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Police assault 12-year-old girl after mistaking her for a prostitute

Andrew McLemore
Raw Story
Saturday, Dec 20, 2008

A girl’s family has filed a lawsuit against Galveston police for their assault on their 12-year-old daughter after mistaking her for a prostitute.

As the girl, Dymond Milburn, walked in her front yard, three men jumped out of a van and beat her about the face and throat, one of them telling her, “You’re a prostitute. You’re coming with me.”

Police attacked Milburn despite the fact that she didn’t fit the racial description of their suspects: three white prostitutes and a black drug dealer.

Three weeks after Milburn was hospitalized for her injuries, police went to her school and arrested her for assaulting an officer during the incident.

The incident occurred two years ago, and since then, Milburn has suffered behavioral problems, nightmares and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The lawsuit against the officers also alleges that the men thought Dymond, an African-American, was a hooker because of the “tight shorts” she was wearing. Police have not yet apologized for the incident.

The case has gone to trial, but the judge declared a mistrial the first day and a new trial is set for February.

“I think we’ll be okay,” said Anthony Griffin, Milburn’s attorney. “I don’t think a jury will find a 12-year-old girl guilty who’s just sitting outside her house. Any 12-year-old attacked by three men and told that she’s a prostitute is going to scream and yell for Daddy and hit back and do whatever she can. She’s scared to death.”

The officers’ lawyer, William Helfand, said Milburn’s father had also been arrested for attacking the officers after his daughter called for him when the police attacked her. Helfand said both would face consequences for their actions.

“It’s unfortunate that sometimes police officers have to use force against people who are using force against them. And the evidence will show that both these folks violated the law and forcefully resisted arrest,” Helfand said.

One blogger defended the story from accusations that it was a hoax because it has not been picked up by the national media and many of the facts come from the Milburn’s attorney.

But the blogger points out that neither the Galveston police department nor the Galveston district attorney’s office have responded to inquiries about the case.

As for the mainstream press, he asks. “Why don’t 90 percent of the abuses of power we look at on this site get covered by the national media?”

Obama & Biden To Protect Bush Administration Criminals

Nuremberg trials also judged “a waste of time”

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Monday, December 22, 2008

It’s par for the course for Obama and Biden, the men who promised “change” but in every step of their preparations for assuming office have pursued nothing but continuity, to acknowledge that they will protect criminals in the Bush administration from prosecution for authorizing torture, a complete violation of both the U.S. constitution and the Geneva Conventions.

When asked by ABC host George Stephanopoulos if top level Bush administration officials would be prosecuted for mandating prisoner abuse, Biden said that he and Obama would be “focusing on the future,” adding “I think we should be looking forward, not backwards.”

Such rhetoric goes to the very heart of the gigantic con job the “Obama change” hoax has wrought upon millions of befuddled Americans who naively presumed that voting for the lesser of two evils would result in anything other than more evil.

Perhaps Göring, Ribbentrop and the rest of the Nazis prosecuted at Nuremberg for their war crimes were following the wrong line of defense when they claimed they were merely “following orders,” they should have just proclaimed that the world should be “looking forward not backwards” and according to the Biden/Obama view of justice, they would have got off scot free.

Likewise, pedophiles and rapists who abuse children and women in ways not far removed from what was approved at Abu Ghraib should merely tell police that since the abuse and rape occurred in the past, everybody should just move on, “looking forwards not backwards”.

Obama and Biden, with their de-facto pardons of the Bush administration torture masters, are ensuring that what happened at places like Abu Ghraib, including beating people to death, raping people with acid covered batons and sexual abuse of children, will continue to happen in future without consequence.

Of course, those that protect war criminals from prosecution should be treated no better than the war criminals themselves, and when real “change” comes to America, Obama and Biden will face the same justice as Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld.

Police: Boy Evaluated Before Weekend Detention

Nov 13, 2008 7:01 am US/Mountain
By Jodi Brooks

Denver police said a 10-year-old boy with bi-polar disorder was evaluated by a third-party youth services agency last Friday before he was detained over the weekend for allegedly assaulting an officer during a violent outburst.

The independent agency called Paramount Youth Services did an assessment according to police. It consisted of 25 questions.

Officials at Centennial Elementary School called police and emergency medical technicians on Friday when Vinni Barros was disrupting his special needs class.

Barros became violent at school and the chain of events that followed landed him in juvenile detention for three days after being arrested for felony assault of a police officer.

His mother, Shantelle Fry, was stunned.

"He doesn't understand why he was put in that situation," Fry said.

According to a letter written by a teacher's aide, Barros had been running around, screaming and knocking things off the desk.

"He picked up a metal bat, put it on his shoulder and smiled at me," she wrote.

He put the bat down and eventually calmed down.

Fry questions the school's decision not to give the boy his emergency medication.

"He completely calms out on that medication," Fry said. "It's meant to drop his blood pressure low enough that he calms out."

But it may not have been such an easy call. Bi-polar disorder is complicated and school nurses typically don't have the expertise to give out strong behavioral changing medication in the context of an emergency.

"We have to make sure that we have a viable physician's order or primary care provider order, as well as parental consent," said Donna Shocks, Denver Public Schools Manager of Nursing Services.

Faced with a clear safety issue, DPS says its staff followed all of its protocols.

"We had a student that the staff at that particular school needed support. They did call safety and security from the district, we did have a registered nurse on scene as well as a police department EMT that responded to that incident," said Alex Sanchez, DPS Spokesperson.

During the encounter, Barros allegedly kicked and spit at a police officer. That's why he was taken into juvenile detention in handcuffs and charged with a felony.

"That's policy, it's protocol," said police spokesman Sonny Jackson. "If you're going to arrest somebody, you're going to handcuff them.

"Should the child go to jail? Should the child go to the hospital? Should he be released to his parents? That's done by people who are trained professionals that make those decisions."

The district attorney's office says charges against Barros will not be filed.

"We had a Chief Deputy District Attorney look at the case facts, review the investigative file, and she made a decision to decline any formal criminal charge," said Lynn Kimbrough, spokeswoman for the DA's office.

He will have to show up for his court date Friday when the case is expected to be dismissed.

Fry kept Barros out of school this week. She's not sure what to do next week.

The DA's office said it is unusual to have criminal cases against 10-year-olds. Ten is the minimum age a person has to be in Colorado to face a criminal charge.

(© MMVIII CBS Television Stations, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

That Was No Small War in Georgia -- It Was the Beginning of the End of the American Empire

By Mark Ames, Radar. Posted December 13, 2008.

The war in Georgia will be remembered as the place where the American Empire fell on its face.

(This article was published in the final issue of Radar magazine, which was bought out and shuttered just as this issue went to print. This is the first online publication of this article. It has been updated by the author.)

Tskhinvali, South Ossetia -- On the sunny afternoon of August 14, a Russian army colonel named Igor Konashenko is standing triumphantly at a street corner at the northern edge of Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, his forearm bandaged from a minor battle injury. The spot marks the furthest point of the Georgian army's advance before it was summarily crushed by the Russians a few days earlier. "Twelve Georgian battalions invaded Tskhinvali, backed by columns of tanks, armored personal carriers, jets, and helicopters," he says, happily waving at the wreckage, craters, and bombed-out buildings around us. "You see how well they fought, with all their great American training -- they abandoned their tanks in the heat of the battle and fled."

Konashenko pulls a green compass out of his shirt pocket and opens it. It's a U.S. military model. "This is a little trophy -- a gift from one of my soldiers," he says. "Everything that the Georgians left behind, I mean everything, was American. All the guns, grenades, uniforms, boots, food rations -- they just left it all. Our boys stuffed themselves on the food," he adds slyly. "It was tasty." The booty, according to Konashenko, also included 65 intact tanks outfitted with the latest NATO and American (as well as Israeli) technology.

Technically, we are standing within the borders of Georgia, which over the last five years has gone from being an ally to the United States to a neocon proxy regime. But there are no Georgians to be seen in this breakaway region -- not unless you count the bloated corpses still lying in the dirt roads. Most of the 70,000 or so people who live in South Ossetia never liked the idea of being part of Georgia. During the violent land scramble that occurred after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the South Ossetians found themselves cut off from their ethnic kin in North Ossetia, which remained part of Russia. The Russians, who've had a small peacekeeping force here since 1992, managed to keep the brewing conflicts on ice for the last 15 years. But in the meantime, the positions of everyone involved hardened. The Georgians weren't happy about the idea of losing a big chunk of territory. The Ossetians, an ethnic Persian tribe, were more adamant than ever about joining Russia, their traditional ally and protector.

The tense but relatively stable situation blew up late in the evening of August 7, when on the order of president Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia's army swept into South Ossetia, leveling much of Tskhinvali and surrounding villages and sending some 30,000 refugees fleeing north into Russia. Within hours, Russia's de facto czar Vladimir Putin counterattacked -- some say he'd set a trap -- and by the end of that long weekend the Georgians were in panicked retreat. The Russian army then pushed straight through South Ossetia and deep into Georgia proper, halting less than an hour's drive from Saakashvili's luxurious palace. All around me is evidence of a rout. A Georgian T-72 tank turret is wedged into the side of a local university building, projecting from the concrete like a cookie pressed into ice cream. Fifty yards away you can see the remains of the vehicle that the orphaned turret originally was part of: just a few charred parts around a hole in the street, and a section of tread lying flat on the sidewalk. Russian tanks now patrol the city unopposed, each one as loud as an Einstrzende Neubauten concert, clouding the air with leaded exhaust as they rumble past us.

But listening to Colonel Konashenko, it becomes clear to me that I'm looking at more than just the smoldering remains of battle in an obscure regional war: This spot is ground zero for an epic historical shift. The dead tanks are American-upgraded, as are the spent 40mm grenade shells that one spetznaz soldier shows me. The bloated bodies on the ground are American-trained Georgian soldiers who have been stripped of their American-issue uniforms. And yet, there is no American cavalry on the way. For years now, everyone from Pat Buchanan to hybrid-powered hippies have been warning that America would suddenly find itself on a historical downslope from having been too reckless, too profligate, and too arrogant as an unopposed superpower. Even decent patriotic folk were starting to worry that America was suffering from a classic case of Celebrity Personality Disorder, becoming a nation of Tom Cruise party-dicks dancing in our socks over every corner and every culture in the world, lip-synching about freedom as we plunged headfirst into as much risky business as we could mismanage. And now, bleeding money from endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we're a sick giant hooked on ever-pricier doses of oil paid for with a currency few people want anymore. In the history books of the future, I would wager that this very spot in Tskhinvali will be remembered as both the geographic highwater mark of the American empire, and the place where it all started to fall apart.

I first visited Georgia in 2002 to cover the arrival of American military advisers. At the time, the American empire was riding high. A decade after the Soviet Union's collapse, Russia seemed to be devolving into an anarchic and corrupt failed state, while the U.S. just kept getting stronger. Within months of President George W. Bush's swearing-in, Time ran a column boasting that America didn't need to accommodate Russia anymore because it had become "the dominant power in the world, more dominant than any since Rome." That same year we invaded Afghanistan without breaking a sweat. The New York Times magazine proclaimed: "The American Empire: Get Used to It." A new word, hyperpower, was being used to describe our history-warping supremacy.

The military advisers were dispatched to Georgia ostensibly to train that country's forces to fight local Al Qaeda cells, which everyone knew didn't exist. In reality, we were training them for key imperial outsourcing duties. Georgia would do for the American Empire what Mumbai call centers did for Delta Airlines: deliver greater returns at a fraction of the cost. They became a flagship franchise of America Inc. It made sense for the Georgians, too: Their erratic and occasionally violent neighbor Russia wouldn't fuck with them, because fucking with them would be fucking with us -- and nobody would dare to do that.

The imperial masterminds who fixated on Georgia as an outsourcing project must have figured we'd score a two-fer by simultaneously winning strategic control of the untapped oil in the region and also managing to stick a giant bug up the raw southern rim of our decrepit old rival Russia.

To enact this plan, America deftly organized and orchestrated the so-called Rose Revolution, which I witnessed in Tblisi in 2003. Saakkashvili's predecessor, Eduard Shevardnadze, was judged unreliable, so in a multilayered soft putsch that used every lever of influence at our disposal, the U.S. replaced him with Saakashvili, a Columbia-educated hothead who speaks perfect neocon. In the Western media, the Rose Revolution was portrayed as 1776 redux (starring Saakashvili as George Washington with a permanent five o'clock shadow). A more perfect vassal for George W. Bush's foreign policy could not have been found than "Misha," as he is fondly known. He stacked his cabinet with young right-wing fanatics, and made sure he had a coterie of mountain-biking American advisers with him at all times. This crew included John McCain's chief foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann, whom Misha paid more than $1 million in lobbying fees.

This project in Georgia was just a high-profile example of a broader Bush strategy. All around Russia's southern border, America laid claim to former Soviet domains. After 9/11, Putin infuriated many of his army commanders and security chiefs by agreeing to let the U.S. set up bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan for the Afghan invasion. Once the Taliban was removed from power, America decided that it felt like staying. After all, who was going stop us? Given the sorry state of their affairs, the Russians certainly weren't. So by 2002, Putin was stuck with American pie dripping down his cadaverous bloodless face. But after years in which Russia rebuilt itself on the back of soaring commodity prices (today it's the world's largest producer of oil), our advantages in global power politics have started to tilt Putin's way. Slowly and quietly he got American forces thrown out of Uzbekistan and all but sidelined in Kyrgyzstan. And then, here in Georgia, he seized the opportunity to really hammer home his point.

During my visit to Georgia in 2003, if someone had told me that in five years American military advisers would be hightailing it from their main base in Vasiani to avoid getting slaughtered by advancing Russian forces, I would have slapped him with a rubber chicken for insulting my intelligence. Yet there they were: gasping for air in the lobby of the Tblisi Sheraton, insisting off the record that the conflict was all the Georgians' fault, not theirs.

Why Misha decided to attack is still a mystery. He claims he was forced to level Tskhinvali to preempt a Russian invasion, but that doesn't make military sense, and has since been debunked by both Georgians and OSCE monitors on the ground; others believe that he struck because, with Bush on his way out, he thought this would be his last chance to regain control of South Ossetia. Another theory popular among journalists and pundits is that the notoriously "hotheaded" (some would say "mentally unstable") Saakashvili was suckered into his doomed invasion by a clever Russian ruse, part of Putin's plan to punish the West for recognizing Kosovo and other crimes of imperial insensitivity. Personally, I'd vote for number two. (Putin has offered an alternative hypothesis: that Misha intentionally sparked a war in order to boost John McCain's prospects in the U.S. election.) Prior to the offensive of August 7, Georgians cut off Russian television and Internet sites in South Ossetia, then rained Grad rockets and artillery on the capital and surrounding villages. The early-hours blitz was, as one Ossetian told me the day before, "shock and awe." At least half the population fled into Russia. People I spoke to in the refugee camps, mostly women, were still in a daze -- they told of fleeing their burning villages under fire, of Georgians raping and murdering, of grenades thrown into civilian bomb shelters, of tanks running over children. (It was impossible to corroborate these individual stories, as is generally the case in trying to sift fact from inflamed rumor in refugee camps.)

Reliable casualty counts for the broader conflict are still all but impossible to get, but as of late August the Russians admit having lost 64 soldiers, and the Georgians a combined 215 soldiers and civilians. In both cases, the real number is probably much higher. On the civilian front, Ossetian sources claim that 1,500 were killed in the Georgian assault -- Putin called it a "genocide" -- but many Westerners dismiss that figure.

Privately, however, American advisers and defeated Georgian commanders admit to "total defeat." Indeed, Arkady Ostrovsky of the Economist, a British reporter who has long been close to Saakashvili, told me that on the day of the cease-fire, the Georgian leader spoke of shooting himself, and was only dissuaded when word came of a supportive statement by Condi Rice. "It was sad to watch," Ostrovsky told me. "I should have been more critical of Saakashvili back when it might have counted. A lot of us should have."

That's exactly the kind of full-spectrum smackdown the Russians were aiming for. And Konashenko wants us all to see it, so he offers to take me and some other reporters to the city of Gori in occupied Georgia. Russia seized control of the city at the end of hostilities, essentially cutting its foe in two and leaving it exposed to Vladimir Putin's whims. "We'll show you Gori -- the city is spotless," Konashenko says cheerfully. "We could have destroyed it, but we didn't. Of course, there's a little bit of damage here and there."

The next morning, I head toward Georgia in the back of a Russian army truck, winding through the countryside of South Ossetia. Many villages have been burned and completely leveled. In the minority ethnic- Georgian communities, the sour odor of death hangs in the air, as those who survived the Ossetians' reprisal attacks had little time to bury their dead friends and relatives.

When we arrive in Gori, the locals seem unnerved by our presence. They shy away as aggressive reporters point cameras and pursue them along the cobblestone streets for a quote. At first, some say that they are grateful that the Russian forces are there to protect them from marauding Ossetian and Chechen irregulars, who had swept through parts of Georgia murdering civilians and looting homes before the Russians arrived. After a half hour, the Georgians we talk with get used to our presence. A few summon the nerve to quietly pull me aside and whisper things like, "Are the Russians ever going to leave?" and "We don't have any information here. Is this going to be Russian territory forever?"

In Gori's vast central square there is shattered glass on the sidewalks, but as Konashenko promised, the city is largely intact. It is also starkly empty, as if a virus or neutron bomb had wiped out the civilian population. Most of the city's inhabitants have long since fled to Tblisi, along with the soldiers.

As we hop out of the army trucks, one of the Russian commanders points to a limp banner flying at half-mast over the polished-granite administration building on the far side of the square, "You see?" he says. "The Georgian flag is still flying. This is Georgian territory -- we're not annexing it like the media says." This kind of boast, conquering a country and then making a big noble show of respecting its sovereignty, was something that had once been reserved for America's forces. How quickly history has turned here.

The other Western journalists fan out for some atrocity hunting, digging for signs that the Russians might have dropped a cluster bomb or massacred civilians. The foreign-desk editors back home have been demanding proof of Russian evil, after largely ignoring Georgia's war crimes in South Ossetia. It's a sordid business, but the reporters are just following orders.

After an hour in the 90-degree heat, I head over to the city's central square, where I stumble across a stunning spectacle: dozens of Russian soldiers doing a funky-chicken victory dance in the Georgian end zone. They're clowning around euphorically, shooting souvenir photos of each other in front of the administration building and the statue of Stalin (Gori's most famous native son) while their commanders lean back and laugh. I approach Lieutenant Colonel Andrei Bobrun, assistant commander of the Russian land forces' North Caucasus Military District -- the roughest neighborhood in Western Eurasia -- and ask him how he feels now, as a victorious military leader in a proxy war with America.

"I have never been so proud of Russia -- magnificent Russia!" Bobrun crows, an AK strapped over his shoulder. "For twenty years we just talked and talked, blabbed and blabbed, complained and complained. But we did nothing, while America ran wild and took everything it could. Twenty years of empty talk. Now Russia is back. And you see how great Russia is. Look around you -- we're not trying to annex this land. What the fuck do I need Georgia for? Russia could keep this, but what for? Hell, we could conquer the whole world if we wanted to. That's a fact. It was Russia that saved Europe from Genghis Khan. Russia could have taken India and the Middle East. We could take anything -- we took Alaska, we took California. There is nothing that Russia could not take, and now the world is being reminded again."

"Why did you give California back?" I asked. It has always baffled me why a country would abandon prime coastal real estate for the frozen swamps of Siberia -- I always assumed it was because the Russians were ashamed when they found themselves holding onto a chunk of this planet as perfect as California: like B-list nerds who successfully crash a Vanity Fair Oscar party, but within minutes of their little triumph, skulk out of the tent out of sheer embarrassment, knowing they never belonged there in the first place.

"We gave it all back because we don't need it," Borisov boasted, puffing out his chest. "Russia has enough land, what the hell do we need more for. But if others want to start something, this is what will happen. Russia is back, and I am so proud."

As the day wore on, the Kremlin press pool organizers finally rounded us up, and we headed back again along the same victory trail. It was on this second visit to ruins of Tskhinvali, as dusk approached and the violence seemed to already acquire a kind of abstract tone, that I started to realize that I was looking at something much bigger than the current debate about Russian aggression or who was more guilty of what -- pulling the camera much farther back on this scene, I understood that I was looking at the first ruins of America's imperial decline. It's not an easy thing to spot. It took years after the real collapse for Russians to finally accept that awful reality, and to adjust accordingly, first by retrenching, not overplaying an empty hand, slowly building up without making any loud noises while America ran wild around the world bankrupting itself and bleeding dry.

And now it's over for us. That's clear on the ground. But it will be years before America's political elite even begins to grasp this fact. In the meantime, Russia is drunk on its victory and the possibilities that it might imply, sending its recently-independent neighbors into a kind of frenzied animal panic. Experience has taught them that it's moments like these when Russia's near abroad becomes, once again, a blood-soaked doormat in the violent epochal shifts -- history never stopped here, it just froze up for a decade or so. And now it's thawing, bringing with it the familiar stench of bloated bodies, burned rubble, and the sour sweat of Russian infantry.

We have entered a dangerous moment in history -- America in decline is reacting hysterically, woofing and screeching and throwing a tantrum, desperate to prove that it still has teeth. Which it does -- but not in the old dominant way that America wants or believes itself to be. History shows that it's at this moment, tipping into decline and humiliation, when the worst decisions are made, so idiotically destructive that they'll make the Iraq campaign look like a mere training exercise fender-bender by comparison.

Russia, meanwhile, is as high as a Hollywood speedballer from its victory. Putting the two together in the same room -- speedballing Russia and violently bad-tripping America -- is a recipe for serious disaster. If we're lucky, we'll survive the humiliating decline and settle into the new reality without causing too much damage to ourselves or the rest of the world. But when that awful moment arrives where the cognitive dissonance snaps hard, it will be an epic struggle to come to our senses in time to prevent the William Kristols, Max Boots and Robert Kagans from leading us into a nuclear holocaust which, they will assure us, we can win against Russia, thanks to our technological superiority. If only we have the will, they'll tell us, we can win once and for all.

Mark Ames is editor of the Moscow English alt weekly, The eXile. He is the author of Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion: From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond.

© 2008 Radar All rights reserved.View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/112457/

WHAT HAPPENED TO FREEDOM?

by: Jamal Hart
(Mumia Abu-Jamal's son)
12/08

“Known worldwide as an almost mythical birthplace of liberty, the hope and freedom acted as a kind of psychic magnet, drawing the poor and oppressed from the class-bound aristocracies of Europe in rivers of emigration as well as Black captives escaping from southern bondage and Black freedmen and women fleeing a humiliating and soul-sapping southern apartheid. The Philadelphia that the stalwart Frederick Douglass beheld with snarled contempt would more than double in size in half a century rising from 650,000 people in 1860 to 1.5 million by 1914.”

-“A People’s History of the United States” by Howard Zinn. Quoted from “We Want Freedom” by Mumia Abu-Jamal


Firstly, I would like to take this time to request a moment of silence for all of our fallen heroes and sheroes who made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom against the oppression of this wicked injustice system among innocent people.

I humbly would like to thank each and every one of you who came out in support of this year’s Class-War Prisoners event. Your solidarity is greatly respected. I give the greeting in many tongues to everyone in attendance by saying As-Salaam-Alaikum, Hotep, Ona MOVE, and Greetings to the masses who sacrificed their time to attend this important event. You have been chosen to become informed, abreast and intuned with a constant struggle that connects us all. I thank the Partisan Defense Committee for their massive support and love over the years throughout this atrocious ordeal. I stand in total solidarity with the labor force and with all people who take a stand against injustice and oppression.

I want you all to know that I have been constantly pushing for liberation quite vigorously and many of you inspire me to push harder and remember the words of a great freedom fighter Sis. Harriet Tubman who said, “I started with this idea in my head. There’s two things I have a right to: Death or Liberty.” (Quoted from the book “We Want Freedom” by Mumia Abu-Jamal).

From the beginning, as many of you know all too well, we are fighting for Mumia Abu-Jamal to be exonerated to freedom. We the people here today and abroad will not compromise in the liberation and freedom of him from behind enemy lines. The supporters constantly expressed this urgent message: FREEDOM OVER A NEW TRIAL!

So many times we have witnessed the vile injustice orchestrated in those so-called rooms of justice (AKA the courtrooms). Too many have been unjustly persecuted and railroaded either because of the color of their skin, a poor person or even a combination of both. God forbid they publicly oppose this outright oppression! They will be prosecuted, ridiculed and even have their character defamed to a demoralized state by this mendacious legal system.

By you being here today either to support this movement or join it for the first time, you are showing your awareness and solidarity to expose and demolish the unsavory racist courts the police state and racist Death Penalty Act that feeds off the working poor. We must collaborate and fight to achieve the one goal to free Mumia and all of our freedom fighters including myself from behind enemy lines.

The senseless murders at the hands of these racist rogue law enforcement officers nationwide are robbing the lives of our youth, women and men to feed their taste for blood like vampires. We cannot allow these injustices to go unchecked and accept their lies thereby causing their behavior to be justified.

The Courts from the lower level to the Supreme Court wants to act as if they cannot see that Mumia Abu Jamal is innocent. All of the evidence is clear and convincing and it is either overlook or dismissed by these rogue courts. However, when a rogue police officer opens fire on innocent working class people and immigrants, somehow they get swift justice and are freed of all charges.

As a man who didn’t think twice to become the voice of the voiceless, Mumia stepped up to the plate to expose this demonic system. A system that was and still continues to enforce intense oppression on African Americans throughout this nation by murderous police officers who hide their venomous ways behind their shields. It then allows them to freely practice corruption, extortion and murder among other unpleasantries. A prime example of this is what happened on Osage Avenue on May 13th, 1985 where 11 MOVE members were brutally murdered by this murderous government. Another example is the attempted assassination of my dear father Mumia on December 9th, 1981 in downtown Philly when these rogue police officers not only shot him, but beat him even while inside the emergency room of Jefferson University Hospital. WHAT HAPPENED TO FREEDOM?

Comrades, the only way we will get freedom for our political prisoners who are suffering in the prison hells of this country is to come together becoming a solid force for the poor and working class. We must reach one to teach one and educate the masses on the political history of America’s oppression.

Many of you assisted in change history in America by voting for the first African-American President showing the world that anything is possible in America. As that was an accomplishment, so should the goal of galvanizing the people and educate them on the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal and too many more being railroaded by a mendacious legal system.

Comrades, we all know that these are trying times. We must step up to the plate and push harder until my dear father Mumia is ultimately free! At some point we need to get a grip and demand the freedom of this innocent man.

Lastly, I remind all of you as I remind myself everyday that we must not allow our adversaries to wag the tail of a dog and allow them to spoon-feed us with their deceiving lie that America does not have any political prisoners.

I am before you today in spirit to express to you that the only way Mumia will be free is for all of us to mobilize like never before and demand that freedom he and all of our freedom fighters so rightfully deserve. We must let them know that we will never give up! There is NO compromise!


FREE MUMIA NOW!!!

Jamal has been incarcerated since 1996. Please write to show a brother some love at the following address:

Jamal Hart #50597-066
FCI Loretto
P.O. Box 1000
Loretto, PA 15940-1000

Blame the Takers, Not the Makers

[col. writ. 11/23/08] (c) '08 Mumia Abu-Jamal


When multiple media outlets put out the same story line, these companies, seemingly separate, establish a media narrative that quickly congeals into an apparent popular opinion -- even when such views actually reflect a narrow slice of elite opinion.

We saw this at work in the now infamous run-up to the Iraq War, when almost all corporate news outlets united to cheerlead the war, based on lies.

More recently we've seen a profound political distaste for the auto companies, with a special vehemence for the United Auto Workers (UAW) who are portrayed as greedy, lazy 'ne'er-do-wells', who are paid far more than they're worth.

Rarely are executive compensations questioned, but men and women on the line are repeatedly pointed to, quite unfairly.

This is the psychological fruit of decades of wars on workers, which really comes from the turn of the last century, when law and corporate opinion criminalized unions as 'syndicalism.'

Through decades of bitter labor struggles, these laws were overturned, but business never really agreed to the core idea of workers' rights, and bided its time until a better season.

That season arrived with the election of Ronald Reagan, who, although he ran on the feel-good nationalism of "Morning in America", waged an old fashioned war against unions by breaking the Air Traffic Controllers -- literally putting them in chains to break their strike in 1981.

