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.

A motto for us old vets: Take one with you!

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Go to 12739
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/20/AR2008022002270.html
Wall Street Bank Run
By David Ignatius
Thursday, February 21, 2008; Page A15

It doesn't look like an old-fashioned bank run because it involves the biggest financial institutions trading paper assets so complicated that even top executives don't fully understand the transactions. But that's what it is -- a spreading fear among financial institutions that their brethren can't be trusted to honor their obligations.

Frightened financiers are pulling back from credit markets -- going on strike, if you will -- to escape the unraveling daisy chain of securitized assets and promissory notes that binds the global financial system. As each financier tries to protect against the next one's mistakes, the whole system begins to sag. That's what we're seeing now, as credit market troubles spread from bundles of subprime residential mortgages to bundles of other kinds of debt -- from student loans to retailers' receivables to municipal bonds.

Investors are nervous because they aren't sure how to value these bundles of securitized assets. So buyers stay away, prices fall further, and the damage spreads.

The public, fortunately, doesn't understand how bad the situation is. If it did, we might have a real panic on our hands. And there would be more pressure for bad policies -- ones that try to freeze the damage, rather than letting prices fall to levels where buyers will return and the markets will clear. Hillary Clinton's proposed moratorium on home foreclosures, in that respect, is one of the truly bad ideas of our time. It would make the situation worse by increasing even more the illiquidity and inflexibility of the housing market.

The answer to Wall Street's bank run may be a version of what saved Main Street banks during the Great Depression. President Franklin Roosevelt created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in 1933 to reassure the public that there was an insurer of last resort for the banks -- and that people's money was safe even if they couldn't see it or touch it or put it under a mattress. Rep. Barney Frank and other congressional experts are weighing different approaches to this problem of how to backstop the markets without Clinton's misguided moratorium.

These markets are now so complicated that most of us can't begin to understand the details. So I asked the chief financial officer of a leading concern to walk me through what has been happening. The problem, he said, is that financial institutions are required to "mark to market" their tradable assets (which is a fancy term for setting a value) even when there isn't a functioning market. In many cases dealers can do little more than guess at the value -- and other investors down the line know it.

To explain how this happened, the CFO took a simple example of residential mortgages. As financial engineering improved in the 1990s, these individual loans were gathered into bundles -- 10,000 home loans of $100,000 each, let's say -- and turned into a $1 billion security that could be traded in ways the individual mortgages never could. But that wasn't enough. The financiers realized they could boost their profits by carving the $1 billion package into different slices, with different risk levels. In that way, a pool of B-rated mortgage assets could generate a slice that was rated AAA, because it was judged the slice most likely to be repaid.

But what happened when the real estate market confounded recent history and began to turn down? People holding the paper could no longer be sure if or when their particular slice would be repaid. The traditional accounting approach -- of estimating the projected cash flow and then discounting for the risk -- didn't work. With 10,000 disparate mortgages underlying the paper, both the rate of cash payments and the risk of default were impossible to predict. So the pyramid began to wobble.

The hubris in this system was Wall Street's confidence that it could value paper securities that had been sliced and diced so many times that they no longer had solid connections to their underlying assets. The nation's leading financier, Warren Buffett, had warned years before that "derivatives," whose value was balanced loosely on the real assets underneath, were the equivalent of "financial weapons of mass destruction." But in the rush for profits, nobody listened.

I've saved the worst for last. Do you want to know who is bailing out America's biggest banks and financial institutions from the consequences of their folly -- by acting as the lender of last resort and controller of the system? Why, it's the sovereign wealth funds, owned by such nations as China and the Persian Gulf oil producers. The new titans are coming to the rescue, if that's the right word for their mortgage on America's future.

The writer is co-host ofPostGlobal, an online discussion of international issues. His e-mail address isdavidignatius@washpost.com.



Go to 12738
http://www.rense.com/general80/dump.htm
It's Time to Dump The
Federal Reserve
By Mike Whitney
fergiewhitney@msn.com
2-23-8

"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored." ~ Aldous Huxley

The upcoming global recession/depression will give us plenty of time to mull over the ruinous effects of Fed policy and to devise a plan for abolishing the Federal Reserve once and for all. That is, if they don't destroy us first.

The credit storm which began in July when two Bear Stearns hedge funds were forced to liquidate, has continued to intensify and roil the markets. Last week the noose tightened around auction-rate securities, a little-known part of the market that requires short-term funding to set rates for long-term municipal bonds. The $330 billion ARS market has dried up overnight pushing up rates as high as 20% on some bonds ­ a new benchmark for short-term debt. Auction-rate securities are now headed for extinction just like the other previously-vital parts of the structured finance paradigm. The $2 trillion market for collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), the multi-trillion-dollar mortgage-backed securities market (MBSs) and the $1.3 asset-backed commercial paper (ABCP) market have all shut down, draining a small ocean of capital from the financial system and pushing many of the banks and hedge funds closer to default.

The price of insuring corporate bonds has skyrocketed in the last few weeks making it more difficult for businesses to get the funding they need to expand or continue present operations. Much of this has to do with the growing uncertainty about the reliability of credit default swaps, a $45 trillion dollar market which remains virtually unregulated. Credit-default swaps are a type of financial instrument that are used to speculate on a company's ability to repay debt. They pay the buyer face value in exchange for the underlying securities or the cash equivalent if a borrower fails to adhere to its debt agreements. When the price of CDSs increases, it means that there is greater doubt about the quality of the bond. Prices are presently soaring because the entire structured finance market ­ and anything connected to it ­ is under withering attack from the meltdown in subprime mortgages. As foreclosures continue to rise, the securities that were fashioned from subprime loans will continue to unwind, destroying trillions of dollars of virtual-capital in the secondary market.

It all sounds more complicated than it really is. Imagine a 200-ft. conveyor belt with two burly workers and a mountain-sized pile of money on one end, and a towering bonfire on the other. Every time a home goes into foreclosure, the two workers stack the money that was lost on the transaction ­ plus all of the cash that was leveraged on the home via "securitization" and derivatives ­ onto the conveyor-belt where it is fed into the fire. That is precisely what is happening right now and the amount of capital that is being consumed by the flames far exceeds the Fed's paltry increases to the money supply or Bush's projected $168 billion "surplus package." Capital is being sucked out of the system faster than it can be replaced, which is apparent by the sudden cramping in the financial system and a more generalized slowdown in consumer spending.

According to a recent Bloomberg article:

"A year ago $20 million would have gotten Luminent Mortgage Capital Inc. access to $640 million in loans to buy top-rated mortgage-backed securities. Now that much cash gets the firm no more than $80 million. ...(Only) 6 lenders are offering 5 times leverage, while a year ago, 20 banks extended 33 times."

The banks are not providing anywhere near as much money for leveraged investments as they did just last year. And, when credit shrinks on a national scale ­ as it is ­ so does the economy. It's a simple formula; less money means less economic activity, less growth, fewer jobs, tighter budgets, more pain.

Bloomberg continues:

"Wall Street firms, reeling from $146 billion in losses on their debt holdings, are fueling a credit crisis by clamping down on lending to investors and hedge funds that use borrowed money to buy securities. By pulling back, (the banks) are contributing to reduced demand and lower prices throughout the fixed-income world."

The banks are in no position to be extravagant because they're already saddled with $400 billion in MBSs and CDOs ­ as well as another $170 billion in private equity deals ­ for which there is currently no market. They've had to dramatically cut back on their lending because they either don't have the resources or are facing bankruptcy in the near future.

An article which appeared on the front page of the Financial Times last week, illustrates how hard-pressed the banks really are:

"US banks have been quietly borrowing massive amounts of money from the Federal Reserve...$50 billion in one month."

