Corruption Information 1075
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 12240
http://www.roguegovernment.com/news.php?id=5691
Bush Signs $555 Billion Spending Bill
12-26-2007
AP
CRAWFORD, Texas (AP) - President Bush, still voicing concern about special project spending by Congress, signed a $555 billion bill Wednesday that funds the Iraq war well into 2008 and keeps government agencies running through next September.
Bush's signed the massive spending bill as he flew on Air Force One to his Texas ranch here to see in the new year. His signature on the legislation caps a long-running fight with the Democratic-run Congress.
``I am disappointed in the way the Congress compiled this legislation, including abandoning the goal I set early this year to reduce the number and cost of earmarks by half,'' the president said in a statement. ``Instead, the Congress dropped into the bill nearly 9,800 earmarks that total more than $10 billion. These projects are not funded through a merit-based process and provide a vehicle for wasteful government spending.''
``There is still more to be done to rein in Government spending,'' Bush said. ``In February I will submit my budget proposal for fiscal year 2009, which will once again restrain spending, keep taxes low, and continue us on a path towards a balanced budget. I look forward to working with the Congress in the coming year to ensure taxpayer dollars are spent wisely.
A Bush spokesman, Scott Stanzel, had told reporters en route to Texas earlier that the president remained concerned about ``Congress' addiction to earmarks.''
Bush, who had used his veto power to remain relevant in the debate with Democrats on national spending priorities, had agreed to sign the measure, which includes $70 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, after winning concessions on Iraq and other budget items. The bill bankrolls 14 Cabinet departments and federal agencies and funds foreign aid for the budget year that began on Oct. 1.
Bush and his Senate GOP allies forced the Iraq money upon anti-war Democrats as the price for permitting the year-end budget deal to pass and be signed.
Democrats tried to use war spending legislation to force a change in Bush's Iraq policy, chiefly by setting a withdrawal goal with dates such as Dec. 15, 2009. But Bush and Republicans held a powerful hand. They knew Democrats would not let money lapse for troops overseas. That allowed a Bush veto in May and GOP stalling tactics to determine the outcome.
On the domestic budget, Bush's GOP allies were divided over whether the overall spending bill was a victory for their party in the long fight with Democrats over agency budgets.
Conservatives and outside watchdog groups criticized the bill for having about $28 billion in domestic spending that topped Bush's budget and was paid for by a combination of ``emergency'' spending, transfers from the defense budget and other maneuvers.
Stanzel noted Wednesday that Bush had asked for options the White House might have to abrogate some or a large degree of the special interest spending.
``So no decisions have been made on that front,'' Stanzel added, ``but certainly as you noted in the president's press conference last week, he talked about directing the OMB director, Jim Nussle, to look at ways - or look at avenues by which the federal government can address those earmarks.''
Go to 12239
http://www.roguegovernment.com/news.php?id=5389
Full Access For Mexican Trucks In U.S.
12-10-2007
Public Citizen
Statement of Joan Claybrook, President of Public Citizen
In a stealthy maneuver, the Bush administration has boosted the threat to the public by increasing the number of Mexico-based trucking firms allowed access to all U.S. roads as part of the reckless North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) trucking “pilot program.” The Department of Transportation recently revealed an increase in the number of NAFTA trucks permitted to all U.S. highways – now 10 carriers, sending as many as 55 trucks throughout the country.
The last time the Bush administration made a public announcement about the number of Mexico-based carriers allowed to participate in the NAFTA trucks pilot program, there were only three carriers.
It has long been the tradition by this administration to bury bad news like this by sending out press releases on Friday afternoon, but in this case, the Department of Transportation (DOT) reached a new low: not sending any press release at all, but simply updating a Web page.
Both houses of Congress have passed versions of the DOT spending bill that includes provisions to shut down this dangerous folly. Unfortunately for all members of the public who must travel every day on the nation’s roads, the White House has threatened to veto the final bill. It is high time for President Bush to get out of the way and let the Senate vote on the final bill before any more lives are put at risk.
In 2001, a NAFTA tribunal ordered the U.S. to permit access to all U.S. roads for Mexico-domiciled trucking companies. The Clinton administration refused to comply with the NAFTA tribunal, citing serious safety and environmental concerns with Mexico’s trucking fleet. The Bush administration has tried since 2002 to enforce the NAFTA order to open U.S. highways to unsafe trucks. Congress has intervened repeatedly to stop the Bush administration. In September, the Bush administration tried to meet NAFTA’s dictates by launching a pilot program to allow up to 100 motor carriers from Mexico full access to U.S. highways. However, the project violates a 2001 congressional mandate that Mexico-domiciled trucking companies meet U.S. safety standards regarding hours of service, driver training and licensing, and vehicle safety before being allowed access to the nation’s roadways.
A lawsuit filed by several groups, including Public Citizen, alleging that the pilot program doesn’t meet congressional requirements is still pending in the Ninth Circuit.
Go to 12238
http://www.roguegovernment.com/news.php?id=5712
Bank Predicts Ron Paul Win & U.S. Depression
12-27-2007
USA Daily
Denmark based Saxo Bank predicts Ron Paul presidency in 2008. According to Pravda.Ru, the bank predicts Paul will be the next president and that the U.S. economy will plunge into a depression prior to the election.
Saxo Bank says the U.S. economy will shrink by 25% and the Chinese economy will decrease by 40%. The economic downturn will come about as a result of the housing crash.
Ron Paul has been critical of the Federal Reserve and has blamed the Federal Reserve for causing the real estate bubble and crash. Paul has said that the loose monetary policy of the Fed had artificially inflated real estate prices which lead to the collapse.
Paul supports ‘Sound Money’ and opposes the Federal Reserve’s ‘Inflation Tax’ and says that he wants to prevent a dollar collapse. On December 16th grass roots activists organized an online protest of the ‘Inflation Tax’ and donated a record 6 million dollars to Paul’s campaign in one day.
Paul now leads all Republicans in fundraising and is best positioned to win the GOP nomination. His campaign is already financed through Feb 5th when 22 states hold primaries.
Paul also advocates the elimination of federal income taxes and a non interventionist foreign policy and is an advocate of protecting the Bill of Rights and the U.S. Constitution. Paul has maintained that U.S. foreign policy was bankrupting the country.
Saxo Bank also predicts $175 a barrel for oil and the price of grain will double. Some have predicted that oil will climb to $250 a barrel if the U.S. attacks Iran. The bank also predicts that 30% of large building companies will go bankrupt
Go to 12237
http://www.roguegovernment.com/news.php?id=5742
Yuan At New High Vs Dollar
12-28-2007
Reuters
SHANGHAI, Dec 28 - China's yuan hit a fresh post-revaluation high against the dollar on Friday and closed above its mid-point for the first time in a week, suggesting the market was becoming used to a faster pace of appreciation.
The yuan ended at 7.3041, up from Thursday's close of 7.3175, after hitting a high of 7.3015. It climbed 0.90 percent during the week, its biggest weekly gain since it was revalued and its peg to the dollar was abolished in July 2005.
