The Red Pill

The King Alfred Plan Explained

noreply@blogger.com (Sparkle) — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 17:19:00 +0000

Don't think it can "never" happen! Look at the video, do the research yourself, THEN spread the word.

The King Alfred Plan brought to you by speaker Dr. Ray Hagin.

Below you'll find a copy of plan he's reading. Don't let lack of knowledge destroy YOU!

The King Alfred Plan In writing....

KING ALFRED

In the event of widespread and continuing and coordinated racial disturbances in the United States, King Alfred, at the discretion of the President, is to be put into action immediately.

PARTICIPATING FEDERAL AGENCIES

National Security Council Department of Justice

Central Intelligence Agency Department of Defense

Federal Bureau of Investigation Department of Interior

PARTICIPATING STATE AGENCIES

(Under Federal Jurisdiction)

National Guard Units State Police

PARTICIPATING LOCAL AGENCIES

(Under Federal Jurisdiction)

City Police County Police

Memo: National Security Council

Even before 1954, when the Supreme Court of the United States of America declared unconstitutional separate educational and recreational facilities, racial unrest and discord had become very nearly a part of the American way of life. But that way of life was repugnant to most Americans. Since 1954, however, that unrest and discord have broken out into widespread violence which increasingly have placed the peace and stability of the nation in dire jeopardy. This violence has resulted in loss of life, limb and property, and has cost the taxpayers of this nation billions of dollars. And the end is not yet in sight. This same violence has raised the tremendously grave question as to whether the races can ever live in peace with each other. Each passing month has brought new intelligence that, despite new laws passed to alleviate the condition of the Minority, the Minority still is not satisfied. Demonstrations and rioting have become a part of the familiar scene. Troops have been called out in city after city across the land, and our image as a world leader severely damaged. Our enemies press closer, seeking the advantage, possibly at a time during one of these outbreaks of violence. The Minority has adopted an almost military posture to gain its objectives, which are not clear to most Americans. It is expected, therefore, that when those objectives are denied the Minority, racial war must be considered inevitable. When that emergency comes, we must expect the total involvement of all 22 million members of the Minority, men, women, and children, for once this project is launched, its goal is to terminate, once and for all, the Minority threat to the whole of the American society, and indeed, the Free World.

Chairman, National Security Council

Preliminary Memo: Department of Interior

Under King Alfred, the nation has been divided into 10 regions. In case of Emergency, Minority members will be evacuated from the cities by federalized national guard units, local and state police and, if necessary, by units of the Regular Armed Forces, using public and military transportation, and detained in nearby military installations until a further course of action has been decided.

1 - Capital Region 6 - Deep South Region

2 - Northeast Region 7 - Deep South Region II

3 - Southeast Region 8 - Great Plains, Rocky mountain Region

4 - Great Lakes Region 9 - Southwest Region

5 - South Central Region 10 - West Coast Region

No attempt will be made to seal off the Canadian and Mexican borders.

Secretary,

Department of Interior

* 849-899 King of England who slaughtered thousands under the disguise of protecting the European religion of Christianity. As a result he was revered as one of the most noble Kings in the history of England.

Combined Memo: Department of Justice

Preliminary Memo: Federal Bureau of Investigation & Central Intelligence Agency

There are 12 major Minority organizations and all are familiar to the 22 million. Dossiers have been compiled on the leaders of the organizations, and can be studied in Washington. The material contained in many of the dossiers, and our threat to reveal that material, has considerably held in check some of the leaders. Leaders who do not have such usable material in their dossiers have been approached to take government posts, mostly as ambassadors and primarily in African countries. The promise of these positions also has materially contributed to a temporary slow-down of Minority activities. However, we do not expect these slow-downs to be of long duration, because there are always new and dissident elements joining these organizations, with the potential power to replace the old leaders. All organizations and their leaders are under constant, 24-hour surveillance. The organizations are:

1 - The Black Muslims

2 - Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

3 - Congress of Racial Equality

4 - Uhuru Movement

5 - Group On Advanced Leadership (GOAL)

6 - Freedom Now Party (FNP)

7 - United Black Nationalists of America (UBNA)

8 - The New Pan-African Movement (TNPAM)

9 - Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)

10 - The National Urban League (NUL)

11 - The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

12 - Committee on Racial and Religious Progress (CORARP)

NOTE: At the appropriate time, to be designated by the President, the leaders of some of these organizations are to be detained ONLY WHEN IT IS CLEAR THAT THEY CANNOT PREVENT THE EMERGENCY, working with local public officials during the first critical hours. All other leaders are to be detained at once. Compiled lists of Minority leaders have been readied at the National Data Computer Center. It is necessary to use the Minority leaders designated by the President in much the same manner in which we use Minority members who are agents with Central and Federal, and we cannot, until there is no alternative, reveal King Alfred in all its aspects. Minority members of Congress will be unseated at once. This move is not without precedent in American history.

Attorney General

Preliminary Memo: Department of Defense

This memo is being submitted in lieu of a full report from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. That report is now in preparation. There will be many cities where the Minority will be able to put into the street a superior number of people with a desperate and dangerous will. He will be a formidable enemy, for he is bound to the Continent by heritage and knows that political asylum will not be available to him in other countries. The greatest concentration of the Minority is in the Deep South, the Eastern seaboard, the Great lakes region and the West Coast. While the national population exceeds that of the Minority by more than ten times, we must realistically take into account the following:

1 - An estimated 40-50 percent of the white population will not, for various reasons, engage the Minority during an Emergency.

2 - American Armed Forces are spread around the world. A breakout of war abroad means fewer troops at home to handle the Emergency.

3 - Local law enforcement officials must contain the Emergency until help arrives, though it may mean fighting a superior force. New York City, for example, has a 25,000 man police force, but there are about one million Minority members in the city.

We are confident that the Minority would hold any city it took for only a few hours. The lack of weapons, facilities, logistics --- all put the Minority at a final disadvantage.

Since the Korean War, this department has shifted Minority members of the Armed Forces to areas where combat is most likely to occur, with the aim of eliminating, through combat, as many combat-trained military servicemen as possible. Today the ratio of Minority member combat deaths in Vietnam, where they are serving as “advisors,” is twice as high as the Minority population ratio to the rest of America. Below is the timetable for King Alfred as tentatively suggested by the JCS who recommend that the operation be made over a period of eight hours:

1. Local police and Minority leaders in action to head off the Emergency.

2. Countdown to eight hours begins at the moment the President determines the Emergency to be:

a. National

b. Coordinated

c. Of Long Duration 8th hour

3. County police join local police 7th hour

4. State police join county and local police 6th hour

5. Federal marshals join state, county, and local forces 5th hour

6. National guards federalized, held in readiness 4th hour

7. Regular Armed Forces alerted, take up positions;

Minority troops divided and detained,

along with all white sympathizers, under guard 3rd hour

8. All minority leaders, national and local detained 2nd hour

9. President addresses Minority on radio-television,

gives it one hour to end the Emergency 1st hour

10. All units under regional commands into the Emergency 0 hour

“0” Committee Report:

Survey shows that during a six-year period, production created 9,000,000 objects, or 1,500,000 each year. Production could not dispose of the containers, which proved a bottleneck. However, that was almost 20 years ago. We suggest that vaporization techniques be employed to overcome the production problems inherent in King Alfred.

(The “0” Committee Report is referring to the problems that occurred in Nazi Germany when the furnaces were not hot enough to burn the bodies that Hitler had killed. The bodies clogged up the furnaces thereby causing a problem that the above committee recommends avoiding by building high-volume (nuclear-powered) incinerators that burn 5,000 degrees. It should be noted that steel melts at approximately 2700 degrees!)

Guess who holds MOST of the US Debt....And It Ain't China.

noreply@blogger.com (Sparkle) — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 14:30:00 +0000

CLICK HERE to find out.

US Economy Collapsing [Understanding how the Federal Reserve operates]

noreply@blogger.com (Sparkle) — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 17:19:00 +0000

"Money is debt and debt is money." To understand that statement you should view the video provided below on the Federal Reserve and how it operates.

The Banned SNL Skit Cannot Hide

noreply@blogger.com (Sparkle) — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 16:34:00 +0000

The skit was banned, it's put up then yanked, put up again then yank again I got my hands on and Im putting it up, let's see what happens.

Herb Sandler takes on SNL after snark attack

Andrew S. Ross

Shooting back at SNL: Herb Sandler's been "listening to this crap for two years," and he's not going to take it anymore. Especially after "Saturday Night Live" labeled him and his wife, Marion, former owners of Oakland's Golden West Financial (nee World Savings) as "people who should be shot" in a skit that ran this past weekend.

In case you forgot, the Sandlers are famous (or infamous) for selling their former S&L, along with $122 billion of adjustable rate mortgages, to Wachovia in 2006. Yes, Herb and Marion made a pot of money, and stand to make more because of their Wachovia stock holdings.

But they don't want to be the fall guys for the collapse of Wachovia, and, by extension, the nation's financial system. "We are being unfairly tarred," Herb, 77, told the Associated Press. (We called Herb, who lives in the East Bay, but hadn't heard back by press time).

Among the points he made in that interview, and four months ago in an interview with the Wall Street Journal: Wachovia's problems are largely of its own management's making; Losses on the Golden West-generated loans carried by Wachovia have been grossly exaggerated. In fact, they're performing better than many of Wachovia's competitors.

He also believes Wachovia is worth more than Wells Fargo has offered, though in this market, he adds, Wachovia should take the money and run.

Others have long criticized the Sandlers' design-your-own home loan plan ("pick a pay") as a disaster waiting to happen. While Golden West's growth and profits soared - along with house prices - underwriting standards and credit requirements became increasingly lax, say insiders. Still, Golden West stood out like a beacon as other S&Ls collapsed around them. As late as 2004, the investment research firm Morningstar called the Sandlers' corporate governance a "paragon" of the industry.

The blame game will rage on, no doubt. Meanwhile, you can judge for yourself the degree of irony in Herb Sandler's onetime description of the S&L scandal as "a crook's paradise."

But the end is nigh: Even as Herb Sandler defends his legacy, the physical remains of his once-mighty empire have all but disappeared. As part of Wachovia's planned layoff of 12,000 employees, World's entire portfolio loan division has been eliminated, as have its underwriting departments, along with sundry loan managers and representatives.

Wachovia doesn't need them because, unlike the way World and Golden West did things, it is getting out of the business of keeping and managing individual mortgages, packaging them instead into parcels of securities to be traded, as so many other troubled banks have done.