The Fed's new Term Auction Facility "allows the banks to borrow money against all sort of dodgy collateral," says Christopher Wood, analyst at CLSA. "The banks are increasingly giving the Fed the garbage collateral nobody else wants to take ... [this] suggests a perilous condition for America's banking system."

The move has sparked unease among some analysts about the stress developing in opaque corners of the US banking system and the banks' growing reliance on indirect forms of government support." ("US Banks borrow $50 billion via New Fed Facility," Financial Times.) (The story appeared nowhere in the US media.)

At the same time the banks are getting backdoor injections of liquidity from the Fed, banking giant Citigroup has been trying to off-load some of its branches so it can cover its structured investment losses. It all looks rather desperate, but scouring the planet for capital to shore up flagging balance sheets is turning out to be a full-time job for many of America's largest investment banks. It is the only way they can stay one step ahead of the hangman.

In the last few days, gold has spiked to $950, a new high, while oil futures passed the $100 per barrel mark. The battered greenback has already taken a beating, and yet, Fed chairman Bernanke is signaling that there are more rate cuts to come. The prospect of a global run on the dollar has never been greater. Still, Bernanke will do whatever he can to resuscitate the faltering banking system, even if he destroys the currency in the process. Unfortunately, interest rates alone won't cut it. The banks need capital; and fast. Meanwhile, the waning dollar has sent food and energy prices soaring which is leaving consumers without the discretionary income they need for anything beyond the basic necessities. As a result, retail sales are down and employers are forced to lay off workers to reduce their spending. This is all part of the self-reinforcing negative-feedback loop that begins with falling home prices and then rumbles through the broader economy. There is no chance that the economy will rebound until housing prices stabilize and the rate of foreclosures returns to normal. But that could be a long way off. With housing inventory at historic highs and mortgage applications at new lows, the economy could keep somersaulting down the stairwell for a full two years or more. Only then, will we hit rock-bottom.

The country is now headed into a deep and protracted recession. Low interest credit and financial innovation have paralyzed the credit markets while inflating a monstrous equity bubble that is wreaking havoc with the world's financial system. The new market architecture, "structured finance" has collapsed from the stress of falling asset-values and rising defaults. Many of the banks are technically insolvent already, hopelessly mired in their own red ink. Public confidence in the nations' financial institutions has never been lower. Monetary policy and deregulation have failed. The system is self-destructing.

Now that the credit crunch has rendered the markets dysfunctional, spokesmen for the investor class are speaking out and confirming what many have suspected from the very beginning; that the present troubles originated at the Federal Reserve and, ultimately, they are the ones who are responsible for the meltdown. In an article in the Wall Street Journal this week, Harvard economics professor and former Council of Economic Advisers under President Reagan, Martin Feldstein, made this revealing admission:

"There is plenty of blame to go around for the current situation. The Federal Reserve bears much of the responsibility, because of its failure to provide the appropriate supervisory oversight for the major money center banks. The Fed's banking examiners have complete access to all of the financial transactions of the banks that they supervise, and should have the technical expertise to evaluate the risks that those banks are taking. Because these banks provide credit to the nonbank financial institutions, the Fed can also indirectly examine what those other institutions are doing.

The Fed's bank examinations are supposed to assess the adequacy of each bank's capital and the quality of its assets. The Fed declared that the banks had adequate capital because it gave far too little weight to their massive off balance-sheet positions ­ the structured investment vehicles (SIVs), conduits and credit line obligations ­ that the banks have now been forced to bring onto their balance sheets. Examiners also overstated the quality of the banks' assets, failing to allow for the potential bursting of the house price bubble. The implication of this for Fed supervision policy is clear. The way out of the current crisis is not."

How odd? So, when all else fails, tell the truth?

But Feldstein is right; the Fed refused to perform its oversight duties because its friends in the banking industry were raking in obscene profits selling sketchy, subprime junk to gullible investors around the world. They knew about the "massive off balance-sheet positions" which allowed the banks' to create mortgage-backed securities and CDOs without sufficient capital reserves. They knew it all; every last bit of it, which simply proves that the Federal Reserve is an organization which serves the exclusive interests of the banking establishment and their corporate brethren in the financial industry.

Surprised?

The upcoming global recession/depression will give us plenty of time to mull over the ruinous effects of Fed policy and to devise a plan for abolishing the Federal Reserve once and for all. That is, if they don't destroy us first.

Mike Whitney [send him mail] lives in Washington state.



Go to 12737
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSBLA36525620080223
Iran says more sanctions won't halt nuclear plan
Sat Feb 23, 2008
By Zahra Hosseinian

TEHRAN (Reuters) - World powers can pass U.N. sanctions resolutions for 100 years without deterring Iran from its nuclear ambitions, Iran's president said on Saturday.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's defiant comments came a day after a report by the U.N. nuclear watchdog said Iran was being more transparent about its nuclear plans but was not doing enough to clear up concerns about whether Tehran had military aims.

Tehran insists its plans are peaceful. But the United States, which has accused Iran of seeking to build nuclear bombs, said Friday's International Atomic Energy Agency report was a good reason to impose more U.N. sanctions.

"If they want to continue with that path (of sanctions), we will not be harmed. They can issue resolutions for 100 years," the president told state television in an interview.

Those leading the bid to impose more penalties, an apparent reference to Washington, and its allies could not "bring the Iranian nation to its knees," he said.

"If they continue (with this pressure), we have designed reciprocal actions," he said without elaborating.

Iranian officials have previously warned that the Islamic Republic could review cooperation with the IAEA, if pushed.

The president declared the IAEA report a "victory" for the Iranian nation, pointing to areas of the document which showed Iranian cooperation had cleared up suspicions.



Go to 12736
http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2008/02/portrait-of-a-h.html
February 22, 2008
Yes, There Is a Guerrilla War Against Zionism in the U.S. What Should Jewish Institutions Do?
I just looked at the comment section of the youtube speech by Congressman Howard Berman the other night in Sherman Oaks. It's stunning how much rage there is toward Berman:

Portrait of a hypnotized zionist tool. He can't even see how he is speaking out of both sides of his mouth. PeaceThroughJustice above has it bang on: HB says he is an ardent supporter of israel and he firmly stands behind israel's security"; then he is shocked that anyone would suggest that US foreign policy is controlled by zionists.

There is no end of evidence that this kind of rage is bubbling to the surface all over America. My sister-in-law tells me that the almost-censored If Americans Knew speech at the Greenwich Library last week was "a mob scene." I've blogged about the fact that at a Yivo event, neocon Iraq-war-planner Bill Kristol had a hunted look as he spoke of the craziness that had surrounded neocons since the war. Neocon chronicler Jacob Heilbrunn has seemed fearful in his public statements about his book, They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons, stepping away from his own assertion that neocons formed cabals in the government. It is as if he is spooked by the snakepit he stepped into. The fact that our Israel policy has hurt us across the Arab world is no longer a revelation to Americans. They know it, and seem to want to do something about it. Jimmy Carter and Walt and Mearsheimer and the Iraq debacle have been an IV-drip into the American bloodstream.

The rage out there is not antisemitism. It may be antiZionism, it may be isolationism. It is a groundswell that needs to be addressed honestly. When Congressman Berman went into fits of denial that there is an Israel lobby, after saying that he joined the Foreign Affairs Committee because he cared about Israel, this was not honest.

What should Jewish institutions do about it? The answer is obvious, they should have forums. They should express the range of Jewish opinion re Israel (not the narrow range that Yivo gathered in its Martin Peretz-organized forum on Walt and Mearsheimer in November). They should encourage that range. They should begin an open discussion within the Jewish community of what Zionism has done to Jewish identity and American foreign policy. They should grill the neocons and give a platform to post-Zionist Jews like Joel Kovel and David Zellnik, rather than just smearing them. They should confront the extent to which the adamant refusal by the Jewish establishment to acknowledge Palestinian suffering even as it insists that Israel is a democracy has hurt Judaism and hurt U.S. foreign policy. They should wake up.



