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As AFP has reported for years, Bilderberg has been trying since 1992 to "establish a UN tax" which would be used to finance their globalist-oriented programs. Of course, the brunt of this tax would fall on American workers, and it appears this is being spearheaded by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.
On Feb. 14, 2008, an Obama-sponsored bill called the "Global Poverty Act" (S 2433) was referred to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee after passing the House. What this bill would do, in effect, is levy a global tax on the United States where an additional 0.7% of the gross national product would be earmarked to foreign aid (on top of what we already give).
If passed this year, by 2021 the U.S. would be committed to an extra $845 billion in foreign aid. Not only would the United States be under the UN's thumb in regard to taxation, but this bill (part of the globalists' Millennium Development Goal) would also seek to ban certain weapons, establish an international criminal court, push global warming legislation, and promote "biological diversity."
Anyone familiar with Bilderberg sees that all of the above
"buzzwords" have been part of their agenda for decades.
Assisting Obama in his endeavors are two longtime Council on Foreign
Relations members: Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), who has been called
Obama's mentor, and Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.). Both have attended
secret Bilderberg meetings and have been influential in trying
to ratify the UN's Law of the Sea Treaty
(LOST).
One political commentator has stated that this bill "would effectively turn control of seven-tenths of the Earth's surface over to the UN," not to mention surrendering the sovereignty of our seas to them.
Obama's popularity can be attributed to one concept: he stands for "change." But is this the type of change that American citizens really want—to become enslaved by a UN global tax on top of the local, state and federal taxes they already pay? Obama is another political tool whose loyalties lie with those shadowy figures who sit atop the world's control pyramid.
Victor Thorn is the co-founder of the World Independent News Group (www.wingtv.net) and the author of many books about 9-11, the New World Order and, of course, the Hillary (And Bill) trilogy.
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Montana Secretary of State Brad Johnson has warned the Supreme Court that guns are legal in his state under the compact each party agreed to when Montana joined the union in 1889.
Johnson and other Montana officials are saying the U.S. government already resolved any questions about the application of the Second Amendment by defining that "any person" has the right to keep and bear arms.
"The Montana Resolution cautions that a collective rights decision would violate the Montana contract for statehood because when that contract was entered the collective rights interpretation had not yet been invented and the individual rights view was an accepted part of the contract," an announcement from the leaders said.
That's the issue in a pending Supreme Court case originating in the District of Columbia (AFP, Jan. 28, 2008), where authorities have banned handguns under the claim that such a 100%-limit is "reasonable" and therefore enforceable despite the Second Amendment. Gun rights advocates have become increasingly perturbed at what bureaucrats and politicians define as "reasonable."
The federal government's position is outlined in a document submitted by U.S. Solicitor General Paul D. Clement. He said since "unrestricted" private ownership of guns clearly threatens the public safety, the Second Amendment can be interpreted to allow a variety of gun restrictions.
"Given the unquestionable threat to public safety that unrestricted private firearm possession would entail, various categories of firearm-related regulation are permitted by the Second Amendment," Clement wrote in the brief.
However, facts and statistics show that rather than an "unquestionable threat to public safety," areas of unrestricted private gun ownership have always enjoyed exactly the opposite—lower crime and safer communities.
Because of the specifics of the D.C. case, the ultimate ruling is expected to address directly whether the Second Amendment includes a right for individuals nationwide to have a gun or whether local governments can approve whatever laws or ordinances they desire to restrict firearms.
Most gun advocates pass off such rhetoric as merely more government mumbo jumbo and "lawyer legalese." Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America is one.
"If the Supreme Court were to accept the solicitor general's line of argument, D.C.'s categorical gun ban of virtually all self-defense firearms could well be found to be constitutional," he said.
Pratt warned such a precedent to affirm any and all gun restrictions if they are considered by a judge to be "reasonable" would place those rights on the lowest rung of the constitutional ladder.
"In contrast to other provisions in the Bill of Rights, which can only be trumped by ‘compelling state interests,' the Second Amendment would be relegated to an inferior position at the lowest rung of the constitutional ladder, should the Justice Department prevail," said Pratt.
In a joint resolution from the Montana leaders, including Rep. Denny Rehberg (R), they caution that should the Supreme Court rule that Second Amendment rights apply only collectively, it would violate the contract under which Montana entered the union as a state. Nobody has suggested that such a move would be the latest cause for secession, but no one has said that it wouldn't, either.
Gary Marbut, president of the Montana Shooting Sports Association and the author of a book on Montana gun law, said, "There was a promise made to Montana that the right to bear arms was an individual right, and what's more, a ‘collective right' interpretation would have been impossible because Montana had no state-run militia in the 1880s."
Individual rights, such as those of free speech and a jury trial, are more definitive than a "collective right" decided by state or local governments.
The Montana contract is archived as Article I of the Montana Constitution. The Montana officials point out that the time the then-territory's "Compact with the United States" was agreed to by Congress, the Montana Constitution included the "right of any person to bear arms."
That language "simply cannot be re-spun to somehow mean a right of state government," they said. "It could not have referred to the National Guard, which wasn't created until years later."
Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Virgil Goode (R-Va.) has asked President Bush to order the Justice Department to submit a brief to the high court supporting the rights of individuals under the Second Amendment. Goode earlier wrote Bush that under the perspective being promoted in the District of Columbia, a national ban on all firearms, even hunting rifles, could be considered valid.
The Second Amendment reads, "A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
See more from Pat at www.patshannan.com.
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In a last-minute twist, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) bowed out of a big Houston energy forum to focus on his congressional reelection in the short time remaining before the Texas primary March 4. If he prevails in the Texas primary and becomes the Republican nominee to return to Congress, his burden will be much lighter, enabling him to rededicate himself to the presidential race, where media-preferred frontrunner Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is rocked by scandal amid Republican Party displeasure with his left-leaning views.
Paul is being challenged for the GOP nomination by Friendswood City Councilman Chris Peden, who Paul describes as a "slick" politician who used to say supportive things about him but now is spreading lies.
Peden, who reportedly is against eminent domain land takings for private gain and helped ease the local property tax burden as a councilman, says he agrees with Paul in opposing the Trans Texas Corridor, according to a spokesman contacted by AFP. However, Peden supports the Bush administration's "war on terror" against what Peden calls "Islamo-fascists."
Paul sharply disagrees, saying the war is a sham and that such multibillion-dollar intervention abroad is drastically depleting America's defenses and resources.
So in the short amount of time left, Paul is hoping to defeat Peden, freeing himself from the bind of running two campaigns at once. Should he not secure the congressional nomination, he thinks the enemies of freedom will see that as a major victory. He said his opponent for Congress would love nothing more than to "bury me in the graveyard of Texas politics."
This event initially was promoted as a debate, but neither Sen. John McCain, nor Mike Huckabee, responded to invitations to participate on the GOP side.
It's conceivable that this was a tactic to deflate the Houston event and deny Paul a national forum where he could have intellectually outshone the other contenders right before the primary.
"Since it's no longer a debate, Ron is going to stay in Washington and make his congressional votes," spokesman Jesse Benton told The Houston Chronicle.
Spokesman Anthony Riedel told AFP that Paul is still a presidential candidate, despite incessant media "blurbs" that suggest the opposite. For example TXCN, a Texas cable TV network, flashed a short news item across the bottom of its broadcast Feb. 24 that alleged Paul admits his presidential campaign is a "failure."
But, as of Feb. 25, Paul had $6.1 million on hand and had just completed a big rally in Austin, Texas, where he spoke to nearly 7,000 people on Feb. 23.
TXCN's website listed an Obama appearance around the same time in Austin, where it said about 100 people were lined up to get in. But Paul's well-attended Austin appearance was ignored. TXCN is owned by the Belo media conglomerate with editorial offices in Austin, Dallas, San Antonio and Houston.
CNN, Fox and the other big networks have continued to ignore Paul. By their own twisted logic, they should be covering Paul to allege that he's bowing out. Huckabee, who's fading somewhat, is mentioned as if he is barely in the race, running "if only in name." But Paul isn't even mentioned in the negative.
The media policy applied to Huckabee is not applied to Paul. Paul said that, above all, he needs financial contributions for his congressional campaign right away to get past that hurdle (800-RON-PAUL).
Mark Anderson is the author of The Ron Paul Revolution, AFP's special report we are encouraging everyone to distribute. For more on how you can help Ron Paul get elected, click here.
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Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is trying to shore up his "conservative base" in the presidential campaign by reversing his positions and now supports making President Bush's tax cuts permanent. Many are quietly holding out for more: full repeal of the estate tax, or "death tax."
This would be a natural progression in his about-face. He has loudly proclaimed that he now supports "permanently extending the Bush tax cuts."
To win enough Democrats to pass the tax cuts in 2001 and 2002, Bush had to agree they would "sunset" unless extended or made permanent.
The death tax trickles down to zero in 2010 and expires at the end of the year. After midnight Dec. 31, 2010, the death tax bounces back to the full 55%.
Tax lovers trotted out billionaire Warren Buffett before the Senate Finance Committee to give the tired argument that it only affects the rich. The death tax should be expanded, he said, to "take more out of the hides of guys like me." Cute, corny and wrong.
What Buffett failed to mention is that the life-insurance business, where he obtains his megabucks, is heavily invested in special life insurance policies aimed at covering the costs of death taxes.
Thousands of heirs who lost farms and small businesses to the death tax would be surprised to learn they are "rich." More than half of America's jobs come from farms and family owned businesses. The death tax caused the loss of 236,000 net jobs last year alone, according to economists at the Institute for Policy Innovation.
Many thousands of Americans face losing their livelihoods. Jack Kent Cook died thinking his son, John, would inherit the Washington Redskins football team and it would always play in "Jack Kent Cook Stadium." But he overlooked the death tax and a mega-bucks merchant obtained the Redskins who now play at "FedEx Field."
It is politically easy to oppose the death tax because 70% of Americans favor repeal. Even many who are fooled into believing it's a tax on "the rich" oppose it on fairness grounds. Taxes were paid on income and assets during life and Americans should not be taxed again from the grave.
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An agreement by the Bush administration and Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper to allow either country to send troops across either country to send troops across the other's border to deal with an emergency is still being kept secret from the American people. At least one Canadian news agency CanWest, has made the story public and questions why the Harper government has kept silent on the deal that was signed in Texas on February 14.
The U.S. military's Northern Command publicized the agreement with a statement outlining how its top officer, Gen. Gene Renuart, and Canadian Lt.-Gen. Marc Dumais, head of Canada Command, signed the plan, which allows the military from one nation to support the armed forces of the other nation during a civil emergency.
The new agreement has been greeted with suspicion by the left wing in Canada and the right wing in the United States.
The outspoken Council of Canadians, which is campaigning against what it calls the increasing integration of the U.S. and Canadian militaries, is raising concerns about the deal. But Canada Command spokesman Commander David Scanlon said it will be up to civilian authorities in both countries on whether military assistance is used or even requested. He said the agreement is "benign" and simply sets the stage for military-to-military co-operation if the governments approve.
But the ever-growing opposing forces against the continental highway proposed as part of a North American Union see it as the tightening grip of the police state. Some have stated that it will be "more comfortable" for foreign troops to shoot Americans and vice versa. They point out that these foreign troops in each place would not be bound by local laws.
"But there's no agreement to allow troops to come in," said Scanlon. "It facilitates planning and co-ordination between the two militaries. The ‘allow' piece is entirely up to the two governments.
If U.S. forces were to come into Canada they would be under tactical control of the Canadian Forces but still under the command of the U.S. military, Scanlon added.
News of the deal, and the allegation it was kept secret in Canada, are already making the rounds on political blogs and Internet sites as an example of the dangers of the growing integration between the two militaries.
"Co-operative Militaries on Home Soil!" notes one Canadian website. "The next time your town has a ‘national emergency,' don't be surprised if Canadian soldiers respond. And remember - Canadian military aren't bound by posse comitatus."
Posse comitatus is a U.S. law that prohibits the use of federal troops from conducting law enforcement duties on domestic soil unless approved by Congress.
