We need cookies... Don't eat ze bugs.
The United States has lost its gold-plated triple-A rating -- in the eyes of credit traders, at least.
U.S. sovereign debt was the third-worst performer in a closely watched derivatives market during the third quarter, CMA said Tuesday in its quarterly review of global sovereign credit risk. The cost of insuring against a default on U.S. government bonds via so-called credit default swaps rose 28% in the quarter ended Sept. 30, the firm said. That puts the United States' third-quarter performance behind only two other nations, both of which are struggling with the early stages of sovereign debt crises: Ireland, whose CDS prices rocketed 72% to a record amid growing questions about the costs of a massive bank bailout, and Portugal, whose costs jumped 30%. What's more, the decline leaves U.S. debt trading at an implied rating of double-A-plus for the first time in memory. Despite building worries about its financial outlook, the U.S. had traded in recent quarters in line with its triple-A rating from S&P and Moody's. But some skeptics have been arguing the U.S. is overrated, and that argument now seems to be gaining steam. "You can see an indication of concern about the easing course the Fed is likely to continue on," said Sean Egan, who runs the Egan-Jones credit rating agency in Haverford, Pa. "There's a number of items that are going to be difficult to reverse as we get down that road, starting with the dramatic underfunding of state pension funds." The shift comes at a head-spinning time for the U.S. economy. The government has run two straight trillion-dollar-plus budget deficits, with more to come. Yet Treasury bonds are trading at record-low yields, reflecting questions about the economic outlook. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve is considering another round of major asset purchases in a policy observers have dubbed QE2, for the central bank's second attempt at quantitative easing – a bid to boost economic activity by expanding the size of the Fed's balance sheet. Comments by Fed chief Ben Bernanke and other policymakers have sent the dollar tumbling to its lowest level since January and helped light a fuse under commodity prices. Those remarks have had the effect of making even weak economic numbers look bullish, by suggesting the Fed will ride in if jobs data, for instance, get too ugly. The rising price of insuring against a default on U.S. government debt is of a piece with these moves and suggests the full tab for the profligacy of the past decade has yet to be presented. To be sure, a default on U.S. debt remains a remote possibility. Even after the third quarter's runup, it costs just $48,000 annually to insure for five years against a default on $10 million worth of Treasury securities. That's a tenth the going rate on Irish debt and about one-eighth the price prevailing in Portugal. And at that, CDS spreads are far from a pure read on default risk. A report by rating agency Fitch on Tuesday noted that credit default swaps performed "unevenly" during the credit crisis in predicting defaults by companies and other private-sector debt issuers. "While there are notable instances in which CDS spread widening preceded eventual defaults, there have also been numerous false positives where spreads ramped up dramatically even though few if any defaults ensued," Fitch wrote. Even so, the third-quarter rise in its CDS spreads knocks the U.S. out of the triple-A league it has long shared with the likes of Germany, Switzerland and the Nordic countries, all of which regularly run trade surpluses and have relatively manageable debt positions. It's early to say there's no going back, but our political leaders certainly have their work cut out for them – without any particular sign they're up to the task.
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October 13, 2010
Otago Daily Times Chris Morris and Amelia Wade South Island mayors will unite to fight the economic pulling power of Auckland's new Super City - a move that may hamper multi-billion-dollar dreams to unclog the city's roads. Mayors from the lower South Island said yesterday co-operation would ensure their region's voice to the Government was not drowned out by the huge Auckland Council. Christchurch mayor Bob Parker said a comprehensive South Island grouping was needed in response "to ensure our voice is clearly heard in central Government". The Auckland Council would be a "huge economic machine". Its economic development budget alone - used in part to promote the city - was likely to exceed $40 million, he said. Mr Parker believed the South Island should follow suit, initially by combining tourism agencies - and their budgets - to promote the entire South Island, rather than its individual regions. The new Auckland Council comes into existence on November 1, replacing eight councils with one representing more than 1.3 million people. Super City mayor-elect Len Brown has already said his strong mandate meant the Government should listen, and that the rest of New Zealand should help pay for a new city-wide rapid transit system in Auckland. He has campaigned on three rail project plans - a central city tunnel, a city-airport link and a city-Albany link - which will cost up to $4.75 billion. Mr Brown could not be contacted last night, but on Monday he told the Herald the Government wanted Auckland to turn itself into "much more of an economic powerhouse" and transport and fixing congestion were important parts of that. Prime Minister John Key has been cautious about Mr Brown's goals, saying "there is no free lunch when it comes to any of this stuff" and indicating that ratepayers would have to pay. "The Government is spending $5 billion in Auckland. We're spending $1.6 billion on rail and that's a considerable contribution already," said Mr Key. New Super City councillor Christine Fletcher - a former Auckland mayor - said last night she was saddened the South Island mayors felt the need to compete. "It would be foolish to ignore the fact that so many New Zealanders live in Auckland. To neglect the needs of these New Zealanders would not make good business sense. "It's important for the rest of New Zealand that Auckland succeeds. It's for everyone's advantage." She did not see the need to compete. "A lot of South Islanders recognise the needs of the new Super City and that it needs to work, but it shouldn't be at the expense of the South Islanders." Mr Parker raised the idea of a combined South Island mayoral forum before last year's Local Government New Zealand meeting in Christchurch, and he won support yesterday from Waitaki District mayor Alex Familton and Invercargill mayor Tim Shadbolt. Mr Familton said change was inevitable and the South Island needed to "speak with one voice". Mr Shadbolt believed a new South Island grouping would be "great". Dunedin's new mayor-elect Dave Cull also backed greater regional co-operation, pointing to the possible centralisation of neurosurgery in Christchurch as one example of what the Auckland Super City could possibly lead to. Recently Jonathan Irish and Stephanie Taylor had their daughter, Cheyenne, removed by the CPS, inditing "being a member of a militia called Oath Keepers" on the rap sheet that the CPS used, along with many other matters that are still to be addressed. Never-the-less, they are both innocent until proven otherwise of any allegations levelled against them, and should be treated as such.
