spiritsoup's Blog

Over 650 Scientists Challenge Global Warming "Consensus"
Twelve times more than those that put their names to the IPCC report

Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Wednesday, Dec 10, 2008

Over 650 scientists have put their names to a US Senate Minority report that challenges the contention of the UN's International Panel on Climate Change that there is a scientific "consensus" on the causes of global warming.

Set to be released within the next 24 hours, the report features contributions from hundreds of prominent researchers, including current and former IPCC scientists, who are now speaking out in opposition of the UN's stance on climate change.

The Senate report is an updated version of a 2007 release, with over 250 more names added, highlighting how widespread dissent continues to grow in the scientific community to the alleged “consensus” that the modern warming is primarily man-made and is a crisis.

In comparison, twelve times fewer - just 52 scientists - participated in the much touted IPCC Summary for Policymakers meeting in April 2007. Climate scientists allied with the IPCC were recently caught citing fake data to make the case that global warming is accelerating.

The new Senate report will feature new peer-reviewed scientific studies and analyses refuting man-made warming fears.

Of course the fact that the establishment likes to engage in regular mass public deception by claiming the debate about global warming is over and any dissent is tantamount to holocaust denial doesn't bode well for potential media coverage of the report, unlike the ongoing UN climate conference in Poznan which is being lavished with endless media attention about the need for a global carbon tax to save the planet from the evils of plant food (CO2).

The self-proclaimed "consensus" behind man-made global warming is one enforced by threats, intimidation and ignorance, as highlighted by media coverage of last year's UN meeting in Bali, where skeptical climate scientists were shunned and ignored for daring to express an opposing viewpoint.

Following the Bali resolution to impose a global carbon tax, over one hundred prominent scientists signed a letter dismissing the move as a futile bureaucratic scheme which would diminish prosperity and increase human suffering.

Hundreds more skeptical scientists met in Manhattan last February at the first International Conference on Climate Change to discuss the side of the climate change debate that the establishment media prefers to pretend does not exist.

Did the mainstream media even acknowledge these events? Not at all, because they challenge the sacred cow that scientists uniformly agree on man-made global warming.

As we have previously reported, less than half of all published scientists endorse what has been dubbed the "consensus view".

However, President-elect Barack Obama yesterday vowed to end global warming "denial".

The following quotes, listed on the website of the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, provide a taster of what will be contained in the upcoming Senate report:

“I am a skeptic…Global warming has become a new religion.” - Nobel Prize Winner for Physics, Ivar Giaever.

“Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly….As a scientist I remain skeptical.” - Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman in the world to receive a PhD in meteorology and formerly of NASA who has authored more than 190 studies and has been called “among the most preeminent scientists of the last 100 years.”

Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history…When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” - UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist.

“The IPCC has actually become a closed circuit; it doesn’t listen to others. It doesn’t have open minds… I am really amazed that the Nobel Peace Prize has been given on scientifically incorrect conclusions by people who are not geologists,” - Indian geologist Dr. Arun D. Ahluwalia at Punjab University and a board member of the UN-supported International Year of the Planet.

“The models and forecasts of the UN IPCC "are incorrect because they only are based on mathematical models and presented results at scenarios that do not include, for example, solar activity.” - Victor Manuel Velasco Herrera, a researcher at the Institute of Geophysics of the National Autonomous University of Mexico

“It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming.” - U.S Government Atmospheric Scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA.

“Even doubling or tripling the amount of carbon dioxide will virtually have little impact, as water vapour and water condensed on particles as clouds dominate the worldwide scene and always will.” – . Geoffrey G. Duffy, a professor in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering of the University of Auckland, NZ.

“After reading [UN IPCC chairman] Pachauri's asinine comment [comparing skeptics to] Flat Earthers, it's hard to remain quiet.” - Climate statistician Dr. William M. Briggs, who specializes in the statistics of forecast evaluation, serves on the American Meteorological Society's Probability and Statistics Committee and is an Associate Editor of Monthly Weather Review.

“For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming? For how many years must cooling go on?" - Geologist Dr. David Gee the chairman of the science committee of the 2008 International Geological Congress who has authored 130 plus peer reviewed papers, and is currently at Uppsala University in Sweden.

“Gore prompted me to start delving into the science again and I quickly found myself solidly in the skeptic camp…Climate models can at best be useful for explaining climate changes after the fact.” - Meteorologist Hajo Smit of Holland, who reversed his belief in man-made warming to become a skeptic, is a former member of the Dutch UN IPCC committee.

“Many [scientists] are now searching for a way to back out quietly (from promoting warming fears), without having their professional careers ruined.” - Atmospheric physicist James A. Peden, formerly of the Space Research and Coordination Center in Pittsburgh.

“Creating an ideology pegged to carbon dioxide is a dangerous nonsense…The present alarm on climate change is an instrument of social control, a pretext for major businesses and political battle. It became an ideology, which is concerning.” - Environmental Scientist Professor Delgado Domingos of Portugal, the founder of the Numerical Weather Forecast group, has more than 150 published articles.

“CO2 emissions make absolutely no difference one way or another….Every scientist knows this, but it doesn’t pay to say so…Global warming, as a political vehicle, keeps Europeans in the driver’s seat and developing nations walking barefoot.” - Dr. Takeda Kunihiko, vice-chancellor of the Institute of Science and Technology Research at Chubu University in Japan.

“The [global warming] scaremongering has its justification in the fact that it is something that generates funds.” - Award-winning Paleontologist Dr. Eduardo Tonni, of the Committee for Scientific Research in Buenos Aires and head of the Paleontology Department at the University of La Plata. # #

Related Reading

• IPCC Scientists Caught Producing False Data To Push Global Warming

• The world has never seen such freezing heat

• VIDEO: The Great Global Warming Swindle

• Obama Pushes Carbon Tax Proposal That Would Inflict New Great Depression

• Arctic Ice Grows 30 Per Cent In a Year

• Get Ready For The Obama “Green Brigades”

• British Kids Encouraged To Become "Climate Cops"

• Record Low Temperatures Hit America

• Central Plank Of Global Warming Alarmism Discredited

• No Global Warming Since 1998 As Planet Cools Off

• Globalists Love Global Warming

• Sick And Tired Of Being Lectured By Global Warming Hypocrites

• In the 1970's, "Global Cooling" Was The New Threat

• The Creeping Fascism of Global Warming Hysteria

Bail out? Let's call it what it is, the Nationalization of the Auto Industry.




Like many in this state I have had to watch as my family members are slowly laid off one by one by the Big Three.  To stand helplessly on the side lines as plant after plant is shut down and operations moved to countries like Mexico and China.  Yet they (The U.S. Auto industry) have the gall to stand before the American Tax payer and ask us for our hard earned tax dollars to help bail them out of the mismanagement and poor business choices that they themselves have wrought.

Ford Motor Company had no problem investing billions on foreign soil to keep from paying living wages to Americans as sited by the Herald Tribune on June 9th of  this year

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/09/news/09oxan-ford
.php

More over GM has also asked Canada for financial help sites the Financial Post.

And Chrysler refused to sell the company to the one man who bailed them out with sound business practices, Lee Iococa. 

With this in mind now they come to us; the ones they left to struggle for a living in near ghost towns like Flint to dig deeper into our pockets to give them a hand.  Personally I say let them fail. 

Did they give a damn about the thousands they left jobless after closing the Wixiom Plant?  Or the Rouge Plant or the plants in Flint?  Yet they turn to the Government and beg for tax money handouts. In essence to Nationalize them. 

