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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U.S. Bank Fundamentals Look Poor
02-26-2008
Bloomberg

Feb. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Citigroup Inc., the biggest U.S. bank by assets, may post its second-straight quarterly loss and fall short of profit estimates for the year because of writedowns on home-equity loans and junk-grade corporate loans, Oppenheimer & Co.'s Meredith Whitney said.

Whitney, whose downgrade of Citigroup last year triggered an 8 percent decline in the company's stock price, said the bank may report a loss of $1.6 billion, or 28 cents a share, for the first quarter, compared with a profit of about $5 billion, or $1.01, a year earlier. Her prediction today compares with the 45-cent per- share average gain expected by analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analyst William Tanona said Citigroup may have to take a writedown of as much as $12 billion.

The rate of loan losses is ``grossly underestimated by consensus estimates'' at Citigroup and other U.S. banks, Whitney wrote. ``Core fundamentals are rapidly deteriorating.'' She cut her per-share prediction for 2008 earnings by more than 70 percent to 75 cents. The New York-based company's shares could fall more than 36 percent to less than $16, she wrote.

Citigroup fell 38 cents, or 1.5 percent, to $24.74 at 4:10 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The shares have declined about 16 percent this year.

The lender posted a $9.8 billion loss for the fourth quarter, the widest in its 196-year history, after writing down subprime mortgage-linked collateralized debt obligations. The value of those securities plummeted last year as investors shunned debt linked to the least creditworthy borrowers. Vikram Pandit stepped in as chief executive officer in December, after Charles O. ``Chuck'' Prince was forced to resign.

Dividend Prediction

Whitney, 38, was among the first analysts to gauge the depth of Citigroup's losses, writing in a note last October that the bank may have to cut dividend payments to shareholders for the first time since the 1990s. In January, the bank slashed its dividend by 41 percent, reversing a pledge made by its executive- committee chairman, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, to preserve the shareholder payout.

Citigroup may have additional writedowns this quarter on CDOs, along with losses on more than $43 billion of junk or ``leveraged'' loans, Whitney said. The bank may also face charges on more than $50 billion of residential mortgages granted to customers who borrowed in excess of 90 percent of the value of their homes, Whitney wrote. Credit-card loans also are prone to higher defaults.

Asset Sales

Citigroup may have to sell $100 billion of assets to free up capital, Whitney said. The lender will ``likely be forced to sell what it can and not what it should,'' she wrote.

The bank may write down as much as $12 billion from the value of fixed-income assets in the first quarter, cutting earnings per share 63 percent to 15 cents from a prior estimate of 40 cents, Goldman analyst Tanona wrote in a report dated today.

Tanona also reduced profit estimates for Merrill Lynch & Co., Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., Morgan Stanley, Bear Stearns Cos., and JPMorgan Chase & Co., as bonds and loans they own lose value.

He cut first-quarter earnings per share estimates by 75 percent for Bear Stearns, 73 percent for Lehman Brothers, 24 percent for Morgan Stanley and 27 percent for JPMorgan Chase. All the firms are based in New York.

In a separate report, Whitney and colleague Kaimon Chung also cut their earnings estimates on large U.S. East Coast banks by an average of 29 percent for 2008 and 13 percent for 2009.



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Public Housing Could Be Under Surveillance
02-26-2008
KHON2

The Hawaii Public Housing Authority wants to install security cameras at all public housing projects throughout the state.

The money would come from tax payers.

It would cost several million dollars for the security cameras, money which the Hawaii Public Housing Authority is requesting from the legislature.

Advocates say the cameras would help deter vandalism and other crime, which would save the state money in the long run.

There are 68 public housing projects throughout Hawaii.

The largest is Kuhio Park Terrace, also known as KPT.



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http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=8119
Voice of the White House February 25, 2008

TBR News.org – February 25, 2008

“Politics is now all the vogue in the American press. It doesn’t matter if the economy is going to hell in a hand basket, we all get to hear the latest thrilling news about the Oscars, JayLo’s babies, the latest Spears craziness, and, of course, Hillary and Obama dukeing it out in Texas. The money here is on Obama. He has outfought, out organized and out talked Hillary. I have met her and while she is very smart, she is a mean, conniving and establishment-bought and paid for witch. She hates men, is very sharp and totally a sell-out. But the thing that shocks me is the elevation of John McCain to the Republican presidential nominee. Inside the Beltway, McCain is known to be going over the edge mentally (see the Green Zone Follies linked here, ed.) and just another sleazy politician on the take. John is coasting on his “war record” which really has been overblown but mentally, he is losing it. Everybody on the Hill also knew about Mark Foley and his frantic lustings after underage Congressional male pages but no one ever opened their mouths until after he was outed. Look, Mommy, at what the Republicans have wrought! Fruits and nuts!”
www.tbrnews.org/Archives/a2818.htm



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The Painfully Silent Genocide of the German People
By Mike James on the border of Switzerland – 26 February 2008

There is a strange feeling of despair that is sweeping Germany, but as with all things that are uniquely German, or at least address fears that cannot be articulated lest they betray a cultural peculiarity incompatible with politically correct European or American sensibilities, nothing is said that makes sense to ordinary citizens. It is only sometimes whispered.

The banks in Germany now stand on the verge of collapse, and despite the best assurances of the financial elite, we all know that hard times are soon upon us. But it’s still a whisper. The International Jewish money power has all but eaten the substance of a fiat money system that, despite its modicum of probity based upon the nominal integrity of a commoditised financial system, had at least promised an element of surety in a world that placed its faith in promissory notes and digits on a computer screen that seemed real. But let’s not mention the Jews. This is Germany.

In America, the people look to their new saviours to rescue them from the disaster that awaits them, a crisis that will most assuredly reveal itself at a personal level on the single default of a month’s salary. Clinton, Obama, McCain, and Huckabee: the hucksters and charlatans of a Judeo-Freemasonic financial deception; all of whom know that the only avenue of escape is war. A New Deal and New War. But this time the only deal you’ll get is war.

We know this already in Europe. America is no longer a real producer economy, but an exporter of war and death. Although Americans are only beginning to feel the inflationary incursions on their purchasing power caused by the greed of a handful of rapacious Zionist bankers, millions of Europeans are bringing less food to the table, week by week, month by month.

If your news staple is CNN or the BBC, you probably won’t realise that hundreds of thousands of Germans are now suffering a level and degree of poverty unknown since the time of the Weimar republic. You’ve probably been sold the story that everything is just swimmingly fine and Germans are amongst the most affluent people in the world. What your Jewish journalists, who in any case have a vested interest in selling the myth of untold German riches to fill their reparations coffers, are not telling you, is that vast numbers of ordinary hard-working Germans are not only working for a pittance, but are finding it almost impossible to feed their families adequately and meet their housing and energy bills.

Although the official statistics and the astonishing lies that daily boast of a ‘buoyant economic recovery’ speak of a nation adequately inured against the worst ravages of poverty and its ability to survive any meltdown on the financial markets, the unspeakable truth never mentioned in any popular broadsheet is that untold numbers of native German children are now going to bed hungry, deprived of even remedial healthcare and a normative standard of education, simply because parents are no longer able to pay clinic visitation fees or cover the costs of schools meals.

According to the latest AWO-ISS report, 10 percent more German children fell below the poverty line in 2006. Wages in real terms (minus inflation) retain the same purchasing power they had in 1987. The despised euro has almost all but decimated consumer purchasing power. Between 2001 and 2005, the cost of most food products increased by almost 100 percent, despite the bare-faced, criminal protestations to the contrary on the part of the former Minister of Finance, Herr Eichel, who was himself found guilty of tax evasion.