"I'm one of the last survivors," said a mortgage consultant in one of Wachovia's Bay Area branches. "Not that we're doing much business.

And you wonder WHY they call us SHEEP

noreply@blogger.com (Sparkle) — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 17:48:00 +0000

Sara Palin's latest charge against Obama is that he hangs out with terrorists...this could not be more true than a kid on the night of Christmas Eve claiming he saw Santa land on the roof top. Yet even so now people have taken the claim a step further and are convinced that Obama is a terrorist himself. This is what I mean by sheep, They're not THINKING for themselves. Sara knows that all she has to do is place an idea in the people's head and they run with it believing that it's true and accepting what is said for what it is, never asking any questions and to lazy to gather information for themselves in a search for truth. First he was judged for his association with Rev Wright, how crazy was THAT? We ALL know people who have radical views that we might not agree with but aren't we ALL entitled to our own opinions and viewpoints? If I know an unlawful person that I used to hang with YEARS ago, does that make me an unlawful person to.....eventhough I've never broken a law? What gives Sara Palin the authority to judge? What gives ANYONE the authority to judge a man by who he once knew? If that's how we're measuring character now.... well we're ALL in a whole HEAP of trouble! Below are couple video's I want you to see so you can understand how great the power of suggestion is to people who aren't acustomed to thinking for themselves. There is a drastic need for the people of America to be deprogramed, or unplugged so to speak.....to stop falling for anything and finally STAND for something. And START doing some research...how can fighting POVERTY be a terrorist act? Do some research on Bill Ayers before you go slandering this University professors name.

Here are the videos....

File this one under the "give 'em enough rope" column. A pro-Obama blogger in Ohio caught McCain-Palin supporters as they streamed into a rally and asked some of the most salient questions of the day. Like, "is Obama a terrorist?" Check out the responses.

Some Things YOU Need To Remember......

noreply@blogger.com (Sparkle) — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 07:34:00 +0000

IN THE CORPORATE WORLD. . .

You are not a man or woman. You are considered a thing. . .
part of a group or an economic unit hooked into the grid of society, a willing slave to your bank account, a willing slave to your credit cards, a willing slave to your school loans. With every new purchase using credit, with every advancement in what you perceive to be life requires a government or bank loan, you sink further into debt and further into voluntary bondage. This debt allows those with money to enslave and control you.

THIS IS WHO YOU ARE. . .

When you're born you become a number. As the number, you reap profit as you grow and work in an illusionary "free" system to help build the collective tax base. The tax base in turn is used to form and engage in a class system that feeds the wealthy. The vast numbers that make up the fabricated American State are used as a tacit slave force to help fund and establish an Industrial Union through income taxation as directed by the likes of a thing called Marxism. You unwittingly work for the good of the orchestrated global family for the benefit of the controlling class.

THIS IS HOW THEY CONTROL YOU. . .

Benjamin Franklin said, "When you run into debt, you give another power over your liberty." And under the law of God The borrower is SERVANT to the lender. LOOK IT UP: Proverbs 22:7. As you work yourself further into debt, you give more of your life away to those with whom you are borrowing, not to mention being in willing disobedience to God. Furthermore, you are also being held responsible for the debt that is created by the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank. The owners of the Federal Reserve dictate the economy, the monetary values, and how you will pay back what you owe. In the end, you will have spent your life in serious, endless debt, because you believe that it is the only way to live as a functional American.

THIS IS THE ILLUSION. . .

You live in a society where you believe you exist as a man or a woman. You believe you are bettering yourself and working your way toward a goal of financial independence; but in reality, you exist to better the global economy in benefit of the Elite. You exist as a source of life for the ruling class. In the real world, you are blinded by the illusion of necessity. . .

THROUGHOUT HISTORY, man has tried with varying rates of failure to control other men for the purpose of gaining more power. Poor men want to be rich, rich men want to be king, and kings want to be god. This adage has proved true time and time again. Today, in the United States, more than 250 million people have bought into this adage and exist in a system created for global corporate profit. Unfortunately, the real world offers broader opportunities for success to those in a position to take advantage. At the same time, it scars those who can not reap its benefits.

"You are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else, you were born into bondage, born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. . . a prison, for your mind."

Morpheus~ The Matrix

REMEMBER....

"The surest way to overthrow an existing social order is to debauch the currency."

This whole economy crisis is not by chance, ask yourself "WHO STANDS TO GAIN?" I can assure you it's not the American people. Don't let silly things like trying to prove Obama's a terrorist because of the people he once knew, or that he's Muslim because of his name, deter you from what's REALLY going on. STAY FOCUSED! Do not allow yourself to be distracted. If these things were true TRUST me he would NOT be running for president and he would not had held ANY office in government. Be more concerned with the government taking over these banking institutions and what that means for YOU. Be more concerned about the Marshal Law they're trying to impliment and us being fed a pack of lies about how it's for our own good. Be more concerned about you're being considered a slave. THESE are the things you need to be mindful of and watching out for. STAY FOCUSED, STAY FOCUSED.....STAY FOCUSED!!!!

You be The Judge...

noreply@blogger.com (Sparkle) — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 06:32:00 +0000

Feds Train Clergy To "Quell Dissent" During Martial Law [A Blast From The Not So Distant Past]

noreply@blogger.com (Sparkle) — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 06:21:00 +0000

Paul Joseph Watson
Thursday, August 16, 2007

Feds Train Clergy To "Quell Dissent" During Martial Law
Shocking KSLA 12 news report confirms story we broke last year, Pastors to cite Romans 13 as reason for public to obey government orders, relinquish guns and be taken to camps during state of emergency

A shocking KSLA news report has confirmed the story we first broke last year, that Clergy Response Teams are being trained by the federal government to "quell dissent" and pacify citizens to obey the government in the event of a declaration of martial law.

In May 2006, we exposed the existence of a nationwide FEMA program which is training Pastors and other religious representatives to become secret police enforcers who teach their congregations to "obey the government" in preparation for the implementation of martial law, property and firearm seizures, mass vaccination programs and forced relocation.

A whistleblower who was secretly enrolled into the program told us that the feds were clandestinely recruiting religious leaders to help implement Homeland Security directives in anticipation of a potential bio-terrorist attack, any natural disaster or a nationally declared emergency.

The first directive was for Pastors to preach to their congregations Romans 13, the often taken out of context bible passage that was used by Hitler to hoodwink Christians into supporting him, in order to teach them to "obey the government" when martial law is declared.

It was related to the Pastors that quarantines, martial law and forced relocation were a problem for state authorities when enforcing federal mandates due to the "cowboy mentality" of citizens standing up for their property and second amendment rights as well as farmers defending their crops and livestock from seizure.

It was stressed that the Pastors needed to preach subservience to the authorities ahead of time in preparation for the round-ups and to make it clear to the congregation that "this is for their own good."

Pastors were told that they would be backed up by law enforcement in controlling uncooperative individuals and that they would even lead SWAT teams in attempting to quell resistance.

Though some doubted the accuracy of this report at the time due to its fundamentally disturbing implications, the story has now been confirmed by a KSLA 12 news report, in which participating clergy and officials admit to the existence of the program.

The report entertains the scenario of martial law as depicted in the movie The Siege and states that "quelling dissent would be critical."

Dr. Durell Tuberville serves as chaplain for the Shreveport Fire Department and the Caddo Sheriff's Office. Tuberville said of the clergy team's mission, "the primary thing that we say to anybody is, 'let's cooperate and get this thing over with and then we'll settle the differences once the crisis is over.'"

Such clergy response teams would walk a tight-rope during martial law between the demands of the government on the one side, versus the wishes of the public on the other. "In a lot of cases, these clergy would already be known in the neighborhoods in which they're helping to diffuse that situation," assured Sandy Davis. He serves as the director of the Caddo-Bossier Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.

For the clergy team, one of the biggest tools that they will have in helping calm the public down or to obey the law is the bible itself, specifically Romans 13. Dr. Tuberville elaborated, "because the government's established by the Lord, you know. And, that's what we believe in the Christian faith. That's what's stated in the scripture."

Screenshot from the KSLA 12 news article that accompanies the video report (http://www.ksla.com/Global/story.asp?S=6937987).

So there you have it - Homeland Security are working with local police departments and religious leaders to prepare for the declaration of martial law and in particular developing techniques they will employ during the crisis to "quell dissent."

Phony Christian leaders are brainwashing their congregations to accept the premise that the totalitarian police state is "of the Lord" and that they should get on their knees and lick jackboots while the round-ups take place as citizens are processed into quarantine zones and detention camps by the National Guard and U.S. troops returning from Iraq

The precedent for mass gun confiscation and martial law in times of a real or manufactured emergency was set during Hurricane Katrina, when police and National Guard patrols forced home owners - even in areas unaffected by the hurricane - to hand over their legally owned firearms at gunpoint.

This is a clear precursor for the imminent declaration of a state of emergency, a scenario that President Bush codified in his recent Presidential Decision Directive of May 9th, which states in the event of a "catastrophic event" the President can take total control over the government and the country, bypassing all other levels of government at the state, federal, local, territorial and tribal levels, and thus ensuring total unprecedented dictatorial power.

The scope of the program is so secretive that even Homeland Security Committee member and Congressman Peter DeFazio was denied access to view the classified portion of the documents.

Rockefeller Admitted Elite Goal Of Microchipped Population

noreply@blogger.com (Sparkle) — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 06:07:00 +0000

You can think it's a game of you want to...After you read this article, you can't say you didn't know.

Hollywood director Russo goes in-depth for first time on the astounding admissions of Nick Rockefeller, including his prediction of 9/11 and the war on terror hoax, the Rockefeller's creation of women's lib, and the elite's ultimate plan for world population reduction and a microchipped society

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Monday, January 29, 2007

Hollywood director and documentary film maker Aaron Russo has gone in-depth on the astounding admissions of Nick Rockefeller, who personally told him that the elite's ultimate goal was to create a microchipped population and that the war on terror was a hoax, Rockefeller having predicted an "event" that would trigger the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan eleven months before 9/11.

Rockefeller also told Russo that his family's foundation had created and bankrolled the women's liberation movement in order to destroy the family and that population reduction was a fundamental aim of the global elite.

Russo is perhaps best known for producing Trading Places starring Eddie Murphy but was more recently in the spotlight for his exposé of the criminal run for profit federal reserve system, the documentary America From Freedom to Fascism.

