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!

Use your Go Back and Go Forward commands to get to where you were in a previous file.

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Highest Go To numbers are the latest Links of all coruption pages.


Go to 13371
http://www.roguegovernment.com/news.php?id=9104
Einstein: Religion Is Childish
05-13-2008
Canadian Press

LONDON — A letter being auctioned in London this week is sure to add fuel to the long-simmering debate about the religious views of Albert Einstein.

In the note, written a year before his death, the Nobel prize-winning physicist dismisses the idea of God as the product of human weakness and the Bible as "pretty childish." The letter, handwritten in German, is being sold by Bloomsbury Auctions on Thursday.

It is expected to fetch between $12,000 and $16,000.

Einstein, who helped unravel the mysteries of the universe with his theory of relativity often expressed complex and arguably contradictory views on faith.

He apparently perceived a universe suffused with spirituality while rejecting organized religion.

The letter up for sale, was written to philosopher Eric Gutkind in January 1954 and suggests that Einstein's view on religion did not mellow with age.

In it, Einstein said that "the word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish."

"For me," he added, "the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions."

Addressing the idea that the Jews are God's chosen people, Einstein wrote that "the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people."

"As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them."

Bloomsbury spokesman Richard Caton said the auction house was "100 per cent certain" of the letter's authenticity. It is being offered at auction for the first time, by a private vendor.

John Brooke, emeritus professor of science and religion at Oxford University, said the letter lends weight to the notion that "Einstein was not a conventional theist" - although he was not an atheist, either.

"Like many great scientists of the past, he is rather quirky about religion, and not always consistent from one period to another," Brooke said.

Born to a Jewish family in Germany in 1879, Einstein said he went through a devout phase as a child before beginning to question conventional religion at the age of 12.

In later life, he expressed a sense of wonder at the universe and its mysteries - what he called a "cosmic religious feeling" - and famously said: "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."

But, he also said: "I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil. My God created laws that take care of that. His universe is not ruled by wishful thinking, but by immutable laws."

Brooke said Einstein believed that "there is some kind of intelligence working its way through nature. But it is certainly not a conventional Christian or Judaic religious view."

Einstein's most famous legacy is the special theory of relativity, which makes the point that a large amount of energy could be released from a tiny amount of matter. The theory changed the face of physics, allowing scientists to make predictions about space and paving the way for nuclear power and the atomic bomb.

Einstein's musings on science, war, peace and God helped make him world famous, and his scientific legacy prompted Time magazine to name him its Person of the 20th Century.



Go to 13370
http://www.realjewnews.com/?p=198
WHY JEWS FEAR PUTIN AS PRIME MINISTER
THE JEWISH CONTROLLED American media paints Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as an evil demagogue.

Here is an example from Time Magazine’s A Tzar Is Born December 2007 article:

— “No one is born with a stare like Vladimir Putin’s. His pale blue eyes are so devoid of emotion that the stare must have begun as someone who understood that power might be achieved by the suppression of ordinary needs, like blinking.

Putin is unmistakably Russian with chiseled facial features and those penetrating eyes. One senses that Putin pays constant obeisance to a determined inner discipline. He is a believer and often reads the Bible.” —

The Jewish owned Wall Street Journal also recently published The Perils Of Putinism scorning Putin for preserving “order and stability” which the Jewish Media works against. The Jewish ‘political scientist’ Arnold Beichman published an article under the same title on Hoover Digest comparing Putin to Ivan the Terrible Here.

But Vladimir Putin knows all about the Jews. That is why in a November 2007 speech to Russian Military Cadets he said:

— “There are those who would like to build a unipolar world who would like to rule all of humanity themselves.” — Here.


JEWS FEAR PUTIN’S VISION OF A CHRISTIAN RUSSIA

IMMEDIATLY AFTER the inauguration of Putin’s chosen President Dmitri Medvedev on May 7 2008 a Russian Orthodox Church service followed. Medvedev, who admits being baptized “at a mature age” Here and who also denies rumours of being Jewish affirmed his commitment to the Church saying, “The state’s special relations with the Russian Orthodox Church will be maintained and further developed to the benefit of the Fatherland” Here.

Just prior to this, Medvedev said in his April 27 2008 Easter Sunday Message, “The growing role of the Russian Orthodox Church opens new possibilities for the cooperation of the state and the Church in resolving current questions of the moral health of the nation in bringing up the young generation” Here.

Putin sent his own message on Easter Sunday 2008 saying, “The state will continue to support the Church in all its work to enlighten the moral education of our citizens, strengthen the influence of family values, and consolidate unity in the Orthodox community.” Here.

Immediately the Jewish Media sprung into action with, “Putin’s message could deepen worries among Russians wary of efforts to press Russian Orthodox teachings on children.” But the only “Russians” that Putin’s message would worry are Jews Here.

Putin & Medvedev have already begun the enlightenment of the youth with a new Orthodoxy 101 Curriculum in Russian Public Schools. And this is what the Jews fear most.


PUTIN OPPOSES THE ZIONIST AGENDA

In Time Magazine’s Person Of The Year 2007 Interview With Putin the War In Iraq
& the threatened US War Against Iran were discussed:

Time: What do you think should be done in Iraq?

Putin: I said it was a mistake from the very beginning. Developments have proved that we were right. The US now believes it is impossible to impose time frames for a withdrawal. In my view if the Iraqis know that a deadline is there they would be more proactive. But this is a decision that we must make together at the level of the United Nations.”

Time: What about a possible war against Iran by the US with regard to their alleged nuclear program?

Putin: Any military action against Iran would be a mistake. Russia’s foreign-policy stance is guided by objective and verified data and intelligence.”

THESE ARE ANSWERS that the Jews fear. Is it any wonder then that the Jewish controlled Media paints Vladimir Putin as “Ivan The Terrible?”

For More See: “Putin Vs. Jews Of The New World Order” Click Here

And: “Putin’s Plan To Foil The Jews” Click Here



Go to 13369
http://www.newsnet5.com/money/16231066/detail.html
The Cleveland Plain Dealer is reporting that about half of the city's subprime mortgage loans written by top lenders in 2005 ended in foreclosure filings.

Subprime mortgage loans are generally given to people with poor credit and come with higher fees and interest rates.

Now Cleveland is dealing with one of the highest foreclosure rates in the nation.

The Plain Dealer said all five of the city's top lenders in 2005 have since been absorbed by other companies or have gone out of business, and there is no accurate way to determine what percentage of subprime mortgage loans may have been based on fraudulent or unscrupulous lending practices.


Go to 13368
http://www.roguegovernment.com/news.php?id=8997
House Approves New Property Seizure Law
05-09-2008
www.roguegovernment.com
Lee Rogers

The criminals in the federal government are now trying to legalize the seizure of computers and other property under the guise of strengthening intellectual property laws. HR 4279 or the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2008 which was recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, will give the government draconian powers to do just this. This legislation gives the government the power to seize property that facilitates the violation of intellectual property laws. The legislation also mandates the formation of a formal Intellectual Property Enforcement Division within the office of the Deputy Attorney General to enforce this madness. In addition, a new office called the Office of the United States Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative is created within the Executive Office of the President. If you boil it down to brass tax, this legislation allows the U.S. government to lawfully seize your computer if it has one unauthorized mp3 file on its hard drive. It also provides the authorization for the creation of offices within the executive branch to enforce a law that is impossible to enforce.

