Bush Administration Memo Says Fourth Amendment Does Not Apply To Military Operations Within U.S.

ACLU Calls For Immediate Release Of Withheld Legal Memo

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

April 2, 2008

CONTACT: James Freedland, (212) 519-7829 or (646) 785-1894; This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

NEW YORK - A newly disclosed secret memo authored by the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) in March 2003 that asserts President Bush has unlimited power to order brutal interrogations of detainees also reveals a radical interpretation of the Constitution's Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable search and seizure. The memo, declassified yesterday as the result of an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit, cites a still-secret DOJ memo from 2001 that found that the "Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations."

The October 2001 memo was almost certainly meant to provide a legal basis for the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program, which President Bush launched the same month the memo was issued. As a component of the Department of Defense, the NSA is a military agency.

"The recent disclosures underscore the Bush administration's extraordinarily sweeping conception of executive power," said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU's National Security Project. "The administration's lawyers believe the president should be permitted to violate statutory law, to violate international treaties, and even to violate the Fourth Amendment inside the U.S. They believe that the president should be above the law."

The Bush administration has never argued publicly that the Fourth Amendment does not apply to military operations within the nation's borders. The memo released yesterday publicizes this argument for the first time.

The ACLU has been aware of the Justice Department's October 2001 memo since last year, but until now, its contents were unknown. The Justice Department informed the ACLU of the memo's existence as a result of a FOIA lawsuit seeking information concerning the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program. The Justice Department acknowledged the existence of "a 37-page memorandum, dated October 23, 2001, from a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in OLC, and a Special Counsel, OLC, to the Counsel to the President, prepared in response to a request from the White House for OLC's views concerning the legality of potential responses to terrorist activity." Until now, however, almost nothing was known about the memo's contents - except that it was related to a request for information about the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program. The ACLU has challenged the withholding of the October 2001 memo and the issue is pending before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

The memo released to the ACLU yesterday cites the October 2001 memo but takes its argument even further. Relying on the earlier memo, the March 2003 memo argues that the president has authority as Commander-in-Chief to bypass not only the Fourth Amendment but the central due process guarantee of the Fifth Amendment as well.

"This memo makes a mockery of the Constitution and the rule of law," said Amrit Singh, a staff attorney with the ACLU. "That it was issued by the Justice Department, whose job it is to uphold the law, makes it even more unconscionable."

The March 2003 memo was declassified in response to a lawsuit filed by the ACLU, the New York Civil Liberties Union, and other organizations in June 2004 to enforce Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for records concerning the treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody abroad. The ACLU has been fighting for the release of the March 2003 Yoo memo since filing the lawsuit. A few weeks ago, after the court ordered additional briefing on whether the Defense Department could continue to withhold the memo, the government reluctantly agreed to conduct a declassification review by March 31. The Defense Department released this memo after conducting the review.

The 2003 Department of Justice memo can be found online at: www.aclu.org/safefree/torture/34745res20030314.html

Documents relating to the ACLU's NSA FOIA lawsuit are available online at: www.aclu.org/safefree/nsaspying/30022res20060207.html

To date, more than 100,000 pages of government documents have been released in response to the ACLU's FOIA lawsuit related the abuse of prisoner in U.S. custody abroad. These documents are available online at: www.aclu.org/torturefoia"

If I am reading this correctly, it seems to me that this administration has justified its crimes by NOT suspending the state of emergency that went up on September 11, 2001. They are using emergency powers if you look at the whole of the spying, military actions inside the US, etc. I would wager that if asked, this administration will admit that we have been in a state of emergency for their tenure in office. Congress? Was the state of emergency lifted, yes or no?

Oh, just one more question: what are "military operations inside the U.S" actually and how often have these "operations" been carried out? Anyone? Bueller? Congress? Impeachment Table? Anyone?

Sonny Bono: Murder Conspiracy Coverup Continues
by DAVID MARTIN

It is now news in Australia that new evidence has turned up that California congressman Sonny Bono was murdered and did not die in a skiing accident as we have been told. Although he was an American whose job was to represent Americans, as far as the mainstream United States press is concerned, this news is unworthy of the attention of the people of the United States. This is the same American press, of course, that has never breathed the slightest hint of suspicion that there might have been foul play involved when the experienced skier Bono was reported to have slammed into a tree at the Heavenly Ski resort in Nevada on January 5, 1998. There were no witnesses, the autopsy report was not released to the public, and Bono had shown himself to be something of a thorn in the side of official Washington, which is probably all the more reason for the lapdogs who call themselves journalists to have dummied up.For Americans, the new revelations can be found buried away and ignored by "respectable people" in the U.S. supermarket tabloid, Globe, of April 14, which hit the news racks on April 4.

It was said to have been gathered by investigator Bob Fletcher, 66, who, according to Globe, was connected to the case even before Bono died:He also feels partially responsible for what happened to the California congressman. Before Bono's death, Fletcher had been probing the activities of high ranking U.S. military and government officials he claims were raking in millions from arms and drug deals in Central America and Southeast Asia.He says he sent his shocking findings of corruption, including videotaped evidence, to Bono."I later received a call from an assistant in his offices to tell me Sonny had seen my full report and was absolutely livid about the level of corruption I made him aware of," Fletcher tells GLOBE.

"He was going to make it his No. 1 priority when Congress resumed after the Christmas and New Year break. He was going to go after the biggest names."Just 10 days later, I received a call that he was dead. I'd heard it was suspected his offices had been bugged. Tragically, that must have been the case. There's no doubt in my mind Sonny was murdered by someone who needed to silence him."The new evidence is the long-suppressed autopsy report, itself, which Fletcher obtained and furnished to the Globe. After reviewing the shocking secret documents, former FBI agent Ted Gunderson tells GLOBE: "The official version of Sonny Bono's death is hogwash. It's nonsense for anyone to now try to suggest that Bono died after crashing into a tree.There's zero evidence in this autopsy report or any of these official documents to show such an accident happened. Instead, there's powerful proof he was assassinated.

"This was an evil plot that was carried out to almost perfection by ruthless assassins."Even though two of the online Australian newspapers attribute their article to "staff writers," it's the same short article in The Australian, Mercury (The Voice of Tasmania), and The Daily Telegraph, beginning:SONNY Bono, former husband and singing partner of superstar Cher, was clubbed to death by hitmen on the orders of drug and weapons dealers who feared he was going to expose them, a former FBI agent claims.Ted Gunderson, now a private investigator, has told the US Globe tabloid that Bono, who served as mayor of Palm Springs for four years, did not die after hitting a tree on a Nevada ski slope in January 1998 as everyone believed.

So identical, are they, in fact, that all three of them have the first sentence in bold. Continuing in the brief, rather sketchy article, they say:Bono, an experienced skier, was ambushed on the slopes by hired hitmen, who beat him to death and then staged a tree collision, Mr Gunderson said.He called for authorities to dig up Bono's remains and open a homicide investigation.His claims have reportedly been backed by top forensics experts who fear Nevada authorities were too quick to call the death a skiing accident.Interestingly, Yahoo also picked up the story, but it is Yahoo for the United Kingdom and Ireland and Yahoo for Australia. It would appear that Yahoo is as compliant toward corrupt American authorities as it is toward their counterparts in China.THE AUTOPSYHow compelling is the new evidence? The five-page autopsy report prepared by Dr. David E. Palosaari, official pathologist for Washoe County at the time, concluded that the death was caused by "craniocerebral injuries due to blunt force trauma (skiing accident)."But Globe reports further:Other injuries detailed in the document included a black eye, swollen lips, bloody nose, bruised jaw, and two upper teeth knocked out, all on the right side of the head.But the pathologist also noted a series of small fractures in a "central depressed region" on the right side of Bono's skull and found "some of the fractured bone pieces have a curved configuration."Fletcher consulted a panel of experts and performed a re-creation to determine how these wounds were caused.He concludes the depressed area was due to blows from a rounded-edged weapon wielded by a man taller than the 5-foot-nine, 165-pound politician and the killer was left-handed since the wounds are on the right side of Bono's face and head. He also believes there was a second man who held Bono from behind.Fletcher thinks the murder weapon was a pistol, but other experts tell GLOBE that a gun barrel would have left distinguishable marks."Sonny was ambushed and viciously battered to death with a billy club or similar weapon," ex-FBI man Gunderson says. "The killers staged the crime scene and made it look like a tragic ski-accident."Fletcher insists the lack of damage to the back of Bono's brain, known as "contra-coup" injuries, is proof that he was beaten to death.

He says people who hit objects face-first normally have brain injuries caused when the organ rebounds off the back of their skull. And other physical evidence doesn't add up, either, he says.Strangely for what was called a ski accident, Bono had no smashed ribs, broken knees, neck trauma--or hand injuries that would have come from trying to ward off a collision with a tree, Fletcher says. And signs that he actually hit the tree--including bark impressions on his face and plant debris on his clothes--are also missing, the investigator says.And his ski goggles weren't smashed as they likely would have been in a collision, according to the expert.Fletcher also notes the back of Bono's clothes were soaked with blood--but he had no back wounds. "The blood must have come from someone else, perhaps when Sonny valiantly fought back and hit one of his assailants," he declares.The autopsy also mentions a small L-shaped tear on the back of Bono's black and purple Fila ski jacket. Fletcher says the tear is a likely result of a struggle. And Gunderson believes the new evidence gathered by Fletcher raises the specter of murder and warrants a new investigation.Fletcher believes that Bono's wife when they became famous together, Cher, will call for a new investigation when she learns of these new revelations.

Little hope is held out, apparently, that she will be joined by Mary Bono, Sonny's wife at the time of his death. Mary, who succeeded Sonny in the Congress and has remarried, has suggested publicly that his errant skiing was caused by Sonny having taken too many prescription painkillers. But that suggestion had already been contradicted by a previously-released toxicology report, said Globe.Sonny's mother, Jean, on the other hand, believed all along that he was murdered. She died in 2005, but not before demanding "a much more thorough investigation" into his death, according to Globe.A WACO CONNECTION?Gunderson agrees with Fletcher that the 62-year-old Bono was likely to have been killed because of what he might uncover, or had already uncovered, about illegal drug and arms dealing by high-level government officials. But there are other possibilities. When Janet Reno testified before Congress about the final, fatal assault on the Branch Davidians at Waco, Bono was relentless in his questioning about the professed use of CS gas on the confined men, women, and children:Representative Sonny Bono (R-CA), a member of the full House Crime Committee, was concerned that Ms. Reno had not conducted a more exhaustive study of CS before making a decision. He challenged her claim that she had done all she could to investigate the attributes and hazards of the substance, noting that the U.S. Army Chemical Research and Development Center had confirmed that it knew of no laboratory studies of CS in which the subjects were children.

He pointed out that Army databases "contain virtually every study on CS that has ever been conducted by any government or private facility in the world," and stated that he found it "difficult to understand how, after extensive, exhaustive research you failed to uncover the following information that I uncovered in just one day: a report contained in the Journal of the American Medical Association, dated August 4, 1989, that states, I quote, 'Inhalation and toxicology studies at high levels of CS exposure have demonstrated its ability to cause chemical pneumonitis and fatal pulmonary edema.' According to an ear, nose, and throat surgeon that I talked to, pulmonary edema is caused when the mucous membrane is irritated, it secretes mucous which in children and infants plugs up the bronchi. They thus drown in their own saliva and mucous. As soon as the child breathes the fumes, the process begins. Soon after that, the child has little lungs left to breathe, and dies. I find it impossible to believe that with the most powerful law firm in the country, the Department of Justice, at your disposal you could not find this information out, that I found out in one day with two staff members .... So I am sorry to say, Madam Attorney General, that I think you failed there." He concluded with the observation that, in his opinion, "it is the responsibility of the Attorney General in cases like this to research every bit of evidence, and if there is counter evidence, then the error should be on the side of the children." Robert W. Lee, "Waco Whitewash."What we see here on display is an independence of mind that is both refreshing and dangerous for an American member of Congress.

Perhaps Bono looked even further into the Waco outrage and found the Waco Holocaust Electronic Museum, which concludes that the whole episode was even more vicious and barbaric than almost anyone suspects. Then again, any member of Congress looking seriously into high level corruption finds himself in what the military calls a "target-rich environment," so who knows what got him killed? The best comparisons that can be made are to the less well-known investigators Paul Wilcher or Danny Casolaro, or perhaps to another California Congressman, Leo Ryan.THE TABLOID COVER-UP OPERATIONOne can hardly argue that the American press has really done the proper job of a free press in a free society because these new revelations have, at least, been published by Globe. Rather, the opposite is more nearly the case. There is hardly any better way to discredit a serious story than to have it published in a tabloid, and only in a tabloid. This Globe story is quite similar to the National Enquirer story about the dubious "suicide" of Enron executive, Cliff Baxter, or the Star story about the George W. Bush-led fraternity at Yale branding pledges with hot coat hangers. It is well sourced and documented. One can bet that Bob Fletcher made a serious effort to get the story covered by "more respectable" news outlets, but was rebuffed.

The same "respectable" news organs are now continuing to cover up for the controlling criminal elite by blacking out what Globe has published. What is really impressive is how thoroughgoing and monolithic the whole operation is. The country is full of reporters who buy groceries in supermarkets just as I do. One would think that one of them, in one corner or other of this vast country, would spot the Sonny Bono article, would recognize the importance of the story, and would be able to prevail upon his or her editor to follow up on it. But it hasn't happened yet. For now it's much bigger news in Australia than it is here, and the odds are very long that not one peep about these Sonny Bono autopsy revelations will be heard anywhere from the American mainstream press.The same sort of blackout occurred when the former lead investigator for Kenneth Starr, Miquel Rodriguez, spilled the beans about the cover-up of Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster's murder, and it happened when the official investigation of the "suicide" of America's first defense secretary, James Forrestal, was made public, and it will occur again.

David Martin,

April 6, 2008

Note: Bob Fletcher's investigative reports are available at P.O. Box 216, Bayview, Idaho 83803, Email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

The writer of the Globe article is Bob Burns, email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED
http://www.dcdave.com/article5/080406.htm

Posted: January 21 2009

Further declines in real estate, banks bankrupt, lower class, middle class, and upper class borrowers are all in trouble now, plenty of pain ahead for all lenders and borrowers, Little in loans whether it be bailouts or personal loans will ever be paid back

The real estate crisis is probably only about 40% over. They’ll be further declines, residential and commercial, and then a basing out period that will take several years. The injection of cheap interest rates and a stimulus package of $825 billion are going to temporarily delay the downside. Instead of ending in 2011 it could extend to 2012.

Citigroup is bankrupt. Its 4th quarter loss was $8.3 billion. Bank of America posted its first loss since 1991 of $1.8 billion. One day they requested $10 billion from the government. The next day it was $20 billion.

Citigroup is being dismantled as a failed financial supermarket. Sanford Weill who created this monster some years ago created a total failure. That is why we recommended a short on the stock at $44.10. In order to keep this loser business a new bad bank is being created to dump all of Citi’s mistakes into. Those would be toxic securities and worthless derivatives. That is $850 billion of Citi’s $1.95 trillion of total assets. What a disaster. Almost half their assets are near worthless, something we pointed out 3-1/2 years ago. Government has already sunk $45 billion into the bank and backs $301 billion of its toxic garbage and securities.

Citi is a major shareholder in the Federal Reserve.

There is now no question that all the legacy or money center banks will be merged into one nationalized bank, which we believe was the intention from the beginning. This will make it easier later in the formation of a One-World government to merge US banks into a world bank that will disperse a world currency. Government is going to take an ever-increasing role in bank ownership and in credit policy, as would be expected in any fascist government

We are still in the earliest stages of an economic and financial collapse, which was deliberately engineered to bring about eventual total control of our economy and financial system. Except for government and the Fed, Wall Street finance has been incapacitated. The government and the Fed are left to do as they please. Our "bought and paid for" Congress will rubber stamp anything handed to them. Bank credit will surpass $1 trillion this year to keep the elitist banks solvent and to delay the forces of deflation and depression. Overall credit expansion will expand to $2 trillion plus as many more banks, brokerage houses, lenders, insurance companies and illuminist corporate giants are served up all the cash and credit they need to survive. Very little will ever be paid back.

