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 12953
http://www.realjewnews.com/?p=176
THE REAL ID ACT OF 2005 is a Jewish plot to deprive Americans of their basic Constitutional rights of “free assembly” & to “bear arms.”

The REAL ID Act of 2005 was covertly attached as a rider on an Appropriations Bill funding the war in Iraq after it failed to pass on its own merits.

Anti-Christian Jews who run US Homeland Security, namely, the Jew, Michael Chertoff and his 3 Jewish deputies, want to jew-lord-it over all Americans by depriving Christian citizens of their rights under the cover of “homeland security.” The Jewish-planned REAL ID Act is slated to go into effect on May 11 2008.

Here is what the Jewish planned REAL ID Act will do:

Persons not possessing a Real ID Card will be denied the right to enter into any Federal Building including a Congressman’s or Senator’s office. This effectively denies these persons their rights to assembly and to petition the government as guaranteed by the 1st Amendment.

Persons not possessing a Real ID Card will be denied the right to bear arms as guaranteed by the 2nd Amendment. This is because the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives will decree that such a form of identification is necessary to meet Federal requirements for purchasing a firearm.

Persons not possessing a Real ID Card will be denied the right to commercial air travel.

Persons not possessing a Real ID Card will be denied the right to make transactions with a Federally licensed bank (every Bank!)


THE 4 JEWISH PLOTTERS OF THE REAL ID ACT

1) Michael Chertoff: Secretary of US Homeland Security.

2) Paul Schneider: Deputy Secretary of US Homeland Security.

3) Fred Schwien: Executive Secretary of Operations of US Homeland Security.

4) Jay Cohen: Under-Secretary for Science & Technology of US Homeland Security. (This Big Brother Jew is the one who will embed his micro-chip into your wrist or forehead).


MONTANA TAKES THE LEAD IN OPPOSING THE REAL ID ACT

OUT OF 12 STATES OPPOSING the REAL ID Act, Montana introduced a Bill last April 2007 opposing the Act because of its infringement upon basic Constitutional rights:

—— “WHEREAS, use of the state-issued Identification Cards will be necessary for any type of federally regulated activity for which an Identification Card must be displayed, including flying in a commercial airplane, making transactions with a Federally licensed bank, entering a Federal Building, or making application for Federally supported public assistance benefits, including Social Security; and

WHEREAS, some of the intended privacy requirements of the REAL ID Act, such as the use of common machine-readable technology and state maintenance of a database that can be shared with the United States and agencies of other states, may be used for purposes that were never intended; and

WHEREAS, these potential breaches in privacy that could result directly from compliance with the REAL ID Act may violate the right to privacy, as secured by Article II, section 10, of the Montana Constitution, of thousands of residents of Montana;

THEREFORE, the purpose of the Legislature is to refuse to implement the REAL ID Act and thereby protest the treatment by Congress and the President as agents of the Federal government.” —— Here; Here; & Here



Go to 12952
http://www.roguegovernment.com/news.php?id=7506
Ron Paul Backers Take Over GOP Caucuses
03-18-2008
St. Louis Post Dispatch

The first hints were the phone calls.

Never before had St. Charles County Republican Party Chairman Jon Bennett received so many queries about where this year's party caucus was to be held. And Bennett didn't recognize most of the callers.

On Saturday, Bennett learned why. Dozens of avid supporters of Ron Paul, a Texas congressman who is running a renegade quest for the presidential nomination, staged a political guerrilla attack. At that caucus at St. Peters City Hall — as well as others across the state — party regulars like Bennett were overwhelmed.

Caucuses in Missouri, held only in presidential election years, are typically low-key affairs attended mainly by party diehards. But this year, the pro-Paul activists commandeered gatherings in the city of St. Louis, St. Louis County, Kansas City and Springfield. Paul supporters also controlled caucuses in at least a half dozen rural counties.

The result: Paul's supporters predict they have snagged roughly a third of the 2,137 state Republican delegates. Those delegates will determine the state GOP platform this spring and help select the presidential delegates to the national Republican presidential convention in Minneapolis in September.

The unorthodox push, which sparked shouting matches in some meetings, reflected Paul's campaign — an anti-establishment, grass-roots movement built on passion.

"This is a movement for change in the long term," said Ruth Carlson, a 24-year-old secretary from St. John who helped organize Saturday's push in the St. Louis area.

At many of Saturday's caucuses, the Paul contingents also won approval for some of their man's key positions, including resolutions for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, and against the federal Patriot Act and warrantless wiretaps.

But the most politically explosive resolution called for repealing the Missouri Republican Party requirement that all of the state's 58 GOP presidential delegates back the victor in the Feb. 5 primary: U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., now the presumptive presidential nominee.

In Missouri's presidential contest, Paul obtained less than 5 percent of the statewide Republican vote.

Missouri leaders of Saturday's pro-Paul effort insist that they're not driven by a quest to resurrect his chances for the White House.

Carlson and other Paul supporters say their aim is to force the Missouri Republican Party to embrace Paul's principles.

"We're not holding out an illusion that Ron is going to win the nomination," said Debbie Hopper, Paul's national field director. "This is about calling the Republican Party back to its roots."

Hopper — who lives in Fenton and was herself elected a delegate Saturday at a caucus in St. Louis County — cited other caucus successes by pro-Paul supporters in other states, including Nevada, Colorado and Washington.

But Missouri Republican officials plan to fight back. State Republican Party Executive Director Jared Craighead said party leaders will be examining the lists of caucus-goers, and of the newly elected state delegates. He contends that some of the Paul activists involved in the caucuses were really Democrats or Libertarians who should be tossed off.

However, St. Louis city Republican Chairwoman Judy Zakibe joined Bennett in asserting that some of the blame lies with Republican elected officials and party activists who stayed home Saturday.

"Our people didn't come out," Zakibe said. "That's what cost us."

But Bennett accused the Paul forces of deception. At the St. Charles County caucus, Paul backers did not identify themselves as such. Instead they promoted a group of proposed delegates they called the Conservative Values slate.

"They went out of their way not to use 'Ron Paul,'" Bennett said. "Intellectually they were dishonest about their reasons."

Still, Bennett had to appreciate their success: "I'll hand them kudos for being activists. I'll hand them kudos for being organized."

Brent Stafford, a computer analyst from O'Fallon who headed the pro-Paul forces in St. Charles County, gave credit to his side's stealth preparations, which included mock caucuses.

Whatever happens, organizer Carlson said Saturday's victories should prove that Republican Party leaders can't ignore Ron Paul, his views or his supporters.

She added with a chuckle: "We're not just a bunch of people on the Internet. We show up."



Go to 12951
http://www.roguegovernment.com/news.php?id=7515
Lehman Borrows From New Fed Facility
03-19-2008
Reuters

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc (NYSE:LEH - News) borrowed a small amount from a new Federal Reserve lending facility that allows investment banks to borrow money directly from the central bank, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

Lehman borrowed the money through the facility, which was announced over the weekend and makes money available to securities firms on much the same conditions as the Fed's discount window, late on Tuesday, the paper reported, citing an unnamed person familiar with the transaction.

A Lehman representative was not immediately available to comment.

The Wall Street Journal also reported that Goldman Sachs Group Inc (NYSE:GS - News) is likely to tap the facility before the end of the week.