Scanlon said there was no intent to keep the agreement secret on the Canadian side of the border. He noted it will soon be reported on in The Maple Leaf, the Canadian forces newspaper and that publication will be put on the Internet.
Scanlon said the actual agreement hasn't been released to the
public because approval is required from both nations. That decision
has not het been taken, he added.
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Recently a "really good student" named Steve Kazmierczak, it seems, took several guns into a geology lecture on Valentine's Day at Northern Illinois University and shot up the class. One hundred to 120 students were in the class at the time. (Time: about 3 in the afternoon on February 14, 2008; weapons: a 12-gauge shotgun, a .22 pistol, a 9 mm pistol and a .45 Glock semiautomatic handgun.)
Why did he do it? Authorities are not quite sure. But whatever triggered the deadly rampage of this "nice boy," one key factor - as in other, similar events - seems to have been the drug Prozac (fluoxetine). According to some experts, it is reasonable to say that Prozac should never have been approved in the first place by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Prozac was allowed on the U.S. Market on December 29, 1987.But even before the drug was approved for the market, a British medical journal said recently, it had given American regulators confidential drug company documents suggesting a link between the popular "antidepressant" and a heightened risk of suicide attempts and violent acts.
Documents it received from an anonymous source indicated that Prozac's manufacturer, Eli Lilly & Co., was aware in the 1980s that the drug could have troubling side effects, The British Medical Journal reported (Jan. 1). The BMJ said a record dated November 29 indicated that Prozac had caused "behavioral disturbances" in clinical trials.
(Eli Lilly is said to be linked to the George bush family.)
BMJ said the documents, missing for 10 years, were part of a 1994 lawsuit against Eli Lilly on behalf of victims of a workplace attack in Louisville, Ky. Joseph Wesbecker,the gunman who killed eight people and himself in1989, had been prescribed Prozac a month before the shootings. (Eli Lilly won that case but later disclosed it had settled with the plaintiffs during trial.)
The History of Prozac was tainted from the start. It began in 1982, when David Dunner of the University of Washington began receiving money that would eventually total over $1.4 million from Lilly for his research and seminars.
Dunner was a member of the FDA's Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee that is responsible for reviewing new drug applications brought before the FDA. These members are foutinely asked if they might have any conflict of interest with each manufacturer presenting new drugs. Dunner responded to this question be stating "no pending commitments at the present time." the FDA assumed his answer was truthful, but in fact Dunner had already been paid by Lilly for conducting a clinical trial of Prozac on 100 people. Thus he apparently had a serious conflict of interest that he covered up.
Dunner had also given five seminars regarding "depressive disorders" sponsored by Lilly, which ne failed to mention to the committee. Furthermore, Dunner also had two more paid seminars booked by Lilly that would take place after the approval of Prozac - another fact he failed to mention.
To make matters worse, Dunner received another Lilly grant to conduct a new study on the effects of Prozac on sleep patterns. This was five days after Prozac was approved.
In 1985, Lilly conducted test on Prozac and found the drug not to be significantly more effective than the placebo. But an FDA statistician suggested to Lilly that the test results could be evaluated differently, causing the results to come out more favorably for Prozac. Guidelines constructed by Lilly for the clinical trials excluded the reporting of "adverse experiences caused by depression," thus skewing the results.
In 1986, Richard Kapit, MD, of the FDA stated that Prozac "may exacerbate certain depressive symptoms and signs."
Clinical risks of mild to moderate severity appeared to be associated with the use of Prozac, as determined by review of the safety data in the New Drug Application submission. The FDA safety review discovered that Lilly failed to report information about psychotic episodes during Prozac's testing, but the FDA failed to reprimand Lilly for omitting this important data.
By 1987, in fact, two months before Prozac was approved for
the market there had already been 39 deaths from controlled clinical
trials: 15 were listed as suicides, another six were overdose,
four more were by gunshot and another two were by drowning. These
27 fatal cases were confirmed to be directly related to taking
Prozac. (An additional 12 deaths were reported but could not be
directly related to the drug.)
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Candace Downing would be 16 today - a bright, chipper and athletic girl enjoying her junior year of high school, probably as the honor student she was in junior high. Instead, this past January 10 marked the anniversary of her legalized murder via government edict in the public schools of Laytonsville, Md.
However, no one is blaming any one individual for Candace's death but rather the system. Candace, then 12, was healthy and happy one day - the day she took the drug Zoloft for test anxiety at school. She wasn't depressed. In addition to being an honor student, she was an artist, an athlete and a constant joy to her family. But the next day she was dead, having hanged herself from the valence of her bed following the ingestion of this legally sanctioned drug.
"We were never given any warning," says Candace's mother, Mathy Milling Downing, who today is an outspoken opponent f Zoloft and other drugs being administered by school systems across the country - many for experimental reasons only. She also is now the state director of the Maryland-Washington chapter of the International Coalition for Drug Awareness.
"Unfortunately, ours is not an isolated incident," she says. "No warning of risk was listed in pamphlets about Zoloft at our doctor's office, and I received no warnings from the prescribing doctor."
The pharmaceutical company dispensing the drug says on its website that Zoloft is well tolerated and effective for the treatment of depression and certain types of anxiety disorders and that it is FDA approved. "For more than 15 years," the spiel continues, "Zoloft has safely and effectively treated millions of people with depression and anxiety."
Quite the contrary, actually, but when Mrs. Downing opposed the idea of putting Candace on the drug, the doctor told her there would be no problems. "What are you worried about?" he asked her. "These drugs are safe and effective. Children take doses of 100 to 200mg a day with no problems." She was given some sample packs, and Mrs. Downing still has them as evidence.
It wasn't until after her daughter's death that Mrs. Downing discovered that her doctor didn't know what he was talking about, just as so many of them who take their postgraduate instruction from pharmaceutical books and drug salesmen. Soon she learned that up to four children out of every 100 who take the drug run the risk of dying by their own hands or at least attempting to do so.
Speaking at a recent Washington conference sponsored by the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology, Mrs. Downing told her heart-rending story of Candace's unnecessary death.
For more than four decades ICSPP, a nonprofit, 501(c) research and educational network of professionals and lay persons, has been informing professionals, media and the public about the potential dangers of biological theories and treatments in psychiatry. The group calls this school medication problem "a national tragedy of monumental proportions" and points out since the federal funding of the program began, diagnosis of bipolar cases has increased 40 times.
The Downings' legal action is still pending, with the most
recent postponement putting the case off until next January. However,
Mathy has a panel of medical experts ready to testify in her behalf
and feels the impact of this civil trial will have multiple ramifications
and is hopeful that will include the cessation of the sale and
distribution into society of this horrible drug. AFP will continue
to follow this important story.
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Although it has not been publicly admitted by financial elites, Americans have been suffering for quite some time through the painful effects of "stagflation." Stagflation is the term which is used when there are rising overall prices coupled with sluggish or no economic growth. It is a double whammy for all, where job creation and real wages stagnate while prices increase, sometimes dramatically.
A phenomenon of the late 1970s, stagflation has supposedly been held in check by "prudent" monetary policy. However, as every consumer is well aware, such a notion is another myth propagated by the ruling establishment. Though there have been on-and-off periods of economic growth over the past generation, overall prices have continued to rise—not as sharply as in the late 1970s, but nonetheless, goods have gotten increasingly expensive except in a few sectors (such as computers) where real prices have actually fallen. What policymakers have done to conceal the problem is to redefine and change the methods they use to formulate price indices. For example, the consumer price index does not include food and oil prices. Even with the exemption of oil and food prices, over the past 12 months consumer prices have shot up 4.3%, a rate that has caught the attention of monetary officials. Charles Plossner, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, said, "Since the summer almost all of the measures of inflation that we look at have begun to accelerate again, and in some cases pretty sharply." He continued, "Perhaps the inflationary pressures are more broad-based than just energy" (The New York Times, Feb. 21, 2008).
His boss, Federal Reserve Chairman Benjamin S. Bernanke, was evasive on the subject at his semiannual congressional appearance as he assured members that the Fed was on top of the situation: ". . . in the months ahead, the Federal Reserve will continue to closely monitor inflation and inflationary expectations." While the Fed has belatedly admitted that there is a general economic slowdown, its officials are loath to speak of stagflation because it would mean an indictment of their own policies. Supposedly, the Fed's chief role is to be an "inflation fighter." At least that is what the two dominant but indistinguishable political parties have taught.
The reality of the matter is quite different than what the public has been led to believe about the nation's central bank. While it is touted as an inflation fighter, the Federal Reserve is anything but and is, in fact, the real culprit behind the current rise in prices and stagflation. Increases in overall prices are not inflationary, instead, price increases are the result of inflation which, traditionally, has been the term used for the expansion of the money supply. The increase in the supply of money generally leads to a reduction in its purchasing power. More dollars lower the value (purchasing power) of each monetary unit. As the nation's central bank, the Federal Reserve has the sole monopoly power over the money supply. It has the ability to increase or decrease the supply of dollars without restraint, which it does through the banking system.
Ever since the start of the housing and mortgage market crisis, the Fed has dramatically expanded the money supply. Paradoxically, the severe financial difficulties which the mortgage and housing industries are facing are due, in part, to the Fed's previous inflationary policy and the deceptive and lax lending practices of the mortgage industry itself.
The results of the Fed's monetary inflation has been rising domestic prices and a plummeting dollar which, over the past four years, has lost 24% of its value against a basket of six major currencies.
The cure for stagflation and the economy in general is to stop the Fed from inflating. However, since the nation's central bank has no real supervision or public oversight, it is not likely to do so. Thus, the only way to counteract the problem is to abolish the Fed and return to a sound monetary system based on a metallic (gold) standard as presidential hopeful Ron Paul has consistently spoken about throughout his campaign and over the course of his distinguished congressional career.
Economic growth can only come about through genuine savings, not via the printing press. Savings provide the crucial resources for capital investment and the payment of wages during the lengthy periods of production.
Until there is a fundamental change in the current monetary and banking system (a return to sound money), genuine long-term prosperity will be an illusion.
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William F. Buckley Jr. is dead. The demise of the ex-CIA man-turned-pundit sparked a shameless wave of over-the top media encomiums for the longtime publisher of National Review, a so-called "conservative" journal many suspected had been (from the beginning) no more than a stylish—if boring—CIA "front."
The nature of the lavish media praise for Buckley was best reflected by the liberal New York Times which went so far as to claim—in all seriousness—that "people of many political stripes came to see his life as something of an art form" because—among other things—Buckley rode motorcycles.
However, despite the hagiography of Buckley in the press, the full story of his intrigue has yet to be told. Although accounts of his record were much on target—in one respect—what was not said about Buckley is more revealing.
The fact is—as The New York Times asserted—Buckley did weave "the tapestry of what became the new American conservatism" during the 1950s. Using National Review as his forum, Buckley did, as the Times said, help "define the conservative movement."
Claiming Buckley's "greatest achievement was making conservatism . . . respectable in liberal post-World War II America," the Times cited a Buckley crony as declaring that, without Buckley, "there probably would be no respectable conservative movement in this country."
What all of this means is that in the early 1950s, Buckley and a clique of associates appointed themselves the new conservative leaders—pompously calling themselves "responsible conservatives"—and loudly announced (with enthusiastic media support) that all who dared to advocate old fashioned America First nationalism or to oppose U.S. meddling in endless wars abroad were no longer even to be considered "conservative" at all.
The "Buckleyites" pronounced themselves boldly internationalist, intent on "winning" the Cold War, even at the expense of a hot war. They had no desire to bring American troops home to protect America. Instead, they were venturing out on a global imperium, and old-style conservative concerns about big government. That socialism (big government) must be the inevitable consequence of military adventurism was pushed aside.
Buckley acknowledged on Jan. 25, 1952 when he wrote in Commonweal, a liberal journal, that he was willing to support what he called "Big Government" for "the duration of the Cold War" because—he said—only "a totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores" could ensure total victory over the communist menace.
The new conservatism was not new at all. In fact, Buckley's "contribution" to conservatism was introduction of a host of longtime Trotskyite (Marxist) communists as voices for "modern conservative thought."