Once the grip of the Fed and our Treasury is complete it will be almost their sole responsibility to extend credit. The excuse will be it has to be done to "save the system" as they microchip you and give you a debit card and set up currency and exchange controls, devalue the dollar and institute wage and price controls. We then become wards of the state. They have allowed the banks to get into such awful shape, that they will tell you that they and America "have no other option" but to have government and the Fed mandate what will be done to "save" the system.

These conclusions can only be reached if you understand the powers behind government, their history, and what their goals are. This is why we have been able to predict what has been going on for years. Very few writers understand and many choose to keep their month’s shut because they fear for their lives. This has been an almost 50-year odyssey for us and we refuse to hide the truth. If you do not understand the history of the Illuminati you are in a quandary. It is the missing link that ties all the events together. You cannot use macro analysis without knowing the history of what these evil butchers are up too.

It is because the key people in the key firms are in on it and taking orders - that is why.

In the blink of an eye trillions of dollars were lost. That amount of money is meaningless when you own the system. You can just create more. It is the power to create and control money and credit that always wins the day. The loss of confidence and trust now worldwide was deliberate. It allowed central banks and governments to totally control their fiscal and monetary systems. Essentially there was no one left to do so.

Within the financial community those who understand what is happening dare not say a word or they’ll lose their companies or their lives. That is why there is no opposition from within.

Think it through and you will get it. Read the “Creature from Jekyll Island” by G. Edward Griffin and other books we recommend and you will finally understand what is being done to you and who is doing it. The most corrupt people on earth. The ability to print money and create credit is the ultimate power. It allows you to control everything.

Then a new national currency to be followed by a world currency, followed by a microchip or a debit card. Everyone throughout the world will be controlled. If you say or write anything negative regarding the New World Order your chip will be disabled or your debit card will be disengaged. Then you become a fugitive to be hunted down and exterminated. This is what is in store for us. This is what these people are up too. This isn’t intrusion, this is dictatorial government and this is where we are headed.

The financial system will not stabilize. It is being deliberately changed. The Treasury is crowding out corporate borrowers in their quest for liquidity, as corporations rush to raise what funds they can to allow them to keep functioning and so that they won’t be absorbed by an elitist mega-company of our new corporatist state. At the same time municipalities are raising all the money they can to keep from going under having far overextended themselves.

If you wanted to refinance do it now. You will never get a better opportunity.

The crisis is here and ongoing. The financial stocks are telling us there is a rocky road ahead. If the market was going to rally it would have already happened. It tried to breakout over Dow 9,000 and was unsuccessful. Underlying everything are lies, corruption and acute stress not visible to the public.

Even many old Wall Street types do not get it and that is because they refuse to believe the actuality of what is happening behind the scenes. Those behind the scenes know full well what is going on and they are not going to fill in the rest of Wall Street, banking, government and corporate America that do not have a need to know.

Focus has to be on wealth preservation and safety of person and assets. The core is your water filter, freeze dry and dehydrated food, family protection and gold and silver related assets.

On top of these underlying mortgages are unemployment and crashing home prices that have left a great percentage of homeowners under water.

The latest statistics we have show long-term unemployment at 17.8%, intermediate U6 at 13.8% and the phony government media figure at 7.2%. In one of the hot spots we estimate U6 to be near 16%. In 2005 and 2006 this region saw construction make up 11% of the job base. 

There are many formerly prosperous people who had equity, no debt, great FOICs who have lost jobs, closed businesses, have no equity, just debts. They have maxed out the credit cards and gone through all their savings and retirement.

The buyers and lenders are stuck, but government is bailing out the lenders not the buyers. The rest are going out of business or losing their jobs. The exception is the rating systems.

That is not the way it works. Bailing them out accomplishes nothing. It just extends the problems into the future.

The raters now very concerned are sending credit warnings to governments, threatening to downgrade their sovereign debt ratings if they allow their fiscal deficits to increase too much. As a result Greece has had their rating lowered and Portugal, Ireland and Spain have been warned by S&P to fix their public finances or face downgrades. This increases the cost of raising funds and is taken as a signal to avoid these securities. Next is the UK, US, France and Germany. This is lose-lose for all sovereign nations where tax revenue is falling, social spending increasing and stock and real estate markets collapsing. No professional should be surprised at these results. We forecast all this six years ago. Of course, no one wanted to listen.

The tact that has been chosen is one of disaster. Lowering ratings at this stage is an exercise in futility.

The world financial system has deliberately been destroyed. The only real question is when will hyperinflation end and read deflation take the advantage and flatten the system?

It will take $2 to $5 trillion to bail out America’s banking system and in the process nationalize it. Government is the only entity capable of bailing out the banks. Do not expect the Obama team to stop the bailouts – they’ll just demand a little more equity. What should have been done is that these crippled financial companies should have been allowed to fail.

http://www.theinternationalforecaster.com

{the Andy Pero story, aka Mr.X...

Nazi Mind control and the Montauk Projects...}

Read the New Stuff just released to Think Aboutit

Click her to read the latest which will be explosive.

Parts:

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19

Let me explain what this next batch is. this is a letter that Mike wrote to Matt Taibbi, Contributing Editor of "Rolling Stone".  He never heard back from him. Who knows if he even got the letter? All of this is part of a "Media Packet" that Mike sent to me. And pretty much just asked if I could get all this to as many people as I could. So, here we are.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

Anyway, the next part is a letter to his lawyer

1

and a letter from his mother... 

1, 2, 3

Special thanks to Misty & Tim

Think AboutIt make no claims for the accuracy of this information and express's NO personal opinions on this subject. 

"COMPUTER BIG BROTHER STATE"

by Paul Baird

http://www.surveillanceissues.com/article_computerstate.pdf

There is no doubt that the global conquest which has been secretly carried out by the U.S based military/agency/corporate crime conglomerate would not have been possible without the vast capabilities of extremely advanced computer systems. These technologies certainly enable the U.S and its close allies to exert absolute control over many organisations and individuals including the worldwide mass media and all telecommunications networks. They thereby determine the ebb and flow of most information. Computer technology has also allowed the U.S and its allies to secretly amass space and ground-based weaponry which goes well beyond the knowledge or understanding of the general population. This equipment is used not so much on genuine enemies as it is on those innocent, concerned citizens who seek to address issues like the undue influence exercised by the crime conglomerate over global affairs; finance, politics, public opinion, weather and much more.

Now, the U.S and its close allies don't often exercise their full power, lest it raise suspicion, and when they do it's done without media coverage. However, that power extends to the point where whole systems can be quickly corrupted or shut down at the snap of a finger. Unbeknowns to most, the crime conglomerate has super computers capable of processing over 280 trillion calculations per second, EACH. Our minds do 5,000, so just one such computer could currently out perform every human mind put together, almost ten times over.

Many such computers are utilised to collect, collate, analyse, cross reference and disseminate information, all of which is gleaned from surveillance systems which are also far beyond those which the community recognises.

It's also important to note that satellite monitoring of ALL telecommunications, of countless face to face conversations and of the brain waves of many effectively drains the brains of the citizenry and feeds the thieving New World Order with valuable options, ideas, strategies and warnings. This thoroughly empowers the very real, very malevolent —Big Brother" to control what we think, feel, do and say. The ruling bodies that play this role do so on behalf of the 1,000 or so families which own 90% of the world's wealth and covet the other 10%; which is shared by the rest of us. We are merely mushroomed mental slaves to the megalomaniacs who have arranged this madness in secret.

Many writers have subtly alluded to this tragic situation but always in an unreal fantasy or sci fi setting so as to avoid censorship, victimisation etc. One such piece is the movie —The Matrix", wherein human beings live in pods, are used like computer batteries and are fed with distractive programming which becomes their lives. Those waking up to this trickery are subsequently persecuted by computer —agents". The alert reader will observe from what follows that there are frightening similarities between that inspired movie and the reality which awaits us if nothing is done to stop the current trend towards ever bigger conspiracies involving computer technology. The available technology already allows far too much which remains unpoliced. Anything from microwave towers to psychotronic weaponry to directed energy weapons and more can be (and is) used against members of the civilian population thanks to secretive computer/satellite technology. Computers are fine with reference to time-saving devices like home automation and calculators or —fun" devices like interactive games and they're especially helpful for transactions, various searches, communications and the like BUT the crime conglomerates uses are frightening; making the microchip the most significant and dangerous invention ever devised.

COLLECTING INFORMATION
The NSA's Echelon satellite system gathers intelligence from ALLtelecommunications, worldwide. The agencies then place —persons of interest" under constant audio/visual surveillance; via satellite. —Persons of interest" could be public figures, prominent businessmen, human rights campaigners, writers, inventors etc or they could be terrorists or other criminals. Regardless, instead of rounding up the criminals (which they could easily do) they use, protect or ignore most of them. Then they use their resources to harass, discredit or kill nuisances and —do-gooders" like whistleblowers, activists etc.

Also, more and more people are having their brain waves monitored, via satellite, with the results relayed to (and interpreted by) computers complete with brain wave vocabulary software. Yes they can read your mind and it's easy to do. It's only suppression of information and conditioning that makes that difficult for some to accept. In reality you have no privacy whatsoever and computers record and store it all.

In addition to these more covert methods you will be aware that simple closed circuit video surveillance can be carried out by employers, investigators, police and so on. These results can also be misused to embarrass/rob/ridicule, also turning the viewers into potential voyeurs, blackmailers or worse. There is also a wealth of information held by beaurocracies, corporations and more which is computer stored; available for referencing/transferring/altering. It's not only spy agencies that can lie or abuse authority.

Note that the stated reason for gathering intelligence is to ensure that national security is not compromised. However, satellite surveillance makes a mockery of that as they clearly know everything significant that's happening yet are selective about reacting to it all. That is, rather than preventing crime/terrorism the spy networks use pathetic excuses and their unquestioned authority to rob, persecute and destroy targeted persons whose knowledge/opinions threaten the operations and reputations of powerful criminals who are above the law.

Honest law enforcers have neither access to nor knowledge of such equipment and are therefore helpless when it comes to stopping the perpetrators who are usually based in the U.S, Britain, Israel etc. One of the more absurd, circular arguments for agencies to use such equipment against the civilian population is facilitated by a scam that works like this… One agency, or branch, harasses a target, another monitors the results (pretending they know nothing of the harassment) claiming the target has a problem and needs to be watched. This then ties up resources with a focus on innocent people who threaten criminals while criminals/terrorists roam freely. This is because criminals run the system when they really should be languishing in jail.

COLLATING INFORMATION
So, the supercomputers receive all the words, thoughts, actions and more relating to anyone that could have an impact on anything or anyone of any importance. That's not so difficult especially when you consider most of us don't ever do anything of great significance in our lives. However, to deal with those that dare to so much as —put their hand up"… every book, video, speech, every work, thought, action etc is scanned, downloaded and filed. Once your mind's around that truth then consider that this wealth of information can be sorted, summarized and categorized in such a way that statistics on individuals, groups, situations, countries and so on can be easily collated and analysed. Especially with precious, private memories being recorded and used you can imagine the possibilities for theft, provocation, blackmail, mind influence and more, even murder. Maybe now you can begin to see how diabolically evil all of this really is and why the megalomaniacs behind it systematically killed most of the scientists, public figures or spies who tried to inform the general public about it. And those of us who remain don't have the platform or authority to get the results needed. Equally, current whistleblower legislation doesn't protect the spies etc who wish to expose all of this evil to the general public. People have a right to know.

Basically put, the offenders play God by striving to possess all knowledge, to read and influence alert minds, to create and end life as they choose. Believe me, the new Reich may not be jack booting their way into our living rooms but they are just as dangerous as they act in secret and remain largely unopposed because of that.

CROSS REFERENCING
We all know that computer records can be linked between the police, the tax office, social security, corporations and so on but more worrying than the ensuing (minor) betrayals of personal privacy are the major betrayals effected when spies and other criminals actively harass civilian targets to keep them silent.

For example, take the practice of media surveillance feedback. 100's of 1,000's of targets can have their words/thoughts recorded such that similarities are highlighted through scripted material. With the targets reading/listening/viewing patterns also known the end result may be that one scripted line or comment or visual image delivered by a media outlet at a particular time could —hit" countless victims. Extend that system and you can see how victims couldn't even be sure that the media —hit" was meant for them. When you get to the point where the targets are so numerous that the media harassers don't even know their names then the media personnel can equate the targets (in their own minds) with a significant portion of the audience. Therefore some fail to even recognise their actions as personal attacks or crimes… or do they? Other cross referencing allows a myriad of correlated interferences to be carried out into people's lives and how they interact with one another. Remember the capacity of the computers in question. This would not be possible without them.

ANALYSING INTELLIGENCE
Human operatives (spies) working for the crime conglomerate enter the picture, (with computer monitoring and high-tech harassment) when persons of interest are highlighted. For targets who are not just watched but tortured they are placed in programs which are run remotely by those operatives. Strategies for oppression/torture are formulated based on circumstances, summarized case histories, thoughts/memories and more. Experts in psychiatry, deceit, torture, theft of intellectual property and murder are employed to remotely preoccupy, use, discredit or kill the victims on behalf of the crime conglomerate that rules the world. The favoured methods of assaults and analysis include on-the-ground interference as well as neurophone voices (placing threats, lies and distractions directly into the brain) and brain wave monitoring (enabling neurophone, and other, feedback to be more damaging). These methods also allow for tampering with and recording of dreams, memories, perceptions, beliefs and more. At this point deliberate misinterpretation of the results can take place especially by the media mafia who can invent whatever truth they want to go with. The resultant persecution forms part of certain —mind control" experiments which can last a lifetime.

Further, on misinterpretation, remember that the favoured methods include having one agency covertly harass someone while another monitors them, pretending there is no provocation. For the innocent this is galling and unfair but it tips over into the dangerous when this is done to terrorists, assassins and others that corrupt monitors can provoke/use to do their dirty work. When you mess with an innocent mind you get self defence but mess with a criminal mind and you could create mayhem.

DISSEMINATING THE INFORMATION
Computers can deliver surveillance results, combined with correlated —coincidental" material and harassment instructions, directly (via computer) to numerous groups that are part of the relevant crime networks. This is usually done from agency to media monitors, especially in the case of live-to-air media broadcasts. Alternatively, —ghost"/spook writers can be to blame; preparing material for entertainment scripts, edited books, political speeches etc. In other words, many spies are actually recruited/trained to work as (or with) public figures. The computers can then dredge up any coincidences when fed a line, a word, a scenario, an idea or so on that's gleaned from surveillance. It doesn't have to be humanly obvious such as a book/song/movie title, it can be a line from one of these or any reference that the target(s) will recognise so that they will be criminally harassed by it. This allows the editing of what's presented to deliver more hits per victim without the slightest risk of detection by anyone else, especially if the corresponding material is from the targets thoughts which no one else could verify. The feeling of this is like being mentally enslaved, gang raped and totally betrayed all at once. Public figures willingly participate in all of this, happily accepting that they have no editorial control over what they present which is often provided (at least in part) by spies and their advanced computers.

Newsreaders, singers, writers, politicians… basically none of them care. They're mostly criminals working for other criminals and they've all sold their souls for opportunity and money. All? Remember the computer assisted monitoring and sifting of people in public life and positions of influence. No one who would take a moral stance against these practises is welcome in their ranks.

So, briefly put, willingness to comply with criminal instruction, when required, is one of the prerequisites for success in public life. The wording, timing and presentation of ads, jokes, comments or anything can be spiked with computer-driven nonsense, propaganda and harassment material. This is often such a significant part of the content that it can ruin the impact of a broadcast or written piece. This practice is part of a system which uses the strutting egos of public figures to cover up some of the greatest crimes the world's ever endured (silently and mostly ignorantly). The entertainment industry itself is run by organised crime and it cooperates fully with military/agency thugs.

The agency criminals who puppeteer all of this also spread lies and rumours to destroy the targets and fuel the hatred of the harassers that they use. Of even greater concern is the fact that some targets are themselves criminals; terrorists, madmen. This allows the organisers of these oppressive programmes to discredit innocent victims by grouping them with those criminals AND it also allows them to use the criminal patsies to create an atmosphere of chaos/randomness, such that it helps to justify wars, ethnic persecution, reductions in democratic freedoms and anything else that generates greater wealth or control for their unseen masters. Most despots, terrorists, assassins and so on are, therefore, set up to do a job and then, if the timing's right, take the fall. The recent freeing of the mastermind of the Bali bombings is an interesting example. Why? Instead of stopping him they allowed the bombings, now they —insult" us by releasing him. Could this be orchestrated to help build up resentment towards these people; perhaps justifying future actions taken to oppress, rob or wipe out certain groups? Remember the surveillance systems I've outlined. Computer based monitoring is universal so no terrorist can plot anything without it being known… Agency acquiescence or provocation is necessary for anything to happen which is of major importance especially events like the New York World Trade Centre tragedy in 2001 or the Bali bombings. Things happen because —they" want them to. They want to rally support for the moves —they" want to make. One day something like this could lead to WWIII.