No matter which party won an election since then, they placated business and hit labor.

One need look no further than the Democrat, William J. Clinton, who fought for NAFTA, which, because it supported businesses when they went offshore in search of cheap labor, severely weakened union power across the board.

Isn't it ironic that media reflects such an anti-union bent when many corporate (at least newspaper employees) reporters are members of the Newspaper Guild?

But union membership isn't determinative; company ownership is. And media is often a small part of a much larger corporate conglomerate.

When the UAW was strong, it strengthened the hand of labor almost all across the board.

The UAW fought long and hard for the wages they've earned. They shouldn't be dogged for this.

They are the makers, not the takers.

The media narrative should be, why aren't all American workers paid a more decent wage?

That's the story that should be the lead on the front page.

--(c) '08 maj

A Secret Recession?

[col. writ. 12/2/08] (c) '08 Mumia Abu-Jamal


Now, we know.

Not only has it been officially confirmed that the U.S. economy is in a recession, but the nation has been in recession since December -- 2007!!

Is it just me, or have I seen sitting president, G.W. Bush say, repeatedly, that 'we're not in a recession?'

Is it possible that the man with a master's degree in business administration didn't know what a recession was?

Or is it simply that his aides didn't tell him?

Or is it that he didn't want to acknowledge it, as this would be but another stain on what can only be called his dysfunctional presidency?

With over a million jobs lost since the first three quarters of the year, the nation's biggest banks crumbling in hours, and with two wars being fought on a Chinese credit card, how could we not know? How could he not know?

Did the members of the administration handling finance keep it a secret from the President? Or did the presidency keep it secret from the People?

Now comes the report from the National Bureau of Economic Research confirming what millions knew by just looking out the window, or strolling in a mall.

Now, it's official.

If ever anyone wonders if they can trust their politicians, remember the recent assurances to millions -- "we're not in a recession", we're not in a recession...."
(Do you believe it yet?)

--(c) '08 maj

More Money for 'Masters': None For You

[col. writ. 11/29/08] (c) '08 Mumia Abu-Jamal


As the nation's economy seesaws between bubble and bust, people are becoming more and more aware of the obscene levels of disproportion between average workers and their CEO's. (Chief Executive Officers)

During congressional hearings where businessmen begged and politicians lectured, much was made of the costs of private jets used to carry them to Washington.

But this was actually a pittance when one considers the rarely discussed issue of executive compensation.

When we look at 12 of the world's most advanced economies, the U.S. is head and shoulders above all others in pay ratios between CEO's and average workers.

In 2006, the average CEO made 364 times more than the average worker. As amazing as this sounds, this was down substantially from 2000, when CEO's made525 times more than the average worker. In 2007, it was 344 times more than the average worker.

As crazy as this sounds it's normal when one considers the bubble that is the nation's boardrooms, where buddies look out for buddies, almost completely divorced from the company's performance.

The other reason such arrangements are rarely successfully challenged is that they are based on contracts signed between corporate boards and CEO's, and are often the terms upon which a CEO joins a firm.

Contracts are the bedrock of American business, and indeed, among the foundations of the U.S. Why so?

Read the Constitution. There it is: Article I; Section 9:
No State shall...pass any laws... impairing the Obligation of
Contracts.....

So what if the contract guarantees the CEO be paid $30 million bucks a year, and the company lost $200 million in revenues? Fire 25,000 workers! A contract is a contract, right?

That's the American way. At least that's the way pushed by big business in the last few decades. In 1980, the average CEO made 42 times more than the average worker. By 1990, it more than doubled to 107 times.

As the economy was falling like dominoes, Wall Street paid out $33 billion in executive bonuses just last year.

It's hard to resist the temptation that business is just a machine -- a money-making machine - to benefit the CEO, the board, their cronies, occasionally shareholders -- and last of all, employees.

It is precisely this machine that built the sub-prime problems, the foreclosure plague, and the present economic repercussions of the latest bursting bubble of wild speculative greed...while paying CEO's fortunes fit for kings.

--(c) '08 maj

[Source: Landy, Heather, "Executive Pay Sparks Outrage", The Washington Post (Nat'l Wkly. Ed.], Nov. 24-30, 2008, pp. 7-8; Maloney, Brenna and Todd Lindeman, "Behind the Big Paydays", The Washington Post, Nov. 24-30, 2008, {Nat'l. Wkly. Ed.} (graphic of pay ratios), p.7.]

False Freedom

[col. writ. 12/7/08] (c) '08 Mumia Abu-Jamal


There is a certain sense in the minds of millions in the aftermath of the U.S. presidential election, that we have reached the promised land.

The imagery and oratory of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is invoked, to suggest that his Dream, as articulated in his epic "I Have a Dream" speech, has been realized.

There is a deep sense that freedom is here, as we all live in a 'post-racial America'.

Or do we?

To be sure, we are all on the brink of history, for this has never happened before.

But there was a time, quite a while ago, when similar feelings swept the nation, and especially Black hearts, that a new day was breaking, and the old ways had fallen away, when freedom was as real as rain.

I speak of the Reconstruction era, when the nation formally extended civil rights to millions of Black men (not to women, notably) and scores of Black people took office in state and federal legislatures, beginning a wave of progressive legislation to better the abominable living conditions of millions, Black and white alike.

But Reconstruction was short-lived, due to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the betrayal of Black freedmen by the federal government, and the campaign of white terrorists against Black people and Republicans, which converged to reassert white supremacy.

The Supreme Court also played a pivotal role in the Slaughterhouse Cases (1873), which, despite the clear language of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, supported states rights over federal constitutional rights, and thus signaled to the South that its denial of rights and segregation of Blacks wouldn't offend their reading of the Constitution.

The hopes, dreams and freedoms of millions were dashed for more than a century, so that the lie of white supremacy could prevail.

At the end of the Civil War, when slavery was formally abolished, Black people were so joyous that many changed their names to reflect this new-found freedom to define themselves. They organized their own churches. They opened schools and businesses. They ran for and won local and national offices. They sat on juries. And they married in droves.

Within a generation, all of these freedoms were washed away, by law, custom and a vicious reign of racist terrorism.

What this history revealed is freedom can be ephemeral.

It matters not what is written in constitutions, nor the rhetoric or promises of politicians. It matters what people fight for.

If history teaches us anything, it is that it matters what social movements struggle for.

-- (c) '08 maj

'Penny Wise -- Pound Foolish'

[col. writ. 12/6/08] (c) '08 Mumia Abu-Jamal


Hundreds of billions of dollars have been poured into financial houses, banks and insurance companies , and the needle on the nation's economy has barely budged from "E".

Now the nation's big three auto companies are at the table in Congress, asking for their share. Not surprisingly, the banks have (despite political claims at the time) tightened, not loosened, credit, a fact that contributes to the once Big Three coming to Congress, for banks have declined to loan money to them!

The auto companies have echoed the banks' arguments, that they too are 'too big to fall', but they are finding a quite different audience than did the financial bigwigs.

That's because they occupy vastly different niches in the nation's political economy, as this new era reflects the transition from manufacturing to financial services as engines of capital production.

While the punditocracy has attacked the automakers for their workers' pay rates, few have been critical of the fees paid to those at the mid-ranks of the financial services industry, only the executives at the top.

That's in part because the political class identifies with, and serves, the financial services sector -- and quite a few come from that world (think of former senator -- and now New Jersey's Governor, John Corzine, for example). That's also because financial services have contributed generally to politicians (Think Enron and the presidential and gubernatorial career of George W. Bush, for example).

And while unions certainly contribute to political campaigns, few have come from the shop floor to the halls of Congress.

That explains the disparity of treatment for the two sectors.

The engines of America's economy aren't Detroit nor Wall Street; they are everyday people, who fuel the economy by their shipping, their use of services, and their wealth of daily business transactions.

Detroit is in trouble today, not because they pay their workers too well, but because their place in the domestic market is slipping annually. Until more people willingly purchase their products, their condition can only worsen.

Before the massive, whirlwind bailouts, the Bush administration tried a modest stimulus package for some Americans, to little effect. That stimulus was too modest, and too limited.

What if 1/2 the money spent on Wall St. went to average Americans?

If they'd spent it, it would've recharged the economy; it they had put it in banks, it would've strengthened bank holdings, making a freeze unlikely.

But the money went to Wall Street, where it sits, as frozen as a Christmas turkey.

The economy moves as a foundation of millions of people; when they can no longer participate it has nowhere to go, but down.

--(c) '08 maj

Somali Woes: The Perils of Intervention

[col. writ. 12/11/08] (c) '08 Mumia Abu-Jamal


On the coastal outcrops of East Africa, in an area known as 'the horn', Somalia sits like a sentinel jutting into both the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean.

Although Somalians have recently been in the Western press because of a half-dozen sensational cases of piracy, the nation has a long and distinct history, centuries before the era of European colonialism.

As long ago as the 1400's, Somalis fought border wars with their western neighbor, Ethiopia. But like many African nations, interference by the West has meant disaster for the people.

Somalia was colonized by the French, the Italians and later, the British, who split the country into separate territories. But throughout the colonization era, they kept their language (Somali), their culture, their history and sense of Somali nationhood.

In 2006, as part of the U.S. misguided 'War on Terror', the U.S. supported an Ethiopian invasion and occupation of Somali, that transformed a bad situation into a worse one. The occupation stirred up Somali nationalism, which strengthened hard-core Islamist forces, which have spearheaded Somali resistance against the Ethiopians.

Now comes word that the Ethiopians are rushing for the exits. By January, 2009, they should be gone.

In the aftermath of this bloody unpopular occupation has grown a deeply radicalized and militarized generation of youth that has no lived memory of schools, of peace, or of communal well-being; only war and strife.

When the U.S. supports proxy wars against nations it doesn't like, it rarely reaps anything better than bitterness.

For the U.S., as one of the world's richest countries, can often afford such expenses, but it doesn't know the time or form of repayment.

Seven years ago, the U.S. experienced one form of repayment when an offshoot of the mujahadin army which forced the Soviets out of Afghanistan, growing stronger in men, money and material by the day.

If Sept. 11th has taught us anything, it should be that wars abroad can become strikes at home.

We've not heard the last of Somalia.

(c) '08 maj

That Was No Small War in Georgia -- It Was the Beginning of the End of the American Empire

By Mark Ames, Radar
Posted on December 13, 2008, Printed on December 17, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/112457/

(This article was published in the final issue of Radar magazine, which was bought out and shuttered just as this issue went to print. This is the first online publication of this article. It has been updated by the author.)

Tskhinvali, South Ossetia -- On the sunny afternoon of August 14, a Russian army colonel named Igor Konashenko is standing triumphantly at a street corner at the northern edge of Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, his forearm bandaged from a minor battle injury. The spot marks the furthest point of the Georgian army's advance before it was summarily crushed by the Russians a few days earlier. "Twelve Georgian battalions invaded Tskhinvali, backed by columns of tanks, armored personal carriers, jets, and helicopters," he says, happily waving at the wreckage, craters, and bombed-out buildings around us. "You see how well they fought, with all their great American training -- they abandoned their tanks in the heat of the battle and fled."Konashenko pulls a green compass out of his shirt pocket and opens it. It's a U.S. military model. "This is a little trophy -- a gift from one of my soldiers," he says. "Everything that the Georgians left behind, I mean everything, was American. All the guns, grenades, uniforms, boots, food rations -- they just left it all. Our boys stuffed themselves on the food," he adds slyly. "It was tasty." The booty, according to Konashenko, also included 65 intact tanks outfitted with the latest NATO and American (as well as Israeli) technology.

Technically, we are standing within the borders of Georgia, which over the last five years has gone from being an ally to the United States to a neocon proxy regime. But there are no Georgians to be seen in this breakaway region -- not unless you count the bloated corpses still lying in the dirt roads. Most of the 70,000 or so people who live in South Ossetia never liked the idea of being part of Georgia. During the violent land scramble that occurred after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the South Ossetians found themselves cut off from their ethnic kin in North Ossetia, which remained part of Russia. The Russians, who've had a small peacekeeping force here since 1992, managed to keep the brewing conflicts on ice for the last 15 years. But in the meantime, the positions of everyone involved hardened. The Georgians weren't happy about the idea of losing a big chunk of territory. The Ossetians, an ethnic Persian tribe, were more adamant than ever about joining Russia, their traditional ally and protector.

The tense but relatively stable situation blew up late in the evening of August 7, when on the order of president Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia's army swept into South Ossetia, leveling much of Tskhinvali and surrounding villages and sending some 30,000 refugees fleeing north into Russia. Within hours, Russia's de facto czar Vladimir Putin counterattacked -- some say he'd set a trap -- and by the end of that long weekend the Georgians were in panicked retreat. The Russian army then pushed straight through South Ossetia and deep into Georgia proper, halting less than an hour's drive from Saakashvili's luxurious palace. All around me is evidence of a rout. A Georgian T-72 tank turret is wedged into the side of a local university building, projecting from the concrete like a cookie pressed into ice cream. Fifty yards away you can see the remains of the vehicle that the orphaned turret originally was part of: just a few charred parts around a hole in the street, and a section of tread lying flat on the sidewalk. Russian tanks now patrol the city unopposed, each one as loud as an Einstrzende Neubauten concert, clouding the air with leaded exhaust as they rumble past us.

But listening to Colonel Konashenko, it becomes clear to me that I'm looking at more than just the smoldering remains of battle in an obscure regional war: This spot is ground zero for an epic historical shift. The dead tanks are American-upgraded, as are the spent 40mm grenade shells that one spetznaz soldier shows me. The bloated bodies on the ground are American-trained Georgian soldiers who have been stripped of their American-issue uniforms.

And yet, there is no American cavalry on the way. For years now, everyone from Pat Buchanan to hybrid-powered hippies have been warning that America would suddenly find itself on a historical downslope from having been too reckless, too profligate, and too arrogant as an unopposed superpower. Even decent patriotic folk were starting to worry that America was suffering from a classic case of Celebrity Personality Disorder, becoming a nation of Tom Cruise party-dicks dancing in our socks over every corner and every culture in the world, lip-synching about freedom as we plunged headfirst into as much risky business as we could mismanage. And now, bleeding money from endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we're a sick giant hooked on ever-pricier doses of oil paid for with a currency few people want anymore. In the history books of the future, I would wager that this very spot in Tskhinvali will be remembered as both the geographic highwater mark of the American empire, and the place where it all started to fall apart.

I first visited Georgia in 2002 to cover the arrival of American military advisers. At the time, the American empire was riding high. A decade after the Soviet Union's collapse, Russia seemed to be devolving into an anarchic and corrupt failed state, while the U.S. just kept getting stronger. Within months of President George W. Bush's swearing-in, Time ran a column boasting that America didn't need to accommodate Russia anymore because it had become "the dominant power in the world, more dominant than any since Rome." That same year we invaded Afghanistan without breaking a sweat. The New York Times magazine proclaimed: "The American Empire: Get Used to It." A new word, hyperpower, was being used to describe our history-warping supremacy.

The military advisers were dispatched to Georgia ostensibly to train that country's forces to fight local Al Qaeda cells, which everyone knew didn't exist. In reality, we were training them for key imperial outsourcing duties. Georgia would do for the American Empire what Mumbai call centers did for Delta Airlines: deliver greater returns at a fraction of the cost. They became a flagship franchise of America Inc. It made sense for the Georgians, too: Their erratic and occasionally violent neighbor Russia wouldn't fuck with them, because fucking with them would be fucking with us -- and nobody would dare to do that.

The imperial masterminds who fixated on Georgia as an outsourcing project must have figured we'd score a two-fer by simultaneously winning strategic control of the untapped oil in the region and also managing to stick a giant bug up the raw southern rim of our decrepit old rival Russia.

To enact this plan, America deftly organized and orchestrated the so-called Rose Revolution, which I witnessed in Tblisi in 2003. Saakkashvili's predecessor, Eduard Shevardnadze, was judged unreliable, so in a multilayered soft putsch that used every lever of influence at our disposal, the U.S. replaced him with Saakashvili, a Columbia-educated hothead who speaks perfect neocon. In the Western media, the Rose Revolution was portrayed as 1776 redux (starring Saakashvili as George Washington with a permanent five o'clock shadow). A more perfect vassal for George W. Bush's foreign policy could not have been found than "Misha," as he is fondly known. He stacked his cabinet with young right-wing fanatics, and made sure he had a coterie of mountain-biking American advisers with him at all times. This crew included John McCain's chief foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann, whom Misha paid more than $1 million in lobbying fees.

This project in Georgia was just a high-profile example of a broader Bush strategy. All around Russia's southern border, America laid claim to former Soviet domains. After 9/11, Putin infuriated many of his army commanders and security chiefs by agreeing to let the U.S. set up bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan for the Afghan invasion. Once the Taliban was removed from power, America decided that it felt like staying. After all, who was going stop us? Given the sorry state of their affairs, the Russians certainly weren't. So by 2002, Putin was stuck with American pie dripping down his cadaverous bloodless face. But after years in which Russia rebuilt itself on the back of soaring commodity prices (today it's the world's largest producer of oil), our advantages in global power politics have started to tilt Putin's way. Slowly and quietly he got American forces thrown out of Uzbekistan and all but sidelined in Kyrgyzstan. And then, here in Georgia, he seized the opportunity to really hammer home his point.

During my visit to Georgia in 2003, if someone had told me that in five years American military advisers would be hightailing it from their main base in Vasiani to avoid getting slaughtered by advancing Russian forces, I would have slapped him with a rubber chicken for insulting my intelligence. Yet there they were: gasping for air in the lobby of the Tblisi Sheraton, insisting off the record that the conflict was all the Georgians' fault, not theirs.

Why Misha decided to attack is still a mystery. He claims he was forced to level Tskhinvali to preempt a Russian invasion, but that doesn't make military sense, and has since been debunked by both Georgians and OSCE monitors on the ground; others believe that he struck because, with Bush on his way out, he thought this would be his last chance to regain control of South Ossetia. Another theory popular among journalists and pundits is that the notoriously "hotheaded" (some would say "mentally unstable") Saakashvili was suckered into his doomed invasion by a clever Russian ruse, part of Putin's plan to punish the West for recognizing Kosovo and other crimes of imperial insensitivity. Personally, I'd vote for number two. (Putin has offered an alternative hypothesis: that Misha intentionally sparked a war in order to boost John McCain's prospects in the U.S. election.) Prior to the offensive of August 7, Georgians cut off Russian television and Internet sites in South Ossetia, then rained Grad rockets and artillery on the capital and surrounding villages. The early-hours blitz was, as one Ossetian told me the day before, "shock and awe." At least half the population fled into Russia. People I spoke to in the refugee camps, mostly women, were still in a daze -- they told of fleeing their burning villages under fire, of Georgians raping and murdering, of grenades thrown into civilian bomb shelters, of tanks running over children. (It was impossible to corroborate these individual stories, as is generally the case in trying to sift fact from inflamed rumor in refugee camps.)

Reliable casualty counts for the broader conflict are still all but impossible to get, but as of late August the Russians admit having lost 64 soldiers, and the Georgians a combined 215 soldiers and civilians. In both cases, the real number is probably much higher. On the civilian front, Ossetian sources claim that 1,500 were killed in the Georgian assault -- Putin called it a "genocide" -- but many Westerners dismiss that figure.

Privately, however, American advisers and defeated Georgian commanders admit to "total defeat."

Indeed, Arkady Ostrovsky of the Economist, a British reporter who has long been close to Saakashvili, told me that on the day of the cease-fire, the Georgian leader spoke of shooting himself, and was only dissuaded when word came of a supportive statement by Condi Rice. "It was sad to watch," Ostrovsky told me. "I should have been more critical of Saakashvili back when it might have counted. A lot of us should have."

That's exactly the kind of full-spectrum smackdown the Russians were aiming for. And Konashenko wants us all to see it, so he offers to take me and some other reporters to the city of Gori in occupied Georgia. Russia seized control of the city at the end of hostilities, essentially cutting its foe in two and leaving it exposed to Vladimir Putin's whims. "We'll show you Gori -- the city is spotless," Konashenko says cheerfully. "We could have destroyed it, but we didn't. Of course, there's a little bit of damage here and there".

The next morning, I head toward Georgia in the back of a Russian army truck, winding through the countryside of South Ossetia. Many villages have been burned and completely leveled. In the minority ethnic- Georgian communities, the sour odor of death hangs in the air, as those who survived the Ossetians' reprisal attacks had little time to bury their dead friends and relatives.

When we arrive in Gori, the locals seem unnerved by our presence. They shy away as aggressive reporters point cameras and pursue them along the cobblestone streets for a quote. At first, some say that they are grateful that the Russian forces are there to protect them from marauding Ossetian and Chechen irregulars, who had swept through parts of Georgia murdering civilians and looting homes before the Russians arrived. After a half hour, the Georgians we talk with get used to our presence. A few summon the nerve to quietly pull me aside and whisper things like, "Are the Russians ever going to leave?" and "We don't have any information here. Is this going to be Russian territory forever?"

In Gori's vast central square there is shattered glass on the sidewalks, but as Konashenko promised, the city is largely intact. It is also starkly empty, as if a virus or neutron bomb had wiped out the civilian population. Most of the city's inhabitants have long since fled to Tblisi, along with the soldiers.

As we hop out of the army trucks, one of the Russian commanders points to a limp banner flying at half-mast over the polished-granite administration building on the far side of the square, "You see?" he says. "The Georgian flag is still flying. This is Georgian territory -- we're not annexing it like the media says." This kind of boast, conquering a country and then making a big noble show of respecting its sovereignty, was something that had once been reserved for America's forces. How quickly history has turned here.

The other Western journalists fan out for some atrocity hunting, digging for signs that the Russians might have dropped a cluster bomb or massacred civilians. The foreign-desk editors back home have been demanding proof of Russian evil, after largely ignoring Georgia's war crimes in South Ossetia. It's a sordid business, but the reporters are just following orders.

After an hour in the 90-degree heat, I head over to the city's central square, where I stumble across a stunning spectacle: dozens of Russian soldiers doing a funky-chicken victory dance in the Georgian end zone. They're clowning around euphorically, shooting souvenir photos of each other in front of the administration building and the statue of Stalin (Gori's most famous native son) while their commanders lean back and laugh. I approach Lieutenant Colonel Andrei Bobrun, assistant commander of the Russian land forces' North Caucasus Military District -- the roughest neighborhood in Western Eurasia -- and ask him how he feels now, as a victorious military leader in a proxy war with America.

"I have never been so proud of Russia -- magnificent Russia!" Bobrun crows, an AK strapped over his shoulder. "For twenty years we just talked and talked, blabbed and blabbed, complained and complained. But we did nothing, while America ran wild and took everything it could. Twenty years of empty talk. Now Russia is back. And you see how great Russia is. Look around you -- we're not trying to annex this land. What the fuck do I need Georgia for? Russia could keep this, but what for? Hell, we could conquer the whole world if we wanted to. That's a fact. It was Russia that saved Europe from Genghis Khan. Russia could have taken India and the Middle East. We could take anything -- we took Alaska, we took California. There is nothing that Russia could not take, and now the world is being reminded again."

"Why did you give California back?" I asked. It has always baffled me why a country would abandon prime coastal real estate for the frozen swamps of Siberia -- I always assumed it was because the Russians were ashamed when they found themselves holding onto a chunk of this planet as perfect as California: like B-list nerds who successfully crash a Vanity Fair Oscar party, but within minutes of their little triumph, skulk out of the tent out of sheer embarrassment, knowing they never belonged there in the first place.

"We gave it all back because we don't need it," Borisov boasted, puffing out his chest. "Russia has enough land, what the hell do we need more for. But if others want to start something, this is what will happen. Russia is back, and I am so proud."

As the day wore on, the Kremlin press pool organizers finally rounded us up, and we headed back again along the same victory trail. It was on this second visit to ruins of Tskhinvali, as dusk approached and the violence seemed to already acquire a kind of abstract tone, that I started to realize that I was looking at something much bigger than the current debate about Russian aggression or who was more guilty of what -- pulling the camera much farther back on this scene, I understood that I was looking at the first ruins of America's imperial decline. It's not an easy thing to spot. It took years after the real collapse for Russians to finally accept that awful reality, and to adjust accordingly, first by retrenching, not overplaying an empty hand, slowly building up without making any loud noises while America ran wild around the world bankrupting itself and bleeding dry.

And now it's over for us. That's clear on the ground. But it will be years before America's political elite even begins to grasp this fact. In the meantime, Russia is drunk on its victory and the possibilities that it might imply, sending its recently-independent neighbors into a kind of frenzied animal panic. Experience has taught them that it's moments like these when Russia's near abroad becomes, once again, a blood-soaked doormat in the violent epochal shifts -- history never stopped here, it just froze up for a decade or so. And now it's thawing, bringing with it the familiar stench of bloated bodies, burned rubble, and the sour sweat of Russian infantry.

We have entered a dangerous moment in history -- America in decline is reacting hysterically, woofing and screeching and throwing a tantrum, desperate to prove that it still has teeth. Which it does -- but not in the old dominant way that America wants or believes itself to be. History shows that it's at this moment, tipping into decline and humiliation, when the worst decisions are made, so idiotically destructive that they'll make the Iraq campaign look like a mere training exercise fender-bender by comparison.

Russia, meanwhile, is as high as a Hollywood speedballer from its victory. Putting the two together in the same room -- speedballing Russia and violently bad-tripping America -- is a recipe for serious disaster. If we're lucky, we'll survive the humiliating decline and settle into the new reality without causing too much damage to ourselves or the rest of the world. But when that awful moment arrives where the cognitive dissonance snaps hard, it will be an epic struggle to come to our senses in time to prevent the William Kristols, Max Boots and Robert Kagans from leading us into a nuclear holocaust which, they will assure us, we can win against Russia, thanks to our technological superiority. If only we have the will, they'll tell us, we can win once and for all.

Mark Ames is editor of the Moscow English alt weekly, The eXile. He is the author of Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion: From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond.

© 2008 Radar All rights reserved.View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/112457/

Study: U.S. Media Keep People Uneducated About Health Issues

By Sarah Seltzer , RH Reality Check

Posted on December 17, 2008

http://www.alternet.org/story/113065/

"Blaming the media" is a catchphrase that is used in almost cliché-level proportions. But when it comes to health care, a new study indicates it may be appropriate to fault media coverage for a lack of public knowledge about health care policy -- and by extension, the false perception of reproductive rights as ideological "hot rods" rather than women's health concerns.

A recently released Pew Research study conducted with the Kaiser Family Foundation monitored health coverage from January 2007 to June 2008 to determine which subjects got the most coverage, and in which media. The study was designed to be particularly broad-ranging -- rather than, for instance, analyzing how TV news covers breast cancer, the study looked at how television, radio, print, online outlets and other forms of media covered everything heath-related, from specific diseases to health policy and more.

What were the results? According to the report, "News about health occupies a relatively small amount of American news coverage across all platforms: 3.6 percent of news during 2007 and the first half of 2008." In a list of most frequently covered topics, health came in eighth -- far above religion, education and celebrities, but below the economy, crime, foreign affairs and politics.

These results, while hardly thrilling, don't seem abysmal at first. Health gets more coverage than celebrities, after all, which seems like a victory in our current climate. But compounding the small amount of attention devoted to health, the breakdown within existing health coverage shows a tendency to focus on controversial or sensational aspects of health issues, leaving vital policy information behind. One need only to think about the extreme health stories on the nightly news (Are your pills contaminated? Are your children at risk from a rare strain of X?) to understand the crux of the problem. Why focus on the actual public ramifications of various diseases and policies when Jenny McCarthy and Amanda Peet are going at it over autism? Or we can lure people in front of the TV by frightening them?

This is a situation only too familiar to reproductive-health advocates, who often see the public health crises caused by lack of reproductive health care submerged beneath the kind of pitched battles or titillating stories the media loves.

Within the small percentage of health news, outlets focused 41.7 percent on specific diseases, the kind of coverage that spikes somewhat when a celebrity like Elizabeth Edwards, Tony Snow or Tim Russert has cancer or a heart attack. Public health issues made up 30.9 percent of coverage, including stories like the tuberculosis-infected man-on-plane scandal, and reports on gossipy health problems like binge drinking.

