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Go to 12553
http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/jan2008/bw20080131_542105.htm
Getting Knocked Down by Prime ARMs
Prime ARMs went to borrowers with good credit because they were less likely to default, right? Wrong
by Prashant Gopal

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We've been reading a lot lately about how subprime mortgages have submarined the economy. Lenders and banks have been taken to the woodshed for irresponsibly giving money to home buyers with poor credit just so they could bundle up the mortgages and resell them as toxic residential-mortgage bonds. But, while there's no denying the subprime problem, on closer look it's clear that even prime borrowers were taking on more debt than they could afford.

How bad is it? In Arizona, between the third quarters of 2006 and 2007, there was a 902% rise in foreclosures started against homeowners who had prime adjustable-rate mortgages, known as ARMs, according to the Mortgage Bankers Assn. ARMs, whether prime or subprime, are the real culprit in the housing crisis because they've allowed too many people to buy homes with almost no money down, with the hope that they could flip the properties or have rates drop before the loans reset.

The rise in prime ARM foreclosure starts isn't isolated to a few states. Nationally, foreclosure starts related to prime ARMs jumped 253% in the third quarter of 2007 when compared to a year earlier.

"The fact is the pain of the changing real estate markets is affecting more than just subprime borrowers," says Keith Gumbinger, vice-president of HSH Associates, a New Jersey-based financial information publisher. "It's more important to think of it as perhaps an ARM problem and a rate reset problem, not just a subprime problem."

Rising Foreclosure Starts
Arizona, Florida, Nevada, and California, which all had the greatest rise in prime ARM foreclosure starts in the third quarter of 2007, also have a heavy concentration of investor-owned properties. Many investors, who bought homes they hoped to resell quickly using no-interest loans and other mortgages with low teaser rates, got hurt when the housing bubble popped. Some investors are simply walking away from homes that are now worth less than what they owe to the bank (BusinessWeek, 1/3/08).

Maryland and Virginia, which also are among the states that have seen the greatest increase in prime ARM foreclosure starts, might have been hurt by an oversupply of new construction, which borrowers typically financed with variable-rate mortgages. Maryland prime ARM foreclosure starts increased 229% during the 12 months ending in the third quarter, 2007. Virginia, which like Maryland includes high-priced Washington, D.C., suburbs, had a 369% year-over-year increase.

Oregon, Massachusetts, and New Jersey also saw huge jumps in such foreclosure starts, in part because buyers with good credit in those states used ARMs to pay for homes that might otherwise have been out of their reach. Of course, nobody would be complaining about ARMs if home prices were still rising.

"There was so much competition for mortgages over the last couple years that the definition of prime became less and less stringent," says Addison Wiggin, publisher of Baltimore-based Agora Financial, which publishes investment advice for individuals. "Even in the prime market, you had people taking on larger loans than they historically were able to handle."

Refinancing and Option ARMs
Borrowers with good credit are in a healthier position than subprime borrowers because lenders see them as less risky candidates for refinancing and are willing to put them into fixed loans. But not all prime borrowers can qualify for refinancing, particularly if they owe more on a mortgage than the house is worth or if they've lost their job and can't meet salary or other underwriting requirements. Refinance applications from borrowers have surged in recent weeks, according to the Mortgage Bankers Assn., which doesn't break out prime and subprime applications.



Go to 12552
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a8tMzIEIp__M&refer=home
U.S. Stocks Drop on Bank Downgrades; American Express Declines

By Eric Martin

Feb. 4 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. stocks declined for the first time in three days after analysts told investors to sell American Express Co., Wells Fargo & Co. and Wachovia Corp. on concern a recession will worsen defaults among consumers.

American Express, the third-biggest credit-card company, slumped after UBS AG said U.S. unemployment will rise, reducing profits. Wells Fargo and Wachovia, the fourth- and fifth-largest U.S. banks, dropped the most in seven years after Merrill Lynch & Co. said loan losses may increase. Concern spending will slow also dragged down retailers such as Tiffany & Co.

The Standard & Poor's 500 Index fell 14.6, or 1.1 percent, to 1,380.82 after rallying 4.9 percent last week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average decreased 108.03, or 0.9 percent, to 12,635.16. The Nasdaq Composite Index retreated 30.51, or 1.3 percent, to 2,382.85. Almost seven stocks declined for every four that advanced on the New York Stock Exchange.

``We probably have not seen the end of the bad news,'' said Craig Hester, who oversees $1.5 billion as chief executive officer of Hester Capital Management in Austin, Texas. ``The first wave has come through the residential mortgage market, and now we're beginning to see credit card delinquencies on the increase.''

American Express decreased $1.94 to $47.66. UBS analysts led by New York-based Eric E. Wasserstrom advised selling the shares because the recession ``will result in higher levels of unemployment in 2008-09, the primary driver of credit losses.''

``American Express is tied to small businesses and consumers in terms of spending,'' said Tim Smalls, head of U.S. trading at Execution LLC in Greenwich, Connecticut. ``That's an ongoing issue. This market is going to be choppy.''

Credit Cards

Shares of other credit card companies decreased. Discover Financial Services slid $1.62 to $16.34. Capital One Financial Corp. dropped $4.32 to $52.65.

Wells Fargo fell $2.26 to $31.39 and Wachovia dropped $3.23 to $35.53. Merrill Lynch lowered its recommendations on the stocks to ``sell'' from ``neutral,'' citing the latest Case- Shiller data, which showed ``rapidly declining California real- estate values.'' They said the valuations of the companies did not fully discount earnings and recession risk in 2008.

Citigroup Inc. dropped 47 cents to $29.22, Bank of America Corp. slipped $1 to $44.03 and JPMorgan Chase & Co. declined $2.03 to $46.22.

Loan Demand

``If economic growth is slowing, there may not be that much demand for borrowed money,'' said John Carey, who oversees about $13 billion at Pioneer Investment Management in Boston. ``The financial stocks make up a significant part of the market and facilitate a lot of other business transactions.''

Ambac Financial Group Inc. plunged $1.81, or 14 percent, to $11.39, the steepest decline in the S&P 500. MBIA Inc. dropped 97 cents, or 5.9 percent, to $15.39. The bond insurance industry may lose $34 billion on securities they guaranteed, causing them to be stripped of their AAA credit ratings, Citigroup Global Markets said in a Feb. 1 report.

Humana Inc. lost $2.86 to $78.98. The No. 2 provider of U.S.-funded health benefits fell on investor concern the next president may cut insurance subsidies, according to Christine Arnold, an analyst with Morgan Stanley in New York. The speculation overshadowed a 57 percent rise in quarterly earnings.

KB Home

KB Home plunged $2.34, or 8.1 percent, to $26.41. Chief Financial Officer Domenico Cecere sold 80,000 shares of the fifth-largest U.S. homebuilder, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Centex Corp., the second-largest U.S. homebuilder, fell $2.33 to $26.67.

Wendy's International Inc. fell $1.25, or 5 percent, to $23.93. The U.S. hamburger chain that's been seeking a buyer since April reported fourth-quarter profit that rose less than analysts estimated. Executives said full-year profit may trail analysts' projections on higher costs for beef and chicken. The company didn't provide an update on a possible sale.

Dynegy Inc. gained 42 cents to $7.55, leading utilities shares higher. The owner of power plants in 13 U.S. states advanced after Barron's said the company's shares may double on increased cash flow and asset values.

Europe, Asia

Stocks in Europe and Asia advanced, helped by takeover speculation. The Dow Jones Stoxx 600 Index of European shares rose 0.2 percent after U.K. pub owner Mitchells & Butlers Plc received a merger proposal and Fortescue Metals Group Ltd. said it held talks with ``strategic'' investors.

