street Journal
Posted: 2009-08-29 22:39:46
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125089638739950599.html

Even as U.S. troops surge to new highs in Afghanistan they are outnumbered by military contractors working alongside them, according to a Defense Department census due to be distributed to Congress -- illustrating how hard it is for the U.S. to wean itself from the large numbers of war-zone contractors that proved controversial in Iraq. The number of military contractors in Afghanistan rose to almost 74,000 by June 30, far outnumbering the roughly 58,000 U.S. soldiers on the ground at that point. As the military force in Afghanistan grows further, to a planned 68,000 by the end of the year, the Defense Department expects the ranks of contractors to increase more. Military contractors' personnel for a time outnumbered U.S. troops in Iraq. The large contractor force was accompanied by issues ranging from questionable costs billed to the government to shooting of civilians by armed security guards. A September 2007 shooting incident involving Blackwater Worldwide guards working for the U.S. State Department, in which 17 Iraqis were killed, forced the U.S. to aggressively rework oversight of security firms. Yet in Afghanistan as in Iraq, the Pentagon has found that the military has shrunk so much since the Cold War ended that it isn't big enough to sustain operations without using companies to directly support military operations.

Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the use of private contractors by the US military in its wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan, click here.

US Air Force prepares drones to end era of fighter pilots
2009-08-23, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
Posted: 2009-08-29 22:36:51
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/22/us-air-force-drones-pilots-afghan...

As part of an expanding programme of battlefield automation, the US Air Force has said it is now training more drone operators than fighter and bomber pilots and signalled the end of the era of the fighter pilot is in sight. Just three years ago, the service was able to fly just 12 drones at a time; now it can fly more than 50. At a trade conference outside Washington last week, military contractors presented a future vision in which pilotless drones serve as fighters, bombers and transports, even automatic mini-drones programmed to attack in swarms. Contractors made presentations for "nano-size" drones the size of moths that can flit into buildings to gather intelligence; drone helicopters; large aircraft that could be used as strategic bombers and new mid-sized drones could act as jet fighters. This Terminator-like vision in which future generations of fighter aces become cubicle-bound drone operators thousands of miles from conflict is already here: the deployment that began during the Bush administration has accelerated during the first seven months of Obama's term. Some 5,000 robotic vehicles and drones are now deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. By 2015, the Pentagon's $230bn arms procurement programme Future Combat Systems expects to robotise around 15% of America's armed forces. As US domestic approval for the "Af-Pak" conflict slips (a new Washington Post poll found less than a quarter of the US public support sending more troops to Afghanistan), the reliance of drones is likely to grow, analysts say. The air force study suggests areas of warfare too critical for automation, including dogfighting and nuclear-bombing, could eventually be handled by drones.

Note: For revealing reports on Pentagon war planning from major media sources, click here.

Political ties to a secretive religious group
2008-04-03, MSNBC News
Posted: 2009-08-29 22:12:48
http://deepbackground.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/04/03/857959.aspx

For more than 50 years, the National Prayer Breakfast has been a Washington institution. Every president has attended the breakfast since Eisenhower. Besides the presidents ... the one constant presence at the National Prayer Breakfast has been Douglas Coe. Although he’s not an ordained minister, the 79-year-old Coe is the most important religious leader you've never seen or heard. Scores of senators in both parties ... go to small weekly Senate prayer groups that Coe attends, [including] senators John McCain, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Observers who have investigated Coe’s group, called The Fellowship Foundation, [describe] a secretive organization. Coe repeatedly urges a personal commitment to Jesus Christ. It’s a commitment Coe compares to the blind devotion that Adolph Hitler demanded. "Hitler, Goebbels and Himmler. Think of the immense power these three men had.” Coe also quoted Jesus and said: “One of the things [Jesus] said is 'If any man comes to me and does not hate his father, mother, brother, sister, his own life, he can't be a disciple.’" Writer Jeff Sharlet ... lived among Coe's followers six years ago, and came out troubled by their secrecy and rhetoric. “We were being taught the leadership lessons of Hitler, Lenin and Mao. Hitler’s genocide wasn’t really an issue for them. It was the strength that he emulated,” said Sharlet, who ... has now written about The Fellowship, also known to insiders as The Family, in [a] book called The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.

Note: Watch an incredible four-minute NBC video clip at the above link showing Coe praising a communist Red Guard member for cutting the head off his mother. For more on Coe's powerful links to Congress and corruption, see the MSNBC article available here.

Report Reveals CIA Conducted Mock Executions
2009-08-21, Newsweek magazine
Posted: 2009-08-23 19:03:43
http://www.newsweek.com/id/213188

A long-suppressed report by the Central Intelligence Agency's inspector general to be released next week reveals that CIA interrogators staged mock executions as part of the agency's post-9/11 program to detain and question terror suspects, NEWSWEEK has learned. The report describes how one detainee, suspected USS Cole bomber Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, was threatened with a gun and a power drill during the course of CIA interrogation. Nashiri's interrogators brandished the gun in an effort to convince him that he was going to be shot. Interrogators also turned on a power drill and held it near him. "The purpose was to scare him into giving [information] up," said one [source]. A federal law banning the use of torture expressly forbids threatening a detainee with "imminent death." The report also says ... that a mock execution was staged in a room next to a detainee, during which a gunshot was fired in an effort to make the suspect believe that another prisoner had been killed. The inspector general's report alludes to more than one mock execution. Before leaving office, Bush administration officials confirmed that Nashiri was one of three CIA detainees subjected to waterboarding. They also acknowledged that Nashiri was one of two Al Qaeda detainees whose detentions and interrogations were documented at length in CIA videotapes. But senior officials of the agency's undercover operations branch, the National Clandestine Service, ordered that the tapes be destroyed, an action that has been under investigation for more than a year by a federal prosecutor. The new revelations are contained in a lengthy report on the CIA interrogation program completed by the agency's inspector general in May 2004.

Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the illegal methods used by the CIA and US military in its wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan, click here.

C.I.A. Sought Blackwater’s Help to Kill Jihadists
2009-08-20, New York Times
Posted: 2009-08-23 19:01:16
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/20/us/20intel.html

The Central Intelligence Agency in 2004 hired outside contractors from the private security contractor Blackwater USA as part of a secret program to locate and assassinate top operatives of Al Qaeda, according to current and former government officials. Executives from Blackwater ... helped the spy agency with planning, training and surveillance. The C.I.A. spent several million dollars on the program, which did not successfully capture or kill any terrorist suspects. It is unclear whether the C.I.A. had planned to use the contractors to actually capture or kill Qaeda operatives, or just to help with training and surveillance in the program. American spy agencies have in recent years outsourced some highly controversial work, including the interrogation of prisoners. But government officials said that bringing outsiders into a program with lethal authority raised deep concerns about accountability in covert operations. Officials said the C.I.A. did not have a formal contract with Blackwater for this program but instead had individual agreements with top company officials, including the founder, Erik D. Prince, a politically connected former member of the Navy Seals and the heir to a family fortune. Over the years, Blackwater has hired several former top C.I.A. officials, including Cofer Black, who ran the C.I.A. counterterrorism center immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks. C.I.A. operatives also regularly use the company’s training complex in North Carolina. The complex includes a shooting range used for sniper training.

Note: For many revealing reports from major media sources on the frequent use of assassinations to advance state objectives, click here.

Americans tiring of war in Afghanistan
2009-08-21, San Francisco Chronicle/Associated Press
Posted: 2009-08-23 18:58:47
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/20/MNFU19BG53.DTL

The violence-scarred elections in Afghanistan provided a stage for the Taliban to show war-weary Americans and Afghans that it has rebounded and can strike - even after eight years of war. For President Obama's policies, the timing couldn't be worse. With memories of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks dimming, Americans are tiring of the conflict. New polling shows a majority - 51 percent - of those surveyed now believe the war is not worth the fight, an increase of 6 percentage points in a month. Obama's answer to the mounting skepticism is to say that, in a way, the war has just begun. The final push to wipe out [the] Taliban ... is not 8 years old but really got started when he took office and ordered 17,000 more troops into Afghanistan. In short order, he also installed a new commander and persuaded Pakistan to join the United States in what on Thursday he called a pincer movement to squeeze the enemy astride the common border.

Note: As shown over and over again, presidents and politicians of both major political parties in the U.S. support the war machine in order to get the war chest they need to be elected or re-elected. Obama is no exception. For lots more on this, click here.

DNA Evidence Can Be Fabricated, Scientists Show
2009-08-18, New York Times
Posted: 2009-08-23 18:53:59
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/science/18dna.html

Scientists in Israel have demonstrated that it is possible to fabricate DNA evidence, undermining the credibility of what has been considered the gold standard of proof in criminal cases. The scientists fabricated blood and saliva samples containing DNA from a person other than the donor of the blood and saliva. They also showed that if they had access to a DNA profile in a database, they could construct a sample of DNA to match that profile without obtaining any tissue from that person. “You can just engineer a crime scene,” said Dan Frumkin, lead author of the paper, which has been published online by the journal Forensic Science International: Genetics. “Any biology undergraduate could perform this.” Dr. Frumkin is a founder of Nucleix, a company based in Tel Aviv that has developed a test to distinguish real DNA samples from fake ones that it hopes to sell to forensics laboratories. The planting of fabricated DNA evidence at a crime scene is only one implication of the findings. A potential invasion of personal privacy is another. Using some of the same techniques, it may be possible to scavenge anyone’s DNA from a discarded drinking cup or cigarette butt and turn it into a saliva sample that could be submitted to a genetic testing company that measures ancestry or the risk of getting various diseases. Tania Simoncelli, science adviser to the American Civil Liberties Union, said the findings were worrisome. “DNA is a lot easier to plant at a crime scene than fingerprints,” she said. “We’re creating a criminal justice system that is increasingly relying on this technology.”

Note: For lots more on government threats to civil liberties, click here.

Oil lobby to fund campaign against Obama's climate change strategy
2009-08-14, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
Posted: 2009-08-23 18:51:11
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/aug/14/us-lobbying

The US oil and gas lobby are planning to stage public events to give the appearance of a groundswell of public opinion against legislation that is key to Barack Obama's climate change strategy. A key lobbying group will bankroll and organise 20 "energy citizen" rallies in 20 states. In an email obtained by Greenpeace, Jack Gerard, the president of the American Petroleum Institute (API), outlined what he called a "sensitive" plan to stage events during the August congressional recess to put a "human face" on opposition to climate and energy reform. "Our goal is to energise people and show them that they are not alone," said Cathy Landry, for API, who confirmed that the memo was authentic. The email from Gerard lays out ambitious plans to stage a series of lunchtime rallies to try to shape the climate bill that was passed by the house in June and will come before the Senate in September. "We must move aggressively," it reads.The API strategy also extends to a PR drive. Gerard cites polls to test the effectiveness of its arguments against climate change legislation. It offers up the "energy citizen" rallies as ready-made events, noting that allies – which include manufacturing and farm alliances as well as 400 oil and gas member organisations – will have to do little more than turn up. "API will provide the up-front resources," the email said. "This includes contracting with a highly experienced events management company that has produced successful rallies for presidential campaigns."

Note: For important reports from major media sources on global warming and oil company manipulation of public perception, click here.

UFO 'appeared above jazz stage at Glastonbury'
2009-08-18, CNN News
Posted: 2009-08-23 18:48:01
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/08/17/ufo.sightings/index.html

An alien with a lemon-shaped head and a jazz-themed encounter with a UFO at the Glastonbury Festival are among hundreds of UFO sightings detailed in the latest batch of documents released Monday by the UK's Ministry of Defence. Fourteen files, containing over 4,000 pages of UFO sightings from 1981 to 1996, have now been placed on Britain's National Archives database and are publicly available online. The sightings range from lights in the sky to close contact with aliens, and the files contain detailed analysis on some of the UK's most popular cases -- a number of which remain officially unexplained. The files ... shed new light on Britain's own 'Roswell', the Rendlesham Forest sightings of December 1980 in which American air force men saw a series of mysterious lights in the trees at the perimeter of an air base used by the U.S. Air Force. The then government of Margaret Thatcher was quick to dismiss the incident, but a letter from a former chief of defense staff in 1985 warned that the affair could prove a 'banana skin' for the Ministry of Defence. "The case has puzzling and disquieting features which have never been satisfactorily explained ... which continue to preoccupy informed sections of the public," said the letter. This latest release of documents represents the fourth set of UFO files released since 2008 as part of a three-year project in conjunction with the National Archives.

Note: For a powerful two-page summary of evidence for UFOs presented by highly respected and credible former government and military personnel from many countries, click here. For excellent information on the Rendlesham Forest case, click here.

MoD's latest UFO files reveal saucerful of secrets
2009-08-17, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
Posted: 2009-08-23 18:45:35
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/aug/17/mod-report-ufo-sightings

Two terrified youths who ran into a Staffordshire police station were in no doubt they had seen a UFO land in a field near Chasetown after they experienced an intense heat when they were walking up Rugeley Road, Burntwood, at 11pm on 4 May 1995. "Their skin turned a glowing red," said the Staffordshire police inspector's report. "They saw a darkish silver inverted saucer shaped object in a field, which was glowing red beneath. The object was about four houses high in the sky and about 40ft away from them. Neither was drunk or under the influence of illegal substances and the next day both provided the police with detailed written reports of what they had seen. The release of the latest batch of the Ministry of Defence's UFO files reveals a hidden British obsession with flying saucers and such close encounters. Bright lights seen across Devon and Cornwall, South Wales and Shropshire in the early hours of 31 March 1993 by 70 police and military witnesses were documented in more than 30 sightings reported to the MoD over a six-hour period. The reports said it was very big, shaped like a catamaran and was completely silent. The head of the UFO section told Sir Anthony Bagnall, the assistant chief of the air staff, that given the quality of the witnesses the sightings could not simply be written off: "It seems that an unidentified object of unknown origin was operating in the UK air defence region without being detected on radar; this would appear to be of considerable defence significance."

Note: For a powerful two-page summary of evidence for UFOs presented by highly respected and credible former government and military personnel from many countries, click here.

Questions for Dr. Marcia Angell
2009-08-12, New York Times blog
Posted: 2009-08-23 18:40:08
http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/12/questions-for-dr-marcia-angell

[Anne Underwood:] President Obama hopes to increase the number of Americans with insurance and to rein in costs. Do you believe any of the plans under consideration by Congress will accomplish those goals? [Dr. Marcia Angell:] They won’t, and that’s the essential problem. If you keep health care in the hands of for-profit companies, you can do one or the other — increase coverage by putting more money into the system, or control costs by decreasing coverage. But you cannot do both unless you change the basic structure of the system. Q. Segments of the health care industry — pharmaceutical companies, for instance — are promising to cut costs. A. It’s not going to happen. These are investor-owned companies. Their fiduciary responsibility is to maximize profits. If they behaved like charities, heads would roll in the executive suites. Q. But what about market mechanisms for reducing costs? Wouldn’t the public option, for instance, provide competition for the insurance companies? A. Theoretically it would, but I doubt the public plan will pass. Industry is lobbying against it, and the president has not said this is a “must.” Even if it does pass, I’m afraid the private insurance industry will use their clout in Congress — and they have enormous clout in Congress — to hobble the public option and use it as a dumping ground for the sickest while they cream off the young and healthy for themselves. Q. How? Won’t insurance companies have to cover all applicants regardless of health status? A. It’s hard to regulate an enormous industry without setting up a bureaucracy to oversee it. That’s very expensive and creates a whole new set of problems.

Note: Dr. Marcia Angell is a senior lecturer in social medicine at Harvard Medical School and former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine. A longtime critic of the pharmaceutical industry, she has called for an end to market-driven delivery of health care in the United States. To read a two-page summary of her critique of market-driven health care, click here.

Strange New Air Force Facility Energizes Ionosphere, Fans Conspiracy Flames
2009-07-20, Wired magazine
Posted: 2009-08-23 18:37:05
http://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/17-08/mf_haarp

The senior senator from Alaska, Ted Stevens, enjoyed a reputation for inserting projects into the federal budget to benefit his home state, most notoriously a $223 million bridge from the town of Ketchikan to, well, not much of anyplace. In 1988, [physics] researchers sat down with Stevens and assured him that an ionospheric heater would be a bona fide scientific marvel and a guaranteed job creator, and it could be built for a mere $30 million. Just like that, the Pentagon had $10 million for ionospheric heater research. In a series of meetings in the winter of 1989-90, the field's leading lights ... pitched the Navy and the Air Force. Haarp, they asserted, could lead to "significant operational capabilities." They'd build a giant phased antenna array that would aim a finely tuned beam of high-frequency radio waves into the sky. The beam would excite electrons in the ionosphere, altering that spot's conductivity and inducing it to emit its own extremely low frequency waves, which could theoretically penetrate the earth's surface to reveal hidden bunkers or be used to contact deeply submerged submarines. Of course, the scientists said, you'd need a brand-new, state-of-the-art ionospheric heater to see if any of this was even feasible. The Pentagon ... began using Stevens' earmarked cash to fund the appropriate studies. For more than a year, planning proceeded largely out of public view. Then, in 1993, an Anchorage teachers' union rep named Nick Begich—son of one of Alaska's most important political families—found a notice about Haarp in the Australian conspiracy magazine Nexus. In 1995, he self-published a book, Angels Don't Play This HAARP. It sold 100,000 copies. He started giving speeches on Haarp's dangers everywhere, from UFO conventions to the European Parliament.

Note: For more excellent information on HAARP, click here. There is much more than meets the eye here.

Health Care Battle: Lobbyists Outnumber Lawmakers
2009-08-14, ABC News
Posted: 2009-08-20 22:38:30
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/HealthCare/story?id=8322683

The time, money and manpower that lobbying firms devote to courting lawmakers reveals an investment inside the Beltway of staggering proportions. For every lawmaker in Congress, there are about six lobbyists pushing their health care priorities, according to a Bloomberg News investigation released today. That's about 3,300 registered health care lobbyists working Capitol Hill. A total of $263 million has been spent on health lobbying in 2009, according to the latest data from the Center for Responsive Politics. That's more money spent on health than any other sector this year. The list of the top 20 spenders in 2009 across all sectors includes the U.S. Chamber of Commerce at No. 1, spending more than $26 million, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) at No. 3, spending $13 million, and Pfizer in the No. 6 spot, spending $11 million. Also joining the ranks of the top 20 spenders this year are Blue Cross Blue Shield, AARP, American Hospital Association, American Medical Association and Eli Lilly, each having doled out between $7 and $10 million this year. Wendell Potter, a 20-year health insurance veteran and former CIGNA vice president, ... spoke out about insurance companies operating behind the scenes. Potter recalled previous health care fights, saying insurers have undoubtedly tried to shape the battle. "It is usually done through the PR firms that work for them," Potter said. "They want to keep their fingerprints off stuff like that. "With this history, you can rest assured that the industry is up to the same dirty tricks, using the same devious PR practices it has used for many years to kill reform this year, or even better, to shape it so that it benefits insurance companies and their Wall Street investors far more than average Americans," he said.

Note: For lots more on the corrupt medical/governmental complex, click here.

Where did that bank bailout go? Watchdogs aren't sure
2009-08-09, Sacramento Bee/McClatchy News
Posted: 2009-08-20 22:35:26
http://www.sacbee.com/838/story/2094756.html

Although hundreds of well-trained eyes are watching over the $700 billion that Congress last year decided to spend bailing out the nation's financial sector, it's still difficult to answer some of the most basic questions about where the money went. Despite a new oversight panel, a new special inspector general, the existing Government Accountability Office and eight other inspectors general, those charged with minding the store say they don't have all the weapons they need. Ten months into the Troubled Asset Relief Program, some members of Congress say that some oversight of bailout dollars has been so lacking that it's essentially worthless. "TARP has become a program in which taxpayers are not being told what most of the TARP recipients are doing with their money, have still not been told how much their substantial investments are worth, and will not be told the full details of how their money is being invested," a special inspector general over the program reported last month. The "very credibility" of the program is at stake, it said. The program was controversial from the start. Critics say it's unfairly rewarded the big banks and Wall Street firms that pushed the economy to the brink.

Note: For many revealing reports from reliable sources on the hidden realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.

President Obama in 'snooping' row over US car scrappage scheme
2009-08-07, Times of London (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
Posted: 2009-08-20 22:32:11
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6742322.ece

President Obama's effort to revive the American car industry with a "cash-for-clunkers" scheme has become embroiled in a row over government snooping. The problems arose after the Department of Transportation claimed that when dealers logged on to the clunkers website their computers – and everything on them – become the property of the US Government. "This application provides access to the Department of Transportation (DoT) CARS system," the warning message read. "When logged on to the CARS system, your computer is considered a Federal computer system and is the property of the United States Government. Any or all uses of this system and all files on this system may be intercepted, monitored, recorded, copied, audited, inspected, and disclosed to authorised CARS, DoT, and law enforcement personnel, as well as authorised officials of other agencies, both domestic and foreign." By the time the disclaimer had been circulated widely on blogs, posted on YouTube and become the subject of a ferocious on-air editorial by the conservative Fox News host Glenn Beck, the Department of Transportation had issued a statement saying that "we are working to revise the language". No explanation was given as to why the original disclaimer was worded so aggressively. Members of the general public do not need to log on to the website so were not asked to agree to the same conditions as dealers. Mr Obama's ... critics argue that the controversy is another example of the intrusiveness that will accompany the President's plans to expand the role of government in the lives of Americans.

Note: Watch a revealing Fox news video report of this unbelievable development at this link. Big Brother at work.

2 U.S. Architects of Harsh Tactics in 9/11's Wake
2009-08-12, New York Times
Posted: 2009-08-20 22:22:13
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/12/us/12psychs.html

Jim Mitchell and Bruce Jessen were military retirees and psychologists, on the lookout for business opportunities. They found an excellent customer in the Central Intelligence Agency, where in 2002 they became the architects of the most important interrogation program in the history of American counterterrorism. They had never carried out a real interrogation, only mock sessions in the military training they had overseen. They had no relevant scholarship; their Ph.D. dissertations were on high blood pressure and family therapy. They had no language skills and no expertise on Al Qaeda. But they had psychology credentials. Seven months after President Obama ordered the C.I.A. interrogation program closed, its fallout still commands attention. In the next few weeks, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is expected to decide whether to begin a criminal torture investigation, in which the psychologists' role is likely to come under scrutiny. The Justice Department ethics office is expected to complete a report on the lawyers who pronounced the methods legal. And the C.I.A. will soon release a highly critical 2004 report on the program by the agency's inspector general. The psychologists' ... fall from official grace has been as swift as their rise in 2002. With a possible criminal inquiry looming, Dr. Mitchell and Dr. Jessen have retained a well-known defense lawyer, Henry F. Schuelke III. Mr. Schuelke said they would not comment for this article.

Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the torture employed by the CIA and US military in "the war on terror," click here.

U.S. battling CIA rendition case in 3 courts
2009-08-10, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
Posted: 2009-08-20 22:17:47
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/09/BAHQ195SJR.DTL

The Obama administration is fighting on multiple fronts - in courts in San Francisco, Washington and London - to keep an official veil of secrecy over the treatment of a former prisoner who says he was tortured at Guantanamo Bay. The administration has asked a federal appeals court in San Francisco to reconsider its ruling allowing Binyam Mohamed and four other former or current prisoners to sue a Bay Area company for allegedly flying them to overseas torture chambers for the CIA. Most recently, a British government lawyer told her nation's High Court last month that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had threatened to limit U.S. intelligence-sharing with Great Britain if the court disclosed details of Mohamed's treatment in Guantanamo. The British court declared in August 2008 that there was evidence Mohamed had been tortured, but deleted the details from its public version of the ruling at the Bush administration's insistence. Mohamed, 30, an Ethiopian refugee and British resident, ... and four other men have sued Jeppesen Dataplan, a San Jose subsidiary of the Boeing Co., for its alleged role in arranging their flights for the CIA. A Council of Europe report in 2007 described Jeppesen as the CIA's aviation services provider. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco reinstated the suit in April, rejecting arguments originally made by the Bush administration that the case posed grave risks to national security. Obama administration lawyers endorsed those arguments at a hearing in February and have asked the court for a rehearing. Mohamed's lawyers, Clive Stafford Smith and Ahmad Ghappour of the British human-rights group Reprieve, were threatened with jail after drafting a letter to Obama in February urging him to release the evidence of their client's treatment in U.S. custody or to authorize Britain to do so.

Note: For many illuminating reports from major media sources on government secrecy, click here.

Judge: CIA interrogations not relevant to 9/11 accused's sanity
2009-08-10, Miami Herald
Posted: 2009-08-20 22:13:31
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/guantanamo/story/1179756.html

U.S. military defense lawyers for accused 9/11 conspirator Ramzi bin al Shibh cannot learn what interrogation techniques CIA agents used on the Yemeni before he was moved to Guantánamo to be tried as a terrorist, an Army judge has ruled. Bin al Shibh, 37, is one of five men charged in a complex death penalty prosecution by military commission currently under review by the Obama administration. But his lawyers say he suffers a "delusional disorder," and hallucinations in his cell at Guantánamo may leave him neither sane enough to act as his own attorney nor to stand trial. Prison camp doctors treat him with psychotropic drugs. Army Col. Stephen Henley, the military judge on the case, has scheduled a competency hearing for mid-September. Meantime, the judge ruled on Aug. 6 that "evidence of specific techniques employed by various governmental agencies to interrogate the accused is . . . not essential to a fair resolution of the incompetence determination hearing in this case." Prosecutors had invoked a national security privilege in seeking to shield the details from defense lawyers. Many of the techniques used on the men have already been made public. They included waterboarding, sleep deprivation and sexual humiliation methods meant to break a captive's will. But Navy Cmdr. Suzanne Lachelier, the Yemeni's Pentagon appointed defense attorney, said court-approved mental health experts -- as well as the judge -- need to know the specifics to assess her client's mental illness. If he suffers post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of his CIA interrogations, there may be PTSD treatments that could make him competent.

Note: For many reports from reliable sources on the hidden realities of "the war on terror," click here.

A Window Into C.I.A.'s Embrace of Secret Jails
2009-08-13, New York Times
Posted: 2009-08-20 22:10:48
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/world/13foggo.html

In March 2003, two C.I.A. officials surprised Kyle D. Foggo, then the chief of the agency's main European supply base, with an unusual request. They wanted his help building secret prisons to hold some of the world's most threatening terrorists. Mr. Foggo, nicknamed Dusty, ... agreed to the assignment. With that, Mr. Foggo went on to oversee construction of three detention centers, each built to house about a half-dozen detainees. The existence of the network of prisons to detain and interrogate [captives] has long been known, but details about them have been a closely guarded secret. In recent interviews, though, several former intelligence officials have provided a fuller account. Mr. Foggo acknowledged a role, which has never been previously reported. He pleaded guilty last year to a fraud charge involving a contractor that equipped the C.I.A. jails and provided other supplies to the agency, and he is now serving a three-year sentence in a Kentucky prison. Eventually, the agency's network would encompass at least eight detention centers, including one in the Middle East, one each in Iraq and Afghanistan and a maximum-security long-term site at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The C.I.A. has never officially disclosed the exact number of prisoners it once held, but top officials have put the figure at fewer than 100. Mr. Foggo's success in Frankfurt, including his work on the prisons, won him a promotion back in Washington. In November 2004, he was named the C.I.A.'s executive director, in effect its day-to-day administrative chief. "It was like taking a senior NCO and telling him he now runs the regiment," said A. B. Krongard, the C.I.A.'s executive director from 2001 to 2004. "It popped people's eyes."

Note: Kyle "Dusty" Foggo's case is highly unusual. Very few high-level CIA officers have ever been imprisoned for corruption. His predecessor as Executive Director of the CIA, quoted in the article above, A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard, who held the office on 9/11, had been the chief executive of a branch of the investment company which placed the still unexplained "put options" on American and United Airlines stocks the week before the attacks, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars of profits to "unknown" parties.

Ministers must explain destruction of 'torture flight' papers, says panel of MPs
2009-08-09, The Guardian (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
Posted: 2009-08-20 22:06:25
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/09/diego-garcia-flights-mps-documents

Ministers must explain why crucial documents relating to CIA "torture flights" that stopped on sovereign British territory were destroyed, a panel of MPs has said. In particular, the MPs ... call for an explanation for the missing papers, which might explain the role of Diego Garcia, the British overseas territory, in the US's "extraordinary rendition" programme. The report says: "We recommend that the government discloses how, why and by whom the records relating to flights through Diego Garcia since the start of 2002 were destroyed." Foreign secretary David Miliband admitted 18 months ago that two US planes refuelled on the Indian Ocean island. The committee now wants a detailed account of the record-keeping and disposal policy regarding flights through the territory and "elsewhere through UK airspace". It also criticises the government's inability to offer assurances that ships anchored outside Diego Garcia's waters were not involved in the rendition programme. "The government must address the use of UK airspace for empty flights that may be part of a rendition circuit," says the report. Amnesty International said the MPs' verdict underlined the need for a full, independent inquiry into the UK's involvement in "war on terror" and human rights abuses. The committee also voiced disquiet over claims that British intelligence officers were complicit in the torture of detainees held overseas. According to documents revealed by the high court last month, an MI5 officer visited Morocco three times during the time British resident Binyam Mohamed claims he was secretly interrogated and tortured there.

Note: For many reports from reliable sources on the hidden realities of "the war on terror," click here.

Wish you weren't here: The devastating effects of the new colonialists
2009-08-09, The Independent (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
Posted: 2009-08-20 22:02:58
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/wish-you-werent-here-the-deva...

Jacques Diouf, head of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, has warned that the world may be slipping into a "neo-colonial" system. The extent of this new colonialism is vast. The buyers are wealthy countries that are unable to grow their own food. The Gulf states are at the forefront of new investments. Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar – which between them control nearly 45 per cent of the world's oil – are snapping up agricultural land in fertile countries such as Brazil, Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Egypt. But they are also targeting the world's poorest countries, such as Ethiopia, Cameroon, Uganda, Zambia and Cambodia. The amounts of land involved are staggering. South Korean companies have bought 690,000 hectares in Sudan, where at least six other countries are known to have secured large land-holdings – and where food supplies for the local population are among the least secure anywhere in the world. The Saudis are negotiating 500,000 hectares in Tanzania. Firms from the United Arab Emirates have landed 324,000 hectares in Pakistan. But they are not the only buyers. Countries with large populations such as China, South Korea and even India are acquiring swathes of African farmland to produce food for export. The Indian government has lent money to 80 companies to buy 350,000 hectares in Africa and recently lowered the tariffs under which Ethiopian agri-products can enter India. One of the biggest holdings of agriculture land in the world is a Bangalore-based company, Karuturi Global, which has recently bought huge areas in Ethiopia and Kenya. Food is not all the new colonialists are after. About a fifth of the massive new deals are for land on which to grow biofuels.

Swine flu jab link to killer nerve disease: Leaked letter reveals concern of neurologists
2009-08-15, Daily Mail (One of the U.K.'s most popular newspapers)
Posted: 2009-08-20 21:57:50
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1206807/Swine-flu-jab-link-killer-ner...

A warning that the new swine flu jab is linked to a deadly nerve disease has been sent by the Government to senior neurologists in a confidential letter. The letter from the Health Protection Agency, the official body that oversees public health, has been leaked to The Mail on Sunday, leading to demands to know why the information has not been given to the public before the vaccination of millions of people, including children, begins. [The letter] tells the neurologists that they must be alert for an increase in a brain disorder called Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS), which could be triggered by the vaccine. GBS attacks the lining of the nerves, causing paralysis and inability to breathe, and can be fatal. The letter, sent to about 600 neurologists on July 29, is the first sign that there is concern at the highest levels that the vaccine itself could cause serious complications. It refers to the use of a similar swine flu vaccine in the United States in 1976 when: * More people died from the vaccination than from swine flu. * 500 cases of GBS were detected. * The vaccine may have increased the risk of contracting GBS by eight times. * The vaccine was withdrawn after just ten weeks when the link with GBS became clear. * The US Government was forced to pay out millions of dollars to those affected. Concerns have already been raised that the new vaccine has not been sufficiently tested and that the effects, especially on children, are unknown. The British Neurological Surveillance Unit (BNSU), part of the British Association of Neurologists, has been asked to monitor closely any cases of GBS as the vaccine is rolled out. One senior neurologist said last night: ‘I would not have the swine flu jab because of the GBS risk.’

Note: For more on the swine flu scare and the dangers of vaccines, click here.

Bank Bonuses Far Exceeded Profits
2009-07-30, CBS News
Posted: 2009-08-09 16:28:55
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/07/30/business/main5197668.shtml

Several financial giants that received federal bailout money in the last year paid out bonuses to employees in 2008 that greatly exceeded the amount of profit generated by the banks, according to a study on executive compensation released by New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo Thursday. Despite claims by bank executives that bonuses are tied to the company's performance, the report states that "there is no clear rhyme or reason to how the banks compensate or reward their employees." Cuomo's investigation "suggests a disconnect between compensation and bank performance that resulted in a 'heads I win, tails you lose' bonus system." According to the report: • Goldman Sachs, which earned $2.3 billion last year and received $10 billion in TARP funding, paid out $4.8 billion in bonuses in 2008 - more than double their net income. • Morgan Stanley, which earned $1.7 billion last year and received $10 billion in bailout funds, handed out $4.475 billion in bonuses, nearly three times their net income. • JPMorgan Chase, which earned $5.6 billion in 2008 and received $25 billion from the government, paid out $8.69 billion in bonus money. • Citigroup and Merrill Lynch lost a combined $54 billion last year. They received a total of $55 billion in bailouts and paid out $9 billion in combined bonuses. ($5.33 billion for Citigroup; $3.6 billion for Merrill Lynch, which was subsequently acquired by Bank of America.) Bonuses have been a hot-button issue surrounding these federally bailed out banks for months, with company executives facing heat from ... local officials like Cuomo angered by the exorbitant compensation plans for the same people widely seen as responsible for the country's financial crisis.

Note: Click here to read the full report. For lots more on the realities behind the taxpayer bailout of Wall Street, click here.

Legal immunity set for swine flu vaccine makers
2009-07-20, MSNBC/Associated Press
Posted: 2009-08-09 16:25:24
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31971355/ns/health-swine_flu

The last time the government embarked on a major vaccine campaign against a new swine flu, thousands filed claims contending they suffered side effects from the shots. This time, the government has already taken steps to head that off. Vaccine makers and federal officials will be immune from lawsuits that result from any new swine flu vaccine, under a document signed by Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, government health officials said Friday. Since the 1980s, the government has protected vaccine makers against lawsuits over the use of childhood vaccines. The document signed by Sebelius last month grants immunity to those making a swine flu vaccine, under the provisions of a 2006 law for public health emergencies. It allows for a compensation fund, if needed. The government takes such steps to encourage drug companies to make vaccines, and it's worked. Federal officials have contracted with five manufacturers to make a swine flu vaccine. The last time the government faced a new swine flu virus was in 1976. Federal officials vaccinated 40 million Americans during a national campaign. A pandemic never materialized, but thousands who got the shots filed injury claims, saying they suffered a paralyzing condition called Guillain-Barre Syndrome or other side effects.

Note: Note for a powerfully revealing CBS report on blatant fear mongering and profiteering from the 1976 swine flue scare, click here. For many revealing reports on corruption in the medical/governmental complex, click here.

Flu Vaccine Panel Creates Priority List
2009-07-30, Washington Post
Posted: 2009-08-09 16:23:15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/29/AR20090729036...

A complicated list of who should get [swine] flu vaccine in the fall is now set. When the vaccine starts arriving in September, first in line will be pregnant women; the caretakers of infants; children and young adults; older people with chronic illness; and health-care workers. That's the advice of a 15-member committee of experts, which met all day Wednesday at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta to advise the federal government on vaccine policy. The priority list names targeted groups and suggests the order in which they should be vaccinated. "The results of this meeting will kick planning into high gear," said Pascale Wortley of the CDC's Immunization Services Division. "This is a watershed moment." All that's missing is the vaccine, knowledge of how well it works and the nitty-gritty details of how to deliver it to people's arms and noses. The vaccine will come in two forms: the traditional flu shot and a "live" vaccine squirted into the nose that contains a weakened version of the new virus. Some of the vaccine will be stored in multi-dose vials containing thimerosal, an antibacterial additive that contains mercury. But there will also be single-dose syringes without thimerosal, a substance that some assert is harmful to children. Among the many unanswered questions is whether two doses will be necessary to provide full protection, how close in time two shots can be given and how big the dose will be. Vaccination programs may start before the answers are known.

Note: Why is thimerosal being used? It is a mercury additive around which there appears to be a major cover-up. For several other revealing articles which suggest an dangerous agenda with the swine flu vaccine, click here.