Faced with rising inflation and diplomatic pressure from China's trading partners, the Chinese central bank allowed its tightly controlled currency to appreciate 6.86 percent this year, accelerating from 3.40 percent in 2006 and 2.56 percent in 2005.
Friday's rise was caused partly by a sharp fall of the dollar in global markets.
But the central bank encouraged the yuan's record gain throughout this week by setting a string of strong mid-points , or reference rates. On Friday it announced a mid-point of 7.3046, up from Thursday's 7.3079.
Traders and analysts believe the central bank is using the mid-points to prepare the market for faster yuan appreciation next year, as it fights inflation.
It may also want to see greater daily volatility, to encourage traders to bet on intra-day moves in both directions instead of assuming the yuan will drift continuously higher. That could make it easier for the central bank to manage faster appreciation.
The yuan mostly traded well below each day's mid-point this week, showing many traders feared a pull-back. But on Friday it stayed slightly above the mid-point for most of the day.
"The recent acceleration of yuan appreciation indicates the central bank is now seriously implementing its new policy of using the exchange rate to fight inflation," said a dealer at a major Chinese commercial bank.
"International pressure is also giving the central bank little choice but to let the yuan rise faster."
Some traders speculate that authorities may soon widen the yuan's daily trading band, which now extends 0.5 percent on either side of the mid-point, or even announce another one-off revaluation. But many analysts think China remains unlikely to take the drastic and risky step of a revaluation.
Dealers agreed that this week's pace of appreciation could not be sustained in the long term. They expect the yuan to rise around 8.5 percent or slightly more against the dollar over the next 12 months.
"The rushby the central bank to allow the yuan to appreciate at a much faster pace at the end of this year is partly to make the headline figures look better," said a trader at a U.S. bank in Shanghai.
"China can proudly say it is serious about currency reforms. But I simply don't believe the yuan will rise at this annualised pace next year, so the recent faster-than-usual rise may mean a pull-back or a slower uptrend at the start of next year."
Asked about the yuan's rise, a Chinese central bank official, who declined to be named, told Reuters on Friday: "We will continue to push forward with reform of the foreign exchange system in a stable way."
He added, "If we don't announce new policies, that means we are not adjusting our policy."
The remarks were in line with previous official statements on the currency. In its November monetary policy report, the central bank said explicitly for the first time that it would use the exchange rate to fight inflation, which hit an 11-year high that month.
In the offshore non-deliverable forwards market, one-year dollar/yuan NDFs fell to 6.7161/6.7236 on Friday from 6.7310/80 late on Thursday. Their latest levels implied yuan appreciation of 8.64-8.76 percent over the next 12 months from Friday's mid-point.
Go to 12236
http://www.roguegovernment.com/news.php?id=5744
Police Abandoned Posts Prior To Bhutto Killing
12-28-2007
Raw Story
Police abandoned their security posts shortly before Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto's assassination Thursday, according to a journalist present at the time, and unanswerable questions remain about the cause of her death, because an autopsy was never performed.
Pakistan's Interior Minister on Friday said that Bhutto was not killed by gunshots, as had been widely reported, and doctors at Rawalpindi General Hospital, where she died, say there were no bullet marks on the former prime minister's body, according to India's IBNLive.com. Furthermore, according to the news agency, there was no formal autopsy performed on Bhutto's body before she was buried Friday.
CNN is now reporting that it wasn't gunshots or shrapnel that killed Bhutto, but that she died from hitting the sunroof of the car she was riding in. The network said sources in Pakistan's Interior Ministry said nothing entered her skull, no bullets or shrapnel.
Apparently there was some kind of lever on the sunroof she was standing through, and she hit her head on that CNN reported Friday morning.
Earlier in the day Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz told a Pakistani news channel, “The report says she had head injuries – an irregular patch – and the X-ray doesn’t show any bullet in the head. So it was probably the shrapnel or any other thing has struck her in her said. That damaged her brain, causing it to ooze and her death. The report categorically says there’s no wound other than that," according to IBNLive.
Perhaps more shockingly, an attendee at the rally where Bhutto was killed says police charged with protecting her "abandoned their posts," leaving just a handful of Bhutto's own bodyguards protecting her.
"Police officers had frisked the 3,000 to 4,000 people attending Thursday's rally when they entered the park, but as the speakers from Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party droned on, the police abandoned many of their posts," wrote Saeed Shah in an essay published by McClatchy News Service. "As she drove out through the gate, her main protection appeared to be her own bodyguards, who wore their usual white T-shirts inscribed: 'Willing to die for Benazir.'"
While some intelligence officials, especially within the US, were quick to finger al Qaeda militants as responsible for Bhutto's death, it remains unclear precisely who was responsible and some speculation has centered on Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI, its military or even forces loyal to the current president Pervez Musharraf. Rawalpindi, where Bhutto was killed, is the garrison city that houses the Pakistani military's headquarters.
"GHQ (general headquarters of the army) killed her," Sardar Saleem, a former member of parliament, told Shah at the hospital.
Whatever the case, Bhutto's precise cause of death may never be known because of the failure to administer an autopsy. The procedure was not carried out because police and local authorities in Rawalpindi did not request one, according to IBNLive, but the government plans a formal investigation why this was the case.
Musharraf initially blamed her death on unnamed Islamic militants, but Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz told The Associated Press on Friday that "we have the evidence that al-Qaida and the Taliban were behind the suicide attack on Benazir Bhutto."
He said investigators had resolved the "whole mystery" behind the opposition leader's killing and would give details at press conference later Friday.
Go to 12235
http://www.forbes.com/markets/2007/12/27/exxon-sakhalin-gazprom-markets-equity-cx_vr_1227markets02.html
Gazprom Takes On Exxon
Vidya Ram, 12.27.07, 7:45 AM ET
LONDON - If the foreign operators of Russia's Sakhalin-1 natural gas field weren’t concerned enough after BP was ousted from a major venture over the summer, then Thursday's comments by a senior Gazprom executive should certainly have them reaching for the vodka.
Gazprom Deputy Chairman Alexander Ananenkov lambasted the operators of Sakhalin-1, arguing that a handover of control to them had led to an "infringement of Russia's national interests," and had turned Russian consumers into "poor relations who see their gas siphoned off."
"We have received an extremely negative experience of foreign participation in exploration projects in Russia's East," he told a news conference.
Exxon Mobil (nyse: XOM - news - people ) operates the vast natural gas field along with the Russian state-controlled oil company Rosneft, India's Oil and Natural Gas Company, and Sodeco, a Japanese consortium. The field is producing approximately 134 million cubic feet of natural gas per day and 250,000 barrels of crude oil.
The comments, which follow several months of rumblings from Gazprom (other-otc: OGZPY - news - people ) about the project, will increase pressure on the operators, led by Exxon, to sell their gas to the Russian giant itself.