Coming in third, actual health policy made up only 24.7 percent of general "health" coverage -- and this includes the political battles during the primaries and the congressional vote on the State Children's Health Insurance Pprogram. Considering that the American health care system is essentially broken, this is a dismal indicator: as the report notes, that means that health policy news made up less than 1 percent of media coverage during the time period. This is not to say that other aspects of health care coverage are unimportant (certainly, diseases and public health issues are probably not covered deeply enough), but instead that sensational and celebrity-oriented slants to health stories often obscure the practical health issues that affect media consumers' lives.

An example of this is the fact that HIV/AIDS stories made up only 2.2 percent of stories related to health, even though misinformation about the (still very much present) disease persists, and dissemination of accurate information is crucial to preventing its transmission.

Newsflash: Reproductive Health Issues Are Health Issues

The lack of coverage when it comes to HIV/AIDS is emblematic of a general failure when it comes to the portrayal of sexual health and reproductive rights in the news media.

In our scandal- and controversy-oriented news culture, reproductive health issues are treated as controversial flashpoints or political footballs rather than genuine public and personal health crises. Many media personalities and reporters caught on to fact that there is a connection between ideology and health during John McCain's infamous placing of "air quotes" around the word "women's health" during a debate -- but there has been little follow up on that connection.

One example of the way the discussion is turned away from health and toward "morality" is the firestorm over the Health and Human Services regulations that would allow providers to opt out of medical procedures they find objectionable.

In focusing on the consciences and internal struggles of health care providers, rather than the difficulty women have accessing proper care, the media does more damage than it possibly can be aware of.

Last month in Slate, Melinda Hennenberger offered an egregious example of this: She spun a piece about the Freedom of Choice Act, legislation that would expand women's access to reproductive care and abortion, into an assault on the moral consciences of Catholics. Presto -- a bill meant to protect women's health becomes an ideological war on the Catholic Church. A juicier story, but a misleading one.

RH Reality Check refuted Hennenberger's factual speculation and even her colleague Dahlia Lithwick reminded readers that women's health hangs in the balance, and often gets lost in the shuffle, when this question is debated.

An example of how to address reproductive health issues in a nonsensational, health-based manner is Rachel Maddow's recent interview with Melissa Harris Lacewell, which was also discussed on this site. The most remarkable thing about the interview was that rather than being framed as a left-right battle royal, the priority of women's health needs was acknowledged by both interviewer and interviewee and was the jumping off point for their discussion rather than the conclusion. They still managed to talk for a long time, and it was even interesting!

There is a market for sensible, factual health coverage because it affects people's lives. It's a wonder that so many arbiters of what's "news" have yet to discover that. Framing reproductive health issues from a public health perspective, and boosting coverage of health care policy, are absolutely crucial to changing the frame on reproductive rights back to what it's really about: women's access to the care they need.

© 2008 RH Reality Check All rights reserved.View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/113065/

Proof The Planned Parenthood Is A Racist Organization

MATTERS OF LIFE AND DEATH
WorldNetDaily
Planned Parenthood: Wanting fewer blacks 'understandable'
Abortion provider says 'yes' when 'donor' wants to reduce minorities
By Bob Unruh

A student-run magazine at UCLA has revealed an undercover investigation in which representatives of Planned Parenthood, the nation's abortion industry leader, admitted willingness to accepting a financial donation targeting the destruction of an unborn black baby.

Lila Rose, who edits The Advocate, previously revealed how Planned Parenthood officials expressed a willingness to conceal statutory rape, an investigative piece that earned her an appearance on the Fox News Channel's "The O'Reilly Factor."

Now she's told WND she hopes the taped responses of Planned Parenthood officials in seven states reveal to her local UCLA community and the nation the racist leanings of the organization.

WND calls to Planned Parenthood of Idaho, which was featured in The Advocate report, requesting a comment were not returned.

"Students on campus are shocked and saddened that such a huge organization would have racist leanings in the present day," Rose told WND. "They are surprised to hear the truth about [Planned Parenthood founder] Margaret Sanger, and how the African-American community is being hurt by abortion.

"There's a lot of surprise out there. Planned Parenthood does an excellent job of covering up the facts," she said.

Sanger supported eugenics to cull those she considered unfit from the population. In 1921, she said eugenics is "the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political and social problems."

At one point, Sanger lamented "the ever increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all." Another time, Sanger wrote, "We do not want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population."

According to Bryan Fisher, executive director of Idaho Values Alliance, Planned Parenthood, which gets an estimated $200 million annually from U.S. taxpayers, has located nearly 80 percent of its clinics nationwide in minority neighborhoods, and about one-third of all abortions are performed on blacks, even though they make up only 13 percent of the population.

Some of the information about the investigation was posted on a YouTube video: NOTE: Unfortunately, YouTube has removed the video. I tried to play it but, it was removed because of the normal YouTube "violation". Anyway, I'll look around and see if I can find it so it can be posted. Planned Parenthood was, is and always will be a racist organization dedicated to eugenics and genocide.

Nationwide, almost half of all black pregnancies end in abortion, officials said.

"It turns out that blatant racism is alive and well in Idaho, but it's not coming from the Aryan Nation types – it's coming from way-left organizations like Idaho's own Planned Parenthood," Fischer said. "If Idaho is in fact a haven for white racism, it turns out that Planned Parenthood and not Richard Butler is to blame."

Richard Butler, who died in 2004, was a notorious white supremacist who founded Aryan Nations in northern Idaho. He lost a 20-acre compound in 2000 when a $6.3 million civil judgment against his group led to a bankruptcy.

"Idaho didn't have room for Richard Butler and shouldn't have room for Planned Parenthood," Fischer said.

The Advocate released a transcript of a conversation between an actor presuming to be a racist and wanting to make a donation, and a woman identified as Autumn Kersey, vice president of marketing for Planned Parenthood of Idaho.

Actor: I want to specify that abortion to help a minority group, would that be possible?

Planned Parenthood: Absolutely.

Actor: Like the black community for example?

Planned Parenthood: Certainly.

Actor: The abortion – I can give money specifically for a black baby, that would be the purpose?

Planned Parenthood: Absolutely. If you wanted to designate that your gift be used to help an African-American woman in need, then we would certainly make sure that the gift was earmarked for that purpose.

Actor: Great, because I really faced trouble with affirmative action, and I don't want my kids to be disadvantaged against black kids. I just had a baby; I want to put it in his name.

Planned Parenthood: Yes, absolutely.

Actor: And we don't, you know we just think, the less black kids out there the better.

Planned Parenthood: (Laughs) Understandable, understandable.

Actor: Right. I want to protect my son, so he can get into college.

Planned Parenthood: All right. Excuse my hesitation, this is the first time I've had a donor call and make this kind of request, so I'm excited, and want to make sure I don't leave anything out.

The investigation included calls to Planned Parenthood in Idaho and half a dozen other states
"I think Idahoans are going to be horrified and shocked at the blatant racism and bigotry exhibited by our local Planned Parenthood affiliate," said Fischer. "I just cannot imagine they're going to stand for that."

He said the timing of the release of the information was intriguing, because the Idaho Legislature is scheduled this week to have its first public hearing on a bill written to prevent Idaho women from being forced into having abortions they do not want.

Rose said students at UCLA now have begun a petition to request the school cut its affiliations with Planned Parenthood.

She said the actor specifically asked about lowering "the number of black people," and each PP branch called agreed to process the racially earmarked donation.

"None expressed concern about the racist reasoning for the donation," The Advocate said.
The Advocate said an Ohio representative, identified as Lisa Hutton, listens to the racist reasoning, but confirmed Planned Parenthood "will accept the money for whatever reason."

Rose said her UCLA campaign has been endorsed by Alveda King, niece of Martin Luther King, who said she supports "the student campaign to get UCLA to cease its programs with Planned Parenthood."

Another Planned Parenthood branch, in Kansas, is facing 107 misdemeanor and felonies charges for allegedly violating Kansas abortion law.

WND reported Rose previously posed as a 15-year-old seeking an abortion at a Planned Parenthood center in Santa Monica, Calif. She was equipped with a hidden camera when she met with an employee to discuss her options.

When Rose revealed she was 15 and her boyfriend was 23, the employee informed her Planned Parenthood was legally required to report the statutory rape, a transcript of the conversation shows.

The Planned Parenthood representative then suggested she could say she was 16 and avoid complications.

"Well, just figure out a birth date that works. And I don't know anything," the rep said.

The Texas-based pro-life group Life Dynamics previously conducted an extensive undercover project in which an adult volunteer posing as a 13-year-old called every Planned Parenthood clinic in the U.S., saying she was pregnant by a 22-year-old boyfriend. Almost without exception, the clinics advised her to obtain an abortion without her parents' knowledge and told her how to protect her boyfriend, who would be guilty in any state of statutory rape.

IMF Chief Warns Of Riots In Response To Economic Crisis

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Wednesday, December 17, 2008

The head of the International Monetary Fund has warned that advanced nations will be hit by violent civil unrest if the elite continue to restructure the economy around their own interests while looting the taxpayer.

During a speech in Madrid, Dominique Strauss-Kahn said that “social unrest may happen in many countries - including advanced economies” if governments failed to adequately respond to the financial crisis.

“He added that violent protests could break out in countries worldwide if the financial system was not restructured to benefit everyone rather than a small elite,” reports the Guardian.

Strauss-Kahn’s comments echo those of others who have cautioned that civil unrest could arise, specifically in the U.S., as a result of the wholesale looting of the taxpayer and the devaluation of the dollar.

Widely respected trends forecaster Gerald Celente recently told Fox News that by 2012 America will become an undeveloped nation, that there will be a revolution marked by food riots, squatter rebellions, tax revolts and job marches, and that holidays will be more about obtaining food, not gifts.

Back in October, Senator Chris Dodd said that revolution would unfold if banks refused to lend money.

“If it turns out that they are hoarding, you’ll have a revolution on your hands. People will be so livid and furious that their tax money is going to line their pockets instead of doing the right thing. There will be hell to pay,” Dodd told the New York Times.

Last month, leading economist Nouriel Roubini said that food riots would be the ultimate consequence of the Federal Reserve and the Treasury’s current policies.

Riots and demonstrations have gripped normally sedate Iceland following a financial catastrophe that has wiped out half of the krona’s value and put one third of the population at risk of losing their homes and life savings.

Expectations of violent civil unrest have not gone unnoticed by the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Institute, who recently issued a report warning that the United States may experience massive civil unrest in the wake of a series of crises which it terms “strategic shock.”

The consequence? The necessity to use “military force against hostile groups inside the United States,” according to the report.

Tens of thousands of active duty military personnel returning from Afghanistan and Iraq are set to conduct “homeland patrols” inside the U.S. and their duties will include tackling “civil unrest and crowd control,” according to a Northcom announcement earlier this year.

DNA “Collection Creep”

Carolyn Harris
Infowars
December 17, 2008

The FBI’s National DNA Index System (CODIS database) was created in 1994 to store the genetic profiles of truly serious violent crimes like rape and murder. But with all things governmental, it expanded to include all convicted felons, then misdemeanants and then those arrested by states. Congress allowed its expansion in 2005 and 2006 under the mistaken impression that DNA collection helps prevent crimes and solves the ones committed. Unlike crime-dramas, in real life DNA is not fool-proof in establishing the identity of the person who committed the crime; it is subject to misuse, abuse and is not always clear-cut.

The Justice Department has published a new rule that will take effect January 9, 2009, that “dramatically expands a federal law enforcement database of genetic identifiers” to include illegal aliens detained and all people arrested for a federal crime.

DNA collection has been widely abused around the US already. Motorists in Colorado were infuriated by requests for DNA samples at a highway checkpoint in 2007. Five separate checkpoints were set up over the weekend, for the purpose of conducting “surveys” regarding drug or alcohol use and DNA collection for the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation.

Some were not aware that the DNA collection was voluntary and one couple, even after declining repeatedly, were offered $100 for their DNA.

In that same year, a plan to require rank-and-file police officers to give DNA samples drew howls of protest. Officers were concerned that their DNA could be abused by an especially crafty criminal collecting a cigarette butt and implicating the officer in a crime.

While the American government continually expands situations in which they take DNA samples, the European Court of Human Rights has just “unanimously ruled that a British policy to collect fingerprints and DNA of all criminal suspects, including those later deemed innocent, violated privacy rights.”

As we reported earlier, on May 2 of this year, the president signed a bill to collect DNA from every newborn. Two of the more disturbing aspects of this law allow the government to establish protocols for the linking and sharing of genetic test results nationwide, and subject citizens to genetic research without their knowledge or consent.

Minnesota’s law allows the collection of newborns at birth. “Children grow up. Eventually, every citizen will have their DNA owned by state government and available for government to engage in genetic research, experimentation, manipulation, and profiling,” said Twila Brase, president of the Citizens’ Council on Health Car. “What good is the state genetic privacy law if government warehousing and analysis of every child’s DNA from birth is exempt from its informed consent protections?” If parents don’t request the sample be destroyed, it is kept indefinitely (.pdf).

The U.S. Government has a history of testing bioweapons and other nasty things on unsuspecting civilians, and the “DNA collection creep” is a very unsettling trend. Armed with the DNA of citizens, there is no telling what horrors they will wreak.

Unemployment: Worse Than it Looks

The most publicized measure of U.S. unemployment tells only part of the story

By Moira Herbst

As U.S. jobs disappear at a rapid clip, the official unemployment figure seems understated. While November's 6.7% rate is a full 2% higher than the same time last year, the rate remains well below the 10.8% postwar peak, reached in November 1982. One issue is that the official unemployment number captures only a slice of the total joblessness in the U.S. To be counted as unemployed in this statistic, a worker must not have a job, be currently available for work, and have actively sought employment within the last four weeks. In other words, a lot of the jobless are left out of the government's tally.

Rajeev Dhawan, director of Georgia State University's Robinson College of Business, says the official unemployment rate is "not a good measure of what is happening in the economy. It's drawn from a sample too small and filled with too many assumptions. Absolute job losses and retail sales give a better idea of what's really happening in the economy."

Fortunately, digging deeper into the labyrinth of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' (BLS) Web site can offer a more complete, if imperfect, picture of joblessness. Since 1993, the BLS has tracked a category of unemployed called U-6, which captures the total unemployed, plus what the agency calls "marginally attached" workers and those employed part-time "for economic reasons." For November 2008, that rate was 12.5%, nearly double the official unemployment rate and the highest since the government started tracking this category.

Outside Looking In
Marginally attached workers are those with no job and who aren't hunting for one but who are interested in working—people who have left the workforce because the employment situation seems so bleak that they've stopped trying. This measure covers anyone who has looked for work in the past 12 months, not just the past four weeks. In November, 1.9 million workers were marginally attached, up 637,000 from a month prior. This category includes long-term unemployed, such as factory workers who can't find a job paying close to what they'd been earning before. Unemployment rates in construction and extraction jobs such as mining hit 12.1% in November, followed by 9.4% in production jobs. That means the ranks of the marginally attached will increase.

Those employed part-time for economic reasons, who are counted as employed in the official statistic, want and are available for full-time work but have had to settle for a part-time schedule. As of November, the number of workers in this category rose by 621,000. There are now 7.3 million involuntary part-time workers, up 2.8 million over the past 12 months.

Contract workers, sometimes known as freelancers or independent contractors, face a special set of problems when it comes to being counted by the government. First, employers aren't required to report layoffs of contract workers to the government, so when companies say they're cutting their contractor workforce—as Google (GOOG) did in October—no one knows by how much. These job cuts are also not recorded in the official job-cut statistics tracked by the government. In other words, the 533,000 jobs lost in the November count don't include any of the tens of thousands of contract workers being slashed from company payrolls as the recession deepens.

Falling Between the Cracks
Some self-employed workers are incorporated into other BLS statistics, but not all of them are counted. Those traditionally considered self-employed, such as independent real estate agents or accountants, are included in the government's household survey of the unemployed. But those working as long-term freelancers for one particular company without the benefits of being staff members—often dubbed "permalancers"—are not. That means a good portion of this group, which the Government Accountability Office says makes up 10% of the workforce, isn't properly tracked. "We really don't know what is happening with the [contractor employment] numbers," says Sara Horowitz, founder of the Freelancers Union, a 93,000-member organization of contract workers. Horowitz says the government should develop better measures of contract workers, perhaps by identifying the number of contractor tax filings with the IRS each year. "An increasing part of the economy is driven by this new workforce, but government agencies haven't updated their methods for counting them," she says.

The BLS does capture other pieces of the unemployment puzzle. It breaks out such demographic categories as education levels. As of November the unemployment rate for college graduates increased less than a percentage point, to 3.1%, while the unemployment rate for high school dropouts rose from 7.6% to 10.5%. The BLS also tracks such categories as age and ethnicity; the unemployment rate in November was 32% for black teenagers, for example. Other data offer state-by-state comparisons of unemployment rates. In the most recent data, which cover the first 10 months of 2008, Rhode Island and Michigan were tied with the highest unemployment rate, at 9.3%, with California next at 8.2%. Though not officially a state, Puerto Rico's rate stands at 12%.

Still, calls for improving the BLS metrics continue. While Horowitz presses for better accounting of contract workers, Georgia State's Dhawan says the surveys need to account for population growth. "Fifty years ago, the [official unemployment] number had some validity," he says. "Now I have little faith in it."

Herbst is a reporter for BusinessWeek.com in New York.

Federal Reserve sets stage for Weimar-style Hyperinflation

F. William Engdahl
Global Research
December 16, 2008

The Federal Reserve has bluntly refused a request by a major US financial news service to disclose the recipients of more than $2 trillion of emergency loans from US taxpayers and to reveal the assets the central bank is accepting as collateral. Their lawyers resorted to the bizarre argument that they did so to protect ‘trade secrets.’ Is the secret that the US financial system is de facto bankrupt? The latest Fed move is further indication of the degree of panic and lack of clear strategy within the highest ranks of the US financial institutions. Unprecedented Federal Reserve expansion of the Monetary Base in recent weeks sets the stage for a future Weimar-style hyperinflation perhaps before 2010.

On November 7 Bloomberg filed suit under the US Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requesting details about the terms of eleven new Federal Reserve lending programs created during the deepening financial crisis.

The Fed responded on December 8 claiming it’s allowed to withhold internal memos as well as information about ‘trade secrets’ and ‘commercial information.’ The central bank did confirm that a records search found 231 pages of documents pertaining to the requests.

The Bernanke Fed in recent weeks has stepped in to take a role that was the original purpose of the Treasury’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). The difference between a Fed bailout of troubled financial institutions and a Treasury bailout is that central bank loans do not have the oversight safeguards that Congress imposed upon the TARP. Perhaps those are the ‘trade secrets the hapless Fed Chairman, Ben Bernanke, is so jealously guarding from the public.

Coming hyperinflation?

The total of such emergency Fed lending exceeded $2 trillion on Nov. 6. It had risen by an astonishing 138 percent, or $1.23 trillion, in the 12 weeks since Sept. 14, when central bank governors relaxed collateral standards to accept securities that weren’t rated AAA. They did so knowing that on the following day a dramatic shock to the financial system would occur because they, in concert with the Bush Administration, had decided to let it occur.

On September 15 Bernanke, New York Federal Reserve President, Tim Geithner, the new Obama Treasury Secretary-designate, along with the Bush Administration, agreed to let the fourth largest investment bank, Lehman Brothers, go bankrupt, defaulting on untold billions worth of derivatives and other obligations held by investors around the world. That event, as is now widely accepted, triggered a global systemic financial panic as it was no longer clear to anyone what standards the US Government was using to decide which institutions were ‘too big to fail’ and which not. Since then the US Treasury Secretary has reversed his policies on bank bailouts repeatedly leading many to believe Henry Paulson and the Washington Administration along with the Fed have lost control.

In response to the deepening crisis, the Bernanke Fed has decided to expand what is technically called the Monetary Base, defined as total bank reserves plus cash in circulation, the basis for potential further high-powered bank lending into the economy. Since the Lehman Bros. default, this money expansion rose dramatically by end October at a year-year rate of growth of 38%, has been without precedent in the 95 year history of the Federal Reserve since its creation in 1913. The previous high growth rate, according to US Federal Reserve data, was 28% in September 1939, as the US was building up industry for the evolving war in Europe.

By the first week of December, that expansion of the monetary base had jumped to a staggering 76% rate in just 3 months. It has gone from $836 billion in December 2007 when the crisis appeared contained, to $1,479 billion in December 2008, an explosion of 76% year-on-year.

Moreover, until September 2008, the month of the Lehman Brothers collapse, the Federal Reserve had held the expansion of the Monetary Base virtually flat. The 76% expansion has almost entirely taken place within the past three months, which implies an annualized expansion rate of more than 300%.

Despite this, banks do not lend further, meaning the US economy is in a depression free-fall of a scale not seen since the 1930’s. Banks do not lend in large part because under Basle BIS lending rules, they must set aside 8% of their capital against the value of any new commercial loans. Yet the banks have no idea how much of the mortgage and other troubled securities they own are likely to default in the coming months, forcing them to raise huge new sums of capital to remain solvent. It’s far ’safer’ as they reason to pass on their toxic waste assets to the Fed in return for earning interest on the acquired Treasury paper they now hold. Bank lending is risky in a depression.

Hence the banks exchange $2 trillion of presumed toxic waste securities consisting of Asset-Backed Securities in sub-prime mortgages, stocks and other high-risk credits in exchange for Federal Reserve cash and US Treasury bonds or other Government securities rated (still) AAA, i.e. risk-free. The result is that the Federal Reserve is holding some $2 trillion in largely junk paper from the financial system. Borrowers include Lehman Brothers, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase, the US’s largest bank by assets. Banks oppose any release of information because that might signal ‘weakness’ and spur short-selling or a run by depositors.

Making the situation even more drastic is the banking model used first by US banks beginning in the late 1970’s for raising deposits, namely the acquiring of ‘wholesale deposits’ by borrowing from other banks on the overnight interbank market. The collapse in confidence since the Lehman Bros. default is so extreme that no bank anywhere, dares trust any other bank enough to borrow. That leaves only traditional retail deposits from private and corporate savings or checking accounts.

To replace wholesale deposits with retail deposits is a process that in the best of times will take years, not weeks. Understandably, the Federal Reserve does not want to discuss this. That is clearly also behind their blunt refusal to reveal the nature of their $2 trillion assets acquired from member banks and other financial institutions. Simply put, were the Fed to reveal to the public precisely what ‘collateral’ they held from the banks, the public would know the potential losses that the government may take.

Congress is demanding more transparency from the Federal Reserve and US Treasury on its bailout lending. On December 10 in Congressional hearings by the House Financial Services Committee, Representative David Scott, a Georgia Democrat, said Americans had ‘been bamboozled,’ slang for defrauded.

Hiccups and Hurricanes

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would meet congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system. The Freedom of Information Act obliges federal agencies to make government documents available to the press and public.

In early December the Congress oversight agency, GAO, issued its first mandated review of the lending of the US Treasury’s $700 billion TARP program (Troubled Asset Relief Program). The review noted that in 30 days since the program began, Henry Paulson’s office had handed out $150 billion of taxpayer money to financial institutions with no effective accountability of how the money is being used. It seems Henry Paulson’s Treasury has indeed thrown a giant ‘tarp’ over the entire taxpayer bailout.

Further adding to the troubles in the world’s former financial Mecca, the US Congress, acting on largely ideological grounds, shocked the financial system when it refused to give even a meager $14 billion emergency loan to the Big Three automakers-General Motors, Chrysler and Ford.

While it is likely that the Treasury will extend emergency credit to the companies until January 20 or until the newly elected Congress can consider a new plan, the prospect of a chain-reaction bankruptcy collapse of the three giant companies is very near. What is being left out of the debate is that those three companies account for a combined 25% of all US corporate bonds outstanding. They are held by private pension funds, mutual funds, banks and others. If the auto parts suppliers of the Big Three are included, an estimated $1 trillion of corporate bonds are now at risk of chain-reaction default. Such a bankruptcy failure could trigger a financial catastrophe which would make what has happened since Lehman Bros. appear as a mere hiccup in a hurricane.

As well, the Federal Reserve’s panic actions since September, by their explosive expansion of the monetary base, has set the stage for a Zimbabwe-style hyperinflation. The new money is not being ’sterilized’ by offsetting actions by the Fed, a highly unusual move indicating their desperation. Prior to September the Fed’s infusions of money were sterilized, making the potential inflation effect ‘neutral.’

Defining a Very Great Depression

That means once banks begin finally to lend again, perhaps in a year or so, that will flood the US economy with liquidity in the midst of a deflationary depression. At that point or perhaps well before, the dollar will collapse as foreign holders of US Treasury bonds and other assets run.

That will not be pleasant as the result would be a sharp appreciation in the Euro and a crippling effect on exports in Germany and elsewhere should the nations of the EU and other non-dollar countries such as Russia, OPEC members and, above all, China not have arranged a new zone of stabilization apart from the dollar.

The world faces the greatest financial and economic challenges in history in coming months. The incoming Obama Administration faces a choice of literally nationalizing the credit system to insure a flow of credit to the real economy over the next 5 to 10 years, or face an economic Armageddon that will make the 1930’s appear a mild recession by comparison.

Leaving aside what appears to have been blatant political manipulation by the present US Administration of key economic data prior to the November election in a vain attempt to downplay the scale of the economic crisis in progress, the figures are unprecedented. For the week ended December 6 initial jobless claims rose to the highest level since November 1982.

More than four million workers remained on unemployment, also the most since 1982 and in November US companies cut jobs at the fastest rate in 34 years. Some 1,900,000 US jobs have vanished so far in 2008.

As a matter of relevance, 1982, for those with long memories, was the depth of what was then called the Volcker Recession. Paul Volcker, a Chase Manhattan appendage of the Rockefeller family, had been brought down from New York to apply his interest rate ’shock therapy’ to the US economy in order as he put it, ‘to squeeze inflation out of the economy.’ He squeezed far more as the economy went into severe recession, and his high interest rate policy detonated what came to be called the Third World Debt Crisis. The same Paul Volcker has just been named by Barack Obama as chairman-designate of the newly formed President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, hardly grounds for cheer.

The present economic collapse across the United States is driven by the collapse of the $3 trillion market for high-risk sub-prime and Alt-A home mortgages. Fed Chairman Bernanke is on record stating that the worst should be over by end of December. Nothing could be farther from the truth, as he well knows. The same Bernanke stated in October 2005 that there was ‘no housing bubble to go bust.’ So much for the predictive quality of that Princeton economist. The widely-used S&P Schiller-Case US National Home Price Index showed a 17% year-year drop in the third Quarter, trend rising. By some estimates it will take another five to seven years to see US home prices reach bottom. In 2009 as interest rate resets on some $1 trillion worth of Alt-A US home mortgages begin to kick in, the rate of home abandonments and foreclosures will explode. Little in any of the so-called mortgage amelioration programs offered to date reach the vast majority affected. That process in turn will accelerate as millions of Americans lose their jobs in the coming months.

John Williams of the widely-respected Shadow Government Statistics report, recently published a definition of Depression, a term that was deliberately dropped after World War II from the economic lexicon as an event not repeatable. Since then all downturns have been termed ‘recessions.’ Williams explained to me that some years ago he went to great lengths interviewing the respective US economic authorities at the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis and at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), as well as numerous private sector economists, to come up with a more precise definition of ‘recession,’ ‘depression’ and ‘great depression.’ His is pretty much the only attempt to give a more precise definition to these terms.

What he came up with was first the official NBER definition of recession: Two or more consecutive quarters of contracting real GDP, or measures of payroll employment and industrial production. A depression is a recession in which the peak-to-bottom growth contraction is greater than 10% of the GDP. A Great Depression is one in which the peak-to-bottom contraction, according to Williams, exceeds 25% of GDP.

In the period from August 1929 until he left office President Herbert Hoover oversaw a 43-month long contraction of the US economy of 33%. Barack Obama looks set to break that record, to preside over what historians could likely call the Very Great Depression of 2008-2014, unless he finds a new cast of financial advisers before Inauguration Day, January 20. Required are not recycled New York Fed presidents, Paul Volckers or Larry Summers types. Needed is a radically new strategy to put virtually the entire United States economy into some form of an emergency ‘Chapter 11′ bankruptcy reorganization where banks take write-offs of up to 90% on their toxic assets, that, in order to save the real economy for the American population and the rest of the world. Paper money can be shredded easily. Not human lives. In the process it might be time for Congress to consider retaking the Federal Reserve into the Federal Government as the Constitution originally specified, and make the entire process easier for all. If this sounds extreme, perhaps revisit this article in six months again.