Leaving their case aside, there have been many cases whereby the CPS will use a political excuse to remove a child from parents when evidence of neglect is sketchy at best, but this trend is far more sinister than just the CPS being lazy in its evidence gathering procedures and cutting corners in order to persuade the Family Courts that the removal of a child or children is necessary. The case of Barry and Cindi Cooper A precedent is being set whereby a child can be removed from parents for purely political reasons, and this is not the first case whereby this has happened. On 18 March 2010, the CPS removed children in Austin, Texas from the care of their parents, Barry and Candi Cooper, simply because of their political activism, and because they had the temerity to teach their son not to trust the government. Thomas Jefferson would have considered that instruction entirely reasonable: "The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive." – Thomas Jefferson "Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government;… whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights." – Thomas Jefferson to Richard Price, 1789 "Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories." – Thomas Jefferson There was no evidence of harm or neglect of the children. They were kept clean, fed a healthy diet, educated, and were happy and well cared for. Even the Travis County Deputy District Attorney, Dayna Blazey, declared the Coopers to be "fit parents, whose children are healthy, happy and 'well cared for', and stating that the kids were not at risk". But still, the local police used a minor drugs offence (possession of a small amount of marijuana of no more than a couple of grams), and their political affiliations, in order to remove their children from the family home. “In my 19 years of experience with criminal defense matters, a search warrant for a misdemeanor charge is certainly unusual,” wrote Minnesota attorney Maury D. Beaulier, who had no prior knowledge of the Coopers’ case. “It indicates to me that this is a targeted investigation. It may be targeted because it is believed to be a part of a greater crime or conspiracy, or, perhaps, because there are political motivations at work.” Of course, you only have to look at the Southern Property Law Center's views on Veterans, Oath Keepers, Constitutionalists and others to see how such people could be targeted by the CPS. Then you have the Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC) report on home-grown terrorism, the Department of Justice's document entitled “Investigating Terrorism and Criminal Extremism: Terms and Concepts”, and the Feds using pre-crime to target disgruntled Veterans. The picture becomes even clearer - that members of various Patriot groups are going to have their children targeted by the CPS for forced adoption as a political weapon of terror. At a March 1925 international birth control gathering in New York City, a speaker warned of the menace posed by the "black" and "yellow" peril. The man was not a Nazi or Klansman; he was Dr. S. Adolphus Knopf, a member of Margaret Sanger's American Birth Control League (ABCL), which along with other groups eventually became known as Planned Parenthood.