Below is taken from section 202 of HR 4279 that gives the federal government the authorization to seize property that may have been used to facilitate an intellectual property violation. The language in this section indicates that a violation would include downloading a single unauthorized mp3 file on to a computer.

d) Unauthorized Recording of Motion Pictures- Section 2319B(b) of title 18, United States Code, is amended to read as follows:

`(b) Forfeiture and Destruction; Restitution-

`(1) CIVIL FORFEITURE PROCEEDINGS- (A) The following property is subject to forfeiture to the United States:

`(i) Any copies of a motion picture or other audiovisual work protected under title 17 that are made without the authorization of the copyright owner.

`(ii) Any property constituting or derived from any proceeds obtained directly or indirectly as a result of a violation of subsection (a).

`(iii) Any property used, or intended to be used, to commit or facilitate the commission of a violation of subsection (a) that is owned or predominantly controlled by the violator or by a person conspiring with or aiding and abetting the violator in committing the violation, except that property is subject to forfeiture under this clause only if the Government establishes that there was a substantial connection between the property and the violation of subsection (a).

This is the 1980s equivalent of the government being given the legal authority to seize cassette recorders if they were used in recording a song off of the radio. Under this legislation, downloading even a single mp3 file unauthorized by the copyright owner will give the federal government the power to take your computer. There is no way that the federal government can enforce this. In fact, it is insane that the U.S. House of Representatives is more concerned about keeping the record and movie industry happy by passing this legislation than they are with real issues. Incredibly, this bill was passed by a vote of 410-11. Two of the dissenting voters included Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul.

John Conyers a fascist and anti-Constitutionalist member of the U.S. House of Representatives who originally introduced this bill made the following statements describing the purpose of the legislation. His statements were republished in a Billboard Magazine report.

(1) prioritize intellectual property protection to the highest level of our government;

(2) make changes to IP law to enhance the ability of IP owners to effectively enforce their rights;

(3) make it easier to criminally prosecute repeat offenders;

(4) increase penalties for IP violations that endanger public health and safety.

Basically speaking, Conyers believes that downloading illegal mp3 and movie files endanger public health and safety. Conyers is either an insane individual that belongs in a mental institution for making such a ridiculous statement or he and everybody else who voted for this bill is in the back pockets of the RIAA, the MPAA and the rest of the music and movie industry. Common sense would dictate that such a law is unenforceable and should have not been seriously entertained. This is just another sign that this country is run by a bunch of fascists who are trying to find as many ways to undermine civil liberties under the guise of enforcing the law. What is really ridiculous about this, is the fact that the Constitution which is the supreme law of the land is violated by these fascist tyrants in Congress every single day of the week. If they were actually serious about enforcing the law, why are they not following the Constitution? Why do they reject it?

Maybe if the movie and music industry stopped putting out horrible content, their sales would be a little better. It seems as if they are trying to blame people who download unauthorized mp3 and movie files for their shortcomings in business. Perhaps they should do what smaller independent music and film production companies have done and embrace the technological revolution instead of stifling it by trying to push this anti-American legislation down our throats.

It is understandable to go after people who are illegally profiting off of selling material that isn’t their own but there really isn’t a need for government involvement. The record industry should sue those people if they believe that there are groups or individuals who are unfairly profiting off of their work. A court can decide if the claims they present are valid. However, to give powers to an already corrupt government to seize private property from people who are violating copyright laws by merely having downloaded mp3 files or movie files on their computer is unenforceable and beyond the scope of government. Section 301 of the bill establishes the Office of the United States Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative and section 501 of the bill establishes the Intellectual Property Enforcement Division within the Department of Justice under the office of the Deputy Attorney General. These particular offices will be established to serve as the enforcement arm for this legislation.

How many more powers is this corrupt legislature going to give to a renegade executive branch that is already engaging in perpetual war, setting up a police state, authorizing torture, destroying national sovereignty and other horrors? The federal government is full of petty bureaucrats and tyrants that can’t do anything right to begin with, and the U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to expand government again through this legislation. With 410 of these tyrants voting for this legislation, it is doubtful that we will be successful in defeating this bill in the U.S Senate or if it goes to the dictator in chief.



Go to 13367
http://www.campaigniran.org/casmii/index.php?q=node/4886
US confession: Weapons were not made in Iran after all
(source: CASMII)
Saturday, May 10, 2008

CASMII Press Release

10 May 2008

"US confession: Weapons were not made in Iran after all"

In a sharp reversal of its longstanding accusations against Iran arming militants in Iraq , the US military has made an unprecedented albeit quiet confession: the weapons they had recently found in Iraq were not made in Iran at all.

According to a report by the LA Times correspondent Tina Susman in Baghdad: “A plan to show some alleged Iranian-supplied explosives to journalists last week in Karbala and then destroy them was canceled after the United States realized none of them was from Iran. A U.S. military spokesman attributed the confusion to a misunderstanding that emerged after an Iraqi Army general in Karbala erroneously reported the items were of Iranian origin. When U.S. explosives experts went to investigate, they discovered they were not Iranian after all.”

The US , which until two weeks ago had never provided any proof for its allegations, finally handed over its “evidence” of the Iranian origin of these weapons to the Iraqi government. Last week, an Iraqi delegation to Iran presented the US “evidence” to Iranian officials. According to Al-Abadi, a parliament member from the ruling United Iraqi Alliance who was on the delegation, the Iranian officials totally refuted “training, financing and arming” militant groups in Iraq . Consequently the Iraqi government announced that there is no hard evidence against Iran.

In another extraordinary event this week, the US spokesman in Iraq, Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner, for the first time did not blame Iran for the violence in Iraq and in fact did not make any reference to Iran at all in his introductory remarks to the world media on Wednesday when he described the large arsenal of weapons found by Iraqi forces in Karbala.

In contrast, the Pentagon in August 2007 admitted that it had lost track of a third of the weapons distributed to the Iraqi security forces in 2004/2005. The 190,000 assault rifles and pistols roam free in Iraqi streets today.

In the past year, the US leaders have been relentless in propagating their charges of Iranian meddling and fomenting violence in Iraq and since the release of the key judgments of the US National Intelligence Estimate in December that Iran does not have a nuclear weaponisation programme, these accusations have sharply intensified.

The US charges of Iranian interference in Iraq too have now collapsed. Any threat of military strike against Iran is in violation of the UN charter and the IAEA's continued supervision on Iran's uranium enrichment facilities means there is no justification for sanctions.

CASMII calls on the US to change course and enter into comprehensive and unconditional negotiations with Iran.

For more information or to contact CASMII please visit http://www.campaigniran.org



Go to 13366
http://www.iraqupdates.com/p_articles.php/article/31036
Former US official claims Iraq corruption sham
Judge Brennan says State Department policies mislead Americans, contributed to deaths of US soldiers.

Source: Middle East Online
Facing serious allegationsA former senior US official in Iraq on Monday accused the State Department of recklessly misleading Americans over the country's plight and contributing to the deaths and maiming of US soldiers.

Retired judge Arthur Brennan alleged that poor performance by the department had led to the loss of billions of dollars, and warned some of the money could be funding outlaws, or insurgents, including the Mehdi Army.

Brennan, who served in 2007 as Director of the Office of Accountability and Transparency, at the US embassy in Baghdad, testified before a Senate Democratic Policy Committee hearing, which no Republicans attended.

He accused the State Department of failing in its mission to thwart widespread corruption in Iraq, and said its policies had instead allowed corruption to fester.

"The actual policies and performance of the State Department in Iraq were not what they are represented to be," he said, his voice shaking with emotion.

"The Department of State has negligently, recklessly and sometimes intentionally misled the US Congress, the American people and the people of Iraq."

"In a sense, the Department of State has contributed to the killing and maiming of US soldiers, the deaths of thousands of Iraqi civilians; the bolstering of illegal militias, insurgents and Al-Qaeda."

