Tuesday, September 15, 2009

CIA-Linked Intel Center Releases Highly Suspicious Bin Laden Tape

Shadowy terror leader pops up right on time again to get Obama’s wars back on track as public opposition hits an all time high

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The shadowy figure of Osama Bin Laden has popped up once again out of nowhere and right on time to re-energize the war in Afghanistan at the most politically opportune moment for the White House, strengthening deeply held suspicions that the terror leader has been dead for years and is merely being artificially resurrected as a sock puppet to rescue a failing geopolitical agenda.

Sky News reports today that in an audio tape, Bin Laden insists that Barack Obama is “powerless” to halt the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which is an odd statement to make in light of the fact that Obama has expanded the war in Afghanistan as well as Pakistan and only overseen a mirage of a withdrawal in Iraq.

This latest tape arrives on the back of the deadliest month ever for U.S. forces since the September 2001 invasion. According to CNN, the August death toll of 46 U.S. troops was the highest monthly toll of the eight year conflict.

Recent public opinion polls also show that “opposition to the war in Afghanistan is at an all-time high” on the back of an obviously rigged election that returned U.S. puppet President Hamid Karzai to power.

President Obama has come under increasing pressure as his hollow promise of “change” evaporates and the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan are rapidly expanded beyond anything the Bush administration even attempted. Cue the entrance of Bin Laden to provide the perfect justification for increasing the U.S. presence in Afghanistan and enabling the White House to dismiss critics as Al-Qaeda sympathizers.

Bin Laden’s talking points, or those ascribed to him by whoever made the audio tape, once again stoke strong suspicions that this is merely another propaganda stunt manufactured by the U.S. military-industrial complex, because they echo criticisms made of Obama domestically that he has cozied up to the Israeli lobby and has retained Bush appointees like Defense Secretary Robert Gates and General Robert Petraeus.

Bin Laden’s alleged audio tape will do nothing whatsoever to harm Obama’s agenda in Afghanistan and indeed it will be cited by the White House as a reason for keeping and expanding America’s presence in the country – which is what makes the alleged tape all the more suspicious.

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First and foremost, the notion that Bin Laden has been dead for many years is accepted by a growing number of intelligence analysts and academics.

This was explored last week in a Daily Mail article which asked the question, “What if everything we have seen or heard of him on video and audio tapes since the early days after 9/11 is a fake – and that he is being kept ‘alive’ by the Western allies to stir up support for the war on terror?,” noting further that this “breathtaking theory” was “gaining credence among political commentators, respected academics and even terror experts.”

The theory first received an airing in the American Spectator magazine earlier this year when former U.S. foreign intelligence officer and senior editor Angelo M. Codevilla, a professor of international relations at Boston University, stated bluntly: ‘All the evidence suggests Elvis Presley is more alive today than Osama Bin Laden.’

Prof Codevilla pointed to inconsistencies in the videos and claimed there have been no reputable sightings of Bin Laden for years (for instance, all interceptions by the West of communications made by the Al Qaeda leader suddenly ceased in late 2001).

Prof Codevilla asserted: ‘The video and audio tapes alleged to be Osama’s never convince the impartial observer,’ he asserted. ‘The guy just does not look like Osama. Some videos show him with a Semitic, aquiline nose, while others show him with a shorter, broader one. Next to that, differences between the colours and styles of his beard are small stuff.’

There are other doubters, too. Professor Bruce Lawrence, head of Duke University’s religious studies’ department and the foremost Bin Laden expert, argues that the increasingly secular language in the video and audio tapes of Osama (his earliest ones are littered with references to God and the Prophet Mohammed) are inconsistent with his strict Islamic religion, Wahhabism.

He notes that, on one video, Bin Laden wears golden rings on his fingers, an adornment banned among Wahhabi followers.

Further evidence that Bin Laden is dead is explored at length in the Daily Mail piece, but the source of the audio and video tapes alone is enough to all but conclude that they are being coming straight out of the U.S. military-industrial complex.

The new audio tape was again released by IntelCenter. As we have exhaustively documented, Intelcenter is an offshoot of IDEFENSE, which was staffed by a senior military psy-op intelligence officer Jim Melnick, who has worked directly for Donald Rumsfeld. The organization released the “laughing hijackers” tape and claimed it was an Al-Qaeda video, despite the fact that the footage was obtained by a “security agency” at a 2000 Bin Laden speech.

IntelCenter was also caught adding its logo to a tape at the same time as Al-Qaeda’s so-called media arm As-Sahab added its logo, proving the two organizations were one and the same.

The Pakistani based Al-Qaeda group Jundullah, formerly headed by the alleged mastermind of 9/11, an organization which enjoys the funding, support and protection of the CIA, also produces propaganda tapes and literature for As-Sahab and in turn IntelCenter.

Several of the previous Bin Laden tapes have been denounced as fake, including a 2002 audio tape which was not authentic according to a Swiss research institute. Experts at the Lausanne-based Dalle Molle Institute for Perceptual Artificial Intelligence compared the tape with 20 earlier recordings of Bin Laden and concluded that the November 2002 tape was fraudulent, in other words that it was someone pretending to be Bin Laden.

We have just about lost count of the amount of times IntelCenter has released a tape from “Al-Qaeda” or “Bin Laden” at the most politically expedient time for the government, whether that be Bush or Obama. The most infamous was the Bin Laden tape that appeared just before the 2004 election that both Bush and Kerry attributed to George W. Bush gaining re-election.

Given the timing of this release, when opposition to the war in Afghanistan is at an all time high, when 9/11 truth is firmly back under national scrutiny following Charlie Sheen’s letter to the President, along with August being the deadliest month in Afghanistan for U.S. troops, the motivation behind releasing a fake Bin Laden tape is abundantly clear and strongly indicates that the Obama White House is replicating the same crude propaganda ploys served up during the eight-year tenure of the Bush administration.

by Paul Joseph Watson

Size Matters; So Do Lies

Back in April, when there was a round of several hundred "tea party" protests across the country to coincide with Tax Day, I devoted significant attention to figuring out how many people had actually attended the rallies. The best figure I could come up with was at least 300,000 -- "at least" being an important caveat because there were dozens of smaller tea party protests for which no reliable crowd size estimates were available. The real number was probably something between 350,000 and 400,000.

This was, I believed at the time and continue to believe, a relatively impressive figure. It is also one that liberals were silly to be so predictably and universally dismissive of. Indeed, the protests were a harbinger for the tough slog ahead for Democrats on health care and other issues. Yes, the grievances that these protesters had may have been somewhat disconnected, and their rank might have run the gamut from ordinary, red-meat conservatives and to the black helicopter set. But, anger is still anger -- and a lot of people, self-evidently, were angry.

At the same time, in attempting to cobble together literally hundreds of independent, local newspaper reports to come up with this figure, I learned a few things about the gamesmanship involved in the reporting of crowd size estimates. Namely, there is a lot of misleading information out there -- some resulting from deliberate lies from protest organizers who exaggerate about how many people they'd drawn to their events, and some of it arising more innocently -- estimating the size of a crowd actually isn't all that easy, particularly if you're in the midst of one. This misinformation, moreover, tended to be self-perpetuating: an organizer might tell a reporter from a local radio station that they'd drawn 3,000 people to their event (when really they'd drawn 800); the 3,000 figure would be picked up by the local TV station, and then the next day on by the local newspaper, which had heard the number on TV. At each stage of the process, as in a game of "telephone", the fidelity of the information was degraded. Perhaps the appropriate context on the number (that it had not been independently verified) had been dutifully reported by the radio station -- but by the time the the transmission had made its way to the newspaper, that context had been lost. The Atlanta rally, for instance, was reported by the local CBS station to have drawn some 15,000 persons -- a figure which, it was later discovered, would quite literally have been physically impossible.