Currently undergoing more treatment in his fight against cancer, Russo made time for a sit down interview with radio host and fellow documentary film maker Alex Jones in which he dropped bombshell after bombshell on what Rockefeller had told him about the direction the world was being steered towards by the global elite.

After his popular video Mad As Hell was released and he began his campaign to become Governor of Nevada, Russo was noticed by Rockefeller and introduced to him by a female attorney. Seeing Russo's passion and ability to affect change, Rockefeller set about on a subtle mission to recruit Russo into the elite.

During one conversation, Rockefeller asked Russo if he was interested in joining the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) but Russo rejected the invitation, saying he had no interest in "enslaving the people" to which Rockefeller coldly questioned why he cared about the "serfs."

"I used to say to him what's the point of all this," states Russo, "you have all the money in the world you need, you have all the power you need, what's the point, what's the end goal?" to which Rockefeller replied (paraphrasing), "The end goal is to get everybody chipped, to control the whole society, to have the bankers and the elite people control the world."

Rockefeller even assured Russo that if he joined the elite his chip would be specially marked so as to avoid undue inspection by the authorities.

Russo states that Rockefeller told him, "Eleven months before 9/11 happened there was going to be an event and out of that event we were going to invade Afghanistan to run pipelines through the Caspian sea, we were going to invade Iraq to take over the oil fields and establish a base in the Middle East, and we'd go after Chavez in Venezuela."

Rockefeller also told Russo that he would see soldiers looking in caves in Afghanistan and Pakistan for Osama bin Laden and that there would be an "Endless war on terror where there's no real enemy and the whole thing is a giant hoax," so that "the government could take over the American people," according to Russo, who said that Rockefeller was cynically laughing and joking as he made the astounding prediction.

In a later conversation, Rockefeller asked Russo what he thought women's liberation was about. Russo's response that he thought it was about the right to work and receive equal pay as men, just as they had won the right to vote, caused Rockefeller to laughingly retort, "You're an idiot! Let me tell you what that was about, we the Rockefeller's funded that, we funded women's lib, we're the one's who got all of the newspapers and television - the Rockefeller Foundation."

Rockefeller told Russo of two primary reasons why the elite bankrolled women's lib, one because before women's lib the bankers couldn't tax half the population and two because it allowed them to get children in school at an earlier age, enabling them to be indoctrinated into accepting the state as the primary family, breaking up the traditional family model.

This revelation dovetails previous admissions on behalf of feminist pioneer Gloria Steinem (pictured) that the CIA bankrolled Ms. Magazine as part of the same agenda of breaking up traditional family models.

Rockefeller was often keen to stress his idea that "the people have to be ruled" by an elite and that one of the tools of such power was population reduction, that there were "too many people in the world," and world population numbers should be reduced by at least half.

One issue which has spiraled out of control of the elite according to Rockefeller's conversations with Russo, is the Israel-Palestine conflict, with serious thinking at one stage revolving around the bizarre notion of giving Israeli citizens one million dollars each and relocating them all in the state of Arizona.

Former CIA Operative: "Of Course Bin Laden is Dead"

noreply@blogger.com (Sparkle) — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 05:40:00 +0000

I TOLD ya'll Bin Laden BEEN dead, that's why Bush was never concerned about catching him, how much of a threat can a dead man be? He's harmless unless the puppet masters are invoking his name. They use the name Bin Laden like they use the Boogie Man. Boooooo are you sc-sc-scared? Believe it or NOT ....but ask yourself this ONE question. If we could find Saddam in a hole in the ground in a matter of days, and capture him... WHY haven't we captured Bin Laden yet? Especually if we "supposedly" know where he is. Click on some of the links provided below and do the math yourself. 2 and 2 never did add up to equal 6 so why should this time be any different??? Think about it.....

Anyway, here's the article:

Former CIA Operative: "Of Course Bin Laden is Dead"
Warns war on terror could be eternal

Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Tuesday, Oct 7, 2008

An important news item that flew under the radar for the most part last week was the assertion from former CIA operative turned whistleblower Robert Baer that Osama Bin Laden is long dead.

The hugely respected intelligence & foreign policy expert told Terry Gross, host of National Public Radio show Fresh Air, "Of course he is dead, where are the DVDs? Bin Laden wouldn't dye his hair, all these things can be manipulated."

Baer, who has has previously publicly questioned the official story of the 9/11 attacks, continued "He hasn't shown up, I've taken in the last month a poll of CIA officers who have been on his trail, and what astounded me was not a single one was sure he was alive or dead. They have no idea, I mean this man disappeared off the side of the earth."

Baer, who's previous book See No Evil was the basis for the film Syriana, asked "When in history has a country fought another country or another entity when the leader may be dead?" and warned that the so called war on terror could be an eternal war if the goal continues to be to capture Bin Laden.

Baer also warned that the war is shifting into Pakistan, a dangerous precedent that could see the vaguely defined conflict move anywhere.

Last July it was revealed that Pakistan has an agreement to allow CIA-operated Predator drones fly over the country and strike targets in the so called "hunt" for Bin Laden. Since that time many strikes have taken place, killing civilians in the process.

In addition, details of a secret Pentagon plan to send U.S. special forces into the wild tribal regions of Pakistan to find Bin Laden have also emerged. The plans have reportedly not yet been implemented due to White House in fighting.

Listen to the short excerpt here.

Listen to the whole interview here.

There is voluminous evidence to suggest Bin Laden is long dead.

According to French newspaper Le Figaro, Bin Laden was on a kidney dialysis machine after he had one shipped to his base in Kandahar Afghanistan in 2000, and when the CIA personally visited him in a Dubai hospital. Other accounts suggest he was also suffering from Hepatitis C at the time and had only two years left to live.

Journalists who met Bin Laden before 9/11 later proclaimed their disbelief about the fact that he didn't appear on video after December 2001 to brag about the fact that he had not been captured. Since that time, every single Bin Laden video tape released has contained vague non-specific messages and in many cases the footage is old and re-hashed.

"With an ego the size of Mount Everest, Osama bin Laden would not have, could not have, remained silent for so long if he were still alive. He always liked to take credit even for things he had nothing to do with. Would he remain silent for nine months and not trumpet his own survival?" wrote the New York Times' Amir Taheri in July 2002.

A very good reason for Osama remaining silent after the end of 2001 would be the fact that he probably died on December 26 of that year, according to a report in the Pakistani Observer, which cited a Taliban official as stating that Bin Laden died due to an untreated lung complication and that he had attended his funeral.

In 2002 CNN reported on the fact that Pakistan's president Pervez Musharraf believed Bin Laden to be dead:

[A Bush administration official] said U.S. intelligence is that bin Laden needs dialysis every three days and "it is fairly obvious that that could be an issue when you are running from place to place, and facing the idea of needing to generate electricity in a mountain hideout,".

Others have gone on record insisting they believe Bin Laden to be dead, they include:

Afghan President Hamid Karzai, FBI counter-terrorism chief Dale Watson, Israeli intelligence sources, the late former Prime Minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto, Bin Laden expert Professor Bruce Lawrence, head of Duke University’s Religious Studies program.

In addition, a leaked French secret service memo in September 2006 concluded that Bin Laden had died of typhoid poisoning the previous month. The memo cited Saudi Arabian secret service sources who were convinced that Bin Laden had died in Pakistan.

"The information gathered by the Saudis indicates that the head of al-Qaeda fell victim, while he was in Pakistan on August 23, 2006, to a very serious case of typhoid that led to a partial paralysis of his internal organs," states the French memo.

Judging from all the available evidence, the White House knows for certain or at least strongly suspects that Bin Laden is dead and has been for many years, but they have chosen to maintain his myth for the purposes of political propaganda and as a hook on which to pin the advance of the imperial Neo-Con agenda.

U.S. will buy stock in banks, Paulson says

noreply@blogger.com (Sparkle) — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 05:21:00 +0000

'Aggressive action'
Oct. 10: Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson announces that the Bush administration will move ahead with a plan to buy stock in financial institutions.

Last time similar program was used was during the Great Depression

WASHINGTON - The federal government will buy stock in American banks for the first time since the Great Depression, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said Friday in the latest dramatic effort to reverse a global financial panic.

“This is a period like none of us has ever seen before,” declared Paulson at a rare Friday evening news conference. He said the government program to buy stock in private U.S. financial firms will be open to a broad array of institutions, including banks, in an effort to help them raise desperately needed cash.

The administration received the authority to take such direct action in the $700 billion economic rescue bill that Congress passed and President Bush signed last week.

Paulson announced the move at the conclusion of discussions among finance officials of the Group of Seven major industrialized countries. The so-called G-7 pledged to take “decisive action and use all available tools” to prevent a worldwide economic catastrophe.

The latest actions came at the end of a dispiriting week that was the worst ever for major U.S. stock indices including the Dow Jones industrials and the Standard & Poor's 500. Stock prices also suffered heavy losses in Europe, Asia and elsewhere.

A sign of how bad things have gotten: A drop of 128 points in the Dow Friday was greeted with sighs of relief after the index had plummeted much further earlier in the session.

The latest Paulson plan follows Britain's move earlier in the the week to partially nationalize its troubled banks by pouring cash into them in return for equity stakes.

Paulson said the U.S. program would be designed to complement banks’ own efforts to raise fresh capital from private sources. The government’s stock purchases will be of nonvoting shares, so it will not have power to run the companies.

The back-stock program would be in addition to the main thrust of the $700 billion rescue effort, which is to purchase distressed assets from financial institutions as a way of unthawing frozen credit, getting banks to resume more normal lending operations and staving off severe problems for businesses and everyday Americans.

Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke met with their counterparts from the world’s six other richest countries late in the day as the rout of financial markets continued.

In a statement at the end of that meeting, the G7 officials vowed to protect major banks and to prevent their failure. They also committed to efforts to get credit flowing more freely again, support the efforts of banks to raise money from both public and private sources, bolster deposit insurance and revive the battered mortgage financing market.

They did not provide specifics beyond that five-point framework.

At the White House earlier in the day, President Bush said, “We’re in this together and we’ll come through this together.” He added, “Anxiety can feed anxiety, and that can make it hard to see all that’s being done to solve the problem.”

He made it clear the United States must work with other countries to battle the worst financial crisis that has jolted the world economy in more than a half-century.

“We’ve seen that problems in the financial system are not isolated to the United States,” he said. “So we’re working closely with partners around the world to ensure that our actions are coordinated and effective.”