Go to 12735
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archives/2008/02/24/2003402648
US$100 a barrel 'a fair price' for oil, Chavez says

AP, CARACAS AND HOUSTON
Sunday, Feb 24, 2008, Page 10
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Friday called US$100 "a fair price" for barrel of oil, and said Venezuela and other OPEC-member nations would try to prevent the price from dropping below that level.

"We will do everything that must be done within OPEC to continue strengthening the price of our oil," Chavez said in a televised address.

He said "US$100 is a fair price" for a barrel.

Venezuela is one of the leading price hawks within OPEC, consistently arguing in favor of production cuts at the group's meetings.

Venezuela's heavy, sulfur-laden crude closed at US$90.13 this week -- US$3.84 more than last week, Venezuela's Energy and Petroleum Ministry said.

Venezuelan oil sold for less than US$10 in 1999, when Chavez took office.

Crude oil futures settled higher on Friday, as tensions between Turkey and Iraq and cold weather in the US Northeast snapped the market out of its one-day slump.

Light, sweet crude for April delivery settled US$0.58, or 0.6 percent, higher at US$98.81 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange on Friday.

April Brent crude on the ICE futures exchange in London closed US$0.76 higher at US$97 a barrel.

Crude was mostly higher throughout the day on news that Turkish troops had entered Iraq in their battle with Kurdish separatists. Turkey serves as an oil and gas transportation hub, and Iraq is a major crude supplier to Europe.

Traders looking to push oil higher were struggling against strong headwinds, however.



Go to 12734
http://www.energyandcapital.com/newsletter.php?date=2008-02-20
Sherritt International and the Rush for 4.6 Billion Barrels of Cuban Oil
By Sam Hopkins | Wednesday, February 20th, 2008

You've probably heard by now that Fidel Castro is about to become Cuba's "ex-presidente." But did you know that a publicly-traded Canadian oil company is extracting oil in Cuba from fields under 50 km from Havana?

Toronto's Sherritt International Corporation has been drilling in Cuba since 2002, and their stock got a "geopolitical bounce" this week as Castro announced his plans to step down.

None other than the United States Geological Survey estimates that Cuba holds reserves of 4.6 billion barrels of oil, and 9.8 billion bbl of natural gas in its Gulf of Mexico waters. That's nearly two-thirds the amount in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which American companies are drooling over!

In this era of declining U.S. domestic oil production and political change around the world, can we Americans afford to ignore this bounty a mere 70 miles from Florida?

Tapping Into Cuban Oil

Sherritt hasn't had to ignore the reality of Cuban oil, and shares (TSE:S) gapped up by about 8% in Tuesday's trading precisely because investors know that the company is already drawing 60,000 barrels per day from our neighborhood Reds.


With a political thaw between Washington and Havana now possible, Sherritt's stake and local expertise become much more valuable.

Along Cuba's northern coast, the country holds significant "near-shore" reserves. That means that unlike deepwater offshore fields, which are becoming more economical and technically viable as oil hovers around $100 per barrel, Cuba's reserves can be tapped from land.

What Sherritt is doing is called directional drilling, and you may remember the method from a couple decades back, when Saddam Hussein accused the Kuwaitis of "slant drilling" for Iraqi oil, giving him a major pretext for his 1990 invasion.

In that case, it was a cause for war. In this case, the Castro regime welcomes Sherritt's tilted pipes to fuel state-run power plants.

Cuba wants energy investment, and plenty of countries and companies are happy to provide it.


Alternative Energy Myths Report

Jeff Siegel's Alternative Energy Myths report is currently available at no charge for his Green Chip Review members. Green Chip Review is a daily e-letter that offers market analysis in alternative and renewable energy, organic foods, green building, and all associated LOHAS segments. For a free membership to the Green Chip Review and to reserve your copy, click here.

4.6 Billion Barrels of Cuban Oil

Even the United States Department of Energy can't play dumb when it comes to Cuba's oil reserves. The Energy Information Administration says that any new production is "dependent on the discovery of substantial new reserves," but the official EIA profile of Cuba goes on to note "considerable excitement over exploration in Cuba's offshore basins, especially in the Gulf of Mexico."

If you're a Yanqui (Spanish for Yankee) oil company, though, you've had to restrain your glee while watching private and state-owned oil companies from around the world horn in Cuba's offshore potential.

Beyond what Sherritt has done, oil companies from Malaysia, India, Spain, Brazil, and of course friendly socialist Venezuela have all cooperated with Cubapetroleo (Cupet) in exploiting their huge petroleum potential.

Investment in Cuba's Vast Oil Reserves

There is a range of oil in Cuba's territorial waters, from light sweet crude to heavy oil that takes a heck of a lot of refining to become usable.

But consider the billions of investment dollars pouring into the Canadian oil sands ("tar sands"), as well as new political realities in places like Libya, where Col. Muammar Qaddafi has come in from the cold in the past few years and brought Africa's largest reserves with him.

In Libya's case, as in Cuba's, we're only at the beginning of a tidal wave of investment into that country's oil industry. The one difference is Washington's cozy new attitude towards Tripoli.

How long will it be before relations with Cuba thaw and give American companies access to Cuban oil?

Luckily, you don't have to wait. Sherritt stock prices are set to continue their rise on this major news, and you can get in now.

Regards,
Sam Hopkins
www.energyandcapital.com



Go to 12733
http://www.rense.com/general62/skol69.htm
Overthrow Of The
American Republic - Part 69
Secrets Of The Monopoly Press
By Sherman H. Skolnick
1-27-5

The primary enemies of the Aristocracy are the American common people. To combat opponents, various weapons are used. Some are simply military. Others are a combination of geopolitical and psychological.

Everybody should know this but most do not.

The American system of education, both public, private, and parochial (often meaning Church schools) seldom, if ever, instructs students in class. That is, in class, you do not learn about CLASS, the Ultra Rich on one side and the peons or "shirtless ones" on the other. So the "enemy" too often is perceived as .simply a person of a different religion, color, or ethnic background, or even gender rather than a CLASS enemy.

The Anglo-American Aristocracy, a long historical creation, has their warehouse of weaponry, that is, their methods and secrets.

[1] The print and electronic media are adjuncts of the Espionage Establishment, A sizeable contingent of those in the press corps have a background in the secret political police, the American CIA and covert operations of Military Intelligence. Psychology and what common folk would call simply trickery are part of the pen-guns.

As a political activist I was one of the first, in the 1960s, to dare speak out, as best I could, about this. Together with associates, I uncovered facts tending to show that key media personnel were simply a front for spies.

I got on their crap list by compiling data on their biographical background and their current methods. I divulged this wherever I could, such as at seminars and college speeches.

The spy-reporters contacted political and civil rights activists, many of whom were anxious to have their views in the "press".

"We want to do a segment about you (on the air or in print)", was a favorite come-on. So the target , off-guard, permitted and answered questions as to their educational background, their employment, their associates, their viewpoints. Often on film and on tape.

It seldom went into the newspapers or on the air. It was, in media jargon, "out-takes", kept iin media files but not used. If you inquired, the excuse given "The news director decided it was not newsworthy."

Hotbeds of activists, such as in the big cities, like Chicago, were fingered by a more or less secret operation. They filmed or taped radio and television talk shows where activists did go on the air. By a secret courier service, which we uncovered and identified, transcripts were delivered to covert offices in Virginia, home of the American CIA.

