Silverstein's Scheme

In a Sept. 2002 PBS "documentary" called "America Rebuilds" the leaseholder of the World Trade Center complex Mr. Larry Silverstein admitted that on 9/11 regarding the destruction of WTC 7: "I remember getting a call from the fire department commander, telling me that they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said, 'We've had such a terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it.' And they made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse." http://www.wtc7.net/pullit.html

The word "pull" used in this context means: "to demolish; wreck" --Webster's Dictionary.
Of course the U.S government refutes Mr. "Silverstein's" disclosure, attributing the collapse of the 47 floor skyscraper to a "fire" which was ignited by "falling debris" from the other two explosively rigged Towers 1 & 2. They have to cover for Mr. Silverstein's "slip", because of the technical impossibility of implanting the necessary material and explosives to implode a large skyscraper in a few hours; so they assert he meant something else and concluded in their NIST report that WTC 7 was "the first skyscraper in modern times to collapse primarily as a result of a fire." Activating an extensive controlled demolition cannot be organized in a short period of time, but requires serious planning over a period of days: http://science.howstuffworks.com/building-implosion.htm
Since they were logistically unable to maneuver a remote-controlled jet into the side of WTC 7 they blamed its obliteration on a "fire".
http://www.nysun.com/new-york/federal-investigators-fires-took-7-world-trade/84395/

In July 2001 the rest of the WTC was leased for $3.2 billion to Mr. Silverstein (who already owned WTC 7) by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to be paid over 99 years--included was a $3.5 billion insurance policy specifically covering acts of "terrorism". Two months later the buildings came down and Silverstein Properties ultimately collected around $4.5 billion from insurance agencies. Not bad for a days work. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aPunKOKxWwN0

Obviously 9/11 wasn't orchestrated by the CIA to solely make billions for their asset Mr. Silverstein (photo above). It was primarily initiated and organized as a means for the U.S. government to wage wars in foreign underdeveloped lands and reduce the civil rights of the American people as they incrementally transform America into a third-world police state like Cuba.

Argentina: A Cattle Mutilation in Victoria

Source: Vision Ovni www.visionovni.com.ar
Date: March 30, 2009

Argentina: A Cattle Mutilation in Victoria
By Silvia Pérez Simondini

On the evening of March 28, 2009, a new mutilation took place in the city of Victoria, Province of Entre Rios (Argentina) at a small ranch owned by Mr. Ignacio Oñativia. A yearling calf was found mutilated, displaying the same incisions we have been seeing since 2002. The clean cuts can be seen in the photographs, with nothing but small traces of blood left behind. The details surrounding the case are unique: in conversation with Mr. Oñativia, he told me that he only kept four (4) animals at that location, among them a rather troublesome calf who posed a problem when it came to putting it in a pen. However, last night, when he entered his ranch, he saw the three animals inside the pen without anyone’s prompting. This drew his attention, and made him think that the missing [calf] must surely be dead. He said to himself that the same situation always seemed to happen – whenever he brought animals from the island, one of them died. He set out to find the missing one. Upon finding it, the first thought that crossed his mind was that it could have died of hoof-and-mouth disease, but when he approached it, he quickly realized that a mutilation was involved. He came to find me at the Museo OVNI and took me to the site, so that I could see for myself.

This location is only meters away from the entrance roundabout to Victoria from Gualeguay, 100 meters from the high voltage wires and 1000 meters from El Ceibo Creek, elements that are never missing in cattle mutilations.

I would like to extend my thanks to the Oñativia family, especially Mr. Ignacio, who not only came to find me, but also assisted me in videotaping and photographing the animal, as the dark of night was complete.

(Translation (c) 2009, S. Corrales, IHU. Special thanks to Silvia Pérez Simondini and Visión Ovni)

You say the New Deal didn’t work? Prove it

You say the New Deal didn’t work? Prove it

by Don Williams

You love certainty.

Even when it turns out to be wrong, most of us love the sound of a voice speaking with inspired conviction.

Which brings me to a bit of bombast one hears over and over from the usual suspects--Rush Limbaugh, George Will, Charles Krauthammer and others who declare that Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal didn’t end the Great Depression. World War II ended the Great Depression, they cry in harmony, and so we shouldn’t buy into President Obama’s stimulus spending plan.

If you set aside the historical truth that unemployment declined nearly every year of Roosevelt’s administration, this argument makes a certain sense to dewy-eyed children growing up among Republicans, because WWII changed damn near everything. It was a conflagration--outrageous chaos melded to unprecedented technology—and it swept Hitler off the world stage.

As a by-product, so the theory goes, it birthed the greatest economic juggernaut the world has ever seen, the U.S. post-war economy. So, the New Deal was beside the point, the argument runs, and one should resist Obama’s massive spending program, which is nothing but warmed over New Deal socialism they inform us with condescension dripping.

In order to spot the central fallacy of this argument, however, one need only play throw-and-catch with the following common sense question:

What in heck was WWII if not a massive government spending and employment program married to unparalleled protectionism?

Yes, yes, it was a war against Nazi-ism and so on, but when it comes to the key question of its effect on the U.S. and global economy, the U.S. war effort was the last word in Keynesian economics, government spending and protectionism—socialism if you will—long as we’re bandying about that hot-button word.

Honest, what was World War II if not the ultimate jobs-programs? Hundreds of thousands of American men were drafted into the military, and Rosie the Riveter’s job at the airplane factory was funded by fat government contracts paid for by tax dollars and federal deficits.

Face it. Nothing is more socialistic than the military culture, where you have men and women living in government housing, driving government jeeps, tanks, planes and boats, shooting government guns, eating government food, wearing government clothing and partaking of government healthcare. Everyone’s pay falls within well-defined boundaries, so the staggering inequities in pay—the kind dragged into the light by so many Wall Street scandals--scarcely exist in the military.

Privates and generals make a guaranteed annual income and salaries are capped by the government. Everyone who signs up for service is treated to goodies at taxpayer expense for the rest of their lives. Government counseling, medical care, pensions, disability payments, education and so on are provided for by a grateful public all too willing to be taxed in order to support the troops.

Moreover WWII provided near-perfect protectionism for American industry. Not only did the war render about half the industrialized world off-limits as trading partners—thanks to blockades, attacks on shipping and laws against trading with enemies—but much of our competition was bombed back to a pre-industrial state by both sides in the conflict, especially in Germany’s Ruhr Valley, Northern Italy, and much of England, France, Russia, Japan, Poland, China and other countries. England was so strapped by the end of the war—in part because of American demands for compensation for helping that nation—that the British public turned Winston Churchill out of office in bitter protest of the fiasco that had stricken their empire.

In addition, the Allies surrendered Central Europe to the trusting hands of Stalin’s radical post-Marxist empire, which sealed them off as trading partners as well.

You could say America was the last man left standing. Aside from Pearl Harbor, hardly a glove was laid on America’s infrastructure. Every power that might’ve challenged our selling of goods and services throughout the world was either off-limits or near-fatally damaged.

It’s true that the Marshall Plan mitigated the damage and brought about a blossoming of European economies. Similarly, Japan was brought back from the ashes.

But what was that if not more Keynesian-style manipulation of economies here and abroad through massive government spending and management?

I bring this up not to advocate turning America into a military welfare state, but just for clarity’s sake. The chief point is that anyone who says Roosevelt’s big-spending policies didn’t end the Great Depression has no leg to stand on, not even one of those expensive titanium legs our government hires doctors to provide wounded troopers. Roosevelt spent more, not less, after the war started.

So whether it was the New Deal or World War II that ended the Great Depression, the chief engine of change was a massive infusion of federal dollars into the American and global economy for more than a decade. It’s a transfer on the order of what Obama intends as he retools the grid, healthcare, education and transportation infrastructure.

To those who say it can’t work, I have two words.

Prove it.

Don Williams is a prize-winning columnist, short story writer and the founding editor and publisher of New Millennium Writings, an annual anthology of literary stories, essays and poems. His awards include a National Endowment for the Humanities Michigan Journalism Fellowship, a Golden Presscard Award and the Malcolm Law Journalism Prize. He is finishing a novel, "Orchid of the Orchid Lounge," set in his native Tennessee and Iraq. His book of selected journalism, "Heroes, Sheroes and Zeroes, the Best Writings About People" by Don Williams, is due a second printing. For more information, email him at donwilliams7@charter.net. Or visit the NMW website at

www.NewMillenniumWritings.com

A ROYAL APRIL FOOL

By Robert Eringer, The Santa Barbara Investigator



With April Fool’s Day looming, let us examine a recent fooling of royal proportions.

The mark? Prince Albert II of Monaco.

The ruse? A woman fooled him into believing she was the daughter of former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

Kathryn Aikterini, who is actually Greek, not Russian, and who speaks not a word of Russian, possessed all the credentials necessary for suckering the Monegasque Monarch, who turned 51 earlier this month: blonde hair, blue eyes, and 24 years young.

She weaseled her way into a princely meeting at the Royal Palace and convinced him to patronize, as honorary chairman, a local branch of an environmental charity—Green Cross International—that she claimed to represent.

Apparently, no one at the Palace checked her credentials—not even the Prince, beyond her physical attributes.

Only much later, after Aikterini’s admission to a psychiatric hospital for depression, was her true identity discovered.

