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GENEALOGY
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CONTENTS: Interesting (to me) gems from the blogosphere or anything else that may strike my fancy.
REFERENCES:
TAXABLE INCOME by Larken Rose
MISSING CHILDREN INFO:
Code Amber
NEWS:
AlterNet.org
Citizens for Legitimate Government
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Monday, May 31, 2004
Raped as a 7-year-old, a former Anchorage resident decides 25 years later to seek a murderous revenge BY DAVID HOLTHOUSE (via Drudge)
New York Times says it was duped by Pentagon 'cunning'
The New York Times, with a huge staff and millions of dollars in equipment and resources was fooled by the Pentagon lies about Saddam's WMDs, while internet blogs like this one, running on loose change found under seat cushions, saw through the lies and deceptions right from the start? Tell us another one. - What really happened
Jailed - for showing dislike of US invaders [excerpt]
General Ryder, the army's provost marshal, reported that some Iraqis had been held for months for nothing more than expressing "displeasure or ill will" towards the US occupying forces. - Douglas Jehl and Kate Zernike (via Information Clearing House)
Al-Qaeda winning: Asian analysts
The al-Qaeda network is winning the global war on terror, while Washington's use of overwhelming force against Muslim extremists is creating a sea of hatred and is strategically flawed, Asian analysts said.
They were speaking at a three-day Asia-Pacific Roundtable on security organised by Malaysia's Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS), which drew some 100 international participants.
ISIS director-general Mohamed Jawhar Hassan said that even though al-Qaeda had lost some of its traditional bases in Afghanistan, the terror group's top leadership remained intact and its ability to wreak havoc remained as strong as ever.
"The US-led international battle is losing while the al-Qaeda-led international network is winning," Mohamed said.
The director of Singapore's Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, Barry Desker, said al-Qaeda remained resilient and the use of force could not eliminate terror threats.
"The response cannot be a military one. This is fundamentally a US error," he said, adding that the US-led war on Iraq and subsequent occupation had driven Islamic militants to wage jihad, or holy war, against Washington.
"Iraq is seen as the epicentre of jihad," he said, adding that al-Qaeda was propagating the view that the US occupation was the manifestation of an evil scheme to dissolve Islamic identity.
Noordin Sopiee, Malaysia's ISIS chairman, said the world was losing the war on terror because "we have expanded the sea of hatred and expanded the reservoir of deep-seated rage (in the Muslim world)."
Stanley Roth, Boeing's vice-president for Asia international relations, said the threat of terror existed in every region and "the war has not been won."
He said the fear of terrorism was affecting oil prices and hurting air travel. - The Age © 2004 AAP (via Information Clearing House)
Challenge to National Security Letter Authority
In an extraordinary sealed case, the American Civil Liberties Union has challenged the FBI’s unchecked authority to issue “National Security Letters” (NSLs), which demand sensitive customer records from Internet Service Providers and other businesses without judicial oversight. Before the Patriot Act, the FBI could use the NSL authority only against suspected terrorists and spies. Thanks to Section 505 of the Patriot Act, the FBI can now use NSLs to obtain information about anyone at all.
The ACLU’s legal papers argue that the NSL statute violates the First and Fourth Amendments because it does not impose adequate safeguards on the FBI’s authority to force disclosure of sensitive and constitutionally protected information.
The ACLU filed the lawsuit under seal to avoid penalties for violating the NSL statute’s broad gag provision, a provision that the ACLU is challenging on First Amendment grounds. Similar gag provisions are attached to other controversial provisions of the Patriot Act, including Section 215, which the ACLU has challenged in another lawsuit.
While the challenge to the NSL provision was filed on April 6, it took nearly three weeks for the ACLU to reach an agreement with the government that allowed the disclosure of anything at all about the case. A redacted version of the complaint is now publicly available, but many details about the case are still under seal. The ACLU believes that the public has a right to more information about the government’s use of the Patriot Act and is committed to unsealing more information about the case as quickly as possible. - Legal Papers (via Counterpunch)
Saturday, May 29, 2004
A free online book:
George (Herbert Walker) Bush: The Unauthorized Biography by Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin
Intelligence agents accused in abuses [excerpt]
Court transcripts and Army investigator interviews provide the broadest view of evidence that abuses, from forcing inmates to stand in hoods in 120-degree heat to punching them, occurred at a Marine detention camp and three Army prison sites in Iraq besides Abu Ghraib. - MATT KELLEY (via Information Clearing House)
Iraq prison abuse 'widespread' [excerpt]
An American news agency says it has seen official papers suggesting that prisoner abuse in Iraq took place at four sites other than Abu Ghraib. - BBC (via Information clearing House)
For Shame by Paul W. Schroeder (via Information Clearing House)
The silence of the healers at Abu Ghraib: doctors and torture by Daniel K. Sokol and Ronald P. Sokol (via Information Clearing House)
Exiled Allawi was responsible for 45-minute WMD claim [excerpt]
The choice of Iyad Allawi, closely linked to the CIA and formerly to MI6, as the Prime Minister of Iraq from 30 June will make it difficult for the US and Britain to persuade the rest of the world that he is capable of leading an independent government.
He is the person through whom the controversial claim was channelled that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction could be operational in 45 minutes. - Patrick Cockburn (via Information clearing House)
Ahead of Iraq Deployment, 37 Korean Troops Convert to Islam [excerpt]
"I became a Muslim because I felt Islam was more humanistic and peaceful than other religions. And if you can religiously connect with the locals, I think it could be a big help in carrying out our peace reconstruction mission." So said on Friday those Korean soldiers who converted to Islam ahead of their late July deployment to the Kurdish city of Irbil in northern Iraq. - englishnews@chosun.com (via Email from SBS)
No Such Thing as Paranoia, Part One by Gary Indiana (via Lew Rockwell)
Friday, May 28, 2004
The Little Engine That Could: How Linux is Inadvertently Poised to Remake the Telephone and Internet Markets by Robert X. Cringely (via Slashdot)
A Salute to Joe Darby, Sam Provance and Jim Massey by Karen Kwiatkowski
Thursday, May 27, 2004
DANCE THE FAT AWAY
You will need (in addition to a TV) a PlayStation2 ($150) and an Ultimate DDR Max 2 Game + Ignition Pad Bundle ($210). (via Slashdot)
Wednesday, May 26, 2004
Abu Ghraib and the Dow by Gary North
Monday, May 24, 2004
Berg execution: A working hypothesis [excerpt]
This article aims to shed light on the apparent execution by beheading of Nicholas Berg . I believe that most of the available evidence surrounding the case suggests that it was a “black operation”by US psychological warfare specialists, the purpose of which was to provide the media with a “moral relativity” argument to counter the adverse publicity over torture at Abu Ghraib prison. - Nick Possum (via What Really happened)
A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury [excerpt] (via Slashdot)
TIME SAFARI, INC.
SAFARIS TO ANY YEAR IN THE PAST.
YOU NAME THE ANIMAL.
WE TAKE YOU THERE.
YOU SHOOT IT.
If You Can’t Trust Chalabi-the-Thief, Whom Can You Trust? by Ron Unz
Memo to Earth Transcribed by John Liechty
Gagging Congress
Attorney General John Ashcroft, the Department of Justice, and the FBI have been engaged in covering up my reports and investigations into my allegations for over two years now: They have blocked the release of all documents related to my case that were requested under FOIA for over two years. They have asserted the rarely invoked State Secret Privilege in my court proceedings. They have blocked the release of the DOJ-IG report of its investigations into my reports and allegations. They have quashed a subpoena for my deposition on information regarding 911. And now they are gagging the United States Congress.
They are not protecting the 'national security' of the United States. On the contrary, they are endangering our national security by covering up facts and information related to criminal activities against this country and it's citizens. To this date the American people have not heard the real facts of these criminal activities, nor of the involved semi-legit organizations, nor of the connected officials. The Department of Justice and this administration are fully aware that making this information public will bring about the question of accountability. And they do not want to be held accountable. It is for these reasons that I have been striving to get the Congress to hold its own public hearings regarding these issues. I no longer intend to go behind their secured-closed doors to testify. I intend to testify openly, publicly, and under oath. - Sibel Edmonds [She is the ex-FBI translator] (via Free-Market.Net)
Has the U.S. Government Committed War Crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq?
By Robert Higgs (via Antiwar.com)
Who Won the War in Iraq? IRAN!
Now that the truth has finally surfaced, we find out that Ahmed Chalabi and his INC cohorts are really Iranian spies, many of them on the payroll of the ayatollahs. One has to wonder if Chalabi fed the American neocons "evidence" about Saddam's WMD, which had been previously falsified by the Iranian intelligence.
The Americans fell into the trap and overthrew Saddam. Thanks to them, the pro-Iranian Shi'as regained control over Iraq and are on their way to establish the Islamic Republic of Iraq.
After 15 years of truce, the Iranians won the war against Saddam – this time using American troops and US taxpayers' money.
Now Iraq will become a pro-Iranian Shia Islamic Republic, hundreds of the Great Satan's soldiers will keep dying every month, and the entire US military will be tied down in Iraq, allowing Iran to continue work on its nuclear weapons programs.
This, ladies and gentlemen, has been one of the biggest con jobs in history. And Bush and his Iran-hating neocons fell for it. - Matt Soja
The Chicken Chronicles, Part II By Carl F. Worden (via Free-Market.Net)
PIGS
As the President is getting off the helicopter in front of the White
House, he has a baby pig under each arm.
The Marine guard snaps to attention, salutes, and says: "Nice pigs,
Sir."
The President replies: "These are not just pigs, son. These are
authentic Texas razorback hogs. I got one for Vice President Cheney,
and I got one for Defense Secretary Rumsfeld."
The Marine again snaps to attention, salutes, and replies, "Nice
trade, Sir." - (via email from JVW)
Grand Theft America
This video was based on Jack Palance's investigation. (via email from PJB)
Sunday, May 23, 2004
U.S. Disputed Protected Status of Iraq Inmates [excerpt]
Presented last fall with a detailed catalog of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, the American military responded on Dec. 24 with a confidential letter asserting that many Iraqi prisoners were not entitled to the full protections of the Geneva Conventions.
The letter, drafted by military lawyers and signed by Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, emphasized the "military necessity" of isolating some inmates at the prison for interrogation because of their "significant intelligence value," and said that prisoners held as security risks could legally be treated differently from prisoners of war or ordinary criminals. - DOUGLAS JEHL and NEIL A. LEWIS (via Information Clearing House)
'Spray and slay': are American troops out of control in Iraq? [excerpt]
The footage of flesh, hair and musical instruments was filmed by a video crew that reached the location of what local people say was a wedding party attacked without warning by the Americans, killing women and children. The instruments belonged to the band of Hussein Ali, one of Iraq's most famous wedding singers, whose relatives buried him in Baghdad last week.
Despite this evidence - and earlier pictures filmed by al-Arabiya television, showing two dead babies wrapped side by side in a blanket, and a headless child lying next to the body of his or her mother - American commanders continue to insist that their strike, on a remote village in the desert close to the Syrian border, was against foreign fighters crossing into Iraq.
