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Iraq Money Missing, Bribed Scientists
People Who Control the World
Revealing News Articles
February 8, 2007

Dear friends,

Below are one-paragraph excerpts of important news articles you may have missed. Each excerpt is taken verbatim from the major media website listed at the link provided. If any link fails to function, click here. These news articles include revealing information on billions of dollars in Iraq money missing, bribed scientists, people who allegedly control the world, and more. Key sentences are highlighted for those with limited time. By choosing to educate ourselves and to spread the word, we can and will build a brighter future.

With best wishes,
Fred Burks for PEERS and WantToKnow.info
Former language interpreter for Presidents Bush and Clinton

House Panel Questions Monitoring of Cash Shipped to Iraq
February 7, 2007, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/07/washington/07bremer.html

A House committee report on Tuesday questioned whether some of the billions of dollars in cash shipped to Iraq after the American invasion – mostly in huge, shrink-wrapped stacks of $100 bills – might have ended up with the insurgent groups now battling American troops. Democrats sharply questioned the former American civilian administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, about lax management of the nearly $12 billion in cash shipped to Iraq between May 2003 and June 2004. Mr. Bremer defended his performance as head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, noting that the United States had to bring tons of American dollars into Iraq because the country had no functioning banking system. Government auditors have repeatedly criticized the American and Iraqi governments for failing to monitor the money once it reached Iraq. "We have no way of knowing if the cash that was shipped into the Green Zone ended up in enemy hands," [Committee Chairman Henry Waxman] said. "We owe it to the American people to do everything we can to find out where the $12 billion went." Mr. Waxman, whose panel is pursuing investigations of fraud and abuse by the federal government and its contractors in Iraq, said he found it remarkable that the Bush administration had decided to send billions of dollars of American currency into Iraq so quickly after the United States occupied the country. The committee calculated that the $12 billion in cash, most of it in the stacks of $100 bills, weighed 363 tons and had to been flown in on wooden pallets aboard giant C-130 military cargo planes. "Who in their right mind would send 360 tons of cash into a war zone?" Mr. Waxman said.

Note: Think about Bremer's assertion that Iraq needed U.S. dollars as the banking system had collapsed. Banking systems have collapsed in numerous countries in the last century, yet that has never stopped the country from functioning, nor has the U.S. ever offered to send huge amounts of cash to help out in the past.

How US lost billions in Wild West gamble to rebuild Iraq
January 26, 2007, London Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article720217.ece

An audit of US reconstruction spending in Iraq has uncovered spectacular misuse of tens of millions of dollars in cash, including bundles of money stashed in filing cabinets, a US soldier who gambled away thousands, and stacks of newly minted notes distributed without receipts. The audit ... by the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction describes a country in the months after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein awash with dollars, and a Wild West atmosphere where even multimillion-dollar contracts were paid for in cash. The findings come after a report last year by the inspector general which stated that nearly $9 billion (�5 billion) of Iraq's oil revenue disbursed by the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority ... cannot be accounted for. The huge sums in cash were paid out with little or no supervision, and often without any paperwork. In one case, a US soldier gambled away more than $40,000 while accompanying the Iraqi Olympic boxing team to the Philippines. In others, "one contracting officer kept approximately $2 million in cash in a safe in his office bathroom", the report says, "while a paying agent kept approximately $678,000 in cash in an unlocked footlocker". More than 160 vehicles worth about $3.3 million could not be traced because there was no proper documentation. Another project, a $473,000 contract to install an internet service in Ramadi, was cancelled because officials could not oversee it. But the contractor had already been paid.

Note: With all of the computers the military and contractors brought into Iraq, shouldn't it be possible to track these monies? Shouldn't we as taxpayers demand accountability?

