January 3, 1995
January 9, 1995
January 16, 1995
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January 30, 1995
Why would Boris Yeltsin order his forces into a tiny republic against the advice of his own generals?
A syndicate of international megabanks and global corporations, guided by the Chase Manhattan consortium, the Rockefeller dynasty's financial flagship, is the driving force behind the Russian government's attempt to crush Chechen independence with tanks and gunships.
President Boris Yeltsin ordered an all-out attack on the tiny Caucasian republic on December 11, only after he was privately assured by a top U.S. Clinton spokesman that the administration would neither criticize not oppose the slaughter of unarmed Chechen civilians by overwhelmingly superior Russian armored columns, The SPOTLIGHT has learned exclusively from diplomatic sources.
The American envoy who gave Yeltsin the green light for the assault on Chechen (sometimes called Chendhenya; population approximately 1.2 million, largely Moslem) has been identified as Strobe Talbott, the Clinton administration's chief adviser on the former Soviet Union.
Talbott, a veteran journalist, has long been closely associated with the Council on Foreign relations and its primary taskmaster, former Secretary of State Henry, these sources confirmed.
INHERITED STRATEGY
Kissinger, now best known as the policy coordinator of the worldwide Rockefeller network, is the architect of the "Greater Russia or Bust" strategy inherited -and adopted -by Clinton from the Bush administration.
According to Kissinger's master concept, if the fiercely independent Chechens -or any of Russia's 20 autonomous republics - were allowed to claim independence from Moscow, the heartland of the erstwhile Soviet Union would degenerate into a chaotic succession of one "Bosnia" after another.
"It's wrong," says Raymond Olivier, the noted French broadcast correspondent based in New York, who has just returned from Russia. "Kissinger's theory is being used to justify atrocious bloodshed in Chechen and elsewhere, all in the name of avoiding the larger disaster of Russia's disintegration. But what this fraudulent policy is really designed to protect is the position -and interests -of Chase Manhattan Bank and its corrupt allies in Russia."
The penetration of international megabanks into the disorganized and unregulated markets of Russia has created "an empire of graft, exploitation and mob rule," says Boris Khachatov, a Moscow pollster and novelist, who is on a sabbatical visit to Harvard University.
"Think of what happened in Iran, where Chase Manhattan led the invasion of corrupters and thieves that destroyed the Pahlavi monarchy," Khachatov explained. "Then multiply it a hundredfold. Add a brutal secret police -the former KGB -many of whose former enforcers are now working for Chase Manhattan and its syndicate partners. Unleash these forces in a sprawling, chaotic nation - Russia -that is literally up for sale. You get what the Rockefellers want: to pull the strings in the world's biggest puppet show."
For foreign financiers, smashing the Chechens' historic quest for independence -which may, in turn, trigger the fall of the Yeltsin regime -is a top priority, these sources say. "The Chechens have no weapons against tanks," related Olivier. "What they have done is to form a human chain -tens of thousands of unarmed men, women and children, a chain some 40 miles long - between Brozny [the Chechen capital] andd the advancing Russian front."
The human chain has stopped the advance of at least one Russian
tank column, whose commander, Gen. Ivan Babichev, declared that
he would not commit "genocide" against civilians. "The
real question is: Can a human wall stop the rapacity of the foreign
banks? I doubt it," commented Olivier.
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The "Evil Empire" of the Soviet Union is gone and unlamented, except by those international financiers who created, supported and profited from it for decades. Now, they are scrambling to retain their hold on their rapidly disintegrating empire.
The Soviet Union has collapsed, but a new "evil empire" is rising fast on its ruins. Ruthless, power-hungry and potentially even more dangerous than its communist predecessor, it is not run by bungling bureaucrats, but rather is managed by bankers, including members of the worldwide Rockefeller network.
Those are the startling conclusions of a recent two-day summit conference on money laundering and organized crime, attended by ministers of justice and police chiefs from 79 nations in Naples, Italy.
Despite its explosive findings, the meeting made few headlines, largely because the full text of its closed-door discussions has still not been released for publication by the UN officials who sponsored the get-together. But at the world forum's New York headquarters, senior staff sources made a detailed summary of the Naples proceedings available to The SPOTLIGHT's diplomatic correspondent.
The documents reveal the deep concern of European lawmen over the "deluge" of financial crime flooding the continent from a new source: Russia.
"In 1984, there were four banks in the entire Soviet Union, all state owned and tightly controlled," notes one conference paper. "This year there are nearly 4,000 private banks in Russia alone, many -if not most -apparently serving as fronts for organized crime and international money-laundering rings."
WHO'S IN CHARGE
Former Soviet citizens who emigrated to Israel in the 1980s now often link these Russian money centers to narcotics wholesalers whose global operations pump hundreds of millions of dollars every week into the international payments system, the report noted.
Recent raids on major drug gangs in the U.S. and Europe have resulted in the arrest of some 20 money movers of Russian birth but Israeli nationality, among them three prominent rabbis, the study noted.
But the most worrisome aspect of the new intercontinental crime wave was the involvement of the Chase Manhattan consortium, the financial flagship of the Rockefeller empire, the conferees found.
"When a joint operation by Italian, Swiss, French and American investigators broke the largest drug ring of the 1980s -it became known in the U.S. as the `pizzaa connection' because pizza parlors were its fronts -the trail led back to Chase Manhattan headquarters in New York City where cocaine couriers dumped suitcases full of cash for laundering," recalled a paper by Prof. Attilio D'Angelo, a noted Italian criminologist.
That, however, was merely the start up of a system which now allows Chase Manhattan and other money centers to bank billions of dirty money anonymously, through Russian subsidiaries controlled by front men, the conference acknowledged.
WIDESPREAD INTERESTS
Conference participants pointed out that these joint U.S.- Russian "crime financiers" are not limited to narcotics. They manage the booming market in car theft that smuggles an estimated quarter-million vehicles stolen in Western Europe eastward, often all the way to Russia, where they are sold openly. Particularly worrisome to law enforcement experts was the discovery that under the tutelage of merger-minded international bankers, the global underworld is forming alliances as never before.
Energized by lawless international financiers, the global crime network now links the chinese Triads, an increasingly powerful Oriental syndicate, to the cocaine cartel of Colombia, the Mofiosi of Southern Italy, the booming Russian mob, and, ultimately, to Wall Street.
"Let us say you are a big American plastics firm looking to acquire a subsidiary in Russia," recounted Dr. Paul Edler, a corporate consultant who monitored the Naples conference. "In theory, you could enlist the services of an honest bank in Moscow, and spend a year or two -and lots of money -trying to cut through the red tap."
But a bank with mob connections can make things a lot easier for you, asserted the prestigious economist. In Russia, former state property, including factories and other assets is being "privatized" via a system of so-called vouchers issued to every citizen. The Naples conference report confirmed that "Russian crime groups and money launderers, acting on behalf of international financial syndicates, buy up millions of such privatization vouchers, or they stage direct takeover of businesses."
The result is that, "Where all means of production were once controlled by the Soviet Communist Party, they are now controlled largely by allied financial and criminal organizations with a global reach," explained Dr. Edler.
Such syndicates have acquired so much power, they are reportedly
tolerated by Russian President Boris Yeltsin because they serve
as a key link in aligning Washington's and Moscow's strategic
game plans, with smaller countries as the frequent losers.
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If health foods must be labeled according to FDA fiat to "protect us," what about the chemicals the government doesn't seem to notice?
In what appears to be part of a groundswell against Food and Drug Administration (FDA) abuses of labeling regulations, a grass roots group has filed an action against the federal bureaucracy. The legal action follows a congressionally-inspired investigation of the FDA's approval of a bioengineered growth hormone used on dairy cows to increase milk output, and action relating to the FDA's efforts to suppress dietary supplements. (See SPOTLIGHT, Nov. 14, 1994.)