"These were more than two dozen military-age males," scoffed Maj-Gen James Mattis, commander of the US 1st Marine Division. "Let's not be naive." What about the video footage? Maj-Gen Mattis said he had not seen it, but added: "Bad things happen in wars. I don't have to apologise for the conduct of my men." Although an investigation has been promised, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Richard Myers, said in Washington: "We feel at this point very confident that this was a legitimate target, probably foreign fighters." - Raymond Whitaker in London and Justin Huggler in Baghdad (via Information Clearing House)
Prisoner was beaten and denied aid. An inquiry was mishandled, an investigator says. [excerpt]
A military investigator has concluded that low-ranking Marines repeatedly struck two defenseless Iraqis at a makeshift prison camp last June, and one of the detainees died after he was left disabled and naked under a scorching sun.
In two reports obtained by The Times, Marine Col. William V. Gallo also criticized an investigation into the death, saying the deceased Iraqi's bodily fluids were mishandled by investigators and were destroyed on the way to a laboratory for analysis.
Gallo's reports and recommendations, which have not been made public, were the basis for an order last month by Maj. Gen. William G. Bowdon III, the commanding officer at Camp Pendleton, that two Marines face courts-martial. - Kevin Sack (via Information Clearing House)
2,000 PAGES 'MISSING' FROM PRISONER ABUSE REPORT PENTAGON SENT TO SENATE (via Drudge)
Gen. Zinni: 'They've Screwed Up'
Accusing top Pentagon officials of "dereliction of duty," retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni says staying the course in Iraq isn't a reasonable option. - 60 Minutes (via Drudge)
Saturday, May 22, 2004
"Fahrenheit 9/11" Review (8 pages) by Frank Rich (via Lew Rockwell)
Marines admit abuse at second prison (via What Really Happened)
Leaked memo reveals control of prison passed to military intelligence to 'manipulate detainees' [excerpt]
Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, head of coalition forces in Iraq, issued an order last October giving military intelligence control over almost every aspect of prison conditions at Abu Ghraib with the explicit aim of manipulating the detainees' "emotions and weaknesses", it was reported yesterday.
The October 12 memorandum, reported in the Washington Post, is a potential "smoking gun" linking prisoner abuse to the US high command. It represents hard evidence that the maltreatment was not simply the fault of rogue military police guards. - Julian Borger (via Information Clearing House)
Agency: Chalabi group was front for Iran The Defense Intelligence Agency has concluded that a U.S.-funded arm of Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress has been used for years by Iranian intelligence to pass disinformation to the United States and to collect highly sensitive American secrets, according to intelligence sources. "Iranian intelligence has been manipulating the United States through Chalabi by furnishing through his Information Collection Program information to provoke the United States into getting rid of Saddam Hussein," said an intelligence source Friday who was briefed on the Defense Intelligence Agency's conclusions, which were based on a review of thousands of internal documents. - Citizens For Legitimate Government
Friday, May 21, 2004
Continuing the Cover-Up? Military Takes Action Against Key Witness in Abu Ghraib Abuse Scandal
A key witness in the military investigation into prisoner mistreatment at Abu Ghraib, Provance told ABCNEWS earlier this week that dozens of soldiers — in addition to the seven military police reservists who have been charged — were involved in the abuse at the prison, and he said there is an effort under way in the Army to hide it. - Brian Ross and Alexandra Salomon (via Information Clearing House)
'U.S. soldiers started to shoot us, one by one.' [excerpt]
It was 10.30pm in the remote village of Mukaradeeb by the Syrian border and the guests hurried back to their homes as the party ended. As sister-in-law of the groom, Mrs Shihab, 30, was to sleep with her husband and children in the house of the wedding party, the Rakat family villa. She was one of the few in the house who survived the night.
"The bombing started at 3am," she said yesterday from her bed in the emergency ward at Ramadi general hospital, 60 miles west of Baghdad. "We went out of the house and the American soldiers started to shoot us. They were shooting low on the ground and targeting us one by one," she said. She ran with her youngest child in her arms and her two young boys, Ali and Hamza, close behind. As she crossed the fields a shell exploded close to her, fracturing her legs and knocking her to the ground.
She lay there and a second round hit her on the right arm. By then her two boys lay dead. "I left them because they were dead," she said. One, she saw, had been decapitated by a shell.
"I fell into the mud and an American soldier came and kicked me. I pretended to be dead so he wouldn't kill me. My youngest child was alive next to me." - Rory McCarthy in Ramadi (via Information Clearing House)
Lucifer's Lodge: Satanic Ritual Abuse in the Catholic Church
The current priest sex scandal in the Roman Catholic Church has sent shockwaves throughout the world. However, mainstream media outlets hardly touched upon the fact that many of the accused priests were involved in Satanic Ritual Abuse as part and parcel of their sexual abuse of children and women. Lucifer’s Lodge covers the sick careers of several abusive priests who employed Devil worship and arcane rights as part of their sexual abuse.
Case studies include; Father Sean Fortune of Ireland who raped children in a haunted house and threatened detractors with magical hexes, Father Frederick Ryan who tattooed a boy with a devil figure and then raped him, Father Bernard Lane who sexually abused homeless boys in a ritual chamber called The Black Room, et al.
Lucifer’s Lodge is not for the faint hearted and is certainly not for children. It constitutes a world far more morbid, sadistic and frightening than anything that the creative novels of an H.P. Lovecraft or a Stephen King could ever hope to conjure. It peers into the real world of Devil worship and arcane sexual rites practiced by priests of the Church of Rome who have formed their own Lucifer's Lodge.
Solidly documented from published sources, and with extensive historical background, Lucifer's Lodge answers the questions:
"Why has the Catholic Church even now rejected Zero Tolerance for pedophile priests?"
"What does the Church still have to hide?" - William H. Kennedy (via 4 A Closer Look)
STRANGE PROPORTION
A few months ago, Corinne and I discovered in downtown Brno a delicious Indian restaurant called Taj (which here is pronounced like 'Thai'). After giving up on both of Brno's Mexican restaurants, because of inauthenticity in one case and ridiculously-priced inauthenticity in the other, we needed to find somewhere to go for special occasions. Taj is just that: You can get a beautiful spicy meal there, but a dinner for two'll cost you 600 crowns (about $30, which is two-and-a-half days' pay). Thus we leave it for very special occasions, like our third anniversary, which we celebrated in April. Recently, however, we have discovered that Taj has an excellent and affordable lunch special, so we head over there once a week to see what's on offer.
Today we decided to have lunch there, and we walked past St. James Cathedral on our way from the tram to the restaurant. We finally saw with our own eyes the archaeological dig we've been hearing about. Apparently, while tearing up the street next to the church to perform some sewer maintenance or some such, city workers stumbled upon an old cemetery from the middle ages. It makes perfect sense, because every other church is surrounded by its own proprietary cemetery, but St. James is surrounded on four sides by city streets. So the real question is, at what point did the city forget about the existence of the cemetery and just pave over it? In any event, regardless of who forgot what when, there have been human bones resting just under the pavement in the middle of Brno for a couple of hundred years, and a bunch of folks are now busy excavating them. Today, the green-overalls city worker guys were sharing their turf with a bunch of student archaeologists, who were gently dusting off the just-exposed skeletons, some with crushed skulls, some fully intact and still in the reverent burial pose. I'm not sure I'd ever seen real human bones before coming to Europe, but I know I've seen a lot of them since. We have the Capuchin Monastery crypts in Brno, the bone church in Kutna Hora, the holy relics built into the cathedral in Olomouc, and so on.
I mentioned the green overalls guys because they entertain me so much. Not the guys in particular, because really they're not very entertaining at all, but their colored overalls are. From what I can tell, this is just a European thing. Different trades wear different characteristic colors, though it could very well be that different city departments wear different characteristic colors. In the Czech Republic, there are a couple of shades: green, navy blue, red, maybe some others. I remember the German overalls palette, though, with much respect. Not only did they choose vibrant colors to liven up their workaday jobs (collectors of the recycled glass in fuchsia overalls, rakers of the leaves in sea green, baggers of the leaves in emerald green, sweepers of the streets in orange, and so on around the color wheel), but they wore them with such pride. "I am a member of the orange team," you could practically hear the man thinking to himself as he scrupulously arranged the piles of dirt at the curb for another man in other overalls to pick up. "We possess skills and efficiency that men in other-colored overalls will never understand."
I'm trying really hard to tie these themes together, but I give up. It's going to have to go like this: Death does not wear vibrant colors. Death wears saltpeter slacks (chimneysweep chinos?). There's something very humbling about seeing all these skeletons, the remains of people who died hundreds of years ago, whose great-grand-children died just slightly less than hundreds of years ago. It's not just that these people receded over time from the memories of their descendents, as almost everyone does within a generation or two. Even though digital photography and modern data storage technology allow us to archive every detail of our lives as they happen, the great-grand-somethings who we will never meet will eventually forget that we ever existed. Eventually, everyone in the city of Brno forgot that the people who had once been worn by those bones had ever lived at all, and they simply paved them over. Above the skeletons of the monks in one room of the Capuchin Crypt, plaques read, "What you are, we were. What we are, you will be." It was meant, perhaps, to be a cryptic rallying call for the afterlife, but it points more directly to the perseverence of dust.
This makes some sense of the tombstone habit, wherein we engrave our names and appropriate dates for all to see, anchor ourselves to a given time and place ("Hey, that guy was alive during the Civil War!"), for the sake of not being wholly forgotten, at least until the wind and the stone come to an agreement about who can last longer. It's strange to realize that my parents, for instance, exist now only as memories of my first-hand experience. When I am gone, they will exist as stories that I have told about my memories, and then they will become stories of stories that my grandson thinks he remembers hearing from his grandpa when he was a kid, though he might have seen it on TV, he can't quite remember. This is how we disappear. - Strange Proportion
Detainees gave raw accounts of abuse [excerpt]
Kasim Mehaddi Hilas, detainee No. 151108, told investigators that when he first arrived at Abu Ghraib last year, he was forced to strip, put on a hood and wear rose-colored panties with flowers on them. "Most of the days I was wearing nothing else," he said in his statement.
Hilas also said he witnessed an Army translator having sex with a boy at the prison. He said the boy was between 15 and 18 years old. Someone hung sheets to block the view, but Hilas said he heard the boy's screams and climbed a door to get a better look. Hilas said he watched the assault and told investigators that it was documented by a female soldier taking pictures.
"The kid was hurting very bad," Hilas said. - Scott Higham and Joe Stephens (via Free-Market.Net)
Berg beheading: No way, say medical experts By Ritt Goldstein (via Free-Market.Net)
Thursday, May 20, 2004
Republican Presidents And War Crimes - Nothing New Here
By Michael Gaddy (via Free-Market.Net)
FBI whistleblower challenges gov testimony at OKC trial [excerpt]
Frederic Whitehurst told jurors ... that FBI forensic scientist Steven Burmeister, whom he trained, had told two lies: that ammonium nitrate crystals found on bombing debris had been embedded by the force of the blast and that the crystals came from the kind of fertilizer believed used in the bombing. - Tim Talley (via Free-Market.Net)
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
L-ARGININE
Description Arginine is an amino acid and is also referred to as "L-Arginine" (the L stands for "levo" and designates the amino acid as naturally occurring and distinguishes from the D or " " synthetic amino acids.).
