Thursday, July 16, 2009

Project Camelot Interviews Jim Marrs 

Video, 1 hour 7 min 47sec.
Jim Marrs: The Rise of the Fourth Reich In America

Laughlin, Nevada, February 2009

http://projectcamelot.org/jim_marrs.html

Jim Marrs - an amiable Texan with twinkling eyes and a mind like a steel trap - is a veteran researcher and speaker on all topics connected with the agenda of the New World Order. Project Camelot is proud to add him to our strong cadre of witnesses.

The books that Jim has authored represent his range of interests clearly: Crossfire (about JFK), Alien Agenda, Rule by Secrecy, The Terror Conspiracy, PSI Spies, The Rise of the Fourth Reich, and Above Top Secret. Jim's broad span of research encompasses Egyptian and Sumerian mythology, Nazi technology, the ET presence, modern geopolitical analysis, the power of the military-industrial complex, the Illuminati, and what one might call the real history of the twentieth century.

Jim sees the big picture clearly, has great command of detail, and is one of the strongest speakers on the lecture circuit today. The title of this video - The Rise of the Fourth Reich in America - tells its own story, and in this 75 minute interview Jim lays out the compelling and disturbing evidence that while most people thought the Second World War ended in 1945, the Nazis were never stopped in their agenda - which can only be understood when one considers how they were assisted in coming to power by those Controllers who plan in terms of generations... not terms of government office.

To contact Bill Ryan or Kerry Cassidy, please e-mail us at support@projectcamelot.org.

posted by George Thomas Kysor 10:29 AM

Colostrum Functions Like Human Growth Hormone to Reverse the Aging Process [extract] 

[S]upplementing with colostrum provides many of the benefits of HGH without the high cost or need for daily injections.
- Barbara Minton, Natural Health Editor, Tuesday, July 14, 2009.

Labels: health

posted by George Thomas Kysor 10:18 AM

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

The Antifederalists Were Right 

September 27 marks the anniversary of the publication of the first of the Antifederalist Papers in 1789. The Antifederalists were opponents of ratifying the US Constitution. They feared that it would create an overbearing central government, while the Constitution's proponents promised that this would not happen. As the losers in that debate, they are largely overlooked today. But that does not mean they were wrong or that we are not indebted to them.

In many ways, the group has been misnamed. Federalism refers to the system of decentralized government. This group defended states rights – the very essence of federalism – against the Federalists, who would have been more accurately described as Nationalists. Nonetheless, what the so-called Antifederalists predicted would be the results of the Constitution turned out to be true in most every respect.

The Antifederalists warned us that the cost Americans would bear in both liberty and resources for the government that would evolve under the Constitution would rise sharply. That is why their objections led to the Bill of Rights, to limit that tendency (though with far too little success that has survived to the present).

Antifederalists opposed the Constitution on the grounds that its checks on federal power would be undermined by expansive interpretations of promoting the "general welfare" (which would be claimed for every law) and the "all laws necessary and proper" clause (which would be used to override limits on delegated federal powers), creating a federal government with unwarranted and undelegated powers that were bound to be abused.

One could quibble with the mechanisms the Antifederalists predicted would lead to constitutional tyranny. For instance, they did not foresee that the Commerce Clause would come to be called "the everything clause" in law schools, used by centralizers to justify almost any conceivable federal intervention. The 20th-century distortion of the clause's original meaning was so great even the vigilant Antifederalists could never have imagined the government getting away with it.

And they could not have foreseen how the Fourteenth Amendment and its interpretation would extend federal domination over the states after the Civil War. But it is very difficult to argue with their conclusions from the current reach of our government, not just to forcibly intrude upon, but often to overwhelm Americans today.

Therefore, it merits remembering the Antifederalists' prescient arguments and how unfortunate is the virtual absence of modern Americans who share their concerns.

One of the most insightful of the Antifederalists was Robert Yates, a New York judge who, as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, withdrew because the convention was exceeding its instructions. Yates wrote as Brutus in the debates over the Constitution. Given his experience as a judge, his claim that the Supreme Court would become a source of almost unlimited federal over-reaching was particularly insightful.

Brutus asserted that the Supreme Court envisioned under the Constitution would become a source of massive abuse because they were beyond the control "both of the people and the legislature," and not subject to being "corrected by any power above them." As a result, he objected to the fact that its provisions justifying the removal of judges didn't include making rulings that went beyond their constitutional authority, which would lead to judicial tyranny.

Brutus argued that when constitutional grounds for making rulings were absent, the Court would create grounds "by their own decisions." He thought that the power it would command would be so irresistible that the judiciary would use it to make law, manipulating the meanings of arguably vague clauses to justify it.

The Supreme Court would interpret the Constitution according to its alleged "spirit," rather than being restricted to just the "letter" of its written words (as the doctrine of enumerated rights, spelled out in the Tenth Amendment, would require).

Further, rulings derived from whatever the court decided its spirit was would effectively "have the force of law," due to the absence of constitutional means to "control their adjudications" and "correct their errors." This constitutional failing would compound over time in a "silent and imperceptible manner," through precedents that built on one another.

Expanded judicial power would empower justices to shape the federal government however they desired, because the Supreme Court's constitutional interpretations would control the effective power vested in government and its different branches. That would hand the Supreme Court ever-increasing power, in direct contradiction to Alexander Hamilton's argument in Federalist 78 that the Supreme Court would be "the least dangerous branch."

Brutus predicted that the Supreme Court would adopt "very liberal" principles of interpreting the Constitution. He argued that there had never in history been a court with such power and with so few checks upon it, giving the Supreme Court "immense powers" that were not only unprecedented, but perilous for a nation founded on the principle of consent of the governed. Given the extent to which citizens' power to effectively withhold their consent from federal actions has been eviscerated, it is hard to argue with Brutus's conclusion.

He further warned that the new government would not be restricted in its taxing power, and that the legislature's war power was highly dangerous: "the power in the federal legislative, to raise and support armies at pleasure, as well in peace as in war, and their controul over the militia, tend, not only to a consolidation of the government, but the destruction of liberty."

He also objected to the very notion that a republican form of government can work well over such a vast territory, even the relatively small terrority as compared with today's US:

History furnishes no example of a free republic, anything like the extent of the United States. The Grecian republics were of small extent; so also was that of the Romans. Both of these, it is true, in process of time, extended their conquests over large territories of country; and the consequence was, that their governments were changed from that of free governments to those of the most tyrannical that ever existed in the world.

What you think you know might not be true

Brutus accurately described both the cause (the absence of sufficient enforceable restraints on the size and scope of the federal government) and the consequences (expanding burdens and increasing invasions of liberty) of what would become the expansive federal powers we now see all around us.

But today, Brutus would conclude that he had been far too optimistic. The federal government has grown orders of magnitudes larger than he could ever have imagined (in part because he was writing when only indirect taxes and the small federal government they could finance were possible, before the 16th Amendment opened the way for a federal income tax in 1913), far exceeding its constitutionally enumerated powers, despite the constraints of the Bill of Rights. The result burdens citizens beyond his worst nightmare.

The judicial tyranny that was accurately and unambiguously predicted by Brutus and other Antifederalists shows that in essential ways, they were right and that modern Americans still have a lot to learn from them. We need to understand their arguments and take them seriously now, if there is to be any hope of restraining the federal government to the limited powers it was actually granted in the Constitution, or even anything close to them, given its current tendency to accelerate its growth beyond them.

July 15, 2009

- Gary M. Galles, a professor of economics at Pepperdine University.

Copyright © 2009 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

Labels: Supreme Court

posted by George Thomas Kysor 6:34 PM

Evidence of Revision 

This is the mindblowing 5-part video documentary series Evidence of Revision whose purpose is to present the publicly unavailable and even suppressed historical audio, video and film recordings largely unseen by the American and world public relating to the assassination of the Kennedy brothers, the little known classified "Black Ops" actually used to intentionally create the massive war in Viet Nam, the CIA "mind control" programs and their involvement in the RFK assassination and the Jonestown massacre and other important truths of our post-modern time. The U.S. Government's Orwellian "Office of Public Diplomacy" has been in existence in various forms and under various names since World War ONE. The union of American governance and American corporate interests began in Abraham Lincoln's day and the massaging of "public truth" began even before the Roman Empire. The more you know about "real history" versus "official history", the better equipped you are to see behind the lies of our times, even as they are told to you. Evidence of Revision sweeps "official truth" into the dustbin of history as it may be revised even as it is being written. Each part cca 100 min. long, 8 hours all together. A must see for everyone Part 1: The assassinations of Kennedy and Oswald as never seen before Part 2: The "Why" of it all referenced to Viet Nam and LBJ Part 3: LBJ, Hoover and others. What so few know even today. Part 4: The RFK assassination as never seen before Part 5: The RFK assassination continued, MK ULTRA and the Jonestown massacre... all related. This is only $20 for 5 dvd's... if you dig it, you should buy it!
- WingTV
(via What Really Happened)

Labels: conspiracy

posted by George Thomas Kysor 4:08 PM

Peter Schiff may run for US senate 

Video, 9 min 31 sec.
(via What Really happened)

Labels: U.S. politics

posted by George Thomas Kysor 9:46 AM

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

The Fed Under Fire 

Video, 8 miutes. (via What Really Happened)

Labels: monetary inflation

posted by George Thomas Kysor 11:08 PM

Serum Fluoride and Sialic Acid Levels in Osteosarcoma 

R. Sandhu2, H. Lal2, Z. S. Kundu1 and S. Kharb2

(1) Department of Orthopaedics, Pt B D Sharma University of Health Sciences, Rohtak, 124001, Haryana, India
(2) Department of Biochemistry, Pt B D Sharma University of Health Sciences, H No 1447, sector-1, Urban Estate, Rohtak, 124001, Haryana, India

Received: 6 April 2009 Accepted: 13 April 2009 Published online: 24 April 2009

Abstract Osteosarcoma is a rare malignant bone tumor most commonly occurring in children and young adults presenting with painful swelling. Various etiological factors for osteosarcoma are ionizing radiation, family history of bone disorders and cancer, chemicals (fluoride, beryllium, and vinyl chloride), and viruses. Status of fluoride levels in serum of osteosarcoma is still not clear. Recent reports have indicated that there is a link between fluoride exposure and osteosarcoma. Glycoproteins and glycosaminoglycans are an integral part of bone and prolonged exposure to fluoride for long duration has been shown to cause degradation of collagen and ground substance in bones. The present study was planned to analyze serum fluoride, sialic acid, calcium, phosphorus, and alkaline phosphatase levels in 25 patients of osteosarcoma and age- and sex-matched subjects with bone-forming tumours other than osteosarcoma and musculo-skeletal pain (controls, 25 each). Fluoride levels were analyzed by ISE and sialic acid was analyzed by Warren’s method. Mean serum fluoride concentration was found to be significantly higher in patients with osteosarcoma as compared to the other two groups. The mean value of flouride in patients with other bone-forming tumors was approximately 50% of the group of osteosarcoma; however, it was significantly higher when compared with patients of group I. Serum sialic acid concentration was found to be significantly raised in patients with osteosarcoma as well as in the group with other bone-forming tumors as compared to the group of controls. There was, however, no significant difference in the group of patients of osteosarcoma when compared with group of patients with other bone-forming tumors. These results showing higher level of fluoride with osteosarcoma compared to others suggesting a role of fluoride in the disease.

- Biological Trace Element Research (via What Really Happened)

NOTE:

"A team of Harvard University scientists, led by Dr. Elise Bassin, publish a study which reports a five-fold increased risk of developing osteosarcoma among teenage boys exposed to fluoridated water at ages 6, 7, and 8. The study is an extension of an analysis first completed by Bassin as a Harvard PhD thesis in 2001. However, her thesis adviser, Dr. Chester Douglass (a consultant to Colgate), was charged in 2005 by the Environmental Working Group of withholding and misrepresenting these findings to the public and scientific community.

"According to Bassin:

"We observed that for males diagnosed before the age of 20 years, fluoride level in drinking water during growth was associated with an increased risk of osteosarcoma, demonstrating a peak in the odds ratios from 6 to 8 years of age. All of our models were remarkably robust in showing this effect, which coincides with the mid-childhood growth spurt. For females, no clear association between fluoride in drinking water during growth and osteosarcoma emerged.(Bassin 2006)"

- TIMELINE: Fluoride & Osteosarcoma [Scroll down.]

Labels: flouride

posted by George Thomas Kysor 3:37 AM

Sunday, July 12, 2009

The Obama Deception 

Video, 1 hr 51 min 21 sec.
(via Bob Unruh)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 11:52 PM

Dossier #7: Tampering with evidence, destruction of incriminating evidence in regards to Barack Hussein Obama aka Barry Soetoro 

This dossier is prepared to alert proper authorities in regards to tampering and destruction of incriminating evidence in regards to Barack Hussein Obama aka Barry Soetoro. In my previous dossiers 1-6 I have provided 100 addresses around the Nation for Barack Obama. These addresses were connected to some 25 different social security numbers. Additionally, I have presented 130 current job positions for Barack H. Obama, Barry Obama and Michelle Obama, that were not listed on their tax returns. All of this data was obtained from most reputable sources such as Intelius, Lexis Nexis and Choice Point. After my reports, some 110 addresses and job descriptions were erased from the Internet. Those numerous addresses, social security numbers and job descriptions provided serious concerns as those can be used for numerous illegal and criminal activities, such as social security fraud, tax fraud, campaign contributions fraud, charitable organization fraud, voter fraud, elections frraud and many others. Erasing such information is evidence of a guilty mind and desire to destroy incriminating evidence. Additionally, many of the job descriptions were with the outlets of main stream media, which might suggest improper financial dealings and an explanation, why most MSM outlets did not provide truthful information about Obama. In spite of numerous citizens’ demands, they never provided crucial information, that Hawaiian statute 338 allows foreign born children of Hawaiian residents to obtain Hawaiian birth certificates and those can be obtained based on a statement of one relative only. Most citizens would’ve never voted for Obama, if they knew that there is no verification of his Hawaiian birth, since the statement from Dr. Fukino, director of the Health services in Hawaii only declared that Obama had a birth certificate, but did not specify whether it was a birth certificate for a foreign born child of a Hawaiian resident or whether it was a birth certificate created based on a statement of one relative only, which could be biased and false and had to be verified against an actual birthing file at the hospital. Equally, MSM never reported truthfully, that Obama jumped on the stage, during an existing rock concert in Berlin, while the media was knowingly defrauding the citizens, claiming this to be a proObama rally as well as many other instances of fraud committed in relation to November 2008 presidential election. I demand immediate investigation and prosecution of the above mentioned activity. Destruction of computer files is equally or more significant in Obamagate as hotel breaking in the Watergate.

Sincerely,

electronic signature

Dr. Orly Taitz, ESQ [Scroll down.]

Sunday, April 26, 2009 1:55 AM

posted by George Thomas Kysor 11:34 PM

Liquorice revealed as latest weapon in battle to beat cancer [excerpt] 

Liquorice could offer valuable protection against sunburn and skin cancer which, say Cancer Research UK, has become the most common cancer among 15- to 34-year-olds.

According to the National Cancer Institute in the US, when applied to the skin, liquorice extract helps combat UV damage and can reduce sunburn by acting as a powerful anti-inflammatory.

Researchers at the Institute of Chinese Medical Science in Taiwan have now discovered why. They found that the active molecule glycyrrhizin blocks AP-1, a protein that can cause inflammation and cancer.

Similar research at Hamdard University, New Delhi, revealed that liquorice helped skin cells recover after being damaged by UV light.

'When we applied glycyrrhizin topically, there was an increase in enzymes that help restore cells to their optimal function after being damaged,' explains Dr Sahar Rahman.

Liquorice extract is already used in many organic sun-care products because it combats inflammation, so helping to reduce the severity of sunburn.

However, the new findings mean that glycyrrhizin from liquorice could soon be used in creams designed specifically to prevent and treat skin cancer.

- Anastasia Stephens © 2009 Associated Newspapers Ltd [See the Fair Use Notice, below.] (via Lew Rockwell)

Labels: health

posted by George Thomas Kysor 9:35 AM

Why so many are sick 

Video, 8 minutes. (via The Real Food Channel)

Labels: health

posted by George Thomas Kysor 7:53 AM

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Demolition access to the World Trade Center towers: Part one - tenants 

Note: The author is indebted to a few particularly useful sources of information and inspiration, including Russ Baker’s book “Family of Secrets”, the websites nndb.com, sourcewatch.org and secinfo.com, and Richard Gage.

On occasion, the public has been asked by George W. Bush to refrain from considering certain conspiracy theories. Bush has made such requests when people were looking into crimes in which he might be culpable. For example, when in 1994 Bush’s former company Harken Energy was linked to the fraudulent Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) through several investors, Bush’s spokeswoman, Karen Hughes, shut down the inquiry by telling the Associated Press -- “We have no response to silly conspiracy theories.” On another occasion, Bush said in a televised speech -- “Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories concerning the attacks of September the 11th.”

But paradoxically, we have also been asked to believe Bush’s own outrageous conspiracy theory about 9/11, one that has proven to be false in many ways. One important way to see the false nature of Bush’s conspiracy theory is to note the fact that the World Trade Center buildings could only have fallen as they did through the use of explosives. A number of independent scientific studies have pointed out this fact [1, 2, 3, 4], but it was Bush’s own scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), through their inability to provide a convincing defense of the official line, who ultimately proved that explosives were necessary.[2, 5, 6, 7]

This leads us to ask the obvious question -- Who could have placed explosives in the World Trade Center towers? To answer that question, we should first consider who had access to the buildings, specifically the areas of the buildings that would be relevant to a demolition operation. We should also consider the time periods of interest. Those who had access at the necessary times should be further considered in terms of their ability to obtain the necessary explosive technologies and expertise, their ability to be secretive, and the possibility that they could have benefited from the destruction of the WTC buildings or from the resulting War on Terror. But one thing is certain, unless it was done by one person acting alone, it must have been a conspiracy.

The Twin Towers and WTC 7, all highly secure buildings, were most readily accessed by tenants, security and building management staff, and construction-related contractors.

Evidence suggests that the period of interest should include the years between the 1993 WTC bombing and September 11th, 2001. This evidence includes the warning from 1993 bombing conspirator Nidal Ayyad, who reportedly wrote -- “next time it will be more precise.”[8] Additionally, evidence of a multi-year plot included the detailed information that FBI informant and mafia kingpin Gregory Scarpa Jr. received while in jail, as early as 1996, from Al-Qaeda operative Ramzi Yousef, while imprisoned in the adjacent cell. Yousef described plans to “bring New York to its knees” by blowing up the World Trade Center with American-owned “flying massive bombs.” Scarpa Jr. provided this information to Assistant US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald and FBI Counsel Valerie Caproni, who were apparently not interested.[9] Another example is the recorded conversation between FBI informant Randy Glass and Pakistani ISI agent Raja Gulum Abbas, in which Abbas claimed “Those towers are coming down”, indicating that a plan was in progress as of July 1999.[10]

Throughout the life of the WTC buildings, modifications were made to each structure. The modifications included upgrades to electrical, fire protection, and elevator systems, as well as general construction activities. As a rule, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ) was responsible for initiating the modifications in the public access areas, and the tenants were responsible for completing the modifications throughout the leased spaces.[11] For this reason, the tenant companies would have been capable of coordinating the installation of explosive materials and other devices with reasonable certainty that those materials would not be detected by others. For a demolition plan to work, however, such tenants would need to be managed as a group, and explosives would need to be placed on enough floors to ensure the fall of each building through what would otherwise have been the path of most resistance.

While examining the tenants in each critical area, we should ask – Cui Bono? That is, who benefited from the destruction of the WTC buildings, and the resulting War on Terror? The obvious answer includes, primarily, the Bush Administration and its friends. It also includes overlapping groups of oil and gas companies, defense contractors, and those who desired to wield undue influence on international policies related to a wide number of issues from civil rights to space domination.

The North Tower Impact Zone

On 9/11, American Airlines Flight 11 hit the north face of the north tower (WTC 1) between floors 94 and 99. In a stunning coincidence, these floors bracket those that had been upgraded for fireproofing shortly before 9/11.[12] This coincidence was amplified by the fact that one tenant occupied all of those floors – Marsh & McLennan (Marsh), which at the time was the world’s largest insurance brokerage company. One other tenant, Sumitomo Bank, shared part of floor 96 with Marsh.

During the years from 1993 to 2001, Marsh made several modifications to these floors, in addition to the fireproofing upgrades mentioned above. According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Marsh made modifications to the south side of floor 94 in 1998. That same year, the PANYNJ helped Marsh demolish floors 95-98 in order to rebuild the fire alarm and sprinkler systems. Marsh did further modification work on floor 95 in the year 2000.[13] The full floor fireproofing upgrades on floors 93 through 100 were accomplished in August through November of 1998, except for floor 94, which was done in December 1996.

Marsh was a large company, with a number of subsidiaries, including Putnam Investments, Mercer, Johnson & Higgins, and Guy Carpenter, a company that occupied floors 47 to 54 of the south tower. Marsh was also known to be notoriously secretive, and had been likened to the CIA.[14] Its chief executive on 9/11 was Jeffrey Greenberg, a member of the Brookings Institution, the Trilateral Commission, and the son of the chairman of American International Group (AIG), Maurice Greenberg. AIG has been reported to be at the center of a number of CIA operations.[15]

Jeffrey Greenberg rose quickly through management at Marsh, having come there directly from AIG in 1995, and then becoming CEO just four years later. At Brookings, Greenberg hobnobbed with Lee Hamilton, co-chair of the 9/11 Commission, and the Iraqi Nemir Amin Kirdar, CEO of Investcorp, a BCCI-related company founded by the Saudi Abdullah Taha Bakhsh.[16]

BCCI was founded by a Pakistani named Agha Hasan Abedi, and was ”made up of multiplying layers of entities, related to one another through an impenetrable series of holding companies, affiliates, subsidiaries, banks-within-banks, insider dealings and nominee relationships.” In the early nineties, BCCI was extensively investigated for money laundering and terrorist financing, and was ultimately shut-down by the Bank of England in 1992.[17] Like BCCI, AIG developed the same fragmented and difficult to trace network of subsidiaries, spread across 130 countries and 400 regulators.[18]

Other very powerful and well-connected people worked in senior management at Marsh. These included Stephen Friedman, a senior principal at Marsh Capital and former partner at Goldman Sachs, who later became George W. Bush’s top economic advisor. Friedman was also a member of the Brookings Institution, the Bilderberg group, the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, and the board at In-Q-Tel, the investment firm founded by the CIA in 1998. In-Q-Tel invests in state of the art technologies related to defense and intelligence work, including nano and chemical technologies, according to its website.[19]

In another interesting coincidence, Friedman belonged, through Cornell University, to a secret society called Quill and Dagger, the membership of which includes Paul Wolfowitz, Sandy Berger and Stephen Hadley. Wolfowitz, the neo-con deputy secretary of defense in the Bush Administration, was the author in 1992 of the “Wolfowitz Doctrine” of pre-emptive warfare. He also made comments about a “surprise like Pearl Harbor” months before 9/11, and met with Pakistani ISI General Mahmud Ahmed in the week before 9/11.[20] Berger, the National Security Advisor to President Clinton, was later caught stealing documents from the 9/11 Commission investigation.[21] Berger was also the boss of White House counterterrorism Tsar Richard Clarke, and together with Hadley - who was Condoleeza Rice’s deputy - was responsible for delaying or obstructing Clarke’s plans to stop Al Qaeda in January 2001.[22]

The President of Marsh Real Estate Advisors, from 1982 to 2001, was Craig Stapleton, the husband of George W. Bush’s cousin, Dorothy Walker Bush. Stapleton’s Marsh division was responsible for negotiating office leases in the US, Canada and Europe. He once co-owned the Texas Rangers with George W. Bush, a spectacular investment for all involved. In 1997, Stapleton was a member of the board of a company called Cendant that was charged in 1998 with massive accounting fraud. The President of Cendant at the time was Henry Silverman, a former partner of the Blackstone Group and later Vice Chairman of the PANYNJ. Stapleton went on to join Winston Partners, a privately owned investment firm founded in 1993 and led by George W. Bush’s bother Marvin.

The Vice Chairman of Marsh on 9/11 was Mathis Cabiallavetta, a Swiss citizen. Although Cabiallavetta was a member of the Marsh board from 1993 to 2000, he took his position as Vice Chairman in 1999, after having been President of the Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) from 1996 to 1998. This was the same UBS that bailed out George W. Bush’s Harken Energy in 1987, with the help of billionaire Jackson Stephens. UBS was linked in other ways to the fraudulent terrorist financing bank BCCI.[16, 23]

Another connection to the Bush family can be seen in the Marsh acquisition of the New York insurance brokerage Johnson and Higgins in March 1997. Johnson and Higgins was the long-time employer of Prescott Bush Jr, brother to George H. W. Bush. Although Prescott Jr. no longer worked there, he had spent 33 years at Johnson & Higgins, retiring as Senior Vice President. After retirement, Bush continued to consult for the company, in Asian dealings. With Prescott Jr, Friedman and Stapleton, Marsh clearly had strong ties to the Bush network. Additionally, it seems possible that some members of Marsh management, particularly Stephen Friedman, through In-Q-Tel, had access to technologies that could have been used to bring about the deceptive demolition of the WTC buildings.