The talk show guests became further targets on whom were gathered intensive background data, including any psychological problems going back to the time they were teen-agers, or in college. To cause other problems for such activist guests, any divorce court records were examined. Expert "trouble-creators", of the same or opposite gender, were steered onto such pigeons.

If the activist was part of a group, well, charming and skilled provocateurs penetrated the group. Purpose? To instigate them into committing crimes as part of the activism. Plainly, to get as many of them "busted" as possible. .

[2] The monopoly press has a long, historical past that key positions, particularly in radio and television, can be purchased. So, on occasion, the secret political police bought or arranged media employment for their spies.

Particularly rewarded with highly lucrative media positions were those who somehow got into a place or situation where they covered up a political assassination.

A few examples. Dan Rather on November 22, 1963, was in Dallas, Dealey Plaza, stationed under the triple overpass bridge. He was right near one of the snipers that killed President John F. Kennedy. The shooter used a storm sewer up on the railroad embankment right near Rather. BLATHER as he is called ended up becoming a CBS anchor face on occasion doing whitewashes of political assassinations.

A Canadian reporter, Robin MacNeil, was at the same time in the Book Depository Building and made false stories about CIA patsy, Lee Harvey Oswald, as the "lone assassin" who worked in that building at that time. MacNeil, together with his confederate, Jim Lehrer, as a reward were given the PBS nightly tv news hour.

Cokie Roberts, daughter of Congressman Hale Boggs (D., La., who was on the Warren Commission), falsely stated her father was satisfied that Oswald was the "lone assassin". Yet, right before the Congressman disappeared, October, 1972, a month before Nixon was re-elected President, the Congressman was stating misgivings about the Commission's "lone assassin" conclusion.

Sometime after ABC-TV got the CIA subsidy, (transferred from CBS 1988-89), Cokie was rewarded for her big lie by a highly-paid Sunday morning ABC-TV network news hour.
[Part 42 of this series, more about JFK murder and the reporters.]

[3] Another system of the Monopoly Press is that certain reporters are rewarded by being allowed, permitted. and condoned to be "double-dippers". That is, they secretly receive compensation, separate and apart of their media job. For what covert purpose? For example, to further the agenda of the occupant and resident of the White House or to promote the big financial lies of Wall Street brokers and investment bankers or to promote as "safe" the poisonous best-selling patent medicines of the pharmaceutical firms.

Daddy Bush, instrumentally tied to the secret political police since about 1959, and implicated in the cover-up of the JFK murder, has been as a director and otherwise part of the cocaine underground within the U.S. reportedly in part through Eli Lilly Company.
[Visit my extensive series, "Coca-Cola, CIA, and the Courts", as to their secret soda pop base and Stepan Chemical Co. www.skolnicksreport.com ]

Various reporters are paid as "double-dippers" to cover up for the "Bush Crime Family" and the Bushies role with the war-mongers, the Carlyle Group.

An example is Bob Woodward, currently a bigshot with the Washington Post. In the 1970s, Woodward became well-known as having supposedly broken open the Watergate Affair. His father Alfred Woodward had a long background with espionage agencies. The elder Woodward became Chief Judge of Du Page County, adjoining Cook County, site of Chicago.

Chief Judge Woodward in the 1970s, had a smelly CIA-linked case through which some of the Watergate figures were paid off. The Judge threatened me with jail for contempt of court when I as a journalist insisted the Chief Judge disgorge from his secret files the public records of the Equity Funding case. (Our group now has apparently the only copy of those files.)

[More about Woodward and his father. "The Late Grand Dragon of the Washington Post", 7/23/01. www.skolnicksreport.com ]

An alleged wife-beater, Bob Woodward has no real background in journalism. "Ghost writers" linked to him are part of pay-off schemes promoting the interests of various corporations. His book about Belushi was to whitewash the insurance firms that underwrite movies and movie stars.

Part of Bob Woodward's "double-dipping" was the George W. Bush whitewash. Woodward was permitted to interview Bush inside the White House. Woodward was reportedly paid-off through a "Ghost" as a transit point from a secret White House slush fund used to compensate "double-dipping" reporters.

[Bob Woodward gets along swell with members of satanist cults like Skull & Bastards Society members Daddy Bush and son George W. Several Chicago-area Judges, including Du Page Chief Judge Alfred Woodward, were named defendants in a civil suit..Some of the Judges were directors and owned and operated a hospital accused specifically of having a sideline of conducting satanic rituals mis-using tiny children. As is typical, a crooked Chicago federal judge, up the wall about the litigation, put it arbitrarily out of court without permitting any evidentiary hearings. ]

[Currently, there is a scandal in Chicago reportedly involving another hospital, apparently part of a massive healthcare mess. Little-known is that Chicago federal judges have been financially linked to that hospital. In Chicago, the chief federal prosecutor is publicly fighting with the federal judge sitting on the case. Related details, Chicago Tribune 1/22/2005; 1/24/2005.]

European newspapers and reporters and some foreign diplomats from their own sources have compiled a list of some thirty U.S. reporters who are allowed, permitted, and condoned, and the Establishment media acquiesces in, the reporters being "double-dippers". That is, getting compensated, separate from their mass media print, radio, and television reporter salaries.

The loot comes, according to the list's details, from a secret Bush White House slush fund. The reporters are being paid to push the Bush White House domestic and foreign policy agenda. On the "double-dippper's" list are reporters from the major newspapers, including but not limited to the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, and major tv and radio networks, ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, and CNN.

Reportedly on the thirty name list is Bob Woodward of the Washington Post..

Making cryptic statements criticizing the "double-dipping" practices has been NBC Senior correspondent Andrea Mitchell, wife of Federal Reserve Commissar Alan Greenspan. (Does Greenspan have the White House slush fund list as well?)

According to the foreign correspondents and diplomats, familiar with the list and the details, the U.S. reporters have NOT reported this "double-dipping" income on their state and federal income tax returns.

HEY, this dirty crooked business is being condoned and approved of by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service Commissioner as well as the U.S. Treasury Inspector General. WHO in the oil-soaked, spy-riddled Monopoly Press is going to grill the Chief Tax Collector and the Inspector General?


Are the overseas reporters and diplomats, both stationed in the U.S., sitting on all this for BLACKMAIL purposes?



Go to 12732
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5729#more-5729
BLOGGED BY Brad Friedman ON 2/22/2008 2:39PM
American Gangsters
-- by Brad Friedman

The U.S. Attorney Purge scandal still ranks, in my estimation, as the key to unlocking almost every other unprecedented domestic (and perhaps even foreign) criminal abuse of power by the White House. The matter strikes at the very heart of the dirty dealings by all of the President's men and, if it were to ever be fully cracked open, would likely display the totality of the blood and guts of the Administration's highly illegal, fully politicized takeover and wholesale abuse of the U.S. criminal justice system.

Little wonder then that the White House has determined to go to the mattresses when it comes to fighting off both House and Senate Judiciary Committee's investigations into the matter. They've determined they are better off playing chicken with Congress and risking criminal contempt charges (which they believe they can either refuse to enforce via the DoJ, or otherwise pardon the players whenever necessary) by refusing to turn over requested documents to Congress and ordering the refusal to testify by top officials such as Karl Rove, Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten.

In order to guard the castle gates, after consigliere Alberto Gonzales could no longer effectively hold off the investigation, they found a man who would play ball for them in AG Michael Mukasey, betting --- correctly --- that Democrats in congress would fold rather than refuse to confirm a man who was, even during Senate hearings, so obviously in the pocket of the White House crime syndicate.