Usually, though, these exaggerations were contained within some reasonable bounds. The estimate reported by CBS Atlanta, for example, appears to have been about double the actual crowd size in that city. I found other cases in which there might have been a threefold or fourfold discrepancy between the numbers claimed by protesters and those provided by local fire departments or sheriff's offices. But almost never more than that -- at some point, a lie ceases to be credible. And of course, there were many protest organizers that provided perfectly honest estimates of their turnouts. I even came across a couple of cases in which they appeared to have lowballed the numbers relative to the estimates provided by independent observers.

But yesterday, someone told a real whopper. ABC News, citing the DC fire department, reported that between 60,000 and 70,000 people had attended the tea party rally at the Capitol. By the time this figure reached Michelle Malkin, however, it had been blown up to 2,000,000. There is a big difference, obviously, between 70,000 and 2,000,000. That's not a twofold or threefold exaggeration -- it's roughly a thirtyfold exaggeration.

The way this false estimate came into being is relatively simple: Matt Kibbe, the president of FreedomWorks, lied, claiming that ABC News had reported numbers of between 1.0 and 1.5 million when they never did anything of the sort. A few tweets later, the numbers had been exaggerated still further to 2 million. Kibbe wasn't "in error", as Malkin gently puts it. He lied. He did the equivalent of telling people that his penis is 53 inches long.

Malkin, who to her credit later corrected the error, frets that it might be used to by liberals to "discredit the undeniably massive turnout". She's right to be worried -- it absolutely will be used that way. If you don't want to be discredited, then don't, as Kibbe did, tell a ridiculous (and easily disprovable) lie.

Malkin herself did not lie; she merely repeated a lie. It does not particularly call into question her character. It does, however, call into question her judgment. The reason is that if there had in fact been 2 million protesters in Washington yesterday, there would have been no need to lie about it -- the magnitude of the protests would have been self-evident. I was in Washington for the inauguration, an event at which there really were almost 2 million people present -- and let me tell you, it was a Holy Mess. Hotels, charging double or treble their usual rates, were booked weeks in advance. Major stations on the Metro system were shut down for hours at a time. The National Guard was brought in. At least 3,000 people got stuck in a tunnel. Essentially the entirely of the National Mall, from the Capitol to the Washington Monument, was dotted with onlookers. Heaps of trash were left behind. The entire city was basically a warzone for a period of about 20 hours, from midnight through mid-evening.

But there are no accounts of any of those sorts of things happening yesterday. 70 thousand people, rather, is about the number that will attend the Washington Redskins' home opener next week. That's a lot of people. Washington -- actually Landover, Maryland, where FedEx Field is located -- will be inconvenienced. But it won't be shut down. Business will go on more or less as usual.

This was not a small rally. It was also not, in comparison with something like the 2006 pro-immigration protests, a particularly large rally. It was a business-as-usual sort of rally. Mock the protesters at your peril: business as usual suddenly isn't so good for Democrats these days, and the sentiments of the 70,000 people who marched on Washington surely mirror those of millions more sitting at home. They were done a disservice by being represented by a liar like Kibbe.

The FBI has abandoned the "Battle of the United States"















I found the following historical film called "The Battle of the United States" disturbing. Why?

In the film we see J Edgar Hoover discussing the importance of catching spies in the United States during World War II and the great efforts the FBI went through to stop them - and they did. J Edgar also credits the citizens with doing their part in the effort to stop spies in the United States - the reason is obvious - unless stopped, spies and traitors can bring about the ruination of the Republic.

CLICK HERE FOR FILM FROM REALMILITARYFLIX

Now comes the disturbing part. Why in the world isn't anyone in the corporate-fake-treasonous- cowardly-lying-through-omission-US Corporate show-biz media talking about Sibel Edmonds' testimony regarding treasonous actions by high officials of the US Federal government to put the spotlight on the feckless FBI? Why when Sibel Edmonds' testimony reveals that the FBI must have known a congresswoman's house was bugged didn't the FBI advise that congresswoman and put a stop to it? What good is a Federal Bureau of Investigation that doesn't investigate Federal crimes and breaches of security?

What about all the people on Sibel's picture-only site (no words allowed since she has been gagged)? Reader - please take a look at those pictures - you may know a lot of the people there - Denny Hastert, Burton, Lantos - c'mon folks these are not obscure individuals - they are people who've participated in forming the laws by which you live.

Why is the FBI under Robert Mueller such a useless pile of sh%T? Why did the FBI of old know the danger of spies and treasonous officials while the FBI of today stops those individuals with the courage to speak out? Why does an FBI translator have to be a "whistleblower" ? Why isn't getting to the bottom of the treasonous hornet's nest at the top of the FBI's plan of the day?

Why indeed?

You can review the Sibel Edmonds' stuff by clicking HERE.

I am disturbed at the inaction of our FBI in this matter. I am disturbed by the action by the FBI in this matter as well which is contrary to their duty to the citizens of this nation. I am disturbed at their brainwashing of kids, blindness regarding the 911 Dust study showing nanothermate in several dust samples from the 911 WTC attacks. ( See previous posts on their ineptitude HERE. ) Examine the links - ask yourself - what good is the FBI to the United States when they are not performing their most basic functions - functions obviously at the core of their very existence according to historical documentation and their own website regarding explosive residue examination.

Click HERE where you can read more on their past expertise regarding explosive residue evidence where today they seem blind as a bat:
"FBI Says Trace Explosive Residue Links McVeigh to Oklahoma City Bombing
TOM BROKAW, anchor (Los Angeles):
Late today at the Oklahoma City bombing trial, an FBI scientist testified that traces of explosives were
found on the shirt and pants that Timothy McVeigh was wearing when he was picked up by authorities
some 90 minutes after the explosion. "

Geez pretty good work - and fast too! But here we are in September 2009, eight years after the attacks on the WTC buildings, with citizen-scientists doing the FBI's work for them and handing the complete job to them and members of congress and.....nothing. This is disturbing indeed. Am I witnessing the end of the American Republic?

Why wasn't Sibel Edmonds promoted and protected rather than gagged and ostracized? A dysfunctional FBI means that there is a giant hole in the defenses of the United States. Why is this allowed to continue? What ever happened to the witness protection program when every person I know, when we talk about Sibel Edmonds, says something like: "Geez I'm surprised she's still alive!" Maybe Robert Mueller can get a job working at the circus as a clown - well on second thought his present job performance predicts future failure as well.

Robert Mueller needs to step down if he can't find the intestinal fortitude to address these national emergencies. Or we need to fire the bum!

Federal, local agents raid New York City residences as part of terrorism investigation

New York residences raided in terrorism probe

WASHINGTON — FBI agents and police on a terrorism task force raided residences in New York City before dawn Monday after a visit from a person believed to be linked to al-Qaida.

The raids came after an individual under surveillance for alleged links to al-Qaida came to New York City over the weekend and left the area, Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., said after receiving a briefing on the raids from federal law enforcement officials Monday.

No arrests were announced Monday but the investigation was still under way. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who was briefed by FBI Director Robert Mueller, said a terrorist attack was not believed to be imminent.

New York Police Department spokesman Paul Browne confirmed that searches were conducted in the borough of Queens by agents of a joint terrorism task force. He would not discuss the matter further.

Two U.S. intelligence officials, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case publicly, said the target of any purported attack — or who would carry it out — remained unclear.

Authorities have not found any weapons ready for use — such as a bomb — that would indicate an attack was imminent, they said. Nevertheless, one of the officials called the threat very real and emphasized the urgency of the threat.

Another person briefed on the matter, who was not authorized to discuss the case and requested anonymity, said the raids were the result of previous law enforcement surveillance of individuals.

The investigation was continuing.

Schumer said he couldn’t discuss much of the case because many of the details were still classified.

“There was nothing imminent, and they are very good now at tracking potentially dangerous actions and this was preventive,” Schumer said. He added that the law enforcement action was unrelated to President Barack Obama’s visit Monday to New York.