Gazprom currently has a legal monopoly over all gas exports, but Sakhalin-1 has been exempt under a production-sharing agreement, allowing its operators to market the field's natural gas in the lucrative Asia-Pacific markets. In 2004, the Exxon-led consortium signed a preliminary agreement to supply 280 billion cubic feet of gas to China's National Petroluem Corporation and has held talks with Japan and India on supplying liquified natural gas.
These moves have been seen as a direct threat to Gazprom, which has grand plans of its own to supply the Far East, particularly as relations with the European Union get more prickly. The European Commission is currently drafting so-called "unbundling" regulations which could force Gazprom to sell some its distribution assets in Europe. (See: " Gazprom's Medvedev Gives Europe A Warning")
"There is no way that Gazprom is going to sit idly by and watch Exxon export Russian gas to China and compete with Gazprom's own plans to export its gas to China," said Andrew Neff, senior energy analyst at Global Insight. "Gazprom will do whatever it takes to ensure it retains its gas export monopoly on Russian gas to Asia the same as it has an export monopoly on Russian gas exports to Europe."
Gazprom is also hoping to use the gas from Sakhalin-1 to supply the domestic market, where gas prices are set to soar and reach parity with export gas prices by 2011. The price of domestic gas will rise by 25.0% in early 2008, giving a massive boost to Gazprom's revenues. (See: " Gazprom Down But Hardly Deflated")
The fact that Exxon is the world's largest energy company will be of little concern to Gazprom, which is used to taking on the sector's heavyweights. In June, BP (nyse: BP - news - people ) ceded control of the Kovykta gas fields in eastern Siberia to Gazprom, while the operators of Sakhalin-2--Royal Dutch Shell (nyse: RDSA - news - people ), Mitsui (other-otc: MITSF - news - people ), and Mitsubishi (other-otc: MSBHY - news - people )--were forced to drastically reduce their stakes. (See: " Russia Shows Sakhalin Partners Who The Boss Is")
Go to 12234
http://www.rense.com/general79/emerg.htm
Emerging Power Against
Rampant Immigration
By Frosty Wooldridge
12-27-7
Bush and Congress cannot and will not prevail against the will of the American people regarding unchecked, unending illegal immigration in 2008.
Here's what my readers and a few experts have to say
"Please read, grade and see who stands for our country and who wants to finish destroying what is left of America. Let us keep track of what they say and then we decide who we will vote into the highest office. We cannot make another mistake again like we did with President Bush."
~ Carmen and Joe dontspeakforme.org
"The Congress finally admits to energy concerns of the future. Yea! But controlling immigration would seem the most logical, but no, nothing about that. Let's save a couple of watts and bring in 20 or 30 million more people into our country. Yeah, that'll do a lot of good. Like my dad used to say 'It's like 'shoveling shi* against the tide.'"
~ Howard of Phoenix, AZ
"The major problem with our country is the gross corruption and compromise of our entire political system of government. It extends to the highest levels. The illegal immigrants that come here have also been the victims of corruption both their government and ours along with corporate America. Most of the flood of illegals was a result of the passage of NAFTA, which as you must know was a lose-lose situation for the average Latino and American. We are in big trouble. Most Americans don't have the ability to be brutally honest with themselves and what is really going on in this country."
~ Barbara
"The Industrial Revolution was so productive that, given the rudimentary nature of governmental and financial institutions, and of the technology of communication and control, capital was unable to deprive labor of a significant share of the national income. Fast forward to '1984' and Big Brother's e-capability for universal surveillance, instantaneous communication, and control of the smallest elements of one's daily life.
"As the supply of labor rises, real wages fall. Thus, illegal aliens don't have to work for lower wages for them to depress wages for all workers. Just their presence here increases the supply of labor, which necessarily lowers the market-clearing wage. Likewise, their presence also increases demand for a wide variety of consumer goods & services, thereby bidding up prices.
"As the American Middle Class continues to be dispossessed economically and disenfranchised politically, they approach the Malthusian state where they compete in 'their own' country for a third world existence with illegals and H-visa aliens. Insult added to injury: will the tins of 'Soylent Green' have bilingual labels?"
~ John Tomaski
"I fear America is finished. And when the NAU becomes a total reality, there's no going back. America as we knew it no longer exists. Instead, we live in a world where we have to fear for our lives when going shopping or going to church, or sending our children to school. We live in a world where we are not secure, even in our own homes.
"I was in a hospital three years ago where there was only one American nurse on my floor for all shifts. Most of the time I couldn't understand what they were saying to me, and one of them tried to give me the wrong medication. I wouldn't take it, and she reported me to the head nurse, who called my doctor at home and got herself a good tongue-lashing, because it WAS the wrong medication.
"Now, if you can't read English, you can hardly speak English, and you can't make yourself understood to English-speakers, why the devil are you working in a situation where you hold their very lives in your hands?"
~ Diane, American grandmother
"Once again massive riots have taken place in a Paris suburb which is populated with North African and Arab immigrants. Over the past week, over 100 police officers have been injured as the thugs hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails and fired shotguns at them. The violence is a direct result of the large influx of Third World immigrants who have no intention of assimilating."
~ Dave Gibson
"The only way to save our country is to start following our Constitution the way it was written. The 2008 election is "do or die" in my opinion. Who we have in Congress and as President will determine our fate. I support Ron Paul for President. The American public needs to wake up and take action, especially immigration."
~ Babs, Belfield, North Dakota
"One third of immigrants (illegals) are on some form of welfare, costing states nearly $20 billion a year adding that efforts to legalize the spiraling number of illegal aliens will only increase the amount of uneducated, uninsured legal immigrants burdening America's welfare rolls. Since 2000, more than 10 million immigrants have entered the U.S., more than half of them illegally. With no change in U.S. immigration policy, another 15 million immigrants will likely arrive in the next 10 years.
"The last seven years have been the highest period of immigration in American history," says Dr. Steven A. Camarota of
The question grows: how long before the United States suffers the same fate as France ? Short answer: not too much longer if the current immigration numbers continue.
If U.S. citizens fail to stop all forms of immigration, this country doesn't stand a chance against its immigrants as they outnumber, overwhelm and thoroughly change our country into something like those immigrants fled.
Unchecked Immigration in any form; a lose-lose dilemma for all Americans.
The November 2008 election of senators and House members, and the next president will sustain or destroy the United States of America. If the democrats win the White House, our borders and beloved Republic become a wide-open free-for-all. If any of the Republicans win other than Ron Paul or Duncan Hunter this nation won't survive.
Think I'm kidding ? Check
Go to 12233
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=701111
Woman sues bank in hopes of recovering life savings
By MARIE ROHDE
mrohde@journalsentinel.com
Posted: Dec. 27, 2007
Willie Floyd, an 82-year-old Milwaukee widow, has filed a lawsuit against officers of the nation's third-largest bank, one with assets of nearly $1.5 trillion, saying they have cheated her out of her life savings - $19,700.22.
Willie Floyd is suing Chase Bank over an uncashed cashier's check for almost $20,000.
Quotable
A cashier's check that is uncashed after five years is presumed to be 'abandoned' under state law.