And if history has taught us anything, it is that we have learned nothing from history.

One other country had also done this within reckoning, but those Companies were Thyssen, and BMW nationalized by the National Socialist of Hitler's Nazi Germany.

Now the Federal Government wants to spend our money, which they illegally retrieve from a taxation Amendment that was never ratified by the proper amount of states, and instill a Car Czar and we are to foot the bill for him, his office, staff and all the bureaucracies that come with it.

As if they have any clue how to run a financially profitable country, let alone a business.

If the big three are having such a hard time competing with the rest of the worlds auto industries then why don't they merge into a leaner more profitable company such as they have done before with Chrysler/Jeep/Eagle or any of the other auto combinations that came in the 70's when times were hard.

I'm all for helping an industry who has our nations best interest in mind, but they don't.
If they did they wouldn't have left Michigan in such economic disarray in order to turn a buck. 

Not that it was solely the Auto Industries fault, our totalitarian state government has had a large part in it with it's deficit spending, Corporate Taxes and refusal to tap into the monies that this state has, as shown in the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report and instead places legislations like the Drivers Responsibility Act (which avoids the double jeopardy law by being an executive action) and larger income taxation on the citizens of this state.

The Federal government has already Nationalized the Banking industry, The Mortgage Industry, Our Schools, are doing their damnedest to follow suit with the Medical Industry and now they seek to over throw the Auto Industry by dangling our tax dollars before them and say, "You can have this loot but you have to do it our way." 

Don't fall for it, Nationalization of the Auto Industry will not save one job for us but will create plenty for the bureaucrats in Washington.

This Bail out has become what I myself, and many others have warned it would become...the Whole Sale take over of our nation by the international banker cartels.

As best stated by quotes from Thomas Jefferson who rightly understood the threat that a central banking structure held for our country.

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a monied aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power (of money) should be taken away from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs." – Thomas Jefferson

“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of currency, first by
inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.” – Thomas Jefferson

And that is what we are witnessing today, a banker take over of most all the holdings in this nation through their unbridled printing of unsound, unbacked money to buy up debt that their monetary system breeds, from companies and the like to further gain control of the people of this nation. 

Until we actually address the real problem; The Federal Reserve and it's failing fiat, fractional reserve lending practices, all the bail outs and restructuring of our private industry into a mega Fascist conglomeration will avail to nothing more then handing our nation over peice meal to the Criminal banking institutions that have caused this problem in the first place.

In closing I leave you with these clips from the Floor of Congress.

Obama...More of the same.  Tyranny and loss of personal freedom.

Stephen Lendman
Global Research
December 5, 2008

December 1 brought more disappointment but no surprises. Obama’s national security appointees (like all his earlier ones) aren’t “change to believe in” or what people expected for their votes. They’re recycled establishment figures. Their agenda is business as usual, and they’ll continue the same failed Bush administration policies at home and abroad. Washington’s criminal class is bipartisan. Obama was chosen to lead it and is assembling a rogue team that’s little different from the one it’s replacing.

For “security”, it means:

– maintaining the “strongest military on the planet” and do it by outspending all other countries combined;

– continued foreign wars;

– possibly another against Iran;

– permanent occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan - directly and with proxy forces; Obama saying he’ll withdraw all US forces from Iraq in 16 months (around mid-2010) is false and misleading;

– a reinvented Cold War against Russia;

– an “absolute” commitment “to eliminating the threat of terrorism (with) the full force of our power;”

– inciting instability anywhere it serves US imperial interests with special emphasis on resource-rich Eurasia, including the Asian sub-continent; Exhibit A: the Bombay (Mumbai) terror attacks that Michel Chossudovsky explains have “the fingerprints of a (carefully planned) paramilitary-intelligence operation (and) are described as India’s 9/11,” or at least a mini version of it; the usual suspects are blamed; the purpose is to incite fear and more violence; the consequences - an internal hard line crackdown, increased tensions between India and Pakistan, and a military opening for Washington to intervene further in the region; and

– additional North American militarization as evidenced by a disturbing December 1 Washington Post report - that (on the pretext of national security) the Pentagon will deploy 20,000 troops nationwide by 2011 “to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear attack or other domestic catastrophe;” three “rapid-reaction” combat units are planned; two or more additional ones may follow; they’ll be supplemented by 80 smaller National Guard units and will be trained to respond to chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, high-yield explosive, and other domestic “terror” attacks or disturbances; in other words, homeland militarization and occupation is planned using combat troops trained to kill.

Media Reaction to Obama’s National Security Appointees

The New York Times suggested he’s “put(ting) the rancor and even some of the rhetoric of the presidential campaign behind him on Monday as he welcomed his chief Democratic adversary into his cabinet and signaled flexibility in his plans to withdraw troops from Iraq.” He stated: “I will listen to the recommendations of my commanders (and it’s) likely to be necessary to maintain a residual force to provide potential training (and) logistical support to protect our civilians in Iraq.”

According to the Cato Institute’s foreign policy director, Christopher Preble, Obama chose Iraq war supporters, so it “suggests that we will only get more of the same.”

The Washington Post highlighted Obama’s “high-powered national security team….to face a complex security picture.” It quoted him calling for “a new beginning, a new dawn of American leadership (and) the power of our moral example.”

According to UN ambassador-designee Susan Rice, it’s a team “to prevent conflict, to promote peace, combat terrorism, prevent the spread and use of nuclear weapons, tackle climate change, end genocide, fight poverty and disease.” More on those aims below.

The Wall Street Journal suggested that Obama’s national security team will make “a clean break from Bush administration policies on Iraq, Afghanistan and overseas diplomacy.” It will differ from “an over-reliance on the military and a failure to devote enough resources to political reconciliation and economic development in those nations.” More on that below as well.

Obama’s National Security Designees

On December 1 in the UK Guardian, author Jeremy Scahill called them a “Kettle of Hawks” so it’s no surprise that hard line neocon writer Max Boot was jubilant over the selections and said they “as easily (could) have come from a President McCain.” He and like-minded ideologues believe this puts “an end to the 16-month timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, the unconditional summits with dictators (aka democrats like Chavez, president Ahmadinejad of Iran, and Fidel and Raul Castro), and other foolishness that once emanated from the Obama campaign.” His selections “should be powerful voices for neoliberalism which is not so different from neoconservatism.”

According to Boot, Obama will pick up right where Bush left off with a near-seamless transition. “Only churlish partisans of both the left and the right can be unhappy with the emerging tenor of our nation’s new leadership.”

According to former Chicago congressman, federal judge, and Clinton White House Counsel Abner Mikva in a Chicago Jewish News article, it’s also true for the nation’s Jews and the state of Israel. As some call Clinton ‘the nation’s first black president,’ “I think when this is over, people are going to say that Barack Obama is the first Jewish president.” Rabbi Arnold Wolf agrees in saying Obama is “embedded in the Jewish world.” Given the team he’s assembling, there’s every reason to believe they’re right.

Hillary Clinton

She’s co-heading the team (with Robert Gates) as Secretary of State designee, so it’s clear no change is planned given her hard line neocon ideology. As one analyst puts it: it’s why many on the left “are grinding their teeth” about her and other former Clinton administration appointees.

Back in May, CounterPunch co-editor Jeff St. Clair referred to her “Gothic politics” that offer no hope for needed change. He called her “constitutionally wedded to a stern neoliberalism, a disposition (she’s unable to) camouflage.”