Add to this L. Paul Bremer, and the possible Marsh ties to demolition technology become clearer. One month after 9/11, Bremer would become the CEO for a new division called Marsh Crisis. Interestingly, the Yale graduate Bremer had been working to complete the National Report on Terrorism, and prior to that had been managing director for Kissinger Associates. According to a US Senate report, Kissinger Associates had a number of meetings with BCCI representatives in the late eighties and early nineties, and it refused to provide documents requested by the Senate investigators.[17] Bremer was also a member of the board for Akzo Nobel, the parent of International Paint, a company that produced a fireproofing application for skyscrapers called Interchar.[24]

Bremer was on the international advisory board for the Japanese mining and machinery company, Komatsu. At the time, Komatsu had been involved in a joint venture agreement with Dresser Industries, the oil-services/intelligence front in which Prescott Bush Sr. and George H. W. Bush got their start with Neil Mallon. The Komatsu-Dresser mining division operated from 1988 to 1997. In July 1996, it patented a thermite demolition device that could “demolish a concrete structure at a high efficiency, while preventing a secondary problem due to noise, flying dust and chips, and the like.”[25] Residues of thermite, the highly energetic chemical mixture, have been confirmed in samples of the WTC dust, and the use of thermite at the WTC was also revealed by environmental data.[1, 2, 3, 4, 26] Dresser Industries merged with Dick Cheney’s Halliburton in 1998.

It is less well known that Bremer’s relationship to Marsh started earlier. In fact, on 9/11, Bremer was the CEO of Marsh Political Risk Practice and he had an office in the south tower. That day, he was interviewed on NBC television, stating that Osama bin Laden was responsible and that possibly Iraq and Iran were involved too, and he called for the most severe military response possible. Google removed the interview video from its servers three times, and blocked it once.[27]

Bremer was called away from Marsh in 2003, to be the Iraq Occupation Governor. His work in that role has been widely criticized.[28]

The South Tower Impact Zone

United Airlines Flight 175 hit the south tower (WTC 2) between floors 78 and 83, in the southeast corner of the building. In the impact zone, Baseline Financial Services (Baseline) was located on floors 77 and 78, Fuji Bank was on floors 79 to 82, and AON Corporation was on floor 83.

Baseline was led by a very interesting individual named Joseph Kasputys, who had a history of being well connected to the highest levels of government, as well as to defense and intelligence industries. Kasputys worked, from 1972 to 1977, for the US departments of commerce and defense. He was also the deputy director of Nixon’s White House taskforce that dealt with the Arab oil embargo of 1973, and he was instrumental in the creation of the Department of Energy (DOE).

Kasputys’ connections to the DOE, from 1977 through at least 1997, are interesting considering that the DOE was developing thermite ignition devices as early as 1983.[29] Additonally, national laboratories working within the DOE developed nanothermites in the late 1990s. Nanothermites are explosive thermite mixtures where one or more reactants are present at the nanometer scale. These are also called super-thermites due to the extraordinarily large amount of energy released upon ignition.[3, 30]

Kasputys was also a member of the Logistics Management Institute (LMI), whose members included Paul Kaminski of In-Q-Tel and General Dynamics, Charles DiBona of Halliburton, Skull and Bones member Joseph Samuel Nye, and Michael Daniels of Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). It has been noted that SAIC, a defense contractor with expertise in thermite-related technologies, played a large part in the NIST WTC investigation. LMI’s self-proclaimed role is “advancing the science of government.”[30, 31]

Better known for his leadership of Primark Corporation from 1987 to 2000, Kasputys was CEO for both companies after the Primark acquisition of Baseline in 1996. Primark owned as many as 50 companies during that time, and was acquired by Thomson Financial in June 2000. Kasputys then became CEO for Thomson, and he later founded the intelligence-services company IHS Global Insight, in March 2001. Another Primark company, Primark Decision Economics, was located in the 11th floor of the north tower.

The sheer number of companies involved with Primark, along with the vague business descriptions given (Baseline was described as “an international provider of information”), gave the impression that something more than legitimate business was involved. Primark owned Triad International Maintenance Company (TIMCO), a company that, among other things, modified Boeing 757s and 767s. Primark also owned The Analytic Sciences Corp (TASC), a security and intelligence (spying) company that had contracts with the DOE. As CEO of World Markets Research Centre, Kasputys predicted in 2003 that the US was the country with the fourth-highest risk of terrorism, and that – “Another September 11-style attack in the US is highly likely." [32]

According to NIST, Kasputys’ Baseline modified the southeast corner of floor 78 in 1999, exactly where the aircraft hit on 9/11.[33] Floors 77 and 78 were upgraded for fireproofing in June and April of 1998, respectively.

Another company with an office on floor 78 was First Commercial Bank. This was a Taiwanese national bank that had, in January 1998, privatized all but one third of its shares. The other two thirds went to First Commercial Financial Corp (FCFC) of Seguin, Texas. Unfortunately, it is not clear if FCFC is related to First Commercial Financial Group (FCFG), owned by Abdullah Taha Bakhsh. FCFG was a commodities brokerage firm that was forced to distribute its customer accounts in 1994, after regulators raised concerns about capital shortfalls and customer complaints.[34].

Interestingly, another company located in Seguin, Texas is the machinery manufacturing company, the Alamo Group. Dave Grzelak, CEO of Komatsu-Dresser, was a director at Alamo. He was also a board member at Aoki Construction Co, a mining company associated with Prescott Bush Jr, as we’ll see below.

The tenant located just above Baseline, on floors 79 to 82, was Fuji Bank. Fuji modified the core of floor 78 in 1998, the east wall of floor 80 in 1999, unknown parts of floor 80 in 2001, and the southeast corner of floor 82 in 1997.[33]

Prior to the year 2000, Fuji Bank was the second largest bank in Japan. Fuji’s largest investors were Union Carbide, Mobil Oil and Raytheon. In 1996, Yasuda Trust became a Fuji subsidiary and in September 2000, Fuji merged with Dai-ichi Kangyo Bank (DKB), and the International Bank of Japan (IBJ), to form the largest bank in the world under the name of Mihuzo Holdings. The second largest at the time was the Sumitomo-Mitsui Banking Corp, formed in October 1999. But the Fuji Bank merger meant that, as of 9/11, Mihuzo Holdings controlled companies not only in the impact zone of the south tower, but also on floors 48 to 50 of the north tower by way of DKB.

Toru Hashimoto, chairman of Fuji Bank, was also with Deutsche Securities Limited Tokyo Branch and is now on the board of Deutsche Bank with Norman Augustine. Augustine, also known for being the CEO of Lockheed Martin, was founder of In-Q-Tel and a board member of Riggs National, the banking firm of Jonathan Bush, the other brother of George H. W. Bush. A 2004 expose by the New York Times revealed Saudi Arabian accounts at Riggs were being investigated for money-laundering and possible financing of the September 11th terrorists.[35]

Deutsche Bank was the bank of the German Gestapo during World War II, funding the construction of concentration camps. It was broken up after the war, only to merge together again in 1957.[36] In 1998, Deutsche Bank added Banker’s Trust, which had purchased Alex Brown and Sons in 1997, to its group of companies. It was Deutsche Bank and these subsidiaries that were identified as being involved in insider trading related to the 9/11 attacks. The person of most interest in these dealings was A.B. Krongard, the CEO of Alex Brown, and CIA counsel to George Tenet.[37] From 2001 to 2004, Krongard was executive director of the CIA. Another significant player was Wolfgang Demisch, managing director at Alex Brown from 1993 to 1998, managing director at UBS Securities from 1988 to 1993, and member of the board at SAIC.

Fuji Bank had a history, in the early 1990s, of scandal related to fraudulent loans and gangster connections. It had also been linked to large CIA-related payments deposited in the Cayman Islands, and to the BCCI connected First American Bank.[38, 39, 40]

Moreover, Fuji Bank was not the only Mihuzo company that was accused of criminal activity. In June 1997, executives of DKB were accused of conspiring to provide $80 million in loans to Ryuichi Koike, a Japanese gangster. Koike used the money to purchase shares in securities brokerages, like Nomura, Nikko (located on floor 79 of the north tower), and Daiwa. Some reports put DKB’s extorted loans to Koike at $272 million.[41] DKB was reported to have made loans to other Yakuza crime syndicates as well, and in June 1997, the chairman of DKB ultimately resigned over the scandal.[42]

Additionally, Mihuzo subsidiary IBJ was discovered to have generated $2.5 billion in fraudulent loans to a businesswoman named Nui Onoue in 1991. IBJ was also reported to have indirectly supported predatory lending by securitizing high-loan-to-value loans to companies like Dallas’ FirstPlus Financial, a company that shot to financial stardom in 1996 and then collapsed in 1999. Dan Quayle was on the board of directors.[43]

Back in the summer of 1989, while his brother was President, Prescott Bush Jr. was the middleman in the takeover of two companies by West Tsusho, a Tokyo-based investment firm linked to one of Japan's biggest mob syndicates. West Tsusho was part of the empire of Susumu Ishii, head of the Inagawa-kai yakuza gang. In 1992, two days after an article linking him to Bush appeared in the Daily Yomiuri, Ishii was dead, reportedly from a “long illness.”[44]

At the time, The Boston Globe reported that Prescott Bush Jr. had also been a business partner with Tokyo-based Aoki Construction Corp (Aoki), in its deals to build in China. Masahiro Sakane, now the CEO of Aoki, was managing director at Komatsu from 1994 to 1999. Komatsu and Aoki shared many other links in management.

The two companies West Tsusho acquired through Prescott Bush Jr., were Quantum Access (of which Bush was a board member) and Asset Management International. As a consultant for Asset Management, Prescott introduced Hughes Aircraft to Japanese investors in a deal in which Hughes and the government of China would launch satellites that would beam television programming to broadcasters in China. [45, 46] In December 1989, President Bush lifted the sanctions that blocked the satellite deal, citing "the national interest." The Bush administration had earlier granted Hughes Aircraft "preliminary licenses" to exchange data with Chinese officials.[47] Also involved in the West Tsusho mob dealings was Nikko Securities (floor 79 of the north tower).

After his death, West Tsusho’s Susumu Ishii was replaced as the leader of the Inagawa-kai gang by Toi Inagawa. In September 1996, Inagawa formed an alliance with Yoshinori Watanabe, head of the largest yakuza gang, Yamaguchi-gumi. Nui Onoue, who received the fraudulent loans from Mihuzo’s IBJ, was said to be associated with Yamaguchi-gumi’s Takumi gang, and also an investor in Inagawa-kai.[41]

Japanese Banks had experienced a relatively tough time in the 1990s, referred to in financial circles as “the lost decade”, and in general were still doing badly in the years 2000 and 2001. In November 2000, Mizuho Holdings had problem loans and bad debts of more than 4 trillion yen ($36 billion). By mid-2001, the company was trading at half the value it had been at just a year before, when the merger was announced. [48, 49] Japan’s financial system began to recover in 2002.[50]

Moving to floor 83 of the south tower, there was AON Corporation, a Chicago-based competitor of Marsh. Today, General Richard Myers, one of the people most responsible for not protecting us on 9/11, is a director at AON. But on 9/11, the most interesting character working for AON was Jim Pierce, the cousin of George W. Bush. Jim’s father Scott Pierce, formerly a partner at G.H. Walker & Co, pled guilty to 2,000 counts of mail fraud in 1985, as President of E.F. Hutton.

Jim Pierce was managing director of AON on 9/11, and he had arranged a meeting on the 105th floor of the south tower for that morning. Pierce survived that day, despite the fact that twelve people came to the meeting in the south tower, and eleven of them died. The location of the meeting had been changed, the night before, to the Millenium Hotel, where Pierce watched the south tower as it was hit by the aircraft. Apparently the meeting attendees were not all notified of the change in location.[51]

AON modifed “unknown” parts of floor 83 in 1997. Some photos of the impact zone suggest that the most explosive part of the fireball erupting from the south tower came from the east side of the building, near floor 83 (see NIST report NCSTAR 1-5A, figure 7-7).

Chuo Trust, which shared floor 83 with AON, was the trust portion of Mihuzo’s DKB. According to NIST, Chuo modified the southeast corner of floor 83 in 1999.

An unusual feature of the destruction of the south tower was the “cold spot” on the north face of the building. This section along a twelve-column area of floors 80, 81, 82 did not experience any fire, despite the fact that the areas on both sides did have fire. In its report NCSTAR 1-5, NIST “concluded that insufficient information is available to allow a likely formation mechanism for the cold spot to be postulated.”

The Washington Group

Another company of interest, on floor 91 just above the impact zone for the south tower, was Washington Group International (Washington). This company was known primarily as a construction and mining firm, and it had just acquired Raytheon Engineers in July 2000. Raytheon was reported to have also occupied floor 91.

Washington had an interesting history. It had been a contractor for the DOE and its predecessor agencies since 1942, when it was involved in the Manhattan Project. In 1995, a management shake-up at Washington resulted in the temporary installment of William Clark as acting chairman. Clark was a member of the Center for Security Policy, along with many neo-cons including Richard Perle, Eliot Abrams, Norman Augustine (In-Q-Tel), Douglas Feith, and 9/11 Commissioner John Lehman. After re-organizing the management at Washington, in just a few months, Clark resigned.

In 1996, Washington took over Morrison-Knudsen, an engineering and construction company that had a history of working on large projects around the world, including in China, Iran, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. In Vietnam, Washington led the RMK-BRJ construction project with Brown & Root. During the 1980s, it worked closely on hazardous clean-up projects for the DOE. The Army Corps of Engineers hired Morrison-Knudsen to demolish over 200 buildings in 1995.[52]

In 1999, Washington acquired Westinghouse Government Environmental Services Company (WGESC), a firm that provided management services to the DOE and DOD. In July 2001, E. Preston Rahe, Jr, the President of WGESC, was promoted to Executive Vice President of Business Development for Washington Group's Government operating unit. Rahe went on to form a new company called Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC, along with General John A. Gordon.

Gordon was George H. W. Bush’s Senior Director for Defense Policy on the National Security Council, and he worked with George Tenet at the CIA from September 1996 to October 1997, as associate director of central intelligence for military support, and as deputy director of the CIA from October 1997 to 2000. During this time, Gordon would have worked closely with A.B. Krongard, who was Tenet’s counsel from 1998 to 2001. Later, in 2003 and 2004, Gordon was George W. Bush’s Homeland Security advisor.

Apart from Lawrence Livermore labs (LLNL), one of the DOE facilities for which Washington was responsible, well before 9/11, was the Savannah River site near Aiken, SC. In February 1997, LLNL and the Savannah River site signed an agreement of cooperation to share technology. Savannah went on to add “Developing sol gel technology for fuels and other applications” to its portfolio.[53, 54] Sol-gel technology is utilized by LLNL for making nanothermites.[55] In another coincidence, Savannah River Technology staff participated in the search and rescue operations at Ground Zero by providing unique tools.[56]

Today, Washington is owned by URS Corp, and they still “help manage and operate Idaho NL, LANL and LLNL,” through a partnership with Battelle.[57] But just before 9/11 they were going through a tough time financially, and sought chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) documents show that Washington made court-ordered pre-petition payments, as part of these proceedings, to a number of companies including Komatsu. Washington also made payments to Greenhorne & O’Mara, whose employee Theresa McAllister was a lead author for the FEMA and NIST reports on the WTC disaster, and to Sumitomo Bank.[58] Sumitomo Bank was closely allied with Komatsu, and was involved with defense-related production.[59]

Other floors and companies of interest

If a “top down” demolition were implemented in the WTC’s Twin Towers on 9/11, then it would have been necessary to plant explosives on floors below the impact zone. From a novice perspective, it would seem ideal to have planted such explosives at regular intervals below the impact area, around floor 50, for example, and below that around floors 25 to 35, and lower. Videos show “squibs” emanating in these general areas of each tower, at levels spaced between the mechanical floors on 41-42, and 75-76.

We have seen that Marsh occupied the impact zone for the north tower, and floors 47 to 54 of the south tower. Additionally, in a reflective criss-cross pattern, Fuji Bank’s parent company Mihuzo Holdings occupied the impact zone for the south tower, as well as floors 48 to 50 of the north tower (DKB). Primark Corporation occupied part of the impact zone for the south tower, and also floor 11 of the north tower.

To evaluate floors 25 to 35 of each tower we should note that, in 1997 and 1998, big leases were signed at the WTC involving AON, Marsh, and Bankers Trust, and two other companies of interest, Exco Resources and Oppenheimer & Co. At the time, tenancy had gone way up and the complex was expected to be at full capacity due to growth of the financial sector.[60]

Exco Resources (Exco), of Dallas Texas, was an oil and gas holding company that was the parent to Garban Intercapital, located on floor 25 and 26 of the north tower, and also on floor 55 of the south tower, just above Marsh subsidiary Guy Carpenter. Exco experienced rapid growth as of 1998, in part due to some very well connected management representatives. Member of the board Mark Neporent also represented Cerebrus Capital, along with Dan Quayle. Robert L. Stillwell, senior partner at Bush friend James Baker’s firm Baker Botts, is currently a director at Exco.

Directors and Officers at Exco, during the period of interest, were associated with Enron affiliates, Anadarko Petroleum, a company owned and operated by long-time Bush family partner Robert Allison, and many other oil and gas exploration firms. Both Enron and Robert Allison met with Dick Cheney in regard to his secretive energy task force in early 2001.[61] In general, oil and gas exploration companies use explosives to underground create shock waves, so that oil reserves can be found through the seismic responses. Usually there is only a 10% success rate for finding new productive oil fields.[62]

Another Exco executive was Jeffrey Benjamin, who served on the board of Exco starting in 1998, and from 1996 to 1998 was managing director of UBS, the BCCI connected bank mentioned above with Mathis Cabiallavetta and Wolfgang Demisch. Just prior to working for UBS, Benjamin was managing director of Bankers Trust. Through Bankers Trust, he worked with A.B. Krongard, and as of 2002, Benjamin is a senior advisor to Apollo Management with Krongard’s wife, Cheryl Gordon Krongard.

Oppenheimer & Co, an investment bank, was on floors 31 to 34 of the south tower. Oppenheimer’s leadership once included Stephen Berger, former executive director of the PANYNJ (1985 to 1990). Berger was also on the board of Dresser Industries, the Bush dynasty firm, as well as being on the board of Forstmann Little & Co. with managing director of the Carlyle Group, Daniel Akerson, and with Alex Mandl of In-Q-Tel.

Oppenheimer was sold, by Stephen Robert and Nathan Gantcher, to the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) in 1997. Mr. Gantcher continued to serve as Vice Chairman of CIBC Oppenheimer from 1997 to 1999 and also served on the board of Jacobsen Partners with Gerald Parsky, the former undersecretary of the Treasury who introduced Saudi investors to America. Parsky developed a close relationship with the Bushes, and by 1976 was “the undisputed go-to man for the Saudis on oil and money.” He also raised a lot of money for George W’s campaign.[63] Parsky, Gantcher and Stephen Robert were all members of the Council on Foreign Relations as of 1997, along with Friedman, Bremer, Augustine, Gordon, and Maurice Greenberg (and about 3,000 others).

CIBC Oppenheimer was invested in a number of powerful and politically wired companies, including Hollinger International, whose board included Henry Kissinger, Richard Perle, and 9/11 Commissioner James R. Thompson. CIBC Oppenheimer was also invested in Robert Allison’s Anadarko Petroleum, and several DKB subsidiaries including CIT Group, on whose board sits 9/11 Commissioner Thomas Kean. On a side note, Kean is also a Trustee of Drew University with Garnett Keith of Komatsu.

In 2003, the SEC fined CIBC Oppenheimer $80 million for helping to manipulate the financial statements of Enron.

Conclusions and next steps

If we look at the companies that occupied the impact zones of the WTC towers, and other floors that might have played a useful role in the demolition of the towers, we see connections to organizations that had access to explosive materials, and to the expertise required to use explosives. Mining companies like Washington, Morrison-Knudsen, Komatsu and Aoki Construction (and John Lehman’s Special Devices Inc.) have access to many types of explosive materials. Oil and gas companies, like those associated with Exco, use explosives for exploration. Some of the explosive technologies available to these companies, for example Komatsu and Washington, involve thermite, a chemical mixture that has been identified in the WTC dust and in the environmental data at Ground Zero.

It seems that, if certain management representatives of the tenant companies listed above wanted to help bring the WTC towers down, they would have been well suited to do so. The companies mentioned were located at well-spaced intervals in the buildings, and some, for example Marsh and the Primark subsidiaries, had a reputation of being secretive. In fact, a number of the executives from these firms were either on the board of intelligence firms (e.g. In-Q-Tel, TASC), or were closely related to others who were. Others were connected to the CIA itself, and to some of the largest defense contractors in the world, like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Halliburton, and SAIC.

There are also strong connections to those who benefited from the 9/11 attacks, most notably the Bush family and their corporate network, including Dresser Industries (now Halliburton) and UBS, and to Deutsche Bank and it subsidiaries, reported to have brokered the insider trading deals. There are links between these tenant companies and the terrorist-related fraudulent bank BCCI.

In Part II of this series of essays, we’ll look at the security companies and other contractors that had access to the WTC buildings. We’ll then see more connections to the Bush family, through the companies that restructured the security systems in the late 1990s, like Securacom, where Marvin Bush and Wirt Walker were directors. Also involved in these security upgrades was Ensec, where future Democrat National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe was added as a director in 1996 and later worked for Harken Energy’s Alan Quasha. The second essay will also look at E.J. Electric, owned by J. Robert Mann of the Yale Glee Club, and examine particulars about the PANYNJ management staff, and the Giuliani and Silverstein teams that were involved.

Part III will review the clean up of Ground Zero, and some of the people involved in the cover-up investigations. For example, we’ll look more closely at Donald Evans, a close friend to George W. Bush since 1968 and his largest fund-raiser, and who also happened to be secretary of the Department of Commerce during the NIST WTC investigation. This is interesting because NIST reports to the Secretary of Commerce.

In the end, we might see that conspiracies are not just limited to the powerless people who happen to live on the most strategically important lands in the world. The conspiracies that matter might involve the powerful people who seek access to those lands, and who have spent their lives seeking more power.

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Endnotes and references:

[1] Steven. E. Jones, Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Completely Collapse?, Journal of 9/11 Studies, September 2006 http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/200609/ WhyIndeedDidtheWorldTradeCenterBuildingsCompletelyCollapse.pdf
[2] Steven E. Jones, et al, Fourteen Points of Agreement with Official Government Reports on the World Trade Center Destruction, The Open Civil Engineering Journal Volume 2, doi: 10.2174/1874149500802010035 http://www.bentham.org/open/tociej/openaccess2.htm
[3] Niels H. Harrit, et al, Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe, The Open Chemical Physics Journal, Vol 2, 2009, doi: 10.2174/1874412500902010007, http://www.bentham-open.org/pages/content.php?TOCPJ/2009/00000002/00000001/7TOCPJ.SGM
[4] Kevin R. Ryan, et al, Environmental anomalies at the World Trade Center: evidence for energetic materials, The Environmentalist, Volume 29, Number 1 / March, 2009, http://www.springerlink.com/content/f67q6272583h86n4/
[5] James Gourley, Appeal Filed with NIST, Pursuant to Earlier Request for Correction, Journal of 9/11 Studies, December 2007 http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/2007/AppealLetterToNISTGourleyEtAl.pdf
[6] Eric Douglas, The NIST WTC Investigation--How Real Was The Simulation?: A review of NIST NCSTAR 1, J 9/11 Studies, December 2006 http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/200612/NIST-WTC-Investigation.pdf
[7] Kevin Ryan, What is 9/11 Truth? - The First Steps, J 9/11 Studies, August 2006 http://www.journalof911studies.com/articles/Article_1_Ryan5.pdf
[8] Larry Neumeister, Trade Center bomber's threat foreshadowed September terrorist attacks, September 30, 2001, Associated Press http://multimedia.belointeractive.com/attack/perspective/0930learning.html
[9] Sandra Harmon, Mafia Son, St. Martin’s Press, NY
[10] History Commons, page for Rajaa Gulum Abbas, http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=rajaa_gulum_abbas
[11] NIST WTC Report, NCSTAR 1-1H, Chapters 11 and 12, http://wtc.nist.gov/NCSTAR1/PDF/NCSTAR%201-1H.pdf
[12] Kevin Ryan, Another Amazing Coincidence Related to the WTC, 911blogger.com http://www.911blogger.com/node/13272
[13] NIST NCSTAR 1-1H (see above), table 13-1, and table 13-2.
[14] Marcia Vickers, The Secret World Of Marsh Mac, BusinessWeek, November 1, 2004 http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_44/b3906001_mz001.htm
[15] Wayne Madsen, AIG is a “special case”, Online Journal. September 23, 2008 http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_3777.shtml
[16] Ellen Ray, William H. Schaap, Covertaction, Institute for Media Analysis, p 193
[17] John Kerry and Hank Brown, The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations United States Senate, December 1992, Senate Print 102-140, http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/
[18] Eric J.Fry, From BCCI to AIG..., March 13, 2009, Bullion Vault Gold News, http://goldnews.bullionvault.com/aig_bcci_031320093
[19] Website for In-Q-Tel, http://www.iqt.org/technology-portfolio/index-by-practice-area.html
[20] The History Commons, “Wolfowitz Doctrine”, http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=us_international_relations_41 Aaron Dykes, Wolfowitz Warns of 'Surprise like Pearl Harbor' Months Before 9/11 Attacks, Jones Report, February 9, 2007 http://www.jonesreport.com/articles/070207_wolfowitz.html Wolfowitz’s meeting with Mahmud Ahmed was documented in a FOIA response obtained by the 9/11 Working Group of Bloomington - http://911workinggroup.org/
[21] Philip Shenon, The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation, pp 249-253
[22] Craig Unger, House of Bush, House of Saud, pp 220, 228
[23] Craig Unger references the UBS links to BCCI in House of Bush, House of Saud, and Russ Baker describes the UBS bailout of Harken in Family of Secrets
[24] Akzo’s International Paint is the maker of Interchar http://www.international-pc.com/pc/pds/963to_uk.pdf http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/Spinoff2006/ps_3.html
[25] Taku Murakami, US Patent 5532449 - Using plasma ARC and thermite to demolish concrete, http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5532449/description.html
[26] Steven E. Jones et al, Extremely High Temperatures During the World Trade Center Destruction, Journal of 9/11 Studies, January 2008 http://www.journalof911studies.com/articles/WTCHighTemp2.pdf
[27] Lewis Paul Bremer III on Washington DC NBC4 TV 09/11/01, Vehmgericht http://vehme.blogspot.com/2007/08/lewis-paul-bremer-iii-on-washington-dc.html
[28] A.K. Gupta, The Great Iraq Heist, January 15, 2004, Information Clearing House http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5692.htm
[29] Albert Gibson et al, Integral low-energy thermite igniter, US Patent number: 4464989, http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=rKl1AAAAEBAJ&dq=US+4464989
[30] Kevin R. Ryan, The Top Ten Connections Between NIST and Nanothermites, Journal of 9/11 Studies, July 2008, http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/2008/Ryan_NIST_and_Nano-1.pdf
[31] Skull and Bones is a secret society at Yale University, founded in 1832. Members have included George H.W. Bush, his father Prescott Bush, his son George W. Bush, his brother Jonathan J. Bush, and many other powerful people. For LMI’s mission, see its website - http://www.lmi.org/aboutus/aboutus.aspx
[32] World Markets Research Centre, Global Terrorism Index: key findings, The Guardian (UK), August 18, 2003 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/aug/18/alqaida.terrorism1
[33] NIST NCSTAR 1-1H, table 13-2
[34] See Micha Morrison, Wall Street Journal, March 1, 1995. and, Gina Bellafante et al, All That Glitters…, Time Magazine, November 6, 1995
[35] Timothy O’Brien, A Washington Bank, a Global Mess, NY Times, April 11, 2004, http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/11/business/yourmoney/11riggs.html?ex=1085025600&en=1cd00a0f06fad384&ei=5070&ex=1084852800&en=d2142d33570c4f4a&ei=5070
[36] Wikipedia page for Deutsche Bank - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Bank
[37] Michael C. Ruppert, Suppressed Details of Criminal Insider Trading Lead Directly into the CIA’s Highest Ranks, October 9, 2001, http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/10_09_01_krongard.html
[38] For the fraudulent loan scandal, see article from The Economist, entitled Japan’s financial scandals: now a big bank, July 27, 1991. For the Cayman islands deposits, see Terry Reed and John Cummins, Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA, p248
[39] William Bowles, ‘Frauds-R-Us’ The Bush Family Saga, Information Clearing House, May 11, 2003 http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3333.htm
[40] Sam Smith, Arkansas Connections, The Progressive Review, January 2001 http://www.prorev.com/connex.htm
[41] David E. Kaplan and Alec Dubro, Yakuza: Japan’s Criminal Underworld, University of California Press, 2003, see p 216 for the Koike loans and pp 198-199 for Niu Onoue
[42] Chairman Resigns at Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank, New York Times Business section, June 14, 1997
[43] For the IBJ loans, see Mihuzo press release - http://www.mizuho-fg.co.jp/english/company/info/pdf/19991222release_eng.pdf and James Sterngold, Japan Hit by Another Scandal, New York Times, August 14, 1991 For FirstPlus Financial, see the Center for Public integrity, The Buying of the President - http://www.buyingofthepresident.org/index.php/archives/2000/545/ For more on Japanese banks and the Yakuza in the early 90s, see – http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/japans-crime-incorporated-the-years-of-the-bubble-economy-lured-japans-yakuza-gangs-to-muscle-into-big-business-terry-mccarthy-in-tokyo-explores-their-corporate-web-1479105.html
[44] Thomas Flannigan, Bribing the Bushes - http://www.jpri.org/publications/critiques/critique_VIII_2.html
[45] Jeff Gerth, The 1992 Campaign; Business Dealings of the President’s Relatives: What the Record Shows, New York Times, April 19,1992, http://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/19/us/1992-campaign-business-dealings-president-s-relatives-what-record-shows.html?scp=9&sq=%22asset%20management%20international%22&st=cse
[46] Russel S. Bowen, The Immaculate Deception, American West Publishers 1991 http://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg33133.html
[47] archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg33133.html Masanobu Iwatani, Regulatory Reform Provokes a Wave of New Entrants to Japan’s Security Markets, Capital Research Journal, Vol 2, No 4, http://www.nicmr.com/nicmr/english/report/repo/1999/1999win04.pdf
[48] Stephanie Strom, International Business; Japan's Banks Pressed by Troubled Corporate Clients, New York Times, November 25, 2000, http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/25/business/international-business-japan-s-banks-pressed-by-troubled-corporate-clients.html
[49] Miki Tanikawa, Stocks Relapse As Japan Waits For Changes, New York Times, July 27, 2001, http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/27/business/stocks-relapse-as-japan-waits-for-changes.html?scp=6&sq=Mizuho&st=nyt
[50] Hiroko Tabuchi, In Japan’s Stagnant Decade, Cautionary Tales for America, New York Times, February 12, 2009
[51] See History Commons profile for Jim Pierce, and accompanying referencs, http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=jim_pierce
[52] Mark MacIntyre, Bunker Hill: light at the end of the tunnel, The Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce, August 20, 1998, http://www.djc.com/special/enviro98/10043970.htm
[53] The agreement between LLNL and Savannah River can be found here - https://www.llnl.gov/str/News597.html
[54] Savannah’s reference to developing sol-gels can be found here - http://srnl.doe.gov/mat_sci.htm
[55] Randy Simpson webpage at LLNL - https://www.llnl.gov/str/RSimpson.html
[56] News from the Savannah River National Laboratory, September 20, 2001, http://srnl.doe.gov/newsroom/2001news/nyc_911.pdf
[57] URS Website - http://www.urscorp.com/Divisions/index.php?s=102
[58] SEC document for Washington pre-payments - http://www.secinfo.com/dRqWm.4G1Vx.c.htm
[59] The Ties That Bind, Descended from family business empires, six huge business groups dominate the Japanese economy, Multinational Monitor, October 1983 - http://multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/issues/1983/10/ties.html
[60] John Holusha, Commercial Property/Downtown; At the World Trade Center, Things Are Looking Up, May 31, 1998, New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/1998/05/31/realestate/commercial-property-downtown-at-the-world-trade-center-things-are-looking-up.html?scp=121&sq=Mclennan&st=nyt&pagewanted=2 Also see PANYNJ press release from December 1997, - http://www.panynj.gov/pr/164-97.html
[61] Don Van Natta Jr. and Neela Banerjee, Top G.O.P. Donors in Energy Industry Met Cheney Panel, New York Times, March 1, 2002
[62] XROilPrice.com, http://xroilprice.com/Oil_Exploration.html
[63] Russ Baker, Family of Secrets, Bloomsbury Press, pp 292-295

*************

- Kevin Ryan, former Site Manager for Environmental Health Laboratories, a division of Underwriters Laboratories (UL). Mr. Ryan, a Chemist and laboratory manager, was fired by UL in 2004 for publicly questioning the report being drafted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) on their World Trade Center investigation. In the intervening period, Ryan has completed additional research while his original questions, which have become increasingly important over time, remain unanswered by UL or NIST. More information http://www.ultruth.com/ feedback kncryan @ msn.com Copyright (c) Scoop Media [See the Fair Use Notice, below.] (via What Really Happened)

Labels: 911

posted by George Thomas Kysor 10:42 PM

Crude Impact 

Video, 2 min 50 sec.

Labels: big oil, Chevron

posted by George Thomas Kysor 5:17 PM

New Evidence: Exercise Helps Heart Disease, Increases Survival Better than Angioplasty 

(NaturalNews.com) At the European Association of Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation meeting recently held in Barcelona, Spain, new heart research was presented that shows one treatment in particular can provide remarkable help for patients with certain forms of serious heart disease. It's not a new drug or surgical procedure. Instead, it's a natural therapy -- plain old-fashioned regular exercise.

In fact, in several studies just presented at the meeting, exercise reduced the markers of heart disease in patients following coronary artery bypass surgery (CABG). What's more, it improved indications of disease in people with heart failure, a condition usually thought to be incurable and often just treated with symptom-relieving drugs. But the news that's perhaps most likely to make some interventional cardiologists' hearts skip a beat or two was the evidence presented that showed that exercise improved cardiac event-free survival in coronary patients better than angioplasty with stents.

Also called percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), angioplasty is commonly used to help people with coronary artery disease whose arteries are narrowed and even blocked by a build-up of sticky plaque. By threading a thin tube through a blood vessel in the arm or groin, interventional cardiologists perform angioplasty to restore blood flood through a clogged artery. A tiny balloon at the end of the tube is inflated when it reaches the exact spot of blockage. That pushes the plaque outward against the walls of the artery, restoring blood flow. A small metal device called a stent is also carried by the tube and deployed at the site of the blockage in order to prop open the artery.

This approach to treating heart disease is a huge business. A report in Bloomberg News last fall noted that about 800,000 angioplasties are performed each year in the U.S. at a cost of about $10 billion annually. And, although many cardiologists consider angioplasty to be the "gold standard" of care in most types of acute coronary events such as heart attack, the procedure's long term benefits have been questioned by many doctors. In addition, the role of angioplasty in treating other kinds of coronary disease, like angina, isn't clear.

To help shed light on this issue, researchers at the University of Leipzig in Germany conducted a study to compare the event-free survival rate in 101 stable angina patients. Research subjects with the condition were divided randomly into two groups. Each group was treated with either a regular exercise program or with angioplasty.

The results, just presented at the European Association of Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation meeting, showed that after five years of follow-up, the study participants who went through exercise training had a better event-free survival rate than those treated with stent angioplasty. In the exercise group, 63 percent of patients had survived, free of cardiac events. However, only 40 percent in the angioplasty group had survived without cardiac problems (which included heart attack, stroke and death).

Two other studies released at the Barcelona conference also back up the idea that exercise can often help even patients with very serious heart problems. Research by Dr. Tomasz Mikulski and colleagues from the Medical Research Centre in Warsaw, Poland, showed that aerobic training using an exercise bike not only improved the physical fitness of cardiac patients following bypass surgery, but also reduced their cholesterol levels and markers of inflammation (which are associated with heart disease).

Dr. Marcus Sandri from the University of Leipzig presented data showing that a moderate exercise program daily for four weeks improved the function of endothelial cells in patients with heart failure. This is important because endothelial cells, which line the circulatory system, are associated with the progression of heart disease and heart failure when they don't function properly.

No improvement was noted in the control group of heart failure patients who did not exercise. Dr Sandri noted in a statement to the media that the beneficial effect of exercise was seen as much in older subjects as in younger. "The effects of exercise were not diminished in our older heart failure patients which suggests that exercise as a treatment might be just as effective in older patients as younger," he explained.

- S. L. Baker, features writer.

Labels: health

posted by George Thomas Kysor 4:50 PM

Friday, July 10, 2009

New research shows vitamin D slashes risk of cancers by 77 percent; cancer industry refuses to support cancer prevention 

Exciting new research conducted at the Creighton University School of Medicine in Nebraska has revealed that supplementing with vitamin D and calcium can reduce your risk of cancer by an astonishing 77 percent. This includes breast cancer, colon cancer, skin cancer and other forms of cancer. This research provides strong new evidence that vitamin D is the single most effective medicine against cancer, far outpacing the benefits of any cancer drug known to modern science.

The study involved 1,179 healthy women from rural Nebraska. One group of women was given calcium (around 1500 mg daily) and vitamin D (1100 IU daily) while another group was given placebo. Over four year, the group receiving the calcium and vitamin D supplements showed a 60 percent decrease in cancers. Considering just the last three years of the study reveals an impressive 77 percent reduction in cancer due to supplementation. (The full press release of this study is included below. It provides more details about the findings.)

Note that these astonishing effects were achieved on what many nutritionists consider to be a low dose of vitamin D. Exposure to sunlight, which creates even more vitamin D in the body, was not tested or considered, and the quality of the calcium supplements was likely not as high as it could have been (it was probably calcium carbonate and not high-grade calcium malate, aspartate or similar forms). What does all this mean? It means that if you take high-quality calcium supplements and get lots of natural sunlight exposure or take premium vitamin D supplements (such as those made from fish oil), you could easily have a greater reduction than the 77 percent reduction recorded in this study.

American Cancer Society opposes vitamin D

This research on vitamin D is such good news that the American Cancer Society, of course, had to say something against it. An ACS spokesperson, Marji McCullough, strategic director of nutritional epidemiology for the American Cancer Society, flatly stated that nobody should take supplements to prevent cancer.

If it seems surprising to you that the American Cancer Society -- which claims to be against cancer -- would dissuade people from taking supplements that slash their cancer risk by 77 percent, then you don't know much about the ACS. In my opinion, the ACS is an organization that actually prevents prevention and openly supports the continuation of cancer as a way to boost its power and profits. The ACS is the wealthiest non-profit in America and has very close ties to pharmaceutical companies, mammography equipment companies and other corporations that profit from cancer. Notice the name, too: It isn't the American Anti-Cancer Society, it's the American Cancer Society! What they really stand for is right in the name!

Click here to read more about the ACS and its financial ties to chemical companies, pharmaceutical companies and radiology equipment manufacturers.

The cancer industry is a multi-billion dollar industry, and I've written extensively about the criminal organizations that protect and promote the industry. Just about everything the public is told about cancer by these cancer institutions is a lie. Those "race for the cure" cancer walks are a complete scam (they really aren't searching for any way to prevent cancer or cure cancer, they're only searching for new patented drugs to profit from cancer).

This research on vitamin D is a huge threat to the cancer industry profit mongers because it reveals a way to prevent cancer for free -- by seeking natural sunlight exposure and letting your skin manufacture your own powerful anti-cancer medicine (vitamin D). The idea that the cancer industry could lose 80% of its patients due to widespread education about vitamin D and sunlight scares the living daylights out of the cancer industry. Billions of dollars in cancer profits are at stake here, so the pro-cancer groups have to do everything they can to discredit vitamin D by creating doubt and confusion. The degree of dishonesty at work here is almost unbelievable to those who don't really know what's happening in the cancer industry.

Ten questions to ask yourself about the cancer industry

Consider these questions:

#1: Why does the cancer industry refuse to educate people about cancer prevention?

#2: If people keep donating money for the "search" for a cancer cure, why won't drug companies pledge to "open source" their patents on cancer drugs to benefit the people whose donations funded them in the first place? In other words, why do people donate money for cancer research but then get charged for cancer drugs?

#3: Why does the entire cancer industry so strongly dissuade people from using sunlight exposure to dramatically reduce their cancer risk? (Hint: Follow the money to the sunscreen industry...)

#4: Why have all the really good cancer supplements, clinics and naturopaths been banned, arrested or run out of the country? (Look up the FDA's oppression of Lane Labs over MGN-3 for a fascinating review of this...)

#5: The U.S. has poured billions of dollars into the cancer industry over the last three decades. Cancer cures were promised in the 1970's. Why are cancer rates still essentially the same today as they were in the 1970's?

#6: Why does the cancer industry continue to use chemotherapy, radiation and other toxic procedures to "kill tumors" when the latest science clearly shows that cancer tumors are only the symptoms, not the cause, of cancer? Chemotherapy destroys immune function and causes permanent damage to the heart, brain and liver...

#7: The World Health Organization says that 70% of all cancers are easily preventable through dietary and lifestyle changes. This latest research shows that sunlight and low-cost calcium supplements can slash cancer risk by 77% in women. Why won't conventional medicine embrace this low-cost, safe and highly effective method for preventing cancer?

#8: The cancer industry routinely attacks anti-cancer herbs, superfoods and supplements. Why is the cancer industry opposed to anti-cancer nutrition? Why does it believe that only man, not nature, can manufacture anti-cancer medicines?

#9: Dark skin pigmentation blocks ultraviolet radiation, meaning that people with black skin need far more time under the sun to generate the same amount of vitamin D as someone with white skin. Not surprisingly, black women suffer extremely high rates of breast cancer while black men show similarly high levels of prostate cancer. The white-dominated medical industry pretends to be "mystified" by all this. Why won't conventional medicine simple tell black people the truth about vitamin D, skin pigmentation and cancer? Why do oncologists try to keep black people ignorant about their vitamin D deficiencies?

#10: Why is it illegal for nutritional supplement manufacturers to tell the truth about the anti-cancer effects of their products? Broccoli, garlic, onions and sprouts all have powerful anti-cancer effects, as do dozens of rainforest herbs (Cat's Claw, for example), Chinese herbs and Western herbs. But the FDA threatens and censors any company that dares to mention cancer prevention on its supplement products. Why is the FDA enforcing a policy of nutritional ignorance with U.S. consumers? Why does the federal government want people to remain ignorant of methods for preventing or treating cancer?

You probably already know the answer to all these questions, because the answer is the same for each one: Corporate profits. Cancer is hugely profitable to treat. Substantially preventing cancer would result in a loss of billions of dollars in profits for the oncologists, drug companies, hospitals and clinics that currently prey upon the finances of cancer victims.

The cancer industry is operated like a criminal racket, using false information, intimidation, political pressure and propaganda to protect its power base and keep its corporations profitable. And that, my friends, is exactly why the industry is against the use of sunlight to prevent cancer. Free medicine from the sky? The very thought of it makes the cancer industry cringe. Sunlight doesn't even need a prescription, you see, and it can't be patented, either.

Preventing cancer the healthy way

Let me tell you how I prevent cancer. I take long walks in the desert with no shirt on, and I don't wear sunscreen. I soak up the sun's rays for many hours each week, and I never get a sun burn because I eat lots of antioxidant-rich superfoods, berries and fresh produce.

I drink a raw superfood smoothie each morning, made of fresh produce and superfoods. My two favorite recipes are chocolate (with raw cacao, coconut oil or macadamia nut oil, raw avocado, spirulina, quinoa, banana and almond milk) and super berry (fresh berries, freeze-dried berries, egg white protein, stevia, aloe vera gel, fresh cucumber or watermelon, celery).

I put no personal care products on my skin whatsoever: No deodorants, no fragrance, no skin creams, no cosmetics and no sunscreen. This alone saves me from exposure to hundreds of cancer-causing toxic chemicals added to personal care products. I refuse to use chemical laundry detergent and, instead, use natural laundry soap that grows on trees: Natural soap berries that we sell as a replacement for chemical laundry detergents.

Corporate-controlled U.S. government doesn't want to prevent cancer
The U.S. government doesn't want the population to be free of cancer. That's a strong statement, so let me offer you an undeniable piece of strong evidence to back that up: The artificially low RDA numbers for vitamin D.

One of the best ways to keep the population suffering from cancer is to enforce long-term nutritional deficiencies that lead to cancer. The US government accomplishes this by keeping the recommendations for vitamin D artificially low, practically guaranteeing that anyone who follows the recommendations will eventually be diagnosed with cancer. Vitamin D deficiency is the leading cause of breast cancer.

Most educated nutritionists agree that the daily dose of vitamin D for an adult should be at least 1000 IUs, perhaps as high as 1400. But the U.S. Institute of Medicine (IoM), which controls the recommendations on these things, currently states that adults under 50 only need 200 IUs of vitamin D a day. This policy is, in my opinion, an organized conspiracy to keep the American people diseased by making sure they stay deficient in anti-cancer nutrients. It serves the interests of all the powerful corporations and non-profits that run Washington. And yes, it is a conspiracy. I've documented it in far more detail in my book, Natural Health Solutions and the Conspiracy to Keep You From Knowing About Them, which reveals shocking details, documents and photographs showing how modern medicine is a system that's literally designed to keep the people in a state of chronic disease.

The FDA doesn't want people to prevent cancer either. That's why they've aggressively attacked companies offering anti-cancer nutrients, and completely censored the very mention of the word "cancer" by supplement companies. In fact, the only reason I can print the information you're reading right now is because I sell no food or supplements and my free speech writing is not regulated by the FDA. If I were selling supplements and writing these same words you're reading right now, I would be arrested, charged with federal crimes, and put out of business by state and federal authorities. That's the reality of the oppressive medical environment under which we live today: Health is outlawed, and only disease is allowed to be promoted.

The cancer industry, you see, is not merely incompetent; it is criminal. Intentionally keeping a population sick so that you can profit from disease is a crime against humanity. And yet this is business as usual in America's modern cancer industry.

Discrediting simple, free and safe cancer prevention strategies is also criminal, and yet this is what the American Cancer Society seems to do at every opportunity.

Plotting to profit from the suffering of other humans beings is evil. And yet the entire revenue base of the cancer industry is based on precisely that: Keeping people alive long enough to "treat" them with overpriced toxic chemicals that can be billed to Medicare at 50,000% markups over their manufacturing cost.

Cancer is big, big business. And curing cancer is a threat to all the criminals participating in that industry: The non-profit employees, oncologists, doctors, federal regulators, drug company executives, med school propaganda teachers, pharmaceutical reps and many others. These people cannot allow cancer to be prevented or cured. Their jobs and careers are at stake.

Another outstanding source for learning more about the evils of the cancer industry is G. Edward Griffin. Click here to read our article about Griffin or click here for his website.

Click here to see his video documentary on vitamin B17

A world free from cancer and full of abundance

Personally, I believe we could create a world virtually free of cancer. We could accomplish it in two generations by taking tough action to outlaw cancer-causing chemicals and investing in genuine cancer prevention education. Drug companies would lose trillions of dollars in profits, hospitals would lose huge amounts of patients, and pro-cancer non-profit groups would lose power, money and prestige. But guess what? We'd all be better off without cancer.

Here's a startling statistic: Did you know that reducing the cancer death rate by just 1% would be worth almost $500 billion to the U.S. economy over the next hundred years or so? (Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) Drop the cancer rate by 10% and it's worth $5 trillion dollars to the economy. (These gains are due to increased productivity and life spans of working, contributing people.)

We know right now that vitamin D and calcium can slash cancer rates by 77 percent. Do the math on that, and you realize that sunlight and calcium could result in a $38.5 trillion boost to the U.S. economy over the next century.

That's enough economic productivity to pay off our entire national debt, build new schools in every town and city in the country, provide free college educations to all young people who wish to go to college, invest billions in new energy technologies and even fund massive health education campaigns to keep our population healthy. $38 trillion is a lot of money. With that kind of increased abundance, we could build a whole new society of health, wealth and education.

But guess what? The cancer industry won't let that happen. There's too much short term profit to be made in keeping everybody sick. The cancer industry is so evil that it will sell out our future in order to maintain power, profits and control over the people today. The cancer industry doesn't want cancer rates to go down, regardless of the benefits to society or individual lives. The cancer industry wants there to be MORE cancer, which is exactly why it opposes commonsense prevention strategies that would reduce cancers. (It's true, this industry actually opposes removing cancer-causing chemicals from the workplace...)

Read more at Dr. Sam Epstein's website: http://www.preventcancer.com

The bottom line in all this? New research shows us that using low-cost calcium and vitamin D supplements (or just natural sunlight), we could slash cancer rates by an astonishing 77 percent. The cancer industry opposes this and is firmly positioned as an opponent of cancer prevention. The industry depends on cancer to grow its own power and profits, and it will invest in the de-education of the public in order to maximize its own revenues.

Cures for cancer exist all around us: Sunlight, rainforest herbs, anti-cancer foods and superfoods, etc. The causes of cancer are well known: Toxic chemicals in foods, cosmetics, personal care products, home cleaning products, and so on. So why don't we, as a nation, take steps to outlaw the things that cause cancer while promoting the things that prevent cancer?

The reason, once again, is because there's too much money at stake here. The corporations are in charge, and as long as they're running the show, cancer cures or prevention strategies that really work will simply not be tolerated.

Creighton press release

Here's the original press release about the new findings on vitamin D and cancer prevention:

OMAHA, Neb., June 8 -- Most Americans and others are not taking enough vitamin D, a fact that may put them at significant risk for developing cancer, according to a landmark study conducted by Creighton University School of Medicine.

The four-year, randomized study followed 1,179 healthy, postmenopausal women from rural eastern Nebraska.* Participants taking calcium, as well as a quantity of vitamin D3 nearly three times the U.S. government's Recommended Daily Amount (RDA) for middle-age adults, showed a dramatic 60 percent or greater reduction in cancer risk than women who did not get the vitamin.

The results of the study, conducted between 2000 and 2005, were reported in the June 8 online edition of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

"The findings are very exciting. They confirm what a number of vitamin D proponents have suspected for some time but that, until now, have not been substantiated through clinical trial," said principal investigator Joan Lappe, Ph.D., R.N., Creighton professor of medicine and holder of the Criss/Beirne Endowed Chair in the School of Nursing. "Vitamin D is a critical tool in fighting cancer as well as many other diseases."

Other Creighton researchers involved in the study included Robert Recker, M.D.; Robert Heaney, M.D.; Dianne Travers-Gustafson, M.S.; and K. Michael Davies, Ph.D.

Research participants were all 55 years and older and free of known cancers for at least 10 years prior to entering the Creighton study. Subjects were randomly assigned to take daily dosages of 1,400-1,500 mg supplemental calcium, 1,400-1,500 mg supplemental calcium plus 1,100 IU of vitamin D3, or placebos. National Institutes of Health funded the study.

Over the course of four years, women in the calcium/vitamin D3 group experienced a 60 percent decrease in their cancer risk than the group taking placebos.

On the premise that some women entered the study with undiagnosed cancers, researchers then eliminated the first-year results and looked at the last three years of the study. When they did that, the results became even more dramatic with the calcium/vitamin D3 group showing a startling 77 percent cancer-risk reduction.

In the three-year analysis, there was no statistically significant difference in cancer incidence between participants taking placebos and those taking just calcium supplements.

Through the course of the study, 50 participants developed nonskin cancers, including breast, colon, lung and other cancers.

Lappe said further studies are needed to determine whether the Creighton research results apply to other populations, including men, women of all ages, and different ethnic groups. While the study was open to all ethnic groups, all participants were Caucasian, she noted.

There is a growing body of evidence that a higher intake of vitamin D may be helpful in the prevention and treatment of cancer, high blood pressure, fibromyalgia, diabetes mellitus, multiple sclerosis, and rheumatoid arthritis and other diseases.

Humans make their own vitamin D3 when they are exposed to sunlight. In fact, only 10-15 minutes a day in a bright summer sun creates large amounts of the vitamin, Lappe said. However, people need to exercise caution since the sun's ultraviolet B rays also can cause skin cancer; sunscreen blocks most vitamin D production.