Foremost among them, James Burnham, only 20 years earlier, had been Jewish Bolshevik Leon Trotsky's "chief spokesman" in American "intellectual" circles. Then, during World War II, Burnham worked for the Zionist- and Trotskyite-infested Office of Strategic Services, forerunner of the CIA, which later recruited Buckley while he was at Yale.
After the war, when Soviet strongman and Trotsky foe Josef Stalin began moving against the Zionists and the Trotskyites who were, in most respects, one and the same Burnham became a so-called "anticommunist liberal."
The term "anti-communist liberal"—in the Cold War—was effectively a euphemism for describing Trotskyites in America. But, led by Burnham and Buckley, the Trotskyites began transmogrifying, through the venue of National Review, into what ultimately are the now-infamous "neo-conservatives" of today.
While traditional American anti-communists wanted to contain Stalinist Russia, the Trotskyites wanted all-out war, so much so that one of Burnham's leading critics was American historian Dr. Harry Elmer Barnes, who described Burnham's shrill calls for war as being "most dangerous and un-American."
In fact, Burnham—this Trotskyite—was the chief theoretician for National Review for more than 20 years.
Another Buckley collaborator was Marvin Liebman—yet another "ex-communist"—who had smuggled arms for the Irgun terrorist gang that killed Christians, Muslims and even Jews in the drive to establish a Zionist state in Palestine. While Buckley ran the "idea" end of the carefully orchestrated seizure of the conservative movement, Leibman ran the business end, assembling massive lists of conservative Americans, most of whom had no idea their movement was being manipulated by forces that were hardly "conservative" at all.
That Buckley should traffic with a figure in the Zionist underground may have involved ulterior motives: Buckley's father—a rich oil man—was later revealed to have lucrative petroleum interests in Israel, among other places.
In addition, the late conservative Chicago Tribune columnist Walter Trojan, a highly respected name in journalism, told intimates that although Buckley was widely touted as a devout "Irish Catholic," Buckley's mother was from a German-Jewish family in New Orleans named Steiner that converted to Roman Catholicism, something common for many New Orleans Jewish families in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Whatever his heritage, young Buckley—enthusiastically encouraged by friendly promoters in the major media—authoritatively began to declare what was permissible for American conservatives to discuss: Anyone who raised questions about such issues as Zionism or the role of big international money in dictating the course of world affairs was a "conspiracy theorist" who was "beyond the pale" and delving into "fever swamps" from which Buckley vowed it was his singular mission to exterminate such pestilence, in particular that of "anti-Semitism."
Considering all of this, Buckley watchers were not surprised that "WFB" was invited to join the Council on Foreign Relations, the New York affiliate of the London-based Royal Institute of International Affairs, the foreign policy making arm of the Rothschild banking empire. Many conservatives tried to explain Buckley's CFR membership by saying Buckley would be a good counterpoint to the predominantly "liberal" point of view perceived to reign at CFR headquarters.
But when Buckley popped up in Cesme, Turkey in 1975 at the conclave of the even more powerful international Bilderberg group, established under the auspices of the Rothschild empire and its junior partners, the Rockefeller family, more people began to get the big picture.
And, when Buckley advocated legalizing marijuana and giving away the American canal in Panama, a lot of conservatives were apoplectic.
However, there were traditional conservatives who were able to withstand the Trotskyite-Zionist onslaught of the Buckley organism poisoning the conservative movement.
That's why a particular Buckley target was the expanding populist movement surrounding Liberty Lobby, founded by Willis Carto in 1955. Buckley was incensed that Liberty Lobby was growing exponentially with grass-roots support, whereas his publication received a substantial base of its subscriptions from purchases made by U.S. government propaganda agencies such as the Voice of America and U.S. propaganda libraries around the world.
When Buckley published a 1971 smear of Carto, sworn testimony later revealed that a primary source for the smear was syndicated columnist Jack Anderson.
Along with his mentor, the late Drew Pearson, Anderson had bragged that much of the garbage they peddled came from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B'nai B'rith, a known conduit for Israel's spy agency, the Mossad.
Pearson's own ex-mother-in-law, newspaper publisher Cissy Patterson, once called Pearson "both undercover agent and mouthpiece for the ADL."
After Liberty Lobby launched an extended investigation of Buckley and his affairs, some details (but not all of them) were published in The Spotlight, Buckley then filed a libel suit against Liberty Lobby in 1980.
And—not coincidentally—this came not long after Buckley's longtime friend and former colleague in the CIA station in Mexico City, E. Howard Hunt, one of the former Watergate burglars, had filed his own lawsuit against Liberty Lobby.
Not only was the CIA providing Hunt with money and attorneys, but Buckley was helping fund Hunt's lawsuit, even as Buckley was waging his own legal assault on the populist institution.
In the end, in 1985—under the skillful defense of attorney Mark Lane—Hunt's lawsuit was dealt a devastating defeat, as later described in Lane's best-selling book, Plausible Denial as well as this writer's Final Judgment.
The jury concluded—just as The Spotlight had said—that there had been CIA involvement in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and that Hunt had somehow been involved. Although Hunt denied under oath that he had any knowledge of any conspiracy to kill Kennedy, he later admitted, in a deathbed confession publicized by his own sons, that he did have foreknowledge of the impending assassination.
And, for the record, it should be noted that there were published allegations that Buckley himself may have had some role in the JFK conspiracy.
In any event, not long after Hunt's lawsuit was scuttled, Buckley's
case against Liberty Lobby came to trial. Although Buckley sued
for millions of dollars, the jury awarded Buckley only a dollar
(plus $1,000 in punitive
damages). When the verdict was announced, a Buckley supporter
in the courtroom burst into tears.
Buckley and his cronies may have had the last laugh, however. A CIA intriguer with ties to operations of Israel's Mossad later orchestrated another legal case against Liberty Lobby that led to its destruction in 2001 at the hands of a federal judge (himself tied to Mossad intrigue).
One of the individuals helping fund that lawsuit was longtime Buckley associate, ex-priest and best-selling author Malachi Martin, who—when not penning articles for Buckley—was writing for the American Jewish Committee's Commentary magazine.
Prior to that Martin had acted as a destructive Zionist agent inside the Second Vatican Council during the early 1960s, a role exposed by such diverse writers as the late Revilo P. Oliver, Michael A. Hoffman II, and Lawrence Patterson of Criminal Politics magazine. [See Michael Collins Piper's The Judas Goats for the entire story.—Ed.]
Buckley is gone, but his ugly legacy remains.
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Famed journalistic curmudgeon H.L. Mencken wrote in The Baltimore Sun nearly a century ago, "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." The current presidential (crooked) election primaries demonstrate that the adage still fits snugly with the American voter.
Speaking of the Elvis-like frenzy at a recent Barack Obama rally, Charlotte Allen of The Washington Post said:
"We scream, we swoon. How dumb can we get?" Her Post colleague, Linda Hirshman, bemoaning the fact that ". . . women are split every way they can be. They're the only bloc not voting their bloc," further wrote, "American women still aren't strategic enough to form a meaningful political movement directed at taking power."
In other words, vote for the woman simply because she's a woman. Obama can count on deriving most of the black votes for no other reason than he is at least half black.
That's certainly enough, to them, for him to be the president. This seems to be the most important determining factor for both groups: "He/she is one of us."
That's enough. Would it make any difference even if the two Democratic candidates were Rosie O'Donnell and O.J. Simpson? Probably not.
Clinton and Obama say they want "change." Really? What have you two frauds done to bring about change since you became senators? You've been sitting up there for 10 years between you.
On the Republican side, John McCain is willing to keep troops in Iraq "for a hundred years," legalize illegal aliens and generally continue to do whatever the existing agenda directs, in order to sell out American sovereignty to the New World Order.
These three traitors are chronicled, day in and day out, on the evening news and the morning newspapers. Yet, while any of them, prior to their recent elevation to "star status" by the media, would have been jubilant to draw 750 people at any speaking engagement, Ron Paul drew a crowd to the capitol steps in Austin, Texas last week estimated by police to be at 7,500. However, unless you were there, that fact would have been difficult to find out.
Certainly, no other newsman told you. So there's one more reason why Ron Paul must stay in the race and as a Republican, at least until convention time right after Labor Day. He must stay not only to enlighten the American people about his sensible platform, but also so he may be able to continue to expose the fraudulent news media for what they really are: deceivers.
Without the deceptive news media—or with fair and honest reporting—Ron Paul would have already sent John McCain back to the Senate and would already be the all but elected new president. But the media have created the appearance that the American people don't want Paul to be president, when it is the Republican planners who don't want him. As the campaign trail lengthens and the revolution expands, it is becoming more and more obvious that Ron Paul is the people's choice.
A radio commentator said that when George W. Bush took office, the euro could be bought with 82 American cents—the overnight change on your dresser. Now with the trading price at $1.53, that 2001 figure may be doubled before you read this. The American economy is crashing, and the Federal Reserve Note "dollar" is doomed. For the past quarter century or more, monetary realists have pointed out that no nation in the history of this planet has ever survived a paper money scheme, and this one won't either.
Now we have reached the end of the line. It is now a crisis. Unless the nation's constitutional monetary system of circulating gold and/or silver coin is restored—and Ron Paul is the only candidate who will do that—then this generation of Americans will witness a crash and depression that will make 1929 look like a Sunday School picnic.
Now, with that in mind, just how many black Americans or female white Americans would really want to see "one of their own" in the White House, if they knew what they were trading for it? Instead of the first woman or first black president, how about we get the first honest president?
The climate of the times demands it. Even if any of the other candidates, upon being inaugurated, decided that a move to an honest monetary system was indeed the right thing to do, he or she would have to appoint Ron Paul secretary of Treasury to carry out the plans because none of the others has a clue how to do it.
One's knowledge is only as good as one's information. If people are not aware of the above facts, then they certainly are justified in making their frivolous complaints all summer long about not having any viable candidates. On the other hand, if the multitudes can be made aware that there is one viable candidate out there—a statesman rather than just another lying politician—then not only would the meaningless debates cease but the voter's decision would be simplified, and the total vote for Ron Paul would be so overwhelming that a computer vote fraud would need to be massive indeed to prevent his election.
This is what begins to happen when an "unknown" and one who many erroneously think (because of news media deception) has already dropped out of the race, draws 7,500 people at a gathering, while the opposition quietly drools in jealousy.
One fraud, Mike Huckabee (who dropped out), the CFR's anointed one to thwart the Paul campaign with his phony conservatism, recently announced that, as president, he would "do away with the IRS." Is that plagiarizing a script from Dr. Paul? But "Fakeabee" hasn't the slightest intention of doing any sort of thing because he has no idea why it should be done. He still thinks the income tax funds something. His is no more than cheap, hollow rhetoric from a deceptive politician.
How can we know this? Because he didn't mention dismantling the FED. Ron Paul is the only candidate who knows that an income tax—and this is straight out of the Communist Manifesto—is necessary only to control a fiat currency. When governments (or in this case, private bankers) can turn on the printing presses at will, then something else is necessary to vacuum up the excess paper and credit each year to prevent hyper-inflation.
However, the system still loses a little more ground each year and eventually even the "vacuum cleaner" is not enough to handle the problem.
The income tax has no function in a system of circulating gold and/or silver coin. If you have wondered how and why both of these destructive planks surreptitiously became a part of the American system in the same year, 1913, that is your answer. One is no good without the other. Why did the people allow our government to permit an independent organization to run our economy in the first place? It was corruption from the start.
President Ron Paul would likely destroy the IRS the benign way: by pardoning every person in federal prison who is there because of a phony tax conviction and stopping all future prosecutions by doing the same thing the morning following any other convictions.
Meanwhile, Americans detest tax increases, and 10-term Congressman Ron Paul has never voted for a tax increase.
As a physician, he has delivered over 4,000 babies and is yet to meet the first mother whose pregnancy was so endangered that she required an abortion. Is it any wonder that he is "pro life?"
A few American communities are finally passing laws to deport illegal aliens, but Ron Paul would send them all home posthaste and then build a fence across the southern border to keep them out. It would cost far less than the financing of "foreign entanglements".