Darker still is her hawkishness, far enough to the right to be indistinguishable from Joe Lieberman or John McCain. It’s why one analyst calls her a “war goddess” and with good reason. She supported the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and still does. She voted for the Patriot, Homeland Security, and other repressive acts.

She’s extremely bellicose, endorses attacking Iran, supported Israel’s destructive 2006 Lebanon war, praised Israel’s apartheid wall, demeans the Palestinian people, equates them with terrorists, calls any Israeli criticism anti-Semitism, is close to AIPAC, and at its June convention said “The United States stands with Israel now and forever….We have shared interests….shared ideals….common values. I have a bedrock commitment to Israel’s security. (Against Islamic extremists) our two nations are fighting a shared threat….I strongly support Israel’s right to self-defense (and) believe America should aid in that defense….I am committed to making sure that Israel maintains a military edge to meet increasing threats.”

“I am deeply concerned about the growing threat in Gaza (and) Hamas’ campaign of terror….Its charter calls for the destruction of Israel….Iran (also) threatens to destroy Israel….I support calling the Iranian Revolutionary Guard what it is: a terrorist organization. It is imperative that we get both tough and smart about dealing with Iran before it is too late.”

In other speeches, Clinton has been extremely belligerent and blatantly malicious in accusations mirror opposite of the truth. She called Iran a strategic long-term threat, a country that practices state terrorism, that uses “surrogates to supply explosives that kill US troops in Iraq,” and that must be dealt with with “all options on the table.”

She also said that if Iran attacks Israel (that’s implausible on its face), America would respond by “obliterating” the country - in other words, incinerate its entire population through a nuclear holocaust. During the 2008 campaign, she told ABC’s Good Morning America:

“I want the Iranians to know, if I am the president, we will attack Iran. And I want them to understand that (if) they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.”

She’s just as extremist on all foreign policy issues. She opposes an international treaty to ban land mines and was against banning cluster bomb exports to countries that use them on civilians. She backs arms transfers and police training to human rights abusing countries like Israel, Egypt, Pakistan, India, Saudi Arabia and similar US allies.

She’s for a larger military budget, continuing the “war on terror,” the nation’s illegal wars and occupation, and Israel’s repressive Palestinian occupation. In July 2004, she denounced the UN, accused it of opposing aggressive US policies, its judicial arm for challenging Israel’s Separation Barrier, and she sponsored a Senate resolution “urging no further action by the UN to delay” its construction.

She’s done nothing to contain nuclear proliferation except to condemn Iran’s legal commercial development. It’s in full accord with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) unlike the world’s greatest nuclear outlaw - America. Israel, India, and Pakistan as well, but they’re US allies unlike Iran. Clinton also supports the Bush Doctrine and his administration’s unilateral position on using first strike nuclear weapons, including against non-nuclear states.

Hillary Clinton at State sends a strong message to free people everywhere and especially to all Muslims and the Arab world - the “war on terror” will continue. Your people are its main target, and America will continue to invade and occupy your lands. It also tells the anti-war movement that it’s work has just begun and will be no simpler under Obama than it’s been up to now. Clinton is a powerful bulwark against it and to all freedom loving people everywhere. “Gothic” indeed - dark and foreboding in the same “war party” under new management.

Robert Gates

He’ll remain as Defense Secretary and is a clear signal of Bush administration policy continuity. After being named to succeed Donald Rumsfeld in November 2006, this writer said about him: The appointment of Robert Gates “replac(es) one controversial (defense) secretary and accused war criminal with an unindicted liar and equally controversial former Reagan and senior Bush official.” Earlier he was involved “in cooking the intelligence to fit the policy in the Iran-Contra scandal he was never held to account for.” He also had a hand “in secretly arming Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. When he takes over (at DOD), expect the Pentagon under (his) management to be no different” than the leadership it’s replacing. In all respects, Gates lived up to expectations and will continue the same policies under Obama.

In an October 28 speech at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, he argued for expanding the Bush administration’s pre-emptive war doctrine to include first strike nuclear weapons. He said that pacifist illusions shouldn’t deter planning for a broader war.

He added that “As long as other states have or seek nuclear weapons - and can potentially threaten us, our allies and friends - then we must have a deterrent capacity that makes it clear that challenging the US in the nuclear arena - or with weapons of mass destruction - could result in an overwhelming, catastrophic response.” In other words, if non-US allies seek nuclear weapons or if Washington (without evidence) claims it, they then become potential targets for a nuclear response even if their intentions are peaceful.

Gates’ other credentials include 26 years with the CIA where he was its deputy director from 1986 - 1989 and director from 1991 - 1993. Former CIA official, turned political activist, Ray McGovern knew him there and wrote about his “dexterity in orchestrating his own advancement (and) never (being) one to let truth derail (his) ambition.”

Former CIA analyst Mel Goodman described how he “tried hard to anticipate the views of policy makers in order to pander to their needs” and played a major role in politicizing the agency. One of his key distortions led to higher military spending under Ronald Reagan - by exaggerating the Soviet menace (along with CIA director Bill Casey) as a “military behemoth with a robust economy rather than a decaying power with a shriveling GDP.”

Goodman added: “While serving as deputy director for intelligence from 1982 - 1986, Gates wrote the manual for manipulating and centralizing the intelligence process to get the desired intelligence product.” He promoted pliable CIA careerists to top positions while sidelining or retiring more independent ones. In 1991 under GHW Bush, his colleagues staged an unprecedented revolt for his role in destroying the agency’s commitment to objectivity.

At the time, Harold P. Ford, former National Intelligence Council vice-chairman, told the Senate Intelligence Committee: “Bob Gates has often depended too much on his own individual analytic judgments and has ignored or scorned the views of others whose assessments did not accord with his own. This would be okay if he were uniquely all-seeing. He has not been.”

Throughout his career, Gates was devious and opportunistic. He’ll bring those “qualities” to the new Obama administration.

He’s also a past president of Texas A & M University (a position gotten with considerable Bush family help), a member of several corporate boards, served on the Baker Iraq Study Group, and was George Bush’s first choice for Department of Homeland Security secretary but declined to remain at Texas A & M.

Retired Marine General James Jones

He’s the announced National Security Advisor designee to head the White House National Security Council (NSC). Since inception under Harry Truman, it’s to advise the president on national security and foreign policies as well as coordinate them among various government agencies (including the military branches, CIA, and other intelligence agencies).

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t
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Jones is a former NATO commander (from 2003 - 2006), Commandant of the Marine Corp (from 1999 - 2003), and 40 year veteran after retiring from the Corp in 2007. He’s now a US Chamber of Commerce executive and last November was named the administration’s special Middle East envoy with this endorsement: he’s the “person we need to take up this vital mission….an experienced leader who can address the regional security challenges comprehensively and at the highest levels….” His assignment was to draft a strategic security stabilization plan to complement (so-called) Israeli - Palestinian peace talks. He supports stationing US forces in Occupied Palestine under the pretext of NATO peacekeepers.

He also investigated the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, concluded that America “t(ook) its eye off the ball” in Afghanistan and is losing. That view supports Obama’s wanting 10,000 more combat troops there (30,000 according to some reports) and also plans “as our first priority” increased regional military operations - against Afghanistan and Pakistan with a more convenient than ever pretext in the wake of the Bombay (Mumbai) terror attacks in the part of the world he calls the greatest menace to US security.