Sanger's other colleagues included avowed and sophisticated racists. One, Lothrop Stoddard, was a Harvard graduate and the author of The Rising Tide of Color against White Supremacy. Stoddard was something of a Nazi enthusiast who described the eugenic practices of the Third Reich as "scientific" and "humanitarian." And Dr. Harry Laughlin, another Sanger associate and board member for her group, spoke of purifying America's human "breeding stock" and purging America's "bad strains." These "strains" included the "shiftless, ignorant, and worthless class of antisocial whites of the South." Not to be outdone by her followers, Margaret Sanger spoke of sterilizing those she designated as "unfit," a plan she said would be the "salvation of American civilization.: And she also spike of those who were "irresponsible and reckless," among whom she included those " whose religious scruples prevent their exercising control over their numbers." She further contended that "there is no doubt in the minds of all thinking people that the procreation of this group should be stopped." That many Americans of African origin constituted a segment of Sanger considered "unfit" cannot be easily refuted. While Planned Parenthood's current apologists try to place some distance between the eugenics and birth control movements, history definitively says otherwise. The eugenic theme figured prominently in the Birth Control Review, which Sanger founded in 1917. She published such articles as "Some Moral Aspects of Eugenics" (June 1920), "The Eugenic Conscience" (February 1921), "The purpose of Eugenics" (December 1924), "Birth Control and Positive Eugenics" (July 1925), "Birth Control: The True Eugenics" (August 1928), and many others. These eugenic and racial origins are hardly what most people associate with the modern Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA), which gave its Margaret Sanger award to the late Dr. Martin Luther King in 1966, and whose current president, Faye Wattleton, is black, a former nurse, and attractive. Though once a social pariah group, routinely castigated by religious and government leaders, the PPFA is now an established, high-profile, well-funded organization with ample organizational and ideological support in high places of American society and government. Its statistics are accepted by major media and public health officials as "gospel"; its full-page ads appear in major newspapers; its spokespeople are called upon to give authoritative analyses of what America's family policies should be and to prescribe official answers that congressmen, state legislator and Supreme Court justiices all accept as "social orthodoxy." Blaming Families Sanger's obsession with eugenics can be traced back to her own family. One of 11 children, she wrote in the autobiographical book, My Fight for Birth Control, that "I associated poverty, toil, unemployment, drunkenness, cruelty, quarreling, fighting, debts, jails with large families." Just as important was the impression in her childhood of an inferior family status, exacerbated by the iconoclastic, "free-thinking" views of her father, whose "anti-Catholic attitudes did not make for his popularity" in a predominantly Irish community. The fact that the wealthy families in her hometown of Corning, N.Y., had relatively few children, Sanger took as prima facie evidence of the impoverishing effect of larger families. The personal impact of this belief was heightened 1899, at the age of 48. Sanger was convinced that the "ordeals of motherhood" had caused the death of her mother. The lingering consumption (tuberculosis) that took her mother's life visited Sanger at the birth of her own first child on Nov. 18, 1905. The diagnosis forced her to seek refuge in the Adirondacks to strengthen her for the impending birth. Despite the precautions, the birth of baby Grant was "agonizing," the mere memory of which Sanger described as "mental torture" more than 25 years later. She once described the experience as a factor "to be reckoned with" in her zealous campaign for birth control. From the beginning, Sanger advocacy of sex education reflected her interest in population control and birth prevention among the "unfit." Her first handbook, published for adolescents in 1915 and entitled, What Every Boy and Girl Should Know, featured a jarring afterword: It is a vicious cycle; ignorance breeds poverty and poverty breeds ignorance. There is only one cure for both, and that is to stoop breeding these things. Stop bringing to birth children whose inheritance cannot be one of health or intelligence. Stop bringing into the world children whose parents cannot provide for them. To Sanger, the ebbing away of moral and religious codes over sexual conduct was a natural consequence of the worthlessness of such codes in the individual's search for self-fulfillment. "Instead of laying down hard and fast rules of sexual conduct," Sanger wrote in her 1922 book Pivot of Civilization, "sex can be rendered effective and valuable only as it meets and satisfies the interests and demands of the pupil himself." Her attitude is appropriately described as libertinism, but sex knowledge was not the same as individual liberty, as her writings on procreation emphasized. The second edition of Sanger's life story, An Autobiography, appeared in 1938. There Sanger described her first cross-country lecture tour in 1916. Her standard speech asserted seven conditions of life that "mandated" the use of birth control: the third was "when parents, though normal, had subnormal children"; the fourth, "when husband and wife were adolescent"; the fifth, "when the earning capacity of the father was inadequate." No right existed to exercise sex knowledge to advance procreation. Sanger described the fact that "anyone, no matter how ignorant, how diseased mentally or physically, how lacking in all knowledge of children, seemed to consider he or she had the right to become a parent." Religious Bigotry In the 1910's and 1920's, the