Abolish The Federal Reserve

Nigerian man was in terror database

2009-12-28T00:40:00.000-05:00

Nigerian man was in terror database
http://waronyou.com/topics/nigerian-man-was-in-terror-database/
A Nigerian man charged Saturday with attempting to blow up a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day was listed in a U.S. terrorism database after his father told State Department officials that he was worried about his son’s radical beliefs and extremist connections, officials said.

The suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was granted a two-year tourist visa by the U.S. Embassy in London in June 2008 and has traveled to the United States at least twice before, officials said. His name was added to a catch-all terrorism-related database last month, when his father reported concerns about his son’s “radicalization and associations” to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria, a senior administration official said.

Abdulmutallab, 23, was subdued by passengers and crew members aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Friday after he ignited an explosive device that set his pants leg and part of the airplane, which was preparing to land in Detroit, on fire. The incident marks the latest apparent attempt by terrorists to bring down a U.S. aircraft through the use of an improvised weapon and set in motion a series of urgent security measures that disrupted global air travel during the frenetic holiday weekend.

http://www.contractorhut.info/
Blog wandering? What is that?! I have seen it over and over again. A new blogger kick starts a blog with all intentions of hitting it big and growing a huge subscriber count. They are going to be the next big thing! Just you wait and see! So what does this new blogger do? Picks a domain name, spends countless hours looking at premium blog themes and finally gets around to installing every single cool plugin they can find. Everything is set and ready to blog!
http://seotricksguide.info/
http://landscapenewengland.info/
Forgive the pun, but this would seem to be something of a no-brainer. Quoth the levitating Lotus: “Merry Christmas and happy holidays to everyone as we’re approaching this new year, I felt it was time to let go of some things that have been gathering dust. Some old things, and some new things, I tried to pick out tracks that I know yall haven’t heard yet so there should be surprises around every turn. can’t believe i’ve been making tracks for over 10 years now..That said, there’s so much to learn still. I hope you all enjoy this mix. Thanks to the Gaslamp Killer for doing an incredible job on this.
http://rap-promotions.info/
http://rappublicity.info/
http://vidzking.com/
http://motorcycletrader.info/
http://www.nonpossible.com/
http://www.globalconspiracy.info/
http://ronpaulforum.info/
http://www.googleprof.com/
http://nascarblog.info/
http://carhub.info/

Fractures in the Truth Movement, Part III The Fissure Becomes a Gulf

2009-12-21T00:44:00.000-05:00

Fractures in the Truth Movement, Part III
The Fissure Becomes a Gulf

http://waronyou.com/topics/fractures-in-the-truth-movement-part-iii/
http://waronyou.com/topics/fractures-in-the-truth-movement/
http://waronyou.com/topics/fractures-in-the-truth-movement-part-ii/

“Strange powers have our enemies, and strange weaknesses! But it has long been said: oft evil will shall evil mar.”

–J.R.R. Tolkien, from The Two Towers

“This fracture in the truth movement between the anti-zionists and the Alex Jones automatons was building gradually for a few years until [Jason] Bermas blew the issue wide open on Alex Jones’ show in April. Since then the fracture has become a fissure, and the fissure will soon become a gulf.“

–from Part 1 of “Fractures in the Truth Movement”

As covered in part 1 of this series, the split between anti-zionists and those who equate anti-zionism with anti-semitism was blown wide open last April by Jason Bermas of Loose Change fame, while guest-hosting the Alex Jones Show. He accomplished this by berating a caller who had the audacity to ask about Jewish control of the Hollywood media. This split widened to a fissure with the firing of Jeff Rense from GCN’s radio network, with Texe Marrs writing an article critical of Jason Bermas, and with Nathaniel Kapner opening the debate on whether Alex Jones is a zionist shill–or just a useful idiot.

Well, a new fissure has appeared between Alex Jones and those who honestly seek the truth in politics and history, which has been building gradually–along with the anti-zionist rift–since the PrisonPlanet.com forums were created in 2007. The two rifts, side by side, represent what has now become a gulf between the Alex Jones world and the rest of the war for truth and justice. As explained in Parts 1 and 2 of this series, when Alex Jones had the PrisonPlanet.tv forums deleted in a hissy fit live on air, it was just before this time that the PrisonPlanet.com forums were created. Because the members only .tv forums were un-moderated, Alex Jones equipped the new free forums at PrisonPlanet.com with moderators who would make Pol Pot flinch. These moderators have been suppressing the flow of information on PrisonPlanet.com’s forums ever since.

What information is there to suppress on an internet forum, you ask? It’s funny you should ask, because that’s one of the things I’d like to address. I made the case for anti-zionism in part 2 of this series, and it just so happens that this is one of the subjects under extreme scrutiny at PrisonPlanet.com. It seems Alex Jones has a reason to suppress any talk of Jews or zionism. I will leave it up to you to decide why that might be, although if you’ve been reading this series, I think I’ve made my opinion on the matter abundantly clear. When someone claims that Arabs own Hollywood, I have to sit back and smile at the sheer arrogance of the statement. Not to mention, my first thought is: “Who the hell is paying this guy to say that?” Yet Alex Jones has made this exact statement not once, but a number of times.

And how does one go about suppressing the flow of information on an internet forum? How do you go about the seedy business of appearing to be for truth and uncovering political crimes, while hiding and removing any trace of your own lies and crimes? It’s easier than you may think. People who are used to being lied to their entire lives sometimes have a hard time seeing through new lies, even if this is their main desire. But as with all lies, eventually the jig is up. A home built upon a foundation of lies is no home at all…

Following are four main tactics I have observed, which are used by internet forum moderators to suppress the free flow of information:

The first tactic is ridicule. Any idea outside of the accepted bubble must be ruthlessly vilified by both moderators and sycophantic registered users alike.

The second tactic is moving threads to “dunce” boards, which are basically forum boards where moderators can quarantine all “kooky” threads. This effectively quarantines the idea of the thread, along with the thread itself and the person who posted the thread. New users naturally shy away from these boards, not wishing to be outcasts. Included in this tactic is changing the title of threads to make the poster appear ignorant or even hateful, and merging “dunce” threads with other “dunce” threads in order to confuse the issues.

The third tactic is deleting posts and threads altogether… Forum posts which are critical of the moderators, or whose topics are taboo, can be simply deleted.

The fourth tactic is banning registered members from using and viewing the forums outright. The ban can be temporary or permanent. This is the tactic that appears to be the downfall of the PrisonPlanet.com forums.

PrisonPlanet.com’s forum moderators apply all of the above tactics to their forums with ruthless efficacy. Many users become disgusted by the blatant abuse of authority, and simply leave, not waiting to get banned or ridiculed. So some see the scam for what it is, and leave on their own terms. Others, as mentioned earlier, are too used to being manipulated to see through the charade.

There is an immediate danger the internet poses for the powers-that-be, and those powers have every motive–financial and political–to attempt to stifle dissent on the internet. It only makes sense considering the effort they’ve expended on suppressing truth through the mainstream media. They would be stupid to not attempt control of their opposition…

Fractures in the Truth Movement, Part III: The Fissure Becomes a Gulf

Rep. Ron Paul Introduces HR 1866 The Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2009

2009-04-05T22:09:00.005-04:00

A federal bill was introduced yesterday that, if passed into law, would remove restrictions on the cultivation of non-psychoactive industrial hemp. The chief sponsors of HR 1866, "The Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2009," Representatives Barney Frank (D-MA) and Ron Paul (R-TX), were joined by nine other U.S. House members split between Republicans and Democrats.

The story continues here:

http://alaskareport.com/n...

Two New Ron Paul Videos - House Floor 04-01-09 & Discussing the Budget 04-02-09

2009-04-05T22:09:00.003-04:00

Ron Paul on the House floor in opposition to the budget, inflation, empire building, the Federal Reserve, etc...

http://www.youtube.com/wa...

Ron Paul discussing the budget with legislative assistant Paul - Martin Foss...

http://www.youtube.com/wa...

Don't forget End the Fed, and Tax day tea Parties coming to a city near you!

http://educationalrevolut...

Your friend in liberty,

robpatozz

How You Can Dig Up a Company's Secrets

2009-04-05T22:09:00.001-04:00

You probably already know about the controversial bonuses at AIG. But what about the compensation being doled out at companies you care about like your employer or your investments?

Now that many big corporations are gearing up for their annual shareholder meetings, you've got a chance to see all of the other perks and payments top executives received last year — from thousands of dollars in tax-preparation services (we're not kidding) to regular use of a company jet.

Just take a few moments to read through the company’s proxy statement. If you’ve never actually pored over a company’s proxy statement, it’s a valuable experience for investors at any level. Publicly-traded companies have to file these forms with the Securities and Exchange Commission in advance of their annual shareholder meetings. Known as form DEF 14A, the proxy lists the names and bios of the people running for the company’s board of directors and discloses the compensation of its top five executives and its board members. (Search for a company's DEF 14A form at the SEC web site here.)

If you own shares of a specific company, the proxy statement can do much more than satisfy your voyeuristic cravings. It also serves as a voting ballot for the company’s board of directors and for any proposals that will be brought up at the shareholder meeting.

Here are four key things to look for in a proxy statement — and how to interpret them.

1. Executive pay — and perks

Probably the most enticing part of a proxy statement is the Executive Compensation section, where companies describe in detail how much they paid their top five executive officers, and in what form.

The Summary Compensation table is a good place to start. This table lists the salary, bonus, stock awards and other compensation that each executive received. But things really get interesting when you dive into the All Other Compensation tables, which list the dollar value of company perks received that are worth $10,000 or more and an explanation of what these perks entail. “A CEO who insists on all the bells and whistles – financial planning, country clubs, home security systems – has too much time on his hands,” says Nell Minow, editor of The Corporate Library, a corporate-governance research firm.

To get a sense of whether these executives are overcompensated, compare the total compensation they received to the operating profit, listed on the income statement (part of a company’s annual statement, or Form 10-K), says Paul Larson, an equity strategist at research firm Morningstar. "If a quarter or a third of the operating profit is going directly to two or three top executives, that’s a red flag,” he says.

2. Board of directors – background, compensation

As a shareholder, you don’t have a say on executive compensation. But you do have a say on who ends up on the board of directors -- and they're the ones who decide what to pay the executives.

So it’s in the shareholders’ interest that independent directors who have a lot of experience and few close-knit affiliations with the company are well represented. “You don’t want too many insiders or too many people associated with company founders, like founding family members. You want a good, independent, diverse board,” says Larson.

Most board members are paid handsomely for their role, which often entails attending a handful of meetings per year. But it's how they're paid that should matter most. Board members who are paid in stock have a vested interest in the company's success. “The single indicator on how effective a board is how much stock they’ve got,” Minow says. “If they’re not willing to put their money where their mouth is, you don’t want them working on your behalf.”

3. Golden parachutes, severance payments

Golden parachutes, or contracts that stipulate what type of severance pay executives will receive if they are terminated, have come under scrutiny lately, with many top executives departing troubled financial firms. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, in fact, prohibits golden parachute payments to senior executive officers or any of the next five most highly-compensated employees at companies getting TARP money. Yet, golden parachutes still exist at many other companies and are worth looking through, says Wayne Guay, associate professor of accounting at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. If a CEO turns out to be a bad fit for the company and leaves it worse off than before, do you really want that person to get paid handsomely for getting fired?

4. Shareholder proposals

The proxy statement describes each of the shareholder proposals that will be put up for vote at the annual meeting and often includes a recommendation from the board in support of or against the proposal. If you're having a hard time deciding how to vote, look for proposals that are endorsed by large institutional investors, says Minow. After all, who's better at looking after a shareholder’s interest than those who own a significant chunk of the company?

SMARTMONEY ® Layout and look and feel of SmartMoney.com are trademarks of SmartMoney, a joint venture between Dow Jones & Company, Inc. and Hearst SM Partnership. © 1995 - 2009 SmartMoney. All Rights Reserved.

Read More...

[Source: SmartMoney.com - Consumer Action - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]

Constitution Revolution - It's Here...

2009-03-15T02:41:00.003-04:00

Hello Friends and Patriots,

I have been hard at work on this video for the last month now, and the time has finally come to release it.

I started working on this as an independent project, simply because I've been inspired by videos made by fellow board members like Aravoth. This video has now become part of a much larger project, which we will be releasing on March 19th, to mark the start of the 7th Year since the Iraq Invasion. We do hint a little bit as to what that project is, but we are not giving away any secrets yet. I will tell you this, the overall project involves much more than 2012. We have not forgotten that we need to pave the way in 2010.

Public finances: One crunch after another

2009-03-15T02:41:00.001-04:00

The financial crisis is battering public finances on several fronts

CALLS for co-ordinated fiscal stimulus to lift the world out of recession were joined at the weekend by Larry Summers, Barack Obama’s top economic adviser. Such co-ordination has been absent up to now, though that could change at the meeting of G20 leaders in London in early April. But there has been plenty of fiscal stimulus, led by America’s $787 billion package, as many governments seek to offset a collapse in private demand. There are worries not only about how much these measures cost up front but their longer-term effects on government finances.

The direct costs of such packages are indeed large. The IMF reckons that for G20 countries stimulus packages will add up to 1.5% of GDP in 2009 (calculated as a weighted average using purchasing power parity). Together with the huge sums used to bail out firms in the financial sector (3.5% of GDP and counting in America, for example), these are immediate ways in which the crisis is affecting public finances across the world. But they are not the only ones. ...

Read More...

[Source: The Economist: News analysis - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]

US governments Cybersecurity chief warns America of NSA

2009-03-08T05:49:00.001-04:00

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. government’s director for cybersecurity resigned on Friday, criticizing the excessive role of the National Security Agency in countering threats to the country’s computer systems.“He has tendered his resignation,” Amy Kudwa, a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman told Reuters.Former Silicon Valley entrepreneur Rod Beckstrom said in a resignation letter published [...]No related posts.

Read More...

[Source: War On You: Breaking Alternative News - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]

Why your doctor is just a drug pusher

2009-03-03T18:47:00.001-05:00

http://www.brasschecktv.c...

More on the Rand Paul & the Senate Race in Kentucky

2009-03-01T19:18:00.011-05:00

It"s now hard to see how Bunning can win or gracefully step aside. If Rand Paul, a Bowling Green eye doctor and the son of Republican Ron Paul who mounted an unsuccessful challenge in last year"s Republican presidential primary, gets in the race, he could raise a lot of money and make it very difficult for whomever the party wants to replace Bunning, including Secretary of State Trey Grayson, who seems to be the favored alternative.
Republicans are in a bind. [Republican Senator Mitch] McConnell doesn"t want to lose another Senate seat to Democrats, especially one in his own state. Republicans, weighed down by an exceptionally unpopular president, have suffered through two disastrous election cycles. McConnell was his party"s Senate leader for only one of those. But his position as Republican Leader might be at risk if his party loses more seats in 2010 and he can"t keep one of Kentucky"s in the Republican column.

This is a big opportunity for Rand, and for the ongoing Revolution!

Read the whole story

Dr. Paul on CNN Live from CPAC

2009-03-01T19:18:00.010-05:00

Part 1

http://www.youtube.com/wa...

Part 2

The spectre of default

2009-03-01T19:18:00.003-05:00

Despite rising investor unease in Ukraine, the cabinet is in no hurry to adopt a credible budget

Ukraine insists it has the funds to avoid default, in the wake of a sharp downgrade by an international ratings agency and CDS spreads that suggest a 70% likelihood of default. Ukraine’s sovereign repayments this year are affordable, but the state could be landed with much-larger obligations from the private sector. Thus relations with the IMF are critical, but these have stumbled on a dispute over the 2009 budget, which rests on highly optimistic assumptions and still fails to deliver the promised zero-deficit. Evidently the government is unwilling to make further spending cuts, and prefers to cover the deficit with bilateral loans. The IMF’s attitude to this is uncertain. Adding to the sense of panic, Ukraine could in early March suffer sharp penalties for its failure to pay for Russian gas supplies.

Ukraine's president Viktor Yushchenko on February 25th dismissed the notion that Ukraine lacked the means to service its sovereign and private debts: “no doubt, these resources exist,” he said. Mr Yushchenko was responding to the decision earlier that day by the credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s (S&P) to cut Ukraine’s main rating, its long-term foreign-currency rating, by two notches to CCC+, putting the country deeper into junk territory. S&P also maintained a negative outlook, indicating that further downgrades were possible. ...

Read More...

[Source: The Economist: News analysis - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]

Obama's Housing Plan: What's in It for You

2009-03-01T19:18:00.001-05:00

Updated on February 25, 2009.

PRESIDENT OBAMA'S $275 BILLION foreclosure-prevention plan, also known as the Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan, is just days away from official take-off, with the program’s final rules about to be publicized and implemented March 4.

Among the president's lofty goals: to enable four to five million homeowners to refinance into more affordable fixed-rate mortgages and to spend a whopping $75 billion to help another three to four million at-risk homeowners keep their homes.

According to the Obama administration, loan modifications may help some households save as much as $400 a month, while certain incentives and payouts will give others $1,500 in cash and up to $5,000 towards their loan balance. Of course, there are also plenty of homeowners that won’t see a dime.

Here’s what you can expect.

1.Greater ease to refinance into lower-interest loans

Promised results: Lower-rate mortgages that could save some homeowners up to $200 per month

What the plan proposes: Many homeowners are "underwater" on their mortgages -- meaning they owe more on their home than it's actually worth. Given that many lenders today won't refinance a mortgage if the borrower owes more than 80% of the value of their home, a lot of people are stuck in their existing mortgages. Obama's plan will enable borrowers to refinance into lower-rate loans worth up to 105% of the property’s current market value.

Who benefits: According to the administration, four to five million homeowners. More specifically, the plan will only help those who have conforming loans (up to $417,000 in most parts of the country, but they can be as high as $729,750 in some high-cost counties in states like New York and California). Those who have jumbo loans that exceed those limits don't qualify.

What you could receive: The administration calculates that someone who owes about $200,000 on a house that is worth $221,000 today and refinances a 6.5% loan into a 5.17% 30-year-fixed loan would save $2,300 a year, or $191 a month.

Final verdict: The government’s calculations are missing the mark, says Keith Gumbinger, vice president of HSH Associates, a mortgage-information research firm. The household in the example above owes less than their home is worth. “They could have gotten a loan anywhere on the private market,” Gumbinger says.

Homeowners who are truly in trouble, such as those in Florida, California, Nevada, Arizona, where prices have fallen by 30% or more, will likely not qualify, says Polina Vlasenko, a research fellow with American Institute for Economic Research, a think tank.

2.Reduced payments for at-risk borrowers

Promised result: Savings on monthly mortgage payments of up to $400 per month

What the plan proposes: Reducing monthly payments for borrowers at risk of losing their home so that payments only comprise 31% of their household income. The reductions will be made by lowering a borrower’s interest rate and will be partly subsidized so lenders don’t have to absorb all costs.

Who benefits: Unlike all the other rescue programs in place so far, this $75 billion Homeowner Stability Initiative will help homeowners who are current on their payments but facing an “imminent” threat of falling behind. The administration estimates that three to four million borrowers may benefit. Only mortgages on primary loans qualify. Those who took loans to purchase investment properties are out of luck.

What you could receive: The administration estimates that a household with a $220,000 mortgage and payments adding up to 43% of monthly income could save over $400 per month after their payment is reduced to 31% of their monthly income.

The verdict: Reducing payments to 31% of household income is a step in the right direction, but it doesn’t address the principal balances of loans that are underwater, says Jim Karr, chief operating officer at the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, a consumer advocacy group. In areas where homeowners owe as much as 25% or 30% more than their homes are worth, an affordable payment may not be incentive enough to keep them in their homes. Also, these modifications are temporary, Karr says. “The question is what’s going to happen in five years if interest rates drift back up,” he notes.

3.Cash incentives for those displaced by foreclosure

Promised result: Up to $5,000 in incentives for staying current on payments and possibly another $1,500 to modify your loan.

What the plan proposes: The government is handing out monetary incentives left and right to make sure servicers are modifying loans -- and that homeowners are staying current on their payments.

Who benefits: Servicers will receive an upfront fee of $1,000 for each eligible modification they complete plus “pay for success” fees of up to $1,000 a year for three years, as long as the borrower stays current on the loan. Another $500 payment will be awarded to each servicer that modifies an at-risk loan before the borrower falls behind.