Guarding the borders of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California would not present any manpower problem, because President Ron Paul would bring home the thousands of troops now tormenting the peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan.
"A nation without secure borders is no nation at all," says he, who, incidentally, will never support these wars or any other war "declared" by a president instead of the constitutionally mandated Congress.
And if these Bush/Cheney wars are going so well, how come Ron Paul gets more votes and donations from military personnel than all of the other candidates combined? President Paul would do away with government "snoopervision" edicts such as the misnamed "Patriot Act," which was a giant step toward a police state and had nothing to do with stopping international terrorists.
Who can think of any reason to vote for anyone else? The answer to is: no one, if they know the facts. Ron Paul would be the choice for president in November, if the people were allowed to learn the facts.
Pat Shannan is the assistant editor of American Free Press.
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Despite the implication of what "Russian roulette" entails—a fool's game of chance with death—there is nothing suicidal about what the ruling elite in Russia is planning. No better proof exists than the election of Dmitry Medvedev as president.
Long considered to be Vladimir Putin's protégé, Medvedev secured over 70% of the vote March 2. He has vowed to continue with "the Putin Plan" which simply means a tough stance when dealing with western/Zionist interests that want to bring Russia under the thumb of the New World Order.
Following the election, Medvedev said his policies would be "a direct continuation of that path which was carried out and is being carried out by President Putin."
There were protests by disgruntled candidates and groups long alleged to be creatures of western intelligence agencies aligned with or working for the U.S., Britain, Israel's Mossad or all three. But the general mood in Russia is one of victory and confidence.
Within minutes of the announcement that Medvedev was the projected winner, large groups of Russians marched through Moscow toward the U.S. Embassy to criticize American policies in Kosovo, Iraq and the Muslim world.
There is good reason for a festive mood. Medvedev is seen as something of an adopted son to Putin, who himself is wildly popular for his no-nonsense approach when it comes to Russia's national interests. Putin is credited with pulling Russia out of the post Soviet-era corruption that marked the heyday of Boris Yeltsin's drunken and compromised presidency. He nationalized industries that had been bled dry by unscrupulous predators holding dual citizenship in Israel and funneled the proceeds into the Russian economy.
He raised the standard of living for virtually all Russians and paid off the debt to the International Monetary Fund. As a result Russia, flush with cash profits from her oil and gas sales, is now posting a surplus of over half a trillion dollars.
No newcomer to politics or to Putin's agenda, Medvedev served under the former KGB colonel as chief of staff, first deputy prime minister and then chairman of the state-controlled gas industry, Gazprom.
Given the thirst for fuel in industrialized Western Europe as well as in those Eastern European countries making up the former Soviet Union, Gazprom's importance cannot be overstated. Economically speaking, it is like a loaded gun pointed at the industrial engines of those countries lying to Russia's west. Putin has used Russia's control over these resources as political leverage with countries dependent upon her for this commodity and has exacted political concessions from them by using it. That policy will continue under Medvedev.
The new president has asked Putin to remain in government as prime minister and Putin has accepted.
Although a post with diminished powers from those of the president, it still affords Putin the opportunity of remaining on the scene and personally overseeing the business taking place in Russia's legislative body, the Duma. In parliamentary elections late last year, Putin's "United Russia" party secured close to 80% of the seats. With a friendly parliament under his watch as premier, new legislation could be written greatly expanding the powers of Putin's newly acquired office.
Putin will be an important advisor to Medvedev. As demonstrated throughout centuries of history, advisors often have as much or more influence than elected official officials. And, should anything unexpected happen, such as Medvedev deciding that the responsibilities and rigors of his new job are too much, a new election would take place in which Putin could legally run for a new term. The Russian constitution only bars a person from holding the office of the presidency more than twice consecutively.
In terms of foreign policy, Putin compared George Bush to a "maniac threatening people with a razor" and Medvedev said the president was "semi-senile." Both men understand the nature of predators and it can be expected that the new president and his right-hand man in the Duma will continue to pour Russia's growing wealth into modernizing her armed forces so that the world's largest country possessing some of the world's largest natural reserves does not go the way of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Western nations will attempt to worm their way into the Medvedev presidency through a combination of threats, bribes, flatteries and insults as they try to reclaim what has been lost under the Putin presidency.
This appears doomed to fail, as the power base in Russia is diffuse, yet united in its will to survive.
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For more than 40 years, the brave survivors of the USS Liberty have tried telling the world what happened to them on June 8, 1967, when Israel sneak attacked the nearly defenseless ship for over an hour with as many as 1,000 rockets, tens of thousands of armor-piercing rounds and five torpedoes.
For the most part, the American media has yawned and decided to cover the latest Hollywood scandal or some other nonsense.
Now survivors of the Liberty will not be forced to beg a criminally incompetent media to tell the truth about what they have endured. The USS Liberty survivors have their own live radio program, appearing on the Republic Broadcasting Network at www.republicbroadcasting.org.
The live, two-hour call-in program airs every Saturday from 10 a.m. to 12 noon CST and is hosted by Phil Tourney (survivor of the Liberty and three-time president of the Liberty Veterans Association) and Mark Glenn, a contributing editor for American Free Press.
The weekly program will also have in-depth analyses of current political events that have as their origin the fact that a U.S. ship was attacked in an act of premeditated, undeclared war and was not rectified. Appearances by many of the other survivors of the Liberty will be a regular theme, talking about what they went through that day and what has happened to them since that time.
Prominent patriots will also appear on the show. Persons wishing to listen to the program live can do so by going to www.republicbroadcasting.org and clicking on the "Listen Live" option. For those unable to listen the program in real-time, it will be archived for later listening.
Suggestions for program ideas can be sent to Phil Tourney at tonktime5@yahoo.com or Mark Glenn at nomorewarsforisrael@gmail.com. Sponsors for the program are also encouraged.
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Over the past several months, conservative devotees of Israel were calling for the head of Adm. William "Fox" Fallon, the tough-talking, no-nonsense chief of the U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for U.S. military operations in the Mideast, East Africa and Central Asia.
On March 11 the conservatives got what they wanted. The admiral resigned his post, citing public controversy over his deep philosophical differences with the Bush administration on foreign policy matters.
Although both the admiral and the administration insisted for public consumption that there were no such differences, powerful forces with an interest in U.S. foreign policy—particularly pro-Israel pressure groups and their influential financial backers—have raised serious questions over the past year about Fallon's commitment to Bush administration policies that are seen as vital to Israel's security interests.
Most recently there's been a buzz in higher circles about an admiring article about Fallon in the new issue of Esquire magazine written by former Pentagon official Thomas P.M. Barnett. Although Fallon, ironically, said that he had problems with the article, it nonetheless regenerated discussion of Fallon's concerns about the direction of the Bush administration's policies.
Israel and its supporters in the United States have long been angry that, upon assuming his post, Fallon had dared to declare that there would be no war against Iran during his watch. Fallon's comment was seen as a direct challenge not only to the Israeli lobby, which has been pushing for U.S. war against Iran, but also to President Bush, who has, of course, been the chief propagandist in the campaign against Iran, even in the wake of the disaster in Iraq that Bush and his pro-Israel "high priests of war" orchestrated.
Fallon also implied in a conversation with Army Col. Patrick Lang, a former analyst with the Defense Intelligence Agency, that he (Fallon) would resign his post in protest rather than follow orders by Bush to wage war against Iran.
Fallon further infuriated the administration (and pro-Israel circles) by dismissing the Bush regime's insistence on using the term "the long war" as a way of hyping the so-called "war on terrorism." The admiral also caused much consternation by referring publicly to the "crazies" in neo-conservative circles who were demanding U.S. military interventions across the Middle East on behalf of Israel.
Israel and its supporters considered Fallon the No. 1 "Arabist" in the Central Command which longtime pro-Israel shill Bill Gertz, writing in The Washington Times, complained "is dominated by Arabists who do not understand Islamist theology." Gertz charged that the generals at the Central Command are "thoroughly confused . . . on the nature of the terrorist threat."
In other words, Fallon and his high-ranking military colleagues were not prepared to thoroughly endorse the concept that all U.S. military operations must be coordinated for the purpose of advancing Israel's geopolitical aims in the Mideast.
Following 9-11, Israel's propagandists began pounding away at the theme of "fighting terrorism" as the foundation for stoking up U.S. public support for Israel (which they claim is based upon something they call "Islamo-Fascism") and although most Americans don't know it, many top-ranking military leaders, intelligence analysts, diplomats and others do not buy the argument that the "terrorist threat" is as serious or organized as Israel and the pro-Israel mass media in America insist.
The attacks on Fallon were part of a long-standing Israeli propaganda campaign against American military leaders being conducted by such groups as the Washington-based Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), which has been described as "a virtual agency of the Israeli government."
In the fall 2006 issue of its Journal of International Security
Affairs, JINSA featured an article calling for a classic "witch-hunt"
aimed at U.S. military leaders and others in the diplomatic and
intelligence community who are perceived to be unsupportive of
Israel.
The author of the article, Walid Phares, who is associated with
a Zionist public policy front known as the Foundation for the
Defense of the Democracies, asserted that there are anti-American
and anti-Israel "adversaries" at high levels in the
American military and intelligence establishment.
In his article "Future Terrorism—Mutant Jihads," Phares asked: How deeply have jihadist elements infiltrated the U.S. government and federal agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, and various military commands, either through sympathizers or via actual operatives?
Since there are few Muslim Americans or even Arab Americans in any substantial numbers in the FBI, Homeland Security, the Department of Defense etc, the suggestion that "jihadist" elements have "infiltrated" our government might seem silly to the average American.
But in the fevered minds of JINSA, the real concern is that there are growing numbers of people high up in the FBI and the CIA and in the military who are getting "fed up" with Zionist power in America.
Top military leaders openly dismissed the need for war against Iraq and Iran, both wars of which have been longtime goals of the Zionist lobby. This, in the view of the JINSA sphere, constitutes effective collaboration with and sympathy for the dreaded "jihadists."
For example, on May 11, 2005, the New York-based Forward, a leading Jewish community newspaper, reported that Barry Jacobs of the Washington office of the American Jewish Committee said he believed there are high-ranking officials in the U.S. intelligence community who are hostile to Israel and waging war against pro-Israel lobbyists and their neo-conservative allies in the inner circles of the Bush administration.
Citing the ongoing FBI investigation of espionage by officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the leading pro-Israel lobby group, Forward reported that this top-level Jewish community leader believes, in Forward's summary, that "the notion that American Jews and Pentagon neo-conservatives conspired to push the United States into war against Iraq, and possibly also against Iran, is pervasive in Washington's intelligence community."
In the end, though, what's interesting is that prior to the explosion of reports in the mainstream media about the dissatisfied generals—four years after American Free Press first broke the story at a national level, even before the invasion of Iraq—the April 2006 issue of America's oldest and most respected magazine, Harper's, featured a provocative cover story: "American Coup d'Etat: Military Thinkers Discuss the Unthinkable"—the "unthinkable" being the apparent possibility that American military leaders could move against the president if he ordered them to wage a war that they did not believe was in America's national interests.
This was one month after Harper's—in another cover story—called for the impeachment of Bush. Clearly, some people in high places were—and are—not happy with the pro-Israel internationalism (and war-mongering policies) of the Bush regime. And Adm. Fallon was one of them. That's why he is has effectively been forced out of his post, the aim of the pro-Israel propagandists.
A journalist specializing in media critique, Michael Collins Piper is the author of Final Judgment, The High Priests of War, The New Jerusalem, Dirty Secrets, The Judas Goats: The Enemy Within and The Golem: Israel's Nuclear Hell Bomb and the Road to Global Armageddon. All are available from AFP. He has lectured across the globe.
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The cost of direct U.S. military operations in Iraq—not including long-term costs such as taking care of wounded veterans—already exceeds the cost of the 12-year war in Vietnam and is more than double the cost of the Korean War.