An example of smaller scale, but nonetheless significant, dissemination is the supplying of background information, neurophone visuals, subliminals, even monitored thoughts to so-called —psychics" who may be doing anything from running a money making scam to —solving" a murder. All —psychic" abilities are synthetic i.e. computer assisted. Everything else is trickery, experience and/or common sense.

THE LIES
Most conspiracies of silence or misinformation are also computer assisted. The control and suppression of information on many environmental dangers, scams and government/corporate/military offences keeps us all in the dark.

Secrecy orders are slapped on all inventions with military applications, secret deals are hatched and so on. It extends outwards until the only random events that exist, and the only matters properly reported to the public, are minor ones or ones caused by mother nature (when she's not assisted or framed by the crime conglomerates experiments and manipulations).

The media betrays and brainwashes us on anything from massacres/wars (and who causes them) to nonsense about aliens, psychics and the paranormal; all of which are phoney events staged using high tech deception and actors.

Another set of lies revolves around the crime conglomerates various money making/control operations. Take, for instance, pharmaceutical products which control or discredit certain sectors of the community. Some of the diseases they've invented (or caused) to do this include ADD, AIDS, ALZHEIMERS, SCHIZOPHRENIA and various —imported" flus. Many of the victims are experimental targets for the mad scientists of the New World Order, others are just pawns. EG 1 AIDS. This is used for genocide (eg Africa), vilification (eg Gays), social control (eg sex) and more. Who gains from that? Ask yourself why San Francisco's gay community was offered free Hep B shots at about the same time that AIDS was surfacing… and everyone that took advantage of this deal died… of AIDS. EG 2 PARANOID SCHIZOPHRENIA. This has been used by agency connected people to discredit, frighten and control whistleblowers for eons. Criminals will naturally defend themselves by calling their accusers mad but the brainwashing of the public with half truths about some victims who went off the rails has made this lie a powerful tool for oppression. So ask yourself why an absurdly high percentage of prisoners in N.S.W. jails are listed by prison psychiatrists as schizo' because they're hearing voices. It's actually caused by a widespread experimental programme employing neurophones designed to study and silence criminals who —know too much" about bigger criminals who roam free (eg a drug dealer who knows the —Mr Bigs" of the drug world and is considering —squealing"). Also isn't it an interesting coincidence that the average duration of such torments is 15 years; exactly the period psychiatrists are educated to believe that the condition exists. What they're not taught is that agencies/criminals use neurophones etc AND that the very term the psychiatrists rely on for their primary source of income was, in fact, invented by spy agency psychiatrists. Again, think. Some victims may go mad, some may be bad but all are targets of the crime conglomerate for one reason or another. Yet no one thinks to ask their history lest they see the reasons for the targeting. EG 3 ADD. This is probably the best understood example; one which most people immediately recognise as a cover. It's a cover for poor parenting, inept teaching, dangerous food additives and so on. It's a sick excuse for pharmaceutical companies and psychiatrists to intervene and take control/money from the source of a childs misery. Based on the checklist for ADD all kids have it. What a joke.

THE TRUTH
George Orwell said that —In a time of universal deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act" and those of us who have been branded by powerful criminals as —dangerously honest" know just what he meant. In particular, todays political and media entities operate in a thoroughly corrupt moral vacuum wherein they're sent into a tailspin of mirthful denial (and criminal defences) when faced with ANY truths that they don't want to deal with. Good at talking about what is right, they are happy to cover for themselves and their —associates". The same can be said for most senior religious and community leaders who participate in corrupt activity. Today, just as it was when Christ was crucified for speaking the truth, criticism of criminals in high places can lead to persecution and death.

So, anyone advocating the truth (in all things) will be treated as a pariah by our democratic —masters" and the empires that they rule. The truth has, in fact, been systematically and almost totally annihilated. In its place we have propaganda, distraction and nonsense. One simple example is the movie, —The Da Vinci Code". This was fed to the public with catch phrases like —Discover the truth". The very heavy promotion of that story was clearly an attempt to somehow undermine Christianity in response to the focus placed on the Jewish leaders' role in the death of Christ, as portrayed in the earlier movie, —The Passion of The Christ". That movie was attacked by —powerbrokers" and —critics" but proved to be hugely popular with audiences (the vast majority). Clearly with works like that, overreaction can spill over into lies and even criminal conduct. (The makers of the movie are currently being persecuted themselves). This is yet another example of God Almighty being attacked because of the almighty dollar. It makes you wonder if Christianity will one day rediscover a world of pain as people again hide from those who want the truth destroyed for fear of what it means for their criminal operations. Yet again, powerful minorities bully majorities into silence and so become the apparent majority —voice". And when honest people reject them and their lies they'll twist that into some sort of threat and maintain that they need to be watched (and tortured). This is clearly how their criminal minds work.

AN OPINION
No one should ever victimise minorities, be they black or white, Jew or Christian, short or tall… whatever, and especially not in a criminal fashion. Instead every honest voice should be heard so that people can decide for themselves. However, those secretly plotting ecocide, genocide and ethnic cleansing, wealth concentration through collusion, theft, deception or any other form of criminal conduct have the worst in them drawn out when they are confronted with the truth. As a result it is often the case that the best on offer, from whatever race, creed etc is discarded completely to hide the crimes of the monsters who secretly prey on society. The best? This could mean people, ideas, views… whatever —they" want to destroy. And it's all done while their front men smile —nicely" at us talking —nicely" about forgiving and forgetting. Normally to forgive and forget would be fine but in the face of a total lack of contrition and systematic, wilful, widespread criminal conduct that would not only be foolish but cowardly. No one has the right to commit crime and no one should give in to it or allow it. The perpetrators belong behind bars.

Yet again, computer technology supplies the preferred methods of arranging many things: accidents, disappearances, framings, discrediting, harassment and more. These things happen to those who know the truth. The rest of the population is controlled only because of their lack of knowledge of that truth. The problem is that —Big Brother" prevents those who know from telling too many people and he is far more malevolent than the glorified peep show —Big Brother" shown on TV. That show's main purpose is to get people to accept a lack of privacy before the true extent of the surveillance society becomes public knowledge. The real Big Brother is the enemy of the people, the enemy of the truth, the enemy of God. And God alone could help us if the biblical revelation about people carrying the mark of the beast (at the end of time) to even buy or sell somehow refers to compulsory implants orchestrated by a future world government (A 6ig 6rother 6ank perhaps?)

OTHER COMPUTER HORRORS
For most people the word —computer" conjures up just a few simple fears; the fear of change, the fear of unemployment, the sci fi nightmare of robots running amok and so on. The full truth is that available computer technology can already do many things. It can already cause earthquakes, hurricanes and lightning strikes using satellite or grand-based facilities like DARPA projects; eg the HAARP antenna farm in Alaska. Directed energy weapons can also (via laser) target any individuals organs, senses or brain function and inflict horrific injuries on targeted persons as well as destroying property. Also psychotronic weapons exist which can deliver brain violence; stalking, harassing and raping people psychologically. The monitoring of brain waves using satellite scanners and the feeding of the results to grand-based super computers allows brainwave vocabulary software to interpret thoughts precisely. These computers are located in places like the CIA's Langley Research Centre, Richmond, Virginia and the NSA/military/base at Fort Meade, Maryland. The gathered thoughts can be categorised, studied and fed back (via neurophone and media harassment) to neutralise targets, emotionally and psychologically. Memories, dreams, reactions and personalities can also be studied, removed and downloaded for long term computer records, robotics or clone brainwashing. Amazingly some wealthy people actually want the contents of their brains downloaded for posterity and they'll pay to have it done. The egotism, ignorance and criminality here is difficult to accept, on any level. On top of all this, thought influence/control is now possible not only through the propaganda and brainwashing of the mass media but also through the abuse of equipment like the computer-based technologies herein mentioned. The targets are the experiments upon which these methods have been (and will be) researched. Voice/thought transferred instruction can also be directed at robots or clones. In fact most things are possible including controlling peoples performances remotely (to fix sporting results, cause accidents and so on) and subliminally influencing their opinions (to skew election votes etc).

Further to the —anything's possible" claim, they can also camouflage, move or levitate objects (and people) making for more deceptive scenarios. One example is approximate invisibility; where technologies are employed to bend light around objects and/or cloaks or screens are projected onto the object using powerful video projectors etc. Another example is where objects float in the sky then apparently fly off quickly. It's all possible just not publicised because the military slaps secrecy orders on anything worth using (as soon as it's invented) then they use it to deceive and abuse people. In fact, when you take a glimpse at the arsenal of experimental/perfected weapons secretly used against the citizenry it's easy to see how total chaos or total control could easily be orchestrated. Our apparently random world is actually very tightly controlled.

Meanwhile environmental, peace and disarmament activists, truth/privacy advocates, major whistleblowers and banned writers all suffer and die thanks to these technologies. That includes the carcinogenic and neuro-degenerative side effects of the constant exposure to the entertainment frequencies that are so cruelly used on them 24/7. Unfortunately Big Brother's conditioning and behaviour modification controls not only kill the truth but those presenting it…often slowly. They do not want people informed of their misuses of technology or their long term plans which include destroying certain cultures through hatred and war as well as the long term halving (or worse) of the worlds population.This then would leave the ruling classes to control all wealth and natural resources; marginalising the —have nots" that survive.

DISTRACTIONS
Whilst many activities have their place in society some can also be used as diversions or controls. Anything that preoccupies peoples thoughts and focuses their attention on something other than important matters and truths can be used in this way… Consumerism, drugs, sex… anything that works (and makes money)… anything that —dumbs down" the population. Meantime the computer crimes mentioned herein go on without detection. Examples of diversions include the following:-

(i) Celebrity fixation œ The whole celebrity circus thing is a cover for some of the biggest cons and betrayals in human history. People are fascinated by, and often put their misplaced trust in, egocentric public figures who have no real social conscience. It couldn't be worse if mind controlled clones or soulless androids had replaced all public figures and were directed from spook central to do whatever, right or wrong, because that's what they do; whatever they're told. Entrained to worship celebrity, even to crave celebrity themselves, the general public are made oblivious to the fact that the 1,000 or so families which control the world, including the media, are members of the Illuminati, The Bilderberg club, etc. They actually use celebrities to channel opinions, control wealth and much, much more, all on their behalf.

(ii) Sex and drugs œ These are two of the more effective means of compromising integrity. It's all about control and money (in that order); control of public figures and the public. For instance, along with the money, time, access, adulation and pressure that comes with public figure status there is usually bargaining, compromise and control. E.g. The mere fact that many celebrities take advantage of underage groupies makes them guilty of paedophilia and therefore blackmailable yet few have ever been charged. Why? Because they do as they're told; they cooperate. Drugs in particular make people susceptible to corrupt suggestions and focus individuals on themselves to the point where they gradually care less and less about how their actions effect others. There wouldn't be many druggies or sex maniacs who weren't criminally minded. However, for every person in a —high" place that's charged, 1000's are never even questioned. Add this to the mix, throw in association with computer assisted spies, certain —above the law" powers and so on and you have a recipe for heinous, oppressive conduct which can be aimed at those opposing high level crime.

(iii) Religion œ Aside from marginalised extremist groups (which certainly capture the attention of their members) there are mainstream religions which can act as an opiate for the honest masses. To have us all just quietly pursuing our own salvation is ideal for —them". They don't want people trying to stop evil. In fact, thinking about the many vital issues which the churches ignore for political reasons I'm reminded of the old Edmund Burke saying regarding evil triumphing when men of goodwill do nothing. The founder of our Christian church, Jesus Christ, certainly criticised hypocrites and those enslaved by the love of money and he paid the price for doing so. However I seem to remember he instructed us to follow his lead. So why don't we?... Distractions? Fear? We should not be deterred by apathy or the fear of those who laugh at us for caring. They do this to silence us and hide their crimes without so much as a challenge to check their criminal progress.

AN OPINION
Even in the western democracies any resistance to the mass media's manipulation of community standards and views can meet with brutal victimisation. Yet often the popular views publicly professed by celebrities are at odds with their own lifestyles. Fair, non-partisan exchanges of views are discouraged as are those who would suggest such a thing. So, what we get instead is anything but genuine. Any discussion that will lead to criticism of powerful criminals is stymied. Even the churches will not foster such criticism being beholden to wealthy —businessmen" and MP's for grants, favourable media presentation etc. Again, as with state police who are instructed to focus on the proverbial droppers of bubble gum wrappers whilst corporate criminals and murderers roam free, the spy agencies focus on silencing honest people leaving them with no resources to deal with the terrorists/criminals that they actually want to use rather than stop. In other words, our limited law enforcement resources are deliberately misallocated.

1. Failure to deliver

Despite the hype, genetic modification consistently fails to live up to industry claims. Only two GM traits have ever made it to market: herbicide resistance and BT toxin expression (see below). Other promises of genetic modification have failed to materialize. The much vaunted GM 'golden rice' - hailed as a cure to vitamin A deficiency - has never made it out of the laboratory, partly because in order to meet recommended levels of vitamin A intake, consumers would need to eat 12 bowls of the rice every day.1 In 2004, the Kenyan government admitted that Monsanto's GM sweet potatoes were no more resistant to feathery mottle virus than ordinary strains, and in fact produced lower yields.2 And in January 2008, news that scientists had modified a carrot to cure osteoporosis by providing calcium had to be weighed against the fact that you would need to eat 1.6 kilograms of these vegetables each day to meet your recommended calcium intake.3

2. Costing the Earth

GM crops are costing farmers and governments more money than they are making. In 2003, a report by the Soil Association estimated the cost to the US economy of GM crops at around $12 billion (£6 billion) since 1999, on account of inflated farm subsidies, loss of export orders and various seed recalls.4 A study in Iowa found that GM soybeans required all the same costs as conventional farming but, because they produced lower yields (see below), the farmers ended up making no profit at all.5 In India, an independent study found that BT cotton crops were costing farmers 10 per cent more than non-BT variants and bringing in 40 per cent lower profits.6 Between 2001 and 2005, more than 32,000 Indian farmers committed suicide, most as a result of mounting debts caused by inadequate crops.7

3. Contamination and gene escape

No matter how hard you try, you can never be sure that what you are eating is GM-free. In a recent article, the New Scientist admitted that contamination and cross-fertilization between GM and non-GM crops 'has happened on many occasions already'.8 In late 2007, US company Scott's Miracle-Gro was fined $500,000 by the US Department of Agriculture when genetic material from a new golf-course grass Scott's had been testing was found in native grasses as far as 13 miles away from the test sites, apparently released when freshly cut grass was caught and blown by the wind.9 In 2006, an analysis of 40 Spanish conventional and organic farms found that eight were contaminated with GM corn varieties, including one farmer whose crop contained 12.6 per cent GM plants.