entire social order–religion, law, politics, medicine, and the media–was arrayed against the idea and practice of birth control. This opposition began in 1873 when an overwhelmingly Protestant Congress passed, and a Protestant president signed into law, a bill that became known as the Comstock Law, named after its main proponent, Anthony Comstock. The U.S. Congress classified obscene writing, along with drugs, and devices and articles that prevented conception or caused abortion, under the same net of criminality and forbade their importation or mailing. Sanger set out to have such legislation abolished or amended. Her initial efforts were directed at the Congress with the opening of a Washington, D.C., office of her American Birth Control League in 1926. Sanger wanted to amend section 211 of the U.S. criminal code to allow the interstate shipment and mailing of contraceptives among physicians, druggists and drug manufacturers. During January and February of 1926, Sanger and her co-workers personally interviewed 40 senators and 14 representatives. None agreed to introduce a bill to amend the Comstock Act. Fresh from this unanimous rejection, Sanger issued an update to her followers: Everywhere there is general acceptance of the idea, except in religious circles. . .The National Catholic Welfare Council [sic] (NCWC) has a special legislative committee organized to block and defeat our legislation. They frankly state that they intend to legislate for non-Catholics according to the dictates of the church. There was no such committee. But 20 non-Catholic lay or religious organizations joined NCWC in opposition to amending the Comstock Act. This was not the first time, nor was it to be the last, that Sanger sought to stir up sectarian strife by blaming Catholics for her legislative failures. Catholic-bashing was a standard tactic (one that Planned Parenthood still finds useful to this day), although other Christian groups now also come in for criticism. Eight years later, in 1934, Sanger went to Congress again. Reporting on the first day of the hearings, the New York Times noted: ... the almost solidly Catholic opposition to the measure. This is now, according to Margaret Sanger. . . the only organized opposition to the proposal. Sanger wrote a letter to her "Friends, Co-workers, and Endorsers" that portrayed the opposing testimony as the work of Catholics determined ... not to present facts to the committee but to intimidate them by showing a Catholic block of voters who (though in the minority in the United States) want to dictate to the majority of non-Catholics as directed from the Vatican in social and moral legislation ... American men and women, are we going to allow this insulting arrogance to bluff the American people? For Sanger, the proper attitude toward her religious critics featured character assassination, personal vilification and old-fashioned bigotry. Her Birth Control Review printed an article that noted: "Today by the Roman Catholic clergy and their allies . . . Public opinion in America, I fear, is too willing to condone in the officials of the Roman Catholic Church what it condemns in the Ku Klux Klan. A favorite Catholic-baiter of Sanger's was Norman E. Himes, who contributed articles to Sanger's journal. Himes claimed there were genetic differences between Catholics and non-Catholics. Are Catholic stocks . . . genetically inferior to such non-Catholic libertarian stocks and Unitarians and Universal . . . Freethinkers? Inferior to non-Catholics in general? . . . my guess is that the answer will someday be made in the affirmative. . . and if the supposed differentials in net productivity are also genuine, the situation is anti-social, perhaps gravely so. Sanger sought to isolate Catholics by creating a schism between them and Protestants, who had held parallel views of birth control and abortion for centuries. She welcomed a report from a majority of the Committee on Marriage and the Home of the General Council of Churches (later the National Council of Churches) advocating birth control. This committee was composed largely of social elite Protestants, including Mrs. John D. Rockefeller, Jr. A number of Protestant church bodies publicly repudiated the committee's endorsement. The Rev. Worth Tippy, council executive secretary and author of the report, told Sanger in April 1931 that: ... the statement on Moral Aspects of Birth Control has aroused more opposition within the Protestant churches than we expected. Under the circumstances, and since we plan to carry on a steady work for liberalizing laws and to stimulate the establishment of clinics, it is necessary that we make good these losses and also increase our resources.Could you help me quietly by giving me the names of people of means who are interested in the birth control movement and might help us if I wrote them. Sanger immediately wrote Tippy that she would be "glad to select names of persons from our lists whom I think might be able to subscribe." Tippy replied to Sanger a week later, offering to give her some names for fund raising and thanking her for the offer of "names of people who are able to contribute to generous causes and who are favorable to birth control." He also related that they had expected some reaction from the "fundamentalist groups," but nothing like what had happened. Protestants repeatedly stated their unity with Catholics in opposing Planned Parenthood's initiatives. During Sanger's attempts to reform New York state law, another Protestant stood with Catholics. The Rev. John R. Straton, Pastor of the Calvary Baptist Church of New York City, said: "This bill is subversive of the human family . . . It is revolting, monstrous, against God's word and contradicts American traditions." Sanger's attack on Catholics appeared to be an attempt to divert attention from the class politics of Planned Parenthood. The Rev. John A. Ryan wrote: ... their main objective is to increase the practice of birth-prevention among the poor . . . It is said that the present birth-prevention movement is to some extent financed by wealthy, albeit philanthropic persons. As far as I am aware , none of these is conspicuous in the movement for economic justice. None of them is crying out for a scale of wages which would enable workers to take care of a normal number of children. Sanger's sexual license was another motivation for her Anti-Catholic sniping. A Sanger biographer, David M. Kennedy, said her primary goal was to "increase the quantity and quality of sexual relationships." The birth control movement, she said, freed the mind from "sexual prejudice and taboo, by demanding the frankest and most unflinching re-examination of sex in its relation to human nature and the basis of human society. Sannger's Gamble It was in 1939 that Sanger's larger vision for dealing with the reproductive practices of black Americans emerged. After the January 1939 merger of her Clinical Research Bureau and the ABCL to form the Birth Control Federation of America, Dr. Clarence J. Gamble was selected to become the BCFA regional director for the South. Dr. Gamble, of the soap-manufacturing Procter and Gamble company, was no newcomer to Sanger's organization. He had previously served as director at large to the predecessor ABCL. Gamble lost no time and drew up a memorandum in November 1939 entitled "Suggestion for Negro Project." Acknowledging that black leaders might regard birth control as an extermination plot, he suggested that black leaders be place in positions where it would appear that they were in chargeÑas it was at an Atlanta conference. It is evident from the rest of the memo that Gamble conceived the project almost as a traveling road show. A charismatic black minister was to start a revival, with "contributions" to come from other local cooperating ministers. A "colored nurse" would follow, supported by a subsidized "colored doctor." Gamble even suggested that music might be a useful lure to bring the prospects to a meeting. Sanger answered Gamble on Dec. 10. 1939, agreeing with the assessment. She wrote: "We do not want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten that idea out if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members." In 1940, money for two "Negro Project" demonstration programs in southern states was donated by advertising magnate Albert D. Lasker and his wife, Mary. From the Associated Press:
State investigators say the husband of former state Senator Nancy Schaefer shot his wife before turning the gun on himself. The couple’s bodies were found in their north Georgia home Friday. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation conducted autopsies on the Schaefer’s Saturday—investigators say all evidence points to the deaths as a murder-suicide. The bodies of Nancy and Bruce Schaefer, 73 and 74 years old respectively, were found by their daughter at the couple’s home in Clarkesville. Nancy Schaefer was a two-term state Senator representing Georgia’s 50th district. She lost her seat in 2008. Schaefer was also a candidate for mayor of Atlanta, Georgia lieutenant governor and governor of the state. The corporate media does not bother to mention that Schaefer exposed the abuses of CPS and the international child sex slavery ring. “Investigators told the Associated Press they believe Bruce Schaefer, 74, shot his wife once in the back while she slept in the bedroom early Friday morning and then shot himself in the head. Police found a handgun near his body and several letters written to family members, including a suicide note,” reports the Associated Baptist Press. Other reports indicate Bruce Schaefer shot himself in the chest. People who commit suicide usually shoot themselves in the head. “Contrary to early reports that Bruce Schaefer had cancer, the Gainesville Times reported March 27 that the couple’s daughter, who discovered the bodies, told the local sheriff her father was not suffering from any serious illness at the time of the shootings. Habersham County Sheriff Joey Terrell said some of the letters mentioned serious financial problems and speculated that might have been a motive,” Associated Baptist Press also reported. Appearing on the Alex Jones Show last May, Schaefer detailed how CPS is involved in child trafficking rings (see video below). After watching Schaefer’s interview with Jones, if you think Schaefer was involved in a suicide pact with her husband, you may also be interested in a famous bridge for sale in Brooklyn. Link: http://www.infowars.com/cps-warrior-nancy-schaefer-gunned-down/ The four aircraft which crashed on September 11th, 2001 have never been forensically matched to the four passenger planes which were allegedly hijacked that morning. Requests under the Freedom of Information Act have met with denials and refusals, and documents which have been produced, allegedly using data from the only three "Black Box" flight recorders said to have been found, have no serial numbers of the devices listed on them.
The excellent work done by Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth and other such organizations, in their quest to determine what caused the Twin Towers and WTC 7 to collapse, should never be underestimated. But, being the primary murder weapons, for my money the real smoking guns were, and still are, the four aircraft that were used as weapons on that terrible day, and for them not to have been identified breaks every rule in any book which seeks to teach the art of solving crimes. It is either an oversight beyond belief, on the part of the 9/11 Commission, or part of a criminal conspiracy of immense proportions set in motion to cover up what really happened on September 11th, 2001. Links to documents researched by Aidan Monaghan. FAA Related http://911blogger.com/node/13149 FBI Related http://rinf.com/alt-news/911-truth/fbi-refuses-to-confirm-identity-of-911-planes/1875/ Serial Numbers http://911blogger.com/node/14081 They are Old Europe's sock puppets, like the US.