- Joshua Stubbins,
attorney for Chase Bank
It will clearly be unjust enrichment for the bank if they are allowed to keep the money.
- Tarena Washington Franklin,
attorney for Willie Floyd
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Buy a link hereFor many years, Floyd and her husband, the late Douglas Floyd, had a savings account at the Marine Bank branch in Waukesha, even though it was far from the north side Milwaukee home where they raised two sons and two daughters.
"My husband was a mechanic at Jack Griffin Ford out there for about 40 years," the widow said. "It was close to where he worked."
In 1985, Douglas Floyd was contemplating retirement and the couple were planning to move back to Arkansas, where they grew up, met and married.
Douglas Floyd withdrew the money from the savings account in April 1985, fully intending to deposit it in another savings account when the couple resettled in the South.
But things happened.
"My husband, he got sick," Willie Floyd said. "He had prostate cancer, and he never got any better."
For a time, the Floyds held out hope that his health would improve and they would make the move. He decided to put the check in a safe deposit box - for which they paid $10 a year - at the bank.
"He got nervous about having the money in the house and he said, 'What if the house catches fire?' So we decided to get a safe deposit box out at the bank way out in Waukesha," she said.
Douglas Floyd died in October 1988. Willie Floyd moved in with her granddaughter, Bridgit Floyd.
The widow said she thought the money was protected as long as it was in a safe deposit box at the bank. She said that some time after her husband died, she asked a teller how long she could keep the check in the box.
"I was told that as long as they were a bank, it would be good," Willie Floyd said. "I didn't think much of it until I got a letter from the bank and I didn't recognize the name" of the bank.
Although the bank's name had changed twice - Marine was acquired by Bank One in 1988; Bank One was bought by J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. in 2004 - this was the first time she had noticed.
Willie Floyd said she hadn't thought about the interest she was losing by not having it in a standard savings account. The interest she would have earned could vary, but a calculator provided online by the Federal Reserve Bank indicates that if she had bought something for $19,700.22 in 1985, it would cost her $38,480.79 to buy the same goods or services, based on the Consumer Price Index.
Willie Floyd didn't share the details of the check with her family.
"I knew there was a check in the safe deposit box, but I had no idea how much it was for," Bridgit Floyd said. "She told me it was none of my business. But we were always careful to pay the annual fee on time. We were never late, not even once."
After becoming concerned when she got a letter from the bank and the name was different from what she remembered, the widow went to the bank, got the check out of the safe deposit box and tried to open a savings account with it in the spring of 2006. Bank officials told her that the check wasn't good anymore.
She hired a lawyer, Tarena Washington Franklin, who said she was directed to bank officials in Louisiana, who told her that the money had been given to the State of Wisconsin as unclaimed.
"I checked with the state, and it was not there," Franklin said. "That money has to be somewhere, and we couldn't get any answer from them. We filed a lawsuit to get their attention."
Franklin noted that the check does not have an expiration date.
"What they're doing, it's unjust," Franklin said of bank officials. "It will clearly be unjust enrichment for the bank if they are allowed to keep the money."
Joshua Stubbins, a local lawyer representing the bank, filed a written response to Franklin's lawsuit. He said a cashier's check that is uncashed after five years is presumed to be "abandoned" under state law. He added that the bank "did not willfully or negligently commit a wrongful, illegal or inappropriate act," and that the case should be dismissed.
Franklin argued that the check should be considered abandoned after five years only after the bank gives notice to the check holder that it is taking that action.
"They never gave my client a notice of any kind," Franklin said. "There is nothing printed on the check indicating an expiration date."
Stubbins did not return a reporter's calls. Christine Holevas, a bank spokeswoman in Chicago, said Chase would have no comment because of the ongoing suit.
Milwaukee County Circuit Judge David Hansher will hear arguments in February on the bank's motion to throw out the lawsuit, which asks that the check be honored. If not resolved, the case could go to trial in midsummer.
Meanwhile, Willie Floyd said she's just sick about the whole matter.
"I didn't even cook dinner last night," she said recently.
Go to 12232
http://www.rense.com/politics4/fronts.htm
A Short History Of Reported
CIA Fronts
By Sherman Skolnick
7-17-99
I used to teach a course on how to investigate and research Foundation Tax Returns, originally called IRS form 990-A, and then form 990-AR, the only tax return, by the way, that is available as a public document. Donors Forum, with office/libraries in many big cities, have on hand for copying, copies of Foundation Tax Returns in that district of the office, sometimes other districts, of their public tax returns as a tax-exempt entity.
In a scandal that was started by Bobby Kennedy in the Spring, of 1967, various foundations around the U.S. were identified as part of a complicated three-level device for disguising CIA funding of domestic operations: [1] conduits [2] pass-throughs and [3] fronts [a technical term]. A summary of the scandal can be seen in the numerous pages of the New York Times "Index" for 1967, a summary of stories in that newspaper, under the heading, Central Intelligence Agency. Before they could accomplish a cover up, I and my associates quickly looked up the 990-A tax returns of the CIA foundations on the three technical levels mentioned. We developed expertise in showing over and above the mass media published reports, where the money came from and was distributed. Among our disclosures, which did not endear us to fellow peaceniks who heckled me as a trouble-maker:
1. Most liberal groups with an office and some funds for a regular staff, got their funding through the three levels, from CIA, including the American Civil Liberties Union, which went out of business in 1967 and was completely taken over by espionage groups, since then called the Roger Baldwin Foundation of ACLU, and such. If you carefully examine the board of overseers of what amateurs continue wrongly call the "American Civil Liberties Union", you will see the espionage types that run the operations throughout the U.S. They are an early-warning system, for example, of flare-ups against the government in the ghettos of big cities.
2. The Nation Magazine, which according to some, does some good, fails and neglects to mention DOMESTIC operations of CIA. A simple answer: their funding comes from, among others, a CIA-front, called the J.M. Kaplan Fund of New York, and a group of CIA foundations grouped under the umbrella of the CIA-funded Roger Baldwin Foundation of ACLU and similar names. Moreover, the Nation Magazine published commentaries making vile statements against Oliver Stone, that JFK was, in fact, the Nation says, killed by a lone assassin and that the movie "JFK" is a phantasy and a "fraud". Thus whitewashing the Dallas murder for what some claim was a CIA-instigated plot against JFK.
3. The Nation Magazine did finally admit several years ago that what they erroneously persist in calling the "AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION" [which actually was taken over by the CIA-foundations in 1967] was very close to FBI dictator/boss J. Edgar Hoover by way of investigating and combatting so-called "Reds" in America.
This next item is surely going to outrage some who are naive and poorly informed.