Army ‘Strategic Shock’ Report Says Troops May Be Needed To Quell U.S. Civil Unrest

Steve Watson & Paul Watson
Infowars.net
Tuesday, Dec 16, 2008

A recent report produced by the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Institute warns that the United States may experience massive civil unrest in the wake of a series of crises which it has termed “strategic shock.”

The report, titled Known Unknowns: Unconventional Strategic Shocks in Defense Strategy Development, also suggests that the military may have to be used to quell domestic disorder.
“Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security,” the report, authored by [Ret.] Lt. Col. Nathan Freir, reads.

“Deliberate employment of weapons of mass destruction or other catastrophic capabilities, unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters are all paths to disruptive domestic shock.” it continues.

“An American government and defense establishment lulled into complacency by a long-secure domestic order would be forced to rapidly divest some or most external security commitments in order to address rapidly expanding human insecurity at home…”

“Already predisposed to defer to the primacy of civilian authorities in instances of domestic security and divest all but the most extreme demands in areas like civil support and consequence management, DoD might be forced by circumstances to put its broad resources at the disposal of civil authorities to contain and reverse violent threats to domestic tranquility.

Under the most extreme circumstances, this might include use of military force against hostile groups inside the United States.” Lt. Col. Freir concludes.

See Pages 31-32 (PDF) for quoted sections.

Freir is a Senior Fellow in the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). He joined the think tank in April 2008 after retiring from the U.S. Army after 20 years as a lieutenant colonel. In his role at CSIS he rubs shoulders with a whole host of globalist luminaries including Zbigniew Brzezinski, Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft and Richard Armitage.

Echoing recent comments made by Pentagon advisors, along with other notable figures such as Colin Powell and Joe Biden, Freir also warns that the incoming Obama administration should prepare for a “first term crisis” that could act as a catalyst for such unrest.

“The current administration confronted a game-changing ’strategic shock’ inside its first eight months in office,” the report reads. “The next administration would be well-advised to expect the same during the course of its first term. Indeed, the odds are very high against any of the challenges routinely at the top of the traditional defense agenda triggering the next watershed inside DoD [Department of Defense].”

We have recently highlighted plans to station thousands more U.S. troops inside America for purposes of “domestic security” from September 2011, an expansion of Northcom’s militarization of the country in preparation for potential civil unrest following a total economic collapse or a mass terror attack.

“The U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe, according to Pentagon officials,” reported the Washington Post last month.

In a September 8 Army Times article, Northcom announced that the first wave of the troop deployment, which was put in place on October 1st at Fort Stewart and at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, would be aimed at tackling “civil unrest and crowd control”.

After a controversy arose surrounding the admissions made in the Army Times article, Northcom retracted the claim but conceded that both lethal and non-lethal weaponry traditionally used in crowd control and riot situations would still be used in the field.

The increasing militarization of America is part of a long term agenda to abolish Constitutional rule and establish a “military form of government,” following a large scale terror attack or similar disaster, as Tommy Franks, the former commander of the military’s Central Command, alluded to in a November 2003 Cigar Aficionado piece.

Franks outlined the scenario by which martial law would be put in place, saying, “It means the potential of a weapon of mass destruction and a terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event somewhere in the Western world – it may be in the United States of America – that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event. Which in fact, then begins to unravel the fabric of our Constitution. Two steps, very, very important.”

In the short term, the domestic deployment of troops is likely aimed at combating likely civil unrest that will ensue after a complete economic collapse followed by a devastating period of hyperinflation.

This warning was again echoed a few days ago in a leaked internal memo from Citibank.
“The world is not going back to normal after the magnitude of what they have done. When the dust settles this will either work, and the money they have pushed into the system will feed through into an inflation shock,” wrote Tom Fitzpatrick, Citibank’s chief technical strategist.

The memo predicts “depression, civil disorder and possibly wars” as a fallout from an economic collapse that many say is on the horizon.

Naturally, the claim that such troop deployments are merely to aid in disaster relief efforts is a thin veil aimed at distracting from the real goal. Should a real tragedy occur, volunteers and already existing civil aid organizations are fully capable of dealing with such events, as we witnessed on 9/11.

The military are primarily trained to kill people and break things, and their role during the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts was mainly focused on detaining people in sports stadiums, shooting alleged looters and seizing guns from wealthy home owners in the high and dry areas, while real recovery measures were left to volunteers and local state authorities.

The open admission that U.S. troops will be involved in law enforcement operations as well as potentially using non-lethal weapons against American citizens is a complete violation of the Posse Comitatus Act and the Insurrection Act, which substantially limit the powers of the federal government to use the military for law enforcement unless under precise and extreme circumstances.

Section 1385 of the Posse Comitatus Act states, “Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.”

Under the John Warner Defense Authorization Act, signed by President Bush on October 17, 2006, the law was changed to state, “The President may employ the armed forces to restore public order in any State of the United States the President determines hinders the execution of laws or deprives people of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by law or opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws.”

However, these changes were repealed in their entirety by HR 4986: National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008, reverting back to the original state of the Insurrection Act of 1807. Despite this repeal, President Bush attached a signing statement saying that he did not feel bound by the repeal. It remains to be seen whether President elect Obama will reverse Bush’s signing statement.

The original text of the Insurrection Act severely limits the power of the President to deploy troops within the United States.

For troops to be deployed, a condition has to exist that, “(1) So hinders the execution of the laws of that State, and of the United States within the State, that any part or class of its people is deprived of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by law, and the constituted authorities of that State are unable, fail, or refuse to protect that right, privilege, or immunity, or to give that protection; or (2) opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws. In any situation covered by clause (1), the State shall be considered to have denied the equal protection of the laws secured by the Constitution.”

Is the incoming Obama administration and Northcom waiting for such a scenario to unfold, an event that completely overwhelms state authorities, before unleashing the might of the U.S.
Army against the American people?

[Ret.] Lt. Col. Freir’s Known Unknowns report addresses this specifically, stating:
“A whole host of long-standing defense conventions would be severely tested. Under these conditions and at their most violent extreme, civilian authorities, on advice of the defense establishment, would need to rapidly determine the parameters defining the legitimate use of military force inside the United States. Further still, the whole concept of conflict termination and/or transition to the primacy of civilian security institutions would be uncharted ground. DoD is already challenged by stabilization abroad. Imagine the challenges associated with doing so on a massive scale at home.”

The deployment of National Guard troops to aid law enforcement or for disaster relief purposes is legal under the authority of the governor of a state, but using active duty U.S. Army in law enforcement operations inside America absent the conditions described in the Insurrection Act is completely illegal.

The political left and right need to join forces and denounce this plan for what it is - another unconstitutional step towards the incremental implementation of martial law and the militarization of America.

Shoe thrower 'beaten in custody'

The brother of the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at US President George W Bush has said that the reporter has been beaten in custody.

Muntadar al-Zaidi has allegedly suffered a broken arm, broken ribs and internal bleeding, his older brother, Dargham, told the BBC.

Mr Zaidi threw his shoes at Mr Bush at a news conference, calling him "a dog".

A spokesperson for the Iraqi military says the journalist is in good health and said the allegations were untrue.

It is unclear whether the reporter may have been injured when he was wrestled to the floor at the news conference, or at a later point.

The head of Iraq's journalists' union has asked the government for clemency towards the journalist who is still in custody.

A spokesman for Iraq's High Judicial Council said that Mr Zaidi, accompanied by defence and prosecution lawyers, had been brought before the investigating judge, Reuters news agency reported.

Abdul Satar Birqadr said Mr Zaidi had been charged with aggression against a president.

"He admits the action he carried out," the news agency quoted Mr Birqadr as saying.

Earlier, Dargham al-Zaidi told the BBC's Caroline Wyatt in Baghdad he believed his brother had been taken to a US military hospital in the Iraqi capital.

Hero figure

A second day of rallies in support of Mr Zaidi were held across Iraq, calling for his release.

Meanwhile, offers to buy the shoes he threw are being made around the Arab world, reports say.

Mr Zaidi told our correspondent that despite offers from many lawyers his brother has not been given access to a legal representative since being arrested by forces under the command of Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, Iraq's national security adviser.

The Iraqi authorities have said the 28-year-old will be prosecuted under Iraqi law.
Iraqi lawyers had earlier speculated that the charges could include insulting a foreign leader and the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri Maliki, who was standing next to President Bush during the incident.

The offence carries a maximum penalty of two years in jail.

Our correspondent says that the previously little-known journalist from the private Cairo-based al-Baghdadia TV has become a hero to many, not just in Iraq but across the Arab world, for what many saw as a fitting send-off for a deeply unpopular US president.

As he flung the shoes, Mr Zaidi shouted: "This is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, dog."

Dargham al-Zaidi told the BBC that his brother deliberately bought Iraqi-made shoes, which were dark brown with laces. They were bought from a shop on al-Khyam street, a well-known shopping street in central Baghdad.

However, not everyone in Iraq has been supportive of the journalist's action.

Speaking earlier in Baghdad, Mouyyad al-Lami described Mr Zaidi's action as "strange and unprofessional", but urged Mr Maliki to show compassion.

"Even if he has made a mistake, the government and the judiciary are broad-minded and we hope they consider his release because he has a family and he is still young," he told the Associated Press news agency.

"We hope this case ends before going to court."

Abducted by insurgents

The shoes themselves are said to have attracted bids from around the Arab world.

According to unconfirmed newspaper reports, the former coach of the Iraqi national football team, Adnan Hamad, has offered $100,000 (£65,000) for the shoes, while a Saudi citizen has apparently offered $10m (£6.5m).

The daughter of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, Aicha, said her charity would honour the reporter with a medal of courage, saying his action was a "victory for human rights".
The charity called on the media to support Mr Zaidi and put pressure on the Iraqi government to free him.

Mr Zaidi, who lives in Baghdad, has worked for al-Baghdadia for three years.

Muzhir al-Khafaji, programming director for the channel, described him as a "proud Arab and an open-minded man".

He said that Mr Zaidi was a graduate of communications from Baghdad University.

"He has no ties with the former regime. His family was arrested under Saddam's regime," he said.

Mr Zaidi has previously been abducted by insurgents and held twice for questioning by US forces in Iraq.

In November 2007 he was kidnapped by a gang on his way to work in central Baghdad and released three days later without a ransom.

He said at the time that the kidnappers had beaten him until he lost consciousness, and used his necktie to blindfold him.

Mr Zaidi never learned the identity of his kidnappers, who questioned him about his work before letting him go.

Do you live in Iraq? Is the shoe thrower the shame or pride of Iraq? Do you think it was disrespectful? Or was he expressing the views of the people? You can send us your comments using the form below:

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5000 Single Gunshot Katrina Victims

The Real FEMA Part 2

The Real FEMA Part 1

NY Feels The Economic Pinch Thus Pinching You

NY gov proposes tax on drinks, downloaded music

ALBANY, N.Y. – Gov. David Paterson's first state budget threatens to affect just about every New Yorker. Even those online.

Paterson proposed Tuesday a 2009-10 budget that would increase spending by 1.1 percent, or $1.3 billion, to create a $121.1 billion spending plan.

Much of the growth is revenue from 88 new or higher fees and will hit New Yorkers in many areas, from downloading music to sipping drinks to fishing.

One of the proposed hikes is a so-called "iPod tax," which would tax the sale of downloaded music and other "digitally delivered entertainment services" by 4 percent.

There also would be higher taxes on gas, taxi rides, cable and satellite TV service, cigars, beer, movie and sports tickets, and health spa visits, to name a few items.

Paterson seems to be fighting both obesity and budget deficits with a proposal for an 18 percent tax on soda and other sugary drinks containing less than 70 percent real fruit juice.

"People don't really realize the amount of calories they're ingesting through liquids," said Joe Baker acting deputy secretary for Health and Human Services to the governor. "They say, 'Oh, it's just a drink.'"

The idea is to discourage consumption of high-caloric beverages — health officials estimate a 5 percent drop — and to raise $404 million in fiscal year 2009-2010 toward the state's multibillion dollar budget gap. Paterson said the proposal would raise $539 million in 2010-2011.

The American Beverage Association opposes the tax, saying it would most harm the middle class. The group also argued that it doesn't make sense to single out a single food product as the cause for obesity.

"There is no science or logic that justifies it," the association's statement said. "Rather, we need to focus on promoting balanced eating habits and more physical activity. Until we get our kids exercising more the scales will be tipped against our next generation."

According to state officials, almost one in four New Yorkers under age 18 are obese, and at higher risk for dangerous, expensive illnesses like diabetes and heart disease.

Operation Northwoods Exposed

Sixty Percent of Doctors Refuse to Get Flu Shots

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, December 9, 2008

Key concepts: Flu shots, Medical myths and Doctors If flu shots are so good for you, then why do sixty percent of doctors and nurses refuse to get them? ABC News is reporting that only forty percent of health care professionals opted to be vaccinated against the flu last year.

It's yet another case of health professionals telling patients to do one thing while they do something entirely different themselves. For example, according to surveys published earlier this year, most oncologists would never undergo chemotherapy.

Many doctors take vitamins and nutritional supplements, but they won't tell their patients to do the same because state medical boards have made it illegal for doctors to recommend nutritional therapies.

Thus, much of what medical professionals tell patients stands in contradiction to what they actually believe is best for their health. Flu shots have become the mad cry of quackery in modern medicine, which believes that the human immune system is useless to prevent infectious disease and must be artificially hijacked by invasive medical procedures (a shot) in order to function correctly.

Interestingly, related research just announced today reveals that half a flu shot produces the same results as a full flu shot. But they didn't test the "no flu shot but extra vitamin D" option, which would have been ever better.

Flu shots are pure quackery combined with clever hucksterism. And if you don't believe me, just check the medical records of the doctors themselves: Most of them aren't getting flu shots in the first place. Doctors aren't stupid people. If they're not getting flu shots, that tells you probably they think it's a waste of time.

Click to read:Sixty Percent of Doctors Refuse to Get Flu Shots

From Abcnews.go.com: A significant chunk of health care professionals declined to get vaccinated against the influenza virus last flu season, with only about 40 percent opting for a jab during the 2007-08 flu season.... more

Dr. Mercola's Comment On Tyson's Chicken

Tyson’s claim may be technically true -- which makes it just about the worst kind of deceptive advertising there is without outright lying. It’s this kind of semantics that can drive even the sanest person wild.

When they say that their chickens are “raised without antibiotics", they are clearly trying to give the impression that their chickens do not contain any kind of antibiotics.

However, the chicken on your plate is anything but antibiotic-free since they’ve injected the eggs with antibiotics, and raised the hatchlings on feed that contains antibiotics.

Sad to say, this is typical behavior when it comes to big business. Whenever a packaged food or a large retailer makes a health claim, your first reaction should be suspicion, not trust.

Other glaring examples of this kind of deceptive marketing tactics include:

Splenda -- They would dearly like you to believe that this artificial sweetener is natural because it is “made from sugar”. But it’s nothing but another half-truth meant to convince you of a falsehood, and the Sugar Association has sued them over this marketing strategy.

7-Up -- Cadbury Schwepps ran an ad campaign that promoted the soda as "100 percent natural" with pictures of cans of 7-Up being picked from fruit trees. The Center for Science in the Public Interest threatened to sue Cadbury Schwepps, calling their ad a “misleading untruth.”

Omega-3 Eggs -- Eggs that advertise their omega-3 content may be defrauding the public by claiming they can reduce your risk of heart disease. The deception here is that these eggs are typically low in the animal-based omega-3 fat DHA, which is far more beneficial to you than the plant-based ALA that most omega-3 eggs contain.

Farm-raised fish carrying the organic label – Applying the organic label to animal food products raised in food factories is a simple bastardization of the term. It is impossible to obtain all the benefits that were naturally included in these fish once artificial manipulation is introduced into the system.

Breeding Antibiotic-Resistant Disease

Poultry farmers regularly treat chickens and other birds with antibiotics to prevent the development of intestinal infections that might reduce the weight (and profitability) of the birds.

Yet scientists have become increasingly concerned that the routine use of antibiotics in animal agriculture may accelerate the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria that could lead to a pandemic or other human health crisis.

For example, gentamicin, the antibiotic that Tyson injects into its eggs, has been used for more than 30 years in the United States to treat many types of bacterial infections in humans, including urinary tract and blood infections. The drug is also stockpiled as a treatment for biological agents such as plague.

Does the practice of using gentamicin in poultry pose a real hazard to your health?

Yes. The practice is likely contributing to and speeding up the emergence of antibiotic-resistant enterococci, which are the leading causes of surgical wound infections and urinary tract infections. Enterococci have developed high-level resistance not only gentamicin, but also other antibiotics over the last two to three decades.

Another antibiotic-resistant strain of bacteria that can wreak havoc on your health is campylobacter, a pathogen common to chicken products, which is responsible for inducing food poisoning in more than 1 million Americans every year, and is considered a growing health threat.

Chickens that are truly raised without antibiotics, however, are far less likely to carry antibiotic-resistant strains of campylobacters, according to a study by Johns Hopkins.

Researchers have also found that conventionally-grown chicken products are up to 460 times more likely to carry antibiotic-resistant strains of E. coli than antibiotic-free chicken products.

But That’s Not the Only Problem With Conventional Poultry Products!

However, my concerns with conventionally-raised poultry (and other livestock) do not end there. Because in addition to the antibiotics typically added to conventional livestock feed, this feed is also laced with the pesticides used in growing the foods it's made of.

Unlike conventional fruits and vegetables, where peeling and washing can greatly reduce the amounts of these toxins, the pesticides and drugs that these animals get exposed to during their lives can become incorporated into their very tissues, especially their fat.

While you can cut off some of it, you may still be ingesting high amounts of toxins if you consume such foods regularly.

Additionally, feed additives like Roxarsone, the most common arsenic-based additive used in chicken feed to promote growth, kill parasites and improve the color of the meat, have been raised as having potential health risks.

Although Roxarsone is normally benign, under certain conditions that can occur within live chickens or on farm land, the compound converts into more toxic forms of inorganic arsenic, which has been linked to:

• Bladder cancer
• Lung cancer
• Kidney cancer
• Skin cancer
• Partial paralysis
• Diabetes

A number of food suppliers have stopped using Roxarsone, including Tyson Foods. But even so, 70 percent of the chickens produced annually in the United States are fed Roxarsone.

Yet another problem with conventional livestock feed is that it is typically made of foods that are not natural to the animal's diet. Whether it's corn for cows or soybeans for chickens, these animals rarely have access to the foods they are naturally adapted to eat. This situation is not only problematic for the animals -- when you eat their meat, it can become a problem for you.

One of the main reasons for this is that the fatty acid profiles of chicken fed its natural diet have a much better balance of omega-3 to omega-6 fats than those of a conventionally-raised chicken. An imbalanced intake of these fats is a contributing factor to many of the chronic diseases modern society is faced with today.

Last but not least, conventionally-raised chickens are typically given little, if any, access to the outdoors. The benefits from frequent sunlight exposure can certainly be extrapolated to cows and chickens as well as humans. At the very least, the vitamin D levels in an animal that has regular access to sunlight are likely to be much higher than those of an animal kept indoors all day.

More vitamin D for them means more vitamin D for you when you eat their meat.

What’s the Answer to This Problem?

If you really want to be sure your food is healthy and safe, you might want to try avoiding grocery stores altogether, as conventionally-raised livestock, including chickens, are not your best choice.

And, adding insult to injury, about 30 percent of all fresh chickens sold in your supermarket have been pumped and plumped with as much as fifteen percent salt water, potential cancer-producing carrageenan, and other additives. This equates to cash strapped consumers paying about $2 billion a year for salt water! These chickens also contain about 800 percent more sodium per serving than expected.

More and more people are buying food fresh off the farm from producers they personally know and trust, through CSA’s (Community Supported Agriculture), farmers’ markets, or other local food movements. When you can actually go visit the farm itself, you can see that it’s natural, fresh, and exactly as advertised.

If you want to get started on this, there are plenty of organizations around to help you out. If you live in an area with severely restricted access to any of these outlets, then, for your convenience, I also have organic, free-range, antibiotic-free chicken available in my online store.

And if you are concerned that organic, free-range poultry and other natural foods are too expensive, please be sure to read Colleen Huber's excellent article on finding organic foods for the same price as processed, conventional foods.

Related Articles:

Resistant Bacteria Common in Grocery Store Chicken

Be Very Careful Eating Chickens You Buy at the Supermarket

Surprising Health Benefits of an Organic Diet

Whole Foods Sues FTC to Halt Kangaroo Court Proceedings

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, December 9, 2008
Key concepts: Whole Foods, FTC and Wild Oats

Many health consumers don't know this, but the FTC is running a "Kangaroo Court" operation where they sue various health companies and require them to show up in the FTC's own "administrative court" that's stacked with the FTC's own "Judges" and answers to no law.

This is how the FTC attacks health supplement companies, too: They charge them with violating FTC marketing and advertising regulations, then they demand the company owners show up at the FTC's kangaroo court in Washington D.C., where there is no jury and no due process. This has been going on for quite some time, even though it is blatantly un-Constitutional and violates numerous legal statutes under U.S. law.

Whole Foods has had enough of this abuse, and they're filing a real lawsuit -- in a real court -- to halt the FTC's kangaroo court proceedings that are attempting to break up Whole Foods following its acquisition of Wild Oats. The FTC, you see, has no interest in breaking up pharmaceutical monopolies that cost Americans tens of billions of dollars a year, but they're all-out gangbusters when it comes to breaking up the health food industry.

The FTC, of course, doesn't want to have to face companies in a real court. That might require them to follow due process, and that's inconvenient for any domineering federal regulatory agency. Why go to federal court when you can set up your own bogus court and just dictate the decisions you really want?

The mainstream media, of course, hasn't touched this issue of the FTC's bogus administrative court and the fact that it's an illegal operation that violates due process guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution. And much like the FDA, the FTC runs rampant over U.S. law, proclaiming whatever edicts it wishes.

It is a good sign that Whole Foods is standing up to this bogus FTC court, demanding a proper trial in a federal court. Should Whole Foods be victorious in this lawsuit, it could set a precedent by which other companies could dismiss the FTC's kangaroo court shenanigans.

See the Wikipedia entry on "Kangaroo Court" here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangaroo_court

As you read it, you'll notice it perfectly describes the FTC administrative court, where the outcome of the sham trial is essentially determined in advance. Whole Foods, you see, has already been determined to be guilty by the FTC, and the "court" proceedings (if you can call them that) exist solely to grant fabricated formality to the decision that's already been made.

Don't you find it astonishing that the FTC completely ignores the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical monopoly drug racket currently being operated in the United States and instead focuses its attention on health food stores?

That's what happens when you have a U.S. government agency that's subject to no law, and yet it's given power to run rampant over the rights of consumers and businesses.

Perhaps a Constitutional attorney can add some comments below this article and shed additional light on this issue.

Tyson Foods Injects Chickens with Antibiotics Before They Hatch to Claim "Raised without Antibiotics"

by David Gutierrez, staff writer

(NaturalNews) Tyson Foods, the world's largest meat processor and the second largest chicken producer in the United States, has admitted that it injects its chickens with antibiotics before they hatch, but labels them as raised without antibiotics anyway. In response, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) told Tyson to stop using the antibiotic-free label. The company has sued over its right to keep using it.

The controversy over Tyson's antibiotic-free label began in summer 2007, when the company began a massive advertising campaign to tout its chicken as "raised without antibiotics." Already, Tyson has spent tens of millions of dollars this year to date in continuing this campaign.

Poultry farmers regularly treat chickens and other birds with antibiotics to prevent the development of intestinal infections that might reduce the weight (and profitability) of the birds. Yet scientists have become increasingly concerned that the routine use of antibiotics in animal agriculture may accelerate the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria that could lead to a pandemic or other health crisis.

After Tyson began labeling its chicken antibiotic-free, the USDA warned the company that such labels were not truthful, because Tyson regularly treats its birds' feed with bacteria-killing ionophores. Tyson argued that ionophores are antimicrobials rather than antibiotics, but the USDA reiterated its policy that "ionophores are antibiotics."

Because ionophores are not used to treat human disease, however, the poultry company suggested a compromise, accepted by the USDA in December, whereby Tyson would use a label reading "raised without antibiotics that impact antibiotic resistance in humans."

Tyson's competitors Perdue Farms Inc., Sanderson Farms Inc. and Foster Farms sued, under the banner of the Truthful Labeling Coalition. In May 2008, a federal judge ruled in their favor and told Tyson to stop using the label.

Not long after, on June 3, USDA inspectors discovered that in addition to using ionophores, Tyson was regularly injecting its chicken eggs with gentamicin, an antibiotic that has been used for more than 30 years in the United States to treat urinary tract and blood infections. The drug is also stockpiled by the federal government as a treatment for biological agents such as plague.

"In contrast to information presented by Tyson Foods Inc., [inspectors] found that they routinely used the antibiotic gentamicin to prevent illness and death in chicks, which raises public health concerns," said USDA Undersecretary for Food Safety Richard Raymond.

"The use of this particular antibiotic was not disclosed to us," said USDA spokesperson Amanda Eamich.

The agency told Tyson that based on the new discovery, it would no longer consider the antibiotic-free label "truthful and accurate." It gave the company 15 days to remove the label from all its products, although that deadline was eventually extended to July 9.

But Tyson objected again, claiming that because the antibiotics are injected two to three days before the chickens hatched, the birds can truthfully be said to be "raised without antibiotics." USDA rules on how to label the raising of birds do not address anything that happens before the second day of life, the company said.

Tyson also defended the "in ovo" injection of antibiotics as standard industry practice.

"The vast majority of the industry does exactly the same thing," Tyson Vice President Archie Schaffer said.

But Hansen noted that it takes gentamicin several weeks to dissipate, so the drugs are still in the birds' bodies after they hatch.

"The labels were clearly false and misleading," he said.

Tyson agreed to voluntarily withdraw its "raised without antibiotics labels," citing "uncertainty and controversy over product labeling regulations." It then filed a lawsuit against the USDA, claiming that the agency had improperly changed the definition of "raised without antibiotics" to include the treatment of eggs.

Tyson is asking to have the regulation to be thrown out.

Sources for this story include: uk.reuters.com; www.msnbc.com; www.lancasterfarming.com.

Gun sales driven by fear of the 'gun snatcher'

Friday, November 07, 2008


NY Times:

Sales of handguns, rifles and ammunition have surged in the last week, according to gun store owners around the nation who describe a wave of buyers concerned that an Obama administration will curtail their right to bear arms.
“He’s a gun-snatcher,” said Jim Pruett, owner of Jim Pruett’s Guns and Ammo in northwest Houston, which was packed with shoppers on Thursday.

“He wants to take our guns from us and create a socialist society policed by his own police force,” added Mr. Pruett, a former radio personality, of President-elect Barack Obama.

Mr. Pruett said that sales last Saturday, just before Election Day, ran about seven times higher than a typical good Saturday.

A spot check by reporters in four other states easily found Mr. Pruett’s comments echoed from both sides of the counter.

David Nelson, a co-owner of Montana Ordnance & Supply in Missoula, Mont., said his buyers were “awake and aware and see a dangerous trend.”

Mr. Nelson said sales at his store had risen about 30 percent since Mr. Obama declared his candidacy. “People are concerned about overreaching legislation from Washington,” he said. “They are educating themselves on the Internet.”

In Colorado, would-be gun buyers set a one-day record last Saturday with the highest number of background check requests in a 24-hour period, according to figures from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.

“We’re not really sure who is promoting the concept that a change in federal administrations might affect firearms possession rights,” said an agency spokesman, Lance Clem, “but we do know that it’s increased business considerably.”

...


“Clinton was the best gun salesman the gun manufacturers ever had,” said Rick Gray, owner of the Accuracy Gun Shop in Las Vegas. “Obama’s going to be right up there with him.”

Sales at his shop doubled on Wednesday, Mr. Gray said, to more than 20 guns from three to 10 on a typical day.

Asked if that made him root for Democratic candidates, Mr. Gray said no. “It’s not all about profits; it’s about what’s he going to do for the country,” he said, noting that he had supported Senator John McCain, who was the Republican nominee.