Just two weeks ago, an unemployed 58-year-old man, unable to live with dignity on the paltry Hart IV social security benefits he claimed after losing his job was found dead in Sollingen. He had starved to death. On the 19 April 2007, a mother and son, unable to make ends meet on social security also met the same fate. Such stories are not isolated cases, for although social security payments are sufficient to put bread and jam on the table, there remains little else beyond which a man may claim for himself a modicum of dignity in life. The government has now chosen to repress all news reports relating to recipients if Hartz IV payments who end up committing suicide or dying by means of anorexia. There a hundreds of such stories.

Alternatives, which are hard to come by, allow recipients to supplement their meagre handouts with so called 1-euro-per hour jobs, surely the most demeaning and insulting way to treat a human being worthy of meaningful and creative work.

And yet billions of German tax euros are sent monthly into the coffers of Tel Aviv banks that purport to act as agents of the increasingly millions of Jews miraculously still alive and claiming compensation for a an alleged ‘holocaust’ against Jehovah’s superlatively shining people. Even the grandchildren of the ever burgeoning numbers of so-called ‘holocaust’ survivors are getting in on the act, claiming that their parents stories of untold grief have traumatised them to a point wherein only financial compensation can act as a palliative to their incomparable distress.

Whenever I travel to Berlin, or Munich, Hamburg or Basle, I note without almost any exception that those who are able to pay premium rates on almost anything they desire are not German. Since 1992, I have noticed the remorselessness slide of German citizens into a class that is now placed somewhere between second and third. I despise Berlin the most, for it is there that I see the financial extravagances extended to newly arrived Jews who contribute absolutely nothing to German culture and come here only to despise, belittle and destroy everything that is decent about the character of the German people.

While Germans in the 1970s were once, for western anti-communist strategic purposes, held-up as the beneficiaries of one of the most generous welfare systems in the world, they are now suffering humiliating levels of poverty unseen since the post-war period, during which time the British and American occupying forces deliberately denied entire urban populations access to nutrition, clean water and medicine.

Fantastical as that may sound, simply scour the internet for real life reports on the hardships caused by the post-2002 ‘Hartz IV’ security benefits reforms (which sometimes forces the unemployed to work for I euro an hour) and verified reports of families who have been found starved to death, or who have chosen suicide, as a way out of their financial misery, necessitated by mass closures of once thriving German concerns expatriated to cheap-labour east European markets generously subsidized by the Marxist traitors in Brussels. And, of course, all at the expense of the German taxpayer.

Last week, the German mainstream media, boasted with great fanfare, the findings of an overpaid German parliamentarian who apparently gave credence to the fact that an unemployed German and his family could live reasonably well on discount food purchased at one of German’s cut-price stores. Thillo Sarrazin, one of Germany’s most slippery and overweight socialist economists and, incidentally, a member of the the SPD’s Friends of Israel, fabricated a dietary plan based on outdated inflationary figures to prove that a man and his family without work could afford to feed themselves on the pittance now extended to Germans unfortunate enough to be born with white skin and blue eyes and no prospects. His calculations left out necessities such as toothpaste, soap, disinfectant and toilet paper, and physicians also criticized the diet as singularly lacking in essential minerals and vitamins.

On the same day, the German Foreign Ministry agreed to increase its financial commitment to fighting Israel’s war in Afghanistan by spending an extra 1.5 billion euros in boosting support for its northern and southern flanks in response to an obscenely aggressive letter written by an American Mafia thug called Robert Gates, who superciliously claims to be ‘the US Secretary of Defense’. Extra financial commitments were also made to Israel in the same week, although they were not specified: and all this at a time when German banks are falling like dominoes under the cascading sub-prime derivative collapse caused by New York’s financial Shylocks, costing German taxpayers untold billions in increased taxation and inflation; and the state is still loathe to prosecute pilfering, tax-dodging billionaires, such as Zumwinkel, for fear of offending their Zionist paymasters

Vast sums of cash are being channelled into projects to promote multicultural ‘community action programmes’, and extortionately large sums of money on comfortably accommodating immigrants into Germany’s anti-German society are on a roll while foreign aid to corrupt African and Asian states has been increased for the third year running. The City of Berlin is pouring unlimited funds into Gay and Lesbian education projects while parents are being forced to subject their children to lessons in ‘homosexual awareness’ in state schools. Yet Germans are going without work, real nourishing food, properly funded schools, and security for localities plagued by foreign gangsters who think nothing of murdering seniors on subways because “he looked at me the wrong way.”

There is now existent within Germany a loathing for the ruling political class that as yet does not translate into any form of national revolutionary resistance. People are afraid. They are afraid losing their jobs. They are afraid of being labelled politically incorrect. They are afraid of losing their children to the state for expressing views that could have them certified as mentally unstable.

Elections are routinely rigged and everyone knows it, yet the arse-whore press and the state subsidized TV news media that remains resiliently silent, preferring instead to distract citizens with perverse game shows that subject contestants to the most humiliating, demeaning trials and tribulations, all for laughs, high ratings and the promise of an exotic holiday in a destination that promises mindless boozing and unlimited sex.

There are times when I sit alone on my balcony by moonlight and gaze out over the fir trees toward the pastures, shrouded in mist and lost in the silence of a village forfeit in time, and I wonder if this is the world in which I was meant to be born.


Mike James is a retired ex-journalist and translator who left England in 1992. He now lives alone in an isolated log cabin directly on the border of Switzerland and Germany.



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Green Zone Follies February 20, 2008

Baghdad – February 20, 2008

“There is nothing new here to report. The troops are clearing out one nest of patriots only to have them move down the road. The DoD is fudging on the death tolls and they never mention the lunatics, the drug use or the semi-mutinous grunts, the constant attacks on the Green Zone with mortars and rockets and so on, and on. I am considered useful so I get to stay here. At least I get good food and relative safety unlike the foot troops. Now, the nutty Cheney wants to hive off more troops to invade Pakistan to help out their vanishing dictator. Never happen, Dick. And here is just a personal vignette of an experience I and my psychologist buddy had with the Republican probable nominee, Senator McCain. He came here, as you might know, to “inspect the situation.” Jesus, what a farce! There he was, walking around a marketplace with more armed guards than Bush has, and wearing a huge bullet-proof vest. Anyway, after he “inspected” the market, he came to the Green Zone for some rigged conference with the lying generals. My buddy and I were going to visit another friend when we saw guards, etc, in front of a rec room door. Curious, we went into another unguarded room, opened several doors and guess what? There was the Senator all by himself, sitting on a folding chair by a card table. We were a little awed so I said ‘Hello, Senator. Sorry to bother you.” He looked at us like we were cows and kept blinking. Finally, he smiled and said, ‘Hey, there, soldiers! How is it going? Is it going good?” and my friend the shrink said, “Why yes, Senator. Everything is great!” And McCain smiled at nothing and looked around the room.

