The politics of greed is what keeps this world wrapped in corruption. If you want to stick around for a while longer, I suggest you educate yourself and try to do something constructive to help save what little good, honesty, and trust we have left.

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Go to 12225
http://www.infowars.com/articles/nwo/rockefeller_jokes_about_control_world.htm
Rockefellers "Joked" About Controlling The World
Elitist sons would carve up the planet into different thiefdoms, "something really behind the joke," admits biographer

Prison Planet | December 19, 2007
Paul Joseph Watson

The elitist Rockefeller sons would sometimes "joke" about which parts of the world they would each control according to biographer Peter Collier, carving the world up into different thiefdoms. Collier's admission that there was "something really behind the joke" is an understatement considering the revelations of the late Aaron Russo about what Nicholas Rockefeller told him.

The admission is taken from a segment of a History Channel documentary about the Rockefeller family which hit You Tube today.

"Sometimes they would joke about it, they would say well David gets Europe, Nelson's gonna have Latin America, and you know John D. the third gets Asia and then they'd make some joke about what Winthrop got, you know which would be something like Arkansas - but nonetheless there was something really behind the joke," states Peter Collier, who wrote a glowing biography of the family with top Neo-Con and former Marxist David Horowitz.


Watch the clip.

Of course the so-called "joke" was a thin veil for the fact that by the end of the 1950's the Rockefellers had become the pre-eminent elitist family and controlled huge swathes of economies, infrastructure, media and business worldwide.

Revelations on behalf of the late Aaron Russo concerning what Nicholas Rockefeller told him about his family's predatory control of the planet were explicit in their honesty and scale.

Nick Rockefeller told Russo in advance that an "event" would precipitate the invasion of Afghanistan so the U.S. could run oil pipelines through the country before invading Iraq and establishing military bases throughout the Middle East. He also stated that we would see soldiers looking in caves in Afghanistan and Pakistan for Osama bin Laden and that there would be an "Endless war on terror where there's no real enemy and the whole thing is a giant hoax," so that "the government could take over the American people," according to Russo, who said that Rockefeller was cynically laughing and joking as he made the astounding prediction. This was all related to Russo nearly a year before 9/11 happened.

Rockefeller also related how members of the elite were obsessed by creating a world identification society where people had to carry ID cards and prove who they were at all times.

During one conversation, Rockefeller asked Russo if he was interested in j oining the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) but Russo rejected the invitation, saying he had no interest in "enslaving the people" to which Rockefeller coldly questioned why he cared about the "serfs."

"I used to say to him what's the point of all this," said Russo, "you have all the money in the world you need, you have all the power you need, what's the point, what's the end goal?" to which Rockefeller replied (paraphrasing), "The end goal is to get everybody chipped, to control the whole society, to have the bankers and the elite people control the world."

Rockefeller also told Russo that his family's foundation had created and bankrolled the women's liberation movement in order to destroy the family and that population reduction was a fundamental aim of the global elite.

Watch a clip of Russo's interview with Alex Jones in which he details the admissions of Rockefeller below.



The History Channel documentary also mentions the Rockefeller's involvement in population control in the clip below.


Alex Jones' terrifying new film End Game: Blueprint For Global Enslavement explores the history of eugenics and answers why the elite are so obsessed with thinning the human population. Click here to order the DVD or subscribe to prison planet.tv and watch the documentary in high quality online streaming format.



Go to 12224
http://www.infowars.com/articles/ww3/iran_israel_is_demanding_us_invade_iran.htm
Paul: Israel Demanding U.S. Invade Iran

Press TV | December 25, 2007

Maverick Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul says the leaders of Israel are impelling the White House to wage war on Iran.

"The government of Israel encourages Americans to go into Iran," Paul said Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press.

The 10-term Texas lawmaker added that neoconservatives have also been pushing the administration into ‘bombing Iran'.

When asked what he would do as the US president ‘if Iran invaded Israel', Paul said the illusion of the Islamic Republic's attack on Israel is like saying, "Iran is about to invade Mars."

The 72-year-old politician made the remarks as Israeli officials are stepping up their war rhetoric against Tehran, over its nuclear program despite the recent reports confirming the peaceful nature of the country's activities.

Ron Paul also made it clear that he would cut the ‘billions of dollars' in annual aid Washington provides for Israel if elected President.



Go to 12223
http://www.infowars.com/articles/bb/internet_your_private_email_messages_and_you.htm
Your Private E-mail Messages and You

Axis of Logic | December 27, 2007
Les Blough

On October 8, 2007, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati granted the government's request for a full-panel hearing in United States v. Warshak case . In their request, the government argued that they have a right to read stored copies of your email.

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

The definition of invasion of privacy , as found in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constituion, has been interpreted by the courts as follows:

"Governmental power to protect the privacy interests of its citizens by penalizing publication or authorizing causes of action for publication implicates directly First Amendment rights. Privacy is a concept composed of several aspects. As a tort concept, it embraces at least four branches of protected interests,that is …

Protection from "unreasonable intrusion upon one's seclusion"

Protection from "appropriation of one's name or likeness

Protection from "publicity given to one's private life," and

Protection from "publicity which unreasonably places one in a false light before the public."

Regarding these protections, Find Law for Legal Professionals notes:

"It should be noted that we do not have here the question of the protection of one's privacy from governmental invasion."

In a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1963, (Katz v. United States) the court stated that the government could not invade the contents of Katz' private conversation on a payphone. The Court stated that the Fourth Amendment forbids the government to make unreasonable searches and seizures of "persons, house, places and effects." In doing so, the court adopted two tests:

Did you think what you were doing was private and
Is society willing to accept your belief as objectively reasonable?
In the case of the U.S. vs. Warshak, the government argued that the 4th Amendment does not protect us from their seizure of our e-mails messages and they don't need a court order to seize them. They argued that users of ISPs don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy. They also argued that one cannot expect privacy after an email account has been abandoned.

They argued that the government is not restricted by the 4th Amendment because those using an ISP have agreed to the ISP's Terms of Service (TOS). The TOS and Privacy Policies of many ISPs permits the ISP to monitor their user's activities to prevent fraud. In agreeing to these Terms of Service, the user admits that they have "no reasonable expectation of privacy" therefore, according to the U.S. Government, their information is up for grabs - just as much as someone who states something in a public broadcast forfeits his/her right to privacy of what he or she said. Take a look at Yahoo!'s privacy policy , for example. Excerpts read (and who ever really reads them!) :

When you register with Yahoo! and sign in to our services, you are not anonymous to us.
Yahoo! automatically receives and records information from your computer and browser, including your IP address, Yahoo! cookie information, software and hardware attributes, and the page you request.
We respond to subpoenas, court orders, or legal process, or to establish or exercise our legal rights or defend against legal claims.
We believe it is necessary to share information in order to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the physical safety of any person, violations of Yahoo!'s terms of use, or as otherwise required by law.
Yahoo! may update this policy. We will notify you about significant changes in the way we treat personal information by sending a notice to the primary email address specified in your Yahoo! account or by placing a prominent notice on our site.
The first thing to note of course is that we are not "anonymous" to Yahoo! The second is that they record and store our information. The third is that they they "respond to subpoenas, court orders, or legal process". Fourth, they claim they do all of this to protect us and finally they claim the right to update this policy. The U.S. Government is now arguing that they don't even have to have a court order to penetrate ISPs like Yahoo!, read and use our private communications in our e-mail messages.