The Dow dropped a little over 100 points while he was speaking.

Fear has tightened its grip on investors worldwide even as the United States and other countries have taken a series of radical actions including an unprecedented, coordinated interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve and other major central banks.

Besides the United States, the other members of the G7 meeting in Washington are Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada. Finance officials also planned to meet with Bush Saturday at the White House.

“We are in a development where the downward spiral is picking up speed,” said Germany’s Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck, who wanted to see an orchestrated response among the G7.

So did French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde, who said a “coordinated, synchronized and rightly timed approach” was needed.

Connect the dots on Bill Ayers

noreply@blogger.com (Sparkle) — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 05:13:00 +0000

By: Ben Montgomery, Times Staff Writer
In print: Sunday, October 12, 2008

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, trying hard to be the country's next No. 2, lunged for the throat last week by suggesting Barack Obama ". . . is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country."

She was citing a New York Times article about Obama's relationship with Weather Underground co-founder Bill Ayers, which concluded that the two "do not appear to have been close."

Ayers is now a well-respected academic and a distinguished professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He and Obama met in 1995 while involved in the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a foundation dealing with urban education issues. They live in the same neighborhood, sat on the Woods Fund board together, and their children went to the same school. The Obama campaign's David Axelrod said they were "certainly friendly" because of those circumstances.

So we wondered, under the same parameters, who else is palling around with this terrorist?

Here's a short list of prominent people at least as connected to Ayers as Barack Obama. Many of them served on various boards with Ayers, while others consider him a friend and associate.

Susan Crown: Vice president of Henry Crown & Co., the largest single investor in Virginia defense contractor General Dynamics Corp. The bulk of the family's holdings are in manufacturing and real estate. Other nuggets include Aspen Skiing Co. resort in Colorado and stakes in the Chicago Bulls, the New York Yankees and New York's Rockefeller Center.

Patricia Graham: Former dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and board member for Houston-based Apache Corp., an independent energy company. She served as president of the Spencer Foundation, which supports research into educational improvement.

Arnold Weber: Past president of Northwestern University and of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, a leading business and civic organization, and director of Chicago-based Diamond Management and Technology Consultants. He has been on faculty at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago, Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a trustee of the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry.

Diana Nelson: Former Republican Illinois state representative and executive director of Cross City Campaign for Urban School Reform.

Adele Simmons: Vice chair of Chicago Metropolis 2020 and president of the Global Philanthropy Partnership. From 1989 to 1999, she was president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Also a director of the Shorebank Corp. and member of the boards of the Field Museum of Chicago, the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Environmental Defense Fund.

Richard Daley: Mayor of Chicago, named one of Time magazine's five best big-city mayors in 2005.

Stanley Fish: Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor of Humanities and a professor of law at Florida International University, as well as dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the author of 10 books.

Ted Sizer: "One of American education's most influential thinkers for over four decades," according to Education Sector, a nonpartisan independent think tank. Author of the Horace trilogy, dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education and headmaster of Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., where presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush schooled.

Deborah Meier: Author of five books on education, MacArthur Foundation "Genius" grantee, and currently on the faculty of New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development.

Alex Polikoff: Lead counsel in the Gautreaux public housing litigation for more than 40 years. Former executive director of Chicago's Business and Professional People for the Public Interest. Was a member of Chicago law firm Schiff Hardin & Waite. Author of Housing the Poor: The Case for Heroism and Waiting for Gautreaux.

Warren Chapman: Vice chancellor for external affairs at University of Illinois at Chicago. Former president of the Bank One Foundation and vice president and national philanthropic adviser for JPMorganChase. Former lead program officer for the Joyce Foundation and member of the boards of directors of the Chicago Historical Society, the Metropolitan Planning Council and Columbia College Chicago.

R. Eden Martin: Executive director of Chicago's Civic Committee of the Commercial Club, and partner in the law firm of Sidley & Austin.

Vartan Gregorian: Former president of the New York Public Library and Brown University. Current president of Carnegie Corporation of New York, trustee of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and member of the editorial board of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Recipient of the National Humanities Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom and honorary degrees from 56 institutions.

Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf: Rabbi emeritus at KAM Isaiah Israel, located across the street from the Obamas' Kenwood home. Taught at Yale, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, the University of Chicago and Loyola Marymount University, and author of Unfinished Rabbi.

Sources: major newspapers, business journals and national magazines.

Ben Montgomery can be reached at bmontgomery@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8650.

What the latest bailout plan means

noreply@blogger.com (Sparkle) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 14:08:00 +0000

by cmartenson

Now that the details are out, we can safely state that the US political and financial leadership has completely sold out the taxpayers and has done so in a manner that is startling, both in its recklessness and its brazenness.

The reckless part I will spell out in the details below.

The brazen part is in how this is being spun out, as if the entire plan were hatched in a hurried rush, at the last minute, after events forced the issue. This is the spin, but it is completely false.

Because many financial commentators, ranging from Roubini to Roach to Calculated Risk to myself, foresaw these events, we can be completely confident that these events were both anticipated and planned for long in advance. The only question left was how they were going to be 'sold' to the public. What better way than in the midst of a "massive financial panic" that required urgent action?

And now that the details are out, the plan is even more insidious than I ever dreamed.

On Friday the news started to leak out that perhaps $500 billion was the, uh, 'floor' for the bailout, and that it might be up to 60% larger than that:

Quote:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Treasury will propose a $500 billion to $800 billion government program to take toxic mortgage-related assets off the books of U.S. financial firms, banking industry sources said on Friday.

The sources said the government would acquire residential and commercial mortgages and mortgage-backed securities under the proposal, which needs Congressional approval.

A Treasury spokeswoman declined to comment.

So it looks like we are being 'softened' up by Extremely Large Numbers coming in quick succession so that we'll be too numb to argue when the real plan comes out. For the record, my solution would have been very different.

Instead of buying these failed assets off of the banks for $500 billion, I would have preferred to see the banks receive $500 billion in loans, which they'd have to pay back from profits over time, while they retained the failed loans on THEIR books as a reminder to be more careful next time. Same cost to the government, but a very different message sent to reckless lending institutions.

And here are the critical elements from the real plan released yesterday (Sat., 9/20) (hat tip to Lemonyellowschwin for posting this in the comments yesterday). Full details are all the way at the bottom.

Quote:

(a) Authority to Purchase.--The Secretary is authorized to purchase, and to make and fund commitments to purchase, on such terms and conditions as determined by the Secretary, mortgage-related assets from any financial institution having its headquarters in the United States.

OK, this starts out kind of like I expected. The definition is a little vague, unfortunately, having stalled at "mortgage-related assets." I would have preferred that they spelled this out, because then we could have assessed which institutions were going to be helped out the most. Certainly these could have and should have been spelled out. This is vague enough to leave open the prospect that practically anything could be defined as "mortgage-related", and I am certain we will see this provision abused. 100% certain.

Quote:
Sec. 6. Maximum Amount of Authorized Purchases.

The Secretary’s authority to purchase mortgage-related assets under this Act shall be limited to $700,000,000,000 outstanding at any one time.

Whoa! Stop! What is this "at any one time" language?? This means that $700 billion is NOT the cost of this dangerous legislation, it is only the amount that can be outstanding at any one time. After, say, $100 billion of bad mortgages are disposed of, another $100 billion can be bought. In short, these four little words assure that there is NO LIMIT to the potential size of this bailout. This means that $700 billion is a rolling amount, not a ceiling.

So what happens when you have vague language and an unlimited budget? Fraud and self-dealing. Mark my words, this is the largest looting operation ever in the history of the US, and it's all spelled out right in this delightfully brief document that is about to be rammed through a scared Congress and made into law.

But, certainly, if the combination of vague language and and unlimited budget will create the conditions for further fraud and abuse, at least we live in a nation of "checks and balances," right?

Wrong.

Quote:
Sec. 8. Review.

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

This language literally took my breath away when I read it. I am now beyond shocked at what is openly transpiring before our very eyes. I can think of NO legitimate reasons(s) for the right of review to be stripped away right from the outset. The illegitimate reason I can think of pertains to the vast riches that are going to flow into the pockets of the well-connected as a result of this act of piracy.

Many such people became fabulously wealthy as a result of picking up real estate assets for pennies on the dollar during the S&L crisis, and that model has being reproduced here.

You can count on it.

This is just another straw, thrown onto an already-collapsed camel, that confirms the fact that the US political system is broken and that the rule of law no longer applies within the US.

My final comment: If it looks like a looting operation, smells like a looting operation, and behaves suspiciously like a looting operation, it might just be a looting operation.

The Wall Street Bailout Plan, Explained: What THEY Say...

noreply@blogger.com (Sparkle) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 13:51:00 +0000

By DAVID STOUT

Published: September 20, 2008

WASHINGTON — News reports about the upheaval in the world of finance have been full of esoteric terms like “mortgage-backed securities” and “credit-default swaps,” but the crisis has resonated for people who know little about Wall Street and who did not think they would ever have to know. Here are several questions and answers of concern to Main Street Americans:

Q. The bailout program being negotiated by the Bush administration and Congressional leaders calls for the government to spend up to $700 billion to buy distressed mortgages. How did the politicians come up with that number, and could it go higher?

A. The recovery package cannot go higher than $700 billion without additional legislation. As for that figure, it lies between the optimistic estimate of $500 billion and the pessimistic guess of $1 trillion about the cost of fixing the financial mess. But the $700 billion is in addition to an $85 billion agreement on a bailout of the insurance giant American International Group, plus $29 billion in support that the government pledged in the marriage of Bear Stearns and JPMorgan Chase. On top of all that, the Congressional Budget Office says the federal bailout of the mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could cost $25 billion.

Q. Who, really, is going to come up with the $700 billion?

A. American taxpayers will come up with the money, although if you are bullish on America in the long run, there is reason to hope that the tab will be less than $700 billion. After the Treasury buys up those troubled mortgages, it will try to resell them to investors. The Treasury’s involvement in the crisis and the speed with which Congress is responding could generate long-range optimism and raise the value of those mortgages, although it is impossible to say by how much.

So it would not be correct to think of the federal government as simply writing a check for $700 billion. It is just committing itself to spend that much, if necessary. But the bottom line is, yes, this bailout could cost American taxpayers a lot of money.

Q. So is it fair to say that Americans who are neither rich nor reckless are being asked to rescue people who are? What is in this package for responsible homeowners of modest means who might be forced out of their homes, perhaps for reasons beyond their control?