“Well…I’m glad to hear it. You are the General?” And I said, a little sarcastically, “Why no, Senator, not quite yet.” And he looked at me like I was a sheep or something, smiling s silly smile. “Oh” he said to the table, “Let’s hope it gets a little cooler here. Have you been here long?” My friend said, “Too long Senator.” “Why that’s good, General,” the Senator replied to the ceiling. Then his lips moved but he said nothing. He looked up and smiled. My wife’s grandfather did just that. And the Senator may have been sitting right near us but believe me, he was somewhere else. Then he began a conversation with someone who wasn’t there and my friend took my arm and said, “I think we should get the hell out of here,” and we started to go back the way we came when some civilian came in. “It’s time to go to the meeting, John,” but McCain just smiled and kept on talking to the table. The civilian said, “All right, gentlemen, time to go. The Senator is very tired and has jet lag.” And when we left, the Senator was talking complete nonsense. Later, one of the staff personnel told both of us that the Senator had “a little accident” and he had to change his pants. Jesus H. Christ! This nut is going to be a President? My friend, who is a pro, said he was very obviously suffering from pre-Alzheimer’s and believe me, although I am not trained, this one was a pure space case. They must know this. I guess they give him a shot of something before he gets out in public but if you saw him with a vacant stare, talking to himself, you would not have to be a professional shrink to know that putting this pathetic man into the Oval Office would be a worse mistake than putting Bush in. At least as far as we know, Bush doesn’t talk to the walls and wet himself.”
www.tbrnews.org/Archives/a2818.htm#001



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http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aejJZdqodTCM
Banks Lose to Deadbeat Homeowners as Loans Sold in Bonds Vanish

By Bob Ivry
Feb. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Joe Lents hasn't made a payment on his $1.5 million mortgage since 2002.

That's when Washington Mutual Inc. first tried to foreclose on his home in Boca Raton, Florida. The Seattle-based lender failed to prove that it owned Lents's mortgage note and dropped attempts to take his house. Subsequent efforts to foreclose have stalled because no one has produced the paperwork.

``If you're going to take my house away from me, you better own the note,'' said Lents, 63, the former chief executive officer of a now-defunct voice recognition software company.

Judges in at least five states have stopped foreclosure proceedings because the banks that pool mortgages into securities and the companies that collect monthly payments haven't been able to prove they own the mortgages. The confusion is another headache for U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson as he revises rules for packaging mortgages into securities.

``I think it's going to become pretty hairy,'' said Josh Rosner, managing director at the New York-based investment research firm Graham Fisher & Co. ``Regulators appear to have ignored this, given the size and scope of the problem.''

More than $2.1 trillion, or 19 percent, of outstanding mortgages have been bundled into securities by private banks, according to Inside Mortgage Finance, a Bethesda, Maryland-based industry newsletter. Those loans may be sold several times before they land in a security. Mortgage servicers, who collect monthly payments and distribute them to securities investors, can buy and sell the home loans many times.

Housing Boom

Each time the mortgages change hands, the sellers are required to sign over the mortgage notes to the buyers. In the rush to originate more loans during the U.S. mortgage boom, from 2003 to 2006, that assignment of ownership wasn't always properly completed, said Alan White, assistant professor at Valparaiso University School of Law in Valparaiso, Indiana.

``Loans were mass produced and short cuts were taken,'' White said. ``A lot of the paperwork is done in the name of the original lender and a lot of the original lenders aren't around anymore.''

More than 100 mortgage companies stopped making loans, closed or were sold last year, according to Bloomberg data.

The foreclosure rate, at 1.69 percent of all U.S. homeowners, is the highest since the Mortgage Bankers Association began tracking it in 1993. The foreclosure rate for subprime borrowers, who have bad or incomplete credit and whose mortgages typically are securitized by private banks rather than government-sponsored entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is at a four-year high, according to the mortgage bankers.

750,000 Homeowners

More than 1.5 million homeowners will enter the foreclosure process this year, said Rick Sharga, executive vice president for marketing at RealtyTrac Inc., the Irvine, California-based seller of foreclosure information. About half of them, 750,000, will have their homes repossessed, Sharga said.

Borrower advocates, including Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann, have seized upon the issue of missing mortgage notes as a way to stem foreclosures.

``The best thing to do is to keep people in their homes and for everybody to take steps necessary to make that happen,'' said Chris Geidner, an attorney in Dann's office. ``These trusts are purchasing these notes, and before they even get the paperwork, they foreclose on people. They become foreclosure machines.''

Lost-Note Affidavits

When the mortgage servicers and securitizing banks that act as trustees of the securities fail to present proof that they own a mortgage, they sometimes file what's called a lost-note affidavit, said April Charney, a lawyer at Jacksonville Area Legal Aid in Florida.

Nobody knows how widespread the use of lost-note affidavits are, Charney said. She's had foreclosure proceedings for 300 clients dismissed or postponed in the past year, with about 80 percent of them involving lost-note affidavits, she said.

``They raise the issue of whether the trusts own the loans at all,'' Charney said. ``Lost-note affidavits are pattern and practice in the industry. They are not exceptions. They are the rule.''

State laws generally make it difficult to foreclose because they favor the homeowner, said Stuart Saft, a real estate lawyer and partner at the New York firm Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP.

``All these loan documents are being sent to the inside of a mountain in the middle of America and not being checked very carefully,'' Saft said. ``The lenders can't find the paper. We're dealing with a lot of paper produced in a mortgage closing.''

`Waste of Time'

Requiring banks to produce the paperwork at a foreclosure hearing is a nuisance, said Jeffrey Naimon, a partner in the Washington office of Buckley Kolar LLP.

``It's a gigantic waste of time,'' Naimon said. ``The mortgage may have transferred five, six, eight times. It's possible that you don't have all the pieces of paper, but it was enough to convince the next guy in the chain. There's no true controversy over whether the owner owns the loan.''

Judges are becoming increasingly impatient with plaintiffs who produce no more proof of ownership than a lost-note affidavit or a copy of the note, said Michael Doan, an attorney at Doan Law Firm LLP in Carlsbad, California.

``Things are heating up,'' Doan said.

In Ohio, where RealtyTrac reported an 88 percent jump in foreclosures last year, Dann, the attorney general, is now arguing 40 foreclosure cases that challenge ownership of mortgage notes, according to his office.

`Cavalier Approach'

U.S. District Judge David D. Dowd Jr. in Ohio's northern district chastised Deutsche Bank National Trust Co. and Argent Mortgage Securities Inc. in October for what he called their ``cavalier approach'' and ``take my word for it'' attitude toward proving ownership of the mortgage note in a foreclosure case.

John Gallagher, a spokesman for Frankfurt-based Deutsche Bank AG, said the bank had no comment.

Federal District Judge Christopher Boyko dismissed 14 foreclosure cases in Cleveland in November due to the inability of the trustee and the servicer to prove ownership of the mortgages.

Similar cases were dismissed during the past year by judges in California, Massachusetts, Kansas and New York.

``Judges are human beings,'' said Kenneth M. Lapine, a partner at the Cleveland law firm Roetzel & Andress LPA. ``They no doubt feel the little guy needs all the help he can get against the impersonal, out of town, mega-investment banking company.''

Warning Plaintiffs

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Samuel L. Bufford in Los Angeles issued a notice last month warning plaintiffs in foreclosure cases to bring the mortgage notes to court and not submit copies.

``This requirement will apply because developments in the secondary market for mortgages and other security interests cause the court to lack confidence that presenting a copy of a promissory note is sufficient to show that movant has a right to enforce the note or that it qualifies as a real party in interest,'' the notice said.

Quick foreclosures benefit communities because properties in default lose value and homeowners in financial distress don't maintain their houses or pay real estate taxes, said Saft of Dewey & Leboeuf.

Painted as the Enemy

``When banks originally made the loans they used people's money from pension funds and savings accounts and they should be allowed to foreclose the loan as quickly as possible before the property depreciates in value any more,'' Saft said. ``The mortgage industry has been painted as the enemy when all they did was make loans to enable people to buy homes. Now there's less money available for new borrowers to buy homes and that's what's causing the value of homes to go down.''