The remaining question is:

"Why does the U.S. Government want the right to information we write in our e-mail messages, a record of the websites we visit and our other internet activities?"

With the complicity of the corporate media, the government has been conditioning the people to believe they need access to this information to protect us from criminal and terrorist threats. So in order to monitor the activities of criminals and "terrorists", they want us to believe that they need to be able to access to all our personal communications without even obtaining a court order to do so? Of course such a claim begs credibility. The U.S. Government has been steadily developing an intelligence infrastructure that would serve well a totalitarian police state in the United States. When the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati granted the full panel hearing on October 8, 2007 they advanced the government's latest aggressive move to know who we are, where we live, what we write, read and what we think.



Go to 12222
http://www.infowars.com/articles/us/ron_paul_what_does_freedom_really_mean.htm
What Does Freedom Really Mean?
Ron Paul | December 26, 2007

"…man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts." - Ronald Reagan

12/26/07 " ICH " – - W e've all heard the words democracy and freedom used countless times, especially in the context of our invasion of Iraq. They are used interchangeably in modern political discourse, yet their true meanings are very different.

George Orwell wrote about "meaningless words" that are endlessly repeated in the political arena*. Words like "freedom," "democracy," and "justice," Orwell explained, have been abused so long that their original meanings have been eviscerated. In Orwell's view, political words were "Often used in a consciously dishonest way." Without precise meanings behind words, politicians and elites can obscure reality and condition people to reflexively associate certain words with positive or negative perceptions. In other words, unpleasant facts can be hidden behind purposely meaningless language. As a result, Americans have been conditioned to accept the word "democracy" as a synonym for freedom, and thus to believe that democracy is unquestionably good.

The problem is that democracy is not freedom. Democracy is simply majoritarianism, which is inherently incompatible with real freedom. Our founding fathers clearly understood this, as evidenced not only by our republican constitutional system, but also by their writings in the Federalist Papers and elsewhere. James Madison cautioned that under a democratic government, "There is nothing to check the inducement to sacrifice the weaker party or the obnoxious individual." John Adams argued that democracies merely grant revocable rights to citizens depending on the whims of the masses, while a republic exists to secure and protect pre-existing rights. Yet how many Americans know that the word "democracy" is found neither in the Constitution nor the Declaration of Independence, our very founding documents?

A truly democratic election in Iraq, without U.S. interference and U.S. puppet candidates, almost certainly would result in the creation of a Shiite theocracy. Shiite majority rule in Iraq might well mean the complete political, economic, and social subjugation of the minority Kurd and Sunni Arab populations. Such an outcome would be democratic, but would it be free? Would the Kurds and Sunnis consider themselves free? The administration talks about democracy in Iraq, but is it prepared to accept a democratically-elected Iraqi government no matter what its attitude toward the U.S. occupation? Hardly. For all our talk about freedom and democracy, the truth is we have no idea whether Iraqis will be free in the future. They're certainly not free while a foreign army occupies their country. The real test is not whether Iraq adopts a democratic, pro-western government, but rather whether ordinary Iraqis can lead their personal, religious, social, and business lives without interference from government.

Simply put, freedom is the absence of government coercion. Our Founding Fathers understood this, and created the least coercive government in the history of the world. The Constitution established a very limited, decentralized government to provide national defense and little else. States, not the federal government, were charged with protecting individuals against criminal force and fraud. For the first time, a government was created solely to protect the rights, liberties, and property of its citizens. Any government coercion beyond that necessary to secure those rights was forbidden, both through the Bill of Rights and the doctrine of strictly enumerated powers. This reflected the founders' belief that democratic government could be as tyrannical as any King.

Few Americans understand that all government action is inherently coercive. If nothing else, government action requires taxes. If taxes were freely paid, they wouldn't be called taxes, they'd be called donations. If we intend to use the word freedom in an honest way, we should have the simple integrity to give it real meaning: Freedom is living without government coercion. So when a politician talks about freedom for this group or that, ask yourself whether he is advocating more government action or less.

The political left equates freedom with liberation from material wants, always via a large and benevolent government that exists to create equality on earth. To modern liberals, men are free only when the laws of economics and scarcity are suspended, the landlord is rebuffed, the doctor presents no bill, and groceries are given away. But philosopher Ayn Rand (and many others before her) demolished this argument by explaining how such "freedom" for some is possible only when government takes freedoms away from others. In other words, government claims on the lives and property of those who are expected to provide housing, medical care, food, etc. for others are coercive– and thus incompatible with freedom. "Liberalism," which once stood for civil, political, and economic liberties, has become a synonym for omnipotent coercive government.

The political right equates freedom with national greatness brought about through military strength. Like the left, modern conservatives favor an all-powerful central state– but for militarism, corporatism, and faith-based welfarism. Unlike the Taft-Goldwater conservatives of yesteryear, today's Republicans are eager to expand government spending, increase the federal police apparatus, and intervene militarily around the world. The last tenuous links between conservatives and support for smaller government have been severed. "Conservatism," which once meant respect for tradition and distrust of active government, has transformed into big-government utopian grandiosity.

Orwell certainly was right about the use of meaningless words in politics. If we hope to remain free, we must cut through the fog and attach concrete meanings to the words politicians use to deceive us. We must reassert that America is a republic, not a democracy, and remind ourselves that the Constitution places limits on government that no majority can overrule. We must resist any use of the word "freedom" to describe state action. We must reject the current meaningless designations of "liberals" and "conservatives," in favor of an accurate term for both: statists.

Every politician on earth claims to support freedom. The problem is so few of them understand the simple meaning of the word.



Go to 12221
http://www.rense.com/politics5/bucks.htm
Big Bucks, Banks,
And The IRS
By Sherman H. Skolnick
11-16-99


In many larger cities, and some smaller ones also, there is a section of the local court called Chancery Court or Chancery Division. It is NOT a place for minor claims such as bus accidents and such. To be heard in Chancery Division are property foreclosure cases, injunction cases, bank trust litigation, class actions for misrepresentation of products, bank problems, and such.

Chicago has such a court, called Chancery Division of Cook County Circuit Court. Is there such a Court where YOU are? Start asking questions and be sure to let us know.

The Chancery Division in the Windy City has a long, crooked past, dotted with scandals not always adequately publicized by what we call the "Liars and Whores of the Press" nor divulged by the "Cowards of the Law". In the 1980s, second in command of Chancery Division was Judge Reginald Holzer. His wife was was big in real estate and insurance. They got along well with certain hoodlum banks. BUT: Holzer lived above his judicial salary. He was forever needing to raise money. Those who wanted to work a malign, if not corrupt, influence on his judicial rulings understood all this. So they gave him alleged "loans" from banks they were connected with. AND: banks always have a lot of litigation business in Chancery Court. A great secret of U.S. judicial history is that a sizeable number of the really important judges have been directors of small, closely held banks, and stockholders of the same. Often, it is the bank across the street from the Courthouse, and often, with lawyer offices in the bank building or right nearby.

It is a fairy tale to say judges are bribed with a bag of money at midnight in an alley. The bribery is most often through banks in which judges, lawyers, and sizeable corporations have a financial interest. As head of a court reform group, I have adequately demonstrated this over a period of four decades.