In addition, the latitude at which you live and your ancestry also influence your body's ability to convert sunlight into vitamin D. People with dark skin have more difficulty making the vitamin. Persons living at latitudes north of the 37th parallel -- Omaha is near the 41st parallel -- cannot get their vitamin D naturally during the winter months because of the sun's angle. Experts generally agree that the RDA** for vitamin D needs to be increased substantially, however there is debate about the amount. Supplements are available in two forms -- vitamin D2 and vitamin D3. Creighton researchers recommend vitamin D3, because it is more active and thus more effective in humans.

* Study participants came from the Nebraska counties of Douglas, Colfax, Cuming, Dodge, Saunders, Washington, Sarpy, Burt and Butler.

** RDA recommendations for vitamin D are 200 IU/d, birth-age 50; 400 IU/d, 50-70 years; and 600 IU/d, 70 years and older.

- Mike Adams, a natural health author and technology pioneer with a passion for teaching people how to improve their health. He has authored and published thousands of articles, interviews, consumers guides, and books on topics like health and the environment, reaching millions of readers with information that is saving lives and improving personal health around the world. Adams is an independent journalist with strong ethics who does not get paid to write articles about any product or company. In 2007, Adams launched EcoLEDs, a maker of super bright LED light bulbs that are 1000% more energy efficient than incandescent lights. He also founded an environmentally-friendly online retailer called BetterLifeGoods.com that uses retail profits to help support consumer advocacy programs. He's also a noted technology pioneer and founded a software company in 1993 that developed the HTML email newsletter software currently powering the NaturalNews subscriptions. Adams also serves as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a non-profit consumer protection group, and practices nature photography, Capoeira, Pilates and organic gardening. He's also author of numerous health books published by Truth Publishing and is the creator of several consumer-oriented grassroots campaigns, including the Spam. Don't Buy It! campaign, and the free downloadable Honest Food Guide. He also created the free reference sites HerbReference.com and HealingFoodReference.com. Adams believes in free speech, free access to nutritional supplements and the ending of corporate control over medicines, genes and seeds. Known by his callsign, the 'Health Ranger,' Adams posts his missions statements, health statistics and health photos at www.HealthRanger.org

Labels: health

posted by George Thomas Kysor 5:35 PM

AETA is Unconstitutional 

30-minute video & transcript.

U.S.A. v. Buddenberg is a federal prosecution of four animal rights activists in California for conspiracy to commit animal enterprise terrorism. On February 19th and 20th, the Joint Terrorism Task Force of the FBI arrested four animal rights activists as "terrorists." The indictment against Joseph Buddenberg, Maryam Khajavi, Nathan Pope and Adriana Stumpo (the AETA 4) charges them with conduct including protesting, chalking the sidewalk, chanting and leafleting -, and the alleged use of "the Internet to find information on bio-medical researchers." These acts are all protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Join CCR in court this Monday as we argue that the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) is unconstitutional before the United States District Court, Northern District of California in San Jose, CA.

The AETA may be a federal law intended to suppress animal rights activity, but it impacts all of our civil liberties and free speech activities. We need your support and solidarity now, as this is the first application of the AETA.

Oral Arguments in U.S.A. v. Buddenberg
Monday, July 13, 2009 at 9:00am
U.S. District Court, Northern District of California
280 South 1st Street
San Jose, CA 95113

- Center for Constitutional Rights (via email)

Labels: AETA, CMU

posted by George Thomas Kysor 5:13 PM

Thursday, July 09, 2009

The Backstory to Bailout Nation, May 22, 2009 

Long story short: After Bill Fleckenstein's GREENSPAN'S BUBBLES: THE AGE OF IGNORANCE AT THE FEDERAL RESERVE McGraw Hill asked him to do a follow up to that book. He (wisely) said no.

However, Bill suggested they contact me.

Which the publisher did. I turned them down (several times). Who had time to write a book? Besides, I did not want to do a fast rush-to-judgment type of thing. But they were tenacious in their pursuit, and I eventually succumbed to their flattery -- but on my terms, including having final edit on the manuscript. (This becomes important later on, as you will soon see).

Because of the way events played out, I ended up writing three separate Bailout Nation books over the next 15 months. The first version was a history of bailouts. This overview covered an arc from Lockheed (1971) to Bear Stearns (March 2008). Around the time this book was due (~Labor Day 2008), something was in the air . . . you could smell the leading edge of the approaching storm. I convinced the publisher to hold off a few weeks.

Boom! Fannie Mae blew up. Then Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, AIG, Citigroup, Bank of America. Soon Merrill was on the ropes, followed by Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, GM and GE. All hell was breaking loose. Well, I thought, at least I had an ending. The expanded version of the manuscript, with greater emphasis on the latter part of 2008, was finished in December '08.

Or so I thought.

After I handed the book into the publisher (McGraw Hill), they let me know they had problems with my assessment of the Ratings Agencies. They were unhappy with my calling them "Pimps & Hos", or describing their business model of rating junk bonds as AAA for big fees as "Payola." (What would you call it?)

Not coincidentally, McGraw Hill owns of the largest Rating Agencies, Standard & Poor's.

The compromise was to remove the reference to Pimps, but using publicly available data and congressional testimony, to add more detailed analysis and quotations from experts. When it was finished, I found the revised section to be much more even handed -- and far more devastating -- to S&P. They (along with fellow rating agencies Moody's and Fitch's) were key enablers to the entire crisis. There were many other guilty parties, but I simply could not under-emphasize the ratings agencies.

When McGH rejected it again, I exercised my right to buy the manuscript back from them in January 2009. Numerous publishers were interested, but I went with Wiley -- they have a great deal of experience publishing business/investing related books, and as a publisher, had no conflicts of interest that would interfere with telling the full story.

The third version was the charm.

By this time, the amount of bailout money going to mismanaged companies, reckless speculators, and incompetent corporate executives had skyrocketed to 14 trillion dollars. This was infuriating to anyone paying attention.

Astonishing things happened as the book progresses. The more I researched and wrote, the more it was apparent we were witnessing the greatest heist ever made. By the last section of the book, history's biggest transfer of wealth -- from the taxpayer to the Banksters -- was taking place. Trillions were being shifted from the responsible to the reckless, from the prudent to the incompetent. It was infuriating -- and you will see as the book progresses my initial academic tone gets replaced with greater snark and anger.

I not only had my ending, I had a new cause -- exposing those who caused this mess, be they Democrat or Republican, Corporate CEO or derivatives trader. I hope the end result is something that will inform and illuminate, while entertaining you along the way . . .

- Barry Ritholtz (via The Daily Reckoning, Casting Blame, Part 1 by Barry Ritholtz)

Labels: economic crisis, economic depression

posted by George Thomas Kysor 1:31 PM

Wednesday, July 08, 2009

New 7/7 Bombing Photo Contradicts Official Story [excerpt] 

[Click image to enlarge.] Despite the fact that the image is cut off at the point where the hole begins, one can clearly see it at the very bottom of the picture. The cabling underneath the floor cover is exposed and the area to the right of the hole is raised up, as if pressure has been exerted from underneath.

The contention that there were no suicide bombers actually on the train at all, as Bruce Lait contends, is consistent with other evidence surrounding the attacks.

The fact that the ID’s of all the so-called suicide bombers were found in pristine condition right next to where the bombs went off strongly suggests the planting of evidence to frame patsies. The ID’s would have had a reasonable chance of surviving relatively unscathed if the bomb was not in the backpack with them, but underneath the train.

On the other hand the backpack bombs could have just been the diversionary blasts to enable patsies to be framed, just like the planes flying into the towers acted as the diversionary cover for the explosives planted inside the World Trade Center.

- Paul Joseph Watson. Copyright © 2002-2009 Alex Jones [See the Fair use Notice, below.] (via What Really Happened)

Labels: 7/7, Cover-up

posted by George Thomas Kysor 11:01 PM

9/11 FLIR Infrared Camera proves NIST and 9/11 Commission Lies 

Video, 10 minutes. (via What Really Happened)

Labels: 911

posted by George Thomas Kysor 9:59 PM

DeMint Amendment to Audit Federal Reserve Blocked by Senate Leadership 

Video, 8 min 49 sec.

Labels: monetary inflation

posted by George Thomas Kysor 5:18 PM

Tuesday, July 07, 2009

A coffee a day ensures the memory will stay 

Monday, 6 July 2009

Scientists have uncovered powerful evidence that caffeine not only helps to stave off Alzheimer's but can treat it.

A few cups of coffee a day may be all that is needed to reverse the effects of Alzheimer's disease, new research suggests.

They plan to follow up the initial results from animal experiments with human patient trials. Leading researcher, the US neuroscientist Gary Arendash said: "The new findings provide evidence that caffeine could be a viable 'treatment' for established Alzheimer's disease, and not simply a protective strategy. That's important because caffeine is a safe drug for most people. It easily enters the brain, and it appears to directly affect the disease process."

A key aspect of Alzheimer's is sticky clumps of abnormal protein in the brain called beta amyloid plaques. Mice with a rodent equivalent of the disease showed a 50 per cent reduction in levels of amyloid protein in their brains after scientists spiked their drinking water with caffeine. The change was reflected in their behaviour as the mice developed better memories and quicker thinking.

Dr Arendash's team, from the Florida Alzheimer's Disease Research Centre in Tampa, studied 55 mice, genetically engineered to develop dementia symptoms identical to those of Alzheimer's. At the age of 18 to 19 months, about 70 in human years, the mice were showing signs of memory impairment. The researchers then gave half the mice water containing caffeine while the other half continued to drink ordinary water.

Humans receiving an equivalent dose for their body weight would be consuming two cups of strong "coffee shop" coffee, 14 cups of tea, or 20 cola drinks a day.

At the end of the two-month study, the caffeine-drinking mice performed far better on tests of memory and thinking than mice given "straight" water. Their memories were as sharp as those of healthy older mice without dementia. Almost half the abnormal protein previously seen when the brains of Alzheimer's mice were examined had vanished after two months. The study was published online in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease.

But the scientists found no evidence that caffeine boosted the mental performance of healthy young brains. Normal mice given caffeinated drinking water throughout their lives had memories no better than those raised on regular water when they reached old age.

- Jon von Radowitz. ©independent.co.uk [See the Fair Use Notice, below.] (via Lew Rockwell)

Labels: health

posted by George Thomas Kysor 7:35 AM

Monday, July 06, 2009

Those Damned Derivative Thingies [This is a MUST read!] 

This essay is a story about insurance, or rather, a story about a type of insurance policy which underwent a mutation. This mutation was not spontaneous – it was engineered. It was one of the biggest scams ever perpetrated.

Paradoxically, the problem was that it worked too well and just got too big.

I hope you stay with the story until its denouement. Maybe you’ll be gobsmacked. If it moves you to go out and start looking for suitable lamposts – then it’s understandable.

When a business makes a loan to another party it can insure against the risk of default. This would be prudent behaviour if the lender had concerns about the borrower not repaying everything which was due.

Insurance companies, like all industries, work to a set of fundamental principles. Two of their most fundamental principles are indemnity and insurable interest.

Indemnity simply means that no-one should "profit" from making an insurance claim. Instead, the money received should be enough to restore you financially to the position you were in before the reason for making the claim occurred.

Insurable interest means that you cannot insure something unless you have a legitimate interest in protecting yourself against something bad happening to that thing. So, for example, you can insure your car or the life of your spouse. You cannot, however, insure the car or the spouse of a complete stranger since your only incentive would be the hope that something bad happens to either or both. In fact, you would have a very strong motive for making sure that something bad actually does happen to either or both!

What has the above got to do with the present mess?

Everything unfortunately.

Understanding the gravity of the situation we are now in means getting to grips with the dreaded "D" word – and I don’t mean "Depression" – I mean "DERIVATIVES"! Few understand them. The following quote refers to Gordon Brown:

"He … made the extraordinary confession that as Chancellor he 'didn't know a lot about' sub-prime mortgages – a key banking practice that sparked the economic collapse."

Mention of the ‘D’ word is usually enough to turn most people off instantly – therefore in what follows I have attempted to keep it as brief and clear as I can and to avoid mentioning this heinous word. Instead I’ll refer to them as Gherkins, Sprouts and Bananas.

The current crisis was started by cheap money being kept cheap for too long. It found its way into the housing market where things escalated as a result of government encouragement for lenders to make bad loans. The lenders who made the bad loans didn’t care since they could sell them on to someone else.

The buyers of these loans didn’t care either since they knew the government would bail them out if they got into trouble. These loans were then securitised; in other words, they were divided up into securities (financial instruments) called "Gherkins" and then sold on to the financial industry.

The financial industry then employed very clever people to mix these securities up in all sorts of permutations and combinations. By the time they had finished splicing and dicing, mixing and matching a new generation of financial instrument had emerged – these were called "Sprouts."

Why did they do this?

It was done to hide the fact that many of these securities were based on bad loans. As such they could only attract a "junk" credit rating which made them more difficult to sell on. By combining them with good loans in incredibly complicated mathematical models, using all sorts of weird and wonderful statistical techniques, this new generation of financial instruments could all attract a triple-A credit rating. Obviously this made these things highly marketable.

Sprouts were sold in vast quantities all over the world. The buyers simply looked at the credit rating. They didn’t know how these things were constructed. They didn’t realize that the models were flawed – Austrian economics tells us again and again that predictions involving human action cannot be reduced to mathematical formulae. (If you’re into self-abuse and really want to put yourself through it go here for a simplified example of how to create a Sprout – and more).

Let’s return to the world of insurance.

Organizations which had purchased Sprouts in huge quantities wanted to reduce their risk. Companies like AIG, for example, offered them insurance policies. In return for regular monthly premiums they could insure against their Sprouts going bad. This was quite legitimate since they had an insurable interest – they owned what they were insuring – and would be rightly indemnified in the event of default.

What happened next was that the insurance policies themselves were then securitised and another generation of financial instruments emerged called "Bananas."

These things have been loosely described as "insurance policies." Nothing could be further from the truth! These things had nothing whatever to do with indemnity and insurable interest. The buyers of Bananas were given the mysterious title of "counterparties." Nobody actually knows who they are.

What was their incentive in purchasing Bananas?

Put simply, Bananas were a bet in which the die was loaded in favour of the gambler, or counterparty. They were betting on the failure of bad loans which were purchased and then re-packaged into Sprouts and then sold on! For those in on the scam there was simply no reason to buy Bananas unless they were confident that the sub-prime market would collapse – which it did. They then claimed on their "insurance" policies.

No. Don’t reach for the bottle just yet. You’ll need a clear head for what comes next. Because it actually gets worse.

Just to recap. The housing food chain spawned three types of financial life form – Gherkins (Mortgage Backed Securities), Sprouts (Collateralised Debt Obligations) and Bananas (Credit Default Swaps).

In this must-read article by James Lieber (which I hope you pass on to as many people as possible) he argues that it was Bananas which turned what should have been a recession into a depression – that the failure of the sub-prime market and its concomitant Gherkins and Sprouts by themselves would not have landed us where we are now.

Why?

Because the amount of money which is still out there waiting to be claimed on Bananas is mind-boggling!

How did it become so large?

The answer is the word "replication." One Sprout could be "insured" time and time again. This is why the thing became so large.

Lieber, writing in Jan. 2009, estimated that the Banana liability was in the region of $600 trillion. In fact, Ellen Brown, writing in Sep. 2008, put total trade in Gherkins, Sprouts and Bananas in excess of $1,000 trillion. The latter is called a quadzillion. If so then we’ve made it – not billions or trillions any more – now we’re into quadzillions!

And just where has all this bailout money paid to financial institutions gone? There’s no way of telling because the Fed’s not saying. How much has gone straight into the pockets of the counterparties, whoever or whatever they are?

I pray HR 1207 makes it all the way. Maybe it will yield up the truth about what has been going on – the fact that it didn’t just happen – it was quite deliberate. And let’s be clear, as Lieber points out in his article, it simply could not have been done without collusion between major players.

Is there a way out of this nightmare? Well, call me an optimist, but there must be. If people can devise a system whereby a tiny elite run the world on money created out of thin air, and get away with it, then surely we have the wit to devise a method of neutralising or cancelling these things – of evaporating them into thin air!

Then go after the counterparties who have already received money and prize every stinking penny from their filthy money-grubbing fingers.

This is no conspiracy theory – it’s fact. See here and here for two articles recently published on LRC – laugh or cry, it’s up to you – but we’ve all been conned, scammed, stiffed or any other word you can think of – yet again.

The greatest scam in history has littered the world with banana skins. There’s a lot more slipping and sliding to go before we emerge from this one – if we ever do – and in one piece at that!

July 6, 2009

- Chris Clancy, Associate Professor of Financial Accounting at Zhongnan University of Economics and Law in Wuhan, Hubei Province, People's Republic of China.
Recently by Chris Clancy: Around With Ludwig.

Copyright © 2009 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

Labels: Wall Street Scam

posted by George Thomas Kysor 3:23 PM

Life in the Universe by Prof. Stephen Hawking 

Body Text
In this talk, I would like to speculate a little, on the development of life in the universe, and in particular, the development of intelligent life. I shall take this to include the human race, even though much of its behaviour through out history, has been pretty stupid, and not calculated to aid the survival of the species. Two questions I shall discuss are, 'What is the probability of life existing else where in the universe?' and, 'How may life develop in the future?'

It is a matter of common experience, that things get more disordered and chaotic with time. This observation can be elevated to the status of a law, the so-called Second Law of Thermodynamics. This says that the total amount of disorder, or entropy, in the universe, always increases with time. However, the Law refers only to the total amount of disorder. The order in one body can increase, provided that the amount of disorder in its surroundings increases by a greater amount. This is what happens in a living being. One can define Life to be an ordered system that can sustain itself against the tendency to disorder, and can reproduce itself. That is, it can make similar, but independent, ordered systems. To do these things, the system must convert energy in some ordered form, like food, sunlight, or electric power, into disordered energy, in the form of heat. In this way, the system can satisfy the requirement that the total amount of disorder increases, while, at the same time, increasing the order in itself and its offspring. A living being usually has two elements: a set of instructions that tell the system how to sustain and reproduce itself, and a mechanism to carry out the instructions. In biology, these two parts are called genes and metabolism. But it is worth emphasising that there need be nothing biological about them. For example, a computer virus is a program that will make copies of itself in the memory of a computer, and will transfer itself to other computers. Thus it fits the definition of a living system, that I have given. Like a biological virus, it is a rather degenerate form, because it contains only instructions or genes, and doesn't have any metabolism of its own. Instead, it reprograms the metabolism of the host computer, or cell. Some people have questioned whether viruses should count as life, because they are parasites, and can not exist independently of their hosts. But then most forms of life, ourselves included, are parasites, in that they feed off and depend for their survival on other forms of life. I think computer viruses should count as life. Maybe it says something about human nature, that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. Talk about creating life in our own image. I shall return to electronic forms of life later on.

What we normally think of as 'life' is based on chains of carbon atoms, with a few other atoms, such as nitrogen or phosphorous. One can speculate that one might have life with some other chemical basis, such as silicon, but carbon seems the most favourable case, because it has the richest chemistry. That carbon atoms should exist at all, with the properties that they have, requires a fine adjustment of physical constants, such as the QCD scale, the electric charge, and even the dimension of space-time. If these constants had significantly different values, either the nucleus of the carbon atom would not be stable, or the electrons would collapse in on the nucleus. At first sight, it seems remarkable that the universe is so finely tuned. Maybe this is evidence, that the universe was specially designed to produce the human race. However, one has to be careful about such arguments, because of what is known as the Anthropic Principle. This is based on the self-evident truth, that if the universe had not been suitable for life, we wouldn't be asking why it is so finely adjusted. One can apply the Anthropic Principle, in either its Strong, or Weak, versions. For the Strong Anthropic Principle, one supposes that there are many different universes, each with different values of the physical constants. In a small number, the values will allow the existence of objects like carbon atoms, which can act as the building blocks of living systems. Since we must live in one of these universes, we should not be surprised that the physical constants are finely tuned. If they weren't, we wouldn't be here. The strong form of the Anthropic Principle is not very satisfactory. What operational meaning can one give to the existence of all those other universes? And if they are separate from our own universe, how can what happens in them, affect our universe. Instead, I shall adopt what is known as the Weak Anthropic Principle. That is, I shall take the values of the physical constants, as given. But I shall see what conclusions can be drawn, from the fact that life exists on this planet, at this stage in the history of the universe.

There was no carbon, when the universe began in the Big Bang, about 15 billion years ago. It was so hot, that all the matter would have been in the form of particles, called protons and neutrons. There would initially have been equal numbers of protons and neutrons. However, as the universe expanded, it would have cooled. About a minute after the Big Bang, the temperature would have fallen to about a billion degrees, about a hundred times the temperature in the Sun. At this temperature, the neutrons will start to decay into more protons. If this had been all that happened, all the matter in the universe would have ended up as the simplest element, hydrogen, whose nucleus consists of a single proton. However, some of the neutrons collided with protons, and stuck together to form the next simplest element, helium, whose nucleus consists of two protons and two neutrons. But no heavier elements, like carbon or oxygen, would have been formed in the early universe. It is difficult to imagine that one could build a living system, out of just hydrogen and helium, and anyway the early universe was still far too hot for atoms to combine into molecules.

The universe would have continued to expand, and cool. But some regions would have had slightly higher densities than others. The gravitational attraction of the extra matter in those regions, would slow down their expansion, and eventually stop it. Instead, they would collapse to form galaxies and stars, starting from about two billion years after the Big Bang. Some of the early stars would have been more massive than our Sun. They would have been hotter than the Sun, and would have burnt the original hydrogen and helium, into heavier elements, such as carbon, oxygen, and iron. This could have taken only a few hundred million years. After that, some of the stars would have exploded as supernovas, and scattered the heavy elements back into space, to form the raw material for later generations of stars.

Other stars are too far away, for us to be able to see directly, if they have planets going round them. But certain stars, called pulsars, give off regular pulses of radio waves. We observe a slight variation in the rate of some pulsars, and this is interpreted as indicating that they are being disturbed, by having Earth sized planets going round them. Planets going round pulsars are unlikely to have life, because any living beings would have been killed, in the supernova explosion that led to the star becoming a pulsar. But, the fact that several pulsars are observed to have planets suggests that a reasonable fraction of the hundred billion stars in our galaxy may also have planets. The necessary planetary conditions for our form of life may therefore have existed from about four billion years after the Big Bang.

Our solar system was formed about four and a half billion years ago, or about ten billion years after the Big Bang, from gas contaminated with the remains of earlier stars. The Earth was formed largely out of the heavier elements, including carbon and oxygen. Somehow, some of these atoms came to be arranged in the form of molecules of DNA. This has the famous double helix form, discovered by Crick and Watson, in a hut on the New Museum site in Cambridge. Linking the two chains in the helix, are pairs of nucleic acids. There are four types of nucleic acid, adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thiamine. I'm afraid my speech synthesiser is not very good, at pronouncing their names. Obviously, it was not designed for molecular biologists. An adenine on one chain is always matched with a thiamine on the other chain, and a guanine with a cytosine. Thus the sequence of nucleic acids on one chain defines a unique, complementary sequence, on the other chain. The two chains can then separate and each act as templates to build further chains. Thus DNA molecules can reproduce the genetic information, coded in their sequences of nucleic acids. Sections of the sequence can also be used to make proteins and other chemicals, which can carry out the instructions, coded in the sequence, and assemble the raw material for DNA to reproduce itself.

We do not know how DNA molecules first appeared. The chances against a DNA molecule arising by random fluctuations are very small. Some people have therefore suggested that life came to Earth from elsewhere, and that there are seeds of life floating round in the galaxy. However, it seems unlikely that DNA could survive for long in the radiation in space. And even if it could, it would not really help explain the origin of life, because the time available since the formation of carbon is only just over double the age of the Earth.

One possibility is that the formation of something like DNA, which could reproduce itself, is extremely unlikely. However, in a universe with a very large, or infinite, number of stars, one would expect it to occur in a few stellar systems, but they would be very widely separated. The fact that life happened to occur on Earth, is not however surprising or unlikely. It is just an application of the Weak Anthropic Principle: if life had appeared instead on another planet, we would be asking why it had occurred there.

If the appearance of life on a given planet was very unlikely, one might have expected it to take a long time. More precisely, one might have expected life to appear just in time for the subsequent evolution to intelligent beings, like us, to have occurred before the cut off, provided by the life time of the Sun. This is about ten billion years, after which the Sun will swell up and engulf the Earth. An intelligent form of life, might have mastered space travel, and be able to escape to another star. But otherwise, life on Earth would be doomed.

There is fossil evidence, that there was some form of life on Earth, about three and a half billion years ago. This may have been only 500 million years after the Earth became stable and cool enough, for life to develop. But life could have taken 7 billion years to develop, and still have left time to evolve to beings like us, who could ask about the origin of life. If the probability of life developing on a given planet, is very small, why did it happen on Earth, in about one 14th of the time available.

The early appearance of life on Earth suggests that there's a good chance of the spontaneous generation of life, in suitable conditions. Maybe there was some simpler form of organisation, which built up DNA. Once DNA appeared, it would have been so successful, that it might have completely replaced the earlier forms. We don't know what these earlier forms would have been. One possibility is RNA. This is like DNA, but rather simpler, and without the double helix structure. Short lengths of RNA, could reproduce themselves like DNA, and might eventually build up to DNA. One can not make nucleic acids in the laboratory, from non-living material, let alone RNA. But given 500 million years, and oceans covering most of the Earth, there might be a reasonable probability of RNA, being made by chance.

As DNA reproduced itself, there would have been random errors. Many of these errors would have been harmful, and would have died out. Some would have been neutral. That is they would not have affected the function of the gene. Such errors would contribute to a gradual genetic drift, which seems to occur in all populations. And a few errors would have been favourable to the survival of the species. These would have been chosen by Darwinian natural selection.