Increasing numbers of US missile strikes are killing more Pakistani civilians. They’re inciting growing anger in the country, are escalating the Afghan war, and threaten to expand the war theater to a much larger area with potentially catastrophic consequences - a strategy Obama and his incoming team apparently support.

In his latest article titled “Afghanistan, Another Untold Story,” Michael Parenti has a different view. After reviewing the country’s recent history, he says:

“US intervention in Afghanistan has proven not much different from US intervention in Cambodia, Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Grenada, Panama, and elsewhere. It had the same intent of preventing egalitarian social change, and the same effect of overthrowing an economically reformist government. In all these instances, the intervention brought retrograde elements into ascendance, left the economy in ruins, and pitilessly laid waste to many innocent lives.”

“The war in Afghanistan, a battered impoverished country, continues to be portrayed in US official circles as a gallant crusade against terrorism. If it ever was that, it also has been a means to other things: destroying a leftist revolutionary social order, gaining profitable control of one of the last vast untapped reserves of the earth’s dwindling fossil fuel supply, and planting US bases and US military power into still another region of the world….In the face of all this, Obama’s call for ‘change’ rings hollow.”

It also suggests a frightening prospect under his leadership - a continuation of Bush’s (preventive war) Doctrine against countries we claim (true or false) practice “terrorism,” harbor “terrorist” elements, or aid “terrorist” groups. In other words, an agenda that needs enemies, invents them strategically, and intends to wage permanent aggressive wars to expand US imperialism globally and especially over resource-rich parts of the world like Eurasia.

Eric Holder

As Attorney General designee, he’s another very troublesome choice because of his hard line law-and-order reputation. He’s Obama’s senior legal advisor, a former District of Columbia Superior Court judge, and Deputy Attorney General under Bill Clinton.

As senior Democrat Party legal advisor during the Bush administration, he was actively involved in his party’s complicity in enacting repressive police state laws.

In 1998, he issued a statement known as the “Holder memo” in which he supported government intervention into policing Internet free speech. It stated:

“Because of the nature of the Internet and availability of agents trained in conducting criminal investigations in cyberspace, investigation and prosecution of Internet obscenity is particularly suitable to federal resources.”

In a 1998 letter to Morality In Media (an extremist religious right front group against pornography), he said: “I appreciated having the opportunity to meet with you recently to discuss the prosecution of obscenity cases.” Holder supported multi-jurisdictional prosecutions of Internet web sites and businesses on such charges, even in cases of First Amendment-protected material.

Some claim his strategy wasn’t to win, but to burden defendants with mounting legal costs, exhaust them through repeated litigation, and perhaps drive them into bankruptcy. It’s a tactic very similar to so-called SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation) lawsuits that are used to intimidate and silence critics.

Holder was also involved in Bill Clinton’s indefensible last day in office Mark Rich pardon, the billionaire fugitive commodities trader. In 1983, Rich and his partner were indicted on 65 counts of defrauding the IRS, mail fraud, tax evasion, racketeering, defrauding the Treasury and trading with the enemy. Holder was deputy attorney general at the time.

As US attorney for the District of Columbia, he also pushed for stiffer marijuana penalties, and according to one report, advocated “minimum sentences of 18 months for first-time convicted drug dealers, 36 months for second offenses, and 72 months for each subsequent conviction.” He also wanted to “make the penalty for distribution and possession with intent to distribute marijuana a felony, punishable with up to a five-year sentence.” The DC Council enacted Holder’s recommendation into law in 2000. His hard line stance against non-violent drug offenders runs counter to Obama’s softer position, apparently about to harden.

Holder also played a lead role in the 2005 Patriot Act reauthorization, supported at the time by Obama. In addition, after his Clinton administration service, he was a partner in the Covington & Burling law and lobbying firm at which he defended Chiquita Brands International executives on charges of aiding terrorism by financing and arming Colombian (AUC) death squads. In spite of overwhelming evidence and the company’s own admission, he got it off with a fine of around half of one percent of its annual revenue.

Holder also believes that accused “terrorists” have no Geneva Convention rights. In a January 2002 CNN interview he said:

“One of the things we clearly want to do with these prisoners is to have an ability to interrogate them and find out what their future plans might be, where other cells are located; under the Geneva Convention you are really limited in the amount of information that you can elicit from people.”

“It seems to me that given the way in which they have conducted themselves, however, that they are not, in fact, people entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention. They are not prisoners of war.”

Holder left unaddressed the question of torture, guilt or innocence. The fact that they were captured and imprisoned is good enough for him.

As the nation’s top law enforcement official, he’ll assure more of the same criminal abuses under George Bush. He’s no civil libertarian or what people should expect from the nation’s top law enforcement officer. He represents business as usual, and a sign of continued dark times ahead.

Keeping FBI Director Robert Mueller as his chief law enforcement deputy (even though his term runs until 2011) is an even stronger signal. Mueller enforced the worst of “war on terrorism” policies, including witch-hunt prosecutions, illegal spying, and targeting political dissent.

The possible appointment of former George Tenet aide John Brennan as new CIA chief is also disturbing although reportedly he’s out of the running. He heads Obama’s intelligence transition team, supported warrantless wiretapping, extraordinary rendition, and was involved in politicizing intelligence alleging Saddam’s WMDs in the run-up to the Iraq war.

Possible CIA Directors

On December 2, The New York Times reported that “Obama Faces a Delicate Task” in choosing his CIA chief - “one of the more treacherous patches of his transition to the White House” given the agency’s disturbing involvement in extraordinary renditions, torture, and other illegal practices under Bush.

Even so, “some senior Democratic lawmakers who are vehement critics of the Bush administration’s interrogation policies seemed reluctant in recent interviews to commit the new administration to following the Army Field Manual in all cases.”

Diane Feinstein will become Senate Intelligence Committee chairperson in January. She says extreme cases and potential terrorist threats call for flexibility, so her message is clear even though in a subsequent statement she softened it. Repressive interrogations, including torture, will likely continue under Obama even if Guantanamo is closed and even though they’re illegal under US and international law.

During the campaign, Obama aides said he’d let CIA keep holding prisoners in overseas jails but that International Committee of the Red Cross representatives should be given access to them. It matters little because, when allowed, their tours are carefully orchestrated to conceal repressive practices and no contact with prisoners most aggrieved by them.

The Army Field Manual (No. 27-10) is explicit on the rule of law. It incorporates the Nuremberg Principles prohibiting crimes against humanity, and in paragraph 498 states that any person, military or civilian, who commits a crime under international law bears responsibility and may be punished. In addition, paragraph 499 defines a “war crime.” Paragraph 500 refers to conspiracy, attempts to commit it and complicity with respect to international crimes. Paragraph 509 denies the defense of superior orders in the commission of a crime; and paragraph 510 denies the defense of an “act of state.”

Most members of Congress from both parties have been complicit with the administration in egregiously violating both US and international laws. All signs point to little, if any, change under the incoming Obama administration.

The Times reports that Obama will replace CIA director Michael Hayden. Possible candidates include:

– deputy director (since 2004) Stephen Kappes, a 27-year CIA veteran;

– former Indiana congressman and member of the 9/11 commission Tim Roemer; he’s now president of the Center for National Policy, a Washington-based national security think tank;

– Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel who’s retiring from the Senate in January; he’s also a former conservative talk-show host and is (or was during his runs for the Senate) part owner, chairman, and CEO of the Election Systems & Software (ES&S) electronic voting machine company; it installed, programmed and operated the equipment used by most voters for the elections in which he ran; he won a second term in 1982 with 83% of the vote - the largest ever political victory in the state; some critics called it a dress rehearsal for Bush’s 2004 electoral theft and various state ones favoring Republican candidates; and

– Jack Devine, a 32-year CIA veteran, now retired, and former head of clandestine service; he describes himself as “a covert action person (who believes) we should be out there pushing US policy wherever we can, covertly and overtly.”