These costs are projected to be almost 10 times the cost of the first Gulf War, almost a third more than the cost of the Vietnam War, and twice that of World War I. The only war in U.S. history that cost more was the World War II, when 16.3 million U.S. troops fought in a campaign lasting four years, at a total cost (in 2007 dollars, after adjusting for inflation) of about $5 trillion.
With virtually the entire armed forces committed to fighting the Germans and Japanese, the cost per GI (in today's dollars) was less than $100,000. By contrast, the Iraq war is costing upward of $400,000 per soldier.
America is spending $16 billion a month on running costs alone. Running expenses for 2008 are projected to exceed $12.5 billion a month for Iraq alone, up from $4.4 billion in 2003. A contractor working as a security guard gets about $400,000 a year, more than 10 times what the government spends on a soldier. To save money, if a soldier is injured, he is forced to repay his sign-up bonus.
One soldier was sued for $12,000 for loss of his helmet and equipment even though he had suffered massive brain damage in an attack.
The Pentagon keeps two sets of books. The first is the official casualty list posted on the DoD website. The second, hard-to-find set of data is available only on a different website and can be obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. This data shows that the total number of soldiers who have been wounded, injured, or suffered from disease is double the number wounded in combat. New research by the Stiglitz/Bilmes team shows that the majority of these injuries and illnesses can be tied directly to service in the war.
After Linda Bilmes published a paper on the cost to veterans, the then-assistant secretary for Health at the Pentagon phoned her and her dean and demanded, "Where did you get these numbers?"
Bilmes said, "I got them from your website, which we now
have access to."
He said, "Oh, that can't be."
Bilmes said, "Well, look at your website."
He said, "Well, fax me my own website." So she faxed him his website.
Then they took down those websites. Then they directed the Department of Veterans Affairs to change the Veterans' websites.
This trickery is seen in the president's proposal for the FY09 budget for veterans. Ostensibly the budget is being increased by $5 billion, But if you look at the fine print, they're hoping to recoup over $3 billion by increasing the co-pays and all the fees on the veterans who need to use the services.
While shafting the soldiers, the administration insists on "sole-source bidding," awarding vast, multi-year contracts to Halliburton, et al., instead of putting them out for bids.
"An academic might say, ‘How can you be a free market,
yet demand single source contracting?'" asks Joseph E. Stiglitz,
co-author of The Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq
Conflict.*
——
*The Three Trillion DollarWar:The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict
by Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes. Hardcover: 192 pages
Published byW.W. Norton, NewYork.
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A recent article entitled "A Requiem for Ron Paul," written by Stacy Cowley for Fortune Small Business magazine online, begins:
"Ron Paul's Friday announcement that his presidential
campaign ‘will soon
wind down' removes from the race a quixotic figure whose doomed
pursuit of the White House inspired libertarians and free-market
purists, including many business owners who loved his message
about a nation free from regulatory fetters."
Asked by AFP why she wrote that Paul had dropped out when he has not, Miss Cowley replied, "I think we stand by what was written," while claiming that the article was "not a bias against a particular candidate; it's just a function of how the media operates."
When reminded that Paul has not actually pulled out like Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney did when they officially quit, she seemed to dodge the matter, while portraying her article as a whole as "a tribute to what he (Paul) was trying to accomplish." She also told AFP that she put the article together (with two other reporters, just for an average length piece) near deadline, though Miss Cowley said she watched all of Paul's latest video.
The mainstream media sees Paul as numerically out of the running in terms of delegates. But Paul confirmed he's still in the race to keep his ideas in the arena (and to be there if McCain falls from grace or if delegates are not bound to McCain in September at the Republican National Convention).
Reporters and editors in the mainstream media want to spin their stories, instead of reporting actual statements and events as they unfold without prejudice. The result is that not enough Americans know about "the other guy" still standing in the GOP field. This deceives the electorate when the nation is in dire straits—and when many who don't want to vote Democratic also don't like McCain but generally are not aware there is another choice.
AFP viewed the same video that Miss Cowley and many other mainstream hacks saw, which is Rep. Paul's latest video statement to supporters posted on ronpaul2008.com. It shows that he has not dropped out of the presidential race. But nearly all media outlets have persistently claimed that he has quit. While Paul does say "victory in the conventional political sense is not available in the presidential race," he nevertheless clearly remains in the presidential race.
"The campaign for freedom will continue in this new phase—in this we will need financial resources to continue," he states in a comment that the major media will not touch in its relentless effort to nudge Paul out of the race, much in the way that former Democratic candidate Rep. Dennis Kucinich (Ohio) was forced out of the running when he was not asked by network wonks to take part in a major televised debate. He charged then that the media was making his decisions for him, rather than allowing him to decide for himself whether to remain in the running.
A valuable spinoff of the Paul campaign is exposure of the major media for what it is—an untrustworthy propaganda belt that cannot be believed. This manipulative information ministry lately has hung its hat on Paul's statement in the video that "the presidential campaign will soon wind down."
However, the next words out of Paul's mouth were: "But we do still encourage all effort to gain the maximum number of votes and delegates in all the remaining primaries and to continue the caucus process that's ongoing in other states by loyal volunteers."
The big media also has latched onto Paul's words: "We must remember, elections are short-term efforts. Revolutions are long-term projects."
Many reports have characterized that video comment as signaling a dignified surrender. However, Paul said on CNN's American Morning show: "If you're in a campaign for only gaining power, that's one thing. If you're in a campaign to influence ideas and the future of the country, the campaign is never over."
Some supporters say the Paul campaign is slow in setting the record straight when the media lie about his status. Evening news reports on NBC and other national networks report as if Paul doesn't exist. It's just the lackluster McCain on one hand, and Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on the other.
Paul has remained true to his word that as long as his supporters want him to remain in the presidential running, he will do so—even as McCain remains the media hyped "leader" for the GOP but is vulnerable to mounting scandals and revelations about his counterfeit conservatism and his checkered past.
Besides being listed as a member of the infamous Council on Foreign Relations in the CFR's 2007 report— putting him in close quarters with the ruling-class establishment that pushes for a U.S. empire and a North American Union—McCain has not earned much heartfelt support from Republican-leaning media pundits (Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, etc) and various longtime GOP fixtures such as evangelical leader James Dobson.
But this GOP clique will not even mention Paul as the Reagan-like figure they claim to be longing for. But, as noted in Newsweek, Paul knew Reagan well, admires and practices some of his philosophy (get rid of the Education Department) and won "The Gipper's" personal support when seeking election to Congress.
Paul did not want to lose the Republican nomination for his Texas congressional seat, since he wants to continue his revolution. He won that hands down versus a determined opponent. And, as AFP has noted, with that victory in his back pocket, his load is lighter and he is able to stay in the presidential running to at least give old-guard Republican voters a constitutional choice.
Republicans, Paul said on CNN, "have a right to vote for someone that stands for traditional Republican principles."
In his latest video, Paul also reiterated the idea of having a summer march in Washington to amplify his revolution's ideas and emphasize its enduring presence on the political scene.
"It looks to me like June 21 would be a good day," he said, adding, however, that other individuals or groups, instead of the Paul campaign, would have to be the march's main organizers. He attributed this to legal, logistical and practical reasons. If his march happens, AFP will be there. As for the other media, who knows?
AFP Contributing Editor Mark Anderson can be reached via email at truthhound2@yahoo.com.
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THE ADMINISTRATION IS STILL PRESSURING Congress not to end a program that lets Mexican trucks without brakes and thin tires shimmy down U.S. streets without limitation. The Mexican government is likely to retaliate with economic sanctions if Congress eliminates the trucking program, which is authorized under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the administration warned.
"Whatever their reason, this is no time to let the politics of pessimism dim the promise of prosperity," said Transportation Secretary Mary Peters as Senate hearings on the issue began.
This "prosperity" is hard for U.S. truckers, who have lost their jobs to low-paid Mexican drivers, to understand. Before the NAFTA treaty, Mexican truckers were required to transfer their loads to U.S. trucks or trains at the border.
The cross-border program started Sept. 4, 2007 Congress did not renew the cross-border program in its fiscal 2008 budget, but the Transportation Department continues to operate the program. The Teamsters Union has opposed the trucking program in a lawsuit that is pending in federal court in San Francisco. The Teamsters argue that the Department of Transportation acted outside its authority by continuing the program after Congress let it expire. The union and its supporters also argue that Mexico has failed to upgrade its truck-inspection facilities or enforce safety regulations to meet U.S. standards.
"Safety standards in Mexico simply are not on par with those in the United States, and few U.S. trucking companies even appear interested in going south," said Todd Spencer, vice president of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, a Grain Valley, Mo. trade organization.
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Throughout the 1990s, Bill and Hillary Clinton were hounded by a massive real estate scandal which came to be known as "Whitewater." Now. A decade later, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has similar troubles. Obama's pal, Antoin "Tony" Rezko, is in a Chicago courtroom facing federal corruption charges.
These proceedings affect the Democratic presidential front-runner because Rezko has been described as Obama's bagman, fixer, and primary campaign fundraiser, In fact, Rezko funneled so much cash to Obama that after he was indicted on fraud extortion, and money laundering charges, Obama suddenly "donated $157,835 in Rezko-linked contributions to charity."
Similar to Hillary's explanations for Whitewater, Obama dismisses his connections to Rezko as nothing more than a "boneheaded mistake" over a little land deal. But their ties go much deeper.
Associates since 1990, Rezko's fortunes grew as his notoriety as a slumlord increased. Most of the government-subsidized properties Rezko let deteriorate to deplorably unlivable standards were located in areas where Obama turned a blind eye as a community organizer or state senator. In addition, Obama also performed legal work for rezko on these properties and gave an internship - at Rezko's request - to the son of John Aramada, who was a Rezko contributor and co-conspirator in his federal corruption case.
Obama and Rezko bought adjoining lots in a Chicago suburb in 2005. When Obama wanted to increase the size of his $1.65 million property, he purchased part of Rezko's parcel from his wife Rita. Fully aware that Rezko was being investigated by the U.S. attorney when his transaction took place. Obama still went forward with the deal.
There is also evidence of questionable campaign financing, where donors would legally contribute money to Rezko, who would then reimburse Obama with laundered money (Chicago Sun-Times, Jan. 8, 2008). This technique is almost identical to how the Clintons moved dirt money though the Arkansas Development Finance Authority (ADFA) to raise funds for Bill's gubernatorial elections during the 1980s.
Obama's Achilles heel has now surfaced, for Rezko has also
been involved in wire fraud, influence peddling, bribery, kickbacks,
extortion of money from companies doing business with the Illinois
Reacher's Retirement Board, and highly suspect deals involving
Iraqi wheeler-dealer Nadhmi Auchi, an accomplice of Saddam Hussein,
who's been charged with bribing various political figures in Britain
(among othr shady endeavors). Will the American mainstream media
expose Obama's skeletons, or will they continue their sweetheart
reportage?
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President bush is Quietly urging his internationalist buddies in the Senate to "pick the right moment" and ratify the sovereignty-surrendering Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST). The "right moment" would be late at night and on an explosive news day such as (God Forbid) another 9-11 style attack that would wipe everything else off page one and reduce any other story to a short, inside version or nothing at all.
The "right moment" could be Election Day, Nov. 4, 2008. There can be little doubt most Americans will be glued to the idiot box waiting to learn who will become president and newspapers the following day will be heavy in election coverage not only of the presidential race but also congressional and local elections. You would hear or read probably nothing about the Senate ratifying the LOST.
Bush's support of the LOST is one of his great betrayals of this country. LOST has been lingering for years. President Ronald Reagan refused to submit it to the Senate for ratification and had the treaty "unsigned" by the United States rather than surrender sovereignty to international bureaucrats acting under the United Nations. Even President George H.W. Bush refused to act on LOST.
Bilderberg President bill Clinton signed it and wanted to submit it to the Senate. But a test vote showed more than 90 senators opposed, so Slick Willie withheld submission for tactical reasons. Under Bilderberg pressure, the current President Bush quietly submitted LOST to the Senate for ratification - but timing is critical.