This new legal action, a formal "Citizen Petition," asks the FDA for "truth and clarity" in labeling for MSG (monosodium glutamate), a food additive with many reported harmful side effects, some of them debilitating or even life-threatening. The petition was filed by the Chicago law firm of Dilling and Dilling(1) on behalf of petitioners, including researchers, physicians and consumers, some of them children and some extremely sensitive to MSG, who want to know if the chemical present in their food and if so, how much. The information is necessary because some people can become seriously ill if they consume MSG.
Spokesman for the grass roots group, Jack Samuels(2), himself MSG-sensitive, says that the chemical has been identified as being responsible for much more than "Chinese restaurant syndrome," (tingling tightness and numbness occurring within two hours of eating). Chinese restaurants have a reputation of using larger amounts of MSG than other food establishments. It is a popular flavor enhancer.
However, most restaurants, without knowing it, have enough MSG in their foods to cause symptoms in many people. According to Samuels, this problem reaches past restaurant eating to food eaten at home, including some infant formulas and table foods fed to babies.
As many as one in three Americans may experience reactions including headache, diarrhea or fatigue after eating MSG without knowing why, and some may suffer life-threatening reactions including severe asthma, heart fibrillation and severe depression.
The FDA has been aware of complaints about MSG sensitivity since 1968. Indeed, the FDA has a regulation that MSG must be labeled as monosodium glutamate when it is added to food in its 99 percent pure form. The Citizen Petition states that most of the MSG used in foods is below that 99 percent concentration level so that it can be called such things as "natural flavor," "flavoring," or some other term that will not adequately warn people that MSG is present.
It was recommended in the FDA sponsored 1990-1992 study that MSG be avoided by pregnant women, infants, children, women of child- bearing age and people with mood disorders. These groups, numbering over 100 million people, have no way under current FDA regulations to know the amounts of MSG present in food they eat.
The petition is supported by volumes of scientific research and reports substantiation the seriousness of the MSG problem. That research relates to growth and development as well as to manifestations of physical and mental illness and raises special concern for infants and children including a possible relationship between MSG and learning disorders.
The goal of the Citizen Petition is to have the FDA take immediate and emergency action to change its regulations pertaining to MSG, requiring that all food labels list the amount of MSG present, accompanied by a simple cautionary statement to those groups most at risk. Only such action would insure that the millions of people now ingesting MSG from hidden sources, and suffering from it, could obtain the information necessary to protect themselves. Only through full disclosure of MSG can the present "epidemic" of food-borne illness from MSG be stemmed, according to the petition.*
(1) Dilling and Dilling is located at 150 North Wacker Drive,
Chicago, Illinois 60606.
(2) Jack Samuels can be reached at (312) 642-9333 or contact the
Truth in Labeling Campaign, P.O. Box 2532, Darien, Illinois 60561.
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Despite the ouster of pro-drug Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders, the administration still wants to outlaw tobacco and legalize marijuana.
The chief spokesperson on the issue of drugs is former Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders, who says her own son did not commit a crime when he was convicted on dealing drugs. She also believes that the government should set up clinics to give free or "dollar- a-dose" drugs to addicts.
To understand the marijuana culture, consider this article from the Montgomery County, Maryland Journal, the other day. Rupert Chappelle, 41 years of age, had been found guilty of drug possession after police searched his home.
According to the article, "Walking through clouds of marijuana smoke in the living room, they found the family's dog deceased and lying on the floor in advanced stages of rigor mortis."
Chappelle's common-law wife, Leatrice Urbanowicz, said she had not been smoking marijuana personally "but had given the animal a puff of marijuana `so she could die in peace.'"
The article went on, "Police Officers also found used condoms and other trash stuffed into broken walls. A bathroom needed plumbing repairs and 15 marijuana plants were growing in the basement..."
The couple has two daughters ages 6 & 8.
The children were briefly taken away and then returned to the couple, who were given sentences of probation by the judge in the case.
This is the reality of the drug culture today.
STRANGE FRIENDS
Though some of the marijuana consumed in the United States is being grown here, most of the drugs flooding the U.S. are coming from foreign-based drug cartels.
And it is not surprising that the homosexual and drug lobbies are coalescing. The national director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), Richard Cowan, who says he has smoked dope every day for the last 26 years, recently came out of the closet, declaring himself gay.
Plus, openly homosexual Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) is emerging as the leading congressional apologist for the drug lobby. He has vowed to hold hearings designed to promote the quack notion of "medical marijuana," supposedly as a treatment for AIDS.
SOROS AND DOPE
The illegal drug lobby itself is more powerful than ever before. The Drug Policy Foundation, which is a dressed-up version of NORML, now brags of receiving millions of dollars in funding from George Soros, a man regularly described in news reports as just a philanthropist. Born in Budapest, Hungary, he emigrated to England in 1947 and moved to the United States in 1956.
He manages the Quantum Fund, an investment vehicle not available to U.S. citizens, now worth $11 billion.
Soros has an organization in Hew York called the Open Society Fund, which is run by a former national director of the ACLU, which of course supports drug legalization.
Soros himself writes and speaks openly about a wide variety of subjects. He is, for example, an ardent advocate of what he calls "The New World Order."
On the issue of drugs, though, he has been uncharacteristically modest, saying only that the millions of dollars he is pouring into this cause are designed to promote "a more open debate" and more humane policies" toward drug users.
However, Soros was reported to have recently purchased a 9 percent share of a major bank in Colombia, which had previously been identified by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) as involved in drug money laundering.
THE FUTURE
What we are seeing here, I believe is the foundation of what will more clearly emerge if drug legalization comes about.
Dr. Elders herself concedes, a system of drug legalization would itself entail a massive expansion of government power, including the promulgation of rules, regulations and standards for the production and use of substances now illegal.
Though such a system is proposed as a way to reduce drug-related criminal activity, there would still be a demand for substances stronger of different from the government-approved variety. Proponents of legalization also ignore the evidence that what drives crime is not just the need for drugs but the drugs themselves.
So the point is that, under a system of legalization, crime would continue but users would be able to get their fixes from the government, which would be supplied with the drugs by a complex multinational operation requiring transportation and distribution networks, as well as financing.
President Clinton himself is reported to have done much more than NOT inhale. And it is now reliably reported that the probe of the Whitewater scandal is touching on the activities of Clinton friend and convicted cocaine trafficker Dan Lasater.
In Haiti, currently, American troops have been deployed to help restore to power an anti-American Marxist himself linked to the drug trade. The DEA was prevented by the Clinton administration from asking exiled president Aristide about suitcases full of cash he was carrying.
NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, is facilitation drug trafficking into the U.S., amid reliable reports that Mexican presidential candidate Luis Donald Colosio was murdered by a powerful Mexican drug cartel.
Prior to NAFTA, Mexico had already emerged as the transit point for as much as 70 percent of the cocaine entering the U.S., and a major source country for heroin and marijuana.
The Colombian drug cartels have shown their ability to strike directly into America. Barry Seal, the central player in a secret U.S. sting operation that exposed Communist Sandinista involvement in the drug trade, was murdered by a Colombian hit team in Baton Rouge in 1986.
Or consider the case of former federal agent Joseph Occhipinti, who was imprisoned for conducting illegal searches and filing false reports in New York. He was granted clemency by former President Bush. Those who have investigated his case say the evidence is overwhelming that he was a victim of a drug cartel conspiracy be foreign drug lords. Of course, the frame-up of Occhipinti was possible only because certain public officials were capable of being corrupted.
With backing from money people like Soros and Richard Dennis, a millionaire commodities broker in Chicago, the drug lobby is on the move. Soros and Dennis, incidently, are major contributors to the Democratic Party.
The drug lobby scored some successes in the recently passed crime bill, which includes a proposal for a National Commission on Crime Prevention and Control. This is a modified version of Rep. Don Edward's (D-Calif.) NORML as a vehicle to reopen the drug debate along the lines suggested by Dr Elders.
The crime bill also includes a provision weakening federal mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders.
Along those line, President Clinton is in the process of naming four new people to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, who are expected to be soft on drug crimes.
By contrast, in Singapore, a Dutch businessman who was convicted of drug possession was hanged the other day.
Here, criminals rule our streets, poison our children, and then, if by chance they're caught, use taxpayer resources to sue prison authorities for cruel and unusual punishment. Plus, they have a criminals lobby that works on their behalf.