Admiral Dennis Blair

Reports are that retired Admiral Dennis Blair is top choice to be Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The office was established by the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act and was formed in April 2005. It’s the president’s principal national security intelligence advisor; heads the nation’s 16 intelligence agencies; and oversees and directs the National Intelligence Program.

Now retired, Blair is a 34 year Navy veteran and currently holds the (former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman) John Shalikashvili Chair in National Security Studies at The National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR). Also the General of the Army Omar Bradley Chair of Strategic Leadership at Dickenson College and the US Army War College. He’s the immediate past president of the Institute for Defense Analyses, a US government Washington, DC think tank that calls itself “a non-profit corporation that administers three federally funded (R & D) centers to assist the (government) in national security issues.”

Blair was also an Oxford classmate of Bill Clinton and a Naval Academy classmate of Senator Jim Webb. If appointed, he’ll bring more militarist credentials to Obama’s war cabinet. In his various command assignments during the Bush administration, he was a point man in the “war on terrorism.” He’ll continue that role as the nation’s intelligence chief.

An obstacle in his way was in a Pentagon inspector general finding regarding DOD conflict-of-interest standards. Earlier he was involved with a study of a major military contract for the F-22 fighter while a board member of the company that makes it, Lockheed Martin. It occurred while Blair was president of the Institute for Defense Analyses. Whether this will derail him is an open question, but it highlights the pervasive Washington revolving-door and overall corrupted culture.

Janet Napolitano

According to Michael Lacey of LA Weekly News, the current Arizona governor and designee for Homeland Security secretary is a troublesome choice. He cites her sorrowful Arizona service “consorting with anti-immigrant enforcers, indulging rank opportunism, and adhering to failed policies (that make for) an unlikely recipe for change we can believe in. And yet this very cocktail of mediocrity” made her Obama’s choice for DHS chief or what this writer calls the nation’s Gestapo.

As Arizona governor, Napolitano defended her states border with a “pitchfork. Her multi-pronged strategy: embrace the nation’s most regressive legislation; empower a notorious sheriff using cynical political calculations; (and) employ boots on the ground” - shock troop enforcers against defenseless Latino immigrants forced north because of destructive NAFTA policies.

Lacey goes on to describe Napolitano’s “bungled billions,” hiring companies embedded with former state agency employees and cronies, ducking hard choices, using accounting gimmicks in state budgets, and various other practices amounting to “corruption, greed, and the cupidity of boondoggle bookkeeping in hard times.” She also signed legislation criminalizing the need to work and support one’s family and created a state atmosphere reminiscent of Prohibition - today against Latino immigrants driven north to find work. Now she’ll do for America what she’s doing to Arizona.

Susan Rice

She’ll be Obama’s nominee for UN ambassador. Earlier under Bill Clinton, she was on the National Security Council and served as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs. Some call her progressive but recommending the unilateral use of military force against any country violates the Charter of the organization where she’ll work. In 2006, she recommended it against Sudan in stating:

“History demonstrates that there is one language Khartoum understands: the credible threat or use of force….After swift diplomatic consultations, the United States should press for a UN resolution that issues Sudan an ultimatum: accept unconditional deployment of the UN force within one week or face military consequences.”

Chapter VII of the UN Charter authorizes only the Security Council to “determine the existence of any threat to the peace, or act of aggression (and, if necessary, take military or other actions to) restore international peace and stability.” It permits a nation to use force only under two conditions: when authorized by the Security Council or under Article 51 allowing the “right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member….until the Security Council has taken measures to maintain international peace and security.”

Calling for unilateral force against another state for any reason is illegal and criminal. Susan Rice did it, yet will serve as America’s UN ambassador as her reward.

Obama continues to round out his team, and each appointment mirrors the others. On his watch, it’ll be business as usual, but what else would we expect.

Alaskan Glaciers Grow for the First Time in 250 years

Plans to implement a worldwide carbon tax in the name of saving the planet from global warming have taken another blow after it was revealed that Alaskan glaciers have grown for the first time in 250 years after an abnormally cool summer.

Now that the planet has naturally exited a warming trend and is heading towards a new “big chill,” as evidenced by the near complete halt in sunspot activity, the glaciers are expanding once again.  

Temperatures 3 degrees below average caused winter snow to remain for longer, prompting the increase in glacial mass, reports the Daily Tech.

“Since 1946, the USGS has maintained a research project measuring the state of Alaskan glaciers. This year saw records broken for most snow buildup. It was also the first time since any records began being that the glaciers did not shrink during the summer months,” according to the report.

The biggest shrinkage witnessed in the region occurred between 1741 and 1900, during which the glaciers lost about 15 per cent of their total mass as the earth began to exit the climatological period coined the Little Ice Age.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but CO2 spewing cars and jumbo jets were not too prevalent in the 18th and 19th centuries.

And now that the planet has naturally exited a warming trend and is heading towards a new “big chill,” as evidenced by the near complete halt in sunspot activity, the glaciers are expanding once again.

Years more growth in the Alaskan glaciers “might mark the beginning of another Little Ice Age,” notes the report.

The expansion of the glaciers follows a similar occurrence in the Arctic, which has undergone an ice cover growth twice the size of Germany in the past year, a gain of about thirteen percent following a colder than usual year.

Man-made global warming adherents have attempted to downplay such instances as aberrations that defy a wider warming trend, but in reality no global warming has been observed since at least 1999 or even 1995, as University of Finland professor Jarl R. Ahlbeck maintains.

Evidence that the planet is tip-toeing towards the onset of a new mini ice age continues to present itself following unprecedented ice storms in Kenya as well as Sydney experiencing its coldest August for 60 years.

The cold snap arrives on the back of the Sun reaching a milestone not observed in nearly 100 years - the entire month of August passed without a single sunspot being noted.

Lack of solar activity in 2008 has coincided with evidence of a cooling trend across the world.

• show_banners(Earlier this year, China experienced its coldest winter in 100 years while northeast America was hit by record snow levels and Britain suffered its coldest Easter in decades

as late-blooming daffodils were pounded with hail and snow on an almost daily basis. The British summer also left many yearning for global warming, with temperatures in June and July rarely struggling to get over 16 degrees and on one occasion even dropping as low as 9 degrees in the middle of the afternoon.

Many parts of the U.S. suffered their coldest April on record. Canada had its third coldest April since 1970.

“Summer heat continues in short supply, continuing a trend that has dominated much of the 21st Century’s opening decade,” reports the Chicago Tribune. “There have been only 162 days 90 degrees or warmer at Midway Airport over the period from 2000 to 2008. That’s by far the fewest 90-degree temperatures in the opening nine years of any decade on record here since 1930.”

According to an Associated Press report, The Farmers Almanac is now also predicting “below-average temperatures for most of the U.S.” The publication boasts of an 85 per cent accuracy rate for its forecasts which are given two years in advance.

According to a report from the World Meteorological Organization last month, the first half of 2008 was the coolest for at least five years, adding that it may actually be the coolest since 2000.