During a group of scandals touched off by our work, 1983 to 1993, called "Operation Greylord", Judge Holzer became aware the federal police were centering on the "loans" he was getting from certain banker-lawyers, with the apparent understanding that Holzer did not have to pay back. As we were the only ones to publicly mention, Holzer was prepared to save himself by snitching on eight OTHER judges in Chancery Division. Holzer was reportedly going to finger the head judge of Chancery, Judge John Hechinger.

One day I was a journalist/spectator in the courtroom of Judge Hechinger. I was observing what I deemed to be another crooked property case. During a recess, Judge Hechinger stood up from the bench, and addressed me. "You know,Mr. Skolnick, you just don't know what you are talking about, saying I was formerly with the FBI. In fact, I was with the CIA." I still remember exclaiming "WOW!" To me, it helped explain why Judge Hechinger was not to be publicly fingered for bribery by second in command, Judge Holzer. "National security" is as good an excuse to save CIA darlings from the fire. Hechinger was also---now get this---a top official of the Cemetery Workers Union. Like mafioso jointly with espionage agencies, did Hechinger and Company bury a few "enemies" in unmarked locations?


Judge Hechinger was allowed to quietly resign or retire. Judge Holzer, fearing for his life, did not finger the other judges for bribery, and, lips sealed, went off to prison, a convicted bribe-taker. A few mafioso-banker-lawyers were disbarred, sort of to reassure the know-nothing public that now all is well again in dear old, crooked old Chicago.


I am no longer surprised by what goes on in Chancery Division.. The powers-that-be are forever inserting a known crook there, promoting him to the Big Bucks Court from some other court section. One such is Judge Lester D. Foreman. In past years, Judge Foreman had been in control of Assignment Court, where cases ready for trial are kept on call to be sent to trial judges in the Law Division. Judge Foreman at the time was second in command to the head of Law Division, namely, Judge Pasquale J. Sorrentino, one of the Old West Side mob's apparent favorites. From time to time, I ended up in Judge Sorrentino's office, right behind Judge Foreman's huge courtroom. I often accompanied litigants who wanted to point out something improper if not crooked in Law Division. A big bear of a man, Judge Sorrentino with a big smile would stretch out his faker's handshake to seem apparently believing that would set me at ease. Maybe since I rolled into his office in a wheelchair, maybe he figured that I am stupid after all, perhaps paralyzed in both body and mind. I was always quick to make a mental note of the plaques on his wall linking him to the Vatican.

The federal secret political police had damaging evidence that Sorrentino arranged through Foreman to reportedly steer certain cases, not by random selection, on to hand-picked judges for alleged "trial", actually for the big fix. All for his lawyer-pals from the Old West Side. Actually, the traditional Italian and Sicilian mafia jointly with other ethnic gangsters, has long since moved their center of operations to west suburban Oak Brook. [The late Frank Sinatra and his mafia friends were major stockholders of Oak Brook Development Company, that made the area an underworld goldmine of crooked public officials and fancy stores.] So head Judge Sorrentino was allowed to quietly resign and not go to prison and given a pass was Judge Lester D. Foreman (312)603-6052 who was promoted to Big Bucks Court, Chancery Division.

Those in the know whisper his name, Chancery Judge Albert "Money" Green (312)603-6034. Like a riverboat gambler, he has been known to wear a polka dot vest on his bench. His specialty? Those several hundred million dollar class actions against sizeable corporations who supposedly did something wrong in selling, promoting their products or their services. The lawyers who bring such actions, called plaintiffs' class action attorneys, if they win, stand to have their usual fees per hour multiplied several times over, as a reward for bringing a class action, supposedly on behalf of all persons victimized. Sometimes their fees are quite a blockbuster per centage of the total award, leaving little if anything for the money to trickle down to the class action suckers who may not have seen the small-print ads in out-of-the-way places in the newspapers.

Cases are supposed to be assigned to judges by random selection. Oh yeah? That is a key factor in our investigations of judicial corruption. How is it, we try to find out, that certain judges somehow end up with certain types of cases, to facilitate the "Big Fix"?

For example, we figured it was no coincidence that Judge "Money" Green was assigned the billion dollar case against the Midwest Stock Exchange. Members of the Exchange claimed they were cheated by "phantom agreements" apparently worked into the Exchange's bookkeeping system when they changed from paper records, about 1977, to computer generated records. Reportedly concealed have been hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars of transactions. The State and Federal tax collectors, the heads of which are too often corrupt, apparently got a piece of the action and thus never made inquiry of the reputed massive tax evasion. The case, 91 CH 09037, brought into the Court record such a stink, that the name was changed to Chicago Stock Exchange. The monopoly press has not reported the really important details of the litigation. Like the head of a gambling casino, Judge "Money" Green has apparently found someway to siphon off his cut or benefit of this river of loot.


About 1999, becoming the new head of Chancery Division was Judge Francis Barth {312]603-4181. Notice how he became top dog there. In 1998, running on the GOP ticket for Illinois Governor was George H. Ryan, for many years having been Illinois Secretary of State. As head of the State's offices for drivers license applications, weighing of trucks for possible overweight violations, and car and other drivers license applications---well, George H. Ryan was in a position to be the apparent recipient of big money. It became more public as a result of a tragedy. Several passengers in a vehicle were killed by another vehicle driven by a fellow who apparently was not eligible for a drivers license and obtained one reportedly by bribing one of Ryan's people. So the federal secret political police began a belated investigation of drivers license pay-offs. A secret IRS team determined that upwards of one million dollars in such bribes were collected, just in recent times alone. Ryan had been Illinois Secretary of State for some eight years. Ryan's drivers license bureau managers and examiners contended they did not keep the bribes but forwarded them to Ryan for his election campaigns. Ryan claimed he did not know some of his own people, and did not remember getting the money.


Here is how upwards of one million dollars of reputed bribe money was used in 1998. Ryan ran for Governor on the GOP ticket. Polls showed there would be only about 4 per cent difference between the vote for Ryan and his Democrat Party challenger, Glenn Poshard, up to that time a downstate Congressman. In 1998, the Libertarian Party was set to put forward a major effort for their third party candidate for Governor. They somehow put together a big advertising budget and were expected to pull some 8 per cent of the vote for Governor. Unlike previous elections where they pulled a small per centage of the vote, the third party candidate in 1998 could have made the difference in the Governor's election outcome.

Ryan's people were reportedly used to challenge the candidate petitions for Governor for third party. The Illinois State Board of Elections general counsel and hearing examiner said the third party had enough petitions. Without apparent specifications, the Board members, however, knocked the Libertarian Party off the ballot. If the Libertarians had remained on the ballot and pulled the expected 8 per cent of the vote for Governor, George H. Ryan could NOT have been elected.

Ryan reportedly used the one million dollars of drivers license bribery money as follows:

1. Reportedly bribed some members of the Illinois State Board of Elections.

2. Some top officials of the state tax collectors, the Illinois Department of Revenue, and top officials of the IRS, Chicago Region, found out about the bribery melon and blackmailed their way into a cut of the action. The U.S. Treasury Inspector General apparently knows about all this and takes no remedial action.