At the time—around last April Fool’s Day—the (UK) Daily Mail reported that “police in Monaco believe Aikterini was the front person for the mafia who wanted to get a toehold into the Royal Family and the elite of Monaco for criminal purposes.”

Which suggests that Monaco’s constabulary doesn’t need to be fooled by anyone; it is content fooling itself, while robberies and burglaries continue to proliferate under police chief Andre Muleberger. (Word is, his tenure will not be renewed.)

Russian intelligence services and the Russian Mafia—often one in the same these days—are much too clever to use a psychologically troubled woman to gain the Prince’s confidence.

Moreover, the Russians have no need for a “toehold” because they already have at least one whole foot, probably a whole leg, in the door—if generally misunderstood by the Prince and Chief Muleberger, either by design or ignorance.

The new Russian presence in Monaco began with Prince Albert’s trek to the Russian side of the North Pole three years ago, when Russia agreed to assist his party’s luxury expedition with logistical support and a landing base, Camp Arctichesky. This evolved into a state dinner at the Kremlin hosted by Vladimir Putin to climax the excursion—and a burgeoning relationship between the Prince’s senior aide-de-camp and General Vladimir Pronichev, Commander of the Federal Border Guards.

Shortly after the Prince and his gang returned home, the Russians offered to construct a dacha (second home) from scratch on the grounds of Roc Agel, Prince Albert’s private estate in the French Alps behind Monaco.

Their offer was accepted—and a team of Russian builders soon arrived to bang the split-level cottage into place, with nary a word in Monaco’s news media.

The Prince did not seem to realize that taking a personal gift of such high value was an act of corruption. Nor did he seem to be aware, or care, that his new dacha would undoubtedly be bugged to the hilt with concealed microphones. (Old habits die hard with the KGB’s successor services.)

The senior aide-de-camp, whose alleged under-the-table commissions until then had been confined to local activities, presumably hit pay dirt with Russians, who are intent on laundering money through Monaco banks and real estate--and gaining residency as a safe haven from dirty deeds and prosecution by the Russian judicial system.

For no sooner had the Prince returned to his Principality from the North Pole and the Kremlin, his aide-de-camp choreographed him to board a yacht berthed in Monaco’s port for introduction to Chalva “Chig” Tchirinsky, a Georgian oligarch of dubious character associated with one of the Red Mafia’s biggest names, Simeon Mogilevich. Chig wanted to dabble in Monaco real estate.

The Prince’s aide-de-camp had much earlier welcomed Gocha Arivadze, a Georgian from Moscow, into his close circle of the Prince’s personal friends, which he co-opted as his own, including two Americans, Michael McNamara and Bob Munsch.

Thus Arivadze, ex-operator of “ARSI” gas stations in Russia, successfully penetrated the Prince’s social orbit—perhaps with some “generosity” toward the senior aide-de-camp (who coordinates Prince Albert’s schedule) for access, and perhaps on behalf of Russian intelligence. Indeed, on the evening of January 12th, 2007 Mr. Arivadze hosted a dinner meeting of Russian intelligence and senior energy executives at the old Machiavelli estate--Villa Mangiacane--in San Casciano, near Florence, Italy. He purported to represent Prince Albert and claimed the Prince placed in his possession a brand-new Rolls-Royce with Monaco tags (T245) parked outside.

Little wonder Arivadze received a medal from President Putin in the Kremlin—a presentation witnessed by the Prince’s aide-de-camp and buddies McNamara and Munsch, who were hanging off the Prince’s coattails to hatch their own business deals in Moscow.

All this, while Monaco’s derelict police, under Muleberger, fretted about a possible “toehold.”

As early as 2000, the Russian SVR determined that glamorous Monaco was strategically important to them as a base for running covert intelligence and financial operations that span the globe.

“The SVR has been studying ways and means to influence and control Prince Albert,” states an intelligence report in our possession. “The SVR will not attempt to recruit Prince Albert in the classic sense of that word, but it does intend to use its considerable resources to establish what it envisages as a ‘special, intimate’ relationship with him.”

To this end, the SVR prepared a psychological profile of Prince Albert, who had not yet ascended the throne. (He did so after his father, Prince Rainier, died in April 2005.)

“He is a fragile personality suffering from multiple inferiority complexes and is quite vulnerable,” states the profile, a copy of which we possess. “He is extremely self-centered with a distinct lack of loyalty to others. His personal desires and interests always come first.”

The SVR concluded that Prince Albert was an excellent candidate for operational development and recommended the use of several named persons as a way of gaining access to him, including a senior Monegasque politician who had compromised himself in illegal business transactions with two wealthy Russians.

But in the end, the SVR did not need to play those cards. The advent of Gocha Arivadze, the North Pole trek, and the Prince’s own aide-de-camp sealed the deal beyond their wildest expectations.

Now, oligarchs like Sergei Pugachev, who reportedly launders money for Putin along the Cote d’Azur, feel delightfully secure within the principality’s borders. It matters not that Mr. Pugachev’s Monaco police file includes numerous notations citing links to the Russian Mafia. Pugachev even bought a Monte Carlo restaurant & bar for his two sons (Viktor and Alexander)--their own little Moscow-by-the-Med.

And the aide-de-camp? Promoted to Palace Charge d’Affaires.

So it wasn’t just an emotionally unstable Greek woman who fooled Monaco’s Prince Albert. Many of his closest friends and subordinates, but most especially Russian intelligence, play him year round.



ROBERT ERINGER is currently completing a book about his five-and-a-half years as spymaster to Prince Albert II of Monaco.


The Santa Barbara Investigator may be reached at:

http://sbinvestigator.blogspot.com/

Credit As A Public Utility: The Solution to the Economic Crisis

The long awaited Six Part Video Series by Richard C. Cook

Credit As A Public Utility: The Solution to the Economic Crisis

http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2009/03/26/credit-as-a-public-utility-the-solution-to-the-economic-crisis-by-richard-c-cook-videos/

Please bookmark this page and watch these videos!

Part One “Our Early Political Leaders Warned Us Against the Banking Interests”

Summary: Early U.S. statesmen, such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Andrew Jackson worked to free the nation from control by the bankers who had been behind the establishment of the First and Second Banks of the United States. During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln implemented a true democratic currency by spending Greenbacks directly into circulation without borrowing from the banks. These measures allowed the U.S. to develop for much of the 19th century largely free from bankers’ control. By the end of the century, this had changed, and the bankers were taking over.

Part Two “The Federal Reserve System: The Bankers Take Over”

Summary: President Lincoln’s Greenback system worked but was undermined and replaced by the financiers who got Congress to pass the National Banking Acts of 1863 and 1864, then the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. The United States now became a nation dominated by the financial elite, the banks, and a debt-based monetary system. Consequently, the 20th Century was one of constant cycles of inflation and deflation resulting in the economic chaos we see today.

Part Three “The Collapse of the Financial System”

Summary: The collapse we are seeing today began in the financial system, not the producing economy. The crisis started with the housing bubble which the Federal Reserve created by cutting interest rates and then brought own by raising them. The trigger of the 2008 bank meltdown was refusal by European banks to purchase any more “toxic” U.S. debt based on mortgages and sold as securities. Now, with the decline in equity values, the burden of debt in our economy has grown even larger. Thus a renewal of bank lending will not solve the problem, while the economic stimulus program of the Obama administration is likewise insufficient to restore economic health.

Part Four “What is Credit and Who Should Control It?”

Summary: Fractional reserve banking is the process by which banks create credit out of thin air. But despite abuses of the system, credit is still a crucial part of modern economics. An enlightened concept of governance would view credit as a public utility. This means that government must take back the control of credit from the private financiers.

Part Five “The Gap Between Prices and Income”

Summary: One of the most important and least understood concepts in modern economics is the existence of a gap between prices and purchasing power. This gap results when a portion of prices must be set aside as business and private savings. The money is then used by the financial system for lending and speculation. Keynesian economics takes control of some of the savings through government deficit spending but is still a compromise with control of the economy by the financiers. In fact Keynesian economics has helped cause the collapsing debt pyramid. A better system would be to provide consumers with a National Dividend as a way to monetize the continuous appreciation of the producing economy.

Part Six “The Greenback and National Dividend Solutions”

Summary: The U.S. should convert to a system where the money supply is created by the federal government by being spent into circulation without government borrowing or taxation as was done with the Greenbacks. The Federal Reserve should no longer be a bank of issue. Additionally, a National Dividend should be paid directly to the people. The “Cook Plan” calls for the initial distribution of vouchers in the amount of $1,000 a month plus a new system of community savings banks. Greenbacks combined with a National Dividend will create a non-inflationary democratic currency and transform the economy of the United States.