Man-made advocates have been losing credibility in recent months on the back of bizarre proposals to fight climate change that include blocking out the sun with spaceships as well as eviscerating pristine old growth forests, despite wider evidence of a cooling trend that is just beginning to manifest itself.

A Futile Bail Out as America Falls into Darkness

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

America has become a pretty discouraging place.  Americans, for the most part, will never know what happened to them, because they no longer have a free and responsible press.  They have Big Brother’s press.  For example, on September 28, 2008, a New York Times editorial blamed the current financial crisis on “anti-regulation disciples of the Reagan Revolution.”  

What utter nonsense.  Every example of deregulation that the New York Times editorial provides is located in the Clinton Administration and the George W. Bush administration.  I was a member of the Reagan administration.  We most certainly did not deregulate the financial system.

The repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial from investment banking, was the achievement of the Democratic Clinton Administration. It happened in 1999, over a decade after Reagan left office.

It was in 2000 that derivatives and credit default swaps were excluded from regulation.

The greatest mistake was made in 2004, the year that Reagan died. That year the current Secretary of the Treasury, Henry M. Paulson Jr, was  head of the investment bank Goldman Sachs.  In the spring of 2004, the investment banks, led by Paulson, met with the Securities and Exchange Commission.  At this meeting with the New Deal regulatory agency tasked with regulating the US financial system, Paulson convinced the SEC Commissioners to exempt the investment banks from maintaining reserves to cover losses on investments. The exemption granted by the SEC allowed the investment banks to leverage financial instruments beyond any bounds of prudence. 

In place of time-proven standards of prudence, computer models engineered by hot shots determined acceptable risk.  As one result Bear Stearns, for example, pushed its leverage ratio to 33 to 1.  For every one dollar in equity, the investment bank had $33 of debt!  

It was computer models that led to the failure of Long-Term Capital Management in 1998, the first systemic threat to the financial system.  Why the SEC went along with Paulson and set aside capital requirements after the scare of Long-Term Capital Management is inexplicable.  

The blame is headed toward SEC chairman Christopher Cox.  This is more of Big Brother’s disinformation.  Cox, like so many others, was a victim of a free market ideology, itself a reaction to over-regulation, that was boosted by academic economic opinion, rewarded with Nobel prizes, that the market “always knows best.”

The 20th century proves that the market is likely to know better than a central planning bureau.  It was Soviet Communism that collapsed, not American capitalism.  However, the market has to be protected from greed.  It was greed, not the market, that was unleashed by deregulation during  the Clinton and George W. Bush regimes.  

I remember when the deregulation of the financial sector began.  One of the first inroads was the legislation, written by bankers, to permit national branch banking. George Champion, former chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank, testified against it. In columns I argued that national branch banking would focus banks away from local business needs.

The deregulation of the financial sector was achieved by the Democratic Clinton Administration and by the current Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson, with the acquiescence of the Securities and Exchange Commission.  

The Paulson bailout saves his firm, Goldman Sachs.  The Paulson bailout transfers the troubled financial instruments that the financial sector created from the books of the financial sector to the books of the taxpayers at the US Treasury. 

This is all the bailout does.  It rescues the guilty.

The Paulson bailout does not address the problem, which is the defaulting home mortgages.  

The defaults will continue, because the economy is sinking into recession.  Homeowners are losing their jobs, and homeowners are being hit with rising mortgage payments resulting from adjustable rate mortgages and escalator interest rate clauses in their mortgages that make homeowners unable to service their debt.  

Shifting the troubled assets from the financial sectors’ books to the taxpayers’ books absolves the people who caused the problem from responsibility.  As the economy declines and mortgage default rates rise, the US Treasury and the American taxpayers  could end up with a $700 billion loss. 

Initially, the House, but not the Senate, resisted the bailout of the financial institutions,whose executives had received millions of dollars in bonuses for wrecking the US financial system.  However, the people’s representatives could not withstand the specter of martial law and Great Depression with which Paulson and the Bush administration threatened them.  The people’s representatives succumbed as they did during the New Deal.

The impotence of Congress traces to the Great Depression.  As Theodore Lowi in his classic book, The End of Liberalism, makes clear, the New Deal stripped Congress of its law-making power and gave it to the executive agencies.  Prior to the New Deal, Congress wrote the laws.  After the New Deal a bill is merely an authorization for executive agencies to create the law through regulations.  The Paulson bailout has further diminished the legislative branch’s power.  

Since Paulson’s bailout of his firm and his financial friends does nothing to lessen the default rate on mortgages, how will the bailout play out?  

If the $700 billion bailout is based on an estimate of the current amount of bad mortgages, as the recession deepens and Americans lose their jobs, the default rate will  rise.  The $700 billion might not suffice.  The Treasury will have to go hat in hand to its foreign creditors for more loans.

As the US Treasury has not got $7, much less $700 billion, it must borrow the bailout money from foreign creditors, already overloaded with US paper.  At what point do America’s foreign bankers decide that the additions to US debt exceed what can be repaid?  

This question was ignored by the bailout.  There were no hearings.  No one consulted China,  America’s principal banker, or the Japanese, or the OPEC sovereign wealth funds, or Europe.  

Does the world have a blank check for America’s mistakes?  

This is the same world that is faced with American demands that countries support with money and lives America’s quest for world hegemony.  Europeans are dying in Afghanistan for American hegemony.  Do Europeans want their banks, which hold US dollars as their reserves, to fail so that Paulson can bail out his company and his friends?

The US dollar is the world’s reserve currency.  It comprises the reserves of foreign central banks.  Bush’s wars and economic policies are destroying the basis of the US dollar as reserve currency. The day the dollar loses its reserve currency role, the US government cannot pay its bills in its own currency.  The result will be a dramatic reduction in US living standards.  

Currently Treasuries are boosted by the habitual “flight to quality,” but as Treasury debt deepens, will investors still see quality?  At what point do America’s foreign creditors cease to lend?  That is the point at which American power ends. It might be close at hand. 

The Paulson bailout is predicated on cleaning up financial institutions’ balance sheets and restoring the flow of credit.  The assumption is that once lending resumes, the economy will pick up. 

This assumption is problematic.  The expansion of consumer debt, which kept the economy going in the 21st century, has reached its limit.  There are no more credit cards to max out, and no more home equity to refinance and spend.  The Paulson bailout might restore trust among financial institutions and enable them to lend to one another, but it doesn’t provide a jolt to consumer demand.

Moreover, there may be more shoes to drop.  Credit card debt could be the next to threaten balance sheets of financial institutions.  Apparently, credit card debt has been securitized and sold as well, and not all of the debt is good.  In addition, the leasing programs of the car manufacturers have turned sour.  As a result of high gasoline prices and absence of growth in take-home pay, the residual values of big trucks and SUVs are less than the leasing programs estimated them to be, thus creating more financial problems.  Car manufacturers are canceling their leasing programs, and this will further cut into sales.

According to statistician John Williams [ http://www.shadowstats.com/section/commentaries ] who measures inflation, unemployment, and GDP according to the methodology used prior to the Clinton regime’s corruption of these measures, the US unemployment rate is currently at 14.7 per cent and the inflation rate is 13.2 per cent.  Consequently, real US GDP growth in the 21st century has been negative. 

This is not a picture of an economy that a bailout of financial institution balance sheets will revive.  As the Paulson bailout does not address the mortgage problem per se, defaults and foreclosures are likely to rise, thus undermining the Treasury’s estimate that 90 per cent of the mortgages backing the troubled instruments are good.  