It's no wonder that a quarter of a million people leave the
United States every year for places like Singapore.
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The Weaver incident and the massacre at Waco have sparked the rise of militias across the country. In this piece, a member of one of the most prominent of these citizens' militias explains the rationale and thinking behind their formation.
In 1989 the publication of my book, The New American Man, was considered a radical act. A SPOTLIGHT review by John Tiffany in August, 1990 acknowledged that even reviewing it would be dangerous. This indicates how different things were just a few years ago, before the Weaver murders and Waco.
That book was an attempt to create awareness of the power of the militia and to call for a rising of the militia against the criminals who have usurped the United States government. It was certainly not premature with respect to the threat posed by the criminals, but it was a few years ahead of the times.
I was followed around the country by the FBI during a private 1990 speaking tour and scheduled for arrest in Medford, Oregon by that bureau on July 31 on the charge of "sedition." The subject of my private talks was that we must abandon the idea of "every man for himself" and replace it with "all for one and one for all," To allow the enemy to continue picking us off one by one was unacceptable. I managed to avoid arrest because of a tip, but, as with so many of us, have been closely monitored ever since.
DEADLY PERSUASION
The federal assault on the Weaver family persuaded some of us that the militia had to rise and assert itself. The federal annihilation of the Branch Davidians persuaded the rest of us. Militia units began to from across the country. The signing of the Brady Bill revealed that all of us, not just the so-called radicals, were to be disarmed.
In February of this year, the Trochmanns of Noxon, Montana formed a militia support group called the Militia of Montana. The Trockmann men, John and Dave and Dave's son, Randy had also been in the vanguard of the effort to awaken Americans from their government-induced lifelessness.
After the signing of the Brady Bill, they gave it one more try before packing it in and moving to Alaska. The results of their last try can only be termed phenomenal.
The Trochmanns were very successful businessmen in Minnesota. They made parts for all snowmobile manufactures and if you had a snowmobile you were running on their parts. John and Dave sold their company and moved to Montana in the 1980s to devote themselves to fighting our corrupt system. The nationwide success of the militia of Montana is the result of their generosity and the meticulous attention to detail which had made their former company so successful.
They began by sending out thousands of dollars' worth of video tapes to groups and individuals around the state and country -free. The tapes were the now famous America in Peril and Waco -the Big Lie. All they asked in return was for the recipients to send back information regarding illegal or suspicious government activity.
INTELLIGENCE NETWORK
Thus was born an intelligence network. Many of the photos used by The SPOTLIGHT of foreign military equipment in this country were supplied by the Militia of Montana. The support group has helped thousands of Americans to form militias in every state.
Naturally, the New World Order crowd views this group as a serious threat. The United Nations had the gall recently to lie to the Congress that there are no UN troops or equipment in this country and that reports to that effect are rumors mongered by a "malicious group in Montana."
The following day, The SPOTLIGHT ran front page photos of UN- marked military equipment being transported through Montana on a train. In late August a convoy of military vehicles, all marked with "UN" on their doors, passed through Post Falls, Idaho in the early hours of the morning. The convoy was reported by three different witnesses.
On September 15, information reached our offices that over 400 British-paid Ghurka mercenaries had arrived at a California military base. This may be the first installment of Royal Hong Kong Police which was recently approved by the Congress for employment in our country. Ghurkas are employed by the British as security forces for the Royal Hong Kong Police and are well known for their aptitude for killing.
NATIONAL VICTORIES
The militia of Montana has had a number of victories nationally. Its fax network helped to avert four planned attacks by federal agencies against innocents in Colorado, Illinois and Washington. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) had intended to attack the survivors of the Branch Davidians in Gunnison, Colorado four months ago. The Noxon group generated enough heat against the local sheriff that he felt compelled to state that he would not allow another Waco to happen there.
A recent attempt by the federal and Illinois governments to disarm Aurora, Illinois was thwarted in the same manner. It was the Militia of Montana which first warned militiamen that Rainier, Washington was to be the target of a "mock invasion" by the U.S. military. The townspeople felt secure enough to deny the military permission to conduct this warfare in their town.
We were soon notified that a military group made up of 60 percent U.S. forces and 40 percent United Nations forces would move against a town in eastern Washington with a special mission to provoke a confrontation with local militiamen. Again, fast action by the Militia of Montana in the form of mobilizing nearby militiamen helped to delay, at least, an attack by this joint U.S./UN convoy seen in Post Falls, Idaho was evidently part of this sinister operation. Others around the country have seen how we do this and are now able to mount similar responses at any time.
The Trochmanns themselves are no strangers to the treachery of the federal government. They have twice managed to avert illegal raids by the BATF and U.S. marshals by notifying the FBI that there was no basis for such raids but that, in any event, they were prepared to defend themselves. Both raids were called off.
FEDERAL INTIMIDATION
This sort of activity is not without grave risk. In May of this year two A-10 Warthog attack planes overflew tiny Noxon at 500 feet and made tight turns over the Militia of Montana offices. They went up and down the valley, crisscrossing in an ugly show of force. The next day another jet made passes in a similar manner.
The Air Force had no explanation for these attempts at intimidation. Directly after the low passes by the A-10s, local residents reported felling dick. One farmer reported losing approximately 200 chickens and other small animals within 24 hours. A month later we were visited by a group of men in black fatigues who conducted maneuvers in the dark for several days. More recently, our people have been followed and videotaped by men form out of state. When confronted, these creeps slink away.
This writer moved from California to Noxon in May to assist the Militia of Montana in any way possible. Twenty years ago I had moved to Rhodesia to help those people in their war against the American-sponsored communist terrorists who were eventually forced into power by our government. I always hoped that the great camaraderie and solidarity I encountered among the fighting Rhodesians could be duplicated in this country.
In Noxon, Montana, I have found this camaraderie and solidarity and it is wonderful. We are seeing the same thing happening all across our huge country, thanks largely to the Militia of Montana. This willingness to fight the enemy, be he foreign or domestic, is developing everywhere.
The key to preparedness is communications. If the Weavers had had radio contact with friends the raid against them could have been averted. The same goes for everyone. All militia units must have radios for everyone along with tight radio discipline. There must be no idle or personal chatter; the frequencies are for emergencies and patrol communications only. Neighborhoods must be patrolled during the likely hours of attack -early morning.
Our friend Louis Beam recently pointed out that a man can join
the armed forces and serve the United Nations or he can join the
militia and defend America. Montana is probably where the fighting
will begin. As mentioned above, we have had a lot of surveillance
by strangers lately as well as a number of warnings from people
on the inside of federal and state agencies. We are prepared for
the most likely eventualities and expect to acquit ourselves honorably.
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Your government is using your tax dollars to bail out international financiers from the ravages of NAFTA.
A shadowy consortium of Wall Street insiders and foreign speculators, with private links to the highest levels of the White House and Federal Reserve System, is skimming "billions, most probably tens of billions of billions of dollars" in windfall profits from the collapse of the Mexican peso and other recent convulsions of the financial markets, economic analysts say.
American taxpayers, still unaware that a stunning $9 billion of their money went down the drain during Christmas week as the Clinton administration tried and failed to bail out the sinking Mexican peso, now face losses "worse than the bloodletting of the savings and loan scandals," warned Dr. Aldo Milinkovich, a former U.S. Treasury economist who is now a corporate strategist in New York.
Some $6 billion of the hurried handout was disguised as a so- called "currency swap" between the Federal Reserve and the Mexican central bank. In addition, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan quietly ordered an additional $3 bullion made available as an "emergency stabilization fund" in order to save, not just the Mexican payments system, but the controversial North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), adopted barely a year ago, and now in dire peril.
The expensive effort to halt the Mexican economy's nose-dive didn't work. "The opponents and critics of NAFTA are now vindicated," admitted Dr. Emiliano Manelli, a UN economist specializing in Latin American studies.
With the peso having lost almost half its value during the last nine days of December, and still falling, "dirt cheap" Mexican goods will soon begin to flood the side-open U.S. market -precisely the sort of calamity the promotters of NAFTA, led by Bill Clinton, swore would never happen, these sources warned.