A National Rifle Association spokesman, Wayne LaPierre, dismissed the notion that the group had any incentive to increase gun sales or membership. “Ridiculous,” Mr. LaPierre said. “I hope President-elect Obama keeps his promises and protects gun rights. If he does that, we’ll be cheering.”

...

Chicago is a place that attempts to ban hand gun ownership and Obama was comfortable in that culture and even voted against a bill that would permit someone to use an unregistered gun in self defense.

Obama has said he is not going to take anyone's gun away from them. I think that statement is just a reflection of the political reality and not his attitude toward gun ownership. He and Democrats are aware of the political cost of trying to restrict gun ownership and they will avoid voting on that issue if they can get away with it.

Democrats believe that the gun issue cost them the 1994 election. It was certainly one of the issues that cost them and they are not going to tempt that fate again. I wish we could be that effective on the energy issue. We forced their hand on it before the election this year and we need to hold them to a lifting of energy restrictions too.

Note: I found this in the comments of a blog on the Chicago Sun Times online. I found it to be very interesting. Check it out.

Ammunition Accountability ActRemember how Obama said that he wasn't going to take your guns? Well, it seems that his minions and allies in the anti-gun world have no problem with taking your ammo!

The bill that is being pushed in 18 states (including Illinois and Indiana ) requires all ammunition to be encoded by the manufacture, a data base of all ammunition sales. So they will know how much you buy and what calibers. Nobody can sell any ammunition after June 30, 2009 unless the ammunition is coded.

Any privately held uncoded ammunition must be destroyed by July 1, 2011. (Including handloaded ammo.) They will also charge a .05 cent tax on every round so every box of ammo you buy will go up at least $2.50 or more! If they can deprive you of ammo they do not need to take your gun!

Please give this the widest distribution possible and contact your Reps!

It's the ammo, not the guns...I've said for a long time that they wouldn't go for your guns, they'd go for your ammo... guns have a Constitutional protection. Ammo does not. A list of states where this legislation is pending is in the final paragraph. Not in CO yet, they'll go where the pansies are first.

Heads up to all of you who swore to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign AND domestic. Let your state Legislatures know that we do not want this bill passed, and petition them to vote no on this bill. We should keep after them until the bill is closed by bombarding them with e-mails, phone calls, and letters.

Get to all your politicians to get to work and NOT LET THIS HAPPEN!!! The 2008 Legislative session has begun, and the Ammunition Accountability Act is being introduced across the country. Below is a list of states where legislation has already been introduced:

Alabama, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Washington.

Status of pending bills in these States is at:

http://ammunitionaccountability.org/Legislation.htm

Obama The Gun Grabber Is Coming

Obama: Don't stock up on guns

December 8, 2008
BY ABDON M. PALLASCH

Political Reporter As gun sales shoot up around the country, President-elect Barack Obama said Sunday that gun-owning Americans do not need to rush out and stock up before he is sworn in next month.

"I believe in common-sense gun safety laws, and I believe in the second amendment," Obama said at a news conference. "Lawful gun owners have nothing to fear. I said that throughout the campaign. I haven't indicated anything different during the transition. I think people can take me at my word."

But National Rifle Association spokesman Andrew Arulanandam said it's not Obama's words — but his legislative track record — that has gun-buyers flocking to the stores.

"Prior to his campaign for president, his record as a state legislator and as a U.S. Senator shows he voted for the most stringent forms of gun control, the most Draconian legislation, gun bans, ammunition bans and even an increase in federal excise taxes up to 500 percent for every gun and firearm sold," Arulanandam said.

Obama answered "yes" in 1996 to a questionnaire from an Illinois group on whether he supported a handgun ban. But he later said a staffer filled out that answer and he did not support a ban.

Nationally, background checks for gun purchases jumped nearly 49 percent during the week Obama was elected, compared with the same time period last year, according to the FBI's National Instant Background Check System.

Anecdotally, gun dealers around the country have reported spikes in sales. The Illinois State Rifle Association Reports gun sales for November were 38 percent higher than last year.

"We don't dispute [the gun sales hike] because the numbers from the federal system certainly confirm that there is increased activity out there. We just think it's a bit stupid," said Peter Hamm, spokesman for the Brady Campaign against Gun Violence.

"Anyone who thinks they need to rush out and buy a firearm clearly has not been paying attention to how quickly we make progress on this issue. We don't think these are first-time buyers. We think they are people who already have more than enough guns at their homes to protect themselves and are buying more."

Judge: Blackwater guards must report to DC court

By LARA JAKES JORDAN and MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writers Lara Jakes Jordan And Matt Apuzzo, Associated Press Writers 20 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Wild, unprovoked gunfire and grenades killed 14 innocent Iraqis and hurt dozens more in a 2007 Baghdad attack, prosecutors said Monday in announcing charges with mandatory 30-year prison terms against five Blackwater Worldwide security guards. The Justice Department called the shooting a shocking and devastating violation of human rights.

The harsh words echoed the outrage of Iraqis, who have waited more than a year to see how the U.S. would respond to the shooting on a busy street in the Iraqi capital.

The shooting by the largest U.S. security contractor in Iraq sparked international condemnation, launched congressional hearings and inspired anti-American insurgent propaganda.

The five security guards — all decorated military veterans — surrendered in federal court in Utah, where one of them lives. The five guards walked wordlessly through a phalanx of reporters. A judge ordered the guards to report to a Washington courthouse Jan. 6, where they were expected to plead not guilty.

A sixth Blackwater guard struck a deal with prosecutors, turned on his former colleagues, and pleaded guilty to killing one Iraqi and wounding another.

"None of the victims of this shooting was armed. None of them was an insurgent," U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Taylor said at a Justice Department news conference in Washington to announce the charges.

Prosecutors said the slain included young children, women, people fleeing in cars and a man whose arms were raised in surrender as he was shot in the chest.

Twenty others were wounded in crowded Nisoor Square, including one injured by a grenade launched into a nearby girls' school. Another 18 Iraqis were assaulted but not wounded, prosecutors said.

Blackwater, which was not charged in the case, maintains its guards were protecting themselves from what they believed was an imminent car bomb attack.

"We think it's pure and simple a case of self-defense," defense attorney Paul Cassell said Monday as the guards were being booked. "Tragically, people did die."

In all, 17 Iraqis were killed in the assault. But Assistant Attorney General Patrick Rowan said evidence in the case could only prove the guards shot 14, although he left open the possibility of future charges.

The five guards were charged with 14 counts of manslaughter, 20 counts of attempted manslaughter and one count of using a machine gun to commit a crime of violence. The machine gun charge, typically used in drug cases, carries a 30-year minimum prison sentence.

The guards are Donald Ball, a former Marine from West Valley City, Utah; Dustin Heard, a former Marine from Knoxville, Tenn.; Evan Liberty, a former Marine from Rochester, N.H.; Nick Slatten, a former Army sergeant from Sparta, Tenn., and Paul Slough, an Army veteran from Keller, Texas.

Defense lawyers say the case has unfairly tarnished the images of the Blackwater guards. Each man has received honors for his service in some of the world's most dangerous places, from Bosnia and Afghanistan to Iraq.

The sixth guard, who is cooperating with the government, is Jeremy Ridgeway of California. He pleaded guilty to one count each of manslaughter, attempted manslaughter, and aiding and abetting. In his plea agreement with prosecutors, Ridgeway admitted there was no threat from a white Kia sedan whose driver, a medical student, was killed and his mother, in the front passenger seat, was injured.

The shooting took place around noon on Sept. 16, 2007, in a crowded square where prosecutors said civilians were running errands, getting lunch and otherwise going about their lives.

Following a car bombing elsewhere in the city, the heavily armed Blackwater convoy sought to shut down an intersection. Prosecutors said the convoy, known by the call sign Raven 23, had violated an order not to leave the U.S.-controlled Green Zone.

Witnesses said the contractors opened fire unprovoked, and left the square littered with blown-out cars.

Khalid Ibrahim, a 40-year-old electrician who said his father, Ibrahim Abid, 78, died in the shooting, welcomed the charges.

"The killers must pay for their crime against innocent civilians, Ibrahim said in Iraq. "Justice must be achieved so that we can have rest from the agony we are living in. We know that the conviction of the people behind the shooting will not bring my father to life, but we will have peace in our minds and hearts."

But the drama is far from over. After more than a year of investigative missteps and fierce debate, the Justice Department now faces stiff challenges to the evidence and legal grounds at the heart of its case.

Most importantly, prosecutors must prove they did not rely on protected statements the guards gave to State Department investigators within hours of the shootings.

The State Department gave limited immunity to all the guards in the four-car convoy, promising not to prosecute them based on the initial statements recounting how the violence began. The move left Justice Department and FBI investigators with a crime scene long gone cold and with limited forensic evidence to bolster their case.

"We fully expect that the defendants will raise the issue," Rowan said. "We've been very careful and very painstaking in the way we have investigated this case, the way we have assembled evidence. And we fully expect to prevail when the court hears that issue."

Defense attorneys also will argue that the guards cannot be charged under a law intended to cover soldiers and military contractors since the men worked as civilian contractors for the State Department. Rowan, however, said Blackwater was supporting the military's mission in Baghdad and the law therefore applies to them.

It is the first time prosecutors have used that argument to prosecute contractors. The Justice Department recently lost a somewhat similar case against former Marine Jose Luis Nazario Jr., who was charged in Riverside, Calif., with killing four unarmed Iraqi detainees.

The Moyock, N.C.-based Blackwater said it stands behind the guards despite being "extremely disappointed and surprised" that one had pleaded guilty.
___
Associated Press writers Jennifer Dobner and Paul Foy in Salt Lake City and Sameer N. Yacoub in Baghdad contributed to this report.

US: Blackwater used grenades on unarmed Iraqis

By LARA JAKES JORDAN and MATT APUZZO, Associated Press

WASHINGTON – Blackwater Worldwide security guards opened machine gun fire on innocent, surrendering Iraqis and launched a grenade into a girls' school during a gruesome Baghdad shooting last year, prosecutors said Monday in announcing manslaughter charges against five guards.

A sixth guard involved in the attack cut a plea deal with prosecutors, turned on his former colleagues, and admitting killing at least one Iraqi in the 2007 shooting in Baghdad's Nisoor Square. Seventeen Iraqis were killed in the assault, which roiled U.S. diplomacy with Iraq and fueled anti-American sentiment abroad.

The five guards surrendered Monday and were due to ask a federal judge in Utah for bail.
"None of the victims of this shooting was armed. None of them was an insurgent," U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Taylor said. "Many were shot while inside civilian vehicles that were attempting the flee from the convoy. One victim was shot in the chest while standing in the street with his hands up. Another was injured from a grenade fired into a nearby girls' school."

The guards were charged with 14 counts of manslaughter and 20 counts of attempted manslaughter. They are also charged with using a machine gun to commit a crime of violence, a charge that carries a 30-year minimum prison sentence.

The shootings happened in a crowded square where prosecutors say civilians were going about their lives, running errands. Following a car bombing elsewhere in the city, the heavily armed Blackwater convoy sought to shut down the intersection. Prosecutors said the convoy, known by the call sign Raven 23, violated an order not to leave the U.S.-controlled Green Zone.

"The tragic events in Nisoor Square on Sept. 16 of last year were shocking and a violation of basic human rights," FBI Assistant Director Joseph Persichini said.

Witnesses said the contractors opened fire unprovoked. Women and children were among the victims and the shooting left the square littered with blown-out cars. Blackwater, the largest security contractor in Iraq, says its guards were ambushed and believed a slowly moving white Kia sedan might have been a car bomb.

"We think it's pure and simple a case of self-defense," defense attorney Paul Cassell said Monday as the guards were being booked. "Tragically people did die."

Prosecutors said the Blackwater guards never even ordered the car to stop before opening fire. In his plea agreement with prosecutors, former guard Jeremy Ridgeway, of California, admitted there was no indication the Kia was a car bomb.

Though the case has already been assigned to U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina in Washington, the guards surrendered in Utah. They want the case moved there, where they would presumably find a more conservative jury pool and one more likely to support the Iraq war.

The indicted guards are Donald Ball, a former Marine from West Valley City, Utah; Dustin Heard, a former Marine from Knoxville, Tenn.; Evan Liberty, a former Marine from Rochester, N.H.; Nick Slatten, a former Army sergeant from Sparta, Tenn.; and Paul Slough, an Army veteran from Keller, Texas.

Ridgeway's sentencing on manslaughter, attempted manslaughter and aiding and abetting has not yet been scheduled.

An afternoon court hearing was scheduled on whether to release the guards. Defense attorneys were filing court documents challenging the Justice Department's authority to prosecute the case. The law is murky on whether contractors can be charged in U.S. courts for crimes committed overseas.

The shootings caused an uproar, and the fledgling Iraqi government in Baghdad wanted Blackwater, which protects U.S. State Department personnel, expelled from the country. It also sought the right to prosecute the men in Iraqi courts.

"The killers must pay for their crime against innocent civilians. Justice must be achieved so that we can have rest from the agony we are living in," said Khalid Ibrahim, a 40-year-old electrician who said his 78-year-old father, Ibrahim Abid, died in the shooting. "We know that the conviction of the people behind the shooting will not bring my father to life, but we will have peace in our minds and hearts."

Defense attorneys accused the Justice Department of bowing to Iraqi pressure.

"We are confident that any jury will see this for what it is: a politically motivated prosecution to appease the Iraqi government," said defense attorney Steven McCool, who represents Ball.

Based in Moyock, N.C., Blackwater is the largest security contractor in Iraq and provides heavily armed guards for diplomats. Since last year's shooting, the company has been a flash point in the debate over how heavily the U.S. relies on contractors in war zones.

The company itself was not charged in the case. In a lengthy statement, Blackwater stood behind the guards and said it was "extremely disappointed and surprised" that one of the guards had pleaded guilty.
__
Associated Press writers Jennifer Dobner and Paul Foy in Salt Lake City and Sameer N. Yacoub in Baghdad contributed to this report.

Man arrested for turning without signaling

By JONATHAN BETZ / WFAA-TV
02:42 PM CDT on Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Note: I don't know how I missed this one, but here it is. Go to this web site to see the video of the news story - http://www.kvue.com/news/top/stories/050608kvueturnviolation-cb.d4cb840e.html#

MELISSA, Tx -- Mark Robinson was driving through downtown Melissa last week when he was pulled over for failing the use his turn signal.

But instead of getting a ticket, the officer took the 24-year-old to jail.

He was booked, strip searched, and sat for 3 hours with criminals. “People talking about using drugs and shooting heroine. They asked me what I was in there for and I said a turn signal violation,” said Robinson.

There aren't any warrants out for Robinson. In fact he says he's never been in jail. But he does admit to challenging the officer's questions during the stop.

“It’s just unacceptable to me to have my son thrown in jail for such a minor offense,” said Mark Robinson, the father.

His father thinks the officer assumed he had drugs because of his age, which he didn't.

“I think if they had stopped me in the same circumstances, I would have never gone to jail, or probably get a ticket,” said the father.

In fact News 8 contacted various cities in Collin County, many of which have not made a single arrest this year for not using a turning signal. Even the police chief in Melissa acknowledges he's never seen this happen in his own city. “In the 6 years I've been the police chief, this is the first time,” said Chief Duane Smith, Melissa PD.

But he stands behind his officer, saying state law gives him the power to arrest someone for many crimes, no matter how minor.

“I can't discuss the specifics of the case. The officer was in his right to arrest the person, which he did,” said Chief Smith.

Still, he tells News 8 this afternoon he will review department policy and may make changes.

For Mark Robinson, what he most wants is an apology, he says, for a trip he never should have been forced to make.

E-mail jbetz@wfaa.com

Mandatory Vaccinations

Mandatory Vaccination
Source: Health Freedom Foundation
www.healthfreedom.org

Although vaccinations have essentially extinguished many illnesses that plagued our society, The American Association for Health Freedom believes children should not be forcefully subjected to unreasonable amounts of vaccinations to combat diseases that primarily affect adults. AAHF is concerned about the lack of urgency among regulators when vaccinations result in death or permanent disability in children. Additionally, AAHF seeks to ensure that freedom of choice is not taken away from parents.

In 1980, American children were vaccinated against six diseases. Today, the mandatory number is 10, with multiple shots. In the near future, there may be two dozen more new childhood vaccines. This estimate may be conservative, according to the National Institutes of Health.

There is at present a serious trend of deteriorating health among American children. Published in a 1994 JAMA article, a survey conducted by Dr. Michel Odent found that children receiving the whooping cough vaccine were six times more likely to develop asthma than children not receiving this vaccine.

Recently, the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases counted 104 separate vaccines at various stages of research and development for everything from herpes to ricketts to stomach ulcers. Not all of the new vaccines in the pipeline are aimed at children, of course. The idea of a "super vaccine"-given at birth or shortly after, with time release particles dissolving over time–may become our reality in a few years.

The "super vaccine" would not only cover the existing childhood protections against mumps, measles, rubella, chicken pox, polio, whooping cough,tetanus, diphtheria, hepatitis B, and meningitis. It would target several varieties of other illnesses, including pneumonia, typhoid, encephalitis, diarrhea, strep, and influenza.

Dr. J. Anthony Morris, former FDA research virologist, thinks undeveloped immune systems of those so young are particularly susceptible to damage from overload. "That is absolutely the wrong approach, to give so many new vaccines."

With two-year-olds facing as many as four injections in a single pediatric visit, we have created an atmosphere in which the costs far outweigh any perceived benefits. Representative John Mica, R-FL, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Drug Policy and Human Resources , has questioned the safety of the hepatitis B vaccine: "Is it possible the Preventive measure for this disease is riskier than the disease itself?"

The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) indicated that one third of the nearly 80,000 reports filed between 1990 and 1997 involved the DPT, whooping cough, vaccine. A total of 876 deaths were recorded after children received the DPT vaccine, a vaccine that is still on the market although a safer alternative exists. Of those, 291, or 33 percent of the deaths reported after a DPT shot, were within 24 hours of the vaccination. Milwaukee immunologist Burton Waisbren, a veteran clinical investigator, told a H ouse oversight subcommittee on federal health policy that "an injustice is being done to the children of this country." He labeled infant hepatitis B vaccination "an experiment sponsored by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) which is designed to determine if vaccination at birth of all babies in the United States will eventually decrease the frequency of cancer of the liver."

For many years, mercury was used as a preservative in vaccines, especially in the United States. In many cases, a preservative was only needed because multiple vaccinations were being given in one shot. Preservative free vaccines were available if taken one vaccination at a time. Why did the medical establishment push more and more vaccinations into one multiple shot? Because they thought that parents could not be trusted to come back to the doctor for a series of single shots spaced out over time. The result is not only potentially dangerous preservatives; it is also a greatly heightened risk of overloading the child's immune system by injecting too much in any one day. This approach does not put the child's welfare first.

Today protests have led to the removal of mercury from most childhood vaccines. But mercury is still used in flu vaccines for children and adults. In the past, children were inoculated against flu from birth to five years of age. This puts mercury into very immature bodies and immune systems. But the new recommedation, just out, is to continue inoculating until age 18. Is this for the children? No, it is supposed to provide better protection for the adults around the children. Meanwhile how much highly toxic mercury will our children be exposed to by age 18?

AAHF believes parents should be informed of their right to omit or simply postpone shots like the hepatitis B and flu vaccines. I nformed consent to any medical procedure carrying the risk of injury or death, such as vaccination, has been the prevailing ethical standard in medical care since the Nuremberg Code and Helsinki Declarations became part of international law after World War II. With increasing numbers of vaccines for non-life threatening conditions being developed and mandated for school-age children, we believe parents should have the right to philosocphical or conscientious belief exemptions for their children.

For Humor - Man "Accidentally" Shoots Wife During Sex

Man Says Wife Was Accidentally Shot During Sex
Man Says Gun Went Off Accidentally

POSTED: 2:30 pm EST December 3, 2008
UPDATED: 6:35 pm EST December 3, 2008

SPRINGFIELD, Ohio -- A Tri-State woman is in critical condition Wednesday after police say her husband shot her while they were having sex.

Timothy Havens, 38, told Springfield police he was reaching for something on the nightstand when the pistol went off, hitting his estranged wife Carolyn in the upper chest. (Hear part of the 911 call)

Carolyn Havens, 42, is being treated at Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton.

This is isn't the first time there's been trouble for the Havens. Court documents showed Timothy served 60 days in jail for assaulting his wife and was ordered to go to anger management classes.
His arrest Tuesday for the weekend shooting was for violating a civil protection order that Carolyn had taken out against him earlier this year.

Bond was set at $75,000 after prosecutors asked for a high bond, "due to alleged prohibited contact between the parties (and) the suspicious nature of the circumstances surrounding (her injury)."

Copyright 2008 by WLWT.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Homeland Security Council Warns of Preposterous Anthrax Attack

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
December 3, 2008

In the wake of Mumbai, Congress has decided to add to the terrorism hype by releasing yet another facetious report. “A bipartisan commission empanelled by Congress released a report today saying that terrorists are likely to carry out a weapons-of-mass-destruction attack somewhere in the world in the next five years,” reports CNS News. “The commission concluded that the terrorists are more likely to use biological weapons than nuclear weapons and that the United States is not prepared for such an attack.”

Shoko Asahara of the 10,000-strong Aum Shinrikyo cult. Aum’s multi-million dollar attempt to kill thousands with aerosolized liquid anthrax in Tokyo was a total failure.

Bush’s Homeland Security Council envisions “terrorists driving a truck with a concealed sprayer [that] would infect five different U.S. metropolitan areas with anthrax in two waves of attacks conducted two weeks apart.”

As with most government issued terrorist scenarios, this one is pure and unadulterated bunk.

In “Busting the Anthrax Myth” by Fred Burton and Scott Stewart, such brazen idiocy is put to rest. Burton and Stewart write that “obtaining a biological agent is fairly simple. Isolating a virulent strain and then weaponizing that strain is somewhat more difficult. But the key to biological warfare — effectively distributing a weaponized agent to the intended target — is the really difficult part of the process.”

Anyone planning a biological attack against a large target such as a city needs to be concerned about a host of factors such as dilution, wind velocity and direction, particle size and weight, the susceptibility of the disease to ultraviolet light, heat, dryness or even rain. Small-scale localized attacks such as the 2001 anthrax letters or the 1984 salmonella attack undertaken by the Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh cult are far easier to commit.

Somebody needs to remind the Homeland Security Council of the failure of the Japanese cult group Aum Shinrikyo. In the late 1980s, Aum managed to hire a team of trained scientists and spent millions of dollars to cook up a batch of botulinum toxin in state-of-the-art biological weapons research and production laboratories. In April, 1990, the group used three trucks rigged up with aerosol sprayers and released a massive amount of toxin on targets that included the Imperial Palace, the National Diet of Japan, the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, two U.S. naval bases and the airport in Narita. It was a total failure. Aum had wanted to kick off a global Armageddon but their feeble attack did not result in mass casualties. In fact, beyond the members of the Aum cult, nobody was even aware an attack had taken place.

“When the botulinum operations failed to produce results, Aum’s scientists went back to the drawing board and retooled their biological weapons facilities to produce anthrax,” write Burton and Stewart. “By mid-1993, they were ready to launch attacks involving anthrax; between June and August of 1993, the group sprayed thousands of gallons of aerosolized liquid anthrax in Tokyo. This time, Aum not only employed its fleet of sprayer trucks but also used aerosol sprayers mounted on the roof of their headquarters to disperse a cloud of aerosolized anthrax over the city. Again, the attacks produced no results and were not even noticed. It was only after the group’s successful 1995 subway attacks using sarin nerve agent that a Japanese government investigation discovered that the 1990 and 1993 biological attacks had occurred.”

In other words, the technology required is beyond the reach of terrorists, especially fumbling cave-dwelling terrorists of the sort that attempt to bring down airliners with shoe bombs. Aum’s “team worked in large, modern laboratory facilities to produce substantial quantities of biological weapons,” not caves or huts in remote tribal villages in Pakistan, and yet they were unable to dispense biological agents effectively.

Operating in the badlands along the Pakistani-Afghan border, al Qaeda cannot easily build large modern factories capable of producing large quantities of agents or toxins. Such fixed facilities are expensive and consume a lot of resources. Even if al Qaeda had the spare capacity to invest in such facilities, the fixed nature of them means that they could be compromised and quickly destroyed by the United States.

If al Qaeda could somehow create and hide a fixed biological weapons facility in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas or North-West Frontier Province, it would still face the daunting task of transporting large quantities of biological agents from the Pakistani badlands to targets in the United States or Europe. Al Qaeda operatives certainly can create and transport small quantities of these compounds, but not enough to wreak the kind of massive damage it desires.

Even so, the Homeland Security Council offers the following absurd scenario:

This scenario describes a single aerosol [anthrax] attack in one city delivered by a truck using a concealed improvised spraying device in a densely populated urban city with a significant commuter workforce. It does not, however, exclude the possibility of multiple attacks in disparate cities or time-phased attacks (i.e. ‘reload’).

For federal planning purposes, it will be assumed that the Universal Adversary (UA) will attack five separate metropolitan areas in a sequential manner. Three cities will be attacked initially, followed by two additional cities 2 weeks later.

It is possible that a Bio-Watch [atmospheric sensor] signal would be received and processed, but this is not likely to occur until the day after the release. The first cases of anthrax would begin to present to Emergency Rooms (ERs) approximately 36 hours post-release, with rapid progression of symptoms and fatalities in untreated (or inappropriately treated) patients.

Nonsense. Obviously, this is a transparent effort to scare an ill-informed public into supporting the real “Universal Adversary,” the government and the corporatized military-intelligence complex. The release of this preposterous “report” arrives not coincidentally on the heels of the horrific Mumbai attacks, when images of rampaging terrorists wantonly killing innocents remains fresh in the minds of the unwitting public. It also follows closely the announcement by Def. Sec. Gates that the Pentagon will deploy troops around the country, supposedly to help in case of a terrorist attack.

It is an attempt to stampede the public into accepting the emerging police state and continued erosion of liberty. It has nothing to do with preventing a terrorist attack or safeguarding the populace. It is a parlor trick not only designed to get people to accept the high-tech surveillance state apparatus now going into place, but also accept the continued militarization of local law enforcement and the deployment of 20,000 military troops around the country.

Big Brother police to get ‘war-time’ power to demand ID in the street - on pain of sending you to jail

James Slack
UK Daily Mail
Wednesday, Dec 03, 2008


State officials are to be given powers previously reserved for times of war to demand a person’s proof of identity at any time.

Anybody who refuses the Big Brother demand could face arrest and a possible prison sentence.
The new rules come in legislation to be unveiled in today’s Queen’s Speech.

They are presented as a crackdown on illegal immigration, but lawyers say they could be applied to anybody who has ever been outside the UK, even on holiday.

The civil rights group Liberty, which analysed clauses from the new Immigration and Citizenship Bill, called them an attempt to introduce compulsory ID cards by the back door.

The move would effectively take Britain back to the Second World War, when people were stopped and asked to ’show their papers’.

Liberty said: ‘Powers to examine identity documents, previously thought to apply only at ports of entry, will be extended to criminalise anyone in Britain who has ever left the country and fails to produce identity papers upon demand.

‘We believe that the catch-all remit of this power is disproportionate and that its enactment would not only damage community relations but represent a fundamental shift in the relationship between the State and those present in the UK.’

One broadly-drafted clause would permit checks on anyone who has ever entered the
UK - whether recently or years earlier.

Officials, who could be police or immigration officers, will be able to stop anyone to establish if they need permission to be here, if they have it, and whether it should be cancelled.

No reasonable cause or suspicion is required, and checks can be carried out 'in country' - not just at borders.

The law would apply to British citizens and foreign nationals, according to Liberty's lawyers. The only people who would be exempt are the tiny minority who have never been abroad on holiday or business.

A second clause says that people who are stopped 'must produce a valid identity document if required to do so by the Secretary of State'. Failure to do so would be a criminal offence with a maximum penalty of 51 weeks in jail or a £5,000 fine.

Currently, police are allowed to ask for identity documents only if there is a reasonable suspicion that a person has committed an offence.

During the Second World War, ID cards were seen as a way of protecting the nation from Nazi spies, but in 1952 Winston Churchill's government decided they were not needed in peacetime.