"Billions of US and Iraqi dollars have been lost, stolen and wasted, it is likely that some of that money is financing outlaws and insurgents such as the Medhi Army."

The State Department rejected the charges.

"We recognize that corruption is a serious problem in Iraq and have worked continuously with the Iraqi government to respond it," said Gonzalo Gallegos, a State Department spokesman.

"Ambassador Larry Benedict was recently appointed as the coordinator for anti-corruption initiatives at embassy Baghdad as part of these efforts.

"Any assertions that we have not taken this issue seriously or given it the attention it merits are simply untrue," he said, reading a written response to the charges.

Brennan, who said he only served in Iraq for 25 days due to a family emergency, was asked by Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill whether US ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker was intentionally misleading Americans over the level of corruption in Iraq.

"If he doesn't know then he is negligent, if he does know he is intentionally misleading Congress and the American public," he said.

Brennan alleged that one unnamed Iraqi leader, who was "corrupt and dangerous," had been involved in a leadership role in a ministry complicit in the abduction, torture and murder of hundreds of Sunnis in Iraqi medical centers.

He said he brought the issue to the attention of Crocker, but added "That Iraqi leader is still in power."

Brennan also accused the State Department of joining the Iraqi government in ignoring and demeaning Judge Radhi al-Radhi, former head of the Iraqi Commission for Public Integrity (CPI).

Radhi has since sought US asylum, after what he said were threats and pressure by the Iraqi government to thwart his attempts to investigate leading ministers for corruption.

Another former US official in Iraq, James Mattil, accused President George W. Bush's administration of failing to demand meaningful action from the Iraqi government on fighting corruption.

"It seems reasonable to conclude that the reasons are either, gross incompetence, willful negligence or political intent on the part of the Bush administration and more specifically, the Department of State," he said.

Mattil was employed as chief of staff for the Office of Accountability and Transparency in Baghdad between October 2006 and October 2007.

The hearing came ahead of the latest in a series of congressional showdowns on funding for the war, and the demands by senior Democrats to bring troops home after the five-year war.



Go to 13365
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1950901/Credit-crisis-makes-Americans-sell-possessions.html
Credit crisis makes Americans sell possessions
By Tom Leonard
Last Updated: 2:40AM BST 13/05/2008
Americans who have lost their homes in the property crisis are starting to lose their possessions too as even the cost of storage proves too much for them.
Auctioneers across the United States are conducting sales at self-storage facilities, selling off the contents of units belonging to people who have fallen behind with their payments.

Thousands of Americans have lost their homes in the sub-prime mortgage meltdown and many have turned to putting their belongings in storage ready for a day when they could buy another home.

There are 51,000 self-storage facilities across the US and business has been booming since the recession.

Article continuesadvertisement
[AD]
Ironically, many of the companies have tempted poorer customers with the same low "teaser" rates that prompted them to buy homes they later could not afford when the rates increased.

When a storage unit renter cannot meet their monthly payments, the facility's owner is usually entitled to sell the contents – often for a knockdown price.

Blair Auction & Appraisal, which conducts auctions at self-storage facilities in the Mid-West, said it recently sold the contents of 45 units at one site in Detroit alone.

"If the site used to have 10 auctions, these days it has 15 or 20," Wayne Blair, the company's owner, told the New York Times.

Þ?Michael Jackson, the singer, has avoided a foreclosure auction of his 2,500-acre Neverland Ranch in California after an investment company bought the loan on the property.



Go to 13364
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24449812/
Growing deficits threaten pensions
Accounting tactics conceal a crisis for public workers

The Washington Post

updated 7:45 a.m. ET May 11, 2008
The funds that pay pension and health benefits to police officers, teachers and millions of other public employees across the country are facing a shortfall that could soon run into trillions of dollars.

But the accounting techniques used by state and local governments to balance their pension books disguise the extent of the crisis facing these retirees and the taxpayers who may ultimately be called on to pay the freight, according to a growing number of leading financial analysts.

State governments alone have reported they are already confronting a deficit of at least $750 billion to cover the cost of the retirement benefits they have promised. But that figure likely underestimates the actual shortfall because of the range of methods they use to make their calculations, including practices that have been barred in the private sector for decades.

Local governments use these same techniques for their pension funds and face deficits that further contribute to what some investors and analysts say may be shaping up to be a massive breach of faith with a generation of public employees.

Yawning gap
This gap is growing more yawning with the years. It has already presented taxpayers with a whopping bill that is eating up a vast portion of government budgets at the cost of other services. In Montgomery County, for instance, pension and retiree health care costs are already higher than the combined budgets for the departments of transportation and health and human services. Eventually, officials responsible for the funds will have to choose whether to continue paying out or renege on benefits promised to retirees.

By their own assessment, state and local governments acknowledge that their funds for retiree benefits are increasingly falling behind, with the number that are severely underfunded soaring to 40 percent in 2006, a five-fold increase from 2000, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

But even these grim calculations are based on assumptions that some analysts consider too aggressive, including projections about how the investments of pension funds will fare and how long retirees will live.

"Very small shifts in actuarial assumptions can generate huge changes over time," said Susan Urahn of the Pew Center on the States, which has studied the issue. "It is not very transparent, and even where it is transparent not many people understand it."

Pension funds generate money from worker contributions, government payments and the returns from investing that money. These funds pay an annual pension salary and health benefits to retirees for as long as they live.

But with workers retiring earlier and living longer, governments have been struggling to keep up with the promises they made. Many are taking out loans to restock their pension funds, which is akin to using a credit card to cover monthly mortgage payments. Others are passing the bill to future generations by using sunny projections of what their investments will return, claiming they do not need to dedicate more money now to their pensions.

'Accounting nonsense'
Such "accounting nonsense" has been "pushing the envelope -- or worse -- in its attempt to report the highest number possible" for their investment returns, wrote billionaire investor Warren E. Buffett in a recent letter analyzing pensions for shareholders of his company. Taxpayers ultimately will pay the price when these forecasts prove wrong.

"Because the fuse on this time bomb is long, politicians flinch from inflicting tax pain, given that problems will only become apparent long after these officials have departed," he wrote. "In a world where people are living longer and inflation is certain, those promises will be anything but easy to keep."

Public pensions have broad leeway in their accounting methods because, unlike their counterparts in the private sector, they have no federal oversight. Private pension funds were forced by regulators starting a generation ago to use far more conservative forecasts in their pension calculations and follow uniform guidelines set by the federal government. The move toward stricter regulation provided a clearer picture of pension costs, and many corporations are now switching their employees to 401(k) retirement plans, which offer far less generous benefits.

For public pension funds, a nonprofit body called the Governmental Accounting Standards Board sets guidelines but has no power to enforce them and little incentive to confront the states and localities that finance its budget. So some states, pension analysts said, have adopted accounting techniques motivated more by politics than prudent financial considerations.

Virginia, for instance, has been using an accounting method since 2005 that allowed the state to contribute about $300 million less into its pension funds each year than what its own pension board has recommended. Some pension actuaries called this "highly unusual" and "troubling."



Go to 13363
http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/05/09/mad.cow.testing.ap/index.html
U.S. wants to stop increased testing for mad cow
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration on Friday urged a federal appeals court to stop meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease, but a skeptical judge questioned whether the government has that authority.


Less than 1 percent of slaughtered cows are currently tested for mad cow disease.

The government seeks to reverse a lower court ruling that allowed Kansas-based Creekstone Farms Premium Beef to conduct more comprehensive testing to satisfy demand from overseas customers in Japan and elsewhere.