A. Yes, you could argue that people who cannot tell soybean futures from puts, calls and options are being asked to clean up the costly mess left by Wall Street. To make the bailout palatable to the public, it is being described as far better than inaction, which administration officials and members of Congress say could imperil the retirement savings and other investments of Americans who are anything but rich.

But it is a good bet that the negotiations between the administration and Capitol Hill will include ideas about ways to help middle-class homeowners avoid foreclosure and perhaps some limits on pay for executives. And it should be noted that neither party is solely responsible for whatever neglect led the country to the brink of disaster.

Q. How is it that the administration and Congress, which have not tried to find huge amounts of money to, say, improve the nation’s health insurance system or repair bridges and tunnels, can now be ready to come up with $700 billion to rescue the financial system? And is it realistic to think that the parties can reach agreement and get legislation passed in a hurry?

A. The first question will surely come up again, involving as it does not just issues of spending policy but also more profound questions about national aspirations. As for rescuing the financial system, elected officials in both parties became convinced that, while a couple of venerable investment banks could fade into oblivion or be absorbed by mergers, the entire financial system could not be allowed to collapse.

And, yes, the parties are likely to reach an accord. Many members of Congress are eager to leave Washington to go home and campaign for the November elections, and no one wants to face the voters without having done something to protect modest savings portfolios as well as giant investors.

Stephen Labaton and David M. Herszenhorn contributed reporting.

ALSO For A List OF Terms And Their Meanings: Click Here

Text Of Draft Proposal For Bailout Plan

noreply@blogger.com (Sparkle) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 13:49:00 +0000

LEGISLATIVE PROPOSAL FOR TREASURY AUTHORITY

TO PURCHASE MORTGAGE-RELATED ASSETS

Section 1. Short Title.

This Act may be cited as ____________________.

Sec. 2. Purchases of Mortgage-Related Assets.

(b) Necessary Actions.--The Secretary is authorized to take such actions as the Secretary deems necessary to carry out the authorities in this Act, including, without limitation:

(1) appointing such employees as may be required to carry out the authorities in this Act and defining their duties;

(2) entering into contracts, including contracts for services authorized by section 3109 of title 5, United States Code, without regard to any other provision of law regarding public contracts;

(3) designating financial institutions as financial agents of the Government, and they shall perform all such reasonable duties related to this Act as financial agents of the Government as may be required of them;

(4) establishing vehicles that are authorized, subject to supervision by the Secretary, to purchase mortgage-related assets and issue obligations; and

(5) issuing such regulations and other guidance as may be necessary or appropriate to define terms or carry out the authorities of this Act.

Sec. 3. Considerations.

In exercising the authorities granted in this Act, the Secretary shall take into consideration means for--

(1) providing stability or preventing disruption to the financial markets or banking system; and

(2) protecting the taxpayer.

Sec. 4. Reports to Congress.

Within three months of the first exercise of the authority granted in section 2(a), and semiannually thereafter, the Secretary shall report to the Committees on the Budget, Financial Services, and Ways and Means of the House of Representatives and the Committees on the Budget, Finance, and Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs of the Senate with respect to the authorities exercised under this Act and the considerations required by section 3.

Sec. 5. Rights; Management; Sale of Mortgage-Related Assets.

(a) Exercise of Rights.--The Secretary may, at any time, exercise any rights received in connection with mortgage-related assets purchased under this Act.

(b) Management of Mortgage-Related Assets.--The Secretary shall have authority to manage mortgage-related assets purchased under this Act, including revenues and portfolio risks therefrom.

(c) Sale of Mortgage-Related Assets.--The Secretary may, at any time, upon terms and conditions and at prices determined by the Secretary, sell, or enter into securities loans, repurchase transactions or other financial transactions in regard to, any mortgage-related asset purchased under this Act.

(d) Application of Sunset to Mortgage-Related Assets.--The authority of the Secretary to hold any mortgage-related asset purchased under this Act before the termination date in section 9, or to purchase or fund the purchase of a mortgage-related asset under a commitment entered into before the termination date in section 9, is not subject to the provisions of section 9.

Sec. 6. Maximum Amount of Authorized Purchases.

The Secretary’s authority to purchase mortgage-related assets under this Act shall be limited to $700,000,000,000 outstanding at any one time

Sec. 7. Funding.

For the purpose of the authorities granted in this Act, and for the costs of administering those authorities, the Secretary may use the proceeds of the sale of any securities issued under chapter 31 of title 31, United States Code, and the purposes for which securities may be issued under chapter 31 of title 31, United States Code, are extended to include actions authorized by this Act, including the payment of administrative expenses. Any funds expended for actions authorized by this Act, including the payment of administrative expenses, shall be deemed appropriated at the time of such expenditure.

Sec. 8. Review.

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

Sec. 9. Termination of Authority.

The authorities under this Act, with the exception of authorities granted in sections 2(b)(5), 5 and 7, shall terminate two years from the date of enactment of this Act.

Sec. 10. Increase in Statutory Limit on the Public Debt.

Subsection (b) of section 3101 of title 31, United States Code, is amended by striking out the dollar limitation contained in such subsection and inserting in lieu thereof $11,315,000,000,000.

Sec. 11. Credit Reform.

The costs of purchases of mortgage-related assets made under section 2(a) of this Act shall be determined as provided under the Federal Credit Reform Act of 1990, as applicable.

Sec. 12. Definitions.

For purposes of this section, the following definitions shall apply:

(1) Mortgage-Related Assets.--The term “mortgage-related assets” means residential or commercial mortgages and any securities, obligations, or other instruments that are based on or related to such mortgages, that in each case was originated or issued on or before September 17, 2008.

(2) Secretary.--The term “Secretary” means the Secretary of the Treasury.

(3) United States.--The term “United States” means the States, territories, and possessions of the United States and the District of Columbia.

Kashkari to discuss bailout plan progress on Monday

noreply@blogger.com (Sparkle) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 13:39:00 +0000

Washington, Oct 9 (PTI) Neel Kashkari, the Indian-origin space engineer appointed by US government to oversee the USD 700-billion financial bailout, will detail out the progress on the implementation of the plan on Monday.

United States Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has selected 35-year-old Kashkari as an Assistant Treasury Secretary to be the interim head of the government's rescue programme.
Treasury Department said in a statement today that Treasury Interim Assistant Secretary for Financial Stability Neel Kashkari would deliver his remarks on Monday before the Institute of International Bankers in Washington.

"He will discuss financial markets and Treasury's progress in implementing the Emergency Economic Stability Act," it added.

Earlier, Paulson had said, "I have appointed an interim Assistant Secretary to manage the programme and begin its rapid implementation. I am currently working with the President to identify a leader to submit for confirmation, as called for in the legislation, to manage the programme and help ensure its long-term success." PTI

FEMA SOURCES CONFIRM COMMING MARTIAL LAW

noreply@blogger.com (Sparkle) — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 11:31:00 +0000

People thought I was crazy when I said it...I don't just make this stuff up, for me to say it I HAD to have heard it from a reliable source....but NOW it's not just me and the reliable source saying FEMA is saying it as well. Do you believe it now, or do you have to hear it on FOX News first??? This has been in talks since April from what I hear. Let's do some research on the C&R Document. It stands for Conflict and Revolution. These are not MY words, You don't have to take my word for it, read the article below then research it yourself. Remember people"Out Of Chaos Comes Order". The price of "order" ALWAYS entails a handing over of control and loss of freedom on the part of citizenry. The puppetmasters create "disorder" so the people (you and me) will demand "order". The trick of creating chaos and then seizing power under the pretense of putting things back in order is a tried and true method of deception and manipulation. It's the meaning behind the Latin motto: ORDO AB CHAO meaning ORDER OUT OF CHAOS.

It's also referred to as the Hegelian Dialect. It was Georg Hegel who wrote about its effectiveness. He described it as: THESIS -- ANTITHESIS -- SYNTHESIS.

Others have described it as: PROBLEM -- REACTION -- SOLUTION in that firstly you create the problem; then secondly you fan the flames to get a reaction; then thirdly (like Johnny-on-the-spot) you provide a solution. The solution is what you were wanting to achieve in the first place, but wouldn't have been able to achieve under normal circumstances. They do this all the time, and they're doing it right now.

Orwell described it as REALITY CONTROL

I'll get into more of this later, but for now read the article....

FEMA sources confirm coming martial law

Wayne Madsen
WMR
October 8, 2008

WMR has learned from knowledgeable Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) sources that the Bush administration is putting the final touches on a plan that would see martial law declared in the United States with various scenarios anticipated as triggers. The triggers include a continuing economic collapse with massive social unrest, bank closures resulting in violence against financial institutions, and another fraudulent presidential election that would result in rioting in major cities and campuses around the country.

In addition, Army Corps of Engineer sources report that the assignment of the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team (BCT) to the Northern Command’s U.S. Army North is to augment FEMA and federal law enforcement in the imposition of traffic controls, crowd control, curfews, enhanced border and port security, and neighborhood patrols in the event a national emergency being declared. The BCT was assigned to duties in Iraq before being assigned to the Northern Command.

On April 3, 2008, WMR reported on a highly-classified document regarding the martial law scenario: WMR has learned from knowledgeable sources within the US financial community that an alarming confidential and limited distribution document is circulating among senior members of Congress and their senior staff members that is warning of a bleak future for the United States if it does not quickly get its financial house in order. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is among those who have reportedly read the document. The document is being called the "C & R" document because it reportedly states that if the United States defaults on loans and debt underwriting from China, Japan, and Russia, all of which are propping up the United States government financially, and the United States unilaterally cancels the debts, America can expect a war that will have disastrous results for the United States and the world. "Conflict" is the "C word" in the document. The other scenario is that the federal government will be forced to drastically raise taxes in order to pay off debts to foreign countries to the point that the American people will react with a popular revolution against the government. "Revolution" is the document’s "R word.

The origin of the document is not known, however, its alarming content matches up with previous warnings from former Comptroller General David Walker who abruptly resigned as head of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in February of this year after repeatedly publicly warning of a "financial meltdown" disaster if America's $9 trillion debt was not addressed quickly. Financial experts have warned that the national debt, corrected for inflation, could reach $46 trillion in the next 20 years. A month earlier, Walker warned the Senate Banking Committee about the reaction of creditor nations in Asia and Europe if the U.S. did not address its debt problem.