Will Safety Fears Hurt Swine Flu Vaccinations?
2009-07-30, ABC News
Posted: 2009-08-09 16:19:57
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/SwineFluNews/story?id=8206167

With the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hoping to have 120 million doses of H1N1 swine flu virus vaccine ready before flu season this fall, some are raising concerns over what they see as an effort to rush the drug through safety trials. The source of many of these concerns is the probability that the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal will be an ingredient in some of the doses of the new vaccine. Concern over thimerosal has lingered for years. Groups opposed to current vaccination practices continue to condemn thimerosal as a toxin responsible for the development of autism and related ailments in children. Additionally, the possibility that the swine flu vaccine could also contain an adjuvant, an ingredient that would allow more doses to be created from existing supplies of the vaccine, has also worried these groups. "We don't have adequate safety studies on this vaccine before we are moving forward to market," said Lyn Redwood, president and co-founder of the group SafeMinds. "I'm really not convinced that we know for sure that the risk of the disease outweighs the risk of the vaccine, especially since this is a brand new additive that we have never used before in combination with thimerosal." During the 1976-77 flu season, a vaccine developed to prevent the spread of a strain of the swine flu was linked to an as-yet-unexplained increase in cases of a rare neurological condition known as Guillain-Barre syndrome in those who received immunizations.

Note: For many powerful reports from reliable sources on the dangers of vaccines, click here.

Thimerosal and the Swine Flu Vaccine
2009-07-29, ABC News blogs
Posted: 2009-08-09 14:52:17
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theworldnewser/2009/07/thimerosal-and-the-swine-flu-...

Today at the CDC in Atlanta, health officials are huddled, trying to game plan the best way to dole out a vaccine for swine flu. But what about the vaccine preservative thimerosal? Here is what the CDC says about Thimerosal: "There is no convincing evidence of harm caused by the low doses of thimerosal in vaccines, except for minor reactions like redness and swelling at the injection site." Thimerosal is no longer used in all child vaccines made in the US except for the flu vaccine. Here is the CDC on Thimerosal and flu shots: "Yes, the majority of influenza vaccines distributed in the United States currently contain Thimerosal as a preservative. However, some contain only trace amounts of Thimerosal and are considered by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to be preservative-free." It would seem likely that the new Swine Flu vaccine therefore would contain some amount of Thimerosal. It would also seem likely that will give some parents pause.

Note: For a powerful article on a major cover-up around thimerosal written by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., click here. For many powerful reports from reliable sources on the dangers of vaccines, click here.

Swine flu tally halted as school year fears loom
2009-07-17, MSNBC News
Posted: 2009-08-09 14:49:02
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31962005/ns/health-swine_flu

Worldwide cases of the new H1N1 swine flu virus are spreading so fast that overwhelmed global health officials have stopped counting and officials with the U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say they'll soon follow suit. "We don't know the extent of the challenges that we'll face in the weeks and months ahead," said Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of the National Center for the Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. Schuchat did not elaborate on how the CDC would inform the public about the extent of the outbreak, which has been confirmed in more than 40,600 people and implicated in 263 deaths in the United States. WHO had reported nearly 95,000 cases including 429 deaths worldwide. Earlier Friday, WHO officials said tracking individual swine flu cases is too overwhelming for countries where the virus is spreading widely. WHO will no longer issue global totals of swine flu cases, although it will continue to track the global epidemic.

Note: Why would they stop counting cases? The numbers have always at best been estimates. Millions died in the 1918 flu epidemic and they have counted and reported those numbers extenstively. Could it be someone or some group does't want us to know how few are actually dying? For several other revealing articles which suggest an dangerous agenda with the swine flu vaccine, click here.

Can the Military Find the Answer to Alternative Energy?
2009-07-23, BusinessWeek magazine
Posted: 2009-08-09 14:42:02
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_31/b4141032537895.htm

The big drive to create a viable alternative-energy future — by Detroit, multinationals such as IBM and BP, and Silicon Valley startups — is well-known. But there's another serious player in this sphere: the U.S. military, and especially DARPA [the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency]. Created at the height of the Cold War to bolster U.S. military technology following the Soviet Union's Sputnik satellite launch, the agency has a long history of innovation. Most famously, DARPA's researchers first linked together computers at four locations in the early 1960s to form the ARPANET, a computer network for researchers that was the core of what eventually grew into the Internet. Other breakthroughs have helped lead to the commercial development of semiconductors, GPS, and UNIX, the widely used computer operating system. Can DARPA now score another double success by changing how both the military and civilian worlds consume and produce energy? DARPA's first goal is always to magnify the might of the U.S. armed forces. That's why Arlington (Va.)-based DARPA is devoting an estimated $100 million of its $3 billion annual budget to alternative energy. DARPA describes itself as an incubator of long-shot technologies too risky for almost anyone else to take on. The agency operates by issuing challenges to companies that are so tough they are called "DARPA-hard." Typically, DARPA requires contractors to come up with solutions that are orders of magnitude superior to current technology. In addition to spurring the development of palm-size fuel cells, DARPA has contracted with companies to miniaturize solar cells that would supplant the need for generators.

New documents show the monkey virus is present in more recent polio vaccine
2001-07-22, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
Posted: 2009-08-09 12:01:42
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2001/07/22/MN173141.DTL

A monkey virus linked to human cancers may have contaminated the oral polio vaccine for years after the U.S. government ordered manufacturers to remove it. The Chronicle reported last week that the simian virus SV40 had contaminated early polio vaccine given to millions of Americans. When health officials discovered in 1961 that SV40 caused malignant tumors in lab animals, they ordered the virus eliminated from all future vaccine. But internal memos from Lederle Laboratories, the chief producer of polio vaccine in the United States, indicate SV40 may not have been completely removed. According to one memo, SV40 was found in three of 15 lots of the oral vaccine seven months after the federal directive was issued in March 1961. Lederle released the contaminated vaccine to the public anyway, the memo shows. Scientists discovered SV40 in the Salk polio vaccine in 1960. By then as many as 30 million Americans had been given injections of the SV40-tainted polio vaccine, which was first licensed in 1955. In recent years more than 60 scientific studies have found SV40 in rare human brain, bone and lung-related cancers, the same kinds of tumors the virus caused in laboratory animals. Some scientists believe SV40 may play a role in causing those cancers. The Lederle documents, which were obtained by Philadelphia attorney Stanley Kops in litigation not related to SV40, raise the possibility the virus might have been transmitted by contaminated oral vaccine, licensed for production in 1962.

Note: There are numerous major problems with how vaccines are monitored and developed, yet the media largely fails to address this major issue. For many powerful reports from reliable sources on the dangers of vaccines, click here. For lots more, click here and here.

Bankers Reaped Lavish Bonuses During Bailouts
2009-07-31, New York Times
Posted: 2009-08-02 23:54:45
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/31/business/31pay.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pag...

Thousands of top traders and bankers on Wall Street were awarded huge bonuses and pay packages last year, even as their employers were battered by the financial crisis. Nine of the financial firms that were among the largest recipients of federal bailout money paid about 5,000 of their traders and bankers bonuses of more than $1 million apiece for 2008, according to a report released Thursday by Andrew M. Cuomo, the New York attorney general. At Goldman Sachs, for example, bonuses of more than $1 million went to 953 traders and bankers, and Morgan Stanley awarded seven-figure bonuses to 428 employees. Even at weaker banks like Citigroup and Bank of America, million-dollar awards were distributed to hundreds of workers. Mr. Cuomo, who for months has criticized the companies over pay, said the bonuses were particularly galling because the banks survived the crisis with the government’s support. “If the bank lost money, where do you get the money to pay the bonus?” he said. All the banks named in the report declined to comment. Incentives that led to large bonuses on Wall Street are often cited as a cause of the financial crisis. Though it has been known for months that billions of dollars were spent on bonuses last year, it was unclear whether that money was spread widely or concentrated among a few workers. The report suggests that those roughly 5,000 people — a small subset of the industry — accounted for more than $5 billion in bonuses. At Goldman, just 200 people collectively were paid nearly $1 billion in total, and at Morgan Stanley, $577 million was shared by 101 people. All told, the bonus pools at the nine banks that received bailout money was $32.6 billion, while those banks lost $81 billion.

Note: How can this happen? Corruption abounds, yet the fact that you are reading this shows we can change it all. For lots more on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.

Military Poised to Help FEMA Battle Swine Flu Outbreak
2009-07-29, Fox News
Posted: 2009-08-02 23:51:13
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/07/29/military-poised-help-fema-battle-s...

The Pentagon is preparing to make troops available if necessary to help the Federal Emergency Management Agency tackle a potential outbreak of the H1N1 virus this fall, FOX News has confirmed. Defense Secretary Robert Gates is preparing to sign an order authorizing the military to set up five regional teams to deal with the potential outbreak of H1N1 influenza if FEMA requests help. A senior U.S. defense official told FOX News that the plan calls for military task forces to work in conjunction with the FEMA. No final decision has been reached on how the military effort would be manned, but one source said it likely would include personnel from all branches of the military. It is not known how many troops would be needed and whether they would come from the active duty or the National Guard and Reserve forces. In the event of a major outbreak, civilian authorities would lead any relief efforts, the official said. The military, as it would for a natural disaster or other significant emergency situation, could provide support and fulfill any tasks that civilian authorities could not, such as air transport or testing of large numbers of viral samples from infected patients. As a first step, military leaders have asked Gates to authorize planning for the potential assistance. Orders to deploy actual forces would be reviewed later, depending on how much of a health threat the flu poses this fall, the officials said.

Note: In conjunction with all the other evidence that the swine flu scare is bogus, it appears that it may also be designed to provide a "wedge" to break down the prohibition, established by the Posse Comitatus Act, against use of military troops in domestic operations. For many revealing reports from reliable sources on government and military threats to civil liberties, click here.

Power Shifts in Plan for Capital Calamity
2009-07-28, New York Times
Posted: 2009-08-02 23:47:25
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/28/us/politics/28continuity.html

A shift in authority has given military officials at the White House a bigger operational role in creating a backup government if the nation’s capital were “decapitated” by a terrorist attack or other calamity, according to current and former officials involved in the decision. The move ... was made in the closing weeks of the administration of President George W. Bush. Officials said the Obama administration had left the plan essentially intact. Under the revamped structure, the White House Military Office, which reports to the office of the White House chief of staff, has assumed a more central role in setting up a temporary “shadow government” in a crisis. And the office, a 2,300-person outfit best known for flying Air Force One, has taken on added responsibilities as the lead agent in shepherding government leaders to a secure site at Mount Weather in rural Virginia, keeping classified lists of successors and maintaining computer systems, among other operational duties. Many of these types of tasks were previously handled by civilians at other agencies, led by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Officials at other agencies that have traditionally played critical roles expressed concern that the new structure placed too much power in the hands of too few people inside the White House. They also saw the move as part of the Bush administration’s broader efforts to enhance the power of the White House. Though the office reports to the White House, many of its employees are uniformed soldiers, and it has sometimes been led by a military officer. While Obama administration officials would not discuss details of their continuity plan, they said the current policy was “settled,” and they drew no distance between their own policies and those left behind by the Bush administration.

Note: For more on the Shadow Government, click here. For lots more on government secrecy from major media sources, click here.

Let's Break up the Fed
2009-07-28, Wall Street Journal
Posted: 2009-08-02 23:44:27
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203946904574300263148640896.html

The Obama administration's plan to increase the powers of the Federal Reserve, says one critic, is like giving a teenager "a bigger, faster car right after he crashed the family station wagon." Broadening the Fed's responsibilities won't help. Instead, we should think of how best to dismantle an overextended Fed. The Fed has been incapacitated by its transformation into an omnibus enterprise with responsibilities ranging from boots-on-the-ground regulation to high-level monetary policy. The Federal Reserve Act of 1913, which created the Federal Reserve System, did so to forestall financial panics rather than pursue macroeconomic policies. The gold standard defined monetary policy. The Fed was merely meant to "provide an elastic currency" by serving as lender of last resort in times of crisis. The Act also assigned the Fed routine responsibilities for maintaining and improving the financial system – examining banks, issuing currency notes, and helping clear checks. The adoption of Keynesian and monetarist ideas by central bankers and elected officials subsequently cast the Fed in a proactive macroeconomic role. In 1977, an amendment to the 1913 Act explicitly charged the Fed with promoting "maximum" employment and "stable" prices. The Bank Holding Company Act of 1956 gave the Fed responsibility over holding companies designed to circumvent restrictions placed on individual banks. Congress further tasked the Fed with enforcing consumer-protection and fair-lending rules. While the record of the Fed's monetary policy has been mixed, its supervision of financial institutions has been a predictable and comprehensive failure. The Fed's excessively broad mandate also has thwarted accountability.

Note: The bill to audit the Fed (HR 1207) in the US Congress now has 276 co-signers -- more than 50% of all members. Yet the media is hardly reporting on this. Contact your Congressional representatives now at this link.

Bush Weighed Using Military in Arrests
2009-07-25, New York Times
Posted: 2009-08-02 23:35:32
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/25/us/25detain.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewa...

Top Bush administration officials in 2002 debated testing the Constitution by sending American troops into the suburbs of Buffalo to arrest a group of men suspected of plotting with Al Qaeda, according to former administration officials. Some of the advisers to President George W. Bush, including Vice President Dick Cheney, argued that a president had the power to use the military on domestic soil to sweep up the terrorism suspects, who came to be known as the Lackawanna Six, and declare them enemy combatants. A decision to dispatch troops into the streets to make arrests has few precedents in American history, as both the Constitution and subsequent laws restrict the military from being used to conduct domestic raids and seize property. The Fourth Amendment bans “unreasonable” searches and seizures without probable cause. And the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 generally prohibits the military from acting in a law-enforcement capacity. In the discussions, Mr. Cheney and others cited an Oct. 23, 2001, memorandum from the Justice Department that, using a broad interpretation of presidential authority, argued that the domestic use of the military against Al Qaeda would be legal because it served a national security, rather than a law enforcement, purpose. “The president has ample constitutional and statutory authority to deploy the military against international or foreign terrorists operating within the United States,” the memorandum said. The memorandum was declassified in March. But the White House debate about the Lackawanna group is the first evidence that top American officials ... actually considered using the document to justify deploying the military into an American town to make arrests.

Note: For many revealing reports from reliable sources on government and military threats to civil liberties, click here.

The Military Is Not the Police
2009-07-30, New York Times
Posted: 2009-08-02 23:32:58
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/30/opinion/30thu1.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pag...

It was disturbing to learn ... just how close the last administration came to violating laws barring the military from engaging in law enforcement when President George W. Bush considered sending troops into a Buffalo suburb in 2002 to arrest terrorism suspects. Unfortunately, this is not necessarily a problem of the past. More needs to be done to ensure that the military is not illegally deployed in this country. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 generally prohibits the military from law enforcement activities within the United States. The Lackawanna Six controversy is history, but there are troubling signs the military may be injecting itself today into law enforcement. The American Civil Liberties Union has been sounding the alarm about the proliferation of "fusion centers," in which federal, state and local law enforcement cooperate on anti-terrorism work. According to the A.C.L.U., the lines have blurred, and the centers have involved military personnel in domestic law enforcement. Congress should investigate. Civil libertarians are also raising questions about a program known as the Chemical, Biological, Radiological/Nuclear and High-Yield Explosives Consequence Management Response Force. The Army says its aim is to have active-duty troops ready to back up local law enforcement in catastrophic situations, like an attack with a nuclear weapon. That could be legal, but the workings of these units are murky. Again, Congress should ensure that the military is not moving into prohibited areas. After the lack of respect for posse comitatus at the highest ranks of the previous administration, the Obama White House and Congress must ensure that the lines between military and law enforcement have been restored, clearly, and that they are respected.

Note: For many revealing reports from reliable sources on government and military threats to civil liberties, click here.

Lab habits: Do depressed lab rats dictate international drug policy?
2005-06-02, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
Posted: 2009-08-02 23:14:55
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/jun/02/farout

The predominant model of drug addiction views it as a disease: humans and animals will use heroin or cocaine for as long as they are available. When the drugs run out, they will seek a fresh supply; the drugs, not the users, are in control. These conclusions, repeated frequently by politicians and the media, are based on experiments carried out almost exclusively on animals, usually rats and monkeys, housed in metal cages and experiencing a particularly poor quality of life. What would happen, wondered psychologist Dr Bruce Alexander, then of British Columbia's Simon Fraser University, if these animals were instead provided with a comfortable, stimulating environment? In 1981, Alexander built a 200sq ft home for lab rats. Rat Park, as it became known, was kept clean and temperate, while the rats were supplied with plenty of food and toys, along with places to dig, rest and mate. Try as he might, Alexander could not make junkies out of his rats. Even after being force-fed morphine for two months, when given the option, they chose plain water, despite experiencing mild withdrawal symptoms. He laced the morphine with sugar, but still they ignored it. Only when he added Naloxone, an opiate inhibitor, to the sugared morphine water, did they drink it. Alexander simultaneously monitored rats kept in "normal" lab conditions: they consistently chose the morphine drip over plain water, sometimes consuming 16-20 times more than the Rat Parkers. Alexander's findings - that deprived rats seek solace in opiates, while contented rats avoid them - dramatically contradict our currently held beliefs about addiction. Nobody seemed to care. Rejected by Science and Nature, Alexander's paper was published in the obscure Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior, where it was summarily ignored. Two decades later, Rat Park sits empty; addiction remains a disease and the war on drugs continues.

Note: Is it possible the powers that be want us to believe addiction is much worse than it really is?

CIA Brainwashing Suit Settled
1988-10-05, Chicago Tribune
Posted: 2009-08-02 23:11:12
http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/chicagotribune/access/24835384.html?dids=24835384...

Eight elderly Canadians who were victims of CIA-funded brainwashing experiments in the 1950s reached a tentative out-of-court settlement Tuesday in their multimillion-dollar damage suit against the U.S. spy agency. The Canadian plaintiffs, who say they suffered permanent mental and physical damage as a result of the bizarre experiments performed on them at a Montreal psychiatric hospital, will divide a $750,000 payment among them, according to their attorney, James Turner. The Canadians, all patients of the late Dr. Ewen Cameron at Montreal's Allan Memorial Institute in the late 1950s, were injected with repeated doses of mind-altering LSD, deprived of sleep, subjected to massive electroshock treatments and forced to listen to thousands of repetitions of taped messages taken from the most sensitive moments of their therapy sessions.

Note: Dr. Cameron was once President of the American and World Psychiatric Associations. For more on the severe abuses of doctors in serving the CIA's mind control programs, click here. For lots more reliable, verifiable information on CIA mind control experiments and programs, click here. The link above provides this abstract of the complete article, which can be accessed by payment of a small fee.

Sticker Shock: $23.7 Trillion Bailout?
2009-07-21, ABC News
Posted: 2009-07-26 23:02:22
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Politics/story?id=8140184

"The total potential federal government support could reach up to $23.7 trillion," says Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, in a report released today on the government's efforts to fix the financial system. "The potential financial commitment the American taxpayers could be responsible for is of a size and scope that isn't even imaginable," said Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., ranking member on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. "If you spent a million dollars a day going back to the birth of Christ, that wouldn't even come close to just $1 trillion -- $23.7 trillion is a staggering figure." The government has about 50 different programs to fight the current recession, including programs to bail out ailing banks and automakers, boost lending and beat back the housing crisis. So far they've cost taxpayers around $4 trillion. But Barofsky says if each federal agency spent the maximum potential amount involved in these initiatives, taxpayers could be on the hook for trillions more. The watchdog also warned today that hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars could be lost if the government does not increase the transparency of the TARP program, which he says has grown to an unprecedented scope and scale. Requiring TARP recipients to report on how government funds are used is among the recommendations urged by Barofsky. He also wants the department to report on the values of its TARP portfolio so taxpayers know about the value of their investments.

Note: For a treasure trove of revelations from reliable sources on the hidden realities behind the Wall Street bailout, click here.

With Big Profit, Goldman Sees Big Payday Ahead
2009-07-15, New York Times
Posted: 2009-07-26 22:59:14
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/business/15goldman.html?partner=rss&emc=rss...

After all that federal aid, a resurgent Goldman Sachs is on course to dole out bonuses that could rival the record paydays of the heady bull-market years. Goldman posted the richest quarterly profit in its 140-year history and, to the envy of its rivals, announced that it had earmarked $11.4 billion so far this year to compensate its workers. At that rate, Goldman employees could, on average, earn roughly $770,000 each this year — or nearly what they did at the height of the boom. Senior Goldman executives and bankers would be paid considerably more. Only three years ago, Goldman paid more than 50 employees above $20 million each. In 2007, its chief executive, Lloyd C. Blankfein, collected one of the biggest bonuses in corporate history. The latest headline results — $3.44 billion in profits — were powered by earnings from the bank’s secretive trading operations and exceeded even the most optimistic predictions. But Goldman’s sudden good fortune, coming only a month after the bank repaid billions of bailout dollars, raises questions for Washington policy makers. In Washington, some lawmakers warned on Tuesday that a quick return to such high pay would stoke public anger as the Obama administration tried to overhaul financial regulation. They warned that Wall Street lobbyists were already trying to block financial reforms. “People all over this country feel an incredible frustration that they are seeing their neighbors lose their jobs and the government is helping companies like A.I.G. and Goldman Sachs and then the next thing they are reporting huge profits and huge compensation,” said Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio and a member of the banking committee. “I think people are incredulous that this system is working this way.”

Note: For a treasure trove of revelations from reliable sources on the hidden realities behind the Wall Street bailout, click here.

Agencies to set up mass swine flu vaccinations
2009-07-21, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
Posted: 2009-07-26 22:55:57
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/21/BA6H18PA5J.DTL

Public health experts are gearing up for swine flu vaccinations this fall in what could be the largest mass-immunization campaign since the polio vaccine was introduced more than 50 years ago. Local public health agencies will bear much of the responsibility for vaccinating the public. For now, there are more questions than answers with regard to flu vaccinations, including how much of the vaccine will be made, when it will available, and who will get it first. In fact, the federal government has not officially announced plans to make a vaccine widely available, although it is expected to do so by the end of summer. "There's still a lot of information we have to figure out, and we're learning as we go," said Dr. Mantu Davis, deputy health officer with the Alameda County Public Health Department. "It's definitely a larger vaccination than anything we've seen, or anything in my lifetime." California authorities designed a mass vaccination plan years ago, under the assumption of a deadly pandemic flu and a limited vaccine supply, said Dr. John Talarico with the state public health department's Center for Infectious Disease. That plan is being revised, given that swine flu seems to be fairly mild so far and that a relatively large amount of vaccine may be available, even if it's not enough to give to everyone at once. A swine flu vaccine is still being designed, and the World Health Organization reported last week that a licensed version may not be available until the end of the year - weeks after the start of the flu season. An unlicensed vaccine - one that is still being tested but is deemed safe enough for the general public - may be available sooner.

Note: After hundreds died and thousands were crippled by a vaccine for the swine flu in 1976, how can they be talking about using an unlicensed vaccine? For lots more on the swine flu scare and the billions in profits for well-connnected pharmaceutical corporations and their major investors, click here.

9/11 Case Could Bring Broad Shift on Civil Suits
2009-07-21, New York Times
Posted: 2009-07-26 22:53:15
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/21/us/21bar.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewante...

The most consequential decision of the Supreme Court’s last term got only a little attention when it landed in May. And what attention it got was for the wrong reason. But the lower courts have certainly understood the significance of the decision, Ashcroft v. Iqbal, which makes it much easier for judges to dismiss civil lawsuits right after they are filed. They have cited it more than 500 times in just the last two months. On its face, the Iqbal decision concerned the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. The court ruled that a Muslim man swept up on immigration charges could not sue two Bush administration officials for what he said was the terrible abuse he suffered in detention. But something much deeper and broader was going on in the decision, something that may unsettle how civil litigation is conducted in the United States. For more than half a century, it has been clear that all a plaintiff had to do to start a lawsuit was to file what the rules call “a short and plain statement of the claim” in a document called a complaint. Information about wrongdoing is often secret. Plaintiffs claiming they were the victims of employment discrimination, a defective product, an antitrust conspiracy or a policy of harsh treatment in detention may not know exactly who harmed them and how before filing suit. But plaintiffs can learn valuable information during discovery. The Iqbal decision now requires plaintiffs to come forward with concrete facts at the outset, and it instructs lower court judges to dismiss lawsuits that strike them as implausible. “It obviously licenses highly subjective judgments,” said Stephen B. Burbank, an authority on civil procedure at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. “This is a blank check for federal judges to get rid of cases they disfavor.”

Note: For many important reports from major media sources on the erosion of civil liberties since the 9/11 attacks, click here.

Assassinations anyone? CIA claims of cancelled campaign are hogwash
2009-07-19, Toronto Sun
Posted: 2009-07-26 22:47:47
http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/eric_margolis/2009/07/19/1018410...

CIA director Leon Panetta just told Congress he cancelled a secret operation to assassinate al-Qaida leaders. The CIA campaign, authorized in 2001, had not yet become operational, claimed Panetta. His claim is humbug. The U.S. has been trying to kill al-Qaida personnel (real and imagined) since the Clinton administration. These efforts continue under President Barack Obama. Claims by Congress it was never informed are hogwash. The CIA and Pentagon have been in the assassination business since the early 1950s, using American hit teams or third parties. Assassination was outlawed in the U.S. in 1976, but that did not stop attempts by its last three administrations to emulate Israel's Mossad in the "targeted killing" of enemies. The George W. Bush administration, and now the Obama White House, sidestepped American law by saying the U.S. was at war, and thus legally killing "enemy combatants." But Congress never declared war. Washington is buzzing about a secret death squad run by Dick Cheney when he was vice-president and his protege, the new U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal. This gung-ho general led the Pentagon's super secret Special Operations Command, which has become a major rival to the CIA in the business of "wet affairs" (as the KGB used to call assassinations) and covert raids. America is hardly alone in trying to rub out enemies or those who thwart its designs. Britain's MI-6 and France's SDECE were notorious for sending out assassins. U.S. assassins are still at work. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, U.S. drones are killing tribesmen almost daily. Over 90% are civilians. Americans have a curious notion that killing people from the air is not murder or even a crime, but somehow clean.

Note: For more revealing information on this, click here. For more on assassination as a tool of state, click here.

Report: Bush program extended beyond wiretapping
2009-07-10, USA Today/Associated Press
Posted: 2009-07-26 22:44:57
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-07-10-report-surveillance_N.htm

The Bush administration built an unprecedented surveillance operation to pull in mountains of information far beyond the warrantless wiretapping previously acknowledged, a team of federal inspectors general reported Friday, questioning the legal basis for the effort but shielding almost all details on grounds they're still too secret to reveal. The report, compiled by five inspectors general, refers to "unprecedented collection activities" by U.S. intelligence agencies under an executive order signed by President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. Just what those activities involved remains classified, but the IGs pointedly say that any continued use of the secret programs must be "carefully monitored." The report says too few relevant officials knew of the size and depth of the program, let alone signed off on it. They particularly criticize John Yoo, a deputy assistant attorney general who wrote legal memos undergirding the policy. His boss, Attorney General John Ashcroft, was not aware until March 2004 of the exact nature of the intelligence operations beyond wiretapping that he had been approving for the previous two and a half years, the report says. Most of the intelligence leads generated under what was known as the "President's Surveillance Program" did not have any connection to terrorism, the report said. The only piece of the intelligence-gathering operation acknowledged by the Bush White House was the wiretapping-without-warrants effort. Although the report documents Bush administration policies, its fallout could be a problem for the Obama administration if it inherited any or all of the still-classified operations.

Note: For many disturbing reports on increasing threats to privacy under the pretext of protection against terrorism, click here.

U.S. Wiretapping of Limited Value, Officials Report
2009-07-11, New York Times
Posted: 2009-07-26 22:40:48
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/11/us/11nsa.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewante...

While the Bush administration had defended its program of wiretapping without warrants as a vital tool that saved lives, a new government review released Friday said the program’s effectiveness in fighting terrorism was unclear. Most intelligence officials interviewed “had difficulty citing specific instances” when the National Security Agency’s wiretapping program contributed to successes against terrorists, the report said. The program ... played a limited role in the F.B.I.’s overall counterterrorism efforts,” the report concluded. The Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence branches ... could not link it directly to counterterrorism successes, presumably arrests or thwarted plots. The report also hinted at political pressure in preparing the so-called threat assessments that helped form the legal basis for continuing the classified program, whose disclosure in 2005 provoked fierce debate about its legality. The initial authorization of the wiretapping program came after a senior C.I.A. official took a threat evaluation, prepared by analysts who knew nothing of the program, and inserted a paragraph provided by a senior White House official that spoke of the prospect of future attacks against the United States. These threat assessments, which provided the justification for President George W. Bush’s reauthorization of the wiretapping program every 45 days, became known among intelligence officials as the “scary memos,” the report said. Intelligence analysts involved in the process eventually realized that “if a threat assessment identified a threat against the United States,” the wiretapping and related surveillance programs were “likely to be renewed,” the report added.

Note: For many illuminating reports from reliable sources on the realities behind the "war on terror", click here.

CIA committed fraud in court, judge rules
2009-07-21, San Francisco Chronicle/Associated Press
Posted: 2009-07-26 22:36:16
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/21/MNPA18S5DU.DTL

A federal judge has ruled that CIA officials committed fraud to protect a former covert agent against an eavesdropping lawsuit and is considering sanctioning as many as six who worked at the agency, including former CIA Director George Tenet. According to court documents unsealed Monday, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth referred a CIA attorney, Jeffrey Yeates, for discipline. Lamberth also denied the CIA's renewed efforts under the Obama administration to keep the case secret because of what he calls the agency's "diminished credibility" in the case. The eavesdropping lawsuit was brought by a former agent with the Drug Enforcement Agency, Richard Horn, who says his home in Rangoon, Burma, was illegally wiretapped by the CIA in 1993. He says Arthur Brown, the former CIA station chief in Burma, and Franklin Huddle Jr., the chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Burma, were trying to get him relocated because they disagreed with his work with Burmese officials on the country's drug trade. Horn sued Brown and Huddle in 1994, seeking damages for violations of his civil rights because of the alleged wiretapping. Tenet filed an affidavit in 2000 asking that the case against Brown be dismissed because he was a covert agent whose identity must not be revealed in court. Lamberth granted the CIA's request and threw out the case against Brown in 2004. But Lamberth found out last year that Brown's cover had been lifted in 2002, even though the CIA continued to file legal documents saying his status was covert. The judge found that the CIA intentionally misled the court and reinstated the case against Brown.

Note: This may not seem like big news, but the fact that the CIA is facing court opposition is quite significant. In the past this never would have happened, much less have made it into a newspaper.

To meet June deadline, US and Iraqis redraw city borders
2009-05-19, Christian Science Monitor
Posted: 2009-07-26 22:25:59
http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0519/p06s05-wome.html

On a map of Baghdad, the US Army's Forward Operating Base Falcon is clearly within city limits. Except that Iraqi and American military officials have decided it's not. As the June 30 deadline for US soldiers to be out of Iraqi cities approaches, there are no plans to relocate the roughly 3,000 American troops who help maintain security in south Baghdad along what were the fault lines in the sectarian war. "We and the Iraqis decided it wasn't in the city," says a US military official. The base on the southern outskirts of Baghdad's Rasheed district is an example of the fluidity of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) agreed to late last year, which orders all US combat forces out of Iraqi cities, towns, and villages by June 30. Although the mission for most brigades and battalions is not expected to substantially change after June 30, US military officials have stopped using the term forward operating base in favor of the more benign-sounding contingency operating site. The SOFA and a wider strategic framework agreement set out a relationship between the US and Iraq very different from that of the military occupation of the past six years. One of the challenges of that new relationship is how the US can continue to wield influence on key decisions without being seen to do so. "For so long we have been one of the driving forces here ... it is such a hard habit to break," says a senior US State Department official. "I think we need to do everything we can not to make ourselves an issue. It has to be seen here as doing it quietly ... so that you are not doing things for the Iraqis, the Iraqis are doing things for themselves but with your help and we remain in the shadows.... It's a very delicate choreography," adds the State Department official.

Note: For a trove of revealing reports on the deceptive strategies used by the US to advance its wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan, click here.

Swine flu vaccine rushed through safety checks
2009-07-13, Times of London (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
Posted: 2009-07-19 15:00:19
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article6694046.ece

A swine flu vaccine will be fast-tracked for use in Britain within five days once it is developed, and 130 million doses are on order. The Department of Health expects to have enough vaccine this year to give it to half the population. Further supplies will be available if needed. Each person will need two doses of the vaccine, unless one single jab is found to provide high rates of immunity. The first doses specific to the H1N1 swine flu virus are set to arrive in September and could be given regulatory approval in less than a week. The move came after the first British patient without underlying health problems died from swine flu, taking the number of swine flu-linked deaths in Britain to 15. Peter Holden, the British Medical Association’s lead negotiator on swine flu, said that ... although swine flu was not generally causing serious illness in patients, health officials were eager to start a mass vaccination campaign, starting first on groups that were susceptible to infection or prone to complications. It is likely that the elderly would be given a seasonal flu jab to guard against other circulating flu strains — as happens every year — as well as the swine flu vaccination. “The high-risk groups will be done at GPs’ surgeries. People are still making decisions over this, but we want to get cracking before we get a second wave, which is traditionally far more virulent,” Dr Holden said. It takes several weeks or months to make flu vaccines, which are cultured using chicken eggs. The European Medicines Agency said the fast-tracked approval procedure has involved trials of a “mock-up” vaccine and that the speed would not compromise patient safety. “The vaccines are authorised with a detailed risk management plan,” the agency said.

Important Note: Don't be fooled by this media propaganda. The same rushed attitude is what led to hundreds of deaths from the swine flu vaccine in 1976. Click here for a powerful CBS 60 Minutes video showing how a huge vaccine propaganda campaign by the government led to these deaths. And a recent article in The Scotsman quotes a spokesperson for the Scottish government saying "We have said that a vaccine is being worked on and the plan is to vaccinate everybody." Remember that the media is beholden to pharmaceutical companies for billions of dollars in advertising income. For lots more powerful information on this vital topic, click here.

Doctors demand inquest into death of Dr David Kelly
2009-07-13, The Telegraph (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
Posted: 2009-07-19 14:56:49
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/5811102/Doctors-demand-inquest-into-de...

A group of 13 doctors who believe that Dr David Kelly, the Government scientist, did not commit suicide, but was murdered, are launching a legal campaign to demand an inquest. The original inquest into Dr Kelly's death six years ago in woods near his Oxfordshire home was suspended by Lord Falconer, then the Lord Chancellor. He designated the Hutton Inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the weapons inspector's death as "fulfilling the function of an inquest". Dr Kelly died shortly after he was exposed as the source for a story claiming the Government "probably knew" that a claim Iraq could attack with weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes was not true. A team of doctors unconvinced by the findings of the Hutton Report has compiled a dossier which claims that a cut to the ulnar artery in Dr Kelly's wrist could not have killed him. The 12-page document concludes: "The bleeding from Dr Kelly's ulnar artery is highly unlikely to have been so voluminous and rapid that it was the cause of death." Among the doctors is ... is David Halpin, 69, a former lecturer in anatomy at King's College, London, and a former consultant in orthopaedic and trauma surgery at Torbay Hospital, who later went into general practice. Dr Halpin said they had argued their case in the legal document in "microscopic" detail and added: "We reject haemorrhage as the cause of death and see no contrary opinion which would stand its ground. I think it is highly likely he was assassinated." The doctors have been working closely with Norman Baker, the Liberal Democrat MP, who believes the scientist was murdered by enemies he made in the course of his work as a weapons inspector.

Note: For a trove of revelatory reports on assassinations as a tool of state, click here.

C Street House at Congress Run by Secretive 'The Family'
2009-07-13, MSNBC
Posted: 2009-07-19 14:53:39
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31890176

We ... have more tonight on the secretive religious group, the Family, that appears to be the connective tissue of the Senator Ensign sex scandal and the Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina sex scandal. Jeff Sharlet, who infiltrated and who wrote on this little understood organization, will be back with us tonight. If you consult this building‘s financial paper trail, you will find that it‘s actually considered to be a church. That designation makes C Street a convenient tax-free haven for the secretive organization that runs it, an organization known as the Family. It also makes for some awkward tax and income questions for the at least five, probably seven members of Congress who live at the house, in exchange for what appears to be substantially below market rent. Jeff Sharlet, who secretly infiltrated the family to write a book [The Family] about them, the C Street house is a former convent. It‘s used as a sort of subsidized, really upscale dorm for members of Congress who are associated with this powerful, poorly understood religious group. The Family and the house at C Street have ended up reluctantly in the headlines now because of the two major politicians‘ sex scandals that are embroiling the Republican Party this summer and that have taken two of their reported 2012 presidential hopefuls out of political contention. Embattled Nevada Senator John Ensign lives at the C Street house. The husband of Senator Ensign‘s mistress says that prominent members of the Family ... as well as other members of Congress who live at C Street—were both aware of Ensign‘s secret affair and were involved in his efforts to pay off the mistress and her family. South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford mentioned C Street by name in his long public statement of regret about his affair with a woman in Argentina.