Less than 1 percent of slaughtered cows are currently tested for the disease under Agriculture Department guidelines. The agency argues that more widespread testing does not guarantee food safety and could result in a false positive that scares consumers.

"They want to create false assurances," Justice Department attorney Eric Flesig-Greene told a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

But Creekstone attorney Russell Frye contended the Agriculture Department's regulations covering the treatment of domestic animals contain no prohibition against an individual company testing for mad cow disease, since the test is conducted only after a cow is slaughtered. He said the agency has no authority to prevent companies from using the test to reassure customers.

"This is the government telling the consumers, `You're not entitled to this information,"' Frye said.

Chief Judge David B. Sentelle seemed to agree with Creekstone's contention that the additional testing would not interfere with agency regulations governing the treatment of animals.

Don't Miss
Japan: No need to ban U.S. beef
"All they want to do is create information," Sentelle said, noting that it's up to consumers to decide how to interpret the information.

Larger meatpackers have opposed Creekstone's push to allow wider testing out of fear that consumer pressure would force them to begin testing all animals too. Increased testing would raise the price of meat by a few cents per pound.

Mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, can be fatal to humans who eat tainted beef. Three cases of mad cow disease have been discovered in the U.S. since 2003.

The district court's ruling last year in favor of Creekstone was supposed to take effect June 1, 2007, but the Agriculture Department's appeal has delayed the testing so far.



Go to 13362
http://uruknet.info/?p=m43942&hd=&size=1&l=e
Gaza bakeries stop working due to lack of fuel, electricity
Palestinian Information Center
May 11, 2008

GAZA, (PIC)-- Owners of bakeries in Gaza Strip on Sunday announced that their bakeries had closed down due to the lack of fuel, gas and electricity that were blocked by Israeli occupation authority.

They told a press conference that their 50 bakeries in the Strip would stop functioning completely.

They called on all parties concerned to secure the necessary mechanism to ensure regular supplies of fuel to bakeries to guarantee continued service to the public.

One of those bakers called on all legal and human rights organizations and the world community at large to act and lift the siege on Gaza.



Go to 13361
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/05/12/ccambrose112.xml
The global slump of 2008-09 has begun as poison spreads
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, International Business Editor
Last Updated: 12:59am BST 13/05/2008

Have your say Read comments

The avalanche of bankruptcies has begun. Six US companies of substance have defaulted on bonds over the past fortnight, against 17 for the whole of last year.

As a "non-believer" in the instant rebound story, I am not easily shocked by gloomy reports. But the latest note by Standard & Poor's -

The Bust After The Boom - gave me a fright.

The sick list is varied, though most for now are victims of the housing crash: Linens 'n Things, ($650m), Kimball Hill ($703m), Home Interiors ($310m), French Lick Resorts ($142m), Recycled Paper Greetings ($187m), and Tropicana Entertainment ($2.49bn).

More by Ambrose Evans Pritchard
Beijing and Riyadh to call shots on dollar
As the Fed's latest loan survey makes clear, lenders have dropped the guillotine. With the usual delay, the poison is spreading from banks to the real world.

Diane Vazza, S&P's credit chief, says defaults are rising at almost twice the rate of past downturns. "Companies are heading into this recession with a much more toxic mix. Their margin for error is razor-thin," she said.

Two-thirds have a "speculative" rating, compared to 50pc before the dotcom bust, and 40pc in the early 1990s. The culprit is debt. "They ramped it up in the last 18 months of the credit boom. A lot of deals were funded that should not have been funded," she said.

Some 174 US companies are trading at "distress levels". Spreads on their bonds have rocketed above 1,000 basis points. This does not cover the carnage among smaller firms outside the rating universe.

The California city of Vallejo (117,000 inhabitants) has just made history by opting for Chapter 9 bankruptcy, the result of tax erosion from a 26pc fall in local house prices. Half Moon Bay may be next.

"This is the tip of the iceberg: everybody is going to line up for Chapter 9 in California," said John Moorlach, Orange County board chief.

US consumers are juggling plastic to put off their day of reckoning. The Fed survey said credit card debt had jumped 6.7pc in the first quarter to $957bn, or $6,000 per working American, despite usury rates near 20pc.

"My guess is that many Americans continue to run up massive credit card debt because they have little intention of paying it off," said Peter Schiff at Euro Pacific Capital. Quite.



Go to 13360
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_resources/article3915052.ece
From Times OnlineMay 12, 2008

Royal Dutch Shell pulls out of $10bn Iran projectMartin Waller
Royal Dutch Shell has apparently caved into political pressure from the US in backing out of a $10 billion gas project in Iran.

Shell and its partner, the Spanish oil firm Repsol, are not going ahead with phase 13 of the giant South Pars project on the border with Qatar, the company confirmed this morning.

The two companies signed a deal last year with the Iranian national oil company to develop phases 13 and 14 of South Pars.

They have now agreed "the principle of substitution of alternative later phases" for the project, Shell said in a formal statement, which would allow other oil companies to step in.

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Total, the French oil company that is also involved in South Pars, confirmed this morning it was still interested in the project despite the withdrawal by Shell and Repsol.

Shell is considering taking part in phases 20 and 21, which are a long way off being developed, the statement added.

America has been putting political pressure on Western companies not to participate in projects in Iran because of suspicions that the Islamic regime is developing a nuclear arms programme.

Have your say

No doubt China and Russia will fill the hole; maybe even India.

Western influence in the Middle East will diminish and the Good ol' USA will carry on financially running the world to the basic detriment of its good neighbours; who pay off its debt by a free falling dollar.

M. Butcher, W-s-M, England



Go to 13359
http://www.rense.com/general32/skol_ov23.htm
The Overthrow
Of The American Republic
Part 23
The Fake Money Business
By Sherman H. Skolnick
12-20-2

When private business partners have a falling out, it seems to be like a divorce.

[1] From inside information, they rant against one another. Each hollars that the other was never any good.

[2] One partner accuses the other of cheating, on friendsip, on money, on business, on assets.

[3] Each accuses the other of hiding or stealing the family jewels.

If you understand this, you comprehend how George Herbert Walker Bush and Saddam Hussein react to each other nowadays. Daddy Bush was actually important to the American CIA since formation of Zapata Petroleum Company, later called Zaparta Offshore. They had hundreds of overseas affiliates. Some contend the firm assisted foreign and domestic spy agencies as a cover operation for covert activities and sucking up intelligence data worldwide. Others assert Zapata's offshore drilling platforms, such as those in the sea beyond the U.S. jurisdictional limits, are transit points for clandestine shipments, such as dope.

Was/is this a way of helicopters, servicing the oil drilling, picking up narcotics shipments and getting them into the U.S.? Some think so. International wire service, Reuters, some years ago, studied the matter, and so alleged. [The exact date of their items are hard to track down, but are known to exist. Was the story dropped into a black media hole?] So, Daddy Bush has been apparently for many years part of the dope trafficking.

One heavily detailed book mentions that Daddy Bush was started in the oil business by British royals. ["The Unauthorized Biography of George Bush", by Webster Tarpley et al., 1992.]

In an FBI document, dated November 29, 1963, circulated by us and others, shown is "George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency" played a key role in the covering up of certain data as to the murder of President John F. Kennedy.

So George Bush The Elder was active in the American spy community long before he was, for eleven and a half months in 1976, Director of Central Intelligence. And ever after, as well. He was instrumental, in the late 1970s, of installing, through political assassinations, in Iraq, Saddam Hussein as the Iraqi strongman.