The decline in the S&P 500 followed the index's best weekly gain since 2003. The Federal Reserve's second interest-rate cut in two weeks, Microsoft Corp.'s $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo! Inc. and a plan to rescue bond insurers lifted equities.

While the S&P 500 climbed 4.9 percent last week, it has lost 6 percent for the year. The Dow average has fallen 4.8 percent and the Nasdaq dropped 10 percent.

Job cuts announced by U.S. employers jumped 19 percent in January from a year earlier as businesses attempted to rein in costs, according to a report by a private placement firm.

Announcements increased to 74,986 last month from 62,975 in January 2007, Chicago-based Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. said. The figures aren't adjusted for seasonal effects, so economists prefer to focus on year-over-year changes instead of monthly figures.

Companies may trim their workforce further as the worst housing slump in a quarter century threatens to push the economy into a recession, economists said. The report followed government figures last week that showed the U.S. lost jobs in January for the first time in more than four years.

Stocks also fell after orders to U.S. factories rose less than economists forecast. The orders increased 2.3 percent, the Commerce Department said, less than the 2.5 percent median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey.

The Russell 2000 Index, a benchmark for companies with a median market value of $547 million, dropped 1 percent to 723.46. The Dow Jones Wilshire 5000 Index, the broadest measure of U.S. shares, fell 1 percent to 13,954.61. Based on its decline, the value of stocks decreased by $170.6 billion.

To contact the reporter on this story: Eric Martin in New York at emartin21@bloomberg.net .

Last Updated: February 4, 2008 16:42 EST



Go to 12551
http://www.rense.com/general80/sosob.htm
Obama Forces Scuttle Bush
Cheney Impeachment Drive
Obama Candidacy Means No Impeachment Of Bush-Cheney
By Webster Tarpley
2-5-8

Wondering why Congressman Kucinich has withdrawn his impeachment resolution against Cheney, and dropped out of impeachment in general? Wondering why the Los Angeles impeachment center has decided to liquidate itself and shut down? Wondering why impeachment meetups across the US are folding? Wondering why so many left-liberal spokesmen are dropping the impeachment issue like a hot potato?

All signs suggest that the demagogic needs of the Obama presidential campaign provide the answer. Impeachment is being sabotaged by left-wing Democrats now moving to support Obama so as to spare the messianic Illinois senator the political embarrassment of having to comment on a serious impeachment effort, which his craven rejection of political struggle makes a taboo. In effect, Obama's phobia against impeachment is even stronger than Hillary's.

As is well known, Obama's fatuous utopian rhetoric promises a golden age and earthly paradise of political harmony in which all real conflicts will be magically neutralized and submerged by the senator's personal charisma. Above all, partisan political clashes will be forbidden. Well, the impeachment of Bush-Cheney is a vital necessity for the future survival of representative government in this country, but carrying it out will necessarily be a rather acrimonious and partisan business. Obama cannot tolerate such a messy process, which might interfere with his ability to float like a seraph above the ignorant armies who clash by night. Struggle in any form is not part of Obama's playbook; it might upset Goldman Sachs, Soros, and his other Wall Street contributors ­ to say nothing of the fussy independent voters upon whom Obama's future rests. It might not play well in the wealthy suburbs. It might spoil his carefully cultivated apolitical, post-partisan image.

Therefore, it is clear, the word has gone out to Obama's leftist backers: impeachment must be dumped, betrayed, sandbagged, and sabotaged without further ado. That is what is now happening. Congressman Kucinich shocked his supporters by telling them to support Obama on the second go-round in the Iowa caucuses. Now he has dropped out of the race and abandoned his own signature issue.

Every vote for Obama is a vote to take impeachment off the agenda ­ forever. Obama supporters should get ready to live with those Bush-Cheney precedents, signing statements, and practices of entrenched totalitarian corruption for the rest of their lives. If Obama wins the day, there will be no question of impeachment, the only way to wipe the slate clean of all the Bush-Cheney obscenities. Obama and impeachment are incompatible. Impeachment supporters should dump the Illinois senator ­ the cause of impeachment is far more important than the vapid slogans dished up by Zbigniew Brzezinski's puppet Obama.
webstertarpley@yahoo.com



Go to 12550
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts02042008.html
February 4, 2008
Did They Reveal the Absence of Confessions?
Why Were the 9/11 Tapes Destroyed?
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Many Americans are content with the 9/11 Commission Report, but the two chairmen of the commission, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton are not. Neither was commission member Max Cleland, a US Senator who resigned from the 9/11 Commission, telling the Boston Globe (November 13, 2003): "This investigation is now compromised." Even former FBI director Louis Freeh wrote in the Wall Street Journal (Nov. 17, 2005) that there are inaccuracies in the commission's report and "questions that need answers."

Both Kean and Hamilton have twice stated publicly, once in their 2006 book, Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission, and again in the January 2, 2008, New York Times, that there are inaccuracies in their report and unanswered--or mis-answered--questions.

On the second day of this new year, Kean and Hamilton accused the CIA of obstructing their investigation: "What we do know is that government officials decided not to inform a lawfully constituted body, created by Congress and the President, to investigate one of the greatest tragedies to confront this country. We call that obstruction."

In their book, Kean and Hamilton wrote that they were unable to obtain "access to star witnesses in custody who were the only possible source for inside information about the 9/11 plot."

The only information the commission was permitted to have about what was learned from interrogations of alleged plot ringleaders, such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, came from "thirdhand" sources. The commission was not permitted to question the alleged plotters in custody or even to meet with those who interrogated the alleged plotters. Consequently, write Kean and Hamilton, "We had no way of evaluating the credibility of detainee information" that was fed to them by third party hands. "How could we tell if someone such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was telling us the truth?"

The fact that video tapes of the interrogations existed was kept secret from the 9/11 Commission.

The video tapes have since been destroyed. The destruction of the videos has become an issue because of White House involvement in the decision to destroy the tapes and because the videos are believed to have been destroyed because they reveal methods of torture that the Bush administration denies using.

According to President Bush, the US does not practice torture even though he and his Department of Justice (sic) assert the right to torture.

Is the torture issue a red herring? The 9/11 Commission was not tasked with investigating interrogation methods or detainee treatment. The commission was tasked with investigating al Qaeda's participation in the 9/11 attack and determining the perpetrators of the terrorist event. There was no reason to withhold from the commission video evidence of confessions implicating al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.

Was the video evidence withheld from the 9/11 Commission because the alleged participants in the plot did not confess, did not implicate al Qaeda, and did not implicate bin Laden?

There is no reason for the Bush administration to fear the torture issue. The Justice Department's memos have legalized the practice, and Congress has passed legislation, signed by President Bush, giving retroactive protection to US interrogators who tortured detainees. The Military Commissions Act passed in September 2006 and signed by Bush in October 2006 strips detainees of protections provided by the Geneva Conventions: "No alien unlawful enemy combatant subject to trial by military commission under this chapter may invoke the Geneva Conventions as a source of rights." Other provisions of the act strip detainees of speedy trials and of protection against torture and self-incrimination. The law has a provision that retroactively protects torturers against prosecution for war crimes.

Did the Bush administration cleverly take advantage of the torture claims in order to spin the destruction of the CIA video tapes as a "torture story." It is conceivable that the tapes were destroyed because they reveal the absence of confession to the plot. As Kean and Hamilton ask, without evidence how do we know the truth?

All we have is the word of the administration that told us Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and that, while sitting on a NIE report that concluded that Iran had terminated its weapons program in 2003, told us that Iran had an ongoing nuclear weapons program and was close to having a nuclear weapon.