Goldman Sachs Chief Financial Officer David Viniar said on a conference call on Tuesday that the broker will likely tap the Fed facility as a new source of liquidity, but had not yet done so.

The new Fed lending facility is part of a move aimed at stabilizing financial markets. It was announced in concert with a decision to approve a special financing package arranged to facilitate JPMorgan Chase & Co's (NYSE:JPM - News) purchase of ailing Bear Stearns Cos Inc (NYSE:BSC - News).

(Reporting by Chris Reiter, editing by Gerald E. McCormick)



Go to 12950
http://www.roguegovernment.com/news.php?id=7528
Doctor Confesses To Stealing Body Parts
03-19-2008
AP

NEW YORK - The mastermind of a scheme to plunder corpses from funeral homes in the Northeast and sell them for millions of dollars pleaded guilty yesterday in a deal that could send him to prison for more than five decades. more stories like this * 2 elderly women on trial in murder plot * Ranger's trial in comrade's death begins * NYC stepfather convicted of manslaughter * Body parts boss can plead guilty in NYC * Body parts boss can plead guilty in NY *

Michael Mastromarino, a 44-year-old former oral surgeon, confessed to the judge that he carried out the scheme from 2001 to 2005. He will face 18 to 54 years and will have to forfeit $4.68 million. He pleaded guilty to 14 counts that include enterprise corruption, body stealing, and reckless endangerment.



Go to 12949
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=8237
Kids loaned out for rape cruises
By Lucy Panton & Philip Whiteside – News of the World March 16, 2008

CHILDREN from the Jersey House of Horrors were loaned to rich paedophile yachtsmen as galley SEX SLAVES, a News of the World investigation reveals.

The youngsters were told by care staff the boat rides were treats—only to be assaulted and RAPED at sea by pervert toffs.

Details of the sick attacks emerged as we discovered even more blood has been found in a bath in the dungeon underneath the Haut de la Garenne home—and in the drains.

And our reporters have been told how builders on renovations at the home were urged by staff to BURN any bones they dug up.

We also uncover the full extent of the dark forces of corruption hampering the police investigation.

We can reveal worried cops feel under so much pressure over the abuse allegations they are preparing to BYPASS Jersey's own legal system and hand their evidence to our government.

This could include files on up to seven social workers and carers who worked at the sinister home—including one nicknamed the ‘pinball wizard' who HURLED kids against the walls to see how far they would BOUNCE.

At least two previous senior employees of children's services on the island are also under investigation despite the attempts of corrupt former policemen, politicians and businessmen to scupper the inquiry.

We understand that two weeks ago Jersey ministers SECRETLY VOTED to have senior police investigator Lenny Harper removed from the case because they believed he was too open with the media. But the Chief of Police Graham Power refused.
Explosive

A source told us: "Such important figures have been implicated in the cover-up of abuse on the island that the cops feel the evidence should now be passed to the British government

"The latest revelations are explosive. It is going to cause massive waves within the political and legal world and could bring the whole of Jersey's infrastructure crashing down."

One of the most serious lines of inquiry in the investigation is that children were regularly loaned to wealthy yachtsmen to "do with them what they chose for the day," according to our source close to the investigation.

Haut de la Garenne staff described the trips as a treat for children who spent long hours cooped up at the home. But in reality the kids were subjected to the vilest sexual abuse on board the luxury boats.

Our source said: "The allegations about the yachting community have come in from a number of different people. It is a very strong line of inquiry and when the evidence is made public people will be horrified."

Meanwhile about a dozen bones found at the home have been sent to a DNA lab to find out how old they are —yet some bone fragments were too burnt to be tested.

Police have taken statements from local builders who were told: "If you find bones, get rid of them or burn them." New blood spots have been discovered in cracks in a concrete bath in the underground chamber and have also been sent for tests and sniffer dogs trained to find blood have found scents in the drains underneath.

Forensic officers are now focusing on the wooden trapdoor leading to a second torture cellar in a bid to extract DNA or fingerprints.

Our source said: "Detectives are doing everything they can to ensure every scrap of evidence is properly investigated. They are very aware that the home dates back to 1856 and some of these bones could be very old.

"This is going to be a long process but the officers have been presented with so many accounts of abuse and cover-ups it is crucial we get answers. People disclosing the abuse have been easy to ignore but finally they are getting a chance to be taken seriously."



Go to 12948
http://www.funnymoneyreport.com/news.php?id=7465
The Federal Reserve Is Destroying America
03-17-2008
www.funnymoneyreport.com
Lee Rogers

It is incredible to see the rampant devaluation of the U.S. Dollar. The Federal Reserve just hours ago made a rare cut of 25 basis points during the weekend which will cause even more inflation. Gold immediately moved up $20 an ounce and the U.S. Dollar Index plunged under 71 in international trading. If this type of market activity continues the U.S. Dollar will have no value in a few months. While it is probably unlikely that we will see a hyper-inflationary collapse of the U.S. Dollar within the next few months, these policies are entirely unsustainable. If the Federal Reserve does not move to defend the value of the U.S. Dollar we will eventually see a hyper-inflationary collapse and worldwide financial turmoil. This view is also shared by other well respected financial analysts. Peter Schiff recently raised concerns about a hyper-inflationary collapse of the U.S. Dollar, Robert Reich a former Clinton cabinet member believes we are facing a depression and Alan Greenspan the man who caused this whole mess wrote in the Financial Times stating that we are facing the worst financial crisis since World War II. What’s amazing is that the Federal Reserve isn’t even trying to protect the U.S. Dollar because all they care about is saving the power of their private banking cartel. They don’t care about the U.S. Dollar nor do they care about the country itself. They are destroying this country through their actions and there needs to be an investigation into the controllers of this bank.

Alan Greenspan saying that we are facing the worst financial crisis since World War II is like a killer returning to the scene of their crime and explaining the results of their crime. Greenspan recently told nations in the Gulf to drop their currency pegs to the U.S. Dollar which encouraged a further drop in the U.S. Dollar. Greenspan’s Financial Times article will cause an even greater acceleration in the collapse of the currency. As the former head of the Federal Reserve, his comments still hold a great deal of importance with people around the world. This means that his comments can literally move the value of the U.S. Dollar one way or another. It is incredibly sick how Greenspan can get away with creating the current crisis we face with his low interest rate policies earlier this decade and analyze the problems that are occurring today that were a result of his own policies with no criticism from the corporate controlled media.

JP Morgan announced that it is completing its buyout of Bear Stearns marking further consolidation in the financial industry. Last Friday, the Federal Reserve with JP Morgan stepped in and bailed them out from going out of business. This was an unprecedented move by the Federal Reserve stepping in and bailing out a failed financial institution.

JP Morgan will buy Bear Stearns for $2 a share which is amazing considering that this stock was trading for around $50 a share just weeks ago. There’s also talk that Lehman Brothers and other large financial institutions might be facing a similar fate.

The U.S. Mint announced that it wants to start melting pennies using steel. According to the U.S. Mint it is now costing them 2 cents to produce every penny and 10 cents to produce every dime. Instead of targeting the real problem which is the Federal Reserve, they’ve decided they want to change the melt content of the coins which completely ignores what’s really happening. The U.S. Mint should be questioning the irrational policies of the Federal Reserve which has caused inflation to run out of control. It’s the Federal Reserve that is causing the metal prices to cost more which is resulting in the production cost of the coins to skyrocket. This is not very difficult to figure out.