In the 1980s, Daddy Bush was Saddam's PRIVATE business partner. It was the subject of a little-mentioned Federal Court case in Chicago, where this free lance journalist, was the only reporter covering the court hearing. My exclusive story appeared in a populist weekly newspaper, The Spotlight, August 19, 1991.[Visit our website story, "The Secrets of Timothy McVeigh" for more details.]

Bush the Elder and Saddam Hussein, just like a mafia gang, shook down, extracting "protection money", from the weak oil sheikdoms of the Persian Gulf. Also, Bush's criminal business confederates in the 1980s, inside and outside the White House, supplied Saddam with the beginnings of nuclear and bio-chemical materials and research, for the possible development of so-called "Weapons of Mass Destruction".

See the heavily detailed book, "The Spider's Web--The Secret history of how the White House illegally armed Iraq", by Alan Friedman, Bantam Books, 1993, never adequately publicized in the oil-soaked, spy-riddled American monopoly press.

Recently, the present Bush White House obtained the original of Saddam's response to the United Nations inspection team, a many thousand page document. Bush, in turn, had copies supposedly made of this and turned it over to other members of the U.N. Security Council. Some assert that the Bush White House eliminated or redacted some of the pages showing the role of the Bush Crime Family in supplying such items to Baghdad. "Annan [U.N. Secretary General] Criticizes Handling of Iraqi Files", New York Times, December 11, 2002.

The Persian Gulf conflict of 1990-1991, in its simplest form, was just, as we have shown, a falling out of disgruntled private business partners, Daddy Bush and Saddam Hussein. In 1991, Daddy Bush stole billions and billions of dollars of monies and assets belonging to Saddam, his former partner. These purloined funds were transferred to twenty five secret worldwide accounts of the Bush Crime Family. [Visit our extensive website series, "Greenspan Aids and Bribes Bush", where the secret Federal Reserve wire transfer records, showing Greenspan's and other secret codes, are attached and can be brought up on the screen. For example, one account shows ONE HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS (partly traceable to assets and funds belonging to former business partner Saddam Hussein) were transferred to a joint Bush account that the Bush Crime Family had with the Queen of England in her private bank, Coutts Bank London. And notice how the Queen arranged for the head of her bank to leave and become a top official of Daddy Bush's purported war-mongering operation, the Carlyle Group, with an armlock on the American war weapons industry. "The Queen has a new bank manager, following the departure of Andrew Fisher, chief executive of Coutts, to the Carlyle Group, the US private equity firm." Financial Times of London, December 19, 2001.]

Here is what happened in the 1990s and thereafter, after Daddy Bush stole hundreds of billions of dollars belonging to his former private business partner, Saddam Hussein. Using the American CIA, Bush set about to try to topple the Baghdad regime, the classical way: using fake money. Historically, it has overthrown governments quicker than dropping bombs.

A team of highly-skilled counterfeiters, headed by a master "cutter" (the trade lingo for a superior performing steel engraver), produced the plates for counterfeit U.S. paper money. [Of course, actually this paper money of a private central bank, the so-called FEDERAL Reserve, has long masqueraded, throughout the world, as the so-called "U.S. Dollar".]

Daddy Bush, in various deals (some of them through oil machinery suppliers headed or connected to Richard Cheney), saw to it that Iraq was flooded with superior fake U.S. Hundred Dollar Bills. They were so expertly made, they actually passed through the Federal Reserve's counting machines as if they were genuine. This type of trick worked well when the same counterfeit team, headed by the same master "cutter", then working for a secret unit of the U.S. Treasury and American CIA, flooded the Soviet Union with superior quality fake Russian rubles. It caused the collapse of the Moscow government. In the 1990s, Daddy Bush and his gang of criminals purported to be supporting Yeltsin and then Putin, with U.S. Paper Money (actually some 800 billion dollars of superior quality fake U.S. paper money. Putin finally caught on to this trick and is shoveling them BACK to the U.S. by the Moscow government's huge buying of gold in the run-up in December, 2002.)

[Visit Part 22 of this series.]

The Bush Crime Family are known to be terrible cheapskates. They reserve the right NOT to pay for goods and services supplied to them. So the crack counterfeit team were, and are, disgruntled, whispering details into the ears of more independent-minded journalists, not part of the monopoly press. The team, as typically handled by the Bushies, has NOT been compensated or paid off, as promised by the American CIA and the U.S. Treasury, at the behest of Daddy Bush.

By the way, some of these countefeiters, absolute experts at their work, previously worked on the other side, producing expertly made plates for mafia-style gangs. Some cynics, however, prefer to point to the U.S. Treasury and the American CIA, as two agencies themselves constituting an underworld.

Whatever opinion you have made of Saddam Hussein, he is NOT some dummy. The superior quality hundred dollar U.S. paper money bills, that flooded Iraq and the Mid-East, by Daddy Bush---well, Saddam, in turn, dumped them on Europe and from which, they are coming back to haunt and trouble the United States.

To cover up this treason and criminality done by Daddy Bush against the American people and their organic law, the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, his son, George W. Bush, the resident and occupant of the Oval Office installed by a military Junta-style Five of the U.S. Supreme Court, feels obligated to find a reason to protect Bush the Elder by violently seeking to remove the Baghdad regime. Saddam's details, documents, and testimony can send Daddy Bush and members of his crime cabal to prison for treason and other high crimes.

Does anyone in the lap-dog monopoly press ever mention anything positive of the distinguished background of Iraq, once called Mesopotamia?

The Greeks called it Mesopotamia, The Land Between the Two Rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris. The word IRAQ is an Arabic noun meaning the shore and grazing area of a river. Iraq was invented by the British, experts on divide and conquer. [As stated earlier in this website series, the Brits have been trying since the War of 1812, when they burned down the U.S. Capitol, to overthrow the American government, returning us to being mere subjects of the British monarch and this continent returned to being just puppet colonies of the Crown.]

After World War One, the British (also with French help) wanted to put the defeated Ottoman Empire into a historical wreckage. So they carved it up and out of it came, among other things, Iraq, in the beginning just a puppet colony part of the League of Nations Mandates.

Who ever reminds us all that the country of Mesopotamia, now called Iraq, is the original Cradle of Civlization, where were first created the city-states, some 4000 B.C.

To try to protect his father from treason conviction and prison, George W. Bush is determined to silence his father's now disgruntled former business partner Saddam Hussein. Do we all understand that Baghdad is a cosmopolitan city of some five million inhabitants. Is the U.S., for the private purposes of the present resident and occupant of the White House, as supervised by Daddy Bush, going to demolish Baghdad by bloody violent force? And for the purpose of taking over Iraq's oilfields, which may, in time, supplant Saudi Arabia as a sizeable supplier of oil to the U.S.?

[Recently, competitor to U.S. Oil firms,British Petroleum, had a rare statement of their boss. He warned the U.S., that in taking over Iraq, the U.S. better NOT keep Britain out of the oil deal.]

Some contend that the U.S., under a supposed leader trying to protect his father, and cause tremendous bloodshed in Iraq and among poorly informed U.S. troops---that the end result may be the change, perhaps violent, of the regime IN WASHINGTON.



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Gun battles as Hizbollah claims Lebanon is at war

Robert Fisk – The Independent May 9, 2008

If you want to fight us, you'll have to fight us. This was Sayed Hassan Nasrallah's message to the Lebanese government yesterday and his words were followed within seconds by two massive gun battles in the streets of Beirut.