Claims:
Protection from heart disease
Reduces cholesterol
Lowers blood pressure
Improves poor circulation
Theory Arginine is a key component of the nitric oxide pathway – and important cascade of reactions involved in vasodilation and related to cardiovascular function. Arginine supplements have been associated with reductions in symptoms associated with coronary artery disease and may be capable of slowing the progression of atherosclerosis
In the body, arginine serves as the substrates for the nitric oxide synthase enzyme, which catalyzes the oxidation of arginine to produce citrulline and nitric oxide (NO). In the cells that line the blood vessels (endothelium cells), nitric oxide production causes vasodilation (opening of the vessels). NO is involved in the overall regulation of systemic vascular resistance, where it inhibits the adherence of cells and foreign substances to the blood vessel walls and helps suppress the overgrowth of smooth muscle cells in the lining of the vessels.
Because humans can synthesize arginine, it has been classified as a non-essential amino acid. Recent evidence suggests that the rate of synthesis of arginine in the body is insufficient for optimal health – a situation which would re-classify arginine as a semi-essential or conditionally essential amino acid.
Scientific Support In people with elevated cholesterol levels, it is common to see a reduced ability of the endothelium to produce NO and, therefore, to dilate effectively. In addition, because NO production may be limited, blood cells such as monocytes and platelets are more likely to attach themselves to the inner vessel wall and lead to blockages. Arginine supplements (8-21 grams per day) have been shown to restore endothelial vasodilation in the coronary arteries of people with high cholesterol and reduce the ability of blood cells to adhere to the vessel walls. Improvements in coronary artery blood flow and reductions in myocardial ischemia and walking pain due to claudication have been noted with arginine supplements (9-14 g/day).
Safety Arginine supplements have been used safely in patients with heart disease in doses up to more than 20 grams per day.
Value For those individuals at risk for coronary artery disease, including those who experience ischemia due to reduced blood flow and oxygen delivery, arginine supplements may be an effective strategy for improving circulation to the heart and other affected areas (such as vessels in the calves).
Dosage A daily arginine requirement has been calculated to be approximately 8 grams per day (based on calculations for a 70-kg person). Since the average American diet contains only about 5 grams of arginine per day, there would appear to be a deficit in intake versus requirements. Importantly, the primary dietary sources of arginine, like all amino acids, are meats and other high protein foods (nuts, eggs).
References 1. Alexander JW, Levy A, Custer D, Valente JF, Babcock G, Ogle CK, Schroeder TJ. Arginine, fish oil, and donor-specific transfusions independently improve cardiac allograft survival in rats given subtherapeutic doses of cyclosporin. JPEN J Parenter Enteral Nutr. 1998 May-Jun;22(3):152-5.
http://www.supplementwatch.com/supatoz/supplement.asp?supplementId=336
Brutal interrogation in Iraq [excerpt]
In the case of Iraqi Major General Abed Hamed Mowhoush, who headed Saddam Hussein's air force, intelligence officers' role was documented in abuse that soon turned fatal, documents show,
Mowhoush, considered a "high-priority target," turned himself in for questioning in November, according to documents. After two weeks in custody at an Al Qaim detention facility, northwest of Baghdad, two soldiers with the 66th Military Intelligence Company, slid a sleeping bag over his body, except for his feet, and began questioning him as they rolled him repeatedly from his back to his stomach, the documents show.
Then, one of the soldiers, an interrogator, sat on Mowhoush's chest and placed his hands over the prisoner's mouth, according to the report: "During this interrogation, the (general) became non-responsive, medics were called and he was later pronounced dead." According to the documents, "The preliminary report lists the cause of death as asphyxia due to smothering and chest compressions."
Immediately after Mowhoush's death was reported, U.S. military officials released a statement acknowledging he died during an interview.
"Mowhoush said he didn't feel well and subsequently lost consciousness," read the press statement, which is still posted on a Pentagon website. "The soldier questioning him found no pulse, then conducted CPR and called for medical authorities. According to the on-site surgeon, it appeared Mowhouse died of natural causes." - Miles Moffeit (via AntiWar.Com)
Is Iraq a Captive Nation? [excerpt]
Even a government as incompetent as the US would not assemble 150,000 troops in a tiny area adjacent to Iraq if the country about to be invaded really had weapons of mass destruction. One or two weapons of mass destruction and there goes our entire army with no troops available to replace them. - Paul Craig Roberts
Interest Rates in One Lesson [excerpt]
The members of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) of the Federal Reserve System decide how many T-bills to buy or sell. These members have a very low discount rate – not for themselves, of course, but for money they create to buy T-bills. They are like counterfeiters. A counterfeiter has a much higher rate of discount for goods that he loans out compared to any counterfeit money that he loans out. An FOMC member is not lending his own money. He is also not lending depositors’ money. He is lending counterfeit money. The difference between counterfeit money and FED money has more to do with trademark analysis than economic analysis. - Gary North
Cover your ass [excerpt]
No way in hell are you young guys defending my freedoms by smashing down doors and brutalizing civilians in an occupied country. I don't care if all the blowhard conjobs in the Pentagon call your duty in Iraq 'liberation' or the Second Coming; the plain, unvarnished truth is you are prison guards in a vast, poisoned, outdoor penitentiary. - Douglas Herman (via Free-Market.Net)
Ex-FBI Lab Worker Guilty, Falsified DNA
A former biologist in the FBI laboratory pleaded guilty Tuesday to submitting falsified DNA analysis reports in over 100 cases.
Jacqueline A. Blake, 40, of Upper Marlboro, Md., pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Washington to a single count of making false statements on official government reports she prepared. - CURT ANDERSON (via Free-Market.Net)
Tuesday, May 18, 2004
AEROSOL OPERATION CRIMES & COVER-UP (via The Power Hour)
Avoiding attacking suspected terrorist mastermind [excerpt]
Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant with ties to al-Qaida, is now blamed for more than 700 terrorist killings in Iraq. But NBC News has learned that long before the war the Bush administration had several chances to wipe out his terrorist operation and perhaps kill Zarqawi himself — but never pulled the trigger. - Jim Miklaszewski (via Young Goodman Brown)
Lobotomy by game playing [excerpts]
Recent medical brain scan studies at Harvard, Indiana University, and elsewhere prove that adolescents' brain functions are damaged by a steady diet of violent images.
The incredibly violent Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, made by Take-Two Interactive of New York City, has caused multiple copycat killings across the country. A recent Gallup Poll found that any American teen who has played this one game is twice as likely to be engaged in an act of violence than those who have not played this one game. In this game you have sex with a prostitute and then kill her grotesquely to get your money back and win the game faster. Police officers are set on fire, shotgunned in the face, and innocent pedestrians are run over with cars.
Presently, Disney-owned ESPN is running ads for the Grand Theft Auto games on programs watched by huge numbers of teens, all in violation of video game industry regulations passed by the industry after the Columbine massacre.
In April 1999, eight days before Columbine, Jack Thompson appeared on national television to identify the role that shooter video games, specifically Doom, would play in future school shootings. A week later in Littleton, Colorado, Klebold and Harris, who obsessively trained on Doom, killed thirteen.
ANOTHER THOMPSON PREDICTION CAME TRUE: Dateline NBC reported Friday, December 13, 2002, that the Beltway Sniper, John Lee Malvo, was compelled by John Muhammad to train on the sniper video game, Halo, switched to sniper-mode or God-mode, to suppress his inhibition to kill." Jack Thompson predicted, in an interview by Matt Lauer on NBC's Today show three weeks before the Beltway Snipers were apprehended, that one of the snipers "might very well be a video gamer as young as 15 trained on a game switched to sniper-mode or God-mode." - Jack Thompson (via The Power Hour)
Interview with a grunt [excerpt]
For nearly 12 years, Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey was a hard-core, some say gung-ho, Marine. For three years he trained fellow Marines in one of the most grueling indoctrination rituals in military life - Marine boot camp.
The Iraq war changed Massey. The brutality, the sheer carnage of the U.S. invasion, touched his conscience and transformed him forever. He was honorably discharged with full severance last Dec. 31 and is now back in his hometown, Waynsville, N.C.
When I talked with Massey last week, he expressed his remorse at the civilian loss of life in incidents in which he himself was involved. - Paul Rockwell (via Citizens For Legitimate Government™)
Monday, May 17, 2004
Berg decapitation video was filmed inside the Abu Ghraib prison
Los Angeles, Alta California - May 16, 2004 - (ACN) There is now ample evidence that the video showing the decapitation of 26 year old Nicholas Berg of Philadelphia by purported Al queda members is a complete fraud. The real Nick Berg may or may not be dead, but the heavily edited video is nothing but a fake. This is the conclusion of La Voz de Aztlan after a frame by frame analysis and the conclusion of hundreds of film, medical and other experts world wide who downloaded, viewed and analyzed the video as well. Literally thousands of persons world wide requested the video, which is rapidly disappearing from the Internet, after our news service published "Nick Berg decapitation video declared a fraud by medical doctor" on Wednesday May 12 and which was linked by other independent news services on the World Wide Web.
With the advent of the Internet, computers and sophisticated programs it has become increasingly difficult for governments to "pull the wool" over the eyes of their citizens. The Internet has essentially allowed freedom loving people around the world to form communication networks that can now out compete the best intelligence government agencies or special operations groups. This has certainly been the case with the hastily released and shoddy video showing five phoney Al queda members participating in the decapitation of Nicholas Berg that was intended, exclusively, to defray attention from the scandalous sexual abuses of Iraqi POW's that took place at the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad. Evidence in fact shows that the Berg decapitation was filmed inside the walls of the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, this cursed dungeon where probably Satan himself roams its corridors.
It is now known that the opportune decapitation video was first uploaded from London, England to a now defunct website in a server located in Malaysia. The website at http://www.al-asnar.biz was shut down as soon as conservative news outlets like CNN and Fox News were notified. These two news services wasted no time in coming out with headlines like "Islamic Terrorists Decapitate an American in Iraq". Within minutes, local news services from New York to Los Angeles were screaming "Muslim Animals Chop Off the Head of an American" and were showing only short segments of the fake video. Pro-Zionist radio stations in Los Angeles have spent literally days since then talking about the Muslim barbarians and why it is so important to support the war in Iraq.
La Voz de Aztlan became mighty suspicious when we first saw a photograph of the purported Nicholas Berg sitting in front of his captors on a white plastic chair that looked very familiar. In addition, the orange prison overalls he was wearing in the video looked mighty familiar as well. La Voz de Aztlan is very lucky that we have a very large readership base that utilizes both e-mail and our "News-Tips Form" on our home page to send us information. Within minutes we were sent the URL where we could download the entire and original video of Nicholas Berg's decapitation. Immediately after viewing the video, we knew that many things about the video just didn't look right and which defied simple logic.
Some peculiar anomalies became readily apparent after watching the video and others followed after careful analysis. Many of the anomalies were pointed out to us by our readers who responded after downloading and viewing the video themselves. Please refer to the photographs published, along with this article, on our website.
by
Hector Carreon
La Voz de Aztlan
(via Citizens For Legitimate Government™)
Today's thought on outsourcing
Now that China has entered the world trade arena with a multitude of
consumer goods for export, it behooves (or should) economists to study
the vast potential China has for competing for top place in supplying
the wants of consumers world-wide. The vast hordes of potential
factory workers, managers, entrepreneurs, etc. in China means (to me)
that the standard of living there will remain low ( yes, I know it is increasing, but competition for jobs will keep it relatively low) for many decades to come. This will not only keep prices down, but, during those decades, Chinese workers, managers, entrepreneurs, etc. will, in effect, be competing with their counterparts in, e.g., the US. ("Ha," you say, "that will create a HIGHER standard of living in the US because of the lower price index!" Yes, it will, but only for those relatively few who would be fortunate enough to have unaffected incomes.) When virtually all US goods and services are supplied by China (and India) the vast majority of the labor pool in the US would either be unemployed or working for starvation wages....unless an astute economist can come up with a viable solution that doesn't involve wishful thinking or unquestioned faith in the free market.