There’s no question that inflation is out of control in this country considering that gold, silver, oil and food prices are skyrocketing. In order to provide even more liquidity for the banks, the Federal Reserve made a rare 25 basis point rate cut over the weekend and are poised to potentially cut rates again this week even as early as tomorrow. This is going to be catastrophic for the U.S. Dollar.

With all this going on it is amazing to see characters like George W. Bush and Henry Paulson state that the economy is doing just fine and not to worry about what’s happening. White House Press Secretary Dana Perino also stated at a recent press conference that she is not allowed to talk about the value of the U.S. Dollar and that all questions pertaining to the U.S. Dollar needs to be directed towards the U.S. Treasury. Of course Paulson the U.S. Treasury Secretary has absolutely no control over the value of the U.S. Dollar because that responsibility lies with the Federal Reserve since they set interest rates and fix the value of the currency. Amazingly when Ben Bernanke the head of the Federal Reserve testified in front of Congress, he directed any questions about the value of the U.S. Dollar to the U.S. Treasury despite the fact that he controls the value of money through their policies. This is absurd. They treat us like we are a bunch of idiots, and this is an obvious attempt by the establishment not to talk about the collapsing currency which is one of the biggest issues of the day right now.

There are even tent cities popping up in California. Of course the Federal Reserve can spend billions to bailout banks, but they won’t help the average middle class homeowner that might be thrown out into the streets as a result of what they did through their policies. When will people understand that the Federal Reserve is a private central bank that is merely looking to preserve the interests of the banking cartel?

Bush has confirmed that he will be meeting with the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets otherwise known as the Plunge Protection Team this week. There's no doubt that this will be an important meeting considering the recent events in the financial markets. It is clear that this group stepped in today to suppress the gold price. After a $20 spike during international trading, gold has lost all of its gains and the U.S. Dollar has seen an amazing recovery. This is totally ridiculous considering the combination of the Bear Stearns news, Greenspan’s outlook in the Financial Times and the rate cut. These people generally step in to move the price of gold down on days when you would normally expect it to move higher in price and today was no exception. Even the most novice of investors can understand that this type of activity makes absolutely no sense without market manipulation.

At this point it seems pretty certain that we are facing an inflationary depression. What’s awful is that much of this is being done by design. The Federal Reserve would prefer to save the banking cartel instead of doing what’s best for the American people. A stable U.S. Dollar would be what’s best for the American people but of course they aren’t moving in that direction. It is likely that we are seeing the start of a domino collapse in the U.S. financial system and it's going to get ugly. If you haven’t bought gold or silver already you are completely insane. In the next few years we may very well see a point in time where you can buy an ounce of gold for the same value as the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Only when we reach close to those levels will we know that we might be near a top in the gold price and even that is being conservative considering what’s happening.



Go to 12947
http://www.rense.com/general50/over50.htm
The Overthrow Of The
American Republic - Part 50
Viet Nam, Madrid, & The Reversal Of War Policy
By Sherman H. Skolnick
3-16-4

Suppose you put your ear to the ground and heard something a-coming, from afar off. Would that foresight make you rich and famous? Depending on the historic era, you might get widely heckled, if not condemned, by your countrymen. Why? Because opposing the common wisdom of the times can be greatly misunderstood.

It was 1967 and the Viet Nam conflict was approaching full boil. In the Spring of that year was a sensational series of articles, principally in the New York Times. Other publications and media outlets pretty much ignored it. Documents were uncovered showing the American CIA was widely controlling various supposedly dissident and other domestic groups.

The CIA funds were funneled through three layers,
technically described as conduits, pass-throughs, and fronts.
[Well equipped public Libraries have a set of volumes, called New York Time Index, summarizing articles, year by year. If the Library still have the one for 1967, you can review a summary of the CIA items listing many of the Foundations implicated.]

Much later, Kennedy Administration left-over U.S. Attorney General, Robert Kennedy, was privately accused of causing these disclosures. Some later claimed it let to his political assassination in 1968, blamed, as usual, on a "lone assassin".

Sensing a break-through, we grabbed up copies of public records, before they would become "unavailable", to trace what groups claiming to be dissidents were fronting for the American secret political police. It enabled us to later show that the so-called American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU, had become defunct in 1967, and had been quietly bought out by a spy agency operation, the Roger Baldwin Foundation. Yet, the press even now refers to them as the American Civil Liberties Union, a non-existent organization.

[About 1990, the Nation Magazine, funded in part by CIA Foundation funds, ran a story about CIA's competitor, the FBI. Namely that for many years after World War Two, the ACLU was a spy-front for the FBI. Ha! Ha! That was one way of the CIA sticking it to the FBI.]

As to the New York Times 1967 series, the records in question were IRS Form 990-A, for foundations, which unlike the income tax returns of corporations and individuals have to be a public record. The records are kept by the District boss of the IRS in the district the foundation shows as a headquarters. For 50 cents a page or so, the IRS office supposedly has to furnish you copies. [A private research group, Donors Forum, with offices in major U.S. cities, over the years were among those which kept copies of some of these Forms.]

[Scroll way down our website www.skolnicksreport.com for story "A Short History of CIA Fronts".]

In the same year 1967, was a huge supposedly peacenik-type convention in Chicago. Called "The New Politics", it was convened at a fancy old hotel, the Palmer House, that strangely charged a knock-down rate of eight dollars a day for rooms for those registering for the convention and staying at the hotel.

The brains behind the affair was a local political analyst guru, Don Rose, a likeable fellow with a full-mouth of rhetoric sympathetic to naive anti-war types. Not known to us at the time, his then father-in-law was a top official of the wire-service, United Press International. (Several years later UPI's internal documents, showing the CIA link, fell into our possession.)

There was too much strange money behind the week-long gabfest. Present with his seemingly peace-loving mouthing-off was Rennard C. Davis, called "Rennie", a cute way to make him acceptable. Not known at the time, he was the son of a Frenchmen with links to the French CIA, and the elder Davis became the top advisor in the White House, after 1968, to then President Richard M. Nixon. And note our earlier stories in this series how the French CIA infiltrated the Dallas plot to assassinate President Kennedy, took secret films of the happening, and have used it ever since to blackmail favors out of the U.S.

Years later we uncovered that Don Rose was reportedly financed by a CIA-linked foundation. (In 1969, when I got a few minutes on the local TV, fingering him and Rennie, Don Rose ended up persuading me to allow him to visit me in my home, where he threatened harm against me, such as if I did not shut up, he would see to it that the media would never cover my viewpoints of court reform or anything else.)

In 1967, anyone with something to say to his fellow citizens was at the mercy of the monopoly press. In Chicago, to be acceptable to local media, dissidents had to go through Don Rose. No Internet, no radio talk shows were widely functioning, no public access Cable TV. Just the liars and whores of the press.

At the New Politics convention, I sensed a reversal coming, of the national and international policy of the U.S. as to the Viet Nam War. The "powers that be", the Establishment, the Ruling Class---THEM---wanted somewhere in the future to extricate themselves from the blunder. Instead, they wanted to explore offshore Viet Nam for oil.

Every time I tried to speak up at the huge public gathering in the Ball Room of the fancy old Hotel, I was snubbed, shouted down, and threatened to be shoved out. Known supposed peace-nik leaders did not allow any real questions to be asked.