Richard C. Cook is a former U.S Treasury analyst who also worked in the Carter White House and for NASA and writes on public policy issues. His new book is We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform (Tendril Press 2009). His website is www.richardccook.com. He is a member of the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network and has been an adviser to Congressman Dennis Kucinich and the American Monetary Institute. Purchase the DVD at Richard C. Cook’s website.


www.richardccook.com

The Art of Taunting (Orwellian Notes, Part 3)

The above title is the link to my "Orwellian Notes, Part 3", a continuing investigative inquiry by the alter-ego 'penucquem'

Argentina: Fabio Zerpa on UFOs

Source: Diario Los Andes and Grupo GABIE
Date: March 24, 2009

Fabio Zerpa – writer, lecturer, and media personality – is one of the “grand old men” of South American ufology. This interview appeared on March 24th in Argentina’s “Diario Los Andes”

Fabio Zerpa says: “I’ll never say if I met ET’s face-to-face”

Known all over the world for his research into the UFO phenomenon, the Uruguayan researcher who lives in Buenos Aires arrived in Mendoza today for a series of lectures and a seminar in Adolfo Calle auditorium to be held today, tomorrow and Thursday. This octogenarian is the author of 20 books and he believes that to die is to return home. To explain this phrase without knowing the person who uttered it would make it seem cliché or a pointless tautology, but Fabio Zerpa is coming to our province. He’s here to offer a seminar with the title “To die is to return home” and this activity precedes the publication of his book “Fabio Zerpa Tiene Razon” (Fabio Zerpa is Right), laughing at the title, a witticism thought up by his publisher, Editorial Atlantida, which organizes the presentation within the framework of the forthcoming Buenos Aires Book Fair. “This book contains my entire life, with accounts from Mirtha Legrand, China Zorrilla, Horacio Ferrer, Alejandro Fantino, Andrés Calamaro and many other friends who outline each aspect of my life.”

Now, with an enviable humor peppered with the idioms of the Tango scene, the man who devoted his entire life to UFO research speaks with Diario Los Andes.

Do the characters that appear in your forthcoming book discuss the various circumstances of your life, or are they restricted to your years in UFO research?

My entire life. For example, Horacio Ferrer discusses my childhood, because he’s from Uruguay and into Tango, like me (Zerpa is a member of the National Tango Academy). China Zorrilla knew me in my teenage years. Mirtha gave me my very first big story, when dealing with extraterrestrial life was still a hobby of mine. It was “Almorzando con las estrellas” (Lunch with the stars) in 1965, when I discussed the [UFO] subject publicly for the first time. And look here, I’m celebrating 50 years of doing it!!

[...]

How did you become so sure about the subject?

I’m an academic with an advanced degree, and therefore my training has been conventional. But fortunately, when I saw a UFO in 1959, I began to study the subject from a different paradigm: unconventional, occult, esoteric, which is as worthwhile as the conventional approach. I’m following the middle path. I studied it because I’ve always been a researcher and hadn’t realized until I saw that UFO.

What was it you saw in 1959?

I was flying in an Argentinean Air Force craft along with a military pilot. We had taken off from the Morón Air Base. At 12:30 in mid-flight and in the vicinity of San Miguel, I saw a metallic object flying along, measuring some 150 meters long.

A block and a half long?

That’s what the aviator calculated, but yes indeed. It was some fifteen hundred meters distant.

Were you already researching UFOs?

No. I was shooting a television series called “Condores de acero” (Steel Condors) for the old Channel 7. I played the role of a pilot who underwent different experiences. That day, the captain had invited me to go flying and at noon, at an altitude of 800 meters, he said to me: “Look at what’s on your left.” I looked, and saw that device beyond the airplane’s tail: close-ended, metallic and completely silent. Wingless, propellerless, and without the exhaust gases that characterized the incipient space rocketry of that time. It flew slowly. It stopped at 1500 meters, didn’t fall down, overcame the force of gravity, made a 60-degree turn and vanished toward northern Argentina. I turned my head and asked: “What is that?” and the captain replied: “A flying saucer.”

Was it like the ones shown in movies?

It was a cigar-shaped craft. I was reminded at that instant of the Zeppelin I saw during my childhood, when it came to Rio de la Plata. That captain told me, ironically: “To some that’s a flying saucer. To others it’s a secret weapon.” That sparked the researcher in me. The UFO impacted my awareness, and it changed my life.”

Are there aliens in our world?

I’ll never say if I have a contact experience, face to face, because if I say so, they’ll think: “This guy’s already talking to aliens and drinking coffee with them” and it’s not true. This is a subject that sometimes drives people off the deep end. It’s important to have considerable control. The word “extraterrestrial” doesn’t mean “Martian”, only beyond the terrestrial. What we’re discussing are space travelers. Along with Dr. Jacques Vallée, who was an advisor for NASA’s Mars Mapping Project, we started looking into ufology. I brought him to [Argentina] some 20 years ago and we researched together. It’s important to be clear about the terminology – we’re UFOlogists, not ufologists.

And what’s the difference?

The UFOlogist studies and deals with UFOs.

Why isn’t there an open and fluid contact with extraterrestrial beings if they’re constantly visiting our planet?

They’ve shown a technology that is completely superior to what humanity possesses in 2009. UFOs – which have been around since since WW 2 – haven’t invaded us in 60 years when they could have done so with the technology at their disposal. If they were human, you just put [U.S. President] Bush in a saucer and we’re good to go! (laughter).

But why isn’t there an open contact, then?

I’ve lived in 18 countries and from my research I can tell you that there are several reasons that they don’t contact us. First: we’re not all that interesting to them. It’s that simple: they come to the planet and do not wish to contact us. It’s the same thing we do to African pygmies. We know they’re there, but we don’t contact them. You walk along San Martin Avenue and you don’t try to contact everyone filing past you. Second: There are others who have come to study the planet and are looking for scientific contact (there are also those who engage in close encounters of the fourth kind – abductions – that is, they bring people aboard their craft). Their interest in the planet is scientific. They’re here to study. The ones that interest me most are the ones who want to make gradual contact with us and show signs of a future contact in the 21st century.



Do you know people who’ve been abducted by aliens?

Over 500 people in the world have been. And there are scientists like Daniel Fry who have been aboard alien craft. Fry designed spacesuits. I met him in the United States.

Why does the scientific community deny all this?

That was then. Now, in the last 10 years, 85 % of the world’s scientists accept the presence of alien life on Earth.

And how does all this tie into the reasons for your presentation in Mendoza?

It’s about the culture of the future and they [alleged aliens] practically live in the future. As Einstein said in 1952, UFOs exist but they’re not space travelers – rather they’re time travelers. Space travelers, parallel worlds and time. Time is the dimension in which we can speak of eternity. “To die is to go home” was a study I’ve been doing since 1971 regarding past lives and the eternity of our spirit. I’ve made eleven thousand inquiries 18 different countries. Even Carl Sagan! (laughs)

You met him?

Of course! We shared our views with Sagan. The real Sagan is the one from “Contact”

Zerpa asks us to mention this, his voice cracking with emotion: “Mendoza has a very special place in my heart. In 1968, when I came to Condor, it was necessary to block off the street with two squad cars because the place was so full. It fills me with emotion because it’s an acknowledgement to the work of one man. And that emotion is related to the childlike sense of wonder that I carry within me.”

(Translation (c) 2009, S. Corrales, IHU. Special thanks to Grupo G.A.B.I.E.)

"We're all in this together"???

-No we are not, that's the point.

By Cindy Sheehan

March 25, 2009 -- President Obama basically said that we can't demonize every investor who earns a profit, because "we are all in this together." Sorry, but I am going to have to call a big fat "bull-shit" on this one.

When Obama said "we" did he have a mouse in his pocket? Obama, and his family have a very opulent, slave-built roof over their heads. He travels on the public nickel, his children attend an exclusive Washington, DC private school that has organic food on its menu, and has health care that covers everyone in his family from head to toe and side to side and inside out.

Even though he and every member of the administration, Congress and the Supreme Court are not hurting for anything, the bastard (sorry if your parents weren't married when you were conceived) Wall Street banksters are receiving billions of dollars of government welfare and are not so good about being in "this together" with us.

The only concrete steps the Treasury and Fed have taken are to buy "toxic" assets (if something is toxic can it still be an asset?) so companies like Goldman Sachs (via AIG) can have the public tit rescue them from their stupider than crap mistakes.

WE the ROBBED Class are in this together. THEY the ROBBER Class are in it for themselves. How many times does Obama have to demonstrate that his economic recovery is nothing but Reaganomics wrapped in a little bit of populist rhetoric to make it easier for the mis-informed Robbed Class to swallow. If anything transpires to alleviate the suffering in our Class at all, it will be because some of the prosperity got through the cracks in the deeply cancerous system and trickled ON us. Rest assured, this is just a mistake and the only time the Robber Class cares about us, is when the interests of the two classes collide.

I will feel like I am "in this" with the Obamas when I have a free house, free health care and if my children would not have to go into lifelong debt to pay for university. I wonder if the wall to wall homeless population (it's growing at an alarming rate) here in San Francisco feels "in this together" with the Wall Street Robbers?I wonder if the people standing waiting for hours in municipal Emergency Rooms waiting to get some, any medical attention feel "in this together" with Congress which has 110% medical coverage?

I wonder if the foot soldiers for the Empire feel "in this together" with the War Profiteer Robbers? I wonder if the victims of the drug wars and street wars feel "in this together" with the children of the Robbers who ride to their schools in limos with bodyguards? I wonder if our brothers and sisters living in tent cities with their children feel "in this together" with the Pelosis and Feinsteins of the world who live in their obscenely huge mansions in exclusive neighborhoods and fly back and forth from DC in private jets that suck down gas at an immoral rate? I wonder if our brothers and sisters who just cashed a final unemployment check feels "in this together" with the Robbers who just cashed millions in bonuses?

I, myself, feel "in this together" with the homeless, hungry, sick, jobless, struggling, stressed, frightened, confused, yet resilient, brave and strong.