Sunday, May 16, 2004
15 Anomalies Surrounding Death Of Nick Berg
(Warning: Parts of the following discussion contain rather sickening references.)
Arab linguists have said the man posing as the Jordanian Zaraqawi did not speak with a Jordanian dialect. Others have suggested the man reading the written statement may not have been a native speaker of Arabic.
Zaraqawi was missing one leg and had been outfitted with an artificial leg that did not fit or function properly. He was unable to walk or stand normally with his ill-fitting limb. No man in the group showed evidence of such an infirmity.
Numerous indigenous sources have said Zaraqawi was killed by a US helicopter attack months ago when he was unable to move quickly enough to escape the targeted house. While others managed to exit the house in time to survive, he died in the collapsed building.
As any surgeon will testify, the alleged beheading was a fake. A beheading would result in a tremendous amount of spurting blood. There would have been blood everywhere had an actual beheading taken place. When the executioner holds up Berg's head immediately following what is represented as an actual decapitation of a living person, there is no significant blood flow from the neck or blood splatters showing anywhere on the executioner. Furthermore, the cut was simply too neat to have been done crudely and with such amazing speed by a man wielding a knife. Anybody who has ever carved a turkey knows there is something wrong with the supposed beheading. The suspended head looks more like Berg had been neatly beheaded by a guillotine.
The orange jumpsuit was standard US military issue to men in custody. It is unlikely Berg would have continuing wearing a US custodial uniform if he had been released by the military as they claim. The fact he was still wearing the suit is both anomalous and suggestive. One is forced to speculate as to whether there was an immediate transfer of Berg from the US military to unknown persons, thusly preventing Berg from discarding his US prison garb.
Several of the men in the film were fat by Iraqi standards. If they were Feyadeen or mujahadeen, they probably have been living underground since the first days of the occupation. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been shown on news stories as they have marched and demonstrated. One would be hard pressed to point out a single fat man among these thousands.
Some men had what can only be described as pasty-white hands. Once again, one would be hard pressed to find Arab men with pasty-white hands.
The lack of spurting blood suggests Berg was already dead at the time of the alleged decapitation. It is possible Berg's dead body was displayed with his head already partially or totally severed. In any case, he almost certainly was killed before the staged beheading. If so, it suggests the captors had no stomach for an actual beheading of a living person, and they opted to fulfill their assignment quietly and with the least amount of gore.
The scream that is heard has been interpreted as a woman's scream by many viewers. Videotape cognoscenti have further said the scream was amateurishly added to the tape.
The U.S. government translation of one statement made on the film is: "Does al Qaeda need any further excuses?" This is a falsification. The actual statement urged fellow insurgents to get off their hind ends and do something. One assumes the translator being used by the US military is a native speaker of Arabic, so this cannot be explained as an innocent flub. This suggests the US government wanted to inject an alleged al- Qaeda group into the murder of Nick Berg.
Iraqis who have seen the videotape on Arabic news broadcasts are universally saying the men in the film are not Iraqis. Are they saying this partly because the speaker does not employ an Iraqi dialect? Where does their certainty come from?
Firearms experts have stated the AK-47 carried by one man was a "Gilal." This actually is an Israeli-made weapon that improves on the famous AK- 47. Feyadeen and other insurgents almost universally use AK-47s.
The man in the videotape who is purported to be Zarqawi is wearing a gold ring. This is absolutely proscribed by Islamic law.
The US military has stated that Berg was never in US custody and that he had been in custody of the Iraqi police. The Iraqi police adamantly deny he was ever in their custody. On April 1, an e-mail from Beth A. Payne, the U.S. consular officer in Iraq, was sent to the family of Nick Berg. It stated that Ms. Payne had located Nick, and he was currently in custody of the US military. We have to conclude that either the email was bogus or the US military has been lying.
The chair that Berg was seated in during the filming was a standard issue military chair of the exact same kind as seen in a color photo taken at the Abu Ghraib Prison. The chances a terrorist cell would be using this same chair are minimal at best. - What Really Happened.com Letters
[If you are over 18, email me for a link to the video clip of the purported beheading sequence.]
Saturday, May 15, 2004
US guards 'filmed beatings' at Guantanamo terror camp [excerpt]
It is the case of Dergoul, however, that is likely to be the most damaging. The 26-year-old, from Mile End in east London, spent 22 months at Guantanamo Bay from May 2002. Today he tells The Observer of repeated assaults by Camp Delta's punishment squad, known as the Extreme Reaction Force or ERF.
Their attacks, he says, would be prompted by minor disciplinary infractions, such as refusing to agree to the third cell search in a day - which he describes as an act of deliberate provocation.
Dergoul tells of one assault by a five-man ERF in shocking terms: 'They pepper-sprayed me in the face, and I started vomiting. They pinned me down and attacked me, poking their fingers in my eyes, and forced my head into the toilet pan and flushed.
'They tied me up like a beast and then they were kneeling on me, kicking and punching. Finally they dragged me out of the cell in chains, into the rec[reation] yard, and shaved my beard, my hair, my eyebrows.'
After their release last March, Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Ruhal Ahmed, the so-called Tipton Three from Staffordshire, told of similar ERF attacks.
Rasul said they led to a new verb being coined by detainees: 'to be ERFed'. That, he said, meant being slammed against a floor by a soldier wielding a riot shield, pinned to the ground and beaten up by five armed men.
However, it is Dergoul who now reveals that every time the ERFs were deployed, a sixth team member recorded on digital video everything that happened.
Lieutenant Colonel Leon Sumpter, the Guantanamo Joint Task Force spokesman, confirmed this last night, saying all ERF actions were filmed so they could be 'reviewed' by senior officers. All the tapes are kept in an archive there, he said. He refused to say how many times the ERF squads had been used and would not discuss their training or rules of engagement, saying: 'We do not discuss operational aspects of the Joint Task Force mission.' - David Rose and Gaby Hinsliff
How a secret Pentagon program came to Abu Ghraib. [excerpt]
The solution, endorsed by Rumsfeld and carried out by Stephen Cambone, was to get tough with those Iraqis in the Army prison system who were suspected of being insurgents. A key player was Major General Geoffrey Miller, the commander of the detention and interrogation center at Guantánamo, who had been summoned to Baghdad in late August to review prison interrogation procedures. The internal Army report on the abuse charges, written by Major General Antonio Taguba in February, revealed that Miller urged that the commanders in Baghdad change policy and place military intelligence in charge of the prison. The report quoted Miller as recommending that “detention operations must act as an enabler for interrogation.”
Miller’s concept, as it emerged in recent Senate hearings, was to “Gitmoize” the prison system in Iraq—to make it more focussed on interrogation. He also briefed military commanders in Iraq on the interrogation methods used in Cuba—methods that could, with special approval, include sleep deprivation, exposure to extremes of cold and heat, and placing prisoners in “stress positions” for agonizing lengths of time. (The Bush Administration had unilaterally declared Al Qaeda and other captured members of international terrorist networks to be illegal combatants, and not eligible for the protection of the Geneva Conventions.)
Rumsfeld and Cambone went a step further, however: they expanded the scope of the sap, bringing its unconventional methods to Abu Ghraib. The commandos were to operate in Iraq as they had in Afghanistan. The male prisoners could be treated roughly, and exposed to sexual humiliation.
“They weren’t getting anything substantive from the detainees in Iraq,” the former intelligence official told me. “No names. Nothing that they could hang their hat on. Cambone says, I’ve got to crack this thing and I’m tired of working through the normal chain of command. I’ve got this apparatus set up—the black special-access program—and I’m going in hot. So he pulls the switch, and the electricity begins flowing last summer. And it’s working. We’re getting a picture of the insurgency in Iraq and the intelligence is flowing into the white world. We’re getting good stuff. But we’ve got more targets”—prisoners in Iraqi jails—“than people who can handle them.”
Cambone then made another crucial decision, the former intelligence official told me: not only would he bring the sap’s rules into the prisons; he would bring some of the Army military-intelligence officers working inside the Iraqi prisons under the sap’sauspices. “So here are fundamentally good soldiers—military-intelligence guys—being told that no rules apply,” the former official, who has extensive knowledge of the special-access programs, added. “And, as far as they’re concerned, this is a covert operation, and it’s to be kept within Defense Department channels.” - SEYMOUR M. HERSH
NASDAQ Nation [excerpt]
The existence of a balance of payments deficit in the $500 billion/year range testifies to the power of manias today. Foreign investors and central bankers are buying dollars to buy American capital. The P/E ratios rise, but sophisticated investors – Buffett and Templeton aside – see no problem. The boom in asset values will go on indefinitely, they assume, because there are always more newcomers, money in hand, seeking asset diversification. - Gary North
Free online book by Murray Rothbard: THE MYSTERY OF BANKING
War, the God That Failed [excerpt]
The core problem in Iraq right now is not some rogue corporals engaged in sadomasochistic torture; the problem is the "idealists" who think nothing of attempting to reconstruct an entire region of the world using bombs and bloodshed. - Lew Rockwell
Friday, May 14, 2004
KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation:The CIA's Secret Manual on Coercive Qestioning (via The Power Hour)
The Saddam-9/11 Link Confirmed [excerpt]
Evidence is “something that indicates,” according to Webster’s. Proof is “conclusive demonstration.” The report of a well-regarded allied intelligence service that a 9/11 hijacker appeared to have met with an Iraqi intelligence agent a few months before the attacks is certainly evidence of an Iraqi connection. - Laurie Mylroie (via InstaPundit)
Bananas [excerpt]
I must grudgingly admit that our Iraqi Adventure seems to have become in some respects a fascinating and invaluable educational experience, nearly on a daily basis.
For example, today’s morning papers revealed that one or more of the prison images being shown to our august Senators and Congressmen depicted scenes of Iraqi POWs sodomizing themselves with bananas, a fact which led one Republican lawmaker to darkly suspect that the action taken was not entirely voluntary, and "was probably coerced somehow." - Ron Unz
Thursday, May 13, 2004
Exporting America's Prison Problems [excerpt]
1997 a 29-year-old schizophrenic inmate named Michael Valent was stripped naked and strapped to a restraining chair by Utah prison staff because he refused to take a pillowcase off his head. Shortly after he was released some sixteen hours later, Valent collapsed and died from a blood clot that blocked an artery to his heart.
The chilling incident made national news not only because it happened to be videotaped but also because Valent's family successfully sued the State of Utah and forced it to stop using the device. Director of the Utah Department of Corrections, Lane McCotter, who was named in the suit and defended use of the chair, resigned in the ensuing firestorm.
Some six years later, Lane McCotter was working in Abu Ghraib prison, part of a four-man team of correctional advisers sent by the Justice Department and charged with the sensitive mission of reconstructing Iraq's notorious prisons, ravaged by decades of human rights abuse. - Dan Frosch (via Rational Review)
Was There Perjury Before Congress? [excerpt]
In this article, an anonymous person identifying as a Military Intelligence Analyst and Interrogator, disects the spin coming out of the Washington Congressional testimony.
And asks a lot of hard questions that demand answers. Such as:
• Wasn't it Maj Gen. Miller, current Iraq Prisons commander who, in August/September 2003 tweaked the interrogation procedures in Iraq up to Guantanamo standards ?