In 1968, occurred a widely misunderstood event. It was the confrontation of anti-war types with the Chicago Police, at the August gathering in the Windy City of the Democratic Convention. The Democrat Party candidate for President, Hubert Humphrey, and his supporters were discredited by the commotions, in front of the Conrad Hilton Hotel where many Democrats were staying, and commotions with the police, across the street in Grant Park.

Who noticed the real activities of straw boss Don Rose? Some claim they saw him go from the anti-war paraders into the Police lines. If true, what side was HE on? To enrage the police, the peaceniks, egged on by government agents provocateurs, in the Park threw bags of excrement at tthe police.

Later, a group supposedly orchestrating the violent disturbances were indicted on the new Federal Criminal charges, crossing state lines to incite riots. They were later called "The Chicago 7", Rennie Davis, Thomas Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and others. [Their federal jury conviction was over-turned when one of the jurors, reportedly with a CIA-funded research group, wrote or revealed a behind the scenes report of what went on with the jury deliberations.]

I did speak at College lectures and other gatherings, about the situation by which the CIA-funded peaceniks helped install Nixon. The result? Chicago U.S. District Judge Julius Hoffman, criminal trial judge in the "Chicago 7" trial, demanded I come to his court chambers to talk to him. There he insisted that I stop publicly discussing the CIA-link to the "Chicago 7". He tried to persuade me that it made him look foolish and that I should not want to harm him as the Judge, as he told me some of his personal anecdotes to try to make me soft-hearted as to him as Judge and once top official of the Brunswick Company, maker of bowling machine equipment (which I always believed was part of the mafia).

I tried to be heard but obviously failed. The spy-riddled, oil-soaked monopoly press was not interested in anythiing I was prepared to say and show. I claimed that the whole event was staged by the American CIA to discredit the Democrat candidate for President and help install Nixon as President, to rule the U.S. with an iron-fist, Fascist-style.

After 1968, as I repeatedly tried to publicly confront Rennie to ask questions about the massive spy agency funding supporting what he and the others did. The outcome? I was either repeatedly pushed away by security patrols or actually arrested. In 1972, I finally walked onto the set of a live, not taped, TV show in Chicago. Dragging myself forward on my braces and crutches, I demanded that Rennie, the
tv guest, be asked specific questions about his CIA funding, such as a quarter million dollars from the Roger Baldwin Foundation, CIA successor to the ACLU. The TV station went off the air with the program as eighteen police arrived to arrest me for trespass.

At the later criminal trial, I beat the charges by locating, and subpoenaing the CIA Station Chief FOR CHICAGO. Under their Charter, THEY are not supposed to have DOMESTIC operations. At other times, however, into the 1970s, I was repeatedly threatened with arrest when I confronted Rennie, Hayden, and others of the "Chicago 7".

By 1970, I became a political assassination researcher. I used to talk publicly how the press seldom paid attention to how Rennie Davis "The French Connection", frequently flew to Paris, to meet the widow of the Saigon premier, Madame Ngu. I found out that she was a principal financier of Rennie and the supposed "Peace Movement" leadership which, as I stated, helped install Nixon in the Oval Office.

I also knew and publicly discussed that Madame Ngu had a motive to arrange the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. There were secret reports that Kennedy, himself a Catholic, ordered for geopolitical reasons, the murder of her husband and other family members, themselves devout Catholics. It is a violation of Vatican Doctrine, punishable by death at the hands of Jesuits, for one Catholic leader to attack and murder other Catholic leaders. And remember, JFK and brother Bobby were repeatedly plotting to invade Cuba, a Catholic nation, and assassinate Fidel Castro, a Jesuit.

Madame Ngu had huge funds available to her, as the head of the dope cartel in Southeast Asia, "The Golden Triangle", going back to the time when the area was called French Indo-China. A Burmese General gave a video-taped interview. He stated that his business partners in the dope trafficking were George Herbert Walker Bush, General Colin Powell, and Powell's sidekick, Richard Armitage. That they arranged to build a road through the jungles, for the General to be able to easily ship the dope product. and the Bush Crime Family to supervise the worldwide trafficking of the same.

In 1971, Daniel Ellsberg, a reputed CIA "darling", somehow was given the "Pentagon Papers", telling revealing and incriminating details of the Viet Nam disaster. He planted copies with the New York Times and others. The Justice Department sought an injunction against the newspapers publishing the same. The case came up before a CIA-linked Federal Judge, New York U.S. District Judge Murray I. Gurfein, had previously been with the predecessor group to CIA, being the OSS. The American secret political poilice wanted to save the "powers that be" from further trouble, so the case ended up before the U.S. Supreme Court, trumpet and enforcers of the Aristocracy, that refused to block the documents from being revealed. This was part of the turning point to force the U.S. out of Viet Nam, 1975.

Now a book relating to Madame Ngu and what she was into, has been published. "The Triangle of Death---the Role of South Viet Nam and the French Mafia in the Assassination of JFK" by L.E. Seymour and Bradley S. O'Leary, November, 2003, World Net Daily Books (www.worldnetdaily.com). They purport to have a document showing the CIA, several days after the Dallas murder, had several of the French mafia Dallas shooters in custody and had them flown to safety out of the U.S.

[Eventually, we intend to post ON-LINE our entire report on the "Chicago 7" and the CIA which we issued in 1972.]

Disguised by a dust-storm of lies, the monopoly press would have us believe "The Arabs Did It!" as to the March 11, 2004 violence in Madrid. The bloodshed in the U.S. on September 11, 2001, orchestrated by high-level U.S. military with the White House, was a turning point to give the occupant and resident of the Oval Office, George W. Bush, Fascist-like powers, cancelling the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. "9-11" was likewise falsely blamed on the Arabs who were just patsies, the violence New York and at the Pentagon being a home-grown product.

The invasion of Iraq seems to be coming to a turning point, sort of like the Viet Nam War. Have we forgotten what happened? There was in Viet Nam growing dissident within the U.S. "grunts", the ground troops. When ordered to go as point man on night patrol, they told their Lt. HE should be point man and go home, as often happened too much, in a body bag. When he refused, they threw a grenade into his tent, "fragging", and said, if he survived, "Lt., your V.C. laundry woman did it!"

Prior to the pre-emptive U.S. atttack, without a Declaration of War by Congress, against Iraq, there were huge anti-war parades in London, Paris, Germany, and Spain, and elsewhere as well. Now the Madrid terrible railroad bombing bloodshed, may be the beginning of the turning point, to extricate the American Establishment from their Iraq "adventure". Is U.S. national and international policy going into the reversal mode? Will THIS mean the throwaway, by the British/American Aristocracy of their scapegoat and stooge, George W. Bush, and maybe, even Daddy Bush, Jeb, Neil, and Marvin as well?

Do we all understand that the Aristocracy does not cry or lose sleep when they order vast bloodshed to carry out their national and international policies? Or when they order the reversal of failed policies?

Despite everything said about the Madrid violence by the pressfakers, it may turn out to be, like Viet Nam, post-Nixon, a turning point where the U.S. Ruling Class wants to extricate themselves, to be either blaming their stooge and scapegoat, George W. Bush, for a financial and military calamity, used to instigate some other trick or surprise event.