It is accurate to posit that Australia, New Zealand and Canada are not independent, sovereign countries. However, these nations are not owned and run by the UK government or the UK nation state; they are owned and run by the House of Windsor Crown Temple syndicate within the City of London Corporation. The head signatory of the Crown Temple syndicate is Elizabeth Windsor (Queen Elizabeth II of England). Queen Elizabeth II is the largest landowner on Earth. She is Head of State of the United Kingdom and of thirty one other states and territories, and is the legal owner of 6,600 million acres of land, one sixth of the Earth’s land surface. A conservative estimate of the value of the Crown Temple syndicate's land holding, under the Queen's signature, is £17.6 trillion. The Queen's syndicate land holdings are based on the laws of the countries she owns and her land title is valid in each of those countries. Her main holdings are Canada, the 2nd largest country on Earth, with 2,467 million acres, Australia, the 7th largest country on Earth with 1,900 million acres, Papua New Guinea with114 million acres, New Zealand with 66 million acres, and the UK with 60 million acres. Elizabeth Windsor and her covert syndicate in London are the world’s largest landowners by a significant margin. The next largest landowner is the Russian state, with an overall ownership of 4,219 million acres, and a direct ownership comparable with the Queen’s land holding of 2,447 million acres. The 3rd largest landowner is the Chinese state, which claims all of Chinese land, about 2,365 million acres. The 4th largest landowner on Earth is often said to be the Federal Government of the United States, which owns about one third of the land area of the USA, 760 million acres. However, this Washington DC private corporation Federal Estate is actually owned and controlled by the London Crown Temple syndicate. Indeed, at the present time, the London syndicate in partnership with an old family Chinese syndicate, hold, and have activated, a $47 trillion World Court Writ of Execution and Lien on the US Treasury and the US Federal Reserve Board. The five largest "personal" landowners on Earth, at present, are Queen Elizabeth II of England (6,600 million acres), King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia (553 million acres), King Bhumibol of Thailand (126 million acres), King Mohammed IV of Morocco (113 million acres) and Sultan Quaboos of Oman (76 million acres). In reality, however, these named individuals are just the head signatories of old bloodline syndicates which act corporately through hidden family trusts. It should not be forgotten that the most powerful financial syndicate in the Western World is that of the European Rothschilds. The Rothschilds, because of their powerbase inside the City of London Corporation, have a controlling membership of the London Crown Temple syndicate, and they also have executive control of the Vatican and the Mafia though the P2 Masonic Lodge in Italy. The financial affairs of the new UK coalition government in London are also Rothschild-controlled. The line management here is understood to be Jacob Rothschild ► Nathaniel Rothschild (N.M.Rothschild & Sons Limited, New Court, St Swithin's Lane, London EC4P 4DU) ► Oliver Letwin ► George Osborne (British Chancellor of the Exchequer). Sources: http://www.whoownstheworld.com/about-the-book/largest-landowner/ http://www.henrymakow.com/by_alcuin_bramertonfor_henryma.html By BILL QUIGLEY
"If it gets any worse,” said Wilda, a homeless Haitian mother, “we’re not going to survive.” Mothers and grandmothers surrounding her nodded solemnly. We are in a broiling “tent” with a group of women trying to raise their families in a public park. Around the back of the Haitian National Palace, the park hosts a regal statute of Alexandre Petion in its middle. It is now home to five thousand people displaced by the January 2010 earthquake. Nine months after the quake, over a million people are still homeless in Haiti. Haiti looks like the quake could have been last month. I visited Port au Prince shortly after the quake and much of the destruction then looks the same nine months later. The Associated Press reports only 2 percent of the rubble has been removed and only 13,000 temporary shelters have been constructed. Not a single cent of the US aid pledged for rebuilding has arrived in Haiti. In the last few days the US pledged it would put up 10% of the billion dollars in reconstruction aid promised. Only 15 percent of the aid pledged by countries and organizations around the world has reached the country so far. With other human rights advocates from CCR, MADRE, CUNY Law School, BAI and the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, I am huddled under faded gray tarps stamped US Aid. Blue tarps staked into the ground as walls. This is not even the hot season but the weather reports the heat index is 115. The floor is bare dirt, soft from a recent rain. Our guide works with a vibrant grassroots women’s organization, KOFAVIV, which is working with women in many camps, and she encourages residents to tell us their stories. Anne has seven children. She would really love to have a tent. She and her family live on a small plot of dirt eight feet by eight feet. Sheets are tied to pieces of wood to keep out the sun. Plastic sheeting covers the ground. When it rains everything they have is soaked. She begs every day for food. Therese has three children, 12, 11, and 9. She has lived in the camps since the quake. A few weeks ago when she went to get a bucket of water, some men grabbed her and raped her. Before the quake she worked as a street vendor but has no money to buy supplies to sell. She prays all day every day for help. Caroline lived with her husband and three children in an apartment in downtown Port au Prince. The quake took her husband and left the rest of the family homeless. She was raped in the first camp she settled in. When she moved she was raped again and fought back with KOFAVIV. She and other women set up their own security with whistles and flashlights to protect each other. They push the police to arrest. Her life is now in danger because the rapists know who she is and she is vulnerable. We hear from dozens of other mothers and grandmothers – Alana, Beatrice, Celine, Marcie, Rene, Wilda and others. This is what they tell us. There is no electricity at all in the camps. Some have lights on poles that work some of the time. Many have no lights at all. There is no food. The children are terribly hungry. The food aid program was terminated in April and nothing took its place. The authorities cut off the food so people would leave the camps, but where is there to go? Water is hard to find. For the people