4. Pacifica Radio, which like the Nation Magazine, has done SOME good, has been reportedly a CIA-Foundation operation, New York, Houston, and the Bay area, California. During the anti-war period, some rednecks, believing that Pacifica-Houston, was a genuine "liberal" group, purportedly bombed the station there. A simple, though certainly not complete answer, is that the stations were used as provocateur operations, to lure out more independent-minded political activists who are and were naive. For example, however, Pacifica, Berkeley, went almost into orbit when Dennis Bernstein of that station, without realizing I am an independent, was unable to stop me from blurting out condemnation of the oil industry and George Bush. Some of his confidants informed me he almost got run over by the station management for letting a "loud mouth" like me on the air.
By the way, I call National Public Radio, NPR, as NATIONAL PETROLEUM RADIO, since they try to keep oil scandals OFF the air. A simple, though certainly not complete answer: for some years Sharon Percy ROCKEFELLER, WIFE OF U.S. Senator John D. Rockefeller 4th, headed NPR. [She now heads a PBS operation in D.C. instrumental in the Jim Lehrer News Hour on so-called Public TV.] No one in NPR, PBS, or for that matter, in the commercial oil-soaked mass media, would dare mention that the family of Sharon Percy Rockefeller is reportedly in business with the CIA-created purported "terrorist" Osama bin Laden. Their joint funds are reportedly kept in the Harris Bank in Chicago, under many concealed accounts. Harris Bank is a unit of the whiskey-soaked Bronfman family, owners jointly with U.S. Senator Peter Fitzgerald of Ill., [R., Ill.] of the Bank of Montreal [Canada]. Bill Clinton said he would like to "freeze" bin Laden's huge funds but cannot "find" them.
Really?
Sidebar note: son of Pacific Foundation founder was one of three activists murdered and buried in Mississippi in an outrageous situation about 1963. [I believe the name was Schwerner.]
Recently, Pacifica Radio in California has fought their part-time staff who apparently wanted a union contract arrangement. Pacifica's New York operation, WBAI, years ago allowed me occasionally on the air until I begin mentioning the CIA-paid and funded provocateurs. It was too close to home for them.
BOTTOM LINE: the CIA-linked foundations seem to know who the real independents are in the U.S. In years past, when I and associates of mine showed up at public meetings of the Chicago office of the Roger Baldwin Foundation of ACLU, when I asked a specific question mentioning their funding, guess what happened? Their then district director abruptly adjourned the meeting which never resumed. They knew we were CIA-foundation experts, I having taught courses on the same at a radio broadcast school, at student seminars at some Universities, such as at the University of Illinois, Chicago Circle Campus.
What would surely floor some simple-minded folks, is that many of the better-funded so-called "liberal" publications, such as IN THESE TIMES [headquartered in Chicago] reportedly receive heavy funding from foundations that they would have to be awfully stupid not to know were either conduits or pass-throughs[technical foundation terms] for the American CIA. Because of such funding that publication some years ago made a complete U-turn regarding the October Surprise matter, that George Herbert Walker Bush helped work a treasonous deal in 1980, to get the Iranians to delay the release of the 52 U.S. hostages, enabling the Reagan/Bush ticket to wreck Jimmy Carter's hope for re-election. Not being able to solve the mess, Carter was perceived as a wimp. First supporting the idea that something bad happened, IN THESE TIMES reportedly because of their funders, reversed themselves and apparently condemned some of the more independent-minded whistle blowers. Just another story suppressed by the liars and whores of the press.
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The Big Picture
2007 Update
By Joel Skousen
Editor - World Affairs Brief
12-28-7
Once a year, I take time out from my normal news analysis to update World Affairs Brief subscribers to the "big picture" of events in the world, including specifically my projections for the next World War, which is the real threat we have to prepare for--not individual terrorism. More than ever, I still consider the nuclear attack on America as inevitable, both because the real axis of evil (Russia and China) are still building for that attack, and because our own government is controlled by those intent upon destroying US sovereignty and delivering our nation over to a socialist New World Order (NWO). The foundational document upon which this update is based is entitled "Strategic Threats of the Coming Decade" and is found athttp://www.worldaffairsbrief.com/keytopics/threats.html .
A Larger World View of the Coming World War: Each year we see the US engaged in extensive military and covert intervention in nearly every country of the world--either under the guise of spreading democracy or promoting US interests. This intervention is the real source of hatred against America, not our freedoms. However, the true globalist purpose of all this intervention is to antagonize the world, control essential resources necessary for a future war, and to induce a massive nuclear retaliation against the US military that will create a world conflict sufficiently horrible to induce Western nations to yield essential sovereignty to a NWO. As I documented in recent briefs, however, that strategy was halted, temporarily, for the first time that I can remember. The US was planning on a massive air assault on Iran this winter but decided to postpone that attack, perhaps out of fear that another aggressive intervention and unpopular war, based on manipulated intelligence, could affect the upcoming primary elections in favor of Ron Paul--the only Republican anti-war presidential candidate--who is already dangerously close to breaking out of the single digits in the polls. I believe it was also feared, correctly, that the fragile state of the US dollar could not handle another trillion dollars in deficit spending while the establishment was busy funneling at least a trillion dollars into the world economy to bailout subprime mortagage holders and the banks that brokered these debt instruments (still ongoing).
The Bush administration has used the phony war on terror as a pretext in a seven year campaign of devious and manipulative legal wrangling to undermine Constitutional protections of the people and to incite false patriotism.
We take notice that even in yesterday's assassination of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, government agencies from Pakistan and some in the US were quick to pin the act on al Qaeda. How can anyone make such a claim without evidence and when the killer is dead? Bhutto did receive a letter from "friends of al Qaeda" on Oct. 23, threatening more suicide attacks. But, how hard is that to fake?
The PTB don't miss an opportunity to keep raising the specter of organized terror. It's too bad that only a few savvy thousands understand that al Qaeda is controlled terrorism (at the top) and used to further political purposes.
True, Pakistan is an essential key for the US, but not in the War on Terror--as claimed--but rather, in the controlled and manipulated war on terror for globalist conflict management purposes. Gen. Musharraf and his ISI spooks manager the arms pipeline to controlled enemies of the US, to create the appearance of terror and havoc. This is the real reason why Musharraf is being supported at all costs.
While Bhutto was no true friend of liberty either, she was a major figure competing with Musharraf for power and had to be eliminated to preserve his fragile base. The commonly stated pretense for assassination by al Qaeda or Muslim militants is that Bhutto was seen as a collaborator with the Americans. But even if true, it is even more applicable towards Musharraf himself, who has not been targeted. This leaves only Nawaz Sharif in the opposition role, and he had better watch his back. Several analysts are predicting that this will give Musharraf another excuse to postpone the election.
This continual drum beat about the threat of Islamic terror is extremely effective at keeping Americans compliant and unthinking. With it all, President Bush has slowly accustomed Americans to accept near dictatorial powers for himself under the guise of "Commander in Chief." Presidents used to require a declaration of war to exercise this power, but no more. The combination of a continual and unending "War on Terror," with numerous broad-ranging war power resolutions allows the United States to be kept under a continual state of war and emergency.