Go to 12946
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=8239
Voice of the White house March 17, 2008

TBR New.org – March 17, 2008

“’Things fall apart/ the center cannot hold…” this is from Yeats’ poem, the Second Coming but it can certainly apply now. The enormous fake mortgage racket is bringing down some of the most important banks, lending houses and corporations in America . The crooked brokers have long since banked their loot out of the country and fled jurisdictions, leaving their knowing crime partners, the big banking houses, behind to take the growing heat. What is coming? The collapse of the national credit system, to include credit cards. Many Americans have been living on their credit cards, running up huge bills that they would deal with when they reupped their mortgages. That stopped and now their houses are maxed out and if they were able to find a buyer who could even get a loan, the house is now worth less than the mortgage so if they sold, they would still owe the banks. That’s why people are walking away from their over-extended homes, their bloated mortgages and their credit cards. Now, we have building scandals in the government areas. Some nice party has a trove of incriminating documents, spirited out of the CIA by an old-time agent and about to be put up on the Internet. I have read some of this material and it makes the hair stand up on the back of the neck. The net result of all this destroys the confidence of the public to such a degree that it will take many years to rebuild the lost trust.”
www.tbrnews.org/Archives/a2824.htm



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Dear Lou Dobbs, Who Owns the Federal Reserve?
Jesse Richard – UPATED: Tuesday, 18 March 2008


It is well that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning." - Henry Ford

May I suggest that everyone who reads this message send a letter to Lou Dobbs, Mr. American Middle Class Champion, and ask him to explain exactly who owns the Federal Reserve and why we allow the Federal Reserve to continue to control our entire economy. Then ask him why he, and everyone else in the media, have refused to explain this to the American people.

As Lou says every day: It's time for answers!

Write to Lou Dobbs here:
www.cnn.com/feedback/forms/form5.html?9

The real answer to this question is that the Federal Reserve is like a big Mafia loan shark. It owns our nation in the same way a loan shark owns his "clients!" There is absolutely no difference between the two.

No matter what the situation, whenever there is news related to the Federal Reserve a big, loud, coordinated, conspiratorial lie of omission is committed by every single news outlet in our nation. What is this lie? It is keeping up the false impression that the Federal Reserve is part of our government! The Fed is a private, for profit bank, that controls our government and economy. They control the money supply, inflation, depression, recessions, etc. They are not accountable to Congress, the executive branch or anyone in government.

The revolutionary war was started primarily to get away from a similar situation in England where the Bank of England held the same control over their nation. Revolutionaries realized this and they put an end to it. Unfortunately some traitors in the Senate reversed our true liberation and now we have a private bank controlling our personal financial status.

Let me ask you a simple question: what country in its right mind would create a system that would force it to lend itself money and have to repay the money WITH INTEREST? What country would charge itself interest? What nation would put itself out of business by making it bankrupt because of interest? The answer is none! America is not charging itself interest on its debt, the privately owned central bankers are doing this and they are hiding in plain sight! Congress (with the exception of Ron Paul), every US president and every single member of the corporate media are either part of the conspiracy or just plain stupid!

Two presidents tried to stop this outrage, and they were both assassinated. Lincoln was set to bypass the central banks in order to finance the Civil War. The banks were going to charge him 24-36% interest on the loans. So Lincoln had Congress pass a law authorizing the printing of full legal tender. These treasury notes would be used to finance the war. Lincoln wrote: "... (we) gave the people of this Republic the greatest blessing they have ever had - their own paper money to pay their own debts..." Now go and research the person who supposedly killed Lincoln and how he relates to bankers.

After Lincoln was assassinated Congress revoked the Greenback Law and enacted the National Banking Act. The national banks were to be privately owned and the national bank notes they issued were to be interest-bearing. The Act also provided that the Greenbacks should be retired from circulation as soon as they came back to the Treasury in payment of taxes.

John F. Kennedy was the next brave man to take on the Federal Reserve. On June 4, 1963, President Kennedy signed a Presidential Executive Order 11110. This order virtually stripped the Federal Reserve Bank of its power to loan money to the United States Government at interest. Kennedy declared the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank would soon be out of business. This order gave the Treasury Department the authority to issue silver certificates against any silver in the treasury. This executive order still stands today. No president since has had the courage to invoke it for it would mean their demise. The US government is a front for the real controllers; the central bankers.

Debt keeps the central banks in control of the world. Nations that eliminate their debt end up on the hit list. When you see nations "liberated" by the US or its allies what normally follows is a central bank extending loans to these liberated nations. The World Bank always comes to the rescue. What a joke this is like having a loan shark come to the rescue of someone who needs food money for his kids!

War is the single biggest money making business for the central bankers. Nations go into tremendous debt to finance war. Interestingly enough, but in no way surprising to those of us who know better, the architects of both Vietnam and the Iraq invasion both went on to become the head of the World Bank; Robert McNamara and Paul Wolfowitz. It is the central banks that push the world towards military conflict.

Look at your money; it say "Federal Reserve Note!" It is not an American government currency backed by an asset. It is fiat currency backed by nothing. The Federal Reserve lends these notes to the government, with interest! What a scam! How do we permit this? Oh, I know, we permit this because most people don't know about it...thanks to the criminals in the media. For if the people knew, perhaps Henry Ford's words would ring true and we would indeed take to the streets to stop this crime!

The Federal Reserve is a private bank that owns the sole right to dictate monetary policy for our nation. As a matter of fact shortly after George W. Bush was placed in office by very powerful people, not by the electorate, the Federal Reserve announced that they would no longer report how much money was being printed. Imagine that! Well you don't have to imagine that because it happened, and your media did not tell you about it, and your Congress sat quiet. Americans let this happen because Americans are pretty much stupid people. They laugh at intelligent people as they dedicate themselves to being suckers who worship a little flag as opposed to a legitimate government.

This is the biggest scam and conspiracy on our planet and we must make this part of our daily discussion. Ask questions, and DEMAND answers!

Please start by writing to Lou Dobbs!
www.cnn.com/feedback/forms/form5.html?9

Think about it!

REFERENCES:

* THE MONEY MASTERS
* THE SECRET BIRTH OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE
* Money As Debt

UPDATE: Some people have commented that the president of the United States appoints the head of the Federal Reserve and that is proof that the Fed is indeed part of the government. Well people, the president does present his selection to Congress for approval...but that selection comes from a list of candidates given to him by the Federal Reserve!!! It's a show, people!

Kids...this is not a joke. It is also not a secret. It is public record...not a theory. The Fed is a private for profit bank that does not answer to Congress or the President and it is unconstitutional. It is another responsibility given to Congress by our Constitution that has been ignored or illegally assigned elsewhere by Congress; just as the power to declare war has been signed over to George W. Bush. Look it up...take a minute...this is a huge issue and one that should not be dismissed so quickly because you just became aware of it by reading a blog. Go do some homework. I did...now help me take back our nation! I am fighting for YOU! The least you can do is check your facts before you dismiss what I have written.
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http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2008/3054
Ohio's voting machines are now an official crime scene
by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
March 17, 2008

At least 15 touch-screen voting machines that produced improbable numbers in Ohio's 2006 statewide election are now under double-lock in an official crime scene. And the phony "Homeland Security Alert" used by Republicans to build up George W. Bush's 2004 vote count in a key southwestern Ohio county has come under new scrutiny.