WE are in this together. WE need to step outside of the Robber Class system and start to build our own systems to help each other through this Robber Class/Goldman Sachs/Federal Reserve depression.

From Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox

http://cindysheehanssoapbox.blogspot.com/2009/03/were-all-in-this-together-cindy-sheehan.html

$120 Million Jets

After receiving $25 billion from the "government", JP Morgan Chase is intending to spend around $120 million for two Gulfstream 650 private jets, and $18 million for a lavish renovation of a hangar at the Westchester Airport outside New York City. The Gulfstream 650's are described by the manufacturer as the "fastest, widest and most comfortable private jets with superior cabin amenities."

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=7146474&page=1

While the masses are reduced to a state of serfdom their arrogant feudal overlords impudently aggrandize themselves with unbelievable unearned wealth. As JP Morgan Chairman Mr. James L. Dimon remarks: "When I hear the constant vilification of corporate America personally I don't understand it." Nor would he understand the dethronement of the extortionate and corrupt nobility and clergy during the French Revolution either.

Wall Street's Economic Crimes Against Humanity

http://www.truthout.org/032209B


By refusing to consider the consequences of their actions, those who created the financial crisis exemplify the banality of evil, writes Shoshana Zuboff.

The financiers at AIG were awarded millions in bonuses because their contracts were based on the transactions they completed, not the consequences of those transactions. A 32-year-old mortgage broker told me: "I figured my job was to get the transaction done ... Whatever came after the transaction - that was on him, not me." A long list of business executives have reaped sumptuous rewards even though they fractured the world's economy, destroyed trillions of dollars in value, and disfigured millions of lives.



But what I love the most about this article is the following comment: BRAVO!!


*****************

Crimes against humanity, my sweet pattootie! "Getting your job done" is the very essence of the alienating division of labor characteristic of any civilized society. It's the perfume of wealth. It means do your job, get your paycheck and don't waste time noodling your nose where it won't do no good. Does the auto worker lay awake at night agonizing over what living beings may have suffered, died or been otherwise wrecked on account of the latest auto off the assembly line? If it weren't for such things as cold-hearted callousness, there would be no such thing as polluted rivers, the Grand Banks Off Newfoundland would still be a rich underwater wonderland, there would be no strip-mines, suburban sprawl, weed killers, insecticide, nuclear waste, bombing ranges, devastated rain forests, no computers (highly toxic devices), nor computer servers, nor web pages; no cars, newspapers, bicycles, plastic bags, tennis shoes, cotton industry, etc.

We, all of us, in today's modern consumerist world profit on the ready availability all kinds of toxic assets (literally). We wouldn't know how to live with out relentlessly poisoning Mother Earth, at least I wouldn't. I'm as big a consumerist Earth-poisoning pig as most anyone (My profound apologies to real pigs which are beautiful acts of pure miraculousness).

These bigwig trader types are just like the rest of us. Their only big crime was they slipped a bit and made it so that now we can't slurp up our ill-gotten gain with all of our accustomed alacrity. For that we deem them criminal, and that only. I say we should give them an award for revealing themselves to be those who are the most like the rest of us. A Nobel Prize should be created in their honor. Statues erected.

nothing to do with conspiracy... or does it?

Profits and Parasites

Three major corporate banking recipients of billions of dollars from the U.S. government's TARP(Troubled Assets Relief Program) fund were JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, and Goldman Sachs. While the people lose their jobs due to the consequences of illicit financial practices by bankers and insurance/mortgage companies, these parasites are awarded billions of dollars for their speculative fraudulent policies. Numerous mortgage lenders began to offer more and more loans to high-risk borrowers, including illegal immigrants, in their scheme to dismantle the economy and profit from the ensuing disorder.

The U.S. Treasury Department transferred $25 billion to JP Morgan Chase via TARP, whose Chairman and CEO is James L. Dimon.

Despite the 2007 sub prime mortgage "crisis", Goldman Sachs was able to profit from the collapse in sub prime mortgage bonds in the summer of 2007 by selling sub prime mortgage-backed securities short. Two Goldman traders, Michael Swanson and Josh Birnbaum made a profit of $4 billion by "betting" on a collapse in the sub-prime market, and shorting mortgage related securities. The Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs is Lloyd Blankfein, who received $10 billion in October 2008 care of TARP. In his first year as CEO Blankfein earned a $67.9 million bonus.

On January 19, 2009 the U.S government bestowed upon Bank of America $20 billion. This was in addition to a previous $25 billion accepted in 2008. ABC News reported this year on February 2nd that Bank of America sponsored a Super Bowl event at a five-star resort in Palm Beach which cost approximately $10 million. The Chairman and CEO is Kenneth D. Lewis. Nice one Mr. Lewis. While the proletarian masses are forced to work for miserable wages, these parasites or 'finance capitalists' are smirking and laughing while enjoying their immense wealth and luxury acquired through swindles and graft.

Ladies and Gentlemen, It’s eat or be eaten

"The preparations for supper diverted the attention of the Ferguson faction from the discussion of their grievance for a long time, and then, when they would have taken it up again, the happy announcement that Mr. Harris was ready drove all thought of it to the winds.

"We improvised tables by propping up the backs of car-seats, and sat down with hearts full of gratitude to the finest supper that had blessed our vision for seven torturing days. How changed we were from what we had been a few short hours before! Hopeless, sad-eyed misery, hunger, feverish anxiety, desperation, then; thankfulness, serenity, joy too deep for utterance now. That I know was the cheeriest hour of my eventful life. The winds howled, and blew the snow wildly about our prison house, but they were powerless to distress us any more.

I liked Harris. He might have been better done, perhaps, but I am free to say that no man ever agreed with me better than Harris, or afforded me so large a degree of satisfaction.

Messick was very well, though rather high-flavored, but for genuine nutritiousness and delicacy of fiber, give me Harris. Messick had his good points--I will not attempt to deny it, nor do I wish to do it but he was no more fitted for breakfast than a mummy would be, sir--not a bit. Lean?--why, bless me!--and tough? Ah, he was very tough! You could not imagine it--you could never imagine anything like it."

"Do you mean to tell me that--"

"Do not interrupt me, please. After breakfast we elected a man by the name of Walker, from Detroit, for supper. He was very good. I wrote his wife so afterward. He was worthy of all praise. I shall always remember Walker. He was a little rare, but very good.

And then the next morning we had Morgan of Alabama for breakfast. He was one of the finest men I ever sat down to handsome, educated, refined, spoke several languages fluently a perfect gentleman he was a perfect gentleman, and singularly juicy.

For supper we had that Oregon patriarch, and he was a fraud, there is no question about it--old, scraggy, tough, nobody can picture the reality. I finally said, gentlemen, you can do as you like, but I will wait for another election. And Grimes of Illinois said, 'Gentlemen, I will wait also. When you elect a man that has something to recommend him, I shall be glad to join you again.'

It soon became evident that there was general dissatisfaction with Davis of Oregon, and so, to preserve the good will that had prevailed so pleasantly since we had had Harris, an election was called, and the result of it was that Baker of Georgia was chosen. He was splendid!

Well, well--after that we had Doolittle, and Hawkins, and McElroy (there was some complaint about McElroy, because he was uncommonly short and thin), and Penrod, and two Smiths, and Bailey (Bailey had a wooden leg, which was clear loss, but he was otherwise good), and an Indian boy, and an organ-grinder, and a gentleman by the name of Buckminster--a poor stick of a vagabond that wasn't any good for company and no account for breakfast. We were glad we got him elected before relief came."


From Cannibalism in the Cars, Mark Twain


http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/1288/

And now for a message from your government

The Treasury Department will unveil the next step in its financial rescue efforts tomorrow, announcing that it intends to create a government body, called the Public Investment Corp., to finance the purchase of as much as $1 trillion in soured loans and toxic assets from ailing banks, according to sources.

The plan calls for the new entity to combine its resources with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the Federal Reserve and private investors to buy those loans and other assets. But the government will put far more money into the deals and take on more risk than the investors, which could include hedge funds, private-equity firms, pension funds and foreign investors with U.S. headquarters, the sources said. The corporation will be funded with $75 billion to $100 billion from the $700 billion financial rescue package.

Key details of the toxic asset purchasing program are not yet finalized, said officials in contact with the Treasury. Some expressed concern that the markets would expect too much out of Monday's announcement. When Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner first sketched out the administration's rescue plan last month, he was criticized on Wall Street and on Capitol Hill for being too vague and creating uncertainty in the markets.

There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling the transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can roll the image, make it flutter. We can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity. For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. We repeat, there is nothing wrong with your television set. You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to... The Outer Limits.

$10 Million CEO Suite

Citigroup Inc. plans to spend about $10 million on a new suite for Chief Executive Officer Vikram Pandit (photo below) after the U.S. government injected $45 billion of cash into the "insolvent" bank.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601110&sid=adLGVE_YzvUU

The "economic collapse" is nothing more than an organized delusive scheme on the part of a collusion of usurious bankers and tycoons to augment their power and wealth through "bailout bills" ratified by their paid agents in Congress. As their fiscal policies eliminate thousands of jobs each month they laugh in luxury at the complacency and gullibility of the "American people". Why should they be concerned about any public "backlash" regarding their enormous embezzlement scam? Around 130 million people reportedly voted in the last election for two state-controlled parties thinking they have a "choice". You do the math. Saturate the hedonist populace with a surfeit of entertainment and you effectively nullify any potential mass protestation.