Borrowers, meanwhile, could receive a $5,000 incentive for staying current on their modified loan. The payment, in increments of up to $1,000 a year for five years, will be applied towards reducing the principal balance of their loan. In addition to that, homeowners who are at risk of falling behind and who modify their loan before they fall behind will receive $1,500.

Renters displaced by foreclosure will receive $1.5 billion in assistance to help them relocate, among other things.

The verdict: A $5,000 incentive applied over five years to a loan that may be upside down by $30,000 or $40,000 is not much of an incentive, says NCRC’s Karr. And while it may sound significant to a homeowner who owes $75,000, someone with a $300,000 mortgage may not be much impressed. But the administration has done a great job of encouraging servicers to modify loans -- and to do so with terms homeowners can afford for the long term. (Or for three years, at least.) “Servicers come out the big winners here,” Karr says.

Read More...

[Source: SmartMoney.com - Consumer Action - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]

SWAT Team Raid on Homeschool and Food and Health Ministry for Hungry Families

2009-02-22T01:01:00.004-05:00

UPDATE: Video and new information:

It happened before Christmas 2008 at a food and health ministry for hungry families in Ohio. It was as if the family were bio-terrorists or something.

Three snipers with high-powered rifles were aimed at the home with ten children being homeschooled. Babies and toddlers were inside also. About twelve armed sheriff deputies along with agents from the Lorain County (Ohio) Health Department and the Ohio Department of Agriculture raided and ransacked the inside and held the family for six hours inside a room in their home outside Lagange, Ohio.

http://wholefoodusa.wordp...

Obama Widens Missile Strikes Inside Pakistan

2009-02-22T01:01:00.001-05:00

From an overt war in Iraq to a covert war in Pakistan. How's that for change?

WASHINGTON With two missile strikes over the past week, the Obama administration has expanded the covert war run by the Central Intelligence Agency inside Pakistan, attacking a militant network seeking to topple the Pakistani government.

---

But how can it be a "covert war" if it is being reported on in the first sentence of a front page story in the NY Times?

Continue

Glenn Beck Predicts Doomsday Revolution!

2009-02-21T00:13:00.009-05:00

http://www.youtube.com/wa...

Glenn Becks prediction is dire Beck says the military is preparing for a revolution.

digg for Liberty*)
http://digg.com/political...

Keyes: Stop Obama or U.S. will cease to exist---"Have People Gone Mad In This Country?" Watch This!!!

2009-02-21T00:13:00.008-05:00

http://www.youtube.com/wa...

DIGG THIS NOW: http://digg.com/politics/...

Kyrgyzstan Issues Eviction Notice for U.S. Air Base. This U.S. Air Base is the main way to get our troops in to Afganistan!

2009-02-21T00:13:00.001-05:00

Kyrgyzstan ordered U.S. forces on Friday to depart within six months from an air base key to military operations in Afghanistan, a move complicating plans to send more troops to battle rising Taliban and Al Qaeda violence.

http://www.foxnews.com/st...

I saw this on the news yesterday and haven't seen it posted here. This is just another indication that Middle East nations are getting tired of our national foreign policy of building empires..

As UAW faces hard times, pioneers recall glory days

2009-02-20T02:31:00.009-05:00

CLIO, Michigan (Reuters) - As the U.S. auto industry struggles to survive by cutting plants, brands and workers, the wage and benefit concessions won by the United Auto Workers union through decades of aggressive representation and negotiations have come under siege. Go to Source

Read More...

[Source: vote tags: Tracking the Vote - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]

The President Who Told The Truth

2009-02-20T02:31:00.007-05:00

http://www.youtube.com/wa...

Tom Woods' 'Meltdown' #16 in NYT Non-Fiction Best Sellers

2009-02-20T02:31:00.005-05:00

Update: I just got word from Tom that Meltdown is officially a New York Times bestseller! It will debut on the March 1 at #16 (tied for #15) in hardcover nonfiction. Woo hoo!

And, it currently occupies spot #5 on Amazon's Nonfiction List!

From the inside flap: The media tells us that "deregulation" and "unfettered free markets" have wrecked our economy and will continue to make things worse without a heavy dose of federal regulation. But the real blame lies elsewhere. In Meltdown, bestselling author Thomas E. Woods Jr. unearths the real causes behind the collapse of housing values and the stock market--and it turns out the culprits reside more in Washington than on Wall Street.

And the trillions of dollars in federal bailouts? Our politicians' ham-handed attempts to fix the problems they themselves created will only make things much worse.

Woods, a senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute and winner of the 2006 Templeton Enterprise Award, busts the media myths and government spin. He explains how government intervention in the economy--from the Democratic hobby horse called Fannie Mae to affirmative action programs like the Community Redevelopment Act--actually caused the housing bubble.

Most important, Woods, author of the New York Times bestseller The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, traces this most recent boom-and-bust--and all such booms and busts of the past century--back to one of the most revered government institutions of all: the Federal Reserve System, which allows busy-body bureaucrats and ambitious politicians to pull the strings of our financial sector and manipulate the value of the very money we use.

Bloomberg spurs laid off Wall Streeters to start companies

2009-02-20T02:31:00.003-05:00

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an ex-trader on Wall Street who became a billionaire entrepreneur, on Wednesday offered new incentives to tens of thousands of laid-off Wall Street workers to become entrepreneurs themselves. Go to Source

Read More...

[Source: vote tags: Tracking the Vote - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]

Woman assaulted calls 911 for help after. Police arrive, arrest, sexually assault her

2009-02-20T02:31:00.001-05:00

Police Assault Woman Who Called for Help; Sue News Station Who Exposes Them| posted by Melissa McEwan | Wednesday, February 18, 2009[Serious trigger warning.]In the below video, Ohio NBC affiliate WKYC investigator Tom Meyer speaks to Greg Steffey, whose wife, Hope Steffey, called 911 after being assaulted by her cousin. When the police arrived, Hope [...]

Read More...

[Source: Mint Dollar - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]

Hey Kids, Wanna Play Security Checkpoint: The Terrifying Marketing Of Police State Normalacy To Children

2009-02-11T21:53:00.002-05:00

February 9th, 2009

Hey Kids, Wanna Play Security Checkpoint:
The Terrifying Marketing Of Police State Normalacy To Children

When I flew home from Washington, DC after a business trip last week, the TSA agent asked to test my laptop. I politely asked what they were testing for. It was just routine she told me. And she"s right, it has become routine, a much too routine standard operating procedure designed to make us believe that the usurping of our privacy and human rights is normal and necessary if we are to be secure and free.

California to Print Own Currency in Form of IOUs?

2009-02-02T03:22:00.004-05:00

I was wondering what the IOUs would do for someone who receives them. I'm trying to understand how this works. California, which can't pay its residents their tax refunds is going to issue IOUs that can be deposited into banks as cash...

http://www.informationcle...

Video: Ron Paul on Fox Business 1-30-09 "Gold Standard"

2009-02-02T03:22:00.001-05:00

http://www.youtube.com/wa...

Califonia to Print Own Currency in Form of IOUs?

2009-02-01T23:08:00.006-05:00

By Paul Craig Roberts

January 28, 2009 "Information Clearinghouse" -- California State Controller John Chiang announced on January 26 that California’s bills exceed its tax revenues and credit line and that the state is going to print its own money known as IOUs. The template is already designed.

Instead of receiving their state tax refunds in dollars, California residents will receive IOUs. Student aid and payments to disabled and needy will also come in the form of IOUs. California is negotiating with banks to get them to accept the IOUs as deposits.

California is often identified as the world’s eighth largest economy, and it is broke.

A person might think that California’s plight would introduce some realism into Washington, DC, but it has not. President Obama is taking steps to intensify the war in Afghanistan and, perhaps, to expand it to Pakistan.

Obama has retained the Republican warmongers in the Pentagon, and the US continues to illegally bomb Pakistan and to murder its civilians. At the World Economic Forum at Davos this week, Pakistan’s prime minister, Y. R. Gilani, said that the American attacks on Pakistan are counterproductive and done without Pakistan’s permission. In an interview with CNN, Gilani said: “I want to put on record that we do not have any agreement between the government of the United States and the government of Pakistan.”

How long before Washington will be printing money?

On January 28 Obama announced his $825 billion bailout plan. This comes on top of President Bush’s $700 billion bailout of just a few months ago.

Obama says his plan will be more transparent than Bush’s and will do more good for the economy.

As large as the bailouts are--a total of $1.5 trillion in four months--the amount is small in relation to the reported size of troubled assets that are in the tens of trillions of dollars. How do we know that by June there won’t be another bailout, say $950 billion?

Where will the money come from?

Obama’s bailout plan, added to the FY 2009 budget deficit he has inherited from Bush, opens a gaping expenditure hole of about $3 trillion.

Who is going to purchase $3 trillion of US Treasury bonds?

Not the US consumer. The consumer is out of work and out of money. Private sector credit market debt is 174% of GDP. The personal savings rate is 2 percent. Ten percent of households are in foreclosure or arrears. Household debt-service ratio is at an all-time high. Household net worth has declined at a record rate. Housing inventories are at record highs.

Not America’s foreign creditors. At best, the Chinese, Japanese, and Saudis can recycle their trade surpluses with the US into Treasury bonds, but the combined surplus does not approach the size of the US budget deficit.

Perhaps another drop in the stock market will drive Americans’ remaining wealth into “safe” US Treasury bonds.

If not, there’s only the printing press.

The printing press would turn a deflationary depression into an inflationary depression. Unemployment combined with rising prices would be a killer.

Inflation would kill the dollar as well, leaving the US unable to pay for its imports.

All the Obama regime sees is a “credit problem.” But the crisis goes far beyond banks’ bad investments. The United States is busted. Many of the state governments are busted. Homeowners are busted. Consumers are busted. Jobs are busted. Companies are busted.

And Obama thinks he has the money to fight wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Except for the superrich and those banksters and CEOs who stole wealth from investors and shareholders, Americans have suffered enormous losses in wealth and income.

The stock market decline has destroyed about 45% of their IRAs, 401Ks, and other equity investments. On top of this comes the decline in home prices, lost jobs and health care, lost customers. The realized gains in mutual funds and investment partnerships, on which Americans paid taxes, have been wiped out.

The government should give those taxes back.

Americans who have seen their retirement savings devastated by complicity of government regulators and lawmakers with financial gangsters should not have to pay any income tax when they draw on their pensions.

The financial damage inflicted on Americans by their own government is as great as would be expected from foreign conquest. While Washington “protected” us from terrorists by fighting pointless wars abroad, the US economy collapsed.

How can President Obama even think about fighting wars half way around the world while California cannot pay its bills, while Americans are being turned out of their homes, while, as Business Week reports, retirees will work throughout their retirement (which assumes that there will be jobs), while careers are being destroyed and stores and factories shuttered.

Americans are facing tremendous unemployment and hardship. Obama doesn’t have another dollar to spend on Bush’s wars.

Taxpayers are busted. They cannot stand another day of being milked by the military-security complex. The US government is paying private mercenaries more by the day than the monthly checks it is providing to Social Security retirees.

This is insanity.

The banksters robbed us twice. First it was our home and stock values. Then the government rewarded the banksters for their misdeeds by bailing out the banksters, not their victims, and putting the cost on the taxpayers’ books.

The government has also robbed the taxpayers of $3 trillion dollars to fight its wars. About $600 billion are out of pocket costs, and the rest is on the taxpayers’ books.

When foreign creditors look at the debt piled on the taxpayers’ books, they don’t see a good credit risk.

Washington is so accustomed to ripping off the taxpayers for the benefit of special interests that the practice is now in the DNA. While bailouts are being piled upon bailouts, wars are being piled upon wars.

Before Obama gets in any deeper, he must ask his economic team where the money is coming from. When he finds out, he needs to tell the rest of us.

Gas prices start February higher

2009-02-01T23:08:00.001-05:00

Gasoline prices started February slightly higher, edging up a modest 0.1 cent, according to a daily survey of credit card swipes.Bookmark and Share More »Powered by Bookmarkify™

Read More...

[Source: Mint Dollar - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]

Blackwater Mercs Likely to Stay in Iraq, Despite Govt Ban

2009-01-31T22:21:00.001-05:00

Iraq’s government says it won’t give Blackwater a license to operate in the country. So does that mean the firm’s cadre of tattooed gunslingers will be gone from Iraq, forever? Not exactly.Sure, Blackwater as a corporate entity probably won’t be roaming the streets of Baghdad or Mosul for much longer. But the individual mercenaries who’ve [...]No related posts.

Read More...

[Source: War On You - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]

Homeless man sentenced to 10 days in jail for eating fish from stream

2009-01-30T01:40:00.011-05:00

A 23-year-old transient was sentenced to 10 days in County Jail on Wednesday for catching and cooking a federally protected steelhead trout from San Luis Obispo Creek.
Victor Manuel Silva was convicted of illegally taking and possessing wildlife. Wildlife officials said the poaching was a blow to the species because the fish was an egg-carrying female that was killed before she had a chance to spawn. Her eggs were strewn along the banks of the creek.
Silva was arrested Sunday at 5 p.m. at the Elks Lane Bridge over San Luis Obispo Creek. Warden Teri Hickey had responded to the area as a result of a tip.
When she arrived, she found a group of three or four homeless men camped out beneath the bridge, cooking a large fish over a fire and getting ready to eat it.
SThey had slices of lemon and a loaf of sourdough bread, Fish and Game Lt. Dean Hileman said. SIt was almost a meal fit for a king.

http://www.sanluisobispo....

What would Ron Paul say about this?

Rescue efforts: Big government fights back

2009-01-30T01:40:00.010-05:00

Public debt soars as governments battle financial crisis and recession. Will fiscal firepower work?

FEW now doubt that the world economy is in its most parlous state since the 1930s. Demand is slumping across the globe as firms and consumers are battered by a pernicious, self-reinforcing bombardment of dysfunctional financial markets, falling wealth, higher unemployment and rampant fear. The IMF’s latest forecasts, published on Wednesday January 28th, suggest 2009 will bring the deepest global recession in the post-war era.

To stem the slump, governments are fighting back with an activism rarely seen outside wartime (see interactive graphic). In some countries, notably China, official estimates overstate the likely fiscal stimulus. But even adjusted for bureaucratic hyperbole the government response is hefty. Weighted by their economies’ size, the plans of 11 big advanced and emerging economies are worth an average of 3.6% of GDP—though spread over several years. The IMF expects tax cuts and spending worth 1.5% of global GDP to kick in this year. ...

Dr. Paul on C-Span 1/29/2009 - 9:30 AM Live!

2009-01-30T01:40:00.008-05:00

On Washington Journal live call in!

Thanks to IPSecure and Thinkharder for the original link.

Tax cut plans: Sizing them up

2009-01-24T20:22:00.002-05:00

The Democratic leadership of the Senate Finance Committee on Friday released a $275 billion proposal of tax cuts aimed at reviving the economy.Bookmark and Share More »Powered by Bookmarkify™

Read More...

Dr. Paul's Walls I - German Hyperinflation

2009-01-16T23:03:00.002-05:00

http://youtube.com/watch?...

Bernanke calls for banking clean-up

2009-01-15T04:14:00.000-05:00

Ben Bernanke called for fresh efforts to clean up the US banking system on Tuesday, warning that fiscal stimulus measures alone would not be enough to overcome the economic crisis.

Speaking in London, the Federal Reserve chairman said he would like the Obama administration to combine capital injections with a plan to cut troubled assets from bank balance sheets – the idea behind the original version of Treasury secretary Hank Paulson’s troubled asset relief program (Tarp). “More capital injections and guarantees may become necessary to ensure stability and the normalisation of credit markets,” he said.
bernanke

Ron Paul on International Banking and Gaza 1-12-09

2009-01-13T18:18:00.008-05:00

http://www.campaignforlib...
http://www.youtube.com/wa...
Dr. Paul discusses the TARP funds and Bernanke's slight to Congress

Bernanke just dodged a question about Austrian Economics vs the FED and it's existence!

2009-01-13T18:18:00.007-05:00

This morning 1/13/09, during a live press conference on CNBC, Bernanke dodged a question about Austrian Economics vs the FED and it's existence!

The questioner asked BB about the course we have been on for the last 90 years, (obviously referring to the existence of the FED) vs. the Austrian model of economics. He asked that considering the problems that are now coming home to roost whether a new way of doing things should be considered.

In his answer, BB changed the topic to focus on capitalism! I hope someone caught this on Youtube.

The Time Clock Has Run Out: Israel Ready to Strike Iran

2009-01-13T18:18:00.006-05:00

More Fear tactics and fulfillment of Biden's prophecy?
A set up for Obama to save the day?

"Informed sources in Washington tell Newsmax that Israel indeed will launch a strike against Iran's nuclear facilities soon, possibly in just days as President George W. Bush prepares to leave office. "

http://www.newsmax.com/he...

When Corporations Rule the World

2009-01-13T01:24:00.005-05:00

Hey everyone,

Here is a book that I believe everyone should read. You can read some excerpts here: http://books.google.com/b...

Jews that are Zionists are the Minority

2009-01-13T01:24:00.004-05:00

An interesting article for those unaware.

The Longand Largely UntoldHistory Of Jewish Opposition to Zionism

http://www.wrmea.org/arch...

The New Way to Give: Venture-Cap Charity

2009-01-10T22:06:00.002-05:00

The digital age is changing philanthropy, as smaller donors use the web to pick and choose — and evaluate and criticize — the charities that matter to them.

This is shaking up the status quo for charities of all sizes, raising concerns that people might think that they’ve done enough by just clicking their mouse. But supporters say the new approaches are letting individuals to take more control of their philanthropy.

For a look at the new giving, SmartMoney focused on three individuals on the vanguard of philanthropy. Below, we tell about an approach that borrows from the world of venture capital. (For an overview and a look at how one man started up his own web-based charity to fight hunger, read part one of “The New Way to Give”; for an examination of how charities can tap virtual worlds, read part three. )

The Entrepreneurial Donor: Venture-Cap Charity

Shortly after turning 50, Sister Eileen McNerney coaxed three other nuns to move into a gang-ridden neighborhood in Orange County, Calif. The California native had read stories about rising drug use and gang violence not far from her home and felt an urgency to understand the root of it all. But the move to Santa Ana was a major adjustment and often meant rolling out of bed onto the floor to seek shelter from the sound of gunfire, McNerney says.

After listening to the wails of a woman mourning the second gang-related death of a son, McNerney snapped into action. “You couldn’t live here and just be an observer,” she says. In 1995, she started Taller San Jose to provide focused job training and placement for at-risk youth — many with rap sheets and pasts as gang members — in areas like construction. The nonprofit has helped about 4,000 young adults, with 72% attending college or landing a job paying more than minimum wage after completing the program, and 92% of the kids who had already spent time in prison stayed out of jail. There are now waiting lists for the program.

Much of the funding and support for groups like Taller San Jose comes from local donors. But thanks to its recent win in an online competition, McNerney expects to develop a much broader base. The competition, called Changemakers, is run by a nonprofit called Ashoka, which supports “social entrepreneurs” who apply business-like discipline to doing good.

The goal of Changemakers is to shake up the exclusivity and black-box nature of traditional philanthropy by pairing the monolithic philanthropic organizations with the scrappy upstarts that can use their help — and their funding. Past competitons have helped a former child soldier in Mozambique who heads a charity that exchanges guns for tractors and sewing machines get an audience with the Rockefeller Foundation and Nike executives.

“In many ways, we’re a matchmaking service,” says Changemakers executive director Charlie Brown. For some entrants, Changemakers has opened the door to foundations they have been trying to meet for years. Ashoka awards each winner with $5,000, and typically a corporate sponsor or foundation puts up as much as $5 million for proposals from all the entrants, not just winners. Each entrant also benefits from the feedback it and its rivals get, creating higher quality and more effective projects in the end, says Maria Blair, associate vice president at Rockefeller Foundation, which funds the program.

Competitions in philanthropy are nothing new, of course: Charles Lindbergh’s trans-Atlantic flight was spurred by charity’s challenge for innovative ideas. (It also won him $25,000.) More recently, foundations have offered multimillion dollar prizes for other scientific ideas. The idea is that rather than old-guard, billion-dollar foundations determining which causes or projects they want to fund, the newest endeavors take input from people in the trenches.

Anyone familiar with “American Idol” can be forgiven for questioning the wisdom of allowing the masses to determine the Next Big Thing — even if that is a charitable cause. But Jane Lowe, program officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, says online competitions generate more varied and unusual ideas. “We tend to get a lot of grant requests for more ‘mainstream’ and less grass roots projects,” Lowe says. “We miss really good ideas.”