4. Reliance on pesticides

Far from reducing dependency on pesticides and fertilizers, GM crops frequently increase farmers' reliance on these products. Herbicide-resistant crops can be sprayed indiscriminately with weedkiller's such as Monsanto's 'Roundup' because they are engineered to withstand the effect of the chemical. This means that significantly higher levels of herbicide are found in the final food product, however, and often a second herbicide is used in the late stages of the crop to promote 'dessication' or drying, meaning these crops receive a double dose of harmful chemicals.10 BT maize, engineered to produce an insecticidal toxin, has never eliminated the use of pesticides,11 and because the BT gene cannot be 'switched off' the crops continue to produce the toxin right up until harvest, reaching the consumer at its highest possible concentrations.12

5. 'Frankenfoods'

Despite the best efforts of the biotech industry, consumers remain staunchly opposed to GM food. In 2007, the vast majority of 11,700 responses to the Government's consultation on whether contamination of organic food with traces of GM crops should be allowed were strongly negative. The Government's own 'GM Nation' debate in 2003 discovered that half of its participants 'never want to see GM crops grown in the United Kingdom under any circumstances', and 96 per cent thought that society knew too little about the health impacts of genetic modification. In India, farmers' experience of BT cotton has been so disastrous that the Maharashtra government now advises that farmers grow soybeans instead. And in Australia, over 250 food companies lodged appeals with the state governments of New South Wales and Victoria over the lifting of bans against growing GM canola crops.13

6. Breeding resistance

Nature is smart, and there are already reports of species resistant to GM crops emerging. This is seen in the emergence of new 'super weeds' on farms in North America - plants that have evolved the ability to withstand the industry's chemicals. A report by then UK conservation body English Nature (now Natural England), in 2002, revealed that oilseed rape plants that had developed resistance to three or more herbicides were 'not uncommon' in Canada.14 The super weeds had been created through random crosses between neighboring GM crops. In order to tackle these super weeds, Canadian farmers were forced to resort to even stronger, more toxic herbicides.15 Similarly, pests (notably the diamondback moth) have been quick to develop resistance to BT toxin, and in 2007 swarms of mealy bugs began attacking supposedly pest-resistant Indian cotton.

7. Creating problems for solutions

Many of the so-called 'problems' for which the biotechnology industry develops 'solutions' seem to be notions of PR rather than science. Herbicide-resistance was sold under the claim that because crops could be doused in chemicals, there would be much less need to weed mechanically or plough the soil, keeping more carbon and nitrates under the surface. But a new long-term study by the US Agricultural Research Service has shown that organic farming, even with ploughing, stores more carbon than the GM crops save.16 BT cotton was claimed to increase resistance to pests, but farmers in East Africa discovered that by planting a local weed amid their corn crop, they could lure pests to lay their eggs on the weed and not the crop.17

8. Health risks

The results of tests on animals exposed to GM crops give serious cause for concern over their safety. In 1998, Scottish scientists found damage to every single internal organ in rats fed blight resistant GM potatoes. In a 2006 experiment, female rats fed on herbicide-resistant soybeans gave birth to severely stunted pups, of which half died within three weeks. The survivors were sterile. In the same year, Indian news agencies reported that thousands of sheep allowed to graze on BT cotton crop residues had died suddenly. Further cases of livestock deaths followed in 2007. There have also been reports of allergy-like symptoms among Indian laborers in BT cotton fields. In 2002, the only trial ever to involve human beings appeared to show that altered genetic material from GM soybeans not only survives in the human gut, but may even pass its genetic material to bacteria within the digestive system.18

9. Left hungry

GM crops have always come with promises of increased yields for farmers, but this has rarely been the case. A three-year study of 87 villages in India found that non-BT cotton consistently produced 30 per cent higher yields than the (more expensive) GM alternative.19 It is now widely accepted that GM soybeans produce consistently lower yields than conventional varieties. In 1992, Monsanto's own trials showed that the company's Roundup Ready soybeans yield 11.5 per cent less on harvest. Later Monsanto studies went on to reveal that some trials of GM canola crops in Australia actually produced yields 16 per cent below the non-GM national average.20

10. Wedded to fertilizers and fossil fuels

No genetically modified crop has yet eliminated the need for chemical fertilisers in order to achieve expected yields. Although the industry has made much of the possibility of splicing nitrogen-fixing genes into commercial food crops in order to boost yields, there has so far been little success. This means that GM crops are just as dependent on fossil fuels to make fertilizers as conventional agriculture. In addition to this, GM traits are often specifically designed to fit with large-scale industrial agriculture. Herbicide resistance is of no real benefit unless your farm is too vast to weed mechanically, and it presumes that the farmers already farm in a way that involves the chemical spraying of their crops. Similarly, BT toxin expression is designed to counteract the problem of pest control in vast monocultures, which encourage infestations. In a world that will soon have to change its view of farming - facing as it does the twin challenges of climate change and peak oil - GM crops will soon come to look like a relic of bygone practices.

http://www.theecologist.org/archive_detail.asp?content_id=1185

A MECHANISM OF BLOOD DAMAGE
Clifford E Carnicom
Dec 14 2009

I am not offering any medical advice or diagnosis with the presentation of this information.  I am acting solely as an independent researcher providing the results of extended observation and analysis of unusual biological conditions that are evident.

An organism and a method that damages the condition of the blood has now been identified and it has been directly observed.  The blood variations reported here are in direct association with the existence of and the severity of the so-called "Morgellons" condition.

The degradation occurs, at least in part, as a result of the existence of a chlamydia-like organism that has been repeatedly called to attention within the research during the past several years. This organism, along with a pleomorphic form tentatively identified as a mycoplasma variation, as well as certain filamentous forms, have been identified as common denominators in past and active biological and environmental examinations.

It will be recalled from earlier studies that essentially all individuals observed thus far display the presence of these blood anomalies to varying degree; statistically it would certainly appear as though the general population is subject to these forms.  It has also been stated that the severity of the damage to the blood appears to occur in direct correlation with the manifestation of symptoms of the Morgellon's condition.

It is commonly perceived that skin anomalies and lesions (eruptions) are the major indicators as to the presence of the Morgellons "condition."  It is asserted by this researcher that this criteria is completely and totally inadequate to establish the existence of the condition.  A more comprehensive assessment appears to be that the presence of certain filamentous forms internal to the body and the presence of the chlamydia-like organism within the blood more positively establishes the existence of the condition.  The presence of skin lesions (eruptions) and or filaments appears to be simply an outward manifestation by a subset of the population of the underlying biological changes that have occurred within the body.   Thus far, all individuals studied show these changes within the body to varying degree.

The specific organisms (four specific forms in total, thus far) involved still require positive identification, as they have for several years now.  I do not claim any medical or biological expertise at the level that is required.  The size of the organisms alone is beyond conventional microscopy and they have been identified only with custom microscopic developments.  Chlamydia-like and mycoplasma-like identifications must only be regarded as tentative and they are based primarily upon observation, research and deduction.

One of the dominant characteristics of the Chlamydia genus is that its members are metabolically incomplete, and that they require the energy of the host to thrive; this is one reason why they exist as intracellular (within the cell) within the host.  In addition, intracellular organisms present a series of challenges to the immune system for detection and eradication, as recognition of a pathogen becomes much more difficult internal to the cell.

One of the dominant characteristics of the Mycoplama genus is that the species lack a cell wall, and hence the ability to assume various forms, i.e, pleomorphic.

Regardless of the eventual identifications that are to take place, the involvement of unconventional biology and genetic modification appears to affirmed by the unusual characteristics, enclosure and transport of these particular organisms under study.

The importance of this paper is that a specific organism and method of blood degradation that is in association with the Morgellons condition has been identified by function and has been observed and recorded, and that this same specific organism has been under study from several different vantage points for several years now.  This chlamydia-like organism remains a focal point of investigation with respect to both the Aerosol Operations and the Morgellons issue; from the current studies it is expected to remain so for some time.  The ubiquity and importance of this specific, (but still unidentified by species), organism will become even more apparent in future writings.  In general, it would appear that the chlamydia-like and the mycoplasma-like intrusions set the stage for broader systematic degradation, immune suppression and additional pleomorphic manifestations upon sufficient invasion.  In addition, genetic modification and transformation of the infective agents as well as the hosts are to be considered as very real possibilities.

The specific method of blood damage referred to in this paper is as follows:

1. The chlamydia-like organism appears to frequently exist in large numbers within the blood, i.e, the serum.  The erythrocytes (red blood cells) can appear to be in good form even with the presence of the chlamydia-like organism in the serum external to the cells.

2. The chlamydia-like organism does appear to be attracted to the outer wall of the erythrocytes.

3. In the early stages of intrusion, the chlamydia like structures can surround and bind to the outer wall of the erthryocyte, with no damage to the cell wall necessarily apparent.

4. Upon increased intrusion of the cell, the chlamydia-like organism will be seen to have been incorporated within the cell wall.  It is at this point that a breakdown of the integrity of the cell wall can often be observed.

5. Upon further intrusion, the chlamydia-like organism can exist in relatively large numbers within the erythrocyte.  Further damage to the integrity of the cell occurs.

6. In extreme cases observed thus far, the integrity of the cell wall is radically compromised, along with the general structure of the red blood cells.  Existence of the chlamydia-like organism can be rampant within the blood.  The functioning of the blood would appear to be seriously impaired at this point and this is expected to have a major impact upon the health of an individual. The pleomorphic organism under study (i.e., mycoplasma-like) is also commonly observed under these conditions.  Skin lesions (eruptions) and anomalies, such as filaments, may also be more common at this stage of the condition.

PHOTOGRAPHS:

Additional Note : The term "eruptions" vs. "lesions" has been introduced into this paper due to discussions with an individual of medical background.  This individual has studied and observed the dynamics of certain skin anomalies in detail.  It has been suggested that this term may be more accurate in describing the specifics of presentation, and it is correspondingly offered to the readership for consideration.  Appreciation is extended to this individual for the discernment that has been provided.

Carnicom Institute

Behind all the deceptive official debate over how many troops are needed to “win” the war in Afghanistan, whether another 30,000 is sufficient, or whether at least 200000 are needed, the real purpose of US military presence in that pivotal Central Asian country is obscured.

Even during the 2008 Presidential campaign candidate Obama argued that Afghanistan not Iraq was where the US must wage war. His reason? Because he claimed, that was where the Al Qaeda organization was holed up and that was the “real” threat to US national security. The reasons behind US involvement in Afghanistan is quite another one.

The US military is in Afghanistan for two reasons. First to restore and control the world’s largest supply of opium for the world heroin markets and to use the drugs as a geopolitical weapon against opponents, especially Russia. That control of the Afghan drug market is essential for the liquidity of the bankrupt and corrupt Wall Street financial mafia.

Geopolitics of Afghan Opium

According even to an official UN report, opium production in Afghanistan has risen dramatically since the downfall of the Taliban in 2001. UNODC data shows more opium poppy cultivation in each of the past four growing seasons (2004-2007), than in any one year during Taliban rule. More land is now used for opium in Afghanistan, than for coca cultivation in Latin America. In 2007, 93% of the opiates on the world market originated in Afghanistan. This is no accident.

It has been documented that Washington hand-picked the controversial Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun warlord from the Popalzai tribe, long in the CIA’s service, brought him back from exile in the USA, created a Hollywood mythology around his “courageous leadership of his people.” According to Afghan sources, Karzai is the Opium “Godfather” of Afghanistan today. There is apparently no accident that he was and is today still Washington’s preferred man in Kabul. Yet even with massive vote buying and fraud and intimidation, Karzai’s days could be ending as President.

The second reason the US military remains in Afghanistan long after the world has forgotten even who the mysterious Osama bin Laden and his alleged Al Qaeda terrorist organization is or even if they exist, is as a pretext to build a permanent US military strike force with a series of permanent US airbases across Afghanistan. The aim of those bases is not to eradicate any Al Qaeda cells that may have survived in the caves of Tora Bora, or to eradicate a mythical “Taliban” which at this point according to eyewitness reports is made up overwhelmingly of local ordinary Afghanis fighting to rid their land once more of occupier armies as they  did in the 1980’s against the Russians. 

The aim of the US bases in Afghanistan is to target and be able to strike at the two nations which today represent the only combined threat in the world today to an American global imperium, to America’s Full Spectrum Dominance as the Pentagon terms it.

The lost ‘Mandate of Heaven’

The problem for the US power elites around Wall Street and in Washington is the fact that they are now in the deepest financial crisis in their history. That crisis is clear to the entire world and the world is acting on a basis of self-survival. The US elites have lost what in Chinese imperial history is known as the Mandate of Heaven. That mandate is given a ruler or ruling elite provided they rule their people justly and fairly. When they rule tyrannically and as despots, oppressing and abusing their people, they lose that Mandate of Heaven.

If the powerful private wealthy elites that have controlled essential US financial and foreign policy for most of the past century or more ever had a “mandate of Heaven” they clearly have lost it. The domestic developments towards creation of an abusive police state with deprivation of Constitutional rights to its citizens, the arbitrary exercise of power by non elected officials such as Treasury Secretaries Henry Paulson and now Tim Geithner, stealing trillion dollar sums from taxpayers without their consent in order to bailout the bankrupt biggest Wall Street banks, banks deemed “Too Big To Fail,” this all demonstrates to the world they have lost the mandate.

In this situation, the US power elites are increasingly desperate to maintain their control of a global parasitical empire, called deceptively by their media machine, “globalization.” To hold that dominance it is essential that they be able to break up any emerging cooperation in the economic, energy or military realm between the two major powers of Eurasia that conceivably could pose a challenge to future US sole Superpower control—China in combination with Russia.

Each Eurasian power brings to the table essential contributions. China has the world’s most robust economy, a huge young and dynamic workforce, an educated middle class. Russia, whose economy has not recovered from the destructive end pf the Soviet era and of the primitive looting during the Yeltsin era, still holds essential assets for the combination. Russia’s nuclear strike force and its military pose the only threat in the world today to US military dominance, even if it is largely a residue of the Cold War. The Russian military elites never gave up that potential.

As well Russia holds the world’s largest treasure of natural gas and vast reserves of oil urgently needed by China. The two powers are increasingly converging via a new organization they created in 2001 known as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). That includes as well as China and Russia, the largest Central Asia states Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

The purpose of the alleged US war against both Taliban and Al Qaeda is in reality to place its military strike force directly in the middle of the geographical space of this emerging SCO in Central Asia. Iran is a diversion. The main goal or target is Russia and China.

Officially, of course, Washington claims it has built its military presence inside Afghanistan since 2002 in order to protect a “fragile” Afghan democracy. It’s a curious argument given the reality of US military presence there.

In December 2004, during a visit to Kabul, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld finalized plans to build nine new bases in Afghanistan in the provinces of Helmand, Herat, Nimrouz, Balkh, Khost and Paktia. The nine are in addition to the three major US military bases already installed in the wake of its occupation of Afghanistan in winter of 2001-2002, ostensibly to isolate and eliminate the terror threat of Osama bin Laden.

The Pentagon built its first three bases at Bagram Air Field north of Kabul, the US’ main military logistics center; Kandahar Air Field, in southern Afghanistan; and Shindand Air Field in the western province of Herat. Shindand, the largest US base in Afghanistan, was constructed a mere 100 kilometers from the border of Iran, and within striking distance of Russia as well as China.

Afghanistan has historically been the heartland for the British-Russia Great Game, the struggle for control of Central Asia during the 19th and early 20th Centuries. British strategy then was to prevent Russia at all costs from controlling Afghanistan and thereby threatening Britain’s imperial crown jewel, India.

Afghanistan is similarly regarded by Pentagon planners as highly strategic. It is a platform from which US military power could directly threaten Russia and China, as well as Iran and other oil-rich Middle East lands. Little has changed geopolitically over more than a century of wars.

Afghanistan is in an extremely vital location, straddling South Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East. Afghanistan also lies along a proposed oil pipeline route from the Caspian Sea oil fields to the Indian Ocean, where the US oil company, Unocal, along with Enron and Cheney’s Halliburton, had been in negotiations for exclusive pipeline rights to bring natural gas from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan and Pakistan to Enron’s huge natural gas power plant at Dabhol near Mumbai. Karzai, before becoming puppet US president, had been a Unocal lobbyist.

Al Qaeda doesn’t exist as a threat

The truth of all this deception around the real purpose in Afghanistan becomes clear on a closer look at the alleged “Al Qaeda” threat in Afghanistan. According to author Erik Margolis, prior to the September 11,2001 attacks, US intelligence was giving aid and support both to the Taliban and to Al Qaeda. Margolis claims that “The CIA was planning to use Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda to stir up Muslim Uighurs against Chinese rule, and Taliban against Russia’s Central Asian allies.”

The US clearly found other means of stirring up Muslim Uighurs against Beijing last July via its support for the World Uighur Congress. But the Al Qaeda “threat” remains the lynchpin of Obama US justification for his Afghan war buildup.

Now, however, the National Security Adviser to President Obama, former Marine Gen. James Jones has made a statement, conveniently buried by the friendly US media, about the estimated size of the present Al Qaeda danger in Afghanistan. Jones told Congress, “The al-Qaeda presence is very diminished. The maximum estimate is less than 100 operating in the country, no bases, no ability to launch attacks on either us or our allies.”