• In the light of interrogator Joe Ryan having attended an Israeli Interrogation Course, did some the 'third country nationals' involved in interrogation --as mentioned in the Taguba report-- come from Israel or the U.K.?
• If the 'other government agencies' mentioned in the Taguba report are --as likely-- CIA, then does the reference to 'ghost detainees' mean the CIA was "disappearing" people in Iraq ?
• Is the Taguba formal US Uniform Code of Military Justice investigation report classified Secret/NOFORN (no Foriegn governement dissemination) because it clearly indicates sanctioned, systemic, patently criminal, multi-theatre practices since at least 9/11 ?
• Does the fact that interrogator Steve Stefanowicz was'nt a disposable Army reserve MP, have anything to do with --according to Joe Ryan's diary-- him still doing his worst at Abu Gharieb at least thru to 25 April '04 ? - Read the article at BreakForNews.com (via The Power Hour)
Collectivism Begins In Your Neighborhood [excerpt]
Those familiar with my writings know of my eternal hostility to collective thinking. The key to living well – materially, psychologically, and spiritually – is to recognize that we are social beings who need the cooperation of others while, at the same time, retaining our individual sense of understanding and direction. We need to maintain an energized awareness that never allows our social needs to preempt our individual judgments about the propriety of our actions.
There is nothing so destructive to decent society as the tendency to relax our psychic energies and let our thinking dissolve into mass-mindedness. Wars have long been the vehicle for transforming peaceful, principled individuals into brutish automatons whose standards of conduct become whatever collective authority defines for them. Wars are destructive enough, in terms of lives, property, and foregone opportunities. But there is a hidden cost not only to wars, but to all forms of collective behavior, that is rarely examined: the diminution of the qualities that make for a free, creative, and humane civilization.
It is to the interplay between the individual and the group that I focus my attention. Let me emphasize, again, that I am not setting the values of individualism apart from our needs for social organization. Without some form of society – if only the family – none of us would have survived to become individuals. As long as these needs reinforce one another – as they do in the marketplace, for example – there is no necessary conflict between the two. It is when the interests and purposes of a group are seen as predominant over those of the individuals who comprise it – when the group becomes an institution, in other words – that this balance is lost and conflict emerges. When our individual autonomy, uniqueness, and principles are squeezed out of us and extruded into a collective mindset, our personal and social needs are placed in opposition. - Butler Shaffer
Tuesday, May 11, 2004
The House That AIDS Built [excerpt]
This article deals with pharmaceutical abuse in a children’s home in NYC. This is a most controversial story – however, it’s entirely based in fact and good reporting. I hope you’ll find it as compelling and shocking as I did investigating it. - Liam Scheff (via The Power Hour)
Inherent National Bankruptcy
Alexander "Ace" Baker has written a very informative article on the fraud involved with the Federal Reserve system. Even with all of his candor, I believe he has painted too rosy a picture of the system.
We are all familiar with a Ponzi scheme. The basic principle is to promise investors that money put into control of the operators will return high interest on the principal invested. Unfortunately, the confidence game promises to pay more interest than the principal generates, if the scheme generates any interest or gain whatsoever. The scheme will last as long as more investors are found whose invested principal will pay for the inflated interest due and payable to earlier investors.
The Federal Reserve operates a Ponzi scheme. Congress can pay for federal expenses with funds collected from taxes, imposts, and duties, but Congress is never satisfied with this amount. The desire to buy votes from special interest groups, and financially assist politically connected friends (or is this redundant?), compels Congress-critters to spend more, and this is identified as deficit spending. To finance this deficit, the Federal Reserve will create on their accounting books a line of credit equal in the amount of the bills, bonds, or notes the Congress will authorize; i.e., the Fed receives the interest-bearing obligation on the full faith and credit of the United States and in return checks written by government agencies will be honored by the banking system. The accumulated deficits are identified as the national debt.
It must be observed the amount of money in circulation is increased by the amount of the principal (actually it is a line of credit that is generated) but the amount promised to be repaid is the principal and the interest. The interest is never created but it is promised to be repaid. It is impossible. The scheme will last only as long as more principal is generated to pay the interest. If all of the “dollars” in the world were used to buy back the bills, bonds, and notes, a national debt would still exist and be accumulating compound interest. The holders of federal debt would have a claim on all of the wealth of the United States citizens.
To make the scheme appear legitimate, the Fed sells a large percentage of the bills, bonds, and notes, with the help of the U.S. Treasury, to remove much of the currency generated by the scheme (multiplied by fractional reserves) from circulation. Japan holds debentures for approximately 10% of the total U.S. debt. How much of this debt holding has been required by financial and government policies to gain approval of trade status for the past 40 years is unknown. It should be apparent that if Japan attempts to sell the obligations to support the yen, it would precipitate a worldwide tsunami. How much purchase of the US debt is required of various other nations to gain favorable trade status is also unknown, but it ties all nations into a global economy.
As Ace has written, the new creation of money by deficit spending is the source of inflation. Those closest to the money printing press will live better than those further away, and the farmers, as a class, are the most distant from the new money. This new money is a way the wealth of the nation is confiscated from the people, and the people are for the greater part, completely unaware of their loss.
Some sources suggest the Fed has never been audited. That is not totally accurate. My 360 page copy of the 1996 Annual Report of the Board of Governors, obtained after several calls to D.C., contains considerable information on the financial status and revenue transfers of the banks, branches, and the system, including interest earned from holdings of national debt. It is audited and signed by Price Waterhouse, LLP, page 275. All federal agencies are audited by the GAO, are they not? The Fed is audited by a private business. It is also known that real estate owned by the Fed is subject to local property taxes and the tax bills can be verified at the county assessor’s office; real estate owned by the federal government is not subject to local property tax. Salaries of employees are, with few exceptions, set by the Fed; they are not government employee civil service. They also have their own private retirement program. The Fed is a privately owned, nationally incorporated for-profit business. Government appointment of governors is from a pre-approved list.
No information is found that suggests an audit of any specie holdings, nor is there any information as to who holds or owns controlling stock (Class A) of the Fed. Congressman McFadden went to his grave unsuccessful in his attempts to determine who owns the Fed.
How long will the Fed be able to continue the Ponzi scheme? A common measure of the solvency of a corporation is the ratio of profit to the cost of debt service. A company that makes 30 times what they must pay for interest on long term debt is much more stable than one with a ratio of three. Every year the US debt service cost increases, and the increase is exponential. Interest on the national debt now consumes 20 to 25% of the taxes collected by the federal government. It is only a matter of time before taxes will not be able to service the national debt and still pay for government programs. National bankruptcy is inevitable. Of course, people who do not pay taxes will be blamed for causing the problem just as the stock market collapse was blamed for causing the depression of the ‘30s.
The way I hear it, the banks had to call notes (demanded payments of loans) that were normally rolled over year to year. The Fed was pulling currency out of circulation and citizens were unable to buy on margin or to pay long-term loans. The Fed caused the collapse. Three times when the economy appeared to be stabilizing, the Fed tightened the money supply. Gold-backed currency was withdrawn. When the economy was expanded to pay for WW II, debt-bearing currency (with interest payable to the Fed) replaced the previous gold-backed money. The Fed had installed their Ponzi scheme. Your grandfather who lost his farm during the Depression probably never knew what hit him.
Today, the Fed can sell government debt at one to two percent. Is the government getting a bargain? The way I see it, there is a market for currency, and all market prices are controlled by supply and demand (Economics 101). People are leery of buying stocks or bonds, yet they are looking for a place to invest money. It appears major capital investments by businesses are being deferred as production facilities are being located overseas to escape oppressive taxation levied upon employees and operations. Government burdens on corporations are destroying the tax base. With investors shying away from stocks, bonds, and a reduced demand for capital investments, we have currency looking for a safe investment. When the interest rate is lower than the rate of inflation, investors are taking a bath. Investments in government debt are losing money. The interest rate in Japan has been low for a decade.
Mortgage interest rates are near record lows. If there was a demand for new houses, interest rates would go up. Greenspan’s whispers that the Fed may raise interest rates is unrealistic. He cannot push a rope. The free market will prevail. A low interest rate is a reflection of skepticism. Only a demand for money will cause interest rates to go up. The economic affect of state legislators lamenting they cannot fund state obligations has not yet been felt. The resultant loss of jobs by non-funding of state projects will be nationwide and will drastically affect national revenue sources.
People still do not know what is going to hit them when Congress tells the Fed they cannot pay the interest on the national debt. Deficit spending to pay for the interest is now sold to the public as the cost of a war. How long can the illusion be maintained? How long can the inflation resulting from deficit spending to pay the interest be concealed from the public? - Jim Carter (via Free-Market.Net)
a rant regarding Abu Ghraib
This makes me so pissed off that I can hardly stand it. It's not funny, it's not justice, it's not anything other than blatantly unacceptable pig-like behavior on the part of people whom a month ago I would have respected at least a little based simply on the fact that they're in the U.S. military. Of course I know that being in the military doesn't make one a saint - but goddammit. I've insisted more times than I care to count to more liberal types than I care to know that American soldiers don't treat people that way. That any Iraqi who was taken prisoner in this "war" could at least rest assured - god what was I thinking??? - that they'd be treated with basic human dignity.
So I was wrong. And I'm pissed off, not because I'm wrong but because those stupid MP's in that godforsaken prison felt compelled to get their rocks off - or to just obey orders, depending on who you believe - at the expense of the very reputation of the U.S. Can I expect to ever again be taken seriously if I insist that the American military can be trusted to maintain the highest standards of decency?
Ah, but you say, this incident is not representative of the entire American military. Well no shit. I know that. Most of you reading this know that. But you've got your head firmly in your ascending colon if you think millions of Middle Eastern people know that or will believe that or will even give a flying crap about knowing or believing what it represents or who is responsible. Pictures are more powerful than anything when it comes to this shit. You can lecture the world until your head explodes about how only a few people were involved and that the military itself exposed the problem and blah blah blah they're dealing with it appropriately and yadda yadda yadda the President is mad and Rummy took responsibility and BLAH. Doesn't matter outside this country. I highly doubt Mohammed gives a damn that Congress is holding hearings or that "most Americans condemn" the prison shenanigans.
So the prison thing makes everyone look bad. Me, you, Bush, Rummy, the entire military establishment. Deny that at your own peril because it's a fact. The damage is done. Some of it can be fixed but not all. Certain people will never, ever forget those images - and best of all, there's apparently lots and lots more to come! Yay! Videos of graphic rape? Excellent. Just what we need.
And you know what? I'm not just pissed about how it makes everyone look bad. That's not what keeps me up at night. What really bothers me is that it's just wrong, what they did to those men. Yeah, I know they were supposedly trying to "break them down" to get information for what was likely a good reason. I know they do that. I'm all for breaking bad people down and treating murderers like pigs and humiliating terrorists. Absolutely. Bring it on. Problem is, I don't know ANYTHING about the Iraqi men in the photos. I dunno, I'm a bit of a fan of the whole innocent-until-proven-guilty thing. Makes it kinda hard for me to not be appalled at photos of people being abused, not knowing who they are or why they're being piled naked upon one another with hoods on their heads.
Call me crazy or naive, I don't give a shit. It's wrong and we all know it. There are better ways to get information and we all know it. Low-level personnel should never be in charge of torture or abuse and we all know it. You think that butch-lookin' gal knows what she's doing? You think she's been trained in the art of information-gathering?