3. The Elections Board matter was appealed to Judge Francis Barth, just before the 1998 election, at the time Barth holding the position of "County Judge", rather than "Circuit Judge", in charge of hearing election cases. Barth was reportedly bribed by Ryan to okay the Elections Board knocking the Libertarians off the ballot. So Ryan was supposedly "elected" Governor. The system being corrupt, crooked public officials are most often rewarded instead of being punished. So, shortly thereafter Judge Francis Barth became head of Big Bucks Court, the Chancery Division. A fellow judge with Barth, Foreman, "Money" Green and others in the unholy Chancery Court with the "big fix" is Judge Thomas P. Durkin {312]603-4890. And, like the others, we never accused Judge Durkin of being honest.

Who are the chief "sacred cows" with big business in Chancery Division? Why, the banks who have millions and millions of dollars of litigation pending there. The head "sacred cow" is La Salle National Bank. Savvy folks know La Salle Bank has so much "clout" and "muscle", they can, if they choose, ignore with impunity court legal papers, such as summonses and subpoenas, thumb their nose at court orders requiring them to divulge records, and even, reportedly on occasion make records appear and disappear, like through their Trust Department. Over the years, La Salle Bank's specialty has been secret nominee accounts for the forwarding of bribery money to offshore accounts for crooked state and federal tax collectors, judges, and other public office bandits.


La Salle National Bank is now the U.S. flagship of the Dutch bank octopus, Algemene Bank Nederland, ABN. AND, ABN has bought up banks not only all over the Chicago-area but in some 14 other cities in the U.S. Using what? Using gold they obtained upon the downfall of the Soviet Government. The former Soviet commissars arranged to steal thousands of tons of gold from their Public Treasury. Remember: the Soviets had been the world's second largest producer of gold. The corrupt commissars reportedly made a deal with the Dutch to split the stolen gold with them. Much of the gold is reportedly parked right on or near a Swiss airport for quick, clandestine shipments worldwide. Holland being heavily linked in business with the Vatican, the Pope has given his blessings to these venal arrangements. [Remember, in previous stories we told how the Catholic Archbishop of Chicago is also the Treasurer for the Church for the WHOLE western hemisphere.]

In 1997, IRS officials threatened to arrest me and an associate of mine, when they found out we were going to put on our public access Cable TV Program in Chicago, an important confession. Spilling his gut was a 25-year career "bagman", James R. Vassilos, who had repeatedly succeeded, with impunity, to bribe top state and federal public officials including high officials of the IRS, Chicago Region office, and the Illinois Department of Revenue, and state and federal judges. [Despite the threats of arrest, the show was aired.]

The "bagman" said he reportedly learned about how to do money laundering, for example, from his brother-in-law. And who was that? Why, a director of Algemene Bank Nederland, Theo Bark. Were the bagman's in-laws also outlaws? When the Queen of Holland on rare occasion came to Chicago, who stood in a small, elite group there to kiss the royal hand? Why, the "bagman" and his spouse.

Did the U.S. Treasury Acting Inspector General, Robert Cesca, know about all this hanky-panky? Law enforcement personnel described Cesca as "the highest ranking mafia representative in the U.S. Government". You say you are among those reading this far from Chicago. Well, Chicago has no armlock on this sort of corruption. Start digging. Start asking questions where YOU are. Let us know.



Go to 12220
http://www.rense.com/general79/honest.htm
Ron Paul Is Correct About
'Not So Honest' Abe Lincoln
By Cliff Mickelson
12-27-7

Cliff -

The word "secede" is getting a lot of Internet airplay recently. What do you think is going on here? Bush is no President Lincoln, but what do you think would happen if a State (such as Vermont) tried to really secede?

-L

Greetings, L

Well, first of all, it needs to be made clear that our Mr. Lincoln was NOT the Polly Purebred that the cult of Lincoln would have us all believe.

Honest Abe was not all that honest. What he was however, was an incredibly brilliant politician and professional manipulator.
Lincoln remains one of the primary protagonists responsible for the ongoing demise of the American Republic. In fact, Lincoln may have (in retrospect) single handedly dealt the Republic it's death blow.
He may also have been an unwitting conduit for the Metaphysical forces of darkness, who, by effectively manipulating the actions of their chosen D politician, were able to first engineer the groundwork that has brought this nation to the brink of apocalyptic destruction it now stands on today.

Contrary to popular opinion, the Governor of South Carolina did not precipitate the War between the States.

Lincoln deliberately provoked that war and Sumpter was the perfect provocation.

Lincoln correctly estimated the mettle of the S. Carolina Governor Francis Pickens, and knew that he could provoke a confrontation by sending a resupply convoy to Major Anderson at Ft. Sumpter.

This is exactly what he proceeded to do.

Overlooked or suppressed in the mix at the time and buried by the victors after the war was the fact that the Federal Government's authority had been lawfully extinguished in the state of S. Carolina by the will of the people through a vote of their lawfully elected representatives.

Despite this fact, the Federals, (in effect a foreign government) continued to illegally occupy by military force, land that was the rightful property of the Sovereign State of South Carolina.

The Federals ignored all timely requests to relinquish the post and when given an ultimatum, replied by assembling a resupply convoy with specific secret instructions to delay their arrival at Charleston Harbor for as long as reasonably possible. Meanwhile, the information that a resupply convoy was on the way was deliberately made well know to all, especially the statehouse in Charleston.

Lincoln was counting on the hotheaded Governor Pickens to fall into his trap and the unsuspecting Mr. Pickens (and his willing adjutant General PT Beauregard) obliged him.

This was the opening act of aggression in the war, NOT the firing on Ft. Sumpter. I note that despite a night long bombardment of Ft. Sumpter, not a single Federal Soldier was killed! This, in stark contrast to the bloody harvest of the following four years.

From that point on, there is an unbroken chain of events leading from Lincoln's Executive Order # 1 and it's unlawful and unconstitutional actions that can be traced from that fateful day in 1861 to this very present moment.

What we are today, with all its ugly warts and cancers, was conceived 140 years ago. The natural course of the nation originally created by its founding peoples was wrenched from its path and sent careening down a deliberate detour. Since that time we have traveled an alien road.

These historic events of 1861, inspired and actualized by Lincoln, have created the reality we experience today. It is a reality based on hijack and deception. As with all purloined historical potentialities based on false truths and darkness, they can only lead to grief, disaster, and destruction. Such an end was the goal as it was intended to be. One conceived back then by metaphysical forces as a bastard child; a fratricidal infant back then, and one that has now grown to be a mature Frankenstein.

Not least among these events that have grown about our collective necks like a millstone over the last 140 years, is the unlawful precedent of the so called "inviolability" of the Union.

Of course you and I view this as illegitimate but it is a false precedent that gives the Federals all the excuse they need to maintain with violence their hold on power.

We may all "decide" to secede from the Union, but I suspect that secret contingencies already exist to make sure that is all we do.

If ten States failed at secession in 1861, working together under much more favorable circumstances, what chance now does one or two States individually have?

One hundred and forty years of walking Mr. Lincoln's path has reduced the once sovereign States to little more than political districts.

Were I to be optimistic on this subject, I would say that I believe the best we can do is hope that enough people can come together to eventually force a Constitutional convention of the States United and dissolve the Federal Government rather than attempt to secede from it. This path is similar to that taken during the demise of the Soviet Union. To destroy the beast communally from within rather than attempt to sever one's self individually from without.

Believe it or not, there is a difference and the difference may mean the difference between success and failure and life and death. Not only for Americans, but for the entire World.