Closing Times

fellow paranoids

Just to let you know that the last podcast ("Closing Time") and blog post ("the secret of seers", a dream experience from some years back that i kept private until now) are now up - the snake is shedding his skin.

here are the show notes

Know that all of Nature is but a magic theater
That the great Mother is the master magician,
and that this whole world is peopled by her many parts
—The Upanishads

In a final, two-hour special, Aeolus takes a bow and delivers the long-promised Sorcerers’ Revelation, discusses his reasons for ending Stormy Weather, describes the pitfalls of the alternate perceptions community and prevailing conspiracy narratives, the danger of knowledge without a context, surrogate gnosis and the matrix outside the matrix, seeing energy directly, the way the world ends, the edges of reality, the known, the unknown and the unknowable, global conspiracy as the ultimate opportunity for surrender, saturation with occult knowledge as a means to short-circuit the counterculture, the need to use one’s life as a case study to turn knowledge into self-knowledge, occult knowledge as being a technology that comes without a manual, the sorcerers’ revelation, Tulpa creation, Masonic Sorcery Theater, the life and death of Carlos Castaneda, prey to power, “the tenant” and the art of dreaming, the old seers and the creation of alternate realities, a new meta-narrative to contextualize all other narratives, the thought forms of God.

Featuring a special appearance by Neil Kramer – www.thecleaver.blogspot.com


happy springtime

AK (the stormy one)

The Sixth Man?

By Robert Eringer, The Santa Barbara Investigator

British spies Guy Burgess and Donald MacLean were numbers one and two. Kim Philby was The Third Man. Gay blade Sir Anthony Blunt, Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures, was fourth, and John Cairncross, fifth.

The question nagging espionage buffs for decades is this: Was there a sixth major British spy for the Soviet KGB, and if so, whom?

Some have pointed to Harold Wilson, who abruptly and mysteriously resigned as prime minister in 1976. The Soviets liked Wilson—and cleared the way for him to become prime minister by poisoning Hugh Gaitskell, the erudite Labour leader, who had stood between Wilson and 10 Downing Street. Gaitskell was pro-Europe and tied to the power-elite, a concept the Soviets pegged with one word: Capital.

Mr. Gaitskell had been planning an official visit to the Soviet Union, which required a visit to the Soviet Consulate in London for collecting a visa. The Labour leader gave advance notice so they would be ready and not keep him waiting long.

Boy, were they ready!

The KGB kept Gaitskell waiting just long enough to serve him tea and biscuits laced with Lupus Disseminata—a fatal toxin unknown to Britain.

Gaitskell knew he’d been hit, but had little time to react, as this toxin quickly attacks the organs. He became seriously ill, never went to the Soviet Union, and promptly died—without the commotion of the more recent state-sponsored poisoning of Alexandre Litvinenko, also in London, also death-by-tea. Harold Wilson took Gaitskell’s place as party leader and, soon after, was elected prime minister.

Britain’s Security Service (MI5) knew what had happened. It was for this reason they scrutinized Wilson’s behavior, bugging his phones and intercepting his mail. When the prime minister became aware of the extent to which MI5 kept him in their sights, he went ballistic, and considered making an issue of it in Parliament. But he was convinced to back off--or risk reading in the Sunday tabloids about a steamy affair he was conducting with Marcia Falkender, his long-time secretary, including snippets of pillow talk at Ms. Falkender’s cozy cottage in Buckinghamshire.

But Wilson was not a Soviet spy.

The Sixth Man was quite likely “the Battenberg Buggerer”: Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma—best known, affectionately, as “Dickie” to his friends—according to a source within the intelligence community.

Lord Mountbatten, a member of the Royal Family, was homosexual, with a passion for young guardsmen. While his wife, Edwina, enjoyed multiple affairs (including one with Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister), Dickie ran rampant through the Queen’s barracks.

The Earl’s proclivity was not lost on the KGB’s First Directorate (external intelligence) whose job it was to identify and recruit spies.

Homosexuality, in those days, qualified as criteria for targeting an individual for recruitment through blackmail. And that’s precisely what the KGB did to Lord Mountbatten, whose resentment against the British Establishment went way back to his adolescence when, in 1917, the British Government made Louis and his family change their German last name, after forcing Louis’s father to resign as First Sea Lord because he was a natural born German and Britain was at war with Germany.

The British Royal Family is German. Its real name is not Windsor, but Gothe-Saxe-Coburg. During World War I, the British Cabinet felt it unseemly that a family with a German name should rule Britannia while tens of thousands of British lads in the trenches were being mustard-gassed by Kaiser Wilhelm’s army. So it compelled the royals to adopt the name Windsor—chosen only because it sounded so quintessentially English.

At the stroke of a pen, Louis Battenberg became Louis Mountbatten.

Dickie never forgave the Establishment.

Back to the KGB, which had more than just Dickie’s homosexuality in their files. They also had this on Lord Mountbatten’s favorite cousin, the Duke of Windsor, formerly King Edward VIII: The dethroned ex-king had secretly collaborated with Adolph Hitler during World War II.

Even before the war, Edward was partial to Germany, and liked to point out that 100 percent Teutonic blood pumped through his veins. Upon becoming king, Edward shared state secrets from his Dispatch Boxes with the German leadership.

British Intelligence chief Robert Vannistat, whose officers kept a watchful eye on the King, reported this to a horrified Stanley Baldwin, the prime minister. Something had to be done.

PM Baldwin and Mr. Vannistat plotted to part King Edward VIII from his throne. Their gambit?

Catapulting the King’s relationship with Wallis Simpson, an American divorcee, into a national calamity. The intelligence services whipped the media into a feeding frenzy, pushing the King into a corner until the pressure was so unbearable he abdicated “for the woman I love.” Edward VIII’s terribly unprepared brother replaced him.

Re-titled Duke of Windsor, the ex-king went into “temporary” exile on the continent. He soon realized he’d been duped and that he would never be allowed to return to Britain. This deeply embittered him.

The Nazis followed these events with deep interest. They tracked Edward to Madrid, followed him to Lisbon, and cut the Duke a deal: Work secretly for us. Once we occupy Britain, you’ll be king again—and Wallis will be queen.

Wallis badgered her husband into accepting the deal.


Now back to Louis Mountbatten. The KGB threatened to expose his homosexuality--and the Duke of Windsor’s treachery--unless the Earl of Burma played ball.

Dickie was never a fan of the United States--which he despised as “classless”-- or its post-World War II “special relationship” with Britain. So it wasn’t particularly difficult for him to avoid scandal and agree to spy for the Soviet Union.

When sleaze-ball Anthony Blunt confessed his role as a Soviet spy to MI5 interrogators in 1964, he gave up Mountbatten.

Defying protocol, the Queen was informed personally by the Director-General of MI5 to keep the government of the day—especially its suspect prime minister, Harold Wilson—out of the loop. This was an extraordinary arrangement, and out of it was hatched an even more extraordinary deal: Louis Mountbatten would remain free, unaware that he had been compromised; the Queen would assist MI5 supplying cousin Dickie with disinformation for Soviet consumption.

One faction of Britain’s security service was livid. They wanted to see Lord Mountbatten punished for his betrayal. However, the arrest, trial and imprisonment of one of Britain’s most prominent royals was out of the question because of the irreparable harm it would do Britain’s monarchy.

This faction, more powerful a decade-and-a-half later, finally had their chance.

The plan was brilliant in its simplicity: Sit back and watch Irish Republican Army (IRA) terrorists blow Louis Mountbatten to kingdom come. They had earlier learned through their informant inside the IRA’s War Council of the plan to assassinate Lord Mountbatten while he vacationed aboard his yacht in Ireland. All they had to do was nothing.

And in return: Public and political outrage ensured MI5 a grander budget than ever before to fight the IRA.

The Santa Barbara Investigator

http://sbinvestigator.blogspot.com/

Fed Caused Great Depression

On March 18, 2009 the privately-owned Federal Reserve announced they will spend or print $1.2 trillion in their attempt to rectify the nation's economy. On hearing this news the U.S. dollar sank against other currencies, as traders worried about the long-term implications of this action, including probable inflation.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2009-03-18-fed-interest-rates_N.htm

In 1913 Congressman Charles Lindbergh of Minnesota commented upon the passage of the Glass-Owen Federal Reserve Act: "The new law will create inflation whenever trusts want inflation. From now on, depressions will be scientifically created." Conspiracy researcher Gary Allen, author of 'None Dare Call it Conspiracy' revealed: "Between 1923 and 1929 the Federal Reserve expanded (inflated) the money supply by 62%."

In 2002, current Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke openly admitted to economist Milton Friedman that the Federal Reserve was the perpetrator of the 1929 economic catastrophe: http://earlytoday.wordpress.com/2008/10/05/bernanke-federal-reserve-caused-great-depression/

"Regarding the Great Depression. You're right, we did it."

Hedge Funds May Be Getting a Bailout via AIG's Payments

People, it's time to get really really pissed off!

*******************

by: Dow Jones | Visit article original @ Dow Jones

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djf500/200903181338DOWJONESDJONLINE000826_FORTUNE5.htm


New York - The fact that some payments made by American International Group Inc. (AIG) to hedge funds are coming from government bailout money raises a question: Are hedge funds receiving a de facto bailout?