Not only all that, but the moronic MPs in the photos are having way too much fun. Especially that butch-lookin' chick. I hate the sight of her smirking visage. What were you thinking???? Posing for pictures of all this? For what purpose on this planet would you do that?? Are you unfamiliar with the freaking digital age?
And the dogs. The dogs!! Why? Why, why, why, why bring dogs into this?? Aghghg. I don't care what the naked man in the photo did. If you know he has information, then you (meaning, a trained interrogation professional) tie him down and you apply controlled bursts of electric shock or some other non-wounding pain until he talks. You don't strip him naked and then let your dog bite him. That's what Nazi pigs do. Great job giving all the America-haters an actual, legitimate reason to compare us to Nazis. Great job. Just smashing.
We have to win the war. Simple as that. And Bush must be re-elected; otherwise it's President Kerry and I'll have to move to Argentina. This prison-abuse thing isn't exactly enhancing our progress towards those goals. It's ammo for people whom I would prefer had none, pure and simple. Ammo for Kerry supporters, idiot anti-war types, and haters the world over to point at us and say, 'See? Bush/war/America sucks.'
My new Rant Disclaimer, to be applied henceforth to each and every impudent outburst: I don't have a solution. I don't know the answer. I don't have all the information. This is just my opinion and there's room for all kinds of gray area. I wrote this in under 20 minutes. It is not an essay or a declaration of fact. I might be wrong. I might be right. It is just a rant. - Rachel (via Bill Whittle)
A failure of leadership at the highest levels
Around the halls of the Pentagon, a term of caustic derision has emerged for the enlisted soldiers at the heart of the furor over the Abu Ghraib prison scandal: the six morons who lost the war.
Indeed, the damage done to the U.S. military and the nation as a whole by the horrifying photographs of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi detainees at the notorious prison is incalculable.
But the folks in the Pentagon are talking about the wrong morons.
There is no excuse for the behavior displayed by soldiers in the now-infamous pictures and an even more damning report by Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba. Every soldier involved should be ashamed.
But while responsibility begins with the six soldiers facing criminal charges, it extends all the way up the chain of command to the highest reaches of the military hierarchy and its civilian leadership.
The entire affair is a failure of leadership from start to finish. From the moment they are captured, prisoners are hooded, shackled and isolated. The message to the troops: Anything goes.
In addition to the scores of prisoners who were humiliated and demeaned, at least 14 have died in custody in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Army has ruled at least two of those homicides. This is not the way a free people keeps its captives or wins the hearts and minds of a suspicious world.
How tragically ironic that the American military, which was welcomed to Baghdad by the euphoric Iraqi people a year ago as a liberating force that ended 30 years of tyranny, would today stand guilty of dehumanizing torture in the same Abu Ghraib prison used by Saddam Hussein’s henchmen.
One can only wonder why the prison wasn’t razed in the wake of the invasion as a symbolic stake through the heart of the Baathist regime.
Army commanders in Iraq bear responsibility for running a prison where there was no legal adviser to the commander, and no ultimate responsibility taken for the care and treatment of the prisoners.
Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, also shares in the shame. Myers asked “60 Minutes II” to hold off reporting news of the scandal because it could put U.S. troops at risk. But when the report was aired, a week later, Myers still hadn’t read Taguba’s report, which had been completed in March. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld also failed to read the report until after the scandal broke in the media.
By then, of course, it was too late.
Myers, Rumsfeld and their staffs failed to recognize the impact the scandal would have not only in the United States, but around the world.
If their staffs failed to alert Myers and Rumsfeld, shame on them. But shame, too, on the chairman and secretary, who failed to inform even President Bush.
He was left to learn of the explosive scandal from media reports instead of from his own military leaders.
On the battlefield, Myers’ and Rumsfeld’s errors would be called a lack of situational awareness — a failure that amounts to professional negligence.
To date, the Army has moved to court-martial the six soldiers suspected of abusing Iraqi detainees and has reprimanded six others.
Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who commanded the MP brigade that ran Abu Ghraib, has received a letter of admonishment and also faces possible disciplinary action.
That’s good, but not good enough.
This was not just a failure of leadership at the local command level. This was a failure that ran straight to the top. Accountability here is essential — even if that means relieving top leaders from duty in a time of war.
— Military Times editorial, May 17 issue
Monday, May 10, 2004
Major General Antonio M. Toguba's Report
The Red Cross Report
THE DICK IN THE HOUSE [excerpt]
The Dick in the house is a curious fellow
He says many things, not all of them mellow
His truth is all true
In many small tiny pieces
But the bulk of Dick’s tales
Are entirely specious.
Dick has a big heart for the small-time dictator;
He tends to befriend them, as ventrilo-quator.
But watch out for danger, chaos, hoi polloi
When wooden toys become real live boys.
So we’ve our post-Taliban man in Afghanistan,
Karzai in Kabul, the country to the Khans.
Young Dick thought this fine, unrecognizing
Afghanistan’s history of rebellious optimizing.
"No matter!" Dick excites, "Iraq is in sight!"
What Iraqi can resist in light of our might?
The prize to be seized, an event most prophetical.
No questions, you people
It’s all patriot-ical.
Today Dick worries with photos and film
Of abuses most foul, raw icons of sin.
Part and parcel to being unwanted, unled,
American soldiers in Iraq become walking dead.
But alas and alack, all dead souls aside,
Dick and his friends quell none of their pride.
Get off our backs, you Congressional hacks!
And you people out there, raising doubt with your morals,
Well, the Dick in the House will just rest on his laurels.
Liberation, democracy, peace, gravitas,
For the Dick in the House words mean just what he wishes.
The solution, Dr. Seuss-style, is urgent! Go fast!
Get that cat from the house, out the door, Dick be cast!
And what shall we do with the mess he has made?
A Republic in shambles, a Constitution waste-laid.
They do not make Tupperware for holding this waste.
We must stop the disaster, be bold, make haste.
Take no "No"s for an answer, deny Dick his claim
That all that he's wrought is all in our name.
Turn away from his pleas, stand firm with arms crossed.
And be sure in November his whole clan is tossed.
This story won’t end with a Kerry Dick-Lite.
But this time when Stupid knocks on the door,
Wave no flags, to be sure, and don’t be polite.
Instead do what Mom has always advised,
Don’t take candy from strangers, be prudent and wise.
And if not, if we don’t, it sure won’t be pretty.
As more folks like me are driven to poetry.
So act now, and be firm, make the fools go away,
May Don be the first, then Paul, then Cheney!
by Karen Kwiatkowski
The Crimes at Abu Ghraib Are Not the Worst [excerpt]
When Daham Kassim, his wife Gufran Ibed Kassim, and their four children tried to escape the hell of U.S. bombing in their neighborhood in Nasiriyah, they stopped on the outskirts of the city at a military checkpoint, where, without warning, U.S. tank crews blasted their car with machine-gun fire, killing three of the children and wounding all the other occupants of the car. U.S. troops, humanitarian as ever, then took the three survivors of the attack to a field hospital, treated their wounds, and let them rest in beds. On the third night, however, the troops expelled them from the hospital to make room for wounded U.S. soldiers. As Kassim relates the story: "They carried us like dogs, out into the cold, without shelter, or a blanket. It was the days of the sandstorms and freezing at night. And I heard [five-year-old] Zainab crying: 'Papa, Papa, I am cold, I am cold.' Then she went silent. Completely silent. . . . My arms were broken. I could not lift or hold her. . . . We had to sit there, and listen to her die." - Robert Higgs
Sunday, May 09, 2004
CHAIN OF COMMAND: How the Department of Defense mishandled the disaster at Abu Ghraib. [excerpt]
Complaints about America’s treatment of prisoners, Rumsfeld said in early 2002, amounted to “isolated pockets of international hyperventilation.” - SEYMOUR M. HERSH
Saturday, May 08, 2004
Just Go...
People are seething with anger- the pictures of Abu Ghraib and the Brits in Basrah are everywhere. Every newspaper you pick up in Baghdad has pictures of some American or British atrocity or another. It's like a nightmare that has come to life.
Everyone knew this was happening in Abu Ghraib and other places- seeing the pictures simply made it all more real and tangible somehow. American and British politicians have the audacity to come on television with words like, "True the people in Abu Ghraib are criminals, but?" Everyone here in Iraq knows that there are thousands of innocent people detained. Some were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, while others were detained 'under suspicion'. In the New Iraq, it's "guilty until proven innocent by some miracle of God".
People are so angry. There's no way to explain the reactions- even pro-occupation Iraqis find themselves silenced by this latest horror. I can't explain how people feel- or even how I personally feel. Somehow, pictures of dead Iraqis are easier to bear than this grotesque show of American military technique. People would rather be dead than sexually abused and degraded by the animals running Abu Ghraib prison.
There was a time when people here felt sorry for the troops. No matter what one's attitude was towards the occupation, there were moments of pity towards the troops, regardless of their nationality. We would see them suffering the Iraqi sun, obviously wishing they were somewhere else and somehow, that vulnerability made them seem less monstrous and more human. That time has passed. People look at troops now and see the pictures of Abu Ghraib- and we burn with shame and anger and frustration at not being able to do something. Now that the world knows that the torture has been going on since the very beginning, do people finally understand what happened in Falloojeh?
I'm avoiding the internet because it feels like the pictures are somehow available on every site I visit. I'm torn between wishing they weren't there and feeling, somehow, that it's important that the whole world sees them. The thing, I guess, that bothers me most is that the children can see it all. How do you explain the face of the American soldier, leering over the faceless, naked bodies to a child? How do you explain the sick, twisted minds? How do you explain what is happening to a seven-year-old?
There have been demonstrations in Baghdad and other places. There was a large demonstration outside of the Abu Ghraib prison itself. The families of some of the inmates of the prison were out there protesting the detentions and the atrocities- faces streaked with tears of rage and brows furrowed with anxiety. Each and every one of those people was wondering what their loved ones had suffered inside the walls of the hell that makes Guantanamo look like a health spa.
And through all this, Bush gives his repulsive speeches. He makes an appearance on Arabic tv channels looking sheepish and attempting to look sincere, babbling on about how this 'incident' wasn't representative of the American people or even the army, regardless of the fact that it's been going on for so long. He asks Iraqis to not let these pictures reflect on their attitude towards the American people- and yet when the bodies were dragged through the streets of Falloojeh, the American troops took it upon themselves to punish the whole city.
He's claiming it's a "stain on our country's honor"... I think not. The stain on your country's honor, Bush dear, was the one on the infamous blue dress that made headlines while Clinton was in the White House... this isn't a 'stain' this is a catastrophe. Your credibility was gone the moment you stepped into Iraq and couldn't find the WMD... your reputation never existed.
So are the atrocities being committed in Abu Ghraib really not characteristic of the American army? What about the atrocities committed by Americans in Guantanamo? And Afghanistan? I won't bother bringing up the sordid past, let's just focus on the present. It seems that torture and humiliation are common techniques used in countries blessed with the American presence. The most pathetic excuse I heard so far was that the American troops weren't taught the fundamentals of human rights mentioned in the Geneva Convention? Right- morals, values and compassion have to be taught.
All I can think about is the universal outrage when the former government showed pictures of American POWs on television, looking frightened and unsure about their fate. I remember the outcries from American citizens, claiming that Iraqis were animals for showing 'America's finest' fully clothed and unharmed. So what does this make Americans now?