Two stories breaking today each serve as fresh reminders of how much is at stake, and how much is being hidden by the WH stonewalling of the scandal's full investigation. Each of them --- the indictment today of AZ's Republican Rep. Rick Renzi on charges of extortion, wire fraud and money laundering, and this Sunday's long-awaited 60 Minutes exposé on the Rove/DoJ/WH gang-bang frame-up of Alabama's now-imprisoned Democratic former Governor Don Seigelman --- merely offer salacious clues as to how bad, how corrupt, and how historically unprecedented (in this country, anyway) the illegal machinations at the heart of this scandal really are.

Please keep in mind that at the center of the entire scandal lies the uber scandal involving the very gaming of our electoral system by folks who, evidence shows, were willing to do nearly anything to ensure they retained a death grip on American political power and the control of its entire legal apparatus in the bargain.

And both the Democrats in Congress, and the American Corporate Mainstream Media, to their eternal disgrace, have all stood by and allowed the shameful bloodbath --- featuring real blood --- to take place...


Here's the skinny on Renzi's long-awaited indictments, finally, today. First from Think Progress [emphasis ours]...

Renzi, who is one of CREW’s 22 Most Corrupt Members of Congress, has been under investigation by the FBI since 2006. At the heart of the investigation was a land deal worth more than $4 million that Renzi brokered for his former business partner, James Sandlin:

In 2005, mining company Resolution Copper sought to mine for copper in Superior, Arizona. Before mining could commence however, Resolution needed Congress to approve a land swap.

Rep. Renzi agreed to support the land exchange bill if, as part of the swap, Resolution bought a 480 acre alfalfa field in his hometown owned by Mr. Sandlin. When Resolution Copper refused the deal, Rep. Renzi solicited the Petrified Forest Group to purchase the land for $4 million. Rep. Renzi assured the group that he would make sure that the swap got through the Natural Resources Committee.

Around the same time, Sandlin made a $200,000 payment to a wine company owned by Renzi. The payment was never noted on Renzi’s 2005 financial disclosure forms for the House.

In April 2007, the FBI raided an insurance business tied to Renzi, which led Renzi to resign from his committee seats and eventually announce that he would not seek another term in office.

Questions have previously been raised as to whether Paul Charlton, one of the nine U.S. attorneys fired last year, lost his job because of his active investigation of Renzi. Read the full indictment here.

And then a bit more from TPM Muckraker, revealing details of the tie-in to the U.S. Attorney Purge scandal [emphasis ours]...

Update: Yikes. In a completely separate matter, the indictment charges Renzi with a conspiracy to "embezzle and misappropriate client premiums [from his insurance company] to fund his congressional campaign."

Update: It's worth recalling that the Renzi case played a small role in the U.S. attorneys' firings scandal. One of the fired U.S. attorneys was Arizona's Paul Charlton. The investigation dates way back to June of 2005, but it did not surface publicly [until] shortly before the 2006 midterm elections. Renzi's people, obviously, weren't happy, and an aide to Renzi put in a call to Charlton (who in turn reported the contact to the Justice Department leadership).

And the Wall Street Journal later reported that investigators and prosecutors in Arizona had been frustrated with senior Justice Department officials' general reluctance to pursue the investigation. The thrust of the piece was that the investigation had been slow-rolled in the run-up to the election.

So the U.S. DoJ apparatus was called in before the 2006 elections, and happily answered the call, in order to keep the investigation, into multiple acts of criminal wrongdoing by Renzi, off the radar until after the election, to the consternation of the very investigators and prosecutors in charge of the actual investigation back in Arizona.

The Seigelman case, it seems, is far far worse, not just because of the way the justice system was abused by a clear line of command leading straight up to Karl Rove and the White House, but because the former Democratic Governor continues to sit in jail, clearly railroaded, without even being able to appeal his own case since the trial judge --- appointed to the case by no accident, according to the Republican whistleblowers currently fueling the story --- still refuses to release the transcript from the original trial.

60 Minutes finally jumps into the story this Sunday, opposite the Oscars, unfortunately. So it may be difficult for the story to get the full oxygen it needs. But we'll try and help a bit as we can.

Scott Pelley's video preview of the story (3:12) helps set the stage for what is more like a story you'd expect to read about coming out of a South American banana republic, or even the former Soviet Union, than here in the good ole US of A. But this is where it all happened, and continues to happen...



The CBS webpage preview for Sunday's story offers a glimpse into one aspect of the story, and a part of their interview with Jill Simpson on just one small part (perhaps the most minor, in truth), of the entire, bastardized Seigelman miscarriage of justice. But again, we find another window into the politicization and abuse of the U.S. Department of Justice under the control of Rove, Bush, Gonzales and their corrupt company [emphasis, once again ours]...



Go to 12731
http://www.rense.com/general80/heg.htm
Old Religious
Hegemony, NWO
Jesus to the Palestinians: "Love One Another."
God to the Jews: "Get Rid of the Arabs."
By Mary Sparrowdancer
©. 2008 - All Right Reserved
2-23-8

Hegemony has been described as a form of control in which the elite achieves dominance over a subordinate population via the subordinates' consent and acceptance of beliefs rather than by use of force, (although force can be a handy standby). Once the elite is accepted as the ruling party, his beliefs, norms and values can then be projected throughout the subordinate masses creating a consensus of what will be accepted as normal behavior - - all benefiting the elite cream that has risen over the masses, to the top. Christianity, the largest organized religion on Earth, is primarily based on the patriarchal hegemony of Judaism, claiming God (Yahweh) is masculine, and males are made in "the image and glory of God," as Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians, Chapter 11.


Hegemony, therefore, is not something newly discovered, but it is one of the most ancient forms of control by establishing ideas and beliefs within the masses. Those wishing to maintain the status quo of the elite, (i.e., the elite) have also long known that the way to protect their status is by eliminating alternative views as well as silencing rebellious intellectuals who dare to question the established beliefs. One of the best known intellectual rebels questioning everything established and "written," is the mysterious, and still popular teacher referred to by many as "Jesus."


Approximately 2000 years ago, he was openly practicing civil disobedience against Judaic law in Palestine as he attempted to set people free from Judaism and its ongoing, organized, patriarchal hegemony. Striving against Judaic masculine hegemony, he was elevating the status of women while also questioning the very identity of the God of Israel, whom he referred to in the Gospel of John as "a liar, a murder, and the devil." He was urging people to "go within," and he spoke instead of a different God of love.


One might wonder how Christianity grew so brutally distant from the original teachings of love, but in careful reading one finds that Jesus was not the founder of Christianity. The apostle Paul, a Jewish man who was never a disciple of Jesus, was the founder of Christianity. The hegemony that Jesus sought to end among the Jews, Paul would reestablish among the Gentiles.


Paul's first letters are said to have been written some 20 years after Jesus was no longer appearing and disappearing in Palestine, and Paul's mission included a large amount of damage control in the aftermath of the liberation created by Jesus. Paul, who never met or followed Jesus, traveled throughout the area establishing patriarchal, organized churches based on Judaic hegemony. Paul told the crowds who were still eager to hear about Jesus, that Paul's teachings were the "gospel of Christ," although the earliest known gospel would not be written for another 20 years.