POLICING BY THE MILITARY IN AMERICA, NOT JUST ABROAD:

noreply@blogger.com (Sparkle) — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 22:47:00 +0000

My friend Kenny told me some disturbing news today. Of course after I got on the phone with him I started researching and gathering as much information as I could. What he told me was that the US would soon start bringing troops back from abroad so that they could police the US streets just in case people start wilding out over this whole economy mess we're in.....meaning making us a "police state". You can call them "Peace Keepers" if you will. If you don't know what that means go look it up, and I'll tell you now, it ain't a good thing. After discussing this with him in some detail, I can see how this could happen.....what I can't see is how we're letting it happen. You might not care NOW, but if it really goes down like that.....only GOD can save us.

NOTE: This next article was written in 2002 and you see the article I posted below this one that was written TODAY....maybe you should do some research on the Posse Comitatus Act, hmmmmmm?

Here's the article from 2002....

Current Laws Already Envision A Broad Domestic Role For The Military And Revising The Posse Comitatus Act Won't Change That Won't Change That

The 124-year-old Posse Comitatus Act criminalizes using the military to enforce domestic laws. Last week, The New York Times reported that the Department of Defense was reviewing - and considering revising - the Act in light of post-Sept. 11 homeland security concerns.
Civil libertarians and legal commentators expressed dismay at the idea. But in fact, the military has provided support to civil authorities for some time now, in and out of the law enforcement arena.

Moreover, it has done so entirely lawfully. That is because while the Posse Comitatus Act itself has not changed significantly, other laws have - in a way that drastically narrows the Act's scope.
The Posse Comitatus Act and Its Purpose

A "posse comitatus" is a group convened from the community to enforce domestic laws. (Think, for example, of the Western sheriff's posse.) The Posse Comitatus Act aims to preserve a wall of separation between the military and domestic police and policing. Congress originally enacted it in 1878 to stop federal troops from enforcing civilian laws in the South, and it has stood since then as a bulwark between military and civil authority.

Accordingly, the Act criminalizes the use of "any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws" - unless the use is authorized by Congress or the Constitution. Only domestic police, not military police, can generally enforce or carry out domestic laws, the Act warns.

Over our history, however, Congress has repeatedly blessed the use of the military for domestic purposes. As a result, the Posse Comitatus Act's exception for Congressionally-authorized domestic uses of the military has swallowed the rule against such use.

The Largest Exception - The National Guard

First, the Posse Comitatus statute only applies to the federal armed forces - not the National Guard, which belongs to the states. This distinction dates back to the original act in 1878, which was passed at the end of Reconstruction to appease Southern interests by forbidding the federal military from enforcing laws in the states.

One example of this is the National Guard's current mission to support the Border Patrol and Customs Service. Another example is the use of National Guard troops (instead of federal troops) in most natural disasters.

The Military Is Already Authorized to Support Domestic Law Enforcement

Title 10 is the part of the United States Code that covers the federal military. It authorizes the domestic use of military assets to support law enforcement in numerous areas. Most of the Title 10 exceptions allowing military involvement in domestic policing were carved out during the Reagan Presidency for the so-called "War on Drugs."

These exceptions allow the military to provide specialized support to domestic law enforcement agencies - particularly in areas where domestic law enforcement agencies don't have any capability. Those areas include long-range surveillance and intelligence capabilities. Vague phrases in the statute such as "training and advising civilian law enforcement officials" or "maintenance and operation of equipment" hint at other such areas.

Indeed, the only limit which remains on military personnel is a "restriction on direct participation by military personnel" in specific police actions - defined to include only "search, seizure, arrest, or other similar activity." (And even these activities can be performed if another law authorizes it.)

This leaves the field wide open for military support in other areas, such as the provision of information, use of military helicopters, surveillance capabilities, just to name a few.

Legally Authorized Categories of Military Support to Civilian Authorities

During the 1980s and 1990s, Congress further revised Title 10 to add more provisions for military support to civil authorities.

For example, one provision authorizes the Secretary of Defense to provide any information "collected during the normal course of military training or operations" to local, state and federal law enforcement. Presumably, this does not authorize the Department of Defense to purposely collect information for domestic law enforcement officials. Nevertheless, the section goes on to say that "the needs of civilian law enforcement officials for information shall, to the maximum extent practicable, be taken into account in the planning and execution of military training or operations."

Congress even added a special exception to this section for chemical and biological emergencies. It gives the military the authority to provide special assistance to local law enforcement in these areas.

A third provision authorizes the Defense Department to use military personnel to train federal, state and local law enforcement officials on the operation of military equipment and any other matters relevant to the purpose of this chapter. This authorizes everything from specialized training in chemical decontamination to more generalized training in tactics.

The next provision goes even further. It allows the military to provide personnel to operate equipment such as helicopters and other special items that may be used by law enforcement. Military personnel may use their equipment for several purposes, including "detection, monitoring, and communication of the movement of air and sea traffic." But they can only use it outside the United States and within 25 miles of the border.

Closer to the border, the military personnel would "hand off" these contacts to law enforcement for interdiction. This exception was clearly carved out to support the war on drugs, and the way incoming drug shipments were acquired and apprehended.

Finally, another provision authorizes the military to play an active role in "emergency situations involving chemical or biological weapons of mass destruction." Added in 1996 by Congress, this exception authorizes the military, in broad terms, to support the Justice Department.
Most of these provisions require a determination by the Secretary of Defense that such assistance is necessary. Some require a joint determination by the Secretary of Defense and Attorney General. None explicitly require the approval of Congress or the federal courts.

Thus, there are just two major constraints on these powers. First, the Secretary of Defense (and sometimes the Attorney General) must authorize such action. Second, military personnel cannot play a direct role in the enforcement of civil law.

No One Has Suggested Giving the Military Domestic Search and Arrest Power

Given that these laws are already on the books, one might wonder what is really at the heart of the current debate over the Posse Comitatus Act and, more generally, over the supposed future expansion of the military's role in domestic law enforcement.

The closest that our troops now come to that kind of domestic law enforcement is the work they do on the borders under the auspices of the Border Patrol and Customs Service. And even there, American soldiers operate with an extremely limited set of rules of engagement.

They provide manpower and other forms of support. But they leave the searching and arresting to the professional Border Patrol officers who have the legal authority to do so.
Giving the military search and arrest power would truly make America into a police state. But that option need not be debated, for it has not been seriously proposed.

An Enlargement of Current Military Powers Is What Is Really At Stake

What is being proposed is an enlargement of the types of powers we already see today. They include, as I have described above, the enhanced use of military intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities in coordination with domestic law enforcement authorities.

Some of these enhancements ought to be uncontroversial - for instance, few would complain about military authorities providing domestic police with enhanced information on terrorism threats from abroad. However, some may object to the use of sophisticated military-surveillance equipment inside our borders.

The debate over the military's role in American society is an important one, and these issues must be discussed in light of our present security concerns. But to have an effective debate, we must know the facts and law as they stand today. Our military has provided support to civil authorities for a long time, and it will continue to do so until Congress or the courts decide otherwise.

Will Wall Street's Meltdown Turn America Into a Police State?

noreply@blogger.com (Sparkle) — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 22:35:00 +0000

Are you getting scared yet????

SOURCE

"Raw capitalism is dead." -- Henry Paulson, U.S. Treasury secretary

"Can't we just all go out and say things are OK?" -- President Bush, to congressional leaders during bailout negotiations

I'm not much of an Army Times reader, but after reading that a brigade was shipping from Iraq in October to serve as "an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks" in the homeland right before the election, my antennae perked up. Same as they did when I read that an electoral college doomsday scenario exists in which Dick Cheney casts the deciding vote that gives McCain-Palin the White House.

That is, if Cheney and Bush don't take it for themselves. That may sound like fantasy, but don't kill the messenger. They are all strands of the Gordian knot the Bush administration has tied around the neck of the American people for the last two presidential terms, best represented today by the failed bailout of banks, brokers and other complicit parties that have since jacked the American people out of trillions. And while the Army Times revelation or election doomsday may turn out to be paranoia rather than prescience, the evidence just isn't there.

Like I said: antennae.

They've come in handy as bullshit detectors since Bush stole the election from a flat-footed Al Gore and set about engineering the greatest transfer of public wealth into private hands in American history. If you factor in Monday's failed takeover, as well as the $5 trillion the American people now owe thanks to the "bailout" of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, not to mention the continuing hyper-expensive occupation of Iraq and so on, our citizenry is now so far in the hole that it's pointless griping about numbers. If you want one, use the figure put forth by Dennis Kucinich: half a quadrillion dollars. We have evolved past the point of economic or geopolitical reality and entered a phase of pure concept.

And all vectors of that phase point toward the conclusion that the proverbial shit has totally hit the fan -- head on, and all over again.

Meet the New Rome, Same as the Old Rome
"Franklin Roosevelt had to save capitalism from itself," Los Angeles Times business editor Tom Petruno told me as Washington Mutual and Wachovia became the latest banking dominoes to fall. "Is history repeating?"

Indeed, it is, as one could tell from the repetitive usage of loaded terms and phrases like "Great Depression," "meltdown," "apocalypse," "Armageddon" and more to describe the just-on-time cratering of the American economy. After the strange bedfellows in both parties torpedoed Bush, Bernanke and Paulson's so-called bailout, more than $1 trillion of market value in American equities disappeared in a single day. The Dow Jones average set a record for quickest suicide dive in a single day. Other indexes sunk to multiyear lows, wiping out years of value, and stocks across the board went negative like Ann Coulter. In fact, the only major stock that actually advanced on Monday was Campbell Soup.

Can there be a more fitting metaphor for the American economy stuck beneath the Bush administration's thumb?

But the reruns, and their loaded terminology, are merging: Bush himself is just another iteration of the infamous "New World Order" instituted by his father while trying to, what else, convince the American public that it needed to go to war against Saddam Hussein. The revisionism is transparent, befitting a government that cares nothing of what its people actually think. Jon Stewart of "The Daily Show" recently juxtaposed Bush's address on the financial cataclysm with his pre-invasion speech in 2003 and found -- surprise! -- they were exactly the same.

This is a long way of saying that this particularly frightening crux of historical geopolitics, fascism and environmental calamity has been a long time coming. Failing banks? Deregulation. Endless war? Homeland security. Total information awareness? Transparent government. Bankrupt economy? The fundamentals are strong.

"Here's my question," Petruno adds. "If this is remembered as Black September, will that end up being too gentle a reference to what actually happened to the American financial system this month? It is beyond comprehension for people who have been on Wall Street their entire lives. I can only imagine how absolutely stunned the American public must be. Stunned, and very afraid."