Read part one, “The New Way to Give: Be Your Own Charity”
Read part three, “The New Way to Give: Virtual Charity”

[Source: SmartMoney.com - Consumer Action

Israel and Gaza: Now the ground war

2009-01-07T21:45:00.002-05:00

Fighting continues within the Gaza Strip, as Israeli soldiers push into the territory

ISRAELI forces pushed deeper into the Gaza Strip on Monday January 5th, the second full day of their ground assault. Israeli troops have encircled Gaza City and are gingerly moving against Hamas fighters who are entrenched in built-up areas. For Israel so far the price has been relatively low—one soldier has been killed and over 50 injured. Israel claims that dozens of Hamas men have died in firefights while others have been captured and taken to Israel for interrogation.

On the other side the death toll is far higher. Palestinian and UN sources count more than 530 Palestinian dead since the Israeli aerial bombardment began ten days ago. Civilians make up at least a quarter of the dead. These casualties include the wives and children of two senior Hamas commanders targeted by Israeli airstrikes at the weekend and a family of seven killed, according to Palestinian reports, by an Israeli naval shell on Monday. ...

Ron Paul: Failure of dollar will dwarf current crisis

2009-01-07T21:44:00.002-05:00

President-elect Barack Obama has started warning that getting the country out of its current economic hole may mean trillion-dollar deficits for years to come — but Rep. Ron Paul has very different ideas.“I think it’s just more of the same,” the former presidential candidate told CNN’s John Roberts on Wednesday. “I don’t think it’ll solve [...]

Read More...

[Source: vote tags: Tracking the Vote

MOCKINGBIRD: The Subversion Of The Free Press By The CIA

2009-01-03T01:08:00.004-05:00

The Subversion Of The Free Press By The CIA
"You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl, for a couple hundred dollars a month." - CIA operative discussing with Philip Graham, editor Washington Post, on the availability and prices of journalists willing to peddle CIA propaganda and cover stories. "Katherine The Great," by Deborah Davis (New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1991)
As terrible as it is to live in a nation where the press in known to be controlled by the government, at least one has the advantage of knowing the bias is present, and to adjust for it. In the United States of America, we are taught from birth that our press is free from such government meddling. This is an insideous lie about the very nature of the news institution in this country. One that allows the government to lie to us while denying the very fact of the lie itself.

The Alex Constantine Article

Tales from the Crypt

The Depraved Spies and Moguls

of the CIA's Operation MOCKINGBIRD

by Alex Constantine

Who Controls the Media?

Soulless corporations do, of course. Corporations with grinning,
double-breasted executives, interlocking directorates, labor squabbles
and flying capital. Dow. General Electric. Coca-Cola. Disney.
Newspapers should have mastheads that mirror the world: The
Westinghouse Evening Scimitar, The Atlantic-Richfield Intelligentser .
It is beginning to dawn on a growing number of armchair ombudsmen that
the public print reports news from a parallel universe - one that has
never heard of politically-motivated assassinations, CIA-Mafia banking
thefts, mind control, death squads or even federal agencies with
secret budgets fattened by cocaine sales - a place overrun by lone
gunmen, where the CIA and Mafia are usually on their best behavior. In
this idyllic land, the most serious infraction an official can commit
__is a the employment of a domestic servant with (shudder) no
residency status.

This unlikely land of enchantment is the creation of MOCKINGBIRD.

It was conceived in the late 1940s, the most frigid period of the cold
war, when the CIA began a systematic infiltration of the corporate
media, a process that often included direct takeover of major news
outlets.

In this period, the American intelligence services competed with
communist activists abroad to influence European labor unions. With or
without the cooperation of local governments, Frank Wisner, an
undercover State Department official assigned to the Foreign Service,
rounded up students abroad to enter the cold war underground of covert
operations on behalf of his Office of Policy Coordination. Philip
Graham, __a graduate of the Army Intelligence School in Harrisburg,
PA, then publisher of the Washington Post., was taken under Wisner's
wing to direct the program code-named Operation MOCKINGBIRD.

"By the early 1950s," writes formerVillage Voice reporter Deborah
Davis in Katharine the Great, "Wisner 'owned' respected members of the
New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and other communications vehicles, plus
stringers, four to six hundred in all, according to a former CIA
analyst." The network was overseen by Allen Dulles, a templar for
German and American corporations who wanted their points of view
represented in the public print. Early MOCKINGBIRD influenced 25
newspapers and wire agencies consenting to act as organs of CIA
propaganda. Many of these were already run by men with reactionary
views, among them William Paley (CBS), C.D. Jackson (Fortune), Henry
Luce (Time) and Arthur Hays Sulzberger (N.Y. Times).

Activists curious about the workings of MOCKINGBIRD have since been
appalled to f__ind in FOIA documents that agents boasting in CIA
office memos of their pride in having placed "important assets" inside
every major news publication in the country. It was not until 1982
that the Agency openly admitted that reporters on the CIA payroll have
acted as case officers to agents in the field.

"World War III has begun," Henry's Luce's Life declared in March,
1947. "It is in the opening skirmish stage already." The issue
featured an excerpt of a book by James Burnham, who called for the
creation of an "American Empire," "world-dominating in political
power, set up at least in part through coercion (probably including
war, but certainly the threat of war) and in which one group of people
... would hold more than its equal share of power."

George Seldes, the famed anti-fascist media critic, drew down on Luce
in 1947, explaining tha__t "although avoiding typical Hitlerian
phrases, the same doctrine of a superior people taking over the world
and ruling it, began to appear in the press, whereas the organs of
Wall Street were much more honest in favoring a doctrine inevitably
leading to war if it brought greater commercial markets under the
American flag."

On the domestic front, an abiding relationship was struck between the
CIA and William Paley, a wartime colonel and the founder of CBS. A
firm believer in "all forms of propaganda" to foster loyalty to the
Pentagon, Paley hired CIA agents to work undercover at the behest of
his close friend, the busy grey eminence of the nation's media, Allen
Dulles. Paley's designated go-between in his dealings with the CIA was
Sig Mickelson, president of CBS News from 1954 to 1961.

The CIA's assimilation of old guard fascists was overseen by the
Operations Coordination Board, directed by C.D. Jackson, formerly an
executive of Time magazine and Eisenhower's Special Assistant for Cold
War Strategy. In 1954 he was succeeded by Nelson Rockefeller, who quit
a year later, disgusted at the administration's political infighting.
Vice President Nixon succeeded Rockefeller as the key cold war
strategist.

"Nixon," writes John Loftus, a former attorney for the Justice
Department's Office of Special Investigations, took "a small boy's
delight in the arcane tools of the intelligence craft - the hidden
microphones, the 'black' propaganda." Nixon especially enjoyed his
visit to a Virginia training camp to observe Nazis in the "special
forces" drilling at covert operations.

One of the fugitives recruited by the American intelligence
underground was heroin smuggler Hubert von Blücher, the son of A
German ambassador. Hubert often bragged that that he was trained by
the Abwehr, the German military intelligence division, while still a
civilian in his twenties. He served in a recon unit of the German Army
until forced out for medical reasons in 1944, according to his wartime
records. He worked briefly as an assistant director for Berlin-Film on
a movie entitled One Day ..., and finished out the war flying with the
Luftwaffe, but not to engage the enemy - his mission was the smuggling
of Nazi loot out of the country. His exploits were, in part, the
subject of Sayer and Botting's Nazi Gold, an account of the knockover
of the Reichsbank at the end of the war.

In 1948 he flew the coop to Argentina. Posing as a photographer named
Huberto von Bleucher Corell, he immediately paid court to Eva Peron,
presenting her with an invaluable Gobelin tapestry (a selection from
the wealth of artifacts confiscated by the SS from Europe's Jews?).
Hubert then met with Martin Bormann at the Hotel Plaza to deliver
German marks worth $80 million. The loot financed the birth of the
National Socialist Party in Argentina, among other forms of Nazi
revival.

In 1951, Hubert migrated northward and took a job at the Color
Corporation of America in Hollywood. He eked out a living writing
scripts for the booming movie industry. His voice can be heard on a
film set in the Amazon, produced by Walt Disney. Nine years later he
returned to Buenos Aires, then Düsseldorf, West Germany, and
established a firm that developed not movie scripts, but anti-chemical
warfare agents for the government. At the Industrie Club in Düsseldorf
in 1982, von Blücher boasted to journalists, "I am chief shareholder
of Pan American Airways. I am the best friend of Howard Hughes. The
Beach Hotel in Las Vegas is 45 percent financed by me. I am thus the
biggest financier ever to appear in the Arabian Nights tales dreamed
up by these people over their second bottle of brandy."

Not really. Two the biggest financiers to stumble from the drunken
dreams of world-moving affluence were, in their time, Moses Annenberg,
publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer, and his son Walter , the
CIA/mob-anchored publisher of the TV Guide. Like most American
high-rollers, Annenberg lived a double life. Moses, his father, was a
scion of the Capone mob. Both Moses and Walter were indicted in 1939
for tax evasions totalling many millions of dollars - the biggest case
in the history of the Justice Department. Moses pled guilty and agreed
to pay the government $8 million and settle $9 million in assorted tax
claims, penalties and interest debts. Moses received a three-year
sentence. He died in Lewisburg Penitentiary.

Walter Annenbeg, the TV Guide magnate, was a lofty Republican. On the
campaign trail in April, 1988, George Bush flew into Los Angeles to
woo Reagan's kitchen cabinet. "This is the topping on the cake,"
Bush's regional campaign director told the Los Angeles Times. The Bush
team met at Annenberg's plush Rancho Mirage estate at Sunnylands,
California. It was at the Annenberg mansion that Nixon's cabinet was
chosen, and the state's social and contributor registers built over a
quarter-century of state political dominance by Ronald Reagan, whose
acting career was launched by Operation MOCKINGBIRD.

The commercialization of television, coinciding with Reagan's
recruitment by the Crusade for Freedom, a CIA front, presented the
intelligence world with unprecedented potential for sowing propaganda
and even prying in the age of Big Brother. George Orwell glimpsed the
possibilities when he installed omniscient video surveillance
technology in 1948, a novel rechristened 1984 for the first edition
published in the U.S. by Harcourt, Brace. Operation Octopus, according
to federal files, was in full swing by 1948, a surveillance program
that turned any television set with tubes into a broadcast
transmitter. Agents of Octopus could pick up audio and visual images
with the equipment as far as 25 miles away.

Hale Boggs was investigating Operation Octopus at the time of his
disappearance in the midst of the Watergate probe.

In 1952, at MCA, Actors' Guild president Ronald Reagan - a screen idol
recruited by MOCKINGBIRD's Crusade for Freedom to raise funds for the
resettlement of Nazis in the U.S., according to Loftus - signed a
secret waiver of the conflict-of-interest rule with the mob-controlled
studio, in effect granting it a labor monopoly on early television
programming. In exchange, MCA made Reagan a part owner. Furthermore,
historian C. Vann Woodward, writing in the New York Times, in 1987,
reported that Reagan had "fed the names of suspect people in his
organization to the FBI secretly and regularly enough to be assigned
'an informer's code number, T-10.' His FBI file indicates intense
collaboration with producers to 'purge' the industry of subversives."

No one ever turned a suspicious eye on Walter Cronkite, a former
intelligence officer and in the immediate postwar period UPI's Moscow
correspondent. Cronkite was lured to CBS by Operation MOCKINGBIRD's
Phil Graham, according to Deborah Davis.

Another television conglomerate, Cap Cities, rose like a horror-film
simian from CIA and Mafia heroin operations. Among other
organized-crime Republicans, Thomas Dewey and his neighbor Lowell
Thomas threw in to launch the infamous Resorts International, the
corporate front for Lansky's branch of the federally-sponsored mob
family and the corporate precursor to Cap Cities. Another of the
investors was James Crosby, a Cap Cities executive who donated
$100,000 to Nixon's 1968 presidential campaign. This was the year that
Resorts bought into Atlantic City casino interests. Police in New
jersey attempted, with no success, to spike the issuance of a gambling
license to the company, citing Mafia ties.

In 1954, this same circle of investors, all Catholics, founded the
broadcasting company notorious for overt propagandizing and general
spookiness. The company's chief counsel was OSS veteran William Casey,
who clung to his shares by concealing them in a blind trust even after
he was appointed CIA director by Ronald Reagan in 1981.

"Black radio" was the phrase CIA critic David Wise coined in The
Invisible Government to describe the agency's intertwining interests
in the emergence of the transistor radio with the entrepreneurs who
took to the airwaves. "Daily, East and West beam hundreds of
propaganda broadcasts at each other in an unrelenting babble of
competition for the minds of their listeners. The low-price transistor
has given the hidden war a new importance," enthused one foreign
correspondent.

A Hydra of private foundations sprang up to finance the propaganda
push. One of them, Operations and Policy Research, Inc. (OPR),
received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the CIA through private
foundations and trusts. OPR research was the basis of a television
series that aired in New York and Washington, D.C. in 1964, Of People
and Politics, a "study" of the American political system in 21 weekly
installments.

In Hollywood, the visual cortex of The Beast, the same CIA/Mafia
combination that formed Cap Cities sank its claws into the film
studios and labor unions. Johnny Rosselli was pulled out of the Army
during the war by a criminal investigation of Chicago mobsters in the
film industry. Rosselli, a CIA asset probably assassinated by the CIA,
played sidekick to Harry Cohn, the Columbia Pictures mogul who visited
Italy's Benito Mussolini in 1933, and upon his return to Hollywood
remodeled his office after the dictator's. The only honest job
Rosselli ever had was assistant purchasing agent (and a secret
investor) at Eagle Lion productions, run by Bryan Foy, a former
producer for 20th Century Fox. Rosselli, Capone's representative on
the West Coast, passed a small fortune in mafia investments to Cohn.
Bugsy Seigel pooled gambling investments with Billy Wilkerson,
publisher of the Hollywood Reporter.

In the 1950s, outlays for global propaganda climbed to a full third of
the CIA's covert operations budget. Some 3, 000 salaried and contract
CIA employees were eventually engaged in propaganda efforts. The cost
of disinforming the world cost American taxpayers an estimated $265
million a year by 1978, a budget larger than the combined expenditures
of Reuters, UPI and the AP news syndicates.

In 1977, the Copely News Service admitted that it worked closely with
the intelligence services - in fact, 23 employees were full-time
employees of the Agency.

Most consumers of the corporate media were - and are - unaware of the
effect that the salting of public opinion has on their own beliefs. A
network anchorman in time of national crisis is an instrument of
psychological warfare in the MOCKINGBIRD media. He is a creature from
the national security sector's chamber of horrors. For this reason
consumers of the corporate press have reason to examine their basic
beliefs about government and life in the parallel universe of these
United States.

How the Washington Post Censors the News
[Note the highlighted paragraph]

How the Washington Post Censors the News

A Letter to the Washington Post
by Julian C. Holmes
_________________________________________________________________

April 25, 1992
Richard Harwood, Ombudsman
The Washington Post
1150 15th Street NW
Washington, DC 20071

Dear Mr. Harwood,

Though the Washington Post does not over-extend itself in the pursuit
of hard news, just let drop the faintest rumor of a government
"conspiracy", and a klaxon horn goes off in the news room. Aroused
from apathy in the daily routine of reporting assignations and various
other political and social sports events, editors and reporters
scramble to the phones. The klaxon screams its warning: the greatest
single threat to herd-journalism, corporate profits, and government
stability -- the dreaded "CONSPIRACY THEORY"!!

It is not known whether anyone has actually been hassled or accosted
by any of these frightful spectres, but their presence is announced to
Post readers with a salvo of warnings to avoid the tricky, sticky webs
spun by the wacko "CONSPIRACY THEORISTS".

Recall how the Post saved us from the truth about Iran-Contra.

Professional conspiracy exorcist Mark Hosenball was hired to ridicule
the idea that Oliver North and his CIA-associated gangsters had
conspired to do wrong (*1). And when, in their syndicated column, Jack
Anderson and Dale Van Atta discussed some of the conspirators, the
Post sprang to protect its readers, and the conspirators, by censoring
the Anderson column before printing it (*2).

But for some time the lid had been coming off the Iran-Contra
conspiracy. In 1986, the Christic Institute, an interfaith center for
law and public policy, had filed a lawsuit alleging a U.S.
arms-for-drugs trade that helped keep weapons flowing to the
CIA-Contra army in Nicaragua, and cocaine flowing to U.S. markets
(*3). In 1988 Leslie Cockburn published Out of Control, a seminal work
on our bizarre, illegal war against Nicaragua (*4). The Post
contributed to this discovery process by disparaging the charges of
conspiracy and by publishing false information about the
drug-smuggling evidence presented to the House Subcommittee on
Narcotics Abuse and Control. When accused by Committee Chairman
Charles Rangel (D-NY). of misleading reporting, the Post printed only
a partial correction and declined to print a letter of complaint from
Rangel (*5).

Sworn testimony before Senator John Kerry's Subcommittee on Terrorism,
Narcotics, and International Operations confirmed U.S. Government
complicity in the drug trade (*6). With its coverup of the arms/drug
conspiracy evaporating, the ever-accommodating Post shifted gears and
retained Hosenball to exorcise from our minds a newly emerging threat
to domestic tranquility, the "October Surprise" conspiracy (*7). But
close on the heels of Hosenball and the Post came Barbara Honegger and
then Gary Sick who authored independently, two years apart, books with
the same title, "October Surprise" (*8). Honegger was a member of the
Reagan/Bush campaign and transition teams in 1980. Gary Sick,
professor of Middle East Politics at Columbia University, was on the
staff of the National Security Council under Presidents Ford, Carter,
and Reagan. In 1989 and 1991 respectively, Honegger and Sick published
their evidence of how the Republicans made a deal to supply arms to
Iran if Iran would delay release of the 52 United States hostages
until after the November 1980 election. The purpose of this deal was
to quash the possibility of a pre-election release(an October
surprise). which would have bolstered the reelection prospects for
President Carter.

Others published details of this alleged Reagan-Bush conspiracy. In
October 1988, Playboy Magazine ran an expose "An Election Held
Hostage"; FRONTLINE did another in April 1991 (*9). In June, 1991 a
conference of distinguished journalists, joined by 8 of the former
hostages, challenged the Congress to "make a full, impartial
investigation" of the election/hostage allegations. The Post reported
the statement of the hostages, but not a word of the conference itself
which was held in the Dirksen Senate Office Building Auditorium (*10).
On February 5, 1992 a gun-shy, uninspired House of Representatives
begrudgingly authorized an "October Surprise" investigation by a task
force of 13 congressmen headed by Lee Hamilton (D-IN). who had chaired
the House of Representatives Iran-Contra Committee. Hamilton has named
as chief team counsel Larry Barcella, a lawyer who represented BCCI
when the Bank was indicted in 1988 (*11).

Like the Washington Post, Hamilton had not shown interest in pursuing
the U.S. arms-for-drugs operation (*12). He had accepted Oliver
North's lies,and as Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee he
derailed House Resolution 485 which had asked President Reagan to
answer questions about Contra support activities of government
officials and others (*13). After CIA operative John

Hull (from Hamilton's home state). was charged in Costa Rica with
"international drug trafficking and hostile acts against the nation's
security", Hamilton and 18 fellow members of Congress tried to
intimidate Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Sanchez into handling
Hull's case "in a manner that will not complicate U.S.-Costa Rican
relations" (*14). The Post did not report the Hamilton letter or the
Costa Rican response that declared Hull's case to be "in as good hands
as our 100 year old uninterrupted democracy can provide to all
citizens" (*15).

Though the Post does its best to guide our thinking away from conspiracy
theories, it is difficult to avoid the fact that so much wrongdoing involves
government or corporate conspiracies:

In its COINTELPRO operation, the FBI used disinformation, forgery,
surveillance, false arrests, and violence to illegally harass
U.S.citizens in the 60's (*16).

The CIA's Operation MONGOOSE illegally sabotaged Cuba by "destroying
crops, brutalizing citizens, destabilizing the society, and
conspiring with the Mafia to assassinate Fidel Castro and other
leaders" (*17).

"Standard Oil of New Jersey was found by the Antitrust Division of
the Department of Justice to be conspiring with I.G.Farben...of
Germany. ...By its cartel agreements with Standard Oil, the
United States was effectively prevented from developing or
producing [fo rWorld War-II] any substantial amount of
synthetic rubber," said Senator Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin
(*18).