That means that Al-Qaeda, for all practical purposes, does not exist in Afghanistan. Oops…

Even in neighboring Pakistan, the remnants of Al-Qaeda are scarcely to be found. The Wall Street Journal reports, “Hunted by US drones, beset by money problems and finding it tougher to lure young Arabs to the bleak mountains of Pakistan, al Qaeda is seeing its role shrink there and in Afghanistan, according to intelligence reports and Pakistan and U.S. officials. For Arab youths who are al Qaeda’s primary recruits, ‘it’s not romantic to be cold and hungry and hiding,’ said a senior U.S. official in South Asia.”

If we follow the statement to its logical consequence we must conclude then that the reason German soldiers are dying along with other NATO youth in the mountains of Afghanistan has nothing to do with “winning a war against terrorism.” Conveniently most media chooses to forget the fact that Al Qaeda to the extent it ever existed, was a creation in the 1980’s of the CIA, who recruited and trained radical muslims from across the Islamic world to wage war against Russian troops in Afghanistan as part of a strategy developed by Reagan’s CIA head Bill Casey and others to create a “new Vietnam” for the Soviet Union which would lead to a humiliating defeat for the Red Army and the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union.

Now US NSC head Jones admits there is essentially no Al Qaeda anymore in Afghanistan. Perhaps it is time for a more honest debate from our political leaders about the true purpose of sending more young to die protecting the opium harvests of Afghanistan.

F. William Engdahl is author of Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order. He may be reached via his website at www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.  

by Lorimer Wilson

This article is a follow-up to my recent piece on "America's Financial Oligarchy" which was a synopsis of Simon Johnson's "The Quiet Coup" on how the financial industry has effectively captured our government. This follow-up article is an edit and review of a lengthy 231-page report prepared in March 2009 by the Consumer Education Foundation (see wallstreetwatch.org/reports/sold_out.pdf for the full report) on how, over the years, the 'Money Industry' as they refer to the financial oligarchy, sold out America to gain such control. Like Simon's article the Consumer Education report at wallstreetwatch.org deserves much more exposure than it will receive in its original format and hence my effort to distill it into a 3-page summary, with my comments where warranted, for your quick review.

The 'Money Industry' Bought Control of America for $5.2 Billion

Harvey Rosenfield, President of the Consumer Education Foundation, contends that "Over the last decade, Wall Street (i.e. the entire financial sector consisting of commercial banks, accounting firms, insurance companies, securities firms including hedge funds and private equity firms) showered Washington with over $1.738 billion in supposed 'campaign contributions' and another $3.441 billion on 2,996 officially registered lobbyists (more than five for each Member of Congress) whose job it was to press for deregulation. In return for the investment of this $5.179 billion, the Money Industry was able to get rid of many of the reforms enacted after the Great Depression and to operate, for most of the last ten years, without any effective rules or restraints whatsoever."

The Transfer of Power Took 25 Years

• Beginning in 1983 with the Reagan Administration, the U.S. government acquiesced to accounting rules adopted by the financial industry that allowed banks and other corporations to take money-losing assets off their balance sheets in order to hide them from investors and the public.

• Between 1998 and 2000, Congress and the Clinton Administration repeatedly blocked efforts to regulate "financial derivatives" -- including the mortgage-related credit default swaps that became the basis of trillions of dollars in speculation.

• In 1999, Congress repealed the Depression-era law that barred banks from offering investment and insurance services, and vice versa, enabling these firms to engage in speculation by investing money from checking and savings accounts into financial "derivatives" and other schemes understood by only a handful of individuals.

• Taking advantage of historically low interest rates in the first few years of this decade, mortgage brokers and bankers began offering mortgages on egregious terms to purchasers who were not qualified. When these predatory lending practices were brought to the attention of federal agencies, they refused to take serious action. Worse, when states stepped into the vacuum by passing laws requiring protections against dirty loans, the Bush Administration went to court to invalidate those reforms, on the ground that the inaction of federal agencies superseded state laws.

• The financial industry's friends in Congress made sure that those who speculate in mortgages would not be legally liable for fraud or other illegalities that occurred when the mortgage was made.

• Egged on by Wall Street, two government-sponsored corporations, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, started buying large numbers of subprime loans from private banks as well as packages of mortgages known as "mortgage-backed securities." (See my article entitled "Our Worst Nightmare: The Puncture of the U.S. Housing Bubble" which outlined their house of cards approach.)

• In 2004, the Securities and Exchange Commission, now operating under the radical deregulatory ideology of the Bush Administration, authorized investment banks to decide for themselves how much money they were required to set aside as rainy day reserves. Some firms then entered into $40 worth of speculative trading for every $1 they held.

• With the compensation of CEOs increasingly tied to the value of the firm's total assets, a tidal wave of mergers and acquisitions in the financial world -- 11,500 between 1980 and 2005 -- led to the predominance of just a relative handful of banks in the U.S. financial system. Successive administrations failed to enforce antitrust laws to block these mergers. The result: less competition, higher fees and charges for consumers, and a financial system vulnerable to collapse if any single one of the banks ran into trouble.

• Investors and even government authorities relied on private "credit rating" firms to review corporate balance sheets and proposed investments and report to potential investors about their quality and safety. But the credit rating companies had a grave conflict of interest: they are paid by the financial firms to issue the ratings. Not surprisingly, they gave the highest ratings to the investments issued by the firms that paid them, even as it became clear that the ratings were inflated and the companies were in precarious condition. The financial lobby made sure that regulation of the credit ratings firms would not solve these problems.

None of these milestones on the road to economic ruin were kept secret, says Rosenfield. The dangers posed by unregulated, greed-driven financial speculation were readily apparent to any astute observer of the financial system but few of those entrusted with the responsibility to police the marketplace were willing to do so and those officials in government who dared to propose stronger protections for investors and consumers consistently met with hostility and defeat. The power of the Money Industry overcame all opposition, on a bipartisan basis.

Their Weapons of Mass Destruction were Derivatives

As Franklin Roosevelt observed seventy years ago, "our enemies of today are the forces of privilege and greed within our own borders" and today, says Rosenfield, their weapons of mass destruction were derivatives: pieces of paper that were backed by other pieces of paper that were backed by packages of mortgages, student loans and credit card debt, the complexity and value of which only a few understood. In fact, says Rosenfield:

"America's economic system is where it is today because gambling became the financial sector's principal preoccupation, and the pile of chips grew so big that the Money Industry displaced real businesses that provided real goods, services and jobs."

The Purchase of America was a LBO

Rosenfield believes that the American consumers are not to blame for this debacle nor those who used credit in an attempt to have a decent quality of life, nor those who agreed to accept the amazing terms for mortgages and finding out later that they had been misled and could not afford the loan at the real interest rate buried in the fine print. Instead of assuming any responsibility for living beyond their means Rosenfield believes Americans are only to blame for "allowing Wall Street to do what it calls a leveraged buy out of our political system by spending a relatively small amount of capital in the Capitol in order to seize control of our economy".

The Privileges of the Financial Oligarchy are Being Preserved

Rosenfield contends that the moment the Money Industry realized that the casino had closed, it turned -- as it always does -- to Washington, this time for the mother of all favors: a $700 billion bailout which was quickly extended to include a feast of discount loans, loan guarantees and other taxpayer subsidies to the tune of at least $8 trillion so far. Then, panicked by Wall Street's threat to pull the plug on credit, Congress rebuffed efforts to include safeguards on how taxpayer money would be spent and accounted for. Rosenfield is of the opinion that the bankers used the bailout monies to pay bonuses, to buy back their own bank stock, or to build their empires by purchasing other banks with very little of the money being used for the purpose it was ostensibly given: to make loans. He is absolutely convinced that Washington's latest giveaway -- the Greatest Wall Street Giveaway of all time as he calls it -- has not fixed the economy but that, at this very moment of national threat, the banks, hedge funds and other parasite firms that crippled our economy are pouring money into Washington to preserve their privileges at the expense of the rest of us.

Washington Was Paid Off

That's why, according to Rosenfield, you won't hear anyone in the Washington establishment suggest that Americans be given a seat on the Board of Directors of every company that receives bailout money or that credit default swaps and other derivatives should be prohibited, or limited just like slot machines, roulette wheels and other forms of gambling. In most of the United States, he says, you can go to jail for stealing a loaf of bread but if you have paid off Washington, you can steal the life-savings, livelihoods, homes and dreams of an entire nation, and you will be allowed to live in the fancy homes you own, drive multiple cars, throw multi-million dollar birthday parties, etc. and virtually get away with it. Sure, he points out, you might not be able to get your bonus this year or, worst come to worst, if you are one of the very unlucky few unable to take advantage of the loopholes in the plan announced by the Treasury Secretary Geithner, you may end up having to live off your past riches because you can only earn a measly $500,000.

The Money Industry Remains in Charge

Rosenfield believes that since President Obama's key appointments to the Treasury, the SEC and other agencies, like their predecessors, are veterans of the Money Industry that the Money Industry remains in charge of the federal agencies and keeps our elected officials in its deep pockets and, as such, nothing will change and that:

"if America is to recover from this economic debacle that we find ourselves in, its people must return to the principles that made it great -- hard work, creativity, and innovation -- and both government and business must serve that end. Washington must serve America, not Wall Street. Things will not change so long as Americans acquiesce to business as usual in Washington. It's time for Americans to make their voices heard."

The report concludes that Wall Street is presently humbled, but not prostrate. Despite siphoning trillions of dollars from the public purse, Wall Street executives continue to warn about the perils of restricting "financial innovation" even though it was these very innovations that led to the crisis in the first place and they are scheming to use the coming Congressional focus on financial regulation to centralize authority with industry- friendly agencies.

"If we are to see the meaningful regulation we need, Congress must adopt the view that Wall Street has no legitimate seat at the table. With Wall Street having destroyed the system that enriched its high flyers, and plunged the global economy into deep recession, it's time for Congress to tell Wall Street that its political investments have also gone bad. This time, legislating must be to control Wall Street, not further Wall Street's control."

God Bless America

My recent "America's Financial Oligarchy is Still in Control" article concluded that the country is in financial crisis and instead of the financial oligarchy being broken up to permit essential reform they are continuing to use their influence to prevent precisely the sorts of reforms that are needed immediately to pull the economy out of its nosedive. Moreover, our legislators seem unwilling to act against these powerful financiers opting instead to succumb to their power and influence and continue to give them what they deem to be in their best interest instead of that of the taxpayers'. Rosenfield goes one step further in claiming that the Money Industry has, in fact, bought control of the American political system and, in the process, betrayed America's trust in them. They are still in control and there is no end in sight.

Indeed, the long-term consequences for America are so dire I think it is incumbent upon us to evoke the words of the anthem "God Bless America" with its stirring words "stand beside her and guide her." I think you would agree, regardless of party affiliation or leanings, that America needs all the help it can get!

The Georgia Guidestones may be the most enigmatic monument in the US: huge slabs of granite, inscribed with directions for rebuilding civilization after the apocalypse. Only one man knows who created them—and he's not talking.

Photo: Dan Winters

 

The strangest monument in America looms over a barren knoll in northeastern Georgia. Five massive slabs of polished granite rise out of the earth in a star pattern. The rocks are each 16 feet tall, with four of them weighing more than 20 tons apiece. Together they support a 25,000-pound capstone. Approaching the edifice, it's hard not to think immediately of England's Stonehenge or possibly the ominous monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Built in 1980, these pale gray rocks are quietly awaiting the end of the world as we know it.

Called the Georgia Guidestones, the monument is a mystery—nobody knows exactly who commissioned it or why. The only clues to its origin are on a nearby plaque on the ground—which gives the dimensions and explains a series of intricate notches and holes that correspond to the movements of the sun and stars—and the "guides" themselves, directives carved into the rocks. These instructions appear in eight languages ranging from English to Swahili and reflect a peculiar New Age ideology. Some are vaguely eugenic (guide reproduction wisely—improving fitness and diversity); others prescribe standard-issue hippie mysticism (prize truth—beauty—love—seeking harmony with the infinite).

What's most widely agreed upon—based on the evidence available—is that the Guidestones are meant to instruct the dazed survivors of some impending apocalypse as they attempt to reconstitute civilization. Not everyone is comfortable with this notion. A few days before I visited, the stones had been splattered with polyurethane and spray-painted with graffiti, including slogans like "Death to the new world order." This defacement was the first serious act of vandalism in the Guidestones' history, but it was hardly the first objection to their existence. In fact, for more than three decades this uncanny structure in the heart of the Bible Belt has been generating responses that range from enchantment to horror. Supporters (notable among them Yoko Ono) have praised the messages as a stirring call to rational thinking, akin to Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason. Opponents have attacked them as the Ten Commandments of the Antichrist.

Whoever the anonymous architects of the Guidestones were, they knew what they were doing: The monument is a highly engineered structure that flawlessly tracks the sun. It also manages to engender endless fascination, thanks to a carefully orchestrated aura of mystery. And the stones have attracted plenty of devotees to defend against folks who would like them destroyed. Clearly, whoever had the monument placed here understood one thing very well: People prize what they don't understand at least as much as what they do.

The story of the Georgia Guidestones began on a Friday afternoon in June 1979, when an elegant gray-haired gentleman showed up in Elbert County, made his way to the offices of Elberton Granite Finishing, and introduced himself as Robert C. Christian. He claimed to represent "a small group of loyal Americans" who had been planning the installation of an unusually large and complex stone monument. Christian had come to Elberton—the county seat and the granite capital of the world—because he believed its quarries produced the finest stone on the planet.

Joe Fendley, Elberton Granite's president, nodded absently, distracted by the rush to complete his weekly payroll. But when Christian began to describe the monument he had in mind, Fendley stopped what he was doing. Not only was the man asking for stones larger than any that had been quarried in the county, he also wanted them cut, finished, and assembled into some kind of enormous astronomical instrument.

What in the world would it be for? Fendley asked. Christian explained that the structure he had in mind would serve as a compass, calendar, and clock. It would also need to be engraved with a set of guides written in eight of the world's major languages. And it had to be capable of withstanding the most catastrophic events, so that the shattered remnants of humanity would be able to use those guides to reestablish a better civilization than the one that was about to destroy itself.

Monumental Precision

Built to survive the apocalypse, the Georgia Guidestones are not merely instructions for the future—the massive granite slabs also function as a clock, calendar, and compass.

The monument sits at the highest point in Elbert County and is oriented to track the sun's east-west migration year-round.

On an equinox or solstice, visitors who stand at the west side of the "mail slot" are positioned to see the sun rise on the horizon.

An eye-level hole drilled into the center support stone allows stargazers on the south side to locate Polaris, the North Star.

A 7/8-inch hole drilled through the capstone focuses a sunbeam on the center column and at noon pinpoints the day of the year.

Text: Erik Malinowski; illustration: Steve Sanford

Fendley is now deceased, but shortly after the Guidestones went up, an Atlanta television reporter asked what he was thinking when he first heard Christian's plan. "I was thinking, 'I got a nut in here now. How am I going get him out?'" Fendley said. He attempted to discourage the man by quoting him a price several times higher than for any project commissioned there before. The job would require special tools, heavy equipment, and paid consultants, Fendley explained. But Christian merely nodded and asked how long it would take. Fendley didn't rightly know—six months, at least. He wouldn't be able to even consider such an undertaking, he added, until he knew it could be paid for. When Christian asked whether there was a banker in town he considered trustworthy, Fendley saw his chance to unload the strange man and sent him to look for Wyatt Martin, president of the Granite City Bank.

The tall and courtly Martin—the only man in Elberton besides Fendley known to have met R. C. Christian face-to-face—is now 78. "Fendley called me and said, 'A kook over here wants some kind of crazy monument,'" Martin says. "But when this fella showed up he was wearing a very nice, expensive suit, which made me take him a little more seriously. And he was well-spoken, obviously an educated person." Martin was naturally taken aback when the man told him straight out that R. C. Christian was a pseudonym. He added that his group had been planning this secretly for 20 years and wanted to remain anonymous forever. "And when he told me what it was he and this group wanted to do, I just about fell over," Martin says. "I told him, 'I believe you'd be just as well off to take the money and throw it out in the street into the gutters.' He just sort of looked at me and shook his head, like he felt kinda sorry for me, and said, 'You don't understand.'"