in Petion park, water is delivered by truck to a central site a block or two away in the middle of several camps. Thousands of people line up twice a day to get water before it runs out. In another camp we visited Sunday, Camp Kasim, there was no water at all for hundreds of families and none scheduled to be delivered until Monday at the earliest. Boys and girls surged around a pipe several blocks away trying to capture some water in Oxfam marked buckets. People are coughing, sniffling, and their eyes watering. Quiet babies are the norm. Many have skin rashes and vaginal infections. There are several volunteer clinics but usually only the very sickest are seen because so many people need help. The biggest camps now have some toilets but not enough. Drainage is a big problem especially now during the rainy season. Children cannot be kept in the suffocating tents. They play in the muddy paths. They would love to return to school but there is no money. Security is a huge problem. Less than a dozen of the thousand plus camps have official security at night. During the day the police may come around or maybe the heavily armed MINUSTAH UN forces will patrol. But at night security forces vanish. With little or no light at night, tens of thousands of unguarded sheet structures and canvas walls offer thieves and gangs an inviting target. Violence against women and girls is widespread. Women who go to the latrines at night are attacked. Some women talk of carrying rape babies. Others will do anything for the crudest abortion. When they go to the police and ask them to investigate, officers demand money for gas. Even those who pay the police usually end up frustrated. There is a sense of impunity. There are an estimated 1300 “camps” of homeless people in Haiti. Homeless people live literally everywhere. People are camped in the middle of many streets. Shanty structures are built right up to the edge of streets. Every park, every school yard, every parking lot appear to have people living under sheets or lean to tents. The most fortunate families live in modest plastic tents. The newest tents are royal blue with red flags with yellow stars on them – donated in the last week from China. Less fortunate families, and there are many of them, live under faded sheets stretched between wooden poles made from tree branches. Within the camps there are dirt paths – some only inches wide. Tents and sheet shelters are side by side – inches apart. Evictions are starting. Churches are pushing people off their property. Schools which are reopening are turning off the water to the people camped in the ball fields. Some in authority are openly saying that people must be forced out the camps. But only 13,000 temporary structures have been built and they are far away from family, school, jobs and healthcare. There is no place to go. The UN, which effectively runs Haiti with the Haitians and the US, holds meetings nearly every day to coordinate responses to dozens of issues like security, food, water, reconstruction, and gender violence. Human rights advocates in Port au Prince complain that no meetings are conducted in Kreyol, the language of the Haitian people. Yet there is hope. The Haitian mothers and grandmothers we heard from are fighting for their lives. KOFAVIV and BAI and other grassroots human rights groups are speaking out, demonstrating, educating the people in the camps, and working together for social justice. During a torrential downpour Saturday, dozens gathered on folding chairs under the front porch overhang of BAI to work on how to get the US, the UN, Haiti and the NGOs to do their jobs. Together the people have a chance. As one woman who works against violence told us, “If there is one woman and one man, maybe the man will win. But if the woman uses whistles to alert other women and gets other women to show up, maybe the man will see he is going to lose and will run away.” Meanwhile, Wilda and a million other Haitians are slowly dying from starvation, illness, lack of security and neglect. Nine months after the quake. By Jerome Corsi - WND The Institute of International Finance, a group that represents 420 of the world's largest banks and finance houses, has issued yet another call for a one-world global currency, Jerome Corsi's Red Alert reports. "A core group of the world's leading economies need to come together and hammer out an understanding," Charles Dallara, the Institute of International Finance's managing director, told the Financial Times. An IIF policy letter authored by Dallara and dated Oct. 4 made clear that global currency coordination was needed, in the group's view, to prevent a looming currency war. "The narrowly focused unilateral and bilateral policy actions seen in recent months – including many proposed and actual measures on trade, currency intervention and monetary policy – have contributed to worsening underlying macroeconomic imbalances," Dallara wrote. "They have also led to growing protectionist pressures as countries scramble for export markets as a source of growth." Dallard encouraged a return to the G-20 commitment to utilize International Monetary Fund special drawing rights to create an international one-world currency alternative to the U.S. dollar as a new standard of foreign-exchange reserves. Likewise, a July United Nations report called for the replacement of the dollar as the standard for holding foreign-exchange reserves in international trade with a new one-world currency issued by the International Monetary Fund. The 176-page report, titled "United Nations World Economic and Social Survey 2010," was issued at a high-level meeting of the U.N. Economic and Social Council and published in its entirety on the U.N. website. by: Yana Kunichoff, t r u t h o u t | Report On the heels of a series of FBI raids on anti-war activists, an FBI whistleblower and constitutional rights groups are calling out the agency for overstepping its bounds, fearing that its increased powers could infringe on First Amendment rights and silence dissent. Agents searched the homes of anti-war activists in Chicago, Minneapolis, Michigan and Durham, North Carolina in the last two weeks of September, along with the offices of the Minnesota Anti-War Committee, confiscating computers, cell phones, large amounts of paper and financial records, according to the activists and their attorneys. "The FBI raids seem to reflect the latest actions by a recidivist agency that has lost sight of its mission to protect public safety," Shahid Buttar, executive director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee and the People's Campaign for the Constitution told Truthout. According to the subpoenas, the activists, who were involved in labor causes, the anti-war movement