U.S. Government agencies knowingly withheld information about
dosages of radiation "almost certain to produce thyroid
abnormalities or cancer" that contaminated people residing near
the nuclear weapons factory at Hanford, Washington (*19).

Various branches of Government deliberately drag their feet in
getting around to cleaning up the Nation's dangerous nuclear
weapons sites (*20). State and local governments back the
nuclear industry's secret public relations strategy (*21).

"The National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society and some
twenty comprehensive cancer centers, have misled and confused
the public and Congress by repeated claims that we are winning
the war against cancer. In fact, the cancer establishment has
continually minimized the evidence for increasing cancer rates
which it has largely attributed to smoking and dietary fat,
while discounting or ignoring the causal role of avoidable
eposures to industrial carcinogens in the air, food, water, and
the workplace." (*22).

The Bush Administration coverup of its pre-Gulf-War support of Iraq
"is yet another example of the President's people conspiring to
keep both Congress and the American people in the dark" (*23).

If you think about it, conspiracy is a fundamental aspect of
doing business in this country.

Take the systematic and cooperative censorship of the Persian Gulf
War by the Pentagon and much of the news media (*24).

Or the widespread plans of business and government groups to spend
$100 million in taxes to promote a distorted and truncated
history of Columbus in America (*25). along the lines of the
Smithsonian Institution's "fusion of the two worlds", (*26).
rather than examining more realistic aspects of the Spanish
invasion, like "anger, cruelty, gold, terror, and death" (*27).

Or circumstances surrounding the U.S. Justice Department theft from
the INSLAW company of sophisticated, law-enforcement computer
software which "now point to a widespread conspiracy
implicating lesser Government officials in the theft of
INSLAW's technology", says former U.S. Attorney General Elliot
Richardson (*28).

Or Watergate.

Or the "largest bank fraud in world financial history" (*29), where
the White House knew of the criminal activities at "the Bank of
Crooks and Criminals International" (BCCI) (*30), where U.S.
intelligence agencies did their secret banking (*31), and where
bribery of prominent American public officials "was a way of
doing business" (*32).

Or the 1949 conviction of "GM [General Motors], Standard Oil of
California, Firestone, and E. Roy Fitzgerald, among others, for
criminally conspiring to replace electric transportation with
gas- and diesel-powered buses and to monopolize the sale of
buses and related products to transportation companies
throughout the country" [in, among others, the cities of New
York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, St. Louis, Oakland, Salt Lake
City, and Los Angeles] (*33).

Or the collusion in 1973 between Senator Abraham Ribicoff (D-CT).
and the U.S. Department of Transportation to overlook safety
defects in the 1.2 million Corvair automobiles manufactured by
General Motors in the early 60's (*34).

Or the A. H. Robins Company, which manufactured the Dalkon Shield
intrauterine contraceptive, and which ignored repeated warnings
of the Shield's hazards and which "stonewalled, deceived,
covered up, and

covered up the coverups...[thus inflicting] on women a
worldwide epidemic of pelvic infections." (*35).

Or that cooperation between McDonnell Douglas Aircraft Company and
the FAA resulted in failure to enforce regulations regarding
the unsafe DC-10 cargo door which failed in flight killing all
364 passengers on Turkish Airlines Flight 981 on March 3, 1974
(*36).

Or the now-banned, cancer-producing pregnancy drug
Diethylstilbestrol (DES). that was sold by manufacturers who
ignored tests which showed DES to be carcinogenic; and who
acted "in concert with each other in the testing and marketing
of DES for miscarriage purposes" (*37).

Or the conspiracies among bankers and speculators, with the
cooperation of a corrupted Congress, to relieve depositors of
their savings. This "arrogant disregard from the White House,
Congress and corporate world for the interests and rights of
the American people" will cost U.S. tapayers many hundreds of
billions of dollars (*38).

Or the Westinghouse, Allis Chalmers,Federal Pacific, and General
Electric executives who met surreptitiously in hotel rooms to
fix prices and eliminate competition on heavy industrial
equipment (*39).

Or the convictions of Industrial Biotest Laboratories (IBT).
officers for fabricating safety tests on prescription drugs
(*40).

Or the conspiracy by the asbestos industry to suppress knowledge of
medical problemsrelating to asbestos (*41).

Or the 1928 Achnacarry Agreement through which oil companies "agreed
not to engage in any effective price competition" (*42).

Or the conspiracy among U.S. Government agencies and the Congress to
cover up the nature of our decades-old war against the people
of Nicaragua

a covert war that continues in 1992 with the U.S. Government
applying pressure for the Nicaraguan police to reorganize into
a more repressive force (*43).

Or the conspiracy by the CIA and the U.S. Government to interfere in
the Chilean election process with military aid, covert actions,
and an economic boycott which culminated in the overthrow of
the legitimately elected government and the assassination of
President Salvador Allende in 1973 (*44).

Or the conspiracy among U.S. officials including Secretary of State
Henry Kissinger and CIA Director William Colby to finance
terrorism in Angola for the purpose of disrupting Angola's
plans for peaceful elections in October 1975, and to lie about
these actions to the Congress and the news media (*45). And CIA
Director George Bush's subsequent cover up of this
U.S.-sponsored terrorism (*46).

Or President George Bush's consorting with the Pentagon to invade
Panama in 1989 and thereby violate the Constitution of the
United States, the U.N. Charter, the O.A.S. Charter, and the
Panama Canal Treaties (*47).

Or the "gross antitrust violations" (*48) and the conspiracy of
American oil companies and the British and U.S. governments to
strangle Iran economically after Iran nationalized the
British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1951. And the
subsequent overthrow by the CIA in 1953 of Iranian Prime
Minister Muhammed Mossadegh (*49).

Or the CIA-planned assassination of Congo head-of-state Patrice
Lumumba (*50).

Or the deliberate and wilful efforts of President George Bush,
Senator Robert Dole, Senator George Mitchell, various U.S.
Government agencies, and members of both Houses of the Congress
to buy the 1990 Nicaraguan national elections for the
presidential candidate supported by President Bush (*51).

Or the collective approval by 64 U.S. Senators of Robert Gates to
head the CIA, in the face of "unmistakable evidence that Gates
lied about his role in the Iran-Contra scandal" (*52).

Or "How Reagan and the Pope Conspired to Assist Poland's Solidarity
Movement and Hasten the Demise of Communism" (*53).

Or how the Reagan Administration connived with the Vatican to ban
the use of USAID funds by any country "for the promotion of
birth control or abortion" (*54).

Or "the way the Vatican and Washington colluded to achieve common
purpose in Central America" (*55).

Or the collaboration of Guatemalan strong-man and mass murderer
Hector Gramajo with the U.S. Army to design "programs to build
civilian-military cooperation" at the U.S. Army School of the
Americas (SOA) at Fort Benning, Georgia; five of the nine
soldiers accused in the 1989 Jesuit massacre in El Salvador are
graduates of SOA which trains Latin/American military personnel
(*56).

Or the conspiracy of the Comanche Peak Nuclear Plant administration
to harass and cause bodily harm to whistleblower Linda Porter
who uncovered dangerous working conditions at the facility
(*57).

Or the conspiracy of President Richard Nxion and the Government of
South Vietnam to delay the Paris Peace Talks until after the
1968 U.S. presidential election (*58).

Or the pandemic coverups of police violence (*59).

Or the always safe-to-cite worldwide communist conspiracy (*60).

Or maybe the socially responsible, secret consortium to publish The
Satanic Verses in paperback (*61).

Conspiracies are obviously a way to get things done, and the Washington Post
offers little comment unless conspiracy theorizing threatens to expose a
really important conspiracy that, let's say, benefits big business or big
government.

Such a conspiracy would be like our benevolent CIA's 1953 overthrow of
the Iranian government to help out U.S. oil companies; or like our
illegal war against Panama to tighten U.S. control over Panama and the
Canal; or like monopoly control of broadcasting that facilitates
corporate censorship on issues of public importance (*62). When the
camouflage of such conspiracies is stripped away, public confidence in
the conspiring officials can erode -- depending on how seriously the
citizenry perceives the conspiracy to have violated the public trust.
Erosion of public trust in the status quo is what the Post seems to
see as a real threat to its corporate security.

Currently, the Post has mounted vituperative, frenzied attacks on
Oliver Stone's movie "JFK", which reexamines the U.S. Government's
official (Warren Commission. finding that a single gunman, acting
alone, killed President John F. Kennedy. The movie also is the story
of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison's unsuccessful
prosecution of Clay Shaw, the only person ever tried in connection
with the assassination. And the movie proposes that the Kennedy
assassination was the work of conspirators whose interests would not
be served by a president who, had he lived, might have disengaged us
from our war against Vietnam.

The Post ridicules a reexamination of the Kennedy assassination along
lines suggested by "JFK". Senior Post journalists like Charles
Krauthammer, Ken Ringle, George Will, Phil McCombs, and Michael
Isikoff, have been called up to man the bulwarks against public
sentiment which has never supported the government's
non-conspiratorial assassination thesis. In spite of the facts that
the Senate Intelligence Committee of 1975 and 1976 found that "both
the FBI and CIA had repeatedly lied to the Warren Commission" (*63)
and that the 1979 Report of the House Select Committee on
Assassinations found that President Kennedy was probably killed "as a
result of a conspiracy" (*64), a truly astounding number of Post
stories have been used as vehicles to discredit "JFK" as just another
conspiracy (*65).

Some of the more vicious attacks on the movie are by editor Stephen
Rosenfeld, and journalists Richard Cohen, George Will, and George
Lardner Jr (*66). They ridicule the idea that Kennedy could have had
second thoughts about escalating the Vietnam War and declaim that
there is no historical justification for this idea. Seasoned
journalist Peter Dale Scott, former Pentagon/CIA liaison chief L.
Fletcher Prouty, and investigators David Scheim and John Newman have
each authored defense of the "JFK" thesis that Kennedy was not
enthusiastic about staying in Vietnam (*67). But the Post team just
continues ranting against the possibility of a high-level
assassination conspiracy while offering little justification for its
arguments.

An example of particularly shabby scholarship and unacceptable
behavior is George Lardner Jr's contribution to the Post's campaign
against the movie. Lardner wrote three articles, two before the movie
was completed, and the third upon its release. In May, six months
before the movie came out, Lardner obtained a copy of the first draft
of the script and, contrary to accepted standards, revealed in the
Post the contents of this copyrighted movie (*68). Also in this
article, (*69). Lardner discredits Jim Garrison with hostile
statements from a former Garrison associate Pershing Gervais. Lardner
does not tell the reader that subsequent to the Clay Shaw trial, in a
U.S. Government criminal action brought against Garrison, Government
witness Gervais, who helped set up Garrison for prosecution, admitted
under oath that in a May 1972 interview with a New Orleans television
reporter, he, Gervais, had said that the U.S. Government's case
against Garrison was a fraud (*70). The Post's 1973 account of the
Garrison acquittal mentions this controversy, but when I recently
asked Lardner about this, he was not clear as to whether he remembered
it (*71).

Two weeks after his first "JFK" article, Lardner blustered his way
through a justification for his unauthorized possession of the early
draft ofthe movie (*72). He also defended his reference to Pershing
Gervais by lashing out at Garrison as a writer "of gothic fiction".

When the movie was released in December, Lardner "reviewed" it (*73).
He again ridiculed the film's thesis that following the Kennedy
assassination, President Johnson reversed Kennedy's plans to
de-escalate the Vietnam War. Lardner cited a memorandum issued by
Johnson four days after Kennedy died. Lardner says this memorandum was
written before the assassination, and that it "was a continuation of
Kennedy's policy". In fact, the memorandum was drafted the day before
the assassination by McGeorge Bundy (Kennedy's Assistant for National
Security Affairs) Kennedy was in Texas, and may never have seen it.
Following the assassination, it was rewritten; and the final version
provided for escalating the war against Vietnam (*74) -- facts that
Lardner avoided.

The Post's crusade against exposing conspiracies is blatantly dishonest:

The Warren Commission inquiry into the Kennedy Assassination was for
the most part conducted in secret. This fact is buried in the Post
(*75). Nor do current readers of this newspaper find meaningful
discussion of the Warren Commission's secret doubts about both the FBI
and the CIA (*76). Or of a dispatch from CIA headquarters instructing
co-conspirators at field stations to counteract the "new wave of books
and articles criticizing the [Warren] Commission's findings...[and]
conspiracy theories ...[that] have frequently thrown suspicion on our
organization" and to "discuss the publicity problem with liaison and
friendly elite contacts, especially politicians and editors "and to
"employ propaganda assets to answer and refute the attacks of the
critics. ...Book reviews and feature articles are particularly
appropriate for this purpose. ...The aim of this dispatch is to
provide material for countering and discrediting the claims of the
conspiracy theorists..." (*77).

In 1979, Washington journalist Deborah Davis published Katharine The Great,
the story of Post publisher Katharine Graham and her newspaper's close ties
with Washington's powerful elite, a number of whom were with the CIA.

Particularly irksome to Post editor Benjamin Bradlee was a Davis claim
that Bradlee had "produced CIA material" (*78). Understandably
sensitive about this kind of publicity, Bradlee told Davis' publisher
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich ,"Miss Davis is lying ...I never produced
CIA material ...what I can do is to brand Miss Davis as a fool and to
put your company in that special little group of publishers who don't
give a shit for the truth". The Post bullied HBJ into recalling the
book; HBJ shredded 20,000 copies; Davis sued HBJ for breach of
contract and damage to reputation; HBJ settled out of court; and Davis
published her book elsewhere with an appendix that demonstrated
Bradlee to have been deeply involved with producing cold-war/CIA
propaganda (*79). Bradlee still says the allegations about his
association with people in the CIA are false, but he has apparently
taken no action to contest the xetensive documentation presented by
Deborah Davis in the second and third editions of her book (*80).

And it's not as if the Post were new to conspiracy work.

Former Washington Post publisher Philip Graham "believing that the function of the press was more often than not to mobilize consent for the policies of the government, was one of the architects of what became a widespread practice: the use and manipulation of journalists by the CIA" (*81). This scandal was known by its code name Operation MOCKINGBIRD. Former Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein cites a former CIA deputy director as saying, "It was widely known that Phil Graham was someone you could get help from" (*82). More recently the Post provided cover for CIA personality Joseph Fernandez by "refusing to print his name for over a year up until the day his indictment was announced ...for crimes committed in his official capacity as CIA station chief in Costa Rica" (*83).

Of the meetings between Graham and his CIA acquaintances at which the
availability and prices of journalists were discussed, a former CIA
man recalls, "You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call
girl, for a couple hundred dollars a month" (*84). One may wish to
consider Philip Graham's philosophy along with a more recent statement
from his wife Katharine Graham, current Chairman of the Board of the
Washington Post. In a lecture on terrorism and the news media, Mrs.
Graham said: "A second challenge facing the media is how to prevent
terrorists from using the media as a platform fortheir views. ... The
point is that we generally know when we are being manipulated, and
we've learned better how and where to draw the line, though the
decisions are often difficult" (*85).

Today, the Post and its world of big business are apparently terrified
that our elite and our high-level public officials may be exposed as
conspirators behind Contra drug-smuggling, October Surprise, or the
assassination of President Kennedy. This fear is truly remarkable in
that, like most of us and like most institutions, the Post runs its
business as a conspiracy of like-minded entrepreneurs -- a conspiracy
"to act or work together toward the same result or goal" (*86). But
where the Post really parts company from just plain people is when it
pretends that conspiracies associated with big business or government
are "coincidence". Post reporter Lardner vents the frustration
inherent in having to maintain this dichotomy. He lashes out at Oliver
Stone and suggests that Stone may actually believe that the Post's
opposition to Stone's movie is a "conspiracy". Lardner assures us that
Stone's complaints are "groundless and paranoid and smack of
McCarthyism" (*87).

So how does the Post justify devoting so much energy to ridiculing those who
investigate conspiracies?

The Post has answers: people revert to conspiracy theories because
they need something "neat and tidy" (*88) that "plugs a gap no other
generally accepted theory fills', (*89. and "coincidence ...is always
the safest and most likely explanation for any conjunction of curious
circumstances ..." (*90).

And what does this response mean? It means that "coincidence theory"
is what the Post espouses when it would prefer not to admit to a
conspiracy. In other words, some things just "happen". And, besides,
conspiracy to do certain things would be a crime; "coincidence" is a
safer bet.

Post Ombudsman Richard Harwood, who, it is rumored, serves as
Executive Director of the Benevolent Protective Order of Coincidence
Theorists, (*91) recently issued a warning about presidential
candidates "who have begun to mutter about a press conspiracy".
Ordinarily, Harwood would simply dismiss these charges as "symptoms of
the media paranoia that quadrennially engulfs members of the American
political class" (*92). But a fatal mistake was made by the mutterers;
they used the "C" word against the PRESS! And Harwood exploded his
off-the-cuff comment into an entire column -- ending it with:"We are
the new journalists, immersed too long, perhaps, in the cleansing
waters of political conformity. But conspirators we ain't".

Distinguished investigative journalist Morton Mintz, a 29-year veteran
of the Washington Post, now chairs the Fund for Investigative
Journalism. In the December issue of The Progressive, Mintz wrote "A
Reporter Looks Back in Anger -- Why the Media Cover Up Corporate
Crime". Therein he discussed the difficulties in convincing editors to
accept important news stories. He illustrated the article with his own
experiences at the Post, where he says he was known as "the biggest
pain in the ass in the office" (*93).

Would Harwood argue that grief endured by journalists at the hands of editors
is a matter of random coincidence?

And that such policy as Mintz described is made independently by
editors without influence from fellow editors or from management?
Would Harwood have us believe that at the countless office "meetings"
in which news people are ever in attendance, there is no discussion of
which stories will run and which ones will find inadequate space? That
there is no advanced planning for stories or that there are no
cooperative efforts among the staff? Or that in the face of our
news-media "grayout" of presidential candidate Larry Agran, (*94) a
Post journalist would be free to give news space to candidate Agran
equal to that the Post lavishes on candidate Clinton? Let's face it:
these possibilities are about as likely as Barbara Bush entertaining
guests at a soup kitchen.

Would Harwood have us believe that media critic and former Post
Ombudsman Ben Bagdikian is telling less than the truth in his account
of wire-service control over news: "The largely anonymous men who
control the syndicate and wire service copy desks and the central wire
photo machines determine at a single decision what millions will see
and hear. ...there seems to be little doubt that these gatekeepers
preside over an operation in which an appalling amount of press
agentry sneaks in the back door of American journalism and marches
untouched out the front door as 'news'" (*95).

When he sat on the U.S. District Court of Appeals in Washington, Judge
Clarence Thomas violated U.S. law when he failed to remove himself
from a case in which he then proceeded to reverse a $10 million
judgment against the Ralston Purina Company (*96). Ralston Purina, the
animal feed empire, is the family fortune of Thomas' mentor, Senator
John Danforth. The Post limited its coverage of the Thomas malfeasance
to 56 words buried in the middle of a 1200-word article (*97). Would
Harwood have us believe that the almost complete blackout on this
matter by the major news media and the U.S. Senate was a matter of
coincidence? Could a Post reporter have written a story about Ralston
Purina if she had wanted to? Can a brick swim?

Or take the fine report produced last September by Ralph Nader's
Public Citizen. Titled All the Vice President's Men, it documents "How
the Quayle Council on Competitiveness Secretly Undermines Health,
Safety, and Environmental Programs". Three months later, Post
journalists David Broder and Bob Woodward published "The President's
Understudy", a seven-part series on Vice President Quayle. Although
this series does address Quayle's role with the Competitiveness
Council, its handling of the Council's disastrous impact on America is
inadequate. It is 40,000 words of mostly aimless chatter about Quayle
memorabilia: youth, family, college record, Christianity, political
aspirations, intellectual aspirations, wealthy friends, government
associates, golf, travels, wife Marilyn, and net worth -- revealing
little about Quayle's abilities, his understanding of society's
problems, or his thoughts about justice and freedom, and never
mentioning the comprehensive Nader study of Quayle's record in the
Bush Administration (*98).

Now, did Broder or did Woodward forget about the Nader study? Or did
both of them forget? Or did one, or the other, or both decide not to
mention it? Did these two celebrated, seasoned Post reporters ever
discuss together their jointly authored stories? Did they decide to
publish such a barren set of articles because it would enhance their
reputations? How did management feel about the use of precious news
space for such frivolity? Is it possible that so many pages were
dedicated to this twaddle without people "acting or working together
toward the same result or goal"? (*99) Do crocodiles fly?