The Executive branch's only restraint on using that power is the fear of engendering on open revolt from the small but growing minority of disaffected Republicans, Democrats and Independents who "won't take it anymore." In any case, the executive still controls secret forces (the dark side of government) that can and does carry out illegal surveillance, warrantless searches, secret detention, and even torture--all under the cover of "national security."
Part of that dictatorial authority came in the Patriot Act, and some in last year's Military Commission's act. By changing the Insurrection Act, Bush has effectively overturned the Posse Comitatus Act which bars the president from deploying troops within the United States. He can now declare martial law at will and employ US troops within the nation to carry it out. The John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 also allows Bush to take control of the National Guard which has always been under the purview of the state governors. Bush now has nearly absolute power over all armed troops within the country, a state of affairs which the constitution purposely tried to prevent.
That said, those that keep predicting the president will use those powers soon will continue to be disappointed. The manpower simply does not presently exist to run any comprehensive form of martial law, and the early use of that power without sufficient public justification would cause a huge backlash against presidential power. We need only look at the disaster the government made out of the Katrina hurricane evacuation to see that backlash. New Orleans has still not recovered, and smart people who got out aren't coming back. Moreover, savvy people know not to get caught in FEMA shelters (which quickly turn into mini-prisons). In my opinion, we will only see the broad use of martial law during the big war that's coming, when America itself is attacked. Until then, it is essential that the American people be kept passive and unsuspecting about government tyranny.
World centers of power are still alive and growing: There are still three major centers of power in the world: Russia, China, and the Anglo-American Globalists (US/UK). All other nations are subservient to or allied with one or more of these 'Big Three' powers. However, I need to add that each uses numerous surrogates to mask their control mechanisms. This year we have seen the Western Globalists broaden their direct support and control over Europe. France and Germany have joined Britain as surrogates for US globalist policies--almost universally against the will of their own peoples. Each of these countries has been found to be cooperating with CIA
rendition and torture flights. In the latest rounds of elections, challenges from the far Left have been defeated in major countries (except Italy) and pro-globalists have gained ground.
Not only do the globalists have a dedicated yesman in British PM Gordon Brown, who replaced Tony Blair, but the White House also seems to have the total allegiance of France's PM Nicolas Sarkozy and Germany's PM Angela Merkel. All other European powers are relatively insignificant when compared to the influence of these Big Three economic powerhouses in Europe.
Russia and China are still allied in a deadly pact to strike the West with nuclear weapons as soon as the best opportunity presents itself, but not before 2009, in order to take maximum advantage of the propaganda value of the 2008 Olympics. My more realistic estimate is that the threat of a pre-emptive nuclear war against America will not reach it's full potential before the middle of the next decade, primarily because China isn't ready yet--and that may yet slide again depending on China's desperate need for oil supplies outside its borders.
(snip)
Yamantau and Kosvinsky Mountains (both located in the Ural mountain range) are the two largest Russian mega-bunker complexes. These sites are not only built to survive the effects of the West's submarine launched missiles, which cannot penetrate Russia's main bunker cities, but they also contain, in my analysis, whole factories for the next generation of biological, chemical, nuclear and missile production facilities and munitions depots.
The Russians are planning on not only surviving any US counter attack, but continuing arms production in underground safe havens. Russia has also numerous underground bunkers to shelter about a fourth of its critical labor and military personnel in and around its major cities. So, while Russia admits to only 3 new Topol M missile deployments per quarter, the number being built underground could be many times that number.
The West, led by the US, is still the leader in high-technology military weapons, a superiority which rests on somewhat limited quantities of expensive smart weapons (a point of vulnerability not lost on our enemies). China has huge advantages in terms of potential military manpower, while Russia has overwhelming superiority in numbers of conventional weapons. Additionally, Russia is only a little bit behind in high tech weapons --thanks to both its continued espionage as well as strategic technology transfers between the US and Russia, facilitated by both Republican and Democratic administrations.
This year Russia made significant strides in a number of areas. Its newest fighter is the SU 30/35 and is every bit as maneuverable as our new F-22. The Russians are expected to have fifth generation fighter (similar to our F-35 joint strike fighter) by 2009.
Despite its pretensions of weakness, Russia has at least a 5-to-1 advantage over the West in terms of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, including missile delivery systems. This latter advantage is critical because, with America's suicidal doctrine of absorbing a nuclear first strike (PDD-60) in effect (Bush has not rescinded it), combined with America's lack of any viable anti-ballistic missile system (we have only six missiles, none of which have explosive warheads, compared with Russia's understated arsenal of 3,000 missiles), it means that Russia has the capability to destroy 90 percent of the entire US military machine in a single day.
In summary, Russia and China are still preparing for war against the West as we speak, and our own leaders in the US are simultaneously downplaying the Chinese threat while outright denying any Russian threat. They are setting America up for a fall, incredible as that kind of treason may appear.
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http://www.forbes.com/home/opinions/2008/12/26/straszheim-china-cic-oped-cx_dhs_1227straszheim.html
China Buys Wall Street
Donald Straszheim 12.27.07, 6:00 AM ET
The subprime mortgage problem has now yielded a full-blown credit squeeze on Wall Street with securities firms' stock prices at fire-sale levels. The new fire-sale buyers are the so-called sovereign wealth funds, and China's are the most prominent.
With the world's largest trade surplus, China is accumulating foreign exchange reserves of about $1 billion per day. Rather than holding these reserves in low-paying Treasury securities, China recently created a new sovereign wealth fund--China Investment Company (CIC)--to invest these funds more profitably. Market participants, pay attention.
The West worries about whether these sovereign wealth fund investors will act like conventional rate-of-return focused investors or will have a different agenda in mind. Two points: First, if the sovereign wealth fund investors are rate-of-return motivated, they might have a much longer time horizon than the typical short-term-focused U.S. institutional investor. I am an optimist on this--increasingly disgusted during my many years in the investment world at the ever shorter term focus on stock prices. To me, anything that extends investors' time horizons would be positive, allowing companies to plan and act for the long run.
But second, if the sovereign wealth fund's agenda even borders on the geo-political, or may set up a sequence of events that is uncomfortable to the host country, then such funds' investments are going to be rejected in many parts of the world. China says it wants " ... to be treated as a common investor in financial markets and will follow international practice regarding disclosure." Fine. But China is a non-market economy that is dominated by the state sector. It is understandable that foreign governments are guarded, given that explicitly stated policy in Beijing is to develop centrally owned state enterprises into positions of global dominance. It is hard for many to accept that CIC would have a less-expansive or less-strategic view.
Beijing's CIC has agreed to invest $5 billion in Morgan Stanley (nyse: MS - news - people ), which is troubled by the credit mess. CIC's investment can be converted into a 9.9% stake to Morgan Stanley in a few years. Morgan Stanley's stock had fallen from $73 to about $49, a fire-sale price in CIC's eyes, though it has rebounded to $54 since the announcement of the Chinese investment. CIC gets a bargain, but no board seat and no say in Morgan Stanley's management--a passive investment. I think this is a win-win deal.