Note: To watch this amazing segment at YouTube, click here. And for more on how political sex scandals may be much more commonplace than you might think, click here.

Senate Blocks Bid to Audit Federal Reserve
2009-07-09, Fox News
Posted: 2009-07-19 14:50:07
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,531045,00.html

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO, HOST: Despite growing pressure from the House and ordinary people, the Senate decided not to increase scrutiny on the Federal Reserve. They actually blocked a bid on procedural grounds to have the Government Accountability Office audit the Federal Reserve and issue a report. Here is Republican Senator Jim DeMint. Senator DeMint, ... Why should the Federal Reserve be audited? DEMINT: Well, the value of our dollar, our whole economic system, rides on [this] unelected, secret agency called the Federal Reserve. We're not sure what they're doing right now. And Ron Paul in the House with over half of the House signing up as cosponsors, and me and Bernie Sanders in the Senate are pushing the idea of a complete audit of the Federal Reserve, because frankly, a lot of us here in this country and around the world, are concerned that we're going to destroy the American dollar and the worldwide reserve currency. NAPOLITANO: How is it that legislation that has more than half the members of the House behind it and is proposed by a staunch conservative Republican like you and then independent socialists like Bernie Sanders is stopped on the floor of the Senate cold before you can even formally introduce it, before you can make a speech in favor of it? DEMINT: Well, if we could get the Federal Reserve under control, it would make it more difficult for the Obama administration, I think, to carry out the continued spending and growing of debt. Because one thing we're concerned about is the Federal Reserve ... will do what we call monetize the debt, basically print money, buy our own debt as a country, and devalue the dollar that way.

Note: For two powerful, short videos revealing efforts to expose the intriguing secrets of the Federal Reserve, click here and here. If you care about the financial health of the U.S. and its implications in our world, these are both must watch videos.

As government tags passports, licenses, critics fear privacy is 'chipped' away
2009-07-11, Los Angeles Times
Posted: 2009-07-19 14:47:14
http://www.latimes.com/business/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-us-chipping-america-i...

Climbing into his Volvo, outfitted with a Matrics antenna and a Motorola reader he'd bought on eBay for $190, Chris Paget cruised the streets of San Francisco with this objective: To read the identity cards of strangers, wirelessly, without ever leaving his car. It took him 20 minutes to strike hacker's gold. Zipping past Fisherman's Wharf, his scanner detected, then downloaded to his laptop, the unique serial numbers of two pedestrians' electronic U.S. passport cards embedded with radio frequency identification, or RFID, tags. Within an hour, he'd "skimmed" the identifiers of four more of the new, microchipped PASS cards from a distance of 20 feet. Paget's February experiment demonstrated something privacy advocates had feared for years: That RFID, coupled with other technologies, could make people trackable without their knowledge or consent. He filmed his drive-by heist, and soon his video went viral on the Web, intensifying a debate over a push by government, federal and state, to put tracking technologies in identity documents and over their potential to erode privacy. With advances in tracking technologies coming at an ever-faster rate, critics say, it won't be long before governments could be able to identify and track anyone in real time, 24-7, from a cafe in Paris to the shores of California. The key to getting such a system to work, these opponents say, is making sure everyone carries an RFID tag linked to a biometric data file. On June 1, it became mandatory for Americans entering the United States by land or sea from Canada, Mexico, Bermuda and the Caribbean to present identity documents embedded with RFID tags, though conventional passports remain valid until they expire.

Note: For lots more on corporate and government surveillance, click here.

Swine flu doses on way to Wales
2009-07-13, BBC News
Posted: 2009-07-19 14:44:17
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/wales_politics/8148345.stm

Enough doses of swine flu vaccines for everyone in Wales should begin arriving in the next few weeks. Latest figures show 64 confirmed Welsh cases, but new counting methods mean up to 1m people in Wales could be diagnosed with the illness long term. Up to six million doses would become available, with two per person, and those most at risk would be first in line to receive a jab. Experts will carry out tests and work out how to administer the vaccine. Wales' chief medical officer Dr Tony Jewell said it would be a huge logistical exercise. Dr Jewell said the vaccine would reduce the impact of a second phase of swine flu. "It will put us in a good position to modify it. It is an unprecedented situation," he said. So far 64 cases of swine flu in Wales have been confirmed by laboratory testing. Latest figures across Wales reveal that 426 people have gone to their local doctor in the past week with flu-like symptoms. Three were admitted to hospital over the last few days. Health officials said for every 100,000 people there have been 14.2 cases of flu-like illnesses. But Wales is behind other parts of the UK for infection rates. In Scotland the rate is 23.6 cases, while in England it is 51.9 cases. Seven people in Wales with swine flu had to be hospitalised but five have since been discharged. 17 people in the UK have died - all but one of them had underlying health problems. Experts say that for most people the illness is mild and gets better within five to seven days.

Note: 426 people had flu-like symptoms? Couldn't that be the normal flu? And all but one of the 17 who died had underlying health problems. Hmmmm. So why are they preparing six million vaccine doses? Could there be lots of money to be made here? A Wall Street Journal article states that $1 billion of our tax dollars have already been set aside with $7.5 billion more on the way. For more reliable information on manipulations involving swine flu, click here and here.

Pandemic flu shows need for pharma incentives: WHO
2009-07-14, Reuters News
Posted: 2009-07-19 14:41:00
http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE56D1XM20090714

Pharmaceutical firms need incentives, including lucrative patents, to keep creating drugs and vaccines against emergent threats such as the H1N1 influenza pandemic, the World Health Organization's head said on Tuesday. "Progress in public health depends on innovation. Some of the greatest strides forward for health have followed the development and introduction of new medicines and vaccines," said WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said. Chan, who last month declared a full pandemic underway from the H1N1 virus, said that patents can help ensure that companies develop medicines to "stay ahead of the development of drug resistance" in diseases like malaria and tuberculosis. The discovery of isolated H1N1 infections that resist the anti-viral Tamiflu, made by Roche and Gilead, and the global scramble to secure flu vaccines have shown the importance of robust research and development, Chan said. "Innovation is needed to keep pace with the emergence of new diseases, including pandemic influenza caused by the new H1N1 virus," she told a meeting on intellectual property and health, a contentious issue that has divided rich and poor nations.

Note: How much more blatant can it get? The WHO is telling us to pump money into the corrupt pharmaceutical corporations, who make huge profits from fear mongering and health disasters. When profit drives the health industry, which do you think comes first, money or public health? For lots more revealing, reliable information on the fear-mongering around swine flu, click here and here.

Swine flu resembles feared 1918 flu, study finds
2009-07-13, MSNBC
Posted: 2009-07-19 14:38:16
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31889365/ns/health-swine_flu

The new H1N1 influenza virus bears a disturbing resemblance to the virus strain that caused the 1918 flu pandemic, with a greater ability to infect the lungs than common seasonal flu viruses, researchers reported on Monday. Separately, a top official at the World Health Organization said Monday a fully licensed swine flu vaccine might not be available until the end of the year. The report could affect many countries' vaccination plans. But countries could use emergency provisions to get the vaccines out quicker if they decide their populations need them. The swine flu viruses currently being used to develop a vaccine aren't producing enough of the ingredient needed for the vaccine, and WHO has asked its laboratory network to produce a new set of viruses as soon as possible. Other tests showed the virus could be controlled by the antiviral drugs Relenza, made by GlaxoSmithKline, and Tamiflu, made by Roche AG, the researchers said. The World Health Organization said on Monday that vaccine makers should start making immunizations against H1N1 and that healthcare workers should be first in line to get them. The WHO has previously estimated that the world could have as many as 4.9 billion doses of H1N1 swine flu vaccine ready for the next flu season — but this assumes people only need one shot and production yields are similar to seasonal vaccine.

Note: Who's making the big bucks here? Why is the WHO so strongly promoting billions of doses of vaccines for a disease in which the vast majority of the relatively few people who have died had underlying causes. For more on the blatant corruption of our health industry from reliable sources, click here and here.

Ignore the health scare professionals: you won't die of swine flu
2009-07-12, The Telegraph blogs (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
Posted: 2009-07-19 14:35:20
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100002999/ignore-the-health-sc...

Swine flu is a nasty disease, but no nastier than other strains of influenza. True, it has killed hundreds of people in Mexico; but even there, other variants of ‘flu virus have been far more lethal. Why, then, the urgent need to inoculate the entire British population? Perhaps I’m being overly cynical, but I can’t help wondering whether we’re being pushed into a wrong-headed course of action by the health scare industry. We’re told that Tamiflu needs to be taken at once, without a moment’s delay – meaning that anyone with a sniffle is likely to start glugging the stuff. We’re also told that the virus may mutate, meaning – conveniently – that we’ll soon need a new variety of medicine. In any case, these flu vaccines have short shelf lives. Good news for the drug manufacturers and their lobbyists; bad news for the taxpayer. Ministers must suspect that the danger is being exaggerated. Yet they would rather spend gazillions than run the slightest risk of being accused of not having done enough. And, needless to say, there isn’t a medical advisory body in the world that will say: “Actually, minister, considering everything in the round, the danger posed by this virus is minor, and we recommend the disbandment of this panel”. You may think I am being unconscionably flippant. But back in April, when newspapers were filling their pages with science fiction scenarios of a deadly epidemic, I suggested that, taking everything together, we weren’t going to die of swine flu. Who has the better track record so far: the Big Pharma doom mongers, or this blog?

Affordable Health Care on the Critical List
2009-07-10, PBS Bill Moyers Journal
Posted: 2009-07-19 14:26:32
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07102009/watch3.html

Quality, affordable health care is on the critical list in America. And so is the newspaper business. So maybe it's not surprising that one of the most powerful papers in the country attempted an unholy alliance, trying to turn a profit from its newsroom's coverage of the fight for health care reform. You may have missed the story because it broke on the eve of the July 4th weekend. The publisher of The Washington Post, Katharine Weymouth — one of the most powerful people in the nation's capital — invited top officials from the White House, the Cabinet and Congress to her home for an intimate, off-the-record dinner to discuss health care reform with some of her reporters and editors covering the story. But she then invited CEOs and lobbyists from the health care industry to come, too — providing they fork over $25,000 a head, or a quarter of a million if they want to sponsor a whole series of these cozy little get-togethers. And what is the inducement she offers them? Nothing less than — and I'm quoting the invitation verbatim — "An exclusive opportunity to participate in the health care reform debate among the select few who will actually get it done." The invitation promises this private, intimate, and off-the-record dinner is an extension "of The Washington Post brand of journalistic inquiry into the issues, a unique opportunity for stakeholders to hear and be heard." Let that sink in. The "stakeholders" in health care reform in this case do not include the rabble — the folks across the country who actually need quality health care but can't afford it. If any of them showed up at the kitchen door on the night of this little soiree, a bouncer would drop kick them beyond the beltway.

Note: To read the complete text, click on the link above and scroll below the video box at the top of the page. For an excellent article on the Washington Post's ties to the CIA and manipulative politics, click here.

U.S. to vaccinate millions against swine flu
2009-07-10, Washington Post
Posted: 2009-07-12 18:27:46
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/09/AR20090709003...

School-age children will be a key target population for a pandemic flu vaccine in the fall, and they may be vaccinated at school in a mass campaign not seen since the polio epidemics of the 1950s. The federal government should get about 100 million doses of vaccine by mid-October, if the current production by five companies goes as planned. But enough vaccine for wide use by the 120 million people especially vulnerable to the newly emerged strain of H1N1 influenza virus will not be available until later in the fall. Those were among the messages administration officials delivered to about 500 state, territorial, city and tribal health officials yesterday at a "flu summit" at the National Institutes of Health's Bethesda campus. President Obama, speaking by audio link from the Group of Eight summit in L'Aquila, Italy, urged "complete ownership" of preparations for what he termed a "significant outbreak" of H1N1 flu in the next few months. "We want to make sure that we are not promoting panic, but we are promoting vigilance and preparation," he said. He added that "the most important thing for us to do is to make sure that state and local officials prepare now to implement a vaccination program in the fall." Children, pregnant women, adults with chronic illnesses, and health-care workers would probably be first in line for the vaccine, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told the gathering. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said "we would absolutely welcome" the idea that the nation's schools be a principal venue for delivering the vaccine. He called them "natural sites" and said that "to open our doors and be part of the solution really makes sense."

Note: The fear-mongering and vaccination plan continues. Note the Post's claim that "more than 1 million Americans have become ill from it." Where did they get this number? The CDC website at this link as of July 10th claims around 40,000 cases in the US. Could this mistake have been intentional? For lots more on this, see this link. And to watch a powerful segment from CBS 60 Minutes showing how government propoganda killed and maimed thousands during the swine flu scare of 1976, click here.

MIA may be a quarantine site in pandemic
2009-06-10, Miami Herald (Miami's leading newspaper)
Posted: 2009-07-12 18:22:48
http://www.miamiherald.com/business/story/1089929.html

Miami International Airport [MIA] and 18 other major American airports have been lined up to handle a future pandemic that could require them to quarantine international flights. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has set up stand-by quarantine/screening facilities at the 19 airports to which all flights from affected countries would be diverted. Nationally, airline and airport lobbyists predict chaos, saying there is no way the air-traffic system can handle such extensive rerouting. Now, new proposals are emerging in Washington, including one that would designate Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood, Orlando International and four other major airports as potential second-tier quarantine sites. Local officials say they understand the CDC will approve the new designations only if the airports pay for the quarantine facilities themselves. The CDC would pay for the quarantine stations at the 19 primary airports. The facilities are not cheap. A 2008 study by the Federal Aviation Administration concluded that setting aside space for health screenings and a quarantine of up to 200 people could cost $15,000 a month, with costs of an actual quarantine running into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood officials began developing a plan to handle quarantined passengers and flights several years ago during the bird flu scare. It calls for erecting air-conditioned tents on the runway ramps to screen or quarantine passengers before they enter the terminal. Quarantined passengers might have to remain for days to show they are not infectious.

Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib ... Bagram?
2009-07-11, Sunday Herald (One of Scotland's leading newspapers)
Posted: 2009-07-12 18:19:37
http://www.sundayherald.com/international/shinternational/display.var.2518245...

Noor Habib's hands shake as he draws a picture of how he says he was abused. He claims that he was taken to a small, darkened cell where his arms were tied to the ceiling and he was made to stand in waist-deep water for six hours at a time. He says he was beaten, threatened with dogs, and deprived of sleep. Habib was an inmate at the Bagram Theater Internment Facility, an American military detention centre outside Kabul. Over a period of more than two months, we tracked down 27 former detainees. There were others, but they were afraid to speak or had been warned not to. Many allegations of ill-treatment appear repeatedly in the interviews; physical abuse, the use of stress positions, excessive heat or cold, unbearably loud noise, being forced to remove clothes in front of female soldiers and in four cases, being threatened with death at gunpoint. All the men who spoke to us were interviewed in isolation and they were all asked the same questions. They were held at times between 2002 and 2008 and they were all accused of belonging to or helping al-Qaeda or the Taliban. None of the inmates were charged with any offence or put on trial. The camp has held thousands of people over the last eight years. Most of the inmates are Afghans but some were captured abroad and brought here under a process known as "extraordinary rendition", including at least two Britons. The Obama administration says they are dangerous men and it classifies them as "terrorist suspects" and "enemy combatants" rather than "prisoners of war". It is a legal classification that critics say deliberately denies inmates access to lawyers or the right to appeal or even complain about their treatment.

Note: For more revelations from reliable, verifiable sources of the horrific abuses carried out under US direction at secret prisons worldwide, click here.

Kelly's Book of Secrets
2009-07-05, Daily Express (One of the UK's largest-circulation newspapers)
Posted: 2009-07-12 18:16:51
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/111971/Kelly-s-book-of-secrets

Weapons inspector David Kelly was writing a book exposing highly damaging government secrets before his ­mysterious death. He was intending to reveal that he warned Prime Minister Tony Blair there were no weapons of mass destruction anywhere in Iraq weeks before the ­British and American invasion. He had several discussions with a publisher in Oxford and was seeking advice on how far he could go without breaking the law on secrets. Following his death, his computers were seized and it is still not known if any rough draft was discovered by investigators and, if so, what happened to the material. Dr Kelly was also intending to lift the lid on a potentially bigger scandal, his own secret dealings in germ warfare with the apartheid regime in South Africa. US television investigators have spent four years preparing a 90-minute documentary, Anthrax War, suggesting there is a global black market in anthrax and exposing the mystery “suicides” of five government germ warfare scientists from around the world. Director Bob Coen said: ‘‘The deeper you look into the murky world of governments and germ warfare, the more worrying it becomes. We have proved there is a black ­market in anthrax. David Kelly was of particular interest to us because he was a world expert on anthrax and he was involved in some degree with assisting the secret germ warfare programme in apartheid South Africa.” Dr Kelly was found dead in woods near his Oxfordshire home on July 17 2003. His apparent suicide came two days after he was interrogated in the Commons over his behind-the-scenes role in exposing the flaws in the “sexed-up” Number 10 dossier which justified Britain going to war with Iraq. Conspiracy theorists have claimed he was murdered.

Note: For more on the CBC documentary Anthrax War, click here. And to read about the strange deaths of 13 renowned microbiologists in the space of less than five months, click here.

The Alarming Record of the F.B.I.'s Informant in the Bronx Bomb Plot
2009-07-07, Village Voice (A progressive New York City street newspaper)
Posted: 2009-07-12 18:13:43
http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-07-08/news/the-alarming-record-of-the-f-b-i-...

Last month, police and the FBI arrested four Newburgh men on charges that they had plotted to bomb synagogues in the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx and fire a missile at a military jet. As more details emerged, however, the less the four defendants sounded like men with the skills to plan a sophisticated terror plot. They were small-time crooks, felons with long criminal records. What the indictment didn't say, and what the initial news reports didn't fill in, was the extent to which the fifth man in the plot, an unnamed FBI informant, had provided the glue to hold the Newburgh 4 together. That informant was a Pakistani man named Shahed Hussain, code-named "Malik," who agreed to work for the FBI to obtain leniency after he was arrested in 2002 for fraud. Over a period of about a year, Malik met with [the] defendants ... while under FBI surveillance. The Newburgh bomb plot isn't the first of Malik's operations for the government. He played a similar role four years ago in an Albany case, in which he helped the FBI arrest a man named Mohammed Hossain, a cash-poor pizzeria owner, and his imam, Yassin Aref, after persuading them to launder $50,000 in a made-up plot to bring a missile to the U.S. and assassinate the Pakistani prime minister. In both cases, Malik did not stumble upon active terror cells plotting to bring destruction on American soil. Instead, in both Newburgh and Albany, he needed long periods of time to recruit his Muslim contacts, spin elaborate tales about his terror contacts, and develop solid plans of action, all the while providing the defendants with large amounts of resources and cash incentives. In each case, the question remains: Would either set of defendants have done anything remotely like plant bombs or launder money for terrorists if not for the prodding and plotting and encouragement of Malik and the FBI?

Note: For lots more from major media sources on the hidden realities behind the never-ending "war on terror", click here.

As rumours swell that the government staged 7/7, victims' relatives call for a proper inquiry
2009-07-03, Daily Mail (One of the UK's largest-circulation newspapers)
Posted: 2009-07-12 18:04:57
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1197419/Conspiracy-fever-As-rumours-s...

The country's worst-ever terrorist atrocity during London's morning rush hour on July 7, 2005, shattered for ever the heady euphoria in which the capital was basking the morning after winning the bid for the 2012 Olympics. That afternoon, Tony Blair - who was hosting the G8 summit on global poverty in Gleneagles, Scotland - returned to Downing Street to pronounce that the attack was an act in the 'name of Islam'. Later, at a meeting of the Government's national emergency committee COBRA, London's anti-terror police chief Andy Hayman told senior ministers that he suspected suicide bombers. And so the story of 7/7 that we have come to accept was pieced together: four British Muslims ... blew themselves up using home-made explosives, killing 56 and injuring 700 on three Tube trains and a double-decker bus. But families of the dead victims and an increasing number of 7/7 survivors claim there are inconsistencies and basic mistakes in the official accounts that need explanation. And they are demanding a full public inquiry to answer key questions about what the Intelligence Services and the police did and did not know before the bombings. Meanwhile, the Government's determined refusal to meet their demands is having a very dangerous side-effect - fuelling myriad conspiracy theories about 7/7. Books, blogs and several video documentaries point to oddities in the official accounts. [Some] of them suggest that the attacks were not the work of Muslim terrorists at all, but were carried out by the Government to boost support for the Iraq war. The survivors are so intent on an independent inquiry that they are now taking legal action in the High Court.

Note: The evidence laid out in this article of government complicity is quite strong. For revealing reports from reliable sources on the unexplained circumstances surrounding the London Bombings on 7/7/05, click here.

Missing Moon-Landing Videotapes May Have Been Found
2009-06-30, Fox News
Posted: 2009-07-12 18:01:08
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,529476,00.html

Just in time for the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing, NASA may have found the long-lost original Apollo 11 videotapes. Back on July 20, 1969, the raw video feed from the moon was beamed to the Parkes Observatory radio telescope in southeastern Australia, and then compressed and sent to Mission Control in Houston. Because of technical issues, NASA's images couldn't be fed directly to the TV networks. Instead, the grayish, blotchy images Americans saw on their TV sets were the result of a regular TV camera pointed at the huge wall monitor in Houston – a copy of a copy, in effect. Those images survive, and anyone can see them on YouTube. But the original, sharp, black-and-white tapes that were recorded at Parkes vanished. NASA had thought they'd been shipped to the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., But a search there a couple of years ago turned up nothing. Around the same time, though, a cache of tapes containing data from moon-surface experiments from the entire Apollo program was discovered in a university basement in Perth, Western Australia, on the other side of the country from Parkes. According to the Sunday Express, NASA has combed through those tapes and found the original Apollo 11 video footage. "We're talking about the same tapes," an unnamed NASA spokesman told the newspaper, though he added that "at this point, I'm not prepared to discuss what has or has not been found."

Note: Isn't it amazing that NASA could lose these invaluable tapes? There are many strange questions surrounding this issue.

Pentagon Exam Calls Protests 'Low-Level Terrorism,' Angering Activists
2009-06-17, Fox News
Posted: 2009-07-12 17:57:54
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,526972,00.html

A written exam administered by the Pentagon labels "protests" as a form of “low-level terrorism” – enraging civil liberties advocates and activist groups who say it shows blatant disregard of the First Amendment. The written exam, given as part of Department of Defense employees’ routine training, includes a multiple-choice question that asks: “Which of the following is an example of low-level terrorism?” – Attacking the Pentagon – IEDs – Hate crimes against racial groups – Protests. The correct answer, according to the exam, is "Protests." “Its part of a pattern of equating dissent and protest with terrorism," said Ann Brick, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, which obtained a copy of the question after a Defense Department employee who was taking the test printed the screen on his or her computer terminal. "It undermines the core constitutional values the Department of Defense is supposed to be defending,” Brick said, referring to the First Amendment right to peaceably assemble. She said the ACLU has asked the Defense Department to remove the question and send out a correction to all employees who took the exam. “There were other employees who were unhappy with it and disturbed by it,” Brick said. Anti-war protesters, who say they have been targets of federal surveillance for years, were livid when they were told about the exam question. “That’s illegal,” said George Martin, national co-chairman of United for Peace and Justice. “Protest in terms of legal dissent has to be recognized, especially by the authorities. It’s not terrorism or a lack of patriotism. We care enough to be active in our government.”

Note: For lots more on the continually-escalating government threats to civil liberties, click here.

Colorful Outsider Is Named No. 3 at the CIA
2001-03-17, Washington Post
Posted: 2009-07-12 17:45:11
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16570-2001Mar16.html

A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard, a ... former investment banker ... was named yesterday executive director of the CIA, bringing a fast-paced management style to the agency's No. 3 job. Central Intelligence Agency Director George J. Tenet announced the appointment, saying he treasures Krongard's "wise counsel and 'no-nonsense' business-like views." Krongard, 64, former head of Alex. Brown & Co., an investment bank based in Baltimore, joined the agency three years ago as a counselor to Tenet. He switched careers shortly after helping engineer the $2.5 billion merger of Alex. Brown and Bankers Trust New York Corp., gaining $71 million in Bankers Trust stock. Few of his former colleagues were surprised by his decision to trade a $4 million salary and stock options for the far less remunerative job of Tenet's consigliere. A graduate of Princeton and the University of Maryland Law School, Krongard has a fondness for extreme military-style activities. Even as a banking executive, he trained with police SWAT teams for recreation and worked out with a kung fu master. He maintained a shooting range on the park-like grounds of his home on the northern edge of Baltimore. In an interview yesterday, Krongard described his past duties as those of a "minister without portfolio" whom senior managers felt comfortable talking to about "sticky subjects." But Krongard exhibited the requisite secretiveness when asked to explain his interest in intelligence and how he came to land a job in Tenet's inner circle. If you go back to the CIA's origins during World War II in the Office of Strategic Services, he explained, "the whole OSS was really nothing but Wall Street bankers and lawyers."

Note: Buzzy Krongard was the executive director of the CIA on 9/11. His past ties to the investment firm which placed most of the extraordinarily high volume of "put options" on United and American Airlines stocks the week before the attacks is one of many strange "coincidences" unexplained by the official story of what happened on that horrific day. For more on this, click here. To read the entire article free of charge, click here.

Senate Bill Would Fine People More Than $1,000 for Refusing Health Care Coverage
2009-07-02, Fox News/Associated Press
Posted: 2009-07-04 20:59:03
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/07/02/senate-democrats-trim-cost-health-...

Americans who refuse to buy affordable medical coverage could be hit with fines of more than $1,000 under a health care overhaul bill unveiled Thursday by key Senate Democrats looking to fulfill President Barack Obama's top domestic priority. The Congressional Budget Office estimated the fines will raise around $36 billion over 10 years. Senate aides said the penalties would be modeled on the approach taken by Massachusetts, which now imposes a fine of about $1,000 a year on individuals who refuse to get coverage. Under the federal legislation, families would pay higher penalties than individuals. In a revamped health care system envisioned by lawmakers, people would be required to carry health insurance just like motorists must get auto coverage now. The government would provide subsidies for the poor and many middle-class families, but those who still refuse to sign up would face penalties. Called "shared responsibility payments," the fines would be set at least half the cost of basic medical coverage, according to the legislation. The goal is to nudge people to sign up for coverage when they are healthy, not wait until they get sick. The legislation would exempt certain hardship cases from fines. The fines would be collected through the income tax system. Obama wants a bill this year that would provide coverage to the nearly 50 million Americans who lack it and reduce medical costs. In a statement, Obama welcomed the legislation, saying it "reflects many of the principles I've laid out." The government's costs would be covered by a combination of higher taxes and cuts in projected Medicare and Medicaid spending.

Note: How can Congress even consider forcing people to buy insurance with threat of a major fine? What happened to the country of freedom and liberty? And is the people or the HMOs who benefit here?

Cybersecurity Plan to Involve NSA, Telecoms
2009-07-03, Washington Post
Posted: 2009-07-04 20:54:59
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/02/AR20090702027...

The Obama administration will proceed with a Bush-era plan to use National Security Agency assistance in screening government computer traffic on private-sector networks, with AT&T as the likely test site, according to three current and former government officials. President Obama said in May that government efforts to protect computer systems from attack would not involve "monitoring private-sector networks or Internet traffic," and Department of Homeland Security officials say the new program will scrutinize only data going to or from government systems. But the program has provoked debate within DHS, the officials said, because of uncertainty about whether private data can be shielded from unauthorized scrutiny, how much of a role NSA should play and whether the agency's involvement in warrantless wiretapping during George W. Bush's presidency would draw controversy. Each time a private citizen visited a "dot-gov" Web site or sent an e-mail to a civilian government employee, that action would be screened for potential harm to the network. Under a classified pilot program approved during the Bush administration, NSA data and hardware would be used to protect the networks of some civilian government agencies. Part of an initiative known as Einstein 3, the plan called for telecommunications companies to route the Internet traffic of civilian agencies through a monitoring box that would search for and block computer codes designed to penetrate or otherwise compromise networks. AT&T, the world's largest telecommunications firm, was the Bush administration's choice to participate in the test. AT&T officials declined to comment. The prospect of NSA involvement in cybersecurity ... fuels concerns about unwarranted government snooping into private communication."

Note: For lots more on government and corporate threats to privacy, click here and here.

To Critics, New Policy on Terror Looks Old
2009-07-02, New York Times
Posted: 2009-07-04 20:50:13
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/02/us/02gitmo.html

Civil libertarians recently accused President Obama of acting like former President George W. Bush, citing reports about Mr. Obama’s plans to detain terrorism suspects without trials on domestic soil after he closes the Guantánamo prison. It was only the latest instance in which critics have argued that Mr. Obama has failed to live up to his campaign pledge “to restore our Constitution and the rule of law” and raised a pointed question: Has he, on issues related to fighting terrorism, turned out to be little different from his predecessor? Mr. Obama’s critics say that ... the core problem with Mr. Bush’s approach ... was that it trammeled individual rights. And they say Mr. Obama’s policies have not changed that. “President Obama may mouth very different rhetoric,” said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “He may have a more complicated process with members of Congress. But in the end, there is no substantive break from the policies of the Bush administration.” Mr. Obama has also drawn fire from human rights advocates for fighting to prevent detainees in Afghanistan from having habeas corpus rights. Mr. Obama has also continued other Bush-era policies ... like the C.I.A.’s “extraordinary rendition” program ... and the invocation of the “state secrets” privilege to shut down some lawsuits. Jack Balkin, a Yale Law School professor, said Mr. Obama’s ratification of the basic outlines of the surveillance and detention policies he inherited would reverberate for generations. By bestowing bipartisan acceptance on them, Mr. Balkin said, Mr. Obama is consolidating them as entrenched features of government. “What we are watching,” Mr. Balkin said, “is a liberal, centrist, Democratic version of the construction of these same governing practices.”

Note: For revealing media articles from reliable sources on the hidden realities of never-ending "war on terror", click here.

Purity of Federal 'Organic' Label Is Questioned
2009-07-03, Washington Post
Posted: 2009-07-04 20:40:54
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/02/AR20090702033...

Three years ago, U.S. Department of Agriculture employees determined that synthetic additives in organic baby formula violated federal standards and should be banned from a product carrying the federal organic label. Today the same additives, purported to boost brainpower and vision, can be found in 90 percent of organic baby formula. The government's turnaround, from prohibition to permission, came after a USDA program manager was lobbied by the formula makers and overruled her staff. That decision and others by a handful of USDA employees, along with an advisory board's approval of a growing list of non-organic ingredients, have helped numerous companies win a coveted green-and-white "USDA Organic" seal on an array of products. Grated organic cheese, for example, contains wood starch to prevent clumping. Organic beer can be made from non-organic hops. Relaxation of the federal standards, and an explosion of consumer demand, have helped push the organics market into a $23 billion-a-year business, the fastest growing segment of the food industry. Half of the country's adults say they buy organic food often or sometimes, according to a survey last year by the Harvard School of Public Health. But the USDA program's shortcomings mean that consumers, who at times must pay twice as much for organic products, are not always getting what they expect: foods without pesticides and other chemicals, produced in a way that is gentle to the environment. "It will unravel everything we've done if the standards can no longer be trusted," said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), who sponsored the federal organics legislation. "If we don't protect the brand, the organic label, the program is finished. It could disappear overnight."

Note: For many revealing reports from major media sources on government corruption, click here.

Museum Gives Voice to Doubts on Dr. King's Killer
2002-10-16, New York Times
Posted: 2009-07-04 20:13:01
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/16/us/museum-gives-voice-to-doubts-on-dr-king-...

James Earl Ray, a drifter and ex-convict, shot and killed the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with a single bullet here on an April evening in 1968. That is the official story, the reason Mr. Ray spent the last three decades of his life in prison. Everybody knows it. But not everybody accepts it. Almost as soon as Dr. King was cut down -- and even more so after Mr. Ray recanted his guilty plea -- conspiracy theories abounded. Some said the assassin was an army sniper. Mr. Ray insisted he had been framed by a man named Raul, hired by the C.I.A. There was even a report that one of Dr. King's entourage had helped to kill him. Now ... the conspiracy theories have stirred to life again at the National Civil Rights Museum, in the former Lorraine Motel where Dr. King was shot. The museum recently opened an exhibit in a new $11 million wing primarily to document the assassination and the mystery that still surrounds it, at least in some people's minds. On display are 200 pieces of evidence, freshly unsealed from police archives. The gun. The 30.06-caliber bullet tweezed out of Dr. King's body. A fake passport and guidebook to Rhodesia found on Mr. Ray, curious artifacts for an unemployed ex-convict supposedly working solo. Questions are stamped on the wall, in bold letters. "Did Ray have help? Did someone else do it? Was the Memphis Police Department part of the conspiracy?" The King family believes that Mr. Ray, who died of liver disease in 1998, was not the killer. Dexter King, Dr. King's son, visited Mr. Ray on his deathbed. The government killed my father, Dexter King told him, not you. Mr. Ray's family said they were finally getting the vindication they deserved.

Note: In one of the biggest media cover-ups ever, the government was found guilty of consipiring to murder King in a 1999 civil trial in Memphis. The press strangely boycotted the historic trial. For more on this amazingly well kept secret, click here. For many revealing reports on the major US political assassinations, which consistently cast doubts on the official accounts of how they occurred, click here.

White House Weighs Order on Detention
2009-06-27, Washington Post
Posted: 2009-06-29 18:57:29
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/26/AR20090626033...

Obama administration officials ... are crafting language for an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely, according to three senior government officials with knowledge of White House deliberations. Such an order would embrace claims by former president George W. Bush that certain people can be detained without trial for long periods under the laws of war. In a May speech, President Obama broached the need for a system of long-term detention and suggested that it would include congressional and judicial oversight. "We must recognize that these detention policies cannot be unbounded. They can't be based simply on what I or the executive branch decide alone," he said. A senior Republican [Congressional] staff member said that senators have yet to see "a comprehensive, detailed policy" on long-term detention from the administration. "They can do it without congressional backing, but I think there would be very strong concerns," the staff member said, adding that "Congress could cut off funding" for any detention system established in the United States. Concerns are growing among Obama's advisers that Congress may try to assert too much control over the process. "Legislation could kill Obama's plans," said one government official involved. The official said an executive order could be the best option for the president at this juncture. Under one White House draft that was being discussed this month, according to administration officials, detainees would be imprisoned at a military facility on U.S. soil, but their ongoing detention would be subject to annual presidential review.

Note: Again the Obama administration is following in the footsteps of the Bush administration, despite prior promises not to do so. For more on threats to civil liberties from reliable sources, click here.

Lawmaker accuses Fed of "cover-up" in BofA deal
2009-06-25, Boston Globe/Reuters News
Posted: 2009-06-29 18:54:21
http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2009/06/25/lawmaker_accuses_fed_of_co...

The Federal Reserve sought to hide its involvement in Bank of America Corp's acquisition of Merrill Lynch as Merrill's financial condition worsened, the top Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee said on Wednesday. The Fed "engaged in a cover-up and deliberately hid concerns and pertinent details regarding the merger from other federal regulatory agencies," Representative Darrell Issa said in a statement released to Reuters. Bernanke has in the past denied any inappropriate pressure on Bank of America. Fed spokeswoman Michelle Smith on Wednesday referred to a letter Bernanke sent Representative Dennis Kucinich on April 30 and later testimony in which he offered an "unconditional assertion" that he did not ask Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis to withhold information regarding Merrill. The Democrat who heads the committee, Edolphus Towns of New York, has called Bernanke to testify on Thursday. Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has also been called to testify before Congress next month about the Bank of America-Merrill Lynch transaction. After rescuing Bank of America in January, U.S. regulators tightened their grip on the bank with a secret agreement that contributed to the ongoing shakeup of its directors and executives, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter. The paper, citing internal documents, added that Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair wrote to Bernanke before the aid to the bank was unveiled to express the FDIC's "discomfort" with the deal..

Note: For a treasure trove on the hidden realities of the governmental bailout of Wall Street, click here.