FEMA Wants Over $300M in Katrina Aid Back
February 6, 2007, ABC News/Associated Press
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2852688

In the neighborhood President Bush visited right after Hurricane Katrina, the U.S. government gave $84.5 million to more than 10,000 households. But Census figures show fewer than 8,000 homes existed there at the time. Now the government wants back a lot of the money it disbursed. The Federal Emergency Management Administration has determined nearly 70,000 Louisiana households improperly received $309.1 million in grants, and officials acknowledge those numbers are likely to grow. An Associated Press analysis of government data obtained under the federal Freedom of Information Act suggests the government might not have been careful enough with its checkbook as it gave out nearly $5.3 billion in aid to storm victims. The analysis found the government regularly gave money to more homes in some neighborhoods than the number of homes that actually existed. The pattern was repeated in nearly 100 neighborhoods. At least 162,750 homes that didn't exist before the storms may have received a total of more than $1 billion in improper or illegal payments. In one neighborhood GAO scrutinized, at least one person gave an address as a cemetery. Records show FEMA gave 27,924 assistance grants worth $293 million in that neighborhood. Only 18,590 homes existed, meaning up to $98 million in aid could have been disbursed improperly or illegally. The AP's findings are similar to those of a February report by the Government Accountability Office, which found hurricane aid was used for to pay for guns, strippers and tattoos. The GAO concluded that between $600 million and $1.4 billion was improperly spent on Katrina relief alone.

Bribes offered to scientists
February 3, 2007, Sydney Morning Herald (Australia's leading newspaper)
http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/bribes-offered-to-scientists/2007/02/02/1169919530963.html

Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world's largest oil companies to undermine the UN climate change report. Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute, an ExxonMobil-funded think tank with close links to the Bush Administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of the report. Travel expenses and additional payments were also offered. The institute has received more than $1.6 million from ExxonMobil - which yesterday announced a $50 billion annual profit, the biggest ever by a US company - and more than 20 of its staff have worked as consultants to the Bush Administration. A former head of ExxonMobil, Lee Raymond, is the vice-chairman of the institute's board of trustees.

Note: Why wasn't this important story covered by any major media in the U.S.? For an answer, click here.

Exxon's 'outlandish' earnings spark furor
February 2, 2007, Globe and Mail (One of Canada's Leading Newspapers)
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20070202.EXXON02/TPStory/

The world's largest publicly owned oil company announced yesterday the largest corporate profit ever, but news of its near $40-billion (U.S.) windfall in 2006 sparked an angry backlash, coming on the eve of a major report blaming the use of fossil fuels for wreaking devastation on the planet. Exxon shares have risen by about 20 per cent in the past year. Exxon wasn't alone in unprecedented oil earnings. Royal Dutch Shell PLC, an Anglo-Dutch company, and U.S.-run Marathon Oil and Valero Energy, also posted best-ever annual results yesterday. And ConocoPhillips Co., also American, last week posted its highest profits. Profits at the five companies together totalled $91.1-billion -- in a year when drivers paid record prices for gasoline. Both Democratic and Republican members of Congress have also urged Exxon to end its funding of organizations that deny the existence of -- or minimize the seriousness of -- human-made global warming. Scientists yesterday accused the conservative American Enterprise Institute, which receives funding from Exxon, of offering scientists up to $10,000 for articles that undercut a report to be released today from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Last month, the Union of Concerned Scientists ... said that Exxon has spent $16-million over the past 10 years financing organizations that deny the seriousness of climate change. Alden Meyer, a strategist with the group, compared Exxon's efforts to discredit the science of global warming to the tobacco companies' efforts to sow doubts about the link between smoking and lung cancer in order to protect their profits.

Note: Compare this Canadian article with the New York Times reporting of this record profit, or that of any other major U.S. newspaper. The U.S. press barely mentions that oil company gouging which took dollars from your pocket is what led to record profits. To understand why the U.S. press behaves in this way, click here.