The touch-screen machines were locked up after Ohio's new Democratic Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, tried to vote last fall. On November 6, she spotted a gray bar with the words "candidate withdrawn" in a slot where the name of Democrat Jay Perez should have appeared. Her husband, voting nearby, told her Perez's name did appear, as it was supposed to, on his machine.

Perez had been a candidate in the race for Franklin County Municipal Judge. He withdrew his name after the county had finalized its ballots. But it now appears the ES&S machines left his name on some machines but not on others. Perez, a Democrat, wanted to avoid playing a spoiler in the race. But the appearance of his name on some machines may have helped Republican David Tyack win.

Brunner now worries that the state will never find out what happened. County election officials ordered the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation to seize the machines. Ohio Attorney General Mark Dann is conducting an investigation that may cost the state $48,000. Brunner recently told WVKO 1580AM radio: "When you're talking about democracy, it's priceless." In another interview with the Columbus Dispatch, Brunner noted "This is a huge problem. There is great concern that not every voter has the same ballot."

Ironically, Brunner requested a paper ballot in the March 4, 2008, primary, but a poorly trained poll worker gave her a provisional ballot instead. Two other staffers from her office were also given the wrong ballots. Brunner has since pledged to upgrade the training for Buckeye State poll workers.

Brunner further announced that she's banning the practice of so-called "sleepovers" where poll workers take the programmable and easily hackable voting machines home with them overnight prior to an election day.

Brunner succeeded Republican J. Kenneth Blackwell as Ohio's Secretary of State. She has vowed to make sure the Buckeye State does not repeat the experience of 2004, when Blackwell choreographed the theft of Ohio's 20 electoral votes for George W. Bush, giving him a second term in the White House. Since taking office Brunner has vowed to shift the entire state to voting on paper ballots, a move being fiercely resisted by numerous Republican-controlled Boards of Elections throughout the state. Thus far Brunner has forced the resignations of BOE chairs in two of Ohio's most populous cities, Cleveland and Columbus.

Matt Damschroder was removed as Franklin County Board of Elections Director on the Sunday prior to Ohio's 2008 primary election. Damschroder was previously suspended for a month without pay for accepting a $10,000 check from a voting machine salesman at the BOE building. The check, made out to the Republican Party, was delivered on the day the state's contracts for electronic voting machines were open for bidding. Damschroder was former chair of the Franklin County Republican Party and the state's leading foe of paper ballots. "Damschroder was very opposed to paper ballots and was stoking the fire against them," Brunner told WVKO.

Dennis White, the new director of the Franklin County BOE was skeptical of the masking problem, but says if it happened, "it's huge. We have a federal election coming up this November," according to the Dispatch. White, who admits to having little knowledge of computers, is the former Ohio Democratic Party Chair.

That election may once again hinge on Ohio's vote count. In 2006, Franklin County officials failed to conduct mandated tests on each machine, instead testing only one machine per precinct on a random bases. A report by SysTest Labs, a Colorado consulting firm, confirmed that what Brunner saw on her machine was "exactly what you'd see if someone masked a name," the Dispatch reported.

Investigators also found that the "audit logs" on the voting machines were turned off by a board programmer in April, 2007, which has hindered investigators from reconstructing software changes. White says the vendor told a board employee how to disable the auditing system, allegedly to speed programming. Brunner said other vendors told her that "You're never supposed to tell a (client) how to do that."

In the primary this past March, the BOE allegedly did test all Franklin County's machines. But some counties ran out of Democratic paper ballots as an influx of apparently Republican and Republican-leaning independents flooded the polls, apparently to vote for Hillary Clinton.

Meanwhile, the Cincinnati Enquirer has reported that a "casual conversation" between a "friendly" FBI agent and the county emergency services director in a parking lot may have contributed to the phony Homeland Security alert that prompted the Warren County BOE to lockdown the vote count in the 2004 election. The BOE declared the emergency and then moved the ballots from the publicly designated vote center to a nearby unauthorized warehouse. They also barred the public and media from witnessing the counting. Warren County, which is outside Cincinnati, then gave Bush 72% of the official vote count, far exceeding expectations. With neighboring Butler and Clermont Counties, Warren gave Bush a margin of 140,000 votes, which exceeded the 119,000 margin by which he allegedly won the election.

The Enquirer reports that "hundreds" of e-mailed complaints poured into the county BOE after the election, including one from an angry voter in the United Kingdom. "Stop destroying our democracy," said one voter from South Carolina.

The Free Press has previously reported that Warren County BOE employees were told on the Thursday prior to the 2004 election day, that there would be a Homeland Security threat on election day. An examination of the ballots by a Free Press investigation team uncovered numerous irregularities in the Warren County vote that helped give Bush the presidency again.

--
Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman co-authored HOW THE GOP STOLE AMERICA'S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008 (www.freepress.org) and, with Steve Rosenfeld, WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO from New Press.



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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88123868&ft=1&f=1001
Stem-Cell Therapy in China Draws Foreign Patients
by Louisa Lim
March 18, 2008 · China is gaining popularity among a new breed of travelers: patients with incurable conditions who are visiting the country to receive experimental stem-cell treatments not offered in the United States.

One company is now claiming a medical breakthrough, advertising that its treatments are restoring vision to blind children. It has ignited a firestorm of controversy in both China and in the U.S.

Giving Parents a New Option

Jena Teague and her husband Terry Williams are among these new visitors. They traveled to China to seek stem-cell treatment for their blind, 7-month-old baby daughter, Laylah. She was born with optic nerve hypoplasia, or ONH — when the optic nerves fail to develop properly in the womb. Conventional medicine offers no treatment and no cure.

But Teague came across a Web site about stem-cell treatments offered by Beike Biotechnology in China and decided to try it — against advice from specialists at home in Georgia.

"None of the specialists had heard of the stem cells, of what they're doing here. They didn't believe it would work. They told me not to expect anything to happen out of it," Teague says.

Nonetheless, the family traveled to the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou, where Beike is based. They are spending $23,000 for Laylah to have infusions of stem cells harvested from umbilical cords — not the more controversial embryonic stem cells. In the U.S., cord blood stem cells are used for treating blood diseases, but are not used for treating other conditions, such as Laylah's vision problem.

Treatment Seems to Yield Positive Results

After three sessions, Teague and Williams say the therapy is already working.

The doctors have told Laylah's parents that the baby now sees light through one eye, while the other eye is dilating almost to the point where she can see light.

So far, 10 patients suffering from ONH have received the same stem-cell treatment in China, and doctors there claim that the vision of all 10 improved after the therapy.

At age 5, Rylea Barlett also received the stem-cell treatment. She, too, had been blind before.

Dr. Shalesh Kaushal, an eye specialist at the University of Florida, examined Bartlett, who is now 6, after she returned to the U.S.

"This child had essentially no light perception, and upon returning she's had a gradual improvement — so much so that at our exam it appeared that she had formed vision," he says. "That is to say that she could at least recognize large letters."

Kaushal concluded that the stem-cell therapy was the only clinical explanation for her improvement. Some infants with ONH gain more vision spontaneously over the first few years of life, but Barlett was already too old for that.

Kaushal is now evaluating other patients before and after the stem-cell treatment. But he is not recommending that patients go to China; he says much more research needs to be done.