On March 20, front-page headlines in the Wall Street Journal, the New
York Times, USA Today, and the Washington Post read respectively:

TSONGAS DROPPED OUT OF THE PRESIDENTIAL RACE CLEARING CLINTON'S PATH

TSONGAS ABANDONS CAMPAIGN LEAVING CLINTON CLEAR PATH TOWARD SHOWDOWN
WITH BUSH

TSONGAS CLEARS WAY FOR CLINTON

TSONGAS EXIT CLEARS WAY FOR CLINTON

This display of editorial independence should at least raise questions
of whether the news media collective mindset is really different from
that of any other cartel -- like oil, diamond, energy, (*100) or
manufacturing cartels, a cartel being "a combination of independent
commercial enterprises designed to limit competition" (*101).

The Washington Post editorial page carries the heading:

AN INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER

Is it? Of course not. There probably is no such thing. Does the Post
"conspire" to keep its staff and its newspaper from wandering too far
from the safety of mediocrity? The Post would respond that the
question is absurd. In that I am not privy to the Post's telephone
conversations, I can only speculate on how closely the media elite
must monitor the staff. But we all know how few micro-seconds it takes
a new reporter to learn what subjects are taboo and what are "safe",
and that experienced reporters don't have to ask.

What is more important, however, than speculating about how the Post
communicates within its own corporate structure and with other members
of the cartel, is to document and publicize what the Post does in
public, namely, how it shapes and censors the news.

Sincerely,

Julian C. Holmes

Copies to: Public-spirited citizens, both inside and outside the news
media, And - maybe a few others.
Notes to Letter of April 25, 1992:

1. Mark Hosenball, "The Ultimate Conspiracy", Washington Post,
September 11, 1988, p.C1

2a. Julian Holmes, Letter to Washington Post Ombudsman Richard
Harwood, June 4,1991. Notes that the Post censored, from the
Anderson/Van Atta column, references to the Christic Institute and to
Robert Gates.

2b. Jack Anderson and Dale Van Atta, "Iran-Contra Figure Dodges
Extradition", Washington Merry-Go-Round, United Feature Syndicate, May
26, 1991. This is the column submitted to the Post (see note 2a)..

2c. Jack Anderson and Dale Van Atta, "The Man Washington Doesn't Want
to Extradite", Washington Post, May 26, 1991. The column (see note
2b). as it appeared in the Post (see note 2a)..

3a. Case No. 86-1146-CIV-KING, Amended Complaint for RICO Conspiracy,
etc., United States District Court, Southern District of Florida, Tony
Avirgan and Martha Honey v. John Hull et al., October 3, 1986.

3b. Vince Bielski and Dennis Bernstein, "Reports: Contras Send Drugs
to U.S.", Cleveland Plain Dealer, November 16, 1986.

3c. Neal Matthews, "I Ran Drugs for Uncle Sam" (based on interviews
with Robert Plumlee, contra resupply pilot)., San Diego Reader, April
5, 1990.

4. Leslie Cockburn, Out of Control. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press,
1987.

5a. Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics,
University ofCalifornia Press, 1991, p.179-181.

5b. David S. Hilzenrath, "Hill Panel Finds No Evidence Linking Contras
to Drug Smuggling", Washington Post, July 22, 1987, p.A07.

5c. Partial correction to the Washington Post of July 22, Washington
Post, July 24,1987, p.A3.

5d. The Washington Post declined to publish SubCommittee Chairman
Rangel's Letter- to-the-Editor of July 22, 1987. It was printed in the
Congressional Record on August 6, 1987, p.E3296-7.

6a. Michael Kranish, "Kerry Says US Turned Blind Eye to Contra-Drug
Trail", Boston Globe, April 10, 1988.

6b. Mary McGrory, "The Contra-Drug Stink", Washington Post, April 10,
1988, p.B1. 6c. Robert Parry with Rod Nordland, "Guns for Drugs?
Senate Probers Trace an Old Contra Connection to George Bush's
Office", Newsweek, May 23, 1988, p.22.

6d. Dennis Bernstein, "Iran-Contra -- The Coverup Continues", The
Progressive, November 1988, p.24.

6e. "Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy", A Report Prepared by
the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations
of the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, December
1988.

7a. Mark Hosenball, "If It's October ... Then It's Time for an Iranian
Conspiracy Theory", Washington Post, October 9, 1988, p.D1.

7b. Mark Hosenball, "October Surprise! Redux! The Latest Version of
the 1980 'Hostage- Deal' Story Is Still Full of Holes", Washington
Post, April 21, 1991,p.B2.

8a. Barbara Honegger, October Surprise, New York: Tudor, 1989.

8b. Gary Sick, October Surprise, New York: Times Books, Random House,
1991.

9a. Abbie Hoffman and Jonathan Silvers, "An Election Held Hostage",
Playboy, October 1988, p.73.

9b. Robert Parry and Robert Ross, "The Election Held Hostage",
FRONTLINE, WGBH-TV,April 16, 1991.

10a. Reuter, "Ex-Hostages Seek Probe By Congress", Washington Post,
June 14,1991,p.A4.

10b. "An Election Held Hostage?", Conference, Dirksen Senate Office
Building Auditorium, Washington DC, June 13, 1991; Sponsored by The
Fund For New Priorities in America, 171 Madison Avenue, New York, NY,
10016.

11a. David Brown and Guy Gugliotta, "House Approves Inquiry Into
'OctoberSurprise'", Washington Post, February 6, 1992, p.A11.

11b. Jack Colhoun, "Lawmakers Lose Nerve on October Surprise", The
Guardian, December 11, 1991, p.7.

11c. Jack Colhoun, "October Surprise Probe Taps BCCI Lawyer", The
Guardian, February 26, 1992, p.3.

12. See note 5a, p.180-1.

13a. See note 4, p.229, 240-1.

13b. Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the
Iran-Contra Affair, Senate Report No. 100-216, House Report No.
100-433, November 1987, p.139-141.

14a. Letter to His Excellency Oscar Arias Sanchez, President of the
Republic of Costa Rica; from Members of the U.S. Congress David
Dreier, Lee Hamilton, Dave McCurdy, Dan Burton, Mary Rose Oakar, Jim
Bunning, Frank McCloskey, Cass Ballenger, Peter Kostmayer, Jim Bates,
Douglas Bosco, James Inhofe, Thomas Foglietta, Rod Chandler, Ike
Skelton, Howard Wolpe, Gary Ackerman, Robert Lagomarsino, and Bob
McEwen; January 26, 1989.

14b. Peter Brennan, "Costa Rica Considers Seeking Contra Backer in
U.S. -- Indiana Native Wanted on Murder Charge in 1984 Bomb Attack in
Nicaragua", WashingtonPost, February 1, 1990.

14c. "Costa Rica Seeks Extradition of Indiana Farmer", Scripps-Howard
News Service,April 25, 1991.

15. Press Release from the Costa Rican Embassy, Washington DC, On the
Case of the Imprisonment of Costa Rican Citizen John Hull", February
6, 1989.

16. Brian Glick, War at Home, Boston: South End Press, 1989.

17. John Stockwell, The Praetorian Guard-- The U.S. Role in the New
World Order, Boston: South End Press, 1991, p.121.

18. Hearings Before the Committee on Patents, United States Senate,
77th Cong., 2nd Session (1942)., part I, as cited in Joseph Borkin,
The Crime and Punishment of I.G. Farben, New York: The Free Press,
Macmillan, 1978, p.93.

19. R. Jeffrey Smith, "Study of A-Plant Neighbors' Health Urged",
Washington Post, July 13, 1990, p.A6.

20. Tom Horton, "A Cost Higher Than the Peace Dividend -- Price Tag
Mounts to Clean Up Nuclear Weapons Sites", Baltimore Sun, February 23,
1992, p.1K.

21. "The Nuclear Industry's Secret PR Strategy", EXTRA!, March 1992,
p.15.

22a. Samuel S. Epstein, MD et al, Losing the War Against Cancer: Need
for PublicPolicy Reform", Congressional Record, April 2, 1992,
p.E947-9.

22b. Samuel S. Epstein, "The Cancer Establishment", Washington Post,
March 10, 1992.

23a. Hon. Henry B. Gonzalez, "Efforts to Thwart Investigation of the
BNL Scandal", Congressional Record, March 30, 1992, p.H2005-2014.

23b. Hon. David E. Skaggs (CO)., White House Spin Control on Pre-War
Iraq Policy", Congressional Record, April 2, 1992, p.H2285.

23c. Nicholas Rostow, Special Assistant to the President and Legal
Adviser, Memorandum to Jeanne S. Archibald et al, "Meeting on
congressional requests for information and documents", April 8, 1991;
Congressional Record, April 2, 1992,p.H2285.

24a. Michio Kaku, "Operation Desert Lie: Pentagon Confesses", The

Guardian, March11, 1992, p.4.

24b. J. Max Robins, "NBC's Unaired Iraq Tapes Not a Black and White
Case", Variety Magazine, March 4, 1991, p.25.

25. Emory R. Searcy Jr., Clergy and Laity Concerned, Spring 1991
Letter to"Friends", p.1.

26. Jean Dimeo, "Selling Hispanics on Columbus -- Luis Vasquez-Ajmac
Is Hired to Promote Smithsonian Project", Washington Post, November
18, 1991, p.Bus.8.

27. Hans Koning, "Teach the Truth About Columbus", Washington Post,
September 3,1991, p.A19.

28a. James Kilpatrick, "Software-Piracy Case Emitting Big Stench", St.
Louis Post/Dispatch, March 18, 1991, p.3B. Elliot L. Richardson, "A
High-Tech Watergate", New York Times, October 21,1991.

29. "BCCI -- NBC Sunday Today", February 23, 1992, p.12; transcript
prepared by Burrelle's Information Services. The quote is from New
York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau who is running his own
independent investigation of BCCI.

30. Norman Bailey, former Reagan White House intelligence analyst;
from an interview with Mark Rosenthal of NBC News. See note 29, p.5.

31. Jack Colhoun, "BCCI Skeletons Haunting Bush's Closet", The
Guardian, September 18, 1991, p.9.

32. Robert Morgenthau. See note 29, p.10.

33. Russell Mokhiber, Corporate Crime and Violence, San Francisco:
Sierra ClubBooks, 1989 paperback edition, p.227.

34. See note 33, p.136-7.

35. Morton Mintz, At Any Cost: Corporate Greed, Women, and the Dalkon
Shield, NewYork: Pantheon, 1985. As cited in Mokhiber, see note 33,
p.157.

36. See note 33, p.164-171.

37. See note 33, p.172-180.

38. Michael Waldman, Who Robbed America?, New York: Random House,
1990. The quote is from Ralph Nader's Introduction, p.iii.

39. See note 33, p.217.

40. See note 33, p.235.

41. See note 33, p.277-288.

42. See note 33, p.323.

43. Katherine Hoyt Gonzalez, Nicaragua Network Education Fund
Newsletter, March1992, p.1.

44. William Blum, The CIA -- A Forgotten History, London: Zed Books
Ltd., 1986,p.232-243.

45a. John Stockwell, In Search of Enemies, New York: Norton, 1978.

45b. See note 44, p.284-291.

46. See note 17, p.18.

47a. Letter to President George Bush from The Ad Hoc Committee for
Panama (James Abourezk et al)., January 10, 1990; published in The
Nation, February 5, 1990, p.163.

47b. Philip E. Wheaton, Panama, Trenton NJ: Red Sea Press, 1992,
p.145-7.

48a. Morton Mintz and Jerry S. Cohen, Power, Inc., New York: Bantam
Books, 1977,p.521.

48b. "The International Oil Cartel", Federal Trade Commission,
December 2, 1949. Cited in 48a, p.521.

49a. See note 44, p.67-76.

49b. See note 48a, p.530-1.

50. Ralph W. McGehee, Deadly Deceits, New York: Sheridan Square
Publications, 1983,p.60.

51. HR-3385, "An Act to Provide Assistance for Free and Fair Elections
in Nicaragua". Passed the U.S. House of Representatives on October 4,
1989 by avote of 263 to 136, and the Senate on October 17 by a vote of
64 to 35.

52. Jack Colhoun, "Gates Oozing Trail of Lies, Gets Top CIA Post", The
Guardian,November 20, 1991, p.6.

53. Carl Bernstein, Time, February 24, 1992, Cover Story p.28-35.

54. "The U.S. and the Vatican on Birth Control", Time, February 24,
1992, p.35.

55. "Time's Missing Link: Poland to Latin America", National Catholic
Reporter,February 28, 1992, p.24.

56a. Jim Lynn, "School of Americas Commander Hopes to Expand Mission",
Benning Patriot, February 21, 1992, p.12.

56b. Vicky Imerman, "U.S. Army School of the Americas Plans
Expansion", News Release from S.O.A. Watch, P.O. Bo 3330, Columbus,
Georgia 31903.

57. 60 MINUTES, CBS, March 8, 1992.

58. Jack Colhoun, "Tricky Dick's Quick Election Fix", The Guardian,
January 29,1992, p.18.

59a. Sean P. Murphy, "Several Probes May Have Ignored Evidence Against
Police", Boston Globe, July 28, 1991, p.1.

59b. Christopher B. Daly, "Pattern of Police Abuses Reported in Boston
Case", Washington Post, July 12, 1991, p.A3.

59c. Associated Press, "Dayton Police Probing Erasure of Arrest
Video", WashingtonPost, May 26, 1991, p.A20.

59d. Gabriel Escobar, "Deaf Man's Death In Police Scuffle Called
Homicide", Washington Post, May 18, 1991, p.B1.

59e. Jay Mathews, "L.A. Police Laughed at Beating", Washington Post,
March 19, 1991, p.A1.

59f. David Maraniss, "One Cop's View of Police Violence", Washington
Post, April 12,1991, p.A1.

59g. From News Services, "Police Abuse Detailed", Washington Post,
February 8, 1992,p.A8.

60. Michael Dobbs, "Panhandling the Kremlin: How Gus Hall Got
Millions", Washington Post, March 1, 1992, p.A1.

61. David Streitfeld, "Secret Consortium To Publish Rushdie In
Paperback", Washington Post, March 14, 1992, p.D1.

62a. See notes 48 and 49.

62b. See note 47b, p.63-76.

62c. "Fairness In Broadcasting Act of 1987", U.S. Senate Bill S742.

62d. "Now Let That 'Fairness' Bill Die", Editorial, Washington Post,

June 24, 1987. The Post opposed the Fairness in Broadcasting Act.

63. David E. Scheim, Contract on America -- The Mafia Murder of
President John F.Kennedy, New York: Shapolsky Publishers, 1988,
p.viii.

64. See note 63, p.28.

65a. Chuck Conconi, "Out and About", Washington Post, February 26,
1991, p.B3.

65b. George Lardner Jr., "On the Set: Dallas in Wonderland",
Washington Post, May19, 1991, p.D1.

65c. George Lardner, "...Or Just a Sloppy Mess", Washington Post, June
2, 1991,p.D3.

65d. Charles Krauthammer, "A Rash of Conspiracy Theories -- When Do We
Dig Up BillCasey?", Washington Post, July 5, 1991, p.A19.

65e. Eric Brace, "Personalities", Washington Post, October 31, 1991,
p.C3.

65f. Associated Press, "'JFK' Director Condemned -- Warren Commission
Attorney Calls Stone Film 'A Big Lie'", Washington Post, December 16,
1991, p.D14.

65g. Gerald R. Ford and David W. Belin, "Kennedy Assassination: How
About the Truth?", Washington Post, December 17, 1991, p.A21.

65h. Rita Kemply, "'JFK': History Through A Prism", Washington Post,
December 20,1991, p.D1.

65i. George Lardner Jr., "The Way it Wasn't -- In 'JFK', Stone
Assassinates the Truth", Washington Post, December 20, 1991, p.D2.

65j. Desson Howe, "Dallas Mystery: Who Shot JFK?", Washington Post,
December 20,1991, p.55.

65k. Phil McCombs, "Oliver Stone, Returning the Fire -- In Defending
His 'JFK' Conspiracy Film, the Director Reveals His Rage and
Reasoning", Washington Post, December 21, 1991, p.F1.

65l. George F. Will, "'JFK': Paranoid History", Washington Post,
December 26, 1991,p.A23.

65m. "On Screen", 'JFK' movie review, Washington Post, Weekend,
December 27, 1991.

65n. Stephen S. Rosenfeld, "Shadow Play", Washington Post, December
27, 1991, p.A21.

65o. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, "The Paranoid Style", Washington Post,
December 29,1991, p.C7.

65p. Michael Isikoff, "H-e-e-e-e-r-e's Conspiracy! -- Why Did Oliver
Stone Omit (Or Suppress!). the Role of Johnny Carson?", Washington
Post, December 29, 1991,p.C2.

65q. Robert O'Harrow Jr., "Conspiracy Theory Wins Converts --
Moviegoers Say 'JFK' Nourishes Doubts That Oswald Acted Alone",
Washington Post, January 2, 1992, p.B1.

65r. Michael R. Beschloss, "Assassination and Obsession", Washington
Post, January 5, 1992, p.C1.

65s. Charles Krauthammer, "'JFK': A Lie, But Harmless", Washington
Post, January 10,1992, p.A19.

65t. Art Buchwald, "Bugged: The Flu Conspiracy", Washington Post,
January 14, 1992,p.E1.

65u. Ken Ringle, "The Fallacy of Conspiracy Theories -- Good on Film,
But the Motivation Is All Wrong", Washington Post, January 19, 1992,
p.G1.

65v. Charles Paul Freund, "If History Is a Lie -- America's Resort to
Conspiracy Thinking", Washington Post, January 19, 1992, p.C1.

65w. Richard Cohen, "Oliver's Twist", Washington Post Magazine,
January 19, 1992, p.5.

65. Michael Isikoff, "Seeking JFK's Missing Brain", Washington Post,
January 21,1992, p.A17.

65y. Don Oldenburg, "The Plots Thicken -- Conspiracy Theorists Are
Everywhere", Washington Post, January 28, 1992, p.E5.

65z. Joel Achenbach, "JFK Conspiracy: Myth vs. the Facts", Washington
Post, February 28, 1992, p.C5.

65A. List of books on the best-seller list: On the Trail of the
Assassins is characterized as "conspiracy plot theories", Washington
Post, March 8, 1992,Bookworld, p.12

66. See notes 65n, 65w, 65l, 65b, 65c, and 65i.

67a. Peter Dale Scott, "Vietnamization and the Drama of the Pentagon
Papers". Published in The Senator Gravel Edition of The Pentagon
Papers, Volume V,p.211-247.

67b. Peter Dale Scott, The War Conspiracy -- The Secret Road to the
Second Indochina War, Indianapolis/New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1972, p.
215-224.

67c. L. Fletcher Prouty, The Secret Team, Copyright 1973. New
printing, Costa Mesa CA: Institute for Historical Review, 1990,
p.402-416.

67d. See note 63, p.58, 183, 187, 194, 273-4.

67e. John M. Newman, JFK and Vietnam, New York: Warner Books, 1992.

67f. Peter Dale Scott, Letter to the Editor, The Nation, March 9,
1992, p.290.

68a. See note 65b.

68b. Oliver Stone, "The Post, George Lardner, and My Version of the
JFK Assassination", Washington Post, June 2, 1991, p.D3.

69. See note 65b.

70. Jim Garrison, On the Trail of The Assassins, New York: Warner
Books, 1988, 315/318.

71. Associated Press, "Garrison, 2 Others, Found Not Guilty Of Bribery
Charge", Washington Post, September 28, 1973, p.A3.

72. See note 65c.

73. See note 65i.

74. See note 67e, p.438-450.

75. John G. Leyden, "Historians, Buffs, and Crackpots", Washington
Post, Bookworld, January 26, 1992, p.8.

76a. Tad Szulc, "New Doubts, Fears in JFK Assassination Probe",
Washington Star,September 19, 1975, p.A1.

76b. Tad Szulc, "Warren Commission's Self-Doubts Grew Day by Day --
'This Bullet Business Leaves Me Confused'", Washington Star, September

20, 1975, p.A1.

76c. Tad Szulc, "Urgent and Secret Meeting of the Warren Commission --
Dulles Proposed that the Minutes be Destroyed", Washington Star,
September 21, 1975,p.A1.

77. "Cable Sought to Discredit Critics of Warren Report", New York
Times, December 26, 1977, p.A37.