They were thought to be hindering the police because so many people resented being asked to produce them.

Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti said last night: ' Sneaking in compulsory identity cards via the back door of immigration law is a cynical escalation of this expensive and intrusive scheme.'

Tory spokesman Damian Green said: 'This scheme will do nothing to improve our security, may make it worse, and will certainly land the taxpayer with a multi-million bill.

'Labour should concentrate on things that will improve our security, like a dedicated border police force.'

LibDem spokesman Chris Huhne said: 'Ministers seem to be breaking their promise that no one would ever have to carry an ID card. This is a sly and underhand way of extending the ID card scheme by stealth.'

There was also concern last night that the Government is seeking to revive controversial plans for secret inquests.

The measure - which would have let the authorities hold a hearing like the Jean Charles de Menezes inquest behind closed doors - was removed from counter-terrorism legislation earlier this year.

But it could be re-introduced as part of a Coroners and Death Certification Bill.

Other Bills set to be unveiled include plans to extend flexible working and new laws giving every employee the right to request time off to train.

These have been widely criticised by business leaders who warn that extending employees rights will damage small firms.

Under a new welfare crackdown, benefit cheats will lose their handouts for one month and council staff will be given powers to use 'lie detector' technology to root out fraudsters.

Dole claimants who refuse to seek work could be made to dig gardens as punishment or they may be ordered to spend an entire nine-to-five day in an office looking through vacant jobs.

Plans for a crackdown on cigarette sales are being reviewed, and a new statutory code of conduct to govern the banks has been added to the list of forthcoming Bills.

The Speech is reported to have undergone last-minute changes, driven by Business Secretary Peter Mandelson, to reflect the economic crisis.

But he is said to have failed in a bid to block health measures on tobacco sales.

Of the Bills dropped altogether, the most high-profile is the Communications Data Bill, which would have created a giant 'Big Brother' database of phone calls, emails and internet visits.

The Home Office said last night it had no intention of making people carry ID cards.

A spokesman said: 'It is simply wrong to claim there are any plans whatsoever to make identity cards compulsory for British citizens or to require British citizens to have an ID card at all times and present it when asked.

'To maintain effective immigration control it is only right that we ask everyone attempting to enter the UK to produce a valid identity document.'

Every worker wins right to training

Ministers are to press ahead with a raft of new workplace rights in the Queen's Speech, despite fears about the impact on businesses battling the recession.

Government sources said plans to extend flexible working have been revived and the country's 22 million workers will get a new right to ask for time off to train.

Business Secretary Lord Mandelson has lost a battle against plans to give millions of parents the right to flexible working.

The flexible working scheme is now expected to be extended in April to 4.5million parents of children up to the age of 16. Plans to extend paid maternity leave from 39 weeks to 52 weeks are also likely to go ahead.

The move will anger business leaders, who say extending employees' rights will hit small firms.

The 'right to train', to be implemented in 2010, will be less contentious as many businesses accept the need to improve employees' skills, especially in difficult economic times.

A tighter rein on the banks

Banks will have to sign up to a compulsory code of practice under plans to be revealed in the Queen's Speech.

It will tear up the voluntary 'Banking Code' which has been in place since 1997.

Key commitments will include ensuring charges are 'open and transparent' and treating customers in financial difficulties in a 'sympathetic and positive' way.

The move comes amid growing fury at the way banks are failing to keep their side of the bargain over the £37billion Government bailout.

In a pre-emptive move, Lloyds TSB - one of the three banks being part-nationalised - will today launch a new charter for small businesses.

The six-point plan will only help businesses with an annual turnover of up to £1million. About 600,000 customers will benefit.

Lloyds said it will agree 'any reasonable request for short-term finance' and promised to pass on the full benefit of any further cuts in Bank of England base rate.

It also promised not to change the interest rate or availability of an overdraft as long as the business does not exceed the agreed limit.

U.S. troops may be deployed in Arizona, Southwest U.S.

Phoenix Business Journal - by Mike Sunnucks

U.S. Defense Department plans to deploy as many 20,000 U.S. troops within the U.S. for homeland security and anti-terrorism efforts could result in a significant number being placed or having some kind of presence in Arizona and the Southwest, according to security experts.

There have been threats against the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station west of Phoenix, the Hoover Dam on the Arizona-Nevada border as well as the Las Vegas Strip and Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). Arizona is also home to U.S. military intelligence operations at Fort Huachuca and has become a focal point with border security efforts along the Mexican border.

The Washington Post recently reported the Pentagon plans to have up 20,000 U.S. troops placed in domestic locations with the charge of responding to security matters.

Some of those troops -- which are under the U.S. Northern Command -- have already been active in Arizona, helping with security efforts along the Mexican border.

The Colorado Springs, Colo.-based Northern Command was created after 9/11 and is geared towards homeland security and civil defense within the U.S.

Civil libertarians on the left and right wonder what role the U.S. troops deployed on U.S. soil will play in security efforts and point to long-held precedents against having the military be involved in law enforcement matters.

The Northern Command has also been deployed to help with natural disasters such as hurricanes and has partnered with state national guard units, including Arizona’s, on various programs, according to Defense Department information.

“The military’s deployment within U.S. borders raises critical questions that must be answered,” said Jonathan Hafetz, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. “What is the unit’s mission? What functions will it perform? And why was it necessary to deploy the unit rather than rely on civilian agencies and personnel and the National Guard?” asked Hafetz in a statement.

A number of security experts and others declined comment but others expect a fair number of domestically deployed troops to have a presence in the Southwest because of the Mexican border and some high-profile targets.

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FDA Reluctantly Admits Mercury Fillings Have Neurotoxic Effects on Children

David Gutierrez
Natural News
Wednesday, Dec 03, 2008

For the first time, the FDA has issued a warning that the mercury contained in silver dental fillings may pose neurological risks to children and pregnant women.

“Dental amalgams contain mercury, which may have neurotoxic effects on the nervous systems of developing children and fetuses,” reads a statement that has been added to the agency’s Web site. “Pregnant women and persons who may have a health condition that makes them more sensitive to mercury exposure, including individuals with existing high levels of mercury bioburden, should not avoid seeking dental care, but should discuss options with their health practitioner.”

The warning was one of the conditions that the FDA agreed to in settling a lawsuit filed by several consumer health groups.

“Gone, gone, gone are all of FDA’s claims that no science exists that amalgam is unsafe,” said Charles Brown, a lawyer for Consumers for Dental Choice, one of the plaintiffs.

“It’s a watershed moment,” said Michael Bender of the Mercury Policy Project, another plaintiff.

Mercury is a well-known neurotoxin that can cause cognitive and developmental problems, especially in fetuses and children. It can also cause brain and kidney damage in adults.

So-called dental amalgams, or fillings made with a mix of mercury and other metals, have been used since the 1800s. Although it is known that small amounts of mercury are vaporized (and can be inhaled) when the fillings are used to chew food, and though Canada, France and Sweden have all placed restrictions on the use of mercury fillings, the FDA has always insisted that amalgams are safe.

Dental amalgams are considered medical devices, regulated by the FDA.

Even the FDA’s new warning stops short of admitting that dental amalgams are dangerous for the general population. Instead, it focuses on the same population that has already been warned to limit mercury exposure by consuming less seafood: children and pregnant women. The FDA says it does not recommend that those who already have mercury fillings get them removed.

Millions of people have received amalgam fillings, although their popularity has dropped off in recent years. Currently, only 30 percent of dental fillings contain mercury - the rest are tooth-colored resin composites made from glass, cement and porcelain. These alternative fillings are more expensive and less durable than amalgam, however.

In 2002, the FDA began a regulatory review of amalgam that was expected to be complete within a few years. In 2006, with the review still incomplete, an independent FDA advisory panel of doctors and dentists rejected the agency’s position that there is no reason for concern about the use of amalgam. While the panel agreed that the majority of people receiving such fillings would not be harmed, panel members expressed concern for the health of certain sensitive populations, including children under the age of six.

The panel recommended that the FDA conduct further studies on the risks to children from dental amalgam, and that it consider a policy of informed consent for children and pregnant: that is, warning those groups of the risks associated with the fillings before installing them.

Part of the lawsuit centered on the FDA’s failure to respond to these recommendations in a timely fashion.

“This is your classic failure to act,” federal judge Ellen Segal Huvelle told the agency.

As part of the lawsuit settlement, the FDA must reach a final decision on the regulation of amalgam by July 28, 2009.

“This court settlement signals the death knell for mercury fillings,” Brown predicted.
But J.P. Morgan Securities analyst Ipsita Smolinski disagreed, saying that the FDA is unlikely to ban amalgam entirely

“We do believe that the agency will ask for the label to indicate that mercury is an ingredient in the filling, and that special populations should be exempt from such fillings, such as: nursing women, pregnant women, young children, and immunocompromised individuals,” Smolinski said.

Prepare For Depression Level Unemployment

Global Economic Trend Analysis

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Deflation has already set in and it’s now realistic to start talking about another “D” word, this one being depression. Before we can use a word, we must define it. For the sake of argument, let’s define depression as unemployment of 10% or greater.

Looking at alternative measures of unemployment (counting discouraged workers, those working part time for economic reasons, etc), we are already there at depression levels of unemployment as noted in table A-12 of the October Employment Report.

Table A-12



The official unemployment rate is 6.5%. However, if you start counting all the people that want a job but gave up, all the people with part-time jobs that want a full-time job, all the people who dropped off the unemployment rolls because their unemployment benefits ran out, etc., you get a closer picture of what the unemployment rate is. That number is in the last row labeled U-6.

U-6 is 11.8%. It reflects how unemployment feels to the average Joe on the street. Note that it was 8.4% a year ago. Both U-6 and U-3 (the so called “official” unemployment number) are poised to rise further.

But let’s assume depression means 10% in the base rate (Line U-3). Can unemployment rise from 6.5% to 10%? Let’s take a look at the data and see.

ADP Says U.S. Companies Cut 250,000 Jobs in November

ADP, the largest payroll processor in the US says Companies Cut 250,000 Jobs in November.

Nonfarm private employment decreased 250,000 from October to November 2008 on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to the ADP National Employment Report®. The estimated change in employment from September to October was revised down from a decrease of 157,000 to a decrease of 179,000.

November’s ADP National Employment Report offers evidence of a labor market that continues to weaken. This month’s employment loss was again driven by the goods-producing sector which declined 158,000 during November, its twenty-fourth consecutive monthly decline.

The manufacturing sector marked its twenty-seventh consecutive monthly decline, losing 118,000 jobs. These losses were compounded by an employment decline in the service-providing sector of the economy which fell by 92,000, the second monthly loss in the service-providing sector recorded by the ADP Report since November of 2002.

In November, construction employment dropped 44,000. This was its twenty-fourth consecutive monthly decline, and brings the total decline in construction jobs since the peak in August of 2006 to 521,000.

Small Businesses Have Largest Decline In Seven Years

Today, the ADP Small Business Report found that small businesses lost 79,000 jobs in November, the largest decline in more than seven years.

The ADP Small Business Report has shown that:

Total small business employment: -79,000
Goods-producing sector: -47,000 small business jobs
Service-providing sector: -32,000 small business jobs
Mass Layoffs Double From Year Ago

Challenger says U.S. Job Cuts More Than Double From Year Ago

Job cuts announced by U.S. employers in November more than doubled from a year earlier, led by a surge at financial firms as the credit crisis deepened and the global economy faltered, according to a private placement firm.

Firing announcements rose 148 percent to 181,671, the most since January 2002, from 73,140 in November 2007, Chicago-based Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. said today. The figures aren’t adjusted for seasonal effects, so economists prefer to focus on year-over-year changes instead of monthly numbers.

Companies are slashing jobs as access to credit remains frozen and sales weakened worldwide. A deteriorating labor market is likely to undermine consumer confidence and spending, pushing the economy further into what may become the longest recession in 70 years.

“Those hoping for a holiday reprieve in downsizing as Christmas approaches could be disappointed,” John A. Challenger, chief executive officer of the placement company, said in a statement. “December has historically been among the larger job-cut months of the year, with many employers making last-minute staffing adjustments to meet year-end earnings goals.”

Surpassed 1 Million

The Challenger report today showed companies have announced a total of 1,057,645 cuts so far this year, up 46 percent from the same period in 2007. Job cuts have surpassed 1 million for the first time since 2005.

The number of planned job cuts increased 61 percent in November from the 112,884 announced in October, Challenger said.

Financial companies led industries in announced cutbacks with 91,356 reductions last month after Citigroup Inc. said it would cut 52,000 workers from its payroll. Retail employers followed with 11,073 firings, while computer and electronics firms combined for 15,350 cuts.

Note that Challenger data is based on mass layoff announcements. Those firings typically do not show up immediately but rather will filter through to the official employment reports over a matter of months as the layoffs actually occur.

Thus we can expect to see weakness continuing for many months ahead as a result of these recent doubling of layoff announcements.

Service Industries Contract by Most on Record

The Institute for Supply Management is reporting Service Industries Contract by Most on Record.

Service industries in the U.S. contracted the most in at least 11 years, and a measure of private payrolls showed job losses accelerated, signaling the economy’s decline deepened last month.

The Institute for Supply Management’s index of non- manufacturing businesses, which make up almost 90 percent of the economy, fell to 37.3 in November, the lowest level since records began in 1997.

“What we’ve seen since mid to late September is that business activity has shut down, along with the consumer,” Stephen Gallagher, chief economist at Societe Generale in New York, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “There is no reason for an immediate turnaround; financial markets have not stabilized; consumers have not stabilized.”

The Labor Department’s November jobs report may show payrolls fell by 330,000, the biggest drop in 26 years, according to a Bloomberg News survey of economists.

John Silvia, chief economist at Wachovia Corp. in Charlotte, North Carolina, lowered his forecast for November payrolls by 100,000 to a decline of 450,000, following the ISM report. Ellen Zentner, of Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd. in New York, projected job losses reached 470,000 last month.

The ISM group’s index of new orders for non-manufacturing industries decreased to 35.4 from 44 the prior month. Its gauge of employment dropped to a record-low 31.3 from 41.5, and a measure of prices paid fell to 36.6, also the lost since at least 1997.

There are two more employment reports for 2008 coming up. The first of those, for November, will be out Friday December, 5. Both will be horrid. The unemployment rate is currently at 6.5%. It appears to be headed to 7% or higher by the end of the year.

If so, unemployment will have risen from 4.4% at the beginning of 2007 to something like 7% at the beginning of 2009. Given that job losses are accelerating and that unemployment is a lagging indicator (unemployment is expected to rise for some number of months after the economy bottoms), it is not unreasonable to be talking about 10% unemployment sometime in 2010, with 8.5% to 9% or higher extremely likely.

8.5% or higher unemployment is enormously deflationary with the current backdrop of consumer debt and huge numbers of people underwater on their homes. Those thinking about the possibility of an economic depression are thinking clearly. Those looking at spiking monetary figures and presuming pent up inflation are likely barking up the wrong tree for quite some time.

Neo-cons still preparing for Iran attack

By Robert Dreyfuss
Asia Times Online

What, exactly, does president-elect Barack Obama's mild-mannered choice to head the Department of Health and Human Services, former senator Tom Daschle, have to do with neo-conservatives who want to bomb Iran?

A familiar coalition of hawks, hardliners and neo-cons expects Obama's proposed talks with Iran to fail - and they're already proposing an escalating set of measures instead. Some are meant to occur alongside any future talks. These include steps to enhance coordination with Israel, tougher sanctions against Iran, and a region-wide military buildup of US strike forces, including the prepositioning of military supplies within striking distance of that country.

Once the future negotiations break down, as they are convinced will happen, they propose that Washington quickly escalate to war-like measures, including a US Navy-enforced embargo on Iranian fuel imports and a blockade of that country's oil exports. Finally, of course, comes the strategic military attack against the Islamic Republic of Iran that so many of them have wanted for so long.

It's tempting to dismiss the hawks now as twice-removed from power: first, figures like John Bolton, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith were purged from top posts in the George W Bush administration after 2004; then the election of Obama and the announcement on Monday of his centrist, realist-minded team of establishment foreign policy gurus seemed to nail the doors to power shut for the neo-cons, who have bitterly criticized the president-elect's plans to talk with Iran, withdraw US forces from Iraq, and abandon the reckless "war on terror" rhetoric of the Bush era.

'Kinetic action' against Iran
When it comes to Iran, however, it's far too early to dismiss the hawks. To be sure, they are now plying their trade from outside the corridors of power, but they have more friends inside the Obama camp than most people realize. Several top advisers to Obama - including Tony Lake, United Nations ambassador-designate Susan Rice, Tom Daschle and Dennis Ross, along with leading Democratic hawks like Richard Holbrooke, close to vice president-elect Joe Biden or secretary of state-designate Hillary Clinton - have made common cause with war-minded think-tank hawks at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and other hardline institutes.

Last spring, Tony Lake and Susan Rice, for example, took part in a WINEP "2008 Presidential Task Force" study which resulted in a report entitled, "Strengthening the Partnership: How to Deepen US-Israel Cooperation on the Iranian Nuclear Challenge". The Institute, part of the Washington-based Israel lobby, was founded in coordination with the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and has been vigorously supporting a confrontation with Iran. The task force report, issued in June, was overseen by four WINEP heavyweights: Robert Satloff, WINEP's executive director, Patrick Clawson, its chief Iran analyst, David Makovsky, a senior fellow, and Dennis Ross, an adviser to Obama who is also a WINEP fellow.

Endorsed by both Lake and Rice, the report opted for an alarmist view of Iran's nuclear program and proposed that the next president set up a formal US-Israeli mechanism for coordinating policy toward Iran (including any future need for "preventive military action"). It drew attention to Israeli fears that "the United States may be reconciling itself to the idea of 'living with an Iranian nuclear bomb'," and it raised the spurious fear that Iran plans to arm terrorist groups with nuclear weapons.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with consultations between the United States and Israel. But the WINEP report is clearly predisposed to the idea that the US ought to give undue weight to Israel's inflated concerns about Iran. And it ignores or dismisses a number of facts: that Iran has no nuclear weapon, that Iran has not enriched uranium to weapons grade, that Iran may not have the know-how to actually construct a weapon even if, at some time in the future, it does manage to acquire bomb-grade material, and that Iran has no known mechanism for delivering such a weapon.

WINEP is correct that the US must communicate closely with Israel about Iran. Practically speaking, however, a US-Israeli dialogue over Iran's "nuclear challenge" will have to focus on matters entirely different from those in WINEP's agenda. First, the US must make it crystal clear to Israel that under no circumstances will it tolerate or support a unilateral Israeli attack against Iran.

Second, Washington must make it clear that if Israel were indeed to carry out such an attack, the US would condemn it, refuse to widen the war by coming to Israel's aid, and suspend all military aid to the Jewish state. And third, Israel must get the message that, even given the extreme and unlikely possibility that the US deems it necessary to go to war with Iran, there would be no role for Israel.

Just as in the wars against Iraq in 1990-1991 and 2003-2008, the US hardly needs Israeli aid, which would be both superfluous and inflammatory. Dennis Ross and others at WINEP, however, would strongly disagree that Israel is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Ross, who served as Middle East envoy for president George H W Bush and then Bill Clinton, was also a key participant in a September 2008 task force chaired by two former senators, Republican Daniel Coats and Democrat Chuck Robb, and led by Michael Makovsky, brother of WINEP's David Makovsky, who served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense in the heyday of the Pentagon neo-cons from 2002-2006. Robb, incidentally, had already served as the neo-cons' channel into the 2006 Iraq Study Group, chaired by former secretary of state James Baker and former Representative Lee Hamilton. According to Bob Woodward's latest book, The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008, it was Robb who insisted that the Baker-Hamilton task force include an option for a "surge" in Iraq.

The report of the Coats-Robb task force - "Meeting the Challenge: US Policy Toward Iranian Nuclear Development" - went far beyond the WINEP task force report that Lake and Rice signed off on. It concluded that any negotiations with Iran were unlikely to succeed and should, in any case, be short-lived. As the report put the matter, "It must be clear that any US-Iranian talks will not be open-ended, but will be limited to a pre-determined time period so that Tehran does not try to 'run out the clock'."

Anticipating the failure of the talks, the task force (including Ross) urged "prepositioning military assets" coupled with a "show of force" in the region. This would be followed almost immediately by a blockade of Iranian gasoline imports and oil exports, meant to paralyze Iran's economy, followed by what they call, vaguely, "kinetic action".

That "kinetic action" - a US assault on Iran - should, in fact, be massive, suggested the Coats-Robb report. Besides hitting dozens of sites alleged to be part of Iran's nuclear research program, the attacks would target Iranian air defense and missile sites, communications systems, Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps facilities, key parts of Iran's military-industrial complex, munitions storage facilities, airfields, aircraft facilities, and all of Iran's naval facilities. Eventually, they say, the US would also have to attack Iran's ground forces, electric power plants and electrical grids, bridges, and "manufacturing plants, including steel, autos, buses, etc".

This is, of course, a hair-raising scenario. Such an attack on a country that had committed no act of war against the United States or any of its allies would cause countless casualties, virtually destroy Iran's economy and infrastructure, and cause havoc throughout the region. That such a high-level group of luminaries should even propose steps like these - and mean it - can only be described as lunacy. That an important adviser to Obama would sign on to such a report should be shocking, though it has received next to no attention.

Palling around with the neo-cons
At a November 6 forum at WINEP, Patrick Clawson, the erudite, neo-conservative strategist who serves as the organization's deputy director for research, laid out the institute's view of how to talk to Iran in the Obama era. Doing so, he said, is critically important, but only to show the rest of the world that the US has taken the last step for peace - before, of course, attacking. Then, and only then, will the US have the legitimacy it needs to launch military action against Iran.

"What we've got to do is to show the world that we're making a big deal of engaging the Iranians," he said, tossing a bone to the new administration. "I'd throw everything, including the kitchen sink, into it." He advocates this approach only because he believes it won't work. "The principal target with these offers [to Iran] is not Iran," he adds. "The principal target of these offers is American public opinion and world public opinion."

The Coats-Robb report, "Meeting the Challenge", was written by one of the hardest of Washington's neo-conservative hardliners, Michael Rubin of the AEI. Rubin, who spent most of the years since 9/11 either working for AEI or, before and during the war in Iraq, for the Wolfowitz-Feith team at the Pentagon, recently penned a report for the Institute entitled: "Can A Nuclear Iran Be Deterred or Contained?" Not surprisingly, he believes the answer to be a resounding "no", although he does suggest that any effort to contain a nuclear Iran would certainly require permanent US bases spread widely in the region, including in Iraq:
If US forces are to contain the Islamic Republic, they will require basing not only in GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] countries, but also in Afghanistan, Iraq, Central Asia and the Caucasus. Without a sizeable regional presence, the Pentagon will not be able to maintain the predeployed resources and equipment necessary to contain Iran, and Washington will signal its lack of commitment to every ally in the region. Because containment is as much psychological as physical, basing will be its backbone.
The Coats-Robb report was issued by a little-known group called the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC). That organization, too, turns out to be interwoven with WINEP, not least because its foreign policy director is Michael Makovsky. Perhaps the most troubling participant in the Bipartisan Policy Center is Obama's eminence grise and one of his most important advisers during the campaign, Tom Daschle, who is slated to be his secretary of health and human services. So far, Daschle has not repudiated BPC's provocative report.

Ross, along with Richard Holbrooke, recently made appearances amid another collection of superhawks who came together to found a new organization, United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), which is led by Mark Wallace, the husband of Nicole Wallace, a key member of Senator John McCain's campaign team. Among UANI's leadership team are Ross and Holbrooke, along with such hardliners as Jim Woolsey, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and Fouad Ajami, the Arab-American scholar who is a principal theorist on Middle East policy for the neo-conservative movement.

UANI is primarily a propaganda outfit. Its mission, it says, is to "inform the public about the nature of the Iranian regime, including its desire and intent to possess nuclear weapons, as well as Iran's role as a state sponsor of global terrorism, and a major violator of human rights at home and abroad" and to "heighten awareness nationally and internationally about the danger that a nuclear-armed Iran poses to the region and the world".

Obama has, of course, repeatedly declared his intention to embark on a different path by opening talks with Iran. He's insisted that diplomacy, not military action, will be at the core of his approach to Tehran. During the election campaign, however, he also stated no less repeatedly that he will not take the threat of military action "off the table".

Organizations like WINEP, AIPAC, AEI, BPC, and UANI see it as their mission to push the United States toward a showdown with Iran. Don't sell them short. Those who believe that such a confrontation would be inconceivable under president Obama ought to ask Tony Lake, Susan Rice, Dennis Ross, Tom Daschle and Richard Holbrooke whether they agree - and, if so, why they're still palling around with neo-conservative hardliners.

Robert Dreyfuss, an independent journalist in Alexandria, Virginia, is a contributing editor at the Nation magazine, whose website hosts his The Dreyfuss Report, and has written frequently for Rolling Stone, The American Prospect, Mother Jones, and the Washington Monthly. He is the author of Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam.

(Copyright 2008 Robert Dreyfuss.)

(Used by permission Tomdispatch)

Cost Of Bailout Hits $8.5 Trillion

Paul Joseph Watson

Prison Planet.com

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

The total cost of funds committed to the bailout in its various guises has now hit $8.5 trillion dollars, up from $7.7 trillion in just two days after the federal government committed an additional $800 billion to two new loan programs on Tuesday.

The total amount of funds now committed equals a figure that represents 60 per cent of the U.S. gross domestic product.

Millions of Americans with savings accounts and pensions will ultimately pay the price because, as the San Francisco Chronicle admits today, “The Fed lends money from its own balance sheet or by essentially creating new money.”

You’ll also find this little snippet in the article, “Most of the money, about $5.5 trillion, comes from the Federal Reserve, which as an independent entity does not need congressional approval to lend money to banks or, in “unusual and exigent circumstances,” to other financial institutions.

Just another reminder that the private, run for profit, Federal Reserve has the printing presses cranked on overdrive in order to bailout Wall Street and the big banks, while the homeowner and the middle class see their savings devalued out of existence.

“If you print money all the time, the money becomes worth less,” warns Diane Lim Rogers, chief economist with the Concord Coalition, but its an empty threat to delirious traders and investors drunk on a record stock market rally after the government pumped more fake liquidity into the bloated bubble.

Veteran investor Jim Rogers echoed the sentiment, predicting the dollar is “going to lose its status as the world’s reserve currency,” adding, “It will be devalued and it will go down a lot.

These guys in Washington, they want to debase the currency.”

“They think that if you drive down the value of your money, it makes you more competitive, now that has never worked in history in the long term,” said Rogers.

How long will it be before Americans realize the looming specter of hyperinflation spells disaster for their life savings? How long will it be before we see rioting in the streets on a par with the scenes witnessed in Iceland over the weekend, where the Icelandic krona has lost half its value in a matter of weeks?

Meanwhile, over in the UK, the government assured the vast majority of the population that they will “tax the rich” in order to pay for the bailout on the other side of the Atlantic, with whopping 61 per cent tax bands being levied on those earning over £100,000 a year.

Since when was £100,000 a year “rich”? After tax, even if someone was able to save half of their remaining income, it would take them around 30 years to save a million pounds, adjusting for inflation. That is not rich.

The reality of course is that it is the middle class who will once again foot the bill for everything, leaving the elite to prolong their con game of fiat money and imaginary credit , once again suckering the poor in for a lifetime of indentured financial servitude.

CNN Censors Federal Reserve Rant?

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Thursday, December 4, 2008

Financial analyst Peter Schiff on CNN.

Technical difficulties or deliberate censorship? CNN does not usually afford a soapbox to Peter Schiff because he’s one of a rare breed of financial analysts, he can actually identify the root of the problem - the Federal Reserve.

So when Schiff was cut off during the height of his rant against the Fed, many of our readers questioned whether it was a deliberate act of sabotage.

Used to doling out a steady diet of bailout propaganda on a daily basis, CNN bosses were probably not amused when Schiff started to blame the government’s obsession with rescuing failed companies for the deepening severity of the economic crisis.

“Capitalism is not about propping up failed companies, we need to let them fail,” said Schiff, before adding, “Now of course behind it all is the Federal Reserve, if the Federal Reserve had not intervened….had they not poured all this alcohol then Wall Street wouldn’t have got drunk, but they did.”