Morgan Stanley, a player in China's financial sector since 1994, gets a sizable cash infusion from the best buyer imaginable. An investment in any foreign company by CIC is like a "Good Housekeeping" seal of approval in China. Morgan Stanley's people now can travel China with business cards saying they are partly owned by the prestigious CIC. The way business and government are intertwined in China, few would dare to refuse talking to a Morgan Stanley representative at the door.
CIC, in turn, gets a seat at the table of one of America's premier investment banking firms--admittedly after it has just stubbed its toe. But it is easy to see Morgan Stanley's stock price recovering all it had lost in the subprime debacle-- a return that likely would make CIC or most any other investor happy. Most valuable to CIC (and to all of China) is head-table acceptance in the global securities industry, the chance to understand modern financial practices and technology in the west and to meet talented financiers who would otherwise be out of reach. Despite China's stunning economic growth record, its financial sector remains weak and primitive. Every step, like this one, that modernizes China's financial sector is a plus for China and for the global economy.
Remember also that CIC invested $3 billion in the June 2007 IPO of Blackstone (nyse: BX - news - people ), a top New York-based private equity firm. This also was a passive investment-- no board seats, no management input. CIC is not happy that the stock is down about 30% from its IPO price, but not to worry. Beijing knows that private equity is going to be very important in China during the coming years. To me, far more significant than any anticipated investment returns is the chance to learn private equity from the best. And Blackstone, with the CIC imprimatur, has a great advantage in China over their competitors.
Just two months ago, Bear Stearns (nyse: BSC - news - people ), another respected securities firm weighed down by subprime missteps, sold a stake in CITIC Securities, a predominantly state-owned Chinese firm. CITIC bought into Bear at a big discount. Bear got the cash, but now enjoys bragging rights in China that are pale compared to those that would have accompanied a CIC investment.
One last historical point. In 2005, CNOOC (nyse: CEO - news - people ) of China (a big state-owned oil and gas firm) attempted to buy Unocal but met considerable resistance in Washington, on geo-political grounds, and soon pulled its bid. China would have gained controlling interest in Unocal, a no-no to many in Washington and in many countries in the world depending on the size of the acquisition and the sensitivity of the sector.
So now CIC has a new strategy--to buy passive stakes, usually with no board seat and no control. This Chinese investment vehicle, therefore, represents no threat to the status quo, but it's learning how a modern economy operates and hopefully will earn top equity market returns.
Donald H. Straszheim is vice chairman of Roth Capital Partners in Los Angeles, former global chief economist at Merrill Lynch (nyse: MER - news - people ), a visiting scholar at the University of California-Los Angeles Anderson School of Management and a longtime China specialist. He previously served as president of the Milken Institute and joined Roth in 2006 to spearhead the firm's China initiatives.
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http://www.forbes.com/home/opinions/2008/12/26/straszheim-china-cic-oped-cx_dhs_1227straszheim.html
Zionists Want Iran Bombed
The last thing they want is an Internet Wonder like Ron Paul to block their plans. There are only three ways to Iran, Israel invades, Bush attacks, or there is a False Flag on America. If Israel strikes, the American mothers could care less if Israel fell into the sea. If Bush instigates something, then most Americans will vote to impeach.
The only probable scenario is an attack on an American City, or the Fifth Fleet, where it is blamed on Iran.
'We're getting ready to bomb Iran'
Paul described what he characterized as a deteriorating situation on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, and said the US was preparing to kickstart yet another conflict -- this time in Iran.
"It is getting worse over there," he said. "Afghanistan is getting worse. Turkey is bombing Iraq. And Pakistan is blowing up and we're getting ready to bomb Iran. A bunch of those neocons want to bomb Iran."
Bombing Can Be Dangerous
Iran doesn't have the capability of making a bomb, but their reactors are dangerous, and an attack could equal another Chernobyl. Israel says we have six months before Iran's reactors become dangerous.
Barak Says Attack Now
Ehud Barak says America must attack all of Iran's nuclear facilities.
Iran Is Formidable
Iraq was a burnt out hulk after the 1991 war, but Iran has missiles, F-14s, an airforce, a real navy, and the 5th Fleet is a sitting duck stationed in the gulf. Beware of the Straights of Hormuz.
Go to 12228
http://judicial-inc.biz/0g_ron_paul.htm
Zionists Want Iran Bombed
The last thing they want is an Internet Wonder like Ron Paul to block their plans. There are only three ways to Iran, Israel invades, Bush attacks, or there is a False Flag on America. If Israel strikes, the American mothers could care less if Israel fell into the sea. If Bush instigates something, then most Americans will vote to impeach.
The only probable scenario is an attack on an American City, or the Fifth Fleet, where it is blamed on Iran.
'We're getting ready to bomb Iran'
Paul described what he characterized as a deteriorating situation on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, and said the US was preparing to kickstart yet another conflict -- this time in Iran.
"It is getting worse over there," he said. "Afghanistan is getting worse. Turkey is bombing Iraq. And Pakistan is blowing up and we're getting ready to bomb Iran. A bunch of those neocons want to bomb Iran."
Bombing Can Be Dangerous
Iran doesn't have the capability of making a bomb, but their reactors are dangerous, and an attack could equal another Chernobyl. Israel says we have six months before Iran's reactors become dangerous.
Barak Says Attack Now
Ehud Barak says America must attack all of Iran's nuclear facilities.
Iran Is Formidable
Iraq was a burnt out hulk after the 1991 war, but Iran has missiles, F-14s, an airforce, a real navy, and the 5th Fleet is a sitting duck stationed in the gulf. Beware of the Straights of Hormuz.
Go to 12227
http://www.alternet.org/workplace/71173/
Buy Some Stuff, Enslave Somebody
By Josh Rosenblatt, Texas Observer. Posted December 27, 2007.
Why are we so disconnected from the slave labor that produces so many of our products?
Years from now, when the story of our corporate age is told with the clarity of hindsight, I'm guessing one of the phrases scholars will keep coming back to is "plausible deniability." The tale will capture our era's wide disparities in wealth, and its almost universal indifference to the rampant mistreatment of workers from countries less fortunate than our own.
After all, when we buy a product -- a piece of fruit, a new suit, an iPod -- how many of us really comprehend what was required to bring that product to our tables, our backs, or our pockets? The expanding global economy demands that corporations seek out the cheapest possible labor to maximize profit, and stimulate growth and innovation. With free trade has come an explosion of global inequality that has left more than 2.8 billion people living on less than $2 a day. We in the wealthy West, living and dining off the fruits of their labor, can honestly say we are unaware of the devil's bargain we bought into. Or that if we do know, the problem is simply too great to comprehend and beyond our means to do anything about, save changing our lifestyles entirely. Best, in other words, not to think about it.
This kind of willful indifference, you might remember, is the line of defense Michael Jordan used to justify his sponsorship deal with Nike Inc. during the 1990s, when that corporation was coming under heavy fire from labor-rights groups for its use of underage, sweatshop labor in Indonesia. It's not my business, he argued; I just wear the shoes. Or take the case of fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi, who agreed to create a line of affordable clothing for Target Corp. stores. Asked if he knew where his clothes were being manufactured, and by whom under what conditions, he responded, "I don't know. And I don't want to know."