"It's clearly a provocative result. … If this is a real, reproducible observation or effect in other patients, one may consider it as a fundamental breakthrough," says Kaushal.

Reasons for Improvements Remain a Mystery

Dr. Sean Hu, the 40-year-old chairman of Beike Biotechnology, is a medical doctor-turned-entrepreneur with a doctorate in biochemistry from a Swedish university.

Less than three years ago, he set up Beike. Since then, 3,000 patients — most of them from China — have received Beike's stem-cell treatments for a wide range of conditions. He says 70 percent have seen improvements, but he admits he can't explain why.

"In the clinical areas, we know there are improvements. We don't know the mechanism behind it," Hu says.



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http://www.rense.com/general81/finan.htm
What You're Not Told
About The Financial Crisis
By Perry Willis
3-18-8

"As Americans we must always remember that we all have a common enemy, an enemy that is dangerous, powerful and relentless. I refer, of course, to the federal government." -- Dave Barry


You can watch hours and hours of news, or read columns of print in most newspapers, and come away no wiser about the causes and prospects for the current financial turmoil.

Most journalists and TV talking heads don't really understand the subject, and those that do speak and write using so much jargon that the average person must feel he or she is trying to follow a conversation in ancient Hebrew.

We're going to try to cut through the jargon, and explain the situation as best we can, in plain English. If you find our explanation of value, please forward it to others.

The current housing crisis, and all that flows from it, comes from two main sources, both deriving from Washington.

First, Congress passed something called the "Community Reinvestment Act" in 1977, resulting in the creation of bureaucratic regulations designed to encourage, or even compel, financial institutions to make loans to people with lower incomes. These regulations were then amended in 1995 and 2005 to create different rules for institutions of different sizes, so that various kinds of institutions would be better able to meet the government's goals for fostering home ownership in lower income communities.

Second, the Federal Reserve starting making loans available to the banking system at extremely low interest rates.

Third, steps one and two combined to make cheap housing loans available to people who could not have afforded or qualified for them before. This caused an increased demand for housing that sent home prices spiralling upward.

Fourth, mortgage lenders managed the risk involved in making these loans by selling their mortgages to other companies, which in turn thought that they were managing their own risk because they had a wide variety of mortgages, from many different types of borrowers, in their portfolio.
Fifth, these decisions about how to manage the increased risk created by the "Community Reinvestment Act" were all in error, because the Fed's policy of easy money had falsely inflated the value of ALL homes. This meant that good mortgages could not be used to manage the risk involved in questionable mortgages, because the value of ALL homes was falsely inflated.

Sixth, as with all inflationary booms, increases in home prices finally absorbed the increased purchasing power provided by the Fed, leading to a slow-down in home purchases. When this moment arrived everyone realized that the homes they had purchased weren't really worth what they had paid for them. The defaults and foreclosures then began, along with the collapse of the financial institutions that owned these unsound mortgages.
Now, the complicated, multi-part scenario described above has been simplified in popular reporting to just two words: sub-prime loans. These two words, combined with the idea that lenders took advantage of poor unsuspecting customers, are supposed to explain everything. But this explanation is both simple and simply insufficient.

A study by the Mortgage Bankers Association tells the true story. In the third quarter of last year fixed rate mortgages accounted for 45% of foreclosures, while sub-prime ARMs accounted for only 43%.

It's not hard to understand why. Who wants to be on the hook for a mortgage that is tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars higher than the property is really worth? Rather than bear this burden, many borrowers are choosing to default, and walk away from their properties. This is especially happening with speculators who bought houses in order to "flip" them. To cope with these foreclosures . . .

Banks have offered their bad mortgages as collateral to borrow money from the Federal Reserve. The money the Fed lends through this process is created out of thin air. This has two shocking consequences. First, the Fed is coming to effectively own an increasing portion of America's stock of housing, and two, these Federal Reserve loans are inflating the money supply, causing prices to rise all through the economy.

As the Fed creates more and more new dollars, the value of all the previously existing dollars declines. This forces people to seek ways to protect their accumulated wealth against the devaluing effects of monetary inflation. Thus . . .

People buy other currencies, causing the exchange value of the dollar to fall
They buy gold, pushing the price up above $1,000 an ounce
And they buy oil futures, driving up those prices too
But it gets worse . . .

Monetary inflation is making foreign investors reluctant to buy U.S. Treasury bonds. Who wants to hold bonds denominated in dollars when the Federal Reserve is reducing the value of the dollar?

The "London Telegraph" reports that foreign participation at a recent auction of U.S. Treasury bonds fell from 25% to less than 6%.

Sadly, there is every reason to expect this phenomenon to continue. This will leave the Federal government with only two options for funding its ever growing deficits. The government must either pay much more interest on its bonds, to compensate lenders for the monetary inflation, or it must sell its bonds to the Federal Reserve System, which will buy the bonds with yet more money created out of thin air, adding still more fuel to the inflationary fire.

The more the Federal government has to pay in interest, the larger the deficits will grow, or, the more it borrows from the Federal Reserve, the more it will have to pay in interest to private lenders. It's a vicious bind.

There is one thing the Federal government could do immediately to lessen this bind. It could cut spending to balance its budget, thereby reducing inflationary pressures. Please use our "Unfunded Liabilities" campaign to ask Congress to do exactly that.

Use your personal comments to tell Congress that you know foreign participation in U.S. bond auctions is declining. Tell them you do not want them to sell their bonds to the Federal Reserve, thereby driving up the money supply. CONGRESS MUST BALANCE THE BUDGET NOW.

Perry Willis
Communications Director
DownsizeDC.org, Inc.



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The only lesson we ever learn is that we never learn

Robert Fisk – The Independent March 19, 2008

Five years on, and still we have not learnt. With each anniversary, the steps crumble beneath our feet, the stones ever more cracked, the sand ever finer. Five years of catastrophe in Iraq and I think of Churchill, who in the end called Palestine a "hell-disaster".

But we have used these parallels before and they have drifted away in the Tigris breeze. Iraq is swamped in blood. Yet what is the state of our remorse? Why, we will have a public inquiry – but not yet! If only inadequacy was our only sin.

Today, we are engaged in a fruitless debate. What went wrong? How did the people – the senatus populusque Romanus of our modern world – not rise up in rebellion when told the lies about weapons of mass destruction, about Saddam's links with Osama bin Laden and 11 September? How did we let it happen? And how come we didn't plan for the aftermath of war?

Oh, the British tried to get the Americans to listen, Downing Street now tells us. We really, honestly did try, before we absolutely and completely knew it was right to embark on this illegal war. There is now a vast literature on the Iraq debacle and there are precedents for post-war planning – of which more later – but this is not the point. Our predicament in Iraq is on an infinitely more terrible scale.

Explosions rock Baghdad 21 March, 2003.

As the Americans came storming up Iraq in 2003, their cruise missiles hissing through the sandstorm towards a hundred Iraqi towns and cities, I would sit in my filthy room in the Baghdad Palestine Hotel, unable to sleep for the thunder of explosions, and root through the books I'd brought to fill the dark, dangerous hours. Tolstoy's War and Peace reminded me how conflict can be described with sensitivity and grace and horror – I recommend the Battle of Borodino – along with a file of newspaper clippings. In this little folder, there was a long rant by Pat Buchanan, written five months earlier; and still, today I feel its power and its prescience and its absolute historical honesty: "With our MacArthur Regency in Baghdad, Pax Americana will reach apogee. But then the tide recedes, for the one endeavour at which Islamic people excel is expelling imperial powers by terror or guerrilla war.