-- Cliff Mickelson

(Note - For the big picture of Lincoln's true agenda and the real reason he forced the South into the hideous Civil War, read the book 'The Real Lincoln' - ed)



Go to 12219
http://business.theage.com.au/americans-walk-from-loans/20071223-1iqr.html
Americans 'walk' from loans
David Hirst
December 23, 2007

THE Dow soared 200 points in a Christmas rush on Friday that belied emerging details that US banking, mortgage companies and credit rating faced collapse while the nation's mortgage insurance industry plunged into chaos.

Nearly 180,000 US local councils were placed on credit watch, with the credit agency Fitch releasing another $US5.3 billion in credit downgrades involving 27 mortgage companies. The news emerged on Friday night, when the nation's newspapers, even if they were following the story, would miss it.

That one company could downgrade 27 major financial institutions in one stroke is stunning, but it follows a swathe of credit downgrades that swept the US on Thursday and Friday.

There has been a major falling out between mortgage insurers, credit rating companies, banks and mortgage institutions, which believed their loans were insured, only to be stunned to find themselves booted into the mire that is American banking.

Chinese, Singaporean and Arab sovereign investment funds seem to offer the only salvation for the US banking system.

The depth of the housing crisis was underscored by the head of one of America's largest banks, Bank of America, the straight-speaking Kenneth Lewis, who warned of a completely new attitude by Americans to their homes amid fears that as many as 20 million householders may "walk" from them, further deepening the crisis.

Lewis' comments came as a new expression - "jingle mail" - referring to the growing trend where Americans mail the keys to their homes to the lenders before vacating, entered the US lexicon. Figures for November revealed more than 200,000 US homes were foreclosed, a 68% increase on November 2006.

Perhaps most alarming is the credit standing of the major insurers of mortgage loans as Moody's, Standard & Poor's and Fitch Ratings slashed insurer ratings and placed the largest insurer under negative credit watch. The mortgage insurers, especially the giant MBIA, stand accused of further imperilling banks and mortgage companies by spending billions on risky CDOs (collateralised debt obligations) and even riskier "double" CDOs.

Lewis was no doubt speaking for all the banking and mortgage monoliths when he said he was "astonished" at the change of attitude Americans were showing to their homes in a country that, with Australia, has the highest home ownership rates in the world.

A combination of new circumstances and psychology seems to be gripping millions of Americans who are paying higher interest on homes that are plummeting in value.

A number of factors are at work. First, many mortgage companies, encouraged by Alan Greenspan during 2002-03, ended mortgage deposit requirements.

Then the banks "sliced and diced" and sold the mortgages in packages so the householder no longer owed their payments to their bank but to anonymous international conglomerates.

Mortgage companies have also, by selling "liar's loans" and "toxic" mortgage debt, lost moral authority. Householders see no reason to be loyal to them.

But the driving force is economic. The glut of cheap housing makes renting attractive and low wages give breadwinners no option but to decide between paying higher food and energy prices and higher rates on car loans and credit cards while seeing their neighbours abandon their homes.

In a repeat of the savings and loan scandal of the 1980s, but perhaps on a vastly greater scale, the downgrading of local councils will further threaten communities.

That period was characterised by cutbacks to police and council lay-offs, followed by degraded roads, and services to the poor and elderly.

The credit downgrades or warnings thereof - the effect is the same when it comes to municipal borrowing - is a direct result of the loss of land tax income by those councils. This has only begun to begin. Some councils take years to adjust their land tax to the new values and direct, urgent action is needed.

When former president George Bush faced the same dilemma in the early 1990s, with Bill Clinton and Ross Perot breathing down his throat, he acted swiftly, and although the savings and loan bail-out may have seen bad money following worse, the crisis was relatively soon resolved, in time for Clinton to take over an economy already beginning to improve. The same could not be said of the actions of his son, George W. Bush, who, as a self-proclaimed and self-starring war leader, cares little for economic management and cannot next stand for re-election anyway.

Late last week the respected website Calculated Risk figured that housing losses might reach $US1 trillion and even $US2 trillion.

The prominent New York University economist Nouriel Roubini, who is predicting an extremely hard landing for the US economy and an acute recession, said on television that Wall Street's latest rises represented a "sucker's rally" and stated the nation was in its "most severe liquidity crisis for 50 years".

"We are heading to a severe recession," he said. In his blog, he referred to Calculated Risk's loss estimate of $US1 trillion plus, and said "could prices fall that far? Oh yes they could".

But the drama now unfolding surrounds the mortgage bond insurers and the credit agencies.

Insurance is taken out in the hope it will never be claimed. However, the insurer has to assume it will be claimed and therefore ensures the premiums are safely invested. The banks, some earlier than others, realised the threat to their mortgages and took some, not nearly enough, insurance from companies such as MBIA and ACA.

As the loans had been sliced and diced, it must have been difficult for actuaries to calculate what insurance was necessary. Even to this day, no one knows who owns and owes exactly what. The CDOs are, after all, collectivised.

It turned out the risk was great and the insurance was needed. Then came the surprise.

The insurer had invested in the very thing the insured was fearful of, the collapse of the value of the CDOs.

Morgan Stanley then commented: "We are shocked that management withheld this information for as long as it did. MBIA simply did not disclose arguably the riskiest part of its CDO exposure."

But they did. Not to JPMorgan or Merrill, but to the insurers, which evidently didn't hear, didn't realise or didn't think it worth passing on to the major mortgage institutions that their insurance money was tied up in the same risky ventures these companies were trying to protect themselves from.

How is it so? Obviously relations between the bastions of Wall Street are cascading into cataracts of ill feeling and anger. J Kyle Bass, the highly respected authority on the housing industry, recently released details of a study his company has concluded on the vast "Inland Empire" region of California where millions of new homes have been built in the past decade, and said he found the situation far worse than he expected, with over 90% of housing loans containing some sort of fraud.

He said "50% of applicants overstated their incomes by more than 50%" in what is the starkest condemnation of the "liar's loans" this correspondent has seen.

The relationship between capital and insurance, and the trust between them is as old as capitalism itself. One cannot survive without the other.

David Hirst is a journalist, documentary maker, financial consultant and investor. His column "Planet Wall Street" is syndicated by News Bites, a Melbourne-based sharemarket and business news publisher.



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http://blog.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2007/12/musharrafs_woes_have_opened_a.html?nav=rss_blog
U.S. Troops to Head to Pakistan
Beginning early next year, U.S. Special Forces are expected to vastly expand their presence in Pakistan, as part of an effort to train and support indigenous counter-insurgency forces and clandestine counterterrorism units, according to defense officials involved with the planning.

These Pakistan-centric operations will mark a shift for the U.S. military and for U.S. Pakistan relations. In the aftermath of Sept. 11, the U.S. used Pakistani bases to stage movements into Afghanistan. Yet once the U.S. deposed the Taliban government and established its main operating base at Bagram, north of Kabul, U.S. forces left Pakistan almost entirely. Since then, Pakistan has restricted U.S. involvement in cross-border military operations as well as paramilitary operations on its soil.

But the Pentagon has been frustrated by the inability of Pakistani national forces to control the borders or the frontier area. And Pakistan's political instability has heightened U.S. concern about Islamic extremists there.