U.S. Issues Guidelines in Case of Flu Pandemic
February 1, 2007, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/01/health/01cnd-flu.html

Cities should close schools for up to three months in the event of a severe flu outbreak, ball games and movies should be canceled ... the federal government advised today in issuing new pandemic flu guidelines to states and cities. Health officials acknowledged that such measures would hugely disrupt public life, but they argued that these measure would buy the time needed to produce vaccines and would save lives. "We have to be prepared for a Category 5 pandemic," said Dr. Martin Cetron, director of global migration and quarantine for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "It's not easy. The only thing that's harder is facing the consequences." The new guidelines also advocate having sick people and all their families' even apparently healthy members stay home for 7 to 10 days. Any pandemic is expected to move faster than a new vaccine can be produced. Current experimental vaccines against H5N1 avian flu are in short supply and based on strains isolated in 2004 or 2005. Although the government is creating a $4 billion stockpile of the antiviral drug Tamiflu, it is only useful when taken within the first 48 hours, and Tamiflu-resistant flu strains have already been found. The historian John Barry, author of "The Great Influenza," a history of the 1918 flu, questioned an idea underpinning the study's conclusions. There is evidence, he said, that some cities with low sickness and death rates in 1918 ... were hit by a milder spring wave of the virus. That would have, in effect, inoculated their citizens against the more severe fall wave and might have been more important than their public health measures.

Note: Why is it that government officials seem to want us to be afraid? Could it be that when we live in fear, we are more willing to give up our freedoms and money and allow them to be in control? For more, click here. And why would the government spend billions on stockpiling drugs of questionable use? For an answer, click here.

Revisiting 9/11 Failures
January 31, 2007, Newsweek
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16907952/site/newsweek/

Senators are renewing calls for the declassification of a CIA report documenting the agency's mistakes in preventing the 2001 attacks. The Senate Intelligence Committee and the CIA may be headed for a new confrontation over an old issue: why an internal report documenting the agency's failures in the run up to the September 11 terror attacks is still being withheld from the public. The report, prepared by the CIA's inspector general, is the only major 9/11 government review that has still not been made publicly available. While Bush administration officials are hardly eager for a public rehash of the 9/11 intelligence failures, the issue is an especially sensitive one at CIA headquarters. The report provides the CIA's own internal account of what some believe was the most spectacular of the pre-9/11 failures: the agency's failure to alert the FBI and other U.S. government agencies to information showing that two of the hijackers had entered the United States as early as January 2000.

Dangerous World Fuels Conspiracy Theorists
January 30, 2007, CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/29/national/main2411081.shtml

Five years later, it's the violent rattling of the ground moments before the World Trade Center's South Tower fell ... that keeps Gary Welz raising questions about just what he survived on Sept. 11, 2001. "I felt what was like an earthquake ... just before the South Tower fell," recalls Welz, an adjunct math lecturer at John Jay Criminal College and Fordham University. "The official explanation that I've heard doesn't make sense because it doesn't explain why I heard and felt an explosion before the South Tower fell." Welz is among the growing ranks of conspiracy theorists who question the official explanation of ... the Sept. 11 attacks. The actions of U.S. administrations in recent American history have done nothing to dissuade conspiracy theorists. The details of the 1980s Iran-Contra affair, after all, read like an implausible conspiracy theorist's dream. The Watergate scandal provides fodder too. The Bush administration, it can be argued, has encouraged a new generation of theorists after implying there was a link between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks ... and insisting Iraq was riddled with weapons of mass destruction. Although he is doubtful of the official 9/11 story, Welz ... does not consider himself a conspiracy theorist. Welz' own skepticism toward 9/11, while based on personal experience, has been reinforced by broadcast quality, highly-polished films on the Internet such as "9/11 Mysteries." There are hundreds of others out there. One such film is "Loose Change" ... a polished, albeit journalistically flawed, attempt to poke holes in the U.S. government's explanation and response to the Sept. 11 attacks. "Loose Change" has been downloaded over 30 million times in 50 countries.

Note: For free viewing of "Loose Change," click here. To view "9/11 Mysteries," click here. For an abundance of reliable, verifiable information suggesting a major cover-up of 9/11, click here.