Go to 12549
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/business/story.html?id=db0041ae-fa25-43a2-b472-f8fbb851a367&k=53982
Dozens of U.S. banks will fail by 2010: analyst
Jonathan Stempel, Reuters
Published: Friday, February 01, 2008
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Dozens of U.S. banks will fail in the next two years as losses from soured loans mount and regulators crack down on lenders that take too much risk, especially in real estate and construction, an analyst said.

The surge would follow a placid 3-1/2 year period in which just four banks collapsed, all in the last year, RBC Capital Markets analyst Gerard Cassidy said in a Friday interview.

Between 50 and 150 U.S. banks -- as many as one in 57 -- could fail by early 2010, mostly those with no more than a couple of billion dollars of assets, Cassidy said. That rate of failure would be the highest in at least 15 years, or since the winding down of the savings-and-loan debacle.


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Font:****"The initial round of failures will come from smaller banks with limited access to capital and overexposure to commercial real estate," Cassidy said.

"Could banks with $75 billion or $100 billion of assets fail? That's hard to say, but it depends on the severity of the economic downturn and the real estate decline," he added.

Banks are under pressure as a slowing economy, the housing crunch, weak job growth and rising energy costs make it harder for individuals and businesses to pay their bills.

Compounding the problem has been the seizing up of capital markets that has led to more than $130 billion of write-downs worldwide, including at lenders such as Citigroup Inc , Bank of America Corp and Washington Mutual Inc .

On Wednesday, Standard & Poor's said financial industry losses linked to mortgages may reach more than $265 billion.

Analyst Tanya Azarchs expects the pain to spread to regional banks, and especially "some of the smaller players that have yet to feel the full extent" of the credit crunch.

Cassidy said: "The regulatory focus is now acutely on commercial real estate. The problems are centered around construction loans in residential housing. Home prices and sales are declining. This leaves builders unable to carry the debt they took on because they can't sell their homes."

RESERVES MAY GROW, MERGERS MAY NOT

There are 8,553 banking institutions insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Of these, 7,285 are commercial banks, 1,257 are thrifts and 11 are U.S. branches of foreign banks.

Twenty-six banks have failed since the last U.S. recession began in March 2001, the FDIC said.

The latest came last week, when Douglass National Bank of Kansas City, Missouri collapsed. Liberty Bank & Trust Co of New Orleans took over its $53.8 million of deposits. FDIC-insured institutions have about $8.19 trillion of deposits overall.

Cassidy expects the bank failure rate to be the worst since at least 1993, when 50 banks collapsed. That followed more than 2,000 failures in the previous decade, according to FDIC data.

Still, that pales in comparison with the more than 9,000 bank failures from 1930-1933, during the Great Depression, Federal Reserve data show.



Go to 12548
http://www.rense.com/general67/over80.htm
Overthrow Of The
American Republic - Part 80
Hurricane Katrina - Who Benefits?
By Sherman H. Skolnick
9-7-5

Some meteorologists contend there has been weather-warfare. That is, they say, that there have been two man-made hurricanes, Ivan [The Terrible], 2004, and Katrina, 2005. And, that these storms were created by technology long-known and directed to specific areas.

One weatherman asserted that Russia has long claimed they can send extreme weather and turbulence from Siberia targeting the United States. He proclaimed that Russia did that with Ivan [later called Ivan The Terrible] in 2004 and Katrina, 2005.

He appeared on the Coast-To-Coast radio talk show with host George Noory, about a night after Katrina hit the Gulf. In describing how brazenly the hurricane was created and directed, that as an inside signal, it came right over the National Hurricane Center in Florida.

If so, WHO had prior knowledge?

1. As a corruptly installed stooge and scapegoat for the Anglo-American Aristocracy, George W. Bush is a prime suspect having foreknowledge. If it became in time more and more evident of a high-level domestic plot, a new "Pearl Harbor", to carry out a long-planned war-mongering cancel-the Constitution agenda, then putting a Russian-style name in advance on the two later man-made suspected hurricanes, would form the basis for blaming Russia. Or like 9-11, falsely blaming "The Moslems".

2. Did Russian president Putin, suspecting he might be blamed for Hurricane Katrina, jump the gun? Just prior to Katrina hitting the Gulf, Putin noted that two U.S. Senators were in Russia snooping around off-limits secret facilities. That is U.S. Senator Barack Obama (D., Ill.) originally from the former British colony of Kenya and a year previous, before Obama was elected, was publicly fingered by me as a British spy; and his accomplice in Russia, U.S. Senator Richard Lugar (R., Ind.).

Putin had both of their passports seized and the two Senators were kept for a while in custody of the FSB, the new Russian secret political police.

(An exclusive news bulletin was on www.cloakanddagger.de}

3. Some assert that a friendly foreign power, also having high technology, made the man-made Katrina suddenly take a right hook and veer slightly away from New Orleans and directly hit the refineries and facilities of British Petroleum, owned by the British monarchy.

4. In an exclusive bulletin on Cloak and Dagger, we told how the Bushies' Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), sabotaged the levee which holds back the nearby lake from swamping below-sea-level New Orleans. More than 25 eyewitnesses to this treason are primarily but not exclusively blacks. FEMA operatives vowed to find these finger-pointers and snuff them out. A friendly foreign power is keeping the witnesses safe.

5. Nationwide, the American Red Cross solicited funds for supposed "New Orleans Hurricane Relief". [Has everyone forgotten that Elizabeth Dole, wife of now former U.S. Senator Dole, having been accused but not punished for reportedly embezzling 150 thousand dollars while she was head of the American Red Cross.? She is now a U.S. Senator (R., N. Car.)].

FEMA in the George W. Bush Administration have been, at great expense, supposedly pre-planning how to deal with an expected New Orleans hurricane disaster. FEMA said that refuge should be sought in the New Orleans Convention Center. And beyond that, FEMA pointed to the nearby Super-Dome sports arena.

Eyewitness residents occupied such places. Those that survived bitterly complain that the Red Cross, the National Guard, FEMA helpers, and other supposed rescuers were nowhere to be seen. For almost a week, no food, no bottled water, no medicines for the sick such as diabetics, and no other life essentials were dropped from helicopters or otherwise made available. In two New Orleans hospitals, patients not otherwise in dying condition, died because of lack of essentials.

6. Noting how Hurricane Ivan The Terrible made a mysterious u-turn, Lenny Bloom, co-host of Cloak and Dagger, in 2004, coined the term, HAARPICANE, named after the latest technology to manipulate the weather and the atmosphere, HAARP.

7. When asked by a reporter why Bush was not ordering immediate emergency aid for the suffering residents of New Orleans, a Bush White House official arrogantly barked out, "After all, they did not vote for us."

8. From long experience as a court-reformer, I learned that when we publicly identify a top Judge as a crook, as a bribe-taker, the Establishment, the Ruling Class, "the powers that be", that is THEM---they throw the Judge away like a worn out shoe, and send him to jail for" suddenly" discovered tax evasion and other criminal offenses. I usually cynically comment, "No decent gangster bagman will further bribe such a corrupt identified judge but will look for another crook on the bench."

There is reason to believe that now the Anglo-American Aristocracy has extracted all the illicit profit they can out of Bush and may want to throw him away. Hence, the monopoly press is strangely allowing Bush critics to be heard stating that in the Gulf area and elsewhere, Americans are suffering from an "incompetent Bush government". Wow! Why was this truism so long delayed in being heard at the hands of the liars and whores of the press?

9. Oil machinery and other service and equipment faker, Halliburton, has been promised the contract to someday, perhaps not soon, rebuild New Orleans. Vice President Richard Cheney, a top-level criminal, was the CEO of the firm and still receives many millions of dollars per year in delayed "compensation" from them while he stonewalls important White House oil dirty business.