But for an inner circle of well-connected financiers and currency manipulators with behind-the scenes access to confidential economic information, the money market upheavals of recent months represent "the biggest get-rich-quick bonanza anyone can remember," says another respected financial analyst who, having left Wall Street's leading statistical service this year to join a major investment bank, asked not to be quoted by name.
"Just as predicted, this fraudulent free trade pact will
end up hurting the workers, taxpayers and savings depositors of
both the U.S. and Mexico," concluded Dr. Manelli. The ancient
Romans asked: Cui bono? That is, who profits? Who gets the tax
dollars? Not the peasants on either side of the border. Your tax
dollars went to bail out the major investors; those with the greatest
"exposure" when the peso tumbled, to wit: Citicorp,
BankAmerica, Chase Manhattan Corp., Chemical Banking Corp., NationsBank
Corp. and Bank of Boston Corp.
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A dangerous "game" played on the high seas could lead to war.
The Pentagon is reluctant to discuss details of a serious "cat and mouse" incident played out in the Yellow Sea, off Red China's Shandong Peninsula, last fall between a U.S. aircraft carrier and a communist Chinese nuclear submarine.
The incident, which nearly led to a confrontation between the two vessels, as well as planes from the carrier and Red Chinese fighter jets dispatched from the Chinese main-land, resulted in Peking warning U.S. diplomats that the next time the Chinese military would "shoot to kill."
THIS TIME FOR REAL
The incident in the Yellow Sea, ignored by the Establishment media other than the Los Angeles Times, was probably the most serious confrontation between the U.S. and Red China since the Korean War and could have sparked a nuclear exchange.
The confrontation lasted for three days, from October 27 to 29, after anti-submarine aircraft from the U.S. carrier Kitty Hawk detected the Red Chinese sub, a Han Class nuclear powered attack submarine, off the Shandong Peninsula in international waters and about 200 miles from the carrier.
After the initial discovery of the submarine, the carrier and its planes apparently lost track of it and the Kitty Hawk dispatched a flight of Lockheed S-3a Viking anti-submarine warfare aircraft to re-locate it.
The U.S. jets dropped sonobuoys, electronic sonic devices used to monitor submarines operating under water.
After locating the sub with the devices American planes continued to track the vessel, which at times was operating at periscope level, about 30 to 40 feet below the surface.
In retaliation for the American aircraft harassing its submarine, the Red Chinese dispatched jet fighters from the mainland, which proceeded directly toward the U.S. planes.
The incident ended peacefully when the communist submarine moved away and headed back to its port at Qingdao, the main Red Chinese naval base on China's eastern coast.
CHINESE ANGRY
However, Chinese officials were concerned that the American aircraft had penetrated China's airspace and were angry that their sub was harassed in international waters. They warned the U.S. government through an American military official in Peking that if the confrontation was repeated, the Chinese military's orders will be to "shoot to Kill."
The Red Chinese have five nuclear-powered attack submarines of the Hans Class. The subs weigh about 5,000 tons, are 330 feet in length and carry 21-inch Soviet Type 53 homing torpedoes and Ying Ji (Eagle Strike) surface-to-surface sea-skimming cruise missiles.
The Kitty Hawk was dispatched in September to waters off North Korea as part of a battle group that also included three cruisers, one frigate and an American nuclear submarine as a show of force to warn North Korea that it should curtail its program to develop nuclear weapons.
In early September U.S. vessels detected another Chinese submarine in open waters but the incident ended more quietly than the Kitty Hawk's encounter.
After the sub tracked by the U.S. carrier's planes retired to the communist naval base at Qingdao, the Pentagon pulled the super flattop out of the area.
In addition to the Han Class subs, Red China has one other nuclear powered submarine, a Xia Class 8,000-ton vessel armed with 12 two-stage solid-fuel ballistic missiles with a range of 1,460 nautical miles and each tipped with a two-megaton nuclear warhead.
The Chinese also have a number of conventional Diesel powered submarines, including one cruise missile-armed modified Soviet- designed Romeo Class vessel, 84 standard Romeo Class subs, nine Ming Class patrol subs and 16 Soviet Whiskey Class ships.
In addition, the Red Chinese have been increasing their naval strength with purchases of vessels that were once part of the Soviets' global navy. They have recently ordered four nuclear- powered submarines from Russia. In a recent article, Harland Jencks, a University of California at Berkeley expert on the Red China's leaders perceive the presence of American naval power in the Pacific as being "at least implicitly" in opposition to Chinese free movement into Asia's open seas.
China has recently displayed its naval power in the area of the Spratley Islands, north of Brunei, claiming the Islands, north of Brunei, claiming the islands as Chinese territory, claims contested by Vietnam, the Philippines and other Asian nations.
Both China and Vietnam are engaged in oil exploration in the
Spratleys, each country considering the other an interloper in
the oil-rich region. In the past, there have been clashes between
Red Chinese and Vietnamese naval forces.
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The White House is under siege and some Washington insiders wee an early end to the Clinton Democratic administration.
The SPOTLIGHT has learned the new Republican leadership of Congress have agreed to postpone indefinitely hearings on the involvement of President ~Bill Clinton, first lady Hillary and their associates in the so-called Whitewater scandal pending indictments from a grand jury meeting under the direction of special prosecutor Kenneth Starr.
According to a Little Rock attorney close to the Whitewater probe, whose identity The SPOTLIGHT has agreed to protect, several indictments of high level members of the Clinton administration, linked to the Whitewater scandal and subsequent cover-up, will be revealed soon.
According to The SPOTLIGHT source, the indictments were completed in December but were not revealed to avoid placing the nation in a state of turmoil during the holiday season.
The source said further indictments could be expected, probably some time in February.
And here's what's really got Washington talking: Suppose Vice President Al Gore gets dragged into the Whitewater mess -an admitted long shot? If the Democrats can't make a deal with the Republican Congress and both Clinton and Gore are forced to resign, the office of the presidency would devolve onto the speaker of the House of Representatives -Newt Gingrich (R.Ga.).
The SPOTLIGHT's exclusive source said conditions at the Clinton White House and moral within the administration are grim.
He said first lady Hillary Clinton confided to "friends from Little Rock" that she didn't expect the Clintons would be able "to remain in the White House through this year.
The attorney told The SPOTLIGHT Starr had told both Sen. Alfonse D'Amoto (R-N.Y.), who now chairs the Senate Banking committee, and Rep. James Leach (R-Iowa), chairman of the House Banking Committee, shortly after the November 8 election that his investigation of the Clintons and their associates was progressing towards indictments.
CHANGE OF MIND
D'Amato, who had vowed the Senate Banking Committee under his chairmanship would immediately conduct wide-range investigations and hearings into the Whitewater affair if the Republicans gained control of the Senate, surprised the nation weeks after the election when he stated he would postpone the probe and hearings due to progress being made by Starr.
Leach expressed similar action would be taken by the House Banking Committee.
The source told The SPOTLIGHT Starr's investigation got a big boost with a plea bargain between his office and attorneys representing long-time Clinton crony and resigned Associate Attorney General Webster Hubbell, in Which Hubbell agreed to plead guilty to felony charges resulting from his over-billing of clients at Little Rock's Rose Law Firm, where Hubbell was a partner with Hillary was a partner with Hillary Clinton before her husband was elected president.
"Hubbel is singing like a canary," the source said. The attorney also told The SPOTLIGHT that Starr's investigative team, which has reportedly been virtually tearing Little Rock apart for evidence of wrongdoing by the Clintons, has discovered some major revelations in the alleged suicide of former White House Deputy Counsel Vincent M. Foster Jr.
Those revelations include, according to the Little Rock attorney,
a telephone log from the office of Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker,
indicating that a call had been received from the White House
that Foster had committed suicide -hours before his body was found
in Fort Marcy Park, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington.
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Shady machinations by the FED may have opened it to a class action suit.