"They drove the Brits out of Palestine and Aden, the French out of Algeria, the Russians out of Afghanistan, the Americans out of Somalia and Beirut, the Israelis out of Lebanon. We have started up the road to empire and over the next hill we will meet those who went before. The only lesson we learn from history is that we do not learn from history."

How easily the little men took us into the inferno, with no knowledge or, at least, interest in history. None of them read of the 1920 Iraqi insurgency against British occupation, nor of Churchill's brusque and brutal settlement of Iraq the following year.

On our historical radars, not even Crassus appeared, the wealthiest Roman general of all, who demanded an emperorship after conquering Macedonia – "Mission Accomplished" – and vengefully set forth to destroy Mesopotamia. At a spot in the desert near the Euphrates river, the Parthians – ancestors of present day Iraqi insurgents – annihilated the legions, chopped off Crassus's head and sent it back to Rome filled with gold. Today, they would have videotaped his beheading.

To their monumental hubris, these little men who took us to war five years ago now prove that they have learnt nothing. Anthony Blair – as we should always have called this small town lawyer – should be facing trial for his mendacity. Instead, he now presumes to bring peace to an Arab-Israeli conflict which he has done so much to exacerbate. And now we have the man who changed his mind on the legality of war – and did so on a single sheet of A4 paper – daring to suggest that we should test immigrants for British citizenship. Question 1, I contend, should be: Which blood-soaked British attorney general helped to send 176 British soldiers to their deaths for a lie? Question 2: How did he get away with it?

But in a sense, the facile, dumbo nature of Lord Goldsmith's proposal is a clue to the whole transitory, cardboard structure of our decision-making. The great issues that face us – be they Iraq or Afghanistan, the US economy or global warming, planned invasions or "terrorism" – are discussed not according to serious political timetables but around television schedules and press conferences.

Will the first air raids on Iraq hit prime-time television in the States? Mercifully, yes. Will the first US troops in Baghdad appear on the breakfast shows? Of course. Will Saddam's capture be announced by Bush and Blair simultaneously?.

But this is all part of the problem. True, Churchill and Roosevelt argued about the timing of the announcement that war in Europe had ended. And it was the Russians who pipped them to the post. But we told the truth. When the British were retreating to Dunkirk, Churchill announced that the Germans had "penetrated deeply and spread alarm and confusion in their tracks".

Why didn't Bush or Blair tell us this when the Iraqi insurgents began to assault the Western occupation forces? Well, they were too busy telling us that things were getting better, that the rebels were mere "dead-enders".

On 17 June 1940, Churchill told the people of Britain: "The news from France is very bad and I grieve for the gallant French people who have fallen into this terrible misfortune." Why didn't Blair or Bush tell us that the news from Iraq was very bad and that they grieved – even just a few tears for a minute or so – for the Iraqis?

For these were the men who had the temerity, the sheer, unadulterated gall, to dress themselves up as Churchill, heroes who would stage a rerun of the Second World War, the BBC dutifully calling the invaders "the Allies" – they did, by the way – and painting Saddam's regime as the Third Reich.

Of course, when I was at school, our leaders – Attlee, Churchill, Eden, Macmillan, or Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy in the United States – had real experience of real war. Not a single Western leader today has any first-hand experience of conflict. When the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq began, the most prominent European opponent of the war was Jacques Chirac, who fought in the Algerian conflict. But he has now gone. So has Colin Powell, a Vietnam veteran but himself duped by Rumsfeld and the CIA.

Yet one of the terrible ironies of our times is that the most bloodthirsty of American statesmen – Bush and Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfovitz – have either never heard a shot fired in anger or have ensured they did not have to fight for their country when they had the chance to do so. No wonder Hollywood titles like "Shock and Awe" appeal to the White House. Movies are their only experience of human conflict; the same goes for Blair and Brown.

Churchill had to account for the loss of Singapore before a packed House. Brown won't even account for Iraq until the war is over.

It is a grotesque truism that today – after all the posturing of our political midgets five years ago – we might at last be permitted a valid seance with the ghosts of the Second World War. Statistics are the medium, and the room would have to be dark. But it is a fact that the total of US dead in Iraq (3,978) is well over the number of American casualties suffered in the initial D-Day landings at Normandy (3,384 killed and missing) on 6 June, 1944, or more than three times the total British casualties at Arnhem the same year (1,200).

They count for just over a third of the total fatalities (11,014) of the entire British Expeditionary Force from the German invasion of Belgium to the final evacuation at Dunkirk in June 1940. The number of British dead in Iraq – 176 – is almost equal to the total of UK forces lost at the Battle of the Bulge in 1944-45 (just over 200). The number of US wounded in Iraq – 29,395 – is more than nine times the number of Americans injured on 6 June (3,184) and more than a quarter of the tally for US wounded in the entire 1950-53 Korean war (103,284).

Iraqi casualties allow an even closer comparison to the Second World War. Even if we accept the lowest of fatality statistics for civilian dead – they range from 350,000 up to a million – these long ago dwarfed the number of British civilian dead in the flying-bomb blitz on London in 1944-45 (6,000) and now far outnumber the total figure for civilians killed in bombing raids across the United Kingdom – 60,595 dead, 86,182 seriously wounded – from 1940 to 1945.

Indeed, the Iraqi civilian death toll since our invasion is now greater than the total number of British military fatalities in the Second World War, which came to an astounding 265,000 dead (some histories give this figure as 300,000) and 277,000 wounded. Minimum estimates for Iraqi dead mean that the civilians of Mesopotamia have suffered six or seven Dresdens or – more terrible still – two Hiroshimas.

Yet in a sense, all this is a distraction from the awful truth in Buchanan's warning. We have dispatched our armies into the land of Islam. We have done so with the sole encouragement of Israel, whose own false intelligence over Iraq has been discreetly forgotten by our masters, while weeping crocodile tears for the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have died.

America's massive military prestige has been irreparably diminished. And if there are, as I now calculate, 22 times as many Western troops in the Muslim world as there were at the time of the 11th and 12th century Crusades, we must ask what we are doing. Are we there for oil? For democracy? For Israel? For fear of weapons of mass destruction? Or for fear of Islam?

We blithely connect Afghanistan to Iraq. If only Washington had not become distracted by Iraq, so the narrative now goes, the Taliban could not have re-established themselves. But al-Qa'ida and the nebulous Osama bin Laden were not distracted. Which is why they expanded their operations into Iraq and then used this experience to assault the West in Afghanistan with the hitherto – in Afghanistan – unheard of suicide bomber.

And I will hazard a terrible guess: that we have lost Afghanistan as surely as we have lost Iraq and as surely as we are going to "lose" Pakistan. It is our presence, our power, our arrogance, our refusal to learn from history and our terror – yes, our terror – of Islam that is leading us into the abyss. And until we learn to leave these Muslim peoples alone, our catastrophe in the Middle East will only become graver. There is no connection between Islam and "terror". But there is a connection between our occupation of Muslim lands and "terror". It's not too complicated an equation. And we don't need a public inquiry to get it right.



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