“I am convinced that everything the government is doing to fight this off is gonna make….” said Schiff before the feed was cut.

Conspiracy or technical gremlins? Either way, it’s unlikely that CNN will invite Schiff back on should he continue to dare tell the truth about the real culprits behind the grand larceny undertaken by the government and the Federal Reserve, the cost of which now stands at $8.5 trillion dollars.

Flashback: U.S. Counterinsurgency Manual Leaked, Calls for False Flag Operations, Suspension of Human Rights

Posted By admin On December 4, 2008 @ 11:17 am

Julian Assange
Statism Watch
Monday June 15, 2008

Editor’s note: Most of the tactics described below are now being implemented and used in the United States against the American people.

Wikileaks has released a sensitive 219 page US military counterinsurgency manual. The manual, Foreign Internal Defense Tactics Techniques and Procedures for Special Forces (1994, 2004), may be critically described as “what we learned about running death squads and propping up corrupt government in Latin America and how to apply it to other places”. Its contents are both history defining for Latin America and, given the continued role of US Special Forces in the suppression of insurgencies, including in Iraq and Afghanistan, history making.

Counterinsurgency tactics now used in Afghanistan and Iraq were first field tested in Vietnam and Latin America.

The leaked manual, which has been verified with military sources, is the official US Special Forces doctrine for Foreign Internal Defense or FID.

FID operations are designed to prop up a “friendly” government facing a popular revolution or guerilla insurgency. FID interventions are often covert or quasi-covert due to the unpopular nature of the governments being supported (”In formulating a realistic policy for the use of advisors, the commander must carefully gauge the psychological climate of the HN [Host Nation] and the United States.”)

The manual directly advocates training paramilitaries, pervasive surveillance, censorship, press control and restrictions on labor unions & political parties. It directly advocates warrantless searches, detainment without charge and (under varying circumstances) the suspension of habeas corpus. It directly advocates employing terrorists or prosecuting individuals for terrorism who are not terrorists, running false flag operations and concealing human rights abuses from journalists. And it repeatedly advocates the use of subterfuge and “psychological operations” (propaganda) to make these and other “population & resource control” measures more palatable.

The content has been particularly informed by the long United States involvement in El Salvador.

In 2005 a number of credible media reports suggested the Pentagon was intensely debating “the Salvador option” for Iraq.[1]. According to the New York Times Magazine:

The template for Iraq today is not Vietnam, with which it has often been compared, but El Salvador, where a right-wing government backed by the United States fought a leftist insurgency in a 12-year war beginning in 1980. The cost was high — more than 70,000 people were killed, most of them civilians, in a country with a population of just six million. Most of the killing and torturing was done by the army and the right-wing death squads affiliated with it. According to an Amnesty International report in 2001, violations committed by the army and associated groups included ‘‘extrajudicial executions, other unlawful killings, ‘disappearances’ and torture. . . . Whole villages were targeted by the armed forces and their inhabitants massacred.’’ As part of President Reagan’s policy of supporting anti-Communist forces, hundreds of millions of dollars in United States aid was funneled to the Salvadoran Army, and a team of 55 Special Forces advisers, led for several years by Jim Steele, trained front-line battalions that were accused of significant human rights abuses.

From the WikiLeaks site:

DISTRIBUTION RESTRICTION: Distribution authorized to U.S. Government agencies and their contractors only to protect technical or operational information from automatic dissemination under the International Exchange Program or by other means. This determination was made on 5 December 2003. Other requests for this document must be referred to Commander, United States Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, ATTN: AOJK-DTD-SFD, Fort Bragg, North Carolina 28310-5000.

Destruction Notice: Destroy by any method that must prevent disclosure of contents or reconstruction of the document.

[...]

Insurgent Strategies.

There are three general strategies of insurgency: foco, mass-oriented, and traditional.

Foco Insurgency.

A foco (Spanish word meaning focus or focal point) is a single, armed cell that emerges from hidden strongholds in an atmosphere of disintegrating legitimacy. In theory, this cell is the nucleus around which mass popular support rallies. The insurgents build new institutions and establish control on the basis of that support. For a foco insurgency to succeed, government legitimacy must be near total collapse. Timing is critical. The foco must mature at the same time the government loses legitimacy and before any alternative appears. The most famous foco insurgencies were those led by Castro and Che Guevara. The strategy was quite effective in Cuba because the Batista regime was corrupt and incompetent. The distinguishing characteristics of a foco insurgency are The deliberate avoidance of preparatory organizational work. The rationale is based on the premise that most peasants are intimidated by the authorities and will betray any group that cannot defend itself. The development of rural support as demonstrated by the ability of the foco insurgency to strike against the authorities and survive. The absence of any emphasis on the protracted nature of the conflict.

Fidel Castro/Cuba

In 1952, Fidel Castro began his revolutionary movement in Cuba. After an unsuccessful attack of Ft. Moncada, he was imprisoned. Upon release in 1955 he fled to Mexico to train a new group of guerrilla warriors. In 1956, Castro and 82 of his followers returned to Cuba on a yacht. Of this group, only 12 of Castro’s followers made their way to the Sierra Maestra mountains. From his remote mountain base, he established a 100to 150-man nucleus. As Castro’s organization grew, small unit patrols began hit-and-run type operations. While Castro continued to expand his area of influence, the popularity of the corrupt Batista government waned. In May of 1958, the government launched an attack on the Sierra Maestra stronghold. Castro withdrew deeper into the mountains, while spreading his message on national reform. Batista’s continuing repression of the country led to general strikes and continuing growth in popular support for Castro’s small cell of revolutionaries. Finally, Batista fled the country on 1 January 1959, and Castro established a junta and became the Prime Minister and President.

Mass-Oriented Insurgency

This insurgency aims to achieve the political and armed mobilization of a large popular movement. Mass-oriented insurgencies emphasize creating apolitical and armed legitimacy outside the existing system. They challenge that system and then destroy or supplant it. These insurgents patiently build a large armed force of regular and irregular guerrillas. They also construct a base of active and passive political supporters. They plan a protracted campaign of increasing violence to destroy the government and its institutions from the outside, Their political leadership normally is distinct from their military leadership. Their movement normally establishes a parallel government that openly proclaims its own legitimacy. They have a well-developed ideology and decide on their objectives only after careful analysis. Highly organized, they mobilize forces for a direct military and political challenge to the government using propaganda and guerrilla action. The distinguishing characteristics of a mass-oriented insurgency are:

Political control by the revolutionary organization, which assures priority of political considerations. Reliance on organized popular support to provide recruits, funds, supplies, and intelligence. Primary areas of activity, especially in early phases, in the remote countryside where the population can be organized and base areas established with little interference from the authorities. Reliance upon guerrilla tactics to carry on the military side of the strategy. These tactics focus on the avoidance of battle, except at times and places of the insurgents choosing, and the employment of stealth and secrecy, ambush, and surprise to overcome the initial imbalance of strength. A phased strategy consisting first of a primarily organizational phase in which the population is prepared for its vital role. In the second phase, armed struggle is launched and the guerrilla force gradually builds up in size and strength, The third phase consists of mobile, more conventional warfare. Conceptually, this third phase is accompanied by a popular uprising that helps overwhelm the regime. It is a concept of protracted war.

Vietnam Conflict.

The Vietnam conflict (1959-1975) is one example of a mass-oriented insurgency. In December 1960, under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh, the National Liberation Front was formed in North Vietnam. Its main goal was to establish shadow governments at all levels in South Vietnam to take control of the population from the South Vietnamese. The National Liberation Front also used propaganda and guerrilla action, expecting the South Vietnamese population to rally to their side and overthrow the government. The insurgency was actually a failure because the mass uprising of the population, envisioned by the communist leaders, never occurred. Relentless guerrilla attacks did serve to weaken the government of South Vietnam, but they did not cause it to fall. In the spring of 1975, North Vietnam launched a massive conventional invasion of South Vietnam using armored vehicles. Saigon, the capital city, fell on 30 April.

Traditional Insurgency.

This insurgency normally grows from very specific grievances and initially has limited aims. It springs from tribal, racial, religious, linguistic, or other similarly identifiable groups. The insurgents perceive that the government has denied the rights and interests of their group and work to establish or restore them. They frequently seek withdrawal from government control through autonomy or semiautonomy. They seldom specifically seek to overthrow the government or control the whole society. They generally respond in kind to government violence. Their use of violence can range from strikes and street demonstrations to terrorism and guerrilla warfare. These insurgencies may cease if the government accedes to the insurgents demands. The concessions the insurgents demand, however, are so great that the government concedes its legitimacy along with them.

Huk Rebellion.

The Huk rebellion in the Philippines can be considered a traditional insurgency despite its Communist origin. The Huks first surfaced as an armed force resisting the Japanese occupation of the Second World War. After the war, when other resistance bands disarmed, the Huks did not. After the American liberation, the Huks saw a chance to seize national power at a time when the newly proclaimed Philippine Republic was in obvious distress as a result of a monetary crisis, graft in high office, and mounting peasant unrest. By 1950, the Huks had built a force of 12,800 armed guerrillas with thousands of peasant supporters on central Luzon. They were defeated in a series of actions by the Armed Forces of the Philippines led by Ramon Magsaysa. By 1965, they were nearly extinct, down to 75 members. Largely agrarian, the Huks do not view the government as totally in need of replacement but believe that many of the people in it need to be replaced. Recently the Huk movement has been gaining popular support, once again on the island of Luzon.

[...]

Counterintelligence

[...]

Most of the counterintelligence measures used will be overt in nature and aimed at protecting installations, units, and information and detecting espionage, sabotage, and subversion. Examples of counterintelligence measures to use are

Background investigations and records checks of persons in sensitive positions and persons whose loyalty may be questionable.
Maintenance of files on organizations, locations, and individuals of counterintelligence interest.
Internal security inspections of installations and units.
Control of civilian movement within government-controlled areas.
Identification systems to minimize the chance of insurgents gaining access to installations or moving freely.
Unannounced searches and raids on suspected meeting places.
Censorship.
[...]

PSYOP [Psychological Operations] are essential to the success of PRC [Population & Resources Control]. For maximum effectiveness, a strong psychological operations effort is directed toward the families of the insurgents and their popular support base. The PSYOP aspect of the PRC program tries to make the imposition of control more palatable to the people by relating the necessity of controls to their safety and well-being. PSYOP efforts also try to create a favorable national or local government image and counter the effects of the insurgent propaganda effort.

Control Measures

SF [US Special Forces] can advise and assist HN [Host Nation] forces in developing and implementing control measures. Among these measures are the following:

Security Forces. Police and other security forces use PRC [Population & Resources Control] measures to deprive the insurgent of support and to identify and locate members of his infrastructure. Appropriate PSYOP [Psychological Operations] help make these measures more acceptable to the population by explaining their need. The government informs the population that the PRC measures may cause an inconvenience but are necessary due to the actions of the insurgents.

Restrictions. Rights on the legality of detention or imprisonment of personnel (for example, habeas corpus) may be temporarily suspended. This measure must be taken as a last resort, since it may provide the insurgents with an effective propaganda theme. PRC [Population & Resources Control] measures can also include curfews or blackouts, travel restrictions, and restricted residential areas such as protected villages or resettlement areas. Registration and pass systems and control of sensitive items (resources control) and critical supplies such as weapons, food, and fuel are other PRC measures. Checkpoints, searches, roadblocks; surveillance, censorship, and press control; and restriction of activity that applies to selected groups (labor unions, political groups and the like) are further PRC measures.

[...]

Legal Considerations. All restrictions, controls, and DA measures must be governed by the legality of these methods and their impact on the populace. In countries where government authorities do not have wide latitude in controlling the population, special or emergency legislation must be enacted. This emergency legislation may include a form of martial law permitting government forces to search without warrant, to detain without bringing formal charges, and to execute other similar actions.

[...]

Psychological Operations

PSYOP can support the mission by discrediting the insurgent forces to neutral groups, creating dissension among the insurgents themselves, and supporting defector programs. Divisive programs create dissension, disorganization, low morale, subversion, and defection within the insurgent forces. Also important are national programs to win insurgents over to the government side with offers of amnesty and rewards. Motives for surrendering can range from personal rivalries and bitterness to disillusionment and discouragement. Pressure from the security forces has persuasive power.

[...]

Intelligence personnel must consider the parameters within which a revolutionary movement operates. Frequently, they establish a centralized intelligence processing center to collect and coordinate the amount of information required to make long-range intelligence estimates. Long-range intelligence focuses on the stable factors existing in an insurgency. For example, various demographic factors (ethnic, racial, social, economic, religious, and political characteristics of the area in which the underground movement takes places) are useful in identifying the members of the underground. Information about the underground organization at national, district, and local level is basic in FID [Foreign Internal Defense] and/or IDAD operations. Collection of specific short-range intelligence about the rapidly changing variables of a local situation is critical. Intelligence personnel must gather information on members of the underground, their movements, and their methods. Biographies and photos of suspected underground members, detailed information on their homes, families, education, work history, and associates are important features of short-range intelligence.

Destroying its tactical units is not enough to defeat the enemy. The insurgent’s underground cells or infrastructure must be neutralized first because the infrastructure is his main source of tactical intelligence and political control. Eliminating the infrastructure within an area achieves two goals: it ensures the government’s control of the area, and it cuts off the enemy’s main source of intelligence. An intelligence and operations command center (IOCC) is needed at district or province level. This organization becomes the nerve center for operations against the insurgent infrastructure. Information on insurgent infrastructure targets should come from such sources as the national police and other established intelligence nets and agents and individuals (informants).

The highly specialized and sensitive nature of clandestine intelligence collection demands specially selected and highly trained agents. Information from clandestine sources is often highly sensitive and requires tight control to protect the source. However, tactical information upon which a combat response can be taken should be passed to the appropriate tactical level.

The spotting, assessment, and recruitment of an agent is not a haphazard process regardless of the type agent being sought. During the assessment phase, the case officer determines the individual’s degree of intelligence, access to target, available or necessary cover, and motivation. He initiates the recruitment and coding action only after he determines the individual has the necessary attributes to fulfill the needs.

All agents are closely observed and those that are not reliable are relieved. A few well-targeted, reliable agents are better and more economical than a large number of poor ones.

A system is needed to evaluate the agents and the information they submit. The maintenance of an agent master dossier (possibly at the SFOD B level) can be useful in evaluating the agent on the value and quality of information he has submitted. The dossier must contain a copy of the agent’s source data report and every intelligence report he submitted.

Security forces can induce individuals among the general populace to become informants. Security forces use various motives (civic-mindedness, patriotism, fear, punishment avoidance, gratitude, revenge or jealousy, financial rewards) as persuasive arguments. They use the assurance of protection from reprisal as a major inducement. Security forces must maintain the informant’s anonymity and must conceal the transfer of information from the source to the security agent. The security agent and the informant may prearrange signals to coincide with everyday behavior.

Surveillance, the covert observation of persons and places, is a principal method of gaining and confirming intelligence information. Surveillance techniques naturally vary with the requirements of different situations. The basic procedures include mechanical observation (wiretaps or concealed microphones), observation from fixed locations, and physical surveillance of subjects.

Whenever a suspect is apprehended during an operation, a hasty interrogation takes place to gain immediate information that could be of tactical value. The most frequently used methods for gathering information (map studies and aerial observation), however, are normally unsuccessful. Most PWs cannot read a map. When they are taken on a visual reconnaissance flight, it is usually their first flight and they cannot associate an aerial view with what they saw on the ground.

The most successful interrogation method consists of a map study based on terrain information received from the detainee. The interrogator first asks the detainee what the sun’s direction was when he left the base camp. From this information, he can determine a general direction. The interrogator then asks the detainee how long it took him to walk to the point where he was captured. Judging the terrain and the detainee’s health, the interrogator can determine a general radius in which the base camp can be found (he can use an overlay for this purpose). He then asks the detainee to identify significant terrain features he saw on each day of his journey, (rivers, open areas, hills, rice paddies, swamps). As the detainee speaks and his memory is jogged, the interrogator finds these terrain features on a current map and gradually plots the detainee’s route to finally locate the base camp.

If the interrogator is unable to speak the detainee’s language, he interrogates through an interpreter who received a briefing beforehand. A recorder may also assist him. If the interrogator is not familiar with the area, personnel who are familiar with the area brief him before the interrogation and then join the interrogation team. The recorder allows the interrogator a more free-flowing interrogation. The recorder also lets a knowledgeable interpreter elaborate on points the detainee has mentioned without the interrogator interrupting the continuity established during a given sequence. The interpreter can also question certain inaccuracies, keeping pressure on the subject. The interpreter and the interrogator have to be well trained to work as a team. The interpreter has to be familiar with the interrogation procedures. His preinterrogation briefings must include information on the detainee’s health, the circumstances resulting in his detention, and the specific information required. A successful interrogation is contingent upon continuity and a welltrained interpreter. A tape recorder (or a recorder taking notes) enhances continuity by freeing the interrogator from time-consuming administrative tasks.

[...]

Political Structures. A tightly disciplined party organization, formally structured to parallel the existing government hierarchy, may be found at the center of some insurgent movements. In most instances, this organizational structure will consist of committed organizations at the village, district province, and national levels. Within major divisions and sections of an insurgent military headquarters, totally distinct but parallel command channels exist. There are military chains of command and political channels of control. The party ensures complete domination over the military structure using its own parallel organization. It dominates through a political division in an insurgent military headquarters, a party cell or group in an insurgent military unit, or a political military officer.

[...]

Special Intelligence-Gathering Operations

Alternative intelligence-gathering techniques and sources, such as doppelganger or pseudo operations, can be tried and used when it is hard to obtain information from the civilian populace. These pseudo units are usually made up of ex-guerrilla and/or security force personnel posing as insurgents. They circulate among the civilian populace and, in some cases, infiltrate guerrilla units to gather information on guerrilla movements and its support infrastructure.

Much time and effort must be used to persuade insurgents to switch allegiance and serve with the security forces. Prospective candidates must be properly screened and then given a choice of serving with the HN [Host Nation] security forces or facing prosecution under HN law for terrorist crimes.

Government security force units and teams of varying size have been used in infiltration operations against underground and guerrilla forces. They have been especially effective in getting information on underground security and communications systems, the nature and extent of civilian support and underground liaison, underground supply methods, and possible collusion between local government officials and the underground. Before such a unit can be properly trained and disguised, however, much information about the appearance, mannerisms, and security procedures of enemy units must be gathered. Most of this information comes from defectors or reindoctrinated prisoners. Defectors also make excellent instructors and guides for an infiltrating unit. In using a disguised team, the selected men should be trained, oriented, and disguised to look and act like authentic underground or guerrilla units. In addition to acquiring valuable information, the infiltrating units can demoralize the insurgents to the extent that they become overly suspicious and distrustful of their own units.

[...]

After establishing the cordon and designating a holding area, the screening point or center is established. All civilians in the cordoned area will then pass through the screening center to be classified.

National police personnel will complete, if census data does not exist in the police files, a basic registration card and photograph all personnel over the age of 15. They print two copies of each photo- one is pasted to the registration card and the other to the village book (for possible use in later operations and to identify ralliers and informants).

The screening element leader ensures the screeners question relatives, friends, neighbors, and other knowledgeable individuals of guerrilla leaders or functionaries operating in the area on their whereabouts, activities, movements, and expected return.

The screening area must include areas where police and military intelligence personnel can privately interview selected individuals. The interrogators try to convince the interviewees that their cooperation will not be detected by the other inhabitants. They also discuss, during the interview, the availability of monetary rewards for certain types of information and equipment.

[...]

Civilian Self-Defense Forces [Paramilitaries, or, especially in an El-Salvador or Colombian civil war context, right wing "death squads"]

When a village accepts the CSDF program, the insurgents cannot choose to ignore it. To let the village go unpunished will encourage other villages to accept the government’s CSDF program. The insurgents have no choice; they have to attack the CSDF village to provide a lesson to other villages considering CSDF. In a sense, the psychological effectiveness of the CSDF concept starts by reversing the insurgent strategy of making the government the repressor. It forces the insurgents to cross a critical threshold-that of attacking and killing the very class of people they are supposed to be liberating.

To be successful, the CSDF program must have popular support from those directly involved or affected by it. The average peasant is not normally willing to fight to his death for his national government. His national government may have been a succession of corrupt dictators and inefficient bureaucrats. These governments are not the types of institutions that inspire fight-to-the-death emotions in the peasant. The village or town, however, is a different matter. The average peasant will fight much harder for his home and for his village than he ever would for his national government. The CSDF concept directly involves the peasant in the war and makes it a fight for the family and village instead of a fight for some faraway irrelevant government.

[...]

Members of the CSDF receive no pay for their civil duties. In most instances, however, they derive certain benefits from voluntary service. These benefits can range from priority of hire for CMO projects to a place at the head of ration lines. In El Salvador, CSDF personnel (they were called civil defense there) were given a U.S.-funded life insurance policy with the wife or next of kin as the beneficiary.If a CSDF member died in the line of duty, the widow or next of kin was ceremoniously paid by an HN official. The HN administered the program and a U.S. advisor who maintained accountability of the funds verified the payment. The HN [Host Nation] exercises administrative and visible control.

Responsiveness and speedy payment are essential in this process since the widow normally does not have a means of support and the psychological effect of the government assisting her in her time of grief impacts on the entire community. These and other benefits offered by or through the HN government are valuable incentives for recruiting and sustaining the CSDF.

[...]

The local CSDF members select their leaders and deputy leaders (CSDF groups and teams) in elections organized by the local authorities. In some cases, the HN [Host Nation] appoints a leader who is a specially selected member of the HN security forces trained to carry out this task. Such appointments occurred in El Salvador where the armed forces have established a formal school to train CSDF commanders. Extreme care and close supervision are required to avoid abuses by CSDF leaders.

[...]

The organization of a CSDF can be similar to that of a combat group. This organization is effective in both rural and urban settings. For example, a basic group, having a strength of 107 members, is broken down into three 35-man elements plus a headquarters element of 2 personnel. Each 35-man element is further broken down into three 1 l-man teams and a headquarters element of 2 personnel. Each team consists of a team leader, an assistant team leader, and three 3-man cells. This organization can be modified to accommodate the number of citizens available to serve.

[...]

Weapons training for the CSDF personnel is critical. Skill at arms decides the outcome of battle and must be stressed. Of equal importance is the maintenance and care of weapons. CSDF members are taught basic rifle marksmanship with special emphasis on firing from fixed positions and during conditions of limited visibility. Also included in the marksmanship training program are target detection and fire discipline.

Training ammunition is usually allocated to the CSDF on the basis of a specified number of rounds for each authorized weapon. A supporting HN government force or an established CSDF logistic source provides the ammunition to support refresher training.

[...]

Acts of misconduct by HN [Host Nation] personnel

All members of training assistance teams must understand their responsibilities concerning acts of misconduct by HN personnel. Team members receive briefings before deployment on what to do if they encounter or observe such acts. Common Article 3 of the four Geneva Conventions lists prohibited acts by parties to the convention. Such acts are-

Violence to life and person, in particular, murder, mutilation, cruel treatment, and torture.
Taking of hostages.

Outrages against personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment.
Passing out sentences and carrying out executions without previous judgment by a regularly constituted court that affords all the official guarantees that are recog-nized as indispensable by civilized people.

The provisions in the above paragraph represent a level of conduct that the United States expects each foreign country to observe.

If team members encounter prohibited acts they can not stop, they will disengage from the activity, leave the area if possible, and report the incidents immediately to the proper in-country U.S. authorities. The country team will identify proper U.S. authorities during the team’s initial briefing. Team members will not discuss such matters with non-U.S. Government authorities such as journalists and civilian contractors.

[...]

Most insurgents’ doctrinal and training documents stress the use of pressure-type mines in the more isolated or less populated areas. They prefer using commandtype mines in densely populated areas. These documents stress that when using noncommand-detonated mines, the insurgents use every means to inform the local populace on their location, commensurate with security regulations. In reality, most insurgent groups suffer from various degrees of deficiency in their C2 [Command & Control] systems. Their C2 does not permit them to verify that those elements at the operational level strictly follow directives and orders. In the case of the Frente Farabundo Marti de la Liberation Nacional (FMLN) in El Salvador, the individual that emplaces the mine is responsible for its recovery after the engagement. There are problems with this concept. The individual may be killed or the security forces may gain control of the area. Therefore, the recovery of the mine is next to impossible.

[...]

Homemade antipersonnel mines are used extensively in El Salvador, Guatemala and Malaysia. (Eighty percent of all El Salvadoran armed forces casualties in 1986 were due to mines; in 1987, soldiers wounded by mines and booby traps averaged 50 to 60 per month.) The important point to remember is that any homemade mine is the product of the resources available to the insurgent group. Therefore, no two antipersonnel mines may be the same in their configuration and materials. Insurgent groups depend to a great extent on materials discarded or lost by security forces personnel. The insurgents not only use weapons, ammunition, mines, grenades, and demolitions for their original purpose but also in preparing expedient mines and booby traps.

[...]

A series of successful minings carried out by the Viet Cong insurgents on the Cua Viet River, Quang Tri Province, demonstrated their resourcefulness in countering minesweeping tactics. Initially, chain-dragging sweeps took place morning and evening. After several successful mining attacks, it was apparent that they laid the mines after the minesweepers passed. Then, the boats using the river formed into convoys and transited the river with minesweepers 914 meters ahead oft he convoy. Nevertheless, boats of the convoy were successfully mined in mid-channel, indicating that the mines were again laid after the minesweeper had passed, possibly by using sampans. Several sampans were observed crossing or otherwise using the channel between the minesweepers and the convoy. The convoys were then organized so that the minesweepers worked immediately ahead of the convoy. One convoy successfully passed. The next convoy had its minesweepers mined and ambushed close to the river banks.

[...]

Military Advisors

[...]

Psychologically pressuring the HN [Host Nation] counterpart may sometimes be successful.Forms of psychological pressure may range from the obvious to the subtle. The advisor never applies direct threats, pressure, or intimidation on his counterpart Indirect psychological pressure may be applied by taking an issue up the chain of command to a higher U.S. commander. The U.S. commander can then bring his counterpart to force the subordinate counterpart to comply. Psychological pressure may obtain quick results but may have very negative side effects. The counterpart will feel alienated and possibly hostile if the advisor uses such techniques. Offers of payment in the form of valuables may cause him to become resentful of the obvious control being exerted over him. In short, psychologically pressuring a counterpart is not recommended. Such pressure is used only as a last resort since it may irreparably damage the relationship between the advisor and his counterpart

PSYOP [Psychological Operations] Support for Military Advisors

The introduction of military advisors requires preparing the populace with which the advisors are going to work. Before advisors enter a country, the HN [Host Nation] government carefully explains their introduction and clearly emphasizes the benefits of their presence to the citizens. It must provide a credible justification to minimize the obvious propaganda benefits the insurgents could derive from this action. The country’s dissenting elements label our actions, no matter how well-intended, an "imperialistic intervention."

Once advisors are committed, their activities should be exploited. Their successful integration into the HN [Host Nation] society and their respect for local customs and mores, as well as their involvement with CA [Civil Affairs] projects, are constantly brought to light. In formulating a realistic policy for the use of advisors, the commander must carefully gauge the psychological climate of the HN and the United States.

CIA Recruitment Ad

Criminal Congress & Their Bankster Buddies (Video Clip)

FEMA's True Power and it's Dangerous

Note: What I find so amazing about this whole situation is that the people are more willing to trample a man to death to go shop and get into fist fights over products than to stand up and fight for their freedom. Our rights and civil liberties are being snatched right in our faces. That shit is gangsta. We'll see very soon if a President Obama brings about the change that most people are thinking about.

Mercury Damages Brain Cells

Lies About Mercury Being Safe in Vaccines

If you think mercury is safe, you better think again. This is being reported in mainstream news. This shit is real. Check it out for yourself. Even if the mercury is removed, the vaccines are still deadly. Allowing those injections into your children is making you parents an accomplice in hurting, even murdering your own child.

Makeba, the Great (1932-2008)

[col. writ. 11/18/08] (c) '08 Mumia Abu-Jamal


Unless you are of a certain generation, the name Miriam Makeba will mean little of nothing to you.

But for generations this glorious, talented African woman stirred souls and fed hearts with a steady diet of lovely and lively songs which shared the rhythms and voices of South Africa with millions.