The plan for treachery is simple. Residents of New Orleans fled for their life. They obviously did not take along in a plastic bag the deed to their property. So now out-of-town and out-of-work, they do not have the funds to pay their property tax nor do they have their property identification code and number. Sixty six per cent of the population of New Orleans have been blacks, many impoverished, together with a sizeable number of poor whites,

So it will be simple for land swindlers like Halliburton and their gang of pirates to grab lots of land from the descendants of slaves or white indentured servants, bull-doze away the hurricane-wrecked houses, and build hotels and other structures to accompany a someday to be newly-enlarged whorehouse district in New Orleans.

Some unfeeling critics would like to unfairly point to the whole hurricane mess, as A Red Light District is Bad Karma. Actually, subject to Bad Karma is the highly corrupt, terribly incompetent Bush White House and the Bush Crime Family.

And what may happen to the tens of thousands of New Orleans refugees now resident in Texas? Doing menial work in Texas are Mexican aliens. So New Orleans refugees can expect to be dragooned into such work, to replace the Mexicans who may be thrown out of the country or forced into the U.S. armed forces headed for Iraq. The Americans can no doubt expect to be paid minimum wages or even under the table below minimum wages, minus deductions for their food, housing, and essentials. They may end up with about the same almost nothing monthly pay received by jail-birds working in the factories now hooked to prisons. {Currently, some of the products bought in chain food stores are actually packed in prison factories including reportedly a fancy, expensive, and widely advertised coffee also often sipped in that company's chain of coffee shops..]

The former New Orleans blacks may become property-stripped latter day slaves and the poor whites, likewise plundered of their assets, can expect to become indentured servants, just in time for the new, worthless Bankruptcy Law, same as those many years ago exported from British Debtors' Prisons to Tennessee and elsewhere in the U.S.

Cheney and the Halliburton Pirate Flag gang and the Bush Crime Family, together with the Oil Cartel--- why they do they want the people cleared off the land in New Orleans? A simple explanation, supplied by savvy sorts, is that New Orleans may be situated on a large pool of oil (or on land for an new 'las vegas'.type operation).



Go to 12547
http://www.rense.com/general80/topple.htm
Iran's Oil Bourse Could
Topple The Dollar
By Mike Whitney
2-5-8

Two weeks ago George Bush was sent on a mission to the Middle East to deliver a horse's head. We all remember the disturbing scene in Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather" where Lucca Brassi goes to Hollywood to convince a recalcitrant movie producer to use Don Corleone's nephew in his next film. The "Big shot" producer is finally persuaded to hire the young actor after he wakes up in bed next to the severed head of his prize thoroughbred. I expect that Bush made a similar "offer they could not refuse" to the various leaders of the Gulf States when he met with them earlier this month.

The media tried to portray Bush's trip to the Middle East as a "peace mission", but that just a smokescreen. In fact, three days after Bush left Jerusalem, Israel stepped-up its military operations in the occupied territories and resumed its merciless blockade of food, water, medicine and energy to the 1.5 million people of Gaza. Clearly, Bush had green-lighted the operations or Israel's aggression would have been seen as a slap in the face of the President of the United States.

So, what was the real purpose of Bush's trip? After all, he has no interest in peace or in honoring his commitment to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. So, why would he choose to visit the Middle East just as his second term as president is winding down and there is no chance of success?

Sometimes personal visits are important; especially when the nature of the information is so sensitive that the message has to be made face to face. In this case, Bush went to the trouble of traveling half-way around the world to tell the Saudis and their friends in the Gulf States that they were going to continue linking their oil to the dollar or they were going to "sleep with the fishes". For the last two months, various sheiks and finance ministers have been moaning and groaning about the falling dollar---threatening to break from the so-called "dollar-peg" and covert to a basket of currencies. Bush's trip appears to have rekindled the spirit of brotherly cooperation. The grumbling has ceased and everyone is back "on board". The regional leaders now seem considerably less bothered by the fact that inflation is gobbling up their economies and driving labor, food, energy and housing through the roof. Reuters summed it up like this:

"After a flurry of public disagreements over currency reform last year, Gulf central bankers are trying to close ranks, talking up the pegs as a source of stability and playing down the dollar's weakness as a temporary phenomenon."

Looks like Bush smoothed things over.

In the last two weeks, the Gulf leaders have watched nervously while the Federal Reserve has slashed rates by a whopping 125 basis points. The cuts are steadily eroding the $1 trillion of capital the sheiks have invested in US Treasuries and securities.

"Inflation is at 16-year highs in Saudi Arabia and Oman, a 19-year peak in the United Arab Emirates. Gulf policymakers are intervening directly in loans, property and commodity markets to offset rate cut." (Reuters)

Property values have skyrocketed. Commercial property in the UAE has doubled since the beginning of 2007. The inflation-bomb has forced other Gulf states to provide food subsidies for their people and a "70% wage rise for some Emirati federal government employees."

Disgruntled migrant workers rioted in Dubai recently, demanding to be fairly compensated for the sharp increase in prices. The Saudi riyal has climbed to a 21-year peak.

Currency traders expect another 8% rise in the dirham and riyal by April and they are predicting that interest rates will compel Central bankers throughout Gulf states to covert to either the euro or a basket of regional currencies. So far, however, the loyal Saudi princes have continued their support for the dollar.

Defending Dollar Hegemony

So, how important is it that oil continue to be denominated in dollars? Would the United States wage war to defend the dollar's status as the world's "reserve currency"?

The answer to this question could come as early as this week, since the long-awaited Iranian Oil Bourse is scheduled to open between February 1-11. According to Iran's Finance Minister Davoud Danesh-Jafari, "All preparations have been made to launch the bourse; it will open during the 10-day Dawn (the ceremonies marking the victory of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran) The bourse is considered a direct threat to the continued global dominance of the dollar because it will require that Iranian "oil, petrochemicals and gas" be traded in "non-dollar currencies". (Press TV, Iran)

The petrodollar system is no different than the gold standard. Today's currency is simply underwritten by the one vital source of energy upon which every industrialized society depends---oil. If the dollar is de-linked from oil; it will no longer serve as the de-facto international currency and the US will be forced to reduce its massive trade deficits, rebuild its manufacturing capacity, and become an export nation again. The only alternative is to create a network of client regimes who repress the collective aspirations of their people so they can faithfully follow directives from Washington.

As to whether the Bush administration would start a war to defend dollar hegemony; that's a question that should be asked of Saddam Hussein. Iraq was invaded just six months after Saddam converted to the euro. The message is clear; the Empire will defend its currency.

Similarly, Iran switched from the dollar in 2007 and has insisted that Japan pay its enormous energy bills in yen. The "conversion" has infuriated the Bush administration and made Iran the target of US belligerence ever since. In fact, even though 16 US Intelligence agencies issued a report (NIE) saying that Iran was not developing nuclear weapons; and even though the UN's nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, found that Iran was in compliance with its obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation (NPT) Treaty; a preemptive US-led attack on Iran still appears likely.

And, although the western media now minimizes the prospects of another war in the region; Israel is taking the precautions that suggest that the idea is not so far-fetched. "Israel calls for shelter rooms to be set up in a bid to prepare the public for yet another war, this time, one of raining missiles." (Press TV, Iran)

"The next war will see a massive use of ballistic weapons against the whole of Israeli territory," claimed retired general Udi Shani. (Global Research\http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7982)

Russia also sees a growing probability of hostilities breaking out in the Gulf and has responded by sending a naval task force into the Mediterranean Sea and the North Atlantic.

According to an article on the Global Research site:
"The flagship of Russia's Black Sea Fleet, the Moskva guided missile cruiser, joined up with Russian naval warships in the Mediterranean on January 18 to participate in the current maneuvers....The current operation is the first large-scale Russian Navy exercise in the Atlantic in 15 years. All combat ships and aircraft involved carry full combat ammunition loads.