The process of biological evolution was very slow at first. It took two and a half billion years, to evolve from the earliest cells to multi-cell animals, and another billion years to evolve through fish and reptiles, to mammals. But then evolution seemed to have speeded up. It only took about a hundred million years, to develop from the early mammals to us. The reason is, fish contain most of the important human organs, and mammals, essentially all of them. All that was required to evolve from early mammals, like lemurs, to humans, was a bit of fine-tuning.

But with the human race, evolution reached a critical stage, comparable in importance with the development of DNA. This was the development of language, and particularly written language. It meant that information can be passed on, from generation to generation, other than genetically, through DNA. There has been no detectable change in human DNA, brought about by biological evolution, in the ten thousand years of recorded history. But the amount of knowledge handed on from generation to generation has grown enormously. The DNA in human beings contains about three billion nucleic acids. However, much of the information coded in this sequence, is redundant, or is inactive. So the total amount of useful information in our genes, is probably something like a hundred million bits. One bit of information is the answer to a yes no question. By contrast, a paper back novel might contain two million bits of information. So a human is equivalent to 50 Mills and Boon romances. A major national library can contain about five million books, or about ten trillion bits. So the amount of information handed down in books, is a hundred thousand times as much as in DNA.

Even more important, is the fact that the information in books, can be changed, and updated, much more rapidly. It has taken us several million years to evolve from the apes. During that time, the useful information in our DNA, has probably changed by only a few million bits. So the rate of biological evolution in humans, is about a bit a year. By contrast, there are about 50,000 new books published in the English language each year, containing of the order of a hundred billion bits of information. Of course, the great majority of this information is garbage, and no use to any form of life. But, even so, the rate at which useful information can be added is millions, if not billions, higher than with DNA.

This has meant that we have entered a new phase of evolution. At first, evolution proceeded by natural selection, from random mutations. This Darwinian phase, lasted about three and a half billion years, and produced us, beings who developed language, to exchange information. But in the last ten thousand years or so, we have been in what might be called, an external transmission phase. In this, the internal record of information, handed down to succeeding generations in DNA, has not changed significantly. But the external record, in books, and other long lasting forms of storage, has grown enormously. Some people would use the term, evolution, only for the internally transmitted genetic material, and would object to it being applied to information handed down externally. But I think that is too narrow a view. We are more than just our genes. We may be no stronger, or inherently more intelligent, than our cave man ancestors. But what distinguishes us from them, is the knowledge that we have accumulated over the last ten thousand years, and particularly, over the last three hundred. I think it is legitimate to take a broader view, and include externally transmitted information, as well as DNA, in the evolution of the human race.

The time scale for evolution, in the external transmission period, is the time scale for accumulation of information. This used to be hundreds, or even thousands, of years. But now this time scale has shrunk to about 50 years, or less. On the other hand, the brains with which we process this information have evolved only on the Darwinian time scale, of hundreds of thousands of years. This is beginning to cause problems. In the 18th century, there was said to be a man who had read every book written. But nowadays, if you read one book a day, it would take you about 15,000 years to read through the books in a national Library. By which time, many more books would have been written.

This has meant that no one person can be the master of more than a small corner of human knowledge. People have to specialise, in narrower and narrower fields. This is likely to be a major limitation in the future. We certainly can not continue, for long, with the exponential rate of growth of knowledge that we have had in the last three hundred years. An even greater limitation and danger for future generations, is that we still have the instincts, and in particular, the aggressive impulses, that we had in cave man days. Aggression, in the form of subjugating or killing other men, and taking their women and food, has had definite survival advantage, up to the present time. But now it could destroy the entire human race, and much of the rest of life on Earth. A nuclear war, is still the most immediate danger, but there are others, such as the release of a genetically engineered virus. Or the green house effect becoming unstable.

There is no time, to wait for Darwinian evolution, to make us more intelligent, and better natured. But we are now entering a new phase, of what might be called, self designed evolution, in which we will be able to change and improve our DNA. There is a project now on, to map the entire sequence of human DNA. It will cost a few billion dollars, but that is chicken feed, for a project of this importance. Once we have read the book of life, we will start writing in corrections. At first, these changes will be confined to the repair of genetic defects, like cystic fibrosis, and muscular dystrophy. These are controlled by single genes, and so are fairly easy to identify, and correct. Other qualities, such as intelligence, are probably controlled by a large number of genes. It will be much more difficult to find them, and work out the relations between them. Nevertheless, I am sure that during the next century, people will discover how to modify both intelligence, and instincts like aggression.

Laws will be passed, against genetic engineering with humans. But some people won't be able to resist the temptation, to improve human characteristics, such as size of memory, resistance to disease, and length of life. Once such super humans appear, there are going to be major political problems, with the unimproved humans, who won't be able to compete. Presumably, they will die out, or become unimportant. Instead, there will be a race of self-designing beings, who are improving themselves at an ever-increasing rate.

If this race manages to redesign itself, to reduce or eliminate the risk of self-destruction, it will probably spread out, and colonise other planets and stars. However, long distance space travel, will be difficult for chemically based life forms, like DNA. The natural lifetime for such beings is short, compared to the travel time. According to the theory of relativity, nothing can travel faster than light. So the round trip to the nearest star would take at least 8 years, and to the centre of the galaxy, about a hundred thousand years. In science fiction, they overcome this difficulty, by space warps, or travel through extra dimensions. But I don't think these will ever be possible, no matter how intelligent life becomes. In the theory of relativity, if one can travel faster than light, one can also travel back in time. This would lead to problems with people going back, and changing the past. One would also expect to have seen large numbers of tourists from the future, curious to look at our quaint, old-fashioned ways.

It might be possible to use genetic engineering, to make DNA based life survive indefinitely, or at least for a hundred thousand years. But an easier way, which is almost within our capabilities already, would be to send machines. These could be designed to last long enough for interstellar travel. When they arrived at a new star, they could land on a suitable planet, and mine material to produce more machines, which could be sent on to yet more stars. These machines would be a new form of life, based on mechanical and electronic components, rather than macromolecules. They could eventually replace DNA based life, just as DNA may have replaced an earlier form of life.

This mechanical life could also be self-designing. Thus it seems that the external transmission period of evolution, will have been just a very short interlude, between the Darwinian phase, and a biological, or mechanical, self design phase. This is shown on this next diagram, which is not to scale, because there's no way one can show a period of ten thousand years, on the same scale as billions of years. How long the self-design phase will last is open to question. It may be unstable, and life may destroy itself, or get into a dead end. If it does not, it should be able to survive the death of the Sun, in about 5 billion years, by moving to planets around other stars. Most stars will have burnt out in another 15 billion years or so, and the universe will be approaching a state of complete disorder, according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. But Freeman Dyson has shown that, despite this, life could adapt to the ever-decreasing supply of ordered energy, and therefore could, in principle, continue forever.

What are the chances that we will encounter some alien form of life, as we explore the galaxy. If the argument about the time scale for the appearance of life on Earth is correct, there ought to be many other stars, whose planets have life on them. Some of these stellar systems could have formed 5 billion years before the Earth. So why is the galaxy not crawling with self designing mechanical or biological life forms? Why hasn't the Earth been visited, and even colonised. I discount suggestions that UFO's contain beings from outer space. I think any visits by aliens, would be much more obvious, and probably also, much more unpleasant.

What is the explanation of why we have not been visited? One possibility is that the argument, about the appearance of life on Earth, is wrong. Maybe the probability of life spontaneously appearing is so low, that Earth is the only planet in the galaxy, or in the observable universe, in which it happened. Another possibility is that there was a reasonable probability of forming self reproducing systems, like cells, but that most of these forms of life did not evolve intelligence. We are used to thinking of intelligent life, as an inevitable consequence of evolution. But the Anthropic Principle should warn us to be wary of such arguments. It is more likely that evolution is a random process, with intelligence as only one of a large number of possible outcomes. It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value. Bacteria, and other single cell organisms, will live on, if all other life on Earth is wiped out by our actions. There is support for the view that intelligence, was an unlikely development for life on Earth, from the chronology of evolution. It took a very long time, two and a half billion years, to go from single cells to multi-cell beings, which are a necessary precursor to intelligence. This is a good fraction of the total time available, before the Sun blows up. So it would be consistent with the hypothesis, that the probability for life to develop intelligence, is low. In this case, we might expect to find many other life forms in the galaxy, but we are unlikely to find intelligent life. Another way, in which life could fail to develop to an intelligent stage, would be if an asteroid or comet were to collide with the planet. We have just observed the collision of a comet, Schumacher-Levi, with Jupiter. It produced a series of enormous fireballs. It is thought the collision of a rather smaller body with the Earth, about 70 million years ago, was responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs. A few small early mammals survived, but anything as large as a human, would have almost certainly been wiped out. It is difficult to say how often such collisions occur, but a reasonable guess might be every twenty million years, on average. If this figure is correct, it would mean that intelligent life on Earth has developed only because of the lucky chance that there have been no major collisions in the last 70 million years. Other planets in the galaxy, on which life has developed, may not have had a long enough collision free period to evolve intelligent beings.

A third possibility is that there is a reasonable probability for life to form, and to evolve to intelligent beings, in the external transmission phase. But at that point, the system becomes unstable, and the intelligent life destroys itself. This would be a very pessimistic conclusion. I very much hope it isn't true. I prefer a fourth possibility: there are other forms of intelligent life out there, but that we have been overlooked. There used to be a project called SETI, the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence. It involved scanning the radio frequencies, to see if we could pick up signals from alien civilisations. I thought this project was worth supporting, though it was cancelled due to a lack of funds. But we should have been wary of answering back, until we have develop a bit further. Meeting a more advanced civilisation, at our present stage, might be a bit like the original inhabitants of America meeting Columbus. I don't think they were better off for it.

That is all I have to say. Thank you for listening.

- Prof. Stephen Hawking

posted by George Thomas Kysor 12:14 PM

Costa Rica the happiest place on Earth, says new report 

By Alex Leff
Tico Times Staff | aleff@ticotimes.net
Happy to be here? Costa Rica tops a new list of the happiest countries on the planet compiled by an independent research group in Britain.

In the second Happy Planet Index (HPI) calculated by the New Economics Foundation, Costa Rica shot ahead of its third-place spot in the original index released in 2006 (TT, Aug. 4, 2006). Vanuatu, an archipelago in the south Pacific, was the happiest and Colombia placed second in the 2006 index.

The country scores 76.1 out of 100 on the new HPI, which measures life expectancy, satisfaction and a country's environmental footprint. The index was released Saturday.

“As well as reporting the highest life satisfaction in the world, Costa Ricans also have the second-highest average life expectancy of the New World (second only to Canada). All this with a footprint of 2.3 global hectares,” reads the HPI (available for download at www.happyplanetindex.org ).

Another reason to cheer in this region: Earth's 10 happiest countries are all – with the exception of one – in Latin America and the Caribbean. Following Costa Rica, they are the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Guatemala, Vietnam, Colombia, Cuba, El Salvador, Brazil and Honduras.

Nicaragua came in 11th.

Some of the wealthiest nations fell somewhere in the middle of the 143-nation list. The United States, however, ranked 114th, sandwiched between Madagascar and Nigeria. The researchers placed their native United Kingdom 74th, just after Slovakia and before Japan and Spain.

Considering the hardships this region has endured over the years, what are Latinos smiling about?

The report explains, “Survey data reveals two key features of Latin American culture. One is the presence of relatively unmaterialistic (sic) aspirations and values, compared to countries with similar economic conditions. Latin Americans report being much less concerned with material issues than, for example, they are with their friends and family. Secondly, social capital is particularly strong in the region. Civil society is very active, from religious groups to workers' groups to environmental groups….”

African countries are at the bottom of the list, with Zimbabweans ranked as the saddest (143) in the world, according to the Index.

Anticipating questions about why developed nations rank poorly, the research group argues on index Web site, “governments have been concentrating on the wrong indicators for too long. If you have the wrong map, you are unlikely to reach your destination.”

- Alex Leff, Tico Times Staff

See also CNN (via email from LD)

Labels: Tico Times

posted by George Thomas Kysor 11:28 AM

Sunday, July 05, 2009

From predator to plant in one gulp 

Free-living versus symbiotic

A working definition for symbiosis is two or more species that live and interact. Mutualism means that each derives a certain benefit from the other, or at most causing no harm to each other. Their relationship is that of “give and take”. For example cleaning fish serve other fish by cleaning off parasites and getting protection, food and rides in return. Sometimes the mutualistic symbionts have practically fused into a single functional organism. The Portuguese Man o’ War is a colony of four different organisms which form a composite jellyfish; None of the individuals which can exist in a free-living form. Lichen is a colony of two: a photosynthetic partner providing sugars, and a fungus providing other nutrients as well as preventing the dehydration of the photosynthetic partner.

The Endosymbiotic Hypothesis

The endosymbiotic hypothesis maintains that eukaryotes evolved from symbiotic interactions between bacteria. There is plenty of evidence for that in chloroplasts and mitochondria: they have their own DNA; their membranes, their DNA, their ribosomes all resemble those of bacteria. The relationship between a eukaryotic cell and its mitochondria is heavily mutualistic: the cell gets ATP, the mitochondria / chloroplasts (M/C) get.. well, to live and reproduce, which they cannot do outside a living cell. Over time, M/C have have lost most of their genomic material to the host: many of the proteins needed to construct an M/C are not encoded in the M/C but in the host’s nucleus, and transported to the M/C. This is probably as intimately connected as two organisms can get, before you cannot tell that they were two separate organisms before they fused into an organism and an organelle. Indeed, the threshold set for distinguishing between an endosymbiont and an organelle lies in protein import. According to this working definition, once an endosymbiont starts importing proteins, it is no longer considered an endosymbiont and becomes an organelle. As with any working definition, if you scratch the surface a bit you will find cases where this rule does not apply well. Viruses are a case in point, acquiring host proteins and actually acting as a vector transferring them between hosts.

Vegging out

Two researchers have shown a striking example of endosymbiosis forming: in 2005 Noriko Okamoto an Isao Inouye reported on a unicellular organism called Hatena. Hatena (”enigma” in Japanese) leads a curious life cycle. Hatena is a single-cell organism, swimming around in the water, using a little feeding apparatus to eat cells and organic material smaller than itself. At some point, it would feed on another unicellular algae, the Nephroselmis. Once Hatena swallows Nephroselmis, it does not digest it. Rather, Nephrosolmis makes a rather comfortable home inside Hatena. Actually, the algae starts growing inside Hatena: it grows to about 10 times its original size, filling up most of Hatena. The alga also seems to lose most of its own organelles, except for the chloroplast. The chloroplast actually grows bigger.

Hatena changes too as a result. Before ingesting the alga, it has a rather complex “mouth”, or feeding apparatus. After ingesting the algae, this mouth disappears. Instead, it is replaced by an eyespot from the algae. The eyespot is a light sensing organelle, a very primitive eye that guides algae to light sources. In this case, it also guides the host, Hatena, to light. Hatena has obvioulsy stopped feeding, at least through its mouth. It is now swimming to the light, letting the alga photosynthesize its food for both of them.

I get the plant, you get the steakhouse coupons

Hatena reproduces by binary fission. So once it splits itself, what happens to the symbiotic alga? Well, one daughter cell gets the alga, and the other gets ot be a predator.. at least until it eats another alga. So here we are, looking at a fascinating evolutionary snapshot: two creatures, they can live apart or together. One is not quite an organelle yet, but definitely on its way.

- Iddo Friedberg, Byte Size Biology. Copyright © 2009 Byte Size Biology. [See the Fair Use Notice, below.] (via Slashdot)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Okamoto, N. (2005). A Secondary Symbiosis in Progress? Science, 310 (5746), 287-287 DOI: 10.1126/science.1116125

OKAMOTO, N., & INOUYE, I. (2006). Hatena arenicola gen. et sp. nov., a Katablepharid Undergoing Probable Plastid Acquisition Protist, 157 (4), 401-419 DOI: 10.1016/j.protis.2006.05.011

Labels: Hatena

posted by George Thomas Kysor 7:08 PM

Woodpecker Guantanamo 

I excitedly opened my July issue of Mt Diablo Audubon Society Newsletter: The Quail to check on whether the beaver article I had written had been included. I wanted to spend the morning talking about the delightful connections I had made with audubon since speaking there, but I found that the same issue is plastered with horrific woodpecker headlines that I simply can’t avoid discussing this morning. The beaver story is a bright spot on a very dark horizon, and one that deserves our attention.

When we last visited the story I had told you that the mutuals in question had seen the end of days on their 50 bird-killing permit, and had decided to seek an additional permit, this one from the Department of Agriculture. This allowed the “trapping for scientific research” of 20 additional birds. I had thought this meant they would just be quietly killed off sight, but I had not truly considered the terrifying options in depth.

Audubon pursued the issue with USDA and received back two responses weighed down by their own great respect for their own very high ethical standards. One was from the US Department of Agriculture National Wildlife Services Research Center (NWRC). The other was from the Washington DC and the head of the Ornothological Council who wanted to further defend the very respectable credentials of NWRC scientists. Apparently the very highest ethical standards were applied to the pointless but ethical capture, ethical interstate transport, ethical detention and ethcial interference of our acorn woodpeckers. After which time they will be ethically euthanized, or, if they’re lucky, saved to particpate in other highly ethical experiments for years to come.

The fate of a score of cheerful acorn woodpeckers from Rossmoor reads like this:

NWRC scientists, with the help of WS Operations field specialists, live-captured 20 acorn woodpeckers from the Rossmoor community in late May. Capture was delayed until after documented egg laying dates by acorn woodpeckers in this region. Care was also taken to not remove birds observed feeding young or sitting on eggs. The birds arrived at the NWRC in Fort Collins, Colorado, on May 27.

“Care was taken not to remove birds observed feeding young or sitting on eggs.” Hey, I feel better already. I understand, science couldn’t possibly have waited until after nesting season was over, because that would have been after the May 31st permit period ran out and then those Rossmoor victims would be left alone with those vicious animals. Surely any ornithologist worth his Sibleys can surely tell two identical woodpeckers apart once they’ve moved off the nest to feed? Anyway, I’m sure that, in the midst of the complex nesting structure of polyandrous acorn woodpeckers where several females care for the young at once, a highly ethical scientist would know instantly who was the mommy. You didn’t say how they were actually trapped, but I’m sure you used ethical silk netting or painless blow dart sedatives or something like that. After their capture they won an all expense paid trip to Colorado! What lucky birds.

The birds will be used to evaluate the effectiveness of several deterrent calls for use in a nonlethal electronic deterrent device. The device is meant to prevent damage to utility poles and other structures. The birds are housed in both indoor and outdoor aviaries and are under the care of our Attending Veterinarian. Our research is conducted under strict scientific protocols and quality assurance standards. Results from this study, as well as others conducted by NWRC scientists, are published in peer-reviewed journals, usually within 1-2 years of a study’s completion.

Anyone feel like a biscuit? Not the stodgy kind mind you, I’m talking about the crisp horrific guantanamo acronymn for the Behavioral Science Consultation Team (BSCT) referring the the team of top military ethical physicians and ethical psychologists on hand to assist and guide the ethical interrogations. I know intimately how much controversy psychologists participating in these teams caused within the APA, so I can only imagine there are a few ornithologists out there that don’t feel cozy with the NWRC either. At any rate, we are told that supporters of these noble birds should be comforted by the fact that they will play an important role in key research. Like this study which has demonstrated that these electrical devices don’t work to deter pileated woodpeckers. It concludes that more research is needed, and any ethiclal scientist can tell you that in order to make sure the method is a complete failure in every way it must be painstakingly applied to all species of woodpecker.

Under provisions of our 2009 California Scientific Collecting Permit (#SCP-10561), we will euthanize the birds upon the completion of the study. Since these woodpeckers are housed in outdoor aviaries, we cannot ensure their isolation from other species or pathogens during the course of back into the wild is not allowed under our permit. If possible, we will use these birds in additional studies, thus alleviating capture of additional birds from the wild.

Of course the captured birds cannot be released into the wild after we finished tampering with them. They might carry pathogens from all the diseases they picked up during our ethical care. Never mind that we spent government money to fly them 1000 miles when we could have studied the woodpeckers in our own backyard. We cannot possibly return them to their native lands because Rossmoor doesn’t want them. Much better to just kill them, but look on the bright side, we might use them again before their deaths!

The Department of Agriculture has as little interest in (or respect) for wildlife as the older gentleman I watched this week trying to use his walking stick to club golden native trout while they spawned in an alpine stream. They both lack the pragmatic understanding of a sportsman, and are miles away from the complex inter-relations of a naturalist. When the man saw me watching in horror he explained “The damn things won’t bite!” Obviously failing to take the bait made them a prime candidate for clubbing. Through gritted teeth it was explained that the fish weren’t eating because they were busy making more fish for him to catch next year, and he grumbled off into the woods, deeply affronted at the inconvenience.

This is the USDA, whose first instinct is to destroy, and whose response to enforced inhibition of any kind is to grumble off into the woods and complain about the obstruction. They’ve shown equal sensitivity to beavers in Elk Grove, the woodpeckers in Rossmoor, the coyotes in Nevada, and waterfowl in Wisconsin. At their worst they are bullies and at their best they are ill-informed rhinoceroses trying to pick wildflowers. Take this example, where an APHIS coyote hunter Gary Strader was recently fired for reporting the illegal shooting of mountain lions by his buddies in a helicopter. Mind you, not fired for participating in the shooting, but fired for caring about it. These are the people taking care of those acorn woodpeckers.

Do I sound bitter?

- Heidi. Copyright © 2009 MartinezBeavers.org [See the Fair Use Notice, below.]

Labels: Rossmoor, woodpeckers

posted by George Thomas Kysor 11:22 AM

Saturday, July 04, 2009

Aircraft repair jobs sold to foreign workers, resumes not important 

Video and article.
When the FAA came to inspect San Antonio Aerospace, the company got a one-hour warning, said a former employee. “And a lot of guys who were not able to read English, they would hide those guys or send them home for the evening," the former employee said.
(via CLG)

Labels: safety

posted by George Thomas Kysor 4:59 PM

Friday, July 03, 2009

EFF Demands Public Release of FBI Surveillance Rules 

Washington, D.C. - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed suit against the Department of Justice today, demanding the public release of the surveillance guidelines that govern investigations of Americans by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

The FBI's Domestic Investigative Operational Guidelines went into effect in December of 2008 and detail the Bureau's procedures and standards for implementing the Attorney General's Guidelines on approved surveillance strategies.

"The Attorney General's Guidelines are troubling, allowing for open investigative 'assessments' of any American without factual basis or reasonable suspicion," said EFF Senior Counsel David Sobel. "The withholding of the Operational Guidelines compounds our concerns. Americans have the right to know the basic surveillance policies used by federal investigators and how their privacy is -- or is not -- being protected."

The FBI's general counsel has acknowledged that "the expansion of techniques available [to the Bureau] has raised privacy and civil liberties concerns." Investigations can include the electronic collection of information from online sources and computer databases, as well as the use of grand jury subpoenas to obtain telephone and email subscriber information. Other recent policy changes allow the FBI to engage in free-ranging investigation of Internet sites, libraries, and religious institutions.

EFF's lawsuit comes after the Department of Justice failed to respond to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for a complete copy of the Domestic Investigative Operational Guidelines. The suit demands the immediate release of the guidelines, as they are being withheld in violation of federal law.

"These policies have been in effect for more than six months and could have great impact on ordinary Americans' lives," said Sobel. "The FBI must follow the law and release these guidelines to the public."

For the full complaint: Click Here.

- ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION

Labels: dictatorship

posted by George Thomas Kysor 5:27 PM

Stimulus Package Blues - Lance Brown w/ Remington Riders 

Video, 3 min 29 sec.

"Stimulus Package Blues" is a YouTube collaboration between Lance Brown (archtopbrownie) and the Remington Riders (bulbheadmyass).

Written by: Lance Brown
extra verse by: Jan Lewis
Sung by: Lance Brown and Jan Lewis
Band: Remington Riders
Produced by: Jan Lewis

Lance Brown: vocals, guitar
Jan Lewis: piano, vocals
Robert Berry: bass, drums, vocals, engineering

LYRICS:

Lance:
Verse 1:
Well, your assets are in trouble
And your confidence is on the wane
Someone made off with the principal
And you're in a world of pain
You say you've got a crisis
Of that there is no doubt
Well I'm here from the government
And I've come to help you out
With my stimulus package, baby
So big it'll blow your mind
You think those other boys got big bonuses?
Maybe you should see mine.

Verse 2:
I can give you an education
I can insure your health
I can rebuild your infrastructure
At the same time I spread the wealth.
If energy is your problem
I can fix that too
Got trouble keeping up your interest,
There's only one thing you gotta do,
And that's take my stimulus package, baby,
So big it'll blow your mind
You think those other boys got big bonuses?
Well baby you should see mine.

Jan:
Verse 3:
It takes a trillion dollars
Just to turn my head,
And I need another trillion
Because my budget's in the red
I want your stimulus package, darlin', yes I do
I want it all year long
I'm trusting in you, baby
Please don't do me wrong.

Lance:
Verse 4:
Now you don't have to worry
And you don't have to fret
I won't get you in trouble
Like the other guys that you met
I'll always use protection
You can take that to the bank
You know that you can trust me, yeah,
Me and Barney Frank
Yeah, with our stimulus package, baby
So big it'll blow your mind
You think those other boys got big bonuses?
Well maybe you should see mine

You think those other boys got big bonuses?
Aw, baby, you should see mine.

Labels: false stimulus

posted by George Thomas Kysor 4:13 PM

Thursday, July 02, 2009

Operation ‘Cast Lead’: 22 days of death and destruction 

127-page Amnesty International Report about the 22 days of death and destruction on the Gaza Strip.

INTRODUCTION

“Until now we don’t understand why. We want
peace; and we want an investigation; we want to
know why me and my sisters have been orphaned.
Why did they kill our parents, our family?”
Fathiya Mousa, whose parents and siblings were killed in an Israeli air strike while sitting in their yard (see Chapter 1.1.2).