It should be. From a military brigade armed for action in the homeland in blatant transgression of Posse Comitatus to what ex-hedge funder and financial personality Jim Cramer recently called "financial terrorism," the United States is pushing forward back.

To start with, the bailout was obvious theft, but our situation is more precarious than you think. The hyperreal credit default swap market, which few understand although it is estimated to involve tens if not hundreds of global trillions, is faltering under the weight of its own Ponzi origins. The scenario significantly worsens once you factor in the given that countries like China and others who have denominated their loans in dollars are shouldering our exploding debt, along with oil-soaked sovereign wealth funds from nations whose civil liberties records suck ass. As I wrote last year on this clusterfuck, if the Chinese call in our debts and oil-producing countries decide to peg their petrodollars to the euro, you can more or less kiss the dollar goodbye. Which means the last thing you'll need to worry about is your stocks, retirement or credit cards. You will instead worry whether or not the cash you have on hand will be worth anything at all. That is the loaded gun that bankers, brokers and the White House is holding to the public's head, as I write. That trillion erased on Monday, as well as the trillions that have been lost and will be lost in the coming months, was nothing more than a hostage situation engineered by the Bush administration, the Federal Reserve and their partners in crime in finance, insurance and real estate business.

They don't call that sector FIRE for nothing. Fire destroys everything and leaves little in its catastrophic wake. Which raises the question: What's left to burn?

"I think our economic situation can get much worse," argues Danny Schechter, the veteran producer and author whose 2006 indie documentary "In Debt We Trust" covered this volatile territory long before CNN would. "Jobless claims are already at a seven-year high, but the government is worried about the reaction from Asia. We are living on other countries' money, and when that spigot gets cut off, we will be in deeper doo-doo. Part of the reason for the scale of the bailout is to show Asia and sovereign wealth funds that we will protect their interests."
But for how long? The Bush administration and Congress' disdain for the American people has been painfully obvious, so it's hard to believe they will call from sky-high Dubai to see how we are doing after making off with almost all of our money.

"It's a high-stakes gamble, which is why Paulson tried to do it quickly in a climate of shock and crisis," Shechter says. "He knew that the longer it takes, the more opposition it will attract. This plan, if eventually passed, will pre-empt the next president from doing anything about it, because there will be no money. They are wrecking the government by wrecking the economy first."

That shock doctrine, as Naomi Klein explained in her brilliant book of the same name, has foisted this same kind of disaster capitalism on country after country over the last century. Klein's book is littered with democracies that slept their way through coups and takeovers, entranced by one simulation or another. The United States was plugged into a matrix that onetime White House press secretary Ari Fleischer described as "an American way of life," adding without deceit that "it should be the goal of policy makers to protect the American way of life."

By destroying it? Mission accomplished.

"This is the September of surprise," Schechter concluded, "not a war on Iran but on America."

Civil War, the Rerun?

So, what's the next step for the shoe yet to drop? Perhaps the Army Times has the clues:

(The brigade) may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or
to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos
in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield
explosive, or CBRNE, attack. ... The 1st BCT's soldiers also will learn how to
use "the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded," 1st BCT
commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control
equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous
individuals without killing them.

Like every move the Bush administration has ever made, from the Patriot Act to the occupation of Iraq and down to bankrupting the American economy, this maneuver is a solution in search of a problem that it seems destined to create. Look around you. Housing is over. Stocks are nosediving. The banks are gone. War is ceaseless. Civil liberties are disappearing. Nerds at the Federal Reserve and the Treasury are taking hostages. It is madness.

And mad people have a tendency to infect everyone around them. The difference is that when you go mad ... well, that's the question mark: What will happen?

Ask the late Iman Morales, who went crazy in Brooklyn on a ledge 10 feet above ground and was illegally tasered by New York police officers, eventually falling to his death, immobilized. A perfect metaphor for our economy, sure, but it's also the type of literal shock we might be awaiting, as the November election creeps nearer and shit begins to hit the fan with ferocity. Many of us so-called alternative journos are not conspiracy nuts, but realists. We look at galvanizing leaders like Barack Obama, America's next president, and compare his impact to that of Lincoln, Kennedy or King -- without forgetting that all three were eventually assassinated. We are the type of realists who live through two Bush presidents, both of whom configured a New World Order, with and without the approval of the American people and the world at large. The type of realists that notice that after 9/11, we couldn't fly to Vegas, but Osama bin Laden's family was flown out of the country on government charter.

And here is what we see today: Crowds protesting in the streets, the people's money wiped out thanks to the Bush administration's latest economic shock and awe. An army brigade matter-of-factly betraying Posse Comitatus for the purpose of crowd control. The public trust and wealth almost robbed cleanly with congressional approval.

In other words, we see another unfolding coup, which is to say, a rerun. And there is no telling what the future may hold, or whether or not we are connecting vectors that should remain solitary. But our math has worked just fine in the past -- better than Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson's math, that's for sure.

And we'd love to be wrong about what's coming. But unfortunately that isn't up to us, and it never has been: It's up to the Bush administration. And it has never failed to let us down.

MURDOCH DEFENDS FOX NEWS

noreply@blogger.com (Sparkle) — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 03:21:00 +0000

Everybody knows how I feel about Fox News . *insert sarcasm here* "Uh yeah waiter....I'll have the Fox News well done with a side of mashed spin doctor & gravy...some propaganda with lemon peper sauce....and a diet coke. Oh and can I super size that?

Here's the article....

Rupert Murdoch may own 20th Century Fox, the Fox TV Network, MySpace, the London Times, and the New York Post, among other media properties, but it is his ownership of Fox News that has brought him the most public recognition, he suggests in an interview with Esquire magazine. "I can go into restaurants and a whole table will get up and clap if they recognize me because they love Fox News," he said. He called the cable news channel "a core asset in every sense, in terms of its popularity and in terms of its profit."

He turned aside claims that the channel is a mouthpiece of conservatives. "The thing that I am proudest of is that it is very, very fair," he said. He praised conservative commentator Bill O'Reilly for booking guests on both sides of controversies. "[MSNBC's] Keith Olbermann is trying to make a business out of destroying Bill O'Reilly. He's done certain things to Bill O'Reilly that I believe were way over the line. I think that's bad behavior. But it's okay for him to criticize Bill. And Bill shouldn't be so sensitive. He should ignore that."

Lies, damn lies & elections

noreply@blogger.com (Sparkle) — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 03:09:00 +0000

THERE'S AN OLD saying that the truth is the first casualty of war.

Well, if that's true, then the 2008 presidential race must be World War III.

Phony Internet rumors, a candidate who was for a "Bridge to Nowhere" before she was against it, and some vicious TV ads with dubious claims — and we're only a week into the traditional fall campaign.

The rampant truth-stretching and smear campaigns have already dashed hopes that one of the most notable White House races in American history — pitting the would-be first African-American president against an ex-POW war hero — would also be one of the most honorable.

Here's a look at the volley of accusations. While distortions can and do occur on both sides, not all political lies are created equal, which is why we're awarding lipstick-pigs, one for a mild whopper and four for a big one, to the various half-and un-truths out there:

"Bridge to Nowhere." When John McCain shook up the race by picking Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, a key selling point was that she was "a maverick" who had acted to kill the so-called "Bridge to Nowhere," a massive bridge connecting Ketchikan, Alaska, to its airport on sparsely populated Gravina Island, costing federal taxpayers $223 million. She told the Republican convention: "I told Congress, thanks but no thanks on that bridge to nowhere."

Except that she had aggressively supported the bridge project when she was a candidate for governor in 2006, only killing the plan a year later when it became a national political hot potato for the GOP. And the money wasn't returned to the American taxpayers; she kept it for related road projects.

Lie rating: 3 lipstick-pigs.

The middle-class multimillionaire: Democrats were already working to portray the Republicans as the party of the rich when some felt McCain handed them a gift at August's Rick Warren values forum, when he seemed to say you weren't rich until you earned a whopping $5 million. Barack Obama got big applause at Denver's Invesco Field when he asked why the GOP standard-bearer would "define middle-class as someone making under $5 million a year."

Except that McCain was clearly joking when he made the remark. How can you tell? Well, for one thing, the audience laughed, and for another thing, McCain said when the yuks died down, "But seriously...." Obama isn't exactly known for his own sense of humor, but he should know a joke when he hears one.

Lie rating: 3 lipstick-pigs.

Special-needs funding: No candidate has burst onto the scene like Palin, and with so much that's being said about her, some of it is blatantly not true. Much of the false gossip has come from that underbelly of political talk, anonymous Internet posters and e-mails, but a couple untruths have been picked up and spread by bigwigs who should know better.

This week, CNN had to correct an on-air comment from a Democratic surrogate, Huffington Post political director Hillary Rosen, who said Palin — whose infant son has Down syndrome -- cut funding for special needs education in Alaska. But she didn't — she increased it, and Rosen was quoting from an Internet poster who misinterpreted raw budget data. Lie rating: 3 lipstick-pigs.

The sex-ed ad: While lies about Palin were coming from the bottom-down of the Internet, highly dubious claims about Obama were coming from the brain trust of the McCain campaign; especially with an ad that accused Obama of successfully backing sex education for kindergartners and wanting kids "learning about sex before learning to read."

The claim sent off lie meters around the country (PolitiFact called it "an absurd claim about a bill that never passed.") The bill in the Illinois state senate, which Obama voted for in committee but didn't pass, would have made it OK for younger schoolchildren to learn about predators and other age appropriate info. This ad is grade-A bacon.

Lie rating: 4 lipstick-pigs.

eBay to nowhere: One of Palin's biggest applause lines in St. Paul came when she discussed the fate of a state airplane that had become a symbol of government waste in Alaska. Declared the vice presidential nominee: "I put it on eBay."

It all depends on what you're definition of the word "put" is; the plane didn't sell through the online auction system and instead was sold through a conventional broker for less money than the state was seeking. That didn't stop McCain from telling a subsequent rally that Palin "sold" the plane on eBay.

Lie rating: 2 lipstick-pigs.

Banning books: Another Internet whopper regarding Palin is a widely circulated list of books that she supposed had banned from the town library of Wasilla, Alaska, shortly after she was elected mayor in 1996. The long list even includes Harry Potter books that hadn't been written yet.