78. Deborah Davis, Katharine The Great, New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1979,p.141-2.

79a. Eve Pell, "Private Censorship -- Killing 'Katharine The Great'",
The Nation, November 12, 1983.

79b. Deborah Davis, Katharine The Great, Bethesda MD: National Press,
1987. Davis says, "...corporate documents that became available during
my subsequent lawsuit against him [Harcourt Brace Jovanovich chairman,
William Jovanovich] showed that 20,000 copies [of Katharine the Great]
had been "processed and converted into waste paper"".

79c. Daniel Brandt, "All the Publisher's Men -- A Suppressed Book
About Washington Post Publisher Katharine Graham Is On Sale Again"
National Reporter, Fall 1987, p.60.

79d. Deborah Davis, Katharine The Great, New York: Sheridan Square
Press, 1991. "...publishers who don't give a shit", p.iv-v; bullying
HBJ into recalling the book, p.iv-vi; lawsuit and settlement, p..

80. Benjamin C. Bradlee, Letter to Deborah Davis, April 1, 1987. See
note 79d, p.304.

81. See note 79d, p.119-132.

82. Carl Bernstein, "The CIA and the Media -- How America's Most
Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence
Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up", Rolling Stone,
October 20, 1977, p.63.

83a. Daniel Brandt, Letter to Richard L. Harwood of The Washington
Post, September 15, 1988. The letter asks for the Post's rationale for
its policy of protecting government covert actions, and whether this
policy is still in effect.

83b. Daniel Brandt, "Little Magazines May Come and Go", The National
Reporter, Fall 1988, p.4. Notes the Post's protection of the identity
of CIA agent Joseph F.Fernandez. Brandt says, "America needs to
confront its own recent history as well as protect the interests of
its citizens, and both can be accomplished by outlawing peacetime
covert activity. This would contribute more to thesecurity of
Americans than all the counterterrorist proposals and elite strike
forces that ever found their way onto Pentagon wish-lists."

83c. Richard L. Harwood, Letter to Daniel Brandt, September 28, 1988.
Harwood's two- sentence letter reads, "We have a long-standing policy
of not naming covert agents of the C.I.A., except in unusual
circumstances. We applied that policy to Fernandez."

84. See note 79d, p.131.

85. Katharine Graham, "Safeguarding Our Freedoms As We Cover Terrorist
Acts", Washington Post, April 20, 1986, p.C1.

86. "conspire", ß4ßRandom House Dictionary of the English Language,
Second Edition Unabridged, 1987.

87. Howard Kurtz, "Media Notes", Washington Post, June 18, 1991, p.D1.

88. See note 65y.

89. See note 65n.

90. See note 65d.

91. William Casey, Private Communications with JCH, March 1992.

Richard Harwood, "What Conspiracy?", Washington Post, March 1, 1992,
p.C6.

93. p. 29-32.

94a. Washington Post Electronic Data Base, Dialog Information Services
Inc., April 25, 1992. In 1991 and 1992, the name Bill Clinton appeared
in 878 Washington Post stories, columns, letters, or editorials;
"Jerry" Brown in 485, Pat Buchanan in 303, and Larry Agran in 28. In
those 28, Agran's name appeared 76 times, Clinton's 151, and Brown
105. In only 1 of those 28 did Agran's name appear in a headline.

94b. Colman McCarthy, "What's 'Minor' About This Candidate?",
Washington Post, February 1, 1992. Washington Post columnist McCarthy
tells how television and party officials have kept presidential
candidate Larry Agran out of sight. The Post's own daily news-blackout
of Agran is not discussed.

94c. Scot Lehigh, "Larry Agran: 'Winner' in Debate With Little Chance
For the Big Prize", Boston Globe, February 25, 1992.

94d. Joshua Meyrowitz, "The Press Rejects a Candidate", Columbia
Journalism Review,March/April, 1992.

95. Ben H. Bagdikian, The Effete Conspiracy And Other Crimes By The
Press, NewYork: Harper and Row, 1972, p.36-7.

96a. 28 USC Section 455. "Any justice, judge, or magistrate of the
United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his
impartiality might reasonably be questioned." [emphasis added]

96b. Alpo Petfoods, Inc. v. Ralston Purina Co., 913 F2d 958 (CA DC
1990)..

96c. Monroe Freedman, "Thomas' Ethics and the Court -- Nominee 'Unfit
to Sit' For Failing to Recuse In Ralston Purina Case", Legal Times,
August 26, 1991.

96d. Paul D. Wilcher, "Opposition to the Confirmation of Judge
Clarence Thomas to become a Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court on the
grounds of his JUDICIAL MISCONDUCT", Letter to U.S. Senator Joseph R.
Biden, October 15, 1991.

97. Al Kamen and Michael Isikoff, "'A Distressing Turn', Activists

Decry What Process Has Become", Washington Post, October 12, 1991,
p.A1.

98. January 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 1992, p.A1 each day.

99. See note 86.

100. Thomas W. Lippman, "Energy Lobby Fights Unseen 'Killers'",
Washington Post,April 1, 1992, p.A21. This article explains that
"representatives of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National
Association of Manufacturers and the coal, oil, natural gas, offshore
drilling and nuclear power industries, whose interests often conflict,
pledged to work together to oppose amendments limiting offshore oil
drilling, nuclear power and carbon dioxide emissions soon to be
offered by key House members".

101. "cartel", Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, 1977.
NOTES

A good source on the Washington Post and Katharine Graham's attempt to suppress the Davis book,"Katherine The Great,", which was largely successful, is Carol Felsenthal's, "Power and Privilege at the Post, the Katharine Graham Story."

For more information on Johnny Rosselli and Moses and Walter Annenberg, an excellent source is "All American Mafioso, the Johnny Rosselli Story," by Ed Becker and Charles Rappelye.

An additional good short reference is "The CIA's Greatest Hits" by Mark Zepezauer. There you will find the reference to Carl Bernstein's classic "The CIA and the Media" which appeared in Rolling Stone on Oct. 20, 1977.

Still another recent example of the CIA's control of the media is the spiking of Sally Denton's & Roger Morris' story,"THE CRIMES OF MENA" by Washington Post managing editor Bob Kaiser even though the story had been legally vetted and cleared for publication. Indeed the story, which details the CIA's involvement in drug trafficing, was already typeset and ready to go when it was killed withouty explanation.

An example of media lies can be found in this example of a faked newspaper photograph.

Eye On Obama

2009-01-02T00:20:00.002-05:00

Obama Seeks Bipartisanship - RNC Declares WarObama’s Big Gamble - Odds Shifting Obama ‘No Comment’ US Just As Guilty As IsraelPhil Berg Goes Back To SCOTUS Vs Obama Obama The Naked Emperor

Read More...

[Source: vote tags: Tracking the Vote -

Weekly Standard Praises Ron Paul (One Year Too Late)

2008-12-31T19:22:00.005-05:00

Via @TAC, some praise and acknowledgment for Dr. Paul in theWeekly Standard:Neither Barack Obama nor John McCain had much of value to say about the financial crisis as it raged through the headlines this fall. Rather than shred their campaign strategies, they played it safe, as most politicians would have. But in the name of [...]

Read More...

[Source: Ron Paul Blog

Coke, Pepsi and a Stiff Drink

2008-12-31T19:22:00.004-05:00

Waiter: What would like to drink?Patron 1: I’ll have scotch on the rocks, and also please bring me some ice water.Patron 2: Can I see the wine list?Waiter: Sorry. We only serve Coke and Pepsi.Welcome to American democracy.Like most Presidential elections, this year we’re offered two candidates that are more the same than different. [...]

Read More...

[Source: Ron Paul Blog

I am off to ECUADOR!

2008-12-31T19:21:00.005-05:00

Just wanted to post and tell everyone that I will be off to Ecuador tomorrow for two weeks! We are buying property and doing a lot of sight seeing and bird watching. We would like to live there at least part time. I will let you know how it goes. Anything you guys particularly interested in?

Wish me luck! I have never been out of the country before.

"Just let me die"

2008-12-31T19:21:00.004-05:00

http://uruknet.info/?p=m5...

"Just let me die"

Due to a lack of electricity, surgeries are being conducted by the light of cellular phones, and hospitals no longer have room to take in those deceased, A doctor in Gaza said that a patient he had to work on without anesthesia cried out these words.

wtf>Cheney Admits He 'Signed Off' on Waterboarding of 3 Gitmo Prisoners

2008-12-28T03:09:00.001-05:00

Author's note: The statements Cheney made this week during an interview with the Washington Times about his role in approving the waterboarding of three Guantanamo detainees and the so-called "enhanced interrogation" of 33 prisoners was, disturbingly, not covered at all by the mainstream media.

Also published at my web magazine, The Public Record.

Vice President Dick Cheney, in another stunning admission during his campaign to burnish the Bush administration’s legacy, said he personally authorized the “enhanced interrogations” of 33 suspected terrorist detainees and approved the waterboarding of three so-called “high-value” prisoners.

“I signed off on it; others did, as well, too,” Cheney said about the waterboarding, a practice of simulated drowning done by strapping a person to a board, covering the face with a cloth and then pouring water over it, a torture technique dating back at least to the Spanish Inquisition. The victim feels as if he is drowning.

Cheney identified the three waterboarded detainees as al-Qaeda figures Abu Zubaydah, Khalid Sheik Mohammed and al Nashiri. “That's it, those three guys,” Cheney said in an interview with the right-wing Washington Times.

Other detainees at secret CIA prisons and at Guantanamo Bay were subjected to harsh treatment, including being stripped naked, forced into painful stress positions, placed in extremes of heat or cold and prevented from sleeping – actions that international human rights organizations, and previously the U.S. government, have denounced as torture and illegal abuse.

“I thought that it was absolutely the right thing to do,” Cheney said of what he called the “enhanced interrogation” of the detainees. “I thought the [administration’s] legal opinions that were rendered [endorsing the harsh treatment] were sound. I think the techniques were reasonable in terms of what they [the CIA interrogators] were asking to be able to do. And I think it produced the desired result.”

Cheney also took issue with the notion that waterboarding was torture.

“Was it torture? I don't believe it was torture,” Cheney said. “The CIA handled itself, I think, very appropriately. They came to us in the administration, talked to me, talked to others in the administration, about what they felt they needed to do in order to obtain the intelligence that we believe these people were in possession of.”

Other experts, including some military and intelligence interrogators, have disputed Cheney’s claims of success in extracting reliable information through waterboarding and other harsh techniques. Much of the confessed information turned out to be dubious or incorrect.

The First Case

Zubaydah was the first “war on terror” detainee to be subjected to the Bush administration’s waterboarding, according to Pentagon and Justice Department documents, news reports and several books written about the Bush administration’s interrogation methods.

However, according to author Ron Suskind who interviewed CIA and other insiders, Abu Zubaydah was not the "high-value detainee" that the Bush administration had claimed. Rather, Zubaydah was a minor player in the al-Qaeda organization, handling travel for associates and their families, Suskind wrote in his book The One Percent Doctrine.

Nevertheless, Suskind said President George W. Bush became obsessed with Zubaydah and the information he might have about pending terrorist plots against the United States.

"Bush was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth," Suskind wrote. Bush questioned one CIA briefer, "Do some of these harsh methods really work?"

Abu Zubaydah's captors soon discovered that their prisoner was mentally ill and knew nothing about terrorist operations or impending plots. That realization was "echoed at the top of CIA and was, of course, briefed to the President and Vice President," Suskind wrote.

But Bush did not want to "lose face" because he had stated Zubaydah’s importance publicly, according to Suskind.

WARONYOU

Treasury's Paulson Seeks More Bailout Funds, Obama Team Joins in Talks

2008-12-07T01:02:00.000-05:00

Treasury Department officials are laying the groundwork for seeking the second half of the $700 billion financial rescue package from Congress and have approached President-elect Barack Obama's transition team in an effort to gain access to the funds, sources familiar with the matter said.

With lawmakers on both sides of the aisle expressing heated opposition to such a request, Treasury officials have come to realize that they need the president-elect's help to obtain the rescue money, the sources said.

The Treasury aired the possibility of seeking the second half of the funds with transition team officials, who said they would attend a meeting with lawmakers and the Bush administration if the department pulled one together.

Of the first $350 billion in rescue money provided by Congress, the Treasury has only $15 billion left, which may not be enough to save a major financial institution if it collapses. Just weeks ago, the Treasury committed to spending $25 billion in rescue money to prop up Citigroup; it had already provided the firm with a $25 billion infusion.

Treasury employees are working on several proposals to unfreeze the troubled credit markets, the sources said. But some of these initiatives may depend on the next installment of the rescue package.

Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. has been cautious about asking Congress for the next installment given the risk that his request would be denied, sources said. Such an event could wreak havoc on the financial markets.

Treasury spokeswoman Brookly McLaughlin said no decision has been made on requesting additional rescue funds.

Obama has not yet stated whether the Treasury should receive the rest of the funds. But in agreeing to allow his aides to meet with administration officials and lawmakers on the issue, Obama appears to be demonstrating his willingness to engage on the issue, two of the sources said.
ad_icon

In a meeting with Treasury officials, Obama's transition team pressed them to use the second installment, if forthcoming, to help struggling homeowners.

Several congressional Democrats said the administration's case for the remaining rescue money would be vastly improved if the Treasury offered this assistance. But Paulson so far has been resistant to using the rescue funds to help homeowners.

Some congressional aides cautioned that even if the Treasury offers help for homeowners, rank-and-file lawmakers might not go along.

Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, has said he is opposed to approving any more bailout money during the Bush administration because he thinks the funds have been misused. And House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) said yesterday that he has told Paulson and Obama that they won't get the money unless a substantial part of it goes toward reducing residential foreclosures, which continue to skyrocket.

"I have said to both parties that the key here is to get some money into foreclosure diminution and if they don't get that done, then they can forget about the second $350" billion, Frank said in an interview.

Frank has been critical of the Treasury for failing to use the money to help distressed homeowners, whose defaulting mortgages have helped spark a global recession. But Frank said he is also critical "a little bit of the Obama campaign for not being more forthcoming on this."

Frank said the financial bailout was sold to lawmakers in part as a way to help homeowners, and that Obama was helpful in making that point. But now, Frank said, "I think they are underestimating the importance of" following through on that pledge.

"Not just economically, which is very important, but politically," he said. "If they want to keep the confidence of the Congress in terms of these kinds of politically risky things, then they can't have people feel that they were misled."

Obama's transition team has been closely reviewing what the Treasury has done so far to rescue the financial system. The team assigned Lee Sachs, a former assistant Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, to work out of a large office that faces the White House on the second-floor of the Treasury building. Sachs and a handful of others have been reviewing the Treasury's initiatives and have been in continual contact with senior officials on the rescue program.

Bush acknowledges recession, automakers' troubles

2008-12-05T16:35:00.000-05:00

President George W. Bush publicly acknowledged for the first time Friday that the U.S. economy is in a recession and worried aloud that Detroit's Big Three automakers may not all survive their mounting troubles.

Four days after the long-suspected existence of a recession was made official, Bush used the word himself.

"Our economy is in a recession," Bush said flatly, speaking to reporters on the South Lawn only hours after the release of a government report showing the biggest month of job losses in 34 years. "This is in large part because of severe problems in our housing, credit and financial markets, which have resulted in significant job losses."

While repeatedly listing the serious problems in the economy, the White House has refused to embrace the actual term until Monday, when a panel for the National Bureau of Economic Research said the recession began last December and is ongoing.

With automakers, particularly General Motors, in fear of bankruptcy, they are seeking from Washington a huge cash infusion of up to $34 billion, beyond an existing $25 billion loan program. Lawmakers are considering the idea, but there is uncertainty about the level of support on Capitol Hill for that plan.

Bush displayed skepticism about the wisdom of new aid to companies that still need to make "hard choices on all aspects of their business." So while urging lawmakers to act next week to help the battered industry, Bush urged a Congress controlled by opposition Democrats to follow his approach.

The president supports adjusting the $25 billion loan program, so that the money would be available more quickly and for more urgent needs than its original long-term purpose of helping to retool factories to produce more energy-efficient cars.

"I am concerned about the viability of the automobile companies," he told reporters on the South Lawn. "I am concerned about those who work for the automobile companies and their families. And likewise, I am concerned about taxpayer money being provided to these companies that may not survive."

With only 46 days left in office before President-elect Barack Obama takes over, Bush declared: "It's important to make sure that taxpayers' money be paid back if any is given to the companies."

The president spoke not long after the release of a government report showing the biggest month of job losses in 34 years. Reacting to the jobs report for November, which also showed a huge jump in the unemployment rate to 6.7 percent, Bush expressed deep concern for Americans who have lost jobs, but also said there are some encouraging signs about the credit markets. "There is still more work to do," he said. "My administration is committed to ensuring that our economy succeeds."

At 12 months, the current recession is already the longest since a severe 16-month slump in 1981-82. Many economists say this downturn will ultimately set a new record for the post-World War II period.

During Bush's eight years in office, the United States has fallen into two recessions. The first one started in March 2001 and ended in November of that year.

Campaign for 'Forgotten Refugees' Downplays Palestinian Losses

2008-12-05T00:24:00.010-05:00

Excerpt: A broad coalition of Jewish lobby groups has made a series of breakthroughs this year in its campaign to link the question of justice for millions of Palestinian refugees with justice for Jews who left Arab states in the wake of Israel's establishment 60 years ago.

WHO Predicts How We Will Die in 2030

2008-12-05T00:24:00.009-05:00

A global rise in tobacco use in the next two decades will help heart disease remain one of humanitys leading killers, while HIV/AIDS deaths will peak in 2012 before making a steady decline. This is according to an update of the World Health Organizations Burdens of Disease report, which measures the current sources of human [...]

Read More...

Friday: 21 Iraqis Killed, 58 Wounded

2008-11-29T02:39:00.013-05:00

Excerpt: Updated at 6:35 p.m. EST, Nov. 28, 2008Thousands of Sadr followers protested the passage of a U.S.-Iraqi security agreement during Friday prayers today, while a bomber targeted one of their mosques in Mussayab. At least 21 Iraqis were killed and 58 more were wounded across the country. Meanwhile, Japan announced the end of its air force mission in Iraq. Also, Ayman al-Zawahri, who is second in command of al-Qaeda, blamed the U.S. financial crisis on its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Now I've Seen Everything

2008-11-29T02:39:00.012-05:00

Excerpt: Of course there's nothing all that unusual about a spy going to work for a Washington thinktank. Ex-CIA employees do it all the time: so do all sorts of other spooks, who would otherwise be haunting the world's darkest corners. No big deal.

Neocon Lobby Group Loses Its Angel

2008-11-29T02:39:00.011-05:00

Excerpt: HONG KONG -- The right-wing US advocacy group Freedom's Watch is reportedly shutting down as its main funder, Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, becomes one of the high-profile casualties of the global economic downturn.

5 Tips: Navigating Today's Troubled Markets

2008-11-25T23:26:00.004-05:00

It’s not easy to sit back and watch the Dow drop triple digits in one session.

Feeling panicky? Before making any hasty moves, here are five steps to consider first.
Don't Panic

First and foremost: Stay calm. The worst thing an investor can do is panic and go on a massive selling spree, says Ben Tobias, a Plantation, Fla.-based fee-only certified financial planner. Investors who sell now will turn paper losses into real losses and won't have money invested to recoup those losses when the market rebounds, he says.

And make no bones about it – the broader markets will recover. History has shown that over the long haul the stock market goes up, not down. Indeed, the periods after a crisis are often very robust.

Make Sure You’re Covered

If headlines of bank failures have you eyeing your mattress as your safe haven, take some deep breaths. Chances are the money you have held at your bank is FDIC-insured. If so, even if the bank shuts down, up to $250,000 (per depositor) in a checking or savings account (or $250,000 in retirement accounts such as IRAs or Keoghs) will be covered by the government. (To find out if a bank is FDIC-insured, visit the FDIC web site.) Those who have more than $250,000 in deposits should consider spreading it among several accounts at different FDIC-insured banks. That way, all of your holdings will be covered.

And what about the money you have at your brokerage firm
? In most cases, investors' assets at brokerage firms are safe even if the firm files for bankruptcy or shuts down. All brokerage firms that conduct business in the U.S. are required to be members of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC), which insures accounts up to $500,000, including cash of up to $100,000 held in brokerage accounts, according to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).

In some cases, when a firm runs into trouble, you still may be able to trade or transfer your account – as is the case with Lehman Brothers. Thus far, it hasn’t been necessary for the SIPC to step in. For more, click here.