She was born March 4, 1932 under apartheid, the daughter of a Xhosa father and a Swazi mother, who was said to have been a sangoma (or mystic).

She showed musical promise at an early age and began public performances as a teenager. From that time until the end of her life, she was a majestic musical artist, and equally an activist for African freedom worldwide.

During her life she was the wife of South African trumpeter, Hugh Masekela, and later Black revolutionary, Kwame Ture (formerly known as Stokely Carmichael). Her marriage to Toure resulted in the loss of scores of concerts and contracts, by forces which opposed the Black freedom movement.

For her songs which attacked and criticized the racist apartheid regime in South Africa, her music was banned and she was denied the right to return to her homeland. She lived away from her birthplace for nearly 3 decades, and the regime wouldn't even allow her to return to the country to attend her mother's funeral. In 1960 the government revoked her citizenship.

If her homeland was out of reach to her, Africa and the broader Black world were not.

She acted in films and on TV. She appeared as a guest star on the Cosby show, and in the acclaimed 1992 movie, "Sarafina", about the youth rebellion against the regime in Soweto.

Her sweet contralto graced many songs but she was perhaps best known for her upbeat "Pata! Pata!" song, as well as her hit "The Click Song", which was based on clicking sounds used in Xhosa.

She died on stage in Italy, at an anti-Mafia concert following the slayings of 6 Ghanaians, after performing so well that the audience shouted for an encore.

Makeba was 76

--(c) '08 maj

'Bailing Out My Boys'

[col. writ. 11/15/08] (c) Mumia Abu-Jamal


It's been over a month since the beginning of the bailout binge, and little, if anything has changed. For, the bailout, from its inception, has been little more than a bait and switch.

Driven by headlines of gloom and doom, spooked by the fear mongers of Wall Street, the White House and Congress rushed to send bales of bucks to banks -- many the very institutions that manufactured this mess.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, formerly a top exec at Golman-Sachs, made barely intelligible sounds about "liquidity", and shoveled the dough to his old pals, while promising politicians that these funds would unfreeze loans so that business and consumers could access credit.

That hasn't exactly happened that way, has it?

Now, we see shifts in strategy, or new ways to throw away public monies for private interests.

Recently, a New York Times reporter overheard a discussion between an employee and an executive for J.P. Morgan Chase bank less than a week after it received $25 billion dollars of the $700 billion dollar bailout. The employee asked one of the bank directors how the loan affected their lending policies. The response was stunning:

What we do think it will help us do is perhaps a little more
active on the acquisition side or opportunistic side for some
banks who are still struggling. And I would not assume that
we are done on the acquisition side just because of the
Washington Mutual and Bear Stearns mergers. I think there
are going to be some great opportunities for us to grow in
this environment, and I think we have an opportunity to use
that $25 billion in that way and obviously depending on
whether recession turns into depression or what happens
in the future, you know, we have that as a backdrop. We
should think that loan volume will continue to go down as
we continue to tighten credit to fully reflect the high cost of
pricing on the loan side."*

And we wonder why the bailout is a bust!

It was never designed to 'save the economy!' It was designed to do exactly what it did -transfer vast amounts of money out of the Treasury and into the banks.

And the next administration will begin with next to nothing, and every promise made during the election will turn to dust.

--(c) '08 maj

[*Source: "How the banks use our money," The Spark, Nov. 3-17, 2008, p.3.]

Masks of Empire

[col. writ. 11/23/08] (c) '08 Mumia Abu-Jamal


It would be easy to succumb to the euphoria of the hour.

Easy. Too easy.

Despite this effluvia of euphoria, blown higher by a media that has learned its role of servitude to power all too well, we have seen reasons to be concerned.

Media reportage and cheers of purported cabinet choices (from a media that claimed to have learned its lesson about cheerleading after the Iraq debacle), should give us pause, for they seem designed more for reassurance than to change.

The heavy concentration of Clintonites evokes 'back-to-the-future' ,more than a new day. And while it's true that, after the madcap governance of George W. Bush, almost anything looks preferable, it's also true that many of the problems facing the U.S. had their beginnings (or exacerbation) during the Wm. Clinton presidency. This may be seen in the promotion and passage of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) under Clinton, through the rubrics of free trade and globalization, which hollowed out national manufacturing, as businesses fled abroad in search of cheaper labor (and more profits).

For while labor gave Clinton their votes he gave his loyalties to the bankers, and served their interests first and foremost.

Similarly, while labor swarmed to (then-candidate) Barack Obama's side, if initial reports are correct, Friedmanites are dominating his economic team. These are economists and pro-business types who fundamentally believe that economies are self-regulating, and thus, their emergence as economic advisers are the continuation of the same policies that led to the present market meltdown.

On foreign policy a Clinton has arisen. Change? Not so much.

So distasteful has been the Bush era, that the '90's look nice by comparison.

Yet, these are not so much policy moves as they are political moves, meant to placate and soothe party rivalries rubbed raw during and intense primary election season.

It is meant to communicate to allies and enemies alike, not change, but continuity.

It is meant to show that although the face at the top has changed, its essence remains the same.

--(c) '08 maj

Obama Sells Out America's Youth and Defenders of Civil Liberties with Eric Holder

Living to see the first African-American elected as President of the United States was supposed to feel a lot better. But, it's hard to get excited about Barack Obama, who seems to have never met an issue he can't take both sides on, and who has elevated "selling out" to an art form. Obama is the Magna Cum Laude, Zen master, and Oracle of All Sell Out Knowledge. He has once again affirmed his exalted position as the King of Masquerade when he chose Eric Holder to be his Attorney General and sold out American youth, particularly black youth.

Holder, yet another ex-Clintonite, was Clinton's Deputy Attorney General and US Attorney General for the Washington DC area. He is an extreme drug warrior who believes that harsher and longer sentences should be enacted for minor crimes such as marijuana use and prostitution. This, in spite of the mounting evidence that the "war on drugs" is a failure and has amounted to nothing more than a war on black people, which also appears to be it's original intent. He wants harsher sentencing for marijuana, which will impact American youth more than any other demographic, and it will specifically impact African-American youth, who are already targeted to be shuffled off to America's new plantations, US prisons.

Perhaps this was Clinton's, now Obama's plan for getting more Black men employed by major corporations, because once inside of prison, many get hired by some of America's top corporations. Of course, they're only paid about 25 cents an hour and they have no benefits. But at least they have a job, something that cannot be said for an increasing number of Americans who are not part of this "affirmative action" program. Some American companies are actually closing up shop, laying off workers, and re-opening in a prison to take advantage of this bonanza of prisoner/slaves. Funny, but America's new slaves look an awful lot like the old ones.

You are aware that slavery is still legal in America, aren't you? If you aren't, be assured that American corporations are.

Holder was part of the Clinton Justice Department that enacted harsh and racially biased laws that exploded America into becoming the greatest prison nation in human history and Bill Clinton into becoming the greatest incarceration president in American history. Clinton ran away from signing legislation that would have addressed the injustice of crack and power cocaine laws. America has more prisoners than all the totalitarian nations we like to look down our noses at. America locks up more prisoners than China, which has 4 times our population.

I wonder how much it costs to be the greatest prison nation in human history?

In 1996, as U.S. Attorney in Washington, D.C, Holder petitioned the City Council to enact mandatory minimum sentencing laws and to make marijuana sale offenses a felony, even for first time offenders. He said he wanted to "Nip it in the bud." He wanted to turn a misdemeanor into a five-year prison sentence. Holder said in an interview that he is considering not only prosecuting more marijuana cases but also asking the D.C. Council to enact stiffer penalties for the sale and use of marijuana. His policies achieved none of its stated goals.

Obama supporters, particularly the youth, who stood in hours-long lines to vote for him thinking him a fresh approach to politics and society have been sold out. If you thought Obama once saying that our prisons are too full with first time offenders or that our prisons are too full of young people was a good reason to support him, you've been sold out.

However, Holder's appointment, which will fly through confirmation by the lemming-like Democratic Congress, is not only bad news for America's youth, it's bad news for those who thought Obama was about protecting civil liberties in this country and reversing the atrocities of the Bush Administration. If you didn't get a clue when Obama reversed himself on FISA and the Patriot Act, Eric Holder is your next clue. Holder was part of the team that developed strategies for the re-authorization of the Patriot Act in 2005, and had this to say about opponents of it: "We're dealing with a different world now. Everybody should remember those pictures that we saw on September the 11th. The World Trade Centers aflame, the pictures of the Pentagon, and any time some petty bureaucrat decides that his or her little piece of turf is being invaded, get rid of that person. Those are the kinds of things we have to do." Get rid of those who oppose it. I voted for someone, although not "petty" by any means, Cynthia McKinney, who certainly opposed it, and the system got rid of her just as he said.

Holder was also involved in Clinton's pardoning of Mark Rich, and as a corporate lawyer in private practice after leaving the Clinton team, played a key role in negotiating an agreement with the Justice Department that got Chiquita Brands International executives off the hook for paying protection money to right-wing death squads in Colombia.

Of course many African-Americans will be dancing to the beat of seeing the first black Attorney General and never notice the words they're dancing to. But those who stand against the attack on civil liberties that emanated from the Bush Administration, and America's youth, Black, White, Hispanic, and Asian college students, who rallied to Obama's side, have now joined the antiwar crowd and those looking for genuine change as pawns in the mindfuck called "Change We Can Believe In."

Everybody's dancing .. but the election is over, and it's time to listen to the words.

Richard Searcy can be contacted at searcy21@juno.com

Rev. Pinkney - and God - Versus Racism in Michigan

To obtain a downloadable MP3 copy of this Black Agenda Radio visit the BA Radio archive page.

The ACLU has agreed to become the lawyers for Rev. Edward Pinkney, the activist minister from Benton Harbor, Michigan, who was imprisoned for three to ten years for invoking God in accusing the presiding judge with corruption. "To our knowledge," said a spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union, "this case marks the first time in modern history that a preacher has been imprisoned for predicting what God might do."

The same judge had previously sentenced Pinkney to probation on charges of having stolen votes in a local election. He revoked probation after Rev. Pinkney made his prediction about God's plan for the judge.

Rev. Pinkney is the acknowledged leader of Black protest in Benton Harbor, a 92 percent African American enclave surrounded by a mostly white county. The real power in the city of a little over 10,000, says Pinkney, is the Whirlpool corporation, which is behind a development project that many Blacks say is against the community's interests. County Judge Paul Maloney changed the sentence from probation to hard prison time, after Rev. Pinkney wrote that Maloney was "racist" and "dumb," and would answer to God for the injustices he had inflicted. Those punishments, wrote Pinkney, would include "curses, fever and extreme burning," unless the judge "hearken[ed] unto the voice of the Lord thy God to observe [and] to do all that is right."

According the Judge Maloney's version of the Constitution, that was enough to send Rev. Pinkney to an Upper Michigan correctional facility. Pinkney says he's being punished for exercising his freedom of speech, and contends the original charge of vote stealing was a frameup by the white establishment that answers to the Whirlpool Corporation, which is accustomed to getting its way in Benton Harbor.

"We knew they were corrupt," said Pinkney, "but the point was, nobody had ever stood up to them before until I came along." He charges people were paid to testify that he was "in possession of an absentee ballot" - the basis for his conviction.

Whirlpool, which is so intent on pushing through its pet project in Benton Harbor, announced that it plans to lay off 5,000 workers, many in Michigan. But, despite the billion-dollar corporation's financial troubles, its will is the equivalent of law in Whirlpools headquarters town.

The bars of Rev. Pinkney's cell testify to that.

America will never be the land of democracy and equal justice as long as the power of money places corporations above the law, or, in Rev. Pinkney's case, allows the corporate class to cause the incarceration of a civil rights leader.

For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com

Will Somalia Become Obama's War?

The days of the American-instigated Ethiopian occupation of Somalia appear to be numbered. Islamic resistance forces reportedly control most of south and central Somalia, and are within miles of the ruined capital, Mogadishu. Within Ethiopia, the occupation of its neighbor seems to be very unpopular, although public opinion is difficult to measure in a dictatorship. If the military momentum remains with the Somali Islamic "Shabab" forces, Barack Obama will be unable to avoid a fundamental foreign policy decision immediately upon assuming office. Will he continue the Bush regime's aggressions against Somalia, predicated on Washington's claim to a "right" to invade and brutalize other peoples in search of targets in the so-called "war on terror."

The American targets have expanded to include the whole of Somali society since late 2006, when Washington encouraged and materially supported Ethiopia's invasion. The Bush gang shrieked hysterically that the Islamic Courts movement, which had risen suddenly to bring a semblance of peace and stability to much of Somalia, was a kind of front for Osama bin Laden.

The Americans sent arms and money to the Somali warlords that the Islamic Courts had defeated. This was not so much an American attempt at regime change, as a cruel conspiracy to plunge Somalia back into the warlord-induced chaos that had reigned since 1991. When the U.S. discovered there was no Somali alternative to the Islamists - in a country that is 99 percent Muslim - Washington opted to launch a general war on Somalia with Ethiopia as its proxy.

The result was a nightmare for the Somali people, millions of whom have been displaced from their homes. Seven hundred thousand have fled Mogadishu, the capital, part of what the United Nations called Africa's "worst humanitarian crisis."

According to a British human rights group, at least 17 U.S. ships have served as "floating prisons," some of them off the Somali coast. The Americans, operating out of their garrison in neighboring Djibouti and from the high seas, pursued their own reign of terror, sending missiles and hit squads to assassinate and kidnap those Washington considered "terrorists" - a term that in Somalia came to mean anyone thought to favor creation of an Islamic state.

It was a nascent Islamic state that had made much of Somalia fit for human habitation, before the American and Ethiopian invasion. The rump Somali Transitional Federal Government, a creature of the Ethiopian occupiers, could not survive if the Ethiopians withdrew, as seems a likely result of the Somali resistance offensive.

The American war in the Horn of Africa has included all the covert techniques developed by the Bush regime to destabilize nations and whole regions of the globe. In Somalia, it seems likely that the Islamist "Shabab" will prevail in much of the country.

The U.S. will have no friends among the Shabab. Barack Obama will be forced to decide - if he has not done so already - whether or not to continue George Bush's war against Somalia. If Obama's version of the war on terror requires the subjugation and continued destruction of Somalia, then he will have made that war his own.

For Black Agenda radio, I'm Glen Ford.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com

American Decline Will Be Worse Than U.S. Intelligence Agencies Fear

American intelligence agencies project that the United States will lose its position of world dominance by the year 2025. Their report is titled “Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World,” and is far more pessimistic about the United States’ future role in the world than a report written in 2004. Back then, when the Iraq War was still young, U.S. intelligence agencies believed American dominance would continue through the year 2020. What a difference has been wrought by the revolt of developing nations against U.S and European global economic dictatorship, the unraveling of America’s own economy, and two major American wars of attempted conquest.

U.S. intelligence analysts now foresee a world in which America is the “single most powerful actor,” but where Washington will no longer be in a position to impose its will on the entire planet.

This is a curious conclusion, because it in effect predicts the end of U.S. imperialism, which is a system maintained only by artificial U.S. economic advantages backed up by an overpowering military – more costly than all the other militaries in the world, combined. Once the United States loses its artificial advantages, such as dollar dominance in the world monetary system, or the capacity to militarily seize the resources of other nations, its decline will be far more profound than Washington’s intelligence agencies can fathom. When the mechanisms of imperial dominance fail, the headquarters countries of Europe and North America will lose their capacity to extort or outright seize most of the value of the world’s resources.

Since the health of their economies is inextricably connected to unfair advantage and other legacies of Euro-American imperialism, the end of that imperial system will cause convulsions that will rock the so-called “western world.” We may well be seeing the beginnings of the Great Unraveling, in the form of the current economic meltdown.

There should be little doubt that America’s ability to bludgeon the rest of the world into economic submission, is over. Unless Washington is willing to roll the dice militarily to hold on to its advantages by force – a doomed project, but one that American ruling circles may believe is their only option – the economic dislocations caused by imperial collapse will have far deeper repercussions than U.S. intelligence analysts are capable of imagining.

The report also predicts that Al Qaeda’s influence in the world will decay due to its “unachievable strategic objectives, inability to attract broad-based support and [its] self-destructive actions.” Actually, those same words can be used to describe Uncle Sam’s problems in holding on to world dominance. The report’s author claims that “the appeal of terrorism is waning.” But what do these American spooks mean by “terrorism.” Certainly Al Qaeda is a terrorist organization. But the Americans, like the European colonizers in decline, have applied the terror label to virtually every national liberation group that has opposed them. The report predicts “widening gaps between rich and poor, the uneven impact of global warming,” and food and water scarcities – conditions that are largely the result of United States policies.

If U.S. imperialism loses its grip on the world – as it must, and as the U.S. intelligence report seems to predict – then huge flocks of chickens will be coming home to roost in America, between now and the year 2025.

For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com

It’s a depression

Helen Thomas
Hearst Newspapers
November 30, 2008

Few prominent economists will say it, but to me it looks and feels like we are in another Great Depression or a reasonable facsimile.

The current meltdown is dubbed a “financial crisis.” But a rose by any other name would still inflict the same hardship and suffering on most people and businesses.

Clearly, the lessons have not been learned from the Herbert Hoover era. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, a columnist for The New York Times, says the current banking crisis is “functionally similar to that of the Great Depression.”

“Many of the symptoms” are the same, including the impotence of monetary policy — like cuts in interest rates — that has not halted the economic downturn.

Typically, the current Republican administration has acted first to bail out the collapsed financial industry, with few strings attached. Belatedly, the government now has come up with an $800 billion program for hard-pressed average Americans to make it easier to get loans for homes, cars and education or borrow through credit cards.

The moves evoke the old quip on Capitol Hill: "A billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you are talking about real money."

The big three auto-makers -- on the verge of collapse -- won little or no sympathy from the nation's lawmakers in a recent appearance before Congress. They will be back again next week to make their appeal along with some representatives of the United Auto Workers union.

Thousands of workers at auto-assembly plants in Michigan and at car-parts suppliers in the Midwest are losing their jobs. No one is predicting a quick turn around from Detroit's 9 percent unemployment rate.

Former Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, a former Republican senator from Michigan, said in a New York Times opinion column that allowing the auto industry to go into bankruptcy would be a "disastrous course." Thousands of Americans would be forced on "the rolls of Medicare and Medicaid, costing billions of dollars," he said.

President-elect Barack Obama has promised a "strong Wall Street and a strong Main Street" if his multi-billion-dollar stimulus package is adopted after he takes office on Jan. 20. In a radio address last Saturday he promised the creation of 2.5 million new jobs, following Franklin D. Roosevelt's recovery blueprint for needed public works projects.

After speaking by phone to President Bush on Monday, Obama told a news conference: "We have to do everything we can to keep the financial industry working."

He also named his economic policy team, many of them familiar from the Clinton era, which prompts the question: Where is the change that Obama promised in his presidential campaign?

It's all going to get worse, according to the experts. We have had recessions before but nothing like this, with massive layoffs, hundreds of foreclosures, retail stores closing, stock market losses, and widespread fears about the future.

I grant you I have yet to see former wealthy men selling apples on the street corner as I did during the Great Depression in the early 1930s but the current uncertainty is cause for worry.

And the outlook for a return of consumer trust in the market is bleak at this time.

Obama told reporters: "The truth is, we don't have a minute to waste. With our economy in distress, we cannot hesitate and we cannot delay. Our families cannot keep on waiting and hoping for a solution."

Obama will have the customary honeymoon and some political running room, at least at the start. But he has to move fast to restore confidence in the market place and trust in the banking system.

His heady presidential campaign is over but prosperity is not just around the corner.

Helen Thomas is a columnist for Hearst Newspapers. E-mail: helent@hearstdc.com. Copyright 2008 Hearst Newspapers.

Clip From 9/11: Road To Tyranny Part 2

Clip From 9/11: Road To Tyranny Part 1

Washington Post: 20,000 More U.S. Troops To Be Deployed For “Domestic Security”

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Monday, December 1, 2008


The Washington Post today reports on plans to station 20,000 more U.S. troops inside America for purposes of “domestic security” from September 2011, an expansion of Northcom’s militarization of the country in preparation for potential civil unrest following a total economic collapse or a mass terror attack.

“The U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe, according to Pentagon officials,” reports the Post.

“Domestic emergency deployment may be “just the first example of a series of expansions in presidential and military authority,” or even an increase in domestic surveillance, said Anna Christensen of the ACLU’s National Security Project. And Cato Vice President Gene Healy warned of “a creeping militarization” of homeland security.”

As Alex Jones exposed back in the late 1990’s, U.S. troops have been training for this eventuality for a considerable amount of time. During numerous urban warfare drills that Jones attended and reported on, troops were trained to raid, arrest and imprison U.S. citizens in detention camps as well as taking over public buildings and running checkpoints. During role playing exercises, actors playing prisoners would scream “I’m an American citizen, I have rights” as they were being dragged away by troops.

The contention that the troops will merely help “recovery efforts” after a major catastrophe is contradicted by the fact that Northcom itself, in a September 8 Army Times article, said the first wave of the deployment, which was put in place on October 1st at Fort Stewart and at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, would be aimed at tackling “civil unrest and crowd control”.

After a controversy arose surrounding the admissions made in the Army Times article, Northcom retracted the claim but conceded that both lethal and non-lethal weaponry traditionally used in crowd control and riot situations would still be used in the field.

The increasing militarization of America is part of a long term agenda to abolish Constitutional rule and establish a “military form of government,” following a large scale terror attack or similar disaster, as Tommy Franks, the former commander of the military’s Central Command, alluded to in a November 2003 Cigar Aficionado piece.

Franks outlined the scenario by which martial law would be put in place, saying, “It means the potential of a weapon of mass destruction and a terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event somewhere in the Western world – it may be in the United States of America – that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event. Which in fact, then begins to unravel the fabric of our Constitution. Two steps, very, very important.”

In the short term, the domestic deployment of troops is likely aimed at combating likely civil unrest that will ensue after a complete economic collapse followed by a devastating period of hyperinflation.

This warning was again echoed a few days ago in a leaked internal memo from Citibank.
“The world is not going back to normal after the magnitude of what they have done. When the dust settles this will either work, and the money they have pushed into the system will feed through into an inflation shock,” wrote Tom Fitzpatrick, Citibank’s chief technical strategist.

The memo predicts “depression, civil disorder and possibly wars” as a fallout from an economic collapse that many say is on the horizon.

Naturally, the claim that such troop deployments are merely to aid in disaster relief efforts is a thin veil aimed at distracting from the real goal. Should a real tragedy occur, volunteers and already existing civil aid organizations are fully capable of dealing with such events, as we witnessed on 9/11.

The military are primarily trained to kill people and break things, and their role during the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts was mainly focused on detaining people in sports stadiums, shooting alleged looters and seizing guns from wealthy home owners in the high and dry areas, while real recovery measures were left to volunteers and local state authorities.

The open admission that U.S. troops will be involved in law enforcement operations as well as potentially using non-lethal weapons against American citizens is a complete violation of the Posse Comitatus Act and the Insurrection Act, which substantially limit the powers of the federal government to use the military for law enforcement unless under precise and extreme circumstances.

Section 1385 of the Posse Comitatus Act states, “Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.”

Under the John Warner Defense Authorization Act, signed by President Bush on October 17, 2006, the law was changed to state, “The President may employ the armed forces to restore public order in any State of the United States the President determines hinders the execution of laws or deprives people of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by law or opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws.”

However, these changes were repealed in their entirety by HR 4986: National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008, reverting back to the original state of the Insurrection Act of 1807. Despite this repeal, President Bush attached a signing statement saying that he did not feel bound by the repeal. It remains to be seen whether President elect Obama will reverse Bush’s signing statement.

The original text of the Insurrection Act severely limits the power of the President to deploy troops within the United States.

For troops to be deployed, a condition has to exist that, “(1) So hinders the execution of the laws of that State, and of the United States within the State, that any part or class of its people is deprived of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by law, and the constituted authorities of that State are unable, fail, or refuse to protect that right, privilege, or immunity, or to give that protection; or (2) opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws. In any situation covered by clause (1), the State shall be considered to have denied the equal protection of the laws secured by the Constitution.”

Is the incoming Obama administration and Northcom waiting for such a scenario to unfold, an event that completely overwhelms state authorities, before unleashing the might of the U.S. Army against the American people?

The deployment of National Guard troops to aid law enforcement or for disaster relief purposes is legal under the authority of the governor of a state, but using active duty U.S. Army in law enforcement operations inside America absent the conditions described in the Insurrection Act is completely illegal.

The political left and right need to join forces and denounce this plan for what it is - another unconstitutional step towards the incremental implementation of martial law and the militarization of America.

Doctors shocked at hostages's torture

Krishnakumar P and Vicky Nanjappa in Mumbai November 30, 2008 19:53 IST

They said that just one look at the bodies of the dead hostages as well as terrorists showed it was a battle of attrition that was fought over three days at the Oberoi and the Taj hotels in Mumbai.
Doctors working in a hospital where all the bodies, including that of the terrorists, were taken said they had not seen anything like this in their lives.

"Bombay has a long history of terror. I have seen bodies of riot victims, gang war and previous terror attacks like bomb blasts. But this was entirely different. It was shocking and disturbing," a doctor said.

Asked what was different about the victims of the incident, another doctor said: "It was very strange. I have seen so many dead bodies in my life, and was yet traumatised. A bomb blast victim's body might have been torn apart and could be a very disturbing sight. But the bodies of the victims in this attack bore such signs about the kind of violence of urban warfare that I am still unable to put my thoughts to words," he said.

Asked specifically if he was talking of torture marks, he said: "It was apparent that most of the dead were tortured. What shocked me were the telltale signs showing clearly how the hostages were executed in cold blood," one doctor said.

The other doctor, who had also conducted the post-mortem of the victims, said: "Of all the bodies, the Israeli victims bore the maximum torture marks. It was clear that they were killed on the 26th itself. It was obvious that they were tied up and tortured before they were killed. It was so bad that I do not want to go over the details even in my head again," he said.

Corroborating the doctors' claims about torture was the information that the Intelligence Bureau had about the terror plan. "During his interrogation, Ajmal Kamal said they were specifically asked to target the foreigners, especially the Israelis," an IB source said.

It is also said that the Israeli hostages were killed on the first day as keeping them hostage for too long would have focused too much international attention. "They also might have feared the chances of Israeli security agencies taking over the operations at the Nariman House," he reasoned.

On the other hand, there is enough to suggest that the terrorists also did not meet a clean, death.

The doctors who conducted the post mortem said the bodies of the terrorists were beyond recognition. "Their faces were beyond recognition."

There was no way of identifying them," he said. Asked how, if this is the case, they knew the bodies were indeed those of the terrorists, he said: "The security forces that brought the bodies told us that those were the bodies of the terrorists," he said, adding there was no other way they could have identified the bodies.

An intelligence agency source added: "One of the terrorists was shot through either eye."

A senior National Security Guard officer, who had earlier explained the operation in detail to rediff.com, said the commandos went all out after they ascertained that there were no more hostages left. When asked if the commandos attempted to capture them alive at that stage, he replied: "Unko bachana kaun chahega (Who will want to save them)?"

Poll: Less than half say US offers liberty and justice for all

Muriel Kane
Raw Story
November 29, 2008


A new poll from Rasmussen Reports indicates that although Americans strongly support the saying of the Pledge of Allegience, less than half of them believe that “the United States is truly the land of liberty and justice for all.”

Among those polled, just 46% said they would agree with that statement, while 42% disagreed. Even among white voters, less than half, just 49%, agreed that there is justice for all in America.

The highest level of agreement was 62% among Republicans, followed by a majority among men. However, women disagreed by a narrow plurality of 45% and Democrats by a more substantial 53%.

Black voters were the group that disagreed most strongly, with 60% denying that there is liberty and justice for all and only 20% agreeing.

However, Ramussen noted that a slightly different poll taken three weeks ago, which asked people whether they “viewed American society as fair and decent,” showed that agreement with that statement by black voters had leaped to 42% immediately following the election of Barack Obama, compared with 24% just a month earlier.

This higher figure as compared with the “justice” poll may be in line with the fact that 65% of the general population believes that American society is fair and decent. Perhaps “justice” is seen by many Americans, both black and white, as a quality both different from and more difficult to obtain than simple decency.