(Global Research, \http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7983)

France is also planning military maneuvers in the Straits of Hormuz. Operation "Gulf Shield 01," will take place off the coast of Iran and will employ thousands of personnel in combined arms operations that will include simulated attacks on oil platforms."

Exercises are scheduled to take place from Feb. 23 to March 5, and will involve 1,500 French, 2,500 Emirate, and 1,300 Qatari personnel operating on land, at sea and in the air, the ministry said..."Around a half-dozen warships, 40 aircraft and dozens of armored vehicles will be in the war games", Fusalba said. \
Go to 12546
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=3346953&C=mideast

Additionally, within the last week, three of the main underwater cables which carry Internet traffic have been cut off in the Persian Gulf and three-quarters of the international communications between Europe and the Middle East have been lost. Large parts of the Middle East have been plunged into darkness.

Is this merely a coincidence or is something else going on just below the surface?

Ian Brockwell, of the American Chronicle said:

"On the assumption that the cables cut were no accident, we must ask ourselves who would do such a thing and why. Clearly Iran, who were most affected, would gain nothing from such an action and are perhaps the target of those responsible?...Maybe this is a prelude to an attack, or perhaps a test run for a future one?

Communication has always been an important factor in military action, and cutting these cables might affect Iran´s ability to defend itself." (American Chronicle, http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/51085)

Despite the lack of media coverage, tensions are mounting in the Gulf and the probability of a US-led attack on Iran is still quite high. Bush is convinced that if he doesn't confront Iran, then no one will. He also believes that if he doesn't militarily defend the dollar, then America's days as "the world's only superpower" will soon be over. So, the real question is whether Bush will realize that America is already hopelessly bogged-down in two "unwinnable" conflicts or if he will "go with his gut" once again and lead us into a ruinous region-wide conflagration.



Go to 12545
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/revealed-british-plan-to-build-training-camp-for-taliban-fighters-in-afghanistan-777671.html
Revealed: British plan to build training camp for Taliban fighters in Afghanistan
By Jerome Starkey in Kabul
Monday, 4 February 2008
Britain planned to build a Taliban training camp for 2,000 fighters in southern Afghanistan, as part of a top-secret deal to make them swap sides, intelligence sources in Kabul have revealed. The plans were discovered on a memory stick seized by Afghan secret police in December.


The Afghan government claims they prove British agents were talking to the Taliban without permission from the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, despite Gordon Brown's pledge that Britain will not negotiate. The Prime Minister told Parliament on 12 December: "Our objective is to defeat the insurgency by isolating and eliminating their leaders. We will not enter into any negotiations with these people."

The British insist President Karzai's office knew what was going on. But Mr Karzai has expelled two top diplomats amid accusations they were part of a plot to buy-off the insurgents.

The row was the first in a series of spectacular diplomatic spats which has seen Anglo-Afghan relations sink to a new low. Since December, President Karzai has blocked the appointment of Paddy Ashdown to the top UN job in Kabul and he has blamed British troops for losing control of Helmand.

It has also soured relations between Kabul and Washington, where State Department officials were instrumental in pushing Lord Ashdown for the UN role.

President Karzai's political mentor, Sibghatullah Mojaddedi, endorsed a death sentence for blasphemy on the student journalist Sayed Pervez Kambaksh last week, and two British contractors have been arrested in Kabul on, it is claimed, trumped up weapons charges. The developments are seen as a deliberate defiance of the British.

An Afghan government source said the training camp was part of a British plan to use bands of reconciled Taliban, called Community Defence Volunteers, to fight the remaining insurgents. "The camp would provide military training for 1,800 ordinary Taliban fighters and 200 low-level commanders," he said.

The computer memory stick at the centre of the row was impounded by officers from Afghanistan's KGB-trained National Directorate of Security after they moved against a party of international diplomats who were visiting Helmand.

A ministry insider said: "When they were arrested, the British said the Ministry of the Interior and the National Security Council knew about it, but no one knew anything. That's why the President was so angry."

Details of how much President Karzai was told remain murky. Some analysts believe Afghan officials were briefed about the plan, but that it later evolved.

The camp was due to be built outside Musa Qala, in Helmand. It was part of a package of reconstruction and development incentives designed to win trust and support in the aftermath of the British-led battle to retake the stronghold last year.

But the Afghans feared the British were training a militia with no loyalty to the central government. Intercepted Taliban communications suggested they thought the British were trying to help them, the Afghan official said.

The Western delegates, Michael Semple and Mervyn Patterson, were given 48 hours to leave the country. Their Afghan colleagues, including a former army general, were jailed. The expulsions coincided with a row within the Taliban's ranks which saw a senior commander, Mansoor Dadullah, sacked for talking to British spies. One official claimed the camp was planned for Mansoor and his men.

The computer stick contained a three-stage plan, called the European Union Peace Building Programme. The third stage covered military training.

Curiously, the European Union says the programme did not exist and there were no EU funds to run it.

Afghan government officials insist it was bankrolled by the British. UK diplomats, the UN, Western officials and senior Afghan officials have all confirmed the outline of the plan, which they agree is entirely British-led, but all refused to talk about it on the record. President Karzai's office claimed it was "a matter of national security".

The memory stick revealed that $125,000 (£64,000) had been spent on preparing the camp and a further $200,000 was earmarked to run it in 2008, an Afghan official said. The figures sparked allegations that British agents were paying the Taliban.

President Karzai's spokesman, Humayun Hamidzada, accused Mr Semple and Mr Patterson of being "involved in some activities that were not their jobs."

The camp would also have provided vocational training, including farming and irrigation techniques, to offer people a viable alternative to growing opium. But the Afghan government took issue with plans to provide military training, to turn the insurgents into a defence force.

Afghan government staff also claimed the "EU peace-builders" had handed over mobile phones, laptops and airtime credit to insurgents. They said the memory stick revealed plans to train the Taliban to use secure satellite phones, so they could communicate directly with UK officials.

Mr Patterson, a Briton, was the third-ranking UN diplomat when he was held. Mr Semple, an Irishman, was the acting head of the EU mission. Officially, the British embassy remains tight-lipped, fuelling speculation that the plan may have been part of a wider clandestine operation.

A spokesman repeated the line used since Christmas: "The EU and UN have responded to inquiries on this. We have nothing further to add."

But privately, the UN maintains it had no role in setting up the camp. Meanwhile, Mr Semple's EU boss, Francesc Vendrell, admitted he had very little idea what was going on.

Yet the British ambassador, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, cut short his Christmas holiday to meet President Karzai and "spell out the Foreign Office paper-trail" which diplomats claim proves his government had agreed. They met twice, but it was not enough to stop Mr Semple and Mr Patterson being forced to leave.

Gordon Brown has also said Britain would increase its support for "community defence initiatives, where local volunteers are recruited to defend homes and families modelled on traditional Afghan arbakai".

Background to the proposal

* December 11

British and Afghan troops take Musa Qala, a Taliban stronghold in Helmand, after President Hamid Karzai reveals that a senior Taliban commander swapped sides.

* December 23-24

The acting head of the EU mission, Michael Semple, and the third-ranking UN diplomat in Afghanistan, Mervyn Patterson, hold talks with local dignitaries and Taliban sympathisers in Helmand. Afghan secret police arrest their colleague, General Stanikzai, and seize a memory stick containing plans for training camps.

* December 25

Semple and Patterson are given 48 hours in which to leave Kabul.

* December 27

The two diplomats fly out of the Afghan capital, despite international appeals to let them stay.