Read More...

Lawrence Summers to Head National Economic Council

2008-11-22T23:13:00.001-05:00

President-elect Barack Obama will name former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers the director of his National Economic Council, placing the Harvard University economist he passed over for Treasury secretary inside the White House as his closest economic adviser, Democratic officials said Saturday night.

Presumed Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) (R) greets former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and others during a meeting with some of his top economic advisors at the Omni Shoreham hotel July 28, 2008 in Washington, DC. Obama called the two-hour meeting to discuss the current economic situation in the United States, including high gasoline prices and the collapse of the mortgage market.

The move came as the president-elect prepares Monday to introduce his new Treasury secretary nominee, Timothy Geithner, and the rest of his economic team at an event in Chicago Monday. Among those on stage will be Mr. Summers, who was central to his campaign's economic team and is now leading efforts to draft a massive economic stimulus plan the president-elect hopes to sign into law as one of his first acts as the nation's leader.

Mr. Obama has instructed his economic advisers to draft a stimulus that could dwarf the $175 billion version he campaigned on, stretching it over two years and pushing to create 2.5 million new jobs with it.

Read more Conspiracy theories and Breaking News without Corporate Views.

Dow Plummets Again

2008-11-21T00:05:00.009-05:00

Via Bloomberg:

U.S. stocks slid and the Standard & Poor's 500 Index plunged to its lowest level in 11 years after economic reports depicted a deepening recession and lawmakers postponed a vote on a plan to salvage the auto industry.

The Standard & Poor's 500 Index extended its 2008 tumble to 49 percent, poised for the worst annual decline in its 80-year history. Chesapeake Energy Corp. and National-Oilwell Varco Inc. slid more than 21 percent as crude sank to a three-year low as the economic slump crushes demand. JPMorgan Chase & Co. tumbled 18 percent and Citigroup Inc. plunged 26 percent as concern the recession will trigger more bankruptcies pushed the cost of insurance against corporate defaults to an all-time high.

``It's an ugly mess out there,'' said Randy Bateman, who oversees $15 billion as chief investment officer of the asset management unit of Huntington Bancshares Inc. in Columbus, Ohio. ``The economy is confirming it is very, very weak.''

The S&P 500 slid 6.7 percent to 752.58, under the low of 776.76 reached during the bear market in 2002. The Dow Jones Industrial Average sank 443.8 points, or 5.6 percent, to 7,553.48. The Nasdaq Composite decreased 5 percent to 1,317.05. Twelve stocks retreated for each that rose on the New York Stock Exchange.

This Is America: Thursday's Show

2008-11-21T00:05:00.008-05:00

Tonight on the November 20 edition on This Is America, with Jon Elliott...

Tonight world-renowned photographer Sebastian Copeland joins Jon to talk about his just released book Antartica: A Call To Action

This is Sebastian's second photographic book on Antarctica and will be a great Christmas gift for all who cherish our planet.

Also regular guest Shannyn Moore joins Jon live from Anchorage and one of Talk Radio News' great journalists tells our listeners the latest in Capitol Hill goings on.

And of course Jon will be taking your calls at 866-303-2270. So make sure to tune in to tonight's jam packed edition of This Is America with Jon Elliott.

You may also dial in and hear the show through Cellecast at 206-400-2860.

Iran switches reserves to gold - report

2008-11-15T15:40:00.000-05:00

TEHRAN, Nov 15 (Reuters) - Iran has converted financial reserves into gold to avoid future problems, an adviser to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in comments published on Saturday, after the price of oil fell more than 60 percent from a peak in July.

Iran, the world's fourth-largest oil producer, is under U.N. and U.S. sanctions over its disputed nuclear programme and is now also facing declining revenue from its oil exports after crude prices tumbled.

"With the plans of the presidency...the country's money reserves were changed into gold so that we wouldn't be faced with many problems in the future," presidential adviser Mojtaba Samareh-Hashemi was quoted as saying by business daily Poul.
He gave no figures or other details.

Before oil prices plunged by more than 60 percent from a peak of $147 per barrel in July, Iran made windfall gains from its crude exports and in April estimated its foreign exchange reserves at about $80 billion.
read more

What's wrong with the WTO?

2008-11-15T15:37:00.001-05:00

A guide to where the mines are buried

by Peter Costantini ~ Seattle ~ November 2001

Submerged within the mind-numbing verbiage of the World Trade Organization treaties and their interpretations are a handful of principles that subordinate all other values—environmental sustainability, consumer and worker safety, public health, freedom of labor and human rights—to maximizing trade. The provisions and interpretations articulating these principles impede nations from enforcing their own laws to protect the public good. They imperil rights and protections won by citizens over the last century and undermine national and local democracy and transparency.

Most of these strictures are not intrinsic to international trade. Rather, they have resulted from the veiled efforts of the most powerful nations and corporations, who use WTO rules and rulings as crowbars to wrench open markets and batter down laws defending the quality of human life and the environment.

The record of the past six years is clear: nearly all WTO decisions have gutted democratic restrictions on trade, effectively lowering environmental, consumer protection, public health, and human rights standards. Even when reasonable standards were applied equally to all domestic and foreign producers, the WTO has repeatedly struck them down as trade barriers, demolishing shelters that citizens have built against the stormy side effects of market forces.
When is trade "free"?

A central principle of the 1947 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (now enforced by the WTO) was non-discrimination: products imported from one country should be treated the same as those imported from all other countries and those produced within the importing country. This principle is expressed in two technical terms:

* National treatment - Goods imported from countries that have signed the treaty must be treated the same as domestic ones.
* Most-favored nation treatment - Goods imported from each signatory country must be treated equally.
Read More

The Real Great Depression

2008-11-10T01:44:00.001-05:00

As a historian who works on the 19th century, I have been reading my newspaper with a considerable sense of dread. While many commentators on the recent mortgage and banking crisis have drawn parallels to the Great Depression of 1929, that comparison is not particularly apt. Two years ago, I began research on the Panic of 1873, an event of some interest to my colleagues in American business and labor history but probably unknown to everyone else. But as I turn the crank on the microfilm reader, I have been hearing weird echoes of recent events.

When commentators invoke 1929, I am dubious. According to most historians and economists, that depression had more to do with overlarge factory inventories, a stock-market crash, and Germany’s inability to pay back war debts, which then led to continuing strain on British gold reserves. None of those factors is really an issue now. Contemporary industries have very sensitive controls for trimming production as consumption declines; our current stock-market dip followed bank problems that emerged more than a year ago; and there are no serious international problems with gold reserves, simply because banks no longer peg their lending to them.

In fact, the current economic woes look a lot like what my 96-year-old grandmother still calls “the real Great Depression.” She pinched pennies in the 1930s, but she says that times were not nearly so bad as the depression her grandparents went through. That crash came in 1873 and lasted more than four years. It looks much more like our current crisis.
READ MORE

Videos: Across the Nation Celebration

2008-11-07T04:40:00.010-05:00

How is it possible that an election could trigger so much joy? Are there so many political junkies in this country? We're thinking no. What then? Well, there's a bit of "Ding Dong W's Dead" going on. But the rest? Pure phenom.

Maron v Seder: Is Africa a Country?

2008-11-07T04:40:00.009-05:00

Sam Seder and Marc Maron hit the streets to conduct a reality check after the most recent Sarah Palin revelations, and find that most people seem to know a thing or two about continents and stuff.

Breaking News: Rahm Emanuel Confirmed

2008-11-07T04:40:00.008-05:00

Via Politico:

Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), a wily, aggressive West Wing strategist
under President Bill Clinton, has accepted the post of White House
chief of staff for President-elect Barack Obama, Democratic officials
tell Politico.
The selection is the first major public decision by Obama since he was elected in a landslide on Tuesday.
The announcement will send a signal that Obama is eager to work with
Congress and plans a swift launch of an aggressive agenda that will
focus on the economy, taxes, energy, education and health care.

More here...

Pointing the US Surveillance Apparatus at the American People

2008-11-02T21:32:00.001-05:00

Do you "pal around with terrorists"? Are you a "radical" or express views that the government considers "extremist"?

On October 28, the whistleblowing website Cryptome published the FBI Directorate of Intelligence: Counterterrorism Division's Counterterrorism Analytical Lexicon. This eye-opening "Unclassified/For Official Use Only" (U/FOUO) document purports "to standardize terms used in the FBI analytical products dealing with counterterrorism."

But what it does instead, in keeping with the FBI's insatiable appetite for "actionable intelligence product," is create new categories of individuals who might fall under the purview of state "counterterrorism" investigations.

Right up front the Bureau informs us that the definitions used in the lexicon, "do not supercede those in the Department of Justice National Foreign Intelligence Program Manual (NFIPM), the Attorney General Guidelines, the National Implementation Plan for the War on Terror, or any US government statute."

That covers a lot and ground and can hide much in the way of government mischief, particularly when new guidelines issued by U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey permit broad, intrusive investigations by FBI snoops. As the Washington Post reported in early October,

The new road map allows investigators to recruit informants, employ physical surveillance and conduct interviews in which agents disguise their identities in an effort to assess national security threats. FBI agents could pursue each of those steps without any single fact indicating a person has ties to a terrorist organization. (Carrie Johnson, "Guidelines Expand FBI's Surveillance Powers," The Washington Post, Saturday, October 4, 2008; A03)

In response, the American Civil Liberties Union warned that,
read more

Maltese freemasons go public on the internet

2008-10-31T00:37:00.003-04:00

Count Leopold von Kolowrat-Krakowsky: an Illuminatus and the National Superior for Austria; founder of St. Johns Lodge of Secrecy and Harmony in Malta.After years of notoriety as a secret society, and a raging debate over the alleged membership of public officials, Maltas freemasons have gone public with a fully-fledged website describing their activities, history and [...]

Read More...

[Source: War On You - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]

VW and hedge funds: Squeezing the accelerator

2008-10-31T00:37:00.001-04:00

Volkswagen's turbocharged shares cause misery for hedge funds

IT IS hard to feel sorrow for hedge funds. Their reputation as ruthless investors and the largely unwarranted blame for amassing huge sums of cash as the financial system crumbled have earned them unflattering comparisons to locusts, spivs and far worse. But if there were ever a moment when the hedge funds might be deserving of a modicum of pity it may be now. On Tuesday October 28th Volkswagen’s share price briefly made it the most valuable company in the world, at a time when many hedge funds had placed substantial bets that the German car company’s value would shrink.

The damage from the head-on collision between many scores of hedge funds (and maybe some banks) is yet to become fully apparent. Some early estimates suggested that the losses from the “short squeeze” could be as much as €30 billion ($37.4 billion), although the final tally will probably be many billions less. Ironically, given that some hedge-fund managers live up to their popular brash and conspicuously wealthy image, the other car company involved in the pile-up is Porsche. ...

Read More...

[Source: The Economist: News analysis - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]

Argentina: Cristina’s looking-glass world

2008-10-27T07:05:00.001-04:00

A short-sighted plan to nationalise private-pension funds in Argentina

ACROSS the developed world, solvent governments have temporarily nationalised banks whose survival was in doubt. Argentina, which often resembles the rest of the world seen through a distorted mirror, likes to do things differently. There the private pension system, which has suffered investment losses but is otherwise sound, now faces permanent nationalisation by a government whose own solvency has been called into question. “The G8 countries are protecting their banks, and we’re protecting our workers and retirees,” declared President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, as she announced a bill containing the measure on Tuesday October 21st.

The immediate effect was to leave them less protected: the Buenos Aires stock-exchange index fell 24% in two days, and investors dumped Argentine bonds, sending their yield soaring to 28%. Many economists and opposition politicians fear that the government’s intention is to raid the pension funds to fill a widening fiscal hole. “A legalised robbery” was how La Nacion, a newspaper, dubbed it in an editorial. ...

Read More...

[Source: The Economist: News analysis - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]

Transvestite Involved in ACORN Scandal Flashes Reporter

2008-10-23T02:09:00.005-04:00

"You mean these right here? Look for the camera. Wanna get naked?"

The congressional elections: More than Obama

2008-10-23T02:09:00.004-04:00

Democrats could dominate Congress after the elections

THE Democrats seem to have everything to cheer in this presidential race. Their candidate, Barack Obama, leads in the opinion polls, raises and spends record amounts of money and has picked up the endorsement of Colin Powell, a Republican former secretary of state. Even Mr Obama’s rival, John McCain, let slip, during an interview with Fox News on Sunday October 19th, that he expects not to be president, saying: “I've had a wonderful life. I have to go back and live in Arizona, and be in the United States Senate”.

Although most attention is paid to the presidential race, another hefty political battle is rolling on: the congressional race. The Democrats captured Congress in the 2006 elections, as voters turned against George Bush and the Republican Party. Two years have done little to soften their views. The Democrats are poised to turn small majorities in both chambers into dominant ones, perhaps realigning American politics for many years. ...

This isn't your Grandfather's Depression

2008-10-22T00:26:00.001-04:00

I don’t know about you, but I have only lived through one depression that I can remember, maybe two depending on whether I am having a good day or not

My grandfather told me, “You have to have a sense of humor,” He gave me this most important piece of advice, which I give you about how to survive a depression. Unfortunately that is all the old man left me so I try and use humor whenever I can.

You are going to need a sense of humor too, if you plan on surviving an economic depression. If you have the other kind of depression, a sense of humor is important too.

I am going to try to give you some important tips on how to survive an economic depression using as much humor as I can muster as my wife tells me she thinks I am already severely depressed. I can live with that. How about you?

Are you ready to make plans for surviving a depression no matter which type you are about to experience? I hope so. I can’t do this alone. I need your help.

Let’s not quibble about whether it is a recession or a depression that is coming; it is too depressing to think about. I am going to call it a depression because that is how I feel.

Please grab a pencil. You don’t need to write anything down, but you can chew on the eraser if you get really nervous about what you are about to learn.

Here is a list of things to do to get ready for the coming Depression/Recession:
read more

Financial Meltdown: The Greatest Transfer of Wealth in History

2008-10-17T23:12:00.001-04:00

"Admit it, mes amis, the rugged individualism and cutthroat capitalism that made America the land of unlimited opportunity has been shrink-wrapped by half a dozen short sellers in Greenwich, Conn., and FedExed to Washington, D.C., to be spoon-fed back to life by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. We’re now no different from any of those Western European semi-socialist welfare states that we love to deride."– Bill Saporito, "How We Became the United States of France," Time (September 21, 2008)

On October 15, the Presidential candidates had their last debate before the election. They talked of the baleful state of the economy and the stock market; but omitted from the discussion was what actually caused the credit freeze, and whether the banks should be nationalized as Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is now proceeding to do. The omission was probably excusable, since the financial landscape has been changing so fast that it is hard to keep up. A year ago, the Dow Jones Industrial Average broke through 14,000 to make a new all-time high. Anyone predicting then that a year later the Dow would drop nearly by half and the Treasury would move to nationalize the banks would have been regarded with amused disbelief. But that is where we are today.1

Congress hastily voted to approve Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson’s $700 billion bank bailout plan on October 3, 2008, after a tumultuous week in which the Dow fell dangerously near the critical 10,000 level. The market, however, was not assuaged. The Dow proceeded to break through not only 10,000 but then 9,000 and 8,000, closing at 8,451 on Friday, October 10. The week was called the worst in U.S. stock market history.

On Monday, October 13, the market staged a comeback the likes of which had not been seen since 1933, rising a full 11% in one day. This happened after the government announced a plan to buy equity interests in key banks, partially nationalizing them; and the Federal Reserve led a push to flood the global financial system with dollars.

The reversal was dramatic but short-lived. On October 15, the day of the Presidential debate, the Dow dropped 733 points, crash landing at 8,578. The reversal is looking more like a massive pump and dump scheme – artificially inflating the market so insiders can get out – than a true economic rescue. The real problem is not in the much-discussed subprime market but is in the credit market, which has dried up. The banking scheme itself has failed. As was learned by painful experience during the Great Depression, the economy cannot be rescued by simply propping up failed banks. The banking system itself needs to be overhauled.
read more

Lehman Approved Huge Payoffs for Execs Days Before Going Bust

2008-10-15T07:24:00.001-04:00

THE Lehman Brothers board signed off on more than $100m (£59m) in payouts to five top executives just three days before the bank went bankrupt leaving thousands of employees out of work in London.

The payoffs, approved on September 12 by the Wall Street giant’s compensation committee, included over $24m in severance packages to the collapsed firm’s top three London executives.

The committee agreed a $16.2m pay-off for Benoit Savoret, chief operating officer for Europe. This payment had been guaranteed by the firm after Savoret had turned down an approach to join a rival firm. Andy Morton, the fixed-income business head, was set for a $2m golden goodbye.

Both were forced out in a shake-up orchestrated from New York in the waning days at the troubled bank. A $5m package for Jeremy Isaacs, the European chief executive who also left, was approved as well.

The executives never received the payments – detailed in internal Lehman documents seen by The Sunday Times - because the company filed for bankruptcy protection the next working day, September 15.

According to Tony Lomas, the lead administrator, they will now be treated as unsecured creditors.

The committee also signed a $41m retention package for Eric Felder, the head of global fixed income in New York, and a $40m two-year deal for Jerry Donini, the US-based head of equities. These are understood to have been voided, replaced by new contracts under Barclays which bought the US business.

The pay deals will further inflame the debate raging about executive pay as the global financial crisis accelerates.

In the two years prior to Lehman’s collapse, the executives were generously remunerated while overseeing forays into risky commercial real-estate investments that helped to bring the company down.
Read More

Liquidating the Empire

2008-10-15T03:00:00.001-04:00

So Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon advised Herbert Hoover in the Great Crash of '29.

Hoover did. And the nation liquidated him – and the Republicans.

In the Crash of 2008, 40 percent of stock value has vanished, almost $9 trillion. Some $5 trillion in real estate value has disappeared. A recession looms with sweeping layoffs, unemployment compensation surging, and social welfare benefits soaring.

America's first trillion-dollar deficit is at hand.

In fiscal year 2008 the deficit was $438 billion.

With tax revenue sinking, we will add to this year's deficit the $200 to $300 billion needed to wipe the rotten paper off the books of Fannie and Freddie, the $700 billion (plus the $100 billion in add-ons and pork) for the Wall Street bailout, the $85 billion to bail out AIG, and $37 billion more now needed, the $25 billion for GM, Chrysler, and Ford, and the hundreds of billions Hank Paulson will need to buy corporate paper and bail out banks to stop the panic.

As Americans save nothing, where are the Feds going to get the money? Is the Fed going to print it and destroy the dollar and credit rating of the United States? Because the nations whose vaults are full of dollars and U.S. debt – China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf Arabs – are reluctant to lend us more. Sovereign wealth funds that plunged billions into U.S. banks have already been burned.

Uncle Sam's Visa card is about to be stamped "Canceled."

The budget is going to have to go under the knife. But what gets cut?
WAR ON YOU

The Really Hard-to-Swallow Truth about the Bailout

2008-10-12T20:38:00.003-04:00

Myriad cultural historians have noted the American belief that success is a sign of God's favor over the past couple of decades.

(In that time) He has had a downright lovefest with the already-rich -- so much so that the richest 400 Americans now have more money stashed away than the combined bottom 150 million Americans. Some $1.6 trillion.

This was accomplished by selling off or shipping out every available asset, from jobs to seaports, smashing usury and anti-monopoly laws, raiding the public coffers and manipulating the medium of exchange and blackmailing the peasantry regarding common needs such as health care and energy to keep their asses warm, to name a few. The ultimate coup was to convince the entire nation that the well-being of the rich, meaning the well-being of Wall Street, was indeed the common man's well-being.

All went well for a while. People went into credit card hock up to their noses in order to provide 26 percent credit card interest to Wall Street, etc. And when that became untenable, flimsy mortgages were cranked out by the millions, ensuring that every American who could hold a crayon could sign to purchase a home. To facilitate this, all sorts of shaky "mortgage instruments" were created -- balloon (sign here Jeeter, you're gonna flip it in a year and make a hundred K on this house trailer), interest only, and finally, negative-balance mortgages where you only paid part of the interest and the rest was rolled back into the principal balance. And joy of joys, you could refinance a couple of times while the inflated value of these houses was on the way up. Life was good for everybody.
read more

Bankruptcy, Theft & Fear

2008-10-11T22:48:00.001-04:00

Why does the U.S. ruling elite en masse accept passively the Rothschild kleptastrophe? The answer is simple. Our ruling elite are no longer domestic factory owners, they no longer control productive capacity in the US. There are no domestic capitalists left in the USA. They have exchanged ownership in real wealth for speculative international portfolios at the mercy of the Money Power. They sold out to the Rothshild-Rockefeller-Zhou credit monopoly and are fully invested in China ventures. They have tied their fortunes to the destruction of the United States economy and people. They go along because they have nowhere else to go, they have no feet of their own to stand on.