By Martin Mann
To bail out Wall Street's foundering megabanks, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan secretly looted millions of small savings accounts and retirement incomes in 1991-93, accumulating evidence - first unearthed by The SPOTLIGHT -has noow conclusively confirmed.
New documentation has come to light, presenting ordinary Americans, acting individually or in class action suits, with a historic opportunity to press charges of fraud, malfeasance and racketeering against the Fed and its manipulative chairman.
The opportunity arose on New Year's Day when the New York Times finally revealed, for the first time, that beginning in late 1990 :The Fed and its chairman engineered a prolonged period of falling interest rates." Their sole purpose was "to save the American banking system: which was "reeling."
Business writer Allen Sloan, a leading Wall Street market- watcher, confirmed the same fact in his column the same day: "Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan drove short-term rates to ultra-low levels in the early 1990s to bail out the banking industry, setting off a wave of wild speculation that's still causing trouble," Sloan disclosed.
CRUCIAL ASPECT
But there was a crucial aspect to this event that neither the Times not veteran columnist Sloan presumed to mention: from first to last Greenspan and the Fed deceived the public about the reasons for their record indicates.
"Greenspan lied consistently about what he was doing to the national economy, and why," says Dr. Paul Adler. "He never told people that he would choke interest rates until the banks revived. The result was the ruin of millions of credulous, unsuspecting people whose small incomes were wiped out."
The record shows that 1991 was a disastrous years for megabanks. The great savings-and-loan bailout scandal was underway, burning up tens of billions of taxpayer dollars and stirring angry protest everywhere. From the first week of January, 1991, when the giant Bank of New England collapsed, there were mounting threats of another financial emergency: the rescue of the nation's sinking commercial banks.
To placate an incensed public, Fed Chief Greenspan and J. William Seidman, then chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), repeatedly assured the nation they were "not even considering" a taxpayer bailout of the 12,976 U.S.-based commercial banks.
In truth, behind the scenes, Greenspan did not merely consider the need for a general bank bailout, he secretly initiated one regardless of the losses it would inflict on American taxpayers and savings depositors.
"It was a covert bailout, and in the nature of such deceptive operations, it was enormously expensive," says veteran Wall Street broker Whitman Alcott, who specializes in financial equities. "But the Fed wanted to keep everything nice and quiet while it skinned the depositors."
CASH INJECTIONS
To refill the banks' leaking vaults, the Fed gave them vast cash injections -tens of billions of dollars -disguised as short-term credits at minimal rates around three percent. Then the Fed borrowed the same money back from the banks at sharply higher long- term rates. It was a thinly disguised taxpayer bailout -but neither Congress not the media ever questioned it, Alcott noted.
Small, loyal depositors got a raw deal, too. Used to receiving around six or seven percent interest on their savings, they say their modest incomes shrink under Greenspan's hammer -often by half or more. The FED's moves plunged millions of older Americans below the poverty line in 1991-1193.
"These savings account holders and retirees whose tiny incomes were somehow pegged to interest rates never knew what hit them -and Greenspan made sure they never found out," confirmed former Treasury analyst Aldo Milinkovich. "If they had realized that the Fed intended to manipulate interest rates for years ahead, rigging then in the banks' favor, they could have taken their nest eggs and invested them in safer, better assets."
But that was precisely what Greenspan wanted to avoid. "The public was told, time and again, that interest rates fell only temporarily, and would soon revert to a higher level," concluded Dr. Adler. "The result was that ordinary Americans ended up paying painfully for yet another giant bank bailout, both as taxpayers and as savers -and never even knew it."
This was "common fraud," concluded Dr. Milinkovich, now a corporate credit analyst on Wall Street. "Private speculators who try this sort of thing often end up in prison. The Fed gets away with it, because it is accountable and responsible on to itself."
But this time around, "The Fed has not just inflicted
huge losses on millions of Americans -these losses can be clearly
demonstrated. The time has come for a massive citizens' campaign
to call Greenspan and his furtive Fedsters to account in a court
of justice for their devious plunder of the nation's treasure,"
Dr. Adler asserted.
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An abandoned Florida landmark has been targeted for a mock military operation.
A plan for U.S. Army Special Forces troops to use a once luxurious Miami Beach hotel as the site of a mock attack as supposed anti-terrorist training will be the latest in a series of bizarre military operations that are being conducted at various sites across America.
Sometime between January 5 and 14, a unit of Special Forces troops from the U.S. Army Special Operations Command is scheduled to conduct a mock anti-terrorist raid on the now vacant St. Moritz Hotel, a Miami Beach landmark.
The 11-story St. Moritz, built in 1939 and now abandoned and owned by the city of Miami Beach, is to be raided by Special Forces troops, including psychological warfare experts, who will be landed on the rooftop and will then rappel down the sides of the hotel on ropes, presumably bursting through windows into rooms where mock targets depicting terrorists will be pre-positioned.
DETROIT PLAN FIZZLED
The Pentagon had a similar plan, in which Special Forces troops, working with Detroit police, would conduct an attack on the vacant landmark Book-Cadillac Hotel in Detroit last summer (SPOTLIGHT, Aug. 15).
That plan fell through when knowledge of it became public. The owner of an adjacent office building refused to allow Special Forces snipers to be placed on the roof of her building and the planned attack was leaked to the local news media and was revealed in the July 23 issue of the Detroit Free Press.
Instead, the military apparently vacant houses owned by Wayne County in the Detroit suburb of Van Buren Township, where live ammunition was used in mock attacks on the buildings.
At the site, state Rep. Deborah Whyman (R) and military experts accompanying her discovered live ammunition, fuses for plastic explosives and live grenades left strewn about the floors of the houses, where they could have been picked up by children living nearby (SPOTLIGHT Nov. 7).
Currently, Rep. Whyman is pushing for hearings by the Michigan legislature on the military activity. Whyman said she plans to introduce legislation curbing the use of live ammunition for such activity in her state and to require prior notice of military maneuvers near areas populated by civilians.
A similar raid, utilizing live ammunition, was conducted by a special U.S. Marine Corps tactical team working with an FBI SWAT unit last year on the abandoned Hotel Del Sol in downtown Yuma, Arizona (SPOTLIGHT, Sept, 19).
There was no prior notice given to residents of the city, many of whom were frightened when gunfire erupted as the Marine-FBI force went from room to room through the hotel, firing at cardboard "pop-up" targets of mock terrorists with pistols and submachine guns.
According to Miami Beach officials, who have issued a license to the Army Special Operations Command to conduct the exercise at the St. Moritz, the army wanted to use live ammunition in the assault on the hotel but was refused permission. They also planned to use the building as a sniper platform.
"Whoa, said the city," according to a report in the December 24 issue of the Miami Herald. "Unsafe. Disruptive. And besides, the city had no desire to be liable for accidents, said John Dellagloria, chief deputy city attorney."
Instead of live gunfire, the Army Special Operations Command has agreed to fire paint pellets in the training exercise. Other plans to use explosives on doors and windows of the hotel, as in the Detroit suburb of Van Buren Township, have also supposedly been canceled.
The St. Moritz is located at 1565 Collins Avenue in Miami Beach, the city's most heavily-traveled thoroughfare.
The hotel overlooks a beach area and many suspect the military may reach the building by coming ashore as raiding parties along the beach.
The St. Moritz is located about 70 feet from the Royal Palm Hotel, where guests will have ring-side seats to watch the action from their windows.
The bizarre military activities are usually held at night.
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Loss of individual state sovereignty in Europe is a harbinger of what's in store for the U.S.
The extensive laws imposed on once-sovereign nations by the European Union (EU) offers a glimpse of the future of the United States when the North American Free Trade Agreement is expanded into the "American Union."
A judge in London, Owen Stable, said bluntly that Britain "has sold itself down the river" by permitting the European Union Court to interfere with its criminal laws and procedures.
The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France stripped Britain's home minister of his traditional right to set the length of prison terms before probation can be granted, allowing criminals to go free.
Meanwhile, the "right wing" of Britain's ruling Conservative Party is demanding a referendum to decide whether Britain should remain in the superstate, which imposes laws both monstrous and petty.