So it will probably come as no surprise that when Jonathan Blum, vice president for public relations of Yum! Brands Inc. (parent of Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Pizza Hut, among others), learned his company had been doing business for years with a farming subcontractor in Florida that grossly underpaid its largely illegal work force, he said, "My gosh, I'm sorry, but I don't think it has anything to do with us." The subcontractor's workers picked tomatoes in what one observer termed "sweatshop-like conditions," without the right to organize, without access to basic rights, protections, or benefits. If celebrities like Jordan and Mizrahi can stand in front of a camera and claim reasonable unaccountability, why shouldn't a corporate mouthpiece like Blum do the same?
This is the world John Bowe stumbled into in 2001. Bowe, a regular contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and National Public Radio's "This American Life", was in North Carolina working on a book called Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs when he heard about a community group in South Florida that had uncovered a slavery ring in local orange groves. Fascinated, Bowe headed to the small town of Lake Placid, where rumors were spreading of a labor contractor in the orange-picking business named Ramiro Ramos. Nicknamed "El Diablo," Ramos had worked for some of the biggest names in the food-service industry, including Pepsico Inc.'s Tropicana, Coca-Cola Co.'s Minute Maid, McDonald's Corp., Wendy's International Inc., and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. He had become notorious for illegally hiring migrant workers from Mexico and using manipulation, financial coercion, deportation threats, and even violence (up to and including murder) to maintain a work force of essentially unpaid and terrified slave labor that had little or no recourse to the American legal system.
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http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/12/27/6024/
Published on Thursday, December 27, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
Disgraced Former FDA Official Now Marketing Lilly Drug
by Martha Rosenberg
As a 33-year-old Wall Street insider known for recommending hot medical stocks, many were surprised when physician Scott Gottlieb was named FDA deputy commissioner for medical and scientific affairs in 2005.”
Gottlieb has an orientation which belies the goal of the FDA,” said Dr. Jerome Kassirer, former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.”The appointment comes out of nowhere,” said former FDA Commissioner Donald Kennedy.
“Anything but a reassuring signal,” said Time magazine.
As critics feared, soon after assuming the number two FDA position, Gottlieb had to recuse himself from resource planning for a possible bird flu epidemic because of financial ties to Roche and Sanofi-Aventis. He also had to bow out of work related to Eli Lilly, Proctor & Gamble and five other drug companies.
When three people in a multiple sclerosis drug trial lost blood platelets and one died, he called stopping the study “an overreaction” because the disease not the drug might be to blame.
And when FDA scientists rejected Pfizer’s osteoporosis drug candidate Oporia, forecast to earn $1 billion a year, underlings received accusatory emails from Gottlieb.
His on-to-Wall-Street approach succeeded in rushing Chantix, Pfizer’s stop smoking drug, varenicline, to market but a string of 2006 suicides and the violent death of Dallas musician Carter Albrecht leave many asking if that was such a good thing.
“The truth is, the FDA’s required trials reveal limited information,” Gottlieb wrote presciently in an oped in the Chicago Tribune in 2005. “In many cases, it is only after…drugs are on the market for many years and given to thousands of patients that their true benefits (sic.) are revealed.”
Gottlieb even trashed the definitive Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) study that found hormone replacement therapy (HRT) was bad nor good for women’s health saying the results “were rushed to print with a cleverly orchestrated PR blitz.”
Now that he’s left the FDA, Gottlieb is helping sell Lilly’s osteoporosis drug Evista which the company was convicted in 2005 of marketing, off label, for anti cancer and heart disease purposes.
Since Evista has now been approved to reduce the risk of developing some breast cancers writes Gottlieb in an angry oped in the Wall Street Journal in December, doesn’t that transform Lilly’s “speech ‘crime,’ by some measures, into a public service?”
Penalizing Lilly’s off-label promotion of Evista may have proved “fatal” for “patients and doctors who rely on the latest clinical information to make hard decisions,” Gottlieb says implying physicians are lost without input from drug reps with Bachelor of Science degrees.
But of course this is not the first time Lilly has had “free speech” problems.
In October, the FDA told Lilly to stop falsely claiming antidepressant Cymbalta produced “significantly less pain interference with overall functioning” and start mentioning its side effect of liver toxicity.
And documents from its Viva Zyprexa campaign show Lilly marketed the atypical antipsychotic for off label use among elderly patients though an increased risk of death in older patients is a warning on its own label.
Nor is Evista a misunderstood wonder drug.
Launched in 1998 to disappointing results, Justice Department documents reveal Lilly brand managers decided to market off label uses for Evista to boost sales.
And when 20 million women quit HRT in the early 2000’s, marketing Evista (raloxifene), a selective estrogen receptor modulator (SERM), as a kind of anti estrogen or good estrogen made sense.
Like HRT, researchers hinted Evista was an all purpose, youth giving drug, not just preventing and treating osteoporosis but reducing the risk of some types of breast cancer and heart attack, stroke or other cardiovascular problems in at risk patients.
Dr. Elizabeth Barrett-Connor, head of epidemiology at the University of California, San Diego called a 2002 Evista study, “exciting because it offers new hope in treating heart disease, the biggest killer of women, while at the same time strengthening their bones.”
Barrett-Connor also assured the public that hormone therapy had “no significant effect on the risk for stroke among postmenopausal women with coronary disease” in an article in the American Heart Association’s journal, Circulation, in 2001, paid for by hormone maker Wyeth-Ayerst Research.
Unfortunately, Evista is a little too much like HRT, which, contrary to what appeared in Circulation, causes a 26 percent increased risk of breast cancer, 29 percent increased risk of heart attack, 41 percent increased risk of stroke, and 100 percent increased risk of blood clots according to WHI figures.
Not only does Evista cause lethal blood clots–its warning label says “Increased risk of Venous Thromboembolism and Death From Stroke”–it increases the risk of ovarian cancer say some clinicians.
“Evista induces ovarian cancer in both mice and rats,” wrote Dr. Samuel S. Epstein, professor of environmental medicine at the University of Illinois School of Public Health in the Chicago Tribune in 1998. “Furthermore, carcinogenic effects were noted at dosages well below the recommended therapeutic level.”
In 2001 scientists at the University of Southern California also found Evista stimulated the growth of ovarian cancer cells.
“In breast and uterine cancer it does not appear to be a problem; in ovarian cancer it may stimulate the cells,” said Dr. Richard Paulson, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology referring to laboratory studies.
Evista advertising is also like HRT, relying on ageism, sexism and fear-mongering to sell product with the patronizing tag line, Protect Her Bones Protect Her Breasts, and a female model symbolically covering her breasts with her arms.
No, off label marketing of Evista is not a public service. But Gottlieb’s departure from the FDA might be.
Martha Rosenberg is a cartoonist for the Evanston Roundtable in Evanston, Illinois.
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