Friday, November 28, 2008

Evidence Mumbai Attackers were Anglo-American Intel Operatives


Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
November 27, 2008

As a BBC report notes, at least some of the Mumbai attackers were not Indian and certainly not Muslim.

Pappu Mishra, a cafe proprietor at the gothic Victorian Chattrapati Shivaji Terminus railway station, described “two sprightly young men dressed in black” with AK47s who were “foreign looking, fair skinned.”

Gaffar Abdul Amir, an Iraqi tourist from Baghdad, saw at least two men who started the firing outside the Leopold Cafe. “They did not look Indian, they looked foreign. One of them, I thought, had blonde hair. The other had a punkish hairstyle. They were neatly dressed,” Amir told the BBC.

Other “men walked into the cafe, drank beer, settled their bills and walked out. Then they fished out guns from their bags and began firing.” Muslims do not drink alcohol, that is unless they are Muslims like Marwan Al-Shehhi and Mohamed Atta, who reportedly not only liked to drink but enjoyed lap dances by topless dancers as well before they supposedly hijacked planes and flew them into buildings.

Even though these firsthand accounts indicate the attackers were white, drank alcohol and displayed the steely and professional reserve of trained military men, the emerging story carried by the corporate media blames the attacks on al-Qaeda and specifically Lashkar-e-Taiba, one Arab and the other Asian. “A terrorist group with training camps in Pakistan and strong ties with al-Qaeda as well as a history of mounting attacks in India yesterday became the chief suspect behind the atrocities,” reports the Times Online, pointing to Lashkar-e-Taiba.

As the Times Online admits, Lashkar-e-Taiba is a creation of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI. It “receives considerable financial, material and other forms of assistance from the Pakistan government, routed primarily through the ISI. The ISI is the main source of LeT’s funding. Saudi Arabia also provides funds,” explains the South Asia Terrorism Portal. Lashkar-e-Taiba “also played a part in the ISI organized ‘Bosnian campaign against the Serbs,’ which was directed above the ISI by the CIA and British intelligence.”

According to Andrew G. Marshall, the ISI “has long been referred to as Pakistan’s ’secret government’ or ’shadow state.’ It’s long-standing ties and reliance upon American and British intelligence have not let up, therefore actions taken by the ISI should be viewed in the context of being a Central Asian outpost of Anglo-American covert intelligence operations.”

The presence of “foreign looking, fair skinned” commandos who calmly gunned down dozens of people after drinking a few beers indicates that the Mumbai attacks were likely the work of the Anglo-American covert intelligence operatives, not indigenous Indian Muslims or for that matter Arab al-Qaeda terrorists. The attacks prepare the ground for the break-up of Pakistan and the furtherance of destabilizing terrorism in the Middle East and Asia. The Mumbai attacks had little to do with India or the relationship between Muslim Pakistanis and Hindu Indians.

“Pakistan’s position as a strategic focal point cannot be underestimated. It borders India, Afghanistan, China and Iran,” concludes Marshall. “Destabilizing and ultimately breaking Pakistan up into several countries or regions will naturally spread chaos and destabilization into neighboring countries. This is also true of Iraq on the other side of Iran, as the Anglo-American have undertaken, primarily through Iraq, a strategy of balkanizing the entire Middle East in a new imperial project.” (See Marshall’s Divide and Conquer: The Anglo-American Imperial Project.)

It is no mistake, as well, that Barack Obama has called for action against Pakistan. “If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will,” Obama said last August.

Regardless of who occupies the White House, the global elite are determined to continue their agenda of violence and murder in order to realize order through chaos. Obama and the Democrats will spend the next four years blaming George W. Bush for what the neocons have done while making sure the same destructive policies remain in effect. It is a shell game. George Bush and Barack Obama control nothing, they are little more than front men for the New World Order.

A letter to the U.S. from Saddam Hussein

Malaysia Sun
Tuesday 25th November, 2008  


Two years ago this month Saddam Hussein was convicted of charges related to the execution of 148 Iraqi Shi'ites suspected of planning an assassination attempt against him, and was sentenced to hang. He wrote a letter to the American people just weeks before his conviction and execution.
Two years ago this month Saddam Hussein was convicted of charges related to the executions of 148 Iraqi Shi'ites suspected of planning an assassination attempt against him, and was sentenced to death by hanging. 

He was executed 2 years ago next month. He wrote a letter to the American people just weeks before his conviction and execution. The letter was collected by one of Saddam's attorney's Ramsey Clark, who in fact asked him to write the letter. It has not been widely published so as a matter of interest on the eve of the second anniversary of his execution we publish the letter in full as follows:

"To the American people:

Peace upon those who believe in peace and desire it, and the mercy of God and His blessings.

I address you in this letter from the place of my confinement, as my attempt on the basis of my moral, human, and constitutional responsibility so that no one among you might say that no one came to us with a message of peace after the war began, refuting the arguments for it and desiring peace for you and for our upright, loyal, heroic people. And as I say this, I do no know whether my brothers and comrades who are leading the Resistance outside the prison have come to you with a letter before or not. That is because the "democracy" of your leaders has prevented me since my arrest and until now from getting newspapers and magazines or hearing radio and television and has isolated me from the world and has isolated the world from me so that I might not hear or see anything from outside my place of confinement.

Is this the true face of democracy and human rights that they advocate outside America!? Or have your rulers lied about it? This includes the killing of people in prisons and jails, some of them by means of the pistols of the American investigators. Or has all of this along with other details that would turn an attentive person’s hair white been concealed from you by your officials such that you do not know the truth!?

Anyway, I address you with this letter of mine in the hope that it will reach you and that you will hear it or read it. And on the basis of my responsibility to bring the facts before people, whatever their color or nationality, for that is our duty to them, just as they have a duty to us not to accept evil.

I address you today as my attorney the eminent lawyer and Professor Ramsey Clark has asked that I write this letter of mine to you. Professor Ramsey has presented an excellent example of a humanitarian in his person and in his colleague Professor Curtis Dobler, both of whom left a positive personal impression on me. On this occasion I wish to salute their courage as they have volunteered for the task although they know the dangers that surround them in carrying out their duty, in particular after criminals have killed four of the defense attorneys.

People of America, it still seems to me that the officials in your government are still lying to you and are not giving you true explanations of the reasons that led them to embark on their aggression against Iraq. In what they have said about the reasons they have deceived, from the starting point, not only the international community, and in particular the European Community but also the peoples of America themselves, knowing beforehand that the facts were contrary to what they were declaring. Untrue is what they said, after their lies were exposed, about having been deceived by their intelligence agencies and by the stooges that they brought along to serve as their puppets in Iraq, just as old imperialism and the old empires of the 19th and 20th centuries used to do. What we are saying is based on many facts, the major ones being as follows:

1. The inspection teams – that came to Iraq in the name of the United Nations and carried out searches even of some private houses as well as government departments, presidential palaces and government documents – those teams knew that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction because most of the leading members in those teams were Americans and British and in addition they had spies and volunteers of other nationalities. Those teams searched Iraq piece by piece from one end to the other and never found any information contrary to what they and others were told by Iraqi government representatives. The inspections lasted for more than seven years. And in addition to the teams that traveled by car and on foot, they used spy planes, helicopters, and satellites in space. The American and English officials thought that this was their historic chance to strike Iraq and destroy its legitimate aspirations and the lofty cultural and scientific achievements made in the course of 35 years, making use of the information gathered by their spies in the inspection teams and making use of the so-called war on terror after the 11 September incident that struck America. They shuffled the cards to bring up the goals that they had already decided upon earlier, and these were not the goals that they publicly announced at the starting line.

It was their assessment that the unjust embargo had not destroyed Iraq’s will nor halted its legitimate aspirations to develop economically, culturally, scientifically, and as a civilization in the conditions of a new independence. They believed that Iraq had come close at that time to breaking the economic embargo as the result of the cooperation of those who cooperated with Iraq on the basis of mutual benefit and fraternal national feelings as far as the Arabs were concerned. The officials in your country thought that this was their chance to impose their will on the world by means of their control of the Middle East’s oil and its production and marketing in new ways and for new goals – those about which we spoke in and before the year 2003 – in addition to attaining one of their Zionist goals and winning support in the election. Iran and its lackeys played a dirty role in making aggression appear attractive and in facilitating its implementation.