Moreover, one consequence of the ongoing financial crisis is financial concentration.  It is not inconceivable that the US will end up with four giant banks: J.P. Morgan Chase, Citicorp, Bank of America, and Wachovia Wells Fargo. If defaulting credit card debt then assaults these banks’ balance sheets, who is there to take them over?  Would the Treasury be able to borrow the money for another Paulson bailout?

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation refinanced one million home mortgages in order to prevent foreclosures.  The refinancing apparently succeeded, and HOLC returned a profit. The problem then, as now, was not “deadbeats” who wouldn’t pay their mortgages, and the HOLC refinancing did not discourage others from paying their mortgages. Market purists who claim the only solution is for housing prices to fall to prior levels overlook that rising inventories can push prices below prior levels, thus causing more distress.  They also overlook the role of interest rates.  If a worsening credit crisis dries up mortgage lending and pushes mortgage interest rates higher, the rise in interest rates could offset the fall in home prices, and mortgages would remain unaffordable even in a falling housing market.  

Some commentators are blaming the current mortgage problem on the pressure that the US government put on banks to lend to unqualified borrowers.  However, whatever  breaches of prudence there may have been only affected the earnings of individual institutions.  They did not threaten the financial system.  The current crisis required more than bad loans.  It required securitization and its leverage. It required Fed chairman Alan Greenspan’s inappropriate low interest rates, which created a real estate boom.  Rapidly rising real estate prices quickly created home equity to justify 100 percent mortgages.  Wall Street analysts pushed financial companies to improve their bottom lines, which they did by extreme leveraging. 

An alternative to refinancing troubled mortgages would be to attempt to separate the bad mortgages from the good ones and revalue the mortgage-backed securities accordingly.  If there are no further defaults, this approach would not require massive write-offs that threaten the solvency of financial institutions.  However, if defaults continue, write-downs would be an ongoing enterprise.

Clearly, all Secretary Paulson thought about was getting troubled assets off the books of financial institutions.  

The same reckless leadership that gave us expensive wars based on false premises has now concocted an expensive bailout that does not address the problem, which will fester and become worse.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

It's all our fault the Economy is Going Down the Drain

Reading through the corporate media in the wake the House passage of the Banker Takeover bill, I am struck by not only the sickening apologia of the supposed intelligentsia but the downright mean spiritedness, no doubt a likely result of nearly eight years of neocon rule. It is now fashionable to kick the victims while they are not only down, but thrown under the bus.

Consider Steven Pearlstein, a scribe for the CIA’s favorite newspaper, the Washington Post.

“The basic problem here is that too many people don’t understand the seriousness of the situation,” writes Mr. Pearlstein. “Americans fail to understand that they are facing the real prospect of a decade of little or no economic growth because of the bursting of a credit bubble that they helped create and that now threatens to bring down the global financial system.”

In short, the global financial system is going to hell in hand basket because of the little guy, not because of the Wall Street shysters and the banksters.

For scribbling such things, Mr. Pearlstein is a winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary.

“And they will come around, reluctantly, to the understanding that the only way to get out of these situations is to have governments all around the world borrow gobs of money and effectively nationalize large swaths of the financial system so it can be restructured, recapitalized, reformed and returned to private ownership once the crisis has passed and the economy has gotten back on its feet.”

Sounds more like socialism, and not any old garden variety socialism. It sounds like National Socialism. Call it fascism, what Mussolini deemed corporatism, if you must.

Nouriel Roubini, professor of economics at the Stern School in New York University, had something to say about this. Roubini rejects the socialist comparison out of hand, saying “calling it socialism (even socialism for the rich, the well- connected and Wall Street) is giving a bad name even to a failed experiment like socialism; this is more akin to the creation of a corporatist state (like the Italian fascism or the German Third Reich) where private sector interests are protected (gains privatized and losses socialized), where the government is taken over by corrupt and reckless private interests.”

You know, the kind of interests that run newspapers like the Washington Post, the sort where Pulitzer Prize darlings excoriate the public for being suckered by snake oil salesmen wearing $5,000 Anderson & Sheppard suits as they angle to get their hands on your pension and 401k so it can be pissed away in the Grand Casino of Speculation.

Curious thing is, Mr. Pearlstein is a liberal.

I guess that gives at least some idea of how the administration of Barack H. Obama will be run.

Bank Closer Hoax Echoes Propaganda By White House


No surprise that we learn the source of the hoax is Hal Turner, who was exposed earlier this year as an alleged FBI informant posing as a white supremacist.

A hoax Internet rumor that has been doing the rounds over the last few days posits that unless the House follows the Senate in approving the bailout bill tonight then all U.S. banks will be forced to close for one week. The scam is noteworthy because it echoes the fearmongering rhetoric being spewed by the White House, while the source of the claim leads back to an alleged FBI informant.

The fact that people are pulling their money out of the banks is undeniable, indeed, following the collapse of Lehman Brothers, even Yahoo.com carried a story admitting there was already a “slow motion run on banks”.

Experts such as Mark Patterson, chairman of private equity fund MattlinPatterson, have warned that 300 to 500 U.S. banks are set to fail over the next three years and as a result absorb all of the FDIC’s pool of funds.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which guarantees individual accounts up to $100,000, only has about $50 billion to “insure” about $1 trillion in assets across the nation’s financial institutions.

The reality of the danger of a run on the banks in a time of financial crisis is all too real, which makes unsubstantiated Internet hoaxes all the more irresponsible. Indeed, a Hong Kong man who posted an Internet rumor claiming that a financial institution would be shut down was arrested this week. Another man was arrested on Saturday for urging people to withdraw money from a local bank that he claimed was about to be shut down.

There’s a clear difference between warning people about how to secure their assets and outright scare mongering about runs on specific banks.

Originating from a so-called “alternative news website” that has routinely proven to be a peddler of disinformation in the past, the rumor states, “Reliable word that Bank of America branch managers just received a message via the U.S. Federal Reserve Wire system from the US Federal Reserve instructing them to “perhaps be ready for a one-week universal shut-down of the banking system”, including access to checking accounts, savings accounts, credit cards and ATM’s.”

“Additional word is that a silent run is taking place on many U.S. Banks with customers withdrawing huge amounts from all banks almost everyday,” the claim reads. “My source says that unless Congress comes through with a plan which will stop the silent run, Banks will be forced to close to stop the run.”

The most interesting aspect of the hoax is that it actually echoes rhetoric being used by the White House and the Federal Reserve in order to ram through the widely despised bailout bill, by using economic terrorism and the fear of total collapse of the financial system to get the message across, just as Bush, Bernanke and Paulson have been ferociously doing for the past two weeks.

No surprise therefore that we learn the source of the hoax is Hal Turner, who was exposed earlier this year as an alleged FBI informant posing as a white supremacist.

In January, hackers broke into Turner’s computer server and found e-mails between Turner and an FBI agent who was apparently Turner’s handler. Turner was providing information to the FBI agent about individuals who attended his neo-nazi rallies, along with a potential assassination plot against Senator Russ Feingold.

“Once again,” Turner wrote to the agent, “my fierce rhetoric has served to flush out a possible crazy.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center documented the case in an article entitled, FBI’s Use of Neo-Nazi Informant Knocked. Both the FBI and Turner have refused to comment on the allegations.

Considering the fact that Turner has been left alone despite arguing that killing certain federal judges “may be illegal, but it wouldn’t be wrong” and outright calling for the murder of immigrants crossing border from Mexico, it’s no surprise that his latest scam, despite its blatant illegality, will go unnoticed by the same authorities that Turner apparently accepts a paycheck from.