He had spoken in that careful, thought-through, distressing way in which he always threatens the Hizbollah's enemies. He even swapped the names of the Lebanese Prime Minister, Fouad Siniora, with that of the Druze leader Walid Jumblatt – calling Jumblatt the real prime minister and Siniora his deputy – and blamed both for trying to set up a CIA-Mossad base at Beirut airport. What other reason could there be, he asked, for the two men to demand the dismantlement of Hizbollah's communications system and the suspension of the head of airport security? This was "a Lebanese government declaration of war against the resistance". Well, maybe. But Nasrallah still wants the Hizbollah's enemies to be the Israelis – not his Lebanese opponents.

So what happened in the minutes after he spoke? At least one Shia Amal gunman started shooting at an office belonging to Sunni supporters of the government, some of whom may have been the youths apparently brought down from Tripoli for just such a battle. The Lebanese army was not fully engaged on the streets last night but its armoured vehicles were driving between the sectarian interfaces and apparently taking fire from both sides.

It was a dark and distressing speech by the secretary general of Hizbollah, which came less than 24 hours after the Grand Mufti, Mohammed Kabbani, furiously referred to the Hizbollah as "armed gangs of outlaws that have carried out the ugliest attacks against the citizens and their safety". Needless to say, neither Nasrallah nor Kabbani stated the obvious – that the first represents a large number of the Shia Muslim community and the second most of the Sunnis.

The sectarian background to this dangerous game is the point, of course. The street battles in Beirut are between Shia and Sunni, the first supporting the Iranian-armed Hizbollah, the second the Lebanese government, which now regularly carries the sobriquet "American-backed". In other words, the collapse of Beirut these past two days is part of the American-Iranian conflict – even though, be sure, the Americans will blame the Hizbollah for this and the Iranians will blame the Americans.

Yet still the language of Nasrallah – like that of Kabbani – was frightening, even though he had behind him the national flag of Lebanon with its green cedar tree as well as Hizbollah's own yellow banner. To call Jumblatt "a liar, a thief, a killer..." – though this view might be heartily reciprocated by Jumblatt himself – is language that puts Lebanese in danger of their lives.

Nasrallah's complaint that the suspension of Wafiq Chucair as head of airport security was part of an American-Israeli plot might sound a bit much, but his long and point-by-point insistence that Hizbollah should maintain its new communications links – including its cameras along the Beirut airport perimeter – was perhaps more reasoned, albeit that it helps allow his organisation to remain part of a state with the state. Wireless communications can easily be tapped, he said, and he added that new communications were the "most powerful tool" in Hizbollah's 2006 war against Israel.

Nasrallah intriguingly pointed out that Siniora's government had previously told the Hizbollah that it would allow the secure communications circuits to remain if the movement closed down its largely empty "tent city" in the centre of Beirut. Indeed, it has largely been in place for more than a year. Hizbollah had no argument with the Lebanese army – a view that might not be shared by General Michel Sulaiman, its commander, who stated yesterday that the situation is "threatening the army's impartiality".

All of which continues Lebanon's crisis. Beirut airport remained largely empty of aircraft yesterday – the Christian daily L'Orient Le Jour rightly suggested that it had been taken hostage by Hizbollah, who control all roads to the terminal – and there were brief gun battles between government and opposition supporters in the Bekaa Valley town of Saadnayel. Yet again, burning tyres were set up in areas demarcating Shia and Sunni districts, and the army closed the Corniche Mazraa highway, which divides west Beirut. By last night it was the scene of a gun battle. Kuwait urged its citizens to leave Lebanon – without being obliging enough to tell them exactly how to perform this task without an airport.
www.independent.co.uk/news/fisk/robert-fisk-gun-battles-as-hizbollah-claims-lebanon-is-at-war-824592.html



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Posted 11/05/2008
The Myth of German Culpability

Michael Walsh

The 2nd World War: The Sequence of Aggression

One of the great mysteries of life is that despite the evidence to the contrary millions of otherwise intelligent people still believe that Germany was the all powerful aggressor during the 2nd World War. Nothing better than these myths illustrate the mind-bending power of propaganda. The provable facts suggest that Germany was the victim and not the perpetrator of naked neighboring aggression. The subsequent allied military triumph was followed by the triumph of the propagandists whose pressing need was to depict the victor nations as being the victim.


THE BRUTISH EMPIRE:
"Germany is too strong. We must destroy her."
- Winston Churchill, Nov. 1936.

"In no country has the historical blackout been more intense and effective than in Great Britain. Here it has been ingeniously christened The Iron Curtain of Discreet Silence. Virtually nothing has been written to reveal the truth about British responsibility for the Second World War and its disastrous results.” - Harry Elmer Barnes. American Historian

"The war was not just a matter of the elimination of Fascism in Germany, but rather of obtaining German sales markets." - Winston Churchill. March, 1946.

"Britain was taking advantage of the situation to go to war against Germany because the Reich had become too strong and had upset the European balance." - Ralph F. Keeling, Institute of American Economics

"I emphasized that the defeat of Germany and Japan and their elimination from world trade would give Britain a tremendous opportunity to swell her foreign commerce in both volume and profit." - Samuel Untermeyer, The Public Years, p.347.

On September 2nd 1939 a delegate of the Labour Party met with the British Foreign Minister Halifax in the lobby of Parliament. 'Do you still have hope?' he asked. 'If you mean hope for war,' answered Halifax, 'then your hope will be fulfilled tomorrow. 'God be thanked!' replied the representative of the British Labour Party. - Professor Michael Freund.

"In Britain, Lord Halifax was reported as being 'redeemed'. He ordered beer. We laughed and joked." - H. Roth. Are We Being Lied To?

"In April, 1939, (four months before the outbreak of war) Ambassador William C. Bullitt, whom I had known for twenty years, called me to the American Embassy in Paris. The American Ambassador told me that war had been decided upon. He did not say, nor did I ask, by whom. He let me infer it. ... When I said that in the end Germany would be driven into the arms of Soviet Russia and Bolshevism, the Ambassador replied: "‘what of it? There will not be enough Germans left when the war is over to be worth bolshevising." -- Karl von Wiegand, April, 23rd, 1944, Chicago Herald American

"I felt sorry for the German people. We were planning - and we had the force to carry out our plans - to obliterate a once mighty nation." - Admiral Daniel Leahy; U.S Ambassador ˆ


MYTH 1. THE GERMAN NATION IS AN AGGRESSIVE NATION

The facts prove otherwise. A Study of War by Prof. Quincy Wright, shows that in the period from 1480 to 1940 there were 278 wars involving European countries whose percentage participation was as follows:

ENGLAND 28%
FRANCE 26%
SPAIN 23%
RUSSIA 22%
AUSTRIA 19%
TURKEY 15%
POLAND 11%
SWEDEN 9%
ITALY 9%
NETHERLANDS 8%
GERMANY (INCLUDING PRUSSIA) 8%
DENMARK 7%

Likewise, Pitirim Sorokin, Vol.111, Part.11, Social and Cultural Dynamics, shows that from the 12th Century to 1925 the percentage of years in which leading European powers have been at war is as follows. (p.352).

COUNTRY PERCENTAGE OF YEARS AT WAR
SPAIN 67%
POLAND 58%
ENGLAND 56%
FRANCE 50%
RUSSIA 46%
HOLLAND 44%
ITALY 36%
GERMANY 28%

Sorokin concludes therefore, "that Germany has had the smallest and Spain the largest percent of years at war." Of leading modern European states, England, France and Russia show clearly twice the aggressive tendencies of Germany.