According to Pentagon sources, reaching a different agreement with Pakistan became a priority for the new head of the U.S. Special Operations Command, Adm. Eric T. Olson. Olson visited Pakistan in August, November and again this month, meeting with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, Pakistani Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee Chairman Gen. Tariq Majid and Lt. Gen. Muhammad Masood Aslam, commander of the military and paramilitary troops in northwest Pakistan. Olson also visited the headquarters of the Frontier Corps, a separate paramilitary force recruited from Pakistan's border tribes.

Now, a new agreement, reported when it was still being negotiated last month, has been finalized. And the first U.S. personnel could be on the ground in Pakistan by early in the new year, according to Pentagon sources.

U.S. Central Command Commander Adm. William Fallon alluded to the agreement and spoke approvingly of Pakistan's recent counterterrorism efforts in an interview with Voice of America last week.

"What we've seen in the last several months is more of a willingness to use their regular army units," along the Afghan border, Fallon said. "And this is where, I think, we can help a lot from the U.S. in providing the kind of training and assistance and mentoring based on our experience with insurgencies recently and with the terrorist problem in Iraq and Afghanistan, I think we share a lot with them, and we'll look forward to doing that."

If Pakistan actually follows through, perhaps 2008 will be a better year.



Go to 12217
http://www.rense.com/general79/we.htm
We Are All Prisoners Now
By Paul Craig Roberts
12-27-7

"They're locking them up today
They're throwing away the key
I wonder who it'll be tomorrow, you or me?"
The Red Telephone (LOVE, 1967)


At Christmas time, it has been my habit to write a column in remembrance of the many innocent people in prisons whose lives have been stolen by the US criminal justice (sic) system that is as inhumane as it is indifferent to justice. Usually I retell the cases of William Strong and Christophe Gaynor, two men framed in the state of Virginia by prosecutors and judges as wicked and corrupt as any who served Hitler or Stalin.

This year is different. All Americans are now imprisoned in a world of lies and deception created by the Bush Regime and the two complicit parties of Congress, by federal judges too timid or ignorant to recognize a rogue regime running roughshod over the Constitution, by a bought and paid for media that serves as propagandists for a regime of war criminals, and by a public who have forsaken their Founding Fathers.

Americans are also imprisoned by fear, a false fear created by the hoax of "terrorism." It has turned out that headline terrorist events since 9/11 have been orchestrated by the US government. For example, the alleged terrorist plot to blow up Chicago's Sears Tower was the brainchild of a FBI agent who searched out a few disaffected people to give lip service to the plot devised by the FBI agent. He arrested his victims, whose trial ended in acquittal and mistrial.

Many Europeans regard 9/11 itself as an orchestrated event. Former cabinet members of the British, Canadian and German governments and the Chief of Staff of the Russian Army have publicly expressed their doubts about the official 9/11 story. Recently, a former president of Italy, Francesco Cossiga, said in an interview with the newspaper, Corriere della Sera (November 30, 2007), that "democratic elements in America and Europe, with the Italian center-left in the forefront, now know that the 9/11 attack was planned and executed by the American CIA and Mossad in order to blame the Arab countries, and to persuade the Western powers to undertake military action both in Iraq and Afghanistan."

It is unclear whether Cossiga was being sarcastic about the opinion of skeptics or merely reporting what people think. I have written to him asking for clarification and will report any reply that I receive. Apparently, the Italian media has not offered a clarification.

Cossiga's statement has not been reported by a US newspaper or TV channel. Raising doubts among Americans about the government is not a strong point of the corporate media. Americans live in a world of propaganda designed to secure their acquiescence to war crimes, torture, searches and police state measures, military aggression, hegemony and oppression, while portraying Americans (and Israelis) as the salt of the earth who are threatened by Muslims who hate their "freedom and democracy."

Americans cling to this "truth" while the Bush regime and a complicit Congress destroy the Bill of Rights and engineer the theft of elections.

Freedom and democracy in America have been reduced to no-fly lists, spying without warrants, arrests without warrants or evidence, permanent detention despite the constitutional protection of habeas corpus, torture despite the prohibition against self-incrimination--the list goes on and on.
Go to 12216
http://www.truthnews.us/?p=1115]

In today's fearful America, a US Senator, whose elder brothers were (1) a military hero killed in action, (2) a President of the United States assassinated in office, (3) an Attorney General of the United States and likely president except he was assassinated like his brother, can find himself on the no-fly list. Present and former high government officials, with top secret security clearances, cannot fly with a tube of toothpaste or a bottle of water despite the absence of any evidence that extreme measures imposed by "airport security" makes flying safer.
Go to 12215
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071221/us_nm/security_airports
_dc;_ylt=ApzEobAIQMfiX02LTvKbk1UXIr0F

Elderly American citizens with walkers and young mothers with children are meticulously searched because US Homeland Security cannot tell the difference between an American citizen and a terrorist.

All Americans should note the ominous implications of the inability of Homeland Security to distinguish an American citizen from a terrorist.

When Airport Security cannot differentiate a US Marine General recipient of the Medal of Honor from a terrorist, Americans have all the information they need to know. http://www.homeofheroes.com/news/archives/2002_0100_foss.html

Any and every American can be arrested by unaccountable authority, held indefinitely without charges and tortured until he or she can no longer stand the abuse and confesses.

This predicament, which can now befall any American, is our reward for our stupidity, our indifference, our gullibility, and our lack of compassion for anyone but ourselves.

Some Americans have begun to comprehend the tremendous financial costs of the "war on terror." But few understand the cost to American liberty. Last October a Democrat-sponsored bill, "Prevention of Violent Radicalism and Homegrown Terrorism," passed the House of Representatives 404 to 6.
Go to 12214
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/12/20/5920/

Only six members of the House voted against tyrannical legislation that would destroy freedom of speech and freedom of assembly and that would mandate 18 months of congressional hearings to discover Americans with "extreme" views who could be preemptively arrested.

What better indication that the US Constitution has lost its authority when elected representatives closest to the people pass a bill that permits the Bill of Rights to be overturned by the subjective opinion of members of an "Extremist Belief

Dr. Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury for Economic Policy in the Reagan administration. He is credited with curing stagflation and eliminating "Phillips curve" trade-offs between employment and inflation, an achievement now on the verge of being lost by the worst economic mismanagement in US history.



Go to 12213
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=7735
US Soldiers Stage Mutiny in Baghdad
Manila Ryce ? Alternet December 23, 2007

After an IED attack killed five members of 2nd Platoon Charlie 1-26 in northeast Baghdad, members of the unit gathered and determined that they could no longer function professionally. Several soldiers feared that their anger and want for revenge would result in a massacre of innocent civilians, and thus decided to stage a revolt against the orders of their commanders.

Charlie 1-26 was the hardest hit unit in Iraq so far, losing 14 soldiers in 12 months. Kelly Kennedy of the Army Times, who was embedded with Charlie Company, recalled the hostility the unit had towards Iraqis living under US occupation:

When the IED, the roadside bomb, went off, it was so close to one of the Iraqi police stations that they should have been able to see somebody burying that. It was right in front of somebody's house, and nobody said anything. Nobody said to these guys, "Listen, there's a bomb here. We're worried about you," even though they had been going out and patrolling and doing what they were supposed to be doing, in their minds. So when that IED went off and killed their five friends, they're in--you have to understand, they've been living together for a year like brothers in the basement of this old palace. And it's--they're right on top of each other and going out and taking care of each other on the battlefield, daily firefights. And so, they're closer probably than anyone could be. And when they lost their five men, they--I think they gave up on the Iraqi people.