If the answer is yes, it would signify the first taxpayer money yet to reach hedge funds since the financial crisis began back in late 2007. Hedge funds - investment pools made up primarily of high net worth individuals, pension funds and university endowments - have suffered like most during the crisis, but have pointed out with pride that as of yet their industry hasn't requested any government handouts.

Officially, of course, any payments made by AIG to hedge funds wouldn't change that fact. It was AIG that requested the bailout, not the hedge funds. The insurance giant is now simply meeting its contractual obligations.

In some cases, AIG has already paid out fairly hefty amounts to hedge funds with U.S. taxpayer funds. AIG said in a press release Sunday that it paid $200 million each in "public aid" to Citadel Investment Group and Paloma Securities. These payments were made to settle short-term trades last year in which the hedge funds loaned AIG cash in exchange for bonds.

Also, as reported Wednesday in The Wall Street Journal, AIG reportedly may be paying out many different hedge funds for bets in which the hedge funds waged that the housing market would crater against AIG's bets that it would remain robust.

It isn't clear how much in total that hedge funds stand to gain through the AIG payments, but the payments call into question the government's decision, whether out of haste or for any other reason, to allow the AIG bailout money to be dispersed to any counterparties, including hedge funds.

"Taxpayer money is being paid to hedge funds by a Treasury that could have limited the payments to domestic banks but decided not to risk letting anyone big fail," said John Coffee, a professor of securities law at Columbia University. "In short, everyone of importance is being protected."

The Real AIG Scandal

By Eliot Spitzer, former governor of New York, in Slate Magazine.

It's not the bonuses. It's that AIG's counterparties are getting paid back in full.

http://www.slate.com/id/2213942/

Everybody is rushing to condemn AIG's bonuses, but this simple scandal is obscuring the real disgrace at the insurance giant: Why are AIG's counterparties getting paid back in full, to the tune of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars?

For the answer to this question, we need to go back to the very first decision to bail out AIG, made, we are told, by then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, then-New York Fed official Timothy Geithner, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke last fall. Post-Lehman's collapse, they feared a systemic failure could be triggered by AIG's inability to pay the counterparties to all the sophisticated instruments AIG had sold. And who were AIG's trading partners? No shock here: Goldman, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, UBS, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, Barclays, and on it goes. So now we know for sure what we already surmised: The AIG bailout has been a way to hide an enormous second round of cash to the same group that had received TARP money already.

It all appears, once again, to be the same insiders protecting themselves against sharing the pain and risk of their own bad adventure. The payments to AIG's counterparties are justified with an appeal to the sanctity of contract. If AIG's contracts turned out to be shaky, the theory goes, then the whole edifice of the financial system would collapse.

But wait a moment, aren't we in the midst of reopening contracts all over the place to share the burden of this crisis? From raising taxes - income taxes to sales taxes - to properly reopening labor contracts, we are all being asked to pitch in and carry our share of the burden. Workers around the country are being asked to take pay cuts and accept shorter work weeks so that colleagues won't be laid off. Why can't Wall Street royalty shoulder some of the burden?

Why did Goldman have to get back 100 cents on the dollar? Didn't we already give Goldman a $25 billion capital infusion, and aren't they sitting on more than $100 billion in cash? Haven't we been told recently that they are beginning to come back to fiscal stability? If that is so, couldn't they have accepted a discount, and couldn't they have agreed to certain conditions before the AIG dollars - that is, our dollars - flowed?

The appearance that this was all an inside job is overwhelming. AIG was nothing more than a conduit for huge capital flows to the same old suspects, with no reason or explanation.

So here are several questions that should be answered, in public, under oath, to clear the air:

• What was the precise conversation among Bernanke, Geithner, Paulson, and Blankfein that preceded the initial $80 billion grant?

• Was it already known who the counterparties were and what the exposure was for each of the counterparties?

• What did Goldman, and all the other counterparties, know about AIG's financial condition at the time they executed the swaps or other contracts? Had they done adequate due diligence to see whether they were buying real protection? And why shouldn't they bear a percentage of the risk of failure of their own counterparty?

• What is the deeper relationship between Goldman and AIG? Didn't they almost merge a few years ago but did not because Goldman couldn't get its arms around the black box that is AIG? If that is true, why should Goldman get bailed out? After all, they should have known as well as anybody that a big part of AIG's business model was not to pay on insurance it had issued.

• Why weren't the counterparties immediately and fully disclosed?

Failure to answer these questions will feed the populist rage that is metastasizing very quickly. And it will raise basic questions about the competence of those who are supposedly guiding this economic policy.

Obama Administration mangles the U.S. Constitution!

BULLSHIT!!! The Obama Administration is wrong!

Yes, the “sovereign” can stop AIG from paying bonuses on contracts!…

As stated below:

“the law is clear that the United States has the authority to impose significant restrictions on the administration of both public and private contracts to ensure that the expenditure of federal funds is consistent with the public interest.”

************************************

The Obama administration's assertion that the federal government had no power to stop A.I.G. from awarding $165 million in bonuses to the derivatives traders in its financial products unit, whose reckless decisions both destroyed the company and exacerbated the collapse of the international banking and insurance industries, rests on a faulty interpretation of the US Constitution. Speaking on ABC's "This Week," Lawrence H. Summers, director of the National Economic Council, explained that the United States could not block payment of the bonuses, despite A.I.G.'s receipt of more than $170 billion in federal TARP funds, because "We are a country of law. There are contracts. The government cannot just abrogate contracts."

Although, it is true that the "government cannot just abrogate contracts" for no good reason, the law is clear that the United States has the authority to impose significant restrictions on the administration of both public and private contracts to ensure that the expenditure of federal funds is consistent with the public interest. Although, it is too late to void the A.I.G. bonuses, the administration's narrow reading of the law should not deter Congress from amending the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of October 2008, the legislation that created TARP, to authorize the president or the secretary of the treasury to modify executive compensation agreements that are contrary to the purposes of the Act.

Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution provides that "No State ... shall pass any ... Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts," but the Supreme Court has held that the contracts clause is limited to state actions and is inapplicable to the federal government. Actions by the United States that allegedly impair contracts are governed instead by the Fifth Amendment's directive that no person "shall be deprived of ... property without due process of law." The Supreme Court's cases interpreting the due process clause distinguish between federal laws that may impair private contracts and laws that allegedly abrogate contracts to which the United States itself is a party. Under both sets of cases, the United States could have prevented A.I.G.'s use of TARP funds to pay executive bonuses, despite A.I.G.'s compensation agreements with its derivatives traders.
[…]

There are, in fact, myriad reasons for the United States to prohibit A.I.G. from awarding bonuses to the members of its financial products unit, and the Supreme Court's precedents would require the courts to defer to these regulatory judgments. As President Obama explained on Monday, these policies include ensuring that the TARP funds are spent to increase financial liquidity throughout the lending and insurance system, deterring future malfeasance by not rewarding bad business judgments and disastrous financial performance and preventing the loss of political support for the financial bailout and regulatory reform program - a risk that the administration is now struggling to contain.

If the administration's concern is that blocking the executive bonuses would violate the contracts by which the United States has awarded A.I.G. its $170 billion in TARP funds, a different constitutional standard would apply. The Supreme Court has held that the sovereign power of the United States is an "enduring presence that governs all contracts subject to the sovereign's jurisdiction and will remain intact unless surrendered in unmistakable terms. Therefore, contractual arrangements, including those to which a sovereign itself is a party, 'remain subject to subsequent legislation' by the sovereign."

Continue reading at:

http://www.truthout.org/031809A

Is Israel assassinating Iran nuclear scientists?

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1064852.html


By Yossi Melman, Haaretz Correspondent

Israel is assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists as part of a covert war against the Islamic Republic's illicit weapons program, the Daily Telegraph on Tuesday quoted Western intelligence analysts as saying.

The British daily said Israel's Mossad espionage agency was rumored to be behind the death of Ardeshire Hassanpour, a top nuclear scientist at Iran's Isfahan uranium plant, who died in mysterious circumstances from reported "gas poisoning" in 2007.

Other recent deaths of important figures in the procurement and enrichment process in Iran and Europe have been the result of Israeli "hits", intended to deprive Tehran of key technical skills at the head of the program, according to the analysts.

The Telegraph also quoted United States intelligence sources as saying Israel is using sabotage, front companies and double agents to disrupt the regime's illicit weapons project as an alternative to direct military strikes.

Nevertheless, it should be noted that Israel has been carrying out similar covert activities for about a decade, ever since Iran was first suspected of seeking nuclear weapons. The U.S. journalist James Risen has written recently that the CIA and the Mossad have planned together a number of sabotage operations against the Iranian program, including damaging power lines to nuclear sites in order to cause harm to computer systems and equipment.

The Telegraph also quoted Israeli officials as privately acknowledging the new U.S. administration is unlikely to sanction an air attack on Iran's nuclear installations and that President Barack Obama's offer to extend a hand of peace to Tehran puts any direct military action beyond reach for now.

As such, the reported goal of Israel's covert campaign is to delay or interrupt the Iranian research program, without engaging in a direct confrontation that could lead to a wider war.

"Disruption is designed to slow progress on the program, done in such a way that they don't realize what's happening. You are never going to stop it," a former CIA officer on Iran was quoted as saying.