While the disciples did not clearly understand who or what Jesus actually was, Paul would take on this task, explaining first and foremost that he was dead and gone, after having "died for our sins." Intellectual battles raged as others claimed he was not a mere mortal, the crucifixion was fiction, and he was something that could not be fully explained: he simply appeared with no history or background, never once speaking his own name in the gospels. For those who argued that he was "fully human," a nativity would be necessary, and so as the stories were passed from one language into another, he became "the son of Mary." This, however, might have been based upon another simple mistranslation. "Mary," in Aramaic, is a masculine noun meaning "Lord." (1)


Paul's work completely opposed that of Jesus. Paul warned that people should "obey the government" because government is established by God, and everyone who is an authority is a "minister of God," put there by God. (Katherine Harris apparently referred to this when she said, "God is the one who chooses our rulers.") Anyone who resists, warned Paul, resists God. He did not preach liberty, or common sense. He preached obedience, rules, laws, taxes, qualifications, submission to authority, the "wrath of God," and he threatened those committing civil disobedience with "damnation." In complete defiance of the teachings of Jesus, Paul brought Jewish patriarchy, organized religion and the hegemonic God of Israel to the Gentiles in the form of Christianity, changing the message of Jesus from "go within," to "go to church." (2) (3)


Paul did much more than this, however. His efforts and teachings, based upon the writings of other Jewish men, helped fix into the minds of the Gentile masses that the God of Israel was the only god in the universe, despite that god's rather human shortcomings. Paul led people to believe that since his god was the only god of the universe, this was, of course, the God who had sent Jesus. Other writings did not support this. Paul helped fix into the minds of millions the idea that Jewish writings and teachings were to be taken as the literal Word of God.


Over one-third of the world's population is Christian, many believing the above ideas because they were "written in the bible." They believe this while not considering the other fact, that it was the Jewish people, themselves, who wrote and edited the bible, creating and recreating the multiple personalities of Yahweh based upon personal visions, dreams, nightmares, ideas, channelings, and ancient stories about the constant smiting of endless enemies. A people subscribing to a war god will ultimately create many warriors.


For nearly 2000 years, a growing percentage of the world has been controlled by authorities aligning themselves with the war God of Israel. When Constantine's Church Fathers formally created his "catholic" or universal Christian church in the 300s, they selected Paul's writings of submission as the foundation for their desired hegemony. In addition, a vision that Constantine is said to have had was also woven into this new state religion as a central theme. He is said to have seen a glowing, inverted sword, its long blade pointing downward, its crossbars upward, and Constantine was told that he would conquer with this symbol. The inverted sword looked much like a crucifix, and so the cross became the primary symbol for his new church. The ancient writings stating that there was no crucifixion of Jesus were discarded by the Church Fathers. (4)


The Old Testament had grown and changed repeatedly throughout its history, but shortly after Jesus arrived to shake Judaism to its core, the old canon containing the "Word of God" as channeled, written and edited by men, abruptly closed with nothing more to be added other than the few selections about Jesus in the Latin Vulgate of 405 A.D. Humanity's personal, official, accepted encounters with "God" ended. There would be no more official encounters with gods, God, God Almighty, LORD God Jehovah, Yahweh, Jesus, or anyone else not of this world. We are a people born wired for rich spirituality, and yet the book of close encounters has been closed for 2000 years.


With nothing new forthcoming according to organized religion, the subordinate masses have found themselves repeatedly reliving "what has been written" in the ancient times. In 1948, the Jewish people announced that according to the "Word of God," God wanted Palestine to be given to the Jewish people. Knowing that the Christians believed most everything, some perhaps read Ezekiel, chapter 37, and decided this must be true. Ezekiel promised that God was going to one day take the Chosen from among the goyim, and bring them into their own land, the "land of Israel," where they will live separately.


Sixty years ago, the Jewish described Palestine as a barren, empty place. It was, they said, a "Land Without People for a People Without a Land." The world believed this, and the new "state of Israel" was created within Palestine, in May, 1948, to help God fulfill "his Word." The Chosen then wrote the following promise. The State of Israel: "will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations." (5)


With the world apparently satisfied by this, Israel then commenced to carry out something quite different from their most recent written promise. We would later learn that this land was far from being "barren." The Holy Land had been cared for and inhabited by Palestinians since ancient history. To remedy this, it would now be necessary for the Jewish to become an invading military force in order to brutally take the land from hundreds of thousands of Palestinian land owners, and then claim this stolen land as their new Jewish-Only state as promised by God through the pen of Ezekiel.


The slaughter of the Palestinians "in the name of God" began in 1948 in order to artificially fulfill a so-called Jewish prophecy. The new Jewish-Only state would be comprised of hundreds of unconnected country club neighborhoods scattered like holes punched throughout the otherwise peaceful, contiguous villages, pastures and orchards of Palestine. These new Jewish-Only neighborhoods dotting the Palestinian countryside would be referred to as "settlements," and the Jewish-Only from all other countries on earth would be invited to come populate the "settlements," and live, vacation or help kill a few Palestinians. There has not been a day of peace since God's New Real Estate Plan was put into action in order to fulfill "The Word of God," by those who wrote it.


With the God of Israel guiding them, the Chosen have forcefully driven the Palestinians off their lands using advanced military equipment such as merkabah (Hebrew word for war chariot) tanks, Caterpillar bulldozers, warplanes, helicopters, blimps, drones, and navy gunboats, supplied or paid for by the United States, which, as primarily Christian, also serves the God of Israel, who in turn serves only the Chosen.


Using this advanced weaponry, God Almighty (we are told) has led his Chosen to repeated miraculous victories against the unarmed civilians as troops have fired up their diesel engines and then rained manmade hellfire down upon villages and refugee camps. For 60 years they have plowed through homes, farms, tents, gardens, orchards and groves, sending the Palestinians running for their lives repeatedly through streets now strewn with Israeli bombing debris. There have been no promises kept by the Chosen in this new Promised Land. The Palestinians are now all refugees in their own land with no human rights whatsoever, because they are not even considered human.


The Chosen have uprooted the ancient orchards and olive groves, as well. They have brought to an end the shortened lives of the people, and ended the long lives of the ancient olive trees that had been lovingly cared for by countless generations since Jesus was in the area, teaching love for one's neighbor. Almost nothing of beauty has been left standing as God's Chosen army has gouged and bulldozed their way through Palestine in order to build God's new, scattered, Holey Land"settlements." Much of what was previously held to be holy is now destroyed, including humans, human rights and ancient Holy Sites. Israeli plans have just been announced for the destruction of a 700-year-old Mosque, because it was constructed "without a building permit." (6)


The army of the Chosen is now freely executing Palestinian civilians, including children, in their homes and on their blood-soaked streets without trials, judge or jury. Many are being kidnapped and imprisoned without charges, including children. New strategies are also being used in order to rid the land of its ancestral owners, including starving the refugees trapped by Israel inside the coveted Gaza Strip, (which contains prime beachfront property and a possible natural gas field). Those who have written that they are the Chosen of God are now withholding water, medical supplies, and electricity from the 1.5 million people trapped in Gaza, and they speak of further plans to launch more deadly military offenses on this tortured population. They are making the refugees as miserable as possible in ongoing attempts to drive them off this land, because a Jewish person "has written in the bible" that this land was given to the Chosen by God.


The Chosen of God have acted in a less-than-civilized manner during their rampages on God's behalf. When the Chosen army besieged the Palestinian Ministry of Culture building and lived in it for approximately one month, they left their bodily wastes throughout the newly built, eight-story building, despite the fact that there were two toilet facilities on each floor. Instead of using the facilities, they chose to urinate and defecate in the rooms, in drawers pulled out of desks, in flower pots, in bottles, on the photocopier, on films, on children's books and on documents. More recently, the Chosen living in "settlement" neighborhoods have been doing something similar. Many of the "settlements" have been built upon Palestine's formerly beautiful, lofty, now-stolen hilltops. The advantage of being uphill is that the Chosen can funnel their raw sewage downhill onto the Palestinian lands below, thus delivering a clever two-fold message from their God. (7) (8)


Like obedient, uneducated serfs in the Dark Ages, we have continued to believe everything that we have been conditioned to believe. We have believed everything the Chosen have written on paper or parchment. The question that now should be asked is, how many other outright lies, inventions and broken promises have the Chosengiven to the world while demanding silence, acceptance, and complete unquestioning belief?