FDA To Make Changes To Boost Drug Safety
January 30, 2007, ABC News/Reuters
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory?id=2835505

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Tuesday it would make organizational changes to improve internal communication about potential risks that emerge after a new drug reaches the market. The move is part of the agency's response to an Institute of Medicine (IOM) report that sharply criticized the FDA's drug safety oversight and called for more staffing, funding and power to police the drug industry. The September 2006 report also found a "dysfunctional" FDA structure that hindered the agency's ability to protect public health. The IOM experts said they found FDA officials had trouble managing scientific disagreements among staff and downplayed some concerns by safety reviewers who monitor drugs after they win approval. On Tuesday, the agency said it was "making specific organizational and management changes to increase communications among FDA review staff and safety staff." The announcement came as lawmakers prepare to debate critical funding legislation for the agency that could become a vehicle for drug safety reforms. The FDA had requested the IOM report after it came under harsh criticism for its handling of Merck & Co. Inc.'s withdrawn arthritis drug Vioxx and other medicines. Merck pulled Vioxx from the market in 2004, five years after its approval, because of a link to heart attacks and strokes.

Do-Gooders With Spreadsheets
January 30, 2007, New York Times
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/01/30/opinion/30kristof.html

The World Economic Forum here in Davos is the kind of place where if you let yourself get distracted while walking by a European prime minister on your left, you could end up tripping over a famous gazillionaire. But perhaps the most remarkable people to attend ... are the social entrepreneurs. Nic Frances runs a group that aims to cut carbon emissions in 70 percent of Australian households over 10 years. His group, Easy Being Green, gives out low-energy light bulbs and low-flow shower heads after the household signs over the rights to the carbon emissions the equipment will save. The group then sells those carbon credits to industry to finance its activities. In the U.S., Gillian Caldwell and her group, Witness, train people around the world to use video cameras to document human rights abuses. The resulting videos have drawn public attention to issues like child soldiers and the treatment of the mentally ill. Now Ms. Caldwell aims to create sort of YouTube for human rights video clips. Muhammad Yunus, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year, demonstrated with Grameen Bank the power of microfinancing. His bank has helped raise incomes, secure property rights for women, lower population growth and raise education standards across Bangladesh – and now the success is rippling around the globe. "Politics is failing to solve all the big issues," said Jim Wallis, who wrote "God's Politics" and runs Sojourners. "So when that happens, social movements rise up." A growing number of the best and brightest university graduates in the U.S. and abroad are moving into this area (many clutching the book "How to Change the World," a bible in the field).

Older Articles Recently Discovered

The people who control the world
January 30, 2003, CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/books/01/30/ronson.them/

The Middle Ages had the Knights Templar. The 18th century had the Masons and the Illuminati. Our modern age has golf-playing businessmen. [Jon] Ronson, a 35-year-old British writer, humorist and documentarian, kept reading and hearing about the "tiny elite [that] rules the world from inside a secret room" -- so he decided to go in search of it. He met with extremists of many stripes: Ku Klux Klansmen with a PR bent, Muslim rabble-rousers ... and others convinced that a New World Order meant the end of the world. He sought out the industrialists of groups such as the Bilderberg Group and Bohemian Grove. He wrote about his experiences in "Them." Ronson's extremists seem rather normal. Some are very much aware of how their views marginalize them. The people of "Them" are people who are all too human -- even if they would deny others their humanity. As the saying goes, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean someone's not out to get you. Ronson doesn't deny that many of the extremists in "Them" are, well, extreme. Many have put together half-baked theories that blame the troubles of the world on wealthy businessmen, usually a code word for Jews. Ronson, who's Jewish himself, sometimes found it awkward to listen to their views. Conspiracy theorists tend to be fearful, less educated, less tied in to the power structure. Meanwhile, the leaders of corporations and countries do meet as part of conferences sponsored by organizations such as the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg Group. While researching a Bilderberg Group meeting, [Ronson] was chased through parts of Portugal by shadowy security men. He found out just how thin the membrane between "us" and "them" may be.