2. The American officials did not withdraw from Iraq after they became hard pressed, but declared that the facts were contrary to what they had claimed before the invasion that took place in March and April of the year 2003. If they had been truthful when they claimed that they had been deceived as a result of the information they had been given and which they used as the cover for their invasion, and which they declared at the time was sufficient justification for the invasion – declaring at the time that it involved things that they said affected the security of the United States – then they would have withdrawn from Iraq after discovering that that information had been false. They would have apologized to the heroic Iraqi people, to the American people and to the people of the world for what they had done.

None of the Americans asked their government before the war how Iraq, a country that had still not emerged from backwardness, could threaten the security of a country like America across the Atlantic. And for that matter why would Iraq want to threaten America, which at that time had not violated the territory of Iraq. If the American officials wanted to promote the claim that Iraq’s threat was precisely involved in the opposing stances taken by Iraq and America over the Zionist occupation of the land of Palestine and other Arab land, it could be said that Iraq is not the only state that takes an opposing stance to that of America in regards to the issue, whether that be Arab states or other states in the world. Furthermore, who has authorized America to make the countries of the world tailor their policies to America’s measurements, and if they don’t oblige, then war should be waged against them? How can one understand America’s call for democracy if it does not permit a difference of opinion even in issues of a regional character, to say nothing of international ones?

Another lie was the claim of American officials that Iraq had links to what they called terrorism, although British Prime Minister Blair declared that Iraq does not have any ties to so-called terrorism and had no internationally prohibited weapons, forcing Bush to declare the same thing. Despite that, none of the important American personalities asked President Bush on what sort of rational analysis or what sort of realistic information this claim rested. Do you know, esteemed ladies and gentlemen, why they didn’t ask? Because some of your prominent personalities are directed in what they do by hidden forces that distorted the image you received of Iraq’s positions. They had been laying the groundwork for years to facilitate aggression from the start. Therefore no one asked the American officials, for example, why no Iraqi took part in the events of 11 September!? And if the participation of individuals in the attack on American targets isn’t to be taken as proof of the involvement of any country in those events, then how do you accuse a state like Iraq, the features of whose political system are known, of so-called relations with terror? How can you consider this charge to be one of only two on the basis of which aggression was launched against the people of Iraq, destroying their property and achievements and bringing their lives under daily and direct threat?

Do you know, esteemed ladies and gentlemen, that I asked one of the American officials who talked with me perhaps two weeks after my arrest, just what was it that you based those false charges on? He said that as far as the weapons of mass destruction were concerned, "we didn’t have anything to confirm what you were saying." And as for the links to terrorism, he said, because you, Saddam Hussein, did not send a letter of condolence to President Bush after the incident [of 11 September].

I smiled bitterly and told him: as regards your claim that you didn’t have confirmation of our statements, it seems that your officials lie and imagine that officials in countries around the world do not tell the truth, or that many of those who have relations with you in fact do not tell you the truth, neither when they oppose your policies nor when they agree with them. This is a dangerous matter, not only for the countries of the world but because they then pose a danger for America as well, if nobody in the world will tell America: 'this is a mistake’ and 'this is unacceptable’! And at that time when American planes were striking targets in Iraq and destroying public and private property, killing Iraqi citizens including women and children for no reason and imposing on Iraq their unjust embargo, prohibiting Iraq from importing even pencils for children to use in primary schools, what exactly is it that should obligate Saddam Hussein to send a telegram of condolences to the president of the state whose officials have committed all those crimes, unless it be out of hypocrisy and weakness? But because I am neither a hypocrite nor a weakling I didn’t send Bush a telegram of condolence. But I did agree on the telegram sent containing condolences in the name of the government of Iraq and sent by Comrade Tariq Aziz, the Deputy Prime Minister, to our friend Ramsey Clark and through him to the stricken families.

Are the great states so deluded as to imagine that whoever does not send a letter of condolence deserves that war should be waged against him, his country, and his people!? Here you see how the American officials used even your own blood to promote their reckless, aggressive policy. Is this the kind of morality that people should have? Or men? Or officials? There is nothing graver than for disasters to ravage people who have been stricken by delusions, committed wrongs, and wantonly despised the roles of others. The worst disease of the American officials who involved the Americans in war against Iraq is this.

3. After I was arrested they made vain attempts to use intimidation and threats against me. One of their generals conveyed that intimidation and host threats and tried to bargain with me, promising to let me live if I agreed to read in my own voice and sign a prepared announcement that was shown to me. That stupid announcement called on the people of Iraq and the courageous Resistance to lay down arms. They said that if I refused, my fate would be that I would be shot just like Mussolini, as my interlocutor put it. But, as you know me and would expect of me, I disdainfully refused, not even touching that dirty document with my hand and sullying myself with it. I told them if I were given the chance to address my people, I would call them to more resistance.

Seven days later, to reinforce themselves, they sent a group to talk with me. They said they were from an American University and that they wanted to engage me in a broad discussion. I agreed and I confirmed to them that Iraq didn’t have any of the things the American officials claimed and I advised them [the US] to leave Iraq quickly and apologize to the people, warning them that they were going to get what they now are facing and what they are now embroiled in – in fact, the fate I expect for them is worse than what they are facing now – and they will never have an adequate chance to pull their arms and equipment out of Iraq if the two halves of Iraq engulf them, and they will engulf them, God willing, because our people are deeply rooted and conscious. They know that our liberation can be clean and complete only with their unity, and that tolerance must be the basis for the orientations of our people within their ranks, and that wounds must be bound up, not ripped open.

I say, I told them all that at that time but they didn’t change their methods; they didn’t replace the keys of falsehood, and they are still knocking on the doors of wrong, failing to try the door of legitimacy, even though they now know. In this connection, attached to this letter are some verses from a long ode; a selection of 56 verses. [Not translated here.]

4. It is neither reasonable nor convincing that a country like America to which the doors of the intelligence agencies in the east and most of the countries of the west have been opened did not know the truth and could not know the truth. Although I am convinced and believe that many countries in the world have an interest in war or wars, she [the United States] does not have an interest in war even though she might believe she does. The contrary, in fact, is the case.

America is a big country on the other side of the Atlantic. It has developed a unique unparalleled power such that I think some people there imagine that it is on its way to attaining the crown of the world all for itself as a world empire. Have they not learned a lesson from their war in Viet Nam? The west used to promote the idea that world Communism and the Soviet bloc threatened their interests and also the security of the entire west. But despite that promotion, this was nothing but a flimsy cover. Nevertheless, America used it and wrapped itself in it until the heroic Vietnamese people expelled them by force.

As to their invasion of Iraq, it came in a situation that made the first step easy from the standpoint of the reaction of the international community because of the international balance of forces. But it came in a situation that might make it more costly that its war in Viet Nam. That is because when America was expelled from Viet Nam it did not lose its standing, or we might say it only lost a small part of its standing. But when it is expelled and routed from Iraq, which has no great power to support it directly, it will lose the fundamental basis of its standing.

In fact it has now already lost the foundation for that standing and its reputation has begun to decay. It is no longer able to wield the big stick that it formerly threatened to use. It used to accomplish more by threatening to use force than by really using force. I will go further and say that after its war in Iraq, that stick no longer frightens many people and America has come to need the silence of the smallest and simplest countries and tries to please them in order to get them to stay quiet about America’s crimes and reckless, deviant policies.

Before, many of the world’s countries used to court the United States and most countries in the world, all except a few, used to fear her threats or parried them with defensive arguments. But now Mao Zedong of fond memory is laughing in his grave because his prediction has been fulfilled and America is a paper tiger. This is by the will of the Living Eternal God, and by His agents on earth, the heroic Mujahideen in glorious, virtuous, militant, jihadist Iraq. So God bless the heroic people of Iraq and God bless the jihad and the mujahideen.