Martin led Christian down the street to the town square, where the city had commissioned a towering Bicentennial Memorial Fountain, which included a ring of 13 granite panels, each roughly 2 by 3 feet, signifying the original colonies. "I told him that was about the biggest project ever undertaken around here, and it was nothing compared to what he was talking about," Martin says. "That didn't seem to bother him at all." Promising to return on Monday, the man went off to charter a plane and spend the weekend scouting locations from the air. "By then I half believed him," Martin says.

When Christian came back to the bank Monday, Martin explained that he could not proceed unless he could verify the man's true identity and "get some assurance you can pay for this thing." Eventually, the two negotiated an agreement: Christian would reveal his real name on the condition that Martin promise to serve as his sole intermediary, sign a confidentiality agreement pledging never to disclose the information to another living soul, and agree to destroy all documents and records related to the project when it was finished. "He said he was going to send the money from different banks across the country," Martin says, "because he wanted to make sure it couldn't be traced. He made it clear that he was very serious about secrecy."

Before leaving town, Christian met again with Fendley and presented the contractor with a shoe box containing a wooden model of the monument he wanted, plus 10 or so pages of detailed specifications. Fendley accepted the model and instructions but remained skeptical until Martin phoned the following Friday to say he had just received a $10,000 deposit. After that, Fendley stopped questioning and started working. "My daddy loved a challenge," says Fendley's daughter, Melissa Fendley Caruso, "and he said this was the most challenging project in the history of Elbert County."

Construction of the Guidestones got under way later that summer. Fendley's company lovingly documented the progress of the work in hundreds of photographs. Jackhammers were used to gouge 114 feet into the rock at Pyramid Quarry, searching for hunks of granite big enough to yield the final stones. Fendley and his crew held their breath when the first 28-ton slab was lifted to the surface, wondering if their derricks would buckle under the weight. A special burner (essentially a narrowly focused rocket motor used to cut and finish large blocks of granite) was trucked to Elberton to clean and size the stones, and a pair of master stonecutters was hired to smooth them.

Fendley and Martin helped Christian find a suitable site for the Guidestones in Elbert County: a flat-topped hill rising above the pastures of the Double 7 Farms, with vistas in all directions. For $5,000, owner Wayne Mullinex signed over a 5-acre plot. In addition to the payment, Christian granted lifetime cattle-grazing rights to Mullinex and his children, and Mullinex's construction company got to lay the foundation for the Guidestones.

With the purchase of the land, the Guidestones' future was set. Christian said good-bye to Fendley at the granite company office, adding, "You'll never see me again." Christian then turned and walked out the door—without so much as a handshake.

From then on, Christian communicated solely through Martin, writing a few weeks later to ask that ownership of the land and monument be transferred to Elbert County, which still holds it. Christian reasoned that civic pride would protect it over time. "All of Mr. Christian's correspondence came from different cities around the country," Martin says. "He never sent anything from the same place twice."

The astrological specifications for the Guidestones were so complex that Fendley had to retain the services of an astronomer from the University of Georgia to help implement the design. The four outer stones were to be oriented based on the limits of the sun's yearly migration. The center column needed two precisely calibrated features: a hole through which the North Star would be visible at all times, and a slot that was to align with the position of the rising sun during the solstices and equinoxes. The principal component of the capstone was a 7\8-inch aperture through which a beam of sunlight would pass at noon each day, shining on the center stone to indicate the day of the year.

The main feature of the monument, though, would be the 10 dictates carved into both faces of the outer stones, in eight languages: English, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi, and Swahili. A mission statement of sorts (let these be guidestones to an age of reason) was also to be engraved on the sides of the capstone in Egyptian hieroglyphics, classical Greek, Sanskrit, and Babylonian cuneiform. The United Nations provided some of the translations (including those for the dead languages), which were stenciled onto the stones and etched with a sandblaster.

By early 1980, a bulldozer was scraping the Double 7 hilltop to bedrock, where five granite slabs serving as a foundation were laid out in a paddle-wheel design. A 100-foot-tall crane was used to lift the stones into place. Each of the outer rocks was 16 feet 4 inches high, 6 feet 6 inches wide, and 1 foot 7 inches thick. The center column was the same (except only half the width), and the capstone measured 9 feet 8 inches long, 6 feet 6 inches wide, and 1 foot 7 inches thick. Including the foundation stones, the monument's total weight was almost 240,000 pounds. Covered with sheets of black plastic in preparation for an unveiling on the vernal equinox, the Guidestones towered over the cattle that continued to graze beneath it at the approach of winter's end.

The monument ignited controversy before it was even finished. The first rumor began among members of the Elberton Granite Association, jealous of the attention being showered on one of their own: Fendley was behind the whole thing, they said, aided by his friend Martin, the banker. The gossip became so poisonous that the two men agreed to take a lie detector test at the Elberton Civic Center. The scandal withered when The Elberton Star reported that they had both passed convincingly, but the publicity brought a new wave of complaints. As word of what was being inscribed spread, Martin recalls, even people he considered friends asked him why he was doing the devil's work. A local minister, James Travenstead, predicted that "occult groups" would flock to the Guidestones, warning that "someday a sacrifice will take place here." Those inclined to agree were hardly discouraged by Charlie Clamp, the sandblaster charged with carving each of the 4,000-plus characters on the stones: During the hundreds of hours he spent etching the guides, Clamp said, he had been constantly distracted by "strange music and disjointed voices."

The unveiling on March 22, 1980, was a community celebration. Congressmember Doug Barnard, whose district contained Elberton, addressed a crowd of 400 that flowed down the hillside and included television news crews from Atlanta. Soon Joe Fendley was the most famous Elbertonian since Daniel Tucker, the 18th-century minister memorialized in the folk song "Old Dan Tucker." Bounded by the Savannah and Broad rivers but miles from the nearest interstate—"as rural as rural can be," in the words of current Star publisher Gary Jones—Elberton was suddenly a tourist destination, with visitors from all over the world showing up to see the Guidestones. "We'd have people from Japan and China and India and everywhere wanting to go up and see the monument," Martin says. And Fendley's boast that he had "put Elberton on the map" was affirmed literally in spring 2005, when National Geographic Traveler listed the Guidestones as a feature in its Geotourism MapGuide to Appalachia.

But many who read what was written on the stones were unsettled. Guide number one was, of course, the real stopper: maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature. There were already 4.5 billion people on the planet, meaning eight out of nine had to go (today it would be closer to 12 out of 13). This instruction was echoed and expanded by tenet number two: guide reproduction wisely—improving fitness and diversity. It didn't take a great deal of imagination to draw an analogy to the practices of, among others, the Nazis. Guide number three instructed readers to unite humanity with a living new language. This sent a shiver up the spine of local ministers who knew that the Book of Revelations warned of a common tongue and a one-world government as the accomplishments of the Antichrist. Guide number four—rule passion—faith—tradition—and all things with tempered reason—was similarly threatening to Christians committed to the primacy of faith over all. The last six guides were homiletic by comparison. protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts. let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court. avoid petty laws and useless officials. balance personal rights with social duties. prize truth—beauty—love—seeking harmony with the infinite. be not a cancer on the earth—leave room for nature—leave room for nature.

Even as locals debated the relative merits of these commandments, the dire predictions of Travenstead seemed to be coming true. Within a few months, a coven of witches from Atlanta adopted the Guidestones as their home away from home, making weekend pilgrimages to Elberton to stage various pagan rites ("dancing and chanting and all that kind of thing," Martin says) and at least one warlock-witch marriage ceremony. No humans were sacrificed on the altar of the stones, but there are rumors that several chickens were beheaded. A 1981 article in the monthly magazine UFO Report cited Naunie Batchelder (identified in the story as "a noted Atlanta psychic") as predicting that the true purpose of the guides would be revealed "within the next 30 years." Viewed from directly overhead, the Guidestones formed an X, the piece in UFO Report observed, making for a perfect landing site.

Visitors kept coming, but after several failed investigations into the identity of R. C. Christian, the media lost interest. Curiosity flared again briefly in 1993, when Yoko Ono contributed a track called "Georgia Stone" to a tribute album for avant-garde composer John Cage, with Ono chanting the 10th and final guide nearly verbatim: "Be not a cancer on Earth—leave room for nature—leave room for nature." A decade later, however, when comedienne Roseanne Barr tried to work a bit on the Guidestones into her comeback tour, nobody seemed to care.

Christian kept in touch with Martin, writing the banker so regularly that they became pen pals. Occasionally, Christian would call from a pay phone at the Atlanta airport to say he was in the area, and the two would rendezvous for dinner in the college town of Athens, a 40-mile drive west of Elberton. By this time, Martin no longer questioned Christian's secrecy. The older man had successfully deflected Martin's curiosity when the two first met, by quoting Henry James' observations of Stonehenge: "You may put a hundred questions to these rough-hewn giants as they bend in grim contemplation of their fallen companions, but your curiosity falls dead in the vast sunny stillness that enshrouds them." Christian "never would tell me a thing about this group he belonged to," Martin says. The banker received his last letter from Christian right around the time of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and assumes the man—who would have been in his mid-eighties—has since passed away.

The mysterious story of R. C. Christian and the absence of information about the true meaning of the Guidestones was bound to become an irresistible draw for conspiracy theorists and "investigators" of all kinds. Not surprisingly, three decades later there is no shortage of observers rushing to fill the void with all sorts of explanations.

Among them is an activist named Mark Dice, author of a book called The Resistance Manifesto. In 2005, Dice (who was using a pseudonym of his own—"John Conner"—appropriated from the Terminator franchise's main character) began to demand that the Guidestones be "smashed into a million pieces." He claims that the monument has "a deep Satanic origin," a stance that has earned him plenty of coverage, both in print and on the Web. According to Dice, Christian was a high-ranking member of "a Luciferian secret society" at the forefront of the New World Order. "The elite are planning to develop successful life-extension technology in the next few decades that will nearly stop the aging process," Dice says, "and they fear that with the current population of Earth so high, the masses will be using resources that the elite want for themselves. The Guidestones are the New World Order's Ten Commandments. They're also a way for the elite to get a laugh at the expense of the uninformed masses, as their agenda stands as clear as day and the zombies don't even notice it."

Ironically, Dice's message has mainly produced greater publicity for the Guidestones. This, in turn, has brought fresh visitors to the monument and made Elbert County officials even less inclined to remove the area's only major tourist attraction.

Phyllis Brooks, who runs the Elbert County Chamber of Commerce, pronounced herself aghast last November when the Guidestones were attacked by vandals for the first time ever. While Dice denies any involvement in the assault, he seems to have inspired it: Spray-painted on the stones were messages like "Jesus will beat u satanist" and "No one world government." Other defacements asserted that the Council on Foreign Relations is "ran by the devil," that the 9/11 attacks were an inside job, and that President Obama is a Muslim. The vandals also splashed the Guidestones with polyurethane, which is much more difficult to remove than paint. Despite the graffiti's alignment with his views, Dice says he disapproves of the acts. "A lot of people were glad such a thing happened and saw it as standing up against the New World Order," Dice says, "while others who are unhappy with the stones saw the actions as counterproductive and inappropriate."

Martin winces every time he hears Dice's "Luciferian secret society" take on the Guidestones. But while he disagrees, he also admits that he doesn't know for sure. "All I can tell you is that Mr. Christian always seemed a very decent and sincere fella to me."

Dice, of course, is far from the only person with a theory about the Guidestones. Jay Weidner, a former Seattle radio commentator turned erudite conspiracy hunter, has heavily invested time and energy into one of the most popular hypotheses. He argues that Christian and his associates were Rosicrucians, followers of the Order of the Rosy Cross, a secret society of mystics that originated in late medieval Germany and claim understanding of esoteric truths about nature, the universe, and the spiritual realm that have been concealed from ordinary people. Weidner considers the name R. C. Christian an homage to the legendary 14th-century founder of the Rosicrucians, a man first identified as Frater C.R.C. and later as Christian Rosenkreuz. Secrecy, Weidner notes, has been a hallmark of the Rosicrucians, a group that announced itself to the world in the early 17th century with a pair of anonymous manifestos that created a huge stir across Europe, despite the fact that no one was ever able to identify a single member. While the guides on the Georgia stones fly in the face of orthodox Christian eschatology, they conform quite well to the tenets of Rosicrucianism, which stress reason and endorse a harmonic relationship with nature.

Weidner also has a theory about the purpose of the Guidestones. An authority on the hermetic and alchemical traditions that spawned the Rosicrucians, he believes that for generations the group has been passing down knowledge of a solar cycle that climaxes every 13,000 years. During this culmination, outsize coronal mass ejections are supposed to devastate Earth. Meanwhile, the shadowy organization behind the Guidestones is now orchestrating a "planetary chaos," Weidner believes, that began with the recent collapse of the US financial system and will result eventually in major disruptions of oil and food supplies, mass riots, and ethnic wars worldwide, all leading up to the Big Event on December 21, 2012. "They want to get the population down," Weidner says, "and this is what they think will do it. The Guidestones are there to instruct the survivors."

On hearing Weidner's ideas, Martin shakes his head and says it's "the sort of thing that makes me want to tell people everything I know." Martin has long since retired from banking and no longer lives in Elberton, yet he's still the Guidestones' official—and only—secret-keeper. "But I can't tell," the old man quickly adds. "I made a promise." Martin also made a promise to destroy all the records of his dealings with Christian, though he hasn't kept that one—at least not yet. In the back of his garage is a large plastic bin (actually, the hard-sided case of an IBM computer he bought back in 1983) stuffed with every document connected to the Guidestones that ever came into his possession, including the letters from Christian.

For years Martin thought he might write a book, but now he knows he probably won't. What he also won't do is allow me to look through the papers. When I ask whether he's prepared to take what he knows to his grave, Martin replies that Christian would want him to do just that: "All along, he said that who he was and where he came from had to be kept a secret. He said mysteries work that way. If you want to keep people interested, you can let them know only so much." The rest is enshrouded in the vast sunny stillness.

Randall Sullivan ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) wrote about the electric-vehicle company ZAP in issue 16.04.

AP IMPACT: Tons of drugs dumped into wastewater   

Sunday, 14 September 2008 14:18 

Tons of drugs dumped into wastewater

By JEFF DONN, MARTHA MENDOZA and JUSTIN PRITCHARD

Associated Press Writers

U.S. hospitals and long-term care facilities annually flush millions of pounds of unused pharmaceuticals down the drain, pumping contaminants into America's drinking water, according to an ongoing Associated Press investigation.

These discarded medications are expired, spoiled, over-prescribed or unneeded. Some are simply unused because patients refuse to take them, can't tolerate them or die with nearly full 90-day supplies of multiple prescriptions on their nightstands.

Few of the country's 5,700 hospitals and 45,000 long-term care homes keep data on the pharmaceutical waste they generate. Based on a small sample, though, the AP was able to project an annual national estimate of at least 250 million pounds of pharmaceuticals and contaminated packaging, with no way to separate out the drug volume.

One thing is clear: The massive amount of pharmaceuticals being flushed by the health services industry is aggravating an emerging problem documented by a series of AP investigative stories — the commonplace presence of minute concentrations of pharmaceuticals in the nation's drinking water supplies, affecting at least 46 million Americans.

Researchers are finding evidence that even extremely diluted concentrations of pharmaceutical residues harm fish, frogs and other aquatic species in the wild. Also, researchers report that human cells fail to grow normally in the laboratory when exposed to trace concentrations of certain drugs.

The original AP series in March prompted federal and local legislative hearings, brought about calls for mandatory testing and disclosure, and led officials in more than two dozen additional metropolitan areas to analyze their drinking water.

And while most pharmaceutical waste is unmetabolized medicine that is flushed into sewers and waterways through human excretion, the AP examined institutional drug disposal and its dangers because unused drugs add another substantial dimension to the problem.

"Obviously, we're flushing them — which is not ideal," acknowledges Mary Ludlow at White Oak Pharmacy, a Spartanburg, S.C., firm that serves 15 nursing homes and assisted-living residences in the Carolinas.

Such facilities, along with hospitals and hospices, pose distinct challenges because they handle large quantities of powerful and toxic drugs — often more powerful and more toxic than the medications people use at home. Tests of sewage from several hospitals in Paris and Oslo uncovered hormones, antibiotics, heart and skin medicines and pain relievers.

Hospital waste is particularly laden with both germs and antibiotics, says microbiologist Thomas Schwartz at Karlsruhe Research Center in Germany.

The mix is a scary one.