New Fed powers not matched with accountability
2009-06-25, Reuters News
Posted: 2009-06-29 18:51:05
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE55O6EZ20090625

President Barack Obama's proposal for a regulatory overhaul of the financial industry vastly expands the reach of the Federal Reserve, yet fails to make policy-makers more accountable for their actions. Critics argue that the new legislation fundamentally misses the problems that led to the financial crisis. It was a lack of enforcement by supervisors, they say, not insufficient rules, that fostered a cowboy culture of rampant risk-taking on Wall Street. "Obama is letting the Fed and everyone else off the hook by saying that the problem was with the regulations and not the regulators," said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic Policy Research in Washington. "If regulators know that even if they totally fail on the job, they will face no career consequences, then at some future point, when there is a choice between confronting the financial industry or just going along, the regulators will just go along," said Baker. Some feel uncomfortable with a broader role for the Fed primarily because of the Fed's closeness to the banking sector. The Fed is not technically a public entity. Each of the Fed's 12 branches are overseen by a nine-member board of directors, two-thirds of whom are elected by the bankers in the district. "The Federal Reserve has massive conflicts of interest that make it ill-suited for its present regulatory functions and certainly for an expanded regulatory reach," said Robert Auerbach, a professor of public affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. "The officials leading the Fed today preside over an organization that is run in substantial part by the bankers they regulate."

Note: For empowering insight into the historic roots of the Federal Reserve's unaccountability, click here.

'If I didn't confess to 7/7 bombings MI5 officers would rape my wife,' claims torture victim
2009-06-25, Daily Mail (a popular U.K. newspaper)
Posted: 2009-06-29 18:41:58
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1195484/If-I-didnt-confess-7-7-bombin...

A British man spoke publicly for the first time yesterday to accuse MI5 officers of forcing him to confess to masterminding the July 7 bombings. Jamil Rahman claims UK security officers were behind his arrest in 2005 in Bangladesh. He says he was beaten repeatedly by local officials who also threatened to rape him and his wife. Mr Rahman, who is suing the Home Office, said a pair of MI5 officers who attended his torture and interrogation would leave the room while he was beaten. He claims when he told the pair he had been tortured they merely answered: 'They haven't done a very good job on you.' Mr Rahman told the BBC: 'They threatened my family. They go to me, "In the UK, gas leaks happen, if your family house had a gas leak and everyone got burnt, there's no problems, we can do that easily".' He says he eventually made a false confession of involvement in the July 7 bomb plots. The extraordinary allegations will add to pressure on UK ministers to come clean over the way Britain's intelligence agencies have been allowed to gather evidence around the world in the eight years since the September 11 attacks. Jamil Rahman, a former civil servant from south Wales, is a British citizen who moved to Bangladesh in 2005 and married a woman he met there. He returned to the UK last year. He said: 'It was all to do with the British. Jamil Rahman is one of a number of former detainees who accuse the British Government colluded in their torture abroad. His account echoes that of former Guantanamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohamed, who said he was tortured in Pakistan and Morocco with MI5's knowledge. The 30-year-old Ethiopian says he was beaten and deprived of sleep to try to make him confess to an Al Qaeda 'dirty bomb' plot, and his treatment is now the subject of an unprecedented police investigation into MI5's conduct.

Note: For lots more on the hidden strategies used to maintain the "war on terror", click here.

D.C. Crash Kills General Who Scrambled Jets on 9/11
2009-06-24, Bloomberg News
Posted: 2009-06-29 18:37:10
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aGu5lX16VTk8

David F. Wherley Jr., the head of the Washington National Guard who scrambled jets over the city during the 9/11 terrorist attacks, was among those killed in the worst commuter train crash in the city’s history, officials said. Wherley’s wife, Ann, was also among the nine people killed when a train plowed into the rear of a stopped train during rush hour on June 22, Quintin Peterson, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Police Department, said in a telephone interview. Both were 62 and lived in southeast Washington. Wherley was commander of the 113th Fighter Wing at Andrews Air Force base in Maryland during the September 2001 terrorist attacks and sent up aircraft with orders to protect the White House and the Capitol, according to the 9/11 Commission report. He commanded the District of Columbia National Guard from 2003 to 2008, the unit said in a statement. Wherley flew T-38 training jets and F-105 Thunderchief and F-4 Phantom combat jets during a military career that began in 1969, according to the guard’s statement. It said he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Fordham University in New York City in 1969, and a master’s in business administration from the University of Maryland in 1977.

Note: Could there be something more than a mere accident behind the death of the commander of the air defense forces over Washington DC on 9/11? Many questions continue to swirl concerning what was in the air over the city that morning, what was launched by Gen. Wherley and when, and why no interception of an attack aircraft approaching the Pentagon occurred. He knew more than the public does about what really took place in those crucial hours, but he will now not be available for questioning should a real investigation into the 9/11 attacks take place. For lots more on the suspicions that surround the official explanation and calls by highly respected citizens for just such an investigation, click here and here.

Claims of 9/11 conspiracy have suspect running scared
2007-05-25, Rocky Mountain News (One of Denver's two leading newspapers)
Posted: 2009-06-29 18:08:30
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5555425,00...

A former Federal Emergency Management Agency videographer accused of killing his wife in Denver is seeking political asylum in Argentina, claiming the U.S. government wants him silenced for what he saw in the smoldering ruins of the Twin Towers after 9/11. Kurt Sonnenfeld's efforts to avoid extradition have gained interest from human rights organizations in South America and broad attention from conspiracy theorists on the Internet. Sonnenfeld, 44, is charged with first-degree murder in the New Year's Day 2002 shooting death of his 36-year-old wife, Nancy. Sonnenfeld is quoted by the Argentine newspaper el Pais as saying, "I realized that they were after something else: the tapes of Ground Zero in my possession." Sonnenfeld said he was arrested by Interpol agents on the new Denver charges a week after delivering a demo video of 9/11 footage to a TV producer in Argentina. "I find that extremely coincidental," he said. In other interviews with Argentine media, Sonnenfeld is quoted as saying, "What I saw (at 9/11) leads me to the terrible conclusion that there was foreknowledge of what was going to happen — the precautions that were taken to save certain things that the authorities there considered irreplaceable or invaluable. For example, certain things were missing that could only have been removed with a truck. Yet after the first plane hit one of the towers, everything in Manhattan collapsed and no one could have gotten near the towers to do that." Sonnenfeld is quoted as saying documentation was removed from U.S. intelligence agencies in the World Trade Center, including the CIA, prior to the attacks.

Note: To read a more recent, powerful Voltaire Network interview with Kurt Sonnenfeld, click here. The truth is coming out more all the time!

Only a Hint of Roosevelt in Financial Overhaul
2009-06-18, New York Times
Posted: 2009-06-23 13:48:57
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/18/business/18nocera.html

Three quarters of a century ago, President Franklin Roosevelt earned the undying enmity of Wall Street when he used his enormous popularity to push through a series of radical regulatory reforms that completely changed the norms of the financial industry. Wall Street hated the reforms, of course, but Roosevelt didn’t care. Wall Street and the financial industry had engaged in practices they shouldn’t have, and had helped lead the country into the Great Depression. Those practices had to be stopped. To the president, that’s all that mattered. On Wednesday, President Obama unveiled what he described as “a sweeping overhaul of the financial regulatory system, a transformation on a scale not seen since the reforms that followed the Great Depression.” In terms of the sheer number of proposals, outlined in an 88-page document the administration released on Tuesday, that is undoubtedly true. But in terms of the scope and breadth of the Obama plan — and more important, in terms of its overall effect on Wall Street’s modus operandi — it’s not even close to what Roosevelt accomplished during the Great Depression. Rather, the Obama plan is little more than an attempt to stick some new regulatory fingers into a very leaky financial dam rather than rebuild the dam itself. Everywhere you look in the plan, you see the same thing: additional regulation on the margin, but nothing that amounts to a true overhaul. The plan places enormous trust in the judgment of the Federal Reserve — trust that critics say has not really been borne out by its actions during the Internet and housing bubbles. Firms will have to put up a little more capital, and deal with a little more oversight, but once the financial crisis is over, it will, in all likelihood, be back to business as usual.

Note: To watch the Inspector General of the Federal Reserve testify to Congress that she knows pracitcally nothing of trillions of dollars that are unaccounted for, click here. For many revealing reports from reliable sources on the hidden realities of the continuing taxpayer bailout of the biggest financial corporations, click here.

Inventory Uncovers 9,200 More Pathogens
2009-06-18, Washington Post
Posted: 2009-06-23 13:45:58
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/17/AR20090617032...

An inventory of potentially deadly pathogens at Fort Detrick's infectious disease laboratory found more than 9,000 vials that had not been accounted for, Army officials said yesterday, raising concerns that officials wouldn't know whether dangerous toxins were missing. After four months of searching about 335 freezers and refrigerators at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Frederick, investigators found 9,220 samples that hadn't been included in a database of about 66,000 items listed as of February, said Col. Mark Kortepeter, the institute's deputy commander. The vials contained some dangerous pathogens, among them the Ebola virus, anthrax bacteria and botulinum toxin, and less lethal agents such as Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus and the bacterium that causes tularemia. Most of them, forgotten inside freezer drawers, hadn't been used in years or even decades. Officials said some serum samples from hemorrhagic fever patients dated to the Korean War. The overstock and the previous inaccuracy of the database raised the possibility that someone could have taken a sample outside the lab with no way for officials to know something was missing. The institute has been under pressure to tighten security in the wake of the 2001 anthrax attacks, which killed five people and sickened 17. FBI investigators say they think the anthrax strain used in the attacks originated at the Army lab, and its prime suspect, Bruce E. Ivins, researched anthrax there. Ivins committed suicide last year during an investigation into his activities.

Note: Fort Detrick is the home of the government lab which is suspected to be involved with the creation of many previously unknown lethal viruses and germs. For lots more, see the excellent work of Dr. Leonard Horowitz at this link and this one.

E-Mail Surveillance Renews Concerns in Congress
2009-06-17, New York Times
Posted: 2009-06-23 13:42:33
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/17/us/17nsa.html

The National Security Agency is facing renewed scrutiny over the extent of its domestic surveillance program, with critics in Congress saying its recent intercepts of the private telephone calls and e-mail messages of Americans are broader than previously acknowledged, current and former officials said. Since April, when it was disclosed that the intercepts of some private communications of Americans went beyond legal limits in late 2008 and early 2009, several Congressional committees have been investigating. Those inquiries have led to concerns in Congress about the agency’s ability to collect and read domestic e-mail messages of Americans on a widespread basis, officials said. Supporting that conclusion is the account of a former N.S.A. analyst who, in a series of interviews, described being trained in 2005 for a program in which the agency routinely examined large volumes of Americans’ e-mail messages without court warrants. Two intelligence officials confirmed that the program was still in operation. Both the former analyst’s account and the rising concern among some members of Congress about the N.S.A.’s recent operation are raising fresh questions about the spy agency. Representative Rush Holt, Democrat of New Jersey and chairman of the House Select Intelligence Oversight Panel, has been investigating the incidents and said he had become increasingly troubled by the agency’s handling of domestic communications. In an interview, Mr. Holt disputed assertions by Justice Department and national security officials that the overcollection was inadvertent. “Some actions are so flagrant that they can’t be accidental,” Mr. Holt said.

Note: For lots more from major media sources on the ever-increasing government and coroporate threats to privacy, click here.

Swine flu shots may go to kids first, Sebelius says
2009-06-16, USA Today/Associated Press
Posted: 2009-06-23 13:39:52
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-06-16-swine-flu-vaccine_N.htm

Schoolchildren could be first in line for swine flu vaccine this fall — and schools are being put on notice that they might even be turned into shot clinics. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Tuesday she is urging school superintendents around the country to spend the summer preparing for that possibility, if the government goes ahead with mass vaccinations. "If you think about vaccinating kids, schools are the logical place," Sebelius told The Associated Press. No decision has been made yet on whether and how to vaccinate millions of Americans against the new flu strain that the World Health Organization last week formally dubbed a pandemic, meaning it now is circulating the globe unchecked. But the U.S. is pouring money into development of a vaccine in anticipation of giving at least some people the shots. While swine flu doesn't yet seem any more lethal than the regular flu that each winter kills 36,000 people in the U.S. alone, scientists fear it may morph into a more dangerous type. Even in its current form, the WHO says about half of the more than 160 people worldwide killed by swine flu so far were previously young and healthy. If that trend continues, "the target may be school-age children as a first priority" for vaccination, Sebelius said Tuesday. "That's being watched carefully." The last mass vaccination against a different swine flu, in the U.S. in 1976, was marred by reports of a paralyzing side effect — for a feared outbreak that never happened. The secretary said: "The worst of all worlds is to have the vaccine cause more damage than the flu potential."

Note: This article admits "swine flu doesn't yet seem any more lethal than the regular flu that each winter kills 36,000 people in the U.S. alone." Be very cautious around any vaccination campaign. Vaccines are extremely poorly regulated and known to fill the wallets of rich politicians invested in them. For lots more reliable, verifiable information on this, click here.

Lawmakers Reveal Health-Care Investments
2009-06-13, Washington Post
Posted: 2009-06-23 13:36:20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/12/AR20090612040...

Almost 30 key lawmakers helping draft landmark health-care legislation have financial holdings in the industry, totaling nearly $11 million worth of personal investments in a sector that could be dramatically reshaped by this summer's debate. The list of members who have personal investments in the corporations that will be affected by the legislation -- which President Obama has called this year's highest domestic priority -- includes Congress's most powerful leaders and a bipartisan collection of lawmakers in key committee posts. Their total health-care holdings could be worth $27 million, because congressional financial disclosure forms released yesterday require reporting of only broad ranges of holdings rather than precise values of assets. Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), for instance, has at least $50,000 invested in a health-care index, and Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), a senior member of the health committee, has between $254,000 and $560,000 worth of stock holdings in major health-care companies, including Bristol-Myers Squibb and Merck. The family of Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), a senior member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee drafting that chamber's legislation, held at least $3.2 million in more than 20 health-care companies at the end of last year. "If someone is going to be substantially enriched by the consequences of the vote, particularly if it represents a meaningful amount of their net worth, then there is a problem," said Harlan Krumholz, a professor of medicine at Yale University.

Note: For more powerful information on major corruption in health care reform, click here. For lots more on government corruption from reliable, verfiiable sources, click here.

Torture, the painful truth
2009-06-15, Los Angeles Times
Posted: 2009-06-23 13:32:59
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-ehrenreich15-2009jun15,0,512919.story

Perhaps we protest too much. Torture, after all, is a venerable American tradition. If not quite as homespun as apple pie or lynching, it is at least as old as our imperial aspirations. We were waterboarding captives in one of our earliest wars of occupation, the Philippine-American War, which cost as many as 1 million civilian lives. In 1902, Teddy Roosevelt himself wrote with laconic praise of "the old Filipino method." Other techniques, crude or sophisticated, have filled the war bag since. CIA interrogation manuals from the 1960s, which lay out the basic stress-position and sleep- and sensory-deprivation techniques later applied at Bagram and Guantanamo, have been public since 1997. Despite our protestations, we have little to be surprised about. Now, when President Obama vows that "the United States does not torture" and spars with the former vice president over details, he crosses his fingers behind his back and saves himself a loophole. Via "extraordinary rendition" -- a Clinton administration innovation -- our government is still free to outsource torture and claim it doesn't know. The Obama administration has been relying increasingly on foreign intelligence services to detain and interrogate our suspects for us. Despite hundreds of front-page stories, we pretend we didn't know, that it was all somehow kept secret from us. This blindness serves a function. By declaring torture anomalous, by pushing it once again to the margins of legality, we can preserve a vision of U.S. military power -- and of American empire -- that is essentially benevolent. [But] maintaining military and economic hegemony over the planet remains an inherently bloody affair. Empire is a synonym for subjugation, and hence for violence on a massive scale.

Note: For a retired Marine Corps general's understanding of the real reasons behind both torture and mass slaughter of civilian populations by the US military, click here.

Military spending sets new record
2009-06-08, BBC News
Posted: 2009-06-14 14:42:09
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8086117.stm

Global military spending rose 4% in 2008 to a record $1,464bn (£914bn) - up 45% since 1999, according to the Stockholm-based peace institute Sipri. "The global financial crisis has yet to have an impact on major arms companies' revenues, profits and order backlogs," Sipri said. Peace-keeping operations - which also benefit defence firms - rose 11%. Missions were launched in trouble spots such as Darfur and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. "Another record was set, with the total of international peace operation personnel reaching 187,586," said Sipri. As the world's aerospace and defence industry prepares for next week's Paris air show centenary, it seems much of the focus is set to shift away from troubled civilian aircraft makers, which are struggling with reduced orders from recession-hit airlines, towards the companies that make fighter jets and other military hardware. In total, the 100 leading defence manufacturers sold arms worth $347bn during 2007, the most recent year for which reliable data are available. Almost all the companies were American or European. "Since 2002, the value of the top 100 arms sales has increased by 37% in real terms," Sipri said. US military spending accounted for 58% of the total global spending increase during the decade, with extra funds set aside to fight the "war on terror". "The idea of the 'war on terror' has encouraged many countries to see their problems through a highly militarised lens, using this to justify high military spending," said Sam Perlo-Freeman, head of the military expenditure project at Sipri.

Note: With all of the government cost-cutting in so many sectors, why aren't more people calling for military cutbacks? For a top U.S. general's insight into the profiteering that drives war (and "peacekeeping" operations as well), click here.

The Economy Is Still at the Brink
2009-06-07, New York Times
Posted: 2009-06-14 14:39:05
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/opinion/07cohanWEB.html

Whether at a fund-raising dinner for wealthy supporters in Beverly Hills, or at an Air Force base in Nevada, or at Charlie Rose’s table in New York City, President Obama is conducting an all-out campaign to try to make us feel a whole lot better about the economy as quickly as possible. “It’s safe to say we have stepped back from the brink, that there is some calm that didn’t exist before,” he told donors at the Beverly Hilton Hotel late last month. Mr. Obama thinks that the way to revive the economy is to restore confidence in it. If the mood is right, the capital will flow. But this belief is dangerously misguided. We are sympathetic to the extraordinary challenge the president faces, but if we’ve learned anything at all two years into the worst financial crisis of our lifetimes, it is that a capital-markets system this dependent on public confidence is a shockingly inadequate foundation upon which to rest our economy. We have both spent large chunks of our lives working on Wall Street, absorbing its ethic and mores. We’re concerned that nothing has really been fixed. We’re doubly concerned that people appear to feel the worst of the storm is over — and in this, they are aided and abetted by ... the fact that the Dow has increased by 35 percent or so since Mr. Obama started to lay out his economic plans in March. But wishing for improvement and managing by the Dow’s swings are a fool’s game. The storm is not over, not by a long shot. Huge structural flaws remain in the architecture of our financial system, and many of the fixes that the Obama administration has proposed will do little to address them and may make them worse.

Note: For many more important reports shedding light on the hidden realities of the US and world economic crisis, click here.

Fed Would Be Shut Down If It Were Audited, Expert Says
2009-06-10, CNBC News
Posted: 2009-06-14 14:33:18
http://www.cnbc.com/id/31204170

The Federal Reserve's balance sheet is so out of whack that the central bank would be shut down if subjected to a conventional audit, Jim Grant, editor of Grant's Interest Rate Observer, told CNBC. With $45 billion in capital and $2.1 trillion in assets, the central bank would not withstand the scrutiny normally afforded other institutions, Grant said. "If the Fed examiners were set upon the Fed's own documents ... to pass judgment on the Fed's capacity to survive the difficulties it faces in credit, it would shut this institution down," he said. "The Fed is undercapitalized in a way that Citicorp is undercapitalized." Grant said he would support legislation currently making its way through Congress calling for an audit of the Fed. Moreover, he criticized the way the Fed has managed the financial crisis, saying the central bank's target rate should not be around zero. "I think zero is the wrong rate for almost any economy," Grant said, adding the Fed has "embarked on a vast experiment in moral hazard. Interest rates are the traffic signals in a market economy, and everything's green. ... You have to wonder whether these interest rates are the right clearing rate or rather they are the imposition of a central bank." Amid a disparity between analysts predicting there will be no rate hikes soon and the fed funds futures indicating tightening by the end of the year, Grant said he thinks the Fed indeed will begin raising rates as inflation creeps into the picture. Fed funds futures have fully priced in as much as a half-point rise in the target rate from its current range of zero to 0.25 percent. "If the hairs on the back of your neck stand up when there's too much unanimity of opinion, then one begins to worry about this," he said. "The Fed proverbially has been late."

Note: For an astonishing five-minute video clip of a Congressional hearing where the Inspector General of the Fed acknowledges she knows almost nothing about trillions of dollars missing from the Fed, click here. For many more important reports shedding light on the hidden realities of the economic crisis, click here.

UN announces launch of world’s first tuition-free, online university
2009-05-19, UN News Centre
Posted: 2009-06-14 14:25:34
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=30848

A leading arm of the United Nations working to spread the benefits of information technology today announced the launch of the first ever tuition-free online university. As part of this year’s focus on education, the UN Global Alliance for Information and Communication Technology and Development (GAID) presented the newly formed University of the People, a non-profit institution offering higher education to the masses. For hundreds of millions of people around the world higher education is no more than a dream, Shai Reshef, the founder of the University of the People, told reporters. They are constrained by finances, the lack of institutions in their region, or they are not able to leave home to study at a university for personal reasons. Mr. Reshef said that this University opened the gate to these people to continue their studies from home and at minimal cost by using open-source technology, open course materials, e-learning methods and peer-to-peer teaching. Admission opened just over two weeks ago and without any promotion some 200 students from 52 countries have already registered, with a high school diploma and a sufficient level of English as entry requirements. Students will be placed in classes of 20, after which they can log on to a weekly lecture, discuss its themes with their peers and take a test all online. There are voluntary professors, post-graduate students and students in other classes who can also offer advice and consultation. For the University to sustain its operation, it needs 15,000 students and $6 million, of which Mr. Reshef has donated $1 million of his own money.

U.S. prison population dwarfs that of other nations
2008-04-23, New York Times
Posted: 2009-06-14 14:14:11
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/world/americas/23iht-23prison.12253738.html

The United States has less than 5 percent of the world's population. But it has almost a quarter of the world's prisoners. Indeed, the United States leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely distinctive American approach to crime and punishment. Americans are locked up for crimes — from writing bad checks to using drugs — that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations. Criminologists and legal scholars in other industrialized nations say they are mystified and appalled by the number and length of American prison sentences. The United States has, for instance, 2.3 million criminals behind bars, more than any other nation. The United States ... has 751 people in prison or jail for every 100,000 in population. (If you count only adults, one in 100 Americans is locked up.) The median among all nations is about 125, roughly a sixth of the American rate. "Far from serving as a model for the world, contemporary America is viewed with horror," James Whitman, a specialist in comparative law at Yale, wrote last year in Social Research. Prison sentences here have become "vastly harsher than in any other country to which the United States would ordinarily be compared," Michael Tonry, a leading authority on crime policy, wrote. Indeed, said Vivien Stern, a research fellow at the prison studies center in London, the American incarceration rate has made the United States "a rogue state, a country that has made a decision not to follow what is a normal Western approach."

Note: Many people are not aware that violent crime in the US has dropped by over 50% in the last 15 years. Yet the prison population continues to grow rapidly at the same time. For more on this, click here.

U.S. Accidentally Releases List of Nuclear Sites
2009-06-03, New York Times
Posted: 2009-06-08 09:52:34
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/03/us/03nuke.html

The federal government mistakenly made public a 266-page report, its pages marked “highly confidential,” that gives detailed information about hundreds of the nation’s civilian nuclear sites and programs, including maps showing the precise locations of stockpiles of fuel for nuclear weapons. The publication of the document was revealed Monday in an online newsletter devoted to issues of federal secrecy. It ... prompted a flurry of investigations in Washington into why the document had been made public. On Tuesday evening, after inquiries from The New York Times, the document was withdrawn from a Government Printing Office Web site. The information, considered confidential but not classified, was assembled for transmission later this year to the International Atomic Energy Agency as part of a process by which the United States is opening itself up to stricter inspections in hopes that foreign countries, especially Iran and others believed to be clandestinely developing nuclear arms, will do likewise. President Obama sent the document to Congress on May 5 for Congressional review and possible revision, and the Government Printing Office subsequently posted the draft declaration on its Web site. Steven Aftergood, a security expert at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, revealed the existence of the document on Monday in Secrecy News, an electronic newsletter he publishes on the Web. Mr. Aftergood expressed bafflement at its disclosure, calling it “a one-stop shop for information on U.S. nuclear programs.” The report lists many particulars about nuclear programs and facilities at the nation’s three nuclear weapons laboratories — Los Alamos, Livermore and Sandia — as well as dozens of other federal and private nuclear sites.

Note: For lots more on government secrecy from reliable sources, click here.

Drug Agency May Reveal More Data on Actions
2009-06-02, New York Times
Posted: 2009-06-08 09:49:14
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/02/health/policy/02fda.html

For years, the Food and Drug Administration has withheld information about drugs and medical devices from the public when their makers cite trade secrecy — even in cases where the agency suspects that the products are causing serious illness or death. Now the new leadership at the F.D.A. may change that. The Obama administration ... is setting up a task force within the agency to recommend ways to reveal more information about F.D.A. decisions, possibly including the disclosure of now secret data about drugs and devices under study. The goal is to open up a system in which the agency failed to inform the public that a widely prescribed heartburn drug was especially toxic to babies; that a diabetes medicine and a painkiller increased heart attack risks; and that antidepressants increased suicidal thoughts and behavior in children and teenagers. “Many people have been harmed over the last decade because the F.D.A. has treated clinical trial results of drugs and devices as trade secrets,” said Dr. Steven Nissen, a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic who has campaigned for the release of such information. In 2007, Dr. Nissen published a study showing that Avandia, a popular diabetes medicine made by GlaxoSmithKline, increased the risk of heart attack by 42 percent. The data Dr. Nissen used was made public because of a lawsuit, but the agency had known of the possible risk for nearly two years. Repeated scandals led the Bush administration in 2005 to promise to make public its product safety investigations more quickly, but it did not recommend changing the laws and regulations that govern the release of trade secrets and agency records.

Note: For a powerful summary of corrupt practices by government and corporations in the pharmaceutical industry, click here.

FBI: Crime falls in US, but small town violence up
2009-06-01, BusinessWeek magazine/Associated Press
Posted: 2009-06-08 09:46:06
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D98I04CG0.htm

Cities in the United States got safer in 2008, while small towns grew more dangerous, according to FBI data. The FBI says violent crime nationwide dropped by 2.5 percent last year. Property crimes also fell, by 1.6 percent, according to the preliminary data collected by the FBI. Cities with more than 1 million people saw murders fall by 4.3 percent; cities with 500,000 to 1 million people saw murders fall by nearly 8 percent. Yet in towns with fewer than 10,000 residents, murders rose 5.5 percent, rape increased 1.4 percent, and robbery 3.9 percent. The latest data shows violent crime fell for a second straight year, after increases in 2006 and 2005. Those two years, the crime rate began to rise after historic lows that began during the Clinton administration and continued into President George W. Bush's first years in the White House. Nationwide, murder and manslaughter dropped 4.4 percent in 2008. Aggravated assault declined 3.2 percent, forcible rape decreased 2.2 percent, and robbery dropped 1.1 percent. The country also saw a huge drop in car thefts -- more than 13 percent. The western region of the country saw the biggest declines, with a 4.2 percent drop in property crime and a 3.4 percent drop in violent crime. The Northeast saw a slight increase in property crime, which rose by 1.6 percent.

Note: You might not know that violent crime rates in the U.S. dropped over 50% between 1994 and 2005, and continue to be low now. Check out the U.S. Department of Justice reports on this by clicking here and here. Why weren't these figures mentioned in this article? And why doesn't good news like this get more coverage? Yet at the same time, imprisonment rates have climbed rapidly. What's up with that?

Aliens exist and UFOs are covered-up by US government, says ex-astronaut
2009-04-22, The Telegraph (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
Posted: 2009-06-08 09:38:42
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/space/5198506/Aliens-...

Alien life does exist but the truth is being covered up by the United States government, former NASA astronaut Edgar Mitchell has claimed. Mr Mitchell, who was part of the 1971 Apollo 14 moon mission, made the claims in a talk to the fifth annual X-Conference – a meeting of those who believe in UFOs and other life forms. He also said he had attempted to investigate the 1947 'Roswell Incident', which some believe was the crash-landing of a UFO, but had been thwarted by military authorities. The former astronaut, 78, said: "We're not alone. Our destiny, in my opinion, and we might as well get started with it, is [to] become a part of the planetary community. ... We should be ready to reach out beyond our planet and beyond our solar system to find out what is really going on out there." Mitchell grew up in Roswell, New Mexico, which some UFO believers maintain was the site of a UFO crash in 1947. He said residents "had been hushed and told not to talk about their experience by military authorities." He claimed he had raised the issue of evidence from local residents with the Pentagon 10 years ago. An unnamed admiral working for the Joint Chiefs of Staff promised to uncover more information for Mitchell but was denied access when he "tried to get into the inner workings of that process." Mitchell claimed the admiral now denies the story. "I urge those who are doubtful: Read the books, read the lore, start to understand what has really been going on. Because there really is no doubt we are being visited," Mitchell said. "The universe that we live in is much more wondrous, exciting, complex and far-reaching than we were ever able to know up to this point in time."

Note: For a powerful summary of evidence of UFOs presented by highly respected military and government officials, including Edgar Mitchell, click here.

Pentagon Plans New Arm to Wage Cyberspace Wars
2009-05-29, New York Times
Posted: 2009-05-31 18:17:32
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/us/politics/29cyber.html

The Pentagon plans to create a new military command for cyberspace ... stepping up preparations by the armed forces to conduct both offensive and defensive computer warfare. White House officials say Mr. Obama has not yet been formally presented with the Pentagon plan. But he is expected to sign a classified order in coming weeks that will create the military cybercommand, officials said. It is a recognition that the United States already has a growing number of computer weapons in its arsenal and must prepare strategies for their use — as a deterrent or alongside conventional weapons — in a wide variety of possible future conflicts. [A] main dispute has been over whether the Pentagon or the National Security Agency should take the lead in preparing for and fighting cyberbattles. Under one proposal still being debated, parts of the N.S.A. would be integrated into the military command so they could operate jointly. A classified set of presidential directives is expected to lay out the military’s new responsibilities and how it coordinates its mission with that of the N.S.A., where most of the expertise on digital warfare resides today. The decision to create a cybercommand is a major step beyond the actions taken by the Bush administration, which authorized several computer-based attacks but never resolved the question of how the government would prepare for a new era of warfare fought over digital networks. Officials declined to describe potential offensive operations, but said they now viewed cyberspace as comparable to more traditional battlefields.

Note: Combine this with the BBC's revealing article on US plans to fight the Internet, and there is reason for concern. For lots more on new developments in modern war planning, click here.

Abu Ghraib abuse photos 'show rape'
2009-05-28, The Telegraph (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
Posted: 2009-05-31 18:13:51
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/5395830/Abu-Ghraib...

Photographs of alleged prisoner abuse which Barack Obama is attempting to censor include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, it has emerged. At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee. Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube. Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts. Detail of the content emerged from Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq. Allegations of rape and abuse were included in his 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He has now confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph. The graphic nature of some of the images may explain the US President’s attempts to block the release of an estimated 2,000 photographs from prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan despite an earlier promise to allow them to be published. Maj Gen Taguba, who retired in January 2007, said he supported the President’s decision, adding: “These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency. “I am not sure what purpose their release would serve other than a legal one and the consequence would be to imperil our troops, the only protectors of our foreign policy, when we most need them. “The mere description of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it.”

Four states adopt 'no-smiles' policy for driver's licenses
2009-05-25, USA Today
Posted: 2009-05-31 18:09:42
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-05-25-licenses_N.htm

Stopping driver's license fraud is no laughing matter: Four states are ordering people to wipe the grins off their faces in their license photos. "Neutral facial expressions" are required at departments of motor vehicles (DMVs) in Arkansas, Indiana, Nevada and Virginia. That means you can't smile, or smile very much. Other states may follow. The serious poses are urged by DMVs that have installed high-tech software that compares a new license photo with others that have already been shot. When a new photo seems to match an existing one, the software sends alarms that someone may be trying to assume another driver's identity. But there's a wrinkle in the technology: a person's grin. Face-recognition software can fail to match two photos of the same person if facial expressions differ in each photo, says Carnegie Mellon University robotics professor Takeo Kanade. Dull expressions "make the comparison process more accurate," says Karen Chappell, deputy commissioner of the Virginia DMV, whose no-smile policy took effect in March. Arkansas, Indiana and Nevada allow slight smiles. "You just can't grin really large," Arkansas driver services chief Tonie Shields says. A total of 31 states do computerized matching of driver's license photos and three others are considering it, says the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators. Most say their software matches faces regardless of expressions. "People can smile here in Pennsylvania," state Transportation Department spokesman Craig Yetter says.

Note: For incisive commentary and a heart-warming video addressing this very topic, click here.

Great Day Talks To Architect Richard Gage About 9/11
2009-05-28, KMPH-TV (Fresno, CA Fox Network affiliate)
Posted: 2009-05-31 18:06:43
http://www.kmph.com/Global/story.asp?s=10445264

Kim Stephens: He’s an architect experienced in steel structures. Now Richard Gage is touring the country with a controversial message about September 11. Kopi Sotiropulos: Richard Gage is here to show us why he’s calling for a more thorough investigation into the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings. First of all give us a little bit more about your background. Gage: I’m an architect of twenty years, a member of the American Institute of Architects, and have been studying steel frame fire proof buildings for about that long. Kim Stephens: We ask that for clarification because as we get into this, we want people to make sure that you’re not just somebody with a wacky idea. You come with some science to you. What is the official reason for the collapse of the World Trade Center towers? Gage: Well we’re told that the planes hit the buildings, and there was an explosion and a fire, and about a hour and a half later, in the case of the north tower, the buildings collapsed due to structural weakening, due to the fires. The problem is that we don’t have large gradual deformations associated with collapses. And fires in high rises have never brought down a steel frame high rise building at all, ever. And what we have, unfortunately, is the evidence in the twin towers and the third skyscraper to collapse that day, which most people don’t know anything about it. We have the evidence of the ten key features of controlled demolition. In the case of building seven, it collapses straight down into its own footprint, at free fall speed, in the first hundred feet. It’s dropping, as you can see symmetrically, smoothly, at free fall speed, in the first hundred feet. Two and a half seconds. This is uncanny, there’s forty thousand tons of structural steel designed to resist this collapse.

Note: The above text is taken from the KMPH interview available here. Richard Gage, AIA, is the founder of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. Remarkably, this interview, though short, was respectful and evenhanded. No ridicule, no debunking, no "conspiracy theory" dismissals! To watch a 7-minute video of the interview, click on the link above. To read a transcript of the interview, click here. For an astonishing comment on PBS by the owner of the building's decision to "pull" the building, click here.

Thriving Norway Provides an Economics Lesson
2009-05-14, New York Times
Posted: 2009-05-31 17:48:53
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/business/global/14frugal.html

When capitalism seemed on the verge of collapse last fall, Kristin Halvorsen, Norway’s Socialist finance minister and a longtime free market skeptic, did more than crow. As investors the world over sold in a panic, she bucked the tide, authorizing Norway’s $300 billion sovereign wealth fund to ramp up its stock buying program by $60 billion — or about 23 percent of Norway's economic output. "The timing was not that bad," Ms. Halvorsen said, smiling with satisfaction over the broad worldwide market rally that began in early March. The global financial crisis has brought low the economies of just about every country on earth. But not Norway. With a quirky contrariness as deeply etched in the national character as the fjords carved into its rugged landscape, Norway has thrived by going its own way. When others splurged, it saved. When others sought to limit the role of government, Norway strengthened its cradle-to-grave welfare state. And in the midst of the worst global downturn since the Depression, Norway’s economy grew last year by just under 3 percent. The government enjoys a budget surplus of 11 percent. Norway is a relatively small country with a ... population of 4.6 million and the advantages of being a major oil exporter. Even though prices have sharply declined, the government is not particularly worried. That is because Norway avoided the usual trap that plagues many energy-rich countries. Instead of spending its riches lavishly, it passed legislation ensuring that oil revenue went straight into its sovereign wealth fund, state money that is used to make investments around the world. Now its sovereign wealth fund is close to being the largest in the world.

Note: For lots more on the global economic and financial crisis from reliable sources, click here.