From the years 1815 to 1907 the record stands as follows:
BRITAIN 10 wars
RUSSIA 7 wars
FRANCE 5 wars
AUSTRIA 3 wars
PRUSSIA-GERMANY 3 wars


GERMANY DID NOT WANT WAR

"I believe now that Hitler and the German people did not want war. But we declared war on Germany, intent on destroying it, in accordance with our principle of balance of power, and we were encouraged by the 'Americans' around Roosevelt. We ignored Hitler's pleadings not to enter into war. Now we are forced to realize that Hitler was right." - Attorney General, Sir. Hartley Shawcross, March,16th, 1984

"The last thing Hitler wanted was to produce another great war." - Sir. Basil Liddell Hart

"I see no reason why this war must go on. I am grieved to think of the sacrifices which it will claim. I would like to avert them." - Adolf Hitler, July, 1940.

Winston Churchill agrees: "We entered the war of our own free will, without ourselvesb being directly assaulted." - Guild Hall Speech, July 1943.


MYTH.2 THE GERMAN ARMED FORCES
OUTNUMBERED THEIR NEIGHBOURS

POLAND

30 Active Divisions
10 Reserve Divisions
12 Large Cavalry Brigades
Poland had nearly 2,500,000 trained men available for mobilisations.

FRANCE

110 Divisions
65 were active divisions
Including 5 cavalry divisions, two mechanised divisions, one armoured division, the rest being infantry. On the German borders stood the French command stood 85 Divisions and could mobilise 5,000,000-armed troops. These were supported backed by five British divisions.

BRITAIN

Britain’s relatively small but high quality Regular Army was supported by the Territorial Army consisting of 26 Divisions with plans well in hand to boost this to 55 divisions. This of course was in turn supported by the then world’s largest conscription army holding an empire ‘upon which the sun never set.’

The British Empire consisted also of the former German ‘empire’ of New Guinea, Nauru, Western Samoa, South West Africa, Quattar, Palestine, Transjordan, Tanganyika, Iraq, Togoland and the Cameroons. These territories stolen from Germany added another 1,061,755 square miles to the British Empire, the equivalent of 35 Scotlands

GERMANY

Against these formidable forces Germany was able to mobilise just ninety-eight divisions of which only fifty-two were active (including Austrian divisions). Of the remaining 46 divisions only 10 were fit for action on mobilisation and even in these the bulk of them were raw recruits who had been serving for less than one month.

The other 36 divisions consisted mainly of Great War veterans over the age of forty who were unfamiliar with modern weapons and up to date military techniques.

THE BALANCE SHEET

On the balance sheets it can be seen that the Poles and French alone, not counting Britain and its Empire, had the equivalent of 130 divisions against a total of 98 German divisions of with 1/3rd were virtually untrained men.

In terms of trained soldiers the Germans were at an even bigger disadvantage. (Note at the outbreak of war over 50% of the German armed forces was horse drawn).


WAR IN THE AIR

"The superiority of the Luftwaffe has been greatly exaggerated to create the impression that Britain was the underdog; a David fighting Goliath. In the run up to the Battle of Britain (August 10th 194) the Luftwaffe had 929 fighters available; mostly single-engine Messerschmitt 109s. Of these 227 were twin-engine long-range Me110s which had a top speed of 350mph. Although it had a faster rate of climb it was inferior when turning or manoeuvring.The ME109’s range restricted its field of operation. Their real fields of operation – out and back – was a little over 100 miles, a flight time of barely 95 minutes and a tactical flight time of just 75 minutes. This was a sever handicap when it is considered that whereas the Luftwaffe pilots were operating scores of miles from their base, British pilots were often within sight of their own. This handicap was made more critical by the fact that downed RAF pilots could be rescued whilst Luftwaffe pilots were of course – if they were lucky – imprisoned.The twin-engine ME110 was a slow flyer able to cruise at a little less than 300mph and was easily outpaced by the RAF’s Spitfires. It was also ‘sluggish in acceleration and difficult to manoeuvre.’The greatest handicap for the Germans however was there primitive radio equipment. Unlike the British versions it was poor in air-to-air operation and could not be controlled by the ground.On the British side a total surpassing 650 fighter aircraft had been amassed by mid-July, mostly Hurricanes and Spitfires although including nearly 100 of the older types. During that whole year Britain produced 4,238 fighters compared with a derisory 3,000 manufactured by Germany.In terms of armaments the noted British military historian, B.H Liddell Hart noted: "What is quite clear, and became evident at the start, was that the German bombers were too poorly armed to be able to beat off the British fighters without a fighter escort of their own.” – History of the Second World War.


GERMANY AND OTHER FREE COUNTRIES ATTACKED

Poland carried out the first acts of aggression. In March 1939 Poland, already occupying German territory ‘acquired’ in 1919 invaded Czechoslovakia. During the months running up to the outbreak of war Polish armed forces repeatedly violated German borders. On August 31st 1939 Polish irregular armed forces launched a full scale attack on the German border town of Gleiwitz.

Within hours Germany retaliated resulting in Britain and France’s declarations of war on the German nation on 3rd Sept 1939. In Britain’s case this declaration of war was constitutionally illegal. It was not as it should have been ratified by parliament.

Despite her borders being constantly attacked by the numerically superior armies of France and England, and economically strangled by world finance, Germany refused to be drawn, negotiated for peace and turned the other cheek for ten months.

Only when it accurately learned that England intended to broaden the western front by occupying the Low Countries and Norway, thus surrounding and threatening Germany’s entire borders, did Germany carry out a pre-emptive strike.

Germany’s defensive counter attack was launched on 10th May 1940. This resulted in the rout of 330,000 British and French troops by a significantly smaller army. It was one of the worst debacles in military history. (The British press called it ‘a miracle).

Russia invaded Finland on Nov 30th 1939. Britain (not for the first time) and France invaded Norway's neutrality on 8th April 1940. To avoid attack via the Baltic Sea Germany counter-attacked. In the small battles that followed (Trondheim) 2,000 German troops routed 13,000 British troops. They were evacuated on 1st May. To save face Churchill disembarked 20,000 British troops at Narvik. They were driven out by 2,000 Austrian Alpine troops.

Canada declared war on Germany 10th Sept 1939. In June 1940 Soviet Russia invaded Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and Rumania. In June 1940, Britain declared war on Finland, Rumania and Hungary whilst also occupying defenseless Iceland. All of these acts of aggression in gross violation of international law and previously signed treaties.

On May 10th 1940 in brazen defiance of international law Britain occupied Iceland. Icelanders regarded the British armed forces as an occupying force.

On 7th Dec 1941 a British backed coup overthrew the Yugoslav government. On 27th March 1941 British troops enter Greece. On 6th April 1941 Germany retaliated and Britain retreated again. In June 1940 Britain prepares to invade neutral Portugal.

The United States, supposedly neutral, consistently attacks German shipping and arrests or otherwise kidnaps German citizens, even those living in South American countries. In August 1941. Germany retaliated.

In 1940 alone Britain, supposedly standing alone and at bay, added 1.6 MILLION SQUARE MILES TO ITS WORLD EMPIRE occupying Italian and French colonies; Syria, Iraq and Persia. Britain’s foremost military historian, A.J.P. Taylor conceded: "There can be no doubt that he (Hitler) broadened the war in 1941 only on preventive grounds.”

Footnote on casualties: In terms of casualties the United Kingdom came in at number nine. Russia came first (official figures at 13.6 million, Germany 3.5, China 1.3, Japan 1.3, Romania 350,000, United States 252,000, Italy 279,000, UK 264,000, France 213,000, Hungary 200,000, Poland 123,000, Greece 88,000, Finland 82,000, Canada 37,000, India 24,000, Australia 23,000, Belgium 12,000, Czechoslovakia 10,000, Bulgaria 10,000, New Zealand 10,000 (another country threatened by Germany no doubt!), Netherlands 8,000, South Africa 6,000, Norway 3,000, Denmark 1,800, Brazil 943.