In tests of wastewater retrieved near other European hospitals and one in Davis County, Utah, scientists were able to link drug dumping to virulent antibiotic-resistant germs and genetic mutations that may promote cancers, according to scientific studies reviewed by the AP.

Researchers have focused on cell-poisoning anticancer drugs and fluoroquinolone class antibiotics, like anthrax fighter ciprofloxacin.

At the University of Rouen Medical Center in France, 31 of 38 wastewater samples showed the ability to mutate genes. A Swiss study of hospital wastewater suggested that fluoroquinolone antibiotics also can disfigure bacterial DNA, raising the question of whether such drug concoctions can heighten the risk of cancer in humans.

Pharmacist Boris Jolibois, one of the French researchers at Compiegne Medical Center, believes hospitals should act quickly, even before the effects are well understood. "Something should be done now," he said. "It's just common sense."

___

Some contaminated packaging and drug waste are incinerated; more is sent to landfills. But it is believed that most unused pharmaceuticals from health care facilities are dumped down sinks or toilets, usually without violating state or federal regulations.

The Environmental Protection Agency told assembled water experts last year that it believes nursing homes and other long-term care facilities use sewer systems to dispose of most of their unused drugs. A water utility surveyed 45 long-term care facilities in 2006 and calculated that two-thirds of their unused drugs were scrapped this way, according to the National Association of Clean Water Agencies.

An internal EPA memo last year included pharmaceuticals on a list of "major pollutants of concern" at health care businesses. Still, few medical centers keep comprehensive records of drugs they cast down toilets or into landfills. When data are kept, drugs and tainted packaging are combined in the same totals.

In an attempt to quantify the problem, the AP examined records in Minnesota, where state regulators have pushed hospital administrators to keep closer track than elsewhere. Fourteen facilities were surveyed, in a range of settings from rural to urban. The AP projected those annual totals onto the national patient population for hospitals and adjusted for the relatively lower pharmaceutical use of Minnesotans. Since long-term care facilities generate more drug waste than hospitals, the AP conservatively doubled the number.

That calculation produced an estimate of at least 250 million pounds of annual drug waste from hospitals and long-term care centers, further complicated by the fact experts say drugs might account for only up to half of pharmaceutical waste, while the rest is packaging.

The AP estimate excludes many other sources of health industry drug waste, from doctors' to veterinary offices. Smaller medical offices typically dispose of expired samples and unwanted drugs like ordinary consumers — with little forethought.

Alan Davidner, president of Vestara of Irvine, Calif., which sells systems to manage drug waste, says his limited sampling suggests the health care industry's contribution could even be higher.

Plus, untold amounts of pills and tablets are being thrown away each year at federal and state correctional institutions.

At a state prison in Oak Park Heights, Minn., nurse Linda Peterson says the hospital unit serving inmates statewide has been throwing away up to 12,000 pills a year. She says some heart medicines and antibiotics are simply chucked into the trash. Tightly regulated narcotics susceptible to abuse go down the toilet.

"We flush it and flush it and flush it — until we can't see any more pills," she says.

She notes the presence of nursing homes, a hospital and another prison in the same area. "So what are all these facilities doing, if we're throwing away about 700 to 1,000 pills a month?"

___

The EPA is considering whether to impose the first national standard for how much drug waste may be released into waterways by the medical services industry, but Ben Grumbles, the EPA's top water administrator, says a decision won't be made until next year, at the earliest.

So far, regulators have done little more than politely ask the medical care industry to stop pouring drugs into the wastewater system. "Treating the toilet as a trash can isn't a good option," says Grumbles.

Some think it's time to do more than ask. "It's strange that we have rules about the oil from your car; you're not allowed to simply flush it down the sewer," says U.S. Rep. Tim Murphy, R-Pa. "So why do we let these drugs, without any kind of regulation, continue to be flushed away in the water supply?"

Landfills are one alternative. At least they don't empty directly, and immediately, into waterways like some sewage.

Marjorie E. Powell, a lawyer for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, says landfills are "more environmentally friendly," while EPA spokeswoman Roxanne Smith contends that landfilling of hazardous pharmaceutical waste "poses little threat to the public."

Still, Grumbles acknowledges that landfills, while safer, are not a permanent solution. That's because pharmaceuticals can eventually reach waterways from landfills through leaks or intentional releases of treated seepage known as leachate.

An agency staffer wrote in a memo last year: "EPA recognizes that residuals in the leachate could contaminate groundwater supplies and ultimately reach water treatment plants, but disposal into the trash is currently considered a BMP" — or best management practice.

Already, researchers have detected trace concentrations of drugs — including the pain reliever ibuprofen and seizure medicine carbamazepine — in seepage or groundwater near landfills.

Environmental professionals outside government are reaching a consensus that incinerators are the best disposal method.

"That's the best practice for today because we don't really know what the hell to do with the stuff," says industrial engineer Laura Brannen, an executive at Waste Management Healthcare Solutions, of Houston. She says burning destroys more drug waste than all other methods, though some contaminants may escape in smoke and ash.

On a recent day at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis, Mary Kuch was getting ready to squirt leftovers from a syringe of hydromorphone, a powerful morphine derivative, into a sink. When she started out in nursing 18 years ago, "I took it for granted, because I was a young nurse, and that's what other nurses did," she says. "But I did find it strange."

These days, only four gallons — drugs with high potential for abuse — go down the hospital's drains each year. Nearly all leftover medicine and contaminated packaging are instead tossed into black bins and rolled to a hospital storage room crammed with scores of 55-gallon drums.

There, waste-company employee Bryant Sears — dressed in a Teflon suit, rubber gloves and goggles — conducts a sorting operation. Pills, blister packs and liquid medicines collected in vials, along with syringes and IV bags, are separated out according to differing disposal standards and methods. Occasionally, he glances at a wall-sized placard with details on which drug goes where — hazardous waste in one barrel, nonhazardous in another. A roll of "hazardous waste" stickers hangs from a pole on the wall.

Sears points to some epinephrine, a heart drug, saying, "Now that it's past its expiration date, it's waste."

These leftovers and discards ultimately will be incinerated.

EPA's Smith says even municipal burners unapproved for hazardous waste "will destroy all but a minute fraction" of organic compounds — the kind found in pharmaceuticals.

But Stephen DiZio, a manager with the California Department of Toxic Substances Control, says not so fast. "I don't think we're encouraging incineration of anything. The public outcry would be so great."

The push for incineration hides an irony. Several decades ago, drug waste was routinely chucked into the trash and burned in hospital or city incinerators.

Then came a national campaign against air pollution. Most hospitals shut down their burners, and city incinerator managers became pickier about what they'd accept. With options restricted, hospitals began shipping more drug waste to landfills — and dumping more into toilets and sinks.

___

A few choices are expanding. Some states have passed laws to make it easier to contribute unused drugs to charity pharmacies that supply low-income patients.

Also, a small share of unused drugs is shipped back to manufacturers for credit — and incineration, waste consultants say. But the drugs are supposed to be sent back in original packaging — sometimes impractical because the packaging is discarded or damaged.

Several long-term care residences want to deploy automatic drug-dispensing machines that suppliers would refill often to reduce waste.

While not yet practical, there are several experimental technologies, such as destroying trace drugs with an electrical arc, microwaves, or caustic chemicals.

Increasingly, some bureaucrats and health professionals are suggesting that drug makers help pay costs of managing drug waste. But the pharmaceutical industry says there's insufficient evidence of environmental harm to warrant the expense.

But impatience is mounting. Even the EPA has begun to take such suggestions seriously. Grumbles says drug makers "should do more for product stewardship and meds retrieval now." He says it would be unwise to wait for all the proof.

For now, many health facilities, especially small ones, are put off by the cost of proper handling. Drugs deemed hazardous by the EPA — about 5 percent of the market — might cost up to $2 a pound to incinerate in a certified hazardous waste incinerator, says Vestara's Davidner. A pound might cost 35 cents to burn in a regular trash incinerator.

Tom Clark, an executive at the American Society of Consultant Pharmacists, wonders: "When you can flush it down the toilet for free, why would you want to pay — unless there's some significant penalties?"

___

The AP National Investigative Team can be reached at investigate (at) ap.org

By David E. Wilkins

Story Published: Mar 25, 2009

Story Updated: Mar 25, 2009

No economist am I – my fields of study are politics, law and history – but the present state of profound economic disrepair across Native nations, the United States and the global community, calls for each of us to put on our thinking caps and ponder what we have experienced and what the next steps might be.

The current depression has erupted at a particularly inauspicious moment in world history. It is a time when frightening environmental conditions – global warming, desertification, rising seas, species decimation, pollution of every kind – are simultaneously wreaking havoc across the planet.

The majority of these debilitating developments have been caused or dramatically exacerbated by human actions – actions fueled by attitudes, ideologies, economic systems and values that for far too many generations emphasized a human-centric approach that rejected or denied the legitimacy and integrity of other beings.

Historically, Native peoples worldwide generally operated spiritually-centered and kin-based political, economic and social systems that respected personal and collective autonomy and sought to manage and positively relate to environments in a sustainable and respectful fashion.

Close encounters of the European and Euro-American kind dramatically transformed Native communities in every respect, including systematic colonialistic efforts to economically incorporate indigenous nations and their economic systems into the ever-expanding worldwide capitalist system.

By the time the Great Depression was seared into the minds, bodies and souls of millions with the catastrophic collapse of the stock market in October 1929, the vast majority of Native peoples had already been economically dependent for several decades. In fact, the 1928 Meriam Report, a comprehensive two-year federal study of Indian communities, had stated that “an overwhelming majority of the Indians are poor, even extremely poor.”

Ironically, over the next decade, as the depression deepened, exacerbated by the Dust Bowl that enveloped great swaths of the country, Native experiences in the United States ran the gamut from sheer depression to relative calm security.

Interestingly, while most federal Indian policy eras have received the attention of numerous scholars, the status of Native nations during the Great Depression has, to my knowledge, not been systematically chronicled. That silence, in itself, is pregnant with meaning, and needs to be explored through critical case studies of the impact of that transformative economic event on Native peoples.

But the anecdotal evidence points to the early 20th century Great Depression as being a most fascinating and complex era for Natives.

For example, John Collier, the commissioner of Indians affairs, in his 1939 annual report, noted that the 1928 Meriam Report had starkly described how pervasive poverty was throughout Indian country. “Today, Indians are still poor, and many of them live just above the minimum of subsistence. A very few are wealthy; many are in great poverty.” This statement suggests a degree of economic improvement among Native nations during, arguably, the most difficult financial crisis of the 20th century.

Of course, some tribal communities suffered profoundly during the 1930s. The Navajo Nation, for instance, as a result of the federally imposed livestock reduction program and low market prices for livestock and woven blankets, were dealt a crippling economic blow and it would take another three decades before they began to stabilize.

For many other tribal nations, however, the Great Depression was anything but that. First, while the Dust Bowl had devastating consequences for much of the nation, for Indian country it actually enabled some tribal governments to regain portions of their lands because many white farmers and ranchers who had owned or leased tribal territory were forced to sell and vacated the reservations.

Second, the Great Depression also shattered, at least for a time, the view that limitless “progress” and “rugged individualism” were ideal features of American life and the American people. The ways of Native peoples, many of whom still adhered to communal lifestyles and remained close to their homelands, appealed to larger society’s members, who were seeking more meaningful and sustainable ways of living.

Third, a number of the Indian New Deal “stimulus”-type programs – the Civilian Conservation Corp (which employed thousands of Indians on road construction, communication lines, forest fire suppression, fence construction, etc.), and the Revolving Credit Fund (established under the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act and used to fund cooperative associations of many kinds – lumber mills, livestock associations, fisheries, tourist cabins, community dairy farms and hay production), created a variety of jobs and programs that had enormously beneficial consequences for many reservations.

One review of a well-done study by Byron Nelson Jr. on the Hupa people of California, determined that this nation emerged in the late 1930s “culturally intact, reasonably prosperous and politically autonomous. …”

Of course, every economic depression is different. The current depression is not and will not be as traumatic as that of the 1929-1939 one. And Native nations today are certainly not economically situated the same way they were 80 years ago – Indian gambling operations, a more educated tribal citizenry and maturing governing institutions have altered the economic and political landscape in profound ways.

The $5.2 billion for tribal governments included in the stimulus law will be an important infusion of needed capital in tribal economies. But equally important, tribal leaders and others in the community need to visit with any remaining community elders who remember the previous depression to get a sense of what actually transpired within their lands.

Besides the interviews a detailed review of historical and archival records should be conducted to see what can be gleaned about each tribe’s path through the Great Depression. We may well pick up some ideas that can hold us in good stead through this current economic debacle.

This kind of history, Arthur Schlesinger once wrote, has many uses because, “History is to the nation as memory is to the individual. As persons deprived of memory become disoriented and lost, not knowing where they have been and where they are going, so a nation denied a conception of the past will be disabled in dealing with its present and its future.”

David E. Wilkins, Lumbee, is professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota.

At the Edge of the Abyss

by Gary North

This week has been filled with surprises. It began with bad news for international stock markets. It got rolling with unprecedented news from the Federal Reserve System. It got wild with nutty news from a bureaucrat in New York. Then it settled down to wild swings on the American stock market.

All in all, this week was a sign that the economy is headed toward the falls. Keep close watch on the canoe 100 yards ahead of you. If, without warning, it disappears, start paddling for the shore. Either shore. Fast.

On Monday, Americans were home, celebrating the birth of Martin Luther King. Well, maybe not celebrating. But home.

The American stock markets were closed. That left foreign markets to set the pace. They fell. They looked like they were in free-fall. Then, the next day – day two for them – they fell again, only worse.

Fifteen minutes before the New York Stock Exchange opened, there was an announcement from the Federal Reserve System. The Federal Open Market Committee had met in secret the night before and had voted, 8 to 1, to lower the target rate for the Federal Funds rate by three quarters of a point: 75 basis points, as they call it in the trade.

First, this announcement came a week before the scheduled meeting of the FOMC. This was unprecedented. Second, the FOMC met secretly overnight. Third, the rate cut was the largest single cut in over two decades. Fourth, the announcement came 15 minutes before the market opened.

What does this tell us? This: eight of the nine members of the FOMC thought the stock market was about to collapse. This was a panic move by eight frightened men in the face of a potential panic sell-off by frightened mutual fund managers, on behalf of frightened investors who would start selling as soon as the market opened.

This is exactly what happened. Sell orders from the day before were executed. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell like a stone by 450 points. This carried the Dow below its high in March, 2000, officially wiping out all profits for eight years, not counting the 21% loss due to price inflation, i.e., lower purchasing power.

Then the market turned. Oh, joy: the FOMC had intervened to save the stock market! Up, up, up it went, almost to the opening price. Then it fell 170 points. Then it rebounded almost to break-even. Then it fell. Then it rebounded. Then it fell. It wound up down by 128. Whew! Saved by the FED!

Overnight (for us), stocks rebounded in Asia (day three). There was one cause: confidence that the FOMC's action would save America from a recession. Asia's markets recovered most of what they had lost for two days.

This recovery was extremely important, but not for reasons offered. It revealed that Asian stock markets are completely dependent on the Asian investors' perception of America's economy. This means that if the U.S. stock market falls, Asia's stock markets will fall. The economies are interlinked. But America's economy is the tail that wags the dog.

SOROS' WARNING

George Soros doesn't think so. I hate to argue with the multi-billionaire currency futures guru, but what happened this week says he's wrong.

On Tuesday, he gave a speech in Davos, Switzerland at the annual Davos summit. He said that America is clearly headed for a recession. He also said that Asia isn't.

He added this: the U.S. dollar is now being abandoned by central banks. It will no longer be the world's exclusive reserve currency. Bloomberg reported:

"The current crisis is not only the bust that follows the housing boom, it's basically the end of a 60-year period of continuing credit expansion based on the dollar as the reserve currency," Soros said in a debate today at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "Now the rest of the world is increasingly unwilling to accumulate dollars."

This is true, but this has been going on for several years, as I have noted before. This quiet abandonment of the dollar, not America's price inflation (low) or monetary inflation (zero in recent years – M-1), is why the dollar has been falling and gold has been rising.

A recession is almost certain in the United States, he said. But he is optimistic about the world's economy.