and the Arab American Action Network, are being investigated for contact they may have had with members of Hezbollah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The spokesman for the FBI in Minneapolis said, "the warrants are seeking evidence in support of an ongoing Joint Terrorism Task Force investigation into activities concerning the material support of terrorism." All the individuals involved in the raids denied their connections to terrorist organizations, and said any meetings or contact they may have had with the groups were perfectly legal. Jess Sundin, of the Minnesota Anti-War Committee, noted that when she met FARC rebels in Colombia in 2000, the Colombian government was holding peace talks with the rebels at a public forum, where she met them. Sundin said she has had no contact with FARC since. The FBI has come under attack recently from a string of reports and investigations that showcase an unfair targeting of activists. Just days before the raids of activists in the Midwest and North Carolina, the Department of Justice released a report finding that between 2001 and 2006, the FBI kept tabs on activists affiliated with Greenpeace, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta), Catholic Workers and Quakers. According to the report, the agency improperly placed these individuals on terrorist watch lists, and gave inaccurate and misleading information to Congress and the public about its activities. "The Bureau's standard for undercover activities is known neither by the public nor Congress," Buttar wrote in an op-ed in Truthout earlier this year. "Intelligence agencies may justifiably pursue clandestine activities, but should not operate according to secret rules - at least not in countries that claim to lead the free world." The FBI disclosed part of its policy following a Freedom of Information Act request made by Buttar, but the section on undercover infiltration has remained secret. A two-year Washington Post investigation, "Top Secret America," detailed the extent of domestic spying and found that the web it wove was so widespread it had become entirely unwieldy: "The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work." James R. Clapper, then undersecretary of defense for intelligence and now director of national intelligence, told the investigators in June 2010, "There's only one entity in the entire universe that has visibility on all SAPs [Special Access Programs] - that's God." Colleen Rowley, a former FBI agent and whistleblower, told Truthout it was "breathtaking to recognize the irony" of the raids on individuals involved in left-leaning, domestic, advocacy groups only days after the flurry of criticism against the agency's mode of operation. Rowley, who left the FBI in 2004 after 24 years with the agency, said the blunders were part of a wider change in FBI rules and the ways it evaluates success. Quantitative rather than qualitative evaluation now means that individual agents are under increased pressure to meet targets, Rowley said, which is evidenced by recent reports of FBI cheating on internal tests. On September 27, 2010, an internal FBI investigation found widespreadcheating on a test related to Bush-era guidelines on justification needed to target a domestic group. The investigators "found test-taking conduct that constituted cheating and abuse, such as the use of answer sheets when taking the exam," which Rowley considers further justification of the response: "Oh my gosh, how can they be continuing after this!" The 2001 Patriot Act loosened restrictions on domestic information gathering by law enforcement agencies, but even these powers have been exploited by the FBI, notes Buttar - three separate reports in 2007, 2008 and 2010 document abuse of the powers extended by President George W. Bush after the attacks on 9/11. Both Buttar and Rowley said that the erosion of FBI constraints reached a new level in 2008 - the Mukasey Guidelines, meant to provide consolidated standards for agents to follow, effectively switched the presumption of one of proving guilt to proving innocence. FBI Director Robert Mueller testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee that FBI agents could not exercise surveillance in the absence of "suspicion," but later amended his statement in a note to Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois). In his note, according to The Associated Press, Mueller said that the FBI "must have a proper purpose before conducting surveillance, but suspicion of wrongdoing is not required." Much of the FBI's abuses have been painted as overhangs of the Bush era, but Rowley notes that current president Barack Obama is a constitutional lawyer, and a Supreme Court case that she calls "the most recent nail in the coffin" was put through under the Obama administration. The legal prohibitions in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project make it a crime to provide support, including humanitarian aid, literature distribution and political advocacy, to any groups that the United States government has designated as a "terrorist" group. The 12-year case, a challenge to the material support statute, was concluded this summer with the Supreme Court voting 6-to-3 that the statute's prohibitions on expert advice, training, service and personnel were not vague and did not violate speech rights. But Buttar, Rowley and William Quigley, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said the loose definition of "material support" could criminalize political speech and humanitarian aid, and by extension, the right to free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment. Quigley noted that the raids on anti-war activists "would have been thought totally ridiculous before the Supreme Court case." "It is still ridiculous, but now also ominous. Whether this is a policy decision by the Department of Justice and the Obama administration or whether this is just a few over-zealous FBI agents we don't know yet," Quigley continued, "but unfortunately the people who are targeted are going to be the guinea pigs for the rest of us to find this out." At a grand jury hearing held Tuesday in Chicago, the activists who had their homes raided refused to testify and assist the government investigation of their activities. For Rowley, the focus of the raids on individuals who have been involved with anti-war movements indicates an extreme illogic in American national security policy - "the mentality to believe that if you are against the war on terror that somehow makes you a terrorist." The raids on the homes of activists "did signal that the war on terror," Rowley said, "has now been turned inward on domestic advocacy groups." |
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