Many of the laws imposed were passed by the European Parliament; others are "rules" dictated by Eurocrats in Brussels.
The EU requires fishermen to carry expensive, 160-piece medical kits, including insulin, even if no diabetics are on board. The EU has banned English oak as "too bendy" for making furniture. The EU also plans to establish a standard Christmas tree.
A law that took effect on New Year's Day bans the sale of bananas of "abnormal curvature" and they must be at least five and one-half inches long. Curvy cucumbers are illegal.
The EU has proclaimed carrots a "fruit" so Portugal can sell its carrot jam throughout Europe. The land snail, popular in French restaurants as escargot, is now a "fish." This allows snail growers to claim fish-farmer subsidies.
Youngsters aged 15-18 are "adolescents: if they have left school but "children" if they have not. Quail are not poultry. It is illegal to ski unless the snow is at least eight inches deep.
Cows must have double eartags with a 14-digit number to identify them. Soya milk is renamed Soya "drink." Restaurants must have separate boards to carry cheese and celery. Butchers must replace wooden carving tables with marble.
Publicizing these rules. both oppressive and petty, has caused a lot of laughter among Europeans, and the Eurocrats are becoming sensitive, resulting in yet another rule that would violate the First Amendment in the United States.
Journalists are now required to present the "benefits of Europe in a positive and optimistic way and not delight in criticism and failure."
Unless the laughter stops, the EU rulemakers warn, "there will be special powers to seek a change in the undisciplined behavior of the transmitters" of the news.
But, for the moment, The SPOTLIGHT can continue to "transmit"
news about what awaits you in the "American Union."
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For the UN to "promote democracy" sounds good. But who's "democracy?" And, how and where will it be "promoted?"
The United Nations has taken another significant step in its move to become, incrementally, a world government.
The UN's General Assembly approved, two days before Christmas, a sweeping resolution calling on Secretary-General Boutros Boutros- Ghali to promote democracy and strengthen the election process worldwide.
The UN also asked its new "high commissioner for human rights," Jose Ayala Lasso of Ecuador, to help in these chores.
Instead of the traditional "peace-keeping" role, where UN forces would patrol between warring sides at their invitation after the shooting stops, it is now preparing to intervene in disputes within sovereign nations.
There are at least 100 wars and skirmishes, mostly within nations, now taking place.
"The time of absolute and exclusive sovereignty has passed; its theory was never matched by reality," Boutros-Ghali said.
"It is the task of leaders of states today to understand this and to find a balance between the need for good internal governance and the requirements of an ever more interdependent world," the UN leader said.
Far from opposing further surrender of national sovereignty
to the UN, U.S. Ambassador Madeleine Albright enthusiastically
endorsed the General Assembly's action.
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The Arizona desert may hold the secret to the influx of Russian military hardware.
The appearance of two Soviet Hind-series attack helicopters at a remote desert airport in southeastern Arizona may hold the key to the presence of large amounts of former Soviet military hardware that has appeared during the past year at various locations throughout the United States.
The Soviet military equipment includes various top-of-the-line helicopters, T-72 main battle tanks and various surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missile systems and launchers.
On December 2, a Hind-D and a Hind-F appeared at the Safford Municipal Airport, about six miles north of the town of Safford, Arizona (population about 7,000) in the southeastern part of the state, about 30 miles from the New Mexico border. The airport is situated in a desert valley just south of the Gila Mountains.
The Safford airport is about halfway between the Hinds' base at Fort Bliss, Texas, and the Yuma Missile Proving Grounds in southwestern Arizona, and is believed to serve as a refueling stop for the aircraft.
FIRST SIGHTING
This is the first time that a Soviet Hind-F has been sighted in the United States. Previously, in the October 31 issue of The SPOTLIGHT, it was reported that a Soviet Hind-E was located at the National Guard section of the Gulport, Mississippi, airport, where it was photographed in a hangar with another sophisticated Soviet helicopter, the antisubmarine warfare Ka-27 Helix. Photos of both helicopters within the hangar appeared in The SPOTLIGHT edition.
Since then, it has been reported that the Hind-E, seen and photographed at Gulfport, has been relocated to Fort Bliss at El Paso, Texas.
The Hinds which appeared at the Safford airfield were spotted by three area men, who were accompanied by two small boys, aged 4 and 6, as the aircraft were descending for a landing.
At the airport, the pilots of the two Soviet-built helicopters were approached by the men holding the young boys' hands and were asked if the children could see the helicopters. The pilots, one of whom appeared to be in his early 50s, and may have been civilian test pilots, gave their consent and allowed the men and boys to get close to the aircraft and to look inside the cargo bays and cockpits.
On of the men quietly borrowed a camera from the airport manager, which was already loaded with a partially used roll of film, and avoiding detection was able to get about 15 shots of the two camouflaged-painted Hinds.
One of two pilots and the two co-pilot-gunners that accompanied them wore "shiny" olive green flight suits, bearing a badge-like insignia that indicated they belonged to the "Ft. Bliss Tactical Air Wing, El Paso, Texas."
The men with the young boys pretended to be common farmers of the area, although one of them, who gave a detailed description of the incident to The SPOTLIGHT, was an Army veteran and trained as a fire control member for the Army's Nike-Hercules air defense missile system at Fort Bliss in the late 1960s.
From airport personnel the men learned that the pilots and two Hinds had been at the Safford airport once before, about two months earlier.
One of the pilots, when asked, stated that one other Hind is located at Fort Bliss, which further confirms the Hind from Gulfport is being based there now. One of the pilots said he didn't know if other Hinds are in the United States.
The Hind-D carried a two-barrel 30-millimeter cannon mounted on the side of the nose cowling, two empty 57-millimeter rocket pods (one under each wing), and, according to the airmen, 1000 gallons of fuel, including two 200 gallon external tanks, one mounted under each wing.
Looking inside the Hind-D, the men observed that the instruments in both cockpits were in Russian, with sticker tape instructions over each in English.
ADVANCED HIND-F
Most interesting, however, of the two aircraft was the Hind-F, which was named "Wild Thing," according to "nose art: at the front. It included a painting of some sort of wild animal. It carried a .51 caliber, four-barrel mini-gun mounted on the right side of the nose, which the pilot said could fire standard U.S. .50 caliber ammunition. There were two rocket pods, one under each wing, of 40 millimeter size, and four dummy missiles mounted, two each, on the ends of the wings. About 140 decoy flares were mounted on each side under the tail section and facing to the sides. The fuel capacity was 600 gallons.
The pilots gave the two young boys colored stickers of what they indicated was their unit's insignia. A copy of the insignia accompanies this article. It shows a frontal view of a Hind, super imposed over a communist red star and circled with the lettering, "GE AIRBORNE THREAT SYSTEMS, EL, PASO TEXAS." This seems to indicate that the helicopters may be part of a secret testing program being conducted by the General Electric Company.
Upon looking in the cockpits of the Hind-F the men noted the instrumentation was all in English, which one of the men told The SPOTLIGHT appeared to have been "the way it was manufactured," as opposed to being "jury-rigged" with American-made gauges, dials and other instruments.
It would appear from this the helicopters are being made for export to English-speaking nations, which could explain the introduction of so much former Soviet military hardware in the United States.
Considering the wording on the insignia it would also indicate General Electric may be secretly working on a U.S. version of the Hind, with GE providing more sophisticated instrumentation and electronics.
As the helicopters prepared to leave, the Hind-F failed to start and was being worked on by the crew when the men and boys had to leave the airport.
One of the men explained that he had encountered a few weeks before the incident a fuel tank truck, hauling another fuel tank on a trailer, being backed out of a back road from the airport, due to a bridge being washed out.
The driver of the truck indicated that he was hauling 9,300 gallons of jet aviation fuel, which is used in the Hind, all the Way from Los Angeles and had been instructed by his company to take the back route. He also said that the fuel was for the military use.
Meanwhile, as the men and boys were viewing the helicopter, the editor of the local Eastern Arizona Courier stopped by the airport and observed the helicopters through the fence.