A FINAL EPITAPH FROM ONE OF ENGLAND’S FINEST POETS:
A curse for England, false and base,
Where nothing can prosper but disgrace,
Where crushed is each flower’s tender form,
And decay and corruption feed the worm ....

... Sounds familiar?
www.thebirdman.org/Index/Others/Others-SurprisingWW2Comparisons-amband.htm



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How the FBI Protected Al Qaeda’s 9/11 Hijacking Trainer
(From Peter Dale Scott)

"In our book, 9/11 and Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out, I wrote of Ali Mohamed, the close ally of Osama bin Laden and his mentor Ayman al-Zawahiri. It is now generally admitted that Ali Mohamed (known in the al Qaeda camps as Abu Mohamed al Amriki — "Father Mohamed the American") worked for the FBI, the CIA, and U.S. Special Forces. As he later confessed in court, he also aided the terrorist Ayman al-Zawahiri, a co-founder of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and by then an aide to bin Laden, when he visited America to raise money.

The 9/11 Report mentioned him, and said that the plotters against the U.S. Embassy in Kenya were "led" (their word) by Ali Mohamed. That's the Report's only reference to him, though it's not all they heard.

Patrick Fitzgerald, U.S. Attorney who negotiated a plea bargain and confession from Ali Mohamed, said this in testimony to the Commission Ali Mohamed. …. trained most of al Qaeda's top leadership – including Bin Laden and Zawahiri – and most of al Qaeda's top trainers. He gave some training to persons who would later carry out the 1993 World Trade Center bombing…. From 1994 until his arrest in 1998, he lived as an American citizen in California, applying for jobs as an FBI translator.

Patrick Fitzgerald knew Ali Mohamed well. In 1994 he had named him as an unindicted co-conspirator in the New York landmarks case, yet allowed him to remain free. This was because, as Fitzgerald knew, Ali Mohamed was an FBI informant, from at least 1993 and maybe 1989. Thus, from 1994 "until his arrest in 1998 [by which time the 9/11 plot was well under way], Mohamed shuttled between California, Afghanistan, Kenya, Somalia and at least a dozen other countries." Shortly after 9/11, Larry C. Johnson, a former State Department and CIA official, faulted the FBI publicly for using Mohamed as an informant, when it should have recognized that the man was a high-ranking terrorist plotting against the United States.

As I say in our book, in 1993 Ali Mohamed had been detained by the Royal
Canadian Mounted Police in Canada, when he inquired at an airport after an incoming al Qaeda terrorist who turned out to be carrying two forged Saudi passports. Mohamed immediately told the RCMP to make a phone call to the United States, and the call secured his release. We've since been told that it was Mohamed's West coast FBI handler, John Zent, "who vouched for Ali and got him released."

This release enabled Ali to go on to Kenya, take pictures of the U.S. Embassy, and deliver them to bin Laden for the Embassy bombing plot.

In August 2006 there was a National Geographic Special on Ali Mohamed. We can take this as the new official fallback position on Ali Mohamed, because John Cloonan, the FBI agent who worked with Fitzgerald on Mohamed, helped narrate it. I didn't see the show, but here's what TV critics said about its contents:

Ali Mohamed manipulated the FBI, CIA and U.S. Army on behalf of Osama bin Laden. Mohamed trained terrorists how to hijack airliners, bomb buildings and assassinate rivals. [D]uring much of this time Mohamed was …, an operative for the CIA and FBI, and a member of the U.S. Army.

…Mohamed turned up in FBI surveillance photos as early as 1989, training radical Muslims who would go on to assassinate Jewish militant Meir Kahane and detonate a truck bomb at the World Trade Center. He not only avoided arrest, but managed to become an FBI informant while writing most of the al Qaeda terrorist manual and helping plan attacks on American troops in Somalia and U.S. embassies in Africa.

That Mohamed trained al Qaeda in hijacking planes and wrote most of the al Qaeda terrorist manual is confirmed in a new book by Lawrence Wright, who has seen US Government records.19 Let me say this again: one of al-Qaeda's top trainers in terrorism and how to hijack airplanes was an operative for FBI, CIA, and the Army.

Yet this TV show, just before the 9/11 anniversary, was itself another cover-up. It suppressed for example the information given it about Mohamed's detention and FBI-ordered release in Canada. According to Peter Lance, the principal author for the show, the show suppressed many other sensational facts. Here is Lance's chief claim: that Fitzgerald and his FBI counterpart on the Bin Laden task force, John Cloonan, learned shortly after 9/11 that Mohamed "knew every twist and turn of" the 9/11 plot.

Within days of 9/11 Cloonan rushed backed from Yemen and interviewed Ali, whom the Feds had allowed to slip into witness protection, and demanded to know the details of the plot. At that point Ali wrote it all out - including details of how he'd counseled would-be hijackers on how to smuggle box cutters on board aircraft and where to sit, to effect the airline seizures.

If all these latest revelations about Ali Mohamed are true, then:

1) a key planner of the 9/11 plot, and trainer in hijacking, was simultaneously an informant for the FBI.

2) This operative trained the members for all of the chief Islamist attacks inside the United States – the first WTC bombing, the New York landmarks plot, and finally 9/11, as well as the attacks against Americans in Somalia and Kenya.

3) And yet for four years Mohamed was allowed to move in and out of the country as an unindicted conspirator. Then, unlike his trainees, he was allowed to plea-bargain. To this day he may still not have been sentenced for any crime."



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Kitty Hawk air wing commander removed for ‘loss of confidence’
Teri Weaver – Stars and Stripes Sunday May 11, 2008

TOKYO — The U.S. Navy air wing commander for the USS Kitty Hawk’s strike group was relieved of duty Friday after an admiral said he lost confidence in the commander’s ability, according to a Navy spokeswoman.

Capt. Michael P. McNellis was relieved as commander of Carrier Air Wing 5 by Rear Adm. Richard B. Wren, commander of Commander Task Force 70, the Navy said in a news release.

The admiral’s mast, a nonjudicial punishment proceeding below the level of court-martial, was held Friday at sea aboard the Kitty Hawk, according to Cmdr. Jensin W. Sommer, CTF-70 strike group spokeswoman.

Sommer declined Friday evening to give any details about the circumstances leading to McNellis’ nonjudicial proceeding.

Sommer described Wren’s findings as a removal from command “due to a loss of confidence, not a punishment.”

McNellis left the Kitty Hawk on Friday, Sommer said. McNellis, who graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1982 and trained as an EA-6B Prowler pilot, was preparing for retirement, she said.

Capt. Michael S. White, the former air wing deputy commander, assumed command, Sommer said.

McNellis took command of Carrier Air Wing 5 in September 2006 from Capt. Garry Mace, who commended McNellis at the time for his experience.

“Since I started working with [McNellis], he’s always been a moral compass for me, keeping me pointed in the right direction,” Mace said in 2006. “I’m sure as a leader, he’ll do great things for this air wing.”

The air wing is based at Naval Air Facility Atsugi and includes seven aircraft squadrons and two smaller aircraft detachments, consisting of about 70 aircraft and 2,000 people. It is part of the Kitty Hawk’s strike group, the largest in the Navy.

The USS Kitty Hawk Carrier Strike Group is conducting training and operations in the Philippine Sea, Sommer wrote in the news release.
www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=54697

Also see:
Six Signs the U.S. May be Headed for War with Iran
www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=8209

The Man Between War and Peace
www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=8207

Fallon ‘may lose job over Iran war’
www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=8190



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