Lents is former CEO of Investco Inc., a Boca Raton, Florida-based developer of voice recognition software. In 2002, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sanctioned Lents and others for stock manipulation, according to the SEC Web site. He lost his job, was fined and his assets were frozen. That's the reason he couldn't pay his mortgage, he said.

``If the homeowner doesn't object to the lost-note affidavit, the judge rubber-stamps it,'' Lents said. ``Is it oversight, or are they trying to get around the law?''

Washington Mutual spokeswoman Geri Ann Baptista said the bank had no comment.

Looking for Loopholes

``I can't believe the handling of notes is worse than it was five years ago,'' said Guy Cecala, publisher of Inside Mortgage Finance. ``What we didn't have back then were armies of attorneys out there looking for loopholes. People are challenging foreclosures and courts are paying a lot more attention to foreclosures than they ever did before.''

American Home Mortgage Investment Corp., the Melville, New York-based lender that filed for bankruptcy last August, said it was paying $45,000 a month to store loan paperwork and petitioned U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Sontchi in Wilmington, Delaware, for the right to toss it all. Sontchi ruled last week that American Home Mortgage could charge banks from $3 to $13 a file to retrieve documents.

The home-loan industry has had a central electronic database since 1997 to track mortgages as they are bought and sold. It's run by Mortgage Electronic Registration System, or MERS, a subsidiary of Vienna, Virginia-based MERSCORP Inc., which is owned by mortgage companies.

No Tracking Mechanism

MERS has 3,246 member companies and about half of outstanding mortgages are registered with the company, including loans purchased by government-sponsored entities Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae, said R.K. Arnold, the company's CEO.

For about half of U.S. mortgages, there is no tracking mechanism.

MERS rules don't allow members to submit lost-note affidavits in place of mortgage notes, Arnold said.

``A lot of companies say the note is lost when it's highly unlikely the note is lost,'' Arnold said. ``Saying a note is lost when it's not really lost is wrong.''

Lents's attorney, Jane Raskin of Raskin & Raskin in Miami, said she has no idea who owns Lents's mortgage note.

``Something is wrong if you start from what I think is the reasonable assumption that these banks are not losing all of these notes,'' Raskin said. ``As an officer of the court, I find it troubling that they've been going in and saying we lost the note, and because nobody is challenging it, the foreclosures are pushed through the system.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Bob Ivry in New York at bivry@bloomberg.net .



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Pentagon Stealing National Guard's Gear
02-26-2008
San Francisco Chronicle

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger told Bush administration officials Monday that he is tired of the Pentagon treating the California National Guard like a stepchild by using its equipment in Iraq and Afghanistan without returning or replacing it.

The Republican governor, in a visit to Washington for the annual meeting of the National Governors' Association, said the California National Guard is missing about half of its equipment - from humvees to radios. That could leave California at risk in an earthquake, fire or other emergency, Schwarzenegger said.

"It's not fair to the states for the federal government to go into a war and then to take from us the equipment," he said after meetings Monday with President Bush and Cabinet officials. "Every time our National Guard leaves, they take with them equipment but they don't bring it back."

Other governors have also complained about the drain of equipment. Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, a Democrat, said last May that her state's response to a tornado in the town of Greensburg was limited because 15 of the Kansas National Guard's 19 Black Hawk helicopters were overseas, along with trucks, bulldozers and other equipment.

Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Schwarzenegger and other governors that the Pentagon plans to pay to replace some of the equipment that is damaged or destroyed, but the compensation could take several years because of budget constraints.

Schwarzenegger said states also face budget shortfalls and can't shoulder the burden indefinitely.

During the Southern California fires in October, some local officials complained about a lack of air support to contain the blazes, while state and federal officials criticized the U.S. military for failing to deploy some of its C-130 planes immediately after the fires broke out.

A few weeks later, when high winds threatened to worsen fires in Southern California, four of the planes were sent after state officials asked for help.

About 2,500 of the state's National Guardsmen are overseas out of a force of more than 20,000. The state estimates that $1 billion worth of equipment is being used, from diesel generators to trucks to GPS devices.

The California National Guard is also stretched thin because about 1,400 guardsmen are helping the federal government to secure the border with Mexico.

"There's only so long you can do that," the governor said. "We now are missing 50 percent of the equipment - the equipment also (used) to train the National Guard."

Schwarzenegger used his trip to press several other key issues with federal officials - although he left Washington with few firm commitments.

In a meeting with Bush and a small group of border governors from the United States and Mexico, he asked for more federal help in stopping drug smuggling, human trafficking and money laundering. He also pushed the president and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to open more traffic lanes at the border to ease congestion and boost trade with Mexico, California's biggest trading partner.

He met with Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson to discuss mortgage issues. The recently approved stimulus package raised federal mortgage limits in high-cost areas from $419,000 to $729,000, but the provision expires at the end of the year. Schwarzenegger wants to see the new limits become permanent, which would help many Bay Area homeowners. Any such package would require congressional action.

The governor is also leading a new effort to lobby the federal government to increase spending on infrastructure. The White House has been cool to the idea, although Democrats in the Senate are talking about a new stimulus package that would add more money for rebuilding highways, bridges and water systems.

"It doesn't need to be part of the stimulus package, it can be separate," Schwarzenegger said, suggesting the money could be inserted into appropriations bills.

The governor said he was too busy this trip to lobby the administration to reconsider its denial of California's waiver to implement its first-in-the-nation greenhouse gas regulations for cars and trucks. The state has sued to overturn the Environmental Protection Agency's decision to reject the state's rules.

Schwarzenegger took a few political questions Monday. Asked if he had any advice for Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, he did not urge him to quit the race, but he did suggest the race for the GOP nomination was over. "The people have made their decision," he said.

Schwarzenegger, who endorsed Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain before the Feb. 5 California primary, also downplayed the idea that he would spend much time campaigning for McCain before November.

"There will be a time he will ask me for my help," he said. "He also knows and makes it clear that I am busy and my No. 1 priority is the people of California."

Schwarzenegger took his mother-in-law, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, to a dinner with Bush and other governors at the White House Sunday. He also found time for two fundraisers for his political action committee, the California Dream Team, that were expected to raise about $250,000.



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http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cfe4dab4-e3d6-11dc-8799-0000779fd2ac.html
Biofuels will not feed the hungry
Published: February 25 2008 20:14 | Last updated: February 25 2008 20:14

Between 1990 and 2005 the proportion of children under five who were underweight declined by one fifth. But that progress is now under threat. Rising food prices mean that malnutrition and starvation once again threaten many of those at the bottom of the world’s economic ladder. While recent spikes in prices are unlikely to be permanent, producers should stop wasting food by subsidising biofuels and give the World Food Programme the funds it needs to distribute calories to those who cannot cope by themselves.

International market prices for wheat, corn, soyabeans and dozens of other commodities have doubled or trebled in recent years. The result is poverty – for millions, a doubling of food prices means destitution – and increased malnutrition. World Food Programme officials have told the Financial Times that the agency may have to cut food rations, or even the number of people it reaches, unless donors provide more cash to pay higher prices.

Some factors affecting prices for the world’s poor are clearly temporary. Bad US and EU harvests in recent years, plus drought in Australia, have reduced grain stocks. There has also been a particular squeeze on internationally trade-able oils and grains, as producers such as Russia introduced export quotas in order to control prices at home. Finally, record shipping rates have made food yet more expensive in the poorer, importing countries that need to buy it most.