"I think it is almost inevitable that the turmoil in the financial markets will affect the real economy," said the founder of New York-based hedge-fund firm Soros Fund Management LLC, which has $17 billion in assets. China and India are benefiting from globalization to a degree that "I don't expect a global recession," he added.

While I don't control $17 billion in assets – why, not even 10% of this – I think he is wrong. I think what happened early this week indicated how wrong he is. The world's stock markets went into a tailspin on the threat of a U.S. recession. Then most of them recovered because of the supposed ability of the FED to avoid a recession here.

Why would the stock markets move in lock step if the underlying economies were not so tightly intertwined that a fall in demand from the United States will not spread?

Here is one possible response: "If China's economy is growing at 10%, why should a 1% or even 2% decline in the U.S. economy pull down China?" Here is my answer.

CHINA'S BOOM

China's central bank has already announced that it will take steps the control price inflation. A Reuters story on December 30 announced:

China's central bank will implement a tight monetary policy in 2008, using a range of tools to keep a check on liquidity, the central bank governor, Zhou Xiaochuan, reaffirmed.

The People's Bank of China has waged a war on excess liquidity and inflation in 2007, raising interest rates six times and increasing the proportion of deposits that banks must hold in reserve 10 times, to a record level. Still, annual consumer inflation is running at the quickest pace in over a decade, and many economists are concerned that it could spill over from food into the broader economy.

The imagery of faithful central bankers waging war on inflation is as inspiring as the image of Alan Greenspan waging war on investment bubbles. The economic boom in China has been created in large part by the central bank, which has inflated M-1 at rates in the range of 17% to 19% for years.

For China's central bankers to warn about price inflation is comparable to the warnings from the Federal Reserve's spokesmen regarding price inflation. In both cases, the central banks are the exclusive cause of the price inflation. From 1938 until now, there has been only one year – 1955 – where America's prices fell, and then by only 1%. That is because the FED has increased the money supply every year since 1933.

At some point, China's central bank will be successful in slowing price inflation. The economic boom requires ever-larger percentage increases of the money supply. By merely following the policies of the previous year, the central bank will produce a recession. If the central bank is serious about slowing inflation through interest rate increases, it will see its goal achieved. Price inflation will in fact slow. The cause of the slowdown will be a recession in China.

What could trigger this? A recession in the United States could. Falling demand for the goods produced by China's export sector will produce bankruptcies in China. They will order no more goods and services. These effects will ripple through the Chinese economy. In the absence of the recessionary efforts of central bank policy, these ripples could be contained by growth in the other sectors. But a reduction of Chinese economic growth is already in the pipeline. The central bank's policy of letting interest rates rise are sufficient to create a domestic recession.

When China goes into recession, assuming the U.S. is also in recession, the whole world will go into recession. This is why I think Soros is wrong. The crisis in the subprime market is spreading to the corporate bond market. The bond insurers are facing bankruptcy. This will lower the ratings of the bonds held by banks all over the world.

This leads me to Wednesday's stock market reversal.

THE 600-POINT RUMOR

The Dow opened Wednesday in panic sell-off mode. It opened at 11,950. It gapped down in one shot to 11,750. Then it fell to 11,700. Then it went back up almost to 11,850. Then it steadily retreated to 11,650. That was just before 1 p.m. Then it reversed. Up, up, up it went. It closed at 12,200. The move was in the range of 600 points, and was reported as such by the press.

What could cause such a reversal? Only after the market closed did the general public find out.

At about 1 p.m., there was a report issued by the office of the New York State Insurance Department. The head of the Department had called a meeting of New York bankers, which was beginning. London's Financial Times described what happened next.

Leading US banks are under pressure from New York state's insurance regulator to provide as much as $15bn to support struggling bond insurers, people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday night.

Eric Dinallo, New York insurance superintendent, held a two-hour meeting with bank executives on Wednesday and urged them to provide as much as $5bn in initial capital to support the insurers – the largest of which are MBIA and Ambac – and ultimately to commit up to $15bn.

Consider what this meeting was about. Companies that have issued insurance contracts to cover for losses in bond holdings are now threatened with bankruptcy because of the turmoil in the subprime credit markets and also the huge market called credit default swaps. These companies may not have enough money in reserve to cover the losses. Their stock market value had tumbled. They were facing bankruptcy. (In my view, they still are.)

Who are the parties who have paid premiums for this insurance? Banks, mainly. Hedge funds are also on the other side of the contracts. If these insurers go belly-up, the market value of the formerly insured bonds will fall. This will create losses for the banks and hedge funds – potentially gigantic losses.

So, the head of the state insurance department called in bankers – whose portfolios are at risk by the bankruptcy of the insurers – and suggested that the pony up as much as $15 billion to cover the losses of the insurers.

Got that? The insured are supposed to insure the insurers against loss. Why? Because if the insurers go belly-up, the banks will experience a loss.

This sounds crazy. But it makes sense under this scenario: the collapse of the bond market threatens the banks by a lot more than $15 billion. If the banks called in are facing losses so huge that $15 billion looks like a bargain, can you visualize what the threat is internationally? After all, the commissioner did not call in banks from outside New York.

The International Herald Tribune, owned by the New York Times, reported on January 24 that the threat of default is creating widespread concern.

Regulators fear a possible chain of events in which the troubled bond insurers, MBIA and Ambac, might be unable to keep their promise to pay investors if borrowers default on their debt.

That could leave the buyers of the bonds – including many banks and pension funds – on the hook for untold billions of dollars in losses, shaking confidence in the financial system.

It was in this context that the discussion of a $15b bail-out took place.

The notion that the failure of even one big bond insurer might touch off a chain reaction of losses across the financial world has unnerved Wall Street and Washington. It was a factor in the Federal Reserve's decision on Tuesday to calm investors by reducing interest rates by three-quarters of a point, to 3.5 percent.

The bond-insurance industry has never before been threatened by a failure of major bond insurers. It has been a low-risk industry, the article reports. Not any more.

"Regulators are furiously trying to come up with a plan," said Rob Haines, an analyst at CreditSights, a research firm, who was not at the meeting. . . .

While $15 billion might seem like a large amount of money for banks to commit to bond guarantors at a time when many investors have lost faith in them, Haines said it would be smaller than the billions the banks might have to write down if the companies lost their top ratings or incurred major losses.

"It's a calculated kind of risk," he said.

A spokesman for Ambac did not return calls seeking comment. A spokeswoman for MBIA declined to comment.

What are we talking about in terms of potential losses?

MBIA has estimated that in the worst case, which it described as a one in 10,000 event, it expects to incur losses of $10 billion, a fraction of the $673 billion it has insured.

I don't know about you, but when I read "$673 billion," insured by a single company in the industry, I grow nervous. Sorry, but I do.

I also think: "What kind of people paid premiums to a company to insure $673 billion worth of bonds?"

Answer: the best and the brightest, the people whose decisions have laid the foundations of the present crisis, which, if it occurs, will re-shape the world's economic system. You know: people like Charles Prince, the former CEO of America's second largest bank, under whose administration, Citigroup has lost (so far) an admitted $18 billion.

My conclusion: The international capital markets are at the edge of the abyss.

The article in the Financial Times added this information.

People familiar with the matter said the specifics of a possible capital infusion had yet to be decided, but contributions would not necessarily be based on how much exposure each bank has to bond insurers.

Some participants in the meeting described the discussions as at an early stage.

Let me summarize. A bureaucrat in charge of regulating MBIA calls in New York bankers to discuss a bail-out totalling (initially) $15 billion. There are no specifics announced. This is only a preliminary discussion. Result: the Dow rises almost 600 points in the afternoon.

If you think stock mutual fund managers were ready to grasp at straws, you have the picture.

CONCLUSION

We appear to be in the early phase of a financial earthquake that will get into the history textbooks. The volatility of the American stock market indicates something severe, yet at present is being contained. Contained by what? By rumors and hope.

I do not suggest that you entrust your financial future to people who invest in terms of rumors and hope. These are the same people who advised clients that they should hold a balanced portfolio of American stocks back in early March of 2000. That portfolio is lower today by 21% due to price inflation, and if the portfolio was the S&P 500, lower by an additional 15% because of recent market declines.

The bad news is just getting rolling.

Stay tuned.

January 26, 2008

Copyright © 2008 LewRockwell.com

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9-19-9

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Barack Obama: The Naked Emperor

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Behind the falsification of US economic data

By Peter Daniels
2 June 2008In recent years, it has become increasingly clear to those who follow US economic statistics that there is something dubious about the numbers released by official government agencies and used to guide many aspects of social and public policy.The details and chronology of the corruption of economic data are presented in a new book by Kevin Phillips, the political commentator and former Republican Party adviser who has become something of a muckraking critic of the “excesses” that he helped set in motion. The book is entitled, Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American CapitalismPhillips summarizes some of his main conclusions in an article in the current issue of Harper’s Magazine. The article focuses primarily on three measures: the monthly Consumer Price Index (CPI), the quarterly Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and the monthly figure for the unemployment rate. Phillips convincingly demonstrates that the real unemployment rate in the United States is between 9 and 12 percent, not the 5 percent or less that is officially claimed. The real rate of inflation is not 2 or 3 percent, but instead, between 7 and 10 percent. And real economic growth has been about 1 percent, not the 3-4 percent officially claimed during the most recent Wall Street and housing bubble that has burst.Phillips’s background makes his statements all the more significant.He was a prime strategist for Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaignand one of the main architects of the notorious “Southern strategy,”through which the old Republican Party of Wall Streetand Main Street refashioned itself with a right-wing populist appeal,stoking racial antagonisms while above all capitalizingon the bankruptcy of American liberalismto shift the political spectrum sharply to the right.

The corruption of official statistics is not the work ofone administration, and Phillips traces it back nearly 50 years.The current occupant of the White House has, in fact,been somewhat less active on this front than his predecessors.

Soon after John F. Kennedy took office in 1961, Phillips points out,he appointed a committee to recommend possible changesin the measurement of official joblessness.What soon followed was the use of the categoryof “discouraged workers” to exclude all those who hadstopped looking for jobs because they weren’t available.Many who had lost employment in basic industry, in a trendthat was just beginning to pick up steam with automationand the rise of global competitors in such industries as steeland auto production, were no longer counted as unemployed.

During the administration of Lyndon Johnson,the federal government began using the concept of a “unified budget” that combinedSocial Security with other expenditures,thus allowing the current Social Security surplusto disguise growing budget deficits. As Phillips reports, Nixon tried to tackle the “problem” of statisticsin typically Nixonian fashion: he actually proposed that theLabor Department simply publish whichever was the lower figurebetween seasonally adjusted and unadjusted unemployment numbers.This was apparently deemed too brazen an attemptat manipulation and was never implemented. Under Nixon’s Federal Reserve chairman, Arthur Burns,however, the concept of “core inflation” was devised. This became the means of excluding certain areas like food and energy, on grounds of the “volatility” of these sectors.

The suggestion was that these prices jumped and then sometimes fell,so that it was best to remove them from the prices surveyed.In fact, food and energy together accounted for an enormous portionof spending for most sections of the working class and,as Phillips also explains, these two sectors are “now verging on another 1970s-style price surge.”As of last January, Phillips writes, the price of imported goodshad increased 13.7 percent compared with a year earlier,the biggest jump since these statistics began in 1982.Gasoline prices, meanwhile, have soared by more than 30 percent since just the beginning of this year.The Reagan administration addressed itself to the pesky problemof housing in the inflation index.An “Owner Equivalent Rent” measurement was dreamed upfor the purpose of artificially lowering the cost of housing—from a purely abstract statistical standpoint.Under Reagan, Phillips also points out, the armed forcesbegan to be included in the labor force and among the employed,thus reducing the unemployment rate, even thoughthese same members of the military would in many caseshave no employment in civilian life.

George H.W. Bush and his Council of Economic Advisersproposed the recalculation of inflation statisticsto give greater weight to the service and retail sectors and, again,reduce the official rate of inflation. This change was actually implemented during the Clintonadministration. Clinton also carried out other changes,including a reduction in the monthly household samplingfrom 60,000 to 50,000, a decrease that was concentratedin the inner cities and had the effect of reducingofficial jobless figures among African-Americans.

The Clinton years were an especially active timefor imaginative tinkering with economic data.Three other “adjustments” in the Consumer Price Indexwere implemented under the Democratic administration: product substitution, geometric weighting, and hedonic adjustment. Product substitution means that, for example,if steak gets too expensive, individuals substitute hamburger.Steak is simply removed from the typical food basketeven though it has been used in the past to track price changes.Geometric weighting is defined as lower weighting in the price indexfor those goods and services that are rising most rapidly in cost,on the assumption that they are consumed in lower quantities.This may of course be true, but the aim is to reducethe inflation figure, covering up the fact that some itemsare no longer affordable for tens of millions of people.

Phillips is particularly scathing about “hedonic adjustment,” also implemented during Clinton’s presidency.In this concept, the supposedly improved quality of some productsand services is translated into a reduction in their effective cost.This is another obvious attempt to reduce official inflation.“Reversing the theory, however, the declining quality of goodsor services should adjust effective prices and therefore add to inflation,”Phillips writes, “but that side of the equation generally goes missing.”

Phillips explains that every single one of the statistical revisionsimplemented over the past two generations have become permanent.Once initiated by a Democratic or Republican administration,they were carried over to the Bureau of Labor Statisticsand other agencies in bipartisan fashion,no matter who the current occupant of the White House was.

To all of the above should be added one other element,which Phillips does not discuss, perhaps becauseit does not stem from the economic data itself.That is the explosive growth of the US prison population,which has soared over the last 30 years and now stands at 2.3 million,compared to an overall labor force of 153.1 million.This situation, the outcome of the misnamed war on drugsand the overall bipartisan law-and-order hysteria,keeps the official unemployment rate artificially low.Between the army and the prison system,official joblessness is reduced by perhaps 2 percent.

Phillips points out that all of the changes in economic recordkeepingover the past 50 years were not the result of some grand conspiracy.They certainly did not stem from a master planhatched in the 1960s or 1970s, of course.This does not mean, however, that there is no logicto these developments, no broader economic and political source. The corruption of economic data correspondsto deepening contradictions of US and world capitalism.These contradictions impelled the bourgeoisie to abandona general policy of social reformthat had lasted for more than three decades,and to embark on what has been termeda “one-sided class war,” in which the services of the pro-capitalist trade unions were utilized to carry out an unprecedented transfer of wealth from the working population to a tiny ruling elite.

There was a step-by-step logic to all of the measuresthat were taken to misrepresent basic economic statistics.Big business could not have carried outthe policies it required without falsifying economic reality.Even though daily life became increasingly difficultfor huge sections of the working class,it was necessary to divide and disorient,to intimidate millions with the claim that “there is no alternative,”and that what Reagan referred to as the magic of the marketplacewas creating a veritable golden age from which everyone would benefit.

Some of the consequences of the falsification of datacan be translated into dollars and cents. If the CPIhad not been systematically understated, Phillips explains, Social Security checks would be 70 percent greater than they currently are. Beyond the direct impact on Social Security and other governmentexpenditures, an artificially low unemployment rate and poverty rate(officially reported as 12 percent, but in fact at least twice that figure)helped the financial and political establishmentto reduce living standards and social conditions. How many countless think tank reports and magazine articles,trumpeted by Democratic and Republican politiciansand academic figures alike, took as the gospel truththat the “Anglo-American” model of capitalism,compared to its more regulated rivals in France and Germany,meant lower unemployment? This and similar claims were based largely on lies.

American capitalism once prided itselfon the accuracy of its economic statistics.An alphabet soup of regulatory agencies carried out this work.During the decades of the Cold War, the spokesmen for big businessalways pointed to the mockery of economic data producedby the Stalinist regimes as one more proofof the superiority of the profit system. Today, however, the growing crisis is producing a historic reversal. Where American capitalism once required accurate data, today it requires lies. Phillips’s revelations share something with those of formerWhite House press secretary Scott McClellan.They are not exactly news, but they represent a kind of barometerof the growing crisis that is forcing its way into the openwithin official and semi-official circles.

by Washington's Blog

Joe Biden said yesterday:

My grandpop used to say ... "When the guy in Minooka's out of work, it's an economic slowdown. When your brother- in-law's out of work, it's a recession. When you're out of work, it's a depression.”

[Asked how he views it, Biden responded:] Well, it's a depression. It's a depression for millions of Americans, through no fault of their own.