Has Anyone Seen a Stray H-Bomb?
2008-11-11, New York Times Blog
Posted: 2009-05-25 11:57:23
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/11/has-anyone-seen-a-stray-h-bomb

A hydrogen bomb is missing from the United States' arsenal and has been, evidently, for 40 years. When last seen, the bomb was one of four aboard an Air Force B-52 bomber that crashed on a frozen bay near Thule Air Force Base in northern Greenland on Jan. 21, 1968. Two years later, the United States and Denmark reported that they agreed "that the accident caused no danger to man or animal and plant life in the area." The 96-page report of the investigation indicated that all four nuclear warheads aboard the plane had disintegrated on impact. Case closed. Well, maybe not, the BBC says this week. Declassified documents that the BBC obtained under the United States Freedom of Information Act indicate that only three of the bombs were accounted for, and that the United States searched secretly for the fourth bomb, without success. By April [1968], a decision had been taken to send a Star III submarine to the base to look for the lost bomb, which had the serial number 78252. (A similar submarine search off the coast of Spain two years earlier had led to another weapon being recovered.) But the real purpose of this search was deliberately hidden from Danish officials. One document from July reads: "Fact that this operation includes search for object or missing weapon part is to be treated as confidential NOFORN", the last word meaning not to be disclosed to any foreign country. "For discussion with Danes, this operation should be referred to as a survey repeat survey of bottom under impact point," it continued. And what does the Pentagon have to say about all this now? It had no comment for the BBC.

Note: To read the original New York Times article from Jan. 22, 1968 on this incident, click here.

Lost: One H-Bomb. Call Owner
2005-04-17, Washington Post
Posted: 2009-05-25 11:54:06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59703-2005Apr16

Just after midnight on Feb. 5, 1958, two U.S. Air Force jets, each traveling 500 mph, collided 35,000 feet over the Georgia countryside. Improbably, all four crew members survived and the accident might have passed into dim memory if not for the thermonuclear weapon jettisoned off Tybee Island, Ga. The bomb is still there. After a weeks-long search, it was "declared irretrievably lost on 16 April 1958," the Air Force reported four years ago in an assessment of whether to conduct a new search and recovery mission. It concluded that "it is in the best interest of the public and the environment to leave the bomb in its resting-place." The Navy Supervisor of Salvage, the report noted, didn't think the bomb could be found. Energy Department engineers' best guess was that it lay "buried nose-down, probably 5-15 feet below the seabed." Clearly, the Air Force would have been glad to let it go at that. However, it did not count on the determination of Derek Duke, a 60-year-old retired Air Force officer who lives nearby and for more than six years has been searching for the bomb in the waters around Tybee Island, about 16 miles from Savannah. Responding to Duke's claim that he had found an area of high radiation the Air Force returned last September to look again. The report on the new search has not been released. Any danger still presented by the Tybee bomb is from the 400 pounds of conventional explosives or from humans somehow ingesting uranium that might escape from the bomb and its silt prison.

Note: For another interesting article on this in USA Today on Oct. 19, 2004, click here. For a much more in-depth article on this incident, click here.

Informer's Role in Bombing Plot
2009-05-23, New York Times
Posted: 2009-05-25 11:47:55
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/23/nyregion/23informant.html

Everyone called the stranger with all the money "Maqsood." He would sit in his Mercedes, waiting in the parking lot of the mosque in Newburgh, N.Y., until the Friday prayer was over. Then, according to members of the mosque, the Masjid al-Ikhlas, he approached the young men. The man, a Pakistani, occasionally approached the assistant imam of the mosque. In time, many of the mosque's older members had made the man for a government informant, according to mosque leaders. They said that he seemed to focus most of his attention on younger black members and visitors. "It's easy to influence someone with the dollar," said Mr. Muhammed, a longtime member of the mosque. "Especially these guys coming out of prison." The members of the mosque now believe that Maqsood was the government informant at the center of the case involving four men from Newburgh arrested and charged this week with having plotted to explode bombs at Jewish centers in New York City. The government case revolves significantly around the work of an informant who facilitated the men's desire to mount a terrorist attack. The role of informants has been a constant in the terror cases made by federal and local authorities since 9/11. And just as constant have been the attempts by lawyers for those charged to portray their clients as dupes, people who would not have committed to do harm without the provocation of the informants. The informant was not identified in court papers unsealed on Wednesday in Manhattan. But according to a person briefed on the case, the informant is Shahed Hussain, the central prosecution witness in a 2004 federal sting focusing on a pizzeria owner and an imam at an Albany mosque.

Note: For lots more on the "war on terror" from reliable sources, click here.

Military tribunals not the same as U.S. courts
2009-05-23, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
Posted: 2009-05-25 11:39:07
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/23/MN9Q17OTTB.DTL

President Obama says his proposed reforms to the military commissions his predecessor established to try suspected terrorists will bring the tribunals "in line with the rule of law." But it isn't the same law that applies in U.S. courts. Pentagon officials appoint the judges and can remove them. Military commanders choose the jurors, who can convict defendants by non-unanimous votes, except in death penalty cases. The military can monitor defense lawyers' conversations with their clients. Prosecutors can also present evidence that would never pass muster in civilian courts. Confessions made under physical or mental pressure could be admissible, despite Obama's disavowal of torture and coercion. There's no ban on evidence from illegal searches. And defendants may be convicted on the basis of hearsay - a second hand report of an out-of-court accusation by another person, perhaps a fellow suspect, whom the defense never gets to see or question. Civil-liberties advocates and legal organizations defending prisoners who may be tried before the commissions say the system is an invitation to abuse and differs little from the tribunals established by President George W. Bush. "The system is designed to ensure the outcome they want ... convictions in every case," said Ben Wizner, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney who has attended proceedings for prisoners at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. "This suggests that the much-heralded improvements to the Bush military commission system are largely cosmetic."

Note: For lots more on the "war on terror" from reliable sources, click here.

How MI5 blackmails British Muslims
2009-05-21, The Independent (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
Posted: 2009-05-25 11:35:49
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/exclusive-how-mi5-blackmails-b...

Five Muslim community workers have accused MI5 of waging a campaign of blackmail and harassment in an attempt to recruit them as informants. The men claim they were given a choice of working for the Security Service or face detention and harassment in the UK and overseas. They have made official complaints to the police, to the body which oversees the work of the Security Service and to their local MP Frank Dobson. Now they have decided to speak publicly about their experiences in the hope that publicity will stop similar tactics being used in the future. Three of the men say they were detained at foreign airports on the orders of MI5 after leaving Britain on family holidays last year. After they were sent back to the UK, they were interviewed by MI5 officers who, they say, falsely accused them of links to Islamic extremism. On each occasion the agents said they would lift the travel restrictions and threat of detention in return for their co-operation. When the men refused some of them received what they say were intimidating phone calls and threats. Two other Muslim men say they were approached by MI5 at their homes after police officers posed as postmen. Each of the five men, aged between 19 and 25, was warned that if he did not help the security services he would be considered a terror suspect. A sixth man was held by MI5 for three hours after returning from his honeymoon in Saudi Arabia. He too claims he was threatened with travel restrictions if he tried to leave the UK."

Note: For lots more on the "war on terror" from reliable sources, click here.

A Missing H-Bomb Ruffles Japanese
1989-05-11, New York Times
Posted: 2009-05-25 11:22:11
http://www.nytimes.com/1989/05/11/world/a-missing-h-bomb-ruffles-japanese.html

Japan's Foreign Minister said today that his country was ''seriously concerned'' about the loss of a hydrogen bomb off Okinawa 24 years ago, and said Japan would press for ''full details'' about the incident from the United States. The comments by the official, Sosuke Uno, came after the Government was sharply criticized both by the Japanese press and by some civic and anti-nuclear groups for playing down reports that the lost bomb is still under the ocean 80 miles from a Japanese island. Over the last two days the Pentagon has provided the first details of the 1965 accident, admitting for the first time that the accident happened off Japan's shores rather than 500 miles from land, as it originally contended. The aircraft carrier Ticonderoga, which was carrying the weapon when it was lost overboard with an A-4 aircraft, was reportedly heading to Yokosuka, the naval base south of Tokyo, from Vietnam. This morning the Asahi Shimbun, the most liberal of Japan's major dailies, castigated the Japanese Foreign Ministry for ignoring the first reports of the accident. In an editorial, the newspaper said that ''an unexpectedly profound gap'' exists between ''the people's feelings'' about the presence of nuclear weapons and the Government's willingness to ignore the presence of the weapons in the interest of avoiding strains with the United States.

U.S. finds lost nuclear bomb
1966-03-18, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
Posted: 2009-05-25 11:18:07
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/03/17/BAVV16AMLN.DTL

A hydrogen bomb that went missing for three months in the Mediterranean Sea is back in the hands of the U.S. military after being found the previous day. The bomb had been lost in January when two U.S. military planes, a KC-135 tanker and a B-52 carrying four thermonuclear weapons, collided during midair refueling. Three of the four bombs fell to the ground near Palomares, Spain. While none of them detonated with a nuclear explosion, the high-explosive triggers in two of the bombs went off upon impact and contaminated the area with radioactive material. A fourth bomb plunged into the water off Spain's southeastern coastline. Following the incident, the Spanish government announced it would no longer allow U.S. planes carrying nuclear weapons to fly over its territory. On March 17, the U.S. Navy, using a midget submarine called the Alvin [found] the bomb 2,500 feet underwater, intact and with its parachute still attached.

Note: You can access a Jan. 27, 1966 NY Times article on this incident for a small fee at this link.

A climate solution that's out of this world
2009-05-14, New York Times
Posted: 2009-05-17 12:00:30
http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2009/05/14/14greenwire-a-climate-solution-thats-...

One of the newest energy lobbyists claims he has the answer to climate change: spaceships. The government has in its possession "extraterrestrial vehicles," lobbyist Stephen Bassett said. As in flying saucers. Imagine the power source, he said, behind a 30-foot wide saucer that weighs the same as a tractor-trailer yet hurtles through galaxies at 20,000 miles per hour. "What is the energy system operating that craft?" Bassett said. "They're not burning kerosene." Bassett ... is working for free as a lobbyist, representing the Hawaii-based Exopolitics Institute, an educational organization which describes itself as "dedicated to studying the key actors, institutions and political processes associated with extraterrestrial life." Bassett said he is less lobbyist and more political activist. "The UFO phenomenon is real," Bassett said. "The E.T. extraterrestrial presence is real." Bassett's been lobbying about seven months, targeting the science and technology, and defense and aviation angles. He added energy to his portfolio in a Senate filing last week. He has spoken to lawmakers in the past, Bassett said, but he's writing off lobbying Congress for now, calling the extraterrestrial issue "the third rail" of politics. Besides, he and other believers have a bigger name on their list. "Knowing that Congress could not act," Bassett said, "what we did was focus on the executive branch, the White House." Those who believe the truth is out there have been waiting for someone like President Obama to come clean about the government hiding information on extraterrestrials, Bassett said.

Note: What's highly unusual about this article is that there is not a note of ridicule. This may be a first for a UFO article in the New York Times. For lots more eye-opening, reliable information on this topic, including a Times article in which a former CIA chief describes a UFO cover-up, click here and here.

Health care's enigma in chief
2009-05-15, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
Posted: 2009-05-17 11:55:45
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/14/EDMF17KIVP.DTL

The most stunning and least reported news about President Obama's press conference with health industry executives this week wasn't those executives' willingness to negotiate with a Democrat. It was that Democrat's eagerness to involve those executives in a discussion about health care reform even as they revealed their previous plans to pilfer $2 trillion from Americans. That was the little-noticed message from the made-for-TV spectacle administration officials called a health care "game changer": In saying they can voluntarily slash $200 billion a year from the country's medical bills over the next decade and still preserve their profits, health care companies implicitly acknowledged they were plotting to fleece consumers, and have been fleecing them for years. With that acknowledgment came the tacit admission that the industry's business is based not on respectable returns but on grotesque profiteering and waste - the kind that can give up $2 trillion and still guarantee huge margins. Chief among the profiteers at the White House event were insurance companies, which have raised premiums by 119 percent since 1999, and one obvious question is why - why would Obama engage those particular thieves? It's a difficult query to answer, because Obama is a health care mystery, struggling to muster consistent positions on the issue. Listening to a 2003 Obama speech, it's hard to believe he has become such an enigma. Back then, he declared himself "a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program" - i.e., one eliminating private insurers and their overhead costs by having government finance health care.

Note: For lots more on health issues from reliable sources, click here.

Federal Judge in Sex Case Gets Nearly 3 Years
2009-05-11, ABC News/Associated Press
Posted: 2009-05-17 11:52:40
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=7557912

A disgraced federal judge was sentenced Monday to nearly three years in prison for lying to investigators about sexually abusing two female employees, who said they feared him so much they hid from him in the courthouse. U.S. District Judge Samuel Kent ... could have received up to 20 years in prison, but prosecutors said they wouldn't seek more than three years under a plea agreement. He also was fined $1,000 and ordered to pay $6,550 in restitution to the secretary and case manager whose complaints resulted in the first sex abuse case ever against a sitting federal judge. "Your wrongful conduct is a huge black X, a smear on the legal profession, a stain on the judicial system itself, a matter of concern in the federal courts," said U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson, a visiting senior judge called in from Pensacola, Fla. Vinson ordered Kent, 59, to surrender June 15 for transfer to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons and to serve three years' probation once his 33-month sentence is completed. He also was ordered to participate in an alcohol-abuse program while in prison. The chairman of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee and its ranking Republican demanded that Kent resign immediately from the bench Monday. His lawyer has said he retired rather than resigned, which would allow him to continue drawing a federal judge's salary.

Note: This case represents a major shift in that it is the first sex case ever against a sitting federal judge. In fact, if you watch the astonishing documentary Conspiracy of Silence, you will see that many top officials are involved in sexual abuse and have fiercely kept that a secret. Let's hope more of this comes out as we spread the word.

Somali pirates guided by London intelligence team, report says
2009-05-11, The Guardian (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
Posted: 2009-05-17 11:47:50
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/11/somali-pirates-london-intelligence

The Somali pirates attacking shipping in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean are directed to their targets by a "consultant" team in London, according to a European military intelligence document obtained by a Spanish radio station. The document, obtained by Cadena SER radio, says the team and the pirates remain in contact by satellite telephone. It says that pirate groups have "well-placed informers" in London who are in regular contact with control centres in Somalia where decisions on which vessels to attack are made. These London-based "consultants" help the pirates select targets, providing information on the ships' cargoes and courses. In at least one case the pirates have remained in contact with their London informants from the hijacked ship, according to one targeted shipping company. "The information that merchant ships sailing through the area volunteer to various international organisations is ending up in the pirates' hands," Cadena SER reported the report as saying. This enables the more organised pirate groups to study their targets in advance, even spending several days training teams for specific hijacks. Senior pirates then join the vessel once it has been sailed close to Somalia. Captains of attacked ships have found that pirates know everything from the layout of the vessel to its ports of call. The national flag of a ship is also taken into account when choosing a target, with British vessels being increasingly avoided, according to the report.

Note: The remarkable capability described here -- knowledge of all the details of cargo, ship layout, nationality, and especially position and course -- is one that only national intelligence agencies are likely to have. The positional information would require real-time satellite or drone aircraft surveillance data. Could MI6, the British C.I.A., be running the Somali pirate operations, which have so suddenly spiked up just as the Pentagon's new AFRICOM gets underway?

'Maverick' DHS Office Issues Glossary of Domestic Extremist Groups
2009-05-05, Fox News
Posted: 2009-05-17 11:44:07
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/05/05/maverick-dhs-office-issues-diction...

The Department of Homeland Security is reining in a "maverick" division of the agency following criticism of a report it issued that details domestic "extremists" ranging from anti-tax movements to pro-environment groups, a DHS official told FOX News on Tuesday. The report, released in March ... was on top of a controversial document the same office produced last month that said U.S. veterans were ripe for recruitment by terrorist groups. The quickly withdrawn report, titled the "Domestic Extremism Lexicon," comes from the department's Office of Intelligence and Analysis, the same unit that produced the report on right-wing extremists recruiting vets. The document, first uncovered by The Washington Times, uses a broad brush to define terms used when analyzing dozens of supposedly extremist ideologies inside the United States. They cover: Jewish extremists, animal rights extremists, Christian identity extremists, black separatism extremists, anti-abortion extremists, anti-immigration extremists, anti-technology extremists, Cuban independence extremists and tax resistance extremists, to name a few. In addition to the report on right-wing threats issued last month -- for which DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano apologized -- DHS detailed left-wing threats in a similar report released in January. The "Domestic Extremism Lexicon" covers ideologies across the spectrum. The top of the document also defines "alternative media" as something sinister -- though the term is commonly used to describe blogs and popular publications like New York's Village Voice.

Note: How strange that Fox News posted this report, yet other major media largely ignored this important news. Click here to read the extremism report.

Inspector at Pentagon Says Report Was Flawed
2009-05-06, New York Times
Posted: 2009-05-17 11:39:04
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/06/us/06generals.html

In a highly unusual reversal, the Defense Department’s inspector general’s office has withdrawn a report it issued in January exonerating a Pentagon public relations program that made extensive use of retired officers who worked as military analysts for television and radio networks. Donald M. Horstman, the Pentagon’s deputy inspector general for policy and oversight, said in a memorandum released on Tuesday that the report was so riddled with flaws and inaccuracies that none of its conclusions could be relied upon. In addition to repudiating its own report, the inspector general’s office took the additional step of removing the report from its Web site. The inspector general’s office began investigating the public relations program last year, in response to articles in The New York Times that exposed an extensive and largely hidden Pentagon campaign to transform network military analysts into “surrogates” and “message force multipliers” for the Bush administration. The articles also showed how military analysts with ties to defense contractors sometimes used their special access to seek advantage in the competition for contracts related to Iraq and Afghanistan. The report released in January took issue with the articles. [It] has been the subject of controversy, with some members of Congress calling it a “whitewash” marred by obvious factual errors. For example, the report erroneously listed many military analysts as having no ties whatsoever to defense contractors.

Note: The author of this article, David Barstow, won a 2009 Pulitzer prize for exposing military corruption, yet the press gave virtually no coverage to his prize. Why does it seem that the media don't want us to know about military influence on the news we receive?

Investments Can Yield More on K Street, Study Indicates
2009-04-12, Washington Post
Posted: 2009-05-17 11:30:33
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/11/AR20090411020...

In a remarkable illustration of the power of lobbying in Washington, a study released last week found that a single tax break in 2004 earned companies $220 for every dollar they spent on the issue -- a 22,000 percent rate of return on their investment. The study by researchers at the University of Kansas underscores the central reason that lobbying has become a $3 billion-a-year industry in Washington: It pays. The paper by three Kansas professors examined the impact of a one-time tax break approved by Congress in 2004 that allowed multinational corporations to "repatriate" profits earned overseas, effectively reducing their tax rate on the money from 35 percent to 5.25 percent. More than 800 companies took advantage of the legislation, saving an estimated $100 billion in the process, according to the study. The largest recipients of tax breaks were concentrated in the pharmaceutical and technology fields, including Pfizer, Merck, Hewlett Packard, Johnson & Johnson and IBM. Pfizer alone repatriated $37 billion, representing 70 percent of its revenue in 2004, the study found. The now-beleaguered financial industry also benefited from the provision, including Citigroup, J.P. Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch, all of which have since received tens of billions of dollars in federal bailout money. The researchers calculated an average rate of return of 22,000 percent for those companies that helped lobby for the tax break.

Note: For lots more on corporate corruption from reliable sources, click here.

Jury convicts former FBI agent in mob killing
2008-11-06, MSNBC/Associated Press
Posted: 2009-05-17 11:25:12
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27579928/wid/11915829

Former FBI agent John Connolly was convicted ... of second-degree murder for leaking information to Boston mobsters that led to the 1982 shooting death of a gambling executive who also had ties to gangsters. Prosecutors said former World Jai-Alai president John Callahan was killed after Connolly warned gangsters that Callahan might implicate them in other slayings. Boston mob kingpins James "Whitey" Bulger and Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi were FBI informants handled by Connolly. Connolly was convicted in 2002 of racketeering because of his relationship with Bulger and Flemmi, including a 1995 tip that enabled Bulger to escape arrest and begin a life on the run that continues to this day. Bulger is one of the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted" fugitives. The story that unfolded over the past two months in a Miami courtroom spanned more than two decades of Boston's underworld, a tale that has already spawned several books and was the basis for the 2006 Martin Scorcese film "The Departed." Connolly retired from the FBI in 1990 and was later indicted on federal racketeering and other charges stemming from his long relationship with Bulger and Flemmi, who paid the agent $235,000 over the years for protection, according to trial testimony. In a case considered one of the FBI's worst failures, Connolly was convicted in 2002 and is serving a 10-year federal prison sentence in the corruption case. He was indicted in 2005 in the killing of Callahan, 45, whose body was found stuffed in the trunk of his Cadillac at Miami International Airport in August 1982.

Method and Apparatus for Tunneling by Melting
1972-09-22, US Patent and Trademark Office
Posted: 2009-05-17 11:21:18
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&...

The invention described herein was made in the course of, or under, a contract with the U. S. ATOMIC ENERGY COMMISSION. It relates ... to a method and apparatus for drilling, tunneling and shaft-sinking in rock with particular advantage at hitherto inaccessible depths. The present invention uses the basic apparatus and method disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,357,505 and in Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory of the University of California Report No. LA-3243 (1965) entitled "Rock Melting as a Drilling Technique." In the existing rock melting devices of the prior art, a major difficulty which limited performance was that of delivering a sufficiently large heat flux to the melting face of the drill or penetrator. The development of the heat pipe alleviates this problem in that the use of heat pipes enables the transfer of heat energy from a compact heat source to the extended melting surface of the penetrator at rates high enough to maintain the surface above the melting temperature of the rock. The extrapolation of a mechanism useful for forming large holes in the earth in accordance with the present invention uses the combination of a refractory rock-melting tool, an in situ heat source preferably a small nuclear reactor and an exceedingly efficient heat transfer mechanism such as a system of heat pipes to convey heat from the source to the walls of the drilling tool.

Note: This patent shows that government scientists at Los Alamos were using a "small nuclear reactor" to drill underground tunnels. Several of the inventors listed on the patent worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory, including: McInteer, Berthus B.; Mills, Robert L.; Potter, Robert M.; Robinson, Eugene S.; Rowley, John C.; and Smith, Morton C.. For photos and more fascinating information on this most intriguing patent, click here.

666: Goldman's latest bonus bears the mark of the beast
2009-05-03, The Independent (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
Posted: 2009-05-10 19:46:33
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/666-goldmans...

Something strange is afoot when Popbitch – provider of a weekly email beloved of students, stuffed full of celebrity tittle-tattle and links to the silliest miscellany of the web – breaks off from such glorious trivia to encourage readers to support GoldmanSachs666.com, a deadly serious website measuring the political tentacles of the mighty investment bank. The credit-market catastrophe that has plunged the world into recession is everywhere stirring new ways of thinking about how banking relates to the wider world, but nowhere more so than among a generation coming into political consciousness in these searing times. Something is brewing, some argue, that could make the "regulatory-financial complex" something to rail against in the same way that the military-industrial complex was in the Cold War. This should worry Goldman Sachs. More so than any other firm, it exists at the intersection of politics and high finance. "It was listening to the news coming out of AIG that got me fired up," says Mike Morgan, founder of GoldmanSachs666.com. "While politicians were screaming about $165m paid out to AIG executives in bonuses, $180bn was walking out the door." The Federal Reserve and the then-treasury secretary, Hank Paulson, decided to funnel public funds to AIG, and its counterparties were paid in full. You don't have to scratch far into the internet to find conspiracy theories: Mr Paulson was chief executive of Goldman before going into government; he appointed Edward Liddy, formerly of Goldman, to run AIG; Goldman was AIG's biggest counterparty, receiving $12.9bn from AIG after the bailout.

Note: For lots more on the Wall Street bailout, click here.

We're really sorry about that $650 billion. Here's a lollipop.
2009-05-01, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
Posted: 2009-05-10 19:43:11
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/01/DDLO17BB2Q.DTL

Like most of us, I guess, I was caught absolutely flat-footed by the economic crisis. I got the part about subprime loans, and why they were both stupid and greedy, but I did not get how that bit of banker's nonsense instantly spread to the national economy and the world economy. Finally I read an article that actually put the thing together in a coherent way. It's in the May 14 issue of the New York Review of Books, and it's by Robert M. Solow, who won the Nobel Prize for economics, so presumably he's not just pulling ideas out of his nose. He starts by talking about leverage, and how very tempting it is as long as prices continue to rise. In the 1990s, it was typical for brokerages (or banks - the difference between the two became blurred) to use a 10-1 model; they used $100,000 to borrow $1 million, and everything was rosy. But it was rosier still at 20-1, and even rosier at 30-1. I am summarizing here - the whole article can be found [here]. [In Solow's words,] "According to data compiled by the Federal Reserve, household wealth in the U.S. peaked at $64.4 trillion in mid-2007, and had plummeted to $51.5 trillion at the end of 2008. Something like $13 trillion of perceived wealth vanished in not much more than a year. Nothing concrete had changed. Buildings still stood; factories were still just as capable of functioning; people had not lost their ability to work or their skills or their knowledge of technology. But a population that thought in 2007 that they had $64.4 trillion with which to plan their lives discovered in 2008 that they had lost 20 percent of that."

Note: Think about it. Simply because of financial manipulations, hundreds of thousands of homes and factory workplaces are now empty, while the numbers living on the street and in camps along rivers has increased dramatically. Yet many of the richest have only grown richer as a result of mergers and more. For lots more on the Wall Street bailout, click here.

Waterboarding, Interrogations: The CIA's $1,000 a Day Specialists
2009-04-30, ABC News
Posted: 2009-05-10 19:39:49
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=7471217

According to current and former government officials, the CIA's secret waterboarding program was designed and assured to be safe by two well-paid psychologists now working out of an unmarked office building in Spokane, Washington. Bruce Jessen and Jim Mitchell, former military officers, together founded Mitchell Jessen and Associates. Both men declined to speak to ABC News citing non-disclosure agreements with the CIA. But sources say Jessen and Mitchell together designed and implemented the CIA's interrogation program. "It's clear that these psychologists had an important role in developing what became the CIA's torture program," said Jameel Jaffer, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union. Former U.S. officials say the two men were essentially the architects of the CIA's 10-step interrogation plan that culminated in waterboarding. Associates say the two made good money doing it, boasting of being paid a $1,000 a day by the CIA to oversee the use of the techniques on top al Qaeda suspects at CIA secret sites. Both Mitchell and Jessen were previously involved in the U.S. military program to train pilots how to survive behind enemy lines and resist brutal tactics if captured. But it turns out neither Mitchell nor Jessen had any experience in conducting actual interrogations before the CIA hired them. The new documents show the CIA later came to learn that the two psychologists' waterboarding "expertise" was probably "misrepresented" and thus, there was no reason to believe it was "medically safe" or effective. The waterboarding used on al Qaeda detainees was far more intense than the brief sessions used on U.S. military personnel in the training classes.

Note: For lots more on CIA torture and other recent government attacks on civil liberties, click here.

Justice Dept. Finds Flaws in F.B.I. Terror List
2009-05-07, New York Times
Posted: 2009-05-10 19:36:21
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/us/07terror.html

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has incorrectly kept nearly 24,000 people on a terrorist watch list on the basis of outdated or sometimes irrelevant information. By the beginning of 2009, the report said, this consolidated government watch list comprised about 400,000 people, recorded as 1.1 million names and aliases, an exponential growth from the days before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The new report, by the office of the Justice Department’s inspector general, provides the most authoritative statistical account to date of the problems connected with the list. An earlier report by the inspector general, released in March 2008, looked mainly at flaws in the system, without an emphasis on the number of people caught up in it. The list has long been a target of public criticism, particularly after well-publicized errors in which politicians including Senator Edward M. Kennedy and Representative John Lewis showed up on it. People with names similar to actual terrorists have complained that it can take months to be removed from the list, and civil liberties advocates charge that antiwar protesters, Muslim activists and others have been listed for political reasons. One of the biggest problems identified in the report was the use of outdated information, or material unconnected to terrorism, to keep people on the bureau’s own terror watch list, which is incorporated in the consolidated list. The report, examining nearly 69,000 referrals to the F.B.I. list that were either brought or processed by the bureau, found that 35 percent of those people, both Americans and foreigners, remained on the list despite inadequate justification.

Note: For many detailed reports from reliable sources indicating the "war on terror" isn't really what it's claimed to be, click here.

Ready or Not, Katrina Victims Lose Temporary Housing
2009-05-08, New York Times
Posted: 2009-05-10 19:30:58
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/us/08trailer.html

Though more than 4,000 Louisiana homeowners have received rebuilding money only in the last six months, or are struggling with inadequate grants or no money at all, FEMA is intent on taking away their trailers by the end of May. The deadline, which ends temporary housing before permanent housing has replaced it, has become a stark example of recovery programs that seem almost to be working against one another. Thousands of rental units have yet to be restored, and not a single one of 500 planned “Katrina cottages” has been completed and occupied. The Road Home program for single-family homeowners, which has cost federal taxpayers $7.9 billion, has a new contractor who is struggling to review a host of appeals, and workers who assist the homeless are finding more elderly people squatting in abandoned buildings. Nonetheless, FEMA wants its trailers back, even though it plans to scrap or sell them for a fraction of what it paid for them. As of last week, there were two groups still in the agency’s temporary housing program: more than 3,000 in trailers and nearly 80 who have been in hotels paid for by FEMA since last May, when it shut down group trailer sites. Most are elderly, disabled or both, including double amputees, diabetes patients, the mentally ill, people prone to seizures and others dependent on oxygen tanks. Of those in trailers, more than 2,000 are homeowners who fear that the progress they are making in rebuilding will come to a halt if their trailers are taken. Progress on renovations has been slow for many reasons: contractors who did shoddy work or simply absconded with money, baffling red tape and rule changes, and inadequate grants.

Note: For further reports on the amazingly unhelpful government response to hurricanes Katrina and Rita, click here.

The Torture Debate: The Missing Voices
2009-05-07, New York Times
Posted: 2009-05-10 19:27:45
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/opinion/07thu1.html

Last month’s release of memos prepared by the Bush Justice Department and the disclosure of a report by the International Committee of the Red Cross on the brutal treatment of detainees expanded public knowledge of an ignominious chapter in the nation’s history. But these and other related disclosures do not provide a complete record of the government’s abuse of detainees. One missing element is the words of those prisoners subjected to waterboarding and other brutality. Those voices remain muffled by a combination of Bush-era resistance to a reasonable Freedom of Information Act request by the American Civil Liberties Union, and the gag order imposed on lawyers representing Guantánamo detainees. For two years, the A.C.L.U. has been seeking complete transcripts of the hearings at Guantánamo for 14 men who were previously in C.I.A. custody, including Abu Zubaydah, who has been described as an operative of Al Qaeda and was waterboarded at least 83 times. But the publicly released version of these transcripts deleted all detainee statements about their ordeals. The Bush team’s national security claim always had the odor of a cover-up. The interrogation program it was protecting has been discontinued, and crucial details are known. It is unsupportable to blank out grim details. The same considerations apply to the protective order that prohibits lawyers for Guantánamo detainees from speaking publicly about their clients’ treatment unless they receive the government’s permission or the information otherwise becomes public. Disclosure of the torture memos and the Red Cross report gives detainee lawyers more leeway, but they should not have to parse their words under a threat of prosecution.

Note: For many reports from major media sources detailing the disturbing government threats to civil liberties, click here.

Torture Memos Will Not Result in Prosecutions
2009-05-06, New York Times
Posted: 2009-05-10 19:24:11
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/06/us/politics/06inquire.html

An internal Justice Department inquiry has concluded that Bush administration lawyers committed serious lapses of judgment in writing secret memorandums authorizing brutal interrogations but that they should not be prosecuted, according to government officials briefed on its findings. The report by the Office of Professional Responsibility, an internal ethics unit within the Justice Department, is also likely to ask state bar associations to consider possible disciplinary action, which could include reprimands or even disbarment, for some of the lawyers involved in writing the legal opinions, the officials said. The findings, growing out of an inquiry that started in 2004, would represent a stinging rebuke of the lawyers and their legal arguments. But they would stop short of the criminal referral sought by some human rights advocates, who have suggested that the lawyers could be prosecuted as part of a criminal conspiracy to violate the anti-torture statute. President Obama has said the Justice Department would have to decide whether the lawyers who authorized the interrogation methods should face charges, while pledging that interrogators would not be investigated or prosecuted for using techniques that the lawyers said were legal. The draft report is described as very detailed, tracing e-mail messages between the Justice Department lawyers and officials at the White House and the Central Intelligence Agency. Among the questions it is expected to consider is whether the memos were an independent judgment of the limits of the federal anti-torture statute or were deliberately skewed to justify the use of techniques proposed by the C.I.A.

Note: For lots more on government corruption from reliable sources, click here.

The State-Secrets Privilege, Tamed
2009-04-30, New York Times
Posted: 2009-05-03 22:42:07
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/30/opinion/30thu1.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pag...

Of the many ways that the Bush administration sought to evade accountability for its violations of the law and the Constitution under the cover of battling terrorism, one of the most appalling was its attempt to use inflated claims of state secrecy to slam shut the doors of the nation’s courthouses. Sadly, the Obama administration also embraced this tactic, even though President Obama criticized the cult of secrecy while running for office, leaving it to the courts to stand up for transparency and accountability. And that is just what a panel of the federal appeals court in San Francisco did on Tuesday by firmly rejecting the claim that the government can prevent a judge from even hearing those who say they were hurt by federal policies and actions. The unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reinstated a civil lawsuit brought against a government contractor by five victims of the extraordinary rendition program, under which foreigners were kidnapped and flown to other countries for interrogation and torture. The panel said the government can ask a judge to decide on a case-by-case basis whether disclosing particular evidence would jeopardize national security. But it recognized the affront to civil liberties and the constitutional separation of powers in the Justice Department’s argument that the executive branch is entitled to have lawsuits shut down whenever an official makes a blanket claim of national security.

Note: For lots more on government secrecy from reliable sources, click here.

How ’07 ABC Interview Tilted a Torture Debate
2009-04-28, New York Times
Posted: 2009-05-03 22:38:10
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/28/business/media/28abc.html?partner=rss&emc=r...

In late 2007, there was the first crack of daylight into the government’s use of waterboarding during interrogations of Al Qaeda detainees. On Dec. 10, John Kiriakou, a former C.I.A. officer who had participated in the capture of the suspected terrorist Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan in 2002, appeared on ABC News to say that while he considered waterboarding a form of torture, the technique worked and yielded results very quickly. Mr. Zubaydah started to cooperate after being waterboarded for “probably 30, 35 seconds,” Mr. Kiriakou told the ABC reporter Brian Ross. “From that day on he answered every question.” His claims — unverified at the time, but repeated by dozens of broadcasts, blogs and newspapers — have been sharply contradicted by a newly declassified Justice Department memo that said waterboarding had been used on Mr. Zubaydah “at least 83 times.” Some critics say that the now-discredited information shared by Mr. Kiriakou and other sources heightened the public perception of waterboarding as an effective interrogation technique. “I think it was sanitized by the way it was described” in press accounts, said John Sifton, a former lawyer for Human Rights Watch. On “World News,” ABC included only a caveat that Mr. Kiriakou himself “never carried out any of the waterboarding.” Still, he told ABC that the actions had “disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks.” A video of the interview was no longer on ABC's website.

Note: For the transcript of the original ABC interview of John Kiriakou, click here. To watch a video of the interview which ABC News removed from its website, click here.

Jet Flyover Frightens New Yorkers
2009-04-28, New York Times
Posted: 2009-05-03 22:35:10
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/28/nyregion/28plane.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&p...

It was supposed to be a photo opportunity, a showcase of Air Force One alongside the sweep of New York City skyline. But as the low-flying Boeing 747 speeded in the shadows of skyscrapers, trailed by two fighter jets, the sight instead awakened barely dormant fears of a terrorist attack, causing a momentary panic that sent workers pouring out of buildings on both sides of the Hudson River. “I thought there was some kind of an attack,” said Paul Nadler, who sprinted down more than 20 flights of stairs after watching the plane from his office in Jersey City shortly after 10 a.m. “We ran like hell.” Witnesses described the engine roar as the planes swooped by office towers close enough to rattle the windows and prompt evacuations at scores of buildings. Some sobbed as they made their way to the street. “As soon as someone saw how close it got to the buildings, people literally ran out,” said Carlina Rivera, 25, who works at an educational services company on the 22nd floor of 1 Liberty Plaza, adjacent to the site of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack. “Probably about 80 percent of my office left within two minutes of seeing how close it got to our building.” Neither the White House nor the F.A.A. explained why the mission was deemed a secret, even though officials conceded the primary purpose was picture taking. Officials at the Department of Transportation and at the Pentagon each denied responsibility for the secrecy.

Note: The official lack of explanation for the government secrecy prior to this terrifying overflight of traumatized Manhattan certainly raises further questions. For lots more on the hidden realities behind the fake "war on terror", click here.