Esteemed ladies and gentlemen of the peoples of America, the time has come to an end in which greatest and best-equipped armies could scatter the organized formations of the opposing army and thereby bring a war to a close. Now you see our courageous army, our heroic people, and our Mujahideen replacing the system of organized formations with a new kind of warfare. And when the Americans on the ground become targets in the vicinity of the guns of the revolutionaries, who attack them as deadly human bombs with nothing more than their bodies filled with faith in God, American superiority is worn down over time. In fact in the near future that superiority will become a burden whose equipment will be difficult to withdraw. So, will America trust the voice of rationality and logic that calls for the preservation of what still remains, or will Satan the deceiver and the hate-filled supporters of Zionism keep pushing the Americans until the waves swallow them and they sink to the depths of the raging sea?

Who, after all, appointed the American government to be the world policeman, to form the world in the mold that it likes, giving national orders to the countries of the world?

Saddam Hussein, ladies and gentlemen, is an honorable patriot and an honest man. He is a statesman resolute in implementing the law, just, but benevolent. He loves his people and his nation. He is straightforward, doesn’t double-cross or deceive. He speaks the truth even against himself. Do tyrants like Bush like such characteristics? If he were a person like De Gaulle or even like Reagan, perhaps he would understand them, or at least would not abhor them. But I must say to you that your country will discover more, esteemed ladies and gentlemen. It has lost his reputation and his standing. Indeed the American who used to travel around the world respected and safe and welcomed wherever he went, is now no longer able to step outside America without a mine detector. And the State Department issues warnings for you constantly about what world regions are dangerous to American lives

It was American officials and their polices themselves that have created an atmosphere of anti-American hatred in the world by means of their arrogant behavior, their haughty aggressive attitude, their lack of respect for international law and the security of the world – including the security of my Arab Nation through their support for the Zionist entity in Palestine – and other world and human issues.

Today you are in a bad predicament with the world and nobody can rescue you but yourselves. If you reform, you will open for the world and for yourselves a new opportunity. But if you are heedless, that is your decision. What you need is free and fair competition and peace in order to have security.

The years that followed the 18th century had long gone when they came as invaders to the Middle East to bring back memories of things that awaken and arouse. The Middle East, and the Arab homeland in particular, was the cradle of prophets and messengers from God. Is the cradle of the prophets, where the prophets are buried in their tombs, also the home of devils and their mirror images – the malicious invaders?

We have believed, and our faith was suited to us, then came the Zionists with a devil for a guide. They stormed in on us as invaders, unjust.
The did not stop their advance nor sit still,
Their diabolical patron has prepared their dilemma. But as for us, we have the Merciful God as Patron.

People of America, despite the crimes your government inflicted on our people, our Arab Nation and humanity, the people of Iraq – and I mean by that the Iraqis, not those with split loyalties who prefer to serve foreigners rather than their own people – I say the free people of Iraq even in their present circumstances are not thinking about their destiny alone but about the destiny of others wherever it’s possible to create a solution that treats a painful problem.

On this basis I said to some Americans when I was in my prison, why don’t you come to an agreement with the Resistance to designate a country with a charter and power to which the Resistance can hand over those American soldiers whom they capture, rather than executing them as currently is said to be taking place. In fact the extent to which the Resistance is responsible for this is unknown, but people who are equitable know that America has not abided by international law in any of its activities in Iraq, including the Geneva Conventions regarding prisoners and detainees. The Resistance has no secure place in Iraq where prisoners can be kept. So whether the Resistance is at all responsible, or whether the responsibility lies with some other parties that have no connection to the Resistance, the justification for it is that there is no secure place for prisoners to be kept.

Therefore in order to fulfill humanitarian needs and to eliminate the justification [for killing prisoners] I make this proposal to you and to the national Resistance and to anyone concerned, and I make this with the best of intentions. If you accept it and respect the Geneva Conventions then the argument of those who kill rather than detain prisoners will have vanished. But if your government does not accept it, then it will bear the responsibility for refusing and for whatever befalls our people and the heroic Resistance as a result of your government’s violation of international law. This will be particularly true if the number of American prisoners increases in the future, and we think that it will increase. Or is it that your government can’t see anything until it feels it?

Esteemed ladies and gentlemen, the time has come for your government to look at all people as equals before international law regardless of the size of the countries to which they belong. Whoever violates international law in his policies and the behavior of his army, he alone must bear the consequences for that policy. And if his policies are not in accordance with the letter of international law, he has no right to call others to protect his rights in accordance with that law.

Esteemed ladies and gentlemen, whoever missed his or her chance to take action to try to prevent the war still has a chance to act to end it and bring back peace and freedom to Iraq in accordance with the choice of its people without foreign interference by anyone whoever that may be.

People of America, I address you not from weakness nor as a supplicant. I, my people, my brothers, comrades, and my nation – we address you on the basis of our moral and human responsibility. I tell you that officials whom you know, and first among them your President, lied to you and deceived you and tricked you using the media that portrayed Iraq to you as incorrigible, and Saddam Hussein as a hateful dictator, and that his people hate him and that his people are just waiting for their chance to get at him. Some of them just wallowed in lying falsehood to the point that they openly declared that the Iraqis would meet the invading armies with roses and celebration.

I know that lots of people don’t do a lot of analysis; they don’t have the time or the ability or the desire to do careful assessments when presented with falsified news so as to uncover the truth. The American peoples had no chance to inquire, for example: why, if the people of Iraq hate Saddam Hussein, how he managed to defeat the Iran of Khomeini after eight years in the aggressive war that Iran sought to impose on us under the slogan of exporting the revolution beginning with Iraq? People of America, the victory over Khomeini’s Iran was not due to the short length of the war, but came only after eight years of grinding warfare in which tens of thousands fell and hundreds of thousands on the Iranian side.

Then if Saddam Hussein were a dictator, why did he establish a parliament with elections for the first time in the year 1980 during wartime, when there had been no parliament in Iraq since 1958? If he and his government were dictators, how could he visit schools, universities, towns, and villages and spend the night with the people wherever the sun went down? How could he travel around and lead at the battle front at night and during the day even in the trenches in the front lines on the battlefield among the Muslim soldiers!?

Yes, esteemed ladies and gentlemen, your government deceived you, and you, or rather most of you, had no chance to inquire of themselves or of others in order to discover the truth because the Zionists in the lobby who advocated the war together with some of the centers of power were deceiving you and tricking you, hiding from your eyes the real truth, exchanging the facts for falsified and slanted information. Last but not least in this regard, if Saddam Hussein were a dictator hated and despised by his people, how is it that his people endured him and why was he chosen President by referendum?

People of America, the misfortunes that have afflicted you and afflicted our Arab Nation and within it our heroic Iraqi people – including the breakdown of America’s standing and reputation – were only caused by the reckless behavior of your government and by pressure from Zionism and power centers that influenced the government to commit those crimes and scandalous actions for specific ends that have nothing to do with the interest of the American peoples. The massacres and blood that now flows in the streets and countryside of Iraq in torrents – the responsibility for that falls on America before all others. You know, or rather you have now come to learn, that neither the stooges whom the American forces brought in on board their aircraft or as shamefaced presents aboard their tanks, nor Iran, which pushed and still pushes forward those who support it and whom they support, would be able to cause the bloodshed, or the destruction of the honor, and property of our people and our state had not America undertaken the aggression and invasion and issued the orders. It is still issuing orders in the Green Zone. Therefore America bears the burden of all those crimes and outrages. So, will you put an end to what is going on by using the methods of direct truth without evasion and digression? Or will you invite the machine of death to continue to eat away at the flesh of Iraqis and the flesh of Americans without doing anything to resolve this?

It is your historical responsibility, esteemed ladies and gentlemen. If you reform, you could save what remains of the standing and reputation of America and its legitimate interests. If you do nothing, you will be keeping silent over something evil. "God grant us patient perseverance and let us die as Muslims." [Qur’an, 7:126]

People of America, the wars that your government promotes in the world – one of them being the war in Iraq – with input from certain centers of power – which you know better than we – are not in the interests of the American people. You know better than many how you paid in blood so that you might liberate yourselves from British colonialism and after that how the United States of America was unified and what rivers of blood were shed in order for that to come about. So, esteemed ladies and gentlemen, how do you accept this interference that abases America before it abases Iraq? How can you accept not only the invasion but becoming mired in the internal affairs of Iraq? You know that Iraq is a land of prophets, messengers, and righteous figures. You know that Baghdad is the fourth holiest city in the Arab homeland – after Mecca, al-Madinah, and Jerusalem – in the sight of all of the Islamic world and all of our Arab Nation. How can one imagine that Iraq could reconcile itself to colonial rule, even if it comes, this time, under another name and with other slogans? Save your country, esteemed ladies and gentlemen, and leave Iraq.