It is important that senators be warned by constituents that if they vote to ratify LOST, they will be exposed in the fullness of time and punished for their treachery at the ballot box. They should be reminded that they are members of the U.S. Senate, not a world parliament.
You can be forgiven if you stop reading now, because Spotlight on Congress has detailed the sins of LOST many times, but it is impossible to overstress the need to preserve national sovereignty.
Under LOST, UN bureaucrats could tell Americans where ships
- including military vessels - can and cannnot sail. Waterways,
such as the Mississippi River, that are connected to the oceans,
could fall under UN domain. About 75% of the Earth would be UN-controlled.
The international commissions that wold make binding determinations
in disputes are loaded with third-world officials who are hostile
to everything American except the billions of tax dollars thrown
at them.
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AFP Corresponding Editor Mark Anderson began his new radio show, When Worlds Collide, on the Republic Broadcasting Network on March 11. The show will run every Tuesday from 11 a.m to 1 p.m. Central Time.
"The audience will be presented with various important issues and problems, via my own statements and those of guests, with an emphasis on how to solve them or at least break them down into manageable pieces. A major goal will be to inspire people to act constructively and not adopt a doomed ‘all is lost' attitude," said Anderson, who has worked in the newspaper business for 25 years, having started in weekly and daily newspapers in Michigan and Indiana. He also dabbled in radio and con-published a quarterly paper, The Herald Republic, from 2002 to 2005.
A major ongoing theme on Anderson's radio show will be the dominant U.S. media and its role in confusing, misinforming, diverting and dumbing down the populace. In this area, a lot of media propaganda will be very carefully dissected so listeners will understand how they are being deceived. Anderson will invite rarely heard guests on his show to reveal what really ails america so actual solutions can materialize.
"Whether the subject is the media specifically or not, the media's role will be analyzed," Anderson explained. "The backdrop will be a ‘Main Street vs. Wall Street' theme - the world of the average American and the world of the elite - and the need to stop the destruction of Middle America by the ruling class minority; hence the name, When Worlds Collide."
For AFP, Anderson writes the news series Across the Nation. Having closely followed Ron Paul's presidential candidacy, he also authored AFP's special report "The Ron Paul Revolution." He is researching expanding that report into a book.
The toll free call-in number to RBN's radio shows is 800-313-9443.
For more information, go to republicbroadcasting.org online.
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When the scandal involving former New York Gov. Elliot Spitzer and his tryst with a $5,000 a night prostitute named "Kristen" was injected, like an informational narcotic, into the American consciousness, most people merely chalked it up as yet one more corrupt politician caught with his pants down.
But there may be more to this than hypocrisy and infidelity. The hidden hand of Israel appears.
Don't assume Spitzer's infidelity was an isolated event. Realistic persons can assume, rightly, that U.S. political figures are as rare at businesses peddling flesh as grave diggers are at cemeteries. Immorality seems to be a political requirement in New York. New Gov. David Paterson and his wife, Michelle both announced extramarital affairs.
The now infamous Emperor's VIP Club providing "services" to Spitzer was operated by Mark Michael Brener, an Israeli national who, when arrested, was in possession of two Israeli passports and, some reports said, $600,000 in cash. The connection between the state of Israel and the international trafficking of pornography, prostitution, and the sex slave business (that is legal in Israel, provided the slave is not Jewish) is a well-founded fact. Gangsters from the "Russian Mafiya" (which Jewish American writer Robert Friedman "outed" as being not as much Russian as Jewish) have made Israel their home away from home in running their international operations and enjoy close ties with Israel's Mossad.
In both his books, By Way of Deception and The Other Side of Deception, former Israeli intelligence officer Victor Ostrovsky details how one of Mossad's primary functions was entrapping important persons involved in politics, business, media and whatnot into compromising and embarrassing positions so as to make them more "pliable" to the demands of the Jewish state. The fact that the Emperor's Club was operating on an international basis indicates that it was connected with the intelligence services of a foreign country that could offer it protection and cover. The "escort service" may have served a dual role as a blackmailing operation for America's power elite.
Supposedly, the whole affair was discovered as a result of "financial irregularities" that triggered an investigation in 2006 that made its way up to the Justice Department. How fortuitous, then, for the war-hungry neocons that the story broke shortly before the "resignation" of Adm. William Fallon, commander of CentCom.
As commander of all military operations in the Middle East, Fallon was the one man standing in the way of George Bush and his neocon "crazies" (Fallon's words) from attacking Iran. He made it clear on several occasions that an attack on Iran would not happen on "his watch" and signaled his absolute opposition to widening an already disastrous war to include Judea's ancient enemies in Persia.
News was leaked a week prior to Fallon's "resignation" that he might be "relieved of duty" by President Bush. Then, almost by magical coincidence, there is Spitzer caught in the middle of everything, and during the days when Fallon's story would have gotten traction. Tragically, the sacking of the one man who could have delayed Armageddon is washed down the memory hole.
If this was a deliberate political hit and Spitzer was not some innocent bystander caught in the cross fire, there are several reasons why he would have been targeted ahead of others. As a Jew he committed a capital offense within his community when, as attorney general for New York state, he investigated powerful Jewish groups, including the World Jewish Congress. Tasked with receiving, handling and distributing reparations for Holocaust survivors through one of its adjuncts, the "Claims Conference," Spitzer's investigation concentrated on "financial irregularities" within the organization.
A story appearing in the Israeli publication Ynetnews of 2006 (the same year the investigations directed by and against Spitzer took place) entitled "Where Did the Shoah Money Go? details how a pittance of the billions collected in Holocaust reparations actually makes its way into the hands of survivors while at the same time executives of the WJC and Claims Conference spend millions on lavish trips for themselves annually.
Ynetnews discussed Spitzer's investigation as well as his "grave" report on the matter, that revealed "apparent financial irregularities amounting to millions of dollars, administrative deficiencies and circular transfers of $1.2 million from the accounts of the WJC in New York to a bank account in Geneva. . . . From there, the money found its way to a private bank account in England and from there to an account in the name of a private company called Solar. . . . Upon opening of the investigation, the money was returned. . . ."
The piece went on to describe how the money was used by officials of the WJC for lavish trips to Paris, Berlin, Rome, Vienna, Geneva, Rio de Janeiro, Budapest, London, and Tel Aviv. In one case involving then president of the organization Israel Singer, it was revealed that in one year's time he personally spent almost half a million dollars on first-class plane tickets, posh hotel rooms and sumptuous meals. In addition, Spitzer's investigation revealed Singer withdrew as much as $750,000 in a year's time for "expenses" related to "Shoah" business that obviously would be written off as a tax deduction.
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Since 2003, Chinese military hackers have been causing havoc in the computer networks of some of America's most secure military and nuclear centers. It is now believed terrorists can also see the value in launching cyber attacks against U.S. computer systems.
The Chinese threat from cyberspace has developed at an alarming rate and for the Chinese military and intelligence services it has proved the most cost-effective way of stealing our nuclear, industrial and defense secrets.
In the past five years Chinese hackers, under the guidance of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) cyber-warfare branch, have penetrated systems at the Pentagon and, more importantly, at Sandia Laboratories, the heart of America's nuclear research and design facilities. They have also been detected inside computers at jet propulsion centers and within our space program.
When it was first discovered (about 2003) they were traveling through secure U.S. networks, carefully selecting classified data, the FBI gave them the title "Titan Rain." More recently that name has been scrapped and they have been accorded another name that remains classified. Unlike regular hackers, they work with speed and precision that indicates they are highly trained to search for specific types of information, while leaving little trace of their presence. It has taken considerable time and effort by computer experts within the U.S. military, Navy and intelligence community to track their movements.
It appears they use service providers in places like Hong Kong, South Korea and Eastern Europe in order to hide their identity and their true place of origin.
Nevertheless, U.S. trackers all agree that the information they have been stealing finds its way to computer centers run by the PLA in mainland China. The sheer scale of their activities indicates that the Chinese military has not only developed an advanced cyber capability but is shaping it into a weaponized form. Someday, it may be used to mount attacks against the banking systems of this country or other major parts of our infrastructure, which are increasingly driven by technology and ultimately rely on the Internet.
In the past two years, our allies have been targeted too. The British Foreign Office email system came under attack, as did parts of the defense structure. Germany and France have also been the subject of periodic probing attempts by the Chinese to test the security of their networks. All of this has forced the United States and its NATO partners to seriously rethink the nature of modern warfare and to accept that future attacks from cyberspace could create as much economic damage as a major terrorist event.
For example, if cyber attacks were to shut down the U.S. banking system or airline computers the damage to the U.S. economy would be enormous. There is also a real threat that Chinese military hackers could disable America's defense networks in a time of war.
There was a stark reminder of the threat from hackers when Estonia, a small East European country that was once part of the Soviet empire, was crippled by Internet attacks in April 2007. The attacks began after ethnic Russians, and their supporters within Russia, were angered by the removal of a Soviet-era military monument in the center of the Estonian capital, Tallin.
For Estonians the statue was a constant reminder of a once brutal Soviet rule, but for ethnic Russians and hard-liners in Moscow it was "blasphemy" to remove it.
The episode sparked rioting followed by cyber attacks that shut down major Estonian government websites, as well as banks and broadcast outlets. Estonia appealed to NATO for assistance and got it— but not before it had become evident the attacks were well coordinated. There were claims the masterminds were Russian military hackers, but that was never proven. What did emerge was that most of the attacks were carried out by groups of young ethnic Russians in Estonia and hackers in Russia.
For the U.S. and NATO, it was a wake-up call and a sober reminder that if highly motivated groups could carry out successful attacks against Estonia, which had highly developed computer systems, what could a determined enemy like China or al Qaeda do? Following the Estonia attacks, NATO's Computer Incident Response Capability Coordination Center was put on high alert and told to be ready to fend off the next attack against a friend or ally on the European continent.
On March 6, 2008, NATO cyber-boss, Suleyman Anil, told hi-tech experts in London that cyber tools have become dangerous weapons we can no longer ignore. He admitted he was especially worried that rogue states and terrorists would see a high value in developing cyber skills because they were cheap to acquire and just as devastating as conventional weapons.
"Cyber war can become a very effective global problem because it is low risk, low cost, highly effective and easily globally deployable. It is an ideal weapon that nobody can ignore," he warned.
He further stressed the need for the west to strengthen its cyber defenses because they were highly vulnerable. His comments were not lost on the UN, which is due to introduce a doctrine citing that a cyber attack against a member state will be judged an attack against all UN states. Such a move is not expected to change the dynamics of the emerging cyber threat to the U.S. and NATO or to prevent the Chinese continuing to penetrate U.S. defense networks.
Last year, there were attacks from Chinese military hackers on the Pentagon's computers and also on defense computers in Germany, India and Australia.
The threat of cyber attacks of a more crippling nature on the U.S. economy has forced defense analysts to think of cyber war in the same ways they think of other forms of warfare. As a consequence, there is an emerging doctrine in Washington, which will soon be applied by America's allies, that a major cyber assault should be accorded the same response as a major conventional attack. In other words, a devastating cyber attack launched from China in the future could see America's cyber warriors swing into action. Alternatively, America's military could launch a conventional strike against China's military or economic infrastructure, exchanging a cyber bomb for a conventional bomb.
On the horizon there is a new cyber threat that concerns the U.S. and its European allies. Intelligence experts in Washington and London have been aware for some time that al-Qaeda has been developing a cyber capability to go hand in hand with major terrorist attacks. The real fear is that an al-Qaeda suicide attack on the subway systems in New York or London could be launched in tandem with a cyber attack on computer networks dealing with emergency response, thus causing untold chaos in the midst of carnage.
For al-Qaeda, cyber weapons are cheap to acquire and difficult to detect. An advantage for the terrorists is that some of the most advanced computer hackers in the world are from India and Pakistan, countries with large Muslim populations.
Richard Walker is the nom de plume of a former mainstream news producer and best selling co-author now writing for AFP.
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How did we get from a "profitable" war against Iraq to a $6 trillion swirling black hole that threatens to flush the United States and the world down the drain? Follow the dollars. Follow the lies:
One month before the invasion of Iraq, Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar met with President Bush in Crawford, Tex., Feb. 22, 2003, to beg him, on behalf of European leaders, not to start a war.