Other factors suggest a more permanent change. Food production consumes energy – for machinery, for transportation and most of all to manufacture fertiliser – and if oil prices remain high it will have a lasting effect on food.

Cuts to food production subsidies, most notably in the EU, will also have a permanent effect on supply.

But the biggest structural change is biofuels. In the space of a few years, the US has diverted about 40m tonnes of maize to produce bioethanol – about 4 per cent of global production of coarse grains. That rapid growth is largely the result of subsidies – which must halt. The environmental benefits of maize biofuel are ambiguous at best and it should not be favoured over growing maize for food.

These fundamental pressures, however, should not cause despair. Twenty years ago there were warnings that economic growth in China and India, and consequent increases in calorie intake, would lead to devastating food shortages. So far China has been able to supply its population’s shift to eating meat.

There are serious challenges to increasing food production: limits to available land, soil degradation and access to water among them. But not only are new technologies such as genetic modification adding to output, there is scope to raise productivity in areas such as the former Soviet Union toward the levels of the most productive farmers.

Over the next few years, therefore, prices should stabilise as supply increases and stocks are rebuilt. In the meantime, those governments that are subsidising biofuels need to cough up and help fund the World Food Programme. The world has enough food to feed everybody – if there is the will to do so.



Go to 12761
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/FC515689-75CC-4121-BD37-2A84E5BF0C60.htm
FEBRUARY 25, 2008
Greenspan tells Gulf to drop dollar
Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the US central bank, or Fed, has said that inflation rates in Gulf states, which are reaching near record levels, would fall "significantly" if oil producers dropped their US dollar pegs.

Speaking at an investment conference on Monday in Jedda, Saudi Arabia, he said the pegs restrict the region's ability to control inflation by forcing them to duplicate US monetary policy at a time when the Fed is cutting rates to ward off an economic downturn.

Debate is rife in the Gulf on how to tackle inflation.

Levels have hit seven per cent in Saudi Arabia, the highest in 27 years and a 19-year peak of 9.3 per cent in the United Arab Emirates in 2006.

Free float?

"In the short term free floating ... will not fully dissipate inflationary pressure, although it would significantly do so," Greenspan said.

Saudi and UAE central bank chiefs are in favour of retaining dollar pegs, but Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani, the prime minister of Qatar, is pushing for regional currency reform to avert possible unilateral revaluations designed to curb inflation.

According to Hamad Saud al-Sayyari, governor of the Saudi central bank, floating the Saudi riyal would not be appropriate for an economy that relies on oil exports.

"Floating is beneficial when the economy and exports are diverse ... as for the kingdom it remains reliant on the export of a single commodity," he said.

Investor attraction

The dollar peg was also defended by Sultan Nasser al-Suweidi, the UAE central bank governor, at a conference in Abu Dhabi on Monday.

He said the policy was helping Gulf states attract foreign investments.

"They did very well for our economies because it has led to more capital flows," al-Suweidi said.

Qatar, has the region's highest inflation, and is considering the revaluing of the Qatari riyal to combat inflation currently at 13.74 per cent.

The exchange rate contributes to about 40 per cent of inflation in Qatar, where the riyal is believed to be 30 per cent undervalued.

Qatar's stand

"We prefer always to act with all the GCC countries," Sheikh Hamad said.

Qatar currently chairs the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council.

"It's now time for the Gulf to have its own currency," he said.

Sheikh Hamad said such a currency should be "like the Japanese yen or other currencies".

Deutsche Bank said last month that both Qatar and the UAE will probably cut ties to the US dollar this year and track currency baskets as Kuwait did last May.



Go to 12760
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/02/25/business/place.php
Russia quietly prepares to switch some oil trading from dollars to rubles

By Andrew E. Kramer
Published: February 25, 2008

MOSCOW: Russia, the world's second-largest oil-exporting nation after Saudi Arabia, has been quietly preparing to switch trading in Russian Ural Blend oil, the country's primary export, from the dollar to the ruble. But the change, if it comes, is still some time off, industry analysts and officials said.

The Russian effort began modestly this month, with trading in refined products for the domestic market.

Still, the effort to squeeze the dollar out of Russian oil sales marks another project with swagger and ambition by the Kremlin, which has already wielded its energy wealth to assert influence in Eastern Europe and in former Soviet states.

"They are serious," said Yaroslav Lissovolik, the chief economist at Deutsche Bank in Moscow. "This is something they are giving priority to."

Oil trading is now nearly always denominated in dollars, the de facto common currency of the petroleum business. When Kuwait sells oil under a futures contract to India, for example, the price is set in dollars.



Go to 12759
http://www.rense.com/general60/accuse.htm
Overthrow Of The American
Republic - Part 66
I ACCUSE!!
By Sherman H. Skolnick
12-2-4

A century ago, under a similar title, a European writer, Emile Zola, took up the cause of a Military Officer, Capt. Alfred Dreyfus, member of an unpopular religion, jailed on Devil's Island, off the coast of South America, falsely accused and convicted of giving military secrets to an enemy nation.

As I writer, under a similar title, I humbly dare finger the Aristocracy of setting about to destroy the three branches of the American Constitutional Government, starting with the public execution, November 22, 1963, of John F. Kennedy, head of the Executive Department. I take up this hazardous cause , with a background soon to be fifty years of my research and investigations, for the benefit of my countrymen and their future generations, that somehow Justice and Freedom may prevail if not also endure.

I ACCUSE each subsequent U.S. President of having been either a plotter, or a JFK murder accomplice, or part of a bloody cover-up mechanism. This done in conjunction with a likewise traitorous and cowardly monopoly press, and various lock-step institutions of education, finance, commerce, and industry.

I ACCUSE the bulk, then and thereafter, of the members of the U.S. Legislative branch of Government, of by their treacherous and thunderous silence, condoning and acquiescing in the on-going downfall of the American organic Law. Thus by their acts, Congress approving of the coup against the American Republic.

I ACCUSE the Aristocracy of begining the wreckage of the Judicial Branch of the U.S. Government, by enlisting if not actually dragooning the Chief Justice of the U.S. highest Court, Earl Warren. to form and carry out a whitewash Presidential Commission of the monstrous deeds, in the supposed name of investigating the public murder in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas.

I ACCUSE the Aristocracy of using what yet remained of the Presidency, the Congress, and the Federal Judiciary, of proceeding to entangle the United States of America in unconstitutional foreign wars serving no Ameircan purpose and of no benefit but rather the impending destruction of the commonfolk of the nation. This done, including open and secret wars in Southeast Asia and American assassination squads (Operation Phoenix and Operation WhiteStar) sent in to butcher great numbers of Southeast Asia civilians. The longing for Equal Rights of American people of color were cut-off in the Jungles, sending them to kill or be killed, in destroying yellow-skinned folk in someone else's civil war.

A brave lower court federal judge in Boston ruled the Viet Nam War unconstitutional which decision was overturned and wrecked by the war-profiteering members of the U.S. Suprene Court obedient to the dictates of the plutocrats.

I ACCUSE the Aristocracy of using their secret political police to orchestrate fake riots and commotions in this nation, to carry out their evil purpose. Such as the Democratic Convention riots of 1968, in Chicago, to discredit the Democrat Party and their Presidential candidate , to install instead as a President, a Dallas JFK plotter and war-monger, Richard M. Nixon. And in 1974, to silence him about this and his role as JFK plotter, Nixon, facing Impeachment, was forced from the Oval Office by the fake Watergate Affair, created by the secret political police. [See, series "Anti-War- Movement", www.skolnicksreport.com]

I ACCUSE the Aristocracy through their secret political police, the FBI/CIA, of ordering the assassination of the THE BLACK MESSIAH, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a Drum Major for peaceful means to remedy the torment and long ongoing smashdown of people of Color. A primary purpose of the murder was to trigger off justifiable outrage and anger by Afro-Americans, leading to possible uncontrollable fires and destruction in 103 U.S. cities, supposedly warranting sweeping up blacks into already prepared and existing concentration camps.