Peace.

God is greatest. God is greatest.

[signed]

Saddam Hussein,
President of the Republic of Iraq and Commander in Chief of the Mujahid Armed Forces.

7 July 2006."

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Citigroup collapses! Banking Shutdown Possible

by Dr. Martin D. Weiss
Global Reasearch


It pains me deeply to announce that, despite the massive government rescue, yesterday’s collapse of Citigroup could ultimately lead to a shutdown of the global banking system.

For many years, I hoped this would never happen, and I thought we might be able to avoid it.

Indeed, that’s why, my firm, Weiss Research, first began rating the safety of the nation’s banks in the early 1980s, and why I later founded Weiss Ratings, a separate subsidiary dedicated exclusively to safety ratings — on thousands of banks, insurance companies, brokerage firms, mutual funds and stocks.

I subsequently sold the Weiss Ratings subsidiary to Jim Cramer’s organization, TheStreet.com; and today, my former company is called TheStreet.com Ratings. I continue to own and run Weiss Research, Inc., the publisher of Money and Markets. Moreover, Weiss Research continues to review all financial institutions for their safety; and to support that effort, we acquire TheStreet.com’s ratings and data for our analysts.

For you, the benefit is that you can now get these independent and accurate ratings for free on the Internet. Plus, you can check our free updated lists of the strongest and weakest bank and insurance companies on our Money and Markets website.

My philosophy was that, to find safety, your primary task was to identify the weak institutions, move your money to the strong ones, and then monitor them periodically to make sure your money was still safe. If all of us — savers, investors, bankers and banking regulators — used this kind of objective data to make rational, informed decisions, we would reward the safest institutions and help prevent the growth of the riskiest. Not only would we be safer individually, but our banking system as a whole would be more solid.

Unfortunately, however, that’s not how history has unfolded.

(read full article)

Get ready for attack on Pakistan!

Intelligence chiefs were expecting Al-Qaeda spectacular

Western intelligence services have been expecting an al-Qaeda spectacular terrorist attack in this crucial period between the end of President George Bush’s administration and the succession of Barack Obama.

Signals intelligence “chatter” in recent weeks indicated that Osama bin Laden’s terrorist organisation might be plotting an attack “to grab the headlines” before Mr Obama takes over in the White House on January 20.

British security and intelligence sources said there had been increasing concern, particularly in the United States, that a “terrorist spectacular” was on the cards.

(read full article)


Mumbai Attacks To Be Blamed On Pakistan?

Up to 100 dead in coordinated terror, India blamed previous attacks on Pakistan

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Coordinated attacks across Mumbai, India’s financial capital, which have killed up to a hundred people and injured hundreds more, are likely to be blamed on a terrorist organization linked to the Pakistani ISI, providing further justification for controversial U.S. bombings inside Pakistani territory and heightened rhetoric against Pakistan on behalf of President elect Barack Obama.

Terrorists armed with AK-47’s and grenades conduced a series of rampages on hotels, restaurants and public transport facilities today, killing around 80 and injuring over 250 people. Initial reports that terrorists had seized western hostages were later dismissed by Indian government officials.

With the corporate media desperate to pin the blame in order to score much needed propaganda points for the ailing war on terror, suspicion is likely to fall on Pakistan, a country that President elect Barack Obama openly threatened during his presidential campaign.


The bombings in Mumbai will also likely silence questions about controversial U.S. bombing raids inside Pakistani territory aimed at terrorists, strikes that have repeatedly killed innocent civilians.

It is commonly asserted that the Pakistani ISI helps fund and train terrorists.

Journalist Stephen Schwartz notes that several terrorist and criminal groups are “backed by senior officers in the Pakistani army, the country’s ISI intelligence establishment and other armed bodies of the state.” Author Daniel Byman states, “Pakistan is probably today’s most active sponsor of terrorism.”

Indeed, Indian police claimed that the Pakistani ISI directed the July 2006 train bombing in Mumbai which killed 186 people, which was blamed on the Islamist militant group Lashkar-e-Toiba, an organization based in Pakistan. Look for the same organization or an affiliated group to be blamed for today’s attacks.

As Bloomberg reports today, “The government has previously blamed terrorist attacks on organizations linked to foreign powers, without offering evidence or making arrests. Local media often blame the attacks on groups backed by Pakistan or Bangladesh, without identifying the security officials who provided the information.”

With shrill corporate media outfits begging for a scapegoat to be used as war on terror propaganda, it won’t be long before an Al-Qaeda-Pakistan link is claimed. Indeed, early reports already state that the attacks are “thought to be linked to Al-Qaeda,” offering no evidence and in spite of the fact that an unknown group, Deccan Mujahideen, has clamed responsibility for the massacre. The Deccan Plateau is a large plateau in India, suggesting this is where the terrorist group was based.

Gates Announces Plan to Make National Guard a Homeland “Operational Force”

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
November 25, 2008

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has ordered the Pentagon to conduct a “broad review” to determine if the military and the National Guard and Reserve can “adequately deal with domestic disasters,” including “a catastrophic attack on the country,” according to the Associated Press. Gates’ order falls on the heels of an earlier report released by the Commission on the National Guard and Reserves urging the Pentagon to “use the nation’s citizen soldiers to create an operational force that would be fully trained, equipped and ready to defend the nation."

Gates and the Pentagon are obviously in the process of implementing the John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007. The act changed federal law so that the Governor of a state is no longer the sole commander in chief of their state’s National Guard during emergencies within the state, a direct violation of Article I, Section 10 and Clause 3 of the Constitution. As original envisioned by the founders, who rightfully feared standing armies, active and reserve military organizations were to be limited in size and scope and complemented by citizen-soldiers. The the John Warner Defense Authorization Act has finally put to rest the idea that these citizen-soldiers will not be federalized.

It can be argued that the Warner bill is simply a culmination of earlier piecemeal violations, including the Militia Act of 1792, the Insurrection Act of 1807, and in particular the Militia Act of 1903, the latter allowing for the creation of the National Guard of the United States as the primary organized reserve force for the U.S. armed forces. Gates is simply announcing a fiat accompli – the merging of the Department of Defense and the National Guard into one cohesive force that will be deployed domestically in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act which substantially limited the powers of the federal government to use the military for law enforcement. In the past, maintaining order during domestic disasters was the responsibility of local and state law enforcement, although the National Guard was on occasion called in cases of civil unrest.

Gates plan for a review of the National Guard’s role is especially troublesome in the wake of the Pentagon’s announcement in September that the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team would be deployed domestically by Northcom beginning October 1.

“Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks,” the Army Times reported on September 30. The battle-hardened brigade, straight out combat duty in Iraq, will engage in “specialty tasks” usually reserved for local law enforcement. In addition, the brigade will use “the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded… designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them,” an especially chilling prospect in light of growing predictions of civil unrest as the economy worsens.

  • A d v e r t i s e m e n t

If the Pentagon plan is realized, the National Guard will receive training for “homeland defense and civil support missions, as opposed to the warfighting now consuming them.” The Associated Press admits Gates’ effort is designed to “integrate reservists into the modern day military and consider treating them on a more equal basis to the active duty troops.”

Arnold L. Punaro, former chairman of the commission, welcomed Gates’ recommendations and declared that improving the military’s role in homeland defense and enhancing the clout of the reserves “represent a historic break with the past.” It also represents a “historic break ” with the Constitution of the United States.

Gates and the Pentagon realize the United States does not face a serious external terrorist threat. Instead, it faces in the not too distant future a reaction on the part of the citizenry to the banker engineered deconstruction of the economy and the social and political chaos that will undoubtedly follow. The National Guard, along with the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team and other military troops, will use the “nonlethal package… designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals” mentioned by the Army Times.