We heard about it all? we heard stories since the very beginning of the occupation about prisoners being made to sit for several hours on their knees? being deprived of sleep for days at a time by being splashed with cold water or kicked or slapped- about the infamous 'red rooms' where prisoners are kept for prolonged periods of time- about the rape, the degradations, the emotional and physical torture- and there were moments when I actually wanted to believe that what we heard was exaggerated. I realize now that it was only a small fragment of the truth. There is nothing that is going to make this 'better'. Nothing.
Through all of this, where is the Governing Council? Under what rock are the Puppets hiding? Why is no one condemning this? What does Bremer have to say for himself and for the Americans? Why this unbearable silence?
I don't understand the 'shock' Americans claim to feel at the lurid pictures. You've seen the troops break down doors and terrify women and children? curse, scream, push, pull and throw people to the ground with a boot over their head. You've seen troops shoot civilians in cold blood. You've seen them bomb cities and towns. You've seen them burn cars and humans using tanks and helicopters. Is this latest debacle so very shocking or appalling?
The number of killings in the south has also risen. The Americans and British are saying that they are 'insurgents' and people who are a part of Al-Sadir's militia, but people from Najaf are claiming that innocent civilians are being killed on a daily basis. Today the troops entered Najaf and there was fighting in the streets. This is going to cause a commotion because Najaf is considered a holy city and is especially valuable to Shi'a all over the world. The current situation in the south makes one wonder who, now, is going to implement a no-fly zone over areas like Falloojeh and Najaf to 'protect' the people this time around?
I sometimes get emails asking me to propose solutions or make suggestions. Fine. Today's lesson: don't rape, don't torture, don't kill and get out while you can- while it still looks like you have a choice... Chaos? Civil war? Bloodshed? We'll take our chances- just take your Puppets, your tanks, your smart weapons, your dumb politicians, your lies, your empty promises, your rapists, your sadistic torturers and go. - Riverbend
An Al-Jazeera cameraman detained and tortured at Abu Ghraib recalls beatings, threats and photos of torture victims used as screen savers on military PCs. [excerpt]
Last Saturday, Suhaib Badr al Baz, a cameraman for Al-Jazeera, sat in the lobby of the Swan Lake Hotel and calmly described his experience being tortured by U.S. military personnel. The soft-spoken journalist's account of his 74 days in U.S. custody was deeply disturbing, and his story not only supports what is now coming to light about human rights violations in Abu Ghraib, but also adds interesting new details. Al Baz said that much of his mistreatment took place in a building at the Baghdad airport, a place where he heard the sounds of prisoners screaming for long periods of time. If his account is accurate, it means that the abuse of prisoners in Iraq is not limited to Abu Ghraib prison or a single military unit. It may well be, as military critics argue, more widespread. - Phillip Robertson (via Rational Review)
Between Iraq and a Hard Place
I think that Butler Shaffer has got it right on the nose!
Thursday, May 06, 2004
'Terri's Law' ruled unconstitutional [excerpt]
The law allowing Florida Gov. Jeb Bush to order Terri Schiavo's feeding tube reconnected was ruled unconstitutional today by a circuit court judge. - WorldNetDaily
Grow-your-own to replace false teeth [excerpt]
Instead of false teeth, a small ball of cells capable of growing into a new tooth will be implanted where the missing one used to be.
The procedure needs only a local anaesthetic and the new tooth should be fully formed within a few months of the cells being implanted. - Ian Sample (via WorldNetDaily)
Cartoonist gets death threats for this. (via WorldNetDaily)
F.A.A. Official Scrapped Tape of 9/11 Controllers' Statements [excerpts]
At least six air traffic controllers who dealt with two of the hijacked airliners on Sept. 11, 2001, made a tape recording that same day describing the events, but the tape was destroyed by a supervisor without anyone making a transcript or even listening to it, the Transportation Department said in a report today.
But officials at the center never told higher-ups of the tape's existence, and it was later destroyed by an F.A.A. official described in the report as a quality-assurance manager there. That manager crushed the cassette in his hand, shredded the tape and dropped the pieces into different trash cans around the building, according to a report made public today by the inspector general of the Transportation Department.
The quality-assurance manager destroyed the tape between December 2001 and February, 2002. By that time, he and the center manager had received an e-mail message sent by the F.A.A. instructing officials to safeguard all records and adding, "If a question arises whether or not you should retain data, RETAIN IT." - MATTHEW L. WALD (via WorldNetDaily)
US army helicopter killing three Iraqis, one of them wounded. - CBC News Video (via Information Clearing House)
U.S. Troops Mistreat Elder Iraqi woman [excerpt]
U.S. soldiers who detained an elderly Iraqi woman last year placed a harness on her, made her crawl on all fours and rode her like a donkey, Prime Minister Tony Blair 's personal human rights envoy to Iraq said Wednesday. - SUE LEEMAN (via Information Clearing House)
The Good, the Not-So-Good, and the Really, Really Ugly [excerpt]
Since there are close to four-and-one-half-billion Web pages, I've had to narrow the choices available. I've got it down to about ten sites, which I refer to as the Good, the Not-So-Good, and the Really, Really Ugly. - Bob Wallace
Wednesday, May 05, 2004
46 columnists here
Joseph Sobran For President
Money, Not So Funny [excerpt]
Of all the government?s criminal activities, probably none is more egregious, but less apprehended by the general public, than its handling of our money, or what passes for it. The Constitution, of recent memory, assigns Congress the task of coining money, while prohibiting that power to the states, which are bound, by that selfsame Constitution, to make nothing but gold and silver coin a legal tender in payment of debts. If the officials who swore an oath to obey the Constitution actually did so, the mints would be coining gold and silver coins, and the people of the states would be using them to pay their debts. Inflation would be non-existent, prices would be stable or gradually falling, and savings would retain their value, or appreciate. Worthwhile, don?t you think? - Paul Hein
Fools for Communism: Still apologists after all these years
A book review by Glenn Garvin
Tuesday, May 04, 2004
Free online book, Black Box Voting, here.
If it wasn't a quagmire, it was certainly quagmiry. And the first prominent retired general to break ranks with President Bush's Iraq war policy was a Republican who once headed the National Security Agency and also served as a deputy national security adviser. Gen. William E. Odom, a fluent Russian speaker who teaches at Georgetown and Yale universities, told the Wall Street Journal's John Harwood staying the course in Iraq is untenable. - Arnaud de Borchgrave (via Rational Review)
The Government Hoax [excerpt]
Men and women pretending to be "government" only have to do one thing different (here’s the "radical" "extremist" part): provide their services on a voluntary basis like everybody else. - Marc Stevens (via Free-Market.Net)
Monday, May 03, 2004
Exporting Cheap Corn and Ruin [excerpt]
This genetic diversity, the product of 10,000 years of human-maize co-evolution, represents some of the most precious and irreplaceable information on Earth, as we were reminded in 1970 when a fungus decimated the American corn crop and genes for resistance were found in a landrace under cultivation in southern Mexico. These landraces will survive only as long as the farmers who cultivate them do. The cheap U.S. corn that is driving these farmers off their land threatens to dry up the pool of genetic diversity on which the future of the species depends. - Michael Pollan
France Invades U.S. by Jerry Ghinelli
Part One, Two, Three, Four.
The "War" On Drugs vs A "Peace" On Drugs [excerpt from A War on Everything]
Does the free market work perfectly? No, it does not. I know that. But the worst it works is a quantum leap so far above the best the State can do that the State can only be considered a danger to everything in which it gets involved.
Take the "war" on drugs as an example. The costs exceed the benefits, and always will. It's an attempt to change people from the outside in, through threats, violence, prison, destruction and death, in the manner of A Clockwork Orange. People only truly change from the inside out, when they change their hearts and minds. You can't permanently change anyone's mind for the better by beating them. If you can change it at all, it's always for the worse.
Making drugs illegal led to organized crime and a multi-billion-dollar black market that is funding terrorism against us. It has caused drugs to become smaller, more concentrated and more powerful, so they'll be easier to smuggle. It has put hundreds of thousands of people in prison for non-violent drug offenses. It has caused crime to go up, as users attempt to obtain the money for a fix. Those are some, but not all, of the results of the State's "war" on drugs.
Now imagine if we made "peace" on drugs, if they were legal. Organized crime involved with drug smuggling would disappear overnight, as would the smuggling itself. The concentrated drugs would still be around, thanks to the State. Once users have had a taste of crack, most aren't going to go back to chewing coca leaves. But at least they wouldn't be mugging people and burglarizing their houses to get the money for a fix. Crime would go down. The prisons would be half-empty. Those are some of the results of a "peace" on drugs.
Legalizing drugs wouldn't be perfect, because of imperfect human nature, but if they were legal, in just a few weeks the public would wonder why it hadn't been done decades before. - Bob Wallace
What is war?
The politicians' stirring phrases are meant to keep our eyes averted from the reality of war -- to make us imagine heroic young men marching in parades, winning glorious battles, and bringing peace and democracy to the world.
But war is something quite different from that.
It is your children or your grandchildren dying before they're even fully adults, or being maimed or mentally scarred for life. It is your brothers and sisters being taught to kill other people -- and to hate people who are just like themselves and who don't want to kill anyone either. It is your children seeing their buddies' limbs blown off their bodies.
It is hundreds of thousands of human beings dying years before their time. It is millions of people separated forever from the ones they loved.
It is the destruction of homes for which people worked for decades. It is the end of careers that meant as much to others as your career means to you.
It is the imposition of heavy taxes on you and on other Americans and on people in other countries -- taxes that remain long after the war is over. It is the suppression of free speech and the jailing of people who criticize the government.
It is the imposition of slavery by forcing young men to serve in the military.
It is goading the public to hate foreign people and races -- whether Arabs or Japanese or Cubans. It is numbing our sensibilities to cruelties inflicted on foreigners.
It is cheering at the news of foreign pilots killed in their planes, of young men blown to bits while trapped inside tanks, of sailors drowned at sea.
Other tragedies inevitably trail in the wake of war. Politicians lie even more than usual. Secrecy and cover-ups become the rule rather than the exception. The press becomes even less reliable.
War is genocide, torture, cruelty, propaganda, dishonesty, and slavery.
War is the worst obscenity government can inflict upon its subjects. It makes every other political crime -- corruption, bribery, favoritism, vote-buying, graft, dishonesty -- seem petty.
Government's Role
If government has a role to play in foreign affairs, it isn't to win wars, to assure that the right people run foreign countries, to protect innocent foreigners from guilty aggressors, or to make the world safe for democracy -- or even a safer place at all.
If government has a role, it can be only to keep us out of wars -- to make sure no one will ever attack us, to make certain you can live your life in peace, to assure you the freedom to ignore who is right and who is wrong in foreign conflicts.
The only reason for military power is to discourage attackers, and -- if they come anyway -- to repel them at our borders. Such things as stationing troops in far-off lands, meddling in foreign disputes, and sending our children to foreign countries as "peacekeepers" only encourage war.
To make America safer and to assure that we stay at peace, we don't need to put more weapons in the hands of government employees, or to reform military purchasing methods, or to make more treaties with other governments, or to increase the military budget.
In fact, we need just the opposite of these things. We need to make it as hard as possible for politicians to involve us in war. And we need to create a defense system that relies as little as possible on the normal workings of government. - Harry Browne
# # #
[From Why Government Doesn't Work, pages 144-145.