This was intended as the "Final Solution", Nazi-like, to rid the American White Majority, of the Black/White "problem", created, in the first place, by the Aristocracy and its slave owners.

I ACCUSE the Aristocracy of escalating the U.S. pattern of election ballot fakery and vote fraud. By the year 2000, this became an art and a science. A puppet of the Aristocracy was installed in the Oval Office. The entire scheme was to discredit the Presidency and at the same time, the U.S. Judiciary. A five-Judge majority of the U.S. Supreme Court was corrupted to obtain their arbitrary ruling in Bush versus Gore. The unfolding of this purchasing of Justice of the high court, started by my writings, is forwarded in part by others as well, such as Vanity Fair Magazine, October, 2004 issue.

A known megalomaniac, George W. Bush, installed thus as the occupant and resident of the Oval Office, proceeded with prior known well-planned deception to cause the Moslem World to rise up as the enemy of the U.S. Government and its three branches. The 9-11 Affair, not actually involving Moslems, was nevertheless falsely blamed on them as supposed perpetrators. Thr plutocrats, to carry out their purpose, snuffed out three thousand Americans. For example, the collapse of the World Trade Center twin towers, expertly arranged by internal explosives, was falsely blamed on being hit supposedly by aircraft piloted by Moslems without skill to fly such planes.

I ACCUSE the Aristocracy of corruptly and by prior deceit of aranging the collusion masquerading as the year 2004 Presidential Election to further discredit the Executive Branch of the U.S. Government. George W. Bush, already a usurper fraudulently and corruptly in office, was aranged to run for supposed re-election against a weak supposed Democrat Party candidate, John F. Kerry, through his wife of convenience, Teresa Heinz, complicit in the evil partnership with Bush. That Kerry actually became through Ohio's Electoral College vote, the actual President-Elect, but secretly abandoned the same for a horde of gold as a reward to be made payable to his wife of convenience.

I ACCUSE the Aristocracy of purchasing and procuring the deafness, dumbness, and blindness of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. To the purpose and end of there being no checks and balances to deter a Dictator disguised as heading the Executive Department. By this unholy combine, and undeclared War, a barbaric slaughter has fallen on the people of an historic land, Iraq, Cradle of Civilization, with less than ten per cent of the population of America in the role of a foreign invader expending its own great treasure and blood .for no purpose of the commonfolk of this Nation.

I ACCUSE the Aristocracy consisting as well as the re-emerging Crowned Heads of Europe, ruling by supposed "Divine Right", not the consent of those governed, of orchestrating and manipulating events and affairs, so that the three branches of the American Republic have become one horrid War Criminal Machine, rightly condemned by the remaining populace of the planet.

I ACCUSE the Aristocracy, which too often remains nameless and faceless by design, of spreading out a poison on America, to split up this land, so that peoples in other Lands, with anger and tears, truly Petition Heaven for what is to them, the justifiable destruction of the American Republic.



Go to 12758
http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=44700§ionid=351020101
Generals to quit if US strikes Iran
Tue, 26 Feb 2008 00:49:33

Some senior US military commanders are prepared to resign if President Bush orders a military strike against Iran, a new report says.

“There are four or five generals and admirals we know of who would resign if Bush ordered an attack on Iran,” The Sunday Times quoted Monday a source with close ties to British intelligence .

“There is simply no stomach for it in the Pentagon, and a lot of people question whether such an attack would be effective or even possible,” the source added.

If proven true a revolt on such a scale would be unprecedented because 'American generals usually stay and fight until they get fired,” said a Pentagon source.

Robert Gates, the defense secretary, has repeatedly warned against striking Iran and is believed to represent the view of his senior commanders.

Iran has announced that in face of any aggression it will respond like a 'tsunami'.



Go to 12757
http://www.rense.com/general80/lifeor.htm
Your Life Or Your Freedom
Jim Kirwan
2-26-8

What began as a simple realignment of government authority behind the scenes, in the 1950's, with Truman's creation of the National Security Council has now begun to consume all the safeguards that were in place to protect national Domestic Security in the United States. Exactly how this came to be could not have been an accident.

Simultaneously with the creation of the NSC, Truman created the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from the remnants of Office of Security Services (OSS) left over from WWII. This massive agency was intended to be used only outside the Constitutional United States. However, since its inception the CIA has been running specific black-ops programs within this country, disguised as National Security priorities that serve USA Incorporated, which we became after NSA took control over the government of the Republic and its CEO, the figurehead president of the Constitutional Republic.

When was the last time a CIA or FBI agent was ever publicly charged with any crime other than espionage? Given our global involvement with criminal activities, is it not reasonable to assume that these huge law-enforcement agencies, and their contract operatives like Blackwater, might routinely violate the laws of the USA, either here or overseas? For that matter when was the Director of any of these supposed agencies ever charged with anything like responsibility for the actions of their agents: as in international drug-running, gun-running, death squads, or the illegal overthrow of so many governments world-wide? We have attacked over fifty nations in the last fifty years: so are we to believe that everything that was done in these black-operations was always and forever legal or this just the-way-business continues to be done today!

To add to our problems a huge new agency was theoretically created by Ronald Reagan in the 1980's when he reconfigured FEMA that had previously only been responsible for assisting the country during moments of crisis. This change created a direct line for the arrest and incarceration of the public, during and after the coming Martial Law.

When Clinton left office, the Decider decided to make all this into official and public policy. Bush with yet another congressional surrender, managed to merge 22 separate government agencies into an 180,000 strong bureaucracy to "manage" the final takeover of the nation. To assist with the lockdown and imprisonment of this country he secretly hired the former head of the USSR's Secret Police, and the former head of the East German Stasi to set up the real-ID card and the six to eight-hundred detention camps in the continental United States. (1)

"We are immersed in two wars, yet we seem to remain in complete denial of that hideous fact. The number of the dead mounts daily, both of our own, and of the others that we routinely slaughter - calling them "insurgents" - which is a complete misnomer. The definition of that term requires that there be an "authority" in place - and since we began these wars, this has not been the case for those that oppose our forces. The White House solution for this "semantics problem" has been to propose US Death squads to "pacify" places where rebellion against US hegemony in any area might be building. Through it all, our own dead and wounded and their treatment by this government that put them In Harm's Way, is still SECRET, because it's bad PR to tell the truth!



Go to 12756
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/feb/22/kennedy.assassination
New evidence challenges official picture of Kennedy shootingguardian.co.uk, Friday February 22 2008
The official record states that senator Robert F Kennedy, like his brother before him, was killed by a crazed lone gunman. But the assassination of a man who seemed to embody so much hope for a bitterly divided country embroiled in an unpopular war still troubles this nation.

Little about the official explanation of the events at the Ambassador Hotel on June 5 1968 makes sense. Now a new forensic analysis of the only audio recording of the fatal shots has given new weight to a controversial theory that there were in fact two shooters, and that the man convicted of Kennedy's killing — Sirhan Sirhan - did not fire the fatal shots.

Following his victory speech to supporters after clinching a tight democratic primary victory in California, Kennedy left the podium in the Embassy ballroom to address a press conference.