Gates’ “operational force that would be fully trained, equipped and ready to defend the nation” has nothing to do with Osama bin Laden and his cave-dwelling terrorists — or another Hurricane Katrina for that matter — but it has everything to do with preventing the people from rising up and taking back their country.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Free Lakota Bank - Sovereignity trough Economic Independence

Money is made possible only by those that produce

A New System of Banking

The Free Lakota Bank is the world's first non-reserve, non-fractional bank that issues, accepts for deposit, and circulates REAL money...silver and gold. All of our deposits are liquid, meaning they can be withdrawn at any time in minted rounds.

Some may confuse our economic structure with isolationism...which it is not. Since we currently produce much more than we consume, we have the right to decide what medium of exchange to accept for our effort. And so, we accept only value for value. Across our great land, over thousands of tribes and merchants participate in our system of trade. We invite others to trade with us and bring value back into our transactions.

A New Standard of value

"Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion...when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing...when you see your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you...when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice...you may know that your society is doomed."

"Atlas Shrugged"

At the Free Lakota Bank, we issue, circulate and accept for deposit only AOCS-Approved silver and gold currencies. Silver & gold are a store of value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Since we deal only in real money, we do not participate in any central bank looting schemes.

Money is made possible only by those who produce. Paper is not money, instead merely a promise to pay. We hope that some day the rest of the world will awaken from the American Dream: the dream that a person can sustain life by consuming more than producing. We call it the American Dream because you must be asleep to believe it. Well, that dream now has a silver lining; as people discover the dream is really a nightmare, the only solution is a return to value: value that comes from production and honest trade.

Visit Free Lakota Bank


Also read:

Lakota withdraw from treaties, declare independence from U.S.

The Lakota Sioux Indians, whose ancestors include Sitting Bull, Red Cloud and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from all treaties their forefathers signed with the U.S. government and have declared their independence. A delegation delivered the news to the State Department earlier this week.

Portions of Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming comprise Lakota country, and the tribe says that if the federal government doesn't begin diplomatic discussions promptly, liens will be filed on property in the five-state region. Here's the news release.

"We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us," said Russell Means, a longtime Indian rights activist. "This is according to the laws of the United States, specifically Article 6 of the Constitution," which states that treaties are the supreme law of the land.

"It is also within the laws on treaties passed at the Vienna Convention and put into effect by the U.S. and the rest of the international community in 1980. We are legally within our rights to be free and independent,"
(read full story)

Visit The Republic of Lakota website


Russel Means

The L.A. Times has called him the most famous American Indian since Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. His indomitable sense of pride and leadership has become embedded in our national character. Today, his path has brought him to Hollywood, thus enabling him to use different means to communicate his vital truths. Through the power of media, his vision is to create peaceful and positive images celebrating the magic and mystery of his American Indian heritage. In contemplating the fundamental issues about the world in which we live, he is committed to educating all people about our most crucial battle - the preservation of the earth.

Albuquerque police want ad: We need snitches

'Make some extra cash! Drug use and criminal record OK'

updated 5:03 p.m. ET Nov. 22, 2008

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - The Albuquerque Police Department has turned to the want ads for snitches.

An ad this week in the alternative newspaper The Alibi asks "people who hang out with crooks" to do part-time work for the police.

It reads in part: "Make some extra cash! Drug use and criminal record OK."

Capt. Joe Hudson says police received more than 30 responses in two days. He says one tip was a "big one" but wouldn't elaborate.

An informant whose tip helps officers arrest a drug dealer could earn $50. A tip about a murder suspect could bring up to $700.

It's not the first time department has run ads. In a program 10 years ago, police received so many calls they turned the phones off.

Documents needing a broader circulation

by Denis Jones

The Yoga of Life

The Group of Thirty has recently published a 249-page- US$95 report entitled The Structure of Financial Supervision: Approach and Challenges in a Global Marketplace. This report discusses supervision principles, instability, rescues, and independence. The report started in July, 2007 with a 17-jurisdiction review of financial regulations, saying “Today, those issues are even more salient and important for national and international financial supervisors and policymakers as they seek to restore financial stability…We hope it will contribute to the international dialogue on the key matter of supervisory architecture.” See also, The Geithner-Zhou Connection.

National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends 2025 Report U.S. economic and political clout will decline over the next two decades and the world will be more dangerous, with food and water scarce and advanced weapons plentiful, U.S. spy agencies projected. The National Intelligence Council analysis "Global Trends 2025" also said the current financial crisis on Wall Street is just the first phase of a global economic reordering..

Status of Forces Agreement - SOFA This is an unofficial translation from the Arabic of the agreement between Iraq and the United States for the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq.

THE ANTI-BANK DEMOCRAT - By an Association of Democrats of Dutchess County - 1842 Oh, for the good ol' days, when democrats had principles.

Atmospheric brown clouds stretch from Dubai to Shanghai, intensifying global warming, reduce crop yields by blocking sunlight,and contribute to extreme weather that also hurts agriculture. The polluted clouds come from burning fossil fuels.

U.S. National Intelligence Estimate - Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Abilities This is the document that you are not meant to see. The Bushies and "anonymous senior officials" vowed that the NIE would not be allowed to enter the national debate on this issue and that they would ignore it and go on insisting that Iran has a weapons program.

Towards a New Blast Zone: Washington D.C.'s next-generation hunting forest. You do want to live outside the blast zone, don't you?

World Bank Unprecedented Crisis Email 07/22/08. This is the original internal email, which notifies World Bank staff of the security failure within the World Bank's computer systems.

Comptroller of the Currency Quarterly Report of bank trading and derivative activities. If you want to see why JP Morgan is next to go down, read this.

Building a North American Community published by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). The CFR report connects the dots between the Bush administration's actual policy on illegal immigration and the drive to create the North American Union.

The Seven Habits of Highly Ineffective Terrorists Most counterterrorism policies fail, not because of tactical problems, but because of a fundamental misunderstanding of what motivates terrorists in the first place. If we're ever going to defeat terrorism, we need to understand what drives people to become terrorists in the first place.

Investigation and Prosecution of Illegal Money Laundering: A Guide to the Bank Secrecy Act Written and published by the Criminal Division of the Justice Department, this is the apparently identical version published by the IRS for its staff. IRS and Justice have long since stopped voluntarily releasing publications that reveal their tactics and inner workings.

Strategic Trends A view of the future, as seen by the Development, Concepts and Doctrine Center, of the UK Ministry of Defense

US Treasury Strategic Directions 2009 through 2011 (July,2008) from the Office of Intelligence and Analysis

Broken Laws Medical Evidence of Torture by US Personnel and Its Impact

No Defense: Soldier Violence Against Palestinian Detainees

Mc Cain POW Interview by a Cuban psychiatrist, in Hanoi, 1970 (translated from Spanish)

Songbird John McCain 'Sang Like a Canary' to the North Vietnamese -Material Supplied by Colonel Ted Guy, John McCain's SRO at the POW prison

Nicolas Sarkozy - CIA agent at the presidency of the French Republic

Russia's 2020 Strategic Economic Goals

A Resolute Strategy On Georgia

Safety of collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), near Geneva

US State Department Telephone Directory - Give Condi a call !

Requisite documents for renouncing US citizenship - Vote with your feet.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights The UN General Assembly called upon all Member countries to publicize the text of the Declaration and "to cause it to be disseminated, displayed, read and expounded principally in schools and other educational institutions, without distinction based on the political status of countries or territories." It is the most translated document on earth and is the standard of rights due to each citizen of the world, though it is largely unknown in the USA, where people are losing their 'civil' rights.

Records of the Rosenberg Grand Jury Transcripts Contains the voices of an earlier American age emerged fresh and harsh in more than 900 pages of secret grand-jury testimony from the defining espionage case of the Cold War.