Monday afternoon, a man answering his apartment door at a three-story brick apartment building in a predominantly Asian neighborhood of Queens confirmed that police had been at his apartment earlier Monday. He and a woman in the apartment wouldn’t comment further or identify themselves, closing their door to a reporter.

Nearby resident Kabir Islam, 24, said he saw FBI agents and police officers surrounding the apartment when he arrived home after 3 a.m. Monday.

Associated Press writers Eileen Sullivan, Lara Jakes and Pamela Hess in Washington and Adam Goldman in New York contributed to this report. Hays reported from New York.

Are Republicans trying to get rid of Obama appointees with anti-czar bill

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Cash for Clunker war to the death

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Ron Paul, CNN American Morning, 9-14-09 END THE FED!

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Gerald Celente: What's next for America? Revolution!

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A million march to US Capitol to protest against 'Obama the socialist'

As many as one million people flooded into Washington for a massive rally organised by conservatives claiming that President Obama is driving America towards socialism.

The size of the crowd - by far the biggest protest since the president took office in January - shocked the White House.

Demonstrators massed outside Capitol Hill after marching down Pennsylvania Avenue waving placards and chanting 'Enough, enough'.

Tens of thousands of people converged on Capitol Hill on Saturday to protest against government spending

Tens of thousands of people converged on Capitol Hill on Saturday to protest against government spending

The focus of much of the anger was the president's so-called 'Obamacare' plan to overhaul the U.S. health system.

Demonstrators waved U.S. flags and held signs reading 'Go Green Recycle Congress' and 'I'm Not Your ATM'.'

The protest on Saturday came as Mr Obama took his campaign for health reforms on the road, making his argument to a rally of 15,000 supporters in Minneapolis.

Saying he was determined to push through a bill making health insurance more affordable, Mr Obama said: 'I intend to be president for a while and once this bill passes, I own it.

US President Barack Obama sports a mustache famously worn by German dictator Adolf Hitler

US President Barack Obama sports a mustache famously worn by German dictator Adolf Hitler

Demonstrators hold up banners on Capitol Hill in Washington on Saturday

Demonstrators hold up banners on Capitol Hill in Washington on Saturday

'I will not waste time with those who think that it's just good politics to kill healthcare.'

But in Washington, protester Richard Brigle, 57, a Vietnam veteran, said: 'It's going to cost too much money we don't have.' Another marcher shouted: 'You want socialism? Go to Russia!'

Terri Hall, 45, of Florida, said she felt compelled to become political for the first time this year because she was upset by government spending.

'Our government has lost sight of the powers they were granted,' she said. She added that the deficit spending was out of control, and said she thought it was putting the country at risk.

Anna Hayes, 58, a nurse from Fairfax County, stood on the Mall in 1981 for Reagan's inauguration. 'The same people were celebrating freedom,' she said. 'The president was fighting for the people then. I remember those years very well and fondly.'

Saying she was worried about 'Obamacare,'Hayes explained: 'This is the first rally I've been to that demonstrates against something, the first in my life. I just couldn't stay home anymore.'

Andrew Moylan, of the National Taxpayers Union, received a roar of approval after he told protesters: 'Hell hath no fury like a taxpayer ignored.'

Republican lawmakers also supported the rally.

'Republicans, Democrats and independents are stepping up and demanding we put our fiscal house in order,' Rep. Mike Pence, chairman of the House Republican Conference, said.

'I think the overriding message after years of borrowing, spending and bailouts is enough is enough.'

FreedomWorks Foundation, a conservative organization led by former House of Representatives Majority Leader Dick Armey, organized several groups from across the country for what they billed as a 'March on Washington.'

Organisers said they had built on momentum from the April 'tea party' demonstrations held nationwide to protest at Mr Obama's taxation policies, along with growing resentment over his economic stimulus packages and bank bailouts.

march


The heated demonstrations were organized by a Conservative group called the Tea Party Patriots

The heated demonstrations were organized by a Conservative group called the Tea Party Patriots

Other sponsors of the rally include the Heartland Institute, Americans for Tax Reform and the Ayn Rand Center for Individuals Rights.

Recent polls illustrate how difficult recent weeks have been for a president who, besides tackling health care, has been battling to end a devastatingly deep recession.

Fifty per cent approve and 49 per cent disapprove of the overall job he is doing as president, compared to July, when those approving his performance clearly outnumbered those who were unhappy with it, 55 per cent to 42 per cent.

Just 42 percent approve of the president's work on the high-profile health issue.

'Parasite-in-chief': The title given to the American President during the demonstrations on Saturday

'Parasite-in-chief': The title given to the American President during the demonstrations on Saturday

The poll was taken over five days just before Obama's speech to Congress. That speech reflected Obama's determination to push ahead despite growing obstacles.

Prior to Obama's speech before Congress U.S. Capitol Police arrested a man they say tried to get into a secure area near the Capitol with a gun in his car as President Barack Obama was speaking.

On Thursday police spokeswoman Kimberly Schneider said that 28-year-old Joshua Bowman of suburban Falls Church, Virginia, was arrested around 8pm on Wednesday when Obama was due to speak.

Bowman's intentions were unclear, police said.



The Real News Network now covering some 911 news

Link to real 911 ..... http://www.911blogger.com/n...

The Fake bin Laden Audio Tape

11/19/2002: United States intelligence officials have concluded that a recently recorded audiotape that was broadcast on an Arab television network last week is genuine and contains the voice of Osama bin Laden, apparently ending months of debate in the government over whether the elusive terrorist leader is still alive. [New York Times]

11/30/2002 - Swiss scientists: "The recording is a fake"

Scientists in Switzerland say they are almost certain that an audio tape attributed to Osama bin Laden is a fake. ... Researchers at the Dalle Molle Institute for Perceptual Artificial Intelligence, in Lausanne, believe the message was recorded by an impostor.

In a study commissioned by France 2 television, researchers built a computer model of Bin Laden's voice, based on an hour of genuine recordings. Using voice recognition systems being developed for banking security, they tested the model against 20 known recordings of Bin Laden. The system correctly identified his voice in 19 of them.

This meant there was only a 5% risk of error in their conclusion that the latest tape is a fake, Professor Hervé Bourlard, the institute's director, told the Guardian yesterday. [Guardian]

12/2/2003 - Swiss Scientists: "Oops. We won't verify other tapes"

Swiss researchers who last November analysed a tape attributed to Osama bin Laden say they won’t be scrutinising the latest recording broadcast by the Arabic television network, Al-Jazeera. The Swiss analysts said the previous tape was almost certainly faked, despite US claims to the contrary. The Dalle Molle Institute for Perceptual Artificial Intelligence (Idiap) in Martigny told swissinfo on Wednesday that it had no intention of analysing the latest tape. [swissinfo]

US Government Supplies Patient with Marijuana

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The Health Insurance Racket

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Doctor says FLU VACCINE will cause 60,000 deaths in France alone ( SEE INFO BOX )

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When the ice age ended, how did the polar bears feel?

I can’t recall exactly when it became unfashionable to be sceptical about climate change. However, I can vividly remember where I was when just as I was giving my trenchant views that it’s all a lot of tosh, I looked around the table and realised that I had gone too far. “Still,” I said. “It’s clear that we must do something for the polar bears. Absolutely imperative.”

Secretly I remain a heretic: but if I hadn’t mentioned the bears the Climate Change Inquisition would have been round to the house quicker than you can say “ice cube” and started pulling out my fingernails until I recanted.


In a similar fashion, I suppose there must have been a time when one could have cast aspersions on The Beatles. “Stupid haircuts” or “can’t read music” or just “silly Scousers”. It didn’t last long. They would shortly sweep the world before them. Sometime later the Rolling Stones pitched up, and it was possible to prefer them. But it wasn’t until the timely appearance of Yoko Ono that one could freely badmouth the Fab Four.