Interesting? Click here to explore further



Go to 12544
http://www.rense.com/general80/doa.htm
America ­ DOA!
By Ted Lang
2-4-8

America has passed ­ it is actually beyond categorization as "dead on arrival". American government defies open accountability. It defends oligarchic agendas and deceives often all Americans. America has long been relegated to the ash heap of history and is in the final stages of decomposition. The so-called press is part and parcel of the oligarchy and exists only to ensure their agenda of a power elite-dominated New World Order.

The Establishment has empowered the Bush-Clinton political family clans to destroy American sovereignty. They have been positioned to deliberately destroy and unnecessarily deploy our military to where it is neither needed nor wanted. Our economy is being undermined by an unnecessary war economy, and our jobs are being sent to foreign lands to greatly improve the profits of a select few politically-connected corporatists and profiteers. They negate our Constitution to destroy our civil liberties seeking to homogenize our individuality into a subservient slave worker class. They ignore international treaties and agreements favorable to all thereby protecting only those agreements that serve the monetary interests of the controlling international oligarchy of globalist elites. And they seek to silence dissent via "hate crimes" and terrorist group designation "laws" and to preclude possible rebellion via "gun control."

For how else can the silence of the MSM be defined on such matters as the Project for the New American Century, Downing Street Memo, and the Cheney-Bush nuclear secrets espionage? How else can the actions of the MSM be described in deemphasizing the positive [Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich, Mike Gravel] and the negative [Project for the New American Century], and then overemphasizing the irrelevant [Paris Hilton, Michael Jackson, and the disastrous 2008 presidential candidates]?

As the MSM propaganda arm of The Establishment distracts US from recognizing and comparing positive versus negative values in our society, in our political systems, and in our government, its fraudulent practitioners are only concerned with competition from the Vinnies in a Bronx efficiency apartment and the partisanship "created" by the Internet. Concern for competition is always justified, but certainly not when it offers fact and truth while the MSM offers only b.s.

And as ABC fired Bob Zelnick over his biography of Al Gore, and fired William Kristol from This Week due to interpreted political posturing, neoconservative and neoconspiratorial lunatic and FoxNews denizen Kristol is hired by the hard left New York Times. And when ABC moderator Charlie Gibson gave physician and Congressman Ron Paul, a grassroots American idol and legitimate 2008 presidential candidate a fair chance to speak, the Red Communist New York Times published an editorial attack against Gibson; how dare he give the American people the opportunity to hear a true American opine and point out what is really wrong with our nation! The Times should consider instead retracting its editorial on the marvelous benefits of whistle-blower legislation our oligarchy has feigned considering their spiking of a London Times report from America's most famous whistle-blower, Sibel Edmonds.

Asking a Republican know-it-all recently as to what he believed was the primary purpose of American government, he quickly offered "national defense." I asked him what he thought of the way American government came to our defense on September 11, 2001. "Just a slip-up ­ you know, how the government screws things up, especially the military." Would it have been worth inciting a riot to point out that our radar/missile/jet interceptor systems are 'human proof' and basically driven by automatic electronics and robotics thereby making such foul-ups an impossibility?

Would it have paid to point out to the GOP "kia" that stand-down orders were issued due to at least five coincidental drills on that particular day? Would it have provided any benefit to point out possible responding aircraft were re-positioned far away from the targets and this was a very unusual deployment of vital defense assets? Would it have been worth raising blood pressures to repeat former Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta's account of Vice President Dick Cheney telling an aide to stop bothering him in that White House bunker on 9/11, and that the "drill" was still on? Nah!

The GOP kia will vote for whoever gets the GOP nod, as the Democrat "yellow dog" will vote for the last standing designee of that insignificant political distinction. As I have pointed out ad nauseum, there isn't any significant difference between American political parties. It's a distractive label chase employed by The Establishment to give US the false sense that we are permitted, nay, "privileged," to participate in selecting and electing "our" representatives in this great "democracy."

But what of the midterm elections of November 2006? The Democrats were given a mandate by the voters to change things in Cheney-Bush Washington. Still today, three quarters of both American citizens and members of the American military want the war stopped. What have Democrats done to accomplish these desires of the voters, our members in the military, and which are in the best interests of our "democracy"? What have Democrats done in terms of looking into the Downing Street Memo, and now the Grossman nuclear secrets espionage? What have they done about the Plame Affair? What have they done about Bush's pardon for Libby?

And speaking of the Grossman caper, where are we now at in terms of the AIPAC spy scandal involving two of AIPAC's former top dogs? And what about the other five AIPAC espionage crimes the FBI could be looking into according to Sibel Edmonds? And why are contributions to AIPAC still tax deductible but contributions to Ron Paul's campaign are not?

By the way, have any of the foregoing concerns come up during the 2008 presidential campaign debates controlled by The Establishment's MSM? I might have missed them, especially since I haven't really followed "the debates" since phony "conservative" FoxNews sabotaged Ron Paul's appearance. And if these didn't come up, then how about voter registration fraud, defective voting machines, and balloting miscounts and fraud? Have these come up yet? When can we expect an exposé and editorial series on these issues?

Now we know why "freedom of the press" is so important; just look at all the crap that's going on in this fraudulent decaying "democracy" and you'll have the answer. And "God save America?" What the hell for?

Think about 9/11 again. Think about the mindset of the criminals behind it. In total, just under about 3,000 Americans were slaughtered on that day. Even those struggling with the concept of our government's involvement are increasingly concluding that the government had to at least have forehand knowledge of the impending "suicide" attacks, the most recent coming from self-acknowledged skeptic Gary Leupp in his reflective piece on Counterpunch, "We Can't Afford to Let Them Spill the Beans," opening by saying, "I am not one to easily embrace conspiracy theories, and in particular have found the idea that 9-11 was somehow an inside job too incredible for serious consideration. On the other hand, there are some very fishy aspects to some officials' behavior pertaining to the attacks."

Leupp's first sentence explains precisely the mindset of the American sheeple and those that believe government is great; hence, there won't be many leftist Internet sites that would even remotely entertain the possibility of a government conspiracy. These people are grounded in the continuing wonderment and adoration of FDR. But now, Leupp's mind is being changed by the government restrictions being cautiously evaded by Sibel Edmonds in her efforts to warn America as to the evil and true horror of American government. Now conceding that a possible beforehand knowledge on the part of government officials did exist, how is this any less an evil had evidence been found proving government hands-on participation?

Think about it for a moment; only around 3,000 American citizens died on 9/11. If you are familiar with, or have ever been in New York City on a weekday morning, it wouldn't be at all outrageous to project that as many as 40 or 50 thousand could have been slaughtered. Consider that OUR GOVERNMENT WAS PREPARED TO LET THAT HAPPEN! And "our" MSM, as well as "our" Congress and its majority of controlling Democrats, is also prepared to, and has been, ignoring all this!

And of course, today our whole system of governance is grounded in welfare and warfare funding. And our war-making cannot be defended as being for defense, but rather, dependent upon intelligence, and for that matter, false flag fraudulent and manufactured intelligence. These frauds, along with our fraudulent political parties, our fraudulent voting and elections, and our fraudulent intelligence as well, have generated within me an intense hatred for all. For me, James Bond is now as dead as this nation is. "Secret Agent Man" was one of my favorite TV shows, and now I don't watch TV at all because I associate it with The Establishment's dumbing-down and political correctness agenda.

We have become a people without a country; but maybe that's a good thing, for the one we are associated with today as its people bears no resemblance to the one that used to be called "America." I, and probably a lot of others as well, must feel like Luke Skywalker living on a remote, barren stretch of "private" land, which is hopefully beyond the radar screen of the Dark Side Evil Empire. We are today more at home with, and better represented by, John Williams' Darth Vader Theme and Imperial March anthem than with either Key's "Star-Spangled Banner" or Sousa's "Stars and Stripes Forever." As old radio and TV's average guy, Chester A. Riley [William Bendix] used to say: "What a revoltin' development!"