Closing Guantanamo From Bumper Sticker to Blueprint

Deep Events and the CIA's Global Drug Connection

Global Water Futures A roadmap for future policy

The Rising Intensity of Conflict 2001 - 2007

The "Future Group" set up by the Council of the European Union include a range of highly controversial measures including new technologies of surveillance, enhanced cooperation with the United States and harnessing the "digital tsunami". In the words of the EU Council presidency: "Every object the individual uses, every transaction they make and almost everywhere they go will create a detailed digital record. This will generate a wealth of information for public security organisations, and create huge opportunities for more effective and productive public security efforts."

The Transparency International CPI measures the perceived levels of public-sector corruption in a given country and is a composite index, drawing on different expert and business surveys. The 2008 CPI scores 180 countries (the same number as the 2007 CPI) on a scale from zero (highly corrupt) to ten (highly clean).

GM crops 'to be grown in secret'

GM crops 'to be grown in secret'
GM food trials in this country have been affected by vandalism Photo: STEPHEN HIRD

Trials could also be conducted away from the public in the Government's Porton Down military research site in Salisbury, Wiltshire, it is claimed.

There are currently no GM food trials underway in the country and the more than 50 that have been conducted since 2000 have been affected by vandalism. Opponents of GM benefit from current rules, which dictate that all trials must be disclosed on a Government website.

However, a review of security arrangements for trials has been ordered by Hilary Benn, the Environment Secretary and Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary.

The Independent reported that ministers are preparing to scrap the disclosure rule.

A Government source told the newspaper: "We need to review the security arrangements. The rules are a charter for people who want to stop the experiments. A lot of information has to be put in the public domain and that makes it very easy for people to trash them."

Mr Benn said: "We need to see if GM foods have a contribution to make, and we won't know the answer about their environmental impact unless we run controlled experiments. It's important to go with the science."

Lord Mandelson acted to loosen rules on GM licensing in his previous job as EU Trade Commisioner, and it is thought he favours a relaxation of the conditions in Britain.

(read full article)

Citibank Scam: Why is the U.S. Bailing Out an United Arab Emirates Owned Bank?

Rising defaults on home loans led Citigroup to post a $2.5 billion loss today, but the earnings report still beat Wall Street expectations and shares for the company were expected to advance to today.

Citi mideast
Funds from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait have all invested in U.S. financial institutions.
(AP/ABC News)

As Citi reported its results, a Saudi prince was likely playing close attention. The nation's biggest banking firm counts as one of its top stakeholders Prince Alwaleed bin Talal.

As of last year, the prince owned more than $3 billion in Citigroup shares through his company, Kingdom Holding Company. In January, he was one of eight investors to buy a total of $12.5 billion in Citigroup securities.

The prince's interest in U.S. bank investments is nothing new — he began investing in Citi in 1991 — but this year, as banks scrambled for capital, several Middle Eastern funds have followed bin Talal's lead with sizeable investments of their own in American financial firms … and that makes some Americans uneasy.

"Americans should be able to have ownership of their country and not depend on international resources to bail them out," said Stephanie Weeks, a New York resident and a customer of Citigroup-owned Citibank.

Monday, November 24, 2008

The Ten Worst Corporations of 2008

by Robert Weissman

The financial meltdown and economic crisis illustrated that corporations will destroy even themselves in search of profit. 

2008 marks the 20th anniversary of Multinational Monitor's annual list of the 10 Worst Corporations of the year.

In the 20 years that we've published our annual list, we've covered corporate villains, scoundrels, criminals and miscreants. We've reported on some really bad stuff - from Exxon's Valdez spill to Union Carbide and Dow's effort to avoid responsibility for the Bhopal disaster; from oil companies coddling dictators (including Chevron and CNPC, both profiled this year) to a bank (Riggs) providing financial services for Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet; from oil and auto companies threatening the future of the planet by blocking efforts to address climate change to duplicitous tobacco companies marketing cigarettes around the world by associating their product with images of freedom, sports, youthful energy and good health.

But we've never had a year like 2008.

The financial crisis first gripping Wall Street and now spreading rapidly throughout the world is, in many ways, emblematic of the worst of the corporate-dominated political and economic system that we aim to expose with our annual 10 Worst list. Here is how.

Improper political influence: Corporations dominate the policy-making process, from city councils to global institutions like the World Trade Organization. Over the last 30 years, and especially in the last decade, Wall Street interests leveraged their political power to remove many of the regulations that had restricted their activities. There are at least a dozen separate and significant examples of this, including the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, which permitted the merger of banks and investment banks. In a form of corporate civil disobedience, Citibank and Travelers Group merged in 1998 - a move that was illegal at the time, but for which they were given a two-year forbearance - on the assumption that they would be able to force a change in the relevant law. They did, with the help of just-retired (at the time) Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who went on to an executive position at the newly created Citigroup.

Deregulation and non-enforcement: Non-enforcement of rules against predatory lending helped the housing bubble balloon. While some regulators had sought to exert authority over financial derivatives, they were stopped by finance-friendly figures in the Clinton administration and Congress - enabling the creation of the credit default swap market. Even Alan Greenspan concedes that that market - worth $55 trillion in what is called notional value - is imploding in significant part because it was not regulated.

Short-term thinking: It was obvious to anyone who cared to look at historical trends that the United States was experiencing a housing bubble. Many in the financial sector seemed to have convinced themselves that there was no bubble. But others must have been more clear-eyed. In any case, all the Wall Street players had an incentive not to pay attention to the bubble. They were making stratospheric annual bonuses based on annual results. Even if they were certain the bubble would pop sometime in the future, they had every incentive to keep making money on the upside.

Financialization: Profits in the financial sector were more than 35 percent of overall U.S. corporate profits in each year from 2005 to 2007, according to data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Instead of serving the real economy, the financial sector was taking over the real economy.

Profit over social use: Relatedly, the corporate-driven economy was being driven by what could make a profit, rather than what would serve a social purpose. Although Wall Street hucksters offered elaborate rationalizations for why exotic financial derivatives, private equity takeovers of firms, securitization and other so-called financial innovations helped improve economic efficiency, by and large these financial schemes served no socially useful purpose.

Externalized costs: Worse, the financial schemes didn't just create money for Wall Street movers and shakers and their investors. They made money at the expense of others. The costs of these schemes were foisted onto workers who lost jobs at firms gutted by private equity operators, unpayable loans acquired by homeowners who bought into a bubble market (often made worse by unconscionable lending terms), and now the public.

What is most revealing about the financial meltdown and economic crisis, however, is that it illustrates that corporations - if left to their own worst instincts - will destroy themselves and the system that nurtures them. It is rare that this lesson is so graphically illustrated. It is one the world must quickly learn, if we are to avoid the most serious existential threat we have yet faced: climate change.

Of course, the rest of the corporate sector was not on good behavior during 2008 either, and we do not want them to escape justified scrutiny. In keeping with our tradition of highlighting diverse forms of corporate wrongdoing, we include only one financial company on the 10 Worst list. Here, presented in alphabetical order, are the 10 Worst Corporations of 2008.

(read the list)

Change: Timothy Geithner, (Fed, IMF, Kissinger Associates, CFR, BIS) Nominated for U.S. Treasury Secretary

Timothy F. Geithner became the ninth president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on November 17, 2003. In that capacity, he serves as the vice chairman and a permanent member of the Federal Open Market Committee, the group responsible for formulating the nation’s monetary policy.

Mr. Geithner joined the Department of Treasury in 1988 and worked in three administrations for five Secretaries of the Treasury in a variety of positions. He served as Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs from 1999 to 2001 under Secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers.

He was director of the Policy Development and Review Department at the International Monetary Fund from 2001 until 2003. Before joining the Treasury, Mr. Geithner worked for Kissinger Associates, Inc.

Mr. Geithner graduated from Dartmouth College with a bachelor’s degree in government and Asian studies in 1983 and from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies with a master’s in International Economics and East Asian Studies in 1985. He has studied Japanese and Chinese and has lived in East Africa, India, Thailand, China, and Japan.

Mr. Geithner serves as chairman of the G-10’s Committee on Payment and Settlement Systems of the Bank for International Settlements. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Group of Thirty.

He and his wife, Carole Sonnenfeld Geithner, have two children.