"The goal is delay, delay, delay until you can come up with some other solution or approach," he added. "We certainly don't want the current Iranian government to have those weapons. It's a good policy, short of taking them out militarily, which probably carries unacceptable risks."

Reva Bhalla, a senior analyst with Stratfor, the U.S. private intelligence company with strong government security connections, was quoted by the paper as saying the strategy was to take out key people.

"With co-operation from the United States, Israeli covert operations have focused both on eliminating key human assets involved in the nuclear programme and in sabotaging the Iranian nuclear supply chain," she was quoted as saying.

"As US-Israeli relations are bound to come under strain over the Obama administration's outreach to Iran, and as the political atmosphere grows in complexity, an intensification of Israeli covert activity against Iran is likely to result."

March Against Corporate Greed!

March Against Corporate Greed!

http://takebacktheeconomy.org

Take Action against Corporate Excess!

Join the movement on March 19.

Time Mag Pans Pentagon Book

Wednesday, Feb. 04, 2009

Blank Spots on the Map
By Gilbert Cruz

Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon's Secret World
By Trevor Paglen

324 pages; Dutton

The Gist:

From Area 51 to the once-secret prisons of Afghanistan, there are certain places that the U.S. government has tried its best to erase from most maps. But as author and geographer Trevor Paglen writes early on in his book, the absence of such places — the titular blank spots —inherently inform us of their exact locations: "Secrets, in other words, often inevitably announce their own existence." Over the next 250 pages, Paglen goes on to sketch out a survey of the dark corners of the United States' national security apparatus from the early 20th century to today.

Highlight Reel:

1. On the sheer breadth of the Pentagon's secret world: "Every year, the United States spends more than $50 billion to fund a secret world of classified military and intelligence activities, a world of secret airplanes and unacknowledged spacecraft, 'black' military units and covert prisons, a secret geography that military and intelligence insiders call the 'black world'...Approximately four million people in the United States hold security clearances to work on classified projects in the black world. By way of contrast, the federal government employs approximately 1.8 million civilians in the 'white' world."

2. On the "Black Chamber," America's first codebreaking agency founded in 1919, and its head, Herbert Yardley: "When Herbert Hoover took control of the White House and named Henry L. Stimson secretary of state, the existence of the Black Chamber remained secret even to the incoming administration...After a few months had passed, Yardley decided that Stimson had settled in well enough to be informed and provided the secretary of state with a handful of decrypted Japanese messages...Outraged, he famously exclaimed, 'Gentlemen do not read each other's mail,' and sought to immediately shut down Yardley's operation....Or so it seemed. Just as the Black Chamber was shutting down, the Army tapped William Frederick Friedman to continue its mission under the guise of a secret military unit."

3. On the Red Cross's complicity with the Bush Administration's secret imprisonment of terror suspects: "I knew that the Red Cross isn't supposed to talk about the work they do. The reports they issue aren't meant for public consumption — the Red Cross is supposed to discreetly visit prisoners and submit reports only to host governments. In the case of prisoners held by the United States in the war on terror, that would be the executive branch. The point of the Red Cross's discreet approach is to ensure that the organization remains neutral in a given conflict and doesn't jeopardize its access to prisoners by publicly embarrassing governments...The Red Cross relies on secrecy as much as the CIA does. It might be called a Faustian bargain, but it's easy to understand the logic."

The Lowdown:

Paglen's concern is the "black world," that parallel government bureaucracy funded by billions in taxpayer dollars, the allocation of which is never revealed. It would be misleading to take the book's subtitle at face value — the "geography" to which Paglen refers is as much metaphorical and legal as physical. (Sorry conspiracy theorists, he does not actually infiltrate any hangars at Area 51). "Blank spots on the map begat dark spaces in the law," he writes, in reference to a raft of shady government incidents from NSA wiretapping to extraordinary renditions to secret CIA missions in 1980's Latin America.

It's a lot to string together, and Paglen has a slight tendency towards stunts — holing up in a Las Vegas hotel in an attempt to track workers flying to and from a secret military installation, for example —and digressions, writing of the exploratory history of inner Nevada, or delving deep into the minutiae of amateur satellite hunting. That's not to suggest that those discussions aren't good reading, for they are — Paglen somehow manages to make the movements of a spy satellite riveting — but rather to say that many of his parts are more intriguing than a somewhat diffuse whole.

The Verdict: Skim

POLICE CHIEF SANCHEZ: MORE ON ABUSE

Robert Eringer, The Investigator, no longer works at the News-Press and although we will probably never know the details as to his being let go, we do have access to his last column. It is a rather scathing attack on Police Chief Cam Sanchez that makes quite a few allegations and uncovers dirty family laundry. Is this last, unpublished article what got him fired?


POLICE CHIEF SANCHEZ: MORE ON ABUSE

by Robert Eringer


Last week’s column on Police Chief Camerino Sanchez’s abuse of authority evoked an avalanche of e-mail to The Investigator. The Wayne Scoles trial, and the apparent misconduct of Chief Sanchez, has clearly touched a community nerve.

Anecdotes starring Chief Sanchez as a bully filled our mailbox, with several correspondents requesting we keep their names and stories confidential for fear of reprisal. (At what point did Santa Barbara enter a time warp and land in the former Soviet Union?)

Others corroborated eardrum erosion from a line that seems to be the chief’s menacing mantra: “I’m not someone you want to mess with.”

Chief Sanchez also reportedly yelled, “Get the f--- out of my city!” at his elderly father-in-law, Danny Gonzales, after allegedly coming up from behind and pushing the 77 year-old at a Santa Barbara rehabilitation center, to which Mr. Gonzales had traveled from Los Angeles to visit his ailing wife, Amida.

Mr. Gonzales’s son, Daniel, who witnessed this assault and battery, told The Investigator: “As my father left a conference room after talking to a hospital administrator, he was followed down the hallway by Cam Sanchez, who then pushed my father in the back while yelling at him ‘to get the f--- out of my city.’ My father, although nearly falling, was able to keep on his feet. As Cam Sanchez is police chief, my father thought it would be futile to file a report.”

Mr. Gonzales and his son are estranged from their daughter/sister Olivia Guadalupe Sanchez and her husband, Cam Sanchez, stemming from an incident 10 years ago when Mr. and Mrs. Sanchez allegedly attempted to fleece them out of their 50 percent share of an LA real estate investment.

"My mom and dad forgot to have a deed recorded,” Daniel Gonzales told The Investigator. “Time passed. Cam and Lupe took advantage of them and, in a case of elder abuse, fraudulently embezzled their 50 percent share of the property by creating a new deed that he signed and deeded to himself. The embezzlement was not discovered until years later. When Cam and Lupe were confronted with what they had done, they refused to remedy the situation.”

Continued Daniel Gonzales: “My mom and dad wanted the property sold, and fought with Cam and Lupe about selling it. Finally, Cam and Lupe would only agree to sell the property and split the proceeds 50/50 if mom and dad would sign a new deed showing that Cam and Lupe held 75 percent interest. I imagine this was done for tax fraud purposes so Cam and Lupe could show 75 percent ownership interest yet receive only 50 percent of the proceeds. Cam and Lupe did a 1031 tax deferred exchange with their proceeds and purchased a property in Lompoc."

We revert to the Lompoc property later in this column.

First, a sampling of missives from readers conveyed to The Investigator:

"The Wayne Scoles trial shows the police chief’s true colors, often law-bending in favor of Hispanics. One example is the sympathy he shows to gang members, thus the lack of introduction of a gang injunction here. I have seen him try to buddy-up to congregating gang members on numerous occasions, once telling them to pour out their beer at a beach instead of arresting them or writing tickets, which is the rule of law."

And: “Hauling Mr. Scoles off to the station where Detective Hunter tried to intimidate him into a confession is even more bothersome. Are we becoming Guantanamo-by-the-Pacific?”

This refers to Jaycee Hunter, who last year was prepared to Taser a Critical Mass bicyclist for running a red light--a transgression this peace officer depicted as “terrorist-type behavior.” Detective Hunter has now taken to writing City Council members to say that Wayne Scoles is not innocent.

Dear Jaycee: Innocent until proven guilty is a basic tenet of our legal system. Which means that if a jury found Mr. Scoles “not guilty” (as it did), he remains, in fact, “innocent.” Perhaps you are confusing the state of your policing with police state.

But we digress. Back to missives on Cam Sanchez: “Collusion, lies and cover-ups seem to be the hallmark of law enforcement in Santa Barbara.”

And: “The police chief’s behavior should be investigated by the DA’s office or a grand jury.”

And: “It is too bad Santa Barbara cannot do better than to hire someone so out of his league.”

And: “He arrests an advocate for the elderly because he can’t take the heat when a citizen displays displeasure with the poor job he is doing fighting crime in the Mesa area. He should resign or be removed.”

We also received a curious tip-off regarding Chief Sanchez’s property holdings—a lead we investigated and confirmed.

Some context: On July 20th, 2001, in response to a request from Cam Sanchez, City Council approved a low-interest “sweetheart” loan of $500,000 for him to purchase a house in Santa Barbara. This was due to Santa Barbara’s relatively high cost of living and requirement that a police chief resides within city limits.

Now our finding: Several years after assuming the position of police chief, Mr. Sanchez and his wife purchased two additional California houses, which they utilize as rental-income properties.