However, it is hard to see what could possibly derail climate change. The masterstroke was of course changing its name from global warming to climate change. Tony Blair, the future prime minister, once fought his way through a blizzard to give a speech in Davos. “Why is it always snowing when I give a speech on global warming?” he joked. Answer: because perhaps it isn’t warming? Anyway, the spin masters moved in and redubbed it climate change and there’s nothing we can do to stop it.

The truth is that there has always been climate change. Imagine how glum the polar bears must have felt at the end of the Ice Age. Once they probably holidayed in the Mediterranean; now they are left with just a couple of icebergs.

My problem is that I don’t think that just because everybody agrees there is climate change – and it’s all our fault – that they are necessarily right. Once upon a time everybody thought the Earth was flat. In the 19th century, collective wisdom agreed that cholera was caused by miasma or bad air. It took a maverick epidemiologist called Dr John Snow to prove that the disease spread not through air but via drinking infected water, originally through tracking the deaths caused by a pump in Broad Street in Soho, London.


Nowadays, climate change is to blame for everything. Friday’s edition of The National ran a story from our Kenyan correspondent. “Climate change, mostly caused by industrialised nations, is having a disastrous effect on Africa’s environment, turning once fertile farmland into barren desert.” Really? Nothing to do with overpopulation, deforestation, and the fact that Kenya has always suffered from droughts? Didn’t Karen Blixen, the author of Out of Africa, write that it was a “tremendous, terrible experience” to live through a season when the long rains fail? And that was in the 1930s, when there were hardly any cars in the world and most people got about on horseback or bicycles.


Cutting greenhouse emissions is of course a good idea. The sooner everybody agrees that using the sun as a power source is the way forward, rather than burning dirty coal, the better. What I dislike is the unhealthy alliance of non-governmental organisations, the European Union, the United Nations and others all running around telling us what to do. Wasting taxpayer money seems to be their main priority. And I particularly dislike Trudie Styler, the wife of Sting, a pop star, who pitches up here and there telling us not to burn wood, then flies off in her private jet to one of her 20 homes.


Having said that, as somebody who has spent most of his life in the northern hemisphere, I’m all in favour of climate change. I’ll be sorry to see the end of Bangladesh of course, and I’ll probably never get a chance to see the Maldives unless I go deep-sea diving. But think how good Scotland and Sweden will become.

That is the thing about man: endlessly adaptable. It was the Greek philosopher Heraclitus who wrote: “You can never step in the same river twice.” Change happens and we learn to live with it, even embrace it. Think of all that virgin tundra! Even Canada might become habitable.


When the great storm of 1987 hit the south of England, millions of trees were felled. The landscape would never be the same again, experts warned. Twenty years later and you would never guess it had happened. Sometimes, doing nothing is the best solution.

Hopefully, soon, climate change advocates will think of something else to worry about. At the moment they remind me of the leader of the French tribe in the Asterix book: he was always worried about the sky falling on his head. It is time for Yoko Ono to get involved in climate change and then we can laugh about it and move on to weightier matters.

by Rupert Wright
Rupert Wright is business comment editor and author of Take me to the source: in search of water.

Tom Woods on Glenn Beck "Meltdown" 02/09/2009

Check this link ........ http://bit.ly/tMBxR

Heraldo sees things that aren't there, and doesn't see things that ARE there!

Watch this clip of Heraldo as he attempts to smear Charlie Sheen regarding Sheen publicly asking for a proper investigation into the events of 911:



Heraldo complains that Charlie Sheen questions the official U.S. government conspiracy theory regarding 911 "in defiance of the facts, in defiance of the historical record, in defiance of their own eyes and witnessing what happened when those planes smashing into the buildings and I think unintentionally I am sure they are hurting the victims families... the survivors, because they continue to raise this preposterous notion that the United States Government would be so hideously manipulative that we would kill almost three thousand of our own citizens as a pretext to going to war in Afghanistan."

Well I guess that makes it official - Heraldo suffers from hallucinations. He criticizes Charlie Sheen for not seeing planes fly into "the buildings." News Flash: NO PLANE FLEW INTO WORLD TRADE CENTER BUILDING 7 HERALDO! Therefore there was no plane for Mr. Sheen to witness flying into WTC7 Heraldo! Pretty clever of Heraldo to group all the buildings together so as to pretend WTC7 doesn't exist. That's funny - isn't that exactly what the 911 Commission did too? Pretend WTC7 never happened?


Heraldo bitches about Sheen questioning the official U.S. government conspiracy theory "in defiance of the facts, in defiance of the historical record..." News Flash: The facts, Mr. Rivero, are that nano-thermate has been found in all four dust samples, and has also been independently verified. But I suppose Mr. Rivero chose a different set of "facts" allowing him to ignore the obvious conclusion - that the buildings were pre-wired for controlled demolition. As usual with the mainstream-corporate-fake-showbiz-media the truth is obscured for the TV-watchers by seeing no evil, hearing no evil, and speaking no evil - that is - evil their corporate pimps don't want them to see. What about these firefighters Heraldo? Do you have names to call them too?


Heraldo falsely accuses Mr. Sheen of hurting the victims' families by doubting the official conspiracy lie - but he excuses Mr. Sheen and others because it is unintentional. Bullshit Heraldo! Watch the family members speak here:


Finally Heraldo - thanks for nothing helping us get the truth out for the first responders who really are the victims of, as you put it, "this preposterous notion that the United States Government would be so hideously manipulative that we would kill almost three thousand of our own citizens as a pretext to going to war in Afghanistan." It is estimated that more first responders will die from the toxic dust they were exposed to with the blessings of the US government that the air was safe than died from the building implosions. Given that, Heraldo, how would you characterize the actions of our government after viewing this video?:


And what words of ridicule do you have for this first responder Heraldo? I suppose he was faking it before he passed away?


Thanks for your support in these difficult times Heraldo! With friends like you who needs enemies?

America the Beautiful's Germ Warfare Rash

In his bellicose Cincinnati, Ohio, speech of October 7, 2002, President George W. Bush warned that Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to threaten America with "horrible poisons and diseases and gases and atomic weapons." While Iraq's possession of these weapons later proved to be unfounded, the president's charges did point to a certain germ of truth: they neatly described his own operations.

Since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Bush administration has spent at least $44 billion on biological "defense" without ever making made a true needs assessment. In the early 1990s the Kremlin shut down their huge, Soviet-era germ warfare operation and, while Israel, Iran, and North Korea are known to have biological weapons research facilities and India, China, and Cuba are said to be building high-security labs to study lethal bacteria and viruses, these initial or potential programs are disproportionately behind the massive efforts underway in the United States. In the words of Edward Hammond, director of the Sunshine Project, an Austin, Texas-based group that tracks research involving biological agents: "Our biowarfare research is defending ourselves from ourselves. It's a dog chasing its tail."

Milton Leitenberg is an arms control authority and a member of the University of Maryland's School of Public Policy and UM's Center for International and Security Studies. In his 2005 book, Assessing the Biological Weapons and Bioterrorism Threat, Leitenberg writes that the risk of terrorists and nonstate actors using biological agents "has been systematically and deliberately exaggerated," particularly after the 2001 anthrax attacks on Congress and media outlets. He contends that U.S. officials undertook a concerted effort to promote their view on the international stage and that an "edifice of institutes, programs, conferences, and publicists" continues to spread what he calls exaggeration and scare-mongering.

What's more, while floating extravagant tales of terrorists planning to launch deadly germ attacks on the United States, the Bush administration has been diverting dollars from urgent medical research against real threats, such as avian influenza, to the creation of new strains of extinct killer diseases like Spanish flu. Upon his retirement in December 2004, Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson cited pandemic flu as the greatest threat to the nation. Yet according to Leitenberg, Washington policymakers instead have focused on bioterrorism and biodefense.