Hints That Detainees May Be Held on U.S. Soil
2009-05-01, New York Times
Posted: 2009-05-03 22:30:48
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/01/us/politics/01gitmo.html

As many as 100 detainees at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, could end up held without trial on American soil, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates suggested Thursday, a situation that he acknowledged would create widespread if not unanimous opposition in Congress. The estimate was the most specific yet from the Obama administration about how many of the 241 prisoners at Guantánamo could not be safely released, sent to other countries or appropriately tried in American courts. Mr. Gates said discussions had started this week with the Justice Department about determining how many of the Guantánamo detainees could not be sent to other countries or tried in courts. He did not say which detainees might be in that group, but independent experts have said it probably would include terrorism suspects whom the military has not yet brought charges against, among them detainees from Yemen and the Qaeda figure Abu Zubaydah, who was subjected to brutal interrogation in secret prisons run by the Central Intelligence Agency. He did not say ... under what law they would be held. The Obama administration is debating how to establish a legal basis for incarcerating detainees deemed too dangerous to be released but not appropriate to be tried because of potential problems posed by their harsh interrogations, the evidence against them or other issues. Mr. Gates said he had asked for $50 million in supplemental financing in case a facility needed to be built quickly for the detainees.

Note: Ironically, it would seem from these plans revealed by Gates that closing the prison in Guantanamo is going to be used as the pretext to establish indefinite detention, without the right of habeas corpus, on American soil. But the reason for the widespread demand to close the prison is precisely to end such detentions! Do they think no one will notice? For many revealing reports from reliable sources on government attempts to erode civil liberties, click here.

How to Deal with Swine Flu: Heeding the Mistakes of 1976
2009-04-27, Time Magazine
Posted: 2009-05-03 22:24:36
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1894129,00.html

In February 1976, an outbreak of swine flu struck Fort Dix Army base in New Jersey, killing a 19-year-old private and infecting hundreds of soldiers. Concerned that the U.S. was on the verge of a devastating epidemic, President Gerald Ford ordered a nationwide vaccination program at a cost of $135 million (some $500 million in today's money). Within weeks, reports surfaced of people developing Guillain-Barré syndrome, a paralyzing nerve disease that can be caused by the vaccine. By April, more than 30 people had died of the condition. Facing protests, federal officials abruptly canceled the program on Dec. 16. The epidemic failed to materialize. Medical historians and epidemiologists say ... the decisions made in the wake of the '76 outbreak — and the public's response to them — provide a cautionary tale for public health officials, who may soon have to consider whether to institute draconian measures to combat the disease. "I think 1976 provides an example of how not to handle a flu outbreak," says Hugh Pennington, an emeritus professor of virology at Britain's University of Aberdeen. Despite modern advances in microbiology, today's health officials still make decisions in a "cloud of uncertainty," Pennington says. "At the moment, our understanding of the current outbreak is similarly limited. For example, we don't yet understand why people are dying in Mexico but not elsewhere." Howard Markel, director of the Center for the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan and a historical consultant to the CDC on flu pandemics, says the most vexing decision facing health officials is when to institute mass vaccination programs.

Note: To watch two short commercials made in 1976 showing clear scare tactics, click here. Only one person died from the actual flu in this 1976 "epidemic," yet more than 30 died of the flu vaccine. To explore the serious risks of vaccines reported in the media, click here. For lots more on bird and swine flu scares, click here.

Reported Suicide Is Latest Shock at Freddie Mac
2009-04-23, New York Times
Posted: 2009-05-02 07:41:16
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/business/23freddie.html?partner=rss&emc=rss...

The pressures were already immense when David B. Kellermann was promoted to the top financial position at the mortgage giant Freddie Mac last September. Mr. Kellermann's boss and other top executives were ousted when the Treasury secretary seized Freddie Mac and its sibling company, Fannie Mae; others left on their own and were not replaced. Early on Wednesday, Mr. Kellermann went to the basement of his brick home and hanged himself, according to people familiar with the situation who were not authorized to speak. His body was removed five hours later, through a throng of neighbors, television crews and others. "David was such an honest and humble person," said Tim Bitsberger, Freddie Mac"s treasurer until he left in December. "It just doesn't make sense," Mr. Bitsberger said. The roots and causes of suicide are often unclear. It is not known if Mr. Kellermann succumbed to the pressures of his job. But in the aftermath of his death, it is plain that at Freddie Mac, as at many of the companies in the center of this economic storm, there are forces so strong they can overwhelm almost anyone. Mr. Kellermann ... was at the intersection of some of the most difficult issues facing the company. Mr. Kellermann was also working in a poisonous political atmosphere. He was recently involved in tense conversations with the company's federal regulator over its routine financial disclosures. Freddie Mac executives wanted to emphasize to investors that they believed the company was being run to benefit the government, rather than shareholders.

Note: For a revealing archive of reports on the hidden realities underlying the Wall Street bailout, click here.

Gonzales Said to Have Intervened on Wiretap
2009-04-24, New York Times
Posted: 2009-05-02 07:39:09
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/us/politics/24harman.html?partner=rss&emc=r...

The director of the Central Intelligence Agency concluded in late 2005 that a conversation picked up on a government wiretap was serious enough to require notifying Congressional leaders that Representative Jane Harman, Democrat of California, could become enmeshed in an investigation into Israeli influence in Washington, former government officials said Thursday. But Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales told the director of the agency, Porter J. Goss, to hold off on briefing lawmakers about the conversation, between Ms. Harman and an Israeli intelligence operative, despite a longstanding government policy to inform Congressional leaders quickly whenever a member of Congress could be a target of a national security investigation. One reason Mr. Gonzales intervened, the former officials said, was to protect Ms. Harman because they saw her as a valuable administration ally in urging The New York Times not to publish an article about the National Security Agency’s program of wiretapping without warrants. The accounts provided new details about tension between senior C.I.A. officials and the attorney general over what to make of the wiretapped conversations involving Ms. Harman, which the former government officials said first occurred in spring 2005. In the wiretapped conversation, Ms. Harman was overheard agreeing to a request made by an Israeli intelligence operative that she try to obtain leniency for two pro-Israel lobbyists in exchange for help in securing the chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee, former officials said.

Note: For lots more on government corruption from reliable, verifiable sources, click here.

Restrain the credit card industry
2009-04-23, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
Posted: 2009-05-02 07:30:47
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/22/EDK817761J.DTL

While American consumers have been struggling, credit card companies have been enjoying a field day. Not only are most of them receiving federal bailout money, but they've been jacking up interest rates (there were rate hikes on nearly 25 percent of accounts between 2007 and 2008) and switching the terms of agreements with consumers. Why the rush to gouge consumers in the depths of a recession? In July 2010, the Federal Reserve will impose new, consumer-friendly disclosure and administrative restrictions on the credit card industry. Scrambling to get ahead of the deadline, the card companies have been raising interest rates, slicing credit lines and, in too many cases, simply dumping customers with little rhyme or reason. Defaults and delinquencies have skyrocketed - and consumers are livid. "It's off the charts in terms of their ire about paying higher interest rates, particularly when their money, as they see it, is being given to the banks to prop them up," said Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough. Speier's staff says her office has been "flooded" with calls from furious constituents. Speier is ... a co-sponsor of HR627, better known as "The Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights." The bill - which has the support of the Obama administration - would prevent card issuers from raising interest rates without advance notice and end the practice of "double-cycle billing" so that consumers do not have to pay interest on debts they've already paid.

Note: For a highly revealing archive of reports on the hidden realities underlying the Wall Street bailout, click here.

Chrysler rejects new loan over exec pay limits
2009-04-21, CNN
Posted: 2009-05-02 07:20:25
http://www.cnn.com/2009/BUSINESS/04/21/chrysler.loan/

Chrysler turned down additional government funding this month because executives at the troubled auto manufacturer could not agree to new government-mandated limits on executive pay, according to a source familiar with the matter. An official with Chrysler Financial told CNN that the loan was turned down because the company "has determined that it has adequate private capital funding to cover the short-term needs of our dealers and customers and as such, no additional TARP funding is necessary at this time." The official also said that company executives "have not been presented with any new demands with regard to executive compensation." Chrysler already borrowed $1.5 billion from the Treasury under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, but those loans were made under less strict regulations pertaining to executive compensation. The Washington Post, which first reported the story online Monday, said the amount of the loan Chrysler rejected was $750 million. A Treasury department spokesman declined to confirm the loan rejection, but told CNN that the administration's Auto Task Force continues to monitor the financing situations for Chrysler and General Motors. "This is an issue that Chrysler and its stakeholders will need to address as part of this process," the spokesman said.

Note: The reason many banks are giving back government loans is very likely also because of executive pay limits. The limits were reported in a NY Times article on Feb. 14, 2009. Not long after came the first news that banks were considering returning the bailout money. Do you think these top execs are more interested in their own paychecks or the health of the company? For a highly revealing archive of reports on the hidden realities underlying the Wall Street bailout, click here.

Officials Say U.S. Wiretaps Exceeded Law
2009-04-16, New York Times
Posted: 2009-04-25 08:46:55
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/us/16nsa.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewante...

The National Security Agency intercepted private e-mail messages and phone calls of Americans in recent months on a scale that went beyond the broad legal limits established by Congress last year, government officials said in recent interviews. Several intelligence officials, as well as lawyers briefed about the matter, said the N.S.A. had been engaged in “overcollection” of domestic communications of Americans. They described the practice as significant and systemic. The legal and operational problems surrounding the N.S.A.’s surveillance activities have come under scrutiny from the Obama administration, Congressional intelligence committees and a secret national security court. Congressional investigators say they hope to determine if any violations of Americans’ privacy occurred. It is not clear to what extent the agency may have actively listened in on conversations or read e-mail messages of Americans without proper court authority, rather than simply obtained access to them. While the N.S.A.’s operations in recent months have come under examination, new details are also emerging about earlier domestic-surveillance activities, including the agency’s attempt to wiretap a member of Congress, without court approval, on an overseas trip. After a contentious three-year debate that was set off by the disclosure in 2005 of the program of wiretapping without warrants that President George W. Bush approved after the Sept. 11 attacks, Congress gave the N.S.A. broad new authority to collect, without court-approved warrants, vast streams of international phone and e-mail traffic as it passed through American telecommunications gateways.

Note: For further disturbing reports from reliable sources on government efforts to establish total surveillance systems, click here.

Control of Cybersecurity Becomes Divisive Issue
2009-04-17, New York Times
Posted: 2009-04-25 08:45:13
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/17/us/politics/17cyber.html?partner=rss&emc=rs...

The National Security Agency has been campaigning to lead the government’s rapidly growing cybersecurity programs, raising privacy and civil liberties concerns among some officials who fear that the move could give the spy agency too much control over government computer networks. The security agency’s interest in taking over the dominant role has met resistance, including the resignation of the Homeland Security Department official who was until last month in charge of coordinating cybersecurity efforts throughout the government. Rod Beckstrom, who resigned in March as director of the National Cyber Security Center at the Homeland Security Department, said ... that he feared that the N.S.A.’s push for a greater role in guarding the government’s computer systems could give it the power to collect and analyze every e-mail message, text message and Google search conducted by every employee in every federal agency. Mr. Beckstrom said he believed that an intelligence service that is supposed to focus on foreign targets should not be given so much control over the flow of information within the United States government. To detect threats against the computer infrastructure — including hackers, viruses and intrusions by foreign agents and terrorists — cybersecurity guardians must have virtually unlimited access to networks. Mr. Beckstrom argues that those responsibilities should be divided among agencies. “I have very serious concerns about the concentration of too much power in one agency,” he said. “Power over information is so important, and it is so difficult to monitor, that we need to have checks and balances.”

Note: For further disturbing reports from reliable sources on government efforts to establish total surveillance systems, click here.

Interrogation Memos Detail Harsh Tactics by the C.I.A.
2009-04-17, New York Times
Posted: 2009-04-25 08:43:12
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/17/us/politics/17detain.html?partner=rss&emc=r...

The Justice Department ... made public detailed memos describing brutal interrogation techniques used by the Central Intelligence Agency, as President Obama sought to reassure the agency that the C.I.A. operatives involved would not be prosecuted. In dozens of pages of dispassionate legal prose, the methods approved by the Bush administration for extracting information from senior operatives of Al Qaeda are spelled out in careful detail — like keeping detainees awake for up to 11 straight days, placing them in a dark, cramped box or putting insects into the box to exploit their fears. The interrogation methods were authorized beginning in 2002, and some were used as late as 2005 in the C.I.A.’s secret overseas prisons. The United States prosecuted some Japanese interrogators at war crimes trials after World War II for waterboarding and other methods detailed in the memos. Together, the four memos give an extraordinarily detailed account of the C.I.A.’s methods and the Justice Department’s long struggle, in the face of graphic descriptions of brutal tactics, to square them with international and domestic law. Passages describing forced nudity, the slamming of detainees into walls, prolonged sleep deprivation and the dousing of detainees with water as cold as 41 degrees alternate with elaborate legal arguments concerning the international Convention Against Torture. The revelations may give new momentum to proposals for a full-blown investigation into Bush administration counterterrorism programs and possible torture prosecutions.

Note: For many revealing reports from major media sources on increasing threats to civil liberties, click here.

Judge rejects bid to derail wiretap challenge
2009-04-18, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
Posted: 2009-04-25 08:41:20
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/17/MN6O174O7E.DTL

A San Francisco federal judge rejected on Friday the Obama administration's attempt to derail a challenge to former President George W. Bush's electronic surveillance program by withholding a critical wiretap document. President Obama's Justice Department had appeared to defy a previous order by Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker to allow lawyers for an Islamic organization to see the classified document, which reportedly showed that the group had been wiretapped. The document, which the government accidentally sent to the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, could establish its right to sue over the legality of the program. Justice Department lawyers told Walker in February that he had no power to enforce his order, and indicated they would remove the document from his files if he planned to disclose it to Al-Haramain's lawyers. But after a federal appeals court denied the department's request to intervene, Walker told the government Friday to cooperate. "The United States should now comply with the court's orders," the judge said. He told lawyers for the administration and Al-Haramain to work out a protective order by May 8 that would maintain the document's secrecy after it had been shown to the Islamic group's lawyers. If the two sides can't agree, Walker said, he will issue his own protective order "under which this case may resume forward progress." The case is one of two before Walker challenging the constitutionality of the program that Bush secretly authorized in 2001 to intercept phone calls and e-mails between Americans and suspected foreign terrorists without seeking a court warrant, as required by a 1978 law.

Note: For more reports on government secrecy from reliable sources, click here.

Fed Shrouding $2 Trillion in Bank Loans in ‘Secrecy,’ Suit Says
2009-04-16, Bloomberg News
Posted: 2009-04-25 08:38:36
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aS89AaGjOplw

U.S. taxpayers need to know the risks behind the Federal Reserve’s $2 trillion in lending to financial institutions because the public is now an “involuntary investor” in the nation’s banks, according to a court filing by Bloomberg LP. The Fed refuses to name the borrowers, the amounts of loans or assets banks put up as collateral under 11 programs, arguing that doing so might set off a run by depositors and unsettle shareholders. The largest U.S. banks have tapped more than $125 billion in government aid under the Troubled Asset Relief Program in the past seven months. Assets, including loans and securities, on the Fed balance sheet totaled $2.09 trillion as of April 9. Banks oppose any release of information because that might signal weakness and spur short-selling or a run by depositors, the Fed argued in its March 4 response. The release of the information “can fuel market speculation and rumors,” including a drop in stock price and a run on the bank, the Fed said. Bloomberg replied yesterday that “these speculative injuries relate only to the reactions of customers, shareholders and other members of the public, not to competitors’ use of the borrowers’ proprietary information to their advantage,” the exception to disclosure under the FOIA law. Government loans, spending or guarantees to rescue the U.S. financial system total more than $12.8 trillion since the international credit crisis began in August 2007, according to data compiled by Bloomberg as of March 31. The total includes about $2 trillion on the Fed’s balance sheet.

Note: For an extensive archive of key reports on the hidden realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.

'Bailout psychology' destroying the economy
2009-04-05, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
Posted: 2009-04-25 08:26:24
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/04/INR316Q4F5.DTL

President Obama must stop the bailouts and start the prosecutions. It's time to focus on anti-poverty programs to protect the growing unemployed from hunger and homelessness. Stealth payments to billionaire bondholders must cease immediately. Since the mid-1970s, average Americans' wages have stayed flat when adjusted for inflation. Productivity rose, profits rose, but not wages. To compensate for stagnant wages and the desire to consume more each year, Americans worked more, retired later, spouses went to work, and many burned savings. Then they started borrowing. Debt became America's growth industry. The scheme collapsed because Americans' wages weren't sufficient to pay the interest on existing debts. The administration and the banks keep talking about a credit crisis, but there isn't one. Banks are lending. If you want a mortgage and can afford to pay it back, you can borrow at low rates today. But most Americans don't want more debt because it is a debilitating path to poverty. The average American family already pays 14 percent of annual income in interest to banks. To fix this fake crisis, there are fake discussions about what the government must do. The endlessly recycled plan to buy "troubled" assets isn't to get banks lending again, because they haven't stopped lending. The plan seeks for taxpayers to buy worthless assets at high prices to absorb rich investors' losses. That's it. It keeps coming back as a different plan, but with that same goal. There is no goal beyond that one goal: keep rich people from taking losses.

Note: For an extensive archive of key reports on the hidden realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.

The G20 moves the world a step closer to a global currency
2009-04-03, The Telegraph (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
Posted: 2009-04-25 08:23:36
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/5096524/The...

The world is a step closer to a global currency, backed by a global central bank, running monetary policy for all humanity. A single clause in Point 19 of the communiqué issued by the G20 leaders amounts to revolution in the global financial order. "We have agreed to support a general SDR allocation which will inject $250bn (£170bn) into the world economy and increase global liquidity," it said. SDRs are Special Drawing Rights, a synthetic paper currency issued by the International Monetary Fund that has lain dormant for half a century.In effect, the G20 leaders have activated the IMF's power to create money and begin global "quantitative easing". In doing so, they are putting a de facto world currency into play. It is outside the control of any sovereign body. Conspiracy theorists will love it. There is now a world currency in waiting. In time, SDRs are likely evolve into a parking place for the foreign holdings of central banks, led by the People's Bank of China. Beijing's moves this week to offer $95bn in yuan currency swaps to developing economies show how fast China aims to break dollar dependence.

Note: For an extensive archive of key reports on the hidden realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.

Report Outlines Medical Workers’ Role in Torture
2009-04-07, New York Times
Posted: 2009-04-14 20:19:59
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/world/07detain.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pag...

Medical personnel were deeply involved in the abusive interrogation of terrorist suspects held overseas by the Central Intelligence Agency, including torture, and their participation was a “gross breach of medical ethics,” a long-secret report by the International Committee of the Red Cross concluded. Based on statements by 14 prisoners who belonged to Al Qaeda and were moved to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in late 2006, Red Cross investigators concluded that medical professionals working for the C.I.A. monitored prisoners undergoing waterboarding, apparently to make sure they did not drown. Medical workers were also present when guards confined prisoners in small boxes, shackled their arms to the ceiling, kept them in frigid cells and slammed them repeatedly into walls, the report said. Facilitating such practices, which the Red Cross described as torture, was a violation of medical ethics even if the medical workers’ intentions had been to prevent death or permanent injury, the report said. But it found that the medical professionals’ role was primarily to support the interrogators, not to protect the prisoners, and that the professionals had “condoned and participated in ill treatment.” At times, according to the detainees’ accounts, medical workers “gave instructions to interrogators to continue, to adjust or to stop particular methods.” The Red Cross report was completed in 2007. It was obtained by Mark Danner, a journalist who has written extensively about torture, and posted Monday night with an article by Mr. Danner on the Web site of The New York Review of Books.

Note: Much of content of the Red Cross report was revealed in a March article by Mr. Danner and in a 2008 book, The Dark Side, by Jane Mayer, but the reporting of the Red Cross investigators’ conclusions on medical ethics and other issues are new.

‘No-Risk’ Insurance at F.D.I.C.
2009-04-07, New York Times
Posted: 2009-04-14 20:14:49
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/business/07sorkin.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&...

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation was set up 76 years ago with the important but simple job of insuring bank deposits. Now, because of what could politely be called mission creep, it’s elbowing its way into the middle of the financial mess as an enabler of enormous leverage. In the fine print of Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner’s plan to lend as much as $1 trillion to private investors to help them buy toxic assets from our nation’s banks, you’ll find some details of how the F.D.I.C is trying to stabilize the system by adding more risk, not less, to the system. It’s going to be insuring 85 percent of the debt, provided by the Treasury, that private investors will use to subsidize their acquisitions of toxic assets. These loans, while controversial, were given a warm welcome by the market when they were first announced. And why not? The terms are hard to beat. They are, for example, “nonrecourse,” which means that if an investor loses money, he owes taxpayers nothing. It’s the closest thing to risk-free investing — with leverage! — around. But, as we’ve learned the hard way these last couple of years, risk-free investing is an oxymoron. So where did the risk go this time? To the F.D.I.C., and ultimately, to us taxpayers. A close reading of the F.D.I.C.’s statute suggests the agency is using a unique — some might call it plain wrong — reading of its own rule book to accomplish this high-wire act. Somehow, in the name of solving the financial crisis, the F.D.I.C. has seemingly been given a blank check, with virtually no oversight by Congress.

Note: For a powerfully revealing archive of reports from reliable sources on the hidden realities of the financial bailout, click here.

U.S. May Enlist Small Investors in Bank Bailout
2009-04-09, New York Times
Posted: 2009-04-14 20:12:05
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/09/business/09fund.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pa...

During World War I, Americans were exhorted to buy Liberty Bonds to help their soldiers on the front. Now, it seems, they will be asked to come to the aid of their banks — with the added inducement of possibly making some money for themselves. As part of its sweeping plan to purge banks of troublesome assets, the Obama administration is encouraging several large investment companies to create the financial-crisis equivalent of war bonds: bailout funds. The idea is that these investments, akin to mutual funds that buy stocks and bonds, would give ordinary Americans a chance to profit from the bailouts that are being financed by their tax dollars. But there is another, deeply political motivation as well: to quiet accusations that all of these giant bailouts will benefit only Wall Street plutocrats. If, as some analysts suspect, the banks’ assets are worth even less than believed, the funds’ investors could suffer significant losses. Nonetheless, the administration and executives in the financial industry are pushing to establish the investment funds, in part to counter swelling hostility against the financial industry. The embrace of smaller investors underscores the concern in Washington and on Wall Street that Americans’ anger could imperil further efforts to stimulate the economy with vast amounts of government spending. Many Americans say they believe the bailout programs ... will benefit only a golden few, including some of the institutions that helped push the economy to the brink. Critics like Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, argue that the bailouts merely privatize profits and socialize losses.

Note: For a powerfully revealing archive of reports from reliable sources on the hidden realities of the financial bailout, click here.

Why Creditors Should Suffer, Too
2009-04-05, New York Times
Posted: 2009-04-14 20:09:57
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/05/business/economy/05view.html?partner=rss&em...

The Obama administration’s proposals to reform financial regulation sound ambitious enough as they aim to bring companies like A.I.G. under a broader umbrella of government rule-making and scrutiny. But there is a big hole in these proposals, as there has already been in the government’s approach to bailing out failing financial companies. Even as they focus on firms deemed too big to fail, the new proposals immunize the creditors and counterparties of such firms by protecting them from their own lending and trading mistakes. This pattern has been evident for months, with the government aiding creditors and counterparties every step of the way. Yet this has not been explained openly to the American public. In truth, it’s not the shareholders of the American International Group who benefited most from its bailout; they were mostly wiped out. The great beneficiaries have been the creditors and counterparties at the other end of A.I.G.’s derivatives deals — firms like Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank, Société Générale, Barclays and UBS. These firms engaged in deals that A.I.G. could not make good on. The bailout, and the regulatory regime outlined by Timothy F. Geithner, the Treasury secretary, would give firms like these every incentive to make similar deals down the road. In both the bailouts and in the new proposals, the government is effectively neutralizing creditors as a force for financial safety. This suggests a scary possibility — that the next regulatory regime could end up even worse than the last.

Note: For a powerfully revealing archive of reports from reliable sources on the hidden realities of the financial bailout, click here.

Revelations of the wholesale greed and blatant transgressions of Wall Street
2009-04-03, PBS Bill Moyers Journal
Posted: 2009-04-14 20:08:37
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04032009/transcript1.html

BILL MOYERS: For months now, revelations of the wholesale greed and blatant transgressions of Wall Street have reminded us that "The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One." In fact, the man you're about to meet wrote a book with just that title. Bill Black, ... what's your definition of fraud? WILLIAM K. BLACK: Fraud is deceit. And the essence of fraud is, "I create trust in you, and then I betray that trust, and get you to give me something of value." And as a result, there's no more effective acid against trust than fraud, especially fraud by top elites, and that's what we have. Well, The way that you do it is to make really bad loans, because they pay better. Then you grow extremely rapidly, in other words, you're a Ponzi-like scheme. And the third thing you do is we call it leverage. That just means borrowing a lot of money, and the combination creates a situation where you have guaranteed record profits in the early years. That makes you rich, through the bonuses that modern executive compensation has produced. It also makes it inevitable that there's going to be a disaster down the road. BILL MOYERS: So you're ... saying that CEOs of some of these banks and mortgage firms in order to increase their own personal income, deliberately set out to make bad loans? WILLIAM K. BLACK: Yes. BILL MOYERS: If I wanted to go looking for the parties to this, with a good bird dog, where would you send me? WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, that's exactly what hasn't happened. We haven't looked, all right? You'd look at the specialty lenders. The lenders that did almost all of their work in the sub-prime and what's called Alt-A, liars' loans.

Note: William K. Black is the former senior regulator who cracked down on banks during the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s. He is now an Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri. The video of this fascinating interview is available here. For a powerfully revealing archive of reports from reliable sources on the hidden realities of the financial bailout, click here.

Latest CIA Scandal Puts Focus on How Agency Polices Self
2009-03-20, Washington Post
Posted: 2009-04-14 20:07:13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/19/AR20090319041...

As a novice CIA case officer in the Middle East, Andrew Warren quickly learned the value of sex in recruiting spies. Colleagues say that he made an early habit of taking informants to strip clubs, and that he later began arranging out-of-town visits to brothels for his best recruits. Often Warren would travel with them, according to two colleagues who worked with him for years. His methods earned him promotions and notoriety over a lengthy career, until Warren, 41, became ensnared in a sex scandal. Two Algerian women have accused the Virginia native of drugging and sexually assaulting them, and, in one instance, videotaping the encounter. The episode -- one of three sex-related scandals to shake the CIA this year -- has drawn harsh questions from Congress about whether the agency adequately polices its far-flung workforce or takes sufficient steps to root out corrupt behavior. Former officers say the cases underscore a perennial challenge: guarding against scandal in a workforce -- the size of which is classified but is generally estimated to be 20,000 -- that prides itself on secrecy and deception. "You have an organization of professional liars," said Tyler Drumheller, who oversaw hundreds of officers as chief of the agency's European division. Experienced field managers are needed, he said, because inevitably "some people will try to take advantage of the system . . . and it's a system that can be taken advantage of." The recent string of embarrassing revelations started with the CIA's former No. 3 officer, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, who was indicted on corruption charges two years ago.

Note: For in-depth analysis of the continuing revelations of a long history of the CIA's use of sex to control people, click here.

Why We Must Fix Our Prisons
2009-03-29, Parade magazine
Posted: 2009-04-14 20:05:42
http://www.parade.com/news/2009/03/why-we-must-fix-our-prisons.html

America's criminal justice system has deteriorated to the point that it is a national disgrace. Its irregularities and inequities cut against the notion that we are a society founded on fundamental fairness. Our failure to address this problem has caused the nation's prisons to burst their seams with massive overcrowding, even as our neighborhoods have become more dangerous. We are wasting billions of dollars and diminishing millions of lives. We need to fix the system. Doing so will require a major nationwide recalculation of who goes to prison and for how long and of how we address the long-term consequences of incarceration. The United States has by far the world's highest incarceration rate. With 5% of the world's population, our country now houses nearly 25% of the world's reported prisoners. We currently incarcerate 756 inmates per 100,000 residents, a rate nearly five times the average worldwide of 158 for every 100,000. All told, about one in every 31 adults in the United States is in prison, in jail, or on supervised release. This all comes at a very high price to taxpayers: Local, state, and federal spending on corrections adds up to about $68 billion a year. Our overcrowded, ill-managed prison systems are places of violence, physical abuse, and hate, making them breeding grounds that perpetuate and magnify the same types of behavior we purport to fear. Post-incarceration re-entry programs are haphazard or, in some places, nonexistent, making it more difficult for former offenders who wish to overcome the stigma of having done prison time and become full, contributing members of society.

Note: The author of this analysis, Senator Jim Webb (D. Va.), is a PARADE Contributing Editor and the author of nine books, including A Time to Fight.

'US graft adds to Mexico's woes'
2009-03-30, BBC News
Posted: 2009-04-14 20:04:22
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7971335.stm

Mexican President Felipe Calderon has warned that corruption among American officials may be making it harder to deal with drug-trafficking between Mexico and the US. Mr Calderon said violence in the border city of Juarez had fallen by 73% in the month since he sent 7,000 extra troops there. There has been open warfare in Juarez for more than a year; last year, 5,600 people were killed in drug-related attacks in Mexico, many in Juarez. President Calderon said it was impossible to smuggle [tons] of cocaine into the United States without the complicity of some American authorities. "There is trafficking in Mexico because there is corruption in Mexico," he told the BBC. "But by the same argument if there is trafficking in the United States it is because there is some corruption in the United States... It is impossible to pass tonnes of cocaine to the United States without the complicity of some American authorities." The situation along the border is very sensitive politically, and although the White House may wonder privately whether there is some corruption among some American customs, immigration and police officials, it is unlikely to admit it publicly.

Note: For powerfully revealing information on involvement of U.S. officials in the illegal drug trade, click here.

Big Bonuses at Fannie and Freddie Draw Fire
2009-04-04, New York Times
Posted: 2009-04-11 07:04:13
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/04/business/04bonus.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&p...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two troubled companies at the heart of the nation’s mortgage market, are set to pay their employees “retention bonuses” totaling $210 million, despite calls from lawmakers to cancel the payments. The bonuses, which were made public on Friday, were defended by the companies’ federal regulator, James B. Lockhart, who said he intended to let them proceed. In a letter sent last week to Senator Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican, Mr. Lockhart disclosed that 7,600 Fannie and Freddie workers were scheduled to receive payouts aimed at retaining those “employees most critical to keep and difficult to replace.” Under the plan, 213 employees will receive retention bonuses worth more than $100,000 this year, and one Freddie Mac executive will receive $1.3 million. Those figures drew sharp rebukes from Mr. Grassley and other lawmakers, who noted that Fannie and Freddie had received pledges of $400 billion from taxpayers to offset huge losses since they were seized by the government in September. Similar bonuses paid by the American International Group, which was also bailed out by taxpayers, incited fiery attacks from the White House and legislators when they were revealed last month. “It’s hard to see any common sense in management decisions that award hundreds of millions in bonuses when their organizations lost more than $100 billion in a year,” Mr. Grassley said in a statement. “It’s an insult that the bonuses were made with an infusion of cash from taxpayers.”

Note: For many revealing reports on the realities behind the Wall Street bailouts, click here.

Banks Get New Leeway in Valuing Their Assets
2009-04-03, New York Times
Posted: 2009-04-11 07:01:25
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/03/business/03fasb.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pa...

A once-obscure accounting rule that infuriated banks ... was changed Thursday to give banks more discretion in reporting the value of mortgage securities. The change seems likely to allow banks to report higher profits by assuming that the securities are worth more than anyone is now willing to pay for them. But critics objected that the change could further damage the credibility of financial institutions by enabling them to avoid recognizing losses from bad loans they have made. Critics also said that since the rules were changed under heavy political pressure, the move compromised the independence of the organization that did it, the Financial Accounting Standards Board. During the financial crisis, the market prices of many securities, particularly those backed by subprime home mortgages, have plunged to fractions of their original prices. That has forced banks to report hundreds of billions of dollars in losses over the last year, because some of those securities must be reported at market value each three months, with the bank showing a profit or loss based on the change. At first FASB ... resisted making changes, but that changed within a few days of a Congressional hearing at which legislators from both parties demanded the board act. “There is a perception that we are yielding to political pressure,” one board member, Lawrence W. Smith, said as he voted for the changes. A group headed by two former chairmen of the Securities and Exchange Commission, one who served under President Bill Clinton and one who was appointed by President George W. Bush, said that it feared that politicization of accounting standards would destroy the credibility of the board.

Note: For many revealing reports on the realities behind the Wall Street bailouts, click here.

Financial Industry Paid Millions to Obama Aide
2009-04-04, New York Times
Posted: 2009-04-11 06:58:41
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/04/us/politics/04disclose.html?partner=rss&emc...

Lawrence H. Summers, the top economic adviser to President Obama, earned more than $5 million last year from the hedge fund D. E. Shaw and collected $2.7 million in speaking fees from Wall Street companies that received government bailout money, the White House disclosed. Mr. Summers, the director of the National Economic Council, wields important influence over Mr. Obama’s policy decisions for the troubled financial industry, including firms from which he recently received payments. Last year, he reported making 40 paid appearances, including a $135,000 speech to the investment firm Goldman Sachs, in addition to his earnings from the hedge fund, a sector the administration is trying to regulate. Mr. Summers’s role at the White House includes advising Mr. Obama on whether — and how — to tighten regulation of hedge funds, which engage in highly sophisticated financial trading that many analysts have said contributed to the economic collapse. Mr. Summers ... appeared before large Wall Street companies like Citigroup ($45,000), J. P. Morgan ($67,500) and the now defunct Lehman Brothers ($67,500), according to his disclosure report. While Mr. Obama campaigned on a pledge to restrict lobbyists from working in the White House, a step intended to reduce any influence between the administration and corporations, the ban did not apply to former executives like Mr. Summers, who was not a registered lobbyist. In 2006, he became a managing director of D. E. Shaw, a firm that manages about $30 billion in assets, making it one of the biggest hedge funds in the world.

Note: For many revealing reports on the realities behind the Wall Street bailouts, click here.

Obama’s Ersatz Capitalism
2009-04-01, New York Times
Posted: 2009-04-11 06:56:08
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/opinion/01stiglitz.html?partner=rss&emc=rss...

The Obama administration’s $500 billion or more proposal to deal with America’s ailing banks has been described by some in the financial markets as a win-win-win proposal. Actually, it is a win-win-lose proposal: the banks win, investors win — and taxpayers lose. Treasury hopes to get us out of the mess by replicating the flawed system that the private sector used to bring the world crashing down, with a proposal marked by overleveraging in the public sector, excessive complexity, poor incentives and a lack of transparency. In theory, the administration’s plan is based on letting the market determine the prices of the banks’ “toxic assets” — including outstanding house loans and securities based on those loans. The reality, though, is that the market will not be pricing the toxic assets themselves, but options on those assets. The two have little to do with each other. The government plan in effect involves insuring almost all losses. Since the private investors are spared most losses, then they primarily “value” their potential gains. This is exactly the same as being given an option. Under the plan by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, the government would provide about 92 percent of the money to buy the asset but would stand to receive only 50 percent of any gains, and would absorb almost all of the losses. Some partnership! What the Obama administration is doing is far worse than nationalization: it is ersatz capitalism, the privatizing of gains and the socializing of losses. It is a “partnership” in which one partner robs the other.

Note: The author of this analysis, Joseph E. Stiglitz, is a professor of economics at Columbia University. He was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers from 1995 to 1997, and was awarded the Nobel prize in economics in 2001. For many revealing reports on the realities behind the Wall Street bailouts, click here.

Inquiry Asks Why A.I.G. Paid Banks
2009-03-27, New York Times
Posted: 2009-04-11 06:54:00
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/business/27cuomo.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&p...

Members of Congress and the New York State attorney general demanded detailed information Thursday on how tens of billions of taxpayer dollars flowed through the American International Group during its crisis last fall and ended up in the coffers of several dozen big banks, shielding them from losses. The new inquiries shine a spotlight on a question that is exponentially bigger, in dollars, than the $165 million in bonuses that A.I.G. paid out this month, but which has been overshadowed until now by the uproar over the bonuses. “We would like to know if the A.I.G. counterparty payments, as made, were in the best interests of the taxpayers who provided the funding,” said Representative Elijah E. Cummings, Democrat of Maryland, in a letter to Neil M. Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program. The banks and investment firms that ended up with A.I.G.’s bailout money last fall were, in many cases, counterparties to derivatives contracts it had sold, known as credit-default swaps, which guaranteed the value of assets in their investment portfolios. They included Wall Street firms, like Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Merrill Lynch, that have successfully resisted efforts to regulate credit derivatives in the past. In several hearings this month, members of Congress said they believed the derivatives had often been used to speculate, not to manage risk. They have expressed outrage that A.I.G.’s trading partners got 100 cents on the dollar for their money-losing trades when ordinary Americans paying for the bailout have suffered big losses in their 401(k) accounts and other investments.