Go to 12543
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article3596.html
Evolved Into Tyrannical Governments
Politics / New World Order
Feb 04, 2008 - 03:44 AM

By: Joel_S_Hirschhorn

Perhaps a global political apocalypse has already arrived.

Activists and dissidents should understand that evil forces and tyrannical governments have evolved. Just as human knowledge and science expand, so do the strategies and instruments used by rulers, elites and plutocrats. By learning from history and using new technology they have smarter tools of tyranny. The best ones prevent uprisings, revolutions and political reforms. Rather than violently destroy rebellious movements, they let them survive as marginalized and ineffective efforts that divert and sap the energy of nonconformist and rebellious thinkers. Real revolution remains an energy-draining dream, as evil forces thrive.


Most corrupt and legally sanctioned forms of tyranny hide in plain sight as democracies with free elections. The toughest lesson is that ALL elections are distractions. Nothing conceals tyranny better than elections. Few Americans accept that their government has become a two-party plutocracy run by a rich and powerful ruling class. The steady erosion of the rule of law is masked by everyday consumer freedoms. Because people want to be happy and hopeful, we have an epidemic of denial, especially in the present presidential campaign. But to believe that any change-selling politician or shift in party control will overturn the ruling class is the epitome of self-delusion and false hope. In the end, such wishful thinking perpetuates plutocracy. Proof is that plutocracy has flourished despite repeated change agents, promises of reform and partisan shifts.

The tools of real rebellion are weak. Activists and dissidents look back and see successful rebellions and revolutions and think that when today´s victims of tyranny experience enough pain and see enough political stink they too will revolt. This is wrong. They think that the Internet spreads information and inspiration to the masses, motivating them to revolt. This is wrong. They await catastrophic economic or environmental collapse to spur rebellion. This too is wrong.

Why are these beliefs wrong? Power elites have an arsenal of weapons to control and manipulate social, political and economic systems globally: corruption of public officials that make elections a sham; corporate mainstream media that turn news into propaganda; manipulation of financial markets that create fear for the public and profits for the privileged; false free trade globalization that destroys the middle class; rising economic inequality that keep the masses time-poor and financially insecure; intense marketing of pharmaceuticals that keep people passive; and addictive consumerism, entertainment and gambling that keep people distracted and pacified.

The biggest challenge for dissidents and rebels is to avoid feel-good therapeutic activism having virtually no chance of removing evil and tyranny. Idealism without practicality tactics without lofty goals, and symbolic protests pose no threat to power elites. Anger and outrage require great strategic thinking from leaders seeking revolution, not mere change. And social entrepreneurs that use business and management skills to tackle genuine social problems do nothing to achieve political reforms. To the extent they achieve results they end up removing interest in overthrowing political establishments that have allowed the problems to fester.

What is the new tool of tyranny? Technological connectivity achieved through advanced communications and computer systems, especially the rise of wireless connectivity. The global message to the masses is simple: Buy electronic products to stay plugged in. Connectivity may give pleasure, but it gives even more power to elites, rulers and plutocrats. It allows them to coordinate their efforts through invisible cabals, to closely monitor everything that ordinary people and dissidents do, and to cooperatively and clandestinely adjust social, financial and political systems to maintain stability and dominance.

In this dystopian world all systems are integrated to serve upper class elites and the corporate state, not ordinary people. When ordinary people spend their money to be more shackled to connectivity products, they become unwitting victims of largely invisible governmental and corporate oppressive forces. They are oblivious that their technological seduction exacerbates their political and economic exploitation. Though some 70 percent believe the country is on the wrong track, they fail to see the deeper causes of the trend. And if Americans were really happy and content with their consumer culture, then why are they stuffing themselves with so many antidepressants, sleeping pills and totally unhealthy foods? In truth, the vast majority of people are in denial about the rotten system they are trapped in (aka The Matrix). They are manipulated to keep hope alive through voting, despite the inability of past elections to stop the slide into economic serfdom.

Increasingly, the little-discussed phenomenon of economic apartheid ensures that elites live their lavish lives safely in physically separated ways. Concurrently, economic inequality rises, as the rich extract unusually high fractions of global wealth. When the rich get richer, the powerful get stronger. Does some economic prosperity trickles down to the poorest people? Perversely, the middle class is moved into the lower class. In this new physics of evil, wealth transfer is not from the rich to the poor, but from the middle class in wealthier countries to the poor in developing nations, where a few new billionaires join the global plutocracy.

Some data on economic inequality: The after-tax income of the top 1 percent of Americans rose 228 percent from 1979 through 2005, while middle class income remained flat over the last 4 decades. The richest 0.01 percent of earners made 5.1 percent of all income in 2005, up more than 300 percent from just 1.2 percent in 1960. Bad economic times like the present just exacerbate inequality. Even as most Wall Street companies lost billions in the sub-prime mortgage debacle after they had already made billions, they gave obscene bonuses to their employees: the average topped $180,000 for 2007, tripling the $61,000 in 2002. Scholars used to predict that high levels of economic inequality like we have today would lead to rebellion. But there are now insufficient tools and paths for rebellion, because the plutocracy has eliminated them. Instead, citizens are offered elections whose outcomes can be controlled and subverted by the ruling class.

The New World Order is getting what it wants: a stable two-class system, with the lower class serving the elitist upper class. The paradox is that along with rising economic inequality and apartheid is mounting consumerism and materialism that is used to pacify, distract and control the masses. That´s where easy credit and cheap products from low-wage nations are critical. The poor can have cell phones, 24-7 Internet access and increasingly cars, while the bejeweled upper class travel in private jets and yachts, vacation on private islands, and have several gated mansions maintained by servants and guarded by private police. We have a technologically advanced form of medieval society. It is working in the US and China and most other places. Elections just mask economic tyranny and slavery.

The ruling class knows how to maintain stability. Keep the masses distracted, fearful, brainwashed, insecure, and dependent on government and business sectors for survival. Train people to see themselves as relatively free consumers. Maintain the myth that ordinary people can become wealthy and join the ruling class, which theoretically is not impossible, but of no statistical significance for the masses.

There are no easy paths to restore power to the people. But here are three strategies worth considering.

First, the real power of the masses is as consumers, not as voters, workers, activists, or Internet users. Weakened unions, globalization, technology, and illegal immigration have sapped the power of workers. National economies, especially the US, depend on consumers. Suspensions in discretionary consumer spending used as a political weapon could force reforms. But curbing personal spending and saving money has become a rare form of civil disobedience. Consumers buy stuff when they want it, not when they can afford it. Rulers have replaced chains with debt and no political leader in a very long time has championed economic rebellion.

Second, because they are more a tool of tyranny than rebellion, the masses should stop giving credibility and legitimacy to faux democracies by boycotting elections. Plutocrats cleverly equate patriotism and good citizenship with voting while at the same time ensuring that no genuine change agents can succeed even if elected. All election results can be subverted by the forces of corruption. Those promising change, like Barack Obama, do not pose a lethal threat to forces of evil and corruption. Sadly, refusing to vote in corrupt political systems is another worthy but unpopular form of civil disobedience. The compulsion to vote is a political narcotic that sustains democratic tyranny.

Third, people must seek forms of direct democracy that give them political power. National ballot measures and initiatives are needed to make laws, impose spending mandates and recall elected officials. A most important tool is constitutional conventions outside the control of status quo preservationists to obtain systemic reforms that governments will never provide, as explained for the US at www.foavc.org. No greater example of ruling class power exists than the absence of massive public demands for using what the Founders gave Americans in Article V: the convention option to circumvent and fix the federal government that – amazingly – has never been used, and that no presidential candidate has supported, including constitutional champion Ron Raul.