But the shortcut he and his entourage took through the hotel's pantry quickly descended into bloody mayhem. As Kennedy turned from shaking hands with two of the kitchen staff, a gunman stepped forward and began firing. Kennedy was hit by four shots including one which lodged in the vertebrae in his neck and another which entered his brain from below his right ear. He died in hospital the following day. Five other people were injured but survived.

Sirhan - a Palestinian refugee who said he wanted to "sacrifice" Kennedy "for the cause of the poor exploited people" - was quickly apprehended. He was eventually sentenced to life imprisonment.

"Sirhan was apprehended at the scene with literally a smoking gun," said acoustic forensic expert Philip Van Praag of PVP Designs, who has carried out the new analysis. "At the beginning many people looked upon this as an open-and-shut case. It was one man, Sirhan Sirhan, who was observed by a number of people, who aimed and fired a gun in the direction of Kennedy's entourage."

But the lone gunman explanation has always looked shaky. The autopsy of Kennedy's body suggested that all four shots that hit him came from behind, and powder marks on his skin showed they must have been from close range.

But Sirhan was in front of Kennedy when he fired, and after shooting two shots was overcome by hotel staff, who pinned him to a table. Also, Sirhan fired eight shots in total, yet 14 were found lodged around the room and in the victims.

"There is no doubt in our minds that no fewer than 14 shots were fired in the pantry on that evening and that Sirhan did not in fact kill Senator Kennedy," said Robert Joling, a forensic scientist who has been involved with the Kennedy case for nearly 40 years. He and Van Praag have published a book on the killing this week entitled "An Open and Shut Case".

The inconsistencies in the case have bred numerous conspiracy theories, including the involvement of the CIA and the idea that Sirhan - who claims not to remember the shooting and pleaded insanity at his trial - was a "Manchurian Candidate" assassin who was hypnotically programmed to kill the senator.

Now Van Praag has added new weight to the 'two shooters' theory. He reanalysed the only audio recording of the shooting, which was made by an independent journalist, Stanislaw Pruszynski. "At the time Pruszynski was not even aware that his recorder was still on," said Van Praag.

The recording quality is poor, but it is possible to make out 13 shots over the course of just over 5 seconds, before what Van Praag describes as "blood-curdling screams" obscure the sound. That is more than the eight rounds that Sirhan's cheap Iver Johnson Cadet 55 revolver carried.

Also, there are two pairs of double shots that occurred so close together it is inconceivable that Sirhan could have fired them all. The third and fourth shots and the seventh and eighth were separated by 122 and 149 milliseconds respectively. In tests, a trained firearms expert firing under ideal conditions could only manage 366 milliseconds between shots using the same weapon. And he was not being pinned to a table at the time.

Lastly, five of the shots - 3, 5, 8, 10 and 12 in the sequence - were found to have odd acoustic characteristics when specific frequencies were analysed separately. Van Praag thinks this is because they came from a different gun pointing away from Pruszynski's microphone.

To recreate this he recorded the sounds made by firing the Iver Johnson and another revolver, a Harrison and Richardson 922. At least one member of Kennedy's entourage was carrying this weapon when the killing happened. In the acoustic tests it produced the same frequency anomalies Van Praag had seen in the original recording but only when fired away from the microphone.

He presented his results on Thursday at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences annual meeting in Washington DC.

Paul Schrade, a close associate of Kennedy's who was director of the United Auto Workers union, was at the senator's side in the pantry and was shot in the head. He told the meeting that America lost an outstanding leader and potentially great president that day.

"I think we were in a position of really changing this country," he said. "What we lost was a real hope and possibility of having a better country and having better relations around the world."

He wants to see the case reopened and properly investigated. "We're going to go ahead and do our best to find out who the second gunman was and that's going to take a lot of work," he said.

Van Praag also wants the case reexamined. "We would hope that the evidence that we have uncovered ... would make a strong enough case to get serious consideration once again by the authorities," he said.



Go to 12755
http://www.newswithviews.com/baldwin/baldwin431.htm
MONEYCHANGERS DESTROYING AMERICA, AND CHRISTIANS DON'T SEE IT

By Pastor Chuck Baldwin
February 26, 2008
NewsWithViews.com

"And the Jews' passover was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem, And found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting: And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables." John 2:13-15 (KJV)

The moneychangers of Jesus' day were the equivalent of the international bankers of our day. With the consent and approbation of the Jewish leaders, these bankers set up shop in the Temple. Their purpose was to exchange whatever currency the Jewish worshipper brought with him or her into Jewish currency, which would then be used to purchase whatever sacrifice the worshipper required. Of course, the exchange rates benefited only the bankers and Jewish leaders (and Caesar, who collected a tax on the exchange, of course). For everyone else, the system was nothing more than legalized extortion.

When Jesus saw what the bankers were doing, He was incensed. And throughout the Gospel narratives, this is the only occasion where Jesus is recorded as resorting to violence. He made a scourge (or whip) and drove the bankers out of the Temple by force and destroyed their tables, along with their records, receipts, etc.

It is too bad that today's pastors and Christians do not share Jesus' disdain for the current generation of moneychangers, because it is the moneychangers who are in the process of destroying these United States of America--and our pastors and Christians either do not see it, or, if they do see it, do not seem to care.

It is modern moneychangers who bully and bribe our spineless and greedy politicians (from both parties) into passing so-called "free trade" deals such as NAFTA, CAFTA, and the FTAA, which have all but destroyed America's manufacturing base and have put millions of American workers out of their jobs. It is the moneychangers who are the driving force behind the burgeoning North American Union, which sacrifices America's national sovereignty and independence.

Over the weekend, Dr. Jerry Corsi reported that a new North American Army has been created, without the approval of Congress or any mention by the American media. In World Net Daily, Corsi reports, "In a ceremony that received virtually no attention in the American media, the United States and Canada signed a military agreement Feb. 14 allowing the armed forces from one nation to support the armed forces of the other nation during a domestic civil emergency, even one that does not involve a cross-border crisis.

"The agreement, defined as a Civil Assistance Plan, was not submitted to Congress for approval, nor did Congress pass any law or treaty specifically authorizing this military agreement to combine the operations of the armed forces of the United States and Canada in the event of a wide range of domestic civil disturbances ranging from violent storms, to health epidemics, to civil riots or terrorist attacks.

"In Canada, the agreement paving the way for the militaries of the U.S. and Canada to cross each other's borders to fight domestic emergencies was not announced either by the Harper government or the Canadian military, prompting sharp protest."

Corsi further writes, "The military Civil Assistance Plan can be seen as a further incremental step being taken toward creating a North American armed forces available to be deployed in domestic North American emergency situations.

"The agreement was signed at U.S. Army North headquarters, Fort Sam Houston, Texas, by U.S. Air Force Gen. Gene Renuart, commander of NORAD and U.S. Northern Command, or USNORTHCOM, and by Canadian Air Force Lt. Gen. Marc Dumais, commander of Canada Command."

For the most part, the American media is blind, mute, and dumb regarding any of the issues relating to the merger of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. The only notable media personality to give this matter any significant attention is CNN's Lou Dobbs. Obviously, the same moneychangers who control Congress also largely control the mainstream media.

The last three American Presidents, too, have been willing pawns in the hands of the moneychangers. Remember, it was Bill Clinton and Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole who collaborated to shove NAFTA down our throats. It was Bush 41 who first publicly promoted a "New World Order." But it has been George W. Bush who has done more to appease the globalist plans of the moneychangers than any President since Woodrow Wilson.