No, Palin is not a psychic — the list is bogus. Palin never ordered any specific books banned in Wasilla, according to numerous news accounts, although it was reported in local media at the time that she did ask the librarian, whom she unsuccessfully sought to fire, what the general policy was on removing books. Lie rating: 2 lipstick-pigs.

Loophole loophole: Obama's speech in Denver was his first chance to lay out his policy plans for a broad audience, and one of his claims was that he would "pay for every dime" of his economic plan "by closing corporate loopholes and tax havens."

But impartial observers like Philadelphia-based Factcheck. org say the Obama statement was "wrong" on two counts. For one thing, a key part of his plan for closing the budget gap would be a higher tax rate on the wealthiest Americans such as families earning more than $250,000. Also, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center says that Obama's plan won't have "every dime" paid for and that it will increase the national debt, albeit not as much as McCain's plan.

Lie rating: 2 lipstick-pigs.

A taxing tale: A number of speakers at the Republican convention echoed a McCain TV ad that accused the Democratic standard-bearer of planning "painful tax increases on working American families."

As noted above, that's only true if their work brings in more than $250,000 for a family; Obama's tax proposal would also cut levies for more than 80 percent of American families, it has been estimated.

Lie rating: 2 lipstick-pigs.

Fact-check falsehoods: This week, the McCain campaign released an ad claiming that Factcheck.org found that the Obama campaign was making attacks on Palin that were "completely false" or "misleading."

In one of many surreal moments of this campaign, that forced Factcheck.org to come out with a new report flagging the McCain campaign for misquoting Factcheck.org. The actual statements involved Internet rumors about the Alaska governor, and had nothing to do with the Obama campaign.

Lie rating: 3 lipstick-pigs.

Fuzzy math: Here's another economic claim that Obama made in Denver, when he said that when Bill Clinton was president, "the average American family saw its income go up $7,500 instead of down $2,000 like it has under George Bush."

PolitiFact labels this statement as "half-true" because the numbers don't exactly add up; the Clinton number includes retirees while the Bush number does not. But the overall trend is correct; average income did decline under the current president.

Lie rating: 1 lipstick-pig. *

By WILL BUNCH
Philadelphia Daily News

bunchw@phillynews.com 215-854-2957

This Chick Right Here...

noreply@blogger.com (Sparkle) — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 02:50:00 +0000

How many of you saw the interview Charlie Gibson had with Sara Palin last night? It's clear that this chick didn't know what the Bush Doctrine was and she tried to fake it on national TV as if she wouldn't be called on it. How can you call yourself a candidate for VP and not know what the Bush Doctrine is??? To bad her camp forgot to brief her on that ESPECIALLY since this was her first interview since it was announced that she was running for VP. If she didn't know she should have just asked Charlie to explain it to her, she couldn't have looked any crazier than she did by trying to fake it.....Lawd, some people. lol

Sarah Palin stumbles in TV interview

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, in her first interview since becoming the Republican vice-presidential candidate, has not been able to respond to a question about the Bush Doctrine.

Speaking at length with ABC interviewer, Charles Gibson, Palin was visibly stumped when she was asked by Gibson if she agreed with the Bush Doctrine.

Palin did not seem to know what Gibson was talking about.

Palin was clearly caught off guard when Gibson asked, "Do you agree with the Bush Doctrine?”

Seeking direction, and perhaps time to formulate her answer, Palin asked, "In what respect, Charlie?"

Initially unwilling to define the doctrine, Gibson said, "What do you interpret it to be?"

Palin asked, "His world view?"

Gibson said, "No, the Bush doctrine, enunciated September 2002, before the Iraq war."

Gibson finally informed her that it meant the right of "anticipatory self-defence."

The Bush Doctrine is a term used to describe several foreign policy principles of president George Bush, including the controversial policy of preventive war and the overthrowing of foreign regimes that represent a threat to the United States.

The Bush Doctrine was used to justify the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Separately, Palin used the interview to reinforce the foreign policy of McCain, warning Russia away from aggression against its neighbours and generally supporting President Bush's approach to combating terrorism.

But she also put some distance between the Bush Administration and the McCain team. "There have been blunders along the way," she said.

Palin said the United States could not allow Iran to have nuclear weapons.

"As Americans, we do not have to stand for that," she said.

Big Bang experiment marred by suicide

noreply@blogger.com (Sparkle) — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 14:52:00 +0000

WOW! .......That's all I can say....wow.

New Delhi - An Indian teenage girl killed herself because she feared that a massive experiment to re-create the birth of the Universe would herald the end of the world, reports said on Thursday.

Chayya Lal, 16, from the central state of Madhya Pradesh, committed suicide after watching television reports on how the particle-smashing test in Geneva could bring about doomsday, Indian newspapers reported.

She swallowed unidentified tablets on Tuesday and was rushed to hospital, but doctors were unable to save her.

Chayya's parents said she had spoken of her fears about the "Big Bang" experiment.

"Chayya had asked me a number of times whether the world would end as they were saying on television," her father Bihari told the Hindustan Times.

"We tried to divert her attention and told her not to worry about any great disaster," the Mail Today quoted him as saying.

The Mail said the local police inspector had raised doubts about the reasons for Chayya's death and had vowed to investigate.

The start of the underground test on Wednesday was hailed a success after the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) designed to expose the secrets of the cosmos swung into action.

Scientists behind the project had earlier dismissed fears that it could create either a "black hole" whose super-gravity would swallow the Earth, or a theoretical particle called a strangelet that would turn the planet to goo.

When the machine is fully operational, scientists hope to fleetingly replicate conditions at the "Big Bang" that created the Universe 13.7-billion years ago. - Sapa-AFP

Fabulously Observant: The 3 most important US Jews

noreply@blogger.com (Sparkle) — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 06:14:00 +0000

SOURCE:

This month marks the 354th anniversary of the arrival of the first boatload of Jews to North America. To honor the birthday of the American Jewish community, I surveyed several dozen leading American Jewish historians about who they think are the three most important figures in American Jewish history. Twenty scholars responded, including perhaps the three leading figures in the field - Dr. Hasia Diner (New York University), Dr. Deborah Dash Moore (University of Michigan) and Dr. Jonathan Sarna (Brandeis University). Hebrew University's Dr. Eli Lederhendler and Tel Aviv University's Dr. Robert Rockaway participated, though the other major historian of American Jewry living in Israel, Kimmy Caplan of Bar-Ilan University, chose not to.

Interestingly, although 10 names were listed and 10 more were volunteered, it quickly became clear that American Jewish historians consider three men to be towering figures in the tales they tell.

Louis Brandeis was the most important American Jew. He was the first Jew appointed to the Supreme Court, and pioneered a uniquely American form of Zionism. Rockaway pointed out that Brandeis "made Zionism a respected American movement, and sold the idea to American Jews and non-Jews."

Prof. Lee Shai Weissbach of the University of Louisville said Brandeis's elevation to the Supreme Court "symbolized the opening of possibilities for Jews in American civic and political life." When Brandeis joined the court in 1916, anti-Semitism was so intense that one of his fellow justices refused to sit next to him for the official court photo.

For many years after Brandeis's appointment, particularly after Associate Justice Benjamin Cardozo retired and was replaced by Felix Frankfurter, there was a de facto "Jewish seat" on the Supreme Court. Frankfurter was replaced by Arthur Goldberg, who was replaced by Abe Fortas, after whom the tradition ceased. But both of president Bill Clinton's appointees, Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Stephen Breyer, are Jewish. In addition, president Ronald Reagan tried to appoint Judge Douglas Ginsburg, whose nomination was scotched because of accusations that he had smoked marijuana.

Two scholars offered important final descriptions of Brandeis: Dr. David Kaufman of the Hebrew Union College called him "the personification of American-Jewish synthesis," and Dr. Samuel Heilman of the City University of New York Graduate Center said Brandeis's involvement with the Supreme Court and American Zionism "put the lie to the dual-loyalty canard."

PERHAPS THE most important American Jew little-known to today's American Jews is Mordecai Kaplan. Kaufman called Kaplan "the key figure in the Americanization of Judaism." Jewish scholar and prolific author Jacob Neusner said Kaplan "thought through the issues of Judaism in a way that matched the American Jewish situation." University of Washington Prof. Noam Pianko praised Kaplan's "insights into the sociological basis of Jewish peoplehood."

Several key institutions in American Judaism which Kaplan pioneered endure. For example, Kaplan brought the bat mitzva to America, with his daughter Judith being the first to undergo that new rite of passage. He also helped innovate the Jewish community center movement, the so-called "shul with a pool" (the title of one of Kaufman's books). He imagined that a synagogue should be more than a place to pray - that it should be a place for the social, intellectual and recreational needs of Jews as well. Today's JCC's owe much to his ideas.

In addition, Kaplan's ideas became the keystone of today's Reconstructionist movement. The only major American Jewish movement in which God is not necessarily central, Reconstructionism emphasizes Kaplan's idea that Judaism is an "evolving religious civilization." Reconstructionism also experimented with the havura movement growing out of Kaplan's values.

Kaplan had an impact on every American Jewish religious movement - including Orthodoxy, as documented in Jeffrey Gurock and Jacob Schacter's A Modern Heretic and a Traditional Community. At least two generations of Conservative Judaism's teachers and rabbis were influenced by Kaplan's instruction at the Jewish Theological Seminary's rabbinical school and Teacher's Institute. And Reform Judaism adopted Kaplan's saying that Halacha should have "a vote but not a veto."

FINALLY, 19TH-century pioneer of Reform Judaism Isaac Mayer Wise came in third place. According to Rockaway, Wise "put Reform Judaism on the map" in the United States. Working from Cincinnati, he established Hebrew Union College, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (now the Union for Reform Judaism), and the Central Conference of American Rabbis. He trained hundreds of Reform rabbis, and in Rockaway's words, "made Reform the strongest Jewish religious movement in America."

The European-born Wise was one of the earliest American rabbis to push for family pews in the synagogue, a mixed choir and counting women in a minyan. He wrote a new prayer book entitled Minhag America (American custom), with the goal of uniting all American congregations. He was also an American Jewish press pioneer, publishing his own The Israelite (later The American Israelite) newspaper.

Come Study With Me

noreply@blogger.com (Sparkle) — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 05:40:00 +0000

If you want some exciting topics to study come visit me on my 'Study Blog'! You can also look in the column to your left at the top and you'll see what Im studying . You can click this link to get there. http://mystudies1.wordpress.com/ Or click on one of the links at the top of the left column. See you there!

Sparkle