Leitenberg posits it might take just such a pandemic to demonstrate to the public that Washington "has been using the overwhelming proportion of its relevant resources to prepare for the wrong contingency." From 1977 to 1999, he notes, flu killed 788,000 people in the United States, about 36,000 a year. Even if there is no outbreak of pandemic flu, one could project 360,000 American deaths from flu over the next decade. When these figures are contrasted with the five deaths from the 2001 anthrax attacks, it is little short of amazing that in fiscal year 2006 the National Institutes of Health (NIH) received $1.76 billion for biodefense but only $120 million to fight influenza.

If taxpayers are slow to recognize that billions of their tax dollars are being poured into hundreds of biological cesspools, some scientific bodies are not. According to the nonprofit Center For Arms Control and Non-Proliferation (CAC) in Washington, DC, in 2001 the U.S. government spent $1.6 billion to address the threat of biological weapons. By 2006 total spending had reached $36 billion, with a record $8 billion more earmarked for FY 2007. As noted, one of the leading agencies allocating such funds is the NIH, billed as "the steward of medical and behavioral research for the Nation." Two years ago, the growing slice of the NIH budget being shifted to biodefense research--money that has traditionally gone to fighting diseases such as cancer--prompted 750 of the 1,143 NIH-funded scientists studying bacterial diseases to write an open letter to NIH Director Elias Zerhouni charging that the research center's emphasis on biodefense had diminished their efforts to achieve basic research breakthroughs.

The public has good reason for concern. In the introduction to Francis Boyle's 2005 book, Biowarfare and Terrorism, MIT molecular biology professor Jonathan King writes: "the Bush administration launched a major program which threatens to put the health of our people at far greater risk than the hazard to which they claimed to have been responding." Bush's policies, he continues, "do not increase the security of the American people" but "bring new risk to our population of the most appalling kind."

From Washington State to Florida and from Massachusetts to California, the United States has broken out in a rash of federally funded biological warfare operations with as many as four hundred labs involved in research related to pathogens that could be used as bioweapons agents. According to the Sunshine Project, most states have a facility of some sort, ranging from an open-air testing location to aerosol test chambers to Biosafety Level 3 or Level 4 operations, the latter being one in which the pathogens being tampered with are deadly, easily transmissible, and have no known cure. Additionally, there are laboratories in a number of states whose activity is classified as secret. Beyond the NIH, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the military are heavily engaged in such work, some of it conducted abroad, such as the Navy's labs in Egypt, Peru, Indonesia, and Germany.

Biological warfare involves the use of living organisms for military purposes. Such weapons can be viral, bacterial, and fungal, among other forms, and can be spread over a large geographic terrain by wind, water, insect, animal, or human transmission. Among the most dangerous pathogens under study are anthrax, tularemia, plague, and ebola virus, as well as toxins (living organisms such as fungi). Using genetic engineering, U.S. government scientists are purportedly concocting new strains of lethal microbes for which there are no cures. Bacteria, for example, can be made resistant to vaccines. Indeed, they can be made more virulent, easier to disseminate, and harder to eradicate. Some pathogens are even being injected with genes to make them resistant to antibiotic drugs.Words fail to describe this "achievement," coming from the same country that gave the world the Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin polio vaccines.

As part of its buildup, in January 2005 the Army authorized construction of a new facility at the already sprawling U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland. According to a July 31, 2006, report in London's Guardian, Fort Detrick's National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center (NBACC), due to be completed in 2008, "will house heavily guarded and hermetically sealed chambers in which scientists simulate potential terrorist attacks." The scientists will dress in full-body spacesuits and use aerosol-test chambers to expose animals to deadly pathogens. To do so, the Guardian reported, the world's most lethal bacteria and viruses would have to be produced and stockpiled. Questions of international law violations and the hastening of a biological arms race persist.

In December 2006 Battelle National Biodefense Institute hooked the $250-million, five-year DHS contract to run the NBACC. According to the Washington Post, much of what transpires at that center may never be known as the government intends to operate the facility largely in secret. In its July 30, 2006, article, the Post reported:

    The heart of the lab is a cluster of sealed chambers built to contain the world's deadliest bacteria and viruses. There, scientists will spend their days simulating the unthinkable: bioterrorism attacks in the form of lethal anthrax spores rendered as wispy powders that can drift for miles on a summer breeze, or common viruses turned into deadly superbugs that ordinary drugs and vaccines cannot stop.

University of Illinois law professor Francis Boyle charges that the Bush administration is spending more money in inflation-adjusted dollars to develop illegal, offensive germ warfare than the $2 billion the United States spent on the Manhattan Project to make the atomic bomb. That weapon's development was, at least, driven by the realistic fears that Nazi Germany might develop it first. Today, no comparable enemy exists.

Peculiarly, the only significant deadly germ warfare attack on the United States appeared to have come from the government's own Fort Detrick site. A month after 9/11, the mysterious anthrax attacks killed five, sickened seventeen, and alarmed the nation. The perpetrator was never found (a poor showing for a country that spends $40 billion a year on intelligence), but the anthrax-laced letters to Democratic Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) and Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) prodded Congress to rubberstamp an expansion of spending for biological defense through the Patriot and Project BioShield acts.

Project BioShield is a $5.6-billion plan under which the Department of Homeland Security is stockpiling vaccines and drugs to fight anthrax, smallpox, and other germ warfare agents. There is considerable dispute as to whether the plan's activities open the door to aggressive use of such agents. According to Boyle, pursuant to two national strategy directives adopted by Bush in 2002, the Pentagon "is now gearing up to fight and 'win' biological warfare without prior public knowledge and review." The Pentagon's Chemical and Biological Defense Program was revised in 2003 to implement those directives, endorsing "first-use" strike of chemical and biological weapons in war. Boyle calls the directives the proverbial smoking gun and further points to President Bush's Homeland Security Presidential Directive, HSPD-10, of April 28, 2004, which states:

    We are continuing to develop more forward-looking analyses, to include Red Teaming efforts, to understand new scientific trends that may be exploited by our adversaries to develop biological weapons and to help position intelligence collectors ahead of the problem.

"'Red Teaming' means that we actually have people out there on a Red Team plotting, planning, and scheming how to use biowarfare," says Boyle. The Army has stated its work is, and will continue to be, solely defensive in nature. But when it comes to biowarfare and the agents involved, how do you prepare to defend against such threats without developing them?

According to Jeremy Rifkin, author of The Biotech Century, "it is widely acknowledged that it is virtually impossible to distinguish between defensive and offensive research in the field." Still, as a signatory to the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (entered into force in 1975), the United States is officially bound to the treaty, the scope of which is defined in Article 1:

    Each State Party to this Convention undertakes never in any circumstances to develop, produce, stockpile or otherwise acquire or retain: (1) Microbial or other biological agents, or toxins whatever their origin or method of production, of types and in quantities that have no justification for prophylactic, protective or other peaceful purposes; (2) Weapons, equipment or means of delivery designed to use such agents or toxins for hostile purposes or in armed conflict.

University of Maryland's Leitenberg, a long-time authority in the arms control field, contends the government is not developing germ warfare weapons. However, in a monograph published by his organization, he does question whether ongoing research crosses the line:

    There is no such thing as 'defensive' biological weapons. Whatever military doctrine may say regarding distinctions between offensive and defensive conventional weapons, this does not apply to biological weapons. Article 1.1 of the BWC allows the growth of laboratory quantities of pathogens (agents) for defensive purposes, that is, in order to develop vaccines and pharmaceuticals, test rapid detection systems, masks, decontamination systems and so on. However, even the 'development' of the pathogen is explicitly forbidden--"never in any circumstances"--as is production and stockpiling.