At 11.30am on 27 December 2008, without warning, Israeli forces began a devastating
bombing campaign on the Gaza Strip codenamed Operation “Cast Lead”. Its stated aim was
to end rocket attacks into Israel by armed groups affiliated with Hamas and other Palestinian
factions. By 18 January 2009, when unilateral ceasefires were announced by both Israel and
Hamas, some 1,400 Palestinians had been killed, including some 300 children and
hundreds of other unarmed civilians, and large areas of Gaza had been razed to the ground,
leaving many thousands homeless and the already dire economy in ruins.

Much of the destruction was wanton and resulted from direct attacks on civilian objects as
well as indiscriminate attacks that failed to distinguish between legitimate military targets
and civilian objects. Such attacks violated fundamental provisions of international
humanitarian law, notably the prohibition on direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects
(the principle of distinction), the prohibition on indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks,
and the prohibition on collective punishment.

Hundreds of civilians were killed in attacks carried out using high-precision weapons – airdelivered
bombs and missiles, and tank shells. Others, including women and children, were
shot at short range when posing no threat to the lives of the Israeli soldiers. Aerial
bombardments launched from Israeli F-16 combat aircraft targeted and destroyed civilian
homes without warning, killing and injuring scores of their inhabitants, often while they slept.
Children playing on the roofs of their homes or in the street and other civilians going about
their daily business, as well as medical staff attending the wounded were killed in broad
daylight by Hellfire and other highly accurate missiles launched from helicopters and
unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, and by precision projectiles fired from tanks.

Disturbing questions remain unanswered as to why such high-precision weapons, whose
operators can see even small details of their targets and which can accurately strike even fast
moving vehicles,1 killed so many children and other civilians.

Scores of civilians were also killed and injured by less precise weapons, such as artillery
shells and mortars, and flechette tank shells, which can be accurately aimed but which
disperse thousands of deadly metal darts at great velocity over a large area.

White phosphorus, a highly incendiary substance, was repeatedly fired indiscriminately over
densely populated residential areas, killing and wounding civilians and destroying civilian
property. It was often launched from artillery shells in air-burst mode, which aggravated the
already devastating consequences of the attacks. Each shell ejected over a hundred felt
wedges impregnated with highly incendiary white phosphorus, which rained down over houses
and streets, igniting on exposure to oxygen and setting fire to people and property. Once their
incendiary content had been discharged, the artillery shells often crashed into buildings
causing further deaths and injuries. Repeated denials of the use of white phosphorus by
Israeli officials during the conflict delayed or prevented appropriate treatment for people
suffering agonizing burns. Some who died might otherwise have been saved.

Artillery in general and white phosphorus shells in particular should never be used in
populated areas.2 Yet in Gaza Israeli forces repeatedly fired them into densely populated
residential areas, knowing that such imprecise weapons would kill and injure civilians. Such
attacks were indiscriminate and as such unlawful under international law.

The scale and intensity of the attacks were unprecedented, even in the context of the
increasingly lethal Israeli military campaigns in Gaza in previous years.3 More Palestinians
were killed and more properties were destroyed in the 22-day military campaign than in any
previous Israeli offensive.

Israeli forces could not conceivably have been unaware of the presence of civilians in
locations which were repeatedly attacked, including with white phosphorus and other
imprecise weapons, given that these areas were under close surveillance by Israeli drones.

Even though Israeli officials knew from the first days of Operation “Cast Lead” that civilians
were killed and wounded in significant numbers, Israeli forces continued to employ the same
tactics for the entire duration of the 22-day offensive, resulting in growing numbers of
civilian casualties. The pattern of attacks and the resulting high number of civilian fatalities
and casualties showed elements of reckless conduct, disregard for civilian lives and property
and a consistent failure to distinguish between military targets and civilians and civilian
objects.

Thousands of civilian homes, businesses and public buildings were destroyed. In some areas
entire neighbourhoods were flattened and livestock killed. Much of the destruction was
wanton and deliberate, and was carried out in a manner and circumstances which indicated
that it could not be justified on grounds of military necessity. Rather, it was often the result
of reckless and indiscriminate attacks, which were seemingly tolerated or even directly
sanctioned up the chain of command, and which at times appeared intended to collectively
punish local residents for the actions of armed groups.

Throughout Operation “Cast Lead” Israeli forces frequently obstructed access to medical care
and humanitarian aid for those wounded and trapped. They prevented ambulances and
medical staff from attending to the wounded and transporting them to hospital and in several
cases targeted ambulance and rescue crews and others who were trying to evacuate the
wounded. As a result people who could have been saved died and others endured needless
suffering and a worsening of their injuries. Children, women and elderly people were among
those trapped and refused access to medical care and/or passage out of areas which had
been taken over by Israeli forces. Medical and humanitarian vehicles and facilities were also
destroyed or damaged as a result of both targeted and indiscriminate Israeli attacks.

In several cases Israeli soldiers also used civilians, including children, as “human shields”,
endangering their lives by forcing them to remain in or near houses which they took over and
used as military positions. Some were forced to carry out dangerous tasks such as inspecting
properties or objects suspected of being booby-trapped. Soldiers also took position and
launched attacks from and around inhabited houses, exposing local residents to the danger of
attacks or of being caught in the crossfire.

Israel and Egypt kept Gaza’s borders sealed throughout Operation “Cast Lead” and its 1.5
million inhabitants could neither leave nor find a place in Gaza where their safety could be
guaranteed. Unlike in southern Israel, where the Israeli authorities have built bomb shelters
to protect local residents from rocket attacks by Palestinian armed groups, in Gaza there are
no bomb shelters and none can be built because Israel has long forbidden the entry of
construction material into Gaza.

Randomly placed telephone calls with recorded warning messages, radio broadcasts and
leaflets dropped by the Israeli army all over Gaza telling people to leave their homes and
neighbourhoods caused widespread panic but offered little protection. In some areas
residents were trapped in their homes, hearing the Israeli army broadcasts warning people to
leave but unable to do so because Israeli forces in the area were not allowing any movement
and therefore anyone who went out risked coming under fire.4 Others who fled their homes
were killed or injured when UN schools and other places where they had sought shelter came
under Israeli attack.

In southern Israel civilians also continued to come under attack from rockets fired daily by
Palestinian armed groups throughout the 22-day conflict. The armed wing of Hamas and
other Palestinian armed groups launched several hundred rockets and mortars into southern
Israel, killing three civilians and injuring dozens of others. Several civilian homes and other
structures were damaged, some extensively. Six Israeli soldiers were also killed in Palestinian
attacks.5

Mortars and so-called Qassam rockets, which are locally made in Gaza, and longer range
Grad-type rockets smuggled into Gaza via the tunnels from Egypt, are unguided projectiles
which cannot be directed at specific targets. Attacks using such rockets are indiscriminate
and hence unlawful under international law. Though in most cases these rockets explode in
empty areas, without causing casualties, each rocket is potentially lethal and the intensified
barrage of such rockets throughout the 22 days of Operation “Cast Lead” caused panic
among the civilian population of southern Israel. Thousands of families fled to other parts of
the country and those who remained in their homes in the south had to run for cover every
time the alarm sounded, warning of an incoming rocket.

Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups also violated international humanitarian law in
their conduct within Gaza. They launched rockets and located military equipment and
positions near civilian homes, endangering the lives of the inhabitants by exposing them to
the risk of Israeli attacks. They also used empty homes and properties as combat positions
during armed confrontations with Israeli forces, exposing the inhabitants of nearby houses to
the danger of attacks or of being caught in the crossfire.

However, contrary to repeated allegations by Israeli officials of the use of “human shields”,
Amnesty International found no evidence that Hamas or other Palestinian fighters directed
the movement of civilians to shield military objectives from attacks. It found no evidence that
Hamas or other armed groups forced residents to stay in or around buildings used by fighters,
nor that fighters prevented residents from leaving buildings or areas which had been
commandeered by militants.

Throughout Operation “Cast Lead”, and for several weeks prior to start of the Operation, the
Israeli army refused to allow into Gaza independent observers, journalists, international
human rights monitors and humanitarian workers – effectively cutting off Gaza from the
outside world and hindering independent monitoring and reporting of the conduct of its
forces there.6 Even after the ceasefire was declared on 18 January, the Israeli army
continued to deny access to Gaza to many human rights and humanitarian workers and
journalists. Some continued to be refused entry into Gaza four months later.7

To date, five months after the end of Operation “Cast Lead”, the Israeli authorities have
failed to establish any independent and impartial investigation into the conduct of their
forces and actively oppose any such investigations being established. They have refused to
co-operate with and to grant access to the country to an international independent factfinding
mission set up by the UN Human Rights Council and headed by Justice Richard
Goldstone,8 undermining its ability to fulfil its mission. They have also rejected the finding s
of a UN Board of Inquiry, which investigated nine attacks on UN facilities and personnel
during Operation “Cast Lead.9

The Israeli authorities have rejected allegations of war crimes and other serious violations of
international law committed by Israeli forces during Operation “Cast Lead” published by
Amnesty International and numerous other human rights organizations and media –
international, Israeli and Palestinian – claiming that Hamas prevents any independent
investigations and forces people to make untrue allegations. However, such claims do not
stand up to scrutiny. Amnesty International’s delegates who visited Gaza during and after
Operation “Cast Lead”, as on many other occasions in recent years, were able to carry out
their investigations unhindered and people often voiced criticisms of Hamas’ conduct,
including rocket attacks. While in Gaza Amnesty International delegates also investigated
crimes and human rights abuses committed by Hamas forces and militias against fellow
Palestinians, including deliberate killings, torture, abductions and arbitrary detention. The
findings were published on 10 February 2009 in a report entitled: Hamas’ deadly campaign
in the shadow of the war in Gaza.10

As of 18 June 2009 the Israeli authorities had not responded to Amnesty International’s
repeated requests, first made in early February, for meetings to discuss its findings and
concerns, nor to the requests for information concerning many of the cases mentioned in this
report.

At the same time the Hamas de facto administration in Gaza has not only failed to investigate
rocket attacks by its own and other armed groups, but has persisted in justifying such
unlawful attacks.

Amnesty International believes that the deaths of so many unarmed civilians and the manner
in which they came under attack demand a thorough, independent and impartial
investigation into the conduct of all parties in the conflict, in order to establish the truth and
so that those responsible for unlawful attacks against civilians and civilian property can be
held accountable and that reparation can be ensured for the victims.

To this end, Amnesty International calls, on the one hand, on the international community to
provide full support to the international independent fact-finding mission established by the
UN Human Rights Council and, on the other, on the Israeli authorities and the Hamas de
facto administration to co-operate with the mission, including by giving its members access
to Israel as well as Gaza. The Israeli authorities need, in addition, to ensure impartial and
thorough investigations, at a national level, of the evidence indicating that its forces
committed serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law during the
conflict and to provide full reparations for the consequences of its unlawful acts and
omissions. At the international level, individual states should exercise universal jurisdiction
wherever there is sufficient evidence of war crimes or other crimes under international law on
either side.

Finally, both the Israeli authorities and the Hamas de facto administration need to take a
series of additional measures to prevent civilian deaths in the future. The Israeli military
must, for instance, comply fully with the duty to take precautionary measures when carrying
out attacks and publicly commit not to use artillery, white phosphorus and other
indiscriminate weapons in densely populated areas. The Hamas de facto administration, for
its part, must ensure that no armed group operating in areas under its control carries out
unlawful rocket attacks against civilian population centres in Israel.

ENDNOTES

1 See for example web pages of Israel’s state-owned Armament Development Authority, Rafael:
http://www.rafael.co.il/marketing/SIP_STORAGE/FILES/1/481.pdf;
http://www.rafael.co.il/marketing/SIP_STORAGE/FILES/2/512.pdf;
http://www.rafael.co.il/marketing/SIP_STORAGE/FILES/9/529.pdf.

2 Population density in Gaza is some 4,200 people per square kilometre. The refugee camps have one of
the highest population densities in the world. For example, over 82,000 refugees live in al-Shati (Beach)
camp, which is less than one square kilometre in size.

3 Since the outbreak of the intifada, the Palestinian uprising which began on 29 September 2000, the
Israeli army has increasingly often used lethal force in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) and
especially in Gaza.

4 On 7 January OCHA warned: “Growing pockets of Gazans are trapped in their homes… Gazans cannot
flee to safety or access food because of Israeli ground forces in the area. In addition to dropping leaflets
over areas including northern Gaza, the entire eastern border of Gaza and Rafah, the Israeli army is
broadcasting messages over local radio and television stations and phoning people all over the Gaza
Strip, ordering people to evacuate their homes and go to urban areas. Panicked, people are fleeing
amidst gunfire and shelling”:
http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/ocha_opt_gaza_humanitarian_situation_report_2009_01_07_english.pdf

5 Another four Israeli soldiers were killed and several injured by their own side in “friendly fire”
incidents.

6 Amnesty International sought access for its delegates to the Gaza Strip from the first days of Operation
“Cast Lead”, but the Israeli army rejected the request. The organization’s delegates were eventually able
to enter Gaza on 17 January from Egypt, having received a special permit from the Egyptian authorities
(usually only Palestinian residents of Gaza are allowed through the Egypt-Gaza border but in the last days
of Operation “Cast Lead” the Egyptian authorities exceptionally allowed passage for foreign journalists
and human rights and aid workers). Amnesty International’s delegates remained in Gaza until 3 February,
during which time they carried out first-hand field research in different parts of Gaza.

7 Among those still denied access to Gaza at the time of writing are delegates from the NGOs Human
Rights Watch and B’Tselem.

8 The international independent fact-finding mission was established by the UN Human Rights Council
at its ninth special session on 12 January 2009. Its mandate was limited to investigating alleged
violations of international law by Israeli forces. However, in April 2009, when he was appointed to head
the fact-finding mission, Justice Richard J. Goldstone, and the President of the Human Rights Council
indicated that the mission would examine the violations of international law committed by all parties,
including by the Palestinian armed groups.

9 The UN Board of Inquiry established that Israeli forces had been responsible for seven of the nine
attacks, while Palestinian militants had been responsible for at least one attack and the source of the
ninth attack could not be established.

10 Amnesty International, Hamas’ deadly campaign in the shadow of the war in Gaza (Index: MDE
21/001/2009), 12 February 2009:
http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/MDE21/001/2009/en/9f210586-f762-11dd-8fd7-
f57af21896e1/mde210012009en.html

Labels: Isreal, Palestine

posted by George Thomas Kysor 9:09 PM

Auditing the Fed will Audit the State 

If Ron Paul succeeds in getting the Fed audited, the consequences could be far-reaching. Assuming the audit isn't rigged to protect the guilty, as a similar bill was in 1978, the Fed will need every obfuscating Keynesian to testify and write editorials on its behalf, to reassure the public that monetary matters really are best left to the gods who rule us, such as Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geithner. Monetarists, too, would likely join the "Save the Fed" crusade, perhaps arguing that even a great free market economist like Milton Friedman considered the Fed useful for preventing and curing recessions.

But the really appetizing part of auditing the Fed is knowing what stands behind it. The Fed is a racket at heart, a con game writ large — what else can you call an organization with the exclusive privilege of printing money in the trillions and handing it over to friends? But if this is true, what does that say about the state, the organization that created and sanctions it? Is the Fed an honest mistake in the state's otherwise undying efforts to preserve our liberty, or might it be a key component of a bigger racket?

Without the power of the state, there would be no proposal to audit the Fed because there would be no Fed to audit. Like any cartel, it exists to protect its members from market retribution, and only the police power of the state can make us shoulder that burden. A bill to audit the Fed could by force of logic become a state audit, much like the investigations of the 1972 Watergate burglary exposed the grinning skull behind the government's public persona. During a Fed audit, for example, would it not be reasonable to ask why the people's elected representatives continue to support a banking system that secretly steals wealth from their countrymen and other dollar holders? Or are we to take the naïve position that most elected officials really are clueless about the Fed's policy of currency debasement and the effects such policies have had in history?

Partners in Crime

There are any number of ways a Fed audit could bring the state itself under close scrutiny, but let us sketch just one line of argument:

1.It is well known that banks engage in fractional-reserve lending, meaning that bankers use their deposits in lending operations, with only a part of their loans covered by money reserves. Fractional reserves expand the money supply, which, until the age of Keynes and Fisher, was called inflation. [1] It is also common knowledge that when banks extend too much credit, depositors quite naturally get nervous and start withdrawing their money.

Although fractional reserves would seemingly qualify as a form of embezzlement — the act of taking for personal use other people's property without their knowledge or consent — government court rulings have never viewed it as such. As Murray Rothbard observed, a bank that fails to meet its deposit obligations is just another insolvent, not an embezzler. Following the British ruling in Foley v. Hill and Others in 1848, US courts consider that money left with a banker is, "to all intents and purposes, the money of the banker, to do with as he pleases."[2]

This holds even if the banker engages in "hazardous speculation." Thus, according to the state, there can be no embezzlement because the money belongs to the bank, not the depositor. But was there ever a depositor who thought he was turning his money over to the banker so he could "do as he pleases" with it? Furthermore, when the banker, in loaning the customer's deposit to another party, essentially creates two claims to the same piece of property (the money deposited), there is no way he can meet his obligations to both depositor and borrower at the same time. Why does the state exempt banks from the law of contradiction?

2.Without a central bank, fractional-reserve banking leads to repetitive crises, as banks are incapable of meeting redemption demands. Banks that have trouble meeting their obligations need money fast, and this is one of the problems a central bank addresses. "The very existence of a fractional-reserve banking system invariably leads to the emergence of a central bank as a lender of last resort," Jesus Huerta de Soto tells us.[3]

True, but as de Soto recognizes, central banks don't emerge from open and candid discussions within the banking community, unless one regards their wish for "a more elastic currency" as an instance of brute honesty. To succeed, central banks need protection from competition; they need to be the monopoly supplier of bank notes. But monopolies in this sense don't emerge on a free market. A deal needs to be cut between big bankers and influential politicians to create a bank with legal privileges. This arrangement is then forced on us not, presented not as a special privilege but as serving the public interest. And we need to be forced to accept the privileged bank's fiat money in trade for real goods or services. It bears repeating: a central bank "is not a natural product of banking development," as Vera Smith concluded in her well-known study.[4] "It comes into being as a result of government favors." What does a government get in exchange for these favors, a Fed auditor might ask?

3.With a central bank, fractional-reserve banking leads to repetitive crises, but they may differ from crises without a central bank in two respects: one, because a central bank enforces a uniform rate of inflation (credit expansion), one bank can't jeopardize the rest by overexpanding more than others; consequently, the day of reckoning is delayed, and the correction needed is more severe. And two, when the crisis hits, the central bank provides a means for more monetary wrongdoing.

Since the requirement of redemption limits the inflationary potential of a central bank, governments sooner or later get around to outlawing money itself and force us to use exclusively what was formerly only a money substitute. Governments, in other words, outlaw gold and make us use their paper. Question from the auditor: how does this arrangement qualify as a free market, as so many commentators today tacitly believe when they blame the crisis on the free market?

With gold gone the central bank becomes government's genie, able to grant it almost unlimited spending. Massive spending in the '30s didn't cure the Depression, though it did make government a much heavier load for the market to bear.

Does the central bank's ability to orchestrate inflation have any connection with a government's involvement in war? Might the world wars have been far shorter and less destructive of life and property, while propagating fewer bloody shoots of their own, without the aid of central banking and a fiat-paper standard? The enormous monetary outlays of war go to politically favored firms, which thus have an incentive to foster a more belligerent and interventionist foreign policy. Is this military-industrial-congressional complex killing us? How eager will politicians be to go to war or police the world if they no longer have a printing press to pay for their adventures?

Might we all be better off with a money and banking system that is completely severed from government? And might we be better off with a government that can't feed on inflation?

The Pujo Committee

Prior to passage of the Federal Reserve Act, Wisconsin Senator Robert LaFollette and Minnesota Congressman Charles Lindbergh Sr. delivered scathing speeches attacking "the money trust" for causing booms and busts. LaFollette charged that the entire country was controlled by just fifty men, a claim that a Morgan partner rejected as totally absurd. He knew firsthand the number was not more than eight.

Following Lindbergh's resolution, Congress created the Pujo Committee to investigate the big bankers, but the committee was firmly in the hands of the trust itself. During the summer of 1912, the committee scared the wits out of people with statistics and testimonies showing the power Wall Street had over the economy. To the public, Congress seemed to be doing its job by cracking down on corruption, though at no time were Lindbergh or LaFollette called to testify, nor did anyone seem to attach any significance to the fact that the biggest bankers were leading the charge for reform.

The committee concluded that banking reform was urgent and necessary to bring Wall Street under control, and a year later Congress and President Wilson gave the country a central bank as an early Christmas present.[5] As Rothbard notes, the composition of the first Federal Reserve Board more or less reflected the power structure of those present at the Fed's founding meeting at Jekyll Island in 1910, with Morgan man Benjamin Strong actually running the system as head of the New York Fed.[6]

Power grabs are a frequent and predictable outcome of government investigations. However, any audit that exposes the Fed's relationship to the state will be worth doing, even if the Fed's friends keep it where it is.

- George F. Smith, the author of The Flight of the Barbarous Relic, a novel about a renegade Fed chairman.

Notes

[1] Jorg Guido Hulsmann, The Ethics of Money Production, Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2008, p. 85

[2] Murray N. Rothbard, The Case Against the Fed, Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1994, p. 42.

[3] Jesus Huerta de Soto, Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles, Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2006, p. 638 (emphasis in original).

[4] Vera C. Smith, The Rationale of Central Banking and the Free Banking Alternative, Liberty Press, 1990, p. 169.

[5] G. Edward Griffin, The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve, American Media, 2002, pp. 443–444.

[6] Rothbard, pp. 121–125.

Labels: Federal Reserve System

posted by George Thomas Kysor 9:58 AM

Wednesday, July 01, 2009

Obamageddon – 2012 

Empire America is on the verge of collapse. Its social, economic and political systems are failed and failing.

The measures taken by successive governments to save the politically corrupt, morally bankrupt, physically decrepit giant from collapse have served to only hasten its demise. While the decline has been decades in the making, the acceleration of ruinous policies under the current Administration is leading the United States – and much of the world – to the point of no return.

The "green shoots" sighted by Field Marshall Bernanke this past spring were a mirage. The 2010 economic "recovery" predicted by the same experts, authorities and financial boy scouts and cheerleaders who didn't see the economic crisis coming is pure delusion.

By 2012, even those in denial and still clinging to hope will be forced to face the truth. It will be called "Obamageddon" in America. The rest of the world will call it "The Greatest Depression."

July 1, 2009

- Gerald Celente, founder and director of The Trends Research Institute, author of Trends 2000 and Trend Tracking (Warner Books), and publisher of The Trends Journal. He has been forecasting trends since 1980, and recently called “The Collapse of ’09.”

Copyright © 2009 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

Labels: economic depression

posted by George Thomas Kysor 9:51 AM

Let's Not Audit the Fed - Let's Give it MORE Power! 

Video, 3 minutes. (via What Really Happened)

Labels: Federal Reserve

posted by George Thomas Kysor 1:04 AM

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

911 Truck bombs 

Video, 7 min 53 sec. (via What Really Happened)

Labels: 911

posted by George Thomas Kysor 11:34 PM

A BURIED 60 Minutes INTERVIEW / INDICTMENT 

Video, 7 min 14 sec. (via What really Happened)

Labels: 911

posted by George Thomas Kysor 10:37 AM

Monday, June 29, 2009

Gold missing from the Canadian Mint 

Video, 2 min 28 sec. (via What Really Happened)

Labels: gold

posted by George Thomas Kysor 9:32 PM

"Cheeeese" 

Video, 1 min 8 sec. (via MartinezBeavers)

Labels: beavers

posted by George Thomas Kysor 5:38 AM

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Criminal Rothschilds 

Video, 10 min 17 sec.
"If my sons did not want wars, there would be none." ~ Gutle Schnaper, Mayer Amschel Rothschilds wife

I am one of those who do not believe the national debt is a national blessing... it is calculated to raise around the administration a moneyed aristocracy dangerous to the liberties of the country
.
Andrew Jackson, Letter to L. H. Coleman of Warrenton, N.C., 29 April 1824

Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.

Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom (1913), Doubleday

From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxembourg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It played, as a modern writer, Mrs. Webster, has so ably shown, a definitely recognisable part in the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the Nineteenth Century; and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire.

Winston Churchill, "Zionism versus Bolshevism", Illustrated Sunday Herald (London), February 8, 1920, pg. 5

The people must be helped to think naturally about money. They must be told what it is, and what makes it money, and what are the possible tricks of the present system which put nations and peoples under control of the few.

Henry Ford, My Life and Work, Doubleday, Page & Company, 1922

I am afraid that the ordinary citizen will not like to be told that the banks can, and do, create and destroy money. The amount of money in existence varies only with the action of the banks in increasing or decreasing deposits and bank purchases. Every loan, overdraft or bank purchase creates a deposit, and every repayment or bank sale destroys a deposit. .... And they who control the credit of a nation, direct the policy of Governments and hold in the hollow of their hands the destiny of the people.

Reginald McKenna, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, addressing the shareholders as Chairman of the Midland Bank, at the Annual General Meeting in January 1924.

The present Federal Reserve System is a flagrant case of the Governments conferring a special privilege upon bankers. The Government hands to the banks its credit, at virtually no cost to the banks, to be loaned out by the bankers for their own private profit. Still worse, however, is the fact that it gives the bankers practically complete control of the amount of money that shall be in circulation. Not one dollar of these Federal Reserve notes gets into circulation without being borrowed into circulation and without someone paying interest to some bank to keep it circulating. Our present money system is a debt money system. Before a dollar can circulate, a debt must be created. Such a system assumes that you can borrow yourself out of debt.

- Willis A. Overholser, A short review and analysis of the history of money in the United States, with an introduction to the current money problem (1936), p. 56.