The domestic economy has been completely destroyed and bankrupted and the headlines of every paper write about fear that "a recession may be threatening" -- and no one comments on how useless, fruitless and juiceless is the economists abstruse techinical definition of "recession" (growth of GDP measures nothing of importance to Americans, it is a useless statistic that conceals that is no measure at all of what is happening to our standard of living, our lives, our ruin. I am reminded of the apocryphal Seventh Day Adventist who when told about 9-11 being a false-flag frame up and the economic kleptastrophe being premeditated conquest of the US by the Rothshilds, Rockefellers and other international crime families summed up the situation giving what to him was its full import: "It's worst than I feared; this means that a Sunday Law may be around the corner." Thus, for some people, nothing can really be bad unless a recession is officially declared or unless those blue laws get passed. "Not a recession," is the pillow that is being forced over your face to keep you from crying out as you are suffocated by Drs. Bernanke and Paulson.
read more

Home Safe Sales Soar As Trust In Banks Collapses

2008-10-09T23:36:00.001-04:00

Are you safe?
Financial crisis: Home safe sales soar as trust in banks collapses
Worried savers are taking their cash out of banks and investing in home safes in an attempt to beat the current banking crisis.

Sales of household safes have soared as the ongoing economic downturn has seen the markets collapse and banks pushed into hasty mergers.

Russ Reader, managing director of Leigh Safes said: "It's simple, if there is a lack of confidence in banks buy safes and put the contents on their home insurance.

"We've seen a 25 per cent increase in sales and inquiries over the last four weeks, in particular for higher-grade safes that insurance companies approve for larger sums."

Safe companies claims sales began to rise following the troubles with Northern and Rock and increased again following the Bradford and Bingle
Read More

Why Wall Street CEO’s Must Go To Jail And Pay back Billions In Bonuses

2008-10-08T23:59:00.000-04:00

“The truth is, through criminal neglect and competence, the people at the
top of these firms chose to look away, to take more risk, to enrich themselves
and to put shareholders and indeed, the country itself and the country’s
economy at risk. It is truly not only a shame, it is a crime” - 60 Minutes

Forget the blame game, forget the justified rants of anger. US taxpayers were asked to risk $700 Billion for a Wall Street bailout that may not even work - but do they really know why?

The rest of the world has been swept up in this crisis, with citizens all over the world afraid their banks are going to shut down - but do they really know why?

I’ll get to the why in a second.

In the meantime, as the world sweats, CEO’s at Lehman, Bear Stearns, AIG, Fannie, Freddie, etc., etc. each walked away with tens and even hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and stock. Lehman CEO, Richard Fuld, himself walked away with $480,000,000 (yes, 480 million) since 2000. That equates to $60,000,000 per year for a guy that drove Lehman into bankruptcy and significan
Read More

Europeans scramble to save failing banks

2008-10-06T06:21:00.002-04:00

Germany became the latest country to move to allay fears about the financial meltdown, enhancing a rescue plan for Hypo Real Estate AG and guaranteeing private bank accounts as European governments scrambled on their own Sunday to save failing banks.

Chancellor Angela Merkel said that no citizen should fear for the safety of their investments. Hours later, her government announced a new bailout package totaling 50 billion euros ($69 billion) for Hypo Real Estate, Germany's second-biggest commercial property lender.

Hypo said an original 35 billion ($48 billion) rescue plan fell apart after private lenders withdrew support, a key element to the proposal that had already been approved by the EU.

The deal was on top of the guarantees of private accounts. German Finance Ministry spokesman Torsten Albig said the unlimited guarantee covered some 568 billion euros ($785 billion) in savings and checking accounts as well as time deposits, or CDs.

At the same time, Belgian Prime Minister Yves Leterme said that France's BNP Paribas SA had committed to taking a 75-percent stake in Fortis NV.

Leterme said the Belgian and Luxembourg governments would, in turn, take a blocking minority share in BNP Paribas.

The deal came after two days of closed-door talks between the Paris-based bank, Fortis and government authorities in an effort to restore confidence in the company before markets open Monday.

In Iceland — particularly hard-hit by the credit crunch — government officials and banking chiefs were discussing a possible rescue plan for the country's overstretched commercial banks.

British treasury chief Alistair Darling said he was ready to take "pretty big steps that we wouldn't take in ordinary times" to help the country weather the credit crunch.

In the past year the government has nationalized struggling mortgage lenders Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley.

"The European banking industry is feeling the wind of default blowing from the other side of the Atlantic," said Axel Pierron, senior vice president at Celent, a Boston, Massachusetts-based financial research and consulting firm.

The erosion has also injured overall confidence and caused concern among investors, politicians and the European public.

The leaders of Germany, France, Britain and Italy met Saturday to discuss the meltdown that has leapfrogged across the Atlantic from the U.S. to Europe, but shied away from action on the scale of the massive $700 billion bailout passed by the U.S. Congress on Friday and later signed into law by President Bush.

Their failure to agree to an EU-wide plan showcased the divisions in Europe on how to deal with the crisis.

France had suggested a multibillion-euro (multibillion-dollar) EU-wide government bailout plan, but backed off after Germany said banks must find their own way out.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy's top adviser, Claude Gueant, insisted that a "common European plan" had come out of the summit.

"What is certain and what the citizens of France and Europe must know is that their (banking) establishments won't be left in difficulty," he told Europe-1 radio on Sunday.

Icelandic banks expanded rapidly after deregulation of the domestic financial market in the 1990s and now have combined foreign liabilities in excess of 100 billion euros ($138 billion) — dwarfing the tiny country's gross domestic product of 14 billion euros ($19 billion euros).

The government last week took over Iceland's third-largest bank, Glitnir, a decision that prompted major credit ratings agencies to downgrade both Iceland's four major banks and its government credit rating.

Looming large was a growing sense that the Federal Reserve and Europe's major central banks — which have been flooding euros and dollars to banks that have grown increasingly unwilling to lend money even to themselves — were ready to institute emergency cuts to their benchmark interest rates this week.

None of the banks, including the European Central Bank and Bank of England, have commented on potential rate hikes or cuts. But analysts believe the Bank of England, which meets this Thursday, will likely lower its rate below 5 percent. The ECB left its rate unchanged at 4.25 percent on Thursday, but opened the door to a rate cut.

Robert Brusca, chief economist at the New York-based Fact and Opinion Economics, said that the ECB does issue such a cut it would a be a sign "that they're really, really scared."

By MATT MOORE, AP Business Writer
Meltdown

H.R. 1424 - Congress Sells Soul to the Bankers & Gives Americans the Boot

2008-10-05T18:06:00.005-04:00

It’s wait and see after Bush signs rescue planBy JIM ABRAMS, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 18 minutes agoWASHINGTON - After two weeks of anguishing debate, Congress has passed and President Bush signed a massive plan to save the financial industry and the economy at large from an unthinkable free fall. Now, the world holds [...]

Read More...

$700 Billion Bailout Could Balloon to $5 Trillion

2008-10-05T18:06:00.004-04:00

So now they try to solve the problem by having this credit bubble actually extended and I think the $700 billion will be like a drop in the bucket because the total credit market in the U.S. is something close to $60 trillion, then you have the CDS market credit default swap of [...]

Read More...

Fifth Grader Suspended For Wearing Anti-Obama Shirt

2008-09-24T21:32:00.023-04:00

An 11-year-old boy in Colorado was suspended from school after he refused to take off a shirt that read, “Obama is a terrorist’s best friend.” His father says that the school is violating his son’s First Amendment rights.

Daxx Dalton, a fifth grader at Aurora Frontier K-8 School in Aurora, Colo., wore the homemade shirt on a day when students were asked to show their patriotism by wearing red, white and blue, according to MyFOXColorado.com.

When he was given the choice of turning the shirt inside out or being suspended, Dalton chose suspension..
[img width=250 height=187

Read More...

[Source: Ron Paul forum

Slower economic growth for Mexico

2008-09-24T21:32:00.022-04:00

A weaker American economy weighs on growth in Mexico

Few Latin American countries are as dependent on US demand as Mexico, which sells 80% of its exports to that market and some of whose industries are closely linked to those north of the border. As a result, the weaker US economy is also dragging down Mexico’s growth rate, although the extent to which it is impacted is less now than during past US recessions.

Mexico’s finance secretariat this month cut its estimate for GDP growth this year to 2.4%, down from 2.8% (which itself was a reduction from an earlier forecast of 3.7%). It cited reduced import demand in the US as the key factor. Under its 2009 budget proposal, the secretariat projects growth in 2009 of 3% (cut from 4%). Officials optimistically expect global conditions to improve next year, although they foresee a decline in output from Mexico’s critical oil sector. (They project a drop in production of 3.8%, and a fall in exports of 8.6%.) ...

Thailand elects a new prime minister

2008-09-24T21:32:00.021-04:00

Thailand's parliament elects a new prime minister

Thailand's legislature elected a new prime minister, Somchai Wongsawat of the People Power Party (PPP), on September 17th. Somchai overcame divisions within the PPP and between the ruling party and its coalition partners to win the parliamentary vote by an overwhelming margin. Yet he will almost certainly be unable to end Thailand's political crisis.

Somchai accepted his new post with a speech calling for national reconciliation, but his being prime minister has already been rejected by the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD), an anti-government movement that has occupied the grounds of government buildings in central Bangkok. To be sure, the soft-spoken former judge is a less divisive personality than his famously combative predecessor, Samak Sundaravej, who was forced to resign last week because he made paid appearances on a television cooking show during his first two months in office. But Somchai has a fatal flaw—he is the brother-in-law of the PAD's enemy-in-chief, former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. This makes him especially unacceptable to the PAD, which in any case believes that any PPP leader would be a proxy for Thaksin. ...

U.S. Army Raiders Plan Permanent Presence on Americas Streets

2008-09-24T21:32:00.020-04:00

As the burgeoning American police state continues to form, it appears that the U.S. military wants in on the action according to a recent Army Times article appearing below.The article indicates that the Army’s 3rd Infantry Divisions 1st Brigade Combat Team, also known as the ‘Raiders‘, has been assigned to U.S. Northern Command located at [...]

ShareThis

The financial crisis: The price of stability

2008-09-24T21:32:00.019-04:00

America's Treasury asks Congress for $700 billion to stabilise the markets

UNTIL this week America's authorities clung to the hope that they could tide over the financial system with a few loans until home prices stabilised and all the bad debts were accounted for. But the destruction visited on Wall Street in the past week has dashed those aspirations and forced policymakers to consider a more sweeping response. The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and AIG’s federal takeover have triggered a wholesale flight to safety that could turn illiquid institutions insolvent. Healthy corporations can no longer issue bonds. Banks can barely borrow from each other.

The federal government, having lent hundreds of billions of dollars to banks and investment banks and AIG, now thinks it must put permanent capital into the financial system to restore confidence and stop the vicious spiral. Hank Paulson, the treasury secretary, and Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, met Congressional leaders towards the end of the week. And on Saturday September 20th Mr Paulson sent a preliminary plan under which the federal government would be authorised to purchase up to $700 billion of "residential or commercial mortgages and any securities, obligations, or other instruments that are based on or related to such mortgages" originated or issued on or before Wednesday. It could buy them from any financial institution headquartered in the United States. ...

Pakistan and America: How to beat the terrorists?

2008-09-24T21:32:00.018-04:00

The leaders of America and Pakistan are set to meet, as tensions grow between the two countries

PRESIDENT George Bush and his Pakistani counterpart, Asif Zardari, were due to hold their first official meeting on Tuesday September 23rd at the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. The American president and Mr Zardari face a common challenge: a Taliban insurgency is burgeoning in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, and al-Qaeda continues to pose a threat from sanctuaries in the two countries’ border areas.

That threat was underscored by a massive suicide bomb-attack on a hotel in Islamabad at the weekend that killed at least 53 people and wounded more than 260. Footage from security cameras showed a tarpaulin-covered truck, which was laden with bricks, sand, rounds of ammunition and 600kg of high-grade TNT and RDX explosives, rumbling into the security gates of the Marriott Hotel. Hapless guards dithered after the driver first detonated a minor explosion. The main blast kicked-in four minutes later leaving nothing but a crater 30ft (9m) deep. It pulverised the landmark international hotel, which was gutted after being engulfed in flames. ...

Population Reduction NANP Conference

2008-09-13T19:55:00.009-04:00

The UN has regulated deadly poisons to be implemented into all forms of our foods. Population reduction is expected to be around 3 Billion.

ShareThis

Read More...

[Source: War On You - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]

The coming days: The week ahead

2008-09-13T19:55:00.007-04:00

Another attempt by Nicolas Sarkozy, the EU president, to resolve the stand-off with Russia

• THE French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, is scheduled to travel to Russia on Monday September 8th, in his latest attempt to push for a resolution to the stand-off in Georgia, where Russian forces remain. Mr Sarkozy, who holds the presidency of the European Union, is trying to get Russia to comply with a peace plan that he promoted in August. Russia's newly aggressive foreign policy is causing concern in Ukraine, too, where political infighting also threatens government instability. On Tuesday a summit between the EU and Ukraine is scheduled to take place.

For background, see article ...

Read More...

[Source: The Economist: News analysis - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]

Angola: African cheer

2008-09-13T19:55:00.005-04:00

Sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest oil exporter held its first elections in 16 years

IT SHOULD be a moment for Angola, and the rest of Africa, to smile. Some 8m Angolans were registered, of a population of 17m, to cast their ballots in parliamentary elections on Friday September 5th. They did so in only the second multiparty election since independence in 1975. The previous time, in 1992, a dispute over the result propelled Jonas Savimbi, then the leader of a rebel-movement-turned-political-party, to flee to the bush and restart a brutal civil war that continued until his death in 2002. This time the election was widely expected to be peaceful, and the prospect of renewed conflict is almost certainly nil.

Despite some delays, it seemed likely that a successful set of parliamentary elections would be followed by presidential and local ones next year. Nobody expected a squeaky-clean poll. Human Rights Watch, a monitoring group, says that the ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), which has held power continuously since independence, had exploited its power of incumbency to guarantee itself a victory. ...

Read More...

[Source: The Economist: News analysis - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]

Ukraine has been promised closer EU ties but not eventual membership

2008-09-13T19:55:00.003-04:00

Ukraine is promised closer ties with the EU

The Ukraine-EU summit has concluded with the EU promising a deeper relationship and the conclusion of an association agreement by March 2009. Crucially, the communique did not offer Ukraine a membership perspective. Reluctance to take this step reflects several factors: enlargement fatigue; doubts about Ukraine’s suitability; and concerns about Russia’s response to closer EU-Ukrainian ties.

The September 9th EU-Ukrainian summit promised to upgrade relations between the two parties but stopped short of offering Ukraine, which aspires to EU accession, a so-called membership perspective. The concluding joint declaration noted that the sections of a new Association Agreement (AA) covering political cooperation and justice, freedom and security were virtually complete, and that the sections on economic and sectoral co-operation were progressing well. A deep and comprehensive free-trade area, which became possible in the wake of Ukraine’s accession to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) earlier this year, will take longer. ...

Read More...

[Source: The Economist: News analysis - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]

Ron Paul / Barry Goldwater Jr. makes ballot in Louisiana

2008-09-13T19:55:00.001-04:00

We here at RPF were the first ones to scoop the news that a group in Louisiana, going under the name Louisiana Taxpayers Party, was going to put Ron Paul/Barry Goldwater Jr. on the ballot for President/Vice President. Although it is technically unoff...

Read More...

[Source: Ron Paul forum - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]

Early elections are set in Canada

2008-09-13T19:54:00.001-04:00

Canada's government calls an early election

Prolonged speculation over whether Canada’s minority Conservative government would call an early election has ended with Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s announcement that voters will go to the polls on October 14th. This is a full year ahead of the date Mr Harper proposed in legislation submitted after he assumed power in January. In putting aside that date, Mr Harper says he aims to address the “dysfunctional” parliament. However, it is more likely that yet another minority government will emerge.

Both Mr Harper and the opposition Liberal Party have recently dropped hints that they might be ready to go to the polls sooner rather than later. Mr Harper earlier insisted that his minority government would not precipitate an election before the scheduled 2009 date. But he laid down the gauntlet in early August, challenging the Liberals to pass various pieces of Conservative legislation when parliament reconvenes on September 15th, or to topple the government by joining forces with the other two opposition parties to reject the bills. ...

Read More...

[Source: The Economist: News analysis - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]

The coming days: The week ahead

2008-09-04T22:59:00.023-04:00

• EUROPEAN UNION leaders are set for an emergency meeting on Monday September 1st to review the block’s relations with Russia in light of the war in Georgia. EU leaders are also likely to discuss new aid for the war-torn regions of Georgia. More strong words of criticism for Russia’s behaviour are expected, but little else, as Europe worries about energy supplies from its vast neighbour. Russia’s government has scored a victory on the home front with its new aggressive foreign policy.

• THE Republican Party holds its four-day national convention in St Paul, Minnesota, beginning on Monday September 1st. As well as the Obama-bashing that most pundits expect, the convention will give John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, the opportunity to gauge party reaction to his surprising announcement that Sarah Palin will run beside him to become vice-president. Mr McCain wants to distance himself from the current Republican administration, so will be pleased that both George Bush and Dick Cheney are expected to skip the convention because of the probable arrival of hurricane Gustav in New Orleans.

• THE European Central Bank meets on Thursday September 4th to consider its response to deteriorating economic conditions in the euro area. Recession looms and inflation has been creeping up. The ECB may reckon that less growth will lessen the prospects of price rises; falling oil prices may ease inflation pressures too. But most think that the bank will wait until the beginning of 2009 before cutting rates to boost the economy.

• PAKISTAN is set to elect a new president on Saturday September 6th. Members of Pakistan's parliament and regional assemblies will vote for a replacement for Pervez Musharaff, who stepped down in August to avoid impeachment charges. Pakistan’s coalition government has already split over the candidacy of Asif Zardari, leader of the coalition’s main member, the Pakistan People’s Party, and favourite to become president. The coalition’s second-biggest constituent, the Pakistan Muslim League (N), walked out, in objection to Mr Zardari’s standing for a presidency with dictatorial powers. This is all an unwelcome distraction in a country facing an ever-worsening Taliban insurgency and a troubled economy.

RNC: Moles Wanted: Minneapolis City Pages advertise for recruits.

2008-09-04T22:59:00.021-04:00

In the months leading up to the Republican National Convention, the FBI-led Minneapolis Joint Terrorist Task Force actively recruited people to infiltrate vegan groups and other leftist organizations and report back about their activities. On May 21, t...

Read More...

[Source: Ron Paul forum

Japan: Get someone else

2008-09-04T22:59:00.020-04:00

Yasuo Fukuda quits as prime minister of Japan, as the country struggles to find stable leadership

IT HAD been the wish of Japan’s 72-year-old prime minister, Yasuo Fukuda of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), to outlast his hapless predecessor, Shinzo Abe, whom he privately despised. He was supposed to provide a steady hand on the helm after Mr Abe’s poor performance. But Mr Fukuda did not manage even Mr Abe’s year in office. On Monday September 1st the prime minister announced his resignation, saying bluntly that “I thought it would be better for someone else to do the job”.

From the start, he had struggled in the face of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) which had won unprecedented control of the upper house of the Diet (parliament). Important legislation was rammed through the Diet thanks only to the two-third’s majority enjoyed by the ruling coalition in the lower house. Most notable was a bill renewing the Japanese navy’s refuelling mission in the Indian Ocean, a part of the anti-terror effort in Afghanistan and thus a gauge of Japan’s willingness to play a part in the world. ...

Read More...

[Source: The Economist: News analysis -

Army opens prep school for dropouts to fill ranks

2008-09-04T22:59:00.019-04:00

FORT JACKSON, S.C. (AP) - Austin Swarner left high school to care for his mother while she fought a losing battle with cancer. Tony Brown wanted to begin supporting himself and left two classes shy of a diploma. Haelee Holden got tired of trying to make it through school while flipping burgers until 1 a.m.But [...]

ShareThis