Boyle, who drafted the 1989 federal law enacted by Congress that criminalized BWC violations, sees it more definitively; he contends the government is creating a killing machine. Fort Detrick's activities betray aggressive intent, he says, and should be shut down and those responsible jailed. Others also apparently believe the line has been crossed. Commenting on Fort Detrick, Mark Wheelis, a microbiology professor at the University of California at Davis, told the Global Security Newswire in June 2004 there was no question that the activities underway there mirrored how offensive biological weapons capability would be developed. "We're going to develop new pathogens for various purposes. We're going to develop new ways of packaging them, new ways of disseminating them," Wheelis outlined. "We're going to harden them to environmental degradation. We'll be prepared to go offensive at the drop of a hat if we so desire." And on July 30, 2006, Leitenberg told the Washington Post, "If we saw others doing this kind of research, we would view it as an infringement of the bioweapons treaty. You can't go around the world yelling about Iranian and Korean programs, about which we know very little, when we've got all this going on."

As for whether there truly is an aggressive intent behind the government's biological warfare research, one clue is that in February 2003 the United States granted itself a patent on an illegal, long-range bioweapons grenade in clear violation of the BWC mandate that prohibits such delivery devices. U.S. officials equivocated they never intended to use the biogrenade as described in their patent. Ironically, as Hammond pointed out in a news statement of November 30, 2004, "The United States invaded Iraq in pursuit of phantom bioweapons yet, here at home, it brazenly develops them."

The Council for Responsible Genetics (CRG) has warned that the United States has progressively undermined international efforts to abolish biological weapons, noting that at the November 2001 Fifth Review Conference in Geneva, the United States rejected a "verification protocol for legally binding international investigations and inspections of all parties." CRG pointed out that to create vaccines or antiviral agents against many of the most dangerous pathogens and toxins, researchers must first produce such agents in sizable quantities, and that, in the name of vaccine development, as many as twenty laboratories in the United States handle, manipulate, and in some cases weaponize, one of the most lethal strains of anthrax. Prominent among these facilities, CRG identified Dugway Proving Ground in Salt Lake City, Utah; the U.S. Army Medical Research Unit in Fort Detrick, Maryland; the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington, DC; the Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio; the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico; the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia; and the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Aberdeen, Maryland.

Critics of the biodefense building boom contend that increasing the number of high-containment labs around the country that will handle potential germ warfare agents only increases the likelihood of accidental (or intentional releases) that ultimately could threaten public safety. Richard H. Ebright, a Rutgers University chemist who tracks arms control issues, told the Baltimore Sun that the government's tenfold expansion of Biosafety Level-4 laboratories raises the risk of spreading dangerous organisms. "If a worker in one of these facilities removes a single viral particle or a single cell, which cannot be detected or prevented," he cautioned, "that single particle or cell can form the basis of an outbreak."

Just recently, the Sunshine Project learned that for fourteen months, Texas A&M University concealed an incident in which a student researcher fell seriously ill from undulant fever. In March 2007 hundreds of people were evacuated from Boston University's ten-story biomedical research building after white smoke wafted through a laboratory containing tularemia bacteria. Exposure to the bacteria can produce sudden chills, fever, pneumonia, and can even prove to be fatal. Meanwhile, the metal frame of another large BU biolab is rising nearby at a cost of $178 million where, the Boston Globe reported in March, "researchers would work with the world's deadliest germs, including Ebola, plague, and anthrax." Anthrax, the nation learned in 2001, subjects its victims to breathing difficulties and wracking coughs as it starves the body of oxygen, often leading to death.

Despite the hues and cries of individuals interviewed or otherwise quoted here, the biowarfare buildup is getting an enthusiastic response from academia, which sees new funds flowing from Washington's horn of plenty. "American universities have a long history of willingly permitting their research agenda, researchers, institutes, and laboratories to be co-opted, corrupted, and perverted by the Pentagon and the CIA," Boyle writes.

More than a dozen universities and private consortia are currently vying to win the DHS contract for its own new biodefense research center tagged at roughly $450 million. The proposed 520,000 square-foot main building of the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF) will be the nucleus of a complex liable to exceed one hundred acres. Although advertised to replace an aging facility at Plum Island, New York, the DHS recently announced plans to spend $30 million to expand that lab. NBAF bidders include state universities of Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin.

According to DHS literature, the NBAF complex will fill a critical void in responding to "high consequence biological threats involving human, zoonotic and foreign animal diseases." While DHS advertises it as a response to "threats," the Council for Responsible Genetics notes that because efforts to diagnose and treat exposure to biological weapons necessarily involve their production and dispersal, transparency measures must be enforced to verify the defensive intent of such efforts. CRG laments that the U.S. rejection of the BWC inspection and verification protocol undermines that obligation.

On the contrary, many university NBAF project bidders have a history of operating in secret, and this has in no way barred them from applying for new operations. Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC) disclosure is vital, Sunshine's Hammond says, for protecting against the human health and environmental risks of biotechnology research. Instead of making its IBC records public as required by NIH guidelines, the University of Maryland, for example, has refused to provide any significant information to the Sunshine Project. "It has lost requests for records, refused them, delayed its response, and when it has replied, provided useless paperwork from which it has redacted all meaningful information," Hammond contends. Scores of other universities are no more forthcoming.

Many big pharmaceutical houses and biotech firms that have received NIH dollars also conceal their operations from the public. Among those, Sunshine identified: Abbott Laboratories, BASF Plant Science, Bristol-Myers Squibb, DuPont Central Research and Development, Eli Lilly Corp., Embrex, GlaxoSmithKline, Hoffman-La Roche, Merck & Co., Monsanto, Pfizer Inc., Schering-Plough Research Institute, and Syngenta Corp. of Switzerland. Of the top twenty biotech firms, only Genzyme and Millennium Pharmaceuticals, both headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, complied with NIH guidelines--likely because reporting is mandated by local law. This illustrates the massive failure of voluntary compliance. Only 8,500, or 16 percent, of the 52,000 workers employed at the top twenty U.S. biotech firms work at an NIH guidelines-compliant company, Sunshine estimated.

Here and there, concerned citizens are speaking out. Private and government groups around the nation are protesting the bid for the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility: In Dunn, Wisconsin, the Dane County Board is opposing the University of Wisconsin's idea of building the NBAF complex on their turf; in Tracy, California, the city council voted against allowing an NBAF facility at Lawrence Livermore, while more than 3,000 people paid to wire DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff opposing the bid and 2,000 more sent e-mail messages in opposition; in Seattle the city council forced the University of Washington to withdraw its bid; at the proposed NBAF site in Leavenworth, Kansas, residents voiced concern over lab safety, the impact on property values, and the potential to make the area a terrorism risk; in Mississippi, opponents posted "No Bio-Lab" signs; and Kentucky residents greeted federal officials making a visit to a proposed site with posters reading "Hal! No! We won't go!" in a reference to Representative Hal Rogers (R-KY).

In Boston, neighbors of the new BU lab under construction have convinced the Massachusetts Supreme Court to hear their objections. In Maryland, area residents are objecting to the enlargement of Fort Detrick. And when the Army announced plans this past March to reopen the Baker Laboratory on its Dugway Proving Grounds (eighty miles southwest of Salt Lake City) for the purpose of testing anthrax, the Salt Lake Tribune recalled years ago when 6,000 sheep grazing near Dugway were killed, likely by nerve gas. "The Army is working on the deadly pathogens for classified defense purposes. That's scary," the Tribune editorialized. "It's no wonder we're concerned."

An editorial of this sort is a rarity. Apart from coverage in the Washington Post and New York Times, major media has done little investigation into the underlying reasons for Bush's biodefense buildup. For that matter, Leitenberg says, "not a single member of the House or Senate has questioned that expenditure or called for its reduction or basic redirection."