The first, purchased on December 24th, 2003, is in Lompoc.

The second, purchased on November 8th, 2005, is in La Habra.

An obvious question: If Chief Sanchez could afford to buy two houses and lease them to tenants for rental income, why did he request a sweetheart mortgage loan from the City—and why did City Council feel obliged to provide it?

Surely, the City required Mr. Sanchez to submit a financial disclosure statement to qualify for such a loan.

Guess again.

We e-mailed City Administrator Jim Armstrong with a request to see such disclosure.

“No,” replied Marcelo Lopez, Administrative Services Director. There is nothing to see because City Council sought no financial disclosure.

Which means the City conducted no due diligence to determine if a sweetheart loan was warranted.

We requested to see the Chief’s employment contract.

“City Heads do not have employment contracts,” Mr. Lopez told The Investigator. “They work at will.”

This means there is no fixed term to Chief Sanchez’s tenure as police chief.

It also means he can be dismissed “at will,” for any reason, at any time, by the City Administrator.

Next, rule of scofflaw: Chief Sanchez has an unpaid bill (since early 2007) with Pueblo Radiology. He did not show up for a hearing in Civil & Small Claims Court to contest this bill, just ignored it--despite having received a summons. So on July 17th, 2008 a default judgment/lien in the amount of $1,917.71 was awarded to CMRE Financial Services Inc. against him.

It begs this question: Does Chief Sanchez, who is sworn to uphold the law, consider himself personally above the law with regard to a) showing up in court when properly served with a summons and b) paying his medical bills?

Finally, a bizarre comment from Mayor Marty Blum after we enquired about Chief Sanchez’s employment with reference to allegations of misconduct: “I hope,” she wrote, “that you also investigate allegations of good conduct on behalf of Chief Sanchez.”

Excuse us?

Wasn’t it the City’s responsibility to conduct due diligence to establish Cam Sanchez’s “good conduct” before hiring him to be police chief—and to verify his neediness to receive a low- interest home loan, courtesy of the tax-paying public?

Madame Mayor, with all due respect, it is the role of investigative journalism to prod and test for misconduct, not to supplement the City’s due diligence—which, in this case, was diddlysquat. In any case, you need not fret; we haven’t received any “allegations of good conduct on behalf of Chief Sanchez” to investigate—only allegations pertaining to embezzlement, tax fraud, elder abuse, assault & battery, and behavior befitting a deadbeat.

And it smells worse than El Estero Wastewater Treatment Plant on a dog day the morning after Fiesta.


If you have a story for The Investigator, you can contact him at eringer33@aol.com. State if your query is confidential.


Robert Eringer's blog is:

http://www.roberteringer.com/col_030709.htm

Staged Synchronicities

The "CIA"-controlled mass media through their fictional TV, radio programs and movies like to subtly foreshadow particular political or social events of the future. They are able to do this because both are scripted and premeditated in advance to occur, either through paid conscious agents or surreptitious methods, such as hypnotism, psychotropic drugs etc. When a united cabal owns and controls the entire political, economic, educational and corporate entertainment/media system, then it is not too difficult to embed and plan the future beforehand. One of the most famous examples is the 1962 film "The Manchurian Candidate" and its apparent parallels to Lee Harvey Oswald's involvement in the Kennedy assassination in 1963 as a 'brain-washed' experiment. (MKULTRA-Sydney Gottlieb). Another odd correspondence between "fact and fiction" was when ABC premiered the TV movie pilot "The Greatest American Hero" on March 18, 1981, the name of the main character being Ralph Hinkley. Then around two weeks later on March 30th the media erupted with the story that President Ronald Reagan was fired upon courtesy of John Hinckley.

Another repetitive trend of the last 10 years leading up to the election of President Obama was the appearance of African-American men casted as President in various TV shows or films. The most popular one was Fox's 24 which premiered in 2001. For the first five seasons actor Dennis Haybert played Democratic President David Palmer. Haybert's portrayal of an African-American president had such an impact that the actor himself even felt that his role helped Americans become "comfortable" with the idea. Political commentators even referred to Obama's election as the "Palmer Effect".

Compelling evidence that the future is revealed in the mass media before it manifests itself, was exposed in the NBC show "The West Wing". There were striking similarities between the shows 2006 season "election" and the actual 2008 U.S. Presidential election. Jimmy Smits played Matt Santos, a young minority Democratic candidate who is pitted against an aging "maverick" Senator named Arnold Vinick(Alan Alda). Santos is telegenic and a popular forty-something with two young children. An "inspirational speaker" he announces his candidacy by telling supporters: "I am here to tell you that hope is real. In a life of trial, in a world of challenges, hope is real." Sound familiar anyone? I suppose if the writers had the crowd shout "Yes we can!" it would be too obvious. His "opponent" is Arnold Vinick, a white-haired Senator(McCain) with a reputation for declaring "straight talk" to the press. Even the vice-presidential picks are similar: the Democrat selects a Washington veteran, while the Republican chooses a staunchly evangelical governor to shore up the base. President Obama likes the music of Bob Dylan and "coincidentally" so does Matt Santos in the show. When the press starts asking where Vinick attends church, he tells his staff "I haven't gone to church for a while." Asked in July 2008 by the NY Times about his church attendance, McCain said: "Not as often as I should." In Britain, where the series remains popular in syndication the newspaper The Telegraph declared: "Barack Obama will win: It's all in The West Wing."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/30/arts/television/30wing.html?_r=2&em=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print

Another odd strand of synchronicity began on April 4, 2007 with the leading news story of "shock-jock" Don Imus being castigated for describing the University of Rutger's women's basketball team as "ho's." For about two straight weeks on the local and national media outlets this silliness was the major news item dwarfing everything else as the nation followed the saga of Imus apologizing and being fired. During the ongoing continuous coverage of this "news", on April 14 the Hawaiian-American pop-singer Don Ho, famous for his hit "Tiny Bubbles"(#8Billboard, 1966) passed away. Then on April 16th, the culmination of "ho" coincidences transpired when Seung-Hui Cho, a South Korean student at Virginia Tech went on a shooting rampage killing 32 people and himself.

And to top it all, in November 2001 the hip-hop group "The Coup" released their album "Party Music". The intended, original CD cover art, created in June 2001 depicts the WTC Twin Towers exploding, months before the 9-11 "Islamic terrorist attacks".

Executive Assassination Ring

Investigative Reporter Seymour Hersh Describes "Executive Assassination Ring"


At a "Great Conversations" event at the University of Minnesota last night, legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh may have made a little more news than he intended by talking about new alleged instances of domestic spying by the CIA, and about an ongoing covert military operation that he called an "executive assassination ring."

Hersh spoke with great confidence about these findings from his current reporting, which he hasn't written about yet.

In an email exchange afterward, Hersh said that his statements were "an honest response to a question" from the event's moderator, U of M Political Scientist Larry Jacobs and "not something I wanted to dwell about in public."

Hersh didn't take back the statements, which he said arise from reporting he is doing for a book, but that it might be a year or two before he has what he needs on the topic to be "effective...that is, empirical, for even the most skeptical."

The evening of great conversation, featuring Walter Mondale and Hersh, moderated by Jacobs and titled "America's Constitutional Crisis," looked to be a mostly historical review of events that have tested our Constitution, by a journalist and a high government officials who had experience with many of the crises.

And it was mostly historical, and a great conversation, in which Hersh and Mondale talked about the patterns by which presidents seem to get intoxicated by executive power, frustrated by the limitations on that power from Congress and the public, drawn into improper covert actions that exceed their constitutional powers, in the belief that they can get results and will never be found out. Despite a few references to the Founding Fathers, the history was mostly recent, starting with the Viethnam War with much of it arising from the George W. Bush administration, which both men roundly denounced.

At the end of one answer by Hersh about how these things tend to happen, Jacobs asked: "And do they continue to happen to this day?"

Replied Hersh: "Yuh. After 9/11, I haven't written about this yet, but the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state. Without any legal authority for it. They haven't been called on it yet. That does happen.

"Right now, today, there was a story in the New York Times that if you read it carefully mentioned something known as the Joint Special Operations Command -- JSOC it's called. It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. [Robert] Gates, the secretary of defense. They reported directly to him. ...

"Congress has no oversight of it. It's an executive assassination ring essentially, and it's been going on and on and on. Just today in the Times there was a story that its leaders, a three star admiral named [William H.] McRaven, ordered a stop to it because there were so many collateral deaths.

"Under President Bush's authority, they've been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That's been going on, in the name of all of us.

"It's complicated because the guys doing it are not murderers, and yet they are committing what we would normally call murder. It's a very complicated issue. Because they are young men that went into the Special Forces. The Delta Forces you've heard about. Navy Seal teams. Highly specialized.

"In many cases, they were the best and the brightest. Really, no exaggerations. Really fine guys that went in to do the kind of necessary jobs that they think you need to do to protect America. And then they find themselves torturing people.

"I've had people say to me -- five years ago, I had one say: 'What do you call it when you interrogate somebody and you leave them bleeding and they don't get any medical committee and two days later he dies. Is that murder? What happens if I get before a committee?'

"But they're not gonna get before a committee."



Continue reading this fantastic article at:



http://www.minnpost.com/ericblackblog/2009/03/11/7310/investigative_reporter_seymour_hersh_describes_executive_assassination_ring