Copies available for purchase here.
Sunday, May 02, 2004
Bush & Cheney testifying to the 9/11 Commission
PROCRASTINATION: How can I get into the "Mile High Club?"
The Mile High Club. Puts a whole new spin on the flight attendant tagline, "enjoy your flight!"
In all 50 or so flights that I have been on, not once did I notice (or hear) a couple of fellow passengers in the lavatory - ahem - getting high. But, according to the online travel company Opodo, almost 10% of air travellers say they have taken part in aerial pleasures at least one mile above the ground. Hmm, so that's why I can never get into the bathroom when I need to, and why I cannot find a blanket when it's cold. (Ack -- and just one more reason to start packing my own blanket!)
Apparently, people are not just doing it in their seats and in the lavatories, some even claim they've done it standing up?! And, it's not just passengers that are sneaking around naked on red-eye flights -- the pilot that invented the "auto pilot" function was actually the first member of "The Mile High Club."
Yes, it was Mr. Lawrence Sperry, a stunt pilot that gave flying lessons on the side, that decided to run around his plane naked with a female student while he tested out his automatic piloting invention. The test was going really well until the daring duo bumped the gyro platform and sent the plane nosediving 500 feet into great South Bay, and lived to talk about it. Gives a whole new meaning to "cockpit." Ahem.
Since then, horny passengers have been one of the fastest growing in-flight disturbances.
"The increasing number of sexual offences by passengers aboard commercial airline flights is a particularly worrying trend. Singapore Airlines noted that a full one-third of cases of "unruly behavior" requiring cabin-crew intervention involved sexual misconduct," the Wall Street Journal reports.
So, what is it about flying and sex? Is there something in the air that makes people want to 69 in a cramped 747's stinky little lav?
It must be cool if the Material Girl sheds her threads for it
Maybe it's all the celebrity status that is associated with joining "The Club." During the late '80s and early '90s, MGM Grand Air routinely flew the rich and famous from New York to Los Angeles, pampered with private rooms, champagne and caviar. Madonna, Harrison Ford and Julia Roberts (and even O.J. Simpson) were just a few of the rich and famous who regularly took wing.
According to former MGM flight attendant, Diana Benson, many celebs took extra long two-person visits to the lav and moaned from their suites when they were not complaining, fighting or feeding their own egos. Yes, for eight swanky years MGM Grand Air was in service, flying Hollywood's elite Mile High Clubbers. Too bad for Paris Hilton that they are no longer decadently flying the friendly skies, she could have filmed some great scenes there!
Good vibrations
Despite the swank risque allure of a cross-country roll in the clouds, physiologists tend to stick to the facts, saying that an airplane is like a giant vibrator! Men get erections from the vibrations of plane as it thrusts into the air while women get aroused by the vibrations ... and the speed. In other words, some people get motion sick, others get motion horny.
Freud's penis theory
Psychologists say that flying is a turn-on to so many people for a variety of reasons. Some people get caught up in the romance of flying as they watch the lights of cities twinkling below. To them, flying symbolizes sex and an airplane is just one big erect penis. It thrusts up into the air to climax, then plateaus at cruising altitude, lands, then is ready to take off again!
Come aboard, it's exciting and new
Shrinks also say that excitement is a factor. Unless a traveler is jet lagged or hung over, flying is exciting. It's an adventure full of potential hook-up partners, new destinations and ... shagadelic flight attendants.
The danger
Flying 30,000 feet above the ground is also kinda dangerous, which is sexy to those that enjoy thrills. There could be a hijacking, the air pressure could change and everyone would have to wear those masks, an engine could go out, the plane could crash.
The possibility of danger raises adrenaline, causing natural amphetamines to flow through the body, exciting travellers to action! But since there really is not a thing that anyone can do on a plane, besides read a magazine or watch a movie, the adrenaline rush makes peope anxious or horny, depending on personality. Hundreds of studies have shown that people are much more likely to fall in love and/or lust under dangerous or adrenaline-heightening circumstances - even crossing a high bridge can makes someone feel an adrenaline surge that the mind mistakes for a feeling of love for the person sh/e is with.
Not so virginic afterall
Virgin Atlantic Airways now offers more private "Upper Class Suites" and plans to provide private sleeping quarters, complete with hot tubs on certain trans-Atlantic flights, in the near future. As Austin Powers would say, "Yeah, baybee!"
If you are afraid to get your wings on a commercial flight, try chartering one with a sweetie. Private Jet Charters in New York offers one-hour "quickie" romantic flights, complete with a bed, champagne and take-home suvenir satin sheets for the low, low price of $599!
So, how can I get into the "Mile High Club?"
Sitting here, procrastinating, I've come up with a few things those who want to get into this "Mile High Club" without getting arrested or embarrassed could do to ensure a safe, uh, landing.
-Call your local travel agent and book a flight to wherever, it doesn't matter. Hint: Ask for a red-eye.
-Consider getting one of those private suites from Virgin or British Airways. Hint: Can't beat saying your first time was on a Virgin - so, it is definitely the airline I'd choose.
-Get to the gate early and seek out a cute solo traveler (like yourself) that looks like they left their inhibitions back at home, were they belong.
-Be ready to negotiate your seat assignment for one closer to your unsuspecting passenger. Hint: don't offer your blanket and pillows, because you might need them.
-Wait for the movie to start before you start your own movie, Paris. You don't want to get arrested for indecent exposure aboard an airline. Trust me.
-Before you start your aerial escapade, make sure you are at least 5,280 feet AGL (above ground level), just to make it official.
-Pack a parachute, er, uh, condom.
-And remember, in the unlikely event of a water landing, your seat cushion may be used to clean up any, uh,, well, you get the picture!
Now that your packed with all this valuable information, fly like the wind and follow in Julia Roberts' by earning your wings! Thanks for reading and ... enjoy your flight! ;) - Kelly Ann Collins
TORTURE AT ABU GHRAIB [excerpt]
Frederick, at thirty-seven, was far older than his colleagues, and was a natural leader; he had also worked for six years as a guard for the Virginia Department of Corrections. Bobeck explained:
What I got is that SSG Frederick and CPL Graner were road M.P.s and were put in charge because they were civilian prison guards and had knowledge of how things were supposed to be run.
Bobeck also testified that witnesses had said that Frederick, on one occasion, “had punched a detainee in the chest so hard that the detainee almost went into cardiac arrest.”
At the Article 32 hearing, the Army informed Frederick and his attorneys, Captain Robert Shuck, an Army lawyer, and Gary Myers, a civilian, that two dozen witnesses they had sought, including General Karpinski and all of Frederick’s co-defendants, would not appear. Some had been excused after exercising their Fifth Amendment right; others were deemed to be too far away from the courtroom. “The purpose of an Article 32 hearing is for us to engage witnesses and discover facts,” Gary Myers told me. “We ended up with a c.i.d. agent and no alleged victims to examine.” After the hearing, the presiding investigative officer ruled that there was sufficient evidence to convene a court-martial against Frederick.
Myers, who was one of the military defense attorneys in the My Lai prosecutions of the nineteen-seventies, told me that his client’s defense will be that he was carrying out the orders of his superiors and, in particular, the directions of military intelligence. He said, “Do you really think a group of kids from rural Virginia decided to do this on their own? Decided that the best way to embarrass Arabs and make them talk was to have them walk around nude?” - SEYMOUR M. HERSH (via Drudge) [Kids? Frederick, 37, had 6 yrs experience as a prision guard and was in charge!]
Saturday, May 01, 2004
The Scales Fell From My Military Eyes [excerpt]
As a young officer, I once gave my Marines a class on rules of engagement prior to an exercise. Discussion eventually came around to whether or not torture could be acceptable in certain circumstances. My reply was simply that as soon as we starting doing that sort of thing, winning or losing no longer mattered, as we would be no better than the enemy we were trying to defeat. Memories of that class came back to me as pictures of American soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners came to light recently on CBS. This is but a small example, but for me, it is just one more reminder that fighting for America is the equivalent of being Kenneth Lay’s lawyer: to defend either probably means having to check your morals at the door. - John Schroder
America's Edge: For How Much Longer? [excerpt]
Economic growth takes place when politicians and bureaucrats pull out of the economy. We are seeing a great reversal. The Communists are pulling out, and Western governments keep adding to the maze of regulations. Meanwhile, Asians are good at math and science. If it turns out that they are innately gifted with entrepreneurial skills, which the reversal of Marxism sets free, then the flow of capital to China will accompany the flow of goods out of China.
Then who will buy T-bills? At what interest rate? - Gary North
THE EFFECT OF OUTSOURCING ON THE VALUE OF THE DOLLAR [update]
"Actually only a non-economist should think in the way Reynolds describes. An economist should know that all jobs aren't outsourced or in danger of being so, and that outsourcing is dynamic. An economist should also always note that we "insource" jobs more than we "outsource" them, and that adopting a global principle that outsourcing of jobs is bad would be more destructive of our economy than beneficial to it, akin to adopting a principle that trade is bad.
"In 2002, America "insourced" $14.8 billion worth of computer, data processing, research, development, construction, architectural, engineering, and other IT services. We "outsourced" $3.9 billion. In other words, we gained far more from global "outsourcing" than we lost. And when we "outsourced", it created $1.12 to $1.14 in additional economic activity within the U.S. for every dollar spent "outsourcing", due to expanding demand in foreign countries for American computers, software, telecom, finance, legal, and marketing services that was created as a result.
"Of course, that wouldn't occur if *everything* were outsourced, but everything is not. "Outsourcing" doesn't happen blindly in an insensate fashion as Reynolds suggests in that quote you provided. A good economist would know and take into account that decisions are made based on cost vs benefit, and false extremes such as the one he raises cloud rather than illuminate what is going on. Reynolds' argument seems to be a political one rather than an economic one." - Porphyrogenitus (via email)
My reply
You wrote: "A good economist would know and take into account that decisions are made based on cost vs benefit, and false extremes such as the one he raises cloud rather than illuminate what is going on."
1. Sure, traders do make decisions on cost vs benefit, and that was Reynolds' point. When, e.g., a Chinese exporter decides that the net return he receives by accepting dollars is less satisfactory than from other currencies, he would then increase his dollar prices or even demand payment in those other currencies. News Report: May 1 (Bloomberg) -- Billionaire investor Warren Buffett said he increased his bet against the U.S. dollar on concern that the country's trade deficit will weaken the currency.
2. The discussion between Reynolds and myself was originally about my contention that outsourcing to China would eventually cause economic havoc in the US because the vast hordes of potential factory workers in China would, in effect, cause a very wide variety of very cheap consumer goods to flood the US for decades to come. Therefore, it was not about "what is going on" but what will be going on. Why isn't a theoretical reductio ad absurdum allowed in a theoretical discussion?
3. I have no doubts that Reynolds is a good economist, although he may have deviated somewhat from the standard free-market-economist rhetoric in this instance.
Porphyrogenitus replies
>> Therefore, it was not about "what is going on" but what will be going on. Why isn't a theoretical reductio ad absurdum allowed in a theoretical discussion? <<
"Oh, it's allowed. Anyone can make whatever argument they like, however absurd. That doesn't mean people have to be persuaded by it or consider it insightful. Some arguments are laughable. Many arguments deserve to have the holes in them pointed out. One can raise all sorts of fantastic boogieman arguments one wants to, but it doesn't mean people have to treat them seriously, even in a theoretical discussion."
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