More questions must be asked. In its news release of August 16, 2001, the Department of Health and Human Services--laying out its plan to combat a possible bioterrorism threat--said it was increasing its support for research related to "likely" agents. If so, what is the point of regenerating an extinct 1918 killer flu virus? The same release warned that "large numbers of people might be directly exposed to an agent released in a dense urban environment." If so, why entertain bids for new facilities in such areas? Deadly pathogens are the last thing the world needs. And yet what we have taking shape in the United States today is the costliest, most grandiose germ warfare research program ever attempted. It involves developmental work with the deadliest and most loathsome pathogens capable of triggering plagues and epidemics. It is being conducted in good part in secret without adequate oversight and in violation of the NIH's own rules and treaty requirements for transparency. It is being lavishly funded while urgent biological research to combat imminent health threats is delayed or denied. It's not only a staggering waste of taxpayer treasure and a perversion of scientific ingenuity but it needlessly puts Americans, and all humanity, at risk.

by Sherwood Ross

PHILADELPHIA LIBRARIES TO CLOSE DUE TO LACK OF FUNDS-OCT. 1ST.

Mainstream Media Cover-Up Implodes As World Discovers Millions Marched In DC

RELATED: Up to two million march to US Capitol to protest against Obama’s spending in ‘tea-party’ demonstration

The Gray Lady of Operation Mockingbird, the New York Times, reports today that “thousands” of patriots protested against Obamacare, cap and trade, the bankster bailout, and unchecked federal government power in the District of Criminals yesterday.

featured stories   Massive Corporate Media Coverup of Real Numbers at D.C. Rally

“The demonstrators numbered well into the tens of thousands, though the police declined to estimate the size of the crowd,” the newspaper reports, attempting to downplay the historical significance of the protest.

The New York Times says the police declined to estimate the crowd — or rather the corporate media declined to report it — because the number was around two million, the largest protest in the capitol’s history.

The protest out-numbered Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech delivered from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963. That march was estimated at around 200,000 people.

ABC News did likewise, pegging the turnout in the thousands. “Thousands of conservative protesters from across the country converged on the Capitol Saturday morning to demonstrate against President Obama’s proposals for health care reform and voicing opposition to big government, what they say is over-the-top spending,” the corporate propaganda outlet claimed on Saturday.

featured stories   Massive Corporate Media Coverup of Real Numbers at D.C. Rally

Ditto the War Street Journal — excuse me, the Wall Street Journal — although they put the number at tens of thousands. The Journal admitted the obvious: “While some Republican officeholders were at the rally, not everybody there called themselves Republicans.”

Fox News tried to spin the event as a Glenn Beck phenomenon.

NPR, the news service of Soros and the foundations, did the same parlor trick with the math, putting the number at tens of thousands. NPR contradicted itself, however, and reported that as “the demonstrators walked along Pennsylvania Avenue toward the U.S. Capitol, the line stretched as far as the eye could see in either direction. The crowd was so thick in places that it was difficult to move.”

As to be expected, the “progressives” (left cover bankster faction) attempted to portray two million patriotic Americans as racists. Think Soros, formerly known as Think Progress, posted a blog entry supposedly revealing racist placards at the event — in fact, none of the signs showed were racist — the worst the Soros operatives produced was a photo of a woman with a Confederate flag. The Soros clan said everybody at the event was white (as if they had examined the skin color of two million people).

It’s not going to work. The two million people who showed up to voice their outrage at a federal government out of control and in violation of the Constitution was but a small sampling of the millions of people across the country in opposition to Obama and the corporate-fascist agenda of his one-world masters.

If Obama and the Democrats ram the deathcare bill through the House by way of “reconciliation,” the opposition will redouble its numbers and once again take to the streets.


Thousands? This timelapse video puts an end to the corporate media lies and spin.

We're Number 37

Check this link ....... http://tinyurl.com/nzcbg7

9/12 Taxpayer Tea Party March on Washington, DC

Check this link ....... http://bit.ly/fLKsZ

Giuliani pushing 9/11 Re-Education Course for Public Schools

Check this link ....... http://bit.ly/dNnvj

FOX News Supports Death Threats on Scholars for 9/11 Truth Activist

Dear Mr. Murdoch,

It has come to my attention that one of your announcers, Bill OReilly, has stated on national television that he would like to see me murdered and thrown into Boston Harbor.

Since I get so many email death threats I cant keep track of them
(among the 10% of my 9/11-related emails that are negative) this is a
pretty inflammatory thing to say. If anything were to happen to me, Fox
News would find itself facing the mother of all lawsuits, and my family
might very well end up in control of the Murdoch fortune.

You may wish to consider urging your friends in the White House to
offer me Secret Service protection. Please assign me the guy who
said were out of here to Bush when the second plane hit the
building at 9:04 not the higher-up who overruled him and kept Bush
reading about pet goats while our nation was allegedly under
surprise attack. See: http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/9-11
secretservice.htmlThe Secret Service agent who said were out of
here before being overruled was honest. Thats the guy I want
protecting my life.

Also, you might want to tell OReilly that HE’S the one who should
worry about ending up in Boston Harbor. 9/11 was an act of high treason
and mass murder, and media figures complicit in the cover-up will be
viewed, a few years hence, the way we now view Dr. Goebbels.

The last time a bunch of empire-builders tried to trample on our
rights, we had a little uprising called the American Revolution. Its
time for another one. Lets kick it off with another Boston Tea Partya
little red-white-and-blue version of V-for-Vendettaand throw the whole
Fox News crew, along with the traitors in this administration, straight
into Boston Harbor.

Sincerely,

Kevin Barrett
Lecturer
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Edgewood College of Madison

Incoming Tokyo government threatens split with US

A split is emerging between the United States and Japan over the new Tokyo government's anti-globalisation rhetoric and its threats to end a refueling agreement for US ships in support of the war in Afghanistan.

New Tokyo government threatens split with US
Yukio Hatoyama blamed the US for the ills of capitalism Photo: AP

Yukio Hatoyama, the leader of the Democratic Party of Japan, has caused alarm in Washington after publishing an article blaming the US for the ills of capitalism, the global economy and "the destruction of human dignity".

He also intends to examine an agreement that permits US warships to dock at Japanese ports, in violation of the nation's non-nuclear principles. Mr Hatoyama says he will also look again at the $6 billion cost faced by Japan to transfer thousands of US troops from their base in Okinawa to the Pacific island of Guam amid a wide-ranging review of the American military presence on Japanese soil.


His election campaign promised a more "independent" foreign policy from Washington and closer relations with Asian neighbours, including China. On Thursday, he repeated his intention to defy the US and end the Maritime Self-Defence Force's resupply mission in the Indian Ocean.

Mr Hatoyama will be sworn in on Wednesday after an historic victory that ended decades of near unbroken rule by the Liberal Democratic Party. He will have his first meeting with Barack Obama, the US president, at the United Nations on Sep 22.

The Pentagon reminded Japan of the expectations it faced as a "great power and one of the world's wealthiest countries". Geoff Morrell, a spokesman, said: "There is an international responsibility, we believe, for everyone to do their share, as best they can, to contribute to this effort to bring about a more peaceful and secure Afghanistan."

The Defence Department would not "prejudge" Japan's new political leadership, he added.

"We think that when the responsibility of governing comes about that people will appreciate, as we have every reason to believe they do, the importance of this alliance and the importance of working together on these [security] agreements," he said.

Makoto Watanabe, a professor of media and communication at Hokkaido Bunkyo University, said: "The US has been critical of new trends in Japan, but we are not a colony of Washington and we should be able to say what we want.

"The Japan-US relationship will remain our most important bilateral link, but while under previous governments Japan had become a yes-man to the US, this suggests to me that healthy change is taking place."

We Can't Break Up the Giant Banks, Can We? Yes We Can!

Top economists and financial experts believe that the economy cannot recover unless the big, insolvent banks are broken up in an orderly fashion.

Even the Bank of International Settlements - the "Central Banks' Central Bank" - has slammed too big to fail. As summarized by the Financial Times:

The report was particularly scathing in its assessment of governments’ attempts to clean up their banks. “The reluctance of officials to quickly clean up the banks, many of which are now owned in large part by governments, may well delay recovery,” it said, adding that government interventions had ingrained the belief that some banks were too big or too interconnected to fail.