The Egyptians made a deal with Saddam Hussein to go into exile to avoid a devastating war against Iraq. Saddam wanted a payment of $1 billion and, for insurance, to keep all the information about how the neocons had supplied him with his weapons of mass destruction. Bush quipped that sending Saddam into exile would save the American people $50 billion for the costs of the war.
That "$50 billion" was a lie. White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey was fired in 2002 for daring to predict the war might cost $200 billion.
Paul Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense, testified to Congress on March 27, 2003 that oil revenue from Iraq would pay for the Iraq war. "The oil revenues of Iraq could bring between $50 billion and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years," he said. "We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon."
When Wolfowitz and the neocons were peddling the tale that Iraqi oil would lower the price of gas, oil was selling for around $20-25 per barrel.
Five years after "mission accomplished," it is over $100 per barrel and gasoline is $3.50 and more per gallon and rising—as the value of the dollar plummets.
This is great for oil companies reaping record billion dollar profits. The House of Saud and the House of Bush, along with the contractors (and of course Israel), are the only beneficiaries of this war.
The Congressional Budget Office estimate for the cost of the war so far is $500 billion. That figure appeared unbelievably low to Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Memorial Prize winner for economics and the chief economist at the World Bank, who is critical of globalism. Linda Bilmes, lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard Univ., agreed. In 2005 they researched the facts and published a report in January 2006 showing the true cost for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was between $1 trillion and $2 trillion.
An outraged Bush blasted Stiglitz and Bilmes, sneering, "We don't go to war on the calculations of green-eye-shaded accountants or economists."
Another CBO report put war costs at $604 billion. Adjusted for inflation, that $604 billion is higher than the costs of the Korea and Vietnam conflicts, according to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (AFP, March 24, 2008).
Stiglitz and Bilmes discovered, after months of chasing often deliberately obscured accounts, Bush's Iraqi-Afghan adventure will cost America—just America—a conservatively estimated $3 trillion. But don't forget, it will cost the rest of the world at least another $3 trillion.
These findings are published in a 192-page exposé, The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict, available at libraries and bookstores. Freelance writer Ralph Forbes can be contacted via email at justrite@ipa.net
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IN 1992, POLITICAL ADVISOR James Carville launched Bill Clinton toward the White House with the slogan "It's the Economy, Stupid," posted on the walls of every campaign office. He was on target but missed the bull's-eye. In reality, "It's the Legal Tender, Stupid."
A friend wrote that when his first great-grandchild arrived a few weeks ago, he thought, "Gotta start a little education fund for the tyke," just as he had done with all his grandchildren. Then he reminded himself that the Federal Reserve had just promised to turn up the money-inflating machine, making any conventional savings program a waste of time—not to mention the money.
The weakness of the dollar makes any saving of dollar-denominated paper assets pointless. Why would any rational person, unless totally ignorant of what is happening, save a dollar in an account that pays less than 3% a year when the rate of inflation is 10% or more? Disregarding the "official" annual rates that are continual, boring lies, just reach back in your own mind to only one year ago. How much did you pay for eggs? Bread and other food items? Gasoline? And if you can buy any of those today for less than a 10% increase from 12 months ago, please tell me where to do it, because I can't. These are the true inflation indicators— at your lunch counters, gasoline stations and supermarkets —not some figures from a government-funded, bureaucratic deceiver.
On my first sales job in the 1960s, I was traveling through 11 states throughout the southeast, and my daily lunch always cost between 65 and 75 cents of lawful money (silver coin), depending upon where I was and how much I wanted to splurge that day. (Oh, how wonderful it was to blow an extra dime and sit in a first class joint.) And I filled the tank of my old Chevy for four bucks.
A few years ago, when your average plate lunch of an entrée and two or three veggies, with iced tea included went to exactly ten times the 1960s figures, I began to talk and write about it, remembering that nothing had changed about the meal except the price. The buildings were just as modern, the floors and tables were just as clean, the restrooms still needed attention and the waitresses were just as sassy. Only the price had gone up.
But then I remembered my independent education about lawful money and realized that the price of lunch and everything else was still the same. A dollar of lawful money now required ten Fed "dollar" notes to obtain. So anyone with knowledge of lawful money realized that the plate lunch was still costing the same as in the 1960s. It was just that the banksters had hoodwinked us into using their paper scrip, issued by their privately owned Fed bank. [Which isn't federal and has no reserves. Ed.]
Now put the same yardstick to today's price of lunch and you will find that it matches in real cost of 40 years ago. A $1,000 (face value) bag of pre-1965 silver coin now goes for $16,000 in Fed notes.
How much did you pay for lunch today? I paid $10.40, with no dessert. Divide that by 16 and see what you get: 65 cents. This should help you realize that nothing has increased in cost in your whole life, but what you have been using to make purchases has continually decreased in value, thereby requiring more of it. The nation's founders had a similar problem in the 1780s and solved it with hard (metal) money. That lasted for some 125 years, until the banksters schemed a way around the constitutional mandate (never been amended and still on the books), "No state shall make any thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts."
Now George Bush, wallowing in a fool's paradise, says he'll perk up the economy this summer by sending $158 billion back to the people. Should that happen, take whatever paltry part is yours and pay off some debt or buy some silver or gold coins. Do not spend this "rebate" on a vacation trip or anything you don't absolutely need. Of course, if you use this to extinguish debt, it won't have the desired (by the government) effect of stimulating the economy, but that is only a politician's way of temporarily staving off the inevitable hyperinflation.
Ultimately it will prove to be the financial equivalent of dumping gasoline on a forest fire. After all, the $158 billion band-aid will be created out of nothing.
Remember, every economic boom, fueled chiefly by debt, always implodes into a deflationary spiral. Buying stocks and real estate with other people's money when inflation is roaring is almost a guaranteed winner, but it is lethal with the turnaround into deflation, a situation already evident in real estate foreclosures in Florida and elsewhere. Bear Stearns had a market value of $20 billion only a year ago. Last week it sold out for $236 million—two bucks a share.
The current housing crisis and all that flows from it comes from two main sources, both deriving from Washington.
In 1977, Congress passed the "Community Reinvestment Act" compelling financial institutions to make loans to people with lower incomes. These regulations were then amended in 1995 and 2005 to create different rules for institutions of different sizes, so that various kinds of institutions would be better able to meet the government's goals for fostering home ownership in poor communities.
Next, the Federal Reserve started making loans available to the banking system at extremely low interest rates. Then, the lenders combined to make cheap housing loans available to people who previously could not have afforded or qualified for them. This caused an increased demand for housing that sent real estate prices spiraling upward.
Now mortgage lenders began managing the risk involved in making these loans by selling their mortgages to other companies, believing that they were accomplishing this with a wide variety of mortgages in their portfolio. However, these decisions were all in error, because the Fed's policy of "easy money" had falsely inflated the value of all homes. This meant that good mortgages could not be used to manage the risk involved in questionable mortgages, because the value of all homes was inflated.
Finally, as with all inflationary booms, increases in home prices absorbed the increased purchasing power provided by the Fed, leading to a slowdown in home purchases. When this moment arrived everyone realized that the homes they had purchased weren't really worth what they had paid for them. The defaults and foreclosures then began, along with the collapse of the financial institutions that owned these unsound mortgages.
Now the complicated, multipart scenario described above has been simplified in popular reporting to just two words: "subprime loans." These two words, combined with the idea that lenders took advantage of poor. unsuspecting customers, are supposed to explain everything.
Perhaps this will explain it better. On Labor Day of 1984, my longtime friend Martin "Red" Beckman sat in a seminar in Orlando, Fla., squirming in his seat as many of the highly publicized and oft-quoted hard money advocates spoke of the soon to come $3,700 an ounce price of gold.
Finally, the meeting was opened to questions, and Red began to speak from the floor. He gently chided the "experts" about their predictions before launching into an explanation of why they were wrong. When he finished, not one could disagree.
Red said to them: "The problem is, you are asking the wrong questions. What you need to ask is, who is buying all this gold. The Federal Reserve Bank buys gold at 10 cents an ounce, so why would they want to push the price to $3,700?"
Gold was at $400 at the time, and the cost of production was $187 to the mining companies. By keeping the price reasonable, Red explained that it also kept the mining companies operating. Hearing the mumblings of disbelief in the audience, Red said, "Oh, you didn't know that the Fed bought gold for 10 cents an ounce? Well, let me tell you how they do it."
He then reminded them of something that everyone in that audience already knew: that the Fed printed paper bills—from $1 to $100 denominations. The price of ink and paper was the same—at a cost of 2.5 cents each. So four $100 bills were created at a cost to the Fed of 10 cents, and these could then be traded for one ounce of gold.
"Now, if you had control of this printing press," Red said, "and could purchase anything you wanted, what would you want more than the gold? Wouldn't you go after that first?"
A quarter-century later we would ask: "And why would you stop?" It's the legal tender, stupid.
Pat Shannan is the assistant editor of American Free Press.
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It is frightening, the ignorance of legislators. In an interview
with Spotlight on Congress, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) was baffled
when asked about 
"hate crimes"
legislation. The stated purpose of the interview was the budget
proposals, so the question was put in budgetary form:
"Sen. Gregg, Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) is constantly offering ‘hate crimes' legislation as an amendment to spending bills. Kennedy has yet to define a ‘love crime.' But do you see any First Amendment problems when law enforcement officers are required to look inside the criminal's head and determine if he mugged only to get money, or did he also ‘hate' the victim?"
A long pause, then "I would have to look at that."
Gregg was also asked about the wisdom of making street crimes a federal issue, getting Washington involved in every petty incident that occurs in your neighborhood, when all states harshly punish violent crimes. (In 2000, Democrats made a big issue of then Gov. George Bush's decision to have Texas prosecute three white thugs who dragged a black man to his death behind a pickup truck instead of letting them be tried under federal "hate crimes" laws. Two are now on death row. Under the federal law, capital punishment is impossible.)
"There is a role for ‘hate crimes' as to race," Gregg said. "How far you extend that as to ..." his voice trailed off.
Gregg was much more comfortable when he got back to budget
issues, deriding "Obama Spendorama," referring to Sen.
Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and his big spending promises as a candidate
for president. Obama and his rival for the Democratic nomination,
sen. Hillary Clinton (N.Y.), both call for $300 billion in increased
spending, and Obama wants to spend an additional $2 trillion over
two years, Gregg said. The Democrats' budget for the Iraq war
is "not enough to bring the troops home - they would have
to stay in the field, without ammunition," Gregg said. (The
Democrats' war budget, $19 when fiscal 2009 kicks in on October
1, funds the troops until Jan. 20, by which time they hope to
have one of their own in the White House.)
C
The Democrats' budget plan, which is based on letting the Bush
tax cuts expire at the end of 2010, means that 43 million families
with children will pay $2,300 more each year, and 18 million old
people will pay $2,200 more, he said. That money could buy an
average family's groceries for eight months, or pay for a family's
health expenses or buy a family's electricity and home-heating
oil for a year, he said.
"Pay Go (pay as you go) is part of stump speeches by those
who fail to pay as you go - including Sen. Kent Conrad,"
Gregg said, referring to the North Dakota Democrat interviewed
earlier by Spotlight on Congress (AFP, March 17, 2008.).
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A grassroots campaign put Ron Paul over the top at the Whatcom County (Washington) Republican Party convention March 15. County Republican Chairman Chet Dow told the local Bellingham Herald that it appears Paul, in his very-alive presidential candidacy, received the majority of delegates who will be sent to the summer state convention in Spokane. From there, delegates will be selectedfor the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis in September.
Nationwide, Paul's number of committed National Convention delegates has risen from 14 to 42.
Paul supporters did much the same in several Missouri counties. "More than a thousand Paul supporters crowded into Republican county caucuses last weekend, electing hundreds of delegates to upcoming congressional district and state conventions," the Kansas City Star reported. But sounding as if it's on guard against readers seeing Paul as electible, the Star added: "Those caucus results aren't expected to change Missouri's votes at the party's national convention - they should still go to Sen. John McCain."