(read full article)

Cost of Bankster Bait and Switch Now $7.4 Trillion

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
November 24, 2008

“The U.S. government is prepared to lend more than $7.4 trillion on behalf of American taxpayers, or half the value of everything produced in the nation last year, to rescue the financial system since the credit markets seized up 15 months ago,” reports Bloomberg. “The unprecedented pledge of funds includes $2.8 trillion already tapped by financial institutions in the biggest response to an economic emergency since the New Deal of the 1930s.”






OTN covers the End the Fed demonstration outside the Dallas Federal Reserve building on November 22nd, 2008.


It is not, however, a response to an economic emergency. It is brazen grand larceny conducted in broad daylight. It is financial terrorism and the bankster engineered TARP is the equivalent of the Patriot Act that allows the government and Wall Street to get away with the biggest heist in modern history. Paulson and his co-conspirators rammed their bank robbery bill through Congress with threats of martial law and dire warnings of a financial crash. Now they are cleaning out the till with precision as Congress and the American people stand dumbfounded on the sidelines.

“When Congress approved the TARP on Oct. 3, Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson acknowledged the need for transparency and oversight,” Bloomberg continues. “Now, as regulators commit far more money while refusing to disclose loan recipients or reveal the collateral they are taking in return, some Congress members are calling for the Fed to be reined in.”

It should be noted that the amount of money pledged is equivalent to $24,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. It’s nine times what the U.S. has spent so far on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Congressional Budget Office figures. It could pay off more than half the country’s mortgages.

Simply reigning in the private Federal Reserve will not put an end to the bank robbery. In fact, the criminal Federal Reserve is responsible for the current economic crisis. The Federal Reserve Bank, through its inflation of the money supply and the distortion of free markets, engineered the crisis. As Alex Jones told OTN on the weekend (see video), the international banksters have cut off liquidity by design in order the bankrupt the country and implode the economy. It is a bankster scheme engineered to consolidate wealth and buy up assets — banks, insurance companies, roads, infrastructure — for pennies on the dollar.

  • A d v e r t i s e m e n t

Last week we were told the in-coming Obama administration will nominate New York Fed boss Timothy Geithner for Treasury secretary. Geithner currently manages the bankster bailout from his New York office, thus demonstrating that the looting will continue under the “change” and “yes we can” president.

Congress is finally coming around, albeit a day late and several billion dollars short, as usual. “The backlash has begun already. Congress is taking a lot of hits from their constituents because they got snookered on the TARP big time. There’s a lot of supposedly smart people who look to be totally incompetent and it’s all going to fall on the taxpayer,” Bob Eisenbeis, chief monetary economist at Vineland, New Jersey-based Cumberland Advisors Inc., told Bloomberg.

It appears Obama will further bankrupt the nation with an ill-conceived “stimulus package,” said to top $700 billion, although Obama’s senior economic adviser, Austan Goolsbee, refused to reveal numbers. In addition, Obama has promised to keep the bankster giveaway on track.

“On Monday, Mr. Obama will likely offer for the first time an explicit pledge to honor all commitments already made by the Bush administration in the TARP program, without imposing new conditions even if there are changes are made to the program in the future. Obama officials also say the president-elect will promise to find spending cuts to try to keep short-term stimulus spending from ballooning the budget deficit over the long term,” reports the Wall Street Journal.

In other words, the austerity and sacrifice alluded to by Obama’s wife during the election will commence in earnest after her husband’s anointment in January. Obama’s spending cuts, of course, will not come out of the massive Pentagon budget, or the off-record intelligence black budget, but will instead come at the expense of the American people who are destined to live as serfs under the system planned by the banksters and the global elite.

Social workers set up a CCTV camera in the bedroom of a couple with learning difficulties in order to monitor their behaviour, a new report claims

By Martin Beckford, Social Affairs Correspondent

Council staff are said to have spied on the young parents at night as part of a plan to see if they were fit to look after their baby, who was sleeping in another room.

The mother and father were forced to cite the Human Rights Act, which protects the right to a private life, before the social services team backed down and agreed to switch off the surveillance camera while they were in bed together.

The case is highlighted in a new dossier of human rights abuses carried out against vulnerable and elderly adults in nursing homes and hospitals across Britain.

It comes just days after the Government admitted town halls have gone too far in using anti-terror laws to snoop on members of the public.
(read full article)

Sunday, November 23, 2008

SECRETS

OF THE

FEDERAL RESERVE


ENTER


Federal Reserve Notes VS. United States Notes

Details Emerge on new World Trade Center Collapse Videos

Previously unreleased footage of collapse of WTC1 & WTC7

by James Corbett

A source connected to the previously unreleased footage of the collapse of WTC1 and WTC7 which suddenly appeared on internet video-sharing site Veoh.com last weekend has revealed details about the footage to The Corbett Report.

According to the source, the videos available on the internet come from a DVD that was compiled from raw footage taken in New York on September 11. The video on the internet has not been edited or manipulated in any way from the footage on the DVD, although the 'replay' of each collapse has been slowed down by 50 percent. The source indicated, however, that the raw footage had been edited before it was put on the DVD, thus explaining the sudden cut from a close-up of the North Tower to a long shot of the entire building with the collapse already underway.

This source also dismisses internet speculation that the person who took the footage was connected in any way to the collapses themselves. A number of posters on internet discussion boards and forums have claimed that the WTC7 video is suspicious as it zooms out just moments before the collapse, as if the person taking the footage knew what was about to happen. The source notes that the footage starts with a close-up of the windows breaking out on the north side of the building, which would have been a visual cue to anyone watching the building at that moment that something was taking place in the building.

As The Corbett Report previously reported, the videos were released anonymously on the internet on November 1, 2008 with no further information. Watch the video in the player below:

The video shows perhaps the clearest view yet of World Trade Center 7 as it collapses directly into its own footprint at freefall gravitational speed in the late afternoon on September 11, 2001. This collapse has long interested 9/11 researchers as the building was not struck by a plane and only had two isolated office fires burning in it that afternoon before its sudden and complete collapse, an unprecedented event in the history of modern steel-framed skyscrapers. The video of the North Tower also shows an extremely detailed view of the bottom half of the building as the collapse reaches the lower levels, including a brief, clear glimpse of the 'spire' of interior columns before they disappear into the pyroclastic dust cloud at the base of the building, a feature not found in ordinary office collapses and also seen in the wake of the WTC7 collapse. Both videos also show clear views of the blast squibs preceding the collapses, another sign of controlled demolition.

There is still no word from prominent researchers of the collapses regarding the new footage. Richard Gage was contacted for comment on this story but has not yet replied to the request for comment.

Related works from The Corbett Report:

New Footage of World Trade Center Collapse Mysteriously Appears on Internet (article)

Emergency Warning For Office Workers (video)

9/11 Truth in Japan (podcast episode)

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Fuck the Bankers!

"History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance."

-James Madison


For centuries, a class of people has made its living by controlling and issuing the currency and credit of nations. That this class holds enormous sway is without question. What is in question is how to work around them so that they can do no more damage to any of us and to limit their power and influence in the material world.

Moneychangers maintain their grip on all of us through our use of THEIR privately issued money. In America, it's the Federal Reserve Note. In much of Europe, the Euro is the point of control. In Japan, it's the yen. And so on for a total of something on the order of 160+ central banks worldwide.

Money isn't the root of all evil. Love of money, simple greed, is the root of all evil. All of the wars of the past 100 years with hundreds of millions dead, injured and homeless, all of the wealth sucked from the veins of human labor, all of the engineered and imposed poverty, all of these things and more can be laid at the feet of the Moneychanging class. Our responsibility lies in finding another method of paying and trading with each other that minimizes the use of Banker-issued notes.

This is where YOU come in: Print Your Own Money. Download it, print it, use it, pass it around. Each note is blank on the back (unlike Banker-issued notes) so you can add your own value to what you think the note should be. A basket of tomatoes, a six pack of beer, a ten "dollar" Federal Reserve Note, an ounce of silver, five gallons of gasoline, a bag of groceries, a day's worth of work...whatever it is that WE want and need, not what the Banking Class dictates as their desires.