This was dangerous because it reinforced the risks of moral hazard which might lead to an even bigger financial crisis in future.

In response, defenders of the too-big-to-fails make one or more of the following arguments:

(1) The government does not have the authority to break up the big boys

(2) To break up the banks, the government would have to nationalize them, which would be socialism

(3) The giant banks have now recovered and are no longer insolvent, so it would be counter-productive to break them up

(4) We need the giant banks to restore credit to the economy

None of these arguments are persuasive.

The Government Does Have Authority to Break Up the Big Boys

One of the world's leading economic historians - Niall Ferguson - argues in a current article in Newsweek:

[Geithner is proposing that] there should be a new "resolution authority" for the swift closing down of big banks that fail. But such an authority already exists and was used when Continental Illinois failed in 1984.

Indeed, even the FDIC mentions Continental Illinois in the same breadth as "too big to fail" banks.

And William K. Black - the senior regulator during the S&L crisis, and an Associate Professor of both Economics and Law at the University of Missouri - says that the Prompt Corrective Action Law (PCA), 12 U.S.C. § 1831o, not only authorizes the government to seize insolvent banks, it mandates it, and that the Bush and Obama administrations broke the law by refusing to close insolvent banks.

Others argue that the PCA does not apply to bank holding companies, and so the government really does not have the power to break up the big boys (see this, for example; but compare this).

Whether or not the financial giants can be broken up using the PCA, no one can doubt that the government could find a way to break them up if it wanted.

FDR seized gold during the Great Depression under the Trading With The Enemies Act.

Geithner and Bernanke have been using one loophole and "creative" legal interpretation after another to rationalize their various multi-trillion dollar programs in the face of opposition from the public and Congress (see this, for example).

So don't give me any of this "our hands are tied" malarkey. The Obama administration could break the "too bigs" up in a heartbeat if it wanted to, and then justify it after the fact using PCA or another legal argument.

Temporarily Nationalizing a Bank is Not Socialism

Many argue that it would be wrong for the government to break up the banks, because we would have to take over the banks in order to break them up.

That may be true. But government regulators in the U.S., Sweden and other countries which have broken up insolvent banks say that the government only has to take over banks for around 6 months before breaking them up.

In contrast, the Bush and Obama administrations' actions mean that the government is becoming the majority shareholder in the financial giants more or less permanently. That is - truly - socialism.

Breaking them up and selling off the parts to the highest bidder efficiently and in an orderly fashion would get us back to a semblance of free market capitalism much quicker.

The Giant Banks Have Not Recovered

The giant banks have still not put the toxic assets hidden in their SIVs back on their books.

The tsunamis of commercial real estate, Alt-A, option arm and other loan defaults have not yet hit.

The overhang of derivatives is still looming out there, and still dwarfs the size of the rest of the global economy. Credit default swaps still have not been tamed (see this).

Indeed, Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said today:

The U.S. has failed to fix the underlying problems of its banking system after the credit crunch and the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.

“In the U.S. and many other countries, the too-big-to-fail banks have become even bigger,” Stiglitz said in an interview today in Paris. “The problems are worse than they were in 2007 before the crisis.”

Stiglitz’s views echo those of former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, who has advised President Barack Obama's administration to curtail the size of banks, and Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer, who suggested last month that governments may want to discourage financial institutions from growing “excessively.”

While the big boys have certainly reported some impressive profits in the last couple of months, some or all of those profits may have been due to "creative accounting", such as Goldman "skipping" December 2008, suspension of mark-to-market (which may or may not be a good thing), and assistance from the government.

Some very smart people say that the big banks - even after many billions in bailouts and other government help - have still not repaired their balance sheets. Reggie Middleton, Mish, Zero Hedge and others have looked at the balance sheets of the big boys much more recently than I have, and have more details than I do.

But the bottom line is this: If the banks are no longer insolvent, they should prove it. If they can't prove they are solvent, they should be broken up.

We Don't Need the Giant Banks

Fortune pointed out in February that smaller banks are stepping in to fill the lending void left by the giant banks' current hesitancy to make loans. Indeed, the article points out that the only reason that smaller banks haven't been able to expand and thrive is that the too-big-to-fails have decreased competition:

Growth for the nation's smaller banks represents a reversal of trends from the last twenty years, when the biggest banks got much bigger and many of the smallest players were gobbled up or driven under...

As big banks struggle to find a way forward and rising loan losses threaten to punish poorly run banks of all sizes, smaller but well capitalized institutions have a long-awaited chance to expand.

BusinessWeek noted in January:

As big banks struggle, community banks are stepping in to offer loans and lines of credit to small business owners...

At a congressional hearing on small business and the economic recovery earlier this month, economist Paul Merski, of the Independent Community Bankers of America, a Washington (D.C.) trade group, told lawmakers that community banks make 20% of all small-business loans, even though they represent only about 12% of all bank assets. Furthermore, he said that about 50% of all small-business loans under $100,000 are made by community banks...

Indeed, for the past two years, small-business lending among community banks has grown at a faster rate than from larger institutions, according to Aite Group, a Boston banking consultancy. "Community banks are quickly taking on more market share not only from the top five banks but from some of the regional banks," says Christine Barry, Aite's research director. "They are focusing more attention on small businesses than before. They are seeing revenue opportunities and deploying the right solutions in place to serve these customers."

And Fed Governor Daniel K. Tarullo said in June:

The importance of traditional financial intermediation services, and hence of the smaller banks that typically specialize in providing those services, tends to increase during times of financial stress. Indeed, the crisis has highlighted the important continuing role of community banks...

For example, while the number of credit unions has declined by 42 percent since 1989, credit union deposits have more than quadrupled, and credit unions have increased their share of national deposits from 4.7 percent to 8.5 percent. In addition, some credit unions have shifted from the traditional membership based on a common interest to membership that encompasses anyone who lives or works within one or more local banking markets. In the last few years, some credit unions have also moved beyond their traditional focus on consumer services to provide services to small businesses, increasing the extent to which they compete with community banks.

Indeed, some very smart people say that the big banks aren't really focusing as much on the lending business as smaller banks.

Specifically since Glass-Steagall was repealed in 1999, the giant banks have made much of their money in trading assets, securities, derivatives and other speculative bets, the banks' own paper and securities, and in other money-making activities which have nothing to do with traditional depository functions.

Now that the economy has crashed, the big banks are making very few loans to consumers or small businesses because they still have trillions in bad derivatives gambling debts to pay off, and so they are only loaning to the biggest players and those who don't really need credit in the first place. See this and this.

So we don't really need these giant gamblers. We don't really need JP Morgan, Citi, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley. What we need are dedicated lenders.

The Fortune article discussed above points out that the banking giants are not necessarily more efficient than smaller banks:

The largest banks often don't show the greatest efficiency. This now seems unsurprising given the deep problems that the biggest institutions have faced over the past year.

"They actually experience diseconomies of scale," Narter wrote of the biggest banks. "There are so many large autonomous divisions of the bank that the complexity of connecting them overwhelms the advantage of size."

And Governor Tarullo points out some of the benefits of small community banks over the giant banks:

Many community banks have thrived, in large part because their local presence and personal interactions give them an advantage in meeting the financial needs of many households, small businesses, and agricultural firms. Their business model is based on an important economic explanation of the role of financial intermediaries--to develop and apply expertise that allows a lender to make better judgments about the creditworthiness of potential borrowers than could be made by a potential lender with less information about the borrowers.

A small, but growing, body of research suggests that the financial services provided by large banks are less-than-perfect substitutes for those provided by community banks.

It is simply not true that we need the mega-banks. In fact, as many top economists and financial analysts have said, the "too big to fails" are actually stifling competition from smaller lenders and credit unions, and dragging the entire economy down into a black hole.