We have believed all of the inventions created about a "God," who is apparently now leading merkabah attacks in the land known since Genesis as Palestine. We have believed, while failing to see organized religion and monotheism for what they are: the earliest form of mass control by the shaping of people's beliefs. With true spirituality extinguished in exchange for a state-controlled religion, the few elite are elevated "by God," to rule over the obedient, submissive masses. At this time in our unending Dark Age, the masses are being further silenced by new laws forbidding people from even questioning the Chosen. Questioning can now result in prison sentences.


It was a deliberate act of control for the Church Fathers to artificially join the teachings of Jesus with those of Paul and Paul's Jewish God of Israel. Jesus showed no allegiance to the God of Israel. It remains a mistake to try to claim that Jesus and Yahweh are on the same side of moral and civil conduct and decency and have led people in similar acts of love and tolerance when clearly this is not true. The tragedy of Jesus was not that he was affixed to a tree, but that he was affixed to the God of Israel.


When did the writings of man become "The Word of God," and whose agenda does this serve? How much truth about Divinity has been kept from us? The hegemonic tools of propaganda are now quite advanced and projecting the desires of the elite into our minds like never before through controlled media, invented news, advertising/ psychology campaigns, state-mandated education, "advanced" education instilling more required beliefs, all entertainment, and the outrageous posting of the Ten Commandments in public areas, demanding loyalty to the God of Israel, all to guard the elite status. How much longer will we allow this growing hegemony now creeping over the world to keep the world confined to the Dark Ages, completely controlled by the elite few?


In 2006, the long-lost Gospel of Judas was translated into English by a team working with The National Geographic Society. This is another piece of ancient writing that was deliberately kept from the masses for the better part of 2000 years, because it challenges monotheism rather profoundly. While man has relied upon the mistranslated bible as a prophetic Word of God and has "helped God" bring about what other men have written as prophecy, the Gospel of Judas stands alone as one of the most prophetic, unadulterated writings perhaps ever found. Its prophecies were fulfilled without artificial help. It was translated and it came to us after its prophecies had already been fulfilled and were standing in plain sight for all to see. (9)


In this ancient, short gospel, one finds that Jesus was appearing and disappearing before the disciples, fully flesh and blood, using various identities indicating he was much more than a "simple carpenter" as others claimed. (Claims of his appearances as a human, using different identities continue around the world today, but the elite-controlled news does not report this.) This ancient gospel contained the prophecy that many horrifying crimes would one day be openly committed by those professing to be followers and priests of Jesus, including sexual crimes, homosexual acts, the sacrifice of children, and slaughter. People would be led astray by priests and treated as cattle, it is stated, because the priests were serving and following the wrong god.


According to this gospel, Judas would be forever falsely accused until the time dawned when a certain generation of people finally grasps the truth about organized religion and the lie of hegemonic monotheism, and breaks away from it. It is that generation, according to this gospel, that is called holy and great, because they will bring an end to the Age of Darkness and see the truth that Judas, alone, first saw and understood: Judas was the only disciple who recognized the true identity of Jesus. Judas, alone, realized that Jesus had not been sent by the God of Israel: Jesus had been sent from a God of love who was light years above and beyond the war God of Israel.


Mary Sparrowdancer is the author of a bestselling book about encounters with Jesus, "The Love Song." First published in 2001, it contained information later validated by the Gospel of Judas in 2006. Following this, Mary's book was pulled out of print by the (Chosen) publisher and made unavailable. A new edition of The Love Song (with new revelations and answers) was put back into print by Mary and friends in 2007. www.sparrowdancer.com



Go to 12730
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/2/21/164330/061/295/461425
Hillary and Monsanto's Aspartame
by Scaredhuman
Thu Feb 21, 2008 at 02:22:50 PM PST
This website is astounding.

Victoria Innes-Brown, M.A.did research for all of us and for all our children.

Go to 12729
http://myaspartameexperiment.com
During the Clinton administration

In l996, FDA Commissioner Dr. David Kessler granted blanket approval of this neurotoxin to be used like sugar. ... On August 26, l996 (p 20-21) the Food Chemical News reported, "Gingrich told FDA in a July 26 letter that he would appreciate any information the agency could provide him on aspartame. Aspartame?commercially known as 'NutraSweet'?was recently approved for all food and beverages uses by the FDA." ... To this day (August 4, 2000) the FDA has refused to answer them ....
Go to 12728
http://www.disinfo.com/...

Scaredhuman's diary :: ::
The connection to the Clntons?

Monsanto owned Nutrasweet during the Clinton Administration.

Drs. Louis Elsas of Emory University and William Pardridge of the UCLA Medical School charged that the diet food and drink industry has engaged in a whitewash' by rejecting health concerns, manipulating research studies and wining and dining scientific critics.

These and other researchers describe a world of subtle, high-stakes strategy in which the availability of corporate funds and the design of research protocols may have influenced the course of a multibillion-dollar industry and potentially affected the safety of millions of people.
Bill's FDA commissioner, David Kessler, not only didn't study Aspartame despite years of concerns about four kinds of seizures and other illnesses, but worked to keep Stevia, a natural sweetener, out of the US, despite

over 900 Stevia studies, none of which indicated any safety concerns regarding human health.
Go to 12727
http://www.stevia.com/SteviaArticle.asp?ID=8134

Because of the election and the focus on Hillary Clinton, because of intense concern about food after the largest meat recall in the history of the FDA, and now, with this astounding study of Aspartame by a mother who cared enough about her family to do research herself for 18 months,

this is a potentially explosive moment for our country.
There is a chance - because of the election and the Clinton's connection to Monsanto - to finally break open into the sunlight what is happening to our food through corporate connections to government. But in isolation from the context of Hillary and Monsanto, the story about Aspartame is horrifying but it remains only frightening, not the transformative moment it could be for this country.

The American people need to know the history of how our farmers and our food have been so badly harmed, as well as the series of undemocratic things happening now to permanently game the system so there can be no viable resistance.


The context MUST be there and the time is RIGHT NOW. The letters that follow give that context.

The first letter explains what the Clintons did and how deep their Monsanto connection is, and the second gives a view, through Ohio, of how Monsanto, works.

Wrap the horrific Aspartame story in the two letters, and people will understand.
This is not about Hillary only, or about Monsanto only,

but they tell the story of what is happening to us in simple and graphic terms.
The context to Aspartame and much else, follows:

An Open Letter to Hillary Clinton from Another Wellesley College Alumna
Dear Hillary,

By polling logic, I should be your supporter - Democrat, woman, white, liberal. But this past summer I saw a News Hour show on farmers committing suicide in Maharastra, India, which affected me deeply. I started learning what was happening to farmers and to food and how the Clintons are connected.

The News Hour piece said Monsanto, a US agricultural corporation, hired Bollywood actors to sell illiterate farmers Bt (genetically engineered) cotton seeds, promising they'd get rich from big yields. The expensive seeds needed expensive fertilizer and pesticides (Monsanto's) and irrigation. There is little to no irrigation there. Crops failed. Farmers had immense debt and couldn't collect seeds to try again because Monsanto seeds are"patented" as "intellectual property"). If they tried, Monsanto has a $10 million budget and 75 person staff to prosecute farmers. http://www.grist.org/...

Since the late 1990s (as industrial agriculture took hold in India?), 166,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide and 8 million have left the land, and it has increased since 2002 to an average of 1 every 20 minutes (P.Sainath, The Hindu). The reasons for suicides are always complex and Monsanto is not the only giant agribusiness now in India, but it is one of the largest, and the main one in Maharastra where the suicides are especially high. Farmers in Europe, Asia, Africa, Indonesia, South America, Central America and here, have all protested Monsanto and genetic engineering.