Note: For many revealing reports on the realities behind the Wall Street bailouts, click here.

CIA expert: Electronic voting not secure
2009-03-25, Miami Herald/McClatchy News
Posted: 2009-04-11 06:51:06
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/story/966214.html

The CIA, which has been monitoring foreign countries' use of electronic voting systems, has reported apparent vote-rigging schemes in Venezuela, Macedonia and Ukraine and a raft of concerns about the machines' vulnerability to tampering. In a presentation that could provide disturbing lessons for the United States, where electronic voting is becoming universal, [CIA cybersecurity expert] Steve Stigall summarized what he described as attempts to use computers to undermine democratic elections in developing nations. His remarks have received no news media attention until now. Stigall told the Election Assistance Commission ... that computerized electoral systems can be manipulated at five stages, from altering voter registration lists to posting results. Stigall said voting equipment connected to the Internet could be hacked, and machines that weren't connected could be compromised wirelessly. Eleven U.S. states have banned or limited wireless capability in voting equipment, but Stigall said elections officials didn't always know it when wireless cards were embedded in their machines. Stigall said that most Web-based ballot systems had proved to be insecure. The commission has been criticized for giving states more than $1 billion to buy electronic equipment without first setting performance standards. Numerous computer-security experts have concluded that U.S. systems can be hacked, and allegations of tampering in Ohio, Florida and other swing states have triggered a campaign to require all voting machines to produce paper audit trails.

Note: For key articles from reliable sources exposing the many flaws in electronic voting systems, click here.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on the Vaccine Autism Coverup
2005-06-22, MSNBC
Posted: 2009-04-11 06:44:08
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8316237

JOE SCARBOROUGH, Host: Six out of every 1,000 kids get it, and nobody knows exactly why. But my next guest says ... part of the blame ... needs to fall on government. And it has to do with a drug called thimerosal. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense [Council]. Let's talk tonight about thimerosal. There are a lot of people out there ... very concerned about the impact of this drug, which is found in vaccines, and how it causes autism. Talk about that. KENNEDY: That's right. Thimerosal is a preservative that was put in vaccines back in the 1930s. Almost immediately after it was put in, autism cases began to appear. Autism had never been known before. It was unknown to science. Then the vaccines were increased in 1989 by the CDC and by a couple of other government agencies. What happened was the vaccine schedule was increased. We went up from receiving about 10 vaccines in our generation to these kids receive 24 vaccines. And they all had this thimerosal in them, this mercury. And nobody bothered to do an analysis of what the cumulative impact of all that mercury was doing to kids. As it turns out, we are injecting our children with 400 times the amount of mercury that FDA or EPA considers safe. A child on his first day that he is born is injected with a hepatitis B shot. Under EPA guidelines, he would have to be 275 pounds to safely absorb that shot. What happened was that, in 1988, one in every 2,500 American children had autism. Today, one in every 166 children have autism.

Note: For an excellent article by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. revealing the severe manipulations around vaccines, click here. For a seven-minute video clip of the above interview, click here. For lots more on autism and vaccines from reliable, verifiable sources, click here

Congress Passes Wide-Ranging Bill Easing Bank Laws
1999-11-05, New York Times
Posted: 2009-04-11 06:41:20
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/05/business/congress-passes-wide-ranging-bill-...

Congress approved landmark legislation today that opens the door for a new era on Wall Street in which commercial banks, securities houses and insurers will find it easier and cheaper to enter one another's businesses. The measure, considered by many the most important banking legislation in 66 years, was approved in the Senate by a vote of 90 to 8 and in the House tonight by 362 to 57. The bill will now be sent to the president, who is expected to sign it, aides said. ''Today Congress voted to update the rules that have governed financial services since the Great Depression and replace them with a system for the 21st century,'' Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers said. ''This historic legislation will better enable American companies to compete in the new economy.'' The decision to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 provoked dire warnings from a handful of dissenters that the deregulation of Wall Street would someday wreak havoc on the nation's financial system. The original idea behind Glass-Steagall was that separation between bankers and brokers would reduce the potential conflicts of interest that were thought to have contributed to the speculative stock frenzy before the Depression. Consumer groups and civil rights advocates criticized the legislation for being a sop to the nation's biggest financial institutions. The opponents of the measure ... predicted that by unshackling banks and enabling them to move more freely into new kinds of financial activities, the new law could lead to an economic crisis down the road when the marketplace is no longer growing briskly.

Note: Clearly these critics of the elimination of Glass-Steagall have been proven right by the financial crisis which has unfolded less than 10 years later. Note the key role played by President Obama's top economic advisor, Larry Summers. If the players haven't changed, how likely is it that the game has?

IRS defends drop in audits of millionaires
2009-03-22, MSNBC/Associated Press
Posted: 2009-04-05 19:40:04
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29831158

The Internal Revenue Service is not living up to its pledge to crack down on wealthy tax cheats, an IRS watchdog group says, citing a drop in audits of millionaires last year. Those with incomes of $1 million and above had a 5.6 percent chance of getting audited in fiscal year 2008, which ended last September, down from 6.8 percent the previous year, according to IRS figures. The actual number of millionaires audited fell from 23,200 to 21,874; the number of millionaires filing tax returns grew from 339,138 to 392,776. "In the face of growing federal deficits and public calls to lower the tax gap — the amount of taxes due but not reported and paid — the drop in millionaire audits is surprising," said the Syracuse University-based Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse in a report Monday. It said the significant drop in audits of richer Americans contrasted with IRS statements last year that it was making strong progress in enforcement, especially of those with incomes of more than $1 million. The TRAC report said focus on high earner returns is critical because of the huge rewards. Among those millionaire audit cases where additional taxes were recommended, the average was $198,000 after face-to-face audits and $137,000 for audits done through correspondence. In total, the IRS collected $56.4 billion in enforcement revenues last year, down from $59.2 billion in 2007 and the first decline in collections in a decade.

Note: The highly important statistic only mentioned in passing here is "the number of millionaires filing tax returns grew from 339,138 to 392,776." That's an over-15% increase in the number of millionaires in one year, while most everyone else seems to be losing money. Hmmmm. Makes you wonder.

Hope in the Mountains
2009-03-25, Washington Post
Posted: 2009-04-05 19:36:13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/24/AR20090324026...

Yesterday was a great day for the people of Appalachia and for all of America. In a bold departure from Bush-era energy policy, the Obama administration suspended a coal company's permit to dump debris from its proposed mountaintop mining operation into a West Virginia valley and stream. In addition, the administration promised to carefully review upward of 200 such permits awaiting approval by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Mountaintop-removal coal mining is the greatest environmental tragedy ever to befall our nation. This radical form of strip mining has already flattened the tops of 500 mountains, buried 2,000 miles of streams, devastated our country's oldest and most diverse temperate forests, and blighted landscapes famous for their history and beauty. Using giant earthmovers and millions of tons of explosives, coal moguls have eviscerated communities, destroyed homes, and uprooted and sickened families with coal and rock dust, and with blasting, flooding and poisoned water, all while providing far fewer jobs than does traditional underground mining. The Corps has been working overtime to oblige impatient coal barons by quickly issuing the pending permits. Each such permit amounts to a death sentence for streams, mountains and communities. Taken together, these pending permits threatened to lay waste to nearly 60,000 acres of mountain landscape, destroy 400 valleys and bury more than 200 miles of streams. The Corps already had issued a dozen permits before the White House stepped in.

Several Clay County Officials Arrested On Federal Charges
2009-03-21, MSNBC
Posted: 2009-03-28 08:55:05
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29778909

Five Clay County [Kentucky] officials, including the circuit court judge, the county clerk, and election officers were arrested Thursday after they were indicted on federal charges accusing them of using corrupt tactics to obtain political power and personal gain. The 10-count indictment, unsealed Thursday, accused the defendants of a conspiracy from March 2002 until November 2006 that violated the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). The defendants were also indicted for extortion, mail fraud, obstruction of justice, conspiracy to injure voters' rights and conspiracy to commit voter fraud. According to the indictment, these alleged criminal actions affected the outcome of federal, local, and state primary and general elections in 2002, 2004, and 2006. Clay County Circuit Court Judge Russell Cletus Maricle, 65, and school superintendent Douglas C. Adams, 57, allegedly used their status in the county to influence the appointment of corrupt members to the Clay County Board of Election Officials. [They also] caused election officers to commit acts of extortion, mail fraud, and bribery. Clay County Clerk, Freddy Thompson, 45, allegedly provided money to election officers to be distributed by the officers to buy votes. He also instructed officers how to change votes at the voting machine. Paul E. Bishop, 60, ... hosted alleged meetings at his home where money was pooled together by candidates and distributed to election officers, including himself. He was also accused of instructing the officers how to change votes at the voting machine. The investigation preceding the indictment was conducted by the FBI, Kentucky State Police, and Appalachia

Note: For some strange reason, the article is no longer available at the link above. To read it on an MSNBC affiliate website, click here. The media have almost always proclaimed that voting maching tampering has never been proven to affect election outcome. This article demonstrates that not only does it happen, but it may be much more prevalent than most would think. For more on this indictment, click here. For more reliable information on widespread election fraud, click here.

AIG - the biggest shark of all
2009-03-19, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
Posted: 2009-03-28 08:51:43
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/03/18/ED0316IQ82.DTL

There must be a criminal investigation of the AIG debacle, and it looks as if New York's top lawman is on the case. The collusion to save this toxic company in order to salvage the rogue financiers who conspired to enrich themselves by impoverishing millions is being revealed as the greatest financial scandal in U.S. history. Instead of taking bonuses, the culprits should be taking perp walks. The real culprits are the AIG leaders who, as New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo revealed Tuesday, signed those bonus contracts a year ago to reward the very people "principally responsible for the firm's meltdown." As Cuomo noted in a letter to Rep. Barney Frank: "The contracts shockingly contain a provision that required most individuals' bonuses to be 100 percent of their 2007 bonuses. Eleven of the individuals who received 'retention' bonuses of $1 million or more are no longer working at AIG, including one who received $4.6 million." But the $165 million in taxpayer funds used to reward them is but a sideshow in a far larger drama of moral decay swirling around the banking bailout. It should not distract from the many billions, not paltry millions, of our dollars being diverted to reward the very folks who brought us such misery. Consider the $12.8 billion of the $170 billion that taxpayers gave AIG in bailout funds that AIG then secretly diverted to Goldman Sachs, a company that evidently has a lock on both the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve no matter which political party is in power.

Note: For an excellent analysis of "the real AIG conspiracy", click here. For lots more on the hidden realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.

Spitzer Takes Aim at ‘Real Disgrace’ at A.I.G.
2009-03-17, New York Times blog
Posted: 2009-03-28 08:50:32
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/spitzer-takes-aim-at-real-disgra...

Eliot Spitzer must miss his glory days when he was the scourge of Wall Street as New York’s attorney general. With the bonus battle exploding at the American International Group, Mr. Spitzer has jumped into the fray — and dismissed the bonus scandal, arguing that it is obscuring the “real disgrace” at A.I.G. “Why are A.I.G.’s counterparties getting paid back in full, to the tune of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars?” he asks in an article on Slate. Mr. Spitzer notes that A.I.G.’s trading parties were all the big banks including Goldman Sachs, many of which received billions of dollars from the government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program. “So now we know for sure what we already surmised: The A.I.G. bailout has been a way to hide an enormous second round of cash to the same group that had received TARP money already,” he writes. “It all appears, once again, to be the same insiders protecting themselves against sharing the pain and risk of their own bad adventure,” Mr. Spitzer writes. Recounting how the economic crisis is affecting workers, with tax increases, pay cuts and layoffs, Mr. Spitzer asks: “Why can’t Wall Street royalty shoulder some of the burden? Why did Goldman have to get back 100 cents on the dollar? Didn’t we already give Goldman a $25 billion capital infusion, and aren’t they sitting on more than $100 billion in cash? What is the deeper relationship between Goldman and A.I.G.?”

Note: For the article written in 2008 by former NY Governor Spitzer which likely caused him to be targeted for a takedown just weeks later, click here. For lots more on the hidden realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.

Canada blocks outspoken British MP
2009-03-20, Toronto Star
Posted: 2009-03-28 08:48:58
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/605682

Canadian officials have denied outspoken anti-war British MP George Galloway entry into Canada on grounds he poses a threat to national security. Alykhan Velshi, a spokesperson for Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, said today Galloway has openly supported Hamas, classified as a terrorist group in Canada, as well as other terrorists. Galloway, who was expected to begin a Canadian speaking tour in Toronto on March 30, called the ban outrageous. Galloway said his supposed support for Hamas amounted to leading an aid convoy into Gaza to break the "illegal siege" following the month-long Israeli incursion in January. "I led a convoy of 110 British vehicles, more than 300 British citizens, to break the illegal siege of Gaza just a few days ago. Most people in the world think that feeding people under siege is something to be commended rather than something to get you banned," he told the Star in a telephone interview from his London office. He noted that when news he was being denied entry to visit Canada first appeared in the British press, it was supposedly because he had expressed opposition to the NATO-led Afghan war. Some critics have called the government's decision to bar Galloway an attack on free speech. Galloway was expelled from the Labour Party in 2003 for urging British soldiers not to fight in Iraq. He formed his own party, Respect, and won re-election to the Commons in 2005.

Fed to Buy Up to $300 Billion Long-Term Bonds
2009-03-18, CNBC/Reuters News
Posted: 2009-03-28 08:44:58
http://www.cnbc.com/id/29755961/

The Federal Reserve announced Wednesday it will spend up to $300 billion over the next six months to buy long-term government bonds, a new step aimed at lifting the country out of recession by lowering rates on mortgages and other consumer debt. Fed purchases should boost Treasury prices and drive down their rates. That would ripple through and lower rates on other kinds of debt. The last time the Fed set out to influence long-term interest rates was during the 1960s. The Fed also said it will buy more mortgage-backed securities guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to help that battered market. The central bank will buy an additional $750 billion, bringing its total purchases of these securities to $1.25 trillion. It also will boost its purchase of Fannie and Freddie debt to $200 billion. Pimco's Bill Gross tells CNBC that the move has expanded the Fed’s balance sheet by perhaps 50 percent, up to $3 trillion. In addition, the Fed said a $1 trillion program to jump-start consumer and small business lending could be expanded to include other financial assets. Across the Atlantic, the Bank of England last week began buying government bonds from financial institutions as it turned to other ways to help revive Britain's moribund economy. The Bank of England, like the Fed, already had lowered its key interest rate to a record low of 0.5 percent. Finance leaders from top economies have discussed coordinating actions from their governments and central banks to provide a more potent punch against the global financial crisis.

Note: The Fed is now buying long-term Treasury bonds because it cannot directly lower interest rates any further. Isn't this just a hidden form of increasing the money supply, with the risk of further devaluing the dollar and eventually causing high inflation? For lots more on the hidden realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here

Treasurys Are 'Disaster Waiting to Happen'
2009-03-17, CNBC
Posted: 2009-03-28 08:43:36
http://www.cnbc.com/id/29720589/

The Federal Reserve has no option but to start buying Treasurys as the government's needs for financing are huge, but the government bond market is a disaster in the making, Marc Faber, editor and publisher of The Gloom, Boom & Doom Report, told CNBC. "Other central banks have done it already around the world but basically what it amounts to is money printing and in fact I don't think that it will help the bond market at all in the long run," Faber told CNBC. "Yields have already backed up pretty substantially and I tell you, I think the US government bond market is a disaster waiting to happen for the simple reason that the requirements of the government to cover its fiscal deficit will be very, very high," Faber said. "The Federal Reserve will have to buy Treasurys, otherwise yields will go up substantially," he said, adding that as their reserves were dwindling, foreign investors were likely to scale down their purchases. But there will be a time when the Federal Reserve will have to increase interest rates to fight inflation, and it will be reluctant to do so because the cost of servicing government debt will rise substantially. "So we'll go into high inflation rates one day," Faber said. The stock market ... outlook is bleak, he added. "I think we may still have a rally ... until about the end of April and probably then a total collapse in the second half of the year sometimes, when it becomes clear that the economy is a total disaster," Faber said.

Note: For lots more on the hidden realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here

A.I.G. Planning Huge Bonuses After $170 Billion Bailout
2009-03-15, New York Times
Posted: 2009-03-21 09:51:32
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/business/15AIG.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pag...

The American International Group, which has received more than $170 billion in taxpayer bailout money from the Treasury and Federal Reserve, plans to pay about $165 million in bonuses by Sunday to executives in the same business unit that brought the company to the brink of collapse last year. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner told the firm they were unacceptable and demanded they be renegotiated, a senior administration official said. But the bonuses will go forward because lawyers said the firm was contractually obligated to pay them. The payments to A.I.G.’s financial products unit are in addition to $121 million in previously scheduled bonuses for the company’s senior executives and 6,400 employees across the sprawling corporation. The payment of so much money at a company at the heart of the financial collapse that sent the broader economy into a tailspin almost certainly will fuel a popular backlash against the government’s efforts to prop up Wall Street. A.I.G., nearly 80 percent of which is now owned by the government, defended its bonuses, arguing that they were promised last year before the crisis and cannot be legally canceled. Of all the financial institutions that have been propped up by taxpayer dollars, none has received more money than A.I.G.. The bonuses will be paid to executives at A.I.G.’s financial products division, the unit that wrote trillions of dollars’ worth of credit-default swaps that protected investors from defaults on bonds backed in many cases by subprime mortgages. Seven executives at the financial products unit were entitled to receive more than $3 million in bonuses.

Note: For many revelations of the amazing realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.

Some Banks, Feeling Chained, Want to Return Bailout Money
2009-03-11, New York Times
Posted: 2009-03-21 09:48:43
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/11/business/economy/11bailout.html?partner=rss...

Financial institutions that are getting government bailout funds have been told to put off evictions and modify mortgages for distressed homeowners. They must let shareholders vote on executive pay packages. They must slash dividends, cancel employee training and morale-building exercises, and withdraw job offers to foreign citizens. As public outrage swells over the rapidly growing cost of bailing out financial institutions, the Obama administration and lawmakers are attaching more and more strings to rescue funds. The conditions are necessary to prevent Wall Street executives from paying lavish bonuses and buying corporate jets, some experts say. Some bankers say the conditions have become so onerous that they want to return the bailout money. The list includes small banks ... as well as giants like Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo. They say they plan to return the money as quickly as possible or as soon as regulators set up a process to accept the refunds. A senior Treasury official involved in the bailout effort said the administration was carefully trying not to do anything that could harm the banks and was giving financial incentives to modify mortgages. But by keeping weak banks operating, the markets continue to sink and taxpayer costs are mounting, outside experts said. “The current policy is likely to result in weaker banks,” Mr. Seidman said. “And keeping insolvent banks in operation does not benefit the system.”

Note: Could it be that that the main reason top bank executives are now talking about giving money back is that don't want to give up their lavish bonuses and corporate jets? What about all the talk about how the whole world would go to pot if they didn't get this bailout money? Somehow this is not surprising.

Whitney Sees Credit Cards as the Next Crunch: Report
2009-03-10, CNBC
Posted: 2009-03-21 09:47:18
http://www.cnbc.com/id/29611789/

Prominent banking analyst Meredith Whitney warned that "credit cards are the next credit crunch," as contracting credit lines will lower consumer spending and hurt the U.S. economy. "Few doubt the importance of consumer spending to the U.S. economy and its multiplier effect on the global economy, but what is under-appreciated is the role of credit-card availability in that spending," Whitney wrote in the Wall Street Journal. Although credit was extended "too freely over the past 15 years" and rationalization of lending is unavoidable, what needs to be avoided was "taking credit away from people who have the ability to pay their bills," said Whitney, CEO of Meredith Whitney Advisory Group. Whitney said available lines were reduced by nearly $500 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008 alone, and she estimates over $2 trillion of credit-card lines will be cut within 2009, and $2.7 trillion by the end of 2010. "Inevitably, credit lines will continue to be reduced across the system, but the velocity at which it is already occurring and will continue to occur will result in unintended consequences for consumer confidence, spending and the overall economy," Whitney said. There is roughly $5 trillion in credit-card lines outstanding in the U.S., and a little more than $800 billion is currently drawn upon, she said. "Lenders, regulators and politicians need to show thoughtful leadership now on this issue in order to derail what I believe will be at least a 57 percent contraction in credit-card lines," she said.

Note: Some believe that rising defaults on credit card debt could cause yet another financial shock to the system. For many more revelations of the amazing realites of the Wall Street bailout and the now world-wide financial and credit crises, click here.

The U.S. Financial System Is Effectively Insolvent
2009-03-05, Forbes Magazine
Posted: 2009-03-21 09:46:05
http://www.forbes.com/2009/03/04/global-recession-insolvent-opinions-columnis...

With economic activity contracting in 2009's first quarter at the same rate as in 2008's fourth quarter, a nasty U-shaped recession could turn into a more severe L-shaped near-depression (or stag-deflation). The scale and speed of synchronized global economic contraction is really unprecedented (at least since the Great Depression), with a free fall of GDP, income, consumption, industrial production, employment, exports, imports, residential investment and, more ominously, capital expenditures around the world. And now many emerging-market economies are on the verge of a fully fledged financial crisis, starting with emerging Europe. In the meantime, the massacre in financial markets and among financial firms is continuing. The debate on "bank nationalization" is borderline surreal, with the U.S. government having already committed--between guarantees, investment, recapitalization and liquidity provision--about $9 trillion of government financial resources to the financial system (and having already spent $2 trillion of this staggering $9 trillion figure). Thus, the U.S. financial system is de facto nationalized, as the Federal Reserve has become the lender of first and only resort rather than the lender of last resort, and the U.S. Treasury is the spender and guarantor of first and only resort. And even with the $2 trillion of government support, most of these financial institutions are insolvent, as delinquency and charge-off rates are now rising at a rate ... that means expected credit losses for U.S. financial firms will peak at $3.6 trillion. So, in simple words, the U.S. financial system is effectively insolvent.

Note: The author of this insightful analysis, Nouriel Roubini, has a very informative blog, available here.

Regulatory reports show 5 big banks face huge loss risk
2009-03-09, Miami Herald/McClatchy News
Posted: 2009-03-21 09:43:13
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics/AP/story/940829.html

Five of America's largest banks, most of which have received $145 billion in taxpayer bailout dollars, still face potentially catastrophic losses from exotic investments if economic conditions substantially worsen, their latest financial reports show. Citibank, Bank of America, HSBC Bank USA, Wells Fargo Bank and J.P. Morgan Chase reported that their "current" net loss risks from derivatives — insurance-like bets tied to a loan or other underlying asset — surged to $587 billion as of Dec. 31 ... a jump of 49 percent in just 90 days. The banks' potentially huge losses ... shed new light on the hurdles that President Barack Obama's economic team must overcome to save institutions it deems too big to fail. While the potential loss totals include risks reported by Wachovia Bank, which Wells Fargo agreed to acquire in October, they don't reflect another Pandora's Box: the impact of Bank of America's Jan. 1 acquisition of tottering investment bank Merrill Lynch, a major derivatives dealer. The risks of these off-balance sheet investments, once thought minimal, have risen sharply. Fears are rising that a spate of corporate bankruptcies could deliver a new, crippling blow to major banks. Because of the trading in derivatives, corporate bankruptcies could cause a chain reaction that deprives the banks of hundreds of billions of dollars in insurance they bought on risky debt or forces them to shell out huge sums to cover debt they guaranteed. The biggest concerns are the banks' holdings of contracts known as credit-default swaps.

Note: For many powerful revelations from major media sources of the Wall Street bailout, click here.

'Run on UK' sees foreign investors pull $1 trillion out of the City
2009-03-07, The Independent (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
Posted: 2009-03-21 09:41:32
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/run-on-uk-sees=foreign-invest...

A silent $1 trillion "Run on Britain" by foreign investors was revealed yesterday in the latest statistical releases from the Bank of England. The external liabilities of banks operating in the UK – that is monies held in the UK on behalf of foreign investors – fell by $1 trillion (£700bn) between the spring and the end of 2008, representing a huge loss of funds and of confidence in the City of London. Some $597.5bn was lost to the banks in the last quarter of last year alone, after a ... massive $682.5bn haemorrhaged in the second quarter of 2008 – a record. About 15 per cent of the monies held by foreigners in the UK were withdrawn over the period. This is by far the largest withdrawal of foreign funds from the UK in recent decades – about 10 times what might flow out during a "normal" quarter. The revelation will fuel fears that the UK's reputation as a safe place to hold funds is being fatally compromised by the acute crisis in the banking system and a general trend to financial protectionism internationally. The slide in sterling – it has shed a quarter of its value since mid-2007 – has been both cause and effect of the run on London, seemingly becoming a self-fulfilling phenomenon. The danger is that the heavy depreciation of the pound could become a rout if confidence completely evaporates. Paranoia that the UK could follow Iceland into effective national insolvency and jibes about "Reykjavik on Thames" will find an unwelcome substantiation in these statistics.

Note: For many deep revelations of the realities of the world financial crisis from reliable sources, click here.

Bair Says Insurance Fund Could Be Insolvent This Year
2009-03-04, Bloomberg News
Posted: 2009-03-21 09:39:53
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=washingtonstory&sid=alsJZqIFuN3k

Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair said the fund it uses to protect customer deposits at U.S. banks could dry up amid a surge in bank failures, as she responded to an industry outcry against new fees approved by the agency. “Without these assessments, the deposit insurance fund could become insolvent this year,” Bair wrote in a March 2 letter to the industry. “A large number” of bank failures may occur through 2010 because of “rapidly deteriorating economic conditions.” The fund, which lost $33.5 billion in 2008, was drained by 25 bank failures last year. Sixteen banks have failed so far this year, further straining the fund. Smaller banks are outraged over the one-time fee ... Camden Fine, president of the Independent Community Bankers of America, said yesterday. The agency, which has released the change for 30 days of public comment, could modify the assessment to shift the burden to the large banks “that caused this train wreck,” Fine said. “Community bankers are feeling like they are paying for the incompetence and greed of Wall Street,” he said. Consumers should watch this issue closely, said Edmund Mierzwinski, consumer program director at U.S. PIRG, a Boston- based consumer-watchdog group. “I wouldn’t take their money out of the bank yet,” Mierzwinski said. “If the FDIC is saying that there is this serious problem, then we should all be concerned. I think there is a chance the FDIC is going to have to ask taxpayers for money in the future.”

Note: For lots more on the financial crisis from reliable sources, click here.

The $700 trillion elephant
2009-03-06, MarketWatch (Wall Street Journal Digital Network)
Posted: 2009-03-14 08:12:46
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/The-700-trillion-elephant-room/story.as...

There's a $700 trillion elephant in the room and it's time we found out how much it really weighs on the economy. Derivative contracts total about three-quarters of a quadrillion dollars in "notional" amounts, according to the Bank for International Settlements. These contracts are tallied in notional values because no one really can say how much they are worth. But valuing them correctly is exactly what we should be doing because these comprise the viral disease that has infected the financial markets and the economies of the world. Try as we might to salvage the residential real estate market, it's at best worth $23 trillion in the U.S. We're struggling to save the stock market, but that's valued at less than $15 trillion. And we hope to keep the entire U.S. economy from collapsing, yet gross domestic product stands at $14.2 trillion. Compare any of these to the derivatives market and you can easily see that we are just closing the windows as a tsunami crashes to shore. The total value of all the stock markets in the world amounts to less than $50 trillion, according to the World Federation of Exchanges. To be sure, the derivatives market is international. But much of the trouble we're in began with contracts "derived" from the values associated with U.S. residential real estate market. These contracts were engineered based on the various assumptions tied to those values. Few know what derivatives are worth. I spoke with one derivatives trader who manages billions of dollars and she said she couldn't even value her portfolio because "no one knows anymore who is on the other side of the trade."

Note: Banks and financial firms deemed "too big to fail" are being bailed out worldwide at taxpayers' expense. But what will happen if losses in the derivatives market skyrocket? No government in the world has the resources to save financial corporations from a collapse in their derivatives trading. For lots more on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.

Hidden Pension Fiasco May Foment Another $1 Trillion Bailout
2009-03-03, Bloomberg News
Posted: 2009-03-14 08:06:05
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=alwTE0Z5.1EA

Public pension funds across the U.S. are hiding the size of a crisis that’s been looming for years. Retirement plans play accounting games with numbers, giving the illusion that the funds are healthy. The paper alchemy gives governors and legislators the easy choice to contribute too little or nothing to the funds, year after year. The misleading numbers posted by retirement fund administrators help mask this reality: Public pensions in the U.S. had total liabilities of $2.9 trillion as of Dec. 16, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. Their total assets are about 30 percent less than that, at $2 trillion. With stock market losses this year, public pensions in the U.S. are now underfunded by more than $1 trillion. That lack of funds explains why dozens of retirement plans in the U.S. have issued more than $50 billion in pension obligation bonds during the past 25 years -- more than half of them since 1997 -- public records show. The quick fix for pension funds becomes a future albatross for taxpayers. The public gets nothing from pension bonds -- other than a chance to at least temporarily avoid paying for higher pension fund contributions. Pension bonds portend the possibility of steep tax increases. By law, states must guarantee public pension fund debts. “What appears to be a riskless strategy is actually very risky,” says David Zion, director of accounting research for New York-based Credit Suisse Holdings USA Inc. “If the returns on the pension bond-financed assets don’t exceed the cost of servicing the debt, the taxpayers bear the brunt.”

Note: The risks to pension funds may require yet another huge public bailout. Where will the money come from? For lots more on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.

Wars, Endless Wars
2009-03-03, New York Times
Posted: 2009-03-14 08:02:59
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/03/opinion/03herbert.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&...

The U.S. economy is in free fall, the banking system is in a state of complete collapse and Americans all across the country are downsizing their standards of living. The nation as we’ve known it is fading before our very eyes, but we’re still pouring billions of dollars into wars in Afghanistan and Iraq with missions we are still unable to define. Even as the U.S. begins plans to reduce troop commitments in Iraq, it is sending thousands of additional troops into Afghanistan. The strategic purpose of this escalation, as Defense Secretary Robert Gates acknowledged, is not at all clear. We invaded Afghanistan more than seven years ago. We don’t even have an escalation strategy, much less an exit strategy. An honest assessment of the situation ... would lead inexorably to such terms as fiasco and quagmire. Instead of cutting our losses, we appear to be doubling down. As for Iraq, President Obama announced last week that substantial troop withdrawals will take place over the next year and a half and that U.S. combat operations would cease by the end of August 2010. But, he said, a large contingent of American troops, perhaps as many as 50,000, would still remain in Iraq for a “period of transition.” That’s a large number of troops, and the cost of keeping them there will be huge. I can easily imagine a scenario in which Afghanistan and Iraq both heat up and the U.S., caught in an extended economic disaster at home, undermines its fragile recovery efforts in the same way that societies have undermined themselves since the dawn of time — with endless warfare.

Note: The strategic purpose of keeping the wars going is well known by the bankers and power elite. A top U.S. general revealed it all in a powerful book, of which we have a two-page summary available here. For revealing reports from reliable sources on the realities of the Iraq and Afghan wars, click here.

Prison Spending Outpaces All but Medicaid
2009-03-03, New York Times
Posted: 2009-03-14 08:01:12
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/03/us/03prison.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewa...

One in every 31 adults, or 7.3 million Americans, is in prison, on parole or probation, at a cost to the states of $47 billion in 2008, according to a new study. Criminal correction spending is outpacing budget growth in education, transportation and public assistance, based on state and federal data. Only Medicaid spending grew faster than state corrections spending, which quadrupled in the past two decades, according to [a new report] by the Pew Center on the States, the first breakdown of spending in confinement and supervision in the past seven years. The increases in the number of people in some form of correctional control occurred as crime rates declined by about 25 percent in the past two decades. As states face huge budget shortfalls, prisons, which hold 1.5 million adults, are driving the spending increases. Pew researchers say that as states trim services like education and health care, prison budgets are growing. Those priorities are misguided, the study says. “States are looking to make cuts that will have long-term harmful effects,” said Sue Urahn, managing director of the Pew Center on the States. “Corrections is one area they can cut and still have good or better outcomes than what they are doing now.” About $9 out of $10 spent on corrections goes to prison financing (that includes money spent to house 780,000 people in local jails). One in 11 African-Americans, or 9.2 percent, are under correctional control, compared with one in 27 Latinos (3.7 percent) and one in 45 whites (2.2 percent).

Note: Crime is down 25%, yet prison spending is 400% of what it was 20 years ago. Is there anything strange here? The prison-industrial complex is mighty big and in many ways mighty corrupt.

Stimulus Plan Places New Limits on Wall St. Bonuses
2009-02-14, New York Times
Posted: 2009-03-07 07:21:14
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/14/business/economy/14pay.html?partner=rss&emc...

Buried deep inside the ... economic stimulus bill ... is some bitter medicine for companies that have received financial bailout funds. Over staunch objections from the Obama administration, Senate Democrats inserted a provision that would impose restrictions on executive bonuses at financial institutions that are much tougher than those proposed 10 days ago by the Treasury Department. The provisions would prohibit cash bonuses and almost all other incentive compensation for the five most-senior officers and the 20 highest-paid executives at large companies that receive money under TARP. The restriction with the most bite would bar top executives from receiving bonuses that exceed one-third of their annual pay. The provision, written by Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., highlighted the growing wrath ... over the lavish compensation that top Wall Street firms and big banks awarded to senior executives at the same time that many of the companies, teetering on the brink of insolvency, received taxpayer-paid bailouts. "The decisions of certain Wall Street executives to enrich themselves at the expense of taxpayers have seriously undermined public confidence," Dodd said Friday. "These tough new rules will help ensure that taxpayer dollars no longer effectively subsidize lavish Wall Street bonuses." Top economic advisers to President Obama adamantly opposed the pay restrictions, according to congressional officials.

Note: For powerfully revealing reports on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.

The Death of 'Rational Man'
2009-02-08, Washington Post
Posted: 2009-03-07 07:19:48
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/06/AR20090206027...

What allowed some people to see the financial crash coming while so many others missed its gathering force? I put that question recently to Nouriel Roubini, who has come to be known as "Dr. Doom" because of his insistent warnings starting in 2006 that we were heading into a global firestorm. Roubini gave two kinds of answers. The first involves standard number-crunching of the sort that economists routinely do -- and that Roubini just did better and sooner. It's his second answer that's more interesting, because it goes to the heart of what we should take away from this crisis: Roubini decided to discard the assumption of market rationality that underlies most economics and to embrace the psychological insights of what's known as "behavioral economics." Everyone else had those same numbers. Why did Roubini act? The answer is that he decided to trust his gut, which told him there was trouble ahead, rather than Wall Street's "wisdom of the crowd," which -- as reflected in stock prices -- said everything was rosy. He concluded that the markets were not pricing in the degree of risk that was actually present in housing. "The rational man theory of economics has not worked," Roubini said last month at a session of the World Economic Forum at Davos. That's why he and other prominent economists are paying more attention to behavioral economics, which starts from the premise that economic decisions, like other aspects of human behavior, are influenced by irrational psychological factors.

Note: To visit Nouriel Roubini's highly informative blog, click here. For lots more on the financial crisis and bailout, click here.

Pa. judges accused of jailing kids for cash
2009-02-11, MSNBC/Associated Press
Posted: 2009-03-07 07:14:01
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29142654

For years, the juvenile court system in Wilkes-Barre [PA] operated like a conveyor belt: Youngsters were brought before judges without a lawyer, given hearings that lasted only a minute or two, and then sent off to juvenile prison for months for minor offenses. The explanation, prosecutors say, was corruption on the bench. In one of the most shocking cases of courtroom graft on record, two Pennsylvania judges have been charged with taking millions of dollars in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers. “I’ve never encountered, and I don’t think that we will in our lifetimes, a case where literally thousands of kids’ lives were just tossed aside in order for a couple of judges to make some money,” said Marsha Levick, an attorney with the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center, which is representing hundreds of youths sentenced in Wilkes-Barre. Prosecutors say Luzerne County Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan took $2.6 million in payoffs to put juvenile offenders in lockups run by PA Child Care LLC and a sister company, Western PA Child Care LLC. The judges were charged on Jan. 26 and removed from the bench by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court shortly afterward. The high court ... is looking into whether hundreds or even thousands of sentences should be overturned. Among the offenders were teenagers who were locked up for months for stealing loose change from cars, writing a prank note and possessing drug paraphernalia. Many had never been in trouble before. Some were imprisoned even after probation officers recommended against it.

Note: For many insights into government corruption from reliable sources, click here.