Labels: Central Bank, Federal Reserve

posted by George Thomas Kysor 9:51 PM

Friday, June 26, 2009

Obama Man 

Video, 3 min 21 sec. (via What Really Happened)

Labels: economy

posted by George Thomas Kysor 8:24 PM

9/11 FEMA videographer at Ground Zero goes public 

As official videographer for the U.S. government, Kurt Sonnenfeld was detailed to Ground Zero on September 11, 2001, where he spent one month filming 29 tapes: "What I saw at certain moments and in certain places ... is very disturbing!" He never handed them over to the authorities and has been persecuted ever since. Kurt Sonnenfeld lives in exile in Argentina, where he wrote "El Perseguido" (the persecuted). His recently-published book tells the story of his unending nightmare and drives another nail into the coffin of the government’s account of the 9/11 events. Below is an exclusive interview by The Voltaire Network.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

22 June 2009 From Buenos Aires (Argentina)

Introduction

Kurt Sonnenfeld graduated from the University of Colorado (USA) with studies in International Affairs and Economics, as well as in Literature and Philosophy. He worked for the United States government as official videographer and served as Director of Broadcast Operations for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)’s National Emergency Response Team. Additionally, Kurt Sonnenfeld was contracted by several other governmental agencies and programs for classified and “sensitive” operations at military and scientific installations throughout the United States.

On September 11, 2001, the area known as “Ground Zero” was sealed from the public eye. Sonnenfeld, however, was given unrestricted access enabling him to document for the investigation (that never took place) and provide some “sanitized” pool video to virtually every news network in the world. The tapes that reveal some of the anomalies which he discovered at Ground Zero are still in his possession.

Accused of a crime that did not occur in a manifest frame-up scenario, especially in light of ensuing events [1], Kurt Sonnenfeld has been persecuted across continents. After several years of fear, injustice and isolation, he has decided to take a public stand against the Government’s official story and is prepared to submit his material to the close scrutiny of reliable experts.

Kurt Sonnenfeld Interview

Voltaire Network: Your autobiographical book titled "El Perseguido" (the persecuted) was recently published in Argentina where you live in exile since 2003. Tell us who is persecuting you.

Kurt Sonnenfeld: Although it is autobiographical, it is not my life story. Rather it is a history of the extraordinary events that have happened to me and my family at the hands of U.S. authorities over the course of more than seven years, spanning two hemispheres, after my tour of duty at Ground Zero and becoming an inconvenient witness.

Voltaire Network: You explained that your request for refugee status within the terms of the Geneva 1951 Convention is still being considered by the Argentinean Senate, while in 2005 you were granted political asylum, albeit, on a provisional basis. That probably makes you the first U.S. citizen in that situation! And no doubt the first U.S. Government official with direct exposure to the events surrounding September 11, 2001 who has “blown the whistle”. Is this what drove you into exile?

Kurt Sonnenfeld: A refugee is a person who has been forced to leave (or stay away from) his or her country for reasons of persecution. It’s undeniable that many people have been persecuted unfairly as a result of the quasi-fascist laws and policies brought about by the shock of September 11, 2001, and they deserve refugee status. But the fact is, requesting refugee status is a risky and dangerous step to take. America is the world’s only remaining “superpower”, and dissent has been effectively repressed. Any person who requests refugee status on political grounds is by nature making an extreme statement of dissent. And if your request is denied, what do you do? Once you make the request, there can be no going back.

Personally, I wasn’t forced to leave the United States, and I certainly did not “flee”. At the time I was still fairly oblivious to what was actually brewing against me. I hadn’t connected the dots yet; so that when I left in early 2003 I had every intention of returning. I came to Argentina for a short respite; to try to recuperate after all that had happened to me. I travelled here freely, with my own passport, using my own credit cards. But because of an incredible series of events, I have since been forced into exile, and I haven’t been back.

Voltaire Network: What type of events are you referring to?

Kurt Sonnenfeld: I’ve suffered false accusations for “crimes” that demonstrably did not happen, abusive imprisonment and torture as a result of those accusations, as well as outrageous calumnies against my reputation, death threats, kidnap attempts and several other violations of civil and human rights as denounced by numerous international accords. My return to the United States would not only be a continuation of those violations, but would be aggregated by the separation - perhaps permanent - from my wife and three-year old twin daughters, the only thing remaining that I have to live for. And then, after the impossibility of receiving a fair trial for a crime that did not happen, I could be subject to the death penalty.

Voltaire Network: In 2005, the U.S. Government lodged a request to have you extradited, which was turned down by a Federal Judge. Then, in 2007, the Argentinean Supreme Court – in a show of integrity and independence - turned down the U.S. appeal, but your Government persisted. Can you shed some light on the situation ?

Kurt Sonnenfeld: In 2008, the US government appealed again, this time with absolutely no legal foundation, to the Supreme Court, which will surely uphold the two already unassailable rulings made by the Federal Judge.

In one of those rulings, it was also noted that there were too many “sombras”, or shadows, surrounding my case. There were many, many obvious fabrications in the extradition order sent here by US authorities, and, thankfully, we were able prove that. The fact that there were so many fabrications has actually served to support my request for asylum. We were also able to show that we had been subject to a prolonged campaign of harassment and intimidation from US intelligence services. As a result, since my family has been assigned round-the-clock police protection. As one senator has noted about my case: “It is their behavior that belies their true motivations”.

Voltaire Network: They want you pretty badly for a “crime that did not happen”! How do you account for such doggedness? As a FEMA official, you must have been trusted by your government. At what point did the situation capsize?

Kurt Sonnenfeld: In hindsight, I realize now that the situation had capsized some time before I actually became aware that it had capsized. Initially, the false accusation against me was completely irrational, and I was totally destroyed by it. It is incredibly difficult to have suffered the loss of someone you love to suicide, but to then be accused of it is too much to bear. The case was dismissed based on a mountain of evidence that overwhelmingly absolved me (Nancy, my wife, had left behind a suicide note and a journal of suicidal writings ; she had a family history of suicide ; etc.). The prosecution was 100% sure of my innocence before requesting the dismissal of charge.

But the sustained incarceration even AFTER it was indicated that I was to be freed was what proved to me that something was happening under the surface. I was held in jail for FOUR MONTHS after my lawyers were informed that the case was to be dismissed and was finally released in June 2002. During that time, an amazing series of strange events began to occur. While still being held, I had a telephone conversation with FEMA officials in an effort to resolve the issue, but I realized that I was considered “compromised”. I was told it had been agreed that “the agency had to be protected”, especially in light of the upheaval that was threatening with the implementation of the “Patriot Act” and the expected usurpation that would come with the new Department of Homeland Security. After all the dangers I had risked, all hardship and difficulties I had endured for them for almost 10 years, I felt betrayed. It left a void in my soul.

Because of their abandonment, I told them I didn’t have the tapes, that I gave them to “some bureaucrat” in New York, and that they would have to wait until I was released to retrieve any other documents in my possession. Soon after that conversation, my house was “seized”, the locks were changed, and men were observed by neighbors entering my house, though there is no record in the court of their entry, as would be required. When I was finally released, I discovered that my office had been ransacked, my computer was missing, and that my tape library in my basement had been dug through and several were missing. Men were constantly parked on the street near my house, my security system was “hacked” more than once, outdoor security lights were unscrewed, etc., to the point that I went to stay with some friends at their condo in the mountains, which was then ALSO broken into.

Anyone who looks for the truth recognizes that there has been an amazing series of irregularities in this case and that an appalling injustice is being carried out on me and my loved ones. This intense campaign to return me to American soil is a false pretext for other darker motives.

Voltaire Network: You have suggested that you observed things at Ground Zero that did not tally with the official account. Did you do or say anything to arouse suspicion in this respect?

Kurt Sonnenfeld: In that same telephone call I said that I would “go public”, not only with my suspicions about the events surrounding September 11, 2001, but about several contracts I had worked on in the past.

Voltaire Network: What are your suspicions based on?

Kurt Sonnenfeld: There were many things, in hindsight, that were disturbing at Ground Zero. It was odd to me that I was dispatched to go to New York even before the second plane hit the South Tower, while the media was still reporting only that a “small plane” had collided with the North Tower — far too small of a catastrophe at that point to involve FEMA . FEMA was mobilized within minutes, whereas it took ten days for it to deploy to New Orleans to respond to Hurricane Katrina, even with abundant advance warning! It was odd to me that all cameras were so fiercely prohibited within the secured perimeter of Ground Zero, that the entire area was declared a crime scene and yet the “evidence” within that crime scene was so rapidly removed and destroyed. And then it was very odd to me when I learned that FEMA and several other federal agencies had already moved into position at their command center at Pier 92 on September 10th, one day before the attacks!

Rubber landing-gear tyres visible in evidence container marked “FBI Plane Parts Only.” We are asked to believe that all four of the “indestructible” black boxes of the two jets that struck the twin towers were never found because they were completely vaporized, yet I have footage of the rubber wheels of the landing gear nearly undamaged, as well as the seats, parts of the fuselage and a jet turbine that were absolutely not vaporized. This being said, I do find it rather odd that such objects could have survived fairly intact the type of destruction that turned most of the Twin Towers into thin dust. And I definitely harbor some doubts about the authenticity of the “jet” turbine, far too small to have come from one of the Boeings!

What happened with Building 7 is incredibly suspicious. I have video that shows how curiously small the rubble pile was, and how the buildings to either side were untouched by Building Seven when it collapsed. It had not been hit by an airplane; it had suffered only minor injuries when the Twin Towers collapsed, and there were only small fires on a couple of floors. There’s no way that building could have imploded the way it did without controlled demolition. Yet the collapse of Building 7 was hardly mentioned by the mainstream media and suspiciously ignored by the 911 Commission.

Voltaire Network: Reportedly, the underground levels of WTC7 contained sensitive and undoubtedly compromising archival material. Did you come across any of it?

Kurt Sonnenfeld: The Secret Service, the Department of Defense, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Internal Revenue Service, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Office of Emergency Management’s “Crisis Center” occupied huge amounts of space there, spanning several floors of the building. Other federal agencies had offices there as well. After September 11, it was discovered that concealed within Building Seven was the largest clandestine domestic station of the Central Intelligence Agency outside of Washington DC, a base of operations from which to spy on diplomats of the United Nations and to conduct counterterrorism and counterintelligence missions.

There was no underground parking level at Seven World Trade Center. And there was no underground vault. Instead, the federal agencies at Building Seven stored their vehicles, documents and evidence in the building of their associates across the street. Beneath the plaza level of US Customs House (Building 6) was a large underground garage, separated off from the rest of the complex’s underground area and guarded under tight security. This was where the various government services parked their bomb-proofed cars and armored limousines, counterfeit taxi cabs and telephone company trucks used for undercover surveillance and covert operations, specialized vans and other vehicles. Also within that secured parking area was access to the sub-level vault of Building 6.

Approaching the entrance to the sub-level areas of Building 6 When the North Tower fell, the US Customs House (Building 6) was crushed and totally incinerated. Much of the underground levels beneath it were also destroyed. But there were voids. And it was into one of those voids, recently uncovered, that I descended with a special Task Force to investigate. It was there we found the security antechamber to the vault, badly damaged. At the far end of the security office was the wide steel door to the vault, a combination code keypad in the cinderblock wall beside it. But the wall was cracked and partially crumbled, and the door was sprung partially open. So we checked inside with our flashlights. Except for several rows of empty shelves, there was nothing in the vault but dust and debris. It had been emptied. Why was it empty? And when could it have been emptied?

Voltaire Network: Is this what set alarm bells ringing for you?

Kurt Sonnenfeld: Yes, but not immediately. With so much chaos, it was difficult to think. It was only after digesting everything that the “alarm bells” went off.

Building Six was evacuated within twelve minutes after the first airplane struck the North Tower. The streets were immediately clogged with fire trucks, police cars and blocked traffic, and the vault was large enough, 15 meters by 15 meters by my estimate, to necessitate at least a big truck to carry out its contents. And after the towers fell and destroyed most of the parking level, a mission to recover the contents of the vault would have been impossible. The vault had to have been emptied before the attack.

I’ve described all of this extensively in my book, and it’s apparent that things of importance were taken out of harm’s way before the attacks. For example, the CIA didn’t seem too concerned about their losses. After the existence of their clandestine office in Building Seven was discovered, an agency spokesman told the newspapers that a special team had been dispatched to scour the rubble in search of secret documents and intelligence reports, though there were millions, if not billions of pages floating in the streets. Nevertheless, the spokesman was confident. “There shouldn’t be too much paper around,” he said.

The bizarre hollowed-out vestiges of The US Customs House (Building Six) And Customs at first claimed that everything was destroyed. That the heat was so intense that everything in the evidence safe had been baked to ash. But some months later, they announced that they had broken up a huge Colombian narco-trafficking and money-laundering ring after miraculously recovering crucial evidence from the safe, including surveillance photos and heat-sensitive cassette tapes of monitored calls. And when they moved in to their new building at 1 Penn Plaza in Manhattan, they proudly hung on the lobby wall their Commissioner’s Citation Plaque and their big round US Customs Service ensign, also miraculously recovered, in pristine condition, from their crushed and cremated former office building at the World Trade Center.

Voltaire Network: You weren’t alone on the Ground Zero assignment. Did the others notice the same anomalies? Do you know whether they have they also been harassed?

Kurt Sonnenfeld: Actually there were a few people on two different excursions that I know about. Some of us even discussed it afterwards. They know who they are and I hope that they will come forward, but I’m sure they have strong apprehensions as to what will happen to them if they do. I will leave it to them to decide, but there is strength in numbers.

Voltaire Network: With the publication of your book, you have become a "whistleblower" – yet another step on which there is no going back! There must be many people with inside knowledge about what really happened or did not happen on that fateful day. Yet, hardly any have stepped up to the plate and certainly no one who was directly involved in an official capacity. This is what makes your case so compelling. Judging from your ordeal, it is not difficult to imagine what is holding such people back.

Kurt Sonnenfeld: Actually, there are several other very smart and credible people blowing whistles, too. And they are being discredited and ignored. Some are being harassed and persecuted, as I am.

People are gripped by fear. Everybody knows that if you question US authority you will have problems in some way or another. At minimum you will be discredited and dehumanized. Most likely you’ll find yourself indicted for something completely unrelated, like tax evasion — or something even worse, as in my case. Look at what happened to Secret Service whistle-blower Abraham Bolden, for example, or to chess master Bobby Fischer after he showed his disdain for the US. There are countless other examples. In the past I asked friends and associates to speak out for me to counter all the lies being planted in the media, and all of them were terrified as to the ramifications to themselves and their families.

Voltaire Network: To what degree would your discoveries at Ground Zero expose the government’s involvement in those events? Are you familiar with the investigations that have been carried out by numerous scientists and qualified professionals which not only corroborate your own findings but, in some instances, far exceed them? Do you regard such people as "conspiracy nuts"?

Kurt Sonnenfeld: At the highest levels in Washington, DC, someone knew what was going to happen. They wanted a war so badly that they at least let it happen and most likely even helped it happen.

Sometimes it seems to me that the “nuts” are those who hold to what they’ve been told with an almost religious fervor despite all of the evidence to the contrary — the ones who won’t even consider that there was a conspiracy. There are so many anomalies to the “official” investigation that you can’t blame it on oversight or incompetence. I am familiar with the scientists and qualified professionals to whom you refer, and their findings are convincing, credible, and presented according to scientific protocol — in stark contrast to the findings of the “official” investigation. In addition, numerous intelligence agents and government officials have now come forward with their very informed opinions that the 911 Commission was a farce at best or a cover-up at worst. My experience at Ground Zero is but one more piece of the puzzle.

Voltaire Network: Those events are nearly 8 years behind us. Do you consider that uncovering the truth about 9/11 continues to be an important objective? Why?

Kurt Sonnenfeld: It is of absolute importance. And it will be equally as important in 10 years, or even 50 years if the truth still has not been exposed. It is an important objective because, at this point in history, many people are too credulous to whatever “authority” tells them and too willing to follow. People in a state of shock seek guidance. People who are afraid are manipulable. And being able to manipulate the masses results in unimaginable benefits to a lot of very rich and very powerful people. War is incredibly expensive, but the money has to go somewhere. War is very profitable for the very few. And somehow their sons always end up in Washington DC, making the decisions and writing the budgets, while the sons of the poor and the poorly-connected always end up on the enemy lines, taking their orders and fighting their battles. The enormous black-budget of the US Department of Defense represents an unlimited money machine for the military-industrial complex, figuring in the multi-trillions of dollars, and it will continue to be so until the masses wake up, recuperate their skepticism and demand accountability. Wars (and false pretexts for war) will not cease until the people realize the true motive of war and stop believing “official” explanations.

Voltaire Network: What is referred to as the 9/11 Truth Movement, has been asking for a new, independent investigation into those events. Do you think that the Obama Administration holds out some hope in this respect?

Kurt Sonnenfeld: I really hope so, but I’m skeptical. Why would the leadership of any established government willingly undertake any action that would result in a serious compromise to their authority? They will prefer to maintain the status quo and leave the things the way they are. The conductor of the train has been changed, but has the train changed its course? I doubt it. The push has to come from the public, not only domestically, but internationally, like your group is doing.

Voltaire Network: A number of human rights and activist groups are supporting your plight, not least Peace Nobel Prize winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel. How have the Argentinean people in general responded to your situation?

Kurt Sonnenfeld: With an incredible outpouring of support. The military dictatorship is still fresh in the collective memory of most of the people here, along with the knowledge that the dictatorship (along with the other South American dictatorships at the time) was backed by the CIA, directed at the time by George Bush Senior. They remember well the torture centers, the secret prisons, the thousands of people “disappeared” for their opinions, the living in daily fear. They know that the United States today will do the same thing if they consider it beneficial, that they will invade a country to achieve their political and economic interests and then manipulate the media with fabricated “causus belli” to justify their conquests.


My family and I are honored to have Adolfo Pérez Esquiveland his advisors at Servicio de Paz y Justicia (SERPAJ) among our dearest friends. We have worked together on many causes, including the rights of refugees, the rights of women, for children without families and children with HIV/AIDS. We are also honored to have the support of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo; Madres de Plaza de Mayo, Línea Fundadora; Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS); Asamblea Permanente de Derechos Humanos (APDH); Familiares de Detenidos y Desaparecidos por Razones Políticas; Asociación de Mujeres, Migrantes y Refugiados Argentina (AMUMRA); Comisión de Derechos Humanos de la Honorable Cámara de Diputados de la Provincia de Buenos Aires; Secretaría de Derechos Humanos de la Nación; and the Programa Nacional Anti-Impunidad. On an international level, Amicus Curiae have been presented in our favor by REPRIEVE of Great Britain, along with the collaboration of NIZKOR of Spain and Belgium. In addition, my wife, Paula, and I have been received in the Congress by La Comisión de Derechos Humanos y Garantías de la Honorable Cámara de Diputados de La Nación.

Voltaire Network: As we said, deciding to write this book and to go public was a huge step. What pushed you to do it?

Kurt Sonnenfeld: To save my family. And to let the world know that things are not what they seem.

Voltaire Network: Last but not least: what will you do with your tapes?

Kurt Sonnenfeld: I am convinced that my tapes reveal many more anomalies than I am capable of recognizing given my limited qualifications. I will therefore cooperate in any way that I can with serious and reliable experts in a common endeavour to expose the truth.

Voltaire Network: Thank you very much !

- The Voltaire Network (via What Really Happened)

Labels: 911

posted by George Thomas Kysor 7:34 PM

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

STOLEN PALESTINIAN PROPERTIES BEING SOLD BY AMERICAN COMPANIES 

Video, 3 min 9 sec.
"One of the issues sharply dividing Israelis and Palestinians is the so-called right of return to Israel by refugees from the 1948 war.

"Most of the property they abandoned has been held by the Israeli government.

"BTW….. the For Sale sign on the building featured is from a real estate company called REMAX….. A U.S. based company.

"Watch your stolen home fly away……."

- DesertPeace

"...[R]ecognition of the Palestinians' right of return was a condition for Israel's membership in the United Nations."

- What Really Happened

Labels: expropriate

posted by George Thomas Kysor 6:54 PM

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

The U.S. and the U.K. Will Both Default on Their Debt by the End of Summer 

As anticipated by LEAP/E2020 as early as October 2008, on the eve of summer 2009, the question of the US and UK capacity to finance their unbridled public deficits has become the central question of international debates, thus paving the way for these two countries to default on their debt by the end of this summer.

(1) At this stage of the global systemic crisis' process of development, contrary to the dominant political and media stance today, the LEAP/E2020 team does not foresee any economic upsurge after summer 2009 (nor in the following 12 months)

(2) On the contrary, because the origins of the crisis remain unaddressed, we estimate that the summer 2009 will be marked by the converging of three very destructive rogue waves.

(3) illustrating the aggravation of the crisis and entailing major upheaval by September/October 2009. As always since this crisis started, each region of the world will be affected neither at the same moment, nor in the same way

(4) However, according to our researchers, all of them will be concerned by a significant deterioration in their situation by the end of summer 2009

This evolution is likely to catch large numbers of economic and financial players on the wrong foot who decided to believe in today's mainstream media operation of "euphorisation".

In this special Summer 2009 edition, our team describes in detail these three converging rogue waves and their impact, and gives a number of strategic recommendations (currencies, gold, real estate, bonds, stocks, currencies) to avoid being swept away in this deadly summer.

LEAP/E2020 believes that,

(5) instead of green shoots (those which international media, experts and the politicians who listen to them kept perceiving in every statistical chart in the past two months),

(6) what will appear on the horizon is a group of three destructive waves of the social and economic fabric expected to converge in the course of summer 2009, illustrating the aggravation of the crisis and entailing major changes by the end of summer 2009 - more specifically, debt default events in the US and UK, both countries at the centre of the global system in crisis. These waves appear as follows:

1. Wave of massive unemployment: Three different dates of impact according to the countries in America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa

2. Wave of serial corporate bankruptcies: companies, banks, housing, states, counties, towns

3. Wave of terminal crisis for the US Dollar, US T-Bond and GBP, and the return of inflation

In fact, these three waves do not appear in quick succession like the sisters rogue waves. They are even more dangerous because they are simultaneous, asynchronous and non-parallel. Hence their impact on the global system accentuates the risks because they hit at various angles, at different speeds and with varying strength. The only certain thing at this stage is that the international system has never been so weak and powerless to face such a situation. The IMF and global governance institutions' reforms announced by the London G20 are at a standstill

(7) The G8 becomes more like a moribund club whose utility is increasingly questioned

(8) US leadership is the shadow of what it used to be, mostly concerned by desperately trying to find purchasers for its T-Bonds

(9) The global monetary system is in a process of disintegration, with the Russians and Chinese in particular accelerating their positioning in the post-Dollar era. Companies foresee no improvement in the business climate and speed up the pace of layoffs. A growing number of states falter under the weight of their accumulated debt created to "rescue banks" and are about to be faced with a welter of failings by the end of this summer

(10) And, last but not least, the banks, once they have squeezed money out of naive savers thanks to the market upsurge orchestrated in the past few weeks, will be have to admit that they are still insolvent by the end of summer 2009.

In the United States and United Kingdom in particular, the colossal public financial effort made in 2008 and at the beginning of 2009 for the sole benefit of large banks became so unpopular that it was impossible to consider injecting more public money into banks in spring 2009, despite the fact that they were still insolvent

(11) It then became necessary to invent a "fairy tale" to convince the average saver to inject his/her own money into the financial system. By means of the "green shoots" story, overpriced stock indices based on no real economic grounds and promises of "anticipated public funding repayment", the conditioning was achieved. Hence, while big investors from oil-producing and Asian countries

(12) withdrew capital from these banks, large numbers of small individual investors returned, full of hope. Once these small investors discover that public funding repayment is only a drop in the ocean of public aid granted to these banks (to help them dispose of their toxic assets) and that, after three or four months at best (as analyzed in this GEAB N°36), these banks are again on the verge of collapse, they will realize, powerless, that their share is worth nothing once again.

Intoxicated by financiers, world political leaders will be surprised - once again, to see all the problems of last year reappear, all the more severe since they were not addressed but only buried under piles of public money. Once that money has been squandered by insolvent banks compelled to rescue even more insolvent rivals, or by ill-conceived economic stimulus plans, problems will re-emerge, further exacerbated. For hundreds of millions of citizens in America, Europe, Asia and Africa, the summer 2009 will be a dramatic transition towards lasting impoverishment due to the loss of their jobs, with no hope of finding new ones in the next two, three or four years, or due to the disappearance of their savings invested in stocks or capital-based pension funds, or in banking investments linked to stock markets or denominated in US dollars or British pounds, or investment in shares of companies pressured to desperately wait for an improvement not coming soon.

Notes:

(1) Not even the "jobless recovery" many experts are trying to make us believe in. In the United States, United Kingdom, Eurozone and Japan, it is a "recoveryless recovery" we must expect, i.e. a pure invention aimed at convincing US and UK insolvent consumers to start buying again and keeping US T-Bonds' and UK Gilts' country purchasers waiting as long as possible (until they decide that there is really no future selling their products to the lands of the US Dollar and British Pound.

(2) Rogues waves are very large and sudden ocean surface waves which used to be considered as rare, though we now know that they appear in almost every storm above a certain strength. Rogue waves can reach heights of 30 meters (98 ft) and exert tremendous pressure. For instance, a normal 3 meter-high wave exerts a pressure of 6 tons/m. A 10 meter-high tempest wave exerts a pressure of 12 tons/m. A 30 meter-high rogue wave can exert pressure of up to 100 tons/m. No ship yet built is able to resist such pressures. One specific kind of rogue wave is called the "three sisters", i.e. a group of three rogue waves all the more dangerous in that, even if a ship had time to react properly to the first two waves, there is no way she could be in the right position to brave the third one. According to LEAP/E2020, it is a similar phenomenon that the world is about to encounter this summer; and no country (ship) is in a favourable position to face them, even if some countries are more at risk than others, as explained in this GEAB (N°36).