If the Iraqi people weren't willing to fight for them, then what was the point? And they were so angry. They just wanted to go out and take out the whole city. They didn't understand why they couldn't finish up what they call the war, and the whole idea of counterinsurgency is that you're supposed to be building relationships, but they're trying to build relationships with people who obviously aren't that concerned about them. So this idea of a massacre was just--they were just so angry, they could barely contain it anymore.
www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/71456/



Go to 12212
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=7745
Afghan puppet regime: Licensed for corruption

By Muhammad Taimoor in Islamabad ? December 25, 2007

On 17 Dec. 2007, some Arab newspapers published news about two Afghan high officials having been arrested and then released who were illegally carrying cash and smuggling antiques worth millions of dollars. After this news the US based Afghan satellite channel Ariana announced the names of the said officials surprising the whole world. These Afghan high officials were the Vice President of Afghanistan Ahmad Zia Masood and Speaker of the Afghanistan Parliament Yunus Qanuni. Both belong to the pro-American Northern Alliance.

The officials were on their way to London when they were caught with 17 million US dollars cash and antiques also worth millions of dollars. These two VIPs would have been in jail by now but were freed when they were identified as the members of Afghan puppet regime.

Yunus who has a family name "Qanuni", meaning lawful or legal in Arabic and Farsi, is being blasted by several Afghan websites for indulging in illegal activities and corruption.

Qanuni on his return called a press conference to wash away the stain on his reputation he got from Dubai. He clarified that the cash he was carrying was meant for purchasing a residential apartment in London for himself. However, he did not reveal the amount of money he was carrying nor how he happened to get the money.

There are a number of Afghan Government Officials who are known for their corruption i.e., Minister of Defense Gen. Faheem Qasim, Speaker Parliament Yunus Qanuni, Vice President Zia Masood, Army Chief Bismillah Khan and others. All have a reputation for illegally grabbing land and taking public parks and buildings into their private custody, taking heavy bribes, creating NGOs to get funds from Western donor agencies for fake projects and so forth.


Comment ? December 25, 2007

More than revealing the corrupt nature of the government installed in Kabul, this says much about the dire nature of the situation in Afghanistan.

For a start: why were such prominent Afghan politicians trying to smuggle so much money out of Afghanistan?

Is this a measure of how corrupt the regime the west has installed in Kabul really is?

Or do the Vice President of Afghanistan and the Speaker of its Parliament know how precarious Nato?s position is in Afghanistan? And were they making preparations for a Nato defeat and the collapse of the current Afghan regime and their possible exile in Europe together with their families?



Go to 12211
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=7756
Pakistan's Bhutto assassinated

ITN ? December 27, 2007

Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto has been killed in a gun and bomb attack after a political rally in the city of Rawalpindi.

'She has been martyred,' said party official Rehman Malik.

Ms Bhutto, 54, died in hospital after reportedly being shot in the head.

Police said a suicide bomber fired shots at Ms Bhutto as she was leaving the rally in a park before blowing himself up.

'The man first fired at Bhutto's vehicle. She ducked and then he blew himself up,' said police officer Mohammad Shahid.

Police said 16 people had been killed in the blast.

A witness said he saw about eight bodies on a road as well as a mutilated human head.

On October 18, a suicide bomber killed nearly 150 people in an attack on Ms Bhutto as she paraded through the southern city of Karachi after returning home from eight years in self-imposed exile.

Earlier, gunmen opened fire on supporters of another former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, from an office of the party that supports President Pervez Musharraf, killing four Sharif supporters, police said.

Mr Sharif was several miles away from the shooting and was on his way to Rawalpindi after attending a rally.

Mr Sharif, who was overthrown by Mr Musharraf in a 1999 coup and allowed back into the country just last month after seven years in exile, blamed supporters of the pro-Musharraf party for the violence.

But a spokesman for the party denied that its workers were involved.



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http://en.rian.ru/russia/20071225/94074574.html
successfully tests sea-based ballistic missile
15:16 | 25/ 12/ 2007



MOSCOW, December 25 (RIA Novosti) - Russia conducted Tuesday a successful test launch of a ballistic missile from a nuclear submarine in the Barents Sea in the Arctic, a Navy spokesman said.

The K-114 Tula (Delta IV-class) nuclear submarine of the Northern Fleet fired a new-generation Sineva intercontinental ballistic missile from a submerged position, targeting a test site on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia's Far East.

"The launch has been conducted from an underwater position," Igor Drygalo said. "A simulated warhead reached the target at the Kura testing ground at the designated time."

The RSM-54 Sineva (NATO designation SS-N-23 Skiff) is a third-generation liquid-propellant intercontinental ballistic missile that entered service with the Russian Navy in June 2007. It has a reported range of 5,500 miles and can carry four nuclear warheads.

The Tula submarine previously test fired a Sineva ICBM, which is allegedly capable of penetrating any existing missile defenses, on December 17. A dummy warhead hit a target at the same testing grounds in Kamchatka with high precision, the Navy said at the time.

The submarine, built in 1987, has been modernized at the Zvyozdochka (Starlet) Engineering Plant in Severodvinsk in the Arkhangelsk Region. It is equipped with 16 Sineva ICBMs missiles and 12 torpedoes.

Delta IV-class submarines currently form the mainstay of Russia's strategic nuclear submarine fleet. Seven of the series were built between 1984 and 1992.

Russia's Strategic Missiles Forces (SMF) recently said that Russia would conduct at least 11 test launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles in 2008 and would double the number of launches after 2009 "to prevent the weakening of Russia's nuclear deterrence under any circumstances."



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http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSN2526656920071226?feedType=RSS&feedName=healthNews&rpc=22&sp=true
Worms infect more poor Americans than thought
Tue Dec 25, 2007 8:13pm EST Email | Print |
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By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Roundworms may infect close to a quarter of inner city black children, tapeworms are the leading cause of seizures among U.S. Hispanics and other parasitic diseases associated with poor countries are also affecting Americans, a U.S. expert said on Tuesday.

Recent studies show many of the poorest Americans living in the United States carry some of the same parasitic infections that affect the poor in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, said Dr. Peter Hotez, a tropical disease expert at George Washington University and editor-in-chief of the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases.

Writing in the journal, Hotez said these parasitic infections had been ignored by most health experts in the United States.

"I feel strongly that this is such an important health issue and yet because it only affects the poor it has been ignored," Hotez said via e-mail.

He said the United States spent hundreds of millions of dollars to defend against bio-terrorism threats like anthrax or smallpox or avian flu, which were more a theoretical concern than a real threat at present.

"And yet we have a devastating parasitic disease burden among the American poor, right under our nose," Hotez said.

He noted a recent study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, presented in November, found that almost 14 percent of the U.S. population is infected with Toxocara roundworms, which dogs and cats can pass to people.

"Urban playgrounds in the United States have recently been shown to be a particularly rich source of Toxocara eggs and inner-city children are at high risk of acquiring the infection," Hotez wrote, adding that this might be partly behind the rise in asthma cases in the country. Up to 23 percent of urban black children may be infected, he said.