The Star, while calling this development "an embarrassment for party regulars across Missouri," added: There are Internet rumors that Paul supporters have attempted or will attempt similar actions in other states, though national GOP leaders say it does not appear to be an issue nationally."
Jackson County, Mo. caucus attendees narrowly elected a nearly full slate of Paul supporters - more than 175 delegates. Along with other delegates picked across Missouri, they will eventually choose 55 of the party's 58 delegates to the Republican National Convention. "Those national delegates must vote for McCain, the primary winner, under state party rules," the Star claimed.
But one observer said the turnout at the Jackson County caucus suggests Paul supporters want to change those rules before the convention. "They're trying to pass a resolution that they don't have to vote for John McCain," area attorney Buford "Bunk" Farrington was quoted.
However, Paul volunteer/organizer Larry Holland, who attended the caucus, told AFP that the Star distorted his stance by making it look like he was not leaning toward unbinding McCain's delegates when, in fact, there was an informal straw poll vote on March 15 to unbind McCain's delegates, which passed by a sizable margin due to the large presence of Paul caucus-goers.
"That's on of our main goals," Holland told AFP,
referring to the strategy of freeing delegates from having to
vote for McCain at the congressional district conventions across
Missouri April 19 and at the state convention in Branson on May
31. He hopes the idea carries over to the national convention,
"whether we have a majority or not." He added: "Why
not? It's a fairness thing."
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Some Cynics say that Sen. John McCain's recent visit to London to attend a fundraiser for his presidential candidacy hosted by lord Jacob Rothschild of the international banking empire may have been quite simply a case of McCain going to Rothschild for his marching orders.
As if to underscore his allegiances, McCain preceded his trip to pay court to Lord Rothschild with a visit to Israel, the Middle East state that counts the Rothschild family as among its chief patrons, to the point that an earlier Rothschild, Edmond, of the Paris-based arm of the banking family, is honored on Israel's currency today.
McCain was accompanied to the Rothschild
gala (and to Israel) by his good friend and fellow devotee of
Israel, Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.), who has endorsed McCain
and who is often mentioned as either a vice presidential running
mate for McCain or as a likely secretary of state in a McCain
administration.
Although McCain's sponsor, Lord Rothschild (as a citizen of Britain) is not permitted by American law to make campaign contributions directly to McCain, he was permitted to host a big-ticket fund-raising reception for McCain attended by Americans in the Rothschild sphere of influence who were willing to pay a minimum of $1,000 per person for the privilege of mixing it up with the American presidential candidate who is clearly the Rothschild family's favorite.
That the Rothschild empire would support McCain should come as no surprise to those familiar with McCain's record.
First of all, McCain has been a longtime member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Although, on Oct. 30 1993, The Washington Post described the CFR as "the nearest thing we have to a ruling establishment in the United States," saying that they are the people who, for more than half a century, have managed our international affairs and our military-industrial complex," what the Post did not say was that the CFR is actually only a New York-based division of the grandly named Royal Institute of International Affairs, which has functioned as the foreign policy-making arm of the Rothschild dynasty, long the prime mover, behind the scenes, of Britain's imperial ventures.
In addition, McCain's own backstage connections in his home state of Arizona (see AFP, Feb. 4, 2008) are equally intriguing and point even further to the reasons why the Rothschilds are enamored with McCain.
As AFP pointed out, McCain's late father-in-law, Jim Hensley, was a top figure in the organized crime power network surrounding one Kemper Marley, who acted as the front man in Arizona for the Bronfman family - key players in the Lansky crime syndicate, popularly though inaccurately referred to as "the Mafia" - who used Marley to control both major political parties in that sate.
The Bronfman family has long been allied with the Rothschilds as among the leading billionaire patrons of Israel and the global Zionist movement, so much so that Idgar Bronfman, head of the dynasty, was, for many years head of the World Jewish Congress (WJC), which is now lorded over by his son Matthew, who is chairman of the WJC's government board.
Eight years ago, when McCain first ran for president, Edgar Bronfman was a contributor to his campaign. And at the time McCain included among his closest advisors the ubiquitous William Kristol of the stridently pro-Israel neo-conservative journal, The Weekly Standard, whose owner, media baron Rupert Murdoch, rose to wealth and power through the sponsorship of the Rothschild and Bronfman families.
Kristol has attended the secretive Bilderberg meetings that are sponsored jointly on an annual basis by the Rothschild family in partnership with their American confreres in the Rockefeller family.
So the McCain-Bronfman-Rothschild connection is intimate on multiple levels and explains much about McCain's long-standing tendency to be an almost feverish advocate for Israel's interests.
McCain himself has declared his allegiance to Israel, above and beyond U.S. interests. In a March 14, 1999 speech in New York to the National Council of Young Israel, McCain said:
"We choose, as a nation, to intervene militarily abroad in defense of the moral values that are at the center of our national conscientiousness even when vital national interests are not necessarily at the stake. I raise this point because it lies at the heart of this nation's approach to Israel. The survival of Israel is one of this country's most important moral commitments."
Thus, McCain would be willing to commit the United States to a war in defense of Israel, even if U.S. "Vital interests are not necessarily at stake." His endorsement of assaults upon the so-called "rogue" Islamic states is part and parcel of this policy, which hardly places America first.
In fact, the record shows that McCain has long been part of an elitist group promoting U.S. military action in defense of Israel. According to the Aug. 2 1996 issue of the London-based Jewish Chronicle, McCain was a member of a little-known operation calling itself the Commission on America's National Interest that issued a report rating Israel as a "blue chip" interest for the United States worth "spending serious treasure and serious blood on" - a conclusion many Americans might question.
The report ranked Israel's survival "on a par with preventing nuclear, biological and nuclear attacks on the U.S. as a vital American interest." The Chronicle summarized the report, quoting the group, with the headline: "Americans ‘should go to war to defend Israel.' "
McCain has said that he is "driven" by "Wilsonian principles" - the internationalist philosophy that U.S. military might should be used to enforce what U.S. military might should be used to enforce what critics have called the New World Order.
In 2006, for his enthusiastic efforts on Israel's behalf, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) gave McCain its "distinguished service award" named in memory of the late Sen. Henry M. Jackson (D-Wash.) who was long on of the Israeli lobby's favorite members of Congress.
To be hailed by JINSA, however, is a rather dubious honor, inasmuch as several people associated with JINSA including its founder Stephen Bryen, and Bryen's close friend, Richard Perle (another regular attendee at the meetings of the Bilderberg group) as well as Paul Wolfowitz (former president of the World Bank) have all been investigated by the FBI in past years on suspicion of espionage on behalf of Israel.
Now the presumptive Republican Party's presidential nominee
has received the formal public endorsement of the unrivaled royal
family of international Zionism - the Rothschilds.
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Hillary Clinton's resumé
actually reads more like the rap sheet of a mobster - one who
always beat the multiple raps. Based on this, she may be right
when she tells us that she is most qualified candidate for president
"based on her record," considering some of the criminals
that have occupied the office in recent years. Meanwhile, she
claims that eight years as "first foul-mouthed lady,"
was on-the-job training to be president. That's akin to Brett
Favre's wife readying herself to start at quarterback for the
Green Bay Packers next year.
As first lady, Hillary did assume authority over health care reform, a process that flushed over $13 million down the tubes. She told Sens. Bill Bradley and the late Patrick Moynihan, both of whom were key votes needed to pass her legislation, that she would "demonize" anyone who opposed it to a vote in a Congress controlled by her own party.
Now from Victor Thorn's new trilogy, we learn that she dog-cussed and even physically beat her spineless, sometimes-roommate into actually letting her be a quasi part-time president. In truth, she was Bill Clinton's "enabler," plugging holes of potential leakage of his public image for the future. She had been doing it since shortly after they were married in 1976. The Thorn book describes her as "... a woman so extreme in her obsession with power that she did everything humanly possible to cover up her husband's deplorable behavior."
Hillary assumed authority over selecting a female attorney general. Her first two recommendations, Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood, were forced to withdraw. She then chose Janet Reno, who endeared herself to Fidel Castro by kidnapping little Elian Gonzalez and deporting him back to Communist Cuba. Janet Reno has since been described by Bill himself as "my worst mistake."
Hillary recommended Lani Guanier for head of the Civil Rights Commission. When Miss Guanier's radical views become known - she had written some law school articles suggesting that some special standards be applied to black people because they had a special experience - her name had to be withdrawn.
Hillary recommended her former law partners, Web Hubbell, Vince Foster and William Kennedy, for positions in the Justice department, White House staff and the treasury, respectively. Hubbell was later imprisoned, Foster was "Arkancided," and Kennedy was forced to resign.
Hillary also recommended a close friend of the Clintons, Craig Livingstone, for director of White House security. When Livingstone was investigated for the improper access of up to 900 FBI files of Clinton enemies ("Filegate") and the widespread use of drugs by White House staff, both Hillary and her husband denied knowing him. FBI agent, Dennis Sculimbrene, confirmed in a senate Judiciary Committee hearing in 1996, both the drug use and Hillary's involvement in hiring Livingstone. After that, the FBI closed its white House Liaison Office, after serving seven presidents for over 30 years.
In order to open "slots" in the White House for her friends Harry and Linda Thomason (to whom millions of dollars in travel contracts could be awarded), Hillary had the entire staff of the White house Travel Office fired. They were reported to the FBI for "gross mismanagement" and their reputations ruined. After a 30-month investigation, only one, billy Dale, was charged with a crime - mixing personal money with White House funds when he cashed checks. The jury acquitted him in less than two hours.
Another of Hillary's assumed duties was directing the "bimbo eruption squad" and scandal defense. She urged her husband not to settle the Paula Jones lawsuit.
She refused to release the Whitewater documents, which led to the appointment of Ken Starr as special prosecutor. After $80 million of taxpayer money was spent, Starr's investigation led to Monica Lewinsky, which led to Bill lying about it and later admitting his affairs. It turned out that Hillary, much the same as Bill, really didn't have much concern over his many liaisons with strange women, just his clumsiness of getting caught. Then they had to settle with Paula Jones.
Then Bill lost his law license for lying to the grand jury and was impeached by the House, while Hillary almost got herself indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice. (She avoided it mostly because she repeated, "I do not recall," "I have no recollection," and "I don't know" 56 times under oath.)
Hillary wrote It Takes a Village, demonstrating her socialist viewpoint. Then she decided to seek a Senate seat in a state in which she had never lived. Her election was aided when her husband pardoned FALN terrorists in order to get the Latino vote and the New Square Hassidim to get Jewish support. Hillary also had Bill pardon her brother's clients, for a small fee, to get financial support. In the campaign for the senate, Hillary played the "woman card" by portraying her opponent (Lazio) as a bully picking on her.
Then Hillary left the White House, but was soon forced to return $200,000 in white House furniture, china and artwork she had stolen. Hillary's husband further protected her by asking the National Archives to withhold from the public until 2012 many records of their time in the White House, including much of Hillary's correspondence and her calendars. Currently, there are ongoing lawsuits attempting to force the release of those records.
She has even bigger imminent legal problems in Los Angeles, where a judge will soon set a trial date in a $17 million fraud suit that aims to expose an alleged culture of widespread corruption by the Clintons and the Democratic Party. Hillary, Bill and even daughter Chelsea, along with a long list of show biz celebs, have been subpoenaed.
As the junior senator from New York, Hillary has passed no major legislation. She has deferred to the senior senator (Democrat Charles Schumer) to tend to the needs of New Yorkers, even on the hot issue of medical problems of workers involved in the cleanup of Ground Zero after 9-11. Hillary's one notable vote; supporting the plan to invade Iraq, she has since disavowed.
As the epitome of corrupt and cheap politicians everywhere,
Hillary Clinton privately is a power-mad, controlling, salty-speaking
intimidator who will do anything to get her way. Publicly, she
is a great actress. She is hated more as a person by those who
were forced to work with her - Secret Service, FBI agents and
White House staff - than the wife of any president in American
history, including Mary Todd Lincoln.
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