By Joel S. Hirschhorn

Go to 12542
http://www.delusionaldemocracy.com



Go to 12541
http://www.moderateindependent.com/v1i15death.htm
The Strange Death of the Woman Who Filed a Rape Lawsuit Against Bush

by Guest Writer
Jackson Thoreau

November 18, 2003 – Early one Saturday afternoon in July 2003, I made a simple phone call to Margie Schoedinger, a Texas woman who filed a rape lawsuit against George W. Bush in December 2002. I expected to leave a message on a machine, so I was caught a little offguard when Schoedinger answered.

She, too, sounded somewhat surprised I had called, saying she hadn’t heard from many other reporters. But she talked to me for a few minutes about the legal action.

"I am still trying to prosecute [the lawsuit]," said Schoedinger, a 38-year-old African-American woman who lived in the Houston suburb of Missouri City. "I want to get this matter settled and go on with my life."

Well, Schoedinger hasn't gone on with her life. In fact, three months after I spoke to her, she died in an apparent suicide. And this matter remains unsettled.

When I asked her in July 2003 about the lack of media coverage, Schoedinger said she wasn't seeking publicity. She said she did not even know about a December 2002 article in the Fort Bend Star, the only U.S. mainstream media outlet that covered this story, to my knowledge. The Fort Bend reporter, LeaAnne Klentzman, said she even went to Schoedinger's home and talked to a man there, who said she could not come to door. While I reached and spoke to Schoedinger on my first attempt, maybe she wasn't ready to talk back in December.

Anyways, Schoedinger said she was surprised the case wasn't covered more because "it is true......People have to be accountable for what they do, and that's why I'm pursuing it."

To be sure, Schoedinger's accusations - which include being drugged and sexually assaulted numerous times by Bush and other men purporting to be FBI agents - are bizarre and hard for most people to believe. But her story fits in with those told by a growing number of people who say they were used as guinea pigs or whatever by members of the CIA or another U.S. agency who wanted to test out the latest mind-controlling drug or just have a strange form of release. And her death - let's just say government agents have made murders look like suicides before.

In her court petition, Schoedinger said police in Sugar Land, another Houston suburb where she said some assailants linked to Bush attempted to unsuccessfully abduct her from her car shortly before the 2000 election, refused to take a report or do anything about that incident. She filed a lawsuit against the Sugar Land department and said that in preparing its defense, Sugar Land police found out that she dated Bush as a minor. I didn't get a chance to ask Schoedinger about that tie and didn't meet her in person, but her driver's license listed her as being 5-foot-8 and weighing 125 pounds, for what that's worth.

The Fort Bend Star story quoted a Sugar Land police captain saying his department had no record of any complaints by Schoedinger. All he had to do was what I did - go to the Fort Bend County Internet site and do a simple search on Schoedinger's name in the area of civil court records. I found the lawsuit Schoedinger filed in December 2000 against Sugar Land police, and it even had numerous responses by the department's attorneys in that case.

Just wait. This story gets stranger.

When I started asking Schoedinger about certain details of the case, such as alleged surveillance at her home and if she was still legally representing herself, she politely ended our conversation. "I need to see what has been written," Schoedinger said. "I feel like it's best for me to end our conversation."

Obviously, she had learned to be careful about what she said and to whom she said it. I could understand her being leery about talking about her situation with a stranger over the phone.

But I remember being puzzled by Schoedinger’s attitude after hanging up the phone. I wondered that if she had made up such a wild story, why she didn't come up with something a little less outlandish, in which people couldn't necessarily dismiss her as a kook. I wondered why she didn't seek publicity to at least provide some form of protection. I've long learned that being as public as possible is one of your best defenses against rogue intelligence agents. But she didn't even seem to want any media to cover her story. I told several writers I knew, some of whom tried to contact Schoedinger. None succeeded, as far as I know.

I remember thinking, "I hope she doesn't wind up on the wrong side of a gun." And sure enough, in late September, Schoedinger did.

The Houston Chronicle wrote a bare-bones obituary that stated only that Schoedinger "expired" on Sept. 22, 2003, and her burial was at Houston Memorial Gardens.

I called the Harris County Medical Examiner's office, and a clerk told me the cause of death: a "suicide" by a "gunshot wound to the head." I hung up amid bombs going off in my mind.

For one, using a gun to commit suicide is predominantly executed by males, according to psychiatrists and other sources like pharmaceutical firm Merck & Co. Women are more likely to overdose on drugs, although the number of gunshot suicides among women has increased in recent years.

Besides Pravda and Internet ezines - one of whom referred to Schoedinger as "deranged" - I haven't seen stories on this strange death of a woman who filed a rape lawsuit against the U.S. president and wound up dead nine months later. I can't say I'm surprised. Or even angry. I don't know what the hell to think. All I know is I was one of the last - if not the last - reporters to speak to Schoedinger, and she didn't sound "deranged" to me in July 2003. She sounded like someone who had gone through something weird and was trying to sort it out. She sounded like someone who wanted the truth to come out. And now she's dead.

If this had happened to Clinton when he was in the White House, do you think the story would have been covered non-stop on FOX, CNN and the right-wing talk shows? Do you think we'd have reporters asking Clinton and his people about this death in press conferences? Is FOX unfair and imbalanced to the point of being "deranged?"

There are some more odd twists to this case. I also found a 2002 criminal case related to Schoedinger in which Christopher Schoedinger, her husband, allegedly struck her. He pleaded no contest and was sentenced to a year in jail. Christopher Schoedinger had also filed for divorce. Then since 1997, Margie Schoedinger had filed for at least five assumed business names for various ventures - including a communications firm, health and beauty business, travel agency and publishing company. Could a "deranged" person start all those businesses or even know how to file a lawsuit?

Schoedinger's lawsuit can still be viewed on the Fort Bend County site at http://ccweb.co.fort-bend.tx.us/localization/menu.asp - then go down to the bottom and click on civil court. Then type "schoedinger" in the plaintiff box and click search. You should find another lawsuit she filed against Sugar Land police, as well.

I can really understand media members being intimidated, even frightened, of the Bush administration. As I've detailed before, these are not Boy Scouts running the show. The Schoedinger death is just the latest in a string of strange ones surrounding the Bush family - Bush biographer J.H. Hatfield, Sen. Paul Wellstone, Sen. Mel Carnahan, and others that are detailed on various sites, including at http://members.boardhost.com/gwbush/msg/362.html.

For the record, I contacted Bush's media office about Schoedinger and have yet to hear back. Now that I live in the Washington, D.C., area, I can go down to the White House in person and try to get someone to speak to me about this case. As expected, I haven't had much luck with the Fort Bend County and other Texas authorities. So maybe I'll stand outside the White House, holding a sign saying, "Who killed Margie Schoedinger?" and passing out copies of my column on the case. It would make about as much sense as anything else in this matter.

For all I know, maybe Schoedinger did kill herself. Maybe she dreamed up a lot of this stuff. But I don't know, am I "deranged" to think it's weird that in this mass-media, detailed-information age, so few people are even asking any questions about how a woman who filed a rape lawsuit against the president could be dead less than a year later?

Jackson Thoreau is an American writer and co-author of We Will Not Get Over It: Restoring a Legitimate White House. The updated, 120,000-word electronic book can be downloaded on his Internet site at http://www.geocities.com/jacksonthor/ebook.html. Citizens for Legitimate Government has the earlier version at http://www.legitgov.org/we_will_not_get_over_it.html. He can be contacted at jacksonthor@yahoo.com or jacksonthor@justice.com.



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