U.S. Forces Out Head of Chemical Arms Agency
2002-04-23, New York Times
Posted: 2009-03-07 07:03:31
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F01E0D91E3FF930A15757C0A9649C...

The United States succeeded today in ousting the director of the global agency charged with ridding the world of chemical weapons after an intense diplomatic campaign that made a number of countries uncomfortable. José M. Bustani, a Brazilian diplomat who was unanimously re-elected last year as the director general of the 145-nation Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, was voted out of office today after refusing repeated demands by the United States that he step down. ''I clearly made some people in Washington very uncomfortable because I was too independent,'' Mr. Bustani said afterward. ''They want somebody more obedient.'' Diplomats said ... it had opened the door further for other international bodies to come under attack. The United States, which is responsible for 22 percent of the agency's budget, had threatened to cut off funding until Mr. Bustani left. ''I think a lot of people swallowed this because they thought it was better for Bustani to be removed than have the U.S. pull out and see the organization collapse,'' said one European diplomat at the meeting. The firing of Mr. Bustani follows the removal last week of Robert Watson, a British-born climatologist who had been outspoken on the threat of global warming, as the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He was removed after pressure from Washington and at least one American oil company.

Note: If Bustani had not been removed, it is very likely that the accusations of WMD in Iraq would never have stood, and the war would not have happened. For a powerful two-page essay by a highly decorated U.S. general alleging that war is a racket orchestrated to line the pockets of the corporations, click here.

A 'fraud' bigger than Madoff
2009-02-16, The Independent (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
Posted: 2009-02-21 09:54:39
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/a-fraud-bigger-than-madoff-1...

In what could turn out to be the greatest fraud in US history, American authorities have started to investigate the alleged role of senior military officers in the misuse of $125bn ... in a US -directed effort to reconstruct Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The exact sum missing may never be clear, but a report by the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) suggests it may exceed $50bn, making it an even bigger theft than Bernard Madoff's notorious Ponzi scheme. "I believe the real looting of Iraq after the invasion was by US officials and contractors, and not by people from the slums of Baghdad," said one US businessman active in Iraq since 2003. Iraqi leaders are convinced that the theft or waste of huge sums of US and Iraqi government money could have happened only if senior US officials were themselves involved in the corruption. American federal investigators are now starting an inquiry into the actions of senior US officers involved in the programme to rebuild Iraq. In the expanded inquiry by federal agencies, the evidence of a ... US businessman called Dale C Stoffel who was murdered after leaving the US base at Taiji north of Baghdad in 2004 is being re-examined. Before he was killed, Mr Stoffel, an arms dealer and contractor, was granted limited immunity from prosecution after he had provided information that a network of bribery – linking companies and US officials awarding contracts – existed within the US-run Green Zone in Baghdad. He said bribes of tens of thousands of dollars were regularly delivered in pizza boxes sent to US contracting officers.

Note: To read a former Marine Corps general's exposure of the high-level criminality and profiteering that is the real purpose behind war, click here. For many powerful revelations from reliable sources of government corruption, click here.

Global economic crisis called biggest U.S. security threat
2009-02-13, Los Angeles Times
Posted: 2009-02-21 09:50:24
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-security-threat13-2009fe...

The nation's new intelligence chief [has warned] that the global economic crisis is the most serious security peril facing the United States, threatening to topple governments [and] trigger waves of refugees. The economic collapse "already looms as the most serious one in decades, if not in centuries," said Dennis C. Blair, director of national intelligence, in [testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee]. Blair's focus on the economic meltdown represents a sharp contrast from the testimony of his predecessors in recent years, who devoted most of their attention in the annual threat assessment hearing to the issues of terrorism and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. "Time is probably our greatest threat," Blair said. "The longer it takes for the recovery to begin, the greater the likelihood of serious damage to U.S. strategic interests." He said that one-quarter of the world's nations had already experienced low-level instability attributed to the economic downturn, including shifts in power. He cited anti-government demonstrations in Europe and Russia, and he warned that much of Latin America and the former Soviet satellite states lacked sufficient cash to cope with the spreading crisis. "Countries will not be able to export their way out of this one because of the global nature" of the crisis, Blair said. U.S. intelligence analysts fear there could be a backlash against American efforts to promote free markets because the crisis was triggered by the United States. "We're generally held to be responsible," Blair said.

Note: For the complete text of Blair's testimony, click here. For an excellent analysis, click here. For more on the realities behind the economic crisis, click here.

Gold Climbs to Seven-Month High as Economy May Worsen
2009-02-17, Bloomberg News
Posted: 2009-02-21 09:46:21
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601082&sid=acerPa4tlqXg

Gold rose to its highest [price] in almost seven months in London as investors bought the precious metal to preserve their wealth on speculation the global economy will deteriorate. Bullion has climbed 33 percent since October as governments lowered interest rates and spent trillions of dollars to combat the recession. “The very big uncertainties in the stock market and economy are driving investors into gold and precious metals,” said Peter Fertig, owner of Quantitative Commodity Research Ltd. in Hainburg, Germany. Gold for immediate delivery rose as much as $25.40, or 2.7 percent, to $967.15 an ounce, the highest since July 22. April futures gained $22.10, or 2.4 percent, to $964.40. Some investors are buying precious metals on speculation government stimulus packages [and bank bailouts] will spur inflation, Fertig said. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner last week pledged as much as $2 trillion in financing for programs aimed at spurring new lending. The Treasury will likely borrow a record $2.5 trillion this fiscal year ending Sept. 30, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. “Investors have been aggressively adding physical gold to their portfolios as concerns about counterparty risk” increase, ETF Securities wrote in a report. Investors are hedging “against the risk of currency depreciation and longer term inflation risks as government debt projections balloon.” “Gold has become, for all intents, the world’s second reserve currency,” Dennis Gartman, an economist and the editor of the ... Gartman Letter, said.

Note: For many revealing reports on the realities of government bailouts of banks worldwide, click here.

US Treasury overpaid $78 bln under TARP-watchdog
2009-02-06, CNN News/Reuters
Posted: 2009-02-15 09:58:02
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/reuters/MTFH29185_2009-02-06_01-...

The U.S. Treasury looks to have overpaid financial institutions to the tune of $78 billion in carrying out capital injections last year, the head of a congressional oversight panel for the government's $700 billion bailout program told lawmakers. Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard law professor, said her group estimated the Treasury paid $254 billion in 2008 in return for stocks and warrants worth about $176 billion under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Warren said the Treasury, under then-Secretary Henry Paulson, misled the public about how it would price them. "Treasury simply did not do what it said it was doing ... They described the program one way, and they priced it another," Warren said at a hearing before the Senate Banking Committee. She added that Paulson "was not entirely candid" in describing TARP's bank capital injection program. Neil Barofsky, another watchdog for the TARP program, told the Senate committee his office is turning to criminal investigations. "That's going to be a large focus of my office," he said. Warren told the banking committee that after three months on the job, her panel is still not getting enough answers from Treasury. She described the bailout as "an opaque process at best." Barofsky raised concerns about potential fraud in one of several programs funded by bailout money -- the Federal Reserve's Term Asset-Backed Loan Facility (TALF).

Note: Was the overpayment by Treasury to Wall Street banks for nearly-worthless assets they created a mistake? Or was it the real, hidden purpose of TARP to pay the banks more for the assets than they are worth? For many revealing reports from reliable sources on the realities behind the Wall Street bailout, click here.

Pentagon sets sights on public opinion
2009-02-05, MSNBC/Associated Press
Posted: 2009-02-15 09:56:32
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29040299/

The Pentagon is steadily and dramatically increasing the money it spends to win what it calls "the human terrain" of world public opinion. In the process, it is raising concerns of spreading propaganda at home in violation of federal law. An Associated Press investigation found that over the past five years, the money the military spends on winning hearts and minds at home and abroad has grown by 63 percent, to at least $4.7 billion this year, according to Department of Defense budgets and other documents. That's almost as much as it spent on body armor for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan between 2004 and 2006. This year, the Pentagon will employ 27,000 people just for recruitment, advertising and public relations — almost as many as the total 30,000-person work force in the State Department. The biggest chunk of funds — about $1.6 billion — goes into recruitment and advertising. Another $547 million goes into public affairs, which reaches American audiences. And about $489 million more goes into what is known as psychological operations. Staffing across all these areas costs about $2.1 billion, as calculated by the number of full-time employees and the military's average cost per service member. That's double the staffing costs for 2003. Recruitment and advertising are the only two areas where Congress has authorized the military to influence the American public. Far more controversial is public affairs, because of the prohibition on propaganda to the American public.

Note: For more revealing reports from reliable sources on the realities of the wars in Afghanstan and Iraq, click here.

Under Obama, same stance on rendition suit
2009-02-10, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
Posted: 2009-02-15 09:54:42
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/02/09/BAGS15QB5B.DTL

President Obama's Justice Department signaled in a San Francisco courtroom Monday that the change in administrations has not changed the government's position on secrecy and the rights of foreign prisoners - and that lawsuits by alleged victims of CIA kidnappings and torture must be dismissed on national security grounds. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ... is considering a suit accusing a San Jose company, Jeppesen Dataplan, of arranging so-called extraordinary rendition flights for the CIA. Although Obama has issued orders banning torture and closing secret CIA prisons, his administration has sent mixed signals on extraordinary rendition and the legitimacy of court challenges. Obama's nominee for CIA director, Leon Panetta, said last week that he approved of rendition for foreign prosecution or brief CIA detention. The American Civil Liberties Union, which represents five men suing Jeppesen for allegedly flying them to foreign torture chambers, said this case is the new administration's chance to live up to its promises. ACLU attorney Ben Wizner told the court that the supposedly ultra-secret rendition program is widely known. He noted that Sweden recently awarded $450,000 in damages to one of the plaintiffs, Ahmed Agiza, for helping the CIA transport him to Egypt, where he is still being held and allegedly has been tortured. "The notion that you have to close your eyes and ears to what the whole world knows is absurd," Wizner said.

Note: For lots more from major media sources on the disturbing trend toward ever-greater restrictions on civil liberties and due process, click here.

Goldman, JPMorgan Won’t Feel Effects of Executive-Salary Caps
2009-02-05, Bloomberg News
Posted: 2009-02-15 09:50:10
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=washingtonstory&sid=azVLk.22AkLI

Executives at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and hundreds of financial institutions receiving federal aid aren’t likely to be affected by pay restrictions announced yesterday by President Barack Obama. The rules, created in response to growing public anger about the record bonuses the financial industry doled out last year, will apply only to top executives at companies that need “exceptional” assistance in the future. The limits aren’t retroactive, meaning firms that have already taken government money won’t be subject to the restrictions unless they have to come back for more. Pay caps may provide the political cover the administration needs to deliver additional infusions of capital into the financial sector. Obama ... “is not proposing to go back and get that $18.4 billion in bonuses back,” Laura Thatcher, head of law firm Alston & Bird’s executive compensation practice in Atlanta, said of the cash bonuses New York banks paid last year, the sixth-biggest haul in history. “Right now, we have not clamped down” on pay at banks. In addition, some executives may be compensated for the potential reduced salaries with restricted stock grants, which may result in huge paydays after the bank repays the government assistance with interest. “They’re just allowing companies to defer compensation,” said Graef Crystal, a former compensation consultant. The restrictions are “a joke,” he said, because “if the government is paid pack, you can be sure that the stock will have risen hugely.”

Note: For many revealing reports from reliable sources on the realities behind the Wall Street bailout, click here.

Curtailing executives' pay? Good luck with that
2009-02-05, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
Posted: 2009-02-15 09:48:55
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/02/05/BUHF15NF2U.DTL

Will President Obama's new plan to rein in executive compensation at companies receiving taxpayer money be more successful than previous attempts? Not if history is any guide. Since at least 1984, Congress and accounting authorities have enacted measures designed in whole or part to stem runaway pay. Yet compensation for top executives has continued to climb in both dollar terms and as a multiple of average worker pay. In 1992, the average chief executive earned $5 million, or 126 times the average hourly worker. By 2007, the average CEO was earning $12.3 million, or 275 times the average worker. No matter what Congress cooks up, it seems like executives, companies and their consultants find a way over, under or through the rules. "It's like putting up a dam for a river. The water tries very hard to find a way around it," says John Olson, a partner with Gibson Dunn & Crutcher who advises corporate boards on compensation and other matters. Obama's plan will apply only to companies taking bailout money in the future and has escape hatches of its own. "You can try all these different reforms," [says Corey Rosen, executive director of the National Center for Employee Ownership,] but none will be truly effective "unless the board of directors, the media and public stop thinking of executives as superstars and that if we just get the right CEO, everything will be OK."

Note: For many revealing reports from reliable sources on the realities behind the Wall Street bailout, click here.

US using British atomic weapons factory for its nuclear programme
2009-02-09, The Guardian (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
Posted: 2009-02-15 09:47:21
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/09/us-uk-atomic-weapons-nuclear-power

The US military has been using Britain's atomic weapons factory to carry out research into its own nuclear warhead programme. US defence officials said that "very valuable" warhead research has taken place at the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston in Berkshire as part of an ongoing and secretive deal between the British and American governments. Campaign groups warned any such deal was in breach of international law. Kate Hudson, of Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, said: "Any work preparing the way for new warheads cuts right across the UK's commitment to disarm, which it signed up to in the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. That this work may be contributing to both future US and British warheads is nothing short of scandalous." The extent of US involvement at Aldermaston came to light in an interview with John Harvey, policy and planning director at the US National Nuclear Security Administration. Harvey said: "There are some capabilities that the UK has that we don't have and that we borrow... that I believe we have been able to exploit [and] that's been very valuable to us." In the same interview, Harvey admitted that the US and UK had struck a new deal over the level of cooperation, including work on ... a new generation of nuclear warhead known as the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW).

New Bank Bailout Could Cost $2 Trillion
2009-01-29, Wall Street Journal
Posted: 2009-02-06 09:25:30
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123319689681827391.html

Government officials seeking to revamp the U.S. financial bailout have discussed spending another $1 trillion to $2 trillion to help restore banks to health, according to people familiar with the matter. President Barack Obama's new administration is wrestling with how to stem the continuing loss of confidence in the financial system, as it divides up the remaining $350 billion from the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program launched last fall. The potential size of rescue efforts being discussed suggests the administration may need to ask Congress for more funds. The administration is expected to take a series of steps, including relieving banks of bad loans and distressed securities. The so-called "bad bank" that would buy these assets could be seeded with $100 billion to $200 billion from the TARP funds, with the rest of the money -- as much as $1 trillion to $2 trillion -- raised by selling government-backed debt or borrowing from the Federal Reserve. The administration is also seeking more effective ways to pump money into banks, and is considering buying common shares in the banks. Government purchases so far have been of preferred shares, in an effort to both protect taxpayers and avoid diluting existing shareholders' stakes. Given the weakened state of the banking industry, with bank share prices low and their capital needs high, economists say the government probably can't avoid owning at least some banks for a temporary period.

Note: Note that the U.S. government has to borrow from the Federal Reserve, which most people don't realize is privately owned by the richest banks. For more on this, click here. The $2 trillion of taxpayer money for Wall Street's toxic assets revealed here is in addition to over $7 trillion already committed according to CNN and others. Wouldn't government debt of this magnitude threaten a broad range of government services and risk seriously weakening the dollar? For many other revealing reports on the Wall Street bailout, click here.

Obama preserves renditions as counter-terrorism tool
2009-02-01, Los Angeles Times
Posted: 2009-02-06 09:23:58
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-na-rendition1-2009feb...

The CIA's secret prisons are being shuttered. Harsh interrogation techniques are off-limits. And Guantanamo Bay will eventually go back to being a wind-swept naval base on the southeastern corner of Cuba. But even while dismantling these programs, President Obama left intact an equally controversial counter-terrorism tool. Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States. Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said that the rendition program might be poised to play an expanded role going forward because it was the main remaining mechanism -- aside from Predator missile strikes -- for taking suspected terrorists off the street. The rendition program became a source of embarrassment for the CIA, and a target of international scorn, as details emerged in recent years of botched captures, mistaken identities and allegations that prisoners were turned over to countries where they were tortured. The European Parliament condemned renditions as "an illegal instrument used by the United States." Prisoners swept up in the program have sued the CIA as well as a Boeing Co. subsidiary accused of working with the agency on dozens of rendition flights. But the Obama administration appears to have determined that the rendition program was one component of the Bush administration's war on terrorism that it could not afford to discard. The decision underscores the fact that the [War on Terror] is far from over.

Note: For key reports from reliable sources on the hidden realities of the War on Terror, click here.

Facing foreclosure? Don't leave. Squat
2009-02-04, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
Posted: 2009-02-06 09:22:41
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/02/04/EDK215MNA0.DTL

Marcy Kaptur of Ohio is the longest-serving Democratic congresswoman in U.S. history. Her district, stretching along the shore of Lake Erie from west of Cleveland to Toledo, faces an epidemic of home foreclosures and 11.5 percent unemployment. Now, she is recommending a radical foreclosure solution from the floor of the U.S. Congress: "So I say to the American people, you be squatters in your own homes. Don't you leave." She criticizes the bailout's failure to protect homeowners facing foreclosure. These mortgages were made, then bundled into securities and sold and resold repeatedly, by the very Wall Street banks that are now benefiting from [a government bailout]. The banks foreclosing on families very often can't locate the actual loan note that binds the homeowner to the bad loan. "Produce the note," Kaptur recommends [to] those facing foreclosure demands of the banks. "[P]ossession is nine-tenths of the law," Rep. Kaptur [said]. "Therefore, stay in your property. Get proper legal representation ... [if] Wall Street cannot produce the deed nor the mortgage audit trail ... you should stay in your home. It is your castle. It's more than a piece of property. ... If you look at the bad paper, if you look at where there's trouble, 95 to 98 percent of the paper really has moved to five institutions: JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wachovia, Citigroup and HSBC. They have this country held by the neck."

Note: Why is it that with the trillions of dollars given by the U.S. government to prop up banks who used shady loan practices, so few homeowners facing foreclosure have received any assistance? For many revealing reports on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.

House Arrest for Madoff in $7 Million Apartment
2008-12-17, abcnews.com
Posted: 2009-02-06 09:21:13
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/WallStreet/story?id=6480363

Bernard Madoff, accused of the largest fraud in U.S. history, will be allowed to remain in his $7 million Park Avenue apartment instead of being sent to jail, under terms of an agreement announced today by federal prosecutors. Madoff was unable to meet the bond conditions set last week by a federal magistrate which required him to get four people to sign his personal recognizance bond. According to the U.S. Attorney's office, only Madoff's wife and brothers were willing to sign the document. But instead of ordering him held in jail, prosecutors agreed to home detention with electronic monitoring. Madoff and his luxury apartment on Manhattan's upper east side will be fitted with an electronic monitoring device by the court's pre-trial services and Madoff will be under a curfew of between 7 p.m. through 9 a.m. Madoff's wife agreed to post the mansions in her name in Palm Beach, Florida and in Montauk on New York's Long Island. The Securities and Exchange Commission chairman said today the agency has found "no evidence of wrongdoing by any SEC personnel" in connection with Madoff's alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme and that the SEC intends to get to the bottom of where it may have gone wrong. "I was very concerned to learn this week that credible allegations about Mr. Madoff had been made over nearly a decade and yet never referred to the commission for action," Commissioner Christopher Cox said at a press conference. Yesterday, Cox acknowledged what amounted to a generational failure on the part of the SEC to discover any hint of Madoff's scheme, despite allegations dating back to 1999.

Note: Why is the criminal responsible for the largest single banking scandal in history given house arrest rather than jail before his trial? Isn't it remarkable that the hands-off treatment Madoff received over the years from the SEC seems to be continuing from the Federal prosecutors? For more on Wall Street corruption, click here.

Bad bank + toxic debts = moral hazard x10
2009-02-02, MarketWatch.com
Posted: 2009-02-06 09:19:51
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/Bad-bank-toxic-debt-one/story.aspx?guid...

BusinessWeek says Paulson/Bush & Co. wasted $350 billion in TARP money ... the Congressional Budget Office and GOP say Obama & Co. will waste another $800 billion on "non-stimulus" programs ... Nobel economist [Joseph Stiglitz] calls [the Bad Bank] plan "cash for trash" ... Warning, you are entering a bizarre space-time continuum ... where Wall Street makes random quantum leaps between metaphoric realities. In the "Lost" television series we're transported into a parallel reality, a perfect metaphor for today's global economic meltdown, which is misunderstood and grossly mismanaged. Wall Street crashed ... on the "Lost Island ... of Manhattan," the former center of world banking. The collateral damage has been enormous: Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, global trade, Iceland. [Wall Street's] clueless leaders ... are "Lost" with no bottom, no recovery, no strategy in sight. A new president, a secretive Fed and an old Congress are throwing around taxpayer trillions like free candy ... on top of Bush's "$10 Trillion Hangover" ...after a clueless Wall Street wrote off trillions in toxic debt, then wasted $350 billion in TARP bailout money, buying $50 million private jets, attending golf outings at exclusive resorts, spending millions on CEO's office renovations and paying $18 billion in year-end bonuses. Hope masks denial: Even President Obama's consultant [Warren] Buffett acknowledges that the proposed stimulus plan "might not work." The stimulus might not work? What if this last bullet is a blank? Should you prepare for the worst-case scenario?

Note: For many revealing reports on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.

Letter from the Grave
2009-01-12, The New Yorker magazine
Posted: 2009-02-06 09:12:10
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/stevecoll/2009/01/letter-from-the.html

[On January 8] Lasantha Wickramatunga, who was fifty-two years old and the editor of a Sri Lankan newspaper called The Sunday Leader, was assassinated on his way to work by two gunmen riding motorcycles. The Leader's investigative reporting had been fiercely critical of the government and of the conduct of its war against Tamil separatists; Wickramatunga had been attacked before. He knew that he was likely to be murdered and so he wrote an essay with instructions that it be published only after his own death. Read it in full below: "No other profession calls on its practitioners to lay down their lives for their art save the armed forces and, in Sri Lanka, journalism. In the course of the past few years, the independent media have increasingly come under attack. Electronic and print-media institutions have been burnt, bombed, sealed and coerced. Countless journalists have been harassed, threatened and killed. It has been my honor to belong to all those categories and now especially the last. We find ourselves in the midst of a civil war ruthlessly prosecuted by protagonists whose bloodlust knows no bounds. Terror, whether perpetrated by terrorists or the state, has become the order of the day. Indeed, murder has become the primary tool whereby the state seeks to control the organs of liberty. Today it is the journalists, tomorrow it will be the judges. For neither group have the risks ever been higher or the stakes lower.

Note: Click on the link above to read this deeply moving letter from a martyr for truth in its entirety.

What Red Ink? Wall Street Paid Hefty Bonuses
2009-01-29, New York Times
Posted: 2009-01-30 10:00:23
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/29/business/29bonus.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&p...

By almost any measure, 2008 was a complete disaster for Wall Street — except, that is, when the bonuses arrived. Despite crippling losses, multibillion-dollar bailouts and the passing of some of the most prominent names in the business, employees at financial companies in New York, the now-diminished world capital of capital, collected an estimated $18.4 billion in bonuses for the year. That was the sixth-largest haul on record, according to a report released Wednesday by the New York State comptroller. Some bankers took home millions last year even as their employers lost billions. The comptroller’s estimate, a closely watched guidepost of the annual December-January bonus season, is based largely on personal income tax collections. It excludes stock option awards that could push the figures even higher. The state comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli, said it was unclear if banks had used taxpayer money for the bonuses, a possibility that strikes corporate governance experts, and indeed many ordinary Americans, as outrageous. He urged the Obama administration to examine the issue closely. “The issue of transparency is a significant one, and there needs to be an accounting about whether there was any taxpayer money used to pay bonuses or to pay for corporate jets or dividends or anything else,” Mr. DiNapoli said in an interview.

Note: For many reports from reliable sources on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.

U.N. crime chief says drug money flowed into banks
2009-01-25, International Herald Tribune/Reuters News
Posted: 2009-01-30 09:59:13
http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2009/01/25/europe/OUKWD-UK-FINANCIAL-UN-D...

The United Nations' crime and drug watchdog has indications that money made in illicit drug trade has been used to keep banks afloat in the global financial crisis, its head was quoted as saying on Sunday. Vienna-based UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa said in an interview released by Austrian weekly Profil that drug money often became the only available capital when the crisis spiralled out of control last year. "In many instances, drug money is currently the only liquid investment capital," Costa was quoted as saying by Profil. "In the second half of 2008, liquidity was the banking system's main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor." The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime had found evidence that "interbank loans were funded by money that originated from drug trade and other illegal activities," Costa was quoted as saying. There were "signs that some banks were rescued in that way." Profil said Costa declined to identify countries or banks which may have received drug money and gave no indication how much cash might be involved.

Note:. For powerful evidence that corporations and even rogue elements of government are involved in the huge amounts of cash generated in the drug trade, click here. For lots more on corporate corruption, click here.

Whistleblower exposes spying on Americans
2009-01-22, MSNBC Countdown With Keith Olberman
Posted: 2009-01-30 09:52:24
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28794766/

OLBERMANN: It has taken less than 24 hours after the Bush presidency ended for a former analyst at the National Security Agency to come forward to reveal new allegations about how this nation was spied on by its own government. Russell Tice [reveals] that under the collar of fighting terrorism, the Bush administration was also targeting specific groups of Americans for surveillance. TICE: The National Security Agency had access to all Americans‘ communications, faxes, phone calls, and their computer communications. They monitored all communications. What was done was a sort of an ability to look at the meta data, the signaling data for communications, and ferret that information to determine what communications would ultimately be collected. Basically, filtering out sort of like sweeping everything with that meta data, and then cutting down ultimately what you are going to look at and what is going to be collected, and in the long run have an analyst look at, you know, needles in a haystack for what might be of interest. OLBERMANN: I mention that you say specific groups were targeted. What group or groups can you tell us about? TICE: [Some of the groups they] collected on were U.S. news organizations and reporters and journalists. The collection ... was 24/7, and you know, 365 days a year, and it made no sense.

Note: To watch this revealing clip on video, click here. For many reports on government surveillance and invasions of privacy, click here.

Madoff's fund may not have made a single trade
2009-01-15, Reuters News
Posted: 2009-01-24 10:08:47
http://www.forbes.com/afxnewslimited/feeds/afx/2009/01/15/afx5928915.html

Bernie Madoff's investment fund may never have executed a single trade, industry officials say, suggesting detailed statements mailed to investors each month may have been an elaborate mirage in a $50 billion fraud. An industry-run regulator for brokerage firms said ... there was no record of Madoff's investment fund placing trades through his brokerage operation. That means Madoff either placed trades through other brokerage firms, a move industry officials consider unlikely, or he was not executing trades at all. 'Our exams showed no evidence of trading on behalf of the investment advisor, no evidence of any customer statements being generated by the broker-dealer,' said Herb Perone, spokesman for the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. Each month, Madoff sent out elaborate statements of trades conducted by his broker-dealer. There also appear to be discrepancies between monthly statements sent to investors and the actual prices at which the stocks traded on Wall Street. To some, the numbers did not add up. About 10 years ago, Harry Markopolos, then chief investment officer at Rampart Investment Management Co in Boston, asked risk management consultant Daniel diBartolomeo to run Madoff's numbers after Markopolos tried to emulate Madoff's strategy. DiBartolomeo ran regression analyses and various calculations, but failed to reconcile them. For a decade, Markopolos raised the issue with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which has come under fire in Congress in recent weeks for failing to act on Markopolos's warnings.

Note: For lots more on corporate corruption from reliable, verifiable sources, click here.

Eight Years of Madoffs
2009-01-11, New York Times
Posted: 2009-01-24 10:07:33
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/opinion/11rich.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pag...

Three days after the world learned that $50 billion may have disappeared in Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, The Times led its front page of Dec. 14 with the revelation of another $50 billion rip-off. This time the vanished loot belonged to American taxpayers. That was our collective contribution to the $117 billion spent (as of mid-2008) on Iraq reconstruction — a sinkhole of corruption, cronyism, incompetence and outright theft that epitomized Bush management at home and abroad. The source for this news was a near-final draft of an as-yet-unpublished 513-page federal history of this nation-building fiasco. The document was assembled by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction — led by a Bush appointee, no less. It pinpoints, among other transgressions, a governmental Ponzi scheme concocted to bamboozle Americans into believing they were accruing steady dividends on their investment in a “new” Iraq. The $50 billion ... pales next to other sums that remain unaccounted for in the Bush era, from the $345 billion in lost tax revenue due to unpoliced offshore corporate tax havens to the far-from-transparent disposition of some $350 billion in Wall Street bailout money. In the old Pat Moynihan phrase, the Bush years have “defined deviancy down” in terms of how low a standard of ethical behavior we now tolerate as the norm from public officials.

Note: To read the draft of the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction's report, click here. To read the New York Times analysis of this important document, click here.

U.S. moving toward czarism, away from democracy
2009-01-18, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
Posted: 2009-01-24 10:06:10
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/01/18/INGP158S4G.DTL

Every patriot should be concerned about the intensifying efforts to supplant democracy with something far more authoritarian. Call it American czarism. Czars - i.e., policymakers granted extralegal, cross-agency powers - have become increasingly prevalent in our government over the past century. Until now, this slow lurch toward czarism has primarily reflected the ancient, almost innate human desire for power and paternalistic leadership. In recent years, this culture of "presidentialism," as Vanderbilt Professor Dana Nelson calls it, has justified the Patriot Act, warrantless wiretaps and a radical theory of the "unitary executive" that aims to provide a jurisprudential rationale for total White House supremacy over all government. But only in the past three months has American czarism metastasized from a troubling slow-growth tumor to a potentially deadly cancer. In October, Congress relinquished its most basic oversight powers and gave Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson sole authority to dole out billions of bailout dollars to Wall Street. At the same time, it did nothing when Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke used fiats to commit $5 trillion worth of new money, loan guarantees and loosened lending requirements ... all while he refused to tell the public who is receiving the largesse. Indeed, the Economist magazine's prediction that the "economic crisis may increase the attractiveness of the Chinese model of authoritarian capitalism" is coming true right here at home, as we seem ever more intent on replicating - rather than resisting - that model.

Note: For many revealing reports on the realities underlying the Wall Street bailout, click here.

U.S. Embassy in Iraq Largest, Most Expensive Ever
2009-01-05, Fox News
Posted: 2009-01-16 08:55:36
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,476464,00.html

After much delay the United States opened its new $700 million embassy in Iraq on Monday, inaugurating the largest — and most expensive — embassy ever built. The compound is six times larger than the United Nations compound in New York, and two-thirds the size of the National Mall in Washington. It has space for 1,000 employees with six apartment blocks and is 10 times larger than any other U.S. embassy. Critics have said that the embassy's fortress-like design and immense size show a fundamental disconnect between the U.S. and conditions on the ground in Iraq. “The presence of a massive U.S. embassy — by far the largest in the world — co-located in the Green Zone with the Iraqi government is seen by Iraqis as an indication of who actually exercises power in their country,” the International Crisis Group, a European-based research group, said in 2006. "The idea of an embassy this huge, this costly, and this isolated from events taking place outside its walls is not necessarily a cause for celebration," architectural historian Jane Loeffler wrote in Foreign Affairs in 2007. “Although the U.S. Government regularly proclaims confidence in Iraq’s democratic future, the U.S. has designed an embassy that conveys no confidence in Iraqis and little hope for their future. Instead, the U.S. has built a fortress capable of sustaining a massive, long-term presence in the face of continued violence.”

Note: Why would the U.S. want Iraq (estimated population 28 million) to have an embassy 10 times or more larger than that of China (over a billion people), Canada, Japan, or for that matter many other countries? And why isn't any major media besides Fox even raising this key question? Look at the AP article which has virtually nothing critical. Could this possibly have anything to do with control of oil and other precious resources there?

Congress Wants Details On Bailout Firms' Bonus Plans
2008-10-30, CNBC
Posted: 2009-01-16 08:49:25
http://www.cnbc.com/id/27423117

The hot-button issues of CEO pay and the Wall Street bailout may soon collide with the real world of Wall Street bonuses, taxpayer and shareholder anger over the financial crisis, and a Treasury secretary with deep roots on Wall Street. And that collision could be loud and ugly. Though what's commonly known as the Wall Street bailout package includes modest restrictions on CEO pay, it hardly prevents participating financial firms from paying bonuses to top executives and others. And in an environment of beaten-down stock prices, rising layoffs, recession and huge government bailouts, experts and legislators say big end-of-year bonuses will cause a firestorm of public outrage and likely provoke a Congressional backlash. "The corporate community doesn't seem to get it," says a seething Nell Minow, founder of the Corporate Library, which focuses on corporate governance issues. "If the corporate leaders don't come to the American people with some accountability, they are going to find themselves in a world of pain. Congress will set CEO pay." "People are going to be demanding that someone go to jail," say Rep. Peter DeFazio (D.-Ore), who says his constituents have applauded him for voting against the legislation. "It will require Democrats to revisit restrictions [on CEO pay]. " DeFazio says he would also recommend Congress "empower a division in the FBI and Justice Department to investigate the fraud and misdeeds that went on."

Note: For many revealing reports on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.

Britain's worst polluters set for windfall of millions
2008-09-12, The Guardian (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
Posted: 2009-01-16 08:48:12
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/12/emissionstrading

A flagship European scheme designed to fight global warming is set to hand hundreds of millions of pounds to some of Britain's most polluting companies, with little or no benefit to the environment. Dozens of multinational firms stand to benefit from the windfall, which comes from the over-allocation of carbon permits under the European emissions trading scheme. The permits are given to companies by the government, and are supposed to account for their carbon pollution over the next five years. But figures published by the European Commission show that many companies have been allocated far too many permits, which they can sell for cash. The scheme is supposed to only distribute as many permits as companies require, with one permit allocated for each tonne of CO2 produced. The figures ... suggest that up to 9m extra annual permits have been allocated to 200 companies across almost all sectors of the British economy, from steel and cement making, to car manufacturing and the food and drink industry. Dozens of household names such as Ford, Thames Water, Astra Zeneca and Vauxhall are among the companies that could benefit. Campaigners say the allocations were ... influenced by industry group lobbying. A source at a major UK car manufacturing firm, which has been allocated more than double the number of permits it needs, told the Guardian they were given out based on "magical logic".

Note: For revealing reports from major media sources on government corruption, click here.

Foundations are in place for martial law in the US
2002-07-21, Sydney Morning Herald
Posted: 2009-01-16 08:42:34
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/07/27/1027497418339.html

Recent pronouncements from the Bush Administration and national security initiatives put in place in the Reagan era could see internment camps and martial law in the United States. When president Ronald Reagan was considering invading Nicaragua he issued a series of executive orders that provided the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) with broad powers in the event of a "crisis" such as "violent and widespread internal dissent or national opposition against a US military invasion abroad". On July 20 the Detroit Free Press ran a story entitled "Arabs in US could be held, official warns". The story referred to a member of the US Civil Rights Commission who foresaw the possibility of internment camps for Arab Americans. FEMA has practised for such an occasion. FEMA, whose main role is disaster response, is also responsible for handling US domestic unrest. From 1982-84 Colonel Oliver North assisted FEMA in drafting its civil defence preparations. They included executive orders providing for suspension of the constitution, the imposition of martial law, internment camps, and the turning over of government to the president and FEMA. A Miami Herald article on July 5, 1987, reported that the former FEMA director Louis Guiffrida's deputy, John Brinkerhoff, handled the martial law portion of the planning. Today Mr Brinkerhoff is with the highly influential Anser Institute for Homeland Security.

Note: Most of these provisions are still in place today. Isn't it time for a change?

U.S. Debt Expected To Soar This Year
2009-01-03, Washington Post
Posted: 2009-01-09 08:36:16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/02/AR20090102023...

With President-elect Barack Obama and congressional Democrats considering a massive spending package aimed at pulling the nation out of recession, the national debt is projected to jump by as much as $2 trillion this year, an unprecedented increase that could test the world's appetite for financing U.S. government spending. For now, investors are frantically stuffing money into the relative safety of the U.S. Treasury, which has come to serve as the world's mattress in troubled times. Interest rates on Treasury bills have plummeted to historic lows, with some short-term investors literally giving the government money for free. But about 40 percent of the debt held by private investors will mature in a year or less, according to Treasury officials. When those loans come due, the Treasury will have to borrow more money to repay them, even as it launches perhaps the most aggressive expansion of U.S. debt in modern history. With the government planning to roll over its short-term loans into more stable, long-term securities, experts say investors are likely to demand a greater return on their money, saddling taxpayers with huge new interest payments for years to come. Some analysts also worry that foreign investors, the largest U.S. creditors, may prove unable to absorb the skyrocketing debt, undermining confidence in the United States as the bedrock of the global financial system.

Note: For many revealing reports on the realities of the Wall Street bailout and its impacts on the national debt, click here.