The SLPC article states,

In 2006, Turner told his audience to “clean your guns, have plenty of ammunition … [and] then do what has to be done” to undocumented workers. Around the same time, he suggested that half the U.S. Congress “may have to be assassinated.” A year earlier, he suggested “drawing up lists of yeshivas,” or Jewish religious schools. He once started a website called www.killtheenemy.com for the purpose of posting photos and names of those who marched in favor of immigrant rights. Hearing that anti-racist activist Floyd Cochran was visiting Newark, near his home town, last June, Turner said he had “arranged for a group of guys to physically intercept” Cochran and added that Cochran would likely “get such a beating that his next stop is going to be University Hospital.” (Although complaints were made both to the FBI and to Newark police about this threat against Cochran, both declined to press criminal charges.)

So Turner’s alleged relationship with the FBI apparently affords him immunity from any legal consequences of making death threats, just as neo-con radio talk show host Michael Reagan was left alone despite openly advocating the assassination of Mark Dice and stating “I’ll pay for the bullets”.

Despite its brazenly unreliable origins, the bank closure hoax has been cropping up in e mails, forums and blogs across the Internet, almost to the point of going viral.

The fact that the scam actually endorses the necessity of passing the bailout bill should tell us in no uncertain terms that it can be attributed to the same economic terrorists that have brow-beaten the American people with threats of a financial apocalypse if the bankers and the Wall Street crooks do not get their way.

Could financial meltdown usher in a NorthCom police state?



The use of U.S. troops in law enforcement duties is a complete violation of the Posse Comitatus Act and the Insurrection Act, which substantially limit the powers of the federal government to use the military for law enforcement unless under precise and extreme circumstances.

Another huge win for the American public, yes I am speaking about the rejection of the Bail Out Bill by Congress.  (After a bit of computer jockeying, I was able to get a readable version of the novel length banker bill up and running in PDF format. Here it is in all its legalistic, mumbo-jumbo glory: http://freespeech.vo.llnwd.net/o25/pub/misc/bankerbill
.pdfposted by the Los Angeles Times, seems to work. It is, however, only a 110 page draft.  )

To think that the American Tax payer should have to fork out $700 billion to bail out the Federal Reserve banking system that has caused the problem in the first place by over extending credit to banking structures that have made it easier for the average American to get credit even if they have shoddy credit.  

Sure many have lost their homes due to being duped by the modern day version of the margin loan that caused the Great Depression...the Adjustable Rate Mortgage. 

But they gambled by purchasing a home above the means of their income on an ARM loan thinking that they could sell the home on a bull market.  They gambled and lost.
Which in turn means the Banks that lent that money have lost too.

And now it's our job to bail them out.   What happened to free market? 

Yeah right, as if we ever had one.

But the reality is the public is furious, and with a looming depression and people beginning to figure out the scam the Fed is pulling, now that the inflation that has been hidden over seas since the end of WWI is finally come home to roost the powers that be need to cover their arses from a huge up rising and this is (in my opinion) the means they tend to use.

Following the alarming admission that active duty U.S. Army would be on call to deal with “civil unrest” inside the United States from October 1st, the US Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) has publicly denied that troops will engage in law enforcement duties, but concedes that forces will be armed with both non-lethal and lethal weapons as well as having access to tanks.

As highlighted last week on , a September 8 Army Times report stated that active duty troops from the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team returning from Iraq would be on call as a “federal response force for natural or man made emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks,” for a period of 12 months from October 1st.

The purpose of the unit’s patrols, according to the article, includes helping “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.”

However, a NorthCom official, presumably responding to reports featured on this website and others, publicly denies that troops will be used to police Americans.

“This response force will not be called upon to help with law enforcement, civil disturbance or crowd control, but will be used to support lead agencies involved in saving lives, relieving suffering and meeting the needs of communities affected by weapons of mass destruction attacks, accidents or even natural disasters,” Army Col. Michael Boatner, USNORTHCOM future operations division chief, told Homeland Security Today.

We also learn that the troops will be under the operational control of USNORTHCOM’s Joint Force Land Component Command under US Army North, headquartered in San Antonio, Texas. The operational headquarters of the response force is at Fort Monroe, Virginia.

The original Army Times report also stated that the use of non-lethal weapons against Americans would be a possibility, but a retraction has now been issued stating that the forces would not use nonlethal weaponry domestically.

However, Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman was told by Air Force Lt. Col. Jamie Goodpaster, a public affairs officer for Northern Command, that “Military forces would have weapons on-site, “containerized,” she said — that is, stored in containers — including both lethal and so-called nonlethal weapons. They would have mostly wheeled vehicles, but would also, she said, have access to tanks. She said that use of weapons would be made at a higher level, perhaps at the secretary of defense level.”

As Goodman writes in an editorial for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, “Talk of trouble on U.S. streets is omnipresent now, with the juxtaposition of Wall Street and Main Street. The financial crisis we face remains obscure to most people; titans of business and government officials assure us that the financial system is “on the brink,” that a massive bailout is necessary, immediately, to prevent a disaster. Conservative and progressive members of Congress, at the insistence of constituents, blocked the initial plan. If the economy does collapse, if people can’t go down to the bank to withdraw their savings, or get cash from an ATM, there may be serious “civil unrest,” and the “sea-smurfs” may be called upon sooner than we imagine to assist with “crowd control.”

The use of U.S. troops in law enforcement duties is a complete violation of the Posse Comitatus Act and the Insurrection Act, which substantially limit the powers of the federal government to use the military for law enforcement unless under precise and extreme circumstances.

Section 1385 of the Posse Comitatus Act states, “Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.”

Under the John Warner Defense Authorization Act, signed by President Bush on October 17, 2006, the law was changed to state, “The President may employ the armed forces to restore public order in any State of the United States the President determines hinders the execution of laws or deprives people of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by law or opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws.”

However, these changes were repealed in their entirety by HR 4986: National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008, reverting back to the original state of the Insurrection Act of 1807. Despite this repeal, President Bush attached a signing statement saying that he did not feel bound by the repeal.

The original text of the Insurrection Act severely limits the power of the President to deploy troops within the United States.

For troops to be deployed, a condition has to exist that, “(1) So hinders the execution of the laws of that State, and of the United States within the State, that any part or class of its people is deprived of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by law, and the constituted authorities of that State are unable, fail, or refuse to protect that right, privilege, or immunity, or to give that protection; or (2) opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws. In any situation covered by clause (1), the State shall be considered to have denied the equal protection of the laws secured by the Constitution.”

Rep. Kaptur: Normal legislative process has been shut down, high financial crimes committed, Republican Michael Burgess says “martial law” has been announced

Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur boldly slammed the bailout bill this past weekend as the work of criminal insiders who have shut down the normal legislative process to commit “high financial crimes” and defraud the American people, while Rep. Michael Burgess warns that “martial law” has been declared.

The two Congress members are part of a growing minority of representatives sounding the alarm about the dictatorial nature of the bailout bill, which is expected to be up for a vote in the House today, with most in Congress having not had the opportunity to even read the legislation.

The bill is expected to reach the Senate on Wednesday as a raft of outraged politicians cry foul about being strong-armed and accused of being unpatriotic for opposing the carte-blanche passage of a piece of legislation that fundamentally centralizes control of the financial infrastructure of the country into the hands