"Because of its possible links to asthma, it would be important to determine whether covert toxocariasis is a basis for the rise of asthma among inner-city children in the northeastern United States," he added.

"Cysticercosis is another very serious parasitic worm infection ... caused by the tapeworm Taenia solium, that results in seizures and other neurological manifestations," Hotez wrote.

He said up to 2,000 new cases of neurological disease caused by tapeworms are diagnosed every year in the United States. More than 2 percent of adult Latinos may be infected, and with 35 million Hispanics in the United States, this could add up to tens of thousands of cases, Hotez said.

"In the hospitals of Los Angeles, California, neurocysticercosis currently accounts for 10 percent of all seizures presenting to some emergency departments," he wrote.

"We need to begin erasing these horrific health disparities," Hotez wrote in the paper, available online at www.plosntds.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pntd.0000149.

(Editing by Alan Elsner)



Go to 12208
http://www.spacewar.com/reports/China_India_building_trust_in_first_joint_military_exercises_official_999.html
China, India building trust in first joint military exercises: official


by Staff Writers
Beijing (AFP) Dec 20, 2007
China said Thursday its first-ever joint military exercises with India that began this week were aimed at building trust between the neighbours, which still have rival claims to Himalayan territory.
The nine-day military exercises in southwest China, which involve around 100 troops from each side, began on Wednesday, foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang told a regular press briefing.

"The aim of the training is to enhance mutual understanding and mutual trust between the Chinese and Indian militaries," Qin said.

A Chinese defence ministry spokesman was quoted earlier on the official Xinhua news agency as saying that the training, in Yunnan province, would focus on counter-terrorism exercises.

The historic manoeuvres were announced after Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met his Chinese counterpart, Wen Jiabao, on the sidelines of an ASEAN summit in Singapore last month.

China and India have a history of rocky relations, and they have yet to resolve a border row that triggered a brief but a bitter war in 1962.

India says China occupies 38,000 square kilometres (14,670 square miles) of its territory, while Beijing claims the whole of the northeastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which is 90,000 square kilometres.

However ties between the regional rivals have thawed since the 1990s, and trade between the two has flourished in recent years.

Qin played down the effects of the lingering border dispute, emphasising the world's two biggest developing countries had much in common on international issues.

"In fact, it's very natural and normal for two countries to have differences," he said.

A second military drill is scheduled to take place in 2008 in India, an Indian defence ministry spokesman said earlier.



Go to 12207
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aiUsVKaqDA7g
Japan Mines `Flammable Ice,' Flirts With Environmental Disaster

By Shigeru Sato

Dec. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Fifty-five million years ago the world's climate was catastrophically changed when volcanoes melted natural gas frozen in the seabed. Now Japan plans to drill for the same icy crystals to end its reliance on imported energy.

Billions of tons of methane hydrate, frozen chunks of chemical-laced water buried in sediment some 3,000 feet under the Pacific Ocean floor, may help Japan win energy independence from the Middle East and Indonesia. Japanese engineers have found enough ``flammable ice'' to meet its gas use demands for 14 years. The trick is extracting it without damaging the environment.

Japan is joining the U.S. and Canada in test drilling for methane even as scientists express concerns about any uncontrolled release of the frozen chemical. Some researchers blame the greenhouse gas for triggering a global firestorm that helped wipe out the dinosaurs.

``Methane hydrate was a key cause of the global warming that led to one of the largest extinctions in the earth's history,'' says Ryo Matsumoto, a University of Tokyo scientist who has studied frozen gas since 1987. ``By making the best use of our wisdom, knowledge and technology, we should be able to utilize this wisely as a new energy.''

If successful, the gas drilling project could help Japan reduce a liquefied natural gas import bill that last year was 2.66 trillion yen ($23.3 billion). The country's LNG imports totaled 62.2 million metric tons, equivalent to 3.03 trillion cubic feet, according to the Ministry of Finance's trade report.

``We are closely watching the government's methane hydrate project, expecting some day to start receiving gas via pipelines from the continental shelf,'' says Toshiharu Okui, deputy general manager of gas resources at Tokyo Gas Co., the country's largest distributor of natural gas.

500 Meters Thick

Trapped within sheets of ice up to 500 meters (1,640 feet) thick is an estimated 40 trillion cubic feet of crystalline methane encased in an ocean trench called the Nankai Trough, 30 miles (50 kilometers) off the coast of the main Honshu Island.

``Reserves aren't as much as Saudi Arabia's or Russia's, but they will contribute to us cutting our heavy dependence on imports,'' says Yoshifumi Hashiba, deputy director of the trade ministry's petroleum and natural gas division.

Exploiting the Nankai Trough depends on developing technical know-how through a test project in Canada's frozen north, says Kenichi Yokoi, team leader of the methane hydrate research project at state-controlled Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corp., known as Jogmec.

``Test production in Canada's permafrost is the key to provide clues and determine how methane hydrate can be tapped for mass production,'' says Yokoi. ``Conventional drilling technologies won't be applied for methane hydrate exploitation.''

Test Drilling Results

The most efficient method has proved ``depressurizing,'' which requires deep bore holes being drilled into the ice sheets. Pressure within the chamber is reduced by a pump, causing gaseous methane to separate from the water and ascend to the well head.

A first round of drilling was completed in April by Jogmec and the Canadian government and a second set of tests are scheduled for early 2008. The two governments won't disclose results due to a confidentiality agreement, Jogmec's Yokoi says.

Commercial exploitation of methane hydrate is economically viable when oil trades above $54 a barrel, Japan's government estimated two years ago. The trade ministry is targeting 2016 to start production, corresponding with the scheduled completion of the 16-year government-led test project.

While governments are attracted to an abundant clean fuel, drilling risks disturbing the seabed and triggering an uncontrolled release, says Matsumoto of the University of Tokyo.

``A mass release of methane into the sea and the atmosphere is a risk for global warming,'' he says. ``Massive landslides at the ocean floor must be avoided when drilling at the Nankai Trough.''

Undersea Landslides

Undersea landsides triggered by volcanoes that occurred more than fifty million years ago resulted in the release of methane hydrate, contributing to global warming that lasted tens of thousands of years, says Matsumoto.

Japan's government is promising rigorous environmental controls with gas-leakage detectors and monitoring systems in place before the scheduled test drilling in as early as 2009.

``Energy security and environment protection cannot be apart from each other,'' says the trade ministry's Hashiba. ``We need a comprehensive assessment.''

Among other concerns are that the separation of sea water and colder fresh water will cause ocean temperatures in the Nankai Trough to fall, says Hashiba. The area is a habitat for red sea bream, a fish delicacy.

Fishing Bank Threat

``We're worried that drilling work might harm our fishing banks out there and eventually reduce our catches of red sea bream,'' says Hironori Watanabe at the Katsuura City fishery association.

A bigger worry is evidence that the undersea ice may already be melting. In September, Matsumoto joined a research party in the Sea of Japan to follow up on a 2006 discovery by his university colleagues of methane gas bubbles rising from the ocean floor.

``It's ironically recurring,'' Matsumoto says. ``Extinction of living organisms has repeatedly taken place in the earth's history, and dead bodies were accumulated in soil and under the sea bed, and turned to oil and natural gas.''

To contact the reporters on this story: Shigeru Sato in Tokyo at ssato10@bloomberg.net ;

Last Updated: December 25, 2007 11:13 EST



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