And who is Monsanto? It is a US corporation which made Agent Orange, PCBs, nuclear weapons components, pesticides, ... With that diverse background in death, it is now "doing" food. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto

What does this have to do with you?

The Orwellian-named "Rural Americans for Hillary" were Monsanto's lobbyists. My greater concern, though, is your former-employer, the Rose Law Firm, whose clients include Monsanto, world's largest GE (genetic engineering) corporation; Tyson, world's largest meat producer; Walmart, the world's largest retailer. Rose is home to the industrialization of food.

You may say you left Rose long ago, but one never leaves such close connections behind. To give an example of how things are entwined and friendly there: Jon Jacoby, senior at the Stephens Group - one of the largest shareholders of Tyson, Walmart, DP&L - is C.O.B. of DP&L, and arranged the Wal-Mart deal while Jackson Stephens' Stephens Group staked Walton, financed Tyson, and Monsanto bought DP&L, while Walmart's board invited you on, aTyson executive helped you do $1000,000 trade just before Bill' governorship, and Jackson Stephens backed Bill for Governor, then President (donating $100,000). http://www.financialsense.com/...

(Tavis Smiley just had you on his show last night, the last night before Super Tuesday. His major funder is Walmart.)

And Bill did some nice things for clients of Rose as well:

Tyson: USDA immediately significantly weakened chicken waste and contamination standards, easing Tyson's poultry-factory expansion. (www.financialsense.com/ editorials/engdahl/2006/0828.html). His USDA head, Espy, was indicted for bribes, money laundering, and much more. Tyson was the largest corporate offender. http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.ne...

Monsanto:

Monsanto people were put in charge of food, ... (http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/072600-03.htm) or http://www.monitor.net/... or http://www.mindfully.org/...
FDA okayed Monsanto's rBGH (bovine growth hormone), first GE-product ever approved.
Despite bovine illness/death, FDA didn't recall or warn. http://www.wafreepress.org/...
When dairymen labeled milk "rBGH-free," USDA threatened confiscation.
Organic food was the last way around unknown danger. FDA tried to close that escape with new "organic" standards, to include: genetic engineering of plants/animals, food irradiation , sewage sludge fertilizer. http://query.nytimes.com/...
USDA backed down from public response 20 times greater than to anything before. http://www.orpheusweb.co.uk/...

American food:

Oils: Indian sheep died eating from Bt cotton fields. http://btcotton.blogspot.com/... Our children eat Bt cottonseed oil in peanut butter, cookies.

Grains: 49% of corn acreage planted in Bt corn in 2007. www.ers.usda.gov/Data/BiotechCrops/adoption.htm French study indicates it causes kidney and liver toxicity. http://www.organicconsumers.org/... Monsanto controls US's two main crops, soy (90% GMO, 90% of traits "belong" to Monsanto) and corn, the largest crop (60% GMO, nearly 100% Monsanto "owned" traits). http://www.organicconsumers.org/...

Meat: Steroids bulk athletes, Monsanto steroids fatten animals, our fattening children eat steroid-laced meats. FDA allowed "known TSE-positive (Transmissible spongiform encephalopathy Mad Cow Disease) material to be used in pet food, pig, chicken and fish feed." Monsanto's GE-hormone increases risk sick cows are entering US food chain. http://www.consumersunion.org/...

Poultry: USDA weakened waste/contamination standards. Waste from transnational poultry industry is now implicated as the source of bird flu. http://www.globalresearch.ca/... The poultry industry is using the crisis to push out small farmers. http://www.ens-newswire.com/...

Milk: Scientific studies indicate Monsanto's rBGH increases risks of breast cancer by up to seven-fold, increases colon, prostate cancers risks. Canada, 29 European nations, Norway, Switzerland, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa ban U.S. rBGH dairy products. Bill's USFDA put no restrictions, warning labels, or any labels. http://www.sustdev.org/...

Monsanto makes moves to increase its control:

Monsanto's Terminator genes make plants sterile after one season, which would require farmers to repurchase. But the genes pose an apocalyptic risk of breaking out into nature. GE breakouts have contaminated maize http://www.slogefree.org/...
and weeds, already. http://www.newscientist.com/...

Monsanto, meat-packers, and USDA (http://www.farmandranchguide.com/articles/2006/01/30/ag_news/updates/update01.txt)
are pushing NAIS (National Animal Identification System), a corporate database tracking small farmers' livestock. http://goexcelglobal.he.net/... .

Monsanto is also pushing state laws taking control from farmers, communities, over GE planting. http://www.rense.com/...

"Genetic Engineering is often justified as a human technology, one that feeds more people with better food. Nothing could be further from the truth. With very few exceptions, the whole point of genetic engineering is to increase sales of chemicals and bio-engineered products to dependent farmers." David Ehrenfield: Professor of Biology, Rutgers University www.innvista.com/society/education/students/simpson.html

But Industrial Agriculture has given us:

Cattle living in filth, 12,000-year-old seed loss, poultry industry implicated in bird flu, Mad Cow disease, bee colony collapse, poisoned soil, depleted water, Superweeds (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1882-geneticallymodified-superweeds-not-uncommon.html), lawsuits against farmers, loss of family farms throughout the world, ... farmers committing suicide. Industrial agriculture.

Bees and farmers, dead. They are our canaries in the mine.

You and Food Safety:

Your proposed "Department of Food Safety" centralizes control over food, but into whose hands, HIllary? You talk tough on labeling ... "foreign" food, but Bill degraded US food and prevented even minimally sane labeling. You never objected.

Monsanto uses child labor in India, http://www.indiaresource.org/... You take Monsanto donations.
Blacks, our poorest group, have to eat Monsanto's steroid/hormone/antibiotic-filled GE food. You take Monsanto donations.
Latinos' central food is corn; its GE version is toxic to the kidney and liver, and has contaminated normal corn in Mexico. You take Monsanto donations.

Who are you with?

National Black Farmers Association, boycotting Monsanto? Babies drinking rBGH milk? Women fearing breast cancer? Suffering animals? Children eating Bt-corn in processed food, soft drinks, and candy? Despairing farmers?

Or Monsanto?

I am a person before I am a woman. Your gender is irrelevant. Given deadly threats to my grandchildren's future by your corporate connections (Edwards was right), I don't believe your talk of "caring" about women/children/health/food.

I will vote for someone committed to small farmers - our ONLY real food safety. Your friends, though, are the heart of an international industrial agricultural nightmare.

Linn Cohen-Cole
Atlanta

Disclaimer: I am not a scientist. I have read for months on this subject, and know that genetic engineering is many orders of magnitude different from "normal" business in its potential biologic ramifications, makes real the warning of Pandora'a Box - letting irretrievable things rush out into nature. Only the stark change to the world from nuclear fission and fusion offers a harrowing enough parallel. I am including only a tiny portion of the horrifying things I have learned. I am expressing my opinion as person and may be wrong. Perhaps things are swell out there and rBGH is fabulous and TSE-laced feed is great, and genetic engineering is the best thing since manna. But I am scared for my family and I have not only a right to say so but an obligation to do so. I am angry that Monsanto was allowed the influence it had and has done the things it definitely seems to have. I am disgusted by industrialization of every tender and beautiful part of our world and hope, for all our children's sake, we are not too late to pull back.

P.S. Since posting my original letter, I have learned that your connection with Monsanto is more intimate than I knew, more on-going, and more central. Your long-time adviser, including for PR, and your chief campaign strategest, is Mark Penn, who works for Burson-Marsteller - Monsanto's PR firm - which represents some of the worst corporations in existence - including Blackwater. http://www.sourcewatch.org/...

Industrial agriculture is a major contributor to global warming.

POOR OHIO: A Second Open Letter to Hillary Clinton About Her Monsanto Connections



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