In an edition of the newspaper, which appeared later on December 14, it was reported that an Army unit of 49 men, apparently commanded by a "Lt. Jordan," had set up a camp along a road, connecting with the main road to the airport.
The newspaper editor visited the site with the Graham County sheriff, after residents of the area reported the presence of the military unit.
The newspaper editor was told by "Jordan" to "Stop taking pictures." When asked why, the officer didn't reply so the newsman continued filming the camp.
The sheriff and newsman were allowed to enter some of the 13 tents at the site, which contained radio equipment.
The Army officer explained that the unit which was stationed at nearby Fort Huachuca, a base that serves as a world-wide electronics intelligence-gathering facility, was at the site "to train and provide communications support to units in other parts of the state."
"On one tent wall," the newspaper noted, "was a standard white marking board with information that 49 people were assigned to the detachment and that 89 M-16 assault rifles had been issued."
The story included an "Editor's Note," which posed the questions: "Why do 49 men need 89 rifles? An even better question is `where are the missing 40 soldiers?'"
"After the brief tour," the newspaper reported, "Jordan was asked about nightly flights of UN helicopters several miles to the east of Safford and the fact that several Harrier jump-jets [vertical take-off jet fighters] have been seen in their landing and take-off configuration mode southwest of nearby Mt. Graham. Jordan replied that he didn't know anything about those things."
The newspaper also reported "Several of the telephone
calls received by the newspaper and the sheriff's office had indicated
that there were a few black-clad UN troops mixed in with the green-
clad troops."
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Cross-border government officials have been named as criminals in the collapse of the Mexican economy.
After long years of wielding "more power with less responsibility than any other economic "czar" as one observer put it, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan was stunned to hear congressional leaders coll for hi criminal indictment this month, not in Washington -at any rate not yet -but in neighboring MMexico.
Behind the unprecedented legal maneuver -no Fed chief has ever faced felony prosecution for official wrongdoing, least of all abroad -there are unusual economic abuses. Barely a year after it adopted the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Mexico has seen its currency nose dive, its industry stall, its stock market crash and its banks run for cover.
At protest rallies in the capital and other major cities, NAFTA was denounced by civic leaders and labor spokesmen as the "treasonout freetrade fraud" that precipitated the economic breakdown.
In the afternoon of January 10, the mounting national tensions exploded. A group of influential lawmakers headed by Jesus de Ortega, the minority leader of the Mexican Dongress, trooped into the office of Mexico's attorney general to file a formal criminal complaint against outgoing President Carlos Salinas di Gortari for frauf, theft, embezzlement, malfeasance and "plunder of the nation's wealth."
In addition to Salinas, a Harvard educated ecomonist known
for his links to the Chase Manhattan consortium, the indictment
cited many of the ex-president's "associates, aids, collaborators,
and other accomplices" who were prominent promoters of NAFTA.
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Bilderberg buddies play fast and loose with your tax dollars.
Jerking !8 billion out of American taxpayers' pockets so Mexico can pay interest on its $160 billion debt -most of it to David Rockefeller and other Wall Street bankers -is as easy as one Bilderberg luminary calling another.
Outgoing Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen participated in Bilderberg for years. His successor's former boss, Goldman Sachs Chairman Stephen Friedman, attended Bilderberg's secret meeting in Helsinki last June.
"If they dared ask Robert Rubin if he were aware of Mexico's concealed debt crisis during the NAFTA debate, and how much the bailout will benefit Goldman Sachs, he would have to do some energetic lying", said a Treasury Department source who would be fired if identified.
New Treasury Secretary Rubin sailed through the Senate hearing. This or other tough questions never came up.
"In fact, the White House was well aware of it, too," the source said. President Clinton is a long-time Trilateral and Bilderberg participant.
Of the $18 billion giveaway, $9 billion comes straight from the International Monetary Fund, one of the world shadow government's favorite conduits for shipping American tax dollars to poor nations.
It is this assurance -that the American taxpayers will bail them out -that allows international financiers to make loans at usurious interest rates to uncreditworthy poor nations. The bankers bear no risk.
Henry Kissinger, an officer of both Trilateral and Bilderberg, began setting the United States up for this rape of the taxpayer in 1993 by assuring the world of Mexico's solvency.
"I know of no government anywhere that is more competent," Kissinger said of Mexico in July, 1993, while propagandizing for NAFTA.
Carlos Salinas, then president of Mexico, "quelled corruption and brought into office an extraordinary group of young, highly trained technocrats," Kissinger said.
Now, Salinas is gone, as is the peso and as is $18 billion.
"You'll hear no talk of bailing out Orange County, California,"
said the Treasury official.
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Patriots are fighting the federal government's attempts to subvert the Second Amendment.
Suit was file January 9 in federal court in San Diego seeking to enjoin the assault weapons ban in the 1994 omnibus crime law. The suit seeks a preliminary and permanent injunction and declaration that the fire arms ban is unconstitutional.
The law was hurriedly passed by Congress just as it adjourned before last November's elections and signed by president Bill clinton on September 13, 1994. It bans 19 specific rifles, such as the Colt AR-15, and vests the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF with power to add firearms to the list of banned weapons. The law also bans ammunition clips that hold more than 10 rounds.
The suit names as defendants Attorney General Janet Reno, the BATF and acting Treasury Secretary Frank Newman who has temporarily replaced Lloyd Bentsen who resigned. The plaintiffs are retired Marine Corps Sgt. Henri Buettner, San Diego County Gun Rights Committee, Bruce Skane, John Wallner and the San Diego militia. The suit challenges the law on the grounds it violates Articles I and V of the Constitution and the Second, Fourth, Fifth and Ninth Amendments. Papers filed in court indicate the plaintiffs have natural rights to "self defense against government and defense of family and property."
Buettner challenges a provision in the law that exempts retired police officers from the weapons ban but applies to him, although through his Marine Corps training he is more qualified to handle the weapons banned by the law.
The plaintiffs' attorney, Pete Lepiscopo, has indicated that in addition to the suit, the plaintiffs are exploring possible political solutions in light of the new Republican majorities in Congress.
In a letter addressed to both Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) and House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), Lepiscopo says, "I believe that my clients' suit illustrates that significant constitutional problems exist with the crime bill. Accordingly, I respectfully suggest that Congress consider repealing the challenged provisions and replace them with stringent punishment for individuals who use any type of firearm during the commission of a violent federal crime. I suggest life imprisonment and if someone is killed, the death penalty."
Lepiscopo has indicated, "It was well understood by the Founding Fathers that which won liberty, will preserve liberty: the inalienable right of the people to keep and bear arms."
Quoting Benjamin Franklin in response to the common argument that gun control will reduce crime, Lepiscopo retorts: "Benjamin Franklin made it quite clear when he said, `Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty for safety.'"
For more information on the suit and/or a copy of the complaint
filed against the government contact: Pete Lepiscopo, Esq., 2635
Camino del Rio South, Suite 108, San Diego, CA 92108. His telephone
number is (619) 299-5343.
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In the wake of the plunge of the Mexican peso, bringing with it the threat of vast social unrest south of our border as well as a promise of a multi- billion dollar bailout for Mexico, a bipartisan group of lawmakers has introduced legislation to repeal the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
Rep. Peter Defazio (D-Ore.) has introduced a measure, H.R. 499, to repeal NAFTA, which is cosponsored by Democrats Marcy Kaptur, Jim Traficant and Sherrod Brown of Ohio; Neil Abercrombie and Patsy Mink of Hawaii; Lane Evans and William Lipinski of Illinois; Maurice Hinchey and Nydia Velazquez of New York; George Miller of California; Frank Pallone of New Jersey; Collin Peterson of Minnesota: Gene Taylor of Mississippi; and Republicans Duncan Hunter of California, Terry Everett of Alabama, Ron Klink of Pennsylvania, and Independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
The announcement was made at a Washington press conference on January 11.
The action follows a drastic plunge in the value of Mexico's currency and a Clinton administration proposal to rescue the plunging peso. The original bailout amount of $9 billion has since increased to $40 billion.