G.W. Bush has used the rubric of "the war on terrorism" to dismantle not only the personal liberties of the American people (most notably with his Gestapo-like Patriot Act), but also the constitutional principles of national sovereignty and independence. For example, back in 2006, G.W. Bush eviscerated one of America's most sacred doctrines protecting liberty and independence: the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which disallowed U.S. military troops from being used against U.S. citizens. (Of course, this did not stop Bill Clinton and Janet Reno from using U.S. troops against U.S. citizens at Waco, Texas. And thanks to G.W. Bush, the crime was permanently covered up.)

The expunging of Posse Comitatus becomes even more jeopardous when one considers the current merger of U.S. and Canadian military forces. Dr. Corsi explains:

"In an exclusive interview with WND during Vigilant Shield 2008, Gen. Renuart affirmed USNORTHCOM would deploy U.S. troops on U.S. soil should the president declare a domestic emergency in which the Department of Defense ordered USNORTHCOM involvement.

"In May 2007, WND reported President Bush, on his own authority, signed National Security Presidential Directive 51, also known as Homeland Security Presidential Directive 20, authorizing the president to declare a national emergency and take over all functions of federal, state, local, territorial and tribal governments, without necessarily obtaining the approval of Congress to do so."

See Jerry Corsi's complete report.

Are readers getting this? George W. Bush, on his own signature, with no approval from Congress and no input from the American people, has seized unlimited power for the Presidency; he has dismantled the constitutional protections of the American people; he has ignored the courts; he has begun creating the merger of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, including the merger of the U.S. and Canadian militaries; and he has refused to enforce U.S. immigration laws, thus facilitating a borderless North America. And all of this has been done at the behest of David Rockefeller and his cabal of moneychangers at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

When Jesus saw the moneychangers in the Temple, He drove them off with violence. Yet, today's pastors and Christians cannot even seem to see what these same moneychangers are doing to America. They support candidates simply because they have an "R" behind their names, vainly imagining that these candidates are somehow better than the ones with a "D" behind their names. The truth is, however, John McCain and Mike Huckabee are as beholden to the moneychangers as are Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Why can't Christians see this? Why are they so blind?


The one man who made it through the Republican Presidential primaries who was not only not beholden to the moneychangers, but who was vehemently opposed to them, was Congressman Ron Paul. But most pastors and leaders of the Religious Right, not seeing or understanding the evil being done by the moneychangers, not only did not support Ron Paul, but they actively supported (and continue to support) the moneychangers' puppet candidates.

I'm sure if Jesus had taken time to sit down and dialogue with those First Century moneychangers, they could have come up with very nice, flowery speeches as to how they were doing the Jewish people a service; how they were patriotic Romans and/or pious Hebrews. But Jesus did not need to dialogue with them: He knew what they were. And He knew what He needed to do; and He did it.


What Jesus did is exactly what every pastor, Christian, conservative, and every other real American should do: rise up against these moneychangers and drive them out of power! But we cannot accomplish this until we see them for what they really are: power-mad extortionists who seek to enrich themselves at the expense of America's freedom and independence. Do you think our fellow pastors and Christians will ever see it?



Go to 12754
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_resources/article3423734.ece
From The Sunday TimesFebruary 24, 2008

Food shortages loom as wheat crop shrinks and prices riseJonathan Leake
THE world is only ten weeks away from running out of wheat supplies after stocks fell to their lowest levels for 50 years.

The crisis has pushed prices to an all-time high and could lead to further hikes in the price of bread, beer, biscuits and other basic foods.

It could also exacerbate serious food shortages in developing countries especially in Africa.

The crisis comes after two successive years of disastrous wheat harvests, which saw production fall from 624m to 600m tonnes, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

Experts blame climate change as heatwaves caused a slump in harvests last year in eastern Europe, Canada, Morocco and Australia, all big wheat producers.

Booming populations and a switch to a meat-rich diet in the developing world also mean that about 110m tons of the world’s annual wheat crop is being diverted to feed livestock.

Short term pressures have compounded the problem. Speculative buying by investors gambling on further price rises has further pushed up prices.

Though shortages are often blamed on the use of land for biofuel crops, the main biofuel cereal crop is maize, not wheat. Farmers have brought millions of acres of fallow land into production and the FAO predicts that the shortages could be eliminated within 12 months.



Go to 12753
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/02/14/60minutes/main3831900.shtml
One Thousand Lives A Month
Researcher Estimates 22,000 Lives Could Have Been Saved Had Trasylol Been Pulled Earlier
| Page 1 of 4
Feb. 17, 2008
(AP / file)

One Thousand Lives A Month
A renowned researcher estimates that 22,000 patients could have been saved if the Food and Drug Administration removed the heart surgery drug Trasylol two years ago. Scott Pelley reports. | Share/Embed

(CBS) This is the story of a drug that was on the market for 14 years and may have contributed to the deaths of thousands of patients. Trasylol, made by Bayer, is given in the operating room to control bleeding. It was a big money maker.

As correspondent Scott Pelley reports, Bayer marketed Trasylol aggressively until it was used in about one third of all cardiac bypass operations in America.

But then, in 2006, a study showed widespread death associated with Trasylol, and as it turns out there was concern long before that.

How much did Bayer know? And why did it take Bayer and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration nearly two years to take the drug off the market after major studies revealed the danger? Two years - during which it's estimated Trasylol was contributing to the loss of one thousand lives a month.

Doctors believe one of those patients was Joe Randone. He had a heart murmur since he was born, but that didn't keep him from an active life. On New Year's Eve 2005, Randone seemed to be the picture of health.

Two weeks later, Randone checked himself into a Long Island hospital for heart valve replacement surgery. He was 52, and the surgeon told his wife Josephine and daughter Marissa that the risks were low.

"They said even possibly in five days he would go home. And then, you know, there was a recovery period, as there would be with any kind of heart surgery," Josephine remembers.

"But then he should be in ICU for about 24 hours, and then move up to a regular floor, recuperate and come home," Marissa adds.

Asked if the doctors weren't particularly concerned about this, Josephine says, "No."

"It was routine as far as they were concerned," Marissa tells Pelley.

The surgeon noted the chance of complications at five percent. Trasylol was put in Joe's IV and kept flowing for four hours. At the end of the surgery, the Randones were told that something was wrong.

"They didn't go into specifics," Marissa says. "Just that there were a lot of complications, and that making it through the night was basically our first concern."

Immediately after the surgery, Randone suffered two heart attacks and his kidneys failed. Randone's surgeon wrote in his notes "Aprotinin-induced graft thrombosis." Aprotinin is Trasylol, and thrombosis means blood clotting.

At the same time, in San Francisco, an eminent medical researcher, Dr. Dennis Mangano, was finishing a study that had followed thousands of patients - the largest Trasylol study ever conducted.

Mangano says the study included 5,065 patients in 17 countries.

"It showed an important association between Trasylol use and kidney failure requiring dialysis, Mangano tells Pelley, “And it showed a trend toward increased death in hospital in these patients."

Dr. Mangano was one of the researchers who discovered that aspirin reduces the risk of heart attack. His non-profit institute studies drug safety and how generic drugs can lower health care costs. His work is credited with improving the health of millions. Ten days after Joe Randone's surgery, Mangano's study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine and reported in newspapers across the country, including Long Island.

Marissa says the doctor had just seen an article about the study in the newspaper. "The surgeon told us that he felt that the drug was the reason for all the complications," Marissa says.

"And that he had filed a report with the FDA, and he wanted us to be aware that it was because of this drug," she says.



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