These notes are only as good as your word which is more than can be said about the Federal Reserve Note and other fiat currencies. You don't even need to use these notes. The way out of the clutches of the Moneychangers is to start finding ways to use their blood-soaked money as little as possible, sharing the fruits of this world amongst ourselves.

It's the oldest form of economy that there is: cutting out the professional middlemen.

FBI Activities in Hollywood

Shortly after WW1, and before he became the head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover spent some time in Hollywood, urging film makers to curtail certain kinds of film making which he felt did not serve the best interests of the country. In particular, Hoover did not like the films of Charles Spencer Chaplin which tended to show people in authority abusing their power, maltreating common people, and eventually being made to look ridiculous. It was a Chaplin trademark, one which Hoover felt fostered a disrespect for authority in the general population.

Chaplin not only ignored Hoover's entreaties, but made fun of him, and when Hoover ascended to the head of the FBI, he made Chaplin pay for his earlier insults, and was instrumental in having Charlie kicked out of the United States.

Hoover was also quite eager to use his new authority to bring Hollywood into line with what Hoover thought was their proper role in society (propaganda organ for the government) and while Senator McArthy grabbed the headlines, Hoover was busy behind the scenes recruiting various people to inform on each other and factionalizing the Hollywood community so that it could not resist him.

One interesting story from those days relates to famed animator Walt Disney who had earlier on asked for Hoover's help in locating his real birth parents, little realizing the price Hoover would make him pay later. During the McCarthy hysteria, Hoover asked Walt Disney to report on anyone that might be a communist. Walt actually did on so at just one occasion, yielding to what must have been an overwelming temptation.

Years ealier, Walt Disney had been teamed up with another animator named Walter Lantz, and together they produced a cartoon named "Oswald The Rabbit", created by Disney. But when their partnership dissolved, somehow Walter Lantz retained ownership of Oswald. On the long train ride home, Walt Disney sketched himself a small rodent with big ears and rubber hose arms and legs and named him "Mortimer Mouse". Following a slight name change by Walt Disney's wife, the new Disney star was born, and Disney became a household name. Walter Lantz went on to create his own star, "Woody Woodpecker".

When Hoover approached Disney to be an informant, Walt was hardly sympathetic. His studio had been stiffed on the payment for several training films produced for the Army during WW2. But the opportunity to "get" the man who stole Oswald from him was too great, and Walt Disney named Walter Lantz to the House Committee on Un-American Activities. That was Walt Disney's fatal mistake.

(read full report)

Zinn: 9/11 Truth Is For “Fanatics”, Has “No Practical Political Significance”

Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Friday, Nov 21, 2008

Just days after left-wing anti-war icon Howard Zinn told an audience that he didn’t care if 9/11 was an inside job, he has repeated the sentiment, stating that questions regarding the attacks have "no practical political significance" and that 9/11 truth activists are "fanatics" who are wasting their time.

During a lecture at UQAM university in Montréal, Zinn was once again asked if he would support a new 9/11 investigation.

Zinn responded:

"I have said that what happened on 9/11 deserves to be investigated more than it has been because I don’t accept and believe official investigations and official reports.

But having said that, and I want to say that this has really annoyed a lot of people, but why not, and I will annoy more people by saying that I think there are many people who have become fanatics about 9/11. By fanatics I mean, they think we should drop everything and just concentrate our energies on finding out what happened on 9/11.

I don’t think the question of what really happened on 9/11 is the most important question we can ask."

Zinn then took a direct swipe at the 9/11 truth movement by stating:

"To tell a movement of citizens in the United States that this is something that we really have to make an issue of, I don’t believe it because we don’t need what happened on 9/11, we don’t need that to tell us about the crimes of the Bush administration.

I believe there are certain things that happen in history and certainly questions that are asked that divert us from the important things that we have to do at hand.

The truth is I don’t think anyone will ever really know what happened on 9/11 just as I don’t think anyone will really know who killed John F. Kennedy, and there are a lot of people who wasted a huge amount of time working on something that did not have any practical political significance."

Zinn then asserted that his previous comments at a lecture in Colorado has been distorted and that he never said he did not care about 9/11 or the fact that it was in the past.

Zinn’s exact words that day were "I don’t know enough about it (the 9/11 conspiracy) and the truth is I don’t much care, that’s past."

Watch the video:

In our previous article we analysed how other leftist luminaries such as Noam Chomsky have belittled the efforts of 9/11 truth activists and attempted to dismiss the political significance of asking questions and highlighting evidence of government complicity in the attacks, while at the same time clearly acknowledging that the truth remains covered up and withheld.

This cements commentators such as Zinn and Chomsky as intellectual cowards and allows them to be used as leftist gatekeepers by an establishment that even they admit has used 9/11 as a means to facilitate aggressive and monstrous foreign and domestic agendas.

What really happened on 9/11 is not a distraction, it is the key to everything:

Without 9/11 there would be no "war on terror".

Without 9/11 there would be no "clash of civilizations"

Without 9/11 there would be no war in Afghanistan.

Without 9/11 there would be no war in Iraq.

Without 9/11 there would be no war in Iran.

Without 9/11 there would be no war in… (insert any country classified as part of the "axis of evil" or defined as being "with the terrorists")

Without 9/11 thousands of U.S. troops would not have been sent to their deaths.

Without 9/11 hundreds of thousands of citizens of Iraq and Afghanistan would not have been sentenced to their deaths.

Without 9/11 there would be no inaction on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Without 9/11 there would be no civilian contractors in Iraq and the scandal that has followed them would have been averted.

Without 9/11 there would be no false military reporting (Pat Tillman, Jessica Lynch), and no crack down on the freedom of the press (banning photographing the returning coffins).

Without 9/11 there would be no Patriot Act.

Without 9/11 there would be no NSA warrantless wiretapping program.

Without 9/11 there would be no Camp Delta and no Camp X-ray at Guantanamo Bay.

Without 9/11 there would be no Military Commissions Act and no coordinated program of extraordinary rendition, indefinite detention and torture of those defined as "enemy combatants".

Without 9/11 there would be no vast increase in secrecy and complete militarization of intelligence under the newly created office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Without 9/11 there would not be thousands of dead and dying emergency workers who are suffering crippling and fatal respiratory illnesses.

Without 9/11 there would be no vast increase in military and security spending that goes arm in arm with huge cutbacks in other key social programs (such as levees in New Orleans).

Without 9/11 there would have been no total abandonment of fiscal restraint, which has contributed to plunging the nation into an abyss of debt and looks likely to tip the world into a deep recession if not a complete depression.

And on and on and on.

Perhaps most importantly, without 9/11 there would be no "post 9/11 society/mentality".

The ongoing ignorance of official 9/11 lies will continue to feed the fear and hostility that this post 9/11 environment is founded upon. If it is "fanatical" to attempt to pay attention to the man behind the curtain, so to speak, then every member of the 9/11 truth movement should plead guilty.

The definition of a "fanatic" is, in this writer’s humble opinion, much closer to the actions of the fawning audience at both of Howard Zinn’s afore mentioned lectures, who proceeded to inanely cheer their hero no matter what came out of his mouth.

Much more fanatical are the kind of pocket radicals who latch on to one way of thinking, stick steadfastly to one political paradigm, completely close their minds to the wider picture, proceeding to repeat adfinum to their friends in the "coffee revolution" shops what Zinn, Chomsky, Vidal and their ilk have said, in between conversations about the finer points of Jack Kerouac’s stream of consciousness prose, their understanding of the term ‘multiculturalism’ and the origins of Che Guevara’s seminal manual on the theory and practice of guerrilla warfare.

Such people can groan all they like when questions over 9/11 are raised, it doesn’t change the fact that every single significant action the Bush administration has taken over the last seven years, every attack on freedom and crime against humanity that they have committed stems from the events of 9/11.

Yes Mr Zinn, you have angered a great many politically minded people with your comments, but what do you expect when you state that you do not care about what really happened on the most historically significant day in our recent history, and in the lifetimes of many of us?

Indeed, this is the key to Zinn’s comments. To him, what really happened on 9/11 is not significant because it is HE who represents the past, it is HE who is wasting his time and it is HE who is politically insignificant.