"NAFTA is not only a job killer, but it has the potential to trigger the biggest U.S. taxpayer bailout since the savings and loan fiasco," said DeFazio. "U.S. working families are already being asked to put up billions of dollars to prop up Mexico's currency and help pave the way for more U.S. manufacturing jobs moving south of the border. It's time to pull the plug on this disaster-in-the- making.
"The Clinton administration is desperately trying to cover up the abject failure of this trade agreement by pouring billions of dollars into Mexican banks and fudging the trade numbers," said DeFazio.
"But there's also a conspiracy of silence on the part of the Republican leadership in Congress who provided the votes needed to pass this turkey."
The press conference revealed that:
* According to the Joint Economic Committee (JEC), the U.S. trade surplus with Mexico, not counting goods produced overseas and shipped through U.S. ports, shrank by 27 percent in the first nine months of 1994, and that the U.S. showed a trade deficit with Mexico for the month of October.
* U.S. Commerce `Department trade figures artificially inflate U.S. export numbers by including the value of products manufactured overseas and transshipped through U.S. ports. For example, cars produced in Spain and shipped through U.S. ports for sale in Mexico are counted by the U.S. government as U.S. exports. Yet such transshipments create very few U.S. jobs.
* The U.S. Department of Labor's Office of NAFTA Trade Adjustment Assistance reports that it has thus far approved 12,00 out of 30,000 applications for welfare from workers who lost their jobs due to NAFTA.
DeFazio called the numbers "the tip of the iceberg," citing JEC estimates that the huge growth in imports from Mexico into the U.S. since NAFTA's passage has cost 137,000 U.S. jobs, mostly in the high wage manufacturing sectors.
"one factory has closed every day since the enactment of NAFTA," said Kaptur. "From Vermont to Pennsylvania to California to Alabama to Florida, people who had jobs now do not because of NAFTA. Good jobs have disappeared and are replaced by temporary and part-time work with no benefits. As families are forever disrupted, NAFTA is wreaking economic havoc on these families -and for our country, NAFTA remains death by pin pricks.
"This time last year every corporate-paid economist, every special interest politician, every reporter from The Wall Street Journal and the big business magnates who read it could not stop gushing about NAFTA," Kaptur said. "Today washington is whispering about how the U.S. is bailing out Mexico.
"If the elites choose to whisper, let me yell it -$9 billion in direct credit from U.S. taxpayers, $5 billion from the U.S. Federal Reserve and $3 billion in loans from U.S. banks! and this is just for starters. The Clinton administration said it is prepared to pay what ever it takes down the road.
"The U.S. government and U.S. banks are spending your money to prop up the Mexican peso, in a country that has never known true democracy, and the multinationals and megabanks that have moved there."
WHERE ARE THE JOBS?
Kaptur said that NAFTA's promoters promised 60,000 U.S. manufactured vehicles would be exported to Mexico in 1994, but in reality only 28,000 were sent while the U.S. imported 278,000 cars from Mexico. "The Big Three corporations have used NAFTA to downsize their labor forces in the U.S., hold down wastes and invest heavily in Mexico," she said.
The bill to repeal NAFTA is brief compared with the 2,000 pages of the original treaty. The bill reads:
Section 1. Short Title: This Act may be cited as the NAFTA Withdrawal Act of 1995.
Section 2. Withdrawal from NAFTA. Pursuant to Article 2205 of NAFTA, the President of the United States shall, not later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, notify the Government of Canada and the Government of the United Mexican States of the withdrawal of the Government of the United States from that Agreement.
Section 3. Modifications to United States Law. The president shall, not later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of this act, submit to the Congress proposed legislation making those changes to the United States law that are necessary to make effective the withdrawal of the United States from NAFTA.
Defazio predicted that as U.S. Mexico trade figures worsen
and the cost of the peso bailout increases, support for repealing
the trade pact will grow dramatically.
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Is the nation's top banker a liar, who uses his extraordinary unconstitutional powers over the nation's money supply to enrich himself and his cronies?
That Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan habitually deceives the public with false and manipulative statements is not news to readers of this populist newspaper, but this month the devious economic czar's tangled lies made him a laughing stock in the one place where his pronouncements matter -on Wall Street.
Behind the contemptuous ridicule -"Greenspan makes Ollie North look like a saint," quipped veteran bond trader Dewitt Mayfield - serious questions are being raised by market watchers about Greenspan's involvement with an inner circle of billionaire speculators who have displayed uncanny foresight about recent zig- zags in the Fed's monetary policy.
Greenspan does not merely fail to tell the truth, he apparently no longer remembers in January, 1995 what he told Congress and the public throughout 1994, observed financial writer John Crudele in his January 16 stock-market column.
Last year, Greenspan "raised interest rates six times...and each time blamed it on dangerously accelerating inflation," recalled Crudele.
In fact, the government's own figures indicate that inflation rose only to 2.6 percent in 1994, Crudele explained. And on January 12, the Fed chairman started a joint session of the House and Senate Budget Committees by testifying that even those reassuring figures may be a bit too high, Crudele reported.
Greenspan told the surprised lawmakers that in reality inflation was stable throughout last year and never even reached a minuscule 2 percent per annum.
"What's going on here?" Crudele asked sarcastically.
It wasn't just that official figures often lied; the problem was that Greenspan was an even worse liar, Crudele concluded. The Fed's real reason for boosting interest rates was Greenspan's concern about wide spread speculation in the financial markets -unleashed by Greenspan's own manipulationn of economy -running out of control and setting the stage for a devastating crash.
Instead of telling the truth, the Fed czar "created an inflation bogeyman and blamed it for every interest-rate hike," Crudele explained.
In telephone interviews with a SPOTLIGHT reporter, other experienced observers were even more sharply critical of what one called Greenspan's deliberate dishonesty."
"There is no other word fore such fraudulent manipulation
of the public," stated Dr Aldo Milinkovich, a former Treasury
policy analyst who is now a corporate consultant in New York.
"Greenspan's disinformation has already impoverished American
taxpayers and savings depositors by tens of billions of dollars.
It is time to take a hard look at just whom these deception operations
have enriched and how."
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The federal government has opened the door for thousands of new immigrants to the United States.
Forget the multimillion-dollar suit filed by Florida against the federal government to recover costs of jailing illegal immigrants and California voters approving the denial of benefits to illegal aliens in the last election.
Forget the lawsuits in the works in Arizona, Texas, Illinois, New York and New Jersey against the federal government to recover costs of caring for illegal immigrants.
Even though American citizens in California voted overwhelmingly in November to "save our state," by enacting strict new laws blocking illegal immigrants from receiving social services, health services (except in emergencies) and public schooling, the federal government continues to recruit Third World immigrants.
OPEN THE GATES
The federal government says it wants more immigrants - 55,000 of them to be exact - to enhance "diversity" in the United States, according to a published report from Florida.
"This was supposed to be for countries that have los immigration rates," a State Department spokesperson told the St Petersberg Times. "It's to diversify the existing pool of immigrants."
Since 1990 millions of immigrants, who can prove they have a high school diploma and are not from a country that already floods the U.S. with immigrants, have become part of a human lottery to enter America.
Citizens from Mexico, China, the Philippines, Vietnam, the Dominican Republic, India, El Salvador, Britain, South Korea, Canada, Jamaica, Taiwan and Colombia are barred from the lottery.
Applicants from any other country need only place their name,
date of birth and address on a blank piece of paper and send it
to a State Department post office box in New Hampshire to be
considered for a visa.
Until 1965 immigration laws gave preference to European immigrants. A change in the law at that time threw open the doors to people from any country. Today 85 percent of immigrants come from Latin America or Asia.
Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) introduced legislation in 1990 to diversify the immigration pool through a lottery. The first 55,000 applicants to pass a medical test proving they do not have either AIDS or tuberculosis, and sign oaths declaring they are not communists or terrorists, don't practice polygamy or have criminal records, become U.S. residents.
These practices come at a time when other First World nations
are cracking down on immigration and U.S. citizens are increasingly
vocal in their opposition to bearing the burden of paying welfare
costs associated with immigration, as well as the fundamental
changes taking place in American society as a result of such immigration.
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