Note: Them is by far the most balanced, entertaining book you are likely to find on conspiracy theorists. It pokes a lot of fun both at the conspiracy theorists and at the powerful secret groups which he finds to be deluded almost as much as the conspiracy theorists themselves. For lots more reliable, verifiable information on power secret societies of the global elite, click here.

The Vision Thing
December 11, 1995, Time Magazine
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,983829,00.html

First Star Wars. Now Star Gate. That is the real code name ... of a secret program that spent $20 million in the past 10 years to employ psychics in pursuit of the unknown. What the Pentagon's ultra-secret Defense Intelligence Agency [DIA] hoped it might get from the paranormal was a real advantage in the world of military intelligence. Last week ... the CIA (which spent $750,000 on psychic research from 1972 to 1977) determined that the program was a waste of money and moved to shut it down. Congress had ordered the agency to take over Star Gate last year and conduct a study of its effectiveness. "There's no documented evidence it had any value to the intelligence community," says David Goslin, of the American Institute for Research, which the CIA hired to do the study. So the three full-time psychics still operating on a $500,000-a-year budget out of Fort Meade, Maryland, will soon close up shop. At least a few powerful Senators on the Appropriations Committee will miss them. Senators Daniel Inouye and Robert Byrd, intrigued by stories of psychic successes, pushed hard during many years to keep Star Gate going. Tales of the effectiveness of psychics as spies have long been circulated. DIA credited psychics with creating accurate pictures of Soviet submarine construction hidden from U.S. spy satellites, and a 1993 Pentagon report said psychics had correctly drawn 20 tunnels being built in North Korea near the demilitarized zone.

Note: Though this article largely debunks remote viewing, it does reveal some key facts. Before 1995 the government consistently denied such a program ever existed. Former participants in remote viewing programs, many of them respected scientists, have spoken openly about their involvement. Many of these scientists believe that the program was not shut down, but rather all civilians were terminated from the program in order to take it to a higher level of secrecy. For an excellent 50-minute video on this program, click here.

An E.S.P. Gap
January 23, 1984, Time Magazine
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,949946,00.html

Ronald McRae, a former investigative reporter [tells of] the military's forays into parapsychology, the quasi-science that studies the interaction of mind and matter. According to McRae, who is skeptical of psychic claims, the Department of Defense has spent $6 million annually in recent years to research such phenomena as extrasensory perception (E.S.P.) and mental telepathy. The Pentagon denies any interest in parapsychology. But in an interview with the New York Times, retired Lieut. General Daniel O. Graham, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, indicated that the military had unquestionably been involved in psychic research. While he considered McRae's $6 million budget figure an exaggeration, he said, "I wouldn't be surprised if the intelligence community were following this. They would be remiss if they didn't." Back in December 1980, Military Review, a journal of the U.S. Army, carried a cover story titled "The New Mental Battlefield" [in which] Lieut. Colonel John B. Alexander wrote that "there are weapons systems that operate on the power of the mind and whose lethal capacity has already been demonstrated." He ... urged the U.S. to step up its research in the field. "I know the Government's involved," says Physicist Russell Targ. "I did the work," he contends. He maintains that there was a "multimillion-dollar" project, part of which focused on "remote viewing" experiments. On a visit to the U.S.S.R. in October, Targ found that the Soviets had replicated some of the experiments he and his colleagues had reported in scientific journals. Says Targ: "In the Soviet Union, psychic research is taken seriously at the highest levels."

Note: For those interested in the military's use of "psyops" (psychological operations), you can view all 170 pages of the official U.S. Army psyops manual from April 2005, available here. Remote viewing has been used extensively in the military, intelligence, and police communities. For an excellent 50-minute video covering this most fascinating topic, click here.

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Iraq Money Missing, Bribed Scientists, People Who Control the World