(3) LEAP/E2020 estimate that their anticipations of social and economic trends in the various regions of the world - published in GEAB N°28 (10/16/2008) are still relevant.

(4) More precisely, in every region, media and stock markets will no longer be able to hide the deterioration.

(5) Our readers have not failed to notice that the same people, media and institutions, considered everything was for the best in the best of worlds 3 years ago, that there was no risk of a severe crisis 2 years ago, and that the crisis was under control a year ago. Their opinion is therefore highly reliable!

(6) As regards US economic statistics, it will be interesting to follow the consequences of the revision of the indexing formula by the Bureau of Economic Analysis due to take place on 07/31/2009. Usually, this type of revision results in further complexity of historical comparisons and favourable modification of important figures. For example, some previous revisions enabled the division of the average level of measured inflation by three. Source: MWHodges, 04/2008.

(7) Except at a regional level where each political entity is organized the way that it wants. For instance, the EU is taking advantage of the political fading away of the UK - mired in a financial, economic and political crisis - and taking supervisory control of the City of London (source: Telegraph, 06/11/2009). It is likely that summer 2009 will be the end of 300 years of the City's supremacy at the centre of British power. On this subject, it is instructive to read George Monbiot's article in The Guardian dated 06/08/2009 and take the time to read John Lanchester's brilliant essay published in the London Review of Books dated 05/28/2009 entitled It's finished.

(8) Who cares any more about G8 final statements, such as that following the June 13th G8-Finance meeting (source: Forbes, 06/13/2009), at a time when each player in fact plays by his own rules: Americans on one side, Canadians and Europeans on another, British and Japanese in the middle, while the Russians play a complete different game?

(9) US Treasury's Secretary of State, Timothy Geithner, recently suffered a very embarrassing experience whilst giving a speech in front of Beijing University students: his audience simply burst into laughter when he reassured that the Chinese government had made the right choice investing their holdings in US T-Bonds and Dollars (source: Examiner/Reuters, 6/02/2009)! There is nothing worse than arousing irony or ridicule when you are an established power because that power is nothing without respect (on the part of both friends and enemies), especially when the one mocking is supposed to be "trapped" by the one mocked. According to LEAP/E2020, this laughter is worth a thousand explanations of the fact that China does not feel at all trapped by the US dollar and the Chinese authorities know exactly what tracks greenbacks and T Bonds are following. This kind of situation was unthinkable only 12 months, maybe even 6 months ago, first because the Chinese were still naive, second because they thought it was in their interest to make everyone believe they were naive. Obviously, on the eve of summer 2009, this situation has vanished: no need to pretend anymore, as highlighted by this survey of 23 famous Chinese economists, published on the first day of Timothy Geithner's visit to Beijing, and revealing that most of them deem US assets risky (source: Xinhuanet, 05/31/2009). This student burst of laughter will continue to echo for many months to come...

(10) Not only in the US will shareholders be systematically prejudiced by the state under the pretext of higher common interest, as in the case of pension fund and bondholder losses related to the Chrysler and GM bankruptcies, or when the US government and Federal Reserve pressured Bank of America to hide the calamitous state of Merrill Lynch from its shareholders at the time of the latter's takeover. Sources: OpenSalon, 06/10/2009 / WallStreetJournal, 04/23/2009. In the UK, Europe and Asia, the same causes will produce the same effects: the raison d'etat has always been the simplest excuse to justify large-scale plundering ... and severe crises are perfect times to call in the raison d'etat.

(11) Germany has a similar problem due to next September's national election. After the election, the country's banking problems will be in the headlines, as several hundreds of billions of risky assets on the balance sheets of a number of banks, mainly regional ones, will need dealing with. It is far from the scope of US and UK banking problems, nevertheless Berlin will probably be faced with a number of potential bank failures. Source: AFP/Google, 04/25/2009. In the United States, the banks bailed out by the federal state have simply lowered the amount of loans granted when they are supposed to do the contrary. Source: CNNMoney, 06/15/2009

(12) Sources: Financial Times, 06/01/2009; YahooFinance, 06/04/2009; StreetInsider+Holdings/4656921.html, 05/15/2009; Financial Times, 06/01/2009

Mercredi 17 Juin 2009

- LEAP/E2020team (via What Really Happened)

Labels: US national debt

posted by George Thomas Kysor 9:46 PM

WHO/UNICRI COCAINE PROJECT 

3 March 1995
Highlights:
• The WHO/UNICRI Cocaine Project is the largest study on cocaine ever undertaken. The
study was made possible through the generous contribution of the Italian Ministry of
Interior. The project produced:
- Country Profiles on Cocaine from 19 developed and developing countries;
- Key Informant Study reports from drug users and others with an extensive
knowledge of cocaine use from 19 cities on almost every continent;
- A Natural History Study report on four sites in South America and Africa.
• The research methods developed for the project can now be used to collect information on
cocaine in other countries and information on other drugs, and to monitor trends in the
future.
• It is not possible to describe an "average cocaine user". An enormous variety was found in
the types of people who use cocaine, the amount of drug used, the frequency of use, the
duration and intensity of use, the reasons for using and any associated problems they
experience.
• However, three general patterns of use were found across the participating countries:
1. The snorting of cocaine hydrochloride (by far the most popular use of coca products
worldwide).
2. The smoking of coca paste and crack, and the injection of cocaine ' hydrochloride, are
minority behaviours, and tend to be found among the socially marginalised.
3. The traditional use of coca leaves among some indigenous populations in Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru,
northern Chile and Argentina as well as some groups in Brazil and Colombia.
• Generally cocaine users consume a range of other drugs as well. There appears to be very little
"pure" cocaine use. Overall, fewer people in participating countries have used cocaine than have used
alcohol, tobacco or cannabis. Also, in most countries, cocaine is not the drug associated with the
greatest problems.
• Health problem; from the use of legal substances, particularly alcohol and tobacco, are greater than
health problems from cocaine use.
• Few experts describe cocaine as invariably harmful to health. Cocaine-related problems are widely
perceived to be more common and more severe for intensive, high-dosage users and very rare and
much less severe for occasional, low-dosage users.
• A majority of health consequences may not be directly attributed to cocaine use. Cocaine often
contributes to or exacerbates the conditions reported, rather than causing them.
• There are widespread myths but few scientific studies of the relationship between cocaine and
sexual behaviour. One finding was that sexual problems seem to occur among high-dosage regular
cocaine users.
• A range of mental health problems are associated with cocaine use, though they are mainly limited
to high-dosage users.
• There is a complex relationship between cocaine use and crime, particularly theft and violence.
• Use of coca leaves appears to have no negative health effects and has positive therapeutic, sacred
and social functions for indigenous Andean populations.
• Responses to cocaine-related health problems are poorly coordinated, inconsistent, often culturally
inappropriate and generally ineffective.
• Education, treatment and rehabilitation programmes should be increased to counterbalance the
current over-reliance on law enforcement measures. They should not necessarily concentrate
exclusively on cocaine, bet should be integrated into a mix of strategies to deal effectively with a
range of drugs.
• In many settings, educational and prevention programmes generally do not dispel myths but
sensationalize, perpetuate stereotyping and misinformation.
• Most treatment services are poorly coordinated, often being culturally inappropriate and ineffective
in achieving rehabilitation. Those most likely to be denied access when seeking treatment are the poor
and heavily dependent.
• In most settings, people who have enough money to pay for cocaine - and who are familiar with a
supplier - are able to obtain the drug despite its illegality.
• In many settings, cocaine users complained about the level of corruption among law enforcement
officials and alleged abuses of human rights. Users made it clear that such abuses and exploitation
would generally not be effective in changing their drug use behaviour.
• Coca paste use may be increasing in Andean countries and crack, use appears to be increasing in
Nigeria and Brazil.
• Cocaine injection rates appear to be relatively stable and at low levels relative to the injection of
other drugs.
• Most countries believe there needs to be more assessment of the adverse effects of current drug
policies and strategies.
• Some countries have shifted the focus of their drug policy to a broad range of goals in which
abstinence is appropriate for non-users and some users of coca products, while other users are
encouraged to use the drug as safely as possible.

- WikiLeaks (via Lew Rockwell)

Labels: censored

posted by George Thomas Kysor 9:09 PM

Sunday, June 21, 2009

JFK, Executive Order 11110 and the Warren Commission 

Video, 2 min 39 sec.
On June 4, 1963, a little known attempt was made to strip the Federal Reserve Bank of its power to loan money to the government at interest. On that day President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order No. 11110 that returned to the U.S. government the power to issue currency, without going through the Federal Reserve. Mr. Kennedy's order gave the Treasury the power "to issue silver certificates against any silver bullion, silver, or standard silver dollars in the Treasury." This meant that for every ounce of silver in the U.S. Treasury's vault, the government could introduce new money into circulation. In all, Kennedy brought nearly $4.3 billion in U.S. notes into circulation. The ramifications of this bill are enormous.

With the stroke of a pen, Mr. Kennedy was on his way to putting the Federal Reserve Bank of New York out of business. If enough of these silver certificates were to come into circulation they would have eliminated the demand for Federal Reserve notes. This is because the silver certificates are backed by silver and the Federal Reserve notes are not backed by anything. Executive Order 11110 could have prevented the national debt from reaching its current level, because it would have given the government the ability to repay its debt without going to the Federal Reserve and being charged interest in order to create the new money. Executive Order 11110 gave the U.S. the ability to create its own money backed by silver.

After Mr. Kennedy was assassinated just five months later, no more silver certificates were issued. The Final Call has learned that the Executive Order was never repealed by any U.S. President through an Executive Order and is still valid. Why then has no president utilized it? Virtually all of the nearly $6 trillion in debt has been created since 1963, and if a U.S. president had utilized Executive Order 11110 the debt would be nowhere near the current level. Perhaps the assassination of JFK was a warning to future presidents who would think to eliminate the U.S. debt by eliminating the Federal Reserve's control over the creation of money. Mr. Kennedy challenged the government of money by challenging the two most successful vehicles that have ever been used to drive up debt - war and the creation of money by a privately-owned central bank. His efforts to have all troops out of Vietnam by 1965 and Executive Order 11110 would have severely cut into the profits and control of the New York banking establishment.

- The Paradigm Shift

Labels: JFK

posted by George Thomas Kysor 9:43 PM

Saturday, June 20, 2009

SEEDS OF DECEPTION by Jeffrey M. Smith 

Video, 1 hour.

Labels: health

posted by George Thomas Kysor 2:19 PM

Friday, June 19, 2009

The Waning Power of Truth: CIA intervention in Iran [excerpt] 

...US “black ops” is at it again, pumping out disinformation about the “stolen” Iranian election. The US media is again serving the government’s disinformation campaign. This despite the fact that on May 23, 2007, Brian Ross and Richard Esposito reported on ABC News: “The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert “black” operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell ABC News.”

On May 27, 2007, the London Telegraph independently reported: “Mr. Bush has signed an official document endorsing CIA plans for a propaganda and disinformation campaign intended to destabilize, and eventually topple, the theocratic rule of the mullahs.”

A few days previously, the Telegraph reported on May 16, 2007, that Bush administration neocon warmonger John Bolton told the Telegraph that a US military attack on Iran would “be a ‘last option’ after economic sanctions and attempts to foment a popular revolution had failed.”

On June 29, 2008, Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker: “Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership.”

The Iranian election protests, essentially by the westernized youth of Tehran who wish to be free of Islamic moral codes, have the hallmarks of orchestration. The protesters are color-coded with green wristbands. Their protest signs are in English and are obviously directed at the western media. Their chants are propagandistic and bear no relation to facts known by every Iranian.

And again, the US media and various experts, whose ambitions depend on government-related careers, are force-feeding the American public the disinformation designed to further isolate and weaken, if not overthrow, the Iranian government.

Until 1978 the US ruled Iran through the Shah. The US intends to again rule Iran through puppets. The only two remaining independent governments in the region are Iran and Syria. If the US doesn’t first bankrupt itself, both countries will fall to US black ops destabilization.

- Paul Craig Roberts

Labels: CIA, Iran

posted by George Thomas Kysor 10:53 PM

Thursday, June 18, 2009

How Monsanto kills the news 

[Click image to enlarge.] Video, 10 minutes.

Labels: censored

posted by George Thomas Kysor 8:46 PM

Is history Repeating? 

[Click image to enlarge.] NOTE: Each heading of the CIA report (on the Time's page) is a link to the Time's interpretation of that section.

In 1953 the CIA instigated Iranian "demonstrators" in a successful attempt to replace the then elected premier of Iran, Mossadegh, with their stooge, the Shah of Iran. This is common, but conveniently forgotten, knowledge.

A closer look at the original document is at:
National Security Archive
Electronic Briefing Book No. 28
The Secret CIA History of the Iran coup, 1953.

Labels: TPAJAX

posted by George Thomas Kysor 11:48 AM

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Home [YouTube HD] 

[Click image to enlarge.] Video, 1:33:18.
We are living in exceptional times. Scientists tell us that we have 10 years to change the way we live, avert the depletion of natural resources and the catastrophic evolution of the Earth's climate. The stakes are high for us and our children. Everyone should take part in the effort, and HOME has been conceived to take a message of mobilization out to every human being. For this purpose, HOME needs to be free. A patron, the PPR Group, made this possible. EuropaCorp, the distributor, also pledged not to make any profit because Home is a non-profit film. HOME has been made for you : share it! And act for the planet.

- Yann Arthus-Bertrand, GoodPlanet Fundation President

TO DEBATE AND TAKE ACTION TOGETHER ON THE GOODPLANET FUNDATION FORUM: http://www.goodplanet.org/en

(via ParisDailyPhoto)

Labels: environment

posted by George Thomas Kysor 2:22 PM

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

The American Empire Is Bankrupt 

This week marks the end of the dollar’s reign as the world’s reserve currency. It marks the start of a terrible period of economic and political decline in the United States. And it signals the last gasp of the American imperium. That’s over. It is not coming back. And what is to come will be very, very painful.

Barack Obama, and the criminal class on Wall Street, aided by a corporate media that continues to peddle fatuous gossip and trash talk as news while we endure the greatest economic crisis in our history, may have fooled us, but the rest of the world knows we are bankrupt. And these nations are damned if they are going to continue to prop up an inflated dollar and sustain the massive federal budget deficits, swollen to over $2 trillion, which fund America’s imperial expansion in Eurasia and our system of casino capitalism. They have us by the throat. They are about to squeeze.

There are meetings being held Monday and Tuesday in Yekaterinburg, Russia, (formerly Sverdlovsk) among Chinese President Hu Jintao, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and other top officials of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The United States, which asked to attend, was denied admittance. Watch what happens there carefully. The gathering is, in the words of economist Michael Hudson, “the most important meeting of the 21st century so far.”

It is the first formal step by our major trading partners to replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. If they succeed, the dollar will dramatically plummet in value, the cost of imports, including oil, will skyrocket, interest rates will climb and jobs will hemorrhage at a rate that will make the last few months look like boom times. State and federal services will be reduced or shut down for lack of funds. The United States will begin to resemble the Weimar Republic or Zimbabwe. Obama, endowed by many with the qualities of a savior, will suddenly look pitiful, inept and weak. And the rage that has kindled a handful of shootings and hate crimes in the past few weeks will engulf vast segments of a disenfranchised and bewildered working and middle class. The people of this class will demand vengeance, radical change, order and moral renewal, which an array of proto-fascists, from the Christian right to the goons who disseminate hate talk on Fox News, will assure the country they will impose.

I called Hudson, who has an article in Monday’s Financial Times called “The Yekaterinburg Turning Point: De-Dollarization and the Ending of America’s Financial-Military Hegemony.” “Yekaterinburg,” Hudson writes, “may become known not only as the death place of the czars but of the American empire as well.” His article is worth reading, along with John Lanchester’s disturbing exposé of the world’s banking system, titled “It’s Finished,” [Interesting article! -GTK] which appeared in the May 28 issue of the London Review of Books.

“This means the end of the dollar,” Hudson told me. “It means China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Iran are forming an official financial and military area to get America out of Eurasia. The balance-of-payments deficit is mainly military in nature. Half of America’s discretionary spending is military. The deficit ends up in the hands of foreign banks, central banks. They don’t have any choice but to recycle the money to buy U.S. government debt. The Asian countries have been financing their own military encirclement. They have been forced to accept dollars that have no chance of being repaid. They are paying for America’s military aggression against them. They want to get rid of this.”

China, as Hudson points out, has already struck bilateral trade deals with Brazil and Malaysia to denominate their trade in China’s yuan rather than the dollar, pound or euro. Russia promises to begin trading in the ruble and local currencies. The governor of China’s central bank has openly called for the abandonment of the dollar as reserve currency, suggesting in its place the use of the International Monetary Fund’s Special Drawing Rights. What the new system will be remains unclear, but the flight from the dollar has clearly begun. The goal, in the words of the Russian president, is to build a “multipolar world order” which will break the economic and, by extension, military domination by the United States. China is frantically spending its dollar reserves to buy factories and property around the globe so it can unload its U.S. currency. This is why Aluminum Corp. of China made so many major concessions in the failed attempt to salvage its $19.5 billion alliance with the Rio Tinto mining concern in Australia. It desperately needs to shed its dollars.

“China is trying to get rid of all the dollars they can in a trash-for-resource deal,” Hudson said. “They will give the dollars to countries willing to sell off their resources since America refuses to sell any of its high-tech industries, even Unocal, to the yellow peril. It realizes these dollars are going to be worthless pretty quickly.”

The architects of this new global exchange realize that if they break the dollar they also break America’s military domination. Our military spending cannot be sustained without this cycle of heavy borrowing. The official U.S. defense budget for fiscal year 2008 is $623 billion, before we add on things like nuclear research. The next closest national military budget is China’s, at $65 billion, according to the Central Intelligence Agency.

There are three categories of the balance-of-payment deficits. America imports more than it exports. This is trade. Wall Street and American corporations buy up foreign companies. This is capital movement. The third and most important balance-of-payment deficit for the past 50 years has been Pentagon spending abroad. It is primarily military spending that has been responsible for the balance-of-payments deficit for the last five decades. Look at table five in the Balance of Payments Report, published in the Survey of Current Business quarterly, and check under military spending. There you can see the deficit.

To fund our permanent war economy, we have been flooding the world with dollars. The foreign recipients turn the dollars over to their central banks for local currency. The central banks then have a problem. If a central bank does not spend the money in the United States then the exchange rate against the dollar will go up. This will penalize exporters. This has allowed America to print money without restraint to buy imports and foreign companies, fund our military expansion and ensure that foreign nations like China continue to buy our treasury bonds. This cycle appears now to be over. Once the dollar cannot flood central banks and no one buys our treasury bonds, our empire collapses. The profligate spending on the military, some $1 trillion when everything is counted, will be unsustainable.

“We will have to finance our own military spending,” Hudson warned, “and the only way to do this will be to sharply cut back wage rates. The class war is back in business. Wall Street understands that. This is why it had Bush and Obama give it $10 trillion in a huge rip-off so it can have enough money to survive.”

The desperate effort to borrow our way out of financial collapse has promoted a level of state intervention unseen since World War II. It has also led us into uncharted territory.

“We have in effect had to declare war to get us out of the hole created by our economic system,” Lanchester wrote in the London Review of Books. “There is no model or precedent for this, and no way to argue that it’s all right really, because under such-and-such a model of capitalism ... there is no such model. It isn’t supposed to work like this, and there is no road-map for what’s happened.”

The cost of daily living, from buying food to getting medical care, will become difficult for all but a few as the dollar plunges. States and cities will see their pension funds drained and finally shut down. The government will be forced to sell off infrastructure, including roads and transport, to private corporations. We will be increasingly charged by privatized utilities—think Enron—for what was once regulated and subsidized. Commercial and private real estate will be worth less than half its current value. The negative equity that already plagues 25 percent of American homes will expand to include nearly all property owners. It will be difficult to borrow and impossible to sell real estate unless we accept massive losses. There will be block after block of empty stores and boarded-up houses. Foreclosures will be epidemic. There will be long lines at soup kitchens and many, many homeless. Our corporate-controlled media, already banal and trivial, will work overtime to anesthetize us with useless gossip, spectacles, sex, gratuitous violence, fear and tawdry junk politics. America will be composed of a large dispossessed underclass and a tiny empowered oligarchy that will run a ruthless and brutal system of neo-feudalism from secure compounds. Those who resist will be silenced, many by force. We will pay a terrible price, and we will pay this price soon, for the gross malfeasance of our power elite.

- Chris Hedges (via Information Clearing House)

Labels: economic collapse

posted by George Thomas Kysor 12:04 AM

Sunday, June 14, 2009

The Mercury-Autism Cover Up 

Video, 2 min 43 sec.

In June of 2000, the Center for Disease Control, the World Wealth
Organization, the FDA, "leading" scientists and representatives of
the pharmaceutical industry got together for a secret meeting.

Their focus was the growing public and scientific awareness that
mercury used as a preservative in vaccines for children had unleashed
an epidemic of autism.

The participants came to three conclusions:

1. They acknowledged the autism/mercury connection
was true (or at least highly plausible)

2. They conspired to create a statistical smokescreen
to obscure the science

3. They agreed not to disclose anything that took place
at the meeting

Your tax dollars at work.

- Brasscheck via email

Labels: health

posted by George Thomas Kysor 5:50 PM

The BBC's 'WTC 7 Collapsed At 4:54 p.m.' Videos 

At 21:54 GMT on 9/11/2001 the BBC announced that WTC 7 had collapsed. There was just one problem with this news: WTC 7 did not collapse until 22:20 GMT.
- What Really Happened

Labels: 911

posted by George Thomas Kysor 2:04 PM

Muslim Mother 

[Click image to enlarge.]
- DesertPeace (via What Really Happened)

Labels: embedded journalism

posted by George Thomas Kysor 1:35 PM

Bush Lawyer Ordered to Testify 

Judge Jeffrey S. White of the Fed. Dist. Court in S.F. has ordered John Yoo to answer the accusations of Jose Pedillo that Yoo's memoranda caused him to be tortured and deprived of his rights. (via What Really Happened)

Labels: constitutional rights, torture

posted by George Thomas Kysor 12:20 PM

The Australian Honey Possum 

Video, 1 min 35 sec.

The Honey Possum is a tiny marsupial found only in the south-west of Western Australia. This region is one of the oldest parts of the earth and contains a rich variety of nectar-producing plants. When the ancestors of the honey possum arrived, most probably from South America more than 50 million years ago, they found a land of sweet nectar.

Finding a constant source of food as pollen and nectar has resulted, over the ages, in the honey possum slowly losing its teeth, so that today, they are just a few tiny pegs. Its tongue has become specialised to lick pollen, with a brush-like tip at the end, similar to that of a bird. Indeed, today, they are unable to chew the hard outer skeleton of insects, and are the only non-flying mammal in the world to survive on the products of flowers.

Although the gestation period of a honey possum is quite short, about three weeks, and the young joeys stay in the pouch for about nine weeks, they only raise about four to six young a year in their natural habitat.

This is not a very high rate of reproduction, compared with other small mammals, but it is obviously enough to have sustained the populations of honey possums through the ages. Scientists ponder whether this could be due to the very nutritious nature of pollen and the large amounts they eat, providing enough food, or whether the mother honey possum cares so well for her young that they all survive, or maybe both!

You can imagine, however, that the dependency of the honey possum on these particular nectar-producing plants makes it especially vulnerable to their loss through bush-fire and land-clearing.

- HoneyPossum (via MartinezBeavers)

Labels: nature

posted by George Thomas Kysor 11:06 AM

Saturday, June 13, 2009

What Is Patrick Fitzgerald Trying to Hide from the Public? 

Photo by George T. Kysor [Click image to enlarge.]

Powerful prosecutor and public figure Patrick Fitzgerald has been waging a chilling private jihad aimed at "killing" a book critical of him. Read more »
- AlterNet

NOTE: The 640-page hardcover is now $11.18 at Amazon.

Labels: coverup

posted by George Thomas Kysor 11:12 PM

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Tissue Printing Technology 

Video, 3 min 40 sec.

Labels: science

posted by George Thomas Kysor 7:04 PM

Record-breaking superlens smashes diffraction limit 

Thursday, June 11, 2009

It must be 10 years since John Pendry at Imperial College London dreamt up the idea of superlenses. Until then physicists had thought that the resolution of all lenses was limited by a phenomenon called the diffraction limit which holds that you can't see anything smaller than about half the wavelength of the illuminating light.

That's true if you look at the propagating component of light waves. But light also records smaller subwavelength details in its evanescent components which do not propagate. At least not usually. What Pendry showed was that evanescent components can propagate in a material with a negative refractive index and pointed out that a thin film of silver ought to have just the right properties.

Since then the race has been on to build superlenses. In 2005, Nicolas Fang at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign created one that could record details as small as 1/6th of a wavelength. That's was a significant improvement over the diffraction limit but why not better?

It turns out that silver films just a few tens of nanometres thick are extremely difficult to make. On this scale, silver tends to clump into islands, like water on plastic, making the film rather irregular. This dramatically reduces the ability of evanescent waves to propagate.

Now Fang and a few buddies including Stan Williams at HP Labs in Palo Alto, have worked out how to make thin silver films smooth. The trick is to grow the silver on a layer of germanium which forces it to form a smooth thin film.

This new lens is huge improvement. With a record-breaking resolution of 1/12th of the wavelength of light, it opens up an entirely new area of imaging when extended to the far field, a feat that can be achieved by gluing a corrugated silver surface on top of the superlens, say the team.

And greater resolution should still be possible: the theoretical limit is 1/20th of a wavelength.

Fang and co conclude with the dramatic prediction that these superlenses should make it possible to film molecules in action in real time with visible light.

That ought to be one impressive movie.

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/0906.1213: Molecular Scale Imaging with a Smooth Superlens

- MIT's TECHNOLOGY REVIEW (via KurzweilAI)

Labels: science

posted by George Thomas Kysor 11:23 AM